Benign Monster @monstroquodlucet - Tumblr Blog

Daily fucking reminder that Luigi Mangione is innocent, completely and fully. He has been convicted of no crime. He has had no fair trial. He is a SUSPECT. Luigi Mangione is entirely innocent and everyone needs to stop parroting this insidious propaganda that he “committed” the crime he is only SUSPECTED of. He is not a murderer. He is not a criminal. He is an innocent man.

cynicalclassicist

Put this out about Luigi Mangione.

depsidase

mysharona1987

depsidase

anxietyproblem

depsidase

guerrillatech

caesarsaladinn

I missed most of the Iraq war due to being a baby, but every time I read about it I start wondering why we aren’t all talking about it all of the time

caesarsaladinn

it feels like the sort of unforced error that should be obsessively postmortemed for the next fifty years, a catastrophe that should utterly delegitimize the society that made it happen, but instead everybody’s like “oh yeah, that. lmao, that was crazy”

septembriseur-deactivated202502

I have to add to this because I was teaching a text about this topic to a bunch of post-2003 undergraduates recently and each time I do so I experience the same sense of disorientation.

This is a war about which the accepted, mainstream consensus is that no one is able to explain the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. The people involved in that decision are unable, in retrospect, to explain or justify it. In almost every postmortem of this decision, you will find some reference to the fact that Richard Haass, who advised Colin Powell at the State Department in 2001-3, has said that he “will go to [his] grave not knowing” why the U.S. invaded Iraq. George Packer, in The Assassins’ Gate, describes the invasion as “something that some people wanted to do.”

This is a war that destroyed a country. It created ISIS. It destabilized the Middle East. It killed a minimum of c. 200,000 people. It displaced millions more. It resulted in devastating losses to the cultural heritage of Iraq. And twenty years on, no one is able to explain why it happened.

It seems to me that there are several important lessons here.

theculturedmarxist

This is a war about which the accepted, mainstream consensus is that no one is able to explain the U.S. decision to invade Iraq.

Probably because everyone involved in producing and disseminating that "mainstream consensus" was involved and culpable in that crime, and instead of opening themselves up to criticism or their careers to repercussions for their monstrous behavior it's easier to just pretend that it just happened, somehow.

George Packer, in The Assassins’ Gate, describes the invasion as “something that some people wanted to do.”

"Some people." We know who these people are.

Established in the spring of 1997, the Project for the New American Century is a non¬ profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project. William Kristol is chairman of the Project, and Robert Kagan, Devon Gaffney Cross, Bruce P. Jackson and John R. Bolton serve as directors. Gary Schmitt is executive director of the Project

Some of these names might be familiar, like John Bolton, some less so, like Robert Kagan, even though this piece of shit, his brother, and his wife are still at it, having a direct hand in the current war with Ukraine.

In essence, The Project for a New American Century is a policy document laying out the intention and rationale for expanding America's hegemony as sole global superpower into the 21st century. It lays out in no uncertain terms why the US went to Iraq: [emphasis added]

In the Persian Gulf region, the presence of American forces, along with British and French units, has become a semi¬ permanent fact of life. Though the immediate mission of those forces is to enforce the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, they represent the long-term commitment of the United States and its major allies to a region of vital importance. Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq and Iran both are identified explicitly as obstacles to US domination in the region.

Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region.

And repeatedly the authors express anxiety over the fact that their plans for domination are on a time table as the regional powers they're looking to dominate are trying to develop deterrents, especially nuclear.

Potential rivals such as China are anxious to exploit these transformational technologies broadly, while adversaries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea are rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they seek to dominate.

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and North Korea are all set up on the chopping block because they represent threats to American/NATO interests. Elsewhere in the document they point out that such a transformation in American power and posture as they're prescribing might not be possible absent a "Pearl Harbor" like event, which they got in the form of 9-11.

And twenty years on, no one is able to explain why it happened.

No, they're just not willing to say the quiet part out loud. All these bastards know full well why it happened and who was responsible, but saying so not only implicates themselves, but the entire US government.

May they all hang.

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