Afghanistan

The Collapse Of Afghanistan And American Illusions

August 20, 2021 Danny Sjursen, LA Progressive. Educate! Afghanistan, Taliban, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

...the crucial question that’s on everyone’s minds seems to be: how did this happen? How did the ostensibly – and somewhat self-styled – most powerful military in history fail against what, when interviewed in Kandahar in 2011, I only slightly satirically called “farm-boys with guns?” Of course, the question itself is partially problematic – denying the Taliban and average Afghans agency, and arrogantly placing America at the center of a Central Asian conflict. This should be a time for self-reflection and humility. Unfortunately, exceptionalist hegemons are hardly known for their humbleness, and I’m hardly hopeful we’ll see much of that virtue, or any accountability, in the coming days, weeks, months, or years. I fear Americans, and especially their elite leaders, aren’t exactly the lesson-learning sorts.

How The Taliban Surge Exposed Pentagon’s Lies

August 20, 2021 Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye. Educate! Afghanistan, Media, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

A month ago, as the US army prepared to end the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan and hand over responsibility to local security forces it had armed and trained, maps showed small, relatively isolated pockets of Taliban control. At the weekend, the Islamist fighters marched unchallenged into Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, bringing almost the entire country under their thumb. US intelligence assessments that it would take the Taliban up to three months to capture Afghanistan’s capital proved wildly inaccurate. It took a few days. Foreign nationals were left scrambling to Kabul’s airport while American officials were hurriedly evacuated by helicopter, echoing the fall of Saigon in 1975, when US embassy staff were chased out of South Vietnam after years of a similarly failed war.

Biden Admitted War In Afghanistan Is Becoming A Somalia-Like Drone War

August 19, 2021 Morgan Artyukhina, Sputnik News. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Drones, Wars and Militarism

The war in Afghanistan rested on the same legal basis as the rest of the US War on Terror: the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress on September 18, 2001, a week after the terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda that destroyed the World Trade Center skyscrapers in New York and damaged the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, killing roughly 3,000 Americans. The US invasion of Afghanistan followed just weeks later, and while the Taliban government that had harbored al-Qaeda was quickly overthrown, it regrouped in the countryside and launched a new insurgency the following year, which on Sunday finally succeeded after 18 years in seizing Kabul and dispersing the US-backed Afghan government.

The Return Of The Taliban 20 Years Later

August 18, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Peoples Dispatch. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Taliban, US Empire

In recent years, the United States has failed to accomplish any of the objectives of its wars. The US entered Afghanistan with horrendous bombing and a lawless campaign of extraordinary rendition in October 2001 with the objective of ejecting the Taliban from the country; now, 20 years later, the Taliban is back. In 2003, two years after the US unleashed a war in Afghanistan, it opened an illegal war against Iraq, which ultimately resulted in an unconditional withdrawal of the United States in 2011 after the refusal by the Iraqi parliament to allow US troops extralegal protections. As the US withdrew from Iraq, it opened a terrible war against Libya in 2011, which resulted in the creation of chaos in the region.

US Government Lied For Two Decades About Afghanistan

August 18, 2021 Glenn Greenwald, Substack. Educate! Afghanistan, Taliban, US Empire, Wars and Militarism

“The Taliban regime is coming to an end,” announced President George W. Bush at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on December 12, 2001 — almost twenty years ago today. Five months later, Bush vowed: “In the United States of America, the terrorists have chosen a foe unlike they have faced before. . . . We will stay until the mission is done.” Four years after that, in August of 2006, Bush announced: “Al Qaeda and the Taliban lost a coveted base in Afghanistan and they know they will never reclaim it when democracy succeeds. . . . The days of the Taliban are over. The future of Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan.” For two decades, the message Americans heard from their political and military leaders about the country’s longest war was the same. America is winning.

Afghanistan: Mirage Of The Good War

August 17, 2021 Tariq Ali, New Left Review. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Taliban, US Imperialism

Rarely has there been such an enthusiastic display of international unity as that which greeted the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Support for the war was universal in the chanceries of the West, even before its aims and parameters had been declared. nato governments rushed to assert themselves ‘all for one’. Blair jetted round the world, proselytizing the ‘doctrine of the international community’ and the opportunities for peace-keeping and nation-building in the Hindu Kush. Putin welcomed the extension of American bases along Russia’s southern borders. Every mainstream Western party endorsed the war; every media network—with bbc World and cnn in the lead—became its megaphone.

Afghanistan – Longest US War Continues To A New Stage

August 17, 2021 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Taliban, US Empire

In recent weeks, the Taliban military rapidly advanced, taking provincial capitals in Afghanistan and then the capital city of Kabul on August 15. The US-backed former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country in a helicopter packed with cash, the US embassy took down the stars-and-stripes, and Western governments evacuated personnel. In the leadup to the debacle, the US bombed a country, which has minimal air defenses, in a war that has cost at least 171,000 to 174,000 lives. Along with Qatar-based long-range B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers and AC-130 Spectre gunships, MQ-9 Reaper drones were deployed. While claiming it would end the war, the US had intended to continue to bomb Afghanistan at will and to keep private military contractors (i.e., mercenaries) there, along with some uniformed US and allied NATO troops such as those from Turkey.

