{"id":432533,"date":"2018-02-25T05:41:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-25T02:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/tr\/content\/?p=432533"},"modified":"2023-04-27T14:51:52","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T11:51:52","slug":"whistling-past-the-graveyard-of-empires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2018\/02\/25\/whistling-past-the-graveyard-of-empires\/","title":{"rendered":"Whistling Past the Graveyard (of Empires)"},"content":{"rendered":"<header id=\"masthead\" class=\"clearfix container site-header\" role=\"banner\">\n<nav id=\"main-navigation\" class=\"container main-navigation\" role=\"navigation\">\n<div class=\"sf-menu\">\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-432536\" src=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/tr\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/zxc.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"640\" \/><\/div>\n<\/nav>\n<\/header>\n<div id=\"main\" class=\"site-main\">\n<div class=\"clearfix container\">\n<div id=\"primary\" class=\"content-area\">\n<div id=\"content\" class=\"site-content\" role=\"main\">\n<article id=\"post-43436\" class=\"clearfix post-43436 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-analysis category-military tag-adnan-al-qadhi tag-afghanistan tag-al-qaeda tag-ashraf-ghani tag-charles-swannack tag-david-petraeus tag-george-w-bush tag-iraq tag-john-burns tag-leon-panetta tag-tom-engelhardt\">\n<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<div class=\"entry-meta\"><em style=\"color: #222222; font-size: 14px;\"><strong>by Tom Engelhardt<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"clearfix entry-content\">\n<div class=\"pf-content\">\n<p>If you\u2019re in the mood, would you consider taking a walk with me and, while we\u2019re at it, thinking a little about America\u2019s wars? Nothing particularly ambitious, mind you, just \u2014 if you\u2019re up for it \u2014 a stroll to the corner.<\/p>\n<p>Now, admittedly, there\u2019s a small catch here. Where exactly is that corner?\u00a0 I think the first time I heard about it might have been back in January 2004 and it was located somewhere in Iraq. That was, if you remember, just nine months after American troops triumphantly entered a burning Baghdad and the month after Iraq\u2019s autocratic ruler, Saddam Hussein, was captured near his hometown, Tikrit.\u00a0 Yet despite President George W. Bush\u2019s unforgettable May 1, 2003, \u201cmission accomplished\u201d moment when, from the deck of an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego, he\u00a0declared\u00a0\u201cmajor combat operations in Iraq\u2026 ended,\u201d the American war there somehow never actually stopped.\u00a0 An insurgency had already flared, U.S. bases were being periodically mortared, and American officials feared that some kind of civil war was in the offing between the country\u2019s formerly reigning Sunni minority and its rising Shiite majority.<span id=\"more-43436\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It was then that Major General Charles Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, mentioned that corner (and as you\u2019ll gather from his comments, it wasn\u2019t even the first time he\u2019d brought the subject up).\u00a0 Here, as\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0correspondent John Burns\u00a0reported\u00a0it, was Swannack\u2019s assessment of the situation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe general, a large, imposing figure renowned among his troops for his no-nonsense ways, began his remarks by reminding the reporters that he had appeared in Baghdad six weeks ago, about the time of the insurgents\u2019 Ramadan offensive, and had said he believed [troops] in his area were \u2018turning the corner.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, he said, \u2018I\u2019m here to tell you that we\u2019ve turned that corner. I can also tell you that we are on a glide path towards success, as attacks on our forces have declined by almost 60 percent over the past month.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As it happened, Americans would remain on the glide path to that corner of ultimate success for some time, not just in Iraq but in Washington, too.\u00a0 There, as Rowan Scarborough\u00a0reported\u00a0more than a year later, in March 2005, \u201cin the privacy of their E-ring offices, senior Pentagon officials have begun to entertain thoughts that were unimaginable a year ago: Iraq is turning the corner. \u2018This is still a tough fight. We don\u2019t want anyone to think that it is not,\u2019 said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a military analyst who strongly supports Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. \u2018But the momentum is in our direction.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Corner-less Iraq<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Here was the problem: every time American troops actually turned that corner, what they found there were insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and other weaponry, sometimes even\u00a0American-produced\u00a0arms.