Afghanistan War Turns 17, Afghans Continue to Die

$45 billion a year, over $1 trillion so far

On October 7th, while the American people were distracted with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation reality show (remember that?), the never-ending US war against the very Taliban the US created entered its seventeenth year. At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in back in February, Randall Schriver, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, testified that the war in Afghanistan cost the American taxpayers $45 billion a year, which includes $5 billion a year for Afghan forces (see links below).

According to Breibart News, as of late 2017 the Taliban controls about 40-50% of the country. But nary a peep out of the mainstream press about this seventeen-year fiasco. But unsubstantiated allegations that a rich white guy acted pervy at a party some thirty years ago while he was both drunk and a minor? Now that’s news! Or wait, what about Trump and Stormy Daniels? That’s way more important than Trump going back on his campaign promise to end America’s longest running war by increasing the number of US troops there.

Afghan civilians have been killed going about their daily lives

Earlier this year, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) issued its “Afghanistan Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict Annual Report 2017”. According to that report, Afghan civilians are still paying the price of the war with their blood. In the report, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, states “Afghan civilians have been killed going about their daily lives – travelling on a bus, praying in a mosque, simply walking past a building that was targeted.”

The chilling statistics in this report provide credible data about the war’s impact, but the figures alone cannot capture the appalling human suffering inflicted on ordinary people, especially women and children.
– Tadamichi Yamamoto, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan

In 2017 ,UNAMA documented 6,768 civilian casualties (2,303 deaths and 4,465 injured) caused by “Anti-Government Elements” and attributed 2,108 civilian casualties (745 deaths and 1,363 injured) to “Pro-Government Forces”. But as Tadamichi Yamamoto, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, put it “[t]he chilling statistics in this report provide credible data about the war’s impact, but the figures alone cannot capture the appalling human suffering inflicted on ordinary people, especially women and children.”

But what about the Taliban?

We’ve heard it before. The justification for America’s longest running war is that if the United States pulls out of Afghanistan it will create a power vacuum (and the loss of $5 billion in US taxpayer money for the Afghan military). Then the Taliban would fill the void and regain total control of the country. A similar argument was made about Vietnam and the greater Cold War strategy. Don’t let communism get a toe-hold in any country or the rest will fall like dominos! And yet, Vietnam became (or returned to being) quite a pleasant place not too long after the United States left.

The Afghanistan War has been dragging on for 17 years and, like in Vietnam, the U.S. clearly is not helping matters. Furthermore, as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on at least two occasions, the United States created the Mujahideen, the pre-cursor to the Taliban, as a strategy to defeat the Soviet Union (links below). Can you really trust the country that created the problem to then turn around an fix the problem? If there was any chance of the United States “bringing democracy” to Afghanistan, don’t you think it should have happened by now?

We shouldn’t be concerned about the Taliban, so much as we should be concerned with the military-industrial complex and its influence in Washington, as President Eisenhower warned on his way out of office. That and the neocons, like the late Zbignew Brezsinski and Henry Kissinger, who influence policy, one presidential administration after another, to maintain a status quo of never-ending war and ever-expanding militarism. Because despite all of the rhetoric from presidents and congressmen, that’s the real policy here. Open-ended war to justify ever-increasing military budgets, ever-expanding war, and the continual erosion of freedom at home.

The Political New Report was created in the interests of informing the public and we need your help. Please share this article and website on social media, and also like and subscribe so other like-minded people can find this content. 

Resource Links:

• Pentagon says war in Afghanistan costs taxpayers $45 billion per year, PBS NewsHour, February 6, 2018
• Amid little scrutiny, US military ramps up in Afghanistan, Military Times, March 10, 2018
• Afghanistan War Cost, Timeline and Economic Impact, The Balance, Updated August 29, 2018
• Report: Taliban controls more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since 2001, World Tribune, September 28, 2017
• Afghanistan Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict Annual Report 2017, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), February, 2018
• Hillary Clinton admits America created, funded and armed Al Qaeda / ISIS terrorists, YouTube
• Image credit: Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Melissa Karnath, March 10, 2018