Brosa Luxemburg
3rd May 2012, 20:34
The Problem With The War In Afghanistan
The war in Afghanistan is now considered to be America’s longest war (Hampson). For putting so much money, men, and supplies into the war, the war has had terrible results. There are many questions that arise when viewing the war. Was the war worth the young men and women sacrificed and maimed? Was the war worth the dead civilians and orphans from both sides of the fighting? It seems that the answer to these questions is a sure and resounding “no.” The United States needs to pull out of Afghanistan and end the war.
The United States intervention into Afghanistan started earlier than after the 9/11 terrorist attacks; beginning in the late 1970’s. In 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to prop up a communist government there (Holan). The war would go on for ten years with the U.S. backing the forces fighting against the Soviet Union (Holan). This ordeal would begin on April 27, 1978 after the left-wing People’s Democratic Party (PDP) overthrew the authoritarian leader Mohammed Daoud (Blum 339). This would concern the United States in 1979 when the U.S. ally in Iran is overthrown by those hostile to the United States because Daoud had been moving Afghanistan closer to the United States (340). The United States didn’t want to lose another ally in the region. The PDP government would announce a program of land reform, controls on prices and profits, increased power to the public sector economy, separation of church and state, eradication of illiteracy, legalization of trade unions, and extending rights to women (339). By May 1979 the PDP cancelled peasant debts to landlords, hundreds of schools and medical clinics were made, and land distribution was underway (340). Some reforms, such as teaching women how to read, offended fundamentalist muslims (341) and two months after Daoud’s overthrow, radical Islamists waged war on the PDP government (342). This group would be called the “Moujahedeen” (345).
Taraki, the leader of the PDP government, was overthrown in an intra-party struggle and replaced by Amin. Taraki was the Soviet Union’s favorite leader and on December 8th the Soviets went into Afghanistan. Amin was killed and replaced by Babrack Karmal (342). During February 1988 all Soviet troops would leave Afghanistan (348). With the absence of Soviet troops, Islamic guerrillas would overthrow the government and storm Kabul in 1992, setting up an Islamist government (351). After victory, the Moujahedeen would turn on each other and split off into different groups (351). The U.S. supported the Moujahedeen and Islamic fundamentalists to fight the Soviet Union (338-339). Basically, the United States helped destroy one of the main forces in the country that could have industrialized and modernized Afghanistan.
In February of 1993 radicals bombed the World Trade Center and most were members of the
old Moujahedeen (352). The Taliban would come to power in Afghanistan and counter Afghanistan warlords, ban music, and oppress women (Holan). The United States would originally support the Taliban, but would become wary after hearing of different policy decisions by the Taliban (Holan).
It wasn’t that the United States was against the repressive government-the United States has had a history of supporting repressive governments-it was against the destabilizing policies of the Taliban. These policies that were causing Afghan society to become worse had the potential to create a space for a movement that would topple the government and institute more revolutionary and populist policies that might go against Washington’s free-market plans. The United States has done this before. After a CIA supported military coup against popularly elected leader Jean-Betrand Aristride in Haiti, the United States pulled support for the new government after a refugee crisis made U.S. leaders believe that the new government was creating a destabilizing situation that might allow an even more revolutionary or leftist group to take power (Blum 370-382).
After the 9/11 attacks, the United States government would respond to such violence in a violent and militaristic way. The United States government’s response was to bomb Afghanistan into oblivion and remove the Taliban, a government that the United States had originally backed, from power (Holan). Before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, millions of Afghans were barely living off international food aid (Chomsky). On September 16th, the press reported that the U.S. government “...demanded [from Pakistan] the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan’s civilian population” (qtd. in Chomsky). The threat of bombings also forced other aid workers to leave and caused millions of civilian deaths (Chomsky).
The approach taken by the United States government could have been much different and spared the lives of many civilians. “The US was not the first country whose people were victims of a cruel terror attack...only in the US was a terror attack answered not by a call for justice but by a declaration of war” (Bennis 14). Scholars, organizations, and others involved in these events offered different approaches to the 9/11 terrorist attacks other than military intervention. According to the UN representative of the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association these included “...providing the Taliban with evidence...that links bin Laden to the September 11 attacks, employing diplomatic pressures to extradite him, and prosecuting terrorists through international tribunals...” (qtd. in Chomsky). The United States had the instruments already in place to charge and prosecute the 9/11 perpetrators, such as the Rewards and Justice Program which had been successful in bringing the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist Ramzi Yousef to justice (Ruwart). Anglo-American military historian Michael Howard supports the use of an international police operation to capture the men responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and trying them in international court (qtd. in Chomsky).
