Sic Semper Tyrannis

This and that---

There are some strange things in the air:

Cheney - I think you have to go back to the problems that Andrew Jackson had with Calhoun to find an example of a former vice-president who chooses to wage war against a new administration.  Am I right about that?  His behavior is in such bad taste that I am driven to wonder why he is acting this way.   In accordance with "Lang's Rules of Analysis" (25 May, 2007 in SST) I suppose that the most likely answer is that he is simply afraid of his own fate.  He was so central to everything that occurred in the first GW Bush administration that he stands to lose heavily as details are revealed of the "policies" that he and his henchmen and allies espoused.  At the risk of sinking to the level of "reductio ad hitlerum," I must say that a lot of his stated rationale for torture as an instrument of statecraft is reminiscent of a famous speech that Himmler made to senior SS leaders at the Wewelsburg Castle.  "We must sacrifice our higher sensitivities in the service of the state, etc." (paraphrasing) Ugh.  Cheney also sounds as though someone is feeding him talking points.  I doubt that he is smart enough to originate a lot of these memes and themes.

Iraq- The Bushies in exile are selling the line that we have made a new Iraq (a brave new Iraq), an Iraq that Obama may "lose" through hasty withdrawal.  This is "preparation of the information battlefield" for an eventual "we wuz robbed" (nous sommes trahis) propaganda campaign.

Where is this new Iraq?  Is it the Iraq in which we have reversed the social order by putting the Shia Arabs in charge so that they can demonstrate that there was nothing unique about the way the Sunnis used to treat them.  Is it the Iraq that is now inevitably going to be in the "orbit" of Iran?  Is it the Iraq in which the central government in Baghdad has even less authority in Kurdistan than before. Is it the Iraq that bristles with hostility to the US?  Where is it?  It is nowhere.  We broke Iraq and now we are inevitably leaving it patched together with duct tape.  Will it fall apart when we leave?  Maybe.

Afghanistan - "She who must be obeyed" is a bigtime civic activist (Tribune of the People) here in our fair city.  She is often invited to conferences, meetings, workshops, etc. at which the developer/citygovernment/chamberofcommerce complex stages farces that they call strategic reviews or citizen/government interactions on questions of land use.  At these theatrical productions the "players" earnestly present the "issues" and "possible decisions" to the assembled "Tribunes of the people."  There are Power Point shows.  Lunch is served.  The "players" (with Tribunes) break down into small groups where "hard questions" are asked and sincere "players" give the Tribunes heartfelt responses.  In the end the herd instinct of humans prevails and the Tribunes "buy into" the players' plans.

The US military has become expert in the business of manipulating public opinion.  They hire contractors to help them.  The Army has created a basic officer personnel branch for career propaganda officers.  Vietnam caused the Army to believe that management of public opinion was a basic task of warfare along with fire, maneuver and logistics.  Now, we are all targets of "information operations," some mounted overseas by foreign government, some by our own government to include the US military.  They mean well.

The vogue for "strategic reviews" is a manifestaton of this process.  I have been invited to a few of these.  In these farcical proceedings, "guru" types are invited, lunch is served, small group discussion takes place, and the talking heads and "gurus" become advocates for the desires of those who have successfully flattered and nodded them into agreement.  The press is full of the oped pieces of McChrystal's "advisers,"  oped pieces that concentrate on settng the stage for eventul demands for more and more resources for Afghanistan.   What is not asked, EVER, is the simple question of what the ultimate goal of the United States should be in Afghanistan.  Why is that?

I feel sorry for the president.  He is under constant attack by both internal and external propagandists and information warriors.  pl

"Rough Terrain" by Vanessa Genzer

"That started him thinking: What if soldiers provided real, dependable security to even one Afghan village? If the village were actually safe, development and jobs could follow.

In counterinsurgency circles, this is called the "oil spot" strategy. The term was coined by the French soldier and administrator Louis Hubert Lyautey, who was sent to colonial Morocco and Indochina in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Hanoi, he watched as soldiers set up a network of military posts to protect villagers and keep out insurgents, and armed locals to defend themselves. With "pacification a great band of civilization advances like a spot of oil," Lyautey wrote.

In the months before Karl's deployment, his enthusiasm for this approach had grown so noticeable that Banger and others had taken to calling him Oil Spot Spock. Karl envisioned soldiers securing a single village or area -- the first spot of oil -- and using its success to spread safety and development drop by drop. Areas outside the chosen villages would be treated as battle zones, where soldiers would know unequivocally that they were at war. If the conflict were divided into hot and cool zones, Karl thought, soldiers could focus their humanitarian aid and development efforts in friendly areas and fight in unfriendly ones. They might have a better chance of avoiding an explosion such as the one in the bazaar. "  Vanessa Gezen

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The "Human Terrain System" (HTS) is a program for which I have a great personal regard.  I helped to train some of these people.  They are very good people.  In an odd way, the program serves to recreate much of the work that I helped with in the Mid-20th Century.  "The more things change..."  In another odd coincidence, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment was my first unit in the Regular Army.  We have a silver cup that was a present from the battalion's officers on the occasion of our marriage.

I read the article closely.  We have been there... done that...  All of it.   I think that Karl is completely correct in thinking that the "oil spots," (les taches de huile) can be made to "connect" with the "grease spots" overlapping until there is not room between them for the agents of a competing vision.

The key to making that work has always been the permanency of the security offered to the people living within the "oil spots."  Without effective protection, the attempt to make Karl's hope work simply makes the villagers better and more concentrated targets.

