It's The War, Stupid

[Hissyspit]

Jeff Huber at Larisa Alexandrovna's blog:

http://www.atlargely.com/2008/09/its-the-war-stu.html

September 18, 2008

It's the War, Stupid

by Jeff Huber

No nation has ever profited from a long war.
--Sun Tzu

$85 billion to bail out American International Group, huh? That's on top of $30 billion to keep Bear Sterns out of the soup line, and $200 billion or more to prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from staining their collective mattress. For that kind of money we could have financed maybe three more years of our woebegone war in Iraq. Not to worry, though; we can stay in Iraq for as long as it takes to achieve the kind of victory John McCain promises if it takes fifty years, a hundred years, a thousand years or a million years to achieve.

The Chinese are a patient people, and they take American Express.

Strategic Reach Around

A number of folks in my neck of Virginia who voted for Bush twice and plan to vote for McCain assure me that our current economic woes are a direct result of our banks making mortgage loans to colored people. This is the same crowd that believes without hesitation that if we were to withdraw from Iraq, a haji horde numbering in the hundreds of millions would transit the oceans aboard a fleet of magic carpets, and invade and occupy America, and force all of us to do unspeakable things in unimaginable ways while we form pyramids wearing our unmentionables, or something like that.

What we're actually observing now is an ironic reversal of the strategic equation that led America to the status of global hegemon. Beginning with World War I (and arguably before that), military intervention overseas both enhanced America's place in the balance of global military power and fueled its economic engine. American has essentially maintained a wartime economy since World War II, the conflict that made the United States the military and economic leader of the free world. Throughout most of that period we have maintained a full time professional force and augmented it with reservists, militiamen, conscripts, and mercenaries. We have also maintained permanent deterrence and first response forces in Europe and Asia as a cornerstone of our Soviet containment strategy.

As a force in being, our post World War II military did a remarkable job of preventing a direct armed confrontation between the free world and the Soviet Bloc. But when we actually committed forces to combat, most notably in Korea and Vietnam, the results were, to put it kindly, disappointing. I don't say this to disparage the spirit and effectiveness of American troops in combat. Tactically, the U.S. military has been superb, but the manner in which America's political and military leaders (who at this point are virtually indistinguishable) have used it has seldom yielded favorable strategic outcomes.

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