Condi Rice criticizes Obama's leadership, proves she lacks anything resembling self-awareness or perspective

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Condi and Dubya. Sort of.

So Condi Rice is on the anti-Obama bandwagon, just like her pals Cheney and Rummy and rest of the detritus of the Bush II presidency:

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Barack Obama of dramatically weakening the United States' position in the world, drawing a straight line between Obama's ever-yielding foreign policy and the increasing troubles around the world.

"Right now, there's a vacuum," she told a crowd of more than two thousand attending the National Republican Congressional Committee's annual dinner last night in Washington, D.C. "There's a vacuum because we've decided to lower our voice. We've decided to step back. We've decided that if we step back and lower our voice, others will lead, other things will fill that vacuum." Citing Bashar al Assad's slaughter in Syria, Vladimir Putin's aggression in Ukraine, al Qaeda's triumphant return to Fallujah, Iraq, and China's nationalist fervor, she concluded: "When America steps back and there is a vacuum, trouble will fill that vacuum."

Oh, the sheer stupidity of the everything-is-Obama's-fault crowd, which is pretty much the same as the America-as-imperial-global-hegemon crowd, as if the president of the United States, any which one, can just snap his, or her, fingers and make the world bow before America's overwhelming might. That sort of worldview, connected to neoconservative ideological fervor, is as ignorant and childish as it is astoundingly dangerous and self-destructive.

And if you're looking to find fault for weakening America's standing in the world, how about, oh, throwing some blame at those who ignored a pre-9/11 CIA memo called "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," launched a second war on false pretenses (i.e., lies) while a first was still going on, and grossly mismanaged that second war while ignoring the first, turning Iraq into a chaotic vacuum and failing to do the job in Afghanistan, allowing al Qaeda and others to continue to thrive while also creating the conditions for terrorism as a movement and threat to grow in strength, all the while weakening America's core alliances, thoroughly obliterating its credibility and moral standing in the world as well as its capacity to engage militarily beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, and making the American people even more isolationist than ever.

And by the way, included among those who deserve that blame is not the president who rebuilt America's alliances, credibilty, and moral standing in the world, put an end to the bloody quagmire of a war in Iraq and the going-nowhere war in Afghanistan, shifted America's military resources to target al Qaeda, against enormous risk gave the green light to the operation to take out bin Laden, directly as a result of the new focus on al Qaeda, opened up diplomatic relations with Iran so as to work towards long-term peace and stability in the Middle East and to turn that country away from its nuclear ambitions, helped put an end to the brutal Qaddafi regime in Libya, and has otherwise carefully guided the U.S. through delicate international crises, from the Arab Spring to Syria to the current situation in the Ukraine, at a time when the American people want nothing of intervention and when there's really only so much even the president of the United States can do to achieve America's foreign policy goals.

So you said what, Condi? And you're blaming whom? Huh.

Veterans Day is a day to apologize

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From our friend Gordon at Alternate Brain:

Thank you for please not thanking me for my service on this Veterans Day. I don't need it and I don't want it. Instead, I think we should APOLOGIZE to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, the living, wounded, and dead, for being so horribly used IN OUR NAME for NOTHING but an imperialistic neocon wet dream that has come to naught but a terrible butcher's bill.

And for all you armchair militarists waving the flag and spouting knee-jerk jingoism, this guy's got real cred. So fuck off.

The mourning will begin shortly -- after this commercial announcement.

By Capt. Fogg

Pavlov rang the bell, the dogs drooled. The media directs, we mourn or we scorn -- we rage, we mock, we believe, we vote, we ignore.

At last, at least for a while yesterday, our media circus was forced to notice that there's a world outside the Seminole county Courthouse and took some time out from endless speculation and pointless discussion of the George Zimmerman trial to obsess about the Asiana airliner that landed short in San Fransisco. In fact as of Monday Morning, it's still "Breaking News" long after the wreckage has gone cold and the survivors taken to hospitals or released.

Yes, two people died, as did many others in transportation related incidents over the weekend. 67 people were murdered in Chicago, one of the gun control capitols of our nation. 10 people died horribly when their plane caught fire in Alaska but I didn't hear a thing about it on CNN, nor about the runaway train explosion that killed 5 with 40 still missing.as the maudlin dirge droned and the newsreaders groaned on and on speculating and conjecturing and playing the same interviews and showing the same pictures of a California runway until I gave up and turned it off.

Oh, the humanity.

Read more »

Bob Woodward attacks Obama for "a kind of madness"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Back when Bob Woodward mattered.

Honestly, it's hard to believe that anyone pays attention to this idiot anymore:

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward attacked President Barack Obama on Wednesday, saying the commander-in-chief's decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier because of budget cuts is "a kind of madness."

"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said Wednesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

"Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need' or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' as he did when Clinton was president because of some budget document?" Woodward added. "Under the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the president going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement. 'I can't do what I need to do to protect the country.' That's a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time."

