The US Lost, But Who Won?
From a military and political aspect, the US and its taxpayers lost the war in Afghanistan.
New York Times writer Jane Perlez discusses the setup in The Real Winner of the Afghan War? It’s Not Who You Think.
Pakistan, nominally a U.S. partner in the war, was the Afghan Taliban’s main patron, and sees the Taliban’s victory as its own. But now what does it do with its prize?
Just days after the Taliban took Kabul, their flag was flying high above a central mosque in Pakistan’s capital. It was an in-your-face gesture intended to spite the defeated Americans. But it was also a sign of the real victors in the 20-year Afghan war.
Pakistan was ostensibly America’s partner in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Its military won tens of billions of dollars in American aid over the last two decades, even as Washington acknowledged that much of the money disappeared into unaccounted sinkholes.
But it was a relationship riven by duplicity and divided interests from its very start after 9/11. Not least, the Afghan Taliban the Americans were fighting are, in large part, a creation of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the I.S.I., which through the course of the war nurtured and protected Taliban assets inside Pakistan.
The Obama administration never said publicly what it suspected: that the Pakistani military knew all along that bin Laden was living with his extended family in Abbottabad, one of Pakistan’s best-known garrison towns.
Taliban Supporters in Pakistan
I am not used to seeing hard-hitting, accurate, and exceptionally written assessments in the New York Times.
A further check shows the writer, Jane Perlez, is not from the main office.
Perlez is the Beijing bureau chief. She has served as bureau chief in Kenya, Poland, Austria, Indonesia and Pakistan, and was a member of the team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for reporting in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
This was the subject of a Tweet chain.
View Outside the US
I found the piece, not “pretty good”, but rather excellent.
Cutting Deals With the Taliban
Taliban Cheer Trump’s Agreement
Q: Trump made an agreement with the Taliban and who cheered the most?
A: The Taliban
Check out the lead image to this article one more time.
The Taliban knew that shortly after a US withdrawal, they would soon take over Afghanistan.
Reality Check
Please watch the above Reality Check.
It ties the preceding Tweets together in one nice package.
Yet, note the underlying theme. CNN portrays the view we should have left residual forces in Afghanistan.
As Long as It Takes
Yesterday, I was listening to talk radio and one of the guests opined that we should have stayed in Afghanistan as long as it take.
Citing South Korea, he even admitted that might take decades. What he did not see is that it would also mean the US would have to win Pakistan as well.
Pakistan Played US for Patsies
Pakistan played the US for patsies. We funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to this alleged “ally” only to have them openly shelter Osama Bin Laden.
While we pounded the hell out of Afghanistan, Pakistan sheltered Bin Laden.
US special forces finally killed located and killed him not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan.
Biden Made Huge Mistakes
That does not excuse Biden’s poor execution. Yet, the assessment of Perlez rings 100% true.
Trump’s 2012 Prophecy
Please consider Trump’s accurate assessment of the situation in 2012.
https://twitter.com/BMeiselas/status/1427742480632406017
Prophecy Statements
- I am thinking the same thing as I have for the last number of years.
- What are we doing there? These people hate us.
- As soon as we leave it’s all going to blow up anyway.
Yes, Biden made huge mistakes. Trump is crowing. But …
If Trump could have gotten us out of Afghanistan without creating a mess, then why did he purposely leave it up to Biden to execute his plan instead of withdrawing by the end of 2020 as he originally promised?
Two Final Questions
- What does the US do with our alleged ally Pakistan?
- What does a nuclear armed Pakistan do when the Taliban attempt to take it over too?
Pakistan may have won, but Perlez hits the key question. What does it do with its victory?
With that question, let’s return to staying in as long as it takes.
As Long as It Takes ALAIT Definition
ALAIT = Forever
No outside force has ever taken Afghanistan and ever will (short of exterminating the Afghan population).
Q: Then what?
A: Eventually the US would be dragged into an affair with Pakistan.
Q: At what cost?
A: The answer to that questions discloses the other winner in this mess: Defense contractors and warmongers seeking perpetual war.
Perpetual wars by definition are never meant to be won. They are meant to last forever.
The bottom line is Biden will get us out of Afghanistan and we should all be grateful.
There never was and never will be a military solution imposed by outsiders in Afghanistan.
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One of the talking points on conservative outlets is the sudden concern for “American civilians” in Afghanistan. As usual, few ask the question beyond this talking point. Who are these American civilians?They are what Eisenhower called the “military industrial complex,” one of the largest arms of the swamp. They are war profiteers there to prolong the war and bring in billions to the corporations they work for as we send our children off to die in pointless and endless wars. The dangers they face were enabled by their own precense and need to take these billions from taxpayers. Now we are supposed to pay for their safe exit?Tell me why everytime our troops begin leaving these places, there is suddenly a “terrorist attack?”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2017/09/07/conservatives-furious-after-trump-cuts-debt-ceiling-deal-with-nancy-pelosi-chuck-schumer/
Tell us what we won, Johnny Donavan! Generations of tax enslavement for future Americans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-poppy-a-success-us-aides-say.html
One of the top profiteers from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War was oil field services corporation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton. Halliburton gained $39.5 billion in “federal contracts related to the Iraq war”.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering#cite_note-43 Many individuals have asserted that there were profit motives for the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush-Cheney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_Administration to invade Iraq in 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney served as Halliburton’s CEO from 1995 until 2000. Cheney claimed he had cut ties with the corporation although, according to a CNN report, “Cheney was still receiving about $150,000 a year in deferred payments.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering#cite_note-44 Cheney vowed to not engage in a conflict of interest. However, the Congressional Research Office discovered Cheney held 433,000 Halliburton stock options while serving as Vice President of the United States.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering#cite_note-45 2016 Presidential Candidate, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rand_Paul referenced Cheney’s interview with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute in which Cheney said invading Iraq “would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it would be civil war, we’d have no exit strategy…it would be a bad idea”. Rand continues by concluding “that’s why the first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush didn’t go into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars- their CEO. Next thing you know, he’s back in government, it’s a good idea to go into Iraq.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering#cite_note-46https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering#cite_note-47 Another prominent critic is Huffington Post co-founder, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianna_Huffington. Huffington said, “We have the poster child of Bush-Cheney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism, Halliburton, involved in this. They, after all, were responsible for cementing the well.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering#cite_note-48
During the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001-2021), defense sector stocks outperformed the average of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market by 58%. Commentators put into question whether the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Taliban_takeover_of_Afghanistan could be consired a failure for the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States. Jon Schwarz of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept argued that “These numbers suggest that it is incorrect to conclude [that the] Afghanistan War was a failure. On the contrary, from the perspective of some of the most powerful people in the U.S., it may have been an extraordinary success. Notably, the boards of directors of all [top] five defense contractors include retired top-level military officers.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering#cite_note-49
From 2007, there were regularly more contractors than U.S. forces in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan. By 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_contractoroutnumbered US state personnel three to one.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering#cite_note-50 In 2016, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris_Corporation was awarded a $1.7 billion contract to supply communications equipment to Afghan security forces.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering#cite_note-51
Citing South Korea, he even admitted that might take decades. What he did not see is that it would also mean the US would have to win Pakistan as well.”
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
—James Madison, Political Observations, Apr. 20, 1795 in: Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. 4, p. 491 (1865)
Trump is the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” president. He didn’t act, but he is always telling us how he could have done it better.