Along with many people, I watched Obama’s speech announcing his plan to escalate the Afghanistan war with a “surge” of 30,000 more troops, and I’d like to offer my two cents: there is no military solution. As Scott Ritter, a former marine and UN weapons inspector, said on Truthdig.com on Nov. 5 2009, military commanders such as General McCrystal, who made the call for more troops, are trained in military campaigns of attack, defeat, and defend, not in larger political strategies. If their capacity is only the violent take-out of “the enemy,” Obama should not be listening to them in choosing a larger political strategy.
More troops simply means sending thousands of young Americans—many of whom are being forced to deploy beyond the commitment they “voluntarily” agreed to in their contract, many of whom are suffering from PTSD and Military Sexual Trauma (MST) from past deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan, and many of whom were recruited after high school by aggressive recruiters promising all types of educational and economic benefits—into a hostile environment.
It’s hostile, as Ritter says, because the American women and men are ARMED and are total FOREIGNERS—not understanding the cultures, languages, regions, governance systems, and economies, where they are deployed. As the 2008 Winter Soldier testimonies of Iraq Veterans Against the War (ivaw.org/wintersoldier) have shown, contemporary U.S. military culture is one based around misogyny, homophobia, and the racist dehumanization of “the other/the enemy.” It is based on killing and following orders. How can this lead to anything constructive?
So what the hell does it mean for these U.S. soldiers to be training Afghans to police, secure, and control their own people? How do they even communicate?
The cleanliness of the “surge-in-order-to-withdraw” argument is a perfect rhetorical move, but in complete disavowal of what it means to be engaged in warfare. Bringing over 30,000 new people, armed and in the uniform of the occupier, into a complex and complicated country is not going to be simple, clean, and straightforward, no matter the intent. It is tantamount to re-declaring war. It will only get more complicated for Obama. As the “resistance” (an umbrella word for so many things) increases, commanders will believe they need more troops, the infrastructure that is left will continue to be destroyed, and people of all genders, ages, and nationalities will die or become permanently maimed and damaged, physically and mentally.
Obama is at the top of a chain of command in which everyone is trained to follow orders from their superiors. This is a military trained for armed combat, destroying the enemy, and paranoid self-preservation. They have no place in Afghanistan. The best he can do is order them home—and write a blank check for all of their healthcare needs.
As for the soldiers, they can refuse to deploy. Just go to CourageToResist.org and Resister.ca to see some of the many who are resisting deployment as we speak.
Lucas Guilkey is a member of the class of 2010.
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