The big news for the MSM today was that Starbucks will bring out their Autumn stable “pumpkin spice latte”…..really? This is news why?
But you were slobbering over the idea of a pumpkin spice latte…real news has hit.
I have been waiting for some good news out of Afghanistan for 18+ years…..and then word came…..
Just 4 days ago some good news was reported…..it said that the peace deal with the Taleban could be signed within days…..
Peace talks between the US and Taliban are going to be taking a little time off for the Eid al-Adha holiday. When they come back after the holiday, the Afghan peace deal is going to be the focus again, and the expectation is it will be finalized.
That’s a key issue. The deal with the US involves removing foreign troops, Taliban keeping foreign Islamists out of Afghanistan, and a ceasefire. The power-sharing deal is the last aspect of peace, and the Taliban had long resisted entering such talks until the US pullout was agreed upon.
Details are still emerging on the most recent talks, and are likely to do so for the next couple of days. There was no indication that any specific obstacle remains, and indications are the peace deal looks roughly the same as it has after the last couple of rounds.
The deal would see foreign troops withdraw, in return for the Taliban keeping ISIS and al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan. The hope was that a ceasefire might’ve been announced this week, and that Taliban-Afghan power-sharing talks would begin
(antiwar.com)
Illustrates the news from Afghanistan…it is good…it is bad….it is up….it is down.
I wish I could say that with the urge to laugh out loud…..
Sorry I had to borrow a line from UK’s Chamberlain in 1938….but this time I am talking about America’s longest war ever….Afghanistan.
The latest round of talks between the US and the Taliban have ended with what is being called a “roadmap to peace” for Afghanistan. The agreement is non-binding, but points toward a formal agreement being not far down the road.
The talks effectively have an agreement on the US withdrawal and the Taliban fighting against ISIS and al-Qaeda, and commits both sides to a deal to end civilian casualties and negotiate with the Afghan government on power-sharing.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the head US negotiator, is expressing hopes that the deal will ultimately be finalized by September 1. This would be the day for signing the deal, though when everything would be implemented is still unclear.
A final deal is expected to both put a timeline to everything, and provide some mechanism of international guarantors for the peace deal, ending 18 years of US-led occupation of Afghanistan.
(antiwar.com)
Where was the “elected” Afghan government in these talks?
I asked and I received…..
The Afghan peace process “must be fully Afghan-owned and Afghan-led,” former President Hamid Karzai said at the 8th World Peace Forum in China on Tuesday, according to Xinhua report.
“Progress is there between the United States and the Taliban, and hopefully, it is one that will ensure lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan,” Karzai said.
The US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad concluded the seventh round of talks with the Taliban negotiators on July 9 in Qatar. He was cited by reports as saying that the Afghans are closer to reaching peace than any time in the past.
Khalilzad said on July 8 that he had “lots of progress” on four key issues under debate in the negotiations.
The four issues which have been discussed by the US and the Taliban negotiators in the seven rounds of talks are counterterrorism assurances, troop withdrawal, a ceasefire and intra-Afghan talks.
Karzai lauded efforts made to push for national reconciliation and bring about peace in Afghanistan, such as the two-day intra-Afghan dialogue opened on Sunday in Qatar’s capital Doha with the presence of a 17-member negotiating team from the Taliban.
(tolonews.com)
Wait!
Did I see that the Taleban was fighting against AQ and ISIS?
And yet the enemy of our enemy is still our enemy…..then explain to all of us just why the Hell are we still fighting and dying in this region?
NATO has a different take on when to leave…..
Acting Defense Minister Assadullah Khalid, the Resolute Support Commander Gen. Scott Miller, and NATO’s Senior Civilian Representative Nicholas Kay on Wednesday visited Ghazni to assess the security of the central province.
Addressing the meeting, Kay said NATO will not leave Afghanistan until the job is done.
“We are not leaving. We are not leaving until the job is done. If the Taliban think they can just wait us out, then they have miscalculated,” he said.
Meanwhile, the acting defense minister said they visited the province to show to the security forces that the government is supporting them.
This war has been raging for 18 years……and there is no end in sight. Out troops will continue to have multiple deployments and we continue to throw money at a hopeless cause.
