Tag: afghanistan

U.S. officials provided Taliban with names of Americans, Afghan allies to evacuate

U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.

The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.

Since the fall of Kabul in mid-August, nearly 100,000 people have been evacuated, most of whom had to pass through the Taliban’s many checkpoints. But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials.

“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”

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Pentagon posts dog pics on Instagram while bombs explode at Kabul airport and Afghanistan disaster continues

At least two bomb blasts and gunfire erupted around the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday, resulting in “a number of” U.S. troop deaths and injuries. Amid that chaos, the Pentagon’s Instagram account carried on posting pictures of dogs in celebration of National Dog Day.

The Department of Defense Instagram account posted seven different photos of dogs on Thursday morning, around the same time Pentagon spokesman John Kirby was publicly confirming the first explosion outside the Kabul Airport.

Up to 13 people were reportedly killed in the bomb blasts outside the Kabul airport, while others were reported injured. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby confirmed that “a number of U.S. service members” were both killed and injured in the attack.

CNN contributor Frida Ghitis tweeted that four or more U.S. service members had been wounded or killed in the attack, according to a State Department official. Other media outlets said four U.S. Marines were killed.

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“War Is a Racket”: The US War in Afghanistan Validates General Smedley Butler

“I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” – Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940) in his book “War is a Racket” (1935).

The ending of the 20-year-war in Afghanistan, the longest ever engagement in a single conflict by the United States armed forces, has been variously described as a “catastrophe”, a “disaster” and a “debacle”. Yet this national failure from which parallels have been drawn with the Vietnam War has not had the same ring of misfortune for some.

Indeed, long before the recent scenes of calamity and collapse in Kabul brought home with resounding finality the futility of a supposed nation-building exercise, the profit-motive for the initial US invasion and the preservation of an enduring occupation was an open secret to anyone who bothered to embark on the slightest inquiry.

The gravy train of American defence spending was in full effect, facilitated by the tentacles of what US President Dwight D. Eisenhower prophesied would become the Military Industrial Complex. For the last two decades have witnessed what has been described as a “wealth transfer from US taxpayers to military contractors”.  But the war, apart from confirming Afghanistan’s reputation as the “Graveyard of Empires”, also validates the phrase coined by US Major General Smedley Butler that war is a racket.

The blame game currently being played out in the United States media by the political class risks obscuring one fundamental issue: the centrality of money and the profit motive in the waging of America’s two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.

The invasion of that country had been planned well in advance of the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the event which provided the impetus for mounting a military response including the country’s occupation. The United States has long coveted gaining access to the mineral and oil rich Caspian region and Central Asia, and the coming to power of the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban movement was not seen at the time by US policy makers as an impenetrable obstacle.

As the French writers Jean-Charles Briscard and Guillaume Dasquie wrote in their book Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden, which was published in 2002, the American government had been prepared to accept Taliban rule on condition that they agreed to the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia.

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Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden Says It’s a “Good Idea” to Drop Off Unvaccinated Trump Supporters in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan

Former CIA Director General Michael Hayden on Sunday said it’s a “good idea” to send unvaccinated Trump supporters to Talban-controlled Afghanistan.

“Can we send the MAGA wearing unvaxxed to Afghanistan, no use sending that plane back empty?” a twitter user tweeted to Hayden.

“Good idea” Hayden replied.

Michael Hayden routinely lashed out at Trump over the last few years because Trump worked on reversing the precedents Hayden created as CIA Director.

Trump wanted to bring back accountability for abuses of power among CIA leadership.

Hayden was an Air Force General and yet for the first time in US military history a senior US Air Force colonel was investigated, indicted and convicted by Italy for a crime of kidnapping that had been authorized at the senior most levels of the CIA and the NSC. The US refused to assert a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), a standard procedure when any military officer is in trouble for even drunken behavior.

According to former CIA agent Sabrina De Sousa, also under General Hayden, another precedent that has direct impact on emboldening the CIA into using senior foreign intelligence surrogates in covert operations – then imposing state secrets to protect them – while sacrificing the rank and file.

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Antony Blinken offers bizarre answer when asked if Biden does ‘not know what’s going on’ in Afghanistan

Secretary of State Antony Blinken provided a bizarre answer Sunday when confronted by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace about President Joe Biden’s level of knowledge about the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan.

Wallace began the interview by questioning Blinken over several statements that Biden has made about the Afghanistan crisis that were later contradicted by his own officials or proved wrong.

Among the topics that Biden got “flat wrong,” Wallace asked Blinken about Biden’s assertion of Americans being able to safely travel to the Kabul airport for evacuation, Biden’s claim that Al Qaeda is not inside Afghanistan, and Biden’s claim that U.S. allies are not questioning American “credibility.” The truth is that Americans cannot travel safel to the Kabul airport, Al Qaeda is operating in Afghanistan, and many U.S. allies are questioning the Biden administration in the wake of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.

“Mr. Secretary, does the president not know what’s going on?” Wallace asked Blinken.

However, instead of addressing Biden’s cognizance, Blinken talked about the “emotional” nature of the crisis.

“This is an incredibly emotional time for many of us, and including allies and partners who have been shoulder-to-shoulder with us in Afghanistan for 20 years at high cost to themselves as well as to us,” Blinken said.

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Bush-Era War Criminals Are Louder Than Ever Because They’ve Lost The Argument

After the US troop withdrawal established conclusively that the Afghan “government” they’d spent twenty years pretending to nation build with was essentially a work of fiction, thus proving to the world that they’ve been lying to us this entire time about the facts on the ground in Afghanistan, you might expect those who helped pave the way for that disastrous occupation to be very quiet at this point in history.

But, far from being silent and slithering under a rock to wait for the sweet embrace of death, these creatures have instead been loudly and shamelessly outspoken.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has posted a lengthy essay by the former Prime Minister who led the United Kingdom into two of the most unconscionable military interventions in living memory. Blair criticizes the withdrawal as having been done out of “obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’,” bloviating about “Radical Islam,” and asking, “has the West lost its strategic will?”

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Ask not what the war cost the US, but who profited from the war

After twenty years and trillions flowing through the Pentagon’s war chest, the real winners were thousands of private military contractors that profited immensely.

The Taliban’s stunning takeover of Afghanistan in the aftermath of a bungling US departure has led many to conclude the war in Afghanistan ended in failure. But it is unlikely to be a view shared by many in the US military.

For them, the twenty-year-long conflict has been a massive success.

When discussing the politics of war, a central premise is often put forward: Cui bono? Who benefits? John Boyd, a former Air Force fighter pilot famously expounded on a theory where there was no contradiction between the military’s stated mission and disregard for combat success:

“People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy,” he said. “They are wrong. The Pentagon does have a strategy. It is ‘Don’t interrupt the money flow, add to it.’”

And add to it they did.

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US says Kabul evacuees don’t need COVID tests

Amid the chaos and confusion at the airport, the United States said it had taken at least one step to ease requirements for those seeking to leave: COVID-19 tests.

Although Afghanistan had been a hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic, the State Department said Thursday that evacuees are not required to get a negative COVID-19 result to travel.

“A blanket humanitarian waiver has been implemented for COVID testing for all persons the U.S. government is relocating from Afghanistan,” the department said.

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