the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 8, 2010
Two U.S. soldiers were killed last week in Helmand Province by an Afghan soldier who turned his weapon on them inside a military base.
It’s only the latest such attack in Afghanistan. In recent months, several other Afghan soldiers shot and killed groups of U.S. or other NATO soldiers in Badghis Province and Helmand Province. Just two weeks ago, an entire police unit burned down its station and defected to the Taliban in a town just southwest of the capital of Kabul.
Helmand Province and its main city of Marjah were supposed to be the big example of the success of the new U.S. strategy to control Afghanistan. The New York Times declared on February 19 that “the Western presence is now firmly established.”
Eight months later, the AP reported: “The end of Taliban control in Marjah has sown seeds of an entrenched guerrilla war that has tied down at least two U.S. Marine battalions and hordes of Afghan police and army.” Clearly, the U.S. is not in control!
And what’s happening in Helmand Province is being repeated throughout the country. U.N. reports that 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces now have districts where the existence of the insurgency makes them too dangerous for Westerners to visit or travel through. In other words, they’re under a de facto control of various insurgent forces.
All these actions show that forces in Afghanistan are concluding that the U.S. will be forced, in one way or another, to leave the country relatively soon.
It also shows that many Afghans will not be sad to see the U.S. leave. And it’s no wonder.
The U.S. war on Afghanistan, now in its tenth year, has destroyed the livelihood of Afghans living in important parts of the countryside; replaced agricultural production with opium production; created an enormous influx into the cities; and it has tossed out 600,000 street children dependent on crime, prostitution and begging to survive. The U.S. hasn’t even bothered to pretend to count the tens or even hundreds of thousands of civilians killed as a result of the war.
As even much of the top U.S. military admits, the longer the war has gone on, the more disastrous it’s been for the population, and the more it’s pushed the population into the arms of the insurgency.
U.S. out of Afghanistan NOW!