Plus I listen to the major Dem candidates when asked about Afghanistan…..most have a common stand…they do not want to leave our troops in Afghanistan but they would remove them in a responsible way…….sounds like the last two presidents……what it means is they will stay in Afghanistan until the weapons industry says we can leave.
I have been asking for years just what would it take to declare victory and bring our weary troops home for a much deserved rest?
It appears that the only strategy we have is to wait the Taleban out…….
The Thirty Years War? The Hundred Years War? The Forever War? More than 17 years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban regime, the United States has failed to crush the resulting Taliban insurgency and cannot withdraw without allowing them to return to power. Political frustration is building. The United States is questioning an ongoing presence. United States Senator Rand Paul recently said, “[W]e’re in an impossible situation. I see no hope for it.” Among the many depressing aspects of the situation is the $13 billion being spent each year in maintaining approximately 16,000 American service members in Afghanistan. The lower estimate for maintaining one service member in Afghanistan is $500,000 per year. More realistic estimates put the number at $1 million per year. (In 2018, to maintain the current force of 16,000, the United States spent $13 billion on U.S. forces and $5 billion on Afghan forces. This provides a cost of approximately $812,000 per U.S. service member per year). The 175,000 strong Afghan National Army (ANA) costs about $5 billion per year or $28,000 per member.
Presently, the United States and NATO maintain discrete military units in Afghanistan. These units operate against the Taliban and train ANA troops. Each year, significant numbers of ANA troops desert. A bigger problem is tens of thousands of ANA “ghost soldiers.” According to a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, these “soldiers” are just names on the ANA’s rolls enabling corrupt high-ranking Afghanis to steal their salaries. The present system of giving money to the Afghan government is not creating an ANA that can ever achieve victory.
So there is my answer….we will just wait the Taleban out…eventually they will tire of fighting and come to a peace accord.
The Taleban seems to think that the US is ready to set a date for departure……
Taliban negotiator spokesman Mohammed Sohail Shaheen, currently in Moscow from the recent talks between Taliban and Afghan officials, reported that he expects, during the next round of talks with the US, the Americans will announce a specific date for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.
The US and Taliban have been known to be advancing toward a deal for months, centered on the US withdrawing from Afghanistan and the Taliban promising to keep ISIS and al-Qaeda out of the country in return.
Shaheen said that if the US does set a date, it will create a very real possibility of settling the war in Afghanistan, now ongoing for some 18 years. President Trump has talked up the merits of such a deal, though some US officials are said to oppose any deal that doesn’t leave a remnant US force in Afghanistan.
(antiwar.com)
Seriously? Did they check with Raytheon or Boeing or any other of the MIC?
And they call me a dreamer!
$13 billion a year is the cost…bring the troops home and we can use that cash for a damn silly wall and Trump can claim the Afghanistan paid for it.
After 18 years of constant war and multiple deployments the US is looking at the peace process taking shape…..
The US gets bad press worldwide…..the American propaganda machine we call the MSM does not pile on….but the news is not good for America…..like the number of civilian deaths……
The report concluded that both an increase in suicide attacks, mainly from ISIS, and a sharp increase in US airstrikes were driving the record deaths, with over 1,000 casualties just from US air operations.
The Taliban were blamed for the largest number of civilian casualties, at 37%, which is in keeping with UN reports of the past. The Afghan government, US, and NATO were blamed for 24%, and ISIS was blamed for a further 20%. This is a huge number of ISIS killings given how comparatively small the group is.
The UN said a particularly concerning fact was that the civilian casualties from US airstrikes were overwhelmingly women and children. This, however, should be unsurprising, as the US tends to define adult men in Afghanistan as “suspects” or “militants” simply by virtue of being in a strike.
(antiwar.com)
With those numbers rising the parties involved are meeting and discussing an end to the hostilities……
18+ years into the US war in Afghanistan, they’ve gone from the Taliban denying negotiations were even taking place, to confirming they are. Progress is now being confirmed by both sides, with a basic framework of a war-ending deal in place.
That deal, specifics not-withstanding, are that the US would withdraw all troops from Afghanistan, and the Taliban would ensure that neither al-Qaeda nor ISIS could operate inside of the country in the future.
Having Mullah Baradar and US negotiator head Zalmay Khalilzad sitting across the table from one another only underscores how serious the talks are getting, and this latest round of talks is expected to continue hammering out specific details.
