The Afghanistan War was the longest war in American history. It’s over I hope. And thank God. I first fully understood that the Afghan war was a farce in 2007. I tried to distance myself from the whole thing. I knew exactly how it would end. It has ended exactly the way I foresaw, although I must admit even I didn’t think the American made Afghan forces would collapse so quickly. I didn’t think it would bother me, but it does. This is my rant mostly to purge my thoughts of this horror, but maybe you’ll suffer through it with me too?
I Went There, I Did That
I first enlisted in the Army almost exactly one year before 9/11. I never did Iraq. Afghanistan was my mission. I deployed there in a combat role in 2007. I was in Special Forces so I had more interaction with Afghan natives than the average US government employee. Like I said, that one little combat tour showed me that we were losing in Afghanistan, and losing bad. The worst part was that I KNEW our strategic level leadership had no darn intention of winning. At that time I was still a statist and I thought we could win if we would just take the gloves off and really FIGHT the Taliban. Over the years, I realized that nothing short of genocide would defeat the Taliban and we had no right, and no political will to commit genocide in Afghanistan so what was the point of keeping the war going? I learned later what the point was.
I was so disgusted by that one little combat tour in Afghanistan that I left active duty military service. I kept going in the National Guard, but I went back to Afghanistan as a military contractor. I had a REMF job. I repaired and installed sensors while teaching soldiers how to use them. I never left the FOB in that job. I did get to travel to almost every FOB in the country though and I talked to a lot of Soldiers and Marines in the process. I saw the war from the private contractors’ side of things. This is where I learned what the point of it all was.
The Whole Point Of The War
The point of the Afghan War WAS NOT to keep America safe. The point of the Afghan War WAS NOT to get revenge for 9/11. The point of the Afghan War WAS NOT to build a democracy in Central Asia. The entire point of the Afghan War WAS to launder as much money as possible away from the American taxpayer and into the pockets of politically connected DC swamp monsters such as the Pelosi’s and the Cheney’s as possible. Too bad a few thousand Americans and several thousand Afghanis had to die to facilitate that wealth transfer.
The Costs Of The War
Let’s look at the costs of the Afghan War.
20 years
2,455 US Service Members KIA
20,722 US Service Members WIA
46,000 Afghanis KIA
2.2 Million Afghanis Displaced
$2.3 Trillion charged to the US Taxpayer’s credit cards
*Data Taken From “Calculating the Costs of the Afghanistan War In Lives, Dollars and Years” Needless to say, these are conservative numbers.
It Was All For Naught
And for all that loss, what has been achieved? Not a thing. Not a darn thing. Afghanistan wasn’t doing very well before the 2001 invasion so it’s hard to say US involvement made Afghanistan worse, but it certainly didn’t make it any better. You’d think for $2.3 Trillion something might get better.
Raytheon Did Well
I know what got better, Raytheon’s stock price!
The Taliban Never Did Anything To Us
Probably the thing that most rubs my butt with a wire brush is the people who think the Taliban attacked us. I kid you not, I saw a lady on Facebook say exactly that when other people were telling her we had no business in Afghanistan. “But the Taliban attacked us on 9/11.”
Ahkchually, Saudi Arabia attacked us on 9/11, but that’s a whole separate can of worms. Let’s look at the Taliban.
A Quick History Lesson
US involvement in Afghanistan didn’t just start from scratch in October 2001. The US had been deeply involved in Afghanistan for decades. Here’s an extremely brief 10,000 foot overview.
In the 1960’s and 70’s the US had some aid projects in Afghanistan. USAID built the Kajaki Dam in 1975 for example. In those same decades, communist infiltrators were working on getting a communist government going in Afghanistan. They managed to get a revolution going, but it soon needed help, and the Commies’ co-religionists in the Soviet Union came to help. The Soviet Union actually sent troops to help out their fellow Afghan Commies in 1979. The US and Pakistan already had intelligence assets in the area fighting the Commies. It didn’t take long for the US to try to get revenge on the Soviet Union for the US humiliation in Vietnam. The US sent money and material to aid both the Afghani anti-communists and the Pakistani military.
Soon, the Soviet Union was bogged down in a quagmire fighting the Afghani Mujahideen. This is where Osama bin Laden made his name as an Islamic freedom fighter. Most of the people who would later form the Taliban and Al Qaeda were at this time getting weapons and training from the US, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others. Funny that they were fighting Soviet approved Afghans such as General Rashid Dostum, who would later become American favorites. In 1989 after wasting much blood and treasure with no noticeable gain, the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. Two years later, the Soviet Union collapsed. We can only hope that the American Empire collapses in two years!
