Who is Barack Obama?

[handy]

Who is Barack Obama? by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com


Who is Barack Obama?
When it comes to foreign policy, the mystery deepens...

by Justin Raimondo, September 25, 2009

Who is this man we elected to the highest office in the land? Is he a change-bringer, or just more of the same?
We’re about to find out.

The New York Times informs us that there is a battle shaping up for hearts and minds – not in the wilds of Afghanistan, but in the White House. And the one heart and mind that matters the most is, of course, the President’s. On one side of the barricades stand Hillary Clinton and her ally Richard Holbrooke, the butcher of the Balkans. It was Hillary, you’ll recall, who demanded of her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, to stop shilly-shallying and begin the bombing of Belgrade. That she’s living up to her reputation as the Democratic Valkyrie of the War Party when it comes to Afghanistan was all too predictable.
On the other side – Vice President Joe Biden, who wants to implement what is essentially the George Will plan for the Afghan front: position our troops somewhere else in the region and send the special forces in as necessary to take out al-Qaeda.
But where does Barack Obama stand?
During the election, he took the Clinton-Holbrooke "nation-building" position, attacking the Bush administration for "neglecting" the "real" war on the Afghan front and framing his opposition to the Iraq invasion in hawkish terms. That was then, however, when politics was in command: now that he’s President, he’s having second thoughts, according to press reports. The Times avers that many in the Pentagon are worried their commander-in-chief has "buyer’s remorse" over sending those 20,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan – like those home-buyers who got in at the top of the market, and are now several feet underwater, which is where he’s heading in the polls.
Obama’s top general on the Afghan front, Stanley McChrystal, is asking for some 40,000 more troops, but that has been put on hold pending the outcome of the internal battle over policy – a battle that will be won or lost in the arena of public opinion.
This defining moment in Obama’s presidency illustrates quite nicely my own thesis that all foreign policy decisions – especially the decision to go to war – are the result and outgrowth of domestic political considerations. Since the primary – indeed, the sole – aim of those in power is to retain (and if possible expand) their hegemonic position – a principle, I might add, that applies to all societies, whether democracies or dictatorships – our rulers will invariably make decisions about US actions overseas in accordance with what effect it has on their standing at home.
President Obama is clearly balking due to the unpopularity of this war. Can he afford to alienate the clear majority of Americans who now think the battle for Afghanistan isn’t worth the price – or will he listen to Hillary and her government-in-exile?
Hillary is clearly the Dick Cheney of this administration in two senses: she’s the chief hawk in the president’s inner councils, and her State Department is taking on all the accouterments of War Party HQ, just as the Office of the Vice President did during the Bush era. Her chief consigliere, AIG board member Holbrooke, would probably have been in Hillary’s position if the Clintons had retained control of the Democratic party in 2008. He is an unmitigated interventionist, who supported the Iraq war and could fairly be described as the architect of the Clintons’ war in the Balkans.
He’s the "closest thing the party has to a Kissinger," as Ari Berman, citing an anonymous foreign policy analyst, put it. Holbrooke was gung-ho on the Iraq misadventure, averring, in 2003, that failure to invade would amount to a violation of international law by the US! Perhaps with an eye to the Democratic base, Holbrooke, as chief foreign policy advisor to presidential candidate John Kerry, tempered his views somewhat, urging the Democratic standard-bearer to keep his rhetoric "deliberately vague" on Iraq.
He is, in short, the examplar of what Berman calls the "strategic class" – the professional managers and guardians of America’s overseas domain, our empire of bases, colonies, and protectorates that provides a good living for a growing class of Americans. Since their incomes and social standing are enhanced by the empire’s global scale, they are constantly seeking not only to defend it but also to expand it whenever possible. All debates within this stratgegic class are over the practicality of whatever new war is on the agenda – never over the legitimacy of our role as global hegemon.
