The tsunami of U.S. coverage of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, almost completely through the lens of people killed in the U.S. or in fighting "for" the U.S., needs to be answered with the force of our understanding and commitment. Buried beneath the rubble of America-first jingoism, historians, thinkers and activists contributed much this week. Rather than summarize, we are sharing links to what really got our attention:

Nazia Kazi, the anthropologist who wrote ..., produced a snappy graphic story published on The Nib last week, What We Forget, with Anuj Shrestha.

It is Sunday night, around 9:00 PM on March 14, 2021 in Portland, Oregon. In two days, it will be the 53rd Anniversary of the My Lai Massacre. Since I was a soldier in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam, I have made three trips back to Viet Nam, which included three trips to the My Lai Massacre site in Quang Ngai Province. Those trips were made in 1994, 2016, and 2018 for the 50th Anniversary.

Since I was in Viet Nam, 50 years have passed – half a century. I have spent most of my adult life recovering from the Viet Nam War (or The American War as the Vietnamese call it). This time of year is always difficult for me, and I am sure it is for countless people I know, whether they were in the military or not. When the My Lai Massacre was first revealed in 1969, and 1970, it drastically changed the course of American opinion about the war, even though some of those changes came slowly, because denial camouflages the Lie. It would take three more years before American troops started coming home, with the official ending of the war on April 30, 1975.

In a welcome development, Biden has announced US plans to re-enter the Iran nuclear agreement, reversing Trump's withdrawal from the agreement negotiated under Obama. He also announced the US will end support for Saudi Arabia's offensive actions against Yemen.

The people of both countries have suffered horribly from US imperialist intervention.

In Iran, domestic tyranny has been strengthened by US sanctions against that country. Iran's prisons are bulging with political prisoners who are opponents of the Islamic Republic while uncounted hundreds of thousands have died from lack of food, medicines and other essentials caused by US sanctions.

The US has actively supported Saudi aggression on Yemen. Over 100,000 Yemenis have died in the Saudi war -- from airstrikes, coordinated and paid for by the US, and spreading famine and disease.

In fact, two Yemeni families have filed a petition against the US government to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights over the “unlawful” killing of 34 relatives, including nine children, in counterterrorism operations between 2013 and 2018.

These conditions have made the Covid epidemic far worse in each country.

To understand what the U.S. does to exert its power around the world, you have to look beyond the public words and actions, to the covert actions that are often even more decisive and revealing of U.S values than overt wars, and certainly more true than diplomacy carried out as subterfuge.  Mike Pompeo, then director of the CIA said in 2017 that it “must be aggressive, vicious, unforgiving, relentless.” That wasn't exactly news to anyone who's followed it since 1947, through its role in dozens of coups overthrowing elected governments not favored by the U.S.  The largest targeted drone killing program of the two decade "war of terror" is probably the CIA's, launched by Bush, expanded by Obama and then more so by Trump. 

It is truly amazing how some progressives and self-described radicals pull the wool over their own eyes when it comes to Donald Trump’s foreign policy. They blithely buy into and peddle the dangerous myth that, for all his ravings and unpredictability, Trump is an “antiwar” isolationist who wants to shrink the U.S. global military footprint and is ill-disposed to getting bogged down in endless wars. Describe him as you will... but a war monger he is not, they say. Wrong, deadly wrong.

U.S. media counts the dead in "America," meaning the United States, leaving deaths uncounted and mostly not noted, in the rest of the globe, save Europe and other "allies." 

But when we think of the pandemic, our thoughts go to those globally in most danger: people in prisons and detention, those without homes to shelter in, those who have to work everyday, the refugees and people in war zones who have no protection.

The most serious consequences of the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq confirm what millions of people around the world warned about 17 years ago.

While the world is consumed with the terrifying coronavirus pandemic, on March 19 the Trump administration will be marking the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by ramping up the conflict there. After an Iran-aligned militia allegedly struck a U.S. base near Baghdad on March 11, the U.S. military carried out retaliatory strikes against five of the militia’s weapons factories and announced it is sending two more aircraft carriers to the region, as well as new Patriot missile systems and hundreds more troops to operate them. This contradicts the January vote of the Iraqi Parliament that called for U.S. troops to leave the country. It also goes against the sentiment of most Americans, who think the Iraq war was not worth fighting, and against the campaign promise of Donald Trump to end the endless wars.

What’s the matter with us
that we allow
Endless wars, new wars
Wars, wars and more wars?

As U.S. threats against Venezuela continue with the U.S. selection and then recognition of non-elected Juan Guaido as the interim president, there have been threats by Guaido supporters, again backed by the Trump/Pence Regime, to take over the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC.

Debra Sweet | May 16, 2019

If you believe Trump is so isolationist that he wouldn't use the tremendous military force he controls to attack, invade, occupy, change regimes or worse, you've been bamboozled. This is the guy who used the "mother of all bombs" and wants to know "if we have nukes, why can't we use them?"

Looking to the storms coming in 2019, we consider, how is Trump the same as other U.S. presidents, and how is his regime markedly different, requiring concerted action from us?

Each of the three "war on terror" presidents were and are completely committed to the US empire's domination of the globe through military supremacy.  Each declared victory in the illegitimate endless war in their own way.  George “W” Bush proclaimed "mission accomplished" (2003),  Obama did it with "air strikes… taking out ISIL leaders, heavy weapons, oil tankers, infrastructure," promoting a "network of partners" instead of invasions (2015) and, Trump bluntly declared victory over ISIS in Syria, saying "now, we've won" (2018).