(The second of a two part series. Part I covered impeachments, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and the Patriot Act. Part II addresses FISA, Iraq, and more.)
6. Legislate treaty abrogation.
Article II of the Constitution requires two thirds of the Senate to ratify all treaties, but nothing in the Constitution or U.S. Code addresses treaty abrogation. This administration has unitarily abrogated at least three ratified treaties--the Geneva Convention, The UN Convention Against Torture and the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. One can also reasonably argue that the 2005 U.S.-India nuclear agreement was a violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The treaty ratification process is meaningless if the executive can single-handedly reverse it with a snap of the fingers, and treaties themselves are completely hollow if the other parties know we're not at all serious about keeping them.
The Senate must play a role in any treaty abrogation. Abrogation by a simple majority is not sufficient. We've seen how a Senate ruled by the sitting president's party becomes a rubber stamp. I propose that the same two thirds supermajority necessary to ratify a treaty be required to abrogate it.
I'm not sure if simple legislation would be sufficient to impose abrogation guidelines. It might be, since the Constitution doesn't allows the two legislative houses to make their own rules. But if Congress itself decides a formal constitutional amendment is the way to go, then I say go for it. Pursuing a treaty abrogation amendment beats the living spit out of pushing for one that bans gay marriage or allows Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president.
7. Bring the hammer down on FISA.
Let's leave the matter of data mining aside for a moment. I have yet to hear a single coherent argument that says the requirement to get a 72 hour retroactive warrant to spy on the phone calls of U.S citizens and permanent residents hampers the president's ability to protect America from terrorism. I don't care how long or cumbersome the FISA applications may be. They're mostly boilerplate, and they're on a word processing template. If the Justice Department needs more lawyers to fill the things out, they can hire more. There's no shortage of lawyers in Washington D.C. who know how to fill in the blanks of a Microsoft Word document.
What's the point of a retroactive warrant? It's all about keeping Big Brother honest. If he never has to answer to anybody about which Americans he's spying on and why, then he can spy on any American he wants for any reason he wants. And once he has the power to do that, you can bet a life's worth of phone bills that he'll abuse it.
8. Enact real federal election reform.
Nobody in Congress is likely to go for this, but these steps could truly reform the congressional campaign contribution process:
-- No more corporate contributions.
-- No private contributions from outside the state or district in which the election is being held.
-- Strict limits on PAC and Political Party spending in any state or Congressional district.
A change to the nature of the Electoral College could profoundly change presidential campaign spending strategies. If we trash the state-by-state "winner take all" electoral rules and make each state's electoral votes proportional to its popular vote, then individual states turn from red or blue to lighter and darker shades of purple. Party and PAC budgeters could no longer target "battleground states" because every state would be a battleground.
Please note that my Electoral College reform plan does not shift presidential elections to a purely "popular vote." The state-by-state proportion of electors would remain the same as it is now, so the vote of an individual in a small northeastern state would still count for three or four times the vote of an individual in a heavily populated western state. Still, though individual votes wouldn't all carry the same weight, they'd all count. Hopefully, that would bring more people to the polls who otherwise would have stayed home because they figured their minority vote wouldn't have mattered.
9. Enact real energy policy reform.
Yeah, we're addicted to foreign oil all right, Mister Bush. But as long as your Uncle Dick's big oil cronies dictate U.S. energy policy, we'll stay addicted for as long as those big oil cronies can make big money on foreign oil. This administration isn't going to do much about energy reform except talk about it to fool the proles into thinking they actually want to do something about it. Energy is the coin of power in the Next World Order. As long as we need foreign oil to run our country, we will to go to war to control the flow of it.
If there were ever a good reason to justify using the Constitution's commerce clause to dictate conditions to private enterprise, forcing the U.S. energy industry to rehabilitate our oil Jones is it.
10. Oh, yeah. Iraq.
General George Casey, U.S. commander in Iraq, recently said Iraqi forces will be ready to take over security responsibilities in 12 to 18 months. That sounds remarkably similar to what he was saying 12 to 18 months ago. In fact, the whole Iraq fiasco is starting to sound like a kid at bedtime saying, "Five more minutes, Dad," over and over and over and over…
We turn one corner after another; we stumble from one final throe to the next. Malarky Maliki tells our troops what they can or can't do in his country, and if his troops don't want to participate in a "joint" operation he approves of, he let's them stay behind while our guys get killed and maimed doing his dirty work for him. He insists we can't impose any deadlines on his government and that mouth breathing president of ours goes along and says, Yeah, that's right, we can't push deadlines on no sovereign nation like Iraq.
So our sovereign nation can't tell that sovereign nation when to get its sovereignty together, but that sovereign nation can tell ours what we can or can't do with our troops and when they can or can't leave that sovereign nation? Malaki's done nothing but screw up, yet we're letting him call all the shots and Bush is kissing his keyster.
I don't want timelines, or benchmarks, or even deadlines. I want ultimatums. We need to tell Malaki we're leaving in six months and if he doesn't like that, we'll leave right now.
Bush won't do that. Congress can and must.
Honorable Mention
My priorities are for a Democratic Congress to restore the legislature's checks and balances over the executive branch and turn our Barbecue Republic back into a real one. But I would also like to see a number of other legislations enacted early in a Democratic "contract with America."
-- Raise the minimum wage. If we allow American citizens to work for slave wages, we're making them slaves. Hasn't that been illegal for over a century now? Didn't we fight a civil war over that issue?
-- Repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. If one percent of the population owns 38 percent of the wealth and 100 percent of the politicians, does it not seem fair that they should bear the brunt of the tax burden?
-- Slash and burn defense acquisition. The U.S. presently spends as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. Where's the payoff on the investment? Our military didn't defend us against the 9/11 attacks and it isn't accomplishing our national aims overseas. The major Mobil/Exxon stockholders wouldn't put up with that kind of return, and their patron saint Dick Cheney wouldn't expect them to.
-- Slash and burn Homeland Security. They're doing a heck of a lousy job, aren't they? We'd be safer without them.
-- Expand AmericaCorps to fill the gaps in Social Security care of disabled Americans. Take the money needed to support the project out of the defense budget. Put the money to a use that actually helps Americans.
-- Trash the school voucher program and fix public education. We can fluff school financing the same way we can solve darn near all of our other problems. Lose a B-2 bomber. Lose an aircraft carrier. Lose a wing of F-22s. We'll never miss them. They don't make a dinar's worth of never mind to Ahmed the car bomber.
These are my thoughts on the subject of federal government change at the moment. I look forward to hearing yours.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Monday, October 30, 2006
My Democratic Congress Wish List (Part II)
(The second of a two part series. Part I covered impeachments, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and the Patriot Act. Part II addresses FISA, Iraq, and more.)
6. Legislate treaty abrogation.
Article II of the Constitution requires two thirds of the Senate to ratify all treaties, but nothing in the Constitution or U.S. Code addresses treaty abrogation. This administration has unitarily abrogated at least three ratified treaties--the Geneva Convention, The UN Convention Against Torture and the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. One can also reasonably argue that the 2005 U.S.-India nuclear agreement was a violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The treaty ratification process is meaningless if the executive can single-handedly reverse it with a snap of the fingers, and treaties themselves are completely hollow if the other parties know we're not at all serious about keeping them.
The Senate must play a role in any treaty abrogation. Abrogation by a simple majority is not sufficient. We've seen how a Senate ruled by the sitting president's party becomes a rubber stamp. I propose that the same two thirds supermajority necessary to ratify a treaty be required to abrogate it.
I'm not sure if simple legislation would be sufficient to impose abrogation guidelines. It might be, since the Constitution doesn't allows the two legislative houses to make their own rules. But if Congress itself decides a formal constitutional amendment is the way to go, then I say go for it. Pursuing a treaty abrogation amendment beats the living spit out of pushing for one that bans gay marriage or allows Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president.
7. Bring the hammer down on FISA.
Let's leave the matter of data mining aside for a moment. I have yet to hear a single coherent argument that says the requirement to get a 72 hour retroactive warrant to spy on the phone calls of U.S citizens and permanent residents hampers the president's ability to protect America from terrorism. I don't care how long or cumbersome the FISA applications may be. They're mostly boilerplate, and they're on a word processing template. If the Justice Department needs more lawyers to fill the things out, they can hire more. There's no shortage of lawyers in Washington D.C. who know how to fill in the blanks of a Microsoft Word document.
What's the point of a retroactive warrant? It's all about keeping Big Brother honest. If he never has to answer to anybody about which Americans he's spying on and why, then he can spy on any American he wants for any reason he wants. And once he has the power to do that, you can bet a life's worth of phone bills that he'll abuse it.
8. Enact real federal election reform.
Nobody in Congress is likely to go for this, but these steps could truly reform the congressional campaign contribution process:
-- No more corporate contributions.
-- No private contributions from outside the state or district in which the election is being held.
-- Strict limits on PAC and Political Party spending in any state or Congressional district.
A change to the nature of the Electoral College could profoundly change presidential campaign spending strategies. If we trash the state-by-state "winner take all" electoral rules and make each state's electoral votes proportional to its popular vote, then individual states turn from red or blue to lighter and darker shades of purple. Party and PAC budgeters could no longer target "battleground states" because every state would be a battleground.
Please note that my Electoral College reform plan does not shift presidential elections to a purely "popular vote." The state-by-state proportion of electors would remain the same as it is now, so the vote of an individual in a small northeastern state would still count for three or four times the vote of an individual in a heavily populated western state. Still, though individual votes wouldn't all carry the same weight, they'd all count. Hopefully, that would bring more people to the polls who otherwise would have stayed home because they figured their minority vote wouldn't have mattered.
9. Enact real energy policy reform.
Yeah, we're addicted to foreign oil all right, Mister Bush. But as long as your Uncle Dick's big oil cronies dictate U.S. energy policy, we'll stay addicted for as long as those big oil cronies can make big money on foreign oil. This administration isn't going to do much about energy reform except talk about it to fool the proles into thinking they actually want to do something about it. Energy is the coin of power in the Next World Order. As long as we need foreign oil to run our country, we will to go to war to control the flow of it.
If there were ever a good reason to justify using the Constitution's commerce clause to dictate conditions to private enterprise, forcing the U.S. energy industry to rehabilitate our oil Jones is it.
10. Oh, yeah. Iraq.
General George Casey, U.S. commander in Iraq, recently said Iraqi forces will be ready to take over security responsibilities in 12 to 18 months. That sounds remarkably similar to what he was saying 12 to 18 months ago. In fact, the whole Iraq fiasco is starting to sound like a kid at bedtime saying, "Five more minutes, Dad," over and over and over and over…
We turn one corner after another; we stumble from one final throe to the next. Malarky Maliki tells our troops what they can or can't do in his country, and if his troops don't want to participate in a "joint" operation he approves of, he let's them stay behind while our guys get killed and maimed doing his dirty work for him. He insists we can't impose any deadlines on his government and that mouth breathing president of ours goes along and says, Yeah, that's right, we can't push deadlines on no sovereign nation like Iraq.
So our sovereign nation can't tell that sovereign nation when to get its sovereignty together, but that sovereign nation can tell ours what we can or can't do with our troops and when they can or can't leave that sovereign nation? Malaki's done nothing but screw up, yet we're letting him call all the shots and Bush is kissing his keyster.
I don't want timelines, or benchmarks, or even deadlines. I want ultimatums. We need to tell Malaki we're leaving in six months and if he doesn't like that, we'll leave right now.
Bush won't do that. Congress can and must.
Honorable Mention
My priorities are for a Democratic Congress to restore the legislature's checks and balances over the executive branch and turn our Barbecue Republic back into a real one. But I would also like to see a number of other legislations enacted early in a Democratic "contract with America."
-- Raise the minimum wage. If we allow American citizens to work for slave wages, we're making them slaves. Hasn't that been illegal for over a century now? Didn't we fight a civil war over that issue?
-- Repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. If one percent of the population owns 38 percent of the wealth and 100 percent of the politicians, does it not seem fair that they should bear the brunt of the tax burden?
-- Slash and burn defense acquisition. The U.S. presently spends as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. Where's the payoff on the investment? Our military didn't defend us against the 9/11 attacks and it isn't accomplishing our national aims overseas. The major Mobil/Exxon stockholders wouldn't put up with that kind of return, and their patron saint Dick Cheney wouldn't expect them to.
-- Slash and burn Homeland Security. They're doing a heck of a lousy job, aren't they? We'd be safer without them.
-- Expand AmericaCorps to fill the gaps in Social Security care of disabled Americans. Take the money needed to support the project out of the defense budget. Put the money to a use that actually helps Americans.
-- Trash the school voucher program and fix public education. We can fluff school financing the same way we can solve darn near all of our other problems. Lose a B-2 bomber. Lose an aircraft carrier. Lose a wing of F-22s. We'll never miss them. They don't make a dinar's worth of never mind to Ahmed the car bomber.
