Fighting the 'Good' War in Afghanistan
Fighting the 'good' war
By Jack A Smith
The United States invasion and occupation of Afghanistan entered its ninth year in October, and the majority of Americans now oppose the war. So far it has failed to achieve US objectives, and it is likely the Obama administration's expansion of the war will compound the failure.
Al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's Mullah Omar - Washington's principal enemy leaders in the Afghan war - are not only alive, free and still taunting the White House after all these years, but appear to believe they now have the upper hand in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden's purpose has always been to draw the United States ever deeper into armed conflict with Islamic society in order to degrade America's image, undermine its economy, and gain recruits. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan played directly into al-Qaeda's hands, as will Washington's effort to widen the Afghan
conflict, especially as it penetrates Pakistan and alienates its masses of people in the process.
So far the two wars launched by president George W Bush have cost the US the antagonism of much of the Muslim world, serious erosion of its own democracy and reputation, and over a trillion dollars. Even if the wars end soon, says Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E Stiglitz, the overall expenditure - including everything from long-term care for severely injured troops to interest on the war debt - will exceed $3 trillion, enough to end world poverty and hunger.
Speaking about Afghanistan this summer, President Barack Obama declared: "This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity." Many war opponents argue that it is indeed a war of choice, and that international police work would have been far more successful and just.
We'll discuss this later in the article, along with the fact that the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, and for that matter the September 11, 2001 attacks, a tragedy that need not have occurred had Washington taken less war-like actions in the key year of 1978, as well as 2001 and 2003. The fact that the US has intervened deeply and for long periods over the past 31 years in a civil war in poverty-stricken, virtually pre-industrial Afghanistan, is probably not understood by many Americans.
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