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https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/15/time-for-peace-in-afghanistan-and-an-end-to-the-lies/

Time for Peace in Afghanistan and an End to the Lies

It has been more than nine years since I resigned in protest over the escalation of the Afghan War from my position as a Political Officer with the US State Department in Afghanistan. It had been my third time to war, along with several years of working in positions effecting war policy in Washington, DC with the Department of Defense (DOD) and the State Department. My resignation in 2009 was not taken lightly by my superiors and my reasons for opposing President Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan found support amongst both military officers and civilian officials at senior levels in Kabul and Washington.

I was repeatedly asked not to resign and was offered a more senior position within the State Department. Richard Holbrooke, then the President’s appointed representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan told me he agreed with 95% of what I had written and asked me to join his staff, while the US ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, told me my analysis was one of the best he had encountered and stated he would write an introduction endorsing my resignation letter if I remained with the US Embassy in Afghanistan for the remainder of my tour. In conversation with the US deputy ambassador to Afghanistan he agreed the war was not just unwinnable, but also corrupt, and stated he would not let his children serve in such a war. Further support for my views was provided by my counterparts who were serving as political officers in the most violent parts of Afghanistan: Kandahar, Helmand, Kunar, Nuristan and Oruzgan Provinces. These men and women made clear their agreement with my assessment and my resignation. The support from the military was equally effusive and genuine, often such support included apologies along the lines of “I’d like to resign too, but I’ve got kids heading to college in a few years…” (the golden handcuffs are an incredibly instrumental and integral aspect of the US Empire’s infrastructure). When I asked Karen DeYoung, the Washington Post correspondent who wrote the front page, above the fold story on my resignation for the Post, why she wrote such a piece about me, she replied she could not find anyone at the Pentagon, State Department or White House who disagreed with me.

I relate the above not to cheerlead for myself, although the sadness and despondency from witnessing the wars up close and from afar and their cruel constant murder, does, at times, necessitate such crutches for me, but to relay my own personal observation of the great lie of war in action; the ability of the machine of war to propel itself forward even when those most intimate with the war, those most responsible for it and without whose support and effort the war could not continue, carry on the war whilst knowing and living the lie full well.

Nearly almost a decade after my resignation, there are reports of a possible peace deal in the making for Afghanistan. What I recognize, so clearly and sickeningly, just as my mind, and my soul, can recall the bright scarlet red of fresh arterial blood that dulls in contact with dust and cloth, or the clay-like frozen set jaw of a dead young man, whether he have been called an Afghan, American or Iraqi, are the same lies of the war that were so skillfully and effectively utilized by politicians, generals and the media to escalate the war in 2009 now being recirculated to defeat any current attempts for peace....

....There is a desperate sunk cost argument that haunts all wars that are lost and unworthy. As it is, more often than not, it is those who have not experienced the pain and the destruction of the war who demand more blood and more sacrifice, turn on Fox News or open the Washington Post and this will be apparent. What makes such an argument even more mean and craven is these deaths, ones that need not be lost in vain as it is typically phrased,are forever tied and bound by the lies of the war, making these deaths eternally ignoble and worthless, the dead never to be heroes, despite the exaggerations of eulogies, bordering often on hagiography, but only to be future-less victims of the greed and egos that advance and maintain the war....

....The total financial costs to the US in direct spending on the war in Afghanistan are approaching one trillion dollars. Peak spending of the war reached more than $100 billion a year and currently runs between $40 and $50 billion a year. Total costs of all the wars the US has been sending its young men and women to kill and be killed in since 2001 are said to be $6 trillion, and this is just for the wars, that $6 trillion figure does not include the regular or usual costs of running the military, which is now over $600 billion a year, or the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on veterans, the intelligence agencies, nuclear weapons, the State Department or Homeland Security. This staggering amount may perhaps best be understood by knowing that in interest and debt payments alone the US has spent more than $700 billion on the wars in 17 years (regarding overall national security spending this year the US will spend hundreds of billions of dollars, as it does each year, on debt payments due to past spending on wars, the military, intelligence, veterans, etc).

