{"id":16644,"date":"2021-11-05T09:19:13","date_gmt":"2021-11-05T13:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=16644"},"modified":"2021-11-05T09:56:31","modified_gmt":"2021-11-05T13:56:31","slug":"bitter-belated-afghan-vindication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/05\/bitter-belated-afghan-vindication\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitter Belated Afghan Vindication"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Bitter Belated Afghan Vindication\"\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan ended with a bang in August as a terrorist attack killed a dozen Marines at the Kabul airport. For almost 20 years, The Future of Freedom Foundation has been one of the few organizations that stalwartly criticized the Afghanistan war. FFF President Jacob Hornberger helped set the gold standard for uncompromising honesty about the folly of U.S. intervention.No Washington pundit, politician, or \u201cexpert\u201d who vouched for the success of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan should ever be trusted again.<\/span>
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It all began with Bush<\/b><\/h2>\n

I wrote numerous articles for FFF on the Afghan war. My first article, \u201cDrug Laws: Terrorists Best Friends,\u201d in February 2002, attacked the Bush administration for perpetuating the war on drugs while promising to rid the world of terror. That article noted:<\/p>\n

Afghanistan produces about 70 percent of the world\u2019s opium. Revenue from opium production helped finance both the Taliban government (until production was banned) and the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Because narcotics are illegal, they tend to attract violent, ruthless people and organizations to carry out their production and marketing. The only reason that opium is more profitable for terrorists than beer is that governments criminalize the possession and distribution of opium while tolerating the possession and distribution of beer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As soon as the U.S. military toppled the Taliban, opium production skyrocketed. The Washington Post <\/i>reported in late December 2001 that \u201ctop Bush administration officials are now advocating that the U.S. government use tax dollars to buy opium directly from the farmers, a one-time buy-back to help farmers make the transition to other crops.\u201d But unless the U.S. government could drive the price of wheat to $500 a bushel, crop substitution made no sense for Afghan farmers.<\/p>\n

At the time, President Bush was receiving glowing press coverage each time he announced the seizure and shutdown of Muslim charities accused of assisting terrorists. President Bush declared that one dime funnelled into a terrorist activity was one dime too much. Terrorists and the Taliban quickly began massively profiting from the revival of opium growing in Afghanistan. My article concluded, \u201cUnless President Bush can guarantee that none of the profits from illicit drugs will seep back into terrorist organizations, he should do the honorable thing and end the war on drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s debacle in Afghanistan was overshadowed by his Iraq war catastrophe for most of his presidency. In my 2004 book The Bush Betrayal<\/i> (St. Martin\u2019s Press), I included a chapter on \u201cAfghan Absurdities,\u201d recounting some of the propaganda scams that followed the U.S. invasion. \u201cGeorge W. Bush is the first president of the United States to attack and overthrow a foreign regime because of its elementary school policies. Actually, this was not the justification for the war against the Taliban at the time U.S. troops charged in. But in the months after the war, Bush constantly contorted the war into a tale that would thrill soccer moms and political illiterates\u201d by boasting of rising school attendance numbers by girls.<\/p>\n

Bush exploited the Afghan war to boost his 2004 reelection campaign, claiming that \u201cAfghanistan has now got a constitution which talks about freedom of religion and talks about women\u2019s rights\u2026. Democracy is flourishing.\u201d Bush neglected to mention that U.S. government officials openly bribed the attendees of the Afghan constitutional convention to sway them to include flowery language about women\u2019s rights. President Hamid Karzai, the U.S. government\u2019s hand-picked ruler, later approved a law entitling husbands to starve their wives to death if they denied them sex.<\/p>\n

