[Peace-discuss] US War A Record Of Unparalleled Failure

David Johnson via Peace-discuss peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
Fri Jun 13 08:15:43 EDT 2014


  US War A Record Of Unparalleled Failure

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Educate! <http://www.popularresistance.org/category/educate/> Foreign 
Policy <http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/foreign-policy/>, Policy 
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/policy/>, Wars and Militarism 
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/wars-and-militarism/>
By Tom Engelhardt, www.tomdispatch.com 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175854/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_a_record_of_unparalleled_failure/#more>
June 12th, 2014
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The United States has been at war --- major boots-on-the-ground 
conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, air strikes, drone 
assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy 
conflicts, and covert actions --- nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War 
began.  That's more than half a century of experience with war, 
American-style, and yet few in our world bother to draw the obvious 
conclusions.

Given the historical record, those conclusions should be staring us in 
the face.  They are, however, the words that can't be said in a country 
committed to a military-first approach to the world, a continual 
build-up of its forces, an emphasis on pioneering work in the 
development and deployment of the latest destructive technology, and a 
repetitious cycling through styles of war from full-scale invasions and 
occupations to counterinsurgency, proxy wars, and back again.

So here are five straightforward lessons --- none acceptable in what 
passes for discussion and debate in this country --- that could be drawn 
from that last half century of every kind of American warfare:

1. No matter how you define American-style war or its goals, it doesn't 
work. Ever.

2. No matter how you pose the problems of our world, it doesn't solve 
them. Never.

3. No matter how often you cite the use of military force to "stabilize" 
or "protect" or "liberate" countries or regions, it is a destabilizing 
force.

4. No matter how regularly you praise the American way of war and its 
"warriors," the U.S. military is incapable of winning its wars.

5. No matter how often American presidents claim that the U.S. military 
is "the finest fighting force in history," the evidence is in: it isn't.

And here's a bonus lesson: if as a polity we were to take these five 
no-brainers to heart and stop fighting endless wars, which drain us of 
national treasure, we would also have a long-term solution to the 
Veterans Administration health-care crisis.  It's not the sort of thing 
said in our world, but the VA is in a crisis of financing and caregiving 
that, in the present context, cannot be solved, no matter whom you hire 
or fire.  The only long-term solution would be to stop fighting losing 
wars that the American people will pay for decades into the future, as 
the cost in broken bodies and broken lives is translated into medical 
care and dumped on the VA.

*Heroes and Turncoats*

One caveat.  Think whatever you want about war and American war-making, 
but keep in mind that we are inside an enormous propaganda machine of 
militarism 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175423/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich,_playing_ball_with_the_pentagon/>, 
even if we barely acknowledge the space in our lives that it fills. 
Inside it, only certain opinions, certain thoughts, are acceptable, or 
even in some sense possible.

Take for an example the recent freeing of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl from 
five years as a captive of the Haqqani network. Much controversy has 
surrounded it, in part because he was traded for five former Taliban 
officials long kept uncharged and untried on the American Devil's Island 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174842/karen_greenberg_guantanamo_forever> 
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It has been suggested that Sgt. Bergdahl 
deserted his post and his unit in rural Afghanistan, simply walked away 
--- which for opponents of the deal and of President Obama makes the 
"trade for terrorists" all the more shameful.  Our options when it comes 
to what we know of Bergdahl's actions are essentially to decry him as a 
"turncoat 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/02/bowe-bergdahl-release-anger-colleagues>" 
or near-voluntary "terrorist prisoner 
<http://time.com/2819645/bergdahl-terrorist-hostage-pow/>" or ignore 
them, go into a "support the troops" mode, and hail him as a "hero" of 
the war.  And yet there is a third option.

According to 
<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/americas-last-prisoner-of-war-20120607> 
his father, in the period before he was captured, his emails home 
reflected growing disillusionment 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bergdahls-emails-reveal-extent-of-us-failure-9474557.html> 
with the military.  ("The U.S. army is the biggest joke the world has to 
laugh at.  It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. 
The few good SGTs [sergeants] are getting out as soon as they can, and 
they are telling us privates to do the same.")  He had also evidently 
grown increasingly uncomfortable as well with the American war in that 
country. ("I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet 
what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them 
that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea 
how to live.")  When he departed his base, he may even have left a note 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/us-soldier-srgt-bowe-bergdahl-of-idaho-pow-vanished-angered-his-unit.html> 
behind expressing such sentiments.  He had reportedly told 
<http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/3/reporter_bowe_bergdahls_fellow_soldiers_questioned> 
someone in his unit earlier, "If this deployment is lame... I'm just 
going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan."

