We've Spent Trillions on Our Pentagon Budget. So Why Are We Losing Against... Iran?
Former US army major and defense intelligence analyst Harrison Mann on why the US military is struggling against Iran and how Donald Trump isn't the only one to blame for US failures in this war.
Americans are used to hearing that they have the greatest military on Earth. An increasing number are aware they also have the most expensive military on Earth, especially after Donald Trump announced yesterday that his trillion-dollar Pentagon budget is the reason we can’t afford daycare, Medicare, or Medicaid. So, one month into the US-Israeli war against Iran, why is the US taking around 10 casualties per day (that’s without setting foot on Iranian soil), unprepared for sea mines, running out of air defenses, and seeing hard-to-replace strategic aircraft blown up on the tarmac?
The Egyptian military, which knows a thing or two about having planes blown up on the ground (Israel launched the 1967 “Six Day War” with a surprise attack on Egypt’s air force that is widely considered a historic strategic coup), might have the answers we’re looking for.
Like many Army officers of the so-called ‘Global War on Terror’ era who were expected to work alongside Middle Eastern partners, I had to study up on the Egyptian army. Required reading included a much-cited, embarrassingly orientalist paper entitled “Why Arabs Lose Wars,” whose author attributes the dismal record of Arab countries’ militaries to alleged cultural defects like penchants for “paranoia” and “deception,” and a “predilection to confuse facts with wishes” (sound familiar?), while underplaying the real reason modern Arab armies didn’t win many wars: That’s not what they were designed to do. Instead, they were optimized to protect authoritarian regimes from perceived domestic threats by quelling dissent and maintaining supporters with patronage in the form of contracts or jobs. Most Arab militaries have excelled at what they were designed to do, with the operationally unimpressive Egyptian Armed Forces emerging victorious from their skirmish with popular rule following the Arab Spring.
So, what is the US military actually designed to do, and how does that explain the failures of the Iran war?