My Trotskyist friends are all celebrating the defeat of American "imperialism" in Afghanistan, while at the same time lamenting the takeover by the Taliban.
The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party) posts a piece by Roy Landersen entitled US rulers end 20-year-long imperialist war in Afghanistan. The lede:
The U.S. rulers’ 20-year war and occupation of Afghanistan, and the carnage it inflicted on working people at home and abroad, ended with further devastation as the Taliban retook the capital, Kabul, Aug. 15.
By the end, the US had 2500 troops in Afghanistan, which hardly rises to the level of "occupation." The supposed "carnage it inflicted" described in the first clause, in fact prevented the Taliban's "devastation" asserted in the second. Incoherence best describes that sentence, along with the rest of Mr. Landersen's article.
In fact, the American war in Afghanistan largely ended by 2013, after which we provided air and intelligence support to aid the Afghan army. All of this was suddenly withdrawn by President Biden without notice, as Mr. Landersen reports.
In the wake of President Joseph Biden’s April 13 announcement that all U.S. forces would withdraw by Sept. 11, and Washington’s abandonment of its main Bagram airbase without any notice to Afghan government forces, the reactionary Taliban stepped up its military offensive. The Afghan army disintegrated after the withdrawal of U.S. army and air support. President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Taliban commanders announced the formation of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
Among that air support taken out of the country were all the Med-Evac helicopters used to airlift wounded Afghan soldiers to hospital. Apparently Mr. Biden expected the Afghan troops to bleed to death on the battlefield just so the US could make a graceful exit.
A better article, albeit with the contradiction already in the headline, posted by Socialist Resurgence and written by Farooq Tariq, is Afghanistan – The U.S. occupation took only human lives; Taliban victory is not a sign of peace. The lede paragraph:
It is now evident that the U.S. imperialism has lost all its human and financial investment in Afghanistan. The Taliban have almost occupied Afghanistan without a fight. What has been spent in Afghanistan in the name of development, “democracy” and training of the armed forces for the last 20 years was unprecedented in the history of the world.
Well--true, of course. The US has needlessly thrown away whatever it has built in Afghanistan, though I doubt the amount--inflation adjusted--was "unprecedented in the history of the world."
I'm bothered by the word "financial"--I don't know what it means. I believe he thinks the US was invested in Afghanistan for potential business ventures--like Walmart was gonna open up a chain of stores in Kabul, Kandahar and Herat. If this is what he suggests, it's ridiculous. Afghanistan was never going to be a trading partner for American consumers.
The reason the US was in Afghanistan was to fight Jihadi terrorist groups that used the country as a base. You may or may not agree with that reason--but that was the reason. It was not an excuse for "democracy," "imperialism," or anything else.
Mr. Tariq admits that the US was partially successful.
Although some human progress has been made: For example, the average age [i.e., life expectancy—editors] has risen from 56 to 64 years, and the number of children who die before the age of five has halved. The literacy increased from 8% to 43%; 89% have access to safe drinking water in the cities. It was only 16% before.
This is not trivial--though it's all gone now, thanks to Mr. Biden's stupidity.
Mr. Tariq claims that "[a]ccording to the Cost of War Project, the United States poured $2226 billion into Afghanistan. This money could have provided basic education and health care all over the world."
Really? Tell that to the girls of northeastern Nigeria, routinely murdered or kidnapped by Boko Haram for the crime of going to school. Or tell that to 10-year-old boys in Uganda and Congo, forced by the Lord's Resistance Army to murder their parents. For that matter, tell that to the girls in Afghanistan--now that the Taliban is in charge, where is their schooling? Absent American "imperialism" it's all gone up in smoke.
For without competent soldiers for protection, any money spent on teachers and textbooks is wasted.
The silliest response to the Afghanistan debacle is that put forth by Ezra Brain, writing for Left Voice, in an article entitled Refugee Caps Are a Tool of Imperialism. Don’t Trust Imperialists to Resolve the Refugee Crisis. The money paragraph is this:
Be it refugee bans or refugee caps, socialists must oppose all imperialist attempts to use borders to restrict the free movement of people, especially refugees from imperialist wars. To put it bluntly: the greatest imperial power in the world, with a coalition of other imperialist powers, attacked, looted, and occupied Afghanistan for 20 years and is now trying to prevent refugees from entering. After 20 years of imperialist occupation, Afghanistan is left impoverished, war torn, and with a growing COVID rate. This is imperialism in its clearest form. Every refugee from the Afghan war — indeed, every refugee anywhere — must be allowed entry into the U.S. and given full legal rights and protections.
Pretty much every word here is wrong. What has the US "looted" from Afghanistan? The country was poor long before we got there and it remains poor today, albeit as Mr. Tariq pointed out, slightly better off than it was before.
But the truly inane demand is that the US accept all refugees from Afghanistan--that would likely be half the population. Beyond the useless claque of New York City college professors that make up Left Voice, there is no political constituency in this country that wishes for this.
It is particularly weird coming from Mr. Brain, an activist in the LGBTQ... community. Suppose only 99% of the Afghans who arrive on our shores are honest refugees--the remainder are instead Jihadis. That means for every million Afghans arriving in Manhattan, 10,000 of them will be hellbent on destroying secular America. I doubt Mr. Brain will do very well when surrounded by 10,000 anti-gay, homophobic, murderous Islamist extremists.
Mr. Brain's demand is ridiculous and very unlikely to come true, but people like him really should be careful what they wish for.
Socialist Action has gotten too small to maintain a proper webpage, and they have yet to post anything about Afghanistan. Which is unfortunate because they represent the dying embers of Brezhnevism in America, and I'd like to know what a Brezhnevist thinks. I predict that, unlike Trotskyists, they'll celebrate the rise of the Taliban--this because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It's the same reasoning for their support of Kim Jong Un, Nicholas Maduro, Bashir al-Assad, and even Xi Jinping.
For just like their mentor, Leonid Brezhnev, they support any government that opposes American "imperialism", no matter how vile.
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