From TomDispatch this morning: the anatomy of the never-ending Global War on Terror as an American disaster — Andrew Bacevich, “Scoring the Global War on Terror, From Liberation to Assassination in Three Quick Rounds”  To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Bacevich discusses the changing face of the Gobal War on Terror.

In his latest TomDispatch post, bestselling author Andrew Bacevich tells a remarkable tale of how, in barely more than a decade, an American “Global War on Terror” went from liberatory fantasies and utopian dreams deep into “the dark side.”  He traces just how it descended into a kind of global gangsterism based on assassination by drone and special forces operatives anywhere on the planet.  It’s a remarkably grim tale of expectations lost and nightmares found, told brilliantly in three rounds (the Rumsfeld era, the Petraeus era, and the Vickers era) by the author of Washington Rules. 

Americans seem hardly to have noticed, but they have been plunged into the equivalent of a war novel with no end — and, at this point, no plot either.  As Bacevich writes, “Operationally, a war launched by the conventionally minded has progressively fallen under the purview of those who inhabit what Dick Cheney once called ‘the dark side,’ with implications that few seem willing to explore.  Strategically, a war informed at the outset by utopian expectations continues today with no concretely stated expectations whatsoever, the forward momentum of events displacing serious consideration of purpose.  Politically, a war that once occupied center stage in national politics has now slipped to the periphery, the American people moving on to other concerns and entertainments, with legal and moral questions raised by the war left dangling in midair.”

And Bacevich ends on a single question that should chill you to the bone:  “Is this progress?”

This is Bacevich at the top of his game telling us things we desperately need to hear.  Don’t miss it.