We're still at war

Pilgrims in the parking lot
Arteries clogged with blood clots
Pushing through the aisles of department stores
Neon crosses and Christmas lights
Credit card debts and brand new bikes
The holidays are here and we're still at war
-Brett Dennen, The Holidays Are Here (and We're Still At War)


I've had this earworm by Brett Dennen in my head every Christmas season, for 7 or 8 years now. It's not something I envisioned becoming a permanent fixture to my holidays, but its looking like it'll be a solid standard for years to come. Yes, as Brett reminds us, America is still at war.

From the time of Poppy Bush's opportunistic defense of Kuwait's territory and ports (at the behest of the Bush/Cheney obligations to their Saudi Arabian friends and allies) against Saddam Hussein's army's advance; through his son, Junior Bush's deployments to 'fight them there' in Afghanistan after the 9-11 attacks; to Junior's 'preemptive invasion and occupation of Iraq; through Barack Obama's 'surge' and escalation of force in Afghanistan; to Pres. Obama's re-escalation of military force and attacks in Iraq after completely withdrawing there (and attacks inside Syria, Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, and deployments to Yemen), America is still at war.

This week, Americans were told by President Obama that the 'longest war in American history,' as he called it, is ending. Well, not exactly 'ending;' rather, 'our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending;' well, not exactly 'ending...'

President Obama's statement on the End of the Combat Mission in Afghanistan -December 28, 2014

Today's ceremony in Kabul marks a milestone for our country. For more than 13 years, ever since nearly 3,000 innocent lives were taken from us on 9/11, our nation has been at war in Afghanistan. Now, thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.
On this day we give thanks to our troops and intelligence personnel who have been relentless against the terrorists responsible for 9/11--devastating the core al Qaeda leadership, delivering justice to Osama bin Laden, disrupting terrorist plots and saving countless American lives. We are safer, and our nation is more secure, because of their service. At the same time, our courageous military and diplomatic personnel in Afghanistan--along with our NATO allies and coalition partners--have helped the Afghan people reclaim their communities, take the lead for their own security, hold historic elections and complete the first democratic transfer of power in their country's history.
We honor the profound sacrifices that have made this progress possible. We salute every American--military and civilian, including our dedicated diplomats and development workers--who have served in Afghanistan, many on multiple tours, just as their families have sacrificed at home. We pledge to give our many wounded warriors, with wounds seen and unseen, the world-class care and treatment they have earned. Most of all, we remember the more than 2,200 American patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan, and we pledge to stand with their Gold Star families who need the everlasting love and support of a grateful nation.
Afghanistan remains a dangerous place, and the Afghan people and their security forces continue to make tremendous sacrifices in defense of their country. At the invitation of the Afghan government, and to preserve the gains we have made together, the United States--along with our allies and partners--will maintain a limited military presence in Afghanistan to train, advise and assist Afghan forces and to conduct counterterrorism operations against the remnants of al Qaeda. Our personnel will continue to face risks, but this reflects the enduring commitment of the United States to the Afghan people and to a united, secure and sovereign Afghanistan that is never again used as a source of attacks against our nation.
These past 13 years have tested our nation and our military. But compared to the nearly 180,000 American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan when I took office, we now have fewer than 15,000 in those countries. Some 90 percent of our troops are home. Our military remains the finest in the world, and we will remain vigilant against terrorist attacks and in defense of the freedoms and values we hold dear. And with growing prosperity here at home, we enter a new year with new confidence, indebted to our fellow Americans in uniform who keep us safe and free.

If the president is referring to success in his succinctly defined mission that Afghanistan is 'never again used as a source of attacks against our nation,' he's not only engaging in sophistry, but challenging the intelligence of the American people into accepting that the planning and orchestration for 9-11 attacks (or any other attacks on our nation) was, or reasonably would be, limited to the geographical confines of Afghanistan.

We know that the planning and orchestration for the attacks were executed in Germany, Pakistan, and even in the United States by 'sleeper cells' of terrorists funded by a network of Osama bin-Laden's and Ayman al-Zawahiri's associates and partners. We know that through the coordination of efforts of fellow terrorist conspirators like Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, Walid Muhammad Salih Bin 'Attash (Khallad), and Abu Bara al-Taizi; and of others like captured Zacarias Moussaoui and those who actually participated in the hijacking and crashing of the airplanes, the plot spanned several geographical locations which were only conveniently endemic to Afghanistan.

