This article discusses the enormous disparity between the Military Industrial/Intelligence/Security Complex we have and the one we need by first understanding who and what are the enemies we really face.
This video contains an excellent description of one of the enemies we face:
The answer has never been, “they hate us because we are free, capitalist or just because we are Americans” or anything like that. Colonel West is right in his assessment. This is a complete clash of civilisations.
However, the answer is not the one we’re using or in the way we are implementing it. The answer is not by crushing or over-riding rights and liberties domestically, nation-building overseas, or engaging objectives confined by the policy constraints and infrastructure of Asymmetric or ‘4G Warfare’ in the way we are conducting it now.
We cannot continue to spend half our $1+ trillion a year defense/security budget to maintain such an infrastructure in a so-called “War-on-Terror” (WOT) as we do now. Certainly not when the ‘identified’ enemy (hidden amongst 60+ million Pashtun?) can spend <$100 million and lead to the stalemates we observe (Do we dare call them “quagmires” yet?).
The enemy eats meals at $.50/head or less while we spend $150/troop. They buy used AK-47s, RPGs, and build $50 IEDs, while we try to bomb them with multi-million dollar smart bombs and on remote ACV video screens where the killing is done via joystick. In doing so, we continue to kill so many non-combatants as ‘collateral damage,’ sending thousands more into the “theological-policy” terrorist embrace in vengeance. The surge won’t contain the War; it widens it every day. Madness.
It’s also not about not providing our troops the best possible supplies and equipment. It’s about how they’re structured and deployed, the mission they’re given and the ROE; before they ever set foot into any “conflict zone” (which cannot be called “battlefields” anymore, that’s largely an antiquated misnomer used by those who don’t have an understanding of the ever-changing 4G Warfare characteristics).
The current US global force structure, deployment, methodology and mission profile is insane and soon to bankrupt us. What sort of defense and security structure is allowed then? I asked just such a question of General Peter Pace (former JCS Chair) the fall of 2008 at a Broadmoor conference and his answer fell waaay short. He admitted he had “never thought about it in those terms.” That’s because his assumption was one born of a career in an era of endless DoD budget increases. In 2008 most were still (but has anything changed?) in massive denial about the extent and nature of the fiscal/financial implosion now more clearly looming on the horizon. Looming, that is, for the still relatively few actually paying attention. The cognitive dissonance, complacency, apathy and ignorance is enormous.
The top end of the Military Industrial/Intelligence and Security Complex (MI/ISC) is obviously more concerned about how many fat defense contracts can be generated at additional hundreds of billions per year in expenditure to continue the gravy train. Instead, of sitting down and looking at the best defense and security needs of the Republic from the ground up, the beat goes on.
The changes are either still too slow transitioning from a ColdWar infrastructure or almost non-existent. How long a list of still actively funded but-totally-obviated Cold War weapon systems does one need to produce in order to emphasize how far out of whack that is? We are buried in a defense procurement system still mired in the abject stupidty of the MilSpec-1463 defense systems procurement process with no hope of soon escaping.
Colonel West was exactly right in saying we have to completely re-assess the approach and methods we now employ in order to determine the proper goals and objectives of a true defense and security of the Republic. A real assessment would lead to dramatic changes in the operating ideology, policies and the deployed structure. However, it’s not happening. This is how empires die and how and where they get suckered into dying.
The average comatose American either wakes up and smells the coffee in short order or relatively soon we will be in a real pickle. There is a date certain sometime in the not-too-far-off-future the Treasury either can’t sell a T-Bill to fund the following month’s DoD procurements or it will only be sold to the Federal Reserve, thereby fully monetizing the expenditure. What then folks? What then?
That cup of java will ‘cost’ (does ‘cost’ have any meaning in a massive inflation?) about $20 when that happens.
I first read the words Al-Qaeda almost 20 years ago. It’s flat-out incomprehensible we are still apparently at the stage of the discussion trying to define who and what the adversaries and enemies are. Flat-out amazing, that one.