The Project for the New American Century Meets the Graveyard of Empires

In all the hand-wringing and recriminations over our defeat in Afghanistan, we might want to look back at how we got into this mess. It started a long time ago, but our efforts to organize the opposition to the Russian invasion took it into its modern madness. The "Mujahedeen" we organized morphed into the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda in the Middle East. Then we invaded Iraq in 1991 for spurious reasons, which set Osama bin Laden on his warpath against us.

What kicked it into high gear was the stolen election of 2000, which brought us George W. Bush, deserter and brain-damaged drug and alcohol addict. He looked the other way when warned of Al Qaeda's intention to attack the U.S. immanently, having other plans. His other plans can be summarized briefly as the grandiose conspiracy known as the Project for the New American Century. It was basically a plan for empire, and in true American fashion, it was to be an empire for profit, not for the people at large, but for a network of cronies.

 
So Bush ignored the warnings of an immanent attack, and we were attacked in an almost genius fashion. The plotters didn’t use bombs, armies, navies, or even chemical or biological agents. They boarded commercial jets, commandeered them, and used them to attack two of our tallest buildings and the Pentagon.

Bush, having ignored warnings of the attacks, had to do something to keep from being impeached and criminally prosecuted. It was easy. Blame someone else. He blamed the government of Afghanistan, the very people we had trained two decades earlier to battle the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. And Al Qaeda, the Arab legatees of the international force we trained in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was invaded in October, 2001, and we have been there ever since. The effort was of course doomed to failure, and that failure is now complete. The real purpose – to save Bush’s skin – was accomplished, but the official, phony reason to capture and kill Osama bin Laden and eliminate the exaggerated threat from Al Qaeda was delayed, put on hold. The incursion accomplished another purpose for the Bush gang, though. It provided the springboard for the next invasion, Iraq, done for equally phony reasons.

The Bush criminal organization was full of hubris, full of themselves with their war madness. One adviser, Richard Perle, bragged that "If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now." The Project for a New American Century has met the graveyard of empires. Maybe there will be a song about that. We never had good intentions in Afghanistan, so why start now? All Biden talks about is "American interests." So vulgar. So shallow. Our stupid empire is becoming its own graveyard.

The goal of capturing and/or killing bin Laden was sort of accomplished years later by President Barack Obama, with the assassination of bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. This was done in a curious and suspicious fashion, using helicopters and Navy Seals to sneak into Pakistan and kill bin Laden in the dead of night like a SWAT team, with a cheering section of President Obama and his national security team watching from the "War Room." Bin Laden’s body was dumped into the ocean, removing all physical evidence of his killing, so we don’t know what really happened. Like Bush before him, Obama could say "Mission Accomplished."

Though the Project for the New American Century has been rendered to the dustbin of history, and the idea of an American empire is a cosmic joke that is no longer funny, We still have some vestiges of our past shenanigans lingering around the planet – Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, Latin America, Africa, and the vast opportunity cost of what we didn’t do here, but could have, to make this country a decent, sustainable, thriving place to live.

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I wrote something in 2001 warning against the pending invasion of Afghanistan. I wrote it in response to "leftist" turned "rightist" firebrand David Horowitz, who took out a full page ad in the University of Wisconsin's Badger Herald, imploring students not to protest Bush II's war plans. It of course had little effect, but it was worth a try. Hoping to stop any madness is always worth a try.

R.I.P. Nanci Griffith. Such a voice. This collection of songs on the David Letterman show is priceless. Here she is doing a Rolling Stones song. This is her best-known song.

R.I.P. Charlie Watts. He was the perfect drummer for the Stones. Here's an example. Here's another. And, of course, this.

R.I.P. Don Everly. Hearing this song makes me feel like I'm 13 again.

Here's a song the grandchildren of the Projectors of the New American Century might sing. Or sort of this. Maybe this.