Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > A 12-Step Program to Cure America of Its War Addiction
________________________________________
A 12-Step Program to Cure America of Its War Addiction
By William Astore [1] / Tom Dispatch [2]
June 28, 2015
To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the
latest updates from TomDispatch.com here [3].
War on drugs [4]. War on poverty [5]. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. War
on terror [6]. The biggest mistake in American policy, foreign and domestic,
is looking at everything as war. When a war mentality takes over, it
chooses the weapons and tactics for you. It limits the terms of debate
before you even begin. It answers questions before they're even asked.
When you define something as war, it dictates the use of the military (or
militarized police forces, prisons, and other forms of coercion) as the
primary instruments of policy. Violence becomes the means of decision,
total victory the goal. Anyone who suggests otherwise is labeled a dreamer,
an appeaser, or even a traitor.
War, in short, is the great simplifier -- and it may even work when you're
fighting existential military threats (as in World War II). But it doesn't
work when you define every problem as an existential one and then make war
on complex societal problems (crime, poverty, drugs) or ideas and religious
beliefs (radical Islam).
America's Omnipresent War Ethos
Consider the Afghan War -- not the one in the 1980s when Washington funneled
money and arms to the fundamentalist Mujahideen to inflict on the Soviet
Union a Vietnam-style quagmire, but the more recent phase that began soon
after 9/11. Keep in mind that what launched it were those attacks by 19
hijackers (15 of whom were Saudi nationals) representing a modest-sized
organization lacking the slightest resemblance to a nation, state, or
government. There was as well, of course, the fundamentalist Taliban
movement that then controlled much of Afghanistan. It had emerged from the
rubble of our previous war there and had provided support and sanctuary,
though somewhat grudgingly, to Osama bin Laden.
With images of those collapsing towers in New York burned into America's
collective consciousness, the idea that the U.S. might respond with an
international "policing" action aimed at taking criminals off the global
streets was instantly banished from discussion. What arose in the minds of
the Bush administration's top officials instead was vengeance via a
full-scale, global, and generational [7] "war on terror." Its thoroughly
militarized goal was not just to eliminate al-Qaeda but any terror outfits
[8] anywhere on Earth, even as the U.S. embarked on a full-fledged
experiment in violent nation building in Afghanistan. More than 13 dismal
years later, that Afghan War-cum-experiment is ongoing at staggering expense
and with the most disappointing of results.
While the mindset of global war was gaining traction, the Bush
administration launched its invasion of Iraq. The most technologically
advanced military on Earth, one that the president termed "the greatest
force for human liberation the world has ever known," was set loose to bring
"democracy" and a Pax Americana to the Middle East. Washington had, of
course, been in conflict with Iraq since Operation Desert Storm in
1990-1991, but what began as the equivalent of a military coup (aka a
"decapitation [9]" operation) by an outside power, an attempt to overthrow
Saddam Hussein and eliminate his armed forces and party, soon morphed into a
prolonged occupation and another political and social experiment in violent
nation-building. As with Afghanistan, the Iraq experiment with war is still
ongoing at enormous expense and with even more disastrous results.
Radical Islam has drawn strength from these American-led "wars." Indeed,
radical Islamists cite the intrusive and apparently permanent presence [10]
of American troops and bases in the Middle East and Central Asia as
confirmation of their belief that U.S. forces are leading a crusade against
them -- and by extension against Islam itself. (And in a revealing slip of
the tongue [11], President Bush did indeed once call his war on terror a
"crusade.") Considered in these terms, such a war is by definition a losing
effort because each "success" only strengthens the narrative of Washington's
enemies. There's simply no way to win such a war except by stopping it.
Yet that course of action is never [12] on the proverbial "table" of options
from which officials in Washington are said to choose their strategies. To
do so, in the context of war thinking, would mean to admit defeat (even
though true defeat arrived the very instant the problem was first defined as
war).
Our leaders persist in such violent folly at least in part because they fear
the admission of defeat above all else. After all, nothing is more
pejorative in American politics or culture than to be labeled a loser in
war, someone who "cuts and runs."
