Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Political Rants

A short ending to the longest war

There’s a lot that’s been said about what happened in Afghanistan over the past couple of weeks. Most of what you’ll hear on cable talk shows is a brand of imperial outrage that would be hard to mock with any justice. I would need a pith helmet and some bad white shorts, for starters. As I’ve said in previous posts, the imperial world view runs deep in our commercial media. It’s like the setting moon illusion – they just can’t help but see things that way.

I’ve got a few thoughts on this issue. Don’t expect to see me invited onto any daytime news shows anytime soon. What I’m about to say would likely make heads explode on Morning Joe.

First, do no harm

A lot of the criticism of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is deserved by this administration. I’ve said often enough that their foreign policy is abysmal, and now they’ve managed to make a mess of practically the only part of it that I agreed with. They’ve known this day was coming since before the inauguration – what the hell were they thinking?

I think the most reasonable explanation is that the Biden administration is terrified of taking in too many refugees. Sam Seder said this on Majority Report a few days ago. It’s like they don’t want to be yelled at by Republicans, so they let these Afghanis swing in the wind. That’s the thanks you get for working with us. You’re welcome, people of Afghanistan!

Bravery and cowardice defined

Another thing I’ve heard is outrage that Biden suggested the Afghan government forces didn’t fight hard enough. This is where the imperial worldview is crucial. Most television commentators I’ve seen appear to consider fealty to American war aims as the standard by which to judge bravery or cowardice.

Let’s face it – many Afghans took part in the U.S. supported military because they needed money. There’s nothing wrong with that. If they folded in the face of the Taliban advance, it’s because they didn’t want to be the last people to die defending a government that no one believes in. Who can blame them?

We always take this condescending view of our allies in-country whenever we invade and occupy another nation. The same stuff was said about the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), or the South Vietnamese forces. Somehow we expect these folks to fight to the death for our national objectives, and that’s plainly irrational.

Let them in

There’s no question but that we owe a massive debt to all Afghans for using their country mercilessly over the course of the last 45 years, first to bludgeon the Soviets, and later to satisfy post-9/11 bloodlust. The least we can do, at this point, is bring a large number of refugees stateside. I know Tucker Carlson and various other white supremacists think that this is some kind of “great replacement” conspiracy, but fuck those guys. If we suddenly care about Afghans, we should help the ones who need help.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Making the bombs more drop-able.

I don’t know if you noticed this in an otherwise busy week of news, but at some point renowned Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released an a previously redacted classified U.S. government report from the late 1950s.

The document included discussion of the possibility of using nuclear weapons on mainland China at a moment of heightened conflict between China and Taiwan, which China regards (not incoherently) as a breakaway province. This was over the island chain called Quemoy and Matsu in the Straits of Taiwan – disputed real estate that came up in one of John Kennedy’s televised debates with Richard Nixon. (The report, prepared by the Rand Corporation, was among a cache of secret documents Ellsberg had taken along with the Pentagon Papers.)

I would like to be able to say that this was the only instance of the United States threatening to use nuclear weapons in conflicts following the Second World War. Sadly, I cannot. We considered using them in Korea and in Vietnam, then fortunately thought better of it. (I seem to remember Nixon exhorting Kissinger to “think big” when he suggested it.) We also came close to triggering a nuclear exchange by accident, through recklessness, more than once. (See my posts on nuclear weapons for some discussion of this.)

A New Generation of Threat

Another thing I would like to think is that we have gained some wisdom with regard to these weapons over the years. I have yet to see evidence of this. The fact is, we are in the process of investing many, many billions of dollars into “upgrading” our nuclear arsenal. This was a process brought along considerably by President Obama, and of course signed on to by Trump and now Biden.

Part of the rationale for this upgrade is safety. But what the hell is safe about an H-bomb? The thing is just inherently dangerous, is it not?

Good Things Do Not Come in Small Packages

What’s particularly frightening about the next generation of nuclear bombs is the advent of low-yield “bunker buster” weapons. These bombs are extremely destabilizing, as they blur the line between nuclear and conventional weapons. They make it simpler for commanders and political leaders to transition to a nuclear conflict in the midst of some overseas dust-up that they get themselves (and the rest of us) into.

Of course, nuclear components have been used in our conventional munitions for decades. The depleted uranium shell casings employed by our military nominally as a means of penetrating armor have been the source of radioactive hot spots in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. These weapons are effectively dirty bombs we deploy pretty liberally.

We’ve Got Shit To Do

One thing we can do to stop this craziness is to tell our congressional representatives to support legislation restricting spending on the ongoing nuclear “upgrade” and expansion. One piece of legislation in the works is Senator Markey’s SANE Act, which was reintroduced just this past week. This bill would cut $73 billion from the planned $1.7 trillion spending on nukes over the next thirty years. Of course, we need to do more than that, but bills like this one represent a good start on starving the beast. Worth a call to your Rep and your Senators. And your President.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Out now?

This week, as you likely know, President Biden announced the planned withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan, with the last ones leaving sometime before September 11, 2021. Mind you, that is not the anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan, but rather the 20th anniversary of the attacks that we used as a justification to invade Afghanistan (not to mention the 48th anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende, President of Chile, and the installment of the dictator Augusto Pinochet – another triumph of American foreign policy). As that date is a significant one in the annals of imperialism, I suppose it’s fitting that we should choose it to mark the end our occupation of Afghanistan, assuming we actually go through with it this time. Let us not forget that Trump agreed to pull out by May of this year, and that the Biden team backed away from that. So … we’ll see.

I (and I’m sure, you as well) have heard many, many voices over the past few days warning of the dark consequences that may result from this decision, as qualified and attenuated as it may turn out to be. (For instance, will contractors be removed? Will overflights and drone sorties continue?) There is a cadre of politicians – mostly those who coalesced around John McCain back in the day – who suggest that our best way forward would be to stay in that country permanently. They point to Germany, Japan, and Korea as examples of what positive effects such an endless presence may have. It’s no accident that the chief proponents of this “strategy” tend to be either veterans or people with strong military connections, because they claim some standing on the issue. It’s just that these are all really bad examples. While there’s been a standoff of sorts in Korea for 70 years, we haven’t been engaged in combat in Germany or Japan or, really, Korea the whole time our military has been ensconced in those countries. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has been an active war zone for forty years and more.

Just to be clear – I’m not saying we should wash our hands of Afghanistan altogether. God, no. We owe the Afghans big-time. We owe them for stoking the Mujahideen rebellion in the seventies, years before the Soviet invasion, a policy that led to a grinding war of attrition through the 80s and into the 90s. We owe them for having funded and facilitated that long war, helping the Saudis bankroll the rise of the precursors of the Taliban and Al Qaida, which is a curse that the Afghans suffered from far more than we have . We owe them for attacking their country in 2001, throwing them into another two decades of war, making common cause with their most rapacious warlords, and costing them another 150,000 lives. We owe them for dropping a lot of bank on some of the most corrupt elements in the country, further entrenching oligarchic power and further distorting their society with corruption and neocolonialism.

Suffice to say, it’s time we left Afghanistan for good. And then maybe make an extra effort to help them overcome the problems that we played a key role in causing.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.