Summary: Sunday’s post discussed the price we pay for our wars in money and blood. Today Andrew Bachevich (Colonel, US Army, retired) explains how we have forgotten about these wars and the price paid — and why we have forgotten.
“How We Learned Not To Care About America’s Wars.“
At TomDispatch, 5 October 2017.
Introduction by Tom Engelhardt
Even though the article was buried at the bottom of page eight of the September 28th New York Times, it caught my attention. Its headline: “Russia Destroys Chemical Weapons and Faults U.S. for Not Doing So.” In a televised ceremony, wrote reporter Andrew Higgins, Russian President Vladimir Putin “presided over the destruction of his country’s last declared chemical weapons on Wednesday.” The U.S. and Russia had, it seems, long ago agreed to do so by 2007, before pushing the date back to 2012, and then 2020. The Russians have now beaten that deadline by three years while, according to an unnamed State Department official quoted by Higgins, the U.S. “remains committed” to doing the same by… “the end of 2023.”
But I digress. One line — actually one word — in his story struck me oddly. The “carefully choreographed” Russian event, Higgins commented, “seemed designed to offset the reputation [Putin] has acquired for belligerence and the flouting of international norms amid Russia’s military interventions in Ukraine in 2014 and in Syria.” Yes, it was the most tepid word in that passage which caught my eye: interventions. Such a mild way to describe what the Russians did in Ukraine, but when it came to Syria, something else entirely occurred to me: like Russia, the U.S. is deeply involved in Syria; like Russia, it has troops in rising numbers there; like Russia, it has loosed its air force on that country, dropping staggering numbers of bombs regularly.
In any normal week of news, however, you can generally search in vain for a discussion here of Washington’s “intervention” in Syria. Officially, the U.S. military is conducting “overseas contingency operations” there and they are meant (unlike Russian efforts, of course) to stabilize that country. But in these years you could search, largely without success, for any labels, however tepid, being applied to what the U.S. is actually doing across the Greater Middle East and Africa. Take the recent decision to send thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Is that part of America’s “Afghan intervention”? Evidently not. Yes, we “invaded” in 2001, but what exactly are we doing now? The upping of the ante in Somalia in the Trump era — does that qualify as part of an ongoing “Somali intervention”? If so, you won’t find out about it from your local news reports. The recent bombing of an ISIS training camp in Libya, not even officially considered “an area of active hostilities,” was the first such attack of the Trump era (but hardly the first of recent years). Is that part of Washington’s ongoing “Libyan intervention”? I doubt it. The nine-month air campaign against Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, that left much of that historic area a pile of rubble — is that part of our “Iraqi intervention” 14 years after the invasion of that country? Not as far as I can tell. Were the increasing numbers of bombs dropped on Yemen and the heightened special operations raids there in the early months of the Trump administration part of our ongoing “Yemeni intervention”? It’s not a description I’ve seen anywhere.
Sixteen years after the 9/11 attacks, our never-ending wars and conflicts continue under the rubric of “the war on terror” (no caps), as terror groups spread and destabilization creeps from one of our war zones to the next. But have you noticed just how nameless, how without descriptors of any sort, such ongoing events are? TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich, author of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country
Autopilot Wars: Sixteen Years, But Who’s Counting?
By Andrew J. Bacevich.
Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts. First, the United States is today more or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one faraway place, but at least seven. Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less.
Nor can it be said that we don’t care because we don’t know. True, government authorities withhold certain aspects of ongoing military operations or release only details that they find convenient. Yet information describing what U.S. forces are doing (and where) is readily available, even if buried in recent months by barrages of presidential tweets. Here, for anyone interested, are press releases issued by United States Central Command for just one recent week:
- September 19: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
- September 20: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
- Iraqi Security Forces begin Hawijah offensive.
- September 21: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
- September 22: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
- September 23: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
- Operation Inherent Resolve Casualty.
- September 25: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
- September 26: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
Ever since the United States launched its war on terror, oceans of military press releases have poured forth. And those are just for starters. To provide updates on the U.S. military’s various ongoing campaigns, generals, admirals, and high-ranking defense officials regularly testify before congressional committees or brief members of the press. From the field, journalists offer updates that fill in at least some of the details — on civilian casualties, for example — that government authorities prefer not to disclose. Contributors to newspaper op-ed pages and “experts” booked by network and cable TV news shows, including passels of retired military officers, provide analysis. Trailing behind come books and documentaries that put things in a broader perspective.
