The whole discussion hinges on "better." From the linked article, which is quoted word-for-word without attribution from The Guardian: While candidate Obama came to office pledging to end George W Bush’s wars, he leaves office having been at war longer than any president in US history. He is also the only president to serve two complete terms with the nation at war. Right. Bush certainly didn't serve two terms with "the nation at war." Nixon would have but he resigned. FDR served three terms with the "nation at war" but died a quarter of the way through the 4th. From the Council on Foreign Relations, which actually did the counting, and which the author didn't even bother to link to: Ain't nobody saying "bombs are good." But let's be honest: The opportunities for fisticuffs are currently more abundant than they've been since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Right. Because the guys doing the precision strikes are the bad guys and the guys pushing barrel bombs out of cargo planes onto neighborhoods are something something squirrel! Speaking out on behalf of grieving families whose losses have never been acknowledged by the US government, I asked President Obama to apologize to them. As I was being dragged out, President Obama said: “The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to.” This is a strident woman demanding the President apologize to a Pakistani family that testified before Congress about drone strikes. You think that shit happened in Vietnam? The whole discussion hinges on "better." My argument is that "better" precludes "always scornfully little" and "always scornfully little" is the general gist of these sorts of posts.Most Americans would probably be astounded to realize that the president who has been painted by Washington pundits as a reluctant warrior has actually been a hawk. The Iran nuclear deal, a herculean achievement, and the opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba unfortunately stand alone as President Obama’s successful uses of diplomacy over hostility.
As President Obama enters the final weeks of his presidency, there will be ample assessments of his foreign military approach, which has focused on reducing U.S. ground combat troops (with the notable exception of the Afghanistan surge), supporting local security partners, and authorizing the expansive use of air power. Whether this strategy “works”—i.e. reduces the threat posed by extremists operating from those countries and improves overall security and governance on the ground—is highly contested. Yet, for better or worse, these are the central tenets of the Obama doctrine.
While the switch from US troops on the ground to airstrikes and special forces has saved US lives, untold numbers of foreign lives have been snuffed out. We have no idea how many civilians have been killed in the massive bombings in Iraq and Syria, where the US military is often pursuing Isis in the middle of urban neighborhoods. We only sporadically hear about civilian killings in Afghanistan, such as the tragic bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz that left 42 dead and 37 wounded.
In May 2013, I interrupted President Obama during his foreign policy address at the National Defense University. I had just returned from visiting the families of innocent people killed by US drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, including the Rehman children who saw their grandmother blown to bits while in the field picking okra.
There’s tangents and rambles ahead. Sorry. I think, from another angle, the problem is that these problems are so big and complex that looking at the whole picture keeps us from acknowledging the little details. Conversely, focusing on the little details often prevents us from acknowledging the whole picture. I think we’re on the same page for the most part. This is how I see things, to the best of my understanding, from the information that has been given to me and how I recall it. When Obama came into office, he found himself between a rock and a hard place. He inherited not one, but two major conflicts, Iraq and Afghanistan. Part of the reason they seemed to be dragging on so long is because neither one really seemed to have had an a clear and easily obtainable end goal. Both wars quickly became unpopular among certain groups here in America (including probably the majority of Democrats that voted for him) and both wars were starting to hurt our image on the international stage. In regards to Iraq, before he left office President Bush was caving in to public pressure and was negotiating removing American soldiers from inside Iraq’s borders. This happened towards the end of his Presidency and the responsibility of seeing this through fell onto the shoulders of Obama. At the time, this is what a vocal group of Americans wanted. From what I understand, many people in the middle east were apprehensive about this idea, because they were worried that Iraq wasn’t ready for this yet and that removing troops would cause a power vacuum. Obama could either stick to our