Disputing Patraeus on Progress in theAfghanistan War
General David Patraeus testified before the Senate Arms Services Committee on March 15, providing an annual assessment of the war/occupation in Afghanistan. He is the top gun in Afghanistan as Commander of International Security Assistance Force and Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan. His assessment was cautiously positive about “US-NATO-ISAF” achievements in the past year, and upbeat in his expectations that Afghan forces will be able to take the “the lead” on security efforts by the end of 2014.
Here is how he begins his statement to the committee.
“At a bottom line up front, it is ISAF’s assessment that the momentum achieved by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of important areas. However, while the security progress achieved over the past year is significant, it is also fragile and reversible. Moreover, it is clear that much difficult work lies ahead with our Afghan partners to solidify and expand our gains in the face of the expected Taliban spring offensive. Nonetheless, the hard-fought achievements in 2010 and early 2011 have enabled the Joint Afghan-NATO Transition Board to recommend initiation this spring of transition to Afghan lead in several provinces. The achievements of the past year are also very important as I prepare to provide options and a recommendation to President Obama for commencement of the drawdown of the US surge forces in July. Of note, as well, the progress achieved has put us on the right azimuth [direction, path] to accomplish the objective agreed upon at last November's Lisbon Summit, that of Afghan forces in the lead throughout the country by the end of 2014.”
Gen. Patraeus reports that the additional troops he has received over the past year, from the beginning of 2010 to early 2011, has made a decided difference. As a result of increased “inputs” from the US and “47 other troop-contributing countries,” 68% coming from the US, the ISAF has been able “to conduct a comprehensive, civil-military counterinsurgency campaign, on staffing those organizations properly, on developing - in close coordination with our Afghan partners - the requisite concepts and plans, and, above all, on deploying the additional forces, civilians, and funding needed.” Continuing: he says: “Indeed, more than 87,000 additional ISAF troopers and 1,000 additional civilians have been added to the effort in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2009. And Afghanistan's Security Forces have grown by over 122,000 in that time, as well.”
The overall troop totals add up roughly to 262,000 troops, including 100,000 US troops, 40,000 troops from 47 other countries, and 122,000 Afghan troops. In addition, there are 6,000-8,000 civilians providing “services in logistics, intelligence, stabilization, and reconstruction.” (http://cnas.org/node/5399.), over 112,000 DOD contractors (http://fas.org.sgp/natsec/R40764.pdf), and more Afghan troops in the pipeline.
With all of these inputs, the “core objective” of the war/occupation remains [pathetically]“to ensure that Al-Qaeda is not able to reestablish a sanctuary in Afghanistan.” Al Qaeda! Patraeus implies misleadingly, that there are two options. Win or lose. If US and other foreign troops withdraw from the country prematurely and before the Afghanistan army is able (if ever) to protect the country by itself, then the Taliban (assumed to be a unified force) will take over the country and provide Al-Qaeda with a safe haven for its international terrorist efforts. With Taliban in control of the country and the Al-Qaeda ensconced therein, the “war on terrorism” will suffer a grave setback and US national security will be compromised. From Patraeus’ perspective, these perceived consequences of withdrawal are clearly sufficient to carry on the war/occupation for however long it takes to “win.”
In his assessment to the Senate Arms Services Committee, General Patraeus goes on to make other points. For example, he reports that the ISAF, Afghan, and other “international partners” have more efficiently captured or killed “insurgent leaders,” in recent months, the Taliban have been cleared from critical areas, the number of “weapons and explosive caches turned in” have increased, more troops have been positioned “to interdict the flow of fighters and explosives from insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan.” He also points out that the Afghan Local Police Initiative has been improved and represents movement toward a time when local communities will be able to defend themselves against “insurgents.”
In the meantime, he says, “I have put a conventional US infantry battalion under the operational control of our Special Operations Command in Afghanistan to increase our ability to support the program's expansion.” The US and international forces have gone to improvements in “governance, economic development, and the provision of basic services.”
In a word, General Patraeus’s testimony comes across as expected, with encouraging statements of progress and the promise of continuing successes in the future. But for all of this, of course, there are reasons to reject his cheerleading assessment. Here I’ll allude to a few of the reasons:
(1) the majority of Americans polled do not buy the idea that we should remain in Afghanistan to “get the job done” according to Patraeus and the other generals and hawkish senators and representatives in the Congress.
(2) The opposition in congress is going up. Though still a minority, it is a growing minority.
(3) Gen Patraeus does not say anything in his testimony about the costs to Afghan society and its people from the 10-year old war. There are great costs, the result of the US/NATO/Etc war and occupation or facilitated by them.
(4) The financial costs of the war for the US are great and the money could be alternatively well spent to address domestic economic problems.
(5) The many arguments in opposition to the war are and remain valid.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/threatmatrix/archives/2011/03/full_text_of_general_petraeus.php
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#1 - Contrary to Gen. Patraeus rosy assessment, most Americans don’t buy it and want a speedy withdrawal of US troops from the war
Reporting for The Washington Post, Scott Wilson and Jon Cohen, write on a “new Washington Post-ABC News poll that finds “nearly two-thirds of Americans [who] say [the] Afghan war isn’t worth fighting.” Additionally, almost “three-quarters of Americans say Obama should withdraw a ‘substantial number’ of combat troops from Afghanistan this summer….” Further, “[t]he number of respondents to the Post-ABC News poll who say the war is not worth fighting has risen from 44 percent in late 2009 to 64 percent in the survey conducted last week.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/poll-nearly-two-thirds-of-Americans-say-afghan-war-isn
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#2 - The number of Representatives in the US Congress in favor of a quick withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan has gone up
Here is the full text of a blog entry on March 18, 2011, by Rebecca Griffin, who is a member of Peace Action West.
Yesterday, the House voted on Reps. Kucinich and Jones’ resolution that would have directed the president to remove all US troops from Afghanistan within 30 days, and if that was deemed unsafe, by the end of 2011.
“The bill gave war opponents in the House another opportunity to draw attention to the failing strategy and to highlight growing public opposition to the war. Rep. Farr (D-CA) summed it up effectively when he took to the floor in support of the resolution:
“’As many of my colleagues demand $100 billion spending cuts, they need look no further than our reckless war spending. For the good of our troops and the health of our economy, this war must end.
“’And this viewpoint is shared across the nation. According to a recent Washington Post poll, nearly two-thirds of the American people support an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. Mr. Speaker, our job in this chamber is to represent our constituents, and they have spoken loud and clear. The American people are fed up with a war that has done little to improve our national security or bolster our international standing. Furthermore, after nearly ten years of fighting, it is crystal clear that the problem in Afghanistan cannot be solved by military means alone.
"Stabilization and reconstruction, governance, and peace-building activities can help to stabilize states, promote rule of law, and bring enduring peace at a sliver of the cost we pay for troops on the ground.’
“In the end, 93 representatives voted in favor of the bill. While we would have preferred a majority, it’s important to keep in mind that at this time last year, only 65 representatives voted in favor of a nearly identical bill. That’s significant growth, especially when many members of
“Congress are hesitant to ‘tie the president’s hands’ with specific dates, especially ones that specifically contradict his stated plan. More and more members of Congress are willing to draw a line and say it’s time to get out. See how your representative voted here.
“Some Senate Republicans criticized what they called ‘mixed messages’ about whether the US is staying or going in Afghanistan when General Petraeus testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week. They’re right, though I’m sure we want the administration to affirm the opposite messages. When we continue to get members of Congress on the record with votes like this, we are saying that the one message is clear: it’s time for this war to end.”
http://blog.peaceactionwest.org/2011/03/18/vote-count-grows-for-quick-withdrawal-from-afghanistan
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#3 – Patraeus unsurprisingly says nothing about the costs to Afghan society and its people.
There were many articles that appeared during the weeks before and after Patraeus testimony that reminded us of the great costs and harms of the war and occupation for the Afghan civilian population and society. On our blog stopafghanwar, we have paid a great deal of attention to the devastation and death wrought by this horrendous situation. Here are sections from two articles that complement and amplify our concerns.
First, Patrick Kelly provides the following summary in his article “Pursuing Peace in Afghan,” for Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Here are two paragraphs from Kelly’s piece.
“Environmental degradation, poverty, and inadequate health care delivery are some of the serious challenges facing this country. Electrical outages are common and clean water does not appear to be in Afghanistan’s immediate future. It is also apparent that the Kabul’s infrastructure has not benefitted in a meaningful way from the billions of dollars that have flowed into Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion. The sewage and sanitation system is exposed and as the busses, cars, truck, and donkey carts maneuver the paved and unpaved roads around the city they create clouds of deadly air. The streets and neighborhoods are a collection of brick and mud homes, bombed out buildings, and piles of rubble that have survived the thirty years of war but do not provide adequate shelter for their residents. Garbage piles, excrement, and animals abound creating a smelly and unsanitary environment. It is these conditions that explain why Afghanistan has the highest rate of fecal matter in the air of any place in the world. These poor living conditions result in nearly 3,000 people dying a year from diseases and medical conditions related to the pollution (wagingnonviolence.com) and a life expectancy of forty five years. Afghanistan is also the third poorest nation in the world. The country is overflowing with orphans, widows, unemployed, and underemployed. The United Nations reports that 36 % of Afghans live on less than a dollar a day. Compounding the problem is that since the US invasion Kabul’s population has grown by over 600 percent. Outside of Kabul, the situation is not much better. Nearly 850 children die from respiratory, gastrointestinal diseases, and malnourishment per day (Save the Children, 2010). These are just some of the challenges facing the nation as people continue to deal with thirty years of war that have gripped Afghanistan.
“Violence is the other major challenge facing the country. The Red Cross says the security situation in the country is deteriorating and life is untenable (International Red Cross, March 15, 2011) The threat of violence is never far from people’s minds and the reality that violence could break out at any time is a constant challenge for Afghans. Since December 2010, levels of violence have increased across the country and Kabul has been rocked by three suicide bombings. While the ISAF is hidden behind 12 foot blast walls rung with barbed wire and sentry post, the day to day security operations are left to Afghans. On nearly every block there are people with automatic weapons patrolling the streets, acting as security for private institutions, and staffing the official and unofficial checkpoints that dot the city. The situation is further complicated by the blast walls and the barb wire which make the city look like an armed camp.
The resulting siege mentality and threat of violence creates futility and shows that the current strategy in Afghanistan is not working.”
http://vcnv.org/pursuing-peace-in-afghanistan
Second, Kathy Kelly offers in her article “Incalculable – the human cost of NATO’s war on Afghanistan, printed by Pulse Media, March 9, 2011, heart-rending examples of a few of the many thousands of Afghan children killed, maimed, or driven into child labor out of desperation in this war. Here is some of what Kelly writes, from her personal witness in Afghanistan as well as from media reports.
“U.S. people, if they do read or hear of it, may be shocked at the apparent unconcern of the crews of two U.S. helicopter gunships, which attacked and killed nine children on a mountainside in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, shooting them ‘one after another’ this past Tuesday March 1st. (‘The helicopters hovered over us, scanned us and we saw a green flash from the helicopters. Then they flew back high up, and in a second round they hovered over us and started shooting.’ (NYT 3/2/11)).
“Four of the boys were seven years old; three were eight, one was nine and the oldest was twelve. ‘The children were gathering wood under a tree in the mountains near a village in the district,’ said Noorullah Noori, a member of the local development council in Manogai district. ‘I myself was involved in the burial,’ Noori said. ‘Yesterday we buried them.’ (AP, March 2, 2011) General Petraeus has acknowledged, and apologized for, the tragedy.
“He has had many tragedies to apologize for just counting Kunar province alone. Last August 26th, in the Manogai district, Afghan authorities accused international forces of killing six children during an air assault on Taliban positions. Provincial police chief Khalilullah Ziayee said a group of children were collecting scrap metal on the mountain when NATO aircraft dropped bombs to disperse Taliban fighters attacking a nearby base. ‘In the bombardment six children, aged six to 12, were killed,’ the police commander said. ‘Another child was injured.’
“In the Bamiyan province of Afghanistan, Zekirullah, a young Afghan friend of mine, age 15, rises at 2:00 a.m. several mornings each week and rides his donkey for six hours through the pre-dawn to reach a mountainside where he can collect scrub brush and twigs which he loads on the donkey in baskets. Then he heads home and stacks the wood – on top of his family’s home – to be taken down later and burned for heat. They don’t have electrical appliances to heat the home, and even if they did the villagers only get electricity for two hours a day, generally between 1:00 a.m. – 3:00 a.m. Families rely on their children to collect fuel for heat during the harsh winters and for cooking year round. Young laborers, wanting to help their families survive, mean no harm to the United States. They’re not surging at us, or anywhere: they’re not insurgents.
