Putin is naughty, but a big-time invader? This is just the media stirring things up, with help from politicians
If they go, we’ll all have to go. That’s the reality of it,” said a British source about US President Joe Biden’s announcement that the last American troops would be out of Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. (What can possibly have possessed him to choose that date?) Not only the remaining 2,500 US troops will go but also the 7,000 British and other NATO troops in Afghanistan. Actually, they were ready to go long ago. They were just waiting for the US to reach the same conclusion, because abandoning your main ally in the middle of a war is not a good idea. Once they are all gone, the Taliban will take back power in Afghanistan. They will close girls’ schools again, ban music, hang people with the wrong haircuts and all the other stuff they did before. Over 20 years of being chased around the hills by gunships has probably not moderated their views. And when journalists asked Biden the inevitable question — doesn’t he feel any responsibility for Afghan human rights, and especially women’s rights? — he said: “The responsibility I have is to protect America’s self-interests and not to put our women and men in harm’s way to try to solve every problem in the world by the use of force.”
Finally, a senior US politician using words as if they mean something. But it didn’t last. Soon enough a “senior official” was talking twaddle on Biden’s behalf: “We went to Afghanistan to deliver justice to those who attacked us on September 11th and to disrupt terrorists seeking to use Afghanistan as a safe haven to attack (from).” Ridiculous! Justice could have been delivered by a single assassin or one mass bombing raid on the camp of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda’s leader, tucked away deep in the Afghan hills. The invasion was just show business. The 9/11 attacks were plotted by al-Qaeda members in Germany and all 19 hijackers were Arabs, not Afghans. They were trained in Afghanistan because bin Laden was given refuge there by the Taliban when the US forced Sudan to expel him.
Some of the brighter people in the US Intelligence services would have known that. However, President George Bush needed to invade somewhere to discharge US rage about the attack (which he had failed to prevent), and where else could it be than Afghanistan? A stealthy assassination or a single bombing raid wouldn’t do the job. As it happened, the invasion of Afghanistan was so easy that it didn’t provide enough catharsis for vengeance-seeking Americans, so Bush ended up adding an invasion of Iraq to the list as well. Saddam Hussein certainly had nothing to do with 9/11, but a spectacular invasion plus Saddam’s capture and execution gave Americans “closure.” That psychodrama was actually played out by 2004, but by then US troops were mired hip-deep in both countries, and it has taken all this time to get them out.
And now on to Ukraine, which Russia is allegedly getting ready to invade: Daily reports of the Russian military build-up, and veiled hints that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the new Hitler. You know, “Today Ukraine, tomorrow the world!” After all, he’s a proven aggressor: Georgia, Crimea, eastern Ukraine. But, stupid as it seems, it was Georgia that started the war with Russia in 2008, hoping to seize South Ossetia and seal the tunnel under the Caucasus range. Crimea was settled by Russians after its previous rulers, Turkic-speaking Muslims were conquered in 1783. It remained Russian until Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine on a whim in 1954. Putin took it back non-violently 60 years later, although that was illegal. So is Russia’s support for Russian-speaking rebels in two eastern provinces of Ukraine, which is just like Ronald Reagan’s military backing for ‘Contra’ rebels against the Nicaraguan Government in the 1980s. Putin is definitely a naughty boy, but a big-time invader of important places? This is just the media stirring things up, with some help from politicians.
(Gwynne Dyer’s new book is ‘Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy and Work.’ The views expressed are personal.)
