by Mike Whitney

Today, we Afghans remain trapped between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other.” Malalai Joya, “A Woman Among the Warlords” Scribner Publishing, New York

	Obama’s speech at West Point.

The Bush administration never had any intention of liberating Afghanistan or establishing democracy. The real aim was to remove the politically-intractable Taliban and replace them with a puppet regime run by a former-CIA asset. The rest of Afghanistan would be parceled-off to the warlords who assisted in the invasion and who had agreed to do much of the United States dirty-work on the ground. In the eight years of military occupation which followed, that basic strategy has never changed. The U.S. is just as committed now as it was at the war’s inception to establish a beachhead in Central Asia to oversee the growth of China, to execute disruptive/covert operations against Russia, to control vital pipeline routes from the Caspian Basin, and to maintain a heavy military presence in the most critical geopolitical area in the world today.

The objectives were briefly stated in a recent counterpunch article by Tariq Ali:

“It’s now obvious to everyone that this is not a ‘good’ war designed to eliminate the opium trade, discrimination against women and everything bad – apart from poverty, of course. So what is Nato doing in Afghanistan? Has this become a war to save Nato as an institution? Or is it more strategic, as was suggested in the spring 2005 issue of Nato Review:

The centre of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward … The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans, and the institutions they have built, to lead the way … security effectiveness in such a world is impossible without both legitimacy and capability.” (”Short Cuts in Afghanistan”, Tariq Ali, counterpunch)

President Barak Obama’s speech at West Point was merely a reiteration of US original commitment to strengthen the loose confederation of warlords–many of who are either in the Afghan Parliament or hold high political office–to pacify nationalist elements, and to expand the war into Pakistan. Obama is just a cog in a much larger imperial wheel which moves forward with or without his impressive oratory skills. So far, he has been much more successful in concealing the real motives behind military escalation than his predecessor George W. Bush. It’s doubtful that Obama could stop current operations even if he wanted to, and there is no evidence that he wants to.

The Pentagon has settled on a new counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) which it intends to implement in Afghanistan. The program will integrate psyops, special forces, NGOs, psychologists, media, anthropologists, humanitarian agencies, public relations, reconstruction, and conventional forces to rout the Taliban, assert control over the South and the tribal areas, and to quash any indigenous resistance. Clandestine activity and unmanned drone attacks will increase, while a “civilian surge” will be launched to try to win hearts and minds in the densely populated areas. Militarily, the goal is to pit one ethnicity against the other, to incite civil war, and to split the country in smaller units that can be controlled by warlords working with Washington. Where agricultural specialists, educators, engineers, lawyers, relief agencies and NGOs can be used, they will be. Where results depend on the application of extreme violence; it will also be…unsparingly. This is the plan going forward, a plan designed for conquest, subjugation and resource-stripping. Here is an excerpt from Zoltan Grossman’s article in counterpunch “Afghanistan: The Roach Motel of Empires” which details the balkenization strategy:

“We are arming and financing the same vicious men (the Northern Alliance) who brought fundamentalism to Kabul in the first place….Like the Soviets, the Americans do not understand that the insurgency is driven not only by Islamist fundamentalism, but also by ethnic nationalism. In the case of the Taliban, they are representing the grievances of the Pashtuns who have seen the artificial colonial “Durand Line” divide their homeland between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The best way to defuse the Taliban is to recognize the legitimacy of this historical grievance, and incorporate Pashtun civil society into both governments.

But instead of unifying the different ethnic regions of Afghanistan, the NATO occupation seems headed more toward a de facto partition of these regions. The foreign policy team that President Obama has assembled includes some of the same figures who advocated the ethnic-sectarian partition of Yugoslavia and Iraq. Obama’s Special Envoy to Af-Pak, Richard Holbrooke, authored the agreement that partioned Bosnia into Serb and Muslim-Croat republics in 1995, in effect rubberstamping the ethnic cleansing that had forcibly removed populations during a three-year civil war. He also turned a blind eye when Serb civilians were expelled from Croatia the same year, and from Kosovo in 1999.

