All empires end messily, including America's.

As in all such matters, we begin by noting that individuals serving in the military don't choose the rationale for their deployment. This is done by political figures for various reasons, few of them involving integrity. So it has been, and so it shall remain, at least until "we the people" have the gumption to think about it.

Donald Trump’s rant against Iran is the howl of a dying empire, by Simon Jenkins (The Guardian)

As the president slurred ritualised abuse of Iran and pleas to Nato, we saw the US’s days as world hegemon dribbling away

 ... All empires outstay their declared purpose, let alone their welcome. All end messily – the operative word is all – be they Roman, Napoleonic, British or Soviet. All are vanquished not by superior power, but by self-delusion and geography. The British empire had neither the right nor the need to invade far-flung parts of Asia and Africa. It was defeated by them. The US has claimed the right to intervene in theatres as diverse as South America, the far east, east Africa and a portfolio of Muslim states. Justification varies from retaliation and deterrence to “self-defence” and the instilling of democracy.

The US’s intentions have often been noble, but good intentions camouflage power projection. When your drones can kill anyone anywhere, the temptation is insuperable. If you think you can police the world from a bunker in Nevada, why not try?

Trump’s instinct was once that of a classic American isolationist. As he reiterated to Congress last February, “Great nations do not fight endless wars … the hour has come to at least try for peace.” He was announcing withdrawal from Syria and more tentatively from Afghanistan. Yet he is still there. The US is fighting six wars – also in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. None has any conceivable relevance to its own security.

Imperialism sticks to politics like glue. Even as common sense screams withdrawal, staying offers the populist an opportunity for glory.

snip

Twenty years of western interventions in the Muslim world have rested on two falsehoods. One is that terrorism poses an existential threat to western democracies, grotesquely underrating their inherent stability. The other is that intervention can remedy such a threat, can enforce obedience and even democracy on victim states ... the issue now is not whether we can any longer plant the flowers of democracy in fields we have drenched in blood. It is how to get the hell out. The sight of Trump ranting against Iran and inflicting on it yet further sanctions was like the final scene of a tragic opera. He seemed a man trapped.

Two American presidents played a significant role in the demise of British imperialism. Franklin D Roosevelt told Winston Churchill that the US’s involvement in the second world war was strictly on condition that Britain dissolved its empire. The US would not defend it. John Foster Dulles, who was later US secretary of state, said in 1945 that his was “the first colony to have won independence” from Britain, and it expected others to follow. This advice was fiercely echoed in 1956 by Dwight D Eisenhower, appalled at Britain’s invasion of Suez.

Iraqi politicians this week joined the anti-imperial cause by demanding that American forces be withdrawn from their soil. All Trump could do was refuse, despite having previously pledged to do just that. Even in its hour of insecurity, 17 years of American occupation had left Iraq just desperate for it to end. It knows it must live at peace with its powerful neighbour, Iran, and this requires it to be no longer to be a tool of American presidential machismo. Likewise Afghanistan must find its own accommodation with the Taliban and with its neighbour, Pakistan ...

"The Afghanistan Papers document a consistent pattern of deception, extending for nearly two decades across three administrations, that should be a major scandal."

"In Afghanistan, there is a plan to build democracy; hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it. There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don't have a plan for reconstruction at home."
-- Jesse Jackson

Where Is the Outrage Over the War in Afghanistan?, by Jeet Heer (The Nation)

A new Washington Post report proving the longest war in American history has been sold on lies for 20 years causes barely a ripple.

In 1971, The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, leaked documents of a massive internal review by the US military of the history of American intervention in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers were an epochal event, demonstrating that top policy-makers, both civilians and military leaders, consistently lied about the war for decades by grossly overstating the likelihood of success and downplaying evidence that it wasn’t going well. Publication of the leaked documents played a major role in undermining not just the support the American public gave to the war but also their faith in the honesty of their government.

On Monday, The Washington Post began a new series called “The Afghanistan Papers,” based on documents obtained by the newspaper of an internal military report on “lessons learned” from Afghanistan since the American invasion in 2002. The Post deliberately echoed the Pentagon Papers in the title, and the series explicitly draws parallels with the earlier scoop. This comparison might seem like hype, but the revelations in the Afghan report live up to its precursor. Like the Pentagon Papers, the Afghanistan Papers make clear that policy-makers consistently held a much more pessimistic private view of the Afghan War than they ever admitted in public. A feel-good story of progress was sold to the American people by military leaders and politicians who knew the truth was very different.

And yet, unlike the Pentagon Papers, the Afghanistan Papers are not making a splash. Released during the week the Democrats were finalizing impeachment, the series barely registered as news. Adam Wunische, a fellow at the Quincy Institute who covers Afghanistan and the Middle East, told me, “When the Afghan Papers came out on Monday, I was checking social media for ‘Afghanistan’ and ‘Afghan war.’ None of that was trending at all. It’s very easy for the public to just not pay attention. It’s not a pressing issue, especially with all the other exciting news that’s going on in politics these days” ...