Please read this whole thing and tell me whatcha think so I can get it out on the web (or not). You see, I asked Arka, and there was no problem with me posting the reply so you need to note if you do or do not want your post, er,... posted.
Hi Todd, Well, it's an interesting position to be sure. I think that you are correct in seeing that the greatest threat to the American ability to 'lead the world' lie in the nascent economic potential of India and China. It is in this part of the world where the geopolitical and economic upheavals of the 21st century will be centered. Europe is prosperous, but no longer growing, and I worry that we here in States have lost our sense of history. Without remembering the past and learning from it, we have little hope of leading the world into the future.Well, I am quite happy to have heard that one. Hey, and I am honest here. It took me about a hour to digest this reply completely. I am trying to be completely fair and balanced in my reporting, no sarcasm intended or implied.
As to the current state of US military power, I prefer to not couch this in terms of liberal and conservative. I can't really speak for what happened to the military under the Clinton administration because I know little about it. I do know that The White House and the Pentagon had a pretty strained relationship in those years. But while I am a supporter of maintaining a well equipped and professional military, I have some very serious problems with its current mobilization by the Bush administration. On one hand, militaries are meant to protect the nations they serve, but on the other hand, the fundamental purpose of armies is to destroy the enemy. the calculus of war is such that it would be irresponsible for armies to do anything short of completely demolishing the capacity of the enemy to resist, and in doing so, protect those whom they serve. It is this calculus which forces me to so vehemently oppose prosecuting war unless the nation is truly under threat. War is a very nasty thing, as I am sure you are aware through your service, and vicariously through the service of others in the military. The US armed forces today are a full generation ahead of any competing forces, and as such, have the capability of shedding an enormous amount of blood. If we are to shed such blood, let it be for a cause that we are certain is just. When Nazi Germany conquered all of continental Europe in the space of 3 months, and was bombing England in 1942, our way of life was at stake. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, laid waste to the US Pacific Fleet, and threatened invasion of the US west coast, our way of life was threatened. Our armed services answered the call and defended the nation with aplomb, albeit at tremendous cost in lives, both enemy and American.
Over the years, the "US economy has gotten bigger and wars have gotten smaller." In the post cold-war years, we have seen that the key threats to our way of life come not from nations but from rogue groups that operate secretly and disparately to shatter the confidence of Western populations. While the September 11th attacks were the worst example of terrorist activity to date, the US is not the first Western power to be a target of terrorism at home. When the Europeans rolled back their empires in the wake of V-E day, they were assailed by angry terrorists originating from their former colonies. These groups were seeking revenge for what they perceived as centuries of imperial domination. Orpheus response to the situation was almost entirely different from our response; instead of launching wave upon wave of military adventurism to rogue colonies, the Europeans focused instead on better police work at home and more compliant diplomacy abroad. The rewards of their more cool-headed approach have been evident for the last 25 years. There have been no major acts of terrorism within Europe for the last three decades, and aside from some home-grown groups (basque Terrorists and the IRA), terrorism in Europe is largely a problem of the past.
Compare that to our response. In response to 9/11, Bush, succumbing to public anger and the need to respond, attacked Afghanistan. This seemed like a good decision given the ostensible support the Afghan government had extended to Osama Bin Laden. In Afghanistan, our modern military faced off against a nation of hardened but poorly equipped islamic tribesmen who could do little to stop or even understand the ways that the US made war. As it did in 1979 in the face of overwhelming Soviet armor, Afghanistan fell, and a new foreign power was in charge. The cost of that war, financially, was relatively small, and it was here that the current administration faced its primary challenge. Could the Bush administration help build an Afghanistan that would reject fanatical people who would plan acts as outrageously barbaric as the ones in New York City?
To do that in Afghanistan required a number of things; patience, money, and most importantly, an understanding of the people we were trying to govern. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has failed on all counts. What has really changed in Afghanistan? The Taliban, which had bullied rival warlords to tow their party line, were Sunni islamic extremists who forced men to grow beards, banned women from public life, and banned music. In the new Afghanistan, warlords appointed by the US military to govern provinces in Afghanistan are largely Sunni islamic extremists who force men to grow beards, ban women from public life, and ban music. But there is one thing that they do that the Taliban would not allow, and that is to grow opium. Almost overnight, Afghanistan has regained it's title as one of the worlds chief opium and heroin producers. And the US government, all the way up the White House, tell DEA agents in neighboring Pakistan to look the other way, because there is no other way to fund reconstruction in Afghanistan.
