Obama - What Next?

Congratulations to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party for their victories last Tuesday.  Obama retained the Presidency by a substantial margin in the electoral college, while the Democrats increased their lead in the Senate.  The Republicans retained control of the House, but two wins against one is a very good result.  But what might it mean for the next four years?  

As a non American, I have not followed the internal political battles in the USA.  My interest in American politics is primarily in its foreign and economic policies.  While the USA is no longer the greatest economy in the world, it is still by far the most important and as the dollar remains the world's reserve currency, changes in US economic and financial policy have enormous repercussions for the rest of us.  However my main concern here is with US foreign policy, as this is the area where the USA remains supreme in the world, in large part because it is the sole remaining military superpower.  So can we expect any changes in US foreign policy now that Obama has been re-elected and no longer has to worry about a third term?  Foreign policy is one area where there has been little change since Obama first won the Presidency.  Particularly in the Middle East US policy under Obama has remained much as it was under Bush.  In that part of the world the US seems to be stuck in a sinking mire.  The first rule of politics when in a hole is to stop digging.  Alas, under Obama the US seems intent on sinking even further into the mire.  The three most important hot spots in the region are Afghanistan, Iran and Israel/Palestine.

While the US has begun to get out of Iraq, in Afghanistan, Obama has increased the American military presence.  To what end?  Little of positive benefit seems to have come from this continuing military presence.  Hundreds of US and allied troops have been killed or maimed, while thousands of innocent Pakistanis and Afghanis have been killed or maimed.  Afghanistan is no more secure than under Bush, while Pakistan has become even more unstable, with a noticeable rise in extremism.  Just what is the end game for the USA in Afghanistan?  There seems to be no clear strategy beyond the current situation, which effectively amounts to Afghanistan remaining a bloody semi protectorate of the USA.

Iran is another country where Obama has simply pursued the existing policy and indeed with the imposition of punitive sanctions has been even more hardline than Bush.  The US has never really accepted the existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran and has opposed it since its inceptions in 1979.  The current punitive sanctions are supposedly in response to the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons programme.  Now even if the Iranian regime was planning to develop nuclear weapons the simple response would be - so what!  After all our close ally in the region, Israel, does have nuclear weapons and moreover has still not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (which Iran has).  And of course Israel has never suffered any sanctions.  So why Iran?  The various international inspectors have never found any definitive evidence that Iran is planning to build nuclear weapons, never mind an actual programme to build weapons.  Every Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic has pronounced on several occasions that it is against the tenets of Islam to possess nuclear weapons.  Once again, what is the end game for the US in Iran.  It seems that the US is simply determined to bring down the Islamic Republic in its entirety.  Again to what purpose?  It cannot be democracy as the US supports non democratic regimes in the area such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan etc.  The imposition of these punitive sanctions does nothing to help the internal opposition to the current Iranian regime.  US policy here seems to serve no purpose other than simply to punish Iran.

Israel/Palestine is another area where Obama has made no difference to previous US policy.  The USA still offers unconditional financial, military and diplomatic support to Israel.  Again there seems to be no purpose to this policy.  The US is ostensibly and in public still in favour of the so-called two state solution for Israel and Palestine.  Yet almost every day Israel destroys the whole basis for this two state option.  If anything, the pace of illegal Israeli land grabs in the occupied West Bank and in occupied East Jerusalem has increased while Obama has been in office.  And the USA has done absolutely nothing to hold Israel to account.  Once more we wonder just what the US envisages as the end game in Israel/Palestine?  The US does nothing to advance the two state option, quite the reverse.  So what is going on here?

These are for me three of the most crucial foreign policy areas where Obama could make a difference.  It is not clear that Obama really supports the current US policy in these three areas.  Now that he no longer has to worry about future re-election, will the real Obama stand up?  Or is he too just as mired in the failed policies of the Bush era?

Afghanistan - Just Leave, Now!

