Month: July 2013

Let’s dissect a headline:

Pentagon: Iran will soon have nuclear missiles capable of striking US

Here’s the true parts:

1. Iran is a country that exists
2. The Pentagon is a place that says lots of nonsensical things

If we’re realistic about examining the “threat” of Iran nuking the US in two short years, there are a starling array of things worth noting. The one that struck me though is that Iran has been “within X years” where X is 2-4 depending on how hawkish the person claiming it is, from nuking the US for as long as I can remember.

That’s not hyperbole. People in the US literally began making these dire predictions in the early 1980’s, when I was just learning to read and before I’d started grade school. 30+ years later, the predictions are still coming, and they’re still headline news.

The claim stems from two different assumptions:

a) Iran will have mastered making warhead-capable miniaturized nuclear bombs.

b) Iran will have developed ICBMs capable of hitting the US.

Part a) is just embarrassing nonsense, because even America’s own intelligence estimates say Iran hasn’t even been trying to do anything nuclear weapons related in years, and the IAEA keeps reiterating the civilian nature of Iran’s civilian program. We go through this all the time. The b) part I think is more interesting, because Iran actually has missiles, and is trying to improve those missiles.

But here the claim fails too, because Iran’s developments in missile technology have centered almost entirely on the twin disciplines of anti-aircraft missiles to protect themselves against air strikes, and medium-range missiles that max out at about Israel (or Greece for the “Iran’s going to attack Europe” scaremongering).

Every assessment of Iran’s military includes the same word in the conclusion: defensive. Iran can’t have a US-sized military budget, so it focuses primarily on making attack inconvenient and having a credible retaliatory capability in the hopes of convincing Israel or whoever that attacking is too dangerous.

And let’s be honest about the “or whoever” part of that. If Iran gets attacked, it’s going to be by Israel, because they’ve got the unique brand of proactive sociopaths in leadership to start a big war like that for no good reason, while most other nations have a whole other brand of sociopaths in power that are lazy and reluctant to start any war they don’t think they’ll win in a matter of hours.

You won’t hear it put this way by anyone in Washington, but the main reason cuts to the defense budget are worrying officials is that they make it more difficult to police the world.

In Foreign Affairs, Michael O’Hanlon and Bruce Riedel suggest a cost-saving measure for America’s empire in the Middle East: opening more U.S. military bases in the region. Instead of relying as it has on expensive “aircraft carriers in and near the Persian Gulf,” the U.S. should move its military presence back onto land in at least three different Gulf states.

The primary purpose of having U.S. military bases peppered throughout the Middle East has traditionally been to exert control over geo-politically vital oil-rich countries and to allow for a rapid and coordinated use of military force at Washington’s command. As a Top Secret National Security Council briefing put it in 1954, “the Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,” as it “contains the greatest petroleum resources in the world” as well as “essential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.”

O’Hanlon and Riedel don’t even consider the legitimacy of America’s military presence in the Middle East; for them, it is a natural law that can’t be questioned. So when faced with strained budgets that can’t support a sprawling, costly, and unwarranted empire, they try to figure minor cost cutting measures around the edges instead of reevaluating our military postures as a whole.

A CSIS report last year took a different tack, arguing that “disappearing finances; rising alternative power centers; declining US military predominance; lack of efficacy of key non-military instruments of power; and reduced domestic patience for global adventures,” all require a rethinking of U.S. grand strategy with an eye towards roll-back.

The very definition of grand strategy is holding ends and means in balance to promote the security and interests of the state. Yet, the post-war US approach to strategy is rapidly becoming insolvent and unsustainable – not only because Washington can no longer afford it but also, crucially, because it presumes an American relationship with friends, allies, and rivals that is the hallmark of a bygone era. If Washington continues to cling to its existing role on the premise that the international order depends upon it, the result will be increasing resistance, economic ruin, and strategic failure.

That first sentence there is one of the most honest you’ll ever see from an elite DC foreign policy think tank. U.S. foreign policy is ultimately promoting “the security and interests of the state.” It isn’t for your sake. It benefits the government and the private interests aligned with it.

What O’Hanlon and Riedel also don’t mention, except for a passing reference to “complex” “internal political factors” in Saudi Arabia and the 1998 Khobar Towers bombing, is that the problem with the U.S. military presence in the Middle East isn’t just its financial cost; it also generates widespread hatred and resentment of the U.S. government and was the underpinning of al-Qaeda’s propaganda aimed at motivating Muslims to attack America and Americans abroad. Huge majorities of people in the Arab world strongly object to the permanent U.S. military presence in their lands.

