Originally published at TomDispatch.com

Iraq remains a mess from which the U.S. military seems increasingly uninterested in withdrawing fully and Afghanistan a disaster area, but it’s never too soon to think about the next war.  The subject is already on the minds of Pentagon planners.  The question is:  Are they focusing on how to manage future wars so that they won’t last longer than the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II combined? 

There’s reason to worry, especially since the lessons of both Iraq and Afghanistan are clear: it takes years after a war has been launched for the U.S. military to develop tactics that lead to stasis.  (“Victory” is a word that has gone out of fashion.)

Here, then, are three modest suggestions for recalibrating the American way of war.  All are based on a simple principle -- “preventive war planning” -- and are focused on getting the next war right before it begins, not decades after it’s launched.

1.  Make the Apologies in Advance

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When then Congressman John Tunney was running in the California U.S. Senate primary in 1970, a race which would culminate with his unseating of Senator George Murphy in the November election, he made reference to the still raging Vietnam War as a “mirage.”

Tunney used the word to accent what he perceived as a wrong-headed view of the United States being able to resolve conflicts through a continuing military commitment. The people of Vietnam would see that the best hope for their future resided in linkage to American power.

The Vietnam War ended with over 59,000 U.S. losses. The foreign losses, counting Cambodia as neighboring offshoot as well as Vietnam, is unknown in any kind of precise calculation but estimated at 2.5 million or more according to some estimates.

The tragic human suffering did not end with the termination of life. The dropping of Agent Orange to remove the heavy jungle forestation that U.S. strategists were convinced would make it easier to fight a hit and run smaller guerilla force did not deter a determined enemy that engaged and disengaged under its own strategic terms.

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By David Swanson

The last time I was on Laura Flanders's GRIT tv I argued that the American public opposed the occupation of Afghanistan, but another guest -- some Washington, D.C., "progressive" -- argued that this had no relevance, since the American public didn't know anything about Afghanistan.

When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan. I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don't know any better.

When I spoke to a philosophy department at a university this month, a number of the professors objected to my advocacy of majority-rule on the grounds that experts often know best.

Let's set aside for a moment the ludicrous propaganda that maintains that the reason we occupy other people's countries is to impose democracy on them. Let's assume we're imposing the rule of elite experts. Even so, even on those terms, here are some possible responses to this line of thinking.

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Cross posted at Blazing Indiscretions and The Peace Tree.

As Americans pursue Happiness today - on this most sacred of holidays - reveling in American exceptionalism, eating hot dogs, potato salad and ice cream, they also rage war to foster "democracy" in an occupied Iraq and Afghanistan:

When will they ever learn?

I first heard Where have all the flowers gone? in 1964 (remember Vietnam?) in my high school German class. Yeah, PP&M, Baez, Kingston Trio, they've all sung it, but Dietrich's extraordinary rendition is the best IMNSHO! Ausgezeignet! Pete Seeger preferred the German version rather than his English version; especially the lyrics. Seeger said often that the German version sings better.

Wann wird man je verstehn?

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