In the first part of a series of reports on Afghanistan, NPR host Steve Inskeep (Morning Edition, 8/5/22) interviewed current Afghan Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid. In introducing Yaqoob on air, Inskeep referenced Yaqoob’s father, the former head of the Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar: “He was the leader who refused to turn over Osama bin Laden in 2001, a refusal that led to the US attack.”
In the online version of the article, NPR wrote: “Omar also sheltered Osama bin Laden, and refused to turn over the Al Qaeda leader when the United States demanded him after 9/11.”
This line that the Taliban “refused to turn over Osama bin Laden,” and that this “led to the US attack,” though part of the commonly accepted chronology of the war, is a gross distortion of history. The truth is almost the exact opposite: The Taliban repeatedly offered to give up Bin Laden, only rejecting George W. Bush’s demands for immediate and unconditional acquiescence without discussion.
‘There are no negotiations’
The series of events leading up to the US Afghanistan invasion were laid out recently in a Current Affairs essay by Nathan Robinson and Noam Chomsky (8/3/22), titled “What Do We Owe Afghanistan?”
Even before 9/11, the Taliban—who already had a “deeply contentious” relationship with Al Qaeda—repeatedly signaled their willingness to work with the US in bringing Bin Laden to justice. Former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil told Al Jazeera (9/11/11) that for years, they had used unofficial channels to present ways to “resolve the Osama issue.” “One such proposal,” Muttawakil said, “was to set up a three-nation court, or something under the supervision of the Organization of the Islamic Conference [OIC].”
Robert Grenier, former CIA station chief in Pakistan, confirmed US receipt of these proposals to Al Jazeera, but dismissed them as a “ploy” to be ignored. According to Grenier, the US “did not trust the Taliban and their ability to conduct a proper trial.”
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the US demanded that the Taliban immediately hand over Bin Laden. The Taliban responded by offering to put Bin Laden on trial if they were shown evidence of his involvement in the attacks. The US refused to share proof, rejecting any diplomatic option.
Bush announced, “There are no negotiations,” then proceeded to bomb Afghanistan, despite numerous warnings from both humanitarian organizations and anti-Taliban forces in the country that their actions would only hurt the Afghanistani people. Even after the bombs began to fall, the Taliban repeated their offers to give up Bin Laden—even dropping the requirement for actual evidence. The US continued its onslaught, initiating the 20-year odyssey of occupation that unraveled last year.
‘Preponderance on the Eurasian continent’
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s vision of the “Grand Chessboard” included a prospective pipeline across Afghanistan.
It’s abundantly clear that US aims in the country transcended capturing Bin Laden and obtaining justice for 9/11 victims. Some, like Chomsky and Robinson, attributed the hasty invasion to Bush’s personal bloodlust.
Others trace US policy in Afghanistan to longstanding geopolitical imperatives for military influence and control of the world’s natural resources. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of the “Afghan Trap,” wrote in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard that “America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.” The book even contained a map of a proposed pipeline through Afghanistan.
The Bush administration’s ranks were pulled in large part from the neoconservative think tank, the Project for a New American Century. In PNAC’s now infamous 2000 document, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, the overtly imperial organization called for the establishment of “forward-facing bases” in Central Asia, calling these “an essential element in US security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region.”
Of PNAC’s 25 founding members, ten went on to staff the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. The day before 9/11, the Bush administration had already made a decision to eventually attack Afghanistan, using Bin Laden as a pretext. On September 12, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were trying to initiate a wider war by attacking Iraq, despite nothing linking Iraq to the attacks.
‘An illegal war’
Nathan Robinson and Noam Chomsky (Current Affairs, 8/3/22) : “Long before 9/11, the Taliban had reached out to the United States and offered to put Bin Laden on trial under the supervision of a ‘neutral international organization.'”
Whatever the Bush administration’s motivations, it’s clear that the reality is a far cry from NPR’s propagandistically simple formulation that the Taliban simply refused to hand over Bin Laden, and this is what led to the US attack on Afghanistan.
However, it should be noted that even in Inskeep’s version of events, the US invasion would still be an unlawful and unnecessary act of aggression. As Chomsky and Robinson wrote in Current Affairs (8/3/22):
The 9/11 attacks could have been dealt with as a crime. This would have been sane and consistent with precedent. When lawbreaking occurs, we seek the perpetrators, rather than starting wars with unrelated parties.…
If the Bush administration had wanted to “defend Americans from another terrorist attack,” it would have pursued the criminal network responsible for the original attack. Instead, it wanted vengeance, and launched an illegal war that killed thousands of innocent people.
NPR’s historical framing is an attempt to paint the Taliban as prepared to defend Bin Laden to the death, and thus complicit or supportive of the 9/11 attacks. This inaccurate portrayal serves to retroactively justify the US assault on one of the poorest countries in the world.
Despite Biden withdrawing from Afghanistan after a brutal 20-year occupation, the US continues to attack the population today. Earlier this year, the Biden administration directly invoked the horrors of 9/11 to justify robbing the Afghans of $7 billion in central bank reserves. In some twisted form of justice, the Biden administration decided to keep the stolen funds and distribute half of it to families of 9/11 victims.
