Win-Hold-Lose: How the Pentagon is Already Planning the Next Wars
In 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act, which formed the National Military Establishment, a department with the unfortunate acronym “NME,” (pronounced “enemy”). Wise men realized a name change was in order, so they rebranded NME as the “Department of Defense.” In its new role, the DoD would oversee the duties formerly handled by the Department of War and the Department of the Navy.
Department of War and “enemy” are more suitable nomenclatures for our modern wartime Chimera, the Department of Defense.
As Thom Shanker details with the cool, detached demeanor of a serial killer, the “protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are forcing the Obama administration to rethink what for more than two decades has been a central premise of American strategy: that the nation need only prepare to fight two major wars at a time.”
Of course, “only two wars at a time, boys” isn’t written anywhere in our Constitution. That may be because our forefathers were sort of wary about that whole empirical conquest thing. They’d just escaped being ruled over by a tyrannical king and were in no rush to impose their own authoritarian regime upon anyone else, though that didn’t stop them from wiping out the Native Americans and pesky Mexicans.
Shanker continues:
A senior Defense Department official involved in a strategy review now under way said the Pentagon was absorbing the lesson that the kinds of counterinsurgency campaigns likely to be part of some future wars would require more staying power than in past conflicts, like the first Iraq war in 1991 or the invasions of Grenada and Panama.
I know what you’re thinking: Surely, the only lesson to be taken out of the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires is to NOT invade countries that pose no threat to the United States. Well, that’s why you’re not in charge of leading young men and women to their deaths. The problem isn’t ideological. It’s strategical.
Among the refinements to the two-wars strategy the Pentagon has incorporated in recent years is one known as “win-hold-win” — an assumption that if two wars broke out simultaneously, the more threatening conflict would get the bulk of American forces while the military would have to defend along a second front until reinforcements could arrive to finish the job.
Another formulation envisioned the United States defending its territory, deterring hostility in four critical areas of the world and then defeating two adversaries in major combat operations, but not at exactly the same time.
For anyone of you weak, pathetic peace-lovers out there, who thought maybe (just maybe) the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan (and sometimes Pakistan) were winding down, stick this Pentagon memo in your pipe and smoke it. This is the long-vision, people. This is perpetual war.
An inconvenient truth is that Americans get worked up at the thought of an extended, massive ground invasion of foreign lands. That’s why the future of war is small, scattered, air-oriented, and covert. Whether it’s Dick Cheney’s implementation of a secret assassination ring, or Pakistan-stationed US drones killing civilians, war no longer has to receive the blessing of Congress, or – pause for laughter – the American people.
War is an inevitability, so a public debate about whether war should be is never an option. It’s not a matter of should we be planning for multiple, simultaneous, small invasions, but a debate over technicalities and strategies for when it happens. And the media usually walks hand-in-hand with the Pentagon, somehow managing to keep a straight face on the matter, when generals and bureaucrats start spouting rhetoric about preserving freedom and democracy via cluster bombs.
The war debate (if it can be called a debate) is completely off-kilter. Even in the “liberal” New York Times, the article isn’t balanced with a pro-war participant and a serious anti-war participant. Yet again, we get a photocopied Pentagon memo crammed within a major newspaper’s margins, without analysis or journalistic insight into the consequences of perpetual war. Including an anti-war voice isn’t partisan. It’s actually doing real journalistic work, which is representing all sides of a story, and not just the loudest opinions resonating from the state.
The closest the Times comes to representing an anti-war voice is in the confusing interjection from Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior follow from the Brookings Institution, a think tank that the Times tells me is center-left, though I wouldn’t have guessed that from O’Hanlon’s comment:
“We have Gates and others saying that other parts of the government are underresourced and that the DoD should not be called on to do everything. That’s a good starting point for this — to ask and at least begin answering where it might be better to have other parts of the government get stronger and do a bigger share, rather than the Department of Defense.”
This sounds like O’Hanlon wants to outsource killing to other departments. Maybe we can arm teachers and parachute them into Pakistan.
Yet again, the debate over our larger war policies goes unexamined by the mainstream media. The media remains compliant in the imperial conquests of our government, and then acts dumbfounded when popular support for their institution wanes, and they find themselves antiquated and bankrupted.
VIDEO: Evil in List Form
Note from Allison: Man, I always forget how evil Karl Rove is until I see his nefarious accomplishments laid out in list form. Then, I revert back to amazement that this little cave troll has (thus far) avoided prison.
Last night on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, former Bush adviser Karl Rove brazenly claimed that he never used his White House position to threaten anyone.
Host Bill O’Reilly caught Rove off-guard with this question: “Now in the Bush White House, did you guys ever threaten anybody who disagreed with you?” Rove hesitated, sputtered, and responded, “Not that — not that — you know — not that I recall.” O’Reilly pressed the point:
O’REILLY: So you never threatened?
ROVE: No.
The smirk on Rove’s face suggested that even he had a hard time believing his own answer. Watch it here.
