America’s Disastrous 60-Year War
Most Americans simply take it for granted that war, or threats of war, having defined our immediate past, will define our future as well.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.
William Astore: "In my lifetime of nearly 60 years, America has waged five major wars, winning one decisively, then throwing that victory away, while losing the other four disastrously. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as the Global War on Terror, were the losses, of course; the Cold War being the solitary win that must now be counted as a loss because its promise was so quickly discarded.
America’s war in Vietnam was waged during the Cold War in the context of what was then known as the domino theory and the idea of “containing” communism. Iraq and Afghanistan were part of the Global War on Terror, a post–Cold War event in which “radical Islamic terrorism” became the substitute for communism. Even so, those wars should be treated as a single strand of history, a 60-year war, if you will, for one reason alone: the explanatory power of such a concept.
For me, because of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation in January 1961, that year is the obvious starting point for what retired Army colonel and historian Andrew Bacevich recently termed America’s Very Long War (VLW).
[ More details from this link: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/america-endless-war/ ]
In that televised speech, Ike warned of the emergence of a military-industrial complex of immense strength that could someday threaten American democracy itself. I’ve chosen 2021 as the VLW’s terminus point because of the disastrous end of this country’s Afghan War, which even in its last years cost $45 billion annually to prosecute, and because of one curious reality that goes with it. In the wake of the crashing and burning of that 20-year war effort, the Pentagon budget leaped even higher with the support of almost every congressional representative of both parties as Washington’s armed attention turned to China and Russia.
At the end of two decades of globally disastrous war-making, that funding increase should tell us just how right Eisenhower was about the perils of the military-industrial complex. By failing to heed him all these years, democracy may indeed be in the process of meeting its demise. . ."
PLEASE NOTE: Several things define America’s disastrous 60-year war. These would include
> profligacy and ferocity in the use of weaponry against peoples who could not respond in kind;
> enormous profiteering by the military-industrial complex;
> incessant lying by the US government (the evidence in the Pentagon Papers for Vietnam, the missing WMD for the invasion of Iraq, and the recent Afghan War papers);
> accountability-free defeats, with prominent government or military officials essentially never held responsible; and
> the consistent practice of a militarized Keynesianism that provided jobs and wealth to a relative few at the expense of a great many.
In sum, America’s 60-year war has featured conspicuous destruction globally, even as wartime production in the United States failed to better the lives of the working and middle classes as a whole.
Let’s take a closer look. Militarily speaking, throwing almost everything the US military had (nuclear arms excepted) at opponents who had next to nothing should be considered the defining feature of the VLW. During those six decades of war-making, the US military raged with white hot anger against enemies who refused to submit to its ever more powerful, technologically advanced, and destructive toys.
...And again, despite all the death and destruction, the US military would lose both wars (one functionally in Iraq and the other all too publicly in Afghanistan), even as so many in and out of that military would profit and prosper from the effort.
...And here’s another reality: Very little of that wealth ever actually trickled down to workers unless they happened to be employed by those weapons makers, which—to steal the names of two of this country’s Hellfire missile-armed drones—have become this society’s predators and reapers. If a pithy slogan were needed here, you might call these the Build Back Better by Bombing years, which, of course, moves us squarely into Orwellian territory
What kind of prosperity are we talking about? ...Learning from Orwell and Ike
Speaking of George Orwell, America’s 60-Year War, a losing proposition for the many, proved a distinctly winning one for the few and that wasn’t an accident either. In his book within a book in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell wrote all-too-accurately of permanent war as a calculated way of consuming the products of modern capitalism without generating a higher standard of living for its workers. That, of course, is the definition of a win-win situation for the owners. In his words:
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labor power without producing anything that can be consumed [by the workers].
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