By Ian Goodrum
It would appear the United States’ media has finally gotten over their love affair with President Joe Biden for not being Donald Trump. Now, at long last, they’re actually criticizing his administration. Are they taking issue with his inaction on student debt, or his mishandling of the new coronavirus variants sweeping through the populace? Maybe they’re nailing him on a fumbled extension of an eviction moratorium that threatens to leave millions homeless.
Nope. They’re outraged because he’s ending a war.
After two decades and as many trillions spent, Biden finalized the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan earlier this month. Almost immediately, the Taliban took the capital Kabul in a matter of days. As if a switch had been flipped, the media response was as strident as it was unanimous.
Their chief objection was not, of course, the tens of thousands of Afghans killed in the 20 years of US occupation. Nor are they concerned with the millions more whose lives were upended by their country’s military. What they’re worried about, what really keeps them up at night, is the loss of American credibility on the world stage. The evisceration of an entire nation is a footnote, at most, to the abject humiliation of a public retreat. Priorities firmly in order, I suppose.
This oblivious attitude was most recently exemplified in the response to a terrorist attack at the Kabul airport. After the deadly bombing, headlines blared with the number 13 — how many US troops were killed — but carried nary a mention of the Afghan civilians who perished. That was, of course, far higher than the total plastered across every US newsstand; at present, at least 169 dead have been accounted for. Perhaps it wasn’t thought to be worth mentioning because eyewitness reports contend some of those civilians were killed when surviving US soldiers opened fire.
Biden swore retribution for those 13 soldiers, and delivered it in traditional American fashion: A drone strike that killed 10 civilians, seven of them children. At a time when many in the media are crying out in disbelief over why so many countries seem to despise the US, the military they revere so much have given them an answer.
But their efforts to justify continued US presence press on. The media has turned to all manner of tactics in this campaign, and it should come as no surprise that has included fear-mongering about China. In America’s absence, they claim, China will move into Afghanistan and run roughshod over the population. They invoke the Belt and Road Initiative to lend credence to this wild fantasia, as the myth of a supposed “debt trap” has become an unchallengeable shibboleth in the parlance of the elite.
I’m not sure what delusions they’re entertaining. China hasn’t been at war in over 40 years. Under the Communist Party, it has done nothing even remotely comparable to the US’ pathological imperial meddling. In that time, priority one for the PRC has been its own sovereignty and independence, and it has repeatedly stressed its refusal to disrupt the internal affairs of other countries. Any pearl-clutching over China stepping into a supposed “power vacuum” is window dressing for a recommitment of US forces to wholesale slaughter. Besides, what do they expect from BRI involvement in Afghanistan? Unlike the US, China doesn’t build military bases abroad. It builds roads, bridges, ports and railways.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from these allegations is those commentators must believe all countries are, underneath their rhetoric, as bloodthirsty as themselves. Without a frame of reference for alternative forms of engagement — where others are treated as equal partners rather than dutiful subjects — you could see how someone could think this way. As the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
But that glib expression has a far more sinister meaning when the nails in question are human beings. And paid political commentators are hardly naïve babes in the woods; their job is to sell the policy objectives of the US security state. So I have little sympathy for their caterwauling. They’re not on the side of the people of Afghanistan, and never have been.
So what are we left with? Well, thanks to the US, we’ve seen what two trillion dollars can buy. Bombs, warplanes, tanks, drones — any implement of destruction you can dream of, it’s been bought and shipped overseas to menace countless sovereign nations.
We’ve also seen what it can’t. Seemingly infinite wealth can’t be used to escape the ravages of a deadly pandemic, despite China’s successful blueprint being essentially public domain at this point. It can’t be used for efficient, affordable public transit to help the working majority get from point A to B without clogging highways and polluting the skies.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily News Exchange Item
