How about some accountability for Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen?
By Philip Giraldi
August 24, 2021 – unz.com
If you want to know how the United States wound up with “government by stupid” one need only look no farther than some of the recent propaganda put out by members of Congress, senior military officers and a certain former president. President George W. Bush, who started the whole sequence of events that have culminated in the disaster that is Afghanistan, is not yet in prison, but one can always hope.
Regarding the current crisis, former FBI special agent and 9/11 whistleblower Coleen Rowley cited Richard W. Behan who mused over “How perverse we have become. We chastise President Biden for a messy ending of the war in Afghanistan and fail to indict George Bush for its illegal beginning.” She then observed, in her own words on Facebook, “So Rehabilitated War Criminal Bush can maintain his legacy as stalwart statesman as he cutely dances with Ellen DeGeneris and Michelle Obama on television screens. Washington is just a big fact-free political show where the blame game winners are the best manipulators.”
Full Article : unz.com
Former British Soldier Gives An Afghanistan Narrative
When you start a war it makes sense to have a well thought out exit strategy. Vietnam repeated, the fall of Saigon with the Viet Cong pressing in was repeated in Afghanistan.
The “train” Afghan military that was suppose to hold ground made such a hasty retreat leaving behind weapons so much so that Indian embassy officials were shock and caught flat footed. So to all who were seeking to get out of “Dodge” quickly.
As expected the Taliban struck with a suicide bomber causing enormous loss of life mostly Afghans. It was Benghazi repeated as American Service personnel remained behind to “hold ground”.
The merits or demerits of this war will be a subject of debate well into the future. The American companies were the prime beneficiaries of a futile war. Billions of dollars line the pockets of the warmongering capitalist. In Shri Lanka a similar thing happened as after 20 years the war ended and the Sinhalese assumed power again in the Northern region. The Sinhalese despite the brutal end demonstrated more compassion than the heartless Taliban. But why the difference? The Sinhalese are Buddhist and the Taliban are jihadist.
For the Taliban the war has been about Islam, Sharia Law and the subjugation of women. This subjugation is not a global phenomena in the Sharia loving nations. Muslim women from Syria as an example of a war torn nation are allowed to go to universities to complete their education. Many coming to western nations have done such. However most muslim men prefer their women to stay home and not leave the house except at their permission.
The Afghan war was based on religious ideology. Those wars are never easily won. The idea of democracy is frowned upon as a western concept, they already have the Sharia. The Americans should have known and understood the battle before entering the battlefield and like Vietnam once again failing to implement democracy….
What would the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan mean for the geopolitics of that region, and I am talking about the whole Eurasian region as Dugin calls it. One of the possible consequences is the weakening and fall of Hindutva ideology. With American troops in Afghanistan fighting a war against the Taliban, considered a fundamentalist Islamic group, the entire region, particularly South Asia, was affected by this war against what was considered to be Islamic fundamentalism. Such a scenario became a fruitful environment for the rise and eventual political victory of Hindutva fundamentalism, under Modi and the BJP. The withdrawal of American troops means that the geopolitical environment that made Hindutva ideology a winning political ideology is no longer there. Surrounded externally by, in the north by Pakistan, China, Iran and now Afghanistan, in the South by a resentful Sri Lanka; surrounded internally by the masses of poor people, the burgeoning militancy of Kashmir, the Dalits, a rising Marxist ideology, Hindutva fundamentalists are now in a precarious position. “About 60% of India’s nearly 1.3 billion people live on less than $3.10 a day, the World Bank’s median poverty line. And 21%, or more than 250 million people, survive on less than $2 a day… Today, the richest 10% in India controls 80% of the nation’s wealth, according to a 2017 report published by Oxfam, an international confederation of agencies fighting poverty. And the top 1% owns 58% of India’s wealth. (By comparison, the richest 1% in the United States owns 37% of the wealth.) Another way to look at it: In India, the wealth of 16 people is equal to the wealth of 600 million people.” https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/10/world/i-on-india-income-gap/ And, “Two-thirds of people in India live in poverty: 68.8% of the Indian population lives on less than $2 a day. Over 30% even have less than $1.25 per day available – they are considered extremely poor. This makes the Indian subcontinent one of the poorest countries in the world; women and children, the weakest members of Indian society, suffer most.”
https://www.soschildrensvillages.ca/news/poverty-in-india-602
In describing the precursors of Hindutva nationalists view of self rule or swaraj, Mohandas Gandhi said in Hind Swaraj, “You want the tiger’s rule without the tiger”. The Hindutva fundamentalists wanted a militaristic India, an India copied from the Nazi ideology. Savarkar, who developed the ideology of Hindutva, was influenced by Nazi philosophy. He “commended Hitler for unapologetically representing the cultural and racial solidarity” which promoted German unification. So one of the geopolitical fallouts of the withdrawal of American troops may be the fall into disfavor of the BJP under Modi. Or American foreign policy experts may see India in the role as a pushback to China, Russia, militant Islam and encourage India to militarize its Hindutva fundamentalism more. A suicidal endeavour which would make Modi into the new Saddam Hussein, in Hindutva garments of course. It may be time to heed Gandhi’s words.
The Afghan war would be remembered as the longest war America fought overseas. The amount of weapons, ammunition, and military gear left behind is phenomenal.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/08/23/staggering-costs–us-military-equipment-left-behind-in-afghanistan/?sh=5499a45f41db
https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-afghanistan-43d8f53b35e80ec18c130cd683e1a38f
With over 2,500 soldiers dead and thousands of amputations, and thousands suffering from PTSD, the war ended as it started suddenly…..the winners! Obviously the Taliban.