Afghanistan is once again high up in the news.  This time it was the incredible revelation that a US soldier had gone on the rampage and murdered 16 Afghan civilians, including women and children.  It seems that news from Afghanistan is one relentless tale of deaths.  If it is not NATO forces, usually unmanned drones, killing lots of people, most of whom are almost certainly civilians, then it is Afghans killing NATO forces.  Just last week it was announced that the death toll for UK soldiers had passed the 400 mark.  Not to mention the countless soldiers who have been maimed for life.  Not to mention the deaths and wounded of other NATO forces.  And of course topping all this by a margin, the thousands of Afghanis killed and maimed.

All for what? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Afghanistan, along with Iraq, ranks as one of the most misguided and reprehensible wars of choice of recent times.  There was never any justification for the war against Afghanistan.  It was also, as events have proved, and many experts foretold, a decidedly stupid decision.  Various powers in the past have tried to intervene in Afghanistan, including the British Empire, then the world’s greatest superpower.  And all have failed, failed miserably.  The latest, before the current disaster, was the Soviet Union.  And despite the inestimable advantage of sharing a border with Afghanistan, the Soviets too failed.  So what on earth persuaded the USA to think it could succeed where everyone else had failed?  Hubris?  A tame press, unwilling to question official assumptions no doubt contributed.  That the UK would slavishly join in was only to be expected from our poodle like leaders.  

And let there be no doubt, this US led mission has demonstrably failed.  This is the US’s longest running military, now in its 12th year.  With no sign of success whatsoever.  Which is hardly surprising given that there was no rational purpose to the war in the first place.  We want to get Bin Laden and these Taliban guys are in the way, so hey, let’s just take them out.  Easy, peasy, but what then?  No idea, seems the most plausible answer.  Countless deaths later the Taliban are still there, waiting in the wings for the soon to come NATO withdrawal.  Then what?  Back to square one, with a Taliban led government in Kabul?

The latest cover for this US led failure is the creation of the Afghan National Army (ANA) which is supposed to take over from NATO sometime soon.  Quite why it has taken almost 11 years to create and train the ANA has never been made clear.  It is certainly a very costly enterprise, at least for the US taxpayer, who is forking out some $12 billion annually just to train the ANA.  But do not place must faith in this somewhat mythical force.  A fine article by Ann Jones and published by TomDispatch.com uncovers in some detail the truth behind the current ANA and its predecessors.  And the key lesson is this: “Start with the simplest of all facts: in the country’s modern history, no Afghan national army has ever saved a government, or even tried.  More often, such an army has either sat on its hands during a coup d’état or actually helped to overthrow the incumbent ruler.”  What the ANA does seem to be good at is killing NATO soldiers.  Jones points out that since the military started recording them in May 2007, 76 NATO soldiers have been killed and an undisclosed number wounded in 46 recorded “deliberate attacks.”  So it is unlikely that the ANA will provide any kind of support to the current Afghan government.  I am also greatly surprised at the need to train and arm any Afghan army.  After all the Afghanis have proved their valour and steadfastness time and time again.  After all they keep winning and we keep losing.  And as Ann Jones reminds us all, this is achieved without our high tech support.  As she puts it:  “As for those Afghan guys who whipped the British three times and the Soviet’s Red Army, they were mostly freelancers, attached to the improvised militias of assorted warlords, fighting voluntarily against invaders who had occupied their country.  The Taliban, like the mujahidin of the anti-Soviet struggle before them, seem to fight quite successfully without any significant training, armor, or heavy equipment to speak of...”

We are losing and losing badly.  Time to get out and fast.

Is there an Afghan Army?

I must confess that I am somewhat confused by all this talk about the Afghan army.  The good news we are told, is that they will soon, or at least by 2014, be ready to take over the job of defending and securing their country.  And our boys and girls can at last come home.   Now, am I alone in finding something fishy about all this?  We are expected to believe that after nine years, yes folks, nine years of occupation by the UK, USA and sundry other countries, we are only now beginning to train an Afghan army?  