There will never be enough coalition troops to provide security for an expanding pattern of "oil spots."  What has always been  needed in this kind of effort is a "pyramid" of security forces beginning with village self defense groups, district forces, province forces and national forces standing in reserve to come to the rescue.  In the end,coalition forces can start the process and act as a mobile reserve but the Afghans really have to do the rest themselves once they have been shown how.

I heard Jim Webb say the other day that "Vietnam and Afghanistan (were) completely different situations."  Well, they are and they aren't.  There are no full time VC  combat units to supplement the guerrilla bands, units like the one that had destroyed the village in which I met Edward Kennedy.  There is not an equivalent to the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) with its highly trained, disciplined and equipped troops.  No NVA artillery, tanks, etc.  Thank God.  There will never be anything like that.  On the other hand, there was an effective government in Vietnam.   You may not like that government but it was a lot more effective than many wish to think.  There is very little government in Afghanistan, very little to work with.

The biggest similarity in the two situations is we Americans.  We are the same, for good or ill.

All of this adds up to an immense task, a generational task.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101926.html

"Study: Oil speculators dominate open interest in oil futures" Ruth

"Using data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the authors state that the previous claims by the commission that speculation wasn't influencing oil futures markets were based on inappropriate analysis. The authors present new evidence that speculative trading is playing an increasingly important role in the oil market.

They note that while the question of what has produced sharp swings in oil prices since 2005 is a complex one that requires further and deeper study, there are "inescapable facts" that need to be part of the debate about regulating the activities of institutions betting on movements in oil price purely for financial gain. Specifically, speculators, which the CFTC designates as any reportable trader who is not using futures contracts to hedge, have increased their footprint in the marketplace dramatically since the late 1990s.

Hedgers are typically producers and consumers of the physical commodity who use futures markets to offset price risk. By contrast, speculators seek profits by taking market positions to gain from changes in the commodity price, but are not involved in the physical receipt/delivery of the commodity.

"To protect the U.S. economy and American consumers, there needs to be greater market oversight," Medlock said. "The tremendous increase in the market presence of speculators by fifteenfold speaks for itself."" Ruth

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Need I say more?  pl

In Memoriam - Edward Kennedy

I knew him slightly.  I briefed him several times in the eighties.  I would go over to his office in the forenoon.  He was usually so hung over that it was difficult to know how much he actually heard or comprehended.  He would occasionally ask questions, good questions.  I liked the man.  I liked his humanity.  Daniel Patrick Moynihan said "what's the good of being Irish if you don't know that the world is going to break your heart?"  I always felt that the world had broken Ted Kennedy's heart and that he drank to dull the pain.  He was not a puritan.  I liked that too.  You could sense that he cared about ordinary people.  He did not much like men like me, but I understood that.  I never reminded him in the course of those briefing meetings that he had met me once before, in Vietnam under terribly difficult conditions.  This had been during a trip he made out there to see the war for himself.

I remember him getting off an Air America Huey in the midst of something terrible, the aftermath of a VC attack on a Montagnard re-settlement village.  He wept after he looked around.  I began to think I might like him.

I did not agree with him about a lot of things politically, but he "was a man for all that," a man with a warm heart.

He belongs to the ages along with a president for whom he must have had a special feeling.  pl

"RED ALERT :: Obama Planning Israel Ambush at Next UN Opening!"

RED ALERT :: Obama Planning Israel Ambush at Next UN Opening! Several sources have informed One Jerusalem that the Obama Administration is planning to significantly step up the pressure on Israel by announcing a comprehensive plan for Israel and the Palestinians at the opening of the United Nations General in September. Picture this: The anti-Israel nations of the world surrounding President Obama as he demands that Israel give up sovereignty over Jerusalem, abandon settlements, and recognize a terrorist state on the West Bank. If this happens, Israel will be isolated from the rest of world in a very dramatic manner. Help stop it by joining One Jerusalem! The first sign that something was up came when Egyptian President Mubarak said that the Obama Administration was ready to propose a plan in September, and the White House rushed to dampen expectations by declaring that they are nowhere near to readying a plan. Our sources confirmed that the Obama administration is contemplating this ambush of Israel at the United Nations. At the moment, friends and supporters of Israel can help derail this insidious plan by helping to publicize the intentions of the Obama administration. Join One Jerusalem Now! Spread the news to family and friends. Forward this mail and encourage them to sign up! By focusing public attention to this ambush, we can help avert it. Change Email Address Send To Friend Unsubscribe You are currently subscribed to this mailing as [EMAIL] One Jerusalem, 136 East 39th Street, New York, NY 10016

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Ignatius on the Obvious in Iraq

"Iran's links with Maliki are so close, said this Iraqi intelligence source, that the prime minister uses an Iranian jet with an Iranian crew for his official travel. The Iranians are said to have sent Maliki an offer to help his Dawa Party win at least 49 seats in January's parliamentary elections if Maliki will make changes in his government that Iran wants.

As security unravels in Iraq, U.S. forces there are mostly bystanders. Even in the areas where al-Qaeda operatives remain potent, such as Mosul, the Americans have little control. Sunni terrorists who are arrested are quickly released by the Iraqis in exchange for bribes of up to $100,000, according to an Iraqi source.

Should the Americans try to restore order? The top Iraqi intelligence source answered sadly that it was probably wiser to "stay out of it and be safe." When pressed about what his country would look like in five years, absent American help, he answered bluntly: "Iraq will be a colony of Iran." "  Ignatius

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Now, let's see...  The United States insisted on country wide elections on the basis of "one man, one vote."  Iraq's Arab Shia are a majority.  The elections yielded governments that were dominated by Shia with lifetime records as religiously focused politicians.  There were other Shia politicians in the elections who were essentially secular nationalists.  The United States favored them and hoped for their election.  Many people in the US smugly expected that these secularists would be elected with a little help from their friends.  They were wrong.  The secularists were badly defeated.  The Shia voted for the religious (dare I say Islamist?) politicians.  Al-Maliki has a lifelong record of Islamist activity and friendly relations with Iran.

