CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie is refusing all comment on whether the US will stop carrying out airstrikes in Afghanistan, saying he’s “concentrating on the here and now.”
The war in Afghanistan is meant to be effectively over, with the last US troops leaving by the end of August. McKenzie, however, suggests that the US intention to continue to support its partners means that they’ll continue to “offer” airstrikes to Afghanistan.
McKenzie didn’t want to admit to intentions to carry out more airstrikes, but did concede that the US has been stepping up airstrikes, and believes they’ve had a “good effect” in the fighting.
The admission that the US will keep carrying out strikes after August would be extremely negative diplomatically, and officials likely want to avoid addressing that aspects of the policy of continuing the war by simply refusing comment on what will happen after August. The truth isn’t hard to see, however.
The US doesn’t have basing rights in Afghanistan or anywhere adjacent, though officials have been clear all along that they have every intention to keep up military operations, somehow.
Without belaboring the point, The Taliban and Afghans alike never seriously considered the US was going to leave Afghanistan. The initial 2002 invasion guaranteed occupation in perpetuity.
Some wouldn’t consider Germany, South Korea, and Japan “occupied.”
Germany, South Korea, and Japan = Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan
The US is coming full circle. Its original involvement in Afghanistan was airstrikes on the Taliban. Those strikes allowed the opposition to the Taliban to win the ongoing civil war. Only then did the US send in troops, an occupation of what was taken via airstrikes.
The US hawks dream of doing it again.
They can’t. The problem is that the old Soviet allies we backed against the Taliban (our former allies) were coopted and then burned out in the occupation. They are gone. All that is left of real weight is the Taliban, standing amid the wreckage we’ve left.
“The war in Afghanistan is meant to be effectively over, with the last US troops leaving by the end of August.”
QUESTION: Why have we allowed Washington to define terms and thus set the narrative? Can we see how narrowly “war” and “withdrawal” are characterized as an “end” to the war? Purpose being to create that impression in the minds of the inattentive, disinterested American public that the war is actually ending, or at least US involvement is.
This is nothing new—Clinton’s bombing of the Balkans, Iraq, etc. was never referred to as the US being at “war”. The public has been conditioned to view the absence of American combat troops as the absence of the US involvement.
Or Libya being a “limited kinetic action”.