[Peace-discuss] [lbo-talk] Fwd: Moyers interviews Andrew Bacevich

[C. G. Estabrook]

[A disturbingly inadequate account that does not stray beyond the usual limits 
of allowable debate. Bacevich does consider why we're in Afghanistan (translated 
form the sanitized American, "in" = "killing people in") for "the longest war in 
U.S. history."  He seems to ascribe it to the stupidity of American leaders, but 
they're not stupid.  They're criminal.  And what are we to think of a purported 
military historian who can say things as flat-out false as, "We quit after the 
Mogadishu firefight in Somalia ... We quit in Vietnam, having paid an enormous 
cost, to try to maintain the viability of South Vietnam..."?  --CGE]

BILL MOYERS: ... This slaughter of innocents has led the pro-American 
"Economist" magazine to question whether our entire effort in Afghanistan" has 
been nothing but a meaningless exercise of misguided violence."

ANDREW BACEVICH: ... we have a second army. And the second army are the units 
that comprise Special Operations forces. They exist in secrecy ... McChrystal 
himself comes out of the Special Operations community. That's his entire 
background is in Special Operations ... why, if indeed the purpose of the 
exercise in Afghanistan is to, I mean, to put it crudely, drag this country into 
the modern world, why put a four-star general in charge of that? ... this kind 
of does bring us back, in a way, to Vietnam, where we found ourselves harnessed 
to allies, partners that turned out to be either incompetent or corrupt. Or 
simply did not share our understanding of what needed to be done for that 
country ... we don't learn from history. And there is this persistent, and I 
think almost inexplicable belief that the use of military force in some 
godforsaken country on the far side of the planet will not only yield some kind 
of purposeful result, but by extension, will produce significant benefits for 
the United States. I mean, one of the obvious things about the Afghanistan war 
that is so striking and yet so frequently overlooked is that we're now in the 
ninth year of this war.  It is the longest war in American history. And it is a 
war for which there is no end in sight. And to my mind, it is a war that is 
utterly devoid of strategic purpose. And the fact that that gets so little 
attention from our political leaders, from the press or from our fellow 
citizens, I think is simply appalling, especially when you consider the amount 
of money we're spending over there and the lives that are being lost whether 
American or Afghan ... if we could wave a magic wand tomorrow and achieve in 
Afghanistan all the purposes that General McChrystal would like us to achieve, 
would the Jihadist threat be substantially reduced as a consequence? And does 
anybody think that somehow, Jihadism is centered or headquartered in 
Afghanistan? When you think about it for three seconds, you say, "Well, of 
course, it's not. It is a transnational movement" ... They can come from 
Brooklyn. So the notion that somehow, because the 9/11 attacks were concocted in 
this place, as indeed they were, the notion that therefore, the transformation 
of Afghanistan will provide some guarantee that there won't be another 9/11 is 
patently absurd. Quite frankly, the notion that we can prevent another 9/11 by 
invading and occupying and transforming countries is absurd ... We should view 
Al-Qaeda as the equivalent of an international criminal conspiracy. Sort of a 
mafia that in some way or another draws its energy or legitimacy from a 
distorted understanding of a particular religious tradition. And as with any 
other international criminal conspiracy, the proper response is a police effort 
... We are now close to a decade into what the Pentagon now calls, "The Long 
War." And it is a war in which one-half of one percent of the American people 
bear the burden. And the other 99.5 percent basically go on about their daily 
life, as if the war did not exist.  I mean, the great paradox of the Long War, 
is that it seems the Long War consists of a series of campaigns with Iraq and 
Afghanistan being the two most important, although one could add Pakistan and 
Yemen to the list, in which there seems to be no way to wind down the campaign 
... we do find ourselves in this circumstance where permanent war now seems to 
have become the norm. And we don't know what to do about that...

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04092010/transcript3.html

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