old abandoned building in Buzet, Croatia
After the deaths of over 100,000 people, costing the US over $2 trillion, America’s two decade “war on terror” has resolved little and achieved virtually nothing. Fighting for the freedom of people who refuse to fight for themselves has never been a fruitful proposition.
In Afghanistan, the US has never enjoyed popular support for its “nation-building” mission and the Afghan people seem more desirous of Islamic extremist rule than anything approaching freedom. Contrary to the claims of politicians, freedom isn’t sought universally.
As the US has exited the scene, the Afghanistan government is crumbling and the Taliban are marching in, seizing the very weapons meant to fight against them. Regardless of peace talks, it is probable the Taliban will be back in Kabul, back in charge, in a matters of weeks or months. The reset to the previous status-quo may even see a rebirth of Afghanistan as the nexus and safe-haven for Islamic terrorism.
But aside from the effort to punish Al Qaeda for the attack on 911, the last almost 20 years fighting a “war on terror” have caused some 15,000 US deaths (military and contractors), over 50,000 were injured, but tens of thousands more suffer psychological trauma, such as PTSD, from the failed conflicts. The damage to American prestige and our economy had been immense.
Another casualty has been civil liberty, thanks to The Patriot Act, by which illegal spying Americans and serious undermining of our values for freedom has occurred. Presently, as the failure of a “war on terror” is being whitewashed, the full power of apparatus erected to fight that war is being turned on Americans at home by a Biden administration who deems anyone who is woke to their authoritarianism as a potential domestic terrorist.
As the Taliban marches toward Kabul in US vehicles, they are bound to make ISIS look trifling and soon enough some US politicians looking to burnish their street cred will begin banging the drums of “nation building” again in Afghanistan.
