Wackystan

by Jeff Huber

It sounds like the world's worst army once again took on the world's best army and lived to fight another day. The BBC reports that on September 25 Pakistani forces opened fire on two U.S. helicopters as they crossed the border from Afghanistan.

Chief Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said the helicopters had "crossed into our territory in Ghulam Khan area."

Pentagon bull feather merchant Bryan Whitman said that, "The flight path of the helicopters at no point took them over Pakistan."

General Abbas said, "They passed over our check post so our troops fired warning shots."

Bryan Whitman said, "The Pakistanis have to provide us with a better understanding of why this took place."

Um, Bryan, they just told you: your helicopter passed over their check post and they fired warning shots at it. What's not to understand?

This incident is yet another prime illustration of what America's biggest casualty has been in our woebegone war on terror: the truth. At this point, when presented with a choice of believing a Pentagon spokesman or a tinhorn two-star general of an army that lost every war it fought for a Bananastan country with imaginary borders and brooms don't even have handles, the decision is obvious: the Pentagon guy is lying.

Wackystan

Whenever I do a piece on Pakistan the first thing that crosses my mind is a tale from a military journalist pal who spent a day in a Pakistani airport, waiting for her airplane to show up and watching the janitor work. The janitor had a broom that he held by string instead of a handle. Every hour, he walked through the terminal, swatting at mounds of dirt, cigarette butts, chicken droppings and other inscrutable filth, trying as best he could to push it all under the chairs the passengers sat in while waiting for their boarding calls. You know who came behind the janitor and cleaned under the chairs? Nobody.

The best part: this didn't take place at some puddle jumper gas-and-go dirt strip in the Khyber Pass. It happened at Islamabad International Airport.

According to the BBC, the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is "unclear." There's an "imaginary border" called the "Durand" line that each side marks differently across a two to three mile wide "no man's land."

Pakistan's constitution allows its heads of state to disband the other branches of government and suspend the constitution itself as they see fit, but the heads of state are hardly American-style unitary executives. Their possession of power depends wholly on the aegis of the military, the military whose army has lost to every army it ever fought (except, of course, the United States Army). It's a form of government best described as a constitutional junta.

Oh, yeah. Pakistan also has nuclear weapons. We don't trust Pakistan's army to guard them properly and we'd like to guard them ourselves, but Pakistan's army won't let us.

And here we are about to get tangled up in a war of some flavor or other with these people that, like the rest of our Bush II conflicts, we can't possibly win because there's no strategic objective to be had that our military can achieve.

Worse yet, losing in the Bananastans promises to be even uglier than it has been in Iraq. We'll have at least four separate entities working at cross purposes who will be more interested in outdoing each other than they will be in doing it to whoever we manage to identify as the "enemy."

Chain of Fools

It's generally accepted among modern military thinkers that unity of command is the principle of warfare that makes all the other principles—objective, offensive, maneuver, economy of force, etc.—possible to achieve. In the civilian world, you do the bidding of whoever who signs your paycheck. In the military, you follow orders from the guy who signs your fitness report. If you have a major operation in which the signature trail doesn't pyramid up to one guy, you have a cluster bomb on your hands. His unified command structure was the thing that allowed Field Marshall Erwin Rommel to overcome his inferior supply capabilities and defeat Dwight Eisenhower's force at Kasserine Pass in 1943.

With that in mind, let's take a look, as best we can, at the chains of command of American and NATO forces presently operating in the Bananastans. Strap on your seatbelts because we'll take a lot of sharp turns on this journey.

The U.S. helicopters the Pakis shot at on September 25 were part of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). ISAF works for Allied Command Operations (ACO), which works for Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACUER), U.S. Army General John Craddock, who works in the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Belgium and is dual hatted as Commander, U.S European Command (EUCOM) headquartered in Germany.

The helicopters that Pakistani troops shot at on September 3 were part of American Special Operations forces, who work full time for U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) which is headquartered in Florida. SOCOM encompasses Army Rangers and Navy Seals and other SPECOP outfits, and is the only unified command to have its own budget, making it a virtual separate service in the U.S. military command structure.

The CIA, which virtually operates like a separate country, is in charge of the unmanned aerial vehicles we use to assassinate—or try to assassinate—evildoers in Pakistan with Hellfire missiles. The CIA has help controlling these complicated drones, of course. They aircraft are flown by Air Force personnel from an operations center at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, which is located in the area of responsibility of U.S. Northern Command (NORCOM) headquartered in Colorado. NORCOM dual hats as commander of the North America Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the outfit that was resting up to track Santa on Christmas Eve when 9/11 happened.

The Bananastans lie in the area of responsibility belonging to the commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), headquartered, like SOCOM, in Florida. General David Petraeus just took charge of CENTCOM, and he must being experiencing military culture shock. As a combatant commander in the unified command structure, Petraeus is supposed to be in control of everything that happens in his area. But as we saw, his predecessor, Admiral William "Fox" Fallon, didn't have control of everything in his area because Petraeus was in charge of Iraq, and Petraeus went around Fallon's back—and everybody else's back—and did monkey business directly with the White House.

Talk about geese and ganders; now Petraeus is the one getting potty blocked from all angles. When it came time for somebody to calm down the Pakis about all the cross-border attacks into their country, the Bush administration sent Admiral Mike Mullen, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff isn't supposed to be in command of anything.

Petraeus might be happy to merely run the public relations effort for the Bananastans campaign. Aside from handing out bribes and weapons to Iraqi militias, that's the sort of thing he's best at. But it appears that the Pentagon wants to control the propaganda operation from Washington through professional humbuggers like Bryan Whitman. That has to grate Petraeus no end since he's so used to doing his own lying.

