Tag Archives: forever wars

Covid, 9/11 & Forever War, by Kit Knightly

Posted on September 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

For our rulers, the only thing better than a perpetual war on a tactic—terrorism—will be a perpetual war on germs. If will give them even more power born of fear and panic. From Kit Knightly at off-guardian.org:

From the war on terror to the “pandemic”, the elite are constructing fake threats to start wars that never have to end.

The war was not meant to be won. It was meant to be continuous.
George Orwell, 1984

Our 9/11 coverage this year, the 20th anniversary, has been focused on viewing the attacks of 2001 through the lens of the Covid “pandemic” rollout.

The point is not that both Covid19 and 9/11 are necessarily part of the same grand plan, were carried out by the same people, or were in any way directly connected. Rather, they are thematically connected, on the meta-level.

They spring from the same collective urge all rulers and governments harbour, and are employed to the same end.

They are different tools designed to achieve the same end. Different approaches to the same problem. Different evolutionary stages of the same animal: The decades-long change in the core aims of warfare and even the very meaning of “war” itself.

War has always been vital to the preservation of the state. Wars make rulers rich, and people scared. They unite nations behind leaders, and distract from domestic political issues.

But, as nations become more powerful, weapon technology more advanced, and global power centralises in giant corporations rather than nations, war – in the traditional sense – becomes more expensive, more dangerous, and largely meaningless.

Essentially the old-fashioned motivations for warfare no longer apply, but the ancillary domestic benefits of war-like policy remain. While the state, and their corporate backers, no longer need to take part in pitched battles over the best farmland, they do still need their subjects to believe they are under attack.

In short, by necessity, “war” has gradually shifted from genuine inter-state conflicts over control of resources, into a top-down tool of psychological manipulation.

And the first stage of that evolution was 9/11.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Governments, Law, Media, Medicine, Morality, Politics, Propaganda, Psychology, Science, Tyranny, War

Tagged , , , ,

Thinking of Enlisting? Read This Afghan War-Inspired Warning Label First, by Brian McGlinchey

Posted on September 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

The US has fought charade wars since World War II. By now, those who enlist to fight in such charade wars can’t claim that they are duped. Rather, it’s willful ignorance on their part. Afghanistan offers them one more chance to get schooled. From Brian McGlinchey at lewrockwell.com:

Operation Enduring Freedom is filled with cautionary tales for would-be service members

Though the war in Afghanistan is over, its grim history is filled with hard truths about what it really means to serve in the American military.

Those truths are particularly relevant to anyone contemplating enlistment or commissioning in the armed forces. With that in mind, here’s a warning label informed by the grim lessons of Operation Enduring Freedom—the failed and futile 20-year war in Afghanistan.

YOU COULD LOSE YOUR LIFE OR LIMBS IN A WAR THAT ACCOMPLISHES NOTHING

After 9/11, the U.S. government was right to lash out at Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. However, that mission was largely accomplished by the end of 2001. As Scott Horton wrote in Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan, within three months of 9/11, “there were not enough (al Qaeda) left alive to fill a seventeenth-century pirate ship.”

The balance of the war was a futile effort to replace the Taliban with a government more palatable to western powers. Today, after more than 2,400 U.S. service members were killed and more than 20,000 wounded, Afghanistan is ruled by the Taliban, just as it was two decades years ago.

YOU MAY HAVE TO FIGHT ENEMIES CREATED BY YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT

Al Qaeda and the Taliban can be traced directly to a 1979 CIA operation, conceived by national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and approved by President Carter, that provided aid to opponents of Afghanistan’s then-pro-Soviet government, in hopes of drawing the USSR into a protracted, hopeless war.

As I wrote in a pointed 2017 Brzezinski obituary, “the Carter and Reagan administrations, along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, funded, organized, transported, armed and trained Salafist extremists to fight the Red Army in a holy war on behalf of Islam. Among those who joined the cause were future al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.”

“The enduring global impact of this 10-year program bears emphasis: The CIA and Saudi GID recruited jihadists from all around the Muslim world, creating relationships and networks that would evolve into not only al Qaeda, but also ISIS and many other Salafist terrorist groups across several continents.”

