Military planners have learned the wrong lessons from the Vietnam War, focusing on war’s “winnability” rather than questioning whether to engage in it all, notes Alastair Crooke.
By Alastair Crooke
Setting aside for the moment President Donald Trump’s animus to Barack Obama and all his works (notably the JCPOA, AKA the Iran nuclear deal), and his close attachment to Benjamin Netanyahu, much of this administration’s foreign policy seems to Beltway outsiders as one that is strategically incoherent: increasing U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan (after 16 years of war); a militarized ‘statelet’ to be constructed in northeastern Syria; a ploy to divide Lebanon; operational collaboration with Saudi’s Yemen war; and ‘taking Jerusalem off the table.’
A helicopter is jettisoned overboard from the USS Blue Ridge off the coast of Vietnam in April 1975, an iconic image marking the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
These policies all seem to be conceived with a puzzling indifference to the likelihood for U.S. failure and humiliation.
Now one military historian who served with U.S. forces in Iraq tells us in a compelling discourse that if we find it confusing, it is because we have failed to grasp the essence of what drives these policies. He explains – in a single word – what it is that we’re missing: Vietnam
“It’s always there,” Danny Sjursen writes of the Vietnam War. “Looming in the past, informing American futures. A 50-year-old war, once labelled the longest in our history, is still alive and well; and still being refought by one group of Americans: the military high command. And almost half a century later, they’re still losing it and blaming others for doing so.”
More than two decades of involvement, spanning from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s and — at the height of involvement — with half a million American troops on the ground, the basic weakness was never altered, observes Sjursen. The U.S.-backed regime in Saigon was simply unable to hold the line without American military support – and ultimately collapsed under the weight of a conventional North Vietnamese invasion, in April 1975.
“There’s just one thing,” Sjursen writes. “Though a majority of historians … subscribe to the basic contours of the above narrative, the vast majority of senior American military officers do not. Instead, they’re still refighting the Vietnam War.”
Many of the current military leaders entered the service when military prestige was at an all-time low ebb. They came of age believing the Vietnam failure was due to political cowardice in Washington, or due to a military high command that too weak to assert its authority effectively. But none of the military analysis done by this post-Vietnam generation of officers ever addressed the basic question “about whether the Vietnam War was winnable, necessary, or advisable” from the beginning.
No, in this view, the war could, and should, have been won – if only the right approach had been pursued.
Thus, we have had “forever war” which is designed empirically to “prove” the two major military theses of the war lacunae – which if they had been properly implemented in Vietnam, instead of being neglected – would assuredly have led to an American “win.”
This revisionist history began in 1986 with an article by David Petraeus in the military journal Parameters, in which he argued that the U.S. army was unprepared to fight low intensity conflicts (such as Vietnam), and that “what the country needed wasn’t fewer Vietnams; but better-fought ones. The next time, he concluded fatefully, the military should do a far better job of implementing counterinsurgency forces, equipment, tactics, and doctrine to win such wars.”
One strand of military analysis (the Clauswitzian, “go-big” hypothesis), about how to “win” next time, was initiated by a Colonel Harry Summers, who suggested that “civilian policymakers had lost the war by focusing hopelessly on the insurgency in South Vietnam rather than focus on the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi: More troops, more aggressiveness, even full-scale invasions of communist safe havens in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, would have led to victory.”
Though H.R. McMaster (the present National Security Advisor) in a 1997 book, Dereliction of Duty, pinned the blame rather on the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a lack of honesty in advising the President Johnson on what was needed to “win,” he agreed with Summers that “winning” required a more aggressive offensive strategy – a full ground invasion of the North, or unrelenting carpet-bombing of that country.
In this sense, he was another “go-big” Clausewitzian – and we may recognize something of this earlier intellectual framing in McMaster’s attempt in April 2017 to persuade President Trump to deploy 150,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, as a Petraeus-style “surge.” It will be recalled also, that McMaster reportedly is the advocate for a more aggressive, military-options approach for North Korea.
The other strand – the lack of a COIN, or counterinsurgency, approach in Vietnam – was initially adopted by Colonel Krepinevich as the overarching explanation for the US military’s Vietnam failure. The definitive COIN doctrine, Field Service Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency Operations, however, was overseen by David Petraeus, working with another officer, Lt. General James Mattis (the present Defense Secretary).
Petraeus would “famously return to Iraq in 2007,” Tom Engelhardt notes, “that manual in hand, with five brigades, or 20,000 U.S. troops, for what would become known as ‘the surge,’ or “the new way forward” – an attempt to bail the Bush administration out of its disastrous occupation of the country.”
“Such revisionist interpretations of the Vietnam experience would prove tragic in Iraq and Afghanistan, once they had filtered down to the entire officer corps,” Sjursen reflects. “All of this misremembering, all of those Vietnam ‘lessons’ inform the U.S. military’s ongoing ‘surges’ and ‘advise-and-assist’ approaches to its wars in the Greater Middle East and Africa.”
Both Vietnam revisionist schools are represented in the Trump administration and guide its version of global strategy. There are those who demand a freer hand in waging war than they had in Vietnam and there is a “hearts-and-minds” faction that consists of officers who have spent three administrations expanding COIN-influenced missions to more than two-thirds of the world’s nations. “Today’s leaders don’t even pretend that the post-9/11 wars will ever end,” notes Sjursen.
