Our Weekly Discontents, 4/19/2021
Long live The Forever War.
Hello again! Derek from Foreign Exchanges here. America’s War in Afghanistan has lasted long enough that a US service member who had not been born when it started could be serving in it today. This conflict, undertaken in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has continued on for a decade past the 2011 death of man responsible for them, former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In an age of “forever wars,” in some circles it has come to be known as The Forever War, owing partly to its length but more to a pervasive sense that its objectives—if they ever were defined—long ago lost any vestige of coherence.
This week we learned that the Afghan war, which celebrated its 19th birthday last October, probably will not see its 20th. President Joe Biden on Wednesday unveiled his plan for the full withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, beginning on May 1 and proceeding in phases until its completion no later than September 11, 2021. The 20th anniversary of 9/11 will, it seems, witness the end of one of the wars it spawned. Or, at least, of America’s role in that war.
Predictably, Biden’s announcement sparked a range of reactions. Writing for Foreign Policy, the Quincy Institute’s Stephen Wertheim praised Biden not just for setting a withdrawal date, but for making the case against all “forever wars”:
Biden made a final argument pregnant with meaning for the United States’ role in the world. “I know there are many who will loudly insist that diplomacy cannot succeed without a robust U.S. military presence to stand as leverage,” he acknowledged. A decade of experience proved otherwise. “Our diplomacy does not hinge on having boots in harm’s way—U.S. boots on the ground,” he said. “We have to change that thinking.” Biden alluded to a general mistake in U.S. calculations: Diplomacy—and with it, perhaps, the promotion of values and rights—did not require armed force to be effective. In fact, force could inhibit the engagement that counted. It could turn U.S. troops, Biden warned, into a “bargaining chip between warring parties in other countries.” Endless war entangled the United States. For Biden, it was past time to end it.
On the other side, the Trilateral Commission’s Meghan O’Sullivan (who also, it may be worth noting, serves on the board of Raytheon Technologies, one of the largest defense contractors in the United States) and Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass took to the Washington Post to lament Biden’s decision. They deserve some credit for dispensing with the oft-abused pretense that a grand success in Afghanistan is just around the corner—the next six months will be key!—and openly acknowledging that what the defenders of this war want is, truly, a forever war: an indeterminate, really endless, US military presence in Afghanistan that is charged not with achieving the definable end of the conflict, but with simply Being There to manage the perpetual status quo. The purpose is not “victory,” in the generally understood sense of that word, but stasis—policing the frontier of the American Empire.
For Haass and O’Sullivan, the costs of remaining in Afghanistan in perpetuity vastly outweigh what they view as the risks of leaving, and why shouldn’t they? Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan do not have to fear deployment—theirs or their loved ones’—to Afghanistan to fight and perhaps die in a war for reasons that are at best theoretical (the fear of another 9/11 planned and launched from Afghan soil). They certainly do not have to fear life in an active war zone, as the Afghan people have had to fear for almost 20 years. To them, this isn’t much more than an academic exercise, a case study in the theory that America cannot lose a war that it simply refuses to stop fighting.
Many defenses of continuing the US role in Afghanistan evince concern that the gains made by Afghan civil society over the past 20 years—for women in particular, but also for at risk ethnic and religious communities—will be lost. Those gains have indeed been real, if largely confined to Kabul and its environs, and they will be at risk if the United States withdraws. They further note that the US departure will not end Afghanistan’s war—the Taliban and the government the US established to replace it will almost certainly have to work out their own struggle for the future of Afghanistan, whether that comes by negotiation or (more likely) through force of arms.
But these arguments begin to fall apart when one reckons with the sheer length of the war. If the United States and its Afghan client have not by now created a set of conditions under which those gains can be protected and the Afghan government can win its war against the Taliban, there is no reason to expect they ever will. Again we’re left to ponder an indefinite occupation, made more perverse by the fact that, as Wertheim points out, the US presence in Afghanistan makes the conflict more, not less, intractable. With the US gone, the war will not end immediately, but it can finally end. It may not be a happy ending, but at least it will be an ending. For many Afghans whose experience of US military occupation has been more “CIA-backed death squad” than “girls in school” and more “drone strike” than “democracy,” that may be enough.
