Category: News

The rhetoric used to marginalize dissenting opinion and coddle the herd into unity conformity is the same in Libya as it has been in other recent wars. I see two main tactics.

The first is the attempt to detract attention and emphasis away from any potential domestic concern about the war with nonchalant casualness. This was exemplified when Harry Ried last week said that the War Powers Resolution doesn’t apply in Libya because “We have no troops on the ground there, and this thing’s gonna be over before you know it anyways, so…” This is common: Don’t trouble yourselves with keeping your own government in check regarding war; this is no big thing and it will be over too soon to be worth any effort to stop it, so sit quiet. Not only did we hear this at the beginning of the war intervention in Libya (it will last “days, not weeks”), but we heard it in Iraq as well. Dick Cheney and other top Bush administration officials said the Iraq war would “last weeks, not months” while Don Rumsfeld said “It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.” We’re now about 100 days into this conflict with no end in sight. Also under this category of enforcing conformity is the promise of no ground troops we’ve been hearing, despite some quiet admissions that we will in fact need ground troops. The goal is the same: this war is and will be small and insignificant; don’t you dare make a fuss about it.

The other tactic is to hint in some way that if you are against the war you’re supporting the enemy. Classic with-us-or-against-us Bush rhetoric as well as Hillary Clinton’s recent “Whose side are you on?” talk is the most egregious of this sort. But it has less potent forms like this recent piece in the Wall Street Journal (via):

The press corps is claiming that all this reflects “war weariness,” but the war in Libya will only drag on longer if Gadhafi and his bloody-minded sons have reason to believe that the Americans are divided. These resolutions will encourage our enemies to conclude that if they can only hold out for a few more weeks or months, the U.S. and NATO will give up and sue for peace. The House is also undermining the morale of Libya’s rebels, not to mention domestic support for the intervention.

If you are not convinced by the first tactic of enforcing conformity (that the war is no big thing, thus shut up), then you still should not express dissent because it will encourage the enemy or let them know our plans. Do not “undermine domestic support for the war” by telling the truth about it or pressuring officials to follow the law; we need that domestic support so keep the people ignorant and thus passively in support of our war dictates. This was common with Iraq too, as administration and military officials said withdrawals dates could never be discussed because that would tell the insurgents when we were leaving.

It seems clear these are just rhetorical tactics without any validity. The aim is to quell dissent and prevent those who might question war from acting in that regard. Congressional moves to end or limit the war are still ongoing, but we’ll have to see if these tactics are as successful as they have been in the past, or if the Libya adventure’s almost satire-like absurdity will continue to “undermine domestic support.”

I’m waiting for Obama’s announcement of the new policy of troop levels in Afghanistan to become old news by about Monday, but while it’s still the weekend, let’s consider further exactly how many people we’ve got in that country smaller than Texas.

From a Congressional Research Service report:

DOD relies extensively upon contractors to support overseas contingency operations. As of March 2011, DOD had more contractor personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq (155,000) than uniformed personnel (145,000). Contractors made up 52% of DOD’s workforce in Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to DOD, in Afghanistan, as of March 2011, there were 90,339 DOD contractor personnel, compared to approximately 99,800 uniformed personnel. Contractors made up 48% of DOD’s workforce in Afghanistan at that time.

As has been reported and discussed at length here at Antiwar.com, the national security establishment, in conjunction with the Obama administration and surely whatever succeeds it, is planning on an essentially permanent U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. Secret negotiations leaked to the Guardian revealed U.S. plans to remain for decades under a broad security agreement. This was corroborated by Hamid Karzai who spoke publicly about a U.S. presence long after the 2014 date of “full withdrawal.” And now after Obama’s announcement of a minor, gradual, and incomplete draw-down, military leaders are complaining it was too drastic. These are relatively clear signs.