Islam teaches that life is a "seamless garment."   For pious Muslims a separation of religious and political concerns is an unacceptable and alien Western notion.  In spite of all the pre-war nonsense about how secularized and "modern" Iraqis are, many Iraqis are quite traditional in their thinking.  They voted in accordance with their true beliefs.  The result is a government that feels a close affinity to the theocracy in Iran.  That does not mean that they are looking to see some sort of union between the two countries or that they want to see Iranian soldiers in Iraq.

The existence of this kind of government is a direct result of American policy in Iraq.  We made this bed, now we must lie in it, at least until we are gone.

Ignatius claims that he could not see this coming?  pl

A Reply - By Richard Sale

I will be brief and be gone.

Someone who commented on my piece, basically said that while I condemned the vitriolic partisanship that refuses to accept President Obama’s election as a legitimate national decision, the hatred and loathing of President George W. Bush by his opponents was portrayed by liberals as normal patriotic dissent and given a pass from criticism.

    This misreads the article.

I took care to show that the disgraceful animosity of certain segments of the public against FDR came from the propertied classes, chiefly Republicans, but  I also took pains to snow the excoriation of our first president, George Washington,  took place at the hands of the Democrat-Republican group formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who loathed the Federalists with whom Washington was  in broad sympathy.

 

Announcement

I chose to post today on "The Athenaeum."  pl

JINSA, SOCOM and the "Grateful Nation" Awards.

This requires no comment from me.  pl

Download Jinsaaward

Download Socomjinsa

Batondor on Moby Dick in Iraq

Batondor wrote to me with this.

 

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"Pat, On "economic determinism", all I will add to the argument is that I remember recently hearing someone put it most succinctly when it was suggested that saying that the Iraq Wars were fought over oil is like stating that the novel "Moby Dick" is about whaling... ... and as for Afghanistan, a small thought experiment is worthy of consideration: how much would the world's oil supply and general economic stability be impacted if a major earthquake shut down all of Afghanistan's LOCs for a good year or two? On the other hand, I am at pains to accept at face value your implication that this is just about Israel. If I am to understand you correctly, you are suggesting that the CNAC types in both the US and Israel consciously cultivated artificial confrontations from the circumstances at hand in both 1990 and in 2000 in order to commit the US militarily in the region while we would remain relatively indifferent to and disengaged from the implications of Israel's expansionism within the West Bank... ... though in all honesty, Pat, I'm not sure my greater pain is not the suspicion that you might be correct in contrast with the angst that comes from observing the more vicious reactions that the process can and has inspired (not to mention the personal aspects of those reactions when attempting to discuss them with family and friends on both sides of the matter). As for Obama's defense of strategy in Afghanistan, I also heard the interview with Rory Stewart on NPR yesterday and was wondering whether you would conceptually endorse his vision that a relatively small foreign military presence (~20,000 SF) could be coupled with modest but durable civilian development programs (though without the social/political engineering) to perhaps avert the impending catastrophe of creeping quagmiredom... ... and as for myself, I can only hope that Obama's personal reaction to the PPT was the same as ours and that his greatest challenge in that regard is to find a meaningful alternative strategy that can pass political muster both in DC and with the public. PS: Did you (or any of your readers) see the interview of Chuck Hagel and Lee Hamilton on Meet The Press last Sunday? I was struck by the somberness, the lack of ambiguity, and I am equally struck by how little coverage it has received. I also noticed that Senator Kerry did not go to Afghanistan with Senators McCain, Graham, Lieberman, and Collins but that he is going later this month after having undergone hip surgery: imho, this is a good thing because he will not be obliged to speak in relative harmony with them while on foreign soil..."

 

Batondor

 

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The "Moby Dick" thing is most apt.  My position in regard to the circumstances leading to the US intervention in Iraq has long been established.  It was laid out fully in my article "Drinking the Koolaid,"  Middle East Policy, Summer, 2004. (available on line)  In a word, we were "bulldozed" into accepting an unnecessary war with the argument that Saddam's Iraq was an existential threat to the US.  It was not.  Your description of the culprits as the PNAC crowd both here and in Israel is just about right.  At this point it seems apparent that Cheney was a member of this group throughout the Bush presidency.  Bush himself?  He seems to have been along for the ride in his first term. 

 

I think that the program in Afghanistan should be to secure the capital and a coalition redoubt around Bagram and then use those areas as a base for counter-terrorism operations aimed at truly international Muslim zealot groups rather than the Taliban confederation of rebels.  Numbers of our troops in this?  20,000, 30,000, something like that.  Forget about building an Afghan nation-state.  That task would be so large that it might bleed us dry.  Some infrastructure projects would be a good idea but only in the context of an international consortium.  Buy the opium crop.  Destroy it, use it in the pharma industry, something.  The offensive operations against the international terrorists should be intelligence driven and consist largely of raids against specific people and organizations.  We should rely on CIA and the Special Operations people in the military.  We should take advantage of the "rentability" of many Afghan groups to use them as auxiliaries in this struggle.  This would be money well spent, just as it was well spent in Iraq.  What is going wrong in Iraq?  The fantasy Shia government has given the Sunni Arabs reason to believe that it will not honor the overt or implied promises that we made to them. 

