https://www.facebook.com/reel/1235776271035366
This is the best rant I’ve heard concerning the 2024 presidential election.
Mouin Rabbani on What Really Happened in Amsterdam Between Israeli Soccer Fans & Local Residents
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/11/netherlands_riots
Dutch Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani discusses the violence that broke out last week between visiting Israeli soccer fans and pro-Palestinian protesters in Amsterdam. The Dutch authorities made over 60 arrests, and at least five people were hospitalized as a result of the clashes, which local and international leaders were quick to brand as antisemitic, even though observers in Amsterdam have said it was Israeli hooligans who instigated much of the violence. Rabbani says that while it’s common for rival teams’ fans to get into skirmishes, what happened in Amsterdam was different. “What we’re talking about here in Amsterdam is not a clash between the hooligans of two opposing sides, but rather these Israeli thugs attacking people who, in principle, had nothing to do with the game, and then afterwards being confronted by their victims,” Rabbani says.
https://www.veteransforpeace.org/pressroom/news/2024/10/22/veterans-peace-applaudsisraeli-soldiers-who-refuse-fight-gaz
Calls for GI’s to Resist Illegal Wars and War Crimes
Veterans For Peace applauds the Israeli military reservists who are calling for a ceasefire and the release of hostages, and who say they will not participate in genocide. You are doing the right thing. Your courageous stance may be answered by official threats and even imprisonment. But you will never regret refusing to kill innocent Palestinian men, women and children.
Palestinian Lives Matter. Yet Palestinians are being systematically slaughtered before the eyes of the world. The ongoing US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza is unacceptable. It is a stain on human history. And it must be ended.
Veterans For Peace has consistently called for an end to the genocide in Gaza, for a permanent ceasefire, and most importantly, for an end to US arms shipments to Israel. When U.S. bombs stop falling on Palestinian children, the genocide will have ended. Veterans For Peace has meticulously documented the US laws that the Biden Administration is breaking when it sends weapons to Israel while it is bombing and starving innocent civilians. As the slaughter in Gaza has continued and escalated, we have sent Open Letters to the State Department, to President Biden, to Vice President Harris and to the Justice Department.
One thing is very clear – this is genocide, a deliberate sustained campaign to wipe out an entire nation of people. This genocide is now being intensified. And it is illegal a thousand times over.
As veterans who have participated in too many illegal and immoral wars, we also want to address our young sisters and brothers, daughters and sons in the U.S. military. The U.S. has 40,000 troops deployed on ships and at bases throughout the Middle East. President Biden recently sent 100 U.S. troop to be stationed in Israel just as Israel is preparing to attack Iran and is bracing for Iran’s promised response.
The U.S. is also backing Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. The U.S. military itself has recently dropped bombs in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Now there is active discussion about waging war on Iran!
Are U.S. troops being purposely deployed where they will be targets and casualties? Is this the way that the Biden Administration will back us into a war with Iran? Such a war is not in the interests of the people of Iran, nor of Israel, nor of the United States. This is a bold war of colonialism and empire – fought for control of other people’s land and resources.
Veterans For Peace has joined with several other organizations to promote the Appeal for Redress (v.2), an opportunity for active-duty GI’s to safely present their concerns to their Congressional
representatives. We refer GI’s who are thinking about becoming Conscientious Objectors to the Center on Conscience and War. We can put you in touch with a GI Rights lawyer if needed.
Remember, it is right to resist unjust wars and illegal orders. And when you do, you will have the support of Veterans For Peace.
STOP THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA – No More US Weapons to Israel
REFUSE TO FIGHT ILLEGAL WARS – No War with Lebanon or Iran
“A Campaign of Genocide”: Noura Erakat Speaks to Ta-Nehisi Coates About Israel’s War on Gaza“
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/11/palfest
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.
On Sunday here in New York City, more than 2,000 people packed the historic Riverside Church for a discussion about America and the war on Palestine. It was hosted by the Palestine Festival of Literature, or PalFest. The church, Riverside, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech on April 4th, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated.
