Idolatry

--Guerras No!, Arcadio Esquivel 

Faulty assumptions, overly optimistic,
lack of reality
--General Ron Adams 

A great civilization is not conquered from without
until it has destroyed itself from within
--Will Durant
 _____________________

We Americans worship false political gods, despite thinking ourselves so secular, or so religious.

Here are some of our Golden Calves:

• Anti-Communism
• The Domino Theory
• Counterinsurgency Theory
• The Long War Theory
• Necessity of Nuclear Weapons Stockpile

All of these beliefs have guided our thinking to accept irrational behavior from our government.  Logical behavior is a hard thing for the human animal to achieve with any regularity, and as on the personal level, so too on the political.

Anti-Communism was United States policy from around 1917 until we became their allies during World War II.  The day following Victory in Europe (VE Day), they reverted into their formerly reviled slot.  The U.S. created and tended a nuclear arsenal capable of ending life on the planet many times over in order to protect ourselves, thinking this Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) posture would ensure our safety; it was a tenuous safeguard, for we were not sure if the Communist hoards respected life in the same way that we did.

As the Soviet empire collapsed, they did not unleash a nuclear war, verifying that our arch-nemesis was not as anarchic as we has feared.  Perhaps the present-day nemesis -- the terrorists -- are similar in that world destruction-domination is not their goal.

The U.S. Army is currently questioning the validity of the COIN theory in warfare, and perhaps it will be remanded to the graveyard of ideas, just as was the Domino Theory.  COIN did not work when practiced in Vietnam, and Southeast Asian carapace did not fall to world Communist domination after Communist tanks rolled into Saigon in 1975.

This leads us to question another shibboleth and bulwark of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), the Long War Theory.  The Long War concept justifies the open-ended roaming of the world seeking terrorists to neutralize, but the process encompasses its own weakness: Non-terrorists die in the project, forming the basis for the creation of future terrorists.  The Long War advocates are peddling the proverbial self-licking ice cream cone.

From where did the Long War concept emerge, and how did it become the darling of our military and political leaders?  Who decided that terrorism was to be a two-generation war? Why did the Department of Defense buy into such an irrational construct? Certainly it would seem there is a measure of self-serving job security involved for the hawkers of such an economically- and psychically draining policy.

The gods to which we bow usually have feet of clay.