End the War on Terrorism

This is the second of 5 episodes in our series on Actually Making America Great. We aren't Democrat or Republican, but we try to find some common ground as we analyze 5 policies that we believe would have the most impact on the lives of the average American. These are typically issues you won't see talked about on the news or by your Congresspeople, but they should. Our goal with this series is to make the case for these policies so that America can actually be Great. That only happens with your support. If you agree with this, please like, subscribe, and share this just about everywhere.

And if you really really liked it, call your Congressional representatives and make them get behind these five issues:

1. End the Drug War

2. End the Foreign Wars

3. Universal Healthcare

4. Hand the Economy Back to the People

5. Get Money Out of Politics

Thank you and hope you enjoy!

Thank you to Naser Al-Fawakhiri for his outstanding work in helping to research and craft the material you heard in this series.
Thank you to Oscar Gregg for crafting the wonderful music you hear for this intro and all the music for the intro and outro of this series. His new single Acrobats is out on all major platforms which you should all give a listen!
This podcast is associated with The New Millennia news organization. 

Transcript

Welcome to the second episode of our series called Actually Making America Great! Thank you so much for tuning in and I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we enjoyed putting this series together. Before we begin, a few mentions need to be made. Thank you to Naser Al-Fawakhiri, who contributed greatly to the research and crafting of the content for these episodes you hear. Also my greatest appreciation needs to be given to my good friend Oscar Gregg, who crafted this intro music you’re hearing as well as the music at the end. His own single, Acrobats, which is absolutely phenomenal, is out everywhere which you should check out and will be linked in the podcast notes below. With that out of the way, our second topic, The War on Terrorism, really shows how powerful corporate interests are, and how people will do anything, even kill unarmed civilians, for money. So without further adieu, let's get into it

Imagine its World War III. The US and some of its allies are up against Iran, Russia and China. Instead of resorting to nuclear force, this war is fought through airstrikes. Much like during WWII, everyone has airstrike sirens and bunkers are in vogue. But without warning, your city is bombed, killing 8 of your neighbors, your brother, and the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (our top ranking military official). 

The goal of the strike was a different guy, but sadly, airstrikes only have a 10% success rate and a 90% civilian death rate, so your brother died too. Welcome to the statistics of war. A caravan of armed  guerillas goes through your city the next day shouting "Death to Iran" and plotting a little ~nonmilitary~ action against Iran's civilians in retaliation for what happened to your city. Would you join them?

Now imagine that I lied about the WWIII part. It was peace time and Iran hadn't declared war on us but still bombed us. Would you still join the guerrillas? Would you consider the Iranian air strike an act of war?

What if they didn't kill our top ranking military official and instead killed Canada's top ranking military official who was just passing through as part of strengthening the US-Canadian alliance, and your brother died anyway?

It's pretty hard to imagine any of this happening. It certainly would feel like the apocalypse. We'd be quick to label Iran as a terrorist nation for conducting such a raid that killed 90% civilians in peacetime.

Remember how I said it's hard to imagine? It isn't that hard to imagine if you're Iran, when we killed Qasim Suleimeini, who was leading the fight against ISIS in Iraq. And yet somehow, we aren't at war with Iran.

It also isn't all that hard to imagine, if you're Iraqi, Somali, Syrian, Yemeni, Afghani, Libyan, or Nigerian. In fact, here’s a list of all the countries the US has bombed (and killed civilians in) since WWII. 

China 1945-6, 1950-53

Korea 1950-53

Indonesia 1958

Cuba 1959-60

Belgian Congo 1964

Dominican Republic 1965-66

Peru 1965

Laos 1964-73

Vietnam 1961-73

Cambodia 1969-70

Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1964, 1967-69

Lebanon 1982-84

Grenada 1983-84

El Salvador 1981-92

Nicaragua 1981-90

Iran 1987-88

Panama 1989-90

Iraq 1991

Kuwait 1991

Bosnia 1995

Sudan 1998

Afghanistan 1998

Yugoslavia – Serbia 1999

Libya 1986, 1989, 2011-

Somalia 1992-4, 2011- 

Nigeria 2014

Syria 2014–

Yemen 2017

Now if you run out of breath trying to name all the countries we’ve bombed in the last 75 years, then we’ve probably bombed way too many countries. 

