Al Jazeera.
They looked like a gang of geriatric giants. Clad in smart casual
attire - dress shirts, sweaters, and jeans - and incongruous blue
hospital booties, they strode around "the world", stopping to stroke
their chins and ponder this or that potential crisis. Among them was
General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a
button-down shirt and jeans, without a medal or a ribbon in sight, his
arms crossed, his gaze fixed. He had one foot planted firmly in Russia, the other partly in Kazakhstan, and yet the general hadn't left the friendly confines of Virginia.
Several times this year, Dempsey, the other joint chiefs, and
regional war-fighting commanders have assembled at the Marine Corps Base
in Quantico to conduct
a futuristic war-game-meets-academic-seminar about the needs of the
military in 2017. There, a giant map of the world, larger than a
basketball court, was laid out so the Pentagon's top brass could shuffle
around the planet - provided they wore those scuff-preventing shoe
covers - as they thought about "potential US national military
vulnerabilities in future conflicts" (so one participant told the New York Times).
The sight of those generals with the world underfoot was a fitting
image for Washington's military ambitions, its penchant for foreign
interventions, and its contempt for (non-US) borders and national
sovereignty.
