{"id":13727,"date":"2015-10-23T05:34:43","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T10:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13727"},"modified":"2015-10-23T05:34:43","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T10:34:43","slug":"tomgram-peter-van-buren-the-great-war-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13727","title":{"rendered":"Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, The Great War in the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/blog\/176059\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, The Great War in the Middle East<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Sometimes I imagine the last 14 years of American war policy in the Greater Middle East as a set of dismal Mad Libs.\u00a0 An example might be: The United States has spent [your choice of multiple billions of dollars] building up [fill in name of Greater Middle Eastern country]\u2019s army and equipping it with [range of weaponry of your choosing].\u00a0 That army was recently routed by the [rebel or terrorist group of your choice] and fled, abandoning [list U.S. weaponry and equipment].\u00a0 Washington has just sent in more [choose from: trainers\/weaponry\/equipment\/all of the above] and [continue the sentence ad infinitum].\u00a0 Or here\u2019s another: After [number, and make it large] years and a [choose one or more: war, air war, drone assassination campaign, intervention, counterinsurgency program, counterterror effort, occupation] in [Greater Middle Eastern country of your choice] that seems to be [choose from: failing, unraveling, going nowhere, achieving nothing], the [fill in office of top U.S. official of your choice] has just stated that a U.S. withdrawal would be [choose from: counterproductive, self-defeating, inconceivable, politically unpalatable, dangerous to the homeland, mad] because [leave this blank, since no one knows].<\/p>\n<p>The president recently\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/obama-expected-to-announce-new-plan-to-keep-5500-troops-in-afghanistan\/2015\/10\/14\/d98f06fa-71d3-11e5-8d93-0af317ed58c9_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">made<\/a>\u00a0just such an\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/la-oe-1020-bacevich-war-no-choice-20151018-story.html\" target=\"_blank\">announcement<\/a>\u00a0about Afghanistan 14 years after the U.S. first invaded.\u00a0 Undoubtedly, his \u201clegacy\u201d would have been at stake if he had withdrawn U.S. forces from that country (as he\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/observer.com\/2013\/02\/president-obama-promises-an-end-to-the-war-in-afghanistan-and-firm-action-on-north-korea-and-iran\/\" target=\"_blank\">promised<\/a>\u00a0to do in 2013) and the Afghan army and police into which the U.S. has sunk an estimated\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/pages\/frontline\/afghanistan-pakistan\/how-is-american-money-being-spent-on-afghan-security-forces-its-classified\/\" target=\"_blank\">$65 billion<\/a>\u00a0had unraveled, as American officials clearly\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stripes.com\/news\/kunduz-collapse-biggest-test-yet-for-afghan-forces-1.370920\" target=\"_blank\">now fear<\/a>\u00a0might happen.\u00a0This means that a baby born somewhere in the United States on September 12, 2001, who is already 14 years old, will turn 16 with America\u2019s second Afghan War still ongoing and, given the trend in American wars in the Greater Middle East (always in, never out), might at 18 be able to join the U.S. military and continue the fight either there, in Iraq, or perhaps in Syria or elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, The Great War in the Middle East Sometimes I imagine the last 14 years of American war policy in the Greater Middle East as a set of dismal Mad Libs.\u00a0 An example might be: The United States has spent [your choice of multiple billions of dollars] building up [fill in name [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2487,2795,522,10145,10144,827,834,862],"class_list":["post-13727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-afghanistan","tag-great-war","tag-middle-east","tag-peter-van-buren","tag-tomdispatch-com","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13728,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13727\/revisions\/13728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}