Bloody Summer Ahead in Afghanistan

10. Feb, 2010 Categories: Economy by Aaron Emery 0 Comments

The frigid winters in mountainous Afghanistan usually pass by with few combat deaths due to less mobility and less activity in the weather. Each summer, the casualty rate has spiked. However, this January was an exception with over the deaths of 30 American soldiers and 9 more to date in February. These totals, along with the arrival of close to 40,000 more NATO and US troops, suggest a bloody summer is ahead in Afghanistan. Last year was a record-setting year for soldier deaths at 317 and the totals so far are about twice as high as the 2009 winter.

American citizens should question why exactly Nobel “Peace” Prize winner Barack Obama, the neoconservative chicken-hawk wing of the Republican Party (that is, most of them), and the interventionist war hawks in the Democratic Party (that is, most of them) are continuing to expend American blood and treasure on a meaningless war. HR 2647, the latest military spending bill of $680 billion for FY2010 was approved 389-22 in October by Congress.

As I have outlined in my platform, the Afghanistan and Pakistan Wars are unconstitutional and thereby illegal. These wars are unjust, preemptive wars of aggression that do not effectively address Al-Qaeda nor the real reasons America was attacked in the first place. Namely, this is our insistence to place over 761 military bases in 150 of the world’s 194 countries. No other country seeks to station their troops on foreign soil as we have. Americans certainly would not put up with the stationing of Chinese or Russian troops on our soil, so we should expect foreigners to feel no different.

Sure, the reasons given publicly for the past 9 years by the Establishment are capture the elusive Al-Qaeda, but p er National Security Adviser James Jones, “less than 100 [al Qaeda] operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.” Surely sending conventional armies of additional thousands abroad is pointless to address Al-Qaeda. Common sense solutions like increasing the bounty offered for Bin Laden (if he is still alive) and other Al-Qaeda members and targeting them by issuing small groups constitutional letters of marque and reprisal are the clear path, but these ideas are kept from public debate. Lost in the shuffling of the facts is the truth that the Taliban would have turned Bin Laden over in exchange for peace.

No, the real reason for all the troops is that the Bush-Obama administrations desire to involve us in a tribal war, most likely for the eco-political reasons I outlined in my plank. We are allied with the weak alliance headed by Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun from the Popalzai tribe, and still some of the tribal warlords of the Northern Alliance which fought a proxy war in 2001 to conquer the country on our behalf. For years, Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, has borne the nickname the Mayor of Kabul since that is as far as his administration’s power extends. The opposing tribes are held together by the Taliban, and consists of more Pashtun, Uzbek, Tajik, Punjabi, Arabic, and even Chechen tribes.

Americans who take the view that we are engaged in a war against Islam are sadly mistaken as our allies are Muslim as well. Those that take the view that the war is just against the “extremists” should be offended not only with the torturing and violations of the rule of law at Abu Ghraib and Bagram Prison, but also by the alliance with disreputable characters like the ex-Taliban, CIA-funded warlord Rashid Dostum, who was responsible for massacre of hundreds or even several thousand Taliban prisoners at Dasht-i-Leili among many other brutal acts in his past. Dostum is now the Chief of Staff in the Afghan National Army under Karzai. (photo of mass grave)

This is a senseless tribal war without a foreseeable end, full of ironies like the United States military has been, in effect, bribing the Taliban so that supplies can be safely transported. Colonel David Haight, commander of the Third Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division, stated, “The American soldier in me is repulsed by it. But I know that it is what it is: essentially paying the enemy, saying, ‘Hey, don’t hassle me.’ I don’t like it, but it is what it is.”

Ending the Afghanistan-Pakistan War (and let us not forget Iraq) has always been the easy part. There is NOTHING keeping us from leaving the country or at least engaging the Taliban diplomatically so peace can be restored as we withdrawal.

In a time when the greatest threat to our prosperity is the fiscal insanity of the Republocrats, when the greatest threat to our security comes not from terrorists but from the inevitable blowback of American foreign policy, preserving – at best – the vanity and pride of career politicians with the blood of our troops is unforgivable, dishonorable, and absurd.

Jake Towne

February 10, 2010

Article Archives