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Former National Security Advisor and literal psychopath John Bolton has a new opinion piece out in Foreign Policy titled “‘Bring the Troops Home’ Is a Dream, Not a Strategy“, which should surprise no one and enrage everyone at the same time. The fact that this reptile continues to be elevated on mainstream platforms after consistently revealing himself to be a bloodthirsty liar is all the evidence you need that we are trapped inside a globe-spanning empire fueled by human corpses.

John Bolton has pushed for deranged acts of mass military slaughter at every opportunity. He not only remains one of the only people in the world to continually insist that the Iraq invasion was a great idea, but has actually argued that the destabilization and chaos caused by the invasion cannot be attributed to Bush’s war because you can’t prove that “everything that followed from the fall of Saddam Hussein followed inevitably, solely, and unalterably from the decision to overthrow him.” There are harrowing accounts of Bolton threatening, assaulting and intimidating anyone with less power than him if they got in his way; he once threatened to harm the children of former OPCW Director General Jose Bustani because Bustani was interfering in attempts to manufacture consent for the Iraq war.

In an even remotely sane civilization, such a creature would be driven from every town he entered until he is forced to crawl into a cave for the rest of his miserable life eating bats alone in the darkness. Instead he is given the mainstream spotlight whenever he wishes while truthful and intelligent anti-imperialists are relegated to fringe blogs and podcasts. This would not be the case if we did not live in an empire that is held together by war and war propaganda.

And now look at me, off on a tangent before my article has even begun.

Anyway, in his Foreign Policy article Bolton argues that withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan would be a mistake, because it would lead to the nation being overrun by ISIS and al Qaeda.

“If the Taliban return to power in all or most of the country, the almost universal view in Washington today is the near certainty that al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and others will resume using Afghanistan as a base of operations,” Bolton writes.

These are very strange words to have to type, but, John Bolton is right. There is a consensus within the hub of the US empire that that is what will happen. You can tell because that’s what the empire’s media have been blaring all year.

In a March article from Vox titled “The best case against withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan“, a senior fellow from the military industrial complex-funded think tank Center for a New American Security named Lisa Curtis explains that withdrawing troops can lead to a disastrous terrorist insurgency that will only result in having to send them back again.

“Let’s look at Iraq,” says Curtis. “When the US withdrew troops, ISIS rose and took over Mosul in 2014. We had to put troops back into Iraq and in even greater numbers, and we had to redouble our efforts to stem the rise of ISIS.”

Bloomberg article from this month titled “Biden’s Afghan Pullout Is Risky Politics and Geopolitics” conveys the same message:

“And once the U.S. is out of Afghanistan, on grounds that it needs to focus on other priorities, it will inevitably become harder to summon the top-level attention and political will needed to stay on top of emerging threats. This is what happened in Iraq in 2013-2014: Midlevel officials were warning, publicly, that ISIS was on the march, but only after a third of the country had fallen did the issue reach the top of the Barack Obama administration’s agenda.”

A Financial Times article a few days back titled “Biden’s risky Afghanistan withdrawal” says the same:

“Biden himself is well aware of the risks. It was he, in 2011, who took charge of America’s final pullout from Iraq. Within two years US forces were sucked back into the region by the rapid spread of Isis across Iraq and Syria. Then, as now, the temptation to proclaim an end to America’s ‘forever wars’ trumped the benefits of retaining a US footprint to insure against new deterioration.”

We hear this same narrative over and over and over again whenever there’s talk about withdrawing US troops from a region, whether it be Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria: this is going to be Obama’s disastrous Iraq withdrawal all over again. Obama withdrew the troops in the early part of his term, but by 2014 Iraq had become so overrun by Islamic State that they needed to return to fight them off.

This is because it has been Beltway Church doctrine ever since the rise of ISIS that Obama was wrong to withdraw troops from Iraq, and it is Beltway Church doctrine because there was a frenetic push to indoctrinate that narrative into Washington policymakers from day one.

As soon as it became feasible we had malignant warmongers like Dick Cheney penning op-eds about how bad and wrong the troop withdrawal was, effectively screaming “SEE??? It’s ALWAYS wrong to end wars!” to ensure that a reduced global military presence never becomes the new normal for the US empire. From that day onwards Obama’s Iraq withdrawal has been used to hammer home this narrative that withdrawing troops from anywhere is “risky” and irresponsible. There was a manic, almost orgasmic delight among warmongers at the fact that at last, at long long last, they finally had some evidence that scaling back military expansionism is bad.

The problem? It’s bullshit.