Are we really to believe that 'more than 13 years' of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan will actually deter someone in the future from plotting some attack on our nation from that or any other location in the world by virtue of our posture or activity there? It's unbelievable, on its face, but all the more incredible when considering that it has been the very U.S. and military presence and activity in Afghanistan and Iraq which has fueled and fostered more individuals bent on violent expressions of retaliation to our advance across sovereign borders than our military forces are able to put down; a mushrooming of support from around the globe for al-Qaeda's 'jihad' against America and our interests and allies.

It's all the more incredible when you consider that even before bin-Laden was located and killed across the border in Pakistan, the U.S. military and intelligence agents admitted that there was little, if any, remnant of al-Qaeda still left in Afghanistan; most having fled to Pakistan and elsewhere early in the initial invasion.

Quite a bit of print has been cast in the past decade about 'Orwellian-speak' in regard to our government officials' justifications for and explanations of military and intelligence goals and operations related to the Bush-era's coinage of our 'war on terror' (and President Obama's fealty to the notion, if not by name, by deed) against agents, operators, architects, associates, forces, remnants, and specters of the original al-Qaeda nemesis which was determined responsible for attacking the nation on Sept. 11, 2001. That 'enduring' commitment which Pres. Obama refers to in his statement makes an absolute Orwellian lie out of any assertion of his that the 'longest war in American history' is ending with his duplicitous statement heralding the withdrawal of a majority of troops deployed to Afghanistan.

The mission of our forces in Afghanistan drifted, as in Iraq, to the desperate defense of an Afghan regime which was installed behind the 'shock and awe' of our invasion following the 9-11 attacks. Like the privileged regime in Iraq which was enabled into influence and authority with votes cast in a dubious election by a minority of citizens under the heavy-hand of their country's invaders, the regime in Kabul relied on their own 'Green Zone' of defense of our military forces as their seat of power to lord over the impoverished country.

It was precisely that opportunistic area of concern surrounding the defense of the Afghan regime that the Pentagon designated to receive the bulk of forces, culled from the Iraq occupation, to 'surge' into Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of additional troops were sent from Iraq to Afghanistan to escalate the occupation of the cities and towns surrounding the Afghan capital and to aid in the desperate defense of the regime against the myriads of separate factions which evolved out of NATO's cynical attempt to dominate the millions of Afghans with their relatively puny, destructive forces.

When the newly-seated Obama administration began to direct their new assaults on whatever they decided was vital to defend in Afghanistan and Iraq, they unleashed every instigation of resistance there was to the presence and activity of the U.S. military on Muslim soil which originated as motivation behind the first bombings the US embassy Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole bombing in Aden in 2000, in addition to the 9-11 attacks. When those terrorist attacks were perpetrated, there was only isolated resistance and violence directed against U.S. interests and allies in the region. In the bloody aftermath of the Bush administration's provocative invasion of Iraq, and Pres. Obama's adoption of that 'terror war,' acts of violence increased and expanded across the globe.

As early as May of 2003, the Brookings Institute found that the invasion of Iraq had "increased the risk of attacks in the United States and Europe by increasing the level of Islamist and anti-American rhetoric, by diverting the attention of political leaders from the central issue of the war on terrorism, and by encouraging the view among the public that the war on terrorism is nearly won."

A Brookings study found that, "The rate of fatal terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups, and the number of people killed in those attacks, increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, the scene of almost half the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks. But even excluding Iraq and Afghanistan—the other current jihadist hot spot—there has been a 35 percent rise in the number of attacks, with a 12 percent rise in fatalities," it concluded.

At the apex of the results and effects of that resistance to the increased and proliferating U.S. military presence and activity in the region over the years since the initial Iraq invasion, Pres. Obama sought to stage some sort of sustaining defense in Afghanistan of our government's own representation of 'democracy' in Kabul against whoever would resist the codifying of America's swaggering advance on their territory.

The increased occupation was designed to facilitate Afghan elections and to provide the same sort of 'with us or against us' choice that our invading and occupying forces in Iraq offered the citizens there. The plot which which emerged in this Potemkin defense of democracy in Kabul is one which is already well-know to Afghans. Opposition communities would be occupied and intimidated by our forces while supportive communities would be protected and enabled in the run-up to the balloting. The outcome of the vote resembled whatever minority composition of the Afghan population felt unencumbered by the regime's heavy-hand to cast their ballot in their favor. The result may well have bolstered whatever legitimacy the West wanted to place on their enabled rule in Kabul, but the effect of the increased military activity had a predictable effect of aligning the myriads of Afghans once led to oppose one another, to band together in resistance against their country's foreign invaders.

