Caliphate, Bush's timeline, and the 500 year war.

[CarbonDate]

As a few of you may know, I'm an active duty NCO in the USAF. I don't like to bring that up much, since it might seem that I'm trying to argue from authority rather than making my point through analysis of facts. But in this case, it's a crucial detail to what I'm writing about today.

Yesterday we had an "all hands call" here at Andersen AFB for junior NCOs (E-5 & E-6) to be briefed by the senior enlisted advisor of USSTRATCOM, Command Master Chief William N. Nissen and the senior enlisted advisor of USPACOM, Command Sergeant Major William T. Kinney (USMC) about long term strategy. Cool, I thought. Maybe I might learn something here.

Boy did I, but not the way I expected. The first half with CMCPO Nissen was informative, if a bit dry. He talked about how DoD structure worked in times of war vs. times of peace and what the functions of braches are vs. the functions of combatant commands. It was interesting, but I was getting a bit drowsy toward the end of it.

The second half was a different story. CSM Kinney got up and spoke, and his speech could not have been more blatantly partisan if he'd been wearing a GOP button. He mentioned "uneducated liberals", talked about Democrats as "quitters" and said that the enemy had influenced the election in their favor this past November. He said that people who voted for Democrats were voting from emotion vice intellect and that we needed to "educate" our loved ones back home or people we ran into in the airport about the nature of our enemy. He had a number of doozies, like referring to Saudi Arabia as a "moderate Muslim country", referring to people telling Israel to give up Jerusalem, and stating that the Iraq War is nothing like the Vietnam War because "when we left Vietnam, it ended! This is gonna keep going!" I still don't know what a "state-sponsored country" is, and I snickered out loud when he at his Freudian slip when he said that the terrorists had already gotten rid of a secular government in "Iraq... er, Iran".

He talked about how the Taliban said that we may have all the weapons, but they have all the time. That struck me as obvious, since it's sort of their fucking country and we're going to have to leave some day. Then he went into the Caliphate and how this apparently is the greatest threat to mankind since Nazi Germany. The Caliphate is a pipe dream of some Islamists to form a unified Muslim nation and institute Islamic law over half the eastern hemisphere. Frankly, most of the countries covered are already Muslim nations, and if it gets them to stop blowing each other (and us) up, I'm all for it. But that presumes that these Islamists have the means of carrying their dream out, which they don't. Philosophical views aside, most Muslims (like most Americans) simply want to be left the fuck alone to live their lives and only engage in terrorism under extreme duress or desperation. It hardly seems like the sort of thing around which we should be forming our long-term foreign policy and military strategy.

And how long term is it? Sgt Maj Kinney told us about the "Long War", which is what the Bush Administration now calls the Global War on Terror (GWOT). They've never offered a timeline in the past, but they apparently do have one. Sgt Maj Kinney let it slip with this one:

"We're entering into a 500 year war here, people."

Let that sink in for a bit. It took me almost a day before I said, "Wait, what!?" I initially ignored the remark because so much else of what he said was just complete bullshit, but he said this in the context of talking about how this was going to be a long war that Americans don't have the patience for because it's not the kind of short war that our MTV generation (and Sun Tzu, if you've ever read Art of War; he wrote, "No country has ever profited from protracted warfare." But I digress.) prefer. He was saying that we have to have the "will" to outlast them. On top of that, he's in a very influential position as the senior enlisted advisor for PACOM.

So it's not that the administration doesn't have a timeline. They do. It's just that they don't want to tell anybody what it is:

500 years.

I'm going to write some letters. I suggest you do the same.

[CJCRANE]

1. The Caliphate is a delusion.

Just look at the struggles between Sunnis and Shi'ites, the embedded and powerful monarchies in the ME (our "allies") and all the differences in culture, race, language, geography etc of muslims.

The Caliphate is even less likely than the Pope becoming political and military leader of all Christian countries in the world.

