Killing at least sixteen Afghan civilians as they slept. Urinating on dead Afghan bodies while laughing about it. Setting fire to their Korans. Day after day, a tired American public hears that these are just “isolated acts” and that these incidents “cast shadows” and “complicate” Washington’s plan for a gradual withdrawal of troops over the next thirty-four months. We are told that the raging anger and distrust between many Afghan and American troops is a further sign that the steady plan is at risk.
Ghazni, Afghanistan— Soldiers from the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division, the Afghan National Police, and the Afghan National Army’s 203rd Corps assemble for a recognition ceremony. (U.S. Navy Photo/ Petty Officer First Class David M. Votroubek via Flickr)
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But what if it’s the other way around, that the repeated acts of madness—and the record number of US military suicides—are signals of distress from an American army that knows it cannot win this war?
Many in the peace movement, myself included, have reluctantly accepted the reality that the withdrawal of our superpower state from Afghanistan would be gradual because so many powerful forces are invested in the ill-fated adventure. This includes our president, who pledged his reputation; the Pentagon, stung by failures in Iraq; the CIA; the neocons and Republicans, with their never-surrender diatribes; NATO and the United Nations; the liberal humanitarian hawks and the mainstream media, which never ever advocates for rapid withdrawal.
While others left the frontlines of the peace effort after Iraq, and more would leave to join the fight against Wall Street, a vibrant peace network has still carried on the push for steady withdrawals, lobbying our Congressional representatives to co-sponsor Barbara Lee’s HR 780 bill to defund the war safely and responsibly or petitioning our senators to sign letters to the president.
Any progress, many of us thought, was better than the deepening quagmire, and so it was a welcome event when the president began de-escalating the war, which he himself had thought necessary to escalate. Ten thousand US troops have already come home since that command. Another 22,000 will come home by this fall. Sixty-eight thousand to go, in stages, by the end of 2014. The end of the American combat role is being pushed up in time for the NATO summit at the end of May. Unsettled and unsettling questions remain: whether US troops will stay in training, advisory and counter-terrorism roles and, if so, how many; whether US bases would come to symbolize a permanent imperial presence in that “graveyard of empires”; how many American and Afghan lives would be lost or permanently damaged; and how many trillions in additional deficits an unfunded war would cost. But a managed de-escalation is at least underway, and it has appeared to many, including the president, that we could turn our attention to other woes.