If you compare Washington, DC and its suburbs to how they psychically existed prior to 9/11, you will most assuredly note the physical impact the wars and the benefitting military industrial complex has had on the city and its suburbs. The Pentagon is not confined to that five sided building alongside Interstate 395, but rather stretches for miles along the Potomac River; from the Key Bridge in Rosslyn, south through Arlington, and extending past Ronald Reagan National Airport into Alexandria, in office building after office building, are tens and tens of thousands of men and women working for war. Likewise in the suburbs, particularly west along Interstate 66 or north along the Baltimore-Washington Highway, hundreds of buildings exist to serve the war machine. It’s not just the defense industry or the contracting firms, but also the banks, hotels, restaurants, apartment complexes, high rise condominiums and near-million dollar McMansions that have risen to serve and support the Pentagon and its wars.

Within these buildings are hundreds of thousands of men and women, the majority not wearing a uniform but working for a contracting firm or defense corporation, who often make salaries in the high five or six figures. When I did such work in 2008, as a single 35 year old who’s seemingly only qualification was that I had been a captain in the Marines, my salary and benefits came close to $120,000 (when I joined the State Department in 2009 I didn’t take a pay cut), while an entry level position with that same DOD contracting company, the requirements of which were to simply possess a secret level security clearance and to know Microsoft Office, was more than $80,000. As you can see it is very easy to slip into those golden handcuffs…

What this calculates to, and remember aside from national and homeland security the federal government has decreased non-defense discretionary spending in real terms since 2001, is that the Washington, DC metro area is the wealthiest part of the country, and has been for a number of years, beginning after these unending wars and their mass profits began. While you can argue correlation is not causation, the symbiotic nature cannot be denied between the unending nature of the wars and the massive increase in wealth for Washington, DC and its people and organs. Observe the loud protestation by the US Senate towards the idea of the US wars in Afghanistan and Syria ending to get a glimpse of the fear that exists in Washington and within the war machine towards just the idea or concept of peace. If you want to understand why these wars continue and why these lies persist, then you must understand the money that sustains and underlies both the war and its lies....

....It is true that there are hundreds of thousands of well paid men and women in the US because of this war, many of whom can now afford beach homes and BMWs, and, yes, it is true there are hundreds of politicians who subsist on the unholy campaign contributions that come from the war machine. Aside from these mercenary beneficiaries can someone point to any thing worthwhile from these wars?

What should be apparent to observers of the war in Afghanistan is that the willingness for peace from the US and its allies has not existed. The reasons are multiple: there is too much money being made; the political advantages of a victory presidency are too great; the vainglorious egos of the generals and those in think tanks, backed financially by the defense industry, are too strong; there may be a great deal of money in minerals to be made in Afghanistan; while the yearly record amounts of drugs grown and exported are enriching the Afghan government and security forces, as well as local, regional and international banks; and if you are the corrupt, decadent Afghan government, with the US as your benefactor, why seek peace? What should also be clear, and damning, is how quickly and easily the recent peace talks have moved forward. With seemingly minimal effort over the span of a few meetings a framework for peace appears possible. All that, tragically, seems to have been required was the willingness of the US government to talk.

What a waste

The saddest epilogue to this essay and to this war is that none of this was necessary. It has all has been a waste.

Blood, flesh, bone, sinew, organs…ground up and thrown, as if by some spectral ghastly hand and shovel, into a furnace of oblivion and nothingness. EB Sledge, a US Marine who fought in the 20thCentury’s Good War, wrote about his experiences as an infantryman amidst all the killing and dying. In With the Old Breed, over and over again, haunted by the dead and the loss of their futures, Sledge summarizes what he saw with the words: what a waste.

Yes, what a waste indeed.

....

General Smedley D. Butler saw and spoke to these same lies of war a long time ago. Few will speak the truth about what US wars are really about. A book he wrote about these things " War Is A Racket " illuminates the true nature of the long history of US interventions. The same travesties and lies of war are elucidated by the author of this article.