"We Can’t Afford War"
By Amy Goodman
“General
Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts,” began the
MoveOn.org attack ad against Gen. David Petraeus back in 2007, after he
had delivered a report to Congress on the status of the war in Iraq.
George W. Bush was president, and MoveOn was accusing Petraeus of
“cooking the books for the White House.” The campaign asked “General
Petraeus or General Betray Us?” on a full-page ad in The Washington
Post. MoveOn took tremendous heat for the campaign, but stood its
ground.
Three years later, Barack Obama is president, Petraeus
has become his man in Afghanistan, and MoveOn pulls the critical Web
content. Why? Because Bush’s first war, Afghanistan, has become Obama’s
war, a quagmire. The U.S. will eventually negotiate its withdrawal from
Afghanistan. The only difference between now and then will be the number
of dead, on all sides, and the amount of (borrowed) money that will be
spent. Petraeus’ confirmation to become the military commander in
Afghanistan was never in question. He replaces Gen. Stanley McChrystal,
who resigned shortly after his macho criticisms of his civilian
leadership became public in a recent Rolling Stone magazine article.
The
statistics for Afghanistan, Obama’s Vietnam, are surging. June, with at
least 100 U.S. deaths, is the highest number reported since the
invasion in 2001. 2010 is on pace to be the year with the highest U.S.
fatalities. Similar fates have befallen soldiers from the other,
so-called coalition countries. Petraeus is becoming commander not only
of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, but of all forces, as the invasion
and occupation of Afghanistan is run by NATO. U.S. troops, expected to
rise to 98,000 this year, far outnumber those from other nations. Public
and political support in many of those countries is waning.
Journalist
Michael Hastings, who wrote the Rolling Stone piece, was in Paris with
McChrystal to profile him. What didn’t get as much attention was
Hastings’ description of why McChrystal was there: “He’s in France to
sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies—to keep up the fiction, in
essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year
ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United
States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government,
forced the resignation of Germany’s president and sparked both Canada
and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops.
McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40
soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him.”
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.”
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 is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio
news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the
author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback
and now a New York Times best-seller.
•••
A lot of innocent people can't afford war, either...
End these insane wars. Bring our people home, alive.
