"According to Andrew Bacevich’s new book, America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, the NO BLOOD FOR OIL people were correct — and thirty years too late. Unlike many journalists and historians who see the wars in the Middle East as a series of isolated conflicts that happen to have taken place in a single region over several decades, Bacevich, a career Army officer turned military historian and foreign policy critic, sees a sustained military campaign that began with Jimmy Carter and continues today. “From the end of World War II to 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in [the Greater Middle East],” Bacevich writes. “Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere except the Greater Middle East.” In attempting to explain why and how this happened, he describes the US’s current situation in the Greater Middle East as the product of many errors of many kinds: strategic and tactical blunders, fashionable military theories that did not live up to their billing, failures to appreciate the political limits of what military force can accomplish, and missed opportunities to restrain a military apparatus that expands the scope of its mission whenever possible."
- From Richard Beck in N+1 magazine
This is an astonishing fact from Richard Beck's study. He certainly highlights what I feel needs to be seriously addressed in our next Presidential cycle: foreign policy. Beck argues strongly that are presence is largely because of our concern to protect our national interest in oil. The greater point being that at least as far back as John Hay saying promoting an "open door" policy of encouraging an open international economic system, backed when necessary by force of arms, which has morphed into assuring the safety and dominance of American capital. However one might take that, his book seems well worth the read and certainly is the essay by Beck as the situation in this part of the world and our policy concerning it is very important. Beck points to Christopher Layne in his book The Peace of Illusions (2006) and his rubric as a way forward.
Soli Deo gloria,
The Reader