This all seems to me yet another PR ploy by the hapless politicians and generals in charge, (in charge?) of this mess.  I for one find it simply incredible that the Afghans need anyone to train them in how to fight.  From all one hears about the place this is one of the most warlike countries in the world.  They have a serious and lengthy history of expelling invaders, going all the way back to Alexander the Great.  And more recently they successfully resisted the Soviet occupation to such an extent that the Soviets gave up and left.

Currently of course a minority of Afghans, the Taliban, are doing a pretty good job of thwarting the might of the UK and USA in the south of the country.  Depending on which reporters you read they may even be winning this war. Over 320 UK soldiers have been killed since 2001, the majority in the last two years.  Recent research has in fact found that the rate at which British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan is double the rate which is officially classified as “major combat”.    Yet, to the best of my knowledge, the Taliban have never had the benefit of training by Western forces.

According to our media the Taliban only represent a small minority of Afghans.  In which case why does the non Taliban majority need us at all.  If this majority is united and committed in their opposition to rule by the Taliban, then as the majority they will be victorious in any fight.  On the other hand if this majority is not united in their opposition to the Taliban, then no amount of training by the UK will make any difference.  This non Taliban majority has had as much experience of fighting - against the Soviets for example, as the Taliban so what is the problem?

Methinks the whole Afghan adventure was and is a complete disaster.  Undertaken for no valid reason whatsoever, badly planned and badly led.  The lack of any political leadership in Afghanistan where the Karzai government has clearly failed to win popular support means that there is no united or committed opposition to the Taliban.  Just a collection of assorted regional warlords, each out for his own best interests.  

And in the West, the whole episode has once again shown up the complete ignorance of our political and military leadership.   Neither has demonstrated any knowledge whatsoever of Afghanistan, its peoples, its cultures or even its history.  Yet with the usual arrogance of our Imperial past we blithely step in, all in the name of protecting “our” interests and rights.  Never mind the wholesale destruction of communities and the thousands of Afghans dead and maimed.   “We” can do whatever we like - “we” have the power.  At least as long the USA is along with us.  The only protection third world countries have against the imperial pretensions of the USA and the UK is to get nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.  This seems to be the real and disturbing message from the twin disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan.

NATO atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq

More and more evidence is becoming available about the extent of the atrocities committed by NATO troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Almost as disturbing as the atrocities themselves are the lengths that NATO will go to in order to try and cover up the atrocities. Most of this post is about an incident which occurred in Paktia province in Afghanistan on February 12th.

On that day the Sharabuddin family had more than 25 guests, as well as three musicians in their home in Khataba village to celebrate the naming of a newborn child. There was however very little celebration as five of the guests - two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother - were gunned down by US Special Forces during a botched raid.

This was of course bad enough, but the US forces then tried to cover up their action. According to an investigation by the Times of London this involved the implicated soldiers carving the bullets they used to kill the women out of their bodies and washing their wounds with alcohol to eliminate traces of their involvement. The first US-endorsed story claimed that US forces had killed two Afghan men because the men were insurgents armed with rifles. The initial story went on to state that 3 women were subsequently found dead (their hands tied and their mouths gagged) inside a room in the house (implying that the murder had been carried out by the home’s inhabitants).

This totally false version of what happened was of course the version that was presented to the public. Virtually all of the mainstream media dutifully recounted the NATO lies without making any attempt to question its veracity. If anything some of the US media go overboard and jazz up the official version. This is akin to propaganda. And it is not as if there was no counter evidence available. Right from the beginning of this story some reporters and agencies questioned the NATO account and even had the audacity to go and interview the family and their neighbours in the village where the atrocity happened. These included Associated Press and the Pajhwok Afghan News, an independent news agency created in Afghanistan to enable war reporting by Afghans.