President Karzai recently instituted a series of laws on women in Shia communities, causing an outcry from women’s rights groups. Hardly unnoticed was his application of different legal standards to different sectarian territories—a sign of de facto (informal) partition. Various “peace” proposals have advocated ceding control of some Pashtun provinces to the Taliban. Far from bringing peace, such an ethnic-sectarian partition would exacerbate the violent “cleansing” of mixed territories to drive out those civilians who are not of the dominant group—the process that brought the “peace of the graveyard” to Bosnia, Kosovo, and much of Iraq.” ( Zoltan Grossman, “Afghanistan: The Roach Motel of Empires” counterpunch)

If Grossman is correct, than Obama’s professed commitment to Afghan liberation merely masks a vicious counterinsurgency strategy that will ethnically cleanse areas in the south while driving tens of thousands of innocent people from their homes. This is essentially what took place in Baghdad during the so-called “surge”; over a million Sunnis were forced from the city by death squads and Shia militia under the watchful eye of US troops. US counterinsurgency wunderkind Gen Stanley McChrystal played a pivotal role in pacifying Iraq, which is why he was chosen by Obama to oversee military operations in Afghanistan. Here’s a clip from an article by Ulrich Rippert “Europe backs Afghanistan strategy aimed at “regionalization”’ on the World Socialist Web Site which provides more details on the plan to Balkenize Afghanistan:

“During his inaugural visit to Washington, new German defense secretary, Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg said it was necessary to put aside “the romantic idea of democratization of the whole country along the lines of the western model” and instead “transfer control of individual provinces step by step to the Afghan security forces.”

The new strategy of “regionalization” is aimed at dividing Afghanistan into individual cantons—in a similar manner to what took place in Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia. Up to now the US-NATO occupation supported the government of Hamid Karzai and sold the process to the public as “democratization”. However, occupation forces are moving increasingly to hand over power directly to regional warlords and their militias—on the assumption that such regional forces will follow the orders of their imperial masters. As soon as there is no more danger in a specific province, Guttenberg declared, then the international troops should be withdrawn from that area.” (Ulrich Rippert “Europe backs Afghanistan strategy aimed at “regionalization”’, World Socialist Web Site)

Obama’s escalation is not aimed at strengthening democracy, liberating women or bringing an end to the brutal, misogynist rule of religious fanatics. It is pure, unalloyed imperial politics, the rearranging of the map and its people to serve Washington’s interests. As journalist Alex Lantier notes on the World Socialist Web Site, the plan does not end with Afghanistan, but stretches across the globe. The hard-right policymakers behind Obama, still have not abandoned their dream of global rule. Here’s an excerpt:

“As Obama indicated elsewhere in his speech, this escalation is one step in plans for even broader wars. “The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly,” he said, “and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Mentioning Somalia and Yemen as potential targets, he added, “our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.”

The inclusion of this passage made clear that Obama was basing his Afghan policy on a report issued last month by Anthony Cordesman of the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Cordesman wrote: “The President must be frank about the fact that any form of victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be part of a much wider and longer struggle. He must make it clear that the ideological, demographic, governance, economic, and other pressures that divide the Islamic world mean the world will face threats in many other nations that will endure indefinitely into the future. He should mention the risks in Yemen and Somalia, make it clear that the Iraq war is not over, and warn that we will still face both a domestic threat and a combination of insurgency and terrorism that will continue to extend from Morocco to the Philippines, and from Central Asia deep into Africa, regardless of how well we do in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

He added: “…the present level of US, allied, Afghan and Pakistani casualties will almost certainly double and probably more than triple before something approaching victory is won.” (Alex Lantier “Obama’s speech on Afghanistan: A compendium of lies” World Socialist web Site)

In the years ahead, we can expect to see relief and reconstruction efforts stepped up to provide security in the heavily-populated areas while the war in the south is expanded and intensified. Tajiks and Uzbeks, in the Afghan military will be enlisted to fight or expel their Pashtun countrymen, while warlords, druglords and human rights abusers are handed over large swathes of the countryside. 30,000 more troops is not enough to lock-down all of Afghanistan, but it may be enough to force hundreds of thousands of people into regional bantustans where they can be controlled by bloodthirsty chieftains, the very same men who leveled Kabul on April 28, 1992, killing 80,000 Afghan civilians. This is Obama’s plan for Afghanistan, a carbon-copy of George Bush’s.

