Wars of Choice

Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense appointee of both a Republican and a Democratic administration, would appear to be about as politically neutral and objective as any military expert could be expected to be. And in these ruinous financial times, as the United States moves into a phase of modern history where it will share the superpower limelight with at least China (if not Russia… again), our ability to wage war without regard to social or hard dollar costs is no more. “‘If we were about to be attacked or had been attacked or something happened that threatened a vital U.S. national interest, I would be the first in line to say, ‘Let’s go,’ ’ Mr. Gates said [from his office in the Pentagon]. ‘I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.’” New York Times, June 18^th.

Take a good look at Chinese and Russian policies after the fall of the Berlin Wall: they have not spent their nations’ capital to fund their military for attacks outside of their own territorial borders. But 9/11 was an attack on American soil by foreign powers, something neither China nor Russia has experienced in recent history. But who attacked us? Afghanistan? Iraq? And who wound up paying the greatest price? Afghanistan? Iraq? Or us? By removing a Sunni minority government (Saddam Hussein) from Iraq and allowing the majority Shiites to take control, we effectively realigned Iraq’s political future into the Shiite orbit of or clear enemy, Iran. In Afghanistan, we placed our bet on a government that became horribly corrupt, allowing the Taliban to increase their power in every region of the country except the capital cit y of Kabul and environs.

Indeed, despite our pledge to rid the Afghan people of the Taliban scourge forever, we are now forced to negotiate with them to accelerate our extraction from a region where no foreign power has ever succeeded in creating a sustained military success: “The United States is in contact with the Taliban about a possible settlement to the near decade-long war in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on [June 18^th], the first official confirmation of U.S. involvement in negotiations.”HuffingtonPost.com, June 18^th. “Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates [also] acknowledged on [June 19^th] that the U.S. State Department is in direct talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan.” Huffington Post, June 19^th. Meanwhile, our economy is in shambles with a federal deficit that boggles the mind and has brought our Congress to a virtual halt as it considers raising the debt ceiling.

We spent over 1$ trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, turned a federal surplus into an economy-destroying deficit, and really did not accomplish the fundamentals of our military mission. Indeed, our war efforts in these two theaters seem to have provided massive recruiting materials for anti-American Muslim fundamentalists, from Pakistan to Iran. According to the June 21^st Bloomberg.com: “Spending growth on Afghanistan operations helped push the Pentagon over the $1 trillion mark, increasing to $6.2 billion per month in April from $4.3 billion in the first two months of fiscal 2011 that began Oct. 1. Afghanistan spending in fiscal 2009, as Barack Obama became president, averaged $3.9 billion per month… The spending total includes war-related operations, transportation, special combat pay and benefits, food, medical services, maintenance, replacement of lost combat equipment and building the Iraq and Afghanistan security forces... Still, the $1 trillion does not include about $95 billion in funds appropriated but still to put on contract or paid to personnel to cover operational costs over the rest of the fiscal year as well as procurement of replacement weapons systems and construction that take years to spend, said Amy Belasco, a Congressional Research Service budget expert.” And think about those lifetime benefits, survivor and disability payments that can drag on for decades that aren’t in those figures. Still, we seem to be the perennial global cop.

We joined U.N. efforts in Bosnia, a successful purge of genocidal maniacs, and perhaps that is the poster-war for global intervention. Now, we face our military commitment, engendering legal challenges to the President’s ability to wage such combat efforts, in another war against repression, this time in support of rebels against a brutal dictator in Libya. Somehow, we missed intervening in the slaughter being conducted against its own citizens by Syrian forces. We also missed another military expedition – against nuclear-powered Iran – that was seriously contemplated in the last two years of the Bush-Cheney administration… because Robert Gates was very much a part of the faction of cabinet officers that opposed such adventurism. “ ‘[Robert Gates will] be remembered for making us aware of the danger of over-reliance on military intervention as an instrument of American foreign policy,’ said former Senator David L. Boren, who, during his tenure as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, developed a rapport with Mr. Gates when he was director of central intelligence in the early 1990s.” NY Times. For the most part, our attempts at playing global cop have alienated more people than those who would stand and admire us.

There is no way for the United States to withdraw completely from military efforts outside our borders. Our minor remaining presence in South Korea, for example, does serve as a deterrent to the idiotic dictatorship to the north, and South Korea is a vital economic link to the U.S. We also have treaties that we have signed, which includes our pledge to protect Israel. But it would seem that reliance on U.S. forces as the mainstay of “moral intervention” in internal disputes in which we are not attacked (or are in imminent and real danger of attack) is no longer tenable. We can no longer afford to be the single major player in such efforts, instead relying on a vastly more balanced participation in U.N.-sanctioned (perhaps N.A.T.O.-sanctioned, but this must be viewed with increasing skepticism) peace-keeping, primarily targeting genocide-prevention or the destruction of resources that are absolutely vital to our future. We must learn this lesson, because we cannot survive another kick up of deficit-growing military intervention unless we truly can justify “why.” We literally could spend ourselves into self-destruction.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I truly wish more political decision-makers were well-schooled in the clear and obvious lessons of history.