Been Down So Long ...

(Cartoon by Yaakov Kirschen and published 9/2/14 on his blog.  Click on image to enlarge.)
I've decided to ease up on my compulsive devouring of the news.  All it does is depress me.  Here we have this perfectly fine planet, one we ought to be taking better care of and one we should be sharing with other humans and all the other creatures on board, yet the only thing humanity appears to be interested in doing is blowing things up or blowing them away.

The Middle East.
Sub-Saharan Africa.
Germany.
Iraq.
Missouri (for cryin' out loud!)

One of the things I've learned over the past year or so is that life is precious -- all life.  Apparently I'm in the minority.

I think I'll curl up with my sleeping assistants and pull the covers over our heads.

ENOUGH, ALREADY!!!!

Things I Wish I'd Said

 

 

(Click on image to enlarge.)

 

 

I've come to the conclusion that Ted Rall really is a national treasure.  Not only are his cartoons brilliant, but the comments attached to the cartoons at his blog are deadly on target.  Here's the succinct analysis he posted June 23, 2014:

 

 As Iraq spirals into sectarian civil war, one of the recurring stories on American media outlets is the mixed feelings of the American veterans who served in the invasion and subsequent occupation. While it’s understandable that they are wondering whether their sacrifices were worth it (hint: no way), shouldn’t we be giving at least equal time to the Iraqis who are living through the consequences of our war there?   [Emphasis added]

 

Good question, one that we probably won't see raised or answered in the US press or even mentioned by the Administration anytime soon.

 

I guess we're too close to July 4th.  It wouldn't be prudent.

MOS*

*More Of Same 

(Cartoon by Lee Judge, published 6/22/14 in the Kansas City Star and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then return, please.)
No, I'm not through yelling about this.  I'd set my hair on fire if I thought it would do any good (or if it were longer than 1/8th inch all the way around).  I'm really that furious.

And so should every American be, regardless of political persuasion.  This administration isn't fooling anybody when it says that the 300 troops being sent to Iraq are there merely as advisors to Iraqi security forces.  Yeah, right.  And I was the inspiration for "My Sharona."

From McClatchy D.C.

“‘Combat’ is an elastic term when you talk about special operations guys, because you never know what they’re going to be doing,” [Former Marine Corp Sgt. Andrew] van Wey, who now does marketing for a military apparel firm in Fort Worth, Texas, said in an interview. “The nature of these guys’ jobs is covert. When you send in special operations, they leave a smaller footprint than infantry or other conventional forces. That’s how they get around violating the spirit of ‘no boots on the ground.’”

Others who served in Iraq said that once the new U.S. troops are embedded with their Iraqi counterparts, all bets are off, because there are few safe havens in a very dangerous country.

“It’s a stretch to say they won’t see combat,” Eric Young, a former Marine corporal who fought in Fallujah during two deployments to Iraq, told McClatchy. “More than likely those Green Berets will take up leadership roles in the Iraqi military. They may not be doing a lot of fighting, but they won’t just sit back and call for support. They’re there to lead from the front. You don’t lead from the back.”   [Enphasis added]

 The US troops will get involved, perhaps wounded or killed and certain elements will call for vengeance and then, just in time for November, 2016, it will become the kind of issue the GOP has been dreaming of.

Like I said last week.  Here we go again.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/20/231083/iraq-vets-say-obamas-promise-of.html#storylink=cpy

Send In The Drones ... There Have To Be Drones

(Cartoon by Yaakov Kirschen and posted on his blog.  Click on image to enlarge and then be so kind as to return here, haste-posthaste.)

The nation of Iraq has once again descended into chaos as Sunni and Shiite  forces are battling for control of the country.  The conflict appears to have spilled over into Syria in order to take advantage of the confusion wracking that country.  And the US response?   No surprises here.

From the L.A. Times:

In a sign of the growing danger in Iraq, President Obama notified Congress on Monday that he was sending up to 275 U.S. military personnel “to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.”

Obama also is considering sending 100 or fewer special operations troops to Iraq to advise its armed forces as it battles Sunni Muslim insurgents, according to a senior U.S. official. It was unclear whether they would be among the 275 military personnel or in addition to them. ...

Analysts and military officials said sending U.S. military advisors may prove unavoidable to reverse the insurgents’ momentum. Without U.S. experts to guide drones and manned aircraft to targets on the ground, airstrikes may prove ineffective or accidentally hit civilians.    [Emphasis added]

From a promise of no troops on the ground in Iraq by the administration to the insertion of a "mere" 275 troops and possibly another 100 special operations troops to "guide" the drones.  All of this activity is allegedly to "protect" our personnel currently ensconced in that gazillion-dollar fortress euphemistically referred to as an embassy.

Now I'm just sure that protecting our oil interests in Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with this move.  Not a chance.  Nope, no way.

In other words, here we go again.

War Is No Tea Party

If the Tea Partiers are really so concerned about taxes this April 15th, they might want to consider supporting those of us who want to reduce the Pentagon's budget and who want to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're spending billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives in our war making, and there isn't any end in sight. Somehow I don't expect to see any rhetoric along those lines coming from those rallies this tax day, which is certainly a shame.

And the cost of those two wars is only going to get higher, according to the Los Angeles Times:

The Pentagon has increased its use of the military's most elite special operations teams in Afghanistan, more than doubling the number of the highly trained teams assigned to hunt down Taliban leaders, according to senior officials.

The secretive buildup reflects the view of the Obama administration and senior military leaders that the U.S. has only a limited amount of time to degrade the capabilities of the Taliban. U.S. forces are in the midst of an overall increase that will add 30,000 troops this year and plan to begin reducing the force in mid-2011. [Emphasis added]

That certainly is an interesting timeline, one that coincides with the kickoff of the 2012 presidential campaign season. It's also just about the time the American public will finally notice the real cost of war as more and more American soldiers are shipped home dead or maimed after fighting what President Obama told us was the "Good War" when he was running for office.

