A while back former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz calculated that the total cost of the War on Iraq and Afghanistan would be a cool three trillion dollars. The video below explains what that money is spent on:
Supposedly it was only World War II that ended the Great Depression. I don’t think the War on Iraq has done the same…
The entire western news media it seems, with the New York Times calling it a “sad Iraq milestone”. But it’s not just the American news media who treat it this way; the same language is also used in Dutch or British news sources. It’s all very touching, if not for the fact that the same media have paid little attention to far sadder milestones: that of an estimated million Iraqi deaths.
All the various mortality studies done in Iraq –the two Lancet studies, Iraq Living Conditions Survey, the ORB polls and the Iraq Family Health Survey– have either been largely ignored or ridiculed in the press. Even the Iraqi Bodycount Project’s estimates were disbelieved until more pessimistic studies appeared. I need not tell you that from that point, any study with higher estimates (that is, all of them) was attacked for not being in line with the Iraqi Bodycount figures.
I dislike seeing those crocodile tears for people who are fighting on the wrong side in the War on Iraq. Yes, to a certain extent the American (and British, and Dutch) soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are victims of this war too, pawns sacrifised in illegal wars, but my sympathy lies more with the innocent civilians living in the country they invaded. The soldiers had a choice to be there; their Iraqi or Afghanistani victims did not. They could’ve had the courage to resist and refused to serve in this war.
Not that I’m glad to see American (or British, or Dutch, or…) soldiers killed or wounded in these wars; that’s why we should bring them home. I just wish that for once the real victims of this war, the untold millions of Iraqis and Afghanistanis who were killed or wounded, who lost their house or their family, who were made refugee, were remembered as well.
Over at the Socialist Unity blog Andy reviewed the latest Stop the War demo and was less than impressed. this lead to an interesting discussion in the comment thread, though unfortunately centered mostly on tactics rather than strategies, much less on the question I’ve asked there as well: has the antiwar movement failed?
Tactically, if we look at what the antiwar movement has done from September 2001 onwards, it has been impressive: larger and larger demonstrations against the War on Afghanistan and in the runup to the War on Iraq, culminating in the 15 February 2003 demonstrations, with two million in London and tens of millions worldwide marching against the war. Not just demonstrations either: a wide variety of direct action initiatives have been tried by local antiwar groups, ranging the spectrum from letterwriting campaigns to attempts to occupy military bases.
Strategically, the antiwar movement managed to set the debate in a fair few countries, despite the opposition of much of the political and media elites. Even at the height of the warfrenzy, there never was a majority in the UK in favour of war and even in the US the war was never supported by a large majority of the people, if it had a majority at all. The great victory of the antiwar movement was that it managed to put the warmongers on the defensive, by making opposition to the war the default position in the debate, with the supporters of the War on Iraq having to explain themselves. With Afghanistan it was the other way around, but with Iraq the antiwar movement framed the debate.
We must not underestimate this achievement, in a climate in which much of the US electorate at least was whipped into fear by “9/11” and The War Against Terror and despite the US/UK’s media’s tendency to portray protestors as a minority of bearded wierdies. Here in the Netherlands this was the one subject on which the overwhelming majority of people could agree, whether socialists, liberals or conservatives, Pim Fortuyn supporters or not: the war was a bad idea and Holland should stay well out of it.
And yet, Holland didn’t stay out of it, though it did avoid the actual invasion. And neither did the UK, US, Spain, Poland, etc. The antiwar movement did not stop the war, did not stop the occupation, despite two million people marching in London and tens of millions worldwide. In the end it turned out the voters could be ignored, unless you did something really stupid, like pretending an Al Quida attack is the work of ETA say. Bush got his second term, Labour had no problem winning their next election and as far as I know nobody lost their seat for their war support other than Oona King.
So I think it’s fair to say that the antiwar movement did fail, as it did not prevent the war nor raise the (political) cost of the war. Arguably it didn’t even slow down the start of the war. We won the battles, but we lost the war.
