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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Will Special Interests Allow America’s ‘Longest War’ to Finally End?

Posted by M. C. on May 3, 2021

So why did we stay? As neocons like Max Boot tell it, we are still bombing and killing Afghans so that Afghan girls can go to school. It’s a pretty flimsy and cynical explanation. My guess is that if asked, most Afghan girls would prefer to not have their country bombed.

But as always, the devil is in the details. It appears that US special forces, CIA paramilitaries, and the private contractors who have taken an increasing role in fighting Washington’s wars, will remain in-country. Bombing Afghans so that Max Boot and his neocons can pat themselves on the back.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/may/03/will-special-interests-allow-america-s-longest-war-to-finally-end/?mc_cid=3c6c95b056

Written by Ron Paul

Even if “won,” endless wars like our 20 year assault on Afghanistan would not benefit our actual national interest in the slightest. So why do these wars continue endlessly? Because they are so profitable to powerful and well-connected special interests. In fact, the worst news possible for the Beltway military contractor/think tank complex would be that the United States actually won a war. That would signal the end of the welfare-for-the-rich gravy train.

In contrast to the end of declared wars, like World War II when the entire country rejoiced at the return home of soldiers where they belonged, an end to any of Washington’s global military deployments would result in wailing and gnashing of the teeth among the military-industrial complex which gets rich from other people’s misery and sacrifice.

Would a single American feel less safe if we brought home our thousands of troops currently bombing and shooting at Africans?

As Orwell famously said, “the war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.” Nowhere is this more true than among those whose living depends on the US military machine constantly bombing people overseas.

How many Americans, if asked, could answer the question, “why have we been bombing Afghanistan for an entire generation?” The Taliban never attacked the United States and Osama bin Laden, who temporarily called Afghanistan his home, is long dead and gone. The longest war in US history has dragged on because…it has just dragged on.

So why did we stay? As neocons like Max Boot tell it, we are still bombing and killing Afghans so that Afghan girls can go to school. It’s a pretty flimsy and cynical explanation. My guess is that if asked, most Afghan girls would prefer to not have their country bombed.

Indeed, war has made the Beltway bomb factories and think tanks rich. As Brown University’s Cost of War Project has detailed, the US has wasted $2.26 trillion dollars on a generation of war on Afghanistan. Much of this money has been spent, according to the US government’s own Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, on useless “nation-building” exercises that have built nothing at all. Gold-plated roads to nowhere. Aircraft that cannot perform their intended functions but that have enriched contractors and lobbyists.

President Biden has announced that the US military would be out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11. But as always, the devil is in the details. It appears that US special forces, CIA paramilitaries, and the private contractors who have taken an increasing role in fighting Washington’s wars, will remain in-country. Bombing Afghans so that Max Boot and his neocons can pat themselves on the back.

But the fact is this: Afghanistan was a disaster for the United States. Only the corrupt benefitted from this 20 year highway robbery. Will we learn a lesson from wasting trillions and killing hundreds of thousands? It is not likely. But there will be an accounting. The piper will be paid. Printing mountains of money to pay the corrupt war profiteers will soon leave the working and middle classes in dire straits. It is up to non-interventionists like us to explain to them exactly who has robbed them of their future.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

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Patriotism | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on April 29, 2021

Some years ago I gave my expression to my own feeling—anti-patriotic feeling, it will doubtless be called—in a somewhat startling way. It was at the time of the second Afghan war, when, in pursuance of what were thought to be “our interests,” we were invading Afghanistan. News had come that some of our troops were in danger. At the Athenæum Club a well-known military man—then a captain but now a general—drew my attention to a telegram containing this news, and read it to me in a manner implying the belief that I should share his anxiety. I astounded him by replying—“When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.”

https://mises.org/wire/patriotism

Herbert Spencer

[Originally printed in Facts and Comments (1902)]

Were anyone to call me dishonest or untruthful he would touch me to the quick. Were he to say that I am unpatriotic, he would leave me unmoved. “What, then, have you no love of country?” That is a question not to be answered in a breath.

The early abolition of serfdom in England, the early growth of relatively-free institutions, and the greater recognition of popular claims after the decay of feudalism had divorced the masses from the soil, were traits of English life which may be looked back upon with pride. When it was decided that any slave who set foot in England became free; when the importation of slaves into the Colonies was stopped; when twenty millions were paid for the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies; and when, however unadvisedly, a fleet was maintained to stop the slave trade; our countrymen did things worthy to be admired. And when England gave a home to political refugees and took up the causes of small states struggling for freedom, it again exhibited noble traits which excite affection. But there are traits, unhappily of late more frequently displayed, which do the reverse. Contemplation of the acts by which England has acquired over eighty possessions—settlements, colonies, protectorates, &c.—does not arouse feelings of satisfaction. The transitions from missionaries to resident agents, then to officials having armed forces, then to punishments of those who resist their rule, ending in so-called “pacification”—these processes of annexation, now gradual and now sudden, as that of the new Indian province and that of Barotziland, which was declared a British colony with no more regard for the wills of the inhabiting people than for those of the inhabiting beasts—do not excite sympathy with their perpetrators. Love of country is not fostered in me on remembering that when, after our Prime Minister had declared that we were bound in honour to the Khedive to reconquer the Soudan, we, after the re-conquest, forthwith began to administer it in the name of the Queen and the Khedive—practically annexing it; nor when, after promising through the mouths of two Colonial Ministers not to interfere in the internal affairs of the Transvaal, we proceeded to insist on certain electoral arrangements, and made resistance the excuse for a desolating war.* Nor does the national character shown by a popular ovation to a leader of filibusters, or by the according of a University honour to an arch-conspirator, or by the uproarious applause with which undergraduates greeted one who sneered at the “unctuous rectitude” of those who opposed his plans of aggression, appear to me lovable. If because my love of country does not survive these and many other adverse experiences I am called unpatriotic—well, I am content to be so called.

