The media is buzzing in anticipation of the impending launch of Operation Moshtarak in Marja, Afghanistan. It will be the biggest military operation of the war so far, and, in many ways, the first fruit of President Obama’s repeated choices to add more troops and firepower to the mess that is the Afghanistan war. Marja is fairly densely populated area in Afghanistan: 85,000 in Marja proper and about 45,000 in the surrounding region. Missteps or neglegence on the part of the military could be tragic, to say the least. U.S. commanders are talking out of both sides of their mouths, promising the revelation of the oft-promised humane war while promising to rain death on our enemies.
What’s got me the most worried is the spadework being done for some sickeningly familiar hand-washing. One could announce one is about to attack a given location to reduce civilian casualties. One can also give said announcement if one plans on taking the gloves off–that way when innocent people die, you can say, “They were warned. They should have left when they had the chance.” The most vulnerable victims can fall into your trap of moral exculpation.
Marja. Fallujah. New Orleans.
Recall Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004:
Before the second Fallujah offensive, Willingham remembers seeing American planes drop flyers ordering citizens to leave the city.
“The flyers let them know we were getting ready to start bombing the city, (and) anyone who stayed we assumed was an insurgent,” Willingham said.
The Fallujah attacks created more than 200,000 internally displaced people and thousands of civilians were killed (predictable, considering that everyone remaining inside the city was treated as an insurgent). Estimates of the dead vary widely. Some exceed 6,000 people. Dispute the exact numbers if you like. The Fallujah operations were a fiasco. The coalition forces devastated the city. They killed many innocent people. Remember that. That’s what happens when you give an evacuation order to a populated area and then treat those left behind as if it’s their fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Remember New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Katrina. Remember that residents were warned to flee. Remember that despite notice of the oncoming storm, some couldn’t leave.
While some blamed public officials for not responding soon enough, others blamed the victims for not evacuating when they knew the hurricane’s arrival was imminent. One fundamental insight of social science is to understand the illogic of blaming the victim (Ryan 1976)…
New Orleans is a city in which 27.9 percent of residents live below the poverty line, 11.7 percent are age 65 or older, only 74.7 percent are high school graduates and 27.3 percent of households do not have cars. Furthermore, a larger than average percentage of residents have disabilities: 10.3 percent of 5-20 year olds, 23.6 percent of 21-64 year olds, and 50.1 percent of those age 65 and older have disabilities according to the 2000 U.S. census. In addition, 77.4 percent of New Orleans residents were born in Louisiana and have lived most of their lives there. These statistics alone go far to explain why tens of thousands of the 500,000 residents of New Orleans did not evacuate; in so many ways they were more rooted in place than the average American.
…New Orleanians’ plans for evacuation were strongly shaped by their income-level, age, access to information, access to private transportation, their physical mobility and health, their occupations and their social networks outside of the city. These social characteristics translated into distinct evacuation strategies for different sectors of the population.
…
Low-income residents had fewer choices with respect to how to prepare for the imminent arrival of Katrina. Since the storm was at the end of the month and many low-income residents of New Orleans live from paycheck to paycheck, economic resources for evacuating were particularly scarce. …[L]ow-income New Orleanians are those who are least likely to own vehicles, making voluntary evacuation more costly and logistically more difficult.
…Not everyone can evacuate the city, even in a mandatory evacuation. Doctors, nurses, hospital employees, police officers, and other essential city and state employees remained in the city to perform their jobs. …Accounts from this group of people are harrowing and heroic and go far to explain why a total evacuation of the city was impossible.
…People living in social isolation and poverty, especially the elderly, the disabled, and those with chronic diseases, have scarce economic resources and social networks that are more locally concentrated and connect them to people in similar socioeconomic circumstances. Therefore, they are less able to use these social networks to evacuate before a hurricane or recuperate their losses after such an event.