In the same time period, since WWII, Congress authorized "war" in only 5 cases: the Korean War, Vietnam , the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq. We aren't going to talk about those past wars though. We're going to talk about the wars that you and I currently pay for, as part of what has been called the "war on terrorism". It is the war on terrorism that is responsible for those 7 countries I named earlier (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Nigeria, Libya, and Yemen) being on the list. And more importantly, all of them except for Nigeria we're still bombing. And that's what your taxpayer dollars go to.

None of this is hypothetical. In the very first raid Trump authorized in office, a 8 year old US citizen was killed. An 8 year old girl. Her brother and father had both been killed previously by airstrikes. She was an American citizen. She was 8.

7,500 other civilians like her have died thanks to US airstrikes. Civilians, not terrorists or terrorist leaders. 90% of those killed by US airstrikes are not the target, but rather civilians. 90% of those who die in US airstrikes are not the people we intend to kill, but civilians, women and children, and first responders especially, a practice outlawed by international law. But the US gets away with violating international law.

We aren't going to discuss whether these countries "deserved" it, in whatever sense you want to use that in. Instead, I want to focus on whether we're winning the so-called War on Terrorism, or at very least, who is winning? A government program that costs, well uh, we don't know how much it costs (more on that later). A government program that costs an estimated 2 trillion dollars over 20 years had better be super effective. Isn’t America #1? So, is terrorism solved? Or is the War on Terrorism the single biggest military failure in the history of the world?

HISTORY

I'd love to talk about how George Washington advised us to avoid foreign entanglements at all costs (literally). Or perhaps how, after WWII, Pres. Eisenhower, a veteran himself, warned of the growing military-industrial complex that profited directly from perpetual war. All of that is super interesting. But we are here to discuss the War on Terrorism. So let's get to it.

9/11 was a terrible event, causing the deaths of 3 thousand Americans in one horribly tragic day. Americans will never forget that day, nor should they. 

In the aftermath of 9/11, Congress gave the Authorization for Use of Military Force or commonly known as the AUMF, a declaration of war that allowed Bush to pursue those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. This authorization started the war in Afghanistan, and then Congress extended it to include Iraq, and in 2003 the US invaded Iraq, toppled Saddam Houssein in a bloody war that killed at least 200,000 civilians in nine years. For comparison, that would be like 1.7 million Americans dying in a war, or just wiping out the entire state of West Virginia. That’s what 8 years of war did to Iraq.

After invading Iraq, Congress was left to the wayside. Whenever the president needed to bomb a foreign country or send troops there, he could use the 2001 AUMF for it, and didn't need to ask Congress. And Bush, Obama, and Trump did exactly that with the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, and Libya.

And that's how the War on Terrorism started. Since then Osama bin Laden was killed under the Obama administration and largely anyone involved in planning the 9/11 attacks has been killed. And yet, the wars go on, and the troops remain abroad, billions of dollars pour into the defense budget to "fight terrorism". So did the War on Terrorism work? Did terrorism itself go away?

TERRORISM DID NOT GO AWAY. IT GOT WORSE

Oh hello Betteridge! Yeah, no it did not go away. It actually got worse.

Since 9/11, al-Qaeda has grown, expanding its influence in Iraq, controlling many areas of Syria, and gaining access to US made weapons in Yemen through US ally Saudi Arabia, the world's largest exporter of Wahhabist ideology, the same ideology that drove the 9/11 attackers. ISIS wasn't a thing in 2001 and after years of intense fighting against many foreign nations (mostly Iran, Russia, Turkey, and a little help from the US) it still exists but is crippled. It still, however, poses a threat in Syria and possibly abroad. The US just signed a peace treaty with the Taliban, admitting defeat after 20 years in Afghanistan. The Taliban has grown rich from the war, which has allowed it to seize control of Afghan opium fields and profit off of the drug trade. They are stronger than ever thanks to the War on Terrorism and the Drug War as was discussed more in-depth in a previous segment. Oh and Boko Haram! Another terrorist group that did not exist in 2001 but now does thanks to US interventions abroad-- they still control parts of Nigeria. After a brief bombing campaign in Nigeria, the US admitted defeat there too.