[…] I can make the point in mitigation that, if the Afghanistan war had not been so shamefully mismanaged, most obviously the diversion of most of the required resources to the Iraq venture, it might well have reached a successful conclusion by now. But even after that mismanagement, I still, reluctantly, support the view that it is better to try and salvage the situation in Afghanistan by committing more resources, rather than pulling out and leaving the Afghans to sort it out themselves. I draw that conclusion because I think there would be even more bloodshed after a withdrawal, and that there’s a reasonable prospect that a democratic government and a largely free society can survive in Afghanistan with our help. And, even after all the mismanagement, I think most Afghans are better off now (or at least no worse off) than they would have been with a continuation of Taliban rule and civil war.
What John writes here seems to be widely believed by disappointed war supporters, but I think it’s a myth. Aghanistan was always a sideshow, a stepping stone on the way to the war that Bush really wanted: Iraq. It would’ve taken another president entirely for Afghanistan to be taken serious the way John wanted it to be. But there’s a deeper fallacy here, which is that if this war had been pursued more seriously, it could’ve been a succes. Again, it’s hard to see this happening with Bush in charge, as the example of Iraq, which has had all the funds and attention Afghanistan has lacked, shows. And let’s not forget the Soviet experience in Afghanistan either; that fiasco can’t be accused of having been underfunded. Enforcing democracy (or socialism) from the barrel of a gun is hard. That’s the lesson I wish more people would learn: that war is hardly the best way to export respect for democracy and human rights.
The other lesson I wish people like John would learn is that “things could be worse” is not a valid reason for staying the course, that hoping that spending more time, more money and more lives in doing the same thing will do the trick this time is not a strategy. We cannot solve the problems of Afghanistan and our presence only makes things worse.
Because until those on the left learn that waging war in the name of democracy and human rights is counterproductive, we will get more Afghanistans and more Iraqs.
Current CIA director Porter Goss admitted in the Washington Post yesterday that the CIA does indeed have a secret prison system outside the USA, including on locations in Eastern Europe:
Goss did not deny the existence — reported earlier this month by The Washington Post — of a secret CIA prison system overseas that has included sites in Eastern Europe. Asked why the United States needed secret prisons, Goss said: “We’re fighting a war on terror. We’re doing quite well in it. Inevitably, we are going to have to capture some terrorists, and inevitably, they are going to have to have some due process, and inevitably, that is going to happen, and it’s going to be done lawfully and under all of the law and order and protections of due process that this country affords.”
In the same article, Condi Rice is also quoted, displaying the same historical insight and intelligence that made her Secretary of State:
In an interview published today in USA Today, Rice indicated she intends to remind Europeans that “we are fighting a war on terror” and that the United States must take certain actions “in order to protect not just ourselves but to protect others.”
She added: “We haven’t ever fought a war like this before. We’ve never fought a war before . . . where you can’t allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them, because if they commit the crime, then thousands of innocent people die.”
Meanwhile, the European Union is less than happy with this situation, as it is hinted that one of the countries in which these prisons are located is a memberstate (Poland) and one is a candidate member state (Romania). So unhappy in fact, it’s threatening sanctions against any memberstate involved in this:
Franco Frattini, the European commissioner for justice and home affairs, warned that any countries found to be allowing the CIA to operate the detention centres – part of a global secret gulag used to hold al-Qa’ida suspects and other “ghost detainees” – could have its voting rights suspended.
It’s uncertain how real these threats are, but Romania at the very least could see itself stuck outside the EU for considerably longer than otherwise would’ve been the case. Smartarses can of course wonder what exactly the difference is between these CIA prisons and something like Belmarsh Prison… Poland could at least strike back by demanding inquiries into which EU countries participated in extraordinary rendition.
Meanwhile, closer at home, all the furore about how exactly the US is treating its detainees has caused problems for the Dutch government. Dutch forces are still active in Afghanistan as part of the peace force there and the Netherlands has been asked to extend its mission for at least another two years, to form part of a stablisation force in the province of Uruzgan, not the most safe of provinces. Already wary of becoming embroiled in internal Afghan conflicts, which may lead to numerous Dutch casualties and resulting political fallout, parliament has also become wary of the American treatment of Afghani prisoners.
And not just parliament. The minister of Foreign Affairs, who had earlier said he thought the war on Iraq was a “mistake”, also has his doubts about this. Granted, for many parliamentaries the risk of Dutch casualties will be the main reason to vote against extending the Dutch mission in Afghanistan, but at the very least the concern about American treatment of prisoners will make a good excuse to refuse.