Think of the effect this is having on certain dead people. Barry Goldwater and Bill Nichols, who established the modern U.S. military joint command structure in 1986, must be spinning in their graves, and Erwin Rommel has to be clawing at his coffin lid for a chance to take another crack at us.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Russ Wellen's interview with Jeff at The Huffington Post and Scholars and Rogues.

It's the War Economy, Stupid

by Jeff Huber

(This is a rework/update of two previous pieces that I cobbled together for Military.com, Antiwar.com, etc. It also has some new material, so I hope you enjoy it.)

No nation has ever profited from a long war.

--Sun Tzu

So we're up to $1.8 trillion to finance the Bush Memorial Bailout, huh? Shoot, that kind of money could bankroll 18 more years of our woebegone war in Iraq. Not to worry, though; we can stay in Iraq for as long as it takes to achieve the kind of victory John McCain promises if it takes fifty years, a hundred years, a thousand years or a million years.

The Chinese are a patient people, and they take American Express.

Strategic Reach Around

Folks in the unconscionable right wing media have the serial Bush voters in my neck of Virginia convinced that our economic woes are a direct result of our banks lending money to colored folks. The National Review points the finger at "a bit of legislative arm-twisting much beloved by Sen. Obama and his fellow Democrats" known as the Community Reinvestment Act by which Obama's "celebrated community organizers" forced banks to make bad loans to minorities. National Review doesn't bother to mention that the Community Reinvestment Act was passed in 1977, and the original Act and its subsequent revisions, according to the Federal Reserve, do not "require institutions to make high-risk loans that jeopardize their safety." To the contrary, "the law makes it clear that an institution's CRA activities should be undertaken in a safe and sound manner." National Review also avoided speculating as to how on earth blacks and Hispanics just recently managed to run up $700 billion or more in bad mortgages all by their lonesomes.

What we're actually observing now is an ironic reversal of the strategic equation that led America to the status of global hegemon. Beginning with World War I (and arguably before that), military intervention overseas both enhanced America's position in the balance of global military power and fueled its economic engine. American has essentially maintained a wartime economy since World War II, the conflict that made the United States the powerhouse of the free world. Throughout most of that period we have maintained a full time professional force and augmented it with reservists, militiamen, conscripts and mercenaries. We have also maintained permanent deterrence and first response forces in Europe and Asia as a cornerstone of our Soviet containment strategy.

As a force in being, our post World War II military did a remarkable job of preventing a direct confrontation between the free world and the Soviet Bloc. But when we actually committed forces to combat, most notably in Korea and Vietnam, the results were, to put it kindly, disappointing. I don't say this to disparage the spirit and effectiveness of American troops in battle. Tactically, the U.S. military has been superb, but the manner in which America's political and military leaders (who at this point are virtually indistinguishable) have used it has seldom yielded favorable strategic outcomes.

General Douglas MacArthur squandered the brilliance of his amphibious landing at Inchon when he pressed too far north and goaded China into the Korean conflict. And it's more or less true that American forces were never defeated on the field in Vietnam, but like they say, you can win a thousand battles...

Today, General David Petraeus boasts of "enormous progress" in Iraq because "We have gone from a situation where 14-15 months ago there were 180 attacks a day in Iraq. Now there are on average about 25 attacks a day." Can you for a moment imagine yourself characterizing 25 bombings a day in California as "progress?"

What gains have been made in Iraq came about as a result of Petraeus following the standard operating procedures from his first two tours in that country. As commander in Mosul and later as the officer responsible for training Iraqi security forces, "miracle worker" Petraeus achieved short term gains by handing out guns and bribes like bags of Gummi Worms. Then he grabbed his end of tour medal and got out of Dodge before the time bombs he left behind blew off his successors' baby makers. The "reductions" in violence in Iraq came largely thanks to the payola Petraeus gave Sunni militias to fight al-Qaeda. Heh. That "fighting al-Qaeda" business is going well. In July 2008, more than four years after Petraeus supposedly tamed Mosul, Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times trumpeted that, "Al-Qaeda is driven from Mosul bastion after bloody last stand." Two months after the bloody last stand, on September 5, the official Operation Iraqi Freedom proclaimed, "Al-Qaeda networks in Mosul set back." Just over two weeks after that, on September 21, the Associated Press heralded, "US military targets al-Qaida in Iraq." This targeting of al-Qaeda occurred after, among other things, a suicide trucker blew up a police headquarters in Mosul. Not my idea of a miraculous outcome, but what the heck? Medals of Freedom for all my friends!

And oh, yeah, Iraq wants us to pack our kit and leave.

Upon taking command of the Iraq theater from Petraeus, General Ray Odierno cautioned that the gains made in Iraq "are fragile and reversible." And do you know what I say? Ha, ha! Do you hear me? Ha, ha, ha! I imagine Odierno plans to spend a lot of time in his new job sitting on his body armor with his legs crossed.

Our puppets in the Bananastans aren't playing by Marquis of Queensbury guidelines either. The worst army in the world (Pakistan's, which has lost every war it ever fought) apparently kicked the best army in the world (ours) out of its country on Monday September 15. General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the closest thing Pakistan has to a genuine head of state, said on Wednesday September 10 that “No external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan.”

Makes you wonder why we spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined if that's all the more good it does us.

Ancient Chinese Open Secret

The Chinese know full well that the Middle East is the traditional graveyard of western superpowers. They have been delighted by our folly in Iraq; they're no doubt approaching Taoist nirvana over the prospect of America digging itself an even deeper hole in the Bananastans, a future that seems set in stone regardless of which political minstrel ingratiates his way into the Oval Office come November.

China watched with amusement for decades as the Soviet Union, with its inferior economic model, tried to compete with us in an arms race. Now, the Chinese spectate from the skybox as we pursue an arms race with ourselves, and pour national treasure down a sand dune, and continue to depend on a form of national power that has become antithetical to our national interest.

