[R-G] Obama outlines policy of endless war

[Anthony Fenton]

Obama outlines policy of endless war
By Bill Van Auken
16 July 2008
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/obam-j16.shtml

Any misconception that Barack Obama is running in the 2008 election as  
an “antiwar” candidate should have been cleared up Tuesday in what was  
billed by the Democratic presidential campaign as a “major speech” on  
national security and the US war in Iraq.

Speaking before a backdrop of massed American flags at the Reagan  
Building in Washington, Obama made it clear that he opposes the  
present US policy in Iraq not on the basis of any principled  
opposition to neo-colonialism or aggressive war, but rather on the  
grounds that the Iraq war is a mistaken deployment of power that fails  
to advance the global strategic interests of American imperialism.

What emerges from the speech by the junior senator from Illinois is  
that the November election will not provide the American people with  
the opportunity to vote for or against war, but merely to choose which  
of the two colonial-style wars that US forces are presently fighting  
should be escalated.

As in his op-ed piece published in the New York Times on Monday, his  
call on Tuesday for the withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq was  
linked to the proposal to dispatch as many as 10,000 troops to  
Afghanistan to escalate the war there.

The thrust of Obama’s speech was a critique of the Bush  
administration’s incompetence in pursuing an imperialist strategy,  
combined with an implicit commitment to advance the same basic  
strategy in a more rational and effective manner once he enters the  
White House.

He summed up his policy as “a responsible redeployment of our combat  
troops that pushes Iraq’s leaders toward a political solution,  
rebuilds our military, and refocuses on Afghanistan and our broader  
security interests.”

Obama reiterated his campaign pledge to bring US “combat brigades” out  
of Iraq within 16 months of his inauguration. After this  
“redeployment,” however, a “residual force” would remain in Iraq  
carrying out counter-insurgency operations, protecting US facilities  
and training and supporting Iraqi puppet forces—tasks that would  
undoubtedly keep tens of thousands of American troops occupying the  
country indefinitely.

Obama stressed that he would make “tactical adjustments” to his plan  
based upon consultations with “commanders on the ground and the Iraqi  
government,” suggesting that even the partial withdrawal he proposes  
would unlikely unfold as quickly as promised.

The speech was scheduled in advance of a “fact-finding” tour that  
Obama is set to embark upon in the next week, visiting both Iraq and  
Afghanistan and conducting meetings with US military commanders in  
both countries.

Obama began his speech by invoking the legacy of US imperialism’s  
strategy in the aftermath of World War II, when it acted to “foster  
new international institutions like the United Nations, NATO and the  
World Bank” and rebuilt shattered European capitalism through the  
Marshall Plan. He contrasted that six-decade policy with what he  
presented as the squandered opportunity for Washington to again seize  
global leadership following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

“The world, too, was united against the perpetrators of this evil act,  
as old allies, new friends and even long-time adversaries stood by our  
side,” said Obama. “It was time—once again—for America’s might and  
moral suasion to be harnessed; it was time to once again shape a new  
security strategy for an ever-changing world.”

The starting point for seizing this golden opportunity, according to  
Obama, was to “have deployed the full force of American power to hunt  
down and destroy Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and all of the  
terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in  
Afghanistan.”

Instead, he charged, the Bush administration diverted these military  
resources into the war against Iraq, “a country that had absolutely  
nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.” He continued: “By any measure,  
our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy  
for keeping America safe.”

This presentation is a gross and deliberate distortion of the motives  
underlying both the war in Afghanistan and the one in Iraq. Neither of  
them was launched with the aim of “keeping America safe,” but rather  
to advance definite strategic interests of American imperialism.

The central aim of the war in Afghanistan—planned well before the  
attacks of 9/11—was to take advantage of the power vacuum in Central  
Asia created by the Soviet Union’s dissolution to assert US domination  
over a region containing the second largest proven reserves of  
petroleum and natural gas in the world.

As for the supposed targets of this operation—Osama bin Laden, Al  
Qaeda and the Taliban—all of them are, in the final analysis, the  
products of US imperialism’s own bloody history of intervention in the  
region, particularly in the 1980s, when Washington poured billions of  
dollars into funding the Mujahedin forces fighting the Soviet-backed  
government of Afghanistan and the Soviet army when it intervened  
there. Among these forces were bin Laden and those who went on to set  
up both Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The legacy of this CIA-directed war was the devastation of Afghanistan  
and protracted political chaos, which Washington sought to curb by  
supporting the Taliban’s coming to power.

Now, nearly seven years after the US invaded Afghanistan, Obama  
proclaims, “As president, I will make the fight against Al Qaeda and  
the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we  
have to win.”

To that end, Obama vowed to send “two additional combat brigades to  
Afghanistan” and to press Washington’s NATO allies to make “greater  
contributions—with fewer restrictions” in terms of deploying their own  
troops.

