What Empires Have Said Throughout History: "One More Surge"

[Joanne98]

For OpEdNews: George Washington - Writer

A leading advisor to the U.S. military, the Rand Corporation, released a study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida". The report confirms what experts have been saying for years: the war on terror is actually weakening national security.

As a press release about the study states:

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."
In fact, starting right after 9/11 -- at the latest -- the goal has always been to create "regime change" and instability in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon and other countries.


As American historian, investigative journalist and policy analyst Gareth Porter writes in the Asia Times:
Three weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith's account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country's top military leaders.

Feith's book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a series of states...

***

General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia .

***

When this writer asked Feith . . . which of the six regimes on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."

***

The Defense Department guidance document made it clear that US military aims in regard to those states would go well beyond any ties to terrorism. The document said the Defense Department would also seek to isolate and weaken those states and to "disrupt, damage or destroy" their military capacities - not necessarily limited to weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The goal was never focused on destroying Al Qaeda. As just one example, the U.S. let Bin Laden escape in 2001 and again in 2007.

Indeed, the goal seems to have more to do with being a superpower (i.e. an empire) than stopping terrorism.

As Porter writes:


After the bombing of two US embassies in East Africa by al-Qaeda operatives, State Department counter-terrorism official Michael Sheehan proposed supporting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against bin Laden's sponsor, the Taliban regime. However, senior US military leaders "refused to consider it", according to a 2004 account by Richard H Shultz, Junior, a military specialist at Tufts University.

A senior officer on the Joint Staff told State Department counter-terrorism director Sheehan he had heard terrorist strikes characterized more than once by colleagues as a "small price to pay for being a superpower".

One More Surge in Afghanistan


Empire after empire has broken its back trying to control Afghanistan.

Why?

It is the crossroads between East, West, South Asia and Central Asia. And now it is the proposed site for a Trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline.


If you believe President Obama's statement that America will be out of Afghanistan in 18 months, I have some barren, rocky hills to sell you. Indeed:

aides said that by announcing a date for beginning a withdrawal, the president was not setting an end date for the war.
Michael Rivero summarizes Obama's Afghanistan war surge in the context of the 2,000-plus-year history of empires trying to conquer that country:
"Just one more surge!" -- The Indus

"Just one more surge!" -- The Kushan

"Just one more surge!" -- The Scythians

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-Empires-Have-Said-Thr-by-George-Washington-091202-439.html

[joecool65]

1. One more surge worked for the Ottomans when they conquered Constantinople

They were almost ready to go home but struck around for "one more surge."
Just one example of many, many surges that have worked.

[eleny]

4. Didn't the Ottoman Empire begin it's decline 100 years later?

But hey, here's to instant gratification and expensive drinks in the present.

[seeinfweggos]

5. normans at hastings

[IrateCitizen]

6. The Normans won at Hastings b/c King Harold also had to contend with...

... the Vikings who were raiding Northern England at basically the same time. This analogy might have held true if this was 1985 and the Afghans were contending with both the US and USSR, but otherwise it falls flat.

[seeinfweggos]

9. but william won the battle itself in one last do or die attack after

unsuccessfully trying several times (if i recall correctly). it is a really bad afghanistan analogy. i'll give you that. it just popped into my head - word association reaction almost - when i read "one last surge."

[eleny]

2. Rec for you with thanks

Sadly, a sucker is born every minute and our country is plunged, once again, into one more surge.

[Joanne98]

3. You're welcome eleny.

:hug:

[Agony]

7. Bringing (more) democracy to your doorstep with a daisycutter! Roy

[ShortnFiery]

8. For many of us old enough to remember Vietnam, this meme rings all too familiar.

Prepare yourselves to welcome in a republican President come 2012, IF THE PAST is any guide.

http://www.lone-star.net/mall/texasinfo/lbj.htm

It was the policy of military escalation in Vietnam, however, that proved to be Johnson's undoing as president. It deflected attention from domestic concerns, resulted in sharp inflation, and prompted rising criticism, especially among young, draft-aged people. Escalation also failed to win the war. The drawn-out struggle made Johnson even more secretive, dogmatic, and hypersensitive to criticism. His usually sure political instincts were failing.

The New Hampshire presidential primary of 1968, in which the antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy made a strong showing, revealed the dwindling of Johnson's support. Some of Johnson's closest advisors now began to counsel a de-escalation policy in Vietnam. Confronted by mounting opposition, Johnson made two surprise announcements on Mar. 31, 1968: he would stop the bombing in most of North Vietnam and seek a negotiated end to the war, and he would not run for reelection.

Johnson's influence thereafter remained strong enough to dictate the nomination of Vice-President Humphrey, who had supported the war, as the Democratic presidential candidate for the 1968 election. Although Johnson stopped all bombing of the North on November 1, he failed to make real concessions at the peace table, and the war dragged on. Humphrey lost in a close race with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon.

[snake in the grass]

10. k/r

[katty]

11. for Empire there is always one more surge-it has to be stopped

that is how it ends, Empires never leave the theatre willingly.