Does the U.S. Owe Reparations to Afghanistan, Should U.S. Troops Leave? – Bennis & Wilkerson

Bennis and Wilkerson agree on reparations but disagree on whether the U.S. should withdraw all troops. Phyllis Bennis and Larry Wilkerson join Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news Transcript Paul Jay Hi, I'm Paul Jay, and welcome to theAnalysis.news. Please don't forget the donate button on the website and the subscribe button on YouTube, and if you can share this file with a bunch of people, and in a second we will return for a discussion about President Biden's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan. President Biden has announced plans to pull troops out of Afghanistan by September 11th. And there's little doubt, at least in my mind, such a course will leave the country in the midst of civil war and in all likelihood ruled by the religious extremist and in the words of many Afghan activists, Taliban fascists. According to many reports, the Afghan Taliban remain heavily influenced or even controlled by Al-Qaeda. That's not to say American allied warlords running the current Afghan government are much better. That said, should the U.S. get out? I certainly think so, but not like this. It was under Jimmy Carter and then Reagan, who armed the rural religious extremists to fight the urban Afghan modernizers in order to suck the Soviet Union into a war. This led to the withdrawal of the Soviets and then the U.S., and that led to a civil war that killed millions of Afghans. A country that was on the road to a more developed economy and modern culture was turned into a wasteland. It was from the ashes of this U.S. instigated civil war that the Taliban arose under the tutelage of U.S. allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Yes, the U.S. should withdraw and the sooner the better, but we should demand more than that. There must be significant reparations paid to the Afghan people to be administered by the U.N. Yes, this endless war must end, but the plan must start from the interests of the Afghan people who have been the victims of U.S. policy. There have been many plans for transforming the Afghan economy from primarily a narco-state to producing poppies for pharmaceuticals. None of these reforms have interested the U.S. Perhaps too many Americans are profiting from the export of heroin. Afghanistan is rich in minerals, including what's been called the Saudi Arabia of lithium, a mineral used in batteries, and that could help develop a more modern economy, but again, the U.S. has done little to nothing to encourage this. The real solution to the Afghan war is ending the crushing poverty, rebuilding the educational and health care system and so on. Everyone has known this for years. Bush talked about a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan. Obama talked about a Civilian Surge, but none of it happened. I know there are no good and simple answers at this point, but to abandon the Afghan people and particularly the girls and women to the viciousness of the Taliban is another crime committed against that long suffering people. There needs to be some sort of international plan financed by the U.S. and the Saudis, but not administered by them. This may be politically impossible at this point, but why should we condone anything else? An international conference that included 20 countries, including the U.S. and the U.N., was scheduled to take place in Turkey, but it's now been postponed. For more of my take on Afghanistan, please watch my film Return to Kandahar. It's in the documentary section on theAnalysis.news website. Now, joining me to discuss Biden's plans to remove troops from Afghanistan are Phyllis Bennis, who is the director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and Larry Wilkerson,