David Cormack
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How to end corporate imperialism?
🕑 Added 2021-08-21 02:17:17 +0000 UTCRecently the US pulled the bulk of its military personnel out of Afghanistan. Things did not go well. Within like ... 2 days I think ... the Taliban, who it seemed have the patience of saints, took control of Kabul and with it the country as a whole.
Pre-pull out, Biden dismissed any claims that the Taliban would take the country in a quick period of time, now he's rightfully being pilloried for that. However he's also made comments subsequent to the pull-out saying that the war in Afghanistan wasn't something he was prepared to pass on to a fifth President.
Fifth. President.
That is nuts to me. The US invaded Afghanistan in October, 2001. Nearly 20 years ago. There have been soldiers from the US who served in Afghanistan, came home, had children and then those children went and fought in Afghanistan.
So yes, it's utterly nuts that the US still had soldiers there. But then at the same time is it incumbent on an invading force to ensure that you improve the country before you leave; at the very least don't let the same "bad guys" take over immediately so that the last 20 years weren't for nothing.
Why did the US even invade Afghanistan in the first place? We were told that it was to find Bin Laden who the Taliban refused to rule out was hiding in the caves of Afghanistan. This was after 9/11.
Bin Laden wasn't found in Afghanistan. He was found and executed in Pakistan in 2011. Ten years ago. That means there have been US soldiers in Afghanistan 10 years after finding and executing the reason for invading, in anothe rcountry.
It's certainly kept the industrial military complex going. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, these are just three of the countries that have made billions out of the Afghanistan invasion. In fact Raytheon has done super well with one of its former directors, Lloyd Austin, now the Secretary of Defence.
Cool country.
If you look back at the United States' history of overthrowing governments, invasions, etc, the trend emerges that it's done to boost, or protect, corporate interests. It's not defence of people, it's defence of capitalism.
The communism scare, and Dulles' domino theory were all about protecting corporatism. All the democratically elected leftist governments overthrown, more corporatism. WWI and II may be the only exceptions to this rule since Teddy Roosevelt was president.
So what should the United States do? Should they stay and help the people - particularly the women and children - of Afghanistan, who are now going to get a much shitter deal under the Taliban? I suppose that depends on your appetite for the US being the world police. Given their history, I'm not a fan of a country being the world police when it only polices corporate interests. But then I don't know what to do about the people now under a repressive regime.
I guess it's true of all repressive regimes. The House of Saud still continues to violate human rights everywhere it turns but the US - and consequently nearly everyone else - turns a blind eye because it's an "ally" of the US. There would be so many countries that fit this definition.
I suppose this is a very roundabout and long way of saying not much. But I wanted to get it down.
Comments
NinjaKitty
The US … eeech!
Ben
For Afghanistan it goes way back before 9/11. Russian invasion, US backing the Mujahideen (essentially part of the Taliban) in fact right back to British colonialism. One of many sadly and how do you fix it? It’s pretty obvious from the past 20 years that you can’t force democracy
