Category: American Empire/Foreign Policy

Col. Andrew Bacevich, “Donald Rumsfeld Was a Disaster”

Andrew Bacevich offers a candid obituary of former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who died this week. Bacevich speaks with a level of moral

Andrew Bacevich

clarity that you will not find in the main stream outlets which specialize in the hagiography of establishment figures.

Bacevich is the president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He’s a retired colonel and Vietnam War veteran. He is also professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University and author of several books. His most recent book, just out, is titled After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. In May, he wrote a piece for The Boston Globe headlined “My son was killed in Iraq 14 years ago — who’s responsible?”

I have read a number of Bacevich’s books and they have all been informative, historically astute, and prophetic in their conclusions. I highly recommend anything Col. Bacevich writes.

He is also a devout Roman Catholic whose Christian faith informs his perspective on life and international relations. He cares deeply about everyone’s humanity, and so, is regularly a critic of US policies overseas.

Take a few moments to hear the truth about Rumsfeld’s legacy. It ain’t pretty. The video is approximately 18 minutes long. Below is Bacevich’s summary of Rumsfeld’s legacy:

Donald Rumsfeld

I don’t expect that there’s going to be any revision of Donald Rumsfeld’s reputation in the future. He was a catastrophically bad and failed defense secretary who radically misinterpreted the necessary response to 9/11, and therefore, caused almost immeasurable damage to our country, to Iraq, to the Persian Gulf, more broadly. And I don’t think there’s any way to disguise that.

Too Bad the People of Guatemala Couldn’t Tell the US State Department, Military, or the CIA, “Do Not Come”

Recently Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Central American country of Guatemala, the jumping off point for the folks braving a dangerous overland journey to our southern border.

She told them, “Don’t do it. Do not come.”

She wasn’t worried about the risks these people would take in bringing their children to the US. Her motives were purely political, as the Republicans continue to browbeat President Biden over the pressures of (illegal) immigration.

The brutal irony of Harris’ order to Central America was the way it exemplified the history of US/Latin American relations. Once again, the USA is telling those Spanish-speaking southerners what they can and cannot do.

If only the people of Latin America had been able to tell the Americans, “Do not come. Stay home. Leave us alone.”

All of the countries in Central America, and almost all in South America, have been the victims of US-led military coups, US-trained death squads, political assassination’s, CIA interference with their democratically elected governments, and neoliberal economic manipulations that keep them as perpetual debtor states.

For just one example, journalists Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton of The Grayzone have produced a new documentary (approximately 13 minutes long) outlining current US efforts to destabilize the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua, close neighbor to Guatemala.

It’s called “How US govt-funded media fueled a violent coup in Nicaragua.”

You will never hear these facts from Kamala Harris or American media:

Stephen Wertheim: “Sorry Liberals. But You Really Shouldn’t Love NATO.”

The one time I have been arrested for peacefully protesting was at an Anti-War/Anti-NATO demonstration in Chicago. I include a brief account of that arrest in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018).

I participated in that march, with tens of thousands of others, because I have long believed that NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) should have been disbanded at the end of Cold War.

It was and remains a Western military alliance that was created to “protect Western democracy” against the alleged threats of world communism advanced by the Soviet Union. But once the USSR ceased to exist, why shouldn’t the largest bloc of military forces in the Western world also disband?

Since then, the USA has easily twisted NATO into an ostensibly “independent” European arm of its own nationalistic, military objectives.

Quite predictably, NATO’s continued existence, and the omnivorous hegemony that inevitably characterizes every multi-national military machine, has been a key player in instigating many of the regional conflicts playing themselves out in Eastern Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East today.

The dissolution of the USSR meant the demise of NATO’s communist equivalent: the Warsaw Pact. So we can forgive Russia’s well-founded nervousness when NATO announced that it would not similarly disband.

To assuage Russia’s fears, the US pledged that if NATO expanded, it would never included nations that had once been a part of the Warsaw Pact.

NATO quickly broke that promise and now includes member states sitting cheek to jowl with the Russian border. And we wonder why Russia has become antagonist and suspicious of US foreign policy?

