US fails to impose will on people of Afghanistan: Activist

The United States has failed to impose its will on the people of Afghanistan despite waging the longest war in American history against the impoverished country, an antiwar activist and political analyst says.

“Clearly, the US war, despite all the destruction that has been done in Afghanistan, has not succeeded in its objectives of subduing the country, or pacifying it,” said Richard Becker, member of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, an umbrella group consisting of many antiwar and civil rights organizations.

“And clearly the forces that are opposed to the continuing occupation have gained in strength, rather than being weakened,” he told Press TV in an interview on Saturday.

According to unnamed US administration officials, the White House is bowing to the Pentagon which wants to maintain higher levels of American troops in Afghanistan by year’s end.

US President Barack Obama revealed last year that a residual force of 9,800 troops would remain in Afghanistan for one year after the formal end of combat operations in December 2014.

According to the plan, that number would be cut to 5,500 at the end of this year and reduced to a small military presence at the US embassy in Kabul by the end of 2016.

But US officials are now saying the Obama administration is abandoning that plan and is poised to keep many of the 9,800 troops there well into next year, according to the Associated Press.

Becker said the US administration and the Pentagon are “very careful that if they withdraw all the forces or most of the forces, as had been planned, that this would go down as defeat for the United States, that the Afghan National Army and the [Afghan] National Police are not in a position to be able to provide security for the government in Kabul, much less control over vast regions of the country.”

“So this is another sign of the failure of the United States to be able to enact its will, to impose its will on Afghanistan, just as it has failed in Iraq to do that,” he noted.

 “And it really is, I would say, a crisis for the United States and for the US foreign policy [because of] what’s happened in the Middle East and Central Asia as result of these reckless, arrogant and imperialist foreign policies,” he concluded.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but the country remained insecure despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops.

In a statement on December 28, Obama argued America is safer and more secure after the Afghan war, which was not worth the cost, a great majority of Americans believe, according to recent polls.

Obama said nearly 10,000 troops remaining in Afghanistan would only be involved in training Afghan forces.

However, Obama has secretly signed an order that allows US troops to be involved in combat operations in Afghanistan throughout 2015, according to the New York Times.

The order will authorize American forces to continue their missions against the Taliban and other militant groups in the Asian country. The new authorization will also let US jets, bombers, and drones be used to aid ground troops.

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