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The Obsolescence of Raw Military Power |
| The Obsolescence of Raw Military Power
by Craig Barnes
[1-23-07]
Jane Hanna, former President of the
Witherspoon Society, sent us this article with this comment:
I think this article is
particularly important because what he has written is true, and perhaps
not obvious to many of our fellow citizens. Our nation has gone in
entirely the wrong direction to think for a minute that our security and
well-being can be assured through military power. Our brains and economy
would more likely create a safe world if used to assure food, safe
water, health care, education, healthy environment and hopeful future
for all, [rather] than by developing death-dealing, environmentally
destructive weapons that enrich the few at the expense of the rest of
humanity. How could we possibly imagine that programs designed to kill
other people and destroy their communities would assure safety and
security for a nation using its treasure in such a way!
Posted here with the author’s kind
permission.
The United States, with its intercontinental ballistic
missiles, its carrier fleets from Taiwan to the Persian Gulf, its military
bases in 132 (or more) countries around the globe from Kyrgyzstan to Korea
to Japan, its heat-seeking sensors, stealth bombers and helicopters, its
night goggles and
rapid fire machine guns, is losing a battle against
insurgents dressed in street clothes, powered by donkeys or auto jalopies or
foot traffic with brief case bombs. In Iraq and in Afghanistan, in Palestine
and in Lebanon, we are helpless; we cannot do a thing about genocide in
Darfur and we are helpless to enforce human rights in Russia or Iran.
For over 50 years we have built the largest military
machine in human history and now we have the most tanks and planes, warships
and sonar guided bombs, the best body armor and strongest humvees. But with
all this we cannot win a war to convince an unwilling people in Iraq, in
Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Sudan, even in Bosnia, to change their ways, or
to submit to become like us.
We have built a military to fight armies in countries
which mass their troops along battle lines. We are prepared to fight World
Wars I and II better than we ever did before. But this is a new world and we
have been preparing for the wrong war. We cannot change the government (or
that is, the source of moral authority) in Iraq or Afghanistan or in Cuba or
Venezuela or Russia or China, with the tools that we have been relying upon
this last 50 years. They are the wrong tools. We have wasted our treasure
and the lives of our young on the wrong strategy.
The president has now decided to engage our military in
door-to-door, urban combat with an invisible enemy. He believes that once we
have ‘taken’ Baghdad, American soldiers will be able to identify who of the
Iraqi police are loyal to our ally Shiite Al Maliki, and who are loyal to
our Shiite enemy Muktada al Sadr. The president believes that young people
from Kansas and Georgia and urban Los Angeles will be able to determine who
among the Iraqi soldiers is willing to shoot Sunni insurgents and who will,
to the contrary, assist the insurgents by planting IEDs under our vehicles.
Sadly, there is no sensor for any rifle, there is no
night-time infrared, there is no accent, or style of clothing which can help
our soldiers know when, or from whom, they have ‘taken’ Baghdad, nor whom to
hold it against, because there is no sensor for ideas in the head.
The wars of whole populations against modernism, the
religious wars of Hamas, and Hezbollah and Osama Bin Laden can none of them
be solved or even addressed by military might. US military power is to Osama
like gasoline to the flames; it infuriates him and insults him and rallies
his followers. US military power is to Taliban fundamentalists in
Afghanistan a despoliation of holy soil, a violation of their identity as
children of Allah, and our show of power is itself an incitement to
resistance. Our military support for Israel is an incentive for Palestinians
to dig in, not to give up.
Military muscle is, in short, simply as out of date, as
obsolete for the solution of the conflicts in the Middle East as the bow and
arrow.
We have, as a nation, for over 50 years, invested in
bases, missiles, thousands upon thousands of stockpiled weapons and planes,
hundreds of thousands of soldiers, marines and sailors and been preparing
for the wrong war. We should have been building libraries, not bases.
Instead of reinforcing the thugs and princes of Islamic fundamentalism, we
should have been seeking out and encouraging conversations among the
enlightened and progressives of all the religions. Instead of giving excuse
to accuse Americans of oil-driven imperialism we should have been developing
alternative fuels, investing some of those billions not on tanks but on
solar arrays, not on stealth bombers but on electric automobiles. A thousand
alternative ways to approach mind change, both theirs and ours, are
available. We have chosen none of them.
There is a bloodbath about to break out in Baghdad which
we will sponsor.
If this tragedy is to have any meaning at all, when it is
done and when it fails, as it surely must, let such failure at last break
the illusion of American military power. At this time in history, ideas are
more important than guns and military power is the exact opposite of what
will create a peaceful or a stable world.
Craig Barnes
Santa Fe
January 15, 2007
The author: Craig
Barnes is a trial lawyer with international negotiating credentials, a
columnist, NPR commentator and playwright. He is very much in demand in
Santa Fe for his analysis of current events.
More from Craig Barnes ---
For more of Barnes’ essays on this topic
over the years, click here.
You might also want to visit the website for
A Nation Deceived, a play
written by Barnes, performed starring Ed Asner and available on DVD.
Barnes says, "The play features a trial of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in
the Court of Common Opinion with Asner playing the lead role of
prosecutor. He is the old Colorado trial lawyer pitted against the
Washington lawyer elite." You can order the DVD from the website, which
will soon include a blog and podcasting.
We welcome your thoughts on this essay!
Is military power really obsolete? In what ways?
And what does that mean for US policy today?
Please send
a note with your reactions,
to be shared here.
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