The story is already starting to change in Afghanistan.
While if we think from the US’s side, we could predict their reactions to any gains by the Taliban, there it is little reason for sympathy. A twenty-year war, false promises about leaving, propping up corrupt leaders, helping the opium trade to flourish (even if inadvertently)—all of this makes any sympathy for the US involvement in Afghanistan simply hard to swallow.
Biden announced that the US would depart from Afghanistan by September 11 of this year.
The Taliban, who had already made an agreement with the Trump administration, which was based on the US pulling out by this past May, of course were not pleased with this change in plans. They had previously urged Biden to honor the Trump-era agreement.
It was clear also that the mainstream media, ever complicit with the powers that be, was not willing to allow Trump and the Taliban’s negotiations to go on quietly.
The lies about Russia having bounties on US soldiers’ heads revealed the level of hypocrisy that the media, at best duped by the CIA, was willing to partake to tow the line of the CIA.
Once Biden—the “not-Trump president”—decided he was pulling the US out of Afghanistan—the story changed. Suddenly the CIA announced that they had “low to moderate confidence” about the Russian bounty story. This time ‘round, the media decided to celebrate Biden’s decision.
One of the things I’ve discussed before is how outlets can frame the narrative they want by focusing on people who support or oppose a certain policy. It’s misleading, but also a calling card of @CNN. pic.twitter.com/sypGhatZdZ
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 14, 2021
(Full thread here)
But Biden has made announcements of leaving Afghanistan before:
VP Biden on Afghanistan: "We are leaving in 2014. Period."
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 12, 2012
We know how that turned out.
There were already plenty of reasons to doubt Biden’s words. Now there’s even more.
The War on Terror was and is much more than that. It can be seen as the latest iteration of the US’s imperial project. Such a label, while not arbitrary, is a convenient means to justify terror as much as it is—or perhaps even more than—a means to halt it. We need only look at the length of this war—twenty years—and the results of it, to understand that.
The weight of all of this is hard to overstate. Peoples’ lives have been lost—around the world—because of these policies. Most of them have done nothing to deserve this. Let that not go unnoticed, undiscussed, un-criticized. These policies quite literally wreak havoc on the world, and what’s so disgraceful about them—they’re in the name of virtually nothing but greed.
Well written article. Gives a lot of insight. Enjoyed reading it.