[Peace-discuss] Disturbing but unfortunately accurate !

Tue Oct 10 03:53:03 UTC 2017

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/us/16prof.html

Former Soldier, Now a Professor, Loses His Only Son to a War He Actively
Opposed - this is Andrew Bacevich

On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 6:59 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> Excellent article, and as you say, unfortunately accurate.
>
> On Oct 9, 2017, at 08:57, David Johnson via Peace-discuss <
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
> *Disturbing but unfortunately accurate !*
>
> *By Andrew J. Bacevich, an author, most recently, of *America’s War for
> the Greater Middle East: A Military History
> <https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553393952/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>.
> Originally published at TomDispatch
> <http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176335/>
> Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts.  First, the United
> States is today more or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one
> faraway place, but at least seven
> <http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/scary-fact-america-dropped-26171-bombs-7-countries-2016-18961>.
> Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less.
> Nor can it be said that we don’t care because we don’t know.  True,
> government authorities withhold certain aspects of ongoing military
> operations or release only details that they find convenient.  Yet
> information describing what U.S. forces are doing (and where) is readily
> available, even if buried in recent months by barrages of presidential
> tweets.  Here, for anyone interested, are press releases issued by United
> States Central Command for just one recent week:
> September 19
> <http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/1324264/september-26-military-airstrikes-continue-against-isis-terrorists-in-syria-and/>:
> Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
> September 20
> <http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/1317427/september-20-military-airstrikes-continue-against-isis-terrorists-in-syria-and/>:
> Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
> Iraqi Security Forces
> <http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/1318986/iraqi-security-forces-begin-hawijah-offensive/> begin
> Hawijah offensive
> September 21
> <http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/1319013/september-21-military-airstrikes-continue-against-isis-terrorists-in-syria-and/>:
> Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
> September 22
> <http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/1320711/september-22-military-airstrikes-continue-against-isis-terrorists-in-syria-and/>:
> Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
> September 23
> <http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/1322796/september-23-military-airstrikes-continue-against-isis-terrorists-in-syria-and/>:
> Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
> Operation Inherent Resolve
> <http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/1322828/operation-inherent-resolve-casualty/>
>  Casualty
> September 25
> <http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/1322838/september-25-military-airstrikes-continue-against-isis-terrorists-in-syria-and/>:
> Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
> September 26
> <http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/1324264/september-26-military-airstrikes-continue-against-isis-terrorists-in-syria-and/>:
> Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq
> Ever since the United States launched its war on terror, oceans of
> military press releases have poured forth.  And those are just for
> starters.  To provide updates on the U.S. military’s various ongoing
> campaigns, generals, admirals, and high-ranking defense officials regularly
> testify before congressional committees or brief members of the press.
> From the field, journalists offer updates that fill in at least some of the
> details — on civilian casualties, for example — that government authorities
> prefer not to disclose.  Contributors to newspaper op-ed pages and
> “experts” booked by network and cable TV news shows, including passels of
> retired military officers, provide analysis.  Trailing behind come books
> and documentaries that put things in a broader perspective.
> But here’s the truth of it.  None of it matters.
> Like traffic jams or robocalls, war has fallen into the category of things
> that Americans may not welcome, but have learned to live with.  In
> twenty-first-century America, war is not that big a deal.
> While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once
> mused
> <https://quotefancy.com/quote/1322097/Robert-McNamara-The-greatest-contribution-Vietnam-is-making-right-or-wrong-is-beside-the>
>  that the “greatest contribution” of the Vietnam War might have been to
> make it possible for the United States “to go to war without the necessity
> of arousing the public ire.” With regard to the conflict once widely
> referred to as McNamara’s War, his claim proved grotesquely premature.  Yet
> a half-century later, his wish has become reality.
> Why do Americans today show so little interest in the wars waged in their
> name and at least nominally on their behalf?  Why, as our wars drag on and
> on, doesn’t the disparity between effort expended and benefits accrued
> arouse more than passing curiosity or mild expressions of dismay? Why, in
> short, don’t we give a [*expletive deleted*]?
> Perhaps just posing such a question propels us instantly into the realm of
> the unanswerable, like trying to figure out why people idolize Justin
> Bieber, shoot birds, or watch golf on television.
> Without any expectation of actually piercing our collective ennui, let me
> take a stab at explaining why we don’t give a @#$%&!  Here are eight
> distinctive but mutually reinforcing explanations, offered in a sequence
> that begins with the blindingly obvious and ends with the more speculative.
