The Peace Press — Wednesday, September 8, 2021 edition

Any military deployment, bombing or air-strike that lacks a Congressional Declaration of War is, under the U.S. Constitution, an impeachable offense crime committed by the President of the United States.

“The commander in chief’s power to invade and inflict carnage is far too expansive.”

“It remains an open question — though historically unlikely — whether Americans will learn from our Afghanistan debacle. The first test has already begun: Will Washington now dismantle the forever wars’ twisted legal architecture and march its remaining boots off Iraqi and Syrian ground? In July, President Biden made the announcement that the United States will soon end its combat mission in Iraq — but not really. The catch is that most of the 2,500 American troops in that country are staying put, simply reclassified as advisers and trainers. More bureaucratic trickery, more linguistic gymnastics, more endless war — 20 years into America’s post-9/11 global crusade. “

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/aumf-afghanistan-congress-invasion/
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“Today’s extremism feeds on war, anger, aggression, fear, hatred, and racism. To end it, we must first abolish war, reject lies, and embrace one another without rancor.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/09/03/end-military-extremism-ending-war
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“Are Americans going to sit around indefinitely eating potato chips while the State Department and Treasury starve Venezuelan children?

Are Americans going to play video games while Israel fires U.S.–made missiles into Damascus from Lebanese airspace — two violations of international law?

Are Americans going to sit around watching corporate sports while the Pentagon drone-murders entire families and Congress votes to increase its post–Afghanistan budget?”

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/09/06/patrick-lawrence-power/
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“Of course, since the U.S. has done so much to destroy Afghanistan and bring even more misery to the people, we are obligated, I believe, to provide more-than-generous humanitarian aid and to safely evacuate all those who wish to leave. That’s the bare minimum we can do. And while we’re at it, we might question the story we tell ourselves about our nation’s benevolence and good intentions. Why is there so little space in this story for the suffering we’ve caused, abetted, or contributed to in places like Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Gaza? Where are the journalists and documentarians who will stand beside the beds of hospitalized children in Yemen and remind us that their wounds, their missing limbs, and their emaciated bodies are consequences of a war we support — the war between Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia, a strategically important ally and one of the biggest clients for U.S. weapons manufacturers like Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/03/afghanistan-farewell-to-arms-predator-drones-night-raids/
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“The final days of the US occupation of Afghanistan were a nightmarish embodiment of the chaos, corruption, and violence of the last 20 years.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/afghanistan-occupation-disaster/
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The Taliban now control Afghanistan — — -if they do not wish the U.S. to help fight ISIS, then the U.S. should stay out of Afghanistan and not launch any airstrikes upon Afghanistan ever. Ending the war should mean an end to airstrikes.

“On Friday, a Taliban official said the group doesn’t need help from the US or any other countries to fight terrorism in Afghanistan.”

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/09/05/taliban-says-they-dont-want-us-help-to-fight-isis-k/
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As long as the air war continues upon Afghanistan, so should the antiwar movement continue protesting the war on Afghanistan — — -the war is not over until all bombings and airstrikes cease to occur.

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/09/05/report-us-navy-might-continue-air-war-in-afghanistan/
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“In contrast, very few people in the US political arena or the corporate-controlled US media express any skepticism about the US and its trustworthiness. It appears the possibility that the US is not trustworthy never crosses their minds. However, if it does, they realize that it is likely not to their political or professional advantage to raise this possibility with others.

President Obama benefited from this lack of skepticism when he falsely touted the precision of the US drone program. When Obama claimed that few civilians were killed, the mainstream media generally accepted this claim until there was too much evidence of civilian deaths to be denied.

The hypocritical US political/media elite are now raising concerns about the safety and well being of the Afghan population under the Taliban’s rule. However, it appears that these concerns about Afghan lives were not a major issue for these elites when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected a proposed surrender by the Taliban in December 2001, a surrender that would have brought an end to most of the fighting there.

