America survives the war
The 20-year war and occupation of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan has seemingly diminished or ended, but the White House rape approach never seems to go away, and in each period, a new excuse is found.
Although the leadership of the United States has shifted between the Republican and Democratic parties over the past 20 years, there has been no change in Washington’s larger approaches. During the White House era, it attacked and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, and at the same time did not leave other countries unprotected. Now Joe Biden is practically following the same approach to hegemony and domination in a different way in Europe and the world.
More interestingly, as the United States withdraws from Afghanistan and maintains a small force in Iraq, not only has the Pentagon’s military budget not been reduced but it has increased by tens of billions of dollars. Although China is used as an excuse to maintain the extraordinary security situation in the United States, the US military industry and government need war to keep the country alive.
While the United States has withdrawn from Afghanistan and kept a small force in Iraq, not only has the Pentagon’s military budget not been reduced but it has increased by tens of billions of dollars.
The rise of terrorist groups since the beginning of the war on terrorism
World public opinion and even American experts are now raising the question that if 20 years ago the George W. Bush administration had chosen a different approach, the situation today would not be so worrying and the threats against the United States and global security would not have increased.
Intercept in a report answered the question: What if the United States did not go to war after 9/11?
While the Biden administration now claims to be reconsidering its counterterrorism approach, research shows that two decades ago there were better alternatives to the fight against terrorism.
“A few days after the September attacks in New York,” said Nick Torres, author of the analysis “In 2001, President George W. Bush stood before Congress and announced the beginning of the ‘war on terror,’ saying that the war would not end as long as terrorist groups were present around the world and until they were defeated.”
More than 20 years after the remarks, the conflict began in Afghanistan but has spread around the world from Burkina Faso, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia to Yemen and beyond.
The US government spent more than $ 6 trillion on the war, killing some 900,000 people, including more than 350,000 civilians, and displacing millions. The war on terrorism marked the worst human catastrophes and the worst US military defeat since the Vietnam War.
Not only did all this cost not destroy terrorist groups, but the number of foreign terrorist groups around the world more than doubled from 32 to 69.
Jennifer Walkup Jace, in Beyond the War Paradigm: What History Tells Us About the End of Terrorist Movements, believes that terrorism is a political phenomenon and that counter-terrorism strategies may lead to a halt to waves of violence rather than organizations. And the people who commit it address the root causes of terrorism.
The high material and human costs not only did not destroy the terrorist groups, but also doubled the number of foreign terrorist groups around the world, from 32 to 69.
According to the report, sophisticated statistical analyzes have shown that there are effective ways to accelerate the destruction of terrorist organizations, but the White House paradigm shift, which was a deviant approach proposed by the White House, has not been one of the most effective.
A survey of 648 militant groups by the analyst shows that only 7% of terrorist groups were defeated by military campaigns.
There are bigger threats than terrorism
“In Iraq and Afghanistan, we provided a clear definition of success; Success will come when al-Qaeda does not have a safe haven in those countries and the people can protect themselves against terrorism. Success will come when Iraq and Afghanistan are economically well off. Success will be achieved when democracy is established in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the government acts on it and responds to the will of its people. “Success will come when Iraq and Afghanistan are strong and capable allies in the fight against terrorism.”
However, today, after 20 years of war, we see that al-Qaeda is still present in Afghanistan. The Islamic State is active in Afghanistan and Iraq. None of these countries can be trusted in terms of democracy or economic conditions. Afghanistan is now on the brink of economic collapse and is ruled by the same rulers that Bush invaded in 2001.
According to the researcher, the money spent on the war paradigm could be allocated to more serious national security concerns.
He highlighted the dangers of a global climate crisis, a health insurance shortage that kills more than 45,000 people a year, the Covid-19 epidemic that killed nearly one million Americans and exposed the poor state of US health care. He stressed that the government could eliminate these problems with the money spent on the war.
According to him, the reality is that poverty, racism and other structural inequalities are a much greater threat to human life than terrorist attacks. These threats are far more dangerous to individuals than militant groups with terrorist tactics. In fact, the United States has over-empted its civilian resources and programs with military responses.
Poverty, racism and other structural inequalities pose a far greater threat to human life than terrorist attacks.
Altogether, during the more than 20 years that four presidents and hundreds of lawmakers have been at the helm of US power, government violence in the form of US aggression has led to occupation and repression playing a central role in presenting the reasoning and logic of terrorist groups.
