Civilizing the Brutes in Afghanistan

Gordon Brown Channels William Westmoreland

"The enemy achieved none of his offensive goals in Vietnam. Indiscriminate mortar and rocket attacks on populated centers and costly attacks on remote outposts were all he could show for his highly propagandized military efforts. The Tet offensive had the effect of a "Pearl Harbor"; the South Vietnamese government was intact and stronger; the armed forces were larger, more effective, and more confident; the people had rejected the idea of supporting a general uprising; and enemy forces, particularly those of the Viet Cong, were much weaker."
-General William C. Westmoreland, June 30th, 1968, "Report on the War in Vietnam."

"It's been a hard year for our soldiers but it's been a much harder year for our enemies, who found they cannot defeat us."
-Gordon Brown, 2008

What can one do but laugh in the face of such relentless delusion? Especially when it emanates from the mouths of imperial overlords such as these. I'm reminded of the US military's constant invocation of the metaphor "there's a light at the end of the tunnel" in the months leading up to Tet. After Tet, it was widely remarked that the light was an oncoming train. Let's hope Messrs. Brown and co. catch theirs soon.

Indeed, there are some salient points of comparison between Vietnam immediately post-Tet and Afghanistan today. The Tet Offensive left the National Liberation Front in control of almost the entire South Vietnamese countryside. Regaining control of the countryside had been one of the key goals of the Americanization of the war from 1965 onwards, and had actually achieved some success in allowing the puppet government of South Vietnam to extract taxes and rent from rural areas. After Tet this progress was entirely reversed. A State Department working paper from March 3 reported that "our control of the countryside and the defense of urban levels is now essentially at pre-August 1965 levels."

The occupiers of Afghanistan today face a similar situation in some respects. While there has been no decisive push among the neo-Taliban, they now have a permanent presence in 72% of the country. As in South Vietnam, the central government has been reduced to running administrative functions in the capital city.

The recent spate of extremely successful attacks on the occupiers' convoys is also reminiscent of Vietnam. During Tet, the NLF claimed to have successfully destroyed 1,800 American and ARVN aircraft. One NLF spokesperson explained the impact of this destruction of matériel on American forces:

The result in lowered U.S military efficiency was immediately noticeable...in lack of coordination between American and Saigon forces; lack of coordination between their own ground units and between ground units and air support; and frequently a total absence of support for platoons and company-sized units caught in our ambushes.

Although the Taliban have not yet been able to to directly destroy the instruments of American warmaking in this fashion, their consistent attacks on supply convoys are going to result in "horrendous problems" for the occupiers, according to defense analyst Ikram Sehgal.

Though the similarities between the military weakness of the occupiers in both Vietnam and Afghanistan are striking, the political differences between the periods could not be starker. In the US, the antiwar movement is extremely weak at the moment, having been without national expression for over a year. While opposition to the war remains high, there is simply no organized expression of it.

This lack becomes crucial when we compare it with 1968, when a highly visible and confident antiwar movement was able to make significant inroads into the American military, so that by the 1970s one could not speak of one without the other. Today we are far from this position. While Iraq Veterans Against the War does brilliant and courageous work, it is not a substitute for a broad, visible movement against the war.

There's also an important political difference between the Taliban and National Liberation Front. Though the Taliban is certainly less homogeneous than American news media would have you think, its reactionary social program significantly diminishes its ability to forge a united resistance. To take but the most obvious example, women played an extremely important role in the Vietnamese resistance. Read Nguyen Thi Dinh's excellent "Founding of the National Liberation Front in Ben Tre" to get an idea of this role. The Taliban simply cannot inspire this kind of support among Afghan women, and even if they did, they would not allow women to play the kind of role Nguyen Thi Dinh did.

Finally, the comparison with post-Tet Vietnam should not encourage passivity among those seeking to rebuild an antiwar movement. The United States did not leave Vietnam until 1975, and in those seven years it wrought as much destruction on the country as it had in the previous decade. Instead, the military weakness of the occupiers should heighten our activity. Obama's plan to send more troops will undoubtedly intensify the slaughter, but the Empire's current weakness should be seized upon.

