Author of Be Ready for Anything and Build a Better Pantry on a Budget online course
It’s rare that I read something on the Washington Post that I don’t find highly biased, even repugnant. But with their recent article on the Afghanistan Papers, they truly knocked the ball out of the park.
The facts they shared should have every American protesting in the streets. Trillions of dollars have been spent on a war that the Pentagon knew was unwinnable all along. More than 2300 American soldiers died there and more than 20,000 have been injured. More than 150,000 Afghanis were killed, many of them civilians, including women and children.
And they lied to us constantly.
Congress just proved that the truth doesn’t matter, though. A mere 22 hours after the release of this document, the new National Defense Authorization Act that breezed through the House and Senate was signed by the President. That bill authorized $738 billion in military spending for 2020, actually increasing the budget by $22 billion over previous years.
So, how is your representation in Washington, DC working out for you?
What are the Afghanistan Papers?
The Afghanistan Papers are a brilliant piece of investigative journalism published by the Washington Post and the article is very much worth your time to read. I know, I know – WaPo. But believe me when I tell you this is something all Americans need to see.
This was an article that took three years of legal battles to bring to light. WaPo acquired the documents using the Freedom of Information Act and got more than 2000 pages of insider interviews with “people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.” These documents were originally part of a federal investigation into the “root failures” of the longest conflict in US history – more than 18 years now.
Three presidents, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have been involved in this ongoing war. It turns out that officials knew the entire time this war was “unwinnable” yet they kept throwing American lives and American money at it.
Here’s an excerpt from WaPo’s report. Anything that is italicized is taken verbatim from the papers themselves – you can click on them to read the documents.
In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.
With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.
“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”
“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,” Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. “Who will say this was in vain?” (source)
The important thing to note about these interviews is that the interviewees never expected their words to become public. They weren’t “blowing the whistle.” They were answering questions for a federal investigation. So they didn’t hold back. These aren’t “soundbites.” It’s what the real witnesses are saying.
The U.S. government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has spent on the war in Afghanistan, but the costs are staggering.
Since 2001, the Defense Department, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have spent or appropriated between $934 billion and $978 billion, according to an inflation-adjusted estimate calculated by Neta Crawford, a political science professor and co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University.
Those figures do not include money spent by other agencies such as the CIA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is responsible for medical care for wounded veterans.
“What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?” Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. He added, “After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.” (source)
The US government deliberately misled the American people.
What’s more, if you officials, up to and including three presidents, knew they were throwing money at something that could never be achieved. They did it anyway and they lied to our faces about it.
The documents also contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.
Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.
Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” Bob Crowley, an Army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers. “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone. (source)
It’s been an epic 18-year-long exercise in CYA. (Cover Your A$$). I don’t see how anyone could fail to be outraged by this. And what I’ve cited here is just the crap icing on the maggot cupcake. It’s a festering mess and I urge you, if you really want to know the truth, to read this article on WaPo and click on these links.
How was all this money spent?
A lot of it went to building infrastructure in Afghanistan. It was flagrantly and frivolously used there while we live in a place where people are going bankrupt at best and dying at worst because they can’t afford medical care and there are places in our country without clean running water or toilets.
One unnamed executive with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) guessed that 90 percent of what they spent was overkill: “We lost objectivity. We were given money, told to spend it and we did, without reason.”
… One unidentified contractor told government interviewers he was expected to dole out $3 million daily for projects in a single Afghan district roughly the size of a U.S. county. He once asked a visiting congressman whether the lawmaker could responsibly spend that kind of money back home: “He said hell no. ‘Well, sir, that’s what you just obligated us to spend and I’m doing it for communities that live in mud huts with no windows.’ ” (source)
Aren’t you angry about this? Don’t you feel betrayed as more Americans struggle to pay their bills and eat food and keep a roof over their heads each month?
Who benefits from this?
As usual, follow the money.
The defense industry certainly reaped rewards and it’s highly likely a lot of people who had the power to allow it to go on made some “wise investments” that have paid off for them. But for the rest of us, this conflict has done nothing except ensure that our tax dollars are not here improving our infrastructure or helping Americans lead better and more productive lives.
Dr. Ron Paul refers to this as the crime of the century.
