Chronicle Of A Failure Foretold

 “I was reminded again how the men who start wars invariably live through them to justify the behavior that has left millions maimed and dead.” Jim Harrison

Saigon, 1975. Kabul, 2021. The motif of the limits of American military power is that of helicopters evacuating personnel from embassy compounds once thought to be impregnable, and permanent. 

I was opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan from the beginning. While the American reaction to the 9/11 attacks was understandable, it always struck me as an overreaction, misguided, out of proportion. I place the Patriot Act in the same category. The folly of trading civil liberties for the illusion of safety, and in the process creating a massive bureaucracy with a creepy name -- the Department of Homeland Security -- was sure to return to haunt us, and did in the summer of 2020 when protestors were snatched off the streets of Portland by DHS thugs in unmarked vehicles and uniforms without insignia or identification. I never consented at the ballot box to be kept under constant electronic surveillance by my own government. Homeland. The word has fascist overtones. 

Had 9/11 been treated like a crime America would not be scrambling to exit Kabul today. Nor would Osama bin Laden have been able to evade capture for ten years, hiding in plain sight in Pakistan. We were told that bin Laden was the most wanted man in the world, hunted by all of America’s major intelligence agencies, and with help from our “allies” in the region. I’m sure it will be fifty years before the full story about bin Laden is known, but my gut sense is that the reporting on the raid that killed bin Laden by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is nearer the truth than any official explanation by the US government. And, of course, the War on Terror didn’t end with bin Laden’s death. Over the course of two decades the lies told by the military establishment to Congress, the media, and the public about Afghanistan rival the lies told about Vietnam. We’re winning; progress is being made; we’re turning the corner; we can leave victorious once the local security forces are trained and equipped, indoctrinated with our fool-proof methods; all we need to completely turn the tide in our favor is a troop surge; all we need is to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Year after year. Thousands of Afghan and American lives, trillions of taxpayer dollars, wasted. 

Once the rather nauseating explosion of “thank you for your service” tributes, solemn moments of silence for our fallen heroes, and stadium flyovers by Navy F-14’s lost their novelty, the American people forgot about Afghanistan. Who could keep track of the Whack-A-Mole nature of the conflict, with the Taliban being routed one year only to return the next more potent than ever. Our victories on the ground were ephemeral; the Taliban had only to be patient, to wait. That was the way to outwit the overwhelming military power of the foreign invader. It worked against the Soviet Union. It worked against the United States, too. 

I’m struck by how often the most egregious blunders are conceptualized and sold by men and women with the finest pedigrees, educated at elite institutions like Harvard and Yale. The best and brightest of the Vietnam Era, the financial wizards who crashed the world economy in 2008, and the architects of the War on Terror, which was always meant to be evergreen. We’ve forgotten the inconvenient fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were nationals of Saudi Arabia, but the United States could hardly launch a military invasion against our dear friends in Riyadh, not at the risk of losing access to Saudi oil. No, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney gave the Saudis a soft pass, as has every administration since. What was the first foreign country Donald Trump visited? Saudi Arabia. Hubris. Greed. Corruption. Rot. This is how global empires deteriorate and collapse. Under the crushing weight of stupidity and the mythology of their own infallibility. 

In my head I can still hear the voice of George W. Bush, the faux cowboy, as he justified the undeclared war against a country that had not attacked the United States; a country in a part of the world that most American citizens couldn’t find on a map or begin to understand; a country of regions, tribes, languages, dialects, feuds and traditions. Bush painted with a simplistic brush, good against evil, on our side or the side of our enemy, our benevolent god against their malignant god. A shocked and frightened nation bought the story. Now will come the excuses and justifications and retellings of the story, recast, not as a tale of colossal failure, but as a noble effort to bestow American-style freedom and democracy on a country that never asked for either. 