The other half was to be redistributed to Afghanistan in the form of humanitarian aid, though experts warn that this is far from a substitute for restarting the economy. This despite outrage from several 9/11 families over the violence committed in their name. As the Afghan economy collapses, nearly the entire country is being plunged into misery on a mass scale, and the US is intent on making it worse (FAIR.org, 2/15/22).
In future reporting, NPR should present a clearer picture of historical events to provide proper context for their listeners, and to avoid legitimizing the ongoing, massively destructive policies of the United States by promoting official state mythology.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to NPR‘s public editor here (or via Twitter: @NPRpubliceditor). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.
Featured image: NPR depiction (8/5/22) of a Taliban compound in Afghanistan (photo: Claire Harbage/NPR).
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Oh … and your tax dollars.
WORD: Democracy Now!, the NYT, and Alex Jones are ALL covering up Sandy Hook.
Any source that fails to disclose a DARPA connections to a “killer” is problematic!
WHAT! Are you saying that a U.S. Government-owned outlet might lie about past events?
(Click on my name for more details about that process)
Click bait alert, self serving, money grubbing A Hole. Ignore this dope !
Click on “Let Me Read it First” and there is no cost.
I do not have a single paying subscriber, because I don’t need any. Derp.
REPEATING! Click bait alert! Ignore this dope as his link drops a dangerous malware payload on your device’s OS. It appears to be spyware at a minimum but could also be a super dangerous Trojan Horse! Always beware of unknown links and never click on them.
Since when is Substack contaminated?
The government doesn’t own NPR. It’s funded by grants from extraordinarily rich people and defense contractors – the same people who own the government. So I guess maybe you’re right. But you’re leaving out the real owners.
National Public Radio (NPR) was established as a non-profit membership media organization in 1967 through legislation known as the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The U.S. Congress has always retained the legislative power to dissolve this organization since its initial inception.
Would you not agree that the power to create or destroy a media organization, is a type of control that far exceeds mere outside influence over the content produced by such an organization?
Very glad to read this important set of media corrections from FAIR, and kudos to author Bryce Greene for writing it. Thank you!
It seems every one of our (America’s) wars was built & sustained upon lies, then glorified in history books by lies.
We must do everything we can to help expose those lies.. and support all whistleblowers & reporters who risk their necks exposing lethal war-crime lies, such as Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley, etc.
Our mass-murdering wars are also sustained & glorified by war-machine funded movies and TV shows. There’s nothing glorious about killing or dying for rapacious & sociopathic war-profiteers.
Here is my message to NPR, posted 10 minutes ago:
“I believe that Fair’s commentary referenced above regarding the Steve Inskeep interview with Afghan Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid on August 5th makes important points that require your response, especially the criticism that Inskeep gives a very misleading, probably totally false, rational for the 20 year horror that was the Afghan war.
“I cannot keep from thinking how in the 1990s during his hey day, Newt Gingrich threatened public radio with loss of federal financial support if it did not start peddling the rightwing slant on the news. NPR’s editorial tone since that day has regularly suggested to me that Gingrich’s threat bore fruit — a very distasteful and toxic fruit.
William M. Edwards
Lieutenant Colonel
U S Army (Retired)”
Correction; should read “rationale” vice “rational” in last line first paragraph.
Regret error.
The majority of funding for both NPR and PBS now comes from corporate donations.
It is no longer “public,” and it is no longer “national.” It has been pwned.
Yet here is what NPR says on the subject:
“Federal funding is essential to public radio’s service to the American public. Its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR.”
NPR emphasized the work “essential.”
Federal support for everything from nuclear weapons proliferation to tax subsidies for corporations who earn quarterly profits in excess of $11B (SEE: Exxon), are always claimed to be “essential.”
Do they teach quotes like the one below in military leadership schools?
“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” -Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC
THANK YOU, sir.
Just tweeted:
I am shocked that you are pushing a false chronology of the U.S. decision to attack & occupy Afghanistan. That 20 year disastrous occupation was not caused by the Taliban protecting Osama bin Laden! Please issue a correction of your false story asap. @NPRpubliceditor
Thanks for this!
I sent the following comment to NPR:
My son was killed in the North Tower of the WTC on 9/11. I was opposed to military reprisals and stated it publicly from the beginning. It was a very controversial position because of the attacks being portrayed as acts of war, instead of a heinous crime by violent extremists. It became evident within a few days that our government was hell-bent on bombing Afghanistan, using my son and other victims to justify such action when there had been talk in the White House before of bombing innocent Afghan people. I learned as time went by, that I wasn’t the only victim family member to feel this way. None of us wanted our personal tragedy used to justify killing innocent Afghans.
Steve Inskeep alleged that the war started because the Taliban “refused to turn over Osama bin Laden,” and that this “led to the US attack,”. This is patently false. The truth is almost the exact opposite: the Bush administration refused to negotiate, even though Iran and Pakistan offered to mediate. In addition, the Taliban repeatedly offered to give up Bin Laden, but rejected Bush’s demands for immediate and unconditional acquiescence without discussion.