Whatever the goals of the new Obama administration had in their deployments in Afghanistan, they had already been corrupted by a mindset which assumed our ability to seize and hold territory impressed more than it repelled. The next strategy was an attempt to thread the needle of resistance to the U.S. advance on Afghan territory with a promise of 'stability' of their installed regime.

The counter to that bunk is that nothing at all had been done to address the original complaint of Muslims and Arabs in the way of our nation's swaggering advance across their sovereign borders; that the very presence of our military on their soil is an intolerable aggravation to their religion, values and their wishes - as well as a threat to a great deal of their own safety and security. The devastating effect of our military intervention in the region, which has cost so many lives caught up in the way of America's government-building folly so far, only deepened itself with every tweak and correction that intended us to 'win' some sort of 'victory' outside of the pursuit of the original 9-11 suspects.

The announcement by then-defense secretary Leon Panetta to reporters while on the way to the 2012 Munich Security Conference that the U.S. is looking to end combat operations in Afghanistan may have come as a surprise to our NATO allies, also en route to the gathering, but no one looking at the failed military and political ambitions of both the Obama and the Bush administrations in the war-torn nation could reasonably have expected anything else.

As far back as November of 2011, senior officials in the administration had signaled the President was exploring a speedier transition of our troops' combat role to training Afghans to provide for their own defense of their dubious government. Tentative plans were said to have been made for President Obama to unveil his revised strategy before the annual NATO summit that May. Even before the signals and leaks from the White House, there were key developments which made it clear that to continue in Afghanistan, either the President would need to undergo another ambitious campaign to rally allies away from their almost certain plans to turn away from their part in the U.S. folly, or the administration and Pentagon would have to devise a way to overcome the mounting problems with logistics, getting supplies to the troops, and the apparent outer limits of the President's belief in what the military forces can accomplish on the offensive against a scattered and determined insurgency.

As if to underscore the folly of their escalated military offensive, U.S. troops all but withdrew from Kandahar, the Pentagon's self-proclaimed center of their terror war in Afghanistan, in a posture of retreat which began that October. The administration had hoped to double down on the occupation, and try to effect a knockout blow to the Taliban resistance. The premise behind President Obama's initial 'surge' of U.S. troops into Bush's Afghanistan quagmire was to 'push back' resisting Afghans enough to allow some sort of political reconciliation. That effort was predictably bogged down by the difficulty in getting the disparate tribes and factions to accept the central authority NATO has set up in Kabul. There's even more difficulty in getting their installed government to accommodate the interests and demands of the resisting rest of the war-split nation.

Even our would-be puppet, Karzai, had bristled and balked at the prospect of more destructive NATO conquest in Afghanistan on his behalf. The once-willing accomplice saw the political writing on the wall and appeared to be looking to settle for the assumption of power wherever the Taliban would allow. His reported outburst at the beginning of the Kandahar campaign, threatening to 'join the Taliban', was a open-warning to the U.S. that he recognized there is no 'political solution' that can be reasonably carved out of the devastating, withering military campaign.

The military and the President quietly hoped we don't notice that they didn't actually transform their Afghanistan misadventure from the leveling of homes in Kandahar, the taking of resistors lives, and the destruction of farmland and livestock into the government-building success that they intended for the 'surge' to highlight. In fact, the UN has reported the civilian death toll in Afghanistan was at its deadliest that year with over 3,000 killed, despite the presence and activity of their would-be NATO protectors. An October 2011 Pentagon report to Congress indicated that Afghan civilians were dying in record numbers. "Civilian casualties -- most caused by the Taliban -- reached an all-time high this summer with approximately 450 civilians killed in July," it said. "Attacks using homemade bombs, or IEDs, also reached an all-time high this past summer, with about 750 IED detonations recorded in July."

Predictably, resisting Afghans had avoided the areas where U.S. troops have masses and have scattered their violence around the capital and elsewhere, killing former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani that September. The planned drawdown was not born out of any political success or victory, but out of a certain realization that there will never be a defining end to the resistant violence there which will transform the country politically. The only course left for a stalemated and faltering U.S. invasion force was to pull back to the capital from their offensive positions in the south of the country and stage a desperate, last-stand defense of their propped-up, yet insolent regime.