>
> Americans don’t attend all that much to ongoing American wars because:
> 1. *U.S. casualty* *rates are low*. By using proxies and contractors, and
> relying heavily on airpower, America’s war managers have been able to keep
> a tight lid on the number of U.S. troops being killed and wounded.  In all
> of 2017, for example, a grand total <http://icasualties.org/oef/> of 11
> Americansoldiers have been lost in Afghanistan — about equal to the
> number of shooting deaths in Chicago
> <https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/2017-chicago-murders> over the course of
> a typical week. True, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where the
> U.S. is engaged in hostilities, whether directly or indirectly, plenty of
> people who are not Americans are being killed and maimed.  (The estimated
> number of Iraqi civilians killed this year alone exceeds 12,000
> <https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/>.) But those casualties have
> next to no political salience as far as the United States is concerned.  As
> long as they don’t impede U.S. military operations, they literally don’t
> count (and generally aren’t counted).
> 2. *The true costs of Washington’s wars go untabulated.  *In a famous
> speech
> <http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/ike_chance_for_peace.html>,
> dating from early in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower said that “Every
> gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in
> the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who
> are cold and are not clothed.”  Dollars spent on weaponry, Ike insisted,
> translated directly into schools, hospitals, homes, highways, and power
> plants that would go unbuilt.  “This is not a way of life at all, in any
> true sense,” he continued.  “[I]t is humanity hanging from a cross of
> iron.” More than six decades later, Americans have long since accommodated
> themselves to that cross of iron.  Many actually see it as a boon, a source
> of corporate profits, jobs, and, of course, campaign contributions.  As
> such, they avert their eyes from the opportunity costs of our never-ending
> wars.  The dollars expended pursuant to our post-9/11 conflicts will
> ultimately number in the multi-trillions
> <http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/>.  Imagine the benefits of investing
> such sums in upgrading the nation’s aging infrastructure
> <https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/>.  Yet don’t count on
> Congressional leaders, other politicians, or just about anyone else to
> pursue that connection.
> <https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553393936/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>
> <image002.jpg>
> <https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553393936/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>
> <https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553393936/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>3. *On
> matters related to war, American citizens have opted out.  *Others have
> made the point so frequently that it’s the equivalent of hearing “Rudolph
> the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at Christmastime.  Even so, it bears repeating: the
> American people have defined their obligation to “support the troops” in the
>  narrowest
> <http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175912/tomgram%3A_rory_fanning,_why_do_we_keep_thanking_the_troops/>
>  imaginable terms
> <http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175423/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich,_playing_ball_with_the_pentagon/>,
> ensuring above all that such support requires absolutely no sacrifice on
> their part.  Members of Congress abet this civic apathy, while also taking
> steps to insulate
> <http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/gop-leaders-quietly-remove-language-repealing-post-911-military-authorization-from-defense-bill/article/2629075>themselves
> from responsibility.  In effect, citizens and their elected representatives
> in Washington agree: supporting the troops means deferring to the commander
> in chief, without inquiring about whether what he has the troops doing
> makes the slightest sense.  Yes, we set down our beers long enough to
> applaud those in uniform and boo
> <http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/patriots/the_blitz/2017/09/devin_mccourty_explains_why_patriots_knelt_during_national_anthem>
>  those who decline to participate in mandatory rituals of patriotism.
> What we don’t do is demand anything remotely approximating actual
> accountability.
> 4. *Terrorism gets hyped and hyped and hyped some more. *While
> international terrorism isn’t a trivial problem (and wasn’t for decades
> before 9/11), it comes nowhere close
> <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/you-re-more-likely-die-choking-be-killed-foreign-terrorists-n715141>
>  to posing an existential threat to the United States.  Indeed, other
> threats, notably the impact of climate change, constitute a far greater
> danger to the wellbeing of Americans.  Worried about the safety of your
> children or grandchildren?  The opioid epidemic constitutes an infinitely
> greater danger than “Islamic radicalism.”  Yet having been sold a bill of
> goods about a “war on terror” that is essential for “keeping America safe,”
> mere citizens are easily persuaded that scattering U.S. troops throughout
> the Islamic world while dropping bombs on designated evildoers is helping
> win the former while guaranteeing the latter.  To question that proposition
> becomes tantamount to suggesting that God might not have given Moses two
> stone tablets after all.
> 5. *Blather crowds out substance. *When it comes to foreign policy,
> American public discourse is — not to put too fine a point on it — vacuous,
> insipid, and mindlessly repetitive.  William Safire of the *New York
> Times *once characterized American political rhetoric as BOMFOG, with
> those running for high office relentlessly touting the Brotherhood of Man
> and the Fatherhood of God.  Ask a politician, Republican or Democrat, to
> expound on this country’s role in the world, and then brace yourself for
> some variant of WOSFAD, as the speaker insists that it is incumbent upon
> the World’s Only Superpower to spread Freedom and Democracy.  Terms like
> *leadership *and *indispensable *are introduced, along with warnings
> about the dangers of *isolationism *and *appeasement, *embellished with
> ominous references to *Munich*.  Such grandiose posturing makes it
> unnecessary to probe too deeply into the actual origins and purposes of
> American wars, past or present, or assess the likelihood of ongoing wars
> ending in some approximation of actual success. Cheerleading displaces
> serious thought.
