Western armies have now occupied Afghanistan for 7 years. The US invaded the country in 2001 because the Taliban refused to extradite Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban came to power after a bloody civil war that was the aftermath of a ten year war against Soviet occupation. That occupation itself was a direct consequence of a covert CIA operation started in 1979 to give the Soviets a 'Vietnam-type' war to damage their economy and military. Osama got support, weapons and training in the '80s to kill as many Russians as possible. The CIA plan worked like a dream, an unwinnable war in Afghanistan was the extra push required to break the Russian economy and end the cold war. Too bad if all Afghanistan was destroyed.
Osama was the reason and so US special forces got in the field to get him 'dead or alive'. The Taliban was willing to surrender him to the US, if the US would provide them with evidence of his involvement in the attacks of 9-11; for a brief moment western judicial values were embraced. Despite the fact that the US claimed to have this evidence, they refused to make it publicly available (it was said to have been shown to NATO partners in a confidential meeting in Brussels) because that might endanger the intelligence gathering process. The rest of the world, including the Taliban, had to take their word for it.
The Taliban refused to do so and on October 7th of 2001 (almost a full month after 9-11) the US began the search for Bin Laden. The Taliban was quickly defeated but Osama was never found, escaping out of Bora Bora into the Pakistan border area.
Fast forward 7 years. Afghanistan has an elected (sort of) government that has no power whatsoever outside the guarded compound it hides in. The Dutch military participates in the occupation of the country with the solemn promise that we will begin reconstruction as soon as the Taliban is defeated. When the mission started the Dutch Ministry of Defense was very clear about the how and why of the invasion of Afghanistan: "Osama did it" and so NATO had to invade. See this (Dutch) screenshot made in 2006:
The problem with this is that no-one believes any more in Osama's guilt when it comes to 9-11. Not Dick Cheney, nor the latest White House spokesdrone or even the FBI! The Dutch MOD has very schrewedly adapted its Afghanistan webpage and Osama is no longer mentioned. In fact the entire menu-item 'Why to Afghanistan' has been disapeared into a some dark place, never to be seen again. It has been replaced by the more neutral 'About Afghanistan'. This is not a redesign-issue because the Bosnia mission still has its original 'Why page'. For Bosnia there is still a 'Why', for Afghanistan apparently no longer. We're not there for a purpose anymore. We're just there. Afghanistan is rapidly turining into Iraq (both times), a war against a former ally, based on lies and impossible to win. So be a good citizen and repeat after me: “Oceania has always been at war with East-Asia”.
