Antiwar.com Week in Review August 26, 2021

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August 26th, 2021

US Continues to Warn of Potential ISIS Attack in Kabul

As the US has been evacuating people from the Kabul airport, US officials have warned of a potential attack from the local ISIS affiliate, known as ISIS-K, a sworn enemy of the Taliban.

President Biden has cited a possible ISIS-K attack as one of the reasons he is sticking to the August 31st withdrawal deadline. "Every day we're on the ground is another day that we know ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both us and allied forces and innocent civilians," Biden said Tuesday.

US officials speaking anonymously to the media have claimed they have knowledge of more specific threats. A Pentagon official told CNN Wednesday that security concerns around the airport have increased due to a "very specific threat stream" from ISIS-K against crowds outside the airport.

By Dave DeCamp

The Cynical Campaign To Scapegoat Joe Biden for the Afghanistan Debacle

The chaotic end to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan has produced an abundance of recriminations. Some of them are warranted, even though the dominant motive in nearly all cases is little more than crude blame shifting. Joe Biden and his foreign policy team certainly can be faulted for spectacularly mismanaging the final stage of the US troop withdrawal. The president's comments on July 8 emphatically disputing predictions that the Taliban would quickly overrun Afghanistan did not enhance his reputation for accurate insights. It is hardly a good sight to see US helicopters conducting evacuation flights of diplomats from the American embassy in Kabul - an image all-too-reminiscent of Saigon in 1975.

By Ted Galen Carpenter

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Peter Bergen is Mistaken About Bin Laden's Strategy

Famous journalist and terrorism expert Peter Bergen is making a big mistake. Give the man credit: he had the courage to travel to Tora Bora with Peter Arnett to interview bin Laden in person back in 1997.

However, as seen in this clip from his appearance on C-SPAN 2's Book TV on August 22, Bergen believes that Osama bin Laden's claim in his 2004 speech that his strategy all along was to bog America down in war and "bleed us to bankruptcy" was just an after-the-fact rationalization for the failure of his real policy, which was simply to make the U.S.A. give up and run away, either right away or after a short fight.

"Bin Laden in 2004 released a video tape saying this was all a clever plan to suck the United States into the Middle East and bankrupt it. Well there's no evidence that was his actual plan. At the time he really believed his own propaganda which is that the United States is weak. I mean when we interviewed him in 1997 for CNN, he was comparing Americans to the former Soviet Union. He really believed that if he applied enough political pressure, the United States would pull out of the Middle East.

By Scott Horton

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Biden Falsely Claims the US Doesn't Have a Military Presence in Syria

President Biden falsely claimed that the US does not have a military presence in Syria when defending his decision to pull out of Afghanistan. In an interview with ABC on Wednesday night, Biden pointed to the so-called "threats" in Syria and Africa.

"There's a significantly greater threat to the United States from Syria. There's a significantly greater threat from East Africa. There's significant greater threat to other places in the world than it is from the mountains of Afghanistan." he said. "We don't have military in Syria to make sure that we're gonna be protected."

By Dave DeCamp

Israel's Nukes Make US Aid Illegal

Peter Beinart's New York Times essay "America Needs to Start Telling the Truth About Israel's Nukes" earlier this month caused a firestorm. In it, Beinart noted how the prevalence of US "lies of omission" allow policymakers and politicians to pretend Israel does not have nuclear weapons. This in turn generates the false narrative that Iran's nuclear program could initiate a Middle East nuclear arms race. Beinart laments how US deceptions about Israel's nuclear arsenal undermine America's self-proclaimed status as a champion of non-proliferation.

What Beinart did not appear to know - until educated by Twitter users - is what machinery keeps the US in lockstep with Israeli so-called "nuclear ambiguity" and why it exists.

Frank Kendall, who was sworn in as Air Force secretary on July 28th, made it clear in the interview that he is focused on China. "I've been obsessed, if you will, with China for quite a long time now - and its military modernization, what that implies for the US and for security," he said.

By Grant Smith

IDF Says It's Accelerating Plans to Strike Iran as Bennett Visits Washington

The Israeli military said Wednesday that it is developing more plans to strike Iran as Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is visiting Washington.

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi told reporters that the Israeli military is speeding up its "operational plans" against Iran. He said that Israel's recently approved military budget had funds for the IDF to expand its capabilities against Iran.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz issued a similar threat on Wednesday. "The State of Israel has the means to act and will not hesitate to do so. I do not rule out the possibility that Israel will have to take action in the future in order to prevent a nuclear Iran," Gantz said.

By Dave DeCamp

US Loses One Afghanistan War: Proposals for New Afghanistan Wars Multiply

Trita Parsi on the True Drivers of Middle East Instability

New Report Finds US Has Spent Over $2.3 Trillion on Afghanistan War

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