From this post: "The New York Times tied itself in knots yesterday trying to determine why we went to war against Iraq. It was truly a fool’s errand, including the necessity to quote some of the fools who got us into that war." I like that the dominant fool of the war mentioned was "W," or "Schrub," as Molly Ivins endearingly called him. His motivation, boiled down, is that he was doin' it for dear old Dad. Other wars have a better raison d'etre ... many others don't. What they *all* have in common is that they suck up blood and treasure, and leave scars that often never heal. The old geezer
William Tecumseh Sherman, was right: War IS Hell. And ever was it thus and ever shall be. Amen.
This may not be relevant but I recall driving home from work, to find that at some point during my commute, the Gulf War had started. The TV was on and my parents were watching the image of flak swirling in the darkness like swarms of crazed fireflies. "Oh look," I said "a thousand points of light."
Thank you, Lucian, for writing about “Weapons Porn”. As soon as an article I’m reading strays into it I’m urged to stop reading. Detailed descriptions of weapons and how they’re used suppresses the savagery of war itself, and it seems many who write about the weapons seem to sadistically revel in it. The butchery caused by those weapons are real only to the poor souls who are there on the ground. No wonder so many of them wind up with PTSD. No media coverage of war ever conveys its true horrors. Even though I have said repeatedly that Ukraine has to get all the weapons it needs, it bothers me to say it knowing what those weapons will do. I am strongly anti-war while recognizing some wars can’t be avoided. The big problem is that those, Putin in this case, who start them rarely are called to account for the carnage they cause. In Putin’s case his arrest warrant is for having kidnapped children, not for killing their parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and on.
The NYTimes ran an extensive piece in the magazine section some years back tracking the weapons from the point of contact back to the precise factory location where they were constructed. It was one of the most damningly concise investigative reporting l have ever “experienced”.
Lucian, your military expertise is being put to good use. By exposing the foibles of our past “achievements “, the lid is being raised on the box of dirty little secrets.
And to those of us in the peanut gallery, keep those cards and letters coming. The truth and reconciliation is a necessary aspect of the process. It’s fortunate we can do this in the comfort of our homes. Take nothing for granted. This story ain’t over till the fat lady sings!
I have given up hoping for human's better angels to take hold. All of these wars have cost countless innocent lives and ruined countless others. The perpetrators have never been held accountable and never will be in any meaningful way.
The common thread in all three conflicts is playing on the opponents home field and them having time, moral vs hubris on ours. While the terrain was vastly different in each the outcome was ultimately sealed by our hubris. In Iraq it was unbelievable that we thought after we " took" the country we would be welcomed as conquering heroes like it was Paris 1945. Any first year middle eastern college history student could have predicted disaster. The worst part? Even after invading and taking Iraq down in the drive to Baghdad we had a window to not screw it up and of course we did. The de - ba' athification, disbanding the Iraqi army, " light foot print" and picking sides was our incompetence.
The actual take down was highly competent and should be studied in combined arms and maneuver warfare. It just gets lost in all I just mentioned. We had no business there and even after given the opportunity to make something out of it we blew it.
Now the Russians they just skipped the whole thing and went for total incompetence. They are a bull in a China shop and if there isn't one they bring one with them. In the process they have not learned from theirs and our experiences in Afghanistan and post invasion Iraq. They might have read clausewitz's 9 principles of war. In the process they have over estimated their superiority and under estimated Ukrainian " will", and exposed their tactics, leadership and weapons as sub standard.
I remember in both conflicts with Iraq we were told they were 10 ft tall they weren't. The Russians were 10ft tall clearly they aren't, now politician after politician sounding the alarm CHINA is 15 ft tall! More un accountable billions for the Pentagon! No questions ! It's all bs, get the American people scared so we can be truly a tin pot country . All guns no butter! That's what concerns me, trillions into high tech weapon systems that don't work..smh
I had a high school AP History teacher who liked short answers to sometimes complicated questions. the first day of our class he asked us to name in one word the thing that wins or loses wars. no one knew. his answer was "logistics."
obviously, that made an impression on ME because I remember it very vividly from 1964.
What I'm wondering is why we consider nuclear war (almost) unthinkable while we merrily go about (almost) unthinkingly incinerating the planet slo-mo with fossil fuels and the rest of it.
“Having good intentions like fighting communism or hunting for WMD’s or punishing terrorists for attacking us on 9/11 doesn’t cut it.
War should be a final option not an allegedly easy solution.”
Meanwhile, we fail to learn from our own actions and history... and people die. War--selling and lobbing bombs of increasing deadliness, is so insanely STUPID, beginning to end. Does it really come down to the profits made from the military industrial complex, as Chomsky argued?
