"9-11 occurred eighteen years ago. The state terrorism of the war on terror continues. Its justification, if it ever had one, is long past."

There’s so much to talk about. And we won’t.

To me, having an honest discussion about America is what honors the dead, not rote remembrances. We have this militarism disease bad.

Alas.

Is Killing Peasants Protecting America’s Interests? by Ron Jacobs (CounterPunch)

The war drags on. There is no end in sight. Peace negotiations are thwarted again. Republicans and Democrats alike appear in the press decrying the possibility of the enemy coming to talk peace and staying at Camp David. Personally, I was surprised by the Camp David aspect of the story only because I figured Trump might try and get the Taliban negotiators a floor or two in one of his hotels or resorts. Why go to Camp David if the family Trump can make a few bucks? If Trump properties are good enough for the Chinese and the US Air Force, why not the Taliban, too?

Perhaps the real reason for the most recent failure of the peace negotiations between the Taliban, the Afghan client regime and the US can be found in Secretary Pompeo’s remarks on CNN’s State of the Union show this past weekend.

“You should know in the last 10 days we’ve killed over a thousand Taliban.” Pompeo told the audience. “And while this is not a war of attrition, I want the American people to know that President Trump is taking it to the Taliban in an effort to make sure that we protect America’s interests.”

Sarcastically speaking, there’s nothing bloodthirsty in that statement. Sounds like a man seeking peace to me. As for the veracity of the quote, let’s take a look. To begin with, if the US and its client forces really did kill one thousand Afghans in the preceding ten days, how can they be certain the dead were Taliban? A more likely scenario is that the dead, whether it’s a few hundred or a thousand, included many Afghan civilians who happened to live in areas controlled by the Taliban who are, after all, Afghans too. Indeed, since the Trump administration took control of the White House and Washington’s wars in 2017, the number of civilians killed by so-called US-led forces has increased each year. This is largely due to the US change in strategy from counterinsurgency to a war primarily fought from the air. In other words, the US is bombing and otherwise attacking anti-occupation forces and the places that shelter them with less intimate targeting than previously. As any observer of modern warfare can tell you, this means that more civilians die—what warmakers call collateral damage ...

American militarism: “The best defense against militarism is peace; the next best thing is the vigorous practice of democracy.”

Because the best antidote to irrationality is rationality, not compounded irrationality.

The Riptide of American Militarism: Lessons from the natural world on Washington’s unnatural wars, by William Astore (Common Dreams)

... The Pentagon and the rest of the national security state never fledge. They never leave the nest. They’re always crying for more money.

Here’s the truth of it, as I see it these days: if Americans are ever to gain control over that national security state, they will first have to recognize its parasitic nature, and the way it continues to stuff its greedy mouth with our cash, which is killing the best hopes for the future of our country ...

"Militarization Has Become Our National Religion."

By means of introduction, The Nation explains.

America’s twenty-first-century wars have been coming home in another way as well: in the increasingly worshipful attitudes of so many Americans (especially those in the seats of power in Washington, D.C.) toward the Pentagon and the U.S. military, as vividly described today by retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, historian, and TomDispatch regular William Astore.

Astore's list of "what we believe" is chilling, and sadly correct.

In Wars and Weapons We Trust: America’s Militarized Profession of Faith, by William J. Astore (Tom Dispatch)

When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I looked to the heavens: to God and Christianity (as arbitrated by the Catholic Church) and to the soaring warbirds of the U.S. military, which I believed kept us safe. To my mind then, they were classic manifestations of American technological superiority over the godless Communists.

With all its scandals, especially when it came to priestly sexual abuse, I lost my faith in the Catholic Church. Indeed, I would later learn that there had been a predatory priest in my own parish when I was young, a grim man who made me uneasy at the time, though back then I couldn’t have told you why. As for those warbirds, like so many Americans, I thrilled to their roar at air shows, but never gave any real thought to the bombs they were dropping in Vietnam and elsewhere, to the lives they were ending, to the destruction they were causing. Nor, at that age, did I ever consider their enormous cost in dollars or just how much Americans collectively sacrificed to have “top cover,” whether of the warplane or godly kind.

