In Afghanistan through 2024? — The United States Seems to Revel in Persistently Self-Destructive Imbecility

© 2012 Peter Free

 

02 May 2012

 

 

Ordinarily, when people see that something is not working, they try something else — but not the United States

 

President Obama yesterday announced an agreement with Afghanistan that essentially commits the United States to being there in some capacity through 2024.

 

The Associated Press summarized the elements of the accord.  Most important among these are:

 

U.S. commits to support Afghanistan's social and economic development, security, institutions and regional cooperation for 10 years, through 2024.

 

Allows U.S. possibility of keeping forces in Afghanistan after 2014 for purposes of training Afghan forces and targeting al-Qaida.

 

Does not commit the U.S. to any specific troop levels or funding levels in the future, an acknowledgement that those decisions will be made in consultation with Congress.

 

Commits the U.S. to seek funding from Congress on an annual basis to support the Afghan Security Forces, as well as for social and economic assistance.

 

© 2012 Associated Press, Highlights of US-Afghanistan agreement, Kansas City Star (02 May 2012)

 

 

Joe Scarborough (of Morning Joe) had a reaction identical to mine

 

The former Florida Representative wrote:

 

That reality means Americans who were not even born on Sept. 11, 2001, will be occupying Afghanistan 20 years after those attacks.

 

Never mind that the epicenter of Al Qaeda's operation has moved to Yemen or that U.S. taxpayers are doling out $2 billion a week on a war whose main purpose is propping up one of the most corrupt regimes on the face of the Earth.

 

Making matters worse is the fact that Mr. Obama's opponents in the GOP want to stay longer.

 

The takeaway of President Obama's speech tonight is simple. The neocons won, the troops lost and the endless war grinds on in a land that humbled the Soviet Union, the British Empire and Alexander the Great.

 

© 2012 Joe Scarborough,  Politics and the endless war, Politico (01 May 2012)

 

 

This is not just about the Military Industrial Complex taking advantage of its war profits machine

 

This is mostly about institutionalized stupidity.

 

There is no mission in Afghanistan left to pursue.  The Al Qaeda that was there has long been as essentially dead as it (or its peers) will ever be.

 

Terrorism is like chronic disease.  It can be managed, but not stamped out.  To the degree that the United States has evolved effective anti-terrorist tactics, these take more the form of special operations and drone attacks, than they do national occupations.

 

And, regarding nation-building, Afghanistan has never been one.  Staying there — in order to make that agglomeration of quasi-tribal interests more than just lines on map — merely indicates that geopolitically obtuse Americans have chosen to ignore literally thousands of years of history.

 

In consequence — by being almost deliberately ignorant and complacently immoral in sowing other people’s destruction — we allow our pin-headed, self-serving political leaders to kill off our military quasi-slave class in pursuing foreign adventures that are almost exclusively about someone else’s profit.

 

In essence, we have institutionalized expensively obtained self-destruction.

 

 

“So, why does this stuff happen, Pete?”

 

We, as voting citizens, open ourselves to being manipulated by the self-seeking politicians that Joe Scarborough finds on both sides of the party aisle.

 

The strategic agreement with Afghanistan is simply a manifestation of President Obama’s wish to stay in office.  It is a defensive tactic aimed at cutting the ground from under the Republican nitwits on the other side, who perennially espouse more bullets, bombs, missiles, and foreign adventures.

 

Militarism is America’s newest cultural lunacy.

 

This spiritually lamentable immorality manifests itself in our penchant for voting for (often strong-jawed) blowhards, who drip machismo and hide personal cowardice at the same time.

 

How many top political leaders have actually fought as combat soldiers and Marines on the ground?  How many have sons and daughters facing firefights in Afghanistan today?

 

Do you think the President would have gotten away with the 2024 commitment, if the United States still had a near-universal military service draft?

 

Our warmongering stupidity is fundamentally a result of a combination of (a) hubris and (b) cowardice:

 

In regard to the first point, we like to strut around bullying other nations.

 

In regard to the second, we revel in hysterical and perpetually puffed up fears of the world’s never-ending supply of “isms.”

 

Most of us have become puppets for political manipulators, who themselves are bribed by campaign contributions and lobbyists to look after the moneyed interests that profit from the public’s lack of clarity and direction.

 

 

The moral? — We should be embarrassed to live in an era in which our President, and his political foes, can combine to commit us to such obviously imbecilic forms of national self-destruction

 

Our voting behavior is exactly analogous to providing cancer with a blood supply.