"...why we did something as stupid as invading three countries thousands of miles from our borders, each one of them on utterly spurious grounds."
It sounds pretty stupid, but only if you think of it as a war. But it all makes perfect sense if you think about it as a grift. It was a pretty successful one.
Or, you could think of it as a war - as long as you factor in the real target. And that would be us, you and me, the American people. As Eisenhower observed, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." He didn't realize that his party would fall into the hands of people who would view that as a prescription. We HAD to spend that trillion dollars over there, so it wouldn't be wasted over here - on things like roads and schools and healthcare and anything else that might confer an iota of benefit on ordinary citizens. Much better to truck it away on pallets in the dead of night.
The Iraq War was a resounding success. It smashed what it was supposed to smash. In enriched those it was supposed to enrich. The waste, fraud, and abuse were not unintended consequences - they were among the goals.
And the hundreds of thousands who died were never gonna vote for Li'l Georgie anyway, so fuck 'em.
We make a mistake when we point to the misery and destruction wrought by conservative "policies" and say that is proof of failure. Much more damning, to my untutored eye, to label that devastation as proof of success.
We all knew that Iraq didn't take down the World Trade Center but W wanted the war for revenge for his dad. There was a lot of opposition but the press really wanted a war to cover so they supported it. They knew but they wanted to sell papers and get ratings. They had their reporters and cameramen all set up to broadcast the first incoming shells. They were disgusting
I never bought the "revenge for his dad line" for a minute. I think it was a good opening for those "Project for a New American Century" scumbags. the "revenge" motif just sounded good.
Great column Lucian! Doesn't it all come back to the truism that people have a connection to their homeland, and conquerors rarely prevail. As a child I thrilled to the Landmark series book, Frances Marion, the Swamp Fox, and how he frustrated the conquering English. Its been the same in how many fruitless wars since. Weapons can't guarantee victory, although maybe they can stop aggression, as in how WWII ended. I think that's about the best we can hope for in Ukraine.
this is a club I really like belonging to. if you go back and check the authors, a lot of them were very distinguished names. I remember that some of those names almost certainly belonged to Blacklist victims.
I have a running gag with a good friend (who's probably reading this) involving "Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde."
I still have all my landmark books from 50 or so years ago. Now I want to pull them out and look/read them again. I have a 10 year old great nephew who might like them.
that's actually an amzingly great idea. if there were still Landmark Book Clubs (I was in both...America and The World), kids might actually know a little history, which they pretty much don't. obviously, I'm not referring to Tony Soll's students.
As a 4th grader in rural Indiana, engulfed by corn fields, the local library and Landmark book series were an oasis. Such great stories. I enjoyed reading the Harry Potter books to my kids, but the Landmark books may have been a better choice. Are they still in school or libraries though?
that was the voice of hope, not the voice of someone fully informed on any sort of factual level.
they can be bought used for next to nothing, though. you can also find the competitive Julian Messner YA biographies for a dollar or so and postage. my father wrote sixteen or seventeen of them.
Wow! Another blast from the past. I still remember things I learned from the landmark books that I received every month. They made me a history teacher.
I have a fantasy where disagreements between nations would be settled by a chess match, each country's grand master against the other's, winner take all. Chess is merely intellectualized, nonviolent warfare. Think of the lives and treasure it would save.
I keep having this sinking feeling that we and our allies are suppling just enough weapons to keep damaging the Russian military but not enough to win any kind of victory. Are we using Ukrainian blood to weaken Russia as much as possible without taking on a larger risk for ourselves?
my father used to identify as a "socialist," but was really just a NY lib'rul. he didn't turn against the Vietnam War till late-ish (say '68 or '69) and was all in for Desert Storm (which disgusted me with its show-offy, cartoon-like death porn), but I never saw him get so furious about ANYTHING political (and he HATED Nixon) until the Iraq War. he was the gentlest person alive, but I didn't remember ever seeing him as furious as he was about Iraq.
he died on May 10th 2003, which was (as I recall) right around when Bush pulled that fucking parachute stunt. it was a ruptured aneurysm that killed him, so I've always tended to think of him as a long-distance casualty in that whole disaster.
From this post: "The New York Times tied itself in knots yesterday trying to determine why we went to war against Iraq. It was truly a fool’s errand, including the necessity to quote some of the fools who got us into that war." I like that the dominant fool of the war mentioned was "W," or "Schrub," as Molly Ivins endearingly called him. His motivation, boiled down, is that he was doin' it for dear old Dad. Other wars have a better raison d'etre ... many others don't. What they *all* have in common is that they suck up blood and treasure, and leave scars that often never heal. The old geezer
William Tecumseh Sherman, was right: War IS Hell. And ever was it thus and ever shall be. Amen.