In an interview last June, Petraeus described the Afghan conflict as “generational,” raising the specter of a decades-long engagement. Speaking on PBS’ News Hour, Petraeus said:
“But this [war in Afghanistan] is a generational struggle. This is not something that is going to be won in a few years. We’re not going to take a hill, plant a flag, [and] go home to a victory parade. And we need to be there for the long haul, but in a way that is, again, sustainable. We have been in Korea for 65-plus years because there is an important national interest for that. We were in Europe for a very long period of time: Still there, of course, and actually with a renewed emphasis now, given Russia’s aggressive actions. And I think that’s the way we need to approach this.”
The analysis by Sjursen helps explain what otherwise seems to be ill-conceived actions by the US military, such as militarily to occupy (i.e. illegally) a corner of Syria (well, 40% of it really). War with Russia and Iran, it would appear, are “forever” wars – generational struggles. China is too, but that is a financial war front, principally.
McMaster said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in May 2016: “What is required to deter a strong nation … is forward deterrence, to be able to ratchet up the cost at the frontier, and to take an approach to deterrence that is consistent with deterrence by denial, convincing your enemy that your enemy is unable to accomplish his objectives at a reasonable cost.”
That is perhaps what America’s annexation of northeastern Syria is all about: ratchetting up the cost, at the frontier; a deterrence by denial (of Syrian land to Iranian forces).
Europe might like to ponder McMaster’s words. For if the U.S is engaged in “generational,” COIN-influenced operations against Iran, the Europeans are fighting the wrong war: Trying to appease Trump, by setting up a working group with the Americans to consider how the JCPOA can be improved, or entering into talks on ballistic missiles with Iran, is likely to achieve nothing: it will be simply subsumed into what McMaster described as the US needing to operate effectively on this “battleground of perception and information.”
That is to say the Europeans will be colluding with the U.S. COIN operations being mounted against Iran.
What is less clear however, about “what’s up” with U.S. foreign policy, is this: At the 2016 CSIS event, McMaster described Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine and its “annexation” of Crimea as having “punctuated” the end of the post-Cold War period, but that these were not new developments “in terms of Russian aggression.”
“Of course, this is a sophisticated strategy, what Russia is employing – and we’re doing a study of this now with a number of partners – that combines, really, conventional forces as cover for unconventional action, but a much more sophisticated campaign involving the use of criminality and organized crime, and really operating effectively on this battleground of perception and information, and in particular part of a broader effort to sow doubt and conspiracy theories across our alliance,” McMaster outlined.
“And this effort,” he continued, “is aimed really not at defensive objectives, but at offensive objectives – to collapse the post-World War II, certainly the post-Cold War, security, economic, and political order in Europe, and replace that order with something that is more sympathetic to Russian interests.”
This is frankly psychotic. It reminds of Fyodor Dosoevsky’s The Possessed, in which the revolutionaries fearing for the soul of Russia (read America), believe that, unless the perceived threats to her are exorcised by a renewal of vigor and a pure nationalism, their country would be overwhelmed. It is a study in the fragmentation of human psyche which leads the group to see everything conspiring together, to destroy what they see to be the true soul of their homeland.
McMaster’s view is presented as if America is the threatened, fragile psyche – under evil attack from all quarters. There seems to be no understanding that these fears might be largely the projections from his own psyche (as in Dostoevsky’s analysis), or that American military actions might have contributed anything to towards these antagonisms that he now identifies as threatening him, and his country; or that the dissolution of the American-shaped global order or America’s dominance over the global financial system, may represent changing major underlying dynamics, that are occurring in, and of, themselves and not connected directly to Russia.
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum.
“Trump, the US version of Gorbatchev”
1-30-18
by Thierry Meyssan
The Rearmament Act of 1995 and the strategy of Pentagon’s new map, which were implemented in the Greater Middle East from 2001, are now on their last legs. While the United States concentrated the greater part of its resources on the destruction of the Muslim world, other countries were developing, including Russia and China. Today, the US armed forces are no longer the strongest armies in the world.
This is what President Donald Trump and General James Mattis, his Defense Secretary, admitted in the National Security Strategy statement during his speech on 17 January at Johns Hopkins University [5]. Even though they did not explicitly state that they had been overtaken, they posited that it was an absolute priority to « re-establish [their] comparative military advantage », which basically admits the same.
. . .
Of course, the US armed forces have an unparalleled budget which is nine times greater than that of Russia. But its armies are pitifully unproductive [6]. In Syria and Iraq, the Pentagon deployed approximately 10,000 men against Daesh, of whom only a third were soldiers and two thirds « contractors » (mercenaries) from private companies. The budget for this operation was seven times greater than that of Russia, and the military outcome was a miserable failure. Donald Rumsfeld – who had brilliantly reorganised the multinational company Gilead Science, which he managed – not only proved incapable of reforming the Secretariat of Defense, but the more money he threw at it, the less efficient it became.
US armament is certainly produced in huge quantities, but it is obsolete compared with that of Russia and China. US engineers are no longer able to produce new weapons, as demonstrated by the failure of the F-35programme. At best, they cobble together bits of old machines and present them as new aircraft. As President Trump noted in his National Security Strategy, the problem is due both to the collapse of Research and Development and the omnipresent corruption in Pentagon acquisitions. The armament industries sell their products automatically, while the Secretariat of Defense has no idea of what is really necessary [7].
