On Tuesday the president bestowed the power upon his satrap of defense, General Mattis, to set troop levels in Afghanistan. In response Thursday, Mattis has committed an additional 4,000 troops to the country to provide support for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in counter-insurgency operations to deal with the ever-growing Taliban forces. This comes, tellingly, after Mattis concurred with senator McCain that the united $tates is “not winning” in Afghanistan—an admission of what the world has already known for years. Nevertheless, the renewed interest in afghan involvement is not exclusively a Trump project, as our readers know. The u.$. has been re-insinuating itself into the Afghan war since the waning days of the Obama administration, when it was clear that the Taliban was gathering strength and launching renewed offensives to capture new territory in the country.

Imperialist “news” organs have so far loved to talk about a “resurgent” Taliban, indicating that while the united $tates had been there, the group had been battered into submission. However, it is clear that the resurgence of Taliban forces came around 2006, and since then has not been atomized or pushed into a full retreat. Even through the height of amerikan occupation the Taliban continued to grow, drawing soldiers from the Afghan refugee population in Pakistan and from those displaced by amerikan bombing and war crimes. While imperialist propagandists like those at the Wall Street Journal would suggest that the united $tates army is undefeated, and it is only the ANSF which has been under siege by the Taliban forces, it is clear that no matter how Mattis adjusts the troop levels in Afghanistan, they cannot win. The united $tates military is just as impotent in dealing with the Taliban as the corrupt, treacherous ANSF.

The trajectory of u.$. involvement in Afghanistan is water on the proverbial oil-fire, it will neither douse Taliban troop sources, nor overcome the Taliban militarily (to the contrary, the blaze will continue to spread). Nonetheless, the traitors in the Afghan leadership have endorsed the idea of more amerikan soldiers, believing that with greater troop deployments they can buy time for their doomed regime against the Taliban in particular, and the afghan resistance generally. However, the united $tates continues to assure the public that these deployments are only to serve a supporting role, and that it is primarily the defeat of the Islamic State in Afghanistan that they are after. This only reinforces the understood reality of an unwinnable war with the Taliban, something that even the most doggedly political line-towers in the general staff can no longer deny.

That has not stopped some from trying to imagine new ways to win the war, and assure amerikan domination over the region. Erik Prince, the founder of the blackwater mercenary company, has recently come out with his own plan for victory in Afghanistan. He suggested, in a piece written for the Wall Street Journal, that the united $tates should integrate Afghanistan as a legal colony, and install a “Viceroy” to direct the internal policies of the country entirely to the liking of Washington. This plan, in his mind, will centralize the amerikan authority over the country, and eliminate what he sees as an uncooperative and disloyal government in Kabul. Of course, few in the u.$. ruling cabal have taken him seriously, despite his business relationship with Trump, but there is an almost surprising resonance among imperialist shock troops for this kind of rhetoric.

Naturally, Prince would like to see a greater role played by his condottieri in the conflict in Afghanistan, as wars line the pockets of all the imperial adventurers who operate in the so-called security contracting business. As if killing Third World children was not already flooding the First World with enough money. The level of absurdity and desperation that the west has sunk to over their perpetual failures in West and Central Asia is terrifying, despite its revealing a deep corruption in their resolve toward victory. They know they are losing, however they will try all they can to salvage their burning theaters, all we can hope for is that these are the last gasps of a dying empire. The people of Afghanistan have weathered the storm, and they will outlive the empire. Anti-imperialists in the west should hasten this process, and help put to rest any more “creative” ideas of continued occupation. Mattis sends 4,000 but it certainly will not be the last deployment, we must oppose every act to preserve the empire.

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