The United States, the world’s largest military superpower, which spends more on its military than the next 11 nations combined, lost the war in Afghanistan after 20 years, and the war in Nigeria after one year.

The War on Terrorism did not make us safer. It made us less safe. It created more terrorists, spurred more terrorist attacks, allowed them to grow stronger and made the US less safe, while we Americans paid for it. 

But at least we got the guys we wanted to get, right? Not really. We mostly killed civilians. Airstrikes have a 90% civilian death rate, which means they destroy civilian infrastructure, orphan children, cast thousands into poverty, create chaos, but they only kill the guy we meant to kill after we kill 9 more civilians.

Terrorism: the use of violence or intimidation against civilians for a political or religious purpose We became the very thing we sought to destroy. And since you can’t fight terrorism with terrorism, terrorist organizations grew stronger over the past two decades.

So, in every place you look, the War on Terrorism failed. Like failed miserably. After throwing $2 trillion at the problem, it did not go away. Terrorists got stronger, US troops died, troop’s families were disrupted, taxpayer money went down the drain, and no one said a word or even asked "How are you gonna pay for it?".

WHO'S WINNING?

Okay if the War on Terrorism failed, why is it ongoing? Like who's winning from all of this failure? The answer is simple

The Government and Terrorists are winning.

How could terrorists benefit? If you reference back to what I mentioned a couple minutes ago, they got stronger, grew rich off the territories they came to control over years of war, and even got arms from the US to help sustain them! That's right, the Pentagon and CIA often arm groups that fight each other, and sometimes the rebels we decide to back hand over their arms to Al-Qaeda, which is exactly what happened in Syria, marking the failure of the CIA's $1 billion secret war in Syria.

Oh, after they get the arms from us, we help them get more fighters. Turns out all this bombing is great for recruitment!  Remember that thought experiment at the beginning of the segment? If some rogue nation randomly bombs the US and kills your brother, 8 of your neighbors, and, coincidentally, a top-ranking military official they were going for, how fast would you sign up for the army? And if the army is decimated by airstrikes and years of war, how fast would you join a band of armed guerillas plotting attacks in the country that attacked us? That's exactly what the terrorists want-- more civilians to be bombed. It helps with enrollment. 

And it helps the government because it allows them to prolong the war, continuing to profit from donations to their campaigns from Raytheon and Boeing in exchange for government contracts. It allows private contractors to build luxury villas in foreign countries (image on screen), as government contracts roll in millions in cash for their "business". It also ensures that the military industrial complex has booming business, as they manufacture bombs, Tomahawk Missiles at $1.5 million each, drones, $1 trillion fighter jets that can't fly (on screen) and thousands of other "secret" expenditures. Frankly speaking, war is not just expensive, but it's not cost efficient with its money.

Millions of dollars in arms and munitions go to groups who fight each other. Millions of dollars in arms and munitions also land in the hands of al-Qaeda, you know the group that started the War on Terror by flying into the World Trade Center? In Afghanistan, 150 million taxpayer dollars went toward constructing luxury villas for 5-10 personnel when military barracks were free and open! The same contractor spent $43 million on building a gas station that could have been built for $500k.

Another contractor in Afghanistan received $3.5 billion in government contracts, but mysteriously couldn't account for how it spent $1 billion of that. We call that a “scam”. In fact, the problem is so much more widespread than just with private contractors. The DoD recently failed an audit, mostly because they are incapable of keeping proper records of how money gets spent on "defense".

In a recent DoD financial report, auditors noted

"Without a complete record of transactions, the DoD Components cannot perform reconciliations of their financial statement line items. Therefore, auditors may not detect errors within the financial statements." (p146) What the auditors are trying to say is their job was made immensely difficult because the DoD doesn't keep the receipts. This allows overspending, misallocation, embezzling, and corruption to go unchecked. You can't even begin to cut costs if you don't know where the money is going in the first place. The $500k gas station that cost $43 million dollars could go completely unnoticed if no one is keeping the books-- there goes $42.5 million taxpayer dollars! That's not money going to the troops or the VA. It's money going to enrich private contractors.

