AT THE END OF THIS HATED WAR, WE NEED TRUTH
By David Bacon
Foreign Policy in Focus | August 30, 2021
https://fpif.org/at-the-end-
of-this-hated-war-we-need-truth/
https://
davidbaconrealitycheck.
blogspot.com/2021/08/at-end-
of-this-hated-war-we-need-truth.html
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) was the main speaker at the rally of over 200,000 people who marched up Market Street in San Francisco to protest the Bush administration’s war on terror and threatened invasion of Iraq. (David Bacon)
Many in the U.S. media continue to credit the good intentions of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, while belaboring its failure over 20 years to achieve any of them. But to say that the United States wanted a progressive, liberal democratic, and secular government in Afghanistan can only be believed by those who refuse to remember what Washington did when Kabul actually had one.
In the days following the attacks on September 11, the United States was called on to declare war against an enemy those in Congress who voted for it couldn’t even name. Policymakers asked American citizens to sacrifice civil liberties for security and give the military money that was so desperately needed to solve the country’s social problems.
Congress did those things with only one dissenting vote: Barbara Lee’s. Now it’s time to look at historical truth, to understand how the United States got this 20-year war, with its ignominious end at the Kabul airport, and how the overarching framework of U.S. policy was responsible for creating it.