At FiredogLake, Chris Hedges the FDL Book Salon
interview with Andrew Bacevich on Bacevich's new book,
The Limits of Power
. Below are a few of Hedges' introductory remarks.
Barack Obama and those around him embrace, as does John McCain, the folly of the “war on terror.” The Obama administration may want to shift the emphasis of this war to Afghanistan rather than Iraq, but this is a difference in strategy not policy. By clinging to Iraq and expanding the war in Afghanistan the poison will continue in deadly doses. Bacevich warns us that these wars of occupation are doomed to failure. We cannot afford them.
...
The “war on terror” is an absurd war against a tactic. It posits the idea of perpetual, or what is now called “generational,” war. It has no discernable end. There is no way to define victory. It is, in metaphysical terms, a war against evil, and evil, as Bacevich writes, will always be with us. The most destructive evils, however, are not those that are externalized. The most destructive are those that are internal. These hidden evils, often defined as virtues, are unleashed by our hubris, self-delusion and ignorance. Evil masquerading as good is evil in its deadliest form.
America’s most dangerous enemies are not, in the end, Islamic radicals but those who promote the perverted ideology of national security that, as Bacevich writes, is “our surrogate religion.” If we continue to believe that we can expand our wars and go deeper into debt to maintain an unsustainable level of consumption, we will dynamite the foundations of our society.