But one fundamental motivation behind the American strategy to maintain a military capacity in Afghanistan is to fight proxy wars with Pakistan. A podcast with New Yorker staff writers Steve Coll and Dexter Filkins provided some fresh analysis:

Steve Coll: I do think the endgame that they’re headed toward, the one they’re planning for anyway, their hope, for American deployments and strategy in Afghanistan after the troop withdrawal is completed in 2014 is rooted basically in retaining a counter-terrorism capacity in Afghanistan, one that would be rooted, the hope is, in adequate Afghan political institutions and security forces. But the American purpose, besides maintaining some good enough Afghan stability, the American purpose would be to maintain a strike capability to go into Pakistan, in particular, when necessary, so that if an opportunity like the one that presented itself in Abbottabad were to resurface, or if Pakistan were to fall further apart and present international threats out of the [sic] of its continuing civil conflicts, that the United States would be close enough to do something about it militarily.

Much of the realist analysis about how the Obama administration is pursuing a military campaign, engaging in a war, that does not present a clear and present danger to the American people or interests may be missing the point. The Obama administration is likely to have a full understanding of the fact that, in isolation, our war in Afghanistan is wasteful and unnecessary. But to be able to use Afghanistan as a proxy in any potential fight or singular operation in Pakistan, may just be worth impoverishing ourselves, letting die Americans in uniform, and continuing to wreak insufferable terror on the Afghan people.

Proxy wars are practically a pastime in American foreign policy. From our bases and troops in South Korea, to our NATO deployments throughout Europe, to our base in Honduras while we terrorized Nicaragua in the Contra war, to bases in Saudi Arabia, to fight the Gulf War and in Kuwait to fight Gulf War 2, to Uzbekistan in the early 2000’s, just north of Afghanistan when Afghanistan itself was a bigger priority. Proxies are an important part of imperial policy; they assist in controlling the world and dominating states from many strategic places, as opposed to simply from Washington.

This in part explains U.S. negotiations with the Taliban, which have been rather counter-intuitive for the American public. The U.S. doesn’t care if the brutal, extremist Taliban have control over various provinces in Afghanistan; we don’t mind the backwardness and harshness with which they rule (contrary to rhetoric). So long as any Afghan government is subservient to U.S. wishes to maintain permanent military capacity, the U.S. is happy.

The tribal areas of Pakistan, representing a threat to American hegemony, are what Americans need to keep in mind when considering Obama’s policy in Afghanistan. In isolation, Afghanistan is as meaningless as it seems.

Today the US House defeated two resolutions on the war on Libya. The first one, to authorize Obama to conduct the war for a year, failed overwhelmingly.

The second one, sold as a war limitation measure, actually authorized most of the activities currently being waged by US forces, was also defeated (a surprise to many).

Here is Rep. Ron Paul’s statement against the limited authorization measure:

Mr. Speaker I rise to oppose this legislation, which masquerades as a limitation of funds for the president’s war on Libya but is in fact an authorization for that very war. According to HR 2278, the US military cannot be involved in NATO’s actions in Libya, with four important exceptions. If this passes, for the first time the president would be authorized to use US Armed Forces to engage in search and rescue; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; aerial refueling; and operational planning against Libya. Currently, absent an authorization or declaration of war, these activities are illegal. So instead of ending the war against Libya, this bill would legalize nearly everything the president is currently doing there.

That the war in Libya can be ended by expanding it and providing the president a legal excuse to continue makes no sense. If this bill fails, the entirety of what the president is doing in Libya would remain illegal.

Additionally, it should not really be necessary to prohibit the use of funds for US military attacks on Libya because those funds are already prohibited by the Constitution. Absent Congressional action to allow US force against Libya any such force is illegal, meaning the expenditure of funds for such activities is prohibited. I will, however, support any straight and clean prohibition of funds such as the anticipated amendments to the upcoming Defense Appropriations bill.

I urge my colleagues to reject this stealth attempt to authorize the Libya war and sincerely hope that the House will soon get serious about our Constitutional obligations and authority.

This week’s news of a resolution from senior Senators to permit military operations in Libya for one year was met with muddled reaction in Congress. The splits within both parties have been preventing clear assertions or definitive action going forward. Today’s WSJ reports that the GOP is bobbing and weaving while trying to determine its actual policy preference.

