Views » July 12, 2010
In an Afghan Hole? Dig Deeper
Like a hapless crew on a foundering ship, those holding the reins in the Afghan war have begun to scramble for reputation preservers. And they are scarce.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s trash talking and his subsequent sacking by President Barack Obama is a sign: America’s foreign policy elite is starting to realize the United States has lost the war.
Maj. Gen. Bill Mayville, McChrystal’s chief of operations, told Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings: “It’s not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win.”
Like a hapless crew on a foundering ship, those holding the reins in the Afghan war have begun to scramble for reputation preservers. And they are scarce.
One person whose reputation may survive is Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry who last November warned that the United States “will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves.” In Rolling Stone, McChrystal scoffs at Eikenberry’s pessimism: “Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books. Now, if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’ “
Others are not so lucky.
On June 22, the day after he first read the Rolling Stone article, Obama said U.S. strategy “is determined entirely” by two criteria: the first is whether it “ultimately makes this country safer,” the second is whether it “justifies the enormous … sacrifice that those men and women are making over there.”
OK, if the war in Afghanistan is winnable, Obama must tell how it will be won. If victory is impossible, as Mayville and other experts assert, Americans deserve to know how fighting a futile war makes their country safer.
Second, if the war is a mistake, how does continuing the fight “justify” the sacrifice soldiers have already made? How is the death of one soldier who died in vain justified by the death of a second … a thousandth?
Part of the reason we aren’t getting straight answers is that the mainstream press plays along with the administration’s we-can-win-in-Afghanistan fantasy.
Listen to the establishment press in the wake of the McChrystal kerfuffle.
On June 24, a New York Times editorial advised: “Reports that some State Department officials are also advocating a swift deal with the Taliban are worrisome. [How so?] … Mr. Obama needs to do a better job of explaining why [the war] is so central to American security. [Why is it?] More important, he and his aides have to do a better job managing it. [By doing what?]” Enlighten us, Gray Lady.
On June 24, Time magazine’s Mark Halperin fawned: “Obama turned what could have been a crippling blow into one of the strongest moments of his presidency to date.”
In a June 23 interview with National Public Radio, Time’s executive editor, Nancy Gibbs, explained her magazine’s special function: “The discipline has always been, not what do you cover, but what do you not cover. It has always been an exercise in ignoring things … in saying, ‘That’s not important enough.’ ” Judging from Halperin’s analysis of the McChrystal affair, Time has determined that what is “important enough” is how the selection of Gen. David Petraeus will play in the Beltway, not whether the substantive policies guiding the United States in Afghanistan are doomed to fail.
A senior adviser to McChrystal told Rolling Stone: “If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular.”
But how are they to learn what is going on? Digesting empty New York Times editorials? Waiting for Nancy Gibbs to decide what deserves to be ignored?
Americans have made enormous sacrifices for this war in Afghanistan. They deserve honest answers from the president and from the press.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Joel Bleifuss, a former director of the Peace Studies Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is the editor & publisher of In These Times, where he has worked since October 1986.
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Reader Comments
Obama said U.S. strategy “is determined entirely” by two criteria: the first is whether it “ultimately makes this country safer,” the second is whether it “justifies the enormous … sacrifice that those men and women are making over there.”
Of the above criteria, only the first is truly legitimate. The second depends on the answer to the first and as such is a response to it. Thus it might be said that Obama is automatically positing that the war “makes this country safer,” by even mentioning the the second as valid.
In my view, the only question that needs discussing is “What threat does the admitted 100-300 Alquada and the Taliban in Afghanistan pose to us in this country?” Only after determining the real threat can you determine if fighting a war there will ‘make us safer’ over here.
To ask Obama how he plans to “win the war,” regardless of your possible intent to expose him by trapping him, actually leads to another cul de sac discussion we have been in before. It is a red herring question whose answer is already known. Check out the answers neocons like Kristol, Krauthammer, Cheney et al, or the folks in the Pentagon like Petraeus give on how we are winning and will win. Thus far we have no effective answer to their ‘answer,’ and stand mute as they proceed to send a new surge of 30,000 troops to ‘keep us safe.’ Likewise all the questions you pose to the NY Times editorial, although valid, are moot. There is no point in debating the corporatist media.
Obama needs to show us how we are being threatened, by proven facts, not simply assumptive rhetoric like the above. That question I posed above, will lead to a real discussion, and open the door to public awareness. Obama’s use here, of fear rhetoric, is only different from BushCos, in its subtelty. The technique of fear mongering must be challenged openly and directly when ever it is used, however subtlety it is used, if there is any chance to change the public’s perception of our foreign policy ideology. And without a massive public response against the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan no change will happen, in my view.
Posted by P E. Scott on Jul 12, 2010 at 7:10 PM
Honest answers from the President and the press? Maybe, but Daddy Warbucks’ enormously wealthy and powerful organization is notoriously self serving and deceitful. Information about its activities typically is censored and sanitized before dissemination up the chain of command or down and out to the general public. Claims of ‘national security interests’ permit omissions of essential facts as well as outright dishonesty when dealing with the uninitiated.
In any case, as long as well-conditioned taxpayers continue to provide massive funding for military ends we will continue to have those gigantic revenue streams breeding war after war for the sake of profits alone. Most Americans do not realize that well over half of America’s revenue since WWII has gone toward the military industrial complex. And now that we are broke there still is not a sound to explain where most of the money has gone - subtly revealing the undisputed power that exists in our war mongering circles.
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
— James Madison, Political Observations, 1795 (as quoted at
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending)
Posted by John Danilow on Jul 13, 2010 at 3:31 PM
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