The United States, champion of freedom and self-determination, is now in its 18th year of colonial war in Afghanistan.  This miserable, stalemated conflict is America's longest and most shameful war.  So far it has   cost over $1 trillion and killed no one knows how many Afghans.

This conflict began in 2001 on a lie: namely that Afghanistan was somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US.  These attacks were planned in Europe and the US, not Afghanistan, and apparently conducted (official version) by anti-American Saudi extremists.  This writer remains unconvinced by the official versions.

We still don't know if Osama bin Laden instigated the attacks.  He was murdered rather than brought to trial.  Dead men tell no tales.  However, Mullah Omar, leader of Afghanistan's Taliban movement, told my late friend journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave that bin Laden was not involved in 9/11.  Who benefited?  Certainly not the Afghans.  They have been at war for the past 40 years.