War on Terror – Memphis Flyer

No single review or interview can do justice to Pay Any Price, the new book by James Risen that is the antithesis of what routinely passes for journalism about the “war on terror.” Instead of evasive tunnel vision, the book offers big-picture acuity, focusing on realities that are pervasive and vastly destructive.

Published this week, Pay Any Price throws down an urgent gauntlet. We should pick it up. After 13 years of militarized zealotry and fear-mongering in the name of fighting terrorism, the book — subtitled Greed, Power, and Endless War — zeros in on immense horrors being perpetrated in the name of national security.

As an investigative reporter for The New York Times, Risen has been battling dominant power structures for a long time. His new book is an instant landmark in the best of post-9/11 journalism. It’s also a wise response to repressive moves against him by the Bush and Obama administrations.

For more than six years — under threat of jail — Risen has refused to comply with subpoenas demanding that he identify sources for his reporting on a stupid and dangerous CIA operation.

A brief afterword in his new book summarizes Risen’s struggles with the Bush and Obama Justice Departments. He also provides a blunt account of his long-running conflicts with the Times hierarchy, which delayed some of his reporting for years — or spiked it outright — under intense White House pressure.

Self-censorship and internalization of official worldviews continue to plague the Washington press corps. In sharp contrast, Risen’s stubborn independence enables Pay Any Price to combine rigorous reporting with rare candor.

Here are a few quotes from the book:

• “Obama performed a neat political trick: He took the national security state that had grown to such enormous size under Bush and made it his own. In the process, Obama normalized the post-9/11 measures that Bush had implemented on a haphazard, emergency basis. Obama’s great achievement — or great sin — was to make the national security state permanent.”

• “In fact, as trillions of dollars have poured into the nation’s new homeland security-industrial complex, the corporate leaders at its vanguard can rightly be considered the true winners of the war on terror.”

• “There is an entire class of wealthy company owners, corporate executives, and investors who have gotten rich by enabling the American government to turn to the dark side. But they have done so quietly… The new quiet oligarchs just keep making money… They are the beneficiaries of one of the largest transfers of wealth from public to private hands in American history.”

• “The United States is now relearning an ancient lesson, dating back to the Roman Empire. Brutalizing an enemy only serves to brutalize the army ordered to do it. Torture corrodes the mind of the torturer.”

• “Of all the abuses America has suffered at the hands of the government in its endless war on terror, possibly the worst has been the war on truth. On the one hand, the executive branch has vastly expanded what it wants to know: something of a vast gathering of previously private truths. On the other hand, it has ruined lives to stop the public from gaining any insight into its dark arts, waging a war on truth. It all began at the NSA.”

Fittingly, the book closes with a powerful chapter about the government’s extreme actions against whistleblowers. After all, whistleblowing and independent journalism are dire threats to the secrecy and deception that fuel the “war on terror.”

Now, Risen is in the national spotlight at a time when the U.S. government is launching yet another spiral of carnage for perpetual war. As a profound book, Pay Any Price has arrived with enormous potential to serve as a catalyst for deeper understanding and stronger opposition to abhorrent government policies.

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.