In retrospect, I got one big thing right and one wrong here. I was right: the Afghan surge was doomed to fail. But what I didn't realize was that its failure didn't matter. What mattered was that Obama showed his obedience to Washington rules. He showed he'd largely defer to the Pentagon and the generals. His deference, his willingness to play the game rather than trying to end it, probably ensured his second term as president.
Yes, the surge was a failure, and the Afghan War would last another 12 years. But Obama easily won a 2nd term by showing he could wage war just like his predecessors, Bush/Cheney.
So, how was Joe Biden finally able to end the Afghan War in 2021? Two reasons. He could blame the Trump administration for putting him in an untenable position, and he could neutralize Pentagon opposition by giving them even more money even as he pulled troops from Afghanistan. Instead of the Pentagon budget decreasing by roughly $50 billion, the yearly cost of the Afghan War, it increased by that amount even as that war finally crashed and burned. There was never, ever, any talk of peace dividends, and once Russia invaded Ukraine early in 2022, vast increases in U.S. and NATO military spending were guaranteed. And so today's Pentagon budget soars toward $900 billion, which doesn't even include aid to Ukraine.
If Biden wins a 2nd term in 2024, it may be largely because he's shown himself to be a slavish servant of the military-industrial-congressional complex and the national security state.
Jul 23, 2023·edited Jul 23, 2023Liked by Bill Astore
Just wild speculation here, Bill, but here goes. LBJ knew the score; nobody was going to put anything over on him. However, whereas JFK had stalled on escalation in Vietnam, and had indicated he was aiming for de-escalation (NSAM 263), LBJ signed the order to send more troops four days after JFK's assassination (NSAM 273). I, for one, believe he'd been shown the light.
As for Obama, I think he was clueless at best, at least initially. Perhaps he was "persuaded" to take the actions he did, and he then got caught up in the whole military apparatus. I've read that he rather relished participating in planning drone attacks. In any case, I agree completely that he was listening to the wrong people. If the salaries, ranks, prestige, and power of advisors depend on pushing one outcome, it makes sense to call for contrary views.
Yes. I'm sure the military was telling LBJ that air power along could win the war, maybe with a few troops, but that the U.S. would prevail in 1965. And then the escalatory spiral began. We need more bombing. More troops. We need to expand the war to win it. And so on.
And so a war the U.S. should never have fought somehow became a vital interest that had to be won at all costs -- especially to the peoples of Southeast Asia.
And LBJ was smart enough to know that, if he didn't buck the military, he was toast politically, which was why he didn't run in '68. It was either bow to the military and lose the election, or try to fight them and possibly not survive to retire to the ranch. I have to think that he was well aware of the pure deception involved in the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident, but obviously, went along with it. He knew the house of cards was teetering by at least late '67, and took the thread-the-needle way out.
You nailed it with "in viewing countries and peoples as so many dominoes, which by the actions -- or the inaction -- of the United States are either set up or knocked down, we vastly exaggerate our own agency and emphasize our sense of self-importance."
Power is heady. We have the most impressive hammer in the world (weaponry) and nobody can stop us from using it while quite a few benefit financially. What should be embarrassing to US power, but isn't, is that Israel and Ukraine determine our foreign policy in their respective areas.
And there's the darned manpower problem. The draft is out. In Vietnam, even with the draft, we could not prop up the proxy. Now, in Ukraine, the proxy doesn't have enough manpower to continue an endless war of attrition. We can lend our hammer, but can't replace the people that die using it.
I get how Obama fooled people in 2008. He was contemporaneously against the Iraq War, and although he did pledge to double down in Afghanistan, he came across as a peace candidate. What I did not get is how people who called themselves progressives and peaceniks could support Obama in 2012.
This piece shows the damage Obama was going to, and did in Afghanistan, add to that Libya, and the drone war and you should have seen him clearly as the tool of the war machine that he was, and remains. I remember getting into a Twitter exchange with Kirsten Powers and chiding her for her support of Obama, in spite of her self-identification as a peace promoter. She responded by stating that she had called for Obama's Nobel Prize to be revoked, as if that is more important than denouncing him as a candidate for reelection. For good measure Powers went on to support the even more hawkish Hilary Clinton in 2016.