The event yesterday featured several speakers, including Palestinian human rights attorney Noura Erakat, a professor at Rutgers University, author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. Another of the panelists was Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, professor of African American studies at Princeton University and contributing writer at The New Yorker magazine. You can see our interview with professor Yamahtta Taylor last week at democracynow.org.
In a minute, we’ll hear from human rights attorney Noura Erakat. She was introduced by the moderator and author Ta-Nehisi Coates. His new book, The Message, in part about a visit he took to the occupied West Bank and Israel that was organized by members of PalFest, the sponsors of yesterday’s event. This is what he had to say.
TA-NEHISI COATES: When I think about being here, I think about ancestors. And I think it would be wrong if I didn’t, if we didn’t proceed without acknowledging that. First of all, I was informed when I came here that this is where Edward Said’s funeral was. And so it’s incredibly appropriate to be here in this moment.
The second thing is something that Yasmin and I talked about and have been talking about for a year, even when we did the other event before, was the fact that this was also the place where Martin Luther King stood up against the Vietnam War and was so courageous. And I want to acknowledge that in his time, when he did that, a lot of people did not applaud. I want to acknowledge that there were many people who he thought of as his allies who left him.
NOURA ERAKAT: Sounds familiar.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Yes, yes, yes, yes. That’s why I think it’s very appropriate, right?
KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: Absolutely.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Who urged him to be silent as bombs were being dropped on helpless people. And he did not do that. And so, I think, in that spirit, that’s the spirit in which we proceed in our conversation.
KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: Yes.
TA-NEHISI COATES: We’re going to talk a lot about theory today, not that theory is irrelevant, but I do think it is important for us to ground ourselves in the reality of what is going on right now.
And, Noura, if you would just take a moment for us and speak to the ongoing genocide, the pain, the life lost, frankly, the role that we as Americans play in that? If you would just take a moment for us just to ground us so that we are not forgetting, so that we are not, you know, all the way up here?
NOURA ERAKAT: Thank you. Thank you, Ta-Nehisi. Thank you, Keeanga and to this audience again. Thank you for coming to find sanctuary collectively.
I think that this was a concern that after more than a year of watching slaughter of babies — this is essentially and continues to be a war on children in a besieged territory where 50% of the population is children, so even before a bomb is dropped, it is a war on children — that it’s really easy to then pivot to the theoretical piece to make sense of it. We want to make sense of it at this stage. And what gets lost is what’s happening.
And so, I appreciated — full transparency: Ta-Nehisi asked me to do this just, you know, right before this event. So I thought that the proper way to do it was actually to read testimony from the ground from a colleague, from a colleague who — who in Gaza, who is recounting, as of 6 a.m. this morning. One of his colleagues woke up to 32 members of his family who were killed in Jabaliya. And Jabaliya is in the north, which is now under now an even tighter siege and a campaign of extermination and ethnic cleansing. What he writes upon waking up at 6 a.m. and finding his family slaughtered is that, quote, “I live meters away from them. It is a matter of luck. I wish I died with them. Neither my heart or mind can tolerate this, my uncle, his wife and three sons and grandsons and daughters all deleted.” He also lost his brother earlier in the year.
And as we’ve been paying attention in this moment, which is important to ground, we’re on day 400 of genocide, but we’re on day 36 of the siege of the north. And the siege of the north is a tightening of the siege that already existed, right? And it’s a siege that even predates the beginning of this campaign, this genocidal campaign. It’s a siege that’s been in place since 2006 at the earliest, thinking about a land siege and a naval blockade. But 1993, if you go back to when Gaza is first circumscribed by barbed wire as a way to prepare for peace, the irony is that the preparation for peace was a program to isolate and separate the Gaza Strip from the rest of the question of Palestine and to call it the Palestinian statelet and never to leave the West Bank to negotiation, but it was done in the language of peace, that this doublespeak continues.
But now here we are, of this — and 36 days of this particular campaign. And we got the earliest indication of it on day six of this genocide, when there was an order to evacuate the north to below the Wadi Gaza line, right? The line which was the order, if you remember, when 1.1 million Palestinians — that’s more than half the population besieged — was ordered to leave the north to below the Wadi Gaza line. But note that that removal was a death sentence, as the World Health Organization called it a death sentence. How do you remove the immobile? How do you force the sick to travel? And those that did take the risk and travel were targeted on the humanitarian lines that they were given, indicating to us on day six that there would be no safe quarter, that this was a campaign of genocide. And it’s why Holocaust studies scholar Raz Segal, the very next day, published in Jewish Currents, “This is a textbook case of genocide,” right?
