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REFLECTIONS ON AFGHANISTAN: Williamson and Chayes discuss Chayes’ article “The Ides of August,” about her experiences working as a reporter and special counsellor to the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war in Afghanistan.
Learn more about Sarah: https://www.sarahchayes.org/
Read “The Ides of August”: https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/the-…
Read Sarah’s books: On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake: https://bookshop.org/books/on-corrupt…
Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security https://bookshop.org/books/thieves-of…
The Afghan people hated the Taliban but they were thankful for ridding the country of the war lords.
President Karzia is responsible for bringing the taliban to Afghanistan.
The CIA allied itself with the war lords that the Afghan people hated.
The war lords took over the provincial governments and corruption was rampant.
The US allowed Karzai’s corruption. When one of his staff was caught accepting bribes, it turned out to be the bag man transporting money from the CIA to Karzai.
We trained guerilla fighters to fight a conventional war dependent on our military equipment rather than a guerilla war.
The corruption and failure of Afghanistan is a mirror of American corruption.
Why is Pakistan considered an ally, given that we didn’t trust them not to tip off Osama bin Ladie and they armed the Taliban with military aid that the US provided them.
Calling Successor a ‘Traitor’, Afghan Ex-Leader Denounces U.S. Bombing
Hamid Karzai .. accused the American military of using the presence of Islamic State militants to turn his country into a laboratory for testing its weapons.
.. they believed it was carried out for American domestic political reasons and as a way to send a message to other countries at odds with the United States, rather than strictly to fight terrorism in Afghanistan.
.. “The goal of this attack was for beyond Afghanistan — it was for showing American power to North Korea, Syria and some other countries; it was for scaring these countries,”
.. “The conclusion is that Daesh was a U.S. contractor, like DynCorp, like other U.S. companies, that they used to empty an area of its population and create a cause, create an environment, a psychological environment in which the U.S. can then test its weapon.”
.. analysts say they believe the latest American bombing has given him another political pretext to mobilize against the government.
.. The current Afghan authorities forcefully blame him for the corrupt institutions they inherited and are trying to peel away the layers of patronage that once made him a powerful player.