Tag: Iraq

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The Real Costs of War

Several newspapers and websites covered President Bush’s visit to Brooke Army Hospital in San Antonio earlier this week. The pictures were gut-wrenching. The president toured the facility, meeting soldiers who had lost arms, legs, eyes, ears, even faces in combat in Iraq.

Bush moved through the hallways, greeting the wounded with a wry smile and his typical bonhomie. As he watched one soldier — blind and legless — climb a wall, he turned to the soldier’s mother and said, “He’s a good man, isn’t he?” Yes, Mr. Bush, he is. And he was probably even a better man before an IED maimed him for life.

One hopes that Bush came away from his visit with some deeper understanding of the human costs of his administration’s unilateral and unnecessary war.

But it’s doubtful. As the president exited the hospital, impressed by the good medical work he’d just seen, he took a moment to advocate for better government support for wounded veterans. Apparently, Bush was unaware that the high-tech rehabilitation facility he’d just visited was entirely supported by private funds.

A new report on the financial costs of war was released this week by congressional Democrats. The report cited the costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at nearly $1.5 trillion — so far. It’s an amount that is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008. The report estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000.

The report also says that our war funding is diverting billions of dollars away from “productive investment” by American businesses. It adds that National Guardsmen and reservists are being kept from their jobs, resulting in economic disruptions for U.S. employers estimated at $1 billion to $2 billion. Gas prices, the report further notes, have tripled since the beginning of the war.

Critics say these figures are inflated. We say, inflated or not, it’s quite obvious that the cost of endless war on two fronts has depleted our economy, pushed our armed forces to the breaking point, and inflicted immeasurable human suffering on our soldiers and their families — not to mention the Iraqi people.

As has been demonstrated over and over again, the way to fight terrorism is through police work and our intelligence agencies. Invading a country under the guise of “keeping America safe from terrorism” makes about as much sense as the old Vietnam canard: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

In this case, we fear, we are destroying our own village. It is time for congressional Democrats to do more than issue reports. It is time to stop the madness of this no-win war.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Reality vs. Stereotype

The line at the cash register in the Macy’s men’s department was four-people deep. I was number four, standing there with my soon-to-be-purchased (I hoped) pants hanging over my arm. But “soon” didn’t look to be in the cards.

The guy at the head of the line had a big stack of stuff — two pairs of jeans, a Calvin Klein shirt, a couple pairs of socks, and a belt. He was a smallish black guy, maybe a teenager, maybe a little older. He was dressed in baggy, low-rider pants, an oversize T-shirt, shiny white tennis shoes, and a new baseball cap with a stiff brim turned sideways on his head.

In short, he looked like the classic urban hip-hop stereotype. He and the sales clerk were engaged in a rather involved conversation. As they continued to chat, those of us in line began to get restless. The guy in front of me let out a sigh — a very audible “this-is-so-Memphis” sigh.

Then a funny thing happened. The guy in front of him joined in the conversation at the checkout.

I heard him ask the kid, “So, when are you going back?”

“In a month,” he said. “I’m getting this stuff because I’m tired of wearing that uniform all the time.” He smiled as he said it. A big warm smile.

Turns out that the “kid” was in the U.S. Army. He was going back to Iraq for his second tour of duty in December. Suddenly, those of us in line weren’t in a hurry anymore. Everyone started talking to the kid, asking him how it was going over there, how was morale, etc.

“Pretty good,” he said. “I won’t say I’m looking forward to going back. But you gotta do what you gotta do. It’s the Army, man.”

The clerk finished ringing up the young man’s items and put them in a sack. As she handed them to him, she said, “God bless you, child. You be careful.”

The rest of us in line shook his hand and said thank you and be careful and thank you again. He smiled from underneath his tilted ball cap, thanked us, and walked away.

Reality, one. Stereotype, zero.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Why Are We Still in Vietnam…er, Iraq?!

Let’s proceed from the assumption that there are winners
and losers in wars (although a case can certainly be made that wars create
nothing but losers).

Let’s further proceed from the assumption that every war is
fought for a purpose. And, let’s further proceed from the assumption (and,
sadly, it’s a big one) that the purpose of fighting a war is not to enrich the
people who inevitably get rich from fighting wars (in the case of Iraq, the
Blackwaters, Halliburtons, General Dynamics and Exxon Mobils of the world).
For a somewhat more contrarian thesis, read my article entitled

“Support the Troops?”

Given these assumptions, it is reasonable to assess the
success of a war by measuring it against its stated objectives. In Iraq, the
objective (supposedly) is not only to provide security and a stable, democratic
government in Iraq, but to prevail in what this administration likes to call the
“war on terror.”

And, since Iraq has been characterized by this administration
as the “central front” in that war, and since one of the stated purposes of
fighting on that “central front” is to “fight them over there so we don’t have
to fight them over here,” it is certainly valid to measure the success of all
those purposes and objectives against the results that have been achieved. That
measurement, and those standards, are sometimes referred to as “metrics.”

There is little question that the war in Iraq has, at least
thus far, failed to achieve the objectives the administration has set out for
it. Remember that, as a condition for implementing the “surge,” there were
“benchmarks” that were supposed to be achieved. Well, in September, the General
Accountability Office issued

its report saying that the majority of the benchmarks had not been achieved.

And it is generally acknowledged that the overarching objective of the war in
Iraq, namely political reconciliation, hasn’t been achieved, and, based on
statements made recently by Iraqi officials, isn’t likely to be achieved,

ever.

But there are other “metrics” by which the success of “war
on terror” may be measured. One of the standards by which that success must be
measured is the answer to the following question: is the U.S. being made safer
from terrorist attack by fighting in Iraq. If the “fight them there…fight them
here” slogan is to have any meaning, surely this is the first question that must
be answered.

