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America: Stop These Wars

Posted By John Grant

Will President Obama cave-in to the generals?

General Stanley McChrystal was appointed commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan due to his leadership in Anbar Province in Iraq, where he was given credit for the success of “the surge.” The propaganda had it that additional troops led to the success of the surge in Iraq. But as people like Bob Woodward have pointed out, that is not the way it really happened. Woodward attributed it to a “secret weapon” he would not reveal. It turns out that secret weapon was General McChrystal’s Special Operations Command, which included highly secret units that captured or assassinated people who were labeled ”irreconcilables,” the current buzzword in Petraeus counter-insurgency doctrine for people who refuse to go along with our program — ie. those who would not accept the $300 a month paid to insurgents to play ball with us. Those captured were sent to a highly secret unit in Baghdad designated by numbers that constantly changed to avoid accountability and staffed by soldiers in civilian clothes with beards, no ranks and using only fictitious first names — all designed to make tracking and accountability difficult or impossible. (This was all reported in an Esquire magazine article several years ago.) In fact, a Navy investigator was tasked to investigate charges of torture by this unit and the investigator threw up his hands and gave up because of the fictitious names and the rest. McChrystal assured his men that the Red Cross would never set foot in the unit, and it never did. Allegations of abuse and torture were reported in the Esquire article — as were tales of innocent people being run through the whole process.

None of this was even hinted at during the Senate confirmation hearing for General McChrystal. He was rubber-stamped through, we were told, because he was so desperately needed in Afghanistan, where we were basically losing the game. It was very clear that McChrystal was named commander to bring this “secret weapon” to the challenge in Afghanistan. Soldiers in these special ops units were to serve for something like five years with periods of 90 days or so in country, then some down time back in the US for rest and training; then, it was back to the front and so on. The point was to establish a long-term commitment to the war effort. The reporters have likely only broken the surface of this secret tactical program that is so critical to the larger, long-term counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan, which entails ground troops and a host of civil affairs and development tasks.  McChrystal is a very cool, smooth customer able to keep secret what he must and present a good face for the propaganda when that is needed. He likes to talk about having “humility” and about how our new task is to “protect the people.” Of course, the Taliban employ the same propaganda notion that they also are about “protecting the people” — from us. As is usually the case in such wars, the population is stuck in the middle receiving the brunt of the violence. The unavoidable challenge is that the Taliban are Pashtuns and they have lived in this very rugged terrain using Islam as a disciplinary ideology for centuries — and they don’t like outsiders. As a Vietnamese officer said to Robert McNamara years after our war there, “We knew you would eventually leave, because you could leave. We lived there and could not leave.” 

As Keith Olberman pointed out eloquently in a Special Comment Monday night, “Mister President, we cannot afford this war.”  Afghans see us as occupiers, and that won’t change. He spoke of “making our troops suffer to make our generals happy.” He mentioned the Pat Tillman case, where General McChrystal ”was willing to stand truth on its head” and pass bald-faced lies to the press and the American people. Why should we trust this man? Olberman wanted to know. “The Pentagon is in the war business!” Olberman cried — so of course they are pushing for more war. We elected an adult, civilian commander-in-chief to represent us, the hard-working, reasonable citizens of this nation, and to tell the generals “No” — as John Kennedy did vis-a-vis General Curtis LeMay and others who wanted to invade during the Cuban Crisis and as Kennedy did in being reluctant to follow McNamara’s call to escalate in Vietnam. (I’ll leave for another time any speculation about what happened to Kennedy in the end.)  

We can’t afford this war because it costs $1 million to support one soldier for a year in Afghanistan. It costs over $1 million for an MRAP truck designed to be destroyed as it protects our soldiers when they hit an IED. It costs $400 for each gallon of gasoline needed to run the MRAPs at something like 5 MPG. Now we learn the Taliban are getting stronger in the north where we thought things were calm and we had a clean route to get supplies in via Uzbekistan. We learn they are becoming more sophisticated in attacking us; that is, they are learning more about us and, as happens over time in wars like this, they will develop new strategies and tactics to attack our young soldiers. Our military is now stretched to the crisis level, with families suffering under multiple deployments, PTSD and record-high suicides. Wall Street has been bailed out, but unemployment across the nation is at unacceptable levels and we’re being told we don’t have the resources to create jobs to do things like maintain our crumbling Infrastructure.  Food stamps are now being distributed in the US at unprecedented levels and growing. Health care is an insult to common decency.  Fear of everything is on the rise. The list of domestic dysfunction goes on.  

We need to recognize the empire is showing signs of strain, and we need to find a better way fro the good of Americans here at home.  Let’s hope President Obama can figure that out before it’s too late.