Anti-war protests confront escalation in Afghanistan

Following months of Pentagon and ruling class pressure to expand the U.S. war in Central Asia, President Barack Obama formally announced he had already issued orders to send some 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan when he addressed West Point Army officers and the country on Dec. 1. His task was to sell the war’s escalation to the population at home and to Washington’s NATO allies abroad.

Protests reflecting the massive popular dismay with the war on Afghanistan were already taking place. Even as Obama was selling the escalation to the country, protesters were gathering in nearby Highland Falls, N.Y. The day after the talk, many anti-war and other progressive groups, including the International Action Center and the Troops Out Now Coalition, planned to be in Times Square. Demonstrations throughout the week were planned around the country.

When the administration presides over a “Jobs Summit” at the White House on Dec. 3, the Bail Out the People Movement will be on the sidewalk outside demanding money for “Jobs, not war!” for 30 million unemployed and underemployed workers.

Each additional troop in Afghanistan will cost $1 million a year, by the latest rule of thumb. As the BOPM leaflet reads, “Instead of a jobs program, the president is sending tens of thousands of troops to war in Afghanistan at a cost of $50 billion more, on top of the fortune already wasted on war.”

The administration is expediting the deployment of its own forces while asking its NATO allies to send an additional 10,000 troops, which would build the total NATO force to more than 100,000. While Washington’s junior partner in London has promised 500 more, Canada and Netherlands are discussing withdrawing their forces, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said the present commitment is France’s limit, and three German government officials have just been forced to resign following criticism over another massacre of Afghan civilians. On Nov. 28 in Spain, demonstrations were held in Madrid and other cities protesting the war in Afghanistan.

Obama is an able orator. He can explain the tactical complexities and difficulties the U.S. faces in Afghanistan—from the viewpoint of Pentagon generals and State Department analysts. None of this changes the basics.

The president’s task is to sell a big lie: that the U.S.-NATO occupation of Afghanistan is for the good of the Afghan and U.S. people. In reality, the occupation has brought death and destruction to Afghans and forced U.S. youths to sacrifice their lives as they kill both resistance fighters and civilians.

The war aims to expand U.S. imperialist influence and power in Central Asia. U.S. victory in Afghanistan means increasing the power of U.S. and West-Europe-based big banks and corporations, the same ones that have been laying off workers and cutting wages at home.

There is a further complication for the administration. A USA-Today/Gallup Poll released in late November shows that 72 percent of Republicans support the escalation, while 57 percent of Democrats favor beginning a withdrawal from Afghanistan. No doubt the Democratic Party leaders in Congress will rally behind this war as they did behind the aggression against Iraq, Yugoslavia, etc. Still, to carry out the war escalation, the administration will have to rely most heavily on its vicious political enemies within the ruling establishment, while alienating its strongest rank-and-file supporters.  

The same big lies

The George W. Bush administration also tried to sell the U.S.-NATO occupation of Afghanistan with a series of big lies. The corporate media will undoubtedly trot them out again to try to justify the escalation.

The first lie is that the Taliban government is responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. All the Taliban regime did, however, was tolerate al-Qaeda—itself an organization nurtured by the U.S. during its Cold War subversion of the Soviet Union. The Taliban government in 2001 was prepared to negotiate the eviction of al-Qaeda when the Bush gang decided it would rather invade Afghanistan.

The second lie says that the Hamid Karzai regime in Kabul, or any other regime that the U.S.-NATO occupation props up, has more legitimacy than the Afghan resistance. Even the current U.S. posture of making demands on Karzai after a blatantly phony “election” can’t change Washington’s reliance on corrupt and reactionary forces. And the profits and corruption start with the U.S. military-industrial complex and the Pentagon warlords, who have shown no moral revulsion about making deals with local Afghan military leaders and those running the opium industry.

The third big lie is that the occupation is aimed at improving conditions for Afghan women. After eight years of occupation, Afghan women’s life expectancy is 44 years and 85 percent are illiterate. It’s true that the Taliban has a reactionary program for women, but so do the forces the U.S. relies on in the puppet regime. What is remarkable is that Afghan women’s organizations openly say that as bad as the Taliban was, conditions are now worse for Afghan women, with reactionary laws, war and hunger adding to their suffering.

The Afghan government that had made the most progress for women’s rights, that had women running ministries, that had women with rifles across their backs defending it, was the revolutionary government of the 1980s that the Soviet Union supported. At that time the U.S. government, its allies in the region and all its Cold War agencies rallied the most reactionary Afghan forces—which murdered women school teachers—to fight and destroy that government.

In the end the Afghan resistance—which includes, in addition to the Taliban, local forces and secular elements that are the continuation of that progressive Afghan government of 1979 to 1991–will refuse to surrender to the U.S.-NATO attempt at conquest. It will be up to the anti-war forces within the NATO countries, including the U.S., to shorten the time and sacrifices made until the inevitable failure of the occupation.