Now, consider the poverty and state of social networks in Afghanistan. The country is one of the ten poorest in the world. GDP per capita is about $425 per year, and more than a third of that meager sum is consumed by corrupt officials demanding bribes, to say nothing of the illicit taxes the Taliban levy on goods. The adult literacy rate is just over 28 percent. We like to say Afghanistan is a “tribal” society, but in reality it is an atomized society, with geographically isolated social networks having been pulverized by decades of war. If many in New Orleans found it hard to evacuate, the residents of Marja will find it doubly so.
Judging by the L.A. Times article on the upcoming operation in Marja, the U.S. commander is saying all the right words when it comes to the issue of insulating the non-combatants from the carnage:
…[I]n the weeks leading up to the imminent offensive to take the Helmand River Valley town of Marja in southern Afghanistan, the Marines’ commander, Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, sat with dozens of Afghan tribal elders, drinking endless cups of sweet tea and offering reassurances that his top priority will be the safety of Afghan civilians.
“In counterinsurgency, the people are the prize,” Nicholson said…
That would be reassuring if Nicholson weren’t talking out of both sides of his mouth:
US Second Marine Expeditionary Force commander Larry Nicholson said that the evacuation of most civilians would give commanders leeway to use air-to-ground missiles, declaring that he was “not looking for a fair fight.”
ABC News quotes Nicholson explaining some truly worrisome logic:
Nicholson underscored the point saying a heavy handed approach will reduce the chance for civilian casualties.
“Our feeling is if you go big, strong and fast, you lessen the possibility of civilian casualties as opposed to a slow methodical rolling assault. You go in and you dominate. You overwhelm the enemy,” he said.
Okay, let’s put these two things together. Nicholson is telegraphing he’s letting the air strikes off the chain and that he intends to use rapid, furious attacks in Marja, and somehow that is supposed to lead to reduced civilian casualties. Well, that would be great if we didn’t already know that the single greatest cause of U.S.-caused civilian casualties was airstrikes in support of troops involved in intense firefights.
Now, one should give people the benefit of the doubt. Nicholson is gearing up for a fight, and when he speaks, he’s got at least two audiences: the Afghan public and his troops. So, one could just write this off as (pardon my French) a little bit of dick-swinging machismo meant to get his troops fired up and his enemies scared. But the problem is that he’s talking trash about using the tactic most responsible for U.S.-caused civilian casualties in a densely populated area, and if he follows through on his swagger, lots of people not a party to the conflict will be torn to pieces by U.S. munitions.
Oh, and “leaflets have been dropped in the Marja district, urging residents to get out of the area.” In a country with 28 percent literacy rates.
As residents flee Marja in advance of this operation, some that remain behind will be members of armed opposition groups like the Taliban. They will be mixed, however, with the poor, the elderly, the sick and the heroic who stay behind to help them.
Members of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, for God’s sake, remember Fallujah. Remember New Orleans. Remember who is really in those buildings. Remember that many of them are trapped, and that many of the trapped got there through a life of misery. Love your neighbor as yourself. Remember the least of these. And as for your enemies, remember, with God watching you, that you must love them, too.
For those of us here in the United States – remember those who are in the path of the hurricane. And remember that the hurricane is us.
Keeping the Spotlight on Afghanistan Tonight: Rethink Afghanistan’s Live Facebook Event
The State of the Union talking points distributed by the White House this morning seem to indicate that the president will only briefly discuss Afghanistan tonight, but we are working hard to keep the spotlight on the Afghanistan war. Tonight, join us for a State of the Union watch party streamed live on Rethink Afghanistan’s Facebook page.