Astonishingly, not even the folks who are in charge of
fighting the war, either on the battle front or on the intelligence front, can
answer that question. Who can forget General Petraeus’ startling admission,
during his

recent testimony before Congress, that he didn’t know whether the war was
making us safer.

Here is the man who is running this war, who is watching the
troops under his command be killed and maimed on a daily basis, and he can’t
even tell us whether their sacrifice is worth it. This is un-freaking
believable! Perhaps even more revealing was the recent interview conducted by
NBC’s Iraq correspondent, Richard Engel, with

the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Admiral Scott Redd.

This newly created agency is supposed to be, according to its mission statement,
leading the fight to “combat the terrorist threat to the U.S. and its interests”
When asked directly by Engel, “are we safer today,” and after a long,
uncomfortable pause (not unlike the one Petraeus exhibited in response to the
same question),

Redd replied: “tactically, probably not; strategically, we’ll wait and
see.”

What the hell does that mean? Wait for what, 3,800 more
American combat deaths? See what, al Quaeda continue to

use the war as a recruiting tool? Well, Admiral Redd won’t have to wait or
get to see anything (at least not at the NCTC): two days after he gave that
interview, he abruptly

announced his resignation from the NCTC.

Just another example of where
speaking truth to power gets you with this administration.

A

recent report issued by the American Security Project answers, with a resounding “no,” the question of whether we’re winning the war on terror. ASP is a
self-described “non-profit, bi-partisan public policy research and education
initiative dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of a range of
national security and foreign policy issues” (read: think tank) whose board of
directors includes Gary Hart (the former Senator), John Kerry (the former
presidential candidate), George Mitchell (also a former Senator) and General
Anthony Zinni (the former commander of CENTCOM, and long-time critic of the war
in Iraq).

It answers the question in cold, statistical fashion. Using ten
objective criteria for determining the results of the “war on terror,” the
report concludes, not surprisingly, that we are losing that war. From a
“massive and dramatic increase in Islamist terrorism since 2003” to “Al Qaeda’s
[expansion of] its reach globally,” to the increasing perception in the Muslim
world of the U.S. as an “aggressive, hostile and destabilizing force,” the
report paints a dismal picture of the effect of the war in Iraq on the “war on
terror.”

The report’s quantification of terrorist attacks is
startling. It finds that the number of such attacks, worldwide, has increased
exponentially. It does not suggest that just because the U.S. hasn’t been
attacked it is therefore safer, and therefore doesn’t need to worry about
terrorism elsewhere in the world, because those aren’t “American interests,” a
position espoused, either ignorantly or dishonestly (but most revealingly), by
the Vice President’s wife in a recent
interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”

As the NCTC’s mission
statement acknowledges, even our intelligence community recognizes that our
“interests” go beyond our borders. And, of course, there is now the depressing
fact that the war in Iraq has resulted in the death of
more Americans than were killed on September 11th.

The mantra of the Vietnam era, equally applicable to the
current era, was most poignantly revealed in a song by the group known as
Country Joe and the Fish. The chorus of their song “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To
Die” included the question “And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting
for…” My question is: Joe, where are you now that we need you?

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Corker Says Constituents and “Common Sense” Come Before Political Loyalties

CREDIT: jb

In a visit to Shelby County Wednesday, Bob Corker, the
Republican who was elected to the U.S. Senate last year over Democrat Harold
Ford Jr. in a tight race that drew ample national attention, made it clear that
partisan issues are the least of his concerns.

Both in a luncheon address to Rotarians at the Germantown
Country Club and in remarks to reporters afterward, former Chattanooga mayor
Corker emphasized a “common sense” approach in which “I strive to make sure that
everybody in the state is proud of the way I conduct myself…to understand issues
as they really are, devoid of some of the rhetoric that surrounds these
issues…[and] the political whims of the day.”

Take his response when asked whether embattled GOP senator
Larry Craig, busted in the infamous “wide stance” airport-restroom case, should
resign for the good of the Republican Party:

Corker said Craig’s predicament was a matter for the
“people of Idaho” and the Senate Ethics Committee. “I don’t try to get into all
the political ramifications of this or that. The way to get a whole lot more
done is to focus on issues.” Somewhat disdainfully, he added, “There are all
these messaging amendments that we do, all about making one side look bad and
the other side look good. Democrats do it, and Republicans do it. It’s a total
waste of time.”

Helping The Med

As to how that even-handed outlook affected his stand on
issues, Corker was explicit. He talked of applying pressure on the
Administration, especially on recent health-care issues he considered urgent for
his constituents. “I know for a fact that I played a huge role in this [latest]
TennCare waiver thing. I have to say I had to put a hold on the Bush
nominations to make it happen. I thought it was important for our state.”

And there was his vote and enthusiastic support recently to expand SChip (the
federal State Children’s Health
Insurance Program) so as to increase funding for Tennessee by $30
million and to permit Medicaid payments for patients at The Med from Arkansas
and Mississippi. Both Corker and Tennessee GOP colleague Lamar Alexander
strongly supported the bill, which passed but was vetoed last week by President
Bush.

“I was glad to have worked out these issues
that have plagued the Med for so long. It’s ridiculous that people from Arkansas
and Mississippi have used the facility for so long and don’t pay for it. What’s
the logic in that?” Corker said, vowing to try to get the Med-friendly
provisions re-established in a veto-proof compromise measure yet to be
fashioned.

Corker made a pitch for the Every American Insured Health Act,
a bill he has sponsored that, he said, would modify the tax code so as to
guarantee universal access to private health insurance “but would not add a
penny to the national deficit.”

Contending that “what I’m trying to do is to add to
the equation a real debate, a real solution,” the senator said his proposal had been
“slammed” on the same day by both a conservative columnist and a liberal
columnist, leading him to conclude, “I’m pretty sure we got it just about
right.”