Rove — the political architect of dirty tricks — clearly did use his position in the White House to engage in vindictive political attacks against his perceived enemies:
– Punished Iraq war whistleblower Joe Wilson by outing his wife Valerie Plame, who was an undercover intelligence agent
– Drove a politically-charged prosecution of former Democratic Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman
– Orchestrated the political firings of U.S. attorneys
– Threatened the late Michael Connell and demanded he “take the fall” for election fraud in Ohio
– Pressured the Texas Secretary of State to fire an attorney in his office for making comments that reflected poorly on him
All this does not even include Rove’s alleged role in the Swift Boat smears against John Kerry, the whisper campaign against Ann Richards that questioned her sexuality, and the attacks on John McCain’s mental health in South Carolina in 2000.
In 2007, Rove also issued this public threat against House GOP congressmen who dared to criticize Bush on Iraq. “Nobody can risk looking disrespectful to the president without paying a price, and they need to understand that,” he said.
VIDEO: Blackwater CEO Erik Prince Resigns in Latest Attempt to Rebrand Tarnished Mercenary Firm
Erik Prince
Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, has announced his resignation as the company’s CEO. The move comes weeks after the company changed its name to Xe in an attempt to rebrand the firm. Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, assesses the latest developments.
Video Guest: Jeremy Scahill, award-winning investigative journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
Wars, Endless Wars
Note from Allison: I don’t get Bob Herbert. He’s wonderful, and brilliant, and everything, but I just don’t get him. I don’t understand how he got hired at the New York Times, or why he’s kept writing for them all these years. Bob Herbert working at the New York Times reminds me of Marilyn Munster living with her freak family. How did HE comes from THAT stock?
Sometimes, I imagine Bob standing around with Thomas Friedman, or (God forbid) Maureen Dowd, at a NYT staff party. Thomas is babbling about his latest trip to a golf club in East India (and how it really reminded him of the power of Globalization.) Maureen isn’t listening to Thomas (typical,) and she asks Bob, “If Hillary Clinton could be a kind of cocktail dress, what kind of dress do you think she would be?” and I imagine Bob’s face twitching as his hand slowly crushes his plastic cup of punch.
I don’t get Bob, but I’m glad he’s around to inject some sanity into the Op-Eds.
The singer Edwin Starr, who died in 2003, had a big hit in 1970 called “War” in which he asked again and again: “War, what is it good for?”
The U.S. economy is in free fall, the banking system is in a state of complete collapse and Americans all across the country are downsizing their standards of living. The nation as we’ve known it is fading before our very eyes, but we’re still pouring billions of dollars into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with missions we are still unable to define.
Even as the U.S. begins plans to reduce troop commitments in Iraq, it is sending thousands of additional troops into Afghanistan. The strategic purpose of this escalation, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged, is not at all clear.
In response to a question on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Mr. Gates said:
“We’re talking to the Europeans, to our allies; we’re bringing in an awful lot of people to get different points of view as we go through this review of what our strategy ought to be. And I often get asked, ‘Well, how long will those 17,000 [additional troops] be there? Will more go in?’ All that depends on the outcome of this strategy review that I hope will be done in a few weeks.”
We invaded Afghanistan more than seven years ago. We have not broken the back of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. We have not captured or killed Osama bin Laden. We don’t even have an escalation strategy, much less an exit strategy. An honest assessment of the situation, taking into account the woefully corrupt and ineffective Afghan government led by the hapless Hamid Karzai, would lead inexorably to such terms as fiasco and quagmire.
Instead of cutting our losses, we appear to be doubling down.
As for Iraq, President Obama announced last week that substantial troop withdrawals will take place over the next year and a half and that U.S. combat operations would cease by the end of August 2010. But, he said, a large contingent of American troops, perhaps as many as 50,000, would still remain in Iraq for a “period of transition.”
That’s a large number of troops, and the cost of keeping them there will be huge. Moreover, I was struck by the following comment from the president: “There will surely be difficult periods and tactical adjustments, but our enemies should be left with no doubt. This plan gives our military the forces and flexibility they need to support our Iraqi partners and to succeed.”
In short, we’re committed to these two conflicts for a good while yet, and there is nothing like an etched-in-stone plan for concluding them. I can easily imagine a scenario in which Afghanistan and Iraq both heat up and the U.S., caught in an extended economic disaster at home, undermines its fragile recovery efforts in the same way that societies have undermined themselves since the dawn of time — with endless warfare.
We’ve already paid a fearful price for these wars. In addition to the many thousands of service members who have been killed or suffered obvious disabling injuries, a study by the RAND Corporation found that some 300,000 are currently suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, and that 320,000 have most likely experienced a traumatic brain injury.
Time magazine has reported that “for the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Suicides among soldiers rose in 2008 for the fourth consecutive year, largely because of the stress of combat deployments. It’s believed that 128 soldiers took their own lives last year.
Much of the country can work itself up to a high pitch of outrage because a banker or an automobile executive flies on a private jet. But we’ll send young men and women by the thousands off to repeated excursions through the hell of combat — three tours, four tours or more — without raising so much as a peep of protest.
Lyndon Johnson, despite a booming economy, lost his Great Society to the Vietnam War. He knew what he was risking. He would later tell Doris Kearns Goodwin, “If I left the woman I really loved — the Great Society — in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs… All my dreams…”
The United States is on its knees economically. As President Obama fights for his myriad domestic programs and his dream of an economic recovery, he might benefit from a look over his shoulder at the link between Vietnam and the still-smoldering ruins of Johnson’s presidency.
