How long until we understand that America is now owned by the American Empire, and President Obama is only a puppet, like a limp noodle on a string?
Carl Jarvis
The Militarized Surrealism of Barack Obama
Thursday 30 June 2011
by: Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch [3] | Op-Ed
It's already gone, having barely outlasted its moment -- just long enough
for the media to suggest that no one thought it added up to much.
Okay, it was a little more [4] than the military wanted [5], something less
than Joe Biden would have liked [6], not enough for the growing crew of
anti-war congressional types [7], but way too much for John McCain [8],
Lindsey Graham [9], & Co.
I'm talking about the 13 minutes of "remarks" [10] on "the way forward in
Afghanistan" that President Obama delivered [11] in the East Room of the
White House two Wednesday nights ago. ?
Tell me you weren't holding your breath wondering whether the 33,000 surge
troops he ordered into Afghanistan as 2009 ended would be removed in a
12-month, 14-month, or 18-month span.? Tell me you weren't gripped with
anxiety about whether 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, or 15,000 American soldiers
would come out this year (leaving either 95,000, 93,000, 88,000, or 83,000
behind)?
You weren't?? Well, if so, you were in good company.
Billed as the beginning of the end of the Afghan War, it should have been
big and it couldn't have been smaller.? The patented Obama words were meant
to soar, starting with a George W. Bush-style invocation of 9/11 and ending
with the usual copious blessings upon this country and our military.? But on
the evidence, they couldn't have fallen flatter.? I doubt I was alone in
thinking that it was like seeing Ronald Reagan on an unimaginably bad day in
an ad captioned [12] "It's never going to be morning again in America."
Idolator President
If you clicked Obama off that night or let the event slide instantly into
your mental trash can, I don't blame you.? Still, the president's Afghan
remarks shouldn't be sent down the memory hole quite so quickly.
For one thing, while the mainstream media's pundits and talking heads are
always raring to discuss his policy remarks, the words that frame them are
generally ignored -- and yet the discomfort of the moment can't be separated
from them. ?So start with this: whether by inclination, political
calculation, or some mix of the two, our president has become a rhetorical
idolator.
These days he can barely open his mouth without also bowing down before the
US military in ways that once would have struck Americans as embarrassing,
if not incomprehensible.? In addition, he regularly prostrates himself
before this country's special mission to the world and never ceases to
emphasize that the United States is indeed an exception among nations.?
Finally, in a way once alien to American presidents, he invokes [13] God's
blessing upon the military and the country as regularly as you brush your
teeth.
Think of these as the triumvirate without which no Obama foreign-policy
moment would be complete: greatest military, greatest nation, our God.? And
in this he follows directly, if awkwardly, in Bush's footsteps.
I wouldn't claim that Americans had never had such thoughts before, only
that presidents didn't feel required to say them in a mantra-like way just
about every time they appeared in public.? Sometimes, of course, when you
feel a compulsion to say the same things ad nauseam, you display weakness,
not strength; you reveal the most fantastic of fantasy worlds, not a deeper
reality.
The president's recent Afghan remarks were, in this sense, par for the
course.? As he plugged his plan to bring America's "long wars" to what he
called "a responsible end," he insisted that "[l]ike generations before, we
must embrace America's singular role in the course of human events."? He
then painted this flattering word portrait of us:
"We're a nation that brings our enemies to justice while adhering to the
rule of law, and respecting the rights of all our citizens.? We protect our
own freedom and prosperity by extending it to others.? We stand not for
empire, but for self-determination... and when our union is strong no hill
is too steep, no horizon is beyond our reach... we are bound together by the
creed that is written into our founding documents, and a conviction that the
United States of America is a country that can achieve whatever it sets out
to accomplish."
I know, I know.? You're wondering whether you just mainlined into a Sarah
Palin speech and your eyes are glazing over.? But hang in there, because
that's just a start.? For example, in an Obama speech of any sort, what
America's soldiers never lack is the extra adjective.? They aren't just
soldiers, but "our extraordinary men and women in uniform."? They aren't
just Americans, but "patriotic Americans."? (Since when did an American
president have to describe American soldiers as, of all things,
"patriotic"?)? And in case you missed the point that, in their
extraordinariness and their outsized patriotism they are better than other
Americans, he made sure to acknowledge them as the ones we "draw inspiration
from."
