Leon Panetta Says Brace For 30 Year War With ISIS

[Lucille]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-1...-year-war-isis

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

"I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror. On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war.

But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror. It was designed from the start to be endless.”

- Glenn Greenwald, in his latest piece for the Intercept [and here previously]

Leon Panetta is pretty much the epitome of a status quo insider. Someone, who due to his influence and mainstream veneer of respectability, is capable of inflicting an almost inconceivable amount of damage to freedom and prosperity in America. In fact, you could say that Mr. Panetta is as responsible as almost anyone else for the banana republic laughing stock that this nation has been transformed into over the past several decades. Why? Because he served in top positions for several of America’s Presidents over that time.

[...] In a recent USA Today interview, we can clearly see exactly what “getting it done” would mean during a Hilary Clinton Presidency: Endless War.

USA Today reports that:

“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war,” he says, one that will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.

In the book’s final chapter, however, he writes that Obama’s “most conspicuous weakness” is “a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause.” Too often, he “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.” On occasion, he “avoids the battle, complains, and misses opportunities.”

Yeah, well Hitler was a pretty passionate leader.



Back to USA Today…

Panetta also argues that there is time for Obama to change tactics and recover — and that it is imperative he do so.

He makes a similar observation about Hillary Clinton, saying she would be a “great” president. “One thing about the Clintons is, they want to get it done,” he says, in words that draw an implicit contrast with Obama. “When it comes to being president of the United States, it’s one thing to talk a good game. It’s another thing to deliver, to make things happen.”

“He may have found himself again with regards to this ISIS crisis. I hope that’s the case. And if he’s willing to roll up his sleeves and engage with Congress in taking on some of these other issues, as I said I think he can establish a very strong legacy as president. I think these next 2 1/2 years will tell us an awful lot about what history has to say about the Obama administration.”

Think about that deeply for a moment. He thinks Obama may have “found himself again with regards to this ISIS crisis.” This is quite telling, since what has characterized Obama’s ISIS policy, is him launching an illegal war that makes George W. Bush look like a constitutional scholar. According to Panetta, that decision characterizes Obama “finding himself.” Naturally, what appeals to Panetta most about Hilary Clinton is her bloodlust for more war. Glenn Greenwald chimes in:

Leon Panetta, the long-time Democratic Party operative who served as Obama’s Defense Secretary and CIA Director, said this week of Obama’s new bombing campaign: “I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war.” Only in America are new 30-year wars spoken of so casually, the way other countries speak of weather changes. He added that the war “will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.” And elsewhere: not just a new decades-long war with no temporal limits, but no geographic ones either. He criticized Obama – who has bombed 7 predominantly Muslim countries plus the Muslim minority in the Phillipines (almost double the number of countries Bush bombed) – for being insufficiently militaristic, despite the fact that Obama officials themselves have already instructed the public to think of The New War “in terms of years.”

Then we have Hillary Clinton (whom Panetta gushed would make a “great” president). At an event in Ottawa yesterday, she proclaimed that the fight against these “militants” will “be a long-term struggle” that should entail an “information war” as “well as an air war.” The new war, she said, is “essential” and the U.S. shies away from fighting it “at our peril.” Like Panetta (and most establishment Republicans), Clinton made clear in her book that virtually all of her disagreements with Obama’s foreign policy were the by-product of her view of Obama as insufficiently hawkish, militaristic and confrontational.

At this point, it is literally inconceivable to imagine the U.S. not at war. It would be shocking if that happened in our lifetime. U.S. officials are now all but openly saying this. “Endless War” is not dramatic rhetorical license but a precise description of America’s foreign policy.

Just yesterday, Bloomberg reported: “Led by Lockheed Martin Group (LTM), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.” Particularly exciting is that “investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq”; moreover, “the U.S. also is the biggest foreign military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip.” ISIS is using U.S.-made ammunition and weapons, which means U.S. weapons companies get to supply all sides of The New Endless War; can you blame investors for being so giddy?

I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror. On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war.

But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror. It was designed from the start to be endless. Both Bush and Obama officials have explicitly said that the war will last at least a generation. The nature of the “war,” and the theories that have accompanied it, is that it has no discernible enemy and no identifiable limits. More significantly, this “war” fuels itself, provides its own inexhaustible purpose, as it is precisely the policies justified in the name of Stopping Terrorism that actually ensure its spread (note how Panetta said the new U.S. war would have to include Libya, presumably to fight against those empowered by the last U.S. war there just 3 years ago).

As I outlined in my post, The American Public: A Tough Soldier or a Chicken Hawk Cowering in a Cubicle? Some Thoughts on ISIS Intervention, as long as the citizenry remains in a fetal position praying for the return of a middle-class lifestyle that is not coming back without concerted effort and struggle, it will continue to be slaughtered like sheep and milked like cows.

