Portside

World military expenditure in 2020 is estimated to have been $1981 billion, the highest level since 1988 — and world military expenditure in 2020 was 2.6 per cent higher in real terms than in 2019 and 9.3 per cent higher than in 2011.

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Drones criss-crossing the skies and hunting for high-value targets create a distraction from actual crises afflicting people in Afghanistan. U.S. drone surveillance potentially sets the stage for criminal assassination.

We went to Iraq thinking this shooting was some form of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire between Blackwater guards and insurgents. After only one week, we determined that this incident was a massacre similar to My Lai in Vietnam.

Withdrawing even some of the U.S. troops, planes, drones and bombers from Afghanistan will reduce the killing.

The agreement, warned Rep. Barbara Lee, "leaves thousands of troops in Afghanistan and lacks the critical investments in peacebuilding, human-centered development, or governance reform needed to rebuild Afghan society."

Is the long promised truce between the US military and Afghanistan’s Taliban really in the offing? If so, nobody will be happier than the Afghans fighting and dying on the front lines of a war many of them believe is “not really our fight.”

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U.S. “Plans” for the Afghan War Might Prove a Crime Against Humanity.

“We found that a few hundred natives living off their land and fighting for it could tie down thousands of American troops... and provoke a segment of our population to take the view that what happens in the Far East is none of our business.”