Amy Goodman: We Can't Afford War

Truthdig.com piece by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman June 29

The point of this piece, as indicated by the title, is the current economic state of society in America and contradictory eternal strategy in Afghanistan (to put on hold the emerging issue of withdrawal from Iraq).

A separate note by Goodman mid-piece nearly warrants an entirely separate investigation and article. Oftentimes in his work, scholar Noam Chomsky has provided analysis of handling popular opinion when it falls inconsistent with the direction the powerful intend to move in the present. The following excerpt is an example of such late modern propaganda, which some would maintain exists only in the political culture of Soviet Russia or one of its authoritarian leftist side projects ... (excerpt)

The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.org, which received international attention after releasing leaked video from a U.S. attack helicopter showing the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad, has just posted a confidential CIA memo detailing possible public relations strategies to counter waning public support for the Afghan War. The agency memo reads: “If domestic politics forces the Dutch to depart, politicians elsewhere might cite a precedent for ‘listening to the voters.’ French and German leaders have over the past two years taken steps to preempt an upsurge of opposition but their vulnerability may be higher now.”

Goodman's conclusion is a highly rational, morally inexorable argument that perplexes the mind in step with the current official rhetoric ...

(second excerpt)

I just returned from Toronto, covering the G-20 summit and the protests. The gathered leaders pledged, among other things, to reduce government deficits by 50 percent by 2013. In the U.S., that means cutting $800 billion, or about 20 percent of the budget. Two Nobel Prize-winning economists have weighed in with grave predictions. Joseph Stiglitz said, “There are many cases where these kinds of austerity measures have led to ... recessions into depressions.” And Paul Krugman wrote: “Who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.”

In order to make the cuts promised, Obama would have to raise taxes and cut social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Or he could cut the war budget. I say “war budget” because it is not to be confused with a defense budget. Cities and states across the country are facing devastating budget crises. Pensions are being wiped out. Foreclosures are continuing at record levels. A true defense budget would shore up our schools, our roads, our towns, our social safety net. The U.S. House of Representatives is under pressure to pass a $33 billion Afghan War supplemental this week.

We can’t afford war.

Amy Goodman on Truthdig.com June 29, 2010

War is making you poor

From Common Dreams May 21
War Is Making You Poor
by Abby Zimet

... Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida introduces the "War Is Making You Poor Act" to highlight the obscene amounts being spent on Iraq and Afghanistan ...


Plus: Hidden Costs of War video

Addiction to conflict marks a choice between justice and empire

Extraordinary Edition story by Collin Friday, May 7

See also: "Number of Soldiers Seeking Opiate Abuse Treatment Skyrockets" by Judson Berger for FOX News; American Addiction by Noam Chomsky, AK Press audio, 2001; Gabriel Kolko for Counterpunch May 2, "Why the U.S. still doesn't get the message: 35 years since the fall of Saigon"

The more time passes in Afghanistan, the more it's resembling Vietnam. Let's just say I grew up with a Vietnam historian around the house. I used to haul a lot of firewood for him. He would tell me how marijuana grew wild in Vietnam, plus it was the '60s so all kinds of soldiers (poor kids) were experimenting. Even some of your all-American athlete types.

Having nothing to do with wild herb, but everything to do with openness to experimentation he said everywhere soldiers off duty, at a base were taking LSD together. Having nothing to do with getting treatment for opiate addiction, groups of soldiers would drop acid. In the jungle on a hot, wet and otherwise eventless evening followed the next day by the work of war and terror of uncertainty. Paradise; escape from battlefield stress and homesickness, right? Then mortars would come from the jungle.

My dad experienced this firsthand, of course. The soldiers who dropped acid together would huddle close to each other because they didn't experience an alert response to the mortar attack and scatter to prevent being targeted and engage a strategy to beat the odds and stay alive. My dad was at the base when a whole tent filled with soldiers on acid were killed together by mortar fire.

Vietnam was pointless. Not an exercise in the expansion of democracy. Just destroying the lives of everyone in Southeast Asia as an experiment in aiming the U.S. war machine at something on the edge of the Soviet Empire to see what was possible. Afghanistan is pointless. In Iraq at least the empire is stealing petroleum rights and export dollars. Pernicious, illegal, but it's a purpose. Machiavelli wasn't a nihilist: act to achieve gain in the face of a morality imposed by outside sources. Afghanistan is strategic presence of empire in the Middle East and the creation and development of some post-Cold War specter to chase (see: Gore Vidal, George Orwell) and at which to aim the apparatus of empire, like in Vietnam. Enormous shares of Western resources devoted to the frontier of empire in the form of prolonged military action.