In the 1960s, despite his own serious misgivings [13] about the ongoing
conflict in Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson set the gold standard in
his determination not to be the first American president to lose a war,
especially in a "damn little pissant country [14]" like Vietnam. So he
persisted -- and the conflict turned him into a loser anyway and destroyed
his presidency.
Even as he waged war, as historian George Herring has noted [15], LBJ did
not want to be known as a "war president." Two generations later, another
Texan, George W. Bush, grasped the "war president" moniker with genuine
enthusiasm [16]. He, too, vowed he would win his war when things started to
go sour. Staring down a growing insurgency in Iraq in the summer of 2003,
Bush did not shy from the challenge. "Bring 'em on [17]," he said in what
was supposed to be a Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry-style moment [18]. Now,
Washington is sending troops back into Iraq [19] for the third time to
engage an even more intractable insurgency, the Islamic State's radical
version of Islam, a movement originally fed and bred partly in Camp Bucca
[20], an American military prison in Iraq.
And just to set the record straight, President Obama, too, accepted the
preeminence of war in American policy in his 2009 Nobel Prize acceptance
speech [21] in Oslo. There, he offered a stirring defense of America's role
and record as "the world's sole military superpower":
"Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States
of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades
with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and
sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity
from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the
Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will.
We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better
future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives
will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in
freedom and prosperity."
It was a moment that defined the Obama presidency as being remarkably in
tune with America's already omnipresent war ethos. It was the very negation
of "hope" and "change" and the beginning of Obama's transition, via the
CIA's drone assassination program, into the role of assassin-in-chief [22].
Everything Is Jihad
Recent American leaders have something in common with their extremist
Islamic counterparts: all of them define everything, implicitly or
explicitly, as a jihad, a crusade, a holy war. But the violent methods used
in pursuit of various jihads, whether Islamic or secular, simply serve to
perpetuate and often aggravate the struggle.
Think of America's numerous so-called wars and consider if there's been any
measurable progress made in any of them. Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on
poverty" in 1964. Fifty-one years later, there are still startling numbers
of desperately poor people and, in this century, the gap between the poorest
many and richest few has widened to a chasm. (Since the days of President
Ronald Reagan, in fact, one might speak of a war on the poor, not poverty.)
Drugs [23]? Forty-four years after President Richard Nixon proclaimed the
war on drugs, there are still millions in jail, billions being spent, and
drugs galore on the streets of American cities. Terror [24]? Thirteen
years and counting after that "war" was launched, terror groups, minor in
numbers and reach in 2001, have proliferated wildly and there is now
something like a "caliphate" -- once an Osama bin Laden fantasy -- in the
Middle East: ISIS in power in parts of Iraq and Syria, al-Qaeda on the rise
[25] in Yemen, Libya destabilized and divvied up among ever more extreme
outfits, innocents still dying in U.S. drone strikes [26]. Afghanistan
[27]? The opium trade has rebounded [28] big time, the Taliban is resurgent
[29], and the region is being destabilized. Iraq [30]? A cauldron of
ethnic and religious rivalries and hatreds, with more U.S. weaponry [31] on
the way to fuel the killing, in a country that functionally no longer
exists. The only certainty in most of these American "wars" is their
violent continuation, even when their original missions lie in tatters.
The very methods the U.S. employs and the mentality its leaders adopt ensure
their perpetuation. Why? Because drug addiction and abuse can't be
conquered by waging a war. Neither can poverty. Neither can terror.
Neither can radical Islam be defeated through armed nation building.
Indeed, radical Islam thrives on the very war conditions that Washington
helps to create. By fighting in the now familiar fashion, you merely fan
its flames and ensure its propagation.
It's the mindset that matters. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan, places
that for most Americans exist only within a "war" matrix, the U.S. invades
or attacks, gets stuck, throws resources at the problem indiscriminately,
and "makes a desert and calls it 'peace'" (to quote the Roman historian
Tacitus). After which our leaders act surprised as hell when the problem
only grows.