It was then that I realized there was, and is no peace party. A few Republicans opposed to the proxy war in Ukraine, yet full of desire for a war with China do not make a peace movement. Only a wholesale crash of the US imperial economy is likely to wake people up to the fact that they have had their economic, civil liberties, and safety sacrificed to a power elite that feeds on rigged markets and global hegemony. A better world may await on the other side of that...if we survive. Peace.
no american knows what was ukraine in 1916!, and less how it is a kluge of lenin, stalin and krushjev!
like saigon kiev is rife with corruption and undemocratic ways including a tilt and bent toward the nazi sympathizers whom stalin fought until 1949.
and the similarities between the linkages between north and south bvietnam and the russian speaking regions of donbas and kherson are very close. the us denying russian elections in the donbas last year is same as clsoning down elections required by the 1954 geneva accords.
and ukraine is not a dominoe!
worse us military is worn out from 20 years of plunder by the counter insurg cabal trying to make up for strategic embarrassement in southeast asia and srtaghistan!
some years 40% of war outlays went to contracts that yeilded no benefit but expensive toys like f-35 too unreliable to even get through a test scenario that air combat command might accept.
time to with draw and bust the military industry complex 70 odd years of dividends and losing wars.....
A wonderful article! Thank you Bill. And thank you for the astonishing Sun Tsu quote from Art of War which is the most important and wise advice I've ever seen for military advisors and planners. I assume everyone at West Point and the Naval Acadamy and the Air force too are required to read that book at some point; so why is it that no one in our military ever allows that thought to sink in?
I agree with Nicholson Baker - Bill Astore for secretary of defense!
"So now the Blob is desperate to jettison this embodiment of its corruption and lawlessness, “Joe Biden,” before the Trump-deranged masses start paying attention to the distant yelling from the asteroid belt of actual news beyond noisy Planet MSNBC. The Blob will be fighting for its very life anyway. The Ukraine operation is not proceeding according to plan. Do you know why? Answer: because it was a stupid plan concocted by purblind Neocon idiots. Russia has been insulted to the degree that it deems America unworthy of negotiation — meaning Russia will bring the Ukraine mess to a conclusion on its terms. They will take care to do it gingerly, so as not to further inflame the psychosis afflicting America and tempt us into even grosser stupidities. Namely, they will insist on a neutral Ukraine with no foreign operators in it and some rearrangement of Ukraine’s borders. America will have to lump it. The Blob Neocon faction will blame the whole lamentable affair on “Joe Biden,” who, by then, will be gone from the White House."
In retrospect, I got one big thing right and one wrong here. I was right: the Afghan surge was doomed to fail. But what I didn't realize was that its failure didn't matter. What mattered was that Obama showed his obedience to Washington rules. He showed he'd largely defer to the Pentagon and the generals. His deference, his willingness to play the game rather than trying to end it, probably ensured his second term as president.
Yes, the surge was a failure, and the Afghan War would last another 12 years. But Obama easily won a 2nd term by showing he could wage war just like his predecessors, Bush/Cheney.
So, how was Joe Biden finally able to end the Afghan War in 2021? Two reasons. He could blame the Trump administration for putting him in an untenable position, and he could neutralize Pentagon opposition by giving them even more money even as he pulled troops from Afghanistan. Instead of the Pentagon budget decreasing by roughly $50 billion, the yearly cost of the Afghan War, it increased by that amount even as that war finally crashed and burned. There was never, ever, any talk of peace dividends, and once Russia invaded Ukraine early in 2022, vast increases in U.S. and NATO military spending were guaranteed. And so today's Pentagon budget soars toward $900 billion, which doesn't even include aid to Ukraine.
If Biden wins a 2nd term in 2024, it may be largely because he's shown himself to be a slavish servant of the military-industrial-congressional complex and the national security state.
Just wild speculation here, Bill, but here goes. LBJ knew the score; nobody was going to put anything over on him. However, whereas JFK had stalled on escalation in Vietnam, and had indicated he was aiming for de-escalation (NSAM 263), LBJ signed the order to send more troops four days after JFK's assassination (NSAM 273). I, for one, believe he'd been shown the light.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/
As for Obama, I think he was clueless at best, at least initially. Perhaps he was "persuaded" to take the actions he did, and he then got caught up in the whole military apparatus. I've read that he rather relished participating in planning drone attacks. In any case, I agree completely that he was listening to the wrong people. If the salaries, ranks, prestige, and power of advisors depend on pushing one outcome, it makes sense to call for contrary views.
Yes. I'm sure the military was telling LBJ that air power along could win the war, maybe with a few troops, but that the U.S. would prevail in 1965. And then the escalatory spiral began. We need more bombing. More troops. We need to expand the war to win it. And so on.
And so a war the U.S. should never have fought somehow became a vital interest that had to be won at all costs -- especially to the peoples of Southeast Asia.
And LBJ was smart enough to know that, if he didn't buck the military, he was toast politically, which was why he didn't run in '68. It was either bow to the military and lose the election, or try to fight them and possibly not survive to retire to the ranch. I have to think that he was well aware of the pure deception involved in the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident, but obviously, went along with it. He knew the house of cards was teetering by at least late '67, and took the thread-the-needle way out.
the angst and the impeachments, the russia baiting on trump was bc of his less than deep genuflection to the neocon atlanticists!