And neo-Trot and MIC war boners go "boooiiinnng" all across the land.

[jmdrake]

I doubt it. In 15 years Al Qaeda/ISIS will be renamed something else.

[twomp]

I doubt it. In 15 years Al Qaeda/ISIS will be renamed something else.

And the American people will $#@! in their pants at the newest evolution. Because the TV said so.

[torchbearer]

And the American people will $#@! in their pants at the newest evolution. Because the TV said so.

next verse same as the first.

[TheTexan]

Well, it's going to take forever at the pace we're going at with these airstrikes. What we really should do, is a full scale ground invasion in Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and everywhere else there are terrorists.

We'd be in and out in a year, and there would be no more terrorists. Win this war on terror once and for all.

[presence]

If Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya all united tomorrow into a far reaching "Islamic State" I don't think I'd give a $#@!, they're all mostly Muslims under post colonial puppet rule anyway.

[William Tell]

I doubt it. In 15 years Al Qaeda/ISIS will be renamed something else.

It already is, ISIL, don't ask me why

[maybemaybenot]

If I had braces I think ISIS terrorists would want to kill me even more. $#@! that. Let Panetta get braces.

[Brett85]

It seems like any time we use military action, even when there may actually be a legitimate threat to our national security, it has to be used by the neocons to justify endless wars overseas. I still think that there's nothing morally wrong with killing members of ISIS, but I may have to change on my mind on this again if the military action against them is just going to be used as an excuse for perpetual war. Taking out their infrastructure and trying to stop their funding by destroying their oil refineries sounded like a good idea; perpetual war doesn't sound like a good idea. I guess anymore we just can't ever use military action for any reason under any circumstances without the action being used to push for permanent war.

[HOLLYWOOD]

October, 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, most will remember Clark's statement,

It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years – we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

But more importantly one must focus on what General Clark states,

“They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”

the epilogue.. the shadow government that controls America today

“This was a policy coup…these people took control of policy in the United States…and forgot to tell the American people."

[heavenlyboy34]

Well, it's going to take forever at the pace we're going at with these airstrikes. What we really should do, is a full scale ground invasion in Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and everywhere else there are terrorists.

We'd be in and out in a year, and there would be no more terrorists. Win this war on terror once and for all.

Problem with that is that if a "military engagement" is actually won the gravy train stops for the regime and the crony class. Then they have to make up another bull$#@! excuse to bomb some other brown people.

[heavenlyboy34]

It seems like any time we use military action, even when there may actually be a legitimate threat to our national security, it has to be used by the neocons to justify endless wars overseas. I still think that there's nothing morally wrong with killing members of ISIS, but I may have to change on my mind on this again if the military action against them is just going to be used as an excuse for perpetual war. Taking out their infrastructure and trying to stop their funding by destroying their oil refineries sounded like a good idea; perpetual war doesn't sound like a good idea. I guess anymore we just can't ever use military action for any reason under any circumstances without the action being used to push for permanent war.

Hey, perpetual war for perpetual peace. War is peace. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength. Now pipe down, mundane.

[DFF]

The US doesn't have the money to fight for 30 years.

In 10 years tops a financial calamity will force the US to pull out of the Middle East completely.

And probably Germany, Japan, and damn near everywhere else.

[osan]

I doubt it. In 15 years Al Qaeda/ISIS will be renamed something else.

And the American people will $#@! in their pants at the newest evolution. Because the TV said so.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

This truth is mind-bending. At least, mine is severely bent.

Rep all around for simple, clear expressions of truth.

[charrob]

October, 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, most will remember Clark's statement,

But more importantly one must focus on what General Clark states,

the epilogue.. the shadow government that controls America today

--here's a clip from the October 2007 interview:



-here he says similar in NYC on 3/2/2007:

[osan]

The US doesn't have the money to fight for 30 years.

They don't need money if they have slave labor.

Think about that awhile. Think about how China got to where it now sits. Now think about the habits of tyrants, the proclivities they display, especially when things get "tight". Money is not an issue. The ability and the will to enslave to whatever degree may be required by a given goal under a set of circumstances, however, eminently is.

In 10 years tops a financial calamity will force the US to pull out of the Middle East completely.

Maybe. Maybe not. Only time will tell. Time and circumstance alone will reveal the truer nature of the fabrics from which not only Theye are cut, but Americans on the average as well. If Theye can convince Americans to voluntarily submit to the role of abject slave, the practical relevancy of money may be swept away. Seems impossible, eh... given what we know of written human history. But I submit it is anything but. When one considers the deep changes in the perceptual landscape of the meaner over the last 100 years, it becomes clear that technologies of sufficient sophistication in skilled hands can accomplish almost anything in terms of the realization of a political will.

