Yesterday, NBC’s Chuck Todd opened a “Meet the Press” segment by calling U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq “wars now without an end.”
“The U.S. now seems to be in a semi-permanent state of war,” added Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel.
“Right now, we’re just in damage control,” explained Lt. General Dan Bolger, Retired, the author of Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. “Our enemies, the Taliban and ISIS, are talking about winning.”
Mr. Todd asked, “Why do we have this incredible military that can’t win these wars?”
“The military can give you a quick victory over a conventional army. It cannot deliver a rebuilt country in the place you go,” replied the general. “That takes an effort of the entire U.S. population and government. And moreover, it takes the commitment of the American people for the long term.”
And then Baghdad and Kabul will look a lot like Chicago or Boston?
“At what point do we walk away?” Todd wanted to know. Never?
“It becomes difficult to walk away, because these situations are spinning quite badly out of control,” offered Sarah Chayes, now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “And it’s spreading.”
Our decade-plus in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost us greatly and accomplished little good, if any.
Even a century of Americans fighting and occupying and pacifying these countries will not succeed. The cost, not just in billions of tax dollars, but also in thousands of our countrymen dead and maimed, is unacceptable.
It’s time to really end the “endless” wars.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
14 replies on “Endless Fog of Endless War”
Americans seem to have succumbed to the belief that it is possible to unilaterally end a war. Unfortunately, the enemy has a vote in the matter.
Our current quandary arose from our participation in a war without a clear objective of victory.
The purpose of war is to eliminate the enemy’s ability to wage war on you.
The purpose is not the indoctrination of the conquered country to accept the wisdom of your economic system, your religion or your political scheme for government. Those goals are not only endless, they are impossible.
War is to teach the aggressor not to hit you again, and eliminate, at least temporarily, its possibility of doing so.
I suspect part of the reason is that we now try to fight more surgically, by sparing civilian lives and property, but it’s tough to tell civilians from terrorists. The last time we fought a conventional war, we ended it much more quickly and decisively, and likely saved millions of lives, by using a bigger stick. People don’t have the stomach for that, anymore. The media would go nuts if we dropped some serious bombs anywhere, no matter what. But the “progressive” way to fight a war clearly doesn’t work as well, or at least as quickly.
These wars are a success. They transfer tax dollars into the hands of a select few who then make political donations ( aka kickbacks ) to the politicians who perpetuate the wars. The founders worried a lot about this, which is why they left no standing army under the federal control. Instead the Congress was only to be able to call up the state militias, who would give direct consequences to their state government, who would then give immediate consequences to their appointed representatives in the Senate.
Worked much better than our current system of no consequences.
Paul, you need to start accepting the fact of the ‘Western Cabal’ agenda. Visit Thrive (http://thrivemovement.com) or for a more journalistically precise account of the men behind the curtain, here’s a good one from someone named O’Keefe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=S10Aotp_tvo#t=3474. — bw
Wars are the health of the banksters!
Bravo to these excellent comments from above:
“Our current quandary arose from our participation in a war without a clear objective of victory.”
“The purpose of war is to eliminate the enemy’s ability to wage war on you. . . . not the indoctrination of the conquered country to accept the wisdom of your economic system, your religion or your political scheme for government. Those goals are not only endless, they are impossible.”
“These wars are a success. They transfer tax dollars into the hands of a select few who then make political donations ( aka kickbacks ) to the politicians who perpetuate the wars.”
“Wars are the health of the banksters!”
Liz — I don’t think the problem is a lack of firepower, or an unwillingness to use it. We’ve dropped our share of big bombs. The military has been able to defeat armed insurgents. What we haven’t been able to do is create decent national governments to keep the peace.
Much of the sectarian bloodshed goes back centuries. We are not in a position to occupy and dictate solutions in these countries. It is too costly in lives and treasure and we are culturally too different to be trusted by those living in these lands.
And we have spent $Trillions, not $Billions.
Add in generations of sworn enemies because of our never-ending war-mongering.
Putin is now making passes at the EU to join them and China and turn their backs on the US. Guess what? If they turn off the gas, they might just make it happen and realistically, it makes some economic sense:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-04/russias-startling-proposal-europe-dump-us-join-eurasian-economic-union
American lives must never be sacrificed again without the full commitment of the American people and their government to a strategy of total victory, and this would require a declaration of war.
Humans are better off when the game of life is lived under a set of rules. But those humans that like power & perceived control over others want to change those rules to their benefit. So, no matter what political system, economic system, religious theocracy etc. is trying to effect the “rule of law” their will be conflict w/others. Only when a sufficient percentage of the population comes together and enforces these “rules” and physically prevents those trying to change the ‘law’ can some spence of peace prevail.
In the world today thousands of different ideologies are trying to be the rule makers. Until the majority of people of the world are living under ‘the rule of law’ that they have effected & agreed to live under no peace will be long lasting.
Currently we in the United States can’t seem to even understand that when we place people in the position of enforcing the law and in that pursuit they encounter resistance they are to “do their job” and overcome that resistance. Be it the two year old refusing to go to bed or a thirty year old drunk driver, the law is meaningless if it is not enforced. But politician after politician will not speak to this idea because they, the elected rule makers might actually do the work their elected to do, not just jostle for control of the political stage of life.
The problem with ending this “endless war” is that the cost to the enemy in prosecuting it to achieve their goals is minimal. Our failure will be in not understanding those goals or the willingness to use the same, or greater, level of brutality to defeat them.
“Our decade-plus in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost us greatly and accomplished little good, if any”
Sad part is that USA has accomplished it’s 6 out of 7 goals. Destroy 7 countries that Israel considered as their enemies and bucking the the USA dollar as reserve.
Excellent short essay on our main problem. Interesting that the General and former JCS staffer exhibit the same imperialist mindset. Somehow “we” must continue to manage unwinnable wars or “things spiral out of control.” Yeah, like we can’t run the world from DC or the Pentagon. Leaving people alone to chart their own destiny is evidently not an option in their view. Instead we must waste trillions and lives to magically re-make every remote Asian hamlet into some version of Small Town USA. Surprising the Master of the World at how difficult that chore actually is.
God, what asses are on the govt payroll…