In a country that now "supports the troops" with bumper-sticker fervor [14]
but pays next to no attention to the wars they fight, perhaps Obama is
simply striving to be the premier twenty-first-century American.? Still, you
have to wonder what such presidential fawning, omnipresent enough to be
boilerplate, really represents.? The strange thing is we hear this sort of
thing all the time.? And yet no one ever comments on it.
Oh, and let's not forget that no significant White House moment ends these
days without the president bestowing God's blessing on the globe's most
extraordinary nation and its extraordinary fighters, or as he put it in his
Afghan remarks: "May God bless our troops.? And may God bless the United
States of America."
The day after he revealed his drawdown plan to the nation, the president
traveled to [15] Ft. Drum in New York State to thank soldiers from the
Army's 10th Mountain Division for their multiple deployments to
Afghanistan.? Before those extraordinary and patriotic Americans, he quite
naturally doubled down.
Summoning another tic of this presidential moment (and of the Bush one
before it), he told them [16] that they were part of "the finest fighting
force [17] in the world."? Even that evidently seemed inadequate, so he
upped the hyperbole. "I have no greater job," he told them, "nothing gives
me more honor than serving as your commander in chief.? To all of you who
are potentially going to be redeployed, just know that your commander in
chief has your back... God bless you, God bless the United States of
America, climb to glory."
As ever, all of this was overlooked.? Nowhere did a single commentator
wonder, for instance, whether an American president was really supposed to
feel that being commander in chief offered greater "honor" than being
president of a nation of citizens.? In another age, such a statement would
have registered as, at best, bizarre.? These days, no one even blinks.? ?
And yet who living in this riven, confused, semi-paralyzed country of ours
truly believes that, in 2011, Americans can achieve whatever we set out to
accomplish?? Who thinks that, not having [18] won a war in memory, the US
military is incontestably the finest fighting force now or ever (and on a
"climb to glory" at that), or that this country is at present specially
blessed by God, or that ours is a mission of selfless kindheartedness on
planet Earth??
Obama's remarks have no wings these days because they are ever more divorced
from reality.? Perhaps because this president in fawning mode is such an
uncomfortable sight, and because Americans generally feel so ill-at-ease
about their relationship to our wars, however, such remarks are neither
attacked nor defended, discussed nor debated, but as if by some unspoken
agreement simply ignored.?
Here, in any case, is what they aren't: effective rallying cries for a
nation in need of unity.? Here's what they may be: strange, defensive
artifacts of an imperial power in visible decline, part of what might be
imagined as the Great American Unraveling.? But hold that thought a moment.?
After all, the topic of the president's remarks was Afghanistan.
The Unreal War
If Obama framed his Afghan remarks in a rhetoric of militarized
super-national surrealism, then what he had to say about the future of the
war itself was deceptive in the extreme -- not lies perhaps, but full
falsehoods half told.? Consider just the two most important of them: that
his "surge" consisted only of 33,000 American troops and that "by next
summer," Americans are going to be so on the road to leaving Afghanistan
that it isn't funny.
Unfortunately, it just ain't so.? First of all, the real Obama surge was
minimally almost 55,000 and possibly 66,000 troops, depending on how you
count them.? When he came into office in January 2009, there were about
32,000 American troops in Afghanistan.? Another 11,000 [19] had been
designated to go in the last days of the Bush administration, but only
departed in the first Obama months.? In March 2009, the president announced
his own "new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan [20]" and dispatched
21,700 more troops.? Then, in December 2009 in a televised speech to the
nation from West Point, he announced [21] that another 30,000 would be
going. ?(With "support troops," it turned out to be 33,000.)
Independent journalism is important. Click here to get Truthout stories sent
to your email. [22]
In other words, in September 2012, 14 months from now, only about half the
actual troop surge of the Obama years will have been withdrawn.? In
addition, though seldom discussed, the Obama "surge" was hardly restricted
to troops [23].? There was a much ballyhooed "civilian surge [24]" of State
Department and aid types that more than tripled the "civilian" effort in
Afghanistan.? Their drawdown was recently addressed [25] by Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, but only in the vaguest of terms.