Television alone has done more to alter the perceptual landscape than all other human invention put together, save language itself... and we don't even know whence language came. The decade following the general availability of television must have been like ultra-viagra to those with eyes to see and a bent for the acquisition of power. There has been no power nearing that of television in the arsenal of weapons against the free and sovereign man. Coupled with the stranglehold on training the young on how to see the world, Theye were all but guaranteed their successes to this point. Sadly, it appears Theye will achieve their goals of dominion over the earth. I hope to be dust by then, but I do pity those who remain upon this enormous prison-globe.

And probably Germany, Japan, and damn near everywhere else.

Not necessarily. Those nations are conquered. There is no overt reason to bring them to great harms, assuming no hidden agenda to cull populations exists... which is a very big assumption, I admit. So long as a population is well trained to obedience, a tyrant is well behooved to leave them alone. Stirring a well settled pot is an act of boundless stupidity. You go where there is trouble and America is a $#@!-ton of that.

If culling down the global population is not to be affected, then the task of one seeking global dominion must be to gain the consent of the governed to the degree necessary for attaining the goal, at least long enough such that every ankle can be manacled, though manacles are always risky business. But I see the progression going thus: gain consent so vast that nobody dares speak against the arrangements. Once acquired, slowly disarm people and expand the ranks of your lapdog bully boys to safe ratios. This all appears to be happening, except the disarming part... but that could come in an instant under the right conditions. Once your population is disarmed, your enforcers are at full population and properly motivated to do your bidding no matter what, and you have the general consent of the body-boobus, you're set for a very long time. Small pockets of questioning individuals are readily vanished or perhaps killed very publicly. Keeping the masses trained to the violence awaiting those who dissent is probably essential in any formula for perpetual control.

That last bit also speaks to why we are seeing perpetual warfare: maintenance of the perceptual standard.

Consider how the human mind operates. At any given moment, there are those things that are acceptable to the mind and those that are not. For a good Christian man, killing another is generally viewed as not acceptable. But put him in uniform, give him a weapon, and place him in an environment where men "over there" are trying their damnedest to kill him, and that basic cognitive value begins to change. Killing that first enemy soldier is a high hurdle, but once cleared, killing the second time represents a notably lower obstacle. By war's end, killing another human being has become mundane in the perceptual world of even the good Christian man. But then the relevant part comes into play: after the war and a period of time, the good Christian man returns to his old self, no longer willing to kill where there is no perceived need. And if called upon again, the process would be much the same, if not so to quite the degree because circumstances would lead him not to uncharted waters, but to those he already knew. But the important point there is that he returns to his "resting state", just as does an atom when outside energies are no longer imposed upon their spaces.

It is this "resting state" that is important and I firmly suspect it has everything to do with the environmental elements present in a person's early years. If a man be raised up in an environment of peaceableness and respect for life and his fellows, that will always be his "resting state"; the place to which his spirit settles in the absence of extreme conditions. I would go so far as to say that this may even be the natural, hard-wired resting state of the vast and overwhelming majority of human beings, which would go a long way toward explaining why they are so easily manipulated, politically. Regardless, it seems to me that if one can alter the environment from one of peace to one of war during a young person's earliest years, his resting state will be closer to war than to peace. And here by "war", I do not mean formal warfare as typically understood, but rather a warlike environment where violence is part and parcel of daily existence. The child who grows up in an environment full of violence has at least an increased likelihood of one being able to appeal to that sense than with one who has grown up in a loving, peaceful, and respectful place.

What is familiar is comfortable. What is comfortable is familiar. Women who are beaten by their spouses most often remain with that spouse. Why, people ask? Because it is familiar, and being so, it is a known quantity. Known quantities are almost always far less scary than the unknown. Therefore, battered women stay put and endure the unendurable because it is less frightening to them than the uncharted territories of freedom and independence.

Raise a child up in an environment where violence and chaos and anger and hatred are commonplace and that will always be a spot of comfort to them, even if not their ultimate resting state. It will be familiar and so being, they will be able to return there.

Take that and now consider the current environment where violence is everywhere, as is fear, anger, bitter envy between artificially contrived "classes". Theye have done their jobs so very well that I believe few Americans would be able to, much less be willing, to wrap their heads around it. What has been accomplished here walks well past "monumental" and I believe that nearly nobody sees it.

That aside, when we continue to consider this human propensity for returning to the resting state, one can readily begin to see why Theye indulge in perpetual warfare: it keeps THEMME out of their resting states! It keeps them trained and in shape to do what needs doing to be the tyrant - to maintain and further cultivate power, because even for Themme, tyranny is not a natural state of existence, but rather one to which they have trained themselves. Consider the analog in sexual activity. A young man might not be naturally homosexual, but if he dares allow himself to go there the first time, just as with killing, the second time is easier and before long he has trained himself to be attracted to that brand of behavior. So it is with many other things in life, tyranny being among them. These are all matters of training, once a boundary has been crossed, and a man can be trained to virtually any behavior imaginable.