There were good and devoted priests in my Catholic diocese. There were good and devoted public servants in the U.S. military. Admittedly, I never seriously considered the priesthood, but I did sign up for the Air Force, surprising myself by serving in it for 20 years. Still, both institutions were then, and remain, deeply flawed. Both seek, in a phrase the Air Force has long used, “global reach, global power.” Both remain hierarchies that regularly promote true believers to positions of authority. Both demand ultimate obedience. Both sweep their sins under the rug. Neither can pass an audit. Both are characterized by secrecy. Both seem remarkably immune to serious efforts at reform. And both, above all, know how to preserve their own power, even as they posture and proselytize about serving a higher one.

However, let me not focus here on the one “holy catholic and apostolic church,” words taken from the “profession of faith” I recited during Mass each week in my youth. I’d prefer to focus instead on that other American holy church, the U.S. military, with all its wars and weapons, its worshipers and wingmen, together with its vision of global dominance that just happens to include end-of-world scenarios as apocalyptic as those of any imaginable church of true believers. I’m referring, of course, to our country’s staggeringly large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, just now being updated -- the term seems to be “modernized” -- to the tune of something like $1.7 trillion over the decades to come ...

The bombing and war cult: "Pounding peasants from two miles up is not exactly an ideal way to occupy the moral high ground in war."

Photo credit: Common Dreams (via AFP/Getty)

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), who has taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, and now teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. He offers Ten Cautionary Tenets About Air Power, and tells it like it is -- although too many Americans on both sides of the political aisle aren't paying attention.

The American Cult of Bombing and Endless War, by William Astore (Common Dreams)

The very Dark Side of US air power

From Syria to Yemen in the Middle East, Libya to Somalia in Africa, Afghanistan to Pakistan in South Asia, an American aerial curtain has descended across a huge swath of the planet. Its stated purpose: combatting terrorism. Its primary method: constant surveillance and bombing -- and yet more bombing. Its political benefit: minimizing the number of U.S. “boots on the ground” and so American casualties in the never-ending war on terror, as well as any public outcry about Washington’s many conflicts. Its economic benefit: plenty of high-profit business for weapons makers for whom the president can now declare a national security emergency whenever he likes and so sell their warplanes and munitions to preferred dictatorships in the Middle East (no congressional approval required). Its reality for various foreign peoples: a steady diet of “Made in USA” bombs and missiles bursting here, there, and everywhere.

Think of all this as a cult of bombing on a global scale ...

And the conclusion.

... If I had to reduce these tenets to a single maxim, it would be this: all the happy talk about the techno-wonders of modern air power obscures its darker facets, especially its ability to lock America into what are effectively one-way wars with dead-end results.

For this reason, precision warfare is truly an oxymoron. War isn’t precise. It’s nasty, bloody, and murderous. War’s inherent nature -- its unpredictability, horrors, and tendency to outlast its original causes and goals -- isn’t changed when the bombs and missiles are guided by GPS. Washington’s enemies in its war on terror, moreover, have learned to adapt to air power in a grimly Darwinian fashion and have the advantage of fighting on their own turf.

Who doesn’t know the old riddle: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Here’s a twenty-first-century air power variant on it: If foreign children die from American bombs but no U.S. media outlets report their deaths, will anyone grieve? Far too often, the answer here in the U.S. is no and so our wars go on into an endless future of global destruction.

In reality, this country might do better to simply ground its many fighter planes, bombers, and drones. Paradoxically, instead of gaining the high ground, they are keeping us on a low road to perdition.

Historical amnesia: "The Militarization of the Southern Border Is a Long-Standing American Tradition."

There is very little "new" under the sun, but with the advent of the internetz and social media, there are numerous and innovative ways of misunderstanding the "old."

