GREEN-ON-BLUE CASUALTIES

Saturday's N. Y. Times carried an article about the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, meeting in Kabul to discuss the recent wave of green-on-blue attacks on NATO personnel by Afghan security forces. Another article carried by the Times Union in Albany, NY states:  "For months, Iraq has been providing economic assistance to Iran, skirting the sanctions imposed on Tehran because of its nuclear program."

Oh f'chrissakes! Americans are such infants.

The Middle East has been playing Empire Games for 5 millennia, and the Arabs, in particular, have been at it for 1,300 years. They see rubes from America, a country barely two centuries old, come along with pretentions to influence convoluted Middle Eastern politics, about which Americans know nothing, and they play the U.S. for suckers, taking all the equipment, money, training, infrastructure we naively give them thinking it will buy their loyalty. Then, with more in common with each other than with “Christian crusaders” they have roundly despised for centuries, Middle Easterners happily turn their guns on us. The green-on-blue incidents in Afghanistan perfectly symbolize the dynamic in the Middle East.

Bin Laden’s strategy was to “Spread them out and bleed them into bankruptcy.” That is realpolitik global geopolitical strategy; and it’s working.

What does America have for a geopolitical strategy? Convert a far more ancient civilization than America's into friendly “beacons of democracy,” at gunpoint and against the tide of religious fundamentalism that for centuries has made no distinction between religion and government? Good luck with that.

Here’s a pertinent excerpt from my book, The Predicament, out in a couple of weeks:

Since Eisenhower’s day, America has waged 3 “Long Wars” of choice – Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. As a U.S. Navy Vietnam vet, it distresses me to point out hard truths about these wars:

Each war was entered into under false pretenses, with inadequate force, nebulous and constantly changing objectives, un-analyzed risks, limited public support at home and abroad, and no exit strategy.

Each war was un-winnable because: The enemy was intractable, having nowhere to go, showed resolve, resourcefulness, discipline, and – dare we say it? – courage. The terrain was cruelly inhospitable, negating much of the American military’s technological advantages, reducing combat to mano-a-mano at the platoon level, where it is numbers that count – and the enemy had numbers in their favor. The situation was un-resolvable, hopelessly mired in ancient local blood feuds, historic ideological and/or religious antagonisms and/or civil wars.

Both wars in the Middle East have been funded on both sides by American taxpayers and users of oil and illegal opiates, thereby extending their duration.

These are all textbook preconditions for strategically un-winnable, policy-driven Long Wars.

Having “been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions,” (Eisenhower) U.S. policymakers committed to sustain it with defense industry buildups and “wars of choice,” providing endless streams of government contracts, swollen corporate profits and dividends, inflated C-suite salaries, and bounteous campaign contributions within what has become the military-industrial-technological-political complex (MITP complex).

In choosing wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, the MITP complex was either incredibly stupid or, more likely, crafty as hell in seeking out resolute adversaries engaged in civil war in inhospitable terrain at such a times as to assure U.S. tactical victories but strategic defeat. Having thus willingly stepped into quagmires, the MITP complex then confidently relied on Americans’ pride, patriotism, unwillingness to concede defeat, and/or lack of interest to drag out long and very profitable, if strategically pointless, wars.

It strains credulity to think the frequent episodes of U.S. military crash spending are coincidental, random or entirely exogenous. With wars, long and short, and military buildups occurring during most of the past 45 years, logic would suggest these episodes are planned, in much the same way as the automobile industry plans obsolescence, and for the same reason.  

America confuses activity with achievement, knowledge with wisdom, power with ability.

Time for America to grow up.
www.the-predicament.com