And it’s why 800 TWAIL scholars, Third World approaches to international law scholars — when people call me international law, you know, the constant question that I get is: How do you still believe in the law? And I’m like, I’m a TWAIL scholar. We never believed in it. We’ve been telling you it is a source and a site of oppression and colonial domination. My book tries to say that and tries to demonstrate how, despite this colonial structure, we can use it for emancipatory purposes, under which circumstances, right? Use it when it suits us. Abandon it when it doesn’t. Create new law when we can. It is a tool. It is not the word of God. It is not holy. It is subject to change and to change by us. So, those 800 TWAIL scholars who know that said, raising the alarm, this is genocide. This was all within the first week, all within the first week.
And now we’re hearing something known as the General’s Plan. The General’s Plan, which is the formula for exterminating the north, the 400,000 people total Palestinians left in the north, 100,000 particularly in the area now marked for ethnic cleansing. The General’s Plan is the brainchild of General Giora. What is his first name? Giora Eiland. Giora Eiland, who proposes this plan. Giora Eiland was also the architect of the Eiland Plan in the early 2000s, which competed with Ariel Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawal and disengagement, which was the withdrawal of Israeli settlers and the withdrawal of military installations, but the maintenance of occupation of Gaza. That Eiland Plan in the early 2000s was to ethnically cleanse all of Gaza into the Sinai, right? So, the idea that he’s now — and by the way, Mada Masr — so, thanks to, you know, our partners at Mada Masr — have written, wrote beautifully and thoroughly about the Eiland Plan.
But you have the 1993 circumscription of Gaza in preparation for peace. You have the Eiland Plan in the year 2000. You have the evacuation order on October 12th, which was called a death sentence. You have the calls that this is genocide since day seven. You have now the General’s Plan.
We have a year, over a year of bearing witness to what — you know, my job and other people’s job has been to illuminate what can’t be seen, what’s been obfuscated. They have illuminated it for us. At this point, it is not about us telling you what you have to read between the lines. It’s literally about what they don’t want to hear, not what is not being revealed, because they are telling us, they have shown us, it is evident, they are defending it. They call it self-defense, and they call the completion of the Nakba as the right to complete. So, it’s less obfuscation, right? And now it becomes more about it’s a battle of narrative: Who do you want to listen to?
AMY GOODMAN: Noura Erakat, professor at Rutgers University, author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, speaking Sunday here in New York at the historic Riverside Church at an event moderated by author Ta-Nehisi Coates. His new book, The Message. The event was hosted by the Palestine Festival of Literature. Also in that discussion, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Princeton University professor. To see our interview with her, go to democracynow.org. The next PalFest event, Palestine Festival of Literature, will be in held London November 20th to mark the republication of Edward Said’s book The Question of Palestine, followed by events in Detroit, Philadelphia and Minneapolis.
When we come back, we’ll speak with Dutch Palestinian Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani about Gaza, about Qatar suspending mediation talks between Israel and Hamas for a Gaza ceasefire, about Saudi Arabia hosting world leaders for an Arab-Islamic summit, and about protests in Amsterdam, where he is. Stay with us.
“Ethnic Cleansing”: Amid Protests of Palestinian Evictions in Jerusalem, Israel Raids Al-Aqsa Mosque“
“Palestinians have been staging weeks of protests to block Israel from evicting dozens of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem to give their homes to Jewish settlers, which the United Nations has described as a possible war crime. Mohammed El-Kurd, a writer and poet who is organizing to save his family’s home in Sheikh Jarrah, says the world is seeing colonialism in action in Palestine. “What’s happening in Sheikh Jarrah today is nothing short of ethnic cleansing,” El-Kurd says in an interview from Jerusalem. ”
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/5/10/jerusalem_sheikh_jarrah_evictions
Chapter #34 New York is a cosponsor of “Roses to Missions” and here is the letter to UN Missions who signed and ratified Nuclear Weapons
Ban Treaty: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZvXRc2wcr3GorRyS81lz9YtfrCTCP2okpEysW8KVKzE/edit
Veterans for Peace Environmental Brochure
IS WAR STILL BECOMING OBSOLETE?