That's what we know.  There is much that we don't know 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/world/asia/bowe-bergdahl-walked-away-before-military-report-says.html>.  
However, what if, having concluded that the war was no favor to Afghans 
or Americans and he shouldn't participate in it, he had, however 
naively, walked away from it without his weapon and, as it turned out, 
not into freedom but directly into captivity?  That Sgt. Bergdahl might 
have been neither a military-style hero, nor a turncoat, but someone who 
voted with his feet on the merits of war, American-style, in Afghanistan 
is not an option that can be discussed calmly 
<http://www.thenation.com/blog/180144/bowe-bergdahl-and-honorable-history-war-deserters> 
here.  Similarly, anyone who took such a position here, not just in 
terms of our disastrous almost 13-year Afghan War, but of American 
war-making generally, would be seen as another kind of turncoat.  
However Americans may feel about specific wars, walking away from war, 
American-style, and the U.S. military as it is presently configured is 
not a fit subject for conversation, nor an option to be considered.

It's been a commonplace of official opinion 
<http://www.voanews.com/content/former-us-officials-see-war-fatigue-from-afghan-conflict-138424439/168400.html> 
and polling data 
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/07/afghanistan-war-fatigue-hits-new-highs-now-matching-levels-last-seen-in-iraq/> 
for some time that the American public is "exhausted" with our recent 
wars, but far too much can be read into that.  Responding to such a 
mood, the president, his administration, and the Pentagon have been in a 
years-long process 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175557nick_turse_changing_face_of_empire> 
of "pivoting" from major wars and counterinsurgency campaigns to drone 
wars, special operations raids, and proxy wars across huge swaths of the 
planet (even while planning for future wars 
<http://news.yahoo.com/west-ponders-stop-fight-great-war-113159434.html> 
of a very different kind continues).  But war itself and the U.S. 
military remain high on the American agenda.  Military or militarized 
solutions continue to be the go-to response to global problems, the only 
question being: How much or how little? (In what passes for debate in 
this country, the president's opponents regularly 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-obamas-weakness-emboldens-putin/2014/03/03/28def926-a2e2-11e3-84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html> 
label 
<http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/29/former-vice-president-cheney-obama-is-very-very-weak-president/> 
him and his administration "weak 
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/condi-rice-blasts-obama-weakness-leadership_786123.html>" 
for not doubling down on war, from the Ukraine and Syria to Afghanistan 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/27/us-usa-afghanistan-obama-idUSKBN0E71WQ20140527>).

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608461548/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>Meanwhile, 
investment in the military's future and its capacity to make war on a 
global scale remains staggeringly beyond 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts/> 
that of any other power or combination of powers 
<http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/military-spending-cuts/u-s-military-spending-dwarfs-rest-world-n37461>. 
No other country comes faintly close, not the Russians, nor the Chinese, 
nor the Europeans just now being encouraged to up their military game by 
President Obama who recently pledged 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/03/obama-pledge-military-europe-ukraine-crisis> 
a billion dollars to strengthen the U.S. military presence in Eastern 
Europe.

In such a context, to suggest the sweeping failure of the American 
military over these last decades without sapping support for the 
Pentagon and the military-industrial complex would involve making the 
most breathtaking stab-in-the-back argument in the historical record.  
This was tried after the Vietnam War, which engendered a vast antiwar 
movement at home.  It was at least conceivable at the time to blame 
defeat on that movement, a "liberal" media, and lily-livered, 
micromanaging politicians.  Even then, however, the stab-in-the-back 
version of the war never quite stuck and in all subsequent wars, support 
for the military among the political class and everywhere else has been 
so high, the obligatory need to "support the troops" --- left, right, 
and center --- so great that such an explanation would have been ludicrous.

*A Record of Failure to Stagger the Imagination
*

The only option left was to ignore what should have been obvious to all. 
The result has been a record of failure that should stagger the 
imagination and remarkable silence on the subject.  So let's run through 
these points one at a time.

/1. American-style war doesn't work./  Just ask yourself: Are there 
fewer terrorists or more in our world almost 13 years after the 9/11 
attacks?  Are al-Qaeda-like groups more or less common?  Are they more 
or less well organized?  Do they have more or fewer members?  The 
answers to those questions are obvious: more, more, more, and more. In 
fact, according to a new RAND report, between 2010 and 2013 alone, 
jihadist groups grew by 58% 
<http://online.wsj.com/articles/seth-jones-the-accelerating-spread-of-terrorism-1401837824>, 
their fighters doubled, and their attacks nearly tripled.

