On the 13th Anniversary of Never Forget Day, we find ourselves ready to head back into Iraq, on a seemingly more justifiable mission than last time, but still a fool's errand with no happy ending. It's not that you can't make a respectable case for military and humanitarian intervention in the region. And if it's remotely true that the group has considerable assets and volunteers from a variety of countries, it is entirely conceivable that a non-Arab cell could sneak, say, a nuclear suitcase into Miami or Baltimore.
What should give pause is what is seemingly not being said, at least as far as I've seen or heard. The fact of the matter is, as Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya and Syria and any number of countries in the region demonstrate, we don't know what we're doing there. We don't know anything about these people, we don't understand why they hate us, we can't figure out the difference between the various groups. We don't know the cultures, the languages, we can't find them on a map.
When you don't know jack shit about a country and people you want to bomb or otherwise commit violence upon, isn't it time you checked your basic premises? Does there have to be a larger casus belli than "I think these guys might be assholes, if these are the guys I'm thinking of."? Weren't some of these ISIS cells rebelling against Bashar al-Assad just a year ago, and weren't we ready to arm them in their fight?
Nowhere in this "spreadin' freedom" effort of the last decade or so, nowhere in the premature triumphalism of the Arab Spring, was the possibility noted that, just because the citizens of these countries had chosen to free themselves from the torturous yokes of (sometimes American-supported) despots and dictators, that they automatically wanted what we had to offer -- an emotionally-retarded culture buttressed by an economy mostly based on rackets and pilferage. Shit, they already have those things.
Look, even if these ISIS assholes aren't a direct threat to American geopolitical interests -- and they almost certainly are, if not a direct threat to the US mainland itself -- it is also difficult to simply stand by while they decapitate foolhardy journalists out in their desert moonscape, while they seize dams and terrorize cities and civilians, while they attempt to exterminate minority religions in the area. But it must also be taken into account that our track record has been one of going in and leaving a bigger mess than when we got there.
Wars and insurgencies, whether they are wrought by religious terrorists or secular governments, are fought for one reason and one reason only -- to establish and legitimize power. Clausewitz's saying about war being politics by other means is as true as ever. It might be helpful if for once, we knew what we were getting into before getting into it.
What should give pause is what is seemingly not being said, at least as far as I've seen or heard. The fact of the matter is, as Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya and Syria and any number of countries in the region demonstrate, we don't know what we're doing there. We don't know anything about these people, we don't understand why they hate us, we can't figure out the difference between the various groups. We don't know the cultures, the languages, we can't find them on a map.
When you don't know jack shit about a country and people you want to bomb or otherwise commit violence upon, isn't it time you checked your basic premises? Does there have to be a larger casus belli than "I think these guys might be assholes, if these are the guys I'm thinking of."? Weren't some of these ISIS cells rebelling against Bashar al-Assad just a year ago, and weren't we ready to arm them in their fight?
Nowhere in this "spreadin' freedom" effort of the last decade or so, nowhere in the premature triumphalism of the Arab Spring, was the possibility noted that, just because the citizens of these countries had chosen to free themselves from the torturous yokes of (sometimes American-supported) despots and dictators, that they automatically wanted what we had to offer -- an emotionally-retarded culture buttressed by an economy mostly based on rackets and pilferage. Shit, they already have those things.
Look, even if these ISIS assholes aren't a direct threat to American geopolitical interests -- and they almost certainly are, if not a direct threat to the US mainland itself -- it is also difficult to simply stand by while they decapitate foolhardy journalists out in their desert moonscape, while they seize dams and terrorize cities and civilians, while they attempt to exterminate minority religions in the area. But it must also be taken into account that our track record has been one of going in and leaving a bigger mess than when we got there.
Wars and insurgencies, whether they are wrought by religious terrorists or secular governments, are fought for one reason and one reason only -- to establish and legitimize power. Clausewitz's saying about war being politics by other means is as true as ever. It might be helpful if for once, we knew what we were getting into before getting into it.
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