Response to a Friend's Criticism of Obama's Speech

I've been out of the information loop for the past few days with my friend MK in town, and during the great three days we spent touring LA, going to Disney Hall for the LA Phil, visiting other friends, I received an email message that essentially said that partisans of Obama will like his speech in response to the attacks on him for tolerating his pastor's statements critical of the United States. Those who oppose Obama, however, will not be persuaded, essentially, because Obama "played the race card" and didn't "throw his pastor under the bus," or adequately explain why Obama has attended the Congregation for twenty years. The email spurred me to start listening to the snippets of Reverend Wright's speeches that have been publicized and to do some research as to what he actually said.


I have not had a chance to go into every single one of the sermons yet, but luckily I happened to run across the one in which he talked about the chickens coming home to roost. I glibly had suggested to this friend that the snippets were probably a form of "cherry picking" from many sermons he had given. Since he's a Christian, I suspect a lot of them might have had messages of love and toleration and understanding. I was glib but probably correct. At least on the first one I looked at.


Here is one of "snippets" from Reverend Wright as reported by ABC News: “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” Thanks to Paul Woodward on the website The War in Context; ABC didn't provide context, because here's what the Rev. Wright said in his speech immediately after that snippet:

Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.

And so who was Wright referring to? Woodward points out that the man Rev. Wright referred to in his speech is Edward Peck:

It’s worth listening to what he has to say. It’s worth taking into consideration the opinion of a man who had been the Deputy Director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism under President Ronald Reagan, former Deputy Coordinator, Covert Intelligence Programs at the State Department, U.S. Ambassador and Chief of Mission to Iraq (1977-1980), and a 32-year veteran of the Foreign Service. At least, as far as Rev Wright was concerned, Edward Peck was worth listening to and that’s what he told his congregation.

On October 8, 2001, on CNN, Peck was asked: “Wouldn’t this war against terrorism be a mistake if we stop at Osama bin Laden and don’t take out Saddam Hussein as well?”

Peck said it would not be a mistake because, “when you take out Saddam Hussein, the key question you have to ask then is, what happens after that? And we don’t have a clue. Nobody knows, but it’s probably going to be bad. And a lot of people are going to be very upset about that, because that really is not written into our role in this world is to decide who rules Iraq.”

So the big question when I see this context, is why was it omitted? Answer? It's inconvenient, it doesn't fit the cartoon version of this attack on Obama. Wright is referring to an establishment white man for his notion which is, in essence, that of "blowback" originally a CIA term for "what goes around comes around." Establish the context and you see the propaganda machine in smooth operation.


So, I read that, and I decided I am going to, slowly but surely, work myself through the rest of the Wright snippets, because who knows what context they might have been taken from? As far as I can tell just from having listened to a few You Tube snippets, the one about AIDS as a plot by the US Govt sounds wacky, but no more than Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell saying 9/11 was God's punishment for gay sex, a woman's right to choose, and women's liberation. And given the kind of program carried out by the government in the Tuskegee Experiments Wright's got a sensitivity to the matter that might not be understandable to a white audience.


I have to say that when my friend wrote in his email that Obama is "playing the race card" I thought it really unfair. The speech addressed directly and honestly the very essence of the attack, which is essentially that of "guilt by association" that we should be very familiar with--the tactic that Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon carried out against pinko commie antiwar anti-American radicals.


In this case the whole organized and orchestrated publicity given to snippets from Wright's sermons was "race baiting" of the worst kind. (It appeals to fear fantasies of the worst kind, like "See, I told you they really want to kill us," "they hate the U.S., they will rise up and kill us in our beds just like the Jihadis" . . .I have even seen today surfing some right wing sites that black people are now being referred to as having "sleeper cells," thereby amalgamating the old racial bias with the new--Islamofascism.)


Wright's an ex-Marine-- the same kind of attack was made on another Marine, John Murtha, the Congressman from Pennsylvania, when he attacked the war from his position as head of the Armed services committee. It's the same whack job that was perpetrated on Max Cleland down in Georgia by associating him with pictures of Osama bin Laden.


Contrary to my friend's assertion that we didn't get an explanation of why Obama attended Rev. Wright's church for twenty years, the speech very clearly explained why. What it said was he had complicated reasons, and he explained them.


I think people who are against Obama aren't really looking for an explanation. They are looking for complete out and out condemnation and perhaps evidence of Obama having stomped out in high indignation. They want a cartoon. They want validation for their own conviction that the country can do no wrong; in short, the guilt by association that is being made here is just another version of the same old Bushit expressed by the patriotic fringe: that criticism of the US is treason.


In a minor form it was the criticism of Michelle Obama saying that she felt proud of this country for the first time when she saw the energy for change coming from all demographic groups to support a campaign that will reverse over seven years of Constitutional abuse.


In short, the attacks are baloney.


The people wanting Obama to throw Wright under the bus are the same ones who insist that we must march in lockstep to the drumbeats for war. They are the ones who wear their lapel pins on their egos, not their lapels. The direction of that march is not in any direction of a compass. It's toward totalitarianism. I'll take Obama's pretty sophisticated and adult responses any day.


There's enough to find fault with in his moderate approach so far that are of more substance than this current hunt for "sleeper cell" "Jihadi sympathizers" and disaffected radical "blacktivists."


But then I am radical: I could start promising to go after administration officials including Cheney, Rumsfeld, David Addington, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales who, having broken the law, ultimately should be under criminal prosecution. Obama would never go that far in his condemnation. Top flight American politicians tend not to be punished for their crimes, and Scooter Libby has already gotten his get out of jail free card.


What pisses me off more than Reverend Wright's diatribe is Dick Cheney being reminded that two thirds majority of citizens wants us--and have wanted us--to leave Iraq, and he says, then smirks, "So?" (Unfortunately I can't get the You Tube video here, so the reportage will have to suffice. Believe me, he smirked. Or was it his built in sneer that I remember? That's a hell of a lot more irritating than Wright saying the chickens have come home to roost.


I ran across an apposite quote from Eric Fromm: "Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. 'Patriotism' is its cult... Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship." I'll use that to give some insight into Obama's problem with the opposition.

News in the Shadows

I started this blog after returning from Memphis in January 2007. I had attended the Third National Conference on Media Reform and was enthusiastic about the work that needed to be done on correcting the continuing failures of the mainstream media to cover essential issues of the day. Few friends were aware, when I spoke to them, of the many stories that go without coverage.

Over this past weekend, friends dropped by for a Saint Patty's Day party and lots of refreshments, food, and conversation. And over the course of the party, despite the political talk, no one seemed aware of one of the bigger uncovered stories, the Winter Soldier 2008 Conference held outside of Washington D.C. in Silver Spring Maryland.