And to accomplish this political callousness, the Pentagon has called in more Special Ops units, those ever-efficient men with their own special language for what it is they do:

With such an abbreviated timeline, the elite manhunt teams are the most effective weapon for disrupting the insurgent leadership, senior officials said. The officials contend that stepped-up operations by teams inserted in recent months already have eroded the Taliban leadership. Defense officials specifically single out the work of special operations forces in eliminating mid-level Taliban leaders before the February offensive in the Helmand province town of Marja. They say the forces have begun similar operations in nearby Kandahar province.

"You can't kill your way out of these things, but you can remove a lot of the negative influences," said a senior Defense official. "A significant portion of the leadership has fled over the border, been captured or removed from the equation." [Emphasis added]


Now that's euphemistic acrobatics at its finest. It kind of takes the sting out of the word killing, and wallpapers over the increasing civilian deaths which will also occur, if the past year or so is any indication.

What a waste of money and of lives.

An Overlooked Anniversary

I found it quite odd that the American media let pass the anniversary of the commencement of the misbegotten and illegal war in Iraq this past week. We're now in the eighth year of the mess, American troops are still there, Americans and Iraqis are still dying, and yet almost nothing to note the anniversary came across my admittedly aging radar screen.

During my weekly visit to Watching America I noticed that most of the rest of the world had ignored the ignominious date as well, most, but not all. Egypt's Addostour was a provided a very interesting and quite honest (perhaps dangerously so) analysis.

And so, the alleged “democratic example” of Iraq is brought about on the skulls of more than one million Iraqis, the total victims over the invasion’s seven years according to statistics.

Strangely enough, the elections of Sunday, March 7th, 2010 are deemed as a real victory for the American scheme in Iraq and an example to be followed by countries of the region. Yet, we need to know which victory is meant here and what this democratic project can be, considering most U.S. regional allies have military inclinations. Why does the U.S. not exert any type of pressure on her allies, even on a formal basis, to force them to adopt democracy? Can democracy be falsely built on the corpses, wounds, culture, security, integrity, and oppression of Iraqi people as well as on the usurpation of their country’s wealth, history and civilization, present and future? I do not know how minds and consciences can be convinced with these lies to the extent of propagating them!

...Accordingly, the American plan goes as follows: the U.S. is to paint her Iraqi example as “legitimate” because Iraqis allegedly took part in making it. Then, “dissident allies” will be told that they shall be replaced by this example, already regarded as legitimate by American people, since the dissidents are illegitimate rulers who faked their victory and assumed power via the military coup d’états America backed or overlooked. In other words, the American rule will be “either to do what you are told or we will repeat the Iraqi example whenever and wherever we like!”

...If the U.S. wants to have democratic regimes in the region, all it has to do is to ask her allies of “timeworn” Arab tyrant rulers to let their people live freely and choose their regimes. Thus, these people should understand that their freedom cannot be secured by America or anyone else. They exclusively have the ability and will to restore their freedom; otherwise, they will eternally live under the illusions of American democracy. [Emphasis added]

That certainly does sound like the America that has evolved over the past century, doesn't it? It also sounds like the American "allies" in that area of the world: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and, yes, Egypt. Brave man, that op-ed writer.

I am still concerned that the Iraq War has fallen into the rabbit hole, however. We hear plenty about the War in Afghanistan (President Obama's "Good War", as if there were such a thing), but very, very little about Iraq. Like the period after the invasion of Iraq when the war in Afghanistan became invisible, nobody much cares about Iraq, nobody but the families of American soldiers stuck there or the Iraqis providing various degrees of hospitality seem to be interested. It's as if the American media and the American public can only concentrate on one war at a time, and then only for brief periods of time until the next shiny key is dangled before them. Right now the key is health care reform. How ironic.

In a comment at Eschaton this morning, the Kenosha Kid provided yet another reason why the press has gone silent on Iraq. He linked to a very intelligent article in the Nation written by Matthew Duss on the Cheney family's open historical revisionism being supported by the media. I haven't checked out the list of guests for tomorrow's bobbleheads, but if neither Liz nor Dick Cheney is listed, I will be surprised.

Here's just a snippet of that article (which you should read, seriously):

It turns out, however, that being disastrously wrong on the most significant foreign policy questions of the era is no barrier to continued influence in American politics. Even though their bong-hit theories about transforming the Middle East at the point of an American gun retain about as much popular appeal as E. coli, the neocons continue to impact US foreign policy debates through an entrenched network of think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Hudson Institute), publications (The Weekly Standard, Commentary, National Review), supportive editorial boards (the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal) and, of course, Fox News.

But, of course, we are too dumb, or too busy trying to put food on the table and providing a roof over our heads for that table to appreciate just what's going on.

Aren't we?

The Elephants In The Room

James Carroll's column in today's Boston Globe deftly points out a key reason why President Obama's plan for reforming health care is in such trouble. And that reason, rarely noted by any other voices in the media or in government, is one that this president shares with one of his predecessors.

...Indeed, today’s health care reform takes as its starting point LBJ’s success in establishing Medicare and Medicaid. Obama is often compared to John F. Kennedy, but Johnson may be the more apt analogy - if not yet because of shared legislative accomplishments (in winning appropriations for Head Start, Vista, Model Cities, and the Job Corps, Johnson erected actual pillars of the Great Society), then because Obama’s opportunity for historic social transformation is also about to be squandered by a misbegotten war.

Or rather, two wars. The elephants in the congressional chamber last week were not the scowling Republicans, but Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which was mentioned. In both places, American wars are quite clearly spinning toward catastrophe. ...

