Shrub is about to announce his new Iraq stratedgy. Lets see if I got this right. During the initial invasion of Iraq, Shrub disregarded the advice of numerous generals (whom he subsequently fired) who told him the military force was too small to keep the peace in Iraq.
Now - four years later - the new stratedgy pivots on precisely what these generals told him to begin with by increasing the number of troops on the ground. Turns out all those generals were correct. We all know Shrub has a developmental disability. The 'boy' is a tad slow to grasp complex issues, but this takes the cake.
Posts: 1162 | Location: Boulder Creek Watershed | Registered: 14 February 2004
Even the neocon architects of the Imperialist invasion of Iraq are abandoning Bush.
Congress holds the purse strings, that's the people's key to dealing with it.
Right! The "architects" like Pearl and Bill Christol are jumping ship with lots of disclaimers. They argue the plan was not flawed only its management. When things go wrong, the rats jump ship.
I heard Senator Reid on NPR this morning acknowledge that Congress would continue funding the war to provide resources to protect the troops. I translate that to mean that current levels of funding in Iraq will continue into the future.
Our new plan is actually the old plan that Bush and company ignored; and the people engaged in its implementation now, are those who argued against it in the first place. Recycled neocons are now embracing the old plan as a new plan they concocted as if it were their own. The wonder of politics in America... nothing ever changes...
Funny how striking is the policies between Iraq and Vietnam. Years after the intitial troop deployment in Nam when things were falling apart, Johnson and later Nixon increased the troop levels. They never learn their lesson from history: a modern military force cannot win a fight against insurgents the new term for what used to be called a guerrilla war.
Posts: 1162 | Location: Boulder Creek Watershed | Registered: 14 February 2004
Funny how striking is the policies between Iraq and Vietnam.
I think that indicates an underlying ontology of some sort is driving all this. It transcends the partisanship of politics. Understand that and perhaps it makes sense of why "... nothing ever changes..." The "ever" being temporally related to what we laughingly call "civilization."
Chalmers Johnson, who characterizes himself as "once a spear carrier for empire" (and once a conservative), and Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army officer who returned to his studies he'd begun before Vietnam and earned a PhD, still conservative in his values he says, and who has written one of the best analysis of the correlations between the military industrial complex and the mess we are in now in the Middle East that I've come across, The New American Militarism., both of these experienced and scholarly minds have transcended what they once took for granted as a necessary "what is" of the world and now see the problem as an unrelenting drive towards imperialism by forces gone far awry from the democratic principles that began this antique form of democracy in the U.S. This drive is endemic and implicit in the very institutions themselves, which have a logic based on the nature of their organizations, and with that logic a "mind" of their own.
The neocons are merely arguing from the internal logic of the institutions themselves. None of them bring up the question of the 700 and some odd bases around the planet we support or any of that. That's implicitly understood as necessary.
Ren, I would have to question what is "new" about American militarism. The concept is actually very old.
Imperialism which is the daughter of Empire has been with us since men awoke to the urge to dominate and take what does not belong to them.
The Roman Empire developed the concept to an Art form. The US and other military powers today, have used the Roman system as a model - at least in its organizational structure. But the results are the same: poverty and resource exploitation follow. That may be why things do not change much. And at the risk of sounding provincial, it is all about money and power.
Posts: 1162 | Location: Boulder Creek Watershed | Registered: 14 February 2004
In the big framework you are referring to, I can only say, but of course, nothing's really new. That was my intended implication above. For folks like Andrew Bacevich, whose life was the military, who's background was heavily influenced by conservative Catholicism and all that's deeply implicit in Catholicism's role in just about every Euro/American based imperialistic effort throughout the world, it's a matter of semantics, kind of like the "new" model of a car, which is made up of many levels of redundancies that have changed little or if at all in character over many years.
One of the effects of the "new" militarism was this revamped small, elite force that Rumfeld pioneered, and which was so well described in the Neocon document put out in the summer of 2000, just in time for the Bush takeover (thanks to the courts), and the philosophy of going in quick and getting out. This was a "new" idea formulated as an alternative in response to the catastophic affect on the military that Vietnam had. It was from that the sense of it that "new" comes into his title. The "new" military was designed to "save the country" from the shame of defeat in a world that was becoming a place of small military skirmishes. Of course, we see now that it utterly failed.
