A majority of United States House of Representatives members voted on September 25 to approve a resolution (H.Res. 1469) condemning 15 members of the executive branch “for their role in the Biden-Harris administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and noncombatant evacuation operation, which led to the injury and death of United States servicemembers, injury and death of Afghan civilians, abandonment of American civilians and our Afghan allies, and harm to the national security and international stature of the United States.”
Sure, the withdrawal of the US from its war in Afghanistan could have been done better. But, where is the similar condemnatory resolution regarding the people in the US government who started, ramped up, and pursued year after year this long US war? The resolution focuses on deaths in the withdrawal. Yet, those deaths were a small fraction of the overall deaths from the war. The Costs of War project at the Watson Institute for international & Public Affairs tallies 176,000 people were killed directly in the violence of the Afghanistan War, plus several times that many more “killed as a reverberating effect of the wars — because, for example, of water loss, sewage and other infrastructural issues, and war-related disease.” Of course, had there not been a withdrawal, the war deaths total would have increased.
The resolution complains of “a chaotic, precipitous withdrawal that resulted in the death of 13 servicemembers.” But, included in those 176,000 deaths from the Afghanistan War that the Costs of War project reports there were the deaths of 2,324 US military members. If you want to condemn people for deaths of American military members in the Afghanistan War, focusing on the withdrawal seems a peculiar choice.
Of course, death and destruction of the Afghanistan war was mainly inflicted on the people of Afghanistan. That is in line with the usual outcome with US wars abroad.
Americans, though, did pay a large bill via taxes and inflation for the expedition of destruction that redounded no net benefit to the public. For the military-industrial complex, in contrast, the gains were grand.
The failure to condemn the Afghanistan War itself should be no surprise. The US House funded it year after year. Then, it has proceeded to fund the ongoing Ukraine and Israel wars with their combined death toll far exceeding that or the Afghanistan War. War is a big part of the legislative agenda.
Maybe years after the Ukraine and Israel wars finally end, a majority of House members will vote to approve resolutions criticizing how peace was achieved. That will call for some backslapping and other expressions of mutual approval.
The US House of Representatives is sometimes referred to by the nickname of the People’s House. A more appropriate nickname is the War House.
