[They weren’t kidding when they called Afghanistan the
“graveyard of empires.” That cemetery has just taken another
imperial body. And it wasn’t pretty, was it? Not that anyone should
be surprised. Even after 20 years of preparation, a burial never is]
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THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN… WHOOPS!… AMERICAN EMPIRE -
WHAT REALLY MATTERS IN THE U.S. OF A.  
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Tom Engelhardt
September 7, 2021
TomDispatch
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_ They weren’t kidding when they called Afghanistan the
“graveyard of empires.” That cemetery has just taken another
imperial body. And it wasn’t pretty, was it? Not that anyone should
be surprised. Even after 20 years of preparation, a burial never is _

U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class David M. Votroubek,

 

In fact, the shock and awe(fulness) in Kabul and Washington over these
last weeks shouldn’t have been surprising, given our history. After
all, we were the ones who prepared the ground
[[link removed]] and
dug the grave for the previous interment in that very cemetery.

That, of course, took place between 1979 and 1989 when Washington
had no hesitation
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using the most extreme Islamists — arming, funding, training, and
advising them — to ensure that one more imperial carcass, that of
the Soviet Union, would be buried there. When, on February 15, 1989,
the Red Army finally left Afghanistan, crossing
[[link removed]] the
Friendship Bridge into Uzbekistan, Soviet commander General Boris
Gromov, the last man out, said, “That’s it. Not one Soviet soldier
or officer is behind my back.” It was his way of saying so long,
farewell, good riddance to the endless war that the leader of the
Soviet Union had by then taken to calling “the bleeding wound
[[link removed]].” Yet, in its own
strange fashion, that “graveyard” would come home with them. After
all, they returned to a bankrupt land, sucked dry by that failed war
against those American- and Saudi-backed Islamist extremists.

Two years later, the Soviet Union would implode, leaving just one
truly great power on Planet Earth — along with, of course, those
very extremists Washington had built into a USSR-destroying force.
Only a decade later, in response to an “air force
[[link removed]]”
manned by 19 mostly Saudi hijackers dispatched by Osama bin Laden, a
rich Saudi prince who had been part of our anti-Soviet effort in
Afghanistan, the world’s “sole superpower” would head directly
for that graveyard (as bin Laden desired
[[link removed]]).

Despite the American experience in Vietnam during the previous century
— the Afghan effort of the 1980s was meant to give the USSR its own
“Vietnam”
[[link removed]] — key
Bush administration officials were so sure of themselves that, as
the _New York Times_ recently reported, they wouldn’t even
consider
[[link removed]] letting
the leaders of the Taliban negotiate a surrender once our invasion
began. On September 11, 2001, in the ruins of the Pentagon, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had already given an aide
these instructions
[[link removed]],
referring not just to Bin Laden but Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein: “Go
massive. Sweep it up, all up. Things related and not.” Now,
he insisted
[[link removed]],
“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders.” (Of
course, had you read
[[link removed]] war
reporter Anand Gopal’s 2014 book, _No Good Men Among the Living_
[[link removed]],
you would have long known just how fruitlessly Taliban leaders tried
to surrender to a power intent on war and nothing but war.)

Allow a surrender and have everything grind to a disappointing halt?
Not a chance, not when the Afghan War was the beginning of what was to
be an American triumph of global proportions. After all, the future
invasion of Iraq and the domination of the oil-rich Greater Middle
East by the one and only power on the planet were already on the
agenda. How could the leaders of such a confident land with a military
funded at levels the next most powerful countries combined
[[link removed]] couldn’t
match have imagined its own 2021 version of surrender?

And yet, once again, 20 years later, Afghanistan has quite visibly and
horrifyingly become a graveyard of empire (as well, of course, as a
graveyard for Afghans
[[link removed]]).
Perhaps it’s only fitting that the secretary of defense who refused
the surrender of the enemy in 2001 was recently buried in Arlington
National Cemetery with full honors. In fact, the present secretary of
defense and the head of the joint chiefs of staff both reportedly
[[link removed]] “knelt
before Mr. Rumsfeld’s widow, Joyce, who was in a wheelchair, and
presented her with the flag from her husband’s coffin.”