John Mueller Department of Political Science University of Rochester: Author of Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War
Prepared for presentation at the 1991 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, The Washington Hilton, Washington, DC, August 29 through September 1, 1991. Copyright by the American Political Science Association.
https://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/apsa1991.pdf
https://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/apsa1991.pdf
Amy Goodman reports on a new book by David Vine, professor of anthropology at American University. He has a new book out The United States of War .
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/11/9_11_war_on_terror_report
AMY GOODMAN: It’s been 19 years since the coordinated attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 killed nearly 3,000 people. At 8:46 a.m. Eastern time, the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center here in New York City. Today, President Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will both visit the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at different times. Biden will also pay respects after attending a 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York, which Vice President Pence will also attend.
Today, the United States faces a terror of a different kind, as more than 191,000 people have died from the COVID-19 pandemic, and a new report projects the U.S. death toll could rise to as high as 3,000 people per day by December. There were more than 1,200 new deaths in the U.S. in the last 24 hours. Time magazine plans to mark the approaching milestone of 200,000 COVID-related deaths in the U.S. with a cover that reads “An American Failure” and has a black border for only the second time in its history. The first time was after 9/11.
This comes as a new report finds the U.S.-led so-called global war on terrorism has displaced at least 37 million people in eight countries since 2001. The Costs of War Project at Brown University has also estimated more than 800,000 people [dead] in U.S.-led wars since 2001 at a cost of $6.4 trillion to U.S. taxpayers. The new report is titled “Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States’ Post-9/11 Wars.”
For more, we’re joined by its co-author, David Vine, professor of anthropology at American University. His new book is out next month, called The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State. He’s also the author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World.
David Vine, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you back with us, although this is a very sad day, on this 19th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Can you talk about the findings of your report?
DAVID VINE: Sure. Thank you, Amy, for having me. It’s great to be back.
The findings of our report are basically asking — the United States has been fighting wars continuously, as you said, for 19 years. We’re looking at what the effects of these wars have been. The Costs of War Project has been doing this for about a decade. We wanted to look specifically at how many people had been displaced by these wars. Basically, we found that no one had bothered to investigate how many people had been displaced by the wars in what are now, actually, at least 24 countries that the United States has been involved in.
And we found that, in total, at least 37 million people have been displaced in just eight of the most violent wars that the United States has either launched or participated in since 2001. That’s Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Syria and the Philippines. And that’s a very conservative estimate. We found that the actual total could be up to 48 to 59 million.
And I do think we have to pause on these numbers, because we — in many ways, our lives are drowning in numbers, about COVID, about many things that are important to track quantitatively, but to wrap one’s mind around what — just 37 million people displaced is difficult, in fact, and I think it requires some active effort, certainly did for me.
Thirty-seven million, to put it in historical perspective, that’s more people displaced by any war since at least the beginning of the 20th century, with the exception of World War II. And if our larger less conservative methodology is accurate, the 48 to 59 million estimate, that is comparable to the displacement one saw in World War II. Another way to try to wrap one’s mind around just the 37 million minimum figure, 37 million is about the size of the state of California. Just imagine the entire state of California disappearing, having to flee their homes. It’s about the size of all of Canada, or Texas and Virginia combined.
AMY GOODMAN: And for those enough who are lucky to have homes during this pandemic, I think people particularly appreciate — I mean, the word “refugees” is thrown around, but what it means to be displaced. Can you talk about why those eight countries? And can you correlate that with U.S. wars abroad?
DAVID VINE: Sure. Again, we wanted to focus on the most violent wars that the United States has been involved in, the wars that the United States has most deeply invested money, and, of course, the blood, the lives of U.S. military personnel, and, by extension, the lives that have been affected, the family members of U.S. military personnel and others. We wanted to look specifically at the wars the United States has launched, so the overlapping war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the War in Iraq, of course; wars that the United States has significantly escalated, Libya and Syria, Libya along with — and Syria, along with European and other allies; and then wars the United States has participated in significantly, in ways including providing battlefield advisers, providing fuel, arms and others, in Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines.
