Aug 13, 2010
(TO LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW for KGNU Denver/Boulder, please click on the iPod Icon above left.)
RIP Tom Hayden, who died Sunday, 23rd October, 2016 in Santa Monica, CA. He stood up for what he believed in and didn't stop till heard. Always a pleasure to talk to.
Tom Hayden, who columnist Dan Walters of The Sacramento Bee once called "the conscience of the Senate", is an American social and political activist, politician, and regular contributor to 'The Nation' who is perhaps most famous for his involvement in the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s as well as in animal rights (The Hayden Act).
Hayden was elected to the California State Legislature in 1982, where he served for ten years in the Assembly before being elected to the State Senate in 1992, where he served eight years till the year 2000. He continues to serve as a member of the advisory board for the Progressive Democrats of America, an influential "grass roots" organization created to expand progressive political cooperation within the Democratic Party. With Medea Benjamin, he is also a co-founder of 'Code Pink'.
Ahead of next week's primary elections in CA and with Colorado's own primaries now behind us, 'It's the Economy's' Claudia Cragg spoke with Hayden about the economy, the potential financial collapse of some states including California, Obama's stimulus package, small business and, importantly, why politicians on both sides continue stubbornly to refuse to debate the real 'elephant in the room', as Hayden puts it, the cost to the US and its people of its ongoing wars.
Hayden starts here by discussing that theme and the Pentagon's 'Long War' doctrine, "a 50 - 80 year war against Islamic terrorism" which he says comes at a huge cost to the economy and to the nation as a whole.
UPDATE - The following is reproduced here with the kind permission of Tom Hayden:
Published
on Friday, November 12, 2010 by The Nation
When
Will Troop Withdrawal From Afghanistan Ever End?
by
Tom Hayden
Persistent
waffling on dates for American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan
has eroded any remaining patience with the Obama White House among
peace activists and voters, a majority of whom favors a timeline
for US troop withdrawals.
Nancy
Youssef of McClatchy reports that the White House
has decided to de-emphasize its pledge to begin withdrawing US
forces by next July, and adopt a new goal of withdrawing by 2014.
The New York Times on Nov. 11 described
the new policy as "effectively a victory for the military." Seeming
to miss the point entirely, the White House immediately declared it
was "crystal clear" that there will be no change to the July 2011
date for beginning the drawdown.
The credibility problem is that the White House has never defined
the scale of its initial drawdown, lending credence to reports that
the elusive pursuit of "success" will take years. Filling in the
blanks is the only way the White House can repair this image
crisis. For example, Obama could promise to withdraw 50,000 US
troops between 2011-2012, a number that would dispel the aura of
tokenism and weakness which now surrounds US policy. The moderate
Afghanistan Study Group, whose members have ties to the White
House, has proposed withdrawing 32,000 by next October and another
38,000 by the following July. The AFG has stated, "The U.S. cannot
afford to continue waffling on its commitments, lest it lose what
little credibility it has with Afghan people. Reneging on the
July deadline will also likely have adverse political effects given
that war is already very unpopular .
The president is expected to clarify his goals at a NATO conference
this week. America's leading military partner, the
United
Kingdom , with some 9,500 troops, has already
floated 2014 as the deadline for its troop departure.
Canada ,
France ,
Italy ,
Poland ,
Sweden and the
Netherlands , whose
combat troops total a combined 14,850, are all in the process of
withdrawing by 2014 at the latest.
The projected costs of another three years are staggering and
rarely reported. Assuming the current pattern of American
casualties and costs through 2012, followed by a fifty percent
reduction in those figures in 2013-14, Pentagon data
reveals the following:
Oct. 2001-Nov. 2010: Americans killed, 1378; Americans
wounded, 9,256; direct taxpayer costs, $364 billion.
2011 projection: 450 more Americans killed, bringing the
cumulative total to 1,850; 5,000 more Americans wounded, bringing
the cumulative total to 14,800; another $113 billion in direct
taxpayer costs, bringing the cumulative total to $503
billion.
2012 projection: at present rates, the cumulative death toll
will become 2,300, the cumulative wounded number will become
15,300; and the cumulative budget cost will become $616
billion.
2013-14 projections [assuming a fifty percent reduction]:
another 450 killed over two years, bringing the total to 2,750;
another 5,000 wounded over two years, bringing the total to 20,300;
another $113 billion over two years, bringing the total to $728
billion.
In plainer terms, the projected American casualties and costs in
Afghanistan alone will double in the next three years from present
levels.
According to the current Foreign Affairs
, the war in Afghanistan is now more than twice expensive as Iraq
[Altman-Haass, "American Profligacy and American Power", Nov.-Dec.
2010, p. 31].
Those numbers do not include Pakistan, Yemen or tens of billions in
the growing US intelligence budget. Nor do the tax dollar figures
include rising indirect costs such as veterans' health care. Nor
are the casualties civilians known or estimated.
Perhaps the greatest policy question is what the American troops
are fighting for. According to the CIA, there are no more than 100
Al Qaeda militants lingering in Afghanistan. Their sanctuaries have
moved to Pakistan and CIA officials have recently said, "the Yemeni
cell posed an even more dangerous threat to the United States than
the Qaeda headquarters in Pakistan." [NYT , Oct.
17, 2010]
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, American troops are fighting and dying to
prop up an Afghanistan regime that is riddled with corruption,
lacks a sufficient army to defend itself, and maintains power by
fraudulent elections.
The cruel pathos of the American situation is summed up in two
options sketched by Gideon Rose, the new editor of Foreign
Affairs, the organ of the Council on Foreign Affairs:
First, "at best, Afghanistan could become another Iraq, with strong
late innings gaining the United States the opportunity to draw down
its forces gradually" or, second, "it could be a replay of Vietnam,
with the White House deciding to pull the plug on a thankless
struggle in a strategically marginal country." A third option is
ignored, that of another massive terrorist attack on the US
provoked by the drone attacks and night raids in Afghanistan
and
Pakistan. [NYT , Nov. 5, 2010]
There is another cost, too. The constant drain in blood and taxes
for the long wars may soon become a terminal drain on any hopes for
the Obama presidency.
Tom Hayden is a former state senator and leader of Sixties peace,
justice and environmental movements. He currently teaches at
PitzerCollege in Los Angeles. His books include The Port
Huron Statement [new edition],
Street Wars and
The Zapatista Reader .