This article was originally published in The eXile on November 29, 2001.

Now that we stomped the dust monkeys, our only casualty being that helicopter wheel that the Taliban danced around while firing their AKs in the air, I have to say, I’m damn glad I was behind President Bush from the get-go. I toldja so! I knew we’d thrash those pathetic primitives! I told everyone, but nooooo, they wouldn’t listen! (more…)

This article first appeared in Alternet.

America now has more military personnel in Afghanistan than the Red Army had at the peak of the Soviet invasion and occupation of that country. According to a Congressional Research Service report, as of March of this year, the U.S. had 52,000 uniformed personnel and another 68,000 contractors in Afghanistan — a number that has likely grown given the blank check President Obama has written for what’s now being called “Obama’s War.” (more…)

The real mystery of our age is this: why do all the media warmongers still have jobs, after the way they goaded us into the epic disaster we’ve found ourselves in? Back in 2001, when a panicked America foolishly handed the steering wheel to pundits like Max Boot, America was at the height of its economic and geopolitical power. What happened next was a lot like that rent-a-car prank in the first Jackass film: decades of America’s accumulated wealth and geopolitical power trashed overnight in a reckless neocon joyride. The warmongers pulled out of the lot in a mint-condition, gas-guzzling boat, cheerfully assuring America that everything would turn out fine. Cut to the slapstick punch line: Boot pushing the remains of the totaled car back onto the lot. Only instead of apologizing like the Jackass pranksters, Boot cheerfully tells America, “You see, I told you it would turn out great! Now give me your next-best car; I’d like to take it out for a spin…” (more…)

What George W. Bush loved best about his job was being a war president. Playing war, that is, as opposed to making war like a grown-up. Remember him strutting onto that carrier in his little flight jacket? You never saw Eisenhower, a real general, playing out his martial fantasies this way. You can take the drink out of the drunk, but you can’t take the swagger out of a fool. (more…)

What does the American surrender monkey call it when he is defeated in the Iraq War, and he is forced to retreat? A real country can accept defeat like a man, admit that it lost and it is retreating, as even someone as weak as Gorbachev did when he pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. (more…)

The hills are alive with the sound of RPGs

After six years of ignoring Afghanistan, things have gotten bad enough to force American officials to pay attention. For the past two months, U.S. casualties in Afghanistan have been higher than in Iraq. And on July 13, Afghanistan definitely got everybody’s attention when nine U.S. troops were killed in what Wikipedia is now officially calling “The Battle of Wanat.” Three days after the battle (more…)