File Under "Really Bloody Interesting:" The Architecture of Occupation in Kabul

The Archipelago of Fear - Charles Montgomery

Crash Course on Afghanistan

Now that school is approaching its winter break, I suspect a good portion of my readers will have some extra time on their hands. Why not brush up on your Afghan history?

Begin with Jonathan Neale's The Afghan Tragedy, written shortly after the Soviet invasion. It's very comprehensive on the social roots of Afghanistan's political system, which was determined primarily by the contest between the landowners (khans) and the central government. Neale's Afghanistan - The Horse Changes Riders is your next stop. This article continues the history until the time of the Soviet defeat. Forgive Neale's penchant for using the same anecdotes over and over again. The Long Torment of Afghanistan covers the period from the Soviet defeat to the American invasion, and is very helpful for differentiating the Taliban from other elements of the mujahideen. Finally, Afghanistan: The Case Against the Good War looks at the American invasion and rise of resistance to it.

If you're tired of Jonathan Neale, check out Nir Rosen's incredible reporting from Afghanistan, which reveals the deadly faultlines between different sections of the "neo-Taliban." Finally, Anand Gopal has an excellent article in Socialist Worker on "Who Are the Taliban?"

Taliban begin 'surge' against NATO forces

The New York Times explains how this latest and fiercest offensive by the Taliban is putting 2008 at a pace to be the deadliest year for NATO forces.

Also, "For the third month in a row, more US troops have been killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq."

Wow. I've always thought that Iran would be the next walloped by US military intervention, however these articles tend to suggest that Pakistan might be the next victim. I mean, I guess this IS the center piece of Obama's foreign policy: punitive strikes against guerrillas in Pakistan and a surge in Afghanistan.

My Corpus Grows

SleptOn magazine just published an article I wrote a few weeks back on Afghanistan. They attributed it to the World Socialist Website instead of Socialist Worker, but cheers nonetheless for the publicity.

A despicable 4th of July gift

Not that the 4th is a typical gift giving holiday, but the Pentagon decided to take the initiative.
The US Government to the troops: Happy Independence Day, your tours are extended!

I think there's a special level in hell for those who do things like this.

US Imperialism's Summer Vacation: Next Stop Iran?

CNN reports that a forthcoming article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh indicates that Congress has authorized $400 million for covert CIA operations in Iran aimed at intelligence gathering and undermining the government. This escalation once again reveals that nuclear weapons are not the issue as the Bush administration and Congress clearly are ignoring the National Intelligence Estimate and International Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran's enrichment programs do not pose a military threat to the region.

Hersh also argues that the US is using Afghanistan as a staging ground for military and covert action against Iran. Following the recent 'surge' in Afghanistan (post forthcoming) and Israel's military exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean earlier this month, the pieces seem to be fitting into place for an Israeli strike against Iran coupled with a tried and true CIA destabilization campaign.

Iran, however, is no Iraq insofar as it has not suffered from a decade of bombings and sanctions, like pre-war Iraq. This conflict would cost the US and its allies heavily:

In the semi-official Mehr news agency Sunday, an Iranian general said his troops were digging more than 320,000 graves to bury troops from any invading force with "the respect they deserve."

"Under the law of war and armed conflict, necessary preparations must be made for the burial of soldiers of aggressor nations," said Maj. Gen. Mirfaisal Baqerzadeh, an Iranian officer in charge of identifying soldiers missing in action.

*UPDATE*
The full Hersh article is here.

Army Suicide Rate highest in nearly 30 years

Cnn is reporting that the suicide rate in 2007 is the highest since the Army began counting this in 1980 and the number of self-injuries is nearly double the pre-September 11th levels. This flies in the face of the Bush Administration's claims that they are truly 'supporting our troops' by providing adecuate mental health care. Also, the suicide rates coincides with the increase in death over the year, nearly the highest since the invasion.

