"Concerns mount that US withdrawal from Afghanistan could risk progress on women's rights," blares a new headline from CNN. "Concerns are mounting from bipartisan US lawmakers and Afghan women's rights activists that the hard-won gains for women and civil society in Afghanistan could be lost if the United States makes a precipitous withdrawal from the country," CNN tells us.
Here's why the US is in Afghanistan - "A recently unearthed 2007 United States Geological Service survey appears to have discovered nearly $1 trillion in mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself. ... The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world. An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys." https://www.mining.com/1-trillion-motherlode-of-lithium-and-gold-discovered-in-afghanistan/
So US occupation will continue until those resources are exhausted, at which point the US will withdraw. This has nothing to do with "women's rights".
Biden, like Trump, couldn't withdraw troops even if he wanted to. Biden, like Trump, does not control the military or policy in general. He rubberstamps preset policy - like Trump did, the only difference is that he does not tweet out his own position.
It's very well thought through and documented. The tropes in question - beloved of the MSM and always in support of war - are:
1. Think of the women!
2. He's attacking his own people!
3. We have to save democracy!
4. Who gets to talk on human rights
Regarding Afghanistan, we might add a fifth trope: They are drug dealers!
Opium and heroin production have increased every year since the NATO invasion. Since every inch of Afghan territory is visible to "our" satellites and surveillance, this is a remarkable achievement. I wonder who those pesky drug dealers could be?
I find the statement in the CNN report by "Fawzia Koofi, one of the other women on the government's team for talks with the Taliban" that "the important thing for me was not who is in Afghanistan, which superpower is in Afghanistan, the troops of which country is in my country. The important thing for me was, as a human being, I could walk and breathe free" rather odd. Really? That the only way her own country could be free would be to have a much bigger country keep its troops there - for how long? Given that those troops have signally failed to eject the Taliban, it's strange that she, an elected representative of Afghan people, would not trust her own people to run their own country at least as well as the USA could.
If America cared about women’s rights we wouldn’t be allies with Saudi Arabia.
Here's why the US is in Afghanistan - "A recently unearthed 2007 United States Geological Service survey appears to have discovered nearly $1 trillion in mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself. ... The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world. An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys." https://www.mining.com/1-trillion-motherlode-of-lithium-and-gold-discovered-in-afghanistan/
So US occupation will continue until those resources are exhausted, at which point the US will withdraw. This has nothing to do with "women's rights".
Biden, like Trump, couldn't withdraw troops even if he wanted to. Biden, like Trump, does not control the military or policy in general. He rubberstamps preset policy - like Trump did, the only difference is that he does not tweet out his own position.
Fair.org has just published a piece which addresses this very issue:
https://fair.org/home/support-the-tropes/
It's very well thought through and documented. The tropes in question - beloved of the MSM and always in support of war - are:
1. Think of the women!
2. He's attacking his own people!
3. We have to save democracy!
4. Who gets to talk on human rights
Regarding Afghanistan, we might add a fifth trope: They are drug dealers!
Opium and heroin production have increased every year since the NATO invasion. Since every inch of Afghan territory is visible to "our" satellites and surveillance, this is a remarkable achievement. I wonder who those pesky drug dealers could be?
I find the statement in the CNN report by "Fawzia Koofi, one of the other women on the government's team for talks with the Taliban" that "the important thing for me was not who is in Afghanistan, which superpower is in Afghanistan, the troops of which country is in my country. The important thing for me was, as a human being, I could walk and breathe free" rather odd. Really? That the only way her own country could be free would be to have a much bigger country keep its troops there - for how long? Given that those troops have signally failed to eject the Taliban, it's strange that she, an elected representative of Afghan people, would not trust her own people to run their own country at least as well as the USA could.