In short, southern border issues real or imagined are a natural, longstanding consequence of America's presumed "manifest destiny," or in other words, our deity-given right to claim western territories from whomever occupied them first -- by force, if necessary.

Ever heard of the Mexican-American War?

The Militarization of the Southern Border Is a Long-Standing American Tradition, by Greg Grandin (The Nation)

Trump’s wall is just the latest incarnation of an old fixation.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.

The point was less to actually build “the wall” than to constantly announce the building of the wall. “We started building our wall. I’m so proud of it,” Donald Trump tweeted. “What a thing of beauty.”

In fact, no wall, or certainly not the “big, fat, beautiful” one promised by Trump, is being built. True, miles of some kind of barrier—barbed wire, chain-link and steel-slat fencing, corrugated panels, and, yes, even lengths of what can only be described as concrete wall—have gone up along the US-Mexico border, starting at least as far back as the administration of President William Taft, early in the last century. Trump has claimed repairs and expansions of these barriers as proof that he is fulfilling his signature campaign promise. Plaques have already been bolted onto upgrades in existing fencing, crediting him with work started and funded by previous administrations.

And yet Trump’s phantasmagorical wall, whether it ever materializes or not, has become a central artifact in American politics. Think of his promise of a more than 1,000-mile-long, 30-foot-high ribbon of concrete and steel running along the southern border of the United States as America’s new myth. It is a monument to the final closing of the frontier, a symbol of a nation that used to believe it had escaped history, but now finds itself trapped by history, and of a people who used to believe they were captains of the future, but now are prisoners of the past.

Prior to World War I, the border—established in the late 1840s and early 1850s after the US military invaded Mexico and took a significant part of that country’s territory—was relatively unpoliced ...

(Psst -- it's not about the flag or the military, and it never has been.)

I'm often reminded of Thomas Jefferson's words:

"Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

To avoid misinformed confusion, readers old enough to remember the Vietnam War era will recall Tricky Dicky Nixon's law-and-order platform, as a blunt missile aimed squarely against "anti-American" war protesters (attacking the flag and our soldiers overseas) and African-Americans (being all uppity about rights and freedoms).

A space alien (or Mr. Spock) might ask: But was the overseas war just, and did the civil rights protesters have a point?

If you're saying to yourself, well, I never protest, and when I do it is done tastefully, so as to be inoffensive to others ... you just might be revealing yourself as a privileged societal cog unable to fathom injustice.

Would you have participated in the American Revolution?

If so, on which side?

You see, etiquette typically goes out the window when TJ's tipping point occurs, as it did in America in 1776, or in Russia in 1917.

Of course, the plain fact is that NFL protests have been breathtakingly sober and polite. If you're upset about free speech and conscience, but not troubled by the mangled brains of players who perform so you can remain safely inside your bubble, there isn't much more anyone can say except "dude, I'm so very sorry for you."

It’s Not About the Flag or the Military. It Never Has Been.

When athletes protest during the national anthem, they are acting on behalf of people who can’t speak as loudly.

By Andrew Cohen (Brennan Center for Justice)

President Trump’s weekend attack on athletes exercising their constitutional right to protest followed the longtime model used by police unions. Instead of acknowledging the legitimacy of the complaint that there is discrimination and misconduct in policing — Trump, like the unions, changed the subject, lashing out at the athletes as unpatriotic, even anti-American. The protests were mischaracterized as attacks on the flag, the anthem, the military, or the nation itself. As if it were ordained somewhere that one must stand, as opposed to kneel, for the anthem.

This is nonsense, of course. There is nothing more American than protesting injustice when it is manifest, nothing more patriotic than speaking for those who do not have a voice or whose voices are rarely heard. When people protest police misconduct, and racial disparities in our criminal justice systems, they are acting to improve the conditions of their fellow Americans, acting to force necessary reform on people (like Trump) and institutions (like police unions) that resist this change. This is “anti-American” or unpatriotic only if you believe the protections of the First Amendment are overrated or unnecessary. And only if you believe it’s unpatriotic to want to make America more just ...