These are my thoughts on the subject of federal government change at the moment. I look forward to hearing yours.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
6. Legislate treaty abrogation.
Article II of the Constitution requires two thirds of the Senate to ratify all treaties, but nothing in the Constitution or U.S. Code addresses treaty abrogation. This administration has unitarily abrogated at least three ratified treaties--the Geneva Convention, The UN Convention Against Torture and the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. One can also reasonably argue that the 2005 U.S.-India nuclear agreement was a violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The treaty ratification process is meaningless if the executive can single-handedly reverse it with a snap of the fingers, and treaties themselves are completely hollow if the other parties know we're not at all serious about keeping them.
The Senate must play a role in any treaty abrogation. Abrogation by a simple majority is not sufficient. We've seen how a Senate ruled by the sitting president's party becomes a rubber stamp. I propose that the same two thirds supermajority necessary to ratify a treaty be required to abrogate it.
I'm not sure if simple legislation would be sufficient to impose abrogation guidelines. It might be, since the Constitution doesn't allows the two legislative houses to make their own rules. But if Congress itself decides a formal constitutional amendment is the way to go, then I say go for it. Pursuing a treaty abrogation amendment beats the living spit out of pushing for one that bans gay marriage or allows Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president.
7. Bring the hammer down on FISA.
Let's leave the matter of data mining aside for a moment. I have yet to hear a single coherent argument that says the requirement to get a 72 hour retroactive warrant to spy on the phone calls of U.S citizens and permanent residents hampers the president's ability to protect America from terrorism. I don't care how long or cumbersome the FISA applications may be. They're mostly boilerplate, and they're on a word processing template. If the Justice Department needs more lawyers to fill the things out, they can hire more. There's no shortage of lawyers in Washington D.C. who know how to fill in the blanks of a Microsoft Word document.
What's the point of a retroactive warrant? It's all about keeping Big Brother honest. If he never has to answer to anybody about which Americans he's spying on and why, then he can spy on any American he wants for any reason he wants. And once he has the power to do that, you can bet a life's worth of phone bills that he'll abuse it.
8. Enact real federal election reform.
Nobody in Congress is likely to go for this, but these steps could truly reform the congressional campaign contribution process:
-- No more corporate contributions.
-- No private contributions from outside the state or district in which the election is being held.
-- Strict limits on PAC and Political Party spending in any state or Congressional district.
A change to the nature of the Electoral College could profoundly change presidential campaign spending strategies. If we trash the state-by-state "winner take all" electoral rules and make each state's electoral votes proportional to its popular vote, then individual states turn from red or blue to lighter and darker shades of purple. Party and PAC budgeters could no longer target "battleground states" because every state would be a battleground.
Please note that my Electoral College reform plan does not shift presidential elections to a purely "popular vote." The state-by-state proportion of electors would remain the same as it is now, so the vote of an individual in a small northeastern state would still count for three or four times the vote of an individual in a heavily populated western state. Still, though individual votes wouldn't all carry the same weight, they'd all count. Hopefully, that would bring more people to the polls who otherwise would have stayed home because they figured their minority vote wouldn't have mattered.
9. Enact real energy policy reform.
Yeah, we're addicted to foreign oil all right, Mister Bush. But as long as your Uncle Dick's big oil cronies dictate U.S. energy policy, we'll stay addicted for as long as those big oil cronies can make big money on foreign oil. This administration isn't going to do much about energy reform except talk about it to fool the proles into thinking they actually want to do something about it. Energy is the coin of power in the Next World Order. As long as we need foreign oil to run our country, we will to go to war to control the flow of it.
If there were ever a good reason to justify using the Constitution's commerce clause to dictate conditions to private enterprise, forcing the U.S. energy industry to rehabilitate our oil Jones is it.
10. Oh, yeah. Iraq.
General George Casey, U.S. commander in Iraq, recently said Iraqi forces will be ready to take over security responsibilities in 12 to 18 months. That sounds remarkably similar to what he was saying 12 to 18 months ago. In fact, the whole Iraq fiasco is starting to sound like a kid at bedtime saying, "Five more minutes, Dad," over and over and over and over…
We turn one corner after another; we stumble from one final throe to the next. Malarky Maliki tells our troops what they can or can't do in his country, and if his troops don't want to participate in a "joint" operation he approves of, he let's them stay behind while our guys get killed and maimed doing his dirty work for him. He insists we can't impose any deadlines on his government and that mouth breathing president of ours goes along and says, Yeah, that's right, we can't push deadlines on no sovereign nation like Iraq.
So our sovereign nation can't tell that sovereign nation when to get its sovereignty together, but that sovereign nation can tell ours what we can or can't do with our troops and when they can or can't leave that sovereign nation? Malaki's done nothing but screw up, yet we're letting him call all the shots and Bush is kissing his keyster.
I don't want timelines, or benchmarks, or even deadlines. I want ultimatums. We need to tell Malaki we're leaving in six months and if he doesn't like that, we'll leave right now.
Bush won't do that. Congress can and must.
Honorable Mention
My priorities are for a Democratic Congress to restore the legislature's checks and balances over the executive branch and turn our Barbecue Republic back into a real one. But I would also like to see a number of other legislations enacted early in a Democratic "contract with America."
-- Raise the minimum wage. If we allow American citizens to work for slave wages, we're making them slaves. Hasn't that been illegal for over a century now? Didn't we fight a civil war over that issue?
-- Repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. If one percent of the population owns 38 percent of the wealth and 100 percent of the politicians, does it not seem fair that they should bear the brunt of the tax burden?
-- Slash and burn defense acquisition. The U.S. presently spends as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. Where's the payoff on the investment? Our military didn't defend us against the 9/11 attacks and it isn't accomplishing our national aims overseas. The major Mobil/Exxon stockholders wouldn't put up with that kind of return, and their patron saint Dick Cheney wouldn't expect them to.
-- Slash and burn Homeland Security. They're doing a heck of a lousy job, aren't they? We'd be safer without them.
-- Expand AmericaCorps to fill the gaps in Social Security care of disabled Americans. Take the money needed to support the project out of the defense budget. Put the money to a use that actually helps Americans.
-- Trash the school voucher program and fix public education. We can fluff school financing the same way we can solve darn near all of our other problems. Lose a B-2 bomber. Lose an aircraft carrier. Lose a wing of F-22s. We'll never miss them. They don't make a dinar's worth of never mind to Ahmed the car bomber.
These are my thoughts on the subject of federal government change at the moment. I look forward to hearing yours.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
My Democratic Congress Wish List (Part I)
If the Democrats manage to win one or both houses of Congress come November, I hope they don't blow the victory by getting bogged down in political window dressing. Here's my "top ten" wish list of what I want to see a Democratic controlled Congress accomplish in its first six months months.
1. Fix the Patriot Act or axe it.
Does any one person in this country know what the Patriot Act actually says? The original version passed by the House--HR 361 RDS--is a compendium of changes to other laws, and updates to the Act are a compendium of changes to the original. It would take the work required of a doctoral thesis to hunt down the true implications of the Act on individual rights. We shouldn't have laws so complex that the average citizen can't understand them. If our elected representatives can't produce a version of the Act that the rest of us can understand, that means they don't understand it either, in which case what the hell were they doing when they voted for it?
If they can't produce a simplified version of the Patriot that they and their constituents can readily absorb, then they should repeal the thing entirely.
2. Impeach Donald Rumsfeld.
Article I of the Constitution gives the House of Representatives the "sole power of impeachment" and the Senate the "sole power to try all impeachments." Judgments in impeachment cases "shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States."
That's good enough for the likes of Rumsfeld. There's no need to put him in a cell and chain him to the ceiling, and break his legs, and water board him, and sic attack dogs on him, and put a woman's panties on his head, and lock him in a cold room, and cover him in feces, and put him in a dog pile naked with the rest of his neocon cronies, and force him to pleasure himself, and rape him with a Chemlite. All that and much more is waiting for him in the next world.
Article II states that, "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
Among Rumsfeld's many sins, treason and bribery might be difficult to justify in impeachment proceedings. Being an arrogant jerk isn't necessarily treasonous. Firing any general who doesn't agree with you and promoting every general who does isn't necessarily bribery. But any Secretary of Defense who goes to war without a post-hostilities plan, as Rumsfeld did, has committed a crime as high as a crime of office can get.
3. Impeach Alberto Gonzales.
What Rumsfeld did to the Iraq Gonzales did to the Constitution. As both White House Counsel and Attorney General, Gonzales was a key player in creating a virtually unchecked executive branch of government. Almost every extra-constitutional stunt Bush has pulled was done on "authority" of a legal position written by or under the supervision of Gonzales.
One might argue that you can't impeach someone for doing his job, but lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee--as Gonzales did regarding the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program--isn't part of anybody's job description. It's a high crime called "perjury."
4. Repeal the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
By passing this bill, Congress handed Mister Bush dictatorial powers. If it's ever challenged in the Supreme Court, there's a fair chance it will be declared unconstitutional, but you never know with this Supreme Court. And why put everybody through the bother, time and expense of a lengthy court procedure? Just strike the bill down.
5. Revise the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
The War Powers Resolution allows a president to commit troops to combat for up to 90 days before he has to get statutory authorization or a declaration of war from Congress. As this administration has illustrated, that's entirely too much latitude for an executive with a war-centric foreign policy to have.
I'd like to strip all authority for a president to commit troops to combat overseas, but given our global presence, I just don't think that's realistic. Things will happen in the future that require immediate military action by the executive, but in 90 days, a president like the one we have now could start a full-scale world war from which we might never extract ourselves.
Shrink that three-month window down to two weeks. That gives a president sufficient time to respond to a no-notice crisis that requires a short duration air operation, an embassy evacuation, and so on. But if he wants to do anything that might conceivably take longer than fourteen days, he'll have to go to Congress first. So if this president decides he wants to start doing blockade ops against Korea or Iran, he'll have to get a buy in from the legislature.
And oh, the new resolution has to contain language that prevents a president from going around Congress by acting under authority of a UN resolution. UN resolutions are fine and dandy, but they aren't a substitute for legislation by Congress.
(Part II will discuss treaties, election reform, Iraq and more.)
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
1. Fix the Patriot Act or axe it.
Does any one person in this country know what the Patriot Act actually says? The original version passed by the House--HR 361 RDS--is a compendium of changes to other laws, and updates to the Act are a compendium of changes to the original. It would take the work required of a doctoral thesis to hunt down the true implications of the Act on individual rights. We shouldn't have laws so complex that the average citizen can't understand them. If our elected representatives can't produce a version of the Act that the rest of us can understand, that means they don't understand it either, in which case what the hell were they doing when they voted for it?
If they can't produce a simplified version of the Patriot that they and their constituents can readily absorb, then they should repeal the thing entirely.
2. Impeach Donald Rumsfeld.
Article I of the Constitution gives the House of Representatives the "sole power of impeachment" and the Senate the "sole power to try all impeachments." Judgments in impeachment cases "shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States."
That's good enough for the likes of Rumsfeld. There's no need to put him in a cell and chain him to the ceiling, and break his legs, and water board him, and sic attack dogs on him, and put a woman's panties on his head, and lock him in a cold room, and cover him in feces, and put him in a dog pile naked with the rest of his neocon cronies, and force him to pleasure himself, and rape him with a Chemlite. All that and much more is waiting for him in the next world.
Article II states that, "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
Among Rumsfeld's many sins, treason and bribery might be difficult to justify in impeachment proceedings. Being an arrogant jerk isn't necessarily treasonous. Firing any general who doesn't agree with you and promoting every general who does isn't necessarily bribery. But any Secretary of Defense who goes to war without a post-hostilities plan, as Rumsfeld did, has committed a crime as high as a crime of office can get.
3. Impeach Alberto Gonzales.
What Rumsfeld did to the Iraq Gonzales did to the Constitution. As both White House Counsel and Attorney General, Gonzales was a key player in creating a virtually unchecked executive branch of government. Almost every extra-constitutional stunt Bush has pulled was done on "authority" of a legal position written by or under the supervision of Gonzales.
One might argue that you can't impeach someone for doing his job, but lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee--as Gonzales did regarding the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program--isn't part of anybody's job description. It's a high crime called "perjury."
4. Repeal the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
By passing this bill, Congress handed Mister Bush dictatorial powers. If it's ever challenged in the Supreme Court, there's a fair chance it will be declared unconstitutional, but you never know with this Supreme Court. And why put everybody through the bother, time and expense of a lengthy court procedure? Just strike the bill down.
5. Revise the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
The War Powers Resolution allows a president to commit troops to combat for up to 90 days before he has to get statutory authorization or a declaration of war from Congress. As this administration has illustrated, that's entirely too much latitude for an executive with a war-centric foreign policy to have.
I'd like to strip all authority for a president to commit troops to combat overseas, but given our global presence, I just don't think that's realistic. Things will happen in the future that require immediate military action by the executive, but in 90 days, a president like the one we have now could start a full-scale world war from which we might never extract ourselves.
Shrink that three-month window down to two weeks. That gives a president sufficient time to respond to a no-notice crisis that requires a short duration air operation, an embassy evacuation, and so on. But if he wants to do anything that might conceivably take longer than fourteen days, he'll have to go to Congress first. So if this president decides he wants to start doing blockade ops against Korea or Iran, he'll have to get a buy in from the legislature.