The scale of President Obama’s military mistake is becoming clear exactly as the moment of his greatest opportunity to improve American life has arrived. The tragedy, as with Lyndon Johnson, will be the destruction of his proposed social transformation by his simultaneous opting for war, as his core supporters among liberals and Democrats feel bound to oppose him. ... [Emphasis added]

Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats have been complaining for months that such a dramatic overhaul of the nation's health care system is simply not feasible. We cannot afford it, not in these times with the economy still swirling around the commode and millions of Americans out of work. One of the reasons for our failed economy, never mentioned in the past eight years, is that the US has been pouring hundreds of billions of dollars, most of it off-budget, into the "misbegotten" wars George W. Bush so brazenly pushed us into. While Iraq is allegedly winding-down (American troops continue to die there, along with even more Iraqis), President Obama will soon be pushing for more troops in Afghanistan, a push that will be met with a stiff wall of resistance from even Democrats such as Carl Levin.

We can't afford a public option (much less the far saner single payer system), the argument goes, but one of the reasons we can't is that the current president will insist on billions of dollars more for what can only be seen now as "Obama's War." Trimming those expenditures and making them available for real reform in health care access would remove the main excuse being used by the GOP and the Blue Dogs (urged on by their health care corporation funders) to stop it.

It's not likely to happen, as I am sure Mr. Carroll knows, but at least one pundit has noticed the connection and pointed out the nakedness of the emperor.

Worst Case Scenario: We Haz It

There's an absolutely stunning, even though predictable, article in the NY Times. It describes a study just released which deals with the mental health care problems our current war veterans are walking around with.

A new study has found that more than one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who enrolled in the veterans health system after 2001 received a diagnosis of a mental health problem, most often post-traumatic stress syndrome or depression.

The numbers are staggering.

The study, released Thursday, was based on the department health records of 289,328 veterans involved in the two wars who used the veterans health system for the first time from April 1, 2002, to April 1, 2008.

The researchers found that 37 percent of those people received mental health diagnoses. Of those, the diagnosis for 22 percent was post-traumatic stress syndrome, or PTSD, for 17 percent it was depression and for 7 percent it was alcohol abuse. One-third of the people with mental health diagnoses had three or more problems, the study found.

The increase in diagnoses accelerated after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the researchers found. Among the group of veterans who enrolled in veterans health services during the first three months of 2004, 14.6 percent received mental health diagnoses after one year. But after four years, the number had nearly doubled, to 27.5 percent.

Keep in mind that these numbers are somewhat limited insofar as they deal only with veterans who use the VA system. It does not take into account those who have access to and have used private health insurance programs, so the authors of the study themselves have acknowledged that extrapolation to the entire body of returning veterans cannot scientifically be made at this time. While I respect the cautious professionalism of the scientific inquirers, I have a lay person's gut feeling that those numbers will pretty closely hold true for all veterans since the beginning of the two wars. I also believe that as more returning vets find themselves laid off and cut off from affordable health insurance, many will turn to the Veterans Administration for care, so that the numbers will be more in tune with the actualities in fairly short order.

What is just as significant as the numbers, however, are the conclusions drawn by the researchers:

The study’s principal author, Dr. Karen H. Seal, attributed the rising number of diagnoses to several factors: repeat deployments; the perilous and confusing nature of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, where there are no defined front lines; growing public awareness of PTSD; unsteady public support for the wars; and reduced troop morale. ...

The new report joins a growing body of research showing that the prolonged conflicts, where many troops experience long and repeat deployments, are taking an accumulating psychological toll. ...

“The study provides more insight as to just how stressed our force and families are after years of war and multiple deployments,” said René A. Campos, deputy director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America. “Our troops and families need more time at home — more dwell time, fewer and less frequent deployments.” [Emphasis added]

To which I say (please forgive the DFH in me), "Well, DUH!"

War is always the last worst option in any situation, but these wars were instigated and run by the most venal and incompetent bunch of blind ideologues of modern history. If the advice given by experienced and thoughtful military leaders didn't match the fantasy based scenario envisioned by the Bush White House and its Neocon vanguard, the advice was ignored and the military leaders so marginalized that they were forced to retire. As a result, our military was broken, and, of course, our national defense weakened dramatically.

Here's the hard part now, however. While President Obama appears to be following through on his promise to reduce troop levels in Iraq, he has also carried through his promise to increase US troop levels in Afghanistan, the "good war" (as if there were such a thing). That means that the multiple deployments will continue, that the various branches of the military will continue to be stressed and stretched when it comes to recruitment and training, and our National Guard continuously called away from their homes and their states, even during times of local emergencies for which those men and women are uniquely qualified.

We will continue to have our already weakened economy driven by off-budget "emergency" appropriations to carry on these immoral wars, and the cost of treating and caring for the soldiers who are trying their best to serve will skyrocket.

This needs to stop. We need to have some real change.

Really.

[Note: For the abstract of the study published in the American Journal of Public Health, go here. You can find the link to the entire study in pdf on that page.]

Sadly, Unsurprising: Update

Yesterday, I posted on the shootings at Camp Liberty in Iraq. The initial reports I saw did have one fact wrong: the soldier who was responsible for the killings did not turn the gun on himself. He shot five other US soldiers and wounded three. He is now in custody.

More details are now emerging. The shootings took place in a clinic for soldiers suffering from stress. The irony of that fact makes the episode even more shocking. According to the NY Times article, soldiers not in the field are required to remove the ammunition from the weapons. How the soldier in question managed to avoid that requirement is currently under investigation.

To the Army's credit, spokesmen are not whitewashing the incident and are openly acknowledging the impact of the stress soldiers are facing in Iraq because of multiple tours there without enough time between assignments:

At a Pentagon news conference on Monday, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the shootings occurred “in a place where individuals were seeking help” for combat stress.

The violence, he said, was a tragic reminder of the need for greater “concern in terms of dealing with the stress” and also “speaks to the issue of multiple deployments” as well the need for finding ways of “increasing dwell time,” so that military personnel spend more months at home between deployments.

Two things occurred to me after reading Admiral Mullen's statement. The first is that while it is good the military now realizes the stress related illnesses are indeed battlefield injuries which must be treated, there is still within the military culture a sense that such psychological damage is unmanly and a sign of character weakness. Why else would the military deny the Purple Heart to those who suffer from that kind of injury?

