Moustafa Bayoumi: Even after Iraq, too many US elites still think war is a bloodless chess game
Donald Trump may act
like a schoolyard bully and an impetuous infant, but he is not the only one to
blame for recklessly bringing the world closer to a catastrophic war. While the
responsibility for approving the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s top
general, in a drone strike near Baghdad international airport is certainly his,
Trump’s actions would not have been possible without the deep infrastructure
for war that lies at the core of the American political system, especially
since 2001.
After the “War on
Terror” began, the United States - already a deeply militarized country - essentially abdicated public deliberations of war and peace when Congress
passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The executive branch
has been invoking the AUMF for almost two decades as its primary legal basis for
military operations around the world.
Put another way, war
isn’t hell. War is mundane. We’ve already arrived at the point when even the
Senate armed services committee couldn’t tell you who, precisely, the United
States is at war with, as a must-hear 2014 episode of the show Radiolab made
clear. This corrosive lack of
transparency recently led a bipartisan group of lawmakers to add language to
the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual defense budget bill,
that would have required Trump to get Congress’s approval before striking Iran.
That bill failed in the Senate, which Trump will no doubt interpret as freeing
his hand even more when it comes to war with Iran...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/06/even-after-iraq-too-many-us-elites-still-think-war-is-a-bloodless-chess-game