 

Sadly, the price of quiet in both Iraq and Afghanistan will be measurable in dollars spent in "subsidies."  pl

Moral Absolutes and Politics by Richard Sale

I have only just become aware of the depth of revulsion, hatred and suspicion that a certain segment of Americans feels for President Obama - a horde of passionate, committed (if not overly bright) people who are out there busily driving needles into wax Obama dolls, or who are eagerly driving stakes into the facsimile of his heart: Obama is a radical, he is a socialist, he will change America from a free market to a government-directed, centrally planned economy, he will destroy the American way of life. Worst and most ominous of all, he is not even an American citizen – this is a part of their liturgy.

What occasions this? One cause is a kind of conceit that says “My vision of the way the country should be run is the only sound and permissible vision. Stray from it and there will be unprecedented calamity.”

    That is one element.

 

"Obama Defends Strategy in Afghanistan"

"“We must never forget,” he (Obama) said. “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.

“So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

The speech, to an audience of 5,500 members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and their families, was in pointed contrast to Mr. Obama’s frequent criticism of the war in Iraq as “a war of choice.” The president on Monday repeated his pledge to withdraw all troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, saying, “And for America, the Iraq war will end.”"   NY Times

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So, how is this different from the deluded propaganda that the Bush Administration served up about Iraq for years and years?

The sub-text in these remarks is the fantasy that has been circulating among minimally informed senior officers and staffs, a fantasy that insists that the Muslim fanatics of the Al-Qa'ida network are a credible existential threat to the United States.  As the fantasy goes, the yearning of the very small number of dangerous zealots to restore the medieval empire of the 'umma on a global basis has some chance of realization.  Power Point presentations have been written by shady consultants that support the idea that "the Muzlims" want to restore that supposedly theocratic "uber" state under the name of the "Caliphate," (khilafa) and to reduce such existing countries as Pakistan, Egypt, Denmark, etc. to mere commanderies (emirates) of the "Muzlim" world empire.  An example of such a briefing for the JCS is at the bottom of this post.

Well, people in Hell want ice water, too.  The yearning of the zealots does not equate with capability now or in the future.  The Bush Administration did not like Husni Mubarak's  "pharonic democracy" in Egypt, but his insistence on suppressing Islamist groups has kept these people from power in that country.  Hopefully, the Danes can do as well.  The idea that this small group of crazies is an existential threat to the US would be funny if it were not so very clear that the same kind of nonsense was "sold" to the American people before and during Iraq.

Park your own propaganda influenced fantasies at the door and let's remember - Iraq did not have WMD.  Iraq did not have a working relationship with the Sunni crazies.  Iraq did not participate in 9/11.  We are leaving Iraq without having changed anything there except that we put the Shia Arabs in charge of whatever parts of the country that they can hold.  We improved the security situation in Iraq by applying the age old method of "divide and conquer" to the qalaxy of leaderless (in terms of central command) insurgent grops that we faced.  It had nothing to do with the purple thumbs.

Now we have the same kinds of propaganda fantasies being sold to the American people and to a malleable executive branch.  We are now told by the president himself that governance and development in Afghanistan are vital American national interests.  We are told that the plight of Afghan women is a vital interest of the United States.  Such statements imply a long term commitment to the "modernization" of Afghanistan.  Such statements imply an ever moving process of "mission creep" no matter what sort of reception McChrystal's "strategic review" receives in Washington.

And, lastly there is the theocratic police state in Iran.  It is being suggested to Americans that; the government of Iran (Shia), the Pushtun dominated Taliban melange (Sunni), and Al-Qa'ida (Sunni) are all really the same thing.  I heard Hillary say that a few months ago.  Obama implied it yeasterday.  What rot!  But, it is selling.

Ask yourself.  Where is this foolishness of "caliphates" and "existential threats" coming from.  THINK!!  pl

Download 051212LongWarBriefv2 1

 

"Iraqi Voters to Decide Whether to Speed U.S. Withdrawal" Ernesto Londono

"Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's cabinet is submitting a draft law to parliament asking it to authorize and fund a referendum on the bilateral agreement that regulates the presence of U.S. troops, the government announced.

The referendum would be held during January's national election.

U.S. officials have quietly lobbied the Iraqi government to suspend plans to hold the referendum, because they're all but certain voters would annul the agreement.

If that were to happen, U.S. troops would have one year to depart, moving up their targeted December 2011 withdrawal date by almost a year.

A simple majority opposed to the agreement would be enough to annul it, according to the cabinet's draft law, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

When the security agreement was negotiated last year, some lawmakers demanded that its implementation on Jan. 1 be followed by a referendum. The referendum was supposed to happen in July, but the government took no action, leading American officials to believe it would never happen. "  Londono

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It is amazing how much we persist in not understanding the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Palestinians, the Israelis, etc.

As a nation, we Americans are so committed to the idea of the essential sameness of people that this phenomenon, that of our own "cluelessness," arises time after time to bite us in the arse.

A year or so ago I was at an alumni event at my BAM (beloved alma mater) and at the obligatory dinner was seated with some nice people.  Among them was a classmate who offered the opinion that he had learned that "people are pretty much the same everywhere."  This fellow had lived in various places, had served in SE Asia and he still believed this to be true.  This event occurred in 2006, the absolute nadir of our experience in Iraq.  He was looking at me as he said it and it was clear that what he was really saying was that people like me who have a bizarre interest in the un-sameness of people are just useless.  People around the table understood the challenge perfectly well and sat looking at me, waiting.  I ignored him.  He said, "well?"  So, I said that sadly he was wrong about this.  He told me that I would see the truth in the outcome in Iraq.

OK.  Now, I see the truth.

If there is such a referendum, the SOFA will be annulled and we will leave a year early.  We won't?  Just wait and see.  We will leave because we will have no choice and all the oil in the world won't make the slightest difference in that process.

