See Emily at play with bombs: The unserious War on Terror

I recently got into argument on an internet political positing site with one the "World War III" (or maybe its IV, I've lost count) enthusiasts when I told him that despite his longing for a world wide conflict emerging from the current Israeli invasion of Lebanon, he wouldn't get it. There would be no invasion of Syria, no bombing of Iran or anything else outside of what's going on southern Lebanon by U.S. induced parameters on the Israelis.

In other words, he would be "All dressed up and no place to go."

I asked him if that made him mad at the Bush II Administration for imposing such limitations and he responded by attacking me for my Manichean view of war as a choice of either total pacifism or total war Goebbels-style 1942.

Some World War III this is turning out to be.

It's becoming increasing obvious watching the current Israeli campaign and the war the U.S. is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the current supporters of war in general, whether they are Bushbots, neocons, misguided but sincere patriots or those who simply like war for its own sake, are not serious about either fighting it or leading the western world to victory in such conflicts.

Yes, there are war freaks out there. Read Chris Hedges book War is the Force that Gives us Meaning or Andrew Bachevich's The New American Militarism and you'll know who they are. Such people formed the core of Fascist movements post-World War I because they, many of whom were former soldiers, could not find any place in the liberal bourgeoisie world of the 1920s. They thought it corrupt and decadent and worshipped war's supposed nobility of extreme sacrifice, courage, honor and selfless duty. One can be all such things in peacetime, but only war constantly tests the mettle of men, or so theory goes. For them, war brings clarity, a purpose, a drive to lives that would be little more than meaningless. They want to be a part of war's history and its ability to change such history. It's no coincidence that Hitler was a former soldier. So was Mussolini. It was no coincidence either that Japanese expansionism or imperialism was championed by the military. And of course, Franco was a generalissimo.

Such people live on today of course. Unfortunately, many are not former soldiers at all. Some are College Republicans who prefer beer bongs on Friday night at the frathouse rather than fighting for their country. Some are neoconservatives whose mettle is only tested when they're fighting writer's cramp from a day's wasted keyboarding on online chat rooms. And some are just loud-mouth punks who style themselves as amateur generals and gung-ho go-getters but wouldn't be caught dead at an enlistment ceremony. It's a good thing for them we're not in total war, otherwise they certainly would be testing their mettle like it or not. But in unserious war, one can enjoy the pleasures of conflict without the logical consequences. The internet, video replays of bombing runs and instantaneous satellite cable TV allows a person to feel as if thought they are a part of the action without so much as bullet whizzing by their heads. It's either the equivalent a great big video game or sporting event, take your pick. As for being an actual soldier well, isn't that somebody else's job?

You can tell both Israel and the U.S. are not fighting serious wars. Let's start with the Israelis. In 1982, the IDF invaded Lebanon with 100,000 troops that took them just 48 hours to reach Beirut. Not only that, but the IAF downed many a Syrian plane in the process. The PLO was expelled from Lebanon which meant the initial goal of the Israeli campaign was achieved. Fourteen years later, we are nearing the fourth week of this conflict and the IDF is finally using not even a quarter of the 1982 force in its current invasion. Not only that, but Hezbollah has been able to kill Israeli soldiers and continuously fire rockets into Israel despite total IAF dominance of the skies. And given the fact Israel knows full well that Hezbollah is being resupplied by both Iran and Syria, nothing has been done militarily to make either country think twice about doing so. Instead we see the Israeli government changing their objectives every week of the conflict and then go about alienating all their potential allies within the region with a merciless bombing campaign upon the whole of Lebanon instead of just Hezbollah controlled areas. They've also enacted a naval blockade of the whole country which is an act of war in of itself.

As for the U.S. in Iraq, the current Administration expects 134,000 soldiers and Marines to act as the main police force for a nation of 18 million the size of California along with defeating an armed insurgency, guard Iraq's borders, protect its economic assessts, support the government and engage in rebuilding projects all at the same time. Warnings were issued at the beginning of the war that the U.S. needed 380,000 troops to effectively police Iraq after Saddam Hussein and his Baathists were driven from power, but they were ignored. Not only that, but anyone reading the best-selling book Cobra II knows that the military was not properly equipped nor had the right kind leadership and planning to deal with the aftermath of the war. Indeed, there was a serious unreality among top U.S. policy makers and generals that pullouts of U.S. forces would begin almost as soon as Baghdad was captured. After all, the troops said it themselves: "The quicker we get to Baghdad, the quicker we come home." Nobody told us about any occupation duty or nation building. And as with Israel, Syrian and Iranian meddling in Iraq goes unpunished.

