Blue-collar worker, reader, and writer Daniel N. White
shares some painful straight talk with those willing to listen.
The article originally appeared in Contrary Perspective,
though I came across in via David Stockman's Contra Corner.
* * *
* *
James Fallows, a noted journalist and author of National
Defense (1981), is tits on a boar useless these days.
(*GUFFAW*)
That’s my conclusion after reading his Atlantic Monthly
cover story, The Tragedy of the American Military, in which he asks, "Why
do the best soldiers in the world keep losing?"
It is a truly terrible article...
Right off the bat, I’m going to have to say that the U.S.
Army doesn’t produce “the world’s best soldiers” — and it never has. We
Americans don’t do infantry as well as others do. This is reasonably well
known. Anyone who wants to dispute the point has to dispute not me but General George
Patton, who in 1944 said: “According to
Napoleon, the weaker the infantry the stronger the artillery must be. Thank God
we’ve got the world’s best artillery.”
Operational analysis of us by the German Wehrmacht and
the PLA (China) said the same thing, and everyone militarily knowledgeable has
seen and read them. We should know that about ourselves by now and we don’t,
and the fact that we don’t, particularly after a chain of military defeats by
lesser powers, says a good deal bad about us as a people and society.
The Atlantic and James Fallows are both professionally
derelict to continue printing these canards about our infantry prowess. “The world’s best” — there is no excuse for
such hyperbolic boasting.
Why the U.S. keeps losing its wars, and why James Fallows
has no clue as to why, is revealing of the American moment.
It’s painfully obvious the U.S. has lost its most recent
wars because it has lacked coherent and achievable objectives for them. (Or no
objectives that our ruling elites were willing to share with us.)
(*NOD*)
Just what, exactly, was the end result supposed to be
from invading Iraq in 2003?
If the Taliban were willing as they stated to hand over
Osama Bin Laden to us, why did we invade Afghanistan?
Why did we then start a new war in Afghanistan once we
overthrew the Taliban?
* FOLKS... POST-ACTUAL-TOPPLING OF THE TALIBAN... WHAT
HAVE WE ACHIEVED IN AFGHANISTAN FOR ALL OUR TREASURE AND BLOOD EXPANDED? SAME
WITH REGARD TO IRAQ? LIBYA...?!?!
* FOLKS... BUSH FUCKED UP... BUT... OBAMA DOUBLED DOWN!
AFGHANISTAN BECAME A DISASTER AFTER OBAMA BECAME PRESIDENT! LIBYA WAS OBAMA AND
HILLARY'S "BABY!" INDEED, THE "ARAB SPRING" THAT HAS LAID
WASTE THE OLD RELATIVE STABILITY OF THE REGION WAS ALL OBAMA AND HILLARY!
Of course, this isn’t the first time in recent history
that the U.S. has fought wars with no coherent rationale. Vietnam had the same
problem. The Pentagon Papers showed that insofar as we had a rationale it was
to continue the war for sufficiently long enough to show the rest of the world
we weren’t to be trifled with, even if we didn’t actually win it.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Dick Nixon was quite upfront in private about this too;
that’s documented in the latest Nixon Tapes book.
(*NOD*)
Not having clear and achievable political objectives in a
war or major military campaign is a guarantee of military failure. Here’s what
arguably the best Allied general in WW-II had to say about this, William Slim,
from his superlative memoirs, "Defeat into Victory," writing of the
Allied defeat in Burma, 1942:
"Of these causes of the defeat, one affected all our
efforts and contributed much to turning our defeat into disaster — the failure,
after the fall of Rangoon, to give the forces in the field a clear strategic
object for the campaign…. Yet a realistic assessment of possibilities there and
a firm, clear directive would have made a great deal of difference to us and to
the way we fought. Burma was not the first nor was it to be the last campaign
that had been launched on no very clear realization of its political or
military objects. A study of such campaigns points emphatically to the almost
inevitable disaster that must follow. Commanders in the field, in fairness to
them and their troops, must be clear and definitely told what is the object
they are locally to attain.”
Anyone who wishes to dispute the lack of clear and
achievable objectives for America’s wars should try to answer the question of
what a U.S. victory in Iraq or Afghanistan would look like. What would be
different in the two countries from a U.S. victory? How would the application
of force by the U.S. military have yielded these desired results, whatever they
were?
I invite anyone to answer these questions!
They should have been asked, and answered, a long time
ago.
All the parties concerned — the American political class,
our intelligentsia, our moral leadership, and our military’s senior officer
corps —have failed, stupendously, by not doing so.
* AGREED.
Indeed, the lack of coherent objectives for these wars
stems from the fraudulence of our pretenses for starting them. Even senior U.S.
and UK leaders have acknowledged the stage-management of falsehoods about
weapons of mass destruction for a rationale for war with Iraq. When wars are started on falsehoods, it isn’t
reasonable to expect them to have honest (or moral) objectives.
* IT'S NOT AS SIMPLE AND CLEAR CUT AS THAT... I DO
BELIEVE THEY BELIEVED SADDAM EITHER HAD OR WAS CREDIBLY CLOSE TO PRODUCING
DANGEROUS WMDs... HOWEVER... WERE INSANE DICTATORSHIPS POSSESSING WMDs A
JUSTIFICATION FOR PREEMPTIVE WAR... SHOULDN'T WE HAVE LONG AGO INVADED NORTH
KOREA?
The question then arises: What were the real objectives
of these wars?
Economic determinists/Marxists look to oil as the
underlying reason, but this can’t be it.
* NOPE. (NOT PER SE!)
