Will We Ever Leave Afghanistan?

American military forces have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001 under the congressional authorization to destroy Al Qaeda for its role in training the 19 criminals who attacked the World Trade buildings in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001, a date that will live in infamy. US military leaders now say that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are no longer in Afghanistan but probably in Pakistan. The enemy has become the Taliban, an insurgency movement dedicated to overthrowing the Karzai government in Afghanistan, a regime supported and financed by the US.

President Barack Obama has sent 30,000 more troops to reinforce the 75,000 already in Afghanistan, in his attempt to secure a military victory over the Taliban guerrillas, a victory that will ensure the survival of the Karzai regime now holding power by election fraud and wholesale corruption. After ten years of fighting, thousands of American troops killed or wounded and a trillion dollars spent, most Americans want to transfer responsibility for this civil war to the Afghan government. However Obama policies for ending this long war are notable for their contradictions. He promises to begin drawing down US forces in July, 2011, “responsibly” but not hastily, and “taking into account conditions on the ground.” These hedges will allow Obama to delay or eliminate withdrawal indefinitely while citing the promised date as policy. Obama hints of willingness to talk to the Taliban while stepping up a military campaign designed to eliminate them. This has inspired President Karzai to begin his own secret negotiations with the Taliban in preparation for the possible departure of the Americans.

This has been the longest war in American history, begun when the US economy was in full bloom and the financial cost was not a factor. Now, with the economy hurting and enormous federal deficits piling up, voters are asking why are we in Afghanistan, a forsaken land dominated by brigands over the centuries, with no economic assets beyond opium, with a population largely illiterate, hardly a factor in world politics. With an important US election just a few months away, the Obama administration finally produced a reason for US presence in Afghanistan by announcing that it had discovered $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits there, far beyond any previously known reserves and “enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself.”

It must be very difficult for soldiers to put their lives on the line with such a contradictory and vague policy. Who wants to be the last one to die for a mistake? And who will protect the American businesses who invest in the newly discovered mineral riches? And who will protect them from the war lords and native marauders?


The timing of the minerals story is curious, especially because this information has been available for years. In fact, the McClatchy newspaper chain revealed several years ago that the Chinese government had made a long-term deal with the Karzai government giving them mining rights to the biggest copper mine in the world and that the Chinese were being protected from Afghan brigands by US troops. Obama needs to explain why the Chinese get this prize investment when US casualties make the exploration possible. What was the deal between China and the US? Was the price China's cooperation on the nuclear crises with North Korea and Iran?

In any case, it looks as though the American voters are being manipulated. We are leaving Afghanistan – maybe - but if we stay there is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Will this be enough to the defer voter worries until after the November election? Will it take this issue away from the Republicans? The prime reason for the contradictory Obama policy is probably political. Leaving Afghanistan without a clear military victory is sure to inspire political attacks on the Obama administration as incompetent or worse, that it diminished US security by "losing Afghanistan", as though it was ours to lose.

Maintaining US Hegemony

Robert M. Gates, US Secretary of Defense, wrote in Foreign Affairs, “The United States is unlikely to repeat a mission on the scale of those in Afghanistan or Iraq any time soon - that is, forced regime change followed by nation building under fire.”

This statement is close to admitting that the invasions were mistakes, that the dangers they were designed to suppress were not commensurate with the cost of suppression. One might then ask, why not bring the troops home at once, or as soon as logistically possible? Why plan on leaving 50,000 or more “residual” American troops in the occupied lands as an additional potential sacrifice in pursuit of a mistaken policy?

Gates continued: “In these situations, the effectiveness and credibility of the United States will only be as good as the effectiveness, credibility, and sustainability of its local partners.” Clearly, our local partners in Iraq and Afghanistan do not have these qualities. Their weakness requires US occupation and military sacrifice because the local elites do not have the power and ability to manage their countries nor the popular support to enforce their will.

The result was predictable: total reliance on the US military and US occupation forces. From time immemorial, these factors have always generated great increases in popular resistance. The foreign occupier violates native territoriality whether in Concord/ Lexington or in Jerusalem. The Tories were too weak to help the British occupiers of Massachusetts in 1776 and Herod could not control the Hebrews who revolted against Roman control of holy places..


The US had experienced this human phenomenon more recently. The leaders of South Vietnam made a mess of governing, alienated the population, crushed the subsistence farmers, created enemies of their regime as well as intense hatred of their American allies. After their complete victory in World War II, the allied forces were wiser, handing over power to the traditional elites in Germany and Japan, who were strong enough to manage their countries while taking general orders from the American conquerors who remained in the background – a strong contrast with Iraq and Afghanistan where the corrupt leaders alienated the local population. It is difficult if not impossible for a foreign occupier to rule without an effective native government to do its bidding. Such governments do not exist in Iraq and Afghanistan, another reason for immediate withdrawal.

Theoretically, as the only superpower, United States hegemony over Planet Earth can be maintained in a variety of ways. The current structure of military dominance relies on supporting the elites in the more than 140 countries where there are at least 750 US military bases. This military system puts the US in defense of ruling regimes in case of insurgency even without formal treaties. However, the military and financial costs may be too great even for the USA, a nation with only 6% of the earth’s humans but a grand 25% of the world's product. The military bases imply ultimate protection of the rulers and a degree of military occupation that inspires resentment of the US by local nationalists who will find ways of attacking the superpower.

But America has other traditions - of openness, of welcoming immigrants, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, of constitutional government, of breaking social and sexual and racial barriers. It does not need to follow the Roman model of military empire of crushing resistance wherever it appears. America’s soft powers, its leadership in assimilation, its remarkable prosperity, its richness in ideas and technology, give it the opportunity to break the Roman pattern of legionary discipline with a benevolent leadership that relies on economic, social and moral persuasion. Even the flaws of America, its aggressiveness, its occasional meanness, its arrogance, so perfectly reflect the best and the worst of the human condition – a sort of Paradise Lost – but remembered.

Military Influence in the US

In this period of American military dominance, generals and admirals have acquired influence well beyond the battlefield. Four-Star General David Petraeus, chief of the US Central Command, oversees US military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the greater Middle East. He is the likely choice to become the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he will again be in the public spotlight. His recent lower profile was suggested by the Obama White House.

His extensive wartime experience and proven ability to negotiate on Capitol Hill have made General Petraeus a formidable political personality should he choose that venue after retirement. He regularly denies interest in becoming president of the United States, sometimes without being asked. He invokes the famous remark of William Tecumseh Sherman, the Civil War general who made the stunningly clear response to presidential ambition: "If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve." Other notable generals found the call irresistible: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight David Eisenhower, so far.

However, that is not the end of the matter. The ascendancy of Petraeus has come during a period in American history in which military leaders have acquired influence well beyond the battlefield. Petraeus and his counterpart commanders in the Pacific, in Europe and in Latin America meet regularly with the politically powerful in foreign capitals, as well as in Washington, DC. Some observers point to their clout as evidence that US foreign policy has become militarized under both Democratic and Republican administrations. It is difficult to deflect this argument when the US is engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is intervening in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, is authorized to chase Al Qaeda militarily into any or all of the 192 countries on earth, and operates 761 military bases in 147 countries.