Sorry to pick just one little thing and comment on it, but this has been bothering me awhile. I keep hearing this sentiment, and it sounds true....then I remember that when I was a kid, we fully expected a large scale ground war if we did not blow up the world with nukes. The world changes too fast, and the military has to struggle to keep up. I don't think we can really say for sure yet what the wars of even a decade from now will be like.
Oh I am absolutely definate that we can to a certain degree. I believe you can to. I'll explain.....
Before the Cold War ended, we lived in a
comfortable and predictable environment. We knew who our enemy was and he existed under a distinct banner and a uniform. Our CIA had spent decades honing its skills quite well because, for the most part, they only focused on the big red adversary. We had the comfort knowing that no matter where we deployed our military or dealt with threats of war, communism's influence was the usual enemy. We can think of Beirut as an exception when we consider Korea, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.
But consider every place an American boot has touched the ground since the Berlin Wall came down. - Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq. Like the Cold War, there is a common theme here. But instead of a clear ideology being that theme, we are dealing with tribes seeking independance from false governments put in place by Europeans and maintained by American/Soviet powers. Our CIA became quickly powerless to deal with the sudden lack of an easily identifiable enemy and our military was sent from one crisis after another, ill equiped and under trained for missions they had never been prepared for.
A second theme is religion. But even this leads us to tribe. During the Cold War we had the luxury of ignoring religious extremism even when it touched our deployed military (Beirut). And even though Communism has been called the "godless religion" by some, the true religious fanatic is a far more dangerous adversary. He is the greatest bull ****ter on earth. Even though he may claim an earthly agenda or a divine right to destroy and murder, he is still adhering to tribal grievance. Hezbollah is Shia. Al-Queda chose Bashir (Sunni) as a host and then migrated to the Tali-Ban (Sunni). (Bin Laden gave himself away by choosing the "starving children of Iraq" as an excuse for 9/11, even though he did nothing about the slaughtered non-Arab Sunni children in Sudan while he was a guest of Bashir.)
We also know that poverty and ignorance is where we will most find regligious fanaticism and a strengthened tribal loyalty. This leads us directly to the economically weak third world tribes shattered by the realizations of freedom and their increasingly free flowing information. This current enemy even has China concerned about Xinjiang and Russia has Chechnya. This makes our enemy a common global enemy. And the heart of this enemy is the Middle East with the HOA (Horn of Africa) and parts of Asia acting as arms.
Whether we deal with pirates from Somalia, religious freaks in Afghanistan, dictator loyalists in Iraq, or organized international thugs, we are dealing with tribal mentality that stems from poverty and failure...and no government claims any of these groups. Saddam Hussein was a member of a dying breed. The dictator, also a comfortable enemy, is seeing the end of days in this world. In their place are the tribes and their off shoot twisted organizations. Therefore, we only need to look at these locations where religious fanaticism is worsening to discover where our future conflicts are going to be. Especially if they affect international trades, our allies' borders, and mass violent organizations.
Our future is very much in the Middle East and the HOA and our enemy is going to be the armed thug, militant, and insurgent who merely clings to his tribe's pride. And this is why I have been "preaching" about tribes in today's world for years as being what has to start being our focus.
