“The only thing more tragic than what’s happened to the Afghan people is that in a few days America will have forgotten Afghanistan again,” says Matthew Hoh, a disabled combat veteran and former State Department official stationed in Afghanistan’s Zabul province who resigned in 2009 to protest the Obama administration’s escalation of the War in Afghanistan. He says much of the U.S.
Since World War II, U.S. soldiers have been stationed on U.S. military bases around the globe. Today, there are around 750 such bases in some eighty countries and colonies.
In the US media, the unfolding drama in Afghanistan has largely focused on the Pentagon’s failure to prevail and questions about President Biden’s failure to respond. Did the US “cut-and-run,” abandoning an ally to a band of bloody religious fanatics?
Writers including Howard Zinn, Chalmers Johnson, Noam Chomsky and John Pilger have for decades warned that American militarist obsessions with wars to impose the US Empire upon the world would end in disaster.
It’s far from the longest U.S. war. There was no peace before or after it. There is no after it until they end it — and bombing has always been most of what it is. It has had nothing to do with opposing terrorism.
There are two things I suppose everyone would agree are true about the remarkable events of the past several weeks in Afghanistan.
So, people get hurt when you stop waging wars, and peace is dangerous, and . . . and . . . well, women’s rights!
U.S. military officials now believe Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, could fall in one to three months.
Painting a portrait takes time, to hurry is to court mistakes. My rule is to be passionate but patient, leaving time to ruminate as I struggle to get the precise glint in the eye, curve the lips just so, and shape the highlight on the bridge of the nose to fit its contour.
