Last week marked the fifteenth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, the longest war in US history. There weren’t any victory parades or photo-ops with Afghanistan’s post-liberation leaders. That is because the war is ongoing. In fact, 15 years after launching a war against Afghanistan’s Taliban government in retaliation for an attack by Saudi-backed al-Qaeda, the US-backed forces are steadily losing territory back to the Taliban.
What President Obama called “the good war” before took office in 2008, has become the “forgotten war” some eight years later. How many Americans know that we still have nearly 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan? Do any Americans know that the Taliban was never defeated, but now holds more ground in Afghanistan than at any point since 2001? Do they know the Taliban overran the provincial capital of Kunduz last week for a second time in a year and they threaten several other provincial capitals?
Do Americans know that we are still wasting billions on “reconstruction” and other projects in Afghanistan that are, at best, boondoggles? According to a recent audit by the independent US government body overseeing Afghan reconstruction, half a billion dollars was wasted on a contract for a US company to maintain Afghan military vehicles. The contractor “fail[ed] to meet program objectives,” the audit found. Of course they still got paid, like thousands of others getting rich off of this failed war.
Do Americans know that their government has spent at least $60 billion to train and equip Afghan security forces, yet these forces are still not capable of fighting on their own against the Taliban? We recently learned that an unknown but not insignificant number of those troops brought to the US for training have deserted and are living illegally somewhere in the US. In the recent Taliban attack on Kunduz, it was reported that thousands of Afghan security personnel fled without firing a shot.
According to a recent study by Brown University, the direct costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars thus far are nearly five trillion dollars. The indirect costs are virtually incalculable.
Perhaps Afghanistan is the “forgotten war” because to mention it would reveal how schizophrenic is US foreign policy. After all, we have been fighting for 15 years in Afghanistan in the name of defeating al-Qaeda, while we are directly and indirectly assisting a franchise of al-Qaeda to overthrow the Syrian government. How many Americans would applaud such a foreign policy? If they only knew, but thanks to a media only interested in promoting Washington’s propaganda, far too many Americans don’t know.
I have written several of these columns on the various anniversaries of the Afghan (and Iraq) wars, pointing out that the wars are ongoing and that the result of the wars has been less stable countries, a less stable region, a devastated local population, and an increasing probability of more blowback. I would be very happy to never have to write one of these again. We should just march home.
TPTB will not ‘march home’ as long as there’s poppy fields in Afghanistan stretching out as far as the eye can see producing record harvest after record harvest every year. Before the “allies” invaded, the Taliban had pretty much wiped out opium production.
My city is being devastated by the abundant supply of dirt cheap heroin, and we are a 90% White city. If the wars cost $5 Trillion, then you can be assured that $Trillions of heroin profits have made their way to our beloved leaders.
As an added bonus, this evil, started by georgie bush and his clan, fits in perfectly with ovomit’s plan to fundamentally transform America.
Hey Lysander! Yeah, ditto on what you said. “Poppy” Bush needs his poppies.
In summer of 2001, a few months before 9/11 I saw reports in the Indian press that the US had notified the Indian government that the US was going to have a war in Afghanistan later in the fall. I remember wondering, “What’s that about?!” The Taliban had been in the news and was being played up as a rising evil power. There had been press reports about the Taliban’s treatment of women, and major publicity when the Taliban blew up some ancient Buddhist statues, but those seemed like rather inadequate reasons to go bombing and invading another country.
Oh well… And then, on Sept 10th, when Rumsfeld announced the 2.3 TRILLION missing from Pentagon bookkeeping, I thought, “Holy Cow! I wonder what the press is going to do with THIS!” Of course the next day, the Pentagon money was forgotten and we had our war justification.
How can we continue the war on drugs, if there are no more drugs?
these are the questions are policy maker consider,
as they snort coke off the belly’s of the finest hookers DC has to offer.
The Afghan’s are like our Amish, they reject modernism and enjoy a male dominated society, they will never embrace democracy, as that would mean the end of their way of life.
It is all about keeping the dark budgets operational, and justifying the MIC.
Read “Horse Soldiers” and you’ll discover how a tiny handful of men “won” the Afghan war before our troops were ever deployed. The plane load after plane load of paratroopers jumping into Afghanistan was just for show and to take control of the opium fields.
Why haven’t CNN and FOX been playing this up ? CNN = Liberals = Hate war. FOX = Conservatives- hate Obama’s handling of the war ? what gives powers that be ? war is the health of the state, and the money from arms, opium, and chaos are just to good to pass up? bunch of evil cocksucks who should be put against the wall, for the good of “the people” of course.