"They’re not doing anything to threaten us. They are children, and children anywhere are like children everywhere: they’re children like our own.
“Sadly, more and more of us in America are getting used to the idea of child poverty – and even child labor – as our own economy sinks further under the burden of our latest nine years of war, of two billion dollars per week we spend creating poverty abroad that we can then emulate at home. Things are getting bad here, but in Afghanistan, children are bombed. Their bodies are casually dismembered and strewn by machines already lost in the horizon as the limbs settle. They lie in pools of blood until family members realize, one by one, that their children are not late in returning home but in fact never will.”
http://nwoobserver.com/2011/03/09/incalculable-the-human-cost-of-nato%E2%80%99s-war-on-afghanistan
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#4 -The enormous financial costs of the war for the US are great and the money could be better spent to address domestic economic problems.
In an article written for Sojourner’s online magazine, Jim Wallis discusses some of the costs of the Afghanistan war here in the US. Here is most of his article.
[….]
“What weighs on my mind is the growing cost of war and that so few are actually seeing the bill, both human and financial. In the two wars, there have been nearly 6,000 U.S. deaths and 40,000 wounded. Tens of thousands of others suffer from post-traumatic stress and other psychological disorders, and a growing number of veterans are committing suicide. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans have died, which is hardly ever a focus of American consciousness.
“There has also been a huge financial cost. The war in Afghanistan now costs more than $100 billion per year, and the cost of caring for veterans is steadily rising. From 2001 to the present, the two wars have cost approximately $1.3 trillion. Economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes estimate that the total cost could go as high as $4 trillion to $6 trillion, including continuing care for veterans and the opportunity cost of inadequate funding for domestic investments.
“With unemployment and poverty rates at near-record highs, this misuse of our precious resources is staggering. President Dwight Eisenhower once reminded us, ‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.’
“The military budget in FY 2010 was nearly $700 billion, with an additional $37 billion for Afghanistan. If we include the defense and homeland security expenses outside the Defense Department, the total exceeds $1 trillion. By contrast, all other discretionary domestic programs totaled approximately $400 billion. It is exactly the situation Martin Luther King warned of when he said, ‘A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.’
“How do we break this military addiction? People respond to incentives. If they know they are going to be footing the bill for something, they are more likely to count the cost. If we were paying extra taxes to fund the war and every family knew they might have to pay the human cost, we would be more careful about what we committed ourselves to.
“We are paying billions of dollars for weapon systems the military hasn't even asked for and doesn't need. Weapons manufacturing brings jobs to congressional districts, which keeps politicians in office. Those workers, and the politicians they elect, will do everything they can to preserve defense contracts -- whether or not they're beneficial to our security or our fiscal health.
“Many of those in the weapons industry are good people, working hard to support their families. I doubt they often think about what they are making or what it will be used for. We rarely hear Eisenhower's term "military-industrial complex" any more. But we have a system in which too many people rely on war and the tools of war for their livelihood. Good people in a bad system can have a lot of bad results.
“Part of our moral recovery must be to challenge the influence of this powerful engine. With the growing national concern over the deficit, and the desperate need for investment in our future, the amount of money spent on war is no longer tenable.
“There are many reasons to end the war in Afghanistan, as the articles in this issue explain. But the unaffordable cost is another compelling reason that we cannot ignore. Even some of the newly elected "tea party" members of Congress are raising this concern. The desire to restore fiscal sanity and to stop mortgaging our children’s future stretches across the political spectrum.
“It is time for the war in Afghanistan to end. Our financial and spiritual health depends on it.”
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj1103&article=the-cost-of-war
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#5 – Many arguments against the war.
You can find a list and discussions of a host of the arguments that have been made against the war in Afghanistan, all of which are relevant for the ongoing debate over when, if ever, to withdraw US troops from the country. Here is the list. You can find the discussions at Wikipedia,
“Opposition to the War in Afghanistan (2001-present). (See URL at the end of the list.)
1 Disputed legality of the U.S. invasion
2 Involvement in an Afghan civil war
3 Afghan civilian opposition to the invasion
4 Afghan civilian casualties
5 Coalition military casualties
6 International public opinion
7 International protests against the war
8 Foreign military occupation
9 Foreign military raids of Afghan homes
10 Destruction of Afghan homes and crops
11 Rejection of the terrorism argument
11.1 Creating and training insurgents
11.1.1 Insurgent detention and recruitment facilities
11.1.2 Incubating and disseminating bomb-making expertise
12 Geo-political and corporate interests
12.1 U.S. energy interests
12.1.1 Pipeline path 'clearing and holding' forces
12.2 War in Afghanistan as a demonstration of U.S. military power
13 Thriving opium production since the invasion
14 Financial cost of the war to taxpayers and Western economies
15 Length of the war
15.1 Comparison to the length of the Soviet war in Afghanistan
15.2 Decades of war imposed on Afghans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E280%93present)#Financial_cost_of_war_to_taxpayer_and_Western_economies
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In short, most Americans who think about the war are opposed to it. And General David Patraeus testimony before the Senate committee is hardly going to change minds, but it does provide a cover for the majority of Senators and Representatives who will go along with his recommendations and appeals for full funding of the war.
The evidence contradicting Patraeus’ sanitized commentary is belied by a growing mountain of evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately, what the majority of citizens think, and even minimal democracy, does not seem to matter. Democratic President Obama and Republican President Bush seem to present variations on the same tune coming from the military brass and weapons’ makers – stay the course. It’s the same old duopoly and same old military-industrial complex.
What is encouraging is that the opposition to the Afghanistan war still has many supporters and voices.
Showing posts with label military spending. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military spending. Show all posts
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The US military remains more powerful than ever
Consider the larger context of US military spending. How large is the US military budget? Why is it so large? The answers to these questions help to throw some light on why the war in Afghanistan is likely to continue beyond 2014.
First, the size of the US military budget -
The overall gargantuan US military budget will most likely continue to rise in FY 2012. This will be so, even though “defense” spending is, and has been, the largest part of the discretionary federal budget (58% by some measures). And it will be so even though the US economy remains in an economic recession, creating insufficient employment opportunities, leaving millions of families in home foreclosure, amidst rising inequality and poverty and infrastructural, energy, and environmental problems that remain unattended.
Reporting for the New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof notes the following: “The United States spends nearly as much on military power as every other country in the world combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It says that we spend more than six times as much as the country with the next highest budget, China.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26kristof.html
The late Chalmers Johnson cited evidence to attest that the US is an empire of military bases. In his last book, Dismantling the Empire (2010), Johnson wrote:
“According to the Defense Department’s Base Structure Report for fiscal year 2009, the Pentagon owned or rented 716 overseas based and another 4,863 in the United States and its territories….Johnson goes on to point out that “the 2009 edition failed to mention any garrisons in the Iraq and Afghan war zones, as well as any bases or facilities used in countries such as Jordan and Qatar. As of the summer of 2009, “there were still nearly three hundred US bases and outposts in Iraq, with the number set to drop to fifty or fewer by August 31, 2010….”
Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope (2010.
At the same time, the number of military bases in Afghanistan has increased. Nick Turse reports that by Feb 2010, there were 400 US and Coalition bases across Afghanistan, with an additional 300 Afghan National Army and Afghan Police bases, “most of them built, maintained, or supported by the U.S. A small number of the coalition sites are mega-bases like Kandahar Airfield, which boasts one of the busiest runways in the world, and Bagram Air Base, a former Soviet facility that received a makeover, complete with Burger King and Popeyes outlets, and now serves more than 20,000 U.S. troops, in addition to thousands of coalition forces and civilian contractors. (See Nick Turse, “Totally Occupied: 700 Military Bases Spread Across Afghanistan,” Alternet.org, Feb 10, 2010.)
http://www.alternet.org/world/145631/totally_occupied:_700_miitary_bases_spread_across_afghanistan?page=entire
Wikipedia provides the following information: “The military of the United States is deployed in more than 150[1] countries around the world, with more than 369,000 of its 1,580,255[2] active-duty personnel serving outside the United States and its territories.” (See Wikipedia, “United States military deployments.”)
There is a continuing debate on whether the defense budget will be marginally cut with the withdrawal of many troops from Iraq, but such a cut, if it should happen, would not significantly reduce the preponderance of overall US military resources. (See Thom Shanker and Christopher Drew’s article, “Gates Sees Crisis in Current Spending, New York Times, Feb 15, 2011).
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/opinion/main6193925.shtml
But there is also evidence that the official estimates of the military budget that capture the media’s attention are lower than they actually are. Chris Hellman points this out:
“For 2012, the White House has requested $558 billion for the Pentagon’s annual “base” budget, plus an additional $118 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At $676 billion, that’s already nothing to sneeze at, but it’s just the barest of beginnings when it comes to what American taxpayers will actually spend on national security. Think of it as the gigantic tip of a humongous iceberg.
“To get closer to a real figure, it’s necessary to start peeking at other parts of the federal budget where so many other pots of security spending are squirreled away.
“Missing from the Pentagon’s budget request, for example, is an additional $19.3 billion for nuclear-weapons-related activities like making sure our current stockpile of warheads will work as expected and cleaning up the waste created by seven decades of developing and producing them. That money, however, officially falls in the province of the Department of Energy. And then, don’t forget an additional $7.8 billion that the Pentagon lumps into a “miscellaneous” category—a kind of department of chump change—that is included in neither its base budget nor those war-fighting funds.”
Hellman then goes on to identify some of the missing pieces from the official and widely discussed Pentagon budget that brings the total from about $700 billion to over $1.2 trillion.
Here are just some of his examples of military-related expenditures in various non-defense categories of the budget: State Department ($8.7 billion); Homeland Security ($53.5 billion); US Intelligence ($59.1 billion); Veterans’ Programs ($129.3 billion); and Interest on the debt related to past government borrowing for military functions ($184 billion). There are other parts of the budget where military-related expenditures are unknown (that is, kept secret). On this, Hellman writes:
“To take one example, how much of NASA’s proposed $18.7 billion budget falls under national security spending? We know that the agency works closely with the Pentagon. NASA satellite launches often occur from the Air Force’s facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Air Force has its own satellite launch capability, but how much of that comes as a result of NASA technology and support? In dollar terms, we just don’t know.
“Other “known unknowns” would include portions of the State Department budget. One assumes that at least some of its diplomatic initiatives promote our security interests. Similarly, we have no figure for the pensions of non-Pentagon federal retirees who worked on security issues for the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, or the Departments of Justice and Treasury. Nor do we have figures for the interest on money borrowed to fund veterans’ benefits, among other national security-related matters. The bill for such known unknowns could easily run into the tens of billions of dollars annually, putting the full national security budget over the $1.3 trillion mark or even higher.”
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/03/01/the-real-us-national-security-budget
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Why is the US military budget so large?
The US leadership, in the both executive and legislative branches, appears determined to preserve the military power of the nation and keep it as a trump card to protect and advance the interests of US corporations, the chief actors in the country’s economy. As long as US dependence on foreign oil continues and increases, this will be the case. There are two other implications. Powerful forces within the US that reap benefits from large military spending want the status quo to continue. This is the military-industrial complex about which President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the country in his last speech as president, on January 17, 1961. And US leaders seem persuaded that only the US has the military power to keep the world from falling into an intolerable and dangerous disorder.
Just consider one of these points, the forces within the US that serve to drive the military-industrial complex. Here are examples of these forces.
In the United States, there are many powerful groups, communities, and just ordinary citizens that support a militarized foreign policy. Why? Many parts of the US have benefited from the Iraq War financially, ideologically, and/or politically. Consider the following list of relevant items
(1) The military-industrial complex thrives on wars, however reckless, costly in resources and to people, and counterproductive they are.
(2) The President, along with too many elected officials in the U.S. Congress, advance a bipartisan, pro-war budget and agenda and have won money and votes for their campaigns..
(3) Covering up - “In 2005 and 2006 while Republicans held a majority in Congress, Democratic Congress members led by John Conyers (Mich.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), and Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) pushed hard for an investigation into the lies that had launched the aggression against Iraq. But from the time the Democrats took the majority in January 2007 up to the present moment, there has been no further mention of the matter, apart from a Senate committee’s release of its long-delayed report” (David Swanson, War Is a Lie, p. 303).
(4) The large veterans’ organizations typically defend the militarized foreign policy of the US government.