(antiwar.com)
I read dissertation papers that grad students submit and this one covers the “Long War” in Afghanistan and the possibility of a peaceful settlement…..
During the last week of January, the news was awash with stories covering the current administration’s ostensibly unprecedented progress with Special Envoy Khalilzad’s recent talks with the Taliban and their Pakistani sponsors in Qatar. In a statement that the U.S. Embassy Kabul released on the last Monday in January, Khalilzad stated that the peace talks had made progress on important issues and that the negotiators had agreed on a framework for further talks in February. In the eighteenth year of a long and stalemated war, there are reasons to be sanguine about these developments, to some degree, simply because this seems to have been the most talk about peace among the belligerents yet in this long hard war. And Mr. Khalilzad is indeed one of the best people to be the U.S. envoy leading the talks given his Afghan origins and years of experience as ambassador in Afghanistan and Iraq
However, there are also reasons for much caution and some alarm about the current progress and the potential for peace in Afghanistan since the deliberations and decisions about many previously intractable issues still require prudence and patience. These details may potentially augur the gravest consequences for Afghanistan, its neighbors, and the U.S. Several things of great importance have yet to be worked out. There is still much uncertainty in what outcomes these talks will result in, and looming yet elusive peace also brings up questions and concerns about the Taliban’s and their sponsor’s true intentions.
This could be good news….or it could be just a lull in a continuing situation….
light at the end of an excruciatingly long tunnel, the prospect of American withdrawal from Afghanistan now seems to glimmer ahead. Several rounds of negotiation in Russia, Qatar, and elsewhere have produced the outlines of an agreement. Details are unknown, but by all accounts, the accord will be based around a simple deal: the United States pulls its troops out and the Taliban pledges to never again host terror groups.
This would be a most un-American peace deal. Rather than a declaration of victory, it would be a reluctant acceptance of stubborn facts on the ground. Afghans repelled British invaders in the 19th century and Soviet invaders in the 20th. For nearly two decades they have held the United States at bay. By leaving Afghanistan to its fate, we would be admitting failure. This horrifies many in Washington. Americans fervently embrace the illusion that their country can succeed at anything — including crushing mountain fighters thousands of miles away who believe they are patriots resisting a foreigner invader.
I wish I could see this as a good thing for the people of Afghanistan….but I cannot….the Taleban when returned to power will revert to their extreme shelf…..a restrictive form of Islam will once again rule the land….
Afghanistan has another worry….the hostilities between India and Pakistan…..there is a possibility that hostilities could spill over into Afghanistan….
Fearing a dangerous spillover impacts from increased tensions between India and Pakistan, war-ravaged Afghanistan has advised its nuclear-armed neighbors to exercise the utmost restraint.
The only good thing is that American troops will come home and get the rest they richly deserve.
Let’s say that a peace plan is negotiated……what does that mean to US troops?
Ongoing US-Taliban peace negotiations, designed to end the 18-year Afghan War, has a new proposal, with the Pentagon having finally offered a formal plan for withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan.
As with the usual Pentagon plans, there seems to be reticence toward actually doing this in a timely fashion. The plan reportedly would have half of the 14,000 US troops leaves Afghanistan within a matter of months, but then the rest would stay for as long as five years.
And that might be a tough sell for the Taliban. After resisting a US occupation for 18 years, the Taliban’s demand is to get the US out of the country, and while the logistics of that might take awhile, five years is a very long time.
If anything, such a long time is likely to raise fears that the Pentagon is dragging its feet specifically to give officials time to change their minds and dishonor the deal, and keeping thousands of troops inside Afghanistan means Trump, or his successor, could end up resuming the war.
(antiwar.com)
US troops are the key to any peace deal with the Taleban…..
Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for Taliban’s political office in Qatar, told reporters in Qatar that the war will come to an end in the country and the Taliban fighters will join the ranks of the Afghan army if the two sides sealed an agreement on the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.
He said talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government is an internal issue and that Taliban is currently carrying out talks with the US about troop withdrawal.
“When the occupation is ended, there is a full withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan and there is an Afghan-inclusive Islamic government in the country, I think there is no need for any military operation and war. So, there will be a sustainable peace in the country and all the military people and our people, they will be included in a national army,” said Shaheen.
An Update before I begin my posting day…..I wrote about the death of an American soldier but no name was released….that has changed…..
