Sat Jan 31st, 2009 at 11:02:05 AM EST
In most countries there are four (or five) centers of power:
- The executive
- The legislature
- The judiciary
- The military
- The church
In the US the church has always wielded indirect power, although in the past four decades there has been an unusually close alliance between certain religious sectors and the Republican part. This is atypical for the US.
What I want to focus on is branch that we are taught in civics class doesn't exist: the military. The idea is that the US doesn't have such a fourth branch of government because the military is under "civilian" control. This is a convenient fiction, 99% of the military structure remains in place from one administration to the next. It is the largest recipient of discretionary federal funds, now at 54% of the budget. To ignore its influence is to make a big mistake.
Until the 20th Century the US tended to have a small military and the general sentiment was for America to stay out of foreign entanglements. There were some exceptions with the Monroe Doctrine and the like, but most military expansionism was focused on continental territory.
When leaders wanted to engage in foreign military action they needed to gin up support by creating a sense of outrage in the public. "Remember the Maine" was used to justify the Spanish American war. Wilson used various claims to get support for entering WWI, LBJ invented the Gulf of Tonkin and even FDR had a campaign of assisting England before Pearl Harbor to sway public sentiment. Recent events have followed this pattern.
There has been a subtle change since WWII, however. Once the military was ramped up to the extent that it became a world player it has never gone back to being only reactive. The first to be affected by the rise of the permanent fourth branch of government was Truman. Enough evidence has now come out over the decision to use the A bomb on Japan to show that he was influenced (or manipulated) by the group that had been working on the bomb and the generals who wanted to use it as a way to signal US superiority, especially to the USSR, in the post war period. Truman was the first modern president to be held captive by the military.
I won't recite all the other examples, but it is clear that LBJ and Nixon were also manipulated. Their mishandling of the Vietnam war was directly related to the poor intelligence information and biased advice they were getting.
The responses of both Bushes to events in the Middle East are just the latest in this chain. The fact that Bush II was happy with false intelligence only shows that some people are content to live in their bubble.
We now come to Obama. Even before he was elected he started to make statements that are right out of the permanent military playbook. This includes the need to expand the military and, now, to ramp up attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The statements that are made by his military advisers sound just like those heard from McNamara and his crew during the Vietnam war. These include the idea that we can pacify the local population, by eliminating the insurgents, that the failure of our programs is due to corruption or lack of adherence to our plans by the government leaders and that an increase of troops on the ground will make a difference.
None of these tactics have ever worked in the past. The evidence of history is there for all to see, not just in wars that the US has fought, but elsewhere. The IRA was not conquered, the parties finally realized that a political solution was the only way out. The rebel forces in parts of Africa have been carrying on civil wars for as long as 40 years. The Kurds have been doing so for centuries.
So what can explain Obama's shortsightedness? Is he a war hawk like Bush? Not likely. Is he in a bubble where all he hears are the daily threat assessments? Perhaps. What I claim is that all presidents are captives of the military branch. They wield so much power, have so many "friends" in congress and control so much of the industrial production of the country that a president isn't able to muster enough support to go against their wishes.
How would he do it? Suppose he proposed a sudden pullout of troops, or a radical downsizing in military spending. Would congress pass the enabling legislation? No. Would he be re-elected. Doubtful.
Is there anything Obama can do to dig himself out of the Middle East quagmire? I'm stumped, recent history seems to indicate not. We only leave after we have not only lost, but been throughly humiliated. When a segment of our government is larger than that of all the other industrialized countries combined to think that its doesn't wield power is naive.
If anyone one thinks they have a way to remove the undue influence of the military on US policy, I'd love to hear it.