The second goes to the issue of the multiple deployments and the lack of reasonable downtime between those deployments. Yes, due to the malfeasance of the last administration and the arrogance of the Pentagon, the US willingly took on two wars, both wrong from their inception in the minds of the neocons running the government, thereby stretching the military to its limits and beyond. This administration, however, seems to be determined to stay locked into the mindset of the last.

While President Obama will be withdrawing troops from Iraq under the time frame established with that country, he is going to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. Troops will simply be rotated from one war to the other. It's hard to imagine the Army being able to increase "dwell time" for those soldiers being rotated, much less provide adequate treatment for the combat stress many (if not most) of those soldiers are suffering.

The results, sadly, will no doubt mean that there will be more episodes such as the one that happened at Camp Liberty. It also means that many soldiers will remain untreated and will suffer long after they return home to their families.

That's what happens in wars. That it is happening in wars that should never have been initiated makes it all the more horrendous.

Meanwhile, We're Still At War

President Obama has had two very good trips abroad, successfully demonstrating that with the new administration comes a new foreign policy. While that may be true with respect to Latin America, it certainly is not all that true with respect to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Obama is hedging on troop pullouts in the first country and is openly ratcheting up the troop count in the second. Two wars in the same region: not much change there.

Today's Los Angeles Times contains an important op-ed column on the issue. Written by Eugene McCarthy, former Democratic Senator from South Dakota and a candidate for President in 1972, the column makes it clear that Mr. McCarthy is as concerned about the administration's stance on Iraq and Afghanistan as a lot of us are.

He points to the fact that by 2006, a majority of the country wanted that madness to end, and to end quickly. That view was given tangible expression in the 2006 elections which gave the Democrats control of Congress. In 2008, not only did the Democrats increase their numbers in Congress, they won the White House. Yet here we are, still recording deaths in Iraq and building up for a surge in Afghanistan, guaranteeing more deaths there.

Mr. McGovern asks a series of important questions, questions that the White House should be forced to address.

Are we now going to ignore for another three years the public mandate of 2006 against this costly, preemptive war based on deceit? And how can we justify putting thousands more U.S. troops into Afghanistan? We have already exhausted our treasury. We are also close to exhausting our soldiers.

Can there be any doubt that the enormous war cost has contributed to the financial crisis here at home? The expense of waging two Middle East wars, plus the loss of revenue caused by the previous administration's tax cuts, have skyrocketed the national debt to a record high. Do we ever consider what the interest alone is on our $10-trillion national debt -- much of it paid to China? ...

Our policymakers in Washington contend that we must maintain U.S. troops in the Middle East to curb terrorism. I strongly believe that it is our military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East that is driving terrorism against the United States. No country that longs for national sovereignty wants a foreign army in its midst. We taught that lesson to the British Empire in 1776 when George Washington and his ragtag guerrilla army drove the British military from our shores.

Those misbegotten wars and the current state of our economy are, as Sen. McCarthy has pointed out, inextricably linked. If President Obama is serious about restoring our economy and our standing in the world to where both should be, he needs to recognize that fact. He needs to listen to honorable men such as Sen. McCarthy and to the millions of Americans who agree with him on this issue.

We need some real change.

Giving the Devil His/Her Due

Remember that scandalous company that killed any number of innocent Iraqis while ' protecting' U.S. personnel in the manner Iraq hated enough to ban them? Yes, I mean Blackwater. They have new uniforms and a new name, and they're back. This from John Cole at Balloon Juice.

Late last month Blackwater Worldwide lost its billion-dollar contract to protect American diplomats here, but by next month many if not most of its private security guards will be back on the job in Iraq.

The same individuals will just be wearing new uniforms, working for Triple Canopy, the firm that won the State Department’s contract after Iraqi officials refused to renew Blackwater’s operating license, according to American diplomats, private security industry officials and Iraqi officials. Blackwater — viewed in Iraq as a symbol of American violence and impunity — lost the contract after being accused of excessive force in several instances, particularly an apparently unprovoked shooting in downtown Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed.

Despite the torrent of public criticism against Blackwater, American officials say they are relieved that the old guards will stay on. Otherwise, Triple Canopy, they say, would not be able to field enough qualified guards, with the proper security clearances, before the new contract goes into effect in May.

“There is just no other way to do it,” said one Western diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to discuss the issue publicly.

Critics of Blackwater said they worried that the same people might perpetuate what they believed was a corporate culture that disregarded Iraqis’ lives.

“They’re really all still there, and it’s back to business as usual,” said Susan Burke, an American lawyer who has filed three civil rights lawsuits against Blackwater on behalf of Iraqi civilians alleged to be victims of it.

An unresolved question is whether Blackwater, recently renamed Xe (pronounced zee), or any affiliated company will profit from the deal.

Contracts let in the misconduct of our occupation of Iraq have been irresponsible to the point of criminal conduct. The return of the very force that the country of Iraq had refused is actionable.

No decent government would inflict this kind of misbehaving mercenaries on a country it expected ever to have decent relations with. Our military should be rebuked, and this decision revoked.

Barack's Iraq?

I read an interesting interview at Germany's Die Zeit. Yes, it's the weekend and, yes, I've made the pilgrimage to Watching America. Anyway, the interview was with Brahma Chellany, professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi, India.

Professor Chellany had a number of interesting observations about the current state of Pakistan, which he designates as a "failed state," not so much because of the weak state of the current civilian government but because the real power in Pakistan has been the military, especially since Pervez Musharraf took over in a coup. The danger here, of course, is that Pakistan is also a nuclear state, something which must worry India and the rest of the region a great deal.

All of that is by way of setting the stage for the part of the interview I considered most interesting. At this point in history, the fate of Pakistan and Afghanistan appear to be intricately linked.

