Tag: Afghanistan War

Yet Another War Fought by Another Generation of Americans – For WHAT?

As a kid who grew up hearing the lyrics of “War” by Edwin Starr:

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing ..

Oh, war, I despise
‘Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go to fight
And lose their lives ..
.. and I still volunteered to join the US Navy in 1976 after the Vietnam War, thinking this country learned from that experience that was based on the lie of “Gulf of Tonkin” incident. Only later, after Gulf War II did I learn that not only Vietnam was based on a lie, but so too was the UN Korean conflict that the US joined, as well as the “surprise” (lie) attack on Pearl Harbor that had this country join in WWII .. as well as the sinking of the “civilian” (lie) ship Lusitania prompting the US to join in WWI. I knew that the Spanish-American War was based on a lie (USS Maine blown up in Havana, Cuba was NOT accomplished by the Spanish) .. but the further I go back the more I understand that truth is the first thing sacrificed with nation’s politicians consider war. So it is past time to evaluate the 17 year war in Afghanistan, as another generation of kids continue the fight there.
As a father, I was late in advising my own boys as to the nature of war, the American Empire and the way this country has been using new generations of our kids as cannon fodder through the decades going back several centuries. I am blessed that my kids were more wise than I was especially after Gulf War II was launched. I am hopeful that my writings today help their kids critically think through these things before they consider joining OR being drafted into the American Empire’s military.
Here is a veteran’s take ( excerpt and book ) on the Afghanistan War. The Moon of Alabama led me to this resource. I will use some of their dialog to reflect on this war in the context of all the other’s this nation has initiated since Moon of Alabama actually goes BEYOND what this book does and gets to the root of the issue.

The piece includes remarkably strong words about the strategic (in)abilities of U.S. politicians, high ranking officers and pundits:

On one matter there can be no argument: The policies that sent these men and women abroad, with their emphasis on military action and their visions of reordering nations and cultures, have not succeeded. It is beyond honest dispute that the wars did not achieve what their organizers promised, no matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly expensive, strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms and under different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck the World Trade Center in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight, reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost as if distant war is a presumed government action.

That description is right but it does not touche the underlying causes…

Underlying causes? Go on sir, set the all important context to what many writers state as mean fact without doing more homework:

… The main military outpost in the valley was build on a former sawmill. Chivers writes:

On a social level, it could not have been much worse. It was an unforced error of occupation, a set of foreign military bunkers built on the grounds of a sawmill and lumber yard formerly operated by Haji Mateen, a local timber baron…

What is missing here is WHY this sawmill was abandoned:

Ten years ago a piece by Elizabeth Rubin touched on this:

As the Afghans tell the story, from the moment the Americans arrived in 2001, the Pech Valley timber lords and warlords had their ear. Early on, they led the Americans to drop bombs on the mansion of their biggest rival — Haji Matin. The air strikes killed several members of his family, according to local residents, and the Americans arrested others and sent them to the prison at Bagram Air Base. The Pech Valley fighters working alongside the Americans then pillaged the mansion. And that was that. Haji Matin, already deeply religious, became ideological and joined with Abu Ikhlas, a local Arab linked to the foreign jihadis…

S**T .. so this effort in Afghanistan is built on past military mistakes (but not in their eyes because continuous war means missions and money .. but I digress)

The U.S. special forces lacked any knowledge of the local society. But even worse was that they lacked the curiosity to research and investigate the social terrain. They simply trusted their new ‘friend’, the smooth talking Pashtun timber baron, and called in jets to destroy his competitor’s sawmill and home. This started a local war of attrition which defeated the U.S. military. In 2010 the U.S. military, having achieved nothing, retreated from Korengal..

Does this not sounds like Vietnam? Fighting for the same hill time after time while trying to “save democracy”? This is as bad as Abraham Lincoln’s “save the Union” bulls**t .. and if you still think he is “honest”, you have some research to do. The “Union” post 1865 was nothing like pre-1861 .. and this country post 1787 (Constitution replaces the Article of Confederation) is nothing like pre-1787. In fact, post Revolutionary War politics kept much of the previous pre-1776 politics with just a flag change when it was all said and done. Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion found this out the hard way.

Back to Afghanistan, as Moon of Alabama concludes:

… Back to Chivers’ otherwise well written piece. He looks at the results two recent (and ongoing) U.S. wars:

The governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, each of which the United States spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build and support, are fragile, brutal and uncertain. The nations they struggle to rule harbor large contingents of irregular fighters and terrorists who have been hardened and made savvy, trained by the experience of fighting the American military machine.
…
Billions of dollars spent creating security partners also deputized pedophiles, torturers and thieves. National police or army units that the Pentagon proclaimed essential to their countries’ futures have disbanded. The Islamic State has sponsored or encouraged terrorist attacks across much of the world — exactly the species of crime the global “war on terror” was supposed to prevent.

The wars fail because they no reasonable strategic aim or achievable purpose. They are planned by incompetent people…

Incompetent people (generals, deep state and politicians) leading ignorant people (who believe themselves to be patriots who will reserve our freedoms) to death, brokenness (PTSD, etc.) and abuse (at the hands of the VA).

.. The U.S. population and its ‘leaders’ simply know too little about the world to prevail in an international military campaign. They lack curiosity. The origin of the Korengal failure is a good example for that.

U.S. wars are rackets, run on the back of lowly soldiers and foreign civil populations. They enriche few at the cost of everyone else.

Wars should not be ‘a presumed government action’, but the last resort to defend ones country…

Amen.

SF1