Last Tuesday, President Obama addressed the nation to explain to us his decision to prolong the Afghanistan War by sending 30,000 more troops into the country. Though he claimed that our presence there is necessary because of the threat from Al Qaeda, the evidence shows us all otherwise. Al Qaeda has less than 100 operatives there, but the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan is largely due to Bush’s neglect in favor of his crusade against Saddam Hussein. While the reasons for going to Afghanistan were “obvious”, our continued presence is somewhat murkier.
Obama’s speech was largely about Pakistan instead of Afghanistan which confuses the President’s decision. To further compound the problems surrounding our situation a new report from the Foreign Relations Committee shows that the Afghanistan War did not need to become as protracted as it has. The report solidifies the evidence that bin Laden was in fact present and contends that through mishandlings of Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, we allowed Osama bin Laden to escape Tora Bora into Pakistan by sending less than 100 soldiers into a region marked with valleys and caves.
How does this happen? How, after less than a year after 9/11 were we not doing everything in our power to capture those responsible for the attacks? The conclusion that makes the most sense to me is that the Bush administration simply didn’t want to catch bin Laden, or at least not as quickly as that. Bush needed Osama bin Laden to realize his agenda (The opposite is also true but is not a point of discussion for this article). Much of Bush’s agenda relied on fear of terrorism and a continued war effort that galvanized a base under the theme of “support the troops”.
We already know that Bush had always planned to attack Saddam; even before he became President. The events of 9/11 provided him an excellent segue for focusing the country on Iraq. Make no mistake, I’m in no way trying to imply that Bush did anything other than neglect dire warnings to bring about the attacks on our country but I have no problem believing that he and those around him used this to move towards a predetermined goal. Think back over the constant, unsubstantiated, and false warnings about Hussein’s dealings with Al Qaeda, WMD, and Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden became Bush’s Emmanuel Goldstein, the villain of George Orwell’s Ingsoc ideology, whose ever-present danger was absolutely necessary to advancing his agenda. Perpetual war is good for business and he is not the first to call for war to enhance the fortunes of the rich. Perhaps Bush meant to collect bin Laden at a more politically strategic time (perhaps in time for the 2004 election), but it proved difficult after he escaped into Pakistan. Perhaps he was never interested in doing it. The point is that he rarely, if ever, took the effort to capture him.
After 8 years, Afghanistan is virtually Al Qaeda-free, but involving our soldiers in fighting Afghanistan’s civil war against the Taliban will only continue to kill people and bankrupt us (bin Laden’s professed actual goal in fighting us and one we have only been too willing to help achieve). In the words of Bad Religion, “That’s how to ration the poor, let them eat war.” Obama’s choice to send 30,000 more soldiers, nuanced with a vaguely worded exit strategy and shortly after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, is only another compromise to the super-hawks on the Right and a possible garnering of political capital for his reelection bid. So-called deficit hawks rant against a healthcare plan that pays for itself but then love to pour your money into this hole by further propping up Karzai’s corrupt and illegitimate government, and hemorrhaging money into the Afghanistan War.
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