There's no question Andrew Bacevich has been one of the staunchest critics of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In part one of Rethink Afghanistan, from which this clip is excerpted, Bacevich called the 17,000 additional troops President Obama has committed "a drop in the bucket." And in a recent conversation with me, Bacevich said Obama put the cart before the horse by escalating the war before finishing his policy review. So I was surprised when Bacevich, a Boston University International Relations professor and author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, told me we wouldn't see congressional oversight hearings anytime soon.
Bacevich's pragmatic assessment stemmed from the fact that Afghanistan is deemed part of the global war on terror that Defense Secretary Gates has called "the Long War." And Bacevich is certainly correct in the sense that we haven't seen much of an institutionalized effort to challenge the policymakers, monitor the military agencies involved, or inform the public. That said, I remain entirely optimistic about bringing about congressional oversight hearings (and I'll explain why in the extended post).
Where is the public outcry for congressional oversight hearings on the war in Afghanistan? Granted, the words "congressional oversight hearings" aren't particularly sexy--certainly not as alluring as "shock and awe," "insurgency," "counterinsirgency," "airstrikes," and "Hellfire missiles." But one thing that is always sexy is power, and Congress has the power to prevent these airstrikes and missiles from killing thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, thereby removing some of the hostility toward our country and reasons for joining the Taliban's insurgency. As Tom Hayden wrote his week, Congress has the power to bring in experts to examine the overall goals for this war; costs and budgeting; skyrocketing casualty rates; use of private contractors; human rights violations and torture. If that kind of power isn't sexy, I don't know what is, but the fact of the matter is Congress won't call for oversight hearings until we make them.
Now there are some true leaders in Congress who have already shown a willingness to oppose the Obama administration, the Pentagon, and a corporate press that has remained largely uncritical of the administration's plans for military escalation. Senator Bernie Sanders is one of those leaders. Though he doesn't approve of President Obama's decision to send an additional 17,000 soldiers to Afghanistan, here's how he tactfully voiced his dissent:
The last thing in the world that I want to see is our new President -- who I have a lot of confidence in in many respects -- we don't want to see him bogged down the way LBJ was bogged down in Vietnam. We don't want to see another war in Iraq, which was so disastrous in so many respects.
This is such an explosive headline, I couldn't resist using it, even though this post is about much more than military escalation. This is the title of part one of Brave New Foundation's new full-length documentary (think Uncovered: The War on Iraq and Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers), which they began releasing online for free today. Their documentary campaign, Rethink Afghanistan, tackles issues like the costs of war and troop buildup--the subject of part one--featuring experts like Andrew Bacevich, Stephen Kinzer, Anand Gopal, and Dr. Ramaza Bashardost, Afghanistan's Independent candidate in their upcoming Presidential Election. It's worth checking out to hear what those experts have to say alone, and the fact that it's free is always an incentive!
But what I want to talk about is the ultimate goal of the Rethink Afghanistan campaign, which is to push for congressional oversight hearings. As I wrote last week, oversight has been a cornerstone of government accountability throughout our country's history, particularly in wartime. And some of the best oversight has not only been bipartisan, but it's come when the President's own party is debating his policies. Take the joint committee investigations during the Civil War, Senator Truman's Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program during WWII, and the Fulbright hearings during Vietnam. The same oversight needs to be applied today, especially after we saw this system of checks and balances shattered during the Iraq war under the Bush administration.
STATE BLOGS