Sadly, the song remains monotonously the same in America: more wars, made
worse by impatience for results driven by each new election cycle. It's a
formula in which the country is eternally fated to lose.
Two Curious Features of America's New Wars
Historically, when a nation declares war, it does so to mobilize national
will, as the U.S. clearly did in World War II. Accompanying our wars of
recent decades, however, has been an urge not to mobilize the people, but
demobilize [32] them -- even as the "experts" are empowered to fight and
taxpayer funds pour into the national security state and the
military-industrial complex to keep the conflicts going.
Recent wars, whether on drugs or in the Greater Middle East, are never
presented as a challenge we the people can address and solve together, but
as something only those who allegedly possess the expertise and credentials
-- and the weapons -- can figure out or fight. George W. Bush summed up
this mindset in classic fashion after 9/11 when he urged Americans to go
shopping [33] and visit Disney World and leave the fighting to the pros.
War, in short, has become yet another form of social control. Have a gun or
a badge of some sort and you can speak forcefully and be listened to;
otherwise, you have no say.
In addition, what makes America's new wars unique to our moment is that they
never have a discernible endpoint. For what constitutes "victory" over
drugs or terror? Once started, these wars by definition are hard to stop.
Cynics may claim there's nothing new here. Hasn't America always been at
war? Haven't we always been a violent people? There's truth in this. But
at least Americans of my grandfather's and father's generation didn't define
themselves by war.
What America needs right now is a 12-step program to break the urge to feed
further our national addiction to war. The starting point for Washington --
and Americans more generally -- would obviously have to be taking that first
step and confessing that we have a problem we alone can't solve. "Hi, I'm
Uncle Sam and I'm a war-oholic. Yes, I'm addicted to war. I know it's
destructive to myself and others. But I can't stop -- not without your
help."
True change often begins with confession. With humility. With an admission
that not everything is within one's control, no matter how violently one
rages; indeed, that violent rage only aggravates the problem. America needs
to make such a confession. Only then can we begin to wean ourselves off
war.
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), now teaches at the
Pennsylvania College of Technology. His books and articles focus primarily
on military history and include Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism [34]
(Potomac Press, 2005). He may be reached at wastore@xxxxxxx [35].
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [36]
[37]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/12-step-program-cure-america-its-war-addiction
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/william-astore
[2] http://www.tomdispatch.com/
[3]
http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73
&id=1e41682ade
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror
[7] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/2293/
[8]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1357781/US-asks-N
ato-for-help-in-draining-the-swamp-of-global-terrorism.html
[9] http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/4.htm
[10] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175922/
[11] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1781/
[12] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175930/
[13] http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11202009/profile.html
[14]
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/lbj-fore
ign/
[15] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0292731078/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
[16]
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_W._Bush:_The_War_President
[17] https://archive.org/details/Bush-BringEmOn
[18] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I530sPVQSc8
[19]
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176015/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren%2C_what_if
_there_is_no_plan_b_for_iraq/
[20]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/camp-bucca-the-us-prison
-that-became-the-birthplace-of-isis-9838905.html
[21]
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34360743/ns/politics-white_house/t/full-text-obama
s-nobel-peace-prize-speech/#.VYLcePlViko
[22] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175551/engelhardt_assassin_in_chief
[23] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175988
[24] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175942
[25]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/world/middleeast/al-qaeda-arabian-peninsul
a-yemen-nasser-al-wuhayshi-killed.html
[26] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175978/
[27] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175977/
[28]
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/12/afghan-opium-crop-record-high-u
nited-nations
[29]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/taliban-has-a-major-afghan-
city-within-its-grasp-for-the-first-time-since-2001/2015/06/22/b60741b0-18dd
-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html
[30] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175980
[31] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175943
[32]
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175970/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_is_a_new_polit
ical_system_emerging_in_this_country/
[33]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301
977.html
[34] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1574886541/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20
[35] mailto:wastore@xxxxxxx
[36] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on A 12-Step Program to
Cure America of Its War Addiction
[37] http://www.alternet.org/
[38] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > A 12-Step Program to Cure America of Its War Addiction
A 12-Step Program to Cure America of Its War Addiction
By William Astore [1] / Tom Dispatch [2]
June 28, 2015
To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the
latest updates from TomDispatch.com here [3].
