Historian Robert Dallek has written persuasively of the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies. "In my judgment," says Dallek, "war kills off great reform movements." (1) Thus, the American entrance into WWI killed off the progressive movement. WWII stifled the reforms of FDR and began the development of the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower later warned of. The Vietnam War ended much of the reform under Johnson and with money only for guns and not butter, halted the War on Poverty.

President Obama was elected on a platform of change and reform. He announced to the world that he would bring fresh faces to Washington, D.C., and change the way it did business. But nothing much has changed on that front: he even kept on George W. Bush’s man at the second most important post in the government, Secretary of Defense. He also kept on and even promoted most of W’s favorite generals, like Gen. McCrystal.

Perhaps the least liberal of Obama’s positions in the campaign was his position on Afghanistan: he said the fight there was a "good war" and that indeed Bush had made a mistake by emphasizing Iraq and not Afghanistan. Most liberals thought this position was just a sop to conservatives like Kennedy’s "missle gap" seemed to be in the 1960 presidential campaign against Richard Nixon. But as with JFK so with Obama. JFK was serious in his expansion of American empire and so is Obama. In one of the few campaign promises that Obama has not broken, he has indeed escalated the US presence in Afghanistan. Obama has already this year doubled the number of American troops there to 62,000. This number does not even include countless thousands of mercenaries like the remnants of Blackwater (whatever its now called) who are hired on as "independent contractors." (1A) But the results, even after 8 years of American occupation, have been a disaster. Just a few days ago, eight US troops and 2 Afghan policemen were killed (and numerous others taken prisoner) as the Taliban overran a US outpost near the Pakistan border. (2)

Even as it appears that America is bogged down in a Vietnam-like quagmire, the similarities with that fiasco extend to the political front. Just as in Vietnam (with Diem), it appears that the "horse" that the Obama administration is backing in Afghanistan is corrupt and has little appeal to the indigenous people. It is clear that the recent "elections" in Afghanistan were riddled with fraud and corruption. US diplomat and UN Official Peter Galbraith has said of the elections:

"…because these elections have been a disaster for Afghanistan, they’ve been a disaster for the international effort. If Karzai emerges as president at the end of this process, his credibility is going to be much reduced for the large part of the country. It clearly has undermined international support for the Afghan effort. When I’m home in Vermont, people are saying, “Well, what are we fighting for in Afghanistan?” Before, you could answer, “Well, September 11th.” Now people say we’re fighting to hold a corrupt government that has done this sort of thing in power. So, the elections—the issue of fraud is hugely important."

(3)

Galbraith, in an interview with Amy Goodman over at Democracynow.org provides more details on how the election fraud occurred, unbelievably enough, under UN auspices and with their tacit blessing:

"…there were about 1,500 polling centers out of 7,000 that were located in areas that the Taliban controlled or were so insecure that they in fact—nobody from the security services or the Election Commission had ever visited those places. These polling centers were never going to open. But as long as they remained on the rolls, they provided an excellent opportunity for fraud, because the people perpetrating the fraud, which, as it turned out, included the Election Commission’s staff, would be able to take the materials, report that they had been open, and then report returns. And, of course, no observer, no candidate agent and no voter could go to the location to see whether in fact the center had opened. So there were about 1,500 ghost polling centers.

I was making progress, with support from the US, the UK, European Union, NATO. But, of course, the Afghan ministers complained about what I was doing to the head of the mission. He sided with them, ordered me not to do anything further. So that would have been the best opportunity to address the issue of fraud. After it took place, the UN had collected—we had run a twenty-four-hour election control center through the election period and the initial counting. We collected hundreds of incidents of fraud. And more importantly, we collected information, extensive information, on turnout. And what our information on turnout showed was that in key provinces in southern Afghanistan, there was a tiny turnout, less than ten percent in a number of cases, and yet a large number of votes recorded. That was very good evidence of fraud.

We wanted to provide this information to the Election Complaints Commission. This is the UN-backed watchdog that, under Afghan law, is supposed to investigate complaints against the election process. Kai Eide, the head of the mission, said no. He didn’t want this information shared at all.

