"Tell me how this ZIO-Hubris ends" - rises to the level of Zioconned Talmudic conundrum....
The golden age of ZIOCONNED special operations, courtesy of the infamous White House Murder INC, in the Levant and Worldwide....
By Andrew Bacevich;
As he campaigns for re-election, President Barack Obama periodically reminds audiences of his success in terminating the deeply unpopular Iraq War. With fingers crossed for luck, he vows to do the same with the equally unpopular war in Afghanistan. If not exactly a peacemaker, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president can (with some justification) at least claim credit for being a war-ender.
Yet when it comes to military policy, the Obama administration's success in shutting down wars conducted in plain sight tells only half the story, and the lesser half at that. More significant has been this president's enthusiasm for instigating or expanding
[ I deeply fear for the Brave American People, when the chattering classes merely reinforce their own Zioconned political autism....
The process of blind Zioconned vilification continues on auto-pilot....
Zioconned US politics seem to be dominated by a lynch mob craving blood and by those who claim to be cowed by that mob...all for the benefit of Zioconned, greedy, criminal and utterly corrupt security contractors, of course....
The lynch mob is really just a bunch of Zioconned bullies, afraid to put their own skin into the fight, so the US attacks only the weakest and poorest (Afghanistan) Iraq, Libya, or Grenada....for no reason that they can articulate....
The only thing that has saved Iran and Lebanon so far..., is that they have shown that they might be able to land a solid punch in return before solidly defeating the ZIOCONNED idiots, just like in the 2006 War on Lebanon.... That has been enough to scare off the mob and reveal them as a bunch of despicable cowards.
This is nothing more than Israeli paranoia, well cultivated and transplanted to the shores of the Zioconned Potomac, where it has found fertile ground, ironically in a place bristling with more military systems than any other....LOL ]
By Andrew Bacevich;
As he campaigns for re-election, President Barack Obama periodically reminds audiences of his success in terminating the deeply unpopular Iraq War. With fingers crossed for luck, he vows to do the same with the equally unpopular war in Afghanistan. If not exactly a peacemaker, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president can (with some justification) at least claim credit for being a war-ender.
Yet when it comes to military policy, the Obama administration's success in shutting down wars conducted in plain sight tells only half the story, and the lesser half at that. More significant has been this president's enthusiasm for instigating or expanding
and ZIOCONNED secret wars, those conducted out of sight and by commandos.
President Franklin Roosevelt may not have invented the airplane, but during World War II he transformed strategic bombing into one of the principal emblems of the American way of war. General Dwight D Eisenhower had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. Yet, as president, Ike's strategy of Massive Retaliation made nukes the centerpiece of US national security policy.
So, too, with Obama and special operations forces. The US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) with its constituent operating forces - Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and the like - predated his presidency by decades. Yet it is only on Obama's watch that these secret warriors have reached the pinnacle of the US military's prestige hierarchy.
John F Kennedy famously gave the Green Berets their distinctive headgear. Obama has endowed the whole special operations "community" with something less decorative but far more important: privileged status that provides special operators with maximum autonomy while insulating them from the vagaries of politics, budgetary or otherwise.
Congress may yet require the Pentagon to undertake some (very modest) belt-tightening, but one thing's for sure: no one is going to tell USSOCOM to go on a diet. What the special ops types want, they will get, with few questions asked - and virtually none of those few posed in public.
Since 9/11, USSOCOM's budget has quadrupled. The special operations order of battle has expanded accordingly. At present, there are an estimated 66,000 uniformed and civilian personnel on the rolls, a doubling in size since 2001 with further growth projected. Yet this expansion had already begun under Obama's predecessor. His essential contribution has been to broaden the special ops mandate. As one observer put it, the Obama White House let Special Operations Command "off the leash".
As a consequence, USSOCOM assets today go more places and undertake more missions while enjoying greater freedom of action than ever before. After a decade in which Iraq and Afghanistan absorbed the lion's share of the attention, hitherto neglected swaths of Africa, Asia and Latin America are receiving greater scrutiny.