Special mention should go to Jerome Starkey, reporter for the Times of London. He has a most interesting article on the whole event on the Nieman Watchdog Foundation website. As he states in his piece: “The only way I found out NATO had lied -- deliberately or otherwise -- was because I went to the scene of the raid, in Paktia province, and spent three days interviewing the survivors. In Afghanistan that is quite unusual. NATO is rarely called to account. Their version of events, usually originating from the soldiers involved, is rarely seriously challenged.” (my emphasis) Starkey’s full article can be read here.

This should be the key story about our invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. How easily we, the public, are lied to by our military and our politicians. And, to make matters even worse, how willingly our mainstream media, with one or two honourable exceptions, colludes in all this lying.

A further example of this collusion can be found in a typically forceful post entitled More cause and effect in the War against Terrorists, by the great Glenn Greenwald. ABC News reported on the attempt by the U.S. Special Forces to apologize to Haji Sharabuddin, the 80-year-old patriarch of the family, by offering him two sheep (a gesture of begging forgiveness in Pashtun custom). ABC News in an online article included this:

“Presenting sheep is such a powerful form of requesting forgiveness that the father is now obligated not to take revenge, even though he has told reporters he wanted to become a suicide bomber. . . . “

The ABC News article celebrates the fact that the sheep offering "will help defuse" lingering anger over the massacre and may help quell the demand for an investigation, limiting the fallout of the incident.

Greenwald in his post, which you can read here, goes on to reveal how we come to know all about the above attempt at an apology. He writes, “The reason we know about the U.S. Special Forces' sheep sacrifice is because The Times of London's Jerome Starkey, who broke the story about what really happened in the Eastern Afghanistan civilian killing, was present at the scene and described it in detail, including the fact that the U.S. Vice-Admiral who offered the sheep, along with Afghan soldiers, wanted to bar the media from witnessing the event and refrained only when the family members insisted that they stay. In contrast to ABC 's sunny report that all is now forgiven, Starkey writes:

"When people come to your gate and ask forgiveness, according to Afghan law, it’s difficult to reject them," Haji Sharabuddin said later. "I am happy they came." But the family insists that it still wants justice. "I don’t care about the money," Haji Sharabuddin said. He believes the troops attacked after faulty intelligence from one of his enemies — a spy. He wants the Americans to face international justice and the spy handed to Afghan authorities and punished. "When they surrender the spy, then I will make a decision. Maybe I will forgive them," he said.”

But the fact that this 80-year-old man was vowing to perpetrate a suicide attack on U.S. forces speaks volumes about the effects of our actions in that country. And lest anyone thinks that this atrocity in Paktia was an isolated incident, there is a whole litany of such atrocities. All initially denied, then covered up and only late in the day finally admitted to. Another Glenn Greenwald post, here - How Americans are propagandized about Afghanistan - gives some more details about the pervasive nature of the atrocities committed in our name. In the post he also reports on the, largely overlooked statement from Gen. McChrystal, where he admitted, regarding U.S. killings of Afghans at check points: "to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I've been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it. . . . We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force." And as I documented before, the U.S. media constantly repeats false Pentagon claims about American air attacks around the world in order to create the false impression that Key Terrorists were killed while no civilians were.

Further confirmation of the willingness of our “boys” to commit acts of wanton violence comes in this video, published by Wikileaks, of another “incident”, this time from July 2007 in Baghdad. The footage shows an attack from a US helicopter, in which a group of around 7-8 people are shot down. The group included two TV cameramen for Reuters who has been trying since 2007 to get the military to release the video. Wikileaks does not say how it got it.

On the video, the U.S. troops later fire at a van that comes to pick up a wounded survivor from the assault. Then, as U.S. ground troops arrive, one of their voices on the intercom is laughing about having driven over a body. It is also very disturbing to hear the troops doing the shooting talk about “engaging with the individuals”, when what they are doing is killing apparently innocent civilians.

