http://blog.psaonline.org/2009/07/07/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:45:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://blog.psaonline.org/2009/07/07/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new/comment-page-1/#comment-1992011 Jeff Mason Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:31:14 +0000 http://blog.psaonline.org/?p=2121#comment-1992011 Mr. Isenberg makes some very interesting and thoughtful comments and assertions about President Obama’s military policies. And I would like to echo many critics who point out that fighting a “long war” is NOT in the strategic interests of the United States. Terrorism, in its many and varied forms, has been around a long time, decades by one definition and centuries by a less rigid interpretation. Can you ever really come anywhere close to“defeating terrorism” any more than you can end hunger, disease, piracy, or even misdemeanor crime for that matter? Like those other admittedly serious concerns, the problem must be addressed-- but the way we’re all (EU, USA, etc) going about it is clearly tremendous overkill. Terrorism is really an international law enforcement problem with internationally acceptable and agreed judicial solutions (on the other hand we can occasionally use U.S., European, or other special forces or military assets in small-scale, specific operations where police forces either don’t have jurisdiction or can not carry out a military-type capture operation). So, consistent with this view, Bin Laden and other international terrorists are criminals that must be captured and put on trial for crimes against humanity or failing that killed! The collateral damage of civilians unjustly harmed or killed, the tremendous expense of war (from taxpayer dollars to the impact on American families of lost loved ones and future income foregone by these losses), and the indefinite duration (and the tremendous uncertainty that this implies) make the AfPak War an unreasonable strategic formulation for America. And, by the way, the war is morally wrong, too. As are all wars, especially now that the Cold War is over and the Millennium is upon us. There are much more important global problems facing human kind (global warming, future asteroid strikes or other cosmic threats that in fact we know very little about right now [implying correctly that we should re-task the military and scientific establishment of this and other nations to nail down those potential threats over the next half century], population growth exceeding resources, and clean energy. One of the most serious concerns is the spread of dangerous nuclear power and weapons technologies when there are no viable long-term safe, reliable storage technologies [and we’re talking VERY LONG TERM when we consider the half-lives of enriched reactor grade (and even more enriched weapons-grade) uranium [hundreds of millions of years] and plutonium [tens of thousands of years]). War is an anachronism that unfortunately our policymakers, leaders, and even most of the general population either has failed to grasp or is unwilling to accept. Nation-state sovereignty is one of the symptoms of the war problem and that too must go but the question is will human kind recognize this in time, before nuclear, biological, chemical, or cosmic apocalypses render our planet uninhabitable? Obama called for REAL CHANGE but the change so far is incremental or symptomatic of a “steady-as-she-goes” course direction. Global conditions require an about-face, a course reversal or even a completely new paradigm not focused on the mega-insignificance of four-year election cycles or meeting the ridiculously short-sighted requirements of “winning the long war." Mr. Isenberg makes some very interesting and thoughtful comments and assertions about President Obama’s military policies. And I would like to echo many critics who point out that fighting a “long war” is NOT in the strategic interests of the United States. Terrorism, in its many and varied forms, has been around a long time, decades by one definition and centuries by a less rigid interpretation. Can you ever really come anywhere close to“defeating terrorism” any more than you can end hunger, disease, piracy, or even misdemeanor crime for that matter? Like those other admittedly serious concerns, the problem must be addressed– but the way we’re all (EU, USA, etc) going about it is clearly tremendous overkill. Terrorism is really an international law enforcement problem with internationally acceptable and agreed judicial solutions (on the other hand we can occasionally use U.S., European, or other special forces or military assets in small-scale, specific operations where police forces either don’t have jurisdiction or can not carry out a military-type capture operation). So, consistent with this view, Bin Laden and other international terrorists are criminals that must be captured and put on trial for crimes against humanity or failing that killed! The collateral damage of civilians unjustly harmed or killed, the tremendous expense of war (from taxpayer dollars to the impact on American families of lost loved ones and future income foregone by these losses), and the indefinite duration (and the tremendous uncertainty that this implies) make the AfPak War an unreasonable strategic formulation for America. And, by the way, the war is morally wrong, too. As are all wars, especially now that the Cold War is over and the Millennium is upon us. There are much more important global problems facing human kind (global warming, future asteroid strikes or other cosmic threats that in fact we know very little about right now [implying correctly that we should re-task the military and scientific establishment of this and other nations to nail down those potential threats over the next half century], population growth exceeding resources, and clean energy. One of the most serious concerns is the spread of dangerous nuclear power and weapons technologies when there are no viable long-term safe, reliable storage technologies [and we’re talking VERY LONG TERM when we consider the half-lives of enriched reactor grade (and even more enriched weapons-grade) uranium [hundreds of millions of years] and plutonium [tens of thousands of years]). War is an anachronism that unfortunately our policymakers, leaders, and even most of the general population either has failed to grasp or is unwilling to accept. Nation-state sovereignty is one of the symptoms of the war problem and that too must go but the question is will human kind recognize this in time, before nuclear, biological, chemical, or cosmic apocalypses render our planet uninhabitable? Obama called for REAL CHANGE but the change so far is incremental or symptomatic of a “steady-as-she-goes” course direction. Global conditions require an about-face, a course reversal or even a completely new paradigm not focused on the mega-insignificance of four-year election cycles or meeting the ridiculously short-sighted requirements of “winning the long war.”

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