Blogs > Masters of War: We're Number 1! We're Number 1!

Dec 27, 2003

Masters of War: We're Number 1! We're Number 1!



Tax season and lawn care has been taking away from my blogging time this weekend but I really must respond to the wave of military post-game analyses that have been appearing in the last few days. There were several last week in the Times and Post, though the most annoying headline award has to go to the AP story that ran in our local paper, "Success in Iraq wows historians." A more thoughtful version of the same basic "damn, we're good" thesis, from a journalist who knows a lot about Pentagon history and politics, appeared in Slate.

The general message I get from these stories is that the military has successfully addressed many of the problems critics charged it with in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Political geek that I was, I grew up reading Washington Monthly stories about a military plagued by interservice rivalries, boondoggle weapons systems, and outmoded strategies. Those days seem to over.  It seems that the service branches have finally learned to play well together, aided by powerful modern communications and targeting systems. Like so many other technological marvels that first appeared 10+ years ago, the various "smart" weapons actually work as advertised now. (I always suspected that there would be frightening military applications for GPS technology, which works well now even if bought as a boating accessory at Wal-Mart.) 

Whether it's good or bad thing to have such a lean mean fightin' machine is debatable. The ability to conquer whole countries with casualties barely in triple figures puts the barriers to worldwide military action lower than they have ever been in our history. The U.S. media's unwillingness to give American viewers any real sense of the human devastation on the receiving end of our weapons lowers the barriers even further. Ironically, the end of the Cold War balance of terror may turn to have cleared the way for a new era of almost constant warfare. The list of U.S. military actions since the late 80s was already long when Clinton left office, and the current crowd seem quite eager to quicken the pace. 

Nevertheless, none of the stories I have read have spent more than a sentence or two considering what seems to me the genuinely determinative factor in the outcome of this war. When the biggest, wealthiest, best-armed nation on the planet attacks one a fraction of its size, isolated from the world for a decade, lacking even the minimal elements of a modern technological arsenal (like a air force!), the result was pretty much guaranteed to be what it was. Empires have been overwhelming inferior foes for millennia, and why should it be any different for us?



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