It seems that all of these suggestions had their place. The use of diplomatic pressures and prosecuting terrorists through international tribunals seems like steps that should have been first used. If these tactics did not work, or if the Taliban and others did not turn over bin Laden and other terrorists, then the use of U.S. special forces or other special operations groups to capture or kill those responsible would be effective and result in little to no civilian casualties. These types of operations and tactics would have avoided the civilian casualties, economic, and infrastructural destruction caused by the bombing campaign.
The fact that these suggestions were ignored shows an interesting fact about the military response by the United States. Instead of taking the more humanitarian and logical suggestions of many experts that the government should arrest, prosecute, or kill if necessary those responsible for the attacks, the United States government instituted a very expansionist policy. After the attacks, declaring war and instituting a “Global War on Terrorism” legitimized U.S. “military, economic, political and cultural domination” around the world (Bennis). The United States could now justify all military responses against other nations as fighting the “Global War on Terrorism”, whether or not if it was truly for this reason. The military action taken by the United States was highly imperialist, extremely intolerant, and morally wrong.
After the 9/11 attacks many American citizens pondered on one specific question: “Why do they hate us?” Many argued that the terrorists and terrorist groups hated the United States because the United States is a beacon of hope to the world and values freedom and democracy. This narrative is extremely false and far-fetched. Islamic terrorist movements have historically been “created or expanded under conditions of military occupation” (Bennis 12). For example, Hezbollah was born in South Lebanon during the 1982 Israeli occupation (12). Islamic parties won major support from the Iraqi people after the U.S. troops occupied the country (13). Between 1980 and 2004 all suicide bombers have committed their acts because of the presence of an occupying power (Horton). In fact, the only reason anyone listened to bin Laden is because he pointed out the legitimate concerns of the people living in the region, which have included six main points: United States military bases in Saudi Arabia, unconditional and unwavering support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the no-fly zone bombings and blockade of Iraq, western support for Middle Eastern dictators, United States pressure on oil producing countries, and United States support for Russia, China, and India and their wars on muslims (Horton). To put it simply, “Is America responsible for the 9/11 attacks? No. Terrorists are responsible for their attacks-and we are responsible for ours” (Ruwart). Scholar Michael Parenti provides a good analysis.
"the target was not US freedom and democracy but Washington’s record
of support for exactly the opposite things: military and economic terrorism,
autocracy, and mass destruction of civilian populations (39)...Osama bin
Laden repeatedly designated “America, Americans, and Jews” as the
enemies to be eradicated. As a rich reactionary religious fanatic, bin Laden
was doing what other reactionaries around the world have often done. He
harnessed the legitimate grievances that people have felt regarding the
conditions of their lives and directed them toward irrelevant foes" (46).
Parenti’s views on this subject seem to be essentially correct on this matter. Osama bin Laden
and other modern terrorists have taken the legitimate grievances of the people in the region about American foreign policy objectives, corporate economic interests that increase poverty and inequality, and other legitimate concerns and directed them against people who have close to no control over these matters; the citizens of the corporate-dominated governments committing these acts.
American imperialist objectives in the greater Gulf area started after World War II when FDR
made a deal with the founder of the modern Saudi Arabia that would become a long-lasting relationship between the two nations (Klare 101). The deal said that the Saudi government would give the United States “privileged” access to Saudi oil in return for U.S. protection of the royal family (102). Since 1990, the U.S. has deployed many troops into Saudi Arabia (102). Fifteen out of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia (102). This fact shows that the government’s imperialist objectives have helped create and fuel Islamic terrorism. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda in all likelihood probably enjoy the United States presence in Afghanistan and the Middle East because the more abuses the people suffer at the hands of the occupying power, the more they turn to the Taliban for support. As Scott Horton put it, “They want to suck us in so they can bleed us dry and then push us out for good-while empowering themselves in the process.” If U.S. troops are pulled out of Afghanistan and if imperialist and economic objectives are abandoned in Afghanistan then these consequences created from the occupation and intervention can be avoided.
