At that time, US President Jimmy Carter warned that "A Soviet-occupied Afghanistan threatens both Iran and Pakistan and is a stepping-stone to possible control over much of the world's oil supplies."
Now Washington is embarked on permanent occupation and for much the same motives that it attributed to the Soviets. It is not some ubiquitous threat of terrorism, but rather political geography, that drives the US to seek permanent bases in Afghanistan.
The country provides US imperialism with a platform for projecting military power against Iran to the West, China to the east, the oil-rich former Soviet Central Asian republics and Russia itself to the north and Pakistan and India to the south.
Even as it has backed off from direct military intervention in Syria and sought a negotiated settlement with Iran on its nuclear program, Washington has by no means abandoned its attempt to offset the relative decline of its economic power through reliance on its residual military superiority.
Afghanistan is seen as an asset in the struggle for American global hegemony against Washington's principal rivals, particularly China. Thus, the blood that has been shed in that country in 12 years of US war and occupation is only a down payment for even more terrible conflicts to come.
The overwhelming popular opposition to war and occupation in Afghanistan within the US and Western Europe finds no expression within either the existing political establishments or the media. Petty-bourgeois pseudo-left groups that once protested against war have now become unabashed cheerleaders for imperialist intervention, as in Libya and Syria.
The development of a genuine mass antiwar movement capable of forcing the withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan and halting even more catastrophic military conflicts depends upon the independent mobilization of the working class against capitalism, the source of war and militarism.
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