Let's address this in order:

First, no, Reagan likely wouldn't have, but that's because he was an extreme militarist who didn't give a damn about the budget, in fact exploding the national debt with outrageous military spending. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, though, one could say that he was right to do so at the time because, you know, there was that whole Cold War going on and it was important to ramp up the military spending and spread the military's reach far and wide. I won't give him that benefit, but, regardless, it's silly to say that what was necessary then is necessary now.

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Why does PSY hate us?

By Frank Moraes

I don't read Glenn Greenwald every day, I quote Glenn Greenwald every day. He is a great writer who really gets to the core of political issues in a way that is rare indeed. Yesterday, he asked a question, "Which of these two stories is causing more controversy and outrage in the US?" And then he offered two quotes. The first was from the New York Daily News about anti-American lyrics written by Korean rapper PSY. The second was from The Guardian about American troops in Afghanistan targeting children with "hostile intent." His point that there is an uproar about the lyrics and silence about killing children in a foreign land.

His broader point is that Americans accept this myth that our government just goes around minding its own business and then people attack us for no reason at all! Now, Greenwald is not making the case that America is evil and we deserve to be attacked. Rather it is that these attacks don't come out of a vacuum. And until we grow up as a people and understand that, there will be ever more people angry at our policies of, for example, targeting Islamic children with our military.

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McCain, Graham urge Romney to call for Afghan War to go on indefinitely

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Hill:

Republican defense hawks are urging Mitt Romney to separate himself from President Obama on Afghanistan and back an extended presence for U.S. troops in the country.

The advice comes as the White House hits the halfway point in its timeline to withdraw all U.S. troops and after Romney faced criticism for not mentioning the Afghan conflict in his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination.

Interestingly, the total number of "defense hawks" cited in this article are two: John McCain and his sidekick Lindsey Graham.

So, really, what? It's these two plus the always-warmongering neocons who want the war to go on... and on... and on?

As Steve Hynd writes at The Agonist:

Madness. If there's one foreign policy move guaranteed to lose an incumbent this election, it would be exactly this. Over 75% of Americans think the US should get out of the Afghan quagmire sooner rather than later.

However, I don't think even Romney's that self-destructive...

I don't either.

Campaigning for America's longest war to continue without an end in sight and without any clear purpose (what exactly does "getting it right" mean, Sen. Graham?) would be disastrous, both because the war itself is deeply unpopular and because his only shot at winning the election is to keep blaming the president for the bad economy (and otherwise lying about the president's views and distorting his words at every possible turn) and hoping swing-state independents and undecideds lap up his bullshit, and while his campaign has certainly seen its share of self-destructive moves, there's no way he'll run with a hawk-fueled call for yet more war in Afghanistan, and threfore yet more bloodshed, which of course would mean putting America's troops in harm's way indefinitely for really no point whatsoever.

Then again, would it surprise you if Romney really were that self-destructive?

Foreign policy ignoramus Mitt Romney set to fight Cold War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From Think Progress:

Romney's campaign often sounds like it still wants to fight the Cold War. Romney himself said that Russia is the U.S.'s "number one geopolitical foe" (a statement that even Colin Powell mocked) and back in April, a Romney adviser criticized President Obama's "Czechoslovakia" policy. Today during a foreign policy debate at the Brookings Institution, senior Romney adviser Richard Williamson, attacking Obama's Syria policy, said the Middle East country is "strategically important to the Soviet Union."

At some point it's not just an innocent mistake anymore. We're past that point.

**********

And from the Obama campaign (which includes us on its media distribution list and has included us in its blog round-ups, for which we're grateful), ten of Romney's foreign policy fails, important to note as he travels overseas, plays up his non-existent bona fides, and lies about President Obama:

Two hundred and ninety-one days after his last foreign policy speech, Mitt Romney stood up once more to deliver a major foreign policy plan and -- once again -- failed to offer any new or even credible policy ideas.

Romney has long displayed a significant lack of knowledge and experience over the years when it comes to foreign policy. But the commander-in-chief only has one chance to make the right decision.

Here's a look at ten times Romney and his campaign got it wrong:

1.      Romney "has been especially vague about how many U.S. forces he would keep in Afghanistan" and has no detailed plan for our engagement in the country.

2.      Romney's campaign said "real Americans" don't care what Romney’s Afghanistan policy is.

3.      Before Osama bin Laden's death, Romney said he wouldn't go into Pakistan if we had bin Laden in our sights and that it was "not worth moving heaven and earth" to find bin Laden.

4.      Romney pledged "to do the opposite" of what President Obama has done for Israel, which includes record-level security funding.

5.      Romney called Russia, a strategic partner of the United States on vital issues, America's "number one geopolitical foe."

6.      When asked how he'd approach going to war with Iran, Romney has said he'd defer to his lawyers: "You sit down with your attorneys" so they can "tell you what you have to do."

7.      Romney has said that bringing all our troops home from Iraq was "tragic" and that it was a "naked political calculation."

8.      Romney "fled down a hallway and escaped up an escalator" to avoid answering a reporter about his position on the NATO mission in Libya.

9.      Romney called the fading power of Venezeula's leader Hugo Chavez a serious threat to our national security.

10.    Romney's campaign said President Obama was not doing enough to protect Czechoslovakia -- a country that no longer exists -- from "the Soviets."

