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The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 33 September 11, 2017
(front page)
White House sends more soldiers for US rulers’ war
in Afghanistan
U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Justin Updegraff
U.S. Marines with howitzer in Afghanistan, June 10. Washington's war to
enter 17th year.
BY JIM BRADLEY
Washington’s military intervention in Afghanistan — the 16-year-long war
already the longest in U.S. history — will continue indefinitely under
President Donald Trump’s “new strategy,” which includes sending several
thousand additional troops. He announced this Aug. 21 in a nationally
televised speech before troops assembled at Fort Myer, Virginia.
The decision flows from the effort of the U.S. propertied rulers to
defend their political and economic interests in the Middle East and
South Asia as the post-World War II imperialist order continues to fray.
The move also reflects the weakened position of U.S. imperialism since
the fall of the Stalinist regimes in the former Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe in the 1990s. For decades Washington had relied on the Stalinist
misleaders to block revolutionary struggles by working people around the
world.
Trump’s decision to hold the line on U.S. military intervention in
Afghanistan reverses his “original instinct,” which “was to pull out,”
he said in his speech. In so doing he now owns the war.
The weak Afghan government, cobbled together by Washington and propped
up by its firepower, would be easily overthrown by the Taliban if U.S.
forces pulled out, Trump said. The reactionary Islamist organization,
which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 with many of its leaders
coming from forces Washington backed to challenge Soviet rule there in
the 1980s, has retaken control of almost 40 percent of the country.
The Trump administration’s Afghan war plans are consistent with previous
administrations. The goal? Not to lose.
“It’s the same forever war,” Doug Ollivant, a fellow at the New America
Foundation and former U.S. Army officer, told the Washington Post.
It involves a few thousand more troops, stepped-up bombings, more
pressure on the Pakistani rulers to back off support for the Taliban and
additional pressure on Kabul to tackle endemic corruption.
A side benefit, Trump said, will be “obliterating ISIS [Islamic State]”
and “crushing al-Qaeda” forces there.
“We see this as a long-term campaign,” an unidentified U.S. military
official in Kabul told the Post. By investing in the war, he said, the
administration “and its NATO allies will be able to chart a way forward
well into the 2020s,” the paper reported.
“This entire effort is intended to put pressure on the Taliban to have
them understand: you will not win a battlefield victory,” Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson told a State Department briefing the day after
Trump’s speech. “We may not win one, but neither will you. At some
point, we have to come to the negotiating table and find the way to
bring this to an end.”
President Trump tried to differentiate his war policy from that of the
Barack Obama administration. “I share the American people’s frustration.
I also share their frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too
much time, energy, money — and, most importantly lives — trying to
rebuild countries in our own image instead of pursuing our security
interests above all other considerations,” he said.
But despite the rhetoric, the Trump administration’s plan amounts to no
more than tweaking the policy of the Obama administration.
Washington’s murderous war
Six days before Trump’s announcement the Taliban issued an open letter
to Washington declaring that the military situation facing the
imperialist forces in Afghanistan is “far worse than you realize.”
“Previous experiences have shown that sending more troops to Afghanistan
will not result in anything other than further destruction of American
military and economic might,” the Taliban said.
Afghanistan’s 33 million people, 90 percent who are Sunni Muslim, are
among the poorest in the world. Few steps have been taken to advance
modern infrastructure and capitalist development. Illiteracy is 60
percent and life expectancy is 51 years. Three-quarters of the
population live in the countryside. Less than 50 percent have access to
electricity.
Despite being landlocked, Afghanistan’s location is strategic.
Washington and its capitalist competitors in the region are looking to
control the development of oil and gas pipelines linking Central with
South Asia. To advance their interests in the region, both Tehran and
Moscow are deepening ties with different factions of the Taliban.
Since the war started in 2001 more than 110,000 Afghan civilians and
soldiers have been killed along with over 2,400 U.S. soldiers and 1,000
from the 38 other NATO countries that have troops there. Civilian war
deaths have been rising steadily from about 2,750 in 2012 to 3,500 last
year according to the United Nations.
Related articles:
Afghan refugees protest deportations in Sweden
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