Mariam Veiszadeh: As an Afghan Australian, I watch in despair as the west cuts and runs / Afghanistan - “We Tried to Tell You” / Polly Toynbee: The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan has laid bare the magnitude of western hubris
The anger and hurt many of us feel is palpable as the reality is that the Taliban would have not risen to have such power and influence, had they not had initial backing from western forces. Combined with a complex multitude of ethnic factions, a power vacuum, an already largely corrupt government weakened further by every attempted invasion/takeover and the international onslaught that follows – Afghanistan has become a country ripe for exploitation from all angles.
To witness what feels very much like a western abandonment
of Afghanistan on mass scale is infuriating. No matter the alleged well
intentions of many, we cannot plant the seeds of war, water them, witness the
deterioration, strip the country of its dignity, and then withdraw without a
well-thought-out exit strategy.
The countless atrocities in Afghanistan did not occur in a vacuum. Several countries (you know who you are) played a vital role in militarising Afghanistan over the 1980s and fueling the political instability that has plagued the country. The costs in terms of lives lost is catastrophic – a painful harsh reality many of our Iraqi, Syrian, Palestinian and many other sisters and brothers are very familiar with, especially when you consider the disturbing fact that US has been at war 225 out of 243 years since 1776, that’s 92 % of the time since its birth….
Afghanistan - “We Tried to Tell You”
FLAYOSC, France — Here we go again. Americans clamor for the
exits, leaving behind innocent blood and sophisticated weapons for jubilant
irregulars who humiliated them with antiquated guns and makeshift bombs. I've seen this, over and over, from Vietnam in
the 1970s to Iraq not long ago. Players differ, but not the plot. Societies
react badly to uninvited foreign saviors. However noble your intentions, you
can't deliver democracy at gunpoint.
Imperial déjà vu dates back millennia. A raging flood not
long ago in this Provence backwater exposed paving stones on the route from
Brittania to Rome, where all roads once led. Every empire eventually fades by
military overreach or internal rot — or both.
By Roman ruins east of here in Frejús, a memorial cemetery
recalls France's centuries-long mission civilisatrice. A mission to civilize.
JFK brushed off Charles de Gaulle's warnings about trying to reshape an ancient
culture. The United States, he said, had nobler intentions.
Most Americans, not imperialists, want to do the right thing
and come home. But few know what the right thing is. Generals loath to admit
defeat by a ragtag rabble see lights at the end of tunnels. One president
passes stalemate on to the next. And people keep dying.
Reporters who get close enough to see and smell the story
are shouted down by a different sort of journalist who speculates about what is
happening from a safe distance. When reality bites, they can only grumble with
an unhelpful refrain: We tried to tell you…
The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan has laid bare the magnitude of western hubris
Here ends the west’s grotesque delusion that it could use its military might to turn Afghanistan into a stable democracy, a shining path of moderate Islam. In the shadow of New York’s burning twin towers, I was one swept along on that “something must be done” tide, that drumbeat for a war to stop terror and liberate oppressed people. We have learned a bitter lesson. How deceptively easy was the 2001 victory, as Taliban fighters fled to melt back into their own population famously murmuring, “You have watches, we have time.” They have just turned back the clock on 20 wasted years….
Chris Hedges: The Collective Suicide Machine
Guantanamo
Bay - President Obama's shame: The forgotten prisoners of America's own Gulag
Book
review: AFGHANISTAN: ‘A SHOCKING INDICTMENT’
The
CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris,
15-21 January 1998
Chauncey DeVega: Trump is mentally ill but our real
sickness runs much deeper
TOM
ENGELHARDT: A World at the Edge
Alfred McCoy: The
crumbling delusion of Washington's endless world dominion
Andrew Bacevich:
High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the Fading American Century
