There is a lot of commentary around these days, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war. They span the political spectrum and are both critical or self serving reflections, depending on your POV. However, all seem to be painfully aware of the cost of this great Imperial preemptive action which arose from this basic imperative:
What drove events was the imperative of claiming for the United States prerogatives allowed no other nation.
Sound familiar?
The idealistic ideas of America’s role in the world arose in the fertile minds of the “Best and the Brightest” attending John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Of course, we are speaking of military power here, but I do think some of this idealism also applies to how elites think about exercising U.S. Financial power too, ala FATCA.
Written by Andrew J. Bacevich, and published in Harpers Magazine, it is one of the more interesting and insightful articles I have read. It discusses where the “big ideas” about “American global hegemony” germinated. It ends by asking Wolfowitz now, not to flinch from taking on the hard questions,
“even if the answers threatened to contradict his own long-held beliefs. Help us learn the lessons of Iraq, so that we might extract from it something of value in return for all the sacrifices made there.”
As a parallel (and maybe this is a stretch) but it seems to me, that when it comes to FATCA and our current global phantom ‘War On Offshore Tax Evasion’, (WOOTE) this lesson rings true here.
Some wars can’t be won and aren’t worth fighting.
Haven’t heard of the ‘Wohlstetter’s Precepts’ that guided us into Iraq? Well let the education begin. You can read about it here.
For an article that starts out with this in the second paragraph, you know you will want to read it! 🙂
From five years of listening to these insiders pontificate, I drew one conclusion: people said to be smart — the ones with fancy résumés who get their op-eds published in the New York Times and appear on TV — really aren’t. They excel mostly in recycling bromides.
Give it a shot.
Great article Just Me, sure to p/o Wolfowitz. Hell’s too good for him and his cronies. So grateful Cretien kept us out of Iraq.
Some wars can’t be won, aren’t worth fighting, and some words are best not spoken. In the early days of the Iraq war, if I remember correctly, I argued on a forum with some radical Muslims in the UK that America cannot be defeated with military might, but that America it can be hurt through the cost of war and harm caused to civilians. I was giving my honest opinion at the time and didn’t think that it would matter, but now I regret that I had stated such and hope that my opinion was ignored. 🙁
It’s part of US exceptionalism that they believe their policymakers are “the best and the brightest” in the world. Combine that with the rest of the exceptionalism myth, and it’s no wonder that they think it’s up to them to teach the rest of the world lessons by force and coercion. Sadly, they don’t learn from their own failures and even less from successes in the rest of the world.
The Iraq War was bullshit from the beginning.
After 9/11 happened, I was planning to enlist in the army, because after all, we were attacked, and we had to answer the call, right? Well, not so fast. It didn’t take long after 9/11 for the news media to start talking about Iraq’s ‘involvement’, and it was that point when I smelled a rat. So I didn’t sign the enlistment papers.
Once they started whipping up this story about WMDs, and how Saddam was this big threat, I was against the war ever since. He was no threat to the US. He was contained since the first gulf war. There were no WMDs, and that reason for invading was proven to be bogus after they went in to look for themselves. So then it became a matter of Saddam gassing his own people back in the 80’s. That was bullshit too, because if that was a sufficient reason to invade, then they would’ve done it back in the 80’s!
So now, it’s taken them 10 full years for 53% of the people back in the homeland to think that the Iraq War is now a mistake. Gee. I’ve been saying that since the beginning, and now, I get to say that I told you so. Oh, and a hearty thank you to the homelander idiots for calling me un-American because I refused to walk in lockstep with that boldfaced lie.
Bush said it pointedly when he stated that we were either ‘for us or against us’. After careful consideration of that statement, I can not, in good conscience, support this ‘War on Terror’, and I no longer want to be an American, either.
Just Me, thank you for introducing us to that letter/article.
I’ve learned a lot on IBS, thanks to your tireless ‘comply, complain and warn’, and though I was too late (or too early?) to avoid part of the trainwreck, I have survived it and got to this point with the help and generosity and tireless work of you and others here.
Part of the ride here has been the discussions of issues like this one. Thanks for pointing out the connections.
Happy Birthday!
Just Me, I echo thanks for this article and especially, for introducing Bacevich. I immeditately went to reserve a copy of the Exceptionalism title, only to find my card has expired. Will take care of that!
There was a documentary on the CBC which stated Bush et al, were interested in protecting Israel because they believed the second coming of J. Christ would take place there. I remember being absolutely shocked and thought at first, that I was hallucinating. Can’t seem to find it on CBC site.
Happy Birthday? Seriously? Me too!
@nobledreamer, Yes seriously, although mine is the 21st and that would have been the 20th on your side of the line! 🙂
BTW, I am not sure which CBC documentary you saw, but would it be about the CUFIs, or Christians United for Israel? I saw this on Bill Moyer back in 2007
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/watch2.html
@Badger…
Thanks for your comment and wish. You will have to come visit this neck of the woods sometime. I spent my day here…
http://www.seeanddonewzealand.co.nz/Russell.html
@Just Me
Not quite following but it doesn’t matter anyway as the 21st is also my day! And our “spring” doesn’t look anywhere near as pleasant as your link shows….
No, that’s not the one. Am very frustrated as have spent hours (again) looking for this film and simply can’t get it. I am not sure the CBC produced but that is where I watched it. It was based upon Bush and his buds-Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, etc. I don’t remember anything particularly except my shock when the point was made that the US had to protect Israel at all costs because that land would be the “2nd coming of Christ.” I simply could not believe my ears.
Just Me, beautiful way to spend the first/second day of spring and your birthday.
NZ is beautiful.
And I’d like to see the Hobbit town too.
Relevant to the US ‘might makes right’ behaviour and values: ex. drones, Iraq, FATCA, (and US government’s exploitive, and extortionate imposition and enforcement of US-extraterritorial-citizenship-based lifelong-tax-servitude on people who don’t live there, and receive no benefit):
See recent post by Allison Christians;
at http://taxpol.blogspot.ca/2013/03/can-states-shame-each-other-into-good.html
Thursday, March 21, 2013
‘Can States Shame Each Other into Good Behaviour?’
“Interesting new paper by Sandeep Gopalan & Roslyn Fuller, Enforcing International Law: States, IOs, and Courts as Shaming Reference Groups. ” ………….
……….”I’m in general a skeptic, viewing the tripartite failures highlighted in this abstract as overwhelming evidence that in the international community, might makes right, full stop. The tenth anniversary of America’s unprovoked war on Iraq, which is now clearly characterized as a strategy to gain control over its oil resources that was planned far in advance of 9/11, seems too ample evidence backing the skeptical view. But I’m willing to engage that social pressure might have some amount of impact on state behaviour in some cases. At least, I am willing to believe that states will work hard to appear to be good citizens in the international legal order, and that this might cause some leaders to make decisions differently than they might absent shaming in the international community. But I remain at heart a skeptic so I will continue to believe that in practice states will use any power they have to achieve their ends at the expense of other states (much as leaders will do the same at the expense of their own people if they can get away with it)………”………..