To me the cry—“Our country, right or wrong!” seems detestable. By association with love of country the sentiment it expresses gains a certain justification. Do but pull off the cloak, however, and the contained sentiment is seen to be of the lowest. Let us observe the alternative cases.

Suppose our country is in the right—suppose it is resisting invasion. Then the idea and feeling embodied in the cry are righteous. It may be effectively contended that self-defence is not only justified but is a duty. Now suppose, contrariwise, that our country is the aggressor—has taken possession of others’ territory, or is forcing by arms certain commodities on a nation which does not want them, or is backing up some of its agents in “punishing” those who have retaliated. Suppose it is doing something which, by the hypothesis, is admitted to be wrong. What is then the implication of the cry? The right is on the side of those who oppose us; the wrong is on our side. How in that case is to be expressed the so-called patriotic wish? Evidently the words must stand—“Down with the right, up with the wrong!” Now in other relations this combination of aims implies the acme of wickedness. In the minds of past men there existed, and there still exists in many minds, a belief in a personalized principle of evil—a Being going up and down in the world everywhere fighting against the good and helping the bad to triumph. Can there be more briefly expressed the aim of that Being than in the words “Up with the wrong and down with the right”? Do the so-called patriots like the endorsement?

Some years ago I gave my expression to my own feeling—anti-patriotic feeling, it will doubtless be called—in a somewhat startling way. It was at the time of the second Afghan war, when, in pursuance of what were thought to be “our interests,” we were invading Afghanistan. News had come that some of our troops were in danger. At the Athenæum Club a well-known military man—then a captain but now a general—drew my attention to a telegram containing this news, and read it to me in a manner implying the belief that I should share his anxiety. I astounded him by replying—“When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.”

I foresee the exclamation which will be called forth. Such a principle, it will be said, would make an army impossible and a government powerless. It would never do to have each soldier use his judgment about the purpose for which a battle is waged. Military organization would be paralyzed and our country would be a prey to the first invader.

Not so fast, is the reply. For one war an army would remain just as available as now—a war of national defence. In such a war every soldier would be conscious of the justice of his cause. He would not be engaged in dealing death among men about whose doings, good or ill, he knew nothing, but among men who were manifest transgressors against himself and his compatriots. Only aggressive war would be negatived, not defensive war.

Of course it may be said, and said truly, that if there is no aggressive war there can be no defensive war. It is clear, however, that one nation may limit itself to defensive war when other nations do not. So that the principle remains operative.

But those whose cry is—“Our country, right or wrong!” and who would add to our eighty-odd possessions others to be similarly obtained, will contemplate with disgust such a restriction upon military action. To them no folly seems greater than that of practising on Monday the principles they profess on Sunday. Author:

Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer was one of the leading 19th-century English radical individualists. He began working as a journalist for the laissez-faire magazine The Economist in the 1850s. Much of the rest of his life was spent working on an all-encompassing theory of human development based upon the ideas of individualism, utilitarian moral theory, social and biological evolution, limited government, and laissez-faire economics.

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The Terrorist Haven Fallacy on Afghanistan – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on April 28, 2021

This is what interventionists just don’t get. They want the U.S. to continue intervening in Afghanistan and elsewhere (e.g., Iraq and Syria) to stop anti-American terrorism. They don’t understand that it is the interventionism that they are advocating that produces the anti-American terrorism. They don’t understand that that is what makes their “war on terrorism” a perpetual war, one that continues to expand the power of the national-security establishment and to enrich the pockets of its ever-growing army of contractors and sub-contractors.

https://www.fff.org/2021/04/20/the-terrorist-haven-fallacy-on-afghanistan/

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Interventionists are saying that U.S. forces need to stay in Afghanistan because otherwise that country will, once again, become a “haven” for anti-American terrorists.

They still just don’t get it. It never ceases to amaze me how blind and obtuse interventionists can be.

Anti-American terrorism is not like the flu or like Covid-19. It doesn’t just spread around the world like an infection or a virus.

Moreover, the 9/11 attacks didn’t occur because the terrorists hated America for its “freedom and values.” They weren’t motivated by anger and rage over Elvis Presley or any other rock and roller. They weren’t motivated by hatred for Billy Graham or any other Christian evangelist.

The 9/11 attacks and all the other anti-American terrorist attacks were rooted in anger and hatred over U.S. interventionism abroad, specifically in the Middle East. Interventionism is the cause of anti-American terrorism. That’s what interventionists still just don’t get.

There were terrorist attacks on American targets before 9/11. There was the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, which was no different in principle than the 9/11 attacks eight years later. There was also the attack on the USS Cole, an imperial warship refueling in Yemen’s Aden harbor when it was attacked. There were the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

All of these terrorist attacks, including the 9/11 attacks, had one thing in common: They were motivated by anger and hatred for the U.S. government’s interventionist foreign policy. For that matter, so were other instances of anti-American terrorism, such as the Fort Hood killing and the Detroit would-be bomber.