It’s bullshit for a couple of reasons, firstly because the US is not withdrawing from Afghanistan; it’s just privatizing the occupation. Mercenaries, special forces, CIA operatives and airstrikes will remain. And that’s assuming there’s even a troop withdrawal at all; as we sit here the US is actually beefing up its military presence in anticipation of Taliban retaliations for remaining in Afghanistan beyond the agreed-upon May 1 deadline, the logic I suppose being something like “We need to add forces to Afghanistan before we leave Afghanistan because we have to kill all the people in Afghanistan who want us to leave Afghanistan before we leave.” In any case the warmongers aren’t actually worried they’ll lose control of Afghanistan, they’re just worried about people becoming too peace-happy; they threw all these melodramatic fits when Trump sought withdrawals that never happened as well.

Secondly, it’s bullshit because the warmongers are lying about why the US re-entered Iraq in 2014.

The US didn’t re-enter Iraq in 2014 to stop ISIS, the US re-entered Iraq in 2014 to stop Qasem Soleimani from stopping ISIS.

This is not a secret. In 2014 the commander of Iran’s Quds Force was already helping to beat back Islamic State in Iraq, and Iraqi officials reminded the world after his assassination last year at the hands of the Trump administration that Soleimani had played a key role in early victories in that fight. Iraq’s Sunni leaders had already been openly saying that they would turn to Iran for help if the US didn’t take the lead in defeating ISIS, and Iran was already demonstrating a willingness to put Soleimani’s notoriously effective fighting forces to work on that endeavor.

If the United States had been a normal country, and not the hub of a globe-spanning empire bent on indefinite global domination, the obvious choice in that moment would have been to let the people in that part of the world sort out their own affairs in whatever way seems best to them. Because the United States is the hub of an empire that cannot tolerate the idea of another power being dominant in an oil-rich region it seeks to control for geostrategic reasons, allowing Iran and Iraq to become allied that closely was unthinkable.

So, as usual, the narrative that westerners were fed about US troops being in the Middle East to “fight terrorists” was a lie. It was about geostrategic control of the world and its resources, just like it always is.

The so-called “war on terror” has never been about defeating violent extremist factions, it’s been about keeping the nations in the region from relying on Iran and its allies to defeat them, and about justifying endless military expansionism in a key geostrategic part of the world. It’s been about ensuring the US power alliance is the dominant military force in the Middle East, not Iran and other unabsorbed powers like Russia and China.

Qasem Soleimani was the best argument against the “war on terror”, and was the leader best suited for bringing the region out of danger from violent extremist factions like ISIS and al Qaeda.

That’s why he is dead now.

The world does not need the US empire to police it. People can sort out their own problems around the world if they were only allowed to. Iraq and its neighbors can sort out their own problems, as can Afghanistan and its neighbors. The only violence at risk of coming toward America and its easily-defended borders is the direct result of the US empire’s relentless aggression and belligerence that has killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century. There is no reason we can’t all just let each other be, collaborating and trading in peace without all these invasions, occupations and toppling of sovereign governments.

The empire’s need to control the world’s affairs is like a macrocosm of the human ego, which also exists out of a fear that something bad will happen if I can’t remain in control of it all. But the world is forever out of control, and attempts to reign it in can only lead to disorder and suffering. Our species will not survive if we cannot collectively learn to relinquish the impulse to control, both within and without, and let life dance to its own beat on this beautiful blue world.

_____________________

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33 responses to “Why The Main Argument Against Withdrawing US Troops Is Bogus”

  1. I agree with most of this article, and I agree with Caitlin’s assessment of John Bolton’s (lack of) sanity, But I don’t, somehow, think she is really suggesting the proper remedy for Bolton’s madness. He seems to me to be quite batty enough, already, without him also being made to eat bats. If he did so, we would probably, then, have even more dangerously mutated bat viruses, passed through ‘national security’ sector mammalian intermediate metabolisms, then let loose on the global public, than we probably have already!

  2. Erdoghan is making a SH!TLOAD through the Euro/China rail link and ( rail freight is up seven fold since 2019 ) has also signed up for the BRI – making him more of a Pariah !

    Anyway you cut it – the Rothschild banking cartel is FINISHED and the $US goes with it !

    This is what Turkey gets for ‘playing’ both sides – like they have done ever since the Crimean War in 1853 ! Whenever there is trouble in the world – you merely have to check this list !!

