Listen to a reading of this article: ❖ The US has officially announced the completion of its military withdrawal from Afghanistan, minus of course the CIA ops which will continue in that country and the bombs that will likely continue to rain down in the name of
As we learned during the Obama years, if you take ground troops out and do nothing except bomb--resulting in more casualties but no more American casualties--then far too many Americans who objected to the war in question are mollified.
One more reason why America is so hated. No sane person, no one capable of imagining themselves in the shoes of those being bombed, can blame the survivors for hating us.
We don't know what would have happened if Jimmy Carter had not signed the intelligence finding Zbigniew Brzezinski demanded he sign, but had there been no arming of the mujahedin, the Soviets would not have intervened because the Kabul government would have handled the mujahedin. We don't know for sure whether women in the main cities would be able to appear in public today without burqas or would have been allowed to attend college and serve in politics, or whether Osama bin Laden would still be working for his father's construction company, but we do know for certain that many thousands more Afghanis would be alive today, and several thousand American soldiers.
As a child of the 60s I never thought I'd say this but we should bring back the draft. Having a military force completely divorced from the will of the populace leads to a 20 year carnage that isn't even newsworthy while the rest of us sip lattes.
Of course our problems are manifold: our politics is also largely unresponsive to We The People; the media serves those same interests and not ours; murky intelligence agencies exert unlimited money, power, and influence.
So it's overwhelming. What could bring people to the streets? The government asking you to give your life for an idiotic graft like Afghanistan, which, to remind everybody, is happening right this minute in Syria.
The idea is generally a good one, the problem is that people of influence and authority will be sure to pull strings and keep their offspring far from harm's way. See: Bush, George W.; Gore, Albert A.; Trump, Donald J. and many many others.
Sure, a far from ideal solution, but better I feel than what we have now. Elites will pervert any system; that much we know. And I think a two year stint right after high school might not be so bad, as I'm imagining it including the option for work in building infrastructure, forestry management, teaching, firefighting -- not just the military. Many don't know what the hell they want to do with their lives when they're 18, and that's fine. Figuring this out while contributing to the country (and not just by being triggermen for the petroleum industry as it is now) would be beneficial for everyone involved.
The political Right has very successfully labeled Biden as a war loser. The MSM often has stated in recent days that "the USA lost the war in Afghanistan." Even Judy Woodruff on the PBS NewsHour said that Monday night. Of course, like Vietnam, the US never declared war on Afghanistan, so there was no war to lose. Nevertheless, there were losses. Lives were lost and a lot of US money was lost. Otherwise, the Taliban were in power when we invaded and they are in power now that we left. Our invasion excuse, Bin Laden, was never there. We killed him in his compound in Pakistan.
There were lessons learned in Vietnam which we ignored in Afghanistan and Iraq. We might learn one lesson. Our exceptionalist white-hat self image is delusion. We do not make the world better by spreading global democracy much less capitalism. We always make it worse. One more thing that Congress could fix if it really wanted to atone for Foreverwar - Defund the CIA. They almost always start conflicts that end in disaster - Afghanistan for example. They should stick to intelligence gathering, and leave covert special ops to the military.
So many of the war hawks these days are in the democratic party while many on the right have an America First aversion to foreign interventions like Afghanistan. I'm not certain that terms like left and right even have meaning any longer.
One reason Trump was so hated was he questioned America's forever wars. The establishment of both parties are now very much on the right, as are their war and ratings loving media cheerleaders.
Left and right still have meaning - just not when it comes to the MIC, even though their support for war is often motivated by differing idiologies. When were kids in school, civic class was superman ideology; truth, justice, and the American Way. Our truth, justice upon others, and ram democracy and capitalism down their commie throats.
All eyes were on Kabul just in time to catch a glimpse of people the U.S. killed with its robot airframes. Will we look away now that U.S. troops have left Afghanistan?
As we learned during the Obama years, if you take ground troops out and do nothing except bomb--resulting in more casualties but no more American casualties--then far too many Americans who objected to the war in question are mollified.