Reckless and stupid isn't a good combination for the Oval Office when it comes to anything, but especially foreign policy.

And Mitt's got it in spades.

James Inhofe, like others on the right, slams Obama's Afghanistan trip, provides yet more evidence he's a relentless idiot, a shameless hyper-partisan hack, or some combination thereof

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So, as you may know, President Obama is in Afghanistan -- or was, I'm not sure of his schedule, and he may very well have left already.

On the one-year anniversary of the remarkable mission that resulted in Obama bin Laden's death, which he himself ordered and for which he deserves enormous credit despite all the hypocritical whining from conservatives, he met with U.S. troops at Bagram air base, telling them that "when we see our homeland violated, when we see our fellow citizens killed, then we understand what we have to do," and also that, alas, "the battle's not yet over."

He also addressed the American people, and the world, saying that "we've traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war. Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of new day on the horizon," a message of hope in a place where there isn't much of it -- and where he himself has continued a war seemingly without purpose, even if he is also ending it.

He also met with President Karzai and signed a partnership agreement with the Afghan government for the post-withdrawal period.

The trip was unannounced but certainly made a lot of sense. It's something any U.S. president would have done, and the anniversary of the death of bin Laden provided an obvious opportunity.

But of course conservatives refuse to give Obama credit for anything, including bin Laden's killing, and criticize him for everything. It's what they've done throughout his first teram and they're doing just that over this trip, saying that he's politicizing -- that is, trying to score political points off, bin Laden's death. (As if Romney appearing with 9/11 self-mythologizer Giuliani at a fire station in New York is somehow... not political? Yes, Republicans' political posturing really is breathtakingly inconsistent.)

You can find countless examples of conservatives huffing and puffing -- and, really, just whining over Obama's massive success (like here) -- or you can just read what Republican Sen. James Infofe said, which in its grotesque idiocy pretty much sums it all up:

We've seen recently that President Obama has visited college campuses in an attempt to win back the support of that age group since he has lost it over the last three years," Inhofe said in a statement. "Similarly, this trip to Afghanistan is an attempt to shore up his national security credentials, because he has spent the past three years gutting our military."

*****

"The security improvements and the killing of Osama bin Laden a year ago are great American victories that should not be politicized," he said.

So, basically, Obama shouldn't be allowed to campaign anywhere, shouldn't talk national security at all, and shouldn't even mention the killing of bin Laden. Not because these things are inherently wrong, mind you, but simply because he's a Democrat. You think Inhofe, or any of these other Republicans, would be criticizing a Republican president for doing any of this? Please. Did they criticize President Bush for his relentless politicizing of 9/11 and the "war on terror"? Of course not.

They're fucking hypocrites. And so transparently partisan, and in such a desperate way, as to be utterly ridiculous.

As usual.

An October Surprise: Will Israel attack Iran?

By Ali Ezzatyar 

The question of whether Israel or America will attack Iran has had a shelf life that is unheard of in international affairs, and the factors that weigh on a yes or no answer to the question have changed surprisingly little over the last ten years. But there is one variable that could alter everything this year: November.

Prior to, and in the early stages of the Iraq War, there was the notion in foreign policy circles that America could launch a military attack on Iran itself. America had an interventionist president driven by perceived ideals that made Iran seem like a perfect target. Such an attack would have been primarily designed to ensure the failure of Iran's nuclear program; the larger question was whether George W. Bush would try to take it all a step further and force regime change in Tehran. These were ideas being discussed as early as 2002; it wouldn't be farfetched to say an attack on Iran felt as imminent then as it does now.

The more "Mission Accomplished" became the biggest American foreign policy quagmire in generations, however, the less likely an American attack became. And somewhere around when the 3000th American military serviceperson was killed in Iraq, the idea that America could attack Iran for any reason had vanished into seeming impossibility. Until now, the ongoing instability in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the 2008 election of a president critical of recent American interventionism, continues to hamstring any notion that the United States could embark on a military venture against a bigger, more powerful, more complicated Iranian foe.

It was about the same time, during Iraq's most tumultuous moments of the last decade, that talk of a unilateral Israeli strike became prevalent. Israel has always been considered the primary beneficiary of such an attack, and hence the idea that their highly capable military could go it alone was always feasible although not preferable to an overwhelming American strike. Until recently, however, there was the notion that Israel would not act without America's approval. This was because the success-to-repercussions ratio for Israel was poor, but also because the chaos of war in Iraq and Afghanistan made intervention in Iran dangerous to America, Israel's most important ally, no matter who the attacking party was.

And since George W. Bush was seen as one of the most Israel-friendly presidents ever, America's hamstring was necessarily Israel's. The logic was that if Israel attacked Iran without America's go-ahead and help, America could get dragged into a third war, which could ultimately serve to tarnish U.S.-Israeli relations permanently. George W. Bush was thought to have put his neck on the line sufficiently for Israel, and we assumed then and know now that he drew a red line around Iran. A third war in the Middle East for George W. Bush would have been disastrous, even more definitively writing off George W. Bush as one of America's worst presidents, and ensuring failure in the 2008 presidential elections for any Republican candidate. After Obama's election, the writing was well and clearly on the wall for Israel: we are not attacking Iran, and neither are you. 

