Obama's "exit strategy" promises nothing but war without end

The lesson of history that Obama and Brown refuse to learn is that the people of Afghanistan never accept occupation by foreign powers. Obama has now committed the United States and its allies to many more years before that lesson is learnt yet again, too late for the thousands who will be killed and maimed or have their lives devastated by a futile and unjustified war.

Barack Obama’s troop surge, bringing the US deployment in Afghanistan to over 100,000, is not an "exit strategy"; it is a strategy for endless war.

Instead of listening to all those Americans who thought they had voted for a "peace president", or to his own party, most of which opposes the troop surge, Obama is escalating the war in Afghanistan to support one of the world’s most corrupt governments.

He is doing this at the prompting of military commanders and Republican Party warmongers who cannot face the prospect of admitting defeat, however many more lives have to be wasted fighting a pointless and unwinnable war while they refuse to face reality.

Necessity

The excuse that this is a "war of necessity" waged to keep Americans secure from terrorist attack is utterly discredited.

Al-Qaeda is an international jihadist organisation which, according to Obama’s own advisors, has less than 100 operatives in Afghanistan.

The Taliban and other forces opposing the US have no aspirations beyond their country’s borders -- they simply want Afghanistan to be free of occupation by foreign powers.

The idea that any future Afghan government would provide "safe haven" for al-Qaeda is clearly nonsensical, as it would be an open invitation to a devastating military response by the United States.

The repeated reference to 9-11 in Obama’s speech was a tactic used by George Bush to justify his disastrous war policies, which the American people were clearly rejecting when they voted for Obama.

The impact of this escalation will be no different from the doubling of US troop numbers earlier in the year, which was one of Obama’s first decisions on taking office.

The result of Obama’s first surge has been to make 2009 the bloodiest year of the war, both for Afghan civilians and for Nato soldiers, who have lost their lives in ever increasing numbers.

Doubling the number of troops in February did not improve security in Afghanistan but made it worse, giving the Taliban and other forces resisting occupation more targets to attack and prompting more Afghans to join the resistance.

Devastation

It’s not just in the lives lost and the devastation of the country that this pointless war can be measured. The economic costs of Obama’s surge are beyond belief, especially for a country submerged under countless trillions of debt due to the credit crisis.

Each soldier deployed in Afghanistan costs the US tax payer $1 million a year. The Afghan war will cost $75 billion in the coming year. This is seven times the Gross National Product (GDP) of Afghanistan, the world’s second poorest country, in which half the population lives on less than $1 dollar a day.

The idea that the Afghan army and police force can be trained in numbers that will enable them to take the place of US and Nato forces -- who will then be gradually withdrawn -- is nothing short of laughable.

The current figure given for the Afghan army of 95,000 is a vast overstatement of the number of soldiers who can actually be deployed. In truth, it's predominantly a phantom army. The US admits that one in four recruits deserts within one year of enlisting -- no doubt because the wages, clothes and other perks become increasingly less attractive when the death rate amongst Afghan soldiers and police far outstrips that of Nato forces.

The same is true of the Afghan police force, the size of which is also grossly inflated, and the members of which are despised and feared by most Afghans for their corruption and brutality.

Yet Obama and Brown still insist that building up a largely phantom army and ghost police force is the cornerstone of their "exit strategy".

Lesson of history

Even if this "exit strategy" worked as described, many more years of war are envisaged by the US and British military. Following Gordon Brown’s "mini-surge", which took UK troop numbers to over 10,000, Britain’s foreign secretary David Miliband said British forces would be in Afghanistan for at least five more years.

Obama’s officials and the Pentagon are talking about at least seven more years.

The prospect of troop withdrawals beginning within 18 months, is simply a smokescreen by Obama and Brown to try and sell a war to their electorates, who -- in continually increasing majorities -- oppose not just the current troop surge, but the presence of any US or British troops in Afghanistan.

The lesson of history that Obama and Brown refuse to learn is that the people of Afghanistan never accept occupation by foreign powers. Obama has now committed the United States and its allies to many more years before that lesson is learnt yet again, too late for the thousands who will be killed and maimed or have their lives devastated by a futile and unjustified war.