It is not only members of the Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations who are guilty of this massive fraud. Falsely selling the Afghanistan war as a great success was a bipartisan activity on Capitol Hill. In the dozens of hearings I attended in the House International Relations Committee, I do not recall a single “expert” witness called who told us the truth. Instead, both Republican and Democrat-controlled Congresses called a steady stream of neocon war cheerleaders to lie to us about how wonderfully the war was going. Victory was just around the corner, they all promised. Just a few more massive appropriations and we’d be celebrating the end of the war.
Congress and especially Congressional leadership of both parties are all as guilty as the three lying Administrations. They were part of the big lie, falsely presenting to the American people as “expert” witnesses only those bought-and-paid-for Beltway neocon think tankers.
What is even more shocking than the release of this “smoking gun” evidence that the US government wasted two trillion dollars and killed more than three thousand Americans and more than 150,000 Afghans while lying through its teeth about the war is that you could hear a pin drop in the mainstream media about it. Aside from the initial publication in the Washington Post, which has itself been a major cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan, the mainstream media has shown literally no interest in what should be the story of the century. (source)
And it’s most likely that nobody will ever face punishment for this deception. If this is not the very definition of the term “war crimes” I can hardly imagine what is. Dr. Paul continues:
We’ve wasted at least half a year on the Donald Trump impeachment charade – a conviction desperately in search of a crime. Meanwhile one of the greatest crimes in US history will go unpunished. Not one of the liars in the “Afghanistan Papers” will ever be brought to justice for their crimes. None of the three presidents involved will be brought to trial for these actual high crimes. Rumsfeld and Lute and the others will never have to fear justice. Because both parties are in on it. There is no justice. (source)
The response? Silence and a budget increase.
The people in government don’t care that we know about all this. Sure, it’s mildly inconvenient but “whatever.”
How do I know this?
Simple. Less than a full day after the story broke, the new NDAA ended up on President Trump’s desk and was signed, authorizing an additional 22 billion dollars for next year’s defense spending. And all anyone can talk about is, “Oooohhhh Space Force!!!”
Government: “Merry Christmas. We’re going to blow through more of your tax money and you won’t get a damned thing for it.”
I couldn’t make this up if I tried. In a notable, must-read op-ed, Darius Shahtahmasebi cited some horrific incidents and concluded:
We can’t let this recent publication obscure itself into nothingness. The recent reaction from Congress is a giant middle finger designed to tell you that (a) there will never be anything you can do about it and (b) they simply don’t care how you feel. Democracy at its finest from the world’s leading propagator of democratic values. (source)
When is enough going to be enough? Why are we not enraged en masse? Why haven’t we recalled these treasonous bastards and taken our country and our budget back?
For a country that is ready to take up arms and waste countless hours “impeaching” Trump over something he said on a phone call, it sure says a lot about those same people ignoring 18 years of treasonous behavior by three separate administrations.
Why isn’t the media raising hell over this? Why aren’t these lives important? Why isn’t sending trillions of our dollars to be frittered away an outrage?
People love to say “America First” and “impeach Trump for treason” and all that jazz. They love to call anti-war people “un-American” and recommend a quick, one-way trip to Somalia if we don’t “support our troops.” However, I think is far more evidence of supporting our troops to want out of there, not risking their lives based on a castle of lies that further enriches powerful and wealthy people who have nothing to lose.
Most people love to be outraged about frivolous matters. But when a report like this and its following insult are met with resounding silence, it’s pretty obvious that hardly anybody is really paying attention.
What do you think?
Did you read the Afghanistan Papers? Were you surprised by the contents? Do you feel the war in Afghanistan is justified? And how do you feel about the new NDAA?
Recommended reading:
- The Afghanistan Papers
- The Afghanistan Papers document database
- ‘Atrocious’: 188 Democrats Join GOP to Hand Trump $738 Billion Military Budget That Includes ‘Space Force’
- Congress Learns Pentagon Wasted $1 Trillion, Promptly Gives It Bigger Budget
- Afghanistan War – The Crime of the Century
- What Everyone Is Missing About the Afghanistan Papers
About Daisy
Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, globe-trotting blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, voluntaryism, and the pursuit of liberty on her website, The Organic Prepper. She is widely republished across alternative media and she curates all the most important news links on her aggregate site, PreppersDailyNews.com. Daisy is the best-selling author of 4 books and runs a small digital publishing company. You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
My father was a career officer in the Air Force. Born in 1920 and growing up desperately poor in the Dust Bowl, he was one of the smartest men I’ve ever known (and the hardest working). He used to say to us that there was no need for war any more; there were other things that could be done diplomatically to remedy the situations. That being said, he served honorably in three wars, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. He never wavered in his belief that war was stupid.