"Winter soldier" is a term derived from Thomas Paine, who spoke of "summer soldiers and summer patriots" who did not want to fight in the Revolution when the cold weather came. It was the name used by Vietnam veterans testifying about the atrocities that they had committed and had witnessed during the Vietnam War. And the name has been recast for this year with veterans of the War in Iraq and Desert Storm testifying to the abuses and atrocities that have occurred during this misbegotten adventure in Iraq under the leadership of George W. Bush.

More on this later: but for now it is enough to suggest some additional stories that do not appear in the mainstream media or that have received only scant attention:

First, the efforts of the CIA and the Bush Administration to finance a coup in Gaza, the thwarting of which was the real story behind the violence of Hamas against Fatah;

Second, the story of the suppression of evidence and investigation on the part of the United States into the death of Rachel Corrie, killed as she was attempting to stop the demolition of a Palestinian house. She was crushed by a Caterpillar Corporation bulldozer driven by a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces;

Third, Winter Soldier 2008, which brought hundreds of veterans to the Washington, D.C. area but received so little coverage you would have thought it took place in the wilds of Indonesia;

Fourth, the failure of the United States government to uphold its International obligation in the case of Luis Posada Carilles, a known terrorist who has been given sanctuary in the United States;

Fifth, the story of the continuing settlement building by the Israeli government in the Occupied Territories and Israel's clear violation of International law and the Geneva Conventions, the collective punishment of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories.

Sixth and finally for now, the subject of my next post, the unjust treatment here in the United States of a Palestinian activist--and it should be noted, a Florida supporter of George W. Bush in the 2000 election--named Sami al-Arian. The Justice Department and Federal judges have kept him in incarceration despite his acquittal by a jury. This travesty of justice is our version of the Dreyfus Affair, and it should be shouted in all the atriums of every courthouse in the United States until justice prevails.

On this last matter, there is important news to be gotten in the morning, and when that news breaks I will be able to present the full story.

Democratic Candidates' Foreign Policy: as Misguided as Bush's

Colombia, backed with millions of US military aid over the past few decades, the source of much of the South American drug trade, and a brutal government whose practices are condemned by almost every human rights group, invades Ecuador, probably with intelligence and technical assistance from the United States, under the guise of “self defense.”

Naturally, President Bush supports the attack, saying that Colombia has a right to “defend itself.” I would expect no less from the war criminal in chief of our country, who has now invaded two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, out of a “right to defend.”

In the case of Iraq, we have known for many years now that the invasion was justified on false, fabricated, or deliberately distorted information and an intention to control the second largest oil source in the Middle East. (And as the years spin by more information from various sources and countries is revealed to confirm that the invasion of Iraq was not justified and was a clear violation of International laws, laws incorporated into our Constitution as the supreme law of the land.)

In the case of Afghanistan, I at first thought thought that at least in that case we were justified, but further reading and research over the years has convinced me that my discomfort with the minimal diplomatic strategy, lack of immediate and massive criminal investigation, and the failures to give the citizens of this country hard evidence of who was responsible for the 9-11 attacks, was a correct response. I never bought the argument that we were in an everlasting war against terror.

I had other specific reasons as well. The first is that Bush demanded that the Taliban—the oppressive government ruling Afghanistan in 2001—turn over Osama bin Laden to us. The Taliban asked for evidence of bin Laden's guilt. I truly thought that the President would have shown the evidence for all the world and the American public to see, but none was forthcoming.

The second is that months after the invasion, the FBI admitted that they still had not conclusively determined that bin Laden was responsible for the attacks. In his testimony before Congress, FBI director Robert Muller indicated that investigators “believed” and “thought” that bin Laden was responsible for the attack, but was unable to state conclusively that they were.

The third reason is that President Bush—without informing Congress, illegally began deploying materiel and troops to the Middle East in preparation for the invasion of Iraq. And finally, what spurred me to suspect further was when President Bush declared that he wasn't concerned about capturing Osama bin Laden any more. That implied to me that operations in Afghanistan had been a pretense.

I don't believe that most Americans easily accept Bush's abandonment of his intentions to bring bin Laden to justice. Bush desires a legacy, but surely his failure to go after bin Laden, as he boasted he would do shortly after 9-11, will be seen as one of the more damning failures in his presidency.

The man is incorrigible. Having decided that invading another country has been justified in the past, he has no hesitation to support another country refusing to pursue diplomatic means and refraining from attack. Thus, he does not even chastise Colombia for having violated international law by invading Ecuador, and then indicating that Colombia was justified in so doing. Immediately he sanctions Columbia's raid.

The Organization of American States, however, had the courage to speak out and chastise Colombia. The bottom line, they said, was that the borders of a country were not to be violated. Columbia at first tried to explain that they had been in hot pursuit of the rebel FARC group, but that was quickly dropped when evidence showed that the attack had been made against the camp while the members were sleeping. Further, Colombia actually went to the site and took away two bodies, one being the leader of the FARC, Raul Reyes, and some computers, leaving the other corpses and some survivors behind.

Now, you would have thought that at least some judicious comments would have been made by the Democratic candidates, but none were. Obama has built so much of his campaign on his judgment in being against the Iraq War, but it is clear to me now that violation of International law in invading another country is not part of his reasons for opposing the war. Instead, he indicates—as quoted by Robert Naiman for CommonDreams.org that Colombia has “every right to defend itself against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)” and refers to the invasion of Ecuador as a “targeted killing.” And indeed, this strikes me as being very close to the rationale he gave for carrying out a strike within Pakistan based on “actionable intelligence.”

Even worse, I think, is Hillary Clinton's statement outrageous criticism of Hugo Chavez for moving troops to secure Venezuela's border, and implying that Ecuador has allowed itself to be a “safe haven” for the FARC. Ecuador is expected to cooperate with Colombia, which has just committed acts of aggression against it. Clinton cannot see beyond the cliché that Chavez is "a dictator" even though he has been democratically elected, and indeed, even had the balls to admit defeat of his proposed changes to the Constitution were the "voice of the people." I know he's a blowhard, I know he doesn't like the government of the United States. He's not a "dictator" in the way that Augusto Pinochet was. Of course, such distinctions are incapable of being made by our politicians. Let's prefer the politically correct conservative clichés above all.

I don't know about you, but I am extremely concerned by the responses of our two Democratic candidates to the Colombian action. It tells me that at best they are “Bush lite” and have accepted as normal the same kind of aggressive behavior, with no thought of handling the matter in a truly diplomatic fashion. Their responses on the matter show me that we are not going to get very much of a change if either is elected.

That's a real shame. It tells me that this country is really heading in a direction that will continue to make us more and more irrelevant to the rest of the world, no matter who enters the White House on January 20, 2009.

