I just heard Secretary of State Hillary Clinton say with a perfectly straight face that in Afghanistan General Petraeus has always stressed that we must do everything we can to reduce civilian casualties. Are they kidding? Do they really not know? There is one--and only one--surefire way to prevent all US-caused civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Get out! Stop shooting! Stop bombing! We kill civilians because we try to kill Taliban, or al Qaeda, or “insurgents,” or whoever. In a country where, like Vietnam forty years ago, the supposed enemy is indistinguishable from noncombatant civilians, conducting military operations will inevitably lead to civilian casualties. There is no way to avoid them. Innocent people will mistakenly be identified as the enemy. We will kill them. It has happened before. It will happen again. Bombs aimed at supposed enemies will miss their target. Innocent people will be killed. It has happened before. It will happen again. People identified as enemy targets will be mingled in with innocent people. We will shoot at them, we will bomb them, and the innocent people around the targets will be killed. It has happened before. It will happen again. Do you really want to avoid civilian casualties? Get out! Stop shooting! Stop bombing! That will stop the US-caused civilian casualties. It is the only thing that will stop the US-caused civilian casualties.
Stopping US-caused civilian casualties is only one of the myriad reasons for us to get out of Afghanistan. For us to do it now. For us to do it as quickly as is logistically possible. There are a great many others. For starters, no foreign power has ever successfully occupied and pacified Afghanistan for long. The British couldn’t do even when they controlled neighboring Pakistan right next door, which we certainly do not. The Soviets couldn't do it even though they were right next door. When Bush invaded Afghanistan my immediate reaction was: Did we learn nothing from the Soviets’ experience in Afghanistan? But then I guess I forgot. We’re different. We’re America. We’re the good guys. We can do anything. Other people’s experiences are irrelevant to us. I forgot the lies of American exceptionalism, that reigning ideology of both of our major political parties.
There is also the fact that Afghanistan is essentially ungovernable—by anyone! Afghanistan is not a nation. It never has been. It is an area defined by the old European imperial powers (by Britain and Russia in particular) as a state, but it is not a nation. It is basically a collection of different tribes. In most of the country Kabul is irrelevant. People answer not to a centralized government but to their local warlord. Beyond that, such government as exists is incurably corrupt. What we Americans call corruption is a way of life in much of the rest of the world, including Afghanistan. The corruption of the Karzai government is obvious. The President’s brother is at least rumored to be a major drug producer. Corruption may be normative to the Afghans, but it means we can never create a centralized government that we will recognize as truly legitimate. We may be trying to produce a stable, non-Islamist state in Afghanistan. We say we are. It can’t be done. Afghanistan is ungovernable in any way that looks like effective government to us Americans.
We have no clear, attainable military objective in Afghanistan. In that regard, as in so many others, Afghanistan is President Obama’s Vietnam. I am committed to nonviolence, as readers of this blog know. Yet even I know that it is basic military doctrine that you don’t engage in military action unless you have, among other things, a clear, attainable, measurable military objective and a clear, workable exit strategy. In Afghanistan we don’t. It’s obvious that we don’t. We should get out now.
Our military adventure in Afghanistan is bankrupting us. We are spending something like $2,000,000,000 a week in Afghanistan. At least, that 's one figure I heard recently. Afghanistan is a black hole militarily, but it is therefore also a black hole financially. The US government hasn’t paid its way on anything in ages, largely because we won't force rich people to pay their fair share of the cost of government. Our government certainly is not paying its way for the Afghan. It looks like the absurdly ideological Republicans in Congress may refuse to raise the US debt limit, thereby causing a world-wide economic meltdown. The Afghanistan war is a major factor, although certainly not the only one, in our need to keep borrowing more and more money.
Afghanistan is Vietnam for our time. It is certainly true that nowhere near as many Americans are being killed in that war as were killed in the significantly shorter Vietnam war. That fact, combined with the fact that we have no military draft and that the war is therefore being fought by volunteers, is why we Americans aren’t out in the streets in our millions demanding an end to our military activity in Afghanistan. With those differences, and I suppose a few others, Afghanistan is today’s Vietnam. It is an unwinnable war with no clear or attainable military objectives in a hostile, foreign country where you can’t tell the enemy from the civilians. The only sensible thing for us to do is to get out, and to do it now.
Because President Obama won’t do that, I am very unlikely to vote for him in next year’s election. He is engaged in a folly, a murderous, vastly expensive folly. Because the US won’t get out of Afghanistan our protestations about trying to avoid civilian casualties ring hollow and hypocritical. We need to get out, and we need to do it now.
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