In fact, according to the experts who really understand the consequences of both wars, they now look like very bad ideas -- although ones with so much momentum, and money behind them, that they have taken on a life of their own.
Michael Brenner asks:
"What is the threat that justifies these expenditures? Americans' collective image of the 'war on terror' project is of hordes of fanatical Muslims scaling the outer walls of the Republic with turbans, scimitars between their teeth and terrifying cries of 'Allah Akbar' on their lips. They are legion. Heroic Americans clad in the colours of the CIA, FBI and Homeland Security man the battlements -- repelling the jihadis with arrows, stones and hot pitch. Some join the uniformed military to sally forth in punitive raids to smite the enemy before he can muster his forces for the next, inevitable onslaught. All this is sheer nonsense inspired more by scary TV shows and films than deliberate thinking."
So if you are looking for an explanation of why the wars go on, despite a majority of the public opposing them, you can't get hung up in debating their pros and cons. They are an extension of an imperial policy that is about perceived national and economic self-interest, not values.
Look for answers in the minutia of budgets and appropriations detailing
who gets what, not in the endless speechifying about our love of
democracy.
Why do you think President Obama is using his ordered
killing (rather than his capture for trial) of bin Laden as a campaign
issue? Is it because, unable to fix the economy, he is running as
"warrior-in-chief"?
Why do you think it's taken so long to launch the 9/11 trials, and why are they being scheduled during a presidential election?
Why
do you think that an elite institution like Yale University has hired
and honored former General Stanley A McChrystal, who ran a brutal
counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, as a guest lecturer on
"leadership"? (An earlier American leader denounced as a war criminal,
Walt Rostow, a key LBJ advisor on the Vietnam War, became the dean of
the Yale Law School.)
Old soldiers never die; they just graduate to the Ivy Leagues.
This
is all part of the militarization of the American economy and culture.
Militaries always need enemies to justify their existence and expansion.
Once they have one, they are reluctant to let it go.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).