Meanwhile, Joe Biden was the third president since George W. Bush and
crew launched this country’s forever wars to find himself
floundering haplessly in that same graveyard of empires. If the Soviet
example didn’t come to mind, it should have as Democrats and
Republicans, President Biden
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former President Trump
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at each other over their supposedly deep feelings for the poor Afghans
being left behind, while this country withdrew its troops from Kabul
airport in a land where “rest in peace” has long had no meaning.

AMERICA’S TRUE INFRASTRUCTURE SPENDING

Here’s the thing, though: don’t assume that Afghanistan is the
only imperial graveyard around or that the U.S. can simply withdraw,
however ineptly, chaotically, and bloodily, leaving that country to
history — and the Taliban. Put another way, even though events in
Kabul and its surroundings took over the mainstream news recently, the
Soviet example should remind us that, when it comes to empires,
imperial graveyards are hardly restricted to Afghanistan.

In fact, it might be worth taking a step back to look at the big
picture. For decades, the U.S. has been involved in a global project
that’s come to be called “nation building,” even if, from
Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to Afghanistan and Iraq, it often seemed
an endless exercise in nation (un)building. An imperial power of the
first order, the United States long ago largely rejected the idea of
straightforward colonies. In the years of the Cold War and then of the
war on terror, its leaders were instead remarkably focused on setting
up an unparalleled empire of military bases and garrisons
[[link removed]] on
a global
[[link removed]] scale.
This and the wars that went with it have been the unsettling American
imperial project since World War II.

And that _unsettling_ should be taken quite literally. Even before
recent events in Afghanistan, Brown University’s invaluable Costs of
War Project estimated that this country’s conflicts of the last two
decades across the Greater Middle East and Africa had displaced at
least 38 million people
[[link removed]],
which should be considered nation (un)building of the first order.

Since the Cold War began, Washington has engaged in an endless series
of interventions around the planet from Iran
[[link removed]] to the
Congo
[[link removed]], Chile
[[link removed]] to Guatemala
[[link removed]],
as well as in conflicts, large and small. Now, with Joe Biden having
withdrawn from America’s disastrous Afghan War, you might wonder
whether it’s all finally coming to an end, even if the U.S. still
insists on maintaining 750 sizeable military bases
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[[link removed]]

BUY THE BOOK
[[link removed]]

Count on this, though: the politicians of the great power that
hasn’t won a significant war since 1945 will agree on one thing —
that the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex deserve yet more
funding (no matter what else doesn’t). In truth, those institutions
have been the major recipients of actual infrastructure spending over
much of what might still be thought of as the American century.
They’ve been the true winners in this society, along with the
billionaires who, even in the midst of a grotesque pandemic, raked in
profits in a historic fashion. In the process, those tycoons created
possibly the largest inequality gap
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the planet, one that could destabilize a democracy even if nothing
else were going on. The losers? Don’t even get me started.

Or think of it this way: yes, in August 2021, it was Kabul, not
Washington, D.C., that fell to the enemy, but the nation (un)building
project in which this country has been involved over these last
decades hasn’t remained thousands of miles away. Only half-noticed
here, it’s been coming home, big time. Donald Trump’s rise to the
presidency, amid election promises
[[link removed]] to
end America’s “endless wars
[[link removed]],”
should really be seen as part o
[[link removed]]f that
war-induced (un)building project at home. In his own strange fashion,
The Donald was Kabul before its time and his rise to power
unimaginable without those distant conflicts and the spending that
went with them, all of which, however unnoticed, unsettled significant
parts of this society.

CLIMATE WAR IN A GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES?

You can tell a lot about a country if you know where its politicians
unanimously agree to invest taxpayer dollars.

At this very moment, the U.S. is in a series of crises, none worse
than the heat, fire, and flood “season” that’s hit not just
the megadrought-ridden
[[link removed]] West,
or inundated Tennessee
[[link removed]],
or hurricane-whacked Louisiana
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or the tropical-storm-tossed Northeast
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but the whole country. Unbearable warmth
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humidity, fires
[[link removed]], smoke
[[link removed]],
storms, and power outages
[[link removed]], that’s
us. Fortunately, as always, Congress stands in remarkable unanimity
when it comes to investing money where it truly matters.