\u00a0 In addition, the streets around that corner turned out to be pitted with half-buried improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, those same insurgents could build from instructions on the Internet and that could destroy the most well-armored Humvee for the\u00a0price of a pizza.\u00a0 (Early on, in fact, some of the places down which American troops had to turn were already being given grimly sardonic names like \u201cRPG Alley.\u201d) There were, as it happened, so many corners to turn and yet, from 2003 on, seemingly nowhere to go.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t doubt that those of you of a certain age preparing for our little walk are already thinking about a somewhat more perilous image from another war: the infamous \u201clight at the end of the tunnel\u201d that will forever be connected with Vietnam.\u00a0 That phrase was repeatedly used by Americans to describe the glide path to victory in that conflict and would long be associated with the commander of U.S. forces,\u00a0General William Westmoreland. He used it to remarkable effect in 1967, a mere 10 weeks before the enemy launched its devastating Tet Offensive.<\/p>\n<p>However, the general was anything but alone in his choice of imagery.\u00a0 That \u201ctunnel\u201d was also occupied by a range of top U.S. officials, from President\u00a0Lyndon Johnson\u00a0to National Security Advisor\u00a0Walt Rostow.\u00a0 And it wasn\u2019t the newest of images either.\u00a0 After all,\u00a0General Henri Navarre\u00a0had used it a decade and a half earlier in the French version of that losing war.<\/p>\n<p>For those in the antiwar movement of the era, it was an image that always had a particularly ominous resonance, since you weren\u2019t just heading for \u201cthe corner\u201d but deep inside a dark tunnel where, just beyond the light glimmering at its end, it was easy enough to imagine a train bearing down on you.\u00a0 By the way, lest you think there\u2019s anything especially original about the American military in the twenty-first century, Westmoreland also spoke with hope in 1967 (but assumedly before he found himself in that tunnel) of\u00a0how\u00a0the U.S. \u201chad turned the corner in the war\u201d and how its end had begun \u201cto come into view.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Iraq, the light at the end of the corner would prove no more evident than it had been in that Vietnamese tunnel and, as a result, the corner itself simply disappeared.\u00a0 In fact, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2008, U.S. commander (and Iraq\u00a0surge\u00a0general) David Petraeus even\u00a0admitted, however reluctantly, that \u201cwe haven\u2019t turned any corners, we haven\u2019t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel.\u201d\u00a0 And soon after that, corners of any sort were largely abandoned (at least as figures of speech).\u00a0 Or perhaps, thought of another way, the problem of finding a corner, no less any good news on the other side of it, would be solved by a change in tactics in the second iteration of Washington\u2019s Iraq War in this century: the one against the Islamic State.\u00a0 From\u00a0August 2014\u00a0on, the U.S. Air Force would be called in to play a major role in turning Iraq\u2019s embattled cities, from\u00a0Fallujah\u00a0to\u00a0Mosul, into so much\u00a0rubble.\u00a0 No corners, no problems, you might say.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I don\u2019t want you to be disappointed.\u00a0 I was serious about that walk to the corner, just not in Iraq.\u00a0 Consider corner-less Iraq no more than background information for the real walk we\u2019re going to take.<\/p>\n<p>But before we leave Iraq, let me mention \u2014 and I hope you won\u2019t consider me too much of an optimist for this \u2014 that I just\u00a0<em>might<\/em>\u00a0see a little light glimmering at the end of the rubble.\u00a0 Is it possible that, some 14 years late, America\u2019s mission-accomplished moment is finally arriving?\u00a0 After all, the \u201ccaliphate\u201d of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is history and, in December, President Donald Trump even\u00a0declared victory\u00a0over ISIS.\u00a0 (\u201cWe\u2019ve won in Iraq,\u201d he said without hesitation or qualification.) \u00a0No tunnel, no corner, no glimmers of light, just the whole shebang.<\/p>\n<p>Now admittedly, while the so-called caliphate is gone and its militants driven out of the Iraqi and Syrian cities they had occupied, some of its fighters seem to be turning themselves back into guerrilla warriors and suicide bombers \u2014 the first post-caliphate bombings in\u00a0Baghdad\u00a0have evidently begun \u2014 and aren\u2019t quite acting like they\u2019re down for the count.\u00a0 Not yet anyway (and let\u2019s not forget as well that, in the years leading to Washington\u2019s \u201cvictory,\u201d the Islamic State did somehow manage to turn itself into a\u00a0global\u00a0terror\u00a0brand).<\/p>\n<p>Still, give me a little leeway here.