commitments of pulling our troops out and risk a power vacuum, leaving him open to scorn and criticism, or he could keep our troops there in hopes of keeping things stable, leaving him open to scorn and criticism. He’s damned if he did. Damned if he didn’t. I didn’t envy him that choice then and I don’t envy him that choice now. Shit, if I’m totally fucking honest, I’m upset about bombs and drone strikes. If he kept our troops there though, I’d be upset about loss of lives and men coming home with PTSD. When I stop to think about things, I’m not mad at Obama or anyone else. I’m mad about the wars. Since he’s a world leader though, sometimes I direct my anger at him. Is it fair? No. Is it human? Yes. Do I think voicing my anger and frustration and let it join in the chorus of other voices in some ways motivates our world leaders to try and find the best solutions possible? Well, that’s what I’m praying for. So he brought home the troops, but there’s still conflicts over there. So now he has to resort to bombs and drone strikes, which bring up a whole slew of criticisms. Collateral damage is harder to control. It’s fuel for propaganda that makes us look bad and could potentially further extremism. It creates an image of us as trying to find a way to sanitize and depersonalize something that we should never try to sanitize and depersonalize because war is something very real, very ugly, and coming face to face with that is a powerful way to motivate us to try and find better methods for conflict resolution. With things like Syria and ISIS, shit gets even messier because different people have different opinions as to which groups and ideologies we should put our trust in. Who do we give weapons to? Who do we give financial aid to? Whose ideas do we support on the world stage? Who can we trust to rebuild the region when all of the smoke clears? What can we do to prevent violent flare ups in the future? I’m sure if you took representatives from America, Russia, Syria, Iraq, ISIS, and whoever else feels like they have a dog in this fight, and put them all in a room, there’d be more disagreeing than agreeing. It’s a mess. It’s a nightmare. This whole quote goes back to the damned it you do, damned if you don’t burden of war. I don’t want anyone dead. Soldier. Civilian. Ours. Theirs. No matter what happens, there’s going to be plenty of blame to go around, because people are dead and that’s completely and totally unacceptable. The true damage of these losses run immeasurably deep. I think it’s important to hold onto that ideal to help motivate our leaders to make the best choices possible, but I think it’s also important to accept that our leaders are also making some very, very difficult choices that no one really wants to make. I think part of the reason she was able to have that conversation with Congress and that we are able to have this conversation now is because of Vietnam. It is to the best of my understanding that Vietnam was a complete and utter shit show for everyone involved. It’s also to the best of my understanding that thanks to magazines and television and reporters, normal every day people got to see the true face of war from the safety of their own homes for the first time ever. I think that information being readily available was a huge turning point for us as a country. I also sometimes worry that in comparison to Vietnam, the media coverage of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria is overly sanitized. I don’t know how heavily people protested to World War One, Two, and the Korean War. I assume it’s much less than Vietnam in comparison. I have some idea of how much people protested Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. I worry that it’s also much less than Vietnam in comparison. I don’t think I know enough to make comparisons between all of them and come out with an answer as to why. There is an overwhelming sense of unfairness and cruelty to all of this. I constantly worry that cruelest thing of all, is that as a collective whole there aren’t enough people feeling that same sense of unfairness and cruelty that I feel. I think if they did, our conversations would be louder, more frequent, and much, much deeper.The whole discussion hinges on "better." My argument is that "better" precludes "always scornfully little" and "always scornfully little" is the general gist of these sorts of posts.
While the switch from US troops on the ground to airstrikes and special forces has saved US lives, untold numbers of foreign lives have been snuffed out. We have no idea how many civilians have been killed in the massive bombings in Iraq and Syria, where the US military is often pursuing Isis in the middle of urban neighborhoods. We only sporadically hear about civilian killings in Afghanistan, such as the tragic bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz that left 42 dead and 37 wounded.
This is a strident woman demanding the President apologize to a Pakistani family that testified before Congress about drone strikes. You think that shit happened in Vietnam?