The Iraqis are a badly divided group of peoples, but not so badly divided that they will not vote to get us out of their country as soon as possible.

Why?  Because their ways and our ways are too incompatible for them to tolerate us any longer than they must.  Could we have softened this attitude toward us?  Yes, but that would have required that we actually respect their ways, which we never did.  pl

 

 

Giving women a chance be combatants.

"Their success, widely known in the military, remains largely hidden from public view. In part, this is because their most challenging work is often the result of a quiet circumvention of military policy.

Women are barred from joining combat branches like the infantry, armor, Special Forces and most field artillery units and from doing support jobs while living with those smaller units. Women can lead some male troops into combat as officers, but they cannot serve with them in battle.

Yet, over and over, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army commanders have resorted to bureaucratic trickery when they needed more soldiers for crucial jobs, like bomb disposal and intelligence. On paper, for instance, women have been “attached” to a combat unit rather than “assigned.”"  NY Times

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Women in the infantry, Special Forces and armor?  Why not?  Can they do the job physically?  Learning that is what P.T. tests are about.  They can either pass the same tests or they can not.  That is easy to find out.  Some people think that women will not be as good at fighting and killing as men.  I think that is a laughable idea, but, once again, the answer to that question is readily available in the wars the US is now fighting.

If women want to put up with living in the field with a lot of very basic men under conditions of constant and close association, conditions in which it is impossible to give them any sort of privacy, and it is often impossible to keep clean for extended periods of time, then they should be allowed to do so.

There is just no accounting for taste.  I miss the Army, but, then...  pl

 

Vick's chance at redemption.

"..Around April 2007, Vick and two associates killed six to eight underperforming dogs by various methods, including hanging and drowning."  Philly.com

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Some jackass will say that I do not love Michael Vick because I am a racist.  Fine.  Have at it.

Actually, I believe in redemption and salvation for sinners.  Michael Vick is a sinner in a profound sense of the word.

What he did to those helpless animals is beyond my personal ability to forgive.  Nevertheless, we are called to forgive the penitent.  He seems to be penitent.

Someone will ask if I am penitent.  Yes, but not for anything most would imagine.

Vick should be given a chance to demonstrate his renewed life.  pl

"Let dog eat dog."

"In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him. He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney's advice. He'd showed an independence that Cheney didn't see coming. It was clear that Cheney's doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times -- never apologize, never explain -- and Bush moved toward the conciliatory." LA Times

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"Let dog eat dog." 

Cheney has a lot to worry about.  How long will "Scooter" be willing to sit in internal exile brooding over the loss of his professional license, disbarment, etc.?

Bush made Libby a permanent threat to Cheney and his "legacy." a threat that can materialize in Cheny's lifetime or perhaps later.  pl

 

The USS Liberty Incident -- Truly a National Disgrace By Sidney O. Smith III

  America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness.

 

I believe that it is time to bring together the best minds in America to confer, report, and make concrete recommendations about how we can reform the process.  Senator Jim Webb,  The National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009

 

Excellent words from the good senator.  And if Senator Webb from Virginia truly wants to expose “irregularities and inequities” that cut against our notion of “fundamental fairness”,  then he need go no further than the Record of Proceedings of the Navy Court of Inquiry (NCOI) into the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967.  

 

Two days after the attack, on June 10, Admiral John S. McCain, Jr, then the Commander-in-Chief,  US Naval Forces, Europe, headquartered in London, England appointed this Navy Court of Inquiry, with Admiral Isaac Kidd presiding and Captain Ward Boston, JAGC, USN, as the senior legal counsel.  And at the initial convening of the Court in London, Admiral McCain then ordered that it conduct and complete the proceedings in one week -- an abbreviated time that Rear Admiral Merlin Staring later described as  “patently unusual and unreasonable”.

 

Yes, one week.  As anyone familiar with our criminal justice system can tell you -- and certainly Senator Webb would agree -- you cannot adequately investigate a barroom brawl in Mobile, Alabama in one week, much less a repeated and coordinated  military attack that took place at sea and left 34 men slaughtered, at least 171 wounded, and an essentially unarmed spy ship dead in the (international) water.

 

A Growing Hysteria

"As Katy Abram told Fox News after passionately confronting Specter: “I know that years down the road, I don’t want my children coming to me and asking me, ‘Mom, why didn’t you do anything? Why do we have to wait in line for, I don’t know, toilet paper or anything?’ ”

Besides the chilling prospect of 21st-century America morphing into a cold war state — with Sheryl Crow in charge of toilet-paper rationing — there are also delusional fears about the government tapping bank accounts and convening “death panels,” as Sarah Palin dubbed them, to exploit the cost-saving potential of euthanizing the old and disabled.

At his more placid town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., on Tuesday, the president had to explain that he did not intend to “pull the plug on grandma.” He said that the specter of death panels had spun out of a proposal from a Republican, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who has long espoused helping Medicare patients learn about options for care at the end of their lives. In an interview with The Washington Post on Monday, Isakson diagnosed Palin’s interpretation of his suggestion as “nuts.”"  Maureen Dowd

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It seems to be in the air, blowing around like a viral infection in a Stephen King novel, "something wicked this way comes..."  The temptation is strong to think that the shaky voices, incoherence and shrillness are products of the summer weather, but...

I think that the problem is actually best heard in sobbed statements like "...I want my America back...," and   "This country is being systematically disassembled to make a different country..."  These words were spoken yesterday by blonde women at public meetings.