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 6 (4th of July edition)

“All I need's a volunteer

I'll cut you in half

While you're smilin' ear to ear

And the freedom that you sought

Driftin' like a ghost amongst the trees

This is what will be”

Bruce Springsteen, Magic

Who will be the last to die from a mistake? It’s a line from the Bruce Springsteen song, “Last to Die.” It’s a relevant question in this time of Covid-19 chaos, with Donald Trump and Mike Pence lying their way to what I hope will be eternal infamy, almost 129,000 dead, millions unemployed, rents and mortgages delinquent, and still, still, six exhausting, anxious months into this thing, no coordinated federal government response on testing, tracing, PPE, income protection for workers and families, or even the merest empathy for the dead and the grieving and the sick and the worried. 

Trump and Pence and all the Fox News blabbers have fed us a steady diet of bullshit, pie-in-the-sky false hope, and a triple helping of magical thinking. 

Trump got bored, Pence went back to praying for the end of the world. Job done. Americans should be outraged by the endless string of failures, scandals, fuck-ups, calamaties, and incompetence engineered by Donald J. Trump and his battalion of Enablers. When Trump and the rest of these jackasses take their final bow and limp or crawl off the stage, I hope we don’t spend even a minute trying to rehabilitate their images like we did with  many Confederates after the Civil War. Let them stand forever as symbols of failure, destruction, and death. 

4th of July, fuck me. The beaches are closed, fireworks cancelled, bars shuttered, movie houses dark. Except for a jog over to the high school, I haven’t left the confines of our apartment building all day. I am now acquainted with every inch of our small yard, from fence to fence. I’ve taken to placing my hands on the trunk of one of our gum trees, for reassurance, the feel of a living thing that will survive this strange time. 

Incompetence kills. Write it down, pass it on, post it on your favorite social media platform. Incompetence kills. It’s a long way to January 2021. Don’t underestimate the damage Trump, Pence, McConnell and Barr can do in the months ahead. 

Let me see if I can wrap part of my brain around recent news reports -- some of them breathless -- that Trump’s buddy, Vladimir Putin, King of Russia, offered cash to elements of the Taliban for killing American soldiers. The American media is astonished, almost apoplectic, first that Russia would bankroll the killing of our brave men & women, and second, that Donald Trump either didn’t read the carefully prepared intelligence that he was provided this past February, or that he refused to believe what he read (or more likely was told), and decided it wasn’t worth even a phone call to his friend in Moscow.  

It’s no secret that Trump admires the way Putin holds and wields and constantly expands his powers. On the other hand, I have never bought the notion that Trump is a Russian asset. Trump is far too scattered, impulsive, stupid, and undisciplined to be run as an agent. I think it’s far more probable that Donald Trump laundered money for Russian oligarchs when they looted the former Soviet Union. I think this explains why Trump is fighting the release of his tax returns in the Supreme Court, as well as why he treats Putin with such deference. The returns may show income sources, investment portfolios, but may also reveal what people like the journalist David Cay Johnston have suspected for years: that Trump never had as much wealth as he claimed.  

I’m not for war. I’ve been against the undeclared and illegal war in Afghanistan since it began. I support slashing the Pentagon budget in half. I’m just an average citizen, but I knew Afghanistan was a mistake and would end in failure. What I never suspected was that successive administrations would keep the war going for nearly 20 years, using the same litany of lies we heard during the Vietnam War: we’ve turned a corner, we must build up the Aghan troops, we’re winning hearts and minds, we just need a troop surge to finish the job, we’re making progress, the Taliban are contained, we’re meeting our strategic objectives, etc, etc. 

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the CIA sprang into action, supplying weapons, money, training and logistical support to the Afghan mujahideen, whose first and only loyalty was to expelling the invaders without giving up any tribal advantage or territory. How many young Soviet soldiers returned to their homeland in body bags, courtesy of the American-supported mujahideen? Not a few, not hundreds, but thousands. Putin would recall the Soviet Union’s failure and humiliation in Afghanistan very well. It must be his Vietnam. The overwhelming force of a superpower defeated by a determined and unyielding guerrilla army that received plenty of help from the United States. I imagine Putin would enjoy settling that score, inflicting casualties on the US, who really have no business being in Afghanistan in 2020. We cannot win any more than our arrogant leaders can admit defeat. 

