OMNI
AFGHANISTAN NEWSLETTER #27,
October 23, 2021.
Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice
(#8 April 15, 2011; #9 June 10, 2011;
#10 July 3, 2011; #11 July 13, 2011; #12
Sept. 5, 2011; #13 Oct. 2, 2011; #14 Oct. 15, 2011; #15 Feb. 14, 2012 ; #16
April 27, 2012; #17 May 3, 2012; #18 Oct. 20, 2012; #19 Jan. 14, 2013; #20
August 17, 2013; #21, Feb. 4, 2014; #22, Feb. 22, 2015; #23, August 22, 2017;
#24, Dec. 27, 2020; #25, August 22, 2021; #26, Oct., 14, 2021)
Contribute
to OMNI: www.omnicenter.org/donate/
These
essays expose the lies used by our leaders to justify our longest war. Together they offer a strong opposition to
US militarism and empire. They say to us
all, get off Twitter (an insult to bird intelligence, and look up twit), turn off Facebook (choosing
feeling over thinking), and drop off the unnecessary in our lives to press our
warrior leaders to end their global predations and let us build peace and
justice. --Dick
CONTENTS #27
John
Potash, CovertAction Magazine. Purpose of the US invasion and Occupation.
David
Adams, Beyond Afghanistan….Afghanistans.
Transcend Media Service.
Richard
Falk, Crimes in Kabul and Washington, D.C.
Transcend MS.
Ed
Rampell, US Defeat a Wakeup Call to US Leaders and Public?
CovertAction
Magazine.
Alba
Ciudad, US Massacres of Civilians in Afghanistan. Orinoco
Tribune.
TomDispatch,
Vijay Prashad, US Purposes and Results.
Brian
Becker, US Empire and Afghanistan 1978 to Present. ANSWER Coalition and
The
Intercept.
As’ad
Abu Khalil, US and Soviet Occupations and Defeats in Afghanistan Compared.
Rabbi Waskow v. “most media coverage.”
UNAC,
“we have not been told the truth throughout the 20 year occupation and war.”
Scott
Ritter, “It Was All Based on Lies,” Popular
Resistance.
ANSWER
Coalition, Biden Acknowledges Defeat and Return to Caliban of 20 Years
Ago.
Contents #26.
Call
me if you would like to become the editor of this mini-anthology. --D
TEXTS
ASSESSMENTS OF US
LONGEST WAR
Was
America’s Longest War for Opium, Oil and Propping up the Stock Market?
Journals/Covert Action 10-15-21
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Oct
15, 2021, 6:40 PM (2 days ago) |
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David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media
Service
1 Sep 2021 –
As Karl Marx put it, spending money on the military is like throwing money into
the sea. It produces nothing of value. And eventually an economy that produces
nothing of value will crash from its own internal contradiction. This is the
contradiction that led Johan Galtung to predict the end of the American Empire
by the year 2020.
Crime
and Punishment in Afghanistan
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND
Media Service
29 Aug 2021 –
Atrocity in Kabul, Geopolitical Crime in Washington,
TRANSCEND Media Service brings to you its own Peace Journalism Perspective plus
a digest of the week’s relevant News, Analyses, Papers and Videos — in various
languages.
Editorials and articles originated on TMS may
be freely reprinted, disseminated and translated, provided a citation and link
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By Ed Rampell on Sep 04, 2021 04:26 pm
As the Afghanistan Armageddon unravels, this
humiliating, devastating defeat for U.S. and its allies’ imperialism and the 20th anniversary
of 9/11, plus the June 29 death of war monger extraordinaire Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, are wakeup calls. They offer those in the U.S. the chance to
reflect upon, reconsider and rethink Washington’s disastrous, interventionist
foreign policy.
After 20 years of war, the retreat of U.S. forces from the Afghan Theater—an
ass-kicking of Biblical proportions—is a reminder of the limits of American
power and over-reach.
The U.S. foreign policy establishment has again been exposed for its
extraordinary imbecility, incompetence, arrogance, and brutality of Greek
tragedy dimensions. As Kabul, like Saigon in 1975, slips from U.S. imperial
control, and the September 11th sneak attack is commemorated,
along with our ongoing racial reckoning, the USA also has a rare golden
opportunity for an imperial reckoning, a perestroika in how the U.S.—the global
capitalist police—interacts with the rest of the world. […]
The post Ass-Kicking in Afghanistan Offers
Opportunity to Reorient U.S. Foreign Policy—Or Will it Just Be Another
Groundhog Day?appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.
China calls for investigation into U.S. massacres of
civilians in Afghanistan
Editor.
Mronline.org (9-5-21).
