When U.S. rulers hype old news from Afghanistan, one has to wonder what’s really happening. The NY Times, a leading ruling-class mouthpiece, treated the recent Wikileaking of old Afghan war documents from the Bush, Jr. era as a blockbuster exposé. In June 2010, the Pentagon re-released a 2007 geological study identifying a trillion-dollar Afghan treasure trove of minerals. Hardly breaking news, these sudden front-page “revelations” reflect major policy disputes within the capitalist class.
Phony Peacenik Wikileaks Aids War-Makers’ Planning
Wikileaks is by no means anti-war (see box). Rather it focuses ruling-class and public attention on the unresolved question of what form of murder best serves U.S. imperialism in Afghanistan. The rulers have two main choices, counterinsurgency or counterterrorism:
• Counter-insurgency amounts to full-scale, vastly expensive colonial occupation that subjugates the entire population, largely through the deadly seizure of cities;
• Counter-terrorism, less costly and perhaps less effective for U.S. invaders, targets suspected al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and allies for assassination in hopes that the rank and file will see the pro-U.S. light.
Wikileaks’ 92,000 dumped memos disclose long-known facts bearing on this debate: U.S. and allied forces have killed thousands of Afghan civilians, thus unintentionally swelling pro-Taliban sentiment; since 2001, the U.S. has employed Special Operations death squads; U.S. “ally” Pakistan aids the Afghan Taliban; and U.S. puppet Afghan ruler Karzai is crooked and unreliable.
Obama & Co. waver on Afghan tactics. Obama at first stressed counter-insurgency with his 30,000-soldier surge. Now with U.S. forces stretched close to the breaking point, counter-terrorism seems to reign in the White House. Richard Haass, president of the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the leading U.S. imperialist think-tank, wrote in Newsweek (7/18/10): “The military price [for counter-insurgency in Afghanistan] is also great, not just in lives and material but also in distraction, at a time when the United States could well face crises with Iran and North Korea.”
Wikileaks, emphasizing obstacles to nation-building, justifies the rulers’ current shift away from old-style colonialism towards assassination. The Times (8/1/10) reports, “Eight months later, that counterinsurgency strategy has shown little success, as demonstrated by the flagging military and civilian operations in Marja and Kandahar and the spread of Taliban influence in other areas of the country. Instead, what has turned out to work well is an approach American officials have talked much less about: counterterrorism, military-speak for the targeted killings of insurgents from Al Qaeda and the Taliban.”
Naked U.S. War-makers Feel A Draft
But there’s an even bigger war story the bosses can’t put on the front page or in prime time because they haven’t yet won the working class, or their own class, to the unity and sacrifice needed for wider conflict. It concerns the rulers’ covert plans to restore the draft and militarize industry, if fighting extends beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. The recently-issued “Final Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel,” ordered by Congress, has buried it on page 64:
“[T]he Panel is concerned that an expansion of the [military] force might be necessary in response to an unexpected attack; to support a longer term, more intensive combat circumstance than Iraq and Afghanistan; or perhaps operations on a third front. While the nation has a Selective Service System, we don‘t see that it has a matching plan even in concept to train and equip an expansion of either conscripts or volunteers and recommend that such a concept plan be prepared. The industrial base has long been a concern and while we should not prop up businesses that cannot survive on their own, neither should we be without the ability to ramp up production in response to crisis.”
Military Focus on Afghan Pipeline?
Or on Minerals?
Afghanistan’s newly-trumpeted mineral wealth underscores another policy quandary for U.S. rulers. Should the main economic goal of U.S.-led military efforts be to secure the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, or should it be to secure access to Afghan iron, copper and lithium?
Geography plays a role as crucial as politics here. If absolute U.S. control of TAPI is paramount, Obama must lead the U.S. war machine in counter-insurgency to forcibly seize the southern, Taliban-dominated Afghan provinces of Kandahar and Helmand through which TAPI will run. TAPI has important ramifications in the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry. “India has recently reaffirmed its interest in progressing with the TAPI pipeline project. Considerations other than commercial may be contributing to this [such as] countering the expanding presence of China in Central Asia.” (“Journal of Energy Security,” 7/26/10)
Minerals, however, lie in abundance in Afghanistan’s northern, western and eastern regions, according to a 2004-2007 study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) publicized this June by the Defense Department. These findings alter U.S. imperialism’s troop-basing requirements.
CFR’s Haass suggests (Newsweek article) a “de facto partition of Afghanistan. Under this approach, the United States would accept Taliban control of the Pashtun-dominated south so long as the Taliban did not welcome back Al Qaeda and did not seek to undermine stability in non-Pashtun areas of the country. If the Taliban violated these rules, the United States would attack them with bombers, drones, and Special Forces. U.S. economic and military support would continue to flow to non-Pashtun Afghans in the north and west of the country.” Haass needn’t mention the east, the border with Pakistan, Osama bin Laden’s hideaway, which gets permanent U.S. attention.
Haass’s redeployment scheme is consistent with both Wikileaks and the Pentagon/USGS. Minerals may, in fact, hold greater importance for U.S. bosses. The report calls Afghanistan the Saudi Arabia of lithium, an essential ingredient in batteries from cell phones to electric cars. And the exploding economy of U.S. competitor China needs iron and copper.
Workers shouldn’t fall for the Wikileakers’ fake pacifism. To effectively oppose U.S. wars with Iraqi, Afghan, Iranian and Chinese or other bosses, we must destroy the profit system which creates this deadly imperialist rivalry. Smashing capitalism will take a communist revolution, which is why we strive to bring this understanding to the rank and file in the shops and unions, in the schools and military, churches and other mass organizations. Such is our Party’s ultimate goal. J
Wikileaks: Another Liberal Rulers’ Mouthpiece
Wikileaks didn’t fall from the sky. Its mastermind Julian Assange sports a lengthening liberal imperialist pedigree. In June, a profile in the ultra-liberal, Establishment New Yorker magazine canonized him as a quirky but supremely well intentioned truth seeker. Assange and pals were front-runners for a $500,000 grant from the Knight Foundation whose president, Alberto Ibarguen, sits on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, the top U.S. imperialist think tank. Knight eventually turned Assange down, but only when dealing with the Times proved far more lucrative to liberal rulers in terms of public opinion. The Rockefeller-led liberal cabal of National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting System, and Corporation for Public Broadcasting have become, through their grantees Radio Pacifica and its “Democracy Now” program, the main media defenders of Assange and his Army intelligence mole Private Bradley Manning.