On September 12, 2001, al-Qaeda was a relatively small organization with 
a few camps in arguably the most feudal and backward country on the 
planet, and tiny numbers of adherents scattered elsewhere around the 
world.  Today, al-Qaeda-style outfits and jihadist groups control 
significant parts of Syria, Iraq 
<http://news.antiwar.com/2014/06/09/al-qaeda-in-iraq-seizes-provincial-govt-headquarters-in-mosul/>, 
Pakistan, and even Yemen, and are thriving and spreading 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175714/nick_turse_blowback_central> in 
parts of Africa as well.

Or try questions like these: Is Iraq a peaceful, liberated state allied 
with and under Washington's aegis, with "enduring camps 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174807/engelhardt_the_great_american_disconnect>" 
filled with U.S. troops on its territory?  Or is it a riven, embattled 
<http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2014/06/07/carnage-across-iraq-leaves-184-killed-183-wounded/>, 
dilapidated country whose government is close to Iran 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/14/iraq-iran-ties_n_1664728.html> 
and some of whose Sunni-dominated areas are under the control 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/world/middleeast/samarra-strike-sunni-militants-storm-central-iraqi-city.html> 
of a group that is more extreme than al-Qaeda?  Is Afghanistan a 
peaceful, thriving, liberated land under the American aegis, or are 
Americans still fighting there almost 13 years later against the 
Taliban, an impossible-to-defeat minority movement it once destroyed and 
then, because it couldn't stop fighting the "war on terror," helped 
revive 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175837/tomgram%3A_anand_gopal,_how_to_lose_a_war_that_wasn%27t_there/>?  
Is Washington now supporting a weak, corrupt central government in a 
country that once again is planting record opium crops 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/13/afghanistan-record-opium-crop-poppies-un>?

But let's not belabor the point.  Who, except a few neocons still 
plunking for the glories of "the surge" in Iraq, would claim military 
victory for this country, even of a limited sort, anywhere at any time 
in this century?

/2. American-style wars don't solve problems. / In these years, you 
could argue that not a single U.S. military campaign or militarized act 
ordered by Washington solved a single problem anywhere.  In fact, it's 
possible that just about every military move Washington has made only 
increased the burden of problems on this planet. To make the case, you 
don't even have to focus on the obvious like, for example, the way a 
special operations and drone campaign 
<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/death-from-above-how-american-drone-strikes-are-devastating-yemen-20140414> 
in Yemen has actually al-Qaeda-ized 
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/6/al-qaeda-on-rise-despite-us-support-to-yemen/> 
some of that country's rural areas.  Take instead a rare Washington 
"success": the killing of Osama bin Laden in a special ops raid in 
Abbottabad, Pakistan.  (And leave aside the way even that act was 
over-militarized: an unarmed Bin Laden was shot down in his Pakistani 
lair largely, it's plausible to assume 
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/06/why-osama-bin-laden-was-killed-by-navy-seals-and-not-taken-alive.html>, 
because officials in Washington feared what once would have been the 
American way --- putting him on trial in a U.S. civilian court for his 
crimes.)  We now know that, in the hunt for bin Laden, the CIA launched 
a fake hepatitis B vaccinationproject.  Though it proved of no use, once 
revealed it made local jihadists so nervous about medical health teams 
that they began killing groups of polio vaccination workers, an urge 
that has since spread to Boko Haram-controlled areas of Nigeria.  In 
this way, according to 
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-cia-fake-vaccination-campaign-endangers-us-all/> 
Columbia University public health expert Leslie Roberts, "the distrust 
sowed by the sham campaign in Pakistan could conceivably postpone polio 
eradication for 20 years, leading to 100,000 more cases that might 
otherwise not have occurred." The CIA has since promised 
<http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/05/19/cia_promises_no_more_fake_vaccination_campaigns_after_bin_laden_raid_linked.html> 
not to do it again, but too late --- and who at this point would believe 
the Agency anyway? This was, to say the least, an unanticipated 
consequence of the search for bin Laden, but blowback everywhere, 
invariably unexpected, has been a hallmark of American campaigns of all 
sorts.

