I had just finished the harrowing account of just how we got Bin Laden in the New Yorker– including a Navy Seal who tackled two people he had reason to believe had suicide bomb vests on to save the rest of his team–when I got the first report of our largest single day death toll in the wars that have dragged for near a decade now. The New York Times reports:
In Afghanistan, insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter on Saturday, killing 30 Americans, including some Navy Seal commandos from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, as well as 8 Afghans, American and Afghan officials said.
The helicopter, on a night-raid mission in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province, to the west of Kabul, was most likely brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade, one coalition official said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and they could hardly have found a more valuable target: American officials said that 22 of the dead were Navy Seal commandos, including members of Seal Team 6. Other commandos from that team conducted the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Bin Laden in May. The officials said that those who were killed Saturday were not involved in the Pakistan mission.
Saturday’s attack came during a surge of violence that has accompanied the beginning of a drawdown of American and NATO troops, and it showed how deeply entrenched the insurgency remains.
In all the discussion of the debt ceiling, did anyone discuss the role that our costly wars have played in driving up the deficit? Noble prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has put the true price of our wars at well beyond $3 trillon, when considering not just the direct costs but the impact on the U.S. economy and the cost of caring for the men and woman who have served in these wars after they come home.
But even beyond the numbers, how about the human cost of these wars? I personally went from cheering the amazing courage of the guys dropping into a Pakistan compound, despite having to crash land their helicopter to find Bin Laden–to realizing the utter futility of what we are doing there when men from the very same unit got shot out of the sky yesterday on yet another mission to try to weed out the bad guys.
Perhaps we are engaged in a war on terror that will determine the very future existence of the United States as we know it. Perhaps the attempt, despite looking futile at times, to install democratic institutions in Iraq and the largely illiterate and desperately poor Afghanistan is the only way to preserve American freedom.
But if that is the case, why are our very bravest men still getting shot out of the sky? And why is our country’s debt being downgraded at least in part because of the financial cost of embarking on the wars on terror in the Middle East?
I am a firm believer that the men we ask to fight these wars are heroes–especially those who die and those who come home permanently damaged–and should be treated as such. I am really beginning to wonder, however, about the President who sent us there in the first place and the one who doubled down in Afghanistan.
Haven’t enough good men died already? Isn’t the massive structure employment in our own country (according to Paul Krugman, another Noble prize wining economist, the percentage of the population currently employed currently stands at a very dangerously low 58.2%) that has caused millions to be permanently without work a bigger threat to our national security than terrorism in the near term?
As the massacre in Norway showed us, terrorism is just as likely to come from within as from outside. As our country continues to slide into economic disarray marked by increased despair, we should take a closer look at what might happen within.
–photo Michael Kamber
About Tom Matlack
From the outside it seems USA has lost it’s way. How did a great country sink this low? These brave men are risking/have risked their lives while their employers can’t even decide if they deserve a wage. Shocking!
These good men are a part of something larger than themselves which is what being a hero requires. I don’t think you can make a clear connection between the acts of individuals in combats zones to the United State’s economy. It diminishes one and confuses the other.
Tom is on the button pointing to military expenditures as what should be the core of our country’s budget talks as we reassess what we can afford, not afford, and what we can borrow to do now but must pay for later.
We killed our enemy with intelligence and courageous men. It’s time to bring the other brave men home.
Our security is not now at risk, and arguably never was. We have spent a decade making war on shepherds and goatherds in Iraq, hanged Saddam long ago, though we never found weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is not a poor country—they have huge stocks of oil. Let’s get out of their way and let them rebuild. If internal strife among warring tribes and sects will ensue, so be it. There is no evidence that our military presence can change the enmities of hundreds of years. If Would anyone care to try that with Hindu vs. Muslim populations in Asia? Arabs and Israelis? Muslim sects in Syria, Libya, Egypt? There is no end to that.
Mission accomplished: let’s go home and kiss girls in Times Square..
In Afghanistan, we are fighting the Taliban, the same organization that defeated and bankrupted the Soviet Union. We found Bin Laden—hiding in plain sight in a porno-filled mansion in Pakistan, a mission accomplished with courage, training, and intelligence. If we are not firebombing the poppy fields that become heroin in the veins of people in Detroit, New York and every other American city, WTF are we doing in Afghanistan? Where is our national interest?
