The images are searing. Helicopters ferrying diplomatic personnel from the U.S. Embassy while plumes of black smoke billow from the building. Taliban fighters with heavy artillery parade through the thoroughfares of provincial capitals. The International Airport, still under U.S. control, is in chaos as collaborators try storm planes to flee the country. In the space of a few weeks the puppet government collapsed, and its figureheads have vanished. The decades of occupation have come to an end. Those that fought to end it now sit at the former president’s desk.

The U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan was never the right thing to do. The events of September 11, 2001 served as a pretext for the war on Afghanistan, a war that was cruel and unjust. Before the troops arrived, U.S. planes unleashed bombs on the country’s cities, destroying hospitals clearly marked with red crosses on the roofs. The invasion came with the brutality of a medieval crusade – marked by torture and summary executions. The U.S. and its accomplices always treated the Afghan people as the enemy. That is why we are seeing what we are seeing. The vast majority of the Afghan people welcome the expulsion of the foreign occupiers.

The occupation was never about helping people. It was about the domination of a strategic region of the world that is rich with resources. Nothing complicated about it. Empires doing what they always do – help themselves to land, labor and natural resources of others.

At the end of the day, and the end of the occupation, the Taliban are in fact a national liberation movement. A movement with real defects, largely lacking an agenda of social liberation that is product of a long historical process, which includes U.S. intervention to defeat the left in Afghanistan. That said, the people of Afghanistan have the right to determine their own destiny free of imperial arrogance.

The main way for assessing any movement for national liberation is by asking and answering the question, “does it weaken imperialism?” Undoubtably monopoly capitalism, or imperialism, was just handed a setback in Afghanistan. The rich and powerful who rule the U.S. rob people aboard and they rob us here at home. What is bad for them, is good for the rest of us. Their setbacks bring us closer to freedom.

President Biden heading out of Afghanistan is not a mistake – it is the recognition of reality. The U.S., along with the other Western powers, were defeated long ago, and we are witnessing the end of that process.

There is something fundamental going on here – U.S. imperialism is in a period of decline, and that decline is accelerating. In Latin America, Cuba and Venezuela are standing strong, and others are joining in. The Palestinian resistance is picking up steam, along with the other resistance movements across the Mideast. The revolutionary struggle in the Philippines is growing. Socialist China grows more powerful. The world is changing.

The outstanding Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong remarked, “Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality, it isn't. It is very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it is very powerful but in reality, it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger.”

That is where we are at today. People everywhere, including here at home, are tired of the obnoxious elite that rules the U.S. The paper tiger, monopoly capitalism, can and will be defeated. It will take time, but time is on our side.

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The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, often referred to as the Taliban, stated, “Now the time has come for the American president Obama and other head of states of invading countries to understand the realities of this futile war and instead of tactical efforts, troop reductions and gradual withdrawals, focus on the conditions, calls and needs of its own people and immediately extract all its troops from our country.”

In recent years the U.S. and its NATO partners have faced numerous setbacks in Afghanistan.

Large portions of Afghanistan are outside the control of the foreign-dominated government headquartered in Kabul. While the U.S. has spent billions to buy legitimacy for the corrupt puppet government headed by Hamid Karzai – as it represents foreign powers, ignores the needs of the Afghan people and engages in torture as a matter of policy – that regime never gained popular support.

A rising tide of ‘green on blue’ attacks, where patriotic Afghanis who are members of the government’s military or police go up against occupation troops, have made practical cooperation between U.S./NATO and the puppet troops difficult to impossible.

Given this situation, there is now a debate in the White House and Pentagon about how to deal with the growing defeat.

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Ten NATO occupation soldiers were killed by Afghan resistance forces on June 7, marking the deadliest day on record for the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Seven of those killed were U.S. soldiers. NATO reported that five troops were killed in an insurgent attack against a police training center, two soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing attack and one in a small arms attack. One day earlier, June 6, five NATO troops were killed in small arms fire attacks, a roadside bombing and a car crash. It is unclear if the car crash was related to a resistance attack.

The attacks are the latest in a series of increasingly bold strikes against the U.S. occupation by Afghan resistance forces. The Afghan people have been waging a nine-year struggle to oust the U.S./NATO occupation of their country. In 2010, all indications show that their struggle for freedom and independence is gaining strength, while the grip of the occupation is weakening.