Brahma Chellaney (BC): President Asif Ali Zardari did well to avoid confrontation with the opposition and reinstate the judges fired by former dictator Pervez Musharraf. But the easing of political tension hasn’t removed the danger that Pakistan, a nuclear nation, might dissolve. Pakistan – as well as Afghanistan – is de facto a “failed state.” The boundaries between the governmental and non-governmental participants are extremely blurred. The president is really more a mayor of the capital city. The national borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan have virtually ceased to exist; it’s difficult to deal with both nations as though they were separate political entities. ... [Emphasis added]

After 9/11, George Bush decided to invade Afghanistan, and in the hysterical response to the terrorist attack, most Americans supported the move. Unfortunately, neither he nor the American public had been paying attention to history. Britain had failed in Afghanistan, and, much more recently, so had the Soviet Union. Ironically, because of the Cold War, US leaders decided to back the "insurgents" against the Russians and poured money, weapons, and intelligence resources into the mess, thereby empowering the very figures who would ultimately have a connection to those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. We backed the very same people that we are fighting today, and not very successfully.

Now part of the reason for that is that the Bush administration was far more interested in Iraq, probably because Iraq has oil and Afghanistan just has opium poppies. President Bush diluted our commitment in Afghanistan and poured it into Iraq with devastating consequences for both theaters. Today's Washington Post makes that clear. The debacle in Iraq was one of the major reasons for the repudiation of the Republican Party in the last election.

Recognizing that fact, Candidate Obama vowed to pull troops out of Iraq. Unfortunately, he intends to send them to Afghanistan, the "good war", fully ignoring all of the history of the region. Here's what Professor Chellaney noted in the Die Welt interview:

America is preparing to repeat the same mistakes that were made by Ronald Reagan when he opposed the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. That’s when the entire Afghanistan-Pakistan disaster began. Obama wants to train and arm new militias in every Afghan province although the country is already awash in armed militias. The militias armed and trained by Reagan, the so-called Mujahadin, became international terrorists. Besides that, Obama wants to cut a deal with the Taliban at the same time he’s hiding behind a troop surge. History again repeats itself. The Taliban was created by the Pakistani intelligence services with the support of the CIA. In October 2001, American policy did a complete turnabout and declared war on the Taliban. [Emphasis added]

So, what's a poor new incumbent to do? Certainly not keep repeating the same mistakes of previous administrations and expecting different results. While President Obama has shown significant signs of a dramatic and welcome change in foreign policy, he still feels compelled to show biceps when it comes to war making, in this case, in Afghanistan.

What he needs to do is spit out the bullet and bite down on contrition. Yes, we broke it and we own it, but we can't fix it without the assistance of the rest of the world, especially the countries in the region (India, Iran, and the Arab nations). India has already poured over $1 billion into Afghanistan in reconstruction aid. Our NATO allies would probably prefer equivalent monetary donations to military assistance. Diplomatic pressure on the war lords of Afghanistan and the military powers in Pakistan could be redoubled by the rest of the world without complaint.

Another "surge" is not the answer.

Getting His War On

During my weekly visit, I found that articles on the Obama presidency dominated at Watching America. That certainly isn't too surprising, given the apparent worldwide relief at the departure of George W. Bush. Still, the coverage selected by the folks at this useful website included a lot of articles that were at least faintly critical of President Obama's initial moves.

The article I found most interesting was from Germany's Die Zeit, if only because of its headline: "Obama's Wars". As unfair as it may seem, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now in fact President Obama's responsibility.

While the article does have something to say about Iraq, Afghanistan is the real focus, which makes sense. Germany is a NATO ally, and what Obama wants to do is increase troops levels in Afghanistan, presumably with help from NATO. The US will expect its allies to contribute troops and materials to the effort, and that means Germany will be asked to pony up as well.

This should come as no surprise to Europe. President Obama made it clear during his campaign that while he wanted to pull troops out of Iraq, a place they never should have been in the first place, he intended to prosecute the "good war" in Afghanistan to root out the evil terrorist extremists that threaten the entire world.

According to the article, Afghanistan will be a much tougher road than Iraq, something President Obama might not fully appreciate. The war in Iraq might have been complicated by the presence of Iran (another enemy); the war in Afghanistan is complicated by the presence of Pakistan (an ally under the Bush administration, at least at the inception of the war). Further, the tribal loyalties coupled with the rugged terrain have doomed other invading powers with great regularity (Britain, and more recently, the Soviet Union).

What is disturbing is that President Obama is still determined to push for a military victory in Afghanistan, even though that goal has not yet been fully defined. In other words, he is listening to the Pentagon, not to the State Department.

At the very beginning of his time in office, the new president met with one of his most important generals. David Petraeus, current commander of the U.S. Central Command, reported to Barack Obama on the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both wars had been initiated by George W. Bush, but Obama wants to end them without having to give up on the U.S. mission to fight terror. ...

Obama now has a new strategy for Afghanistan: more soldiers are meant to protect the population more effectively against violence, since every bomb and every assassination undermines the authority of the government in Kabul. In addition, the tasks for the military will be decreased. Most likely, soldiers will not have to fight al-Qaida, rebellious Pashtuns, the Taliban, drug lords, and smugglers all at the same time anymore. It is planned to win over Pashtun tribes for the fight against Islamic fundamentalists. [Emphasis added]

Swell: US and NATO forces will only have to fight on four fronts instead of five. We'll buy the Pashtun loyalty with money, munitions, and Viagra. Yeah, that'll bring peace and stability to the country.

President Obama will continue the Bush administration policy of treating the war on terrorism as just that, a literal war which uses bullets and bombs instead of addressing the root causes of terrorism, poverty, powerlessness and despair. While I thought President Obama's decision to sit down with an Al-Arabiya to make clear that his administration was not anti-Muslim or anti-Arab was a master stroke, his determination to continue the war on Islamic extremists undercuts his proclamation.

Unfortunately, no change is evident here.

That Rainbow Is Actually An Oil Slick

While all the world's attention is turned toward the economic disaster they have achieved, a few splinters from the mainframe of occupied White House policy are busily scurrying about doing all the damage they can. Of course, the oil companies are full of these crossovers. In Iraq, a former manager of oil agreements is busily at work countering them before they can be brought into force.

