Endless War category archive

Mother Jones reprints (reposts?) William Astore’s “7 Reasons America Is Stuck in Never-Ending War.” Here’s one, the seventh; follow the link for the rest.

The new “normal” in America is war: The 9/11 attacks happened more than 13 years ago, which means that no teenagers in America can truly remember a time when the country was at peace. “War time” is their normal; peace, a fairy tale.

What’s truly “exceptional” in twenty-first-century America is any articulated vision of what a land at peace with itself and other nations might be like. Instead, war, backed by a diet of fear, is the backdrop against which the young have grown to adulthood. It’s the background noise of their world, so much a part of their lives that they hardly recognize it for what it is. And that’s the most insidious danger of them all.

Dan Simpson looks back at 60 years of American interventionism–Indochina, the Middle East, Afghanistan, among others–and becomes profoundly depressed at the outcomes. A snippet:

And I have concluded that the U.S. role in former French Indochina — Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia — from roughly 1963 to 1975, was fairly destructive at that time and for the future. Our bombing and, in effect, occupation of parts of that area destroyed physical and societal infrastructure and left the region a wreck. Without taking the big leap off the end of the board, it seems to me that we are doing the same thing in the Middle East and Afghanistan now.

Some analysts argue that this is U.S. policy, that the United States deliberately busts up countries and regions to keep them susceptible to our influence and incapable of presenting problems for us — though I don’t know that I would agree. The proclaimed cause can change. It might be anti-communism, anti-terrorism or the promotion of democracy, but our armed aggression and the resulting broken, weakened countries is the same, for the most part.

Read it, and think.

Warning: Language.

The funnest Republican thing–mongering war.

Via Balloon Juice.

Excerpt:

Six years into his presidency . . ., this man still thinks he can peruade us through reasoned argument. Has he met us?

Video moved below the fold because it autoplays on some systems.

Read more »

Jeb “Oh God Please Not Another” Bush turns to the same stable of warmongers as his apparently (in Republican eyes) non-existent brother did so as to supplement his wisdom and perspicacity.

Let Shaun Mullen explain.

Thom explains why Frankenstein must pursue his own monster.

Your tax dollars at work war.

Via Job’s Anger.

Der Spiegel parses NATO’s kill list. A snippet (much more indescriminate death and destruction at the link):

The Afghan, who has been given the code name “Doody,” is a “mid-level commander” in the Taliban, according to a secret NATO list. . . .

The operations center identified “Doody” at 10:17 a.m. But visibility is poor and the helicopter is forced to circle another time. Then the gunner fires a “Hellfire” missile. But he has lost sight of the mullah during the maneuver, and the missile strikes a man and his child instead. The boy is killed instantly and the father is severely wounded. When the pilot realizes that the wrong man has been targeted, he fires 100 rounds at “Doody” with his 30-mm gun, critically injuring the mullah.

“Surgical strike” is a myth perpetuated by those who monger war and would have you believe that life is a video game.

In real life, there is no such thing.

Old men lie. Young folks die.

Thom and Vincent Bugliosi consider how President George the Worst’s Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq fathered ISIS.

Dick Polman on the recent belated conviction of a few of Blackwater’s mercs:

What a perfect metaphor for the Bush occupation, which reaped the whirlwind we’re experiencing today. First he staged a needless invasion; then, when it became clear that he needed way more troops than his neoconservative dreamers envisioned, he hired scads of private contractors (Blackwater being a prime beneficiary) to fill the breach. Blackwater CEO Erik Prince hailed from a well-connected, politically-wired Republican family. Before Bush took office, his firm had garnered less than $1 million in federal contracts; after Bush took office, his firm tallied more than $1 billion.

As Polman points out, there’s a lot more guilt to go around.

Via Funny or Die.