Afghanistan a Year Later: Can We Finally Speak Honestly About Bush & Cheney’s “Little War”?

One year ago this week the United States pulled out of Afghanistan, ending the longest “war” in American history.

For this anniversary the media has been covering Afghan government corruption, the Taliban’s reversion to violence and misogyny, and the famine that’s beginning to creep across that benighted nation.

But the two most important aspects of the war from an American policy perspective are being completely ignored.

They are:

1. Why did George W. Bush attack Afghanistan in the first place; what was his goal in invading and occupying that country?
2. Why do we continue to call occupations of foreign nations “wars”?

Bush and Cheney tried to justify their illegal and unauthorized attack, but both they and Congress pulled this off illegally.

There was no war resolution that passed Congress as required by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: “The Congress shall have Power … To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”

The Bush administration rationale was that Bin Laden had a training camp and had been living in Afghanistan, thus we were justified in bombing the second poorest country in the world further back into the stone age.