For more than 30 years, the U.S. national-security establishment had relied on Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union, along with Red China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, and the threat of “godless communism,” to justify its existence. The last thing the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA ever expected was that the Cold War would end and that it would lose its official communist enemies.

Then the Soviet Union suddenly and unexpected declared an end to the Cold War, exited West Germany and Eastern Europe, and dismantled. Suddenly, the justification for having converted the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-national-security state in 1947 disintegrated.

That’s when U.S. officials decided to go into the Middle East with its interventionist foreign policy. They intervened in the Persian Gulf War, killing countless Iraqis. They intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water and sewage treatment plants with the intent to spread infections and illnesses among the Iraqi populace. They imposed one of the most brutal systems of sanctions in history on the Iraqi people. The sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. The U.S. ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, declared that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.” U.S. troops were stationed near Islamic holy lands, knowing full well how that would be received my Muslims. There was also the unconditional support given to the Israeli government.

All that is what produced the deep anger and rage against the United States that manifested itself in anti-American terrorist attacks. It was interventionism, not hatred for America’s “freedom and values,” that motivated the 9/11 attacks as well as the anti-American terrorist attacks before and after the 9/11 attacks.

Thus, there is a simple solution for anti-American terrorism: Simply end U.S. foreign interventionism. Then the supposed threat of Afghanistan serving as a “haven” for anti-American terrorism disappears.

This is what interventionists just don’t get. They want the U.S. to continue intervening in Afghanistan and elsewhere (e.g., Iraq and Syria) to stop anti-American terrorism. They don’t understand that it is the interventionism that they are advocating that produces the anti-American terrorism. They don’t understand that that is what makes their “war on terrorism” a perpetual war, one that continues to expand the power of the national-security establishment and to enrich the pockets of its ever-growing army of contractors and sub-contractors.

Ending American interventionism would bring an end to anti-American terrorism, which would bring an end to the perpetual “war on terrorism.” But even that’s not enough because it is clear that for the national-security establishment, its Cold War against Russia and China never ended. To finally, once and for all, end the Cold War, it is necessary to dismantle America’s disastrous experiment as a national-security state and restore a limited-government republic to our land. That’s a key to getting our nation back on the right road — the road to liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world.

This post was written by: Jacob G. Hornberger

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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The United States Has Declared Defeat in Two More Wars | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on April 24, 2021

For example, we were told Iraq and Afghanistan would become “democracies” where Western-style human rights are protected and valued. That was the humanitarian justification.

We were also told these countries would become reliable allies of the United States, sort of like Germany or Japan. That was the geopolitical justification.

The US has failed on both fronts.

https://mises.org/wire/united-states-has-declared-defeat-two-more-wars

Ryan McMaken

President Biden announced last week that he planned to remove all combat troops from Afghanistan by September, which he says will mark the end of what is now a twenty-year war in the central Asian country.

A week earlier, the US and Iraq reaffirmed a deal to withdraw “any remaining combat forces” from Iraq, and to further wind down the US involvement there, which dates back to the 2003 invasion.

In both cases, of course, the stated plans to end military intervention have been framed in polite language designed to make it look like the US is leaving on its own terms—and also to allow the US regime some level of plausibility when it claims “mission accomplished.”

In reality, of course, both Iraq and Afghanistan are just two more wars that the United States has lost in a long list of botched military interventions dating back to Vietnam and Korea. Moreover, these withdrawals signal the US’s continued geopolitical decline in a world that is becoming multipolar and highly motivated to bring to a final end the US’s vanishing “unipolar moment.”

But what exactly do we mean by “lost” in this context? Well, by the standards of the objectives presented by the US regime itself when these wars began, these wars are complete failures.

For example, we were told Iraq and Afghanistan would become “democracies” where Western-style human rights are protected and valued. That was the humanitarian justification.

We were also told these countries would become reliable allies of the United States, sort of like Germany or Japan. That was the geopolitical justification.

The US has failed on both fronts.

The Failure of Global Democracy

When the United States first invaded Afghanistan, following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US regime claimed the mission was both a punitive and a strategic one. The military intervention was, we were told, designed to punish and disable the Taliban regime, which was fostering terrorist training camps of the sort that supposedly led to 9/11.

But, not surprisingly, Washington then decided it was going to stay in Afghanistan for a long time. The voters were soon told to brace for a generational war, one that could last decades. After twenty or twenty-five years, though, we were told Afghanistan would become a liberal democracy where women could walk around in miniskirts and the youth would spend their days studying poetry and engineering at universities. Afghanistan, we were told, would end up like postwar Germany and Japan—outposts of Western liberal democracy.

Needless to say, the Pentagon never mentions that anymore. Even after twenty years, the political situation in Afghanistan can perhaps be most accurately described as an ongoing series of wars between warlords, with US-supported warlords on the “good” side. The idea that these US-aligned warlords represent the side of human rights, though, is wishful thinking at its most extreme.

Two years after the occupation of Afghanistan began, the promises of “global democracy” became even more grandiose as the regime tried to grow support for the Iraq invasion. The Bush administration pushed a grand vision for the entire region with claims that a new democratic Iraq would serve as the launching point for a total makeover of the Middle East, which would soon become a region of liberal democracies. The US repeatedly claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was something of a reincarnation of Hitler—rather than the run-of-the-mill dictator he was—and suggested that once Hussein was gone freedom and justice would flower throughout the region.

