My grand-daughter posed that question to me the other day. She’s aware of the initial reason to invade Afghanistan after 9/11. She’s aware of the unilateral decision by Bush 43 to invade Iraq. What’s she’s finding hard to understand is why we haven’t left. What is it that we hope to further accomplish? The ethnic and religious feuds have continued unabated for a thousand years and we are powerless to stop them. The recent revelations about the continuous positive propaganda by our government in spite of their own knowledge we weren’t making a difference (similar to The Pentagon Papers), prompted her interest.
I don’t have any good answers to give her. What reasons can we provide for the continual occupation of these countries and the never ending death toll among American troops and contractors?
No one wanted to listen to President Eisenhower’s 1961 warning about the increasing power of the “Military Industrial Complex”. JFK tried to take some steps to reign it in and paid for this action with his life. No one since has dared to question its power and influence. WW 2 ended 75 years ago and we still have troops in Europe and Japan. The Korean War ended in 1953, but the US still has troops there 67 years later. US forces have been in the Middle East fighting for 18 years with no end in sight. Today the military of the United States is deployed in more than 150 countries around the world, with approximately 170,000 of its active-duty personnel serving outside the United States and its territories. President Trump has made some noise about “bringing the troops home”, but has not really made any concrete steps in that direction. If he cares about his health, he will not seriously change anything about the current Military Industrial Complex. Far too many rich and powerful families are making way too much money for them to allow any significant changes to the status quo.
For Afghanistan, the US has run into the same problem that everyone else has had: the government is too weak to gain legitimacy and implement security. So far, successive presidents have decided that they do not want to totally withdraw US troops until there are better assurances that Al Qaeda, and more recently ISIS, will not come back and use the country as a base for overseas attacks. However, the number of US troops has come down a lot. There were 100,000 in 2010 and thereabouts, now we are below 12,000 or so. Casualties have also dropped significantly in recent years, which some don’t recognize.
Iraq is more complicated. Obama dramatically drew down US presence in the early years of his presidency, from roughly 180,000 in 2007 to nearly none in 2012. But when ISIS exploded onto the scene in 2014, troops came back in to train and advise Iraqis and others to fight ISIS. Until the recent unpleasantness, the US had around 5,000 troops there. Obama and Trump (until very recently) has those troops there for the counter-ISIS mission, with the support of the Iraqi government.
In part it’s to fight against clear threats, such as ISIS and al-Qaida remnants in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region. And in part is that it’s very hard to give up on a goal like “nation building”. Even if it’s not working, you at least, in your own mind, get credit for trying. When you give up, things are likely to get worse, at least in the short run, and even if they only stay the same level of bad, it is now “your fault”.
It’s possible that there’s an element of “we must not give the impression that we give in to terrorists”. A justification and motivation for terrorist attacks on US interests in the region is US interests in the region. Pulling out militarily can be seen as a victory for the terrorists and mean more risks for US economic and political interests, even though the “infidel troops on our soil” justification is gone.
I’ll tell you what. I will read books on the Kennedy assassination and his ideas about Vietnam and Cuba and you can get your information about these subjects from Wiki. And don’t tell me what I should read up on. I’ve read several books on this subject from all sides and have come up with my own conclusions. I suggest you do the same.
I haven’t talked with our generals but, as I understand it, these would be the basic concepts:
The best defense is a good offense. Either we can try to fight bad guys on American soil or go over to where they are and fight them there. In terms of public safety, the latter is much better.
The US has a vested interest in international commerce. Our military was, after all, initially formed to fight pirates in Tripoli, because they were attacking our trading ships.
You broke it, you bought it. If you execute a man, because he was a criminal, and he leaves behind a innocent little baby then either you walk away and hope the baby doesn’t starve before someone finds it, or you do your duty to ensure that it is being taken care of. Only one of those options is decent.
It’s simple. We didn’t lose. If we had lost, we could have left. But we didn’t, so we had to stay. We lost in Viet Nam, so we left. We lost in 1812, so we left. Sadly, we went back and haven’t lost there again, so we still have troops there too. When America goes to war, we stay until we lose.
I would argue that the best and most cost-effective defence is a believable threat of retaliation, or at least the impression that an attack would be too costly.
Surely the Massachusetts militia formed to fight the British in the 1770s was the forerunner of the US military.
3)The problem comes when the innocent baby grows up and sets out to avenge his father.
We have to assume that people wouldn’t intentionally do something that they thought was going to be useless and/or a failure. A GQ answer would necessarily be one of “good” reasons since the question is, “What are the (presumably positive) reasons for doing this strange thing?”
You and your grand-daughter are making the mistake of believing that our government acts rationally. It’s a government. It’s a big bureaucracy. It never acts rationally.
There are too many people with a vested interest in endless war. First, in the government itself you have countless career bureaucrats and diplomats and admirals and generals and the like. Then you have lobbyists for companies that profit off war, and various experts at newspapers, think tanks, and such who have made their career sucking up to the military, and so forth. All of these influential people were chosen for having a pro-government and pro-military bias.
So while technically the President of the United States could choose to end any war at any time and bring home all the American troops in a particular place, doing so provokes the anger of “the blob”, i.e. of the huge mass of highly paid, highly influential careerists who were selected to advance and defend the military-industrial complex. Here’s a good article that discusses how they tilt the “conversation” in a pro-war, pro-military direction.
The Founders had a horror of standing armies, since they were historically used as tools of oppression by the monarchy in Europe. Militias, quick to form and disband, were by far favored. This led to huge problems during the Revolutionary War because neither Congress nor the states wanted to establish a national army that was so clearly needed.
That stayed true after the U.S. became a country. The problem was globalism. As soon as Americans got out into the world they fell prey to more powerful forces that had no compunctions about creating armies. And navies. Congress created a navy in 1801. The Marines already existed. The combination was seen as necessary both against the Barbary States and later against the British.
West Point followed, in the interestingly named Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802, but it was a minor appendage to the navy and mostly responsible for training engineers.
You can argue that anything and everything that involved arms was a forerunner to the military, but the prejudice against an army except in times of war remained huge until after WWII. The U.S. Army was always a global laughingstock until then.
Yes, a president could do that. If at all wise, they would order troops to head home immediately, leaving much gear behind, just before leaving office - when it’s too late for The Blob to stage a pre-emptive hit. That ex-prez should probably hide out, too, maybe in Beijing. But they’ll die soon anyway. The Blob is not kind.
From the article: “The blob is neither liberal nor conservative, it is simply invested in maintaining the American empire in its current form.” The “current form” includes spending more on “national security” than the rest of the world combined. Keep the cash flowing! Who cares if much military hardware is unfit for service? Don’t bother to repair those old planes, ships, and APCs - buy more! Buy more missiles and artillery that will never be fired in anger. Buy more systems that don’t work. It’s only business.
The Founders were right to fear standing armies. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” was their ideal. So much for that. :smack:
Well obviously without the stabilizing influence of the US military, the whole area would devolve into a chaotic quagmire of partisan violence and constant low-level insurrection.