We’re still lying to ourselves about American military power (hurkl alert)

Washington Post ^ | August 30th 2021 | Paul Waldman

[Ennis85]

On Monday morning, we learned that a U.S. drone strike targeted at a car bomb “killed 10 civilians in Kabul, including several small children,” and that “the dead were all from a single extended family and were getting out of a car in their modest driveway when the strike hit a nearby vehicle.”

Unlike most such events — and there have been hundreds over our two-decade War on Terror — this one will get a bit of notice in the U.S. media. But only a bit. Neither these deaths, nor the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers at the Kabul airport, nor the difficulties of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, are likely to puncture the lies we have been telling ourselves about the way we use our bristling machinery of war all over the world.

In the debate we’re now having about that withdrawal, you can see all those lies repeated and polished anew. Let’s consider a few of them:

U.S. wars are just and noble, undertaken for all the right reasons. This is always part of the story we are told about any war; if it’s not the primary justification, it comes in a close second.

We invaded Afghanistan to exact revenge for 9/11, but arguments quickly followed about how we’d liberate Afghan women, banish the cruel Taliban, and help move the country into the 21st century. We made the same case in Iraq: Yes, that war was sold on lies about weapons of mass destruction, but we were also going to free the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein’s despotic rule. Thus it is with every country we invade, bomb, or cripple with economic sanctions: We’re doing this not for ourselves, but for them.

People in other countries appreciate that our motives are good. This is a particularly vital lie

[Ennis85]

"We made the same case in Iraq: Yes, that war was sold on lies about weapons of mass destruction"

Except there was no lie, Saddam Hussein had been in breach of clear undertakings that led to the ceasefire of the first gulf war that he instigated in 1990 by invading and annexing Kuwait. He had been in breach of 17 UNSC resolutions including Resolutions 687 and 678 which constituted the terms of the truce negotiated in the first Gulf War, a truce whose violation was a legal justification for renewed combat. As well as UNSC 1441 which stated that was to honour the terms of the Gulf War truce and to destroy his illegal weapons programs, or face “serious consequences.”

The casus belli for the Iraq war was not the intelligence(the lie he's alluding to), in the operative enforcement procedure, the trigger for enforcement was Iraq's noncompliance. Iraq's WMD breach was basic established fact in the ceasefire disarmament process, and regardless of the intelligence, Iraq's guilt of proscribed armament was presumed until Iraq proved it was compliant and disarmed as mandated by the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441)

All of which was confirmed by Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors.

"We invaded Afghanistan to exact revenge for 9/11"

"Revenge", not legitimate retailation or self-defense in response to an unprovoked attack but an leasing of some barbaric primal rage.

"People in other countries appreciate that our motives are good"

Well last I checked the people of Afghanistan have overwhelmingly supported the US presence there as polls have consistently shown.

[Bullish]

I just hurkled a little just thinking about it.

[scott7278]

Please...when I hear about somebody hurkling, it makes me want to hurkl.

[LastDayz]

UNLEASH THE HURKLING.