Ten plus years ago, the United States (oops, NATO) invaded Afghanistan and quickly won the war against the militarily (technologically) inferior Taliban government. Washington and its allies followed their victory by quickly losing the occupation challenge. As George W. Bush and company invaded Iraq, the Taliban crept back from Pakistan and undid the American war victory.

In reflecting on the disastrous last decade we might ask: what would the world be like today if the United Sates, Britain, Canada and the other countries using their military might to kill fanatical young people had instead used that money to buy school books, drill wells, educate people, and promote religious tolerance throughout the Middle East—and at home?

Think of the new Libya as the latest spectacular chapter in the Disaster Capitalism series. Instead of weapons of mass destruction, we had R2P (“responsibility to protect”). Instead of neo-conservatives, we had humanitarian imperialists. And the project is the same: to completely dismantle and privatize a nation that was not integrated into turbo-capitalism.

Now in its eighth year, the US and NATO occupation of Afghanistan continues to grind on, its original—if entirely spurious—raison d’etre long since lost in the fog of war. Of all the paper-thin rationales, then, for the continuing occupation of Afghanistan, the notion that ‘we’ are somehow deeply concerned for the welfare of the Afghani people is the most stubbornly, the most patently delusional.

Despite almost a decade of warfare, including an invasion and occupation, the US military and its allies and client state armed forces are losing the war in Afghanistan. Outside of the central districts of a few cities and the military fortresses, the Afghan national resistance forces, in all of their complex local, regional and national alliances, are in control, of territory, people and administration.

Without forgetting the very significant progress towards more civilized societies in past years, and the reasons for it, let’s focus nevertheless on the present, and on the notions of imperial sovereignty now being crafted. It is not surprising that, as the population becomes more civilized, power systems become more extreme in their efforts to control the “great beast.” And the great beast is indeed frightening.

The resistance resists; every block, every house, every store rings out with gunfire; the resistance is everywhere. Every house takes hits–the resistance fights on. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed, thousands have been injured and many more will die, but after each funeral tens of thousands more–the peaceful, apolitical, “wait-and-see” ones–have taken up the gun.