Wednesday, March 09, 2011

The neocons are trying to talk us into war -- again

The lesson of these three wars is that the rhetoric of lift-and-strike is a gateway drug that leads to all-out American military invasion and occupation. Once the U.S. has committed itself to using limited military force to depose a foreign regime, the pressure to "stay the course" becomes irresistible. If lift-and-strike were to fail in Libya, the same neocon hawks who promised that it would succeed would not apologize for their mistake. Instead, they would up the ante. They would call for escalating American involvement further, because America’s prestige would now be on the line. They would denounce any alternative as a cowardly policy of "cut and run." And as soon as any American soldiers died in Libya, the hawks would claim that we would be betraying their memory, unless we conquered Libya and occupied it for years or decades until it became a functioning, pro-American democracy.

Those who are promoting an American war against Gadhafi must answer the question: "You and whose army?" The term "jingoism" comes from a Victorian British music-hall ditty: "We don’t want to fight but by Jingo if we do,/ We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too." Unfortunately for 21st-century America's jingoes, we haven’t got the ships, the men or the money. The continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched U.S. military manpower to the limits. The U.S. has paid for these wars by borrowing rather than taxation. The long-term costs of these conflicts, including medical care for maimed American soldiers, will run into the trillions, according to the economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.

No comments:

opinions powered by SendLove.to