    https://green-bri.org/countries-of-the-belt-and-road-initiative-bri

  3. Quote, “The Taliban will overun Afghanistan”. No shit ! Of course the FACT, that the Taliban consists of indigenous Afghan people seems to be ignored. Such people ARE entitled to self Government if they choose. (The same crap we refused to allow the Vietnamese people’s)That also is FACTUAL. So why feed the LIE, that somehow the Taliban are an foreign group ? As for ISIS, there was no ISIS in Afghanistan before the U.S.’s war of choice against Syria. Let’s not forget who it was who trained armed and supplied these blood thirsty criminals to do their dirty work, and STILL DO, to this day. Yes, we had Al Quaeda, (also another U.S. creation )who were given sanctuary in Afghanistan, which the Talban stated, they were quiet happy to hand over to the U.S. Authorities IF they were given the ALLEGED evidence to sustain the claim being made by the U.S. that they were responsible for Sept 11. Needless to say, that ALLEGED evidence, has to this very day, not seen the light of day, IF it even exists, which I for one, serious doubt.
    So, at the end of the day, we are being TOLD to accept that the Taliban together with ISIS are a threat to Governance, (a puppet Government installed by OCCUPATION troops mind you ) thus U.S. military must remain in Afghanistan for the good of the Afghanistan peoples.
    Well if people believe this crap, we are all doomed.

  4. War is big business and the most effective means of wasting $trillions$ so as not to waste all that wealth and resources on actually improving the society from which that wealth is essentially being stolen. Such appropriated funds can benefit a smaller number of people and gaurantee them an opulent life style. War and discord are easy goals and assure that business will always be good. Heaven forbid that populations should find out what miraculous things could occur in their societies were such wealth and energy be devoted to the betterment of those nations populations.

  5. John Bolton is simply a kill them all and let God sort them out type person. He is a firm believer in the peace of the dead. His philosophy is dead men cause no problems for the empire. His might is right agenda is very popular in many military circles. If it wasnt for that riduculous mustache, he could have been president with Madeline Albright as his VP. Per wikipedia….In the context of the 1998 Iraq campaign, Albright expressed another justification, saying, “But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”

  6. One additional bullshit, misleading thing that Lisa Curtis said was that, when we withdrew troops, ISIS moved in. She completely failed the CIA was responsible for the creation of ISIS, that it recruited people to ISIS and trained and armed ISIS with sole purpose that ISIS would defeat alQueda and drive it from Iraq. The fools at the CIA never considered that they were creating an enemy far worse than alQueda. It’s amazing how stupid they think we are and that even Stevie Wonder can see that what they do and say is both dangerous and bullshit propaganda of the highest order.

  7. TheRoadKing101 Avatar
    TheRoadKing101

    The middle eastern occupations are not for empire or US benefit whatsoever. Dig a little bit deeper.

    1. Absoluetly spot on. If only people did, DIG DEEPER. The whole concept of weakening nations once capable of stalwart self defense, is to ensure they cannot defend themselves against the expansion of the Greater Israel. End of story.

  8. You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning… he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

    1. Nonsense!!! John Bolton is a typical Christian evangelical. Kill crush and enslave any and all who dispute (HA HA HA) their version of the word God!!

  9. The anti-terrorism rationale further falls apart when one considers that the U.S. has for years supported terrorists in Syria and continues to do so right up to the present day. Euphemistically, such folks are referred to as “moderate rebels” or “the resistance,” but the truth is that they are head-chopping jihadists. From the American policy leadership’s point of view, sowing chaos in Syria is a good thing, because it makes Israel happy and Russia unhappy. From the jihadists point of view, they are acting in the name of jihad. It’s an alliance of convenience that puts the lie to any and all U.S. claims of fighting terrorism.

  10. Taking a further chance on commenting, with a new understanding: even if 99% of everything within and relating is supported, no hard criticisms (regardless of validity) will be allowed on the 1%. With that in a going forward mind: Then: “John Bolton has pushed for deranged acts of mass military slaughter at every opportunity” and it was even revealed that he “threatened to harm the children of former OPCW Director General Jose Bustani because Bustani was interfering in attempts to manufacture consent for the Iraq war.” Now: Does the Deep State care if any revealing voices remain? Yes, and they will be targeted – no matter how obscure.

  11. Philip Mollica Avatar
    Philip Mollica

    As a start, what if we insist in our own corner of the world to stop calling them wars, and start calling them what they are… occupations.
    A subtle, but important distinction.
    The Occupation of Afghanistan, the Occupation of Iraq, etc.
    This is more in line with the Imperialist American government and military.
    War is a cop-out and a narrative. Let’s not give them any more ammunition.

    1. I prefer ‘the war on Libya’ and ‘the war on Yemen’, etc, as not all these wars are occupations.

      1. No – but they ARE murder justified by FUCKING lies !!

        SH!T is about to get REAL !!

        Here come the Putin SANCTIONS !!

        I doubt the ZIO/US will be going to the space station again !

        https://en.mehrnews.com/news/172503/Putin-orders-preparing-list-of-hostile-states-for-sanctions

        1. Why do you think the US won’t be going to the ISS again?

    2. The worst part is many of the US troops occupying are from the bible belt and have been taught from a young age that the people they occupy are evil because they don’t follow Jesus.