\u00a0 I\u2019m just talking about glimmers, and\u2026 oh, wait, I should mention one more thing: in neighboring Syria, all a-glimmer itself these days, the U.S. is now seemingly on the brink of\u00a0involvement\u00a0in a whole new war between NATO ally Turkey and the Kurdish forces it\u2019s still backing against ISIS and, talking about what\u2019s glimmering in the distance, a possible future war with Iran also seems to be\u00a0lurking\u00a0just around the next turn of the Trumpian corner.<\/p>\n<p>Still, let\u2019s keep the good news in full view.\u00a0 U.S. troops are actually being drawn down in Iraq and a mere 14 years after that mission-accomplished moment, some of them are evidently\u00a0being sent\u00a0to the place where that corner-to-be-turned still evidently stands, where for America\u2019s war-fighting generals and other key officials, there have always been corners to turn beyond compare.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cEnhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So how about taking that little walk of ours somewhere in Afghanistan? After all, a mere 16 years after the Bush administration invaded and liberated that land \u2014 at the end of November 2017, to be exact \u2014 U.S. commander Army General John Nicholson, who had only recently been\u00a0claiming\u00a0that the fight against the Taliban (and a new branch of ISIS) was \u201cstill in a stalemate,\u201d suddenly suggested\u2026 yes, you guessed it\u2026 that the by-now famous corner, so long sought after, was once again being turned.\u00a0 He managed to make the point by quoting a recent statement of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani,\u00a0saying, \u201cNow, looking ahead to 2018, as President Ghani said, he believes we have turned the corner and I agree.\u00a0 The momentum is now with the Afghan Security Forces and the Taliban cannot win in the face of the pressures that I outlined.\u00a0 Again, their choices are to reconcile, live in irrelevance, or die.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If, so many years later, General Nicholson were alone in such a conclusion, you might question his claim, given that the Taliban now control or contest\u00a0more Afghan territory\u00a0than at any time since they were driven from power in 2001; that President Ghani\u2019s government seems\u00a0shakier\u00a0than any since the U.S. \u201cliberated\u201d the country; that the Afghan security forces have been\u00a0taking\u00a0a\u00a0beating; and that the capital, Kabul, the heartland of government control, has been a veritable\u00a0inferno\u00a0of\u00a0terror attacks. \u00a0Still, here\u2019s what gives Nicholson\u2019s statement its power: he\u2019s not alone.\u00a0 His conclusion has been backed by a remarkable array of knowledgeable officials since at least 2010.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s just a partial list: \u00a0U.S. Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal in\u00a0February 2010\u00a0(the U.S. had \u201cturned the corner\u201d in Helmand Province in the embattled poppy-producing southern heartland of the country); Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on\u00a0June 7, 2011\u00a0(\u201cI leave Afghanistan today with the belief that if we keep this momentum up, we will deliver a decisive blow to the enemy and turn the corner in this conflict\u201d) and his boss President Barack Obama on the\u00a0same day\u00a0(\u201cWe\u2019ve broken the Taliban\u2019s momentum, trained Afghan security forces, and are now preparing to turn a corner in our efforts\u201d); Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey in\u00a0April 2012\u00a0(\u201cIn my opening months as chairman, I worked with the secretary of defense and the president to fashion a new defense strategy, guidance that would address the security paradox. This guidance is meant to help our military\u2026 turn the corner from a decade of focus on stability operations and find a new way forward to address that wider spectrum of threats\u201d); and Gates\u2019s successor, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in\u00a0September 2012\u00a0(\u201cWe have turned the corner\u201d); and so it\u2019s gone in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>Or put another way, never have so many prospective corners been turned over so many years to so little effect. \u00a0Nonetheless, if you\u2019re game, let\u2019s think about heading out in search of just such a corner one more time.\u00a0 Before we go, though, let me mention one other thing.\u00a0 Given the experiences of the British and the\u00a0Soviets, among others, Afghanistan has long been\u00a0called\u00a0\u201cthe graveyard of empires.\u201d\u00a0 However, for Afghans since 1979, when the\u00a0first iteration\u00a0of America\u2019s wars there began, it has simply been a graveyard. This year, things have already gotten\u00a0so bad\u00a0in Kabul \u2014 from attacks on a major hotel and a military academy to a devastating bomb concealed inside an ambulance \u2014 that city dwellers have reportedly taken to carrying \u201cin case I die\u201d notes with them, lest their bodies be shredded and left unidentifiable by the latest Taliban or ISIS terror assault.