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Education, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Horseshit, Imperialism, Military, Morality, Politics, Propaganda, War

Tagged , ,

Warmongers Keep Raging About The Phrase ‘Ending The Forever Wars’ And We Should Laugh At Them, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on August 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

What the warmongers want is a world dottedwith US garrisons. In other words, the trappings of empire. The idea may be laughable, but the people pushing it are not. They’re deadly and dangerous. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

In the wake of the Afghanistan withdrawal influential promoters of western militarism have been absolutely fuming about the popular idea of ending the forever wars, and their tantrums are not even trying to disguise it as something else. They’re literally using that phrase, “ending the forever wars”, and then saying it’s a bad thing.

I mean, what a bizarre hill to die on. War is the very worst thing in the world, and forever is the very worst amount of time they could go on for, yet they’re openly condemning the “doctrine of ending the forever wars”. How warped does your sense of reality have to be to even think this is a view anyone who isn’t paid by defense contractors could possibly be sympathetic to?

Yet they are indeed trying. Citing the chaos of the Afghanistan withdrawal as though every single day of the twenty-year occupation has not been far worse, career-long warmongers are trying to spin “ending the forever wars” as a disdainful slogan that everyone should reject.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, War

Tagged ,

Joe Biden Is Following a Blueprint for Forever War, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on March 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

Going bigger in Syria and backing up the power-mad idiot in Saudi Arabia just gets the US more stuck on the Middle Eastern tar baby. From Danny Sjursen at inthesetimes.com:

Bombing Syria and excusing the crimes of the Saudi crown prince won’t bring us any closer to a withdrawal from the Middle East.

Last week, the U.S. military bombed a site near al-Hurri, along the Iraqi border inside Syria, where Iranian-backed Iraqi militias were allegedly stationed. Although the U.S. launched its missiles across an international border (and without the approval of Congress), White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki framed the strike as a ​“defensive” response to a series of rocket attacks that have killed one and wounded several Americans over the past two weeks. The American bombing left ​“up to a handful dead,” according to one U.S. official who spoke with CNN, and Tehran condemned the assault as ​“illegal and a violation of Syria’s sovereignty” — a perception gap certain to complicate President Joe Biden’s pronounced plans to reverse Donald Trump’s antagonistic Iran policies and rejoin the nuclear deal.

The campaign will do little to further the United States’ objectives in the Middle East (in as much as they can even be articulated at this point), but it heralds something more dispiriting still: That nearly two decades into a regional war, Washington (perhaps willfully) does not understand the Syria-Iraq-Iran nexus, and that the Biden administration is following a failed blueprint in the Middle East — a reality that was thrown into even sharper relief when the U.S. elected not to punish Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) after the release of a declassified intelligence report that found he was directly responsible for the murder of the Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics, War

Tagged , , , ,

Is Biden Reenlisting in the Forever Wars? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on March 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Forever wars are forever appropriations to big, politically powerful defense and intelligence contractors, which is why these wars never end. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

Thursday, in its first military action, the Biden Pentagon sent two U.S. F-15Es to strike targets of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia just inside the eastern border of Syria.

The U.S. strikes were in retaliation for a missile attack on a U.S. base in Irbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, which killed a contractor and wounded a U.S. soldier.

“We’re confident that the target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strikes,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

But Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Chris Murphy want to know where President Joe Biden got his authority to launch attacks in Syria, where there was no clear or present danger to any U.S. troops.

Days before the U.S. strike, Kataib Hezbollah issued a statement denying any complicity in the Irbil attack: “We absolutely did not target Erbil or the Green Zone and have no knowledge of the group that did.”

Iran has also denied any involvement in the missile attack on the Americans. On a visit to Baghdad, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called for an investigation as to who is initiating the attacks inside Iraq.

“We emphasize the need for the Iraqi government to find the perpetrators of these incidents,” said Zarif.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russian forces in Syria got only four or five minutes’ notice that U.S. planes were on their way to a strike.

Bottom line: Those conducting these attacks on U.S. bases and troops in Iraq, provoking American counterstrikes, seek to ignite a conflict between the U.S. and Iran, and its proxies in Iraq and Syria.