The Bush Betrayal<\/i> scoffed at how Bush contorted the \u201cvictory over the Taliban to make himself appear as not only a great military conqueror but also a savior of part of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like a knight in Mark Twain\u2019s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\u2019s Court,<\/i> Bush continually inflates the size of the dragons he supposedly slayed. In a speech in Louisville, Kentucky, on September 2, 2002, Bush bragged, \u201cWe went in to liberate people from the clutches of the most barbaric regime in history.\u201d But the Taliban\u2019s grisly record did not compare with the ravages of Hitler\u2019s Germany, Stalin\u2019s Russia, or Mao\u2019s China.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 2007, I told the New York Times<\/i> that Bush appointing a \u201cwar czar\u201d for Afghanistan was \u201cthe same old scam that politicians have used for a long time whenever there is a failing policy.\u201d At that point, details were leaking about the torture regime at the U.S. government\u2019s Bagram Air Force Base, where innocent detainees had been beaten to death. The Los Angeles Times<\/i> reported allegations that Afghan soldiers detained by the U.S. government had suffered \u201crepeated beatings, immersion in cold water, electric shocks, being hung upside down and toenails being torn off.\u201d A Senate Intelligence Committee report later revealed that detainees at a CIA site north of Kabul \u201cwere kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste. Lack of heat at the facility likely contributed to the death of a detainee.\u201d Detainees were \u201cwalked around naked or were shackled with their hands above their heads for extended periods of time. Other times, the detainees \u2026 were subjected to what was described as a \u2018rough takedown,\u2019 in which approximately five CIA officers would scream at a detainee, drag him outside of his cell, cut his clothes off, and secure him with Mylar tape. The detainee would then be hooded and dragged up and down a long corridor while being slapped and punched.\u201d The CIA torture center was not classified as part of the billion dollars that the U.S. government spent in Afghanistan to help promote \u201cthe rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the start of the Obama administration, I wrote a piece for FFF headlined, \u201cEight Years of Big Lies on Afghanistan.\u201d That piece scoffed at Bush\u2019s \u201cbragging about having given \u2018freedom and democracy\u2019 to 25 million Afghans,\u201d a charade that \u201chelped Bush preen as the conqueror of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama was Bush 2.0<\/b><\/h2>\n

In 2009, the Obama administration admitted that the U.S. military intervention had effectively failed. Obama\u2019s solution: send another hundred thousand more U.S. troops to turn that nation into a democracy and a paradise for women\u2019s rights. My article noted, \u201cFor 8 years, the American people have been fed one big lie after another regarding Afghanistan,\u201d including \u201cfour-star howlers\u201d such as \u201cclaims that the U.S. is speedily building up the Afghan army.\u201d That article concluded:<\/p>\n

There is no reason to expect the U.S. government to ever become trustworthy on Afghanistan. At best, Washington will rotate its lies, the same way it rotates the National Guard units sent to the Afghan badlands. Americans need to recognize that, once their government commences warring, truth will be target number one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The following year, FFF published a piece of mine sardonically titled, \u201cBringing Freedom and Prosperity to Afghanistan.\u201d The flood of U.S. aid had helped turn Afghanistan into the second most corrupt nation on Earth. According to Transparency International, the only place in the world that was more corrupt was Somalia \u2014 a nation best known for its pirates.<\/p>\n

U.S. government handouts have enabled the Afghan government to increase repression of the Afghan people. The U.S. government has poured billions of dollars into building up the Afghan army. But Afghan soldiers are often a pox on their countrymen who looted and raped their fellow citizens. Unfortunately, Afghans were receiving the same type of freedom that Bush created for Americans. The Afghan government created a National Security Court to try terrorist cases and other cases but did not disclose any details on how the court would actually function [similar to the trials at Guantanamo]. The new court provided the appearance of a judiciary while permitting maximum political manipulation of charges and verdicts. The Karzai government also expanded the number of judges on the Afghan Supreme Court from nine to 137. Even Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s 1937 scheme to pack the U.S. Supreme Court was timid in comparison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To sanctify U.S. intervention, the Obama administration doubled down on pretending that Afghanistan had a democratic government. My article noted:<\/p>\n

The election last summer in Afghanistan was one of the most corrupt in the world since the fall of the Soviet bloc. But after it became clear that Karzai was not going to budge from power, the Obama administration decided to treat him as if had won fair and square. That was the same folly that the Johnson administration fell into regarding its South Vietnamese lackeys in 1967. But in the same way that the Vietnamese people were not fooled, the Afghan people are increasingly bitter about both Karzai\u2019s abuses and the fact that the United States is sanctioning their oppressor.<\/p>\n

