This country has now been at war continuously for 18 years, ever since President George W. Bush and his top officials announced a “Global War on Terror” within days of the 9/11 attacks and, not long afterward, launched the invasion of Afghanistan. Iraq, of course, followed. And Somalia. And Yemen. And Libya. And Syria. And drone strikes that have never ended across a vast region of the planet. And the building up of a Special Operations force of 70,000 -- bigger than the militaries of many countries -- and the creation of an Africa Command (AFRICOM) after which the war on terror spread across that continent, too. And so it's gone, and continues to go, as hundreds of thousands die and millions are displaced. And that “war” (an ever-more complicated and unsettling set of conflicts) has in its own way come home, too, not just in the arming of America's police with weaponry straight off those distant battlefields or the creation of militarized SWAT units across the country, but in those endless ceremonies “honoring” the troops at sporting events of every sort, in the constant growth of the national security state, and the continual padding of the Pentagon budget.
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