And they are succeeding.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, War

Tagged , ,

Washington chicken littles would keep troops in Afghanistan forever, by Dan DePetris

Posted on November 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

There never seems to be a “right” time for Washington to withdraw from its forever wars. One possibility the author doesn’t consider is that it’s not fear, but rather a gravy train of out and out intelligence and military corruption that leads to perpetual war in places like Afghanistan. From Dan DePetris at responsiblestatecraft.org:

n the days since the Trump administration announced the withdrawal of 2,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the Beltway has turned into the epicenter of righteous condemnation.

Lawmakers like Republican Sen. Ben Sasse are issuing mealy-mouthed press statements calling the troop drawdown a modern-day retreat from evil terrorist forces. Retired 4-Star Generals, including John Allen and Joseph Votel, are wondering why the White House would deliberately hand Afghanistan over to the Taliban when there is so much more work to do.

One of the most sanctimonious denunciations of the withdrawal came from none other than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who scurried to the Senate floor on the eve of the announcement to make his displeasure known: “The consequences of a premature American exit…would be reminiscent of the humiliating American departure from Saigon in 1975.”

The American public has heard all of this before. Invocations of Vietnam, claims about terrorist vacuums, and the levying of emotionally stultifying words like “retreat” are par for the course in Washington. But the last several days of huffing and puffing from the usual, so-called national security “experts” have been so obscenely dishonest that one wonders why they are consulted at all.

The talking point of a U.S. withdrawal being rushed or irresponsible is perhaps the most laughable of the bunch. The term “precipitous” has been used by opponents of the withdrawal so many times over the last several days that some journalists are habitually injecting it into their own reports. “Precipitous,” however, connotes a disorganized, panicked sprint to the exits. Trump’s decision to reduce the U.S. troop presence in the country is anything but — the administration has made it abundantly clear that Trump sees no point in throwing good money after bad in one of the most violent and corrupt places on earth. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien telegraphed the move to bring U.S. force levels in Afghanistan to 2,500 over four weeks ago. Nobody should be surprised. Nor should movement towards a final exit from a war that just entered its 20th year be referred to as a “precipitous” action.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics, War

Tagged , ,

ELECTION 2020: What President Biden Won’t Touch, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on November 25, 2020 | Leave a comment

Joe Biden’s no threat to the warfare state. From Danny Sjursen at consortiumnews.com:

Considering the think-tank imperialists in the bunch Biden is naming to direct U.S. foreign policy, Danny Sjursen expects little to change in the essence of the war-state.

Military aircraft streaming red, white and blue during the welcoming ceremony for President Donald Trump, May 2017, King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (White House, Andrea Hanks)

In this mystifying moment, the post-electoral sentiments of most Americans can be summed up either as “Ding dong! The witch is dead!” or “We got robbed!” Both are problematic, not because the two candidates were intellectually indistinguishable or ethically equivalent, but because each jingle is laden with a dubious assumption: that President Donald Trump’s demise would provide either decisive deliverance or prove an utter disaster.

While there were indeed areas where his ability to cause disastrous harm lent truth to such a belief — race relations, climate change, and the courts come to mind — in others, it was distinctly (to use a dangerous phrase) overkill. Nowhere was that more true than with America’s expeditionary version of militarism, its forever wars of this century, and the venal system that continues to feed it.

For nearly two years, We the People were coached to believe that the 2020 election would mean everything, that Nov. 3 would be democracy’s ultimate judgment day. What if, however, when it comes to issues of war, peace, and empire, “Decision 2020” proves barely meaningful?

After all, in the election campaign just past, Donald Trump’s sweeping war-peace rhetoric and Joe Biden’s hedging aside, neither nuclear-code aspirant bothered to broach the most uncomfortable questions about America’s uniquely intrusive global role. Neither dared dissent from normative notions about America’s posture and policy “over there,” nor challenge the essence of the war-state, a sacred cow if ever there was one.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Imperialism, Military, War

Tagged , ,

What Does Winning Mean in a Forever War? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on May 22, 2020 | 2 comments

The ones who “win” from US forever wars are defense and intelligence contractors. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

When a Wall Street Journal editorial warned this week against any precipitous U.S. withdrawal that might imperil our gains in Afghanistan, an exasperated President Trump shot back:

“Could someone please explain to them that we have been there for 19 years. … and except at the beginning, we never really fought to win.”