by Gordon Duff, Veterans Today

Conservative commentator, former Marine Colonel Bob Pappas has been saying for years that bin Laden died at Tora Bora and that Senator Kerry’s claim that bin Laden escaped with Bush help was a lie.  Now we know that Pappas was correct.  The embarassment of having Secretary of State Clinton talk about bin Laden in Pakistan was horrific.  He has been dead since December 13, 2001 and now, finally, everyone, Obama, McChrystal, Cheney, everyone who isn’t nuts is finally saying what they have known for years.

However, since we lost a couple of hundred of our top special operations forces hunting for bin Laden after we knew he was dead, is someone going to answer for this with some jail time?  Since we spent 200 million dollars on “special ops” looking for someone we knew was dead, who is going to jail for that?  Since Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney continually talked about a man they knew was dead, now known to be for reasons of POLITICAL nature, who is going to jail for that?  Why were tapes brought out, now known to be forged, as legitimate intelligence to sway the disputed 2004 election in the US?  This is a criminal act if there ever was one.

In 66 pages, General Stanley McChrystal never mentions Osama bin Laden.  Everything is “Mullah Omar”now.  In his talk at West Point, President Obama never mentioned Osama bin Laden.  Col. Pappas makes it clear, Vice President Cheney let it “out of the bag” long ago.  Bin Laden was killed by American troops many many years ago.

America knew Osama bin Laden died December 13, 2001.  After that, his use was hardly one to unite America but rather one to divide, scam and play games.  With bin Laden gone, we could have started legitimate nation building in Afghanistan instead of the eternal insurgency that we invented ourselves.

Without our ill informed policies, we could have had a brought diplomatic solution in 2002 in Afghanistan, the one we are ignoring now, and spent money rebuilding the country, 5 cents on the dollar compared to what we are spending fighting a war against an enemy we ourselves recruited thru ignorance.

The bin Laden scam is one of the most shameful acts ever perpetrated against the American people.  We don’t even know if he really was an enemy, certainly he was never the person that Bush and Cheney said.  In fact, the Bush and bin Laden families were always close friends and had been for many years.

What kind of man was Osama bin Laden?  This one time American ally against Russia, son of a wealthy Saudi family, went to Afghanistan to help them fight for their freedom.  America saw him as a great hero then.  Transcripts of the real bin Laden show him to be much more moderate than we claim, angry at Israel and the US government but showing no anger toward Americans and never making the kind of theats claimed.  All of this is public record for any with the will to learn.

How much of America’s tragedy is tied with these two children of the rich, children of families long joined thru money and friendship, the Bush and bin Laden clans.

One son died in remote mountains, another lives in a Dallas suburb hoping nobody is sent after him.  One is a combat veteran, one never took a strong stand unless done from safety and comfort.  Islam once saw bin Laden as a great leader.  Now he is mostly forgotten.

What has America decided about Bush?

We know this:  Bin Laden always denied any ties to 9/11 and, in fact, has never been charged in relation to 9/11.  He not only denied involvement, but had done so, while alive, 4 times and had vigorously condemned those who were involved in the attack.

This is on the public record, public in every free country except ours.  We, instead, showed films made by paid actors, made up to look somewhat similar to bin Laden, actors who contradicted bin Ladens very public statements, actors pretending to be bin Laden long after bin Laden’s death.

These were done to help justify spending, repressive laws, torture and simple thievery.

For years, we attacked the government of Pakistan for not hunting down someone everyone knew was dead.  Bin Laden’s death hit the newspapers in Pakistan on December 15, 2001.  How do you think our ally felt when they were continually berated for failing to hunt down and turn over someone who didn’t exist?

What do you think this did for American credibility in Pakistan and thru the Islamic world?  Were we seen as criminals, liars or simply fools?  Which one is best?

This is also treason.

How does the death of bin Laden and the defeat and dismemberment of Al Qaeda impact the intelligence assessments, partially based on, not only bin Laden but Al Qaeda activity in Iraq that,not only never happened but was now known to have been unable to happen?