Whichever way we look at the problem, the United States army is a paper tiger and there is no hope of reforming it either in the medium or the long term – and there is even less chance that it will once again eventually overtake its rivals Russia and China.
. . .
As from now, international relations are dominated by this question – will the United States accept its current position or not. [11]. Today, Donald Trump finds himself in the same uncomfortable position that Mikhaïl Gorbatchev once occupied.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article199471.html
Well not really. I am fairly sure our military as bloated as it is has the capacity to avoid some fishing vessels in the South China Sea. Well perhaps they do not have that advanced capability but surely their cruise missiles when fired at targets will find their mark. So what if they can’t. We have super advanced anti missile missile like things that can shoot down incoming warheads at least 10% of the time sometimes even 8%! I’m fairly sure there’s a space laser aimed at you right now or is it aimed at me. It is too hard to tell because the guidance system is controlled by anyone with access to the go fund me site with a chance to aim the laser by donating to military research on more accurate guidance systems.
But the argument that Donald Trump finds himself in the same uncomfortable position as Mr Gorbachev did has a whole bunch of problems.
1. Trump just wants to build a wall and will probably be stopped by us Americans because at the end of the day we still run America.
2. The USSR built a wall impoverished generations and when it came time for the end it imploded.
3. Right now the USA is sitting on top of not only the largest military on the planet but the biggest mountain of coin to fund it.
4. Since WWII we have always kept up with the current state of the art in war.
Stick to the economic friendship theme. That is where we can all agree without comparing the size of our military and getting into fights.
Enough of the Vietnam War theories! There is a more modern theory which explains the current mindset of our military planners.
PNAC or The Project for the New American Century which hid in plain sight and yet was never reported widely had all of the objectives plowed into the Vietnam theory about how our military strategists plotted to go to war with all of the countries the USA actually went to war with. In the pivotal position paper “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century. A Report of The Project for the New American Century September 2000”
This was published under the
PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Suite 510, Washington, D.C. 20036
Telephone: (202) 293-4983 / Fax: (202) 293-4572
Established in the spring of 1997, the Project for the New American Century is a non
profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership.
The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project. William Kristol is chairman
of the Project, and Robert Kagan, Devon Gaffney Cross, Bruce P. Jackson and John R.
Bolton serve as directors. Gary Schmitt is executive director of the Project.
“As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the
world’s most preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in
the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does
the United States have the vision to build upon the achievement of
past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a
new century favorable to American principles and interests?
Their purpose?
ESTABLISH FOUR CORE MISSIONS for U.S. military forces:
• defend the American homeland;
• fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars; (Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea the Axis of Evil)
• perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in
critical regions; (preemptive wars)
• transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs;” (Drones and Smart Bombs)
To carry out these core missions, we need to provide sufficient force and budgetary
allocations. In particular, the United States must:
MAINTAIN NUCLEAR STRATEGIC SUPERIORITY, basing the U.S. nuclear deterrent upon a
global, nuclear net assessment that weighs the full range of current and emerging threats,
not merely the U.S.-Russia balance.
RESTORE THE PERSONNEL STRENGTH of today’s force to roughly the levels anticipated in
the “Base Force” outlined by the Bush Administration, an increase in active-duty strength
from 1.4 million to 1.6 million.
REPOSITION U.S. FORCES to respond to 21st century strategic realities by shifting
permanently-based forces to Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia, and by changing naval
deployment patterns to reflect growing U.S. strategic concerns in East Asia.
MODERNIZE CURRENT U.S. FORCES SELECTIVELY, proceeding with the F-22 program while
increasing purchases of lift, electronic support and other aircraft; expanding submarine
and surface combatant fleets; purchasing Comanche helicopters and medium-weight
ground vehicles for the Army, and the V-22 Osprey “tilt-rotor” aircraft for the Marine
Corps.
CANCEL “ROADBLOCK” PROGRAMS such as the Joint Strike Fighter, CVX aircraft carrier,
and Crusader howitzer system that would absorb exorbitant amounts of Pentagon funding
while providing limited improvements to current capabilities. Savings from these canceled
programs should be used to spur the process of military transformation.
DEVELOP AND DEPLOY GLOBAL MISSILE DEFENSES to defend the American homeland and
American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world.
CONTROL THE NEW “INTERNATIONAL COMMONS” OF SPACE AND “CYBERSPACE,” and pave
the way for the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of
space control.
EXPLOIT THE “REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS” to insure the long-term superiority of
U.S. conventional forces. Establish a two-stage transformation process which
• maximizes the value of current weapons systems through the application of advanced
technologies, and,
• produces more profound improvements in military capabilities, encourages competition
between single services and joint-service experimentation efforts.
INCREASE DEFENSE SPENDING gradually to a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross
domestic product, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually. (Wow! They sure set their sights low!)
The multiple challenges of the post-Cold War world mean that the US would have to develop and enhance key objectives:
1. Cold War 21st Century Security system
2. Bipolar Unipolar Strategic goal
3. Contain Soviet Union
4. Preserve Pax Americana
5. Main military mission(s)
6. Deter Soviet expansionism
6. Secure and expand zones of democratic peace; deter rise of new great-power competitor; defend key regions;
7. Exploit transformation of war Main military threat(s)
8. Potential global war across many theaters
9. Potential theater wars spread across globe
10. Focus of strategic competition Europe East Asia
HOMELAND DEFENSE. America must defend its homeland. During the Cold War,
nuclear deterrence was the key element in homeland defense; it remains essential. But the
new century has brought with it new challenges. While re configuring its nuclear force, the
United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and
weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action
by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself. Of all the new and current
missions for U.S. armed forces, this must have priority.