The Diplomacy of Buffoons

Condoleezza Rice talking in a closed system expresses sympathy for the death of a college student, general concern about the treatment of the citizens of Gaza and about deaths of Palestinian citizens. But it's generalized. Specific about an Israeli student, but not for the baby killed by the Israelis as collateral damage?

Not for two farmers killed in their fields last week when a tank artillery shell was fired. Collateral damage? Or perhaps Israel's high-tech version of the Kassams falling on Sderot? You can have bad intelligence or you can fire just to scare the hell out of the farmers, or you can fire off your homemade rockets and keep your fingers crossed that they will kill someone. Either way, who cares about really trying to figure out how to stop the violence on either side?

And then the final absurdity: the rockets must stop, she says, they must stop. So who is she going to talk to? She who immediately condemned Hamas when they won the elections and became the elected majority party of Gaza and the Occupied Territories. She who announced that Hamas was a terrorist organization so we don't deal with them. She who supported the Israeli withholding of funds legitimately due to the Palestinian government in the beginning of the collective punishment? She who failed to consider even talking to Hamas indirectly when they made back channel overtures and indeed even unilaterally ceased fire in the subtle hope that it might convince the Israelis and the US and the EU to recognize them and start just to talk?

Perhaps she thinks that even though Fatah is not in Gaza, but is in the Occupied Territories that Fatah can stop the rockets? Who stops the rockets? Can anyone? When she says the rockets must stop, who is she expecting to stop them? God? Does she ever think that the only way to stop them is to try to talk to the ones who are firing them?

This is the mind set that is equal to the passive voice, the disembodied sentences with no agents, the child in a Bill Cosby monologue that insists that "it broke." This is the voice of the esteemed citizen just stopped for speeding, "Don't you know who I am? Don't you know who is talking to you?"

Were it not so tragic, one could laugh uproariously at this madness, this diplomacy of buffoons. This is Bergson's definition of the comic: the rigid personality persisting in behavior despite the knowledge that her demand will not be listened to. The rockets must stop. If this is not a clear indication that as much as we loathe them we must talk to our enemies, then I don't know what further example is needed.

She will continue to make demands to the clouds, to the trees, to the stones. They are more liable to answer than Hamas or vengeful splinter groups in Gaza who fire the rockets in retaliation.

And while I am at it, the Kassam rockets—homemade, inaccurate, wounding or killing almost at random since they make it in the general direction of a town—they are the warfare of buffoons on the other side, people who cut off noses to spite their face. They are the gang that cannot shoot straight because they do not have the technology. They are the jerry-rigged terrorists.


These Kassams are opposed to Israel's almost accurate missile assassinations. I say almost accurate because they strike the targeted vans, or perhaps they hit an apartment in which the intended victims were thought to be, but might have left—during the moment between the intelligence and the button pushing the trigger pulling, but it just happens to kill some women and babies as “collateral damage” . . . ah yes, collateral damage, the cowardly euphemism that allows us not to give that techno-beast its proper name: state-sponsored terrorism.

"Occupation Corrupts"

Follow up to the previous entry—In the Cauldron of Injustice--

When you listen to Israelis who understand what their government is doing in the Occupied Territories or even to foreign policy experts who have no axe to grind except for peace and a peaceful settlement, you find general agreement on one notion: that the occupation of the territories, the continuation of settlement construction, establishment of outposts, demolition of homes, illegal appropriations of land and water rights, harassment at checkpoints, arrests, kidnappings, torture, detentions without charges, assassinations, artillery shellings, and brutal actions of the Israeli police and the IDF—I list the catalog because all of these things are going on all the time—the point of agreement is that these things are hurting Israel irreparably and working counter to their security.

A recent editorial in Ha'aretz bears this out, and makes the point that antiwar critics in the United States have been making for many years now: that Abu Ghraib was a symptom of the moral corruption that has been driving the leadership of this country in both foreign and domestic policy.

The editorial, entitled “Something bad is happening to us”, details the corruption that was first revealed a few years ago by Breaking the Silence , a group of current and ex-IDF soldiers formed to work for peace and to tell Israeli citizens what brutality has been and is being carried out in their name. Their keynote is "Occupation Corrupts." This past weekend, on Israeli television, a show called Facts broke the silence once again and backed it up with phone camera pictures. Here's a description from the editorial:

This time, it was regular soldiers in the Kfir Brigade. They exposed their backsides and sexual organs to Palestinians, pressed an electric heater to the face of a young boy, beat young boys senseless, recorded everything on their mobile phones and sent it to their friends. One of their "mischievous acts" was to test how long a Palestinian who was being choked could survive without breathing. When he passed out, the experiment was stopped. The soldiers described activities to "break the routine" that consisted entirely of abuse. It was enough for a boy "to look at us the wrong way" for him to be beaten.

The editorial ends with the same point we in the antiwar and progressive movement have been making for years:

Perfectly ordinary people, as the American psychologist said of the Abu Ghraib abusers, are capable of behaving like monsters when they receive a message from the top that it is permissible to abuse, beat, choke, burn, make people miserable and generally do anything that man's evil genius is capable of inventing to others who are under their control. Something bad is happening to us, they are saying in the Kfir Brigade. That "something" is the occupation.

Criticism of one's country is not unpatriotic; it certainly is not treasonous. A Democratic enterprise—or any enterprise for that matter—cannot long survive when it betrays basic principles and refuses to correct its course despite all the signs that it is sailing in the wrong direction.

Some moments in the Cauldron of Injustice

One of the reasons for my not having posted during the last of January and through February was due to my involvement in a conference presenting the Palestinian side of the question. That is, the "other side of the question" that you normally do not read in the mainstream media. It is not reported.


I have been following as best I can, the lack of real progress since the Annapolis peace conference in November--originally out a desire to follow George W. Bush's continuing buffoonery as he brings his disastrous destruction of this country's foreign policy to an end. After seven years of neglect, the man suddenly understands that maybe he should be doing something to wipe a little of the muck from his reputation and that of the Republican Party.


He is utterly incapable of wiping the muck from the Constitution, particularly the sections dealing with the duties of the Executive and the Bill of Rights. But nonetheless he pushed for 6 months to get the Annapolis Conference, the conference was held to much fanfare and hot air, and delegates from the Middle East countries did their damnedest to be optimistic. The optimism faded fast by the close of the first of the bi-weekly meetings that were to be held as a the major elements of the "peace process."


As usual, Israel has refused to show good faith by stopping the building of the settlements, continuing its collective punishment of the residents of Gaza, and its continuing arrest and imprisonment of Palestinians without due process. The Israeli government holds Fatah in the Occupied Territories responsible for stopping the violence coming from the only interested party kept out of the negotiations, Hamas, which threw Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. No control, but a demand for control.


Despite that the so called "Road Map" provides the steps for both sides, despite that the road map clearly calls for a halt to expansion of the settlements, Ehud Olmert has refused to call for a moratorium or end. His latest explanation is so myopically one sided and insensitive to the Palestinians that it would be laughable in its absurdity and irony if it were not so morally bankrupt.