And oh, the new resolution has to contain language that prevents a president from going around Congress by acting under authority of a UN resolution. UN resolutions are fine and dandy, but they aren't a substitute for legislation by Congress.
(Part II will discuss treaties, election reform, Iraq and more.)
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Friday, October 27, 2006
A Tonkin Gulf in the Arabian Gulf?
Also posted at Kos. Stop by and recommend if you like.
I'm not yet convinced that a war with Iran or Korea is inevitable, but I don't dismiss the possibility that at the highest levels of the White House, such wars are already a done deal.
Daniel Ellsburg is among the latest high profile political figures to suggest that we may soon see a replay of the Tonkin Gulf incident. Ellsburg is the former State Department official who "leaked" the so-called Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. Among other things, the Papers implied that LBJ used exaggerated reports of engagements in the Tonkin Gulf between U.S. and North Vietnamese naval forces to justify pre-planned expansion of air and ground operations in Vietnam. Ellsburg and others fear that the current U.S. naval "build up" in the Arabian Gulf region could produce a déjà vu all over again situation. I think that's entirely too possible, and am also concerned that the same sort of thing could happen with North Korea.
Rules of Engagement and War Powers
Americans should be aware of two key war fighting doctrine documents, both of which are unclassified and available through official government sources.
First of these is the Standing Rules of Engagement for US Forces, last updated in January of 2000. The key concept--or "prime directive," if you will--of the SROE is the Inherent Right of Self Defense:
The Inherent Right of Self Defense exists under all circumstances--peacetime, wartime and in-between time, and no other directed constraints or limitations restrict that right. Embedded in the Self Defense doctrine are four key terms.
-- Necessity. Exists when a hostile act occurs or when a force or
terrorist(s) exhibits hostile intent.
-- Proportionality. Force used to counter a hostile act or
demonstrated hostile intent must be reasonable in intensity, duration, and magnitude to the perceived or demonstrated threat based on all facts known to the commander at the time.
-- Hostile Act. An attack or other use of force against the United
States, US forces, and, in certain circumstances, US nationals, their
property, US commercial assets, and/or other designated non-US forces,
foreign nationals and their property. It is also force used directly to
preclude or impede the mission and/or duties of US forces, including the
recovery of US personnel and vital US Government property.
-- Hostile Intent. The threat of imminent use of force against the United States, US forces, and in certain circumstances, US nationals, their property, US commercial assets, and/or other designated non-US forces, foreign nationals and their property. Also, the threat of force to preclude or impede the mission and/or duties of US forces, including the recovery of US personnel or vital USG property.
Where Things Get Tricky
Commanders and individuals are not only expected to respond proportionally when attacked, they have an obligation to do so when "the threat of imminent force exists."
Say you're in command of a U.S. Navy missile destroyer steaming in international waters off the coast of Iran or North Korea or wherever conducting blockade operations. Tensions between the U.S. and the target country are high. It's the middle of the night. You have no fixed wing or helicopter air cover. A group of three surface contacts in formation pop up on the edge of your radar horizon, coming from the direction of a known enemy port that harbors patrol boats and steaming straight toward you at flank speed. Given that innocent merchant ships don't leave port in formation at flank speed, you know these three ships have to be military patrol boats. Given the range of modern surface-to-surface weapons, you know you're already within range of theirs. You can also reasonably assume it's a given that they have you targeted; otherwise they wouldn't be steaming straight toward you at flank speed. And given the capabilities of modern surface-to-surface missiles versus your missile defense systems, it's a given that if they shoot off a volley of six or more missiles at your ship, one or more of them will hit it.
How long do you wait before you decide it's "necessary" to do it to them before they do it to you, and your ship, and the 200 plus members of your crew?
And what measure of "proportionality" does it take to do what's necessary short of whacking the patrol boats with your own surface-to-surface missiles?
Where Things Get Trickier
So you pop off some surface-to-surface missiles of your own and sink the three patrol boats, and report the engagement to higher authority. National Command Authority (NCA, which is the President and the Secretary of Defense) uses this incident as an excuse to unleash a larger, pre-planned operation against the enemy.
When the smoke clears, the enemy claims that the three patrol boats were merely getting underway at flank speed in response to an SOS plea from a small merchant ship that was wallowing off of coastal waters.
Then it sucks to be you. The National Command Authority has high cover for unleashing its pre-planned offensive operation, and you wind up in the bottom of the dumpster.
Where Things Get Trickiest
I'm just saying…
If you are the destroyer skipper who the NCA used to justify their hidden war agenda, you might think that Congress had some sort of power to reign them in. But you'd be wrong.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973, originally intended to restrict presidential authority to start another Vietnam, actually does the exact opposite. It gives a president up to 90 days to conduct full-scale wars overseas without so much as a by your leave from Congress or anybody. And three months into any war in which the U.S. has suffered combat casualties, is it likely that any Congress would pull the plug on it?
Tricky Dick's Progeny
You'd like to think that the Bush administration chicken hawks aren't hatter-class mad enough to pull the kind of stunt I've just described, but consider the stunts they've already pulled on Iraq.
Richard Nixon protégés Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are still in power, and anyone who doesn't suffer from autism knows there's no skullduggery they're not above.
Acorns and trees, and all that.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
I'm not yet convinced that a war with Iran or Korea is inevitable, but I don't dismiss the possibility that at the highest levels of the White House, such wars are already a done deal.
Daniel Ellsburg is among the latest high profile political figures to suggest that we may soon see a replay of the Tonkin Gulf incident. Ellsburg is the former State Department official who "leaked" the so-called Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. Among other things, the Papers implied that LBJ used exaggerated reports of engagements in the Tonkin Gulf between U.S. and North Vietnamese naval forces to justify pre-planned expansion of air and ground operations in Vietnam. Ellsburg and others fear that the current U.S. naval "build up" in the Arabian Gulf region could produce a déjà vu all over again situation. I think that's entirely too possible, and am also concerned that the same sort of thing could happen with North Korea.
Rules of Engagement and War Powers
Americans should be aware of two key war fighting doctrine documents, both of which are unclassified and available through official government sources.
First of these is the Standing Rules of Engagement for US Forces, last updated in January of 2000. The key concept--or "prime directive," if you will--of the SROE is the Inherent Right of Self Defense:
A commander has the authority and obligation to use all necessary means available and to take all appropriate actions to defend that commander's unit and other US forces in the vicinity from a hostile act or demonstration of hostile intent. Neither these rules, nor the supplemental measures activated to augment these rules, limit this inherent right and obligation. At all times, the requirements of necessity and proportionality, as amplified in these SROE, will form the basis for the judgment of the on-scene commander (OSC) or individual as to what constitutes an appropriate response to a particular hostile act or demonstration of hostile intent.
The Inherent Right of Self Defense exists under all circumstances--peacetime, wartime and in-between time, and no other directed constraints or limitations restrict that right. Embedded in the Self Defense doctrine are four key terms.
-- Necessity. Exists when a hostile act occurs or when a force or
terrorist(s) exhibits hostile intent.
-- Proportionality. Force used to counter a hostile act or
demonstrated hostile intent must be reasonable in intensity, duration, and magnitude to the perceived or demonstrated threat based on all facts known to the commander at the time.
-- Hostile Act. An attack or other use of force against the United
States, US forces, and, in certain circumstances, US nationals, their
property, US commercial assets, and/or other designated non-US forces,
foreign nationals and their property. It is also force used directly to
preclude or impede the mission and/or duties of US forces, including the
recovery of US personnel and vital US Government property.
-- Hostile Intent. The threat of imminent use of force against the United States, US forces, and in certain circumstances, US nationals, their property, US commercial assets, and/or other designated non-US forces, foreign nationals and their property. Also, the threat of force to preclude or impede the mission and/or duties of US forces, including the recovery of US personnel or vital USG property.
Where Things Get Tricky
Commanders and individuals are not only expected to respond proportionally when attacked, they have an obligation to do so when "the threat of imminent force exists."
Say you're in command of a U.S. Navy missile destroyer steaming in international waters off the coast of Iran or North Korea or wherever conducting blockade operations. Tensions between the U.S. and the target country are high. It's the middle of the night. You have no fixed wing or helicopter air cover. A group of three surface contacts in formation pop up on the edge of your radar horizon, coming from the direction of a known enemy port that harbors patrol boats and steaming straight toward you at flank speed. Given that innocent merchant ships don't leave port in formation at flank speed, you know these three ships have to be military patrol boats. Given the range of modern surface-to-surface weapons, you know you're already within range of theirs. You can also reasonably assume it's a given that they have you targeted; otherwise they wouldn't be steaming straight toward you at flank speed. And given the capabilities of modern surface-to-surface missiles versus your missile defense systems, it's a given that if they shoot off a volley of six or more missiles at your ship, one or more of them will hit it.
How long do you wait before you decide it's "necessary" to do it to them before they do it to you, and your ship, and the 200 plus members of your crew?
And what measure of "proportionality" does it take to do what's necessary short of whacking the patrol boats with your own surface-to-surface missiles?
Where Things Get Trickier
So you pop off some surface-to-surface missiles of your own and sink the three patrol boats, and report the engagement to higher authority. National Command Authority (NCA, which is the President and the Secretary of Defense) uses this incident as an excuse to unleash a larger, pre-planned operation against the enemy.
When the smoke clears, the enemy claims that the three patrol boats were merely getting underway at flank speed in response to an SOS plea from a small merchant ship that was wallowing off of coastal waters.
Then it sucks to be you. The National Command Authority has high cover for unleashing its pre-planned offensive operation, and you wind up in the bottom of the dumpster.
Where Things Get Trickiest
I'm just saying…
If you are the destroyer skipper who the NCA used to justify their hidden war agenda, you might think that Congress had some sort of power to reign them in. But you'd be wrong.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973, originally intended to restrict presidential authority to start another Vietnam, actually does the exact opposite. It gives a president up to 90 days to conduct full-scale wars overseas without so much as a by your leave from Congress or anybody. And three months into any war in which the U.S. has suffered combat casualties, is it likely that any Congress would pull the plug on it?
Tricky Dick's Progeny
You'd like to think that the Bush administration chicken hawks aren't hatter-class mad enough to pull the kind of stunt I've just described, but consider the stunts they've already pulled on Iraq.
Richard Nixon protégés Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are still in power, and anyone who doesn't suffer from autism knows there's no skullduggery they're not above.
Acorns and trees, and all that.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Bush: More Dubya Talk on Iraq
If the people running our woebegone war in Iraq were as good at running the war as they are at spinning it, they wouldn't have to spin it.
Young Mister Bush's Wednesday morning press briefing in the East Room , touted by MSNBC's Rita Crosby as a "sober assessment" about the Iraq situation, was the same pile of bull feathers we've been hearing since the "fall" of Baghdad. If that was a "sober assessment," I want some of whatever Bush and Rita are drinking.
Shifty Tactics
"As the enemy shifts tactics, we are shifting our tactics as well," Mister Bush said in his prepared speech, as though that were something to brag about. Whenever you're shifting tactics to adapt to your enemy's, your enemy has the initiative, and if the key to your strategy is reacting to the enemy's tactics, you have no strategy. If you have no coherent strategy, no amount of "faith based" policy will bring you "victory" or "get the job done," regardless of how adamantly you refuse to define what "victory" or "the job" is.
Hence the major fallacy in Bush's remark, "Our commanders on the ground are constantly adjusting our tactics to stay ahead of our enemies." But no, Mister Bush, they're not staying ahead of our enemies. Our latest "crackdown" in Baghdad is a bust and al Qaeda linked gunmen in Ramadi have declared the city part of a separate Islamic state.
"Americans have no intention of taking sides in a sectarian struggle or standing in the crossfire between rival factions," Mister Bush said. And yet that's exactly what American troops are doing. The best of intentions are always trumped by reality. But we wouldn't expect Mister Bush to take no never mind of that "reality" stuff.
"Some of the Iraqi security forces have performed below expectations," he said. No, Mister Bush, all of the Iraqi forces have performed below expectations. They've either refused to fight other Iraqis or have formed death squads who are not answerable to the central Iraqi government.
"We learned some key lessons from that early phase in the war," Bush said. Where's the evidence of our having learned anything?
"As General Casey reported yesterday in Iraq, the men and women of the armed forces have never lost a battle in over three years in the war." Is it possible the neither Casey nor Bush understand what a frank admission of failure this statement is? U.S. troops have won a thousand battles yet they're losing the war.
Perhaps this misunderstanding of the difference between tactics and strategy is what led Mister Bush to say, “I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq; I’m not satisfied, either,” despite the fact that the Secretary of Defense and the key generals in charge of the unsatisfactory situation are still in place and Bush gives no indication that he'll remove them.
Also still in place is U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Kahlilzad, a charter member of the Project for the New American Century that formulated the Iraq invasion policy in the late 90s. According to Bush, Kahlilzad has laid out a "new" three step strategic approach:
There is nothing new in any of this. It hasn't worked in the past and it isn't working now.
Explaining why Mister Bush chose Wednesday to give a major address on the war, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said, “It’s important for the president’s voice to be heard in his own words.”
