Last week marked the fifteenth anniversary of the US invasion of
Afghanistan, the longest war in US history. There weren't any victory parades
or photo-ops with Afghanistan's post-liberation leaders. That is because the
war is ongoing. In fact, 15 years after launching a war against Afghanistan's
Taliban government in retaliation for an attack by Saudi-backed al-Qaeda, the
US-backed forces are steadily losing territory back to the Taliban.
What President Obama called "the good war" before took office in
2008, has become the "forgotten war" some eight years later. How
many Americans know that we still have nearly 10,000 US troops in
Afghanistan? Do any Americans know that the Taliban was never defeated, but
now holds more ground in Afghanistan than at any point since 2001? Do they
know the Taliban overran the provincial capital of Kunduz last week for a
second time in a year and they threaten several other provincial capitals?
Do Americans know that we are still wasting billions on
"reconstruction" and other projects in Afghanistan that are, at
best, boondoggles? According to a recent audit by the independent US
government body overseeing Afghan reconstruction, half a billion dollars was
wasted on a contract for a US company to maintain Afghan military vehicles.
The contractor "fail[ed] to meet program objectives," the audit
found. Of course they still got paid, like thousands of others getting rich
off of this failed war.
Do Americans know that their government has spent at least $60 billion to
train and equip Afghan security forces, yet these forces are still not
capable of fighting on their own against the Taliban? We recently learned
that an unknown but not insignificant number of those troops brought to the
US for training have deserted and are living illegally somewhere in the US.
In the recent Taliban attack on Kunduz, it was reported that thousands of
Afghan security personnel fled without firing a shot.
According to a recent study by Brown University, the direct costs of the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars thus far are nearly five trillion dollars. The
indirect costs are virtually incalculable.
Perhaps Afghanistan is the "forgotten war" because to mention it
would reveal how schizophrenic is US foreign policy. After all, we have been
fighting for 15 years in Afghanistan in the name of defeating al-Qaeda, while
we are directly and indirectly assisting a franchise of al-Qaeda to overthrow
the Syrian government. How many Americans would applaud such a foreign
policy? If they only knew, but thanks to a media only interested in promoting
Washington's propaganda, far too many Americans don't know.
I have written several of these columns on the various anniversaries of
the Afghan (and Iraq) wars, pointing out that the wars are ongoing and that
the result of the wars has been less stable countries, a less stable region,
a devastated local population, and an increasing probability of more
blowback. I would be very happy to never have to write one of these again. We
should just march home.
