Enduring Freedom until 2050

After eight long years, now more than ever, the United States invasion and (partial) occupation of Afghanistan is on a roll, courtesy of US President Barack Obama’s “new strategy”.

This – which Pentagon supremo Robert Gates insists is “working” – includes US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) staging mini-Guernicas, al la the bombing of Guernica, Spain, by

German and Italian warplanes in 1937, as painted by Pablo Picasso.
It also includes General Stanley McChrystal – the former number one hit man for General David Petraeus in Iraq – assaulting Washington to demand (what else is new?) an extra 45,000 US boots on the ground.

Add 52,000 US troops and no less than a staggering 68,000 US contractors as of late March – don’t even count NATO – and soon there will be more Americans wallowing in the Afghan mire than Soviets at their occupation peak during the 1980s. In only 450 days, Enduring Freedom plus NATO boots swelled up from 67,000 to 118,000.

Does it matter that, according to a McClatchy/Ipsos survey, almost eight years after the “war on terror” bombing of the Taliban, 54% of Americans think the US is “losing” the war while 56% are against sending more troops? Of course not.

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New NATO head, former president George W Bush-friendly Anders Rasmussen from Denmark, has been trying to explain the new “strategy” in pyrotechnic NATOese to skeptical Europeans. But the real plot of the non-stop tragicomedy is never spelled out. The US and its NATO allies will do – and spend – whatever it takes to implant military bases on the doorstep of both Russia and China and – Allah only knows – get their Trans-Afghan Pakistan gas pipeline on track.

From November 2001 to December 2008, the Bush administration burned $179 billion in Afghanistan, while NATO burned $102 billion. Former NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the West would keep troops in Central Asia for 25 years. He was corrected by the British army’s chief of general staff, General David Richards: it will be 40 years. Expect the “evil”, fit Taliban – immune to global warming – to be fighting Enduring Freedom by 2050.

Asia Times