At last a headline on NPR (National Public Radio), “Biden Declassifies Secret FBI Report Detailing Saudi Nationals’ Connections To 9/11.” After Trump’s promise was broken, now a Democrat is exposing some truth about 9/11 and the involvement of our so-called ally, Saudi Arabia?

Onward I read with bated breath, “The partially redacted report…” Oh well.

I doubt that even the most fervent Biden supporter could excuse his process in abandoning Kabul. But… In conservative media you’d think he alone gave $85 billion worth of military hardware to the Taliban. It was at least a twenty year debacle, and even goes back hundreds. But condensing it into a time where Americans can learn from history, there’s the U.S. and UK’s sponsorship of the Iranian coup in 1953.

The Middle East has always depended on Western know-how to extract and sell their oil. But the people of Iran elected Mohammad Mossadegh in order to secure a larger percentage of the profit from their oil. The oil industry has long had a lot of control over governments, basically holding them hostage because government gets the blame when economic conditions are flat.

How would you feel if a democratically elected president of the United States was replaced by The Shah of Iran? This was the beginning of modern antagonism between Muslims and the West. The hostage takers in Tehran in 1979 were not so much different from American revolutionaries of 1776.

Since that time U.S. forces have entered Afghanistan in search of bin Laden, then started a war in Iraq over a border dispute with Kuwait (where all the labor is imported and the locals lounge around counting oil proceeds and driving Ferraris). Does it start to appear that our military is being abused as a tool of industry rather than utilized as a tool for defense?

In a country where being anti-abortion is called pro-life, no one could be excused for calling our government out as the least pro-life organization since the communists took over Russia and China. When former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright said on TV that U.S. sanctions killed 500,000 children in Iraq and it was “worth it,” that pretty well sums up the attitude of U.S. elites: Death and destruction is worth it as long as it profits business that controls our government. This fact does not exclude the widows and orphans of U.S. military.

Our involvement in the Middle East has been the quintessential terrorist recruitment project because anyone associated with civilian victims of the U.S. military turns against us. Should Americans who supposedly are represented by this killing machine start to rein it in? The most disturbing part of all of this is that even without the secrets, the information is out there for people to access and decide that our government is wrong conducting these deadly and wasteful adventures.

Slogans denouncing Biden for the bungled exit from Afghanistan ignore the bungled past twenty years. They take the place of simple thought processes like “Is it constitutional?” or “What are the long term effects?” or “What is the goal?” They divide us in the same way as accusations of “deniers” and “anti-vaxxers.”

Since 9/11, the use of $5.8 trillion has been denied to entrepreneurs, charity, and infrastructure developers and handed over to the military industrial complex. Blaming Biden distracts us from a much bigger goal; simple and efficient defense of the people of the United States.