The message from the US is always the same: it’s fine when we do it, not fine when you return the favor. We’re the indispensable nation, the great beacon of liberty and freedom. Yes, our police forces routinely murder unarmed black Americans. Yes, many of our states contort themselves to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. Yes, millions of Americans cannot afford basic health care. Yes, our police spray rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful, unarmed demonstrators. Yes, we incarcerate more people than any other nation. Yes, we erected monuments to traitors and white supremacists. But how dare anyone question our commitment to liberty!

Done with Change, Over Hope

I’m done with politics for a while.

I’m disgusted, dejected, and discouraged.

I’m done with change and over hope.

No more will I respond to e-mail alerts from well-meaning but underfunded progressive organizations, no more will I e-mail or phone the people who are supposed to represent my interests in Washington D.C., no more will I pull my hair and gnash my teeth over the latest Obama capitulation.

I can’t do it, at least not without driving myself crazy or into a prolonged depression. I thought the Bush years were aggravating – and they were – but to watch the candidate I voted for bend over and spread his ass cheeks to appease the GOP, well, that’s beyond what I can tolerate. The latest tax giveaway to the rich was the straw that snapped the camel’s spine. I called, I wrote, I signed petition after petition, yet the package went forward just the same, pushed by Obama, to the delight of the wealthy; they received the goodies their campaign contributions paid for.

If I keep writing about politics I’m going to become a crank, like the one Philip Roth describes in Exit Ghost: “Otherwise, I told myself, you’ll become the exemplary letter-to-the-editor madman, the village grouch, manifesting the syndrome in all its seething ridiculousness: ranting and raving while you read the paper.”

I’m not naïve. I expected a limited resemblance between candidate Obama and President Obama, but I didn’t expect that Obama would become the second coming of Bill Clinton, surround himself with Clinton-era apparatchiks, and take economic advice from the likes of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner; I didn’t expect that he would bow and scrape and become Wall Street’s lackey.

I never thought that President Obama would endorse the Bush era economic plan: endless tax cuts that largely benefit the rich and endless foreign wars that benefit no one. But endorse them he has, putting his presidency and the Democratic Party in a box come 2012.

For a man blessed with such eloquence, why does Barack Obama find it so difficult to articulate a coherent vision of who he is and what he stands for?

Obama has taken to spinning the truth like a run-of-the-mill D.C. PR flack, calling the tax giveaway the product of compromise with the GOP and an economic stimulus package that will grow the economy. The truth is that the tax deal will exacerbate the federal deficit, add fuel to Republicans who want to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, and do little to promote job growth.

In Afghanistan, Obama claims things are on-track and that some American forces may depart next summer, though naturally this depends on conditions on the ground and how prepared the Afghan military is to take over. If the Afghan Army isn’t ready now, after nine years and billions of dollars, why should we believe things will be any different by mid-2011? Or by 2014 for that matter? Obama is selling us a fantasy at a time we cannot afford a costly and unwinnable foreign war. Strip away all the military-speak and the fact is that a few hundred al-Qaeda forces have effectively tied up 100,000 American troops – the sophisticated forces of an empire -- at a cost of $120 billion a year.

The war continues and the tax cuts continue and the calls for spending cuts continue and the tone deafness of the ruling class continues, and the people are impotent, far more interested in American Idol and the Kardashians than they are in how their children’s prospects are being diminished by a political and economic system owned and operated by plutocrats for the benefit of plutocrats.

Time to back off and think about something other than the death spiral of the American Dream.

The Malaise

(I began writing this piece before the flap over Stanley McChrystal hit the media.)

Something is terribly wrong with the American occupation of Afghanistan.