NOW who is the colossus seeking world domination? I’ll give you a hint: it sure ain’t Russia.

Dr. Stephen Wertheim is an historian of U.S. foreign policy, the director of

Stephen Wertheim

grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and a visiting faculty fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School.

His recent book is entitled, Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy. I have it now on my reading list.

He also recently wrote an important editorial for the New York Times criticizing President Biden’s reaffirmations of the US commitment to NATO.

The article is called “Sorry, Liberals. But You Really Shouldn’t Love NATO.” It is important reading. Since it is behind a paywall, I have reproduced it in full. (All emphases are mine):

Even before today’s NATO summit, President Biden settled the most important question: He affirmed America’s commitment to defend the alliance’s 30 members by force. And despite divisions on many other foreign policy issues, his party stands in lock step behind him. To most Democrats, alliances symbolize international cooperation. Proof positive is that Donald Trump supposedly sought to tear them down.

Yet current progressive enthusiasm for NATO is anomalous. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, depriving NATO of its original reason for being, skeptics of the alliance included liberals as much as conservatives. In 1998, 10 Democratic Senators joined nine Republicans in opposing the first, fateful round of NATO enlargement, which would soon extend the alliance to Russia’s border.

Among the dissenters was Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. In between voting against the first Iraq war in 1991 and the second after Sept. 11, Mr. Wellstone warned that expanding NATO would jeopardize Europe’s hard-won gains. “There is peace between states in Europe, between nations in Europe, for the first time in centuries,” he said. “We do not have a divided Europe, and I worry about a NATO expansion which could redivide Europe and again poison relations with Russia.”

Events have proved him wiser than his party seems to think. The left has ceded criticism of NATO to the right, mistaking armed alliances for friendly partnerships and fixating on Mr. Trump’s rhetoric instead of his actions. (In the end, he reaffirmed every U.S. alliance commitment, embraced NATO’s expansion to Montenegro and North Macedonia, and beefed up U.S. forces in Eastern Europe.) It’s time for Americans to recover their critical faculties when they hear “NATO,” a military alliance that cements European division, bombs the Middle East, burdens the United States and risks great-power war — of which Americans should want no part.

At first, the United States figured it could enlarge its defense obligations under NATO because doing so seemed cost-free. Throughout the 1990s, post-Soviet Russia lay prostrate. The United States, by contrast, could trim its military spending only to enjoy greater pre-eminence than ever. If the Soviet collapse made NATO seem less necessary, it also made NATO seem less risky. Warnings like Mr. Wellstone’s, voiced by many analysts at the time, sounded hypothetical and distant.

But they have gained credence as Russia objected, first with words, eventually with arms, to the expansion of an alliance whose guns had always pointed at Moscow. By 2008, NATO declared its intention to admit Georgia and Ukraine. Each had been a founding republic of the Soviet Union and had territorial disputes with Russia. For each, Russia was willing to fight. It swiftly occupied parts of Georgia. Once Ukraine’s pro-Russian president was overthrown in 2014, Russia seized Crimea, home to its Black Sea naval base, and backed separatists in the Donbas region.

The conflict in Ukraine continues, with no resolution near. Rather than use diplomacy to back an internationally negotiated settlement, the United States has preferred to arm Ukraine with lethal weapons. After decades of overreach, the Biden administration now faces a stark choice: commit to fight for Ukraine, creating a serious risk of war with Russia, or admit that NATO expansion has come to an overdue end.

Lacking an adversary of Soviet proportions, NATO has also found new foes “out of area” — its euphemism for waging wars in the greater Middle East. The bombing of Libya in 2011 was a NATO operation, signaling to war-weary Americans that this time the United States had real partners and multilateral legitimacy. The war proved disastrous anyway.

NATO helped fight the forever war in Afghanistan, too. Seeking to support U.S. aims after Sept. 11, it undertook “our biggest military operation ever,” Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg boasted in March. Two decades later, European soldiers are leaving, having failed to remake Afghanistan but perversely succeeded in making NATO seem relevant. Absent the Soviet threat, as Secretary General Stoltenberg admitted, the alliance has had to go “out of area or out of business.”

