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In Afghanistan Speech, Obama Offers Token Troop Withdrawals While Maintaining the "War on Terror” Mindset | | AlterNet »

Phyllis Bennis’s policy analysis is always impeccable and well-documented. Out Now, TINO.

By Phyllis Bennis
June 22, 2011 | President Obama passed up an opportunity to recognize our democracy and respect the views of the vast majority of the American people. LIKE THIS ARTICLE ?Join our mailing list:
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President Obama’s speech tonight violated one of his most important campaign promises: to “end the mind-set that leads to war.”

To the contrary, his announcement of a token shift of 10,000 soldiers leaving by the end of 2011, and maybe another 23,000 in another year, makes clear that his claim tonight that “the tide of war is receding” remains untrue. The enormous current deployment of 250,000 U.S. and allied military forces (100,000 U.S. troops, 50,000 NATO troops and 100,000 Pentagon-paid contractors) in Afghanistan continues, and reflects not an end but an embrace of the mind-set of war, even with this small shift of soldiers. This was an opportunity for President Obama to recognize our democracy, to acknowledge and – dare I suggest? – even respect the views of the vast majority of the American people. Sixty-four percent of the people of our country believe the war is not worth fighting. When this war began in October 2001, only about 12% of people in the U.S. did not support it. So 64% opposition means a lot of folks have come to that realization now after years of escalating Afghan civilian and U.S. military casualties, years of a collapsing economy, and yes, years of hard-fought anti-war organizing.

Don't "No-Fly" Libya - IPS »

I also highly recommend Phyllis Bennis’s interview on FAIR’s Counterspin.

It’s not that there are no real humanitarian concerns; Libyan civilians are paying a huge price in challenging their dictator. But powerful U.S. interests are at stake, and few of them have anything to do with protecting Libyan civilians. Certainly oil is key; not so much about access to Libyan oil (the international oil market is pretty fungible), but about which oil companies will gain privileged positions? Will it be BP and Chevron who win the lucrative contracts to develop Libya’s enormous oil fields, or will Chinese and Russian oil companies take their place? What pipelines will a new government in Libya choose, and which countries and corporations will benefit?

And it’s not only about oil. The Libyan uprising is one of many potentially revolutionary transformations across the Arab world and in parts of Africa, where long-standing U.S.-backed dictatorships are collapsing — what kind of credibility can the U.S. expect in post-Qaddafi Libya? Washington may be betting that it can win credibility with the opposition by jumping out in front with an aggressive anti-Qaddafi “military assistance” campaign, perhaps starting with a no-fly zone. But in fact Washington risks antagonizing those opposition supporters, apparently the vast majority, determined to protect the independence of their democratic revolution.

The future of Libya and much of the success of the democratic revolutions now underway across the region, stand in the balance. If the Obama administration, the Pentagon, war profiteers and the rest of the U.S. policymaking establishment continue to define U.S. “national interests” as continuing U.S. domination of oil-rich and strategically-located countries and regions, Washington faces a likely future of isolation, antagonism, rising terrorism and hatred.

The democratic revolutionary processes sweeping North Africa and the Middle East have already transformed that long-stalemated region. The peoples of the region are looking for less, not greater militarization of their countries. It is time for U.S. policy to recognize that reality. Saying no to a no-fly zone in Libya will be the best thing the Obama administration can do to begin the process of crafting a new, demilitarized 21st century policy for the U.S. in the newly democratizing Middle East.

This set of documents is unquestionably the most important history so far of key parts of the US war in Afghanistan. These are reports of troops and commanders in the field to other military officials — this is where they tell the truth, to themselves. It is significant that the Obama administration has not tried to claim the reports are not accurate. What they are trying to do is to have it both ways: claiming that disclosure of the reports somehow endangers US troops, but at the same time disparaging the documents as showing nothing we didn’t already know.

These reports, of events already past, are hardly likely to endanger the troops in Afghanistan — the people and insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan don’t need Pentagon documents to know what US/NATO forces are actually doing in their countries.

The documents probably will have a significant impact on the US/NATO war though — just not what the White House is warning of. These reports will likely stoke even greater global anger around the world, as evidence filters out to those far from Afghanistan and Pakistan who didn’t already know what the US/NATO occupation looks like. That will certainly mean rising anger towards US policies and unfortunately towards Americans as a whole…but more importantly it will spur enormous anti-war activity in places like Europe, Canada, Australia, and Turkey. And that means greater pressure on those governments still providing troops for Washington’s war in Afghanistan. And most important of all, they will mean greater pressure than ever on the Obama administration to end the war and especially on Congress to vote NO on next week’s supplemental war funding bill.

[…]

The Wikileaks Papers provide a treasure trove of new evidence of what we already knew: this war has already failed. Every death, of Afghan civilian and of US or NATO soldier, is needless. Every dollar spent on military actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan is wasted. The cost of this occupation and this war - in Afghan blood, in US and NATO military blood, in the billions of dollars needed for jobs at home and real reconstruction in Afghanistan and elsewhere - is too high. We need to stop the funding for escalation now, bring the troops and contractors home, support Afghan and regional/UN diplomacy, and begin the long effort of making good on our huge debt to the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Maybe, just maybe, this 21st century Pentagon Papers - the 2.0 version: Afghanistan - will provide the spark of anti-war outrage to make that happen.

Next week congress is set to vote on $33 billion to pay for Obama’s already-underway escalation in Afghanistan — enough to pay for 500,000 good green union jobs at home and still have billions left to start paying down our debt to Afghanistan for real reconstruction and diplomacy.

Call your Representative at 888-493-5443 now. Tell your Congressperson that the WikiLeaks’ documents confirm once again that the costs of this war are too high.

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Phyllis Bennis: “Pentagon Papers 2.0: Afghanistan” on HuffPost.

Bennis, Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, is the goto person for erudite alternative analysis of Mideast and Central Asia policy. Clearly, the release of the Afghan War Diary is an historic moment that will affect our conduct of foreign policy, and may have implications for the way in which individual Americans conduct themselves elsewhere around the world. Mostly it provides an opening for discussing our national priorities, and how we may redirect money from the war effort to economic and energy security at home.