A Failed Formula for Worldwide War

tomdispatch.com — In one way or another, the U.S. military is now involved with most of the nations on Earth. Its soldiers, commandos, trainers, base builders, drone jockeys, spies, and arms dealers, as well as associated hired guns and corporate contractors, can now be found just about everywhere on the planet. Since 2001, the U.S. military has thrown everything in its arsenal, short of nuclear weapons, including untold billions of dollars in weaponry, technology, bribes, you name it, at a remarkably weak set of enemies -- relatively small groups of poorly-armed fighters in impoverished nations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen -- while decisively defeating none of them. It should, by all rights, dominate the world just as the neoconservative dreamers of the early Bush years assumed it would. Yet after more than a decade of war, it has failed to eliminate a rag-tag Afghan insurgency with limited popular support.

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