Last week, President Obama began a month long campaign "to remind an American electorate fatigued by war that the U.S. military effort in Iraq is about to enter its end game." The "end game" includes the withdrawal of "combat troops," but the continuing presence of approximately 50,000 troops labeled a "transition force" by the administration or, alternatively, "advisory and assistance brigades."
Assuming that the remaining "non-combat" troops are in fact removed from Iraq at the close of 2011, the "global war on terror" will continue on with or without a significant American troop presence in the Middle East. There are 94,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan, although the administration promises that their withdrawal will begin next year as well, even as June and July of this year proved to be the deadliest months since the war began nearly nine years ago. Even beyond Afghanistan, a large intelligence bureaucracy has developed to keep America safe from another domestic terrorist attack. Dubbed "Top Secret America" in a recent Washington Post report, it strongly resembles the massive bureaucracy created by the federal government to fight "the war on drugs."
Which speaks to the problem, a structural one that surpasses this administration, this congress and indeed this decade. As a result of choices that were made in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the US is now engaged in a state of permanent war that will have deleterious effects on our constitution, our way of life and our politics, both foreign and domestic, for decades to come. This is not without precedent, as the right to privacy and freedom from government intrusion were among the first victims of the drug war. Over time the lopsided effects of America's new form of prohibition began to materialize among communities of poor and ethnic minorities. It also began to have an impact on foreign policy, as militarized drug interdiction at the border and in Central and South America. To date, the Mexican Drug War that was launched less than five years ago has claimed 28,000 lives. Indeed, if the recent General Accounting Office report (PDF) is any indication, the Merida Initiative, a $1.6 billion initiative aimed at supporting "law enforcement activities" in Mexico's drug war, was a predictable failure. Apart from reinforcing a disturbing pattern of human rights abuses, the militarized drug war, focused as it is on supply, is doomed to failure like all previous efforts.
The other war on an abstraction, the "war on terror," is not doing any better. A recent Brookings/Zogby poll of six Middle Eastern countries indicates that President Obama's failure to control Israeli aggression and settlement expansion has created a substantial drop in his popularity, as sixty-three percent of respondents expressed discouragement with the administration's "peace process" efforts. The International Crisis Group released a report last week warning of the possibility of another regional war in the Levant, concluding that "the world should cross its fingers that fear of a catastrophic conflict will continue to be reason enough for the parties not to provoke one."
In the meantime, the United States continues to bleed jobs. America can afford to spend billions on endless wars on abstractions, but is powerless to put food on the table. Billions for aimless neocolonial adventures in the Levant and AfPak, pennies for the unemployed. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that the bombs in Vietnam explode in Harlem. Today, the bombs in Baghdad, the predator drones in AfPak, the colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the war against plant life and pharmaceuticals has all but destroyed the hope of a better America. Will our government wake up in time to change course?