OT: The New American Militarism
John Manning
The New American Militarism
by Paul Craig Roberts
Antiwar.com, January 18, 2005
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=4445
Americans have been betrayed. Sooner or later, Americans will realize
that they have been led to defeat in a pointless war by political
leaders who they inattentively trusted. They have been misinformed by a
sycophantic corporate media too mindful of advertising revenues to risk
reporting truths branded unpatriotic by the propagandistic slogan, "you
are with us or against us."
What happens when Americans wake up to their betrayal? It is too late to
be rescued from catastrophe in Iraq, but perhaps if Americans can
understand how such a grand mistake was made, they can avoid repeating
it. In a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press, The New American
Militarism, Andrew J. Bacevich writes that we can avoid future disasters
by understanding how our doctrines went wrong and by returning to the
precepts laid down by our Founding Fathers, men of infinitely more
wisdom than those currently holding reins of power.
Bacevich, West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, and soldier for 23
years, is a true conservative. He is an expert on U.S. military strategy
and a professor at Boston University. He describes how civilian
strategists – especially Albert Wohlstetter and Andrew Marshall – not
military leaders, transformed a strategy of deterrence that regarded war
as a last resort into a strategy of naked aggression. The resulting
"marriage of a militaristic cast of mind with utopian ends" has
"committed the United States to waging an open-ended war on a global scale."
The greatest threat to the U.S. is not terrorists but the
neoconservative belief, to which President Bush is firmly committed,
that American security and well-being depend on U.S. global hegemony and
impressing U.S. values on the rest of the world. This belief resonates
with a patriotic public. Bacevich writes, "In the aftermath of a century
filled to overflowing with evidence pointing to the limited utility of
armed force and the dangers inherent in relying excessively on military
power, the American people have persuaded themselves that their best
prospect for safety and salvation lies with the sword."
If Americans persist in these misconceptions, America will "share the
fate of all those who in ages past have looked to war and military power
to fulfill their destiny. We will rob future generations of their
rightful inheritance. We will wreak havoc abroad. We will endanger our
security at home. We will risk the forfeiture of all that we prize."
Bacevich understands that the problem is not how to deal with terrorism
but how to deal with the hubris, laden with catastrophe, that America is
God's instrument for bringing history to its predetermined destination.
Being assigned such an exalted role creates the delusion that America's
virtue is unquestionable and its use of preemptive coercion is
infallible, a delusion that led to the "cakewalk war" that would
entrench democracy in the Middle East and have the troops home in 90 days.
American hubris, which flows so freely from President Bush's mouth,
explains why half the U.S. population yawns over the U.S. slaughter of
Iraqi civilians and communist-style torture of Iraqi prisoners. The
"cakewalk war" is now almost two years old and has claimed 10 percent of
the U.S. occupation force as casualties. Yet, the delusion persists that
the U.S. is prevailing in Iraq.
The new American militarism would be inconceivable, Bacevich writes,
"were it not for the support offered by several tens of millions of
evangelicals." Books written about "militant Islam" could equally
describe militant evangelical Christianity. How did a Christian doctrine
of love and peace become an apology for war?
Bacevich explains that evangelicals, aghast at Vietnam era protests of
America's war against "godless communism," turned to the military as the
repository of traditional American virtues. For evangelicals, end-times
doctrines converged eschatology with national security. Prophecies
merged America's fate with Israel's. Islam inherited the role of godless
communism and became the target of the war against evil. America emerged
with the "same immensely elastic permission to use force previously
accorded to Israel."
America's security and the well-being of the world are threatened by
America's unwarranted belief in the efficacy of force. War is
ungovernable: "The shattered reputations of generals and statesmen who
presumed to bring it under control litter the 20th century. On those
rare occasions when war has yielded a seemingly decisive outcome, as in
1918 or 1945, it has done so only after exacting a staggering price from
victor and vanquished alike. Even then, in resolving one set of
problems, 'good' wars have fostered resentments or created temptations,
leading as often as not to further conflict."
The new American militarism has abandoned the Founding Fathers, deserted
the Constitution, and unrestrained the executive. War is a first resort.
Militarism is inconsistent with globalism and with American ideals. It
will end in abject failure.
The world is a vast place. The U.S. has demonstrated that it cannot
impose its will on a tiny part known as Iraq. American realism may yet
reassert itself, dispel the fog of delusion, cleanse the body politic of
the Jacobin spirit, and lead the world by good example. But this happy
outcome will require regime change in the U.S.