One Sign of Stupidity Is the Inability to Learn No Matter How Graphic the Lesson — A Comment about William Astore’s Excellent Summation of American Militarism’s Predicament

© 2015 Peter Free

 

15 June 2015

 

 

Perhaps, if we knew our historical ABCs, we would not be such idiots

 

Ignorance quickly loses its power to excuse sequential failures.

 

For example:

 

 

Reports that President Obama is considering even more troops and bases to fight ISIS in Iraq put me to mind of Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus.  Two millennia ago, Varus committed three Roman legions to the Teutoburg Forest in Germania in terrain that neutralized Roman advantages in firepower and maneuverability.

 

Ambushed and caught in a vise, his legions were destroyed in detail as Varus took his own life.  To Rome the shock and disgrace of defeat were so great that Emperor Augustus cried, “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my Legions!”

Ever since 9/11, American presidents and their military advisors have repeatedly committed U.S. troops and prestige to inhospitable regions in terrain that largely neutralizes U.S. advantages in firepower and maneuverability.

 

Whether it’s the urban jungles of Baghdad or Fallujah or Mosul or the harshly primitive and mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, American troops have been committed to campaigns that they can’t win (in any enduring sense), under conditions that facilitate ambushes by an elusive enemy with superior knowledge of the local terrain.

 

Unlike Rome, which did learn from Varus’s catastrophe the perils of imperial overreach, the U.S. persists in learning nothing.

 

By repeatedly deploying American troops – whether in the tens of hundreds or tens of thousands – to so many equivalents of the Teutoburg Forest, our leaders continue a strategy of overreach that was already proven bankrupt in Vietnam.

 

Despite setback after setback, American presidents and generals persist in trying to control hostile territory at the end of insecure logistical lines while mounting punitive raids designed to deny Al Qaeda or ISIS or the Taliban “safe havens.”

 

We should have learned the impossibility of doing this from Vietnam, but it seems America’s presidents and generals keep trying to get Vietnam right, even if they have to move the fight to the deserts of Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan.

 

© 2015 W. J. Astore, America’s Military Strategy? Persistent Overreach, The Contrary Perspective (13 June 2015) (extracts)

 

Notice that Lt. Col. (retired) Astore uses history, culture, and knowledge of geographic terrain to make points that even an introductory class at America’s military academies should immediately list.

 

 

Do we revel in ignorance and our related inability to connect dots? Or is something else going on?

 

As I said a few days ago, we are repetitively stupid on purpose because that is where war profits are.

 

In addition to rampant war profiteering, free market orthodoxy has led to the removal of most of the American economy abroad.

 

What is good for American multi-national corporations and their shareholders is emphatically not good for most of society. The Obama Administration’s metaphorical opium-swilling love affair with the worker-destroying Trans Pacific Partnership is representative.

 

 

The basic problem is institutionalized greed

 

American society today elevates avarice to inviolable status, no matter its destructive effect on most of the society that it operates in. Our system is set up to fuel the materialistic lifestyles of the Affluent Few on the backs of serf-like many.

 

The fact that most of us willingly accept this state of affairs is (perhaps) indicative our un-fitness for long term survival.

 

By acting so repetitively foolishly against our own interests, we prove the merit of the Affluent Few’s sense of superiority and deservingness. Societally speaking, generally, one has to save the whole boat to save oneself.

 

 

The moral? — Major religious traditions see excessively indulged wealth-lust as sinful behavior

 

Love of lucre, in practice, almost always equals disrespect for humankind and spiritual principles. American militarism and economic outsourcing both come from the same community-squashing, self-aggrandizing motive.

 

The American public’s ignorance — of history, culture, and practice-embodied spiritual principle — makes us easily manipulated fodder for destructively selfish entities.

 

I find it especially repellant that the Affluent Few kill off their soulful bettors via intentionally provoked wars and poverty-imposing economic manipulations.

 

Avarice is ugly. Subjecting oneself to its conniving oppressiveness is a form of (arguably) cowardly self-elimination.