I had just finished stacking some blown-up rollers on top of my brand new, multimillion-dollar International MRAP Wrecker. It was my second rotation out to FOB Frontnek, and I was psyched to get into some serious missions. Our convoy was about to leave Kandahar and head into the mountains, and the stars and sky at the FOB were almost worth the entire deployment. But as we were nearing the edge of the city, I saw an Afghan National Police officer open a car door on the side of the road, pull the driver out, and shoot him in the face. I didn’t even flinch. I still remember watching the blood pool on the shiny new road in my side mirror.

That was just one of the many “humanitarian” acts I witnessed—and did nothing about. When you’re in country, you have to disconnect your heart; if you don’t, you can’t do your job, and you’re honestly a liability. When you come back home and try to reconnect, the wires are no longer compatible. Once you finally eke out a semblance of a caring, feeling human being, you realize that everything you bled for was bullshit. That afternoon in RC South, Afghanistan, on the side of the street—it was just another Tuesday. That moment wasn’t merely a flash of brutality; years later, it woke me up to the carnage lurking behind our so-called “humanitarian” efforts.

Now, while you might have grown up believing USAID was all about building wells, handing out rice, and spreading goodwill, here’s the searing truth: behind that smile is a labyrinth of covert maneuvers. Take Cuba’s ZunZuneo, for instance—a secretive, text-based social network that masqueraded as harmless sports scores and weather updates while secretly stirring political dissent. Funded through shell companies and cloaked in the guise of aid, it was a tool designed to destabilize a government, just another dark maneuver in the playbook of influence.

The old soldier’s adage—“if it’s too dirty for the CIA, give it to USAID”—isn’t just crude humor. It’s a brutal nod to a system where humanitarian fronts serve as masks for covert operations. Whether it’s in Afghanistan or Cuba, the same crooked machine is at work: political elites, defense contractors, and intelligence agencies all playing a twisted game of chess with human lives as pawns.

And yeah, while the polished propaganda touts nation-building, the real story is written in the blood on the streets. In Afghanistan, despite all the talk of progress, endless fields of poppy and marijuana thrived. Organized crime, corrupt officials, and warlords—often on our payroll—laughed all the way to the bank while we were busy being fed lies. Every covert project, every mission that promised to “help,” ended up as another notch in the belt of manipulation.

So when you see convoys of “aid workers” rolling with armed guards or fields of poppy inexplicably off-limits, don’t be fooled by the façade of benevolence. Behind the sanitized slogans lies a machine of global influence that sacrifices truth for power and profit. I witnessed that raw brutality on the streets of RC South—a flash of cold-blooded execution that underscored just how deeply rotted the system really is.

It’s time to wake the hell up. The poppy fields, the secret social networks, the armed convoys—they’re all red flags of a system that’s rigged against us. If we keep accepting these sanitized narratives, we’re only complicit in the cover-up. The truth is out there, hidden behind the glossy veneer of “aid,” and it’s high time we tore that veil down to expose the rot underneath. 

Haven’t you ever wondered why these projects cost billions? It’s all a fucking grift! We’re the victims here—the Democrat with a huge heart who just wants to help those suffering, the Republican who’s always paid his damn taxes and student loans and just wants everyone to pull their own weight. There’s money for all of it. Tons of it. But it all ends up swept away by Nancy’s insider trading and Cheney’s endless defense spending.

The Arab Spring was really the spark that lit the revolution cycle. USAID dropped 1.2 billion on what they called the Facebook revolution, with the grand goal of fundamentally altering society’s relationship with power. Sounds good on paper, right? Well, it’s high time we radically change our own social contract with power. We’re in charge now, and I want to know why the fuck 9/11 is still classified. It’s time to get pissed at the right people.