Of course, this all assumes the US is really leaving. Biden’s announcement was not welcomed by the Taliban, which had already negotiated a May 1 US withdrawal date with the Trump administration and is now being told that date will only mark the beginning of the withdrawal, not its end. The Taliban has already promised to boycott any further peace efforts until all foreign soldiers have left Afghanistan. It may resume regular attacks on those foreign soldiers, after having agreed to go easier on them as part of its arrangement with Donald Trump. A stalled peace process, combined with a Taliban escalation, will put pressure on Biden to modify or even abandon his withdrawal plans.
Beyond the hypothetical, courtesy of the New York Times we learned this past week that the Biden administration isn’t exactly planning to leave Afghanistan alone. It will of course continue to send aid to the Afghan government, which was expected. But it is also already in talks with Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors about the possibility of housing a long-term US military presence, ostensibly intended to handle counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Afghanistan.
There is a certain absurdity to announcing a “withdrawal” from Afghanistan while positioning strike teams and drones in nearby countries so as to continue attacking targets inside Afghanistan. And the slope from “counter-terrorism” operations to continued involvement in the war against the Taliban could prove to be conveniently slippery. But in a broader sense, what this NYT report shows is the United States does intend to keep policing the imperial frontier, it’s just shifting the logistics a little bit. It shows that Biden, for all his talk about ending endless wars, isn’t prepared to apply that logic beyond Afghanistan. In truth, The Forever War is has never been the one in Afghanistan. It’s the War on Terror, in which Afghanistan is just one of several fronts. It would seem that, at least for now, that war is going to keep chugging along.
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Cruel and Usual
Shane Ferro
Every time there is yet another gun-related tragedy in the United States I return to my very conflicted feelings about gun policy. Specifically, that an effort to “get guns off the street” in purportedly blue cities and states translates to locking up mostly young, mostly Black individuals for years, creating “felons,” for simply possessing weapons that would be perfectly acceptable to own and carry openly in another part of the country. Meanwhile, guns and gun violence are still everywhere, even and especially in these cities and states that take a real Tough On Crime approach to possession.
So who are these laws really helping?
Welcome to Hell World
Luke O’Neil
Things in Canada look pretty fucked right now in terms of Covid. It’s honestly disorienting to hear about from an American perspective just as it seems like we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel down here. In order to get to the bottom of why our neighbors to the north seem to be fully chunking it on a third wave of Covid I asked over a dozen Canadians to explain what’s happening. So here is that. It’s like 8,000 words of Canadians just motherfucking their government over and over.
Earlier this week I sent out this Hell World to paying subscribers. It’s a discussion with a palliative care nurse practitioner about how his job changed during the onslaught of Covid and what it feels like to be the person who has to explain to so many patients that they are going to die. It’s really depressing! Even grading on a curve for what I normally cover.
What do people tend to say at the end of life? When they know they’re about to die? Are there any common themes?
It’s really unpredictable how somebody is going to react to the news. Largely people immediately have regrets. I hate to say that. It’s human nature to not expect yourself to die. As the protagonist of reality you don’t expect that you’re ever going to die or not be around…
A lot of times people deal with the news well. When that happens I sit down with them and say tell me about your life. Tell me what you did. A common thread I’ve seen is that if somebody felt loved during their life they have an easier time accepting the end of their life. It’s not a matter of success or accomplishment but if someone just feels like there was another person who cared for them when they were alive… The tragedy is that I’m not going to see my wife again, but at least I had that person caring for me the whole time.
Prior to that I published this absolutely gorgeous essay on memory and loss and memory loss by Irish writer Sean McTiernan.
I’ve been thinking about my grandmother. It's not an anniversary or anything, she's still just dead like always. I’m thinking of a simple painting of a figure alone in a boat. She made it as a prescribed activity in the amazing home she spent her final years in while suffering from dementia after a severe stroke.
Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future
Patrick Wyman
Whether we’re fully aware of it or not, we’re pretty locked into an evolutionary view of how societies develop over time: hunting and gathering and wandering the land, then farming and living in one place, then the emergence of elites, cities, states, and what we think of as civilization, in an inevitable march leading up to the present day. It’s essentially the line we’ve been fed for the past couple of centuries, from the Enlightenment through the middle of the 20th century, and thence to the textbooks and other sources from which most of were taught.
The only problem with that formula, that linear path of development, is that it’s bullshit. That’s not how any of this works. Hunter-gatherers aren’t necessarily mobile, farmers don’t necessarily live in one place, cities can exist without social hierarchies, and none of it is inevitable.
Around 10,000 years ago, people living in the remote, forbidding Highlands of New Guinea began experimenting with unique forms of agriculture. They transplanted bananas, taro, and yams from down the mountainsides up the slopes, cleared some of the forest, and then constructed mounds and drainage channels to help grow their crops. This was an independent invention of agriculture, one that has lasted all the way up to the present, but it never led to massive cities, states, institutionalized inequality, or any of the other things we associate with quote-unquote “civilization.”
Wars of Future Past
Kelsey D. Atherton
The Minnesota National Guard deploying to support police against protestors is, at this point, so cliche it was subject to an Onion story. Telling the story visually means either having a photographer on the ground, or it means leaning on the photographs the Guard itself publishes. This support is formally called “Operation Safety Net,” and quick search of the term on DVIDSHub will lead one to public domain images of masked guards, parked armored vehicles, and calm daytime checkpoints.
In the pictures of guards standing around, the rifles are all held in the official “ready but not threatening” angle, barrels down and fingers off the trigger. Whether that stance is enough to calm people in the streets against murder by the state, people who now see evidence of military occupation on top of police violence, is unlikely, but that rifle stance is the image the military wants project.
“The closer your topic is to the publicly-acknowledged, routine actions of the uniformed U.S. military, the easier it is to find high-quality graphics you can use,” political scientist and writer Paul Musgrave told me in the last Wars of Future Past, as part of our conversation on the military and public domain.
“The farther away [from routine action], the more impossible it becomes very quickly, even with allied forces,” Musgrave continues. There’s an abundance of images about war that the military wants people to see, and it’s all calm rifle angles on peace-kept streets.
Discourse Blog
Hi everyone, Crosbie here for Discourse Blog. It is almost certain now that this summer will be just like the last. That’s both encouraging and defiant, as it’s clear that Americans’ desire to protest the continued injustice of police violence has not waned, and also completely absurd, as it means that the system of state violence is as strong as ever. More than three people have died at the hands of police every day since the trial for George Floyd’s killer Derek Chauvin began.
Here’s how we’re covering this. Sam Grasso wrote about the fallacy of looking to more police to solve growing anti-Asian hate crimes, and about the futility of “reform” for policing overall. Katherine Krueger wrote about the American hero “Soup for my Family” protester. Jack Mirkinson wrote about the Cop News Network and about notoriously pro-cop Andrew Yang getting booted from a Daunte Wright protest, as well as the police’s disgusting defense of Daunte Wright’s killing.
We had plenty of other blogs as well: Paul wrote about Duke’s anti-union movement, Jack covered the end of the Afghanistan war (if that happens) and the new protofascist caucus, but it’s pretty clear what the big story is going to be for the next few months. See you next week.
The Flashpoint
Eoin Higgins
Last week at The Flashpoint I revealed that Boston Police Sergeant Clifton McHale, who bragged about using his car to run down protesters last summer, is back on duty despite an ongoing investigation into his actions.
Here's what attorney Carl Williams, who passed me the 66 hours of body cam video that made up the bulk of my reporting in December that broke the story of how BPD treated demonstrators, reacted to the news that McHale is on desk duty:
"With new leadership in the city of Boston there is some hope for a change in the violent culture and practice of the Boston Police Department. There could even be hope for some accountability but with the reinstatement of Sgt. Clifton McHale it is looking like the same old story. And that is a story of impunity for the police."