Afghanistan And The US Imperial Project

August 17, 2021 Jack Rasmus. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Pentagon Budget, US Empire

On August 16, 2021 President Biden addressed the nation to explain why the US military is pulling out of Afghanistan. To a lesser extent, he also tried to explain why the Afghan government and its 300,000 military forces imploded over the past weekend. With the Afghan State’s quick disappearing act, in a puff of smoke up went as well the more than $1 trillion spent by the US in Afghanistan since 2001. Biden glossed over the real answer to the first point why the US is now pulling out. The second he never really answered. The real answer to the first point is simple: the USA as global hegemon can no longer afford the financial cost of remaining in that country, so it is pulling out.

The Only Truth About Afghanistan War Is That It Was All Based On Lies

August 17, 2021 Scott Ritter, RT. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Lies, Wars and Militarism

The stunning victory of the Taliban over the US-backed Afghan government raises more questions than it answers as to how this happened. In the search for answers, however, don’t ask the generals who fought the war – they all lied. Let me begin with full disclosure – I have never set foot in Afghanistan. I have zero skin equity in this current debacle. I have lost very close friends to the conflict that tore that country apart these past 20 years, and I do mourn their loss. What I lack in on-the-ground warfighting resume entries, however, is somewhat compensated by a more intellectually based approach toward the conflict in Afghanistan. As a historian, I have studied the tribes of Afghanistan, especially their penchant for conflict against ruling authority which deviates from what they expect from their leaders.

Rapid Taliban Takeover Shows How Little US Understood Afghanistan

August 16, 2021 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! Afghanistan, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

No doubt many Afghans fear a resumption of Taliban rule after two decades, with its draconian rules against music, the cinema and girls going to school. But there is a reason why the Afghan military dissolved before the advancing Taliban, putting up no resistance whatsoever, despite Washington banking on them holding out for at least a month: the Taliban may be rotten but they are Afghans. They may impose an unpopular, repressive regime but they are not a foreign occupation force.

Afghanistan’s Promising Socialist Future Killed Off By US Imperialism

August 16, 2021 Marilyn Bechtel, People's World. Educate! Afghanistan, Cold War, Soviet Union, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

Since the horrific events of Sept. 11, much has been said about the desperate situation of the Afghani people now crushed under the heel of the theocratic, dictatorial Taliban, and about the role of the Northern Alliance and other Taliban opponents who now figure in Washington’s plans for the region. There has been talk, most of it distorted, about the role of the Soviet Union in the years from 1978 to 1989. There has been talk, most of it understated, about the role of the U.S. in building up the Mujahideen forces, including the Taliban.

Afghanistan Shenanigans

August 16, 2021 Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlin's Newsletter. Educate! Afghanistan, Taliban, Wars and Militarism

"It's long been obvious to anyone paying attention that the Taliban would regain control of the country when occupying western powers withdrew, but I don't think anyone would've put money on it happening this quickly. A few interesting questions have come up about this, like for example how hilarious would it be if after spending twenty years and trillions of dollars and thousands of human lives "fighting the Taliban", the Taliban suddenly resumed power as a US puppet regime?"

Opening And Closing US Embassies-From Sierra Leone To Afghanistan

August 16, 2021 Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, US Embassy, US military

While the people of Afghanistan are in a state of fear of the Taliban who now control Afghanistan, its capital, major cities and countryside after the U.S. and NATO occupation of twenty years, please pardon my personal observances of some of my experiences during sixteen years in the U.S. diplomatic corps and opening and closing U.S. Embassies in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan and the effects on the civilian populations of the countries involved. In December 2001, I was a part of a very small team from the U.S. Department of State that was sent to Kabul, Afghanistan to reopen the U.S. Embassy. The Embassy had been closed for 12 years following the Soviet exodus from Afghanistan and the subsequent civil war between the warlord militias that fought to gain land and influence.

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.

US Sending 3,000 Troops To Afghanistan

August 13, 2021 Bill Van Auken, WSWS. Educate! Afghanistan, Joe Biden, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

The Pentagon announced Thursday that the US is sending 3,000 US soldiers and Marines into Afghanistan with the ostensible mission of securing US diplomatic facilities in Kabul and organizing the evacuation of American civilians. Britain is sending 600 soldiers for the same purpose. The US deployment of one Army and two Marine infantry battalions has been ordered as the lightning offensive of the Taliban—and the unmitigated rout of the US-backed Afghan security forces—has steadily tightened a noose around the Afghan capital. The collapse of security forces loyal to the US puppet regime in Kabul accelerated exponentially on Thursday with the Associated Press reporting the Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan’s second largest city, Kandahar, in the south.

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