And what or our military presence there? Outside of the ISAF, which is now a NATO entity, US forces are holed up in bases toting a great deal of firepower, but not really understanding how to govern or control an area where tribalism, factionalism, and patriotism rule the day. The situation is disturbingly familiar; the Soviets had pretty much accomplished the same thing in the mid 80's. I recently spoke with a former officer of the Spetnaz Russian Airborne in Russia, a veteran of the Afghan war who echoes the same sentiment. So, given this precarious situation, what could we have done?
Invade a much larger, even more ethnically divided country of course! Without any proof of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, George W Bush and his advisers duped the American public into believing that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction which he could use to threaten Americans at home. He could give them to terrorist groups, he claimed. Tony Blair, in an effort to preserve Britain's 'special relationship' with the US, was quick to announce that Saddam Hussein could launch his menacing weapons at a moments notice, showering the western world Fu-Manchu style with agents of chemical and biological mayhem. Of course, we knew what Saddam had and how long he had it; we sold him his chemical and biological weapons stocks in the mid 80's to keep the Ayatollahs of Iran from taking over the middle east. Ronald Reagan, in a special memo, even advised several armed services committee members to look the other way when it was reported that Saddam was gassing Iraqi Kurds. Gassing Kurds is a proud tradition in Iraq started by the Royal Air Force of Great Britain in the 1920's, and looking away from such atrocities committed by powers friendly to us is a proud American tradition. In his zeal to unleash a $200 billion war on Iraq, the Bush administration even stooped to using crude forgeries of uranium dealings between Iraq and Niger as proof of Saddam's nefarious intentions. WMD's became a household term as our troops rolled into Iraq, despite the fact that UN inspectors had found nothing to substantiate the Bush administration's claims. We killed 26,000 Iraqis in this war, if you could call it a war. 'Degrading enemy forces to a non-operational state' is the Orwellian pentagonspeak for slaughtering wholesale thousands upon thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians fated to die. And what has been gained by their deaths, and by the deaths of almost 300 Americans in Iraq? Last week, General Abizaid admitted that the security situation in Baghdad is worsening by the day. The occupation is costing the US a billion dollars a week. And the French, who understand well the costs of empire, are reminding us that they told us so. And have we slowed the spread of terrorism to the US and our allies? Well, we have bombings and reprisals in Israel, bombings in Mumbai, India, and bombings in Iraq against the UN and other targets. Soon, I imagine, we will see bombings on our shores.
Bush's zeal to use the military for the destruction and subsequent resurrection of nations he does not like is shortsighted, and his willingness to put the lives of servicemen and women at risk for spurious or unfounded reasons is criminal. Bill Clinton may have humiliated men and women in uniform, but Bush is putting them in the line of fire without just pretense, and that is far worse. Further, his outright disregard for globally established rules of justifiable military action and conduct previously sanctioned by the United States, squanders the sympathy and cooperative spirit that the rest of the world extended to us in the wake of the September 11th attacks. It also makes it more dangerous for Americans such as myself to travel abroad without becoming targets of violent anti-Americanism. And as this administration misuses the nation's military to take more innocent lives, I fear that it also endangers Americans here at home. If my sister or my mother was killed by a stray missile or a trigger happy soldier, I imagine that I might be inspired to take up arms against those who perpetrated such violence. By choosing the path of violence, the Bush administration increases the number of disaffected people on this planet who might seek to do us harm, in revenge for the destruction we have brought to them.
America is being led astray by people who have not learned the lessons of history; these are men who don't understand the way the world works, and only pay lip service to the values that we as Americans hold dear. The trials and travails of European imperialists should give our leaders pause as they contemplate lengthy and bloody occupations of ethnically divided nations. They should understand that war has irreplaceable human costs, and that violence only leads to more violence. If you recklessly take life, you are bound to generate anger and resentment. if the Bush administration really understood the concept of security, they would have taken $200 billion to improve airport security, put more police on the streets, or coordinate US law enforcement. They would have built stronger diplomatic ties with governments and law-enforcement agencies overseas, and improved cooperation between them and our own. They would have used the goodwill and support of the world after 9/11 to build a regime of international cooperation, to prevent malefactors from attacking our progressive values. No amount of money can bring that spirit of cooperation back.
Sorry for the long winded reply,
Arka C.
No comments:
Post a Comment