Rethink Afghanistan’s Facebook campaign around the State of the Union address is really heating up. We’ve already been the focus of two big write-ups on techPresident and Mashable. Here’s what techPresident had to say:
But chattering on Twitter, or live-blogging it, which more than 2000 sites and organizations are apparently promising to do!–is hardly the only or best way to use a live event for online organizing. See, for example, what “Rethink Afghanistan,” a project of the Brave New Foundation, is doing tonight around the State of the Union, via its staffer Derrick Crowe, writing on OpenLeft:
…
Note how Rethink Afghanistan is using multiple layers of engagement. Its strategists understand that people have many choices for watching SOTU–all equally good–but the opportunity to share the experience with other like-minded activists can add extra value to the experience. They’re also planning to add value to the speech video by adding a chyron with a running tally of the cost of the war throughout the speech, and with liveblogging by the group’s founder, Robert Greenwald. Finally, they’re hoping they can get their activists to generate some live feedback in a highly visible place, the White House’s Facebook page.
Check out the Mashable piece for a full description of what we’ve been up to over the past few days on Facebook and how it ties in to tonight’s event. Here’s a rundown of the agenda for tonight:
- Rethink Afghanistan’s fan page will have a live stream of a part of Rethink Afghanistan (The Cost of War) prior to the speech at 8:30 p.m. Eastern / 5:30 p.m. Pacific.
- Then, we’ll carry a live stream of the State of the Union address.
- Brave New Foundation’s Robert Greenwald will be there for the conversation, and I’ll provide commentary and links to Afghanistan-related information.
- After the speech, our whole mob will head over to the White House’s Facebook page to share our thoughts on his Afghanistan comments.
Please join us tonight starting at 8:30 p.m. Eastern / 5:30 p.m. Pacific on Rethink Afghanistan’s Facebook fan page. Let’s keep the focus tonight on ending the war in Afghanistan. Hope to see you there.
President Obama will give his first State of the Union address on Wednesday night at 9 p.m. Eastern. Brave New Foundation’s Rethink Afghanistan campaign wants to make sure this isn’t just a time to sit and watch, but a time to get together with our friends and push back against the expanding Afghanistan war.
20,000 and Counting
On Friday, we asked our supporters to sign a simple petition to President Obama:
In your State of the Union address on January 27, 2010, I want you to provide a concrete exit strategy for our troops in Afghanistan that begins no later than July 2011 and which completes a withdrawal of combat troops no later than July 1, 2012.
More than 20,000 people signed it. Instead of just handing it to someone at the White House, petition signers are getting their message and the list of signers to the White House by posting it on the White House Facebook fan page. If you haven’t signed the petition, please do so.
No Applause, Please
Our friends over at TrueMajority are pushing their Members of Congress to refrain from applauding when the president talks about Afghanistan. The media and people at home notice when an applause line falls flat during the State of the Union, and we want our representatives to represent us by refusing to cheer for more wasted spending on a deadly war that doesn’t make us safer.
Rethink the State of the Union
Why watch the speech alone on TV when you can hang out with more than 11,000 people like you who want the Afghanistan war to end? Join the other fans of Rethink Afghanistan and watch the speech on our Facebook fan page.
- Rethink Afghanistan’s fan page will have a live stream of a part of Rethink Afghanistan (The Cost of War) prior to the speech at 8:15 p.m. Eastern.
- Then, we’ll carry a live stream of the State of the Union address.
- Brave New Foundation’s Robert Greenwald will be there for the conversation, and I’ll provide commentary and links to Afghanistan-related information.
- After the speech, our whole mob will head over to the White House’s Facebook page to share our thoughts on his Afghanistan comments.
We hope you’ll join us tomorrow night starting at 8:15 p.m. Eastern as our community gathers to rethink the State of the Union.
…I’ve started a great new job with Brave New Foundation, working on their Rethink Afghanistan campaign. This blog will start to refocus a bit on matters of faith and nonviolence in the coming few days, but for now, take a look at what I get paid to do now!
Reported Killing of Children Haunts Foreign Forces as Protests Erupt Across Afghanistan
KABUL (AP) — Thousands of Afghans shouting ”Death to America!” protested the killings of children Thursday, the latest in a string of controversial cases in which international forces have been blamed for civilian deaths.
