Ten years ago, I published “WAR: The Afterparty” after a tour of a half century of scenes of U.S. military interventions. I interviewed experts and everyday folks along the way in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. After viewing the carnage and failed misadventures in each of those places, one holds the hope that lessons have been learned. As my native country threatens death and destruction to ally and enemy alike in Canada, Greenland, Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba, to name a few, nothing seems learned in the United States of Amnesia. As with my recent books, I will post chapters and interviews and PDFs from the book free in the coming weeks. Here is the opening chapter. If you support the work, please share, subscribe, or have a read.
Chapter One: Prologue
There is an American ideology of war.
It was established by our founding fathers.
It has three parts.
We should keep our standing army small. “A large standing Army in time of Peace hath ever been considered dangerous to the liberties of a Country.” That’s George Washington right there.
We should not intervene in the affairs of other nations. “Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?” Also, George Washington.
War, the ultimate manifestation of Big Government, is a threat to personal liberty. “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.” That, from James Madison.
The founding fathers suggested we avoid the pitfalls of European empire building by keeping our standing (permanent) armies small and military spending low, avoiding foreign interventions and resisting government’s appetite for a security state. Today, eschewing their guidance, we have a new American attitude toward war. There are three parts.
War is cheap.
War is perpetual.
War is an amusement.
We know that war is cheap because our taxes were lowered, not raised for our recent trillion-dollar Iraq adventure. And, instead of a patriotic call to arms, where every mother’s son enlists with the nation under attack, we have a small subset of citizens, professionals and contractors fighting our wars.
We know that war is perpetual because we are embroiled without end in overt and covert battles, and because President George W. Bush told us to be vigilant as the long war, the war on terror will last decades.
We know that war is an amusement because our cup of popular entertainment runneth over with war, with killing, with enemies to be bombed, overthrown, strafed, tortured and exterminated.
War does not require your sacrifice. It’s clinical and it’s titillating. And it will be with you, as an American, forever.
——————
Vinh Moc Tunnels, Quang Tri Province, Vietnam
January 2015
I’m sitting on a beach looking out over the Gulf of Tonkin. A half century ago, on August 4th, 1964, over this same horizon, the USS Maddox reported it was attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats. President Lyndon Baines Johnson spoke to the nation that evening and set a new precedent for war-making. Instead of asking Congress to declare war, as required by the U.S. Constitution, the President asked for approval of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving him license to escalate the Vietnam conflict. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara confessed years later that the attack never happened. By the time the last helicopter was pushed into the South China Sea in 1975, more than 58,000 Americans and over two million Vietnamese were dead, three countries were war-ravaged, one acutely divided.
——————-
Erbil, Iraq
January 2016
There’s no beach here, but a fair amount of sand. If you drive fifty kilometers in the direction I’m looking, due west, you’ll be in Islamic State-occupied Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, radical Islamists were brutally repressed; there was no “al-Qaeda in Iraq.”
On March 20th, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq claiming Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction programs were a grave and imminent threat. President Bush’s National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice warned that we must not allow a smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud. The weapons were never found. The price in blood and treasure for the occupation: 4,500 American dead, 35,000 wounded, 100,000 Iraqi civilian dead, two million refugees, a civil war, an Iran-allied, kleptocratic Shi’ite government and jihadi control over as much as a third of the country. Promised a short, inexpensive war, the final bill for American taxpayers, including an estimated $490 billion in veterans’ benefits, will be in the trillions, including projected interest payments.
——————
In my years in business, if a field manager failed to achieve budgeted goals, if employees were getting hurt on the job, if customers hated the company, we might pay the operation a visit. We’d ask tough questions, especially about the variance between budgeted goals and performance. We’d talk to employees and customers, take a close look at the books. And, then, on a company credit card, we might go out for dinner, order a bottle or two of wine, and set a course of action. If the mission was not getting accomplished, we would change strategy, and, often, staff.
We are told in the press and by political leaders to avoid the appearance of weakness, to project American power in Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Libya, Iran. Before we do, maybe it’s time for a field audit that asks some simple questions: Do we achieve the objectives given us by our government when we wage war? What are the actual outcomes, the return on our investment in blood and treasure?
WAR: The Afterparty is a round-the-world tour through countries that have received American military forces in the pursuit of freedom, democracy, justice, and the free flow of commerce. In Southeast Asia, the Greater Middle East, the Balkans and Central America, I recorded oral histories from political and religious leaders, writers, teachers, mothers and combatants who witnessed history from the other end of the gun barrel.
The question is not whether America should have a strong national defense, or whether it should insulate itself from the world. Those are red herrings. The proper question is, do we accomplish in war what we say we will and were the benefits of our interventions worth the costs? After the party is over, what are war’s real effects?
How do we as Americans choose to act on the world stage, in an era of financial constraints? Unpaid, unelected world policeman? Providential city on a hill? Muscular wielder of a big stick? The news out of Syria, Ukraine and other global hotspots reminds us that smart, informed attitudes toward how and why we go to war are important markers for the future of American democracy.
I traveled around the world to experience the geography, walk the streets, ask spontaneous questions and see if any patterns or themes emerged.
They did.
This is the story of the Afterparty, in the words of those uniquely able to make an assessment. In the final chapter, based on what I learned and you’ve read, our audit questions will be answered.