We are to blame for creating the terror: The U.S. involvement in Afghanistan leading up to 9/11

Truth is not a partisan issue. The United States assumed the role of the victim following the events of 9/11, but such a view is conceited and lacking in accountability. We were wronged, as were all living beings, with the loss of human life that day. But our loss fails to compare with the brutality we as the United States have brought upon Afghanistan through our Capitalistic pursuits, beginning in 1979. It is Capitalism, along with the greed that accompanies it, which has brought upon widespread death of unfathomable toll. In a ten year span from 1979 tom 1989, an estimated one million Afghani’s lost their lives to a war that was of our creation, deceptively invoked to hinder the Soviets, while at the same time expanding our access to Afghanistan oil. If there is one thing we could have learned from 9/11, it’s that the acts of the “terrorists” were invoked, that these weren’t crazed people from a region simply plagued by jealousy or religious fanaticism, but in fact human beings rebelling against the cause of their suffering. We haven’t learned any of this! Instead, we have remained proud of our lifestyle and defiant of any wrongdoing, seemingly beginning the story from September 11th, 2001, ignoring the causes which led up to it. I have supplied a link below which details a history of Afghanistan and the events which led up to the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center. Please read the account, but I will offer a summary.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/e297a/Afghanistan,%20the%20United%20States.htm#_ftnref28

To summarize the above report, in seeking to give the USSR “…its Vietnam war”, the United States CIA began secretly giving funds to Afghanistan resistance fighters, the predecessors to the Taliban, in the hopes of invoking the Soviets into war. We armed them and trained them while advancing the carnage in the region. While fact, history has been recorded with a much different account. Until 1998, it had been largely accepted that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan prior to our involvement in the region, and that our actions were in response, but an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, and admissions from former CIA director Robert Gates, reveals that the U.S. intended to invoke the Soviets into the region, giving them a war they couldn’t win that took place far away from American soil, which wouldn‘t cost American life. In essence, Afghanistan became a pawn in the Cold War, a battle which ultimately pitted Capitalism against a distorted version of Socialism, amid loads of false propaganda. A link to the Brzezinski interview is below.

http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html

So, what had begun as a civil war in Afghanistan escalated into a battle of economic systems between two super powers. We armed and trained the predecessors to the Taliban and escalated their war, only to retreat from the region once the Soviet Union and Cold War were no more, no longer of interest to us. We did nothing to clean up a region we ravaged, and offered no foreign aid to help them rebuild. And now, perhaps worst of all, is the knowledge that all of this was intended and created for our own political and economic purposes. A whole region torn apart by war, fueled from our selfish deceit.

Put yourself into the shoes of the people of Afghanistan and you too will understand the resentment they hold towards the United States. Imagine another country fueling a war in our land which didn’t have to be, and finding out later that the side you thought was your ally was actually the cause of your war. Imagine finding out that the ten years of brutality and hell your country experienced, followed by the subsequent years of unaided rebuilding, was the direct result of an outside force misrepresenting themselves to you, using the lives of your citizens to fight their war. We were the terrorists long ago, much worse than the terrorists which struck on 9/11. Our terrorism was deceitful, widespread and of much further harm than anything experienced on 9/11. And worst of all, this is largely unknown.

And now we’re in Iraq, doing it again, involving ourselves in a region we have no business being. Our government clearly won’t learn, so it’s up to the people to seize back control and do what is right. Protests and voting are not enough. In a sick twist to the story, it was our actions back in 1979 which led directly to the opportunity for Bush to capitalize off of 9/11 and proliferate the war in Iraq, again through deception and misleading the truth. Because of the mindset inherent in Capitalism, greed amid the unyielding desire to profit with little to hold it in check, our desire to defeat the Soviets took life from a region we had no place being. Capitalism wants to defeat all opposing economic systems. It knows that Communist and Socialist economies are difficult to trade with and harder to profit off of, due to their great regulations restricting free trade. It’s the same reason we were in Vietnam, ravaging another region guilty of threatening the interests of our elite. When will this stop? When will the masses be able to see the ways they were fooled and hustled? When will the American citizens realize that their government been high jacked, their freedoms stolen and their will deceived? It is our gluttonous lifestyle, one afforded through our abuses of Capitalism, which has allowed these great injustices to proliferate. I have read that we as a nation account for 5% of the world’s population, but consume 25% of it’s resources. Our Capitalism has exhausted the resources within our own country, and to continue the rapid growth our nation has become addicted to, we must invade the economies of other countries and initiate wars to produce our excessive profit. We are the terrorists, not the Taliban. We are the extremists, not Al-Qaeda. When will the American people realize this? Probably not until we’ve invaded Iran.