‘Justice has been delivered,” said Joe Biden on Tuesday as he celebrated a “successful” bombing mission on the capital of Afghanistan. Is that what he calls it?

The US’s assassination by drone strike of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri on Tuesday was like a horrible throwback to the worst crimes of George Bush. Then, in 2001, the US bombed and invaded Afghanistan, supposedly to crush Al Qaeda and get rid of the Taliban government. It was part of a project to reassert the US’s military and economic dominance.

Now, more than two decades later, the Taliban are back in government and—allegedly—harbouring members of the now almost-irrelevant Al Qaeda. So what “justice” did the US’s 20 year war on Afghanistan deliver? 

It killed at least a quarter of a million Afghan people—likely many more, as the US never bothered counting its victims. It spent trillions of pounds on soldiers, bombs and weapons to do it. And instead of showing strength, it weakened US power.

At the end of it all last year—thanks to widespread hatred of the US and its puppet government—the Taliban kicked it out and regained control. Now Biden is reduced to a desperate re-enactment of the 20 year war—starving Afghan people with sanctions and bombing them to give his government some sort of boost. 

That doesn’t look like justice.