Tag: afghanistan war
Democratic Hopefuls Turn Away From Endless Wars

Democratic Hopefuls Turn Away From Endless Wars

For most of the past 30 years, the default American approach to global affairs has been aggressive, ambitious and disastrously wrong. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney get the blame for the war in Iraq, but it had the support of such prominent Democrats as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. For a long time, when military intervention was proposed, the Democrats offered Americans an echo, not a choice.

That may finally be changing. The party’s presidential candidates are not giving their primary attention to foreign policy and national security. But when they talk about it, they evince a refreshing skepticism about our habit of fighting wars of choice.

In an article in Foreign Affairs, Elizabeth Warren wrote, “It’s time to seriously review the country’s military commitments overseas, and that includes bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq.” As for nuclear proliferation (think Iran) she advocated “a reinvestment in multilateral arms control” — the opposite of Donald Trump’s policy.

Bernie Sanders sounded similar themes in his recent piece in Foreign Affairs, warning of the risk that Trump will start a war with Iran. As a general matter, he has no use for an “aggressive unilateralism” that “privileges military tools over diplomatic ones.”

Emma Ashford, a research fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, praises Warren and Sanders for their consistency “in arguing for fewer interventions, spending more on diplomacy and less on the military, and ramping down the war on terror.” She adds, “My impression is that the support for these ideas from some of the race’s frontrunners is helping to pull other candidates in that direction too.”

That appears to be the case. In Wednesday’s debate, Tulsi Gabbard said we should “end these wasteful regime change wars.” Tuesday, Pete Buttigieg said he would withdraw from Afghanistan in his first year, and Beto O’Rourke agreed. John Hickenlooper got no second when he insisted, “We’re going to have to be in Afghanistan.”

Even Joe Biden, who disavows his vote for the Iraq War, stresses that he opposed Barack Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan. In Wednesday’s debate, he said a 2010 ceremony in Baghdad marking the end of U.S. combat operations was one of his proudest moments.

When it comes to foreign policy, this is no longer the party of Hillary Clinton, an inveterate hawk. As secretary of state, she pressed for escalation in Afghanistan, helped push Obama into using air power in Libya and tried in vain to get him to go to war in Syria.

During her 2016 race, she mocked Obama’s droll summary of his approach. “‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” This year’s presidential candidates seem to think that if it’s not an organizing principle, then it will do until they find one.

The Democrats have sound reasons to prefer a new policy of restraint. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya showed how badly things could go wrong even when we “won” the war. Even Obama admitted that the Libya mission “didn’t work.” Why would any Democrat want to undertake another war?

In the past, they acted out of a combination of idealistic zeal and fear of being tarred as soft-headed appeasers. But idealistic zeal lost its luster in Afghanistan and Iraq, and soft-headed appeasement has become the Trump brand.

Today, all Democrats have to do to look tough is to note how Trump has been duped by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. The candidates can reject military action against Iran or Venezuela knowing that Americans have no appetite for war with either.

Their ambitious domestic agenda would cost a lot of money, and even in an era of trillion-dollar deficits, choices have to be made. “Defense spending should be set at sustainable levels,” wrote Warren, “and the money saved should be used to fund other forms of international engagement and critical domestic programs.” Democrats want to stop squandering money on wars, so they can use it to expand health care coverage, combat climate change and upgrade infrastructure.

Shunning military intervention abroad has proved to be shrewd politics in one election after another. Trump promised to curtail our international role. Obama was a stalwart opponent of the Iraq War. Even Bush, in 2000, vowed to “stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions.”

Americans are wary of wading into trouble overseas and eager to address our problems here at home. Trump hasn’t given them what they want. This time, maybe a Democrat will.

Danziger: War Without End

Danziger: War Without End

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.

U.S. Aid To Afghanistan Exceeds Marshall Plan In Costs, Not Results

U.S. Aid To Afghanistan Exceeds Marshall Plan In Costs, Not Results

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

The United States has now spent more on the reconstruction of Afghanistan than it did on the Marshall Plan that lifted Western Europe from the ruins of World War II. But it can expect far less return on its investment in the still-unstable Central Asian nation, a Pentagon auditor reports.

Afghanistan is mired in political crisis and will remain dependent on foreign donors, primarily the United States, for years to come, writes John F. Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, in his latest quarterly report to Congress.

U.S. spending on the Afghanistan nation-building project over the last dozen years now exceeds $104 billion, surpassing the $103.4 billion current-dollar value of Marshall Plan expenditures, which helped rebuild European nations after World War II. The spending helped a vanquished Germany emerge as the economic engine of Western Europe.

