The US has no interest in winning wars it instigates in different parts of the world, the purpose rather is to initiate a conflict and keep it going as long as possible. Here are twelve reasons why ongoing wars are much more profitable for Washington than an actual victory.
America doesn’t “win” its wars, because winning a war is secondary to other goals. Winning or losing has little immediate consequence for the United States, because the wars it starts, Wars of Choice, are not caused by actual foreign threats. Losing one of these Wars of Choice wouldn’t mean getting invaded or our cities being destroyed.
Within four days of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had put together a vast plan to fight terror in 92 countries, a newly-released 2005 letter by then CIA Director George Tenet revealed on Friday.
The letter was part of a cache of previously classified documents including a nearly 500-page CIA Inspector General’s report that documented many “systemic problems” in the US intelligence services before September 11 attacks.
“On September 15, 2001, the Chief of CTC [CIA Counterterrorism Center] and I presented the President of the United States [George W. Bush] with a plan to attack al-Qaeda in its Afghanistan sanctuary and a worldwide plan that covered 92 countries. Our plan was adopted and we were given significantly expanded authorities and additional resources by the President to fight the war on terror.”
Tenet served as Director of the CIA from July 1997 until July 2004, and was the second-longest-serving director in the Agency’s history next to Allen Dulles. He was appointed by then President Bill Clinton and retained the position under President George W. Bush.
The following are some of the interests Washington has in not winning its unending wars.
1) War sustains the (very) profitable contracts for supplies in key congressional districts, grants for university faculties to study strategy, new funding for new weapons. During wartime politicians don’t dare question the Pentagon’s cost “to defend America?”
2) Continued conflict postpones hard decisions about cutting defense spending such as closing surplus bases, cutting duplicate systems, and focusing on waste. Shakespeare advised a king to have lots of foreign wars in order to have tranquility at home.
Think tanks and military strategists have concluded that the American Empire is unsustainable without wars. Peace is unacceptable. It would destroy the system and bring down the positions of power and wealth.
3) Starting wars is the historic way for kings (and presidents) to gain popularity and avoid doing tough domestic reforms for problems that cry out for solutions. War lets them be postponed. Think of George W. Bush winning election on promises to balance the budget, have health care reform, reform our bankrupt social security commitments, tackle the EPA, take on the teachers’ unions, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and such. Instead, with war, all those issues were swept aside. He won his re-election by having even bigger deficit warfare/welfare spending and increasing the national debt by trillions.
4) Private “contractors” profit from continuing crises. They don’t get paid in peacetime. They profit from war, or at least from more declared enemies to guard against. In Iraq and Afghanistan there were hundreds of thousands of them, military and well-paid mercenaries (often former military) who would otherwise have lesser-paying jobs.
5) Washington’s community prospers. Think tank intellectuals get lots of TV exposure and lectures, new funding produces new jobs and government grants and trips to the excitement of battlefields, or at least to comfy headquarters, to study the “enemy.” Congressmen get more TV time; critics can be condemned for hampering the war effort or even aiding the enemy. Everyone feels important. Heritage Foundation interns were recruited to help administer Iraq, and while not every war produces jobs even for interns, money flows everywhere.
6) Cable TV gets more viewers (e.g. more advertising revenue). Instead of interminable, boring coverage of the same old event, like CNN’s repeated coverage of the disappeared Malaysian airliner for weeks. Wars are more exciting and gain 24-hour coverage and viewers.
7) Military careers. Our Army and Navy are designed for past wars where soldiers and sailors were mostly identically trained to be able to fill identical slots for fallen comrades or sunken ships. Officer careers were based upon well-rounded experience and commands. Third world wars are different. In nations without a rule of law everything is based upon personal relationships with tribal and military leaders. The British and Roman empires sent out staffers to spend a lifetime gaining confidences and studying different tribes, religions, and local issues. For America, every officer has dozens behind him wanting to get some “war” experience on their resumes. So officers rarely stay longer than a year on any battlefield posting, barely enough time to learn the area and gain the confidence of local leaders, much less learn their languages. Long, interminable wars allow for many more officers to get “their tickets punched,” as the saying goes.
8) The military has fewer members and can’t absorb many casualties. So to minimize casualties they attack from the air, bombing and obliterating whole villages and towns (think Fallujah), creating a constant supply of new enemies. If winning was really important they would have to absorb many more casualties and station many more troops for many more years to occupy and pacify the conquered (liberated) nations. Instead they just strike and kill randomly for years without end.
9) Few Americans want to spend lifetimes studying tribes, religions, and customs in obscure, boring, and uncomfortable regions of the world. The British Empire was heavily staffed by poor Scots and Irish who could find few jobs at home. America does not have that problem. It employs the skilled, educated elites capable of administering far-flung possessions.
10) Our Congress is more concerned with appearances than winning. Political grandstanding, appearing tough, and pandering to local constituencies are the main objectives for most of them. Think of Iran, where no peace agreement acceptable to Iran and our European allies can gain Congressional approval. Another unending war is possible and could easily expand to blowing up oil and gas resources all over the Persian Gulf.
11) The internal US security establishment, costing hundreds of billions, requires threats. Think of how often the FBI agents provocateurs infiltrate and agitate groups of disenchanted young macho males dreaming of acting out their fantasies. Unending wars fulfill this need. If the US actually “won,” many of the well paid jobs in the professional military complex would become superfluous.
12) Politicians and generals know how to take advantage of false flag operations and invented foreign propaganda. Various foreign nations or rebel interests want the US to bomb and/or invade their local enemies. The recent attack on Libya was based on false information, solicited and used to facilitate our allies. Saudi Arabia wants us to destroy Iran, Turkey wanted us to attack Assad in Syria, Israeli and Zionist neocon hawks wanted us to “rip apart” Iraq. Kuwait’s sheiks paid millions for a PR campaign for America to attack Iraq the first time, and so on.
The US Military could “win” easily. But, as stated above, they don’t really want to win. Too many in the Military Industrial Complex benefit from unending wars.
The US is not the first empire to confront this problem. However, in the past, such unending wars were limited by their costs. But America has vast wealth, and if need be she borrows the money from foreigners. China has loaned the US much of the money she uses to pursue her agenda of war. This will eventually weaken the Empire by continually evoking hatred from the nations and her own citizens. The US is causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents and making enemies of nearly all nations. It was American war hawks who created ISIS and all the chaos in the Middle East.
Yet these rotten political and military predators don’t really lose wars either. America doesn’t lose wars, it just loses interest and withdraws from them to move on to its next victim.
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