http://original.antiwar.com/solomon/2009/05/21/the-march-of-folly-continued/
The March of Folly, Continued
By Norman Solomon
Antiwar.com: May 21, 2009
To understand what's up with President Obama as he escalates the war in
Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a book published 25
years ago. The March of Folly, by historian Barbara Tuchman, is a chilling
assessment of how very smart people in power can do very stupid things – how
a war effort, ordered from on high, goes from tic to repetition to
compulsion to obsession – and how we, with undue deference and lethal
restraint, pay our respects to the dominant moral torpor to such an extent
that mass slaughter becomes normalized in our names.
What happens among policymakers is a "process of self-hypnosis," Tuchman
writes. After recounting examples from the Trojan War to the British moves
against rebellious American colonists, she devotes the closing chapters of
The March of Folly to the long arc of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The parallels
with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan are more than uncanny;
they speak of deeply rooted patterns.
With clarity facing backward, President Obama can make many wise comments
about international affairs while proceeding with actual policies largely
unfettered by the wisdom. From the outset of U.S. involvement in Vietnam,
Tuchman observes, vital lessons were "stated" but "not learned."
As with John Kennedy – another young president whose administration "came
into office equipped with brain power" and "more pragmatism than ideology" –
Obama's policy adrenaline is now surging to engorge something called
counterinsurgency.
"Although the doctrine emphasized political measures, counterinsurgency in
practice was military," Tuchman writes, an observation that applies all too
well to the emerging Obama enthusiasm for counterinsurgency. And
"counterinsurgency in operation did not live up to the high-minded zeal of
the theory. All the talk was of 'winning the allegiance' of the people to
their government, but a government for which allegiance had to be won by
outsiders was not a good gamble."
Now, as during the escalation of the Vietnam War – despite all the
front-paged articles and news bulletins emphasizing line items for civic aid
from Washington – the spending for U.S. warfare in Afghanistan is
overwhelmingly military.
Perhaps overeager to assume that the context of bombing campaigns ordered by
President Obama is humanitarian purpose, many Americans of antiwar
inclinations have yet to come to terms with central realities of the war
effort – for instance, the destructive trajectory of the budgeting for the
war, which spends 10 dollars toward destruction for every dollar spent on
humanitarian programs.
From the top of the current administration – as the U.S. troop deployments
in Afghanistan continue to rise along with the American air-strike rates –
there is consistent messaging about the need to "stay the course," even
while bypassing such tainted phrases.
The dynamic that Tuchman describes as operative in the first years of the
1960s, while the Vietnam War gained momentum, is no less relevant today:
"For the ruler it is easier, once he has entered a policy box, to stay
inside. For the lesser official it is better, for the sake of his position,
not to make waves, not to press evidence that the chief will find painful to
accept. Psychologists call the process of screening out discordant
information 'cognitive dissonance,' an academic disguise for 'Don't confuse
me with the facts.'" Along the way, cognitive dissonance "causes
alternatives to be 'deselected since even thinking about them entails
conflicts.'"
Such a psycho-political process inside the White House has no use for the
report from the Congressional Progressive Caucus that came out of the caucus'
six-part forum on Capitol Hill this spring, "Afghanistan: A Road Map for
Progress."
Souped up and devouring fuel, the war train cannot slow down for the
Progressive Caucus report's recommendation that "an 80-20 ratio
(political-military) should be the formula for funding our efforts in the
region with oversight by a special inspector general to ensure compliance."
Or that "U.S. troop presence in the region must be oriented toward training
and support roles for Afghan security forces and not for U.S.-led
counterinsurgency efforts."
Or that "the immediate cessation of drone attacks should be required." Or
that "all aid dollars should be required to have a majority percentage of
dollars tied or guaranteed to local Afghan institutions and organizations,
to ensure countrywide job mapping, assessment, and workforce development
process to directly benefit the Afghan people."