Bold Attacks on U.S. Air Bases

Last month, Afghan resistance fighters attacked the massive Bagram air base in the central Parwan province. Bagram is one of the largest U.S. military bases in Afghanistan. Many of the unmanned drone aircraft that are used to assassinate resistance figures – killing thousands of Afghan and Pakistani civilians in the process – are launched from this base. Over 30 fighters attacked the base on May 19 with rockets and small arms fire, in a fight that lasted for several hours. One U.S. soldier was killed and nine were wounded. So far this year, Bagram has been attacked about once a week.

Days later, insurgents attacked another major military base of U.S. occupation, the Kandahar air base. The Kandahar air base is the largest in southern Afghanistan, and is another launching point for the hated Predator drone aircraft, as well as for U.S. airstrikes and bombing raids that have killed thousands of civilians. The resistance attack lasted for two hours; one of the rockets injured several U.S. troops. That same day, three U.S. soldiers were killed elsewhere in the country.

Occupation to Attack Kandahar?

Several months ago the U.S. military made clear its desire to root out resistance fighters from Kandahar with pronouncements that it intends to begin a major military operation in the area later this month. Kandahar is known to be a stronghold of resistance forces in Afghanistan – 258 NATO troops have been killed in the province during this war, the second highest death toll for any Afghan province. But the U.S. will face a difficult, if not impossible task, of controlling the city. Any military operation in the city of Kandahar is certain to result in pitched urban warfare with well-trained and motivated fighters. It seems unlikely that the U.S. can effectively control the city, yet to admit that it is in the hands of the insurgency would be a major blow to the morale of the occupation forces.

In many ways the U.S. moves to attack Kandahar reveal the essence of where the U.S. occupation currently stands: the U.S. military knows it cannot succeed in controlling Kandahar because it lacks legitimacy and that any attack on the city will result in hundreds of civilian casualties which will drive more Afghans into the resistance. Yet fear of admitting defeat propels the U.S. military into a worse position of entering a fight that it cannot win. And this cycle is being played out across the country with disastrous results for the people of Afghanistan.

Corrupt Occupation Government Lacks Legitimacy

The corrupt occupation government in Kabul, headed by President Hamid Karzai, recently held a so-called 'peace meeting' in Kabul, with much fanfare. The aim of the meeting was to shore up support for the hated Karzai regime in its struggle against the Taliban and other Afghan resistance forces. The Karzai government has been linked numerous times with drug trafficking. It maintains power through an alliance with corrupt warlords who share the spoils of the drug trade.

Meanwhile here is how ordinary people live in Afghanistan: 42% of the population lives in poverty. The average Afghan lives on a dollar a day. The life expectancy is 44 years. The literacy rate is 28%. One in five children will die before they reach the age of five. There are over 3 million refugees.

Meanwhile, President Karzai and his associates, much like the puppet government in occupied Iraq, live in luxurious, walled compounds and earn tens of millions of dollars from the drug trade. They pay off the 240,000-strong puppet police and military force, trained by the U.S. and NATO, to further their deals in the drug trade.

The U.S. has been trying to stabilize its puppet government in Kabul. For the U.S. to succeed in maintaining its occupation of Afghanistan, it must first make the Afghan people accept the puppet government in Kabul as a legitimate force. And of course, it is clear the U.S. is failing in this task as it continues to lose ground to Afghan anti-occupation forces across the country each day. It is in this context that the loya jirga, or 'grand assembly,' must be analyzed.

The loya jirga took place June 3. 1600 delegates, hand-picked by President Karzai's staff, participated. From the beginning it was clear that this was a staged event, not an assembly with political power. One member of the Afghan parliament told the New York Times, “It’s dangerous to raise people’s expectations with this fake and artificial exercise; it’s a workshop, not a jirga.” Another parliamentarian, Mir Joyenda, said, “This is a mistake; all the warlords were there in the front row.”

But as we have seen, it was no ‘mistake’ that the warlords were sitting in the front row. It could not have been otherwise. That is the basis of power for the U.S.-backed Karzai government.

For their part, the Taliban boycotted the jirga and launched a sustained attack on its opening day. As President Karzai began speaking, urging the Taliban to lay down arms, a rocket exploded a few hundred yards away from the tent. Minutes later, another rocket landed and resistance fighters began an attack on the security forces at the compound.

Mullah Zayfan, a local Taliban commander, commented on the attack, “The Islamic Emirate has a rule. While foreign forces are here, no representatives are allowed to attend any jirgas, or any talks. After the foreign troops leave, Afghans can sit and talk together.”

