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.
Israel, that shitty little Country.
America that shitty big Country!
Shit is shit.
If that comment got approved, what were the announced terms about?
I suggest being more specific: terms mentioning “shit” or “crap” and any relative term of theirs more than one time are denied to appear.
And never mind if some by Revusky get lost in the process.
Neta Crawford 教授(布朗大学)刚刚发布了一项研究,声称自 2001 年以来,美国纳税人在伊斯兰战争(John Hammer,Activist Post,5 年 18 月 2012 日)又名反恐战争上浪费了超过 XNUMX 万亿美元。
为了犹太复国主义实体的利益,这两个国家都被入侵和占领。
After Israel’s defeat in Lebanon in 2006, then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice came-up with the idea of fulfilling Zionists’ century-old dream of Greater Israel by military regime changes and further break-up of Israel’s enemy countries in the region.
“A strict count of dollars spent on ongoing conflicts “understate the wider budgetary impact of the wars and their long-term implications for US federal and state government spending,” Crawford wrote.
For instance, Crawford cites a $1 trillion price tag for VA costs through 2053 as the agency continues to add younger veterans seeking care despite a dip in overall veteran population.
The VA had not anticipated the number nor the complexity of the new veterans’ medical needs, the report stated, alluding to combinations of traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder and complex blast injuries such as amputations, which were less survivable in earlier conflicts and require expensive lifetime care.
“The expenditures noted on government ledgers are necessary to apprehend, even as they are so large as to be almost incomprehensible,” she wrote.
The Pentagon has requested $66 billion to continue its military aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria the next year budget, according to the report.
The study doesn’t include the human tragedy as result of America’s proxy wars for Israel. In Afghanistan and Iraq over 7,000 US troops dead, 52,000 wounded in action; over 1.3 million of Iraqis including 500,000 children dead, who wouldn’t otherwise be, 4 million displaced and made homeless, etc.
The study coincides with the 15th anniversary of September 11 terrorism, with 10,000 US troops still in Afghanistan, 15 years after the US invasion of that country, and an estimated 6,000 in Iraq. Hundreds more special operations forces have been deployed to Syria, where the US is fighting to bring an anti-Iran regime change.
https://rehmat1.com/2016/09/26/study-us-wasted-5-trillions-on-afghanistan-iraq-wars/
We have 10,00 troops still in Afghanistan while China has recently completed train service from Beijing. The point of our staying there 15 years is to secure the bountiful raw materials they possess. China is busy loading freight cars while we hunt enemies.