The nefarious nature of the U.S. presence was articulated fittingly enough by O’Hanlon and Riedel, however. The various U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf, each with about 72 fighter jets on board, are “to provide the airpower that [the U.S.] would need during a possible conflict with Iran.” We used to hear this rhetoric about Iraq back in the day. Experience should show it’s less a “just in case” kind of thing, and more a dependable military force to implement the expected U.S. war on Iran.

And finally, O’Hanlon and Riedel address the potential problems of building more land bases in the Middle East in the context of the rising political awareness and activism in the Middle East. It could be hilarious satire if they weren’t so sincere:

Some will argue that more planes on the ground in the Qatar and the United Arab Emirates would tie the United States even more closely to those countries’ royal families, at a time when the Arab Spring challenges their ability to hold onto power. The United States could also be implicated in any regime crackdowns against citizens. That is part of why the United States should diversify its combat airpower presence to at least two, if not three, places. But it is worth remembering that, in fact, the United States has already thrown its support behind those governments, and the Saudi royals, for years. In other words, the United States is already seen as being very close to them. Getting even closer will not change perceptions that much. It is, therefore, a tolerable additional risk.

The “risk” that more people get angry with the U.S. for propping up the brutal tyrannies in the Persian Gulf is “tolerable” because, heck, we’re already hated for that very reason! Might as well pile on! Notice that they don’t mention the moral questions of upholding mass political repression for millions of people across the region. They only care about perceptions it might cause, not the act of doing it.

Despite new rules put into place by Congress in 2009 prohibiting the use of open air trash-burning pits on U.S overseas bases — yes, the same pits that countless numbers of Iraq and Afghanistan vets, and their doctors, say have caused irreparable harm to their health  — an inspector general’s (SIGAR) report released today say they are still in commission at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan.

Camp Leatherneck is in Helmand Province and has been a launching pad for Marine expeditionary forces and other American servicemembers and contractors since 2008. As recently as 2012  it was the temporary home for some 18,000 at one time — which means a lot of people have been exposed to the huge smouldering pit there. Today, as Camp Leatherneck is  dismantling ahead of withdrawal, it houses about 13,500 U.S military and civilian personnel, according to the letter to U.S Central Command from the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John F. Sopko, dated July 11.

In that letter, Sopko says the Camp Leatherneck actually spent $11.5 million in taxpayer money to purchase and install two 12-ton and two 24-ton capacity incinerators for clean burning (what the bases were supposed to be doing in the wake of the 2009 legislation). Best let Sopko explain in his own words the rest:

My inspectors made several visits to the camp and found that the 12-ton incinerators were not being used to full capacity and the 24-ton incinerators were not being used at all because a contract for their operation and maintenance had not been awarded. As a result, the camp was relying heavily on open-air burn pit operations to dispose of its solid waste. However, Department of Defense guidance and a U.S. Central Command regulation limit the use of open-air burn pit operations. Camp Leatherneck is in violation of this guidance and regulation.

Camp officials advised that they are planning to eventually use all four incinerators and are looking into the feasibility of contracting to have any excess solid waste hauled to a local landfill. In mid-June 2013, my office was notified that a contract was about to be awarded for operating and maintaining the two 24-ton incinerators and that a contract for hauling trash off-site should be in place by the end of July 2013.

These are positive steps toward the cessation of open-burn pit operations. However, if the base incinerators were used to their full capacity,hauling trash off-site may not be necessary.

Bottom line, the IG’s report found that Camp Leatherneck was violating the new Department of Defense regulations passed in 2009 and furthermore “as a result, possible long-term health risks to the camp’s personnel continue.”

This is a bold statement, considering that the DoD has been dancing around the issue of whether the burn pits are causing health problems for years. We here have documented much of their two-stepping, plus a lot of new funny business with how the VA has been surveying troops coming home with issues ranging from asthma to lung lesions. Doctors who have done lung biopsies on returning vets say they they have have toxic exposure. Others have gone public with their belief that the pits are blame. Yet more and more we hear these reports of bases taking half-baked measures to shut the monsters down — and we’re playing for the privilege! In April we reported another IG report on Camp Salerno, where their two $5 million incinerators have not only gone unused, but are now rotting in place.

Congress has managed to pass a requirement that the VA start collecting information on sick vets for a Burn Pit Registry (the VA initially resisted such a registry, but now is seeking comment and providing details). Soon we may see the repercussions of the Pentagon not taking these risks on U.S bases so seriously.

 

There are rumors that the Obama administration is considering a “zero option” in Afghanistan – that is, abandoning plans to leave a significant residual force there to train Afghans, perform special operations against the Taliban, and bolster the enfeebled Afghan state and instead withdrawing all U.S. troops sometime in 2014. According to reports, the zero option is being considered primarily because of the bitter disagreements and distrust between the Obama administration and President Hamid Karzai.