At least the Middle East contains the real, if receding, threat of terrorism, against which minimal military action can be warranted. But Europe is stable and affluent, far removed from its warring past. America’s European allies provide their people with world-leading living standards. They can also perform the most basic task of government: self-defense. In any case, Russia, with an economy the size of Italy’s, lacks the capability to overrun Europe, supposing it had any reason to try. If American leaders cannot countenance pulling U.S. forces back from Europe, then from where would they be willing to pull back, ever?

The danger of permanent subordination to America has started to register in European capitals, long solicitous of American commitment. President Emmanuel Macron of France has accused NATO of experiencing “brain death” and proposed creating an independent European army, an idea rhetorically welcomed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. The watchword in Brussels these days is “strategic autonomy,” meaning autonomy from the United States. Europeans scarcely seek to disinvite American forces from their continent. Still, they are finding that cheap security from Washington carries mounting costs: dependence on an erratic superpower, pressure to restrict business with China and Russia, and division in Europe itself.

The real question is what Americans want. They could continue to fetishize military alliances as a “sacred obligation,” as President Biden characterized NATO on Wednesday. Or they could treat them as means to ends — and coercive means that often corrupt worthy ends.

For progressives who seek to end endless wars and prevent new ones, the matter of Europe can no longer be skirted. The United States can trust Europeans to defend Europe. Otherwise, it would seem that America truly intends to dominate the world in perpetuity, or until the day a war so great puts dreams of dominance to rest.

Speaking Truth to Power in American Will Get You Death Threats

Somali born US representative Ilhan Omar recently asked the US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, an important question about America’s

Ilhan Omar questions Anthony Blinken by Zoom

relationship to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

She asked Blinken a thoughtful, necessary question which he skirted completely. Here is the complete transcription of that question:

Mr. Secretary, the last time you were here, I asked about the Trump sanctions on the ICC staff, so I wanted to thank you publicly for doing the right thing and lifting them. I know you opposed the court’s investigation in both Palestine and in Afghanistan. I haven’t seen any evidence in either case [sic] that domestic courts both can and will prosecute alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. And I would emphasize that in Israel and Palestine, this includes crimes committed by both the Israeli Security Forces and Hamas. In Afghanistan, it includes crimes committed by the Afghan national government and the Taliban. So, in both of these cases, if domestic courts can’t or won’t pursue justice, and we oppose the ICC, where do we think the victims of these supposed crimes can go for justice and what justice mechanism [inaudible 00:01:29]?

Given the long-standing US antagonism towards the ICC, including the scuttling of any and all cases that even tangentially involve the United States or Israel, Rep. Omar asks the obvious question: where can the victims of these crimes against humanity turn for justice?

Predictably, conservatives and pro-Israel apologists jumped on Rep. Omar immediately. In her defense she sent out the following Tweet:

We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice.

The pundit class immediately torn their clothes and screamed in outrage.

Anthony Blinken

How dare Rep. Omar put the US and Israel in the same class of miscreants as Hamas and the Taliban! She must be excoriated, even excommunicated, for her blasphemy against the lily-white mythology of “American (and Israeli) exceptionalism.”

Never mind the fact that those who study our history know full well that the US is every bit as guilty – many will argue even more so — of war crimes as are the Taliban or Hamas.

It did not take long for Rep. Omar to suffer the most hateful vitriol from not only her congressional colleagues but also conservative news media and the wider public.

Below is a short video explaining the recent series of attacks against Rep. Omar and her family:

Let me say again, as I have many times before, I love Ilhan Omar.

She is a very brave woman of color with the integrity, strength of character, and rightly attuned moral compass to speak truth to power.

Sadly, for jingoistic, “patriotic” Americans, including politicians in both parties who have sold their souls to corporate power, genuine justice and equality before the law are nothing more than bland banners to wave at 4th of July picnics.

