i find it amazing that the great mass of 'consumers', sheep that they are, can't think about all of the wars and enemies presented daily on their tv, and discover that maybe all of the crap we're sold might not be as its presented. i have neighbors, who were once close friends, who aren't anymore because i don't buy this nightly 'news' crap;

When I first learned about the Thirty Years War in a history class in college, I was both fascinated and amazed. How in the world could a war go on for 30 years? That just seemed incomprehensible to me.

Not anymore. The U.S. war on Afghanistan has now been going on for 17 years. And if the American people follow the advice of Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, it’s a virtual certainty that the United States will easily surpass the Thirty Years War and, maybe, the Hundred Years War, which needless to say, also amazed and fascinated me when I learned about its existence.

I can just see Americans 83 years from now breaking the 100-year-war record and exclaiming in celebration, “We’re Number One! We’re Number One! KAG! KAG! Keep America Great!”

O’Hanlon’s advice comes in the form of an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times. It’s entitled “Our Longest War Is Still an Important War.” In his op-ed, O’Hanlon says that it is important that U.S. troops remain occupying Afghanistan, perhaps even in perpetuity.

Why does O’Hanlon feel this way? The thrust of his piece is a variation on the theme that has guided the so-called war on terrorism ever since the 9/11 attacks way back in 2001— that it’s better for U.S. forces to kill the terrorists over there before they come over here to get us.

Not surprisingly, O’Hanlon ignores a very important point about this “war on terrorism” — that it is U.S. interventionism that is the cause of anti-U.S. terrorism.

Why is that important? Because the continued and perhaps perpetual interventionism that he is endorsing produces the very thing that he’s using to justify the continued interventionism.............https://www.fff.org/2019/01/25/justifying-the-17-year-war/