Last Friday marked the 10th Anniversary of the Afghan War. On October 7th, The United States invaded the landlocked country of Afghanistan in order to topple the Taliban regime, which did not actually participate in the 9/11 attacks. So far, around 1,791 American troops have died as a result of the war. And after 10-years of a brutal occupation, Osama Bin Laden has been killed after evading capture by U.S. forces. War-related violence has increased by 39% in Afghanistan.
What has the U.S. reaped because of this war? Thousands of American soldiers have been killed or severely wounded; thousands of Afghans have died and perhaps thousands if not millions of Afghans have been displaced from their homes; more enemies have been created who hate the United States and its' foreign policy; and blowback. The war-powers of Congress over the President have been further eviscerated. Overall, this war has made the United States less safe, less prosperous, and less free. But how is the Afghan War a disaster for America, while at the same time being an immoral war?
Constitutional Problems
One problem with the Afghan war involves its' dubious constitutionality. According to Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the power "to declare war". George Washington, the first President of these United States, said this of the war powers and the Constitution:
The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.
But in the case of the Afghanistan, war has not been officially or constitutionally declared. But Congress did pass a resolution of Authorization for the Use of Military Force. How is this unconstitutional? The Authorization for the Use of Military Force is unconstitutional because it basically delegates the Congressional war-making power to the President. The AUMF allows the President to use military force if and how he deems necessary, but Congress has no power to delegate its' war-making power to the President.
Also, since the government of Afghanistan (which at the time was the Taliban regime) did not actually attack the United States, a declaration of war against Afghanistan would be very difficult to rationalize. As the Founders understood, the federal government was limited to protecting these United States from invasion by a foreign government. They understood that the proper and constitutional foreign policy for America would be that of noninterventionism, whereby the country would swear off invading foreign lands to export our goodness, change the regimes of other countries, or free oppressed peoples. Thus, many early Americans understood that war should only be entered to when the country was invaded by a foreign government. That is, war had to be defensive, and all other options had to be exhausted. It was understood that a declaration of war by Congress would come up only under these circumstances.
But the Afghan War, while on the surface may appear to be defensive, was not actually self-defensive. The Afghan government had not attacked the United States. As Jacob Hornberger notes:
Actually, the Taliban did not participate in the 9/11 attacks. If the U.S. Empire had even one iota of evidence supporting that thesis, does anyone honestly believe that President George H.W. Bush would have gone to the United Nations to seek permission to invade Afghanistan? Of course not. When another nation-state attacks the United States, like Japan did in 1941, you can rest assured that the United States is going to defend itself without seeking permission of the United Nations.
Don’t forget, also, that the U.S. government furnished millions of dollars in foreign aid to Afghanistan prior to the 9/11 attacks.
So the U.S. is not waging a war of self-defense because the Taliban did not invade or attack the United States.
The Costs of War
One thing that is sometimes ignored is the enormous toll that war, especially the Afghan war, has on our economy. Spending on war and "defense" (read:empire), has drastically increased, especially under the Obama administration. As Anthony Gregory has written:
spending on Afghanistan has sharply increased. The most expensive year during the Bush presidency was in FY2008, with a price tag of $43.5 billion. In FY2009, that number rose quickly to $59.9 billion. In FY2010 the war was costing the United States $93.8 billion, and the cost is projected to be $118.6 billion for FY2011 and $113.7 billion for FY2012.
Anthony Gregory further explains the costs of war:
What was the full opportunity cost of all these wars? Few economists ask this question. What if these resources had been available for private savings and investment? What if the Americans and foreigners fighting had instead been working in the commercial sector, producing wealth? Perhaps the financial situation would look considerably better. The government is notorious for diverting money and energy from productive uses toward wasteful ones. Nothing is as destructive as war. Even the most just war imaginable is a disaster for the economy, as the great economist Ludwig von Mises explained.
War is perhaps the greatest disaster for a free-market economy. In war, government redirects economic resources into the hands of the State. These economic resources are then wasted on fancy military equipment and weapons that are sent overseas and eventually destroyed. Overall, war is a net negative for the economy.