That didn’t happen. Indeed, even if life improved for some Iraqis—such as the Kurds—life became far worse for countless other Iraqis. As noted by NPR in 2018, as a result of the Iraq War,

Iraq devolved into one of the most dangerous and corrupt countries in the world. With an estimated 500,000 killed in war and violence since 2003, few families have been left untouched. Although security has improved immensely, corruption remains entrenched.

“The majority of people before—Sunni and Shiite—did not like the [Hussein] regime,” says [General Najm al-Jabouri]. “But many people, when they compare between the situation under Saddam Hussein and now, find maybe their life under Saddam Hussein was better.”

Today, Iraq’s standard of living remains crippled by the US invasion, and the democratic government amounts to a regime that is little more than a group of competing kleptocracies.

Moreover, the US invasion paved the way for the rise of religious extremism in Iraq, which led to the near-total destruction of Iraq’s Christian population—which had enjoyed legal protection under Hussein.

Rather than spread notions of liberal democracy and human rights in the region, the US regime has only doubled down in its support for the most repressive regimes. The US remains an enthusiastic supporter of the Saudi regime, one of the most despotic and blood-soaked regimes on earth today. The US has been propping up the military dictatorship in Egypt. Through its interventions in Libya and Syria, the US has taken the side of terrorists and Islamic zealots who traffic young women for sex slavery and enforce the most draconian sorts of Islamic law—something much more rare under the Hussein regime, or under the secular regime still ruling in Syria.

The US’s regime change in Iraq supercharged al-Qaeda and ISIS, leading to humanitarian crises in northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

The Failure of Regime Change

But even if the US failed miserably on installing new human rights–loving regimes across the region, at least the US’s “national interests” are now much safer thanks to regime change. Right?

Well, not quite. Although Washington now claims that it is leaving Iraq and Afghanistan on good terms with the local regimes, the fact is that the US is leaving in power a great many enemies who are more than happy to see the US leave. And in many cases, the US strengthened those with an interest in undermining Washington’s interests.

In Afghanistan, for example, the anti-US warlords (i.e., Taliban-aligned groups) aren’t going away, and are likely to even increase in power as the US leaves. This, after all, is the central claim made by those who oppose Biden’s withdrawal plan. The US leaves behind an Afghanistan where anti-US powers are likely to quickly rush in and fill the power vacuum.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the main “accomplishment” of the removal of Sunni-aligned Saddam Hussein was to grow the power of the Shia minority. This now means the growth of Iran-aligned Shia militias, which are avowedly opposed to the US regime.

In other words, the US could maintain a foothold in both countries indefinitely, but it could only do so through old-fashioned—and very costly—military occupation. That’s certainly not what Washington promised twenty years ago.

With all its fanciful promises for fundamentally changing the calculus in the Middle East, the US has not come even close to shifting the balance of power toward the US by creating a new block of pro-US “democracies.” Mostly, the US has sown chaos in the region, paved the way for terrorist groups, and reaffirmed support for some of the worst dictators and regimes in the region.

All of this was bought and paid for by thousands of US lives and hundreds of thousands of lives in the invaded countries. And by trillions of US dollars. 

The last twenty years have been little more than the US regime spinning its wheels, all while condemning millions to a new reality of greater death, disability, and poverty.

It’s not over yet, though. The fact some announcements have been made about ending wars doesn’t mean they’re really over. There’s no time frame for the final removal of combat troops from Iraq. In Afghanistan, the US may not be ending the war at all, but only shifting toward a war fought by US-employed mercenaries.

In any case, the global political situation has become expensive and hostile to the point that it now makes sense to at least ostensibly bring these conflicts to an end. Also, now that the average American voter is barely paying attention—and that the US is facing an economic crisis and weak recovery—it has become politically expedient to forget about those old wars, preferably with an eye to starting a new one with Russia.  Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power&Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

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My Corner by Boyd Cathey

Posted by M. C. on April 23, 2021

“Slouching towards Armageddon”

American Foreign Policy’s Death Wish

If Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) had their way American troops—boys, men, women, and, yes, transgenders—would not only be in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, “for as long as it takes” uttered an unchastened Cheney (re-affirmed in her congressional positions of power by gutless fellow Republicans), but everywhere else in the world where “the ‘democratic’ way of life” must be imposed by American might. And the result? A continuation of thousands of body bags…

http://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/

Friends,

If Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) had their way American troops—boys, men, women, and, yes, transgenders—would not only be in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, “for as long as it takes” uttered an unchastened Cheney (re-affirmed in her congressional positions of power by gutless fellow Republicans), but everywhere else in the world where “the ‘democratic’ way of life” must be imposed by American might. And the result? A continuation of thousands of body bags, billions of dollars from an already desperate American middle class, and the destruction of indigenous cultures dating back thousands of years, to be replaced with feminism, same sex marriage and gender fluidity, and the fruits of robber baron capitalism.

The response of those two leaders and others in the Washington establishment bespeak the era of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton when Neoconservative scribblers like Bill Kristol and the late Charles Krauthammer (canonized now by Fox News), and the globalist policy wonks at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), ruled the roost…and America’s international role of spreading democratic, secularist…and ultimately anti-Christian…dogma was riding high. It was the time before the advent of Donald Trump and “Make America Great Again,” before the scales and blinders began ever-so-slightly to come off the eyes of millions of Americans.

