The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth

After 9/11, the United States began operating in Afghanistan, supporting and buying native armies to confront al-Qaeda. But over time these were replaced by U.S. ground forces, and the war expanded to Iraq. What had been a rational war turned into both an unwinnable war and one that would drain and distort American domestic life. Imperial wars exha

In the post-war period, much of the non-communist world was opened up to US domination by tactics of this sort. This became the method of choice to fight off the threat of communist insurgencies and revolution, entailing an anti-democratic (and even more emphatically anti-populist and anti-socialist/communist) strategy on the part of the US that pu

would never keep. “He offered simple solutions to complex problems,” Sebestyen wrote in his biography of the Bolshevik leader. “He lied unashamedly. He identified a scapegoat he could later label ‘enemies of the people.’ He justified himself on the basis that winning meant everything: the ends justified the means.”