8/23/21 Statement on US Occupation of Afghanistan

In recent days the world has seen the Taliban take total control of Afghanistan’s government after the swift defeat of Afghan state forces and U.S. withdrawal from the country. The Anti-War Committee recognizes this major defeat to the US war machine and their occupation of Afghanistan, which was long overdue after 20 years of death, chaos, and destruction. It is past time that the Afghan people begin to pave their own path forward without American meddling, and it’s past time that the trillions of American taxpayer dollars be used for education, jobs, infrastructure, and healthcare here instead of deadly wars of imperialist conquest overseas.

The Anti-War Committee has always stood against the War in Afghanistan. We were opposed to sending the troops in the first place when the 9/11 attacks were used as an excuse to start an imperialist war. We were opposed to the “surge.” We wanted troops out, and no private contractors or covert mercenaries in their place. We still support that, and we oppose calls for redeployment. But the Anti-War Committee also recognizes that the chaos that the United States’ carelessly-executed, helter-skelter withdrawal from Afghanistan has caused has created terrible fear, instability, and uncertainty for ordinary Afghans. The speed and carelessness of the U.S. retreat demonstrates that the U.S. was never interested in helping the Afghan people; the U.S. has always treated Afghanistan as a pawn in a geopolitical game. The moment that Biden decided to admit the U.S. lost this war, whatever remained of the humanitarian facade crumbled and the U.S.’s lack of concern for anyone in Afghanistan became blindingly obvious.

As a result of the retreat from Afghanistan and the fall of the U.S.-trained Afghan military, chaotic scenes have erupted at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Seven Afghans have died in attempts to escape by hanging on to U.S. aircraft leaving the country. There has also been overwhelming pushback from both Democrats and Republicans who have spent decades blindly promoting the myth that continuing to occupy Afghanistan is somehow safer for Afghans. Mainstream U.S. and international media outlets have added to the hysteria, calling for more US involvement, primarily because of fears about the Taliban’s treatment of women and children. This is nothing new.

To those people, we ask: after $2 trillion dollars, 20 years, 150,000 Afghans murdered and millions more injured and traumatized, as well as thousands of Americans killed and wounded — how many more poor people are you willing to kill to impose your vision on a country on the other side of the world? When are you personally going to enlist? Further, the US media ignores the decades that Afghan women have spent working for their own rights on their own terms, and reinforces the idea that Arab men are congenitally predisposed towards violence and misogyny. The notion that Afghan women are only safe when they are “protected” by American soldiers is, frankly, racist, not to mention demonstrably untrue.

For years the United States has used this concept of “humanitarian bombing” to attempt to justify all the death and destruction of its occupations, but the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has never attempted to understand anything about the humanitarian issues faced by women and children in Afghanistan or the decades of work by Afghan women’s movement. The Afghan women that the U.S. State Department and international media now pretend to care about have again and again demanded peace, as has the majority of the Afghan population across all lines of identity. There have been countless cases of U.S. soldiers raping Afghan women. 80% of Afghans say they are terrified by the sight of US troops and occupation forces. The longer US troops were present in Afghanistan, the more people were traumatized, the more destruction was wreaked, the more the opiate production grew, etc.

The quick collapse of the US puppet government in Afghanistan should cause introspection for Americans, especially those of us who call ourselves progressives. We hope that the narrative of US imperialism bringing “progressive democracy” or “humanitarian aid” through military invasion dies now. The days of invading countries, declaring brand-new, U.S.-backed, corrupt governments to be the legitimate rulers and anyone who does not agree to be “insurgents” should’ve been over after Vietnam. But now, especially now, we should see this as what it is: a pay-day for the warlords of the American military-industrial complex and a death sentence for ordinary people.

So while some will critique Biden for a sloppy withdrawal, the Anti-War Committee stands by the 20-year-overdue need for the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan, after Obama and Trump both failed to fulfill promises to do so. We join the Afghan diaspora in calling for the U.S to help with refugee resettlement and to rebuild Afghanistan. The U.S. owes Afghanistan reparations for what it’s done. We cannot allow the United States to wipe its hands of Afghanistan and pretend like this war never happened. But at the heart of it all is national sovereignty and self-determination, two things the U.S. will need to learn how to respect and value before it will ever be able to engage with the world as anything other than a bully and a predator. The US is already freezing Afghanistan’s assets held in foreign banks, and Washington hawks are talking about sanctions. Some are even drooling at the prospect of exploiting and weaponizing Afghanistan’s instability against other US adversaries like Iran. The U.S. will not learn its lesson unless Americans stand up and fight back. We demand withdrawal from all countries the U.S. currently occupies with military forces, such as Iraq and Syria. We also demand an end to the sanctions strangling and killing the poorest people in 39 countries around the world.