{"id":52001,"date":"2015-01-05T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=52001"},"modified":"2019-11-18T10:08:06","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T10:08:06","slug":"afghanistan-skulking-away-from-a-failed-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/01\/afghanistan-skulking-away-from-a-failed-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan: Skulking Away from a Failed War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"robert<\/a>\u201cThe only good Talib is a dead Talib.\u201d<\/p>\n

These words, uttered half a decade ago by the head of intelligence for the NATO coalition force in Afghanistan, summon a far earlier American savagery. As the American empire affects to close the door on its war with Afghanistan, the words also serve as a sort of doorstop propping open our further intervention in this broken country.<\/p>\n

The war isn\u2019t really ending. Some 18,000 foreign troops will stay in Afghanistan, almost 11,000 of them American, under a new mission called \u201cResolute Support.\u201d U.S. forces will also have \u201ca limited combat role as part of a separate counterterrorism mission,\u201d according to the Wall Street Journal. Incredibly, we\u2019re not letting go. We\u2019re just disappearing the combat mission into global background noise.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re continuing to dehumanize part of humanity on the pretext of saving it. The updated version of \u201cthe only good Indian is a dead Indian,\u201d redirected to the Taliban, was quoted a few days ago in a Der Spiegel article called \u201cObama\u2019s Lists: A Dubious History of Targeted Killings in Afghanistan.\u201d The article goes into detail about the administration\u2019s infamous \u201ckill lists\u201d and the hunting of upper- and mid-level Taliban leaders via helicopter and drone \u2014 assassination by Hellfire missile \u2014 which is an extermination methodology guaranteed to kill lots of innocent civilians along with (or instead of) the targeted Taliban operative. But, you know, that\u2019s war.<\/p>\n

The official \u201cend\u201d to the Afghan war, while it doesn\u2019t mean the end of combat operations, does offer us a moment of disturbing reflection on what has been accomplished these last 13 years, during the first of our wars allegedly to eradicate, but in fact to promote, terror. We poured at least a trillion dollars into the war, which claimed some 30,000 lives, over two-thirds of them civilians. The first thing that occurs to me is that, officially, these statistics mean nothing.<\/p>\n

U.S. Army General John Campbell, commander of the International Security Assistance Force, exemplified this by smothering the human toll of the war in simple-minded verbiage during a secret ceremony held last weekend in a gymnasium at ISAF headquarters in Kabul: \u201cOur new resolute mission means we will continue to invest in Afghanistan\u2019s future,\u201d he said. \u201cOur commitment to Afghanistan endures.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the way, the ceremony, commemorating the war\u2019s shutdown, was secret because authorities feared the possibility of a Taliban attack. The United States and NATO, as everyone knows, are the losers, despite the bloated enormity of their military superiority. The Afghanistan war, like the Iraq war, was an utter failure even in terms of U.S. interests and geopolitical objectives.<\/p>\n

But any honest reflection requires a far more serious, all-encompassing look at the war\u2019s results.<\/p>\n

War is torture on a national scale. The nation of Afghanistan and its people are, of course, the primary losers in our \u201cinvestment\u201d in their future \u2014 our investment in nation-wrecking.<\/p>\n

For instance: \u201cWhat has happened in Afghanistan over the last 13 years has been the flourishing of a narco-state that is really without any parallel in history,\u201d Matthieu Aikins said during a recent interview on Democracy Now.<\/p>\n

Aikens\u2019 article, \u201cAfghanistan: The Making of a Narco State,\u201d which ran recently in Rolling Stone, points out that, since the U.S. invasion, opium production in Afghanistan has doubled and the country now accounts for about 90 percent of the world\u2019s heroin traffic. Opium is about 15 percent of the country\u2019s gross domestic product, Aikens said \u2014 even though Afghanistan is at the bottom of the drug trade economically. \u201cAfghan farmers only touch 1 percent of the value of the global opium trade,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Before 2001, opium production had been declining in Afghanistan, but, Aikens told Democracy Now, \u201cthe U.S., in its quest for vengeance against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, partnered with the very warlords whose criminality and human rights abuses had created the conditions that led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place. And in many cases, these are the same individuals who were responsible for bringing large-scale opium cultivation to Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets.\u201d<\/p>\n

War is also humanity\u2019s spiritual cancer.<\/p>\n

Up and down the ranks, dehumanization of the enemy rules. \u201cThe only good Talib is a dead Talib.\u201d This is the thinking that justifies mass bombing raids and kill lists. It also infects the souls of rank-and-file soldiers, such as the \u201cKill Team\u201d described by Mark Boal in another extraordinary Rolling Stone story, this one published in March 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong the men of Bravo Company,\u201d Boal writes, \u201cthe notion of killing an Afghan civilian had been the subject of countless conversations, during lunchtime chats and late-night bull sessions. For weeks, they had weighed the ethics of bagging \u2018savages\u2019 and debated the probability of getting caught. Some of them agonized over the idea; others were gung-ho from the start. But not long after the New Year, as winter descended on the arid plains of Kandahar Province, they agreed to stop talking and actually pull the trigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boal\u2019s article details the killing \u2014 and dismemberment \u2014 of Afghan civilians purely for sport and revenge. The details are gruesome: \u201cThen, using a pair of razor-sharp medic\u2019s shears, he reportedly sliced off the dead boy\u2019s pinky finger and gave it to Holmes, as a trophy for killing his first Afghan.\u201d<\/p>\n

What a mockery the reality of war makes of the rhetoric that blesses it. The American empire holds a secret ceremony to skulk away from a failed mission. But this war isn\u2019t over. It won\u2019t be over until we vow, as a nation, not to start the next one.<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound <\/strong>(Xenos Press), is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015 Tribune Content Agency, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ceremony, commemorating the war\u2019s shutdown, was secret because authorities feared the possibility of a Taliban attack. The USA and NATO, as everyone knows, are the losers, despite the bloated enormity of their military superiority. What a mockery the reality of war makes of the rhetoric that blesses it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism","category-central-asia-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}