the world will never forget this twenty-five-year history written in the blood of four point five million innocent people.
Imagine a dark, air-conditioned room in the middle of the Nevada desert. A twenty-two-year-old American soldier sits there, sipping coffee while staring intently at a monitor screen. On the screen in front of him, thousands of miles away, a peaceful wedding gathering is taking place in Yemen.
The soldier simply presses a single button, and in the blink of an eye, forty innocent people are turned to ashes. Then he calmly takes another sip of his coffee. This is not an action scene from a Hollywood movie. It has been the daily routine of the American War on Terror over the last twenty-five years.
Do you have any idea how many people lost their lives in this twenty-five-year war? Ten thousand, twenty thousand, or maybe a hundred thousand? No, the actual number will send a cold chill down your spine. The latest research from the Costs of War project at Brown University shows that at least four point five to four point seven million people have died in this war since 2001.
Yes, you heard that right. More than four point five million lives were erased from this earth forever. Now the question is, why and how did the world's self-proclaimed defenders of human rights carry out such a massive massacre?
Today, let us dive deep into this twenty-five-year history written in blood. The story begins on September 11, 2001. Nineteen members of Al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes and launched devastating attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon. Nearly three thousand American citizens died in those attacks, shocking the entire world. Right after that, a dangerous military decision was made behind closed doors at the White House. Just a few days after the event, standing before the United States Congress, then-President George W. Bush made a proud and historic announcement.
George W. Bush declared back then that our war on terror begins with Al-Qaeda, but it does not end there, and it will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated. This single statement from Bush effectively signed the death warrants of millions of people across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
The first victim was Afghanistan, a land of mountains and deserts. On October 7, 2001, waves of American bomber planes took to the skies over Afghanistan, launching Operation Enduring Freedom.
Within a few weeks, the Taliban government fell. But the real game was just beginning, because a war that was supposed to end in a few months ended up lasting for twenty whole years. According to the Brown University report, one hundred and seventy-six thousand people died in direct combat on Afghan soil alone.
On top of that, hundreds of thousands of innocent Afghan women and children died from starvation and lack of medical care. Before the war, sixty-two percent of Afghans faced severe food shortages, but after the war, that number jumped to ninety-two percent. They literally turned the entire country into a burning pile of ruins.
Do you know how this Afghan war ended? Just like in the Vietnam War, American forces were forced to pack up and flee Kabul under the cover of night. In August 2021, the world watched in disbelief as American troops hurriedly packed their bags. The puppet government they spent twenty years and trillions of dollars building collapsed like a house of cards in just a few days.
At Kabul airport, we saw desperate people trying to escape by clinging to airplane wheels, falling from the sky to their deaths. Was this the example of twenty years of democracy?
After Afghanistan, America turned its greedy gaze toward Iraq's vast oil reserves. But Al-Qaeda was not there, so what excuse would they use to attack? This is where one of the biggest state frauds in modern history began. The CIA and the Bush administration began telling lies day in and day out, claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell even stood before the United Nations, holding up a small vial and claiming it was a biological weapon. Yet today, the whole world knows that all of it was a complete lie.
On March 19, 2003, without caring for international law, American and British forces launched a massive military invasion of Iraq. Under the name Shock and Awe, designed to paralyze the enemy through terror, the skies of the Iraqi capital Baghdad burned red day and night with relentless bombings.
Reports from international news outlets like Al Jazeera and RT estimate that around three hundred and fifteen thousand people died directly in the Iraq war. From the looting of the National Museum of Iraq to the horrific torture inflicted on prisoners at Abu Ghraib, it surpassed the dark ages of history. You surely remember those terrifying photographs from Abu Ghraib where dogs were unleashed on naked prisoners.
But what did America actually gain by killing so many people? Let me share a very shocking and hidden piece of information behind the scenes. Do you know who the main mastermind behind this terrifying Iraq war really was? It was then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who, right before the war, was the CEO of a multinational corporation named Halliburton. Amazingly, after Iraq was completely destroyed, this very company, Halliburton, received multi-billion-dollar exclusive contracts to supply military equipment and rebuild the country!
In other words, on one hand, they bombed and destroyed towns belonging to innocent people, and on the other hand, they filled their own pockets under the guise of cleaning up the rubble. This is the absolute dirtiest and most shameless form of capitalist imperialism.
Was it just ground war? No, then began a new, invisible terror of drones and airstrikes. Under the Obama administration, this drone warfare practically turned into a video game. American Predator drones roamed the skies over Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria like angels of death.
According to data from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, America carried out at least four hundred and twenty-three drone strikes in Pakistan alone since 2004. These strikes killed nearly four thousand people, about one thousand of whom were women and children. In Yemen, eight hundred and fifty-three people died across one hundred and eighty-six strikes, while hundreds more were killed in Somalia.
The most horrific part is that everyone killed in these drone strikes was labeled a terrorist in Pentagon records without any proof. The US military used repulsive tactics called signature strikes and double taps, where a second bomb was dropped on the rescuers who rushed in to help those wounded by the first strike.
