{"id":400736,"date":"2019-03-22T01:15:06","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T00:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/whose-blood-whose-treasure-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2019-03-22T01:15:06","modified_gmt":"2019-03-22T00:15:06","slug":"whose-blood-whose-treasure-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/whose-blood-whose-treasure-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"Whose Blood, Whose Treasure? \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"
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America\u2019s senior generals find no exits from endless war, writes William J. Astore for TomDispatch.<\/span><\/p>\n

By\u00a0<\/strong>William J. Astore<\/strong><\/a><\/span>
TomDispatch.com<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed that famed saying when summing up the Obama administration\u2019s military intervention in Libya in 2011 \u2014 with a small alteration. \u201cWe came, we saw, he died,\u201d she\u00a0said<\/a><\/span>\u00a0with a laugh about the killing of Muammar Gaddafi, that country\u2019s autocratic leader. Note what she left out, though: the \u201cvici<\/em>\u201d or victory part. And how right she was to do so, since Washington\u2019s invasions, occupations, and interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere in this century have never produced anything faintly like a single decisive and\u00a0lasting victory<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFailure is not an option\u201d was the stirring 1995 movie catchphrase for the dramatic 1970 rescue of the Apollo 13 moon mission and crew, but were such a movie to be made about America\u2019s wars and their less-than-vici<\/em>-esque results today, the phrase would have to be corrected in Clintonian fashion to read \u201cWe came, we saw, we failed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wars are risky, destructive, unpredictable endeavors, so it would hardly be surprising if America\u2019s military and civilian leaders failed occasionally in their endless martial endeavors, despite the overwhelming superiority in firepower of \u201cthe\u00a0world\u2019s greatest<\/span><\/a>\u00a0military.\u201d Here\u2019s the question, though: Why have all the American wars of this century gone down in flames and what in the world have those leaders learned from such repetitive failures?<\/span><\/p>\n

The evidence before our eyes suggests that, when it comes to our senior military leaders at least, the answer would be: nothing at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin with General David Petraeus, he of \u201cthe surge<\/a>\u201d<\/span> fame in the Iraq War. Of course, he would briefly fall from grace\u00a0in 2012<\/a>,<\/span> while director of the CIA, thanks to an affair with his biographer with whom he inappropriately shared highly classified information. When\u00a0riding high<\/a><\/span>\u00a0in Iraq in 2007, however, \u201cKing David\u201d (as he was then dubbed) was widely…<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America\u2019s senior generals find no exits from endless war, writes William J. Astore for TomDispatch. By\u00a0William J. AstoreTomDispatch.com \u201cVeni, Vidi, Vici,\u201d boasted Julius Caesar, one of history\u2019s great military captains. \u201cI came, I saw, I conquered.\u201d Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed that famed saying when summing up the Obama administration\u2019s military intervention in Libya […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-400736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400736","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\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}