Holbrooke has been given a very broad mandate by the President as plenipotentiary in charge of the "Af-Pak" portfolio, and the role he’s playing was made clear when, at a meeting with our European allies, he hailed the recent Afghan election, so brazenly stolen by "President" Hamid Karzai.
In pursuing his portfolio Holbrooke is very likely to reflect the views of his capo di tutti capi, who took the unusual step of going public with the internal debate over Afghanistan policy. In a recent interview with PBS, Hillary came out against the Biden option guns blazing:
"Some people say, ‘Well, Al Qaeda’s no longer in Afghanistan. If Afghanistan were taken over by the Taliban, I can’t tell you how fast Al Qaeda would be back in Afghanistan."
To listen to this kind of talk, you’d think there hadn’t been a Democratic primary and a subsequent election. Or maybe she thinks she won both. So much for that "cabinet of equals": what we have here is Hillary’s shadow government, which is openly trying to run the foreign policy show. And where is the President?
This is the big question in the minds of "progressives," and the left in general, these days. The decision he makes about Afghanistan will give us an answer. It will be the test of their Great Leader concept of the man they put in the White House, in whose success they’ve invested so much. Their reverence for Obama has an almost North Korean edge to it: his shining visage illuminates their vision of a "progressive " America at peace with the world. They overlooked his promise during the campaign that he would escalate the war on the Afghan front: he has to do that, they thought, to prove he’s not "soft" on national security issues and is tough enough to be commander-in-chief. But we know what he really thinks and wants, the lefties averred: he’s really one of us (that’s what the Rush Limbaugh types, say, too). But is he?
We’ll soon see.
This plastic moment is the perfect time for the antiwar movement to gear up for a major campaign – so where are they? A series of disconnected local events are scheduled for October 7: but no nationally-coordinated action is planned in Washington, DC. Instead, various groups are independently putting on events, such as a "Peace for Afghanistan House party" suggested by Peace Action, which clearly ought to change its name to Peace Inaction.
Yes, you can "protest" the war holding a glass of white wine in one hand and that wonderful sushi your friend Tiffany whipped up in the other. Forget those tired protest signs!
What’s wrong with these wimps?
I’ve seen this kind of thing happen time and again on the left. As a disinterested and somewhat bemused observer on the sidelines, I’ve been continually astonished at the almost masochistic willingness of the so-called progressives to be pushed around by the "centrist," "moderate" wing. On every issue, from healthcare to gay rights, they have conceded in the name of "unity": just give in this one time, the Mod Squad argues, and you’ll get what you want in the end. Just not now.
I wonder if the left will ever run out of patience. For the moment, at least, they’ve put their complete trust in the Dear Leader. Which raises the question: will they follow him wherever he wants to go – even if it’s into the wilds of Waziristan?
Some will, some won’t, with the former, I fear, outnumbering the latter. What’s especially troubling, however, is that at the very moment when maximum pressure on the President to get out of Afghanistan would do the most good, the antiwar movement has gone A.W.O.L. When the shameful history of this rotten war is written, their craven passivity will make for an especially shameful little footnote.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
It’s the weekend – which means it’s time to go shopping, right? Well, maybe not, given the bad economic times we’re living through. Which means lots of people are taking advantage of the savings made possible by shopping online. Did you know that you can shop online – and, simultaneously, help the world’s premier pro-peace web site? Well, it’s true: every time you buy something at Amazon.com – where you can buy practically anything – Antiwar.com can get a commission if you do it via our site. Go here – and go shopping for a more peaceful world.

