Afghans Go To Polls : Will The U.S. Now Remain Past 2014? - And WHO Will Pay For It?

"Unlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources.  We do it because it’s right." - Barack Obama,  2011


Today is a big voting day in Afghanistan, and likely will be an even bigger one for the American Military- Industrial National Security State. It means there is a good chance the vote will see pressure for the U.S. to remain long term, possibly even through 2024 - despite the fact we lack the money to do that. Hell, we have more pressing problems here at home with a collapsing infrastructure as well as middle class. We can't be the world's cop forever!

What we know is that eight candidates are competing in the race. The problem is that the five minor candidates’ separate  shares of the total  vote will make it even more difficult for any one candidate to reach the 50 percent threshold that would allow an outright victory. In this case, a runoff vote is unlikely to take place until the end of May at the earliest. The leading candidates going into the vote were Ashraf Ghani, 64, a technocrat and former official in Mr. Karzai’s government; Abdullah Abdullah, 53, a former foreign minister who was the second biggest vote-getter against Mr. Karzai in the 2009 election; and Zalmay Rassoul, 70, another former foreign minister.

All three of these guys are said to be in favor of approving a long term American troop presence. Up in the air is how long an American force will remain in Afghanistan after 2014. Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign a long-term security deal to allow that presence through 2024 was a major point of tension between the American and Afghan governments.  Why, baffles the mind of the objective and rational observer, given the continued costs to Americans in blood and treasure.  Hell, we've already been there over 12 years and have little or nothing to show for it other than a lot of pissed off people - at home and over there. (Many of the latter pissed and outraged at drone strikes that took out family members and for which they were offered a few head of sheep and a thousand bucks as  reparation.)

I mean, in the normal world of logic and rationality and given our dwindling resources and stupendous debt - with domestic needs already stretched beyond limits - we ought to have taken Karzai's 'out'  and left, lock, stock and barrel. But oh no, we have to continue the pretense of Pax Americana and being the cop of the world. But, of course, why would a national security state that killed the President who inveighed most against Pax Americana (in 1963)  pay any attention to it now? They wouldn't because they removed the sole obstacle to its future implementation, via the document NSC-68.

As in the case of Vietnam, which ought to have had its plug pulled much earlier (thereby saving thousands more lives), we ought to be pulling the plug on this Afghan fiasco and THIS year!  We can't do the Afghans' nation building for them.  It's now their job. We invested in their security forces as much as we can and as it is that trillion dollars pissed away over there has set us back in sundry ways. Hell, to me it'd be more crucial to use the projected money we might spend there on lowering the interest on college students' debt.

But make no mistake that Amerikkan  Neocons and the military-industrial state want a presence there if for no other reason to bleed down our domestic resources even further - thereby widening the nation's economic inequality and hastening the end of the American Middle class. The longer the U.S.  presence, the more money pumped into the pockets of defense contractors for more stupid weapons, including setting up a "combat air brigade" at a cost of $1 billion here in Colorado Springs. (And ranchers here are already in an uproar that the Army wants to claim over 200,000 acres for "drone maneuvers", for cripes' sakes!)

Yes, it may take six months or even longer for the Afghan issue to be settled, following today's election, but make no mistake the end result will be an unwise extension of our presence, of at least 10,000 troops - maybe more. Obama has made it clear this is what he wants-  for reasons I cannot begin to fathom- other than that the neocons have burrowed into his head. In effect, making 10,000 (or more)  targets for the Taliban as well as laying the potential for more incidents to piss off the Afghans and surrounding nations, likely leading to more terrorist blowback.

Which, of course, the national security state welcomes as more justification to keep its expansive surveillance system going. They ought to be more concerned with the additional thousands of returned troops likely to go mentally  'haywire' and ending up with tragedies such as we beheld at Fort Hood 2 days ago.

See also: 'Afghan Elections for Another Fake Regime' - by Eric Margolis

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/55206/afghan-elections-for-another-fake-regime

Excerpt:

Afghanistan’s national election held this week is a sham. A group of candidates, handpicked by the US, will pretend to compete in an election whose outcome has already been determined – by Washington. The candidates include US -groomed politicians, and drug-dealing warlords from the Tajik and Uzbek north. Chief among them, Rashid Dostam, a major war criminal and principal CIA ally who ordered the massacre of over 2,000 Taliban prisoners.

Such is the rotten foundation on which Washington is hoping to build a compliant Afghan “democracy” that will continue to offer bases to US troops and warplanes. Afghanistan’s majority, the Pashtun tribes, have little voice in the election charade.

Time to End the Afghan Intervention - And Use the $$$ HERE in the U.S. of A.!

U.S. Marines urinate on Taliban corpses almost 2 years ago. It is now time, with the opportunity to leave -  to do so. We can't afford to pour $8 billion a year into this deficit pit to stay another 10 yrs.