All this shows how damaging our continuing occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is to us, in addition to the damage we are doing to Iraqis and Afghanis. This aspect of the occupation is well brought out in this post by Helena Cobban on her blog - Just World News. She writes" "All these revelations that keep coming out about the strong propensity of U.S. (and Israeli) troops to engage in excessive violence, and the propensity of their respective high commands to cover up that fact, underline a couple of important lessons:

• 1. Armed conflict is always violent, and extremely damaging to anyone who is in the war zone. No matter how often they tell us about "pinpoint accuracy", "smart weapons", and so on, the vast majority of the violence involved in armed conflict is brutal and anything but "pinpoint".
  2. Armed conflict always also brutalizes those sent out to engage in it. And it brutalizes people more and more over time, as acts that earlier are seen as taboo or "exceptional" progressively become more and more routine. Time was, in Israel, the military would rigorously investigate the cause of every death-in-conflict of a Palestinian. Then it stopped doing that. Then it started acting as if extrajudicial executions could be considered as "just routine"...
  

Using violence to try to resolve differences is outrageous, and barbaric. All of us who live in countries that claim to respect human life and human liberties should renounce it. Guess what, we do now have international institutions that, if further strengthened, could help us resolve all the world's big conflicts without recourse to war."

Afghanistan - the final push?

So the UK and the USA have started another stage managed offensive against the Taliban. Embedded journalists send back reports, pictures and films for our newspapers and TV. And our boys are winning. Of course they’re winning - the Taleban were never likely to stand and fight. Which guerilla movement ever has? The Taliban had already retreated into the mountains or become invisible amongst the locals. So what is left for the poor squaddy to do now that he has been deprived of his real job - killing the enemy? Judging by the reports, sitting down and blethering with the remaining locals. With the aid of interpreters the UK and US soldiers are trying to convince the local Pashtun to turn their backs on the evil Taliban, give up growing the evil poppy and everyone will live happily ever after. Sounds like a fairy tale to me.

And no doubt to the Pashtun as well. Just imagine things from their perspective. Here are all those strange soldiers, armed to the teeth, from far away countries, who cannot speak the local language and in 6-12 months time will be back home in the UK or the USA. Meanwhile the Taliban are just around the corner, biding their time. For the Taliban fighters, unlike the UK soldiers actually live there. Afghanistan, including Helmand province is their homeland. They have nowhere else to go and will carry on with their guerilla fighting until they achieve something.

The key deceit in all this is the pretence that the Taliban are some alien force or part of some global terrorist campaign. All the evidence is that they are a nationalist group which represents a significant section of Pashtun opinion. And the Pashtun are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Not a good choice for an enemy. So once upon a time they had an agreement with Osama Bin Laden. Didn’t the USA once upon a time have an agreement with this same Osama Bin Laden when he was a freedom fighter blowing up Soviet soldiers?

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a some stage, sooner or later, the allies will have to reach a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. Now this may be jazzed up as only dealing with the moderate elements in the Taliban. Lovely word moderate - who decides who is and who is not a moderate? Why the UK and the USA. Whatever, any final settlement is likely to involve bringing the Taliban back into government. And that agreement will almost certainly include a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops. What happens then? Who knows and I suspect few will care.

Sounds unlikely? Anyone looked at the current situation in Northern Ireland recently? Last I remember Sinn Feinn was sharing power with the most die hard of the Unionist parties. Yes the very same Sinn Feinn, with the very same leaders who spent decades fighting the UK and killing and maiming hundreds of soldiers and civilians. The very same Sinn Feinn that UK ministers and Ulster Unionists would berate and condemn and vow to never negotiate with and never surrender to. Now I am not suggesting that there is a simple comparison between the situation in Afghanistan and what happened in Ulster. But one is the same, namely that for all the distaste and hatred that Sinn Feinn provoked, nothing could alter the fact that they did represent a significant section of catholic and nationalist opinion. And they lived there. So short of a bit of genocide, there was ultimately no alternative to negotiation and power sharing.

