Another description of the surrender , differing little, appeared seven years later:
It took barely two months after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 for the United States mission to point itself toward defeat.
"Tomorrow the Taliban will start surrendering their weapons," the Taliban's spokesman Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef announced on Decembe r 7 , 2001. "I think we should go home." But the United States r efused the group's surrender, vowing to fight on to shatter the Taliban's influence in every corner of the country. 9
(A contemporaneous report in a UK newspaper that same day told of the surrender, but not the subsequent rejection. See "Taliban Surrender in Kandahar," The Guardian, December 7, 2001.)
Accepting the surrender would have denoted a great victory in the "war on terrorism." But George Bush was fighting a war for oil and empire, and vi ctory would pose a huge tactical difficulty: with no enemy to fight he would have to demobilize h is forces in the Mideast and bring them home. That he could not tolerate: the great prize, the Iraqi oil, had yet to be won, so the fighting in the Mideast would have to be sustained as a "war on terrorism"--- until the invasion of Iraq could be planned, authorized by Congress, and sold to the American people. The Taliban's offer was simply dismissed, and the fighting continuedfor twenty years.
And now President Biden has called a halt in Afghanistan , in humiliating defeat. The Taliban, who once offered to disarm and disband , have taken control of Afghanistan.
The national media acknowledge the defeat, but trumpet "the end of America's longest war" as recompense. That is grossly misleading : American military violence rages on in the "war on terrorism ." U.S. combat troops remain stationed in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Kenya, Somalia, Yemen, Jordan, Kuwait, Djibouti, Qatar, the UAE, Turkey, the Philippines, and Cyprus, and we conduct counterterrorism operations in 61 additional countries around the world. 10
This madness is the legacy of the Bush Administration , and successive presidents have done nothing to end it. Withdrawing troops from Afghanistan is a n o- brainer tactical retreat, but George Bush's bogus war plunges mindlessly ahead.
President Biden, carpe diem. Call th e "war on terrorism" for the fraud it is and end it. Bring all the troops home, from everywhere.
1 See, Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, New York: Simon and S c huster, 2004, p. 86
2 See "US planned war in Afghanistan long before 9/11," by Patrick Martin, World Socialist Website, November 20, 2001, and "U.S. Planned Attack on Taleban," by George Arney, BBC News, September 18, 2001.
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