TALIBAN CELEBRATIONS, REPRISALS FOLLOW DEPARTURE OF LAST U.S. PLANE
The last U.S. plane left Afghanistan late Monday, ending a 20-year occupation that began shortly after Al Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11, cost over $2 trillion, took more than 170,000 lives and ultimately ended in shameful defeat, leaving behind thousands of Americans and allies to the mercy of a brutal enemy – the now victorious Taliban. And a disgraced president – Joe Biden.
So it was all for naught. All that carnage, all those lost lives. Here’s how the New York Times summed it up today.
The war began under President George W. Bush as a hunt for Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader who oversaw the 9/11 attacks on the United States. On that score, it succeeded: Al Qaeda was driven out and Bin Laden was killed by an American SEAL team in Pakistan in 2011.
But the United States, confident it had routed the Taliban, refused their entreaties for a negotiated surrender and plowed ahead with an enormous effort to not only drive them out but to construct a Western-style democracy in Afghanistan. The lengthy occupation allowed the Taliban to regroup, casting itself as the national resistance to the American invaders and, three American presidents later, driving them out in a war of attrition, much as Afghans had done to the Soviets in the 1980s.
Bob Djurdjevic/TRUTH IN MEDIA Comment
Aug 31, 2021
The time to declare victory and get the hell out of Afghanistan was 10 years ago when the US Navy Seals killed Osama bi Laden, the man against whom this war was launched (see Truth in Media satirical editorial “Where is Sancho Panza when we need him?”)
Or even better, not to have gotten into this war at all in a country which had defeated two empires – the British and the Soviet ones. Only lunatics keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome.
Except, of course, if WAR, any war, is good for business. And the $2 trillion which the Afghanistan war cost the American taxpayers represented $2 trillion in gross income for a slew of multinational companies, the “death merchants,” which profited from this war.
“PERPETUAL COMMERCE THROUGH PERPETUAL WAR” – is the New World Order slogan which the Truth in Media identified and published more than a quarter century ago (see http://www.truthinmedia.org/Bulletins99/tim99-11-4.html).
So while the American empire, like the British and the Soviets before them, left Afghanistan today with a tail between its legs, the CEOs of these large corporations can hold their heads up high. They have done well for their shareholders.
The real tragedy of this war is that the outcome was completely predictable. So check out these Truth in Media editorial comments from 2001, some satirical, written BEFORE we went into Afghanistan with full force.
A satirical Truth in Media editorial comment by Bob Djurdjevic
Where Is Sancho Panza When We Need Him?
PHOENIX, Sep. 28, 2001 – Like a Don Quixote of the 21st century, President Bush… is swinging at elusive windmills of Islamic terrorism, while failing to clean house at home. Yet, blinded by arrogance and ignorance, fueled by government and media lies and distortions, Americans cheer when they should jeer. Where is Sancho Panza when we need him?
Miraculous, at that moment, Sancho and his master ride onto the TiM set. We’ll let you listen in on their conversation…
DON QUIXOTE: So we are at war.
SANCHO: Says who?
DON QUIXOTE: The President. Congress says so, too. Even Hollywood says so. So it must be true.
SANCHO: I see. And who is our enemy?
DON QUIXOTE: Osama bin Laden.
SANCHO: One country of 281 million people is going to war against one man?
DON QUIXOTE: Well, not only one man. Against any government that backs him. Such as the Taliban in Afghanistan.
SANCHO: But the Taliban is not a government. Bill Clinton, when he was President, signed an executive order that deliberately characterized the Taliban as a “paramilitary organization,” not a government.
DON QUIXOTE: That’s semantics.
SANCHO: Yes, Sir, it is. But it’s presidential semantics. So it must be important.
DON QUIXOTE: Why do you think so?
SANCHO: Well, you tell me, Sir. You’re defending the President’s actions. All I see is a contradiction. We are not recognizing the Taliban as a legitimate government of Afghanistan. Yet we want it respond to our ultimatums as if it were. To me, that’s not just semantics, that’s a contradiction.
DON QUIXOTE: Sancho, take it easy. You can’t talk like that about president when we are at war. The country must stay united.
SANCHO [undaunted]: But, Sir, staying united in the face of folly will only lead to greater folly. For example, the President’s saying that we are not going to war with the Afghan people, while he prepares our troops for a takeover of their country, is just plain doubletalk. Clinton-style. Different strokes for different folks; same old double-talking hoax. Just ask the million Afghan refugees at the Pakistani border trying to flee their country.
