A recent Washington Post article: At War With the Truth
U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found.
Historical Context
The current US war in Afghanistan is now the longest single military conflict in the history of the United States. It has been going on so long that it hardly requires justification to the American public anymore. We are accustomed to it. I was in high school when we first invaded.
The British fought in Afghanistan three times, for 1-3 years each time.
The Soviets fought in Afghanistan for 9 years from 1979-1989. It was a Cold War proxy war against forces backed by the United States.
The Perceived Problem
The article above claims that falsified reports by military generals are a major factor that keep us in Afghanistan. The article goes so far as to say the reports have been deliberately falsified over the years to justify remaining at war.
The Actual Problem
We as a country continue to fight a nearly 20 year conflict in Afghanistan. The Washington Post article above will be soon forgotten.
We fail see how wrong some decisions are ironically because they are so wrong on such a large scale that we simply can’t comprehend it. The magnitude is so much bigger than us we assume we must be mistaken somehow.
The main-stream media controls the majority of information people receive. They sling mud at each other for entertainment. An article like the one above catches peoples’ interest because it implies evil treachery by a select group, in this case military generals.
What the Main-Stream Media is Saying
The article appears anti-war. However, notice the article does not actually say we should leave Afghanistan now. It provides no suggestion for how we should cut our losses and depart. It also does not reference the historical failures in Afghanistan of the British and the Soviets.
The article criticizes former President Obama. Did The Washington Post criticize President Obama from 2009 – 2017, when he could actually make decisions? I will be honest, I am not going to go search Washington Post articles for an 8-year period, but let’s all be honest, Obama is a Democrat and The Post let him go while he was in office.
My Opinion
The Washington Post article describes one small portion / symptom of the military industrial complex as though it is a new thing. Really it is a very old phenomenon. It was well-known in 1935.
The article focuses on one select group of people, military generals. I believe that the scope of people responsible for our military industrial complex – which includes fighting a 2 decade war in Afghanistan – is so wide that pointing at one set of actions by one group is ridiculous. Generals operate near the political level. When the overall political climate wants to remain at war, it selects generals who will fight war.
Why is the Washington Post so excited to report the evil treachery of the military generals right now? I do now know but I will speculate. I heard recently noted that military generals are enjoying more political success now than ever before here in the US. Maybe this article is designed to curb that trend.
The Solution
We need to acknowledge all the factors that go into the United States fighting wars. This includes military generals who want to fight wars of course. However, it also includes our consumer culture that gobbles up resources made cheap by war and perpetuated by our two-party democracy that gives us only two choices, selected by the dollars of the MIC, both war-fighting.
We need to educate ourselves about ourselves and it starts by not consuming any information owned by large corporations close to Washington DC. The main-stream media is so ubiquitous that forcing oneself to learn is insufficient. We must first cut the propaganda from our busy lives and free our minds.
The gap between our nation as a whole and the wars we fight with 2% of the population needs to close. Is this possible? I really do not know.