In the history of the Iraq War, one name is perhaps synonymous with the collapse of the Bush administration's hopes for a post-Saddam world: Retired Lt. General Jay M. Garner. It was Garner who served as the first post-war administrator for Iraq, running the country during the fateful two months immediately following the invasion before being replaced by L. Paul Bremer III.

However, Garner's frustrating tenure in Iraq wasn't entirely wasted. This year, he and a small group of former US military leaders, officials, and lobbyists have quietly used their deep connections in Kurdistan to help Canadian companies access some of the region's richest oil fields.

Though Garner's involvement in these deals has, so far, remained under the US media's radar, the situation presents an embarrassment for the Bush administration. US policy holds that foreign companies should not jump into the Iraqi oil business until after Iraqis figure out how to apportion their petroleum between various regions and the central government. In fact, last year, an American company named Hunt Oil triggered a controversy when it signed a deal to produce oil in the area of Dahuk in Kurdistan. Hunt Oil's CEO is a friend of President Bush and a former member of his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; congressional investigators discovered that even though the State Department eventually condemned the contract, the administration had long known about the deal and elected not to intervene. Garner has so far evaded a similar outcry because he's acting on behalf of companies in Canada.

But Garner's deal-making is not without risks. In the spring of 2007, Iraq's cabinet began working on an oil law to govern the country's oil reserves, which are the third largest in the world. Ever since then, however, Iraq's Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish factions have been locked in a contentious struggle over the proposal. According to several observers, including a State Department official familiar with the matter, Garner's efforts to help his Canadian employers preempt the oil law have undermined the already fragile possibility of a cohesive Iraq—which was, of course, what Garner was originally sent to Iraq in 2003 to achieve. Referring to Garner and his colleagues, the official says, "It's unfortunate that they are working for a company that is just adding fuel to the fire in disagreements between Baghdad and Erbil, but there's not much we can do about it."
(snip)
When the Iraqi constitution was written, the sections relating to oil were, predictably, some of the most hotly contested, and they remain riddled with ambiguities. The Kurds successfully pushed for language limiting the central government's authority to current oil fields, as opposed to as-yet-unexplored ones. It's also unclear who has the power to actually award contracts; that was one of the matters left for the long-awaited oil law. Now, as a State Department legal adviser who worked on the draft told me, the ambiguities have "come home to roost."

What is clear is that each move by foreign companies into Kurdistan adds fresh discord to Iraq's volatile debate over federalism and oil. A poll released in August 2007 by a Washington, DC-based consulting firm found that more than 60 percent of Iraqis want their oil to be developed by the Iraqi state rather than foreign companies. More than 70 percent complained about a lack of transparency where proposed oil laws are concerned.

Baghdad has denounced most of the oil contracts signed by the KRG as "illegal," and has blacklisted the companies involved from future bids. In September, Iraq's oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani, threatened that the oil law might never pass if Kurdistan doesn't cancel the contracts.

A stalemate on the oil law could be disastrous—not least for the Bush administration. That's why, the State Department official told me, Washington's policy is plain: "We do not support any company signing a deal before an oil law is in place."

The agreement the maladministration has been trying to put into place to keep President Obama's hands tied may just be unraveled by one of its own kind. The ironies growing out of this group of criminals all trying to get the most out of the U.S. treasury and all of its attendant troughs just grow and grow.

The primacy of greed and heedlessness of consequences that has characterized the maladministation is rife in its many former participants. The damage they can do has been displayed at large lately. The individuals running up their separate damages are going to be manifesting their misdeeds for some time to come.

The circular firing squad should give us some great reading sometime soon. If there's any solar energy for the light left to read by, that is.

Karma, Part 2

Last Saturday, I posted on Iran's pressure to shut out US oil companies in Iraq in favor of Chinese and Russian oil companies. A measure of the success of that pressure was the awarding of a renegotiated oil deal to a Chinese state-owned oil company. In today's NY Times we learn that further moves have been taken to freeze out US and other western oil companies.

An Iraqi plan to award six no-bid contracts to Western oil companies, which came under sharp criticism from several United States senators this summer, has been withdrawn, participants in the negotiations said on Wednesday.

Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, told reporters at an OPEC summit meeting in Vienna on Tuesday that talks with Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, Total, BP and several smaller companies for one-year deals, which were announced in June and subsequently delayed, had dragged on for so long that the companies could not now fulfill the work within that time frame. The companies confirmed on Wednesday that the deals had been canceled.

While not particularly lucrative by industry standards, the contracts were valued for providing a foothold in Iraq at a time when oil companies are being shut out of energy rich countries around the world. The companies will still be eligible to compete in open bidding in Iraq.

Interestingly, the article seems to imply that because certain US senators (among them Democrat Chuck Schumer) objected to the no-bid process, the Iraqis decided against proceeding with the multiple deals.

Earlier this summer, a group of Democratic senators led by Charles E. Schumer of New York had appealed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to block the deals, contending that they could undermine the efforts of Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites to reach agreement on a hydrocarbon law and a revenue-sharing agreement. This criticism was conveyed to Mr. Shahristani by the American Embassy in Baghdad in late June, and after that the deals were delayed.

Oh, those damned Democrats! Interfering with the oil companies' God-given right to all that Iraqi oil is just not nice. Now we'll have to pay 'leventy-seven dollars a gallon and drill in ANWR all because the Democrats just couldn't leave well enough alone.

Nice try, NY Times, but you should have done your homework. The US may be occupying Iraq, but our influence is pretty tepid compared to that of Iran, one of the direct consequences of the illegal and misbegotten war in Iraq. Perhaps if the Times had bothered to read the Iraqi newspapers (like Azzaman, which was the source of the article I reviewed in last Saturday's post) it might have come up with a more plausible reason for the cancelled contracts.

Of course, that wouldn't play as well during an election campaign, would it.