<\/p>\n<p>Across the country, in winter \u2014 usually a time of little fighting \u2014 the war(s) are simply being ratcheted up.\u00a0 The Trump administration and the Pentagon are sending in more troops (\u201cadvisers\u201d), more\u00a0planes, and more\u00a0drones.\u00a0 The U.S. military has announced soaring numbers of air strikes,\u00a0as well\u00a0as\u00a0more bombings\u00a0(including\u00a0record ones) than at any time since 2012 when 100,000, not 14,00-15,000, U.S. troops were in-country.\u00a0 And the U.S. air commander there, Air Force Major General James Hecker, recently threatened more of them,\u00a0claiming\u00a0that \u201cthe Taliban still has not felt the full brunt of American and Afghan air power.\u201d\u00a0 And yet, according to both\u00a0the Pentagon\u00a0and a recent\u00a0BBC study, the Taliban is now contesting more territory than at any time since 2002 and militants from the ISIS branch there have similarly been spreading to new parts of the country.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, the U.S. military (in support of Afghan security forces) and the Taliban (as well as ISIS) are fighting each other, but functionally, when it comes to ordinary Afghans, they are colluding in killing\u00a0striking numbers\u00a0of\u00a0civilians\u00a0across the country.\u00a0 In other words, more than a decade and a half later, despite those corners, it all only seems to be getting worse with no end in sight.<\/p>\n<p>After all, in these years, the two groups the Bush administration went after in 2001, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, have somehow morphed into \u201cmore than 20 terrorist and insurgent groups\u201d on either side of the Afghani-Pakistani border.\u00a0 (And in case you doubt those figures, they\u2019re straight out of a recent ill-titled\u00a0Pentagon report, \u201cEnhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan.\u201d)\u00a0 Beyond Afghanistan, in these years, the same process has been repeating itself, as the original al-Qaeda morphed into a whole range of groups (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and so on) and the same thing is now happening to ISIS.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, I\u2019m starting to wonder about almost any corner in much of the Greater Middle East and Africa, which means it\u2019s true: I\u2019m the one who\u2019s hesitating now.\u00a0 I know what I promised you, but to be honest, I\u2019m having my doubts about this walk of ours.\u00a0 I\u2019m worried about what exactly will happen if we ever do get to that corner.\u00a0 Who, after all, wants to\u00a0whistle\u00a0past a graveyard?<\/p>\n<p>So here\u2019s my suggestion.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t we just postpone our walk for a while?\u00a0 Bad as things are right now, experience tells us \u2014 or at least our military commanders swear to it \u2014 that they\u2019ll get better sooner or later.\u00a0 What if we check back this fall, or maybe early next year, or perhaps sometime in 2020, or even 2021?\u00a0 By that time, there has to be at least one corner around which we could\u2026 well, you know what I\u2019m about to say.\u00a0 Count on one thing: I\u2019ll be in touch.<\/p>\n<p><em>Reprinted, with permission, from TomDispatch.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the\u00a0<\/em><em>American Empire Project<\/em><em>\u00a0and the author of\u00a0<\/em>The United States of Fear<em>\u00a0as well as a history of the Cold War,\u00a0<\/em>The End of Victory Culture<em>. He is a fellow of the\u00a0<\/em><em>Nation Institute<\/em><em>\u00a0and runs\u00a0<\/em>TomDispatch.com<em>. His latest book is\u00a0<\/em>Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.\u00a0\u00a0<em>His next book,<\/em>\u00a0A Nation Unmade by War\u00a0<em>(Dispatch Books), will be published in May.\u00a0<\/em><em>Follow\u00a0<\/em>TomDispatch<em>\u00a0on\u00a0Twitter\u00a0and join us on\u00a0Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Alfred McCoy\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power<em>, as well as John Dower\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II<em>, John Feffer\u2019s dystopian novel\u00a0<\/em>Splinterlands<em>, Nick Turse\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Next Time They\u2019ll Come to Count the Dead<em>, and Tom Engelhardt\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World<em>.\u00a0<\/em>Copyright 2018 Tom Engelhardt<\/p>\n<div class=\"printfriendly\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 by Tom Engelhardt If you\u2019re in the mood, would you consider taking a walk with me and, while we\u2019re at it, thinking a little about America\u2019s wars? Nothing particularly ambitious, mind you, just \u2014 if you\u2019re up for it \u2014 a stroll to the corner. Now, admittedly, there\u2019s a small catch here. Where exactly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4092,"featured_media":66528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[9747,9727],"class_list":["post-432533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iraq","tag-afghanistan","tag-iraq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}