Rethink Afghanistan War

Rethink Afghanistan War - Part 2
Rethink Afghanistan War - Part 3
Rethink Afghanistan War - Part 4
Rethink Afghanistan War - Part 5
Rethink Afghanistan War - Part 6

In the 2009 documentary “Rethink Afghanistan“, several other former U.S. intelligence officials and experts on Afghanistan also contend that the war in Afghanistan does nothing to protect the safety of American people, but, on the contrary, only threatens the safety and security of Americans, both in the U.S. and abroad:

"Both wars have made the Middle East and the world much more dangerous for Americans and for any American presence overseas. It's creating much greater hostility towards the U.S. and creating a whole lot more people that would be happy to kill Americans or join in some kind of terrorist operation." - Graham Fuller, former CIA station chief in Kabul, in "Rethink Afghanistan".

The war in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001 as U.S government claimed that aim of their invasion was to find Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking Al-Qaeda members to be put on trial, and to destroy the organization of Al-Qaeda in response to the 11 September attck on US. The war was launched, along with the British army and working with the Afghan opposition forces of the Northern Alliance, quickly ousted the Taliban regime.

One day before the 11 September, 2001 attacks, the Bush administration agreed on a plan to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by force if it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden. The plan involved using escalating methods of applying pressure over a three year period. At that September 10 meeting of the Bush administration's top national security officials, it was agreed that the Taliban would be presented with a final ultimatum to hand over Osama bin Laden. If the Taliban refused, covert military aid would be channeled by the U.S. to anti-Taliban groups. If both those options failed, "the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action.

Opponents of the war have long claimed that the attack on Afghanistan was illegal under international law, constituted unjustified aggression and would lead to the deaths of many civilians through the bombing campaign and by preventing humanitarian aid workers from bringing food into the country.

"The US is trying to show its muscle, score a victory and scare everyone in the world. They don't care about the suffering of the Afghans or how many people we will lose. And we don't like that. Because Afghans are now being made to suffer for these Arab fanatics, but we all know who brought these Arabs to Afghanistan in the 1980s, armed them and gave them a base. It was the Americans and the CIA. And the Americans who did this all got medals and good careers, while all these years Afghans suffered from these Arabs and their allies. Now, when America is attacked, instead of punishing the Americans who did this, it punishes the Afghans." - Abdul Haq, anti-Taliban Pashtun leader, October–November 2001, days before he was killed.

Despite U.S government claimed that invasion on Afghanistan ground is to destroy terrorist base, it had actualy create more difficult situation as suicide bombattacks became common after the US invasion and the increase number of insurgent. Suicide bombattacks were virtually unheard of in Afghanistan prior to the U.S. invasion in 2001, and both the use of suicide attacks and the use of improvised explosive devices (IED) as roadside bombs were relatively uncommon in Afghanistan until mid-2005.

According to a UN report on suicide attacks in Afghanistan: "During the ravages of the Soviet occupation, the warlords' struggle for domination, and even during the Taliban period, Afghans never undertook such operations." Despite thirty years of warfare, suicide attacks were not carried out by any Afghans until after mid-2003, and only came into prominence in mid-2005 when they began to escalate drastically.