Trump Doesn't Want to End US Wars. He Wants to Hide Them.
By Allegra Harpootlian &
Emily Manna,
TomDispatch
Published
April 29, 2019
Heres a question worth asking about Americas seemingly endless global conflicts: if you kill somebody and theres no one there (on our side anyway), is the United States still at war? That may prove to be the truly salient question when it comes to the future of Americas war on terror, which is now almost 18 years old and encompasses significant parts of the Greater Middle East and North Africa. Think of it, if you want, as the artificial intelligence, or AI, question.
Its not, however, the question that Washington is obsessing over. Retired military officials, defense outlets, and pundits alike have instead been pontificating about what it means for the Department of Defense and key Trump officials to regularly insist that the countrys national security focus is shifting from a struggle against insurgent groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to the growing influence of what are termed near-peer enemies, a fancy phrase for China and Russia. Speculation about what this refocusing will look like has only grown in the wake of President Trumps various tweets and statements declaring that Americas endless wars will be coming to a glorious end and how now is the time to bring our troops back home.
Whats been missing from this conversation is an answer to what should be a relatively easy question: Is the war on terror really being dumped to focus on great power competition?
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-doesnt-want-to-end-us-wars-he-wants-to-hide-them/