US MIlitary Base at Diego Garcia      Anita Sullivan, UK

I recently put up a diary about perpetual war and used US investment and expenditures in the vast numbers of bases and mega-embassies around the world as a way of measuring the truth of the theme.   Figures from two years ago report that it costs taxpayers over a trillion a year to maintain these bases (the costs of the secret ones no one knows), and the hundreds of bases in Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t added in.)  But planning and building for the future are even heavier indicators, as reported below.

 The discussion included the difficulty of any President or Congress finding the will or having the desire to stand in the way of the firmly entrenched Military/Industrial/Congressional/Think Tank Complex, whose interests seem to favor war, American hegemony and global resource domination. 

 Today I’d like to examine some of the ways that they act as counterfactual to the accepted idea that they add to peace and stability to the interests of the US.

 As I was collecting info toward that end, I came across this piece from Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation on TPM Café about a new book by Robert Pape and James Feldman called Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It.   Pape hosts a web database on the subject: The Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism.  Their data reifies what many of us have concluded, both intuitively and from reading interviews with terror suspects and detainees.

 Clemons points out that neither Pape nor Feldman are anti-war softies, but do wish to see the formulation of smart military strategies to forestall terrorism; what they’ve found indicates that we are creating and adding fuel to the rage against the US and our allies in the GWOT.

 He says:

“Pape and his co-author Feldman have broken down every recorded suicide terrorist incident since 1980 and noted an eruption of such incidents since 2004. From 1980-2003, there were 350 suicide attacks in the world, only 15% of which were anti-American.

In the short five-year period since, from 2004-2009, there have been 1,833 suicide attacks, 92% of which were anti-American.

Pape argues that the key factor in determining spikes of suicide terrorism is not the prevalence or profile of radical Islamic clerics or mental sickness but rather the garrisoning of foreign troops, most often US troops or its allies, in these respective countries”.

 Clemons says, and Pape’s site confirms, that the Pentagon is listening to their practical data.  That’s a good thing; what effect it will have is another matter.  But it’s information that the American public needs to know.  Pape’s gotten some exposure, but I doubt many have seen him on their teevees.

 The public and any White House needs to pay more attention to military installations on foreign soil as counterproductive in the areas that concern local residents.  Organizations to push back against (especially) US bases worldwide are forming.  They chronicle the abuses of local populations (rape, human rights violations, etc.) as well as track the pollution of land and water the military seems casually to inflict.  Relocation of indigenous populations has occurred to accommodate bases; Diego Garcia is one of the most hideous examples.  Vieques, Puerto Rico, is another.

 In the discussion of Enduring War, and specifically in Afghanistan, I found this Walter Pincus piece at WaPo, detailing the massive construction of bases around the country, many of which are for use by American forces, not Afghan security forces, and aren’t expected to be completes until late 2011.  The massive number and scope of air base projects costing multiple billions of dollars speak of involvement ‘in the area’ well into the future.  Read it if you can; it’s hard, but we need to know these things our nation is doing, and how they will affect our futures.

 And from Tom Englehardt:

 "And let’s not leave out the Army’s incessant planning for the distant future embodied in a recently published report, “Operating Concept, 2016-2028,” overseen by Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, a senior advisor to Gen. David Petraeus.  It opts to ditch “Buck Rogers” visions of futuristic war, and instead to imagine counterinsurgency operations, grimly referred to as "wars of exhaustion," in one, two, many Afghanistans to the distant horizon.

So here’s one way to think about all this: like people bingeing on anything, the present Pentagon and military cast of characters can’t stop themselves.  They really can’t.  The thought that in Afghanistan or anywhere else they might have to go on a diet, as sooner or later they will, is deeply unnerving.  Forever war is in their blood, so much so that they’re ready to face down the commander-in-chief, if necessary, to make it continue.  This is really the definition of an addiction -- not to victory, but to the state of war itself.  Don’t expect them to discipline themselves. They won’t.

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Andrew Bacevich’s new book The US Military as Quagmire Specialists is out.  A teaser from:

 “Here is Brigadier General H. R. McMaster, one of the Army’s rising stars, summarizing the latest in advanced military thinking:  “Simply fighting and winning a series of interconnected battles in a well developed campaign does not automatically deliver the achievement of war aims.”  Winning as such is out.  Persevering is in.” 

 (Quagmire-think.)