An Unjust War for the U.S. – A Just Struggle for the Afghan People

Civilian casualties continue to mount during this conflict. Officially, the number of civilians killed last year was 2259. But the true number is almost certainly much higher. Like in Iraq (“We don't do body counts,” the top general in Iraq, Tommy Franks, once said), the U.S. military seems to show little concern for how many civilians are killed by its airstrikes, drone missile attacks, night raids and ground assaults. Rather than reveal the truth about civilian casualties, the U.S. has instead recently been caught lying about murders of Afghan civilians.

But instead of ending this occupation, the Obama government has escalated the war, while Democratic Party politicians vote in funding for the Afghanistan war. Over $60 billion dollars were just appropriated for the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan last week. The U.S. has now appropriated over $1 trillion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while working people suffer from massive unemployment, poverty and uncertainty in the greatest economic crisis in 80 years. U.S. troop numbers continue to increase in Afghanistan – over 87,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan this year, twice the number that was there last year. On top of that, another 40,000 NATO troops are in Afghanistan.

1099 U.S. troops have been killed so far in Afghanistan, and over 6000 wounded. This is a tragedy for thousands of American families that are faced with the loss of a loved one, or the debilitating injuries suffered by a family member of friend. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and are frequently denied medical care for this condition.

As the U.S. and NATO attempt to strike out against those who oppose the occupation, the national liberation movement in Afghanistan continues to grow. The people fighting the U.S./NATO occupation of Afghanistan are doing what anyone would do if their country was occupied and a corrupt, warlord government was installed to rule over them. The problems about conservative, oppressive forces within the resistance movement against the U.S. occupation is a problem that Afghan people can deal with on their own, free from a foreign occupation.

The anti-war movement in the NATO countries continues to wage struggle in solidarity with the Afghan people. The anti-war struggle in the Netherlands grew so strong as to cause the government there to collapse in February 2010, as anti-war forces opposed the Prime Minister's attempt to keep thousands of Dutch troops in occupied Afghanistan. This is a great example of the strength of the anti-war movement in the NATO countries.

Anti-war forces must unite across continents, and with the anti-occupation forces in Afghanistan, to end the unjust occupation of Afghanistan. Until there is justice, it is clear that there will be no peace.

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For the people of Afghanistan, the “war on terror” has been a war of terror. Some people say that the American bombing campaign has taken the lives of 4500 people. Other estimates are higher. In any event, no one here should be fooled. The bombing targets included hospitals and old folks homes, the Arab media and the Red Cross (twice). Nothing can justify this.

And the war continues. It is likely go on for the some time. No one wants their country occupied by foreign powers. So, the people of Afghanistan will mount a resistance. Its scope and power remain to be seen, but it will certainly be a factor.

The Bush administration says it has a “public relations” problem. They are right about that. But PR or no PR – Marines brandishing M-16s on the streets of Kandahar and Special Forces threatening people at hospitals speak volumes about U.S. intervention. For that matter, no spin-doctor can cover up the criminal bombing that took place in the villages around Tora Bora. Bush spokesmen say it never took place, while the rest of us can look at the pictures in the newspapers of dead bodies and kids without legs.

Collapse of the Taliban

The Afghan people have a long history of fiercely defending their independence. The British tried, and the story of their occupation could have been entitled “no one gets out of here alive.” A month into the bombing campaign, the Pentagon was referring to the Taliban forces as “seasoned fighters” and “tough customers.” So what happened? Why did the cities fall so quickly?

Some of the answer lies in the technological power of the U.S. military. Fifteen thousand pound bombs are no joke. But the Vietnamese faced those same bombs, waged a people's war, and Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City.

The ability of the Taliban to resist has been limited because their reactionary policies undermined their popular support. No matter how favorable the terrain, without active popular support it's impossible to wage and win a guerrilla war.

War Aims

With or without the events of Sept. 1l, the U.S was on a collision course with Afghanistan. On a political level, countries that maintain their independence, for whatever reasons, are labeled “rogue states” and the Taliban government was on the short list to join that list. Sanctions were already in place, and from there it is a short step to war.