Corker said that executives of key national corporations,
saddled with large health-care costs for their employees, were “waling the halls
of Congress trying to get us to move to a government-run system so they can
alleviate. that expense which makes them non-competitive.” Without some
alternative form of universal access, he said, such a government-run system was
inevitable.

With 800,000 Tennesseans and 47 million Americans lacking
health-care coverage, there was also a “moral obligation” to make coverage universal,
Corker stressed.

Relations with Iran and Syria

As a member of both the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee
and the body’s Armed Services committee, Corker says he is focusing hard on
issues relating to war-torn Iraq, a country he has visited twice, and
neighboring Iran, subject of much speculation these days concerning possible
future hostilities between that country and the U.S.

Here again, the senator stressed his determination to
maintain independence of judgment. “I’ve had some very tense moments with this
administration – in the first two months I was up there [in Washington]
especially. There were some underwhelming meetings.”

Corker is dubious about the current political leadership of
Iraq {“things cannot go on as they are”) but supportive for the time being of
the current military strategy of General David Petraeus, with whom he stays in
contact.

On Iran, Corker said there was “some concern in the
Senate that the president might take action” and emphasized that “he [Bush]would have
to have Senate authority to do that.” Corker reminded reporters that after his
election he had said on CBS’ Face the Nation that diplomatic negotiations
with both Syria and Iran were necessary.

“We don’t want to overplay our hand in Iran,” he said.
“There’s a group of people there who want to be our friends. If we move into
Iran unilaterally others [in the region] will step back from being our friends.”

Corker, who was a construction executive before entering
politics, related the current diplomatic situation to his experience in
labor-management negotiations in Tennessee. “If you don’t talk with your enemies
they remain your enemies. There’s a lot to be learned just to be in somebody’s
presence,” he said.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Schuster Says “Sorry” to Marsha Blackburn

Earlier this week, the Flyer posted a clip of MSNBC’s David Schuster flustering Rep. Marsha Blackburn by asking her the name of the soldier most recently killed in Iraq from her district. Blackburn couldn’t answer the question.

Now, as it turns out, Schuster couldn’t answer it correctly either …

From MediaBistro: David Shuster just took to the air on MSNBC to apologize for an earlier segment, in which he asked Rep. Marsha Blackburn to name the last person from her district who died in Iraq. The original transcript:

Blackburn: “The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq uh — from my district I — I do not know his name …”

Shuster: “Okay, his name was Jeremy Bohannon. He was killed August the 9th, 2007. How come you didn’t know the name?”

Turns out Bohannon wasn’t from Blackburn’s district, but rather from a neighboring one.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Q&A: Mike Heidingsfield,

Most days, Mike Heidingsfield studies local crime-fighting strategies from the safety of his downtown office. But in 2005, the president of the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission helped train police forces in Iraq. That experience recently led him to another dangerous task.

In July, Heidingsfield spent two weeks in Iraq as part of a commission studying that country’s security forces, which include the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police. He, along with 20 other commission members, testified before Congress earlier this month. The commission found that the Iraqi army had improved and in the next 12 to 18 months should have the ability to operate independently of coalition forces.

But the commision also found that the Iraqi Police Services and the Iraqi National Police, which Heidingsfield spent his time studying, are undertrained, underequipped, and infiltrated by insurgents. — Bianca Phillips

How did you study the Iraqi Police?

We went to their training centers. We sat through their classes. We watched them operate in the field. We interviewed them. We did everything possible to immerse ourselves in what they were doing. It was of no value to stay in the Green Zone and simply be briefed because you couldn’t get a sense of what’s really happening.

Were you scared?

Yes, you’re always afraid. You’re afraid because if you’re out in the Red Zone, you never know who the enemy is, because they look just like the next person. You never know where the next explosive device is going to be hidden. And you never know when you’re going to be targeted.

You sleep in catnaps. You’re always listening. I slept with my body armor and my machine gun.

What were your accommodations in the Green Zone?

You stay in a specially constructed shelter that’s covered in sandbags to protect against mortar and rocket attacks. It’s normally two small bedrooms with an adjoining restroom. It’s not luxury living.

Does the Green Zone feel safe?

No, it doesn’t, oddly enough. It used to feel safer. When I was there the first time, every so often the Green Zone would get rocketed or hit by a mortar.

This time, we got rocketed and mortared every day in the Green Zone. There were five deaths within the span of four days. In fact, the first death of an Army nurse in combat since Vietnam occurred while we were there. She was going to the gymnasium to work out and was hit by a mortar.

What did you eat?

They have Pizza Hut and Burger King in the Green Zone. And they have great dining halls with terrific cafeteria-style food.

You can’t just go to a restaurant [in the Red Zone] because they’ll kill you. People ask me if I went shopping, and I say no. Did you go get a beer? No. Did you sit in a coffee shop? No. You can’t do those things because they will kill you.

There’s controversy right now over whether the U.S. should pull out of the war. Based on what you’ve seen with the Iraqi Police, what do you think?

I think we ought to redeploy our forces to bases in Turkey, Kuwait, and Jordan. We’d be strategically positioned around Iraq. … I think we should secure the borders of Iraq, so that Syrians and Iranians are denied the ability to go in and influence events.

I think we should secure the infrastructure, like the electrical grids, the oil fields, and if we do that, we should leave the internal political decisions to the Iraqis. They have to sort through how they’re going to come at political reconciliation.

Do you think the recent troop surge made a difference?

I think it made a difference in the interim. Whenever you impose 30,000 additional troops in a relatively confined area, it’s going to displace the violence and reduce the level of violence.

The question is whether the Iraqis have the ability to sustain that after we no longer have the surge in place. I think the original premise of the surge was to give the Iraqis the opportunity to make political decisions. And they have not done that.

