Our national leaders’ rationale for investing so much money and so many boots on the ground in that awful war in Afghanistan was that we’d leave behind a stable, popular government to assure peace and prosperity for all.
That was 11 years ago. Now that America has begun withdrawing from Afghanistan, what are we actually leaving behind? Answer: A despised and corrupt oligarchy.
To put faces to it, look no further than the family of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s incompetent, impossibly vain, and dishonest president. His brothers have amassed astonishing fortunes during his tenure from insider deals, drug trafficking, and siphoning off untold millions of U.S. aid dollars.
Despite their stashes of ill-gotten wealth, however, the Brothers Karzai aren’t much of a brotherhood. They’re roiled with jealousies, business rivalries, and murderous intrigues. For example, Mahmoud Karzai was developing a massive private housing project on 10,000 acres of land said to have been seized from the government when brother Shah Wali Karzai suddenly pulled off his own seizure. Early this year, he secretly “transferred” $55 million from Mahmoud’s corporation to one of his own.
Meanwhile, another very rich brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was killed last year, resulting in one of his aides being imprisoned, though he’s still not been charged with any crime. The aide isn’t being held by regular authorities, but by the personal security guards of Shah Wali — who seem to think the aide knows where Ahmed’s fortune is stashed.
Our country sacrificed lives, treasury, and moral standing for this? America’s “leaders” of the past decade owe us — especially our troops — an abject apology.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
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