Tom Paine 1949
Diamond Member
- Mar 15, 2020
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The Washington Post reports that the Taliban has entered Kabul through four gates to the city, The Afghan “President” is rumored to have fled the country, and the government has apparently collapsed. Twenty years of imperial American intervention lies in ruin.
As sad as this will be for those Afghans who threw their lot in with the American occupiers, this will hopefully be a lesson for arrogant Americans who think U.S. military prowess, and economic bribery of corrupt local pro-Western elites, can replace intelligent diplomacy and a sober foreign policy.
It should be pointed out that after the last Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the Kabul central government survived for THREE YEARS, while the U.S. continued aid to the jihadists. It survived even after Soviet military aid ended, and even 9 months after the Soviet Union itself collapsed.
It is impossible to overestimate how badly these FOUR decades of wholly typical U.S. stupidity and arrogance served real U.S. interests, and more especially how much they damaged the interests of all Afghan people.
In the last two decades the Afghan army and police, like the U.S. army and U.S. contractors, were mercenaries. The main difference was that the U.S. military and thousands of contractors were usually just rotated in and out, had American homes and families awaiting them decked out with American flags, couldn’t speak the local languages, and were paid infinitely more than Afghan rank and filers, who only wanted to feed their families. Afghan generals and politicians stole most of the money and much of it found its way into foreign bank accounts awaiting this very moment. Another even greater part of it went to bribe Taliban militants not to attack regional government forces.
The MIC arms manufacturers and contractors made great profits supplying the Green Zone fortress state, while turning most of Afghanistan into a testing ground for new U.S. ”anti-terror” weapons systems.
My last comment is that had Trump not proposed withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is unlikely the Biden Administration would have felt it had the political “cover” to finally get the hell out. U.S. ultra-partisan domestic politics, and macho “patriotism,” usually makes intelligent, sober and restrained foreign policy … all but impossible.
…
A slightly better-than-average article, still too sympathetic to past U.S. policy and the recent Afghan regime, which at least raises a few points about mistaken U.S. military-centered foreign policy:
20-year US intervention in ruins as Taliban enters Kabul – Responsible Statecraft
As sad as this will be for those Afghans who threw their lot in with the American occupiers, this will hopefully be a lesson for arrogant Americans who think U.S. military prowess, and economic bribery of corrupt local pro-Western elites, can replace intelligent diplomacy and a sober foreign policy.
It should be pointed out that after the last Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the Kabul central government survived for THREE YEARS, while the U.S. continued aid to the jihadists. It survived even after Soviet military aid ended, and even 9 months after the Soviet Union itself collapsed.
It is impossible to overestimate how badly these FOUR decades of wholly typical U.S. stupidity and arrogance served real U.S. interests, and more especially how much they damaged the interests of all Afghan people.
In the last two decades the Afghan army and police, like the U.S. army and U.S. contractors, were mercenaries. The main difference was that the U.S. military and thousands of contractors were usually just rotated in and out, had American homes and families awaiting them decked out with American flags, couldn’t speak the local languages, and were paid infinitely more than Afghan rank and filers, who only wanted to feed their families. Afghan generals and politicians stole most of the money and much of it found its way into foreign bank accounts awaiting this very moment. Another even greater part of it went to bribe Taliban militants not to attack regional government forces.
The MIC arms manufacturers and contractors made great profits supplying the Green Zone fortress state, while turning most of Afghanistan into a testing ground for new U.S. ”anti-terror” weapons systems.
My last comment is that had Trump not proposed withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is unlikely the Biden Administration would have felt it had the political “cover” to finally get the hell out. U.S. ultra-partisan domestic politics, and macho “patriotism,” usually makes intelligent, sober and restrained foreign policy … all but impossible.
…
A slightly better-than-average article, still too sympathetic to past U.S. policy and the recent Afghan regime, which at least raises a few points about mistaken U.S. military-centered foreign policy:
20-year US intervention in ruins as Taliban enters Kabul – Responsible Statecraft
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