On Wednesday, September 1, Chinese Foreign
Affairs Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that the massacres of civilians
committed by the US military in Afghanistan during 20 years of occupation and war
should be fully investigated.
|
4:37
PM (14 minutes ago) |
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A bit of hope that doesn’t come from Miami
Vijay Prashad/ mronline.org (4-24-21).
After twenty years, the United States
government–and the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)–will
depart from Afghanistan. They said that they came to do two things: to destroy
al-Qaeda, which had launched an attack on the United States on 11 September
2001, and to destroy the Taliban, which had given al-Qaeda a base.
April 23, 2021 | Newswire 
The Real Story: U.S.
imperialism and Afghanistan (1978 - Present)
These are episodes of The
Socialist Program, a podcast providing news and views about the world for those
who want to change it hosted by ANSWER Coalition National Director Brian
Becker. You can follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
PART 1 | The Real Story -
When U.S. empire waged war vs. Socialism in Afghanistan 1978-1990s
The United States has been
intervening in Afghanistan since 1979. Trump and now Biden promise to end U.S.
involvement in the Afghanistan war. But imperialist domination in the country
continues. Brian is joined by Sohrob Aslamy, a doctoral student at Syracuse
University in the Department of Geography and the Environment. Part 1 focuses
on the history—the real reasons—behind U.S. intervention in Afghanistan,
starting in the 1970s.
Listen to Part 1 of the
series here
Part 2 | The Real Story - Is the U.S. actually
leaving Afghanistan?
The Biden administration
has announced that the United States will be withdrawing its troops from
Afghanistan by September 11 of this year, and that this withdrawal will take
place regardless of conditions on the battlefield. What's behind this move? Is
the U.S. empire's longest war really coming to an end? Brian continues the
discussion with Sohrob Aslamy.
Listen to part 2 of the
series here
Please make an urgently needed donation to the
antiwar and anti-racism movement today. We can only carry on this crucial work
with contributions from supporters like you.
A shocking exposé in The Intercept reveals CIA-backed death squads in Afghanistan have killed
children as young as 8 years old in a series of night raids, many targeting
madrassas, Islamic religious schools. The United States played key roles in
many of the raids, from picking targets to ferrying Afghan forces to the sites,
to providing lethal airpower during the raids. This was part of a campaign of terror orchestrated by
the Trump administration that included massacres, executions, mutilation,
forced disappearances, attacks on medical facilities, and airstrikes targeting
structures known to house civilians.---Intercept (via
Casa Cry January 2021)
U.S. defeat in Afghanistan—A contrast with the Soviet experience
As'ad AbuKhalil. Mronline.org (8-17-21)
The U.S. has been defeated today in
Afghanistan not by a super power with an advanced military, but by a rag-tag
army of fanatical locals who perfected and consolidated their fanaticism under
U.S., Saudi and Pakistani tutelage in the 1980s to fight the Soviets.
|
8:39
AM (8 hours ago) |
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The
Shalom Center Board has had no chance to discuss the events of the last week in
Afghanistan. So these thoughts come to you as my own.
There are
lessons both for US foreign policy and for our internal domestic life from the
20-year failure of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Most of the media response
is blinding us to what we could learn.
Most
media coverage and most conversations have assumed that "Afghanistan
is a foreign policy problem." But there are uncomfortable aspects of the
20-year "forever war" that point right here at home. I will sketch
them close to the end of this essay.
To sum up
the "foreign policy" part: The US intervention began legitimately as
a defensive anti-terrorist action after 9/11.The American Empire turned that
into a "forever war" against Afghanistaa. This past week, the
American Empire lost that war. That doesn't mean the Afghans who won are
democratic or magnanimous, and it doesn't mean that all the frightened Afghans
are bad guys. . But American democracy and the American Republic won a snall
but important victory against the Empire, if we have the good sense to claim
it.
I
notice that most of the media are describing the fall of the Kabul government
as the Taliban versus Afghanistan. But the Taliban are Afghans [PASHTUN
ethnicly, mainly Sunni Islam]. They have deep roots in Afghan society.
They were and perhaps still are the ultra right-wing version of Islam. (There
are similar energies among some jews, Christians, Hindus, even
Buddhists.) Their public proclamations in the last few weeks have
promised an open-hearted relationship with civilians throughout Afghanistan.
They have
already shown that their fighters have more commitment to their vision of their
country than the “official” army bought by two trillion American dollars. That
“army” faded away into less than smoke as soon as American power was withdrawn.
Perhaps
the Taliban promises will turn out to be fake, or turn out impossible to
fulfill if civil servants and police officers who are panicked by the political
earthquake flee or refuse to work, and are coerced.. We may learn that
the Taliban are still as oppressive as they once were.Or we may learn that they
have learned. Either way, it will have to be Afghans who organize to change
their own country.