And no, you knew perfectly well that I wasn’t referring to the
creation of a green-energy economy. In fact, Republicans wouldn’t
hear of it
[[link removed]] and
the Biden administration, while officially backing the idea, has
already issued more than 2,000
[[link removed]] permits
to fossil-fuel companies for new drilling and fracking on federal
lands. In August, the president even called on
[[link removed]] OPEC
— the Saudis, in particular — to produce significantly more oil to
halt a further rise in gas prices at the pump.

As America’s eternally losing generals come home from Kabul, what I
actually had in mind was the one thing just about everyone in
Washington seems to agree on: funding the military-industrial complex
beyond their wildest dreams. Congress has recently spent months trying
to pass a bill that would, over a number of years, invest an extra
$550 billion
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this country’s badly tattered infrastructure, but never needs time
like that
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pass Pentagon and other national security budgets that, for years now,
have added up to well over a trillion dollars
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In another world, with the Afghan War ending and U.S. forces (at least
theoretically) coming home, it might seem logical to radically cut
back on the money invested in the military-industrial complex and its
ever more expensive weaponry. In another American world on an
increasingly endangered planet, significantly scaling back
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every way and investing our tax dollars in a very different kind of
“defense” would seem logical indeed. And yet, as of this moment,
as Greg Jaffe writes at the _Washington Post_, the Pentagon continues
to suck up
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larger share of discretionary spending than any other government
agency.”

Fortunately for those who want to keep funding the U.S. military in
the usual fashion, there’s a new enemy out there with which to
replace the Taliban, one that the Biden foreign-policy team and a
“pivoting” military is already remarkably eager
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At least when the latest infrastructure money is spent, if that
compromise bill ever really makes it through a Congress that can’t
tie its own shoelaces, something will be accomplished. Bridges and
roads will be repaired, new electric-vehicle-charging stations set up,
and so on. When, however, the Pentagon spends the money just about
everyone in Washington agrees it should have, we’re guaranteed yet
more weaponry
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country doesn’t need, poorly produced
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exorbitant sums, if not more failed wars as well.

I mean, just think about what the American taxpayer “invested” in
the losing wars of this century. According to Brown University’s
Costs of War Project, $2.313 trillion
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into that disastrous Afghan War alone and at least $6.4 trillion
[[link removed]] by
2020 into the full-scale war on terror. And that doesn’t even
include the estimated future costs of caring for American veterans of
those conflicts. In the end, the total may prove to be in the $8
trillion range
[[link removed]].
Hey, at least $88 billion
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went into supplying and training the Afghan military, most of
which didn’t even exist
[[link removed]] by
August 2021 and the rest of which melted away when the Taliban
advanced.

Just imagine for a minute where we might really be today if Congress
had spent close to $8 trillion rebuilding this society, rather than
(un)building and wrecking distant ones.

Rest assured, this is not the country that ended World War II in
triumph or even the one that outlasted the Soviet Union and whose
politicians then declared it the most exceptional, indispensable
[[link removed]] nation
ever. This is a land that’s crumbling before our eyes, being
(un)built month by month, year by year. Its political system is on the
verge of dissolving into who knows what amid
[[link removed]] a raft of voter
suppression laws, wild claims about the most recent presidential
election, an assault
[[link removed]] on
the Capitol itself, and conspiracy theories galore. Its political
parties seem ever more hostile, disturbed, and disparate. Its economy
is a gem of inequality, its infrastructure crumbling, its society
seemingly coming apart at the seams.

And on a planet that could be turning into a genuine graveyard of
empires (and of so much else), keep in mind that, if you’re losing
your war with climate change, you can’t withdraw from it. You
can’t declare defeat and go home. You’re already home in the
increasingly dysfunctional, increasingly (un)built U.S. of A.

_[TOM ENGELHARDT created and runs the website TomDispatch.com
[[link removed]]. He is also a co-founder of
the American Empire Project
[[link removed]] and the author of a highly
praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of
Victory Culture
[[link removed]]. 
A fellow of the Type Media Center [[link removed]], his
sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War
[[link removed]].]_

_Follow TomDispatch on Twitter
[[link removed]] and join us on Facebook
[[link removed]]. Check out the newest Dispatch
Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands
[[link removed]] (the
final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s
novel Every Body Has a Story
[[link removed]], and
Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War
[[link removed]],
as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
[[link removed]] and
John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since
World War II
[[link removed]]._

_Copyright 2021 Tom Engelhardt. Cross-posted with permission. May not
be reprinted without permission from TomDispatch
[[link removed]]._

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