Thank you for saying this then Bill and thank you for saying what you say today.
I just said it. You lived it and stood up for what's right. Go for Hoh in '24! :-)
You nailed it with "in viewing countries and peoples as so many dominoes, which by the actions -- or the inaction -- of the United States are either set up or knocked down, we vastly exaggerate our own agency and emphasize our sense of self-importance."
Power is heady. We have the most impressive hammer in the world (weaponry) and nobody can stop us from using it while quite a few benefit financially. What should be embarrassing to US power, but isn't, is that Israel and Ukraine determine our foreign policy in their respective areas.
And there's the darned manpower problem. The draft is out. In Vietnam, even with the draft, we could not prop up the proxy. Now, in Ukraine, the proxy doesn't have enough manpower to continue an endless war of attrition. We can lend our hammer, but can't replace the people that die using it.
I get how Obama fooled people in 2008. He was contemporaneously against the Iraq War, and although he did pledge to double down in Afghanistan, he came across as a peace candidate. What I did not get is how people who called themselves progressives and peaceniks could support Obama in 2012.
This piece shows the damage Obama was going to, and did in Afghanistan, add to that Libya, and the drone war and you should have seen him clearly as the tool of the war machine that he was, and remains. I remember getting into a Twitter exchange with Kirsten Powers and chiding her for her support of Obama, in spite of her self-identification as a peace promoter. She responded by stating that she had called for Obama's Nobel Prize to be revoked, as if that is more important than denouncing him as a candidate for reelection. For good measure Powers went on to support the even more hawkish Hilary Clinton in 2016.
It was then that I realized there was, and is no peace party. A few Republicans opposed to the proxy war in Ukraine, yet full of desire for a war with China do not make a peace movement. Only a wholesale crash of the US imperial economy is likely to wake people up to the fact that they have had their economic, civil liberties, and safety sacrificed to a power elite that feeds on rigged markets and global hegemony. A better world may await on the other side of that...if we survive. Peace.
Yes. He was the "smart" war candidate, except Afghanistan was just as dumb a war as the Iraq one.
He was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize because he wasn't George W. Bush. He then gave a "peace" speech defending preemptive war.
What a guy! As he himself quipped, he became very good at killing people, especially via drone strikes.
You are absolutely correct! He was stunningly brazen about the violence he committed. The Teflon he was wearing put Reagan's to shame.
Bill Astore for Secretary of Defense!
Only if you want my wife to kill me. :-)
no american knows what was ukraine in 1916!, and less how it is a kluge of lenin, stalin and krushjev!
like saigon kiev is rife with corruption and undemocratic ways including a tilt and bent toward the nazi sympathizers whom stalin fought until 1949.
and the similarities between the linkages between north and south bvietnam and the russian speaking regions of donbas and kherson are very close. the us denying russian elections in the donbas last year is same as clsoning down elections required by the 1954 geneva accords.
and ukraine is not a dominoe!
worse us military is worn out from 20 years of plunder by the counter insurg cabal trying to make up for strategic embarrassement in southeast asia and srtaghistan!
some years 40% of war outlays went to contracts that yeilded no benefit but expensive toys like f-35 too unreliable to even get through a test scenario that air combat command might accept.
time to with draw and bust the military industry complex 70 odd years of dividends and losing wars.....
A wonderful article! Thank you Bill. And thank you for the astonishing Sun Tsu quote from Art of War which is the most important and wise advice I've ever seen for military advisors and planners. I assume everyone at West Point and the Naval Acadamy and the Air force too are required to read that book at some point; so why is it that no one in our military ever allows that thought to sink in?
I agree with Nicholson Baker - Bill Astore for secretary of defense!
James Howard Kunstler today......
"So now the Blob is desperate to jettison this embodiment of its corruption and lawlessness, “Joe Biden,” before the Trump-deranged masses start paying attention to the distant yelling from the asteroid belt of actual news beyond noisy Planet MSNBC. The Blob will be fighting for its very life anyway. The Ukraine operation is not proceeding according to plan. Do you know why? Answer: because it was a stupid plan concocted by purblind Neocon idiots. Russia has been insulted to the degree that it deems America unworthy of negotiation — meaning Russia will bring the Ukraine mess to a conclusion on its terms. They will take care to do it gingerly, so as not to further inflame the psychosis afflicting America and tempt us into even grosser stupidities. Namely, they will insist on a neutral Ukraine with no foreign operators in it and some rearrangement of Ukraine’s borders. America will have to lump it. The Blob Neocon faction will blame the whole lamentable affair on “Joe Biden,” who, by then, will be gone from the White House."
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-purple-hour/
Not one of POTUS ever said NO to war. Not a one.