All Troops Out By 2011? Not So Fast.
Jeremy Scahill (h/t: Alternet)
Some anti-war analysts find hope in President Barack Obama’s address at Camp Lejuene in North Carolina on Friday, in which he appeared to spell out a clear date for withdrawal from Iraq.
“I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011,” Obama said in a speech that quickly generated headlines announcing that an end to the occupation is on the horizon. As far as rhetoric goes, Obama’s statement seems very clear. But in reality, it is far more complicated.
Obama’s plan, as his advisors have often said, is subject to “conditions on the ground,” meaning it can be altered at any point between now and 2011. Underscoring this point, a spokesperson for New York Rep. John McHugh, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said on Friday that Obama “assured [McHugh] he will revisit the tempo of the withdrawal, or he will revisit the withdrawal plan if the situation on the ground dictates it. … The president assured him that there was a Plan B.”
Despite Obama’s declarations Friday and the celebrations they have sparked on the liberal blogosphere, the Pentagon certainly seems to believe its forces may well be in Iraq after 2011. NBC’s Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszeswki reported on Friday that “military commanders, despite this Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government that all U.S. forces would be out by the end of 2011, are already making plans for a significant number of American troops to remain in Iraq beyond that 2011 deadline, assuming that Status of Forces Agreement agreement would be renegotiated. And one senior military commander told us that he expects large numbers of American troops to be in Iraq for the next 15 to 20 years.”
Some have suggested that such statements from the military are insubordination and contrary to Obama’s orders, but they could also reflect discussions between the White House and the Pentagon to which the public is not privy.
Then there’s the monstrous U.S. embassy unveiled last month in Baghdad, the largest of any nation anywhere in the history of the planet and itself resembling a military base. Maintaining this fortified city will require a sizable armed U.S. presence in Baghdad and will regularly place U.S. diplomats in armed convoys that put Iraqi civilian lives in jeopardy.
Whether this job is performed by State Department Diplomatic Security or mercenaries from the company formerly known as Blackwater (or else a corporation more acceptable to the Obama administration), the U.S. will have a substantial paramilitary force regularly escorting U.S. VIPs around Iraq — a proven recipe for civilian deaths and injuries. Obama’s speech on Friday did not even address the question of military contractors — a crucial omission given that their presence rivals that of U.S. troops by a ratio of over 1-to-1.
Finally, the Status of Forces Agreement, which supposedly lays out a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, contains a gaping loophole that leaves open the possibility of a continuation of the occupation and a sustained presence of U.S. forces well beyond 2011, “upon request by the government of Iraq.” Article 27 of the SOFA allows the U.S. to undertake military action, “or any other measure,” inside Iraq’s borders “In the event of any external or internal threat or aggression against Iraq.” Could this mean an election where the wrong candidate or party wins? What is the definition of a threat?
The Democrats’ Response
Earlier in the week, when details of Obama’s official Iraq plan began to emerge, expressions of surprise poured from the offices of the congressional Democratic leadership over his intention to keep a force of 35,000 to 50,000 troops in the country beyond 2010.
“When they talk about 50,000, that’s a little higher number than I anticipated,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was “particularly upset” according to the New York Times and did not understand “the justification.” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., exclaimed, “Fifty thousand is more than I would have thought.”
The response from the Democratic power brokers was embarrassingly disingenuous. Obama said early on in his presidential campaign that he intended to keep behind a “residual force” of the scope he laid out. Those who have long protested this aspect of his plan were marginalized and ignored in both the corporate media and the Obama campaign.
The same Democratic leaders expressing their disappointment ignored the credible voices of dissent for years while supporting the occupation through votes and funding. That they would wait to express their dissent until long after it would actually have had an impact is one of the best examples of what has been so wrong with the Democrats’ role from the beginning of President George W. Bush’s declaration of war against the world and his 2003 invasion of Iraq.
If Pelosi, Reid, et al., really had a problem with a 50,000 troop residual force, they certainly had ample time to say so when Obama was running for president.
On Friday, however, these same Democrats welcomed the announcement that combat missions would be out by 2011. Reid praised Obama’s plan, while cautioning that we “must keep in Iraq only those forces necessary for the security of our remaining troops and the Iraqi people.” Following Obama’s speech at Camp Lejeune, key Senate Republicans praised Obama’s plan as well, while reminding everyone that it was an outgrowth of the Bush administration.
“It is encouraging to see the Obama administration embrace the plan of Gen. David Petraeus that began with the successful surge in 2007, and continues shifting combat responsibilities to our Iraqi allies,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Adopting the Bush Narrative
Beyond the headline-generating news, Obama’s speech at Camp Lejeune delivered a number of lines — wrapped in laudatory rhetoric — that could have been delivered by Bush himself.
“I want to be very clear,” Obama told the military audience. “We sent our troops to Iraq to do away with Saddam Hussein’s regime — and you got the job done.” Perhaps it bears remembering that “removing Saddam” was justification two or three offered by the Bush administration after the WMD fraud was exposed.
