Our Government Is Planning to Stay at War for the Next 80 Years --

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Quote: LA Times / By Tom Hayden
comments_image 30 COMMENTS
Our Government Is Planning to Stay at War for the Next 80 Years -- Anyone Got a Problem with That?
Without public debate and without congressional hearings, a segment of the Pentagon and fellow travelers have embraced a doctrine known as the Long War.
March 31, 2010 |



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Without public debate and without congressional hearings, a segment of the Pentagon and fellow travelers have embraced a doctrine known as the Long War, which projects an "arc of instability" caused by insurgent groups from Europe to South Asia that will last between 50 and 80 years. According to one of its architects, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are just "small wars in the midst of a big one."

Consider the audacity of such an idea. An 80-year undeclared war would entangle 20 future presidential terms stretching far into the future of voters not yet born. The American death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan now approaches 5,000, with the number of wounded a multiple many times greater. Including the American dead from 9/11, that's 8,000 dead so far in the first decade of the Long War. And if the American armed forces are stretched thin today, try to conceive of seven more decades of combat.

The costs are unimaginable too. According to economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, Iraq alone will be a $3-trillion war. Those costs, and the other deficit spending of recent years, yield "virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors," according to a New York Times budget analysis in February. Continued deficit financing for the Long War will rob today's younger generation of resources for their future.

The term "Long War" was first applied to America's post-9/11 conflicts in 2004 by Gen. John P. Abizaid, then head of U.S. Central Command, and by the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State, Gen. Richard B. Myers, in 2005.

According to David Kilcullen, a top counterinsurgency advisor to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and a proponent of the Long War doctrine, the concept was polished in "a series of windowless offices deep inside the Pentagon" by a small team that successfully lobbied to incorporate the term into the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, the nation's long-term military blueprint. President George W. Bush declared in his 2006 State of the Union message that "our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy."

The concept has quietly gained credence. Washington Post reporter-turned-author Thomas E. Ricks used "The Long War" as the title for the epilogue of his 2009 book on Iraq, in which he predicted that the U.S. was only halfway through the combat phase there.

It has crept into legal language. Federal Appeals Court Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a darling of the American right, recently ruled in favor of holding detainees permanently because otherwise, "each successful campaign of a long war would trigger an obligation to release Taliban fighters captured in earlier clashes."

Among defense analysts, Andrew J. Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran who teaches at Boston University, is the leading critic of the Long War doctrine, criticizing its origins among a "small, self-perpetuating, self-anointed group of specialists" who view public opinion "as something to manipulate" if they take it into consideration at all.

The Long War has momentum, though the term is absent from the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review unveiled by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February. One commentator has noted the review's apparent preference for finishing "our current wars before thinking about the next."

Still we fight wars that bleed into each other without clear end points. Political divisions in Iraq threaten to derail the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops scheduled for 2012.

As troop levels decline in Iraq, they grow to 100,000 in Afghanistan, where envoy Richard C. Holbrooke famously says we'll know success "when we see it." The Afghan war has driven Al Qaeda into Pakistan, where U.S. intelligence officers covertly collaborate with the Pakastani military. Lately our special forces have stepped up covert operations in Yemen.

It never ends. British security expert Peter Neumann at King's College has said that Europe is a "nerve center" of global jihad because of underground terrorists in havens protected by civil liberties laws. Could that mean NATO will have to occupy Europe?

It's time the Long War strategy was put under a microscope and made the focus of congressional hearings and media scrutiny. The American people deserve a voice in the strategizing that will affect their future and that of their grandchildren. There are at least three important questions to address in public forums:



* What is the role of the Long War idea in United States' policy now? Can the Pentagon or president impose such war-making decisions without debate and congressional ratification?



* Who exactly is the enemy in a Long War? Is Al Qaeda (or "Islamic fundamentalism") considered to be a unitary enemy like the "international communist conspiracy" was supposed to be? Can a Long War be waged with only a blanket authorization against every decentralized group lodged in countries from Europe to South Asia?



* Above all, what will a Long War cost in terms of American tax dollars, American lives and American respect in the world? Is it sustainable? If not, what are the alternatives?



President Obama has implied his own disagreement with the Long War doctrine without openly repudiating the term. He has pledged to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2012, differing with those like Ricks who predict continuing combat, resulting in a Korean-style occupation. Obama also pledges to "begin" American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan by summer 2011, in contrast to those who demand we remain until an undefined victory. Obama told West Point cadets that "our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended, because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own."



Those are naive expectations to neoconservatives and to some in the Pentagon for whom the Long War fills a vacuum left by the end of the Cold War. They will try to trap Obama in a Long War by demanding permanent bases in Iraq, slowing American withdrawals from Afghanistan to a trickle and defending secret operations in Pakistan. Where violence flares, he will be blamed for disengaging prematurely. Where situations stabilize, he will be counseled it's because we keep boots on the ground. We will keep spending dollars we don't have on wars without end.

