War Is No Longer a Last Resort

Quote of the day:
“Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.”
--Samuel Butler

Quote of the day no. 2:
“We should view violent Islamic radicals as an international criminal conspiracy. We should make common cause with other nations in destroying this conspiracy, using methods similar to those used against the mafia.”
--Andrew J. Bacevich

As important as it is that we step back from the mess in Iraq in order to gain some rational and historical perspective, we don’t seem to do it. It may be that the situation gets us so worked up that we can’t manage anything but anger, posturing and endlessly repeated catch phrases from all sides.

In his book The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, Andrew Bacevich takes this step back. He looks at the development of our attitudes about American power and influence over the last hundred years, and his observations are worth a look.

He says this: “In former times American policymakers treated (or at least pretended to treat) the use of force as evidence that diplomacy had failed. In our own time they have concluded (in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney) that force ‘makes your diplomacy more effective going forward, dealing with other problems.’ Policymakers have come to see coercion as a sort of all-purpose tool.”

In an interview in the March 2007 Sun, Bacevich gives this explanation for why he thinks we cannot win in Iraq: “The leaders of the Arab world took several decades to realize they were not suited for Western-style war, with tanks, bombers, heavy artillery and so on.

“We now have a generation of Arab leaders--and perhaps Muslim leaders in general--who are choosing military techniques that play to the strengths of their people and their societies. They don’t need fighter-bombers; they don’t want tanks. As the resistance in Iraq continues to demonstrate on a daily basis, they have developed a strategy that we don’t know how to defeat. And any statesman with half a brain should know that if you can’t defeat your enemies militarily, then you need to rethink the war option.”

Why do we do this? It’s because “Politicians on both sides are wedded to what I call the ‘narrative of the American century.’ It goes like this: Beginning with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. finally broke away from its isolationist roots and recognized its responsibility as a world leader.

“From that day forward, according to the narrative, the U.S. has been engaged in a great campaign to spread freedom around the world. We did it to great effect in World War II. We did it again, albeit over a longer period and with some missteps, in the Cold War.

Bacevich says the narrative has continued: “Since September 11, 2001, we have recommitted ourselves to this campaign. Just as we brought freedom to Europe and East Asia and the old Soviet bloc, we are now engaged in an effort to bring freedom to the Muslim world.” That’s what our self-narrative says.

He goes on: “And so we have this catastrophic war in Iraq, which the president sees as the first step toward spreading freedom in the Muslim world. And the Democrats in Washington have trouble articulating a critique of the war because they are bound to the same narrative.

“Both Left and Right are attached to a concept of history that in some way served our purposes back in the forties and fifties, but today has become irrelevant and counterproductive.”