\u201cC<\/span>hicken Fried\u201d by the Zac Brown Band is a paean to everything a Southern man loves\u2014cold beer on a Friday night, jeans that fit just right, the radio turned up, sunrise, the \u201ctouch of a precious child,\u201d Moma\u2019s love, and, of course, chicken. Near the end, the song turns patriotic: <\/p>\n I thank god for my life \u201cSo we don\u2019t have to sacrifice\u201d: It\u2019s a jarring turn of phrase. In an earlier day, Americans were expected to share the sacrifices of our armed forces. No longer. We honor soldiers who give the ultimate sacrifice so that we don\u2019t have a give up a damn thing. Zac Brown doesn\u2019t take the next step, but George W. Bush did: We honor the sacrifice of our soldiers by not<\/em> giving up a damn thing, by drinking our beer, eating our chicken and shopping for those just-right jeans. Our contribution to the war effort is defiantly to \u201cenjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed\u201d (Bush 43).<\/p>\n In several books (2009\u2019s American Empire<\/em><\/a> and 2013\u2019s The New American Militarism<\/em><\/a>), retired Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich has argued that current American foreign policy is founded on precisely this premise: We\u2019ll do whatever it takes to preserve our way of life, self-indulgent though it may be. In his recent America\u2019s War for the Greater Middle East<\/em><\/a>, Bacevich highlights a particular dimension of our creed of freedom: oil. We can\u2019t live the American dream of mobility without it, so we gotta have it. If the rest of the world reels, so be it. If it means that we have to throw ourselves into four decades of war on the other side of the globe, so be it. We must preserve our freedom. <\/p>\n By Bacevich\u2019s count, we are in the midst of a fourth war in the middle east, each a predictable result of our failures in the previous war. He takes Operation Eagle Claw, the failed 1980 attempt to rescue the American hostages in Tehran, as a starting point for his history. Throughout the 1980s, we intervened, tragically, in Lebanon, supported mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, aided Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran while secretly funneling arms to Iran. The liberation of Kuwait from Iraq was the second Gulf War. The 1990s look like an interim, but Bacevich reminds us that even then we were patrolling the borders of Iraq, running an occasional sortie, and fighting in Somalia, not to mention the related war in Kosovo. Throughout, we had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, one of the provocations that led to the third war. After 9\/11, we followed the Soviet lead with an invasion of Afghanistan and then of Iraq. In the current fourth war, we have been dealing with the murderous aftermath of our adventuring that is known as the Islamic State.<\/p>\n Bacevich\u2019s book is a military history of the past 40 years, but my interest is more in the political, policy, and cultural lessons that he draws. One of his recurring themes is American overconfidence in the military, often in situations that are not susceptible to military solutions. This is an expression of a deeper illusion that the US \u201cpossesses not only the wisdom but also the wherewithal to control or direct\u201d the historical forces we meddle with (364). We don\u2019t even understand<\/em> those forces. Bacevich charges that the early formers of American Middle East in the 1970s ignored religion (38) and he observes that we even helped stoke jihadism because it inspired Afghans and their allies to fight the Soviets (58-9). We simplify by personalizing; every successive enemy is embodied in an individual who is denounced as the next Hitler.<\/p>\n <\/span>Because policymakers don\u2019t understand life on the ground, they plunge us into unwinnable conflicts: \u201cWhile the commitment of raw military power might get things off to a good start, a faulty grasp of underlying political dynamics leaves the United States susceptible to ambush, both literal and figurative\u201d (147). As a result, we make matters worse: \u201cAmerican purposes and U.S. military policy in the Islamic world have never aligned. Rather than keeping threats to U.S. interests at bay, a penchant for military activitism, initially circumspect but becoming increasingly uninhibited over time, has helped to foster new threats\u201d (362). <\/p>\n The scope of our aims is breathtaking. Obama has scaled back the rhetoric, but Bush responded to 9\/11 with a global<\/em> war against terrorism, sometimes spun as a global war against evil. Bush simultaneously defended the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. Followed through, this is a prescription for perpetual war. As Rumsfeld put it in the aftermath of 9\/11, we must \u201cmove swiftly . . . go massive\u2014sweep it all up, things related and not\u201d (quoted 222). \u201cRelated and not\u201d\u2014that covers every conceivable everything. Rumsfeld had the clarity to recognize that permanent war was the price we had to pay for sustaining our way of life. A week after 9\/11, he said, \u201cwe have a choice either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way they live, and we . . . chose the latter.\u201d <\/p>\n Doubtless he had in mind the restrictions on freedom that would follow if we were more vigilant about terrorism. But the point applied more widely. We have, as Rumsfeld recognized, a choice, and four decades of war was not the only choice we could have made. Bacevich has surprisingly positive things to say about Jimmy Carter\u2019s much-maligned \u201cmalaise\u201d speech, which Hendrik Hertzberg characterized at the time as \u201can exercise in national pastorship\u201d (quoted 20). As policy proposal, the speech was a plea in favor of American energy independence, but Carter set oil shortages and dependence on OPEC in the context of a failure of American values and a \u201ccrisis of confidence.\u201d We are at a crossroads. One road, he said, depends on \u201ca mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility.\u201d The other path was the path of true freedom, which requires \u201ccommon purpose and the restoration of American values.\u201d Energy was one of the \u201cbattlefields\u201d on which America\u2019s destiny would be determined (quoted 19-20). Carter\u2019s sermon was dismissed and soon enough he had adopted the \u201cCarter Doctrine,\u201d declaring that \u201can attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States . . . and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force\u201d (quoted 28). Modesty, restraint, and self-examination were out the window.<\/p>\n Bacevich is a punchy, darkly sarcastic writer. He\u2019s no apologist for radical Islam; he knows that America fights evil men and regimes throughout the Middle East. A realist who overtly places himself in the Niebuhrian tradition, his motto might be Psalm 20: \u201cSome trust in horses and some in chariots.\u201d He has little respect for foreign policy experts, and only slightly more for the top brass of the military. He never speaks ill of American troops, and he is the furthest thing from an American-hater. A graduate of the US Military Academy and a 23-year Army veteran, he has the ethos to pull off an account driven by quiet rage at American hubris and naivete. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a rage that he deftly passes on to his readers. That\u2019s what Bacevich wants. He lays the blame for the lack of a \u201cserious challenge\u201d to ongoing war at our feed: \u201cThus far, at least, Americans themselves appear oblivious to what is occurring. . . . In a fundamental sense, the war is not their concern\u201d (369).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cChicken Fried\u201d by the Zac Brown Band is a paean to everything a Southern man loves\u2014cold beer on a Friday night, jeans that fit just right, the radio turned up, sunrise, the \u201ctouch of a precious child,\u201d Moma\u2019s love, and, of course, chicken. Near the end, the song turns patriotic: I thank god for my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[846,99,1634,1032,1395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-foreign-policy","category-american-politics","category-foreign-affairs","category-middle-east","category-war"],"yoast_head":"\n
And for the stars and stripes
May freedom forever fly, let it ring.
Salute the ones who died
The ones that give their lives
So we don\u2019t have to sacrifice
All the things we love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n