Now more than ever: "US Military Should Get Out of the Middle East."

Hama Rules, 1982.

It isn't minimizing the horror of chemical weapons to offer a reminder that there is a thing called Assad-Vu in Syria: they've all been here before.

1982 Hama massacre

I've been around for 12 presidents (yes, a few months of Eisenhower, too), split between seven Republicans and five Democrats, and while they may seem to have little in common, most have seemed quite willing to bomb things. This might constitute something of a trend.

Journalist Phillip M. Bailey‏ won last night's local Internet with this:

Now we get to watch #Dems and #GOP switch their positions on #Syria airstrikes.

Yep.

US Military Should Get Out of the Middle East, by Jeffrey D. Sachs (Common Dreams)

It’s time to end US military engagements in the Middle East. Drones, special operations, CIA arms supplies, military advisers, aerial bombings — the whole nine yards. Over and done with. That might seem impossible in the face of ISIS, terrorism, Iranian ballistic missiles, and other US security interests, but a military withdrawal from the Middle East is by far the safest path for the United States and the region. That approach has instructive historical precedents.

America has been no different from other imperial powers in finding itself ensnared repeatedly in costly, bloody, and eventually futile overseas wars. From the Roman empire till today, the issue is not whether an imperial army can defeat a local one. It usually can, just as the United States did quickly in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The issue is whether it gains anything by doing so. Following such a “victory,” the imperial power faces unending heavy costs in terms of policing, political instability, guerrilla war, and terrorist blowback.

Terrorism is a frequent consequence of imperial wars and imperial rule. Local populations are unable to defeat the imperial powers, so they impose high costs through terror instead.

America's "empire of chaos," a cannon now turned inward and pointed at YOU, lord.

Ready for more uplifting Tuesday morning reading? Okay, here goes. We've uncorked the bad genie from so many worldwide bottles, and now we're enveloped in the consequences.

American History Explains Donald Trump, by Tom Engelhardt (The Nation)

After so many years of creating chaos abroad, it’s finally come back to haunt us.

The one thing you could say about empires is that, at or near their height, they have always represented a principle of order as well as domination. So here’s the confounding thing about the American version of empire in the years when this country was often referred to as “the sole superpower,” when it was putting more money into its military than the next 10 nations combined: It’s been an empire of chaos ...

Now, set the hook, because we'd best get used to it.

 ... The United States with all its wealth and power is, of course, hardly an Afghanistan or a Libya or a Yemen or a Somalia. It still remains a genuinely great power, and one with remarkable resources to wield and fall back on. Nonetheless, the recent election offered striking evidence that the empire of chaos had indeed made the trip homeward. It’s now with us big time, all the time. Get used to it.

"These aircraft ... are normally used to do stuff like carry troops, bomb buildings and kill people."

Back in 2007, Lucinda Marshall said it so well in LEO that I needn't elaborate, apart from this stellar Michael Parenti quote from Against Empire:

Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.

I'm off to Bloomington, Indiana. Let's hope the planes aren't audible there.

Connected Diss: Thunder air show sends the wrong signal

The thing I love most about Thunder Over Louisville is the annual opportunity it affords every man, woman, child and dog in the Metro to get a feel for what it must sound like to live in a country that has been invaded by the U.S. military. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fireworks and the wonderful sense of community that brings hundreds of thousands of people and picnic baskets to the Waterfront. It’s the afternoon of strutting our military stuff that makes me uneasy. Clearly an event this large is a major part of the image that this community projects, and an examination of the message that it delivers is long overdue.I can hear it now — oh, lighten up, it’s just a show, go eat some burgoo … The problem is, these aircraft that roar over the city during the afternoon of Thunder were not designed for family fun. While there is a civilian component to the Air Show, most of what we see in the skies — the bombers, tankers, fighters and the like — are normally used to do stuff like carry troops, bomb buildings and kill people.