Afghan war most certainly was nation building

In announcing that August 31st would mark the end of the U.S. Afghan war, President Biden said “We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build. It is the right and responsibility of the Afghan people alone”.

Not true. The Afghan war was nation building 1.0. The 911 attacks were carried out by 19 hijackers; 15 from Saudi Arabia, 2 from the UAE, and one each from Lebanon and Egypt. The ringleader was Osama bin Laden, also a Saudi, whose home country was the biggest supporter of Salafist jihadism, the ideological basis for terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

Saudi fingerprints were all over the 911 attacks, so much so the U.S. kept them from public view for years in their report on the attacks.

After 911 the U.S. had one job in Afghanistan, where much of the attack planning occurred: Kill them and get out.

That would have disrupted the U.S. war party’s true objective: remaking the entire Middle East as an American style sphere of influence. The real prize was Iran, a potential hegemon in the region viewed as an imminent and unacceptable threat to U.S. national interests.

The road to Iran started with Afghanistan, continuing on through Iraq and Syria, Iran’s neighbor an ally.

So Afghanistan, like Iraq seventeen months later, was marked for regime change to install a pro U.S. government. To do that the U.S. simply inflated the threat from an independent Afghanistan to justify an unnecessary war. Knocking off the Taliban government was so easy the U.S. was fooled into thinking we’d prevailed, allowing America to gin up a second senseless war in Iraq.

Nineteen years and nine months after a murderous and needless attack against the people of Afghanistan, which killed tens of thousands and wounded or made refugees of millions, the U.S. is calling it quits. Biden puts the best spin possible on our exit, saying he won’t send a third generation of Americans to fight a war with no different outcome than achieved presently.

A truer reason for leaving would better serve history. ‘The Afghan war was unnecessary, failed, and must be ended now’.