Olmert has been visiting Japan, and in a press conference clearly indicated that he would not halt the settlement construction: I quote from an article in Middle East online from Monday, February 25, 2008:

"First of all it is difficult (to stop construction) because you are talking about living entities," Olmert told broadcaster NHK before his departure for Tokyo. "You are talking about people living there. They need to live, they need to express their desire to live. They have children, they want to get married, they want to have homes."

His insensitivity to the desires of normal Palestinians living under the oppressive occupation of their territory is worthy of George W. Bush. It comes from the same moral corruption that refuses to understand the other side of the question.


I always thought that in a dialogue, "we seek first to understand, then to be understood" as Stephen Covey put it. (I never thought I would be recommending one of the The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People for the Middle East peace process, but there you are.)


After reading Olmert's insensitive and almost peevish statement, it is very clear to me that he is just trying to grind the other side down and frustrate the Palestinians into another violent rebellion. This has become clear to the Arab nations as well. They have become so frustrated with the Israeli government's intractability that they are now discussing withdrawing their 2002 peace initiative--which proposed exactly what Israel has been demanding all along: recognition of their existence as a state and security for their borders.


Olmert will not change. The frustrated and foolishly violent splinters of Palestinians who keep sending rockets over the border does not appear about to change. The Israeli assassinations will not stop, nor will their collective punishment of the Palestinians. Nor will the ambitions of the most radical of the Zionists, whose stated aim is to drive the Palestinians off the land and into the surrounding countries.


And when you see articles in the American press about the children in Sderot, the southern Israeli town, wounded by Kassam rockets, you feel bad. You wish that the Palestinians would have enough intelligence and sense to stop their violence. And then you feel worse when you see that the daughter of a Palestinian family, coming out of a store after buying her mother a present, was hit in the back of the head by a rubber bullet and died three days later without regaining consciousness.


The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), not surprisingly, deny that they used the rubber bullets. They do admit to using tear gas canisters against some young people throwing stones nearby. The Israeli residents of Sderot ask that Ehud Olmert come spend a day or two with them to experience their fear.


And the father of the dead girl is a member of a Palestinian-Israeli group of ex-Palestinian fighters and former soldiers in the IDF. You will see the wounded Israeli children mentioned on the news and in the American and Israeli press, but you will find the story of the dead Palestinian girl only in the Palestinian news services and the International Herald Tribune.


The usual complaint from supporters of Israel when one presents information about the Palestinians' hardships is that the "other side" is not being told. Well, the Palestinian story, here in this country, IS THE OTHER SIDE.


So now you have both sides. Which do you respect more? Ehud Olmert or the Palestinian father? Don't ask me. I have my bias. I am the father of two daughters in a privileged and safe community. Olmert has two daughters and two sons, and his wife is a strong supporter of Peace Now. His older daughter is an outspoken supporter of Machsom Watch, the Israeli woman's group that monitors checkpoints and confronts IDF soldiers about abuses against the Palestinians. That was the story according to Newsday in March of 2006. What they think two years later is an open question. I suspect they haven't changed much.


Demand peace, non-violence, and intelligent negotiations from both sides.

Blogging on the Run

Skimming along quickly this evening after a night at the movies—a disappointing but thrilling Vantage Point (Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker) with a fatal plot flaw causing the disappointment. I won't ruin it for you, but it's a character imperfection based on Liberal wish fulfillment.

I love information that comes from the ground view. That's why whenever I see the name Nir Rosen as the author, I always read the piece. His latest, “The Myth of the Surge” is in Rolling Stone. It is a good corrective to the official party line that has been swallowed hook line and tin squid lure that the surge has been working. I recommend it very highly.

As I write the phrase “the official party line” I think to myself that this is what it must have been like for people in the Soviet Union before the first sprinklings of glasnost. Well, a bit of an exaggeration, we are not that far into the forest yet, and so I suppose my real situation is in more in tune with the late I.F. Stone: “All Governments Lie.”


More on that point later when I do some more discussion on Joe Stieglitz, and asymmetrical intelligence.

One of the concerns I have about the Democratic candidates centers around foreign policy. Of the two candidates (did Mike Gravel ever officially drop out of the race?), neither is able to say what they really intend to do. In campaigning, particularity on foreign policy is the death kiss. They fear alienating their supporters or a particular segment of potential voters, or they fear leaving themselves open to an attack of “swiftboating.” We are not going to be educated by the candidates themselves.

We can however, get an education from people like Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. Just listening to him is an education, but if you really want some realistic thinking about the current policy issues, listen to this interview with him on Antiwar Radio. Catch the interview here.


Scott Horton (“the other Scott Horton”) asks some leading questions and then has the sense to sit back and let Clemons talk. He is a valuable mentor, and if you have any interest in the US's place in the world, listen hard to what he says, particularly when he makes the point that the Bush Administration has diminished our place in the eyes of the world, and that we must understand that this has happened. He is particularly good in the second half when asked to comment on the foreign policy advisers that Barack Obama is relying on.

One anecdote stayed with me. Clemons recently visited China and asked one of his Chinese foreign policy people what China was up to. The answer? Something to the effect of “we are thinking up ways of distracting the United States with small Middle Eastern countries.”

Ain't it the truth!

The Cost of Moral Corruption: $3 Trillion,

As we used to say in the insurance business, and that's just the minimum.

I can remember a little over two years ago that Joe Stieglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist, former chief economist for the world bank, and Linda Bilmes, an economist at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard projected the costs of the Iraq war at between $1.2 and $2 trillion dollars in their paper “The Economic Costs of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years After the Beginning of the Conflict.” Just to establish context, this was in response to official government estimates that the cost of the war was going to be about $500 billion dollars. (The paper can be found here.)

What I found most important in their analysis back then was that they had included estimates of costs to take care of returning military casualties from the war, and other costs unrecognized by the usual government or mainstream media commentators. For example: hiring contractors to do work previously considered “soldierly” has increased costs, as have the cost of bonuses to retain trained soldiers who are thinking they could leave the army and become a contractor; or in another area, the loss to society of the full employment and productivity that would have been contributed had a soldier not been wounded and disabled; another was the money paid to oil producing nations for the oil to keep the war vehicles running: money which does not go into the economy of the US.

According to Stieglitz, he and Bilmes even adjusted their estimates downward a bit to account for the “benefits” of the war, such as that we no longer had to patrol the “no-Fly Zone” since Saddam was defanged. (For a good commentary on the paper, here's an excellent interview of Stieglitz by Charles M. Young in Rolling Stone.)

