Back in 2001 I predicted how this middle east scenario would play out, and I have found no reason to change any of the major details.
Some of our readers may have come across a story about a tiny creature with no technological capabilities and a weapon equivalent to an injection of a tiny irritant, which destroyed a gigantic vehicle and four humoungous opponents, all of whom were heavily armed and trained in martial arts.
That creature was a wasp. It is more accurate to say that the human driver, in his efforts to avoid being bitten by the wasp and suffering a tiny irritation, lost sight of the road and destroyed himself and his passengers in the ensuing crash.
There may be, as Adam Smith once said, "a great deal of ruin in a nation", but when the American empire spends madly on a war against a tactic, which can never end, it is thereby hurrying down the road to ruin at a breakneck pace. In the same way that no enemy actually destroyed the USSR militarily, but the empire cracked up due to financial and economic stresses, the present USSA is creating stresses which cannot be sustained.
Statist apologists are trained to repeat mantras about percentage of GDP, for one simple reason: it obscures the total amount spent on corporate welfare.
Look at the dollar figures here
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htmThe USSA spends at least $623 billion on "defense", as of 2004. The entire rest of the world combined - which includes many allies - spent $500 billion. Dollar for dollar, the USSA could take on all the rest of the world, including Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, Germany, and France, and still outspend them.
This is not "defense" by any meaning recognized by people with a working BS detector. It is corporate welfare. You can wake up and stop being a shill for the state-corporate-welfare-machine anytime.
The cost of asymmetric warfare is going to get worse, not better. Consider the development of missiles which are capable of destroying super carriers. Cost of missile: millions. Cost of carrier: billions. If that doesn't spin your head around, what would?
If you are a so-called "military expert", you must have read the Art of War. Who wrote that book? Who is most familiar with the theory and practice? Over the long term, successful warmaking depends upon a robust economy. Our so-called "experts" have wed themselves to the failed theory of socialist planned economies, even as those who have real experience with the "economic calculation problem" are backing away from socialism and returning to their capitalist roots.
The downfall of the USSA is going to be a classic case of hubris - a failure to imagine that the self-absorbed Planners and Leaders - and their deluded Followers - might actually be totally wrong on a colossal scale.
If you think yourself to be an "expert" on military history, dig up an essay about the Spanish-American War. (I'll google it up sometime, I hope) - the gist is that America, in "winning" that war, transformed itself from a Republic to an Empire, which was essentially a victory for what we would now call the Empire meme, and a loss for America as it was conceived by the Founders, and imagined by many of those to this day who love America.
Under the mistaken theory that we "had" to transform ourselves into fascists to defeat the Nazis, the US government took control of much of industry. Under the mistaken theory that we "had" to nationalize the economy to compete with "Japan, Inc", idiots like New Gingrich promoted more government involvement in the economy. Under the mistaken theory that we "must" turn ourselves into a police state to win the "war on drugs" and "war on terror", the government has greatly increased the number of so-called "intelligence" agencies and police forces, ramped up the corporate-welfare "defense" budget, and shredded what is left of the Bill of Rights.
If this counts as "victory", we lost everything that matters. The Soviets won. We are become them. It is madness to take on not one, but several unwinnable wars. The War on Drugs is not winnable, and never was; it is an attempt to repeal the laws of economics. The War on Poverty is self-defeating; poverty is so defined that the war can never be won - the bottom fifth will always be with us by definition. The war on a tactic is likewise unwinnable by definition. As long as our military is breaking things and killing people, it will encourage a few terrorists to respond.
We have discovered a self-perpetuating machine at last: the Imperial Military and all their vast legions of self-deceiving dupes. For whatever reason, the dupes want to be fooled.