Hold the US Accountable for US War Crimes in Afghanistan

Speech by Anti-War Committee member Wyatt Miller on August 18, 2021

The situation in Afghanistan reveals US foreign policy at its worst: Twenty years of occupation, complete with drone strikes, illegal renditions, CIA-trained death squads, and hundreds of thousands dead. Then, with the troops finally leaving, we see the flipside of US imperialism: inhuman callousness toward refugees and asylum seekers, collective punishment and treating an entire nation as pawns in a geopolitical game. 

The Anti-War Committee has always stood against the War in Afghanistan. We were opposed to sending the troops in the first place. 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 neither do we support the US leaving a trail of destruction in its wake with no accountability. The US can’t just wipe its hands of Afghanistan and pretend like the last twenty years never happened.

We we can’t lose sight of the war criminals who started these wars in the first place: George Bush. Dick Cheney. Donald Rumsfeld, who managed to die before he could be brought to justice. Barack Obama, for institutionalizing the war and radically ramping up the drone strike campaign. Donald Trump, for using Afghanistan as a stage for his disgusting “mother of all bombs” strongman antics.

We also can’t lose sight of the fight to close Guantanamo Bay prison, where many Afghan citizens continue to be held indefinitely and subjected to torture.

And here in the US we have a responsibility to fight for a system that can actually play a constructive role in the world. Because Afghanistan shows us that currently, the US is structurally incapable of doing anything but harm. It does harm when it invades, it does harm when it occupies, and it even manages to do harm when it packs up and leaves, defeated. It’s not only the disgraceful scenes at Kabul airport. 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.

None of this will help Afghanistan. If anything the US owes Afghanistan reparations for what it’s done. But at the heart of it all is sovereignty and self-determination, two things the US needs 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.

Unfortunately, the military-industrial complex and the multinational corporations aren’t going to teach it that lesson. That’s why we have to, in the streets. And we have to continue to fight for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, and against any future wars or occupations to stop this type of catastrophe from ever happening again.