FAIR shows how western media is ignoring civilian deaths caused by US, assuming noble purpose, and often suggesting some way we could have held on longer. Amnesia in service of the endless war machine. No one should be fooled.
IMO the problems with withdrawal were caused by the failure to negotiate peace, not merely withdrawal, with the Taliban. But no President could have done that, and if they had, the media would have framed it in even more negative terms. Any President would have had to continue to fight forever from surrounding countries, continuing the illegal war forever, rather than accept defeat at the hands of monsters we first created* then isolated, demonized, and attacked. And we haven't really made peace even yet, while demanding that the Taliban do so. We want to keep the Taliban from making deals with their neighbors Russia, China, and Iran.
As horrible as the Taliban are, they killed fewer Afghans than the US. Afghan women were by and large under similar straits under US backed warlords as the Taliban and were not calling for the US to stay. Feminism, Freedom, and Democracy were weaponized in service of a brutal US occupation. So it is, often, with idealism--it is weaponized to serve empire.
I am happy that Biden stood the course on withdrawal, anyway. That it wasn't going to be perfect would of course be weaponized by the war media, like any withdrawals from endless wars. Nor would any part of the establishment accept a true surrender--which would be a surrender to the Taliban, giving them the keys and normalization. No, from every hill, using every means available, we will still fight on, to destroy whatever government continues to give an ear to our enemies. I suspect that's already happening. Meanwhile, we turn a blind eye to ourselves and a magnifying glass to our enemies, as always.
I dream of no foreign entanglements, respect for the internal processes of other countries, and never ending healthy self-critique. We should not interfere in the internal governing or financial processes of other countries. Such a country turning away from empire would have the resources to draw down the impending climate disaster as well as survive. But without that turning away from empire, neither outcome will be possible.
(*The Taliban were among the least vile elements of the Mujahadeen, which US backed in a long proxy war against Russia which was the pre-prelude to the US occupation. The Mujahadeen were the good guys them, Freedom Fighters, while they were tearing up a progressive socialist democracy that happened to be aligned with our enemy, the USSR. Contrary to myth, we continued to support the effort to regime-change the Afghan socialist government which lasted beyond 1991. Somehow Feminism didn't matter to US media then. The problem came when the resulting government, led by the relatively-least-vile element of those we supported, recognized the usefulness of recognizing their neighbors Iran/Russia/China. So obviously it's really weaponized idealism. The hypocrisy of the US is galling. And we US citizens should be more concerned with extremist misogyny in and by the USA itself, in many forms, including the attack on abortion rights in the USA, as well as endless imperialism planned, produced and delivered upon the world (sanctions, coops, color revolutions, etc, against Iran/Cuba/Russia/China/Venezuela/Syria/etc)--where the suffering caused by these horrors we cause hurt mostly poor women and children and not the intended leaders--whose primary difference from the good guys that we support (inc Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Columbia) are generally that the sanctioned leaders are slightly nicer to others generally, and especially that they are nicer to our enemies (including all in that group by definition anyway). We're incredibly sensitive to the idea that any enemy country might spend a few bucks trying to influence our elections, while blind to the fact we've run the biggest regime change and global domination racket in the world since 1945. We blow up countries we don't like. The US regime developed from Imperialism and hasn't shaken it since.)
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