[Tars]

President Obama is clearly balking due to the unpopularity of this war. Can he afford to alienate the clear majority of Americans who now think the battle for Afghanistan isn’t worth the price – or will he listen to Hillary and her government-in-exile?

Heh heh...

Hillary is clearly the Dick Cheney of this administration in two senses: she’s the chief hawk in the president’s inner councils, and her State Department is taking on all the accouterments of War Party HQ, just as the Office of the Vice President did during the Bush era.

Ha HA!

what we have here is Hillary’s shadow government, which is openly trying to run the foreign policy show. And where is the President?

Please...stop. Hillary & Bill have been models of restraint & support for the Obama administration. I love the parts trying to characterize Hillary as a Mafia Don. Hyperbole should be used in moderation.

This is the big question in the minds of "progressives," and the left in general, these days. The decision he makes about Afghanistan will give us an answer. It will be the test of their Great Leader concept of the man they put in the White House, in whose success they’ve invested so much. Their reverence for Obama has an almost North Korean edge to it

No, really, please stop. Obama as Kim Jong-Il? The tone of the piece is starting to sound a little shrill, don't you think?

As a disinterested and somewhat bemused observer on the sidelines,

Hardly "disinterested and somewhat bemused". From Wikipedia:

"In the 1996 U.S. congressional elections, Raimondo ran as a Republican candidate in California's 8th district against Nancy Pelosi."

"During the 1992, 1996, and 2000 presidential elections, Raimondo supported the campaigns of Pat Buchanan, both as a Republican and in the Reform Party."

I wonder if the left will ever run out of patience. For the moment, at least, they’ve put their complete trust in the Dear Leader. Which raises the question: will they follow him wherever he wants to go – even if it’s into the wilds of Waziristan?

Again with the Kim Jong-Il? Give it a break fella! According to this guy, Obama's shaping up as areal empirical tyrant. Maybe he'll appoint one of his daughters as his successor. You think?

NOTES IN THE MARGIN
It’s the weekend – which means it’s time to go shopping, right? Well, maybe not, given the bad economic times we’re living through. Which means lots of people are taking advantage of the savings made possible by shopping online.

Two words: Preview Post

[handy]

Gee, sorry. I missed the references to KJI. Can you be so kind as to point them out?

There was a whole lot of 'shrill' coming from the so-called 'anti-war' crowd back when it was Bush the Lesser's war. Now that it's Obama's war, the silence is deafening. And as the democrats in congress ramp up for even More war that we cannot afford, the sheeple who voted for him are failing to see or admit that they have been duped. And so we get more of the same...

but he does know how to pronounce 'nuclear'...


[QUOTE=Tars;98341]Heh heh...

Ha HA!

Please...stop. Hillary & Bill have been models of restraint & support for the Obama administration. I love the parts trying to characterize Hillary as a Mafia Don. Hyperbole should be used in moderation.

No, really, please stop. Obama as Kim Jong-Il? The tone of the piece is starting to sound a little shrill, don't you think?

Again with the Kim Jong-Il? Give it a break fella! According to this guy, Obama's shaping up as areal empirical tyrant. Maybe he'll appoint one of his daughters as his successor. You think?

[Tars]

Gee, sorry. I missed the references to KJI. Can you be so kind as to point them out?

From the piece you posted: "Their reverence for Obama has an almost North Korean edge to it". And reference to Obama as "Dear Leader". Who is the "Dear Leader" of North Korea?

I empathize with Raimondo; and with your seeming sentiments in posting the piece. I think most peace-loving Americans do, to some extent.

The U.S. has been put in this terrible position by the truly horrendous mis-management of the previous administration. The whole thing could've have been resolved, or at least become a U.N. or NATO allies project if the Neocons hadn't screwed everything up by disasterously changing course to invade Iraq.

The sad truth is, we all inherited the Afghanistan debacle. To characterize Obama as warlike and an imperialist is just thoughtless and silly. He, like the rest of us should, considers potential solutions to the world's Afghanistan problem, by considering the long view. Realistic solutions to Afghanistan must include considerations on regional and hence global peace and stability resulting from our actions there. And not least by far, he must also consider the welfare of the people of that region.

I can't see that we have the option of just backing out. Personally, I'd like to see U.S. role shifted to more of a humanitarian rebuilding effort, protected by U.S./Nato military. If/when/where Al Qaeda pokes its head up, punk 'em with the drones and special forces.

I agree with CARL M. LEVIN

Democratic senator from Michigan; chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee:

"Our strategic approach to Afghanistan should start from a simple premise: It is in our national security interest to ensure that Afghanistan does not revert to rule by a regime that would allow its territory to once again serve as a base for attacks against us.

