More on U.S. Military Policy
Longtime 2GreenEnergy reader/commenter Larry Lemmert, whom I respect greatly, writes about my suggestion that “war is not the answer” as follows:
There are people inside and outside our borders who mean us harm. How should we react to them? Turning the other cheek if done in a literal sense would allow many innocent people to die at the hands of power-hungry terrorists. Defending our freedom to be disagreeable means we or our enemies will die.
The tension between these opposing ideals is more than many of our troops can handle. The extreme suicide rate among those who have seen combat is evidence of this mental anguish. I don’t have solutions but I sleep better at night knowing that our volunteer soldiers and first responders are on duty trying to keep a peace that we can all live with. God grant that they are protected from harm, physically and mentally.
Thanks, Larry. Some people say that America’s aggression in its foreign policy actually fuels terrorism, and I can understand that. Imagine you’re a homeless, uneducated 20-couple-year-old guy, living in abject poverty with no hope of relief, and that your country is being invaded; there’s nothing around you but hunger, suffering and dismembered bodies. You have nothing to lose by giving your life in an effort to kill some of the invaders.
Now imagine that the US has been a demonstrable source of help, in the form of food, shelter, education and empathy. Speaking for myself, I’d be far less willing to attack the US under the latter circumstances. I think anyone would.
You write: Defending our freedom … means we or our enemies will die. I would edit that as follows: Defending our freedom with means that continually and overtly violate international law means that we AND our enemies will die.
Of course, no change to anything here is on the horizon under a Republican or Democratic administration in 2017. Ultra-hawk Hillary Clinton can’t wait to start invading places around the globe, and Donald Trump, it’s hard to know how he would act due to his constantly changing self-contradictory rhetoric. He is a petulant child, lashing back against the most subtle slight–a bad-tempered little boy with his finger on the nuclear annihilation button. If that doesn’t frighten you, it’s unclear what will.
Not only are we not going to see an end to our endless wars, but we’re not getting our privacy and civil liberties back, nor shall we disconnect Congress from ownership by Wall Street and the oil companies, nor will anything be done about the income/wealth inequality that is swallowing our democracy whole. If you want change on any of this, news flash: it’s not coming from either of the two dominant political parties.
Btw, Larry, I applaud your open-mindedness in putting up with me and my activist/pacifist rants all these many years. You’ve been with us since the inception of 2GreenEnergy in 2009. Lots of people would have tuned out long ago; that you didn’t is indeed to your credit.
Our government and our allies (UK, France) have been mucking about in the region about a hundred years – ever since oil was discovered in Iran.
People don’t remember that WWI (the war to end all wars) was inaugurated with a British invasion of Basra. Mohammad Mosaddegh discovered just how serious our government was (and is) about democracy in the Middle East.
It is correct to say that something had to be done about terrorism.
I think about terrorism the way I feel about illegal immigration – both are tactics, and both are law enforcement and public/foreign policy issues that can’t be resolved by military means – and I understand the clear motivators in both cases, while not at all agreeing with the tactics (terrorism or illegal immigration) in response.
Donald Rumsfeld’s private fear has come to pass – as admitted by several of our generals in the theater – our “strategy” is serving to create far more terrorists (desperate and hopeless militant radicals) that we can ever kill. Al Qaeda and Daesh are FAR more powerful today because of our invasions and occupations post-9/11, and because of our continually skewed policies on the Israel/Palestine issue.
Our elites won’t tolerate self-determination in the Middle-East because it means the end of their unfettered control and extraction of natural resources (which belong by birthright to the people in each nation there).
A common thread across many cultures in the region is a firm belief in three things – hospitality, forgiveness, and revenge. We’ve long exhausted the first two, and we’d best see that our leadership implements a strategy of making amends to mitigate the third.