LARGE WARS. Second, the United States must retain sufficient forces able to rapidly
deploy and win multiple simultaneous large-scale wars and also to be able to respond to
unanticipated contingencies in regions where it does not maintain forward-based forces.
This resembles the “two-war” standard that has been the basis of U.S. force planning over
the past decade. Yet this standard needs to be updated to account for new realities and
potential new conflicts.
CONSTABULARY DUTIES. Third, the Pentagon must retain forces to preserve the
current peace in ways that fall short of conduction major theater campaigns. A decade’s
experience and the policies of two administrations have shown that such forces must be
expanded to meet the needs of the new, long-term NATO mission in the Balkans, the
continuing no-fly-zone and other missions in Southwest Asia, and other presence missions in
vital regions of East Asia. These duties are today’s most frequent missions, requiring forces
configured for combat but capable of long-term, independent constabulary operations.
TRANSFORM U.S. ARMED FORCES. Finally, the Pentagon must begin now to exploit the socalled “revolution in military affairs,” sparked by the introduction of advanced technologies
into military systems; this must be regarded as a separate and critical mission worthy of a
share of force structure and defense budgets.
Finally a tribute to 9/11 with flags waving:
Any serious effort at transformation must occur within the larger framework of U.S. national security strategy, military The United States cannot simply declare a “strategic pause” while experimenting with new technologies and operational concepts. Nor can it choose to pursue a transformation strategy that would decouple American and
allied interests. A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward basing and presence, would be at odds with larger American Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century policy goals and would trouble American allies.
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
It is all in the report published for all to see. Wonder why we have not been exposed to this? You must have been sleeping.
It wasn’t “a long one” pause after all since we got our New Pearl Harbor with the attacks on 9/11.
Military thinking has evolved since Vietnam. I think the PNAC project reflects some of that thinking in that our leaders envisioned in the 1990’s that America was coming into a new era of Empire much like the British Empire. The New American Century was a Century where American military might would dominate the planet and we would build up our defensive (offensive) forces to be able to engage in multiple large scale wars up to four of them simultaneously to defeat our enemies. The buildup imagined a vast nuclear force as well to be used as a deterrent for those who might resist our aggression.
The scary part is that they knew it would take something like 9/11 to galvanize the nation to support a war.
That is exactly what happened. The administration forged a propaganda war to implicate Iraq for 9/11 and told a bunch of official lies to support their claims resulting in the eventual ultimatum delivered to Saddam Hussein that he had 48 hours to get rid of the WMDs he was accused of having despite the UN’s objections that Iraq had disarmed.
So actually, I am not all that convinced that our military has an obsession with Vietnam and has based all their actions on that failed war. It seems a bit ridiculous to think that the leaders in the Pentagon were any more concerned with Vietnam than they were with the War of 1812. They had plenty of think tanks dreaming up a new century of military domination with the plans and actions to make their plans a reality.
There has never been an official inquiry whether our government secretly conspired to get us into a war with Iraq. Nobody ever references the Project for the New American Century as possible motivations for the Gulf Wars. I might be completely wrong here but I think there is a link here that has largely been unexplored.
If the Bush administration willfully ignored all the intel coming in about Saudis learning to fly at FAA flight schools but with no interest in learning how to land even though FAA flight instructors warned FBI and the FBI warned the CIA but were told to take no actions then there is a story there.
From The World Socialist Website an article from 2002:
The case of Zacarias Moussaoui raises many questions about the conduct of the FBI and other US intelligence agencies in the period leading up the September 11. It is the clearest example of the almost inexplicable refusal on the part of these agencies to take any action that could have prevented the bloodiest terrorist attack in American history.
Moussaoui was arraigned January 3 on six counts of conspiracy to commit murder and terrorism in the September 11 attacks. A French-born man of Moroccan Arab descent, Moussaoui refused “in the name of Allah” to make a plea, and a plea of not guilty was entered for him at the request of his public defender.
The 30-minute hearing in a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia concluded with US District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema setting a trial date for next October, despite defense protests that this would put jury selection around the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Defense lawyers suggested they would seek a change of venue from Alexandria, only a few miles from the Pentagon where 189 people were killed when a hijacked American Airlines jet slammed into the building on September 11. Brinkema indicated that she was not inclined to grant a change of venue, saying that a fair jury could be found in northern Virginia.
Four of the six charges against Moussaoui carry the death penalty, although he was arrested a month before the September 11 attacks and therefore could not have played any active role in the mass murder. Prosecutors have until March 29 to announce whether they will seek death sentences. Moussaoui would be the first French citizen to face the death penalty in the United States since the US Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976.
FBI refusal to act
Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota August 16 after officials of a flight school, the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, a suburb of Minneapolis, tipped off the FBI that he was seeking flight training on a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.
His conduct aroused suspicion: his attitude was belligerent, he was evasive about his personal background, he declined to speak French with an instructor who knew the language, and he paid the $6,300 fee in cash. He insisted on training to fly a jumbo jet despite an obvious lack of skill even with small planes. The prospective student reportedly did not want to learn how to take off or land, only how to steer the jet while it was in the air.
