In 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan as part of the so-called War on Terror. The United States administration was joined in Afghanistan by the United Kingdom. Later, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) also joined the United States in the country. They were going to hunt for Osama bin Laden and also destroy the Taliban.

At the beginning of the invasion, the man in the oval office then, George W Bush, said the main goal was to dismantle al-Qaeda and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power.

As it later became clear that Bush and his European war cohorts had no business invading Afghanistan, the United States government turned to propaganda news coverage through the mainstream media, trying to justify why it was necessary for the country to go to war in the Middle East, including the Iraqi war.

During Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, he promised to end the needless wars waged by the country in the Middle East. Particularly, he said he would withdraw all United States soldiers from Afghanistan, as the war has no merit.

Although Obama was able to withdraw some United States and NATO troops between 2011 and 2016, transferring many combat roles to the Afghan security forces, there still remain some coalition soldiers, led by the United States, fighting in the country.

However, as the fight continues in Afghanistan, civilians’ lives are at peril. The death toll among civilians has risen as a result of United States-led air-to-ground attacks in civilian populated areas in the country.

On February 9, 2017, the United Nations confirmed that 18 civilians were killed in a United States-led airstrike in Helmand’s Sangin District in Afghanistan. The attacks were reportedly targeting anti-government forces. The United Nations said the dead were all women and children. Although the Pentagon tried to refute the United Nations’ statement, it later admitted that United States warplanes completed 30 bombing raids in the area, including the strikes believed to have caused the civilian deaths. Of course, the United States would always describe such brutal killings as so-called ‘collateral damage’.

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cc: seun lalasticlala

An army who served during the afghan & iraq war Mark L. Elrod said:

I served, too, Operation Iraqi "Freedom." We had no business being in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was not a fight for "freedom." We are only making more enemies. With every civilian life we take, we create 10 new enemies. Those people have families & friends. Those family members & friends hate us for what our government orders us to do. They live with the threat of a missile strike at any time, anywhere. Even if they are non-combatants, they might die. That breeds hatred & contempt. With our allies slowly turning against us, the hatred we are causing will come back to haunt us & our, once, allies are going to step back & watch it happen.

Who will help? England & Israel? That is not much help at all. Germany is not too happy with us because of Obama's spying. France is fed up with Trump, as is Ukraine & other Slavic nations. Our imperialism & hubris is going to come back to bite us.

There are many other veterans who realize we had no business being there. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, nor did Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia funded the terrorists. Yet, we did not attack them. Also, there is no justification for missile strikes on crowds of people. Our nation carpet bombed civilian targets is Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, & all commits "surgical strikes" throughout the middle east that kill civilians. There is no justification of that.

In addition, we dropped leaflets that depicted a Muslim mother holding her baby with a mushroom cloud rising in the background. The woman & the infant's flesh was "melting" in the photo. It was a very good photo manipulation, it looked realistic. There was Arabic writing on them, I am assuming they were threats. My division created them. We called it "PSYOPS," but that is just another term for terrorism. We dropped hundreds of thousands of them over villages. We were sending a message that we will kill your women & children. That is jacked-up shit.

You wonder why we are hated. Well, dropping leaflets like those & killing crowds of people (then killing the first responders) breeds hatred & creates enemies.

cc seun lalasticlala

Freedom? for whom?
The US funded and armed the Taliban to give the USSR a headache.
The fact that the government of the time was an ally of the USSR and they were there by invitation was lost on the US and the idiot Charlie Wilson ...
So now the US has the headache, and Russia doesn't.
You'd think that was a lousy bargain, but you'd be wrong.

So why is the US in Afghanistan? They had nothing to do with 911, or any other so called "terrorist" attacks.
They're there for the poppy crop, guarded by US Marines ... "paying your share".
The CIA is the distributor of drugs world-wide. It funds their clandestine operations, above and beyond the US Government's reach.
And the minerals in Afghanistan are plentiful, some not found elsewhere (yet).

So please, enough with the heroes and the freedom garbage.
It's just more US hegemony and plunder, and these boys are just dumb gun fodder.

Prior to the US funding the Taliban, Afghanistan was a pretty modern country.
The USSR had built highways, hospitals, infrastructure. Few women wore hijabs and burkas then. Plenty of schooling for girls.
That's all gone now of course. God bless the USA.

(I won't even address the policy of perpetual war and the Military Industrial Complex: shifting US taxpayers' money into the pockets of those who produce the killing tools.)

The other reason the US is in Afghanistan is that it's on the other side of Iran from Iraq, where they already have a strong presence, having bombed that sovereign nation into the sand and hung its leader. And Iran is in the crosshairs.

And they wonder why the US is hated in the Middle East ... why they call it the "Great Satan".
No surprise to me.