You'll listen to the nattering class babble in the infosphere about how our economic woes came about as a result of deregulation, and to some extent they'll be correct.

But what you'll actually be hearing is what it sounds like when your country is losing the kind of war that takes place in the brave new world order it created.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Russ Wellen's interview with Jeff at The Huffington Post and Scholars and Rogues.

My Obligatory Palin Comparison

"When the people of Iraq are liberated, we will again have written another chapter in the glorious history of the United States of America."

--John McCain, March 19, 2003

What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Tina Fey?

Tina Fey would make a good president. With her years as head writer of Saturday Night Live in her resume, Fey has more proven leadership and management performance than 99.99 percent of the politicians in this country, including and especially Palin.

And unlike John McCain, Fey isn't bat guano crazy, and she knows how to clean her room, and she can control her temper, and she isn't 72 years old.

I said some time ago that as president of the United States, John McCain would be the most dangerous man in the history of humanity. The only thing that keeps me from amending that statement is the fact the Sarah Palin is a woman. At this point, I'm not sure which scenario frightens me more: If President Grandpa lives through an entire term or if he doesn't.

I've held off doing lampoons on Palin because both her detractors and supporters have been doing such a good job of it. What's not to satirize? My favorite looney tune in praise of her foreign policy credentials came from neoconservative stalwart Frank "Bull Goose" Gaffney, who said that as Governor of Alaska, the state closest to our old Cold War nemesis Russia, "Sarah Palin would know more by osmosis--if nothing else--about the necessity for U.S. anti-missile systems than either Messrs. Obama or Biden." Frank has clearly absorbed more right wing Kool-Aid by osmosis than any living being other than, perhaps, Bill Kristol, whose dad Irving still holds the patent on the original formula.

I finally—weeks after the fact—forced myself to sit through the video of Palin's acceptance speech at the Republican Convention. The ovation her appearance prompted reminded me of The Beatles' premier on Ed Sullivan' show. (What do die-hard Republicans and hysterical teenage girls have in common?) Palin's speech ultimately moved to the subject of her political opposition and, as Republican political speech so often does, devolved into schoolyard taunting. It was like listening to Jesse Ventura in tight pants doing cast off Don Rickles material: Hockey mom hurls cheap insults to the approval of thousands of adoring hockey pucks.

(Oh yeah, another difference: Tina Fey is funny.)

Her address was so devoid of substance that only one aspect of it warrants specific mention: the part that begins: "It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves."

This is part of team McCain's "principled stand" meme, the one that says he was willing to throw away his chance at the presidency by backing the surge strategy. A lot of folks have swallowed this fair tale, including, not surprisingly, Tom Friedman of the rudderless New York Times. "I respected Mr. McCain's willingness to support the troop surge in Iraq, even if it was going to cost him the Republican nomination," Friedman wrote on September 16. Friedman. Brother. I'm still trying to figure out what color the sky is on that flat world of his.

Straight Talk, No Chaser

Though only a few of us are saying so, McCain's endorsement of the surge strategy was the antithesis of political courage. It was more of a Hail Mary play. In December 2006, the month before the surge strategy was unveiled, and McCain came out in favor of it, he was far from the hands-down favorite to take the GOP nomination. At that point he was behind Rudy Giuliani in the polls, and Fred Thompson was waiting in the wings for the right moment to transmogrify himself into the next Ronald Reagan. McCain, whose organization was never quite organized, needed the backing of the premier policy and lobbying force in conservative circles. Fortunately for him, just then the neoconservative bund was looking for a new sock puppet to endorse its latest plan to keep the United States in an eternal state of war.

On January 5, 2007 McCain and gal pal Joe Lieberman showed up at the American Enterprise Institute to endorse Fred Kagan's "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq" presentation, and became the crown/clown prince of the warmongery.

In summer of 2007 Straight Talk McCain claimed on CNN that "I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years. I came back from my first trip to Iraq and said, ‘This is going to fail. We’ve got to change the strategy to the one we’re using now.’” But the truth is that McCain was a vocal supporter of the strategy in Iraq and then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's "small footprint" approach up until the November 2006 elections when Congress got a new majority party and Donald Rumsfeld got the boot.

Once committed to the surge, McCain was determined to make it sell. It was in April 2007 that McCain flew his other paramour Lindsey Graham to Baghdad on the taxpayers' dime to help General David Petraeus stage an outdoor market shopping spree that featured a security force of over 100 heavily armed troops and a brace of Blackhawk helicopters that McCain and Petraeus hoped nobody would find out about.

In her speech, Palin echoed the McCain mantra thanks to his steadfast support of the surge, "victory" is "within sight." Like McCain and his henchpersons, Palin didn't bother to detail what that state of affairs consists of and how it came about.

General Petraeus boasts of "enormous progress" in Iraq because "We have gone from a situation where 14-15 months ago there were 180 attacks a day in Iraq. Now there are on average about 25 attacks a day." Iraq's population is roughly 10 percent that of the United States. If we "only" had 250 bombings, shooting, mortar attacks etc. related to sectarian strive per day in this country, would you consider that "victory" was "within sight?"

What gains have been made came about as a result of Petraeus following the standard operating procedures from his first two tours in Iraq. As commander of the Mosul district and later as the officer responsible for training Iraqi security forces, Petraeus achieved short term gains by handing out guns and bribes like iPods, accepted his end of tour medal, and got out of Dodge before the time bombs he left behind blew off his successors' baby makers. Upon taking command of the Iraq theater of war from Petraeus, General Ray Odierno cautioned that the gains made in Iraq "are fragile and reversible." I imagine Odierno plans to spend a lot of time in his new job sitting on his body armor with his legs crossed.