Supporters of the continued presence in Afghanistan claim that, while the Afghan people have a history of fighting against occupying powers, the American presence is different because the United States is occupying to help the people of Afghanistan and not for the imperialist goals of former occupiers (O’Hanlon and Riedal). The problem with this argument is that the United States has occupied Afghanistan for America’s own imperialist purposes. The U.S. had hoped to use Afghanistan as a site for an oil pipeline since the 1980’s (Bennis 15). During the United States’ initial intervention into Afghanistan in the 1980’s, “Zalmay Khalizad was a UNOCAL consultant who brought the Taliban’s oil chiefs to Texas to negotiate a deal...and of course it never came up in Khalizad’s confirmation hearings as ambassador to Iraq and the UN” (16). The United States has recently begun to train Afghan geoscientists to “collect, process, and exploit valuable ‘mineral resources’ and ‘rare earth elements’ in Afghanistan” and the U.S. has also found “at least $1 trillion in mineral resources, fossil fuels, and rare earth elements within Afghanistan” (Glaser “Next Step”). For a nation dependent of mineral resources, fossil fuels, and rare earth elements it would make sense that the U.S. occupation would try to exploit those that existed in Afghanistan. Noam Chomsky highlights another objective of the United States in the region.
"a World Bank study...concluded that Afghanistan has a positive pre-war
history of cost recovery for key infrastructure services like electric power
and “green field” investment opportunities in sectors like telecommunications,
energy, and oil/gas pipelines...One may reasonably ask just whose needs are
served by these priorities, and what status they should have in reconstruction
from the horrors of the past two decades."
Afghanistan also sits close to Pakistan and India, who are rivals and nuclear powers (Holan). It
would therefore be in the United States’s best interests to control an area so close to the conflict. The U.S. is also claimed to want to establish a reliable client state, where Afghanistan will be economic, political, and militarily subordinate to U.S. interests, in Afghanistan to carry out other interventionist policies in the region (Glaser “Child Hunger”). What started as a overreaction, emotional, and illogical response to the 9/11 attacks has been manipulated into a war for natural resources, imperialist, and geopolitical objectives. If the United States left the region, it would give Afghanistan a chance to develop without the domination of a foreign power that helped wipe out a force in the late 1970’s and 1980’s that had the best chance of modernizing and industrializing the country.
Supporters also claim that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has improved the lives of Afghans because GDP has been growing by ten percent a year (O’Hanlon and Riedal). This does not prove that the lives of Afghans has improved since the United States presence because most of these gains have gone to the autocratic, authoritarian, and corrupt Afghan political and economic elite. Even with the economic gains, half of the children under five in Afghanistan go hungry and Afghanistan has one of the worst levels of child hunger in the world (Glaser “Child Hunger”). Forty-five percent of the population cannot buy enough food to “guarantee bare minimum health levels” and the unemployment rate is as high as eighty percent in some parts of the country (Gopal). This argument by defenders of the United States presence in Afghanistan does not justify the continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
The corrupt elites did not just spring up out of nowhere. The U.S. returned almost all the same warlords to power who had ruled before the Taliban (Chomsky). Some Afghans during this time period said that things were “worse than it was before the Taliban came to power” (qtd. in Chomsky). As harsh and oppressive as the Taliban were, their rule marked the end to the worst record of human rights abuses in Afghanistan according to international human rights activists (Chomsky). “These were the years of rule by warlords of the Northern Alliance and other western favorites” (Chomsky). The U.S. doesn’t care about democracy, freedom, and human rights in Afghanistan, it cares about creating a reliable and compliant ruling class that will carry out the United States government's interests.
The best argument for the continued presence of occupying troops has been that the United States now has an obligation to protect secular and democratic leaders who they encouraged to create “real alternatives to religious fundamentalism” (Wiener). The problem with this argument is that if we owe it to those people for the reasons mentioned, then following that line of logic we also owe it to them to stop supporting the corrupt and undemocratic government in Afghanistan. “The Karzai government exists only because the US created and sustained it, despite massive election fraud, monumental corruption, and myriad failures to win popular support” (Wiener). We would also owe it to them to stop killing so many civilians in Afghanistan. To do so, it would require occupying troops to fight in a much more dangerous way (Wiener). Troops won’t be able to just fire off drone strike miles away from the impact site, they will have to be at the conflict zone more often. Jon Wiener sums up what is wrong with this argument.
“One of the key criteria of a just war...is that there be a realistic possibility
of achieving a just peace.” [sic]...we need to ask: Is there a realistic possibility
the US will abandon Karzai in favor of a democratic government? [T]hat
the US military will fight the right kind of war? That the American people
will be willing to keep paying for this war for many more years? What’s
wrong with the obligations argument is that the answer to each of these
questions is “no.”
