Afghanistan, among many others, is a perfect example of why the US doesn't need to be nation-building in the middle east. US taxpayers are on the ongoing hook for about $114 Billion down the Afghani toilet since 2002. And what did we get for our money?
Since the US stupidly attempted to defeat the Taliban there and then stupidly decided to install our particular brand of democracy, from the top down the whole country has become a cesspool of Pentagon-financed corruption, graft, and violence.
The poppy warlords, Taliban rabble, military, and politicians all have their hands out snatching money, coercively taken from US taxpayers at the point of a gun, handed out like Halloween candy by the US government, desperate for something they can point to as an Arab-related victory in the middle east.
It is an utter failure, just as Iraq, Libya, Syria, and probably Egypt will ultimately be utter failures too as far as American influence there.
Enough already. Get out of there, wash our hands of the whole mess, and leave them to their own devices. If they ever decide to come this way with bad intentions, we'll know it and we'll kill them as their toes hit the water on their shores, otherwise who cares what happens to them?
5 comments:
Q. Who took the U.S. into Afghanistan?
A. George Bush et al
Q. Why did they take the U.S. into Afghanistan?
A. Ostensibly because of 9/11.
Q. What, in God's name, did Afghanistan have to do with 9/11?
A. Nothing.
Q. So what was the REAL motive for invading Afghanistan? Cui bono? No, really.
Soon after posting the above I ran across this apropos statement in “America’s Longest War Gets Longer’, By Eric Margolis, October 8, 2016.
“…the Bush administration […] claimed the 9/11 attackers, most of whom were Saudis, were motivated by hatred of American ‘values’ and ‘freedoms.’ This nonsense planted the seeds of the rising tide of Islamophobia that we see today* and the faux ‘war on terror.’**"
*See almost anything Ed writes.
**[ibid]
Continued from above:
"Taliban, which had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, had shut down 90% of Afghanistan’s heroin and opium trade. The US-allied Northern Alliance restored it, making Afghanistan again the world’s leading supplier of heroin and opium."
Ah, Ed's anti-terrorist champion of peace, democracy and the American way at work. Ooh-rah!
Isaac, I never understood the connection to Afghanistan and I suspect Ed will agree with you/me. I suspect his answer might touch on the power of the military-industrial complex et al.
My opinion? We should have stayed the hell out of there and the Middle East as well.
Isaac, you're arguing against a point that I didn't make. Clearly the US made a decision that the Taliban are worse to have in power than poppy farmers. The wisdom of interference one way or the other is what I'm calling imminently debatable.
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