(5) Thousands of communities across the United States and in virtually all congressional districts support the government’s large military budgets, especially when they have military bases in their areas or local business with contracts to produce weapons or military-related supplies. The benefits are in employment, additional taxes, and spurs to the local economy.
(6) Burgeoning private firms/contractors prosper that provide services to the troops, security to embassies and officials, experienced former soldiers for special operations, and intelligence to the military.
(7) Millions of citizens who pride themselves on being patriotic have adopted the idea, perhaps out of fear, confusion, or the lack of information, that military force is the only way to protect America and its interests here and abroad. Here is a sad commentary on the US culture from David Swanson’s new book, War Is a Lie.
“We are more saturated with militarism than ever before. The military and its support industries eat up an increasingly larger share of the economy, providing jobs intentionally spread across all congressional districts. Military recruiters and recruitment advertising are ubiquitous. Sporting events on television welcome ‘members of the United States armed forces viewing in 177 nations around the world’ and nobody blinks. When wars begin, the government does whatever it has to do to persuade enough of the public to support the wars. Once the public turns against wars, the government just as effectively resists pressure to bring them to a swift end. Some years into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a majority of Americans told pollsters it had been a mistake to begin either of those wars. But easily manipulated majorities had supported those mistakes when they were made” (p. 10).
(8) The terror-complex. A widely held view in the United States is that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were necessary to forestall and ultimately defeat international Islamic terrorism. These misbegotten goals generate fear and submissiveness in the population but also opportunities for the creation and expansion of yet more profitable and career-enhancing opportunities. Chris Hedges provides a glimpse of this in his article, “The Terror-Industrial Complex,” truthdig.com, February 8, 2010.
“It is difficult to get a fair trial in this country if the government wants to accuse you of terrorism,” said Foster. “It is difficult to get a fair trial on any types of charges. The government is allowed to tell the jury you are a terrorist before you have to put on any evidence. The fear factor that has emerged since 9/11 has permeated into the U.S. court system in a profoundly disturbing way. It embraces the idea that we can compromise core principles, for example the presumption of innocence, based on perceived threats that may or may not come to light. We, as a society, have chosen to cave on fear.”
“I spent more than a year covering al-Qaida for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East. The threat posed by Islamic extremists, while real, is also wildly overblown, used to foster a climate of fear and political passivity, as well as pump billions of dollars into the hands of the military, private contractors, intelligence agencies and repressive client governments including that of Pakistan. The leader of one FBI counterterrorism squad told The New York Times that of the 5,500 terrorism-related leads its 21 agents had pursued over the past five years, just 5 percent were credible and not one had foiled an actual terrorist plot. These statistics strike me as emblematic of the entire war on terror.
“Terrorism, however, is a very good business. The number of extremists who are planning to carry out terrorist attacks is minuscule, but there are vast departments and legions of ambitious intelligence and military officers who desperately need to strike a tangible blow against terrorism, real or imagined, to promote their careers as well as justify obscene expenditures and a flagrant abuse of power. All this will not make us safer. It will not protect us from terrorist strikes. The more we dispatch brutal forms of power to the Islamic world the more enraged Muslims and terrorists we propel into the ranks of those who oppose us.
(9) The media are too often an echo chamber of the official war narratives – Check out these two books, for example: Anthony Dimaggio, When Media Goes to War, and Norman Solomon’s War Made Easy
In his book War is a Lie, David Swanson comments on the role of the media: “The approach of the US corporate media to war coverage is to feature lots of ‘experts’ on war. By ‘experts’ they clearly mean high-ranking military officials, current or retired. But if the question is whether or not to go to war, or whether or not to continue war, or whether or not to escalate war, then why aren’t experts at peace making as relevant as experts at war making? In fact, why aren’t they more relevant, given our supposed preference for peace, its legality, and the ongoing pretense of civilian control over our military? The military can offer expertise on how to start and fight a way, but should it be considered to have any authority on whether to start a war?” (p. 252).
(10) Think tanks (some) provide rationales for war. Derek Leebaert provides the following examples in his book Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy.
“Think tankers who double as advisers to the military – including Frederick Kagan and his spouse, Kimberly Kagan, who runs a new organization, ‘the Institute for the Study of War’ – wrote an op-ed…stating, ‘There is no doubt that we can succeed against the much weaker foes,’ comparing the Afghan insurgents dismissively to those in Iraq. Brookings expert Michael O’Hanlon and participated from the CSIS, Brookings, and the AEI to urge ‘significant escalation’ as they unanimously insisted ‘there is no alternative to victory’” (p. 243).
--------------------
What’s the point?
The US military establishment and its extensions have distorted our economy, politics, and cultural. A majority of Americans who have been recently polled indicate that they would like to see an end to the Afghanistan war. But this is not an issue that was high on the list of priorities indicated in other polls or why they voted as they did in 2010.
Perhaps the economic troubles of many Americans will in time be reflected in elections and in the White House and US Congress. However, the 2010 elections moved in the opposite direction, toward the right-wing of the Republican Party. This is a political reality so that now the Congress has become even more inclined toward a strong military. (It remains to be seen whether the Tea Party changes this reality.) One big part of the problem politically is that corporations and the rich are now legally able to pour more money into elections and lobbying than ever in memory.
In the meantime, the peace and anti-war groups remain relatively small. This is certainly true, when one compares the size of such groups before the Iraq War with what we have today. But even then the anti-war movement was unable to stop the US invasion of Iraq. Compare today with a letter I wrote back in February of 2003.
An Anti-War Movement With Many Voices
Bob Sheak
February 12, 2003
The peace/anti-war movement in the U.S. and across the world is large and diversified in the types of people and organizations involved and the religious and ideological views held by activists. Whatever differences there are, they are united by their opposition to a needless and costly war on Iraq and their support for the continuation of the inspections process.
An estimated 100,000 turned out for an anti-war rally and march in Washington last October, and at least twice as many showed up in January, with estimates ranging up to 500,000. Regardless of the exact number, the January rally was the largest anti-war demonstration in D.C. since the Vietnam era. At the same time, tens of thousands marched in San Francisco and towns of all sizes across the country and in some 37 other countries. On February 9th in Jakarta, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, up to a hundred thousand Indonesians staged a peaceful protest against a possible attack on Iraq. As of Friday, February 7th, 72 cities in the U.S. has passed resolutions or signed letters in opposition to an invasion of Iraq and 85 others (including Athens) had campaigns to do so.
The peace/anti-war movement includes traditional peace groups; student, global justice and antiracist activists; mainstream labor, environmental, civil rights and women's organizations. Over a hundred celebrities announced their opposition to the war on December 10 through the new Win Without War coalition. More than 750,000 people have joined online activist group MoveOn.org, which supports continued inspections and is airing television ads to that effect. Thirty-five hundred anti-war poems have been submitted to http://www.poetsagainstwar.org/. Z Magazine printed the e-mail addresses of 221 “peace” groups in its February issue. Even several prominent Republican businessmen took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal that told Bush: "The world wants Saddam Hussein disarmed, but you must find a better way to do it."
Almost all of the major faiths have spoken out against war. The National Council of Churches, which represents 36 denominations and 140,000 local congregations, has taken a strong stand against an invasion of Iraq and has organized “A Season for Peacemaking.” And on February 9th, Pope John Paul II, the head of the Catholic Church with hundreds of millions of members in the U.S. and across the globe, addressed pilgrims and tourists in St Peter's Square in Rome and prayed for "an act from on high" to prevent a war against Iraq. Writing from Rome for online World News, Richard Owen writes: “The ageing pontiff rebuffed attempts by the Bush Administration to persuade him that impending military action against Baghdad amounted to a Christian ‘just war’… [and] also gave his backing to the new Franco-German plan to resolve the Iraq crisis through beefed-up weapons inspections and the deployment of UN troops.”
One implication of this growing peace/anti-war movement is that there is a large and growing number of Americans, leaders from many institutional sectors here and abroad, and others around the world who have not been convinced by the enormous and relentless efforts of the Bush Administration to rally them to support a preemptive “war” against Iraq that will have catastrophic human consequences.
Last word: The challenge appears unceasing....
First, the size of the US military budget -
The overall gargantuan US military budget will most likely continue to rise in FY 2012. This will be so, even though “defense” spending is, and has been, the largest part of the discretionary federal budget (58% by some measures). And it will be so even though the US economy remains in an economic recession, creating insufficient employment opportunities, leaving millions of families in home foreclosure, amidst rising inequality and poverty and infrastructural, energy, and environmental problems that remain unattended.
Reporting for the New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof notes the following: “The United States spends nearly as much on military power as every other country in the world combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It says that we spend more than six times as much as the country with the next highest budget, China.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26kristof.html
The late Chalmers Johnson cited evidence to attest that the US is an empire of military bases. In his last book, Dismantling the Empire (2010), Johnson wrote:
“According to the Defense Department’s Base Structure Report for fiscal year 2009, the Pentagon owned or rented 716 overseas based and another 4,863 in the United States and its territories….Johnson goes on to point out that “the 2009 edition failed to mention any garrisons in the Iraq and Afghan war zones, as well as any bases or facilities used in countries such as Jordan and Qatar. As of the summer of 2009, “there were still nearly three hundred US bases and outposts in Iraq, with the number set to drop to fifty or fewer by August 31, 2010….”
Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope (2010.
At the same time, the number of military bases in Afghanistan has increased. Nick Turse reports that by Feb 2010, there were 400 US and Coalition bases across Afghanistan, with an additional 300 Afghan National Army and Afghan Police bases, “most of them built, maintained, or supported by the U.S. A small number of the coalition sites are mega-bases like Kandahar Airfield, which boasts one of the busiest runways in the world, and Bagram Air Base, a former Soviet facility that received a makeover, complete with Burger King and Popeyes outlets, and now serves more than 20,000 U.S. troops, in addition to thousands of coalition forces and civilian contractors. (See Nick Turse, “Totally Occupied: 700 Military Bases Spread Across Afghanistan,” Alternet.org, Feb 10, 2010.)
http://www.alternet.org/world/145631/totally_occupied:_700_miitary_bases_spread_across_afghanistan?page=entire
Wikipedia provides the following information: “The military of the United States is deployed in more than 150[1] countries around the world, with more than 369,000 of its 1,580,255[2] active-duty personnel serving outside the United States and its territories.” (See Wikipedia, “United States military deployments.”)
There is a continuing debate on whether the defense budget will be marginally cut with the withdrawal of many troops from Iraq, but such a cut, if it should happen, would not significantly reduce the preponderance of overall US military resources. (See Thom Shanker and Christopher Drew’s article, “Gates Sees Crisis in Current Spending, New York Times, Feb 15, 2011).
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/opinion/main6193925.shtml
But there is also evidence that the official estimates of the military budget that capture the media’s attention are lower than they actually are. Chris Hellman points this out:
“For 2012, the White House has requested $558 billion for the Pentagon’s annual “base” budget, plus an additional $118 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At $676 billion, that’s already nothing to sneeze at, but it’s just the barest of beginnings when it comes to what American taxpayers will actually spend on national security. Think of it as the gigantic tip of a humongous iceberg.
“To get closer to a real figure, it’s necessary to start peeking at other parts of the federal budget where so many other pots of security spending are squirreled away.
“Missing from the Pentagon’s budget request, for example, is an additional $19.3 billion for nuclear-weapons-related activities like making sure our current stockpile of warheads will work as expected and cleaning up the waste created by seven decades of developing and producing them. That money, however, officially falls in the province of the Department of Energy. And then, don’t forget an additional $7.8 billion that the Pentagon lumps into a “miscellaneous” category—a kind of department of chump change—that is included in neither its base budget nor those war-fighting funds.”
Hellman then goes on to identify some of the missing pieces from the official and widely discussed Pentagon budget that brings the total from about $700 billion to over $1.2 trillion.
Here are just some of his examples of military-related expenditures in various non-defense categories of the budget: State Department ($8.7 billion); Homeland Security ($53.5 billion); US Intelligence ($59.1 billion); Veterans’ Programs ($129.3 billion); and Interest on the debt related to past government borrowing for military functions ($184 billion). There are other parts of the budget where military-related expenditures are unknown (that is, kept secret). On this, Hellman writes:
“To take one example, how much of NASA’s proposed $18.7 billion budget falls under national security spending? We know that the agency works closely with the Pentagon. NASA satellite launches often occur from the Air Force’s facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Air Force has its own satellite launch capability, but how much of that comes as a result of NASA technology and support? In dollar terms, we just don’t know.
