When Will We Ever Learn?: What our National Security State Got Wrong in Its Wars of Choice and How to Deconstruct the War State

This book is part memoir, part critique of U.S. foreign and military policy over the last 50 years from my lived experiences, and part warning about where our country is headed unless our national security state updates its Cold War mentality and Congress dramatically cuts its spending on our military. Since these topics are dull, it’s also part shtick.Two spoiler alerts from my book:1) Russia is just a made-up villain to justify Congress’ overspending on our military and to keep NATO in existence. And 2) China is eating our lunch internationally in the 21st century global economy by investing in infrastructure and building partnerships around the world; while Washington wasted trillions fighting last-century geopolitical wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Congress uses 60% of its discretionary spending on useless military assets like aircraft carriers, war planes, and military bases around the world assuming our War State will be fighting World War III any day now.Hey guys, you're 0-for-3 in major air-and-ground wars in Asia in my life (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) with the 4th – the now 70-year stalemate in Korea – remaining a dangerous flash point. Are you sure you want to arm up and go for your first post-WWII win in Asia in War #5 as the Mother of All Battles with the country that makes our iPhones? I’ll take the house odds on that #5 being another L. What doesn’t Congress get real and take half of the 60% in discretionary spending it overfunds the War State with and spend it on education, clean energy, and healthcare to provide taxpayers a return on investment. I got a plan in my book to show Congress how to get this done. I’d be glad to come in and discuss it.How did I get such a cynical view of our national security state careerists in Washington and our War State’s inability to win wars? I lived through the Iraq and Afghan wars as a field-level advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2007 to 2014. Over these 8 years, I witnessed daily the futility of these enterprises as military campaigns; the senseless loss of life and maiming of combatants and civilians; and the heavy toll our “do good” foreign policy had on the local populations we presumably were there to help. I cover the deception, intrigue, and bad decisions in Washington that got us into and prolonged these wars long after each was an unwinnable money pit. I also provide lessons learned from these misguided endeavors and recommend changes in U.S. foreign and military policy including ending our self-defeating War on Terror.But my apprehension about what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex in 1961 began when I was an Air Force officer in the 1970s. I was involved in the bombing of Haiphong and Hanoi in late ’72 in the Vietnam War. I remember thinking, “Why are we bombing the North back to the Stone Age when the purpose of the war was to unify the country?” I asked this same question about Iraq and Afghanistan. I also served on a Cold War nuclear-missile base in South Dakota. I could not believe how insane and diabolical the mutually assured destruction doctrine was even then during the Cold War. Now 30 years after the Cold War, the missiles with nuclear warheads are still there. Congress has approved a $264 billion project to modernize and extend their life – instead of removing them under a U.N.no-nukes treaty in 2017 that had broad international support but the War State killed by getting NATO to oppose it. WTF?My tour as a NATO soldier in the ‘70s was a paid vacation. I remember thinking, “the Europeans don’t need us here defending them – they got it covered.” That was true then with the Soviet Union. Today, the European NATO countries spend four times a much on defense as Russia. The U.S. remains in NATO only because our general officers like their paid vacations in Europe. Any military purpose ended with the Cold War. Contact: ron@enzweiler.com Read more