Consider the empires of days past. The fiery young wannabe gathers his forces, fights the fight, prevails, takes over, and ultimately gets old. Getting old more often results in fatigue and fatigue leads to the resting state. The king goes soft. This is not universally true, but often enough to be worthy of note. For some the resting state is softness. For others it is morbid self-indulgence or some other form of corruption of otherwise normal behaviors. The salient point here is that the resting state is often one that is conducive to the wrong behaviors - behaviors that do not well support the necessities of maintaining one's position as king.

I daresay that the modern tyrants have, with the help of our technologies, learned well from the errors of their countless forebears and now have in their hands the knowledge necessary to the perpetual maintenance of station. Warfare is all about the exercise of power. Being in proper warring shape leaves one in a good condition for welding power, particularly from the psychological standpoint. Therefore, until such a time as may arrive where other, more subtle and materially less overtly destructive means are in hand, warfare stands to remain the glue that binds the tyrant to his raison d'être, keeping the musculature of his mind in the proper tone for discharging the duties required to grow and refine his grasp upon the mass.

One day he may have in hand a drug solution - God knows they are flailing at this wildly right now, our children their guinea pigs. They may even one day produce a genetic engineering "solution" to the problem of perpetually maintaining a grip over the wad of humanity. But until then, blunt instrument of base warfare appears to my eyes to be the optimal means by which Theye keep themselves from falling into the same pattern of failure that has plagued those who came before them, generation over generation. Theye now have the technological means through the instruments of mechanization to persecute campaigns of death and destruction until kingdom come. I believe that this is precisely what Theye will do until they either have a better instrument in hand or something stops them. I am not so confident about that something ever coming to fruition.

Therefore, be prepared for many years of strife to come. May I prove mistaken.

[Peace&Freedom]

What we are seeing is the normalization of McCain's "50 years in Iraq" rhetoric, where every US military engagement or mission is defined in decades or generations long terms. They had to make a gesture towards closure in Iraq and Afghanistan to please the public, then crank the occupation and bombing right back up.

In the case of ISIS/ISIL the pretext gives the MIC the rationale for ongoing incursions in both Iraq and Syria. So long as the myth of an open ended 'THREAT' is out there, fueled by periodic false flags and questionable beheading videos, the public can be steered into accepting unjust, undeclared wars of aggression into perpetuity, or so they think.

[Ronin Truth]

30 years to take down a rag tag regional militia, by a nation that spends more on the military each year than the rest of the world combined. There's something very wrong and rotten in DC. But then again, we all already knew that. I want a huge tax refund. Gimme a break (or I may begin to form a rag tag militia)!

[Lucille]

30 years to take down a rag tag regional militia, by a nation that spends more on the military each year than the rest of the world combined. There's something very wrong and rotten in DC. But then again, we all already knew that. I want a huge tax refund. Gimme a break (or I may begin to form a rag tag militia)!

Right?!

Infinite Arrogance, Infinite Incompetence
http://www.fredoneverything.net/$#@!edGummint.shtml

The military. A trillion withering green ones a year and we get forces that can’t beat a few pissed-off goat-herds with AKs. Which actually is a good thing since they shouldn’t be trying. A chronicle of unmitigated failure, and always for the same reason: trying to use shiny toys to whip whole countries that don’t want us there. Hey, if it doesn’t work, let’s do it again.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/TeaParty.shtml

Worse—maybe worse—America bumbles about the world like a blind man, and doesn't know it. Its contempt for everywhere else, its inability to conceive that maybe other peoples and places don't want to be like America, leads to disaster after disaster. Washington was going to invade Iraq, which with gratitude would go all democratic and be like Massachusetts, and the other Arab nations would follow suit, and so we would remake the Arab world according to Fox News.

Americans believe this stuff. There is probably no one in France, and here I include asylums, drains, and morgues, who could be so narcissistically stupid.
[...]
In ten years the Pentagon can't beat a few tens of thousands of peasants armed with AKs. Nobody else's army could do it either. Thing is, everybody else has figured out that such wars don't work too well. Not us.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/PurpleFather.shtml

But why, it occurred to me, should we expect the Pentagon to win wars? It has nothing to gain by winning, and everything to lose. From a budgetary point of view, victory would be as bad as defeat. In either case, contracts would slow.

[Natural Citizen]

Germany is basically saying that they aren't going to be taking part in NATO's games willy nilly any more. Same phenomenon happening with other countries.

In one breath they are claiming that they don't have enough of an arsenal and in the other breath they are selling all kinds of hardware.

Breathe in... Germany unable to fulfill 'some' NATO obligations – MoD

Breathe out... Berlin gives green light for arms exports to S.Arabia, Qatar


Edit - I meant to post this in another thread. Except I forgot which one.