Kabul Has Fallen – But Don’t Blame Biden
The rush is on now to find somebody to blame for the chaos in Afghanistan. Many of the “experts” doing the finger-pointing are the ones most to blame. Politicians and pundits who played cheerleader for this war for two decades are now rushing to blame President Biden for finally getting the US out. Where were they when succeeding presidents continued to add troops and expand the mission in Afghanistan?
The US war on Afghanistan was not lost yesterday in Kabul. It was lost the moment it shifted from a limited mission to apprehend those who planned the attack on 9/11 to an exercise in regime change and nation-building.
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks I proposed that we issue letters of marque and reprisal to bring those responsible to justice. But such a limited and targeted response to the attack was ridiculed at the time. How could the US war machine and all its allied profiteers make their billions if we didn’t put on a massive war?
So who is to blame for the scenes from Afghanistan this weekend? There is plenty to go around.
Congress has kicked the can down the road for 20 years, continuing to fund the Afghan war long after even they understood that there was no point to the US occupation. There were some efforts by some Members to end the war, but most, on a bipartisan basis, just went along to get along.
The generals and other high-ranking military officers lied to their commander-in-chief and to the American people for years about progress in Afghanistan. The same is true for the US intelligence agencies. Unless there is a major purge of those who lied and misled, we can count on these disasters to continue until the last US dollar goes up in smoke.
The military industrial complex spent 20 years on the gravy train with the Afghanistan war. They built missiles, they built tanks, they built aircraft and helicopters. They hired armies of lobbyists and think tank writers to continue the lie that was making them rich. They wrapped their graft up in the American flag, but they are the opposite of patriots.
The mainstream media has uncritically repeated the propaganda of the military and political leaders about Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and all the other pointless US interventions. Many of these outlets are owned by defense industry-connected companies. The corruption is deep.
American citizens must also share some blame. Until more Americans rise up and demand a pro-America, non-interventionist foreign policy they will continue to get fleeced by war profiteers.
Political control in Afghanistan has returned to the people who fought against those they viewed as occupiers and for what they viewed as their homeland. That is the real lesson, but don’t expect it to be understood in Washington. War is too profitable and political leaders are too cowardly to go against the tide. But the lesson is clear for anyone wishing to see it: the US global military empire is a grave threat to the United States and its future.
“It's time to get out of Afghanistan. It's a fruitless venture. Too much has been lost. The chance of winning, since we don't even know what we are going to win, doesn't exist. So they are tired of it.
Financially, there's a good reason to come home as well. Some argue we have to be there because if we leave under these circumstances we'll lose face; it will look embarrassing to leave. So how many more men and women have to die, how many more dollars have to be spent to save face? That is one of the worst arguments possible.
We are not there under legal conditions. This is a war. Who says it isn't a war? Everybody talks about the Afghan war. Was the war declared? Of course not. It wasn't declared. There was a resolution passed that said that the President at that time, under the emergency of 9/11, could go and deal with al Qaeda, those who brought upon the 9/11 bombings. But al Qaeda is not there anymore. So we are fighting the Taliban. The Taliban used to be our allies at one time when the Soviets were there. The Taliban's main goal is to keep the foreign occupation out. They want foreigners out of their country. They are not al Qaeda. Yet most Americans--maybe less so now. But the argument here on the floor is we have got to go after al Qaeda. This is not a war against al Qaeda. If anything, it gives the incentive for al Qaeda to grow in numbers rather than dealing with them.
The money issue, we are talking about a lot of money. How much do we spend a year? Probably about $130 billion, up to $1 trillion now in this past decade...
All empires end for fiscal reasons because they spread themselves too far around the world, and that's what we are facing. We are in the midst of a military conflict that is contributing to this inevitable crisis and it's financial. And you would think there would be a message there. How did the Soviets come down? By doing the very same thing that we're doing: perpetual occupation of a country. We don't need to be occupying Afghanistan or any other country. We don't even need to be considering going into Libya or anywhere else.
Fortunately, I guess for those of us who would like to see less of this killing, we will have to quit because we won't be able to afford it. The process that we are going through is following the War Powers Resolution. This is a proper procedure. It calls attention to how we slip into these wars.
I have always claimed that it's the way we get into the wars that is the problem. If we would be precise and only go to war with a declaration of war, with the people behind us, knowing who the enemy is, and fight, win, and get it over with, that would be more legitimate. They don't do it now because the American people wouldn't support it.
Nobody is going to declare war against Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya. We now have been so careless for the past 50 or 60 years that, as a Congress and especially as a House, we have reneged on our responsibilities. We have avoided our prerogatives of saying that we have the control. We have control of the purse. We have control of when we are supposed to go to war. Yet the wars continue. They never stop. And we are going to be completely brought down to our knees.
We can't change Afghanistan. The people who are bragging about these changes, even if you could, you are not supposed to. You don't have the moral authority. You don't have the constitutional authority...
This is military Keynesianism to believe that we should do this forever."