A counterinsurgency strategy to secure the Afghan population, principally carried out by the Afghan army with support from the United States and coalition allies, is the approach that seems most likely to prevent the Taliban from retaking power and once again harboring those who have attacked us before and would attack us again.

The Afghan army is the hope of its nation. Its soldiers are motivated to fight and are respected by Afghan citizens. Our focus should be on rapidly expanding their numbers; providing them with training and support; and equipping them, on an urgent basis, in part with a significant transfer of equipment now in Iraq. In addition, we should help the Afghans implement a plan to win over low- and mid-level insurgents and re-integrate them into Afghan society, just as we brought tens of thousands of Sunni insurgents in Iraq over to our side.

Ultimately, Afghanistan's own institutions will determine the success of a counterinsurgency strategy. Our goal should be to strengthen those institutions."

(From Politico)

Karma means you don't get away with anything.

[Sciguy]

A counterinsurgency strategy to secure the Afghan population, principally carried out by the Afghan army with support from the United States and coalition allies, is the approach that seems most likely to prevent the Taliban from retaking power and once again harboring those who have attacked us before and would attack us again.

The Afghan army is the hope of its nation. Its soldiers are motivated to fight and are respected by Afghan citizens. Our focus should be on rapidly expanding their numbers; providing them with training and support; and equipping them, on an urgent basis, in part with a significant transfer of equipment now in Iraq. In addition, we should help the Afghans implement a plan to win over low- and mid-level insurgents and re-integrate them into Afghan society, just as we brought tens of thousands of Sunni insurgents in Iraq over to our side.

Sunday 20 September 2009

by: Ann Jones | TomDispatch.com



Tom Englehardt | Introduction: Ann Jones, Us or Them in Afghanistan?

In Washington, calls are increasing, especially among anxious Democrats, for the president to commit to training ever more Afghan troops and police rather than sending in more American troops. Huge numbers for imagined future Afghan army and police forces are now bandied about in Congress and the media -- though no one stops to wonder what Afghanistan, the fourth poorest country on the planet, might actually be like with a combined security force of 400,000. Not a "democracy," you can put your top dollar on that. And with a gross national product of only $23 billion (a striking percentage of which comes from the drug trade) and an annual government budget of only about $600 million, it's not one that could faintly maintain such a force either. Put bluntly, if U.S. officials were capable of building such a force, a version of Colin Powell's Pottery Barn rule for Iraq would kick in and we, the American taxpayers, would own it for all eternity.

On the other hand, not to worry. As Ann Jones makes clear in her revelatory piece below, the odds on such an Afghan force ever being built must be passingly close to nil. Such a program is no more likely to be successful than the massively expensive Afghan aid and reconstruction program has been. In fact, for all the talk about the subject here, it's remarkable how little we actually know about the staggering expensive American and NATO effort to train the Afghan army and police. Stop and think for a moment. When was the last time you read in any U.S. paper a striking account, or any account for that matter, in which a reporter actually bothered to observe the training process in action? Think how useful that might have been for the present debate in Washington.

Fortunately, TomDispatch is ready to remedy this. Site regular Jones, who first went to Afghanistan in 2002 and, in an elegant memoir, Kabul in Winter, has vividly described her years working with Afghan women, spent time this July visiting U.S. training programs for both the Afghan army and police. She offers an eye-opening, on-the-spot look at certain realities which turn the "debate" in Washington inside out and upside down.

- Tom

Ann Jones | Meet the Afghan Army
Is It a Figment of Washington's Imagination?

The big Afghanistan debate in Washington is not over whether more troops are needed, but just who they should be: Americans or Afghans -- Us or Them. Having just spent time in Afghanistan seeing how things stand, I wouldn't bet on Them.

Frankly, I wouldn't bet on Us either. In eight years, American troops have worn out their welcome. Their very presence now incites opposition, but that's another story. It's Them -- the Afghans -- I want to talk about.

