Gillard has pledged that Australia will maintain troops in Afghanistan, virtually as long as US imperialism wants them there. How long is this to be? Nobody knows. Australia’s commitment is open-ended.

 

Obama and his generals have proposed a series of ‘troop surges’ to increase military strength beyond the 94,000 already there. Yet, in the same breath, they talk of a ‘draw-down’ from July 2011. The other major ally of US imperialism, Britain, is now saying they want to withdraw by 2015. Others, such as the Dutch, are packing their bags to join the many countries that have already pulled out combat troops.

 

In the countries that contribute to the US occupation of Afghanistan, anti-war protests attract more and more support, including that of returned troops disgusted by the outright corruption of the Karzai regime and the feeling that this is an unjustified and unwinnable war.

 

In the United States, veterans from the war are particularly active in exposing the quagmire that American troops find themselves in, with endless tours of duty and no real confidence in the generals to look after them, either on the battlefield or if they suffer injury and are shipped home. And, speaking of the generals, the sacking of General Stanley McChrystal and his replacement by General David Petraeus has revealed deep-seated problems with the relationship between the political and military wings of US imperialism.

 

In spite of all the firepower, the technology, the drones and so on, the US is barely hanging on to a few main cities and towns, surrounded by a sea of hostility and resistance. They have failed to learn the lessons of history which defeated both the British and later, the Russian efforts at suppressing the Afghan people’s aspirations for national independence. Furthermore, they have failed to learn from their own history in Vietnam, where their military might was used to prop up a succession of vicious and corrupt puppets, but was finally swept away by people’s war.

 

Why, then does US imperialism persist? It really has little to do with Afghanistan being a “terrorist training ground”. More accurate reasons are Afghanistan’s strategic significance and the discovery by the Pentagon of massive deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and industrial metals such as lithium, in remote and uncontrolled regions of the country. Of course, the Pentagon is assisting the Afghan Ministry of Mines to organise mineral rights with multinational mining companies. The imperative for imperialism is to expand or sink. Are they really going to walk away from all this wealth?

 

As long as Australia is chained to the interests of US imperialism, more young Australians will die protecting foreign monopoly profits. Australians don’t support this shabby war.