Some may wonder why the United States supports undemocratic and often harsh and
repressive governments all over the world and in Afghanistan. The main reason is because these dictatorships are loyal to the foreign policy decisions of the United States. It doesn't matter how bad these dictators “oppress, torture, rape, and brutalize their own people. All that matters is that they are loyal members of the Empire, especially when it comes to the war on terrorism” (Hornberger). These dictatorships have also supported corporate-friendly economic systems that are open to U.S. corporate penetration and continually suppress internal movements that might end this economic situation (Parenti 74). Both of these requirements have been met by Karzai and the current Afghan elite. With the example of Uzbekistan, Phyllis Bennis makes the following point.
"Uzbekistan isn’t known for its oil riches-but the establishment of US
military bases on its territory conveniently close not only to Afghanistan
but to several transnational oil and gas pipelines in the region certainly
made it worth Washington’s while to abandon even the pretext of
concern about Uzbekistan’s dictatorship" (Bennis 16).
Pulling the troops out of Afghanistan seems like the most sound and logical step to take when
examining all the facts and evidence. The history of America’s involvement in Afghanistan is not a particularly positive one, and begs the question of what America’s responsibility and objectives are in the region. The decision to invade Afghanistan was an irrational, illogical, and unjustified action when looked at in comparison to other solutions to the 9/11 attacks. Islamic and individual terrorism has been created in situations of occupation and intervention throughout the middle east and only increases in Afghanistan with the continued presence of American troops. The United States government’s objectives in Afghanistan are not noble and if the leaders are truly concerned about Afghanistan’s self-development they will stop pushing economic policies that benefit a small ruling class at the expense of the majority of people. Pulling the troops out of Afghanistan and ending United States domination over Afghanistan may not solve the problems of poverty, terrorism, human rights, and industrialization but it certainly won’t hurt the efforts to end these problems. In fact, staying in Afghanistan will in all likelihood increase such problems.
Other solutions to the Afghanistan war exist, but when considering all the facts it seems that immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan is the most sound, logical, and morally correct decision. It wasn’t right for the United States to invade Afghanistan in the first place and the longer the imperialist power stays the worse Afghanistan becomes. If the United States government and the civilians of the country truly want to put an end to suicide terrorist threats then the United States needs to stop participating in a foreign policy that breeds such actions. This seems to be a legitimate demand from the citizenry to the leaders of the United States. The first step we can take is to pull out of Afghanistan and end the terrible and failed war in the region.
Works Cited
Bennis, Phyllis. “The Global War On Terror: What It Is, What It’s Done To The World.” War With No
End. New York: Verso, 2007. 11-32. Print.
Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II. Updated
ed. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004. Print.
Chomsky, Noam. "The War In Afghanistan." Z Magazine Feb. 2002. Print.
Glasser, John. "Child Hunger in Afghanistan Among Worst in the World ." Antiwar.com.
Randolph Bourne Institute, 5 Mar. 2012. Web. 2 Apr. 2012.
---. “Next Step: Exploit Afghanistan’s Natural Resources.” Antiwar.com. Randolph Bourne Institute,
30 Nov. 2011. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
Gopal, Anand. “The Surge That Failed: Afghanistan Under The Bombs.” TomDispatch.com. The
Nation Institute, 9 Oct. 2008. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
Hampson, Rick. “Afghanistan: America’s Longest War.” USA Today. USA Today, 27 May 2010.
Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
Holan, Angie D. "The Afghanistan War: A Simple Explanation ." PolitiFact. Tampa Bay Times, 12
Oct. 2009. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.
Hornberger, Jacob G. “Where’s The American Outrage Against U.S. Support of Dictatorships?” The
Future of Freedom Foundation. The Future of Freedom Foundation, 16 Feb. 2011. Web.
16 Apr. 2012.
Horton, Scott. “For Those Interested in Facts: They Hate Our Foreign Policy.” Antiwar.com.
Randolph Bourne Institute, 19 May 2007. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
Klare, Michael T. “What bin Laden and Bush Don’t Talk About: The Politics of Oil.” After 9/11:
Solutions for a Saner World. Ed. Don Hazen, Tate Hausman, Tamara Straus, and Michelle
Chihara. San Francisco: Independent Media Institute, 2001. 101-103. Print.
O'Hanlon, Michael E., and Bruce Riedal. "What's Right With Afghanistan." Brookings. The
Brookings Institution , 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.
Parenti, Michael. The Terrorism Trap: September 11 And Beyond. San Francisco: City Lights
Books, 2002. Print.
Ruwart, Mary. “When Will We Ever Learn?” Antiwar.com. Randolph Bourne Institute, 5 May 2008.
Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
Wiener, Jon. "The Best Argument For The Afghan War--and What's Wrong With It." Dissent.
Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas , 7 June 2010. Web. 1
Apr. 2012.
The war in Afghanistan is now considered to be America’s longest war (Hampson). For putting so much money, men, and supplies into the war, the war has had terrible results. There are many questions that arise when viewing the war. Was the war worth the young men and women sacrificed and maimed? Was the war worth the dead civilians and orphans from both sides of the fighting? It seems that the answer to these questions is a sure and resounding “no.” The United States needs to pull out of Afghanistan and end the war.
The United States intervention into Afghanistan started earlier than after the 9/11 terrorist attacks; beginning in the late 1970’s. In 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to prop up a communist government there (Holan). The war would go on for ten years with the U.S. backing the forces fighting against the Soviet Union (Holan). This ordeal would begin on April 27, 1978 after the left-wing People’s Democratic Party (PDP) overthrew the authoritarian leader Mohammed Daoud (Blum 339). This would concern the United States in 1979 when the U.S. ally in Iran is overthrown by those hostile to the United States because Daoud had been moving Afghanistan closer to the United States (340). The United States didn’t want to lose another ally in the region. The PDP government would announce a program of land reform, controls on prices and profits, increased power to the public sector economy, separation of church and state, eradication of illiteracy, legalization of trade unions, and extending rights to women (339). By May 1979 the PDP cancelled peasant debts to landlords, hundreds of schools and medical clinics were made, and land distribution was underway (340). Some reforms, such as teaching women how to read, offended fundamentalist muslims (341) and two months after Daoud’s overthrow, radical Islamists waged war on the PDP government (342). This group would be called the “Moujahedeen” (345).
Taraki, the leader of the PDP government, was overthrown in an intra-party struggle and replaced by Amin. Taraki was the Soviet Union’s favorite leader and on December 8th the Soviets went into Afghanistan. Amin was killed and replaced by Babrack Karmal (342). During February 1988 all Soviet troops would leave Afghanistan (348). With the absence of Soviet troops, Islamic guerrillas would overthrow the government and storm Kabul in 1992, setting up an Islamist government (351). After victory, the Moujahedeen would turn on each other and split off into different groups (351). The U.S. supported the Moujahedeen and Islamic fundamentalists to fight the Soviet Union (338-339). Basically, the United States helped destroy one of the main forces in the country that could have industrialized and modernized Afghanistan.
In February of 1993 radicals bombed the World Trade Center and most were members of the
old Moujahedeen (352). The Taliban would come to power in Afghanistan and counter Afghanistan warlords, ban music, and oppress women (Holan). The United States would originally support the Taliban, but would become wary after hearing of different policy decisions by the Taliban (Holan).
It wasn’t that the United States was against the repressive government-the United States has had a history of supporting repressive governments-it was against the destabilizing policies of the Taliban. These policies that were causing Afghan society to become worse had the potential to create a space for a movement that would topple the government and institute more revolutionary and populist policies that might go against Washington’s free-market plans. The United States has done this before. After a CIA supported military coup against popularly elected leader Jean-Betrand Aristride in Haiti, the United States pulled support for the new government after a refugee crisis made U.S. leaders believe that the new government was creating a destabilizing situation that might allow an even more revolutionary or leftist group to take power (Blum 370-382).
After the 9/11 attacks, the United States government would respond to such violence in a violent and militaristic way. The United States government’s response was to bomb Afghanistan into oblivion and remove the Taliban, a government that the United States had originally backed, from power (Holan). Before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, millions of Afghans were barely living off international food aid (Chomsky). On September 16th, the press reported that the U.S. government “...demanded [from Pakistan] the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan’s civilian population” (qtd. in Chomsky). The threat of bombings also forced other aid workers to leave and caused millions of civilian deaths (Chomsky).
The approach taken by the United States government could have been much different and spared the lives of many civilians. “The US was not the first country whose people were victims of a cruel terror attack...only in the US was a terror attack answered not by a call for justice but by a declaration of war” (Bennis 14). Scholars, organizations, and others involved in these events offered different approaches to the 9/11 terrorist attacks other than military intervention. According to the UN representative of the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association these included “...providing the Taliban with evidence...that links bin Laden to the September 11 attacks, employing diplomatic pressures to extradite him, and prosecuting terrorists through international tribunals...” (qtd. in Chomsky). The United States had the instruments already in place to charge and prosecute the 9/11 perpetrators, such as the Rewards and Justice Program which had been successful in bringing the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist Ramzi Yousef to justice (Ruwart). Anglo-American military historian Michael Howard supports the use of an international police operation to capture the men responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and trying them in international court (qtd. in Chomsky).