Afghans are Afghans. They have their own history, their own culture, their own habitual ways of thinking and behaving, all complicated by a modern experience of decades of war, displacement, abject poverty, and incessant meddling by foreign governments near and far -- of which the United States has been the most powerful and persistent. Afghans do not think or act like Americans. Yet Americans in power refuse to grasp that inconvenient point.

In the heat of this summer, I went out to the training fields near Kabul where Afghan army recruits are put through their paces, and it was quickly evident just what's getting lost in translation. Our trainers, soldiers from the Illinois National Guard, were masterful. Professional and highly skilled, they were dedicated to carrying out their mission -- and doing the job well. They were also big, strong, camouflaged, combat-booted, supersized American men, their bodies swollen by flack jackets and lashed with knives, handguns, and god only knows what else. Any American could be proud of their commitment to tough duty.

The Afghans were puny by comparison: Hundreds of little Davids to the overstuffed American Goliaths training them. Keep in mind: Afghan recruits come from a world of desperate poverty. They are almost uniformly malnourished and underweight. Many are no bigger than I am (5'4" and thin) -- and some probably not much stronger. Like me, many sag under the weight of a standard-issue flack jacket.

Their American trainers spoke of "upper body strength deficiency" and prescribed pushups because their trainees buckle under the backpacks filled with 50 pounds of equipment and ammo they are expected to carry. All this material must seem absurd to men whose fathers and brothers, wearing only the old cotton shirts and baggy pants of everyday life and carrying battered Russian Kalashnikov rifles, defeated the Red Army two decades ago. American trainers marvel that, freed from heavy equipment and uniforms, Afghan soldiers can run through the mountains all day -- as the Taliban guerrillas in fact do with great effect -- but the U.S. military is determined to train them for another style of war.

Still, the new recruits turn out for training in the blistering heat in this stony desert landscape wearing, beneath their heavy uniforms, the smart red, green, and black warm-up outfits intended to encourage them to engage in off-duty exercise. American trainers recognize that recruits regularly wear all their gear at once for fear somebody will steal anything left behind in the barracks, but they take this overdressing as a sign of how much Afghans love the military. My own reading, based on my observations of Afghan life during the years I've spent in that country, is this: It's a sign of how little they trust one another, or the Americans who gave them the snazzy suits. I think it also indicates the obvious: that these impoverished men in a country without work have joined the Afghan National Army for what they can get out of it (and keep or sell) -- and that doesn't include democracy or glory.

In the current policy debate about the Afghan War in Washington, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin wants the Afghans to defend their country. Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the committee, agrees but says they need even more help from even more Americans. The common ground -- the sacred territory President Obama gropes for -- is that, whatever else happens, the U.S. must speed up the training of "the Afghan security forces."

American military planners and policymakers already proceed as if, with sufficient training, Afghans can be transformed into scale-model, wind-up American Marines. That is not going to happen. Not now. Not ever. No matter how many of our leaders concur that it must happen -- and ever faster.

"Basic Warrior Training"

So who are these security forces? They include the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP). International forces and private contractors have been training Afghan recruits for both of them since 2001. In fact, the determination of Western military planners to create a national army and police force has been so great that some seem to have suppressed for years the reports of Canadian soldiers who witnessed members of the Afghan security forces engaging in a fairly common pastime, sodomizing young boys.

Current training and mentoring is provided by the U.S., Great Britain, France, Canada, Romania, Poland, Mongolia, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as by the private for-profit contractors MPRI, KBR (formerly a division of Halliburton), Pulau, Paravant, and RONCO.

Almost eight years and counting since the "mentoring" process began, officers at the Kabul Military Training Center report that the army now numbers between 88,000 and 92,000 soldiers, depending on who you talk to; and the basic training course financed and led by Americans, called "Basic Warrior Training," is turning out 28,800 new soldiers every year, according to a Kabul Military Training Center "fact sheet." The current projected "end strength" for the ANA, to be reached in December 2011, is 134,000 men; but Afghan officers told me they're planning for a force of 200,000, while the Western press often cites 240,000 as the final figure.