This is the smoke and mirrors "success" John McCain takes credit for now, the same John McCain that Sarah Palin lauds for "his commitment to the security of the country he loves."

To summarize: Tina Fey would make a good president and she's funny. Sarah Palin is a joke who has a serious shot at making George W. Bush the second worst president in U.S. history.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Russ Wellen's interview with Jeff at The Huffington Post and Scholars and Rogues.

It's the Stupid War, Stupid (Update)

by Jeff Huber

No nation has ever profited from a long war.

--Sun Tzu

$85 billion to bail out American International Group, huh? That's on top of $30 billion to keep Bear Sterns out of the soup line, and $200 billion or more to prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from staining their collective mattress. For that kind of money we could have financed maybe three more years of our woebegone war in Iraq. Not to worry, though; we can stay in Iraq for as long as it takes to achieve the kind of victory John McCain promises if it takes fifty years, a hundred years, a thousand years or a million years to achieve.

The Chinese are a patient people, and they take American Express.

Strategic Reach Around

A number of folks in my neck of Virginia who voted for Bush twice and plan to vote for McCain assure me that our current economic woes are a direct result of our banks making mortgage loans to colored people. This is the same crowd that believes without hesitation that if we were to withdraw from Iraq, a haji horde numbering in the hundreds of millions would transit the oceans aboard a fleet of magic carpets, and invade and occupy America, and force all of us to do unspeakable things in unimaginable ways while we form pyramids wearing our unmentionables, or something like that.

What we're actually observing now is an ironic reversal of the strategic equation that led America to the status of global hegemon. Beginning with World War I (and arguably before that), military intervention overseas both enhanced America's place in the balance of global military power and fueled its economic engine. American has essentially maintained a wartime economy since World War II, the conflict that made the United States the military and economic leader of the free world. Throughout most of that period we have maintained a full time professional force and augmented it with reservists, militiamen, conscripts, and mercenaries. We have also maintained permanent deterrence and first response forces in Europe and Asia as a cornerstone of our Soviet containment strategy.

As a force in being, our post World War II military did a remarkable job of preventing a direct armed confrontation between the free world and the Soviet Bloc. But when we actually committed forces to combat, most notably in Korea and Vietnam, the results were, to put it kindly, disappointing. I don't say this to disparage the spirit and effectiveness of American troops in combat. Tactically, the U.S. military has been superb, but the manner in which America's political and military leaders (who at this point are virtually indistinguishable) have used it has seldom yielded favorable strategic outcomes.

General Douglas MacArthur squandered the brilliance of his amphibious landing at Inchon when he pressed too far north and goaded China into the Korean conflict. And it's more or less true that American forces were never defeated on the field in Vietnam, but so what?

Today, though they'll take all the kudos they can get over the "success" of the surge strategy in Iraq, neither General David Petraeus nor General Ray Odierno are eager to openly boast about the "victory" their elected bosses keep promising us is just around the corner. Upon taking charge of Central Command from Petraeus, Odierno cautioned that "we must realize that these gains are fragile and reversible." Odierno's starting to sound like a man watching his life pass before his eyes. As Petraeus's sidekick, he looked on as his boss created a faux peace by handing out guns and bribes like Hershey bars. Now that he's top kick, Odierno quakes at the knowledge that the bribe spigot may dry up but the guns won't go away. Odierno is also sweating bullets (heh, heh) over what he'll do when his neocon masters tell him he has to stay in Iraq and their erstwhile puppet Nuri al Maliki tells him he has to go.

Our puppets in the Bananastans aren't playing by Marquis of Queensbury guidelines either. The worst army in the world (Pakistan's, which has lost every war it ever fought) apparently kicked the best army in the world (ours) out of its country on Monday September 15. General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the closest thing Pakistan has to a genuine head of state, said on Wednesday September 10 that “No external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan.”

Makes you wonder why we spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined if that's all the more good it does us.

Ancient Chinese Open Secret

The Chinese are keen students of the entirely scrutable history of western civilization and know full well that the Middle East is the traditional graveyard of occidental superpowers. They have been delighted by our folly in Iraq; they're no doubt approaching orgiastic ecstasy over the prospect of America digging itself an even deeper hole in the Bananastans, a future that seems set in stone regardless of which political minstrel ingratiates his way into the Oval Office come November.

China watched with amusement for decades as the Soviet Union, with its inferior economic model, tried to compete with us in an arms race. Now, China spectates from the skybox as we pursue an arms race with ourselves and continue to depend on a form of national power that has become antithetical to our national interest.

You'll listen to the nattering class babble on the infosphere about how our present economic woes came about as a result of deregulation, and to some extent they'll be correct.

But what you'll actually be hearing is what it sounds like when your country is losing the kind of war that takes place in the brave new world order it created.

The Latest Shenanigans

The NYT and other sources reported late Friday that the Bush administration is urging Congress "to grant it far-reaching emergency powers to buy hundreds of billions of dollars in distressed mortgages despite many unknowns about how the plan would work."

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says the upfront cost could be as much as $500 billion. "Outside experts" say it could be closer to $1 trillion.

As best I can tell, these figures are above and beyond the $300 billion plus the government has already committed to bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and AIG and so on…

Timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

Even Later Shenanigans

The NYT reported at 10:30 am eastern time that "The Bush administration is asking Congress to let the government buy $700 billion in toxic mortgages in the largest financial bailout since the Great Depression."

'We're going to work with Congress to get a bill done quickly,'' President Bush said at the White House.

Yes, let's do this as quickly as possible. There's no sense in anyone taking a moment to think about what they're doing at a time like this.

Related articles:

Wars and Empires (September 2005)

In an Arms Race with Ourselves (October 2005)

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Russ Wellen's interview with Jeff at The Huffington Post and Scholars and Rogues.