It seems that all of these suggestions had their place. The use of diplomatic pressures and prosecuting terrorists through international tribunals seems like steps that should have been first used. If these tactics did not work, or if the Taliban and others did not turn over bin Laden and other terrorists, then the use of U.S. special forces or other special operations groups to capture or kill those responsible would be effective and result in little to no civilian casualties. These types of operations and tactics would have avoided the civilian casualties, economic, and infrastructural destruction caused by the bombing campaign.
The fact that these suggestions were ignored shows an interesting fact about the military response by the United States. Instead of taking the more humanitarian and logical suggestions of many experts that the government should arrest, prosecute, or kill if necessary those responsible for the attacks, the United States government instituted a very expansionist policy. After the attacks, declaring war and instituting a “Global War on Terrorism” legitimized U.S. “military, economic, political and cultural domination” around the world (Bennis). The United States could now justify all military responses against other nations as fighting the “Global War on Terrorism”, whether or not if it was truly for this reason. The military action taken by the United States was highly imperialist, extremely intolerant, and morally wrong.
After the 9/11 attacks many American citizens pondered on one specific question: “Why do they hate us?” Many argued that the terrorists and terrorist groups hated the United States because the United States is a beacon of hope to the world and values freedom and democracy. This narrative is extremely false and far-fetched. Islamic terrorist movements have historically been “created or expanded under conditions of military occupation” (Bennis 12). For example, Hezbollah was born in South Lebanon during the 1982 Israeli occupation (12). Islamic parties won major support from the Iraqi people after the U.S. troops occupied the country (13). Between 1980 and 2004 all suicide bombers have committed their acts because of the presence of an occupying power (Horton). In fact, the only reason anyone listened to bin Laden is because he pointed out the legitimate concerns of the people living in the region, which have included six main points: United States military bases in Saudi Arabia, unconditional and unwavering support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the no-fly zone bombings and blockade of Iraq, western support for Middle Eastern dictators, United States pressure on oil producing countries, and United States support for Russia, China, and India and their wars on muslims (Horton). To put it simply, “Is America responsible for the 9/11 attacks? No. Terrorists are responsible for their attacks-and we are responsible for ours” (Ruwart). Scholar Michael Parenti provides a good analysis.
"the target was not US freedom and democracy but Washington’s record
of support for exactly the opposite things: military and economic terrorism,
autocracy, and mass destruction of civilian populations (39)...Osama bin
Laden repeatedly designated “America, Americans, and Jews” as the
enemies to be eradicated. As a rich reactionary religious fanatic, bin Laden
was doing what other reactionaries around the world have often done. He
harnessed the legitimate grievances that people have felt regarding the
conditions of their lives and directed them toward irrelevant foes" (46).
Parenti’s views on this subject seem to be essentially correct on this matter. Osama bin Laden
and other modern terrorists have taken the legitimate grievances of the people in the region about American foreign policy objectives, corporate economic interests that increase poverty and inequality, and other legitimate concerns and directed them against people who have close to no control over these matters; the citizens of the corporate-dominated governments committing these acts.
American imperialist objectives in the greater Gulf area started after World War II when FDR
made a deal with the founder of the modern Saudi Arabia that would become a long-lasting relationship between the two nations (Klare 101). The deal said that the Saudi government would give the United States “privileged” access to Saudi oil in return for U.S. protection of the royal family (102). Since 1990, the U.S. has deployed many troops into Saudi Arabia (102). Fifteen out of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia (102). This fact shows that the government’s imperialist objectives have helped create and fuel Islamic terrorism. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda in all likelihood probably enjoy the United States presence in Afghanistan and the Middle East because the more abuses the people suffer at the hands of the occupying power, the more they turn to the Taliban for support. As Scott Horton put it, “They want to suck us in so they can bleed us dry and then push us out for good-while empowering themselves in the process.” If U.S. troops are pulled out of Afghanistan and if imperialist and economic objectives are abandoned in Afghanistan then these consequences created from the occupation and intervention can be avoided.
