9/11: Afghan Aftermath. Failure It Was, And Still Is.

After the airborne attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, America and her NATO allies went in to Afghanistan with the following aims: to defeat and remove the Taliban from power, to rid a Foreign Sovereign State of the terrorist training ground it had become; to find and exterminate the pestilence upon the earth of Al Qaeda, along with its leader, Usama bin Laden.

Yes, the Taliban were removed from power, but never militarily defeated, as they simply hid their weaponry, and henceforth became a mobile guerilla army, armed, paid and protected by the well-known but never officially acknowledged ties with Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence. True, the Allies got rid of Al Qaeda; they eventually hunted down and killed Usama bin Laden, hiding in plain sight less than two miles away from Pakistan’s premier military academy. 

And then the mistakes began. The Administrators, such as the blithering British idiot Rory Stewart, forgot about, or rather never really understood; Afghan Society. They forgot that Soviet Russia had invaded, bled and then withdrawn; aided by American missiles, launched by the Mujahideen. They forgot that England, over a century earlier, had also invaded, had her armies cut to pieces, and had withdrawn, defeated. For centuries, it has been built upon one keystone, and that keystone is Islam. The religious, tribal, family and relative structures, refined and honed over some eleven centuries, have made Muslim Afghan society almost impenetrable when it comes to change, despite the so-called Liberal values which some claim enhances Western Democracies.

The do-gooders pushed for female Afghans to be educated, to be allowed the same sorts of freedoms commonplace in the West. They pushed for women to be included in regional and national Government; always in the wrong-headed belief that a male-dominated Afghan society would view these moves as ’progressive’. 

But worse was to follow, because the leaders, the alleged ‘thinkers’ in American, British and Allied Governments began thinking about nation building. I kid you not, those fools thought they could change the very mindset of a Society which has built itself around an insular Stone Age belief structure, and get them to embrace Western values. How daft can you get?
So, when things started going badly, when the Taliban commenced their return; instead of washing our collective hands of the whole caboodle, the Americans, having drawn down their forces, went back in in force, and the stupid bloody Brits went back in to Helmand alongside them. The idea then was that they would ‘train’ the Afghan Armed Forces, and once they had been trained, then America and those trailing along on the coattails could commence leaving. After all, the Afghan generals could be trusted, the Afghan Government, headed by America’s ‘chosen one’, was firmly in power, the untold millions of dollars spent on military hardware gave the Afghans the edge over any foe, corruption was defeated: all was well: nothing could go wrong! 

If Olympus existed, you could just imagine all those Greek Gods, those Deities rolling around the floor, helpless with laughter.

Then the whole thing began to totter. Donald Trump was the President, and he wanted all the American forces back home, and an end to the ‘forever’ war. His plan was simple, get all the weaponry out, then the American civilians, then the chosen compromised Afghans; compromised because they had either worked for the Americans, or had worked in the liberal ways which the Allies had imported. And then, when everyone else has been airlifted, the military themselves would leave; and the Afghans would then be running their own Country.

But Joe Biden became the President, and he decided to speed things up. He told the generals that the fastest way was the best, announce a general retreat, and first to evacuate was Bagram Airbase, the best fortified place in the whole of Afghanistan; and the Taliban wouldn’t notice. After all, the Afghan Army was the best trained and equipped; what could go wrong?

As everyone now knows, the whole Afghan caboodle collapsed in less than a week, and that has been covered many, many times. America has landed itself with one hundred thousand Afghans; 95% of whom have never been checked, The Brits have invited in some fifteen thousand savages: what have we done? 

I normally don’t go in for foretelling the future, but, if you have ten spare minutes try this small essay; about what might well be.

I would therefore end by placing four photographs, the contents of which are self-explanatory.