The U.S. military offensive against the Taliban was an abject failure in achieving the goals behind the offensive. What happened to the promised ability of the U.S.-led NATO forces to protect the residents of Afghanistan against Taliban blowback from their invasion? The ability to protect innocent civilians from NATO attacks, or insulate them from the negative consequences and effects of the NATO military advance? The ability of NATO to provide and deliver the services and amenities of the central government to the displaced residents? Nonexistent.

President Obama and his republican Pentagon holdovers led our nation to this retreat. They were content to tolerate the continued deaths of our our soldiers as our troops eventually hunkered down there; tolerate the thousands drastically wounded; waiting for some declared 'victory' to materialize out of our their desperate defense of their own lives against the Afghans that the President and the Pentagon claim we're liberating.

They were content to push the 'end of combat operations' beyond the midterm elections; all the while, most of the original threatening figures in our terror war have been killed -- their violent spawns made witness to the worst of al-Qaeda's warnings about U.S. imperialism, and more than satisfied to have the bulk of our nation's military forces bogged down and fighting for their lives in Kabul. "Our bottom line in Afghanistan is ‘in together, out together'." Panetta had told reporters in Feb. 2012.

"As an alliance, we are fully committed to the Lisbon framework and transitioning to Afghan control by 2014 . . . We hope Afghan forces will be ready to take the combat lead in all of Afghanistan sometime in 2013. . . .

We've been in Afghanistan longer than our country fought WWII. No matter to our leaders, though. 'Freedom's' cause for occupation supporters is nothing more than a repression of one group or another within the sovereign nation we invaded into accepting our military forces' false authority over them; and cynical manipulation and control the Afghan government lords over the people of Afghanistan by the intimidation of our military occupation.

Our nation's possessive militarism in Afghanistan and elsewhere has divided our nation from within, and, from without, against our restive allies. The escalated occupation has ignored whatever Afghans might regard as freedom in our insistence that their country be used as a barrier against the terror forces we've aggravated and enhanced in Pakistan. Yet, the soldiers the President insisted on continuing to commit to his retreat to Kabul are mostly fighting and dying because they're not wanted there by the majority of the Afghan people. Our soldiers have been fighting to control the Afghans, and they've been busy fighting to get the U.S. to release that control.

Ready or not, its becoming increasingly clear that President Obama can't leave Afghanistan fast enough to outrun the mission's devastating failure...but, we're not really leaving, are we? Almost 11,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq for the first few months of 2015 and then drawdown to about 5,500 troops by the end of next year; 'training' Afghan military forces and conducting 'counterterrorism operations against the remnants of al Qaeda.'

"Our personnel will continue to face risks," President Obama admitted in his statement. Understated, I think, given that he's re-escalated his terror war in Iraq and expanded U.S. attacks to Syria in a military offensive which the administration and military has justified and defined as an extension of their 13 year terror war by stressing dubious and tangential ties between their new nemesis and enemy and al-Qaeda. Notwithstanding approval by the new republican Congress of President Obama's pursuit of a new authorization to use military force, they're still relying on the original 9-11 AUMF to recommit our forces to their perpetual war. Only in the most evasive and contradictory terms can Pres. Obama claim that the "longest war in American history" is coming to a an end.

"The Afghan people must know that our commitment to their future is enduring, because the security of Afghanistan and the United States is shared." Barack Obama said on July 15, 2008.

"I think Afghanistan is still winnable, in the sense of our ability to ensure that it is not a launching pad for attacks against North America. I think it's still possible for us to stamp out al Qaeda to make sure that extremism is not expanding but rather is contracting. I think all those goals are still possible, but I think that as a consequence to the war on Iraq, we took our eye off the ball. We have not been as focused as we need to be on all the various steps that are needed in order to deal with Afghanistan," the president had said.

I don't believe there was ever anything to 'win' in Afghanistan, as the president suggested. There has been, however, much to lose in this repeated flailing of our military forces against the Afghan people; against the remnants and ghosts of al-Qaeda. We have already been shown, repeatedly, that our government-building efforts behind the force of our military in the Middle East has produced more individuals inclined or resigned to violent expressions of resistance than it's succeeded in establishing any of the 'democracy' or 'stability' promised.

There's absolutely no hint of lessons learned from the President's tragic escalation of Bush's Afghanistan deployment in which he sacrificed over 1000 more troops' lives in his ''surge' than Bush lost avenging 9-11. Over 2200 U.S. troops have been sacrificed in Afghanistan - 630 of those deaths occurring in 8 years under George W. Bush. Illustratively, the top three deadliest years of the war -- 2010 (497 deaths), 2011 (362), 2009 (303) -- occurred under President Obama’s tenure. Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. fatalities in the war in Afghanistan have occurred during the Obama administration, in a quarter of the war's duration.

