By Steve Otto
I remember back to a cartoon I saw in Playboy magazine. There was this guy about to shake hands with another guy. But when the reader flipped open a cover page, the one man’s hand had a rattlesnake head for a thumb. The purpose of the cartoon is not what is important here. What is important is my opinion of those who promote patriotism, patriotic wars, reverence for the flag and standing for the national anthem. Many people around the country are moved by such thing. I am not. I won’t shake the patriot’s hand with its snakehead.
This all brings me to an AParticle in The Wichita Eagle,“Afghanistan’s arc from 9/11: Once hopeful, now sad.” For most of us it is no surprise that the main-stream press in the US has strongly opposed President Joe Biden’s decision to leave Afghanistan. It is most likely the idea behind the article mentioned above. From the article:
“America was still reeling from the horrific terrorist attacks of two months earlier, when planes flown by al-Qaida terrorists crashed into three iconic buildings and a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000 people.
The perpetrators and their leader, Osama bin Laden, were somewhere in Afghanistan, sheltered by the Taliban .
The mission: Find him. Bring him to justice.
Right then, Afghanistan — two decades of disorder behind it, two decades more just ahead — was suspended in an in-between moment. The recent pages of its book were already filled with so much heartbreak, but for the first time in a while, some blank pages full of potential sat just ahead. Nothing was certain, but much seemed possible.
Against that backdrop, Afghans understood the mission against bin Laden to mean a chance to secure their future — a future as murky on that day as it is today. In those post-2001 months and years, they believed in the power of “the foreigners.”
Probably the biggest lesson to be learned here are that no one in a foreign country should rely on foreigners to help them out of a dilemma. It is not hard to understand why many people in Afghanistan did not like nor trust the Taliban. They are a bunch of right-wing theocratic people bent on restoring Afghanistan to some kind of Islamic paradise they believed once thrived in Afghanistan’s past. But hoping the Americans would bring the kind of prosperity found in the US was a pipe dream and a dangerous one.
The main point of US intervention in Afghanistan was a combination of protection against so called terrorism (it was just after 9/11 and the US went through about the worst terrorist attach in our history). There was also the need to protect US interests. This is important because it was way more important for resources in the US than for the Afghanistan people. Prosperity just didn’t end up in the lives of those who planned to make Afghanistan their home. According to that article a lot of Afghanistan people believed that good times and level headed government would follow the US invasion. Again:
“But in November 2001, in a mostly ruined Afghan capital where rutted roads were filled with bicycles and beat-up yellow taxis, it meant hope.
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Torek Farhadi joined scores of educated and trained Afghan expatriates who returned to their homeland in 2002 after the Taliban were gone. He wanted to be part of the new Afghanistan that the U.S.-led invasion promised.
“I found the people relieved fresh and full on energy to start anew,” the economist said from his home in Geneva, as he watched the Taliban’s return to power last month. He remembered, too, the “smart young women” he encountered who had lost huge chunks of their educations to Taliban repression between 1996 and 2001.”
I can’t blame people for wanting something better than the Taliban. I would not want to live under such a government. But a better system needs to come from the people of Afghanistan, not foreign invaders, no matter how benevolent they might be.
I have learned here in Kansas not to trust the so called leaders who get elected to run our government. I live in the richest nation on Earth and yet there is no health care for those who live on minimum wage or under. Our government takes care of the wealthy and at times members of the middle class. Those below the middle class are treated with nothing but contempt. Those of us who have seen that contempt know that there is no way this government will better the lives of poor people who live here in the US or in Afghanistan. To believe such miracles were possible was pure fiction. Now there are many Afghanistan people who now know the truth. Liberation can not come from foreigners—only from those who live in Afghanistan.
So we need to remind people that out missions in foreign countries are not to help the people living there—they are for the benefits of those who live here. That is how it has been, that is how it will always be.
Pix bySnake head puppets.