“Other “known unknowns” would include portions of the State Department budget. One assumes that at least some of its diplomatic initiatives promote our security interests. Similarly, we have no figure for the pensions of non-Pentagon federal retirees who worked on security issues for the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, or the Departments of Justice and Treasury. Nor do we have figures for the interest on money borrowed to fund veterans’ benefits, among other national security-related matters. The bill for such known unknowns could easily run into the tens of billions of dollars annually, putting the full national security budget over the $1.3 trillion mark or even higher.”
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/03/01/the-real-us-national-security-budget
--------------------
Why is the US military budget so large?
The US leadership, in the both executive and legislative branches, appears determined to preserve the military power of the nation and keep it as a trump card to protect and advance the interests of US corporations, the chief actors in the country’s economy. As long as US dependence on foreign oil continues and increases, this will be the case. There are two other implications. Powerful forces within the US that reap benefits from large military spending want the status quo to continue. This is the military-industrial complex about which President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the country in his last speech as president, on January 17, 1961. And US leaders seem persuaded that only the US has the military power to keep the world from falling into an intolerable and dangerous disorder.
Just consider one of these points, the forces within the US that serve to drive the military-industrial complex. Here are examples of these forces.
In the United States, there are many powerful groups, communities, and just ordinary citizens that support a militarized foreign policy. Why? Many parts of the US have benefited from the Iraq War financially, ideologically, and/or politically. Consider the following list of relevant items
(1) The military-industrial complex thrives on wars, however reckless, costly in resources and to people, and counterproductive they are.
(2) The President, along with too many elected officials in the U.S. Congress, advance a bipartisan, pro-war budget and agenda and have won money and votes for their campaigns..
(3) Covering up - “In 2005 and 2006 while Republicans held a majority in Congress, Democratic Congress members led by John Conyers (Mich.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), and Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) pushed hard for an investigation into the lies that had launched the aggression against Iraq. But from the time the Democrats took the majority in January 2007 up to the present moment, there has been no further mention of the matter, apart from a Senate committee’s release of its long-delayed report” (David Swanson, War Is a Lie, p. 303).
(4) The large veterans’ organizations typically defend the militarized foreign policy of the US government.
(5) Thousands of communities across the United States and in virtually all congressional districts support the government’s large military budgets, especially when they have military bases in their areas or local business with contracts to produce weapons or military-related supplies. The benefits are in employment, additional taxes, and spurs to the local economy.
(6) Burgeoning private firms/contractors prosper that provide services to the troops, security to embassies and officials, experienced former soldiers for special operations, and intelligence to the military.
(7) Millions of citizens who pride themselves on being patriotic have adopted the idea, perhaps out of fear, confusion, or the lack of information, that military force is the only way to protect America and its interests here and abroad. Here is a sad commentary on the US culture from David Swanson’s new book, War Is a Lie.
“We are more saturated with militarism than ever before. The military and its support industries eat up an increasingly larger share of the economy, providing jobs intentionally spread across all congressional districts. Military recruiters and recruitment advertising are ubiquitous. Sporting events on television welcome ‘members of the United States armed forces viewing in 177 nations around the world’ and nobody blinks. When wars begin, the government does whatever it has to do to persuade enough of the public to support the wars. Once the public turns against wars, the government just as effectively resists pressure to bring them to a swift end. Some years into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a majority of Americans told pollsters it had been a mistake to begin either of those wars. But easily manipulated majorities had supported those mistakes when they were made” (p. 10).
(8) The terror-complex. A widely held view in the United States is that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were necessary to forestall and ultimately defeat international Islamic terrorism. These misbegotten goals generate fear and submissiveness in the population but also opportunities for the creation and expansion of yet more profitable and career-enhancing opportunities. Chris Hedges provides a glimpse of this in his article, “The Terror-Industrial Complex,” truthdig.com, February 8, 2010.
“It is difficult to get a fair trial in this country if the government wants to accuse you of terrorism,” said Foster. “It is difficult to get a fair trial on any types of charges. The government is allowed to tell the jury you are a terrorist before you have to put on any evidence. The fear factor that has emerged since 9/11 has permeated into the U.S. court system in a profoundly disturbing way. It embraces the idea that we can compromise core principles, for example the presumption of innocence, based on perceived threats that may or may not come to light. We, as a society, have chosen to cave on fear.”
“I spent more than a year covering al-Qaida for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East. The threat posed by Islamic extremists, while real, is also wildly overblown, used to foster a climate of fear and political passivity, as well as pump billions of dollars into the hands of the military, private contractors, intelligence agencies and repressive client governments including that of Pakistan. The leader of one FBI counterterrorism squad told The New York Times that of the 5,500 terrorism-related leads its 21 agents had pursued over the past five years, just 5 percent were credible and not one had foiled an actual terrorist plot. These statistics strike me as emblematic of the entire war on terror.
“Terrorism, however, is a very good business. The number of extremists who are planning to carry out terrorist attacks is minuscule, but there are vast departments and legions of ambitious intelligence and military officers who desperately need to strike a tangible blow against terrorism, real or imagined, to promote their careers as well as justify obscene expenditures and a flagrant abuse of power. All this will not make us safer. It will not protect us from terrorist strikes. The more we dispatch brutal forms of power to the Islamic world the more enraged Muslims and terrorists we propel into the ranks of those who oppose us.
(9) The media are too often an echo chamber of the official war narratives – Check out these two books, for example: Anthony Dimaggio, When Media Goes to War, and Norman Solomon’s War Made Easy
In his book War is a Lie, David Swanson comments on the role of the media: “The approach of the US corporate media to war coverage is to feature lots of ‘experts’ on war. By ‘experts’ they clearly mean high-ranking military officials, current or retired. But if the question is whether or not to go to war, or whether or not to continue war, or whether or not to escalate war, then why aren’t experts at peace making as relevant as experts at war making? In fact, why aren’t they more relevant, given our supposed preference for peace, its legality, and the ongoing pretense of civilian control over our military? The military can offer expertise on how to start and fight a way, but should it be considered to have any authority on whether to start a war?” (p. 252).
(10) Think tanks (some) provide rationales for war. Derek Leebaert provides the following examples in his book Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy.
“Think tankers who double as advisers to the military – including Frederick Kagan and his spouse, Kimberly Kagan, who runs a new organization, ‘the Institute for the Study of War’ – wrote an op-ed…stating, ‘There is no doubt that we can succeed against the much weaker foes,’ comparing the Afghan insurgents dismissively to those in Iraq. Brookings expert Michael O’Hanlon and participated from the CSIS, Brookings, and the AEI to urge ‘significant escalation’ as they unanimously insisted ‘there is no alternative to victory’” (p. 243).
--------------------
What’s the point?
The US military establishment and its extensions have distorted our economy, politics, and cultural. A majority of Americans who have been recently polled indicate that they would like to see an end to the Afghanistan war. But this is not an issue that was high on the list of priorities indicated in other polls or why they voted as they did in 2010.
Perhaps the economic troubles of many Americans will in time be reflected in elections and in the White House and US Congress. However, the 2010 elections moved in the opposite direction, toward the right-wing of the Republican Party. This is a political reality so that now the Congress has become even more inclined toward a strong military. (It remains to be seen whether the Tea Party changes this reality.) One big part of the problem politically is that corporations and the rich are now legally able to pour more money into elections and lobbying than ever in memory.
In the meantime, the peace and anti-war groups remain relatively small. This is certainly true, when one compares the size of such groups before the Iraq War with what we have today. But even then the anti-war movement was unable to stop the US invasion of Iraq. Compare today with a letter I wrote back in February of 2003.
An Anti-War Movement With Many Voices
Bob Sheak
February 12, 2003
The peace/anti-war movement in the U.S. and across the world is large and diversified in the types of people and organizations involved and the religious and ideological views held by activists. Whatever differences there are, they are united by their opposition to a needless and costly war on Iraq and their support for the continuation of the inspections process.
An estimated 100,000 turned out for an anti-war rally and march in Washington last October, and at least twice as many showed up in January, with estimates ranging up to 500,000. Regardless of the exact number, the January rally was the largest anti-war demonstration in D.C. since the Vietnam era. At the same time, tens of thousands marched in San Francisco and towns of all sizes across the country and in some 37 other countries. On February 9th in Jakarta, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, up to a hundred thousand Indonesians staged a peaceful protest against a possible attack on Iraq. As of Friday, February 7th, 72 cities in the U.S. has passed resolutions or signed letters in opposition to an invasion of Iraq and 85 others (including Athens) had campaigns to do so.
The peace/anti-war movement includes traditional peace groups; student, global justice and antiracist activists; mainstream labor, environmental, civil rights and women's organizations. Over a hundred celebrities announced their opposition to the war on December 10 through the new Win Without War coalition. More than 750,000 people have joined online activist group MoveOn.org, which supports continued inspections and is airing television ads to that effect. Thirty-five hundred anti-war poems have been submitted to http://www.poetsagainstwar.org/. Z Magazine printed the e-mail addresses of 221 “peace” groups in its February issue. Even several prominent Republican businessmen took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal that told Bush: "The world wants Saddam Hussein disarmed, but you must find a better way to do it."
Almost all of the major faiths have spoken out against war. The National Council of Churches, which represents 36 denominations and 140,000 local congregations, has taken a strong stand against an invasion of Iraq and has organized “A Season for Peacemaking.” And on February 9th, Pope John Paul II, the head of the Catholic Church with hundreds of millions of members in the U.S. and across the globe, addressed pilgrims and tourists in St Peter's Square in Rome and prayed for "an act from on high" to prevent a war against Iraq. Writing from Rome for online World News, Richard Owen writes: “The ageing pontiff rebuffed attempts by the Bush Administration to persuade him that impending military action against Baghdad amounted to a Christian ‘just war’… [and] also gave his backing to the new Franco-German plan to resolve the Iraq crisis through beefed-up weapons inspections and the deployment of UN troops.”
One implication of this growing peace/anti-war movement is that there is a large and growing number of Americans, leaders from many institutional sectors here and abroad, and others around the world who have not been convinced by the enormous and relentless efforts of the Bush Administration to rally them to support a preemptive “war” against Iraq that will have catastrophic human consequences.
Last word: The challenge appears unceasing....
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Afghanistan - cut funding, reduce violence
The decade-long US/NATO war on and occupation of Afghanistan is unrelentingly costly, in human terms, to US taxpayers and US debt, in Afghan and contractor corruption, in the fear and hatred generated by foreign occupation among ordinary Afghan people, and, to end this incomplete list, the squandering of money on this futile war when there is so much economic distress in Afghanistan and the US.
The Republicans in the US House and Senate want to reduce government spending on non-military discretionary programs by $100 billion in the next fiscal year. Tom Engelhardt demurs. The savings should more reasonably come from the military side of the budget proposals. Given the less-than-rational policies justifying the Afghanistan war/occupation, we should, Engelhardt argues, look at the military spending proposals on the budget. Here is just one of Engelhardt’s ideas. He writes in his Feb. 17, 2011, article on Antiwar.com that we could easily cut a $100 billion or more from the spending side of the government budget by bringing the troops home from Afghanistan.
---------------
Engelhardt - Ending the war in Afghanistan and save over $100 billion the first year
[….]
“Which reminds me: Didn’t I mention Afghanistan?
“If so, how fortunate, because there’s a perfectly obvious path toward that Republican goal of $100 billion. If we were to embark on it, there would be even more cuts to follow and — believe it or not — they wouldn’t be all that painful, provided we did one small thing: change our thinking about making war.
“After all, according to the Pentagon, the cost of the Afghan War in 2012 will be almost $300 million a day or, for all 365 of them, $107.3 billion. Like anything having to do with American war-fighting, however, such figures regularly turn out to be undercounts. Other estimates for our yearly war costs there go as high as $120-$160 billion.
“And let’s face it, it’s a war worth ending fast. Almost a decade after the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. military is still fruitlessly engaged in possibly the stupidest frontier war in our history, thousands of miles from home in the backlands of the planet.
[….]
There’s genuine money to be slashed simply by bringing the troops home….
[….]
URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/02/17/cutting-100-billion-easy/
---------------
Sadly the war is likely to continue beyond 2011 or 2014. There is no definitive end in sight for this fruitless endeavor. And it is likely to get worse by the violence it generates in the meantime.
---------------
Slobodan Lekic learns that the top US general in Afghanistan sees intensified fighting in 2011. Reporting for the Associated Press (2-9-11), Lekic writes that “General Patraeus predicts intensified fighting in 2011.” Lekic continues:
“ The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned [on NATO TV] that combat will likely escalate during the spring thaw as Taliban insurgents try to return to areas cleared by the international forces during the past several months.