Already operating in dozens of countries around the world - as many as 120 by the end of this year - special operators engage in activities that range from reconnaissance and counter-terrorism to humanitarian assistance and "direct action." The traditional motto of the Army special forces is "De Oppresso Liber" ("To Free the Oppressed"). A more apt slogan for special operations forces as a whole might be "Coming soon to a Third World country near you!"
The displacement of conventional forces by special operations forces as the preferred US military instrument - the "force of choice" according to the head of USSOCOM, Admiral William McRaven - marks the completion of a decades-long cultural repositioning of the American soldier.
The GI, once represented by the likes of cartoonist Bill Mauldin's iconic Willie and Joe, is no more, his place taken by today's elite warrior professional. Mauldin's creations were heroes, but not superheroes. The nameless, lionized SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden are flesh-and blood Avengers. Willie and Joe were "us". SEALs are anything but "us". They occupy a pedestal well above mere mortals. Couch potato America stands in awe of their skill and bravery.
This cultural transformation has important political implications. It represents the ultimate manifestation of the abyss now separating the military and society. Nominally bemoaned by some, including former secretary of defense Robert Gates and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, this civilian-military gap has only grown over the course of decades and is now widely accepted as the norm.
As one consequence, the American people have forfeited owner's rights over their army, having less control over the employment of US forces than New Yorkers have over the management of the Knicks or Yankees.
As admiring spectators, we may take at face value the testimony of experts (even if such testimony is seldom disinterested) who assure us that the SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets, etc are the best of the best, and that they stand ready to deploy at a moment's notice so that Americans can sleep soundly in their beds. If the United States is indeed engaged, as Admiral McRaven has said, in "a generational struggle", we will surely want these guys in our corner.
Even so, allowing war in the shadows to become the new American way of war is not without a downside. Here are three reasons why we should think twice before turning global security over to Admiral McRaven and his associates.
Goodbye accountability. Autonomy and accountability exist in inverse proportion to one another. Indulge the former and kiss the latter goodbye. In practice, the only thing the public knows about special ops activities is what the national security apparatus chooses to reveal.
Can you rely on those who speak for that apparatus in Washington to tell the truth? No more than you can rely on JPMorgan Chase to manage your money prudently. Granted, out there in the field, most troops will do the right thing most of the time. On occasion, however, even members of an elite force will stray off the straight and narrow.
(Until just a few weeks ago, most Americans considered White House Secret Service agents part of an elite force.) Americans have a strong inclination to trust the military. Yet as a famous Republican once said: trust but verify. There's no verifying things that remain secret. Unleashing USSOCOM is a recipe for mischief.
Hello imperial presidency. From a president's point of view, one of the appealing things about special forces is that he can send them wherever he wants to do whatever he directs. There's no need to ask permission or to explain. Employing USSOCOM as your own private military means never having to say you're sorry.
When president Bill Clinton intervened in Bosnia or Kosovo, when president George W Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, they at least went on television to clue the rest of us in. However perfunctory the consultations may have been, the White House at least talked things over with the leaders on Capitol Hill.
Once in a while, members of the US Congress even cast votes to indicate approval or disapproval of some military action. With special ops, no such notification or consultation is necessary. The president and his minions have a free hand. Building on the precedents set by Obama, stupid and reckless presidents will enjoy this prerogative no less than shrewd and well-intentioned ones.
And then what ...? As US special ops forces roam the world slaying evildoers, the famous question posed by David Petraeus as the invasion of Iraq began - "Tell me how this ends" - rises to the level of Talmudic conundrum.
There are certainly plenty of evildoers who wish us ill (primarily but not necessarily in the Greater Middle East). How many will USSOCOM have to liquidate before the job is done? Answering that question becomes all the more difficult given that some of the killing has the effect of adding new recruits to the ranks of the non-well-wishers.
