Hey Pundits, War Isn’t A Game

Article

Apr 15

UPresident Joe Biden walks through Arlington National cemetery on April 14, 2021. He announced it's "time to end" the war in Afghanistan. [AFP/ Brendan Smialowski] — President Joe Biden walks through Arlington National cemetery on April 14, 2021. He announced it's "time to end" the war in Afghanistan. [AFP/ Brendan Smialowski]

The US is withdrawing from Afghanistan and there’s nothing to celebrate. After 20 years of American occupation, an estimated 150,000 people have died, over 40,000 of them civilians. More than a hundred civilians were killed just last month.

But when President Biden announced the U.S. withdrawal, pundits clicked easily into the fatuous games that are their media meal tickets: Who won? Who lost? How many people did the U.S. “liberate”? How will American prestige be affected?

The game is as familiar as it is grotesque. As Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) noted on Twitter, “Afghanistan was never ours to win or lose. WTH is wrong with these people who love talking about war as if it’s a game. It’s lives and futures stolen meaninglessly by people who comfortably beat the drums of war at no real consequence to them.”

The president who launched this war is today affectionately ribbed for his amateur paintings of puppies, soldiers and immigrants. That his hands are covered in the blood of over a hundred thousand people didn’t prevent his rebirth as a resistance hero. And his lieutenants have entered semiretirement as occasional pundits, relaxing comfortably on piles of private sector loot. The invasion’s architects Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are both worth millions, and tend to pop up in the news for things like selling a $2 million vacation home.

Maybe there are some winners after all.