“We kept our troops in Iraq to help establish a sovereign government,” Obama went on, “and you got the job done.” (The idea that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki regime is either sovereign or a government is hotly debated in Iraq.) “And we will leave the Iraqi people with a hard-earned opportunity to live a better life — that is your achievement; that is the prospect that you have made possible.”
As much as could be said about this, perhaps the best response was delivered on Friday by Washington Post correspondent Thomas Ricks, who knows the situation in Iraq about as well as any journalist.
“We won’t know for 10 or 15 years whether we actually did something right, even in removing Saddam Hussein,” he said on MSNBC. “We may very well end up with a strongman, stronger than Saddam, closer to Tehran and certainly will be anti-American. That’s in some ways the best-case scenario if that country holds together.”
Regardless of what happens down the line, the world knows the truth about the lies that both Democrats and Republicans promoted in support of Bush’s war against Iraq. Rather than inspire hope among Iraqis, the U.S. occupation has devastated their country and opened Iraq’s gates for unprecedented violence and instability in their country and the region.
Obama, the candidate, used to riff on these truths on the campaign trail. The contradiction between President Obama’s speech at Camp Lejeune and his rhetoric before he was elected should serve as a warning to those who take his words at face value. But more important, combined with his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan, Obama’s adoption of key lies from Bush’s Iraq narrative should be seen as a dangerous indicator of things to come.
Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
VIDEO: Obama and His Economic Plan are Confused
Note from Allison: This is Joseph Stiglitz. He’s the most cited economist in the world, a Nobel Laureate, and the guy who first price-tagged the Iraq war at $3 trillion. As you’ve probably already gathered, he’s a genius. Also, he’s smart, which is different than genius because it means he possesses the gift of “breakin’ it down,” and speaking simply so we mortals can understand him.
He very clearly explains why Obama has devised a plan to help the banks, and not the bankers, and he also details what we need to do in order to change our financial system. Well worth the watching.
Watch the videos here.
Iraq and Afghanistan: Consider the Alternative
Today, President Obama unfurled his shiny plan to keep 35,000 to 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq under a “new mission of training, ” and to send 17,000 more troops into Afghanistan. This may seem like a sleight of hand artifice (removing troops from Point A, only to drop them in Point B,) but many hawkish pundits, columnists, and bloggers respond to criticism of Obama’s plan by deploying the straw-man directive for readers to “consider the alternative.”
Meaning, I guess, we’re supposed to concede the point that keeping armed forces in Iraq is better than some imagined, hypothetical scenario where all hell breaks loose the second our forces leave, the country dissolves into sectarian warfare (worse that the civil strife that has already occurred,) and some kind of apocalyptical genocide breaks out (the kind of genocide we care about, not the Darfur or Congo kind.)
Let’s set aside the points that sectarian violence may be declining because of mass exoduses from Iraq, a significant amount of the population being dead, and US forces bribing Iraqis not to shoot each other, (all of which the Washington Post described as troops “stop(ping) a sectarian civil war.”) What is this “alternative” I’m supposed to be considering?
Over at Politico, Yousef Munayyer imagines the alternative to permanent occupation as crafty foe behaving themselves only until the final US Blackhawk helicopter departs the Iraq landscape so they can then rain down terror upon the population.
The fundamental problem with measuring success in the fight against insurgency is that we can never be sure if they have stopped fighting because they have given up or because they are just laying low and waiting for us to leave. I don’t know if I would call 50,000 troops “residual” but the heart of the problem is that we simply can’t move out quicker because we just don’t know what will happen.
This is a variation of the “consider the alternative” argument. Because the US military does not yet possess the gift of clairvoyance, we have to remain committed in the region indefinitely because, gee, just consider what might happen in this hypothetical I’ve invented.
It’s like John McHugh (R-NY) said today after his meeting with Obama. We have to consider the possibility that something bad may happen, like “the situation on the ground deteriorat(ing) and violence increas(ing),” which may very well happen because, ya’ know, we totally ripped apart the Iraqi infrastructure and societal fabric. But how do US troops occupying the region convey a new era of autonomy and peace to the Iraqis? They don’t. They can’t. Their presence just delays the inevitable: US troops leaving the region, and chaos and strife following a tumultuous time, followed by (hopefully) rebuilding. That’s what will happen if the troops leave tomorrow. That’s what will happen if the troops leave in December. The only difference is less men and women of all nationalities will die if it happens tomorrow.
To be sure, Iraq and Afghanistan are tremendously volatile regions, but deploying the “consider the alternative” argument is manipulative. Sure, something bad can happen at any given moment. Something bad might be happening in Denmark right now, or rather, something bad may happen eventually. That’s a 1% chance, and Dick Cheney says that’s all we need. Shall we invade? Something bad is actually happening in Darfur and the Congo right now, so why aren’t our troops on their way there?
We don’t know what may happen, but we do know what has happened. The wars have been disastrous, and the explanations for the decrease in violence in Iraq ranges from speculative to insincere. Killing off the population and bribing those who remain isn’t a diplomatic strategy. It’s making the best of a fucked-up situation. It’s reason for shame, but it’s certaintly not a mandate to stay in the region indefinitely because a handful of hawkish pundits keep lobbing hypotheticals at the American population.
