The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Saturday, January 20, 2018

Special Update for Saturday, January 20, 2018

It's just incredible to me how the U.S. corporate media, politicians, and the general public completely ignore the military actions of their own government. The Pentagon operates, it seems, with no political accountability. We have to depend on Juan Cole to tell us that the U.S. has made an open commitment to an endless military presence in Syria.

The U.S. has 2,000 special operations troops in eastern Syria. Did you even know that? They are embedded with a Kurdish faction called the YPG, in a pseudo-state called Afrin. Which Turkey is now shelling. The U.S. troops, according to Rex Tillerson, are supposed to eliminate any resurgence of IS, depose Bashar Assad, enable Syrian refugees to return home, reduce Iranian influence, and eliminate any so-called "weapons of mass destruction" from the country, of which there aren't any. (Chemical weapons are not "weapons of mass destruction.") Right. Sure. But they might get us into a war with Turkey and/or Russia.

Of course, U.S. troops are already in Iraq forever, and Afghanistan forever, and in a whole bunch of other countries you won't know they are in until some of them get killed, for reasons nobody is bothering to tell you, which nobody seems to care about.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Look, we get it. It's your blog, you can change the narrative to what fits your desired world view...that said, yes, chemical weapons are considered WMDs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction There's the wiki definition. Here's the FBI version: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/wmd

Regarding troops in Syria and other places...do you really want a resurgence of the cancer that is ISIS? Or are you just that lacking in what it takes to prevent that from happening?

I know, I know, you haven't posted in ages...probably because things are actually going well for the military. And you seem not to like that. Keep up the blogging though, it's nice to read about our successes in your silence!

Cervantes said...

Look, just because somebody uses the term "WMDs" for chemical weapons doesn't make it true. They are battlefield weapons. Blowing people up is just as massively destructive as gassing them, in fact it can be more so.

I haven't been blogging as regularly because I've been busy, but no, things are not going well for the U.S. military, particularly in Afghanistan. And 2,000 U.S. troops in the northeast of Syria aren't going to do shit about IS.

Dancewater said...

In fact, the US is (and has been) helping ISIS in Syria. As the Podesta emails said: ISIS is on our side in Syria. And the US troops are in Syria (supposedly) to dispose Assad. Assad is going nowhere.

If turning foreign countries into shitholes is the definition of US military success, then yes, things are going well for the military.

16+ years of the US military in Afghanistan, and more of the country is under Taliban control than in 2001.

Almost 15 years in Iraq, and that country is a total wreck.

The US-driven NATO bombing of Libya has resulted in slave markets and terrorist groups ruling various areas of the country.

The US-assisted Saudi war on Yemen has caused the world's worst cholera outbreak and massive starvation.

Over 3 years of intervention in Syria, and that country is nearly in ruins. The parts of the country that are doing well is under Assad.

The world's worst refugee crisis since WWII has caused horrible hardship and death. And those refugees are mainly coming from Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria - all countries the US has bombed, attacked and invaded. All those countries were MUCH better off before the US military was ordered to bomb, attack or invade them.