During a daily press-briefing, the spokesperson for the Department of State, Rear Admiral John Kirby would announce that the professionalism and the skill as well as the capabilities that are resident in the United States military are beyond debate and dispute. He would go even further by stating in all of human history there has ever been a military as capable and as intelligent, as strong, as well-led, and as well-resourced as the United States military is today.
Well, that’s a rather modest approach to PR, but Kirby must have realized that the Pentagon has not enjoyed much good publicity recently.
As it has already been mentioned previously in a number of articles, US troops are known today for bringing their allies under friendly fire and of numerous cases of indiscriminate bombings of residential areas. It would be difficult to expect any praise from non-Western media sources across the globe after such events.
Prominent international players have repeatedly complained about the behavior of American soldiers on bases that those states host, since there’s a long track record of drunk driving, fistfights and cruel violence against local residents. In fact, those bases have provoked a number of massive anti-American protests, since those living in the vicinity of these installations hardly feel protected at all.
Instead of serving as a symbol of goodwill, partnership and order, American soldiers that are stationed abroad have become an embodiment of lawlessness, carelessness and brutality. One can recall the massive public outrage in South Korea provoked by American soldiers that raped local girls.
As for the actual combat capabilities of US troops, even the Wall Street Journal announced that the Assad regime’s recapture of Aleppo showcases Washington’s pullback from the Middle East. Alternative media sources are convinced that Moscow and its allies have derailed Washington’s attempts to redraw the political map of the Middle East in Syria. The potent power of Russian weapons has become so obvious that CNN would inform its readers that sales of arms by American defense companies have declined for the fifth consecutive year in 2015.
In one of his articles a retired United States Army major general openly declares that:
After 13 years of war, young leaders are voting with their feet again. As sergeants and young officers depart, the institution is breaking for a third time in my lifetime. The personal tragedies that attended the collapse of a soldier’s spirit in past wars are with us again. Suicide, family abuse, alcohol and drug abuse are becoming increasingly more common.
The quality of American weapons are a source of contention as well, as the USS Zumwal, USS Coronado, and USS Milwaukee, supposedly “cutting edge” military vessels, have been riddled with engine failures and other major setbacks. As for the the warplanes that the US Marine Corps flies, it’s been reported by Foxnews that most of its aircraft are inoperable. Even the poor and hungry Ukrainian servicemen are convinced that US drones were made back in the “stone age“.
So the assessment made by John Kirby of the current state of the US military is clearly false and misleading, but the Obama administration is known for such statements, since it’s been trying hard to conceal the extent of the true scale of the decline of the US government. The only positive thing is that when the Obama administration leaves, they’re going to take John Kirby along with them.
Jean Périer is an independent researcher and analyst and a renowned expert on the Near and Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”