So why the history lesson?  If the foregoing is mostly true, I think we can draw two important conclusions:

First, not enough has changed elsewhere to make an American attack on Iran any more likely in the short term as it was five years ago. Afghanistan is increasingly unstable while Iraq's direction remains a huge question mark. Furthermore, Pakistan has come to resemble more and more an ally-turned-enemy, and any fallout from a breakdown in relations there could be catastrophic. There is just too much risk involved with an attack on Iran.

To the contrary, and more importantly, this is the most temperate climate for an Israeli attack on Iran we have seen. There are some obvious reasons, such as unprecedented Iranian isolation, Iran's reportedly nearing critical stages in its nuclear development, and recent accusations of assassinations of Israelis abroad. But there is something much more profound from an Israeli perspective.

A plurality of Israelis believe that Barack Obama is the least Israel-friendly president in American history. They harbor suspicions about his intentions in the region and generally believe he may abandon Israel in ways unprecedented to presidents before him.

An attack on Iran this year is unquestionably dangerous to Obama's reelection. There is no scenario where a unilateral attack by Israel will not hurt Obama's chances. We probably do not need to discuss how a failed attack, the most likely scenario of a unilateral Israeli strike according to most analysts, would be disastrous for U.S. interests and the president personally. But even a successful Israeli attack would wreak havoc on financial markets, on American interests in the region, and portray Obama as a man with no control over a key region for U.S. interests. This is the most likely scenario for an unlikely Republican win in November 2012.

Even if the American public is critical of an Israeli strike, the hawkish Republican candidate-turned-president, who has been distinguishing himself all year long on the principle of being forceful with Iran, comes to power with Israel's interests in mind. It is win-win for Israel.

If Israel waits long enough to ensure there is no sanction from an Obama administration for its attacking Iran, but not until after the elections themselves, it can both perform an operation it has been planning for years, and one which it sees as vital to its long-term survival, while supplanting the president of its largest benefactor that it wants to see gone anyway. Could Israel be planning an October, or perhaps August / September surprise? It wouldn't be the first time Iran has been used to win a U.S. election. (Remember this one?)

The odds of an Israeli attack on Iran are the highest they have been in ten years.

Is it wrong for U.S. troops to urinate on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, of course.

But I thought the troops could do no wrong. Ever. Isn't that what we hear constantly from the armchair militarists on the right (not just in the U.S. but here in Canada as well)?

**********

In all seriousness, this is, needless to say, horrible:

A video showing four United States Marines urinating on three dead Taliban fighters provoked anger and condemnation on Thursday in Afghanistan and around the world, raising fears in Washington that the images could incite anti-American sentiment at a particularly delicate moment in the decade-old Afghan war. 

(I'm not going to post the video here. You can find it by clicking on the links below.)

Look, I do generally respect the men and women in the armed forces, even if I usually don't agree with the missions they're on, nor with the warmongering political leadership that directs them, and even if I don't their generally right-leaning political views and outlook. And I certainly wouldn't hold the deplorable actions of a small handful of them against the rest of them. There are rotten apples everywhere.

But I think it's fair to ask: How much of this sort of thing is going on? If not urinating on corpses, how about violence against innocent targets? I understand that anything can happen in a war zone, and that it's unfair to expect those in combat to behave completely as if they were at home, but there are lines that just mustn't be crossed. And both the military and its civilian leadership would do well to do everything they can to prevent this sort of thing from happening. (Not just from being made public, from ever happening.)

Thankfully, the Pentagon is reacting strongly to the incident, with Secretary Panetta "condemn[ing] it in the strongest possible terms" and ordering an investigation. Gen. James Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, has also ordered an investigation.

And it's not just a horrible incident in and of itself. As Yochi Dreazen writes at The Atlantic:

The Afghan video is of particular concern because it has the possibility of becoming one of the dominant images of the war. U.S. night raids of Afghan homes, and inadvertent killings of Afghan civilians, are the primary sources of anti-American feelings within the country, but they've never been captured on film. The laughter and smirking of the Marines as they urinate on the corpses is also likely to further offend Afghans already disenchanted with the U.S.-led war effort in their country.

For all this, though, including the obvious damage to America's credibility and moral standing, as well as to the military generally, it's hardly surprising that some conservatives are actually cheering this on, defending the Marines. Talk about deplorable.

Ten years into it, what are we to make of the Afghan War?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

See Patrick Porter at The Duck of Minerva, one of my favourite foreign policy blogs, who has an overview of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the terrible that has resulted from that seemingly endless war. He concludes:

[T]he most profound significance of the invasion is that it led to the war in Iraq. Because America quickly overthrew the Taliban in a country infamous for being the 'graveyard of empires', this gave false confidence to the Bush II Administration, which concluded that it could do the same thing against the easy target of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Thus Afghanistan was the catalyst for a greater disaster in the Gulf, which in turn accelerated the erosion of American power in the world.