More at the link, and more on BPD to come.
The Insurgents
Jordan Uhl & Rob Rousseau
This week we’re talking about Joe Biden’s announcement of the end of the US occupation of Afghanistan with writer & community organizer Arash Azizzada and culture writer & podcast producer Sarah Sahim. Is the war actually ending or is it just being privatized? How does this current war fit into the historical context of the various empires that have attemped and failed to occupy Afghanistan? How are folks in the international Afghan diaspora reacting to this current news? Also, when are Zelda and Ganon going to stop playing footsie and begin the intimate physical relationship that we all know they both want? Believe it or not, all these questions will be answered in this episode. The full conversation is for subscribers only so please consider subscribing if you want to listen beyond the free preview.
Kim Kelly
Hey pals, my latest post was about my visit to the Warrior Met coal mine in Brookwood, Alabama, where 1,100 United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) members have been on strike since April 1st. As they stare down the barrel of their third week on strike, one of my sources down there couldn’t tell me when he thought they’d reach an agreement; he heard that the company’s negotiators are “on vacation,” and that they’re trying to starve the miners out. You can check out the video report I did for Means TV here. (My Patreon posts on this are subscriber-only, which I know is annoying, but I’m trying to get together enough scratch to go back down there to keep reporting on the strike!).
“That’s what money and greed does to people,” that miner told me in a text message. “And it’s sad for real because I know what every man down there has been through, and they have gotten many big bonuses from us, but they don’t want to give us anything for it.”
BORDER/LINES
Gaby Del Valle & Felipe De La Hoz
In keeping with our “that Joe Biden sure is bad on immigration, huh” theme, last week’s newsletter was all about how the Biden administration is engaging in the bipartisan tradition of pushing the “border” further and further south. Last week, the White House press secretary said the Biden administration had reached agreements with Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico to enhance border security in the three countries in order to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S.
The idea of using foreign security forces to prevent migration to the U.S. isn’t new. Trump strong-armed the Mexican government into deploying troops to the country’s southern border in 2019, threatening to impose tariffs on Mexico if it failed to limit Central American migration. Biden’s approach seems more carrot than stick—the administration is offering financial and logistical support and is reportedly offering to send vaccines abroad in exchange for border enforcement—but the desired result is the same.
The U.S. has a legal responsibility to asylum seekers; if someone arrives at the border seeking protection, they’re supposed to get a fair day in court and, if they meet the criteria for asylum, are supposed to be granted it. That hardly happens as it is. By extending the border further and further south, the Biden administration—like its predecessors—is working to prevent the first step of the asylum process from even happening. After all, if asylum seekers can’t make it here in the first place, then they can’t file a claim, and if they can’t file a claim, they can’t stay.
Foreign Exchanges
Derek Davison
Over the weekend, the Financial Times broke the news that Saudi and Iranian representatives held an under-the-radar negotiating session in Baghdad, brokered by the Iraqi government, earlier this month. This would mark the first time representatives of the two countries have spoken directly since 2016. The full agenda for that meeting is unknown but the main focus seems to have been on finding a way out of the morass in Yemen, and the meeting evidently went well enough that, according to FT, the parties are planning to hold another perhaps as soon as this week. The Iranian government is suggesting that FT’s report was unfounded, but I suspect that’s meant to avoid angering hardline, anti-diplomacy elements within Iranian politics.
Assuming they are taking place, these negotiations are at a much too early stage to draw any conclusions, but the fact that they’re happening at all is an interesting commentary on what happens when the United States stops inflaming regional tensions. The Biden administration hasn’t really done anything substantive to shift US policy in the Persian Gulf, but simply the suggestion that it will be less indulgent of the Saudis and more interested in talking with the Iranians than was its predecessor seems to have sparked a fairly significant diplomatic development.