Supporters of the continued presence in Afghanistan claim that, while the Afghan people have a history of fighting against occupying powers, the American presence is different because the United States is occupying to help the people of Afghanistan and not for the imperialist goals of former occupiers (O’Hanlon and Riedal). The problem with this argument is that the United States has occupied Afghanistan for America’s own imperialist purposes. The U.S. had hoped to use Afghanistan as a site for an oil pipeline since the 1980’s (Bennis 15). During the United States’ initial intervention into Afghanistan in the 1980’s, “Zalmay Khalizad was a UNOCAL consultant who brought the Taliban’s oil chiefs to Texas to negotiate a deal...and of course it never came up in Khalizad’s confirmation hearings as ambassador to Iraq and the UN” (16). The United States has recently begun to train Afghan geoscientists to “collect, process, and exploit valuable ‘mineral resources’ and ‘rare earth elements’ in Afghanistan” and the U.S. has also found “at least $1 trillion in mineral resources, fossil fuels, and rare earth elements within Afghanistan” (Glaser “Next Step”). For a nation dependent of mineral resources, fossil fuels, and rare earth elements it would make sense that the U.S. occupation would try to exploit those that existed in Afghanistan. Noam Chomsky highlights another objective of the United States in the region.
"a World Bank study...concluded that Afghanistan has a positive pre-war
history of cost recovery for key infrastructure services like electric power
and “green field” investment opportunities in sectors like telecommunications,
energy, and oil/gas pipelines...One may reasonably ask just whose needs are
served by these priorities, and what status they should have in reconstruction
from the horrors of the past two decades."
Afghanistan also sits close to Pakistan and India, who are rivals and nuclear powers (Holan). It
would therefore be in the United States’s best interests to control an area so close to the conflict. The U.S. is also claimed to want to establish a reliable client state, where Afghanistan will be economic, political, and militarily subordinate to U.S. interests, in Afghanistan to carry out other interventionist policies in the region (Glaser “Child Hunger”). What started as a overreaction, emotional, and illogical response to the 9/11 attacks has been manipulated into a war for natural resources, imperialist, and geopolitical objectives. If the United States left the region, it would give Afghanistan a chance to develop without the domination of a foreign power that helped wipe out a force in the late 1970’s and 1980’s that had the best chance of modernizing and industrializing the country.
Supporters also claim that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has improved the lives of Afghans because GDP has been growing by ten percent a year (O’Hanlon and Riedal). This does not prove that the lives of Afghans has improved since the United States presence because most of these gains have gone to the autocratic, authoritarian, and corrupt Afghan political and economic elite. Even with the economic gains, half of the children under five in Afghanistan go hungry and Afghanistan has one of the worst levels of child hunger in the world (Glaser “Child Hunger”). Forty-five percent of the population cannot buy enough food to “guarantee bare minimum health levels” and the unemployment rate is as high as eighty percent in some parts of the country (Gopal). This argument by defenders of the United States presence in Afghanistan does not justify the continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
The corrupt elites did not just spring up out of nowhere. The U.S. returned almost all the same warlords to power who had ruled before the Taliban (Chomsky). Some Afghans during this time period said that things were “worse than it was before the Taliban came to power” (qtd. in Chomsky). As harsh and oppressive as the Taliban were, their rule marked the end to the worst record of human rights abuses in Afghanistan according to international human rights activists (Chomsky). “These were the years of rule by warlords of the Northern Alliance and other western favorites” (Chomsky). The U.S. doesn’t care about democracy, freedom, and human rights in Afghanistan, it cares about creating a reliable and compliant ruling class that will carry out the United States government's interests.
The best argument for the continued presence of occupying troops has been that the United States now has an obligation to protect secular and democratic leaders who they encouraged to create “real alternatives to religious fundamentalism” (Wiener). The problem with this argument is that if we owe it to those people for the reasons mentioned, then following that line of logic we also owe it to them to stop supporting the corrupt and undemocratic government in Afghanistan. “The Karzai government exists only because the US created and sustained it, despite massive election fraud, monumental corruption, and myriad failures to win popular support” (Wiener). We would also owe it to them to stop killing so many civilians in Afghanistan. To do so, it would require occupying troops to fight in a much more dangerous way (Wiener). Troops won’t be able to just fire off drone strike miles away from the impact site, they will have to be at the conflict zone more often. Jon Wiener sums up what is wrong with this argument.
“One of the key criteria of a just war...is that there be a realistic possibility
of achieving a just peace.” [sic]...we need to ask: Is there a realistic possibility
the US will abandon Karzai in favor of a democratic government? [T]hat
the US military will fight the right kind of war? That the American people
will be willing to keep paying for this war for many more years? What’s
wrong with the obligations argument is that the answer to each of these
questions is “no.”
