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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWar, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing. Literally.
Looking back on almost 15 years in which the United States has been engaged in something like permanent war in the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, one thing couldnt be clearer: the planets sole superpower with a military funded and armed like none other and a defense budget larger than the next seven countries combined (three times as large as the number two spender, China) has managed to accomplish again, quite literally absolutely nothing, or perhaps (if a slight rewrite of that classic song were allowed) less than nothing.
Unless, of course, you consider an expanding series of failed states, spreading terror movements, wrecked cities, countries hemorrhaging refugees and the like as accomplishments. In these years, no goal of Washington not a single one has been accomplished by war. This has proven true even when, in the first flush of death and destruction, victory or at least success was hailed, as in Afghanistan in 2001 (You helped Afghanistan liberate itself for a second time, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to US special operations forces), Iraq in 2003 (Mission accomplished), or Libya in 2011 (We came, we saw, he died, Hillary Clinton on the death of autocrat Muammar Gaddafi).
Of all forms of American military might in this period, none may have been more destructive or less effective than air power. US drones, for instance, have killed incessantly in these years, racking up thousands of dead Pakistanis, Afghans, Iraqis, Yemenis, Syrians and others, including top terror leaders and their lieutenants as well as significant numbers of civilians and even children, and yet the movements they were sent to destroy from the top down have only proliferated. In a region in which those on the ground are quite literallyhelpless against air power, the US Air Force has been repeatedly loosed, from Afghanistan in 2001 to Syria and Iraq today, without challenge and with utter freedom of the skies. Yet, other than dead civilians and militants and a great deal of rubble, the long-term results have been remarkably pitiful.
. . .
Put another way, for the country that has, like no other on the planet in these years, unleashed its military again and again thousands of miles from its homeland in actions ranging from large-scale invasions and occupations to small-scale raids and drone assassination strikes, absolutely nothing has come up roses. From Chinas Central Asian border to north Africa, the region that Washington officials began referring to as an arc of instability soon after 9/11 and that they hoped to garrison and dominate forever has only become more unstable, less amenable to American power and ever more chaotic.
Unless, of course, you consider an expanding series of failed states, spreading terror movements, wrecked cities, countries hemorrhaging refugees and the like as accomplishments. In these years, no goal of Washington not a single one has been accomplished by war. This has proven true even when, in the first flush of death and destruction, victory or at least success was hailed, as in Afghanistan in 2001 (You helped Afghanistan liberate itself for a second time, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to US special operations forces), Iraq in 2003 (Mission accomplished), or Libya in 2011 (We came, we saw, he died, Hillary Clinton on the death of autocrat Muammar Gaddafi).
Of all forms of American military might in this period, none may have been more destructive or less effective than air power. US drones, for instance, have killed incessantly in these years, racking up thousands of dead Pakistanis, Afghans, Iraqis, Yemenis, Syrians and others, including top terror leaders and their lieutenants as well as significant numbers of civilians and even children, and yet the movements they were sent to destroy from the top down have only proliferated. In a region in which those on the ground are quite literallyhelpless against air power, the US Air Force has been repeatedly loosed, from Afghanistan in 2001 to Syria and Iraq today, without challenge and with utter freedom of the skies. Yet, other than dead civilians and militants and a great deal of rubble, the long-term results have been remarkably pitiful.
. . .
Put another way, for the country that has, like no other on the planet in these years, unleashed its military again and again thousands of miles from its homeland in actions ranging from large-scale invasions and occupations to small-scale raids and drone assassination strikes, absolutely nothing has come up roses. From Chinas Central Asian border to north Africa, the region that Washington officials began referring to as an arc of instability soon after 9/11 and that they hoped to garrison and dominate forever has only become more unstable, less amenable to American power and ever more chaotic.
THE REST:
http://billmoyers.com/story/war-what-is-it-good-for-absolutely-nothing-literally/
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War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing. Literally. (Original Post)
Triana
Feb 2016
OP
MH1
(17,600 posts)1. It's good for increasing the coffers of the MIC.
Otherwise, what you and the article said.
Triana
(22,666 posts)2. That's the whole point of it no doubt. n/t
Octafish
(55,745 posts)3. Makes warmongers richer, but that is not good.
Remember War Monkey when he said, "Money trumps peace"? Most people -- including well-read liberals -- have not, thanks to a news media owned by rich warmongers.
"Commercial interests are very powerful interests," said George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007 White House press conference in which he added, "Let me put it this way, ah, sometimes, ah, money trumps peace." And then he giggled and not a single member of the callow, cowed and corrupt press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.
Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention back in 2007. I don't recall even one reporter from the national corporate owned news seeing it fit to comment. Certainly not many have commented on how three generations of Bush men -- Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, President George Herbert Walker Bush and pretzeldent George Walker Bush all had their eyes on Iraq's oil. While prices were high, it became Ukraine's natural gas. What a hoot war is -- and profitable.