Club Orlov finds the collapsing American Empire comical. And in a dark way, it is. Serious societal upheaval in the U.S. is coming. It will happen when the populace, politicians, and chattering class realize other countries are either ignoring or mocking it. China already is mostly ignoring U.S. blustering. Putin recently spoke about the U.S. like it was a spoiled, dimwitted child. Oh dear, these are bad days indeed for American Exceptionalism and a New American Century.
The simple truth is, despite its huge arsenal, the U.S. isn’t particularly good at war. It makes the same mistakes over and over (No, air power alone cannot win a war, it just can’t.) Worse, the U.S. assumes it knows what is best, blunders into invading nations based on making them safe for democracy (whatever that means), switches allies like changing socks, pays little if any attention to local alliances and customs, then wonders why the whole thing blows up in its face. U.S. war pigs make a tidy profit off the carnage and chaos. The rest of us gain nothing.
It was Putin’s speech that laid out the Empire’s silliness for all to see when he scolded the US for making a bloody mess of the Middle East with its ham-handed interventions. The oft-repeated quote is “Do you understand what you have done?” but that’s not quite right. The Russian…can be more accurately translated as “How can you even now fail to understand what a mess you have made?” Words matter: this is not how one talks to a superpower before an assembly of the world’s leaders; this is how one scolds a stupid and wayward child. In the eyes of the whole world, this made the Empire look rather silly.
War in the U.S. since the Vietnam War has become unpopular. That’s why we have a volunteer army. It cuts down on protesting. Even with that we are so loathe to have any U.S. injuries or deaths we have bizarre rules of engagement that make actual effective fighting difficult. Russia has no such qualms.
But now it appears that the Russians have achieved in five days of bombing what the Americans couldn’t in a year and the ISIS boys are running away to Jordan; others want to go to Germany and ask for asylum. This has made the Americans upset, because, you see, the Russians were bombing “their” terrorists—the ones the Americans recruited, armed and trained… and then bombed? I know, silly—but true. The Russians will have none of that, because their approach is, if it looks like a terrorist and quacks like a terrorist, then it is a terrorist, so let’s bomb it.
How is this all going to end? Well, since we are all just being silly, let me make a humble suggestion: the US should bomb everything inside the Beltway in Washington, plus a few counties in Virginia. That should significantly degrade the country’s capability for being extremely silly. And if that doesn’t work—so what? After all, it is clear that results don’t matter. As long as the military contractors are getting paid, it’s all good.