Including the erosion of American soft power, it must be added, its credibility, moral standing, and diplomatic clout. Obama has done much to try to reverse that erosion, but he has hardly been the sort of progressive world leader some of us hoped he might be, and so, ten years after the war began, the U.S. remains in Afghanistan, caught in an unwinnable struggle to achieve vague and ever-shifting objectives.

Yes, the brutal Taliban regime was "toppled," yes, life was made "more dangerous and insecure for Al Qaeda and its affiliates, yes, the effort to "transform Afghanistan into a strong, centrally-governed democracy" hasn't been entirely a failure (and certainly requires a great deal of time)...

But at a cost that, it would seem, is significantly greater than the meager benefits.

What to make of Obama's Afghan pullout

By Michael J.W. Stickings

NYT:

President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgement of the shifting threat in the region and fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America.

Umm... what goals? Isn't that the problem? They were never clearly articulated. The Taliban was removed from power, yes, but that was before Obama became president.

So what was the point?

A stable, democratic Afghanistan? Well, that's not the case?

Just stable? Again, not so much -- not with most of the country largely lawless and with Karzai being little more than mayor of Kabul.

The destruction of al Qaeda and the Taliban? Well, Osama may be dead, but America's enemies linger still. They may not be able to use Afghanistan the way they used to, but, again, that was achieved long before 2008.

Ah, Obama says, the "tide of war is receding," and Afghanistan no longer poses a terrorist threat. But it hasn't for some time.

Look, I'm not saying that the war needs to continue. I've been against it for a long time now. But it's pretty ridiculous essentially to declare victory and to say that the goals have been achieved. The president can only say that because the goals were never clear in the first place, nor when he ramped up the war with more troops, with an Iraq-like "surge."

So we need to ask again: What was it all for?

Or does it not matter anymore, what with the 2012 campaign underway and domestic political considerations weighing even more heavily than before?

Mr. Obama announced plans to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. The remaining 20,000 troops from the 2009 "surge" of forces would leave by next summer, amounting to about a third of the 100,000 troops now in the country. He said the troop reductions would continue "at a steady pace" until the United States handed over security to the Afghan authorities in 2014. 

Well, that's fine, even if it means three more years of war. But let's see what actually happens, and whether he sticks to the plan. Because, as Think Progress notes, the withdrawal of about 30,000 troops by 2012 would still leave more troops in Afghgnistan than were there when he took over the presidency. 

So what should we make of Obama's Afghan pullout? Not much. Yet.

(For more, see Carl's fine post from yesterday.)

NATO airstrike kills Afghan civilians. Yes, it's time to end this war.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

NYT:

Afghan officials said Sunday that a NATO airstrike had killed 14 civilians, most of them women and children, in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday night.

Local officials said the strike was aimed at Taliban fighters and missed, hitting two family homes.

But in a conflicting account, a high-level NATO official said Sunday night that nine civilians were killed in the strike, which was aimed at five insurgents who attacked a coalition foot patrol and killed a Marine. The insurgents continued to fire from inside a compound when NATO forces called in the strike.

"Unfortunately, the compound the insurgents purposefully occupied was later discovered to house innocent civilians," the official, Maj. Gen. John Toolan, commander of NATO forces in the Southwest region, said in a statement. The general apologized for the civilian deaths on behalf of all coalition forces, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top coalition commander in Afghanistan, and said the investigation into the episode was continuing.

"While I know there is no price on human life, we will ensure that we make amends with the families in accordance with Afghan culture," he said. 

This isn't about "us" being as bad as "them," it's about the quagmire the Afghan War has become, that it has been for a long time now. And making "amends" just won't cut it. It's time to get out.

Now, I'm not sure Hamid Karzai's "last warning" really means anything. NATO (and particularly the U.S.) will stay in Afghanistan as long as it wants.

But what is the point of staying? What is the war for?

There are several answers to that question -- including supporting the country's "government" (i.e., Karzai, who barely controls Kabul), rooting out the Taliban in the name of the "war on terror," building a sustainable state with a legitimate democratic government, as well as a healthy civil society, etc.) -- but not a single one is satisfactory anymore.

It may be impossible to avoid civilian casualties entirely, but this latest incident serves as a reminder of just how pointless the war has become.

Killing in Afghanistan

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Our must-read of the day is "The Kill Team" by Mark Boal, posted the other day at Rolling Stone. What's it about?

How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses – and how their officers failed to stop them.

It's disturbing, but it's important. Take the time.

Is Libya the antidote to Iraq Syndrome?

By Nicholas Wilbur

When President Obama announced on March 18, 2011, that he would deploy the United States military in order to enforce a United Nations resolution, there was little doubt that the intervention on behalf of the Libyan people was not solely dedicated to their protection, even if that was the primary justification for the mission.

Nobody's jaw dropped when Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) told MSNBC three days later, "We are in Libya because of oil."

With the Arab world in chaos, anxieties over the future of oil production spiked gasoline prices by 20 percent in a matter of weeks. On par with the economy and the unemployment rate, gas prices determine elections. Unfortunately, high gas prices do not justify military intervention. Luckily, the potential for mass murder does.