How many “Pentagon Pundits,” the retired officers who sold their honor to send us to war for what is now known to be domestic political dirty tricks and not national security are culpable in these crimes?

I don’t always agree with Col. Pappas on things.  I believe his politics overrule his judgement at times.  However, we totally agree on bin Laden, simply disagree with what it means.  To me lying and sending men to their deaths based on lies is treason.

Falsifying military intelligence and spending billions on unnecessary military operations for political reasons is an abomination.  Consider this, giving billions in contracts to GOP friends who fill campaign coffers, and doing so based on falsified intelligence is insane.  This was done for years.

We spent 8 years chasing a dead man, spending billions, sending FBI agents, the CIA, Navy Seals, Marine Force Recon, Special Forces, many to their deaths, as part of a political campaign to justify running American into debt, enriching a pack of political cronies and war profiteers and to puff up a pack of Pentagon peacocks and their Whitehouse draft dodging bosses.

How many laws were pushed thru because of a dead man?

How many hundreds were tortured to find a dead man?

How many hundreds died looking for a dead man?

How many billions were spent looking for a dead man?

Every time Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld stood before troops and talked about hunting down the dead bin Laden, it was a dishonor.  Lying to men and women who put their lives on the line is not a joke.

Who is going to answer to the families of those who died for the politics and profit tied to the Hunt for Bin Laden?

by Russell D. Longcore

On Thursday, November 5th, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan used handguns to fire upon fellow soldiers at Fort Hood Texas, killing 13 and wounding 30.

The base commander says soldiers who witnessed the shooting reported that Major Hasan shouted “Allah Akbar!” (God is great) before opening fire. Hasan, an American citizen and a practicing Muslim, himself was shot four times, and is presently hospitalized in stable condition. Originally it was thought that Hasan was killed, but later his survival was confirmed.

Hasan is a physician…a psychiatrist in fact. He recently worked at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Maryland, one of the primary places that wounded Gulf War soldiers are treated for horrific injuries. But those same wounded soldiers bring back deep mental wounds, and Hasan’s specialty was in counseling and helping soldiers suffering the mental anguish from war.

Major Hasan was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan, and reports say that he was angry about his deployment.

Over the coming weeks and months, military investigators will work to determine Major Hasan’s motivation for the murders. If found competent, he will likely stand trial for the murders and injuries. However, you should expect that the findings will be “spun” in a way that absolves Washington and the military from any responsibility for their part in the murders.

Nothing in this article should be misconstrued as a tacit approval of Hanan’s acts. Murder is always murder, and killing 13 and wounding 30 is an horrific slaughter. No justification exists for this act.

Here are some points that likely will be off-limits in the mainstream media:

1. The morality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. George Bush’s administration and Congress lied the US into an Iraq war against their own puppet dictator Saddam Hussein. It was never proven that Hussein or Iraq had ANY involvement in the 9-11 attacks. President Obama has now fully embraced war in Iraq and Afghanistan which continues unabated.

2. The legality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No declaration of war has ever been enacted by the US Congress, which is required in the Constitution.

3. Base security and the Second Amendment. Military personnel do not forsake their rights under the Second Amendment when they take their Oath of Service, do they? The fact that the soldiers on bases across the world are unarmed makes it easy for any assailant to do his work. Universities like Virginia Tech (curiously Hasan’s alma mater, where another mass murder incident took place), public schools, and government buildings are also open kill zones for armed gunmen. Just one soldier carrying his sidearm at Fort Hood could have stopped the slaughter. One soldier. One.

4. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Part of PTSD is the mental anguish military personnel experience when they have done unspeakable things in war that conflicts with their moral code. How do you live with yourself when your actions caused the deaths of women and children who never did anything to deserve death? How do you cope with seeing thousands of people bombed out of their homes and turned into refugees? How do you cope with seeing your buddies blown to bits by IEDs? How do you deal with the disease, displacement and death that your very presence in a foreign country delivers? Most military personnel live through it, albeit mentally tortured. But some choose #5.

