In this installment, drawing from David T. Pyne’s
Modern Wars the U.S. Should Never Have Fought or Should Have Fought Differently
U.S. Involvement in major 20th and 21st century wars resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths while creating new enemies making the U.S. much less secure.
I include three wars—the first two of which Pyne regards as “unnecessary” and the last of which, the Afghan war, which Pyne lists as “should have been fought differently.”
In important respects the Syrian war is rather like Iraq in reverse—in each case a well established authoritarian government, representing a minority demographic, maintained order in a fractious land. In Iraq it was Saddam’s Sunni minority dominating Shiites, in Syria Assad’s Alawites dominated the Sunni majority. It’s not totally clear to me what was to be accomplished. Payback for Syria supporting terrorists? A favor to Israel, with whom Assad refused to make peace? In any event, the US involvement on the side of far more dangerous terrorists (ISIS, al Qaeda) than Syria had supported severely tarnished the US brand—”democracy now or else.” What has been accomplished? Three notable developments:
Iran’s influence has been immensely extended, from its own borders across Iraq and and the way to the Mediterranean Sea.
Russia has emerged again as an influential player in the Middle East, complete with a strategic naval and air bases.
Hezbollah’s capabilities have been immensely developed.
My guess is that these accomplishments were not intended by the US’s Neocon brain trust, but they are very real.
Syrian Civil War (2011-present)—U.S. military assistance to Islamist extremists and terrorists began with the CIA providing modern arms to the mujahadeen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979-1989 and continued with the war in Kosovo as well as the wars in Libya and Syria even while the U.S. was fighting the so-called Global War on Terrorism. U.S. involvement in the Syrian Civil War against the Baathist regime of Bashar al Assad, has been very ironic as the U.S. has bombed ISIS rebels in Iraq while supporting them in Syria. The U.S. has provided military assistance to the Syrian rebels, who consist mostly of Islamist extremists, many of which have ties to Al Qaeda. As many as 610,000 Syrians are believed to have died in this conflict thus far.
First Libyan Civil War (2011)—The unprovoked NATO military intervention in the Libyan Civil War including NATO bombings of Russian-backed Libyan government forces in 2011 was very reminiscent of the unprovoked NATO bombing campaign against government forces in the Yugoslav Civil War in 1999 as well as the unprovoked US invasion of Iraq in 2003. These aggressions undoubtedly served to belie NATO’s claims that it is a purely defensive alliance with no offensive aims against Russia and its allies and gave further credence to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s belief that NATO poses an existential threat to the Russian Federation. NATO’s support of Islamist Libyan rebels was successful in achieving its objective of regime change in overthrowing and killing secular Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was successful in overthrowing and killing him. However, it led to a devastating civil war, lasting several years in which the country was divided and controlled by different factions with most of the country falling under the control of a group affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Well done! Another own goal for Team Neocon—with devastating consequences far beyond Libya’s borders. Not mentioned is that US destruction of another authoritarian but stable Muslim regime has led—predictably (and I did predict it at the time)—to regional chaos. In the Libyan case, what developed was the Sahara desert was opened up to enormous arms and human trafficking and slave operations that have impacted both Europe as well as the African states on the other side of the Sahara.
Afghan War (2001-2021)—While U.S. military intervention was justified in Afghanistan in the wake of Al Qaeda’ s attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 Americans, once the goal of the overthrow of the Taliban had been achieved and Bin Laden and Al Qaeda had been chased out of most of Afghanistan, U.S. military forces should have been withdrawn after a two-three month campaign by the end of that year. Instead, the U.S. waited to withdraw its troops until twenty years later, ten years after Biden Laden had been killed, with the end result being that the Taliban seized control of the country before U.S. military forces had even been withdrawn. The estimated death toll from the Afghan war has been up to 212,000 people.
Not yet fully understood is the US decision to allow bin Laden to escape to Pakistan—or am I missing something? The whole Tora Bora episode is hard to understand. I’m open to correction on that score.
The Bush II neocon brain trust, mainly Rumsfeld really screwed up when the decision was made to rely on local forces to secure the escape routes, unless their actual goal was to have a "forever war." I remain unconvinced that all unintended adverse consequences aren't actually by design, supporting jihadist forces anywhere is universally stupid . . .