The big difference is that northern Ireland was part of the UK. While this was disputed by Sinn Feinn, the rest of the country, including of course the majority in northern Ireland itself, did not. So in a sense that meant that the UK wasn’t going to just go away. Too many of its citizens lived in northern Ireland and they weren’t going to go away. And Sinn Feinn was never in any position to embark on a bit of genocide on its own. Hence the stalemate and hence the current power sharing.

Afghanistan of course is not and never has been part of the UK, nor the USA. At some stage the majority in these countries will weary of the whole ghastly escapade - the deaths, the maiming, the cost. And at some stage our troops will come home. Everyone knows this - including the Taliban. All they need to do is survive - in the mountains, in Pakistan or lost among the local Pashtun. Perhaps this current offensive really is stage managed. We claim a glorious victory over the radical elements in the Taliban and negotiate a settlement with the remaining moderates. Declare victory and come home. Sounds good.

Yet Another Afghan Surge

So Obama finally made up his mind. The Commander in Chief has decided and lo! the whole world trembles. Or not. Not much trembling in Afghanistan apparently. As usual the UK is right onside with our very own mini surge of troops. And despite all the talk and briefings nobody seems to be much wiser as to what all these surges are supposed to achieve, let alone why we in the UK should be in Afghanistan anyway.

For there is a contradiction at the heart of the newly announced strategy. On the one hand we are assured that we need to be in Afghanistan in order to protect us in the UK from terrorist actions. Yet at the same time we are assured that we are only going to stay there for a short time and that our surge depends on the good behaviour of the current Afghan government. Now somebody is clearly lying here. If there is a real threat to our safety in the UK that requires us to occupy the country, then we stay there for as long as it takes to get rid of the threat. You don’t state that you’re going to start the pull out in a year’s time. And you most definitely do not make our presence conditional on what the Afghan government does. After all it is supposed to be our security that is at risk. What if the threat has not been eradicated in a year’s time? Do our troops stay on - for ever?

At this moment it is not at all clear just what the end game from the UK/USA perspective is. One thing for sure is that all this concern about the Afghan government is a mere smokescreen. Either we are in Afghanistan for a long, long time or we are already preparing the ground for our withdrawal. In which case the stuff about holding Hamid Karzai and his corrupt government to account becomes the perfect excuse for our pull-out. Look, we did everything we could, but these son-of-a-bitches out there just couldn’t get their act together, so we’re offski.

When you take into account the various crises facing the world - the continuing effects of the financial meltdown, global warming, the rise of Israeli fundamentalism, to name a few - the justification for wasting billions of pounds and dollars supporting a war in Afghanistan is exposed as threadbare. While there seems to be growing instability in Pakistan and many terrorist attacks in the UK seem to have a Pakistani connection, we are stuck militarily in Afghanistan. As the USA National Security Advisor Jim Jones was quoted as saying there may be only less than 100 Al Qaeda fighters in the whole of Afghanistan. What we have in Afghanistan is a civil war and it escapes me completely why I should be funding one side of a civil war and why UK soldiers should be getting killed to support one side of a civil war. It is only arrogance of the worst kind that allows some people in the West to think they have the right to violently decide the future of other peoples half way round the globe. The Taleban are probably not a very nice bunch of people, but that is not a reason for us to go around killing and maiming tens if not hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taleban leader, has already issued a long message to the world, pre-empting Mr. Obama’s speech. It includes the following section which makes clear that the root cause of the violence is the occupation:

Afghanistan is our home and nobody negotiates with anyone about the ownership of their home and about how to share sovereignty and management responsibilities of their home. Nobody will give up their right to be the owner of their home and nobody will wilfully lose their authority in their own home. The foreigners have taken over the home of the Afghans by force and cruelty. If they want a solution to the problem, they should first end their occupation of Afghanistan.

Nick Mills, Associate professor of journalism at Boston University, in an article in the Huffington Post, neatly summarizes the key problem facing our troops:

... the great conundrum of our efforts in Afghanistan is, the more we try to fight for the Afghans, the more we seem to fight against them. There are ways to help the Afghans, but occupying their country with an army isn’t one of them.

