President Obama said on Tuesday that he will announce his decision on how many more troops to send to Afghanistan next week, and that it is his intention to "finish the job" that began with the overthrow of the Taliban government in the fall of 2001. While he avoided any hints of the new troop levels he foresees in Afghanistan, the president signaled that he will not be talking about a short-term commitment but rather an effort muscular enough to "dismantle and degrade" the enemy and ensure that "Al Qaeda and its extremist allies cannot operate" in the region. – New York Times
Dominant Social Theme: Whatever it takes to win a war.
Free-Market Analysis: Wars can be won. When Rome dismantled the city of Carthage, razed it and sowed the ground with salt, it won a war. Carthage was finished. Likewise, when the allies occupied Germany at the end of the Second World War, the Nazi party was definitively unraveled. It stopped existing (for the time being) as a meaningful and powerful entity.
Of course, one might say (and we will) that some of the more disturbing elements of Nazi Germany have reappeared, in of all places, Britain and America, the two countries who probably contributed the most to the end of Nazi Germany. One of the worst parts of Nazification in the eyes of many, was the way the state placed private enterprise in the public domain, not doing away with it but making industry bend to the wishes of the state both in terms of militarization and domestic security.
There are unfortunately modern parallels that we can discern. The Bush administration, in fact, could be said to have done something similar, in at least one instance, when it pressured American phone companies to go along with a program of comprehensive but private -- and illegal – wiretapping. (Retroactive Congressional approval does not from our point of view make the program any more "legal" then or now
The American Homeland Security's invasive and endlessly broad mission (and even its nomenclature) might easily have found a home in the early stages of pre-war Nazi Germany from our point of view. The British, under Blair, thoroughly blurred the lines of public and private endeavors in manifold industries and of course through domestic intelligence as well. The British are the most publicly videotaped (surveilled) nation in the entire world apparently -an ironic twist for a sturdy population that determinedly faced down the bestial "Hun."
We can see from the above examples that winning wars for the most part is, or seems to be, a fairly relative phenomenon. Yesterday's troublesome authoritarianism in a far-off country, once defeated, ends up like a virus, infecting one's own country. The West is steadily becoming more authoritarian as a result of the war on terror, even as questions continue to be raised about what the war on terror really is, why it was started and how it will end, if ever.
Barack Obama, who in this instance anyway seems about as imaginative (apparently) as a stump, is reported to have come to the conclusion that he needs to "finish the job in Afghanistan." This is a remarkably banal statement, hiding under its sentiments a thousand tiny murders and a million sins. (War is not a "job" but a series of military campaigns that involve the maiming and death of young men – and women now – and often the corollary, if mistaken, slaughter of non-combatants as well.)
Anyway, he has in mind, the article excerpted above tells us, permanently displacing the once-ruling Taliban in favor of the current Afghanistan democracy. Of course the current demos is so corrupt that most think the incoming administration took the election by fraud. As far as the Taliban go it is instructive to recall they were initially at least apparently a Western invention aimed at the Russians. Blowback again.
So ... it is all so very confusing. The Taliban, to the best of our knowledge, did not initiate 9/11. Neither did Iraq. We are however led to believe that the privileged son of one of the Bush family's biggest business partners did so while hiding in a cave. Indeed, he may have, but we will likely never know for sure because according to a well received book by John Farmer, lead counsel of the 9/11 Commission, the entire civilian intelligence and American military structure lied about the events surrounding 9/11, both leading up to it and following it.
But nonetheless, Obama will finish the "job." Whatever it is.
In today's other article we refer to General Smedley Butler's great work, "War Is a Racket." These words ring as true today (for us anyway) as they did after the First World War, which so horrified this great military man. We wonder in 10 or 20 years just how justifiable the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will look to more dispassionate observers. Certainly there are not many today who would wholeheartedly launch a defense of all the endless small wars that the United States was involved in during the 20th century, post World War II.
Have the Iraq and Afghanistan wars made the West "safer." Have they pushed back or done away with the threats to the West from the Taliban, Saddam Hussein or Al Quaeda? What were those threats anyway? Do they still exist? If the wars indeed did stall the advance of these ferocious entities, then what does disengagement from these states entail? Isn't it dangerous to leave unless these enemies are thoroughly defeated? Saddam Hussein is gone, but the Taliban and Al Quaeda remain active so far as we can tell. Now indeed, the enemy may have been "degraded" – a favorite Pentagon term – but who is to say that the enemy (whatever it is) will not reconstitute absent allied pressure.
Conclusion: Short of razing Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan and sowing the ground with salt, we question whether the endlessly reconstituting threat of fundamentalist, militant Islam – as it characterized anyway by Western military leaders – can ever be fully dealt with, If this is the case, then some other way, preferably peaceful, ought to be advanced to counter the endlessly replicating danger. Or is this the best our leaders have to offer us? Endless war to assure an endless peace. The trouble, apparently, is that war comes first.
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