The Afghanistan War Has Been A Tissue Of Lies

The Afghanistan War Has Been A Tissue Of Lies

“In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.”.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This week, the venerable Washington Post newspaper revealed a bombshell, 2,000 page, secret Pentagon report detailing the astounding failure of US war strategy in Afghanistan, America’s longest war.

Americans have been fed a steady stream of lies about the Afghan War, concluded the Post.  So asserted this writer in ‘American Conservative’ magazine in 2003 when the US invaded Afghanistan.

`We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking,’ admitted three star General Douglas Lute who commanded US forces in Afghanistan under Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama.

Arrogance and ignorance, backed by mammoth brute force, led US policy in the remote Asian nation.  Attacking Afghanistan was revenge for the 9/11 attacks against the US.  As this writer saw first hand in Afghanistan, all the claims about Osama bin Laden’s ‘terrorist training camps’ in Afghanistan were lies.  9/11 was not planned in Afghanistan.
Taliban were not ‘terrorists.’  They were lightly armed tribal warriors fighting bandits and the US-backed Afghan intelligence services run by the Communist Party.  Taliban’s fathers, the mujahidin, were hailed as ‘freedom fighters’ by Ronald Reagan.  In 2003, the US did a total volte-face to support the Afghan Communists who promised to allow US-owned pipeline routes south from Central Asia’s oil rich Caspian Basin to Pakistan’s coast.  After Taliban refused the chintzy US pipelines offer, this nationalist, anti-drug movement that battled the rape of Afghanistan was branded ‘terrorists’.

The US-installed Kabul regime was a bunch of off-the-shelf CIA assets: warlords, major drug dealers, and communists.  Billions upon billions of US dollars were flown in to hire mercenaries and pay off warlords and criminals.  The biggest war criminals in Afghanistan became key US allies.

When Taliban was in power, it eliminated 90% of Afghanistan’s extensive trade of high-grade morphine and heroin.  Once the US seized Kabul and installed its own puppet regime, drug production surged to all-time highs.  US forces and their allies became deeply involved in the drug trade that sustained the nation’s economy.  Today, US-run Afghanistan is the world’s biggest drug dealer.

Those journalists like this one who insisted on telling the truth about Afghanistan were fired or ignored.  I was booted off CNN for denying their false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  And that the US was ‘winning’ the Afghan War.  I was banned from certain radio and public TV networks for asserting that ISIS was a western invention, backed by Turkey, the US, France, Britain and Israel.  I was branded a ‘radical’ for trying to tell the truth.

I mention these examples to affirm charges, made by the Washington Post, that the entire Afghan conflict was a farrago of lies and half-truths cooked up by the US government to justify a brutal war of aggression against a weak, medieval nation that dared to block our demands for strategic pipeline routes.
The Washington Post played a key role in promoting the lies that opened the way to the US invasion of Iraq.  Today, it is doing penance by revealing all the lies that facilitated the Afghan War – and the thousands of US soldiers killed or wounded there, the vast destruction wrought on Afghanistan by US warplanes, wide scale torture, starvation, mass killing of civilians and all the other horrors of war.

According to the Pentagon report, the US has wasted at least one trillion dollars ($1 trillion) on its Afghanistan War to no discernible effect other than great numbers of dead and wounded, destroyed villages, machine-gunned farm animals, and vast chemical pollution.  If it moves, bomb it is the American credo.

That’s why we see the shameful spectacle of US B-1 and B-52 heavy bombers carpet bombing Afghan villages, and swarms of helicopter and AC-130 gunships blasting apart medieval Afghan tribesmen and wedding parties.  The Soviets were just as ruthless; but we are more efficient.

America’s media, with a few small exceptions, has promoted the Pentagon’s war against the Afghan people and totally covered up its atrocities and egregious lies.  This war has become a giant, money devouring killing machine that boosts politicians and military contractors.  The past presidents who cheered on this disgraceful war against one of the world’s poorest, most backward nations deserve to be disgraced.

Meanwhile, we must stop and think about the Pashtun tribal fighters who held off the world’s mightiest military machine for the past 18 years with little more than old AK-47 rifles and indomitable courage.  We owe them our sincerest apologies and a rebuilt country.  As a former US soldier I salute them, these bravest of the brave.



 Eric S. Margolis



I* am JOSEPH F BARBER, Founder of the veterans project,
freelance writer editor and author ,blogger and veteran of the United states Army ,it is my dream to make true change in our world and to use the gifts I was given by god to help all of humanity make a better world free of hunger ,violence and cruelty I hope you will join me in this endeavor,If you haven’t donated yet, please consider donating $5 - $10 to  get me closer to my goal. No donation is too small!

Joseph F Barber Veteran kneeling center with his team Ft Dix NJ

I am Founder of the Veterans Project We believe that "When our grandchildren ask us where we were when the voiceless and vulnerable of our era needed a leader of compassion and purpose and hope - I hope we can say we showed up, and that we showed up on time

We believe, Ignorance is the enemy of peace and human suffering the true cost of war.

We believe that lies kill and those who tell them, profit without regard to human costs.

We believe that a single teardrop, torn from the heart of a child who witnesses the needless death of its parent or sibling, has more value than all of the wealth spent on bombs and armaments.

We believe that when we join with others and discover the harsh realities about our history and the torment that has paid for our comfortable lives, we are each compelled to help others understand that another way is possible.

Citizens of our world “We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.” “The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?” “No Big Power in all history ever thought of itself as an aggressor. That is still true today.” There is no way to peace; peace is the way.

When the typical reformer or revolutionist proclaims the new order, he goes on to urge men to organize, agitate, get out the vote, fight. Jesus also proclaimed The Kingdom of God [i.e., the revolution] is at hand; but immediately added in true prophetic fashion, Repent. That is to say, if we are to have a new world, we must have new men; if you want a revolution, you must be revolutionized. A world of peace will not be achieved by men who in their own souls are torn with strife and eagerness to assert themselves. In the degree that the anti-war or pacifist movement is composed of individuals who have not themselves, to use Aldous Huxley's phrase, achieved detachment, who have not undergone an inner revolution, it too will experience the same failure to achieve self-discipline, integrity, true fellowship among its own members which has afflicted other movements for social change.

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.” and many do but at a price of being placed on a watch list or to be detained hounded and arrested held and with out due process they are the heroes those whom have chosen to speak out at any cost from veterans to soldiers to the citizen STAND AND BE COUNTED

A little about us... We run this non-sectarian, non-partisan organization to ignite discussion on our world and in our communities, to educate our world about the injustice of aggressive violence. We believe that in order to reach out to our peers most effectively, we cannot stand on religious arguments alone, and we cannot adhere entirely to one political side in our currently polarized culture. We believe that the consistent life ethic is not for any one religious group or for any one political position, but rather for everyone dedicated to human rights, life and dignity. No matter your reason for believing in the inherent value of human life, we hope you can join us, and through our efforts we can together endeavor to make violence unthinkable - - - to make it history!
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