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August 19th<\/sup> 2021<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s hard not to feel horror at the events this week in Afghanistan. The awful scenes of panicking Afghanis clinging to the side of a C-19 as it took off and falling to their deaths would shake anyone up. Rachel Maddow was reduced to tears recounting the incredible tale of the efforts to get a translator (one of thousands) out of the country with his family. The only other time that happened was when the story broke of what the Trump administration was doing to refugee children. <\/span><\/p>\n But Afghanistan was always going to end this way. It didn\u2019t matter if it was now, or 2020, or 2002. The end of the American occupation of Afghanistan was always going to be bloody and painful, because that\u2019s how occupations almost always end. That\u2019s why they are against international law.<\/span><\/p>\n And make no mistake\u2014this was never \u201ca war in Afghanistan\u201d as people who should know better keep calling it. It was an occupation.<\/span><\/p>\n Remember how it began? Nine Eleven had just happened, and the Bush administration decided that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind it. Osama was hiding in Afghanistan (and he probably was) with the connivance of the Taliban government (probably not the case). So the US sent troops into Afghanistan to find and arrest him. <\/span><\/p>\n Even I didn\u2019t have any problem with that. ObL was an obvious suspect because of his role in the previous attack on the Twin Towers, and I hated and despised the Taliban, cruel, corrupt and often insane, like all authoritarian religious regimes. If they were hiding Osama, then fuck them. Go in, get him, and get out.<\/span><\/p>\n Only it became obvious within weeks that Osama was long gone, flown the coop to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, two countries the US didn\u2019t invade searching for him. Instead, the US stayed in Afghanistan, setting up a puppet regime and pouring billions into the place. Supposedly the US was going to rebuild Afghanistan, new roads, new schools, new infrastructure, all the shit the government wasn\u2019t doing in America. In reality, the money covered the costs of occupying the country, billions in bribes to the local warlords not to cause trouble, and maybe 5% which actually went to \u201crebuilding\u201d. All told, some two trillion dollars got poured down a rat hole, nearly all of it wasted and in the pockets of people we didn\u2019t want to help. <\/span><\/p>\n The US paid people to be their friends there, and that went about as well as paying people to be your friend usually goes. And Bush and Obama didn\u2019t have a clue how to end it, especially since the neo-liberals who engineered the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq were ready to pounce, and declare any administration willing to pull out \u201csoft on terrorism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The US occupied Iraq on the insanely stupid excuse that Saddam Hussein, mortal enemy to the Taliban and Iran, was secretly helping them. They managed to end that one by surrendering well in advance and letting the Iraqis choose their own government first. So the people didn\u2019t have to overthrow a puppet regime. <\/span><\/p>\n Remember \u201cVietnamization\u201d? Nixon figured, correctly, that if they let the Vietnamese people choose their government, there would be less unrest when the Americans left. Only the people in North Vietnam didn\u2019t get to vote, and so they considered the Saigon government a puppet regime. Weeks later, it was gone, and Saigon was now Ho Chi Minh City. <\/span><\/p>\n In Iraq, they surrendered to the people they invaded Iraq to rid the country of first, and then left.<\/span><\/p>\n Trump actually tried to do something like this, releasing some five thousand political prisoners, including much of the new government in Kabul and a lot of warlords who didn\u2019t toe the line, in hopes that there wouldn\u2019t be a bloody dumping of the Vichy regime in Kabul when US troops were pulled out, originally slated for May 1st<\/sup> 2021. But the planned talks at Camp David never happened, and Biden had too much on his plate to take it up. So there remained a puppet regime in Kabul, which lasted nearly a week. <\/span><\/p>\n The Taliban moved fast, and swept into power. But a lot of people hate and fear them, and not just American puppets and lackeys. As mentioned, they are a theocracy, the most vicious and hateful form of government known to man, and women and anyone who don\u2019t want strict adherence to Sharia Law (which would be most Muslims) have every reason to fear them. Expect Afghanistan to be a bloody mess for some time to come. <\/span><\/p>\n To Republicans who say this is Biden\u2019s fault: Fuck you. Bush began the occupation, and Trump set things up so it would end as badly as possible. For the human sewage who are shouting they don\u2019t want Biden dumping refugees on them from Afghanistan: double fuck you. Biden should offer to trade you and your family to the Taliban for every decent person and his family in Afghanistan who tried to help and now needs to get out. America is far better off with them and without you. <\/span><\/p>\n Still, the US is out of there, and the hemorrhaging of money has slowed. Maybe some of you will learn from this\u2014occupations are a waste of time and money and usually end with many people getting hurt. The only way an occupation will work is through centuries of attrition (the Norman invasion of England) or genocide (the Americas by Europe). As foreign policy, they never work and usually backfire. Don\u2019t do it.<\/span><\/p>\n I doubt it will work. The UK, the USSR and the US have both tried occupying Afghanistan and all left weaker and poorer for it. The USSR tried occupying eastern Europe. History is full of failed occupations, or ones that ended in mass murder and social destruction. <\/span><\/p>\n