The cover of the January-February 2015 The Atlantic asks “Why Do The Best Soldiers in the World Keep Losing?” which leads to this article (at the link below), which fails to answer the question.
The main focus of the article is the by now endlessly familiar discovery that most U.S.-Americans are not in the military. The article is accompanied by another advocating a draft. The claim in the main article is that because most people are disconnected from the military they are more willing to send it off into unwinnable wars.
Nowhere does the author, James Fallows, attempt to so much as hint at what makes the wars unwinnable. He does claim that the last war that was in any way victorious for the United States was the Gulf War. But he can’t mean that it resolved a crisis. It was a war followed by bombings and sanctions and, in fact, the repeated revival of the war, ongoing and escalating even now.
What Fallows must mean is that once the U.S. military had done what it can do — namely, blow stuff up — in the Gulf War, it more or less stopped. The early days in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq 2003 saw very similar “victories,” as did Libya 2011 and numerous other U.S. wars. Why Fallows ignores Libya I don’t know, but Iraq and Afghanistan go down as losses in his book, I think, not because there’s no draft or because the military and Congress are corrupt and build the wrong weapons, but because after blowing everything up, the military stuck around for years trying to make people like it by murdering their friends and family members. Such occupations are virtually unwinnable, as in Vietnam and numerous other places, because people will not accept them, and because military attempts to create acceptance are counterproductive. A better military with more self-criticism, a draft, and an audited budget would not alter this fact in the slightest.
Fallows’ contention that nobody pays any attention to wars and militarism misses the point, but it is also overstated. “I’m not aware,” he writes, “of any midterm race for the House or Senate in which matters of war and peace . . . were first-tier campaign issues.” He’s forgotten 2006 when exit polls showed ending the war on Iraq as the number one motivator of voters after numerous candidates opposed the war they would escalate as soon as they were in office.
Complete story at - The Atlantic Can't Figure Out Why U.S. Loses Wars Washington's Blog
The main focus of the article is the by now endlessly familiar discovery that most U.S.-Americans are not in the military. The article is accompanied by another advocating a draft. The claim in the main article is that because most people are disconnected from the military they are more willing to send it off into unwinnable wars.
Nowhere does the author, James Fallows, attempt to so much as hint at what makes the wars unwinnable. He does claim that the last war that was in any way victorious for the United States was the Gulf War. But he can’t mean that it resolved a crisis. It was a war followed by bombings and sanctions and, in fact, the repeated revival of the war, ongoing and escalating even now.
What Fallows must mean is that once the U.S. military had done what it can do — namely, blow stuff up — in the Gulf War, it more or less stopped. The early days in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq 2003 saw very similar “victories,” as did Libya 2011 and numerous other U.S. wars. Why Fallows ignores Libya I don’t know, but Iraq and Afghanistan go down as losses in his book, I think, not because there’s no draft or because the military and Congress are corrupt and build the wrong weapons, but because after blowing everything up, the military stuck around for years trying to make people like it by murdering their friends and family members. Such occupations are virtually unwinnable, as in Vietnam and numerous other places, because people will not accept them, and because military attempts to create acceptance are counterproductive. A better military with more self-criticism, a draft, and an audited budget would not alter this fact in the slightest.
Fallows’ contention that nobody pays any attention to wars and militarism misses the point, but it is also overstated. “I’m not aware,” he writes, “of any midterm race for the House or Senate in which matters of war and peace . . . were first-tier campaign issues.” He’s forgotten 2006 when exit polls showed ending the war on Iraq as the number one motivator of voters after numerous candidates opposed the war they would escalate as soon as they were in office.
Complete story at - The Atlantic Can't Figure Out Why U.S. Loses Wars Washington's Blog
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