T wenty years later, after the squandering of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, President Biden withdrew American troops from Afghanistanand drew angry criticism for the chao tic exit that followed.
How perverse we have become. We chastise President Biden for a messy ending of the war in Afghanistan and fail to indict George Bush for its illegal beginning.
George Bush launched a war for oil and empire, invading two sovereign nations without provocatio n. He violated international law .
Within ten days of taking office the Bush Administration formalized a decision to invade Iraq. 1 Long before 9/11 the attack on Afghanistan was scheduled . 2 Neither proposed incursion had the slightest thing to do with terrorism: the objectives were preemptive access to Iraqi oil and a pipeline right-of-way across Afghanistan for the Unocal Corporation . 9/11 offered a spectacular and fortuitous covering alibi ; President Bush declar ed a "war on terrorism " and launched his premeditated wars . 3
Osama bin Laden was portrayed as an iconic terrorist, to be apprehended for his orchestration of 9/11. But George Bush from his first day in office, January 20, 2001, could have negotiated with the Taliban to assassinate Osama bin Laden or to surrender him into U.S. custody. That was the standing offer the Taliban tendered in late 2000, seeking to retain U.S. favor after bin Laden bombed the U.S.S. Cole. The Bush Administration refused the offer, four times prior to 9/11 and once more five days later. 4
Saddam Hussein was said to be an intolerable terrorist threat, too. "Regime change" was necessary to remove him from power. In February of 2003, Saddam Hussein offered to enter voluntary exile in Turkey, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. Here was "regime change" handed on a plat t e r to George Bush, but a peaceful one. The offer was brushed aside ."5
George Bush needed terrorists, alive, at large, and in residence in Afghanistan and Iraq, to make his"war on terrorism" credible.
The pipeline project was the first order of business. On October 7, 2001, the invasion of Afghanistan was underway, but the billions of barrels of Iraqi oil were never far from mind. Seven weeks later, onNovember 27, 2001, the President ordered his Defense Department to plan the invasion of Iraq. 6(That was eleven months before Congress would authorize it.)
The aggressions were titanic failures. Yes, a few American oil companies operate in Iraq today, but they are barely visible among scores of other firms from Egypt, Italy, Japan, France, Austria, the UK, Canada, Hungary, India, Norway, and the holders of the largest contracts by far, Russia and China. 7
Afghanistan lies in a state of seething chaos. There will be no American pipeline across the country: twenty years of staggering costs in lives and treasure for nothing.
Those costs might have been avoided : violence in Afghanistan could have ended two months after George Bush turned it loose.
Anand Gopal, an American journalist, tells the story with unusual authority. He moved to Afghanistan in 2008, learned the language, and f or four years he travelled the country freely.
His book appeared in 2014: No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes.
It relates the Taliban's surrender:
His back to the wall, Mullah Omar [leader of the Taliban] drew up a letter to Hamid Karzai, acknowledging his selection as interim president. The letter also granted Omar's ministers, deputies, and aides the right to surrender.
...On December 5 [2001] a Taliban delegation arrived at the US special forces camp north of Kandahar city to officially relinquish power...[The Taliban]...pledged to retire from politics and return to their home villages. Crucially, they also agreed that their movement would surrender arms, effectively ensuring the Taliban could no longer function as a military entity. There would be no jihad, no resistance from the Taliban to the new order... 8
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