Why Are We Still Fighting in Afghanistan?

Right now, President Barack Obama is trying to decide what to do about the war in Afghanistan.

According to a senior administration official, President Obama “has embarked on a very, very serious review of all options.”

...but is that true? Are all options on the table? When you hear White House spokesman Robert Gibbs say things like:

“I don't think we have the option to leave. That's quite clear.”--10/5/09

...or Defense Secretary Robert Gates, declaring:

“We are not leaving Afghanistan. This discussion is about next steps forward and the president has some momentous decisions to make.”--10/5/09

It makes you wonder if they really are considering “all the options”--since many Americans believe the best option is to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring our troops home. If President Obama doesn't even consider that option, he is left to choose the best way to continue a war that we should not be fighting.

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Let's do our own review of the war in Afghanistan. We can start by asking, “Why are we fighting in Afghanistan?”

The Bush Administration's stated purpose for invading Afghanistan was the “disrupting, dismantling and defeating the terrorist organization that attacked us on September 11.”

Okay, in that case--Mission Accomplished! According to Obama's National security adviser, James Jones:

“[A]l-Qaida has fewer than 100 fighters operating in Afghanistan without any bases or ability to launch attacks on the West.”--AP, 10/6/09

So, al Qaida has left Afghanistan--leaving America to fight a war against the Taliban, who are not leaving, because they are Afghanis, and Afghanistan is their country. Like it or not, the Taliban were the government in Afghanistan, prior to our invasion.

The Bush Administration seemed to have no problem recognizing the Taliban as legitimate when it appeared that they were going to allow the UNOCAL Corporation to build an oil pipeline across Afghanistan. As long as the Taliban stuck to oppressing women and blowing up Buddhist shrines, they were okay. It wasn't until they said no to the UNOCAL pipeline deal that the Taliban suddenly became a threat to world peace.

The military plans to overthrow the Taliban were already on George W. Bush's desk before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. We cannot even pretend that would be a “preemptive war”. That is good old American Imperialism at it finest. The attacks just served as a convenient excuse to overthrow the Taliban and set up a puppet government headed by Hamid Karzai, who just happened to be a UNOCAL consultant (another UNOCAL consultant, Zalmay Khalilzad, was named Special Envoy to Afghanistan).

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