One more reason why America is so hated. No sane person, no one capable of imagining themselves in the shoes of those being bombed, can blame the survivors for hating us.
We don't know what would have happened if Jimmy Carter had not signed the intelligence finding Zbigniew Brzezinski demanded he sign, but had there been no arming of the mujahedin, the Soviets would not have intervened because the Kabul government would have handled the mujahedin. We don't know for sure whether women in the main cities would be able to appear in public today without burqas or would have been allowed to attend college and serve in politics, or whether Osama bin Laden would still be working for his father's construction company, but we do know for certain that many thousands more Afghanis would be alive today, and several thousand American soldiers.
As a child of the 60s I never thought I'd say this but we should bring back the draft. Having a military force completely divorced from the will of the populace leads to a 20 year carnage that isn't even newsworthy while the rest of us sip lattes.
Of course our problems are manifold: our politics is also largely unresponsive to We The People; the media serves those same interests and not ours; murky intelligence agencies exert unlimited money, power, and influence.
So it's overwhelming. What could bring people to the streets? The government asking you to give your life for an idiotic graft like Afghanistan, which, to remind everybody, is happening right this minute in Syria.
The idea is generally a good one, the problem is that people of influence and authority will be sure to pull strings and keep their offspring far from harm's way. See: Bush, George W.; Gore, Albert A.; Trump, Donald J. and many many others.
Sure, a far from ideal solution, but better I feel than what we have now. Elites will pervert any system; that much we know. And I think a two year stint right after high school might not be so bad, as I'm imagining it including the option for work in building infrastructure, forestry management, teaching, firefighting -- not just the military. Many don't know what the hell they want to do with their lives when they're 18, and that's fine. Figuring this out while contributing to the country (and not just by being triggermen for the petroleum industry as it is now) would be beneficial for everyone involved.
The political Right has very successfully labeled Biden as a war loser. The MSM often has stated in recent days that "the USA lost the war in Afghanistan." Even Judy Woodruff on the PBS NewsHour said that Monday night. Of course, like Vietnam, the US never declared war on Afghanistan, so there was no war to lose. Nevertheless, there were losses. Lives were lost and a lot of US money was lost. Otherwise, the Taliban were in power when we invaded and they are in power now that we left. Our invasion excuse, Bin Laden, was never there. We killed him in his compound in Pakistan.
There were lessons learned in Vietnam which we ignored in Afghanistan and Iraq. We might learn one lesson. Our exceptionalist white-hat self image is delusion. We do not make the world better by spreading global democracy much less capitalism. We always make it worse. One more thing that Congress could fix if it really wanted to atone for Foreverwar - Defund the CIA. They almost always start conflicts that end in disaster - Afghanistan for example. They should stick to intelligence gathering, and leave covert special ops to the military.
So many of the war hawks these days are in the democratic party while many on the right have an America First aversion to foreign interventions like Afghanistan. I'm not certain that terms like left and right even have meaning any longer.
One reason Trump was so hated was he questioned America's forever wars. The establishment of both parties are now very much on the right, as are their war and ratings loving media cheerleaders.
Left and right still have meaning - just not when it comes to the MIC, even though their support for war is often motivated by differing idiologies. When were kids in school, civic class was superman ideology; truth, justice, and the American Way. Our truth, justice upon others, and ram democracy and capitalism down their commie throats.
Thank you !!
Just discovered another sub-stack outstanding analysis -- droning of innocent civilians has restarted:
https://foreverwars.substack.com/
Victims of A Drone Strike, Momentarily Visible
All eyes were on Kabul just in time to catch a glimpse of people the U.S. killed with its robot airframes. Will we look away now that U.S. troops have left Afghanistan?
https://foreverwars.substack.com/p/victims-of-a-drone-strike-momentarily
Spencer Ackerman -- Aug 30
The bar is so low it's hard not to give Biden any credit.