Seeds of democracy grow into war and opium

U.S. is striving to be a world leader, but is showing its leadership in a barbaric way. It is trying to sow the seeds of democracy around the globe, but is doing it with arms, pouring blood of civilians. There is a great number of examples - Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and, of course, Afghanistan. Other countries may be added to this list.

The American troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, Barack Obama reminded when delivering his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He promised not to change the initial return date of the soldiers. In 2013, 34,000 U.S. military would leave the war zone. Afghan services will be in charge of the operations against the Taliban. Many experts still do not believe that the U.S. troops will leave the area completely.

Contrary to expectations, the U.S. is leaving Afghanistan in the status of a country that has lost its military campaign. The military campaign that the U.S. has been conducting in Afghanistan since 2001 inflicted serious damage to the American economy and did not yield any tangible results. Withdrawal from Afghanistan is not only one of the main campaign promises of Barack Obama, but also a necessary measure, as his administration is committed to bringing its own foreign policy ambitions in line with the economic situation in the country. Since 2001, the U.S. has spent over $1.4 trillion dollars on the war in Afghanistan. 

According to Bruce Riedel, a former adviser to the president who was behind the administration's Afghan policy, four years ago, Obama realized that he inherited the Afghan disaster, a war that the U.S. was rapidly losing. In particular, the findings of the expert report on Bagram military base in 2012 were widely discussed. They stated that NATO troops were defeated in the Afghan war. A similar conclusion was made by Senator Mike Rogers after a visit to Afghanistan last year.  

However, withdrawal from the war was much more difficult than its launching. Barack Obama was planning to create favorable conditions for the conclusion of the war - to form a strong government and a local battle-worthy army that could replace foreign troops. The effort was not very successful. If at first the U.S. tried to develop sensible tactics to get out of the Afghan deadlock, now the emphasis is on the quick withdrawal and not the tactics. Past illusions that the U.S. withdrawal could be implemented as combat capability of the Afghan army would increase have vanished. Current behavior of the U.S. is the evidence of their desire to escape from Afghanistan, hand over all the positions and abandon the conditions stipulated earlier.

Whereas previously the commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan John Allen proposed to leave 15,000 troops of the current 66,000, now the White House called the number of six to nine thousand. More recently, deputy national security adviser to the President Ben Rhodes said the administration was considering a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops.  

The formal reason for the invasion was the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The subsequent events of this military campaign had a pathetic name - "Operation Enduring Freedom." But what is behind these lofty words? An old friend of the Bush family, Osama bin Laden, in the late 1990's was hiding among the Taliban, who refused to give him to the American justice. Osama was blamed for the terrorist attacks in 2001, and NATO forces led by the United States invaded Afghanistan, ostensibly to combat international terrorism. But the U.S. government could not hide the truth about its friendship with the Taliban. The former Minister of Defense of Germany Andreas von Bulow said that the U.S. intelligence services have trained about 30,000 Muslim militants in Afghanistan, in particular, a group of fanatics who were prepared to defend their country and the idea to the end. One of them was Osama bin Laden.

The CIA "nurtured" the Taliban in Afghanistan. And then, the United States began fighting them. For nearly 12 years the 150,000-strong army of NATO with the latest weaponry was at war with 27,000 Taliban militants. Could that be that the U.S. military were to perform several different tasks? The following numbers suggest this may be the case.

Opium production in Afghanistan after the entry of NATO troops has increased 40 times. According to the Federal Drug Control Service, about 40 percent of Afghan heroin goes to Russia. Many experts believe that the deployment of troops in Afghanistan served as a good opportunity to arrange full heroin aggression against Russia. According to the UN, selling drugs Taliban annually earns $2.8 billion. Also, the UN released information that in the past 10 years in Europe and Russia about 1 million people died from Afghan heroin. Note that Afghan drugs do not get to the U.S. and do not harm their people.

About 34 thousands of civilians were killed during the war in Afghanistan. Frequently media reported that NATO aircraft "mistakenly" killed another group of people. The exact number of dead Taliban remains unknown, however, according to rough estimates, it is 10 thousand people. About 4.5 thousand NATO troops will never return to their families. Strong government in the country has not been formed, the effective army is non-existent, and the Taliban can regain control of the country at any time.  

This is the sad result of the military operations of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. This is how the U.S. is able to demonstrate its leadership by cracking down on peaceful citizens of other countries. No one calls the U.S. president a dictator or bloody murderer and instead he is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It took the U.S. forces eight years to change the regime in Iraq. During this time, tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed, and the Americans spent nearly $1 trillion. Iraq is yet to see the promised stability. The Americans were interested only in the Iraqi oil fields. The U.S. started the war in order to get them under control. As a result, over 20 million Iraqis have lost their means of livelihood, energy, food, water, medicines and medical care.

According to the UN, since the beginning of this year, 9,000 people fell victims of the conflict in Syria, where the total number of dead amounted to 70 thousand. The U.S. financed the Syrian opposition that unleashed a bloody civil war in the country. With the support of U.S. intelligence in Libya, Gaddafi's regime was overthrown. However, the Libyan people had stable lives and incomes under the alleged tyrant. Now the country does not remember what stability is.

Now the U.S. president is making a strong statement in response to the nuclear test by North Korea, and talking about sanctions against Iran. This means that at any time American bombers may head to these countries "to sow" democracy. The Americans should be solving their numerous internal problems as their national debt has once again reached a new high - 16.394 trillion. We hope that the U.S. government will start solving their national problems instead of seeking new external debt, combatting terrorism outside of the country and imposing their "democracy."

Sergei Vasilenkov

Pravda.Ru

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