The American people already have abandoned their aversion to yet another military endeavor, mainly because the administration and the media have joined forces to reassure the public that Libya is not an invasion, a war, or an occupation. 

Unlike "Operation Enduring Freedom" in Afghanistan, which was an eye-for-an-eye assault on the elusive mastermind behind Sept. 11, 2001, and unlike "Operation Iraqi Freedom," which was sold to the American people based on false pretenses and hyped fears of mushroom clouds over major U.S. cities and weapons of mass destruction – and an invasion/war/occupation orchestrated by a millionaire oil company CEO who also happened to be the vice president, no less – Libya, conversely, has the potential to become the antidote to "Iraq Syndrome," an engagement that not only unifies the American public but that also reverses the reputation of the United States as a war-mongering, war-profiteering world police force.

The Libya intervention is not only a "just" mission, it is also "just" a mission. The president has promised both America and the international community that no ground troops will be deployed. 

In Afghanistan, there was an evil terrorist roaming around the hills laughing about his attacks on the World Trade Center. In Iraq there were (allegedly) chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

In Libya there is a dictator, Muammar al-Qaddafi, who has authorized aerial bombings of his own cities and deployed the army to hunt down and kill civilian rebels unsupportive of his regime. "Any Libyan" who "undermines the sovereignty of the state," who commits crimes against the army, or who opposes his reign "will be punished by death," Qaddafi said.

"We will show no mercy and no pity to them," he warned.

This "mission" is a political win-win for President Obama. However involved, however bloody, however defined by historians, the first phase of bombing the military facilities of a dictator is sure to give Obama a boost in the polls.

Beyond quelling fears of ever-higher gas prices, the use of military force against a world enemy has the potential to erase the image of Obama as a weak leader and an inexperienced and incapable commander in chief.

By framing the engagement as a humanitarian relief effort aimed at protecting the civilian rebels being targeted, incarcerated, and murdered by Qaddafi's troops, the administration can win the hearts of both the pro-military conservatives and the foreign policy isolationists on the left.

Conservatives are easy. They love a good fight against a bad guy, and Qaddafi is about as bad as it gets (worse, or at least on par with, Saddam Hussein). What's the point in having the greatest military on earth – and spending more on defense than every other developed country combined – if you don't flex a little military muscle every now and then? Furthermore, if we justified the dethroning of Saddam, Qaddafi, given his latest antics, should be no question.

Obama's announcement of military force in Libya:

"Let me be clear. These terms are not negotiable.

These terms are not subject to negotiation.

If Qaddafi does not comply with the resolution,

the international community will impose consequences.

The resolution will be enforced through military action."

Many liberals, on the other hand, prefer that America keep to herself. But they have a weakness for peace missions. With the support of France and Britain, the United States – by far the most militarily equipped for the initial strikes on key air force facilities – is leading the surge. But the intention is to turn the mission over to NATO, which would brand the intervention not as another U.S. war but as a unified international coalition fighting as one in order to ensure peace and democracy in the Arab world. By promising that no U.S. ground forces will be deployed, Obama has tried to turn the hearts of his own base. By employing the rhetoric of past commanders in chief – the "reluctance" to use military force, the pursuit of peace, the refusal of a dictator to agree to the terms of resolution drafted by an international coalition – Obama has earned a nod of approval from the entire world.  

As for the apolitical majority of American citizens, strong rhetoric about the coalition, about the humanitarian crisis, and about the potential of mass graves come second, third and fourth, respectively, to the bottom line. If gasoline prices fall in America because of the U.S. military's involvement in Libya, the ends will justify the means.

If Obama is lucky, historians will document the "mission" in Libya through a lens that focuses not on the political intentions or the casualties it caused, but on the national and international support it garnered.

_______________________________________________________

The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.

All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.

 – Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf –

• Libya poll: 70% of Americans back no-fly zone resolution in Libya, CNN poll finds – L.A. Times

• "No time for doubters" – The Economist

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

U.S. military fucks up in Afghanistan, killing children, strengthening Taliban

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Times:

Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan mountains were killed by NATO helicopter gunners who mistook them for insurgents, according to a statement on Wednesday by NATO, which apologized for the mistake.

The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old, were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to one of the war’s worst cases of mistaken killings by foreign-led forces. The victims included two sets of brothers. A 10th boy survived.

The NATO statement, which included an unusual personal apology by the commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said the boys had been misidentified as the attackers of a NATO base earlier in the day. News of the attack enraged Afghans and led to an anti-American demonstration on Wednesday in the village of Nanglam, where the boys were from.

Something tells me the personal apology from Petraeus isn't going to help much. As Comrade Misfit puts it, "[n]o matter how many clinics NATO sets up or how many schools are opened, the relatives of the dead children aren't going to be in a forgiving mood."

And neither, of course, will the Taliban, which only gets stronger each and every time the U.S. (and NATO) fucks up like this. As Andrew Sullivan puts it:

Of course this was a mistake. But it reinforces the human toll of fighting an insurgency you often cannot see in a region you cannot fully control where insurgents and civilians are often interchangeable. At some point, the inevitability of this kind of civilian death makes one reassess the justness of this long, long war -- and the chances of "success" whatever that now means.