Categories
News

Mike Heidingsfield, Iraqi Security Force Commissioner

Mike Heidingsfield spends most of his days studying local crime-fighting strategies in the safety of his downtown Memphis office. But back in 2005, the president of the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission helped train police forces in Iraq. That experience qualified him for another dangerous task recently.

Heidingsfield spent two weeks in early July in Iraq as part of a commission studying the progress of the Iraqi Security Forces, which includes the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Police. He, along with 20 others who served on the commission, testified before Congress earlier this month. — by Bianca Phillips

How did you end up on the Iraqi Security Force Commission?

In the appropriations bill that passed Congress in May, there was language inserted by Senator John Warner requiring that an independent commission be established to go to Iraq and assess the progress of the Iraqi Security Forces, which means the Iraqi Army and their military in general and the Iraqi Police.

We were supposed to determine, if in the next 12 to 18 months, they’ll be able to secure their borders, deny safehaven to terrorists, re-build their infrastructure, and train additional personnel. That was our mandate.

The commission was chaired by a retired marine corps four-star general. He chose about 15 additional retired general officers to go with him. Then he chose five police executives, so I was one of those.

How do you study the Iraqi Police?

We broke up into teams. The law-enforcement team stayed together. We traveled all over Iraq by helicopter gunship — all the way north to Kurdistan, west to the Al Anbar Province, east to the Iranian border, and south toward Basra.

We met with the Iraqi Police. We went to their training centers. We sat through their classes. We watched them operate in the field. We interviewed them. We did everything possible to immerse ourselves in what they were doing. It was of no value to stay in the Green Zone and simply be briefed because you don’t get a since of what’s really happening.

What did the commission find about Iraqi Army?

On the good side, the Iraqi Army has made very substantial progress. Probably in the next 12 to 18 months, they will have the ability to operate independently of coalition forces. They’re much more advanced than the Iraqi police.

If you look toward the regions of the country where you have one religion, you definitely have a level of order that was not there when I was there before. Al Anbar Province is one example because it’s all Sunni.

Conversely, Baghdad itself is as or more dangerous than it was when I was there previously. The sectarian violence seems more apparent and more deliberate. In Basra, because the British are drawing down their presence, there is very significant violence that, ironically, is Shiite on Shiite. They’re trying to see who will prevail down there in the oil-rich country.

What about the Iraqi Police?

The Iraqi police are struggling terribly. You have the Iraqi Police Service, which is a national force of 235,000 members. They still remain under-trained, compromised by having a significant number within their membership who are militia members or insurgents. They’re under-equipped. They’re under-armed, and it’s very difficult for them to do their job. It’s aggravated by the fact that, unlike the Iraqi Army, which is controlled by the Ministry of Defense, the Iraqi Police are controlled by the Ministry of the Interior, which is roughly equivalent to our Justice Department.

The Ministry of the Interior is just a dysfunctional bureaucracy. It is riddled with sectarianism. There is a massive amount of distrust and a complete unwillingness to share power or information. As a result of that, the Iraqi Police, as you try to mature them and develop them as a force, suffer terribly.

There’s also an Iraqi National Police organization. So you have the Iraqi Police Service, the IPS, with 235,000 members. They’re throughout the country at 1,200 different locations.

The Iraqi National Police, which is an organization of 25,000 people, are sort of a flying squad for the Interior Ministry. They’re really not police except in name. They’re more like commandoes. They’re heavily rumored to be involved in death squads and torture and are universally disliked in Iraq.

One of our recommendations is that the 25,000-man force should be deconstructed and re-organized. It should be probably one-quarter the size it is now, down to about 6,000 men. They should have specific, highly specialized skills, like urban search and rescue, dealing with improvised explosive devices, tasks that require a highly developed skill level, but don’t have any political connotation. The rest of them should be disbanded and maybe put into the Iraqi Police Services or the Iraqi Army.

It’s kind of a mixed bag. There’s no doubt the borders are not secure. They cannot secure the infrastructure. They cannot deny safehaven to terrorists, and they’re having great difficultly training additional forces. It’s a pretty pessimistic picture.

Their police force is set up like the military. When you say police officer in Iraq, that’s like a captain or a colonel or a general. They have 10,000 generals in the Iraqi Police. Everybody’s a general. They’re the bosses.

Then they have shurtas, which is the worker bees. But there’s nothing in between, and that’s one of the issues. The shurtas don’t have any independent decision-making authority. And the whole notion of first-line supervisors or middle management doesn’t exist in Iraq.

They can ultimately be successful if the Iraqi government commits to re-organizing the Ministry of the Interior. Until that is re-organized, the Iraqi Police will never be successful.

Didn’t you help train Iraqi police back in 2005?

I was there from October 2004 to January 2006. I was the State Department’s contingent commander for the police advisory mission in Iraq. I was responsible for all the U.S. police advisors who were there to train Iraqi police. There were 500 of them.

We built a basic police academy curriculum that had a lot of the same things that we teach here about Western democratic principles. That did not resonate at all with the Iraqis. They don’t have any point of reference for that sort of thing. It just doesn’t make sense to them because they haven’t lived under that kind of system.

Plus, the Iraqi Police recruits were being killed at such a high rate on their way to us to be trained or after we released them from the duty station. They didn’t have the skills to stay alive.

So the curriculum had to be changed pretty substantially and it made them more of a light infantry force. They learned survival skills.

Today, they go through a hybrid-training program. Some of that Western training is occurring, and there’s also a great deal of some of those survival light infantry skills. Slowly, you see some progress being made. One of the best things that’s happened is we have now trained a sizeable contingent of Iraqi trainers, so we’ve got Iraqis training Iraqis. That’s better than having Americans training Iraqis in the classroom.

There’s a lot of controversy now over whether or not the U.S. should pull out of the war altogether. Based on what you’ve seen, what do you think?