The audit identified nearly $9 billion that could be saved by cutting inefficiencies in the Air Force in 2018 alone. Another $1 billion was lost to "improper payments" in that year. In 2015, DoD accounting failed to account for nearly $2 trillion. The auditors also mention (in a footnote at the end of the report):

The Department spends billions of dollars each year to maintain key business functions intended to support the warfighter. Lack of support for transformation. The Department continues to confront decades-old management weaknesses related to its business functions that support these forces. 

The auditors are referencing the F-35 the Pentagon spent $400 billion on which cannot fly. It is a fighter jet... that cannot… get off of the ground. After $400 billion they couldn't get something to lift off the ground. But that's just business as usual for the Pentagon, says the auditors. Military contractors get rich while the Department of Defense suffers from ineffectual programs, mismanagement and scams. No wonder we're losing the War on Terrorism. There's money to be made the longer it goes on, so run the Pentagon like a circus and you get perpetual war. The military budget gets to stay at 50% of discretionary spending to "fight terrorism" while no actual fighting happens, just scam artists taking $400 billion and giving us a hunk of metal that can't fly.

The goal isn't to "win" the War on Terrorism. The people who died 9/11 are dead. What does winning mean, if the current strategy only makes more terrorists, increases their strength, and kills thousands more civilians?

The goal never was to win. The goal is for perpetual war, because the very same people who can control when the wars end profit directly from more war. Companies that benefit from war and government contracts lobby the government and fund politicians campaigns and, unsurprisingly, once in office the politicians give the companies more money and send over more troops to make things worse so that the war never ends.

WHO LOSES?

So who loses? Well You, me, and the Constitution.

We get more terrorists, they grow stronger, and we funnel trillions of dollars for decades to come into never-ending wars.

Could it possibly get worse?

Well, yes, obviously. Let's ask ourselves one really important question: what about our troops? Those in service are the ones who stand the most to lose in a prolonged War on Terror. Since 2006, 16% of military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan were under non hostile conditions, often as part of an accident or self-inflicted wounds. That's over 700 soldiers whose families had to bury them because a useless war kept their loved one in harm's way, not from terrorists, but from accidents during exercises. Instead of having their family member at home with them, the failures of the DoD ripped away 700 lives.

Nearly 2 thousand troops died of IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2006, 43% of troop deaths overseas. These unseen explosives aren't gunfights with terrorists. They are deaths caused by continued troop presence in those countries. The longer we keep troops there, the more likely they encounter an unexploded mine and die. The War on Terrorism kills more troops in accidents and mines than in any actual "fighting of terrorism"-- while the terrorists grow stronger each day troops stay there. Each passing day more troops die to accidents and avoidable deaths and we make it less and less likely they'll ever see the end of the war.

Another way the troops lose is that the vast majority of this spending doesn't go toward troops and their families and retired vets. A little over one-third of spending goes toward the men and women who serve or who have served and their families. All this waste directly cuts into the amount of money that could be spent on paying troops, providing for their families, and funding the VA. Meanwhile corporations that scam the government for contracts make millions as part of a "War on Terrorism" that doesn’t fight terrorists, but makes more of them, which it is designed to do.

It doesn't just hurt the troops. The constitution has been ripped to shreds as a result of the War on Terrorism. Wars have to be authorized by Congress. The Constitution tasks Congress with making declarations of war, raising, and supporting the troops. If you read the constitution strictly, that means Congress gets to decide what countries we commit acts of war in (like sending troops, invading, or bombing). Since 2003, we’ve done that to 134 countries, but Congress has given zero declarations of war. The Constitution isn’t being ignored; the Supreme Court has decided that all of this isn’t Congress’ power, it’s the President’s, who can unilaterally start wars, and move troops around the world without telling Congress.