5. Suicide rates in the military. News stories about alarmingly high suicide rates in the military have been surfacing since 2001 when the US began its military adventures in Iraq. The fact that military personnel have been deployed multiple times is a giant factor. The fact that National Guard and Reservists have also been deployed to “the sandbox” multiple times is another suicide factor. Finally, soldiers see…and cause…thousands of civilian deaths in both countries. The military personnel ask “what are we doing here?” and find no answer. They can’t escape their service, can’t desert their post and hop a plane for home, find themselves 5,000 miles from home with no solutions, or are scheduled for a mandatory deployment that they cannot avoid without court martial. So, in hopelessness and despair, many kill themselves.

6. Desertion: defined in Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as “Any member of the armed forces who (1) without authority goes or remains absent from his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to remain away therefrom permanently; or the abandonment of military duty without leave and without the intent to return.” Only in the military…or slavery… is a soldier “owned property,” subject to court martial, death or imprisonment for “quitting” his job. Desertion rates are up significantly since 2001, with many deserters heading to Canada or some other nation for asylum.

Major Hasan is a devout Muslim, so his story will likely be spun about Islam and terrorism. Reports say that he has expressed grave concerns about waging war against fellow Muslims. This is a legitimate concern for any devout believer.

But Hanan had other options. He could have refused the deployment for religious reasons (Conscientious Objector status), or simply the reason that he refused to obey an order he believed to be an unlawful order. Lieutenant Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq in 2006. Watada said he believed the war to be illegal and that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, it would make him party to war crimes. The Army lost the initial court martial ruling, dropped the second court martial in 2008 and discharged him from the Army.

Washington’s leaders and minions set the stage for this tragedy. But don’t look to them to take any responsibility for the toxic environment that our military personnel are forced to live under. Isn’t this akin to abusing a dog over years, and then feigning surprise when the dog attacks someone? Should we not treat our fellow humans better than our pets?

Think about this. Do you believe that any military personnel, constitutionally deployed within the borders of the Unites States of America in a purely defensive status would ever have reason to react in this manner?

Does this have anything to do with state secession? Yes, it does.

Hanan’s actions are what is commonly referred to as “blowback”…the unintended consequences of government policy. Nations that don’t invade other nations don’t have these kinds of tragic events as a rule. And states that eventually secede from the US, and keep their militias within their own borders, defending the new nation from invasion, won’t have them either.

Environmental Graffiti

War in Afghanistan and Pakistan –

The United States wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have proven to be beyond stupid and cruel. The motives behind each war have been clear for some time. Iraq may possess the largest oil reserves on the planet after Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan must be a key player in a long planned, complex Central Asian pipeline network for oil and natural gas as well. The massive oil corporations fully intend to extend the Age of Oil as long as possible, regardless of the consequences to the planet’s economy and ecology. Talk aside, we see nothing but cooperation and collaboration from the major sovereign states of the world for whom the question is not ‘If’ but ‘How’.

X-47B UCAS in flight
Artist - Northrup Grumman

Is there any success to report after eight years into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?If you believe that the Age of Oil must be continued at any cost, then stability in northern Iraq where Kurds control vast oil reserves is important. The Kurds view the United States as an ally and sympathetic to their cause of a semi-autonomous province within Iraq. The Kurdish independent movement believes in a greater Kurdistan nation that draws upon territory in Iraq, Turkey and elsewhere.

USA oil companies have been in the northern Kurdistan provinces of Iraq for some time, attempting to lock down major oil deals. The new Iraqi government is now soliciting bids for the development of several major oil fields, and the United States is not given a preferred position. The chaos in Afghanistan has prevented potential energy resources from being adequately mapped and described. Although rarely mentioned in the press, American interest in Iran may stem from that country’s possession of at least 10% of the world’s proven oil reserves, and huge proven gas reserves that are the second largest on the planet next to those in Russia – see Source #11.

Pipelineistan –

Kazakhstan / Russia / North Caspian Oil and Gas
Map - Department of Energy / United States government

The strategic value of Afghanistan to the United States and NATO remains its central position within Pipelineistan, a gigantic, complex oil and gas pipeline project that would traverse Central Asia. Pipelineistan requires the participation of Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, India, Turkey, Turkmenistan, China, Russia, and Armenia. Located on the other side of the world, the United States is nonetheless determined to be sitting at the table. China, Russia and Iran envisage a new Silk Road that transports oil and gas extending from the Caspian Sea to Xinjiang Province in China’s far west.

