Remember how the Afghan War “ended” at the end of 2014, only for NATO to announce the “Resolution Support Mission” which was keeping occupation forces, and by extension the war, there through the end of 2016?
Today, without much fanfare, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO has decided to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2016, and that this will “have a military component.”
Unlike other NATO operations in Afghanistan, which had some sort of deadline attached for them to eventually break, the latest announcement doesn’t include any timeline at all, suggesting the occupation, even rhetorically, is open-ended.
This isn’t entirely surprising, with the US already having a formal deal to keep troops in Afghanistan “through 2024 and beyond,” and seems to ensure that both US and NATO troops will be in Afghanistan for many years to come.
The announcement is likely to be a huge blow to Afghan peace talks, as the Taliban had conditioned any talks on the withdrawal of foreign forces, and NATO seems to be settling in for a long stay.
This is both an outrage and an expression of the ownership of the American and European governments by the munitions and "defense" interests. The American people need to organize in a way which they haven't since the labor victories of the 1930s and oppose this craziness. There is simply no way that we'll ever leave Afghanistan as long as the politics of the question is left to the mechanisms of so-called "representative government". We must organize and take direct action. Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.
And which parts of NATO would that be? Canada? Nope The Dutch? Nope The Brits, French or Germans? Nope.
That would be the newest members of the NATO alliance Slovakia, the Baltics, Poland, even gallant little Slovenia – guarding the ramparts of the alliance in the Hundu Kush. And America, of course, America will be staying – as a loyal member of the Alliance,:doing its duty to defend of course.
"…doing its duty to defend of course."
Defend what? Our Freedom? I've never been able to figure out what exactly we're doing there. There is nothing there to make us want to be there.