But here’s the truth of it. None of it matters.
Like traffic jams or robocalls, war has fallen into the category of things that Americans may not welcome, but have learned to live with. In twenty-first-century America, war is not that big a deal.
While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once mused that the “greatest contribution” of the Vietnam War might have been to make it possible for the United States “to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire.” With regard to the conflict once widely referred to as McNamara’s War, his claim proved grotesquely premature. Yet a half-century later, his wish has become reality.
Why do Americans today show so little interest in the wars waged in their name and at least nominally on their behalf? Why, as our wars drag on and on, doesn’t the disparity between effort expended and benefits accrued arouse more than passing curiosity or mild expressions of dismay? Why, in short, don’t we give a [expletive deleted]? Perhaps just posing such a question propels us instantly into the realm of the unanswerable, like trying to figure out why people idolize Justin Bieber, shoot birds, or watch golf on television.
Without any expectation of actually piercing our collective ennui, let me take a stab at explaining why we don’t give a @#$%&! Here are eight distinctive but mutually reinforcing explanations, offered in a sequence that begins with the blindingly obvious and ends with the more speculative. Americans don’t attend all that much to ongoing American wars because…
(1) U.S. casualty rates are low.
By using proxies and contractors, and relying heavily on airpower, America’s war managers have been able to keep a tight lid on the number of U.S. troops being killed and wounded. In all of 2017, for example, a grand total of 11 American soldiers have been lost in Afghanistan — about equal to the number of shooting deaths in Chicago over the course of a typical week.
True, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where the U.S. is engaged in hostilities, whether directly or indirectly, plenty of people who are not Americans are being killed and maimed. (The estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed this year alone exceeds 12,000.) But those casualties have next to no political salience as far as the United States is concerned. As long as they don’t impede U.S. military operations, they literally don’t count (and generally aren’t counted).
(2) The untabulated costs of Washington’s wars.
In a famous speech, dating from early in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower said that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Dollars spent on weaponry, Ike insisted, translated directly into schools, hospitals, homes, highways, and power plants that would go unbuilt. “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense,” he continued. “[I]t is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
More than six decades later, Americans have long since accommodated themselves to that cross of iron. Many actually see it as a boon, a source of corporate profits, jobs, and, of course, campaign contributions. As such, they avert their eyes from the opportunity costs of our never-ending wars. The dollars expended pursuant to our post-9/11 conflicts will ultimately number in the multi-trillions. Imagine the benefits of investing such sums in upgrading the nation’s aging infrastructure. Yet don’t count on Congressional leaders, other politicians, or just about anyone else to pursue that connection.
(3) On matters related to war, American citizens have opted out.
Others have made the point so frequently that it’s the equivalent of hearing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at Christmastime. Even so, it bears repeating: the American people have defined their obligation to “support the troops” in the narrowest imaginable terms, ensuring above all that such support requires absolutely no sacrifice on their part. Members of Congress abet this civic apathy, while also taking steps to insulate themselves from responsibility. In effect, citizens and their elected representatives in Washington agree: supporting the troops means deferring to the commander in chief, without inquiring about whether what he has the troops doing makes the slightest sense. Yes, we set down our beers long enough to applaud those in uniform and boo those who decline to participate in mandatory rituals of patriotism. What we don’t do is demand anything remotely approximating actual accountability.
(4) Terrorism gets hyped and hyped more.
While international terrorism isn’t a trivial problem (and wasn’t for decades before 9/11), it comes nowhere close to posing an existential threat to the United States. Indeed, other threats, notably the impact of climate change, constitute a far greater danger to the wellbeing of Americans. Worried about the safety of your children or grandchildren? The opioid epidemic constitutes an infinitely greater danger than “Islamic radicalism.” Yet having been sold a bill of goods about a “war on terror” that is essential for “keeping America safe,” mere citizens are easily persuaded that scattering U.S. troops throughout the Islamic world while dropping bombs on designated evildoers is helping win the former while guaranteeing the latter. To question that proposition becomes tantamount to suggesting that God might not have given Moses two stone tablets after all.
(5) Blather crowds out substance.
