Tariq Ali: Obama’s War
[Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written more than two dozen books on world history and politics, and seven novels (translated into over a dozen languages) as well as scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of New Left Review and lives in London.]
Afghanistan now is at a critical stage. And now I’m very glad to say that the London Review of Books, whose thirtieth anniversary we are commemorating, has over the years published myself and others on this subject, taking essentially a critical stance to this war because, as many of you will recall, it became fashionable all over the world, not just in the United States, to think of Iraq and Afghanistan as two very different wars. Which of course, on one level, they are. But I mean different moral values were placed on these wars by good-thinking people. The Iraq war was a bad war, which should never have happened; that is the view of large numbers of people in the United States today, and always was the view of an overwhelming majority of Europeans.
The Afghan war, on the other hand, was meant to be the good war. This was a war where people who attacked the United States on September 11th were based. And therefore they had to be sorted out; the government which gave them refuge had to be toppled and this could only be done militarily. I will just say as a small footnote here that the official 9/11 inquiry said that the Afghan government never formally refused to hand over these people; they just demanded to see the evidence, and said if the evidence was convincing of their involvement they would hand them over. I just say that because the commission of enquiry made a point of noting that.
Now, some of us argued at the time, myself included—of course, no one supported this crazed attack on the United States—what the motive of actually sending in an army to conquer Afghanistan was. If, as the former President said, the main aim was to sort out al Qaeda, sort out Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar, “dead or alive” in his unforgettable words—and, you know, if they were dead, that was that, if they were alive they would presumably be brought to the United States to stand trial for having ordered this attack… And I remember saying in an argument with one of the former president’s leading supporters at the Washington Post, Charles Krauthamer—in a debate that took place on Canadian television—that if this was the case, then it was a failure. Because this was a small terrorist organization which wasn’t going to hang around in Afghanistan for the United States Army to come capture it, but would flee and look for refuge in other parts of the world, most likely in the border badlands of Pakistan, but presumably elsewhere. So that would fail, and it did fail, because if you announce you’re invading a country to capture A, B, and C, A, B, and C don’t stay there. They move on.
So the country was captured without a struggle, in reality. Worth remembering that. There was no real struggle by any segment of Afghan society to resist the U.S./NATO occupation. Why? Because the key player in this war was Pakistan, which had armed the Taliban, which had sent the Taliban to take power and end a period of civil war. And there were large numbers of Pakistani soldiers, Pakistani Air Force, Pakistani military, Pakistani intelligence people, people in Afghanistan who essentially told the Taliban leaders, “Now is not the time to fight. Shave your beards and come back to Pakistan, or go. But do not resist, because you will all be killed.” From their point of view, it was very sane advice. And, more astonishingly, the Taliban leadership, which was divided, actually accepted that advice. So Kabul fell without a struggle. And for the first two years the resistance to the United States and its NATO allies was limited, episodic, and localized. What made it national? What made it national was the decision by the United States to impose a regime on Afghanistan. One of its CIA assets, Hamid Karzai, was propelled into power. More on him later since he has become a controversial figure as of late, supposedly fighting with the United States. But let’s just go through the chronology....
Read entire article at Guernica
Afghanistan now is at a critical stage. And now I’m very glad to say that the London Review of Books, whose thirtieth anniversary we are commemorating, has over the years published myself and others on this subject, taking essentially a critical stance to this war because, as many of you will recall, it became fashionable all over the world, not just in the United States, to think of Iraq and Afghanistan as two very different wars. Which of course, on one level, they are. But I mean different moral values were placed on these wars by good-thinking people. The Iraq war was a bad war, which should never have happened; that is the view of large numbers of people in the United States today, and always was the view of an overwhelming majority of Europeans.
The Afghan war, on the other hand, was meant to be the good war. This was a war where people who attacked the United States on September 11th were based. And therefore they had to be sorted out; the government which gave them refuge had to be toppled and this could only be done militarily. I will just say as a small footnote here that the official 9/11 inquiry said that the Afghan government never formally refused to hand over these people; they just demanded to see the evidence, and said if the evidence was convincing of their involvement they would hand them over. I just say that because the commission of enquiry made a point of noting that.
Now, some of us argued at the time, myself included—of course, no one supported this crazed attack on the United States—what the motive of actually sending in an army to conquer Afghanistan was. If, as the former President said, the main aim was to sort out al Qaeda, sort out Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar, “dead or alive” in his unforgettable words—and, you know, if they were dead, that was that, if they were alive they would presumably be brought to the United States to stand trial for having ordered this attack… And I remember saying in an argument with one of the former president’s leading supporters at the Washington Post, Charles Krauthamer—in a debate that took place on Canadian television—that if this was the case, then it was a failure. Because this was a small terrorist organization which wasn’t going to hang around in Afghanistan for the United States Army to come capture it, but would flee and look for refuge in other parts of the world, most likely in the border badlands of Pakistan, but presumably elsewhere. So that would fail, and it did fail, because if you announce you’re invading a country to capture A, B, and C, A, B, and C don’t stay there. They move on.
So the country was captured without a struggle, in reality. Worth remembering that. There was no real struggle by any segment of Afghan society to resist the U.S./NATO occupation. Why? Because the key player in this war was Pakistan, which had armed the Taliban, which had sent the Taliban to take power and end a period of civil war. And there were large numbers of Pakistani soldiers, Pakistani Air Force, Pakistani military, Pakistani intelligence people, people in Afghanistan who essentially told the Taliban leaders, “Now is not the time to fight. Shave your beards and come back to Pakistan, or go. But do not resist, because you will all be killed.” From their point of view, it was very sane advice. And, more astonishingly, the Taliban leadership, which was divided, actually accepted that advice. So Kabul fell without a struggle. And for the first two years the resistance to the United States and its NATO allies was limited, episodic, and localized. What made it national? What made it national was the decision by the United States to impose a regime on Afghanistan. One of its CIA assets, Hamid Karzai, was propelled into power. More on him later since he has become a controversial figure as of late, supposedly fighting with the United States. But let’s just go through the chronology....