The instructor and a vice president of the flight school briefed two Democratic congressmen from the Minneapolis area in November about their repeated efforts to get the FBI to take an interest in Moussaoui’s conduct. Their accounts were first reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, then in the New York Times December 22.
The vice president of the flight school, who briefed Minnesota Congressmen James Oberstar and Martin Sabo, said it took four to six phone calls to the FBI to find an agent who would help. The instructor became so frustrated by the lack of response that he gave a prescient warning to the FBI that “a 747 loaded with fuel can be used as a bomb.”
Investigation blocked in Washington
Moussaoui was detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service on charges of violating the terms of his visa. Local FBI investigators in Minneapolis immediately viewed Moussaoui as a terrorist suspect and sought authorization for a special counterintelligence surveillance warrant to search the hard drive of his home computer. This was rejected by higher-level officials in Washington, who claimed there was insufficient evidence to meet the legal requirements for the warrant.
FBI agents tracked Moussaoui’s movements to the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, where he logged 57 hours of flight time earlier in 2001 but was never allowed to fly on his own because of his poor skills. This alone should have set off alarm bells, since a confessed Al Qaeda operative, Abdul Hakim Murad, had trained at the same school, as part of preparations for a suicide hijack attack on CIA headquarters. Murad testified about these plans in the 1996 trial of Ramzi Ahmed Yusef, the principal organizer of the 1993 World Trade Center car-bombing.
Several of the September 11 hijackers had either enrolled in or visited the Oklahoma flight school, as a more thorough investigation determined in the aftermath of the suicide hijackings.
On August 26, FBI headquarters was notified by French intelligence that Moussaoui had ties to the Al Qaeda organization and Osama bin Laden. Even this report did not spur the agency to action. A special counterterrorism panel of the FBI and CIA reviewed the information against him, but concluded there was insufficient evidence that he represented any threat, despite his refusal to answer questions and the French allegations. Moussaoui was not even transferred from INS detention to FBI custody until after September 11.
The French warning arrived on the day after the first two suicide hijackers purchased their one-way, first class tickets for flights on September 11. More tickets were purchased on August 26, 27, 28 and 29, while the FBI was refusing to pursue a more intensive investigation into Moussaoui or search his computer.
The New York Times commented December 22 that the Moussaoui case “raised new questions about why the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies did not prevent the hijackings.”
FBI officials responded indirectly to this criticism, flatly denying the account of the warning given by the flight school personnel. “The notion of flying a plane into a building or using it as a bomb never came up,” one senior official to the Washington Post January 2. “It was a straight hijacking scenario that they were worried about.”
This issue is of critical importance, and the flight school instructor, unlike the FBI, has absolutely no reason to lie. In the wake of September 11, FBI Director Robert Mueller flatly declared that the FBI had no indication that terrorists were seeking to use hijacked airliners as flying bombs. His assurances were accepted uncritically by the American media. The account given by the flight school shows that these assurances were lies.
A security stand-down
The Moussaoui case is only one of a number of indications that the US government had ample warning that a major terrorist operation was under way in the United States and yet did nothing to preempt or block it.
* The governments of at least four countries—Russia, Germany, Israel and Egypt—gave Washington specific warnings of terrorist attacks in the United States involving the use of hijacked airplanes as weapons, in the months leading up to September 11.
* The US government itself had multiple indications of the danger of suicide hijackings, based on its own investigations into other terrorist attacks attributed to Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network.
* The US government was monitoring the electronic communications of bin Laden and his associates during the extensive period of advance planning which preceded the September 11 attack.
* Several of the September 11 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, the alleged ringleader, were under direct surveillance by US agencies as suspected terrorists during 2000 and 2001.Yet they were allowed to travel freely into and out of the US and eventually carry out their plans.
September 11 took place amid a virtual stand-down of the security forces which permits no innocent explanation. The circumstances of the terrorist attacks deserve the most serious and conscientious investigation. Both the Bush administration and the Democrats and Republicans in Congress have rejected any such probe, suggesting that to question the role of the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies is unpatriotic.
But the facts which are known so far point to the conclusion that officials at the highest levels of the US government knew that a major terrorist attack was under way and made no serious effort to prevent it. The political motive can be inferred: they permitted an attack to go forward—whether they knew its full dimensions or not—in order to provide the necessary pretext for carrying out a right-wing agenda of military intervention abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home.
I am not sure why this website is taken with the theory that our military is preoccupied with Vietnam while ignoring all of this. Perhaps it is just to distract us.
As an after comment,
Yes, this is the same Robert Mueller who is now leading the Russia Gate investigation into Russian election hacking.
The analysis (after the 9/11 attacks) of Zacarias Moussaoui’s hard drive revealed the 9/11 plot after it happened and the obfuscation by the FBI prevented any officials from learning of the plot before hand. The hard drive was a treasure trove of Al Qaeda plans with contacts and detailed information. Had the FBI allowed the forensic investigation of the contents of the hard drive the 9/11 plot could have been revealed.
There has never been an inquiry as to why the FBI refused to allow the computer hard drive of a known terrorist to be examined.
The comment is certainly interesting but 10 pages is really too long; should be separated into half-page sections by subject with intro/conclusion for distinct comments. Switching in the middle from PNAC to a theory of a USG plot to in 9/11 is too much. On the USG conspiracy to start Iraq War II, see Bamford’s Pretext for War.