[….]
“Last year's surge boosted the international force to about 150,000 troops. NATO and President Hamid Karzai hope to have more than 300,000 Afghan army and police in action by next autumn facing a much smaller organized insurgent force.
[….]
“Last year was the deadliest of the nearly decade-long war for international troops, with more than 700 killed. This compares to about 500 in 2009, previously the worst year of the war. Record numbers of insurgents and civilians also have been killed.
[….]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/ap_re_eu/eu_nato_patraeus
---------------
Jason Ditz reports on on Antiwar.com (Feb 16, 2011) that Admiral Michael Mullen also anticipates increases violence in Afghanistan in 2011 – i.e., agreement among top brass that violence in Afghan will worsen in 2011
….today Admiral Michael Mullen informed Congress that 2011 will be an even more violent year in Afghanistan than the record 2010 was.
“’The fighting will be tough and often costly,’” Mullen informed the committee in a prepared statement, which added that the violence to come would be “’greater than last year,’” which may sound familiar, because violence in Afghanistan has gotten worse year after year, and record tolls always find a way to be topped.”
[….]
URL to article: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/02/16/mullen-informs-congress-afghan-violence-to-worsen-in-2011/
---------------
The anticipated increase in violence is predictably going to result in increase deaths and injuries, physical and psychological, both to civilians and to combatants. Derrick Crowe reports in the Huffington Post (Feb 2, 2011) that “2010 was the worst year for civilian deaths of the Afghanistan War.” Put it together. If last year was the worst year in this respect, and if the top military brass predicts that violence will rise in 2011, then 2011 will become the worst year for civilian deaths in this battered country of Afghanistan. The surge in carnage will continue to escalate, we are forewarned.
------------
Derrick Crowe:
“Last year was the worst year for civilian deaths in the war so far, and irregular armed groups backed by the U.S. and by the Afghan government are preying on the population while recruiting and abusing children. Go team.
[….]
“Here's the latest assessment from the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (.PDF):
“Almost everything related to the war surged in 2010: the combined numbers of Afghan and foreign forces surpassed 350,000; security incidents mounted to over 100 per week; more fighters from all warring side were killed; and the number of civilian people killed, wounded and displaced hit record levels.
“...From 1 January to 31 December 2010, at least 2,421 civilian Afghans were killed and over 3,270 were injured in conflict-related security incidents across Afghanistan. This means everyday 6-7 noncombatants were killed and 8-9 were wounded in the war.
“...In addition to civilian casualties, hundreds of thousands of people were affected in various ways by the intensified armed violence in Afghanistan in 2010. Tens of thousands of people were forced out of their homes or deprived of healthcare and education services and livelihood opportunities due to the continuation of war in their home areas.
“Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are widely considered as the most lethal tools which killed over 690 civilians in 2010. However, as you will read in this report, there is virtually no information about the use of cluster munitions by US/NATO forces. Despite Afghanistan's accession to the international Anti-Cluster Bomb Treaty in 2008, the US military has allegedly maintained stockpiles of cluster munitions in Afghanistan.
“A second key issue highlighted in this report is the emergence of the irregular armed groups in parts of Afghanistan which are backed by the Afghan Government and its foreign allies. These groups have been deplored as criminal and predatory by many Afghans and have already been accused of severe human rights violations such as child recruitment and sexual abuse.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/derrick-crowe/2010-worst-year-for-civil_b_817308.html
---------------
There are alternatives to the US/NATO war on occupation of Afghanistan. Tom Engelhardt offers sound advice in his article cited earlier. The Afghanistan Study Group provides an authoritative and comprehensive report in “A New Way Forward: Rethinking US Strategy in Afghanistan.” Check it out at:
http://www.afghanistanstudygroup.org/
Also think about joining the anti-war demonstration in New York City on Saturday, April 9, 2011.
The Republicans in the US House and Senate want to reduce government spending on non-military discretionary programs by $100 billion in the next fiscal year. Tom Engelhardt demurs. The savings should more reasonably come from the military side of the budget proposals. Given the less-than-rational policies justifying the Afghanistan war/occupation, we should, Engelhardt argues, look at the military spending proposals on the budget. Here is just one of Engelhardt’s ideas. He writes in his Feb. 17, 2011, article on Antiwar.com that we could easily cut a $100 billion or more from the spending side of the government budget by bringing the troops home from Afghanistan.
---------------
Engelhardt - Ending the war in Afghanistan and save over $100 billion the first year
[….]
“Which reminds me: Didn’t I mention Afghanistan?
“If so, how fortunate, because there’s a perfectly obvious path toward that Republican goal of $100 billion. If we were to embark on it, there would be even more cuts to follow and — believe it or not — they wouldn’t be all that painful, provided we did one small thing: change our thinking about making war.
“After all, according to the Pentagon, the cost of the Afghan War in 2012 will be almost $300 million a day or, for all 365 of them, $107.3 billion. Like anything having to do with American war-fighting, however, such figures regularly turn out to be undercounts. Other estimates for our yearly war costs there go as high as $120-$160 billion.
“And let’s face it, it’s a war worth ending fast. Almost a decade after the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. military is still fruitlessly engaged in possibly the stupidest frontier war in our history, thousands of miles from home in the backlands of the planet.
[….]
There’s genuine money to be slashed simply by bringing the troops home….
[….]
URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/02/17/cutting-100-billion-easy/
---------------
Sadly the war is likely to continue beyond 2011 or 2014. There is no definitive end in sight for this fruitless endeavor. And it is likely to get worse by the violence it generates in the meantime.
---------------
Slobodan Lekic learns that the top US general in Afghanistan sees intensified fighting in 2011. Reporting for the Associated Press (2-9-11), Lekic writes that “General Patraeus predicts intensified fighting in 2011.” Lekic continues:
“ The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned [on NATO TV] that combat will likely escalate during the spring thaw as Taliban insurgents try to return to areas cleared by the international forces during the past several months.
[….]
“Last year's surge boosted the international force to about 150,000 troops. NATO and President Hamid Karzai hope to have more than 300,000 Afghan army and police in action by next autumn facing a much smaller organized insurgent force.
[….]
“Last year was the deadliest of the nearly decade-long war for international troops, with more than 700 killed. This compares to about 500 in 2009, previously the worst year of the war. Record numbers of insurgents and civilians also have been killed.
[….]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/ap_re_eu/eu_nato_patraeus
---------------
Jason Ditz reports on on Antiwar.com (Feb 16, 2011) that Admiral Michael Mullen also anticipates increases violence in Afghanistan in 2011 – i.e., agreement among top brass that violence in Afghan will worsen in 2011
….today Admiral Michael Mullen informed Congress that 2011 will be an even more violent year in Afghanistan than the record 2010 was.
“’The fighting will be tough and often costly,’” Mullen informed the committee in a prepared statement, which added that the violence to come would be “’greater than last year,’” which may sound familiar, because violence in Afghanistan has gotten worse year after year, and record tolls always find a way to be topped.”
[….]
URL to article: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/02/16/mullen-informs-congress-afghan-violence-to-worsen-in-2011/
---------------
The anticipated increase in violence is predictably going to result in increase deaths and injuries, physical and psychological, both to civilians and to combatants. Derrick Crowe reports in the Huffington Post (Feb 2, 2011) that “2010 was the worst year for civilian deaths of the Afghanistan War.” Put it together. If last year was the worst year in this respect, and if the top military brass predicts that violence will rise in 2011, then 2011 will become the worst year for civilian deaths in this battered country of Afghanistan. The surge in carnage will continue to escalate, we are forewarned.
------------
Derrick Crowe:
“Last year was the worst year for civilian deaths in the war so far, and irregular armed groups backed by the U.S. and by the Afghan government are preying on the population while recruiting and abusing children. Go team.
[….]
“Here's the latest assessment from the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (.PDF):
“Almost everything related to the war surged in 2010: the combined numbers of Afghan and foreign forces surpassed 350,000; security incidents mounted to over 100 per week; more fighters from all warring side were killed; and the number of civilian people killed, wounded and displaced hit record levels.
“...From 1 January to 31 December 2010, at least 2,421 civilian Afghans were killed and over 3,270 were injured in conflict-related security incidents across Afghanistan. This means everyday 6-7 noncombatants were killed and 8-9 were wounded in the war.
“...In addition to civilian casualties, hundreds of thousands of people were affected in various ways by the intensified armed violence in Afghanistan in 2010. Tens of thousands of people were forced out of their homes or deprived of healthcare and education services and livelihood opportunities due to the continuation of war in their home areas.
“Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are widely considered as the most lethal tools which killed over 690 civilians in 2010. However, as you will read in this report, there is virtually no information about the use of cluster munitions by US/NATO forces. Despite Afghanistan's accession to the international Anti-Cluster Bomb Treaty in 2008, the US military has allegedly maintained stockpiles of cluster munitions in Afghanistan.
“A second key issue highlighted in this report is the emergence of the irregular armed groups in parts of Afghanistan which are backed by the Afghan Government and its foreign allies. These groups have been deplored as criminal and predatory by many Afghans and have already been accused of severe human rights violations such as child recruitment and sexual abuse.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/derrick-crowe/2010-worst-year-for-civil_b_817308.html
---------------
There are alternatives to the US/NATO war on occupation of Afghanistan. Tom Engelhardt offers sound advice in his article cited earlier. The Afghanistan Study Group provides an authoritative and comprehensive report in “A New Way Forward: Rethinking US Strategy in Afghanistan.” Check it out at:
http://www.afghanistanstudygroup.org/
Also think about joining the anti-war demonstration in New York City on Saturday, April 9, 2011.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
High costs of war continue under Obama
Reporting for Stars and Stripes, Leo Shane writes on the highlights of a conference call with award-winning Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University economist Linda Bilmes. The focus of the call was on Stiglitz and Bilmes book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict and recent estimates. The book was first published in 2008. The $3 Trillion refers to the low estimate of the military-related costs of the Iraq War, including, among other things, the medical costs for veterans, the related costs for their famiies, and the opportunity costs for government, that is, what the government could have altrernatively spent on domestic programs here in the US (e.g., education, green infrastructure, job creation, medical care for all, etc.). The costs were estimated by the authors through 2017. The high-end cost estimate was $5-trillion.
Shane reports that, in the conference call, "Bilmes said about 600,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have already sought medical treatment from the Department of Veteran Affairs, and 500,000 have applied for disability benefits." Bilmes continued: "That's about 30 percent higher than initial estimates for care, and could cost the department nearly $1 trillion in costs for the current wars alone."
In addition, Shane reports, "Stiglitz said history has shown the cost of treating illness such as post-traumatic stress disorders only increase with time, and with the country still expecting a significant presence in Afghanistan for years to come, the bills will keep piling up."
See full story at: http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central_1.8040/study-wars-could-cost-4-trilliong-to-6-trillion-1.120054
From another source: A headline from Truthdig.com on August 9, 2010, indicates that "Obama Will Spend More than Bush on Military." (http://www.truthdig.com/ )
Truth.dig quotes from the New York Times as follows:
"Mr Gates [Secretary of Defense] is calling for the Pentagon's budget to keep growing in the long run at 1 percent a year after inflation, plus the cost of the war[s]. It has averaged an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 7 percent a year over the last decade (nearly 12 percent a yar without adjusting for inflation), including the costs of the wars. So far, Mr. Obama has asked Congress for an increase of total spending next year of 2.2 percent, to $708 billion - 6.1 percent higher than the peak under the Bush administration."
The implication of these estimates is that, when spending on the wars is included with other net increased in the military spending, Obama's military budget will be higher than what the Bush administration allocated in their highest military-spending year. Note also that the $708 billion does not include the costs of long-term medical care for veterans or the costs to their families of providing often extensive and long-term care, or, additionally, how rising military-related costs reduce expenditures on many important domestic programs in the US.
Shane reports that, in the conference call, "Bilmes said about 600,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have already sought medical treatment from the Department of Veteran Affairs, and 500,000 have applied for disability benefits." Bilmes continued: "That's about 30 percent higher than initial estimates for care, and could cost the department nearly $1 trillion in costs for the current wars alone."
In addition, Shane reports, "Stiglitz said history has shown the cost of treating illness such as post-traumatic stress disorders only increase with time, and with the country still expecting a significant presence in Afghanistan for years to come, the bills will keep piling up."