Can you imagine how we would feel if nine American boys were slaughtered from the air by an occupying power? Does anyone think this kind of mistake -- inevitable in such a war zone -- can do anything but help the insurgency?

Maybe it was inevitable, maybe it wasn't. But the fact that it happened, along with the inevitable anti-American response from justifiably angry Afghans, reveals a great deal about a war that has turned into a quagmire of failure.

Americans would never put up with this. Why should we expect the Afghans to?

Did the U.S. military use "psy-ops" against senators and other officials?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings has a stunning -- but, when you think about it, not all that surprising, given what we know the military is capable of -- report on the use of so-called "psy-ops" against high-ranking American and foreign targets:

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

*****

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war.

Yes, and it's an indication of just what the U.S. military -- or parts of it, anyway -- think of the civilian leadership under which it supposedly serves.

It seems a bit like science fiction, but of course it's not. Psychological warfare -- "operations" against human targets -- is very real, even if poorly understood, not least by the public, and Steve Clemons, a commentator whom I respect a great deal, thinks it might even have worked, at least on Sen. Carl Levin. As Steve adds:

Caldwell should be fired. What he did, if Hastings has his details is right, is really outrageous and a further testament to the wobbliness of civilian control over the military in today's world.

But bigger question is whether any psy-ops operations were directed at the President of the United States and/or his direct team.

Someone needs to ask that in the White House press briefing.

Agreed on all points. If the allegations are true, the civilian leadership must assert its lawful authority and get rid of Caldwell and anyone else involved, just as it must assert its authority generally -- what else is the U.S. military doing that it shouldn't be, what else is it getting away with?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, as it's not clear what exactly happened, or even whether it happened. But questions do need to be asked, including of Obama and top military brass, and a serious investigation needs to be launched.

Because if it happened in any way like the way Hastings reports it did, even if happened just a little bit, with "psy-ops" used against U.S. and foreign officials, nothing less than American democracy itself was, and may still be, threatened.

I'm Pat f***king Tillman — why are you shooting at me?

By Edward Copeland 

That post title is the last words the former NFL star turned Army Ranger said before he was killed in Afghanistan by his own troops in 2004.

We are living in the Golden Age of Nonfiction. I thought it silly when the Oscars expanded best picture to 10 nominees, but I could live with them doubling the number of documentary feature nominees because documentaries get better and better. I have a difficult time cutting it down to five. I've only seen one 2010 documentary that I've given a negative review. More importantly, this meant that Oscar finalist The Tillman Story didn't make the final cut and it's the second-best 2010 documentary I've seen (so far).

For the Bush Administration, the wars in Afghanistan and later in Iraq weren't just campaigns for whatever reason they chose to give on any particular day, they also were part of a re-election strategy and whenever there was a chance to sell a positive story to the lazy eager-to-echo-anything press, they took it. So, when Pat Tillman, who earned millions in the NFL for the Arizona Cardinals, decided to give up his football career to join the fight against terrorism after 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told his subordinates to keep special watch on him. This was an American hero in the making that would make for great P.R.

Things didn't turn out that way exactly, though the government and high-ranking Pentagon officials did their best to keep their heroic scenario when Tillman was killed April 22, 2004, the initial story was the he died from enemy fire in an ambush, going so far as to credit him for saving the lives of some of his fellow soldiers and Gen. Stanley McChrystal awarded him the Silver Star posthumously. Just one problem: That was all a lie. Tillman died as a result of friendly fire and it took years and the persistence of his family to get at the truth.

Director Amir Bar-Lev gives a detailed portrait of who Tillman was both before and after his enlistment and with testimony from others who served with him, evokes a sense of outrage at the coverup, misguided accusations and fall guys the government used because their desired tailor-made American hero failed to pan out the way they envisioned. Ironically, during his unit's Iraq deployment Tillman was even there to witness the lengths they went in setting up the false tale of Pvt. Jessica Lynch's rescue. They were kept waiting 24 hours before retrieving Lynch to allow time for the camera crew to arrive. During his time in Iraq, Tillman also turned against Bush and the war effort, commenting to fellow soldiers that the Iraq war was "so fucking illegal." Bar-Lev keeps the focus moving with complete clarity and this documentary is quite a change-of-pace from his previous one, 2007's My Kid Could Paint That.

Narrated by Josh Brolin, The Tillman Story shows the true Pat Tillman, one that defied all stereotypes one would lump on the star athlete. He was a well-read man (Chomsky and Emerson; most religious texts, despite his atheism) who graduated from Arizona State with a 3.8 G.P.A. While the administration and the media were eager to wrap Tillman's decision to forgo his lucrative NFL career with a simple patriotic motive, Tillman himself refused interviews on the subject.

Even though both he and his very close younger brother Kevin joined up as Army Rangers, Tillman was determined to keep his reasons private. However, before he'd ever made the decision to enlist, various NFL players were filmed giving reactions to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and this footage was usurped by the Pentagon in their P.R. efforts to define Tillman's motive, be it true or not.

