Tag Archives: US Interventionism

Afghanistan: Oh, When Will We Ever Learn? by Thomas Knapp

Posted on December 13, 2019 | 1 comment

Afghanistan has cost the US much treasure and many lives, both US and Afghans, for no discernible purpose. From Thomas Knapp at antiwar.com:

“U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign,” the Washington Post‘s Craig Whitlock reports, “making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

Whitlock bases that claim on a collection of candid, confidential interviews with more than 400 military and political “insiders” conducted by Congress’s Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Not that we really needed “The Afghanistan Papers” to tell us the war was unwinnable. That was clear from the beginning. Any mission beyond quick strikes on al Qaeda’s facilities and operators in Afghanistan was doomed to failure.

The idea of taking over the country and making it into a “western democracy” was transparent foolishness. More than one empire has foundered on the rock that is Afghanistan, and the American military adventure there was never going to be the exception.

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As Winter Comes Pipeline Wars Heat Up, by Thomas Luongo

Posted on December 9, 2019 | 1 comment

Apparently the US government has failed to stop the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Europe. From Tom Luongo at strategic-culture.org:

For all of 2019 December has been a magnet. A number of major geopolitical issues come to head this month and many of them have everything to do with energy. This is the month that Russian gas giant Gazprom was due to finish production on three major pipeline projects – Nordstream 2, Turkstream and Power of Siberia.

Power of Siberia is here. It’s finished. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping christened the pipeline to begin the month. Next month Putin will travel to Turkey to join President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to open the first of four potential trains of the Turkstream pipeline.

It is only Nordstream 2 that continues to lag behind because of insane levels of pressure from the United States that is dead set against this pipeline coming online.

And the reason for that is the last of the major energy issues surrounding Gazprom needing resolution this month, the gas transit contract between it and Ukraine’s Naftogaz.

The two gas companies have been locked in legal disputes for years, some of which center on Crimea’s decision to break away from Ukraine and rejoin Russia in 2014. Most of them, however, involve disputes over costs incurred during the previous and expiring gas transit contract.

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Posted in Business, Energy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics

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On the Ground in Hong Kong, by Jeff Thomas

Posted on November 19, 2019 | 1 comment

It’s difficult to impossible to determine what exactly is going on in Hong Kong, especially concerning the question of outside involvement in the protests, particularly US involvement. However, here’s a report from Hong Kong, by Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

Hong Kong

Throughout the world, the media televise weekly reports on the protests in Hong Kong. Developments have remained highly visible, courtesy of regular demonstrations that take place like clockwork, every weekend in the business district of the city.

And these are not small demonstrations. A crowd of up to two million has gathered on at least one occasion. Although they began in the thoroughfare that divides the Admiralty from the government offices, they’ve spread east and west for a mile or more along the thoroughfares of Connaught Street, Harcourt Street and Gloucester Road.

Further, the demonstrations have occurred consistently, each weekend for several months, ensuring that the media have fodder each week for yet another update.

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Crime, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Insurrection, Intelligence, Media, Politics

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Combat Vet Senator Richard Black Fighting the War Party, by Hunter DeRensis

Posted on November 18, 2019 | 1 comment

Most of America’s most ardent proponents of interventionism and perma-war have never been closer to an actual war than a two-day public relations tour of the troops. From Hunter DeRensis at antiwar.com:

Two weeks ago the Virginia State Senate switched hands from the Republicans to the Democrats, another step in the state’s leftward turn. One of the Democratic pick ups was in the 13th district, where incumbent State Senator Dick Black is retiring from public service. Black is a Vietnam veteran and former colonel in the US army, a former delegate in the Virginia House, and he has served in the state senate since 2012.

Senator Black, who has been a vocal opponent of the United States’ overseas wars, spoke to Antiwar.com for an exclusive interview covering his military career, candid rejection of the Washington foreign policy consensus, and his activism against regime change in Syria.

Military Service and the Vietnam War

Black was born in northern Virginia in 1944, and spent his young formative years being raised in Miami, Florida. After attending the University of Miami for one year, Black was compelled to leave due to financial distress. He enlisted in the Marine Corps and began a “miserable existence” in the aviation cadet program.

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Coming to Terms With the US Role in Central America, by César Chelala

Posted on November 17, 2019 | 1 comment

The US doesn’t have clean hands in Central America, and its interventions there have something to do with the flow of people trying to cross the southern border.  From César Chelala at antiwar.com:

On March 11, 1999, President Bill Clinton took an unprecedented step. During a four-nation visit to Central America, he expressed regret for the role the United States had played in a brutal counter-terrorism campaign that had caused the deaths of thousands of civilians in Guatemala’s civil war.

President Clinton’s apology followed the publication of the findings of an Independent Historical Clarification commission, which concluded that U.S. government support to the Guatemalan military was responsible for most of the human rights abuses committed during the 36-year war in which 200,000 people died.

The human rights abuses were also detailed in The Guatemala Truth Commission report which was coordinated by Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was brutally murdered. According to the report, children were killed, abducted, forcibly recruited as soldiers and sexually abused. Fetuses were cut from their mothers’ wombs and young children were thrown alive into pits.

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How the Deep State Really Works, by David Stockman

Posted on November 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

The Deep State considers itself above its servants—elected officials. From David Stockman at internationalman.com:

International Man: Last year, President Trump took the unusual step of bypassing his advisors to announce his intention to withdraw all US troops from Syria quickly. The decision rattled Washington and the mainstream media. It caused former Defense Secretary Mattis to resign. Almost a year later, the US has withdrawn only a token number of soldiers. It still has thousands of troops occupying the part of the country where oil fields are located. What is going on here?

David Stockman: Well, that’s the Deep State at work.

