In August, after 20 years of fighting and during one period deploying 100,000 troops, the U.S. was forced to withdraw its military from Afghanistan.  Its pro-U.S. government and armed forces rapidly collapsed, and the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist Taliban seized power.  America and its supposedly “all-powerful” military had been defeated in the longest war it has ever fought.

As revcom.us wrote at the time:

The humiliating defeat of the U.S. project to dominate Afghanistan and the whole region is a very good thing, but the victory of the Taliban is a bad thing. And so the immediate situation confronting our sisters and brothers in Afghanistan has grown even more dire.

People cannot afford to be bounced between the poles of backing one or another of these reactionary forces. We need to bring forward another way, a revolutionary alternative.

Yet even as the U.S. rushed out of Afghanistan, Biden continued to call Afghanistan a “just war,” lauding U.S. troops for serving with “valor, courage and integrity.”

But what was the reality of this war, and what did it bring for the Afghan people? 

• The U.S. rained enormous, murderous violence on Afghanistan, dropping over 38,000 bombs and carrying out over 12,000 drone strikes.  More than 111,000 people were killed, over 116,000 injured, and some five million Afghan people were forced from their homes by America’s war. 
• The U.S. military was not offering a “helping hand” to the Afghan people, and only using force “surgically” in carefully calibrated strikes.  U.S. and Afghan military repeatedly carried out bombing attacks on wedding parties, funeral processions, schools and hospitals.
• A New York Times (December 18, 2021) study found that U.S.-led Afghan soldiers roamed the countryside at night, backed by U.S. airpower, seizing innocent villagers and carrying out bombing strikes killing hundreds of civilians—which were never seriously investigated or reported in rosy Pentagon press releases. In one village, called Barang, in southern Afghanistan, “On average, each household lost five civilian family members. An overwhelming majority … were caused by airstrikes… A father killed in an airstrike while running for the forest. A nephew killed as he slept with his flock of sheep. An uncle shot by American soldiers as he went to the bazaar to buy okra for dinner.”

• U.S. forces and their Afghan clients terrorized people with dead-of-night house searches. They created a network of prison and detention centers where at least 15,000 Afghans have been detained on little or no evidence, brutally beaten, tortured, and sometimes killed. The International Criminal Court stated U.S. forces had “committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape, and sexual violence”—war crimes—in Afghanistan.
• Overall at least 43,000 and perhaps as many as 220,000 civilians died by war-related causes, and this massive violence was a major driving force fueling the resurgence of the Taliban and reactionary Islamic fundamentalism.
• Life was a nightmare for women under Taliban rule, and remained so for the vast majority under the U.S.:  some two-thirds of Afghan girls still didn’t attend school and 87 percent remained illiterate. At least 70-80 percent were forced into marriage, many before the age of 16, and nearly 90 percent were victims of domestic abuse.  During the U.S.  occupation, Amnesty International called Afghanistan one of the worst places in the world to be a woman.
• In this already impoverished country, the war destroyed crops and villages, distorted and disrupted the economy and further impoverished half of Afghanistan’s 35 million people.
• The U.S. has left hunger and starvation in its wake in Afghanistan: more than 22 million Afghans don’t have enough food, eight million are on the brink of famine, and “a  million more under the age of five are at risk of dying over the three coldest winter months ahead,” according to the latest reports.¹, ²

And no, all this violence and suffering was never about “justice for 9/11,” ending terrorism, building democracy, liberating women, or anything remotely just, as the lying representatives of U.S. capitalism-imperialism have claimed ad nauseum. 

From the very beginning, the October 2001 invasion and occupation was a war of imperialism—consciously aimed at delivering a gangster threat to the world: never dare attack the U.S!  And it was part of a grand plan to strengthen America’s grip on the Middle East and Central Asia as part of strengthening its global empire of exploitation and oppression—the rulers, full of hubris, dreaming they could create the world’s only unchallenged and unchallengeable empire. 

So to those who say to U.S. troops and vets, “Thank you for your service,” stop thanking murderers, tortures and foot soldiers for a bloody empire for “their service”!   The Afghanistan war—yet again—shows the truth of what’s said about the U.S. military in A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION from the Revcoms: 

The military of this country is not carrying out an “honorable service”—and it is not some “bad ass” force that people should respect. It is doing the same thing around the world, on a massive scale, that the police are doing here: carrying out the cowardly killing and terrorizing of people in the service of the biggest oppressors in the world, the rulers of this country.