But of course, that was 2006. Two years later, it's not surprising to see that the estimated cost of the war has increased, but the increase appears to me to be disproportionately large. In the latest estimate, Stieglitz and Bilmes project the cost of the war to be $3 trillion dollars.

Their estimates are presented briefly in the Times (London) online in a guest editorial called “The Three Trillion Dollar War”. The piece is a quick view of their new book, of the same title, to be published in March, 2008 in the US. (It comes out this month in England, which accounts for the Times online including the cost of the War in Iraq in terms of the cost to Great Britain.)

What is astounding is that the direct costs of the war—not including the costs of taking care of the injured veterans, for instance, or other items yet to be accounted for, now exceeds the cost of the 12 year Vietnam war by about 30%, is ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, twice that of the First World War and is exceeded only by . . . well, let Stieglitz and Bilmes tell you in their own words :

The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that's $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.

But remember, this is only the DIRECT cost of the war: the equipment, the ammo, the fuel, the bombs, the planes, the payment of salaries to the soldiers. The information that the Pentagon does not account for, the information that we can estimate by taking into account the overall impact of the war and our commitments to our soldiers—disability payments for the rest of their lives and the cost of medical care, for instance, or the cost of borrowing money to finance the war, to finance those disability payments, is tremendous.


You get the picture.

(Always keep in mind that The Bush administration--unlike FDR, and just like LBJ--has refused to raise taxes on those who could afford it (and the majority of whom probably strongly supported the war).


The information that is not entirely revealed, is not made transparent to us, must be ferreted out and highlighted by Stieglitz and Bilmes. Thank them for detailing the lack of transparency in our government on this criminal war.

The saddening thought is what Stieglitz and Bilmes say at the very end of their update:

A $3 trillion figure for the total cost strikes us as judicious, and probably errs on the low side. Needless to say, this number represents the cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq.

Of course. Our government omits and forgets and disregards much. The candidates for President forget to talk about it—or they consciously avoid talking about it.


Only Dennis Kucinich, the conscience of the Democratic Presidential race, mentioned it when he had his limited chances to speak. Only Dennis Kucinich, for instance, mentioned that we have an obligation to pay war reparations to the people of the country we illegally invaded.

And how do you begin to calculate these reparations we owe in the greatest moral sense but will never ever get around even to calculating? What has been the cost to the Iraqi people? What will be the cost?

Here's one of them. Back in September Bill Moyers interviewed George Packer and Debra Amos, and Packer talked of the plight of Iraqi immigrant families:

When you talk to Iraqis now compared to at the beginning of the war they no longer say in six months things will get better as they used to or in a year things will get better. They now say in two decades. In other words, for an Iraqi, not really in my lifetime. It will be my children that see a better Iraq. That means they're making decisions now about what they have to do with their families in order to ride out a 20 year horror. And that means they're not going back to Iraq.

No, left out of the cost, as Stieglitz and Bilmes write, is the cost to the families of the dead Iraqis, the cost of the destroyed infrastructure, the cost of corruption and murder, the uncountable costs to the over Four Million refugees and internal refugees. It brings tears to my eyes to think of the injustice we are responsible for. There is no end to it. The accounting is obscured at the same time that it is open ended.

More to come . . .

Report from Afghanistan

Sarah Chayes—former Monitor Radio, Paris-based freelance reporter, and NPR reporter, whose work was always admirably hard-nosed and of high quality—stopped reporting in 2002 and returned to Afghanistan to at the invitation of the uncle of Hamid Karzai, and worked in Afghans for Civil Society, a non-profit group founded by Karzai's brother. She left that post after less than a year but has stayed, at great danger to herself, to help form a cooperative--the Arghand Cooperative--that produces fruit, nut and botanical skin care products. She is a brave woman. Only Bill Moyers would even think of having her on to get the story about her work in Afghanistan. The interview presents unique viewpoint on the conflict in Afghanistan and most importantly suggests why the efforts of the United States and NATO are going badly.

It is not the story you get from the mainstream media. Her reporter's eyes are still sharp and her analysis of the situation on the ground will help educate the American public.

Catch it here and watch it a couple of times if you can. Here's the final moment, the question asked by a Bill Moyers who is almost embarrassed to ask it, admiring her dedication and fearing for her survival:

BILL MOYERS: There's a thin line. As I listen to you, there's a thin line we sometimes walk, we human beings, between hope and folly. . . Are you very close to that line?

SARAH CHAYES: I don't think that hope is relevant. I think determination is all that counts. You just have to try. It doesn't matter if you hope you're going succeed or not. You have to keep trying.

She is a brave woman. After you see her speak out passionately about her life and her work and criticize the situation on the ground, you have to wish her well and, like Moyers, have the hope that she will survive.

What hath unregulated Corporate Socialism wrought?

Writing in The Nation online, Nancy Cleeland in “The Incredible Shrinking Paycheck” reports on the analysis of recent Bureau of Labor Statistics information. The analysis, by Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, indicates that the “grim news” was worse than he expected.

I just thought it might be helpful to pass on to you this revealing chart:

Bernstein sees three forces contributing to the decline in wages: wage growth has slowed for American non-managers, about 80% of the workforce; inflation is picking up, spurred by higher gas prices and a rise in food prices; and last, employers are cutting back on hours as the economy shrinks. Since the economy is continuing to slump and prices continue to rise, the trend will continue, and as our paychecks purchase less, we will cut back on spending. Rough weather ahead . . .

Except of course, for the managers and the entrepreneurs in the financial sector and elsewhere. Remember that the top ten percent of the population owns an enormous share of the country's entire wealth to begin with. This includes the people who put together the unregulated, unsupervised, irresponsible—in some cases probably criminal—hornswoggle of sub-prime mortgages, later sold off by the mortgage lenders to financiers, who in turn sliced and diced and rebundled them into what are now seen to be almost worthless securities.

As a result, the banks who bought the subprime-based securities are in trouble, having to write off the losses on their balance sheets. The big guys, like Citicorp and Mellon/Bank of New York, and others not only here in the states but all over the globe. And governments are bailing them out. Here in the US the banks have hit the Federal Reserve for $50 billion in new money to support their balance sheets.

What else is new? We paid for the Savings and Loan crisis. And despite his outspoken criticism of the economy and the political scene right now, Lee Iacocca insisted that the government had to bail out Chrysler a few decades ago.

Of course, the financiers and brokers have already scooped up their bonuses and commissions. They have put their money into foreign currencies, gold, or cash have no responsibility imposed upon them. Now they are waiting for "buying opportunities" in the market, including the foreclosed properties in the neighborhood across town or out in San Bernardino.

No one of them is guiltless, and I am sure that there are Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians who have made their money off the scam. Not to mention some closet anarchists. But the subprime securities crisis has eroded the dollar. The wartime economy has borrowed its way into war. The “Haves and the Have-mores”--the president's favorite people--have made out like bandits. And most of us are shuddering when we fill up the gas tank.

