“The Taliban’s ‘shadow government’ has existed virtually throughout the US-led occupation. Yet as the war has dragged on, and territory under government control has shrunk, the Taliban has expanded its focus on not just fighting, but governing controlled territory.”
“The U.S. military invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to help the Afghanis to establish a democratic government, which they now have, with a president/executive branch and a Parliament. However, after nearly 17 years of fighting, U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan war is the longest in U.S. history. To date, 2,411 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan.”
“The U.S. attack is completely illegal under such international law as exists. The U.N. charter is very clear on that. One cannot help but reach the conclusion that something is dreadfully wrong in our system. Germany, Italy and Japan, when they were fascist-controlled, similarly launched expansionary and aggressive moves against various regions.”
Read more: https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/u-s-bombs-assad-forces-openly/
“Randall Schriver, the Defense Department’s top Asia official, said the $45 billion total for the year includes $5 billion for Afghan forces and $13 billion for U.S. forces inside Afghanistan. Much of the rest is for logistical support. Some $780 million goes toward economic aid.”
“It was a bad moment for the US to stir the pot by saying it would stay in Syria and target Assad and Iran. A Kurdish-Turkish war in northern Syria will be a very fierce one. The US obsession with an exaggerated Iranian threat – about which, in any case, it cannot do much – makes it difficult for Washington to mediate and cool down the situation. Trump and his chaotic administration have not yet had to deal with a real Middle East crisis yet and the events of the last week suggest that they will not be able to do so.”
“The Pentagon has ordered an independent federal auditor to stop providing the public with key information about U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan, accelerating a clampdown on data, such as the size of the Afghan military and police forces, that indicate how the 16-year-old stalemated war is going. The restrictions fly in the face of Pentagon assertions over the past year that it was striving to be more transparent about the U.S. war campaigns across Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.”
Read more: http://www.theitem.com/stories/pentagon-restricts-release-of-afghanistan-war-data,302763
“What has been the outcome of this 16-year quagmire in Afghanistan? The nation-building war that Bush, Obama and now Trump continue to wage has destabilized neighboring Pakistan further.”
Read more: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=9242
“American forces went to Syria with the declared objective of pushing the ISIS terror gang out of territory it had seized there. This has been accomplished. It is an ideal moment for the U.S. to declare victory and depart. That, however, would be hauling down our flag. By Roosevelt’s logic — and evidently Tillerson’s — American soldiers should not be withdrawn from any country where they have ever been deployed.”
“Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan: This trifecta of semi-permanent US military engagements reflects the extraordinary power of the Pentagon to sway even a president who had made opposition to such policies a central element of his campaign.”
“U.S. and Western politicians avert their eyes from this data and this correlation; acts of terror are explained away as ‘random,’ ‘mindless,’ and, perhaps most disingenuously of all, ‘unprovoked.’ The public, either unfamiliar with secret operations carried out by the U.S. military or intelligence services, or uninformed about the brutal nature of the foreign wars fought in their name, tend to buy into this fantasy of an ‘innocent’ America hated and attacked by hordes of ‘mad’ Muslims.”
Read more: https://theintercept.com/2018/01/22/blowback-cia-drones-middle-east/