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“There Is No End In Sight” Army Major Warns Of “Perpetual War” On Terror

July 12, 2018

“There Is No End In Sight” Army Major Warns Of “Perpetual War” On Terror

Cutting through the haze of humanitarian bullshit and liberation,  West Point graduate and author Major Danny Sjursen told ‘Watching The Hawks’ that the War on Terror is a “battle for basic hegemony in the Middle East”, warning that it may go on indefinitely.

In the brief but eye-opening interview, Sjursen calls the US’ now 17-year War on Terror “unprecedented in American history,” noting that soon kids who were born after 9/11 will be joining the military.

Sjursen called the War on Terror a misnomer. “How do you fight a war against a tactic. Terrorism is a tactic,” he asked.

“What it really has been, in my opinion, is a war for basic hegemony in the Middle East,” Sjursen said.

He believes that even though some of it may be backed by humanitarian impulses, “I don’t suspect that the government necessarily fights just for oil or whatever the different conspiracies [are].”

“The War on Terror, as far as I see it, is potentially perpetual. There is no end in sight,” he added.

Calling for a teaching of the mistakes from the “messy history” of the US misadventure in Iraq and Afghanistan, Sjursen warned that the US is “apt to repeat” these mistakes “whether it’s in Iran, whether it’s in West Africa.”

“American soldiers are dying countries Americans can’t pronounce, they can’t find on the map, and part of the problem and part of the reason for that they aren’t really educated on this.”

Sjursen called for the War on Terror to be taught in schools and for honest and critical conversations to be had publicly in order to educate the average American on it.

Perpetual Business Of War

April 27, 2018

Perpetual Business Of War

Shortly before its attack on Syria, the US declassified its “Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States’ Use of Military Force and Related National Security Operations.” As its name implies, this paper concerns itself with US military operations abroad. The word “war” is never officially used, as you may notice, because the procedure for declaring war is a rather complicated process.

According to the report, “US. forces remain in Afghanistan for the purposes of stopping the reemergence of safe havens that enable terrorists to threaten the United States or its interests.” In regard to Iraq and Syria, the picture is much the same. US armed forces are deployed “to conduct operations against ISIS with indigenous ground forces.” Such evasive wording in regard to the second group suggests that this is a reference not only to terrorists, but also to Syrian government troops. This is confirmed a bit further into the document, where it states that “US Armed Forces participating in the Defeat-ISIS campaign in Syria have taken a limited number of strikes against Syrian government and pro-Syrian government forces.” As for the Kurdish divisions, only the Iraqi Peshmerga are mentioned, although in Syria the US has also provided military assistance to the Kurdish units of the SDF.

Only a relatively small contingent of American troops have been posted to Yemen, where they are conducting operations against the local branches of al-Qaeda. In addition to taking part in combat operations, the US provides logistical assistance from Saudi Arabia against Houthi rebels.

In Somalia, the US carries out both air strikes as well as ground operations, which includes cooperation with the African Union mission in Somalia. The US has designated al-Qaeda, ISIS, and al-Shabaab as its military targets.

Libya has mostly been on the receiving end of air strikes that are supposedly coordinated with the Libyan Government of National Accord.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Recipe Concocted for Perpetual War Is a Bitter One

February 5, 2018

Recipe Concocted for Perpetual War Is a Bitter One

Perpetual war is leading to a host of societal ills, yet debates on war and peace are almost entirely absent from public discourse, Robert Wing and Coleen Rowley observe.

U.S. Marines patrol street in Shah Karez in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Robert Storm)

Last October marked the 16th anniversary of our unending war – or military occupation – in Afghanistan, the longest conflict on foreign soil in U.S. history. The cost to human lives in our current cycle of U.S.-initiated “perpetual wars” throughout the Middle East and Africa is unthinkably high. It runs well into millions of deaths if one counts – as do the Nuremberg principles of international law – victims of spinoff fighting and sectarian violence that erupt after we destroy governance structures.

Also to be counted are other forms of human loss, suffering, illness and early mortality that result from national sanctions, destruction of physical, social and medical infrastructure, loss of homeland, refugee flight, ethnic cleansing, and their psychological after-effects. One has to witness these to grasp their extent in trauma, and they all arise from the Nuremberg-defined “supreme crime” of initiating war. Waging aggressive war is something America is practiced in and does well, with justifications like “fighting terrorism,” “securing our interests,” “protecting innocents,” “spreading democracy,” etc. – as has every aggressor in history that felt the need to explain its aggressions.

Yet few gathered across the country in October, much less gave a thought of lament to the harm we are doing. It’s a topic we’d like to forget. Recalling that domestic opposition to the Vietnam War grew exponentially over the similar (but far shorter) timespan of that aggression, one might wonder what has changed.  A numbed, distracted America has reached the point where bellicose presidential threats to destroy North Korea with its puny nuclear arsenal, and cancel the agreement keeping Iran from developing one, barely elicit shrugs among us.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Perpetual War: Treadmill of America’s Mind

October 25, 2017

Perpetual War: Treadmill of America’s Mind

Like a caged hamster on a running wheel, the American people are trapped in perpetual wars that the foreign policy elites offer no way to end, only excuses to continue, observes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

The newest issue of Foreign Affairs features the theme of “America’s Forgotten Wars,” with a cover illustration that juxtaposes a carefree scene of Americans enjoying a picnic with a scene of American soldiers fighting and incurring casualties in some sandy and desolate battle space.