  12. How many George Floyd’s has John Bolton killed? How many George Floyd’s has the US killed in Afghanistan?
    https://redflag.org.au/article/how-west-destroyed-afghanistan

  13. Julius Skoolafish Avatar
    Julius Skoolafish

    Caitlin, small world. Earlier this evening someone shared the following 60 Minutes abomination on another site and I was compelled to look up Tony Kevin and send him a message of support and solidarity – only to find that he is an old acquaintance of yours.
    .
    https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/11/25/author-event-tony-kevin-in-conversation-with-caitlin-johnstone/
    .
    .
    • Is Vladimir Putin the mastermind behind Russia’s global web of poisoning? | Under Investigation
    .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpMNoeIuEys
    .
    I am bewildered at how ‘humanity’ has arrived at these depths. What is it we are trying to achieve by basing our ‘reality’ on lies?
    .
    PS … Apparently John Bolton is very popular on the Gatestone Institute.

  14. An asylum for the criminally insane, the military intelligence complex is a breeder reactor that continually creates its own enemies as in the creation of al qaeda and ISIS. John “Yosemite Sam” Bolton is the deadly incarnation of a cartoon villain.

  15. Thomas Golden, Ph.D. Avatar
    Thomas Golden, Ph.D.

    The Taliban are Afghans. They are by blood Afghans. At the onset, country loving students dying for their country. They love their country. Robert E. Lee was a citizen of the United States. Not a foreigner.

  16. Syria has started fighting back – Israel has NO clothes – the Iron Dome is as fake as a three dollar bill !

    https://syrianews.cc/huge-explosion-in-al-quds-israel-bombs-syria-syria-bombs-israel-israel-stunned/

    1. Also this: “Iranian vessels carrying oil and wheat supplies to Syrian ports will henceforth be escorted through the Mediterranean after exiting the Suez Canal.”
      https://www.debka.com/russian-fleet-to-secure-sanctions-busting-syria-bound-iranian-oil-shipments/

  17. american mic and intellegence agencies have used religiously brainwashed muslims for geostrategical gain in chechnya, yugoslavia, afghanistan, iraq, syria, libya and china (…). i would not exclude that they would succeed in doing that again in afghanistan. isis did not ’emerge’, they were put there and egged on by the mic and ic. uyghur muslims didn’t radicalize out of the blue, american intelligence poured money into it. etc … the taliban and neighbouring countries should be on the lookout for operatives and contractors fueling extremist terrorism after the official american cohorts leave.

    1. All the BS about the Uighur’s in China – here is the TRUTH !

      The western media is just out of control CORRUPT !!

      International trade using the $US dollar has dropped from over 90% in 2015 to around 50% now – it is happening at WARP speed !!

      This is why they have mRNA de-population Gene therapy parading as a VACCINE !

      https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-04-02/The-war-in-the-shadows-Challenges-of-fighting-terrorism-in-Xinjiang-Z7AhMWRPy0/index.html

      1. Where are those figures for international trade from?

        1. And why would the USA and Israel be trying to depopulate their own countries, leaving others to use different vaccines?

          1. An interesting silence from someone usually so eager to post.

  18. Bolton writes of the danger of al Qaeda returning to Afghanistan, ignoring the fact they now control a large area of Syria, with tacit Western backing. And did the September 11 2001 attacks on the USA emanate from Afghanistan? Much of the planning took place in Germany, while the hijackers learned how to fly planes in the US itself.

    I do agree with Bolton when he says, “The basic national security goal that all U.S. leaders must pursue is to define their country’s strategic interests and how to protect them.” I just can’t see how perpetual war is in the interest of the USA, or anyone else.

    1. The 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by the Pentagram and Mossad – I thought everyone with a functioning BRAIN knew that ???

      The most powerful military in the world at the time – couldn’t stop a few Arabs with boxcutters – don’t make me FUCKING laugh !

      And the Pentagon stood down the ENTIRE US AIR FORCE that day !

      Construction began on the Pentagon on 9/11 – 1941 – sixty years later ( to the day ) they celebrated their jackboot on the face of ALL Americans !

      1. There you have it. After all these years and the massive EVIDENCE, or lack thereof, we still have people accepting the bullshit narrative that a bunch of terrorists (U.S. trained and supplied ) hiding in a cave in Afghanistan were capable of attacking the country, which claims to be the mightiest military on the planet, with massive resources and technological resources at it’s finger tips, was INCAPABLE of protecting it’self from these guys ????????? THEY STILL BELIEVE THIS CRAP ? No wonder they can shove dna altering shit into our veins. If people still believe all that crap, we really are doomed.

  19. At their first meeting, former U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis told John Bolton: “I’ve heard that you’re actually the devil incarnate and I wanted to meet you.” (DuckDuckGo it, or see this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/Jd0fVREENzM.) I think he was joking. Right?

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