Top 4 Countries Where US Was 'Arsonist and Firefighter'
Afghanistan
In 2001, in response to the horrifying 9/11 attacks in the United States, then-president George Bush announced the Global War on terrorism and the beginning of the operation, codenamed “Enduring Freedom,” to target al-Qaeda and the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. Washington has been mired in the never-ending war for over sixteen years, and despite its initial advances during the campaign, today the Taliban controls about one-third of Afghanistan, “more territory than at any point since the US-led invasion.” But has the plight changed a bit since the launch of “Enduring Freedom”?
The US strategy in Afghanistan was in theory to train an Afghan army that could fight the terrorist groups in the country and then to withdraw. After almost seventeen years of continuous warfare, the country is still devastated, and now the situation has deteriorated further due to relentless airstrikes, a dire economic and humanitarian situation; Afghanistan has been a hotbed of terrorism and drug trafficking, and that has not changed since the Western invasion.
While Barack Obama pledged to pull troops from the war-torn country in 2014, drawing them down to 8,400 by the end of his term in December 2016, forces nonetheless remained there. And it seems that his successor Donald Trump couldn’t just let Afghanistan go, going even further in his decision to retain forces in Afghanistan and to increase the number beyond 8,400.
Former US ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald E. Neumann believed that it was Obama’s announcement that the US was “no longer at war with the Taliban” that eventually gave the movement a chance to retake control of over 70 percent of the territory, thereby prompting the Afghan government to propose to recognize the movement as a legitimate political party to quell the violence.
And – surprise, surprise – Daesh has reached Afghanistan, too, having gained a foothold “under the watch of US military and intelligence forces,” former Afghan President Hamid Karzai said. He blamed the US for supplying weapons to the group in the country, insisting that military action by foreigners would not bring peace, but would foment extremism instead.
“Military action, especially by foreign forces, will not bring peace. Afghans need to evolve a consensus to reach out to everybody, including ‘sons of the soil’ Taliban, to seek a settlement,” he suggested in October 2017.
Iraq
In 2003 the George Bush Administration justified the Iraq War on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had acquired weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and thereby put in peril the whole Middle East region. The official rationale for the invasion was the need to remove “a regime that developed and used weapons of mass destruction, that harbored and supported terrorists, committed outrageous human rights abuses, and defied the just demands of the United Nations and the world.”
Now, it is a well-known fact that the alliance backed by the US and the UK was accused of faking the evidence of WMD presence in Iraq in order to justify the invasion. Having toppled Hussein and brought the Shiites to power, the United States spurred chaos in the country that, just like Afghanistan, became a cradle of terrorism; the so-called Sons of Iraq, a group of trained rebels, sponsored by the United States, at some point became members of the most violent terrorist group in the history of humankind – Daesh, thus making the West confront a “weapon” it had created itself.
In December 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over the Islamic State, but the United States has not yet left the country. Probably, Washington is still dealing with the fire it started up itself. Rumor has it the US is going to relocate its troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to curb the Taliban…Déjà vu?
Libya
In the wake of the Arab spring on March 17, 2011 the UN Security Council passed a US-drafted resolution authorizing military intervention in Libya in order for Washington and its allies to save people from the dictator Muammar Gaddafi and establish democracy in the country.
“We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi—a city nearly the size of Charlotte—could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world,” Barack Obama declared, having chosen the most eloquent words to appeal to people and reassure them that he was doing the right thing.
Later, in a Fox News interview, the former president admitted that it was his “worst mistake,” referring to the aftermath of the intervention.
“Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.”
The overthrow of Gaddafi, who had controlled all signs of extremist discontent at home with an iron fist, a swift regime change and his brutal murder, opened a Pandora’s box of Islamist militancy, destroying the country’s statehood and turning it into a “failed state.”
What struck people the most was the reaction to the death of Gaddafi from the then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said “we came, we saw, he died.”
