Shock and awe.
Remember that phrase from the second Gulf War? We dropped an unprecedented number of bombs with terrifying names like "bunker buster," under the gravely mistaken notion that if we rooted out the bad guys, the grateful Iraqi people would suddenly coalesce around the idea of democracy. We would be heroes, and above all, the oil would flow again. Rousing scenes of the toppling of a giant Saddam Hussein statue were instead followed by years of protracted warfare, thousands of American soldiers killed and maimed, the establishment of torture camps by our own government, untold death, destruction, and displacement of the Iraqi people, the aggravation of bitter sectarian conflict, the establishment of a U.S.-backed government nearly as corrupt and repressive as the Hussein regime, and finally, an utter power vacuum in much of the country that precipitated the rise of ISIS.
Our nation possesses the most extensive and technologically advanced killing apparatus in the history of the planet. Our Air Force is able to inflict massive damage from great heights with minimal risk to our personnel. Yet, time and time again, we have seen the ultimate failure of these campaigns militarily, while the suffering they cause is undeniable. Secret campaigns in Laos and Cambodia. Drone strikes in Afghanistan that target terrorists but all too often have killed innocent people.
The conflicts that embroil us today are the undigested residue of decades of ill-conceived colonial struggles and Cold War power plays. Iraq as a nation never made sense at all; it was a creation of the British empire. Today, the Kurdish people perhaps best symbolize this problem. Their ancestral homeland lies over four different nations: Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, each of whom has competing interests, and each of whom fears an uprising by the Kurds. Instead of constituting a fully functioning nation, the Kurds are an oppressed minority in each of the countries whose borders have unfortunately been drawn through their homeland. Today, we ally with the Kurds to fight against ISIS; meanwhile, our ostensible ally and NATO co-member Turkey brands the Kurds as terrorists. All of this is playing out in Syria, where many other ethnic, sectarian, and national interests collide with devastating consequences for the people.
On Thursday, our military dropped the biggest bomb ever unleashed in the history of the world in one of the poorest nations of the world, Afghanistan. This rugged and tribal land has been the site of constant conflict since the 1980s, as first Russia, then Islamic extremists, then the United States, then more extremists have battled for control. While the Taliban has been our focus for over a decade, Thursday's attack was against our latest regional bad guy, ISIS. The justification for the enormity of the weapon is that it has the capability to destroy cave and tunnel systems that the terror group supposedly hides out in. I say supposedly, because since the early days of the second Gulf War, journalists have been kept far from crucial action, and actual images of combat and its aftermath have been strictly censored by the government.
Every one of us has some kind of horrific imagery of ISIS and what it does floating around in our minds. Beheadings, slavery, suicide bombings, the threat of imminent terror anywhere in the world. Of course most Americans see the need to somehow combat terror. But if anything is true it is this: we will never bomb that ideology out of existence. Every killing of an ISIS fighter creates another martyr who is used to recruit more fighters. What should our long-term strategy be? First of all, let's have a strategy.
During the campaign, Donald Trump called our President and his military advisers "stupid," saying that he would quickly take out ISIS, and that his plan was "secret." We now know that he had no plan, and whatever action is being taken now is simply a continuation of what was being done before. The trouble is, foreign policy does not work at all if it is attempted through solely military means.
Trump appointed an unusual candidate to lead the State Department, an oil CEO with no experience in conventional diplomacy. But even more troubling is the fact that most top-level posts at the department remain unfilled. These next-level positions are usually staffed by people with years of experience in their specific areas who have trained extensively in the history, culture, and languages of the areas they oversee. Combined with Tillerson's disbanding of the press corps that traditionally follows the Secretary of State, and our nation is left with a crippled ability to conduct even the most basic diplomacy.
The fate of the world could be in the hands of a man who orders missile strikes while eating chocolate cake, "beautiful chocolate cake." A man who, with his loose words, is unnecessarily riling up the despotic dictator of North Korea. A man whose foreign policy aims seem most directed to his domestic audience, because who won't support going after baby murderers and terrorists? A man who gleefully boasted that he would revive waterboarding, "and more" because "it works." A man whose policy veers wildly from day to day, moved more, apparently, by the tears rolling down the cheeks of his daughter Ivanka, than briefings with military and national security advisors, let alone our allies.
When are we going to realize that if we really want to be leaders of the free world, the way forward is not in a campaign of endless wars? As the richest nation on Earth, we can do more. We should:
Dramatically increase foreign aid to all corners of the globe, particularly in those regions where our blundering and imperialistic actions have caused the worst suffering.
Fast track training for a new wave of diplomats by making college affordable for all, and by funding special grants and awards to those who learn critical languages such as Arabic or Russian and to those who agree to join the foreign service as teachers, social workers, engineers, and health care workers.
Immediately apply a version of the Hippocratic oath to our military policy: first, do no harm. In other words, we should always apply the most minimally invasive and least destructive strategies to achieve a military objective.
Restore full media coverage of every aspect of every conflict in which we are currently engaged. When the American people began watching the death and destruction of the Vietnam War every night on the evening news, they quickly became tired and outraged. Why do we see images of gassed Syrians but never see the aftermath of mistaken drone attacks? We can witness what our enemies do, but never confront our own atrocities? I am not comparing the butchery of Assad to our military, yet our ill-conceived and often reckless policies result in unnecessary deaths and injuries. We have a right and a moral obligation to confront the evidence.
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