They have no hold in real life; certainly not in the hardball realm of Realpolik. They possess no power of moral suasion that might move the consciences of America’s leaders to confess and repent of the nation’s many, grotesque national sins – including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Why are all the members of Congress claiming to be Christians on the wrong side of this debate?

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am grieved that (almost certainly) a majority of American evangelicals share in the hateful attitudes now on display in these vile attacks against Rep. Omar.

We are seeing another clear example of the corrupting influence of Nationalism, and why all Nationalisms are antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Nationalism is inherently incapable of genuine confession, repentance, rectification, and restoration. It is an ideology rooted in the elevation of the Collective Self, which has no relation to Christian discipleship.

Humility and self-abasement, cardinal attributes of authentic Christian faith, are anathema to Nationalistic sentiment. Thus, the label Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron, a blasphemous self-contradiction.

Ilhan Omar’s Muslim faith, combined with her life experience as a Somali refugee, has formed a more noble and enlightened conscience, a more Godly sense of right and wrong than we now see among any of the Family Research Council, Religious Right, Republican, or Democratic critics demanding that she be punished for asking the obvious and necessary questions about America’s place in the world.

This is why I pray from Ilan Omar. I ask the Lord to protect her and her family, and that she continue to find the courage to continue working for justice in this world.

And this is why I pray for American Christianity, that the Lord redeem us from our apostasy. And that we renounce the destructive sin of Nationalism with all its evil power.

The Bombing May Be Over, But the Devastation Remains

Israel and Hamas may have reached a “ceasefire,” but Palestinian suffering continues unabated.

While Israel violated the ceasefire almost immediately, the western press says nothing about it. [I will be posting about this common scenario very soon.]

The recent missile exchange killed 12 Israelis and at least 288 Palestinians, including 69 children and 40 women. More than 8,900 others were injured in Gaza, many with life-threatening wounds.

Israeli bombing damaged or destroyed 187 Gazan schools, including 55 kindergartens and 132 elementary schools.

This man lost 14 family members in a single strike. Of course, all human lives are sacred. We are all created as the Image of God. But this one man lost more family members than were killed in the entire state of Israel.

Watch below to learn about his story:

Repost: Dispelling a Memorial Day Myth

[This Memorial Day weekend, I am reposting an article I shared several years ago. After listening yesterday to several speakers on Christian radio — neither of whom had served in the military or ever been to war — advertise the beauties of “Americanism” while defending Christian Nationalism and glorifying our military; hearing them disparage people like me who warn against the dangers of Christian Nationalism, I decided to resurrect this article.]

I wrote this article in 2006. It was originally published in Perspectives Journal  (August 1 issue).  It is as relevant today as it was then.

The only difference for me is that my father died several weeks ago of war related health problems.

“I’m an Army brat, the proud son of a proud veteran who completed four tours of duty in two separate conflicts. I am immensely grateful that my father always returned home, at least physically. My mother was never forced to grieve at her husband’s graveside, but there is more than one way for a soldier to die. Often the man who comes home is not the same man who left for war.

“I remember my mother’s stories of how his hands would encircle her throat at night as she crept into his nightmares, the sleeping wife lying next to him fused with the Chinese enemy crawling under his tent flap. I vividly recall the continual depression, the emotional detachment, the explosions of anger. Our family eroded (internally, if not externally) and gradually fell apart like a sand castle trying to withstand an oncoming tide.

“There is more than one way for a soldier to die. Sometimes the family that waits behind gets back only a shell of the man they once knew. Somewhere overseas the soldier’s insides are emptied onto a battlefield, scooped out by bombs and artillery, sleepless nights and ‘collateral damage.’ The father I once knew had been replaced by someone new, a stranger haunted by guilt and riddled with sickness.

“What do my mother and siblings have to celebrate on Memorial Day?

