Matthew Hoh
America uses 25% of the world’s oil. The US consumed 20,680,000 barrels of oil per day in 2007. Our leaders certainly do know that the supply is finite and that switching off oil and gas will lead to a radically different way of life for Americans, and certainly destabalize our entire country. We are just not ready for peak oil at all. We have been trying to get a pipeline through Afghanistan for natural gas since at least 2000. Congress is dragging its feet on a new energy/climate bill, and that is threatening our national security and energy supplies.
Destabilization due to energy shortages will have serious ramifications for all of our politicians. These are all some of the base reasons why we stay in Afghanistan. There are also extraneous humanitarian reasons for staying now that we have installed a terribly corrupt government. Can we fix our mistakes there and should we even try? I’m sure this is part of what President Obama is weighing, but he’s also reportedly decided that we will stay there. On Democracy Now on Wednesday, it was revealed that the decision to increase troop levels is over, and now the only question is how many more to send.
The controllers of our military-industrial complex have been aware of peak oil and dwindling energy resources for decades. They are also well aware of climate change and how that is also a threat. So why aren’t more in the military having an ethical problem with what we are “really fighting for” in the Middle East? One former Marine has, at least. Now that we know Hamid Karzai’s brother is paid by the CIA, and we are funding the CIA, and Karzai is producing opium, and opium is funding the Taliban, we are funding the Taliban. This should not be acceptable to anyone.
Former Marine Captain Resigns in Protest of Afghanistan War
Top civilian in Southern province argues we’re exacerbating the problem we’re supposedly there to solve.
by Glenn Greenwald
Matthew Hoh, a former Marine captain with combat experience in Iraq, resigned last month from his position with the Foreign Service, where he was the the senior U.S. civilian in the Taliban-dominated Southern Afghanistan province of Zabul, because he became convinced that our war in that country will not only inevitably fail, but is fueling the very insurgency we are trying to defeat. Hoh’s resignation is remarkable because it entails the sort of career sacrifice in the name of principle that has been so rare over the last decade, but even more so because of the extraordinary four-page letter (.pdf) he wrote explaining his reasoning.
Hoh’s letter should be read in its entirety, but I want to highlight one part. He begins by noting that “next fall, the United States’ occupation will equal in length the Soviet Union’s own physical involvement in Afghanistan,” and contends that our unwanted occupation combined with our support for a deeply corrupt government “reminds [him] horribly of our involvement in South Vietnam.” He then explains that most of the people we are fighting are not loyal to the Taliban or driven by any other nefarious aim, but instead are driven principally by resistance to the presence of foreign troops in their provinces and villages. . . . .
Matthew Hoh, a former Foreign Service officer and former Marine Corps captain who last month became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, was online Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss the reasons why he thought the war “wasn’t worth the fight.” You can read his Q&A here.
The media, the American people, rarely discuss why we’re really in Afghanistan. Even progressives like Rachel Maddow have expressed strong support for the Afghanistan war (Maddow did so on election night, no less). The reason we’re there is to be ahead of other big world powers when the war for fossil fuels really heats up. It’s about land, location, natural gas, Russian resources, a pipeline, and probably several other things, but we are not still there because it’s been claimed that 9/11 was planned there. It would be crazy to believe that is the reason we are there, 8 years later. Americans better confront the reality of why we are taking over this country, and planning to occupy it for many decades to come. Americans need to stop fooling themselves that we are “helping the Afghan citizens” — and providing them with free health care, by the way, which we can’t even get here in the U.S. because the pro-war folks think that’s “soshalizm”. We need to decide if we want to keep paying for nation building, a corrupt Afghan government, killing civilians, and the way we are being lied to about all of it, as much as we were lied to about Iraq. Who can defend this?
Glen Greenwald says, “How long are we going to continue to do this? We invade and occupy a country, and then label as “insurgents” or even ”terrorists” the people in that country who fight against our invasion and occupation.”
I have been asking this since 2004, since before my original podcast. We label people whatever is useful to us, so it’s justified to kill them. We label them something else, like “Freedom Fighters” and they are our allies. If we label them something good, we supply them with money and weapons. Sometimes, like now, we supply them indirectly with money and weapons, even as we fight and kill them. The world is a crazy place, isn’t it?
The Taliban and/or various other fighters in Afghanistan have been both allies and enemies to the U.S. Some of them today are probably the sons of the former “Freedom Fighters”. Bush blamed it all on lack of uniforms and 9/11 and “democracy” something they still do not have. They will think of anything they can, no matter how absurd, to justify what they do. And I’m still asking the same question Greenwald asks, for the same reasons, nearly six years later, and Obama is doing much of what Bush started, only with different participants. The current participants are even more removed from 9/11. Yet there we are. But remember this because it’s probably the most important:
Dominance, something the U.S. aspires to at all times, is completely dependent on fossil fuels. And fossil fuels are running out.
Interesting. This is the first perspective of this type I have read. Though, honestly, I don’t generally read much about the wars. I think you definitely have some interesting points, especially that at the end of the power and dominance being tied to fossil fuels. Great post.