All-War-All-the-Time?
Originally posted at TomDispatch.
Hmmm… let me see if I’ve gotten this straight. In his last days in office, Donald Trump is “ending” America’s forever wars (as he long promised he would do) by leaving 2,500 American troops in Afghanistan, a similar number in Iraq, and continuing the air war across parts of the Greater Middle East and Africa. Take Somalia, where American troops have periodically been stationed since 1993. The latest secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, actually visited that country as November ended to thank the more than 700 U.S. troops involved in training and advising Somali forces there. He promised to withdraw
Yves here. A critical part of America’s permanent war footing is that Americans are kept almost entirely ignorant of the extent of our engagements, let alone that their main end product is nation breaking.
By Rebecca Gordon, who teaches at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes and is now at work on a new Dispatch book on the history of torture in the United States. Originally published at TomDispatch
It was the end of October 2001. Two friends, Max Elbaum and Bob Wing, had just dropped by. (Yes, children, believe it or not, people used to drop in on each other, maskless, once upon a time.) They had come to hang out with my partner Jan Adams and me. Among other things, Max wanted to get some instructions from fellow-runner Jan about taping his foot to ease the pain of plantar fasciitis. But it soon became clear that he and Bob had a bigger agenda for the evening. They were eager
NationofChange
Can we finally stop marching to disaster?
It was the end of October 2001. Two friends, Max Elbaum and Bob Wing, had just dropped by. (Yes, children, believe it or not, people used to drop in on each other, maskless, once upon a time.) They had come to hang out with my partner Jan Adams and me. Among other things, Max wanted to get some instructions from fellow-runner Jan about taping his foot to ease the pain of plantar fasciitis. But it soon became clear that he and Bob had a bigger agenda for the evening. They were eager to recruit us for a new project.
It was the end of October 2001. Two friends, Max Elbaum and Bob Wing, had just dropped by. (Yes, children, believe it or not, people used to drop in on each other, maskless, once upon a time.) They had come to hang out with my partner Jan Adams and me. Among other things, Max wanted to get some instructions from fellow-runner Jan about taping his foot to ease the pain of plantar fasciitis. But it soon became clear that he and Bob had a bigger agenda for the evening. They were eager to recruit us for a new project.
And so began
Did Al-Shabaab Attempt a 9/11-Style Aircraft Attack Targeting the United States?
A passenger plane in Handeda, Japan. (ykanazawa1999, https://flic.kr/p/bbbRXi; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
Disturbing news on the counterterrorism front this morning: The Justice Department has announced the extradition of Kenyan national Cholo Abdi Abdullah from the Philippines, in order to face charges stemming from an alleged 9/11-style plot to hijack and crash an aircraft. This story is notable (beyond the normal level for terrorism-related prosecutions) for several reasons.
1. Is al-Shabaab turning its focus toward operations inside the United States?
The Somalia-based terrorist group al-Shabaab which is deemed by the U.S. government to be an “associated force” of al-Qaeda and thus within the scope of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) has a long track record of conducting operations outside Somalia, but most of these attacks