See page 13 of this.
The question is: will an already heavily militarized foreign policy geared to endless global war be surrendered to the generals?
The question is: will an already heavily militarized foreign policy geared to endless global war be surrendered to the generals?
The Taliban fight for something they believe -- that their country should be freed from foreign occupation.
I'm kinda baffled that you could describe it as such whilst simultaneously agreeing with Howard's substantive point*...?
oh yes, I was waiting for this.
And here the US military playing Obama into a lose lose situation. (Helped by Obama's desire to appear 'tough') With Petraeus in the background angling toward a 2012 Presidential bid.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175118/a_military_that_wants_its_way
in the how, not the what, just rubs me the wrong way really. mostly in that he uses "terrorists" and, even worse, "criminals" for all Arab/Jewish fighters under the British occupation of Palestine, as well as for the Irish (c'mon that one should resonate with you!). as well as for Malaya, which also seems inaccurate, I dunno enough about Cyprus. right after he - correctly - demarcates terrorism as a tactic, not something you can fight a war against, it seems a bit off to toss around those words loosely, esp. the latter.
also his substantive point is pretty bleeding obvious isn't it.
Well, that's just fair, isn't it? If terrorism is a tactic then it doesn't really speak to the rightness or wrongness of the cause in question. And "criminal" just follows directly from his argument. I don't see anything to disagree with there, personally.
(What, is this the Profane Existance forum now)
very little of reprimanding consequence was said to Russia by her wealthy trading partners pre-9/11, tbf
Even if you think in terms of conspiracies, you can't discount the possibility that some military experts and leaders actually do think that, in order to win the war -- if that's what civilian leaders want them to do -- they will need more troops. Just imagine that's the case. To pull off what's being demanded operationally, you need more troops. But getting more troops is a political issue, and the politicians don't want to leave or stay, so the war will just get lost inch by miserable inch. How's that for a bit of speculation?
I think this is nonsense, to be frank. the bit about Obama & the Dems & toughness, alright. but for the 100th time, the military doesn't set policy. the politicians do. mission creep, alright, but not the policy in the first place.
seriously tho, criminals does seem inaccurate. I'm reminded of Chiang Kai-Shek referring to the Communists as bandits. it's fine if it's accurate, a bad mistake if it's not.
as it happens I am wearing an old Profane Existence t-shirt right now so you can get stuffed innit. Making punk a threat "again" = greatest slogan ever (esp. if by threat you mean spending most of your time hunting down obscure Dbeat 7"s on Ebay and making sure the studs on your jacket are perfectly spaced)
Well I won't argue that's it's not cheesy/a little strained. But look at it from the other side: Let's imagine that Obama isn't the virtual Bush clone he seems to be, and wants to get out of the war. Are the generals/military establishment going to support him in that aim?
While Engelhardt's depiction might be cheesy your responses seem credulous in regard to the military establishment and its own self interest and imperatives.
Ahead of a United Nations Security Council briefing Tuesday on Afghanistan, the country's foreign minister urged patience from the international community in dealing with his struggling homeland.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta said abandoning Afghanistan now will only "embolden extremists in the region and beyond."
"What the Afghan nation expects and deserves from a renewed partnership with the international community is the reassurance of long-term commitment and solidarity," Spanta told the U.N. General Assembly on Monday.
The Security Council will be briefed on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's report on Afghanistan which describes the violence as the single greatest impediment to the nation's progress. Ban also wrote that recent elections were challenging and that serious electoral fraud occurred primarily due to the lack of access to parts of Afghanistan mired in conflict.
[...]
"As with any emerging democracy, undoubtedly, there were irregularities," Spanta said. "But one should not assess a young terrorist-inflicted democracy with the criteria of stable, prosperous and centuries-old democracies. This is not a call to condone fraud and irregularities. But in passing judgment, we should be conscious of the context."
Let's imagine that Obama isn't the virtual Bush clone he seems to be, and wants to get out of the war.