In short, handing war to the special operators severs an already too tenuous link between war and politics; it becomes war for its own sake. Remember Bush's "global war on terror"? Actually, his war was never truly global. War waged in a special-operations-first world just might become truly global - and never-ending. In that case, McRaven's "generational struggle" is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Andrew J Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a TomDispatch regular. He is editor of the new book The Short American Century, just published by Harvard University Press.
President Franklin Roosevelt may not have invented the airplane, but during World War II he transformed strategic bombing into one of the principal emblems of the American way of war. General Dwight D Eisenhower had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. Yet, as president, Ike's strategy of Massive Retaliation made nukes the centerpiece of US national security policy.
So, too, with Obama and special operations forces. The US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) with its constituent operating forces - Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and the like - predated his presidency by decades. Yet it is only on Obama's watch that these secret warriors have reached the pinnacle of the US military's prestige hierarchy.
John F Kennedy famously gave the Green Berets their distinctive headgear. Obama has endowed the whole special operations "community" with something less decorative but far more important: privileged status that provides special operators with maximum autonomy while insulating them from the vagaries of politics, budgetary or otherwise.
Congress may yet require the Pentagon to undertake some (very modest) belt-tightening, but one thing's for sure: no one is going to tell USSOCOM to go on a diet. What the special ops types want, they will get, with few questions asked - and virtually none of those few posed in public.
Since 9/11, USSOCOM's budget has quadrupled. The special operations order of battle has expanded accordingly. At present, there are an estimated 66,000 uniformed and civilian personnel on the rolls, a doubling in size since 2001 with further growth projected. Yet this expansion had already begun under Obama's predecessor. His essential contribution has been to broaden the special ops mandate. As one observer put it, the Obama White House let Special Operations Command "off the leash".
As a consequence, USSOCOM assets today go more places and undertake more missions while enjoying greater freedom of action than ever before. After a decade in which Iraq and Afghanistan absorbed the lion's share of the attention, hitherto neglected swaths of Africa, Asia and Latin America are receiving greater scrutiny.
Already operating in dozens of countries around the world - as many as 120 by the end of this year - special operators engage in activities that range from reconnaissance and counter-terrorism to humanitarian assistance and "direct action." The traditional motto of the Army special forces is "De Oppresso Liber" ("To Free the Oppressed"). A more apt slogan for special operations forces as a whole might be "Coming soon to a Third World country near you!"
The displacement of conventional forces by special operations forces as the preferred US military instrument - the "force of choice" according to the head of USSOCOM, Admiral William McRaven - marks the completion of a decades-long cultural repositioning of the American soldier.
The GI, once represented by the likes of cartoonist Bill Mauldin's iconic Willie and Joe, is no more, his place taken by today's elite warrior professional. Mauldin's creations were heroes, but not superheroes. The nameless, lionized SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden are flesh-and blood Avengers. Willie and Joe were "us". SEALs are anything but "us". They occupy a pedestal well above mere mortals. Couch potato America stands in awe of their skill and bravery.
This cultural transformation has important political implications. It represents the ultimate manifestation of the abyss now separating the military and society. Nominally bemoaned by some, including former secretary of defense Robert Gates and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, this civilian-military gap has only grown over the course of decades and is now widely accepted as the norm.
As one consequence, the American people have forfeited owner's rights over their army, having less control over the employment of US forces than New Yorkers have over the management of the Knicks or Yankees.
As admiring spectators, we may take at face value the testimony of experts (even if such testimony is seldom disinterested) who assure us that the SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets, etc are the best of the best, and that they stand ready to deploy at a moment's notice so that Americans can sleep soundly in their beds. If the United States is indeed engaged, as Admiral McRaven has said, in "a generational struggle", we will surely want these guys in our corner.
Even so, allowing war in the shadows to become the new American way of war is not without a downside. Here are three reasons why we should think twice before turning global security over to Admiral McRaven and his associates.
