April 3, 2011
My first reaction to the rioting and killing in Afghanistan — in retaliation for the burning of a Koran — was to think that we should abandon this barbaric land to its fate. Why should we continue to put not only Americans but other foreign nationals in harm’s way? But if the test for abandonment is disdain for religious primitivism, then we would need to withdraw from Florida, where the ritual Koran-burning took place, and it wouldn’t stop there; religious fundamentalism, some of it issuing in acts more violent than book-burning, isn’t confined to Florida. We’re in no position to make religious, or antireligious, judgments.
However, the question I put is, I think, valid, with some modification: Is whatever we are doing in Afghanistan worth all the loss of life: American, Afghani and other? Also, what justifies the financial cost?
Wars, unless they are purely defensive, always raise questions of justification. Our recent adventures certainly pose that problem. None of the excuses for war in Iraq hold water. The President’s rationale for the bombing of Libya is confused and unconvincing. The invasion of Afghanistan was, plausibly, justified as a campaign against al Qaeda, which was a proven threat to our security. However, that hunt failed early on, and at this point it does not even seem to be an excuse for the continued operations.
Some months ago, The Seattle Times carried a column by David Sirota in which he lamented our inability to learn from experience, citing, among other examples, the failure to draw appropriate lessons from Vietnam, leading to the long-term occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Among other causes, he cited the failures of journalism.
Although Sirota’s reference was primarily to electronic media, the Times helpfully provided proof in the same edition. It devoted much of page one to a story about a murder elsewhere in the state, not important news except to those involved. The Times relegated to page four a report from The Washington Post that we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars building bases in Afghanistan which will not even be completed when the withdrawal is supposed to begin this summer, and which are intended for use by American forces. In other words, the withdrawal may be a farce and the occupation endless.
The Times, to its credit, has advocated withdrawal on its editorial pages, and the news department recognized the implications of the base-construction story, captioning it “Plans indicate long stay for U.S. in Afghanistan.” The placement of a less important story on the front page may reflect a realistic business decision, but it constitutes a failure of journalism, a small one, but part of a pattern.
Military fatalities total 2,388, 1,521 of them American. The monetary cost runs to nearly three hundred million dollars per day 25 and that is just the budgeted cost. As Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have shown, the actual, long-term cost is much higher.26 Yet the media more or less ignore Afghanistan — The Pew Center estimated that four per cent of media coverage was devoted to it in 2010 27 — and report the budget debate with little reference to the elephant in the room.
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25. Using the FY 2011 budget, $113.5 billion, the daily figure is $310,958,904. The FY 2012 proposal is $107.3 billion, or $293,972,603 per day. See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gNQ3JbWwd6t-PzkuECkRJvsAlNkA