These elite also didn’t show much concern about Afghan lives during the past 20 years when the US forces were bombing and then militarily occupying the country. In addition, the fighting with the Taliban, especially the air campaign, continued throughout these past 20 years and killed a large number of civilians. In fact, according to a excellent recent article by Jim Lobe in Responsible Statecraft, using research by Andrew Tyndall, in 2020 the corporate-controlled media mostly ignored Afghanistan with a total of 5 minutes coverage during the 14,000 minutes of weekday evening news coverage on the three national broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC). In the previous five years prior to 2020, the networks averaged 24 minutes per network per year. Thus there is little evidence of any real concern being shown about the safety and well being of the Afghanistan people before the Taliban recaptured control of Afghanistan.”

https://original.antiwar.com/Ron_Forthofer/2021/09/05/afghanistan-and-the-us-corporate-media/
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“Meanwhile, the “humanistic interventionists” are more concerned with Washington’s “betrayal” of the Afghan people, “leaving them to their fate,” as if the Afghans are irrational beings with no agency of their own, or as if the Afghan people have called on the Americans to invade their country or have “elected” American generals as their democratic representatives.

The US-Western propaganda, which has afflicted our collective understanding of Afghanistan for twenty years and counting, has been so overpowering to the point that we are left without the slightest understanding of the dynamics that led to the Taliban’s swift takeover of the country. The latter group is presented in the media as if entirely alien to the socio-economic fabric of Afghanistan. This is why the Taliban’s ultimate victory seemed, not only shocking but extremely confusing as well.”

https://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2021/09/05/on-propaganda-and-failed-narratives-new-understanding-of-afghanistan-is-a-must/
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“Count on this, though: the politicians of the great power that hasn’t won a significant war since 1945 will agree on one thing — that the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex deserve yet more funding (no matter what else doesn’t).”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/09/07/imagine-spending-8-trillion-rebuild-society-instead-destroying-one
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“The United States should abandon the corrosive Wilsonian tradition of hypocritical moral posturing. Refusing to recognize a disagreeable reality does not change that reality. Like it or not, the Taliban now controls Afghanistan. Like it or not, a communist regime still governs Cuba, despite Washington’s 6-decade-long effort to unseat it. Like it or not, Iran is and will continue to be a major power in the Middle East. Like it or not, North Korea is a nuclear weapons power in a volatile region, and the U.S.-led policy of trying to isolate the country and wreck its economy has failed.

Establishing formal diplomatic ties with such governments simply is a recognition of reality. “

https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Galen_Carpenter/2021/09/06/refusing-to-recognize-the-taliban-a-pointless-wilsonian-practice-in-us-diplomacy-continues/
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“With endless wars comes endless spending. If the US is to keep a constant stream of men, equipment, weapons, and bribes coming flowing into Afghanistan, none of that is free. As it turns out, none of that is cheap either. The Costs of War Institute at Brown University’s latest estimates for the total costs of the war peg it at $2.313 trillion. Written out long-hand, the number is: 2,313,000,000,000. This is the equivalent of spending just over 300 million dollars every single day just in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001. Put in individual terms, this war cost the taxpayer roughly $2 every day, or $730 a year.”

https://original.antiwar.com/JW_Rich/2021/09/06/a-lifetime-at-war-in-afghanistan/
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“In his novel, 1984, George Orwell foresaw a dystopian future where wars would be fought perpetually, not intended to be won or resolved in any way and President Eisenhower’s parting words as he left office in 1961 were a warning of the “grave implications” of the “military-industrial complex.” Wikileaks founder Julian Assange noted that these dire predictions had come to pass, speaking in 2011: “The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the U.S. and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/09/07/no-longest-war-us-history-not-over
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“Operation Enduring Freedom is filled with cautionary tales for would-be service members”

https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/thinking-of-enlisting-read-this-afghan
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“The U.S. retaliatory drone strike in Kabul against ISIS-K reminds Ann Wright of her personal experience in helping to relocate large numbers of people in short order from Freetown, Sierra Leone, 25 years ago.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/09/07/lessons-for-the-evacuation-of-afghanistan/
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“Biden is right to end the forever war in Afghanistan. Now he needs to close the forever prison that it built.”

https://original.antiwar.com/farrah-hassen/2021/09/06/now-close-gitmo-too/
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In a democracy, there is accountability. So why don’t we have accountability? Are we really a democracy?

“There are two decades of days to choose from, yet no one is held responsible for them.”

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-worst-day-in-afghanistan/
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“In reckoning with post-9/11 fantasies and lies, don’t forget the role of the press.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/press-cheerleaders-afgan-war/
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“Ours have been wars of hatred, not logic, and doomed to fail — at a mind-boggling human and financial cost.”