If I were
an Afghan, with the Americans gone I would be opposing the Taliban with all my
might. Inside the United States, I oppose their equivalent – the ultra-right-wing
militias that were part of the mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6.
I am not
an Afghan, and I know that I and my government have no ethical legitimacy in
trying to jam my money and my Army down the throats of Afghans. No ethical
legitimacy and no practical effectiveness. It only wounds my own America as
well as Afghanistan when my government tries to do that.
The
ethically legitimate act of the US in Afghanistan was with approval by the UN
Security Council, as international law and US treaty law provide, to break up
Al Qaeda after its attack on the Twin Towers. That was accomplished in six
months, not 20 years.
Even that
could have been done more ethically, without using torture on those arrested,
without endless prison in Guantanamo but with trials in US courts under US law.
Instead,
the “forever war.” The result of US governmental hubris, and the result
of that hubris was an insurgent movement with high morale and clever strategy.
Why was
most of the US government and media so stunned by the swift collapse of the
puppet government in Kabul? Because most of the US military and
foreign-policy Establishment had blinded themselves to how weak was their
effort to impose an American system on Afghanistan. They were not even
consciously lying; they could not believe in the strength of the ragtag
uprising and the weakness of an imperial imposition.
The swift
and total collapse of the Kabul government and its army was not evidence that
President Biden made a mistake. It was, rather, evidence that his
assesssment of the Afghan reality was much closer to correct than that of
the stay-onners..
America
had plenty of evidence, if we had paid attention. Not just the failures of the
British Empire twice in the 19th century and the Soviet Empire
once in the twentieth, when they tried to occupy Afghanistan. But also the
failures of the US government when it invaded, occupied, and tried to control
Vietnam and Iraq.
There
were even two lessons in our dealings with Iran. First, success in the
difficult negotiations that led to an Iran with no nuclear-weapons program
without a ruinous war. Second, the Trumpist stupidity and cruelty that threw
away that great success, imposed murderous sanctions even in the midst of
pandemic, and convinced Iran that the US could not be trusted.
All this
left behind destruction and death. Even in Vietnam, almost 50 years later, with
a reasonably decent society at home and at peace with the US, people were still
dying from US Agent Orange and US land mines and cluster bombs. And in
the US, what could two trillion dollars have accomplished to avert climate
crisis, create jobs in the Rust Belt, reduce racial inequality?
Finally,
I promised to look at the Afghanistan at home. I wrote that the Taliban
were the much stronger Afghan equivalent of the comparatively weak mob on
January 6.There is already a blurry
Afghanistan growing INSIDE us. How do we grow ourselves in a different
direction ?
How do we
keep that mob from growing into an American Taliban? The answer depends on us –
you, me, millions of us.
· Is the
growing power of huge corporations becoming a kind of "Kabul
government" -- with few roots in American neighborhoods and democratic
American life? Is that the origin of a "forever war"? Is it the root
of violent disaffection?
· Can we
turn America from its imperial hubris – which was here from the beginning, in
the form of slavery and genocide and the destruction of much of our land --
passenger pigeons, bison, forests, the prairie?
· Can we
turn America once again to regrowing its democratic roots and hopes – which
were also there from the beginning?
· Can we
find in ourselves a vigorously nonviolent version of committed citizenship and
high morale -- more commited to imaginative and effective soul-force than
the American would-be Taliban are to violence?
· Can we
free ourselves of the “occupying force” of huge corporation – and thereby
also outwork and outlive and out-ethic and out-morale our own Taliban?
Can we
make an America that is not an oppressive empire at home and abroad,
laying waste
an exhausted Earth,
but a democratic republic replenishing Earth?
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Thanks! Shalom, salaam, paz, peace, namaste!
-- Arthur
UNAC (8-18-21).
|
Afghanistan Events are happening very fast in
the world today but perhaps none faster than the rapid advance of the Taliban
and the fall of the US puppet regime in Afghanistan. It is reported
that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani
fled the country with four cars and a helicopter full of cash. |
|
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Biden
acknowledges that the US has been defeated in Afghanistan war
ANSWER
Coalition via uark.onmicrosoft.com 8-16-21
Dear Dick --
The lightening fast collapse of the
Afghan government and the panicked evacuation currently being carried out by
U.S. forces in Kabul caps two decades of brutal and arrogant occupation of the
country. In the end, the political situation in Afghanistan today is the same
as it was before the invasion -- with the Taliban in control. It is important
to note that prior to the 9/11 attacks the U.S. government had no problem
dealing with the Taliban despite their repression of basic rights, including
banning girls from receiving an education.