Similarly, the NSA's surveillance regime, another form of global 
intervention by Washington, has --- experts are convinced --- done 
little 
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/no-doubt-about-nsas-impact-yeah-there> 
ornothing 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/23/obama-cant-point-to-a-single-time-the-nsa-call-records-program-prevented-a-terrorist-attack/> 
to protect Americans from terror attacks.  It has, however, done a great 
deal to damage the interests 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/07/technology/internet-giants-erect-barriers-to-spy-agencies.html> 
of America's tech corporations 
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/04/opinion/kehl-bankston-nsa-surveillance/> 
and to increase suspicion 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/04/germany-inquiry-nsa-tapping-angela-merkel-phone> 
and anger over Washington's policies even among allies.  And by the way, 
congratulations are due on one of the latest military moves of the Obama 
administration, the sending of U.S. military teams 
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/05/u-s-sending-small-military-team-to-nigeria-to-help-plan-search-for-girls-held-by-militants/>and 
drones 
<http://www.voanews.com/content/us-drone-flying-from-chad-in-search-for-missing-nigerian-girls/1920535.html> 
into Nigeria and neighboring countries to help rescue those girls 
kidnapped by the extremist group Boko Haram.  The rescue was a 
remarkable success... oops, /didn't happen/ (and we don't even know yet 
what the blowback will be).

/3. American-style war is a destabilizing force. / Just look at the 
effects of American war in the twenty-first century.  It's clear, for 
instance, that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 unleashed a brutal, 
bloody, Sunni-Shiite civil war across the region (as well as the Arab 
Spring, one might argue).  One result of that invasion and the 
subsequent occupation, as well as of the wars and civil wars that 
followed: the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis 
<http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/>, Syrians 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/31/us-syria-crisis-toll-idUSBRE9BU0FA20131231>, 
and Lebanese, while major areas of Syria 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/in-the-war-on-terrorism-only-alqaida-thrives-9506723.html> 
and some parts of Iraq 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/20/the-bloody-rise-of-isis-in-iraq/> have 
fallen into the hands of armed supporters of al-Qaeda or, in one major 
case, a group that didn't find that organization extreme enough 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/al-qaeda-disavows-any-ties-with-radical-islamist-isis-group-in-syria-iraq/2014/02/03/2c9afc3a-8cef-11e3-98ab-fe5228217bd1_story.html>.  
A significant part of the oil heartlands of the planet is, that is, 
being destabilized.

Meanwhile, the U.S. war in Afghanistan and the CIA's drone assassination 
campaign in the tribal borderlands of neighboring Pakistan have 
destabilized that country, which now has its own fierce Taliban movement 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/world/asia/karachi-pakistan-airport-attack-taliban.html>.  
The 2011 U.S. intervention in Libya initially seemed like a triumph, as 
had the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan before it.  Libyan autocrat 
Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and the rebels swept into power.  Like 
Afghanistan and Iraq, however, Libya is now a basket case, riven by 
competing militias 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/30/us-libya-militias-insight-idUSBREA2T05H20140330> 
and ambitious generals 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/libya-bomb-attack-four-die-in-failed-assassination-attempt-on-general-9488564.html>, 
largely ungovernable, and an open wound for the region.  Arms from 
Gaddafi's looted arsenals have made their way into the hands of Islamist 
rebels and jihadist extremists from the Sinai Peninsula 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/libyan-weapons-flooded-egypts-black-weapons-market/2011/10/12/gIQA2YQufL_story.html> 
to Mali, from Northern Africa 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/libyan-weapons-al-qaeda-north-africa_n_2727326.html> 
to northern Nigeria 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/nigerian-islamist-militants-return-from-mali-with-weapons-skills/2013/05/31/d377579e-c628-11e2-9cd9-3b9a22a4000a_story.html>, 
where Boko Haram is entrenched.  It is even possible, as Nick Turse has 
done 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175714/nick_turse_blowback_central>, to 
trace the growing U.S. military presence in Africa to the 
destabilization of parts of that continent.

/4. The U.S. military can't win its wars. / This is so obvious (though 
seldom said) that it hardly has to be explained.  The U.S. military has 
not won 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175114/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_what_the_u.s._military_can%27t_do> 
a serious engagement since World War II:  the results of wars in Korea, 
Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq ranged from stalemate to defeat and 
disaster.  With the exception of a couple of campaigns against 
essentially no one (in Grenada and Panama), nothing, including the 
"Global War on Terror," would qualify as a success on its own terms, no 
less anyone else's.  This was true, strategically speaking, despite the 
fact that, in all these wars, the U.S. controlled the air space, the 
seas (where relevant), and just about any field of battle where the 
enemy might be met.  Its firepower was overwhelming and its ability to 
lose in small-scale combat just about nil.

It would be folly to imagine that this record represents the historical 
norm.  It doesn't.  It might be more relevant to suggest that the sorts 
of imperial wars and wars of pacification the U.S. has fought in recent 
times, often against poorly armed, minimally trained, minority 
insurgencies (or terror outfits), are simply unwinnable.  They seem to 
generate their own resistance.  Their brutalities and even their 
"victories" simply act as recruitment posters for the enemy.