Ever since Paul Warburg’s and Edwin Seligman’s chat[1], the American public has been burdened by a pernicious war tax[2]. Crony Capitalism[3] and the warfare-welfare state[4] seem to have been imported from abroad and existed in it’s modern form of central banking and government bond market since the Napoleonic wars. Further tax reform may be desirable e.g. perhaps some form of decentralized indirect apt tax[5] with an upward limit on inheritance.
Increases to the above type of tax rate during times of military conflict may reduce financial profits in stock & bond markets and have less effect on everyday businesses and working taxpayers. In other words, finance and capital markets[6] would be adversely affected by excessive warfare, but let us not doubt any lack of patriotism, in this area of the economy, and willingness to sacrifice profits during and for a considerable time after a ‘just’ war.
[1] The Warburgs | Ron Chernow | Downpour | 2016
[2] The Income Tax | Edwin Seligman | Internet Archives| 1911
[3] What is Crony Capitalism? | Youtube
[4] Warfare State to Welfare State Conflict Causes Government to Expand at Home | Ivan Eland
(The Independent Review, v. 18, n. 2, Fall 2013, ISSN 1086–1653, Copyright © 2013, pp. 189–218.)
[5] Taxation for the 21ST Century: The Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax | SSRN
[6] Economics & Finance – Finance & Capital Markets | Khan Academy
Discussion of who profits by war and peace may go back as far as 421 BC[1,2]. The Spartans had a captive source of revenue, namely 50% of an helot’s labor, until they faded away. Various schemes of hoodwinking the public are manifold throughout history.The cause of military conflicts oft times end when the war chest is empty and no one is willing to refill it, ipso facto, tax reform like that mentioned above may curb the appetite for war. Smedley Butler’s summarized solution to the warfare state is[3],
“A few profit — and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can’t end it by disarmament conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war”,
and a modern update may be to include the financial sector, not merely the industrialists and financiers. The improvements may also tamp down on excesses in the welfare state and lay the foundation for increasing productive economic activity and rewards for everyday businesses and working taxpayers, as well as competitiveness in foreign markets of goods & services.
[1] Peace – Aristophanes – Ancient Greece – Classical Literature
[2] Aristophanes’ ‘Peace’ (2009 Production) | Youtube
[3] War is a Racket | Smedley Butler
US military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria are basically colonial wars. The US is attempting to include this countries, or maintain these countries in its sphere as markets and as sources of raw materials. Afghanistan is a major supplier of opiates. Iraq has some the largest oil reserves and high quality easily accessed oil in the world. Syria is Syria. The US will fight any country it can to prevent it from aligning with the Russians, the Chinese, or the Iranians. However, what the US doesn’t understand is that colonialism died after WWI. Nazi Germany tried it, El Duce tried it, Imperial Japan tried. They all failed. Meanwhile, all the other colonial powers were slowly decolonializing (new word). That would include Britain, France, Soviet Union, …Spain had already lost most of their colonies. France held out with the colonies till the bitter end but realized colonialism was a losing proposition. Not so with the US. Why is the US so blind to history? Because we hadn’t experienced total war on our Continent. We don’t see first hand the bombing, the killing, the horror so we maintain a self image in invincibility notwithstanding losing wars like Vietnam, inability to win in Afghanistan and Iraq, the failure of the blockade on Cuba. It’s very sad but the US is stuck in the 1890s when Teddy Roosevelt rode up San Juan Hill and McKinley conquered the Phillipines. We still think we can rule the world.
And Bernia you can add to the Afghani equation a good deal of mineral wealth.
The problem with Afghanistan’s mineral potential is that it cannot be exploited unless their people agree. A few bands of guerillas will disrupt any commercial venture. Before those deposits become viable the wars have to cease. Those wars will not stop until the US (and UK) are completely out of the picture.
I guess the only country that will be able to help the Afghans to develop those resources will be the Chinese. Hmmm, maybe Chinese policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other nations has some merit.
You can’t have capitalism without war. Until we learn to share with each other, there will be war. This is not an easy lesson for us to learn, but either we do, or we will soon be gone from the Earth.
Everything we needed to learn in kindergarten – like, don’t fight kids, share. We are at the kindergarten stage of developing a true culture.
Yes, very true. It is the only way humanity can survive – by agreeing to share with each other, instead fighting wars to steal and plunder.
Agreed wholeheartedly.
Capitalism as currently operated calls for the creation of banker controlled debt ad infinitum. Wars are the perfect pretext for creating debt. The Italian city-state bankers, especially the Venecians, perfected the model and then moved it to Holland and then England.
The Bank of International Settlements, the quite-literally sovereign central bank of central banks, created after WW1 to collect German reparations, governs the “systemically important (banking) institutions.” The latter are not subject to national control by sovereign nations. These banks are not subject to national control. That’s why their officers are not prosecuted.
We have arrived at the ultimate destination generated by modern capitalism: the economic collapse of the last-standing empire precipitated by unservicable debt.
So simple but so hard to implement. I’m not religious but isn’t this the doctrine of Christianity and most major religions?
We lost in Vietnam for one reason. We were fighting on the wrong side. Something we have pretty much done since WWII.