The best thing the economic crisis has demonstrated is to starkly underline how stupid this is. We're participating in the destruction of the quality of life here and abroad simultaneously while absurdly pretending the opposite is developing before our eyes so long as we are patient enough to watch the benefits of consolidated private wealth reach those, in a cruel paradox (and a dubious swindle), it will never reach.

Is the addiction to narcotics any different from addiction to petroleum in the developed nations? Is the role of driving and access to industrial products in the fight against climate change any different whatsoever from the role addiction plays in the refusal to alter course in order to achieve preferable ends? Are any of us capable of breaking the cycle without being completely cut off from the object of obsession?

The end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan will be a victory for rank-and-file soldiers (who can just as easily be paid to provide domestic defense or take a job in an expanding economy where military expenditure is returned to communities at home), for rank-and-file workers and for development of infrastructure and fewer reasons for the inhabitants of Afghanistan and Pakistan to turn against each other.

The end of the U.S. war in Iraq is an issue of justice unrelated to the prosecution of war in Afghanistan except for the convenient location of U.S. military resources in the Middle East. The lies that led U.S. military resources there were illegal. To their credit, it is incredible how people who made these decisions and told lies that destroyed other societies with U.S. capital have completely avoided accountability and justice. The path of history we're seeing play out with the current economic crisis and mythology of "Too Big to Fail" is synonymous, and what we can expect when we refuse to defend ourselves against mortal enemies who call themselves our friends with a smile and a handshake.

As for opiate addiction and recovery, scholars like Noam Chomsky have maintained for more than a decade these economies are rooted in serious substance abuse problems in the centers of developed nations. Treatment at home equates to the end of the drug trade in colonized regions where the drugs are produced industrially. The fatigued War on Drugs has essentially served as a means to ignore what research has demonstrated consistently. The solution to problems of violence and endemic corruption resulting from illegal trade lies in treating the addictions that breathe life into those problems.

Meanwhile, to trust the U.S. military, the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon to solve the situation in Afghanistan is near the decision to help an addict kick by handing him $400 cash. To hope it will solve itself organically by the time scheduled for withdrawal (pardon the dark pun) is akin to a decision to use echinacea, goldenseal, zinc and vitamin C to treat heroin addiction.

Why the U.S. still doesn't get the message: 35 years since the fall of Saigon

Why the U.S. Still Doesn't Get the Message

35 Years Since the Fall of Saigon
By Gabriel Kolko (author of "Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914," "Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism," "Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience" and "World in Crisis."

Wednesday, May 05, 2010
This piece is available on Znet and originally hails from Counterpunch

The United States' wars have always been very expensive and capital-intensive, fought with the most modern weapons available and assuming a modern, concentrated enemy such as the Soviet Union. The ever-growing Pentagon budget is virtually the only issue both Republicans and Democrats agree upon. But there are major economic and social liabilities in increasingly expensive, protracted wars, and these-as in the case of Vietnam-eventually proved decisive.

The U.S. wars since 1950 have been against decentralized enemies in situations without clearly defined fronts, as exist in conventional wars. Faced with high firepower, in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, even Iraq, America's adversaries disperse - they fight from caves, behind jungle foliage, etc.,-- using cheap, relatively primitive military technology against the most advanced U.S. artillery, tanks, helicopters, and air power. In the end, its adversaries' patience and ingenuity, and willingness to make sacrifices, succeed in winning wars, not battles. Its enemies never stand and fight on U.S. terms, offering targets. The war in Vietnam was very protracted and expensive, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are also prolonged-and increasingly a political liability to the party in power in Washington. This has repeatedly illustrated the limits of American power, and the Korean war established the first precedent.

When the Korean war ended, the U.S. leaders swore they would never fight another land war in Asia. The Korean war was fought to a draw, basically a defeat for U.S. objectives to reunite the country. Vietnam proved yet again that the U.S. could not win a land war-and it failed entirely there, at least in the military sense. Their ultimate success was due to the confusion of the Vietnamese Communists themselves, not the success of the Saigon regime or American arms. The U.S. has always been vulnerable militarily precisely because its enemies have been primarily poor and compelled the adapt to the limits of their power.

After its defeat in Vietnam in 1975 the U.S. leaders once again resolved yet again never to fight a land war without massive military power from the inception of a conflict and the support of the American people - which gradually eroded during the Vietnam war. The Weinberger doctrine in 1984 enshrined this principle. The U.S. has won wars against small, relatively weak enemies, as in Nicaragua, but in both Iraq and Afghanistan it has made the mistakes of the Korea and Vietnam wars all over again. It still wishes to be the "indispensable power," to quote former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, but it cannot win the victories it covets. Like a drunken person, it no longer controls itself, its environments, or makes its actions conform to its perceptions. It is therefore a danger both to itself and the world.


Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. His latest book is World in Crisis.