With the news of an 8 year old boy killed Friday in Kandahar province, adding another to the list of thousands killed by wayward drone attacks in Afghanistan, it is now time to pull ALL U.S. troops out forthwith and the use the money we'd spend there on needs here. I am talking about nearly 16 million American kids who go to bed hungry each night, after the SNAP program was discontinued and now new food stamp cuts are being proposed as part of a "Farm" bill. A Farm bill, btw, which is actually a subsidy to rich agri-business operations, not to little "moms and pops" as some might believe.

Writing about the bill's  $14  billion a year "crop insurance" subsidy, Jim Hightower wrote in one of his recent columns (e.g. Colorado Springs Independent, Nov. 30):

While the House wants to force food stamp recipients to prove that their incomes are low enough to qualify for benefits, the crop insurance handout requires no means testing and has no limits on how much recipients can get. This means that billionaires who're only incidental "farmers" will be among the biggest beneficiaries


We need to process that, as well as the image of hungry kids by the millions who have to go to school each day with empty bellies, as their parents now struggle to get adequate food supplies after the Reeps cut the SNAP program. With the $36 a month cut to SNAP - enough for nearly a week's dinner meals for a family of 4- people now are pouring into food banks which themselves are finding their shelves bare.

Now, how can THIS be reconciled with the willingness to piss 8 billion a year for the next TEN years into Afghanistan, according to a new "accord" the U.S. wants - to allow up to 10,000 American troops to remain there until 2024? The total intended to be pissed away amounts to $80 fucking BILLION - enough to ensure NO American kid or his parents goes hungry for the next ten years. You want to know where the money is to feed those families before you cut the food stamp program by $40 billion, THERE it is, Mr. GOOPr!

Obama originally promised a pullout next year following 13 years of the longest "war" ever, but now for some odd reason is proffering a "security compact" to stay another ten years with billions spent each year. I am wondering if the stresses of his healthcare.gov debacle have overly muddled his neurons or what?  Whatever, Susan Rice insists the Americans will be forced to withdraw by 2015 without a security deal.

Meanwhile, Hamid Karzai has insisted on his own assurances as part of the deal, including no reckless drone attacks on friendlies and no kicking their doors in, invading their homes and doing spurious searches.  The U.S. in response has made it clear it can't make such guarantees, and Obama evidently wrote a letter to Karzai assuring him that "the U.S. will make every effort to respect the sanctity and dignity of Afghans in their homes."

Well, try running that one past the families already  affected, and nearly 15,000 homes kicked in, and occupants tossed face down on the floors,  over 12 years..

Additionally, the U.S. press is all het up about Karzai's "disparity of reaction" (New York Times, Dec. 1, p. 16) reacting with fury to a U.S. led drone attack, but remaining silent about a Taliban suicide bomber attack. But again, this is another reason to leave the damned place and make no deals with Karzai. Indeed, Atiqullah Baryalai, quoted in the Times piece, observed that Karzai's silence is: "sending a message to the Taliban that he really doesn't want a security agreement with the Americans".

If this is the case, we shouldn't walk out, we ought to race the fuck out and leave Karzai and his nation of fifty tribes and tribal passions to themselves. Even remaining 50 years wouldn't be sufficient to help them!

Essentially, Karzai by his dithering on any security deal has given us a perfect excuse to leave Afghanistan and not look back. But what has the U.S. been thinking of doing? Going instead to Karzai's second in command and seeking a deal with him! WHY? You have the opportunity to leave, TAKE IT!

Our people are the ones that need that money! Our kids are the ones going to bed hungry each night, and 48 million Americans are living off piddling, grudgingly bestowed food stamps that can barely keep body and soul together. 

If Obama has any sense he will take the cue on offer, thank Karzai for his input and LEAVE!  Invest right here at home now, for once, instead of pissing $80 b more into a barren deficit trap!

One more thing: Dianne Feinstein has initiated a new round of terror mongering, asserting we are at increased risk now for terror attacks and more than we have ever been. Obviously and clearly she wants more funding for the national security state which has served her and hers just fine. She likely also wants to keep the NSA spooks fully occupied and funded as long as she can bleed money from the rest of us. Of one thing she is correct: that terror risks will rise the longer we remain with our asses in the Middle East, antagonizing all and sundry.

We seem not to have processed that is what led initially to 9/11 as blowback, as the late Chalmers Johnson has noted.  When asked in an interview with In These Times if September 11 was an example of blowback, Johnson responded:

Of course it is. That's exactly what my book was written for: It was a warning to my fellow Americans, a year ago, that our foreign policy was going to produce something like this. It's important to stress, contrary to what people in Washington and the media are saying, that this was not an attack on the United States: This was an attack on American foreign policy.


Similarly, the longer we remain in Afghanistan the greater the risk of blowback. As with Vietnam we need to let them, the Afghans, determine their own destiny.

We can't be the 'Cops of the World', nor can we be nation builders when our own country daily falls into disrepair as the human fabric is also unraveled by misplaced priorities! We need to attend to our immediate domestic security before any more foreign "war" adventures!