{"id":218451,"date":"2016-01-25T17:19:52","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T17:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=218451"},"modified":"2016-01-25T17:19:52","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T17:19:52","slug":"emancipating-military-containing-citizenry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/emancipating-military-containing-citizenry\/","title":{"rendered":"Emancipating the Military, Containing\u00a0the\u00a0Citizenry"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Those who try to understand military policy often confuse themselves by focusing<br \/>\non minor matters such as strategy, tactics, logistics, and armament. Here they<br \/>\nerr. For years the central goal of the military, the brass ring, has been independence<br \/>\nfrom control by civilians. It has been achieved.<\/p>\n<p>In time of war, the first concern of the command is to limit the flow of information<br \/>\nto their publics. The actions of the enemy are an important but secondary consideration.<br \/>\nThus militaries strive to prevent the dissemination of photos of mutilated soldiers<br \/>\nor, as in Washington today, of governmentally tortured prisoners. In the United<br \/>\nStates, which characteristically fights wars unrelated to the safety of the<br \/>\ncountry, the Pentagon must also keep soldiers from being told that they are<br \/>\nbeing sacrifice for the benefit of arms manufacturers and imperialist ambitions.<br \/>\nIn wars before Vietnam, this was adroitly effected. You could go to jail for<br \/>\ncriticizing a war.<\/p>\n<p>In Vietnam, something new happened. The press covered the war freely. Reporters<br \/>\nwent where they pleased, beyond the control of the military. Their publications<br \/>\nran the results. National magazines printed horrific photographs of what was<br \/>\nreally happening.<\/p>\n<p>Truth tells. The coverage was one of the two factors that forced Washington<br \/>\nto quit the war. The other was the passionate unwillingness of young men to<br \/>\nbe forced to fight a war in which they had no interest. The war, a source of<br \/>\nmeaning for Washington\u2019s thunderous hawks and fern-bar Napoleons, was getting<br \/>\nthem killed.<\/p>\n<p>The military of Vietnam wasn\u2019t very good at fighting, and neither is the<br \/>\nmilitary of today. GIs in Asia would assault a hill, usually of no importance,<br \/>\nand, after three days, with the aid of helicopters, helo gunships, napalm, artillery,<br \/>\nand fighter-bombers, would capture it. This would be called a triumph. The astute<br \/>\nobserved that if the Americans had to fight on equal terms, without overwhelming<br \/>\nmaterial superiority, they would last perhaps ten minutes. This is now a recognized<br \/>\npattern. Note that numerically superior and hugely armed American forces have<br \/>\nbeen outfought for years by lightly armed Afghan goat herds. Since neither the<br \/>\nwars nor the soldiers in them are of much importance, this doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/reed\/2016\/01\/22\/emancipation-military-containingthecitizenry\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those who try to understand military policy often confuse themselves by focusing on minor matters such as strategy, tactics, logistics, and armament. Here they err. For years the central goal of the military, the brass ring, has been independence from control by civilians. It has been achieved. In time of war, the first concern of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-218451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}