The people who voted against Obama and who insist that he is "the other" are afraid.  They are afraid that this president really does intend systemic change in American society, a redistribution of privilege and benefits and power that will end the domination of the country by white people.  Feeding their inchoate fears are the "projections" that are made by media babblers that white people will be a minority in the US in fifty years or so.  These projections are usually self-serving and based on the assumption that in fifty years it will still be valid to try to characterize people in this way by race.  Look around you.  Do you not see young America evolving away from this primitive notion of race?

From this fear of the loss of power over their environment comes many evils.  The "birthers" are a good example.  Their absurd insistence about Obama's supposed Kenyan birth is merely a screen for their terror of someone they see as an alien black revolutionary.  They don't care where he was born.  They simply do not want him.  They see his policies as steps toward a future that they reject.

"Whose country is this?"  John Wilkes Booth wrote those words in his day book while hiding in the Maryland woods, nursing a broken leg.  The day before he shot Lincoln, Booth stood in a crowd and heard the president say something that indicated that freed blacks would have to be citizens.  Booth then said to one of his men, "That means votes for n-----s.  Now I'll put him through."  That seems to have been the moment of decision for murder.

People should take a step back and then walk away from the hysterics and the media demagogues before the situation deteriorates further. 

Things are going very wrong in this country.  "The center does not hold."  pl

 

National Journal Blog - 11 August 2009

http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/08/containment-succeeded-preempti.php#1346445

"Doomsday -- pros and cons" de Borchgrave

"U.S. share of global output continues to decline from year to year. Like General Motors Corp. and Ford, the United States has yielded share of the global market from one-third at the turn of the new century to one-quarter today. Was the rise of the rest the decline of the West?

Have U.S. commitments and responsibilities outstripped resources? The two anonymous billionaire voices were among the many now saying so in public opinion polls. They feel a paradigm shift is inevitable. We are yet to wean ourselves from the old paradigm: the $3 billion we borrow each and every day -- principally from China -- to maintain the world's highest standard of living, based on conspicuous consumption, at a time of growing world shortages. And when we are finally weaned, it will become glaringly obvious that we were living way beyond our means and that major belt-tightening is long overdue."  De Borchgrave

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Yup.  It's the end of days, or something.   I read the Stanley McChrystal "information operation" in the Wall Street Journal today.  Wow!  Jim Jones was on the tube yesterday trying to make it clear that Obama Administration policy in Afghanistan is "settled policy" (a neologism).  And today we have this virtual announcement of "push back" in a Murdoch Newscorp organ.  Is there a Rubicon in all this somewhere?  I understand that construction of permanent looking US facilities goes on apace in Afghanistan.  The Burger King is pleased.

Stanley wants to pull back out of the field in order to concentrate his forces on the population?  Hmmm.  This sounds familiar.  So, what will then happen in the "abandoned" countryside?  A sort of "Mosby's confederacy" with the Taliban confederation running an alternative government?  Maybe they will destroy themselves attacking us?  Could be, might be.  Na San or a couple of places I knew more intimately come to mind.

We live in interesting times.  pl

Jim Jones on the Newsies today.

The general needs some help with the business of TV interviews.  He is not a good speaker.  He was stiff, spoke in a monotone and had a number of verbal tics.  Nevertheless, I think it was a good thing for him to be on television.  He needs the exposure. On the plus side he spoke with a certain lack of pretense and was straightforward in the way that one would expect.  He should keep it up.

He made it clear that his conception of his role is that of the head of a staff planning agency that works out in detail the papers and briefings that support the commander in chief's decisions.  This is a classic military notion reflecting a mastery of the art of supported decision making that lies at the heart of much of military staff work.  Like the good soldier that he is, Jones can follow as well as lead and he is doing both.  Eisenhower's original thinking on the functioning of the National Security Council staff was much like this.  Another military man.  This means that Jones has no intention of becoming a competitor in the "interagency."  He wants to be a colleague to Clinton, Gates and Blair, not their rival.  Because of this he does not want the kind of vainglorious public stance that someone like Kissinger loved so much.  All of that is to the good.

Then the bad news ---  We are clearly headed down the primrose path in Afghanistan.  See Walter Pincus' piece in the Washington Post today.  pl

Just buy the opium.

"By selling wheat seeds and fruit saplings to farmers at token prices, offering cheap credit, and paying poppy-farm laborers to work on roads and irrigation ditches, U.S. and British officials hope to provide alternatives before the planting season begins in early October. Many poppy farmers survive Afghanistan's harsh winters on loans advanced by drug traffickers and their associates, repaid with the spring harvest.

"We need a way to get money in [farmers'] hands right away," said a senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan.

The program replaces the Bush administration's focus on crop eradication, which "wasted hundreds of millions of dollars," according to Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Destroying the crops succeeded only in "alienat[ing] poor farmers" and "driving people into the hands of the Taliban," he told reporters last week.

But many previous U.S.-funded crop-substitution programs have failed as well, from Asia to Latin America. A similar plan in Colombia, begun in the late 1990s, has barely made a dent in the level of cocaine production, although the country began to stabilize in recent years as its U.S.-trained military adopted new strategies against armed insurgents and civil institutions were strengthened.

Officials maintain that the new Afghan plan differs from unsuccessful "alternative" plans because it is an integral part of a military-development strategy that includes tens of thousands of U.S. troops to keep the Taliban and traffickers at bay while Afghan security forces are being trained. Plans call for hundreds of U.S. and international aid experts to work directly with farmers and local officials until the Afghan government has matured. "  Washpost

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We should not be in the business of re-structuring and reforming Afghanistan, but if we are going to try to do that, then attempts like this are inevitable.

It seems to me that there are too many moving parts in this scheme.   "selling wheat seeds and fruit saplings to farmers at token prices, offering cheap credit, and paying poppy-farm laborers to work on roads and irrigation ditches," etc.  The more complicated you make things like ths, the more likely it is that there will be unforeseen consequences.

