Diverting Funds From Problems at Home

President Barack Obama’s recent decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending 34,000 additional troops is unrealistic, hypocritical, and destructive.

Obama claims that the cost of 40,000 additional troops is $30 billion, assuming we can leave in eighteen months like he claims. In reality, the cost of continuing the war will be exponentially larger. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D) explains that the new deployment will bring total troop strength to 100,000 and the yearly cost to $100 billion a year. That doesn’t even include private contractors, which cost an additional $60 billion a year. Although victory in eighteen months was never feasible, the administration has already backed down from that claim, stating that a “re-evaluation” will be done at that time. In reality, America is looking at many more years of war, costing about $160 billion a year — if the US doesn’t further increase the number of troops and contractors.

There is a wide range of needs that $160 billion a year can address. The most pressing issue is climate change, an issue we supposedly cannot afford to concentrate on right now. However, we all know what $160 billion a year towards this cause could do. It is imperative that we save the planet not only from a human standpoint, but from a geopolitical one. As global warming progresses, it will become increasingly clear to the rest of the world that the US has played a leading role in bringing this crisis about, leading to more worldwide hatred of the US. This constitutes a more serious threat to our national security than Al Qaeda alone will ever present.

This money could also go towards true health care reform. A government funded universal health care plan would save and improve the lives of millions of Americans. This would take money that Obama isn’t willing to invest into the American people. Yet he claims the war is being fought for us, to defend our freedom, to protect our nation. Obama’s commitment to change, a message directed at the working-class American, comes into question when you see his true priorities. Kucinich argues that “it really begs the question about whether the nation–building that we seek to do in Afghanistan would be better directed to rebuilding America, to creating jobs here, to rebuilding bridges here instead of blowing them up in Afghanistan.”

Obama cites two main justifications for fighting this war. One of them is the removal of the Taliban, a fundamentalist group notorious for its oppression of women. Although preventing the Taliban from returning to power is a legitimate objective, the alternative group, the Northern Alliance, is equally sexist and oppressive. The US has supported the Northern Alliance since the beginnings of its occupation.

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, or RAWA, has made a fruitless effort to educate the world about this. They explained, “Under the US–supported government, the sworn enemies of human rights, democracy and secularism have gripped their claws over our country and attempted to restore their religious fascism on our people. Whenever fundamentalists exist as a military and political force in our injured land, the problem of Afghanistan will not be solved.”

Obama’s other stated objective of this war is national security — the War On Terror. Al Qaeda has important headquarters along the eastern border of Afghanistan, and Obama thinks these additional troops are necessary to defeat them. There are major flaws in this thinking. Yes, maybe we can kill some key terrorists through this occupation, but the main result of this war will be to spawn new terrorists. As the US continues to impose its will on the world by “spreading democracy,” it builds its image as an imperialist nation bent on world conquest. The US is killing tens of thousands of Afghan civilians, displacing hundreds of thousands from their homes, and bringing chaos to the lives of the population. This is the motivation for terrorist attacks against the US in the first place, and troop escalation will only strengthen that.