{"id":16554,"date":"2016-01-16T11:40:39","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T16:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16554"},"modified":"2016-01-16T11:40:58","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T16:40:58","slug":"enduring-bases-enduring-war-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16554","title":{"rendered":"Enduring Bases, Enduring War in the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enduring Bases, Enduring War in the Middle East<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

Meet the hottest new commander in the increasingly secretive world of American warfare, Lieutenant General Raymond \u201cTony\u201d Thomas. A\u00a0rare portrait<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0paints him as a \u201cshadowy figure\u201d — an appropriate phrase for the general who has been leading the U.S. military\u2019s \u201cmanhunters<\/a>,\u201d aka Joint Special Operations Command, or\u00a0JSOC<\/a>. They are considered the\u00a0cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me<\/em>\u00a0among America\u2019s ever-larger crew of Special Operations forces, now at\u00a0almost 70,000<\/a>\u00a0and growing. Thomas is reportedly slated to take over Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, and so head up that now massive secret military cocooned inside the U.S. military. To put its ranks in perspective, think of the\u00a0active duty militaries<\/a>\u00a0of Argentina (73,000), Australia (56,000), Canada (66,000), Chile (61,000), or South Africa (62,000).\u00a0 In other words, our secret \u201cwarriors\u201d now outnumber the military contingents of major nations.<\/p>\n

As America\u2019s leading counterterror general, Thomas has a reputation for bluntness.\u00a0 In a rare public\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0last April, he offered these striking comments about the country\u2019s global war on terror: \u201c[Y]ou can\u2019t look at the array [of metrics] right now and not sense that we\u2019re losing — we\u2019re losing right across the board from the North African littoral through to Afghanistan and Pakistan.\u00a0 There are some good news stories… [but] across the board we\u2019re not winning and I don\u2019t think you need a lot of empirical data to tell you that.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0TomDispatch<\/em>\u00a0has\u00a0long<\/a>said<\/a>\u00a0the same thing, of course, but never better.<\/p>\n

Still, if you\u2019re trying to imagine what a man with such views sees in his crystal ball when it comes to America\u2019s failing wars and conflicts, don\u2019t for a second think that he\u2019s in favor of cutting back.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enduring Bases, Enduring War in the Middle East Meet the hottest new commander in the increasingly secretive world of American warfare, Lieutenant General Raymond \u201cTony\u201d Thomas. A\u00a0rare portrait\u00a0in the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0paints him as a \u201cshadowy figure\u201d — an appropriate phrase for the general who has been leading the U.S. military\u2019s \u201cmanhunters,\u201d aka Joint Special Operations Command, […]<\/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":[11759,11760,7335,522,6463],"class_list":["post-16554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-david-vine","tag-joint-special-operations-command","tag-jsoc","tag-middle-east","tag-tom-dispatch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16554","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=16554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16556,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16554\/revisions\/16556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}