Imagine what the will of the people of this nations would be like if we’d spent half of the trillions we threw away (to kill them) on improving their infrastructure and education instead. Terror recruitment would have come to a standstill. Spend half the rest on international law enforcement and terror would become a dead issue.
But then, the weapons makers might have to alter their business model.
Cameron,
I’m always amazed by the degree of warped self-loathing for your own culture and country uttered by people like yourself.
Of course, when expressing that much loathing of your own society, you must also invent a delusional history to justify your claims. Collaborators and quisling shared the same misogynistic fantasies
Normally I would ignore such arrant nonsense, but I suppose it would be irresponsible not to dispel some of the nonsense.
The cause of the World War I, was not the discovery of oil in Iran ! Nor was the war “inaugurated” by the battle of Basra, which occurred long after war in Europe had been declared.
The idea that “extraction of natural resources belongs by birthright to the people of a nation” is entirely a Western concept.
Outside Western values an older idea prevails, IE: Natural resources belong to those who discover them, invent the extraction technology, provide the organization to harvest, and lastly provide the technically advanced civilization that can make use of the resources. Without these accomplishment, the resource would remain an unknown, and useless commodity.
The region known as the middle east, has been an area of continual warfare, rivalry and conflict for a least 6000 years before the US was conceived ! The city of Aleppo is over 7000 years old .
Naram-Sim as Armi, the Amorites, Hittites, Mitanni,Assyrians, Medes, Babylonians,Persians,Macedonians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Arabs, Turks and Ottomans, among scores of other fought ferocious battles over the city, often slaughtering, and enslaving the inhabitants.
The middle East is no stranger to savage conflict eons before oil or the West was conceived.
“The common thread across many cultures in the region is a firm belief in three things – hospitality, forgiveness, and revenge”.
What absurd nonsense ! The common thread throughout the region is Conquest, repression, religious fanaticism, and until the advent of Western intervention, enslavement and genocide.
Those are the realities. Western involvement and policies from support for Israel to promoting the folly of an “Arab Spring” , have only added one more dynamic to age-old conflicts.
The idea of Western “Elites” having “unfettered control and extraction of natural resources” is largely a fantasy. Iran, Saudi Arabia etc have long controlled the own resources (the US is not even part of OPEC !).
Nothing could have made this more evident, than Iraq selling its Oil output to the Peoples Republic of China in preference to the US. (Although the involvement of France and Total Oil in the removal of Qaddafi needs closer examination).
Middle Eastern terrorism is just the latest in a long line of terrorist organizations, including home grown US crazies.
Hashishiyyin, Sicarii, Thugees, Irgun, Serbian-irredentist Black Hand, IRA, Sons of Volsung, Fatah (PLO), Red Brigades, Japanese Red Army Faction, Baader-Meinhof, Weather Underground, Revolutionary Struggle, Shining Path, and countless more terrorist movements have practiced their murderous trade across the globe for millennia .
Many of these terrorists came from peaceful, liberal democracies and were highly educated with relatively privileged childhoods.
Education, healthcare, human rights can;t exist without the rule of law, stable government and a healthy economy.
It takes armed force to establish a society where the rule of law is obeyed, it takes a political consensus to observe the rule of law, to create an environment where Education, healthcare, human rights, stable government and a healthy economy can thrive.
The role of the modern military is to provide sufficient security so civilian institutions can grow and succeed. The military must have limited, short term objectives. Soldiers are not police. Ensuring security by stopping armed conflict, involves neutralizing an identifiable enemy.
The US military is not equipped or trained to provide colonial style political security troops for long term peace keeping an nation building.
The US mission is complex. The US is too large and economically integrated with the rest of the world, to retreat into isolationism. Like all great powers, it must become involved. The challenge for the US is learning to do so effectively.
On the balance, despite many mistakes, you should be proud of the history of US activities abroad. On the balance, the US has exerted a positive influence on world affairs. No nation is perfect, nor is any great power altogether altruistic, but the US is better than most.
