No one has conquered Afghanistan since Alexander the Great -- a point actually made, astonishingly enough, by McCain in the first debate, who didn't seem to appreciate its force. Mostly that didn't stick when the troops left whatever town they had just taken, although the Afghans, or many of them, paid "tribute," er, blackmail to Alexander while he lived, fortunately for them, not long. To the extent that Alexander's Afghan conquest stuck beyond that it did because he married a Bactrian (Afghan, we'd now say) princess, or chieftain's daughter, Roxanne. I don't think that Michelle Obama would approve of that solution (Roxanne is among other things, suspected of poisoning Alexanders first, Persian wife, Darius; daughter); and unlike today, polygamy was both legal and popular in Alexander's time and constituencies.
Be that as it may, what BHO actually says should be noted. He says he wants to send two more brigades" of new troops into Afghanistan. This would be a fairly significant escalation of the war. NATO has about 43,000 personnel (mostly noncombat, ratio these days is roughly 10:1) in Afghanistan, 26,000 of which are US. A US military brigade comprises 1,500 to 4,000 personnel, so this could mean as many as 8,000 new us troops, or a roughly 15% increase in the total number of NATO troops, an increase by a third of the number of US troops. But as a practical matter that is a drop in the bucket. It will not make any military difference whatsoever in a country where the Taliban and the warlords own everything outside three or four major cities.
Now BHO is a very smart guy who has highly competent military advice. He has to know this escalation won't do a damn thing militarily, and it's not even significant as an escalation compared to the withdrawal of 140,000 troops (plus, one presumes, a roughly equal number of contractor/mercenaries) from Iraq, even if BHO were to leave a residual force behind.
The BHO Afghan escalation proposal, like the threat to go after bin Ladin in Pakistan without asking if they find him (ha!) and the Pakistantis are unable or unwilling to "take him out," is purely for domestic consumption. It is meant to show a US audience that Democrats can be as aggressive and militaristic as Republicans, and to justify withdrawal from Iraq in the context of BHO's suggestion that that is the "wrong" war. It's a play for the US political middle.
That doesn't make BHO a wonderful guy and an ideal candidate of the left, although ending the Iraq war would be a real improvement from any sane political perspective. Apart from the young men and women the proposed Afghan escalation would put in harms way and those near them, and the extra Afghan civilians who will be killed by some of those troops, the Afghan idea is not a major military change.
What is really scary, though, and what no one I have heard discuss has remarked, is that both candidates, including BHO, want to get the former Soviet Republics, including Ukraine, into NATO. For people -- both McCain and BHO -- who sday they don't want to start a new cold war, that is a pretty strange way to go about it, because that is exactly what surrounding Russia with NATO countries, some of which used to be sister Republics and share extended borders with Russia, would do.
I do trust that the Russians will continue to be stable and cool-headed and not start shooting, but they will reignite the arms race, and we, of course, will "have" to respond, and we will back in the pre-perestroika era with the great power politics of the 19th century. That will be extremely expensive for countries that, like us, can't afford it, and extremely dangerous in terms is raising the geopolitical military temperature fought, if people are sane about it, through proxy wars. One doesn't really want top have to start thinking (again)( aboout what it means if they are not sane.
--- On Wed, 10/8/08, Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:
> From: Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us>
> Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Obama falters McCain the winner
> To: "Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and thethinkers he inspired" <marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu>
> Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2008, 9:56 AM
> >>> Doug Henwood
>
>
> > No, the distinct characteristic of Obama's
> position is that he
> > proposes a definite "timetable" for
> withdrawal as opposed to an
> > indefinite one or "eventually."
>
> Yeah, and he explicitly wants to take the troops withdrawn
> from Iraq
> and send them to Afghanistan. Surely you've noticed
> that.
>
> Doug
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Surely since you don't allow "conspiracy
> theories" of 9/11, it is
> your position that Bin Laden's group did 9/11. Is it
> your position
> that Bin Laden's group did 9/11, but the US shan't
> attack Bin Laden's
> group ? Given the premise that Bin Laden's group
> attacked the US on
> 9/11, I don't know of a legal argument against the US
> military
> counterattacking that group. Bin Laden's group is sort
> of unique in
> modern US imperialist history. No other "Third
> World" country or group
> has actually attacked the US, contrary to US lying
> propaganda about
> protecting American "freedom" through wars in
> Korea, Viet Nam,
> Nicaragua, Afghanistan-ante (!), etc.
>
> Iraq was the opposite. The attack there by the US violates
> the UN
> Convention against Crimes Against Peace.
>
> As far as imperialism, I don't really think the US
> wants to set up a
> colony or neo-colony in Afghanistan. There's not much
> to exploit
> there.
>
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