NATO Airstrikes Kill Afghan Civilians (Again)

From the New York Times. This on top of the revelation earlier this year that NATO has killed more civilians than the Taliban.

It's Like Rain on Your Wedding Day

According to the LA Times, Blackwater 'employees' in Iraq may legally constitute unlawful combatants (to any rational person, there is no bloody doubt) and thus, under the policies, actions and precedents set by the Bush Administration, theoretically earn them a one way ticket to Guantanamo Bay:

"U.S. officials have described many of the suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban affiliates it holds at Guantanamo Bay as unlawful combatants either for taking part in hostilities against the United States or by supporting the hostilities while not part of a nation's military."

Are you serious?

Earlier today General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared that he believed, due to his upbringing, that homosexuality is immoral. GENERAL Peter Pace, as in director, architect, and adviser to the Bush doctrine thinks that two adults of the same gender having sex (which I'm sure is occurring very frequently giving all the leisure time troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have) is evil. A man who has undoubtedly supported torture, extraordinary rendition, the invasion, and continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan which has led to the slaughter of hundreds of Iraqis and Afghanis THINKS that consensual sex is immoral. Are you shitting me?

It's very telling, given the upcoming election year and the fact that the democrats are often seen as the more friendly (or less blatantly hateful) alternative to the LGBT community, that after several Code Pink anti-war protesters jeered at the General's comments that the Democratic chairman, Senator Robert Byrd, stopped the session, had them removed and sealed the doors before resuming the session. Even more disconcerting were the only dissenting remarks from the Dems reported by AP in the article from Sen. Tom Harkin (Iowa), who said he found Pace's previous remarks as "very hurtful" and "very demoralizing" to homosexuals serving in the military. He continued by saying that the General should have a chance to clarify his marks (to me the fact that he already said the same thing in a March Chicago Tribune interview indicates that this expression of his warped moral compass is crystal clear). He ended his stalwart defense of the LGBT community by stating: "It's a matter of leadership, and we have to be careful what we say."

Tisk tisk General, please keep your hateful thoughts to yourself. By the way, great job on the war. We respect you as a leader. We who stand against this kind of hate and as well as the murderous war this guy has helped to carry out need to demand more from the party that claims to stand to the left of the Republicans in the upcoming election year. Only by protesting and outspoken in our criticism and continuing to hold their feet to the fire will we get them to cough up the changes we demand.

Seemingly Fierce Anti-War Lineup for Hollywood

The Guardian ran an article today describing some of the new star-studded anti-war movies that are slated to come out in the next year. I'm a bit skeptical at the moment. I really liked Syriana, however George Clooney's Oscar acceptance speech where gave a nod to the progressive bastion of Americana that is Hollywood for giving an award to Hattie McDaniel, who potrayed Mammy, really took the jelly out of my donut (especially having recently view Spike Lee's seminal "Bamboozled"). On the other end of the spectrum, the recent Mark Wahlberg film "the Shooter" showed a vigilante conspiracy flick where Wahlberg, a disgruntled ex-special ops soldier, gets framed for an assassination of an African leader who is against resource exploitation of his country by the US and the subsequent massacres being carried out in the name of profit and eventually hunts down the evil-doing politician and advisor (Danny Glover). Needless to say, the left-leaning impulse is a breath of fresh air in this well worn reactionary genre (cough cough Rambo), though the politics are muddled to say the least. Nonetheless, the subject matter of these movies seems great: extraordinary rendition, CIA torture, Afghanistan, and PTSD.

It remains to be seen, as the author points out, if these movies will get made, but the over half dozen slotted to be filmed definitely relfect the sea change in public opinion against the war in Iraq and maybe even an increasing questioning of the Afghanistan invasion. The real groundbreaking part of this story is that these films are set to be released while the conflict is still raging. No critical film was made about Vietnam until three years after it ended. Hopefully these films will be right what the Doctor ordered for the anti-war movement, as "Sicko" proved to be for a newly sparked movement for universal healthcare.