…the soldier killed was Army Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy A. Bolyard, 42, of Thornton, West Virginia. It said he died of wounds sustained from small arms fire in Logar Province, but it provided no other details about the incident.
Bolyard was assigned to 3rd Squadron, 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, based at Fort Benning, Georgia. His brigade was sent to Afghanistan early this year as part of a revamped American strategy to bolster the Afghan security forces by placing U.S. military advisers with Afghan troops closer to the front lines. (thestate.com)
Yesterday I wrote a post on the situation in Afghanistan …….https://lobotero.com/2018/09/04/afghanistan-still/ and as usual events moved to make the post needy of more information…so let me extend the reports from Afghanistan.
A brand new general has taken command in Afghanistan…..
17 years into the US War in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin Scott Miller has arrived in the country to take over control of the US-led occupation, replacing outgoing Gen. John Nicholson. Miller is the 17th commander to lead the war.
Gen. Miller has been participating in the war in Afghanistan from the beginning. He was present during the 2001 US invasion, then at the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was among the forces sent during President Obama’s escalation of the Afghan War, as a brigadier general. Now, he’s a full general, commanding the longest war in American history.
Miller talked of adjustments to be made, but gave no suggestions that he’s going to make any serious changes. This likely means he’ll follow the historic trend of taking over, promising a review of policy, offering nominal changes and quickly falling out of favor, only to be replaced by the next commander.
(antiwar.com)
But what will be new with US policy……not a damn thing!
As the anniversary of the September 11 attacks draws near, the Afghanistan War—the nearly seventeen-year-old conflict those terrible events spawned—is seeing a change in leadership. Army Lt. Gen. Austin Scott Miller, America’s ninth commander, is preparing to take charge of the effort but has already admitted to his lack of innovative thinking. At his confirmation hearing in June, he told the Senate that he couldn’t guarantee a timeline for bringing U.S. troops home. This is unfortunate—and expected. Despite the change of command, Miller represents the same stale thinking that has permeated U.S. foreign policy for the last two decades.
Sad news over the Labor Day weekend is that yet another American soldier has died in Afghanistan and another soldier wounded but in stable condition…….but the good news is that a former asset of the CIA that became a major terrorist has been killed……the leader of the terrorist cell known as the Haqqani Network has been eliminated…..
The Taliban say the Afghan Haqqani network founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, an ex-US ally turned fierce enemy, has died after years of ill health. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed told the AP that Haqqani died on Monday inside Afghanistan. The elderly founder of the outlawed group had been paralyzed for the past 10 years. The Haqqani network was declared a terrorist organization by the United States in 2012. Haqqani, whose son is believed to have taken over the network in 2001, had not been heard from in several years, and reports of his death had been widespread in 2015.
In announcing Haqqani’s death Tuesday, Mujahed called him a religious scholar and an “exemplary warrior” who was “among the great distinguished Jihadi personalities of this era.” Haqqani, whose group had close ties to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, was a prized CIA asset when Afghan guerrillas were fighting Soviet forces in the 1980s, the BBC reports. He allied himself with the Taliban after they seized power in 1996, and his group is believed to have been behind many recent attacks on NATO and Afghan forces.
And that is not the only setback the terrorists have endured…..
The U.S. military confirmed that it killed Abu Saad Orakzai, the Islamic State’s emir for its Khorasan province, in an airstrike in Nangarhar, Afghanistan on Aug. 25. The Afghan government had previously announced his death, but the report was not confirmed.
“The strike resulted in his death,” according to a press release that was issued by Resolute Support, NATO’s command in Afghanistan. The airstrike targeted Orakzai, who is also known as Abu Sayed Bajauri and Abu Sayad Erhabi, “in the eastern area of the Nangarhar province,” and was carried out by U.S. Forces-Afghanistan.
Sad News: Yet another American has been killed in Afghanistan……
Details are still unclear, but one American soldier was reported killed and another wounded Monday in what officials are describing as an “apparent insider attack” in eastern Afghanistan. The wounded soldier is in stable condition.
(antiwar.com)
17 years and what do we have to show for our occupation of Afghanistan? The Taleban is still a functioning army……violence is a daily occurrence…..US troops are still dying……
After that was said the intel people had to get their two cents in also…..
Hope springs eternal for Pentagon officials, with regards to any war the US is involved in. Everywhere and always they believe the war is going well and about to turn the corner, and over the past 17 years, that’s been the constant military stance on Afghanistan.
