Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country by Andrew J. Bacevich Read Free Book Online Page B

inconsequential measure, the Israeli security concept, nasty as it may be, has succeeded.
    What’s hard to figure out is why the United States would choose to follow Israel’s path. A partial explanation may lie with the rightward tilt of American politics that began in the late 1970s, affecting the way both Republicans and Democrats have approached national security ever since. Among hawks in both parties, Israel’s kick-ass pugnacity struck a chord. As a political posture, it can also win votes, as it did so memorably for Ronald Reagan, campaigning for the presidency back in 1980, in the midst of the Iran hostage crisis. As a presidential candidate, Reagan not only promised unstinting support for Israel but also projected a “take no guff” attitude that came right out of that country’s political playbook. The contrast with Jimmy Carter, who was seemingly taking a lot of guff from abroad, could hardly have seemed starker. That Reagan proceeded to trounce Carter was a lesson not lost on candidates in subsequent elections.
    Over the course of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama quarter century, following in Israel’s path describes precisely what Washington has done. A quest for global military dominance, pursued in the name of peace, and a proclivity for preemption, justified as essential to self-defense, pretty much sums up America’s present-day MO.
    Israel is a small country with a small population and no shortage of hostile neighbors. The United States is a huge country with an enormous population and no enemy within several thousand miles of its borders (unless you count the Cuban-Venezuelan Axis of Ailing Autocrats). Americans have choices that Israelis do not. Yet in disregarding those choices, the United States stumbled willy-nilly into an Israel-style condition of perpetual war—with peace increasingly tied to unrealistic expectations that adversaries and would-be adversaries will comply with Washington’s demands for submission.
    Israelification got its kick-start with George H. W. Bush’s Operation Desert Storm, that triumphal Hundred Hour War likened at the time to Israel’s triumphal Six Day War. As we have noted, that victory fostered illusions of the United States exercising perpetually and on a global scale military primacy comparable to what Israel has enjoyed regionally. Soon thereafter, the Pentagon announced that it would settle for nothing less than what it termed full spectrum dominance.
    Bill Clinton’s contribution to the process was to normalize the use of force. During the several decades of the Cold War, the United States had resorted to overt armed intervention only occasionally. Although difficult today to recall, back then whole years might pass without U.S. troops being sent into harm’s way. During Clinton’s two terms in office, however, intervention became commonplace.
    The average Israeli had long since become inured to reports of IDF incursions into southern Lebanon or Gaza. Now the average American became accustomed to reports of U.S. troops battling Somali warlords, supervising regime change in Haiti, or occupying the Balkans. Yet the real military signature of the Clinton years came in the form of air strikes. Employing bombs and missiles to blast targets in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Serbia, and Sudan, but above all Iraq, became the functional equivalent of Israel’s reliance on airpower to punish “terrorists” while avoiding the risks and complications of putting troops on the ground.
    In the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush, along with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, a true believer in full spectrum dominance, set out to liberate or—take your pick—pacify the Islamic world. The United States followed Israel in assigning itself the prerogative of waging preventive war. Although depicting Saddam Hussein as an existential threat, the Bush administration also viewed Iraq as an opportunity. By destroying his regime and occupying his country, the United States would signal to other