Karma

The GOP's nominee for Vice President, Gov. Sarah Palin, has uttered the obvious: the Iraq War was about oil. It was nice to see a Republican finally admit what the rest of the country suspected all along. Now that the causus belli is out in the open, it's pretty obvious that the gang that couldn't shoot straight screwed that part up as well. From Iraq's Azzaman:

Iran is pressuring Iraqi authorities to exclude U.S. oil majors from contracts to develop the country’s massive oil fields, sources at the Oil Ministry said.

The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the authorities currently favor Chinese and Russian companies to those of the United States.

Their remarks come following a contract the ministry signed last month with China’s state-owned oil firm CNPC.

The $3bn oil services contract is a renegotiated deal of the Ahdad oilfield which CNPC had agreed to develop in 1977.

China is the first country to win such a contract since the 2003 U.S. invasion of the country.

And how is it that the second member of the Axis of Evil has such power over Iraqi decisions? After all, it wasn't that long ago that the two countries were at war, a war so bitter that millions from both countries died in it.

Well, there's that Shiite-Sunni thing that neither George Bush nor John McCain still quite understand. Once the US toppled Saddam Hussein and his Sunni government, the Iraqi Shiites, a huge majority in the country, could take over and could count on their Shiite neighbors in Iran for back-up. And that is precisely what Iran gave.

The Ministry of Oil and other key portfolios such the Ministry of Interior and Finance are in the hands of pro-Iran Shiite factions.

Analysts say it is difficult today for any major development, whether economic or political, to take place in Iraq without Iranian consent.

Iran has emerged as the country’s top trading partner. Its firms are present in the Kurdish north and southern Iraq carrying out projects worth billions of dollars.

Iranian goods are the most conspicuous merchandise in Iraqi shops.

Iraq, though occupied and administered by America, has grown to be so pendent (sic) on Iran that some analysts see it as a satellite state of Tehran.

In other words, the Iraq War was the biggest gift the US could have given Iran. If so many people hadn't been (and continue to be) killed and maimed on both sides, the whole thing would be darkly humorous. But they were/are and it isn't.

Heckuva job, George!

Not So Fast

The "security" agreement the White House has been pushing in Iraq has apparently had another set-back. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has just replaced his country's negotiating team with members of his inner circle, which means the agreement in all likelihood will not be reached before the end of the year, much less before the US election. An article in today's Los Angeles Times details some of the sticking points.

"People gave the impression we were close when Rice was here, but it's not over. We would have a serious problem if we took it to the parliament right now," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue.

The official insisted that if U.S. troops remained exempt from Iraqi rule of law, the pact would never get passed by the lawmakers. ...

The sides also are still negotiating a withdrawal date, the official said.

The latest version of the agreement, which was read to The Times by the Maliki confidant, says all U.S. forces will leave Iraq by the end of 2011, unless Iraq requests otherwise. It also says the Americans will withdraw from cities in June 2009, unless the Iraqis ask them to stay.

The new wording is a departure from the White House's insistence on a conditions-based timeline for a pullout. Under the new language, Iraq, not the U.S. military, decides when the troops will leave. U.S. officials have gone back to Washington to consult on the language, the Maliki confidant said. [Emphasis added]

That the Iraqi government insists on acting like a sovereign nation even while under occupation must really gall the White House. The fact of the matter is, nonetheless, that even the US installed Prime Minister has to go to the Iraqi Parliament for approval of any such agreement and the Parliament has made it clear that it will not approve an agreement which is nothing more than maintaining the status quo.

Iraq made it clear that it would not accept the idea of immunity from Iraqi law for US troops. The US has made it equally clear that no "security" agreement is possible without the immunity. In fact, right from the start, the US negotiators wanted that immunity extended to all sorts of people, something the US press has not really emphasized in its coverage of the talks. The LA Times article at least gives a quiet nod to that extensive immunity:

Some Western and Iraqi officials blame the Americans for sending a team in the spring that demanded more than 50 long-term bases, the ability to launch operations without permission from the Iraqi government and immunity for security contractors and U.S. troops. Their opening stance played into the hands of Shiite lawmakers in Maliki's coalition, who want the Americans to leave, officials said. [Emphasis added]

Yes, you read that right: the immunity would extend to such run-amok contractors as Blackwater. Can you blame the Iraqis for digging their heels in on such an issue?

The UN mandate for the Iraqi occupation runs out in December, and clearly the Bush administration wanted to tie down this agreement before then, leaving at least one positive element in the last bit of presidenting that Mr. Bush still appears to be interested in, his legacy. The Iraqis, however, are fully aware that a new administration will be installed in January, one that might be willing to actually negotiate rather than demand. Unless the current White House occupier is willing to drop the expansive immunity language, his legacy will be missing an entry.

142 days

Clearly Irony Is Not Dead

In this morning's radio address, President Bush said the following:

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. For more than a week, the people of the nation of Georgia have withstood assault from the Russian military. The world has watched with alarm as Russia invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatened a democratic government elected by its people. This act is completely unacceptable to the free nations of the world.

The United States and our allies stand with the people of Georgia and their democratically elected government. We insist that Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity be respected. And Moscow must honor its pledge to withdraw its invading forces from all Georgian territory.

It's not so surprising that the president said this, he has, after all, been saying this all week. What is so amazing is that he said it with a straight face (his usual smirk notwithstanding). Here is a man who invaded another sovereign nation, destroyed its infrastructure and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and who has made no move to withdraw any troops from that sovereign nation, all in the name of bringing democracy (at least that's one of the reasons espoused).

The people of Iraq must surely have noticed the hypocrisy of the president's statement. Living under an occupation and being governed by US puppets is clearly weighing on them, as this opinion piece written by Fatih Abdulsalam and published in Iraq's Azzaman makes clear.

Let us try to describe the kind of ‘democracy’ the U.S. has implanted in Iraq.

Using its deadly and fearful military machine, the U.S. has exported the democracy of dark and rotten vestibules to Iraq whose smell now stings the eyes and nostrils of anyone with common sense.

It is the democracy of bombardment, shelling, indiscriminate killing, massive prisoner abuses, turning millions of people into refugees, attacking with warplanes and heavy armor major cities, towns and villages and dividing a unified nation along ethnic and sectarian lines.