These two foreign adventures have cost us more than $1 trillion, yet if you read the rhetoric spewing out of the mouths of some of our fulminating conservative leadership and talk radio Percocet junkies, the US is being bankrupted by teachers, who insist on decent wages for working with our most important asset, youth, and pesky senior citizens who are living too long.
Crap. And anyone in the US smarter than a carrot knows it is crap.
The conversation has to come to military expenditures, the only entitlement that seems to not be on the table, ever. If you give $1 to a senior citizen, the citizen buys $1 worth of goods or services, which gets taxed, raises revenues, and goes out again in social programs and infrastructure that enhances US productivity. If you spend $1 on a helicopter, and that helicopter crashes and burns, not only do we lose brave men and women, we can only build another helicopter, a boon to military suppliers, parasites on the state, wholly worthless to the rest of us. It doesn’t even buy us security.
None of this criticizes brave soldiers doing their duty. What is criminal is that we are sending those brave men and women into harm’s way to fight a foe that fights back with bombs in its underwear while we contract Athlete’s Foot in airports. We cripple ourselves in this war on terror: there has not been a successful hijacking of an Israeli airline in 25 years; the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes has never been repeated.
What do they know we do not?
They know that terror is counteracted by intelligence and covert operations.
Ron I am not diminishing what the men in combat do and have done. In fact one could argue I am obsessed with it given how much I write about it. My point is that as a country we have to make tough choices about our resources and efforts and I question whether the war on terror, and the massive investment of dollars and human beings, hasn’t itself tanked our economy, put us in debt, and distracted our leaders from the bigger threat from structural unemployment, growing wealth disparity, and the justified dispair and anger that is increasingly fostering. If the Tea Party shows nothing else its that people are very, very upset about where we are as a country, no overseas but right here at home.
As an American Soldier currently in Afghanistan, feminist and Democrat, I believe in these wars we’re fighting. While the cost for both wars are high, and the cost of human lives even higher, these costs are both worth the fight because America and its allies both depend on us winning these wars.
While the far-left will point to the loss of human lives as a reason to end the war, and the far-right will use fear-mongering tactics of Islamophobia and defending America’s freedoms to support the war, the truth is that wars are politics by other means, and these wars must exist to ensure our long-term economic interests and security.
More than just that, the lives of women and men both in Afghanistan and Iraq depend on us winning these wars, regardless of cost. Nations that have strong economies and stable governments are more likely to be more successful in their drive to promote gender equality. Likewise, nations that value its girls and women and see them as equal to men also have more stable governments and stronger economies. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the conditions of women and girls are less than ideals, and thus anyone who wishes to promote gender equality must also promote and support these war efforts. In a sense, gender equality and economic development are depended upon each other, and we cannot have one without the other.
I’ve stood there for many ramp ceremonies (makeshift memorial ceremonies on airport tarmacs when bodies of service women and men are loaded onto planes to head home), and I’ve cried for each one of them, and I hurt for each of their family, but at the end of the day, in an effort to make a better world and to secure the interests of America and its allies (in the purest form of realism within international diplomacy), these wars are a moral imperative.
I’ve never forgotten the names of the Soldiers who died, nor have I forgotten all the stories of dead Soldiers I’ve had to cover – but at the same time, I’ve not forgotten about the plights of women in these worn-torn countries, either.
Come to Afghanistan, live among the locals, and see how our Soldiers fight, and with an open mind, I’ll bet the author or anyone with any sense of compassion will end up supporting these war efforts – even far-leftists like Dennis Kuninich.
Thank you for your service Marc. Your heroism, and the men and woman like you, is beyond reproach.
I respect what you are saying and that you have far more information than I do to say it. I have not been there and seen these wars in person. I did, however, just arrive home from Africa last night where there is massive starvation and mistreatment of women. I just wonder how we choose to save the people, the women, of Afganistan and let the people, the women, of Africa starve? One could certainly make the argument that a fraction of the money spent in the middle east would have saved more lives in a Continent were many live on $1 a day and drought and political instability has caused 10s of thousands of children to die in just the past week.
Mr. Matlack,
Enjoy your cozy warm bed and the knowledge that your children are safe and sleeping soundly. They will go to private schools and enjoy their trust fund.