From an economic perspective, Afghanistan is important to the corporate heads that call empire building “globalization.” The oil reserves of the former USSR, especially those of central Asia, are critical. So are plans to put oil and gas pipelines throughout Afghanistan. The strategic significance of these oil reserves is accented by the growing radicalization of the Arab peoples. Time is not on the side of the Saudi rulers, nor on that of the other Arab elites who have pledged their loyalty to the dollar. So, alternative sources of oil need to be developed.

Limits of Empire

In the early 1970's, the U.S. was at the height of its power. Blows from the national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America, along with the rise of competition from Europe and Japan signaled an end to the “American century.” The standard of living here has declined each year since 1973, as corporations have restructured themselves and society to maintain rates of profit and compete effectively.

The fall of the Soviet Union gave the U.S. more room to maneuver. But more room to act is different that “do as you will, when you will.” In no place is this more clear than the Middle East, where events are spinning out of Washington's control.

All War, All the Time?

For American policy makers, the world is a dangerous “with us or against us” sort of place, so, according to this view, there are lots of terrorist, terrorist-supporting, and weapons of mass destruction producing countries.

Defense Secretary Rumsfield was correct in saying the U.S. cannot wage a war with everyone in the world at the same time. So, a debate is underway in the White House and Pentagon about who to strike next. Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan are among the place under discussion. In some places the U.S. will use proxies to fight its wars. In others, American intervention will be more direct – U.S. ships, troops and planes.

An element of U.S. strategy is the attempt to criminalize the fight for national liberation – to put a “terrorist” tag on freedom fighters.

It is important to recall that the U.S. is already playing a military role in Colombia and the Philippines The longest air war since Vietnam is being directed against Iraq. Israel's occupation would be impossible without U.S. assistance.

The anti-war movement has its work cut out for it. We need to demand “no new targets!” The sanctions and bombing campaign against Iraq needs to be ended, and we should be on guard for any moves to expand the war on Iraq. With the possibility open for the dramatic escalation of the war in Colombia, it's critical that demands are raised to bring U.S. military personnel home and to cut off assistance to Colombia's death squad government.

Finally, there is the issue of Palestine. It is unfortunate that many progressives have turned a blind eye towards Israel's occupation. The effort to liberate Palestine is central to the Arab people as a whole. Aid to Israel must end.

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Statement of the Emergency Committee Against U.S. Intervention in Afghanistan

The U.S. government launched massive attacks against Afghanistan on Oct. 7, claiming retaliation for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11.

But the events of September 11 were simply the pretext for the launching of a war for the control of resources around the world.

Every war needs a pretext, a political provocation with which the authorities can mobilize the population.

In history class, we were taught that World War I was started when Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated. However, the eruption of that war was the result of a whole range of political factors. The assassination was only the pretext for launching a war that had been brewing for months.

Governments, including the U.S., have actually manufactured events to justify going to war, like with the Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam. At other times, governments in need of a pretext for war will latch onto a horrific event and use it to condemn their chosen enemy as the source of all evil and deserving of an extreme military response.

These war preparations did not begin with the September 11 attacks, and they are not aimed at punishing those responsible. The war preparations are, in fact, aimed to position the U.S. as the supreme economic and military power in the world today. That is why some commentators are referring to the current crisis as the “start of World War III.”

September 11 simply set off an explosion that was already in the making.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the U.S. has been the largest economic and military power in the world. But the U.S. has not been able to consolidate its position because it has been challenged by its economic competitors in Europe and Asia.

Nor has the U.S. been able to discipline every state that fails to allow itself to be dominated by U.S. economic interests. In every case, when the U.S. labels a country a “rogue state”, the country is one that has refused to be a compliant accessory in the U.S.-dominated New World Order.

For the U.S., the most effective way to enforce world domination is through use of its military.

The Bush administration is grabbing hold of the September 11 attacks in order to lay the basis for this worldwide escalation of U.S. militarism. The Bush administration has made it clear that it will go after any state that it decides is “terrorist.” No need to show any connection between any particular state and the events of September 11. Just click on the “terrorist” icon and start bombing.

The Washington Post, in an editorial published on Sept. 15 wrote, “The Bush administration's vow to go after states that harbor terrorists as well as terrorists themselves opens up a broad array of potential targets.” The Post editorial goes on to mention Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Syria and North Korea as possible targets.

On Sept. 14, the Egyptian ambassador to the U.S. left a meeting at the U.S. State Department saying that the U.S. should focus on finding those who carried out the attacks and not “broaden the effort to include other geopolitical goals.”

But that is just what the Bush administration has in mind.