Now I am closer to the end of my life, and I see how right he wasl The cost in lives and limbs is much more important to me than money; however, I am furious that defense contractors can grow rich from the swamp that is DC. If you do follow the money, as Daisy says, you find that our tax money goes to buddies of people who, not only use it to make themselves rich but also hand out jobs with high salaries to these “public servants” after their terms are up. Shameful. Despicable. Profane.
Washington DC is beyond anything we can do to fix.. It has evolved into one huge anti-American citizen cesspool.
Terrific, Daisy!!! Thanks for having the gumption to say it like it is. And as you say, the VIP’s are all in on it, including the Mainstream Media. President Eisenhower warned us about the “Military-Industrial complex, but his warning went unheeded. Besides invading Afghanistan, probably the stupidest thing our Government has done is killing Saddam, the only leader who could control all the warring factions in the Middle East. A second contender would be the Carter administration’s milquetoast response to the radicals taking over Iran and holding our people hostage. Time for us to get mad and start leaning on our legislators now. Thanks for your great and appropriate expose here.
Sad and wasteful use of money and lies. It was the same with the Vietnam war. We kept getting told we were winning.
In Vietnam, our boys in the field did win. The only reason the North Vietnamese invaders stayed in the field was because they had their eyes on that cesspool called Congress, expecting Congress to betray our troops and overturn the victory. Congress delivered. Congress was controlled by Democrats then too.
I have never voted Democrat since. Independent, sometimes Republican, never Democrat when given the choice.
The Vietnamese at least were sane. The Afganese have an ideology that makes them insane. The only way to “win” is to kill them all off, which is unacceptable. The other option is to leave and let them rot in their own cesspool.
As a retired Air Force member it sickens me to see how many service members die for useless wars and how much is spent. No matter what we think, the politicians will continue to send someone else’s sons and daughters off to die while theirs are stateside safe and sound.
Revolution is the only way America will change…
I’m past angry, Miss Daisy. This outrage has been evident for a good deal longer than the Afghanistan debacle, and it just keeps going on, and on, and on . . .
“Support the Troops!” “We’re fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here!” “USA! USA! USA!”
Well, I was one of those troops y’all back here were supporting (Iraq was my war, however . . . not that that really makes any real difference; the debacle in Iraq, like Afghanistan, is a “gift” that just keeps on giving). And, at the time, I was convinced of its rightness because I believed all the nonsense regarding WMDs, “fighting them over there . . . “, etc. But the truth was hidden in plain sight, and I was forced to begin reckoning with it upon my return from my last deployment back in ’06.
Those extremist “wackos”, you know, Washington and Jefferson, wrote famously regarding avoiding entangling alliances, confining our war-making efforts to legitimate defense, etc., but I guess we’re too busy denouncing them because they’re old, dead white guys who owned slaves! Further, they didn’t govern an empire, with all the lusts for domination and the corruption imperial power brings with it, but a republic (nor, perhaps worse yet, a democracy!). While far from perfect, that republic was made up largely of farmers who were loathe to go off on some hare-brained wanna-be tyrant’s hobby war for the increase of said tyrrant’s (along with his cronies’) maintenance of power and profit. Farmers tend to be grounded far more in reality, and have no time for the abstractions and theories tyrants (and their inevitable bureaucracies) can afford to indulge themselves in; thus, they oppose the kind of wars we have engaged all too often during this and the last century.
Defending kith and kin? Absolutely! Wars “making the world safe for democracy (and the power and profit of politicians and corporations)”? Absolutely NOT!!!
But we turned the corner from being a republic a loooooong time ago, and are now a de facto empire, spouting cliches about the virtues of “democracy”, and forcing it on the rest of the world.
I’m afraid none of this, sadly, can or will be solved at the ballot box. These people, as I wrote in another post, are ultimately lawless, and simply won’t “go gently into that good night!”, regardless of the party affiliation. I hope I’m wrong, but – referencing a couple of earlier posts of yours – we’d do well to keep prepping, forming local and TRUSTED alliances, and look to the example many Virginia counties are setting right now!
