I am a huge fan of American soldiers. While not all are the strong men and women we think of as fighting the good fight for our nation, enough of them are the selfless, valiant individuals that we can honestly feel good about soldiers as a whole. The military on the other hand is a steaming mess of corruption and mismanagement. Still, at the end of the day we are held responsible not for the mess that is the military, but for the image of power our soldiers project. This is the condition that leads to us being held responsible, and often believing we are responsible for what is happening in the Middle East.
To recognize the corrupt and outright mismanaged state of the U.S. military, look no further than the $43 million dollar gas station we built for cars that don’t even exist. The best part is that a similar station cost the Pakistani government only $500,000 to build. No, wait, the best part is that the military can’t find anyone to answer how or where the other 42.5 million was spent.
We dump so many lives and resources into the region that you would think we would have made some form of progress in forming a lasting positive relationship in the areas we do the most spending and fighting. Wrong again. In truth, these regions are the same regions where ISIL is gaining the most ground. Now, in the wake of the Paris attacks, a great deal of the blame is being placed on the shoulders of President Obama and his rhetoric about ISIL. That, I believe, is the fault of American Military exceptionalism. Because we feel our might is beyond match and question, we also feel that it is our responsibility to use that might to control a region that hasn’t seen lasting peace since, well, ever.
Peter’s Uncle Ben would be proud.
Let’s face facts: Nobody can win a war in that region because there is no such thing as winning. Once you control one region, another flares up with the largely sectarian violence common to the region since its inception. This is not a problem we can fix with drones or soldiers. In fact, the latest reason we’ve been given for being there is to keep the battle from crossing our borders, as if the biggest threat on the planet is taking place in this tiny collection of countries. We’ve given the terrorists so much social power that no military officer or political figure can sneeze without running into someone who wants to know what they plan to do about terrorism.
Its a problem that needs a new solution. One solution might actually be to pull out of the region completely. Let them handle their own wars as they prefer. Only, we are too strong of a military to ever allow that.