Eideard

When the president decided to send more troops to a distant country during an unpopular war, one powerful senator had enough. He warned that the U.S. military could not create stability in a country “where there is chaos … democracy where there is no tradition of it, and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life.”

“It’s unnatural and unhealthy for a nation to be engaged in global crusades for some principle or idea while neglecting the needs of its own people,” said Sen. J. William Fulbright, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in 1966 as the Vietnam War escalated.

Fulbright’s warning is being applied by some to Afghanistan today. The U.S. is still fighting dubious wars abroad while ignoring needs at home, says Andrew J. Bacevich, who tells Fulbright’s story in his new book, “Washington Rules: America’s Path To Permanent War.”

As the Afghanistan war enters its ninth year, Bacevich and other commentators are asking: When does it end?

They say the nation’s national security leaders have put the U.S. on an unsustainable path to perpetual war and that President Obama is doing little to stop them…

Bacevich has become a leading voice among anti-war critics. He is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army, a former West Point instructor and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He’s also a Boston University international relations professor who offers a historical perspective with his criticism. He says Obama has been ensnared by the “Washington Rules,” a set of assumptions that have guided presidents since Harry Truman.

The rules say that the U.S. should act as a global policeman. “Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland or Detroit,” Bacevich writes.

His solution: The U.S. should stop deploying a “global occupation force” and focus on nation-building at home.

RTFA. He offers an understanding of history similar to what I grew up with. Especially my studies in military history with veterans of WW2. I was “lucky” – I got to follow it as it happened, not just read about it.

Detail, analysis, and that old American bugaboo – history for people who neither wish to study history or learn from history.