No Excuses
No Excuses
Politicians used to lie to get us into wars. Not anymore.
Welcome to another edition of Willoughby Hills!
This newsletter explores topics like history, culture, work, urbanism, transportation, travel, agriculture, self-sufficiency, and more.
As I wrote on Wednesday, I’ve been thinking back to 9/11 and its aftermath a lot lately. That single day was used for the justification for a multi-decade war in Afghanistan and later Iraq.
I’m not defending any of that. Those wars were terrible policy, all predicated on lies. Colin Powell testified before the U.N. in 2003, stating emphatically that he saw the Iraqi government as an immediate threat:
“‘Every statement I make today is backed up by solid sources,’ [Powell] said. ‘What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions. Clearly, Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops him.’”
The claim of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq proved to be false, something for which Powell accepted responsibility in 2011:
“‘It turned out, as we discovered later, that a lot of sources that had been attested to by the intelligence community were wrong,’ Powell said in Washington, DC.
‘I understood the consequences of that failure and, as I said, I deeply regret that the information – some of the information, not all of it – was wrong,’ said the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on bad intelligence under the premise of retaliation for 9/11 and also preventing another large scale attack. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind 9/11 was found a decade later in Pakistan.
The death toll as a result of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan over the ensuing two decades was estimated at 432,093 civilians.
Over the last year, we have again seen faulty logic used to justify mass killings. The U.S. and Israeli governments have used the attacks of October 7 as an excuse to wage all out war in Palestine. The estimated Israeli death toll from October 7 was 1,139 people. The official death toll of Palestinians is now 41,500 people, more than half of whom are women and children. 1,300 are children under the age of two. (The Lancet placed the estimated death toll much higher over the summer).
Despite large scale protests over the past year, U.S. officials continue to defend Israel. In a statement released yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris said this:
“I have an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel. I will always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.”
As American lawmakers have twisted themselves in all kinds of rhetorical knots defending Israel’s “right” to kill 40,000+ Palestinians, Israel has decided to take their bombings region-wide, with major attacks on Lebanon over the last week that have killed more than 1,000 people (including 87 children).
As I watch in horror as bombs rain down on civilians in Beirut and throughout Lebanon, I am struck with the question of why? Why is this happening? What’s the justification?
Hezbollah, in solidarity with Palestine, has been trading small scale fire with Israel over the past year, but this latest series of attacks from Israel is a major escalation to the situation.
What’s wild to me is that I have yet to hear a justification for why these increased bombings are taking place, and more importantly, what warrants the bombing of civilians?
We are no longer asking why as a society, and instead are just shrugging this whole situation off. Our leaders aren’t even trying to gaslight us anymore. They aren’t offering a fake excuse or really any excuse at all.
And most Americans seem content to accept that reality, or at least, to look the other way.
The United States continues to aid and abet Israel, pledging another $8.7 billion aid package just a few days ago, after the bombardment of Lebanon had started. $8.7 billion of our tax dollars. Money that could be spent to make American lives better, but is instead being used to fund the bombings of two countries.
It reminds me a bit of a friend I had growing up. This friend never had a ton of extra money. He shopped at thrift stores before they were cool and lived in a modest house. Yet his dad insisted on driving an expensive sports car that couldn’t even hold my friend and his siblings in the back seat.
We all saw the folly of the dad’s car. The money used to buy that sports car could have improved the entire family’s life, but instead, it all went to the dad’s ego.
In this presidential election year, we are supposed to decide the direction that our country takes over the next four years. I agree with the people who say another Donald Trump term would be a complete disaster for our rights, our country, and our planet.
But I am also confused and frankly disappointed by those who argue that Harris is the “lesser of two evils” or worse, are eagerly jumping in to endorse her.
We now have a U.S. backed Israeli army attacking two countries simultaneously and the Democratic candidate for president offering her full endorsement of these events. As the vice president of the current administration, she is also complicit in all that has taken place over the last year.
No wonder Dick Cheney was so happy to endorse her.
Many believe that the end goal is not only the assumption of Gaza and the West Bank into Israel, but the formation of “Greater Israel,” which includes Lebanon, Jordan, and portions of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt:
“In a January 2024 recording, Israeli politician Avi Lipkin was stating: ‘… eventually, our borders will extend from Lebanon to the Great Desert, which is Saudi Arabia, and then from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates. And who is on the other side of the Euphrates? The Kurds! And the Kurds are friends. So we have Mediterranean behind us, the Kurds in front of us, Lebanon, which really needs the umbrella of protection of Israel, and then we’re gonna take, I believe we’re gonna take Mecca, Medina and Mount Sinai, and to purify those places.’”
Increasingly, American support for Israel is putting us at odds with the rest of the world. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the U.N. last week, many delegates stood up and left the hall in protest. There is an arrest warrant issued for Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court.
In her statement yesterday, Harris also said this:
“President Biden and I do not want to see conflict in the Middle East escalate into a broader regional war. We have been working on a diplomatic solution along the Israel-Lebanon border so that people can safely return home on both sides of that border. Diplomacy remains the best path forward to protect civilians and achieve lasting stability in the region.”
If she were truly committed to a diplomatic solution and a deescalation, stopping aid to Israel would be a great place to start. And maybe using some of that money over here for popular programs like public transportation, health care, and education, to name a few.
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I cannot support any position that puts Donald Trump back into the White House. As much as I do not understand Israel's power position with our government, I greatly fear the results of a Trump presidency. Therefore, I will support anyone opposing the Republican party and its frightening and damaging agenda to Americans, the climate, and to the world. Kamala Harris gets my vote without hesitation. Any other rhetoric is damaging to the effort to prevent a Trump win.
Again, I´m totally with you. Just look too at the devastation left by Hurricane Helene and I also think of the billions of dollars US taxpayers are paying to fund Zionist Israel when those billions are so badly needed in the USA. Funding a genocide is beyond horrific and I´m extremely upset at the downplaying of citizen protests that have been ongoing for months and months by our politicians.