You may be missing the point by focusing on the words of the title. He talks of Bush's born again Wilsonianism, so he's not really seeing imperialism for the first time at all, just looking at it in a different way, maybe, for himself.
What I was trying to point out was that some of the folks from the "establishment," folks who would never have even considered the open acknowledgement that this country was long since steered in the direction of imperialism, finally have not only acknowledged the deep structures in place taking it in that direction, but recognize that it's a self destructive course. Probably some glimmering implication of the implied destructiveness of that latter realization lead them to acknowledging the former, but I don't pretend to know how they come to their ideas.
For some, it's been like a kind of born again experience. That's a major transformative event for an elderly intellectual, if you consider the complexity of what makes up an intellectual's mind, how much they might have established as the truth behind their ideas. It's something like the effect a Zen master has on a student by using a koan. Transending the double bind of the koan can lead to a reording of the mind, even though it still consists of all its stories. I know Chalmers Johnson talks about being at Berkeley in the sixties and how he looked at the kids protesting from the establishment perspective then, and now he recognizes that they were way ahead of him in their understanding about the issues of imperialism and militarism, and if he were then the person he is now, he'd have been outside in the streets with them.
This was a "new" idea formulated as an alternative in response to the catastophic affect on the military that Vietnam had. It was from that the sense of it that "new" comes into his title. The "new" military was designed to "save the country" from the shame of defeat in a world that was becoming a place of small military skirmishes. Of course, we see now that it utterly failed.
Right, I see the context. The book you refer is offering an 'ideal' scenario, same with Rumsfields rapid deployment theory. If the past four years has shown us anything, it might suggest that when politicians start using soverign nations as a personal petri dish to test their grand social experiments wrapped in various ideologies, what they create is the opposite of what they intended. (As you note.) Iraq is a catastrophic event (both in the world at large, and the soldiers being killed or maimed there) and stands as a contradiction to the theory.
No argument with the rest of your point though.
Posts: 1162 | Location: Boulder Creek Watershed | Registered: 14 February 2004
The "new" military was designed to "save the country" from the shame of defeat in a world that was becoming a place of small military skirmishes. Of course, we see now that it utterly failed.
I see the new military as one that is designed to reduce American casualties in an effort to not generate the kind of public opinion against the use of military power we saw during Vietnam. I think that's why we saw Swartzkoff showing off his smart bombs and claiming they can not only hit a specific building, they can target a specific window during Gulf 1. It's also why while we lost tens of thousands during Vietnam, we've only lost north of 3 thousand to date in Iraq.
I also don't think we have just seen small skirmishes. Genocide in Darfur and the Sudan have killed hundreds of thousands. The reason this has been allowed to happen is that every nation deflects it's responsibility to protect nations which are concidered third world and unimportant, to the UN and the UN is a piece of shit.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
I see the new military as one that is designed to reduce American casualties in an effort to not generate the kind of public opinion against the use of military power we saw during Vietnam.
I found elements of that in Bacevich's book.
quote:
I think that's why we saw Swartzkoff showing off his smart bombs and claiming they can not only hit a specific building, they can target a specific window during Gulf 1. It's also why while we lost tens of thousands during Vietnam, we've only lost north of 3 thousand to date in Iraq.
According to the philosphy of the so called "New Military," as Bacevich reveals it, we weren't supposed to lose 3000 soldiers, have 10,000 plus permanently physically damaged, thousands more suffering psychological damages, and so on and so forth, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's killed, and now a civil war. It was supposed to be over at Mission Accomplished in 2003 -- that is, according to this "New Military" paradigm, and its basically chicken hawk neocon bunch of fabricators, who of course worked it out with selected military thinkers. Having been in that culture himself, Bacevich has some fairly interesting first hand derived insights to share about it.
quote:
I also don't think we have just seen small skirmishes. Genocide in Darfur and the Sudan have killed hundreds of thousands. The reason this has been allowed to happen is that every nation deflects it's responsibility to protect nations which are concidered third world and unimportant, to the UN and the UN is a piece of shit.
Generally speaking, the "New Military" was not designed with the idea in mind that it would be dealing with genocide of that nature, or any nature. It's designed to do something more to advance U.S. Empire, as it's finally coming to be recognized. "Small skirmishes" is relative, and means something smaller than the European style wars, like WWII, or what was imagined might erupt between the U.S. and the USSR. Iraq was supposed to be a small skirmish.
