America’s terrible decisions

Ten minutes before President Barack Obama was welcomed into the well of the Congress on Tuesday night, I tweeted that I looked forward to hearing about lots of innovative policy ideas that have pretty much no chance of becoming law.

President Obama did not disappoint.

His State of the Union address was chock-full of proposals for creating jobs, improving American infrastructure, fighting climate change, fixing the immigration system, investing in early education, creating new avenues to build up retirement savings and making voting easier. All good ideas, but they will all almost certainly suffer much the same fate as the proposals that Obama unveiled in last year’s State of the Union — they are dead on arrival. In an era of historic and unprecedented Republican obstructionism and an almost complete lack of interest by a GOP Congress in legislating, Washington will in 2014 remain as divided and dysfunctional as it has been for much of the past four years.

The State of the Union is, and almost always has been, in the modern era a spectacle of unity, masking the deep and enduring divisions that have increasingly come to define American society. Rarely has that been truer than in the Obama era and Tuesday night was more of the same.

Still, Obama’s speech was not without its moments of bipartisan consensus. None were poignant than at the end when Obama took a moment to honour Cory Remsburg, an Army ranger, grievously wounded in Afghanistan. Obama met Remsburg in the summer of 2009 at Omaha Beach in France. Four months later, on his tenth deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, Remsburg was nearly killed by a massive roadside bomb outside Kandahar. After dozens of surgeries and years of gruelling rehabilitation, Remsburg remains severely impaired. He is blind in one eye, partially paralysed and suffers from brain damage. Still, he has made dramatic improvement, having learned to speak, stand and walk again.

He was for Obama a reminder that “our freedom” and “our democracy has never been easy”. Remsburg is a symbol, per Obama, of the courage of America’s fighting men and women. But Remsburg is also the symbol of something else — the terrible decisions made by America’s political leaders over the last 13 years that have squandered the sacrifice and patriotism of young men like Remsburg. For what cause was Remsburg so profoundly harmed, his life forever altered? According to his commander-in-chief “because of the extraordinary troops and civilians who risk and lay down their lives to keep us free, the United States is more secure”. This is at best an over-statement and at worse a lie.

How have the costs borne by Remsburg or the nearly 1,700 young men and women who have died in Afghanistan since Obama became president made America safer? How have they kept the country more free?

When Remsburg was almost killed in the fall of 2009, Obama already had sent 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. He was in the midst of a strategic review that would lead to another 30,000 soldiers being deployed there. Four years after the US commanding general in Afghanistan — under whom Remsburg served — declared that the US would bring “government in a box” to southern Afghanistan, the country remains highly unstable. It is still wracked by terrible violence, endemic corruption, under-development and political instability. The momentum of the Taliban has been slowed, but is far from broken.

Just this week, the man whose government for which American soldiers were maimed and killed, blamed the US for the country’s continuing woes and claimed that it was US troops, not Taliban fighters, who were responsible for some of the bloodiest and most deadly recent terrorist attacks.

And what of Al Qaida, the nominal reason why Remsburg was asked to fight for his country? They remain no more a presence in Afghanistan than they were four years ago. They have seen their ranks increasingly felled, but rarely by American soldiers on the ground, but rather unmanned drones operating high above the tribal regions of Pakistan.

Those facts, however, were in short supply on Tuesday night. Obama bragged about the 60,000 troops he has brought home from Afghanistan, rather than 50,000 he sent there. He renewed a promise to complete the US mission there; rather than speaking honestly about the uncertain future facing Afghanistan because of the flawed mission he green-lighted. He said that the US “will support a unified Afghanistan as it takes responsibility for its own future” rather than mentioning that Congressional support for that mission is on life support, in large measure because of the mercurial and obstinate US ally who is the president of Afghanistan. He described the benefits that would come “if” Afghanistan signs the recently negotiated bilateral security agreement, rather than the strong possibility that it will not and thus leave the US with little to show for 13 years of war. He declared that soon “America’s longest war will finally be over” while failing to mention that, as president, he prolonged it.

Of course, as has been the case throughout Obama’s presidency — and indeed throughout much of the post 9/11 era — self-serving spectacle took the place of such hard truths. There was a hero in the house and he must be feted. Indeed, Obama’s veneration of Remsburg led to the longest ovation of the night as members of both parties put aside their partisan differences to honour a young man who had been permanently scarred in a conflict that so many of those applauding had supported.

On the one hand, it was a reminder that there is still much that unites Americans. On the other hand, it is one of the more nauseating spectacles in American politics: Watching the presidents and congressman who send young men and women overseas to fight stupid wars then wrap themselves in the mantle of their sacrifice.

“Supporting the troops” — a phenomenon that is a permanent part of American life from the halls of Congress to the nation’s baseball stadiums is as Andrew Bacevich writes: “America’s new civic religion.” It is a painless and easy opportunity to avoid responsibility and extol the selflessness of others while offering none of one’s own.

To be sure, it is laudable that Obama is pursuing diplomatic solutions in the Middle East with Iran, Syria and Israel and the Palestinians in order to avoid future conflicts. It is commendable and praiseworthy that he stated a desire to move America “off a permanent war footing”. But a little introspection on how America found itself on that war footing, and Obama and Congress’s own culpability, would be in order too.

That would, however, probably have got a bit less applause.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd