American Justice – 9/15/21:
American Justice – 9/15/21:
Okay, we had some fun yesterday. Unfortunately, not everything is cotton candy and roses. And as much as we would all like to wash our hands of Afghanistan, it is not going anywhere. Here’s your updates:
– We had the first of an endless number of congressional hearings on our evacuation of Afghanistan.
– Democrats largely defended the Biden Administration, pointing out that Trump essentially handed them a Jenga tower with all the supports pulled out. It could have collapsed at any time. Trump reduced the number of U.S. troops to an all time low, while Taliban forces were at an all time high. The Democrats version is that the disastrous withdrawal was inevitable, simply the cards they were dealt. As a matter of fact, we should be applauding the evacuation effort, since we were able to pull 130,000 people in 2 weeks… something that has never been done before. However, much of the chaos could have been avoided if we started pulling Americans and our Afghan friends months ago, instead of waiting until weeks before the withdrawal deadline to pull people.
Keep that in mind, withdrawing itself did not trigger the country’s collapse. The Trump administration dialed down our forces without pulling anyone.
Mistake #1.
Yet, for the 8 months he was in office, the Biden Administration allowed these folks to remain in Afghanistan while the Taliban worked on bribing their way to power.
Mistake #2.
The knowledge that Americans were completely pulling out at the end of August triggered the collapse that led to the frantic evacuation effort -in that order. The Jenga blocks collapsed with everyone still inside the country.
– Republicans are describing this as a total failure that has strengthen our enemies, weakened our position in the world, and fed the women of Afghanistan to the Taliban. All of which is true, but those hypocrites don’t get to say shit, because they were cheering on Trump when he set the stage for it. Trump was going to do everything Biden did, except he was going to do it even sooner, just as chaotically and leave as many of our Afghan allies behind as he could.
A plague on both your houses.
But that’s old news.
We have new news. On our way out of Afghanistan, ISIS-K attacked the airport, killing 13 members of our military and 200+ of our Afghan allies.
America was not going to allow the attack to go unanswered, so we swiftly attacked an ISIS-K attack planner. Someone attacks America, we strike back quick, and hard. Serve them some righteous American justice. Americans demand it, doing otherwise would show weakness.
Here is the problem- We aren’t sure we got the right people. CNN has done a great job investigating this:
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/09/14/us-drone-strike-afghanistan-isis-k-the-lead-coren-ldn-vpx.cnn
According to them, a vehicle left what the military believed to be an ISIS-K safehouse. The vehicle drives all over the city. According to our intelligence, the vehicle was supposed to be carrying explosive material, meet up with another insurgent on a motorcycle. However, footage shows that the vehicle was only carrying water, and never meets up with any motorcyclist. Our military launched a drone strike on the vehicle while it was parked at a residence, surrounded by children.
If we ignore for a moment that the American military dropped a bomb on children while trying to get revenge for the American people -And we fucking shouldn’t.
We don’t even know if the target of the attack was with us, or against us.
Which puts me in the uncomfortable position of agreeing wholeheartedly with Rand Paul:
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6272667436001#sp=show-clips
For those who skipped the video, in short Rand Paul asks Antony Blinken
“Well see, you’d think you’d kind of know before you off somebody with a predator drone whether he was an aid work or an ISIS-K operative.”
Rand Paul & Ron Paul have some quacky ideas, however, they both have always been consistently critical of how and when America uses military force. That is not something we often see in the Democratic party, let alone the Republican party. There is actually quite a bit of overlap between Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul. We should listen to them because they are not partisan hacks on the issue. They’ve been discussing it for years at great political risk.
I remember a few years ago Ron Paul discussing the concept of “Blowback” at a Republican 2008 debate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQrwKr_b4Lg
The idea being that it feels good to attack bad people. However, in doing so, we always run the risk of hurting innocent people. Those innocent people now sees us as the enemy… and the cycle continues. We create the terrorists of tomorrow by seeking out revenge using unmeasured amounts of force, and making imprecise attacks based on weak intelligence today.
These events are not isolated incidents. America has a long history of doing this. American drones have killed countless innocent people. We’ve dropped bombs on weddings. Here we killed and maimed children. We invaded Afghanistan even though we knew many of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia… and members of their government knew of, and were complacent in the attack. Pakistan hid Osama Bin Laden, and we did nothing. We invaded Iraq based on false intelligence, and called ourselves “liberators”.
We lost 2,977 on 9/11. And that really sucks.
And in the wars we’ve fought since, we’ve lost another 7000+ service members in the fighting, and 30,000+ to suicide after they came home.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/military/killed
Our strongest argument for the War on Terror is: “At least we haven’t had another 9/11”
But with 37,000 service members directly or indirectly killed since, I’m counting at least 12 for us.
I’m not a pacifist. I’m just anti-stupid war. I am anti-fighting without clear, well planned, obtainable goals.
The war in Afghanistan cost $2.3 trillion, and 71,000 civilian Afghans were killed as a direct result of the war.
The war in Iraq cost $2 trillion, and 200,000 civilian Iraqis were killed as a direct result of the war.
In all- Brown University estimates our 20 year War on Terror has cost $6.4 trillion, and resulted in 801,000 total deaths, 335,000 of those civilians.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/US%20Budgetary%20Costs%20of%20Wars%20November%202019.pdf?utm_source=Daily%20on%20Defense%20(2019%20TEMPLATE)_11/15/2019&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEX_Daily%20on%20Defense&rid=84648
The only version of freedom & peace we have been able to offer is one with drones flying above their heads like the Sword of Damocles.
And what did we learn from it? A few weeks ago evil ISIS-K murdered 13 members of our military, so we righteously bombed some Afghan children while trying to get revenge on someone who may or may not have been an ISIS-K operative…as stated by our Secretary of State Antony Blinken himself.
Right now there is this narrative being pitched that pulling our troops out of Afghanistan will not impact our ability to fight terrorism. Presumably, American operatives will continue to collect intelligence, and we will continue to bomb perceived threats with drone strikes.
Sometimes we will kill bad people, sometimes we will bomb innocent people and children. Some of the survivors will want revenge on America… and then we will bomb them too.
And the shit show continues.
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