I think we ought to re-deploy our forces to bases in Turkey, Kuwait, and Jordan. Obviously, Syria is not going to let us base any troops there. We gave up our base in Saudi Arabia. But in Kuwait, Turkey, and Jordan, we’d be strategically positioned around Iraq.

I think we should secure the borders of Iraq, so that Syrians and Iranians are denied the ability to go in and influence events.

I think we should secure the infrastructure, like the electrical grids, the oil fields, and if we do that, we should leave the internal political decisions to the Iraqis. They have to sort through how they’re going to come at political reconciliation.

We did three things in Iraq: We removed a bad guy, we gave them the structure for a representative government, and we determined there were no weapons of mass destruction. But we can’t fix thousands of years of religious history. All we can do is give them a safe operating environment and a level playing field.

Do you think the troop “surge” made a difference?

I think it made a difference in the interim. Whenever you impose 30,000 additional troops in a relatively confined area, it’s going to displace the violence and reduce the level of violence.

The question is whether the Iraqis have the ability to sustain that after we no longer have the surge in place. I think the original premise of the surge was to give the Iraqis the opportunity to make political decisions. And they have not done that.

What were the Iraqi attitudes like toward Americans while you were there?

It’s kind of a mixture. There’s a sense of weariness because we’ve been there so long. I think they feel like they need us, but they’re really weary of having us. I had a police commander say to me, “You can’t leave because you’ve caused this situation. There’s a moral imperative that requires you to stay.”

I didn’t respond to that, but in my heart, I felt like there’s an equal moral imperative that says, “We have to be sure we’re sending our children to die for the right reasons.”

What about the morale of American soldiers?

It’s very good. They’re tired. Many of them have been there two, three, or four times. It’s fair to say they’re weary. But morale is very good. No matter how the soldiers feel personally about the war, they just keep saluting and doing the job.

Were you afraid while you were there?

Yes, you’re always afraid, because if you’re out in the Red Zone, you never know who the enemy is because they look just like the next person. You never know where the next explosive device is going to be hidden. And you never know when you’re going to be targeted.

In my 14 months there in 2005, on my first tour, the headquarters I was in was bombed three times. I got ambushed on a highway and we had to fight our way out of it. And we got hit by a roadside bomb. I experience the variety of attacks that one gets when you’re part of the coalition. So you’re fighting all the time.

You sleep in catnaps. You’re always listening. I slept with my body armor and my machine gun. That’s just the way you live.

Does the Green Zone feel safe?

No it doesn’t, oddly enough. It used to feel safer. When I was there the first time, every so often, the Green Zone would get rocketed or hit by a mortar. But unless it was that unlucky fellow who happened to be underneath it, nothing tended to happen.

This time, we got rocketed and mortared every day in the Green Zone. And there were five deaths within the span of four days. In fact, the first death of an Army nurse in combat since Vietnam occurred while we were there. She was going to the gymnasium to work out and was hit by a mortar.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Support the Troops?

The debate over the Iraq war has devolved into a struggle
over whether the political combatants in that fight “support the troops.” The
Republic party (the equivalent of what the president cynically—or maybe just
ignorantly—likes to call the “Democrat” party), which continues to support the
President’s “stay the course” strategy in Iraq, continues to assert that any
attempt to end the war and bring our troops home constitutes a failure to
support the troops.

That’s a little like saying that any attempt to cure cancer
is a failure to support the livelihoods of the medical professionals who
diagnose and treat it. And, many of the so-called anti-war politicians in
Washington counter that assertion with the equally sophistic phrase that it is
possible to oppose the war, but support the troops.

All of this made me want to examine, closely, the whole
“support the troops” meme the right wing likes to trot out (and the chickenshit
Democrats buy into) as the ultimate justification for the continuation of the
war, and the conclusion I came to is that supporting the troops is both a false
mantra, and worse, is not justified by the facts.

Let’s start with the premise that the purpose of a standing
military is to defend the U.S. from attack. Indeed, since funding for the
military is part of the “defense” budget, there’s no arguing that point. Since
we all know, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war,
that few, if any, countries have the power, much less the ability (or even
desire), to attack the U.S. (at least not conventionally, as by launching an
amphibious force or parachuting onto our shores), one has to wonder, has that
purpose outlived its usefulness.

Even if one were to posit as a given the “threat”
represented by the “axis of evil” (i.e., Iran, North Korea, China), the
inescapable fact is that the threat from those countries (if one truly exists,
rather than being ginned up by an administration that uses the fear of attack as
its ultimate political weapon) is that they will launch a nuclear attack on the
U.S. Why else are the neocons beating the war drums against the prospect of
Iran’s development of a nuclear capability, and why else is this president
spending billions of dollars on a “missile defense shield” which has, in
testing, been a demonstrable failure?

Now, of course, a standing army will not have any ability
to defend the U.S from nuclear attack. It’s a little like the scene from one of
the “Indiana Jones” movies where the colorfully-attired tribesman brandishes a
long and lethal-looking scimitar in threatening gestures aimed towards our hero,
only to have an amused, but obviously not intimidated, Jones pull his gun and
shoot the flamboyant warrior dead on the spot.

In other words, don’t bring a sword (even if it’s a big
one) to a gun fight. Similarly, don’t bring a rifle, pistol or even a canon to a
fight with someone who has a nuclear weapon. No matter how sophisticated a
standing army is, it is no match against ICBM’s. But, we also know that there
are no countries who currently have a delivery mechanism for any nuclear weapons
(the laughable “test” conducted by North Korea several months ago proved that),
though the joke that’s told about the Chinese lack of a delivery system is that
with a population of a billion people, they can just pass the weapon, hand to
hand, across the ocean.

