Now playing the role of cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan after a Boston Globe op-ed says it is a war of choice, President Obama insisted it is a war of "necessity." The op-ed says the Afghan people's state of semi-starvation, 40% unemployment, and the Taliban wage of $8 per day (like the MacDonald's sign said "Always Hiring!") has everything to do with the renewed insurgency.
The op-ed further posits that this is just the way our country's war profiteers like it, Dyncorp, Bechtel, KBR. One need only look at campaign contributions to congressmen from military contractors outside their districts to understand why, even with popular sentiment against them, the wars just keep rolling on.
Take the critical position of Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, now held by Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI)...
Arguably one of the ten most powerful positions in the government, war appropriations can stop right here. Hawaii is a little set of islands way out in the Pacific, right? But look at where defense contractors who give Inouye big money are located.
The new citizen's watchdog group MAPLight.org makes it easy to see who from across the country owns your congressman.
Buckely vs. Valeo, the Supreme Court ruling which equated campaign contributions with free speech, upheld my right to corrupt my own congressman. But did it give me the right to corrupt yours too? The fact is, now an average of 80% of all congressman's and senators campaign contributions come from outside their own districts. From defense. From insurance. From financial services. As healthcare reform advocates are finding out, the insurance industry has spread enough money to enough hands to make the current heroic charge for reform into a bad political burlesque. Public option, YES! I mean, no. I mean, YES! I mean NO...
Our original system of geographically-based, representative democracy has turned into a high-stakes marketplace of committee-member-shopping by industries looking for favors, including war. They'll give you a show, make you think something is going to happen for your phone calls, but in the end the fix is in. Insiders already know who will go first, last, and place. It's been paid for.
MAPLight.org has found that congressmen who voted for TARP (the financial services industry bail-out) received nearly 50% more in campaign contributions from the financial services industry (an average of about $149,000) than congressmen who voted "no" ("The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.") Legislators who voted for the automobile industry bail-out in 2009 received an average of 40% more in contributions from that industry than those who voted against it. And these are the less startling numbers. House Energy and Commerce Committee members who voted "yes" on an amendment in 2009 favored by the forest products industry, to allow heavier cutting of trees, received an average of $25,745 each from the forestry and paper products industry, 10 times as much as the $2,541 received on average by each member voting "no."
The connection? We may not look too bright, but the politicians better not think we're totally stupid. Where there's smoke there's fire.
The answer, on the wide variety of issues on which congress seems to be listening to corporations, rather than constituents, is to simply ban campaign contributions from outside the district. If congressmen weren't meant to represent geographical constituents, the Founders wouldn't have drawn district maps.
But back to that war of choice, for military contractors. His own Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged last March, "Roughly 70 percent [of the Taliban] are involved because of the money." And General Karl Eikenberry, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said to Congress in 2007: "Much of the enemy force is drawn from the ranks of unemployed men looking for wages to support their families." And top general Stanley McChrystal said just last week that jobs could curb Taliban fighting, all but begging his commander-in-chief, in public, to start up simple, $7-a-day job projects to keep childrens' bellies full and young fighting-age males tired at night. This is a war of "necessity," not choice?
Mr. Obama, some children have been eating grass in Afghanistan. That's why their daddy's are picking up guns. It didn't have to be this way. It was and is a choice to allow the Taliban to be the employer of last resort, rather spend one-tenth of what we are spending now on military hardware, on an expansion of cash-for-work job programs, which are already in place on a small scale and working well.
The vast majority of Afghans hate the Taliban. They remember heads and hands getting cut off in the National Stadium on Friday nights. They don't want to see it return, but you do what you have to, to feed your family. The op-ed states:
"Perhaps most telling are stories like Mahmud’s, who told a reporter in Helmand that joining the Taliban gave him a chance to save up enough money to start his own small business, buying goods in Lashkar Gah and selling them in the district "mila’’ or markets. Mahmud said, "Now that I have work, I am not with the Taliban anymore."
This situation is the true definition of insanity.
The diarist is co-founder of Jobs for Afghans, advocating a peaceful alternative to war in Afghanistan.
Starvation in Kandahar