SANCHO [bends down as if in a prayer, whispering]: Oh, Milosevic, where are you when we need you? Who are we going to blame now for this Kosovo-type exodus? Gotta conjure up a Milosevic-like “pariah” among the Taliban before some Americans clue in that these folks may be fleeing – US! [pun intended].
DON QUIXOTE: What are you doing, Sancho? What are you muttering about?
SANCHO: Oh, nothing, Sir. Just seeking some divine guidance.
DON QUIXOTE: Well, all of us can certainly use some of that.
And as the two Miguel de Cervantes’ medieval heroes ride into a 21st century sunrise, chatting about the windmills in their minds, the term New World Order comes up.
DON QUIXOTE: What is that “New World Order,” Sancho?
SANCHO: In its ideal form, the 21st century New World Order is not all that different from an earlier version – the Communist International. It’s just that its crest is the Almighty Dollar, not a ”red star.”
DON QUIXOTE: Really? They worship paper money?
SANCHO: No. They are doing away with that. It is a world whose object of worship is The Golden Calf. Virtual image, of course, not real gold. Their holy shrine is Wall Street. Their apostles’ creed is, “I believe in nothing!”
DON QUIXOTE: In nothing?
SANCHO: Except, of course, in the Almighty Dollar, the Golden Calf and the street called Wall.
DON QUIXOTE: Christ Almighty… what a weird place!?
SANCHO: Dollar Almighty, Sir.
DON QUIXOTE: Pardon?
SANCHO: They believe in the Almighty Dollar, Sir, not in Jesus Christ.
DON QUIXOTE [raising his eyebrows in disbelief]
SANCHO: Furthermore, it is a world that, like communism, legitimizes state terrorism. It’s a world plutocracy in which six billion people slave away so that some 4,000 “Princes of the New World Order” could enjoy the spoils of power.
DON QUIXOTE: Sancho, are you sure you’re not talking about medieval Spain?
SANCHO: No, Sir. That was a much more primitive plutocracy. This one has the slaves cheer and applaud their rulers.
DON QUIXOTE: Never hear of such nonsense! Sancho, are you pulling my leg?
SANCHO: No, Sir. If God were to (re)create the world by the designs of the NWO Princes, there would be only three kinds of creatures:
· All two legged-creatures would be ostriches.
· All four legged-creatures would be sheep.
· All sea-living creatures would be sardines, anxiously waiting in long lines at the Princes’ ports to be stuffed into cans by some New World Order machine.
DON QUIXOTE: Well, Sancho, that’s not all bad. Such a world may appeal to some sheep farmers.
SANCHO: Yes, Sir. But only provided that they are willing to stoop down to the level of their livestock. For, the modern NWO is a world without borders, without religions, without traditions, without nations, without morals, without cultures…
It is an allegedly multicultural world, yet one that is represented globally by monocultural symbols, such as the English language, CNN, Hollywood, Coca-Cola, Nike, Levi’s, McDonald’s or Pizza Hut logos. But above all the “greenback” – the Almighty Dollar.
DON QUIXOTE: So if you’re not one of them, you’re against them, you’re saying?
SANCHO: Not just me, Sir. You heard the President say so himself.
DON QUIXOTE [shaking his head]: My, oh my… I see your point, Sancho. We could looking for trouble.
SANCHO: Indeed. Sometimes arrogance and such dichotomies can backfire on the NWO architects. What happened on Sep. 11 is a case in point. They didn’t listen to one of our contemporaries, Sir.
DON QUIXOTE: Who is that?
SANCHO: Nicolo Machiavelli.
DON QUIXOTE: What did he say?
SANCHO: Well, writing in 1573 in “The Prince,” Signor Machiavelli warned that, “there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than a creation of a new order of things.”
DON QUIXOTE: Guess our President didn’t read The Prince.
SANCHO: Guess not, Sir. The Princes usually don’t read, especially not about the Princes. Which is why their New World Orders always end up in a dustbin of history.
And as the two Miguel de Cervantes’ medieval heroes went on their merry way, we took a virtual stroll down Wall Street in order to gauge the stockmarket’s reaction to the Sep. 11 World Trade Center and the Pentagon attacks.
http://www.truthinmedia.org/Bulletins2001/tim2001-10-3.html
“God save America from her own folly” (Bob Djurdjevic, September 2001)
Here’s an excerpt from a letter I wrote from Belgrade, Montana (yes, there is a Belgrade in Montana, too!):
BELGRADE, Montana, Sep. 20, 2001 – “I am getting really worried about all this same-mindedness that I am seeing in this country. I am afraid we are being led into totalitarianism, but of a different and more dangerous kind than that practiced by the fascists and the Communists. Because it is subtler, and thus more perfidious.