Kazakhstan to China / Proposed Oil Pipelines
Map - Department of Energy / United States government

The United States counters with the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation and the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. At the end of the day, it has to come down to which routes are chosen to bring Kazakhstan’s enormous oil reserves to market after production starts in 2013. Whoever controls Pipelineistan may well control the world’s strategic energy supplies for the remainder of this century. See the important analysis of Central Asian pipelines and oil wars by award winning international journalist Pepe Escobar in Source #12. Yes, Virginia, Black Gold still rules and this is why the “Bull in the China Shop ( re United States) cannot afford to leave Afghanistan, nor give up control over Pakistan’s military policy.

B-1 Lancer bomber over Afghanistan
Photo - Master Sergeant Andrew Dunaway / USAF

“Full Spectrum Dominance” Falls on Its Face –

Attempts to redefine reality to suit USA objectives have met with little success because the fundamentals are well known and not overly complicated. The Taliban is not Al Qaeda, has not fused with AQ and has a very different and locally focused agenda – takeover over the Afghanistan government. The Taliban are not a global terrorist organization, and have no plans to become one. To the extent that Taliban controlled territories are made available to Al Qaeda for base of operations, the United States has only itself to blame.

Are Drone attacks justified? This is an interview in the United States at Fora TV with Hamid Mir, a prominent Pakistani journalist who was the only journalist able to interview Osama bin Laden after 9/11. Drone missions are far less costly than military aviation sorties that require a human pilot and crew.

Military operations brought to Afghanistan, and forced upon Pakistan amidst the AfPAK War, have created a new huge refugee problem in the northwest provinces of Pakistan. These refugees hate the United States because of the civilian casualties caused by the drone missions. To continue to talk about “winning hearts and minds” in Afghan and Pakistan villages is ludicrous. The score card of terrorist leaders killed is beside the point because there is an endless supply of good candidates ready to fill vacant leadership positions as the past eight years has demonstrated.

MQ-9 Reaper drone in flight
Photo - Lt. Colonel Leslie Pratt / USAF

Propaganda about the birth of ‘fledging democracies’ would be laughable, if the human costs were not so severe. Sectarian Sunni-Shi’ite warfare in several disguises continues in Iraq. There are political analysts who believe that Iraq is the most politically corrupt state of all. Afghanistan remains as it has always been, a tribal federation where alliances shift and move in complex patterns yet to be understood in the West, and it remains the premier narco state on the planet. The United States is now deeply enmeshed in a plot to remove Hamid Karzai from office as the President of Afghanistan. His opponent in the recently held corrupt elections is believed to be more easily manipulated by American interests. So much for genuine ‘fledgling democracy’; the energy stakes are much too high for that.

The human cost in civilian casualties and social/cultural destruction in Afghanistan, and now Pakistan, is well known, thoroughly documented and apparently of little concern to those obsessed with ‘full spectrum dominance’. Tons of verbiage attempting to convince the world otherwise have accomplished little except to lower America’s integrity and trust index to near zero After eight years of these two wars, USA prestige and influence in the world has reached a new low point.

Trillion Dollar Bill
Graphic Art - methodshop

The National Priorities Project / Cost of War Counters Trade-Off –

As always, the Bottom Line is Money. There are a number of cost of war counters on the web, but a new web site has developed an exceptional presentation. TheNational Priorities Project mission is to analyze “complex federal spending data and translate it into easy-to-understand information about how [United States] federal tax dollars are spent.”

The National Priorities web site is an education for the world, not just American voters. The expected running tally, cost-of-war counter is present. In addition, there are separate Cost of War in Afghanistan and Cost of War in Iraq counters. The visitor can choose a specific defense program and home state, and the counter will calculate what non defense programs could have been funded in that state if the chosen defense program were not funded. These counters are the bottom line look at an oft discussed topic, ‘what would we get if this or that defense program was not funded?’

