[Post-Afghanistan, nation (un)building comes home.]
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IMAGINE SPENDING $8 TRILLION TO REBUILD A SOCIETY INSTEAD OF
DESTROYING ONE  
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Tom Engelhardt
September 7, 2021
Tom Dispatch
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_ Post-Afghanistan, nation (un)building comes home. _

An Afghan security personnel inspects the site a day after a car bomb
explosion in Kabul on August 4, 2021, Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty
Images

 

THEY WEREN'T KIDDING WHEN they called Afghanistan the "graveyard of
empires [[link removed]]."
Indeed, that cemetery has just taken another imperial body. And it
wasn't pretty
[[link removed]],
was it? Not that anyone should be surprised. Even after 20 years of
preparation, a burial never is.

In fact, the shock and awe(fulness) in Kabul and Washington over these
last weeks shouldn't have been surprising, given our history. After
all, we were the ones who prepared the ground
[[link removed]]
and dug the grave for the previous interment in that very cemetery.

That, of course, took place between 1979 and 1989 when Washington had
no hesitation
[[link removed]]
about using the most extreme Islamists—arming, funding, training,
and advising them—to ensure that one more imperial carcass, that of
the Soviet Union, would be buried there. When, on February 15, 1989,
the Red Army finally left Afghanistan, crossing
[[link removed]]
the Friendship Bridge into Uzbekistan, Soviet commander General Boris
Gromov, the last man out, said, "That's it. Not one Soviet soldier or
officer is behind my back." It was his way of saying so long,
farewell, good riddance to the endless war that the leader of the
Soviet Union had by then taken to calling "the bleeding wound
[[link removed]]." Yet, in its own
strange fashion, that "graveyard" would come home with them. After
all, they returned to a bankrupt land, sucked dry by that failed war
against those American- and Saudi-backed Islamist extremists.

Two years later, the Soviet Union would implode, leaving just one
truly great power on Planet Earth—along with, of course, those very
extremists Washington had built into a USSR-destroying force. Only a
decade later, in response to an "air force
[[link removed]]"
manned by 19 mostly Saudi hijackers dispatched by Osama bin Laden, a
rich Saudi prince who had been part of our anti-Soviet effort in
Afghanistan, the world's "sole superpower" would head directly for
that graveyard (as bin Laden desired
[[link removed]]).

Despite the American experience in Vietnam during the previous
century—the Afghan effort of the 1980s was meant to give the USSR
its own "Vietnam"
[[link removed]]—key Bush
administration officials were so sure of themselves that, as the New
York Times recently reported, they wouldn't even consider
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letting the leaders of the Taliban negotiate a surrender once our
invasion began. On September 11, 2001, in the ruins of the Pentagon,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had already given an aide these
instructions
[[link removed]],
referring not just to Bin Laden but Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein: "Go
massive. Sweep it up, all up. Things related and not." Now, he
insisted
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"The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders." (Of
course, had you read
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war reporter Anand Gopal's 2014 book, No Good Men Among the Living
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you would have long known just how fruitlessly Taliban leaders tried
to surrender to a power intent on war and nothing but war.)

Allow a surrender and have everything grind to a disappointing halt?
Not a chance, not when the Afghan War was the beginning of what was to
be an American triumph of global proportions. After all, the future
invasion of Iraq and the domination of the oil-rich Greater Middle
East by the one and only power on the planet were already on the
agenda. How could the leaders of such a confident land with a military
funded at levels the next most powerful countries combined
[[link removed]]
couldn't match have imagined its own 2021 version of surrender?

And yet, once again, 20 years later, Afghanistan has quite visibly and
horrifyingly become a graveyard of empire (as well, of course, as a
graveyard for Afghans
[[link removed]]).
Perhaps it's only fitting that the secretary of defense who refused
the surrender of the enemy in 2001 was recently buried in Arlington
National Cemetery with full honors. In fact, the present secretary of
defense and the head of the joint chiefs of staff both reportedly
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"knelt before Mr. Rumsfeld's widow, Joyce, who was in a wheelchair,
and presented her with the flag from her husband's coffin."