We also know, because our president and his sycophants have
been telling us this since at least September 11, 2001, that terrorism (and the
terrorists who use it) is an unconventional form of warfare. They use the word
“asymmetric” to describe the “enemy” in the “war on terror,” and tell us that,
among other things, this kind of war is different because it isn’t state
sponsored, the combatants don’t wear uniforms, etc. That, of course, is one of
the rationales this administration has used for denying “enemy combatants” the
essential rights granted under the Geneva Conventions and other international
treaties, thereby exposing American troops to similar mistreatment in the event
they are captured.

So a conventional military force isn’t the right vehicle to
fight an unconventional (i.e., “war on terror”) war, if we’re to credit what
we’ve been told. And, if we’ve learned one thing from the debacle that Iraq has
become (and should have learned from the earlier misadventures of, for example,
France in Algeria, Russia in Afghanistan, or even our own experience in
Vietnam), it is that conventional troops are almost powerless to fight a war
against terrorists and insurgents.

So what other purpose does a standing army serve? The
answer is all too simple: to fight conventional wars (and, not incidentally, to
line the coffers of what Dwight Eisenhower so presciently called the “military
industrial complex”). That means to land troops by air or sea on “enemy”
territory, conduct military operations, the purpose of which is to kill as many
of the enemy (whoever we declare them to be) as they possibly can.

That’s what our military did in the days immediately
following our initial invasion of Iraq. It’s also what our military has done in
wars going back to the War of 1812, including, but not limited to, World Wars I
and II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War (the latter of which was also a war
against an insurgency, and we know how well that turned out). In other words, a
standing army is an excuse to fight conventional wars in an era where
conventional wars have become all but useless, with the exception of wars whose
purpose isn’t to defend our country from attack.

In order to accomplish the purpose of its conventional
military operations of late, the U.S. has been relying on the services of a
so-called “all-volunteer” corps of fighters. Of course, these fighters aren’t
volunteers, in the conventional sense, since we all know that the dictionary
definition of a volunteer is “a person who performs a service willingly and
without pay.” Hence the nickname for the state of Tennessee as the “Volunteer
State,” a term that originates from the outpouring of volunteers (in the truest
sense) from that state to fight in the War of 1812.

No, the current “all volunteer” military is anything but
volunteers (except, and only, to the extent they are to be distinguished from
the “involunteers” in prior wars, who were drafted, usually against their will,
to serve). They are, in fact, job applicants who have a variety of motivations
for wanting the job.

For some, it’s the signing bonuses (as much as $20,000,
depending on the speed of deployment and the duration of the commitment) the
military is dangling to entice applicants, especially given the difficulty it’s
been having meeting its recruitment quotas. For others, it’s the benefits that
come from military service, including educational benefits and medical benefits
(illusory as it appears those benefits have become) following their service. For
some, it’s the fact that the military is the employer of last resort for a
variety of slackers and dead-enders, including felons, high school dropouts and
even skinheads, neo-Nazis and gang members. It is no accident that the vast
majority of volunteers for the military come from the lower economic rungs of
our society.

For many, however, it’s a combination of jingoistic
patriotism and a desire to engage in legitimized, permissible, sanctioned
violence. How else can we explain the fact that the military has now begun
accepting volunteers who have a history of committing violent crimes?

The members of the military, whether they be ground or air
forces, are trained, to put it simply, to kill. If they did stateside what
they’re paid to do “in theater,” they would be considered criminals, but put a
gun in the hand of a 20-something, wet-behind-the-ears soldier, tell him he’s
fighting for a great and glorious cause, and let him loose on the enemy du jour,
and just about anything he does with that weapon is OK, even if includes killing
innocent civilians.

And if he can’t find enough enemies to shoot at through
normal tactics, he can always (as we found out in the last few days) bait the
field of battle with enticements to potential insurgents and terrorists to up
his kill rate. In other words, our military thinks it can do something to
facilitate the killing of human beings that the laws in most states prohibit a
hunter from doing to kill wildlife. Is this a great military, or what?

A good friend of mine, who was a fighter pilot in Vietnam
(and, among other things, dropped napalm and agent orange on civilians in that
country), told me that among the patches some pilots had sewn onto their flight
suits was the motto “We Control Violence.” When you have the ability to fire
canons or drop bombs (the kind that kill people instantly by blowing them up, or
that take longer to kill them by giving them cancer or other fatal diseases)
from the air, or fire 50 millimeter bullets from a sniper rifle on the ground,
there’s no doubt that, as far as the victims of your firepower (especially when
those victims are what the military calls “collateral damage”) are concerned,
you certainly do control violence.

It might have been more accurate if that patch had said “We
Control Life.” Let’s not forget, though, that the military is the spearhead for
the effectuation of our foreign policy. If that policy includes “regime change,”
or the imposition of our form of government, and if that policy dictates that
tens of thousands of innocent civilians be killed in that effort, then the
military is the vehicle by which that policy is accomplished.

So the question is, is the military (especially in its
activities in support of Bush’s policy in Iraq) worthy of our support. Are the
men and women who “volunteer” to accomplish Bush’s objectives praiseworthy?
Remember, Bush never served in combat (thanks to his daddy’s connections with
the Texas Air National Guard), nor did most of the chickenhawk neocons who
engineered the war in Iraq. None of them, nor any of their family members, was
ever going to fight the war either. Without obedient, compliant, and credulous
men and women to fight Bush’s war, there would/could be no war.

So is the military entitled to a pass for wittingly doing
the president’s bidding because they’re “just following orders?” You may
remember this as part of the infamous “Nuremberg defense,” a rationalization
that was debunked at the war crimes trial following World War II, and has been
made obsolete in, among other places, the Uniform Code of Military Justice which
empowers soldiers to disobey unlawful orders. Is the military entitled to a
pass, much less our admiration, because they dutifully (some might say blindly)
follow the orders given by their commander-in-chief, or are they complicit in
the atrocities that accompany the combat in which they engage?