What the Vietnam War established was there is profit in bogged down wars. All these generals in my opinion, are writing strategic plans only to impress the executives who head up our MIC. I don’t believe we Americans are fighting any real enemy, as much as our MIC is making war profits generational. This mindset also extends to our Homeland Security Agency, as it flows into our news reporting, and everyday life to keep us afraid, very afraid of the bogeyman of who we cannot see.
Bingo!
It wasn’t the boogeyman that flew planes into the World Trade Center.
And it wasn’t an “act of war” either, just a convenient starting bell for all the wars Cheney and friends had been wet-dreaming about since they were young punks in Reagan’s administration.
It was the Iranians! Right?
The hopes to create a Syria based Rojava/Kurd state; the increase in Afghanistan; the increase in Yemen; stoking a divided Lebanon–all can be explained by one word: Profit. In each case:
Rojava/Kurds in Syria: They have oil, therefore money. They need stuff, lots of stuff, including military need–therefore that means profit for American business interests in supplying them what they need.
Afghanistan: They receive the most foreign aid of all countries from America. That money is then used to purchase American goods–weapons, training, etc.
Yemen: The longer the war goes on the more weapons and training the Saudis need to buy from American corporations.
Lebanon: Hezbollah is demonized while the government is aided in order to get them to buy American made weapons to supply them to stand up to Hezbollah.
All these areas serve the financial interests of American corporations which are owned by a variety of investors–some American, some not. The Russians are being targeted along with China not because they are competitors in profit, but rather because they are competitors in pushing a worldview, a political influence/propaganda model by being directly competitive to the worldview or political influence/propaganda model of the Anglo/Euro/Arab propaganda model. They each push out to the world that the others are criminals, foolish, and not to be trusted. Both are correct to one degree or another.
And the same goes for Jerusalem, since of course that proclamation by Trump would drive the Muslim world and especially the Palestinians to violence. That leads to more financial aid to Israel which is then used to buy more stuff from American business (weapons). Same for Iran–making Iran into a bigger threat than they are has the added advantage of being able to sell more military stuff to other countries to protect them from a newly dangerous Iran. Follow the money….
I personally decided on my stance sometime in 1965 but here I want to point out to CN readers the mention of Edward Lansdale in this article, and I’ll provide a link that interested readers may look at that I would encourage to carefully follow.
I can’t think of a more influential individual on my generation than Edward Lansdale. If one looks carefully behind the scenes in nearly every controversial event, one will find Edward Lansdale. I first became aware of him when I read Col. Fletcher Prouty mention that he thought he could identify Lansdale on the scene at Dealy Plaza.
It was Lansdale philosophy that Communism could only be stopped by Democratic Revolution. A major mistake in my estimation. He supported a clear bridge into civilian warfare that is unacceptable. Recently I read a review of a new book by Max Boot in The NY Times “The Road Not Taken” which seems to indicate that if a more “limited war” had been fought in Vietnam there might have been a better outcome which, for me, is a major misconception underlying most Neocon thinking so some lessons appear to never be learned…
This would be the “go small” scenario” or, the contemporary Neocon approach, which carefully precludes their own fighting and dying. Or in Cheney’s words, “I had other priorities”…
http://spartacus-educational.com/COLDlansdale.htm
The above is a reposting from anotherCN piece that is appropriate.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/30/assault-on-the-embassy-the-tet-offensive-fifty-years-later/
What’s even more frightening is what Trump & his Generals are planning as far as the American Nuclear Arsenal is concerned.
The several quotes below, combined, from the linked article tell me Trump & his Generals may well be considering using nukes in an invasion of Iran. Low yield nukes the likes of which were dropped on Nagasaki & Hiroshima but with much greater accuracy & efficacy (GPS tracking & guidance). They can drop leaflets a few days in advance of the fire storm just as they did for Japan and France (Saint-Malo).
I hope I’m wrong, but why else the arsenal in this way rather than just agree to concomitantly pare nuclear arsenals with Russia. How is upping the nuclear ante moving towards more peaceful & pleasant relations with Russia? For those who support Trump as a reaction to their palpable loathing of “The Red Queen” because, amongst other things, they believe she would have started a nuclear war with Russia, how is Trump’s nuclear proliferation policy any better and not worse?
FYI, I’m not a Hillary supporter so please don’t take my comments as such. I have no political ideology. Each issue is evaluated upon its own merits and not the edicts of a party platform & ideology.
When you read the linked article and/or the quotes from it below, imagine, if you can, Trump confronted with the Cuban Missile Crisis versus JFK. I’m fairly certain, nay I’m 100% certain, I wouldn’t be typing this today if he was because I, you, we wouldn’t be here. Now, imagine if you dare, Trump & his Generals confronted with something similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis today. I know, right? Best not to go there but we must if want to try and prevent it. How has it come to this? The Military Brass are steeped in history up to their eyeballs and yet they continually repeat history’s mistakes. It’s an enigma borne of pedantry & myopia. Of hubris & ego & group think. It’s folly. Tragic folly.
What Trump Means When He Talks Nukes At The State of the Union
Very scary! It’s already in place, I believe, for Trump to be able to do this. Congress should change that. Time for letter writing and phone calls.
