The one important aspect of climate change the Left keeps missing is the fact that Wall Street’s very lucrative military-industrial complex leaves the largest carbon footprint of any industry. So, why have the peace and environmental movements, along with most of the Left, failed to make this important connection?

Millions of people have been displaced by the Syrian war. We bring you some of those countless voices in this moving exclusive.

Syria has become dangerous. Syrians get killed and wounded almost daily. Their neighbours have also felt the impacts of violence: refugees in Turkey and outbreaks of fighting in Tripoli’s streets in Lebanon where peace depends on a nuanced arrangement between Christians and Sunni and Shia Muslims.

Ten plus years ago, the United States (oops, NATO) invaded Afghanistan and quickly won the war against the militarily (technologically) inferior Taliban government. Washington and its allies followed their victory by quickly losing the occupation challenge. As George W. Bush and company invaded Iraq, the Taliban crept back from Pakistan and undid the American war victory.

In reflecting on the disastrous last decade we might ask: what would the world be like today if the United Sates, Britain, Canada and the other countries using their military might to kill fanatical young people had instead used that money to buy school books, drill wells, educate people, and promote religious tolerance throughout the Middle East—and at home?

Now in its eighth year, the US and NATO occupation of Afghanistan continues to grind on, its original—if entirely spurious—raison d’etre long since lost in the fog of war. Of all the paper-thin rationales, then, for the continuing occupation of Afghanistan, the notion that ‘we’ are somehow deeply concerned for the welfare of the Afghani people is the most stubbornly, the most patently delusional.

Despite almost a decade of warfare, including an invasion and occupation, the US military and its allies and client state armed forces are losing the war in Afghanistan. Outside of the central districts of a few cities and the military fortresses, the Afghan national resistance forces, in all of their complex local, regional and national alliances, are in control, of territory, people and administration.

Without forgetting the very significant progress towards more civilized societies in past years, and the reasons for it, let’s focus nevertheless on the present, and on the notions of imperial sovereignty now being crafted. It is not surprising that, as the population becomes more civilized, power systems become more extreme in their efforts to control the “great beast.” And the great beast is indeed frightening.

The resistance resists; every block, every house, every store rings out with gunfire; the resistance is everywhere. Every house takes hits–the resistance fights on. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed, thousands have been injured and many more will die, but after each funeral tens of thousands more–the peaceful, apolitical, “wait-and-see” ones–have taken up the gun.