The American War...

[Rockhopper]

Tom Engelhardt discusses the American unparalelled failure to win a war!

The United States has been at war -- major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, air strikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts, and covert actions -- nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War began.  That’s more than half a century of experience with war, American-style, and yet few in our world bother to draw the obvious conclusions.

Given the historical record, those conclusions should be staring us in the face.  They are, however, the words that can’t be said in a country committed to a military-first approach to the world, a continual build-up of its forces, an emphasis on pioneering work in the development and deployment of the latest destructive technology, and a repetitious cycling through styles of war from full-scale invasions and occupations to counterinsurgency, proxy wars, and back again.

So here are five straightforward lessons -- none acceptable in what passes for discussion and debate in this country -- that could be drawn from that last half century of every kind of American warfare:

1. No matter how you define American-style war or its goals, it doesn’t work. Ever.

2. No matter how you pose the problems of our world, it doesn’t solve them. Never.

3. No matter how often you cite the use of military force to “stabilize” or “protect” or “liberate” countries or regions, it is a destabilizing force.

4. No matter how regularly you praise the American way of war and its “warriors,” the U.S. military is incapable of winning its wars.

5. No matter how often American presidents claim that the U.S. military is “the finest fighting force in history,” the evidence is in: it isn’t.

Source.

Tim.

[Lenzabi]

What Tom is looking at is the symptoms, not the disease. That disease is actually a parasitic infestation in America.....The American Military-Industrial-Complex. It has taken over our culture, our politics, our society and government, it works as the weapon making contract companies hand in hand with heir allies Big Oil dominate, control and take over parts of our government first, convincing politicians that they will benefit from the war factories in their districts, then they get their allies to make war seem a good idea as opposed to letting the "bad guys" get away with whatever invented acts may happen (Fear as a media tool), they then have a population willing to work at the plants or sign up and "defend their nation" even though the Taliban and such could only dominate Afghanistan, and spread to Pakistan and Iran? already Islamic states with no cros global capacity militarily speaking.

So that answers Toms' first Premise 1) the reason we simply do not finish wars fast anymore is that short wars are less profitable than everlasting wars.

2) No it is not meant to solve them, otherwise there would be little to no reason for 1)

3) Stability is not the goal, they have calculated that instability beeds more boogeymen for them to use that fear in the media tool so that they can feed always at the tax payer trough!

4) Please refer to 1), 2) and 3).

5) Oh that it has been fighting for the past 15yrs says it is a good military, and a hardy one. It has done it's job for the MIC admirably, keeping the boiler on and stewing the world stage for the MICs of other nations to see if they can also do the same, after all parasites need fresh hosts for when they have spent the old host now don;t they?

Is my Nation loving up or what?