Meanwhile, Joe Biden was the third president since George W. Bush and
crew launched this country's forever wars to find himself floundering
haplessly in that same graveyard of empires. If the Soviet example
didn't come to mind, it should have as Democrats and Republicans,
President Biden
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and former President Trump
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flailed at each other over their supposedly deep feelings for the poor
Afghans being left behind, while this country withdrew its troops from
Kabul airport in a land where "rest in peace" has long had no meaning.

AMERICA'S TRUE INFRASTRUCTURE SPENDING

Here's the thing, though: don't assume that Afghanistan is the only
imperial graveyard around or that the U.S. can simply withdraw,
however ineptly, chaotically, and bloodily, leaving that country to
history—and the Taliban. Put another way, even though events in
Kabul and its surroundings took over the mainstream news recently, the
Soviet example should remind us that, when it comes to empires,
imperial graveyards are hardly restricted to Afghanistan.

In fact, it might be worth taking a step back to look at the big
picture. For decades, the U.S. has been involved in a global project
that's come to be called "nation building," even if, from Vietnam,
Laos, and Cambodia to Afghanistan and Iraq, it often seemed an endless
exercise in nation (un)building. An imperial power of the first order,
the United States long ago largely rejected the idea of
straightforward colonies. In the years of the Cold War and then of the
war on terror, its leaders were instead remarkably focused on setting
up an unparalleled empire of military bases and garrisons
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on a global
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scale. This and the wars that went with it have been the unsettling
American imperial project since World War II.

And that unsettling should be taken quite literally. Even before
recent events in Afghanistan, Brown University's invaluable Costs of
War Project estimated that this country's conflicts of the last two
decades across the Greater Middle East and Africa had displaced at
least 38 million people
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which should be considered nation (un)building of the first order.

Since the Cold War began, Washington has engaged in an endless series
of interventions around the planet from Iran
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Congo
[[link removed]],
Chile
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Guatemala
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as well as in conflicts, large and small. Now, with Joe Biden having
withdrawn from America's disastrous Afghan War, you might wonder
whether it's all finally coming to an end, even if the U.S. still
insists on maintaining 750 sizeable military bases
[[link removed]] globally.

Count on this, though: the politicians of the great power that hasn't
won a significant war since 1945 will agree on one thing—that the
Pentagon and the military-industrial complex deserve yet more funding
(no matter what else doesn't). In truth, those institutions have been
the major recipients of actual infrastructure spending over much of
what might still be thought of as the American century. They've been
the true winners in this society, along with the billionaires who,
even in the midst of a grotesque pandemic, raked in profits in a
historic fashion. In the process, those tycoons created possibly the
largest inequality gap
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on the planet, one that could destabilize a democracy even if nothing
else were going on. The losers? Don't even get me started.

Or think of it this way: yes, in August 2021, it was Kabul, not
Washington, D.C., that fell to the enemy, but the nation (un)building
project in which this country has been involved over these last
decades hasn't remained thousands of miles away. Only half-noticed
here, it's been coming home, big time. Donald Trump's rise to the
presidency, amid election promises
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to end America's "endless wars
[[link removed]],"
should really be seen as part o
[[link removed]]f that
war-induced (un)building project at home. In his own strange fashion,
The Donald was Kabul before its time and his rise to power
unimaginable without those distant conflicts and the spending that
went with them, all of which, however unnoticed, unsettled significant
parts of this society.

CLIMATE WAR IN A GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES?

You can tell a lot about a country if you know where its politicians
unanimously agree to invest taxpayer dollars.

At this very moment, the U.S. is in a series of crises, none worse
than the heat, fire, and flood "season" that's hit not just the
megadrought-ridden
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West, or inundated Tennessee
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or hurricane-whacked Louisiana
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or the tropical-storm-tossed Northeast
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but the whole country. Unbearable warmth
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humidity, fires
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smoke
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storms, and power outages
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us. Fortunately, as always, Congress stands in remarkable unanimity
when it comes to investing money where it truly matters.