The number 400,000 is often mentioned as the supposed end-strength quota for the combined security forces -- an army of 240,000 soldiers and a police force with 160,000 men. Yet Afghan National Police officials also speak of a far more inflated figure, 250,000, and they claim that 149,000 men have already been trained. Police training has always proven problematic, however, in part because, from the start, the European allies fundamentally disagreed with the Bush administration about what the role of the Afghan police should be. Germany initiated the training of what it saw as an unarmed force that would direct traffic, deter crime, and keep civic order for the benefit of the civilian population. The U.S. took over in 2003, handed the task off to a private for-profit military contractor, DynCorp, and proceeded to produce a heavily armed, undisciplined, and thoroughly venal paramilitary force despised by Kabulis and feared by Afghan civilians in the countryside.

Contradicting that widespread public view, an Afghan commanding officer of the ANP assured me that today the police are trained as police, not as a paramilitary auxiliary of the ANA. "But policing is different in Afghanistan," he said, because the police operate in active war zones.

Washington sends mixed messages on this subject. It farms out responsibility for the ANP to a private contractor that hires as mentors retired American law enforcement officers -- a Kentucky state trooper, a Texas county lawman, a North Carolina cop, and so on. Yet Washington policymakers continue to couple the police with the army as "the Afghan security forces" -- the most basic police rank is "soldier" -- in a merger that must influence what DynCorp puts in its training syllabus. At the Afghan National Police training camp outside Kabul, I watched a squad of trainees learn (reluctantly) how to respond to a full-scale ambush. Though they were armed only with red rubber Kalashnikovs, the exercise looked to me much like the military maneuvers I'd witnessed at the army training camp.

Like army training, police training, too, was accelerated months ago to insure "security" during the run-up to the presidential election. With that goal in mind, DynCorp mentors shrunk the basic police training course from eight weeks to three, after which the police were dispatched to villages all across the country, including areas controlled by the Taliban. After the election, the surviving short-course police "soldiers" were to be brought back to Kabul for the rest of the basic training program. There's no word yet on how many returned.

You have to wonder about the wisdom of rushing out this half-baked product. How would you feel if the police in your community were turned loose, heavily armed, after three weeks of training? And how would you feel if you were given a three-week training course with a rubber gun and then dispatched, with a real one, to defend your country?

Training security forces is not cheap. So far, the estimated cost of training and mentoring the police since 2001 is at least $10 billion. Any reliable figure on the cost of training and mentoring the Afghan army since 2001 is as invisible as the army itself. But the U.S. currently spends some $4 billion a month on military operations in Afghanistan.

The Invisible Men

What is there to show for all this remarkably expensive training? Although in Washington they may talk about the 90,000 soldiers in the Afghan National Army, no one has reported actually seeing such an army anywhere in Afghanistan. When 4,000 U.S. Marines were sent into Helmand Province in July to take on the Taliban in what is considered one of its strongholds, accompanying them were only about 600 Afghan security forces, some of whom were police. Why, you might ask, didn't the ANA, 90,000 strong after eight years of training and mentoring, handle Helmand on its own? No explanation has been offered. American and NATO officers often complain that Afghan army units are simply not ready to "operate independently," but no one ever speaks to the simple question: Where are they?

My educated guess is that such an army simply does not exist. It may well be true that Afghan men have gone through some version of "Basic Warrior Training" 90,000 times or more. When I was teaching in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006, I knew men who repeatedly went through ANA training to get the promised Kalashnikov and the pay. Then they went home for a while and often returned some weeks later to enlist again under a different name.

In a country where 40% of men are unemployed, joining the ANA for 10 weeks is the best game in town. It relieves the poverty of many families every time the man of the family goes back to basic training, but it's a needlessly complicated way to unintentionally deliver such minimal humanitarian aid. Some of these circulating soldiers are aging former mujahidin -- the Islamist fundamentalists the U.S. once paid to fight the Soviets -- and many are undoubtedly Taliban.

