In the grand scheme of things, the United States, as a superpower, can be seen as the virtual “teen-ager” among the world’s older league of powerful nations.  And, in that role, we do not disappoint, dealing with global diplomats and heads-of-state with much the same brash and bumptious behavior that has earned American tourists near universal contempt.

Like teenagers, too, we Americans have short attention spans and even shorter memory, we require instant gratification as well as fairly constant ego-boosting, and have little use for the advice of our elders or the lessons of history (even our own).  Our proudest invention is a run amok military juggernaut hemorrhaging blood and treasure and endangering our survival as a nation, in the process.  If money spent equaled power and success our defense budget — $700 billion proposed for 2010 – should provide unqualified victory in everything that our military undertakes.  We live in a world in which we outspend every other country on Earth for military defense; as a matter of fact, the US’s military spending was at 48% of the world’s total military outlay in 2008.  The US has the weapons capability to destroy any other country on Earth, or the entire plant, several times over, for that matter.  Nevertheless, our military track record for the past six decades has been embarrassingly dismal.  How is that possible . . . ?

Maybe it has to do with the fact that our foreign policies sound like something straight out of Marvel Comics.  America has grown up with a self-congratulatory messianic complex.  Not satisfied to merely enjoy the excellent niche that we have made for ourselves, we know, in our generous American heart of hearts, that the rest of our species will benefit greatly if they only come to a greater appreciation of our American Way of Life – and we’re willing to kill anyone who stands in the way of our missionary efforts.  So it is that some of the goriest, most ruthless acts of human history have been carried out by those who believe that they have been singled out for greatness by whichever god or gods are in charge of such determinations.

That sense of “Divine Appointment” is bred in the bone of American patriots who have grown up on a tradition of promoting American principles by force, if necessary.  That notion can be traced all the way back to the sainted “Founding Fathers,” so recently canonized by the Tea Party in their Constitutional revival meetings which  focus on the Tea Party’s own somewhat remarkable interpretations of the select bits of the foundational document that they particularly resonate to . . .

The ink on the Declaration of Independence was barely dry before Alexander Hamilton, clearly impressed with his and his colleagues’ efforts, declared the document an act of God:

“written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself.”

Furthermore, he looked forward to the day when America would be powerful enough to assist peoples in the “gloomy regions of despotism” to rise up against the “tyrants” that oppressed them.

James Madison, not to be outdone, saw the battle between “Liberty and Despotism,” as the “great struggle of the Epoch” with America, of course, leading the righteous into the light.  For his part, John Quincy Adams considered the United States “destined by God and by nature to be the most populous and powerful people ever combined under one social contract.”

And that’s just the beginning  . . .

"American Progress" by John Gast, 1872

Keeping the tradition alive, further down the line, were sentiments like those memorialized in the Republican Platform document of 1900, in which party leadership congratulated themselves on the outcome of the recently concluded war with Spain, saying that it was a:

“war fought for ‘high purpose,’ a war for liberty and human rights that had given ten millions of the human race a new birth of freedom and the American people a new and noble responsibility . . . to confer the blessings of liberty and civilization upon all the rescued peoples.”

And then, of course, there’s Henry Clay, one of the original War Hawks of the 12^th Congress who agitated for waging war on Britain (the War of 1812) to defend America’s republican “honor,” and believed that the United States belonged, naturally, at the “centre of a system which would constitute the rallying point of human freedom against all the despotism of the Old World.”

I could rattle on about related peculiar American beliefs like “Manifest Destiny” and the mistakes and excesses of many American statesmen and Commanders-in-Chief, directly attributable to their belief that they were acolytes in a divinely ordained mission; but, despite the patriotic hype and jingoism that pervades Life in America, I believe, at bottom we all have a queasy realization that we are a Jekyll and Hyde society – at best.  We like to think of ourselves as peace-loving champions of human rights who do everything in our power to avoid war yet are frequently dragged into conflict to redress the wrongs that others commit.  On the other hand we know, from experience, that our leaders will not hesitate to invent reasons to go to war (i.e., Gulf of Tonkin) with the best of intentions, of course; or even to unleash weapons of mass destruction on the innocent people of a sovereign nation to facilitate our opportunistic search for imaginary weapons of mass destruction.