It’s not working. The Afghans are unwilling partners in the game we are playing with their country.

The world’s lone superpower appears lost and confused as it blindly chases shadows across one of the most backward countries on the planet.

Longest “war” in U.S. history.

Let that fact sink in.

Longer than the Civil War. Longer than WWII. Longer than Vietnam.

President Obama claims the U.S. will withdraw some of its combat forces in mid-2011, but in reality the U.S. has no intention of fully withdrawing from Afghanistan – not after pouring billions of dollars and at least a thousand American lives into the country. Bases and outposts are being built for a long stay by U.S. forces and private contractors, and it’s time – years past time – for American voters and taxpayers to ask why.

Why are we in Afghanistan almost nine years later? Who are we fighting? What is our primary strategic objective, and is that objective realistic? Are we in Afghanistan so that a long sought after oil pipeline can be built and then secured through the western part of the country? Are we simply after Afghanistan’s plentiful mineral reserves?

But perhaps the most important question is the one least asked by the American news media and American politicians: how many Afghans have been killed or wounded since we invaded in 2001? What’s the body count?

And let’s go further and ask another basic question: what is the will of the Afghan people? Do they want American and NATO soldiers in their country?

Time stands against us in Afghanistan, as does history. The language spoken today by the American military and political establishment is eerily familiar to that spoken during the Vietnam War. Our military firepower is unmatched, but the conflict in Afghanistan, like Vietnam, can’t be won by firepower alone.

Stanley “Poor Judgment” McChrystal is gone and David “The Miracle Worker” Petraeus is taking command, but something remains terribly wrong in Afghanistan, not to mention in Washington D.C., and Albany, NY and Sacramento, CA and Detroit, MI and Phoenix, AZ.

Call it the superpower malaise. The case might be terminal.

Iraq. Afghanistan. The BP oil hemorrhage. An economy that won’t recover for any except the wealthy. Stubbornly high unemployment. State budgets in disarray. People suffering. The national political system paralyzed, polarized, bought and paid for with campaign bribes.

I have the sense that the world’s lone superpower is like the proverbial Potemkin village – a façade, an elaborate charade – all polished surfaces perched on a rickety foundation very near total collapse. The confidence and élan we once carried as our American birthright has been replaced with apprehension and fear – fear of Muslims and Mexicans, fear of decline, fear of change, fear of the future, fear of taxes, fear of death, fear of life, fear of the dark, and, most of all, fear of the truth about our situation.

In the years following 9/11, Hunter S. Thompson referred to the U.S. as the Kingdom of Fear, but the sort of fear I’m talking about here penetrates even deeper.

We are now a nation living on borrowed time and paying the bills with borrowed money. Our politicians and their corporate masters hum the same hackneyed tunes while the shining city on the hill burns.

Liar, Liar

I hate to be lied to, whether by one of my children or the President of the United States.

Our president was in Afghanistan recently, meeting with our corrupt surrogate, Hamid Karzai, and then, clad in his Air Force One jacket, giving a pep talk to the troops. I certainly wouldn’t expect the president to create a somber mood by telling the troops the truth about our situation in Afghanistan, but on the other hand I don’t expect him to outright lie.

But the fact is that all American presidents lie at some point. Perhaps Obama honestly believes that our Afghan adventure wasn’t a war of choice, and that invading the country in 2001 was the only option by which we could punish Al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps Obama also believes that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are one and the same, interchangeable parts, with identical aims and ideals. Perhaps Obama was expressing realistic hope when he said that our presence is paving the way for a golden age of peace and prosperity in a country that has experienced neither in decades. Perhaps Obama knows something that most Americans don’t, some secret that will allow us to “win” this war and one day soon bid Afghanistan fond farewell, with a ticker tape parade through the streets of Kabul.

And perhaps Obama believes in Santa Claus, leprechauns, and the Easter Bunny.

