{"id":37840,"date":"2021-08-10T08:22:49","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T16:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=37840"},"modified":"2021-08-10T08:22:49","modified_gmt":"2021-08-10T16:22:49","slug":"why-do-we-fight-dont-ask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/10\/why-do-we-fight-dont-ask\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do We Fight? Don&#8217;t Ask"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Derek Davison <a href=\"https:\/\/discontents.substack.com\/p\/when-the-why-doesnt-matter\">commented<\/a> on the three U.S. strikes in Somalia that have taken place in the last few weeks, and noted that there is hardly anyone asking why the US is engaged in hostilities in Somalia in 2021:<\/p>\n<p><i>There\u2019s no questioning why al-Shabab, whose current ambitions don\u2019t extend beyond Somalia and whose reach extends no further afield than neighboring Kenya, should be regarded as a threat to the United States. There\u2019s no questioning why the 2001 AUMF is still on the books at all some 20 years later, when everyone involved in planning and carrying out the September 11 attacks is either dead or in hiding. There\u2019s no questioning the absurdity of claiming the right \u201cself-defense\u201d in reference to another country\u2019s military in a battle in which no American personnel were at risk. All of that is just How It Is, apparently, and there\u2019s no sense&nbsp;wasting our beautiful minds&nbsp;on the subject. <\/i><\/p>\n<p>The other wars that the US is currently involved in are like this. Once the US gets involved in a conflict, it never fully extricates itself. It doesn\u2019t matter if the original reason for this involvement made any sense, and it doesn\u2019t matter if there is no real legal authorization for it. It doesn\u2019t matter that it has nothing to do with defending the United States, because once the military is involved somewhere it can claim to be defending itself without having to account for why they are there.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/daniellarison.substack.com\/p\/why-do-we-fight-dont-ask\"><b>Read the rest of the article at SubStack<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at <a href=\"https:\/\/daniellarison.substack.com\">Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative<i>. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene<i>, and<\/i> Culture11, <i>and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week<i>. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DanielLarison\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Derek Davison commented on the three U.S. strikes in Somalia that have taken place in the last few weeks, and noted that there is hardly anyone asking why the US is engaged in hostilities in Somalia in 2021: There\u2019s no questioning why al-Shabab, whose current ambitions don\u2019t extend beyond Somalia and whose reach extends no [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-37840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"The forever war is allowed to continue in as many places as it does for as long as it has because virtually no one in a position of authority wants to demand an end to it."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37840"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37842,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37840\/revisions\/37842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37840"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=37840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}