Well said and I for one completely agree with your point of view.
The Republic that was is long left in the dust. De facto empire, hmm. Yes, I see that clearly. As empires go, this one may not last much longer. Have no idea what that may look like practically. I just know that this once great country is NOTHING like the one Washington and his fellows defended. And we are far worse for it!
How did you become a “troop” after all that your parents told/taught you? Or did your parents fail you?
Daisy,
I think more people aren’t angry about this because 3 trillion is a number so vast it’s meaningless to most folks. Also, the war in Afghanistan doesn’t grab their attention anymore. We continue to waste treasure and lives in a war we cannot win because it’s about religion and ideology, not battle tactics. Tragic.
I agree with what Marie and Daithi Dubh say. My war was Vietnam and it appears the lessons we allegedly learned from that mistake must be re-learned the hard way. So stupid to ignore history.
The Brits couldn’t “win” in Afganistan. The Russians couldn’t “win” either. Why would we think we could? We don’t belong in that part of the world, no matter its strategic value or its oil possibilities. There ought to be laws against politicians enriching themselves and their friends and against American blood being spilled on foreign soils “defending” people who don’t want our “help”. But there aren’t and there won’t be. The best we can do is minimize (legally) the taxes we must pay to support this nightmare, make family and community connections and alliances. We’re past saving the land we knew and are reduced to manning the lifeboats.
Well how else can politicians ensure their large campaign donation if they don’t “come through” for their donors . Not only do we not take care of our military and veterans, more and more military jobs/functions are outsourced. We saw how well these contractors do their jobs .
Those who dare speak up are swiftly attacked as “unpatriotic”. Even politicians who have honorably served – John McCain, Max Cleland, are branded unpatriotic. Or even worse, accused of lying about their service. In Cleland’s case, losing his legs below the knee and one forearm just couldn’t have been due to him serving in Vietnam .
Our infrastructure is crumbling. Our health care system is sorely lacking. But we always and I do mean always, have enough money to increase the military budget.
Those who are so quick to engage the US in war should be the first in line to serve.
The history of John McCain should be a cautionary one.
I cannot speak of his military career, I wasn’t there. Let those who were there argue about it.
But I can speak to his civilian career after he came back, and it’s a dishonorable one. From the way he divorced his first wife to his involvement in a failed savings and loan to his comporting with Muslim terrorists to …… All of these are public record.
People change. Not everyone, but enough do change that we have to be on guard concerning everyone. We mustn’t let praiseworthy actions in the past blind us to the fact that the person has changed to be a crook. Likewise, a crook can reform to become praiseworthy.
The “Deep state” is real, amoral, murderous, and consists of many people who like to pass themselves off a great people. Sadly, some of those people may have acted honorably in the past, only to become corrupted in the present. This example of Afghanistan is one where we are being taxed, wounded and killed for no benefit to the American people, and most Americans don’t know it because the deep states has conspired with its owned media to hide the truth from us.
Love your blog when the topics relate to useful survival tips when the feces hits the whirling blades of the wind making machine. However your forays into the political world simply makes you, well, just another of the plethora of political pundits. For example, when the first sentence of your article today started with, “It’s rare that I read something on the Washington Post that I don’t find highly biased,” I didn’t go any further. The Washington Post and other ultra-left leaning rags will always be biased towards anything the Trump administration tries to do. Being “unbiased” is not in their vocabulary and I think a wise person would do well by permanently relegating the reading of their distortions into the “rare” category and leaving it there until it becomes extinct. I’m a 30-year Navy Vet whose father was a 26-year Navy Vet and my son is a 30-year Navy Vet. The TRILLION dollar Defense Bill that you article “implies” will go for fighting in Afghanistan is incorrect. Look at the 3.1% pay raise given our military personnel and the many other items being funded to keep America strong in the ever unpredictable threats we face on a daily basis.
This is an interesting comment.
You admitted you read no further than the first paragraph but you still have a lengthy comment indicting the content of my article. Honestly, when I see someone say “I read this sentence and went no further, I feel much the same about their comment since it’s based on what they suppose my article is about.