The meeting that the Egyptian ambassador was leaving was called by the U.S. State Department. Representatives from 15 Middle East countries were told that they had a stark choice: “... either declare their nation members of an international coalition against terrorism, or risk being isolated in a growing global conflict,” according to The New York Times.

The Bush administration is planning what amounts to a worldwide “lockdown”. For the U.S. government this is an opportunity to realign the world.

Afghanistan and bin Laden have become the first chosen targets for the Pentagon. Within minutes of the September 11 explosions, the government and media began laying the political groundwork for an attack on Afghanistan. News reports included unfounded speculation that bin Laden and Afghanistan were the culprits. The focus of reporting has been on who to blame, rather than on what circumstances led to the attack.

Afghanistan is a particularly easy target. The Taliban movement and the government it has established, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, have few friends in the West. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world.

If, in fact, a political force or movement “associated with the Middle East,” as TV commentators describe it, should actually have been responsible for carrying out the September 11th events, the first thing that one would want to understand is: why?

In light of the twenty-four/seven news coverage, it is amazing that there has not been any serious discussion in this country over why anyone would be so angry with the U.S. that they would participate in such a massive attack.

In fact, for many millions of people around the world the U.S. is not seen as the “shining city on a hill,” but as a giant economic power that exploits the labor and resources of the world for the profits of large multi-national corporations.

U.S. policy in Iraq is one prominent example. In 1990, the United Nations, at the urging of the U.S., imposed massive economic sanctions against Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait.

Eleven years later these sanctions remain in place. U.N. and other agencies report that over a million Iraqi people have died as a result of the effects of the sanctions.

Also well known is the attitude of the U.S. government to the suffering brought upon the Iraqi people. The CBS news program “60 Minutes” interviewed Madeleine Albright when she was Secretary of State during the Clinton administration. When questioned about the more than 500,000 innocent Iraqi children who had died as a direct result of the sanctions, Albright was asked if the price was justified. She responded, “We think the price is worth it.”

In addition to the sanctions, the U.S. has conducted a nearly continuous bombing campaign against targets in Iraq.

The pretext used to launch the Persian Gulf War was the need to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Yet long after that feat had been accomplished, the war continues. It didn't take long for the world to realize that the true purpose of this armed conflict was the U.S. need to control the flow of oil.

Middle East oil will be pumped and distributed no matter who controls the wells. The real question is: who will reap the profits from the oil and who will control its distribution around the world?

Clearly, the U.S. wants to maintain control not only over the profits, but also over its economic competitors. With the U.S. military in control of the transportation of oil, competitors such as Japan, Germany, France and England will be forced to cooperate with the U.S. in order to maintain their economic infrastructures.

The U.S. military presence in the Middle East and the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan are driven by one thing: oil.

Afghanistan is located in an area of the world that the U.S. and western oil companies must dominate in order to retain control over the world's economic systems. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the new development of oil reserves in the Central Asian states, there are huge profits to be made by those who can control the extraction and distribution of oil.

An “Afghanistan Fact Sheet” produced by the U.S. Energy Information Administration states, “Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes proposed multi-billion dollar oil and gas export pipelines through Afghanistan.”

An article in the Denver Rocky Mountain News printed last year highlighted the importance of opening up these Central Asian oil resources: “What makes the Caspian oil particularly attractive is that it is not controlled by OPEC [the organization of oil exporting countries, heavily dominated by the Arab states]. Unlike the Arabs, the Central Asian republics have no reservations about allowing foreigners to develop their energy sector.”

When the Taliban first emerged as the dominant power in Afghanistan, the U.S. tried to maintain good relations with the movement. This arrangement continued despite the obvious discrimination being instituted against the women of Afghanistan and the attack on basic human rights for all Afghanis.

The reason: the multi-national oil company, UNOCAL, was in negotiations with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. When that deal fell through, U.S. foreign policy abruptly changed. By failing to meet the needs of the U.S. multi-national oil companies, the Taliban were demoted to an unreliable partner and labeled a danger to U.S. control of the region.

The catalyst for the U.S. attack on Afghanistan therefore, has less to do with concern over “terrorism” and more to do with concern for oil profits.

The war plans of the U.S. government are not the path to a safe world, but to a more dangerous world for everyone. A strong anti-war and progressive movement in the U.S. will be the clearest signal to the world that the majority of the people of the U.S. are allies in the struggle for a better world.

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