See full story at: http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central_1.8040/study-wars-could-cost-4-trilliong-to-6-trillion-1.120054
From another source: A headline from Truthdig.com on August 9, 2010, indicates that "Obama Will Spend More than Bush on Military." (http://www.truthdig.com/ )
Truth.dig quotes from the New York Times as follows:
"Mr Gates [Secretary of Defense] is calling for the Pentagon's budget to keep growing in the long run at 1 percent a year after inflation, plus the cost of the war[s]. It has averaged an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 7 percent a year over the last decade (nearly 12 percent a yar without adjusting for inflation), including the costs of the wars. So far, Mr. Obama has asked Congress for an increase of total spending next year of 2.2 percent, to $708 billion - 6.1 percent higher than the peak under the Bush administration."
The implication of these estimates is that, when spending on the wars is included with other net increased in the military spending, Obama's military budget will be higher than what the Bush administration allocated in their highest military-spending year. Note also that the $708 billion does not include the costs of long-term medical care for veterans or the costs to their families of providing often extensive and long-term care, or, additionally, how rising military-related costs reduce expenditures on many important domestic programs in the US.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
US Military spending is profligate, unnecessary, and undermines domestic spending
In the following article, professor of history and author Lawrence Wittner focuses on the costs of US military spending and argues that they are over-sized by a mile and that there is no sign from the Obama administration that military spending will be diminished any time soon.
We don't need 865 military facilities in 40 countries and US territories. We don't need high-priced weapons that virtually always end up costing far more than originally planned. And, most relevant for this blog, we don't need to spend over a trillion dollars on US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus additional spending as we escalate US forces in Afghanistan. By the way, it is unreasonable to pay premium salaries and benefits to hundreds of thousands of private contractors.
In the domestic context of overall US budgets, spending on the military has the consequence of increasing budget deficits, the national debt, and of giving Republicans and Conservative Democrats another rationale to cut domestic programs in the US for education, health care, job-creation, etc., that would help to reduce poverty while improving the conditions of tens of millions of American workers and families in this country.
How Much is Enough?
America's Runaway Military Spending
By LAWRENCE WITTNER
August 17, 2010
http://www.counterpunch.org/wittner08172010.html, and http://peacevoice.info
The August 9 announcement by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates of cost-containment measures at the Defense Department should not obscure two underlying facts. First, as he conceded, these proposed economies will not result in cutting the overall Pentagon budget, which is slated for expansion. And, second, as a Washington Post article reported, "defense officials characterized them as a political preemptive strike to fend off growing sentiment elsewhere in Washington to tackle the federal government's soaring deficits by making deep cuts in military spending."
But why should anyone want to cut the U.S. military budget?
One reason is that—with $549 billion requested for basic military expenditures and another $159 billion requested for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—the record $708 billion military spending called for by the Obama administration for fiscal 2011 will be nearly equivalent to the military spending of all other nations in the world combined. When it comes to military appropriations, the U.S. government already spends about seven times as much as China, thirteen times as much as Russia, and seventy-three times as much as Iran.
Is this really necessary? During the Cold War, the United States confronted far more dangerous and numerous military adversaries, including the Soviet Union. And the U.S. government certainly possessed an enormous and devastating military arsenal, as well as the armed forces that used it. But in those years, U.S. military spending accounted for only 26 percent of the world total. Today, as U.S. Congressman Barney Frank has observed, "we have fewer enemies and we're spending more money."
Where does this vast outlay of U.S. tax dollars—the greatest military appropriations in U.S. history—go? One place is to overseas U.S. military bases. According to Chalmers Johnson, a political scientist and former CIA consultant, as much as $250 billion per year is used to maintain some 865 U.S. military facilities in more than forty countries and overseas U.S. territories.
The money also goes to fund vast legions of private military contractors. A recent Pentagon report estimated that the Defense Department relies on 766,000 contractors at an annual cost of about $155 billion, and this figure does not include private intelligence organizations. A Washington Post study, which included all categories, estimated that the Defense Department employs 1.2 million private contractors.
Of course, enormously expensive air and naval weapons systems—often accompanied by huge cost over-runs—account for a substantial portion of the Pentagon's budget. But exactly who are these high tech, Cold War weapons to be used against? Certainly they have little value in a world threatened by terrorism. As Congressman Frank has remarked: "I don't think any terrorist has ever been shot by a nuclear submarine."
Furthermore, when bemoaning budget deficits, Americans should not forget the enormous price the United States has paid for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the highly-respected National Priorities Project, their cost, so far, amounts to $1.06 trillion. (For those readers who are unaccustomed to dealing with a trillion dollar budget, that's $1,060,000,000,000.)
When calculating the benefits and losses of these kinds of expenditures, we should also include the opportunities forgone through military spending. How many times have government officials told us that there is not enough money available for health care, for schools, for parks, for the arts, for public broadcasting, for unemployment insurance, for law enforcement, and for maintenance of America's highway, bridge, and rail infrastructure?
Admittedly, there are other reasons for America's failure to use its substantial wealth to provide adequate care for its own people. Some Americans, driven by mean-spiritedness or greed, resent the very idea of sharing with others. Furthermore, years of tax cuts for the wealthy have diminished public revenues.
Even so, it is hard to deny that there is a heavy price being paid for making military power the nation's top priority. With more than half of U.S. government discretionary spending going to feed the Pentagon, we should not be surprised that—in America, at least—it is no longer considered feasible to use public resources to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or house the homeless.
We would do well to recall an observation by one of the great prophets of our time, Martin Luther King, Jr.: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).
This essay is distributed by the Oregon Peace Institute.
We don't need 865 military facilities in 40 countries and US territories. We don't need high-priced weapons that virtually always end up costing far more than originally planned. And, most relevant for this blog, we don't need to spend over a trillion dollars on US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus additional spending as we escalate US forces in Afghanistan. By the way, it is unreasonable to pay premium salaries and benefits to hundreds of thousands of private contractors.
In the domestic context of overall US budgets, spending on the military has the consequence of increasing budget deficits, the national debt, and of giving Republicans and Conservative Democrats another rationale to cut domestic programs in the US for education, health care, job-creation, etc., that would help to reduce poverty while improving the conditions of tens of millions of American workers and families in this country.
How Much is Enough?
America's Runaway Military Spending
By LAWRENCE WITTNER
August 17, 2010
http://www.counterpunch.org/wittner08172010.html, and http://peacevoice.info
The August 9 announcement by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates of cost-containment measures at the Defense Department should not obscure two underlying facts. First, as he conceded, these proposed economies will not result in cutting the overall Pentagon budget, which is slated for expansion. And, second, as a Washington Post article reported, "defense officials characterized them as a political preemptive strike to fend off growing sentiment elsewhere in Washington to tackle the federal government's soaring deficits by making deep cuts in military spending."
But why should anyone want to cut the U.S. military budget?
One reason is that—with $549 billion requested for basic military expenditures and another $159 billion requested for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—the record $708 billion military spending called for by the Obama administration for fiscal 2011 will be nearly equivalent to the military spending of all other nations in the world combined. When it comes to military appropriations, the U.S. government already spends about seven times as much as China, thirteen times as much as Russia, and seventy-three times as much as Iran.
Is this really necessary? During the Cold War, the United States confronted far more dangerous and numerous military adversaries, including the Soviet Union. And the U.S. government certainly possessed an enormous and devastating military arsenal, as well as the armed forces that used it. But in those years, U.S. military spending accounted for only 26 percent of the world total. Today, as U.S. Congressman Barney Frank has observed, "we have fewer enemies and we're spending more money."
Where does this vast outlay of U.S. tax dollars—the greatest military appropriations in U.S. history—go? One place is to overseas U.S. military bases. According to Chalmers Johnson, a political scientist and former CIA consultant, as much as $250 billion per year is used to maintain some 865 U.S. military facilities in more than forty countries and overseas U.S. territories.
The money also goes to fund vast legions of private military contractors. A recent Pentagon report estimated that the Defense Department relies on 766,000 contractors at an annual cost of about $155 billion, and this figure does not include private intelligence organizations. A Washington Post study, which included all categories, estimated that the Defense Department employs 1.2 million private contractors.
Of course, enormously expensive air and naval weapons systems—often accompanied by huge cost over-runs—account for a substantial portion of the Pentagon's budget. But exactly who are these high tech, Cold War weapons to be used against? Certainly they have little value in a world threatened by terrorism. As Congressman Frank has remarked: "I don't think any terrorist has ever been shot by a nuclear submarine."
Furthermore, when bemoaning budget deficits, Americans should not forget the enormous price the United States has paid for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the highly-respected National Priorities Project, their cost, so far, amounts to $1.06 trillion. (For those readers who are unaccustomed to dealing with a trillion dollar budget, that's $1,060,000,000,000.)
When calculating the benefits and losses of these kinds of expenditures, we should also include the opportunities forgone through military spending. How many times have government officials told us that there is not enough money available for health care, for schools, for parks, for the arts, for public broadcasting, for unemployment insurance, for law enforcement, and for maintenance of America's highway, bridge, and rail infrastructure?
Admittedly, there are other reasons for America's failure to use its substantial wealth to provide adequate care for its own people. Some Americans, driven by mean-spiritedness or greed, resent the very idea of sharing with others. Furthermore, years of tax cuts for the wealthy have diminished public revenues.
Even so, it is hard to deny that there is a heavy price being paid for making military power the nation's top priority. With more than half of U.S. government discretionary spending going to feed the Pentagon, we should not be surprised that—in America, at least—it is no longer considered feasible to use public resources to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or house the homeless.
We would do well to recall an observation by one of the great prophets of our time, Martin Luther King, Jr.: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).
This essay is distributed by the Oregon Peace Institute.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
US military a major source of environmental pollution
Sara Flounders' award-winning analysis offers documentation of the large environmental impact of US military operations around the world. Although she does not provide details on Afghanistan, indications are that delivering supplies to the troops in this country are enormous. Afghanistan is a land-locked and mountaineous country, with only one transportation artery up to the task. She argues, reasonably, that the best way to reduce the environmental impact from high-fuel military operations (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions) is to cut back on U.S. military foreign interventions and to reduce the Pentagon's budget, which overshadows the military spending of all other countries.
Winner of Project Consored top 25 articles for 2009 - 2010 news stories:
Pentagon's role in global catastrophe
By Sara Flounders
http://www.iacenter.org/o/world/climatesummit_pentagon121809
In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets -- it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions?
By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.
The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count.
The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon's aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world. At the time, the U.S. Navy had 285 combat and support ships and around 4,000 operational aircraft. The U.S. Army had 28,000 armored vehicles, 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, more than 4,000 combat helicopters, several hundred fixed-wing aircraft and 187,493 fleet vehicles. Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution, all their other vehicles run on oil.
Even according to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon.
The U.S. military officially uses 320,000 barrels of oil a day. However, this total does not include fuel consumed by contractors or fuel consumed in leased and privatized facilities. Nor does it include the enormous energy and resources used to produce and maintain their death-dealing equipment or the bombs, grenades or missiles they fire.
Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports: "The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. ... The war emits more than 60 percent of all countries. ... This information is not readily available ... because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under U.S. law and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change." (http://www.naomiklein.org/, Dec. 10) Most scientists blame carbon dioxide emissions for greenhouse gases and climate change.
Barry Sanders in his new book, "The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism," says that "the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency ... the Armed Forces of the United States."
Just how did the Pentagon come to be exempt from climate agreements? At the time of the Kyoto Accords negotiations, the U.S. demanded as a provision of signing that all of its military operations worldwide and all operations it participates in with the U.N. and/or NATO be completely exempted from measurement or reductions.
After securing this gigantic concession, the Bush administration then refused to sign the accords.
In a May 18, 1998, article entitled "National security and military policy issues involved in the Kyoto treaty," Dr. Jeffrey Salmon described the Pentagon's position. He quotes then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen's 1997 annual report to Congress: "DoD strongly recommends that the United States insist on a national security provision in the climate change Protocol now being negotiated. http://www.marshall.org/
According to Salmon, this national security provision was put forth in a draft calling for "complete military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions limits. The draft includes multilateral operations such as NATO- and U.N.-sanctioned activities, but it also includes actions related very broadly to national security, which would appear to comprehend all forms of unilateral military actions and training for such actions."
Salmon also quoted Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who headed the U.S. delegation in Kyoto. Eizenstat reported that "every requirement the Defense Department and uniformed military who were at Kyoto by my side said they wanted, they got. This is self-defense, peacekeeping, humanitarian relief."
Although the U.S. had already received these assurances in the negotiations, the U.S. Congress passed an explicit provision guaranteeing U.S. military exemption. Inter Press Service reported on May 21, 1998: "U.S. law makers, in the latest blow to international efforts to halt global warming, today exempted U.S. military operations from the Kyoto agreement which lays out binding commitments to reduce 'greenhouse gas' emissions. The House of Representatives passed an amendment to next year's military authorization bill that 'prohibits the restriction of armed forces under the Kyoto Protocol.'"