The entire Tillman family could be viewed somewhat as iconoclasts, compared to most Americans, so as far as I'm concerned that's what endears them to me all the more. When his family first learns of his death, they were given the false story of the ambush and the enemy fire. Still, even at the large, made-for-television memorial service Washington assembled (despite the fact that on his enlistment papers Pat Tillman specifically said he wanted no military funeral. Military officials even tried to take advantage of his grieving wife Marie to get Pat buried at Arlington.), while speakers spoke of God's blessings, etc., ignoring Pat's quite vocal status, like most of his family, as an atheist, his youngest brother Rich thanked the previous speakers for their thoughts but said, "Pat isn't with God. He's fucking dead."

Once soldiers on the scene spoke out and the Pentagon was forced to admit that Tillman was a victim of friendly fire, D.C. realized they picked the wrong family to screw with as his mom began a years-long campaign to get at the truth about the coverup. The story as told proves both inspiring and frustrating, as the Army drops so many documents, most redacted, upon Dannie Tillman, that she and another veteran start approaching them like some sort of crossword puzzle to decipher what names and words are blacked out.

In one of the most infuriating incidents, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, who Tillman served under in Afghanistan, went on ESPN and made comments to the effect that the reason the Tillman family wouldn't let it go and just accept the Army's story was that because they were atheists and didn't believe in God, it would be hard for them to accept any truths. Eventually, after they finally got a congressional inquiry, Kauzlarich was demoted in retirement and remains the only person who received any sanction for the coverup.

On the other hand, the soldiers who did speak to the truth, were all punished in other ways for essentially being whistle-blowers.

Credit for the excellence of The Tillman Story should also be given to Mark Monroe for compiling this massive amount of information into a workable script for Bar-Lev to direct into such a coherent, compelling and, yes, chilling film. It almost makes me want to synopsize the entire documentary, but it's better to see it for yourself.

The ultimate irony about Pat Tillman is that the Bush Administration wanted to mold him into a hero for their own cynical, political purposes but by the covering up of the way he died, it enabled us to see who the real Pat Tillman was and he was more patriotic and a hero on a far grander scale than any P.R. flaks could have dreamed up. It's tragic that he died the way he did, but it's reassuring to know that men like him still exist in the first place.

(Cross-posted at Edward Copeland on Film.)

Restrepo: Remembering again that war is real and John Wayne is long gone

By R.K. Barry

I saw a documentary a couple of days ago about American troops in Afghanistan. The film was made by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington. It's called Restrepo.

What I found most interesting was a comment by the filmmakers that they have received strong positive comment both from those opposed to the war and those more hawkish.

This is the promotional description:

RESTREPO is a feature-length documentary that chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. The movie focuses on a remote 15-man outpost, "Restrepo," named after a platoon medic who was killed in action. It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military. This is an entirely experiential film: the cameras never leave the valley; there are no interviews with generals or diplomats. The only goal is to make viewers feel as if they have just been through a 90-minute deployment. This is war, full stop. The conclusions are up to you.

Whatever one's politics, I would hope that this film reminds them that we should never forget what we do to soldiers when we put them in a combat situation, that we should always make political decisions with a clear understanding of their implications for everyone involved.

I thought the film was extremely well done. I found it moving and an honest attempt to do justice to the experiences of soldiers doing the fighting. I highly recommend it. 

There are a lot of things I would want to say about what makes young men and women join the military and go to war. There are things about the relationship between decision-makers and those who carry out their orders about which, in a democracy, we should always be mindful.

There are things about what I think are justifiable views on patriotism and other forms less savory that I believe we should discuss.

But these weren't the kinds of thoughts I was having as I watched this film.

Maybe it's because I grew up in the kind of working-class neighbourhood in which a lot of kids went off to war, some as draftees and some who joined. Maybe this is the reason I have a lot of compassion for those who find themselves being shot at and having friends die in conflicts the political dynamics of which are probably not very clear to them.

I was too young to go to Vietnam but not too young to know of families devastated by its impact. Today, largely due to social class and maybe age, I don't know many young people who have gone off to war, but it's not a total abstraction to me either.

My workplace is not far from the coroner's office where some soldiers killed in Afghanistan are brought once repatriated. More than once I have stood on the sidewalk to watch a long procession of cars wend its way through downtown streets. On one occasion I saw what was undoubtedly a young widow in the lead car with the window open. I could see her clearly. The look of pain on her face is impossible to describe – there's nothing abstract about that at all.

All the debates: why young men and women choose to go to war; the extent that economic class plays an important role; whether we should ever have been in these wars at all; what supporting our troops really means – these things are important discussions.

I'd suggest you find this documentary – Restrepo – and that you remember that wars are fought by young people who, once the shooting starts, seem to want only to get back home.

These wars have been going on too long, so long that we have forgotten the sacrifices that we are expecting of our soldiers, except in speeches that have become so clichéd we no longer think about what the words mean.

So little do we now seem to care about the people we put in harms way that it wasn't even an honourable mention as an issue in the last round of campaigning.

How sad is that?

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)