War on drugs [4]. War on poverty [5]. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. War
on terror [6]. The biggest mistake in American policy, foreign and domestic,
is looking at everything as war. When a war mentality takes over, it chooses
the weapons and tactics for you. It limits the terms of debate before you
even begin. It answers questions before they're even asked.
When you define something as war, it dictates the use of the military (or
militarized police forces, prisons, and other forms of coercion) as the
primary instruments of policy. Violence becomes the means of decision, total
victory the goal. Anyone who suggests otherwise is labeled a dreamer, an
appeaser, or even a traitor.
War, in short, is the great simplifier -- and it may even work when you're
fighting existential military threats (as in World War II). But it doesn't
work when you define every problem as an existential one and then make war
on complex societal problems (crime, poverty, drugs) or ideas and religious
beliefs (radical Islam).
America's Omnipresent War Ethos
Consider the Afghan War -- not the one in the 1980s when Washington funneled
money and arms to the fundamentalist Mujahideen to inflict on the Soviet
Union a Vietnam-style quagmire, but the more recent phase that began soon
after 9/11. Keep in mind that what launched it were those attacks by 19
hijackers (15 of whom were Saudi nationals) representing a modest-sized
organization lacking the slightest resemblance to a nation, state, or
government. There was as well, of course, the fundamentalist Taliban
movement that then controlled much of Afghanistan. It had emerged from the
rubble of our previous war there and had provided support and sanctuary,
though somewhat grudgingly, to Osama bin Laden.
With images of those collapsing towers in New York burned into America's
collective consciousness, the idea that the U.S. might respond with an
international "policing" action aimed at taking criminals off the global
streets was instantly banished from discussion. What arose in the minds of
the Bush administration's top officials instead was vengeance via a
full-scale, global, and generational [7] "war on terror." Its thoroughly
militarized goal was not just to eliminate al-Qaeda but any terror outfits
[8] anywhere on Earth, even as the U.S. embarked on a full-fledged
experiment in violent nation building in Afghanistan. More than 13 dismal
years later, that Afghan War-cum-experiment is ongoing at staggering expense
and with the most disappointing of results.
While the mindset of global war was gaining traction, the Bush
administration launched its invasion of Iraq. The most technologically
advanced military on Earth, one that the president termed "the greatest
force for human liberation the world has ever known," was set loose to bring
"democracy" and a Pax Americana to the Middle East. Washington had, of
course, been in conflict with Iraq since Operation Desert Storm in
1990-1991, but what began as the equivalent of a military coup (aka a
"decapitation [9]" operation) by an outside power, an attempt to overthrow
Saddam Hussein and eliminate his armed forces and party, soon morphed into a
prolonged occupation and another political and social experiment in violent
nation-building. As with Afghanistan, the Iraq experiment with war is still
ongoing at enormous expense and with even more disastrous results.
Radical Islam has drawn strength from these American-led "wars." Indeed,
radical Islamists cite the intrusive and apparently permanent presence [10]
of American troops and bases in the Middle East and Central Asia as
confirmation of their belief that U.S. forces are leading a crusade against
them -- and by extension against Islam itself. (And in a revealing slip of
the tongue [11], President Bush did indeed once call his war on terror a
"crusade.") Considered in these terms, such a war is by definition a losing
effort because each "success" only strengthens the narrative of Washington's
enemies. There's simply no way to win such a war except by stopping it. Yet
that course of action is never [12] on the proverbial "table" of options
from which officials in Washington are said to choose their strategies. To
do so, in the context of war thinking, would mean to admit defeat (even
though true defeat arrived the very instant the problem was first defined as
war).
Our leaders persist in such violent folly at least in part because they fear
the admission of defeat above all else. After all, nothing is more
pejorative in American politics or culture than to be labeled a loser in
war, someone who "cuts and runs."