/5. The U.S. military 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175337/tomgram%3A_william_astore,_we%27re_number_one_%28in_self-promotion%29> 
is not "the finest fighting force 
<http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/03/afghanistan.obama/index.html?_s=PM:POLITICS> 
the world has ever known" or "the greatest force for human liberation 
the world has ever known," or any of the similar over-the-top 
descriptions that U.S. presidents are now regularly obligated to use./  
If you want the explanation for why this is so, see points one through 
four above.  A military whose way of war doesn't work, doesn't solve 
problems, destabilizes whatever it touches, and never wins simply can't 
be the greatest in history, no matter the firepower it musters.  If you 
really need further proof of this, think about the crisis and scandals 
linked to the Veterans Administration.  They are visibly the fruit of a 
military mired in frustration, despair, and defeat, not a triumphant one 
holding high history's banner of victory.

*As for Peace, Not a Penny*

Is there a record like it?  More than half a century of American-style 
war by the most powerful and potentially destructive military on the 
planet adds up to worse than nothing.  If any other institution in 
American life had a comparable scorecard, it would be shunned like the 
plague.  In reality, the VA has a far better record of success when it 
comes to the treatment of those broken by our wars than the military 
does of winning them, and yet its head administrator was forced to 
resign recently amid scandal and a media firestorm.

As in Iraq, Washington has a way of sending in the Marines, setting the 
demons loose, leaving town, and then wondering how in the world things 
got so bad --- as if it had no responsibility for what happened.  Don't 
think, by the way, that no one ever warned us either.  Who, for 
instance, remembers Arab League head Amr Moussa saying 
<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0914-01.htm> in 2004 that the 
U.S. had opened the "gates of hell" in its invasion and occupation of 
Iraq? Who remembers the vast antiwar movement 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/410/the_march_that_wasn_t_to_be> in the 
U.S. and around the world that tried to stop the launching of that 
invasion, the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets to 
warn of the dangers before it was too late?  In fact, being in that 
antiwar movement more or less guaranteed that ever after you couldn't 
appear on the op-ed pages of America's major papers to discuss the 
disaster you had predicted.  The only people asked 
<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0914-01.htm> to comment were 
those who had carried it out, beaten the drums for it, or offered the 
mildest tsk-tsk about it.

By the way, don't think for a moment that war never solved a problem, or 
achieved a goal for an imperial or other regime, or that countries 
didn't regularly find victory in arms.  History is filled with such 
examples.  So what if, in some still-to-be-understood way, something has 
changed on planet Earth?  What if something in the nature of imperial 
war now precludes victory, the achieving of goals, the "solving" of 
problems in our present world?  Given the American record, it's at least 
a thought worth considering.

As for peace?  Not even a penny for your thoughts on that one.  If you 
suggested pouring, say, $50 billion into planning for peace, no less the 
$500 billion 
<http://www.defenseone.com/management/2014/03/obama-requests-smaller-500-billion-defense-budget/79813/> 
that goes to the Pentagon annually for its base budget, just about 
anyone would laugh in your face.  (And keep in mind that that figure 
doesn't include most of the budget 
<http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/inside-the-2013-us-intelligence-black-budget/420/> 
for the increasingly militarized U.S. Intelligence Community, or extra 
war costs 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175815/tomgram%3A_mattea_kramer,_is_the_pentagon_doomed_--_to_be_flush_forever> 
for Afghanistan, or the budget of the increasingly militarized 
Department of Homeland Security 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175545>, or other costs hidden 
elsewhere, including, for example, for the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which 
is buried in the Energy Department's budget.)

That possible solutions to global problems, possible winning strategies, 
might come from elsewhere than the U.S. military or other parts of the 
national security state, based on 50 years of imperial failure, 50 years 
of problems unsolved and wars not won and goals not reached, of 
increasing instability and destruction, of lives (American and 
otherwise) snuffed out or broken?  Not on your life.

Don't walk away from war.  It's not the American way.

/Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the //American Empire Project/ 
<http://www.americanempireproject.com/>/and author of /The United States 
of Fear 
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608461548/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>/as 
well as a history of the Cold War, /The End of Victory Culture 
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/155849586X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>/. He 
runs the Nation Institute's //TomDispatch.com/ 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/>/. His latest book, co-authored with Nick 
Turse, is /Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 
2001-2050 
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086EF89K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tomdispatch-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0086EF89K>/./

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