{"id":20199,"date":"2016-04-24T09:19:12","date_gmt":"2016-04-24T14:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20199"},"modified":"2016-04-24T09:19:12","modified_gmt":"2016-04-24T14:19:12","slug":"andrew-bacevich-and-americas-long-misguided-war-to-control-the-greater-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20199","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Bacevich and America’s Long Misguided War to Control the Greater Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"
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ANDREW BACEVICH AND AMERICA\u2019S LONG MISGUIDED WAR TO CONTROL THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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THE CONVICTION\u00a0that invasion, bombing, and special forces benefit large swaths of the globe, while remaining consonant with a Platonic ideal of the national interest, runs deep in the American psyche. Like the poet Stevie Smith\u2019s\u00a0cat<\/a>, the United States \u201clikes to gallop about doing good.\u201d The cat attacks and misses, sometimes injuring itself, but does not give up. It asks, as the U.S. should,<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the good
\nOf galloping about doing good
\nWhen angels stand in the path
\nAnd do not do as they should<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nothing undermines the American belief in military force. No matter how often its galloping about results in resentment and mayhem, the U.S. gets up again to do good elsewhere. Failure to improve life in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya stiffens the resolve to get it right next time. This notion prevails among politicized elements of the officer corps; much of the media, whether nominally liberal or conservative; the foreign policy elite recycled quadrennially between corporation-endowed think tanks and government; and most politicians on the national stage. For them and the public they influence, the question is less whether to deploy force than when, where, and how.<\/p>\n

Since 1979, when the Iranians overthrew the Shah and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. has concentrated its firepower in what former U.S. Army colonel Andrew Bacevich calls the \u201cGreater Middle East.\u201d The region comprises most of what America\u2019s imperial predecessors, the British, called the Near and Middle East, a vast zone from Pakistan west to Morocco. In his new\u00a0book<\/a>,\u00a0America\u2019s War for the Greater Middle East<\/em>, Bacevich writes, \u201cFrom the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in that region. Within a decade, a great shift occurred. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed anywhere\u00a0except<\/em>\u00a0the Greater Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

ANDREW BACEVICH AND AMERICA\u2019S LONG MISGUIDED WAR TO CONTROL THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST THE CONVICTION\u00a0that invasion, bombing, and special forces benefit large swaths of the globe, while remaining consonant with a Platonic ideal of the national interest, runs deep in the American psyche. Like the poet Stevie Smith\u2019s\u00a0cat, the United States \u201clikes to gallop about […]<\/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":[13611,13610,13612,522,525,5567,827,862],"class_list":["post-20199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-andrew-bacevich","tag-charles-glass","tag-greater-middle-east","tag-middle-east","tag-military","tag-the-intercept","tag-united-states","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20199","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=20199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20200,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20199\/revisions\/20200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}