Afghanistan: disastrous US defeat again!

WHILE the US is pushing the Philippines to ramp up tensions in the South China Sea using a “swarm of fake news” agitation and propaganda media, political and bureaucratic assets funded by the new CIA fronts like Institute for War and Peace Studies (IWPS) as reported by Pinoy Exposé recently, the US is retreating in Afghanistan in another disgraceful admission of defeat to a ragtag guerilla army called the Talibans.

Last April 14, 2021, US President Joe Biden, announced the withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021.

The US launched a war against Afghan Talibans in 2001 using the World Trade Center Twin Towers terror attack and Osama bin Laden’s presence in Afghanistan as pretexts – even though it is scientifically proven that neither bin Laden nor the Talibans could have had anything to do with that complex attack in the U.S.

The US war in Afghanistan has cost the country $2-trillion in 20-years with only an ignominious and shameful defeat to show, while having killed up to 220,000 civilian over the two decades averaging 11,000 civilian casualties every year.

Since 2001, up to 800,000 US soldiers were deployed to Afghanistan and 2,400 troops have been killed, equivalent to 1 percent of the Afghan civilians they killed.

When I think of what the Filipino civilian toll could be in a US-led war versus China using the Philippines, I can only shudder.

The US record of defeats in wars that it started is there for all to see.

Yet, in the Philippines there are still many “American Boys,” Amboys for short, who approve for the Americans to risk the peace, prosperity and even the survival of Philippine society itself, for the planned US war against the peacefully rising China.

Count the US defeats: Korea, US driven to accept the 38th Parallel line; Vietnam, US kicked out; Iraq, Libya, Syria, the US have lost in all of them. And mind you, these are all countries located in Asia.

There is no other war in the Asian horizon that the U.S. is interested in, except that against China, even if China continues to declare without let up that it does not seek to replace the U.S. as global hegemon.

But the US can’t take the humility of having another “equal” in this world, yet it won’t face China fair-and-square and wishes to use the Philippines as a “pawn” to draw away some Chinese fire power from US forces to Philippine targets.

Why are so many Filipinos duped into swallowing the “benevolent” US image and hug these colonial-era exploiters?

The US and Philippine oligarchy control the mainstream media, many politicians and academics (like UP Prof. Clarita Carlos, La Salle Prof. Renato de Castro, Richard Haydarian, Jay Batongbacal, et al) and orchestrate mass brainwashing agit-prop operations like we saw recently in the scare tory of “220 Chinese militia vessels” that were nothing more than plain and real fishing vessels.

But like in all post-WW II wars the US initiated, not only will the US lose its war with China but it is already losing the economic and “soft power” war as well as China is popular with 70 percent of the poorer countries of the world with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) economic assistance and, lately, its “Vaccine Humanitarianism” benefitting countries like the Philippines which will get 25-million doses from China as well as 1- million donated Sinovac vaccines.

I used to administer the Philippine Refugee Processing Center (PRPC) in Bataan where I took care of 300,000 pro-American Vietnamese left behind in Vietnam when the US abandoned them after losing the war in 1975.

I shudder to think what will happen to the Amboys when they are left behind after the US finally loses its physical conflict with China in the decade ahead.

The US and Amboys should wake up soon enough and learn from the US defeats and help end its aggressions.

(Herman Tiu Laurel is an author, writer and founder of the Phil-BRICS Strategic Studies think tank. Join his: “Power Thinks” with Ka Mentong Laurel and guests – Every Wednesday 6pm Live on Global Talk News Radio [GTNR] on Facebook and Talk News TV on YouTube; and Every Sunday 8 to 10am on RP1 738 on your AM radio dial.)