For these polices which the U.S. initiated and Iraqi politicians have been copying we have lost so much innocent blood.

Iraq’s share of democracy is death, division, homelessness, lack of basic and rudimentary amenities and escape into nowhere.

Is there an alternative to the fake democracy the U.S. has been selling to Iraq?

There will be no way out for Iraq as long as U.S. and Iraqi politicians laugh at each other.

There will be one crisis after another. Some of the problems will exacerbate and there will be no force on earth to contain them.

I think that summarizes things quite nicely.

Heckuva job, George.

That's Gotta Leave A Mark

Lawrence J. Korb, who served as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, has a scathing op-ed piece in today's Boston Globe in which he notes the competing goals of President Bush and President al-Maliki of Iraq.

The Bush administration envisions a prolonged US military presence in Iraq with hundreds of large bases, and with American forces free to conduct military operations against what they perceive as Iraq's internal and external enemies. The administration says this would achieve victory over the terrorists, who in its view were preventing Iraq from becoming a peaceful, stable democracy allied to the United States that could help contain Iran. Despite Friday's announcement, the president still insists he is against an artificial timetable for withdrawal.

The Iraqis see it differently. Maliki argues that the terrorists have been defeated and the United States needs to set a withdrawal date if it wishes to remain when the UN mandate expires. Why the difference between Maliki and Bush? There are at least four reasons.

First, Maliki knows that if the United States does not set a withdrawal date, the status of forces agreement, or even a memorandum of understanding, will not be approved by the Iraqi Parliament. A majority of the Iraqi Parliament has signed a letter to that effect. ...

Second, there were not that many foreign terrorists to begin with. Despite the administration's claim that we are fighting them (Al Qaeda) over there (in Iraq) so we do not have to fight them over here (the United States), the number of Al Qaeda loyalists who came into the country after the US invasion never numbered more than 2,000. ...

Third, with the rising price of oil, Iraq is awash in money and no longer needs US assistance to rebuild its war-torn infrastructure. ...

Fourth, the Shi'ite dominated Iraqi government is not as concerned about the threat from Iran as the Bush administration. Many of Iraq's Shi'ite leaders lived in Iran during the regime of Saddam Hussein and see the Iranians as Shi'ite allies with whom they can and should have a close relationship - unlike Bush who sees the Iranians as the second coming of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.

Lawrence Korb hardly qualifies as a DFH (he has Reagan credentials, after all), so his analysis does deserve some attention from the DC Villagers. It's not, however, as if Mr. Korb is telling anyone anything new. I'm certain that at least a few of those working in the White House are fully aware of each of Mr. Korb's four bullet points, but that really doesn't matter. The Petulant President has decided, and that is that.

The fact that the term "time horizon", a term that has absolutely no meaning, has been selected over "time table" is telling. This president insists our troops must stay forever, and must do so with complete immunity from Iraq law. Anything less means that somehow going to war was not the right thing to do (which it most definitely was not) and that Mr. Bush was wrong to do so. We can't have that, now, can we?

It is Mr. Korb's concluding words that display his complete disgust with this administration:

As recently as June, when the president said "you know, of course, we're there at their invitation," Bush never envisioned them actually telling us to leave before his mission was accomplished. Just as he misjudged and mismanaged the situation going in, it is clear that he is equally clueless about when to get out and regain control of US policy.

Yes, I think that just about gets it.

Hitting Too Close To Home

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is still stalling on the "security agreement" the White House is pushing. The agreement will result in American forces' remaining indefinitely in Iraq and will extend total immunity to those forces and to those in support positions. Now Mr. al-Maliki has another reason to stand back from the agreement, according to this op-ed piece in Iraq's Kitabat.

At dawn on Friday, a force of the American occupation of approximately sixty fighters with four large Apache helicopters attacked the village of Jnajah in the rural province of Karbala.

After the attack, Aqeel Khaz’al, one of the members of the Dawa Party and who serves as a governor of Karbala and who is connected to the United States operations, condemned the U.S. operation, which he described as a breach of the security agreement to hand over the security operations to the Iraqis in Karbala, and that the American criminals must be prosecuted by the Iraqi justice system. ...

After further investigations, it was confirmed that the American attack was aimed at a rural region inhabited by the tribe of Malik, from the Euphrates region and not the south, and that one of the attack’s victims, Ali abd al-Hussein al-Maliki, was directly related to Nouri al-Maliki.

In other words, the Iraqi Prime Minister was awakened and realized that America does not respect anyone in Iraq, including the cousins of Beni Malik in Karbala, even though he always condoned the crimes of the American forces throughout the years of his control, including the crimes of the American occupation in Sadr City in which the American occupation killed more than one thousand Iraqi martyrs and devastated the city, all without comments from the leaders in the Green Zone. And let’s not forget about the crimes in Sahat al-Nosour (Western Baghdad), and Hayaniya Square and Tanouma in Basra. [Emphasis added]

That's right. The US attack on Karbala, the one the Iraqis say killed 20 civilians, resulted in the death of a member of the Prime Minister's own family. Under the proposed agreement, that state of affairs will continue, a fact that the author of the article, Muhamed Haji Hassan, understandably is appalled by.

...You have seen that they kill and arrest without respect for Iraqi Sovereignty or the presence of the governor of Karbala. And what they did is a message to everyone that they will continue their approach after the agreement on security:

-Killing Iraqis without fear of Iraqi justice

-Detaining Iraqis in American prisons in Iraq

-Unilateral attacks on Iraqi cities without notifying the Iraqi government

-Unimpeded entry and exit of Iraqi cities where no one has a right to stop them.

-Free movement of any military equipment across the Iraqi border, including nuclear wastes which may be buried in Iraqi soil.

What President Bush is demanding is unlimited license for an unending occupation, one that could, as Sen. McCain has suggested with some unseemly glee, last a hundred years. It's unlikely that Iraqis will look kindly upon a Prime Minister who caves in to such a demand.

197 days.