“Please, don’t urge me to remember the veterans who gave their lives so that we could be free. It’s cold comfort because it’s not true. Aside from the clearly religious overtones of those words, something my Christianity finds deeply offensive, my father’s life was not ruined while defending American freedom. Were that the case, I might be able to celebrate. But with the possible exception of World War II, what modern war has this nation fought for such noble purposes? None. My father’s life was hollowed out for a discredited domino theory that preserved American freedom by only the most strained exercise in mental gymnastics. (If Southeast Asia falls, we’re next!) In the end, half the Korean peninsula and the whole of Vietnam were ‘lost.’ Yet, our freedoms were not diminished one iota.

“Let’s be honest in our celebrations. My father’s comrades-in-arms died believing that they were defending American freedom. They died because this nation’s political leaders had convinced themselves that the borders of American national interests extended into Southeast Asia. But the verdict is now inescapable. American freedom was never at risk in any of those conflicts.

“Soldiers gladly give their lives defending the buddies huddled beside them.

Wounded U.S. paratroopers are helped by fellow soldiers to a medical evacuation helicopter on Oct. 5, 1965 during the Vietnam War. Paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s First Battalion suffered many casualties in the clash with Viet Cong guerrillas in the jungle of South Vietnam’s “D” Zone, 25 miles Northeast of Saigon. (AP Photo)

Soldiers die because they obey their orders, no matter how dangerous. Many die because they are patriots. Sometimes they die in the conviction that they are defending someone else’s freedom. More die because they didn’t know what else to do after high school graduation. Soldiers die because they trust their leaders and believe the rallying cries of the commander-in-chief. But none of this necessarily has anything to do with the defense of American freedom. History demonstrates that our soldiers most often die as instruments of the ambition, naivete, stubbornness, ignorance, arrogance, and miscalculations of our nation’s leaders.

Washington DC, USA – June 18, 2016: The Memorial Wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC at dawn.

“It is far more accurate to say that Memorial Day commemorates those men and women who unwittingly gave their lives for the extension of America foreign, political, and economic interests. But that’s neither catchy nor comfortable to repeat.

“In 1775 Samuel Johnson characterized patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel. It is also the first refuge of the masses unwilling to face hard political realities. I’ll stand to memorialize the patriot soldiers who gave their lives protecting a buddy while carrying out dangerous commands. But don’t ask me to memorialize a lie. My family has suffered enough for patriotic delusions.”

When Are Palestinians Allowed to Defend Themselves?

American and Israeli officials repeatedly remind us that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” It is the standard refrain whenever Israel unleashes another conflagration upon the people of Gaza.

In fact, it is the perennial explanation for anything and everything the Israeli military does that results in the death or injury of Palestinians, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or Israeli proper.

Israel’s right to self-defense is the diplomatic equivalent of Abracadabra, making all details, questions, and specific circumstances irrelevant when it comes to reporting events on the ground in Israel/Palestine.

Regardless of the situation, no matter the sequence of events, whenever Israeli power meets and defeats a Palestinian standing in its way, the bloody outcome is always chalked up to Israel’s right to self-defense.

But when do Palestinians have the right to defend themselves?

When are they finally given permission to stand up and say, “Enough is enough! We are not going to take this oppression anymore.”

By what law does Israel and its allies serve as judge and jury in adjudicating these “rights” on the world stage, determining the guilty and the innocent from their bastions of power and privilege?

I was sitting in the small kitchen of a Palestinian family living in the Dheisheh refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem. As in so many Palestinian homes, three generations shared the tiny space together, continuing to bear witness to the aggrieved ancestors who fled their home in 1948. Terrified of the approaching Israeli army, they hoped to escape the bloodshed that had taken so many others before them.

Now they lived in fear of night raids and random shootings carried out by the Israeli army in their refugee camp.

My friend served as translator as the matriarch of the family updated me on the family story. Five of us were crowded together sipping coffee in the living room. The woman’s two sons sat in chairs on either side of me. She held a shy granddaughter on her lap while the child’s mother stood back in the kitchen listening to our conversation.

Both men were home briefly from the local hospital. They had returned to eat lunch and would go back for more treatment when they were finished. Each of them was wrapped in fresh bandages, one around his waist, the other on his leg. Neither could walk without assistance.

