both the United States And allied nations have tried to strengthen Afghanistan's military during the 20-year US war in Afghanistan against the Taliban. Why the US got involved in Afghanistan - and why it's been difficult to get out. Why did the U.S. invade Afghanistan? The US has evacuated more than 5,000 Afghans and is scrambling to find countries willing to house refugees fleeing the Taliban. The question remains, why did the US get sucked into a two decade war in Cent Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan gives us the first book-length expert historical analysis of these wars. The US finally realised and accepted this publicly. Potential Reason # 4: To train our troops for nighttime, warrantless break-in-and-search operations anywhere in the world, including inside the US. The US blamed their leader Osama bin Laden, who was operating under the cover of the Taliban. And we now have a president who asserts the authority to kill off any person he deems a “threat.” I submit that this claim of unaccountable power represents a far greater threat to the peace and security of the country than any terrorist or group of terrorists could ever pose. DADDY, WHY DID WE HAVE TO ATTACK IRAQ? Perhaps President Obama provided the best summary of this position in a speech at West Point. So far our fighting men and women in Afghanistan have sustained over 2,200 deaths and 12,300 wounded.6 Many of their wounds have been horrendous: horrible burns, multiple amputations, and the loss of genitals.7 In spite of successful, heroic efforts to save those wounded in battle, many war veterans die while waiting for care through the VA system.8 And the number of active duty military personnel and veterans committing suicide has risen to alarming levels. 9  Should any President ever declare Operation Enduring Freedom to be a “victory”, it will have been a Pyrrhic victory at best. Why did Bush go to war in Iraq? Over the past twelve years we have been treated to a litany of reasons why the United States invaded Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda, the international terror network, attacked the US on September 11, 2001. Afghanistan War, international conflict beginning in 2001 that was triggered by the September 11 attacks. When administrations changed and Trump became the US President, Pentagon asked Trump to deploy additional 3,500 troops in the country. Potential Reason #7: To squander our national treasure. All content © 2007-2021 Dissident Voice and respective authors | Subscribe to the DV RSS feed | Top. In 2011, former US President Barack Obama had Laden killed by US Navy SEALs in a raid on his residence in Pakistan. This book analyzes the complex causes and effects of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks both domestically and internationally, and examines the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, the real failure in Afghanistan was much broader than the internal squabbles that Nasr and Chayes have addressed. Here's a recent quote about why the US invaded Afghanistan in the first place. U.S. forces quickly toppled the Taliban (the faction that ruled Afghanistan and provided sanctuary for al-Qaeda) in the first months of the war, only to face years of insurgency led by a reconstituted Taliban. Why did the UK invade Afghanistan? It is currently winding down, and American troops are likely to leave soon but only after a stay of nearly two decades. In The American War in Afghanistan, Carter Malkasian provides the first comprehensive history of the entire conflict. The New York Times ran a story citing a government official who claimed evidence “reaches from the southern tip of Manhattan to the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan.”. He has held various positions in the nuclear and environmental industries and has degrees in Geology and Environmental Systems Engineering. Thousands of military absentee ballots are being lost, Iraq, Afghan wars will cost to $4 trillion to $6 trillion. Why did President Bush invade Afghanistan? The president said . It regrouped and came back after every military loss. President George Bush rejected as "non-negotiable" an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan . They targeted bin Laden's al-Qaeda fighters and also the Taliban. By Robert L. Grenier. In the spring of 2003, acclaimed journalist Anne Nivat set off from Tajikistan on a six-month journey through the aftermath of the American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. The United States is no exception. SECRETARY POWELL: We are hard at work bringing all the information together, intelligence information, law enforcement information. According to the U.S. government, that mission was accomplished almost ten years later by a team of Navy Seals in an operation lasting only a few hours … in neighboring Pakistan. Soviets begin withdrawal from Afghanistan. No, they invaded Iraq for oil not afganistan. This book examines the lessons we can learn from this intelligence operation for the future and makes some observations on what came next in Afghanistan—and what is likely yet to come. In 2001 Tony Blair explained that the invasion was necessary to . US planned war in Afghanistan long before September 11. Insider accounts published in the British, French and Indian media have revealed that US officials threatened war against Afghanistan during . Governments routinely have evidentiary standards that must be met before they grant an extradition request. This is a war of necessity.”. President Bush first ordered the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan shortly after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York and the Pentagon just outside of Washington, D.C. U.S. policymakers are nevertheless confronted with many questions regarding that conflict, such as its affordability, the effectiveness of various strategies, and even whether U.S. forces should remain in that country at all. Since the 9/11 attack, Al Qaeda has chosen to not attack the vulnerable American homeland in order to cement the transfer of war guilt to the United States. He can be reached at: John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / 09/08/2021, Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert, Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, & Jason Stanford, The Rise of the Security-Industrial Complex from 9/11 to COVID-19, BBC Admits Its Douma Chemical Attack Report Did Not Meet Own Accuracy Standards, Biden Exits Afghanistan, Heads in the Wrong Direction. In addition to the development of new nuclear missiles, the Cold War escalated further when