{"id":72874,"date":"2016-05-02T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=72874"},"modified":"2016-04-30T17:06:33","modified_gmt":"2016-04-30T16:06:33","slug":"andrew-bacevich-and-americas-long-misguided-war-to-control-the-greater-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/andrew-bacevich-and-americas-long-misguided-war-to-control-the-greater-middle-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Bacevich and America\u2019s Long Misguided War to Control the Greater Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Illustration:<\/a>

Illustration: Selman Design<\/p><\/div>\n

23 Apr 2016 – <\/em>The conviction that invasion, bombing, and special forces benefit large swaths of the globe, while remaining consonant with a Platonic ideal of the national interest, runs deep in the American psyche. Like the poet Stevie Smith\u2019s cat<\/a>, the United States \u201clikes to gallop about doing good.\u201d The cat attacks and misses, sometimes injuring itself, but does not give up. It asks, as the U.S. should,<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the good
\nOf galloping about doing good
\nWhen angels stand in the path
\nAnd do not do as they should<\/em><\/p>\n

Nothing undermines the American belief in military force. No matter how often its galloping about results in resentment and mayhem, the U.S. gets up again to do good elsewhere. Failure to improve life in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya stiffens the resolve to get it right next time. This notion prevails among politicized elements of the officer corps; much of the media, whether nominally liberal or conservative; the foreign policy elite recycled quadrennially between corporation-endowed think tanks and government; and most politicians on the national stage. For them and the public they influence, the question is less whether to deploy force than when, where, and how.<\/p>\n

Since 1979, when the Iranians overthrew the Shah and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. has concentrated its firepower in what former U.S. Army colonel Andrew Bacevich calls the \u201cGreater Middle East.\u201d The region comprises most of what America\u2019s imperial predecessors, the British, called the Near and Middle East, a vast zone from Pakistan west to Morocco. In his new book<\/a>, America\u2019s War for the Greater Middle East<\/em>, Bacevich writes, \u201cFrom the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in that region. Within a decade, a great shift occurred. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed anywhere except<\/em> the Greater Middle East.\u201d That observation alone might prompt a less propagandized electorate to rebel against leaders who perpetuate policies that, while killing and maiming American soldiers, devastate the societies they touch.<\/p>\n

Bacevich describes a loyal cadre of intellectuals and pundits favoring war after war, laying the moral ground for invasions and excusing them when they go wrong. He notes that in 1975, when American imperium was collapsing in Indochina, the guardians of American exceptionalism renewed their case for preserving the U.S. as the exception to international law. An article by Robert Tucker in Commentary<\/em> that year set the ball rolling with the proposition that \u201cto insist that before using force one must exhaust all other remedies is little more than the functional equivalent of accepting chaos.\u201d Another evangelist for military action, Miles Ignotus, wrote in Harper\u2019s<\/em><\/a> two months later that the U.S. with Israel\u2019s help must prepare to seize Saudi Arabia\u2019s oilfields. Miles Ignotus, Latin for \u201cunknown soldier,\u201d turned out to be the known civilian and Pentagon consultant Edward Luttwak. Luttwak urged a \u201crevolution\u201d in warfare doctrine toward \u201cfast, light forces to penetrate the enemy\u2019s vital centers\u201d with Saudi Arabia a test case. The practical test would come, with results familiar to most of the world, 27 years later in Iraq.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon, its pride and reputation wounded in Vietnam as surely as the bodies of 150,000 scarred American soldiers, was slow to take the hint. The end of compulsory military service robbed it of manpower for massive global intervention. Revelations of war crimes and political chicanery from the Senate\u2019s Church Committee and the Pike Committee in the House added to public disenchantment with military adventures and intelligence meddling in other countries\u2019 affairs. It would take years of effort to cure America of its \u201cVietnam Syndrome,\u201d the preference for diplomatic before military solutions.<\/p>\n

In the Middle East, President Gerald Ford saw no reason to rescind his predecessor\u2019s policy, the Nixon Doctrine of reliance on local clients armed by the U.S. to protect Persian Gulf oil for America\u2019s gas-hungry consumers. Nothing much happened, though, until one of the local gendarmes, the Shah of Iran, fell to a popular revolution and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\"Illustration:<\/a>

Illustration: Selman Design<\/p><\/div>\n

Change came with the Carter Doctrine, enunciated in the president\u2019s January 1980 State of the Union address: \u201cAn attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and as such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carter\u2019s combative national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote later, \u201cThe Carter Doctrine was modeled on the Truman Doctrine.\u201d Bacevich comments that the Truman Doctrine of ostensibly containing the Soviet Union while absorbing the richer portions of the decolonizing French and British Empires \u201cinvited misinterpretation and misuse, with the Vietnam War one example of the consequences.\u201d Carter\u2019s doctrine, modified but not rescinded by his successors, led to similar consequences in Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n

George W. Bush took the Carter Doctrine to fresh lengths when he made the case, prepared for him by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, for preventive war in a speech at the U.S. Military Academy on June 1, 2002: \u201cIf we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.\u201d Bacevich quotes the Nuremberg court\u2019s view of preventive war: \u201cTo initiate a war of aggression is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.\u201d After the failures to impose order in Afghanistan and Iraq, President Barack Obama rather than abandon the policy merely moved its emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan without achieving any military or political objectives.<\/p>\n

Bacevich, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, while conceding his \u201cundistinguished military career,\u201d is more willing than most journalists to question the justice and utility of expanded military operations in the Middle East and to challenge the media-hyped reputations of some of America\u2019s favorite generals, Stormin\u2019 Norman Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, Wesley Clark, and David Petraeus foremost. One general who comes out well in Bacevich\u2019s assessment is British, Sir Michael Jackson, who resisted Wesley Clark\u2019s order to block a runway at Pristina airport against Russian flights into Kosovo. His answer, worthy of Gen. Anthony McAuliffe\u2019s reply of \u201cNuts\u201d to the German demand for surrender at Bastogne: \u201cSir, I\u2019m not starting World War III for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

This tour de force of a book covers the modern history of American warfare with sharp criticism of political decisions and rigorous analysis of battlefield strategy and tactics. As such, it should be required reading at the author\u2019s alma mater. It would not hurt for those aspiring to succeed Barack Obama as commander-in-chief to dip into it as well. None of them, with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, is likely to reject the worldview that led to so many deaths around the world. Watch for more military missions. Be prepared for more assassination by drone, of which even former Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal said, \u201cThey are hated on a visceral level, even by people who\u2019ve never seen one or seen the effects of one.\u201d McChrystal pointed out that drone strikes are great recruiters, not for the U.S. military, but for the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS.<\/p>\n

Ignoring Bacevich and heeding the call of the intellectual warmongers who guided Bush, Obama\u2019s successor, like Stevie Smith\u2019s cat, is likely \u201cto go on being \/ A cat that likes to \/ Gallop about doing good,\u201d expanding rather than limiting the projection of armed might into the Greater Middle East.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Charles Glass<\/em>, former <\/em>ABC News chief Middle East correspondent, recently published <\/em>Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe<\/a> (Verso).<\/em><\/p>\n

Charles Glass<\/a> – \u2709charlesglassbooks@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

23 Apr 2016 – The conviction that invasion, bombing, and special forces benefit large swaths of the globe, while remaining consonant with a Platonic ideal of the national interest, runs deep in the American psyche. Nothing undermines the American belief in military force. No matter how often its galloping about results in resentment, the U.S. gets up again to do good elsewhere. Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal pointed out that drone strikes are great recruiters, not for the U.S. military, but for the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}