WILL AFGHANISTAN BE OUR LAST WAR?

The thought came to me that Afghanistan maybe our last “conventional war”, ever! By conventional war, I am refereeing to organized armed forces of two countries or political units facing one another on some great battlefield. That definition even disqualifies the Afghanistan "conflict" as a war. General Patton, in the WW II was the idol of conventional warfare; standing in a rapidly moving heavily armored tank overlooking a battlefield of death and destruction and thinking how glorious war is. Include the more recent event of General Colin Powell planning Desert Storm, the first invasion of Iraq, by using massive overwhelming force accompanied by an anticipated flood of feel good hormone following complete victory, which never came. Or Bush and the second Iraqi war; liar, liar Baghdad on fire.

We are living in a seminal era in terms of international conflicts; a shift from the clash of massive war machines to conflict through terrorism. This change diminishes the significance of industrialized nation’s military industrial complex that has dominated the world for so long and shifts it to suicide bombers and roadside improvised explosive devices (IED). It seems a legitimate question ask, “Is this change here to stay?” What maybe overlooked is that it is in keeping with an overall humanization trend, which makes it seem as if it is here to stay. Of course, there will be some small army against small army conflicts but fewer in number but no more death dealing massive wars—a bold thing to say in light of the atomic bomb. Unfortunately, with the diminished possibility of a huge war there will be more and more acts of terror. In terms of natural history, belligerent behavior first evolved between individuals, then families, then tribes, religious groups, politically defined nations and now with the world becoming flat such behavior seems to be changing to conflict between radical ideologues and society as a whole. In many case cases it is net even groups but between individuals and society; Timothy McVey, the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge. Regardless, the only way for a small force to fight a massive force is through use of terror. 

Stephen Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why violence has declined, published in 2011 was a remarkable book because of the author’s diligence in his research and his reduction of a massive database to an understandable discussion. The subtitle points at the conclusion. Violence has declined through the centuries. Fewer and fewer people are dying. Gore and “man’s inhumanity to man” is still there but is no longer on such a massive scale.

Once we examine what could be the consequences of this shift on our society, I think we will realize how much our ancestors have structured world society around war. Obviously, our national defense posture—both offensive and defensive—will eventually reflect this paradigm shift from massive conflict to fighting small groups of terrorists. This shift will influence our culture in terms of economic structure and continue inducing changes right down to social values and even language. For instance, our morally sensitive culturally values have changes tremendously in the past century. In WW II, for example, we deliberately targeted civilian populations: Dresden, Germany and Hiroshima, Japan. In contrast, the “killing” of a single 16–year-old boy in Yemen, incensed us as a nation. While it is true that the media has distorted the truth of that incident and made it sound as if we personally were responsible by using the pronoun “we”, our government did target and kill a group of al Qaeda operatives, which by chance included this boy. It happened in a country, with which we are not at war in the old constitutional sense; that is, congress has not declared war on.

We call the people killed by drones in that restaurant and other places as operatives and not soldiers. If we had captured them, we would not call them prisoners of war. The POW Geneva Convention for treatment of prisoners of war or “enemy combatants” no longer applies in an undeclared war. We can not release them at the end of the war if there is no war to end. We have no legal structure to make a decision of when and where to shoot a drone missile any more than we have a legal structure to handle a terrorist captured in a foreign country. Almost as aside, if we did not use great waves of huge bombers or massive ships to kill people, we will not need to make these weapons of war; we use single drones flown remotely. A pentagon full of unneeded general and admirals will disappear. Our war veterans will dwindle to a single person flying the drone from a building in the United States and a few people at some remote airfield launched the drone and people need for logistics. War of this sort will never have thousands of wounded veterans and their families for our government to pledge lifelong care.

On the domestic manufacturing side and veteran entitlements, the economic impact will be equally dramatic. Aside for drone and rocket manufacturing, no weapons of war will be needed, only protective armor and whole body scanners, and explosive detectors.  The cost of war will diminish to near zero. The next 100 years could be dramatic in a nice way. Sure, we still have bomb, bomb McCain, neo-cons, and greedy industrialists including arms manufacturers trying to exxpand to the domestic market. Nonetheless, the shift is happening and will continue to happen. We should recognize it for what it is, encourage it, always being vigilant, and keep fighting radial groups who use terrorist techniques to get to the top of the peck order—the ones who want to be the top chicken and are willing violate basic morality and kill people to get there.