...The United States, whose costliest political and military adventures since 1950 have ended in failure, now must face the fact that the technology for confronting its power is rapidly becoming widespread and cheap. It is within the reach of not merely states but of relatively small groups of people. Destructive power is now virtually 'democratized.' If the challenges of producing a realistic concept of the world that confronts the mounting dangers and limits of military technology seriously are not resolved soon, recognizing that a decisive equality of military power is today in the process of being re-imposed, there is nothing more than wars and mankind’s eventual destruction to look forward to.The Great Equalizer - Lessons From Iraq and Lebanon
We live in a tragic world and war is considered more virtuous than peace--and since arms-makers profit from wars and not peace, conventional wisdom is reinforced by their lobbies and by preaching the cult of weaponry.The Decline Of The American Empire
The US may explore how to end its predicament in Iraq but only Iran can help it. Ironically, Iran has gained most geopolitically from Saddam Hussein's defeat and has no incentive to save the Bush Administration from the defeat now staring at it--both in Iraq and in future elections in the US.
The world is escaping American control, and Soviet prudence no longer inhibits many movements and nations. World opposition is becoming decentralized to a much greater extent and the US is less than ever able to control it--although it may go financially bankrupt and break up its alliances in the process of seeking to be hegemonic.
This is cause for a certain optimism, based on a realistic assessment of the balance-of-power in the world. I think we must avoid the pessimism-optimism trap but be realistic. Although the Americans are very destructive, they are also losing wars and wrecking themselves economically and politically. But for a century the world has fought wars, and while the US has been the leading power by far-in making wars since 1946, it has no monopoly on folly.
But it is crucial to remember that the US is only a reflection of the militarism and irrationality that has blinded many leaders of mankind for over a century.
The task is not only to prevent the US from inflicting more damage on the hapless world--Iraq at this moment--but to root out the historic, global illusions that led to its aggression.
...By the beginning of 1975, the regime in South Vietnam was beginning to disintegrate by every relevant criterion: economically and politically, and therefore militarily. The Saigon army abandoned the battlefield well before the final Communist offensive in March 1975. Moreover, with the Watergate scandal, the Nixon Administration was on the defensive after 1973, both with the American public and Congress, and after Nixon's forced resignation the new American President, Gerald Ford, was simply in no position to help the economically and politically bankrupt Thieu regime. The American army, at this point, was too demoralized to re-enter the war. Washington correctly assumed that its diplomatic strategy had won Moscow and Peking to its side by threatening to swing its power to the enemy of whatever nation would not support its Vietnam strategy--triangular diplomacy.Lesson from a total defeat: Vietnam 30 years after
But it was irrelevant what Hanoi's former allies did--and essentially they did what the Americans wanted by cutting military aid to the Vietnamese Communists. The basic problem was in Saigon: the regime was falling apart for reasons having nothing to do with military equipment. The Communists were stunned by their fast, total victory over the nominally superior Saigon army, which refused to fight and immediately disintegrated.
Thus ended the most significant American foreign effort since 1945. There are so many obvious parallels with their futile projects in Iraq and Afghanistan today, and the lessons are so clear, that we have to conclude that successive administrations in Washington have no capacity whatsoever to learn from past errors. Total defeat in Vietnam 30 years ago should have been a warning to the U.S.: wars are too complicated for any nation, even the most powerful, to undertake without grave risk. They are not simply military exercises in which equipment and firepower is decisive, but political, ideological, and economic challenges also.
...By the beginning of 1975, the regime in South Vietnam was beginning to disintegrate by every relevant criterion: economically and politically, and therefore militarily. The Saigon army abandoned the battlefield well before the final Communist offensive in March 1975. Moreover, with the Watergate scandal, the Nixon Administration was on the defensive after 1973, both with the American public and Congress, and after Nixon's forced resignation the new American President, Gerald Ford, was simply in no position to help the economically and politically bankrupt Thieu regime. The American army, at this point, was too demoralized to re-enter the war. Washington correctly assumed that its diplomatic strategy had won Moscow and Peking to its side by threatening to swing its power to the enemy of whatever nation would not support its Vietnam strategy--triangular diplomacy.Lesson from a total defeat: Vietnam 30 years after
But it was irrelevant what Hanoi's former allies did--and essentially they did what the Americans wanted by cutting military aid to the Vietnamese Communists. The basic problem was in Saigon: the regime was falling apart for reasons having nothing to do with military equipment. The Communists were stunned by their fast, total victory over the nominally superior Saigon army, which refused to fight and immediately disintegrated.
Thus ended the most significant American foreign effort since 1945. There are so many obvious parallels with their futile projects in Iraq and Afghanistan today, and the lessons are so clear, that we have to conclude that successive administrations in Washington have no capacity whatsoever to learn from past errors. Total defeat in Vietnam 30 years ago should have been a warning to the U.S.: wars are too complicated for any nation, even the most powerful, to undertake without grave risk. They are not simply military exercises in which equipment and firepower is decisive, but political, ideological, and economic challenges also.
There has now been a qualitative leap in technology that makes all inherited conventional wisdom, and war as an instrument of political policy, utterly irrelevant, not just to the U.S. but to any other nation that embarks upon it.So, the one time that the US effectively executes a proxy war by the same methods we're now losing (Afghanistan) doesn't count? The fall of the Soviet Union can be traced back to their failure to defeat the muj in Afghanistan... that sounds like a well fair victory for the US, doesn't it?
For one - the Iraq war was short and decisive. The major combat operations being over thing was dead on.
The USA has yet to suffer one assault from Iraq within our territory
There was plenty of resistance from partisans in both cases
According to America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, a new study by former Ambassador James Dobbins, who had a lead role in the Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo reconstruction efforts, and a team of RAND Corporation researchers, the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in Germany--and Japan, Haiti, and the two Balkan cases--was zero.Tje National Review's John O'Sullivan said, "Not a single 'Werewolf' emerged from his lair" in his April 2003 the allies will be welcomed as liberators piece.
« Older 151 Changes to The Empire Strikes Back... | Ice bubbles... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by y2karl at 2:17 PM on September 5, 2006