We will die to keep it that way.
You will never understand.
I am not trying to inflame anyone, nor am I going out of my way to offend anyone, but the devil’s advocate in me can’t help but notice the broad patriotic strokes being used here.
Realistically, I cannot assume every man engaged in a profession, no matter how beloved a profession that is, is a “good man.” I can maybe give men in some jobs the benefit of the doubt more than in other jobs, but this conflation bothers me a little bit. I find the blind “support your troops” sentiment in American media to be overly sentimental and simple-minded. In foreign policy I have a fairly conservative view, even neo-con in some ways, but even I find this kind of language disturbing. Sorry, but I don’t give blind faith to anyone just because he or she wears a uniform — I find the twentieth century a great source of reasons not to.
Take 200,000 people engaged in any activity involving stress, violence, miscommunication, and raw human emotions. Are they ALL behaving like good people? Probably not. Are there good people dying on the other side, at least by accident? Probably.
There are some bad people wearing uniforms all over the world. I’m fairly patriotic, but I can’t believe that America is somehow an exception to this. I think the use of “we” and “us” and “our” is overblown. Patriotism should be more than team spirit. The American military is more than “my team.” War is more complicated than a game. The American flag is so much more than team colors. I’m glad Osama bin Laden is dead, but _I_ was not part of the “we’ that got him. Give me a break. My Japanese-American friend did not bomb Pearl Harbor, and I did not shoot bin Laden.
I’m leaving aside for the moment the many people working overseas who actually don’t wear uniforms, which complicates things further. When I’m supposed to support “our troops,” is that supposed to include all intelligence operatives, double agents, mercenaries, wet work operatives, etc.? Or is it just the people who wear conventional uniforms and are held to formal rules of conduct?
I think of myself as a pragmatist. A war is justifiable or not, winnable or not, and that’s what the main debate should be about, not whether the men engaged are “good” or not. (Yes, ignoring for the moment that good and bad women are dying, too.) Talking about how good the men are often muddies the waters. And, clearly saying the men are good could lead to totally different conclusions: 1) pull out before any more good men lose their lives, or 2) don’t dishonor the good men who have died by pulling out too soon.
My way of life is thanks to the service of good men in uniform. Did every single man in uniform contribute to that? No way. Would I enjoy my way of life had some people never served in uniform? Absolutely. I could have done without Benedict Arnold, the St. Patrick’s battalion, thousands of men wearing the Confederate gray, George McClellan, and anyone court-martialed for murdering a fellow serviceman. Not to mention commanders-in-chief of both parties who have made deplorable decisions.
P.S. The chaplain who shot up Fort Hood a year or so ago was wearing a uniform. I refuse to give him support or thank him for his service. No excuses just for wearing a stars and stripes velcroed to your shoulder.
Let’s not forget Naomi Klein’s statements that there are approximately 70-100 “contractors” in the war torn arenas for each and every soldier. Who are we supporting, by supporting the troops ?
Also, I have often wondered if the mental health services that should be a right to our service people were freely available, and easy to actually receive, if events similar to fort Hood could have been avoided.
A less informed person said to me that a large number of untreated (because of a lack of resources) PTSD suffering veterans, with the right to bear arms could be the biggest threat to our government and security.
Major Hassan was not a chaplain.
I will never pretend to know what it might be like to be there in the trenches, serving, and protecting. I also don’t see that wide a gap in the debate here. All of us want our troops back home, safe and sound with their children and being rewarded on the home front as they should be for their service. I can only assume the brave men and women in the field would choose that as well.
At some point it becomes a debate over the logic of it all. If the troops are fighting our freedoms, then logic says that being at home, with all the resources associated with war being put to use being brought back home as well, will much better serve the freedoms being sacrificed for worldwide. The facts are the economy is taking freedoms from all of us. People are living in poverty in the US. Education, medical care (even adjunct services for Veterans) are all suffering because of the money being spent worldwide to “protect our freedoms.”
Who is it that really benefits those expenditures? Are the native peoples of these lands glad to have us around or do they resent our interference? Is our motivation for the people and “Democracy”, a system which upon closer inspection may not quite be working as planned? Aren’t the same people that are making the decisions on whether wars and occupation continue consorting with the profiteers and contractors and other CEOs who are profiting the most while our oil prices increase, and many of us are at serious risk of losing all those freedoms we espouse so highly and freely? Can anyone explain how – ethically at least it is acceptable for a soldier in service to have to worry about his family home being foreclosed on while he or she is serving our country?
