People speak of Afghanistan as “our generation’s” Vietnam, a quagmire, a war that goes on simply because it has been going on.
The Afghan war is dragging into being our generation’s, and soon the next generation’s Vietnam as well, over a decade and a half old. There are troops deploying now that were two years old when the conflict started. There are fathers and sons deploying together. Bin Laden’s been dead for years.
With a slight break, the current war in Iraq has been ongoing for some 14 years. If you want to think of it in a longer view, Trump is now the fifth consecutive president to make war on that country. Saddam’s been dead for years.
And though of more recent vintage, the war in Syria appears both open-ended in duration and ramping up in US involvement. If Assad died tomorrow, the war would likely only intensify, as the multiple parties in the fight vie to take over after him.
The reason we’re fighting all of these places and more can’t still be “terrorism,” can it? That has sort of been the reason for the past 16 years so you’d think we would have settled that. Regime change? A lot of that has also happened, without much end game, and nobody seems to know if that does or ever did apply in Syria to begin with. America can’t be under threat after all these years, right? I mean, world’s most powerful military and all that.
So maybe it’s time for the current president to tell us why we’re still fighting in all of these wars. Because previous presidents’ track records on explaining to the ever-bloodthirsty American public why we are fighting is poor. Perhaps history has a lesson for us?
— When I was a kid, successive presidents told us we had to fight in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, because if we didn’t fight them over there, we’d have to fight them on the beaches of California. We believed. It was a lie.
— I was a teenager during the Cold War, several presidents told us we needed to create massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons, garrison the world, maybe invade Cuba, fight covert wars, and use the CIA to overthrow democratically elected governments and replace them with dictators, or the Russians would destroy us. We believed. It was a lie.
— When I was in college our president told us that we needed to fight in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua or the Sandinistas would come to the United States. He told us Managua was closer to Washington DC than LA was. He told us we needed to fight in Lebanon, Grenada, and Libya to protect ourselves. We believed. It was a lie.
— When I was a little older our president told us how evil Saddam Hussein was, how his soldiers bayoneted babies in Kuwait. He told us Saddam was a threat to America. He told us we needed to invade Panama to oust a dictator to protect America. We believed. It was a lie.
— Another president told us we had to fight terrorists in Somalia, as well as bomb Iraq, to protect ourselves. We believed. It was a lie.
— The one after him told us that because a bunch of Saudis from a group loosely tied to Afghanistan attacked us on 9/11, we needed to occupy that country and destroy the Taliban, who had not attacked us. The Taliban are still there 15 years later, ISIS now too, and so is the American military. We believed. It was a lie.
— After that the same President told us Saddam Hussein threatened every one of our children with weapons of mass destruction, that the smoking gun would be a mushroom cloud, that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda. We believed. It was a lie.
— In 2011 the president and his secretary of state told us we needed regime change in Libya, to protect us from an evil dictator. We believed. It was a lie.
— In August 2014 the same president told us we needed to intervene again in Iraq, on a humanitarian mission to save the Yazidis. No boots on the ground, a simple, limited act only the United States could conduct, and then we’d leave. We believed. It was a lie.
— That same president later told us Americans will need to fight and die in Syria. He says this is necessary to protect us, because if we do not defeat Islamic State over there, they will come here, to what we now call without shame or irony The Homeland. We believed. It was a lie.
So with a new guy in the White House, maybe it’s time to renew the question. Perhaps the media can take a day off from what borders on sexual pleasure gushing over the latest super bomb and ask the president a few simple questions: why are we fighting, what is the goal, when will we get there? Someone should have asked a long time ago, but since no one did, this is as good a time as any.
Poster Comment:
Trump, hoping that you'll be impressed by his BIG guns, and that you'll overlook his SMALL hands and junk.
#1: A K A Stone To: hondo68 (#0)
Because Ron Paul voted for war in Afghanistan.