See: US ready to use nukes in case of conventional attack – Nuclear Posture Review
Published time: 2 Feb, 2018 19:37
https://www.rt.com/usa/417748-us-nuclear-review-russia/
To add a thought to your comment, I often try to research the difference in nuclear generating power plants in this age vs the age of the 1940s, and it’s difficult to find clear information, but I’ll keep loooking. When people compare low yield vs thermonuclear and add precision with GPS to their low yield argument what is often not stated is Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not have nuclear power plants, nor even nuclear generated ships/subs etc as in todays’ world. Imagine if Hiroshima had a power plant equivalent to Chernobyl, or even a Fukushima commissioned in 1971. The results would be an unlivable environment. It’s obvious why the US made some countries (Iraq) give up their nuclear ambitions, which seems unlikely in the case of Iran.
Not only would ‘low yield’ create a disaster of monumental proportions, the land could become uninhabitable for humans for 20,000 years (just a guess). Even a mistake in guidance could perhaps trigger the multiple nukes Israel has stored. I would suggest that any comparison to Hiroshima or Nakisaki is no longer valid in todays world of nuclear plants, some just generating power in a peaceful way. Those who want to make a geopolitical power grab ala PNAC may find themselves unable to even run their precious pipelines anymore.
I’m not disagreeing with anything you posted, but I can’t help but think the analogy to the 1940s is somewhat anachronistic with all the nuclear everywhere. Just a thought, I didn’t mean to distract from your point. The entire concept is, as you say, tragic folly.
Fair point, and, no, I don’t think your commentary is a distraction at all.
For me, the only relevant comparison to Nagasaki & Hiroshima is the power of even a low-yield nuclear weapon. Other than that, as you say, the world is a very different place today than it was in the 1940s, and the ubiquity of nuclear power plants is just one of many ways the world is different — and yet some things never seem to change, like, say, perpetual war for war’s sake it seems regardless of the rationalization & justification for each consecutive conflict.
As a rejoinder to your commentary about nuclear power plants, the fact they provided “too cheap to meter” civilian power generation was secondary to their main purpose. The “too cheap to meter” civilian power generation dimension was their selling point to the naive & gullible public. Energy resource scarcity at that time wasn’t even a blip on the radar so there really was no need or demand for civilian nuclear power generation especially considering the complexity and associated costs of running a nuclear power plant. They were, first & foremost, at least in America, designed to produce plutonium for nuclear weaponry. Without this dual-use feature, they never would have been considered, from a cost-benefit perspective, as the article below indicates.
http://www.neis.org/literature/Brochures/weapcon.htm
I think Fallujah is a great example of what these low-yield nuclear weapons will be used for. Kirkuk, as well. And, if you consider the tremendous advances in automation and AI, it’s not a stretch to imagine that these Long Game Strategists envision a wasteland covered in pipelines built and maintained by automation and AI. What a great way to protect the pipelines — turn the terrain into an uninhabitable wasteland where no human foe could gain access to and thus mitigate the flow of the precious spice that feeds the rampant & ravenous industrialization of the planet until the planet is no more.
Wonderfully stated, and thank you for your informative follow-up, and the link. The dual-use is known and talked about, but there is a huge disconnect somewhere between our ability to generate, and our ability to control the waste. We still can’t properly store our waste and the material created at Hanford, especially in the 40s and 50s, is a nightmare project and money pit. They, the DOE, want to turn the waste into a glass protected storable product (layman’s term), and they are now building injectors to even condense the waste. Some of the bi-product from the 40s and 50s are so hard to even put through the pre-injectors due to large size sludge etc, and it is known that if the injectors clog, this very expensive building will just have to sit for thousands of years, unused. So it makes even less sense to start testing nuclear weapons after 39 years, since I believe the scientists already have enough information already, despite the generation gap, in its distructive power.
Just recently a test at Fukushima building 2 showed radioactive levels at a point higher outside the containment building than inside, which means the levels flowing into the ocean are much much higher than Tepco reported before. The levels of 650 sieverts are frying their robots now, and a robot built to withstand 1,000 sieverts is having trouble. It’s obvious I’m no nuclear scientist but shouldn’t people be informed on how dangerous all of this is? Are the robots supposed to withstand the heat of the sun to make sense of our mess? This information is ‘under-reported’, of course. So, while we pretend ‘duck and cover’ will help save our children’s lives, many people are walking cluelessly into many false beliefs about controlling nuclear bombs, that is, if they are paying attention at all.
Your closing sentences though create a shiver throughout my central nervous system. It is difficult to imagine a worst case scenario for humans and cultures, but a best case scenario for the fossil fuel industry and the death planners. “A wasteland covered in pipelines” where humans can’t go is even more sad and scary than I even imagined. Where are these insane planners going to live? Underground?
Let’s hope you are wrong, but something tells me…….
Thanks.
I too hope I am wrong. Believe me.
I think you will appreciate this documentary if you haven’t already seen it.
Into Eternity
Thanks for the reply. I have a reply to your reply but it’s stuck in moderation. I think you will appreciate it once it’s approved.
Thank you. I often wonder about the changes in the last 40 years. Awaiting more information.
Sorry, I tried to share. Obviously the reply I referenced isn’t going to make it out of moderation.
You probably know it already but not everyone who lurks & reads may know it. I don’t want to recreate the reply and have it moderated again so we’ll just have to leave it as unfinished business, I suppose.
It’s one of many reasons we’re in this predicament. Comments sections at well-read venues along with the mainstream media and so-called alternative media coupled with social media fosters fragmentation and precludes any form of collaboration regarding societal evolution.