Guy Baehr
Guy Baehr
Nov 5 · 2 min read

The betrayal from Washington is in consistently enrolling various groups — including marginalized groups such as the Kurds — to serve in our endless proxy and regime change wars. We do this in many ways. Sometimes it is idealistic rhetoric. Just as often it is cash payoffs to leaders. Usually the marginalized group seeks and accepts support from the US because it believes it will further their own aims, such as overthrowing a government or carving out an enclave of their own.

At the leadership level, sentiment, friendship and loyalty are rarely involved. Unfortunately, for those involved in the actual fighting and dying, on both sides, the shared hardship and sacrifice in battle forges human bonds and, when the realpolitik changes, feelings of guilt and betrayal. This is understandable and also sad, but is not a good guide to either policy or to the assigning of blame.

To blame those who seek to end the US policy of endless regime change wars, or, worse, to advocate continuing endless regime change war to avoid “betraying” allies and proxies, gets things exactly wrong. The way to avoid betraying would-be allies is not to start these cynical, ill-conceived and immoral wars in the first place and not to cynically enroll these groups as allies and proxies to help fight them — or to continue them out of a manipulated sense of loyalty.

Obviously, ending these wrongly conceived wars is going to be messy and should be done in a way that avoids unnecessary death and destruction, but the imperative must be to end them quickly and cleanly in a way that puts a stop to killing and clears the way for a workable and durable peace, even when that means “losing” a war that we (and our proxies or allies) had once hoped to “win.”

These wars, however messy, need to be stopped now. This needs to be done because they are a betraying not only of allies, but, equally important, the citizens of the United States who pay for and die in these cynical and destructive wars — as well as the civilian populations killed, wounded and displaced by them.

As anyone who has looked at the results of these wars with any objectivity, none have anything to do with defending freedom, establishing democracy, lifting oppression or even defending our nation’s vital interests. The usual result is chaos and death. We are all just collateral damage, including the Kurds.

It’s time to say, “No More. No More Betrayal. No More Proxies. No More Lies. No More Endless Wars for Corporate Profits and Power.”

    Guy Baehr

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    Guy Baehr