And the military have no power/influence in this equation, right? Mere handmaidens to the awesomeness of the politicians and the binding beauty of the constitution
In an excellent new article in The*New York Review of Books this week, Gary Wills examines the underlying systemic and cultural reasons why, in the areas of civil liberties and national security, "the Obama administration quickly came to resemble Bush's." *Wills makes the point I've been emphasizing for some time:**as long as we remain a nation in a permanent state of war, devoted to imperial ends, maintaining our National Security State ensures that the*core assaults on civil liberties will never end; at best, we can tinker with them on the margins with the types of pretty words that the*Obama administration adores, but it will persist and grow on its own accord:
But the momentum of accumulating powers in the executive is not easily reversed, checked, or even slowed. It was not created by the Bush administration. The whole history of America since World War II caused an inertial transfer of power toward the executive branch. The monopoly on use of nuclear weaponry, the cult of the commander in chief, the worldwide network of military bases to maintain nuclear alert and supremacy, the secret intelligence agencies, the entire national security state, the classification and clearance systems, the expansion of state secrets, the withholding of evidence and information, the permanent emergency that has melded World War II with the cold war and the cold war with the "war on terror"—all these make a vast and intricate structure that may not yield to effort at dismantling it. Sixty-eight straight years of war emergency powers (1941–2009) have made the abnormal normal, and constitutional diminishment the settled order. . . .
Some were dismayed to see how quickly the Obama people grabbed at the powers, the secrecy, the unaccountability that had led Bush into such opprobrium. . . . .*
Now a new president quickly becomes aware of the vast empire that is largely invisible to the citizenry. The United States maintains an estimated one thousand military bases in other countries. . . .
That is just one of the hundreds of holdings in the empire created by the National Security State. A president is greatly pressured to keep all the empire's secrets. He feels he must avoid embarrassing the hordes of agents, military personnel, and diplomatic instruments whose loyalty he must command. Keeping up morale in this vast, shady enterprise is something impressed on him by all manner of commitments. He becomes the prisoner of his own power. As President Truman could not not use the bomb, a modern president cannot not use the huge powers at his disposal. It has all been given him as the legacy of Bomb Power, the thing that makes him not only Commander in Chief but Leader of the Free World. He is a self-entangling giant.
Wills' whole essay is highly worth reading.**None of it excuses "how quickly the Obama people grabbed at the powers, the secrecy, the unaccountability that had led Bush into such opprobrium."**But it does explain it and put it into context.* Even if*Obama were committed to undoing these policies -- just assume hypothetically that this were true -- the nature of*America's imperial and militarized political culture would make that, as Wills says, "a hard, perhaps impossible, task."**The*President is powerful, but there are many other factions that wield great power as well -- the permanent Washington political class, both public and private -- and they are firmly entrenched against any type of "change" in these areas as one can imagine, as it's from those policies that their power and purpose (and profits)*are derived
That's why I keep quoting the 1790 warning of James Madison about what happens -- inevitably -- to a country when it chooses to be a permanent war-fighting state devoted to maintaining imperial power:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied : and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
Shouldn't we think about what that means?**All of these subsidiary, discrete battles are shaped by this larger truth.* We're a country that has been continuously at war for decades, insists it is currently at war now, and vows that it will wage war for years if not decades to come*(Obama:**we'll be waging this war "a year from now, five years from now, and -- in all probability -- ten years from now").**Exactly as Madison said*(and as Wills this week emphasized), as long as we're choosing to be that kind of a nation, then the crux of the Bush/Cheney approach will remain in place.* We can sand-paper away some of the harshest edges*("we're no longer going to drown people in order to extract confessions"); prettify some of what we're doing*("we're going to detain people with no charges based on implied statutory power rather than theories of inherent power"); and avoid making things worse ("we won't seek a new preventive detention law because we don't need one since we already can do that").**But no matter who we elect, the pervasive secrecy, essentially authoritarian character of the Executive, and rapid erosion of core liberties will continue as long as we remain committed to what Wills calls "the empire created by the National Security State."
this, firstly, is absurd. whether or not one is an Obama supporter (or a Bush supporter, for that matter). how exactly is he a "virtual Bush clone"? be specific, please, no empty platitudes.
ouch, that stings. rapier wit & all that. of course they influence policy. I'd certainly hope the President would consult his senior military leaders before making important decisions about getting into or continuing wars. it being, yunno, their job to offer him advice on military matters.
& of course the military has power. but barring a military coup, yeah, they're still subservient to the decisions the civilians make. a lot of dudes were very unhappy about Iraq in 2003, if you'll recall (Shinseki, most prominently) - that was Bush's decision, no one else's. reckon a lot of dudes are pretty unhappy about Afghanistan too, for a variety of reasons. Vimothy already hit most of the main points so I won't rehash them.