Allow me to utter a heavy sigh… Again we can all see your tired and impotent tactics of insult (ad hominem), inaccuracy, straw man attack, and non sequitur.
The next time you begin here by insulting someone (“amazed by the degree of warped self-loathing for your own culture and country uttered by people like yourself”… “Collaborators and quisling[s] shared the same misogynistic fantasies”) and then attempt to contest their observations, please do make an effort to get your facts straight.
Your assertion regarding a “battle of Basra” being “long after war in Europe had been declared” is flatly false. The British captured Basra in November 1914 – a mere four months into a four-and-a-half-year war.
http://www.1914-1918.net/mespot1914.html
As for one of your many straw men, which you habitually erect to assault in place of what was actually said, you state, “The cause of the World War I, was not the discovery of oil in Iran !” – as if your actually contesting an existing statement (which I never made).
I don’t know if you swallowed the lie that the war was due to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, but like most wars the cause lay in a struggle over resources, and the profit and power they facilitate.
The British and German navies had both recently moved from coal to oil, and Germany had no oil rich “colonies” So the Germans engaged in the “drive to the East” notably with an ambitious rail line intended to stretch from Berlin to Basra – the first half of which became known as the Orient Express. The German intent – clearly understood – was to gain a greater foothold in the Middle East where oil was already becoming the predominant interest of competing foreign powers Britain and France.
We saw the same efforts by Germany to gain control of Middle East oil resources in WWII, and the allied defeat of those attempts – so maintaining the imbalance of fuel supply between Allied and Axis powers – was crucial to the eventual Allied victory.
Your non sequitur reference to Middle East history, emphasizing repeated conflicts, is also true of Europe and Asia – in other words, it’s true of humans. Your reference has no bearing on the plain admitted fact that US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan (and thousands of US bombings in other nations) in the last dozen years have increased the ranks, reach, and influence, of militant groups using terrorism as a tactic.
I also find it astonishing and darkly amusing that you seem to think yourself capable of crawling inside my head and deducing that I loath my culture and country.
If I hated my country and culture, I’d be overjoyed with our current path – a path you have elected to vociferously defend.
It’s my deep and abiding love of my culture and my country – straight along with the rest of humanity and all life on this planet – which moves me to my persevering care and concern that the enduring hypocrisy and cruelty of our elites (along with elites in other nations) be recognized, countered and reversed.
So, yet again – as I’ve suggested to you so very often here – please to try to avoid ad hominem, straw man attacks, and non sequitur – and try to keep your comments accurate and relevant.
Thanks for playing.
Craig,
Just to correct some inaccuracies. The economic figures over the last two years have shown significant falls in poverty in the US, and an equal narrowing of the gap between rich and poor.
This has been almost entirely due to the drop on the price of oil.
Your depiction of armed forces personnel is also inaccurate and demeaning. One in Six members of the US military are female.
Most of these people love their job. The instinct for aggression is part of the human psyche. The military simply channels and disciplines that natural warrior instinct in a controlled and positive fashion. Like any high risk occupation, police, fire, medical personnel, military personnel will find themselves in traumatic situations.
This is the price these people pay to protect and preserve civilization.
Pacifism has always been an illusion, an illusion paid for by the sacrifice of others.
Even the great socialist writer George Orweel wrote;
“Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’.”
Pacifism only works is your opponent is basically peaceful and committed to the rule of law and reason.
You write: “Pacifism only works if your opponent is basically peaceful and committed to the rule of law and reason.”
There’s no evidence to support this, fortunately for us all. I only hope we get a chance to prove or disprove this statement. So far, we’ve been a civilization of ever-increasing violence, and that itself will eventually take us asunder.
Craig,
Actually, we have countless examples of peaceful societies being overwhelmed by ferocious enemies (just ask the Dalai Lama) . Even Gandhi admitted that his program of passive resistance would not have been as effective against a more ruthless imperial power than the British.
