Afghanistan War

US Embassy Staff Flee Kabul As The Taliban Takes Control

August 15, 2021 Popular Resistance. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Taliban, Wars and Militarism

Taliban fighters entered Kabul on Sunday and sought the unconditional surrender of the central government, officials said, as Afghans and foreigners alike raced for the exit, signaling the end of a 20-year Western experiment aimed at remaking Afghanistan. The beleaguered central government, meanwhile, hoped for an interim administration, but increasingly had few cards to play. Civilians fearing that the Taliban could reimpose the kind of brutal rule that all but eliminated women’s rights rushed to leave the country, lining up at cash machines to withdraw their life savings. Helicopters buzzed overhead as part of an evacuation of personnel from the U.S. Embassy. Several other Western missions were also preparing to get staff out. In a stunning rout, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and NATO over nearly two decades to build up Afghan security forces. Just days earlier, an American military assessment estimated it would be a month before the capital would come under insurgent pressure.

Biden Must Call Off The B-52s Bombing Afghan Cities

August 12, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Popular Resistance. Resist! Afghanistan War, Bombs, Joe Biden, Wars and Militarism

Nine provincial capitals in Afghanistan have fallen to the Taliban in six days - Zaranj, Sheberghan, Sar-e-Pul, Kunduz, Taloqan, Aybak, Farah, Pul-e-Khumri and Faizabad - while fighting continues in four more - Lashkargah, Kandahar, Herat & Mazar-i-Sharif. U.S. military officials now believe Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, could fall in one to three months. It is horrific to watch the death, destruction and mass displacement of thousands of terrified Afghans and the triumph of the misogynist Taliban that ruled the nation 20 years ago. But the fall of the centralized, corrupt government propped up by the Western powers was inevitable, whether this year, next year or ten years from now. President Biden has reacted to America’s snowballing humiliation in the graveyard of empires by once again dispatching U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad to Doha to urge the government and the Taliban to seek a political solution, while at the same time dispatching B-52 bombers to attack at least two provincial capitals.

‘The Afghanistan War Was A Disaster;’ Veteran Danny Sjursen On US ‘Pullout’

July 26, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Afghanistan War, Joe Biden, Pentagon, Wars and Militarism

The Pentagon has started closing military bases and pulling troops out of Afghanistan but confusion over what this means for the United States' longest war exists. For clarification, Clearing the FOG speaks with retired US army major, author and activist, Danny Sjursen. He calls the Afghanistan War a disaster and says the United States would have been better off if it had buried all of the trillions spent to invade and occupy Afghanistan in the ground instead. Sjursen discusses what the withdrawal means for the people of Afghanistan and the countries in that region. He also advises us on what to watch out for as the war hawks push Biden to continue to have a presence there. We also talk about his newest book on US history and empire through the lens of American exceptionalism.

Top US General Won’t Commit To Ending Afghanistan Airstrikes

July 26, 2021 Jason Ditz, AntiWar.Com. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

The war in Afghanistan is meant to be effectively over, with the last US troops leaving by the end of August. McKenzie, however, suggests that the US intention to continue to support its partners means that they’ll continue to “offer” airstrikes to Afghanistan. McKenzie didn’t want to admit to intentions to carry out more airstrikes, but did concede that the US has been stepping up airstrikes, and believes they’ve had a “good effect” in the fighting.

Spare Us An Afghan Threequel, Joe!

July 10, 2021 Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (Ret.), AntiWar.Com. Educate! Afghanistan War, Joe Biden, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

Kandahar Airfield ("KAF") was as bizarre as it was dusty. You sort of tasted it before you smelled it – and smelled before you saw it. It’s been a full decade since I first did. When the cavalry troop I’d commanded touched down as a final top-off to President Obama’s Afghan surge, we gazed upon this weird way station of America’s war effort with exhausted eyes. Fatigue breeds a certain stripped-down simplicity – "Just show me to my damn cot, already!" – so it took until morning to truly spy the strangeness. It was a place of curious contrasts. Dry dirt roads, but plenty of civil and military traffic – like Luke Skywalker’s home planet Tatooine, with tanks and Toyotas alike. Inbound rockets and bomb shelters; and T.G.I. Friday’s dine-in on the base’s bustling boardwalk. Trauma patients flown in daily to the hyperactive hospital; and amateur athletes flocking nightly to the Canadian-dominated hockey rink.

What Critics Of The US Withdrawal From Afghanistan Get Wrong

May 20, 2021 Matthew Hoh, CNN. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Joe Biden, Wars and Militarism

Within hours of President Joe Biden's announcement that US forces will leave Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, objections and remonstrations appeared across US media. These protests are nearly all disingenuous, false and specious, and meant to utilize fear to continue a tragic and purposeless war. Much of the argument against withdrawal ignores how truly counterproductive the war in Afghanistan has been. Consider just two facts: In the years prior to the US invasion in 2001, Afghanistan and Pakistan were home to four international terror groups. Now, the Pentagon testifies that the number of such terror groups has grown to 20 or more Second, when the US first invaded Afghanistan, al Qaeda counted around 400 total members worldwide.

Corporate Media Oppose Afghan Control Of Afghanistan

May 15, 2021 Joshua Cho, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Afghanistan War, Media, Sovereignty

When President Joe Biden announced the “withdrawal” of US troops from Afghanistan after almost 20 years of occupying the country in violation of international law, corporate media not only misled their audiences on what the US is actually planning to do in Afghanistan, but also somehow made it seem as if withdrawing from the longest overseas war in US history would be premature (FAIR.org, 9/11/19). Establishment reporting over the future of Afghanistan after Biden’s announcement also demonstrated the imperialist mindset of corporate journalists, who presented Afghans controlling their own country as an unacceptable outcome.