A number of intelligence officials are challenging the Pentagon’s insistence that things are fine, and the policy review is likely to include a new intelligence assessment for the administration. The military is scared to death of that assessment.
(antiwar.com)
Things are fine?
After 17 years of blood sweat and money and the best description is “things are fine”?
Seriously…is it not time to face the music and admit that we have done all we can for Afghanistan and bring our weary troops home?
Yes Irene there is still a war raging in the central Asian country of Afghanistan….you remember that right?
Of course you do not remember because you are scrambling around trying to see what Omarosa has to say or what BS can be made out of a trial….you prefer speculation and entertainment to reality and fact.
So I will help….whether you appreciate it or not…..
The Taleban is having successes and against the best equipped army in the world…..just miles from the capital of Kabul a battle is raging in Ghazni….
The Taliban began attacking the city Friday, and has killed over 100 security forces since. Reports as of Sunday had them in control of the bulk of the city, and surrounding districts on the outskirts.
The reinforcements are leading to conflicting reports, with the Interior Minister claiming the Taliban are pushing back to just small pockets of resistance. The Taliban, by contrast, says they remain in control of most of the city.
(antiwar.com)
US military statements, unsurprisingly, continued to downplay what they called an “inconsequential fight” on Friday, saying they view the Taliban in the area as “isolated and desperate,” and insist that control of the city remains with the government.
More territory is being lost……
As the fight between the Afghan government and the Taliban for control of Ghazni City continues, three additional districts have been overrun by the Taliban. It has also come to light that Resolute Support – NATO’s command in Afghanistan – has intentionally misled the public about the status of seven of Ghazni’s districts.
Resolute Support claimed these seven districts were under government control. In reality, the Taliban physically controlled the terrain while the Afghan government operated them remotely from Ghazni City.
Provincial officials in the Faryab Province announced on Monday that after a 48 hour siege, the Afghan Army base in Ghormach District has been surrendered outright to the Taliban. Over 40 surviving forces were taken prisoner in the surrender.
The Faryab base is relatively remote, and security forces were warning Sunday that they were running out of ammunition and badly in need of reinforcements. The reinforcements never came, and they apparently had no choice but to give up.
Yet this is just the latest in a series of Afghan military bases overrun by the Taliban, and with that comes not only prisoners, but seized weapons as well. It’s not clear how many weapons were stored at this base, though since defenders were complaining about lack of ammunition, they may not be immediately useful for Taliban in the area.
(antiwar.com)
Yes Irene we Americans are still fighting and dying in Afghanistan.
Now demand to know why?
A little and short history of Afghanistan…..
Update: After writing this draft more news has come out about the situation in Afghanistan…….
Starting before dawn, Taliban fighters quickly overwhelmed the police checkpoint, killing nine police, then moved on to the army base. They got to the base in Baghlan-e Markazi District and took that as well, killing another 36 troops.
Baghlan Governor Abdul Hai Nemati says that reinforcements have been sent to try to recapture the area. Checkpoints in the area were reportedly set on fire by the Taliban, however, so not everything can be recovered.
Believe it or not after 17 long bloody years there is still news from Afghanistan…..
The government of Afghanistan held talks with the Taleban…it brought about a short ceasefire but not much else…..
If the U.S. has any real strategy in Afghanistan, it seems to be fighting a war of attrition long enough and well enough for the threat to drop to a level that Afghan forces can handle or accept a peace settlement credible enough for the U.S. to leave. After seventeen years of combat, no one at any level is claiming that enough military progress has been made in strengthening the ANSF enough for it to win. The most favorable claims seem to be that the ANSF are not losing, may someday become able to win with U.S. support.
No one is making any serious claims about success at the civil level in terms of politics, governance, and economics. Hope for the civil side seems to rely on the theory that if you attempt enough reform plans, one may eventually work. This is a literal triumph of hope over experience.
SecState Pompeo visited Afghanistan and reported back that our strategy is indeed working……that is great considering that NO one knows just what the strategy is….so how can we say it is working……
Then more news comes out about the ISIS cell fighting in Afghanistan…..
Gen. John Nicholson, the US commander in Afghanistan, says that the ISIS affiliate is increasingly resilient, with access to foreign fighters. On top of that, Nicholson warned, ISIS is getting funding and other general support from jihadist groups in several nearby countries.