There will be no happy ending to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. By vesting himself in one of Bush\u2019s greatest follies, Obama is destroying his credibility both with Americans and with the world. Who will be the last American soldier to die so that the U.S. president can continue denying his Afghan follies?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even though the CIA warned Obama that a troop surge would fail, he sent another hundred thousand Americans to Afghanistan. The following year, FFF published my piece titled, \u201cDying to Corrupt Afghanistan<\/a>.\u201d My article noted:<\/p>\n

American soldiers are dying so that Afghan politicians can continue looting U.S. tax dollars. Foreign aid has long been notorious for creating kleptocracies \u2014 governments of thieves. The $50+ billion foreign aid that the United States has dumped on Afghanistan over the past decade is a textbook case of how foreign handouts drag a nation down.<\/p>\n

Corruption has been a huge issue ever since the United States installed a puppet government in Afghanistan. One Afghan truck driver bitterly told a reporter, \u201cEvery man in the government is his own king.\u201d A United Nations study reported that 60 percent of Afghans identified corruption as the nation\u2019s biggest problem \u2014 even worse than the war with the Taliban. The report estimated that Afghans must pay more than $2 billion in bribes to government officials and others each year \u2014 equivalent to almost a quarter of the country\u2019s gross domestic product. That would be akin to Americans\u2019 paying more than $3 trillion in bribes each year.<\/p>\n

In October 2009, when the U.S. government was still purportedly debating whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported that \u201cone U.S. military official said discussions within the Obama administration are ongoing about whether it is even possible to \u2018surge\u2019 enough troops to overcome the corruption.\u201d The fact that the U.S. foreign aid spurred the corruption was left out of that particular discussion.<\/p>\n

The ultimate purpose of foreign aid is to buy allegiance and submission abroad. For politicians, buying allegiance isn\u2019t corrupt \u2014 it is simply politics. There is no bureaucratic cure for the perverse incentives created by flooding foreign nations with U.S. tax dollars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The sins of foreign aid<\/b><\/h2>\n

From 2001 onwards, American politicians talked as if they were bringing civilization and decency to a hopelessly backward nation. In August 2017, when he announced he was sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, President Trump declared, \u201cIn every generation, we have faced down evil, and we have always prevailed.\u201d<\/p>\n

But such strutting could not survive a close examination of the sordid details of U.S. intervention. In 2018, FFF published my piece, \u201cYour Tax Dollars Bankroll Afghan Child-Molesters.\u201d By that point, the United States had spent more than $70 billion financing the Afghan military and police. Congress passed a law prohibiting the Pentagon from bankrolling any foreign military units if there is \u201ccredible information that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.\u201d But congressional appropriations bills contained loopholes that specified that funds for Afghan Security Forces \u201cshall be available to the Secretary of Defense, notwithstanding any other provision of the law.\u201d This clause, which is referred to by Pentagon policymakers as the \u201cnotwithstanding authority,\u201d removed all legal and moral limits on U.S. government spending in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Afghan military commanders and police routinely kidnapped young boys and used them as sex slaves \u2014 a practice known as bacha bazi \u2014 boy play. After the Taliban first took control of Afghanistan in 1996, bacha bazi was punished with a death penalty, and the abuse became far less pervasive. But that prohibition ended after the U.S. invasion toppled the Taliban. American troops complained of seeing boys chained to beds and hearing their screams at night as they were assaulted. Army captain Dan Quinn complained that \u201cwe were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did \u2014 that was something village elders voiced to me.\u2019\u2019 Aaron MacLean, who served in Afghanistan with the Marines, observed that the \u201cTaliban have long used reports of rapes committed by government agents as a recruiting tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pentagon ignored U.S.-subsidized rapings until a 2015 New York Times<\/i> expos\u00e9 of American soldiers\u2019 being punished for protesting atrocities against boys. The Times <\/i>reported that U.S. troops were confounded that \u201cinstead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages \u2014 and doing little when they began abusing children.\u201d Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) complained to the Pentagon, \u201cIt is bad enough if the Pentagon is telling our soldiers to ignore this type of barbaric and savage behavior, but it\u2019s even worse if we are punishing those who try to stop it.\u201d\u00a0 As I wrote in a Hill article headlined, “Your Tax Dollars Fund Afghan Child Rape”:<\/p>\n