We can look back into our own childhoods. The only thing that stopped schoolyard bullying, was a display of force and the fear of retribution.
Do you think Pot Pot, Mao, Beria, Himmler, would have listened to a pacifist appeal to their better natures?
There is no doubt that violence is required to put down oppressive regimes. (My father was a B-17 pilot over Germany in WW2.) But I believe that if violence is the go-to mode of dealing with conflict, we’re going to run into problems, and that exactly what we’re seeing now: a constant escalation of brutality with no resolution in sight.
Lincoln was correct when he observed, “Force is all conquering, but it’s victories are short lived.”
Other historic conclusions of experience are noteworthy…
“Men acquainted with the battlefield will not be found among the numbers that glibly talk of another war.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1946
“Man is stumbling blindly through a spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”
“It is no longer possible to shield ourselves with arms alone against the ordeal of an attack – for modern war visits destruction on the victor and the vanquished alike. The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.”
“With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by moral adolescents. Our knowledge of science has already outstripped our capacity to control it.”
— General Omar Bradley, 1948
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil – hate producing hate, wars begetting more wars – must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the abyss of annihilation.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” — Authoritarian propaganda slogan from the book “1984”, by George Orwell, 1948
Craig, you have laid responsibility for the creation of the current batch of terrorists at the feet of U.S. and allied powers who have projected power in the Middle East. To be consistent with your pacifism downt you think that you would have been compelled to side with Lord Chamberlan at the outset of WWII? Hitler was runner ng wild over Europe committing atrocities that most of the cililized world could not ignore. Yes there were economic issues that drove countries into the fray but those were secondary to stopping a madman who was looking to dominate the world. ISIS today has similar aspirations and perhaps a larger following of Jihadists foot soldiers who will die for their evil cause. Hitler’s gestapo storm troops did not seem to be religiously motivated. I think that you are on the wrong side of history regarding pacifism in the face of evil.
Hi Larry,
Enjoyed your post, although to be fair, and in the interests of historical accuracy just two points:
1) The Right Honourable Neville Chamberlain FRS. wasn’t a “Lord “, unlike many conservatives of his era, he was never ennobled or became a member of the House of Lords. For a short period he was Lord President of the Council, but that’s an office, not a personal title.
2) The Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), were the Secret State Police, and as part of SIPO, were one of the department with the much larger RSHA (Reich Main Security Office or Reichssicherheitshauptamt). ”
Storm troopers” is a term often misused and misunderstood. Originally, Stormtroopers were German troops who specialized in trench infiltration assault attacks in last years of World War One.
The term was coined to describe the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The SA or Sturmabteilung ( Storm Detachment) was considerably diminished after the 30 June 1934 ‘Night of the Long Knives’. After that date real power shifted to the SS.
The organization continued a reduced role by mobilizing mobs for parades and demonstrations etc, until with the advent of the war when most of it’s members were drafted into the armed forces, and the SA was largely forgotten.
The term “Storm trooper” largely feel out of favour in Germany during the war.
Sorry to be pedantic, and I hope I didn’t detract from your overall meaning.
Thanks for the corrections Marcopolo. When you get to my age history begins to run together and get distorted as neural connections find their own shortcuts which may or may not end up in a rabbit hole. I enjoy all of your posts and your lucid perspective on the environment and political/cultural musings.
I find it interesting how often I see people equating anyone in favor of peace over war with Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. It’s little remembered that it was also Chamberlain who declared war on Germany shortly after Hitler’s forces entered Poland in 1939.
There are both similarities and differences between Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) and the Nazi Party – though I’m not sure how useful such a comparison would be, given the wide differences in the nature of the respective forces, and in their capabilities and tactics, not to mention in the terrain of battle over most of the active theater.
