Obama to Restore Afghanistan Status Quo Ante
By Anthony Gregory • Tuesday February 12, 2013 9:59 AM PDT • 9 Comments
By this time next year, Obama plans to bring the U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan down to about 32,000. For this, I’m sure many will credit him for winding down the war. Yet this is almost the exact number of troops that were there when Obama took power in January 2009. He then proceeded to triple the number, then bring it back down to about double the presence that characterized the end of the Bush years, and now we’re all waiting for him to restore the precise number that he inherited. This puts aside the possibility of U.S. troops staying there into the next decade.
What has been accomplished in the last four years? Plenty of bloodshed—a sharp rise in Afghan casualties and close to three times as many American troop deaths as Bush presided over in Afghanistan in more than seven years. Also, Afghanistan’s Bagram prison facility, even more lawless than Guantánamo, swelled from about 630 prisoners to about 3,000 on Obama’s watch. The president also managed to widen the drone war in neighboring Pakistan, killing thousands, including perhaps a couple hundred kids.
What was this all about? Oh yes, to stop al Qaeda in Afghanistan—even though the administration conceded in 2009 that there were only about a hundred such people that fit the description. And to promote democracy. And stamp out opium.
The original reason to invade Afghanistan in October 2001 also made little sense—the “terrorist training grounds” were used to train ground fighters who had nothing to do with 9/11, a plot planned in Europe and the United States involving no Afghan nationals. It was all about revenge then, and it’s all about imperial inertia now.
Tags: Afghanistan, Terrorism, The State, War 
Precisely so. thanks for your writing it.
richard | Feb 12, 2013 | Reply
Your article is interesting, yet vague and ambiguous. One-sided journalism gets old. My husband works in Afghanistan...has been there since 2009. You mention nothing positive of our presence there or accomplishments. I could not be prouder of our troops and civilians overseas. You are clueless to what the daily grind is there.
Barb | Feb 12, 2013 | Reply
Barb, no-one is questioning the motivation or the competence of our troops and the others who have tried to make a difference. But the truth is exactly as Gregory has written it – we have accomplished that will last – except to get a lot of people killed.
JonO | Feb 12, 2013 | Reply
I pity People such as Barb. I really do.
“U.S. soldiers (and their supporters) are living in Fantasyland if they think that their actions did any “real and permanent good” in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
http://lewrockwell.com/vance/vance317.html
clark | Feb 13, 2013 | Reply
This essay is well-informed, reasoned and articulated. This comment is based on five tours in Afghanistan, 1986-1987-1990-1991-1997.
In 1986, during the Soviet occupation, I worked with USIS, training Afghan journalists in documentary photography. Thereafter, working as a free-lance journalist.
Bruce Richardson | Feb 14, 2013 | Reply
It’s all a part of making the world safe for corporate international trade. Globalism.
As soon as it’s safe, there will be MickeyDs over there selling McYak burgers, and a Pepsi plant to make the HFCS beverages to wash them down.
Every day is another step towards the New World Order. When finally achieved, who’s going to lead this NWO?
The 1%, of course...
Asmyguitargentlyweeps | Feb 16, 2013 | Reply
@Barb
Have you considered that the reason no positive mention is made of “our presence there or accomplishments” is because there is none?
Messianic Theonomist | Feb 19, 2013 | Reply