Nine years after Baghdad erupted in "shock and awe," we're once again hearing in America the drumbeat for war in the Middle East. Now, the bull's-eye is on Iran. But what we need more than a simple change of target is a complete change in perspective, says Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran-turned-scholar who's become one of the most perceptive observers of America's changing role in the world.
Andrew Bacevich on Changing Our Military Mindset from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.
This week, on an all-new Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers and Bacevich explore the futility of "endless" wars, and provide a reality check on the rhetoric of American exceptionalism.
"Are we so unimaginative, so wedded to the reliance on military means that we cannot conceive of any way to reconcile our differences with groups and nations in the Islamic world, and therefore bring this conflict to an end?" Bacevich tells Moyers.
Bacevich also answers the question of whether Iran is a direct threat to America with a definitive no. "Whatever threat Iran poses is very, very limited," he tells Moyers, "and certainly does not constitute any kind of justification for yet another experiment with preventive war."
Bill Moyers: Welcome. Sometimes seems as if it were only a bad dream vaguely remembered from last night's restless sleep, but it was actually nine years ago this month that Iraq's capital of Baghdad erupted in 'shock and awe' and the American invasion began of a country that had not attacked us. When the last combat troops pulled out this past December, what one neo-conservative advocate of the invasion had predicted would be a "cakewalk," had killed well over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians, cost nearly 4500 American soldiers their lives, maimed many others, and incurred costs that could reach more than 3 trillion dollars before the last invoice comes due.
And we never did find those weapons of mass destruction.
Yet here we are, nine years later, and once again the drumbeat sounds for war in the Middle East. This time the bull's eye is Iran, and many of the bloodthirsty cries come from the same lusty throats that agitated a decade ago for invading Iraq. Now the neo-con armchair warriors call for hitting Iran before it builds a nuclear bomb to drop on Israel – a scenario that remains in doubt.
