COIN: The Continued Failure In US Foreign Policy

doitvoluntarily (77)in #politics • 8 years ago

Over the last decade or more, the United States has been employing a highly controversial foreign policy via the military strategy of counterinsurgency. Otherwise known as COIN. This is referred to as a sort of new gospel for the Pentagon.

The strategy consists in using high-tech weapons to engage in warfare, while also requiring that ground troops embed themselves within the civilian population. The point of that is that they want to use their physical presence there to not only attack the enemy, but also rebuild and possibly implement their own government in the area.

Essentially, they want to build a brand new government and then have it be accepted by the people who they've been bombing for more than a decade.

The military strategy has attracted a mighty following of neocons, many journalists and military officers etc. And many of them to this day still honestly believe that this is the right solution for the Middle East. They've been utilizing this strategy for many years now, and yet it hasn't seemed to in any way weaken the supposedly growing threat of terrorism around the world. It's a foreign policy that is not only very costly, but one that takes many decades to achieve; if it ever gets fully realized.

Not everyone is buying what the COIN strategy is trying to sell.

Douglas Macgregor, who is a retired colonel, has previously admitted that the entire military strategy itself is nothing more than a fraud which has been perpetrated upon the American people. “The idea [he says] that we are going to spend [trillions of dollars in order] to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.”

Despite the apparent failures of the war on terror, military officials insist on charging forward anyways; looking to spend trillions of more dollars on conflict. As long as the Federal Reserve is around to help them cover the cost, and the taxpayers are there to bail them out, then it's no coincidence that the US will be engaged in endless warfare.

After millions of lives have been lost, an obscene amount of money has been spent, and many communities destroyed, the seemingly blood-thirsty military officials are still having difficulty coming to terms with the apparent failure of their strategy. When all you have to show for your strategy is waste and inefficiency, perhaps it's time to reconsider a few things.