American trainers have taken careful note of the fact that, when ANA soldiers were given leave after basic training to return home with their pay, they generally didn't come back. To foil paycheck scams and decrease soaring rates of desertion, they recently devised a money-transfer system that allows the soldiers to send pay home without ever leaving their base. That sounds like a good idea, but like many expensive American solutions to Afghan problems, it misses the point. It's not just the money the soldier wants to transfer home, it's himself as well.

Earlier this year, the U.S. training program became slightly more compelling with the introduction of a U.S.-made weapon, the M-16 rifle, which was phased in over four months as a replacement for the venerable Kalashnikov. Even U.S. trainers admit that, in Afghanistan, the Kalashnikov is actually the superior weapon. Light and accurate, it requires no cleaning even in the dust of the high desert, and every man and boy already knows it well. The strange and sensitive M-16, on the other hand, may be more accurate at slightly greater distances, but only if a soldier can keep it clean, while managing to adjust and readjust its notoriously sensitive sights. The struggling soldiers of the ANA may not ace that test, but now that the U.S. military has generously passed on its old M-16s to Afghans, it can buy new ones at taxpayer expense, a prospect certain to gladden the heart of any arms manufacturer. (Incidentally, thanks must go to the Illinois National Guard for risking their lives to make possible such handsome corporate profits.)

As for the police, U.S.-funded training offers a similar revolving door. In Afghanistan, however, it is far more dangerous to be a policeman than a soldier. While soldiers on patrol can slip away, policemen stuck at their posts are killed almost every day. Assigned in small numbers to staff small-town police stations or highway checkpoints, they are sitting ducks for Taliban fighters. As representatives of the now thoroughly discredited government of President Hamid Karzai, the hapless police make handy symbolic targets. British commanders in Helmand province estimated that 60% of Afghan police are on drugs -- and little wonder why.

In the Pashtun provinces of southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is strong, recruiting men for the Afghan National Police is a "problem," as an ANP commander told me. Consequently, non-Pashtun police trainees of Hazara, Tajik, Uzbek, or other ethnic backgrounds are dispatched to maintain order in Pashtun territory. They might as well paint targets on their foreheads. The police who accompanied the U.S. Marines into Helmand Province reportedly refused to leave their heavily armed mentors to take up suicidal posts in provincial villages. Some police and army soldiers, when asked by reporters, claimed to be "visiting" Helmand province only for "vacation."

Training Day

In many districts, the police recently supplemented their low pay and demonstrated allegiance to local warlords by stuffing ballot boxes for President Karzai in the presidential election. Consider that but one more indication -- like the defection of those great Islamist fundamentalist mujahidin allies the U.S. sponsored in the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s who are now fighting with the Taliban -- that no amount of American training, mentoring, or cash will determine who or what Afghans will fight for, if indeed they fight at all.

Afghans are world famous fighters, in part because they have a knack for gravitating to the winning side, and they're ready to change sides with alacrity until they get it right. Recognizing that Afghans back a winner, U.S. military strategists are now banking on a counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to "clear, hold, and build" -- that is, to stick around long enough to win the Afghans over. But it's way too late for that to work. These days, U.S. troops sticking around look ever more like a foreign occupying army and, to the Taliban, like targets.

Recently Karen DeYoung noted in the Washington Post that the Taliban now regularly use very sophisticated military techniques -- "as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the U.S. Army's Ranger school, which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments." Of course, some of them have attended training sessions which teach them to fight in "austere environments," probably time and time again. If you were a Talib, wouldn't you scout the training being offered to Afghans on the other side? And wouldn't you do it more than once if you could get well paid every time?

Such training is bound to come in handy -- as it may have for the Talib policeman who, just last week, bumped off eight other comrades at his police post in Kunduz Province in northern Afghanistan and turned it over to the Taliban. On the other hand, such training can be deadly to American trainers. Take the case of the American trainer who was shot and wounded that same week by one of his trainees. Reportedly, a dispute arose because the trainer was drinking water "in front of locals," while the trainees were fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramazan.

There is, by the way, plenty of evidence that Taliban fighters get along just fine, fighting fiercely and well without the training lavished on the ANA and the ANP. Why is it that Afghan Taliban fighters seem so bold and effective, while the Afghan National Police are so dismally corrupt and the Afghan National Army a washout?

