Endless War category archive

Dr. Strangelove revisited.

Via Job’s Anger.

Via Job’s Anger.

Andrew Bacevich thinks that more Mideast Whack-a-Mole is not the answer. A snippet.

The Islamic State emerged from a set of nontrivial conditions afflicting many nations across the greater Middle East. Figuring prominently among those conditions are political dysfunction, economic underdevelopment and social alienation, along with the pernicious residue of European colonialism still lingering everywhere from arbitrary borders to thieving local elites. Those so inclined can throw into the mix the ongoing plight of the Palestinian people.

The key point is this: Were the United States and its partners miraculously to succeed tomorrow in destroying the Islamic State and its leader, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, those conditions would still persist. As a consequence, another “Islamic State,” under another banner, inspired by a new leader, would almost certainly appear. And we’ll find ourselves right back where we are today. Indeed, Islamic State is itself a legacy organization, successor to the now defunct al-Qaida in Iraq.

He’s quite right, you know. Causes lead to effects. Fighting effects does not affect the causes.

Mark Fiore.

Tony Norman reminds us that war is not a video game. A nugget (emphasis added).

More than 70 percent of Americans are in favor of military action against the movement known as the Islamic State, but they’re not in favor of deploying ground troops. We don’t mind raining death from the skies, either by bombing the enemy the old-fashioned way or with drones dropping hell-fire missiles, but there’s no appetite for military occupation except in the craziest nether regions of the Republican Party.

We want the killing done as antiseptically as possible and with a minimum of American casualties. In other words, we want another of those “magic” wars we never seem to get. They elude us no matter how much our leaders assure us that we’re entitled to conflicts with a minimum of fuss when they’re laying out the rationale for open-ended bombing campaigns. We don’t even have to know how to find on a map the countries we plan to bomb. All we need to bring to the table is fear — and the more of it, the better.

There is no such thing in war as a “surgical strike.”

Also see George Smith on fear.

Stu Bykofsky note the U-turn in America’s war fever and wonders why. He considers both the beheadings in the Middle East and the Ray Rice case.

In each case, none of the facts had changed, just our perception and reaction to them.

(snip)

Founding military strategist Sun Tzu, the William Shakespeare of tactics, wrote that a crucial preliminary to battle is attacking the mind of the enemy. He proposed using spies to plant false information to create fear and confuse the enemy.

In today’s world, social media are those agents.

Do please read the rest. It’s worth thinking about.

Shaun Mullen shares 15 thoughts. Here are two of them:

(2.) The war will be unlike any other. Comparisons to World War II, let alone the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, do not begin to describe a conflict based on Whack-a-Mole air strikes backed by the marginally competent ground forces of Iraq, Kurdistan and Syria.
(3.) The air war in Libya didn’t work. Why should this one?

Read the rest.

Skillful PR does not a threat make.

This has been a complimentary edition of what Noz said.

I take anything associated with Glenn Greenwald with a grain of salt. Though I sympathize with many of his leanings, I find that his tendency to promote himself often renders his “reportage” less than objective.

Nevertheless, even though this came from his website (no link–it’s mentioned in the video and you can find it yourself), I thought it worth a look.

Zandar channels Bob Cesca on Rand Paul’s flippity-flops on ISIS. A nugget:

It’s also a deeply silly position to all of a sudden start pushing Iran as the solution to the Islamic State problem when Republicans screamed bloody murder at even using diplomacy with Iran in regards to enriching uranium. Now all of a sudden Republicans want to trust Iran’s military to bail us out so that we don’t have to send in ground troops? That’s the big plan?

Who does he think he’s fooling with this? Republican primary voters who will flay him leading up to 2016? General election voters who will laugh him out of the room? He knows he’s in trouble . . . .

Below the fold in case it autoplays.

Excerpt:

No strategy was our strategy the last time we started a war.

Also, there’s a short commercial, but it’s worth it.

Read more »

Pap discusses how the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq led to today in Iraq.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Dan Simpson advances a number of reasons why he considers military “intervention” against ISIS to be an extremely bad idea. The entire column is worth a look; here’s a snippet on the domestic pro-another-war bunch:

The Pentagon . . . needs another war to justify its budget. Taking on the Islamic State does check that box, ill-advised though it might be. It is better than fighting Russia in the Eastern Ukraine or heating up conflict with China in the South China Sea.

The U.S. companies that make money off wars, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon, would of course favor another war with more sales of aircraft, drones, rockets and fuel to wage such a war.

Other Capitol elements favoring war include the Israel lobby, which wants to see American public concern diverted from what Israel is doing in Gaza and from pressing it for renewed negotiations with the Palestinians over the future of the Israel-Palestine territory. American forces fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria would serve as useful distraction in that regard from the point of view of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and his American supporters.

Also favoring increased U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Syria would be the usual mindless warmongers such as Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina . . . .

Yastreblyanski thinks that President Obama isn’t digging the war drums. A nugget (emphasis in the original):

To judge whether it’s true or not, the best criterion is to look not at the relative seniority of those Senior Officials who are “unnamed because they were not authorized to speak” but at Obama’s own words, even if they’re as vague as Eisenhower. In the case of Syria, they’re not vague at all, falling under the rubric of the “Don’t do stupid shit” doctrine: Obama has always been against bombing Syria, no matter what the Anonymi say, not because he’s a hippie (alas!), or out of some grand global design we can’t see, but because to do so would be stupid.