Dateline USA: Permanent War

Tonight, President Obama speaks to the nation about the conflict in Libya. At the National Defense University in Washington, he will give a speech on the subject during prime time television on the East Coast. When the U.S. bombed Libya in 1986, President Reagan spoke to the American people that night from the Oval Office, the setting that is generally used for such weighty matters. When the same happened in 1999 in Kosovo, President Clinton followed suit. When the nation entered into war, life, albeit for a little while, came to a standstill for. Obama we hear only after a lot of grumbling and pushing, and only half-heartedly. With reason, of course. He keeps silent and minimalizes as much as possible because he sure knows there is no honor to be had with the nth military intervention.

This should absolutely not be called war. A spokesperson of the State Department even called it “kinetic military action”. But of course it is a war. How else would you call a large-scale action in which the U.S. fires more than a hundred cruise missiles and Gadhafi’s ground troops are being attacked? Remember the images of the Highway of Death between Kuwait City and Basra, where the withdrawing Iraqi troops were massively slaughtered during the First Gulf War in 1991? Hundreds of vehicles shot to pieces, from which still smoldering corpses protruded of enemy soldiers who were also someone’s child. That is what is going on in Libya. Because it is necessary in this case, it does not change the fact that it is an unfortunate situation.

Fact is: We hardly still register it. America is permanently at war. This country has waged non-stop war since 9/11. This year — it goes faster than you think — it is ten years ago. And yes, you get used to it. At American airports you constantly see soldiers. Some of them are there for security reasons. That on its own is already significant. Uniformed, armed soldiers who protect civilians — there was a time when you associated that with Pinochet’s Chile rather than the United States of America.

Others fly off and on from their tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. It used to cause a stir. In the first years after 9/11, no soldier could quietly eat a hamburger, while one after another came to shake his hand and thank him for his service. Now, you only see that rarely. The veterans — many are up for their third or fourth tour — have become part of the furniture.

This habituation is perverse. You should ask yourself what those soldiers have been through, how many hundreds of thousands of deaths happened in American conflicts since 9/11, how many thousands of young men and women have come home maimed and how many thousands of billions of dollars all of it costs.

And Obama? He is hopelessly stuck in the clew. George W. Bush, his neoconservative advisers and top military people spoke of the Long War, a decades-long war between the West and all kinds of Islamic enemies along the so-called Arc of Instability, an area that roughly stretches from the Horn of Africa to southeast Asia. Iraq and Afghanistan are only the first battles in that sphere. The Pentagon already plans for years of that long war.

Whether he likes it or not, Obama cannot get out of it. In Iraq, where there are still tens of thousands of Americans, the game has not been finished yet. When the fighting stops in Afghanistan, no one can predict. Obama wanted to reduce the American engagement there, but was skillfully blocked by the military. Today there is Libya. You do not have to be a dreamer to see new conflicts coming in Iran and Pakistan, and in other Arab countries, where there are no guarantees for a good end to the revolution of the last months. Therefore it may be better to go shopping and not think too much about it. It does not stop anyway. You would see black for lesser things.