Tag: neocons

Anti-war Pragmatists and Pro-war Fantasists

war weary
Tell me how this ends …

W.J. Astore

Remember when those who advocated for peace were dismissed as “dreamers”?  The great John Lennon imagined a world where peace could reign, and he wasn’t afraid of the dreamer label, because he knew it could be more than a dream.  Peace is often presented as a fantasy embraced by soft-hearted people.  War, by comparison, is a harsh reality embraced by hard-headed realists, or so we’re told.

What if it’s the opposite?  What if peace is really based on pragmatism, and war on fantasy?  What if the hard-headed realists are really those who advocate for peace via dialog, diplomacy, treaties, and the like?  And it’s the warmongers who are truly the soft-headed dreamers?

Consider the results of recent American wars.  The wars in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) were total disasters.  Ditto interventions in Iraq and Libya.  The Afghan War approaches its third decade with no end in sight.  How are these wars pragmatic or preemptive or necessary or productive?  They’ve been based on fears and fantasies.  They’ve been colossal mistakes based on lies and fantasies of power.

Indeed, it’s the neocons who have been America’s leading fantasists, starting disastrous wars driven by an ideology of American exceptionalism and warrior masculinity in which they believe they can create and control their own reality irrespective of history and the facts.  These men can’t imagine peace.  All they can imagine is a world in which American military power creates a world “safe for democracy,” which means safe for their own greed and power and profit, including profit from more and more weapons sales.

We see this fantasy at work today.  Somehow, starting wars is sold as a way to prevent them.  Killing a senior Iranian general in a foreign country without the approval of that country or Congress for that matter is sold as preventing war.  The president commits an act of war in the name of peace.

To believe this, you must be a fantasist in the extreme.  We need to denounce these pro-war fantasists for what they are.  They may fancy themselves as hard-headed men of action, but they’re really thick-headed sociopaths guided by delusional fantasies.

Update (1/5): Speaking of pro-war fantasists, I just saw this Trump tweet, which is what happens when you elect and empower a bully-boy as president:

“The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way…and without hesitation!”

The Syrian Troop Withdrawal That Wasn’t

hqdefault
Stability operations?

W.J. Astore

After calling for all U.S. troops to be pulled out of Syria, President Trump is now in favor of keeping a “small…stabilizing force” there.  What a shame.  Trump is the ultimate flip-flopper, bowing to the neo-cons and the Washington establishment whenever it’s expedient for him to do so.

What, exactly, is America’s national security interest in Syria?  Trump says these U.S. troops will help to prevent a resurgence of ISIS, but surely Syria, Turkey, Russia, and other countries in the region have more incentive — and far more capability — to keep the Islamic State down and out.  But let’s say the Islamic State did make a comeback in Syria after all U.S. troops left.  In that case, couldn’t U.S. troops just redeploy there?  Why are “boots on the ground” needed in perpetuity in Syria to monitor the dead carcass of ISIS?

Once the U.S. commits troops to a region or country, they seem to linger — and linger.  In rare cases when troops finally are withdrawn and something bad happens, you instantly hear how it’s the fault of those who called for troop withdrawals, as if U.S. troops bring stability wherever they go.

It’s a strange belief.  The U.S. celebrates its troops as warriors, trains them in kinetic operations, outfits them with the most destructive technologies, and then deploys them to bring stability and peace to regions those troops barely understand.  For a different vision of the “stability” American troops bring, one might ask the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, to name only three recent examples.

It’s high time, America, that we bring the troops home.  Our national defense is not advanced by worldwide troop deployments in the name of “stability.”  Trump once seemed to recognize this, however fleetingly, as a candidate.  As president, however, he’s become yet another pawn of U.S. military interventionists and neo-cons.  As Trump would say, sad.