Have America's Fool's Errands in Afghanistan and Iraq Made Us Less Safe?

This blog has long been a critic of America's fool's errands in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Both misadventures have helped bankrupt the nation and have thrown away thousands of American lives needlessly (for the record, I have a son-in-law still recovering from wounds suffered in Afghanistan over 5 months ago).  One need only check out any major newspaper on any given day to see stories of carnage, bombings, utter, and he was one of the lucky ones corruption and religious extremism continuing to occur if not thrive.  But as an op-ed in the Washington Post by a former Marine who served in Afghanistan notes, these wars of American hubris may well have made us less safe in the long run.  Here are op-ed highlights:

This past week, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly told investigators that he and his brother set off bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in part because of their opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Marine who fought in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2010, the news made me wonder: Had my war brought the horrors of battle home?

I deployed to Afghanistan believing my presence in that country would help stop attacks such as Boston’s from happening. But instead, my war has spilled over, striking the city where my 22-year-old brother goes to school and where my mom, until recently, felt perfectly safe eating lunch outdoors.

The Tsarnaev brothers aren’t the first alleged terrorists to cite U.S. military intervention in other countries as a reason for targeting civilians, and they won’t be the last. Despite our best efforts and valor, I wonder, have America’s wars made the homeland less safe? Sure, we’ve killed and captured thousands of radicals who wanted to harm Americans. But in doing so, have we created more?

It wasn’t always easy to justify serving in a war that has devolved from its initial aim of ousting the Taliban and al-Qaeda to a nation-building effort that appeared to have come 10 years too late. The conflict has dragged on for more than a decade, becoming increasingly unpopular after years of mixed results and no clear definition of victory.

Some of my best friends came home in flag-draped coffins, and no one ever convincingly explained to me why and what for. On a recent winter afternoon, after Afghan President Hamid Karzai delivered an upbeat speech at Georgetown on the future of Afghanistan, I had the chance to ask him what the sacrifice of my brothers-in-arms meant to him and his countrymen.

The answer I received was a diatribe. Karzai cited Sept. 11, 2001, and America’s global war on terror but never directly answered my question. I would have liked a “thank you” or a sentence with “greatly appreciated” in it. But there was not a hint of gratitude in his response.

While I was deployed, I went to bed at night believing that I was protecting the homeland because coming after me and my fellow Marines was a much easier commute for those so hell-bent on killing Americans. But that argument no longer makes sense if my war has inspired enemies at home.

The brother who stands accused of packing pressure cookers with low-grade explosives and ball bearings is an American citizen. My own countryman was apparently responsible for filling my mom with deep hatred, for killing an 8-year-old boy and three others, for attacking my home town.

But my war failed to help those people at the finish line. As those bombs exploded, my war came home.

Sadly, I agree with the author.  Given the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who have died because of these wars, often through deliberate action as well as gross negligence by American military personnel, I suspect that we have created thousands more jihadist.  And some of them are right here in America.  These wars were caused by hubris and greed and those who took America to war based on lies remain unpunished.  Their innocent victims are both here in America and in Afghanistan and Iraq.

GOP and Anti-Marriage Forces Show Increased Willingness to Use Violence

While Teabagistan is going berserk and demanding that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect, be tried as an enemy combatant and that his rights as a U.S. citizen be stripped away, some members of the GOP and certainly some of the anti-gay crowd and their allies in France in particular seem more and more willing to threaten, if not actually use, physical violence.  Illustrative of the growing GOP insanity comes from the Benton County, Arkansas GOP. Political Wire has the money quote:

"We need to let those who will come in the future to represent us [know] that we are serious. The 2nd amendment means nothing unless those in power believe you would have no problem simply walking up and shooting them if they got too far out of line and stopped responding as representatives. It seems that we are unable to muster that belief in any of our representatives on a state or federal level, but we have to have something, something costly, something that they will fear that we will use if they step out of line."   .  .  .  .   

I hope that we can do something to make sure the lesson learned by those who represent us in the future is that bad things will happen to you if you follow that precedent.