“For the past 60 years, the United States has waged war after war for America’s narrow interests alone, and has created havoc, destruction, and death in its wake.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/09/03/global-cooperation-not-endless-war-should-be-future-us-foreign-policy
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“My opinion as the mother of an Army Infantry Officer who served in Kandahar Province during President Obama’s surge in Afghanistan.”

“We cannot allow the story of this war to be told as anything less than a lesson, a cautionary tale, a devastating loss, and international tragedy that could have been avoided.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/09/03/war-afghanistan-over-its-time-face-truth
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“Before he stole $169 million and fled his failed state in disgrace, Afghanistan’s puppet President Ashraf Ghani was formed in elite American universities, given US citizenship, trained in neoliberal economics by the World Bank, glorified in the media as an “incorruptible” technocrat, and coached by powerful DC think tanks like the Atlantic Council.”

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/09/02/afghanistan-ashraf-ghani-corrupt/
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Once you understand that many generals are just ass-kissing, yes-men politicians telling the Establishment exactly what it wants to hear while simultaneously vying for post-military-career top positions at war-profiteering firms, then you begin to understand how many generals are simply traitors to their country, much like war-profiteering corporate cockroaches who deserve only extermination, and don’t give a rat’s ass about the troops dying and being maimed in the perpetual wars waged for profit.

“I’m not mad about us pulling out of Afghanistan,” he said, having served in-country as a rifle squad team leader. “The frustrating thing for me is the fact that these senior leaders, I would say brigade level and up, are so disconnected from their formations that they thought that this [nation-building] was gonna work.” He added: “They thought that the Afghans would actually adopt a democracy. Their military would be able to fight off the Taliban, and everything would be great.”

The average enlistee, interacting on the ground with Afghan army recruits and fearing the infamous green-on-blue attacks — when those recruits turn their rifles on their trainers — were under no such fantasy. “You ask any grunt that has been on the ground in Afghanistan, ‘Do you feel the Afghan army was at any point or would be capable of effectively protecting their country?’ They’re going to tell you no.”

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/soldiers-are-losing-faith-in-their-commanders/
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“Everyone except the military-industrial complex lost the ‘war on terror.’”

“While the American people financed the war with their tax dollars, and in some cases their lives, the top five Pentagon contractors enjoyed a boom in growth in federal contracts over the course of the war in Afghanistan. Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, found that Congress gave $2.02 trillion to the top five weapons companies — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman — between 2001 and 2021.

And between 2002 and 2020, federal funding for those five weapons companies grew by 188 percent.

In fairness, the weapons companies invested heavily to lobby members of Congress about a variety of matters, including budget and appropriations issues impacting their bottom-lines.”

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/09/02/top-defense-firms-see-2t-return-on-1b-investment-in-afghan-war/
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Both Trump and Biden deserve credit for ending the war on Afghanistan — — -Trump for negotiating the terms of the Doha agreement which stipulated the withdrawal of U.S. forces while President Biden deserves the credit for sticking to his word and to the Doha agreement by withdrawing U.S. forces. So remember not to “partisan-ize” the withdrawal — — — give credit where credit is due to President Biden and President Trump both.

“Anti-war advocates on Tuesday credited President Joe Biden with finally ending the U.S. war in Afghanistan, even as many expressed surprise that it was ultimately the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a lifelong proponent of U.S. military intervention, to end the 20-year quagmire.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/08/31/progressives-credit-courage-biden-lifelong-hawk-end-afghan-war
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“And now that the US-Nato military alliance has staggered out of Afghanistan, defeated but grovelingly defiant, it should be giving thought to what has happened in that benighted country and planning for the future on the basis of what it has learned. The problem is that Nato doesn’t seem to have learned anything by its absurd foray, and is indeed intent on widening its horizons in order to attempt to justify its existence. The best lesson from Nato’s Afghanistan debacle (and its eight month bombing fandango that destroyed Libya’s economic infrastructure and encouraged home-basing of terrorist groups where none had formerly dared set a foot) is that it would be globally beneficial if Nato were to disband, but we have to be realistic and accept that common sense will not prevail in that regard.

Along the same lines, it would be sensible for Washington to objectively assess the value of the estimated 750 military bases in about 80 countries around the globe, and inform us exactly what benefit their existence is supposed to offer to the US and the rest of the world. “

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/03/when-will-they-ever-learn-out-of-afghanistan-into-the-mire/
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“More Americans favor engaging Cuba diplomatically than any other approach to the island, according to a new poll by the online political platform Moxy.”

https://thehill.com/policy/international/570803-poll-americans-favor-diplomatic-engagement-with-cuba
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Will President Biden also withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, Iraq and Africa?
Clearly the U.S. deployment of troops to Syria was based on yet another lie.