House Republican leaders on Wednesday abruptly canceled plans to vote Thursday on whether to set limits on U.S. military activities in Libya, following a caucus meeting marked by rifts over how to proceed.

The delay is the latest example of how a restive caucus is making it difficult for House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) to steer a course on U.S. foreign policy. Six months into their control of the House, GOP leaders are being pressed to take tough positions by rank-and-file members, who are frustrated with bills that offer tough words but produce little action.

“You can do resolutions until you’re blue in the face; if they go over to the Senate and they don’t go anywhere, what are we going to do next—are we going to have a resolution saying we really don’t like what the president is doing or are we going to pull the trigger and cut off the faucet, so to speak?” said Rep. Tom Rooney (R., Fla.) after a GOP caucus meeting.

…One resolution would authorize a limited U.S. role in Libya, similar to a measure pushed by Sens. John Kerry (D., Mass.) and John McCain (R., Ariz.). There is little evidence Republicans will vote for it, though. House leaders are also now aiming to bring up a second measure to set funding limits on Libya activities in the current fiscal year, without leaving allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “in the lurch,” an aide said.

Some Republicans are pushing House leaders to allow a vote on a third option: cutting off funding for the U.S. role in Libya. It isn’t clear whether that will happen.

That’s right. Nothing much is clear yet. Both parties have those who support Obama’s unconstitutional, illegal, unnecessary, and hypocritical war in Libya, those who don’t support it, and those who wish to walk the line by withdrawing their support, but still giving operational control to Obama and NATO. The result is the appearance of a weak-kneed Congress. Meanwhile, King Obama is waging war.

News yesterday that Israel is finally allowing building materials into Gaza, which has been deprived of them since Operation Cast Lead reduced much the infrastructure to rubble, was good to hear, but I’m still left slightly skeptical. First of all, it’s limited: supplies can be used only on projects that have been previously approved by Israel. This is merely another imposition, another example of the overwhelming weight of Israeli domination down to the minutiae of Palestinian life. It proves Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza was never meant to give any sort of sovereignty to Gazans, and it raises the concern that this easing of the blockade is not only limited, but temporary.

I don’t know to what extent this move is a response or an acknowledgement of the aid flotilla that will set sail for Gaza (which Israel warned against with a more or less promised use of force), but if it is I feel that’s more reason to suspect this decision is extremely temporary.

Meanwhile, the indelible caricature of himself Elliot Abrams is huffing and puffing over an open letter to President Obama just published in the New York Review of Books from a group of prominent academics and public intellectuals about Israel-Palestine. It urges the most prosaic and reasonable approach to the conflict (1967 lines with minor and mutual swaps, sharing Jerusalem, solution to refugee problem,  security guarantees, etc.), but Abrams can’t believe his ears: they are “blaming almost every aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Israel and urging heavy American pressure to change Israeli policy.” He of course totally ignores the fact that his opposition to this sacrilege is a recipe for conflict with no end in sight.

Israel has of course been concerned about the Arab Spring for similar reasons the U.S. is concerned: policy ought not reflect the will of the people in that region. Huff Po:

“We are looking at an area which is under a political turmoil, something we have not witnessed for maybe 90 years since the collapse of the Ottoman empire, he said. “I cannot say that their (others in the government) doubts don’t have a certain foundation but I still believe despite all uncertainty Israel should make a real attempt to enter negotiations.”

Since the beginning of the year, the Arab world has been wracked by pro-democracy demonstrations, which brought down the governments in Tunisia and Israel’s neighbor Egypt.

There has been some worry in Israel that the new governments that emerge in the region might be more hostile to the Jewish state than their predecessors. Israeli skeptics note that elections in the Middle East have brought groups like Hamas and Hezbollah to power.

“It’s clear to us that (with) these events of the Arab spring that under certain situation we might find ourselves having to defend ourselves alone,” Barak said.

Unfortunately U.S.-Israeli policy has not adapted to the changing environment; there is complete obstinacy in the face of these potential changes, despite plenty of opportunity to settle for peace with only minor concessions. Little victories like being allowed to re-building your bombed homes and schools are not enough to postpone much needed honesty about U.S. policy in this regard.