Hamster on a running wheel. (Photo from Wikipedia)

The picture depicts truthfully the detachment between, on one hand, the daily interests and attitudes of most Americans and, on the other hand, the disturbing reality of the United States being engaged continuously in a variety of lethal military operations in multiple lands overseas.

Andrew Bacevich has elsewhere provided several reasons why, as he puts it, “the vast majority of the American people could not care less” that their country has become mired in what amounts to permanent warfare abroad. These reasons include, for example, that the true costs of these military expeditions have not been completely tabulated and that “blather crowds out substance” in American public discourse about foreign policy.

The pattern of permanent U.S. involvement in warfare, which has prevailed for the past 16 years, departs markedly from what had been the traditional American approach toward war and peace, and therein lies an additional set of reasons why Americans at home are not now up in arms over how fellow citizens have had to take up arms and fight endlessly overseas. That tradition grew up throughout the Nineteenth Century and was cemented by America’s greatest overseas military effort ever: World War II.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

George Orwell, Edward Bernays & Perpetual War

December 8, 2015

George Orwell, Edward Bernays & Perpetual War

Another horrific act of terror, another shrill chorus calls the faithful to war. It’s a recurring phenomenon in this early Twenty-first Century. The horrible news crashes from the heavens like a meteor, violently jolting us from the Saint Vitus Dance of our produce-consume existence. Our screens with all the answers flash between splattered blood on the pavement and the victims’ smiling faces as they were in life. From the Middle East we hear little and see less of the shattered lives on the receiving end of our vengeance. Like giving a fifth of bourbon to a drunk prostrate on the pavement, our leaders advocate more slaughter as the solution to the world’s problems. Mass civilian casualties is the global order of the day, the constant in our lives.

Orwell’s essay on Perpetual War in “1984” is currently enjoying a revival in certain circles. Through the novel’s mysterious bogey man, Emmanuel Goldstein, Orwell avers that technological innovations have brought industry to such a level of efficiency that material abundance and leisure should be attainable to all. Widespread material comfort and spare time would allow the populace to develop intellectually and spiritually, and thus to achieve a kind of universal enlightenment. Orwell argues that with such leisure-based understanding, humanity would question the necessity for hierarchy and begin to threaten the arrangement that so benefits those at society’s pinnacle.

During the first half of the Twentieth Century those atop “1984”’s pyramid perceived this eventuality and identified a leisured, enlightened public as a threat to social stability and their dominant position. The ruling caste devised Perpetual War as a way of keeping industrial production humming. Orwell plainly states, “The primary aim of modern warfare… is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Left and Right Must Stop the Establishment’s Perpetual War Machine

November 21, 2015

The Left and Right Must Stop the Establishment’s Perpetual War Machine

antiwar

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, some of us tried to raise questions of U.S. foreign policy. I got my mic cut on O’Reilly’s show. Others got far worse — a friend basically felt he had to move out of his neighborhood he was so reviled for criticizing the U.S.’s militarism. Oh, yeah, and hundreds of thousands of people got killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

The root causes of the 9/11 attacks were hardly discussed — unless it was people deriding Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell for blaming gay folks.

Now, there’s no meaningful peace movement. Partly as a result of that, we’re not having a serious discussion we should be about foreign policy after the Paris attacks: How U.S. — and Western — foreign policy manifests hatred and all that brings.

One might have thought that would be possible — the target of this attack was not the U.S., though it could be the next target. But that should give us some breathing room as well as a measure of urgency to think things through.

The major policy debate now is about Syrian refugees.

This is part of a political pattern: The two party establishment agrees on a series of issues and those issues are largely ignored. (Perpetual war.)

Then, there’s something they disagree on and that’s vociferously debated. (Refugees.)

Problem is, sometimes what they agree on (perpetual war) is what causes the other issue (refugees).

Right now, both the Democratic and Republican establishments both agree on a course of perpetual war. There’s virtually no remorse about having pushed for regime change in Syria and Libya and that leading to enormous human suffering that we’re mostly blind to.

When the Obama administration made an overt push for war in Syria in 2013, the left and right united and stopped it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: What Have We Learned From 24 Years of War?

November 11, 2014

oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: What Have We Learned From 24 Years of War?.

The responsibility for starting and ending wars, the way wars are fought and the losses we suffer all rest with our elected civilian leadership.


What have we learned from 24 years of war? Since the First Gulf War in early 1991, the U.S. has had continuous combat operations in one theater or another. After the first war, combat air patrols enforced the No-Fly Zones over Iraq for years, until 9/11 triggered the first phase of the Afghanistan War and President Bush led the nation into the Second Iraqi War in March 2003.

Though this war officially ended with U.S. troop withdrawals in December 2011, the war continues to burn through lives and treasure in Iraq and it continues on in the memories, wounds and lives of veterans and their families.

What have we learned from 24 years of continual warfare? There may be two sets of answers: one set for policy-makers, those we have elected to make the consequential decisions of war and withdrawal, and another set for the citizenry who provide the volunteers who actually fight the wars and the treasure to pay for the wars and their long aftermath.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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