And finally, there was a third incident, but there were many others, but these were the most important. In September, in early September, I was again in charge, and the Independent Election Commission, which actually was not an independent commission—it was appointed by Karzai and very much operated on his behalf through this election process—I got word that they were planning to abandon published safeguards, their own published safeguards, to exclude fraudulent ballots from the final tally. And I got in touch with them, and I said that we would object to that. This produced—within two hours, the president of the country called in the American ambassador to protest it. I was called in by the foreign minister. This was deemed to be improper foreign interference. And instead of backing me up, Kai Eide sided with Karzai. And the result was where we are now. There is an electoral crisis in Afghanistan, and the ability of the United Nations to deal with it is much diminished. You heard the presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, who’s the second place contender, but what was the message to him and to the opposition when the United Nations dismisses the individual who was responsible for supporting these elections because of concern over fraud? How could he have confidence in the role of the UN as an impartial arbiter at this stage?

(4)

For blowing the whistle on election fraud, Peter Galbraith was fired by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as the top American diplomat at the U.N. in Afghanistan. How does the election fraud affect the US presence in Afghanistan and what impact should it or might it have on a possible escalation of troops there? Again, we have to look at history. When the US propped up a corrupt regime in South Vietnam, it undermined its own assertions that it was fighting against an evil, corrupt ideology. Supporting corruption and fraud tends to corrupt and debase both the country occupied and the occupying forces. Here is how Peter Galbraith’s view on an escalation of US forces for Afghanistan:

Now, to turn to your question on whether there should be an additional surge of US troops, I’m against that at this time, for the simple reason that for the counterinsurgency strategy that is being proposed to President Obama, for that to work, you need to have an Afghan partner, a government, which is capable of establishing a reasonably efficient and honest administration in the areas that the US troops then have—first have cleared. And we don’t have an Afghan government that’s a credible partner. Given this election mess, a large part of the country is not going to accept Karzai, if he in fact emerges from this as the legitimate leader. And so, under those circumstances, the counterinsurgency strategy can’t work, and therefore, in my view, it really makes no sense to put in additional troops.

(5)

To my knowledge, the Obama administration has not addressed the key issues involved in the dismissal of its own diplomat to the UN overseeing Afghanistan. Galbraith is just another person thrown by Obama under the bus. Nor has the Obama administration adequately dealt with the issue of corruption in the Karzai presidency and the deleterious effect of such corruption on the war effort. Like the Johnson administration in Vietnam, the Obama administration appears to be digging a deeper and deeper hole in Afghanistan. It is at a point where Gen. McCrystal, Obama’s pick to head the American effort in Afghanistan, wants a significant ramp-up in forces there. He has told Obama that the war effort is "undersourced". (6) The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal–according to a Reuters article titled "Gates Blames Past Lack of Troops for Taliban Edge"–has "given a dire assessment of the eight-year war, saying that more troops and a new strategy to win over the Afghan people are needed to avert failure." (6A).

Given Obama’s gung-ho statements as far back as the presidential campaign on the importance of the war in Afghanistan and given Obama’s steadfast opposition to a progressive agenda overall (failure to prosecute the Bush administration’s actions on torture; failure to deal with the unemployment crisis; failure to reign in the Imperial Presidency; failure to even consider the public option in health care reform; flip-flops on FISA, DOMA, DADT and many other issues), I think it likely that the generals will get what they want out of Obama.

Indeed, since I wrote the above paragraph, I’ve had to edit this diary to include news from the mouth of Robert Gates that indicates the Defense Department wants more troops and money for Afghanistan. Here’s what Gates said on Monday:

"U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday blamed the past U.S. failure to deploy enough troops to Afghanistan for the Taliban’s revival and said the United States could not afford to become the second superpower defeated there. …The debate within the Obama administration is now over whether to send up to 40,000 more troops, or scale back the U.S. mission and focus on striking al Qaeda cells, an idea backed by Vice President Joe Biden. The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has given a dire assessment of the eight-year war, saying that more troops and a new strategy to win over the Afghan people are needed to avert failure."