It’s true that the leadership of both groups made use of genuine longstanding grievances, religious divisions, and mistrust of foreigners (justified or not). In the hands of such leaders, these factors became tools to manipulate aggrieved and misguided people into supporting an authoritarian campaign of anti-intellectualism, fundamentalist-friendly propaganda, and barbarous persecution of opposition figures.
Further, both appealed to a widespread sense of powerlessness, and a social conservatism that yearned for a return to former days of power and prosperity (real or imagined), as well as an expansion of territory and/or influence. Both also engaged in the threat and use of extreme violence to intimidate people within their spheres of control.
However, major differences include the Nazi’s building of a powerful modern war machine inside Germany, and mobilizing vast swaths of the German population of a nation state – including it’s government and tax base – in support of military adventurism on a wide scale.
Much of Daesh’s current leadership drew itself out of the largely Baathist military of Iraq (unwisely disbanded by Paul Bremmer), but – like Al Qaeda – Daesh maintains a distributed, fluid structure and engages in asymmetrical war tactics. Quite a contrast to the Nazis.
The Nazis also shrewdly garnered significant support across elite societies and populations in other powerful nations – including Britain and the United States.
It’s worth bearing two things in mind about the Nazi Party, which are rarely discussed in the consolidated corporate media cabal, but which yet remain on the horizon of living memory.
First, there were numerous wealthy interests in America that aided in the rise of the corporate friendly Nazi party in Germany (Prescott Bush and Henry Ford among them).
The famously decorated, honest and honorable General Smedley Butler even reported to Congress about a serious American fascist coup attempt (organized by wealthy financial elites) that tried to recruit him against FDR’s presidency. The general was a patriot, and once he announced the coup before Congress, it evaporated.
Hitler was in fact only somewhat backhandedly crowned Man of the Year by the publishers of Time Magazine’s in 1938.
Second, prior to WWII, there were also many tens of thousands of avowed fascists among our citizenry, holding enormous mass rallies in cities across the United States.
In any case, fascism is an ideology that means death for civilization, and it needs to be stopped wherever and whenever (and under whatever guise) it raises its feverish and hoary head.
Fortunately, our domestic brand did not win the day here in the 1930’s, but such ideas persist under different flags, including our own, and they still cloak themselves in an empty claim of patriotism.
Incidentally, here’s an interesting article on the term “Daesh” and it’s use in place of the ISIS and ISIL acronyms:
https://www.freewordcentre.com/explore/daesh-isis-media-alice-guthrie
Cameron,
You certainly have a very self-serving interpretation of history and the English language !
Your claim ” WWI (the war to end all wars) was inaugurated with a British invasion of Basra”.
I observe “The war was not inaugurated by the Battle of Basra, war “inaugurated” by the battle of Basra, which occurred long after war in Europe had been declared.”
Your retort to this simple historical fact is, ” Your assertion is “flatly false” ! You then go on to justify such peculiar reasoning by asserting that a war declared on July 28, 1914, was “inaugurated” by an event that occurred November 11 to November 21, 1914 !
The fact that the participans in the Basra conflict weren’t even at war in July 1914, makes your claim even stranger !
Or maybe you haven’t quite grasped the meaning of the word “inaugurate ” ?
You move on to a even more distorted rant about the narrow aversion of a serious 1930’s coup by “fascist” plotters in the US seeking to oust FDR.
General Smedley Butler’s claims were never substantiated and sadly, by the time he made these claims General Butler had become a tragic, erratic figure subject to fits of metal instability whileassociating with some very fringe oddballs and shadowy characters who may have excited his fantasies and affected his judgement.
The diversity of political and administrative institutions in the US makes any attempt to depose a President, remove Congress, civilian power and impose military government, impossible.
As in most Western armed forces, the US military is bound by it’s oath to the Constitution and is only obliged to obey “lawful” orders.
You seem to have an odd notion as to the values of US culture and history. But that’s understandable, since it’s obvious by studying your many postings that you have acquired all the distortions and prejudices common to those of the hard core politically leftist persuasion.