Lost Liberty
Every President, every Congressman, every member of the armed forces, has taken an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. The constitutional question should be the first litmus test in examining all policies and laws enacted by the federal government. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the federal government has waged a war on the Bill of Rights. As with any crisis, the government, especially the federal government, will exploit any crisis or emergency to gain more power and steal the liberties of the people. As James Madison said in opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: "Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger real or pretended from abroad."
The PATRIOT Act, which was passed by Congress on October 15, 2001, is perhaps one of the most abominable violations of the U.S. Constitution in our time. One effect that the PATRIOT Act has is that it assaults the Fourth Amendment which states that "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." But under the PATRIOT ACT, federal agents are allowed to engage in "sneak and peak" searches and seizures, which, as Anthony Gregory explains "allows the feds to come into your home, search your residence, and leave without telling you for up to six months." It forces businesses to spy on their customers and hand over information to the Justice Department. Surveillance, wiretapping, and warrantless searches have increased as a result of the Act, thereby circumventing the Fourth Amendment.
Self written National Security Letters violate the First Amendment by forbidding those who are being monitored (read: spied on) by the FBI from telling anyone about it, even their spouse or lawyer. The National Security Administration spies on Americans telecommunications without a warrant, another violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment has been violated by the federal government's use of torture against detainees, especially Guantanamo detainees. And the prison at Guantanomo Bay, which is a violation of Cuba's sovereignty, has not been closed down, and is main warehouse for captured "enemy combatants".
Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein summarizes some of the PATRIOT Act's assaults on the Constitution:
Section 206 of the Patriot Act authorizing roving wiretaps to collect foreign intelligence; section 215 authorizing orders to seize any "tangible thing"like books or computer hard drives to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities; section 505 authorizing National Security Letters to seize customer records of financial institutions, credit bureaus, and telecommunications providers by the government's assertion of relevance to preventing international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities; and, section 6001 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 authorizing surveillance against hypothetical "lone wolf"international terrorists are all abusive of citizen liberty because they encroach on the right to be left alone without probable cause to believe the target is implicated in crime.
Furthermore, as Anthony Gregory notes:
Perhaps the freedom being defended is the long-celebrated right to due process and habeas corpus for those detained by the government. That would be hard to reconcile, however, with the Bush administration’s roundup of hundreds of innocent aliens right after 9/11, the “material witness” doctrine that allowed for indefinite detention without charge, or the “enemy combatant” designation that, when pinned on someone by the president, even on a U.S. citizen, means there will be a total disregard for traditional due process. It would certainly make a puzzle out of Guantanamo, where some detainees have been determined innocent of all wrongdoing but are nevertheless kept detained; and it would be hard to make sense of the military commissions that deprive subjects of both the standard protections of criminal suspects or those of prisoners of war. The secret evidence used in many cases in the last ten years certainly seems to be in tension with the right to confront one’s accuser and the evidence laid against one. And Obama’s very concept of “prolonged detention” and his administration’s fighting the courts on numerous habeas corpus cases are a little bit of an enigma if indeed the right to due process is what our leaders have in mind when they’re waging these wars for our freedoms.
Conclusion
The Afghan War is not a war for freedom; it is a war against ourselves, our values, our liberties, our prosperity, and our Constitution. A better alternative to dealing with the 9/11 perpetrators would have been to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisals. This would have limited and minimized both the costs and the damage. It certainly would have been better than having a large land army invade and occupy the "Graveyard of Empires". But since Osama Bin Laden is dead, it is time to bring all the troops home from Afghanistan and close down all military bases there. All assaults on our liberties and Constitution by the federal government since the Afghan War need to be abolished and repealed.
Unfortunately, President Obama has fulfilled his promise of expanding and escalating the Afghan War. If this course is not reversed, we will create (or have we already created?) endless new enemies who will retaliate with violent acts of terrorism; our national defense will be greatly weakened; and the American Republic, and the liberties it stood for, will be forever murdered. We live in a time in which the last nails are being placed in the coffin of the American Republic.
Let us admit it: It was wrong to invade Afghanistan.