Back in April 2014, at Communities Digital News, I noted that:

“Today, Republican Party leaders, like those over in the Democratic Party, endorse what they call ‘equality’ and believe generally in imposing ‘liberal democracy’ around the world. Recall leading Neoconservative writer Allan Bloom’s dictum that he famously penned a few years back, which serves as motto for most in the current Republican leadership: ‘And when we Americans speak seriously about politics, we mean that our principles of freedom and equality and the rights based on them are rational and everywhere applicable. World War II was really an educational experiment undertaken to force those who do not accept these principles to do so’.”

Those Neoconservatives have never given up, and many of their major mouthpieces—a Max Boot, Jonah Goldberg, the writers at National Review—became leaders of the Never Trump movement. Others, less honest and more corruptive and evil about their motives, with dishonest smiles on their faces, buried into the Trump administration (e.g., think here of a John Bolton or General Mattis) where they could subvert and impede even the slightest movement toward realism in American foreign policy. (My constant belief is that a major failing of Trump and his presidency was his inability to surround himself with advisors and officials who would genuinely carry out an America First agenda; many acted consistently and fervently to sabotage and undermine it.).

What I wrote back in 2014 came to mind during these past few weeks. And two events—two items in the news—triggered my thoughts.

First, came a subdued report earlier this month, barely noticed by national media that the much-ballyhooed accusations in June 2020 of the Russians paying financial bounties to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan to kill American servicemen was essentially based on nothing—no solid intelligence –just the “assessment” of some of those same inflamed global policy wonks who continue to dwell in the bowels of the permanent managerial state bureaucracy. Remember how the media and politicians reacted last June and July? For days there was hardly anything else of any import on MSNBC or CNN. “The Russians are paying the Taliban to kill American boys!” cried Nancy Pelosi.  “Trump’s a Russian stooge!” bellowed Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff, “maybe taking direct orders from the Kremlin! He must be impeached!”

And so it went, with headlines on the national (and local) news for days and days. But now some of the media most culpable for spreading and propagating that falsehood—think here of The Daily Beast—casually admit (usually buried way back on page 13) that what they reported was wrong. Indeed, the US intelligence agencies have, surprise surprise, walked back the accusation. The story, they now maintain, “is, at best, unproven — and possibly untrue.” 

It was all political, but it also demonstrated once more the incredible power and reach of our corrupted Intel agencies whose ideological subinfeudation to and use by Neocon globalism remains unbroken and unbreakable.

The second item that caught my attention was a fascinating essay in The Asia Times (March 19), and the title tells all: “Life after death for the neonconservatives.” The author, David P. Goldman (from whom I would not have expected such realism), asserts that “[t]he obsession of American foreign policy after the fall of communism was [imposing] pro-Western democracy in Russia, and the foreign policy establishment have never forgiven Vladimir Putin  for returning Russia” to its older, pre-Soviet traditions. But now, “the obsession is back with Joe Biden—and with it, the neoconservatives who dominated the failed administration of George W. Bush. For several reasons, President Biden’s March 16 denunciation of Putin as a ‘killer’ without a soul ranks among the dumbest utterances ever by an American leader – and that’s a crowded field. To begin with, heads of state do not insult each other this way, except in wartime.”

Goldman continues that the idiotic and senseless American (and presidential) insults and the accompanying ratcheting up of tensions along the Russian-Ukranian border, largely pushed and encouraged by the US handing a blank check to Ukraine, have forced a wary Russia, the world’s second major power, into a reluctant alliance with China, the world’s third major power which is something that foreign policy realists have always dreaded and worked to avoid.

Not only that but Russia’s collaboration, at least tacitly, is needed for any lasting deal with a nuclear Iran. And there is little inclination now in Moscow to assist the Neocon blockheads at the State Department to facilitate this.

This latest bout with “Russians did it!” hysteria appears to be largely the result of the Intel agencies’ recent  “assessment” (March 16), once again charging those utterly beyond-the-pale demiurges from Moscow, who want to re-create the Soviet empire, “of operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy, and the Democratic Party.” As Goldman observes, that report is more of the same unsupported drivel, the fluff, we’ve been hearing for years from Democratic AND Republican political leaders. And a continuation of the fatal fascination that establishment Neocons have with Russia—“It won’t act like a responsible democracy! It wants to do its own thing!” Or, to paraphrase Allan Bloom, if they won’t do what we tell them to do, steps must be “undertaken to force those who do not accept these principles to do so.”

Despite their apparently weakened position after four years of Trump and a gradual realization among millions of Americans that Neoconservative solutions to global problems are not only wrong, but positively dangerous, they’re back and occupy positions of authority in the Biden presidency. Thus, while the administration tacitly encourages the BLM/Antifa mobs in our streets, pushes Critical Race Theory in our schools, and opens the floodgates for illegals at our border, we venture ever so close to world conflagration internationally.

During the Bush and Obama years the Neocon foreign policy establishment got the US to spend over $6 trillion for foreign wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, and Syria. And more than 801,000 people have died (up to now) as a direct result of the fighting (Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs). And at the same time, again Goldman: “America lost industrial jobs at the fastest rate in its history, and America’s trade deficit ballooned to $600 billion a year. It failed to export democracy, but also failed to export anything else,” except misery, dislocation and upheaval.