Boston College Political Science Professor Alan Wolfe termed U.S. foreign and defense policy as a "Scoop Jackson foreign policy with a Robert A. Taft military." Given that Donald Rumsfeld will go down as one of the worst defense secretaries ever in the nation's history, it's amazing there hasn't been more of an outcry for his ouster from the proponents of the Scoop Jackson foreign policy, the neoconservatives. Now some have called for his firing, like Bill Kristol. But most have not. And there's a reason why. The neocons were part and parcel to every bad decision made in the Pentagon throughout the war and none has to unmitigated gall to make Rumsfeld the sole scapegoat of failure. What it boils down to is that neocons were just as unserious about the war as anyone. Was it not Richard Perle who said that Iraq would be a cakewalk and that only 50,000 troops would be needed to invade and pacify it? Was it not Ken Adelman who said only 80,000 troops were needed? Was it not Doug Feith who argued that we had to disband the Iraqi military? Was it not Paul Wolfowitz who assented to every bad decision made by the Pentagon in the course of the war?

Unserious nations do not win wars. This was supposed to be the lesson of Vietnam; you do not fight a war behind with one's hand tied behind one's back. You do not have half your population fighting and dying and the other half enjoying peace, love, dope at the same time. You're not supposed to hide the cost of the war in black or off-budget accounts or with deficit financing which causes inflation and higher interest rates. You're not supposed to fight for ground and then give it up later. You're not supposed to go into a conflict with unclear objectives and no sense when victory will be achieved. You're not supposed to micromanage the war from afar or make it fit some sort of ideological or technological construct. You're not supposed to destroy the village in order to save it. Unfortunately, when you put Lyndon Johnson's cheerleaders and the son's of those cheerleaders in charge of war, such lessons tend to be forgotten.

Maybe it’s a Texan thing. You know, drugstore cowboys, all hat and no cattle.

No, war leaders since the U.S. became a global empire have tried to keep the costs of their colonial wars away from the public as the British Empire and the French Empire did so. The reason for all this unseriousness is quite simple. A serious war requires sacrifices from the public. This would include conscription, a war levy, rationing, giving up luxuries and trivial pursuits. Even a Declaration of War to make it all official. After all, as George Bailey once so famously said: "Dontcha know there's a war on?" None of that has happen here. In fact, none of aforementioned has happened all at once since World War II, the last serious war the U.S. fought. No, after 9-11 George Bush II told the U.S citizenry they should go out and shop for more stuff if only to keep the economy from collapsing. Not exactly a Churchillan "Blood, Sweat and Tears" moment there. The aims is for both guns and butter to keep the empire going, to allow the citizenry to go on with their lives as if though nothing has happen or has changed to disrupt their routines or bring unalterable change while other people go and fight the war in their stead. This is why empires use professional militaries instead of conscript armies because the one lesson from Vietnam that did sink in is that the misuse of a conscript military causes upheaval at home as Vietnam and even War Between the States showed. Notice any antiwar movement or protests in the street over Iraq? I haven't.

The problem that has arisen is that 9-11 did happen and is seared into the nation's psyche just as much as Pearl Harbor did half a century ago. And yet, five years later, what do we have to show for it? The world that once proclaimed its sympathy with us now hates us. Iraq has become an ungovernable mess instead of a shining beacon of democracy and even in
Afghanistan the persons who committed this atrocity still remain at large, including one Osama bin Laden. From the moment 9-11 happened, forces that could have brought the nation together in a serious common war effort drove it apart because some were more committed to their utopian dreams rather than punishing the perpetrators who killed 3,000 or their fellow Americans, others were committed to using the war to scoring partisan political points, others were just committed to seeing any kind of war at any time of after the years of peace following the Cold War and the first Gulf War for their own viewing pleasure and still others, as alleged murderer Steven Green said, "just wanted to go out and kill people."

On the battleship Missouri after accepting the Japanese surrender, Gen. Douglas MacArthur once hoped nations would refrain from using war as a means of settling international disputes. Yet if there was no other choice but war, then MacArthur said there was no substitute for total victory (which got him fired by Harry Truman). That requires a total effort. Unfortunately in this day and age, instead of the MacArthurs, we have jokers who like to talk about World War III and "clashes of civilizations" in the abstract, but do not wish to see or fight such wars in reality. Alas, like Vietnam and Korea, the U.S. public will turn away from and tune out the unserious war because it is unserious and those left holding the bag as per usual, will be the brave men and sadly women (thanks to the neocons) who sacrifices will be in vain unless someone grabs hold of the reigns and says "It's time to get serious."

--Sean Scallon