The Taliban Comes Home to Roost; U.S. Militarist Foreign Policy a Disaster

[Tom Paine 1949]

It’s not just “leftists” who recognize our 20 year military adventurism in Afghanistan was profoundly misguided. Here is a (rather tardy) opinion presented by a senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute:

“What if the US didn’t go to war in Afghanistan after 9/11?
For President Bush, the only option was revenge, but an alternative path was available

“Rather than launching a war that proved to be disastrous, an alternative reaction to 9/11 might have been to expand police and intelligence operations and to work with sympathetic allies to pressure the Taliban, which had little or nothing to do with 9/11, to dismember al-Qaida and to turn over its top members.

“Several conditions were favorable to such an approach…. But none of that was good enough for President George W. Bush, who eschewed any “negotiations” whatever ….

“The Bush administration’s reaction to the 9/11 attacks … was a mixture of panic, confusion, fear, and guilt. Moreover, “Bush personally wanted vengeance.”… Bush “wanted to kill …”

“The American public was similarly moved, so there was perhaps some political risk in adopting a less militarized approach….

“America’s longest war might have been avoided … if Bush had shown some flexibility on the “negotiation.”... Instead, the Taliban had to win the country back after years of warfare in which trillions of dollars were expended and well over a hundred thousand people killed.”

What if the US didn’t go to war in Afghanistan after 9/11? – Responsible Statecraft

 

[Ringo]

"The project" Costs of war " of Brown University published a report with an assessment of the total budget expenditures and future obligations of the United States after the September 11 wars: "about $8 trillion at current prices." The report says that about 1 million people were killed in the US wars on terrorism"

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2017/Costs%20of%20War%2C%20Brown%20University.pdf

 

[Correll]

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.
......

So, what would have been the "intelligent diplomacy and sober foreign policy" response to 9-11 and the deaths of over 2000 American civilians and the TALIBAN refusing to turn over the mass murderers behind it?

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

So, what would have been the "intelligent diplomacy and sober foreign policy" response to 9-11 and the deaths of over 2000 American civilians and the TALIBAN refusing to turn over the mass murderers behind it?

Not interested in having another tedious “discussion” with you, Correll. I’ve learned well how useless they are.

P.S. — covered this already in other comments

 

[Correll]

Not interested in having another tedious “discussion” with you, Correll. I’ve learned well how useless they are.

P.S. — covered this already in other comments

I'm sorry my refusal to agree with your constant Anti-American spin, makes it hard for you to build up your arguments.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

As I said..there is good money to be made in wars..which is why the right wing chicken hawks are crying about this one ending..

No one was complaining about it ending, dumbass! They were upset in the way the withdrawal was conducted.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

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

Accusing the US military of being mercenaries is the only problem I have with your post. You apparently do not know what a mercenary is.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

More than 90% of the Afghan rural population long preferred “Taliban” or local leadership rule to rule by the foreign-supported corrupt central government. Should this 90% of the country be “completely destroyed”?

You realize that exactly the opposite is true.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

LuckyDuck, I get your point. I never opposed the original assistance to the “Northern Alliance” ethnic groups (mostly Uzbeks and Tadzhiks) who with our assistance (and some Russian logistic assistance) drove the Taliban out of Kabul. The hunt for Bin Laden in Afghanistan failed, however.

We had no business militarily in Afghanistan either before that, when we supported BinLaden and gave billions in military aid and even stinger missiles to the fanatic Mujahaddin against the then pro-Soviet Afghan government, or after Bin Laden escaped into Pakistan. The occupation, the surge, the nation building was always doomed.

The best chance of modernizing Afghanistan was earlier, before 1988 (or 1992), when the Russian and Soviet Central Asian Muslim soldiers were still there. During Gorbachev’s rule we should have supported the Soviet presence diplomatically and helped the Afghans as they tried to build a moderate state.

They built far more schools and hospitals and liberated far more Afghan women than we ever did. But instead we …

My point is that our involvement in Afghanistan didn’t begin after 9/11 and we had already contributed to jihadi chaos in the country under Reagan.

Who supported bin Laden?

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

There is a strong whiff of genocide in your comment above. There was never a single act of terror committed by the Talaban in the U.S.A.

The Saudi and Arab terror network of Osama Bin Laden was supported by the U.S and set up by our friends in the Pakistani security services. BinLaden & Pakistan & the Arab fundamentalists in Afghanistan were ALL on “our side” — before the Talaban were even born.

The rural-based Talaban who swept away the Mujaheddin warlord jihadists and drug dealers alienated many non-Pashtun tribal groups and educated city dwellers, and of course the West. But they did not support, and indeed condemned, the 9/11 attack.

The Talaban “government” fled from Kabul when the “Northern (tribal) Alliance” got U.S. air and Special Forces (and Russian) support, but American arrogance and stupidity was obvious even from the start. We made a “non-negotiable” demand that the Talaban violate their own “hospitality” traditions, which they had extended to a friend whom had helped them and us in the past. The U.S. demanded they immediately and unconditionally turn over Bin Laden without providing any evidence of his guilt whatever. See the Oct. 2001 Guardian article below.

***

Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over

President George Bush rejected as "non-negotiable" an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan.

Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty". In Jalalabad, deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir - the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime - told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but added: "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country".

Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over

You need to learn to spell Taliban.

 

[Ringo]

The United States thanked Kosovo for its readiness to accept Afghan refugees, the "Voice of America" writes.

And even earlier, Ukraine announced its readiness to accept 5 thousand Afghans.
That's why the States need "allies" — to clean up after the master...
Well, the "good" news for Germany: Wait for thousands of new refugees!