I agree with that. It's important for everyone to hear just how clueless their commander in chief is when it comes to conducting armed conflict. Bush and his sidemen still seem to believe that the same kinds of glittering generalities and talking points that win elections can win wars. They're wrong of course, but then winning the next election has always been more important to them than winning the current war.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Young Mister Bush's Wednesday morning press briefing in the East Room , touted by MSNBC's Rita Crosby as a "sober assessment" about the Iraq situation, was the same pile of bull feathers we've been hearing since the "fall" of Baghdad. If that was a "sober assessment," I want some of whatever Bush and Rita are drinking.
Shifty Tactics
"As the enemy shifts tactics, we are shifting our tactics as well," Mister Bush said in his prepared speech, as though that were something to brag about. Whenever you're shifting tactics to adapt to your enemy's, your enemy has the initiative, and if the key to your strategy is reacting to the enemy's tactics, you have no strategy. If you have no coherent strategy, no amount of "faith based" policy will bring you "victory" or "get the job done," regardless of how adamantly you refuse to define what "victory" or "the job" is.
Hence the major fallacy in Bush's remark, "Our commanders on the ground are constantly adjusting our tactics to stay ahead of our enemies." But no, Mister Bush, they're not staying ahead of our enemies. Our latest "crackdown" in Baghdad is a bust and al Qaeda linked gunmen in Ramadi have declared the city part of a separate Islamic state.
"Americans have no intention of taking sides in a sectarian struggle or standing in the crossfire between rival factions," Mister Bush said. And yet that's exactly what American troops are doing. The best of intentions are always trumped by reality. But we wouldn't expect Mister Bush to take no never mind of that "reality" stuff.
"Some of the Iraqi security forces have performed below expectations," he said. No, Mister Bush, all of the Iraqi forces have performed below expectations. They've either refused to fight other Iraqis or have formed death squads who are not answerable to the central Iraqi government.
"We learned some key lessons from that early phase in the war," Bush said. Where's the evidence of our having learned anything?
"As General Casey reported yesterday in Iraq, the men and women of the armed forces have never lost a battle in over three years in the war." Is it possible the neither Casey nor Bush understand what a frank admission of failure this statement is? U.S. troops have won a thousand battles yet they're losing the war.
Perhaps this misunderstanding of the difference between tactics and strategy is what led Mister Bush to say, “I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq; I’m not satisfied, either,” despite the fact that the Secretary of Defense and the key generals in charge of the unsatisfactory situation are still in place and Bush gives no indication that he'll remove them.
Also still in place is U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Kahlilzad, a charter member of the Project for the New American Century that formulated the Iraq invasion policy in the late 90s. According to Bush, Kahlilzad has laid out a "new" three step strategic approach:
First, we're working with political and religious leaders across Iraq, urging them to take steps to restrain their followers and stop sectarian violence.
Second, we're helping Iraqi leaders to complete work on a national compact to resolve the most difficult issues dividing their country. The new Iraqi government has condemned violence from all quarters and agreed to a schedule for resolving issues such as disarming illegal militias and death squads, sharing oil revenues, amending the Iraqi constitution and reforming the de-Baathification process.
Third, we are reaching out to Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, asking them to support the Iraqi government's efforts to persuade Sunni insurgents to lay down their arms and accept national reconciliation.
There is nothing new in any of this. It hasn't worked in the past and it isn't working now.
Explaining why Mister Bush chose Wednesday to give a major address on the war, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said, “It’s important for the president’s voice to be heard in his own words.”
I agree with that. It's important for everyone to hear just how clueless their commander in chief is when it comes to conducting armed conflict. Bush and his sidemen still seem to believe that the same kinds of glittering generalities and talking points that win elections can win wars. They're wrong of course, but then winning the next election has always been more important to them than winning the current war.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
War Talk: Mad Dogs and Generals and Iraq
It's embarrassing to realize how long the neoconservatives have been able to double talk their way around their falsehoods and fumbles in Iraq. We've heard daily changing rationales for invading the country, of corners turned, purple fingers raised, real progress and last throes. Any mention of quagmires, insurgencies and civil was has been dismissed as "Henny Penny sky is falling" talk. Critics of the war and its conduct are called "defeatists," "cowards" and worse.
Since the White House Information Group (WHIG) formed in summer of 2002 to sell the invasion, we've heard noting but untruths and denials about this woebegone war, and the deluge of bunker mentality bunk shows no sign of abating.
Praying the Course
The rhetoric of most of our senior-most active duty military officers has been delusional to date, but lately it's broken the threshold of bull-goose lunacy.
On October 19, Joint Chiefs chairman General Peter Pace told an audience in Florida that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "…leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country."
If Rumsfeld is doing what the Lord tells him to, the Lord has it in for the United States of America.
Pace's remarks came at a change of command ceremony at which Admiral James Stavridis took the helm of U.S. Southern Command. Stavridis, whose last job was serving as a senior aide to Rumsfeld, said of his boss that, "He comes to work everyday with a single-minded focus to make this country safe… We're lucky as a nation that he continues to serve with such passion and such integrity and such determination and such brilliance."
It's nice of Rumsfeld to come to work every day, and I'll buy the part about him being "single minded," but "brilliant?" As a charter member of the Project for the New American Century. Rumsfeld was a key player in formulating the Bush administration's Iraq policy, and as Secretary of State, he has been singularly responsible for the micro-mismanagement of it. Rumsfeld's the one who canned former Army chief Eric Shinseki for warning that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to secure post-war Iraq and who threatened to "fire the next person" who talked about the need for a postwar plan.
And it's thanks to Rumsfeld's single-minded intransigence that more than three years after the fall of Baghdad, the Bush administration appears to have finally decided it's time for a new course in Iraq.
Straying the Course
Now that former Secretary of State James Baker says "stay the course" is not a viable strategy, young Mister Bush and his echo chamberlains are claiming that it was never the strategy at all.
Over the weekend, White House Counsel Dan Bartlett told CBS that the administration has never had a "stay the course" strategy for Iraq. Mister Bush himself told ABC's George Stephanopolus "We've never been stay the course."
This kind of horse feathering is so self-satirizing you can't come up with a punch line to top it.
And still it continues.
At a Monday press conference on October 23, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said that Mister Bush had stopped using the "stay the course" mantra because it "gave the wrong impression about what was going on."
No one in the press corps bothered to ask what was new about Mister Bush giving the American public a wrong impression, but one reporter had the temerity to ask, "Is the President responsible for the fact people think it's stay the course since he's, in fact, described it that way himself?"
Snow's answer: "No."
Tuesday, during an MSNBC interview with Tim Russert, Wicked Witch of the West Wing and former WHIG member Mary Matalin gave a convoluted explanation of how the White House was both changing things in Iraq and keeping them the same. Her cockamamie explanation of how tactics were changing though the strategy wasn't showed she doesn’t know the difference between a tactic and a strategy and a broomstick other than the talking points she gets from Dick Cheney's office.
A change in tactics, no matter how good those tactics may be, is for naught if the fundamental strategy they serve is still profoundly flawed. You can win a thousand battles, etc.
And no amount of spin can make up for a failed strategy that our political and military leaders continue to cling to.
Rovewellian media choirboy Tucker Carlson recently gave one of the best defenses of the neoconservative noise machine I've heard in quite some time. Speaking of the Pat Tillman friendly fire death story cover up, he said, "Let me speak on behalf of everyone who's ever told a lie. Telling the truth is really hard."
To paraphrase Huey Lewis, "The old boy may be barely breathing, but the heart of irony is still beating."
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword
Since the White House Information Group (WHIG) formed in summer of 2002 to sell the invasion, we've heard noting but untruths and denials about this woebegone war, and the deluge of bunker mentality bunk shows no sign of abating.
Praying the Course
The rhetoric of most of our senior-most active duty military officers has been delusional to date, but lately it's broken the threshold of bull-goose lunacy.
On October 19, Joint Chiefs chairman General Peter Pace told an audience in Florida that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "…leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country."
If Rumsfeld is doing what the Lord tells him to, the Lord has it in for the United States of America.
Pace's remarks came at a change of command ceremony at which Admiral James Stavridis took the helm of U.S. Southern Command. Stavridis, whose last job was serving as a senior aide to Rumsfeld, said of his boss that, "He comes to work everyday with a single-minded focus to make this country safe… We're lucky as a nation that he continues to serve with such passion and such integrity and such determination and such brilliance."
It's nice of Rumsfeld to come to work every day, and I'll buy the part about him being "single minded," but "brilliant?" As a charter member of the Project for the New American Century. Rumsfeld was a key player in formulating the Bush administration's Iraq policy, and as Secretary of State, he has been singularly responsible for the micro-mismanagement of it. Rumsfeld's the one who canned former Army chief Eric Shinseki for warning that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to secure post-war Iraq and who threatened to "fire the next person" who talked about the need for a postwar plan.
And it's thanks to Rumsfeld's single-minded intransigence that more than three years after the fall of Baghdad, the Bush administration appears to have finally decided it's time for a new course in Iraq.
Straying the Course
Now that former Secretary of State James Baker says "stay the course" is not a viable strategy, young Mister Bush and his echo chamberlains are claiming that it was never the strategy at all.
Over the weekend, White House Counsel Dan Bartlett told CBS that the administration has never had a "stay the course" strategy for Iraq. Mister Bush himself told ABC's George Stephanopolus "We've never been stay the course."
This kind of horse feathering is so self-satirizing you can't come up with a punch line to top it.
And still it continues.
At a Monday press conference on October 23, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said that Mister Bush had stopped using the "stay the course" mantra because it "gave the wrong impression about what was going on."
No one in the press corps bothered to ask what was new about Mister Bush giving the American public a wrong impression, but one reporter had the temerity to ask, "Is the President responsible for the fact people think it's stay the course since he's, in fact, described it that way himself?"
Snow's answer: "No."
Tuesday, during an MSNBC interview with Tim Russert, Wicked Witch of the West Wing and former WHIG member Mary Matalin gave a convoluted explanation of how the White House was both changing things in Iraq and keeping them the same. Her cockamamie explanation of how tactics were changing though the strategy wasn't showed she doesn’t know the difference between a tactic and a strategy and a broomstick other than the talking points she gets from Dick Cheney's office.
A change in tactics, no matter how good those tactics may be, is for naught if the fundamental strategy they serve is still profoundly flawed. You can win a thousand battles, etc.
And no amount of spin can make up for a failed strategy that our political and military leaders continue to cling to.
Rovewellian media choirboy Tucker Carlson recently gave one of the best defenses of the neoconservative noise machine I've heard in quite some time. Speaking of the Pat Tillman friendly fire death story cover up, he said, "Let me speak on behalf of everyone who's ever told a lie. Telling the truth is really hard."
To paraphrase Huey Lewis, "The old boy may be barely breathing, but the heart of irony is still beating."
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Wherefore Iraq?
“No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.”
-- Carl von Clausewitz
More than three years into our Iraq misadventure, the Bush administration has yet to give us a clear explanation of why we invaded that country and what we hoped to accomplish by it. I in no way believe that they were as fuzzy on their war aims as they appear to have been, and as they appear to be now.
The paper trail of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) makes it quite clear that the neoconservatives were determined to remove Saddam Hussein from power by military means years before the 2000 election. While the PNAC at various times cited weapons of mass destruction and protection of Israel as motivations for an invasion of Iraq, the real aim was to establish an expanded military footprint in the Middle East in order to control the flow of the region's oil, thereby giving the U.S. a virtual stranglehold on global energy and the global economy. Hussein himself was less of an immediate threat than a convenient excuse to execute the plan. From the PNAC's Rebuilding America's Defenses published in September of 2000:
The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. (Page 14.)
The neocons were realistic enough at the time to know American's wouldn't support their imperialistic vision absent something like "a new Pearl Harbor."
The 9/11 attacks of 2001 gave PNACers like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and others--by then in control of the reigning administration--the Pearl Harbor they needed, and they proceeded to pop the lid on the neocon can of spank.
It's important to note that prior to the 9/11 attacks, PNAC literature made little to no mention of Osama Bin Laden, his al Qaeda network, of Hezbollah or Hamas or of terrorism in general.
Would Have, Could Have, Should Have
That 9/11 was easily traceable to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization, operating out of Afghanistan, must have given the neocons by then in power joy beyond their wildest dreams. They had to take time to build a firmer case for invading Iraq based on the attacks, but already had more justification than they needed to go into Afghanistan.
While Afghanistan has little to no energy or economic assets, its physical position offered a profound geo-strategic lever to the neoconservative's strategy for sewing up the Middle East region and its oil reserves. Had we managed to establish permanent military bases and stable U.S. compliant governments in both Afghanistan and Iraq, while simultaneously bringing Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi to leash, America would have had a lock on both the center and the periphery of the Islamic part of the world. Iran would have been isolated and surrounded, and we may have been able to elbow an emerging China and a re-emerging Russia out of the Middle East and Africa forever.
With physical control of the balance of the world's fuel and mineral resources, the U.S. could have commanded the cooperation of Western Europe and South America. Isolated, China and Russia would have had little choice but to play along with a semi-permanent U.S. hegemony as well, and the neoconservative dream would have been realized.