The policymakers who are gunning the war train can't be bothered with such
ideas. After all, if the solution is – rhetoric aside – assumed to be
largely military, why dilute the potency of the solution? Especially when,
as we're repeatedly made to understand, there's so much at stake.
During the mid-1960s, while American troops poured into Vietnam, "enormity
of the stakes was the new self-hypnosis," Tuchman comments. She quotes the
wisdom – conventional and self-evident – of New York Times military
correspondent Hanson Baldwin, who wrote in 1966 that U.S. withdrawal from
Vietnam would bring "political, psychological, and military catastrophe,"
signaling that the United States "had decided to abdicate as a great power."
Many Americans are eager to think of our nation as supremely civilized even
in warfare; the conceits of noble self-restraint have been trumpeted by many
a president even while the Pentagon's carnage apparatus kept spinning into
overdrive. "Limited war is not nicer or kinder or more just than all-out
war, as its proponents would have it," Tuchman notes. "It kills with the
same finality."
For a president, with so much military power under his command, frustrations
call for more of the same. The seductive allure of counterinsurgency is apt
to heighten the appeal of "warnography" for the commander in chief; whatever
the earlier resolve to maintain restraint, the ineffectiveness of more
violence invites still more – in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as in Vietnam,
Laos, and Cambodia.
"The American mentality counted on superior might," Tuchman commented, "but
a tank cannot disperse wasps." In Vietnam, the independent journalist
Michael Herr wrote, the U.S. military's violent capacities were awesome:
"Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but
stop."
And that is true, routinely, of a war-making administration.
The grim and ultimately unhinged process that Barbara Tuchman charts is in
evidence with President Obama and his approach to the Afghan war: "In its
first stage, mental standstill fixes the principles and boundaries governing
a political problem. In the second stage, when dissonances and failing
function begin to appear, the initial principles rigidify. This is the
period when, if wisdom were operative, re-examination and re-thinking and a
change of course are possible, but they are rare as rubies in a backyard.
Rigidifying leads to increase of investment and the need to protect egos;
policy founded upon error multiplies, never retreats. The greater the
investment and the more involved in it the sponsor's ego, the more
unacceptable is disengagement."
A week ago, one out of seven members of the House of Representatives voted
against a supplemental appropriations bill providing $81.3 billion to the
Pentagon, mainly for warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. An opponent of the
funding, Congressman John Conyers, pointed out that "the president has not
challenged our most pervasive and dangerous national hubris: the foolhardy
belief that we can erect the foundations of civil society through the
judicious use of our many high-tech instruments of violence."
Conyers continued:
"That belief, promoted by the previous administration in the wake of the
terrorist attacks of September 11, assumes that the United States possesses
the capacity and also has a duty to determine the fate of nations in the
greater Middle East.
"I oppose this supplemental war funding bill because I believe that we are
not bound by such a duty. In fact, I believe the policies of empire are
counterproductive in our struggle against the forces of radical religious
extremism. For example, U.S. strikes from unmanned Predator Drones and other
aircraft produced 64 percent of all civilian deaths caused by the U.S.,
NATO, and Afghan forces in 2008. Just this week, U.S. air strikes took
another 100 lives, according to Afghan officials on the ground. If it is our
goal to strengthen the average Afghan or Pakistani citizen and to weaken the
radicals that threaten stability in the region, bombing villages is clearly
counterproductive. For every family broken apart by an incident of
'collateral damage,' seeds of hate and enmity are sown against our nation. …
"Should we support this measure, we risk dooming our nation to a fate
similar to Sisyphus and his boulder: to being trapped in a stalemate of
unending frustration and misery, as our mistakes inevitably lead us to the
same failed outcomes. Let us step back; let us remember the mistakes and
heartbreak of our recent misadventures in the streets of Fallujah and
Baghdad. If we honor the ties that bind us to one another, we cannot in good
faith send our fellow citizens on this errand of folly. It is still not too
late to turn away from this path."
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