I've written about how the U.S. military institution is the big winner in the Iraq war. After all the damage and loss, it got more money, more troops, shorter combat tours, new equipment and a pause to reset. Increasingly, we hear murmurings about China and a resurgent Russia and, of course, a nuclear-weapons-seeking, radical Islamist, Holocaust-denying belligerent Iran. Oh, what a wonderful world for the brass.Arkin makes an important point that we should look very critically at the endlessly-repeated military complaint that the Army is nearly broken. We've seen at least the tip of the iceberg on some of the very damaging impact of the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War on the military. But the Pentagon is far better at lobbying for more money than at counterinsurgency. Having half the military budgets of the entire world just isn't enough for them!
It's not that the Pentagon and the national security establishment are addicted to permanent war. It's more that they are over 9/11 and the mantra, uttered for seven years now, that "everything changed." In fact, nothing changed. The military doesn't really buy that terrorism is the number one threat to the United States, and, even if it did, it doesn't see the battle as its to wage. Sure, al-Qaeda is out there and the Middle East and South Asia, way beyond Israel, are suffering civilization-challenging sickness. But while we play whack-a-mole in Iraq and sit waiting for the Baghdad government to find South African-like political reconciliation, the bigger realization on the part of the brass is that whatever the job left in Iraq, it is not the job of tanks and "armies" and expeditionary Marines and navies and big planes and "intercontinental" anything. In other words, the American military itself has made its choice: The future isn't in Iraq. (my emphasis)
Tags: iraq war, william arkin
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