It’s regrettable to start 2015 with bad news but are US-NATO pulling another Iraq War-style withdrawal from Afghanistan? They held a military ceremony with lots of saluting & a flag lowering but they’re leaving 20,000 troops in Afghanistan. What about the massive drone operation?

At this time last year, the US was arm-twisting & threatening then president Karzai for refusing to sign a security agreement that would negate Afghan sovereignty by allowing US troops to stay with impunity for criminal acts committed. He accused the US not only of fostering conflict with the Taliban but of playing both sides of street. Karzai was never anybody’s hero but even he couldn’t stomach the subservience to the Pentagon.

The new president, Ashraf Ghani, who won office through election fraud, is as sycophantic to the US as Karzai when he won office through election fraud. Ghani was in office for only moments before he signed the security agreement which sanctions continued US occupation under the guise of “counterterrorism operations against the Taliban & other insurgents.” What a multitude of crimes are contained in that vague formulation, including US military involvement in drug trafficking, drone bombings of civilians, terrorizing of the population, massive homelessness & millions of war refugees.

You gotta hand it to Ghani: he’s handsome, a spiffy dresser, & credentialed up to his eyeballs with academic honors but he’s as corrupt as everybody else in Afghanistan who makes league with the US government against the people of Afghanistan.

The US-NATO war in Afghanistan has not ended & frankly we’re tired of Obama’s (speaking of handsome & spiffy dressers with academic honors) grotesque shell game. The antiwar movement has only one response to the news of US-NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan: we continue marching to demand US out of Afghanistan! US out of Iraq!