Fighting to lose
One thing that Neocon A (McCrazy) and Neocon B (O’Bomber) agree on, along with almost everything else of import, is that the US needs More War. Especially in Afghanistan.
It strikes me that it isn’t sufficient simply to point out (what should be) the blazingly obvious truth: the US has no sensible strategic military reasons for its occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s not just that those occupations are militarily pointless. “Pointless” isn’t value-neutral: it’s a very bad thing. Any pointless military action is an invitation to disaster.
Aside from the fact that they drain the US defense complex of the ability to defend the US against actual enemies – strongly suggesting no one in charge of US defenses believes any exist – and laying aside that the grotesque costs of the two pointless horror-shows have broken the economy to the extent that over a quarter-century of inflation-fueled boom has busted, probably beyond repair, we all seem to be overlooking one very important fact.
In the real world, successful pack alphas are never aggressive. They don’t go looking for fights.
Why? Because they can’t win anything.
If you’re the Alpha, that’s it. You’re top of the stack. What benefits can you gain by fighting?
None. There isn’t anything left. All you can do is keep the status quo. Or lose.
Three basic possibilities exist for the rewards to fighting for an Alpha:
- You win. You keep your position. Also your life.
- You win but are hurt. At the best you’re weakened and will be challenged again soon – and be more likely to lose. Otherwise you may bleed out slowly, get infected and die in agony, be just a heartbeat slow and get your back broken by a wildebeest. Getting your throat torn out by a challenger might be your kindest fate.
- You die. Game over.
There. Clear enough? If you’re an Alpha (“the world’s only superpower!”) and you pick a fight the only possible outcomes are a) neutral; b) negative. If you think that’s a good bet, you probably helped conceive the invasion of, of all the horrible places, Afghanistan (see Empires, Graveyard of.)
For an Alpha the only justifications for fighting are to defend yourself and your position against a serious threat. (In the real world, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to fight for the “position” of a nation-state, at all, but I’m mooting that one now.) Follows, doesn’t it?
Now: how could anybody who isn’t delusional or just a pants-wetting coward really believe that Iraq or Afghanistan posed a deadly threat to the US? And do we want the mad or those terrified their own shadow has WMDs to control our destinies? Maybe that’s a bad idea?
So it isn’t sufficient simply to point out (what should be) the blazingly obvious truth: the US has no sensible strategic military reasons for its occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. They also invite disaster – not just for the military, but the nation and its subjects. The latter being us.
Addendum – please, don’t even write me any weak nonsense about how “al-Qa’ida” trained in Afghanistan. They also trained in Hamburg and south Florida, among other places. So what?
Tags: bad strategy, dominance, Neocon A vs. Neocon B, superpower delusions