Why not do what I suggested before and simply buy the crop at the farmyard gate.  The prices that the farmers get are quite low and this would not cost a lot.  It would also have the joyous side effect of financial ruin for a lot of Afghans who vaguely remind me of people like Walid Jumblatt in Lebanon.

Ah!  I suppose that the puritan heart of America would recoil in horror from encouraging these farmers in their production of this "sinful" crop.  Of course!  I should have thought of that!  pl

Open Thread - 7 August 2009

Go to it.  I will watch with interest.  pl

"Iraqi Authorities to Remove Capital's Blast Walls" Washpost

"Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the Baghdad security command, said the blast walls would vanish from highways and secondary roads within 40 days, marking the first time the government has provided a timeline for their removal.

Some Western media organizations and embassies based outside the Green Zone have quietly lobbied the Iraqi government to delay the move, which has been widely discussed for months, fearing that their compounds will become more vulnerable.

"No exceptions will be made," Moussawi said in a statement."  Washpost

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Christopher "The Mouth" Matthews once asked with regard to Iraq, "Who is in charge there? (Iraq).  Since the Iraqis did not bother to inform Odierno or the US ambassador of this timeline and decision, I suppose that question is now settled.

Last week Michael Gordon of the New York Times published an internal policy think piece from Odierno's staff.  Judy Miller isn't around any more, so Gordon must have come up with this act of public service all by himself.  This memo recommended a quicker departure from Iraq for US combat units because the Iraqi Government and people (less the Kurds) want us gone.  In response Ray Odierno, master of an ever shrinking kingdom in that sad country, repudiated the memo saying that the work of the US in Iraq was not done because Iraq was not yet "secure, stable, sovereign and self-reliant."  Hmm.  Well, there you go again, general.  It will be few years, decades, centuries before those goals are achieved.  President Obama has announced US policy with regard to Iraq.   The end of 2011 is THE END.  Get it?  Will it be necessary for you to be "perp walked" out to the airplane on the way to your confirmaton hearing to be Army chief of staff?

Colonel Reese is right.  The long neocon adventure in Iraq is ending soon.  I do not know Reese but on behalf of colonels everywhere, I would like to acknowledge the continuing indifference to other people's fate displayed by Michael Gordon.

Attaboy, Mike. you really screwed this guy.  pl

"U-turn puts Hezbollah in the driving seat" - Moubayad

"Those who rejoiced at the election results in Lebanon on June 7 had a big surprise this week, as the tables seemed to turn on the pro-Western coalition in favor of the Hezbollah-led opposition, and Damascus."  Moubayad 

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Walid Jumblatt is moving away from the Jeff Feltman (and US) backed 14 March movement in Lebanon and toward the "evil" Syria and Iran backing 8 March movement.  Translation:  If he goes all the way into a political alliance with the "8ers," this will effectively reverse the Lebanese parliamentary election held in June.

Why is the Druze enigma taking his tribesmen in this direction?  Wadih! (Clear!)  He sees that Syria's position is improving vis a vis the US and in that context the obvious paramilitary strength of Hizbullah mandates a change in his posture.

There will be consternation in Israel over this.  pl

 

It's 1963 again. This time, Afghanistan

"... given the relatively small size of the Afghan army and police -- numbering some 170,000 men -- and with the total number of U.S./NATO troops numbering around 100,000, McChrystal's impending request makes a great deal of military sense. While the combined forces total 270,000, classic counterinsurgency doctrine indicates that Afghanistan needs as many as 600,000 soldiers and cops to protect its population of some 30 million.

An additional reason why more boots on the ground makes military sense is the large geographic scope of the Taliban insurgency. Estimates of the number of full-time fighters generally do not go above 20,000 men. But according to our analysis of an unpublished threat assessment map provided by the Afghan National Security Forces to the United Nations in April, 40 percent of Afghanistan was either under direct Taliban control or a high-risk area for insurgent attacks. "  Bergen and Tiedeman

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George Romney (father of Mit) ran for president back in the bad old Vietnam days.  He went to Vietnam, listened to the briefings, poked about a bit and then came back a supporter of the whole enterprise.  Later, in the midst of the Republican primary season, he decided that he had made a mistake in judgment and told the world that he had been deceived by the briefing process and that the war was not such a good idea.  That was before Cronkite's Tet Offensive epiphany in 1968.  The press and public found such wavering to be unacceptable and that was the end of George Romney as a national political figure.  Many, many other visitors to Vietnam suffered the same eventual fate.

A couple of month's back, an old soldier employed as a cameraman at a discussion of the Afghan War remarked to me, "sir, its 1963 again."  And that it is.

The same words are being spoken.  "Three to five years, that's what it will take."  The same kind of fervent ideology driven "experts" are pushing the COIN nation-building "candy."  Have some!  It will taste sooo good.  You will feel so good about yourself and your benevolent view of how to wage war against the evil guerrillas/jihadis/communists/tribals/...  What a fine thing to build a "brave new world."

"Afghanistan needs as many as 600,000 soldiers and cops to protect its population of some 30 million."  

"...according to our analysis of an unpublished threat assessment map provided by the Afghan National Security Forces to the United Nations in April, 40 percent of Afghanistan was either under direct Taliban control or a high-risk area for insurgent attacks."

They "need" 600,000 soldiers and police!  Lordy! Lordy!  Can things be as bad as that?  "40 percent" of Afghanistan is at risk?  Can there be any doubt that we must SAVE AFGHANISTAN?  They have maps that show which places are "at risk?"  Lordy!  I do hope that they are color coded.  There must be some copies of the color coded and categorized maps that we "cranked out" periodically, (monthly I suppose) in the pacification program.  Let's see....  "This village is in category 3.  No! No! It is in category 4. The data from our advisers with the government in that province show that to be true..."

