Pars Today

Pars Today- In the heat of the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger, as the government spokesman, said "The army, in its customary sense, will be victorious only when it wins the war. Otherwise, it is always a loser. But, on the contrary, guerrillas will lose only when they give up the war, or else, they are always winners."

These remarks, which indicated the frustration of the US army against the Vietcong, have now turned into its victory codename; though with the consideration that it is the US army which acts as guerrillas.

Now, several decades after the Vietnam War, the Pentagon, which had been defeated during the war to outwit Vietnamese guerrillas, finally has reached a simple solution. The solution is to change the meaning of victory very quietly- without anyone's notice- and replace it with the definition used by guerrillas on victory believing that: Defeat in war occurs only with giving up war and nothing else. With this policy, the free-acting military commanders were authorized to wage nonstandard and endless wars while being highly immune against controls and enforcement of limitations by the Congress.

Nevertheless, in 2021, while having such a firm mechanism, the Pentagon was defeated again in Afghanistan because the Taliban had the upper hand in the guerrilla war. Thus, the Pentagon had to add this war to the long list of its internecine defeats after WWII (remember Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) and simultaneously, to the list of its unpleasant "victories" (take Grenada and Panama). But, in the meantime, far from the people's eyes and the Congress surveillance, unofficial wars and shadow battles still continue.

For instance, the war is Syria is 10 years old, the American interference in Iraq from 1990- 2003 or 2014- depending on how we want to calculate it- has persisted till this date, the US clashes in Somalia and the African coast have been there for two decades. Nearly 24 years ago, the US with its partners in the NATO, executed the project to bombard Serbia which made the country dare to enter war with Kosovo. Today, the United States is still maintaining the peace-keeping soldiers of the NATO forces in Kosovo. The US army continues to deploy approximately 30 thousand of its military forces in the Korean Peninsula because the temporary peace, which caused a halt in the 1953 war in the country, has not been concluded as a peace pact. Even the US defeat in Afghanistan in 2021 was not the end of the event as the American President, Joe Biden's "War from Beyond Horizon" in 2022 continued with the US drone attack on and killing of Al-Qaeda leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Perhaps, the Pentagon will fail to outwit guerrillas in the battlefield, but this way of asymmetrical warfare- which it has started in Washington and other places- will cause the flames of struggle to survive in a slow and steady manner; while the Pentagon's military budget not only won't decrease, but it will also increase constantly. This stratagem is astounding.

Therefore, the US defeats in wars have been special victories for the high-ranking non-military officials, generals their partners in industry and other followers of this clique.

This was adopted from an article titled “The U.S. Military is Winning. No, Really, It Is!” authored by Nick Turse. This article is published at Tomdispatch website.

RM/UR