Goldman correctly labels the essential ideology of the Neoconservatives as “right-wing Marxism.” He continues:

“Being determines consciousness, taught Marx, and ideology arises from the social structure. For Marx, that meant that communism would create a New Man free of the vices of capitalism; for neoconservatives, it meant that the mere forms of democratic governance would create democrats.”

It took no less an observer than Joschka Fischer of the German [Leftwing] Green Party to notice what had happened and what my friend Dr. Paul Gottfried calls the “strange death of Marxism”:

“When I came to Washington as German foreign minister during the [George W. Bush] administration and met the neoconservatives, I instantly recognized them as the old comrades! I got the book by [neocons] Richard Perl and David Frum, An End to Evil, and took Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution from my bookshelf, and compared them page by page. Except for some changes in terminology, they were the same book.”

I am sure that Lindsey Graham and Liz Cheney would object strenuously to the comparison. And I am certain that Jonah Goldberg and the National Review crowd would cry “fascist” if made the butt of such a comparison.

But the comparison holds and will not go away. The establishment “conservative movement” long ago accepted the progressivist version of history and its idea of inevitability, and the national GOP has done its best to rationalize politically that vision. In the end, the conservative/Republican establishment—what Gottfried calls “ConInc”—and the post-Marxist Left emit from the same fetid and poisonous philosophical swamp. And, despite its protestations to the contrary and its sometimes defensive appearance against the rot, that pseudo-Conservatism is essentially antithetical to Western Christian civilization.

Until it is overthrown our precipitous decay will continue. 

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The Ron Paul Institute-Why Can’t We ‘Just March Out’ Of Afghanistan

Posted by M. C. on April 20, 2021

A recent article in the Military Times lays out the massive disaster of the US two-decade war on Afghanistan: more than two trillion dollars spent – much of it going to fund crooked practices in Afghanistan and here at home. And even worse, the Cost of War Project has estimated that a quarter of a million people have been killed in the war.

https://us6.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=a6b3044a9fe8889c822d11c16&id=6e64bb3c73

Why Can’t We ‘Just March Out’ Of Afghanistan

Apr 19 – Last week President Biden announced a “full” US withdrawal from Afghanistan – the longest war in US history – by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the United States. While this announcement is to be welcomed, the delayed US withdrawal may result in Americans and Afghans dying needlessly for good PR optics back home. We all remember how many Americans died after President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” stunt in Iraq.

The war has been a disaster from day one. So why wait to end it?

The previous Trump Administration had negotiated an agreement for the US to be out of Afghanistan by the first of May, but in its obsession with tossing out anything associated with Trump, President Biden will continue to keep US troops in harm’s way in this pointless war.

The Taliban have kept their end of the “Doha Agreement” signed under then-President Trump: no Americans have been killed in Afghanistan for more than a year. However, the US side under President Biden will formally violate the Agreement by keeping US troops in-country after May 1st. The Taliban has announced that it will hold the US “liable” for remaining in-country after the agreed-upon departure date. That means more Americans may be killed.

The outcome of the war will not be altered in the slightest by keeping US troops in Afghanistan four additional months. The withdrawal is already announced and no one paying attention expects the corrupt US-backed Kabul government to survive. It is another Saigon moment, proving that the intellectually bankrupt US foreign policy and military established has learned absolutely nothing from history. So if another American is killed, who is going to explain to the grieving family why their loved one had to remain in harm’s way for a good 9/11 photo-op?

A recent article in the Military Times lays out the massive disaster of the US two-decade war on Afghanistan: more than two trillion dollars spent – much of it going to fund crooked practices in Afghanistan and here at home. And even worse, the Cost of War Project has estimated that a quarter of a million people have been killed in the war.

We do applaud President Biden’s decision to ignore the demands of all the neocons who have flocked to support his Administration, but as is most often the case, when it comes to Washington you have to really read the fine print when something sounds too good to be true. In this case, the fine print is that the US will not actually be leaving Afghanistan at all. As a recent article in The Grayzone points out, the Afghan war will continue with US special forces, CIA paramilitaries, and guns-for-hire taking the place of US soldiers. The war is not going to end, it’s just going to be “privatized.”

My philosophy has always been simple: we just marched in, so we can just march out. As we have learned recently, that is exactly what President Trump tried to do in the final days of his presidency, only to get cold feed after his military and national security “experts” told him it was a terrible idea. When the history of the Trump Administration is written, it will sadly be filled with stories of Trumps’ excellent instincts tossed aside by his inability to demand that those working for him follow his orders. It’s tragic.

We need to be completely out of Afghanistan. Yesterday.

—

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US Criticized For Withdrawing Troops From Afghanistan While Just 50 Years From Victory

Posted by M. C. on April 16, 2021

https://babylonbee.com/news/us-criticized-for-withdrawing-troops-from-afghanistan-while-just-50-years-from-victory?fbclid=IwAR3i-mfewuw1vWDTQeGsMR6wKW-Y6PQ3M25UIS9V86oHItycsecEpxKTXkY

U.S.—The U.S. has been criticized for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan when the country is so close to victory, being just another 50 years away from declaring victory in the region.

Commentators, pundits, Democrats, and Republicans alike criticized the proposal to pull troops out in a few months, when if we just stay there for another few decades, victory is all but assured.

“Why are we leaving when victory is on the horizon, just a few decades away?” asked John Bolton. “We’re so close. You can’t give up right when you’re on the finish line, with a utopia in the Middle East being within our reach if we just stay there for another half-century.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense to leave now.”