The underlying issues should be debated now, before the future itself has been drafted for war.
Tom Hayden was a leader of the student, civil rights, peace and environmental movements of the 1960s. He served 18 years in the California legislature, where he chaired labor, higher education and natural resources committees. He is the author of ten books, including "Street Wars" (New Press, 2004). He is a professor at Occidental College, Los Angeles, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics last fall.

http://www.alternet.org/world/146236/our..._with_that

[Deathaniel]

(04-11-2010 08:54 PM)nik Wrote:  Our Government Is Planning to Stay at War for the Next 80 Years -- Anyone Got a Problem with That?
Without public debate and without congressional hearings, a segment of the Pentagon and fellow travelers have embraced a doctrine known as the Long War.
March 31, 2010 |


without public debate and without congressional hearings, a segment of the Pentagon and fellow travelers have embraced a doctrine known as the Long War, which projects an "arc of instability" caused by insurgent groups from Europe to South Asia that will last between 50 and 80 years. According to one of its architects, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are just "small wars in the midst of a big one."

really r folks so easily look at this hand foolish while the other is doing what it really plans... it's not a warlike today it's a war of survivle they're planning to survive through... well the very select few....

they know of what is coming, and are planning for it, the need to bury resources for/through war is just a smoke screen. personally rather then be distracted, look deeper at the other hand....

they are planing to survive with no sun, with new land masses, with differences in our magnetosphere... ect what ever it may be, and it will be they figure at worst 80 years b4 the world will be relatively "normal" to re populate, and re-establish control of what survived...

Best bets r to plan for the worst also, and teach yourselves how to survive make a few friends to form a small group, and have a place inmind to head for that may be safe if the world floods, or theres no sun... mountanous area's, and places far from any volcano's say 400 mile/ 650 km.... and make sure your not near a fault, research where they are....

3 things are destined to happen and each is devistating to various degrees.... b4 others add i know there r more... but theses three are provable beyond ANY shadow of a doubt....

1) solar flaring wiping out our electicity grids, communications, we just finished an aweful sudden lull in sun spot activity and thats a good warning of possible storm as, it gave the sun time to build up, it just needs some trigger....

2) nibru? thats right!!!! i know there will be some skeptics, but depending on where it comes in contact with us and the sun it could be an ELLE or it could just pole flip our world, cause massive tsunami's and earth quakes with a few volcanoes erupting for next 20 yrs due to the gravitational pull.... that is only if one of it's moons also doesn't hit us....

3) and then speaking of gravitational pulls, another even is due to happen we pass through the pull of the center or "dark rift sun effect"which can mess with our rotation, the sun's gravity on us, and nibru's along with any other planet in our system.... what will that do to us... it will be curious to find out.... and then some also theorize there will be cosmic wind from the center which may affect us also... so

in short any one of these 3 or other to be announced issues on a global scale will cause the governments and wars of today to change, and yes your American government is planing to go into hiding to survive ands eventually reclaim what remains when it's appropriate to do so.

[Melchor]

(04-11-2010 10:17 PM)Deathanyl Wrote:  Best bets r to plan for the worst also, and teach yourselves how to survive make a few friends to form a small group, and have a place inmind to head for that may be safe if the world floods, or theres no sun... mountanous area's, and places far from any volcano's say 400 mile/ 650 km.... and make sure your not near a fault, research where they are....

3 things are destined to happen and each is devistating to various degrees.... b4 others add i know there r more... but theses three are provable beyond ANY shadow of a doubt....

1) solar flaring wiping out our electicity grids, communications, we just finished an aweful sudden lull in sun spot activity and thats a good warning of possible storm as, it gave the sun time to build up, it just needs some trigger....

2) nibru? thats right!!!! i know there will be some skeptics, but depending on where it comes in contact with us and the sun it could be an ELLE or it could just pole flip our world, cause massive tsunami's and earth quakes with a few volcanoes erupting for next 20 yrs due to the gravitational pull.... that is only if one of it's moons also doesn't hit us....

3) and then speaking of gravitational pulls, another even is due to happen we pass through the pull of the center or "dark rift sun effect"which can mess with our rotation, the sun's gravity on us, and nibru's along with any other planet in our system.... what will that do to us... it will be curious to find out.... and then some also theorize there will be cosmic wind from the center which may affect us also... so

in short any one of these 3 or other to be announced issues on a global scale will cause the governments and wars of today to change, and yes your American government is planing to go into hiding to survive ands eventually reclaim what remains when it's appropriate to do so.

Well fuck I better requisition some tunnel boring equipment.

[Deathaniel]

(04-12-2010 05:21 AM)Melchor Wrote:  Well fuck I better requisition some tunnel boring equipment.

if you like your tunnel collapsing on you, better to go high then underground, having a few underground locations marked isn't a totally bad idea, just would not want to be underground when a quake hits of mag 9+

even reinforced shafts will collapse, but having an underground you can work lights (metal hallide) if theres no sun is idea to prevent you from starving as with the lights (false sun) you can grow vegetation at least

the gov has several bunkers, but ironically enough the 3 i know of are all in mountains very high above sea level and are in the side of the mountain, not under it...

the smallest can house 2500people for 20 yrs, and they expect some to die and extend the rations by required amounts, and like the military bunkers built in the 40's/ 50's they are linked by good 'ol fashioned radio's and wired tech.. now how much do you think such a structure cost to build and keep secret.... and stock.... see your 80 yr war folks!!!