They both were recovering from gunshot wounds given to them by Israeli soldiers.

They were walking home after dark when neighbors warned them to be careful. The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) was conducting another night raid, breaking down doors, invading homes, pulling people out of their beds and arresting them for unknown “offenses.”

As these brothers got close to home, flashlights peered from around a corner shining abruptly into their faces. Quickly running up the short flight of stairs to the front door, shots rang out.

Opening the door and falling inside, both men had been hit. One in the leg. The other in the abdomen. Two expanding pools of blood now decorated the kitchen’s linoleum.

Israeli soldiers burst in after them and ran-sacked the house. The place was torn apart. Chairs, a baby’s crib, and bedding materials all ruined. I asked for permission to photograph the damage to make some small record of their claims.

After determining that the brothers were not the men they were looking for, the soldiers walk out leaving the panicked grandmother and wife to deal with their wounded, bleeding menfolk on their own.

Fortunately, neighbors who owned a car quickly got the two men to the local hospital where they received emergency medical aid. This was not their night to bleed to death as victims of Israel’s “shoot first and ask questions later” policing policy.

But there will be other nights. And many, many future opportunities to be crippled, wounded, maimed, or die at the hands of Israeli soldiers.

The family is now left to cover the medical expenses for themselves. No one receives a Sorry We Shot You letter in the mail. No one from the Israeli government ever comes around to say, “Oh, sorry. We shot you by mistake. Our bad! We meant to kill someone else. Let us pay your hospital bills.”

Nope. If you are a Palestinian, it’s all on you. After all, your mere existence is a pain in the ass to Israel’s ever expansive settler colonial enterprise. The soldiers had hoped you would bleed out on the kitchen floor. Couldn’t you take the hint? That’s why they didn’t give you any medical assistance at the time.

This is daily life for the Palestinians living in the West Bank. Gaza stories are even more horrific than this. But that will have to wait for another post some other day.

Imagine living in this fragile environment, under this type of interminable threat day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Not just in one location, but in many, many places all throughout your homeland where dozens and dozens of others are abused in similar ways over and over again with no end in sight.

No one ever comes to your assistance. No one stands up for you. No one defends you. No one tells Israel that they have to stop mistreating you, now.

So, one day, you decide to stand up for yourself. You are not going to take it anymore.

The only question is: when will the rest of the world wake up and recognize that Palestinians have a right to defend themselves?

Join the Webinar: “Two Chosen People? Two Promised Lands? Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism Under Trump and Biden”

Not long ago I was invited to participate in an online webinar happening May 18th, 12:00 pm (Eastern Time) sponsored by the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME).

The discussion will focus on the different ways Americans and Israelis view themselves as “exceptional nations,” both fulfilling a unique, divinely ordained mission to world history.

The presidency of Donald Trump gave voice to evangelicalism’s (i.e., conservative Christianity’s) bellicose commitment to both Christian Nationalism (the belief that America is a Christian nation) and Christian Zionism (the belief that Christians must support the state of Israel).

Israel puts itself at the center of Jewish Nationalism.

How do these political beliefs relate to each other?

What does the Bible say about such things?

How should the Christian church relate to Israel and its continuing conflict with the Palestinian people?

I will share this conversation with Lisa Sharon Harper (founder and president of Freedom Road) and L. Daniel Hawk (Ashland Theological Seminary).

I hope you will join us for what, I am convinced, will be a fascinating conversation. For those who can’t make it, the webinar will be recorded and made available at the NEME website.

You can register online here.

Alas. The US War in Afghanistan Will Not End on 9/11/21

I will keep my fingers crossed and hope that  president Biden follows through on his promise to withdraw all US ground forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021.

But even if he does resist the pressure of DC warmongers now mounted against him, the senseless 20 year war in Afghanistan is bound to continue.

Investigative journalist, Norman Solomon

Journalist Norman Solomon’s article at SheerPost reminds us that we always have to read the fine print in any presidential statement.

There we will see that the air war will continue. US drones will not stop murdering anonymous Afghan civilians, including women and children.