Jesus Loves Me

For the most part, we are a nation of ideologues who believe that we, alone on Planet Earth, know the Truth and, with missionary zeal, we loudly and tirelessly repudiate any and all sorts of alternate truth.  We walk among Earthlings but we are not of them . . . who wouldn’t sign on to that exalted position?

Despite our current President’s agile mind and rhetorical skill, he ascribes to the same old creed of American Hegemony that has landed us in so much trouble, so many times that it’s hard to keep count.  Our adolescent stubbornness effectively prevents us from anything like learning from past mistakes so, as the philosophers say, “we are doomed to repeat them.”  When Barack Obama talks about foreign policy he preaches the American Gospel in these handy soundbites: America must be the “leader of the freeworld” “battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.”  Obama believes and has said as much that America’s purpose in the world is to promote democracy, a notion expanded by the cringe-worthy sentiment that the “security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people.”  Really . . . ? 

With all of those grandiose visions dancing in his head, Obama has, much to the bewilderment of many of his supporters, embraced his roles as Commander-in-Chief and Wartime President with alarming  gusto.  He has increased defense spending and expanded military forces to ensure that the US has “the strongest, best-equipped military in the world.” He has doubled-down in Afghanistan and Pakistan, making Afpak “Obama’s War,” determined to be the first to walk out victorious from “the Graveyard of Empires.”  He talks in manly terms about putting “rogue nations” and “hostile dictators” in their place by pursuing “muscular alliances,” and maintaining “a strong nuclear deterrent,” all objectives eminently worthy of his Nobel Prize-winning plan for America.

Unfortunately, one man’s vision is another man’s debacle and images of former glory and stirring rhetoric aside, the reality of our situation is sobering.  Clearly, we have learned nothing from the past, skating glibly from the abject failure of “Vietnamization” to the equally hilarious, and mercifully short-lived notion of “Iraqification.”  The American people, shell-shocked perhaps by our decades of commitment to Permanent War, have become complacent and dutifully rubber-stamp the funding of our global police actions, acquiescing to the routine bypass of Congress and any serious debate in the name of “National Security.”  Besides, we’ve been assiduously schooled to believe that questioning our military adventures is tantamount to Treason, so we obediently stand by and dumbly witness atrocities carried out by the “troops” that it is our patriotic duty to support unconditionally.  Welcome to Stepford . . .

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Reuters

We insist on making war even though our track record, over the last half-century documents the fact that we are really piss-poor at it.  We couldn’t even manage to win the blamed War on Drugs, which was recently pronounced DOA, after 40 years, billions of dollars and tens of thousands of deaths.  Recent news out of Afghanistan indicates that Gen. McChrystal’s pumped up Operation Moshtarak (Marjah) was a waste of time that only demonstrated how lame the COIN strategy is and how smart it will be to go to COIN-Lite (basically targeted assassinations with none of the time consuming hearts and minds stuff that is just so “last year;” the Kandahar Offensive/Operation/Process, or whatever they’re calling it this week, has been postponed until the fall because, lo and behold all the boots aren’t on the ground yet and won’t be until round about September (somebody really should have told the General that he wasn’t working with a full Humvee when he was busy hyping the big battle for June).  Suddenly Gen. McC is admitting that “nobody’s winning, nobody’s losing” in Afghanistan which is a real kick in the head if you cling to the hope that “happily ever after” is scheduled for a year from now.  Jeff Huber, one of my all-time favorite McChrystal analysts, parses the General’s progress report best, saying:

“When you’re the world’s sole superpower, and you’ve been bogged down for eight years by pismire adversaries who don’t have an air force or a navy or an army or even a defense budget, you’re not breaking even, you’re getting your heinie handed to you on a plate with a generous helping of grilled crow on the side. What could better symbolize our humiliating defeat than the recent spectacle of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton kissing up in public to Afghan sleaze peddler Hamid Karzai?”

