The Guns of August: Lowering the Flag on the American Century by Chalmers Johnson

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/17-2

In 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published a book about the start of World War I and called it The Guns of August. It went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. She was, of course, looking back at events that had occurred almost 50 years earlier and had at her disposal documents and information not available to participants. They were acting, as Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it, in the fog of war.

So where are we this August of 2010, with guns blazing in one war in Afghanistan even as we try to extricate ourselves from another in Iraq? Where are we, as we impose sanctions on Iran and North Korea (and threaten worse), while sending our latest wonder weapons, pilotless drones armed with bombs and missiles, into Pakistan's tribal borderlands, Yemen, and who knows where else, tasked with endless "targeted killings" which, in blunter times, used to be called assassinations? Where exactly are we, as we continue to garrison much of the globe even as our country finds itself incapable of paying for basic services?

I wish I had a crystal ball to peer into and see what historians will make of our own guns of August in 2060. The fog of war, after all, is just a stand-in for what might be called "the fog of the future," the inability of humans to peer with any accuracy far into the world to come. Let me nonetheless try to offer a few glimpses of what that foggy landscape some years ahead might reveal, and even hazard a few predictions about what possibilities await still-imperial America.

Let me begin by asking: What harm would befall the United States if we actually decided, against all odds, to close those hundreds and hundreds of bases, large and small, that we garrison around the world? What if we actually dismantled our empire, and came home? Would Genghis Khan-like hordes descend on us? Not likely. Neither a land nor a sea invasion of the U.S. is even conceivable.


More at the link ---

[indepat]

1. Chalmers realizes our national leadership has not a clue as to perpetually being in a fog of war,

spending as much as the rest of the world on the military with only 5% of the world's population, and has not a clue that our country is incapable of paying for basic services as evidenced by our country sinking inexorably near the bottom in most quality of life factors among the world's industrial nations. This perpetual "March of Folly" (again borrowing from Ms. Tuchman) is done under the fictitious guise of keeping us safe all the while our country slides into proverbial hell in a hand-basket. :)

[mmonk]

2. Chalmers is great at writing the real questions.

That is why I own some of his books.