It’s just until December! comes the scream of rationalization for a new Magic Number pull-out date. We have to remain in the region until December to ensure a fair, free election. Mind you, we can’t figure out how to run our own elections, but we’re going to import democracy to the Iraqis. International organizations independently monitor elections all the time, but suddenly we need an occupying force to handle procedures. With the help of the UN, elections are held in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces, with about 15 million citizens eligible to vote. If we’re hanging around to see how the Iraqis really feel about the US occupation, they’ve already been abundantly clear that they want us gone. Furthermore, it’s more than a little insulting to imply that Iraqis can’t handle their own elections without Big Brother America holding their hands throughout the process. It’s also ridiculous to imply Iraqis are somehow better off with Americans in their country. In some respects, things in Iraq are worse now than they were pre-American invasion. Take, for example, the looting of museums, disappearance of electricity, and appearance of smoking craters.
“In an ideal world, the Iraqi security forces could handle the election security themselves,” says Dennis Hertel (D-MI), Vice-President of the International Elections Monitors Institute (IEMI). “Whenever there is a threat, you have to make sure the security is adequate so people can vote. Violence is intimidation for the people participating in the election.” And Hertel admits that the best possible scenario is for third party, international watch groups to monitor the elections without a military presence: “The best thing is if you don’t have to have armed forces, or even legal officers for elections.”
Surely, Iraqis may need help rebuilding, training their military, and protecting their citizens, but a unilateral occupation isn’t the answer to their problems. It is only a promise of continued strife and violence. If the United States is serious about helping (and not occupying,) they should throw full support behind the UN and look for partners in the international community to provide non-military aid.
I guess we’re supposed to take Obama’s new Iraq and Afghanistan plans very seriously because they suddenly have bipartisan support. But the fact that John McCain, the man who once said that it would be totally cool if our troops remained in Iraq “for 100 years,” now agrees with Obama’s wartime policies is a very, very bad sign. When McCain later had to explain his comment because it was tremendously awful, he cited a longstanding, ugly truth of American power: we occupy a lot of countries. It’s just part of that crazy stuff we do all the time.
US Military Bases (Wikipedia)
There are 737 military bases scattered around the planet, which staff roughly 2,500,000 US military personnel. It’s become commonplace to send our troops to foreign countries and station them there indefinitely. It’s become so banal that the so-called Progressive candidate, Barack Obama, can admit to keeping 35,000-50,000 armed troops in Iraq (with no deadline,) toe the line with John McCain and John Boehner, and the mainstream media accepts that this is a responsible, sane plan. It’s accepted because, once again, something bad is out there…waiting.
The Taliban are bad news. Hardly anyone disputes that. They terrorize innocents (particularly women, young girls, and anyone trying to receive an education,) but unilateral military action has never nurtured diplomatic relations. America has been in Afghanistan for eight years, and all that has been accomplished is a resurgent Taliban insurgency that is busily overwhelming areas of Pakistan, a country with a nuclear weapon. But a continuation of unilateral firebombing of civilian-populated regions doesn’t work. Unlike the reasons to stay in the Middle East afforded to us by the mainstream media, that’s not speculation.
Occupying a country and terrorizing the population ensures only one thing: blowback. Yes, pulling out of Iraq may lead to bad things that will demand attention from the international community and the UN, but the United States galavanting across the region and crushing indigenous people inspires only hatred.
This isn’t some radical, new lesson we have to learn. We’ve known this since 1991 during the Gulf War, when our Saudi Arabia-stationed bases pissed off this guy named Osama bin Laden. How many little Osamas are witnessing the brute, awful strength of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan? How many members of their families and communities have our troops killed?
This just doesn’t make sense for Obama’s administration, or for our country. Our military and money is spread preciously thin. As Paul Krugman explained in his column today, Obama’s economic plan just may work, as long as nothing bad happens (like blowback from our irresponsible and irrational actions abroad):
According to the Obama administration’s budget projections, the ratio of federal debt to G.D.P., a widely used measure of the government’s financial position, will soar over the next few years, then more or less stabilize. But this stability will be achieved at a debt-to-G.D.P. ratio of around 60 percent. That wouldn’t be an extremely high debt level by international standards, but it would be the deepest in debt America has been since the years immediately following World War II. And it would leave us with considerably reduced room for maneuver if another crisis comes along.
That doesn’t really sound like Era of Responsibility, does it? Everything will be fine as long as nothing bad happens ever again because of these stupid things we’re doing in other people’s countries, and none of the people we’re bombing remember it was us, who bombed them. I’m sure Krugman wasn’t imagining another 9/11 in his hypothetical, but it’s a distinct possibility considering we’re broke, and our military is crouched in a foreign desert, messing with the locals.
A long-term goal for this mess should be to make the Taliban and radicalism unappealing. That won’t happen if we keep bombing countries. Poor, desperate people tend to falls into the clutches of radicalism because radicals can point up to the American jets that just decimated entire villages and say, “They did it.” Militarism only fuels more anti-America fervor. Charity and multilateral efforts to help a people (not through occupation,) but through aid will gradually make such radicalism unappealing. It’s not a quick fix. It will take generations, but it’s worth adopting some patience into our foreign policy strategies.