NATO troops were among those killed in Wednesday’s blast, which the Afghan Interior Ministry attributed to a detonated roadside mine. However, Afghans were already enraged by accusations of execution-style killing of children by foreign forces in late December, and the taint of that incident made the protesters more than willing to attribute blame to coalition forces:
On Wednesday, an explosion tore through a group of children gathered around foreign soldiers visiting a U.S.-funded road project in Nangarhar province, east of the capital of Kabul. Afghan officials said four children were killed. NATO said two died.
Minutes after the blast, local residents were accusing American forces of throwing a grenade into the crowd — even though several international troops were among the wounded. The Afghan Interior Ministry later released a statement saying the explosion occurred when a passing police vehicle hit a mine.
Still, an estimated 5,000 protesters demonstrated the deaths Thursday along a road between Kabul and Jalalabad in Nangarhar. They waved a banner condemning the attack, set fire to an effigy of President Barack Obama and chanted ”Long live Islam!” and ”Death to Obama!”
This is the latest in a series of protests against foreign troops that erupted across Afghanistan over the past several weeks. Protests erupted in late December in Kabul and Jalalabad over the killing of children by foreign forces in Ghazi Khan in late December. In early December, hundreds of Afghans protested in Mehtar Lam after an airstrike reportedly killed 12 civilians (NATO initially denied the deaths and then had to walk it back pending investigations, as usual).
According to a recent report by the Afghanistan Rights Monitor, an average of three children are killed per day by the Afghanistan war.
Cross-posted at Rethink Afghanistan.
Dear New York Times: When Eight Children (Not Men) Get Executed by Foreign Forces, “Karzai vs. U.S.” Is Not the Story
Alissa J. Rubin’s and Abdul Waheed Wafa’s story on the reported execution of eight Afghan boys demonstrates journalistic incompetence or intentional propaganda tactics in the lede:
KABUL, Afghanistan — The killing of at least nine men in a remote valley of eastern Afghanistan by a joint operation of Afghan and American forces put President Hamid Karzai and senior NATO officials at odds on Monday over whether those killed had been civilians or Taliban insurgents.
First of all, these were not “men.” They were boys. The youngest was 11, and the oldest was 17, all of which would be considered children were they not scary brown people in a country we’re bombing.
The military often dismisses this distinction with such euphemisms as, “They’re fighting-age.”
But get this through your stenographic skulls, corporate press: even if these kids were uniformed members of some local militia wearing bandoleers of grenades and toting bazookas, the correct term would be child soldiers.
But, of course, child soldiers is a term that evokes sympathy and tragedy, while “men” of “fighting age” evokes threat and violence.
Rubin and Wafa use the word “men” four times, at least once as a statement of fact without attributing the characterization to anyone. By contrast, the term “schoolboys” is used only once, and then portrayed it only as Karzai’s characterization of the dead.
But the larger issue here is the total deflection of the actual story in the lede. This is not a story about a spat between Karzai and NATO. This is a story about allegations of execution-style killings carried out by coalition forces. For comparison, see the Times UK story on the same incident:
American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead.
That accusation is the story, and is far more relevant to the crisis in Afghanistan than The New York Times’ amateurish “he-said-she-said” narrative.
For a much more detailed comparison of the two stories, see this post by Dave Lindorff which brought this to my attention.
To learn more about civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan, watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part 4): Civilian Casualties.
Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. The views expressed are his own. Visit RethinkAfghanistan.com to send your loved ones a video that matches your concerns about the war in Afghanistan.
It’s been a terrible year for the U.S. in Afghanistan. After endless policy reviews and two huge shipments of young people and weapons to the Graveyard of Empires, here’s what we’ve got to show for it:
- Double the military casualties of the prior year,
- An unbelievably corrupt election that obliterated hopes for “legitimacy” for the Afghan government,
- A large increase in the number of noncombatant locals that the U.S. or anti-Afghan-government elements have inadvertently slaughtered, and
- P.R. nightmare after
- P.R. nightmare.
The year was capped by the reported killing of school children by an international raid. Protests erupted. The locals burned President Obama in effigy. Good riddance, 2009.