I'm not sure why you brought this genocide issue into this discussion, but I'm wondering, how do you describe what you mean by this?:
quote:
The reason this has been allowed to happen is that every nation deflects it's responsibility to protect nations which are concidered third world and unimportant
The notion "been allowed to happen" is very curious. Been allowed by who or what? A related and even more curious notion I'm wondering about: What is the nature of a nation's "responsibility" that every so called nation is supposed to know, act upon, in some generally accepted sense (by whom I don't know how to imagine) and who or what is supposed to hold these nations to what ever that might be? How do you imagine such responsibility being even measured? I mean, if it's not some International organization that comes together and agrees upon standards, how can you say a country is not taking care of its responsibility as it sees it if you don't have some transcendent standards in mind?
No, the Neocons are not abandoning Bush. They have been buying time to put their long-term plans into effect. And now their long-awaited plans are now coming to fruition. Read: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132569.ece We were right all along - it was/is about the oil. No wonder Bush wants more troops in Iraq - the Iraqis are going to go ballistic when they realize their country is not only being occupied, but ransacked of its most precious commodity, by the country that was supposed to set them free. It appears the job of the additional troops will be to provide security - security for the oil wells. Will the Dems take this on? I don't see how this can be ignored or talked around.
Posts: 10 | Location: st. louis, missouri | Registered: 17 October 2006
I'm not sure why you brought this genocide issue into this discussion, but I'm wondering, how do you describe what you mean by this?:
Ren, I just found the description of recent small skirmishes to be odd when, in Africa, militaries had been used against civilian populations to kill so many. By avoiding conflict to stop the killing of civilians, does than mean military versus military skirmishes had been small? I think the notion that we've recently seen small skirmishes is that the UN avoided the big ones.
quote:
How do you imagine such responsibility being even measured? I mean, if it's not some International organization that comes together and agrees upon standards, how can you say a country is not taking care of its responsibility as it sees it if you don't have some transcendent standards in mind?
We are drifting a little here but I think the concept of the UN is good. What the UN has become is bad. The UN is incapable of dealing with anything which requires a military action. I don't want the United States to be the worlds police force. The UN could be a perfect vehicle for that but it is run by despots and tyrants. It is a political morass that shows bureaucracy at it's worst. The genocide in Darfur, the Sudan and Angola could have easily been avoided by an international organization like the UN which actually lived by the standards set down in their charter. Instead, the UN is a corrupt worthless organization that does little other than give away wheat. They are incapable of mustering military might when that force is necessary on an international basis.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
Maford, I see this is your second post so let me welcome you to the Board.
First, I would like to point out that "we," or at least I, may be using a narrower definition of neocon than you. "Neocon" has gotten to be a sloppily used term of late, so it's not easy to tell what someone means by it. I see nothing in your referenced article that even mentions the neocons, let alone contradicts the many examples I have found of neocons blaming Bush for the mistakes in managing the debacle in Iraq, not themselves. This process has been visible now for over a year. Cheney and Rumsfeld are not, for example, neocons, though they have worked closely with them. Cheney and Rumsfeld, along with Rice and of course the President, are considered by some of the neocons at least to be part of the team that has mismanaged their idealistic geopolitical strategies.
Secondly, I'd argue that the neocons as a whole are not primarily interested in Iraq's oil as their reason for wanting to get a political foothold in Iraq (though certainly it would be important to them strategically), so much as seeing Iraq as a strategic placed foothold in what is commonly known as the "Strategic Elipse."
In particular, I would call attention to the general understanding I've developed, after paying fairly close attention to them for some time now, and that's their specialty focus in geostrategic politics. They are the "big thinkers," so to speak. That's really what I see the neocons bringing to the table for this administration. It's their Machiavellian-based unilateralistic foreign policy thinking that got the sway in designing this war, sending the "realist" camp to the back rooms (notice they've returned) and in the misuse of the military in the way it was used to deal with what happened after the Iraq government was taken down, particularly through Rumsfeld, who is not a neocon in my book either, but again, like Cheney, allied with the. Along with that is their influence in designing the "New Militarism," the evidence for which can be found well laid out in their documents at their Project for a New American Century site, American Enterprise Institute, among other sources I've tracked.
