The U.S. War in Afghanistan
The “horror and chaos” we hear about in relation to Afghanistan did not begin with the U.S. military leaving Kabul. It began when the United States launched a war on Afghanistan in 2001—and even earlier, when Russia invaded the country in 1979. These two wars have made Afghanistan look chaotic and its people appear backward, when in fact the chaos is due to two imperialist powers waging war on the country for decades.
The United States will withdraw from Afghanistan on August 31, 2021. The twenty-year war it has fought has been the longest in U.S. history, and the withdrawal is good news for both USers and the Afghan people.
Afghanistan will no longer be a battlefield, a country for the Western capitalist nations to drop bombs on—destroying villages, farms, schools, clinics, and homes. More than five thousand women and children, and seventy thousand Afghan male fighters on both sides, have been killed. Over five million Afghans have been displaced and are now refugees, primarily in Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey.
The war in Afghanistan was never about September 11, 2001, although the U.S. government used that as an excuse to invade the country. It was never about creating more safety for the people of the United States or for making their lives better. After two decades of direct involvement, 3,200 U.S. soldiers have been killed and over twenty thousand injured. The U.S. media has censored the horrifying images of the war. Most U.S. people have been able to go about their lives and not be aware that their country was involved in an unjust, brutal, extremely expensive war (U.S. taxpayers have paid between 1.7 and 2.2 trillion dollars for it).
The war was never about saving Afghan women from male domination and sexism. The U.S. government has claimed that Afghan women needed to be “saved” from the “evil” male Taliban. It’s true that the Taliban have been brutal to women, but that was an excuse, not the reason, for the war. Also, it is racism to see South, Central, and West Asian and North African (SCWANA) women as silent, weak, and oppressed and SCWANA men as bad, violent, and sexist. Furthermore, war never saves women. In fact, it usually disproportionately affects women and children and leaves them in poverty for long after its end date.
The war was never about the liberation of the Afghan people. When the United States invaded in 2001, Afghans were facing unprecedented poverty, starvation, illiteracy, and destruction of their farmlands, in part due to Russia’s earlier war on the country, but the U.S. military had no intention of addressing these challenges. By design, the U.S. military cannot and will not prioritize human lives and needs. It is built to wage war—not engage in creating humane societies, despite the “humanizing” stories told by the United States.
In 2018 the defense budget of the U.S. military was $700 billion. Part of it paid for a skilled, complex marketing and communications team that focuses on what they call “unified storytelling.” They spend millions of dollars on advertising campaigns that paint the U.S. military as a force for positive change, linking it to values like honesty, fairness, and truth. In fact, the results of invasion, war, and occupation are only destruction and greed.
The war in Afghanistan was never a humanitarian mission. It was always about the extraction of natural resources—such as uranium, lithium, and natural gas—to profit the military-industrial complex and companies like General Electric and Lockheed Martin.
Under imperialism and colonialism, an occupying power forces the local leadership and population to be dependent on it. In Afghanistan, the corrupt Afghan leadership and military were dependent on the U.S. presence. The United States is leaving behind a weak infrastructure and a devastated country, and the Taliban fighters feel vindicated.
During both the Russian and U.S. wars, Afghanistan’s opiate industry flourished. It funded the Taliban’s taking on [confronting and fighting] the two imperialist superpowers, and the cheap opiate pouring into Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey had a devastating effect—creating and fueling addiction among the young people there.
The U.S. government is opportunistic. It is not loyal to the local people or the dictators who are its allies. The U.S. military did not make any plans for the evacuation of the Afghan leaders and military personnel who had worked with them or any plans for saving the lives of the vulnerable human rights defenders, including Afghan feminists, translators, and journalists. These people have been left behind to fend for themselves—and the situation is now dangerous for them, as they are seen as traitors by the Taliban. I believe there will be more bloodshed in the days and months ahead.
However—good or bad—without the daily greed of the imperialist superpowers who’ve been calling the shots [determining things], the Afghan people may now have a chance to be the architects of their own destiny.
DISCHARGING ON THE WAR
There are many ways to discharge on the war, and I welcome you to work on it in your sessions, classes, support groups, and workshops.
If you are a USer, or a European whose nation supported the war, I invite you to discharge on any place where you feel numb or enraged or on the effects of the war on your life.
It is also crucial to remember that there are no human enemies. I have written about this recently. See my article, “No Human Enemies,” on page 64 of the January 2021 Present Time or at <www.rc.org/publication/present_time/pt202/pt202_064_ak>. What is your first memory of being told that you or your people had enemies?
We know from RC theory that every human is a good human and that people who’ve been hurt can hurt other people. Take this into sessions. Also, Afghan women are good people and not more oppressed than other women, and Afghan men are good people and not more sexist than other men. And the people who have profited from this war and led the military operations are good but hurt people.
Brooklyn, New York, USA
(Present Time 205, October 2021)