No WMD. Just oil.
This may not be relevant but I recall driving home from work, to find that at some point during my commute, the Gulf War had started. The TV was on and my parents were watching the image of flak swirling in the darkness like swarms of crazed fireflies. "Oh look," I said "a thousand points of light."
(I was ignored)
it was exactly like that for me as well.
Thank you, Lucian, for writing about “Weapons Porn”. As soon as an article I’m reading strays into it I’m urged to stop reading. Detailed descriptions of weapons and how they’re used suppresses the savagery of war itself, and it seems many who write about the weapons seem to sadistically revel in it. The butchery caused by those weapons are real only to the poor souls who are there on the ground. No wonder so many of them wind up with PTSD. No media coverage of war ever conveys its true horrors. Even though I have said repeatedly that Ukraine has to get all the weapons it needs, it bothers me to say it knowing what those weapons will do. I am strongly anti-war while recognizing some wars can’t be avoided. The big problem is that those, Putin in this case, who start them rarely are called to account for the carnage they cause. In Putin’s case his arrest warrant is for having kidnapped children, not for killing their parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and on.
The NYTimes ran an extensive piece in the magazine section some years back tracking the weapons from the point of contact back to the precise factory location where they were constructed. It was one of the most damningly concise investigative reporting l have ever “experienced”.
Lucian, your military expertise is being put to good use. By exposing the foibles of our past “achievements “, the lid is being raised on the box of dirty little secrets.
And to those of us in the peanut gallery, keep those cards and letters coming. The truth and reconciliation is a necessary aspect of the process. It’s fortunate we can do this in the comfort of our homes. Take nothing for granted. This story ain’t over till the fat lady sings!
I have given up hoping for human's better angels to take hold. All of these wars have cost countless innocent lives and ruined countless others. The perpetrators have never been held accountable and never will be in any meaningful way.
Sadly...
The common thread in all three conflicts is playing on the opponents home field and them having time, moral vs hubris on ours. While the terrain was vastly different in each the outcome was ultimately sealed by our hubris. In Iraq it was unbelievable that we thought after we " took" the country we would be welcomed as conquering heroes like it was Paris 1945. Any first year middle eastern college history student could have predicted disaster. The worst part? Even after invading and taking Iraq down in the drive to Baghdad we had a window to not screw it up and of course we did. The de - ba' athification, disbanding the Iraqi army, " light foot print" and picking sides was our incompetence.
The actual take down was highly competent and should be studied in combined arms and maneuver warfare. It just gets lost in all I just mentioned. We had no business there and even after given the opportunity to make something out of it we blew it.
Now the Russians they just skipped the whole thing and went for total incompetence. They are a bull in a China shop and if there isn't one they bring one with them. In the process they have not learned from theirs and our experiences in Afghanistan and post invasion Iraq. They might have read clausewitz's 9 principles of war. In the process they have over estimated their superiority and under estimated Ukrainian " will", and exposed their tactics, leadership and weapons as sub standard.
I remember in both conflicts with Iraq we were told they were 10 ft tall they weren't. The Russians were 10ft tall clearly they aren't, now politician after politician sounding the alarm CHINA is 15 ft tall! More un accountable billions for the Pentagon! No questions ! It's all bs, get the American people scared so we can be truly a tin pot country . All guns no butter! That's what concerns me, trillions into high tech weapon systems that don't work..smh
I had a high school AP History teacher who liked short answers to sometimes complicated questions. the first day of our class he asked us to name in one word the thing that wins or loses wars. no one knew. his answer was "logistics."
obviously, that made an impression on ME because I remember it very vividly from 1964.
What I'm wondering is why we consider nuclear war (almost) unthinkable while we merrily go about (almost) unthinkingly incinerating the planet slo-mo with fossil fuels and the rest of it.
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - George Santayana
“Having good intentions like fighting communism or hunting for WMD’s or punishing terrorists for attacking us on 9/11 doesn’t cut it.
War should be a final option not an allegedly easy solution.”
Meanwhile, we fail to learn from our own actions and history... and people die. War--selling and lobbing bombs of increasing deadliness, is so insanely STUPID, beginning to end. Does it really come down to the profits made from the military industrial complex, as Chomsky argued?
"...why we did something as stupid as invading three countries thousands of miles from our borders, each one of them on utterly spurious grounds."