And sure, there will always be a handful of baddies out there that hate us (and will always hate us,) and they’ll try to hurt us. But let’s consider this alternative: A surplus in the economy from the money saved not waging wars abroad, and a strong military at home (including care for veterans.) Imagine skilled interrogators, who know how to coax forth answers with a game of chess, and not waterboarding. Imagine well-trained intelligence officers networking abroad, or new, secure American infrastructure and a well-funded FDA to keep our food safe. Imagine justice and accountability, and the permanent banishment of secret prisons and tribunals so that future terrorist attacks cannot possibly be justified to the world as self-defense or “pay back.”
Even in this imagined alternative, we can never be fully protected from the possibility of something bad happening. We can only be properly equipped to deal with the aftermath in a rational way. What we certainly do not need is 35,000-50,000 troops in Iraq and 17,000 more troops in Afghanistan. No imagined alternative will justify this empirical behavior.
Drunken Politics with Journalist Johann Hari
Johann Hari
Part 1 can be heard here.
A big, warm welcome to Johann Hari, our very first guest with a fatwa on his head!
Jamie barely represses his rage at the state of the American comedy industry, and Allison and Jamie discuss Obama’s sketchy policy decisions.
Join Drunken Politics for part one of their interview with journalist Johann Hari, their very first guest with a fatwa on his head. Visit JohannHari.com to read Johann’s amazing articles.
Johann Hari is an award-winning journalist who writes twice-weekly for the Independent, one of Britain’s leading newspapers, and the Huffington Post.
Every Wednesday on BTR
‘Prince’ Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to Britain, has accused Johann of “waging a private jihad against the House of Saud”. (He’s right). Johann has been called ‘Maoist’ by Nick Cohen, “Stalinist” by Noam Chomsky, ‘Horrible Hari’ by Niall Ferguson, “an uppity little queer” by Bruce Anderson, ‘a drug addict’ by George Galloway and “fat” by the Dalai Lama
Part two of the interview next Wednesday on BTR!
Iraq’s War Widows Face Dire Need With Little Aid
Ahmed Hassan Sharmal, right, and his extended family of 30, including three war widows, are forced to share only two trailers. (Johan Spanner for The New York Times)
BAGHDAD — Her twin sisters were killed trying to flee Falluja in 2004. Then her husband was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad just after she had become pregnant. When her own twins were 5 months old, one was killed by an explosive planted in a Baghdad market.
Now, Nacham Jaleel Kadim, 23, lives with her remaining daughter in a trailer park for war widows and their families in one of the poorest parts of Iraq’s capital.
That makes her one of the lucky ones. The trailer park, called Al Waffa, or “Park of the Grateful,” is among the few aid programs available for Iraq’s estimated 740,000 widows. It houses 750 people.
As the number of widows has swelled during six years of war, their presence on city streets begging for food or as potential recruits by insurgents has become a vexing symbol of the breakdown of Iraqi self-sufficiency.
Women who lost their husbands had once been looked after by an extended support system of family, neighbors and mosques.
But as the war has ground on, government and social service organizations say the women’s needs have come to exceed available help, posing a threat to the stability of the country’s tenuous social structures.
With the economy limping along, dependent almost entirely on the price of crude oil, and the government preoccupied with rebuilding and quelling sectarian violence, officials acknowledge that little is likely to change soon.
“We can’t help everybody,” said Leila Kadim, a managing director in the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. “There are too many.”
Among Iraqi women aged 15 to 80, 1 in 11 are estimated to be widows, though officials admit that figure is hardly more than a guess, given the continuing violence and the displacement of millions of people. A United Nations report estimated that during the height of sectarian violence here in 2006, 90 to 100 women were widowed each day.
In large cities like Baghdad, the presence of war widows is difficult to ignore. Cloaked in black abayas, they wade through columns of cars idling at security checkpoints, asking for money or food. They wait in line outside mosques for free blankets, or sift through mounds of garbage piled along the street. Some live with their children in public parks or inside gas station restrooms.
Officials at social service agencies tell of widows coerced into “temporary marriages” — relationships sanctioned by Shiite tradition, often based on sex, which can last from an hour to years — to get financial help from government, religious or tribal leaders.
Other war widows have become prostitutes, and some have joined the insurgency in exchange for steady pay. The Iraqi military estimates that the number of widows who have become suicide bombers may be in the dozens.
In the past several weeks, even as the government has formed commissions to study the problem, it has begun a campaign to arrest beggars and the homeless, including war widows.
The issue has burst into public view in some unusual ways recently. When an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President Bush in December, he shouted that he was doing so on behalf of the war’s widows and orphans. During the campaign for last month’s provincial elections, political rallies featured heart-rending songs of the suffering of widows.
Those sentiments, though, have yet to translate into political action.
Efforts to increase the government stipend for widows — currently about $50 a month and an additional $12 per child — have stalled. By comparison, the price of a five-liter container of gasoline, used for cars as well as home generators, is about $4.