He continued by vowing to expand the intervention in Afghanistan into  
neighboring Pakistan.

“The greatest threat to that security lies in the tribal regions of  
Pakistan, where terrorists train and insurgents strike into  
Afghanistan,” he warned. “We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary,  
and as president, I won’t. We need a stronger and sustained  
partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO to secure the  
border, to take out terrorist camps and to crack down on cross-border  
insurgents. We need more troops, more helicopters, more satellites,  
more Predator drones in the Afghan border region. And we must make it  
clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high- 
level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights.”

There is no evidence that US forces are fighting Al Qaeda in  
Afghanistan or that the bulk of those attacking American and NATO  
forces are following orders issued by the remnants of the Taliban. The  
Pentagon has not reported the capture of Al Qaeda operatives in the  
stepped-up fighting that has claimed the lives of 69 US and NATO  
soldiers in the months of May and June.

The reality is that the resistance to the US-led occupation has grown  
dramatically as a direct product of the escalating slaughter of  
civilians, as seen in the July 6 US air strike that killed 47 members  
of a wedding party, the vast majority of them women and children.  
Anger has also been generated by the arbitrary detention and frequent  
torture of those picked up by US units and Afghan puppet troops, as  
well as by the gross corruption of the US-backed regime of President  
Hamid Karzai.

In the attack on a US base last Sunday that claimed the lives of nine  
US soldiers, local villagers reportedly participated, providing direct  
support to the insurgents who carried out the assault.

With “more troops, more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator  
drones,” Obama is proposing to escalate this slaughter, which will  
generate greater resistance and an expanded war involving more US  
troops and, inevitably, their deployment across the border into  
Pakistan.

Obama vowed to beef up the US military for a war that threatens to  
prove far more intense than the one in Iraq. He called for an overall  
increase of American ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000  
marines, and “investing in the capabilities we need to defeat  
conventional foes and meet the unconventional challenges of our time.”

Much of the media reaction to Obama’s speech centered on speculation  
over whether it was aimed at reassuring his Democratic base that he is  
still committed to effecting a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, or  
if it indicated a further “move to the center” by stressing his  
willingness to use force as the US commander-in-chief.

In reality, the speech reflected what is becoming a consensus position  
within much of the American political establishment, Democratic and  
Republican alike. There is a growing conviction that the US can secure  
its strategic interests in Iraq with fewer troops and without  
expending the more than $10 billion a month that is compounding the  
deepening economic crisis of American capitalism.

To underscore this message, Obama was introduced Tuesday by former  
Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, who, together with Republican ex- 
Secretary of State James Baker, chaired the Iraq Study Group, the  
bipartisan panel that called for a revamped US military and diplomatic  
policy aimed at salvaging the American intervention in Iraq.

Both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the Joint  
Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, have expressed concern that  
there are insufficient troop levels in Afghanistan to secure US  
domination of the country. They have indicated that they would like to  
deploy another 10,000 there—the same number proposed by Obama.

Even Bush, in a White House press conference Tuesday morning, sounded  
this theme, claiming that Washington and its NATO allies were already  
initiating a “surge” in Afghanistan.

As for the speech signaling a shift to the right, the reality is that  
Obama has sounded the same themes repeatedly since initiating his run  
for the presidency. While in the Democratic primaries he stressed his  
opposition to the 2002 Senate vote to grant Bush authorization to  
launch the Iraq war—a resolution that was supported by his principal  
rivals Hillary Clinton and John Edwards—he always made it clear that  
he embraced the ideological framework of the “global war on terrorism”  
used to justify both the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions.

Given this position and his subsequent votes to fund the war once he  
entered the Senate in 2005, there is little reason to believe that he  
would not have joined his rivals in giving Bush a blank check for an  
Iraq invasion had he been a US senator at the time.

Writing in Foreign Affairs a year ago, Obama stressed that the lesson  
of the Iraq debacle was the necessity to prepare for new US wars. “We  
must use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it  
for the missions of the future,” he stressed. “We must retain the  
capacity to swiftly defeat any conventional threat to our country and  
our vital interests. But we must also become better prepared to put  
boots on the ground in order to take on foes that fight asymmetrical  
and highly adaptive campaigns on a global scale.”

While Obama’s “left” apologists will no doubt excuse the blatant  
militarism and warmongering in the candidate’s speech as a mere  
political device aimed at winning over “centrist” voters, the reality  
is that the candidate is spelling out what can be expected from an  
incoming Democratic administration in 2009.

Its policies will be determined not by the hollow campaign rhetoric  
about “change” that has been Obama’s specialty, but rather by the  
deepening economic and social crisis of American capitalism and the  
determination of the American ruling elite to continue using military  
force as a means of offsetting its economic decline.