At publishing time, the nation’s warmongers were relieved as they realized there’s basically zero chance we’re actually leaving Afghanistan this fall.

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Steny Hoyer: Hypocrite of the Decade

Posted by M. C. on April 16, 2021

He even brutally attacked fellow Democrat Member Jim Moran (D-VA) for pointing out the worst kept secret in US history: that AIPAC was instrumental in pushing the US into a war on Iraq that in no way served the US interest but did very much serve Israeli government interests.

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/congress-alert/2021/april/14/steny-hoyer-hypocrite-of-the-decade/

Written by Daniel McAdams

If you could mash-up all that is disgusting, evil, hypocritical, and idiotic in the US Congress, the resulting conglomeration would look a lot like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD). His entire career has been spent gorging himself at the trough of the US taxpayer: he’s never had an honest job.

Hoyer is shameless. A fetid product of the bowels of Washington DC – a 20 term (40 year!) Member of Congress who has never met a war he did not want to send poor kids off to fight. He loves war, he loves the Beltway war machine, and his dedication to Israel and to the continued oppression of the Palestinians is limitless. He even brutally attacked fellow Democrat Member Jim Moran (D-VA) for pointing out the worst kept secret in US history: that AIPAC was instrumental in pushing the US into a war on Iraq that in no way served the US interest but did very much serve Israeli government interests.

He was critically responsible for ginning up then-skeptical Democrat Party support for the Iraq war. And when it became clear to anyone with a brain that the Iraq war was, as the late former NSA Director Bill Odom put it, “the greatest strategic disaster in American history,” Hoyer continued to dutifully lead the charge to keep funding that brutal, immoral, anti-American, and counterproductive occupation and continued war on the Iraqi people.

So what’s the latest beef against this supremely corrupt symbol of American decline? His rank hypocrisy.

Steny Hoyer when President Trump announced that he would remove all remaining US troops from the 20 year failed war in Afghanistan:

President Trump, disturbingly but characteristically, did not consult Congress about this action.  The only beneficiaries from such a troop reduction right now will be Russia and Iran, which continue to seek ways to thwart American interests, destabilize our allies, and exploit our weaknesses.  President Trump has just handed them a gift at the expense of our national security and the safety of our men and women in uniform.

Steny Hoyer today when President Biden announced that he would remove all remaining US troops from the 20 year failed war in Afghanistan:

I believe that President Biden is making the right decision to bring all of our personnel home this year. … I thank President Biden for his determination to bring our troops home…

America: do you want to know why we can’t have nice things? The Steny Hoyers of the country who continue to serve up feces and try and convince us it’s delicious chocolate.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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Do We Not Have Enough Enemies? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 20, 2021

Biden also faces a new crisis of his own making. His “compassionate” policy on illegal immigration has been rewarded with scores of thousands of children, teenagers and families crossing our Southern border to be granted temporary residence while their cases await hearings.

With the border disintegrating, one would think the Biden administration would not be looking around for other crises.

Yet, in Tokyo, on the eve of his meeting with the Chinese in Anchorage, Blinken was playing the hawk: “China uses coercion and aggression to systematically erode autonomy in Hong Kong, undercut democracy in Taiwan, abuse human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet, and assert maritime claims in the South China Sea that violate international law. … We will push back if necessary when China uses coercion or aggression to get its way.”

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/03/patrick-j-buchanan/do-we-not-have-enough-enemies/

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Asked bluntly by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is “a killer,” Joe Biden answered, “Uh, I do.”

Biden added that he once told Putin to his face that he had “no soul.”

Biden also indicated that new sanctions would be imposed on Russia for the poisoning of dissident Alexei Navalny and for meddling in the 2020 U.S. election to allegedly help Donald Trump. Russia also faces U.S. sanctions for building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic to deliver natural gas to Germany.

With its president being called a “killer” by the U.S. president, Russia called Ambassador Anatoly Antonov home “for consultations.” In other times, such an exchange would bring the two nations to the brink of war.

What is Biden doing? Do we not have enough enemies? Does he not have enough problems on his plate?

The May 1 deadline for full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, negotiated a year ago with the Taliban, is just six weeks off. Do we stay and soldier on or depart? No decision has been announced.

If we stay, our forces in Afghanistan could, again, come under fire. If we leave, the Kabul regime could be shaken to its foundation and fall.

Leaving would be an admission that the U.S. failed, and the war is lost.

After the recent U.S.-South Korea military exercises, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s sister issued this threat to the Biden administration:

“We take this opportunity to warn the new U.S. administration trying hard to give off powdered smell in our land (that) if it wants to sleep in peace for the coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step.”

There is talk of new North Korean tests of missiles and nuclear weapons.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Tokyo this week that the U.S. goal remains “the complete denuclearization of North Korea” But Presidents Bush II, Obama and Trump all failed to achieve that goal.

With national elections in June, the clock is also running on the Tehran regime that negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal. Does Biden intend to sign on again, as he indicated in the campaign he would, or walk away?

Biden also faces a new crisis of his own making. His “compassionate” policy on illegal immigration has been rewarded with scores of thousands of children, teenagers and families crossing our Southern border to be granted temporary residence while their cases await hearings.

With the border disintegrating, one would think the Biden administration would not be looking around for other crises.