While it was a terrible year in Afghanistan for you, America, it was a great year for China. The People’s Republic just locked in rights to one of the richest copper supplies on Earth:
While the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda here, China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.
…
“We do the heavy lifting,” [Central Asia-Caucasus Institute chairman S. Frederick Starr] said. “And they pick the fruit.”
While China reaps the payoff, we continue to pay the costs.
According to the National Priorities Project’s Jo Comerford, we’re spending $57,077.60 per minute in Afghanistan just for the latest 30,000-troop escalation. The total per-hour cost is around $12 million. With the money we’ll spend to ship our young men and women and equipment to Afghanistan, we could have instead created “537,810 construction jobs, 541,080 positions in healthcare, fund 742,740 teachers or employ 831,390 mass transit workers.” Or doubled the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
But by all means, let’s keep sending our neighbors and our neighbors’ kids to Afghanistan to ensure China’s economy stays on track.
Learn more: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Three): The Costs of War.
Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. The views expressed are his own. Visit RethinkAfghanistan.com to send your loved ones a video that matches your concerns about the war in Afghanistan.
Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. The views expressed are his own. Sign our CREDO petition to reject escalation in Afghanistan & join Brave New Foundation’s #NoWar candlelight vigil on Facebook and Twitter. But make these your first steps as an activist to end this war, not your last.
The United Nations says the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan increased in 2009 over 2008. According to the UN, in the first 10 months of this year 2,038 civilians died as opposed to 1,838 during the same period last year, an increase of 10.8 percent.
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) says the vast majority of civilian deaths were due to fighting between Taliban rebels and pro-government forces. The UNAMA says 468 Afghan civilians were killed by either Afghan government forces, the US military or NATO troops.
These new numbers show that the conflict is far more dangerous for civilians than for combatants, due in large part to the use of IEDs by anti-Afghan-government forces and to the use of airstrikes by coalition forces.
Learn more about Afghan civilian casualties at Rethink Afghanistan.
In a midterm election, you live or die by your base. The party that motivates its base to donate, volunteer and vote more effectively than the other will pick up seats in Congress. Unfortunately for Democratic incumbents, their base opposes the president’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan and wants troops brought home faster than planned. Democratic candidates for the House and Senate, then, must fight the president’s escalation if they want to mitigate their losses in 2010. If they don’t, the Democratic base should (and likely will) sit this one out.
Democrats emphatically oppose the war in Afghanistan and the president’s latest escalation. Prior to the president’s announcement at West Point, 61 percent of Democrats opposed sending more troops to Afghanistan versus 27 who supported an escalation [FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. Nov. 17-18, 2009]. A USA TODAY/Gallup poll on November 20-22 found that 57 percent of Democrats wanted to start bringing troops home.
Ferreting out the implications of the post-escalation-announcement polling is slightly more complex, but shows a consistent picture of Democratic opposition to escalation in Afghanistan. When asked about the president’s stated policy combining another escalation with a drawdown beginning in 2011, 58 percent of Democrats expressed their support. However, when the same poll bifurcated the two components of the policy, it became clear that Democrats supported the drawdown date, not the troop increase:
- A plurality of Democrats (43 percent) believed President Obama was sending “too many” troops.
- 62 percent of Democrats either agreed with the timetable or wanted the troops to begin coming home sooner.
Gallup concluded:
It may be that while Democrats disagree with the specifics of the timetable as announced, they approve of the idea of having any timetable included. And it may be that while Republicans strongly disagree with the having any timetable included, they approve of the general idea of an increase of troop levels.
Democratic support for the total policy should be heavily weighted, then, toward the drawdown aspect of the plan and not the troop increase. That’s a severe problem for overly optimistic congressional Democrats who want to believe that the president’s speech made political room for them to support escalation. When November 2010 arrives, the only components of the president’s policy in evidence will be escalation and its costs, which the Democratic base loathe. Think about what that will mean if Democrats remain far more concerned with the costs of the Afghanistan policy than with the risk of terrorism (79 percent to 46 percent, respectively).