Today in Copenhagen the same agreements and guidelines on greenhouse gases still hold. Yet it is extremely difficult to find even a mention of this glaring omission.
According to environmental journalist Johanna Peace, military activities will continue to be exempt from an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that calls for federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Peace states, "The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government's energy demand." http://solveclimate.com, Sept. 1)
The blanket exclusion of the Pentagon's global operations makes U.S. carbon dioxide emissions appear far less than they in fact are. Yet even without counting the Pentagon, the U.S. still has the world's largest carbon dioxide emissions.
More than emissions
Besides emitting carbon dioxide, U.S. military operations release other highly toxic and radioactive materials into the air, water and soil.
U.S. weapons made with depleted uranium have spread tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans.
The U.S. sells land mines and cluster bombs that are a major cause of delayed explosives, maiming and disabling especially peasant farmers and rural peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America. For example, Israel dropped more than 1 million U.S.-provided cluster bombs on Lebanon during its 2006 invasion.
The U.S. war in Vietnam left large areas so contaminated with the Agent Orange herbicide that today, more than 35 years later, dioxin contamination is 300 to 400 times higher than "safe" levels. Severe birth defects and high rates of cancer resulting from environmental contamination are continuing into a third generation.
The 1991 U.S. war in Iraq, followed by 13 years of starvation sanctions, the 2003 U.S. invasion and continuing occupation, has transformed the region -- which has a 5,000-year history as a Middle East breadbasket -- into an environmental catastrophe. Iraq's arable and fertile land has become a desert wasteland where the slightest wind whips up a dust storm. A former food exporter, Iraq now imports 80 percent of its food. The Iraqi Agriculture Ministry estimates that 90 percent of the land has severe desertification.
Environmental war at home
Moreover, the Defense Department has routinely resisted orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up contaminated U.S. bases. (Washington Post, June 30, 2008) Pentagon military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as contaminants seep into drinking water aquifers and soil.
The Pentagon has also fought EPA efforts to set new pollution standards on two toxic chemicals widely found on military sites: perchlorate, found in propellant for rockets and missiles; and trichloroethylene, a degreaser for metal parts.
Trichloroethylene is the most widespread water contaminant in the country, seeping into aquifers across California, New York, Texas, Florida and elsewhere. More than 1,000 military sites in the U.S. are contaminated with the chemical. The poorest communities, especially communities of color, are the most severely impacted by this poisoning.
U.S. testing of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Southwest and on South Pacific islands has contaminated millions of areas of land and water with radiation. Mountains of radioactive and toxic uranium tailings have been left on Indigenous land in the Southwest. More than 1,000 uranium mines have been abandoned on Navajo reservations in Arizona and New Mexico.
Around the world, on past and still operating bases in Puerto Rico, the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Japan, Nicaragua, Panama and the former Yugoslavia, rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon.
The best way to dramatically clean up the environment is to shut down the Pentagon. What is needed to combat climate change is a thoroughgoing system change.
IAC wins award for the Project Censored twenty-five "Most Censored" News Stories of 2009-10: http://www.projectcensored.org/
Winner of Project Consored top 25 articles for 2009 - 2010 news stories:
Pentagon's role in global catastrophe
By Sara Flounders
http://www.iacenter.org/o/world/climatesummit_pentagon121809
In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets -- it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions?
By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.
The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count.
The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon's aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world. At the time, the U.S. Navy had 285 combat and support ships and around 4,000 operational aircraft. The U.S. Army had 28,000 armored vehicles, 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, more than 4,000 combat helicopters, several hundred fixed-wing aircraft and 187,493 fleet vehicles. Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution, all their other vehicles run on oil.
Even according to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon.
The U.S. military officially uses 320,000 barrels of oil a day. However, this total does not include fuel consumed by contractors or fuel consumed in leased and privatized facilities. Nor does it include the enormous energy and resources used to produce and maintain their death-dealing equipment or the bombs, grenades or missiles they fire.
Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports: "The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. ... The war emits more than 60 percent of all countries. ... This information is not readily available ... because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under U.S. law and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change." (http://www.naomiklein.org/, Dec. 10) Most scientists blame carbon dioxide emissions for greenhouse gases and climate change.
Barry Sanders in his new book, "The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism," says that "the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency ... the Armed Forces of the United States."
Just how did the Pentagon come to be exempt from climate agreements? At the time of the Kyoto Accords negotiations, the U.S. demanded as a provision of signing that all of its military operations worldwide and all operations it participates in with the U.N. and/or NATO be completely exempted from measurement or reductions.
After securing this gigantic concession, the Bush administration then refused to sign the accords.
In a May 18, 1998, article entitled "National security and military policy issues involved in the Kyoto treaty," Dr. Jeffrey Salmon described the Pentagon's position. He quotes then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen's 1997 annual report to Congress: "DoD strongly recommends that the United States insist on a national security provision in the climate change Protocol now being negotiated. http://www.marshall.org/
According to Salmon, this national security provision was put forth in a draft calling for "complete military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions limits. The draft includes multilateral operations such as NATO- and U.N.-sanctioned activities, but it also includes actions related very broadly to national security, which would appear to comprehend all forms of unilateral military actions and training for such actions."
Salmon also quoted Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who headed the U.S. delegation in Kyoto. Eizenstat reported that "every requirement the Defense Department and uniformed military who were at Kyoto by my side said they wanted, they got. This is self-defense, peacekeeping, humanitarian relief."
Although the U.S. had already received these assurances in the negotiations, the U.S. Congress passed an explicit provision guaranteeing U.S. military exemption. Inter Press Service reported on May 21, 1998: "U.S. law makers, in the latest blow to international efforts to halt global warming, today exempted U.S. military operations from the Kyoto agreement which lays out binding commitments to reduce 'greenhouse gas' emissions. The House of Representatives passed an amendment to next year's military authorization bill that 'prohibits the restriction of armed forces under the Kyoto Protocol.'"
Today in Copenhagen the same agreements and guidelines on greenhouse gases still hold. Yet it is extremely difficult to find even a mention of this glaring omission.
According to environmental journalist Johanna Peace, military activities will continue to be exempt from an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that calls for federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Peace states, "The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government's energy demand." http://solveclimate.com, Sept. 1)
The blanket exclusion of the Pentagon's global operations makes U.S. carbon dioxide emissions appear far less than they in fact are. Yet even without counting the Pentagon, the U.S. still has the world's largest carbon dioxide emissions.
More than emissions
Besides emitting carbon dioxide, U.S. military operations release other highly toxic and radioactive materials into the air, water and soil.
U.S. weapons made with depleted uranium have spread tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans.
The U.S. sells land mines and cluster bombs that are a major cause of delayed explosives, maiming and disabling especially peasant farmers and rural peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America. For example, Israel dropped more than 1 million U.S.-provided cluster bombs on Lebanon during its 2006 invasion.
The U.S. war in Vietnam left large areas so contaminated with the Agent Orange herbicide that today, more than 35 years later, dioxin contamination is 300 to 400 times higher than "safe" levels. Severe birth defects and high rates of cancer resulting from environmental contamination are continuing into a third generation.
The 1991 U.S. war in Iraq, followed by 13 years of starvation sanctions, the 2003 U.S. invasion and continuing occupation, has transformed the region -- which has a 5,000-year history as a Middle East breadbasket -- into an environmental catastrophe. Iraq's arable and fertile land has become a desert wasteland where the slightest wind whips up a dust storm. A former food exporter, Iraq now imports 80 percent of its food. The Iraqi Agriculture Ministry estimates that 90 percent of the land has severe desertification.
Environmental war at home
Moreover, the Defense Department has routinely resisted orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up contaminated U.S. bases. (Washington Post, June 30, 2008) Pentagon military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as contaminants seep into drinking water aquifers and soil.
The Pentagon has also fought EPA efforts to set new pollution standards on two toxic chemicals widely found on military sites: perchlorate, found in propellant for rockets and missiles; and trichloroethylene, a degreaser for metal parts.
Trichloroethylene is the most widespread water contaminant in the country, seeping into aquifers across California, New York, Texas, Florida and elsewhere. More than 1,000 military sites in the U.S. are contaminated with the chemical. The poorest communities, especially communities of color, are the most severely impacted by this poisoning.
U.S. testing of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Southwest and on South Pacific islands has contaminated millions of areas of land and water with radiation. Mountains of radioactive and toxic uranium tailings have been left on Indigenous land in the Southwest. More than 1,000 uranium mines have been abandoned on Navajo reservations in Arizona and New Mexico.
Around the world, on past and still operating bases in Puerto Rico, the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Japan, Nicaragua, Panama and the former Yugoslavia, rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon.
The best way to dramatically clean up the environment is to shut down the Pentagon. What is needed to combat climate change is a thoroughgoing system change.
IAC wins award for the Project Censored twenty-five "Most Censored" News Stories of 2009-10: http://www.projectcensored.org/
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Wikileaks documents are a big deal
In the following article, Joshua Holland responds to Andrew Exum's recent op-ed in the New York Times. Exum sees little new information in the 92,000 or so "military field reports lead by the whistle-blower site Wikileaks." He is dismissive of their impact on US Afghanistan policy or on pubic opinion. Holland writes that the information in the documents may not be new to people who study or have followed closely the occupation and war in Afghanistan.
But it is new (news) for most Americans and the documents help to confirm that the war has been ineffectually waged, civilian and military casualties have continued to be high, and the ISI in Pakistan have been undercutting US war efforts in Afghanistan, etc. Additionally, the documents may have the effect of increasing the number in US Congress who are willing to speak up against additional funding for the Afghanistan occupation/war, and perhaps even vote against the funding.
As the Wikileak documents get media attention, they plant seeds of opposition and reinforce opposition among a war-weary and economically strapped US citizenry.
Why Wikileak's Doc-Dump Is Such a Big Deal (Even if There’s Nothing New Within)
Posted by Joshua Holland on @ 9:19 am
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/27/why-wikileaks-doc-dump-is-such-a-big-deal-even-if-theres-nothing-new-within/
There is a tendency among People Who Pay Close Attention To Things to think other Americans are also paying attention — to decent information — and are therefore somewhat in the know.
That leads to people trying to get away with ridiculous claims, such as this:
ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper.
That paragraph was from an op-ed piece by Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) — a pro-Afghanistan war think-tank — in The New York Times. Exum’s message seems to be, ‘move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.’ Understandable — CNAS, according to a WaPo report last year, “may emerge as Washington’s go-to think tank on military affairs” in the Obama era. CNAS staff have “filled key posts in the new administration (such as former CNAS president Michele Flournoy, who is now undersecretary of defense for policy), and its top people include John Nagl, who helped draft the Army’s counterinsurgency manual, and David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus.”
And his suspicion that everyone already knows this stuff is bullshit. In 1997, the government conducted a huge survey on American adults’ civic participation. Almost a third of the public couldn’t say what “job or political office” Al Gore held — after he had spent five years serving as vice-president. Around a third didn’t know which party held the majority in Congress at the time. Perhaps most shockingly, at least to political buffs like myself, was that 49 percent of Americans surveyed didn’t know “which party is more conservative at the national level.” That’s domestic politics — a subject that Americans tend to have a better grasp on than foreign affairs. Two years after the attacks of 9/11, 70 percent of the public believed in a conspiracy theory which held that Saddam Hussein had had a connection to the attacks.
I haven’t gone through those 92,000 field reports myself. And I have no problem buying that there’s nothing in the pile that would surprise anyone who not only reads the entirety of their hometown paper’s foreign coverage but also reads those stories all the way through to the 17th paragraph, where the real news — the ugly news of American war-making — tends to be buried. What is that — one percent of the population? I’d guess that’s overstating it.
So, this document dump pushes what a few war-nerds may have grasped from a thousand stories on page B-6 onto the front page, revealing not a series of “unfortunate incidents” but a pattern of disregard for civilian casualties that disproves a central tenet of our COIN strategy — that war can be fought in a kinder, gentler, more progressive way thus helping win the hearts and minds of the local population.
Here’s a report from the Times’ news section that completely contradicts Exum’s ‘ho-hum’ narrative:
The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.
The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.
In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure. A Senate panel is also set to hold a hearing on Tuesday on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.
Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
Exum isn’t alone arguing that ‘there’s no there there,’ but I don’t think that’s going to cut it. Recent history certainly suggests it won’t:
The [Pentagon] papers revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corpsattacks, none of which had been reported by media in the US. The revelations widened the credibility gap between the US government and the people, allegedly hurting President Richard Nixon’s war effort.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer with AlterNet.
But it is new (news) for most Americans and the documents help to confirm that the war has been ineffectually waged, civilian and military casualties have continued to be high, and the ISI in Pakistan have been undercutting US war efforts in Afghanistan, etc. Additionally, the documents may have the effect of increasing the number in US Congress who are willing to speak up against additional funding for the Afghanistan occupation/war, and perhaps even vote against the funding.
As the Wikileak documents get media attention, they plant seeds of opposition and reinforce opposition among a war-weary and economically strapped US citizenry.
Why Wikileak's Doc-Dump Is Such a Big Deal (Even if There’s Nothing New Within)
Posted by Joshua Holland on @ 9:19 am
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/27/why-wikileaks-doc-dump-is-such-a-big-deal-even-if-theres-nothing-new-within/
There is a tendency among People Who Pay Close Attention To Things to think other Americans are also paying attention — to decent information — and are therefore somewhat in the know.
That leads to people trying to get away with ridiculous claims, such as this:
ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper.
That paragraph was from an op-ed piece by Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) — a pro-Afghanistan war think-tank — in The New York Times. Exum’s message seems to be, ‘move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.’ Understandable — CNAS, according to a WaPo report last year, “may emerge as Washington’s go-to think tank on military affairs” in the Obama era. CNAS staff have “filled key posts in the new administration (such as former CNAS president Michele Flournoy, who is now undersecretary of defense for policy), and its top people include John Nagl, who helped draft the Army’s counterinsurgency manual, and David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus.”
And his suspicion that everyone already knows this stuff is bullshit. In 1997, the government conducted a huge survey on American adults’ civic participation. Almost a third of the public couldn’t say what “job or political office” Al Gore held — after he had spent five years serving as vice-president. Around a third didn’t know which party held the majority in Congress at the time. Perhaps most shockingly, at least to political buffs like myself, was that 49 percent of Americans surveyed didn’t know “which party is more conservative at the national level.” That’s domestic politics — a subject that Americans tend to have a better grasp on than foreign affairs. Two years after the attacks of 9/11, 70 percent of the public believed in a conspiracy theory which held that Saddam Hussein had had a connection to the attacks.
I haven’t gone through those 92,000 field reports myself. And I have no problem buying that there’s nothing in the pile that would surprise anyone who not only reads the entirety of their hometown paper’s foreign coverage but also reads those stories all the way through to the 17th paragraph, where the real news — the ugly news of American war-making — tends to be buried. What is that — one percent of the population? I’d guess that’s overstating it.
So, this document dump pushes what a few war-nerds may have grasped from a thousand stories on page B-6 onto the front page, revealing not a series of “unfortunate incidents” but a pattern of disregard for civilian casualties that disproves a central tenet of our COIN strategy — that war can be fought in a kinder, gentler, more progressive way thus helping win the hearts and minds of the local population.
Here’s a report from the Times’ news section that completely contradicts Exum’s ‘ho-hum’ narrative:
The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.
The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.
In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure. A Senate panel is also set to hold a hearing on Tuesday on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.
Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
Exum isn’t alone arguing that ‘there’s no there there,’ but I don’t think that’s going to cut it. Recent history certainly suggests it won’t:
The [Pentagon] papers revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corpsattacks, none of which had been reported by media in the US. The revelations widened the credibility gap between the US government and the people, allegedly hurting President Richard Nixon’s war effort.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer with AlterNet.
US relies more on military as its hegemony declines
Published on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 by Foreign Policy in Focus
Imperial Overkill and the Death of US Empire
by Francis Shor
The main point of Shor’s article is that US foreign policy is a militarized foreign policy. This reflects a faltering US economy, the rising power of the Pentagon within the US, and a last ditch effort to avoid the decline of US hegemony around the world. You can go back to C. Wright Mills' book, The Power Elite (published 1956) to get an idea of the some of the roots of the military elites and US policy. Seymour Melman, now deceased, provided a monumental account in his books of how "the permanent war economy" was leading to a decline in "American capitalism. His books include: Out Depleted Society (1965), The Permanent War Economy (1974), Profits Without Production (1983), among others.
While the centrality of the Pentagon and military spending has long been prominent in US affairs, Shor argues that, unlike the past, it is not the cold war that spurs US militarism at home and abroad but the decline of and growing challenges to US imperialism.
Here are excerpts from the article.
“... beyond Afghanistan and the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian basin region, the imperial projects of the United States are, more and more, a commitment to Pentagon aggression and profligacy.”
[Imperial overkill] reflects: “The compulsion to rely even more heavily on the military to compensate for a waning hegemony in other domains - and to contend with shrinking resources (especially hydrocarbons), rising adversaries (especially China) and growing resistance (especially non-state Islamic militants and Latin American national-popular governments) - led to a record number of direct U. S. interventions. In turn, two of the most massive interventions, those in Iraq and Afghanistan, underscored the inability of Washington to realize all of its imperial goals.”
[....]
The Obama administration has expanded [2] the role of Special Operations forces from 60 to 75 countries, and given these forces the go-ahead to "get more aggressive much more quickly." In the process, the Obama administration has ramped up the extrajudicial assassinations first approved by the previous administration and added on a nearly 6 percent increase in the Special Operations budget.”
Shor adds:
...with special operations planting the seeds for eventually larger military engagements, the Pentagon has to plan for permanent war. This doctrine of "Long War" has bipartisan support in Washington, and is key to the forms of disaster capitalism that enrich the military-industrial complex and private contractors like Halliburton, Blackwater, and DynCorp, among many others.
Garrisoning the Globe [Shor’s section heading.]
The US efforts to maintain its military superiority is indicated by the fact that “the Pentagon still manages to receive the equivalent of what all of the other nations around the globe spend on their militaries,” continues to be “the overwhelming leader in military exports to the tune of 70 percent of the weapons market,” flouts “ international treaties, such as those on cluster bomb,” thus eroding “international legal standards,” and has over 700 military based positioned around the world.
[....]
“ This imperium is under attack not only by adversaries, but also by those who no longer accept U. S. economic and ideological models, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007.” Shor gives the following examples. “Continuing resistance in Okinawa has roiled Japanese politics. In Latin America, leftist leaders from Rafael Correa in Ecuador to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela have challenged the United States....
“....Chavez has replaced U.S. military contracts with those of Russian and Chinese companies, and created a new military alliance with Russia that brought Russian naval vessels to Venezuela.”
The End of Indispensability
Shor quotes Emmanuel Todd, who maintains that the US "is pretending to remain the world's indispensable superpower by attacking insignificant adversaries," but[6] "this America... is hardly the indispensable nation it claims to be and is certainly not what the rest of the world really needs now."
Still it has the effect of creating “perpetual war.” “Such perpetual war is no longer about achieving victory, whatever that means, but perpetrating military imperialism. Although that imperialism is anchored in protecting economic prerogatives, it's also an obsession with a matrix of control and destruction, resulting in imperial overkill.”
[....]
Addicted to War
“.... Using a multiplier effect, the economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the long-term expenses for those wars to be in excess of three times the expended amount. This is all part of a growing debt [9] of $13 trillion dollars. Moreover, with U. S. casualties rising in Afghanistan and with a record number of closed head injuries among American soldiers, the costs in human terms are enormous. And still, the Pentagon is seeding future wars by the extensive operations of Special Forces.”
In Afghanistan, US contractors...contribute money [10] to Taliban warlords in order to guarantee safe delivery of U. S. supplies over Afghan routes. These payoffs also allow an unending cycle of violence that stokes the military machine and its imperial enablers.
[....]
“....Many voices on the left and the right are calling for Washington to admit it cannot "win" in Afghanistan. However, like other empires of the past, those in power remain convinced that they have a global mission to perform, even if it leads to self-destructive imperial overkill.”
© 2010 Foreign Policy in Focus
Francis Shor teaches history at Wayne State University. A contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, he is the author of Dying Empire: U. S. Imperialism and Global Resistance [11].
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/27-7
Imperial Overkill and the Death of US Empire
by Francis Shor
The main point of Shor’s article is that US foreign policy is a militarized foreign policy. This reflects a faltering US economy, the rising power of the Pentagon within the US, and a last ditch effort to avoid the decline of US hegemony around the world. You can go back to C. Wright Mills' book, The Power Elite (published 1956) to get an idea of the some of the roots of the military elites and US policy. Seymour Melman, now deceased, provided a monumental account in his books of how "the permanent war economy" was leading to a decline in "American capitalism. His books include: Out Depleted Society (1965), The Permanent War Economy (1974), Profits Without Production (1983), among others.
While the centrality of the Pentagon and military spending has long been prominent in US affairs, Shor argues that, unlike the past, it is not the cold war that spurs US militarism at home and abroad but the decline of and growing challenges to US imperialism.
Here are excerpts from the article.
“... beyond Afghanistan and the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian basin region, the imperial projects of the United States are, more and more, a commitment to Pentagon aggression and profligacy.”
[Imperial overkill] reflects: “The compulsion to rely even more heavily on the military to compensate for a waning hegemony in other domains - and to contend with shrinking resources (especially hydrocarbons), rising adversaries (especially China) and growing resistance (especially non-state Islamic militants and Latin American national-popular governments) - led to a record number of direct U. S. interventions. In turn, two of the most massive interventions, those in Iraq and Afghanistan, underscored the inability of Washington to realize all of its imperial goals.”
[....]
The Obama administration has expanded [2] the role of Special Operations forces from 60 to 75 countries, and given these forces the go-ahead to "get more aggressive much more quickly." In the process, the Obama administration has ramped up the extrajudicial assassinations first approved by the previous administration and added on a nearly 6 percent increase in the Special Operations budget.”
Shor adds:
...with special operations planting the seeds for eventually larger military engagements, the Pentagon has to plan for permanent war. This doctrine of "Long War" has bipartisan support in Washington, and is key to the forms of disaster capitalism that enrich the military-industrial complex and private contractors like Halliburton, Blackwater, and DynCorp, among many others.
Garrisoning the Globe [Shor’s section heading.]
The US efforts to maintain its military superiority is indicated by the fact that “the Pentagon still manages to receive the equivalent of what all of the other nations around the globe spend on their militaries,” continues to be “the overwhelming leader in military exports to the tune of 70 percent of the weapons market,” flouts “ international treaties, such as those on cluster bomb,” thus eroding “international legal standards,” and has over 700 military based positioned around the world.
[....]
“ This imperium is under attack not only by adversaries, but also by those who no longer accept U. S. economic and ideological models, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007.” Shor gives the following examples. “Continuing resistance in Okinawa has roiled Japanese politics. In Latin America, leftist leaders from Rafael Correa in Ecuador to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela have challenged the United States....
“....Chavez has replaced U.S. military contracts with those of Russian and Chinese companies, and created a new military alliance with Russia that brought Russian naval vessels to Venezuela.”
The End of Indispensability
Shor quotes Emmanuel Todd, who maintains that the US "is pretending to remain the world's indispensable superpower by attacking insignificant adversaries," but[6] "this America... is hardly the indispensable nation it claims to be and is certainly not what the rest of the world really needs now."
Still it has the effect of creating “perpetual war.” “Such perpetual war is no longer about achieving victory, whatever that means, but perpetrating military imperialism. Although that imperialism is anchored in protecting economic prerogatives, it's also an obsession with a matrix of control and destruction, resulting in imperial overkill.”
[....]
Addicted to War
“.... Using a multiplier effect, the economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the long-term expenses for those wars to be in excess of three times the expended amount. This is all part of a growing debt [9] of $13 trillion dollars. Moreover, with U. S. casualties rising in Afghanistan and with a record number of closed head injuries among American soldiers, the costs in human terms are enormous. And still, the Pentagon is seeding future wars by the extensive operations of Special Forces.”
In Afghanistan, US contractors...contribute money [10] to Taliban warlords in order to guarantee safe delivery of U. S. supplies over Afghan routes. These payoffs also allow an unending cycle of violence that stokes the military machine and its imperial enablers.
[....]
“....Many voices on the left and the right are calling for Washington to admit it cannot "win" in Afghanistan. However, like other empires of the past, those in power remain convinced that they have a global mission to perform, even if it leads to self-destructive imperial overkill.”
© 2010 Foreign Policy in Focus
Francis Shor teaches history at Wayne State University. A contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, he is the author of Dying Empire: U. S. Imperialism and Global Resistance [11].
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/27-7
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