[formercia]

2. The Crusaders have been fighting this 'war' for 900 years

what's another 500? :sarcasm:

Related threads:

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=68296

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2945354&mesg_id=2945354

[leveymg]

3. That's half a 1000 -Year Reich, actually lasted 12 years.

Looks like this war may also end at about half that. If BushCo and the AF End Timers believe it's now necessary to rally support for the President among the NCOs, they're already half-way out the door.

[sweetheart]

4. unelected civil servants project beyond politics the permanent state

That is why i want to fire the entire federal government, leaving not a single person on payroll
before starting over. These people are planning to exist no matter what party passes below them
on their permanent warmongering footing. The military's supposed to STFU and serve, that's spooky,
a bunch of psyops taxwasters planning to squander the blood of more generations.

[seemslikeadream]

5. Please post this in GD

please

SLaD

[formercia]

8. I linked it here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2952718&mesg_id=2952718

It wouldn't hurt to re-post it.

[CarbonDate]

10. I actually posted it here so it wouldn't fall away in five minutes.

Thanks to everybody for the votes, by the way.

[Jcrowley]

6. Kick for this post

Put this up in GD please.

K&R

[Ms. Clio]

7. thanks very much for this post

k&r

[hvn_nbr_2]

9. The oil will run out before 500 years. We won't care about the sand.

When the oil runs out, or if they find an economical way to extract from Canadian oil shale, or if alternative sources develop to economic sufficiency, we won't care about the Middle East any more. Whether it's a united Taliban caliphate or a balkanized region of feudal warlords or a Bushian pipedream democracy, we won't care and we'll be long gone.

[Morgana LaFey]

11. GOOD point

Ideology is one thing, but hardly worth fighting over in the final analysis. Money (and that includes the natural resources which create wealth), on the other hand, is always worth fighting over.

[Uncle Joe]

13. I believe as Al Gore that we have plenty enough oil to destroy life as we know it n/t

[Cobalt-60]

17. once the fossil oil companies

join the whale oil companies on the scrap heap of history they will no longer be able to manipulate our government.
Yes the delusion is pretty thick over there at the GOP.
I hold multiple degrees and take great exception to being referred to as uneducated.
As far as I'm concerned those are fighting words, just like "traitor" and "terrorist lover".
But at least now it's in the open they want the war to go on forever.
We actually need to purge the state.

[Uncle Joe]

12. I wonder if Command Sergeant Major Kinney believes Chesty Puller

was an "uneducated liberal" or quitter when came out and said War was a racket? Or did he think this of Dwight Eisenhower when he warned against the corrupting influence of the military industrial complex gaining too much power?

[tbyg52]

15. Did Chesty Puller say that?

I thought it was Smedley Butler?

I ask because Chesty Puller was a friend of my dad's, and that *sure* doesn't sound like anything a friend of my dad (or my dad, for that matter) would say--but miracles could happen, I guess....! ;)

[Uncle Joe]

16. My bad, thank you for the correction tbyg52

:hi:

[carnie_sf]

20. It was Smedley Butler

and HE was a two time congressional medal of honor winner.

[mojowork_n]

19. Here's the full Smedley Butler essay

It pre-dates World War One:

"WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows..."



http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

[Uncle Joe]

21. Thanks for the post mojowork

I believe my brain had already started the holiday, when I said Chesty Puller:rofl: I must have been having a flashback.

[Recursion]

14. 500 years? Hardly

It's running out. How much more oil is there in the region? Once that runs out, we won't care about the middle east anymore, and they will be so poor they can't do anything to us. Chindia will fight with each other over markets in the ME and Africa, and will start outsourcing work there just like they are doing to us now.

A 500-year war is ludicrous. The region is only globally relevant for another 50 years or so, if that.

[formercia]

18. The 'Long War'

Fearless Leader weighs in on the 'Long War':

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061220-1.html

"This war on terror is the calling of a new generation; it is the calling of our generation. Success is essential to securing a future of peace for our children and grandchildren. And securing this peace for the future is going to require a sustained commitment from the American people and our military.

We have an obligation to ensure our military is capable of sustaining this war over the long haul, and in performing the many tasks that we ask of them."