That's right, gun nuts are supposed to simply shoot members of Congress if they don't knuckle under to the demands for no restrictions whatsoever on gun ownership.  The quote comes from the April newsletter of the Benton County, Arkansas Republican Party.   In France, the allies of the National Organization for Marriage - whom Brian Brown has openly praised - have taken this mindset and put it in action.  During the anti-gay demonstrations yesterday, French police were forced to use tear gas and nightstick like batons  against the "godly Christian" crowd.  In addition, a gay man in Nice, France was savagely beaten and rendered unconscious (see photo below) and a literal death threat was made against the leader of the French Parliament. Joe My God has this on some of the violence:

At a Manif Pour Tous protest on Friday night, anti-gay activists battled French riot police who used tear gas and batons on some of the crowd. One of the protesters in the scuffle is reportedly a Catholic priest with the anti-semitic Society of St Pius X, who runs the church outside of which the melee occurred.

To date, not the first word of criticism or condemnation has been uttered by NOM.   One can only wonder what may be in store from the far right if the U.S. Supreme Court rules broadly on a constitutional right to gay marriage.  Remember, it is not the liberals - or socialists as the GOP likes to call us - are not the ones resorting to and advocating violence.

GOP Leaders Admit Boston Bombing Suspect Cannot Be Tried In Military Tribunal

A prior post noted how the ever disgusting Palmetto Queen, Senator Lindsey Graham wanted suspected Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tried as an enemy combatant and tried before a military tribunal.   Never mind that doing so would violate federal law which prohibits American citizens from being tried by military tribunals.  Graham's principal concern in proposing a violation of federal law was most likely to pander to the knuckle dragging GOP base (see image above) in his home state where he will be up for reelection in 2014.  Sadly, such behavior is all too typical of the supposed leaders of today's GOP.  When in doubt, engage in demagoguery.  The law?  Well it just doesn't matter if ignoring it excites the foulest elements of the GOP base.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the GOP admission that it cannot do what would gain points with the white supremacists and immigrant haters of the party base.  Here are highlights:

On Friday, while the manhunt for suspected Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev continued, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) published a series of tweets suggesting that he wanted to revive the George W. Bush-era debates about whether terrorism suspects can be denied many constitutional rights and tried by a military tribunal. In a statement Graham released yesterday with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Rep. Pete King (R-NY), however, the four conservatives acknowledge that shunting Tsarnaev into a military commission is not a lawful opinion. Tsarnaev is an American, and federal law does not permit U.S. citizens to be tried under the military commissions system.

On CNN this morning, Graham articulated what now appears to be the conservative position on how Tsarnaev should be treated:

GRAHAM: This man, in my view, should be designated as a potential enemy combatant and we should be allowed to question him for intelligence gathering purposes to find out about future attacks and terrorist organizations that may exist that he has knowledge of, and that evidence cannot be used against him in trial. That evidence is used to protect us as a nation. Any time we question him about his guilt or innocence, he’s entitled to his Miranda rights and a lawyer, but we have the right under our law — I’ve been a military lawyer for 30 years — to gather intelligence from enemy combatants. And a citizen can be an enemy combatant.

He is not eligible for military commission trial. I wrote the military commission in 2009. He cannot go to military commission.

Graham’s repeated insistence that Tsarnaev be treated as an “enemy combatant” remains concerning. In his statement with McCain, Ayotte and King, Graham claims that people like Tsarnaev can be “held as enemy combatants” — a view which suggests they could be held indefinitely even if they are not convicted by a court of law. Ultimately, however, the question of what would happen if Tsarnaev were not lawfully convicted by a civilian court is likely to be moot, as the evidence against him is very strong.

[T]here is a price if law enforcement or intelligence agents subject Tsarnaev to further interrogation without reading him his rights or permitting him to invoke his rights to remain silent or to have an attorney present. No information obtained in violation of Miranda can be used against Tsarnaev at his trial. Nevertheless, because the evidence against Tsarnaev is already so strong, even before he is questioned, it is likely that the FBI and CIA will be willing to pay this price in order to question this suspect without an attorney present.

I suspect that Graham accomplished his goal of satiating the extremists in the South Carolina GOP base.   Meanwhile, since I find Graham so whining and nasty in general, I could not resist this image I happened upon via MAD Magazine:

Yuck!!!