The Legacies of Greed and Power-Seeking in Afghanistan and the World

First the US and its allies armed, funded, and trained the Mujahideen against the stable, pro-Soviet, secular government in Afghanistan in the early 1980s. Before the US started meddling in its government, Afghanistan was a country that had been progressing technologically and economically for decades, and where women did not have to wear the hijab and did go to college and become professionals. From the Wikipedia “Afghanistan” article:

[In] 1919, Emir Amanullah Khan declared the Emirate of Afghanistan a sovereign and fully independent state. He moved to end his country’s traditional isolation by establishing diplomatic relations with the international community, particularly with the Soviet Union and the Weimar Republic of Germany.[118][119] He proclaimed himself King of Afghanistan on 9 June 1926, when the Emirate of Afghanistan became the Kingdom of Afghanistan. Following a 1927–28 tour of Europe and Turkey, he introduced several reforms intended to modernize his nation. A key force behind these reforms was Mahmud Tarzi, an ardent supporter of the education of women. He fought for Article 68 of Afghanistan’s 1923 constitution, which made elementary education compulsory. The institution of slavery was abolished in the Emirate of Afghanistan in 1923.[120] King Amanullah’s wife, Queen Soraya, was an important figure during this period in the fight for woman’s education and against their oppression.

~ Wikipedia. 2021. “Afghanistan”

Then the US and its allies helped the Mujahideen terrorists to destabilize and topple the government of Afghanistan and establish of a fundamentalist, authoritarian, Islamic regime in the country, during the Reagan administration.

Then the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2000 because that government whose existence in Afghanistan the US and its allies were responsible for had become too powerful and was starting to strongly support active jihad (holy war) in a big way, and because of the greed and power-seeking of Western corporations. Afghanistan was a strategic country in the game of chess the super-powers were playing because of its location and natural resources, and because of the never-ending “war on terror” the US and its allies were waging.

The US and its allies again were instrumental in the toppling of the Afghan government which was being run by the Taliban Islamic fundamentalists. The US and its allies occupied the country for the next 20 years, fighting constantly against the Taliban militants and struggling to work with the regional warlords. Then the US declared defeat after not having fought a winnable war during any of those 20 years. The US proceeded to clumsily and carelessly abandon the country to the fundamentalist militants who were waiting to topple the weak, ineffective, Western-installed government by just blowing on it.

A similarly tragic war and peace saga is encased in the history of Iran, starting with the MI6 and CIA’s meddling in their government and the toppling of its democratically elected, socialist prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953.

Lesson here: US and other super-powers, stop meddling in other countries’ governments. That goes for all the four superpowers (the US, the EU, China, and Russia). History has shown that it is, first of all, because of the super-rich’s meddling in the democratic institutions of their own countries; and, secondly, because of the superpowers’ meddling in the governments of smaller, weaker countries, that the well-being of humanity has not been lifted up nearly as much as it could have been and should have been. It is also because of this meddling that there are close to 8 billion people on earth, and not close to the 3 billion that were alive in the 1960s when the Beatles recorded their famous hit “Too Many People.” After all, the only things that the very poor and the very under-educated have to comfort them is religion and family. Most everyone and everything outside of these is hostile and unhelpful.

It is because of the meddling of the super-rich in the US that there now exists such historically high levels of corruption and degradation of our own democratic republic. Meddling by the wealthy and powerful also account for the present day’s extreme wealth inequality and injustice, the extreme violence and instability, the disastrous environmental destruction we are witnessing — including the out-of-control global warming, which was caused by the fossil fuels industry’s unchecked corruption and deceptions, the dismal lowering of US educational achievements and shortages of professionals, the devastating blows to our human rights and freedoms, and the stagnation in progress, in general, in the areas of standard of living and well-being and security.

All of these ills can be directly traced to the super-rich’s and the superpowers’ constant meddling, motivated by greed and power-seeking: the constant parade of destabilizations of governments, assassinations of democratically elected leaders, and coups — and the corruption and decay that has followed.

The US’s most tragic, recent coup was carried out on November 22nd of 1963 when JFK was assassinated and LBJ was installed as our new, unelected president; and everything started changing — everything. Whereas the US had seen great economic and social progress in the preceding three decades, we started undergoing mostly governmental, economic, and societal regression after that tragic date. There have been some small steps forward, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These may have been “must-do’s” accomplished by President Johnson to retain some semblance of legitimacy so he could maintain support for other major about-faces from JFK’s policies, such as committing ground troops to the Vietnam War and reversing JFK’s Executive Order #11110, which had the effect of transferring the authority to print and lend money from the privately owned Federal Reserve to the US Treasury Department.

The fact is, in general, the people of the United States have been pushed backwards in terms of our progress in achieving economic and social progress. If I seem to harp on this cataclysmic day in history — and I do — it is because, considering the bright future promised to humanity that was so palpable you could reach out and just touch it during the Kennedy administration, this following on the heels of the great economic, social, military, and diplomatic feats achieved during the FDR years — and then the successful Truman and Eisenhower years — what was thrust upon humanity as a result of the Kennedy assassination was the equivalent of humanity being driven back from the shining days of the Renaissance to the Dark Ages, but gradually, step by step.

Presently, the US and its allies have just absconded on their moral duty to the people of Afghanistan, who never asked them to support the overthrow of their government by the Mujahideen in the early 1980s, nor to invade their country once again in 2000. The US military and its allies recently just skipped out on the Afghans because they evidently decided there was no longer any financial or strategic reason for them to stay. Presently, the people of Afghanistan have been plunged into a famine, which was directly caused by our meddling and sudden departure. In fact, they have been in a state of chaos and extreme want ever since the US and its allies started meddling in their government by supporting the Mujahideen in the 1980s.

Presently, because of the shock and disruptions to their economy and government caused by of the pullout of troops by the US and its allies, the people of Afghanistan are having to depend upon the charity of the United Nations — basically international welfare. Further, it will take years for the Afghan people to rebuild their country up from the current chaos they are living through. This is just one of the many “legacies of greed and power-seeking” on the part of the very few. Wherever there is chaos and extreme want in any country (including on the part of the middle and lower classes in the US today), just look at the paper trail: the history of the country. What stories it will tell you of the meddling by the super-rich to corrupt and take over the once democratic and legitimate levers of the government; and in many cases, what stories it will tell you of the meddling by one or more superpowers in the government of such a country. And finally, what stories it will tell of greed and power-seeking, which are always behind such meddling.