Ever since we became an empire, we took up the habit of lying our way into a war, and using that war to enrich contractors and cover politicians and generals in glory. By the end of World War II, this modus operandi had become systematized to the point where General/President Eisenhower felt compelled to warn us about it, and he gave it a name—the military-industrial complex.
We’ve gone from re-electing presidents for starting wars to presidents starting wars in order to get re-elected. So some of the blood of these many years is on us, the voters. But in all fairness, we do get lied to about why our wars are necessary. We’ve just got to learn to stop being so eager to believe these lies.
Afghanistan is not just the latest chapter in a long book about greed, hubris, blood, vanity, and moronic morality; it is a special case, for lasting so long and costing so much. This $2.3 trillion boondoggle was never about what was best for Afghanistan; it was only and always about us—our fear, our power, our national esteem. Some 2,500 Americans died for these sins.
Afghanistan is again a medieval theocracy, but now with tons of military hardware and infrastructure. Ah, but what does it matter, as long as our military contractors get their trillion pieces of silver? It is greed that will destroy us, not Muslim terrorists.
Should we be wagging an accusing finger at Joe Biden? He got us what we said we wanted—out of Afghanistan. When the Trump administration sued for a separate peace with the Taliban, thus undermining the government then in Kabul, the die was cast. Biden could only follow suit, and delay the inevitable for another 15 weeks.
It was a sloppily planned exit. Women will be plunged back into the 12th century. Men who collaborated with us will be killed if they don’t escape. Families will be torn apart. Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia will all seek to expand their influence.
As difficult as it was for the US to finally withdraw from Afghanistan, it will be harder still for us to withdraw from the military-industrial complex and our convenient rationalizations for ever more defense spending. But taking into account the trillions of dollars and millions of lives wasted by our peculiar military institutions, couldn’t we have used our wealth and talents more wisely, less destructively? What could our nation have accomplished by not blowing things up in the name of peace? We’ll never know.
JEFFREY HOBBS, Springfield, Ill.
Various veterans of service in Afghanistan are condemning President Biden for pulling out. If the US military, with its superior assets could not bring the Taliban to heel in 20 years, it has no standing to criticize a decision to call off a failed mission.
The Taliban apparently had superior leadership and tactical smarts. They laid in the weeds while their opposition dissipated itself and have now taken advantage of their deception, replicating a strategy that Russia deployed successfully against Napoleon and Hitler.
Russia had proved that the Taliban had staying power and terminated their misadventure in Afghanistan when its futility became obvious. We were a slower learner.
If the US can salvage anything out of this mess, it will be the possible retention of its embassy and the potential for some level of positive communication in the years ahead.
There is no way that our exodus from Afghanistan will pose any serious threat to the US.
RUDY DALPRA, Safford, Ariz.
America came to be in defiance of the world’s greatest empire. With the Cold War, we dabbled in imperialism ourselves. But we were never very good at it. It is offensive to our DNA.
The only legitimate government is popular government. It is back in control in Afghanistan.
We should recognize the Taliban immediately. We should continue our financial support, oh—at least as long as the hand-wringers had planned to maintain troops there—indefinitely. We should open our borders wide to all Vichy who collaborated in the occupation.
These new grateful Americans will be superior citizens to the intellectual chowderheads of the Project for a New American Century: Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, et al. They were the strategic masterminds behind the Bush Jr. Middle East policy who conceived a sort of democratic Domino Theory for the belt of Islam from Morocco to Pakistan. They fancied themselves bold visionaries supplying the cerebral heft to the new Alexander the Great (W., ha!), but were actually trapped in a retarded adolescence for having too much dice skill at Parker Bros.’ “Risk”
These gentlemen and their political spawn must be exiled, if not from the geographic expanse, from the bureaucracies and editorial syndicates.
M. WARNER, Minneapolis Minn.
Hal Crowther does excellent work in writing about Trump in the 6/1/21 issue [“Abuse of Asian-Americans Sets New Cognitive Low”]. Where he falls far short is in his comparison of the criticisms waged by Republicans and Democrats against their adversaries. He gives equal weight to both.
He writes, “Loudmouths on both sides like to dismiss their political adversaries as cretins. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter on the Right always treated it as common knowledge that liberals are America’s village idiots, intellectual Democrats with Harvard Law pedigrees may have been too hard on Ronald Reagan and even too hard on George W. Bush.”
How can one be too hard on Reagan? The last 40 years of Reaganomics have brought us the inequality we face today, the destruction of unions, his lack of concern about racism shown by his appointing anti-Black bigot Bill Bennett as secretary of education, his lack of concern about AIDS.