It gets worse. The War on Terrorism encroaches on other liberties the Constitution promised Americans. The Supreme Court upheld the portion of the Authorization for Use of Military Force that allows indefinite detention. (Hedges vs Obama 2012) The government can decide that you're a "threat to national security" and lock you up forever. The Supreme Court said that's constitutional. Habeas corpus? Never heard of it. It's all Magna Carta to me

In 2007 the Supreme Court decided that the authorization, the War on Terrorism, allowed the National Security Administration to expand its surveillence program. In other words, for as long as the war on terrorism exists, its not just the defense contractors that win—its Big Brother too. They get to collect our data and spy on us. The fourth amendment privacy rights can no longer be defended because the government can violate your privacy if they claim it was for "national security". "Oh I just wanted to make sure you're not a terrorist or anything! Sorry to intrude!"

A bloated defense budget and huge spying apparatus backed by 16 intelligence agencies is the definition of Big Government. 

For those who believe in small government, ending the War on Terrorism is a necessary first step toward getting the Government out of your private life. Otherwise, the government can keep using it to justify taking away our liberties and freedoms. Meanwhile, the War on Terrorism makes Americans less and less safe, breeding more terrorists, and cementing their power, All in the name of perpetual war that allows only a few rich business interests to get rich, at the expense of you, me, the taxpayers, our loyal service members, and the Constitution itself.

SO HOW DO WE FIX IT?

Well, if we go back to the definition

(Terrorism: "the use of violence or intimidation *against civilians* for a *political* or religious aim"

So let’s consider what we are currently doing 

Airstrikes have a 90% civilian death rate which is what our $686 billion military budget pays for, 50% of which is discretionary spending

Only 33% of the country favors staying in Iraq or Afghanistan. 33% isn’t a majority. It is time for Congress to listen to the American people and end the War on Terrorism.

Ending the War on Terrorism doesn’t mean letting terrorists get away with terrorist attacks. It means de-escalating troop presence, building up local institutions in the countries destroyed by years of war. It means cutting military aid to Saudi Arabia, who is arming Al-Qaedi in Yemen and exports Wahhabist ideology which inspires many terrorists today. The bombs in Saudi Arabia’s war with Yemen are made in the US, and the more Yemenis that see shrapnel labelled with the US flag, the more terrorists we create. Ending the War on Terrorism means stopping giving terrorist organizations recruitment material and reducing the number of people who get radicalized. 

It also means cutting waste and heavily monitoring spending so contractors don’t scam us of hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

It also means spending more on providing for our troops and keeping them out of harm's way by bringing them home.

It also means cutting back on the massive government surveillance apparatus, 16 intelligence agencies tasked with spying on the average American’s everyday life. It means restoring the first amendment and putting that money into programs that actually help americans, like creating jobs, fixing our crumbling infrastructure, and growing our economy. It means shrinking Big Government.

The fact of the matter is the United States is the single biggest threat to world peace at the moment. No other country randomly bombs other countries overseas, countries that never attacked us, without any declaration of war. Only the US kills other nations top ranking military officials, especially military officials that were leading the charge in killing ISIS terrorists. That’s what your taxpayer dollars go to. Not keeping you safe. Ending the War on Terrorism means spending the Defense budget on DEFENSE not war, and corporate interests, and contractors’ profits.

It's time to make defense spending actually about defense. It’s time to end the war on terrorism Because that would Actually Make America Great Again.

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This is the second of 5 videos in our series on Actually Making America Great. We aren't Democrat or Republican, but we try to find some common ground as we analyze 5 policies that we believe would have the most impact on the lives of the average American. These are typically issues you won't see talked about on the news or by your Congresspeople, but they should.

Our goal with this video series is to make the case for these policies so that America can actually be Great. That only happens with your support. If you agree with this video, pls like, subscribe and share this video just about everywhere, I don't care. And if you really really liked it, call your Congressional representatives and make them get behind these five issues:

1. End the Drug War

2. End the Foreign Wars

3. Universal Healthcare

4. An Economy for America

5. Get Money Out of Politics

Thank you for Listening