Goodbye accountability. Autonomy and accountability exist in inverse proportion to one another. Indulge the former and kiss the latter goodbye. In practice, the only thing the public knows about special ops activities is what the national security apparatus chooses to reveal.
Can you rely on those who speak for that apparatus in Washington to tell the truth? No more than you can rely on JPMorgan Chase to manage your money prudently. Granted, out there in the field, most troops will do the right thing most of the time. On occasion, however, even members of an elite force will stray off the straight and narrow.
(Until just a few weeks ago, most Americans considered White House Secret Service agents part of an elite force.) Americans have a strong inclination to trust the military. Yet as a famous Republican once said: trust but verify. There's no verifying things that remain secret. Unleashing USSOCOM is a recipe for mischief.
Hello imperial presidency. From a president's point of view, one of the appealing things about special forces is that he can send them wherever he wants to do whatever he directs. There's no need to ask permission or to explain. Employing USSOCOM as your own private military means never having to say you're sorry.
When president Bill Clinton intervened in Bosnia or Kosovo, when president George W Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, they at least went on television to clue the rest of us in. However perfunctory the consultations may have been, the White House at least talked things over with the leaders on Capitol Hill.
Once in a while, members of the US Congress even cast votes to indicate approval or disapproval of some military action. With special ops, no such notification or consultation is necessary. The president and his minions have a free hand. Building on the precedents set by Obama, stupid and reckless presidents will enjoy this prerogative no less than shrewd and well-intentioned ones.
And then what ...? As US special ops forces roam the world slaying evildoers, the famous question posed by David Petraeus as the invasion of Iraq began - "Tell me how this ends" - rises to the level of Talmudic conundrum.
There are certainly plenty of evildoers who wish us ill (primarily but not necessarily in the Greater Middle East). How many will USSOCOM have to liquidate before the job is done? Answering that question becomes all the more difficult given that some of the killing has the effect of adding new recruits to the ranks of the non-well-wishers.
In short, handing war to the special operators severs an already too tenuous link between war and politics; it becomes war for its own sake. Remember Bush's "global war on terror"? Actually, his war was never truly global. War waged in a special-operations-first world just might become truly global - and never-ending. In that case, McRaven's "generational struggle" is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Andrew J Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a TomDispatch regular. He is editor of the new book The Short American Century, just published by Harvard University Press.
As I've said repeatedly and it is clearly incontrovertible, the ZIOCONNED US position on Iran has ZERO to do with any alleged "nuclear weapons program" - which just about everyone agrees does not exist and the DIA claims basically never did exist except on paper - but rather with regime change - or more precisely, regime disruption.
In other words, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down and thus the military-industrial complex wants a replacement of the $100 billion or more a year they've been getting free from the US taxpayer - or China, take your pick - for the last decade. Only Iran offers another decade-long war. North Korea would be too "hot", China is nuclear, as is Pakistan. Only Iran is an "easy target" in the sense that it cannot threaten the US homeland while at the same time burning up billions in war expenses which will have to be replaced at inflated prices.
And of course, there's the oil...
Recent articles in various places have correctly pointed out that ZIOCONNED Obama is "more Bush than Bush" in his militaristic foreign policy. ZIOCONNED Obama is owned and operated by the Crown and Priztker families in Chicago. He is not going to go against his sponsors in any way in defanging the ZIOCONNED military-industrial complex OR the Israel Lobby.
Therefore anyone who writes a piece seriously considering that the ZIOCONNED US might conceivably have an interest in resolving the issues Iran presents is delusional.
Iran does not have and has never had and probably - without a significant change of leadership - never will have a nuclear weapons program which would do them absolutely no good strategically and would do their soft power foreign policy projection considerable harm.
The Iran crisis is manufactured from whole cloth and is merely the pretext by which the US will start yet another bloody and interminable war for the profits of major corporations and the campaign contributions of ZIOCONNED corrupt Western politicians....