In each of these wars, we have found displacement numbering in the millions. And indeed, I think, you know, we have to recognize that displacement, the need to flee one’s home, to flee for one’s life, is — in many ways, there’s no way to calculate what that means for a single individual, a single family, a single community, but we did feel it was important to look at the total mass displacement that these wars have caused.
It is important to note, we are not saying the United States is solely to blame for this level of displacement. Clearly, there are other actors, other governments, other combatants, who are important in the responsibility they bear for displacement in these wars: Assad in Syria, Sunni and Shia militias in Iraq, the Taliban, of course, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, others. U.S. allies, including Britain, also bear some responsibility.
But the United States has played a disproportionate role in waging war, in launching war and in perpetuating war over the last 19 years. And as you pointed out, this has cost U.S. taxpayers, U.S. citizens, U.S. residents in other ways, including the $6.4 trillion — and that’s trillion with a T, $6.4 trillion — that the Costs of War Project has estimated the United States has either spent or obligated already. And that total is, of course, increasing by the day.
AMY GOODMAN: And, David Vine, the number of refugees the U.S. accepts from these wars, whose displacement the U.S. is causing?
DAVID VINE: Yeah, and we can look at the fire in Lesbos that you referred to earlier, that has displaced some 13,000 people, a refugee camp on Lesbos that’s been totally destroyed. And I would hope that people looking at the fires in California and Oregon and Washington could more easily empathize with the refugees in Lesbos and the refugees throughout the Greater Middle East, in particular, where fires — essentially, one large fire has been burning since October 2001, when the U.S. launched its War in Afghanistan.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to President Trump earlier this week telling reporters top Pentagon officials don’t like him because he wants to get the U.S. out of endless wars that benefit weapons manufacturers.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Biden shipped away our jobs, threw open our borders and sent our youth to fight in these crazy, endless wars. And it’s one of the reasons the military — I’m not saying the military is in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t, because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy. But we’re getting out of the endless wars.
AMY GOODMAN: Sounds a little like, well, if Howard Zinn were alive, what he would say. But Trump’s criticism of the military-industrial complex contradicts his own record of overseeing this historic increase in war spending, in the defense budget, in spending on military equipment, selling weapons overseas. Politico recently called Trump the “booster-in-chief of defense contractors.” Last year, Trump bypassed Congress so he could sell $8 billion of weapons to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Earlier this year, his administration ordered a reinterpretation of a Cold War-era arms treaty in order to pave the way for drone sales to go to governments that have previously been barred from such purchases. Can you respond to what he said?
DAVID VINE: In many ways, what Trump said is quite rich, so to speak. Indeed, he is correct that weapons manufacturers have benefited greatly, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, in addition to other infrastructure contractors, the companies that make military bases that now dot the Middle East. But, you know, Trump, indeed, as Politico said, is the booster-in-chief. He has overseen and pushed for military budgets that exceed those at the height of the Cold War.
And I think we have to ask: What are the enemies the United States faces today that require a military budget of this size? Does the United States need to be spending upwards of $740 billion a year to defend itself? Could we be spending this money in better ways to defend ourselves? And what needs, drastic, dramatic, pressing needs, human needs, are being neglected because we are pouring tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars into this war machine on a yearly basis?
And I think COVID, of course, points to this, underlines it, more than ever. The United States was not prepared for a pandemic. And this is in no small part because the United States has been pouring money into this war machine while neglecting human needs in the United States and around the world — healthcare needs, pandemic preparedness, affordable housing, the environment. This money that we’ve been pouring into the war machine, of course, could have been addressing the global warming that one sees, that plays some role in the fires one is seeing across the West Coast, among many other pressing needs that the world faces today.
AMY GOODMAN: This is an amazing fact you’ve pointed out, David Vine: The U.S. military has waged war, engaged in combat or otherwise invaded foreign lands in all but 11 years of its existence.