In the 1960s, despite his own serious misgivings [13] about the ongoing
conflict in Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson set the gold standard in
his determination not to be the first American president to lose a war,
especially in a "damn little pissant country [14]" like Vietnam. So he
persisted -- and the conflict turned him into a loser anyway and destroyed
his presidency.
Even as he waged war, as historian George Herring has noted [15], LBJ did
not want to be known as a "war president." Two generations later, another
Texan, George W. Bush, grasped the "war president" moniker with genuine
enthusiasm [16]. He, too, vowed he would win his war when things started to
go sour. Staring down a growing insurgency in Iraq in the summer of 2003,
Bush did not shy from the challenge. "Bring 'em on [17]," he said in what
was supposed to be a Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry-style moment [18]. Now,
Washington is sending troops back into Iraq [19] for the third time to
engage an even more intractable insurgency, the Islamic State's radical
version of Islam, a movement originally fed and bred partly in Camp Bucca
[20], an American military prison in Iraq.
And just to set the record straight, President Obama, too, accepted the
preeminence of war in American policy in his 2009 Nobel Prize acceptance
speech [21] in Oslo. There, he offered a stirring defense of America's role
and record as "the world's sole military superpower":
"Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States
of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades
with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and
sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity
from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the
Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will.
We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better
future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives
will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in
freedom and prosperity."
It was a moment that defined the Obama presidency as being remarkably in
tune with America's already omnipresent war ethos. It was the very negation
of "hope" and "change" and the beginning of Obama's transition, via the
CIA's drone assassination program, into the role of assassin-in-chief [22].
Everything Is Jihad
Recent American leaders have something in common with their extremist
Islamic counterparts: all of them define everything, implicitly or
explicitly, as a jihad, a crusade, a holy war. But the violent methods used
in pursuit of various jihads, whether Islamic or secular, simply serve to
perpetuate and often aggravate the struggle.
Think of America's numerous so-called wars and consider if there's been any
measurable progress made in any of them. Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on
poverty" in 1964. Fifty-one years later, there are still startling numbers
of desperately poor people and, in this century, the gap between the poorest
many and richest few has widened to a chasm. (Since the days of President
Ronald Reagan, in fact, one might speak of a war on the poor, not poverty.)
Drugs [23]? Forty-four years after President Richard Nixon proclaimed the
war on drugs, there are still millions in jail, billions being spent, and
drugs galore on the streets of American cities. Terror [24]? Thirteen years
and counting after that "war" was launched, terror groups, minor in numbers
and reach in 2001, have proliferated wildly and there is now something like
a "caliphate" -- once an Osama bin Laden fantasy -- in the Middle East: ISIS
in power in parts of Iraq and Syria, al-Qaeda on the rise [25] in Yemen,
Libya destabilized and divvied up among ever more extreme outfits, innocents
still dying in U.S. drone strikes [26]. Afghanistan [27]? The opium trade
has rebounded [28] big time, the Taliban is resurgent [29], and the region
is being destabilized. Iraq [30]? A cauldron of ethnic and religious
rivalries and hatreds, with more U.S. weaponry [31] on the way to fuel the
killing, in a country that functionally no longer exists. The only certainty
in most of these American "wars" is their violent continuation, even when
their original missions lie in tatters.
The very methods the U.S. employs and the mentality its leaders adopt ensure
their perpetuation. Why? Because drug addiction and abuse can't be conquered
by waging a war. Neither can poverty. Neither can terror. Neither can
radical Islam be defeated through armed nation building. Indeed, radical
Islam thrives on the very war conditions that Washington helps to create. By
fighting in the now familiar fashion, you merely fan its flames and ensure
its propagation.
It's the mindset that matters. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan, places
that for most Americans exist only within a "war" matrix, the U.S. invades
or attacks, gets stuck, throws resources at the problem indiscriminately,
and "makes a desert and calls it 'peace'" (to quote the Roman historian
Tacitus). After which our leaders act surprised as hell when the problem
only grows.