Osama bin Laden had a front row seat for all of this. After he saw his former allies, the US bomb Iraqis for no good reason throughout the 1990’s, he decided he could draw the US into an Afghanistan quagmire that would break the American Empire just like Afghanistan broke the Soviet Union. He sat back, and waited for the time to be right to spring his trap.
Here Comes The Taliban!
Meanwhile, with the defeat of the Commies, Afghanistan descended into civil war. There were many factions, but the faction that began to get a lead was the faction that had Pakistan AND US support, you know them as The Taliban!
The Taliban was a native Pashtun movement. By 1996 they had control of all the Pashtun dominated areas of Afghanistan. By 2001, they were mopping up the last remnants of the Northern Alliance, a collection of non-Pashtun Afghans who didn’t want to live under Pashtun domination. Not all, but certainly some of the Northern Alliance fighters were former Soviet allies, while most of the Taliban were former US allies.
The Taliban And Al Qaeda Never Really Got Along
Then when Septermber 11th went down, the US flipped sides. The Taliban was no friend of Al Qaeda. In fact they were looking for a way to kick them out of Afghanistan. The Arabs had been good allies to fight off the Russkies, but now the Arabs were just hanging out, causing problems, and putting on airs. The Arabs always thought they were better than the Afghans you see. So when 9/11 happened, the Taliban actually tried to turn them over to Bush and the US. They of course couldn’t do that openly, and when Bush publicly demanded the Taliban hand over Bin Laden, they couldn’t look like they were just caving to US demands, but they did offer to turn Bin Laden over to any Muslim country the US named. So the US could have demanded that Bin Laden be handed over to UAE, then immediately picked him up at the airport in Dubai for forwarding to Guantanamo. But no, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld wanted war.
Even after the US invaded, it wasn’t too late. The Taliban were quickly sent running for the hills, and Bin Laden was soon surrounded near the border with Pakistan. Someone very high up ordered US forces to stand by and wait, giving Bin Laden enough time to get smuggled into Pakistan because Rumsfeld couldn’t stand to have the war end so quickly.
It Never Had To Be Like This
It didn’t have to be this way. Even if you believe all the Neocon BS and think that we HAD to invade Afghanistan because of 9/11, by 2002 it was all wrapped up. They had killed or captured almost all of Al Qaeda’s crew in Afghanistan. If the US had wrapped it up and gone home in 2003, it might have been a nice little war. But they couldn’t do that. No way! They had to embark on a fool’s errand to turn Afghanistan into a Sweden of Central Asia. The Afghanis had other ideas.
So we got the horrific timeline we got. With thousands of American Soldiers lives wasted for no damn reason in a war that only served to make the board of Fluor Corp. insanely wealthy. That is a horrible thing to type. Be assured that I do not type this paragraph lightly. This is a conclusion I came to after years of internal struggle. After seeing things up close and personal. After seeing the disgusting back room dealing of government contractors and colonels looking for war just for war’s sake. The colonels get promoted. The contractor gets another contract. Some people die. America goes broke. Whatever.
Think about that $2.3 Trillion dollars. We keep hearing that America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Whether it is or isn’t, $2.3 Trillion could certainly help fix a few bridges in Indiana. We’ve got an entire generation of young Americans that can’t afford a home because of market distortions caused in part because of the massive war debt. We’ve got older Americans who can’t afford to die because of the massive tax burden they face to pay that war debt. The whole thing is insane. The whole thing was easily avoidable.
America’s Generals Are Self Serving Losers
Then we’ve got the generals. Useless board room managers who don’t know how to do anything except bloviate and kiss higher’s butt for that next promotion. They all knew it was un-winnable from the start. They said so in the Afghanistan Papers. But that didn’t stop them from sending the soldiers in their care to die for no reason other than their next cushy job with Northrop Grumman. There is not a single American general alive that has ever won a war. Why do we respect these people?
Never Let The Lizard People Do That Again
So to conclude, the Afghanistan War was unnecessary from the start. It was badly handled the whole way along. It is nothing but a good thing that US Troops are out of that mess. Biden is already a better president than Trump just for ending the Afghan war. It’s hard for me to say that because I kinda like Trump and I absolutely despise Biden. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever let the ruling class talk you into supporting another war. I guarantee you that whenever the next war comes along, average Americans will be the losers, and DC freaks will be the big winners.
To get a much more detailed picture of the War, read Scott Horton’s “Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan.”
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