There's the money quote right there. We agree, but we disagree. Your argument is that idealism and demanding purity keeps us focusing on the laudable goal of peace. My argument is that idealism and demanding purity allows us to scapegoat our leaders without facing the complexity that we're all culpable in war. Your understanding of Iraq and Afghanistan are not wrong. They're not really understanding though. You have a chronology but not a comprehension. That comprehension is unpopular in the United States because - really - we did it. Afghanistan was a stable monarchy until the King went on vacation and the Communists staged a coup. We can't have that, this is America. And since those filthy Communists were supported by the Soviet Union, obviously that can't happen. So we gave missiles to the animists, and we let the Saudis know we wanted their money in there, too, and the Saudis turned it into a holy war of the righteous vs. the Infidel, and we turned a messy pagan hinterland into a Wahabi hell that destroyed equality, annihilated historic sites and sheltered bin Laden and the problem with arming the mullahs and financing the madrasas for fifteen years is you're not going to wind that shit down, particularly now that the Wahabis think it's their playground and I don't know if you've ever noticed, but the Saudis do what we ask them to when they want to. Afghanistan was created for us by us. Every hardship in it is because we couldn't stand to see the Soviets gain a foothold in the Middle East. Benezir Bhutto told us we were sowing dragon's teeth in '91 when we pulled out. Lo and Behold. Iraq was a secular military despotism run by a rank demagogue who happened to oppose the Mullahs that blew us out of the middle east so we looked the other way when he spent 30 years making enemies across a thousand miles, stoking religious enmities and practicing a reign of terror. Then when he ceased to be convenient we knocked him out and left a power vacuum that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas. Iraq was created for us by us. Even Schwartzkopf knew you couldn't knock out the center without replacing it with something and what we replaced it with was ISIS. And this is our foreign policy. This is how oil flows to us, why we win trade wars, all the little things that make being American much nicer than being Syrian. This is the cost of Empire and we hate being reminded that we pay for it in the blood of The Other. And sure. We don't want to. We weren't asked. These are undeclared wars, clandestine combatants. But the democratic process led us to 26,000 bombs dropped, every single step of the way, and insisting it's his fault and not yours is having your cake and eating it too.There is an overwhelming sense of unfairness and cruelty to all of this.
I think we're still in total agreement here and I'm actually really glad you made the last statement, bold and all, and not me. I always have and always will hold the opinion that the large failures of the world, be they violent conflicts, environmental problems, labor problems, or what have you, are collective failures. When I tend to have these kinds of conversations with people though, it's often a concept I kind of have to allude to here and there and not directly state, because for some reason, it's an unpopular opinion. A good analogy I've heard is that a chess game would never get started if the pawns refuse to move. As a silver lining though, I think we're starting to get to the point where people as a collective whole will be more open to that very idea. We're seeing this attitude in other areas of life, where people are concerned about how their consumption affects the environment, workers rights, the economy, animal rights, etc. Everyday the conversations seem to be more frequent, more common, and more in depth. Going back to Vietnam as an example, I think part of the reason is our ability to share information easier and easier with each other. It's kind of why concepts like internet censorship keep me up at night. With war itself though, there seems to be an extra barrier that we have to overcome, and it's really hard to figure out what it is. It might be the US vs. Them mentality that international conflicts bring about or it might be that the idea that we as individuals halfway across the world share a bit in the guilt of ruined lives might be too big of a pill to swallow. Attitudes are shifting though and I think in the right direction. For example, Europe has taken millions of refugees and I think if America's political environment wasn't so messed up, we'd have been willing to take on more than we have. I woke up today to a heartening news story. Jack Ma of Alibaba is openly criticizing the US for spending so much on our military that could be better spent elsewhere. Chinese citizen or no, this isn't a conversation I tend to hear from influential people and I hope it's something that catches the ears of more influential men and plants seeds in their mind. To be fair, I don't think Syria is Obama's fault, nor Putins, nor Assad's. Like I said before, these issues are a sea of mud and laying blame can be a hard thing to do. When it comes to something like using a private army to change a government for business reasons though? I think it becomes a little easier to point fingers and say "There are the assholes over there."We agree, but we disagree. Your argument is that idealism and demanding purity keeps us focusing on the laudable goal of peace. My argument is that idealism and demanding purity allows us to scapegoat our leaders without facing the complexity that we're all culpable in war.
And sure. We don't want to. We weren't asked. These are undeclared wars, clandestine combatants. But the democratic process led us to 26,000 bombs dropped, every single step of the way, and insisting it's his fault and not yours is having your cake and eating it too.