“SIGAR calculates that by the end of 2014, the United States will have committed more funds to reconstruct Afghanistan, in inflation-adjusted terms, than it spent on 16 European countries after World War II under the Marshall Plan,” says the report.

The 259-page account features a photograph of a pile of metal frames from school furniture in Nangarhar province from which the wood was stripped and burned for heat.

Sopko’s accounting of the record U.S. foreign investment makes it clear that the proceeds from Afghanistan will fall far short of the German experience.

Afghanistan is beset by corruption, tribal conflicts, and a resurgent Taliban poised to strike government targets once U.S. troops end their combat mission in December. The Islamic militants chased from Afghanistan by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion have stepped up attacks on the fledgling Afghan National Army, inflicting many of the 2,330 deaths suffered by the force over the last two years, the auditor noted.

Almost two-thirds of America’s investment in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, $62 billion, has gone to building up its military and police forces, which are now at a level that far overwhelms the country’s ability to pay for them. Even if the government succeeds in its plan to reduce the size of its security forces by 35 percent by 2017, the projected annual $4.1-billion cost for the 228,500 citizens under arms is almost double what the country collects in tax revenue, Sopko pointed out.

The Afghan government approved $7.6 billion in spending this fiscal year, despite anticipated revenue of $2.8 billion.

“This year, donor grants will make up most of the shortfall, but aid to Afghanistan has been falling since 2010, and history suggests it will fall even more sharply after U.S. and coalition troops are withdrawn,” the report notes.

The predicted donor fatigue after U.S.-led NATO forces leave would coincide with a reduced ability for U.S. auditors to evaluate how Afghans are using their U.S. aid, the inspector general noted.

A companion report to Congress this week warned that lax oversight and inventory practices for the $626 million worth of U.S. weapons delivered to Afghan soldiers and police could mean weapons will fall into the hands of militants.

Sopko’s office, known by its acronym SIGAR, said it was initiating “a new series of lessons-learned reports” from the most expensive foreign reconstruction effort underwritten by the U.S. taxpayers.

The report detailed billions spent on ill-considered agriculture and infrastructure projects unsuitable to Afghanistan’s terrain and culture. Among them was a failed attempt to curb opium poppy cultivation to deprive the Taliban of a vital source of income.

The inspector general also alluded to the unfinished work of democracy-building in Afghanistan, where two rival presidential candidates claim to have prevailed in the multistage election that began in April. A recount of more than 8 million ballots cast in the June runoff is under way in hopes of determining the winner between former World Bank official Ashraf Ghani and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, who had beaten Ghani in an earlier election round.

Until a successor to President Hamid Karzai is inaugurated, the United States cannot get the necessary endorsement from Kabul for a plan to leave behind a U.S. force of nearly 10,000 troops to train Afghan security forces.

AFP Photo/Massoud Hossaini

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What Will Become Of Right-Wing Bergdahl Billboard?

What Will Become Of Right-Wing Bergdahl Billboard?

Among the bellwethers of right-wing politics in western Washington state is a popular and iconic billboard perched next to the northbound lanes of Interstate 5, almost exactly halfway between Portland and Seattle, featuring a cartoon image of Uncle Sam pointing his finger at the reader, while the crude block letters next to him form not-infrequently-misspelled messages proclaiming the cause of the moment. Not so long ago, that sign – like a number of right-wing pundits and politicians whose tweets along similar lines have been swiftly deleted – was denouncing President Obama for his ostensible failure to secure the release of then-prisoner of war Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from his Taliban captors in Afghanistan.

“The Uncle Sam billboard,” as it is known, featured the message: “No Soldier Left Behind? What About Bowe Bergdahl?” for a duration of at least a month last spring. I saw it there on March 3 during a drive from Portland, while another photographer shot the image above on April 3.

The billboard is well known to drivers in the state, especially those who make the trip on I-5 regularly (it’s estimated that more than 50,000 drivers use that stretch every day). It has been there since the early 1960s, when the owner of the land on which it sits, a farmer named Alfred Hamilton, erected it and began posting his iconoclastic messages.  Always of an arch-conservative bent, they frequently wobbled into Bircherite conspiracism, especially on the subject of the United Nations.

Before Al Hamilton retired in the 1990s, the messages were changed weekly; ever since then, however, they have changed monthly. The elder Hamilton died in 2004, but one of his sons has continued the tradition and posts fresh messages monthly.

So far, there’s no word on whether the Uncle Sam billboard will change its tune about Bergdahl, since the old message is no longer operative in conservative circles – which are now loudly denouncing Obama for negotiating Bergdahl’s release.

Image © Alex Milan Tracy/Demotix/Corbis