DAVID VINE: That’s right. The past 19 years of war, many people often see it as exceptional, as strange that people entering college today or most people enlisting in the U.S. military today will not have seen a day of their life or will not — have no memory of a day of their life when the United States was not at war.
In fact, this is the norm in U.S. history. And the Congressional Research Service shows this on a yearly basis in a report that you can find online. This is not just me, although I have a list of the wars, expanding on the Congressional Research Service list. These are wars and other forms of combat that the United States has engaged in since independence. And indeed, in 95% of the years in U.S. history, all but 11 years in U.S. history, the United States has been involved in some form of war or other combat.
And one needs to look at this much longer-term trend, this longer-term pattern that extends beyond the war, the so-called war on terror that George W. Bush launched in 2001, to understand why the United States has poured so much money into these wars and why the effects of these wars have been so horrific for the people involved.
AMY GOODMAN: David Vine, you report in your forthcoming book, The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State, that U.S. bases abroad enable combat in 24 countries: quote, “Thousands of U.S. military bases in nearly 100 foreign countries and territories — more than half of them built since 2001 — have enabled the involvement of U.S. military forces in wars and other combat deployments across at least 24 nations since the George W. Bush administration launched its war on terror,” so-called, following the September 11, 2001, attacks.
DAVID VINE: Indeed. The United States currently has about 800 military bases in around 80 foreign countries and territories. This is more bases than any nation in world history. The United States has, as you alluded to, had even larger numbers of bases. At the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were upwards of 2,000 bases abroad.
And part of what my book, The United States of War, shows is that this is also a long-term pattern. The United States has been building military bases abroad since independence, initially on the lands of Native American peoples, then increasingly outside of North America, and eventually encircling the globe, particularly after World War II.
And what I show is that these bases have not only enabled war, they’ve not only made war possible, but they’ve actually made war more likely. It’s made war a far-too-easy policy choice decision for powerful decisionmakers, leaders, politicians, corporate leaders and others.
And we need to basically dismantle this infrastructure of war that the United States has built up. Why does the United States have dozens of military bases in the Middle East, in virtually every country outside of Yemen and Iran? These bases, of course, are in countries that are led by undemocratic regimes, not spreading democracy — far from it — in many cases, actually blocking the spread of democracy, and making these wars possible, that — I think it’s important to underline again — beyond displacing 37 million people, at least, and perhaps up to 59 million people, these wars have taken the lives of, as the Costs of War Project has shown, around 800,000 people. And this is just in five of the wars — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen — the United States has — U.S. combat has taken the lives of around 800,000 people.
But there are also indirect deaths, deaths that have been caused by the destruction of local infrastructure, healthcare services, hospitals, food sources. And those total deaths could number upwards of 3 million people. And I think most people in the United States, again, myself included, have not really reckoned with the total damage that these wars have caused. We haven’t even begun to wrap our minds around what it would mean to have this level of destruction in our lives.
AMY GOODMAN: And you have, for example, the effects of soldiers on bases, like what happened in the Philippines, where the authoritarian leader, President Duterte, just pardoned a U.S. soldier who was found guilty of murdering a trans woman off a base.
DAVID VINE: Yes, this is another cost of war. We need to look at the costs of war in terms — the human costs in terms of direct combat deaths, injuries in these wars, the “wars on terror,” numbering in the tens of millions, but we also need to look at the deaths and injuries that are caused on a daily basis around U.S. military bases around the world. These bases have — in addition to enabling the wars that the United States has been fighting, they have very immediate harms that they inflict on local populations, including in the Philippines and in, as I said, around 80 countries and territories around the world, damage to their environments, their local communities, in a whole variety of ways.
AMY GOODMAN: David Vine, I want to thank you so much for being with us, professor of anthropology at American University, co-author of the new report on the Costs of War Project headlined “Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States’ Post-9/11 Wars.” Your new book, coming out, The United States of War.
” The U.S. Army has fired or suspended 14 officers and soldiers stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, following an investigation into sexual assaults and murders at the base, including the bludgeoning to death of 20-year-old soldier Vanessa Guillén, whose remains were found in July. ” Democracy Now
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/14/fort_hood_investigation_murders_assault
Is it time to shut down Fort Hood? There have been multiple reports of sexual assault and corruption there.