While mass media wrestles with the blame about the debacle of Afghanistan, and whose fault it is, and whether Trump lied about his conditions for withdrawal, and whether Biden ignored the intelligence reports on embassy evacuation or just simply lied about them, it’s all so painfully meaningless; so much sound and fury, ignoring the obvious.
The obvious question is why were we there to begin with? The propaganda narrative, entitled “Operation Enduring Freedom”, was to destroy Al-Qaida, perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, and to destroy the Taliban government. That government arose in 1994 when the Mujahedeen that defeated the Soviets in 1989, in turn went on to defeat the corrupt warlord dominated government that arose in the aftermath of the Soviet defeat.
What we should understand is that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by 19 terrorists, 15 of whom were Saudis, 2 UAE citizens, one Lebanese, and one Egyptian; not only were none Afghanis, but the funding has been confirmed to have been from Saudi elites. Did we get our geography wrong or were we stupid enough to believe the false narrative, and for twenty years!
In that time, the casualty list is appalling: US military 2.5K, US allies about 1.1K, US contractors about 3.8K, Afghan military about 66K, Afghan civilians about 47K, and the “enemy” about 51K; these figures do not include the wounded, many permanently disabled. Please note that the causality rate among Afghani civilians is nearly that of the “enemy”; we killed nearly as many civilians as the “enemy”, so who were we there to fight?
This does not include the devastation to the US economy; while this and the Iraqi War cost Americans about $2T, now $6.5T including interest since the US doesn’t “pay”, it barrows endlessly, the real question is not who ended this wrong; it’s who started this moronic ideology to begin with? The answer to that is not acceptable to those who deflect the issue to who’s to blame for what just happen with the US evacuation of our Embassy in Kabul; that was as inevitable as what happened in Saigon 46 years ago.
So here we are, nearly a half century later than the end of the Viet Nam War, with the same inevitable results, and the real question is what have we learned at these terrible devastating costs? Have we degenerated hopelessly into a warfare state, where by executive order we leash hell on our own, helpless civilians as collateral damage, and an economy so indebted to mindless violence that we kill nearly as many innocents as some poorly defined “enemy”?
While Congress grapples with the stupidity of another $3.5T in spending, consider some simple housekeeping to stop the military adventurism draining this country’s resources; let’s close the 800+ military bases in about 70 foreign countries; stop stupid money like the $1.5T F35 development for a plane that can’t even fly; and above all, return war powers to the only constitutional authority, the Congress of the USA, and end the despotism of executive war powers.
Libera Voce 