Obama Extends Unending US War in Afghanistan

Friday, October 16, 2015
By Paul Martin

By Bill Van Auken
Global Research
October 16, 2015

President Barack Obama Thursday publicly rescinded his previously declared proposal for drawing down the US military force occupying Afghanistan and adopted a plan dictated by the Pentagon to keep the remaining 10,000 troops in place, likely beyond the end of his presidency.

“As you are well aware,” Obama said in his speech Thursday, addressing himself to the American people, “I do not support the idea of endless war.”

The “idea,” i.e., the phony rhetoric of hope and change, has long since become a tired joke. As the pliant mouthpiece of the military and intelligence apparatus that dominates the American state, the US president has assured that “endless” and ever-expanding war is an undeniable reality.

Obama cynically dropped his previous argument that keeping US troops in Afghanistan indefinitely, at the current cost of roughly $35 billion a year, was neither fiscally nor politically justifiable. While his administration can find no money for jobs, education, health care or other vital social needs, unlimited resources are always on offer for America’s war machine.

The decision to upend the US timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan comes little more than a year after Obama ordered thousands of US troops back into Iraq and launched an air war in both that country and neighboring Syria.

The immediate impetus for Obama’s scrapping of the planned reduction in troop strength in Afghanistan is of a piece with the motive for sending US troops back into Iraq: the spectacular collapse of puppet security forces trained and armed by the Pentagon at the cost, in the case of the Afghan forces, of $65 billion.

The Iraqi security forces fled with virtually no resistance in the face of an offensive by a much smaller force, handing over Mosul, the country’s second largest city, to ISIS. A virtual carbon copy of this episode unfolded at the end of last month in Kunduz, the strategic center of Afghanistan’s northeast, when the Afghan army and police melted away in front of a force of several hundred Taliban fighters. In both cases, the puppet security forces left behind tons of US arms and military equipment.

In both countries, well over a decade of war and the expenditure of trillions of dollars have produced only a debacle for US imperialism, together with death and destruction for millions of Iraqis and Afghans.

The Rest…HERE

Leave a Reply

Join the revolution in 2018. Revolution Radio is 100% volunteer ran. Any contributions are greatly appreciated. God bless!

Follow us on Twitter