adminGary Leupp
As a general rule, US wars are based on lies. Some of these are soon exposed; the lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda links used to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq were exposed (to anyone paying attention) within a few months, or at least by the end of 2003.
The lie that Spaniards mined the USS Maine in Havana Harbour in 1898, used to justify US war and the colonisation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii and the Philippines, was exposed much later.
The lies about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of 1964, used to justify the escalation of the Vietnam War, were only exposed in the 80s and 90s.
The Big Lie surrounding the US invasion of Afghanistan has not yet been adequately exposed and discussed. The lie was hinted at, rather than expressed outright.
The lie was that there was no distinction between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. “We make no distinction between terrorists and those who harbour them,” declared former US president George W Bush. This is the heart of the Bush Doctrine.
The point was to justify the overthrow of a regime by actively confusing distinctions, encouraging people to see the Taliban as actively in cahoots with al-Qaeda plots, hence enemies of America and “terrorists” by definition.
Most people in the US initially bought Barack Obama’s differentiation between the second Iraq War as “war of choice” and “strategic blunder” and the Afghan War as a “necessary war” to punish and crush al-Qaeda. (That’s what the polls suggested; they never, unfortunately, allowed those polled to describe either conflict as neither a necessary war nor a war of choice but as a “criminal war.”)
But now (or as of February, according to a Gallop poll) 49 percent of people in this country (US) consider the war beginning in 2001 as a “mistake,” while 48 percent disagree.
If there was once a consensus that Iraq was a mistake, but Afghanistan a good cause, there is a growing realization that there is no “good war,” or at least little likelihood that US troops will enter one on the right side anytime soon. Look at the splendid results of the US/NATO assault on Libya, and the ongoing agony of an Iraq wrecked by its encounter with would-be “liberators.”
Senator John McCain, who is not one to apologise for any war or acknowledge the lies behind them, recently called the five Taliban leaders released from Guantanamo “hard-core military jihadists who are responsible for 9/11.” This is patently false; there is no evidence that any of these men even knew what bin Laden was up to, or had any stake in or desire for attacks on the US.
Only if you believe that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are one, the distinctions between them unworthy of your attention, can you blithely assign responsibility for the attacks on the released men.
It needs to be repeated again and again: the Taliban is not al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is not the Taliban.
Al-Qaeda is an Islamist global terror outfit that wants to provoke and intensify conflict between the Muslim world and the West (and Israel).
It had bases in Afghanistan dating back to the 1980s, when Osama bin Laden was cooperating with the CIA to overthrow the pro-Soviet regime.
Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, having been expelled at US orders from Sudan; he was welcomed by anti-Taliban friends.
When the Taliban swept to power later that year, they allowed bin Laden to remain out of appreciation for his role in the mujahedeen efforts in the 1980s, and in accordance with the Pashtunwali code of hospitality.
They accepted funds and other assistance from al-Qaeda but neither steered the other. In all likelihood the regime of Mullah Omar knew nothing about an al-Qaeda attack on the US and subsequent US attack.
The Taliban is a xenophobic Pashtun-nationalist movement rising out of the disorder of the period from 1978 to 1996. It is dedicated to the implementation of Sharia law in Afghanistan, which it thinks the only way to maintain peace and order.
For better or worse, it has a broad social base, rooted in the traditional religiosity of the culture. (Of course the Taliban is not alone in implementing Sharia law. Saudi Arabia, once one of the Taliban regime’s major supporters—with Pakistan—also cuts off thieves’ hands and stones adulterers.
But are administrators of a system of draconian punishment, specified according to the Qur’an or to their interpretation it by God Himself, necessarily “terrorists”? Does the word retain any utility when applied so broadly?) Afghan-born US State Department official Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as ambassador to both Afghanistan (2003-5) and Iraq (2005-7) — a neo-con close to Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle — once welcomed the overthrow of the Northern Alliance regime and the ascension of the Taliban to power. — Trinicenter.com
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