WARS & MILITARY

Two US veterans, Matthew Hoh and Daniel Sjursen, explain how the war in Afghanistan was lost, Afghans suffered, and military contractors profited — all while the American public was kept in the dark. Guests: Danny Sjursen. Retired US Army officer, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. He served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at West Point. His latest book is “A True History of the United States.” https://twitter.com/SkepticalVet Matthew Hoh. Former Marine and State Department official who resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan over U.S. policy in September 2009. Now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.

PAUL EDWARDS—The only indisputable truth about the Afghan debacle is that the U.S. War Machine and its wholly-owned Congress and Press, hyped fear and outrage at 9/11 to spin the mythical GWOT and two decades of limitless profiteering using the brutal destruction of a poor, defenseless country as a weapons-testing experiment.

Quan, a member of the China Writers Group I belong to, has sent the following message: Dear CWG,  Today, Monday August 2-2021 is to be remembered ! HMS Queen Elizabeth did not dare enter Chinese waters in the South China Sea after China’s stern warnings & US’ disapproval…And this is happening 72 years & 2 days after the end of the Amethyst incident.

What kind of attack might Taiwan expect? I haven’t talked to the Chinese General Staff for weeks now, and so am making this up. But the goal would probably be to get the war over before America had time to react. Keeping invaders out is one thing, getting them out another. So, maybe a sudden attack with ballistic missiles to crater runways with simultaneous mass missile attack on air defenses with amphib ships simultaneously setting sail. At fifteen knots it would take about eight hours to reach the island. With heavy air support from China’s highly non-negligible air force, Chinese troops might well get ashore and into cities before America’s hypergalactic indomitable military could get its thumb out of…well, never mind. The Americans would be caught flatfooted by a fait accompli. Washington would face the joyful choice of bombing Chinese soldiers inside Taiwanese cities, or—this is Saturday Night Live territory—undertaking a land war in Asia against China. It may be that Taiwan has thought of this.

CALEB MAUPIN—As if Carter hadn’t taken the Democrats further enough away from working people, Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council embraced full-on economic neoliberalism. Clinton ended “welfare as we know it” putting millions of working mothers into desperate circumstances and betrayed the labor unions who voted for him signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Clinton made a point of embracing the rapidly expanding prison industrial complex during his campaign, condemning Black rap artist Sista Solja in a campaign speech, and being photographed with a prison chain gang. Clinton even suspended his campaign in order to return to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Black man. The notion that some African-American youth were “super-predators” was used to terrify white voters into supporting such policies. Biden joined the rallying cry to “get tough on crime” with more prisons and longer sentences.