There was no chemical attack by government forces of Syria but even if there had been, that would still does not justify U.S. military intervention.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958679/BBC-admits-Syria-gas-attack-report-flaws-complaint-Peter-Hitchens.html
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Racism is an unspoken rationale for U.S. imperialist actions.

“The debacle in Afghanistan exposes how racism oozes from every edifice of the U.S.’s imperialist wars. War requires the dehumanization of its subjects. It is assumed that Afghanistan needs the United States to achieve any modicum of (white) “civilization.” The people of Afghanistan have been deemed incapable of expressing self-determination without the almighty hand of the U.S. military. The Taliban, on the other hand, represents the “heart of darkness” that must be wiped away in order for the people of Afghanistan to leave their “primitive” existence behind.”
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“Racism provides ample cover for the economic interests served by the U.S.’s endless wars. Federal contracts for weapons manufacturers grew $119 billion from 2001–2020 in large part due to the bonanza of market opportunities that were engineered by the occupation of Afghanistan. The New Cold War against China and Russia has also driven the expansion of U.S. military resources into Asia and Africa. More than fifty percent of all U.S. military assets reside in the Asia Pacific and the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) now possesses partnerships with all but one African country (Eritrea).

War serves a myriad of interconnected interests for the U.S. ruling class. As the market for private military contractors has grown, so too have profits for Wall Street investors. Fossil fuel corporations supply one of the largest polluters in the world, the U.S. military, with the crude energy necessary to facilitate its endless expansion.”

https://www.blackagendareport.com/war-racist-enterprise
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“A group representing the families of some of the victims of the September 11 attacks applauded an executive order issued by President Joe Biden on Friday in which the president directed federal agencies to review and release documents related to the FBI’s investigation of the attacks.

The order comes a month after nearly 1,800 family members, survivors, and first responders called on Biden to stay away from the upcoming 20th anniversary events unless he ordered the declassification of the documents.

“We are thrilled to see the president forcing the release of more evidence about Saudi connections to the 9/11 attacks,” Terry Strada, national chair of 9/11 Families United, said in a statement.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/03/under-pressure-victims-families-biden-orders-release-911-documents
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“One can only surmise that a combination of saber rattling and fear mongering over China has truly had an effect.”

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/09/02/new-poll-finds-majority-of-americans-open-to-sending-troops-to-defend-taiwan/
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“Even After Afghanistan, Washington’s War Party Wants to Send Others Off To Fight and Die”

“Year in and year out, the US project was a disaster visible to the entire world. Yet American policymakers lied to each other and the American people, claiming progress that never occurred. The time is now for a policy witch-hunt, to ruin the reputations of those whose lies extended the conflict and careers gained from failure. Many of them — David Petraeus, H.R. McMaster, and Joseph Dunford immediately come to mind — took the lead in demanding that American forces remain in Afghanistan as long as necessary, meaning effectively forever, in an attempt to put off the Afghan implosion and consequent damage to their reputations.

Yet the unnecessary sacrifice of American lives and waste of American wealth appears to have only increased demands for more endless war on behalf of the abstract ideal of democracy. For instance, the lives of urban Afghan elites were improved by the thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars dissipated by America. Rather than appreciate this effort, some Afghans blamed the US for not doing even more to preserve the regime, apparently irrespective of the cost.”

https://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2021/09/05/is-democracy-worth-war/
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While Chelsea Manning’s historical contribution to peace, transparency, accountability and the rule of international law is commendable, her recent whining about pretending to be a perpetual victim of anyone she disagrees on the Right with is far less than admirable. Glad to see Glenn Greenwald expose his written record with her in the interest of transparency. More kudos to Glenn Greenwald.

“Despite my not having said a single word to her since 2018, the whistleblower today claimed she’s “terrified” of me, implying serious personal abuse. See for yourself.”

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/all-communications-between-myself
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“Military occupations excite violent resistance throughout history. The U.S. has given up the fantasy of transforming Afghanistan. This removes Israel’s cover for its occupation and is generating panic among Israel’s friends.”

https://mondoweiss.net/2021/08/afghanistan-withdrawal-is-a-shock-to-the-israel-lobby/