Forever war — Andrew Bacevich blames politicians, not generals — but I point to the System that produces both

© 2018 Peter Free

 

08 June 2018

 

 

An initial premise

 

Identifying humanity's enemies, whether people or systems, helps us resist them.

 

We should know, or seek to identify, who the wrong-doers are and sometimes why they got to be that way.

 

 

Here is an example of a mistaken enemy identification

 

The usually insightful Professor Andrew Bacevich arguably got slightly off track with an otherwise excellent essay:

 

 

He excused one group of American authorities — for their creation of America's state of perpetual war — on the basis of their predictably flawed professional character.

 

And he slammed another group of authorities — also for their creation of America's infinite war — on the basis of their equally foreseeably flawed character.

 

 

Isn't that questionable reasoning?

 

 

We'll excuse Group A for viciously staying within their often strategically moronic character, but blame Group B for exactly the same trait?

 

 

Bacevich's rationale for blame

 

The former Army colonel wrote that:

 

 

Once it becomes apparent that a war is a mistake, why would those in power insist on its perpetuation, regardless of costs and consequences?

 

Not so long ago, America’s armed forces adhered to a concept called victory, which implied conclusive, expeditious, and economical mission accomplished. No more.

 

Victory, it turns out, is too tough to achieve, too restrictive, or, in the words of Army Lt. Gen. Michael Lundy, “too absolute.” The United States military now grades itself instead on a curve.

 

As Lundy puts it, “winning is more of a continuum,” an approach that allows you to claim mission accomplishment without, you know, actually accomplishing anything.

 

“These days,” in the Pentagon, [journalist Greg] Jaffe writes, “senior officers talk about ‘infinite war.’”

 

Infinite war is a strategic abomination except for arms merchants, so-called defense contractors, and the “emergency men” (and women) devoted to climbing the greasy pole of what we choose to call the national-security establishment.

 

War keeps the gravy train rolling.

 

Who should we hold accountable for this abomination? Not the generals, in my view.

 

If they come across as a dutiful yet unimaginative lot, remember that a lifetime of military service rarely nurtures imagination or creativity.

 

And let us at least credit our generals with this: In their efforts to liberate or democratize or pacify or dominate the Greater Middle East, they have tried every military tactic and technique imaginable.

 

No, it’s not the generals who have let us down, but the politicians to whom they supposedly report and from whom they nominally take their orders.

 

© 2018 Andrew J. Bacevich, How to Win a War That Never Ends, The Nation (07 June 2018) (excerpts, italics added)

 

 

Say what?

 

Professor-Colonel Bacevich's is a typically military way of looking at things. Structure over substance:

 

 

Even though my bosses are dumb and ignorant civilian doofuses, it's their responsibility to come up with my marching (or not marching) orders and be competent about it.

 

Strategy's their bailiwick, not mine.

 

 

Huh?

 

Bacevich's analysis overlooks (a) who is actually competent at what, as well as (b) who is supposed to be persuasively advising whom.

 

 

Let me illustrate what I mean — generals first, then politicians

 

Generals are predictably:

 

 

conventional — meaning "challenged" in most situations that have ambiguous solutions

 

almost exclusively 'thump the bastards' or kill-oriented

 

and

 

part of, and dependent upon, the very Military Industrial Gravy Train that Bacevich identifies as being an obstacle to the use of even minimal strategic sense.

 

 

Given its incentives, our System predictably makes general officers proponents of, or acquiescent in, waging infinite war.

 

Being anything else would either require them to think with (a) geopolitically knowledgeable strategic competence — or — (b) acknowledge that they will have to forsake the impressive goodies that come with their employment as professional warmongers.

 

As Bacevich implies, neither alternative (given what the System turns generals into) seems attainable.

 

Now, let's examine the second prong of Bacevich's blame sweepstakes.

 

Politicians, predictably, are:

 

 

cowards — usually morally, often physically

 

most have never been in sustained combat (of any even metaphorical kind)

 

nor have they seriously studied History, military actions or strategy —

 

they are, instead, almost completely about manipulating voters

 

which, naturally, requires them to combine hypocrisy with a slimy deviousness,

 

and

 

their personal prime directive is (almost always) to stay on Politics' own Gravy Train.

 

You know, the same Military Industrial freight that the generals are riding.

 

 

Mandated constitutional structure or not, politicians are not at all suited to corralling and directing their theoretical military subordinates.

 

This is a systemic flaw, not a personality one.

 

 

This reality means that

 

One must either blame both politicians and generals for our Infinite War — or, more insightfully — the plutocratically twisted economic and political structure that inevitably (given its workings) produces it.

 

Consider, for example, this hypothetical:

 

 

Were a majority of the highest ranking general officers suddenly to announce that our national strategies are self-defeating, unsustainable or misguided — would not politicians have to listen?

 

 

The public has too much regard for the American military to ignore such a (hypothetical) stand on its part.

 

So, who's to blame, again?

 

 

The moral? — Rationally speaking, when it comes to waging strategically senseless perpetual war . . .

 

If one forgives generals, one has to forgive politicians.

 

The self-serving geopolitical incompetence of both groups is structurally generated by the Founders' political and economic system.

 

Any system that depends upon individually noble behavior to thwart its incorporated preference for producing stupidity, avarice and oppression is going to fail. Just like ours has.

 

Why a politician should be strategically nobler and less implicitly self-serving than a general officer, I have no idea. And neither, in truth, does Professor Bacevich. He just prefers military authoritarian types to more blatantly parasitic civilian sleaze-bags. Just as I often do.

 

Our character preferences, however, should not be allowed to overcome our analytical acuity. And mine points to a flawed system, not to the personalities that comprise it.