Let’s hope we do begin to withdraw soon.

For a fascinating comparison of the rhetoric used by Bush and Obama to justify the surge - basically the same - see this article by the great Glenn Greenwald.

Tom Engelhart has a fine exposė of the figures behind Obama’s surge - there are in fact nine surges in all. You can find this report here.

Afghanistan and the Generals

Does anyone have a clue about what is really going on in Afghanistan? And by anyone, I include the likes of Brown and Obama. Day by day we get more reports of bloody fighting with the usual high numbers of civilians killed or severely injured. As regards the development of a stable democratic society in Afghanistan this also seems to be a complete mess, with almost daily reports of corruption and infighting among the various local warlords who seem to have what passes for real power in the country. And of course the fighting has long since passed into north-western Pakistan, with all the possible destabilizing consequences this brings for that country. All for what? Nobody seems to really know.

Our political and military leaders give out different answers depending on who is asked or which day of the week it is. However, more and more people with direct experience on the ground in Afghanistan are speaking out agains this misadventure which is costing so many lives. One of the latest is Matthew Hoh, a former US Marine captain who fought in Iraq, and who later served as a civilian State Department representative in the Zabul province of Afghanistan. Hoh has recently resigned from his post as he longer believes this war is worth fighting. He explains in some detail his reasoning, based on his own experiences in Afghanistan, in his letter of resignation. You can read the full letter here. It was reprinted in an article on the War in Context website. You need to scroll down a bit to get the full letter.

Hoh is just one of many with first hand experience of the war who now object to the whole premiss. However it is interesting to see just who are still vociferously supporting the war. The usual suspects appear of course - the neo-con establishment of armchair warriors who egged us on into invading Iraq and would just love to see us bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. This time around though the top military brass are getting involved. Even in the UK the top military figures are more and more willing to speak out and demand the government give them more of this and that in order to do the job. This politicization of the military is very dangerous and pretty much unheard off in the UK. It is a clear sign of the weakness of the Brown government that it has not sacked some of these generals.

This political involvement of the military has gone further in the USA. There the actions and comments of some generals has been openly described as insubordination. This applies particularly to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander in Afghanistan, who, according to one report, “has put on quite a show of insubordination in the past month or so in an attempt to cram his escalation plan down the throat of the America public. He has waged open information warfare in the media, right wing and otherwise, against President Barack Obama. I wonder how much longer Obama will up with it. More to the point, I wonder if he can stand up to it.” This quote is from an online piece by Jeff Huber a now retired Commander in the U.S. Navy. You can read the full piece here.

What is going on? The top US military establishment, including General McChrystal and his boss, David Petraeus, head of Central Command, were of course all appointed by the Bush/Cheney regime. It seems that not surprisingly they are mostly, if not all, of the neo-con persuasion. Faced with a newly elected and popular Democratic President the generals and their allies in the media seem to have decided to go on an all out attack to force the President not just to continue the war in Afghanistan but to up the ante and increase the US forces there. To reinforce their pleas they and a pliant media dole out scary tales of what might happen if the US pulls out - the Taliban and Al-Qaida return not just in Afghanistan, but take over Pakistan as well and before you know it the end of civilization has come.

But why all this rush to escalate the war? None of the generals and their neo-con allies can believe any of this guff about a resurgent Al-Qaida. The answer can only be that the top military brass fear a downsizing of their precious empire. The military are of course not alone. Ever since the 1940s military spending has brought enormous profits to the companies supplying the equipment that all armies need. Just think of all those planes, tanks, helicopters, battleships, aircraft carriers, missiles and all the other bits and pieces that go in to keeping an army, navy and airforce on the go. This infamous military-industrial duopoly has come to exercise enormous power in the USA and to a (slightly) lesser extent in the UK. The military industrial economy is one of the most protected, uncompetitive and thereby one of the, if not the most profitable business in the world. If there was no enemy and no more wars to fight, what would happen to all those profits?

