Editor's note: Keith Lamb is a University of Oxford graduate with an MSc degree in Contemporary Chinese Studies. His primary research interests are China's international relations and "socialism with Chinese characteristics." The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

A tragedy is the only way to describe the twin explosions outside the Kabul airport in which more than 100 people, including at least 13 U.S. service members, were killed. So far, it has been reported that ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

In response, U.S. President Joe Biden said, "We will not forgive, we will not forget, we will hunt you down and make you pay." These words, of course, are not so dissimilar to those uttered by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 event that sparked the Afghanistan invasion in the first place.

With this in mind, despite this tragedy, Biden would have been a wiser man if he had first taken stock of history. After all, thousands of U.S. experts at the organization "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth" dispute the events of 9/11, claiming a controlled demolition took place that day. With numerous discrepancies in the official 9/11 accounts, and the endless war profiteering provided by this event, one is left asking whether something more sinister was afoot on that September day?

Regardless of this, the U.S.'s madness in Afghanistan has to stop somewhere. If one continues down the path of an eye for an eye, then the Afghans have over 200,000 debts to settle. At any rate, without debating the pros and cons of a military response to what is a "cowardly" terrorist attack, the recent Afghan explosions reveal numerous hypocrisies in the U.S. strategy, which in turn exposes the U.S. to be a disingenuous actor.

ISIL, as we are led to believe, is on one hand the enemy of the U.S. but yet this group also buttresses U.S. interests in Syria against President Bashar al-Assad. Furthermore, ISIL, and for that matter, al-Qaida, have always been intimately tied up with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which has carried out numerous terrorist attacks on Chinese soil. Indeed, this terrorist group is also active in both Syria and Afghanistan. The United Nations (UN), which declares ETIM a terrorist group, states that ETIM is responsible for bombing "buses, cinemas, department stores, markets, and hotels."

ETIM also targeted the 2008 Olympic Games and was responsible for the 2013 Tiananmen Square attack. Considering this, will the U.S. spare a thought for the thousands of Chinese citizens that have died from terrorism? And will the U.S. also acknowledge that China is allowed to pursue legitimate actions to combat terrorism?

Clearly not, as ETIM has been delisted by the U.S. as a terrorist group. This paves the way for the future funding of this group, which will attempt to carry out terrorist operations against China. These obvious contradictions point to there being a covert operation by the U.S. to undermine China using jihadi terrorists. Worryingly, it is worth pointing out that if ISIL can operate freely away from the confines of the Taliban, against the U.S., then ETIM may well also have its space against China.

Thus, China must be cautious that this is precisely what the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is making room for. The attack on U.S. troops at the Kabul airport could, just like 9/11, provide a cover for U.S. hegemonic actions, allowing the U.S. to play the victim card, divorcing itself from any responsibility for future terrorist events, while simultaneously providing terrorists with covert support.

In addition, any revenge attacks by the U.S. could be used to continue what is, if actions speak louder than words, a U.S. strategy of keeping countries, outside of its hegemonic control, de-developed. Of course, when it comes to China's rise, the U.S. openly supports actions that would thwart it. With the U.S. threatening to launch an attack at "a time of their choosing," it is hardly beyond the scope of imagination that just as China cooperates to build up Afghanistan's infrastructure, the U.S. is left with an excuse to bomb it.

Importantly, the U.S. is not naïve when it comes to the terrorist dangers that threaten China. The Newslines Institute, as part of the deep state's propaganda arm, published a 50-page "academic looking" report in 2021, falsely claiming China carries out slavery and genocide against the Uygurs, while the year before it released a report detailing the dangers of Uygur jihadi fighters describing them as "veterans of the Afghan wars." Furthermore, the U.S. government cannot be said to be ignorant of this fact either. In 2002, ETIM planned to bomb the U.S. embassy in Kyrgyzstan, and in 2018, as reported by NBC, the U.S. bombed both ETIM and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan's Badakhshan Province, on the border of China.

Bizarrely then, at least for those who don't understand the dark nature of hegemony, which is about remaining the top dog no matter what the cost is, there is a hypocrisy where the U.S., rightly, cries out against terrorist attacks against itself, but, wrongly, supports terrorism when it is in its own interests.

Disturbingly, when it comes to China, the ideological foundations to justify this hypocrisy have already been laid down using the aforementioned atrocity propaganda. Western populations have already forgotten the lies that led to the justification of previous wars, and now they have been propagandized to show no sympathy towards China, which has been dehumanized. This is appalling considering Beijing, quite rightly, strongly condemns the killing of U.S. troops and the loss of Afghan civilian lives at the Kabul airport.

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