One would hope that the American public would demand accountability from this administration on the goals they establish behind these new deployments. It should be remembered that the Iraq 'surge' began as a trickle, and, in a year, over 800 U.S. troops had lost their lives as a result of that escalation. What we need to hear from the administration is a clear mission for our nation's defenders in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, which is actually directed toward fulfilling the original authorization to use military force which Congress approved for prosecution against "those responsible for the (9-11) attacks launched against the United States."

"That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

If we are really serious about 'democracy' in Afghanistan we should let Afghans sort out those conflicts they have with resistant communities and provinces by themselves. Unfortunately, with any continued U.S. military presence there, that means more armed conflict for our assisting troops, and the reality is, democratic governance from the protected regime won't happen in any truly representative way while the Afghan military is operating behind our heavy-handed presence which carries with it our decidedly retaliatory and destabilizing agenda. We should let Ashraf Ghani (or whoever manages to assume authority in the future) prosecute those defenses without our compromising influence.

What we need in Afghanistan is a true end-point to the occupation. That isn't likely to come with the President's announcement, but it's something which Congress should demand from the administration before they hand over another wad of borrowed cash to continue. If they're not prepared to draft a more defining and relevant authorization for the use of our defensive forces in Afghanistan they should, at least, endeavor to compel the administration to adhere to the limited mandate in the original one.

The President and our legislators need to craft and direct policy in Afghanistan which is 'enduring' but, not merely an extension of this self-perpetuating flailing of our military forces at every expression of resistance to their self-serving presence; or against their self-serving political agendas. Both Bush and Obama made dubious and tenuous representations of the threat to the U.S. in order to declare and secure their unilateral authority to use our military forces (at least initially) any way they see fit, without congressional pre-approval - justified almost entirely in their view by their opportunistic declarations that our security is threatened.

That was the slippery slope that Bush used to war. That's the slope that Pres. Obama used to escalate Bush's Afghanistan occupation far beyond the former republican presidency's limits - with the catastrophic result of scores more casualties than Bush to our forces during this Democratic administration's first term and scores more innocent Afghans dead, maimed, or uprooted.

In pressing forward with a re-escalated U.S. military response to the atrocities committed within Iraq, this Democratic president is losing almost all of the ground we thought we'd covered in repudiating the opportunistic Bush wars. Bush's were waged, certainly, for oil and other greed; but just as certainly to effect U.S. expansionist ideals involving regime changes and 'dominoes.'

In President Obama's recent representations of a future threat to the U.S. from this new enemy in Iraq, we see echoes of Bush's 'preemptive doctrine' which many believed this new president's election was repudiating. The results, worldwide, of contemporary U.S. interventionism, speak for themselves. The Obama administration, almost blithely, is hoping their own military steadfastness in Afghanistan - and their new offensive stand in Iraq says something uniquely democratic and inspiring to the world. I'm afraid that all anyone outside of this country will hear is 'empire.'

The only lesson that our military invasions have imposed on the region is the one which the authors of the deployments purport to oppose; that of the efficacy of military force and violence as an ultimate avenue to power and authority. In Iraq and Afghanistan, those who support the U.S. military-enabled regimes and seek protection behind our dominating forces are considered 'democratic' and legitimate -- while those who choose to be or find themselves outside of that imposed influence are to be opposed as 'insurgent' or 'radical' in their opposition and defense of their chosen territory against NATO's selfish advance.

Bush wrote the script for the U.S. in the region; cast the antagonists in his kabuki play - erected Potemkins of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan to defend in contrived protection schemes where we create the 'enemies' we then claim to protect and defend against.

The Taliban is an imposture in our government's terror war. Our own invading and occupying military forces are the most aggravating element in the perpetual violence in Afghanistan and the region. Deliberately so. The resistant unrest in Afghanistan hasn't abated; it's actually intensified, even as our forces are angling to leave; even the military commanders have recently predicted that violence and deaths will likely continue in the future. I'm at a loss to imagine how that prospect will enhance or relationship with Afghans or others in the region and encourage them to adopt and carry our nation's banner of war against their resisting country-folk. But, that's been the plan . . .

Deception of democracy
The philanderings of faux foreign policy
The holidays are here and we're still at war...Yes, the holidays are here and we're still at war...