Perhaps it will make us walk more or ride a bike. But as you do watch out for backwash of the Cadillac and Hummer SUVs. That's the first sign of the rough weather ahead. It will tousle your hair and jostle your determination.

Why does Bill Moyers get a bad rap?

I don't know why people think that Bill Moyers is not to be listened to. The other day I ran across a comment on a news site and the writer dismissed out of hand that Moyers had been used as a source. You knew that the commentator on the news story had not even gone to the Moyers reference to check it out.


For the past two weeks, Bill Moyers has been having as his guest Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a media analyst, very bright and perceptive, commenting on the elections and the absolutely god-awful bullshit coverage on the TV. My god I am so tired of it. The talking heads are absolutely incapable of discussing the issues or even asking the questions that would focus on the issues.


Tonight Jamieson gave her comments on the Iowa and NH votes. Also, Moyers interviewed Shelby Steele, a conservative (!) essayist and scholar at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, commenting on Obama. Steele has just published a book on Obama called A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama And Why He Can't Win. Steele wrote a book called The Content of Our Character which I read a number of years ago with real appreciation. A really interesting interview.


Both the commentary by Jamieson and the interview with Steele can be found here. If you come to this post late, search Moyers' site for the references to the program.


You might enjoy it if for nothing else than the pleasant change of pace from the crap shoot on NBC, Fox, CBS, CNN. (Only C Span will give you some interesting actual coverage of the issues as the candidates discuss them. The rest of the idiots are more interested in sound bytes and stupidity. I have a fantasy of calling up and getting on Hardball and telling Mathews to shut the hell up and start doing some real journalism.)


You have to grant me this: listening to Moyers talk about the issues and the quality of the reporting is a hell of a lot more interesting than watching somebody like Wolf Blitzer or even the mainstream tools at Washington Week that follows the Moyers show out here in PST zone. (Washington Week which is now sponsored by National Journal and the National Mining Association. Sheeesh. Or as Archie Bunker used to sneer, Jeez, Editht!

A Specter is Haunting America!

A relative of mine has had the misfortune of receiving emails sent by the very conservative parent of a friend. From time to time my relative forwards one to me. I couldn't let this one go by, however, without trying to parse it and perhaps try to understand the conservative man's thought processes.

So here is the text of the email my relative forwarded to me:

Subject: A German's Point of View on Islam

Let us neither become the silent majority, nor the victims of the evil
being propagated in this World!

Very sobering message!

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned
a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German
people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward
fanaticism.

"Very few people were true Nazis "he said," but many enjoyed the
return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those
who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just
sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we
had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost
everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my
factories."

We are told again and again by "experts" and "talking heads" that
Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want
to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is
entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel
better, meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across
the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam
at this moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of
50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically
slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking
over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb,
behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque
after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and
hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the
"peaceful majority", the "silent majority", is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in
peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about
20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge
population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to
kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a
warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of
12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and
bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it
not be said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving"?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our
powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of
points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up ,
because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that
the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs,
Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and
many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until
it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to
the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is
serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is
contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend
yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world
wide, read this - think about it - and send it on.

I thought this was an excellent example of paranoia--and very sincere paranoia at that. As I read it again, I began trying to think of ways I could rebut this attempt to start a chain letter of propagation of the paranoia. I actually thought of sending the message back to the man who had sent it to my relative, but I knew that a response would be worth very little. It could not possibly inspire a dialogue. At best, a response would be read and then tossed aside as the rant of an unpatriotic fool.

However, it seems to me to be a good start at examining the thinking of the fierce foes of Islamofascism. It also forced me to write down what I thought might be the good alternatives to the strategy we have taken since September 11, 2001, the day that the specter began to haunt the more conservative and impercipient citizens of the United States.

Dear Mr. _____________:

E________ forwarded your email to me and some others of her friends, and I am presuming to respond to it rather than forward it. I find the anecdote of the German survivor quite important, though I am not sure that it is the same kind of importance that the author of the message has in mind. The anecdote tells me that I have a duty--as the German industrialist obviously did not think he had--to speak out against what was happening to his country.

I think in fact, that the message you sent to E__________ is counter-productive, and in fact is the very kind of thinking that was rife in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Perhaps the good German industrialist, had he the chance to relive those moments, might have spoken out in protest and attempted to keep himself and his friends from just "sitting back and letting it happen."

Did you notice that title of your email is somewhat deceptive? The German industrialist did not even mention Islam. In other words, whoever sent you the message has forced the anecdote to fit the notion of "Islamofascism" so currently fashionable in conservative circles. Or perhaps the writer of the original has fallen victim to the winter strain of what I like to call the Giuliani virus?

The whole message omits, unfortunately, a very important element of reasoned discourse. That is, we all have have a duty to provide evidence for our assertions, and secondly, we cannot suppress ideas that counter our argument, especially if we acknowledge them.

I will take the second point first, and refer to the assumption the writer of the message makes:

"Although this unqualified assertion [that "the majority of Muslims want to live in peace"] may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history."

However, if the unqualified assertion that most Muslims want peace may be true, surely that IS relevant. Perhaps we have here an inconvenient truth? And despite his common sense view that such might be the case, he suppresses the idea by calling it fluff, and replaces it with what, I think is an apt but unconsciously damaging metaphor. He chooses to believe not in reasonable persons desiring peace but in the "specter" of "fanatics rampaging across the globe." Unfortunately, the word "specter" carries too much unreality as well, with connotations of apparitions and ghosts.

I think that is the root of the problem I have with this message. The thought might appear to be a specter, but appearances are not reality.

However, for the sake of the argument, let's delineate the specter that arises by deliberately suppressing the inconvenient truth. How about some evidence that shows how the "fanatics" rule Islam? That is to say, where is the proof that "the Fanatics" are actually in charge of the major Islamic countries of the world (we can begin with Indonesia, we can follow with Egypt, or Turkey, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia. However, those last are our allies!) Perhaps he means that all powerful country called Sudan? Perhaps not. We have agreements with the government of Sudan to assist us with the “War on Terror.” We might even have sent captives there for . . . rendition. (We can leave aside the Palestinians and Hezbollah for the moment, since they are quite weak compared to the United States, and we can also omit Libya since we started trading with it again.)

So perhaps without having the courage to name them, he really means Iran and Syria? Can he then perhaps show how these two countries are run by fanatics like Hitler? And can he present evidence that has been substantially supplied by neutral third party sources rather than the United States government--or more specifically the office of the Vice President and the Weekly Standard? And once he has established that can he show how Iran and Syria are also secretly massing aircraft carriers, planes, tanks,and ships for an invasion of the major countries of the western world?

