I had exact same thought last night, but Steven Den Beste is the first person I’ve seen put it out there — the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan may ironically prevent what was likely to be the first major famine of the 21st century.
Even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Afghanistan was on the verge of starvation. During the Spring and Summer of 2001 the Taliban did everything they could to block the United Nations and non-governmental relief agencies from doing their jobs (including regular arrests of aid workers).
With the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. reaction, the situation became even worse, and both relief agencies and many Leftists were predicting that the U.S. war would end up killing hundreds of thousands from famine alone. Some on the nutty Left such as Noam Chomsky went so far as to claim that the United States was carrying out genocide.
But now that Mazar-e Sharif and Kabul have fallen to Northern Alliance forces, the reality may just be the opposite of what the critics predicted. With the Taliban out of the way, effective relief efforts might actually put Afghanistan’s hunger problem on a far better footing than it has been in years.
Hmmm . . . if this scenario plays out, I wonder if those critics will give the U.S. credit for ending famine conditions that the Taliban had been unable and unwilling to prevent? Don’t count on it.