As a, shall we say, "student" of geopolitical strategizing, and the forces involved in globalization, I've always assumed that oil was one of the primary issues in the U.S. involvement in the Middle East. But there are other factors as well, and they have to do with economic forces at play between Europe, China and the U.S. But Iraq's oil was not what I consider to be the primary motivation. I would put out there for consideration the notion of establishing permanent bases Iraq, the ongoing construction of the massive building in the Green Zone that's to become the largest U.S. Embassy in the world. And a number of similar factors like that.
We, Chris and I, were talking about a new strategy in Iraq, and the redesigned U.S. militarism that went with the current strategy, you bring in the U.N. and genocides in third world countries that have little or nothing to do with the discussion, and then you suggest "we" are drifting. I won't irritate you by putting a smiling smiley here.
I am not asking for an argument for or against the U.N., I just want to know how, if you say countries are supposed to be responsible, you could account for that. What would it be, this "responsibility" concept you refer to? Since you suggested it, I thought you might have something worked out about it.
The "New Militarism" I'm referring to has nothing to do with the U.N. and what you've been saying, as far as I understand it. I really can't help seeing those as seperate issues, but if you can pull them together, I'd be interested in looking at what you have to say.
I did my best to explain to you what I thought Andrew Bacevich meant by "small skirmishes." If you want to disagree with him about his particular analysis of the the reorganization of the military since Vietnam, especially as it has evolved since the Cold War ended, a military that he was once a part of as one of its officers, and with what he identified that it considered "small skirmishes" in its reorganization goals, you can get in touch with him, he teaches at Boston College. Also his book isn't a bad read.
Ren, I was acknowledging my part in the drift. I only mentioned the UN and genocide to illustrate that while, other than Iraq, we have had small skirmishes. My contention is that we, the international community, has avoided big skirmishes by not taking responsibility to stop some of the atrocities that I mentioned before. There wasn't a large war in Africa because the international community looked the other way as people were slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands.
My views on the ineffectiveness of the UN have everything to do with the abdication of the responsibility of individual nations to the collective power of the UN which it will not use.
The reformulation of the military didn't start with Rumsfeld. Al Gore was charged with "reinventing government" and he was able to cut the number of government employees significantly. Many of his cuts were active military personnel and he was able to decrease the size of the military by privatizing clerical, food service and laundry and other functions. That's why the military no longer transports fuel to staging areas, Halliburton does.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
What I wanted to understand was what "responsibility" itself is to every nation, individually, as you have implied. The implication of the non U.N. environment I see you driving at is something along the lines of the "we" you cited as an international community that is not institutionalized in the U.N. Exactly what individual nation "responsibility" in that environment amounts to, I don't understand. For instance, regarding this line in particular:
quote:
the international community, has avoided big skirmishes by not taking responsibility to stop some of the atrocities that I mentioned before.
If individual nations have abdicated their "responsibility," what specifically is it that they have abdicated that they would otherwise excercise if there were no U.N.? And then, now with this new wrinkle you've added above, about avoiding "big skirmishes" by abdicating responsibility, I'm curious about how excercising that "responsibility" you've inferred, a concept which I don't understand, would lead to something on the order of WWII, in Africa or anywhere, which is the size conflict I'd said the military more or less used as their notion of something other than small skirmishes. How would countries create a conflict on the order of a World War by taking responsibility? is I guess the new twist to the question that puzzles me. I'm trying to reconcile the above with this, which implies that if individual nations didn't abdicate their responsibilities, there would be bigger conflicts. Maybe that's not what you mean?:
quote:
My views on the ineffectiveness of the UN have everything to do with the abdication of the responsibility of individual nations to the collective power of the UN which it will not use.
I'm a little confused about how Al Gore got into this all of a sudden. Neither Rumsfeld nor Al Gore are solely responsible for anything to do with the "New Militarization." It was a group effort that involved a lot of minds, negotiations, and proposals, and the process began to evolve after Vietnam. Perhaps you remember some of the early stages with the idea of an all voluntary army? If you want to get a fairly good overview of the current model of the military rebuilding process that Congress began voting in after 2000, I recommend this document from the PNAC published in September of 2000:
What I wanted to understand was what "responsibility" itself is to every nation, individually, as you have implied.
Just speaking for myself, I believe that every nation has a responsibility to support basic human rights and end those violations with force which comes from the international community, not unilaterally from the US. This is why I mentioned genocide and my displeasure with the UN. If the UN was an effective body, parameters for the redesign of our military would be drastically different.
The document from the New American Century, authored by Bill Krystol, was written pre 9/ll as you noted. I'm sure the recommended expenditures are drastically different in a post 9/11 world.
