Episode 133: The Art of Fake-Ending Wars

Citations Needed

News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2021

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Yemen war: Joe Biden ends support for operations in foreign policy reset," reports the BBC. "Trump: US will be out of Afghanistan by Christmas 2020," cheered Military Times. "Trump Orders Withdrawal of U.S. Troops From Northern Syria," the New York Times told us.

For decades, the United States has very often appeared to have "ended" wars that do not, in fact, end at all. Open-ended jargon like "residual counter terror forces," "Vietnamization," "military advisors," along with deliberately ambiguous timetables, process criticisms––all are used to confuse the average media consumer.

America's politicians know the American public broadly dislikes war and empire––and thus wants to see it restrained––but these same politicians don't really want to end wars so they have a frequent PR problem: How do you make it look like you're ending a war or occupation without really doing so?

To solve this conundrum, American political leaders have perfected the art of fake-ending a war. Which is to say, announcing a war is going to end, typically around election time, only to––once the headlines make a big splash––backtrack, obfuscate, claim the "situation on the ground has changed" or the military involvement will only be in a "limited" or "defensive" capacity, shuffle troops around or find other thin pretexts to continue the war or occupation.

In this episode, we discuss the United States' history of fake-ending wars, who these pronouncements are meant to please, why troops levels are often impossible to know, and why so many of our so-called "wars" are not really wars at all, but military occupations that are never really meant to end.

Our guest is Shireen Al-Adeimi, assistant professor at Michigan State University.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Citations Needed with Nemeshirazi and Adam Johnson.
0:09.1	Welcome to Citations Needed, a podcast on the media, Power, PR and the history of Bullshit
0:14.6	I Am Nemeshirazi.
0:15.6	I'm Adam Johnson.
0:17.2	We are back after our spring break.
0:19.7	Thanks everyone for sticking with us, for bearing with our little hiatus.
0:24.1	You know what, we are back now and one team member stronger, Adam has had a baby.
0:31.8	So congratulations my friend.
0:33.7	Yes Peter Jean Lazare is born February 12th, 2021.
0:37.3	A healthy condition.
0:39.2	He's eating a lot.
0:40.2	He's a chubby baby which we're very excited about.
0:41.7	I should actually make a correction there.
0:43.3	Adam did not have a baby.
0:44.7	Sarah had.
0:45.7	I did not have a baby, that's correct.
0:48.6	But no, he's doing good.
0:50.0	We're very happy with him.
0:51.0	He's great.
0:52.0	He's been a little wild.
0:53.0	I'm just saying, you know, no more free rides.
0:54.0	That's what I'm saying.
	...

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