They Almost Always Escalate Into Full-Scale Calamities
23 HOURS AGO
I recently came across the expression “minimally invasive” to describe an internal medical procedure that seemed anything but. I immediately thought of the Pentagon and its various “operations,” which always start with great enthusiasm and promises of decisive results with minimal trouble. “Invasive” operations like Vietnam in 1965, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003, all promising quick and decisive results, all instead leading to further escalation, serious “collateral damage,” and profound debilitation of both the foreign patient and the American doctor (though the doctor, or perhaps the hospital, always got paid).
Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq: they were all “operations” that were supposed to be over and done with in a matter of a few weeks or months, tops. They all lasted at least a decade, sometimes two, always doing harm to the invader and especially extreme harm to the invaded.
I know, of course, that medical terminology shouldn’t be applied to war, but tell that to the Pentagon, which loves to speak of “surgical strikes,” and which also speaks of terrorism as a metastasizing cancer. It would be interesting indeed if the U.S. military was guided by the Hippocratic Oath of first doing no harm as it planned its various “operations” around the world. (Strictly speaking, “First do no harm” isn’t in the oath, but it’s a Hippocratic sentiment that captures the essence of that oath.)
And now we have war with Iran, yet another war started with the promise of a quick victory, a war we were told that would last no longer than eight weeks, tops. A war sold as helping the Iranian people win their freedom, though that BS rhetoric is no longer used.
If we judged America’s military operations like we judged medical procedures, surely we’d fire all the “doctors” at the top for malpractice and incompetence, wouldn’t we? When “minimally invasive” medical procedures lead to 20-year struggles that end in abject failure and prodigious debt, we don’t buy happy-talk of, well, the doctors tried, but “mistakes were made,” and the patient wasn’t really worth saving to begin with because he just didn’t cooperate with his freedom-bringing American “doctors.”
Surely an “exceptional” nation like the United States should be helping others—or, at least, not harming others. How about that for a foreign policy goal? It sure beats a “warrior ethos” of punching others when they’re down.