When it comes to foreign policy, American public discourse is — not to put too fine a point on it — vacuous, insipid, and mindlessly repetitive. William Safire of the New York Times once characterized American political rhetoric as BOMFOG, with those running for high office relentlessly touting the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God. Ask a politician, Republican or Democrat, to expound on this country’s role in the world, and then brace yourself for some variant of WOSFAD, as the speaker insists that it is incumbent upon the World’s Only Superpower to spread Freedom and Democracy. Terms like leadership and indispensable are introduced, along with warnings about the dangers of isolationism and appeasement, embellished with ominous references to Munich. Such grandiose posturing makes it unnecessary to probe too deeply into the actual origins and purposes of American wars, past or present, or assess the likelihood of ongoing wars ending in some approximation of actual success. Cheerleading displaces serious thought.
(6) Besides, we’re too busy.
Think of this as a corollary to point five. Even if the present-day American political scene included figures like Senators Robert La Follette or J. William Fulbright, who long ago warned against the dangers of militarizing U.S. policy, Americans may not retain a capacity to attend to such critiques. Responding to the demands of the Information Age is not, it turns out, conducive to deep reflection. We live in an era (so we are told) when frantic multitasking has become a sort of duty and when being overscheduled is almost obligatory. Our attention span shrinks and with it our time horizon. The matters we attend to are those that happened just hours or minutes ago.
Yet like the great solar eclipse of 2017 — hugely significant and instantly forgotten — those matters will, within another few minutes or hours, be superseded by some other development that briefly captures our attention. As a result, a dwindling number of Americans — those not compulsively checking Facebook pages and Twitter accounts — have the time or inclination to ponder questions like: When will the Afghanistan War end? Why has it lasted almost 16 years? Why doesn’t the finest fighting force in history actually win? Can’t package an answer in 140 characters or a 30-second made-for-TV sound bite? Well, then, slowpoke, don’t expect anyone to attend to what you have to say.
(7) Anyway, the next president will save us.
At regular intervals, Americans indulge in the fantasy that, if we just install the right person in the White House, all will be well. Ambitious politicians are quick to exploit this expectation. Presidential candidates struggle to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of them promise in one way or another to wipe the slate clean and Make America Great Again. Ignoring the historical record of promises broken or unfulfilled, and presidents who turn out not to be deities but flawed human beings, Americans — members of the media above all — pretend to take all this seriously. Campaigns become longer, more expensive, more circus-like, and ever less substantial.
One might think that the election of Donald Trump would prompt a downward revision in the exalted expectations of presidents putting things right. Instead, especially in the anti-Trump camp, getting rid of Trump himself (Collusion! Corruption! Obstruction! Impeachment!) has become the overriding imperative, with little attention given to restoring the balance intended by the framers of the Constitution. The irony of Trump perpetuating wars that he once roundly criticized and then handing the conduct of those wars to generals devoid of ideas for ending them almost entirely escapes notice.
(8) Our culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from criticism.
As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. military establishment aligned itself with the retrograde side of the culture wars. Who can forget the gays-in-the-military controversy that rocked Bill Clinton’s administration during his first weeks in office, as senior military leaders publicly denounced their commander-in-chief?
Those days are long gone. Culturally, the armed forces have moved left. Today, the services go out of their way to project an image of tolerance and a commitment to equality on all matters related to race, gender, and sexuality. So when President Trump announced his opposition to transgendered persons serving in the armed forces, tweeting that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” senior officers politely but firmly disagreed and pushed back. Given the ascendency of cultural issues near the top of the U.S. political agenda, the military’s embrace of diversity helps to insulate it from criticism and from being called to account for a less than sterling performance in waging wars. Put simply, critics who in an earlier day might have blasted military leaders for their inability to bring wars to a successful conclusion hold their fire. Having women graduate from Ranger School or command Marines in combat more than compensates for not winning.
A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary America. But don’t expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of the New York Times to lose any sleep over that fact. Even to notice it would require them — and us — to care.
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About the author.
Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor Emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. Bacevich graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1969.
He served in the United States Army, deployed to Vietnam in 1970-1971. Later he held posts in Germany (including with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment), the United States, and the Persian Gulf. He retired in 1990 from the Army with the rank of Colonel.
He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton. He taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins before joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998.
See his Wikipedia entry. Read his articles at TomDispatch, at The Nation, at the Huffington Post, and at The Atlantic. See these books by by Andrew Bacevich about our wars…
- Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country
(2013).
- America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History
(2017).
For More Information.
If you found this post of use, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Also see all posts about Afghanistan and Iraq, about COIN, and especially these…
- The King of Brobdingnag comments on America’s grand strategy.
- Return of the COINistas (the zombies of military theory).
- Stratfor sees Afghanistan war fatigue in America. Only our rulers remain eager.
