The ‘Long War’ Quagmire for the US

[tekisui]

Source: Gulf Times

by Tom Hayden

Without public debate and without congressional hearings, a segment of the Pentagon and fellow travellers have embraced a doctrine known as the “Long War”, which projects an “arc of instability” caused by insurgent groups from Europe to South Asia that will last between 50 and 80 years. According to one of its architects, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are just “small wars in the midst of a big one”.

Consider the audacity of such an idea. An 80-year undeclared war would entangle 20 future presidential terms stretching far into the future of voters not yet born. The American death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan now approaches 5,000, with the number of wounded a multiple many times greater. Including the American dead from 9/11, that’s 8,000 dead so far in the first decade of the Long War. And if the American armed forces are stretched thin today, try to conceive of seven more decades of combat.

The costs are unimaginable too. According to economists Joseph E Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, Iraq alone will be a $3tn war. Those costs, and the other deficit spending of recent years, yield “virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Obama or his successors”, according to a New York Times budget analysis in February. Continued deficit financing for the Long War will rob today’s younger generation of resources for their future.

The term “Long War” was first applied to America’s post-9/11 conflicts in 2004 by Gen John P Abizaid, then head of US Central Command, and by the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State, Gen Richard B Myers, in 2005.

According to David Kilcullen, a top counterinsurgency adviser to Army Gen David H Petraeus and a proponent of the Long War doctrine, the concept was polished in “a series of windowless offices deep inside the Pentagon” by a small team that successfully lobbied to incorporate the term into the 2006 Quadrennial Defence Review, the nation’s long-term military blueprint.

more: http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=352932&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26

[panader0]

1. It's a perfect set-up for corporate warriors

No real enemy in a uniform, no end ever, continuous profits, always looming.........

[kenny blankenship]

2. We can't withdraw from Afghanistan! It would embolden our foe in Yemen.

We can't withdraw from Pakistan! It would just embolden our foe in Iraq.
We can't withdraw from Iraq! It would just be a surrender to Iran.

Biting off more than they can chew is no accident.

[Better Believe It]

3. And how about those uppity Latin Americans! Who do they think they are asserting independence?