On our performance in Iraq, there are those among us who have declared “victory” without getting overly descriptive about what that victory looks like.  If “victory” means things like: a functional popularly elected government in place, a path to re-establishing a decent standard of living and resumption of services, a decrease in partisan violence – if those things matter, there is ample evidence that victory celebrations might be a little premature.  In fact, the Iraqi government announced, today, their plan to get back to basics by building a 15 foot high wall around Baghdad (complete with moat,in spots).  Oddly, no one seemed to see a need for such fortifications before the American Crusaders liberated Iraq.

Another compelling argument for folding our tents in the Middle East is that the longer we stay the stronger the various regional insurgencies will become because we just can’t seem to keep ourselves from handing out cash when we’re on a mission – it’s who we are.  We don’t have a clue who’s friend or foe but we have utter faith in that key tenet of Americanism that says that “if you throw enough money at, it’ll get better.”

Ergo, we read reports like this one by Luke Mogelson, in The Nation describing an expensive (and potentially dangerous) failure of US policy in the much-touted Reconstruction of Iraq.  The gist of the story is that much of the money that the US was pumping into “post-war” Iraq probably wound up financing and arming insurgents and militants, via fictitious inflated worker rolls, kickbacks and payoffs – as well as just plain not knowing “who’s who.”  Here’s a snippet describing how that went down:

“Precisely how much money went to the insurgency remains unknown. Occupation business has been conducted largely in cash. All told, $12 billion—some 240 tons of bills—has been shrink-wrapped and shipped to Baghdad from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City.  At its height the CSP (Community Stabilization Program) was disbursing $1 million a day. “They would bring in money on pallets,” says Colonel Boston. “Where does that money go?”

Enough people with their boots firmly on the ground raised red flags and sounded alarms:

“It was just a sham,” says retired Lt. Col. Felix Boston, a member of a provincial reconstruction team deployed to Baghdad’s Kadhimiya district . . .  militias that found safe haven there were still active in the insurgency, and USAID hoped to lure potential recruits away by enlisting them in the trash campaigns. Time sheets submitted to IRD (International Relief and Development, an American non-profit subcontractor to USAID which, in turn, subcontracted its work to local contractors listed thousands of Iraqis, each receiving wages from USAID. But according to several embedded provincial reconstruction team members, many of these workers were phantoms, never seen by the US Army’s Dagger Brigade during its regular patrols of the area. ‘The numbers were so inflated,’ says Boston. ‘They’d say 5,000, and there might have been a hundred people.’”

Finally, the commander of Dagger Brigade, encouraged a USAID rep to contact the head of the CSP to do something about the American handouts because:

“The dire consequence is that American soldiers are killed attempting to secure areas being destabilized in part by misdirected American dollars.”

The unconscionable response from the head of CSP was:  “Talk to our lawyers. We’re not going to do anything about it.”  So much for supporting our troops . . .

The reason that these events in Iraq played out the way they did is because the civilian functionaries involved are fast-trackers, aiming for the seats of American Power, and not inclined to let anything stand in the way of turning in an impressive performance.  They are the “team players” drafted into the “industrial” piece of the military-industrial complex and they play hardball (and almost always win).

Here’s Mogelson’s account of the typically American “happy ending” to this story:

“During her glowing assessment of the CSP at the US Institute of Peace in November, Jeanne Pryor, the USAID deputy director for Iraq reconstruction, recited a litany of statistics and pointed out that the daily disbursement of CSP funds in Iraq often exceeded what entire countries receive from USAID in one year.”

