US military institutions have vested interest in ongoing wars, says American historian

An American historian believes the US wages never-ending wars around the world in pursuit of the interests of its military institutions, saying that major shifts in public understanding are needed to put an end to such wars.

The US pursues its military programs because “bureaucrats and officers in the military and the Pentagon have vested interest in keeping the programs going and even expanding them,” Gareth Porter, a historian and investigative journalist, told Press TV’s News Review program.

“This has been the logic of US imperial ventures in that part of the world for all these years and will continue to be the logic of those ventures as long as this organization – that is, a set of organizations of the national security state of the United States – remains intact,” he said, referring to the US militarism in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Porter said the national security state will continue to carry out military interventions that are regarded as in the interest of those institutions because such wars have done very well for the individuals and the organizations that have been carrying them out.

Of course, the victim countries and the American people have been harmed continuously by this phenomenon, he said.

This set of institutions, Porter noted, are continuing to do this on the basis of propaganda that is dispensed by US media, which have never had the slightest interest in exposing what’s really going on.

“So we have a system here that cannot be cracked without major shifts in public understanding and organization,” he added.

Taliban: US can now help rebuild Afghanistan after destroying it

The Taliban say the United States could now step forward and participate in the reconstruction of Afghanistan given how it contributed to its destruction.

The remarks were made after leaked footage emerged showing a series of US drone strikes in Afghanistan, including a pilot who admitted he had killed two innocent Afghan civilians and a child by mistake.

In the leaked footage, the US drone operators questioned the purpose of the strikes amid the ongoing withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in recent weeks.

The pilot and a number of other drone operators said the strikes carried out by the Task Force South West served little purpose when the Marines had essentially given up on Helmand.

“The drone strikes were punitive. Killing for the sake of killing,” one of the operators told Connecting Vets, which published the leaked footage and a series of journal entries from the pilots.

In a distressing journal entry, one of the drone operators discussed the accidental killing of a young Afghan family, as a result of which, he wrote, “my productivity today was derailed.”

‘Not even tip of iceberg’

Meanwhile, the other guest on Press TV’s News Review program said the report was “not even the tip of the iceberg.”

The US doesn’t want its crimes seen by the rest of the world, said Daniel McAdams, the Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

The US claimed that was is a great crusade for humanity and humanitarianism, “when in fact it was twenty years of wanton killing, and the couple of murders you bring up in your report are not even the tip of the iceberg; they are not even a little chip of ice on the iceberg,” McAdams said.

US, allies warn citizens away from Kabul airport over ‘threat of terror attack’

The US, Britain, and Australia warn their citizens to stay away from the Kabul airport, citing “security threats.”

Asked whether he thinks the United States’ bombing campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as its wars in other countries, would further deteriorate those countries’ situation by radicalizing their populations, McAdams said “it depends on your perspective.”

He went on: “If the goal is war all the time, which I believe that is the goal, then radicalizing the population is actually a very successful move, because then you have an excuse to remain in the country for another set of years because you can show that this percentage of the population has become more radicalized.

The government of Afghanistan rapidly collapsed on August 15 and president Ashraf Ghani fled the country in the face of the lightning advances of the Taliban, following what has been criticized as a hasty withdrawal of American forces from the country, 20 years after they invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban.

Amidst the chaos that followed the collapse of the Afghan government, US President Joe Biden has called for contingency plans from the Pentagon and State Departments in the event Washington’s evacuation mission is not completed in time, as demanded by the Taliban.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that over the last ten days, the State Department has evacuated roughly 4,500 US citizens.

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