The U.S. is now negotiating with the Taliban to return the nation to some kind of hybrid administration that gives a significant amount of power to our former arch-foes. The current government of Afghanistan is not invited to these talks. Can there be a more anxious government in the world right now than the government of Afghanistan?
In other words, after almost 20 years of war and the loss of thousands of lives, we are going to restore things to exactly the way they were when we started.
The U.S. has lost this war. It will never publicly admit it, but it has lost the war in Afghanistan and it is finally going to leave, but not before adding insult to injury. The Taliban has no interest in a pluralistic, representative government. They have no interest in the rights of girls and women to an education or any other choice. Once the U.S. is gone, they will extract revenge on all who opposed them, including the thousands of Afghani volunteers who joined the police forces– at great risk– for $300 U.S. a month. They will almost certainly drive out their coalition partners and establish a repressive Islamic regime, like the one they had before the U.S. invaded, and after they drove out the Soviets.
Will anybody responsible for this disaster ever be held to account? The George W. Bush Presidential Library still stands. Dick Cheney’s daughter sits in Congress. Rumsveld? Wolfowitz? Richard Perle? Probably serving on boards of large corporations for hugh sums of money?
The dead? They remain dead and buried and mourned by their families and loved ones who think Colin Kaepernick should just go and piss off. We are patriotic. We invite you to use us. We invite you to offer our bodies as a sacrifice to your political career. They will name a freeway after you. They will bury our fathers, brothers, sons, daughters, wives, and sisters under the freeway.