After more than two decades of continuous war against countries we bombed with which we were officially at peace, and then invaded, and after millions have been killed and after billions have been spent to finance America’s illegal wars, we are no safer than we were before 9-11 and the world is facing the greatest refugee and worst humanitarian crisis since WW II. The United States is to blame for these wars of atrocity and the American political class that promulgated them are war criminals. In short, we Americans are the new Nazis of the world disorder.
Reports by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Mother Jones, and Time put the costs of American adventurism at about $1.6 trillion dollars. Other reports have estimated the cost of US wars since 9/11 to be far higher, between $4 -$7 trillion. According to MJ, “a report by Neta Crawford, a political science professor at Boston University, estimated the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as well as post-2001 assistance to Pakistan—to be roughly $4.4 trillion. The CRS estimate is lower because it does not include additional costs including the lifetime price of health care for disabled veterans and interest on the national debt.”
The U.S. is primarily to blame for the wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq which have killed thousands of people, most civilians, every year. The U.S. is complicit in proxy wars in Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan, Ukraine, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Congo, and Libya, which have claimed hundreds lives in recent years. Mexico, which suffered the fifth highest number of violent deaths in the world last year, is sort of a special case because the country is effectively a narco-state due to the violence unleashed by drug gangs. Afghanistan is also a narco-state but it is under occupation by American forces, which have not stopped, or even slowed much of the opium production in that country. U.S. agencies like the DEA, AFT, and FBI have been deeply involved in Mexico, as U.S. military forces are involved in Afghanistan, and those agencies were responsible for gun shipments to drug traffickers in Mexico. These facts are undisputed.
So while hundreds of armed conflicts are on-going around the world, the bloodiest conflicts are the ones where U.S forces are either directly or indirectly involved.
The American wars have led to famine and a refugee crisis which in turn is leading to the dissolution of the European Union and to new military and political alliances that will make the world a more dangerous place than it is now.
American exceptionalism that has guided the last three administrations was supposed to bring happy days of peace and security and democracy to the world but none of that has materialized and anybody who still thinks our militarism will accomplish those fanciful goals is drinking too much tainted Kool-aid.
In short, we Americans are like those good Germans who bought Hitler’s propaganda and enjoyed a better life for a while as German armies invaded their neighbors with whom they were officially at peace. History does have its lessons but we have not learned from it and are condemning ourselves by repeating it.
The U.S. is the Fourth Reich. God help us all.
Peter White is a writer and producer. He lives in Tennessee with his two sons and a dog, Ashes, who loves books. Ashes is not choosy about what she sinks her teeth into and her master is a regular contributor to the Nashville Public LIbrary.
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