“Although we condemn the 9/11 attacks as criminal acts and condemn it as a day,” the Intercept report concluded. The war on terror has led to more people taking up arms against the United States and increasing support for terrorist groups aiming to fight the United States. “So if Washington’s real goal is to prevent terrorism, the best option is to help strengthen security and human rights and ensure that people have access to the resources they need, not to start a war.”
There is no budget for a war that does not exist
Both Trump and Biden spoke of a reduction in US foreign military commitments and intervention, but that too could not be a cover for US global leadership. If so, after the end of the war in Afghanistan, the United States should have set a lower cost for its military, but surprisingly, the same trends were repeated. US officials say the threat of China and critics of the role of lobbying groups in justifying Washington’s desire to provoke war.
Biden withdrew US troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, and continued Trump’s promise to reduce the US presence in Iraq. However, Congress apparently did not pay much attention to the issue in drafting the budget, and eventually passed the largest defense spending bill in the country’s history at $ 768 billion. This is the largest budget in the years since the Vietnam-Korea War and more than Ronald Reagan’s budget increase. The only time this bill had a greater increase in inflation was in 2011, when US forces were at their peak in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Many ask why, with the end of the war, Congress increased its budget by about $ 30 billion more than last time.
“When the Cold War with Russia ended in the 1990s, US military leaders insisted that their costs could be cut in half,” VOX reported. President Bush cut defense spending by 9 percent, and then “Bill Clinton” initially cut it by about 8 percent. They sought to reinvest that money inside the United States, calling it a share of peace, but under pressure from Republican lawmakers, Clinton was unable to actually change the military budget. Defense spending began to rise in the late 1990s and then reached much higher levels in the years after 9/11.
Biden was critical of why the American people should spend $ 300 million a day for two decades, but he did not go far enough to reconsider the US approach.
The United States left Iraq in 2021, leaving only 2,500 troops and withdrawing from Afghanistan, but there was no budget cuts.
According to Mandy Smithberger of the Government Monitoring Project, Biden was expected to address the issue because he described the war as costly and criticized why the American people should spend $ 300 million a day for two decades. But he did not go far enough to reconsider the US approach.
The question is, despite the corona epidemic and its costs, why did this not happen in the new budget?
The short answer is that the US National Security Agency sees China as the most immediate threat, but also the deep-rooted interests of the US arms industry. Everyone in Washington is talking about “great power rivalry” or “strategic rivalry” with China, and in the face of this threat – whether real or exaggerated – no official is interested in cutting military budgets.
China or the interests of the arms industry?
Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), believes that among the national security circles in Washington, everyone says China, China, China.
The fact is that the military contractors are the biggest winners of the continuation of this situation, and in fact, they want war and tension for the United States. According to the report, no one in Washington wants to be recognized as someone who cuts defense budgets; In the recent term, 88 senators voted in favor of the defense budget for fiscal year 2022, and only 11 people opposed. For the past 60 years, the defense spending bill has been passed each year with the support of two parties.
For almost a century, military-industrial complexes have shaped Washington’s behavior. “Contractors are the biggest winners,” said an analyst at the Center for International Policy. According to the Congressional Research Service, 464,500 full-time contractors work for the Department of Defense.
The role of lobby groups can not be ignored. According to Open Secrets, the defense industry spent at least $ 99 million on lobbying in 2021. Lockheed Martin is one of the five largest military companies in the country, present in all states, to impress critics.
The United States has more than 750 military bases or facilities in 80 countries around the world, and last year US Special Operations Commands were deployed in 154 countries.
In Afghanistan, for example, the Pentagon no longer spends $ 3.8 billion training and equipping Afghan forces, but US Central Command continues to monitor potential terrorist threats, such as those affiliated with ISIS. The US Air Force has withdrawn from bases in Afghanistan and moved to bases in the Middle East and South Asia.
Analysts believe big cuts in US military budgets are possible, but a bigger shift requires new thinking. That’s why the non-partisan federal agency has proposed a gradual $ 1 trillion budget cut over a decade, but more importantly, the conflict and the profits from the war have become commonplace among US government officials.
According to the analytical news site Vox, Biden, like Clinton, missed the opportunity to take advantage of peace. After some initial stances, such as Clinton, he never fully addressed the wars.
One analyst in 1995 argued that the most obvious weakness of the Clinton administration was that it was living on the Cold War defense budget, which is now over. In the present era, Biden has also based his defense and war budget on the war mentality within the framework of the doctrine of the fight against terrorism, but this war does not exist externally.