Forever Wars
Perpetual war, endless war, or a forever war, is a lasting state of war with no clear conditions that would lead to its conclusion.
"War does not determine who is right — only who is left.” In History we have records of the hundred years war, which ran from 1337 till 1453, the Trojan War which lasted at least a decade, the Roman–Persian Wars which lasted nearly 7 centuries as well as the Ottoman wars which lasted nearly as long, the Polish–Russian Wars pale in comparison at a meager 380 years, as do dozens of other long forgotten conflicts of bloodlust. In the early 20th Century we had World War One - at the culmination politicians and statesmen alike declared it to be The War to End All Wars - and we all know how that worked out. In all these conflicts Historians frequently question whether the cost justified the losses and whether the victor, when there actually was a clear cut victory actually gained much.
"When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men's weapons will grow dull and their ardour will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength ... There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare ... In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns." - Sun Tzŭ - The Art of War
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” - Plato
The Views and Opinions of the Authors are purely their own
Are the Forever Wars Really Ending?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Clearly, with the cuts in troops in Germany, Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump has signaled a new resolve to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy in an “America First” direction
“There is no… sound reason for the United States to continue sacrificing precious lives and treasure in a conflict not directly connected to our safety or other vital national interests.” So said William Ruger about Afghanistan, our longest war.
What makes this statement significant is that President Donald Trump has ordered a drawdown by mid-October of half of the 8,600 troops still in the country. And Ruger was just named U.S. ambassador to Kabul.
The selection of Ruger to oversee the U.S. withdrawal came as Gen. Frank McKenzie of Central Command announced plans to cut the U.S. troop presence in Iraq from 5,200 to 3,000 by the end of September.
Is America, at long last, really coming home from the forever wars?
A foreign policy analyst at the libertarian Charles Koch Institute and a Naval officer decorated for his service in Afghanistan, Ruger has long championed a noninterventionist foreign policy.
His nomination tends to confirm that, should Trump win a second term, his often-declared goal of extracting America from the forever wars of the Middle East, unachieved in his first term, would become a priority.
Yet, we have been here before, bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, only to send thousands back when our enemies seemed to be gaining the upper hand at the expense of the allies we left behind.
Still, this time, Trump’s withdrawals look to be irreversible. And with the U.S. deal with the Taliban producing peace negotiations between the Kabul government and the Taliban, America seems to be saying to both sides of this endless civil war:
The destiny of Afghanistan is yours. The choice of war or peace is up to you. If talks collapse and a fight to the finish ensues, we Americans are not coming back, even to prevent a Taliban victory.
Speaking in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Trump made a remarkable declaration:
“We don’t have to be in the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel. … There was a time we needed desperately oil, we don’t need that anymore.” If Trump means what he says, U.S. forces will be out of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan early in his second term. . . This has been a summary only Read the Full Article By Patrick J. Buchanan @ Buchanan.org
19 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, end the forever wars
Via Orange County Register
Nineteen years ago today, America was shocked by the tragic attacks on our nation. We must never forget the nearly 3,000 lives we lost that day or the incalculable impact on all who were impacted by the attacks of that day. The world as we knew it changed that day.
In the aftermath of the attacks, a sense of national unity swept America not experienced ever since.
Especially amid our currently brutally divisive and challenging moment, it’s difficult to fathom a return to anything resembling such unity.
But it’s also all too easy to forget that two decades later, America has been a nation at war ever since.
Just a week after the attacks of Sept. 11, Congress approved and President George W. Bush signed an “Authorization for Use of Military Force” granting the executive branch the authority to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons…”
Since that moment, and followed up by an AUMF in 2002 to permit the executive branch to use military force in Iraq, the United States has found itself in a series of conflicts, many of which continue to this day.
The costs of these conflicts have been immense. Read More
Forever Wars Don’t End. They Just Go Corporate
By Josuhua Keating @ Slate.com
Two recent attacks reveal the U.S.’s troubling reliance on military contractors.
President Donald Trump speaks frequently about his desire to bring U.S. troops home from places like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan and bring a close to the “endless wars” he inherited. Just last Wednesday he boasted that “we left Syria.” This isn’t even true in an official sense, but troop numbers also only tell part of the story. Some boots on the ground are not being counted at all.
In a stunning report on Wednesday, the New York Times revealed details of a Jan. 3 attack by the Somali jihadi group Al-Shabab on a base in neighboring Kenya that left three Americans dead. The Pentagon was so alarmed by the incident that it quickly deployed 100 troops to restore security at the base at Manda Bay. But it got almost no attention in the United States, perhaps because it occurred in the aftermath of the killing of another contractor, in Iraq, which set off the tit-for-tat cycle that nearly brought the U.S. and Iran to war. Two of the three Americans were civilian contractors.
The U.S. increasingly relies on private contractors in a vast number of overseas military operations, creating a status quo that both obscures the extent of the U.S. military’s reach and creates a host of new dangers. If Trump moves ahead with troop withdrawals—the Pentagon is reportedly considering a major drawdown in Africa even as conflicts with jihadi groups in Somalia and West Africa intensify—these contractors could take on an even greater role.
Trump may be perfectly happy with this new status quo. His administration’s reliance on contract workers goes far beyond military roles. Erik Prince, founder of the contractor Blackwater (now known as Academi) and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is an influential if unofficial figure in the administration and has publicly advocated replacing U.S. troops in Syria and Afghanistan with contractors. Trump, who recently boasted inaccurately that Saudi Arabia paid $1 billion for the deployment of U.S. troops, doesn’t always appear to grasp the distinction between troops and mercenaries. The use of private soldiers generally fits with his transactional approach to foreign policy.
But this drift toward privatization began before Trump took office. Under the George W. Bush administration . . . Read More