It is no coincidence that the neo-cons and their allies keep banging on about the need for a Long War. A never-ending war suits them just fine. Lots of glory for the generals and even more money for the profiteers. A war atmosphere also helps keep down those nasty liberal civil rights people who might otherwise investigate the relationships involved in this military industrial complex, including the politicians who benefit. Watch our for General McChrystal - the further he goes, the worse it will be for us, never mind the poor long suffering people of Afghanistan.

How many helicopters does it take to defeat the Taliban?

It is getting to sound more and more like the old music hall joke. All these pleading cries about the lack of equipment for our “boys” in Afghanistan. Well, how many helicopters does it take to defeat the Taliban? The answer is always the same – more than we have at the moment. Not much of a joke really. Then again, our military presence in Afghanistan – killing and maiming hundreds of Afghanis – is not much of a joke either.

This constant harping on about the need for more and more weapons and equipment is very much a distraction from the really important question – what the hell are we doing in Afghanistan anyway? The surreal nature of the debate, if one can dignify the pathetic pleas as a debate, was given away by Sir Jock Stirrup, the chief of the defence staff, who in an interview said there was "no such thing as enough helicopters in an operational campaign". He expanded on this to more or less say that for the military there is never enough. No matter what you are talking about – weapons, munition, transport – from the perspective of the military there is never enough. Most revealing indeed. A bit of a gaffe I would have thought, if there was a real debate going on, that is. If according to the defence staff there is no such thing an “enough”, how on earth is the government or we, the people to figure out how much equipment to supply? Presumable Sir Jock just wants us to give him lots and lots of everything, never mind the cost.

I wonder if this kind of talk was the centre of media coverage during the second World War, when the British military were almost certainly well short of adequate weapons and equipment for most of the war? Don't think so, somehow. When a country is faced with a real life or death threat, the overwhelming majority of people just get on with fighting the aggressors, with whatever weapons and equipment are at hand. We only get this sort of public squabbling because a) the government is on its last legs and b) no-body believes this to be a life or death threat to the UK. This is manifestly a war of choice and as such it becomes more and more difficult to justify the growing number of British casualties.

The attempts by ministers and their Tory party shadows to claim that this war of occupation is preventing terrorism on the streets of Britain is just plain absurd. Before 2001, other than terrorist action by the IRA there was no terrorism on the streets of Britain. Since our invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq there have indeed been terrorist attacks, but all have been home grown.

Now Nato are getting in on the act with the alliance's Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warning that Nato cannot afford to walk away from Afghanistan however dangerous or expensive the campaign becomes. Bully for him. One thing for sure, he is not likely to get blown up by a roadside bomb. Good of him to volunteer the deaths of others, and I wonder how much money he personally is prepared to give towards the costs?

Mr Scheffer went on to claim that failure would give free run to al-Qaeda. These and similar extravagant claims are pretty preposterous. The Taliban is a political and military organization which wants to regain control of Afghanistan. If they were ever to achieve that aim, and even if Nato troops did withdraw, it is not inevitable that the Taliban would win complete power again. The other ethnic groups in Afghanistan, the Tajiks, Uzbeks etc, are much stronger than they were when the Taliban were in power. However, even if the Taliban were to return to power in Kabul, why would they want to risk their victory by allowing a free rein to al-Qaida? The Taliban were never that united in their previous links with al-Qaida, according to this article by Simon Jenkins.

And why does al-Qaida need a base in Afghanistan anyway? As Rory Stewart asks in a must read article in the London Review of Books; “And does al-Qaida still require large terrorist training camps to organise attacks? Could they not plan in Hamburg and train at flight schools in Florida; or meet in Bradford and build morale on an adventure training course in Wales?” You can access Stewart's article – The Irresistible Illusion – here.

There is of course an alternative answer to the question posed at the beginning – How many helicopters does it take to defeat the Taliban? This alternative answer is none – we shouldn't be in Afghanistan anyway.