I agree with William Ruger and Dan Caldwell’s assessment at RealClearPolitics:
The veterans of our most recent wars distinguished themselves in challenging situations time and again. When we consider martial valor and individual sacrifice, we shouldn’t only think about our troops on the beaches of Normandy or Iwo Jima. We should also remember those who fought in dusty places like Fallujah, Baghdad, and Kandahar, displaying heroism to rival that of previous generations. Thus, we rightly honor their service today.
However, the tactical successes and individual bravery of American fighting men and women over the past 17 years cannot mask the broader failures of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11. Nor should they be used as justification to continue endless wars disconnected from U.S. security in places like Afghanistan.
The best way to honor the sacrifices of our post-9/11 veterans and their families is to make sure we pursue a foreign policy that only calls on our troops to fight when absolutely necessary for our safety, prosperity, and way of life. We shouldn’t ask people to risk everything for their country when what they are fighting for has little to do with U.S. interests or can only be connected to them indirectly via distorted or idealistic theories of the world. We dishonor veterans when we continue to pursue failed policies that can’t be clearly linked to why so many of them joined in the first place: to defend America and our freedom here at home.
They’re right. There are only two problems. We don’t agree on what a better foreign policy would be or, more precisely, elites think one thing while most Americans think another and the elites’ view is prevailing. And there’s no foreseeable path that leads us to a better foreign policy. Who would be its standard bearers? Democrats? These are the same Democrats who’ve intervened in a dozen places around the world since 2009. Republicans? It is to laugh.
“What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
That’s where it started and many of the same people or the like-minded are around today saying the same things, immune to the experience of the past 25 years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/02/world/asia/afghan-commander-us-john-nicholson.html
SSDD.
If that sentiment is true, Andy, then that’s just sick.
…….
I’ll bet the odds of getting out of Afghanistan are higher under Trump than at any time in 17 years.
I doubt that we’re just there because we’re there. I think that no president wants to withdraw from Afghanistan and have another attack emanate from there. That means it’s either victory (which is impossible) or a permanent presence.
All of this was completely foreseeable. If it was a surprise that was just because the political leadership of three successive administrations just can’t handle the truth. Leaders who don’t have the balls to wage war shouldn’t wage war. War isn’t tidy, sanitary, surgical or any other euphemism. War is killing people and breaking their stuff.
That’s a fantasy, Drew. Trump has not only permanently committed us to Syrian intervention in an act of galactic hypocrisy, he has empowered the military machine to conduct its own foreign policy. He’s a blood-soaked ghoul like the rest of them.
“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”
I would have chosen this as the philosophical underpinnings of our recent problems, but really, when have we ever been averse to running off to war?
Drew- Thanks for the good laugh on a dreary day.
Steve
If anyone has been playing chess here it was Bin Laden, along with Ayman al-Zawahiri, who saw the Soviet Union bled dry, retreated in defeat. It’s amazing, really, what he accomplished, with 19 men, armed with deceit and box cutters to actually strike the Pentagon itself, and now, many years after his death, we still bleed, argue among ourselves about why we fight there as we drift towards a rout similar to that in April, 1975.
As it works out that’s what I think about every time I hear someone speak dismissively of the possibility of a handful of terrorists making their way into the United States with the “caravan” making its way from Central America. It doesn’t take many.
The same factor gives me reservations on tourist and educational visas, especially to citizens of particular countries. The 9/11 attackers were mostly here on tourist or educational visas which IIRC they overstayed. More than 17 years later and we still don’t monitor tourist and educational visas.
“As it works out that’s what I think about every time I hear someone speak dismissively of the possibility of a handful of terrorists making their way into the United States with the “caravan†making its way from Central America.”
And as you go on to point out, there are many much easier ways for people to get here. Why walk a thousand miles when you can fly here in comfort? Take a boat. Ride the bus. Bike across from Canada. Could there be terrorists in the caravan? Absolutely! Could everyone in the current White House be secret terrorists waiting for the right moment to try to kill us all with our own nukes? Absolutely! Neither is likely.
Steve
All of those are arguments for why we need to control who comes into the country more assiduously than at present. We haven’t come to terms with the implications of personal empowerment.
Drew,
That quote is Madelaine Albright to Colin Powel in the early 1990’s.
Yes, I think history shows it’s definitely true. The national security establishment, part and parcel of both parties, is fully on board with using the military to achieve non-military goals.
As far as President Trump and Afghanistan, I hope you’re right, but I don’t see it. Trump cares about “winning” and the lack of a “winning” option is why we’ve continued to kick the can.
“All of those are arguments for why we need to control who comes into the country more assiduously than at present. ”
We have limited number of resources. We should concentrate them where the bad people will actually try to enter. The caravan just isn’t one of those places. They have lots of easier choices. While we are at it we should also focus not he places where these people come from, with Saudi Arabia high up on that list.
Steve
Steve:
It’s not the caravan, a couple thousand people maybe. It’s the millions watching the caravan’s progress and making travel plans based on it’s success. It’s unfair to the migrants themselves to send false hope of open borders. For every one of us including you, there is a limit you will tolerate on immigration, it may be higher than mine, but there is one.
You know when you have enough lights in the reading room when you have enough light to read by. Rather than spending trillions in a futile attempt at liberalizing the Middle East we should be hiring more resources to monitor the border. We should also have a system for monitoring visas. It’s a cost of doing business.