One option: Get out of Afghanistan
Robert Zaller
Issue date: 11/13/09 Section: Ed-Op
Sept. 11 has long come and gone as an event in American history, even as we continue to struggle about how to memorialize a capitalist shrine on some of the most valuable real estate in the world. The fact is that our two real monuments-one for each of the twin towers?-are a pair of failed wars, one morally and prudentially questionable and the other an act of blatant aggression with no justification in law, morality or anything else.
I have written at length about the willful destruction of Iraq in these articles, and the corrosive effects-for international law and for our own body politic-of failing to hold our homegrown war criminals accountable. Suffice it to say, that while public attention shifts now to the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan, Iraq continues to fracture along its ethnic and religious lines, with decades of civil war the likely outcome. We broke that country, as Colin Powell once warned we would do with the brutal frankness of the military mind, but we don't own it. Iran might, but that's no sure bet either. Our own continued presence there-still 120,000 strong, not counting the contractors and oil prospectors-is, now, simply beside the point. We're like the guest who broke all your best china and insists on helping you pick up the shattered pieces when you just want him to go home.
But what about that other mess, the one in Afghanistan? Unlike Iraq, we had a genuine casus belli there, at least to hear it from Osama Bin Laden's mouth. In fact, we never did establish the degree of complicity between the Taliban and the Sept. 11 attacks, which in any case were enabled not by training bases in Afghanistan, but by laundered Saudi oil money-our own petrodollars coming back to bite us. Of course, like a junkie in hock to his pusher, we weren't going to disturb the Saudi sheikhs in their tents, or at least no one in the Bush clan was. The Taliban-universally despised, and sitting on no reserves of oil or anything else-were a target of opportunity in what Barack Obama, apparently suffering a brain cramp, has now rebranded as a "war of necessity."
I have written at length about the willful destruction of Iraq in these articles, and the corrosive effects-for international law and for our own body politic-of failing to hold our homegrown war criminals accountable. Suffice it to say, that while public attention shifts now to the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan, Iraq continues to fracture along its ethnic and religious lines, with decades of civil war the likely outcome. We broke that country, as Colin Powell once warned we would do with the brutal frankness of the military mind, but we don't own it. Iran might, but that's no sure bet either. Our own continued presence there-still 120,000 strong, not counting the contractors and oil prospectors-is, now, simply beside the point. We're like the guest who broke all your best china and insists on helping you pick up the shattered pieces when you just want him to go home.
But what about that other mess, the one in Afghanistan? Unlike Iraq, we had a genuine casus belli there, at least to hear it from Osama Bin Laden's mouth. In fact, we never did establish the degree of complicity between the Taliban and the Sept. 11 attacks, which in any case were enabled not by training bases in Afghanistan, but by laundered Saudi oil money-our own petrodollars coming back to bite us. Of course, like a junkie in hock to his pusher, we weren't going to disturb the Saudi sheikhs in their tents, or at least no one in the Bush clan was. The Taliban-universally despised, and sitting on no reserves of oil or anything else-were a target of opportunity in what Barack Obama, apparently suffering a brain cramp, has now rebranded as a "war of necessity."
Viewing Comments 1 - 5 of 5
Vic Anderson
posted 11/19/09 @ 11:14 AM EST
The ONLY option!
tiuoche
posted 11/19/09 @ 11:48 AM EST
fascist amerika WILL continue to murder, torture and destroy for amerikan Imperialism ! The good newz...the fascist amerika IS failing now !
tioche; Mexico
Ted Blodgett
posted 11/19/09 @ 7:09 PM EST
"The failure will be his, and the cost ours. The tragedy will be Afghanistan's"
Truer words have never been written. I care little for the political failure of Obama but the cost to the working and the poor of America will be paid for generations to come. (Continued…)
Alyssa
posted 11/20/09 @ 12:05 AM EST
Brilliant article. You made some fantastic points; bravo. I agree completely-we should pull out of Afghanistan immediately. We're at a stalemate. Theres no way we can organize a government in Afghanistan, when they themeselves, don't want one. (Continued…)
Pickerl
posted 11/22/09 @ 2:26 PM EST
Not only is the Afghanistan war a shame but it is also a sham. We are there to install a pipeline. We need to get the heck out of everywhere. Pull our troops back to America and patrol out national boarders. (Continued…)
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