After 9/11 the United States had options besides launching an invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq, but the public needed vengeance to dampen its shock and fear, George W. Bush needed to look tough, so in we went. Recall that American forces routed the Taliban in 2001 and early 2002, though the rout didn’t stick. If we couldn’t defeat the Taliban then what makes our chances any better today? Why do we need more troops in 2010 than we did in 2002?

The Taliban and Al-Qaeda are allies of convenience, not a united bloc moving in unison toward world domination though characterizing them as such works effectively for manipulating American voters.

What Obama didn’t say the other day is that this war of choice is unwinnable and will continue for many more years, through shifting strategies, changes in command on the ground, ultimatums to the Afghan government and half-hearted promises to NATO. The U.S. will prop Karzai up until he does something so stupid or outrageous that he leaves the U.S. no choice but to remove him. (You can be sure the CIA already has contingency plans drawn to topple Karzai and install a successor.) American forces and contractors will lumber around Afghanistan, chasing the Taliban, counting the dead and wounded, and causing collateral civilian deaths and casualties that will insure the Taliban always has a fresh supply of recruits. Kill one, recruit six is a sure-fire recipe for endless war.

Obama’s dream of an Afghanistan at peace and enjoying prosperity is preposterous. The President is intelligent and knows very well that Afghans have been at war almost continuously for thirty years; peace and prosperity are not on the horizon.

How will this war play out at home? Coupled with the forever occupation of Iraq, the Afghan war will drive federal budget deficits and create political pressure to slash Medicare costs and “reform” Social Security, in addition to blocking efforts to stimulate the economy and put Americans back to work. Such pressure is building now, with major media outlets like the New York Times sounding dire warnings about Social Security. Cutting entitlement programs is promoted as the only way to control the deficit, because, you see, we cannot cut funding for war and occupation and homeland security while our brave troops are in harm’s way.

History is replete with tales of powerful nations that get in over their heads and then find it difficult, if not impossible, to get out. When a nation sinks blood and coin in a foreign adventure the last thing it can accept is departing empty-handed, in disgrace and with its flag in tatters. President Obama knows we’re headed for that fate in Afghanistan, certainly, and possibly in Iraq as well, but for now he plays his commander-in-chief role, distorting the truth in order to exhort the troops.

Several years hence, when Obama writes his memoirs, he’ll assert that he had no choice but to carry the torch handed him by his predecessor.

That will also be a lie.

LBJ Rides Again

The era is different. The terrain is different. The culture is different. Yet the similarities between Barack Obama and Lyndon Johnson are remarkable, and the chances of history repeating itself are an odds-makers dream. The Vietnam conflict ruined LBJ’s presidency and derailed his domestic agenda, just as Afghanistan will likely doom Obama’s presidency at a time in America’s history when the country can least afford for him to fail.

LBJ feared the political consequences of appearing weak on Vietnam just as Obama is deathly afraid of appearing wimpy on Afghanistan. Like LBJ in Vietnam, Obama desires to “finish” the job in Afghanistan, though what that job is remains a shifting target.

The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in order to root out al-Qaeda terrorists, their Taliban supporters, and to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Superior military firepower allowed the US to rout the Taliban, but Osama bin Laden remains at large, possibly hiding in Pakistan. It is unlikely bin Laden would still be free or alive without a wink and a nod from the Pakistani government – a purported ally of the US in the Global War on Terror and a major recipient of US funding. Pakistan is a key but wildly unpredictable variable in the Afghanistan conflict; for good or ill we’re in bed with a country we cannot trust any more than we can trust the government of Hamid Kharzai.

There’s an element of Keystone Cop in the U.S.’s pursuit of bin Laden. Bill Clinton tried to take bin Laden out with cruise missiles; W. Bush used cowboy rhetoric and an invasion and occupation that have cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars; and now Obama seems determined to continue Bush’s misadventure. Despite all this, not to mention the best efforts of the CIA, NSA, DIA and NATO, bin Laden is still alive and dreaming of global jihad.

