Too Much Stuff: How Our Profligate Consumerism Might Keep Us in Iraq

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com. Posted November 21, 2008.

Getting out? Don't dream of it.

Going to War with the Society You Have

Back in December 2004, when a soldier at a base in Kuwait asked about the lack of armor on his unit's Humvees, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously said, "As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have…"

Rumsfeld was then still focused on his much-ballyhooed "transformation" in warfare. He was intent on creating a Military Lite -- the most pared down, totally agile, completely networked, highest of all high-tech forces that was going to make the U.S. the dominant power on the planet for eons. As it turned out, that force was a mirage. In reality, the U.S. military in Iraq proved to be a Military Heavy. In retrospect, Rumsfeld might have more accurately responded: You have to go to war with the society you have.

In fact, the Bush administration did just that -- with a passion. After the attacks of 9/11, the President famously pleaded with the American public to return to normal life by shopping, flying, and visiting Disney World. ("Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.") The administration and the Pentagon led the way. As the Pentagon's budget soared, its civilians and the high command went on an imperial spending spree the likes of which may never have been seen on this planet.

For them, Iraq has been war as cornucopia, war as a consumer's paradise. Arguably, on a per-soldier basis, no military has ever occupied a country with a bigger baggage train. On taking Iraq, they promptly began constructing a series of gigantic military bases, American ziggurats meant to outlast them. These were full-scale "American towns," well guarded, 15-20 miles around, with multiple PXes, fitness clubs, brand fast-food outlets, traffic lights, the works. (This, in a country where, for years after the invasion, nothing worked.)

To the tune of multi-billions of dollars, they continued to build these bases up, and then, in Baghdad, put the icing on the Iraqi cake by constructing an almost three-quarter-billion dollar embassy of embassies, a veritable citadel in the heart of the capital's American-controlled Green Zone, meant for 1,000 "diplomats" with its own pool, tennis courts, recreation center, post exchange/community center, commissary, retail and shopping areas, and restaurants -- again, the works.

In other words, abroad, we weren't the Spartans, we were the Athenians on steroids. And then, of course, there was the "equipment" that Mullen referred to, the most expensive and extensive collection you could find. As the Washington Times's Arnaud de Borchgrave wrote back in October 2007: "Watching them drive by at 30 miles per hour, would take 75 days. Bumper-to-bumper, they would stretch from New York City to Denver. That's how U.S. Air Force logistical expert Lenny Richoux described the number of vehicles that would have to be shipped back from Iraq when the current deployment is over. These include, among others, 10,000 flatbed trucks, 1,000 tanks and 20,000 Humvees." And don't forget "the 300,000 'heavy' items that would have to be shipped back, such as ice-cream machines that churn out different flavors upon request at a dozen bases…"

As Dr. Seuss might have put it: and that is not all, oh no, that is not all. In July 2007, for instance, the Associated Press's Charles Hanley described U.S. bases holding "more than the thousands of tanks, other armored vehicles, artillery pieces and Humvees assigned to combat units. They're also home to airfields laden with high-tech gear, complexes of offices filled with computers, furniture and air conditioners, systems of generators and water plants, PXs full of merchandise, gyms packed with equipment, big prefab latrines and ranks of small portable toilets, even Burger Kings and Subway sandwich shops."

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Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture.

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