Then there was a major surge of CIA personnel [26] (along with US special
operations forces), and there's no indication [27] whatsoever that anyone in
Washington intends reductions there, or in the drone surge [28] that went
with it.? As a troop drawdown begins, CIA agents, those special ops forces
[29], and the drones [30] are clearly slated to remain at or beyond a surge
peak.
Finally, there was a surge in private contractors [31] -- hired foreign guns
and hired Afghans -- tens of thousands of them.? It goes unmentioned, as
does the surge in base building [32], which has yet to end [33], and the
surge in massive citadel-style embassy building [34] in the region, which is
assumedly ongoing.
All of this makes mincemeat of the idea that we are in the process of ending
the Afghan war. I know the president said, "Our mission will change from
combat to support.? By 2014, this process of transition will be complete,
and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security."? And that
was a foggy enough formulation that you might be forgiven for imagining more
or less everything will be over "by 2014" -- which, by the way, means not
January 1st, but December 31st of that year.
If what we know of US plans [35] in Afghanistan plays out, however, December
31, 2014, will be the date for the departure of the last of the full Obama
surge of 64,000 troops.? In other words, almost five years after Obama
entered office, more than 13 years after the Bush administration launched
its invasion, we could find ourselves back to or just below something close
to Bush-era troop levels. Tens of thousands of US forces would still be in
Afghanistan, some of them "combat troops" officially relabeled (as in Iraq
[36]) for less warlike activity.? All would be part of an American "support"
mission that would include huge numbers of "trainers" for the Afghan
security forces and also US special forces operatives and CIA types engaged
in "counterterror" activities in the country and region.
The US general in charge of training the Afghan military recently suggested
that his mission wouldn't be done until 2017 [37] (and no one who knows
anything about the country believes that an effective Afghan Army will be in
place then either). ?In addition, although the president didn't directly
mention this in his speech, the Obama administration has been involved in
quiet talks [38] with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to
nail down a "strategic partnership" agreement that would allow American
troops, spies, and air power to hunker down as "tenants" [39] on some of the
giant bases we've built.? There they would evidently remain for years, if
not decades [40] (as some reports have it).
In other words, on December 31, 2014, if all goes as planned, the US will be
girding for years more of wildly expensive war, even if in a slimmed down
form.? This is the reality, as American planners imagine it, behind the
president's speech.
Overstretched Empire
Of course, it's not for nothing that we regularly speak of the best laid
plans going awry, something that applies doubly, as in Afghanistan, to the
worst laid plans.? It's increasingly apparent that our disastrous wars are,
as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry recently
admitted, "unsustainable [41]."? After all, just the cost of providing?air
conditioning to US personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan -- $20 billion a
year -- is more than [42] NASA's total budget.
Yes, despite Washington's long lost dreams of a Pax Americana in the Greater
Middle East, some of its wars there are still being planned as if for a
near-eternity, while others are being intensified [43].? Those wars are
still fueled by overblown fears [44] of terrorism; encouraged by a National
Security Complex funded to the tune of more than $1.2 trillion [45] annually
by an atmosphere of permanent armed crisis; and run by a military that,
after a decade of not-so-creative destruction, can't stop doing what it
knows how to do best (which isn't winning a war).
Though Obama claims that the United States is no empire, all of this gives
modern meaning to the term "overstretched empire."? And it's not really much
of a mystery what happens to overextemded imperial powers that find
themselves fighting "little" wars they can't win, while their treasuries
head south.
The growing unease [46] in Washington about America's wars reflects a
dawning sense of genuine crisis, a sneaking suspicion even among hawkish
Republicans that they preside ineffectually over a great power in
precipitous decline.
Think, then, of the president's foreign-policy-cum-war speeches as ever more
unconvincing attempts to cover the suppurating wound that is Washington's
global war policy.? If you want to take the temperature of the present
crisis, you can do it through Obama's words.? The less they ring true, the
more discordant they seem in the face of reality, the more he fawns and
repeats his various mantras, the more uncomfortable he makes you feel, the
more you have the urge to look away, the deeper the crisis.
What will he say when the Great American Unraveling truly begins?
Copyright 2011 Tom Engelhardt
No comments:
Post a Comment