Only weeks after the September 11, attacks, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom and deployed troops in Afghanistan — starting a perpetual quagmire that would lay waste to the lives of Americans and Afghans alike.
More than 2,300 troops dead, tens of thousands more mangled and traumatized, more than 11,000 innocent women and children turned casualties, and tens of thousands of other lives ruined or prematurely ended — and there is absolutely nothing to show for it.
Despite Obama’s attempt to declare the war in Afghanistan a victory in 2014, and withdraw most of the troops, more Taliban controls the region now than before Bush’s assault on the country almost 15 years ago.
In spite of countless drone bombs raining down from the skies, hellfire and tomahawk missiles flattening buildings, and mass graves filled with collateral damage, the US has absolutely nothing to show for it.
Aside from the countless ruined lives, the cost of the war has reached astronomical proportions leaving mountains of debt for our grandchildrens’ grandchildren.
The Congressional Research Service, for example, concluded in 2015 that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost U.S. taxpayers $1.6 trillion. However, according to a report from TIME magazine last year, that number is a gross underestimate.
A truer measure of the wars’ total costs pegs them at between $4 trillion and $6 trillion. This fuller accounting includes “long-term medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans and families, military replenishment and social and economic costs,” Harvard economist Linda Bilmes calculated in 2013, reports TIME.
Instead of realizing that invading and occupying a foreign country creates enemies, the United States has doubled down on their efforts and begun to ramp up the Afghan war once again — because this time it has to work, right? Wrong…
For decades, the US and its Western allies have been violently and frequently meddling in the Middle East. Beginning with the clandestine overthrow of democratically elected leaders, moving on to financing violent extremist groups, and morphing into full blown invasions of entire countries, the Middle East has been the target of destruction since at least 1953.
Ignoring all of the treachery, corruption, and death exported from the US in the last 70 years, the troglodytes in D.C. continue to assert that ‘the terrorists hate our freedom.’ Sadly, the propaganda being shoved down the throats of Americans by these ill-informed political puppets preserves this idiotic assertion.
Millions have died in the West’s relentless pursuit of nation building and controlling oil, all of it is written off as “collateral damage,” and the clueless politicians march on.
The reality is that since 9-11, the US and their NATO allies have fostered a breeding ground for extremist and fundamentalist groups. As Americans sat back on their couches and watched the “Shock and Awe“on CNN, the US was sowing the seeds for perpetual war.
They were planting a garden in which a million Bin Ladens would later bloom.
This policy played right into the hands of the, then, tiny and insignificant fundamentalist groups. Every time a US bomb dropped into a village, this was a recruiting haven for the fundamentalists. Now, a group who was never heard of 3 years ago is recruiting people on a global scale and growing their ranks daily.
Below is one of the most powerful short videos ever made which blows US foreign policy wide open.
If the US government would bring to a halt all of its nation building, drone strike programs, militarized occupations, and 700+ bases around the world, you could rest assured that the “massive terror threat” would diminish to almost nothing. However, it seems the power drunk violent sociopaths at the helm of the world’s largest military show no signs of slowing down.
As the military industrial complex continues to spread like cancer, it is up to us to remain vigilant.
We must not give in to the warmongering propaganda that is shoved down our throats by ALL major media outlets. We must regain our humanity and empathy for other humans. We must be courageous in the face of popular ignorance, and seek to lessen this ignorance by becoming informed and active.
We must cease this paradigm of self-destructive behavior. The power to change the world is in all of our hands; those in power are nothing without your consent and funding. Will we finance our own demise or wake up to the fact that criminally insane psychopaths are leading the proverbial lemming nation off of a cliff? The choice is yours.
