In just 20 years, the total cost of the US increasing homeland security and waging wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere since Sept. 11, 2001, have exceeded $8 trillion, according to new estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University.
The idea was already absurd and dangerous. But now the Afghanistan debacle should bury it permanently. Despite 20 years and $1 trillion in military and other aid, the U.S. supported-government collapsed within weeks.
Since World War II, U.S. soldiers have been stationed on U.S. military bases around the globe. Today, there are around 750 such bases in some eighty countries and colonies.
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Gunshot wounds and blood are unable to conceal the text on the red shirt worn by labor rights leader Dandy Miguel the night he was killed: 'Sahod, trabaho, karapatan, ipaglaban' (Fight for salary, jobs, and rights).
Maybe this time we can finally ask whether trying to prop up a dying empire actually makes us -- or indeed the world -- any safer. This is the best chance in a generation to start that conversation.
More prisoners have died at Guantánamo than have been convicted by the military commissions. 2019 was a bad year for justice for former and present Guantánamo prisoners, and not just prisoners subject to the military commission process.
“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.”
...military and CIA drones that hover constantly over eight countries across the Greater Middle East and Africa, and regularly terrorize, maim, and kill civilians, including children, are equivalents of disturbed shooters in American schools.
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