More than once, I caught myself wondering if this kind of a war fever and euphoria also pervaded the public mood in Germany of the mid-1930s. Yet I saw tonight President Bush invoke the Islamic terrorists-to-Nazi comparison in his address to the joint session of Congress. And everybody applauded without dissension. Just as the Soviet delegates did when the Secretary General of the USSR used to deliver his speeches to the Communist Party Congresses.
By the way, that’s also what both the Nazis and the Communists used to do – invert the arguments against them, and turn a victim into an aggressor [TiM Ed.: as George Orwell beautifully described in his 1948 book – “1984” – using Big Brother’s slogans, such as, “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery,” “Ignorance Is Strength” – see “Two Parallel Wars,” Apr. 3, 1999 – http://www.truthinmedia.org/Kosovo/War/day11up2.html , and the TiM Speeches – http://www.truthinmedia.org/Tour-de-Canada/tor-12-99.html].
What worries me is that no one here seems to be asking, or is even being permitted to ask (which is worse) on major networks, “why did these terrorists hate us so much to have sacrificed themselves and thousands of innocent lives? What have we (meaning our government) done to precipitate that?”
No, the answer is not that they supposedly envy our freedom and democracy, as President Bush said tonight. The answer lies in what our arrogant foreign policy has done to them (for more on that, read the “Collateral Damage” editorial in the Sep. 11 TiM Bulletin – http://www.truthinmedia.org/Bulletins2001/tim2001-9-2.html).
From what I’ve seen during this trip, goaded by Washington and the national media war frenzy, American people are allowing themselves to be ruled purely by emotions. They don’t want to hear any dissenting opinions. In fact, I’ve heard that a Sikh had been shot in Phoenix [TiM Ed.: Actually, it was in Mesa, AZ, a Phoenix suburb] for wearing a turban, having been mistaken for an Arab by the ignorant, yet hateful, “patriotic” American shooter.
That’s all very troubling to me. America is starting to look and feel like the Middle East; full of hatred and racial intolerance, with compassion reserved only for one’s own kind…
In other words, we may be suckered into fighting somebody else’s war. Yet just look at how futile violent retaliation has been for Israel and the Mossad. Israel has been practicing retaliation for decades. Yet the bottom line is, if peaceful existence has been the goal (which one hopes every government’s goal is), then retaliatory violence has been proven ineffective. Israel is still at war now, as it was 30, 40, 50 years ago. Is that the future of America? Is that why the President and his aides have been preparing us for a “very long war?”
In fact, it could be worse. (Now that Saddam Hussein’s direct belligerence has been quarantined by the West), Israel has had “only” the Palestinians and the Hamas/Hezbollah to worry about. By contrast, Bush et. al. in Washington seem to be taking on more than 1.5 billion Muslims world over.
[TiM Ed.: Yes, yes, yes… we’ve also heard the Bush rhetoric how the coming “war” is supposedly not aimed against the Islamic people. But have you ever asked a Muslim if he/she believes it? The claim is just about as preposterous as was the Clinton/Albright assertion that the 1999 bombing of Serbia was not aimed at the Serbian people, but rather at Milosevic. The fact that NATO missed Milosevic, while killing some 2,000 Serbs and destroying much of the country’s civilian infrastructure, should make only the ignorant and the gullible believe such ludicrous claims].
Even the very term “Infinite Justice,” chosen for this “war,” is a provocation to the Muslims. I am told (by someone very familiar with the Middle East) that they believe that only Allah (God) can dispense ultimate justice. This will inflame their anti-American feelings even more. Some Muslim clerics are already protesting. [TiM Ed.: We understand that the operation’s name has been dropped since this letter was written, due to just such an outcry of Muslim-Americans against it].
By contrast, a change in our foreign policy, which helped precipitate the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks, could help forge a “very long peace” instead of waging a “very long war.” But no one seems interested in peace, these days. For, that would be a victory of brains over brawns, not a popular outlook in a materialistic society where the Almighty Dollar is God, and war is good for business.
So when seeing the “God bless America”-signs all through the western states, I kept muttering to myself, “God save America from her own folly.”