Military Cost to Secure_Energy FY2009 / HI
Chart - National Priority Project

For those with blogs or web sites, National Priority makes available free code snippets so you can place these calculators on your page. This is a great site with superb calculators. Spend some time at National Priority Project and think again about where America is taking the world.

Disclaimer: The author of this post has no professional relationship with the National Priorities Project.

Sources -

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 11, 12

by Karen Kwiatkowski

Eight years ago, the public objective was to displace the Taliban and create a non-al-Qaeda supporting “democracy” in Afghanistan.

For a moment, leave aside Washington’s more fundamental objectives in the military invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent base-building – security for the trans-Afghanistan pipeline project, restoring the opium exports that had finally subsided under Taliban enforcement by early 2001, and improved military positions vis-à-vis Iran, Pakistan and Russia. The fossil fuel manipulations, drug money and maintaining a justification for our outsized military-industrial complex are not the topics here.

The Taliban, while initially displaced from Kabul, are regaining some political influence. We may claim “mission accomplished” because they are competing for influence in an Afghanistan that has other comparable politicized ethnicities – and the Taliban no longer receive significant support from al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.

Osama who?

Yes, that’s what we are saying.

Afghans were infuriated, not just at this past summer’s flawed and corrupted election, but also at the previous elections that confirmed US satrap Hamid Karzai. Afghans have international support for their case against the US-manipulated election – and we should take the anger of Afghans as confirmation of our success in creating a democratic mindset there.

Afghans also understand some of the basics that our own founders and early Presidents grasped, and not just the successful use of insurgency tactics against a far better equipped and funded occupying army that wants to economically exploit and civilize them.

In a recent report on the morale troubles of our Marines in the agricultural Helmand region, reporters “…talked to the grey-bearded men in the village… Asked if they wanted a school or more doctors, all said such questions were a matter for those who own the fields.”

A matter for those who owned the fields. In a nutshell, it is clear that these Afghans get it. Government, and collectively provided services and polices, should be by the people, of the people and for the people.

Of course, a few sentences later villagers in Helmand were surprised to hear of a new round of planned elections to be held. A villager is quoted “We never even heard of elections. If we had, I suppose we might have voted.”

While some may have missed the recent election, we may still consider our public mission accomplished. Not only do Afghans understand how democracies should work, they appear to be ready and willing to participate in that iconic process of ballot-casting.

What more could we ask? The deed is done. Afghanistan is a success by our own standards, and while our public claims of a righteous invasion still sustainable.

Obama is right to wait until after popular resolution of Kabul’s leadership before adding even more troops, as is NATO. Had Afghanistan’s summer presidential election been fair, our satrap Karzai would not be in charge, and the Kabul government would already be purged (perhaps viciously) of US-linked politicos and appointees. The run-off, if conducted fairly, will contribute to the continued and irreversible reduction of US credibility. President Obama should assess this much as he would a Chicago election – and get out of Afghanistan while we can still claim a positive influence.

There is a reason the generals are not in charge of our country – by design, anyway. The Gates’ and McCrystals of the world are the real barbarians, personally and professionally locked on a treadmill that demands ever more blood and more glory, at any cost. With the publicly accepted mission in Afghanistan accomplished, Americans cannot afford to entertain the vain fantasies of flag officers who fear nothing but their own oblivion, and will sacrifice any number of lives and all measures of treasure in pursuit of personal relevance.

Thinking people everywhere see our Afghanistan experience as a crash of 20th-century American empire on the 21st-century rocks of reality. The contraction of our empire – happening today in monetary as well as military terms – is at least a full generation overdue. The false sustenance of a financial bubble corresponds with the failing sustenance of military empire. Our children are the first generation who are not citizens, but Caesar’s slaves, bound to a life of fear and labor, made bearable only by their inchoate dreams of freedom. The military-industrial complex, a benign tumor in the days of Eisenhower, has metastasized to the extent that generals run Washington and the fourth estate exists solely to serve the imperial machine.

Obama has a small window of opportunity to declare victory and take a step towards retroactively earning his Nobel peace prize. Afghanistan no longer threatens us, and they’d like their country back.