{"id":31013,"date":"2021-04-16T20:40:04","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T11:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/apr\/16\/20-years-western-intervention-afghanistan-terror"},"modified":"2021-04-16T20:40:04","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T11:40:04","slug":"what-did-20-years-of-western-intervention-in-afghanistan-achieve-ruination-simon-jenkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=31013","title":{"rendered":"What did 20 years of western intervention in Afghanistan achieve? Ruination | Simon Jenkins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Britain\u2019s justifications for invading were having influence and deterring terror. They are just neo-imperialist platitudes<\/p>\n<p>The longest, most pointless and unsuccessful war that Britain has fought in the past 70 years \u2013 its intervention in Afghanistan \u2013 is to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/apr\/14\/all-nato-troops-expected-to-leave-afghanistan-before-11-september\">end in September<\/a>. I doubt anyone will notice. Nations celebrate victories, not defeats.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty years ago the United States decided to relieve its 9\/11 agony not just by blasting Osama bin Laden\u2019s base in the Afghan mountains, but by toppling the entire Afghan regime. This was despite young Taliban moderates declaring Bin Laden an \u201cunwelcome guest\u201d and the regime demanding he leave.<em> <\/em>The US then decided not just to blast Kabul but invited Nato to launder its action as a matter of global security. Britain had no dog in this fight and only joined because Tony Blair liked George W Bush.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/apr\/16\/20-years-western-intervention-afghanistan-terror\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Britain\u2019s justifications for invading were having influence and deterring terror. They are just neo-imperialist platitudesThe longest, most pointless and unsuccessful war that Britain has fought in the past 70 years \u2013 its intervention in Afghanistan \u2013 &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2095,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,938,61,52,473,47,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-military","category-south-and-central-asia","category-uk-news","category-us-military","category-us-news","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2095"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31014,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31013\/revisions\/31014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}