For, I fear that the looming “war” against terrorism may end up as a “Clash of Greens.” No, not the environmentalist “greens.” It will be the U.S. (dollar) greenback, and the New World Order forces behind it, versus the favorite color of Islam.
http://www.truthinmedia.org/Bulletins2001/tim2001-10-3.html
September 11, 2001
“COLLATERAL DAMAGE” HITS HOME
This is an excerpt from a Truth in Media editorial written on 9/11, while one of the WTC towers was still standing.
“When the “world’s only superpower” and its allies bombed and killed thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq and Serbia, Americans were told it was just “collateral damage.” After all, we, the “champions of democracy and the free world,” were only fighting the murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Some civilian casualties were “regrettable, but unavoidable,” the Pentagon, NATO or State Dept. spokesmen told us.
Now the tables have turned. Terrorism begets terrorism. Unnamed terrorists, presumed to be “Islamic fundamentalists,” have now killed thousands of innocent Americans while fighting, what they think are, the murderous regimes of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Now Americans know firsthand some of the terror the Baghdad or Belgrade residents felt when NATO bombers unloaded their deadly cargo on them. The only thing missing is the terrorists’ spokesmen telling us now that “it was just “collateral damage;” that “some civilian casualties were regrettable, but unavoidable.”
What we did to Iraq and to Serbia was a case of state terrorism. What unnamed terrorists did to us today was retaliation to state terrorism. “Collateral damage” has come home to roost. “What goes around, comes around.” “He who plays with fire, gets burned by fire.”
From “Collateral Damage” Hits Home, 9/11/2001
INTERVENTIONISM IS THE INCUBATOR OF TERRORISM
Meanwhile, back home, thanks to the media warmongering distortions, most Americans confuse foreign interventionism, carried out through such “just wars” as the current one Bush is waging on Afghanistan as a part of the NWO’s hegemonic agenda, with American patriotism. The two have nothing to do with each other. They are united only by the NWO media and government propaganda. If we have per se an un-American government in Washington (see this writer’s May 1, 1999 speech at the White house for more on this), that answers first and foremost to the Princes of the NWO, not the American people, how can supporting such a government’s foreign interventions be a patriotic act?
Let’s turn to Pat Buchanan, a former presidential candidate, and a red-bloodied American whose patriotism no one can question, for council on this conundrum. Here’s an excerpt from his Sep. 14 column titled, “U.S. Pays The High Price of Empire:”
“In the presidential campaign of 2000, we failed to make foreign policy the issue. But what I said then retains relevance: “How can all our meddling not fail to spark some horrible retribution …. Have we not suffered enough–from Pan Am 103, to the World Trade Center (1993), to the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam–not to know that interventionism is the incubator of terrorism. Or will it take some cataclysmic atrocity on U.S. soil to awaken our global gamesmen to the going price of empire?”
“America today faces a choice of destinies. We can choose to be a peacemaker of the world, or its policeman who goes about night-sticking troublemakers until we, too, find ourselves in some bloody brawl we cannot handle.”
In his intervention in Lebanon’s civil war, President Reagan made a rare blunder. But when our Marines were massacred, he did not send a mighty army to avenge them. He used U.S. power to exact a price, then extricated us from that war. There is no vital American interest at risk in all these religious, territorial and tribal wars from Algeria to Afghanistan. Let us pay back those who did this, then let us extricate ourselves. Either America finds an exit strategy from empire, or we lose our republic.”
Yet, instead of an “exit strategy,” the post-Sep. 11 events have had exactly the opposite effect. Instead of extricating ourselves from other people’s wars, Washington has now drawn us even deeper into them. The Middle Eastern and Central Asian wars are now being fought on American soil, with innocent Americans as victims.
And that’s a boomerang effect of interventionism, a blowback of a failed foreign policy carried out by four presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden). Just as this writer said in his September 11, 2001 editorial “Collateral Damage” Hits Home.
http://www.truthinmedia.org/Bulletins2001/tim2001-10-3.html
SEVEN YEARS AGO OBAMA HAD DECLARED END OF AFGHANISTAN WAR
Ironically, seven year ago, another Democrat in the White House, Barrack Obama, had declared victory and the end of the then 13-year old Afghanistan war (see below).
But the war raged on for another seven years and $1 trillion dollars, to the delight of “death merchants” and other war profiteers. As for the needlessly lost lives, including that of 13 American serviceman at the Kabul airport a few days ago, well, they don’t care. And apparently neither does much this American president who was checking his watch as the caskets of the dead soldiers were unloaded on American soil.
On to the next overseas war we go…
TRUTH IN MEDIA: TRUTH TRUMPS POWER EVERY TIME! 
Leave a Reply