On Aug. 31, the day the U.S. completed its pull-out of evacuees and military forces from Afghanistan after 20 years, President Joe Biden spoke in a national address, of the “end of an era.” The same day in Afghanistan, the Taliban held two press conferences in Kabul—one at the international airport, and one at the national TV building, at which leaders announced their commitment to Afghanistan’s sovereignty, building its economy, asking for international support, and or the return of Afghans to build their nation.
“Get the solutions out front,” was the urgent call to action today, by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. This is a turning-point moment, she stressed. There are the immediate humanitarian needs in Afghanistan, as well as ongoing crises from the pandemic and famine worldwide which must have attention, and there is the necessity to launch infrastructure-building for basic livelihoods and the future. In the forefront is the necessity to build capacity to provide world health security. All this requires international collaboration.
Instead of this overview, there abound all types of abreactions in the Transatlantic Establishment, on the end of the “forever war” by the U.S. pulling out of Afghanistan, ranging from shock, to benign babble on “diplomacy”—but without development content. The MICIMATT complex is working overtime to thwart needed action. That is, the complex made up of the “military industrial congressional intelligence media academia think tank” circles. For example, the media try to inculcate fixated fury, mostly on the Kabul evacuation, and strictly military “issues.”
Zepp-LaRouche, instead, called for focus on “What to do next?” It is time to reflect on why this whole sad situation happened in the first place. That raises the question of the 20-year cover-up of those behind the perpetration of the 9/11 attack.
In 10 days, the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks will take place. In 2001, blame for that atrocity was deliberately misattributed to shield the British/Saudi Arabia and related networks responsible, to instead focus on bad guys in bat caves in Afghanistan for the next two decades.
In New York, the Independent Candidate for U.S. Senate Diane Sare has released a Special Supplement to her monthly newspaper, the New Federalist. Dated today, her lead article is headlined, “9/11 Was Preventable; Only Facing the Truth Will Secure the Future.” The broadside features excerpts from Lyndon LaRouche’s live interview appearance on Utah radio at the very time of the 9/11 attacks. He warned then, on the real nature of the networks which perpetrated the assault, saying, “Osama bin Laden is not an independent force….”
On the ground in Afghanistan right now, of the total population of 39 million, there are an estimated 18 million in need of humanitarian relief (shelter, water, food, medicine, livelihood aid). Well over 500,000 Afghanis are displaced within their own nation. UN staff are on the scene from UNICEF, UNHCR and other agencies, to keep relief going.
Last week David Beasley, Executive Director of the UN World Food Program, went personally to Afghanistan during the evacuation period, to meet with the Taliban, to keep continuity of aid going. He estimates that 4 million Afghanis could die this year from starvation if food relief is not constant. He reported that the Taliban are cooperating fully, including by providing food warehouses and routes for delivery. The WFP is committed to pre-stage food for the winter over the next 45 days, provided an additional $200 million comes in to the WFP.
The events in Afghanistan—historic and dramatic—are in fact part of the collapse of the whole neo-liberal system. The absence and decrepitude of infrastructure in the United States for the last half-century—especially provision of new water supplies, disaster protection structures, rail building, and the takedown of health care capacity, are at the extreme stage. This is the story—not climate change—of the raging Western wildfires, and the vulnerability to hurricane damage on the Gulf Coast and elsewhere. Many states have a harvest disaster, which makes for a world food crisis.
The “solutions” Zepp-LaRouche refers to, include banking reorganization on the Glass-Steagall principle, directed credit for crash programs of infrastructure construction, particularly health care, and R&D for space, nuclear fusion energy, and other advanced scientific programs.
Afghanistan is a special conjuncture, involving the necessity to change course. But meantime, the danger persists from the pro-“endless war” crowd, which continues the Asia Pivot, anti-China actions in the Pacific; the Ukraine activation against Russia; and all the other geopolitical maneuvers. On Aug. 30, British Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston crowed about how Britain stands ready to make airstrikes anywhere, if terrorism is the target. Even if no longer on the ground in Afghanistan—“one of the most inaccessible parts of the world … we’re still able to operate there” through airstrikes and drones, he said. After all, we launch airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, said Wigston. “I know there will be instances where there will be unavoidable civilian casualties.” By one estimate, the U.K. has conducted 50 airstrikes since January, in Syria and Iraq.
Instead of death and failure, the world is ready and open for peace through development.