Alas
The "victory" the neoconservatives envisioned is now unachievable, and has given our peer competitors a critical vulnerability to exploit. Our experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown our military's decisive edge in symmetrical combat to be impotent at accomplishing our national aims. The neocons may have been "clear in their minds" what they wanted to achieve and how they intended to achieve it, but they were wrong.
China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela, through superior strategies, have sat on the sidelines and watched the U.S. bang its helmet into the wall and shoot itself in the foot. Our adversaries play a sophisticated game of contract bridge with a full deck while we continue to play the child's game of war with a handful of deuces.
No nation in its senses, however powerful, ought to be doing that.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
General Caldwell, Iraq, and the Power Conundrum
(Cross posted at Kos.)
According to the senior American military spokesman in Iraq, the U.S. led crackdown on Baghdad is a bust. But that senior military spokesman is being very Bush administration friendly in the way he couches his terms. Major General William B. Caldwell IV calls the recent surge in violence in Iraq's capital city "disheartening."
That's an interesting choice of words, General. It's "disheartening" when the top college on your wish list turns you down, or you don't get that promotion you thought you were a shoe-in for, or the publishing deal for your first novel falls to pieces in the 11th hour. When the plans of the world's mightiest nation for terminating a war go down the tubes time after time after time after time, it's an unmitigated disaster. And when that mighty nation's senior military officers prevaricate for the sake of protecting their political masters, it's an unforgivable disgrace.
Stars on Their Collars, Tails Between Their Legs
During a recent televised briefing in Baghdad, Caldwell said it was "no coincidence" that the increasing number of deaths in Iraq “coincide with our increased presence on the streets of Baghdad and the run-up to the American midterm elections.”
It's no coincidence that things coincide? That's a brilliant conclusion, General.
Caldwell also said, “The enemy knows that killing innocent people and Americans will garner headlines and create a sense of frustration.”
I have to wonder, General, how "they" knew that our "increased presence" on the streets would result in greater deaths of "innocents" and Americans, and would grab headlines and garner a sense of frustration prior to the midterm elections and "we" didn't.
I can't help but conclude that the increased deaths and frustration prior to the elections weren't expected. I suspect that the much-ballyhooed offensives in Ramadi and Baghdad were calculated to provide major successes in Iraq prior to the midterm elections, and now that they haven't, the likes of Caldwell are helping to reverse the spin in a way that will keep the ball in the GOP's court.
Major General Caldwell commanded elements of the 82nd Airborne Divison in New Orleans during the dysfunctional Hurricane Katrina rescue effort. At the time, he gushed to the American Forces Information Service that his soldiers often told him how proud they were to help the "stricken people of New Orleans."
In his current job as spokesman for Multi-National Forces Iraq, he's trying to generate happy noise about how U.S. troops are helping the stricken people of Iraq. As recently as late September of this year, he wrote that the violence in Iraq belies "the gradual but remarkable transformation this nation is experiencing."
"This nation" is the one that John Warner (R-Virginia), chairman of the Senate House Committee recently said is "drifting sideways" and that former Secretary of State James Baker now describes as a "helluva mess."
Part of me wants to sympathize with the generals and admirals currently on active duty. They're in a hell of a spot, being in charge of troops caught up in a quagmire of bad policies and strategies thrust on them by the neoconservative chicken hawks. But you know what? To hell with the generals and admirals.
Nobody achieves high rank in the military by accident these days. They spend decades taking the right kinds of assignments, making the right kinds of connections, and learning the right kinds of manners. Many of them come from a long line of senior military officers, or marry into one, or both, and entirely too many of them came from the service academies, where they received four years of instruction on how to lie, cheat and steal their way to the top of their profession. They all had a long, long look at the nature of the positions they aspired to, and none of the generals and admirals serving today got where they are by telling Donald Rumsfeld to go eat his hat.
Mad Dogs and Generals
I tend to think we have roughly twice as much military force as we really need. America presently spends as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, and apocalyptic ambitions of the lunatic right aside, there's no need for America to go to war with the rest of the world. But realistically, America needs to retain a decisive balance of military power to maintain both its own security and a relatively peaceful environment in the global order, which means we'll need to keep a corps of career officers who will eventually become flag and senior staff officers.
The downside to that reality is that career military officers tend to become, well, careerists, and careerists' principle motivation tends to be the advancement of their own careers. It was the 19th British historian Lord John Acton who said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," and, "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." It's to Lord Acton's credit that he chose to pursue academia rather than the political power his birthright made available to him, but even his example leaves us with a conundrum.
If people who seek power are inherently corrupt, and virtuous people avoid or shun power, then who winds up in power?
I'm perhaps overly fond of joking that we've arrived at a point in U.S. history where our politicians run wars and our generals play politics, but that's not really a new phenomenon. Keep in mind that George Washington, our first civilian Commander in Chief, was also the first general of our first army.
There's no easy way to undo the Gordian knot we presently find ourselves twisted into, but Americans may be wise to consider what happened when they gave total power to a single, warfare-centric party to hand-pick a cadre of yes-men generals and admirals.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
According to the senior American military spokesman in Iraq, the U.S. led crackdown on Baghdad is a bust. But that senior military spokesman is being very Bush administration friendly in the way he couches his terms. Major General William B. Caldwell IV calls the recent surge in violence in Iraq's capital city "disheartening."
That's an interesting choice of words, General. It's "disheartening" when the top college on your wish list turns you down, or you don't get that promotion you thought you were a shoe-in for, or the publishing deal for your first novel falls to pieces in the 11th hour. When the plans of the world's mightiest nation for terminating a war go down the tubes time after time after time after time, it's an unmitigated disaster. And when that mighty nation's senior military officers prevaricate for the sake of protecting their political masters, it's an unforgivable disgrace.
Stars on Their Collars, Tails Between Their Legs
During a recent televised briefing in Baghdad, Caldwell said it was "no coincidence" that the increasing number of deaths in Iraq “coincide with our increased presence on the streets of Baghdad and the run-up to the American midterm elections.”
It's no coincidence that things coincide? That's a brilliant conclusion, General.
Caldwell also said, “The enemy knows that killing innocent people and Americans will garner headlines and create a sense of frustration.”
I have to wonder, General, how "they" knew that our "increased presence" on the streets would result in greater deaths of "innocents" and Americans, and would grab headlines and garner a sense of frustration prior to the midterm elections and "we" didn't.
I can't help but conclude that the increased deaths and frustration prior to the elections weren't expected. I suspect that the much-ballyhooed offensives in Ramadi and Baghdad were calculated to provide major successes in Iraq prior to the midterm elections, and now that they haven't, the likes of Caldwell are helping to reverse the spin in a way that will keep the ball in the GOP's court.
Major General Caldwell commanded elements of the 82nd Airborne Divison in New Orleans during the dysfunctional Hurricane Katrina rescue effort. At the time, he gushed to the American Forces Information Service that his soldiers often told him how proud they were to help the "stricken people of New Orleans."
In his current job as spokesman for Multi-National Forces Iraq, he's trying to generate happy noise about how U.S. troops are helping the stricken people of Iraq. As recently as late September of this year, he wrote that the violence in Iraq belies "the gradual but remarkable transformation this nation is experiencing."
"This nation" is the one that John Warner (R-Virginia), chairman of the Senate House Committee recently said is "drifting sideways" and that former Secretary of State James Baker now describes as a "helluva mess."
Part of me wants to sympathize with the generals and admirals currently on active duty. They're in a hell of a spot, being in charge of troops caught up in a quagmire of bad policies and strategies thrust on them by the neoconservative chicken hawks. But you know what? To hell with the generals and admirals.
Nobody achieves high rank in the military by accident these days. They spend decades taking the right kinds of assignments, making the right kinds of connections, and learning the right kinds of manners. Many of them come from a long line of senior military officers, or marry into one, or both, and entirely too many of them came from the service academies, where they received four years of instruction on how to lie, cheat and steal their way to the top of their profession. They all had a long, long look at the nature of the positions they aspired to, and none of the generals and admirals serving today got where they are by telling Donald Rumsfeld to go eat his hat.
Mad Dogs and Generals
I tend to think we have roughly twice as much military force as we really need. America presently spends as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, and apocalyptic ambitions of the lunatic right aside, there's no need for America to go to war with the rest of the world. But realistically, America needs to retain a decisive balance of military power to maintain both its own security and a relatively peaceful environment in the global order, which means we'll need to keep a corps of career officers who will eventually become flag and senior staff officers.
The downside to that reality is that career military officers tend to become, well, careerists, and careerists' principle motivation tends to be the advancement of their own careers. It was the 19th British historian Lord John Acton who said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," and, "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." It's to Lord Acton's credit that he chose to pursue academia rather than the political power his birthright made available to him, but even his example leaves us with a conundrum.
If people who seek power are inherently corrupt, and virtuous people avoid or shun power, then who winds up in power?
I'm perhaps overly fond of joking that we've arrived at a point in U.S. history where our politicians run wars and our generals play politics, but that's not really a new phenomenon. Keep in mind that George Washington, our first civilian Commander in Chief, was also the first general of our first army.
There's no easy way to undo the Gordian knot we presently find ourselves twisted into, but Americans may be wise to consider what happened when they gave total power to a single, warfare-centric party to hand-pick a cadre of yes-men generals and admirals.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Iraq and America: a Tale of Two Dystopias
Three years and counting into our Iraq fiasco, even senior Republicans like Senator John Warner (R-Virginia) think it's time for a new strategy. They're a thousand days and several hundred billion dollars late, but hey, better late than never, huh?
Warner, who is head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, thinks a "change of course" might be necessary if things don't improve in the next two months. Why he wants to wait two more months before changing course is anybody's guess, as is how the chairman of the SASC is just now deciding that things are "drifting sideways." If Iraq is Warner's idea of drifting sideways, I'd hate to see what he considers "going down the toilet."
Larry Diamond, an adviser to former Secretary of State James Baker's Iraq Study Group , says of the Iraq situation that "This is the fourth quarter, there's two minutes left in the game, and we're down two touchdowns."
As far as I'm concerned, Diamond left a few details out of his analogy. It's also fourth down, we're on our own one-yard line, and the punter just fumbled the snap in the end zone.
Stand Up, Stand Down, Sis Boom Bah!
It's clear to everyone but young Mister Bush and his autistic base that his "stand up, stand down" strategy hasn't worked and isn't going to. For years, many Iraqi forces have refused to fight their fellow Iraqis, and the ones who agree to participate in operations can't be trusted.
Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times reports that "The Iraqi government removed the country’s two most senior police commanders from their posts on Tuesday, in the first broad move against the top leadership of Iraq’s unruly special police forces."
Shiite militias have infiltrated the police and have formed death squads that operate outside control of Iraq's Interior ministry with what Tavernise calls "virtual impunity." In other words, the forces charged with stopping sectarian violence are the very ones committing it. Tavernise reports that a replacement for the two dismissed senior police commanders has been chosen, but says that "his name could not be released until adequate security arrangements had been made for his family."
Run that through your decoder ring and you get "They can't disclose his name until they figure out how to protect his family from the police he's supposed to be in command of."
A Tale of Two Dystopias
The neoconservative experiment in Iraq has created two dystopias: one Hobbesian, one Orwellian.
Thomas Hobbes was the was the 17th century British philosopher who is considered to be the founder of the modern social contract tradition and who said that life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." The current social contract in Iraq is even nastier and more brutish than the one that existed under Saddam Hussein, and can hardly be considered much better than conditions that exist in the wild.
A recent study published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Healthestimates that "As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions." Given the population ratios between Iraq and the U.S., 654,000 Iraqis equate to roughly 7 million Americans.
Young Bush, of course, dismisses the Johns Hopkins figures as "just not credible," and says that he reckons the true number of Iraqis killed in the war to be closer to 30,000. Irony must be chuckling in its coffin over Bush referring to anyone else--much less a respected institution like Johns Hopkins--as "not credible," and lamenting at the Orwellian dystopia the United States has become.
In George Orwell's 1984, Big Brother dealt with his political embarrassments by making them disappear. In 2006, Jeb Bush's big brother makes over a half-million dead Iraqis disappear by denying they ever existed.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Warner, who is head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, thinks a "change of course" might be necessary if things don't improve in the next two months. Why he wants to wait two more months before changing course is anybody's guess, as is how the chairman of the SASC is just now deciding that things are "drifting sideways." If Iraq is Warner's idea of drifting sideways, I'd hate to see what he considers "going down the toilet."
Larry Diamond, an adviser to former Secretary of State James Baker's Iraq Study Group , says of the Iraq situation that "This is the fourth quarter, there's two minutes left in the game, and we're down two touchdowns."
As far as I'm concerned, Diamond left a few details out of his analogy. It's also fourth down, we're on our own one-yard line, and the punter just fumbled the snap in the end zone.
Stand Up, Stand Down, Sis Boom Bah!
It's clear to everyone but young Mister Bush and his autistic base that his "stand up, stand down" strategy hasn't worked and isn't going to. For years, many Iraqi forces have refused to fight their fellow Iraqis, and the ones who agree to participate in operations can't be trusted.
Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times reports that "The Iraqi government removed the country’s two most senior police commanders from their posts on Tuesday, in the first broad move against the top leadership of Iraq’s unruly special police forces."
Shiite militias have infiltrated the police and have formed death squads that operate outside control of Iraq's Interior ministry with what Tavernise calls "virtual impunity." In other words, the forces charged with stopping sectarian violence are the very ones committing it. Tavernise reports that a replacement for the two dismissed senior police commanders has been chosen, but says that "his name could not be released until adequate security arrangements had been made for his family."
Run that through your decoder ring and you get "They can't disclose his name until they figure out how to protect his family from the police he's supposed to be in command of."
A Tale of Two Dystopias
The neoconservative experiment in Iraq has created two dystopias: one Hobbesian, one Orwellian.
Thomas Hobbes was the was the 17th century British philosopher who is considered to be the founder of the modern social contract tradition and who said that life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." The current social contract in Iraq is even nastier and more brutish than the one that existed under Saddam Hussein, and can hardly be considered much better than conditions that exist in the wild.
A recent study published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Healthestimates that "As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions." Given the population ratios between Iraq and the U.S., 654,000 Iraqis equate to roughly 7 million Americans.
Young Bush, of course, dismisses the Johns Hopkins figures as "just not credible," and says that he reckons the true number of Iraqis killed in the war to be closer to 30,000. Irony must be chuckling in its coffin over Bush referring to anyone else--much less a respected institution like Johns Hopkins--as "not credible," and lamenting at the Orwellian dystopia the United States has become.
In George Orwell's 1984, Big Brother dealt with his political embarrassments by making them disappear. In 2006, Jeb Bush's big brother makes over a half-million dead Iraqis disappear by denying they ever existed.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Can James Baker Really Change the Course on Iraq? Nah.
Can Poppy Bush's Secretary of State James Baker really convince Junior to change his strategy for Iraq? If so, Baker will be eligible for an international honor that hasn't been invented yet, because a change in the administration's stance on Iraq will be the most tectonic global event since the mountain came to Mohammed.
We pretty much know that young Mister Bush had very little to do with formulating his foreign policy. Much as he "developed" a set of personal "values" by adopting the evangelical agenda as he entered middle age, he bought the neoconservative policy farm when the key members of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) hand picked him to be their finger puppet for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination bid. Once in office, he became an enthusiastic if often awkward front man for Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Scooter Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad and a host of other PNAC luminaries whose names we've grown so familiar with.
It has been the under the influence of these ideological fanatics that Mister Bush launched America's woebegone misadventure in Iraq, and has steadfastly stood by his "stay the course" and "bring 'em on" and "dead or alive," "Cut 'em off at the pass," and other rabid rhetoric that his Rovewellian speech writers cribbed from old Hoot Gibson and John Wayne movies.
Now, supposedly, Bush the younger has brought in his dad's trusted adviser to help him out of the mess his own trusted advisers got him into. And based on early reports of what Baker will advise him to do, Mister Bush, at the ripe old age of 60, will have to make the first real choices of his life.
War Talk
Chosen to head a bipartisan panel charged with reassessing the Iraq strategy, Baker is lately famous for saying, "I believe in talking to your enemies."
That's a radical concept for an administration that only talks to screened audiences of the faithful autistic right and Big Brother Broadcast yahooligans like Rush Limbaugh and its Gollums at Fox News.
And we need no further proof that the Bush administration doesn't want to talk to its "enemies" than the fact of Condi Rice as Secretary of State and John Bolton as Ambassador to the United nations. Nobody wants to talk to those two.
Bar Talk
So Jim Baker and a couple handfuls of his friends are shooting the breeze about what Bush should do about Iraq before they go out and whoop it up in Georgetown. It's comforting to see that the American system of government is finally kicking in, isn't it?
As best we can tell, here's what Baker and his Iraq Study Group (ISG) have come up with so far.
According to Kenneth T. Walsh of US News and World Report, the ISG report criticizes "what they consider a series of mistakes in occupying the country, including lack of sufficient U.S. troops and failure to stem sectarian violence."
Is that so? Can we have (and pay for) a few more high-powered blue ribbon panels to confirm that?
Baker says, "there are alternatives between stay-the-course and cut-and-run." There's another revelation we didn't need a former Secretary of State and a bunch of his cronies to tell us.
The BBC reports that Baker's commission is expected to produce a report in the "next few months," and that it will recommend "significant change" from Mister Bush's stay-the-course policy, but Baker insists that the ISG has not come to a "definitive conclusion."
Baker's mum's-the-word stance is somewhat puzzling considering how much time he's spent granting interviews to the media over the last week or so. Puzzling, that is, until you consider that he's hitting the airways to sell his new book, not to discuss the Iraq situation. That gives me more than a little heartburn about Baker's priorities and motivations. I don't know about you, but I give a heck of a lot more hoot about the Iraq situation than I do about sales of James Baker's lousy book.
Small Talk
An October 12 article by Eli Lake of the New York Sun may be our best glimpse behind the ISG curtain.
"Stability first," according to Lake, "argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents."
That sounds identical to the strategy Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki launched last summer, a strategy that's already a proven failure.
"Redeploy and Contain" is exactly what Congressman Jack Murtha proposed back in November of 2005, an option that was immediately dismissed by the Bushmen as a "cut and run" option.
Big Talk
I've played this half-mooned "recommend courses of action" game--albeit at a much smaller table than the one Baker and his pals are sitting around--more times than you can shake a green tambourine at. When you first convene as a part of these planning cells, you're told that the boss wants to hear some "out of the box thinking," but if you really think the boss wants you to think out of the box, you're out of your mind.
The boss wants to hear that he's been right all along, and your job is to prove it by spinning alternative options that are unacceptable and by crafting one option that's just like what the boss is already doing and giving it a different name. That way, the boss can carry on doing what he was already doing and claim that he's doing something "new" under advice of "wise counsel."
So I'm not the least bit optimistic that James Baker's gentleman's club will change our course in Iraq. At the end of the day, the Rovewellians will use whatever they report to justify their woebegone strategic vector.
"See? Even Daddy's old horse holder says we're doing the right thing. Keep bringing them on!"
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
We pretty much know that young Mister Bush had very little to do with formulating his foreign policy. Much as he "developed" a set of personal "values" by adopting the evangelical agenda as he entered middle age, he bought the neoconservative policy farm when the key members of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) hand picked him to be their finger puppet for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination bid. Once in office, he became an enthusiastic if often awkward front man for Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Scooter Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad and a host of other PNAC luminaries whose names we've grown so familiar with.
It has been the under the influence of these ideological fanatics that Mister Bush launched America's woebegone misadventure in Iraq, and has steadfastly stood by his "stay the course" and "bring 'em on" and "dead or alive," "Cut 'em off at the pass," and other rabid rhetoric that his Rovewellian speech writers cribbed from old Hoot Gibson and John Wayne movies.
Now, supposedly, Bush the younger has brought in his dad's trusted adviser to help him out of the mess his own trusted advisers got him into. And based on early reports of what Baker will advise him to do, Mister Bush, at the ripe old age of 60, will have to make the first real choices of his life.
War Talk
Chosen to head a bipartisan panel charged with reassessing the Iraq strategy, Baker is lately famous for saying, "I believe in talking to your enemies."
That's a radical concept for an administration that only talks to screened audiences of the faithful autistic right and Big Brother Broadcast yahooligans like Rush Limbaugh and its Gollums at Fox News.
And we need no further proof that the Bush administration doesn't want to talk to its "enemies" than the fact of Condi Rice as Secretary of State and John Bolton as Ambassador to the United nations. Nobody wants to talk to those two.
Bar Talk
So Jim Baker and a couple handfuls of his friends are shooting the breeze about what Bush should do about Iraq before they go out and whoop it up in Georgetown. It's comforting to see that the American system of government is finally kicking in, isn't it?
As best we can tell, here's what Baker and his Iraq Study Group (ISG) have come up with so far.
According to Kenneth T. Walsh of US News and World Report, the ISG report criticizes "what they consider a series of mistakes in occupying the country, including lack of sufficient U.S. troops and failure to stem sectarian violence."
Is that so? Can we have (and pay for) a few more high-powered blue ribbon panels to confirm that?
Baker says, "there are alternatives between stay-the-course and cut-and-run." There's another revelation we didn't need a former Secretary of State and a bunch of his cronies to tell us.
The BBC reports that Baker's commission is expected to produce a report in the "next few months," and that it will recommend "significant change" from Mister Bush's stay-the-course policy, but Baker insists that the ISG has not come to a "definitive conclusion."
Baker's mum's-the-word stance is somewhat puzzling considering how much time he's spent granting interviews to the media over the last week or so. Puzzling, that is, until you consider that he's hitting the airways to sell his new book, not to discuss the Iraq situation. That gives me more than a little heartburn about Baker's priorities and motivations. I don't know about you, but I give a heck of a lot more hoot about the Iraq situation than I do about sales of James Baker's lousy book.
Small Talk
An October 12 article by Eli Lake of the New York Sun may be our best glimpse behind the ISG curtain.
A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials…
… the 10-member commission…is considering two option papers, "Stability First" and "Redeploy and Contain," both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.
"Stability first," according to Lake, "argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents."
That sounds identical to the strategy Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki launched last summer, a strategy that's already a proven failure.
"Redeploy and Contain" is exactly what Congressman Jack Murtha proposed back in November of 2005, an option that was immediately dismissed by the Bushmen as a "cut and run" option.
Big Talk
I've played this half-mooned "recommend courses of action" game--albeit at a much smaller table than the one Baker and his pals are sitting around--more times than you can shake a green tambourine at. When you first convene as a part of these planning cells, you're told that the boss wants to hear some "out of the box thinking," but if you really think the boss wants you to think out of the box, you're out of your mind.
The boss wants to hear that he's been right all along, and your job is to prove it by spinning alternative options that are unacceptable and by crafting one option that's just like what the boss is already doing and giving it a different name. That way, the boss can carry on doing what he was already doing and claim that he's doing something "new" under advice of "wise counsel."
So I'm not the least bit optimistic that James Baker's gentleman's club will change our course in Iraq. At the end of the day, the Rovewellians will use whatever they report to justify their woebegone strategic vector.
"See? Even Daddy's old horse holder says we're doing the right thing. Keep bringing them on!"
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Iraq and the "War on Evil"
"When you believe in things you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way."
-- Stevie Wonder
An October 14 story by Tom Raum of Associated Press proclaimed "Bush Keeps Revising War Justification." That's hardly news, but Raum makes a pretty good point about the neocon administration's shifting war aims.
Initially, the rationale was specific: to stop Saddam Hussein from using what Bush claimed were the Iraqi leader's weapons of mass destruction or from selling them to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.
But 3 1/2 years later, with no weapons found, still no end in sight and the war a liability for nearly all Republicans on the ballot Nov. 7, the justification has become far broader and now includes the expansive "struggle between good and evil."
That's about the size of it. The harder it comes to justify our woebegone war in Iraq, the more abstract the justification has become, and "evil" is about as abstract (and subsequently irrational) a reason to fight a war as there is.
The Good, the Bad, and the Manipulated
Some people believe in the concept of an abstract "evil," some don't. I choose not to, not out of any particular spiritual or moral conviction, but because belief in forces that exist beyond the physical universe leads to superstitious thinking and irrational actions.
We have much to fear from both nature and our fellow human beings, but that doesn't necessarily make either of them "evil." Lightning is not something that spiteful, malicious god-like creatures hurl to earth to make it a living hell. It's a natural phenomenon, and the more we understand lightning's underlying scientific aspects, the better we can learn to protect ourselves from it.
It's probably fair to say that all human beings have baser instincts, instincts that spring from our need to survive as individuals and as a species. Most of us learn to harness these base instincts in constructive ways that allow us to exist peaceably in society. A lot of us don't. Among those who develop anti-social behaviors, some end up in prison and some turn into monsters. It's easy to fall into thinking of a Hitler or a Stalin as being "evil personified," but to do so is to grant them a supernatural status that makes them virtually undefeatable. But, as history shows, the rest of humanity defeated both Hitler and Stalin, and it didn't do so with talismans or exorcisms.
Any time the word "evil" crops up in war propaganda, the intent is to throw irrational fear into the hearts and minds of a political leader's following. By frightening a populace into an irrational state, the political leader clears the way to act in any manner he wishes without having to give rational explanations for those actions to his followers.
Hence it is that any time young Mister Bush and his echo choir are pressed to give specifics on strategies or war aims, they shift to the "evil" meme, a meme so primal that it strikes a chord not only neoconservative's autistic religious right base, but in self-styled skeptical sons of the enlightenment like little old me.
That's the really scary part of all this. As much education and experience as I have in military and foreign policy issues, and in propaganda techniques, and as much effort and thought as I've put into deconstructing this administration's lunatic policies and rationalizations, they still at times throw enough oogey-boogey into me to make me want--if only briefly--to believe everything else they say and go along with whatever they want to do. That gives me a profoundly frightening perspective on the effect their manipulations must have on the portions of the population that are predisposed to believe and follow them.