This material armament does not even consider the troops they would need. For example, we know now that the rudely replaced General of the Army Eric Shinseki was probably correct that at least 300,000 troops would be needed to secure a country the size of Iraq. So the Iranians--who are pretty good soldiers themselves--would need at least 3.6 million troops to secure a country the size of the United States. (And when you think of the insurgency that would result from all of our well-armed citizenry, they'd probably want twice that number at least.) That's a lot of troops to hide in the Canadian wilds. Perhaps the Iranians are signing secret non-aggression pacts with Mexico and Canada so they can stage the invasion. But you might object, they will deliver the bombs with their missiles. Perhaps the ones that can barely reach Israel will some how grow booster rockets and make it over the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to strike Baltimore.

You see, I am taking the analogy the message is insisting on seriously. But I cannot see how the industrial capacity in Iran and Syria is very similar to the military buildup that took place in Germany during the 1930s after the National Socialists were defeated but Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Without a Wehrmacht and a Luftwaffe, I think it might be difficult to rampage over the globe.

I think you will find yourself hard pressed to find the evidence. I think what is driving this message is a fearsome fantasy, not common sense. The reasonable and well-substantiated idea that most Muslims want peace, since at the present moment they are the ones who appear to be the victims of terror, gets lost in the aura of an apparition grounded in fear.

Some mitigation is needed. All the fanaticism alluded to in the message is local, and is mostly internally contained. The fanaticism of the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Japanese Imperialists, and the Maoists is long gone. The so-called Cold War is over. The local fanaticism the writer fears is hardly equal to any of those mid-century powers either in extent or in philosophical influence. Those mid-century wars are done, and current efforts to create new Hitlers, Stalins, or Tojos who speak Arabic or Farsi and believe in a government founded on a single religious belief are flimsy at best and not very useful.

Indeed, I find that a few proponents of the word "Islamofascism" also have a worrisome tendency to insist that the United States is really a Christian nation and that Christian principles should control governmental approaches to problems. In fact, I find that those religio-political zealots have something in common with the leaders they accuse of "Islamo fascism." So much so in fact that I am tempted to be glib and talk about "Christofascism" as if it were as real.

Of course, the absurdity of the latter term underscores the absurdity of the former. Neither begins to approach the real problem. The person who wrote the message probably does believe that terrorists are actually taking control of the Islamic countries, but when you stop to think about it, the evidence is not there.

We should keep in mind that the country with the largest offensive war machine, and a military budget larger than almost the rest of the world combined is the United States. We should also keep in mind that the expenditures for Iraq and Afghanistan are "off budget." So that means we have the greatest military expenditures in the history of the modern world.

You might remind yourself that George W. Bush announced the term "Axis of Evil" just a few months after the Iranians sent overtures of negotiation (or didn't the National Review tell us about that?) In fact, as has been well-documented, the Iranian government both before and after the election of their current president, had cooperated with the United States against terrorists and the Taliban in Afghanistan.Looked at objectively, I am afraid that much of the world with some justification perceives the United States as that "specter rampaging across the globe."

You also may not know it, but our soldiers are currently being encouraged and browbeaten into believing that they are soldiers for Christ rather than soldiers of the United States. In fact, one could reasonably argue that the continuing and so-called "unpatriotic" resistance to the ongoing sectarian tendencies within the military is an attempt--unlike the cowardly German capitalist/industrialist—to deter the Christian militarism.

Lest you think I am exaggerating, I refer you to the lawsuit brought in Federal courts this past year by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. A believer in Islamo Fascism would call criticism of the "war on Terror" unpatriotic. It is not. It is part of the movement to deter the destruction from within of the Constitution of the United States.

As Ron Paul, the most ignored (and the only anti-war) Republican candidate has said on more than one occasion, quoting Sinclair Lewis, when fascism comes to the United States, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. In fact, I can argue that at least the German industrialist in the anecdote was aware of what was going on. Hitler after all, had been elected to office in a democratic and constitutional process.

I can argue that most people in the United States are not even aware of what is going on. Most people in the US exist in a bubble of self-contained amnesia about injustice, domestic spying, executive abuse, disregard for treaties (which the Constitution refers to as part of the "supreme law of the land"), the destruction of Habeas Corpus and other high crimes and misdemeanors.

The last creature to discover water is the fish, as a philosopher once said..

That terrorism is a problem, there is no doubt. That there are terrorists worldwide, there is no doubt. That they can plan and commit acts of terrorism is certain. That they have the actual power to take over the nations of the developed world is a fantasy. In fact, it is an utterly bizarre fantasy. Terrorism has become a larger problem because of the phantasmagorical "War on Terror." Our neo-colonial efforts to control the oil resources of other countries is also beyond doubt a contributing cause.

The real shame is that good old fashioned police work; international cooperation; intelligent security programs not distorted and gutted by corporate cynicism, stupidity, and lack of patriotism; rational nuclear disarmament efforts; and some genuinely intelligent and objective domestic, immigration, trade, human rights and foreign policy might have had some real impact on the terrorist problem. Unfortunately, over 7 years have been badly wasted, counter productive, and damaging to our country and to world peace.

If I might close the loop of the analogy in this message that I will not forward, the Nazis, you may recall, made similar and successful efforts to create terrorist enemies: back then the Nazis called their terrorists Communists, socialists, labor organizers, intellectuals, vermin, gypsies, Jews, and homosexuals. We don't need that kind of thinking anymore. We need to think about the problem of terrorism and handle it as a rational citizen of the modern world, not like it's a crusade, or a holy war, or a season of "24," or a John Wayne shoot 'em up. So in the interests of trying to play the German citizen who did protest what was going on, I am returning the message to you and hope you will consider the problem a bit differently.

Sincerely yours,

Afghanistan, Afghanistan: Go fly a Kite

Reading the print edition of the Los Angeles Times for December 22, I found a good illustration of how an ordinary article in a generally well-respected paper tends to spin for the administration. The headline in the Times is “No force 'surge' for Afghanistan.” (Section A, page 3). However, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates did not even use the term “surge” in his press conference:

“You're talking about probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,500 troops . . . So it's not like moving 100,000 troops from one place to the other or something like that.”

Note the deceptive analogy put forth by Secretary Gates by speaking of 100,000 troops. Since that number would almost quadruple the force (given by the Times as 26,000) already in Afghanistan, the comparison was hardly apt, being well beyond an exaggeration. Surge indeed. More like a tsunami at that number. But notice how even in its headline, the Times couldn't do the math correctly to back up its choice of words.

If the total US forces in Afghanistan are at 26,000 as the LATimes reports, an additional 7,500 would certainly qualify to be called a “surge.” That is a 28.8% increase. For comparison, in the so-called “surge” in Iraq, a total of (eventually) 30,000+ troops were added to an existing force of 128,000 which were on the ground early in 2007. The “surge” in Iraq therefore was a percentage increase of roughly 23%. So the question for the Times's staff headline writers and their editors is why present a headline that will seriously misrepresent the increase requested by the Afghanistan commanders? If 23.4% in Iraq qualifies as a "surge," why doesn't 28.8% in Afghanistan?