- Two generals chat about Afghanistan (a funny, sad, horrifying look at our war).
- Why Trump’s plan for Afghanistan will fail.
- Stratfor pans Trump’s new Afghanistan War plan.
- A reminder that we pay for our wars in money and blood.
“Even to notice it would require them — and us — to care.”
I’ve heard that in Japan there are very few public garbage cans, and yet they don’t have a problem of trash littering their streets, because the citizens have sufficient levels of civic pride, respect, and common decency to carry their rubbish with them until they come across a private receptacle.
It would seem there is a certain satisfaction those people take in the proper functioning of their society, and in each person’s role in that mechanism. I have to imagine that translates into other areas of their public life, such as the reliability of their train systems.
I can’t help but contrast that with attitudes in the US, where it’s not uncommon for example to see someone throw an empty soda cup out the window of a moving vehicle and onto the street. As if it’s someone else’s problem.
That’s the problem, we just don’t care.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to-you-that-you-should_us_59519811e4b0f078efd98440
Hi Mr Kummer and all,
This is an excellent bookend to your earlier blood and treasure post. COL Bacevich is and excellent writer with insights we ignore a our peril. I know you don’t like commenters to veer too off topic, but I’d like to tie these posts together, along with your theme of income inequality, most recently covered in another excellent post.
So, why?
The military-industrial-congressional complex is an excellent way to distribute cash on the one hand, but then concentrate it into targeted hands on the other. There is a Boeing office in Arlington, VA with a model of a 747 that has the location of all of the different places parts come from to assemble it. There are a bunch. There is probably a frob or dortle from Hawaii, which is an exemplar of Adam Smith’s theories… Could be an F35. Whatever.
People don’t realize that GS15s can *retire* at a relatively young age as part of the 10% (million plus dollars in assets) then go work their way up to the 95% (few million dollars in assets) in a second career for a big system integrator. So what if Elon Musk has billions and is in the 0.01% (or whatever, there are probably more zeros) but even rich people like their rock stars and idols to be indescribably richer. These myths come from somewhere. And there is no “man” behind the curtain. I think Donald J Trump proved that. Here’s how dumb I am: two years ago, I would have refused to read a novel based on the premise of a Trump presidency with all of the attendant nonsense that got him there and happened since not because it would have been absurd — I love absurdity, Dadaismus, etc. — but because it would have been unfunny, predictably bad nonsense a hack would churn out to try to do a The Apprentice spin-out.
HRC lost — and it’s been pointed out here and elsewhere — in part because she’s totally in. She’s all in. She loves things how they operate, and she wants to make the pile higher using the same tricks and techniques for the same beneficiaries. When her essential worldview matches GWB’s grammatical manglings, look for the closest PFD! You might have to fight for it! Everyone who’s in is not part of the wee percent, but they’re on the right side of the curve and it works for them.
As a fairly conventional classical liberal who has to suppress my more libertarian urges, I notice that where the free market folks and I hope you take this at face value and not at how it might play on a Righty network, rational/pragmatic social justice folks (unfortunately a too-small pack) come to loggerheads is conflating something like large builder of expensive hardware which is not particularly useful in the defense of the country but in made in its name with anything remotely like a free market. No, it’s a system to take money from California, launder it through a parts factory in South Dakota so some jackass in Connecticut can make his 18% for not doing anything outside of being rich. Nothing in that supplies any value to anyone. It’s all a scam. Hell, the M14 could have provided everything we’ve needed for “national defense” from when it was first delivered until 2025 or beyond. So, it’s heavy. Put a plastic stock on it. Whatever. Look at all of the “platforms” that come, go, get tweaked ordered, unordered, reordered. Ditto F16, Ditto A10. It’s nuts! That’s where the Cato guys fall down on the job. There are folks at Cato who I *know* would reject the MICC as corrupt and do, but as a whole it’s all if it’s private, it’s good, and if it’s gummit, it’s bad, and that is to totally to miss the point. I don’t know who added congressional to the MICC, but they deserve great credit, IMO.
Rant off. Sorry, but you have been on a tear with some interesting and pertinent posts.
With kind regards to you and your readers,
Bill
BIll,
Thanks for posting this well-thought out analysis. I look at these posts thematically (hence the links to others at the end), and it’s great to others review them accordingly — whether favorably or not.
The question I have after reading any analysis, whether superficial or deep (like yours), is so what? That is, what will you do with your conclusions? What do you recommend the rest of us do with them? That’s the “rubber meet the road” point between analysis and political effectiveness.