Donald Trump is all by his lonesome. He’s home alone in the Oval Office. Now, half of it, he can blame himself. If he hires someone, a known idiot like John Bolton, what does he expect is going to happen except that everything he wanted to do is going to be undermined.

Nevertheless, he can’t seem to find anybody who can articulate on a day-to-day basis a pathway to the more restrained America First posture that he had in mind.

He’s surrounded by people who constantly countermand his orders. You have James Jeffery, the US Ambassador and special envoy to Syria saying, “Well, Trump didn’t mean that when he said he wanted the troops out of Syria.”

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Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Imperialism, Media, Politics

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Domestic and Foreign Wars, by John Stossel

Posted on October 9, 2019 | 1 comment

Another war that Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard questions is the drug war. From John Stossel at theburningplatform.com:

Domestic and Foreign Wars

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is controversial within her party.

She says the U.S. should talk to its enemies. She was criticized for meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

But Democrats were supposed to be the anti-war party, I say to her in my newest video.

“They’re heavily influenced by a foreign policy establishment … whose whole power base is built around continuing this status quo,” Gabbard tells me. “So much so, to the point where when I’m calling for an end to these wasteful wars, they’re saying, ‘Well, gosh, Tulsi, why are you such an isolationist?’ As though the only way that we can relate with other countries in the world is by bombing them.”

Gabbard is a veteran, and now says, “Honor our servicemen and women by only sending them on missions that are worthy of their sacrifice.”

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American Privilege, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on September 15, 2019 | Leave a comment

America does thing to the world that no other country does, and which the US would never allow to be done to it. From Caitlin Johnstone at medium.com:

American liberals and progressives talk a bit about white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege etc, but one thing I never hear them talk about is American privilege: the ability their nationality gives them to have a relationship with this world that the rest of us do not have.

American privilege is reassuring yourself that there are problems enough at home without worrying about the trillions your government’s war machine is spending terrorizing the world and encircling the planet with military bases.

American privilege is reluctantly allowing the potential Commanders-in-Chief have an eight-minute conversation about foreign policy in your presidential primary debates, when your country’s military policy functionally dictates the affairs of rest of the world.

American privilege is arguing against the legality of assault weapons on the basis that they are “weapons of war”, implying that they’re fine as long as they’re used to kill some foreigner’s kids.

American privilege is being able to masturbate your outrage addiction over a racist joke while ignoring the way your military murders black and brown people by the tens of thousands every year.

American privilege is being able to lose your mind over someone using the wrong pronouns while paying no attention to the fact that your government pours your tax money and resources into governments and groups who hang gay people in the town square.

American privilege is believing your propaganda is the truth, and everyone else’s understanding of the world is fake news.

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When, If Ever, Can We Lay This Burden Down? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on August 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

The US should quit playing global cop, not just for the sake of the globe, but for its own survival. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

Friday, President Donald Trump met in New Jersey with his national security advisers and envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who is negotiating with the Taliban to bring about peace, and a U.S. withdrawal from America’s longest war.

U.S. troops have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, in a war that has cost 2,400 American lives.

Following the meeting, Trump tweeted, “Many on the opposite sides of this 19 year war, and us, are looking to make a deal — if possible!”

Some, however, want no deal; they are fighting for absolute power.

Saturday, a wedding in Kabul with a thousand guests was hit by a suicide bomber who, igniting his vest, massacred 63 people and wounded 200 in one of the greatest atrocities of the war. ISIS claimed responsibility.

Monday, 10 bombs exploded in restaurants and public squares in the eastern city of Jalalabad, wounding 66.

Trump is pressing Khalilzad to negotiate drawdowns of U.S. troop levels from the present 14,000, and to bring about a near-term end to U.S. involvement in a war that began after we overthrew the old Taliban regime for giving sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.

Is it too soon to ask: What have we gained from our longest war? Was all the blood and treasure invested worth it? And what does the future hold?

If the Taliban could not be defeated by an Afghan army, built up by the U.S. for a decade and backed by 100,000 U.S. troops in 2010-2011, then are the Taliban likely to give up the struggle when the U.S. is drawing down the last 14,000 troops and heading home?

The Taliban control more of the country than they have at any time since being overthrown in 2001. And time now seems to be on their side.

Why have they persevered, and prevailed in parts of the country?

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

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The View From Tehran: America’s Sordid History of Meddling in Iran, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on June 4, 2019 | Leave a comment

The US government certainly does not have clean hands in Iran. From Danny Sjursen at antiwar.com:

No war yet! That’s the good news…for now. A few weeks have passed since unhinged National Security Advisor John Bolton – who never saw a regime he didn’t want to change – reportedly ordered the Pentagon to update plans to send 120,000 additional troops into the Persian Gulf. All this preparation and the inherent threat to strike Iran was ostensibly based on vague and unsubstantiated intelligence that Tehran had planned attacks on U.S. troops in the region. Murky and secretive intelligence, preemptive war plans, and unrepentant neocons sowing fear within the American populace. We’ve all seen this movie before, in Iraq, just sixteen years ago, and it didn’t end well. US troops are still there and may be so indefinitely.

If the purported Iranian threats seem manufactured, its because they likely are. And all the wrongs Tehran allegedly perpetrated against the US are exaggerated and overblown. Sure, Iran is, like all countries, an imperfect actor. The Islamic Republic did hold America’s embassy staff hostage during the Carter years. Tehran has backed Hezbollah and Hamas, both of whom once specialized in suicide bombing attacks on civilians.

Still, its worthwhile – particularly in the serious business of war and peace – to step back, slow down, and walk a proverbial mile in others’ shoes. Let me offer, then, the view from Tehran; to see the world and the US through Iranian eyes. An honest historical appraisal of the complicated U.S.-Iranian relationship demonstrates that it was often Washington and its western allies that meddled in the region and acted as the aggressors.

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