The American public and its political leadership will do anything for the military except take it seriously. The result is a chickenhawk nation in which careless spending and strategic folly combine to lure America into endless wars it can’t win.
James Fallows
The Atlantic - January/February 2015
In mid-September, while President Obama
was fending off complaints that he should have done more, done less, or
done something different about the overlapping crises in Iraq and
Syria, he traveled to Central Command headquarters, at MacDill Air Force
Base in Florida. There he addressed some of the men and women who would
implement whatever the U.S. military strategy turned out to be.
The part of the speech intended to get coverage was Obama’s rationale
for reengaging the United States in Iraq, more than a decade after it
first invaded and following the long and painful effort to extricate
itself. This was big enough news that many cable channels covered the
speech live. I watched it on an overhead TV while I sat waiting for a
flight at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. When Obama got to the section of his
speech announcing whether he planned to commit U.S. troops in Iraq (at
the time, he didn’t), I noticed that many people in the terminal shifted
their attention briefly to the TV. As soon as that was over, they went
back to their smartphones and their laptops and their Cinnabons as the
president droned on.
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