You suggested what you felt a wise person should do, so I’ll offer you some related advice. I think a wise person would be able to understand that this information came directly from government documents and use that as their source – which is what I delved into after reading the excellent article on WaPo. My quotes came from the US government. Not the Washington Post.
But what do I know? I should clearly stop worrying my pretty little head about the state of the world, our country’s wasteful spending, and our soldiers dying to enrich some politicians and defense contractors. Bye, now. I’m off to the kitchen where I belong.
Daisy – you need some help with the dishes LOL… I guess he doesn’t understand the Pentagon papers of of today. Or perhaps he discounts them since faux news didn’t cover them.
Well bless your heart SamAyeAm. My Revolutionary War GGGGGreat- grandfather is yawning over your post.
Oh drink a little more of that red Kool Aid SamAyeAm! I suppose when the SHTF you believe that the military will help you and that the gubmint sent your check in mail too!!
Your own bias tendencies are showing sir!
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ~ Upton Sinclair
If government services were valuable and the market wanted them, would they be provided on a compulsory basis?
If I did business in the same manner as government does, and forced strangers to give me money, would you consider me a criminal?
Are you or your “representatives” threatening someone with an initiation of violence today?
Daisy, thank you for this disurbing but honest look at what is going on in our once Christian country. We used to be reverred by the world and rightly so because we were doing the right things. Not any more as your article points out!
There are times I am ashamed to call myself and American, because of what “our” government is doing in “our” name.
I submit to you, my fellow Americans, that the fiercest enemy America ever faced in open combat was Nazi Germany. Yes, the Imperial Japanese as well as the communist Chinese, North Koreans and North Vietnamese were also formidable foes, but they weren’t quite the Third Reich. The Soviet Red Army might have proved an even tougher enemy, but we never faced them in actual combat.
So, how long did it take to defeat Hitler’s Germany? Less than four years. So I say that now and in the future, for ANY WAR WE ARE FIGHTING, if we can’t win in less than four years time, we are either doing it wrong, or we are there for the wrong reasons.
I leave it to each of you to decide just how the government so badly bungled the Afghan war; that’s a matter for debate. What I know for a fact is that there are people serving in that war who WERE NOT BORN YET when the conflict began.
It’s high time this conflict was wrapped up. We will not honor our fallen and wounded service men and women by allowing a new generation of soldiers to be ground up trying to “civilize” a primitive nation of stone cold fanatics who are not collectively worth the cost of even one of our people getting so much as windburn or a fractured toe nail.
We originally went in because the government there was shielding the terrorist who attacked us in 2001. Well, that sack of filth is at the bottom of the ocean and the government that shielded him assumed room temperature a long time ago.
Are there are sick, evil maniacs still skulking around that country? You betcha! Is it OUR responsibility to choose what sort of government that nation has? NO, IT’S NOT. If they attack us again in any way, then we stomp on ’em, then bring our people home. If they leave us alone, we mind our damned business. Ya know, like all the stuff that needs to be fixed, right here in America
We never defeated the Germans during WWII, the Russians did. It was a fight between the Fascists and the Communists, two sides of the same coin, to put Europe into slavery. The Russians enslaved one-half of Europe for forty-five years.
And that is part of the problem. We’re still fighting ‘Second Generational Warfare’ of putting massive firepower on a fixed target while the world has moved onto Fourth-Generational and now probably fifth-Generational Warfare. Not counting other armaments, it’s estimated for every Afghanistan opponent killed we spent around a half million bullets.
See William S. Lind’s website ‘Traditional Right’.
Lind explains the different types of generational warfare.
“We” didn’t do anything. The criminals who call themselves the U.S. government sent the military “in” because it’s profitable for those who invest in death and destruction.
“The measure of the state’s success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not.” – Joseph Sobran
Being RULED by demonic men who LOVE death. The death of your soldiers, the death of your country, the death of your unborn.
They grin ear to ear but frown when Donald Trump is succeeding. Put on scorning faces.
Now they want your guns after taking your money. Trillions of it. We worked and were taxed for nuth’n but that’s what makes Demoncraps so happy.
Your enslavement and vain labors.
Trump succeeds at nothing. More dead soldiers, even more debt than we’ve ever had, punitive cuts to food assistance to those who need it the most, and most worrisome, same behavior the world saw from Hitler.