Now, after months of careful deliberation that has been criticized by the GOP as “dithering,” even though the GOP’s man, W. Bush, bumbled around in Afghanistan for nearly seven years, Obama will dispatch some 30,000 more American troops to the Afghan quagmire. While the number of troops is less than requested by Stan McChrystal, the American commander, Obama will ask, beg, plead, browbeat and threaten our NATO allies to give 6,000 or more additional troops to the meat grinder, providing McChrystal the magic number he wanted from the beginning. Why NATO countries should cough up more soldiers is a mystery, since Afghanistan is clearly America’s war.

By sending fewer than 40,000 American troops, Obama can claim that he’s not a puppet of the Generals, even though he is because not sending thousands more troops was never a serious policy consideration. This is another of those instances where failure is redefined, packaged and sold to the public as success. Will the people buy it? Probably. Millions of Americans are distracted by the rigors of everyday life, deeply worried about keeping or finding a job, making the mortgage payment, or putting food on the table. The economy is fucked – at least for people who work for wages, but things aren’t yet so bad that our government can’t waste billions chasing phantoms in Afghanistan.

When he addresses the nation next Tuesday to justify the troop increase, Obama will appear and sound reasoned, reasonable, realistic and resolved; he will talk about our national security, our freedom and perhaps our way of life in language that will soar and may even inspire. Unlike W. Bush, Obama probably won’t refer to the American people as the chosen ones or toss in many references to God, and in itself this will be a relief, but the bottom line is that the U.S. will be stuck in Afghanistan for years and perhaps decades to come, unable to “win” the conflict or cut its losses and leave. The Soviets poured more than 100,000 soldiers into Afghanistan in the 1980’s and got their clocked cleaned.

I’m afraid the same unfortunate fate awaits us. History may not repeat in exactly the same way, but repeat it does when people are too stupid or stubborn to heed history’s lessons.

Our Collective Insanity

Endless undeclared wars. Unchecked corporate power. A demagogue like Glenn Beck on the cover of Time. Unemployment high. Real health insurance reform held hostage by the status quo. Misguided “revolutionaries” marching on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Has everyone gone insane? Are we experiencing a collective mental meltdown?

Nowhere is the madness more pronounced than in our determination to remain in Afghanistan.

We can deploy as many troops and private contractors as we want in Afghanistan and still “lose” the war because winning is an impossibility. Echoing his predecessor, President Obama claims that winning in Afghanistan is vital to our security. OK, Mr. President, prove it. Prove that after eight years more American casualties are worth it. Prove that more civilian deaths are justified. Prove that Afghanistan won’t descend into chaos no matter what we do or how long we remain. Prove that for every “terrorist” we kill another doesn’t take his place.

Except for those who have served there, and their families and friends, the American public could care less about Afghanistan -- a far away country with a foreign history and culture. No, Afghanistan is out of sight and out of mind, as invisible and inscrutable as the enemy we seek to destroy. The costs of the war are also out of sight and mind -- charged to our national credit card, hidden in massive budget documents with accounting sleight of hand. Institute a draft and start sending well-to-do kids to die in the Korengal Valley and maybe the public mood changes.

Like all imperial powers throughout history, the United States has discovered that invading another country is a relatively easy affair; leaving is the tough trick. The initial surge of overwhelming military might produces a short-lived euphoria. The real war begins when the dust settles. The cakewalk becomes a quagmire. False honor trumps reality every time. The imperial power can’t admit it blundered without appearing weak or lacking in “resolve,” so instead of cutting its losses it digs in, more determined than ever to “win” what can’t be won. Justifications for staying are created, re-created and recycled; bold new “strategies” for securing peace and stability are unveiled.

Meanwhile, domestic problems mount. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, claims that the recession is over or nearly over, but Bernanke and his ilk live in bubbles protected from the hardships faced by ordinary Americans. How can the recession be anywhere near over when the unemployment rate in California is 12%?

Rest assured, the insanity will continue.