“While militia members and insurgents may have fed fraudulent time sheets to IRD, they were at least patently fraudulent and made no pretense of truth. But IRD then fed those numbers to USAID, USAID fed them to the American people and eventually, inevitably, Ambassador Ryan Crocker fed them to Congress . . . Crocker appeared before the House and Senate to warn against a troop withdrawal and point out, among other gains, that CSP funds provided tens of thousands of jobs. Somewhere along the way the forged signatures had become real signatures; the phantom workers had become flesh-and-blood workers, young Iraqi men persuaded by American generosity not to fight us—an indicator of progress in a winnable war.”

It seems incomprehensible but, in my lifetime bracketed by Vietnam and Afpak, I believe that I have witnessed America getting progressively worse at conducting the wars that our economy now depends on.  As David Swanson said, recently:

“We are now a nation that regularly bombs civilians, detains the innocent, and tortures suspects—sometimes to death.”

Recent low points in American statecraft — the Persian Gulf intervention, the intentional destruction of Iraq’s water-and-sewage facilities, the years of brutal sanctions on Iraq topped off by U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright’s infamous declaration that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it,” the stationing of U.S. troops on Islamic holy lands, the unconditional support of the Israeli government, the support of brutal dictators, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the assassinations in Pakistan, the rendition, torture, Guantanamo ad nauseam – are a ringing indictment of our willingness to sacrifice our basic humanity in the pursuit of an American ideal that justifies any means to achieving our “divinely ordained mission” of democratizing the world – a monstrous notion no less chilling, to me, than the Global Caliphate of Islam, or any other past or future program of world domination.

Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University and Vice Chairman of the U.S. Army War College Board of Visitors has written extensively on these issues for the Claremont Institute and has a lot of very worthwhile insights to offer – here’s a sample:

“What can explain the remarkable fact that U.S. forces, disposing of practically endless money, firepower, and mobility, became enablers of the people they had routed eight years before? What can turn overwhelming power into self-defeating impotence? Only ideas that insulate against reality. Self-evidently, neither of the options that our establishment lets into its digestive system-a long occupation with counterinsurgency forces, along with nation-building in a non-nation; or more remote-controlled pinprick drone strikes based on third-hand intelligence-is relevant to stopping the flow of dollars, guns, Wahabi missionaries, and suicide bombers into both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”

“This is because the logic that flows from the heights of American universities through the bureaucracies and the war colleges, which transforms conscientious junior officers into nodding generals, forecloses fruitful options leaving only the choice between the futility of nation-building counterinsurgency and the deadly unseriousness of drone strikes and hit teams. Typical of our ruling class’s decisions, President Obama’s December 2009 Afghanistan plan committed to both: to nation-building while denying that he was doing so, and to remote strikes while holding out no hope of eliminating enemy strongholds.”

“The men and women who run our government and occupy the commanding heights of our society seldom miss the fact that their ideas have not yielded the results they expected. But their very status and authority blind them to the reason why: the false axioms of their own mis-education. Lacking intellectual diversity and flexibility, they double down on their bets and dig deeper in failure. Akin to coaches who lead good teams to loss after embarrassing loss at the hands of inferior ones, they should be replaced. But firing a ruling class is hard. Replacing it is still harder. Nevertheless, just as sports teams rebuild by bringing in new talent, by reemphasizing blocking and tackling, pitching, fielding, and hitting, so countries intent on renewal must begin by rejecting the fashions—and the fashionable—of the age, by going back to basics, and drawing solutions for new problems from statecraft’s perennial principles.”

Meanwhile, our President and our Secretary of State entertain the coarse, but useful, crook that they have installed to run the freshly minted democracy of Afghanistan and reassure him of the only outcome that he really cares about – rain or shine American financial support for the foreseeable future.  Promises were made that we are “in it for the long term” and that the US will have a long-term interest in “making sure that Afghanistan is secure, that economic development is taking place and that good government is promoted.”

Wow, Mr. President, we could use some of that in our town . . .

Technorati Tags: Defense budget, Hillary Clinton, President Obama, Hamid Karzai, foreign policy, military failures, manifest destiny, American Exceptionalism