En Passant

Australia is cutting and running from Afghanistan, along with the US.

Brothers in arms

Abbott and Shorten, in their joint and brotherly trip to the forces withdrawing from Afghanistan, dressed it up in the usual bullshit about valiant fighters.  My guess is the Taliban will be back in the saddle soon enough, perhaps with the support of various warlords.

So what did the $7 billion, 40 dead Australians, 260 seriously injured and the deaths and injuries of thousands of Afghans achieve?

Nothing. It has ended in defeat but our ruling class won’t tell you that. They have to perpetuate the myth of brave Australian soldiers defending freedom for their future imperialist expeditions.

The history of Australia as a white colonial settler state has been first the dispossession and genocide committed against the original inhabitants, dispossession and genocide which continues today.

The second limb has been Australian capitalism’s lockstep with the major imperialist power of the time, the UK initially and since World War II the United States.

Each of our military adventures has been a foreign invasion with big brother. We are the invaders, not the liberators.

The invasion of Afghanistan was US imperialism’s response to the humiliation of 9/11.

Overthrowing the Taliban, who were in fact prepared to hand over bin Laden if he were tried in a Muslim country, was symbolic of US strength, couched in terms of fighting terrorism.

It had nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with containing China. The threat to US global power is not Al-Qaeda; it is Chinese imperialism.

Australia followed the US into Afghanistan not because it is a lapdog of the US. It serves the interests of Australian capitalism to do that. The power of the US and the insurance policy of ANZUS lays the framework for the expansion of Australian power in the region.

The US pivot to Asia increases the power of the Australian ruling class in the region, or so our one percent thinks.  This means the price of insurance – sacrificing a few working class kids in the battlefields of some foreign country – is a small one for the Australian ruling class to pay for the consolidation of its regional power and further cementing its close relationship with the major terrorist power on the globe, US imperialism.

The myth of brave freedom fighting Aussie soldiers is about continuing the flow of working class kids into the professional killing machine of Australian capitalism. So while there might be some more serious analysis in the Department of Foreign Affairs and sections of academia, the lies of glorious war are force fed into the Australian working class.

Yet the reality is the Taliban and other resistance fighters have defeated the US and its allies. They will leave without having achieved any of their supposed goals of democracy, women’s liberation and the other lies offered to disguise the reality of imperialist invasion and war crimes.

We cannot predict what will happen when the US leaves but one thing is clear. The US has not defeated the Taliban and it will play a major role in post-invasion Afghanistan. Not only that but the invasion has strengthened the Taliban in Pakistan and any peace settlement there will involve them as the legitimate rulers of areas they currently run.

The US assassination of Hakimullah Mehsu, an attempt to derail the peace discussions,  may only strengthen the hand of the Taliban.  It will harden the Taliban in the direction of both more individual terrorism in Pakistan but also consolidation of its control of major areas of Pakistan and the use of those bases to encroach further into government areas.  Eventually the Pakistan government will begin negotiations again, perhaps with the Pakistan Taliban in a more powerful position than now.

And what message does the disaster in Afghanistan send to China? Certainly not one of an all powerful US military able to impose its will on the world. The failure of the US’s Afghan strategy has shown its weakness and possibly emboldened the Chinese ruling class to flex its muscles in the region.

The US has achieved none of its objectives in invading Afghanistan.

We need to be clear. Afghanistan is a defeat for US and Australian imperialism.