I am glad I am not a party to those make shift memorials on tarmacs around the world. I also believe they are unnecessary. Repeatedly I hear the question “why are we still there?” I have yet to hear a real answer not tainted with political agenda or profit motive from those who are not there any more than I am, unless it is for a photo op.
At this stage of the game, I believe we all would be better off if the troops were allowed to be heroes here at home. At home with their families, communities, and in the political, socio – economic system they fought to protect. The sufferings of the current times have solutions. They are difficult to implement perhaps, but not to understand. Bring home the troops, and all the money it cost to keep them in harms way. Bring the jobs and manufacturing back to the US where they belong. Buy American, and perhaps teach of the morals and values that our troops hold so dearly. Maybe that will help turn things around. A look back to the “Golden Rule” is called for. We need heroes, indeed. I believe we need them at home more than we need them in Afghanistan or Iraq at this point.
Please. Give me some credit for having a brain in my head. Much of American foreign policy is carried out in defense of “freedom,” but I think it is completely naive to think that American military policy is only about freedom and nothing else.
There are plenty of American servicemen and women who are there because of ideological reasons. They see themselves as fighting for freedom. I don’t doubt their sincerity. But, that doesn’t mean that the government that sends them there is only thinking about freedom. Just because elected leaders, unelected leaders, and an echoing media throw the word “freedom” around does not mean that a war really is about freedom. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.
I’m a diehard capitalist. Do I think aerospace companies are only motivated by patriotism and democracy when they sell aircraft to the Pentagon? Please. Has the public ever been lied to and propagandized in the name of freedom and democracy? Do I have to ask?
I’m a hard-nosed foreign policy wonk. Why can’t a war just be in the country’s national security interest? Why does the government have to sell everything as a “war for freedom”? It’s dishonest and makes people needlessly suspicious.
AnonMale
you put it plain and simple and I agree
if I may add, we go to war:
1. because our leaders crave glory ( like Artila, Gangis, Julias , )
2 our leaders greed the ‘oil’ (or money or raw materials or farmlands..)
3 our people felt dull and our leader thought to give them some exictments (sort of Gladiatorings)
very naive thoughts, but I wonder how much truth in it
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in these disgusting bloodbaths. They were wrong from day one. Nation-building is a joke and a lie.
When it comes down to it, economic interest is the exact reason, and from a realism perspective, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There are many layers to this war, security being one of them, but economic interests is another, and as a liberal, Democrat and Soldier, I am fine with that.
It’s sort of like people who say that the war in Iraq was about oil – which is not true, but if it were, so what?
Good men are still dying in Afghanistan because for more than thirty years the US has pursued a misguided foreign policy in the Middle East. Our support of Israel, fueled by the effective lobbying efforts of AIPAC and the neo-cons, has done immeasurable harm to this country. The US has endured decades of “the war on terror” because of our unilateral support of Israel.
George Washington warned in his farewell address to the nation that becoming too close to any one nation would make their enemies become our enemies. And that is exactly what has happened. We’ve become too close to Israel and their Muslim and Arab enemies have become our enemies. It didn’t have to be that way.
Good men are still dying in Afghanistan because of the effectiveness of the Israel Lobby in this country.
Firstly I do not want to disrespect any who has had loved ones lost to the ‘war on terror’ or to those maimed, injured and I do not question the courage and bravery of the men on the ground however, they did sign up for the service and therefore become tools of Government to carry out foreign policy.
I do strongly disagree with the conflict in Afghanistan and the Iraq war and the pretext to these wars, 9/11 ( that’s a whole subject in it’s self )
As for Bin Laden, he was the required “‘bogey man”.Was he not killed several times previously? before ‘finally’ getting killed.! there was no proof to confirm his demise previously, As far as I’m concerned we only have the presented ‘evidence’ provided by the U.S military. The war on terror goes on providing profit for the military industrial complex, and as someone else has mentioned the Neo-Cons which had set out their plans prior to 9/11 for dominance of the Middle East
and it’s resources which involved creating conflicts for the long term agenda which is still going on.
The U.S public and the World is being duped.