Also noted in the document was the changing state of technology, certainly changed from Vietnam era technology. The report addresses attacks on the internet as part of modern warfare. I think it's appropriate to periodically assess the state of our defense capabilities.
Gore and Rummy are not solely responsible for new militarization but since the supposed end of the cold war, the two of them were primarily responsible for military redesign. Dick Cheney was GW Bush's Secretary of Defense but he served four years out of the past eighteen. Gore instituted privatization of military support and Rumsfeld was given orders to rethink all military structure before 9/11 because the Bush administration didn't think that Clinton military structures were mobile and capable enough to fight the small skirmishes you mentioned earlier.
September eleven changed all of that including the report from Krystol.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
Don, I'm sorry but I'm just not seeing this discussion going anywhere and I'm not really that interested in trying to understand what you are talking about, or what you really know about this. The more I ask the worse it seems to get.
I'm just going to give you a couple of things so you know why I'm essentially done:
quote:
September eleven changed all of that including the report from Krystol.
That report was not authored by Kristol. Didn't you even bother to look? If you want to discuss something seriously it would be reasonable to get some easy facts straight. Otherwise I don't see much in it for me. I honestly don't trust what you are saying now. Why you imagined it was authored by Kristol leads me to wonder what other wild assumptions you are randomly throwing out here.
Here are the principle authors listed on the title page:
Thomas Donnelly, Principal Author,
Donald Kagan, Gary Schmitt, Project Co-Charmen.
And here are the co-participants:
Roger Barnett, U.S. Naval War College Alvin Bernstein, National Defense University Stephen Cambone National Defense University Eliot Cohen Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University Devon Gaffney Cross Donors' Forum for International Affairs Thomas Donnelly Project for the New American Century David Epstein Office of Secretary of Defense, Net Assessment David Fautua, Lt. Col., U.S. Army Dan Goure, Center for Strategic and International Studies Donald Kagan, Yale University Fred Kagan, U. S. Military Academy at West Point Robert Kagan, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Robert Killebrew, Col., USA (Ret.) William Kristol, The Weekly Standard Mark Lagon, Senate Foreign Relations Committee James Lasswell, GAMA Corporation I. Lewis Libby, Dechert Price & Rhoads Robert Martinage, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment Phil Meilinger, U.S. Naval War College Mackubin Owens, U.S. Naval War College Steve Rosen, Harvard University Gary Schmitt, Project for the New American Century Abram Shulsky, The RAND Corporation Michael Vickers, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment Barry Watts, Northrop Grumman Corporation Paul Wolfowitz, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University Dov Zakheim, System Planning Corporation
So as you can see, the work is a compilation of many different contributors. That was very easy for you to have found out. I gave you a link to the document.
quote:
The document from the New American Century, authored by Bill Krystol, was written pre 9/ll as you noted. I'm sure the recommended expenditures are drastically different in a post 9/11 world.
I've taken the trouble to read the report, do research on what's being done to transform the military, and from you I get an "I'm sure" because in your opinion "911 changed everything." That means to me, whatever I say, what ever effort I go to, whatever I reference, you already have the answer. If you took the trouble you might have discovered 911 actually helped kick this plan off, and it was predicted that such an event could on page 51 of the report where we find this statement:
quote:
(p. 51 Rebuilding Americas Defenses)
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions.
911 equals Pearl Harbor, Don. 911 helped put this model into play.
If you were paying attention you might have noticed that on the day of 911, Condi Rice was to go before Congress to present the ideas about missile defense you'll find in this document. That presentation was of course cancelled. After 911 there was no need to cajole and twist arms in Congress anymore. Yes, 911 changed things. The New Militarization is all being implemented pretty much according to this basic, long term model, with updates and modifications of course, but pretty much in line with the big picture, because it's not something you change overnight. If anything changes the model, it will be this debacle in Iraq.
So I don't see any point in going any further. This seems like just another opinion chaser to me.
I agree that it's an opinion chaser and I did read some of the report. I used the name Krystol because that's one I'm familiar with. He was the chairman of the project. The first thing I do when reading anything is to see if there is an agenda connected to the writing. Being familiar with Krystol, I knew what the agenda was.
I'm not sure if you believe that the report gives credence to the theory that the government was complicit in 9/11. All reports about military possibilities are loaded with contingencies. The writers try to be Nostradamas and if they predict enough, they'll eventually predict something right.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
Don, Kristol wasn't even one of the co-chairmen. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume you must have read Kagan as Kristol.