Is that true? Did we “never really” fight to win during our 19-year war in Afghanistan, except when we first ousted the Taliban in 2001?

At one point in this longest American war against al-Qaida and the Taliban, Barack Obama surged 100,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan.

The issue here is with the terminology.

In the forever wars of the Middle East, what does “winning” mean?

To those of us who grew up in the mid-20th century, victory was Gen. MacArthur standing on the deck of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay as top-hatted Japanese diplomats signed the articles of surrender.

Victory was unmistakable and irreversible.

Five years after V-J day, however, came Korea, a war that lasted three years and ended in deadlock, stalemate and a truce along the 38th parallel, where the North-South war had begun in June of 1950.

Vietnam also came to be called a “no-win war.”

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in Foreign Policy, Governments, History, Imperialism, Politics, War

Tagged ,

Where Have You Gone, Smedley Butler? by Danny Sjursen

Posted on February 23, 2020 | 1 comment

You’d think America would have at least one renegade general who would publicly state that forever wars are idiotic and criminal, but sadly, that’s not the case. From Danny Sjursen at tomdispatch.com:

There once lived an odd little man — five feet nine inches tall and barely 140 pounds sopping wet — who rocked the lecture circuit and the nation itself. For all but a few activist insiders and scholars, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is now lost to history. Yet more than a century ago, this strange contradiction of a man would become a national war hero, celebrated in pulp adventure novels, and then, 30 years later, as one of this country’s most prominent antiwar and anti-imperialist dissidents.

Raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and educated in Quaker (pacifist) schools, the son of an influential congressman, he would end up serving in nearly all of America’s “Banana Wars” from 1898 to 1931. Wounded in combat and a rare recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor, he would retire as the youngest, most decorated major general in the Marines.

A teenage officer and a certified hero during an international intervention in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion of 1900, he would later become a constabulary leader of the Haitian gendarme, the police chief of Philadelphia (while on an approved absence from the military), and a proponent of Marine Corps football. In more standard fashion, he would serve in battle as well as in what might today be labeled peacekeeping, counterinsurgency, and advise-and-assist missions in Cuba, China, the Philippines, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, France, and China (again). While he showed early signs of skepticism about some of those imperial campaigns or, as they were sardonically called by critics at the time, “Dollar Diplomacy” operations — that is, military campaigns waged on behalf of U.S. corporate business interests — until he retired he remained the prototypical loyal Marine.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Military, Politics, War

Tagged , ,

Marines, Not McDonald’s: Tom Friedman’s Fortune-Telling Folly, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on February 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

One way to greatly burnish one’s credentials as a seer and a sage and increase one’s book sales is to be consistently wrong. From Danny Sjursen at antiwar.com:

History is over. The world is flat.

These were the sort of self-congratulatory and wildly grandiose platitudes that passed for wisdom in first decade after the United States declared “victory” in the Cold War. Neither slim statement is true – at least not in the sense they meant them – naturally: literally (of course), or even figuratively. Then again, it isn’t strictly true that the U.S. “won” the Cold War, or “defeated” the Soviets, surely not militarily, either.

There’s reams of evidence that the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and the consequent America-piloted globalization crusade, didn’t usher in world peace or cover the world with Western-style, liberal governments. Yet, even in the face of such pesky facts, a staggeringly sizable core of establishment foreign policy elites, in that intellectual wasteland of Washington D.C., still cling to these comforting fictions. As if just a bit more effort, one last good old college-try, by their “indispensable nation” could get the job done. Thankfully, there are eloquent voices from outside the Beltway echo chamber doing their best to deep six these harmful myths.

For example, recently, I read – dissected really – my longtime muse Andrew Bacevich’s new book, The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered its Cold War Victory. It’s damn good. To emphasize his point, Bacevich conjures the (still living) ghosts of Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman. Fukuyama was the prophetic one, and the lead phrase up top was his. His bold assertion was that, as the Cold War wound down, the future would belong to American-style governments, specifically that: “The end of history means liberal democracy is the final form of government for all nations.”

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, History

Tagged , ,