Why, one might ask, aren’t more members of the military
speaking out against the policy in Iraq, and why aren’t more members of the
military taking other action (e.g., deserting) as they see the effects of that
policy on the ground? Could it be because they agree with the policy, and if so,
aren’t the policy and their service in its support inseparable?

Let’s admit something: anyone who has volunteered for
military service since the war in Iraq started knew they might be sent to fight
that war, and many, suffused with an overwhelming sense of “duty, honor,
country” volunteered precisely for that reason. Pat Tillman, the NFL quarterback
who was killed by his own troops, only to have that fact covered up by the
military and the Bush administration, was the poster child for that motivation.

So we have to assume that they not only agreed with the
policy effectuated by that war, but that they were eager to serve as the tools
(or, if you like it better, vehicles) of the apparatus that has given us that
war for the last five years. They are not unwitting victims, innocent bystanders
or accidental tourists in this war; they are the means for its accomplishment.

The people who are fighting the current war may be cannon
fodder to the cynical politicians who want to keep them there, but they are the
personification of those politicians’ policies. Therefore, it is impossible to
oppose the war, but support the people who, by volunteering to fight it,
implicitly (if not explicitly) support it and make it possible.

Of course, this rationale may not be as applicable to the
members of the National Guard and Reserve, who have been, essentially,
conscripted to fight, and who may or may not support the policy they are being
forced to fight for, but even they realize, when they sign up for duty
stateside, that they can be drawn into a foreign war, and we’re not seeing any
mass rebellion or revolt by these troops either against the administration’s war
policy.

In terms of admirability, I suggest there are many
categories of people (and the jobs they perform) that are far more worthy of
support than the members of the American military who are being used, with their
knowledge and accession, as a means of foisting an unjustified, and
unjustifiable, war on the American (not to mention the Iraqi) public. Police
officers, firefighters, teachers, nurses, and even garbage collectors are, in my
opinion, worthy of far more admiration, respect, and yes, support, than the
people who kill in pursuit of George Bush’s insane policies.

The U.S. military in Iraq isn’t defending this country.
Even General Petraeus (speaking of tools) couldn’t make that argument in his
recent “show and tell” before the Congress. It isn’t making this country any
safer; it isn’t lessening the threat of worldwide terrorism (in fact, just the
opposite) and it isn’t defending the American way of life (unless you think the
American way of life is unbridled violence, either of the domestic variety—as
the recent upswing in national crime statistics suggests—or of the kind we
export).

Of course, the same political machinations which cause
Democrats to drink the “support the troops” Kool Aid being served up by our
president and his party’s members are what prevent those same political
calculators from coming anywhere near saying that the military is far less than
the admirable, self-sacrificing, infallible institution it is portrayed as
being. That’s why the well-deserved (if less-than-delicately worded) criticism
of Petraeus contained in the recent MoveOn.org ad in the New York Times mustered
the indignant outrage it did, even from enough Democrats in the Senate to pass
an embarrassingly irrelevant resolution condemning the ad.

Apparently, criticizing a general who manipulates the facts
to fit the policy is akin to treason, or at least to blasphemy, to our elected
officials, including many chickenshit Democrats. Never mind that when Bush has
been critical of what generals have told him, he flat out fired them. Now that’s
what I call supporting the troops.

I realize my analysis and conclusions about the “support
the military” cliche make it seem like I probably don’t believe in the sanctity
of such American institutions as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie or Chevrolet
either, and truth be told, I don’t. Baseball has become a money-grubbing,
sleazy, corrupt industry; hot dogs are laced with harmful chemicals, apple pie
contributes to an epidemic of obesity (besides, I prefer peach) and Chevrolet
builds more gas guzzling vehicles than any other manufacturer, thus contributing
to our dependence on foreign oil and, indirectly, to the terrorism that has been
spawned by our petro-centric foreign policy.

However, nothing I’ve said should be interpreted as a
desire to see American soldiers harmed in any way. Quite the contrary. Just
because American soldiers volunteer for service knowing they may be grievously
injured, or even killed, doesn’t mean they deserve either of those fates And
just because they have volunteered to serve a corrupt, indefensible policy also
doesn’t mean they deserve to be punished by being injured or losing their lives.

They are entitled to every safeguard and protection from
harm this country can give them (rather than the lip service they are frequently
paid), and to the fulfillment of promises that get made to induce them to serve,
whether that is effective body armor (rather than the garbage they’ve been
getting as a result of a corrupt procurement process), vehicles that will
protect them from explosions or adequate medical care following their service.
Which is why what they deserve is to be removed, immediately (if not sooner)
from a situation that exposes them to such risks for all the wrong reasons. If
there is to be any punishment meted out as a result of what has turned into a
criminal war, that will be for an appropriate tribunal to decide.

Nor would it be valid to draw the inference that I’m some
kind of pacifist. I would be the first to call for military action were any
foreign power to attempt to come ashore in amphibious vehicles on Long Island,
Boca Raton or San Diego, or invade the U.S. by any other conventional means (and
that includes fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan). And far be it from me to
suggest any kind of reallocation of resources, either financial or human, away
from defending our country against a bogus “war on terror” to defending our
country against real risks, like dread diseases, and a pathetic health care
system that cause (or do little to prevent) the deaths of more people in this
country every single day than were killed on September 11, 2001.

My point about the military is only that it is manipulative at best, and dishonest at worst to justify a continuation of the war based on the need to “support the troops,” and the rush to glorify the military or act like that institution is somehow sacrosanct ignores reality, especially when that reality dictates that institution deserves no more honor, or support, than the dishonorable mission it is fighting.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Pulling the Plug (Again!)

