Endless War category archive
The Insecurity State 0
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Tom Engelhart considers the costs of circling the wagons by the overreactionaries:
Given the enemy at hand – not a giant empire, but scattered jihadis and minority insurgencies in distant lands – all of these institutions, which make up the post-9/11 National Security Complex, expanded in ways that would have boggled the minds of previous generations (as would that most un-American of all words, “homeland”). All of this, in turn, happened in a poisonously paranoid atmosphere in Washington, and much of the rest of the country.
Read the whole thing.
Red Dawn, Through a Glass Darkly 0
PoliticalProf remarks on the irony:
No, I have no intention of seeing this potboiler. I didn’t watch the first one and want to keep my record unblemished.
Fighting the Last War 2
Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, writing as a private citizen, considers the current situation in Afghanistan and sees parallels between the legacy of General Patraeus and that of another legendary general from a war long gone.
It’s worth noting that when Gen. William Westmoreland told Congress how well the Vietnam War was going in April 1967, he was hailed as a hero and interrupted by applause 19 times. But years later, when an honest evaluation of his performance was made and the truth was laid bare, his name became a byword for military failure.
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