Andrew Bacevich opens his new, magnificent book Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War with a tale of himself as an Army colonel on a research mission into the former East Germany, part of the Cold War enemy that loomed over his entire career. He describes how the scales fell from his eyes.
"How could I have so profoundly misjudged the reality of what lay on the far side of the Iron Curtain?" he asked himself. But then that was only the half of it. "Far worse than misperceiving "them' was the fact that I misperceived "us' "
He refers to himself as a "slow learner," the truth hitting him in his forties. "Worldly ambition inhibits true learning," he writes. "A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable. "All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility."
That same personal epiphany applies, he says, to the nation as it pursues a state of permanent war on what amounts to the global front lines of what was begun as westward Manifest Destiny centuries ago. This drive to control is our "worldy ambition," the thing that "inhibits true learning" and precludes the humility it takes to see what is being done in our names as Americans, often dishonestly and in secret.
"If change is to come, it must come from the people," Bacevich writes. "Yet unless Americans finally awaken to the fact that they've been had, Washington will continue to have its way."
Without this soul-searching change, there will be no meaningful national jobs programs; there will be no needed infrastructure maintenance; there will be no domestic Marshal Plan pursuing alternative energy application; and we will continue to fall behind in educating our youth for the future.
We are now on the verge of bailing out crooks in an Afghan banking system that crashed, just like the economic crisis here, due to irresponsible loans and real estate boondoggles. Just like we did here, we will be bailing out the fat-cat crooks who caused the crisis. And just like here, the poor and working people will suffer.
We will bail the government out in Afghanistan, as Bacevich and Brzezinski make clear, because of our own blinding ambition, drive and corruption and because we know, if we don't bail them out in a crisis like this, we will be disempowering them and empowering the Afghan insurgency.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