> 6. *Besides, we’re too busy. * Think of this as a corollary to point
> five.  Even if the present-day American political scene included figures
> like Senators Robert La Follette
> <http://progressive.org/dispatches/robert-la-follette-america-s-anti-imperialist-prophet/>
>  or J. William Fulbright
> <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G4JFCTK/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>, who
> long ago warned against the dangers of militarizing U.S. policy, Americans
> may not retain a capacity to attend to such critiques.  Responding to the
> demands of the Information Age is not, it turns out, conducive to deep
> reflection.  We live in an era (so we are told) when frantic multitasking
> has become a sort of duty and when being overscheduled is almost
> obligatory.  Our attention span shrinks and with it our time horizon.  The
> matters we attend to are those that happened just hours or minutes ago.
> Yet like the great solar eclipse of 2017 — hugely significant and instantly
> forgotten — those matters will, within another few minutes or hours, be
> superseded by some other development that briefly captures our attention.
> As a result, a dwindling number of Americans — those not compulsively
> checking Facebook pages and Twitter accounts — have the time or inclination
> to ponder questions like: When will the Afghanistan War end?  Why has it
> lasted almost 16 years?  Why doesn’t the finest fighting force
> <http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175337> in history actually win?  Can’t
> package an answer in 140 characters or a 30-second made-for-TV sound bite?
> Well, then, slowpoke, don’t expect anyone to attend to what you have to say.
> 7. *Anyway, the next president will save us.*  At regular intervals,
> Americans indulge in the fantasy that, if we just install the right person
> in the White House, all will be well.  Ambitious politicians are quick to
> exploit this expectation.  Presidential candidates struggle to
> differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of them promise in
> one way or another to wipe the slate clean and Make America Great Again.
> Ignoring the historical record of promises broken or unfulfilled, and
> presidents who turn out not to be deities but flawed human beings,
> Americans — members of the media above all — pretend to take all this
> seriously.  Campaigns become longer, more expensive, more circus-like, and
> ever less substantial.  One might think that the election of Donald Trump
> would prompt a downward revision in the exalted expectations of presidents
> putting things right.  Instead, especially in the anti-Trump camp, getting
> rid of Trump himself (Collusion!  Corruption!  Obstruction!  Impeachment!)
> has become the overriding imperative, with little attention given to
> restoring the balance intended by the framers of the Constitution.  The
> irony of Trump perpetuating wars that he once roundly criticized and then
> handing the conduct of those wars to generals devoid of ideas for ending
> them almost entirely escapes notice.
> 8. *Our culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from
> criticism.  *As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. military establishment
> aligned itself with the retrograde side of the culture wars.  Who can
> forget the gays-in-the-military controversy that rocked Bill Clinton’s
> administration during his first weeks in office, as senior military leaders
> publicly denounced their commander-in-chief?  Those days are long gone.
> Culturally, the armed forces have moved left.  Today, the services go out
> of their way to project an image of tolerance
> <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/09/29/air-force-academy-head-tells-racists-get-oudelivers-stern-lecture-wake-racial-slurs-found-prep-schoo/715755001/>
>  and a commitment to equality on all matters related to race, gender, and
> sexuality.  So when President Trump announced his opposition to
> transgendered persons serving in the armed forces, tweeting
> <http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/politics/trump-military-transgender/index.html>
>  that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs
> and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” senior
> officers politely but firmly disagreed and pushed back
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/us/politics/mattis-trump-transgender-ban.html>.
> Given the ascendency of cultural issues near the top of the U.S. political
> agenda, the military’s embrace of diversity helps to insulate it from
> criticism and from being called to account for a less than sterling
> performance in waging wars.  Put simply, critics who in an earlier day
> might have blasted military leaders for their inability to bring wars to a
> successful conclusion hold their fire.  Having women graduate
> <http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/21/us/women-army-ranger-graduation/index.html>
>  from Ranger School or command
> <http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/22/politics/marine-corp-female-infantry-officer/index.html>
>  Marines in combat more than compensates for not winning.
> A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary
> America.  But don’t expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of
> the *New York Times* to lose any sleep over that fact.  Even to notice it
> would require them — and us — to care.
>
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