The ANSWER Coalition was among the first
organizations in the United States to mobilize in opposition to the war at its
onset in 2001, and has consistently protested this senseless occupation that
has inflicted death and suffering on millions. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans
have died over the course of the war, and millions have been forced to flee
their homes.
For 20 years, hundreds of thousands of
foreign troops cycled through the country while a ferocious air war waged by
U.S. bombers and drones took a grave toll on Afghan civilians. Those
responsible for these war crimes and the entire criminal enterprise of the war
should be held to account.
The frenzied evacuation of Kabul has
dealt a blow to the image of U.S. imperial might around the world. Members of
the military, political and media elite are engaged in a blame game over who is
responsible, with many essentially adopting the position that the withdrawal
was a blunder and the U.S. occupation should have gone on literally forever.
But all those who initiated, managed and profited off of the war -- and those
who sold the war to the public -- share blame for the immense suffering it has
caused.
The following statement originally
published by Liberation News provides addition details and analysis.
U.S.-backed Afghan government surrenders
to the Taliban
The unopposed entrance of Taliban forces
into Kabul marks the bitter conclusion of a 20-year long military adventure by
U.S. imperialism that senselessly inflicted death and suffering on an enormous
scale. The fact that the U.S.-backed Afghan government surrendered without a
fight is the clearest indication that it was nothing more than an extension of
U.S. imperialist power. The stark reality showed itself: either the U.S.
imperialist occupation that began 20 years ago would be sustained literally
forever, or this government would collapse upon the exit of U.S. military
forces. The Taliban coming to power in the mid-1990s was the consequence of the
CIA war against the socialist government of Afghanistan that had come to power
in 1978 during the Saur Revolution. The U.S. was perfectly willing to do
business with the Taliban prior to September 11 in spite of their odious
policies including their prohibition on the education of girls. The hope and promise
of the earlier socialist period was crushed by U.S. intervention and the later
collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then, the people of Afghanistan have lived
under one reactionary government after another.
The complete and almost instantaneous
military and political collapse of the Afghan government has led to a situation
where the Taliban is presiding over the panicked evacuation of its opponents
from inside the capital city. Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October
2001, hundreds of thousands of Afghans died, millions were forced to flee their
homes, tens of thousands of working class enlisted soldiers from the United
States were killed or injured — and in the end the political situation in the
country is returning to a situation where the Taliban dominates the country.
The U.S./NATO invasion of Afghanistan
began October 7, 2001 in retaliation for the September 11 terrorist attacks
against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Bush administration
refused the Taliban government’s offer to hand over Osama bin Laden for trial
in a Muslim country if the United States would present evidence showing that
al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack. Instead, Bush declared “no
negotiations with terrorists” and launched the invasion. The Bush administration
used the September 11 attack as a pretext to launch a sweeping assault against
Iraq and other Middle Eastern governments. The invasion of Afghanistan was
simply conceived of as a box-checking endeavor by the neo-conservative
government to wage a new round of aggression under the banner of the “war on
terror”. This imperialist wave of aggression toppled the government in Iraq and
Libya and hoped to topple the governments in Syria and Iran as well. It has
been a disaster for the people of the Middle East and South Asia.
The pace of the Taliban’s advance was
stunning. In just nine days, the group took over every major city in the
country and then marched into Kabul without firing a shot. This was possible
because the Afghan government’s forces in most cases put up virtually no
resistance. Where fighting did occur, it frequently was carried out by elite
special forces or local militias. When the moment of truth arrived and it
became clear that the U.S. military really was leaving the country, the Afghan
National Army did not fight.
After the 2001 invasion, the United
States spent hundreds of billions of dollars creating and supporting the Afghan
government’s military. But this military served a government that had no
political legitimacy. Its source of authority was the U.S.-led foreign
occupation of the country, corruption was rampant and it failed to develop an
appreciable base of support among the country’s people. It was clear that the
government would not be able to hold out for long against the Taliban, so
rather than fight and die to prolong the inevitable the security forces mostly
chose to step aside.
Read more here
Please make an urgently needed donation
to the antiwar and anti-racism movement today. We can only carry on this
crucial work with contributions from supporters like you.
CONTENTS #26, October 14, 2021
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/10/omni-afghanistan-newsletter-26-october.html
Historical
Timeline of Afghanistan
Farah
Stockman. What was the War about? Profiteering and Corruption.
UN
News Wire 10-13, Taliban and Women
Julie
Hollar, Failure of US Mainstream Media in Reporting on Women
Brian
Terrell, US’ Longest War Not Over
Tom
Engelhardt, Fall of the US Empire
END AFGHANISTAN NEWSLETTER #27, 10-23-21
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