Here We Go 'Round the Bananastan, Bush

by Jeff Huber

Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki wants U.S. troops to leave Iraq. General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani wants U.S. troops to stay out of Pakistan. In the former instance we'll be thrown out of a country after occupying it for six or more years. In the latter case, we'll get thrown out of a country before we go through the trouble of occupying it.

That's assuming, of course, that young Mr. Bush is serious about recognizing the sovereignty of our little buddies in the war on terror, which maybe isn't such a good assumption to make.

Knock, Knock, Knocking Down Pakistan's Door

On Wednesday September 3 Kayani said, “No external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan.” That was the same day that American Special Operations forces pulled a commando raid that chased Taliban militants or al Qaeda militants or "other" militants or some combination of the three out of Afghanistan and across the border into Pakistan and killed about twenty people, mostly women and children. The militants, whatever kind of militants they were exactly, apparently got away.

The New York Times noted that unnamed "top American officials" said the raid "could be the opening salvo in a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces" into Pakistan.

We might surmise that according to the Newspeak Dictionary top American officials use, "could be" is a synonym for "is" (which clarifies what their definition of "is" is), because on September 10 the NYT reported that unnamed top American officials said Mr. Bush "secretly approved" the broader campaign back in July.

You might want to get up on a tabletop at this point in the story because the horse trot gets pretty thick from here on in.

Merde in Your Eye

One of the top senior American officials told the NYT that “We have to be more assertive" because “The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable.” The NYT story notes that the situation in Pakistan has been intolerable for "nearly seven years" but doesn't comment on why the intolerableness has become so urgent now that "orders have been issued."

The September 10 NYT story does observe, however, that "It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country." A different unnamed senior American official from the one who said we have to be more assertive asserted that "the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults" but "The official did not say which members of the government gave their approval."

To review the bidding: We have unnamed American officials telling us that Mr. Bush gave secret orders (which are now an open secret) for Special Operations forces to do special operations inside Pakistan that one unnamed American official says multiple unnamed Pakistani officials approved of.

That's fairly fetid, but don't get down off that table yet; more filly flop is coming your way…

Spit Sandwich

That the NYT shows concern about the legality of Mr. Bush's new retro-preemptive deterrence escapade is notable on several counts. First is that Mr. Bush has been pulling the same sort of shoot-'em-up shenanigans in Somalia, but neither the newspaper of record nor anyone else is concerned about the legality of that operation because, by and large, the people who've lost their lives in Somalia are the same color as the people who lost their homes in New Orleans.

Second, it's fishy that no one in our government can tell us who in the Pakistan government says it's okay for us to start a war in Pakistan, but it wouldn't really matter if we did have a name. A thousand John Yoos could connive day and night for a year and not come up with a convincing argument that the U.S. Constitution allows a president to go to war on the say so of a foreign government.

Our woebegone war in Iraq is a plethora of despicable things, but "illegal" isn't one of them. Hillary Clinton and several hundred of her best friends in the United States Congress passed an Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq in October 2002 that constituted "specific statutory authorization" as delineated in War Powers Resolution of 1973 for Mr. Bush to "use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary" against Iraq. That, fellow citizens, is as legal as war gets in the Brave New World Order. Formal war declarations went out of style with big band jazz, and without U.S. backing, international treaty organization resolutions aren't worth what you have to pay a janitor to throw them in the trash.

Our Afghan oopscapade, the one that's spilling over into Pakistan, is notionally covered by the AUMF passed a week after the 9-11 attacks. If that AUMF covers Pakistan and Somalia, then it authorizes Bush to attack anywhere and anytime he wants to without giving Congress so much as the courtesy of a reach around, and amounts to Congress having delegated its constitutional war powers to the executive branch: which is, to say the very least, unconstitutional.

Don't get down form the table yet. We have two more gems of heinous humbuggery to discuss.

How War Was It?

It was so war…

Some in the mainstream media would have you believe that armed incursions into Pakistan to engage militants hiding there are covered by standing rules of engagement governing "hot pursuit." Bunk. "Hot pursuit" is something Jackie Gleason does when Burt Reynolds drives too fast; it is not a term associated with U.S rules of engagement. "Pursuit of hostile forces" authorizes said pursuit (and engagement) of said hostile forces if they "continue to commit hostile acts or exhibit hostile intent," but that's not something they're doing when, say, they're attending a wedding like they tend to be when we strike them with missiles fired from unmanned aircraft or manned nuclear submarines.

Speaking of missile attacks: Though it strongly opposes U.S. ground forces operating in its tribal regions, Pakistan's military—the closest thing Pakistan has to a government—has largely ignored American air strikes on its soil. This, in some ways, has led to a perception presented in the press that while "boots on the ground" may constitute an act of war, air strikes do not. But air strikes are every bit as much acts of war as invasions are, even if the air strikes are conducted by unmanned vehicles (a man somewhere sends them on their mission) and even the unmanned vehicles are controlled by a CIA agent or even a Blackwater mercenary rather than a U.S. military person.

Thus, Mr. Bush has been conducting an illegal war in Somalia (that nobody cares about) since at least as far back as January 2007 and in Pakistan (that everybody suddenly does care about) since at least year before that.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Russ Wellen's interview with Jeff at The Huffington Post and Scholars and Rogues.

Y I H+8 Bob Woodward

by Jeff Huber

In the span of a little over three decades, Bob Woodward of Watergate fame has gone from being a savior of his county's Constitution to one of his country's premier bull feather merchants. Bob has yet another book out about the Bush administration that contains revelations a year and a half too late to matter and an eternity shy of journalistic integrity.

