The Point of No Return

I don’t want to believe it, even though I suspect that Chris Hedges, who writes regularly for the website Truthdig, is probably right: we can’t win. By “we” I mean political progressives, liberal Democrats and independents of good will. We’re so far behind the power and influence curve that we have no hope of catching up. But if we have lost who has won? That’s easy. The oligarchs and plutocrats who own and operate the corporate state, their hired hands in Congress and the Supreme Court, and their propaganda mouthpieces in the mainstream commercial media.

If the recent mid-term elections proved anything, it’s that money is murdering our democracy and real debate no longer exists in this country. The commercial media sets the parameters, dictates subject and slant, and draws from a shallow pool of “experts” and “insiders” to explain, or more often, spin, what is going on with the burning issue of the day. Dissenting voices are seldom heard in the major broadcast media. Without real debate and dissent, democracy cannot exist except in name, which is exactly the way the plutocrats and oligarchs want it.

We are trapped in a zero sum game waged between left and right, blue and red, liberal and conservative. And with the rise of the Tea Party and its political purity tests, it’s certain the GOP will tilt further right, and the Democrats -- petrified by their losses on November 2 -- will follow, as President Obama appears resigned to do on the Bush tax giveaway to the super rich.

So, we can’t win, but on the other hand, the stakes are so serious that we can’t afford to capitulate. Instead, like all outgunned and outnumbered armies, we have no option but to fight asymmetrically, locally, on a smaller scale.

Speaking of asymmetrical warfare, it looks like our commitment to the Afghan sinkhole just got extended to 2014. No public debate required for this decision, and no discussion of how we will pay for it. Nine years ago our target was Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda – now it’s the Taliban.

Though scattered by American firepower in the early months of the invasion, the Taliban regrouped and launched a reinvigorated campaign to rid Afghanistan of foreign invaders. Nine years, billions of dollars and thousands of killed and injured later, President Obama makes upbeat pronouncements about progress, improved security and increased recruitment for the Afghan army; the American media repeats these fabrications almost verbatim – when the media bothers to cover the war at all. For any sense of perspective one has to turn to the foreign press and independent, un-imbedded media, and there one learns that the war that isn’t going well.

For those of us old enough to remember, Obama’s statements have a definite Vietnam-era ring to them. LBJ and Nixon repeatedly assured the American public that we were turning the corner toward victory, securing territory, killing or capturing more Vietcong, and winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people.

The truth in Vietnam was dramatically different from official pronouncements, just as the truth in Afghanistan is different.

In Vietnam, the US attempted to prop up a corrupt, illegitimate regime; in Afghanistan, our purported partner, Hamid Karzai, is both corrupt and unreliable, and to make matters even worse, our supposed ally, Pakistan, plays both sides of the game for its own strategic advantage.

Governments routinely lie about the need for war and the reasons for keeping wars going. Polls show that most Americans are sick of the Afghan war and realize that it’s a dead end, but – and this is where we return to Chris Hedges and his thesis that we have lost – public sentiment has no impact on policymakers. Why? Because this war, unlike Vietnam, carries no obvious domestic political cost. The only people affected by Afghanistan are soldiers and their families, plus 100,000, give or take, employees of for-profit war contractors. No sacrifice is asked of the larger public – no higher taxes, no war bonds or resource rationing, and no draft.

I think this is the real lesson many American leaders learned from our Vietnam experience: the best way to marginalize domestic anti-war sentiment is to keep the costs of war hidden and citizen sacrifices at a bare minimum.

Of course, there is a huge domestic cost to our economy as the wars drive up the national debt, but this cost isn’t immediate or visceral enough to seize the attention of the public. For policymakers, our war on terror is sacred ground; instead of looking at the dollars we’re pouring into Iraq, Afghanistan and the bloated military-intelligence-security complex, key Republican leaders, and Obama’s bipartisan Deficit Commission, propose to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits, eliminate tax breaks for the remnants of the middle-class and, naturally, reduce taxes for the wealthy.

It’s a strange time in America, perhaps even a point of no return. The status quo works great for the very wealthy, for big business, and for the political class, and they will not relinquish their power and prerogatives easily. Average citizens seem to understand that something is fundamentally out of whack, but have no idea where or whom to turn to for a way out of this morass.