I said, some months ago (“Time To Pull the Plug,” December,
’06), that it was time for Congress to defund the war in Iraq. It has now become
apparent that’s the only way we’re going to get out of Iraq in anything
approaching a reasonable period of time In the time since I wrote that piece,
hundreds more American soldiers have died, thousands more have been permanently
disabled, and we’ve spent additional billions of dollars on this tragic, futile
war. The electorate spoke loudly and clearly last November about their antipathy
for the war. Their mistake was thinking their vote would bring an end to the
war, just as the Iraqis’ mistake was thinking that voting for a government would
actually give them a government.

The feckless Democrats have knuckled under to a Republican
autocrat, choosing to play a dangerous game of political chicken with Bush
instead of exercising their electoral prerogative. If Bush thought he was given
“political capital,” after a close election victory in ’04, Democrats were given
the bank in ’06. Yet, they’ve cowered in their corners, afraid of the political
consequences of doing what they were elected to do. What sense does that make?

And the Democrats’ excuse? We don’t have enough votes to
override a veto, they say, while they engage in pathetic maneuvering, posturing,
and worse, empty table-thumping. The only thing the Democrats can do to end the
war is the very thing they have the power to do, without worrying about whether
or not the President likes or approves of it—cut off funding. Congress has
what is so colorfully called the “power of the purse.” Under the Constitution,
Congress decides whether, and how much, to fund wars. It has the power, under
the terms of Article I, Section 8, to “raise and support armies.”

Many people may not realize that, thinking that anything
Congress does is subject to Presidential approval (through signing) or
disapproval (through veto). But the truth is, Congress can end this war, ALL BY
ITSELF. So why hasn’t it done so? Because it has bought into the spin of an
administration that enjoys one of the lowest approval ratings in history that
cutting off funding for the war is cutting off funding for the troops (even
though that is manifestly untrue). And if Congress did that they’d probably face
the folks who drive around in cars with those magnetic “Support the Troops”
stickers rising up in revolt, right? Wrong.

The Democrats have allowed Bush (and his various henchmen)
to define funding for the war as either being for “spreading democracy,”
“fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”, or being
against the troops. With the notable exception of Congressmen Martha and
Kucinich, and of late, Chris Dodd, the Democrats have allowed themselves to be
cowed by an administration whose “support” for the troops has manifested itself
in vehicles that don’t protect troops from being blown up, involuntarily
extended tours of duty and woefully inadequate health care when they leave the
military. So who’s really supporting the troops?

In addition to the “not supporting our troops” trope, the
Republicans also have their go-to talking point, namely that if troops are
withdrawn, the result will be a catastrophe. This from the same people who
claimed there were WMD’s in Iraq, that the war would be short (and cheap), that
we’d be greeted as “liberators,” and that Iraqi oil would pay for the war. In
other words, Bush and his cadre of neocon war drummers were wrong about every
single thing they predicted about the war. But now we’re supposed to believe
their prediction about what will happen when we withdraw? That defies logic.

The President’s speech on Thursday, which followed his
alter ego, General Petraeus’ dog and pony show before Congress (which revealed
that he himself can’t say that the war in Iraq is making the U.S. any safer),
revealed, at long last, his (Bush’s) true agenda. We all know that the U.S. is
building the largest embassy in the history of civilization in Iraq, and that
it’s been building permanent military bases in Iraq, so we knew Bush et al. were
planning on a long-term presence in that country. But now we know that he’s
planning on an indefinite presence, because he has finally told us so. The
“enduring relationship” he announced during his speech has been interpreted as
nothing short of the kind of commitment we’ve seen in Korea.

In other words, American troops will be stationed in Iraq
for at least the next 50 years (which is probably how long it would take to get
the Iraqi army to “stand up” anyway). Of course, Korea isn’t in the midst of a
civil war, and few, if any, American soldiers who have been stationed there for
the last 50 years have died as a result of any combat. So, in the face of
overwhelming opposition to the war, the public’s belief that American troops
should be promptly (within a year) and totally withdrawn, and an approval rating
lower than most used car salesmen have, what does the President do? Why, of
course, he calls for our troops to be permanently stationed in Iraq.

I’ve thought, for some time, that Bush has gone “Captain
Queeg” (the deranged commander of a battleship in the novel—and a role so
convincingly played by Humphrey Bogart in the movie of the same name—The Caine
Mutiny) on us, or worse, that he’s figured out how to hold us all hostage to his
insanity, while we (and especially the Democratic party) have been suffering
from a bad case of Stockholm syndrome. The sailors on the U.S.S. Caine mutinied
in order to prevent the ship from capsizing. Our ship is severely listing,
thanks to our “Captain Queeg’s” insanity. If we don’t take over control of this
ship soon, and convince the Democrats in Congress that the only way to do that
is to stop funding for the war, we may find our ship of state capsizing as well.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Tanner Sparring with Fellow Democrats Over Iraq

The 9th District’s Steve Cohen isn’t the only local member of Congress to be in the middle of a verbal firefight these days. Tennessee’s 8th District congressman John Tanner, who represents part of Memphis and much of northern Shelby County, is feuding with fellow Democrats over a bipartisan measure he’s sponsoring to relax the terms of a congressionally mandated withdrawal from Iraq.

In response to criticism from MoveOn.org and other critics who want more direct and immediate withdrawal measures, Tanner, a leader of the Democrats’ congressional Blue Dog faction, said, “When these soldiers, sailors, and airmen are buried, they’re not buried as Republicans or Democrats. I care a hell of a lot more about them than I do about partisan politics.”

Liberal blogger Matt Stoller comes back at Tanner with this bit of sarcasm: “[He] is willing to go the mat to beat back those crazy anti-troop liberals that actually want to compel Bush to withdraw troops, since that apparently is partisan politics.”

The two sides of the controversy can be followed here and here.