Progressive imperialists & Afghanistan

[mix]

There has always been, historically, a strain of European and American progressives and leftists who have supported empire, usually phrased in the transformative language of "civilization."

Those who support our country's ongoing occupation and war in Afghanistan are in this camp. Their arguments usually rest on the claim that we will make Afghani lives better by bringing them "rights" and our own techniques and technology.

"Progress," in other words, is what is always promised to the benighted.

There are, of course, other arguments crasser and coarser, based on simple unyielding support for President Obama, specious geopolitical reasoning, and outright revenge.

The US occupation of Afghanistan is nothing more than empire-building and empire always end, for the victims and perpetrators, in sadness and collapse.