Some may wonder why the United States supports undemocratic and often harsh and
repressive governments all over the world and in Afghanistan. The main reason is because these dictatorships are loyal to the foreign policy decisions of the United States. It doesn't matter how bad these dictators “oppress, torture, rape, and brutalize their own people. All that matters is that they are loyal members of the Empire, especially when it comes to the war on terrorism” (Hornberger). These dictatorships have also supported corporate-friendly economic systems that are open to U.S. corporate penetration and continually suppress internal movements that might end this economic situation (Parenti 74). Both of these requirements have been met by Karzai and the current Afghan elite. With the example of Uzbekistan, Phyllis Bennis makes the following point.
"Uzbekistan isn’t known for its oil riches-but the establishment of US
military bases on its territory conveniently close not only to Afghanistan
but to several transnational oil and gas pipelines in the region certainly
made it worth Washington’s while to abandon even the pretext of
concern about Uzbekistan’s dictatorship" (Bennis 16).
Pulling the troops out of Afghanistan seems like the most sound and logical step to take when
examining all the facts and evidence. The history of America’s involvement in Afghanistan is not a particularly positive one, and begs the question of what America’s responsibility and objectives are in the region. The decision to invade Afghanistan was an irrational, illogical, and unjustified action when looked at in comparison to other solutions to the 9/11 attacks. Islamic and individual terrorism has been created in situations of occupation and intervention throughout the middle east and only increases in Afghanistan with the continued presence of American troops. The United States government’s objectives in Afghanistan are not noble and if the leaders are truly concerned about Afghanistan’s self-development they will stop pushing economic policies that benefit a small ruling class at the expense of the majority of people. Pulling the troops out of Afghanistan and ending United States domination over Afghanistan may not solve the problems of poverty, terrorism, human rights, and industrialization but it certainly won’t hurt the efforts to end these problems. In fact, staying in Afghanistan will in all likelihood increase such problems.
Other solutions to the Afghanistan war exist, but when considering all the facts it seems that immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan is the most sound, logical, and morally correct decision. It wasn’t right for the United States to invade Afghanistan in the first place and the longer the imperialist power stays the worse Afghanistan becomes. If the United States government and the civilians of the country truly want to put an end to suicide terrorist threats then the United States needs to stop participating in a foreign policy that breeds such actions. This seems to be a legitimate demand from the citizenry to the leaders of the United States. The first step we can take is to pull out of Afghanistan and end the terrible and failed war in the region.
Works Cited
Bennis, Phyllis. “The Global War On Terror: What It Is, What It’s Done To The World.” War With No
End. New York: Verso, 2007. 11-32. Print.
Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II. Updated
ed. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004. Print.
Chomsky, Noam. "The War In Afghanistan." Z Magazine Feb. 2002. Print.
Glasser, John. "Child Hunger in Afghanistan Among Worst in the World ." Antiwar.com.
Randolph Bourne Institute, 5 Mar. 2012. Web. 2 Apr. 2012.
---. “Next Step: Exploit Afghanistan’s Natural Resources.” Antiwar.com. Randolph Bourne Institute,
30 Nov. 2011. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
Gopal, Anand. “The Surge That Failed: Afghanistan Under The Bombs.” TomDispatch.com. The
Nation Institute, 9 Oct. 2008. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
Hampson, Rick. “Afghanistan: America’s Longest War.” USA Today. USA Today, 27 May 2010.
Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
Holan, Angie D. "The Afghanistan War: A Simple Explanation ." PolitiFact. Tampa Bay Times, 12
Oct. 2009. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.
Hornberger, Jacob G. “Where’s The American Outrage Against U.S. Support of Dictatorships?” The
Future of Freedom Foundation. The Future of Freedom Foundation, 16 Feb. 2011. Web.
16 Apr. 2012.
Horton, Scott. “For Those Interested in Facts: They Hate Our Foreign Policy.” Antiwar.com.
Randolph Bourne Institute, 19 May 2007. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
Klare, Michael T. “What bin Laden and Bush Don’t Talk About: The Politics of Oil.” After 9/11:
Solutions for a Saner World. Ed. Don Hazen, Tate Hausman, Tamara Straus, and Michelle
Chihara. San Francisco: Independent Media Institute, 2001. 101-103. Print.
O'Hanlon, Michael E., and Bruce Riedal. "What's Right With Afghanistan." Brookings. The
Brookings Institution , 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.
Parenti, Michael. The Terrorism Trap: September 11 And Beyond. San Francisco: City Lights
Books, 2002. Print.
Ruwart, Mary. “When Will We Ever Learn?” Antiwar.com. Randolph Bourne Institute, 5 May 2008.
Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
Wiener, Jon. "The Best Argument For The Afghan War--and What's Wrong With It." Dissent.
Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas , 7 June 2010. Web. 1
Apr. 2012.