Dear Mr Kummer,
LK: That is, what will you do with your conclusions? What do you recommend the rest of us do with them?
So, these are great questions and ones I’ve wrestled with — as you have, and far more effectively. The first is what will I do. Well, I am going to get more local. More immediate. This may be a mistake but I am not connecting how there is much I can do about the MICC, beyond leave it behind. But I’m the merest twig on one mighty oak in a forest of countless mighty oaks. I will aspire to effect change at the neighborhood/city/county level with eyes on how those folks will roll things up from there for the larger politics, but I’m more interested in the shared community.
What should other folks do? Well, that requires wisdom above my pay grade, but I would offer these few things I try and fail at all the time. First, listen. What do the facts say? Why do people say what they do? A huge weakness of mine is confirmation bias. My biggest weakness is the one (the myriad dozens) I don’t know about. Fight the flaws you know and find out the ones you have and don’t feel bad because they’re there. Everyone has them. Unfortunately, not everyone cares. Just care is huge.
Here is where you contribute so much: you believe that things can be different. You believe that we have the power to change things. Yes it may be very difficult. But you know what? World War 2 was difficult. We are richer by orders of magnitude. I don’t like our underachievement. We should have all kind of crazy expectations of ourselves as being able to do anything, and building a better world for ourselves and everyone around us should not be aspirational. It should be assumed. Of course we can do it. Who cares about the hard part? Where did that part go?
I’ll ask you a personal question if I may be so bold: has your reading of science fiction helped shape your pragmatic optimism? And if so, maybe that’s a recommendation? Hell, a Fabius Maximus book club! But not Listen, Liberal! (no, everyone, go buy it, it’s good!) but Starship Troopers or whatever. This is, of course, ha ha, only serious, only serious because you can come up with references from about 8 different Star Trek themes at the drop of the hat, and it’s not just nimble googling.
Well, something pie-in-the-sky, something concrete.
I very much appreciate you providing this forum!
With kind regards to you and all,
Bill
Bill,
“e first is what will I do. Well, I am going to get more local.”
That’s by far the second most common answer I get (defeatism/passivity/apathy is by far the most common). And it makes sense. However, not by itself.
As always in these things, I suggest looking first (but not exclusively) to the Founders for advice. Their task — revolution, then building a radically new form of Nation — was far larger. Samuel Adams, one of the first movers, set the pattern. He acted locally, organizing Boston. But he also networked with similarly minded people across the nation through the Committees of Correspondence. These succeeded spectacularly, eventually become shadow governments — the seeds of the revolutionary state and local governments. Without those the revolution would never have gotten off the ground; victory would have been impossible.
Horse-carried mail worked just fine for them. Modern commo and travel tech makes our far easier task even easier.
Dear Mr Kummer,
LK: That’s by far the second most common answer I get (defeatism/passivity/apathy is by far the most common). And it makes sense. However, not by itself.
Heh! You busted me, kinda sorta. I have an agenda, and I want to align my agenda with what might trickle up to the larger politic. My best shot at it is affecting local zoning insanity, then about eight other things, then maybe something bumps into Atlanta or Tallahassee and the process at that level. I am just not the guy to go head to head with the guy who could be my great-grandchild in a Burberry suit that is more expensive than my next thousand old-boy breakfasts put together on whether we should source landing struts from this guys district in Arizona or that guys district in Montana with the backing of a big SI. If that sounds like a cop out, well, I’d tell people to go play sports. You get to learn when you’re out of your league, and that it’s OK to be so. Find the level where you’re best able to contribute. I’ve played Rugby for clubs in almost a dozen nations, but I am not a great athlete — I just found where I could contribute effectively. I am not going to play for Bath. That’s OK. Well, now I couldn’t play against middle schoolers who I just kicked a ball to…
And, as I think you know, I’m a pretty old-school classical liberal. I would have issues if I had to work with Hamilton, not that I completely disagreed with him. But I’d be the interlocutor explaining that Jefferson is not completely wrong about being skeptical of consolidating power in the federal government. If I had a TARDIS and brought him to one of the three letter agencies to see how contract administration and adherence to the paperwork reduction act of 1980 or whatever the year it’s been updated to is going, it might have altered his opinions…
Thank you for challenging me and keeping me honest. We have to pick our fights. BUT, we have to be game for the fight! Pick well, punch well, good luck, and have fun!
With a happy regards,
Bill