Norman Solomon: The Hollow Politics of Escalation
[Norman Solomon is co-chair of the national Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. He is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com.]
An underlying conceit of the new spin about benchmarks and timetables for Afghanistan is the notion that pivotal events there can be choreographed from Washington. So, a day ahead of the president’s Tuesday night speech, The New York Times quoted an unnamed top administration official saying, "He wants to give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down."
But "eventually" is a long way off. In the meantime, the result of Washington’s hollow politics is more carnage.
The next days and weeks will bring an avalanche of hype about insisting on measurable progress and shifting burdens onto the Afghan army - while the US military expands the war. In the groove, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, told CNN viewers on Sunday, "The key element here is not just more troops. The key element is shifting the operations to the Afghanis [sic]. And if that can be done, then I would support the president."
That’s the kind of talk that I. F. Stone disparaged at the height of the Vietnam War, in mid-1970, when he concluded, "Not enough Asians are going to fight Asians for us even if the price is right."...
... At the core of the enabling politics is inner space that’s hollow enough to reliably cave under pressure. Typically, Democrats with antiwar inclinations weaken and collapse at push-comes-to-shove moments on Capitol Hill. The habitual pattern involves loyalty toward - and fear of - "the leadership."
Early on, during President Johnson’s Vietnam War escalation, Sens. Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening and then Frank Church were prophetic antiwar pariahs. As years went by, the war’s horrors and growing domestic opposition led some others in Congress to find a solid inner core that withstood pro-war pressures. Eventually...
Read entire article at Truthout
An underlying conceit of the new spin about benchmarks and timetables for Afghanistan is the notion that pivotal events there can be choreographed from Washington. So, a day ahead of the president’s Tuesday night speech, The New York Times quoted an unnamed top administration official saying, "He wants to give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down."
But "eventually" is a long way off. In the meantime, the result of Washington’s hollow politics is more carnage.
The next days and weeks will bring an avalanche of hype about insisting on measurable progress and shifting burdens onto the Afghan army - while the US military expands the war. In the groove, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, told CNN viewers on Sunday, "The key element here is not just more troops. The key element is shifting the operations to the Afghanis [sic]. And if that can be done, then I would support the president."
That’s the kind of talk that I. F. Stone disparaged at the height of the Vietnam War, in mid-1970, when he concluded, "Not enough Asians are going to fight Asians for us even if the price is right."...
... At the core of the enabling politics is inner space that’s hollow enough to reliably cave under pressure. Typically, Democrats with antiwar inclinations weaken and collapse at push-comes-to-shove moments on Capitol Hill. The habitual pattern involves loyalty toward - and fear of - "the leadership."
Early on, during President Johnson’s Vietnam War escalation, Sens. Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening and then Frank Church were prophetic antiwar pariahs. As years went by, the war’s horrors and growing domestic opposition led some others in Congress to find a solid inner core that withstood pro-war pressures. Eventually...