02.25.12
The truth you’re not allowed to utter
Published in the Asia Times, this piece by Andrew Bacevich, goes into the evolution of the US military strategy, or lack of it, during the war on terror.
There’s no catchy description for it, just a handful of idiot’s acronyms and jargon, and Bacevich, a history prof at Boston University allowed to occasionally be one of the academy’s pro critics of the US military, seems loathe to call it out language that could be far more blunt.
In fact, the piece is notable for how it dances around the immorality of the global war strategy, which I’ve called Bombing Paupers.
Because that’s what it is. Succinct and painful.
Of course he gets it, but won’t really say it:
The United States is now in the business of using missile-armed drones and special operations forces to eliminate anyone (not excluding US citizens) the president of the United States decides has become an intolerable annoyance. Under President Obama, such attacks have proliferated …
The role allotted to the American people is to applaud, if and when notified that a successful assassination has occurred.
I guess you could say the trivial destitute pests in the really broken places of the world, and the people mistakenly offed in the effort to get them, could be seen as “intolerable annoyances.”
However, that overlooks the whole other side of the coin, the one where an entire national and globe-spanning industry of national security men and arms manufacturers, work to designate the paupers of the world as “intolerable annoyances.”
Their chosen because they’re easy to paint in this manner. They look and sound alien, desperate and — best of all — poor. And they really can’t fight back to well against the instruments and special forces operations deployed against them.
If and when the US gets into a war with Iran, after that country’s conventional military is destroyed, its skies laid bare, the strategy will evolve to the same. It will be easy to cynically justify because Iran is a really big country where a lot of people will be really angry. But they won’t have an air force that can defend airspace and territory against drones once the defense infrastructure is torn away.
Bacevich mentions some of the celebrity names from the forever war. Rumsfeld, Petraeus, the latter once cited as a possible presidential candidate, now at the CIA where half or more of Bombing Paupers can be quietly administered.
Bacevich mentions an undersecretary of intelligence whose name is unknown to 99 percent of Americans — Michael Vickers — who is now the government CEO, so to speak, of Bombing Paupers, Inc.
The Boston U. man calls Vickers a “gangster,” only because someone who admires the guy already delivered the description as a compliment.
You don’t have to be a scholar to know any of this because it’s obvious.
Hat tip, as usual, to Pine View Farm.
“AKA full employment for Generals, consultants, and munitions makers,” writes Frank, with more laceration than the polite academic and ex-military man.