It sounds pretty stupid, but only if you think of it as a war. But it all makes perfect sense if you think about it as a grift. It was a pretty successful one.
Or, you could think of it as a war - as long as you factor in the real target. And that would be us, you and me, the American people. As Eisenhower observed, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." He didn't realize that his party would fall into the hands of people who would view that as a prescription. We HAD to spend that trillion dollars over there, so it wouldn't be wasted over here - on things like roads and schools and healthcare and anything else that might confer an iota of benefit on ordinary citizens. Much better to truck it away on pallets in the dead of night.
The Iraq War was a resounding success. It smashed what it was supposed to smash. In enriched those it was supposed to enrich. The waste, fraud, and abuse were not unintended consequences - they were among the goals.
And the hundreds of thousands who died were never gonna vote for Li'l Georgie anyway, so fuck 'em.
We make a mistake when we point to the misery and destruction wrought by conservative "policies" and say that is proof of failure. Much more damning, to my untutored eye, to label that devastation as proof of success.
I think that--alas!--you're right about this.
We all knew that Iraq didn't take down the World Trade Center but W wanted the war for revenge for his dad. There was a lot of opposition but the press really wanted a war to cover so they supported it. They knew but they wanted to sell papers and get ratings. They had their reporters and cameramen all set up to broadcast the first incoming shells. They were disgusting
I never bought the "revenge for his dad line" for a minute. I think it was a good opening for those "Project for a New American Century" scumbags. the "revenge" motif just sounded good.
or at least that's MY opinion.
The neocon numbskulls sold the line that we'd gain control of Iraqi oil.
Follow the money....
You're making way too much sense, IV. You'll never get anywhere with that. But you certainly have our respect.
Yes, "Stop Making Sense"!
Great column Lucian! Doesn't it all come back to the truism that people have a connection to their homeland, and conquerors rarely prevail. As a child I thrilled to the Landmark series book, Frances Marion, the Swamp Fox, and how he frustrated the conquering English. Its been the same in how many fruitless wars since. Weapons can't guarantee victory, although maybe they can stop aggression, as in how WWII ended. I think that's about the best we can hope for in Ukraine.
another Landmark Book guy!
fantastic!
this is a club I really like belonging to. if you go back and check the authors, a lot of them were very distinguished names. I remember that some of those names almost certainly belonged to Blacklist victims.
I have a running gag with a good friend (who's probably reading this) involving "Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde."
I still have all my landmark books from 50 or so years ago. Now I want to pull them out and look/read them again. I have a 10 year old great nephew who might like them.
that's actually an amzingly great idea. if there were still Landmark Book Clubs (I was in both...America and The World), kids might actually know a little history, which they pretty much don't. obviously, I'm not referring to Tony Soll's students.
As a 4th grader in rural Indiana, engulfed by corn fields, the local library and Landmark book series were an oasis. Such great stories. I enjoyed reading the Harry Potter books to my kids, but the Landmark books may have been a better choice. Are they still in school or libraries though?
they must be.
that was the voice of hope, not the voice of someone fully informed on any sort of factual level.
they can be bought used for next to nothing, though. you can also find the competitive Julian Messner YA biographies for a dollar or so and postage. my father wrote sixteen or seventeen of them.
Wow! Another blast from the past. I still remember things I learned from the landmark books that I received every month. They made me a history teacher.
wow, you too, Tone?
can you still sing the Disney "Swamp Fox" theme song? I can.
they had all those leftover coonskin hats, y'see...
Excellent essay. You always give me new ways to think about old issues. Thank you...
Might makes right, right?
I have a fantasy where disagreements between nations would be settled by a chess match, each country's grand master against the other's, winner take all. Chess is merely intellectualized, nonviolent warfare. Think of the lives and treasure it would save.
And the global TV ratings it would rack up!
I keep having this sinking feeling that we and our allies are suppling just enough weapons to keep damaging the Russian military but not enough to win any kind of victory. Are we using Ukrainian blood to weaken Russia as much as possible without taking on a larger risk for ourselves?
my father used to identify as a "socialist," but was really just a NY lib'rul. he didn't turn against the Vietnam War till late-ish (say '68 or '69) and was all in for Desert Storm (which disgusted me with its show-offy, cartoon-like death porn), but I never saw him get so furious about ANYTHING political (and he HATED Nixon) until the Iraq War. he was the gentlest person alive, but I didn't remember ever seeing him as furious as he was about Iraq.
he died on May 10th 2003, which was (as I recall) right around when Bush pulled that fucking parachute stunt. it was a ruptured aneurysm that killed him, so I've always tended to think of him as a long-distance casualty in that whole disaster.