American Empire's unwinnable wars, from an Officer's PoV - [PEACE]
Zenaan Harkness
zen at freedbms.net
Fri Nov 8 20:20:49 PST 2019
America's Endless Wars: "At West Point, Graduation Day Felt More Like
A Tragedy Than A Triumph"
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/americas-endless-wars-west-point-graduation-day-felt-more-tragedy-triumph
https://www.thenation.com/article/afghanistan-army-west-point/
...
The first of our wars to come from that nightmare has always been
unwinnable. All the Afghan metrics—the US military’s own “measures
for success”—continue to trend badly, worse than ever in fact. The
futility of the entire endeavor borders on the absurd. It makes me
sad to think that my former officemate and fellow West Point
history instructor, Mark, is once again over there. Along with just
about every serving officer I’ve known, he would laugh if asked
whether he could foresee—or even define—“victory” in that country.
Take my word for it, after 18-plus years, whatever idealism might
once have been in the Army has almost completely evaporated.
Resignation is what remains among most of the officer corps. As for
me, I’ll be left hoping against hope that someone I know or taught
isn’t the last to die in that never-ending war from hell.
My former cadets who ended up in armor (tanks and reconnaissance)
or ventured into the Special Forces might now find themselves in
Syria—the war President Trump “ended” by withdrawing American
troops from that country, until, of course, almost as many of them
were more or less instantly sent back in. Some of the armor
officers among my students might even have the pleasure of
indefinitely guarding that country’s oil fields, which—if the
United States takes some of that liquid gold for itself—might just
violate international law. But hey, what else is new?
Still more—mostly intelligence officers, logisticians, and special
operators—can expect to deploy to any one of the dozen or so West
African or Horn of Africa countries that the US military now calls
home. In the name of “advising and assisting” the local security
forces of often autocratic African regimes, American troops still
occasionally, if quietly, die in “non-combat” missions in places
like Niger or Somalia.
None of these combat operations have been approved, or even
meaningfully debated, by Congress. But in the America of 2019 that
doesn’t qualify as a problem. There are, however, problems of a
more strategic variety. After all, it’s demonstrably clear that,
since the founding of the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in
2008, violence on the continent has only increased, while Islamist
terror and insurgent groups have proliferated in an exponential
fashion. To be fair, though, such counter-productivity has been the
name of the game in the “war on terror” since it began.
Another group of new academy graduates will spend up to a year in
Poland, Romania, or the Baltic states of Eastern Europe. There,
they’ll ostensibly train the paltry armies of those relatively new
NATO countries—added to the alliance in foolish violation of
repeated American promises not to expand eastward as the Cold War
ended. In reality, though, they’ll be serving as provocative
“signals” to a supposedly expansionist Russia. With the Russian
threat wildly exaggerated, just as it was in the Cold War era, the
very presence of my Baltic-based former cadets will only heighten
tensions between the two over-armed nuclear heavyweights. Such
military missions are too big not to be provocative, but too small
to survive a real (if essentially unimaginable) war.
The intelligence officers among my cadets might, on the other hand,
get the “honor” of helping the Saudi Air Force through
intelligence-sharing to doom some Yemeni targets—often civilian—to
oblivion thanks to US manufactured munitions. In other words, these
young officers could be made complicit in what’s already the worst
humanitarian disaster in the world.
Other recent cadets of mine might even have the ignominious
distinction of being part of military convoys driving along
interstate highways to America’s southern border to emplace what
President Trump has termed “beautiful” barbed wire there, while
helping detain refugees of wars and disorder that Washington often
helped to fuel.
...
None of these potential tasks awaiting my former students is even
remotely linked to the oath (to “support and defend the
Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and
domestic”) that newly commissioned officers swear on day one. They
are instead all unconstitutional, ill-advised distractions that
benefit mainly an entrenched national security state and the
arms-makers that go with them. The tragedy is that a few of my
beloved cadets with whom I once played touch football, who babysat
my children, who shed tears of anxiety and fear during private
lunches in my office might well sustain injuries that will last a
lifetime or die in one of this country’s endless hegemonic wars.
...
My last day in front of a class, I skipped the planned lesson and
leveled with the young men and women seated before me. We discussed
my own once bright, now troubled career and my struggles with my
emotional health. We talked about the complexities, horror, and
macabre humor of combat and they asked me blunt questions about
what they could expect in their future as graduates. Then, in my
last few minutes as a teacher, I broke down. I hadn’t planned this,
nor could I control it.
My greatest fear, I said, was that their budding young lives might
closely track my own journey of disillusionment, emotional trauma,
divorce, and moral injury. The thought that they would soon serve
in the same pointless, horrifying wars, I told them, made me “want
to puke in a trash bin.” The clock struck 1600 (4 pm), class time
was up, yet not a single one of those stunned cadets—unsure
undoubtedly of what to make of a superior officer’s streaming
tears—moved for the door. I assured them that it was okay to leave,
hugged each of them as they finally exited, and soon found myself
disconcertingly alone. So I erased my chalkboards and also left.
Three years have passed. About 130 students of mine graduated in
May. My last group will pin on the gold bars of brand new army
officers in late May 2020. I’m still in touch with several former
cadets and, long after I did so, students of mine are now driving
down the dusty lanes of Iraq or tramping the narrow footpaths of
Afghanistan.
My nightmare has come true.
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