We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, October 10, 2016

Fifteen Years Into the Afghan War, Do Americans Know the Truth?

Click here to access article by Ron Paul from Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

This American libertarian exposes the terrible waste of taxpayers' money in Afghanistan during the past 15 years, and the results are all negative.
I have written several of these columns on the various anniversaries of the Afghan (and Iraq) wars, pointing out that the wars are ongoing and that the result of the wars has been less stable countries, a less stable region, a devastated local population, and an increasing probability of more blowback. I would be very happy to never have to write one of these again. We should just march home. 
I think that his narrow petite-bourgeois focus misses the bigger picture of an Empire that is racked with debts and must resort to imperialism with the hope of stealing resources and wealth from other regions of the world to pay off some of these debts to major capitalists. This is very similar to what happened with the Nazis who were heavily financed by Western capitalists. 

Nazi Germany was broke on the eve of WWII, and only by conquering regions to the east (as laid out in Hitler's Mein Kampf) and stealing their wealth could save Nazi Germany from bankruptcy. Of course, one of the major reasons Western capitalists invested in them was because of the promise that the Nazi's offered to crush their nemesis--the Soviet Union.  

Similarly today we read daily reports about the huge debt hole that is plaguing nearly all sectors of the capitalist economies under the US-led Empire. And I don't think that there is any doubt that this same motivation is driving the directors of the Empire to urgently pursue imperialist actions that we see today in the Middle East and eastern Europe. I don't think Paul understands this.