So is it any wonder that when the Rovewellians throw doggerel like "If we withdraw before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here " into the Big Brother Broadcast, nobody in the "base" or even in the so-called "liberal media" bothers to ask "What does 'withdraw' mean?" or "What is the 'job?'" or "How will we know when the 'job' is 'done?'" or "Who is the 'enemy?'" or "How will the 'enemy' follow us here?"
The mouth breathers of the base are so brainwashed and brain dead from all the "evil" talk that they don't have capacity to imagine such questions, and the "liberal media" won't ask them for fear of being labeled part of the evil-doer axis and losing audience share to the Big Brother Broadcast (Fox News, AM talk radio, etc.).
It saddens me no end to see how far my country has turned from its original moral and intellectual principles. America's greatest founding fathers--George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine--were students and proponents of the 18th century Enlightenment Movement, a philosophy that sought to replace the superstition and tyranny of what we now call the Medieval Age with scientific methods, logic, and individual rights, dignity and determination.
Under its present neoconservative rule, America is headed back to creating the very kind of world it sought to change. When I was a kid, George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 were taught in American elementary and high schools as examples of the evils of Leninist socialism. Today, they reflect the basic tenets of American neoconservative capitalism. The very kinds of absolute powers King George III tried to impose on the American colonies are the very same sort of absolute powers President George III wants to exercise on the United States of America. And given the state of technology in our age, President George has more tools at his disposal to impose tyranny than either George the king or George the author could have imagined.
Democratic victories in the November congressional elections won't solve all of America's problems, but that's the best hope we have to keep our country from turning into the stuff of a futuristic dystopia novel. If the Republicans manage to keep control of the legislature, the best strategy I can think of for what's left of the enlightened segment of the American population is to take a page from Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451. Start memorizing your favorite books and stake out a cave to hide in before the Great Satan starts fire-hosing your home library with kerosene.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Bob Herbert's National Service Draft: Good Intentions, Dire Consequences
Response to my piece from last Friday on Bob Herbert's campaign to make two years of national service mandatory for all U.S. citizens suggests that the idea is growing in popularity. I am convinced that a national service draft would be a profound disaster, and believe it's vital to point out the dire consequences that a universal conscription would produce.
Spiting Your Face
I want to believe that Bob Herbert's heart is in the right place, but on this issue, his head's in a place it wasn't designed to fit into. Here are some snippets from remarks he made in September 2005 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Let's be realistic. National service may "not have to be in the military," but it will be if Uncle Sam decides that's what he wants the national service to be. If everybody's eligible for a national service draft, everybody's eligible for military service. That means Uncle Sam can turn into Big Brother whenever he wants to, and build a military as big as he wants for as long as he wants to fight whatever perpetual wars he feels like fighting.
Even folks who would serve in non-military capacities would in essence be subject to something akin to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, under which Big Brother could ban all opposition to his wars and all other forms of dissent. Under a national service regime, virtually every citizen could be called to some sort of semi-active duty status, and every citizen's constitutional rights could be permanently stripped.
You think that couldn't happen? Take a look at what's happening right now. Thanks to the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, your President and your Secretary of Defense can declare you an "enemy combatant" and "disappear" you Joseph Heller style without so much as a by-your-leave from anybody.
A national service draft won't draw our warriors "from a broader slice of the population." It's true that most of today's rifle soldiers come from underprivileged and working class backgrounds, but guess what--that's where most of the rifle soldiers came from during Vietnam when we had a draft. Don't kid yourself into thinking we can have a "fair" draft by making it universal. Private Juarez will still be fighting door to door in some foreign hellhole while Second Lieutenant Bush passes out cocktails and peanuts on Air Force One.
If national service draftees work with the homeless, the poverty stricken, the illiterate and so forth, that will lead to all social, charitable and education organizations coming under direct control of the federal government. Do we not already have enough bloated federal bureaucracies? And do we not already have too much federal influence on what should be state controlled programs?
There Ought to be a Law
A national draft that extends beyond the scope of military service is arguably unconstitutional on two counts.
First, it doesn't appear to be allowed by Article I. Section 8 of that Article authorizes Congress to "raise and support armies" and "provide and maintain a navy." This, along with the legislature's power to "declare war" supports the constitutional legality of a military draft, but it's hard to find anything in the Constitution that supports the position that Congress can conscript citizens to work for the Red Cross or AmericaCorps.
More importantly, though, a universal conscription would make federal service a de facto condition of citizenship, and would clearly violate the Fourteenth Amendment's definition of a U.S. citizen as "All persons born or naturalized in the United States."
It follows that in order to establish a national service draft, we'd need to a) ignore the Constitution or b) write an amendment to the Constitution that expands the powers of Congress and redefines citizenship and the privileges and immunities that come with it under the Bill of Rights and elsewhere.
Either way, we'd be throwing the Constitution out with the junk mail, and pounding the final nail into the coffin of our cherished republic.
Kerosene on the Fire
I'm not sure where Herbert gets the idea that there's not enough "outrage" over what's going on in Iraq. Polls like the one taken by CNN in September 2006 indicate that opposition to the Iraq war has reached an "all time high," and even Fox News concedes that the "2006 Election Is All About Iraq."
If there's not enough outrage over Iraq to suit Herbert, it's not because most Americans aren't "sharing the sacrifice." It's because the mainstream media has allowed the Big Brother Broadcast (Fox News, AM talk radio, right wing publications like The Weekly Standard, etc.) to bully them into being "fair and balanced" on the subject. Young Mister Bush is fond of blaming the unpopularity of his Iraq misadventure on the "images of chaos and carnage" shown on the news networks. But think about it: when's the last time you actually saw a scene of chaos and carnage in Iraq on CNN, MSNBC, or any of the regular network's nightly news programs?
If Herbert honestly thinks a universal national service draft will help end the war in Iraq, he's as delusional as the neo-contrivers who started it. The populace can't control the actions of the state by becoming vassal to it.
Adopting Herbert's universal national service program wouldn't just make the United States look like Stalin's Soviet Union. It would make Stalin's Soviet Union look like Shangri-La.
And whether he knows it or not, by advocating a universal draft, Herbert is playing right in to the neoconservative agenda of selling the American public on the Orwellian notions that "war is peace," "freedom is slavery" and "ignorance is strength."
Wake up and smell the totalitarianism, Bob.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Spiting Your Face
I want to believe that Bob Herbert's heart is in the right place, but on this issue, his head's in a place it wasn't designed to fit into. Here are some snippets from remarks he made in September 2005 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
I think that all Americans should do two years of national service. It does not have to be in the military. I'd love to see people out there in the community. You could work with the homeless, you could work with the poverty-stricken, you could do literacy work…
… So, that's the kind of national service that I'm thinking of. It would include the military as well because, obviously, you have to defend the country. But if you're going to fight wars, then you need to draw your warriors from a broader slice of the population than we're doing now…
…One of the reasons we are not more outraged about what's going on in Iraq is that there are not that many Americans who feel that they have a personal stake in what's going on in Iraq.
Let's be realistic. National service may "not have to be in the military," but it will be if Uncle Sam decides that's what he wants the national service to be. If everybody's eligible for a national service draft, everybody's eligible for military service. That means Uncle Sam can turn into Big Brother whenever he wants to, and build a military as big as he wants for as long as he wants to fight whatever perpetual wars he feels like fighting.
Even folks who would serve in non-military capacities would in essence be subject to something akin to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, under which Big Brother could ban all opposition to his wars and all other forms of dissent. Under a national service regime, virtually every citizen could be called to some sort of semi-active duty status, and every citizen's constitutional rights could be permanently stripped.
You think that couldn't happen? Take a look at what's happening right now. Thanks to the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, your President and your Secretary of Defense can declare you an "enemy combatant" and "disappear" you Joseph Heller style without so much as a by-your-leave from anybody.
A national service draft won't draw our warriors "from a broader slice of the population." It's true that most of today's rifle soldiers come from underprivileged and working class backgrounds, but guess what--that's where most of the rifle soldiers came from during Vietnam when we had a draft. Don't kid yourself into thinking we can have a "fair" draft by making it universal. Private Juarez will still be fighting door to door in some foreign hellhole while Second Lieutenant Bush passes out cocktails and peanuts on Air Force One.
If national service draftees work with the homeless, the poverty stricken, the illiterate and so forth, that will lead to all social, charitable and education organizations coming under direct control of the federal government. Do we not already have enough bloated federal bureaucracies? And do we not already have too much federal influence on what should be state controlled programs?
There Ought to be a Law
A national draft that extends beyond the scope of military service is arguably unconstitutional on two counts.
First, it doesn't appear to be allowed by Article I. Section 8 of that Article authorizes Congress to "raise and support armies" and "provide and maintain a navy." This, along with the legislature's power to "declare war" supports the constitutional legality of a military draft, but it's hard to find anything in the Constitution that supports the position that Congress can conscript citizens to work for the Red Cross or AmericaCorps.
More importantly, though, a universal conscription would make federal service a de facto condition of citizenship, and would clearly violate the Fourteenth Amendment's definition of a U.S. citizen as "All persons born or naturalized in the United States."
It follows that in order to establish a national service draft, we'd need to a) ignore the Constitution or b) write an amendment to the Constitution that expands the powers of Congress and redefines citizenship and the privileges and immunities that come with it under the Bill of Rights and elsewhere.
Either way, we'd be throwing the Constitution out with the junk mail, and pounding the final nail into the coffin of our cherished republic.
Kerosene on the Fire
I'm not sure where Herbert gets the idea that there's not enough "outrage" over what's going on in Iraq. Polls like the one taken by CNN in September 2006 indicate that opposition to the Iraq war has reached an "all time high," and even Fox News concedes that the "2006 Election Is All About Iraq."
If there's not enough outrage over Iraq to suit Herbert, it's not because most Americans aren't "sharing the sacrifice." It's because the mainstream media has allowed the Big Brother Broadcast (Fox News, AM talk radio, right wing publications like The Weekly Standard, etc.) to bully them into being "fair and balanced" on the subject. Young Mister Bush is fond of blaming the unpopularity of his Iraq misadventure on the "images of chaos and carnage" shown on the news networks. But think about it: when's the last time you actually saw a scene of chaos and carnage in Iraq on CNN, MSNBC, or any of the regular network's nightly news programs?
If Herbert honestly thinks a universal national service draft will help end the war in Iraq, he's as delusional as the neo-contrivers who started it. The populace can't control the actions of the state by becoming vassal to it.
Adopting Herbert's universal national service program wouldn't just make the United States look like Stalin's Soviet Union. It would make Stalin's Soviet Union look like Shangri-La.
And whether he knows it or not, by advocating a universal draft, Herbert is playing right in to the neoconservative agenda of selling the American public on the Orwellian notions that "war is peace," "freedom is slavery" and "ignorance is strength."
Wake up and smell the totalitarianism, Bob.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
NYT's Bob Herbert Exploits the Troops
I know my position on this subject is controversial, and that some readers will be surprised to hear me say this, but I'm fed up with listening to how only the "few" are sacrificing in our war on terror, and of seeing high profile columnists like Bob Herbert of the New York Times echo chamber this diaper dialogue to support their pet agendas.
Few people feel worse than I do for our troops who have had to serve two, three or more tours of duty in a war zone thanks to our end zone fumbles in Iraq, and I can understand why some of those troops are starting to complain about it. But when I start hearing about how unfair it is that only the troops are sacrificing, that's where my sympathy ends.
What Did the "Volunteers" Think They Were Volunteering For?
I'm not fond of chastising enlisted personnel for expressing their personal views, but Sergeant X agreed to be quoted in Herbert's October 12 column "Sacrifice of the Few," and Herbert saw fit to identify him by name. The column is nested behind NYT's Times Select firewall, but I'll give you enough snippets to illustrate my point.
What Sergeant X and Herbert don't seem to understand is that those other people's lives are "normal" because those are the lives they signed up for. Sergeant X was headed back to "the most abnormal place on earth" because he volunteered to be in the business of professional arms.
Like everyone else in the armed services today, Sergeant X was not drafted. When he volunteered to fight wars, did it not occur to him that he might actually have to fight one? And has it never occurred to Sergeant X or Herbert that America finances a robust standing professional force in peacetime so that if war breaks out, the professional force will fight it and the rest of America can go on with its "normal" life?
The war in Iraq is the number one issue in American politics and "society" doesn't care about what's going on "over there?" As for "sharing the sacrifice," whom does Sergeant X think pays him twice a month, and spends $2 billion per week to "support" the war in Iraq, and financed his state university education and his fiancé's engagement ring?
Can We Share?
Herbert didn't let the interview end until Sergeant X endorsed one of Herbert's favorite mantras.
Much of the time, Bob Herbert's heart is in the right place, but on certain subjects he has his head cross threaded up another part of his anatomy, and his advocacy of compulsory national service is one of his foggiest notions.