The CIA and various special ops units will continue their clandestine operations.

The insanity of American foreign policy, which appears intent upon dominating the entire globe, has not changed. President Biden remains a neo-liberal, American imperialist.

The publication of the Afghanistan Papers by the Washington Post — this generation’s equivalent of Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers, revealing the truth about the horrid, unwinnable war in Vietnam — has been ignored by the public and Congress, meaning that there is little public pressure to TRULY bring this war to an end.

Solomon’s piece is entitled, “The Fine Print on Biden’s Afghanistan Announcement.”

Here it is:

Contrary to what Joe Biden has said and corporate media has parroted, U.S. warfare in Afghanistan is set to continue well beyond September 11, 2021.

When I met a seven-year-old girl named Guljumma at a refugee camp in Kabul a dozen years ago, she told me that bombs fell early one morning while she slept

Guljumma, 7, and her father, Wakil Tawos Khan, at the Helmand Refugee Camp District 5 in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 31, 2009. [Photo by Reese Erlich]
at home in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley. With a soft, matter-of-fact voice, Guljumma described what happened. Some people in her family died. She lost an arm.

Troops on the ground didn’t kill Guljumma’s relatives and leave her to live with only one arm. The U.S. air war did.

There’s no good reason to assume the air war in Afghanistan will be over when — according to President Biden’s announcement on Wednesday — all U.S. forces will be withdrawn from that country.

What Biden didn’t say was as significant as what he did say. He declared that “U.S. troops, as well as forces deployed by our NATO allies and operational partners, will be out of Afghanistan” before Sept. 11. And “we will not stay involved in Afghanistan militarily.”

But President Biden did not say that the United States will stop bombing Afghanistan. What’s more, he pledged that “we will keep providing assistance to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces,” a declaration that actually indicates a tacit intention to “stay involved in Afghanistan militarily.”

And, while the big-type headlines and prominent themes of media coverage are filled with flat-out statements that the U.S. war in Afghanistan will end come September, the fine print of coverage says otherwise.

The banner headline across the top of the New York Times homepage during much of Wednesday proclaimed: “Withdrawal of U.S. Troops in Afghanistan Will End Longest American War.” But, buried in the thirty-second paragraph of a story headed “Biden to Withdraw All Combat Troops From Afghanistan by Sept. 11,” the Times reported: “Instead of declared troops in Afghanistan, the United States will most likely rely on a shadowy combination of clandestine Special Operations forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives to find and attack the most dangerous Qaeda or Islamic State threats, current and former American officials said.”

Matthew Hoh, a Marine combat veteran who in 2009 became the highest-ranking U.S. official to resign from the State Department in protest of the Afghanistan war, told my colleagues at the Institute for Public Accuracy on Wednesday: “Regardless of whether the 3,500 acknowledged U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, the U.S. military will still be present in the form of thousands of special operations and CIA personnel in and around Afghanistan, through dozens of squadrons of manned attack aircraft and drones stationed on land bases and on aircraft carriers in the region, and by hundreds of cruise missiles on ships and submarines.”

We scarcely hear about it, but the U.S. air war on Afghanistan has been a major part of Pentagon operations there. And for more than a year, the U.S. government hasn’t even gone through the motions of disclosing how much of that bombing has occurred.

“We don’t know, because our government doesn’t want us to,” diligent researchers Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies wrote last month. “From January 2004 until February 2020, the U.S. military kept track of how many bombs and missiles it dropped on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and published those figures in regular, monthly Airpower Summaries, which were readily available to journalists and the public. But in March 2020, the Trump administration abruptly stopped publishing U.S. Airpower Summaries, and the Biden administration has so far not published any either.”

The U.S. war in Afghanistan won’t end just because President Biden and U.S. news media tell us so. As Guljumma and countless other Afghan people have experienced, troops on the ground aren’t the only measure of horrific warfare.

No matter what the White House and the headlines say, U.S. taxpayers won’t stop subsidizing the killing in Afghanistan until there is an end to the bombing and “special operations” that remain shrouded in secrecy.