9/11 attacks will be 15 years ago this September…..and it will be the 15th anniversary of the War on Terror…..and in those 15 years what has been done to win this War on Terror?
We invaded Afghanistan and put the Taleban on its back foot…..we finally tracked down and killed Osama…..we invaded and have occupied Iraq and rid the world of a tyrant, Saddam and in doing so unleashed the dogs of Hell….so I ask again…..what has the war on terror accomplished?
We have killed a lot of people mostly civilians…..we have caused countless dollars of destruction and devastation and in all that time we have not ended this war….we have made new enemies and irritated old ones…..
All in all….it has NOT been a productive 15 years…..
I found a good piece in “The American Conservative”….believe it or not….they do publish some good articles……and this analysis is a really spot on piece of work.
It’s been almost a decade and a half since 9/11, but the foreign-policy establishment still cannot admit that continuous American intervention in the Middle East has been a failure.
I recently attended a conference entitled “Hindsight: Reflections on 15 Years of the War on Terror.” With a wide range of highly respectable speakers, I naively expected that the panels would conclude that the so-called “global war on terror” had been a misguided project ab initio, that the United States continues to repeat mistakes in its national security policy that promote rather than discourage terrorism—and that the terrorism threat itself has been grossly inflated for largely political and economic reasons.
Source: Washington’s Terrorism as Usual | The American Conservative
And this election that approaches smells like it will be yet another 15 years of the same unproductive policies….and that does not matter which candidate wins the contest.
This is precisely why: #ImWithJill @DrJillStein
It is a compelling argument for…..chuq
great points made friend
Thanx…..the US is just spinning its wheels…as usual….chuq
spinning in the air, no forward movement.
None what so ever…..after 14 years it is starting to back up….
great
Ugh. Conflict good. No profit in peace….
End of story, ffolkes. When every single one of the 455 who run the US government are corrupted by money, all of what see makes perfect sense.
There is only one motivating factor at play in the world today, and that is the corporate bottom line.
Show me, if you think I’m wrong. I’m willing to listen to any reality based evidence. Right now, reality operates human culture solely by the bottom line.
gigoid, the dubious
…(the sound of crickets)……chuq
*grin*
We will never win the war on terror until somebody gets the gonads to give the real enemy a name and start shutting down their ability to kill us . . . It is something like the war on drugs . . . good for many industrial bottom lines but totally unwinnable . . . until somebody gives the enemy a name.
It has a name…TERROR….fighting over what to call it waste time and energy.
How about “Shirley”? As in “Shirley everything must be done to fight terrorism.”
Is that the same Shirley that was related to Shirley Knott?
I don’t know who Shirley Knott is. The only Shirley I ever noticed was Shirley Partridge. “C’mon get happy” indeed! (Phrasing!)
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/confidential/partridge-sex-shirley-joking-article-1.1369824
I think this was probably the best paragraph in that story…
“It is projected that Uncle Sam will spend $4.2 trillion in 2017 compared with $1.863 trillion in 2001, $503 billion of which will be borrowed…The Department of Homeland Security, which did not exist prior to 2001, gets $40 billion and employs 180,000; the intelligence agencies get an estimated $100 billion and employ 100,000; the FBI gets nearly $9.5 billion; and the Department of Defense gets $632 billion, which does not include a slush fund to cover the war in Afghanistan and other contingencies. In 2001, the Pentagon budget was $277 billion. When all the increases are added up and compared to the baseline of 2001, the war on terror currently costs the American taxpayer directly more than $500 billion per year as part of an overall defense and national security budget that approaches $1 trillion. As there may be only 100 or so terrorists interested and plausibly capable of attacking the United States directly, that works out to something like $10 billion per year per terrorist….And that is only at the federal level.”
He then goes on to talk about the State & local government efforts, the militarization of police departments, university campuses, etc. While he talks about the FBI Patsy Factory that cranks out Oswald after Oswald, he doesn’t even mention that many local police departments are getting into the domestic spying racket.
Sure, Osama, Saddam & Mo’ K are dead, but the only measurable difference between 2001 and now are those budget stats (And MISC Industries profits.)
Wasted money….comes down to that alone….