Ghosts of Vietnam
If early news accounts are correct, President Barack Obama will send over 30,000 new troops into Afghanistan to support and defend one of the most corrupt governments on earth. He will do so in part because during the last US Presidential Election liberals, while opposing the ruinous and disastrous Iraq war, painted the Afghanistan war as “the good war” perhaps because it was seen as more winnable.
But there is another reason. Wars fought overseas are real-life metaphors for political wars fought here at home. War abroad are ultimately about domestic politics; about the struggle for political supremacy in America. War, the old adage goes, is the sport of kings. In the US, war is the sport of political parties. She or he who sounds most hawkish, who shows political toughness with other peoples’ children will tend to prevail in the elections.
Afghanistan is thus a prop in a great play of little importance in and of itself but of great symbolic value in the long wars between right and left in the American body politic. It matters not one wit what Americans want, nor what party they belong to. US political parties are bought and paid for tools of great corporate and private wealth. Thus we see the spectacle of people voting for ostensibly anti-war candidates who once in office vow to more wars, more weapons, and more troops. Why? Because war is big business. It has been since the US Civil War when fortunes were made arming, feeding, and equipping troops.
War is never about what politicians say war is about. Afghanistan is no more about terrorism than Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction. Today, Britain is about to launch a rare parliamentary inquiry into how it got into the Iraq war. Isn’t it remarkable that they can ask questions after the war, but not before? Of course, they did so in fealty to their big brother, the US, for the basest of reasons, for politics and for profits.
From death row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal
November 29, 2009