If it’s true that Obama is considering pulling out all U.S. troops, it seems highly unlikely to me that Karzai himself is the reason. Granted, Karzai has been corrupt, mercurial, and downright cheeky towards the Obama administration. But Karzai is scheduled to be out of office in just under a year in any case, and I doubt Obama would abandon one of his most consistent foreign policy schemes just to spite a guy who is expected to be at least nominally out of the picture in a matter of months.

Then there is the question of whether it’s true that the administration is considering a complete pullout. An obvious case in point is the complete withdrawal (excepting a hand full of forces as trainers) from Iraq, which nobody in the administration even considered as an option before the Iraqi government insisted on keeping to the prescriptions of the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement, which did in fact call for a full withdrawal. Yet, the administration did eventually succumb to the pressure to leave entirely.

Could this be happening again in Afghanistan? If so, it would probably be based on practical and strategic considerations instead of political ones. The Afghan war has been a sinkhole for U.S. lives and resources, and the American people largely want out. More than a decade of war trying for the same objective and we’ve seen nothing but failure. The main objectives have been to rid the country of al-Qaeda, eliminate the Taliban, build up a legitimate Afghan government and train an effective Afghan army. Al-Qaeda has left, less because of the U.S. military campaign than because of other “opportunities” al-Qaeda fighters perceive in other parts of the world. But every other objective has failed miserably: the Afghan state is neither stable or legitimate, the Taliban insurgency is as strong as ever, and the Afghan army couldn’t win a fight against an army of ants, never mind an armed insurgency determined to regain power.

I doubt the Obama administration is actually considering pulling out completely (after all, Washington and Kabul have already signed an agreement saying the U.S. military will be there in some capacity until 2024), but that is mere speculation on my part. What’s more interesting are the arguments floating around for staying in Afghanistan. Here’s Peter Bergen at CNN, who says “zeroing out U.S. troop levels in the post-2014 Afghanistan is a bad idea on its face”:

After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, something that was accomplished at the cost of more than a million Afghan lives and billions of dollars of U.S. aid, the United States closed its embassy in Afghanistan in 1989 during the George H.W. Bush administration and then zeroed out aid to one of the poorest countries in the world under the Clinton administration. It essentially turned its back on Afghans once they had served their purpose of dealing a deathblow to the Soviets.

As a result, the United States had virtually no understanding of the subsequent vacuum in Afghanistan into which eventually stepped the Taliban, who rose to power in the mid-1990s. The Taliban granted shelter to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization from 1996 onward.

After the overthrow of the Taliban, a form of this mistake was made again by the George W. Bush administration, which had an ideological disdain for nation building and was distracted by the Iraq War, so that in the first years after the fall of the Taliban, only a few thousand U.S. soldiers were stationed in Afghanistan.

The relatively small number of American boots on the ground in Afghanistan helped to create a vacuum of security in the country, which the Taliban would deftly exploit, so that by 2007, they once again posed a significant military threat in Afghanistan.

This is an old argument. It holds that because America wasn’t constantly occupying Afghanistan and dominating their politics, the country grew as a threat.

In fact, U.S. meddling in Afghanistan is a large part of what has fueled the trouble. Washington helped bring the Afghan warlords to power in order to land a strategic defeat against the Soviet Union. That was our first mistake. It was the experience ousting the Soviets from Afghanistan that motivated Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda to try and bait the U.S. in there for a lengthy quagmire in the first place.

The reality – which Bergen and much of the rest of the establishment can’t seem to grasp – is that military occupation and nation-building is a barbaric and ineffective policy prescription for a country like Afghanistan.

I can’t predict what will happen if a complete U.S. withdrawal led to the Taliban regaining power, but it’s entirely possible that the last decade of war has persuaded many in the Taliban’s leadership that it ain’t worth baiting military empires into Afghanistan for no reason. And it’s quite possible most of the lower-level Taliban fighters feel just the way this Taliban fighter, in a 2010 interview for PBS’s Frontline, said he feels:

Q: And what will happen if the Americans leave?

Taliban: We will sit back and give up our weapons.

Mos Def participated in a demonstration of the force-feeding procedures that more than 40 Gitmo detainees on hunger strike are being subjected to everyday. It’s less pleasant than you probably imagined.

The United Nations has already said this practice amounts to torture and violates international law. The notion that the Obama administration insists on keeping these people caged indefinitely without charge or trial is authoritarian enough. But to then say these people won’t even be allowed to protest their own mistreatment by going on hunger strike is beyond the pale.