Let's say we require every citizen between the ages of 18 and 20 to perform two years of national service. What are we going to do with all those kids, and how are we going to pay them? Do we not have enough bloated, ineffective federal government programs already? And how will having a bunch of underage drinkers getting underfoot at AmericaCorps or the Red Cross or Homeland Security help us win our war? Two words: it won't. Does Herbert honestly think it makes sense in wartime to keep an all volunteer military and conscript everyone else to hand out coffee and doughnuts at the USO? That sort of "sacrifice" wouldn't do the likes of Sergeant X any good, and it would horn in on Halliburton's combat coffee service contract.
I'm embarrassed for Sergeant X. He comes across in Herbert's column like he's in need of a prescription for grow-up pills. But my embarrassment for Sergeant X is nothing compared to my outrage at Bob Herbert for exploiting a dispirited young soldier to promote Bob Herbert's personal agenda.
Herbert does a grave injustice to the dignity of America's fighting men and women when he hands one a crying towel and turns on the tape recorder.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Few people feel worse than I do for our troops who have had to serve two, three or more tours of duty in a war zone thanks to our end zone fumbles in Iraq, and I can understand why some of those troops are starting to complain about it. But when I start hearing about how unfair it is that only the troops are sacrificing, that's where my sympathy ends.
What Did the "Volunteers" Think They Were Volunteering For?
I'm not fond of chastising enlisted personnel for expressing their personal views, but Sergeant X agreed to be quoted in Herbert's October 12 column "Sacrifice of the Few," and Herbert saw fit to identify him by name. The column is nested behind NYT's Times Select firewall, but I'll give you enough snippets to illustrate my point.
Sgt. [X] remembers the time, not too long ago, when he came home on a brief leave from Iraq. He was walking through an airport, in uniform, and other passengers, spotting him, began to applaud.
“It was awesome,” he said. “They were cheering and clapping. It was great. But you know what? I said to myself, ‘That guy’s flying to Toledo on a business trip. This lady over here is flying off on vacation. Their lives are normal. But soon I’ll be getting on a plane to go back to the most abnormal place on earth.’”
What Sergeant X and Herbert don't seem to understand is that those other people's lives are "normal" because those are the lives they signed up for. Sergeant X was headed back to "the most abnormal place on earth" because he volunteered to be in the business of professional arms.
Like everyone else in the armed services today, Sergeant X was not drafted. When he volunteered to fight wars, did it not occur to him that he might actually have to fight one? And has it never occurred to Sergeant X or Herbert that America finances a robust standing professional force in peacetime so that if war breaks out, the professional force will fight it and the rest of America can go on with its "normal" life?
[Sergeant X is] safely home after serving three nerve-racking combat tours — one in Afghanistan and two yearlong tours in Iraq. He’s engaged to be married and will receive a degree soon from [a nearby] State University. His commitment to the military, which he made while still in high school…, will end in a few months.
But there is a definite edge in his voice, an undercurrent of bitterness, when he talks about the tiny percentage of the American population that is shouldering the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We’re nowhere close to sharing the sacrifice,” he said. “And it should be shared, because it’s only in that sharing that society will truly care about what’s going on over there."
The war in Iraq is the number one issue in American politics and "society" doesn't care about what's going on "over there?" As for "sharing the sacrifice," whom does Sergeant X think pays him twice a month, and spends $2 billion per week to "support" the war in Iraq, and financed his state university education and his fiancé's engagement ring?
Can We Share?
Herbert didn't let the interview end until Sergeant X endorsed one of Herbert's favorite mantras.
He said that if he could wave a magic wand, he would make some form of public service compulsory. “You wouldn’t have to join the military,” he said. “But there are many other ways to serve. You could work for AmeriCorps, or the Red Cross, or Homeland Security. You could do something. It’s about social responsibility. Especially in a time of war."
Much of the time, Bob Herbert's heart is in the right place, but on certain subjects he has his head cross threaded up another part of his anatomy, and his advocacy of compulsory national service is one of his foggiest notions.
Let's say we require every citizen between the ages of 18 and 20 to perform two years of national service. What are we going to do with all those kids, and how are we going to pay them? Do we not have enough bloated, ineffective federal government programs already? And how will having a bunch of underage drinkers getting underfoot at AmericaCorps or the Red Cross or Homeland Security help us win our war? Two words: it won't. Does Herbert honestly think it makes sense in wartime to keep an all volunteer military and conscript everyone else to hand out coffee and doughnuts at the USO? That sort of "sacrifice" wouldn't do the likes of Sergeant X any good, and it would horn in on Halliburton's combat coffee service contract.
I'm embarrassed for Sergeant X. He comes across in Herbert's column like he's in need of a prescription for grow-up pills. But my embarrassment for Sergeant X is nothing compared to my outrage at Bob Herbert for exploiting a dispirited young soldier to promote Bob Herbert's personal agenda.
Herbert does a grave injustice to the dignity of America's fighting men and women when he hands one a crying towel and turns on the tape recorder.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
North Korea: More Foreign Policy Follies
According to an Associated Press report, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said young Mister Bush has told the North Koreans that "...there is no intention to invade or attack them. So they have that guarantee... I don't know what more they want."
Ah, U.S. foreign policy at its finest. We invaded a country that had no nukes (Iraq), we threaten to attack a country that has no nukes and says it doesn’t want any (Iran), but North Korea, a country that not only admits it has nukes but claims to have tested one and threatens to test more, them we promise not to invade or attack.
Rice also said that Pyongyang may be afraid that the U.S. will conduct an Iraq-style invasion of North Korea. But no, she said, "Iraq was a very special situation… Iraq was a desire to finally deal with a threat that had been there for too long."
Candy Condi has an odd sense of history and a seemingly inferior grasp of arithmetic. North Korea became a threat when it invaded South Korea in 1950. Saddam Hussein changed from an ally to a threat when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. The way I figure it, that means North Korea was a threat for forty years longer than Iraq was. You have to wonder what kind of Brave New Math the State Department uses to calculate these things.
Then again, you also have to consider that the Generation X neoconservatives who used to work for Condi on the National Security Council didn't think weapons of mass destruction were factors during the Cold War, and simultaneously blurted absurdities like, "Arms control, what's that?"
U.S Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said that the U.S. won't be intimidated by threats from North Korea. "This is the way North Korea typically negotiates by threat and intimidation," Bolton said. "It's worked for them before. It won't work for them now."
I don't know about that, Moustache Ride. We warned them not to develop nuclear weapons and they went ahead and did. We warned them not to test missiles and they went ahead and did. We warned them not to test a weapon and they went ahead and did that too. They're already slapped with so many sanctions that more sanctions aren't likely to make any difference in their behavior. And we've promised that we won't attack or invade them. I'd say threat and intimidation tactics are working out pretty good for them.
What's It Oil About?
In the Rose Garden yesterday, Mister Bush talked about North Korea's successful "nucular test" and how it constitutes a threat to international stability. Ho-hum. But perhaps his most notable statements regarded his "staying the course" Iraq posture. He said that the Islamic "caliphate" wanted to be able to take over Iraq and use oil as an economic weapon, which means that he's openly admitting now that his administration's U.S. Middle East strategy is, and always was, about oil.
That brings us back to what was really different between Iraq and North Korea, and what's different between North Korea and Iran. Though the Bush administration has consistently used the specter of a mushroom cloud over an American city as a tool to gain support of its pitiful policies, it really couldn't care a tree hug less if another tinhorn or two has a fistful of nukes. What the neoconservatives really worry about is control of the balance of global energy. That's why they want so desperately to hang on in Iraq. It's also why they want to paint Iran as a bigger threat than North Korea.
The Balance of Electrical Power
Among what I describe as the "upper tier" political entities in the Next World Order series, energy has supplanted military force as the premier tool of trans-national power. These days, firepower is far less important than the kind of power that turns on electric lights and fuels industrial growth. That's why Iran and Iraq have become such critical factors in the present global power struggle and why North Korea, despite its possession of nuclear weapons, is little more than a tic on a dog's tail.
The neocons thought they could cheaply and easily grab control of the balance of the world's oil reserves by invading and controlling Iraq. As we have seen, that plan fell out of the sky like a lead zeppelin, and created a gaping vulnerability for America's adversaries to exploit.
China, the rising hegemon on the block, has formed an energy coalition with Russia, Iran, and Venezuela that seriously threatens to chop the western nations' control of the energy market off at the knees, and if they succeed, they'll have done so without firing a single shot. And there's a good chance they'll pull it off, because as strategists go, the Chinese and their allies read Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, while Dick, Dubya, and the rest of the neocons are still struggling to grasp the basic concepts of Dick and Jane and My Pet Goat.
See Spot Poop
In his landmark novel on World War I titled The General, C.S. Forester likened the British high command during "The Great War" to a group of simpletons trying to pull a screw out of a floor with a claw hammer, never imagining that the task could be easily accomplished with a screwdriver.
I'd like to think that if we handed a screwdriver to the mouth breathers and kindergarten kids in charge of the United States, they'd use it to extract us from the hole they've drilled us into, but I suspect they'd just use the tool to drive the screw in further.
Poop, Spot! Poop! Right on Mommy's carpet!
Good boy!
Spot remover? What's that, Dude?
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Ah, U.S. foreign policy at its finest. We invaded a country that had no nukes (Iraq), we threaten to attack a country that has no nukes and says it doesn’t want any (Iran), but North Korea, a country that not only admits it has nukes but claims to have tested one and threatens to test more, them we promise not to invade or attack.
Rice also said that Pyongyang may be afraid that the U.S. will conduct an Iraq-style invasion of North Korea. But no, she said, "Iraq was a very special situation… Iraq was a desire to finally deal with a threat that had been there for too long."
Candy Condi has an odd sense of history and a seemingly inferior grasp of arithmetic. North Korea became a threat when it invaded South Korea in 1950. Saddam Hussein changed from an ally to a threat when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. The way I figure it, that means North Korea was a threat for forty years longer than Iraq was. You have to wonder what kind of Brave New Math the State Department uses to calculate these things.
Then again, you also have to consider that the Generation X neoconservatives who used to work for Condi on the National Security Council didn't think weapons of mass destruction were factors during the Cold War, and simultaneously blurted absurdities like, "Arms control, what's that?"
U.S Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said that the U.S. won't be intimidated by threats from North Korea. "This is the way North Korea typically negotiates by threat and intimidation," Bolton said. "It's worked for them before. It won't work for them now."
I don't know about that, Moustache Ride. We warned them not to develop nuclear weapons and they went ahead and did. We warned them not to test missiles and they went ahead and did. We warned them not to test a weapon and they went ahead and did that too. They're already slapped with so many sanctions that more sanctions aren't likely to make any difference in their behavior. And we've promised that we won't attack or invade them. I'd say threat and intimidation tactics are working out pretty good for them.
What's It Oil About?
In the Rose Garden yesterday, Mister Bush talked about North Korea's successful "nucular test" and how it constitutes a threat to international stability. Ho-hum. But perhaps his most notable statements regarded his "staying the course" Iraq posture. He said that the Islamic "caliphate" wanted to be able to take over Iraq and use oil as an economic weapon, which means that he's openly admitting now that his administration's U.S. Middle East strategy is, and always was, about oil.
That brings us back to what was really different between Iraq and North Korea, and what's different between North Korea and Iran. Though the Bush administration has consistently used the specter of a mushroom cloud over an American city as a tool to gain support of its pitiful policies, it really couldn't care a tree hug less if another tinhorn or two has a fistful of nukes. What the neoconservatives really worry about is control of the balance of global energy. That's why they want so desperately to hang on in Iraq. It's also why they want to paint Iran as a bigger threat than North Korea.
The Balance of Electrical Power
Among what I describe as the "upper tier" political entities in the Next World Order series, energy has supplanted military force as the premier tool of trans-national power. These days, firepower is far less important than the kind of power that turns on electric lights and fuels industrial growth. That's why Iran and Iraq have become such critical factors in the present global power struggle and why North Korea, despite its possession of nuclear weapons, is little more than a tic on a dog's tail.
The neocons thought they could cheaply and easily grab control of the balance of the world's oil reserves by invading and controlling Iraq. As we have seen, that plan fell out of the sky like a lead zeppelin, and created a gaping vulnerability for America's adversaries to exploit.
China, the rising hegemon on the block, has formed an energy coalition with Russia, Iran, and Venezuela that seriously threatens to chop the western nations' control of the energy market off at the knees, and if they succeed, they'll have done so without firing a single shot. And there's a good chance they'll pull it off, because as strategists go, the Chinese and their allies read Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, while Dick, Dubya, and the rest of the neocons are still struggling to grasp the basic concepts of Dick and Jane and My Pet Goat.
See Spot Poop
In his landmark novel on World War I titled The General, C.S. Forester likened the British high command during "The Great War" to a group of simpletons trying to pull a screw out of a floor with a claw hammer, never imagining that the task could be easily accomplished with a screwdriver.
I'd like to think that if we handed a screwdriver to the mouth breathers and kindergarten kids in charge of the United States, they'd use it to extract us from the hole they've drilled us into, but I suspect they'd just use the tool to drive the screw in further.
Poop, Spot! Poop! Right on Mommy's carpet!
Good boy!
Spot remover? What's that, Dude?
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
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