We all need to take a step back from the talking points and be objective as to the state of the country. Anyone think family farms are doing well? Is the middle class thriving – the very same middle class that enabled the US to be the strongest nation in the world? Is the deficit/debt due give aways to the rich/corporate america?
I can’t speak for anyone else but I’ll be fine and so will my kids. We adapt to change and call a spade a spade. Regardless of skin color, a good person is a good person. And a piece of excrement is a piece of excrement. Those who can change and adapt will survive and most likely thrive.
This monumental century+ long theft of citizen resources goes way beyond “mere” tax money. When the federal reserve system was sneaked through Congress in the wee closing hours of 1913, it opened the floodgates to the crime of counterfeiting the American currency. It’s not remembered today that the 1792 Coinage Act, passed at a time within living memory of the inflationary disasters during the American Revolution (both on our part, and by the British to deliberately add to our disaster), enacted a prohibition on counterfeiting the money — to be enforced by a DEATH PENALTY. They well remembered how during part of the war a wagonload of money couldn’t buy a wagonload of food.
During World War I, the counterfeiting presses were cranked up and rolling. By the war’s end, prices had gotten jacked up by about 25%, followed by the predictable depression in 1921. Fortunately, FDR wasn’t in a position to prolong it with more than a decade of government intervention like he did after the 1929 collapse.
The point of such counterfeiting was, and is, to steal additional purchasing power from the citizenry. You can’t separate purchasing power away from gold or silver like you can with paper fiat money. This is why the British created the Bank of England in 1694 to steal added purchasing power from the populace, beyond what the tax rate would generate — because they had learned that above a certain published tax rate, the population would revolt, the torches and pitchforks would come out, and Crown heads would be cut off. But counterfeiting (euphemized as “inflation”) was the workaround that would keep most of the unsophisticated population in the dark and pacified. It would also transfer enormous wealth from the citizenry to the uber-wealthy who received such funds first BEFORE the price level rose. The result is the century+ long gutting of the American middle class and the destruction of some 96-98% of the dollar’s value, based on starting from 1914.
Empires traditionally either die by military disaster or financial catastrophe. At one time, after the Middle Ages, Portugal, Spain, France and finally England all in sequence used their currency as the global reserve currency of their eras. Century after century, as one empire and reserve currency went belly up, another took its place. We are now at the state of empire (despite the official lies) where the US dollar has been the world’s reserve currency, and much of Asia is scrambling to bail out of using it as fast as they can. America has become the hated money-changer in the global temple. Spending ourselves silly on the warfare / welfare state has created an unpayable bubble — that the nation’s founders (who warned of the dangers of a standing army) would comprehend.
A final thought: when Eisenhower’s speech was being drafted to warn us about the military-industrial complex, it included the word “congressional” in that phrase. When he deleted that word, he explained that keeping the word “congressional” in would be a bigger fight than he wanted to take on.
Instead, we still face that fight today. I wonder if we’ll ever remember that the century+ of counterfeiting that ruined our money was once a death penalty offense, established by the Revolutionary founders who had survived such a disaster.
–Lewis
Gotta keep the CIA Heroin Dollar Propping Scheme going as long as possible since many Cuntreez don’t like the Old Greenback the way they used to like back in the day when we Invaded, Killed & Toppled Regimes with Wild Abandon. The Globalists plan on using the Ching Chong Chicom Yellow Skin Slant Eyed Devils to do the Dirty Work now because as a Race they have No Souls & will do Anything for Money.
The Anarcho-Capitalists told the statist zombies that this is how things go down, but the zombies wouldn’t and won’t listen because they are cowards.
“Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one’s self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.” ~ Michael Rivero
War isn’t unwinnable. The strategies are though.
Why aren’t more Americans mad?
COMFORT
As long as The People can sit in their recliner, eat junk, drink beer, smoke marijuana, watch the game on the big screen HD TV while typing away about the hardships and grievances of everything all the while in a climate control house there won’t be any mad.
This is how people are controlled. Prisoners don’t riot if they are comfortable. Office workers don’t quit when they are comfortable. Spouses don’t divorce when they are comfortable.
Daisy,
Thanks for posting this article.
Way back in 1984, the Grace Commission, authorized by then prez Reagan, found that NOT ONE CENT of the income tax ever made it to the federal gov’t. It was all absorbed by the PRIVATELY OWNED federal reserve bank as interest on the money it printed and loaned congress. The interest (profit) goes right into the pockets of the shareholders of the “non” federal reserve .