Too hard on Bush? How can one forget the numerous deaths in the Iraq War despite no evidence of weapons of mass destruction? His attempts to privatize Social Security?
I defer to Don Rollins in his column in the same 6/1/21 issue [“The Comedy and Tragedy of George W. Bush”] and his long list of reasons, which he described as truncated as to why one can’t be too hard on Bush.
CHARLES McCARTHY, Highland, N.Y.
Sometimes the clarification of an issue one is pondering has been there all along, sight unseen. Such is the case of the book I recently discovered while looking for something else. It is “Democracy in America,” by Alexis de Toqueville, first published in [two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840]. In this case, it is the “Second Part” that I’m reading.
I couldn’t help but notice that this book’s topic fits exactly with your 8/15/21 TPP issue about “Chaos” in America right now [“Chaos Theory: When Madness Gains Momentum,” by Hal Crowther]. It’s amazing how whast he says is currently what we are and have been experiencing. It seems that every sentence in this book will explain everything we and the whole world has been going through right up until this second.
Please read it (if you haven’t done so yet, or lately). I guarantee you will find it absolutely important and timely.
CHERYL LOVELY, Presque Isle, Maine
Thanks for including Sam Uretsky’s “Dealing with Your Emojis” in your 8/15/21 issue. It could have been a sardonic squib, but was instead a refreshing boost to optimism in rather dreary times.
Whether a society had a written language was once believed the touchstone of civilization. Now we can use the universality of smiles and tears to transcend language barriers and set the mood for ensuing compositions.
The popularity of emojis attests to their value in enhancement of cosmopolitan understanding. Literary expertise can then handle the arabesques of nuance, idiom and so forth.
Linguistically yours,
WILLIAM DAUENHAUER, Willowick, Ohio
Joel D. Joseph’s article “Water in All the Wrong Places,” [8/1/21 TPP] discusses how desalination can be used to supply a reliable source of fresh water for drought ridden regions of the world, and reduce sea level rise due to global warming. In light of the reoccurring severe droughts in the western US and other parts of the world, it may be necessary to use the ocean to make fresh water. However, I question the feasibility of using desalination to reduce sea level rise by a sufficient amount to avoid sea water encroachment on coastal towns, cities and estuaries.
For one thing, his analysis never considered where to put the displaced water. The discussed 1.6-foot sea level rise works out to be 42,420 cubic miles of water. The total volume of surface fresh water for all of the rivers and lakes of the world is about 21,340 cubic miles. Thus, we’d have to store almost two times the current volume of surface fresh water on Earth to offset just 1.6 feet of sea level rise.
Another important problem is the quantity of energy needed. Currently, it takes about 3kWh of energy (as electricity) to make one cubic meter of fresh water from sea water. There are some efficiency gains in the works, for example, there is a demonstration project that claims to use only 1.7kWh per cubic meter, but the theoretical minimum is 0.86kWh per cubic meter. For comparison, fresh water treatment for human consumption requires an average energy input of 0.29kWh per cubic meter. Therefore desalination will require more energy than currently used to clean up fresh water.
Considering the 1.7kWh per cubic meter figure of the demonstration project, it would take about 300 trillion kWh of energy to initially drop the ocean level by 1.6 feet using desalination. Since the US used about 27 trillion kWh of total energy in 2020, this is about 11 times the energy used by the US in one year. Of course, the desalination process would take place over many years as the sea level rose, but nonetheless, a lot of energy would have to be used. Wind and solar power systems could supply the electricity, but they too require energy and resources to build and maintain. As this one example shows, trying to mitigate sea level rise in what would seem like a win-win solution, actually has significant, if not insurmountable, practical hurdles.
GIAN PAULETTO, Rutland, Vt.
Create municipal-owned clusters of volunteer-built tiny homes on land with materials provided by the municipality; 64 square-feet, insulated, single 110V outlet, tiny homes, provided free to occupants, with street lights, arrayed pleasantly, not screened from the community, with maintained area shower bathrooms and trash dumpsters, planned for easy drive-by policing, provided free to occupants;.
This is an economical solution for both those displaced and for the more than 50% who are horneless by choice, independents who won’t live with others in a multi-million dollar facility with expensive services.
TOM RICHARDS, North Attleboro, Mass.
When 700,000 deaf, dumb, inconsiderate, self-centered, baby-brained bikers show up in South Dakota, it may be the start of Season One’s “The Riding Dead.” They bring their own choppers and will handle bars, restaurants and porto-lets with little respect for the faring of the merchants who are cast as victims.
This bark isn’t worse than the bike.
FLORA ORMSBY SMITH, Marblehead, Mass.
From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2021
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