George W. Bush is whining from the peanut gallery about the inevitable US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The former president, who launched a "war on terror" in Afghanistan after 9/11, has said that he is against President Joe Biden's troop withdrawal decision.
Shut up George! The only thing Americans want to hear from you is your apology for creating this humanitarian disaster that has dragged on for the last 20 years. George W. Bush is a war monger who is responsible for sending thousands of American Troops to die in an unwinnable conflict, and carry out an absurd nation building project in Afghanistan.
George W. Bush relished calling himself a ‘War President’.
I’m a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind. Again, I wish it wasn’t true, but it is true. And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is. And I see dangers that exist, and it’s important for us to deal with them.
Bush lied to us. Shamelessly. And he still is lying to us.
As the Taliban takes over the country, hawkish pundits and ex-officials in America are still clinging to the long-broken dream of nation-building.
By Daniel Bessner, Derek Davison
From its inception in 2001 to its ignominious end, the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been defined by lies. It was a lie when, in 2001, President George W. Bush told service members that “your mission is defined, your objectives are clear.... We will not fail.” It was a lie when, in 2016, President Barack Obama proclaimed that America had successfully “trained Afghan forces to take responsibility for their own security.” And it was a lie every time pundits and officials insisted that victory was around the corner.
Manifold elites are now lying about the fall of Afghanistan “under Biden’s watch.” In The New York Times, the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Kagan claims that “a disastrous Taliban takeover wasn’t inevitable,” though it has been obvious for years that the Taliban was winning and that the Afghan government would eventually fall without overwhelming U.S. support. In The Wall Street Journal, former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Bradley Bowman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies assert that “the refusal to provide the Afghan people the support necessary to stem a humanitarian catastrophe emboldens China, Russia and other adversaries eager to proclaim the U.S. an unreliable partner and a declining power,” though the U.S. has proved time and again that it is already those things. And in The New York Times, Bret Stephens perplexingly affirms that “Disaster in Afghanistan Will Follow Us Home,” as if the militarization of U.S. policing that occurred in the wake of the war on terrorism hasn’t already done significant damage to the country.
These and other comments evince the cynicism that always defined the invasion of Afghanistan. It’s hard to imagine that Kagan, McMaster, Bowman, and Stephens really believe that America’s vital security or economic interests will be adversely affected by the Taliban’s victory. The U.S. remains a very safe, powerful, and rich country that faces no serious security threats. Rather, one gets the impression that the hawks are annoyed and embarrassed that a small paramilitary group was able, like the North Vietnamese army before it, to reveal, beyond the shadow of a doubt, America’s inability to remake foreign nations in its image.
If George W. Bush really wanted to be helpful he should apologize for misleading America into two unwinnable wars, using a pack of deliberate lies.
The same factors that led the Afghan military to surrender to the Taliban this weekend were behind the collapse of the Iraqi military back in 2014.
By Ibrahim Al-Marashi
Intervention and failed state-building
Granted there are substantial differences between the histories as well as socioeconomic and ethno-sectarian compositions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the collapse of Iraq’s military in 2014 and Afghanistan’s in 2021 can still be tied together for one reason: both debacles were the result of an American invasion and consequent failed state-building efforts.
Indeed, the US’s 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq both led to externally-imposed, securitised state-building processes that had devastating consequences for these countries and their security sectors.
After its invasions, the US excluded the Iraqis in the Baath party and military and Afghans in the Taliban from its state-building efforts. In response, both these groups turned to violence to undermine the new state and the military.
So SHUT UP George Bush!
You have lots of blood on your hands.