And no, you knew perfectly well that I wasn't referring to the
creation of a green-energy economy. In fact, Republicans wouldn't hear
of it
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and the Biden administration, while officially backing the idea, has
already issued more than 2,000
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permits to fossil-fuel companies for new drilling and fracking on
federal lands. In August, the president even called on
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OPEC—the Saudis, in particular—to produce significantly more oil
to halt a further rise in gas prices at the pump.

As America's eternally losing generals come home from Kabul, what I
actually had in mind was the one thing just about everyone in
Washington seems to agree on: funding the military-industrial complex
beyond their wildest dreams. Congress has recently spent months trying
to pass a bill that would, over a number of years, invest an extra
$550 billion
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in this country's badly tattered infrastructure, but never needs time
like that
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to pass Pentagon and other national security budgets that, for years
now, have added up to well over a trillion dollars
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In another world, with the Afghan War ending and U.S. forces (at least
theoretically) coming home, it might seem logical to radically cut
back on the money invested in the military-industrial complex and its
ever more expensive weaponry. In another American world on an
increasingly endangered planet, significantly scaling back
[[link removed]] American forces in
every way and investing our tax dollars in a very different kind of
"defense" would seem logical indeed. And yet, as of this moment, as
Greg Jaffe writes at the _Washington Post_, the Pentagon continues to
suck up
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"a larger share of discretionary spending than any other government
agency."

Fortunately for those who want to keep funding the U.S. military in
the usual fashion, there's a new enemy out there with which to replace
the Taliban, one that the Biden foreign-policy team and a "pivoting"
military is already remarkably eager
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At least when the latest infrastructure money is spent, if that
compromise bill ever really makes it through a Congress that can't tie
its own shoelaces, something will be accomplished. Bridges and roads
will be repaired, new electric-vehicle-charging stations set up, and
so on. When, however, the Pentagon spends the money just about
everyone in Washington agrees it should have, we're guaranteed yet
more weaponry
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this country doesn't need, poorly produced
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sums, if not more failed wars as well.

I mean, just think about what the American taxpayer "invested" in the
losing wars of this century. According to Brown University's Costs of
War Project, $2.313 trillion
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went into that disastrous Afghan War alone and at least $6.4 trillion
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by 2020 into the full-scale war on terror. And that doesn't even
include the estimated future costs of caring for American veterans of
those conflicts. In the end, the total may prove to be in the $8
trillion range
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Hey, at least $88 billion
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just went into supplying and training the Afghan military, most of
which didn't even exist
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by August 2021 and the rest of which melted away when the Taliban
advanced.

Just imagine for a minute where we might really be today if Congress
had spent close to $8 trillion rebuilding this society, rather than
(un)building and wrecking distant ones.

Rest assured, this is not the country that ended World War II in
triumph or even the one that outlasted the Soviet Union and whose
politicians then declared it the most exceptional, indispensable
[[link removed]] nation
ever. This is a land that's crumbling before our eyes, being (un)built
month by month, year by year. Its political system is on the verge of
dissolving into who knows what amid
[[link removed]] a raft of voter
suppression laws, wild claims about the most recent presidential
election, an assault
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on the Capitol itself, and conspiracy theories galore. Its political
parties seem ever more hostile, disturbed, and disparate. Its economy
is a gem of inequality, its infrastructure crumbling, its society
seemingly coming apart at the seams.

And on a planet that could be turning into a genuine graveyard of
empires (and of so much else), keep in mind that, if you're losing
your war with climate change, you can't withdraw from it. You can't
declare defeat and go home. You're already home in the increasingly
dysfunctional, increasingly (un)built U.S. of A.

© 2021 TomDispatch.com

TOM ENGELHARDT [[link removed]],
co-founder of the American Empire Project
[[link removed]], runs the Nation Institute's
TomDispatch.com [[link removed]].

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