William Astore: The U.S. Military’s Lost Wars // Chris Hedges: The American Empire Will Collapse Within a Decade, Two at Most
One of the finest military memoirs of any generation is Defeat Into Victory, British Field Marshal Sir William Slim’s perceptive account of World War II’s torturous Burma campaign, which ended in a resounding victory over Japan. When America’s generals write their memoirs about their never-ending war on terror, they’d do well to choose a different title: Victory Into Defeat. That would certainly be more appropriate than those on already published accounts like Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez’s Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story (2008), or General Stanley McChrystal’s My Share of the Task (2013)... U.S. forces are engaged in an open-ended war on terror in 80 countries, a commitment that has cost nearly $6 trillion since the 9/11 attacks (Costs of War Project)
William J. Astore: The U.S. Military’s Lost Wars Overfunded, Overhyped, and Always Over There
Had there ever been an imperial power at the ostensible height of its glory that proved quite so incapable of effectively applying its military and political force globally to achieve its aims? At their height, the Roman Empire, China’s various imperial dynasties, and Europe’s colonial powers, however brutally, generally proved quite capable of impressing their wills and desires on those beyond their borders, even on relatively distant parts of the planet (at least for a time).
Had there ever been an imperial power at the ostensible height of its glory that proved quite so incapable of effectively applying its military and political force globally to achieve its aims? At their height, the Roman Empire, China’s various imperial dynasties, and Europe’s colonial powers, however brutally, generally proved quite capable of impressing their wills and desires on those beyond their borders, even on relatively distant parts of the planet (at least for a time).
In fact, in the Cold War years - think of Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, or Chile on the first 9/11 (September 11, 1973) - the
U.S. proved no less capable, often in similarly brutal ways. And yet,
from Afghanistan to Libya, Iraq to Somalia, Syria to Yemen, despite the endless application of U.S. power,
the killing of
tens of thousands of people (including key figures in various terror
movements), the displacement of millions, the rubblization of whole cities, and the creation of a
series of partially or fully failed states, nowhere, as TomDispatch regular Astore points out
today, has U.S. power succeeded in successfully imposing its will, even as its
wars only multiplied.
Dunkirk
Veteran Weeps At Film Premiere: ‘It Was Just Like I Was There Again’
The Collapse of the American Empire?
The Collapse of the American Empire?
And here’s another thing I’ve come to wonder about: How did the hearts-and-minds moxie of the leftist national liberation movements of the previous century that decolonized much of the planet get transferred to the extreme Islamist groups of this one? Like the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (the “Vietcong”) and similar groups in the twentieth century, al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, and other terror outfits regularly suffer extreme casualties and yet somehow maintain their grip on the hearts and minds of significant numbers of people in riven, increasingly ruined lands. They can, it seems, even attract random Americans and Europeans into the fold. It’s a strange and unexpected phenomenon, a grim success story that hasn’t been faced in a serious way here.