(6A)

Note too that in what is being called "a sweeping review of U.S. strategy toward Afghanistan", one option (withdrawal) is not being considered just as Obama failed to consider the most economical and efficient option (single payer) in the health care debate. "We are not leaving Afghanistan," Gates said on Monday." "I don’t think we have the option to leave." (6A) But of course, in any TRUE assessment (as opposed to a public relations type assessment) all options should be on the table. However, this administration has shown in the past, as in single payer, its willingness to put true reform "off the table" and not even consider it. So it goes with Afghanistan, and so, I predict, will Obama’s escalation which will be hidden in propaganda-like language ("war is peace") with NO REAL BUDGET PROJECTIONS OF ITS COST EVER BEING DONE (unlike what happens when the expansion of social programs is anticipated). Obama will wrap himself around the flag–very much like Bush did–especially since his whole "agenda of reform" is under fire and he has a huge negative stemming from his failed salesmanship of the Chicago Olympics. In short, what is better to cut off talk of reform and get poll numbers up than some military adventure?

Author and essayist Gore Vidal recently told the Times (London) in an interview that Obama doesn’t understand the generals and the military and Vidal, as usual, is being proven correct:

How’s Obama doing? “Dreadfully. I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we’ve had in that position for a long time. But he’s inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism.” America should leave Afghanistan, he says. “We’ve failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it.

… “He f***ed it [health care reform] up. I don’t know how because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen.” As for his wider vision: “Maybe he doesn’t have one, not to imply he is a fraud. He loves quoting Lincoln and there’s a great Lincoln quote from a letter he wrote to one of his generals in the South after the Civil War. ‘I am President of the United States. I have full overall power and never forget it, because I will exercise it’. That’s what Obama needs — a bit of Lincoln’s chill.” … Vidal now believes, as he did originally, Clinton would be the better president. “Hillary knows more about the world and what to do with the generals.

(7)

Note too that Obama has never seemed to recognize that the United States cannot have both guns and butter at the same time. He misleadingly told the Congress in his address on healthcare reform that health care was the program which most American government money went to. "Put simply," Obama told the nation, "our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close." (8) That’s wrong, very wrong. The budget for health "insurance" reform Obama seeks is around $900 billion BUT FOR 10 years. The U.S. defense budget for last year, for JUST ONE YEAR, is almost that amount if you count all of the supplementals and hidden costs. The war in Iraq has cost $3 trillion according to Nobel Prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz in his book of that name. It will soon surpass the costs of the Vietnam War. So Obama is misleading the public when he tells the nation that social programs like health care are the most costly things the government funds.

It is the Defense Department and the war machine that eats up most taxpayer dollars. There is no question too that an escalation of the war in Afghanistan (although it will never be called that for political reasons) will sap any reform efforts on the domestic front, just as it has done historically in the past (see the discussion above especially in the introduction). As Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. has recently written, "Those most eager for a bigger war have little interest in Obama’s quest for domestic reform."(9) But even that is a spin on Obama’s record of hesitancy and opposition to true reform. So far, the only thing the country has heard from Obama is talk of reform, we haven’t seen the real thing or any action. Given Obama’s reluctance to even replace a Republican Defense Secretary with a Democrat, given his complete obeisance to W’s Gates and his generals, and given Obama’s DLC-like approach to government, it is likely we will see an escalation of the war in Afghanistan, gussied up by Obama to look like progress, change, and yes, even peace.

NOTES:

(1) Dallek quoted in: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/ej_dionne/article_619db043-bcec-5858-86b6-9ae85fb5b4db.html

(1A): http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091006/ts_nm/us_afghanistan

(2) Border post overrun: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/5/headlines#1

(3) Peter Galbraith interview: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/5/fired_un_official_peter_galbraith_accuses

(4) Same source as above.

(5) Same source as above.

(6) See E.J. Dionne, Jr. column in #1 above.

(6A) Same source as 1A above.

(7) Gore Vidal interviewed at http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6854221.ece#

(8) Barack Obama in speech before Congress athttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/us/politics/10obama.text.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

(9) Same source as above #1.