Sadly, the song remains monotonously the same in America: more wars, made
worse by impatience for results driven by each new election cycle. It's a
formula in which the country is eternally fated to lose.
Two Curious Features of America's New Wars
Historically, when a nation declares war, it does so to mobilize national
will, as the U.S. clearly did in World War II. Accompanying our wars of
recent decades, however, has been an urge not to mobilize the people, but
demobilize [32] them -- even as the "experts" are empowered to fight and
taxpayer funds pour into the national security state and the
military-industrial complex to keep the conflicts going.
Recent wars, whether on drugs or in the Greater Middle East, are never
presented as a challenge we the people can address and solve together, but
as something only those who allegedly possess the expertise and credentials
-- and the weapons -- can figure out or fight. George W. Bush summed up this
mindset in classic fashion after 9/11 when he urged Americans to go shopping
[33] and visit Disney World and leave the fighting to the pros. War, in
short, has become yet another form of social control. Have a gun or a badge
of some sort and you can speak forcefully and be listened to; otherwise, you
have no say.
In addition, what makes America's new wars unique to our moment is that they
never have a discernible endpoint. For what constitutes "victory" over drugs
or terror? Once started, these wars by definition are hard to stop.
Cynics may claim there's nothing new here. Hasn't America always been at
war? Haven't we always been a violent people? There's truth in this. But at
least Americans of my grandfather's and father's generation didn't define
themselves by war.
What America needs right now is a 12-step program to break the urge to feed
further our national addiction to war. The starting point for Washington --
and Americans more generally -- would obviously have to be taking that first
step and confessing that we have a problem we alone can't solve. "Hi, I'm
Uncle Sam and I'm a war-oholic. Yes, I'm addicted to war. I know it's
destructive to myself and others. But I can't stop -- not without your
help."
True change often begins with confession. With humility. With an admission
that not everything is within one's control, no matter how violently one
rages; indeed, that violent rage only aggravates the problem. America needs
to make such a confession. Only then can we begin to wean ourselves off war.
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), now teaches at the
Pennsylvania College of Technology. His books and articles focus primarily
on military history and include Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism [34]
(Potomac Press, 2005). He may be reached at wastore@xxxxxxx [35].
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [36]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[37]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/12-step-program-cure-america-its-war-addiction
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/william-astore
[2] http://www.tomdispatch.com/
[3]
http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73
&id=1e41682ade
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror
[7] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/2293/
[8]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1357781/US-asks-N
ato-for-help-in-draining-the-swamp-of-global-terrorism.html
[9] http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/4.htm
[10] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175922/
[11] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1781/
[12] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175930/
[13] http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11202009/profile.html
[14]
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/lbj-fore
ign/
[15] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0292731078/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
[16]
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_W._Bush:_The_War_President
[17] https://archive.org/details/Bush-BringEmOn
[18] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I530sPVQSc8
[19]
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176015/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren%2C_what_if
_there_is_no_plan_b_for_iraq/
[20]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/camp-bucca-the-us-prison
-that-became-the-birthplace-of-isis-9838905.html
[21]
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34360743/ns/politics-white_house/t/full-text-obama
s-nobel-peace-prize-speech/#.VYLcePlViko
[22] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175551/engelhardt_assassin_in_chief
[23] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175988
[24] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175942
[25]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/world/middleeast/al-qaeda-arabian-peninsul
a-yemen-nasser-al-wuhayshi-killed.html
[26] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175978/
[27] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175977/
[28]
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/12/afghan-opium-crop-record-high-u
nited-nations
[29]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/taliban-has-a-major-afghan-
city-within-its-grasp-for-the-first-time-since-2001/2015/06/22/b60741b0-18dd
-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html
[30] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175980
[31] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175943
[32]
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175970/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_is_a_new_polit
ical_system_emerging_in_this_country/
[33]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301
977.html
[34] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1574886541/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20
[35] mailto:wastore@xxxxxxx
[36] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on A 12-Step Program to
Cure America of Its War Addiction
[37] http://www.alternet.org/
[38] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B