Bobby's been all around the Big Brother Broadcast talking about the special program used in Iraq to bring down the violence levels that his special contacts in the White House and the Pentagon told him about. Bob told Larry King he "would love" to offer details about the secret program, but his sources told him "you can't write about this. This will get people killed."

Hmm. Writing about it would get people killed but talking about it on Larry King Live won't. I "would love" to know how that works.

I'd also love to know if this secret program—which Woodward compared to the development of the atom bomb in World War II—isn't part of something that was discussed in open sources as long ago as January 2007, back when Bobby's new book would have been relevant.

I've Got an Open Secret

On 60 Minutes, Bob described the "sophisticated and lethal special operations program" as "very sensitive and very top secret." Woodward told Scott Pelley of CBS that "there are secret operational capabilities that have been developed by the military to locate, target, and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq, insurgent leaders, renegade militia leaders."

Woodward then proceeded to tell Pelley, "I'd love to go through the details, but I'm not going to."

Jesus, Larry and Curly. How many more details do we need to figure the secret out, Bobby? I read everything you're talking about in a Spider Man comic book when I was eight. He threw this little spider looking gizmo on the Kingpin that stuck to him like a tick, and then Spidey tracked him down later and had a big fight with him. Spidey lost the fight. Too bad he forgot to take Iron Man along with him. Iron Man could have zapped the fat bastard with a repulsor ray.

And if Spider Man wanted to keep his gizmo a secret, it would be way, way, way too bad if he told Bob Woodward about it. But Spidey would never do something that dumb. Comic book characters, you see, are a lot smarter than the unnamed senior White House and Pentagon officials who talk to Bob Woodward.

Oh, hi, Bob. You're writing another book and you're looking for sensitive military secrets to put in it? Sure, I can tell you all sorts of sensitive military secrets you aren't supposed to know for your book, as long as talk about them on television too. Eight o'clock at Zola's? Your treat, right? Meet you at the bar!

Or maybe senior White House and Pentagon officials aren’t so dumb at that. Let's see: government bigwigs speaking on condition of anonymity so it doesn't sound like they're planting propaganda in the American press tell a big shot reporter (or a big shot reporter wannabe) things he turns around and reports while also reporting that he wasn't supposed to report them. This pattern has become so familiar by now that every time I read one of these stories sourced to "unnamed officials" my lips move. Consuming the undiluted excrement our fourth estate shovels at us on a 24/7/52 basis is like watching some dumb jerk at a party do 35-year old Monty Python routines and, worse yet, watching a roomful of even dumber jerks stand around and laugh at him.

The Mesmer of Success

The red herring in Bob's latest information mission is that the surge owes its success to the secret weapon rather more than it does to the surge. That piece of brainwash—somewhat subtler than it seems at first blush—is built on a handful of colossal but opaque false assumptions (Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four threw an invisible shield around them).

First is that some secret weapon straight out of Marvel Comics is responsible for the reduced violence in Iraq. It isn't. Nor is the surge. The causes of the reduced violence in Iraq are the bribe money Petraeus handed out to the Sunnis and the brokering the Iranians did between rivals Nuri al Maliki and Muqtada al Sadr so they'd make nice and not blow the incredible window of opportunity they have now to create a Axis of Shiites that can dominate the Middle East with help Russia and China.

Second is that the "reduced" incidences of violence in Iraq comprise "success." Even at their present levels, the bombings, shootings and other attacks taking place in Iraq are still atrocious; the country continues to be a cauldron of Hobbesian turmoil.

I'm not sure how much of this Bob Woodward realizes, and I'm not sure it matters. Bob quit caring about making a difference with his journalism about the time they cast Robert Redford to play him in All the President's Men. Now what he cares about making is money; Deep Throat has abdicated to Deep Pockets.

Lamentably, Woodward has become the template of success in the journalistic profession: cultivate powerful connections, break one big story, then sit back, let interns write your books for you, and ride the talk show circuit.

Perhaps the greatest damage Woodward did, however, was his investigative work on Watergate back in the 70s. He, as much as anyone else in the media, led us to adopt the grand illusion that our free press would always protect us from our government. Now, we can't even condemn FOX News as the government propaganda network because it's all FOX News.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Russ Wellen's interview with Jeff at The Huffington Post and Scholars and Rogues.

Mission Accomplished Again. Still. Always.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

--Voltaire (1694-1778)

Young Mr. Bush announced today that he'll bring about 8,000 troops home by February 2009. That's about seven months after the surge was originally supposed to expire, about 8,000 troops shy of reducing the troop levels to their pre-surge numbers, and about a month after his woebegone tenure as commander in chief expires. Master George also say more forces could withdraw in the first half of 2009, by which point he'll be clearing brush at his ranch and tepee off the trees in front of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

Only in the Barbecue Republic would the head of state tell his populace that his war escalation plan has been so successful that he has to extend it into the next head of state's term, and only in the Barbecue Republic would 45 percent or more of the population salute and say "makes sense to me."

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Russ Wellen's interview with Jeff at The Huffington Post and Scholars and Rogues.

A Boot Up the Bananastan

U.S. special forces attacked militants in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border on Wednesday, according to a September 3 New York Times article by Pir Zubair Shah, Eric Schmitt and Jane Perlez. The militants undergo a remarkable transformation in the course of the story.

In the headline they're "Militants." In the lead sentence they're "Qaeda militants." Three paragraphs in the bad guys are "Taliban and Al Qaeda." Several paragraphs later they're just "Qaeda" again, then they become just "Taliban," then "Taliban and Qaeda." In the last three paragraphs they're plain old "Taliban" and "Taliban" and "Taliban."

I don't buy for a second that all this name changing is merely sloppy writing on the part of NYT reporters. It has all the earmarks of being part of the long term, ongoing information operation designed to give the American public the perception that everyone Mr. Bush attacks in his woebegone war on terror had something to do with 9/11. If "Qaeda" attacked New York and Washington and every A-rab and A-rab wannabe Persian from Iran who we don't like is part of "Qaeda," then every A-rab and A-rab wannabe we don't like is responsible for 9/11.

