ARTICLES
Volume 39 No. 4 - 2021
This article originally appeared in the print version of Women Against Military Madness Newsletter Vol 39, No 4, 2021.
by WAMM Newsletter Staff
Afghanistan: “Over the Horizon”
When it comes to inflicting miseries on innocent Afghan people, there’s plenty of blame to be shared…Yet, unquestionably, the warring party in Afghanistan with the most sophisticated weapons and seemingly endless access to funds has been the United States. Funds were spent not to lift Afghans to a place of security from which they might have worked to moderate Taliban rule, but to further frustrate them, beating down their hopes of future participatory governance with twenty years of war and brutal impoverishment. The war has been a prelude to the United States’ inevitable retreat and the return of a possibly more enraged and dysfunctional Taliban to rule over a shattered population.
The troop withdrawal negotiated by President Joe Biden and U.S. military officials is not a peace agreement. Rather, it signals the end of an occupation resulting from an unlawful invasion, and while troops are leaving, the Biden Administration is already laying plans for “over the horizon” drone surveillance, drone strikes, and “manned” aircraft strikes which could exacerbate and prolong the war.
Kathy Kelly, a longtime peace activist has been in Afghanistan many times throughout the years. See her article, “Reckoning and Reparations in Afghanistan,” The Progressive, July 15, 2021
Somalia: “Collective Defense”
The U.S. military was supposed to have pulled out of Somalia mid January of 2021, as announced by Trump. However, that doesn’t mean leaving the country. The U.S. military is stationed in adjacent countries and can still bomb Somalia as they did on July 20 and again on July 23. According to online news site, The Hill, U.S. Africa Command General Stephen Townsend claimed his own authority to strike under “collective defense”, meaning it’s conducted with partners veiled by “operational security.” The Pentagon claimed the bombing was done under the 9/ll Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) which gave the president the power to strike anywhere, anytime, ignoring the fact that the U.S. House of Representatives had recently voted to repeal the AUMF and that even the President wasn’t informed of the action. So evidently a general can make decisions to bomb, independent of any branch of government.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota questioned the idea of collective defense and asked that “strategy focus first and foremost on the security of the Somali people and the stability of the Somali state.”
– Newsletter staff