This is absurd.  I know that all these generals, etc. were in high school during Vietnam but haven't they ever read anything serious about that mess?  Exactly the same things were said then as justification for American intervention in a war that was essentially a civil war among the Vietnamese.  It was said then that the Vietnamese communists were mere pawns of the Soviet Union and/or the Red Chinese.  In fact, they were far too nationalist to be dependable pawns of any foreign entity.  Now, we are snuggled up to Hanoi like lovers on a cold and snowy night.  Now, it is said that the Taliban menace is a pawn of the Al-Qa'ida centered takfiri jihadi network.  Rubbish!  "Taliban" is now being used as a descriptive shortcut for every conceivable kind of dissident Pushtun rabble.  Karzai is our hero?  for how long will that be?  I remember someone named Diem.  He was our hero, a brave enemy of the united communist menace.

The snow machine is running full blast in Afghanistan.  Self assured and handsome generals preside over artful and convincing "power point" briefings.  Visiting firemen tour the country convincing themselves that this brush fire war on the roof of the world is our fight.  How is it our fight?  How?

Soon, it will be 1968 again, and then...   

pl

 

Harper on "facing reality"

The failure of President Obama to face reality is the greatest single threat to the survival of the United States as we know it. Whether it is facing the tough choices on Afghanistan, or dealing with an out-of-control breakdown of our economy and our financial system, the President has betrayed a disconnect from reality that is truly alarming. I fear that the President has surrounded himself with a group of sycophants, like Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Larry Summers, Denis McDonough and a few others, who take the old Tip O'Neill saw that `all politics are local' to a new extreme. All politics are electoral! Ignore any reality that jeopardizes reelection fantasies, and just keep spinning reality.
Part of this logic is that the President has to be screened from all unpleasant realities, for fear that his fragile ego will shatter.

I wonder how this White House team will deal with what can only be judged, in reality, as a significant political victory: The freeing of the two American journalists from a North Korean gulag, as the result of effective, low-key and persistent diplomatic efforts by the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, capped by the weekend visit of former President Bill Clinton to Pyonyang. The fact that the trip was fully negotiated in advance, the fact that the ex-President spent a reported four hours talking with the reclusive North Korean leader, is, by any stretch, an intelligence coup, as well as a diplomatic coup. But it was a coup executed by Hillary and Bill Clinton, and the President was not the one who got the media kudos.

I see this as a psychological litmus test. Will the President share the spotlight, and rejoice in a true foreign policy victory, with a real human interest face? Or will he persist in seeing his own cabinet and political allies as part of a zero sum game, in which anyone else sharing the spotlight is viewed with fury, and triggers vengeful plotting?

A relatively minor incident in the scheme of things, yes. But psychologically revealing nevertheless. Since Col. Lang chose to present a big picture assessment of just how dangerous this moment is, I thought it appropriate to jump in with a psychological assessment. All politics are truly not local, but very often, politics are subjective, and I think this is one of those moments.   Harper

National Journal Comment - 4 August 2009

http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/08/us-foreign-policy-speak-a-towe.php#1345357

I spent the day today at a veterinary clinic with a sick Canine-American member of the family and did not have much time for SST today.   I did, however write a further comment over on the rather inhibited NJ blog.  pl

PS  Did you know that there are veterinary oncologists?

National Journal Blog - 3 August 2009

http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/08/us-foreign-policy-speak-a-towe.php#1345076

Ruminations on the Afghan "money pit," etc.

Afghanistan - Yesterday, I watched file footage of General McChrystal at his confirmation hearing.  In it he clearly said that he intended to wage a "comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign."  (paraphrasing).  I hadn't heard that before.  Well, he was honest.  I mistook him for someone else with different intentions.  Did the president and David Jones not know what he intended to do?  Did they not talk to him before giving him the job?  Did they not see that he would demand more troops?  Implicit in his stated intention is the task of creating a new and grand Afghanistan that will be a stout hearted ally of the United States in our quest to make the world an unsafe place for takfiri jihadi folk.  As I have said before, this is an enormous task, an enormously expensive task that will take a long time.  The American people will grow weary of the whole thing before transformation of Afghanistan is achieved.  They will demand an end in one way or another and we will then leave.  General McChrystal's "strategy review" is an interesting thing.  Since McChrystal already knew what he intended to do before he left for overseas to take command, what are the conferees strategizing about?  I suppose that it must be "the plan," in other words, how much to ask for and how fast.  McChrystal evidently assembled a group of COIN enthusiasts and a few strategery groupies from the think tanks to help him think this through.  They have decided that all out COIN (nation building) is the answer.  Surprise!!!  He is going to ask for more troops?  Of course he is.  What else could he possibly do, given his intentions?

The Economy- It seems to me quite possible that the economy will not be what it was, not for a long time, maybe never.  Our worship of "free trade" has caused us to export our manufacturing base while importing hundreds of billions of dollars in finished goods that we have been paying for with the credit derived from borrowing dollars from some of the countries to which we exported our capacity for making things other than numbers stored in computers.  Translation?  We are really a lot poorer than most people yet understand.  There may well be a "bounce" back out of this recession.  That will be driven by an illusion of well-being, but the underlying reality will still be there and it will catch up with us.  It would seem that Ross Perot was not so crazy when he talked about that "sucking sound" as jobs flowed out of the US in pursuit of "comparative advantage."  Will we still like "free trade" if it makes most of us poor?

2012 - People like Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour may have more of a future than one might have thought a while back, but what sane person will want the job?  pl