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The Consequences of America's Imperialist Foreign Policy in Afghanistan
20 years ago, the United States invaded Afghanistan under the pretenses of stopping terrorism for the benefit of corporations. Now that we have pulled our troops, we must reckon with this past.
By Nicholas Just, August 17, 2021
Image Credit: Defense One/Handout via Reuters
On August 16, 2021, 19 years after the 9/11 Attacks and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, the world watched as the same group we sought to oust in our initial plot, the Taliban, took back the capital of Afghanistan. In 2016 Americans were eager to elect a president that seemed to prioritize putting the war in Afghanistan to an end, with nearly 70% of voters having previously approved of Biden pulling troops from the country.
Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, called his foreign policy “America First”; this was likely mostly to appeal to his xenophobic and nationalist followers. As a result of it, though, we saw an attempt to negotiate a ceasefire between the Taliban on the condition that they would never house terrorists.
Among these attempts, a meeting that was to be held at the primary presidential retreat, Camp David, was canceled for obvious security issues. Nevertheless, the conditions for a ceasefire were met and the US planned to evacuate some 15,000 military personnel during the next presidential term.
Although the negotiated ceasefire ended much of the fighting in Afghanistan, it also helped the Taliban extend their influence. This is a lose-lose scenario for the country. Hussein Sayed/AP
The conditions of the deal imply that the only interest of the United States in the “War on Terror” was to literally fight terrorism, a seemingly valid assertion without proper context.
It should be noted that our approach to terrorism has always been highly profitable for the military-industrial complex. It is less profitable to end terrorism in a deal made by the Trump administration. Instead, our government for almost two decades opted to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars on the War on Terror.
Every single attack perpetrated by the US military has only worked to radicalize more people against the West and has led to the continuation of the issue. This pattern was exploited by those businessmen not concerned with terrorism, but rather concerned with their own economic gain. Western governments acted upon those concerns and thus created an industrial enterprise of murder.
This is the second time since 9/11 the entire world has watched in real time the mass murder of civilians in relation to this conflict; keep in mind that the war on terror claims hundreds of thousands of non-combatant deaths every year. The other instance, the Paris Attacks of 2015, sparked fear in the hearts of Americans.
This is why a candidate that spoke of putting an end to this forever war was destined to win the 2016 presidential election. This is the main reason we are withdrawing from Afghanistan.
But, who are we leaving behind? Conservatives are apt to hypocritically remind us that the Taliban is hostile to women and LGBTQ people. They don’t bring this up because they are advocates of their rights, but rather because they are only arguing for the continuation of the War on Terror. With that said, they are not wrong in asserting that the Taliban is made up of Islamic fundamentalist extremists, and that they do plan to implement policies that attack the LGBTQ.
Those seeking asylum from the Taliban are now fleeing Afghanistan into neighboring countries, such as Pakistan, we see men, women, and children trying to escape the Taliban any way they can. This within the western media catastrophe, Trump pointing Twitter fingers at Joe Biden for not evacuating civilians before our military.
Thousands of civilians have needlessly died as a result of profit seeking by our defense corporations and imperialist policies. Tehran Times
It is out of character for the President of the United States to care about the lives of Afghan people. Our disregard for human life is evident except when it’s in the eyes of the media. When this was exposed, the Republicans and Democrats did not unify to take any responsibility over the situation, they instead used the situation to shift the blame onto each other and thus negate it.
Now the world sees an image of Afghan people crammed into what is apparently the final jet leaving the Afghanistan with civilians. Video of what is apparently the outside of one of these jets shows people crowding the jets, and even fatally attempting to cling onto them to escape, these are the people who are being left behind. People that may be facing prosecution now by the Taliban.
Let this week live in our memories as a moment in our history when our government showed their true colors. Their disregard for human life was televised and the true intentions of the “War on Terror '' were never more clear than in this past week. Afghanistan is now again in the hands of the same group we funded, armed and arguably created to fight the socialist coalition in the Soviet-Afghan war, the same group we invaded Afghanistan to oust.
Countless lives have been lost, companies like Lockheed Marten and Boeing’s profit margins are in the tens of billions. These are the spoils of American foreign policy.
August 28, 2021: 182 people, among them 13 United States military, died in a suicide bombing attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport last Thursday. The Biden administration released a statement saying that there would be retaliation for the attack. Today, a drone strike was used in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan to kill someone who authorities presumed to be involved in the attack.
September 17, 2021: The Pentagon confirmed that a previous airstrike aimed at ISIL-K terrorist elements had resulted in the deaths of ten civilians and zero enemy casualties. The drone attack was aimed at Kabul aid worker Zemari Ahmadi, who was suspected of having a relation to the Kabul Airport Attacks of August 29. In reality, he was unaffiliated with any group that played a role in orchestrating the attacks.