Yet, in Tokyo, on the eve of his meeting with the Chinese in Anchorage, Blinken was playing the hawk: “China uses coercion and aggression to systematically erode autonomy in Hong Kong, undercut democracy in Taiwan, abuse human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet, and assert maritime claims in the South China Sea that violate international law. … We will push back if necessary when China uses coercion or aggression to get its way.”

China has enacted a new law that authorizes its coast guard to use force to defend Chinese sovereignty. And among China’s claims to sovereign control are the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, claimed and controlled by Japan.

Blinken has warned the U.S. will fight to keep the Senkakus Japanese.

While in Tokyo, Blinken also denounced the generals’ coup in Myanmar, accusing Myanmar’s army of “attempting to overturn the results of a democratic election and … brutally repressing peaceful protesters.”

Former national security adviser to President Trump John Bolton has listed other areas where China is engaged in “unacceptable behavior.”

“A by-no-means-comprehensive list of Beijing’s transgressions that require U.S. attention would include: meddling, blatant and subtle, with U.S. public opinion; building military bases in the disputed South China Sea; menacing Taiwan, Vietnam and India; increasing strategic nuclear forces and egregious global cyberwarfare; empowering North Korea’s nuclear weapons program; concealing the origins of covid-19; stealing intellectual property and forcing technology transfers; and genocide against Uyghurs and the repression of Hong Kong.”

Perhaps the Anchorage talks can be extended to get all the items on Bolton’s agenda fully addressed.

Again, does not America have enough on her plate already?

Our national debt is now larger than our national economy. COVID-19 has killed half a million of us and is killing 1,000 a day more. We have a broken and bleeding Southern border being overrun with no end in sight.

Politically, our nation is divided as deeply as it was on the eve of the Civil War. We are caught up in a culture war, at the root of which is an irreconcilable conflict over whether America is a good and great country, perhaps the greatest — or a nation of whose history and founding we ought to be eternally ashamed.

If time is on America’s side in our cold wars with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, is not the wiser policy to maneuver to avoid any new hot wars?

Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever See his website.

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Erie Times E-Edition Article-Report: US wasted billions on cars, buildings in Afghanistan

Posted by M. C. on March 3, 2021

Peter Van Buren wrote a book about his experience as a government employee trying to rebuild Iraq.

He was tasked with building a multi-million $ frozen chicken plant in an area where there was no electricity let alone any refrigerators.

The military routinely leaves $millions of equipment behind when abandoning bases. In the ME it often ends up with jihadists.

https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=1c69ad246

Kathy Gannon

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ISLAMABAD – The United States wasted billions of dollars in war-torn Afghanistan on buildings and vehicles that were either abandoned or destroyed, according to a report released Monday by a U.S. government watchdog.

The agency said it reviewed $7.8 billion spent since 2008 on buildings and vehicles. Only $343.2 million worth of buildings and vehicles “were maintained in good condition,” said the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, which oversees American taxpayer money spent on the protracted conflict.

The report said that just $1.2 billion of the $7.8 billion went to pay for buildings and vehicles that were used as intended.

“The fact that so many capital assets wound up not used, deteriorated or abandoned should have been a major cause of concern for the agencies financing these projects,” John F. Sopko, the special inspector general, said in his report.

The U.S. public is weary of the nearly 20-year-old war and President Joe Biden is reviewing a peace deal his predecessor, Donald Trump, signed with the Taliban a year ago. He must decide whether to withdraw all troops by May 1, as promised in the deal, or stay and possibly prolong the war. Officials say no decision has been made but on Monday, Washington’s peace envoy and the American who brokered the U.S.-Taliban deal, Zalmay Khalilzad, was back in the Afghan capital for a tour of the region.

Taliban insurgents and the Afghan government have been holding onagain- off-again talks in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar but a deal that could bring peace to Afghanistan after 40 years of relentless war seems far off.

After Kabul, Khalilzad will travel to Qatar’s capital of Doha and neighboring countries, including Pakistan, to push anew for progress in the Doha talks and a cease-fire to end the relentless violence.

Analyst Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal said the findings by SIGAR are not surprising. The reasons for the financial losses include Taliban attacks, corruption and “throwing money at the problem without considering the implications,” he said. “It is one thing to build a clinic and school, it is another to operate, maintain, and in many cases defend this infrastructure from Taliban attacks,” said Roggio. “Additionally, the West has wildly underestimated the impact of Afghan corruption and in many cases incompetence. It was always a recipe for failure.”

U.S. agencies responsible for construction didn’t even ask the Afghans if they wanted or needed the buildings they ordered built, or if they had the technical ability to keep them running, Sopko said in his report.

The waste occurred in violation of “multiple laws stating that U.S. agencies should not construct or procure capital assets until they can show that the benefiting country has the financial and technical resources and capability to use and maintain those assets effectively,” he said.

Torek Farhadi, a former adviser to the Afghan government, said a “donorknows- best” mentality often prevailed and it routinely meant little to no consultation with the Afghan government on projects.

He said a lack of coordination among the many international donors aided the wastefulness. For example, he said schools were on occasion built alongside other newly constructed schools financed by other donors. The construction went ahead because once the decision was made – contract awarded and money allocated – the school was built regardless of the need, said Farhadi.

A SIGAR report says about $1.2 billion of buildings and vehicles, out of $7.8 billion spent since 2008, were used as intended. RAHMAT GUL/AP, FILE

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