A K A Stone posted on 2017-04-24 21:47:29 Reply Private Reply
#2: Justified To: hondo68 (#0)
OMG its so funny Trump is in office 100 days and because he has not done everything he is a bad or failed president!!!!!!!!!
He has done more in the first 100 days than any president in the past.
I think what Trump has done is shown people are just crazy! Their expectations are so far off the scale its hilarious!!
Justified posted on 2017-04-24 21:52:47 Reply Private Reply
#3: Hondo68 To: A K A Stone, *The Two Parties ARE the Same* (#1)
How come that loser Trump hasn't brought the troops home, and declared victory yet?
He's just keeping them there to protect the D&R party's Opium Poppies!
Hondo68 posted on 2017-04-24 21:58:51 Reply Private Reply
#4: paraclete To: hondo68 (#0)
I think it can and is. Perhaps the definition of terrorism has changed, changed from the attacks of a few jihadists to a war of state sponsored terrorism, to a proxy war against regimes we don't like backed by other regimes we don't like, or maybe we do like them. I understand your confusion, the edges of this conflict have groups sponsored by the same nations fighting each other, Al Qaeda fighting IS, YPG fighting IS fighting Turks, IS fighting Turks and the list goes on until you have to wonder are these the same groups flying flags of convenience.
Iran fights the Saudi in Yemen, Iran fights IS in Iraq and Syria, US fights IS in Iraq and Syria and yet the US fights Assad in Syrian and in doing so fights Iran and Russia. The local populations are terrified, isn't this the definition of terrorism and what we should be fighting against?
One hundred years ago a war was fought to end all wars. The war ended successfully and the hordes repulsed but that same war was fought again twenty years later and then again and again in smaller wars while the weapons grew more destructive so now the wars are fought with less troops and they go on unceassingly. GWB got one thing right, the war on terror would not be a quick war.
paraclete posted on 2017-04-24 22:12:45 Reply Private Reply
#5: rlk To: hondo68 (#0)
The problem is not war, but that for years we have used our own incompetently led military to attack our allies and befriend and strengthen people who should be our enemies.
rlk posted on 2017-04-24 22:14:46 Reply Private Reply
#6: paraclete To: rlk (#5)
The military leaders are not incompetent but those who have political oversight are. a great effort is made to protect civilian populations without knowing whether those civilians side with the enemy, just because you don't have a gun in your hand doesn't mean you arn't an enemy. The weapons to end these wars exist but politically they cannot be used. Saddam was useful fighting Iran until he was no longer useful because he threatened the Sauds but the US has conveniently forgotten that most of the 9/11 bombers were Saudi, OBL was Saudi
paraclete posted on 2017-04-24 22:34:04 Reply Private Reply
#7: sneakypete To: hondo68 (#0)
Islam declared war on us a thousand years or so ago,and all we have done in the last 20 years or so is play defense. We need to go after the bastards in their home territories. If they want war,let's give it to them.
sneakypete posted on 2017-04-24 22:49:26 Reply Private Reply
#8: sneakypete To: paraclete (#6)
BINGO!
sneakypete posted on 2017-04-24 22:50:45 Reply Private Reply
#9: A K A Stone To: hondo68 (#3)
Says the homo lover of gay johnson. You pimped open borders for gay. You pimped fag pretend marriage for gay. Fuck you open border ass licker.
A K A Stone posted on 2017-04-24 22:53:03 Reply Private Reply
#10: HomerBohn To: hondo68 (#0)
Ask Bush I and Bush II!
Then ask the most corrupted America-hating president in history, Barack Insane Obama!
HomerBohn posted on 2017-04-25 07:19:36 Reply Private Reply
#11: Deckard To: Justified (#2)
Still guarding the poppy fields, no doubt.
Drug War? American Troops Are Protecting Afghan Opium. U.S. Occupation Leads to All-Time High Heroin Production
Deckard posted on 2017-04-25 08:58:02 Reply Private Reply