Afghanistan — Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden have takes worth hearing
If you’re looking for an honest take on the unceremonious end of the War in Afghanistan, you would do well to steer clear of mainstream American news and pundits—whether they’re scoring political points against the Blue Team or blindly claiming that Orange Man Bad is to blame.
Let me be the first person on the right to say, President Biden deserves a considerable amount of credit for sticking to the plan put in place, albeit delayed and bungled, to withdraw from this misguided war. Let’s get to it.
First up, grab a cup of hot tea (or an adult beverage of your choosing) and take a listen to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald. He’s got the receipts on all the lies we were told since back in 2001. This is just devastating. (Turn the volume up for the video clips.)
Year after year, U.S. generals have said in public they are making steady progress on the central plank of their strategy: to train a robust Afghan army and national police force that can defend the country without foreign help.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-us-government-lied-for-two-decades
In the Lessons Learned interviews, however, U.S. military trainers described the Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters. They also accused Afghan commanders of pocketing salaries — paid by U.S. taxpayers — for tens of thousands of “ghost soldiers.”
None expressed confidence that the Afghan army and police could ever fend off, much less defeat, the Taliban on their own. More than 60,000 members of Afghan security forces have been killed, a casualty rate that U.S. commanders have called unsustainable. (Washington Post – as quoted by Glenn Greenwald)
Tucker Carlson & @ggreenwald Discuss Why The Government Lied About Afghanistan
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) August 18, 2021
Glenn: "It's not a case where they got it wrong in good faith. It's a case where they deliberately lied to the public to justify this endless war because so many people were profiting from it." pic.twitter.com/7smp8xfiPJ
Just hours before I sat down to draft this, the President of the United States gave a speech in which he tried to defend the honor of this war—a defense that is frankly offensive, and that I think most offends the families of the injured and the dead.https://t.co/fw8fp5EMOw
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 18, 2021
The last week has been hard for me, and yet I can only imagine what this week has felt like, and what the future will bring, for the people—the peoples—of Afghanistan…there was a time when I felt like picking Afghanistan up by its ankles and shaking it until all the terrorists fell out, like scorpions from a boot. Most Americans felt that way, in the autumn of 2001, and I was no different. I was 18 years old and almost competitively wrong about everything. I actually believed most of what I heard on TV from “official sources”—not everything I heard, but enough. I trusted my government, at least I trusted it to know more about Afghanistan than I did…
https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/kabul
Speaking of Orange Man Bad, apparently he was interviewed on the topic. You might be surprised by what he said:
TRUMP: "It was a horrible decision going into the Middle East. I know the Bush family will not be happy, but I believe it was the worst decision in the history of our country when we decided to go into the Middle East." pic.twitter.com/PW8XXoHi7h
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 18, 2021