The War in Afghanistan is already over

Let's make this short, but to some, perhaps not sweet: the U.S. has already lost in Afghanistan. It just does not realize it yet. That is, in fact, the good news. It will be official shortly, when Mr. Obama refuses the request to send yet more troops to the fractured, mountainous region known as Afghanistan.
Of course, this announcement will be greeted with a lot of angst on the right; dire predictions will be made regarding the horrible consequences of such a defeat. But sometimes a country can actually benefit by losing a war. Don't believe it? Ask Japan and Germany. At last report they are doing quite well. Rumor has it that they build better cars than...Detroit. They also happen to have a stronger manufacturing base than the United States. Who would have predicted that in August of 1945?
Happily, there are no American national interests at stake in Afghanistan, just as there never were any in Viet Nam. All the fears ginned up by the domino theory about the fall of that Asian country were never realized. The U.S. went back to business, as it will do again after leaving Afghanistan. There were serious consequences for our Vietnamese allies however, and I do not dismiss them. But any power, much less a world empire, must be able to distinguish between its own national interests and those of its allies. Such interests change daily, and rarely remain completely aligned.
This is not to say that policies change to reflect such a constant change; indeed, policy becomes static, causing serious dislocations from reality. Such a dislocation can be seen in Japan. The U.S. remains entrenched in Japan sixty plus years after defeating the country. We have no military fears of Japan. Yet why we continue to occupy Japan remains unconsidered among the broad American public. It is not forgotten in Japan, however, and the oddity of Okinawa will soon be addressed now that the Japanese have tossed out the sclerotic party that has dominated their politics for decades.
The Afghanistan policy fiasco never made sense. Just a few years after helping Afghanis defeat conventional military forces from a tottering empire (sound ominously familiar?), the United States incredibly turned around and decided...that it should send conventional military forces into Afghanistan. If insanity can be defined as repeating the same actions while expecting different results, the U.S. policy was and is insane. The idea that we could accomplish what the Soviets could not is simply another example of American hubris.
The American defeat may force the recognition by Washington of the limits of its empire. The public is far ahead of the policy wonks in Washington, who continue to operate in a bubble disconnected from reality, foreign and domestic. A serious review of American commitments abroad is long overdue.The costs of maintaining U.S. military bases around the world has been and remains unsustainable and undesirable.The very existence of such bases creates an inevitable conflict with populations resentful of such intrusions.
The borders of bases the United States has expanded to encompass the entire world. Chalmers Johnson cited in 2003 a Pentagon study admitting the existence of 702 overseas bases in 130 countries. Given that the U.S. cannot control its own border in Arizona and California, prevailing in such a remote imperial border war never reflected reality.
The United States loss will simply be one of many endured by western powers in Afghanistan. Happily, the loss will not have serious strategic consequences, and may have the salutary side effect of making the United States reassess its real role in the world. After sixty years of perpetual war, cold or hot, it is well past time for that critical review.


copyrightC2009 R.M.Wright