I don't give any serious thought to the conspiracy theories. Most of those I've even looked at are couched in a language that comes across as an amateurish joke to me. I don't even see the point of the conspiracy theorizing, this nation already has a pretty good case for fraud if anyone wants to prosecute it.
That PNAC report is what I can see as the philosophical overview for the makeover of the military and the current Administration's foreign policy. It's not the only document I consider, just one that does a fair job of summarizing a decade's worth of efforts on the part of a very pro military, pro Pax Americana group, and puts the neocon cast on it, which is the philosophical element that got its day in the White House after 911. The so called "realist" bunch (in which I'd include Colin Powell) was pushed aside. We see now they are back, with Gates and Baker, and others. Powell unfortunately didn't get out of the way quick enough and now he's been badly tarnished.
What I've done is, over the past twenty five or so years, I've kept an eye on the neocons, once I knew about them. During the nineties I kept track of the tension between the neocons, along with their Cold War militarist oriented buddies, like Rumsfeld and Cheney, and the downsizing efforts by the more "realist" oriented factions in government to reformulate the military that found itself in a single super power world. I believe you stuck a name on a Democrat of that faction, Al Gore. The PNAC document represents a compilation of that decade's thinking by the one group that couldn't imagine letting this "opportunity" fall by the wayside. In conjunction with that, I note that Bacevich's book documents and puts a scholarly slant on the military thinking that coincided with the militarists during the process. There are many factions of thought in the military, it just happens that the confuence of the neocons gaining the upper hand in this administration after 911 and those that wanted to perpetuate a particular military vision overlapped after 911. Any thoughts that put that in the realm of "conspiracy" are cartoonish to me and frightening in their inability to understand the complexity of how ideas interact in this world. More specifically, regarding this issue on this thread considering the failure of that ideology and what comes next, for the past five years or so I followed:
The PNAC ideas in this Administration; The Military Transformation Act; Military theory and the overlap in that and the PNAC document, Rebuilding America's Defenses;
The core mission from that document:
Defend the American homeland;
Fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
Perform the "constabulary" duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
Transform U.S. forces to exploit the "revolution in military affairs"
Two other significant features that cross reference across the Department of Defenses "New Militarism" and the PNAC document are:
"Full spectrum dominance" and "Network Centric Warfare"
Those are key concepts underlying the Military Transformation Act and the document Rebuilding America's Defenses.
If you are interested in searching the government documents and doing enough reading, you can find the threads that make up the philosophy that makes for the central theme of failure we are discussing. A thread of philosophy can be uncovered if one is persistent enough. If one looks carefully and intelligently in the key places. If you want to dismiss it, I couldn't blame you for that, but your formulaic presentation that:
quote:
All reports about military possibilities are loaded with contingencies. The writers try to be Nostradamas and if they predict enough, they'll eventually predict something right.
merely announces your disinterest, not mine. This is a very interesting strategic problem to me, because it takes about twenty years to put these projected changes in place, no one can say with even a glimmering of certainty what the defense needs of the U.S. will be by then. That long term strategic planning problem that in a sense defines the "military industrial complex" and it's role in a nation the size and complexity of the U.S., has a huge impact on foreign policy flexibility, funding issues, and in a sense, the whole nature of a functional democracy on that scale. When I use a term like "antique democracy" it's that sort of scale of problem I'm thinking of. When I discuss the issue of "Collapse of Complex Societies" it's the ponderousness of those sorts of strategic challenges that come into play.
Here are a few DoD articles from 2003 when the Military Transformation Act was first being pumped up for Congress. These are not opinion pieces from a newspaper, these are what was being said at the time to Congress to sell this transformation idea. Look closely enough and you will find the philosophy of the PNAC document interlaced in the arguments:
Or do the Nuclear Strikes on Iran planned by Israel have anything to do with the continuance of a clearly failed policy by the Bush Administration? A policy which they continue to rhetorically relate with "winning a war" in Iraq, something that was never a war, but an attack on a sovereign nation that did not threaten the U.S., a regime change, all of which took about two months, and a subsequent near four year occupation for the purpose of the advancing a larger program -- that includes the installing a faux democracy they now parade as another of the distractions from the deeper motivations -- that could be called "Pax Americana" by virtu
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