Of course, this props up the “war machine” and by paying, you are funding your own demise.
I stopped in 1990. I Will Never Pay Another Cent.
EVER.
People need to wake up to the fact that politicians are corrupt,self-serving and amoral.There are no good guys.And they are controlled by a satanic elite bent on fulfilling their own agenda.Long past time to wake up to reality.
Follow the money indeed. If your country’s main export is broccoli, don’t worry about being invaded. However, oil and poppy pretty much sum up the Middle East in flames. For Afghanistan, the war on drugs is a war for drugs. The war was unwinnible because they never intended to “win”.
Unfortunately, even if your only cash crop is broccoli someone will still use eminent domain for a superhighway thru your backyard.
Anyone remember the line asked to the character Robert Redford played in the movie “Three Days of the Condor”, (badly paraphased) … “What if one day there is no gasoline for the cars? What then? Do you think people will care what happens?
Question for Daisy,
As a proud member of Robert MacNarama’s “One Hundred Thousand”, in reference to the above article I’m curious, what exactly did we learn from Vietnam?
best
For clarification, the Washington Post’s article.
When the Washington Post in it’s article used the phase “lessons learned from Vietnam”, and my opinion is nothing was learned, it makes one wonder where they’re coming from.
The Wasington Post that “… itself … was a major cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan.”.
It may seem like a very minor rhetorical phase in an otherwise article, that as you (and Ron Paul) pointed out, needs to be addressed.
But, again, what spin is involved. Is there a white/black backwash since the article is from the Washington Post readers might doubt it’s authenticity?
Substitue Vietnam for Afghanistan in the Washington Post article and nothing changes.
The real question is why we were in Afghanistan at all?
I strongly suspect that we were there to restore the opium conduit of the PTB to the western markets since that is what the Taliban had interfered in a really big way. The PTB have run the US government, iits banking, ts politics, ts major political parties and controlled much of its military …and the UN until 2017 and thanks to Trumps efforts the PTB is losing its control of the status quo. The greed of the PTB for the “power” of being the “masters of the world” is being revealed for all to see though many lack the vision to see it.
Still as the systemic corruption within the US Corporation is revealed and the hidden history is put into the light of day the truth that the United States Corporation is NOT out lawful government. Our lawful government ended in 1861! The fake government began after that and was finalized after that in 1871 as the United States Corporation occupying only the District of Columbia, the territories, protectorates and the military enclaves. What we think of today as States are only sub-corporations of the US Corporation having no real basis on the land and are just man-made, artificial entities outside of the dejure, sovereign nation States of the people. The 14th Amendment (not a lawful Amendment, since there was no legitimate government to add it to the Constitution for the united States of America, was added to a fake constitution call THE CONSTITUTION FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. and created a NEW class of citizen, called the US citizen. The 14th Amendment states that anyone born in the UNITED STATES or naturalized in the UNITED STATES is a citizen of the UNITED STATES and subject to its jurisdiction. This UNITED STATES is not the United States of America but only DC (10 by 10 miles) not even a State). A US citizen is a “subject”, a slave of the UNITED STATES as a citizen of Rome was a subject of Rome and NOT a freeman! A freeman is a citizen of the sovereign State, due to the land on which he/she was born and NOT a citizen of the defacto United States, an artificiality,
Defending izlom from itself, ie the war on a specific emotion – currently the emotion called terror – is stupid to the tune of trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives.
What if they decide to wage war on melancholy or perhaps euphoria next? I’m serious in case you wondered because that makes about as much fing sense.
Be that as it may, when we got 911’d it was mostly saudis, with pakistans int agency funding it.
So who does w bomb and invade?
Astan and Iraq.
Now on to out bases in other countries.
Ever notice how close Russia moved their country to our military bases? Weird, really, why would Russia want to be so close to our bases? Oh wait, it’s us who moved bases close to Russia’s border!
We should pull all US forces from around the world and let each country take care of their own security. Imagine the savings. It’s not like we can’t turn someone’s cities into ash if we needed to.
Trump needs to do what he said he would and get our guys out of the shitholes pronto.
Ever notice how the US mil protects the borders of foreign countries with deadly force via the most advanced weapons ever to exist….. but not its own?