This type of reporting on NPR misleads the public and seems more like a propaganda machine for the hawks in government. The American public deserves more honesty from media, especially from a public radio station such as NPR.
My comment to NPR (rage subdued ala FAIR advice about respectful communication:
I regularly watch PBS and listen to Oregon Public radio. I will continue to do so. However, I will avoid Steve Inskeep after his misleading summary of the rationale for US invasion of Afghanistan (August 5, Morning Edition). I believe a retraction of that claim is in order—but not expected—by Morning Edition. Does Inskeep see comments to the Public Editor?
This is what I sent to NPR:
I am dismayed by your revisionist history that says that the Taliban “sheltered Osama bin Laden, and refused to turn over the al-Qaida leader when the United States demanded him after 9/11.” The group actually made several attempts to work with the US to bring Bin Laden to justice.
This disinformation only serves to feed continued injustices from our country such as withholding funds that are the property of the people of Afghanistan.
Please be more careful in your historical statements.
The mythology flows not only from NPR. Bush refused to provide the Taliban with any evidence that Bin Laden was responsible for the 9-11 attacks because he didn’t have any. The reason he rushed to attack Afghanistan was twofold: to make it appear that he was a strong leader responding to the disaster; and to prevent an investigation that might have disclosed who really knocked down the towers. The general censorship of the argument and considerable evidence that 9/11 was an inside job in no way rebuts the argument and evidence. Calling the scientific study of the collapse of the towers a “conspiracy theory” hardly discredits it, but serves only to prevent the gullible and stupid from examining it and thinking for themselves. Of course there was a conspiracy behind the collapse of the towers: would those who deny it have us believe that it was just a hell of a coincidence that the three buildings all collapsed into their basements within a few hours of each other?
This is an important reference from article: “..Bush administration’s ranks were pulled in large part from the neoconservative think tank, the Project for a New American Century. In PNAC’s now infamous 2000 document, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, the overtly imperial organization called for the establishment of “forward-facing bases” in Central Asia..”
Arguably, even more salient is this re a quote from PNAC:
” Written before the September 11 attacks, and during political debates of the War in Iraq, a section of Rebuilding America’s Defenses entitled “Creating Tomorrow’s Dominant Force” became the subject of considerable controversy: “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” ”
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
Then, approx 8 months into the PNAC-controlled Bush/Cheney admin, the NeoCons get exactly what they sought: “a catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor” = 9/11.
Extraordinary luck for those in power?
Extreme coincidence for the Military Industrial Complex profiteers?
Extreme coincidence for the newly-empowered Pentagon (esp JSOC), NSA, CIA, FBI, etc to take the gloves (restrictions) off and spy on all American citizens, employ extreme & relentless torture to hundreds, imprison hundreds sans any recourse or trial, attack numerous countries, etc?
And how astoundingly lucky that None of our top leaders were held accountable for their extremely evil, brutal crimes..war-crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against every single American citizen (illegal & unconstitutional spying), not to mention likely around 2 million dead as a result of their wars of aggression.
And while other countries paid, by far, the steepest price in blood, we ended up shoveling somewhere around $8 Trillion to the MIC & their multitude of wars.
All sheer coincidence.
Because we *know* that super-rich, Ivy-League-educated, power-hungry white guys don’t conspire to do bad things and profit from them. That would be silly of us to imagine such.
George Warmonger Bush lied about more than Iraq, he lied about Afghanistan too. Neither nation was responsible for 9/11 and Bush could have let Afghanistan hand over Bin Laden to the US and avoided war. After the Gulf War ended and before the Iraq War started, the US and UK were bombing Iraq from the NO Fly Zones and Iraq was already in ruins. The UN Sanctions led to starvation of the Iraqi Peoples because the UN’s Oil For Food Program restricted the amount of food Iraq could buy.
All sadly, wretchedly true. It’s estimated that approx 500,000! Iraqi children died as a result of US-led UN sanctions on Iraq..horrifying.
And the Iraq War led to–likely–close to 2 Million Iraqi deaths (along with roughly 10k American deaths), as a simple extrapolation of the multiple Iraqi Excess Mortality Surveys, each peer-reviewed & published in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet.
Wars are built & sustained on lies.
Rapacious sociopaths (psychopaths) profiteer from their trumped-up wars while the rest of us suffer..tho some Far more than others.
As U.S. Marine Smedley Butler (who saw more than his share of war & horrors) titled his book, “War is a Racket.”
Thanks for the excellent rebuttal to NPR’s historical distortions and outright lies. NPR was a primary source of news for me throughout the seventies and eighties, but this sort of right wing drivel (and the sell-out to advertisers) is why I stopped listening to NPR in the early nineties.
Thank goodness FAIR magazine came came along in the mid-eighties, shortly before I dumped the hollowed-out and neutered “public” radio news broadcaster.