This is the first time officials are addressing this issue. Afghan officials have declared the ISIS presence in Nangarhar to have been “wiped out” several times following offensives in recent years, and when that offensive wraps up, ISIS reemerges there, seemingly as strong as ever.
Before, officials just ignored the past, and were every bit as confident about their newest offensive. Gen. Nicholson’s comments show that there is at least some recognition that these offensives, while killing a lot of people, aren’t amounting to much.
(antiwar.com)
I apologize for the terrible news but at least you know how bad it is….now is time for the people to speak up and demand out troops come home.
WE do not get much news from Afghanistan while the Lawyer-fest is in full bloom…..so I feel that we need to keep abreast of where our troops are asked to die.
This region has been calm for awhile…well at least in the news but otherwise it remains the same……..
In a newly released video, the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), an al Qaeda-linked Uzbek group, showcased a joint raid with the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. The video, which is dated for Oct. 2017, takes place in northern Afghanistan, but no specific location is mentioned.
The short video begins by showing the jihadists preparing for the military raid and driving through a remote Afghan village. A clash with Afghan forces, the majority which occurred at night, is featured. During the aftermath of the assault, a fighter is seen climbing a tower to place the Taliban’s white flag. Fighters are then seen parading and celebrating with captured equipment. This includes several captured US-made Humvees.
In recent months the Taleban has made great strides in Afghanistan and now the Marines are trying to turn back those successes…..
US Marines have been operating in Helmand Province nearly through the entire Afghan War. This area was the center of the capture-and-hold strategy for years. But Taliban gains are mounting in recent years, and they control more territory than any other time in the war.
Afghan forces around Helmand are more and more limited, and under growing pressure. Much of the Marines’ focus is defending those allies. Officials are trying to put a positive spin on that, saying they can improve intelligence sharing from the Afghans.
But those Afghans are always under pressure, and that means that a lot of Marines will be stuck dealing with that, with few left to try to retake territory. The soaring amount of territory the Taliban is contesting also means that, while trying to reclaim districts, the Marines are racing to try to gain more than the Afghans lose.
(antiwar.com)
I will try to keep my reader up-to-date on our troops and they are asked to do in the name of freedom.
Do I need to point out that Afghanistan is the US longest war? I didn’t think so.
Every president since Bush2 has pretended that there is some sort of grand plan for the conflict in Afghanistan…..it has been a lie since 2001….some say that the key to Afghanistan is through Pakistan….
America and its Coalition partners have now been at war in Afghanistan for six years longer than the Soviets were at war in Afghanistan.
There are a number of reasons why the war in Afghanistan is a protracted stalemate, but a huge one lies in the delusion that portrayed Pakistan as a friend and, until now, impaired clear-eyed thinking about a strategy for Pakistan.
The reason for the stalemate is the support and sanctuary that the Pakistani security establishment has continued to provide to the enemies of the Afghans, Americans and the Coalition partners.
Pakistan is the hideout for many within the Taleban and has been since the early days of America’s involvement…..the Taleban has been a thorn in the US collective butt….but what is most amazing is that the US needs the Taleban intact to justify its time in Afghanistan…..
I read an interview with some people from Afghanistan about the necessity of the Taleban for the US and its proxies…..
“Whoever sits in the White House will continue to serve the 1% and spread wars across the world, to maintain the US hegemony. Many corporations, arms manufacturers and corporate-employed mercenaries, benefit from the war itself, or from extravagant reconstruction opportunities the war destruction creates. The increase in the number of US troops is not to secure the country or annihilate the US creations, the Taliban and ISIS, but rather a show of US power to rivals, Russia, China and Iran.
Despite all their differences, the US and Iran’s aim in Afghanistan converge on one point: the promotion of fundamentalist thought, and continued support for the most reactionary, dark-minded and criminal fundamentalist elements. While the US killed hundreds of Afghan revolutionaries and freedom-fighters through its fundamentalist mercenaries in the 1980s and 90s, it used these tactics to prevent the rise of nationalist, freedom-fighting and independent figures and forces that would resist its occupation and bullying,”
The US will continue to fight and die in Afghanistan as long as it stays profitable…..and the president and his minions will continue to lie as long as the M-IC needs then to do so.