Then in 2011, the so-called Arab Spring arrived in the Middle East, which was largely a planned instability backed by the West. An armed uprising began against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and NATO jumped at this opportunity. Reports from Amnesty International state that under the pretext of protecting civilians, the Western military alliance NATO launched nine thousand seven hundred airstrikes in Libya in just seven months!
Do you know what Libya looks like today? Once the richest and most prosperous African nation, it is now controlled by various armed groups, where human slave trading happens in broad daylight.
Gaddafi essentially wanted to introduce a pan-African gold dinar, which would directly challenge the dominance of the Western dollar. For this exact crime, he was brutally murdered, and the entire nation of Libya was destroyed. Later in 2014, under the pretext of operations against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, American carpet bombing began once again.
According to Airwars, over thirteen thousand civilians lost their lives to American bombs in this campaign alone. Ancient cities like Aleppo and Raqqa in Syria are now nothing more than piles of concrete rubble. And right now, American troops occupy Syria's largest oil fields, which is nothing short of open international robbery.
Now let us look at the numbers from a different perspective. Do you know how many people were displaced during these twenty-five years of war? The Costs of War project indicates that nearly thirty-eight million people across Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria were forced to flee their homes. The world has not seen a refugee crisis of this scale since the Second World War. If you look at the life of Ayesha, a forty-year-old Afghan woman, this cruelty becomes painfully clear.
She was forced to leave her home for the first time after the American invasion in 2002. After living in miserable conditions in Iran for eleven years, she finally returned to Afghanistan last year. The root cause behind the drowning of thousands of children like Aylan Kurdi in the Mediterranean Sea is this very warmongering policy of the United States. Every war has two sides.
America destroyed these nations, but did they escape completely unharmed themselves? More than eight hundred thousand American soldiers served in Afghanistan, and by the end of the war in 2021, at least two thousand five hundred American soldiers were killed in action.
On the other hand, three thousand four hundred and eighty-one American soldiers died in the Iraq war, and over thirty-one thousand were injured. But the real tragedy for American society began after these troops returned home. The rates of psychological trauma and suicide among these returning veterans are so high that even the Pentagon is at a loss. On average, twenty-two American veterans commit suicide every day, which is even more tragic than dying on the battlefield. By 2050, caring for and rehabilitating these veterans will cost America at least two point five trillion dollars. The very country they thought they were serving now views them as a burden.
Now let us come to the most shocking statistic of all. How much money was pulled out of the pockets of American taxpayers over the last twenty-five years to fund this War on Terror? According to the Brown University report, the United States has already blown five point eight trillion dollars on this war. When you add the future care costs for veterans, that figure climbs to a staggering eight trillion dollars!
Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine how much money eight trillion dollars is. With that vast amount of money, every single homeless person in America could have been given a house, and the entire education system of the country could have been made free forever.
Yet, those taxpayer dollars were ruthlessly funneled straight into the pockets of arms dealers. Famous international analyst Jeffrey Sachs stated directly in an interview with international media that US foreign policy is not a tool for building peace; it is essentially a profitable business for the military-industrial complex that profits off human corpses.
Former US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis lamented in an analysis that this war on terror failed completely in achieving its core objectives, serving only to spark rage in the hearts of people in Palestine and around the world. Defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics grew astronomically rich over these twenty-five years, pulling billions of dollars in profit at the cost of innocent blood.
If we connect all these events like links in a chain, the geopolitical equation becomes very simple. First, Afghanistan was invaded using the threat of Al-Qaeda. Next, Iraq's oil fields were taken under control using the false excuse of weapons of mass destruction. The political vacuum and instability created in Iraq then gave birth to ISIS. Then, under the guise of defeating ISIS, Syria and Libya were destroyed to legitimize American military presence across the Middle East. It is an endless vicious cycle where before one war even ends, the seeds of the next war are carefully planted.
Now an inevitable question arises in everyone's mind. What is going to happen in the coming days, and will this bloody game played by America continue unchecked? As a scholar of international geopolitics, my answer is clear and firm: no, the rules of this shameless imperialist game are changing forever.
Over the past twenty-five years, America has not only lost trillions of dollars militarily, but it has also turned the entire world against itself. Today, the Global South, especially the BRICS nations, is directly challenging the dominance of the US dollar. De-dollarization is no longer just a theoretical concept; it is a living reality.
China and Russia together have already established a new multipolar world order. In the future, America will no longer be able to single-handedly launch military invasions of other countries like it did in 2003. Their own economy is facing major troubles, and inflation has reached high levels.
Burdened by a massive national debt of thirty-five trillion dollars, America is bound to face a severe economic crisis in the coming decade. Corporate defense companies might have made short-term profits selling weapons, but in the long run, America has lost its moral and economic credibility across the globe forever.
The smell of gunpowder lingering in the air of Afghanistan and Iraq may fade over time. But the world will never forget this twenty-five-year history written in the blood of four point five million innocent people. People will remember forever how Washington wore the mask of civilization to carry out the greatest brutality of the century. Times are changing, and one day, in the court of history, they will be held accountable for every single drop of blood.
posted by Satish Sharma at
15:24
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