It’s the timing that should amaze us (were anyone to think about
it for 30 seconds). Let’s start with the conflict in Afghanistan,
now regularly described as the longest
war in American history. It began on
October 7, 2001, and will soon reach its 15th “anniversary.” Think
of it as the stepchild of America’s first
Afghan War (against the Soviets), a largely CIA affair which lasted
from 1979 to 1989. Considered a major victory, leading as it did to the
implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, it also devastated Afghanistan and created
close to the full cast of characters for America’s second Afghan War.
In reality, you could say that Washington has conducted a quarter-century-plus
of warfare there (with a decade off). And in the Pentagon, they’re
already talking about that war’s possible extension well
into the 2020s.
And then, of course, there’s Iraq. Where even to begin to count?
You could start perhaps with the military aid
and assistance that Washington gave Saddam Hussein in the eight-year
war that followed his invasion of Iran in 1980, including crucial
information that the Iraqis could use to target Iranian troops with
their chemical weapons. Or you could start with that victory of all victories,
the first Gulf War of 1991, in which the U.S. military crushed Saddam’s
troops in Kuwait, showed off the snazzy techno-abilities of the mightiest force
on the planet… and er, um… somehow didn’t unseat the Iraqi ruler,
leading to years of no-fly-zone air
war until that second, ultimate victory, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which led
to… er, um… a disastrous occupation, various insurgencies, and finally the withdrawal of
American forces in 2011 before… er, um… the Islamic State emerged triumphantly
to smash the
American-trained Iraqi
army, taking over major cities, and establishing its “caliphate.”
That, of course, led to America’s third Iraq War (or is it the fourth?),
still ongoing.
In other words, at least a quarter-century of conflict and possibly more with
no end in sight.
And don’t get me started on Somalia. Who, after all, doesn’t
recall the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu (known here as the “Black Hawk down”
incident)? Twenty-three years later, the U.S. is still
bombing, missiling, and raiding that
country which is, by now, a terror disaster zone. Or Yemen, where the
U.S. began its drone
strikes back in 2002 and has never
stopped as that country went over a cliff into civil war followed by
a disastrous Saudi-led invasion that the U.S. has backed in
a major way, including supplying cluster
bombs and white
phosphorous to its forces. And Libya? From the moment in
1986 when the Reagan administration sent in
the U.S. air power to take out “terrorist training” sites in Tripoli
and…