In 2018, The US Was At War With Uyghur Terrorists

May 2, 2021 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! Afghanistan War, Terrorists, US Foreign Policy, Uyghurs

Washington, DC - In the dying months of his administration, President Donald Trump removed from the United States terrorist list a little-known paramilitary organization called ETIM, an acronym that stands for either the East Turkestan Independence Movement or the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, depending on whom one asks. The group is also sometimes known as the [East] Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP or ETIP). Explaining the decision, the State Department said that “ETIM was removed from the list because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist.” The move was hailed by a wide range of Uyghur groups in the United States, who saw it as a step towards blocking China’s actions against Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province.

Chris Hedges: The Unraveling Of The American Empire

April 20, 2021 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Afghanistan War, US Empire, Wars and Militarism

America’s defeat in Afghanistan is one in a string of catastrophic military blunders that herald the death of the American empire. With the exception of the first Gulf War, fought largely by mechanized units in the open desert that did not – wisely – attempt to occupy Iraq, the United States political and military leadership has stumbled from one military debacle to another. Korea. Vietnam. Lebanon. Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria. Libya. The trajectory of military fiascos mirrors the sad finales of the Chinese, Ottoman, Hapsburg, Russian, French, British, Dutch, Portuguese and Soviet empires. While each of these empires decayed with their own peculiarities, they all exhibited patterns of dissolution that characterize the American experiment.

Biden Isn’t Ending The Afghanistan War, He’s Privatizing It

April 18, 2021 Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine. Educate! Afghanistan War, Joe Biden, Mercenaries, Pentagon

On April 14, President Joe Biden announced that he would end the U.S.’s longest war and withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan on the 20th anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. Over 6,000 NATO troops will also be withdrawn by that time. “War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking,” Biden said during his remarks from the White House Treaty Room, the same location from which President George W. Bush had announced the war was beginning in October 2001. “We were attacked. We went to war with clear goals. We achieved those objectives. Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is degraded in Afghanistan and it’s time to end the forever war.” Biden’s claim that he is ending the forever war is misleading.

Media Once Again Trolling US Withdrawal From Afghanistan

April 16, 2021 Caitlin Johnstone. Educate! Afghanistan War, Media, System Change, US Empire

I don’t write much about the specific individuals who drive the oligarchic empire because individuals are not the problem, the system is. Right-wing conspiracy analysts prefer to focus on specific corrupt elites because they like to think if you just got rid of them, capitalism would work fine. And it just wouldn’t. If you rounded up and executed all the sociopathic ruling elites today but left our current systems intact they’d just be replaced tomorrow. A competition-based model where war, corruption, oppression and exploitation remain profitable guarantees this. A lot of right-wing conspiracy analysis today ultimately boils down to “These bastards are ruining the capitalism!” But capitalism is already ruined, and ruinous.

Biden Administration’s September 11 Withdrawal Plan Violates Peace Agreement

April 15, 2021 Black Alliance for Peace, Popular Resistance. Educate! Afghanistan War, Joe Biden, Peace Agreement, Taliban

Members of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) criticized U.S. President Joe Biden's announcement Wednesday that he would pull troops from Afghanistan on September 11, 2021, thereby violating a key component of a peace agreement negotiated by the previous administration. A September 11 withdrawal—landing on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack—reinforces the false impression that the Taliban government had something to do with the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. BAP is concerned the attempt to move the date of U.S. withdrawal past the agreed-upon May 1 deadline will give hardliners in the Biden-Harris administration the opportunity to create the conditions for continued U.S. occupation of Afghanistan by baiting the Taliban into renewed attacks.

Is The Long War Finally Ending?

April 3, 2021 John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus. Educate! Afghanistan War, Joe Biden, US Foreign Policy, Wars and Militarism

In October 1944, with the end of World War II in sight, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin passed a note back and forth to each other at a conference in Moscow. On the piece of paper, Churchill had assigned percentages to several Eastern European countries. Stalin amended the numbers, and Churchill agreed. The deal remained secret for nearly a decade. The percentages on the piece of paper referred to the amount of influence that the Soviet Union and the West would wield in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece, with the first three countries falling in the Soviet sphere, control divided evenly in Yugoslavia, and Greece staying in the Western camp. It was the first major articulation of the geopolitical “spheres of influence” that would characterize the Cold War era.

Scheer Intelligence: What Is It About The Democrats’ Love Of War?

April 3, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Afghanistan War, Democrats, Podcast, Wars and Militarism

Nearly two full decades into the Afghanistan War, with just a month left before the United States under President Trump had agreed to withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan at long last, it seems Joe Biden is going to backtrack on his predecessor’s promise. At his first press conference as U.S. president, Biden stated, “It’s going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline,” citing “tactical” and safety concerns regarding the 2,500 soldiers left on the ground in Afghanistan. Maj. Danny Sjursen, a historian and veteran of America’s two longest wars, joins Robert Scheer on this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence” to discuss what he thinks about Biden’s possible delay and what this will mean to Afghanistan’s people and the American soldiers in the region.

US Joins ‘Rules-Based World’ on Afghanistan

March 27, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Popular Resistance. Educate! Afghanistan War, Antony Blinken, International Law

On March 18, the world was treated to the of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sternly lecturing senior Chinese officials about the need for China to respect a “rules-based order.” The alternative, Blinken warned, is a world in which might makes right, and “that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us.” Blinken was clearly speaking from experience. Since the United States dispensed with the UN Charter and the rule of international law to invade Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and has used military force...

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