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Selected Articles: Remembering the Inception of the “War on Terrorism” – 16 Years of Afghan Crisis

9-10-2017 < Global Research 143 937 words
 

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Longest War in US History Turns 16 Today – Thousands Dead, No End in Sight & It’s Getting Worse


By Rachel Blevins, October 09, 2017


After the US began ‘spreading democracy’ there 16 years ago, Afghanistan has become more dangerous, more corrupt, and deadlier than ever.



Afghanistan: US Sponsored Al Qaeda “Freedom Fighters” Were Used to Railroad the Formation of a Secular Socialist Government


By Gaither Stewart, October 09, 2017


Neocons continues to be a promising alternative. No oil but lots of poppies and valuable land and location. Soviet Russia had dreamed of a Soviet-friendly progressive Afghanistan to protect and secure its vast Islamic regions extending from the Caucuses to the Far East. It failed to quell the ruly, untamable Afghans as Americans cannot still today. Though U.S.-supported Mujahideen could not defeat in battle the Soviet-supported government in Kabul in the 1980s, it at least convinced the Russians to abandon a lost mission and to leave, a lesson that the USA has continued to learn and unlearn for 16 years. On the flimsiest of excuses it too invaded indomitable Afghanistan in 2001 after 11 September … and is still there flailing at windmills, unable to completely abandon another lost war.



The Invasion of Afghanistan, October 7, 2001: Did 9/11 Justify the War in Afghanistan?


By David Ray Griffin, October 07, 2017


US political leaders have claimed, to be sure, that the UN did authorize the US attack on Afghanistan. This claim, originally made by the Bush-Cheney administration, was repeated by President Obama in his West Point speech of December 1, 2009, in which he said: “The United Nations Security Council endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks,” so US troops went to Afghanistan “[u]nder the banner of . . .  international legitimacy.”



US to Plunder Afghanistan’s Mineral Riches


By Stephen Lendman, September 24, 2017


Endless US aggression in Afghanistan has nothing to do with combating terrorism (America supports it), everything to do with controlling the country, using it for oil and gas pipelines, part of encircling Russia and China with US military bases, and plundering vast Afghan mineral riches – likely worth trillions of dollars, a prize corporate predators covet.



The People of Afghanistan Have Had Truly Enough of Western Imperialist Barbarism


By Andre Vltchek and Alessandro Bianchi, September 12, 2017


The US alone claims that it has managed to spend, since the invasion in 2001, between 750 billion and 1.2 trillion dollars. That’s huge, an astronomical amount, even bigger than the entire Marshall Plan after WWII (adjusted to today’s dollar)! But has it been spent to help the Afghan people? Of course not! It has gone mainly into corrupting of ‘elites’ and their offspring, into the military, into the salaries of foreign contractors. Huge military bases were built; some were at some point decommissioned, others were moved somewhere else. Airports were constructed – all of them military ones. Private Western security firms are having a ball. I once calculated that if all that money were to be equally divided between all Afghans, the country would have had a much higher income per capita than relatively affluent Malaysia, for 16 consecutive years!



The Spoils of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade


By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 22, 2017


The following article first published in May 2005 provides a background on the history of the Afghan opium trade which continues to this date to be protected by US-NATO occupation forces on behalf of powerful financial  interests.



In Afghanistan, Civilian Casualties Happen by Design, Not by Accident


By Masud Wadan, May 20, 2017


Afghanistan’s death toll from the US-led war is placed at 100,000 people. This startling figure sparks the speculation that the US and allies were just watching the people dying over this period. The US-based Brown University’s “Costs of War” study finds that at least 100,000 civilians have lost their lives to the war between 2001 through 2014.



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