Combat High
America’s addiction to war
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Buddhika Jayamaha, Danny Sjursen, Gregory Daddis, Jason Dempsey, Sarah Kreps
A few months before the United States invaded Iraq, in 2003, Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary at the time, was asked on a radio show how long the war would take. “Five days or five weeks or five months,†he replied. “It certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.†When George W. Bush departed the White House more than five years later, there were nearly 136,000 US soldiers stationed in the country.
The number of troops has fallen since then, but Bush’s successors have failed to withdraw the United States from the region. Barack Obama campaigned on ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to send hundreds of troops into Syria. For years Donald Trump described America’s efforts in Afghanistan as “a waste†and said that soldiers were being led “to slaughter,†but in 2017 he announced that he would deploy as many as 4,000 more troops to the country. “Decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk of the Oval Office,†he explained. Every president, it seems, eventually learns to embrace our perpetual war.
https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/combat-high/