Propaganda catch phrase-wise, "Qaeda" is a convenient substitute for "Commie," and if you don't hate the Qaedas and the Islamofabulism they stand for, then you're a Qaeda sympathizer, you dirty low down haji hugger.

It's also apparent to me that this info operation originates in one of the Pentagon truth ministries that sprang from Donald Rumsfeld's short lived Office of Strategic Influence. I hope you find the idea of the Pentagon running a deception operation on the American public shocking, but that's not the most shocking thing covered in this Sept 3 NYT story.

More shocking is that the story discusses what amounts to the Department of Defense assuming the authority to declare war, and even more shocking than that is that nobody seems to realize they're doing it and/or they don't appear to care.

War Games

In case you didn't have to take a written test to earn your American citizenship, here's a quick primer on war powers. Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution makes the president commander in chief of the military. All other war making powers, including and especially ratification of treaties and declaration of war, belong to the legislature as described in Article II, Section 8. After Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon wiped their noses with the Constitution in their pursuit of the Vietnam War, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973. In a nutshell, the War Powers Resolution allows a president to commit troops to combat for a maximum of 90 days, after which time he must get a declaration of war or "specific statutory authorization" from Congress to continue the operation. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) of September 18, 2001 pretty much covers statutory authorization for operations in Afghanistan, and Congressed passed a second AUMF for Iraq in October 2002.

But we've also been conducting overt offensive combat operations in Somalia and Pakistan for over a year (which, for the benefit of you hard core Bush supporters, is a lot, lot more than 90 days), and there's nothing remotely resembling an AUMF that covers either of those countries.

What we've mostly done in Pakistan and Somalia involves air strikes. Sometimes we bomb targets with hellfire missiles fired from unmanned aerial vehicles. Sometimes we bomb them with cruise missile fired from nuclear submarines. In at least one instance, we used a AC-130 gunship to rip a Somali village—and a bunch of the Somalis in it—to smitherines.

The idea behind these air strikes is to kill a high-ranking Qaeda official. Rather, the idea is to kill someone we've accused of being a high-ranking Qaeda official. Killing him while he's just a suspect saves us the trouble of having to bring him in and give him a kangaroo trial. The problem with a kangaroo trial is that no matter how much we stack it to produce a conviction, there's a chance the guy's Qaeda sympathizer defense attorney will prove the guy's not involved with Qaeda at all. That's a lot of time and effort wasted trying to nail a Qaeda guy who turns out not to be one.

We almost always kill a lot of civilians with these air assassinations, which is embarrassing, especially when it turns out that we bombed a wedding ceremony. We seldom get the guy we were actually after. Normally though, we claim that we got one or more "number two" guys, which is an easy claim to make, because almost everybody in that part of the world is a number two guy to some other guy, even though that other guy usually doesn't amount to a puddle of number one.

The downside, then, to air assassination, is that we never kill the right people, and killing the wrong people makes a lot of other people mad enough to sign on with the evildoers who otherwise never would have dreamed of doing such a thing.

The upside is that the Navy and Air Force get to contribute to the war on terror, which gives them an excuse to keep all the expensive equipment we bought them that was designed to fight a type of war they'll never fight against an enemy that only exists in the collective imagination of the American Enterprise Institute.

Plus, when we use airpower, it's not like we're really conducting war, even though we really are. Even though it seems more antiseptic, dropping bombs on a country is every bit as much an act of war as invading the country is. I'd guess that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is aware of that, but I'm not certain. Gates says and does some oddball things.

According to Shah, Schmitt and Perlez, the September 3 U.S. attack on the Pakistani village signaled what unidentified "top American officials" (them again) say "could be the opening salvo in a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces" inside Pakistan. This broader campaign would be part of a "secret plan secret plan that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been advocating for months within President Bush’s war council."

This is the selfsame Robert Gates who just last July warned of a "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy. Creepy, huh? At the war college where I got my masters degree in neoconservative studies, they teach that every military operation should have an integrated deception plan. Maybe that's Gates's primary function at DoD; to keep the public so confused nobody can figure out what the Pentagon is up to.

Whatever the case, it's going to be mighty darn hard for Gates to keep pretending he's not conducting an illegal war in Pakistan if he's going to make a regular thing of putting boots on the ground there. Then again, the only people keeping tabs on what he does are the press and Congress, so he'll probably keep getting away with it.

And lamentably, if the September 3 raid is any indication, this new boots up the Bananastan strategy isn't going to work any better than the old wedding bombing policy did. By official and unofficial accounts, American commandos managed to kill 19 "innocent people," most of them women and children, but the bad guys, whatever you want to call them, apparently escaped.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Russ Wellen's interview with Jeff at The Huffington Post and Scholars and Rogues.

They Lied with Their Boots On

Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.

--Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Vladimir Putin, who promoted himself from being Russia's president to being Russia's Dick Cheney, says America's Dick Cheney orchestrated the Russia-Georgia conflict to benefit the presidential bid of the neoconservatives' next white hope, John McCain. I've googled high and low and can't find a whisper of denial of Putin's accusations from our Dick Cheney or any of his henchmen.

Maybe the Cheney Gang has given up bothering to deny anything. Maybe they realize that by now, any time it's the word of Russia's Dick Cheney—or for that matter anybody else's Dick Cheney—and our Dick Cheney, the world population makes the safe assumption that our Dick Cheney is lying. Or it could be that they're simply so used to telling earth shattering untruths and getting away with it that they don't even bother to tell them any more.