None of the economic determinist explanations for the
Vietnam War made a lick of sense then or now, and any arguments about war for
oil make an assumption, admittedly a remotely possible one, about the ruling
elites in the U.S. and UK not being able to read a financial balance sheet. The
most cursory run of the financials under the best possible assumptions of the
promoters of the wars showed Iraq as a giant money loser, world’s third largest
oil reserves or not. Economic reasons for a war in Afghanistan? Nobody could
ever be that dumb, not even broadcast journalists.
(*NOD*)
Judging from the results, the real intent of our
political leadership was to create a state of permanent war, for narrow, behind
the scenes, domestic political reasons.
* YES! THE "SECURITY STATE!"
The wars were/are stage-managed domestic political
theater for current political ruling elites. The main domestic objective sought
was a Cold-War like freezing of political power and authority in current form
by both locking up large areas of political debate as off-limits and increasing
the current distribution of societal resources toward economic elites.
* MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX...
This was the real objective of both sides in the Cold
War, Americans and Russians both, once things settled out after 1953, and most
historians just lack the ability and perspective to see it.
* DWIGHT... DAVID... EISENHOWER...
(*PURSED LIPS*)
(*SALUTING*)
A related factor Americans aren’t supposed to discuss is
how much of the drive to war was neo-con war promotion manipulated by
Israel.
(*NOD*)
There’s no getting around the high percentage of Jewish
neo-cons inside the Beltway.
* NOPE. (AND NON-JEWISH!)
There’s a seven decade-long history of American
country-cousin Jews being manipulated by their Israeli city-slicker relations,
too, but I’d call this a contributing factor and not a causative one. But the
willingness of American neo-cons to do Israel’s bidding and launch a war
against Iraq is most disturbing and does require more research. (They all seem
to be willing to do it again in Iran; was there ever a neo-con ever against an
Iran war - ever?) Just look at the current situation vis-à-vis Iran, and the
direct intervention by the Israeli Prime Minister into American foreign policy.
There is one other possibility: that America’s leaders
actually believed their own PR about spreading democracy.
* YEP. THAT IDIOT BUSH DID. HE ACTUALLY DID. AND IN HIS
OWN WAY... SO DOES THAT IDIOT MCCAIN - ONLY UNDER GOOD OL' FASHIONED
AMERICAN-ALLIED STRONG MEN!
* OOPS! ONE MORE! (NAKED GREED!)
Cui Bono - "To whose benefit" - is always the
question we need to ask, and with 13 years of war the beneficiaries should be
obvious enough. Just follow the money, and follow those whose powers get
increased. James Fallows, and everyone else in the mainstream news media,
hasn’t.
(*NOD*)
But the most pressing issue isn’t any of the above. The most pressing issue is moral, and most
importantly of all our society’s unwillingness to face the hard moral questions
of war.
Above all else war is a moral issue; undoubtedly the most
profound one a society has to face. Wars are the acme of moral obscenity.
Terrible moral bills inevitably accrue from the vile actions that warfare
entails. It has always been so. As long as there has been civilization there
has always been great debate as to what political or social wrongs warrant the
commission of the crimes and horrors of war. About the only definitively
conceded moral rationale for war is self-defense against external attack.
Domestic political theater is nothing new as a reason for war, but it has been
universally condemned as grotesquely immoral throughout recorded history.
* THIS IS NOT PACIFISM, THIS IS MORALITY!
Our country is ostrich-like in its refusal to acknowledge
the moral obscenity of war and its moral costs.
* OR EVEN FINANCIAL COSTS!
Insofar as your average American is willing to engage
with these moral issues, it is at the level of “I support our troops” to each
other, combined with the “Thank you for your service” to anyone in
uniform.
* YEP...
(*GRIMACE*)
Moral engagement on the biggest moral issue there is -
war - with these tiresome tropes is profoundly infantile. It isn’t moral
engagement; it is a (partially subconscious) willful evasion.
* MANY OF THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST PEOPLE I KNOW FALL INTO
THIS TRAP... THEY REFUSE TO DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN "VITAL" NATIONAL
INTEREST AND "NATIONAL INTEREST." THEY REFUSE TO PERSONALIZE IT. I
MYSELF START WITH THE QUESTION "WOULD I SACRIFICE MY LIFE OR THE LIFE OF A
LOVED ONE FOR "THIS"... WHATEVER "THIS" IS?"
The Hollywood sugarcoated picture of what war is hasn’t
helped here; blindness due to American Exceptionalism hasn’t helped either. Our
intellectual and moral leadership — churches in particular — have been entirely
AWOL on the moral failings of our wars and the moral debts and bills from them
we have accrued and continue to accrue. And these bills will come due some day,
with terrible interest accrued. Anyone paying attention to how the rest of the
world thinks knows that we currently incur the world’s contumely for our
failings here on this issue.
(*NOD*)
Mr. Fallows and the Atlantic are both equally blind and
AWOL on the moral issues of our wars. The moral issues, and failings, of the
wars are paramount and are completely undiscussed in the article, and the
magazine, and always have been since before the wars began. Mr. Fallows, and
the Atlantic, by framing the war issue in terms of “why the best soldiers in
the world keep losing our wars” are avoiding them in a somewhat more
sophisticated way than the “Thank you for your service” simpletons are.
* THAT SAID...
They should know better...
...and they don’t.
They lack the situational- and self-awareness to
understand that they are doing this. They deserve our contempt for it. They certainly have mine.
The issue isn’t why the world’s best soldiers keep losing
our wars. The issue is why we start and fight wars this stupid and wrong and
show every sign of continuing to do so in the future. Why do we learn nothing
from our military defeats? How can we remain so willfully and morally blind?
Well, types like James Fallows and The Atlantic Monthly
are a large part of why.
Missing the biggest political and moral question in our
lifetimes, for this many years, well, hell, The Atlantic Monthly and James
Fallows are just tits on a boar useless these days.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR...
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