Professor-Colonel Andrew Bacevich Warns Us about Perpetual War under its Newly Evolved Special Operations Guise — and My Comment about the Commander in Chief’s Perhaps Self-Unquestioned Arrogance

05 June 2012

Introduction — the juxtaposition of concealed militarism and spiritual hubris — the modern day stuff of Shakespearean tragedy

This essay is about:

(1) the Imperial Presidency’s use of Special Operations to escalate America’s misguided (now perpetual) militarism

and

(2) Commander in Chief Obama’s arguable spirit-defying arrogance.

How this essay is structured

In regard to the militarism theme, former Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich wrote a recent critique of American Special Operations’ secret, therefore ungovernable character.

Professor Bacevich has long been an intelligent critic of America’s self-destructive infatuation with perpetual war. His two most recent essays point to President Obama’s secretive use of Special Operations as a highly concealed, therefore malignant, manifestation of military imperialism.

Regarding my second theme, President Obama’s spiritual conceit — emboldened the fast-flowing circumstances with which he must stressfully deal — has arguably gotten the best of him. He is taking the United States on a moral slide into the History’s equivalent of national purgatory.

Citations

Andrew Bacevich, The golden age of special operations, Al Jazeera (05 June 2012)

Andrew Bacevich, Andrew Bacevich, The Golden Age of Special Operations, Tom Dispatch (29 May 2012)

Colonel Bacevich and I agree that America’s waging of perpetual war has escaped citizens’ control — especially so under militarism’s newly evolved Special Operations camouflage

This anti-democratic development bodes badly for America’s survival as a symbol of peaceful and enlightened freedom. We seem to have devolved into a caricature of the enemies that we formerly despised.

“Special Ops” secrecy perfectly expands the concealed scope of the Imperial Presidency.

The budget for the United States Special Operations Command quadrupled after 9/11. Bacevich estimates that this Command now comprises 66,000 people, operating in 120 countries, delivering services ranging from reconnaissance, humanitarian action, counterterrorism, and what the military casually calls “direct action.”

The evolution of America’s military from:

a drafted force that once touched virtually all families,

to a volunteer one that affects only about 1 percent of Americans,

to a secretive Special Operations agglomeration of secret units, whose members are unnamed and whose actions are essentially untraceable —

solidifies the gap between:

American citizens and Congress, on the one hand,

and

the military and its Commander in Chief, on the other.

Costs of the divorce between ordinary Americans and their increasingly Special Ops-dominated military

Bacevich writes that the special operations trend represents three significant social costs. These include:

(i) vanished political accountability,

(ii) a strengthened imperial presidency with regal prerogatives,

and

(iii) the institutionalization of perpetual war for no good reason.

Colonel Bacevich’s analysis of the negative effects of the Special Ops trend

He wrote:

Goodbye accountability

In practice, the only thing the public knows about special ops activities is what the national security apparatus chooses to reveal. Can you rely on those who speak for that apparatus in Washington to tell the truth?

No more than you can rely on JPMorgan Chase to manage your money prudently.

Hello imperial presidency

From a president's point of view, one of the appealing things about special forces is that he can send them wherever he wants to do whatever he directs.

There's no need to ask permission or to explain. Employing USSOCOM as your own private military means never having to say you're sorry.

Building on the precedents set by Obama, stupid and reckless presidents will enjoy this prerogative no less than shrewd and well-intentioned ones.

And then what… ?

There are certainly plenty of evildoers who wish us ill . . . . How many will USSOCOM have to liquidate before the job is done?

Answering that question becomes all the more difficult given that some of the killing has the effect of adding new recruits to the ranks of the non-well-wishers.

In short, handing war to the special operators severs an already too tenuous link between war and politics; it becomes war for its own sake.

My added observation about the Commander in Chief’s trend-contributing arrogance

I have previously written that President Obama appears to suffer from at least situationally displayed over-confidence. When this personal conceit traipses over into essentially spiritual matters, Shakespearean tragedy brews.

The Commander in Chief’s terrorist-hunting drone program is an example that supports:

(1) Colonel Bacevich’s point about the accountable-to-no-one Presidency

and

(2) mine about the Commander in Chief’s hubris.

First, in defense of the President, pragmatism in pursuit of America’s enemies is not wrong

I share President Obama’s willingness to crush America’s enemies in any practicable way that falls to us.

And I have no objection to the occasional use of drones to strike at terrorists. But, as is usual with wisdom in action, it boils down to sensibly chosen proportions.

I suspect that a slippery slope that involves killing people, without due process, is one of the more spiritually and geopolitically dangerous ones.

Absolute power corrupts — President Obama’s very probably excessive use of drone-based killing

The human psyche’s inevitable dark streak can lead us too far in the direction of unregulated killing.

Spiritual guidelines revolve around the idea that the human soul is corrupted or corruptible. Even when one strips that observation of its religious origin, it is still true. We use reason to support our emotional impulses, not vice versa. And much of what we do is very obviously wrong, when re-examined in calm retrospect.

The people best situated to fend off the lure of unethical excesses are those who most recognize their proneness to them. The President, I increasingly think, is not one of these people.

Somewhat in the President’s defense, I note that Jiddu Krishnamurti once wrote that — in a source that I have since been unable to relocate — powerful politicians are not ever likely to qualify as being spiritually wise.

The power-hungry and manipulative political mind, probably necessarily, indulges anti-ethical action.

But, if that is so, the fact becomes a strong argument for setting institutionalized limits on executive politicians’ power.

Pertinent here, after three years of watching his leadership (and lack thereof), the President arguably manifests notable levels of power-wielding arrogance. It is one thing to give a saint a gun. It is another to give a quasi-megalomaniac one.

The very probably illegal and unethical excesses of his drone-based terrorist-hunting program are evidence. I have addressed the subject twice before, here and here.

Note

Those essays left out my recognition that I, too, would be particularly prone to excessively using drones to kill America’s enemies.

Perhaps that is what makes me sensitive to the President’s choice of direction. I see in him (perhaps erroneously) my own vulnerability to ethically questionable over-reactions.

That said, I suspect that the President has gone too far in being murderously aggressive.

And, as Colonel Bacevich points out, there is no institutional or political price that the President pays in making arguable geopolitical and spiritual errors of this kind.

Aside from a clear recognition of the psyche’s frail hold on “right” behavior, there is nothing to stop any Commander in Chief from slash and burn tactics, while using what has essentially become the President’s Personal Military.

This is Colonel Bacevich’s point.

Institutionalized constraints on executive power are the key to avoiding a quasi-regal, imperialistic presidency.

The moral? — Perpetual war is an evil, and America’s institutionally unaccountable Commander in Chief has used Special Operations to enhance his personal power at the nation’s and the military’s expense

This is not the America that the Statute of Liberty was once intended to salute with her lamp.

We have become significantly more than a shadow of what we formerly despised.

PeteFree.com

Professor-Colonel Andrew Bacevich Warns Us about Perpetual War under its Newly Evolved Special Operations Guise — and My Comment about the Commander in Chief’s Perhaps Self-Unquestioned Arrogance