the USSR invaded Afghanistan. It was al Qaeda, the international terror network, not Afghanistan's Taliban -- a regional Islamic political and military force -- that. Howard Uhal is a Vietnam era veteran of the US Army and a former nuclear submarine officer. Bush, however, was not in a diplomatic mood, and he told the Taliban “the demands were not open to negotiation or discussion.”, The refusal by the Bush administration to put any evidence on the table made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the Taliban to turn bin Laden over. U.S. Army / Flickr. US based advocates fear that interpreters and other Afghan nationals who cooperated with the US will be targeted by the Taliban. The US did not "invade" Afghanistan. And also, remember, he has been linked to earlier attacks against US interests and he was already indicated for earlier attacks against the United States. The US actively supported the Mujaheddin, of which Bin Laden and his foreign fighters were a sub group of, in a war against the Soviets. Introduction -- The American skeptics -- Russian skeptics -- The American rationale -- The Russian rationale -- The study's objectives -- Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Obama said: We did not ask for this fight. In 1978, the Taraki government initiated a series of reforms, including a radical modernization of the traditional Islamic civil and especially marriage . The Iraq War (America's second war with Iraq, the first being the conflict that followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait) continued to be a rancorous and controversial topic years after the US ceded control of the country to the Iraqi civilian government.The positions various commentators and politicians took prior to and shortly after the US invasion have political implications to this day, so it . Afghanistan, 1975: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. Let's see what happened. By Nasim Fekrat (in Pennsylvania, U.S.) The western media has always framed the presence of US and other international forces in Afghanistan negatively. The anger arising from the invasion and occupation of the country has created a perpetual supply of terrorist recruits, enabling U.S. officials to use the never-ending “war on terror” to eviscerate the Bill of Rights. In this regard, why did the Soviets invaded Afghanistan? - F1Krazy. But alongside such publicized goals there is a list of things we also achieved by invading and occupying Afghanistan, most of which are not at all commendable. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Afghanistan was a "fair" war, a tit-for-tat response to the . Informed by the author’s decades-long firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan, and superbly shaped by his hallmark gifts as a narrative historian and his singular eye for the evocation of place and culture, The Return of a King is both the ... After all, such a gesture might have spared the United States and her NATO allies, and the people of Afghanistan, the costs and consequences of a war that is now entering its eleventh year. Plus, Pakistan nurtured the Taliban, despite its continuous denials to Washington. Q: Daddy, why did we have to attack Iraq? That's longer than World War I, World War II and the Korean War combined. Al-Qaeda does 9/11. Potential Reason #1: To protect and maintain the opium poppy crop, Afghanistan is by far the world’s largest producer of opium. Amazon: “Economic Terrorism” and the Destruction of Competition and Livelihoods, Complacency Rules: Consumerism and the Environment, Remember the HPV vaccine scandal of 2018? This is an unforgettable account of the power of idealism—and of one person’s fierce determination to make a difference. “This is a wonderful book. […] The interweaving of Power’s personal story, family story, diplomatic history ... The invasion's public aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda, which had executed the September 11 attacks weeks prior, and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban government from power. Response, 1978-1980. Also, according to BBC, the US did not have a clear political strategy to be successful with the drawdown. President Bush said we initially attacked that country “to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.” His successor President Obama continued down that shining path to “achieve our objective of defeating the core of al Qaeda.” Along the way we hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden (who was hiding in neighboring Pakistan) and built schools, hospitals, and chicken processing factories in a mostly futile effort to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. The study attempts to look at the United States response to the various developments and challenges of Afghanistan with a view to understand the dynamics of survival and relative failure of this land-locked country. , it still intends to use diplomatic and monetary leverage to help the Asian country. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld attacked Afghanistan in October, 2001, but their real targets should have likely been Saudi Arabia and the secret intelligence agency (ISI) in Pakistan. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States "war on terror" and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. WTC building is deemed as a sign of the US hegemony. One of the few good things the Taliban did was to curtail the planting and harvesting of opium poppies.1 This no doubt angered the drug lords and their beneficiaries in the global ruling class. President Bush said we initially attacked that country "to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime." The prominent philosopher Slavoj Zizek stated the question well at RT, on August 17th: In October 2001, the USA began bombing Afghanistan. It seemed like a safe option ... until it was not. 20 years since 9/11 it looks like the Taliban is about to seize control of Afghanistan. The Soviet presence in Afghanistan lasted until Feb. 1989, and, according to official sources, cost 15,000 Soviet lives (and at least 640,000 Afghans), and failed to accomplish its goals: the pro . By keeping patriotic Americans who have military training engaged in endless conflict in a distant quagmire, the government prevents them from taking a direct role in any future domestic struggles. The US has been involved in peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban to achieve just that for the past few years. They are, after all, a part of the lasting legacy of Operation Enduring Freedom. 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