US capitalism accepts defeat in Afghanistan: Looking for plan B

Any alliance is acceptable in the defense of markets

The more sober strategists of US capitalism’s foreign policy have concluded that their little venture in Afghanistan, like their other war in Iraq, is a complete failure. The Afghan occupation is costing the US taxpayer $7 billion a month, and domestic support is waning as more austerity and cutbacks are on the horizon.

Writing in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs Robert D Blackwell* lays out the best scenario for US interests in Afghanistan-------partition the country. US policy makers are desperately trying to figure a way to extricate themselves from another disastrous defeat without making it obvious it is a defeat.

Blackwell points out that with 150,000 troops on the ground, the US/ NATO coalition has 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan than the old Soviet Union did during its failed intervention. The government of Hamid Karzai is completely rotten and an unreliable ally. Like much of the US taxpayer’s money that is wasted on these excursions, it ends up in the pockets of corrupt politicians and businessmen.

The problem for US capitalism is that it is not able to defeat the Taliban Pashtuns in their stronghold in the south of the country so the next best thing is partition. Blackwell is very honest about the inability of the US to accomplish anything better than partition. Existing Afghanistan policy is in “serious trouble” he writes. So serious that he is compelled to quote the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." It reveals a great deal that a major US bourgeois strategist resorts to quotes from an artistic genre known as “Literary Nonsense” to prove his point.

Blackwell’s analysis is closer to the truth than most when it comes to the Afghanistan debacle. Washington should accept that the Taliban will control the south, he argues, and the US will be stuck in the north, (with the partition scenario) for a long period of time but with fewer troops, 35,000 to 50,000. This is a “profoundly disappointing outcome to the United States’ ten year investment” Blackwell concludes, but is “the best result that Washington can realistically and responsibly achieve”. It is the best, “available alternative to strategic defeat”. How things can change in 8 years when Paul Kennedy’s article, The Eagle has Landed appeared in the Financial Times: “In global military terms now only one player on the field now counts – the US.”, Kennedy wrote. Financial Times 2-2-02.

US capitalism invests in warfare only if the returns are there. But Afghanistan is increasingly becoming a bad investment. According to the CIA, there are only 50 to 100 al Qaeda fighters in the country and the US has 100,000 troops there; the original reason for invading was to get Osama bin laded and rout the Taliban. Neither has been accomplished, the Taliban still control the south. This works out to about 1000 to 2000 soldiers per al Qaeda fighter (terrorist) and “a billion dollars per terrorist each year” Blackwell figures. Is this tax money well spent?

These are staggering figures when you think about it. At the beginning of the Iraq occupation, the low estimate for how long the US would stay was three months (Jay Gardner, the first proconsul to Iraq) and the longest was two years at the most (Paul Wolfowitz, US Under Secretary of Defense) ** The reality is that US capitalism has gone from defeat in Iraq to defeat in Afghanistan The Eagle might have landed but it landed on a hornets nest. These are the people that make decisions for the rest of us; decisions that have disastrous consequences for us and catastrophic ones for their victims.
The results of an exhausted US military in human terms will burst through the surface at some point. The US government’s assault on Bradley Manning, threatened with life in prison, is a warning to US troops to keep their mouths shut. But that dam will also burst.

The “experts” might have thought we would be out of Iraq in two years but there were millions of people that new better. However, our views don’t count, no one’s views count in the quest for domination of the world’s resources and trade.

So US capitalism is recognizing the facts on the ground and is willing to share the country with the Taliban, it will still have a foothold in central Asia which is its goal. It is quite likely the Taliban/Pashtuns will not agree to this so the US taxpayer can expect to fork out a lot more in terms of cash, declining living standards and dead and severely damaged sons and daughters in an occupation it cannot win but cannot exit. Northern Ireland is an example of such failed excersizes.

In the early years, Bush and his “feminist” wife made the protection of women a major issue in their defense of the Afghan war. I even had right winners at work point to the honorable efforts that the Bush regime was engaged in, defending womens rights around the world. What about the women in a Taliban controlled southern Afghanistan? “Partition” would stabilize the country, that’s the important thing Blackwill writes. This is what matters. But it is also time for looking reality in the eye, “What about the islands of non-Pashtun peoples in the south and the east?, he asks. “What about the women of those areas-----would not this course abandon them?"

“Unfortunately the answer is essentially yes”, he says, answering the question for us. This is the great mind of capitalism at work. They were wrong on Iraq, they’re wrong on Afghanistan; they were wrong in Vietnam.

Capitalism cannot solve the numerous regional wars and conflicts that are its own creation. It goes from crisis to crisis with murderous consequences. For workers, there was a window of opportunity in Afghanistan during the short-lived regime of Mohammad Nabjibullah. Najibullah as a secular leader formed the Republic of Afghanistan and supported free expression and multiple party elections. His regime should have been supported by workers throughout the world which would have weakened his reliance on the Soviet bureaucracy, but the struggle between the former Soviet Union and US capitalism for influence in the region was center stage and workers of the world suffered for it especially in Afghanistan and especially women and girls.

The US government supported the medieval warlords against the more progressive secular regime of Nabjibullah in the Afghan civil war. The US, and its ally, the Saudi Monarchy, gave some $40 billion in money and arms to the Islamic Taliban fighters.  Eventually the Najibullah regime fell, he was tortured and murdered by the Islamic Taliban and his testicles hung from a lamppost in Kabul according to reports. This is how US tax money is spent. The interests of US workers and workers throughout the world were set back considerably by US capitalism's tactics in the Afghan war.

The Labor leaders in the US have no independent position on any issues to the strategists of US capitalism. The US working class should have given critical support to the Nabjibullah government. This would have led to an entirely different situation in Afghanistan today, not to mention the US.

Global capitalism has no solution to the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq; they are driven to war by the laws of the system. The US capitalist class is completely bankrupt. Blackwill is described by Foreign Affairs Magazine as “Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow for US foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.” A pompous title named after a war criminal. Why not a “Saddam Hussein Senior Fellow” or a “Joseph Stalin senior fellow”?

Wolfowitz too, who slightly misjudged the situation in Iraq obviously, was one of their policy wonks. He was a senior figure in their government. A real thug, he eventually went to the World Bank where he was forced to resign in disgrace in an ethics scandal. But they don’t go to jail. The little deal at the World Bank pales compared to his murderous criminal activity as a US government official

Workers are taught from day one that we cannot govern society. Without capitalists society would collapse. Every ruling class teaches that the system it governs is the end of civilization, is permanent. History is a better teacher.  The feudal aristocracy told the capitalists they couldn’t rule, that society would collapse without the king. They were right, feudalism collapsed and society as we know it will have to collapse for us to take control of our own destiny; capitalist society one of endless wars, poverty, insecurity and environmental disasters will have to cease. That’s not a bad thing; every dog has his day.

* Plan B in Afghanistan: Foreign Affairs, January 2011
** Rudd Jansens: American Empire and the End of the Nation State