In other words, the Times tells its readers, we're not going to have to increase our commitment that much. Don't get worried. The increase is minuscule. Certainly not like the surge in Iraq.

But in fact, is this the case? Do we even know how many American troops are fighting in Afghanistan? What is the source for the Times's figure of 26,000? They never tell us where they got the figure, even though Pentagon policy tends to keep the exact number obscured.

What, for example, did Gates and his companion at the press conference, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright, actually say about total troop size in Afghanistan? I excerpt from the text of the press conference itself. This comes from Gates and the General toward the end when speaking of the request from the commander for more troops:

But the bottom line is, you're -- if you have satisfied every requirement he has, you're talking about probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,500 troops. So it's not like moving 100,000 troops from one place to the other or something like that.

And we will be looking at the requirements ourselves, and we will be talking with our allies. But there is clearly, in the view even of the commander on the -- in the field, no requirement for a substantial plus-up of forces in Afghanistan to meet -- to accomplish his mission.

(To the general.) Do you want to add anything --

GEN. CARTWRIGHT: No, I think that's right. It's -- one, it's playing to the strength of your allies, and two, the delta -- we started the year at about 35,000. We're ending the year about 43(,000). And we're trying to make sure that what it is we're doing out there is aligned with the need. To the extent that it is -- that there are needs, it is -- it's about in the 7,500 -- but it's spread across combat-type forces, trainers, et cetera. And so we're trying to make sure we understand that and then target our allies for those capabilities which play to their strengths.

Since the context of the press conference included the trip to Scotland to meet with NATO allies, probably Cartwright was referring to total NATO forces, which were at 41,000 as of July.

However, if Cartwright is referring to the combined NATO forces, he's indicated an increase has already taken place. His statement does not jibe with the recent (less than two weeks old) information from Afghanistan. On December 10, 2007 Gwen Ifill interviewed General Dan McNeill, the International Force Commander, on the Online News Hour. He answered her question about the anticipated needs of the International Force in Afghanistan. Are more NATO forces need? Are more Afghan security forces needed?

I think it means both. By U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, we should have security forces that total well over 400,000. That's not going to happen. The present plan in the international community is to build the Afghan army to a force between 70,000 and 80,000. The police, I believe, the figure is 82,000. NATO right now is running about 41,000.

McNeill says "right now" but that 41,00 figure in turn appears to repeat information as of July, as reported by Pierre Tristram on About.com: Middle East Issues. And that in turn appears to have been based on a Congressional Research Service report from March, 2007. So either McNeill was using those July figures, or perhaps Cartwright knows something McNeill doesn't? It is difficult to get an exact count of United States deployments to Afghanistan, because, according to both Tristram and the CRS, the Department of Defense does not report troop strength.

Note what the remarks were in the press conference from Secretary Gates:

But there is clearly, in the view even of the commander on the -- in the field, no requirement for a substantial plus-up of forces in Afghanistan to meet -- to accomplish his mission.

While McNeill knows that the troops suggested in the insurgency manual are "not going to happen," he clearly needs more troops and clearly has put in a request for the 7,500, but Gates is playing with words here--in terms of what is in place, whether 26,000, 41,000 or 43,000--when he says "no requirement for a substantial plus-up in Afghanistan." Clearly more troops are needed by the ground commander, and 7,500 is substantial. It's just not substantial in terms of that dream number McNeill cited of "well over 400,000" or substantial in terms of Gates's 100,000.

The war in Afghanistan isn't going well. Karzai has asked for more help. Some of the NATO countries are clearly getting uncomfortable with the losing battle and are resisting the US's requests for additional support. According to Gates, the Dutch have re-upped for another two years and other countries are going to keep contributing. Poppy production is at an all-time high. But casualties are increasing. This year, suicide bombings have increased to 130. Civilian casualties, at 2600, are double those of last year. As of today, according to iCasualties.org, 115 U.S. and 114 coalition soldiers have been killed this year .

Two other items in the press conference should be pointed out. First, Gates reminded the reporters that that at least least 5,700 troops will be coming home by the end of the year. The White House itself in its Presidential press release for November 29, 2007 has tried to pass this off as a result of the surge (“5,700: Guided by the principle of 'return on success,' the United States will bring 5,700 troops home by the end of the year as a result of progress made by the surge of operations.”). I think it was Juan Cole who pointed out earlier in the year that these troops were scheduled to be withdrawn in December anyway. Any arguments that the troops would be coming home from Iraq because of the "surge" is highly suspect as spin.

Second, one of reporters--referred to as "Jim" by the Secretary of Defense--actually tries to provoke Gates to give an answer:

Mr. Secretary, the highly respected retired Army General Barry McCaffrey just returned to the U.S. from an extensive tour in Iraq and he was there about the same time you were. And he said that what was striking to him is once you get outside the Green Zone, the national government, in a practical sense, for the people of Iraq just doesn't exist. And he said in fact, the U.S. military on the ground serves that purpose, in assuring that the local populations get the kind of basic services that they need, which are actually required for long-term stability.


And he warns that if you take the military out, all that goes away.


Since the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is conditional, would that be an absolute condition, that there has to be political reconciliation, political progress made by the national government before substantial numbers of American troops can be withdrawn from Iraq? And what kind of assurances did you get in your meeting with Maliki that he was willing to make progress on those issues?

It's a shame the reporter had to obfuscate his provocative reference to McCaffrey with his questions about "absolute conditions" and "assurances from Maliki." Why not just ask what Gates's response was to McCaffrey's observation? The elaborations just allowed Gates to temporize and blather. Although Gates completely --and predictably--avoided addressing the "highly respected" McCaffrey, he in effect supported McCaffrey's contention:

And creating -- getting the ministries down into the provincial and local areas, you know, frankly -- I mean, this is a challenge we face in Afghanistan, as well. It's a challenge that many developing countries face.

Gates passed the buck. Everything will have to depend on the judgment of Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus "next spring." You may remember that last spring we were told to wait for General Petraeus to report in September. In the spring of 2008 I am sure, we will postpone the decision until the end of summer. And watch how that September 2008 answer will do everything possible to frame success in time for the Presidential elections in November. And so it goes.


(As an aside, I also find it unfortunate that Gates, in talking at the beginning of the conference about his visits to wounded troops and their families, described them as “close encounters.” Unfortunate, I think, because the phrase, in our contemporary movie culture, connotes that the injured troops and their families are aliens. The secretary should not use the phrase again, and I hope that he or his his staff will avoid the inept phrase in the future.)