When I visited bases and training grounds in July, I heard some American trainers describe their Afghan trainees in the same racist terms once applied to African slaves in the U.S.: lazy, irresponsible, stupid, childish, and so on. That's how Afghan resistance, avoidance, and sabotage look to American eyes. The Taliban fight for something they believe -- that their country should be freed from foreign occupation. "Our" Afghans try to get by.

Yet one amazing thing happens to ANA trainees who stick it out for the whole 10 weeks of basic training. Their slight bodies begin to fill out a little. They gain more energy and better spirits -- all because for the first time in their lives they have enough nutritious food to eat.

Better nutrition notwithstanding -- Senator Levin, Senator McCain -- "our" Afghans are never going to fight for an American cause, with or without American troops, the way we imagine they should. They're never going to fight with the energy of the Taliban for a national government that we installed against Afghan wishes, then more recently set up to steal another election, and now seem about to ratify in office, despite incontrovertible evidence of flagrant fraud. Why should they? Even if the U.S. could win their minds, their hearts are not in it.

One small warning: Don't take the insecurity of the Afghan security forces as an argument for sending yet more American troops to Afghanistan. Aggressive Americans (now numbering 68,000) are likely to be even less successful than reluctant Afghan forces. Afghans want peace, but the kharaji (foreign) troops (100,000, if you include U.S. allies in NATO) bring death and destruction wherever they go. Think instead about what you might have won -- and could still win -- had you spent all those military billions on food. Or maybe agriculture. Or health care. Or a civilian job corps. Is it too late for that now?

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Ann Jones is the author of Kabul in Winter (Metropolitan, 2006) and writes often about Afghanistan for TomDispatch and the Nation. War Is Not Over When It's Over, her new book about the impact of war on women, will be published next year.

[Tars]

Ann Jones | TomDispatch.com

"One small warning: Don't take the insecurity of the Afghan security forces as an argument for sending yet more American troops to Afghanistan. Aggressive Americans (now numbering 68,000) are likely to be even less successful than reluctant Afghan forces."

Agreed - hence, the frequent Viet Nam comparisons in the media.

Afghans want peace, but the kharaji (foreign) troops (100,000, if you include U.S. allies in NATO) bring death and destruction wherever they go. Think instead about what you might have won -- and could still win -- had you spent all those military billions on food. Or maybe agriculture. Or health care. Or a civilian job corps. Is it too late for that now?

Who wants armed occupiers wandering their soil? Unfortunately Ms. Jones didn't address the opinions of Afghanis about what it would be like to have the Taliban controlling the nation again.

I hope the U.S. does not "surge" more troops into Afghanistan. But the U.S. can't just load everyone up and leave, as some suggest. Hopefully, over time, we can reduce the military population there to an amount geared to protecting the agriculture, health care, and civilian construction workers Ms Jones suggests.

Militarists would no doubt recoil in horror at the thought of putting American civilians into Afghanistan. Ms Jones wonders if it's too late. I don't think so. However, workers would need to be heavily guarded. Any humanitarian efforts need to be joint civilian/military projects. If it just isn't tenable, then the U.S. can with withdraw as appropriate. Send them someplace else, where their efforts would be appreciated.

I also think that any U.S. presence in any country should not be done unilaterally at all. Except to remove immediate threats to the people of the U.S. - as determined by U.S. intelligence. We can push our alliances for humanitarian/military action, but we can no longer just do it ourselves. That path is too injurious to the security of our nation. Time for the rest of the industrialized nations to get up off their hypocritical butts, and start sharing the load.

No Matter how difficult your past, you can always begin again today

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I liked Fareed Zakaria's Washington Post OpEd this morning:

Excerpt:

"Obama is gambling that America is mature enough to understand that machismo is not foreign policy and that grandstanding on the global stage won't succeed. In a new world, with other countries more powerful and confident, America's success -- its security, its prosperity -- depends on working with others. It's a big, bold gambit. I hope it works"