Pushing policies opposed by your base in a midterm election year is another way of asking to get wrapped in a burlap sack and hit with sticks. James Morone, writing about the health reform fight, explains [h/t Ezra Klein]:
Many Democrats are moving to whittle back health reform in order to win over moderate, fence-sitting, frightened independents.
Big mistake.
Go back and look at the midterm tsunami that swept the Democrats out of office the last time. The turnout for that wave was just 36 percent. Moderate, fence sitting independents don’t vote in midterm elections with a 36 percent turn out.
What really happened back in 1994? The Republican base — jubilant, mobilized and angry — turned out. The Democratic base — dispirited, disenchanted and demobilized — stayed home. As Democrats ponder which way to go in this latest round, they ought to read the political lessons more carefully: Short-term electoral success rests with the base, the people who got excited about “change we can believe in.” Long-term electoral success rests in designing and pushing through a program that then grows very popular.
Klein describes what happens when you jab your thumb in the eye of your base to try to scoop up independents and the spare opposition voter in a midterm cycle:
Dispirited Democrats will stay home. Energized Republicans will press their advantage. Add in that the wave of young voters who were energized by Obama’s campaign probably aren’t going to turn out for the midterm election anyway, and you’re looking at a pretty unfriendly landscape.
Congressional Democrats should already see the warning signs of an ugly election cycle in the voter-intensity tea leaves:
Among Republican respondents, 81 percent said they were definitely or probably going to vote, versus only 14 percent who were definitely or not likely to do so…Among Democrats? A woeful 56-40: Two out of every five Democrats are currently unlikely to vote.
Describing the danger of dampening Democratic turnout by pushing an Afghanistan escalation, MoveOn’s Nita Chaudhary said:
“There is no doubt Washington has to worry about how the base is reacting and feeling…It’s incredibly important heading into next year, because the base knocks on doors, makes phone calls and gives money.”
Bottom line: Congressional Democrats and their kindred spirits beyond Washington, D.C. must get over their reluctance to buck President Obama on Afghanistan if they want to get out of this election cycle with their skin on. Midterm elections are base-centered elections. Winning base-centered elections requires actions that energize the base. If the Democrats in Congress want to stanch the bleeding on this part of the electoral contest, they have to run against the president’s escalation in Afghanistan and fight it every step of the way. And if “our” representatives in Congress won’t fight the Afghanistan escalation, we have to be willing to walk away from them. Cenk Uygur:
If that scares you and you start to worry about damaging a Democratic president, you’re never going to win at this game. You’re never going to get the policies you want. They don’t listen to reason, they listen to power…If you don’t have the stomach for being this tough on Obama and the Democrats, well then you don’t have the stomach for politics. And you will permanently be the Republican’s bitches.
Pushing an Afghanistan policy opposed by the base, supported by the opposition and that will send American boys and girls home in body bags is political malpractice, especially going into an election where more than 80 percent of your opponent’s base is ready to charge into the voting booth. Issues exist in this election cycle other than Afghanistan, and reasons to oppose escalation in Afghanistan exist other than the purely political, but if Democrats won’t even act against escalation to save their own skins, they’ll deserve every bit of the political pain they’ll feel in November.
In 2010, I will not donate, block-walk, or phone bank for any incumbent who fails to take forceful action to stop this escalation and bring our troops home. Fair warning, Democrats: I’m not alone.
Before the marvel of this night
adoring fold your wings and bow,
then tear the sky apart with light
and with your news the world endow,
proclaim the birth of Christ and peace,
that fear and death and sorrow cease.
Sing peace, sing peace, sing gift of peace, sing peace, sing gift of peace.…
The love that we have always known,
our constant joy and endless light,
now to the love-less world be shown,
now break upon it’s deathly night.
Into one song compress the love
that rules our universe above.
Sing love, sing love, sing God is love, sing love, sing God is love.
Jaroslav Vajda, Before the Marvel of This Night.