Still, only about 120,000 widows — roughly one in six — receive any state aid, according to government figures. Widows and their advocates say that to receive benefits they must either have political connections or agree to temporary marriages with the powerful men who control the distribution of government funds.
“It is blackmail,” said Samira al-Mosawi, chairwoman of the women’s affairs committee in Parliament. “We have no law to treat this point. Widows don’t need temporary support, but a permanent solution.”
The latest plan, proposed by Mazin al-Shihan, director of the Baghdad Displacement Committee, a city agency, is to pay men to marry widows. “There is no serious effort by the national government to fix this problem, so I presented my own program,” he said.
When asked why the money should not go directly to the women, Mr. Shihan laughed.
“If we give the money to the widows, they will spend it unwisely because they are uneducated and they don’t know about budgeting,” he said. “But if we find her a husband, there will be a person in charge of her and her children for the rest of their lives. This is according to our tradition and our laws.”
Abdulalah F. Alafar, who runs the Maryam Establishment for Children charity in Baghdad, said he had become so frustrated by the lack of government support that he had begun to turn away war widows. He said he planned to close his organization entirely this month.
“If the situation progresses, we will be just like India,” he said. Questioning the government’s priorities, he added, “They are busy building public fountains when we don’t have water in the sink.”
The trailer park, in Baghdad’s Al Shaab district, opened four months ago. Its 150 identical aluminum trailers sit in neat rows amid a vast field of puddles, their white exteriors already stained tan by blowing sand.
A short walk down a muddy path from Ms. Kadim’s trailer, Ahmed Hassan Sharmal, 58, and his extended family of 30 are moving into trailer numbers 39 and 40. Three of his daughters-in-law are widows. Fatherless children seem to fill every bit of the trailers’ available space, playing and giggling while their mothers wonder where everyone will sleep.
Mr. Sharmal, a Shiite, lost three sons to sectarian violence in Diyala Province, which was a center of the Sunni insurgency, during a 10-month period in 2006.
One son, a doctor, was killed in a parking garage as he walked to his car. A second died after gunmen sprayed bullets across a field of soccer players. The third, a police officer, was shot in the back of the head while on his way to work.
Jinan, 25, had been married to the doctor. She has no money and little freedom. One of her brothers-in-law, an unemployed former police officer, said he planned to marry her, a match arranged by her in-laws. As he spoke, her 4-year-old son squirmed in her mother-in-law’s lap.
Soon, Jinan will no longer be a widow, but she refuses to look at the man chosen to be her husband. As she hangs her head as if to cry, the conversation continues without her.
Anwar J. Ali and Suadad al-Salhy contributed reporting.
Army Charity Hoards Millions
FORT BLISS, Texas (AP) — As soldiers stream home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the biggest charity inside the U.S. military has been stockpiling tens of millions of dollars meant to help put returning fighters back on their feet, an Associated Press investigation shows.
Between 2003 and 2007 – as many military families dealt with long war deployments and increased numbers of home foreclosures – Army Emergency Relief grew into a $345 million behemoth. During those years, the charity packed away $117 million into its own reserves while spending just $64 million on direct aid, according to an AP analysis of its tax records.
Tax-exempt and legally separate from the military, AER projects a facade of independence but really operates under close Army control. The massive nonprofit – funded predominantly by troops – allows superiors to squeeze soldiers for contributions; forces struggling soldiers to repay loans – sometimes delaying transfers and promotions; and too often violates its own rules by rewarding donors, such as giving free passes from physical training, the AP found.
Founded in 1942, AER eases cash emergencies of active-duty soldiers and retirees and provides college scholarships for their families. Its emergency aid covers mortgage payments and food, car repairs, medical bills, travel to family funerals, and the like.
Instead of giving money away, though, the Army charity lent out 91 percent of its emergency aid during the period 2003-2007. For accounting purposes, the loans, dispensed interest-free, are counted as expenses only when they are not paid back.
During that same five-year period, the smaller Navy and Air Force charities both put far more of their own resources into aid than reserves. The Air Force charity kept $24 million in reserves while dispensing $56 million in total aid, which includes grants, scholarships and loans not repaid. The Navy charity put $32 million into reserves and gave out $49 million in total aid.
AER executives defend their operation, insisting they need to keep sizable reserves to be ready for future catastrophes.
“Look at the stock market,” said retired Col. Dennis Spiegel, AER’s deputy director for administration. Without the large reserve, he added, “We’d be in very serious trouble.”
But smaller civilian charities for service members and veterans say they are swamped by the desperate needs of recent years, with requests far outstripping ability to respond.
While independent on paper, Army Emergency Relief is housed, staffed and controlled by the U.S. Army.
That’s not illegal per se. Eric Smith, a spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service, said the agency can’t offer an opinion on a particular charity’s activities. But Marcus Owens, former head of IRS charity oversight, said charities like AER can legally partner closely with a government agency.
However, he said, problems sometimes arise when their missions diverge. “There’s a bit of a tension when a government organization is operating closely with a charity,” he said.
Most charity watchdogs view 1-to-3 years of reserves as prudent, with more than that considered hoarding. Yet the American Institute of Philanthropy says AER holds enough reserves to last about 12 years at its current level of aid.
Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, said that AER collects money “very efficiently. What the shame is, is they’re not doing more with it.”
National administrators say they’ve tried to loosen the purse strings. The most recent yearly figures do show a tilt by AER toward increased giving.
Still, Borochoff’s organization, which grades charities, gives the Army charity an “F” because of the hoarding.
The AP findings include:
– Superior officers come calling when AER loans aren’t repaid on time. Soldiers can be fined or demoted for missing loan payments. They must clear their loans before transferring or leaving the service.
– Promotions can be delayed or canceled if loans are not repaid.
– Despite strict rules against coercion, the Army uses pushy tactics to extract supposedly voluntary contributions, with superiors using language like: “How much can we count on from you?”
– The Army sometimes offers rewards for contributions, though incentives are banned by program rules. It sometimes excuses contributors from physical training – another clear violation.
– AER screens every request for aid, peering into the personal finances of its troops, essentially making the Army a soldier’s boss and loan officer.
“If I ask a private for something … chances are everyone’s going to do it. Why? Because I’m a lieutenant,” says Iraq war veteran Tom Tarantino, otherwise an AER backer. “It can almost be construed as mandatory.”
Neither the Army nor Sgt. Major of the Army Kenneth Preston, an AER board member, responded to repeated requests for comment on the military’s relationship with AER.
AER pays just 21 staffers, all working at its headquarters at Army Human Resources Command in Alexandria, Va. AER’s other 300 or so employees at 90 Army sites worldwide are civilians paid by the Army. Also, the Army gives AER office space for free.
AER’s treasurer, Ret. Col. Andrew Cohen, acknowledged in an interview that “the Army runs the program in the field.” Army officers dominate its corporate board too.
Charities linked to other services operate along more traditional nonprofit lines. The Air Force Aid Society sprinkles its board with members from outside the military to foster broad views. The Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society pays 225 employees and, instead of relying on Navy personnel for other chores, deploys a corps of about 3,400 volunteers, including some from outside the military.
Army regulations say AER “is, in effect, the U.S. Army’s own emergency financial assistance organization.” Under Army regulations, officers must recommend whether their soldiers deserve aid. Company commanders and first sergeants can approve up to $1,000 in loans on their own say-so. Officers also are charged with making sure their troops repay AER loans.
“If you have an outstanding bill, you’re warned about paying that off just to finish your tour of duty … because it will be brought to your leadership and it will be dealt with,” says Jon Nakaishi, of Tracy, Calif., an Army National Guard veteran of the Iraq war who took out a $900 AER loan to help feed his wife and children between paychecks.
In his case, he was sent home with an injury and never fully repaid his loan.
The Army also exercises its leverage in raising contributions from soldiers. It reaches out only to troops and veterans in annual campaigns organized by Army personnel.
For those on active duty, AER organizes appeals along the chain of command. Low-ranking personnel are typically solicited by a superior who knows them personally.
Spiegel, the AER administrator, said he’s unaware of specific violations but added: “I spent 29 years in the Army, I know how … first sergeants operate. Some of them do strong-arm.”
Army regulations ban base passes, training holidays, relief from guard duty, award plaques and “all other incentives or rewards” for contributions to AER. But the AP uncovered evidence of many violations.
Before leaving active duty in 2006, Philip Aubart, who then went to Reserve Officer Training Corps at Dartmouth College, admits he gave to AER partly to be excused from push-ups, sit-ups and running the next day. For those who didn’t contribute the minimum monthly allotment, the calisthenics became, in effect, a punishment.
“That enticed lots and lots of guys to give,” he noted. He says he gave in two annual campaigns and was allowed to skip physical training the following days.
Others spoke of prizes like pizza parties and honorary flags given to top cooperating units.
Make no mistake: AER, a normally uncontroversial fixture of Army life, has helped millions of soldiers and families. Last year alone, AER handed out about $5.5 million in emergency grants, $65 million in loans, and $12 million in scholarships. Despite the extra demands for soldiers busy fighting two wars, AER’s management says it hasn’t felt a need to boost giving in recent years.
But the AP encountered considerable criticism about AER’s hoarding of its treasure chest.
Jack Tilley, a retired sergeant major of the Army on AER’s board from 2000 to 2004, said he was surprised by AP’s findings, especially during wartime.
“I think they could give more. In fact, that’s why that’s there,” said Tilley, who co-founded another charity that helps families of Mideast war veterans, the American Freedom Foundation.
What does AER do with its retained wealth? Mostly, it accumulates stocks and bonds.
AER ended 2007 with a $296 million portfolio; last year’s tanking market cut that to $214 million, by the estimate of its treasurer.
Sylvia Kidd, an AER board member in the 1990s, says she feels that the charity does much good work but guards its relief funds too jealously. “You hear things, and you think, “`They got all this money, and they should certainly be able to take care of this,'” she said. She now works for a smaller independent charity, the Association of the United States Army, providing emergency aid to some military families that AER won’t help.
Though AER keeps a $25 million line of bank credit to respond to a world economic crisis, its board has decided to lop off a third of its scholarship money this year. “We’re not happy about it,” Spiegel says.
Allison Kilkenny: Unreported 
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