A subsequent Pentagon Inspector General revealed that some U.S. troops were \u201ctold that nothing could be done about child sexual abuse because of Afghanistan\u2019s status as a sovereign nation, that it was not a priority for the command, or that it was best to ignore the situation and to let the local police handle it.\u201d Regarding pedophilia, the Navy gave its members training that \u201cadvises readers to control and overcome any frustration caused by cultural differences that they may experience during their deployments,\u201d while Marines were told \u201cto be mentally prepared to encounter this attitude, and to \u2018move on,\u2019\u201d according to the report. A subsequent Inspector General report warned that \u201cthe full extent of child sexual assault committed by Afghan security forces may never be known.\u201d But part of the reason that the \u201cfull extent\u201d will never be known is that U.S. government agencies did not want to know.<\/p>\n

Americans would never tolerate paying federal funds for a notorious child-rape regime in Cincinnati or Omaha. But your tax dollars are underwriting similar sordid abuses in Kandahar and Kabul. Doctors, teachers, and social workers can be jailed for failing to report child abuse here at home. But, 6,000 miles away, U.S. troops risk their career for protesting pederasty.<\/p>\n

U.S. government interventions merely covered up evil which U.S. aid helped multiply. Americans have been encouraged to believe that U.S. foreign policy is on moral automatic pilot and that good things happen wherever the United States intervenes. But piety too easily obscures atrocities.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Americans finally recognize many of the lies that pervaded the success claims of the 20-year war in Afghanistan. The carnage was not \u201cgood intentions gone awry.\u201d Instead, it was a generation of politicians, government officials, and Washington \u201cexperts\u201d who reaped power and profits by perpetuating a quagmire that pointlessly killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers and an untold number of Afghans. No Washington pundit, politician, or \u201cexpert\u201d who vouched for the success of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan should ever be trusted again.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article was originally published in the November 2021 edition of<\/em> Future of Freedom<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitter Belated Afghan Vindication by James Bovard November 5, 2021 The 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan ended with a bang in August as a terrorist attack killed a dozen Marines at the Kabul airport. For almost 20 years, The Future of Freedom Foundation has been one of the few organizations that stalwartly criticized the Afghanistan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,3068,32,83,3067,574,82,202,952,137,462,27,283,38,3064,3066,513,1259,3065,115,75],"class_list":["post-16644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afghanistan","tag-bagram-air-force-base","tag-bush-betrayal","tag-corruption","tag-experts","tag-fff","tag-foreign-aid","tag-fraud","tag-future-of-freedom-foundation","tag-george-w-bush","tag-karzai","tag-lying","tag-mark-twain","tag-obama","tag-opium","tag-pundits","tag-rape","tag-sigar","tag-taliban","tag-united-nations","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\nBitter Belated Afghan Vindication - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"No Washington pundit, politician, or \u201cexpert\u201d who vouched for the success of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan should ever be trusted again.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/05\/bitter-belated-afghan-vindication\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bitter Belated Afghan Vindication - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"No Washington pundit, politician, or \u201cexpert\u201d who vouched for the success of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan should ever be trusted again.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/05\/bitter-belated-afghan-vindication\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-11-05T13:19:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-11-05T13:56:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/1024px-Kunar_river_Noorgal_district_in_Afghanistans_Konar_province-1920x600_c.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@jimbovard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"12 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2021\\\/11\\\/05\\\/bitter-belated-afghan-vindication\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2021\\\/11\\\/05\\\/bitter-belated-afghan-vindication\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jim\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f\"},\"headline\":\"Bitter Belated Afghan Vindication\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-11-05T13:19:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-11-05T13:56:31+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2021\\\/11\\\/05\\\/bitter-belated-afghan-vindication\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2635,\"commentCount\":1,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2021\\\/11\\\/05\\\/bitter-belated-afghan-vindication\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2021\\\/11\\\/1024px-Kunar_river_Noorgal_district_in_Afghanistans_Konar_province-1920x600_c.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Afghanistan\",\"Bagram Air Force Base\",\"Bush Betrayal\",\"corruption\",\"experts\",\"FFF\",\"foreign aid\",\"fraud\",\"Future of Freedom Foundation\",\"George W. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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