America once again participates in its favourite past-time of bombing countries that can in no way retaliate. There is a word that describes people who act that way, but the name alludes me.
It’s not just Trump or republicans for whom this is an engaging “sport”, as the last few administrations have bombed the “proverbial” out of Afghanistan. Worth noting: The Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone, although distributed unevenly across seven countries (and of course Afghanistan received some of that “rainfall”. The seven countries he did bomb were Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia and Trump’s national Muslim ban included 5 of these countries.
This time, however, America set about to destroy a facility they built in Afghanistan. At least you can assume that the MOAB bomb was dropped with pin point accuracy to cause the most damage. Especially since the CIA would have likely retained the blueprints of the facility they built in collaboration with Osama Bin Laden. Spending $314M building a bomb – that by itself cost $16M each – is an expensive way to destroy a constructed facility which had cost untold millions in the first place.
All this for a country that can’t afford the “horrendous expense” inherent in serving meals to the elderly, as Trump decides that Meals on Wheels is a burden the economy can’t afford. As many a pundit has observed, money to conduct war is always in plentiful supply. For example, here in Australia, $195B on defence is affordable, but increases in spending on health, welfare and education are not. The hypocrisy and bullying of nations previously beaten into submission to the point that – because of America – a violent caliphate arises called Daesh/ISIS. It has repeatedly been said “wars against states which do not pose an imminent threat to America’s national security increases the threat of terrorism“. Having done that, it doesn’t help if you start funding and supplying equipment to these terrorists as America did for a long time for ISIS.
The shock discovery for the American senate, for example, that Toyota appeared to be supplying ISIS with massive numbers of Toyota vehicles, was ultimately revealed to be sourced from the America US state Dept dropping crate loads of vehicles into Syria. Without America, ISIS would never have been as well armed, trained or supplied. It would have died as a movement in the Middle East without the American military education and equipment to support them. Presently America is bombing their creations in both the insurgency they funded and the facilities they build and funded, yet they apparently can’t spare to resolve the poverty of their own country.
Not unlike, in an obscure manner, Gerhard Richter taking to 60 of his photo-based paintings with a box cutter and matches. Odd coincidental numbering, but wasn’t that the number of Tomahawk missiles fired at Syria recently at an Airfield that was operational 24 hours later? OK, OK, I am stretching my analogues to the point of ridiculousness but perhaps my weird segues will induce you to remember the facts. The truth is that neither America or Australia should be putting air-force, troops, or bombs into the region. That is presuming we want to establish peace in the middle-east, which admittedly is probably an invalid assumption.
It is small wonder that when Wikileaks revealed this rampant corruption and hypocrisy by America that the CIA director, Mike Pompeo, branded them a “hostile intelligence service“. Odd change of face as Mike was apparently a fan when the information Wikileaks supplied suited his agenda. But for now, Julian Assange is the “bad guy”? Really? So what does that make America in the light of everything else!?