It's the eye-watering lies of the neoconservative oligarchy that everyone remembers, but I've come to believe the little lies they tell reveal more about their malignant nature, and I'm particularly interested when these venial mendacities get dropped not by our politicians, but by our ever growing phalanx of political generals. I recently ran across one of these gems in, of all places, The Times of India.

At a late August Washington press conference, Marine Corps Commandant General James Conway said that al Qaeda members in Iraq are moving to the safe haven in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. "I think the al Qaida knows that they have blown a movement in Iraq through a number of missteps over time," he told reporters. The spine of the story, however, is not about the migration of al Qaeda fighters, but how Conway knows about said migration.

"No intelligence agency would say this," Conway confessed. Now that's something, when they can't bully a single intelligence source into backing up their fractured fables. So how did Conway verify his assertions to the vigilant fourth estate? "My guess is," he told them, "my belief is that they probably have gone to that safe haven in the FATA."

My guess? My belief? My God.

Conway's crack talk is reminiscent of a July 19 Associated Press interview with top U.S. commander in Iraq General David Petraeus. King David said that senior Al Qaeda leaders "might be" diverting fighters from the war in Iraq to the Afghan frontier area. He also said that Al Qaeda "might be" reconsidering Iraq as its highest priority war front. What made him say this "might be" happening is "some intelligence that has picked this up.” In case you're wondering what "some intelligence" might consist of, Petraeus explained that, "It's not solid gold intelligence." And "not solid gold intelligence" means what, exactly, General?

“There are unsubstantiated rumors and reflections that perhaps some foreign fighters originally intended for Iraq may have gone to the FATA," Petraeus finally told AP, which means in point of fact that the entire story about al Qaeda in Iraq transferring itself to the Bananastans is total f***ing bulls***; but that didn't keep Petraeus from telling it or the Associated Press from running it.

But the goofy intelligence this bull feather mattress is supposedly based on isn't the goofiest part of it. The goofiest part is the story's basic premise. How do you suppose al Qaeda dudes in Iraq are getting to middle Bananastan? I'm going to go out on a limb and say they're probably not flying there first class out of Baghdad International. And you can bet your sweet bippy they're not forming up and marching 2,000 miles through the mountains and deserts of Iran and Afghanistan. (U.S. Navy Seals might be able to do something like that, but it would take them a very long time.)

Yeah, you can smuggle dribs and drabs of martyrdom interns from Baghdad to Islamabad or wherever. You'd do that with key leadership personnel, or with special task operatives like the carload of out-of-towners who pulled off the 9/11 attacks. But it's not like the Petraeuses of this world would have you believe, with Field Marshall bin Laden and 50 or so of his best number-two men sitting around the strategic display in the Situation Cave making weighty decisions on troop movements. All right then, we'll take the Third Lebanese Division along with elements of the X Karbala Corps and shore up the Four-Oh-First Palestine Battalion at their positions along the Khyber Pass.

This logistical dissonance hits straight at the heart of the inanity behind the "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" mantra, recast in summer of 2006 by then Central Command chief General John Abizaid as "If we withdraw before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here." The enemy can't get here from there, not in the kinds of numbers Abizaid and the rest try to conjure in our imaginations. It's not always certain whom the "enemy" is when Mr. Bush's echo chamberlains refer to them, but it sort of doesn't matter. No enemy, actual or potential, has an air force or navy big enough to bring a suitable occupation force to America. The oceans are too wide to swim or jump across, and big grown up generals like John Abizaid should know better than to believe a hoard of Hajjis can get here on flying carpets or can wish themselves here by rubbing a magic lantern.

Why do men with four stars on their collars talk this kind of far-fetched poppycock?

Part of the answer lies in their need to sustain the myth that Saddam Hussein was connected with the 9/11 attacks. In a new book, author Ron Susskind claims the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, hand written letter designed to contrive a false link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto calls Susskind's accusation "absurd." Of course it's absurd, Tony, but that's not what we asked. Could you tell us whether or not it's true?

It's a yes/no question, Tony. Take your time.

By the way, in case you didn't know already: the pack of Sand Webelos that calls itself al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has about as much to do with the real al Qaeda as Erik Estrada has to do with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Where Do We Find Such Liars?

I suppose by now most Americans are inured to hearing our highest-ranking military officers tell outrageous lies, but I'm not. I find their chronic mendacity disgraceful, and can't help but wonder what's going on in their military minds. Possible explanations abound.

Solzhenitsyn theorizes that evildoing has a threshold magnitude, and when individuals cross that threshold they leave humanity behind. George Orwell's doublethink is the power "to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them." In his celebrated essay "On Bulls***," Professor Harry G. Frankfurt suggests that what bulls***ters misrepresent has nothing to do with their beliefs, that their only value they recognize is expediency. Conversely, retired Army Colonel Paul E. Valley, creator of the MindWar concept, says that in order to be effective the information operative "must know that he speaks the truth, and he must be personally committed to it." (Emphasis Valley's.)

I'll offer a few more suppositions that may apply in the cases of the three generals. We can probably attribute Conway's prevarications, at least partly, to simple-minded singleness of purpose. There's little question that Petraeus is an historic case study in unbridled personal ambition. As to Abizaid, I'd really, really, really love to know at what precise moment in his career the guy took his last drug urinalysis.

It's probably less important to ponder why these men did what they did than it is to consider what to do about them. Here's what Solzhenitsyn had to say about the bad men of his time and place:

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundation s of justice from beneath new generations… Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.

It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!

Solzhenitsyn's words reverberate for me when I think that not only has David Petraeus been rewarded by his promotion to head of Central Command, he personally hand-picked the latest crop of Army one-star generals.

And if McCain loses in November, just you watch who the GOP trots out in 2012.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Russ Wellen's interview with Jeff at The Huffington Post and Scholars and Rogues.