What’s Wrong Today:

Recently, there here has been a
rash of statements across many segments of our society saying: “this is not who we
are”.


It is becoming an automatic
response from business, politics, military, and government officials after some
horrifying event occurs. Some suit steps to a microphone and states that
whatever happened, it is certainly “not who we are”.

So,
consider these dispatches from the front:

This
is not a reflection of who we are”
–Jeff Gearhart, Wall-Mart’s general counsel, on the
firm’s Mexico bribery

“This
is not who we are”

-Hillary Clinton on the US massacre of 16 Afghan
villagers

“This is not who we
are”
–General John Allen, commander of forces in
Afghanistan, on Koran burning

“This
is not who we are”
–Leon Panetta on troops posing with enemy body parts

“This
is not who we are”
–Hillary Clinton, also on troops posing with enemy body
parts

Spying by police “is not who we are”
–Newark Mayor Cory Booker, commenting on the NYPD
spying on Muslims in Newark, NJ

“using
pepper spray on peaceful protesters…is not who we are”
– UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, after the pepper
spraying of students

 

“the assertions made by [Jeff Smith] do not reflect our values,
our culture…at Goldman Sachs” (In
other words, this is not who we are)

-Lloyd Blankfein, CEO
of Goldman Sachs

So,
What’s Wrong?

If
these acts are “not who we are”, they sure
are who we are becoming. If they are not “who we are,” then why so many recent examples of bad behavior?

The transgressions
are always framed as “one bad apple in the barrel”. The “not who we are” phase has
moved up near the top in American PR usage. It is now just like your child’s: “it wasn’t me, it was him.”

In the
business world,
we are consumed by winning; coming in second is for losers. The pressure to
increase profits is unremitting. This has created a culture in the financial
services industry that tolerates making huge (hedged or unhedged) bets with the
capital of our banks. While at Walmart, bribery of foreign officials just
another arrow in the quiver.

In the military, the loathsome acts
by our warriors in Afghanistan may indicate what our military’s culture has
become. Or, these acts might just be a direct result of the constant pressure
of returning to the battlefield for a 4th or 5th
deployment in 10 years that is caused by our politicians’ inability to say “it’s
over”.

In law
enforcement,
local and federal agents are increasingly militarized. Their culture is
evolving from “protect and serve”, to enforcing order and protecting property.
They see the public, particularly protesters, as a kind of “enemy” to be
subdued. Protesters are likely to be perceived as threats to the authority of law
enforcement, so they are beaten, pepper-sprayed, spied upon and locked up.

Meanwhile, we participate in a public farce
perpetrated by the suits, based upon lip service to the morals and culture of
the recent past. And it plays out in an endless loop in our media.

It is time to stop pretending that we are
not accountable, the “who” can only be us.  If we are truly better than this,
if this is not who we are, then we had
better act quickly to change both who represents us, and the culture of our businesses
and institutions.

Ultimately,
we all share the blame for the actions of our government, our economy, our
culture. We need to hold all levels of business and government accountable for
any action that betrays America’s promise.

 

Walt Kelley had it right in “Pogo”
in 1970: “We have met the enemy
and he is us”.

What’s
Wrong Today:

On
Friday, House Speaker John
Boehner named Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as qualified to be vice
president. “I think the number one quality is, are they capable of being
president in the case of an emergency?” Boehner added.

Boehner also said
that Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana fit his
criteria that the pick be capable of serving as president.

So What’s Wrong?

 

Boehner waited to endorse Rubio until he showed
his mainstream Republican chicken hawk chops:

 

Rubio said
last Wednesday that a unilateral
“military solution” from the United States may be needed to stop Iran
from acquiring a nuclear bomb and that we may need to lead an initiative in Syria without the UN.

Rubio, speaking at The Brookings
Institution with Joseph I. Lieberman (I-CT), said that it was imperative that
the United States not “stand on the sidelines” of a simmering Middle
East, but instead provide leadership to resolve global crises. He observed:

“Our preferred
option since the US became a global leader has been to work with others to
achieve our goals, …America has acted unilaterally in the past  and I believe it should continue to do so in
the future, when necessity requires,”

He was
alluding to Iran. Here are some other thoughts from the same speech:

“We should
also be preparing our allies, and the world, for the reality that
unfortunately, if all else fails, preventing a nuclear Iran may, tragically,
require a military solution.”

Rubio noted
how Washington should be prepared to bypass the United Nations when “bad
actors” prevent it from taking meaningful steps, such as on Syria.

“The Security
Council remains a valuable forum, but not an indispensable one,..We can’t walk
away from a problem because some members of the Security Council refuse to
act.”

Rubio lambasted Russian president-elect
Vladimir Putin’s preaching of “paranoia and anti-Western sentiments”
and said the “curtain of secrecy that veils the Chinese state” makes
it unwise to trust them to lead on global economic and political freedom. He went
on to point to Syria as an example of the need for US engagement. “The
region is waiting for American leadership,” Rubio said:

 

“You need the
center of gravity to instigate this coalition (supporting opposition groups in
Syria) and move forward with a defined plan. In the absence of American power
and American influence and American leadership, it’s hard to do that.”

So, Rubio is campaigning for vice president
by promising to embroil our country in two more Middle East wars, and to do so
without the backing of international law.

This isn’t the kind of thing you just flounce
into: Syria is 2/3rds the size of Iraq, and Iran is 3 times more populous, so
Rubio is willing to commit us not only to bear more thousands of war dead and
badly wounded but also to spend additional trillions in distant Middle Eastern
deserts.

Sounds like John McCain.

So
if you like your luggage to match, why not another absurdity in the second chair?

A brief update on the Health
Insurance rebate that the Wrongologist wrote
about in March.

You may remember the salient facts:

• The
  Affordable Care Act requires that 80 to 85 cents of every dollar insurers
  collect in premiums be spent on medical care or activities that improve the
  quality of that care (the Medical Loss
  Ratio, or MLR)

• If
  not, they must send their customers a rebate for the difference

• However,
  An insurer-supported Senate bill introduced by Mary Landrieu (D-LA) aimed to
  roll back the rebates

Here is the update:

Landrieu’s bill failed
to make it to the floor of the Senate.

As a result, this
year, 15 million
people will receive checks from their health insurance companies totaling $1.3
Billion.

The ACA reform
requires that insurance companies spend most of the premium dollars paid by
individuals on providing health care services, or refund the difference to
policy holders. This is a significant part of what health reform was about.

The
Obamacare haters like to talk about “market-based” solutions for
health reform. Well, this is one they will try to spin as a bad idea.

Based
on the preliminary estimates from insurers, the rebates will be distributed
among the 3 insurance markets as follows: $426 million in the individual
market, $377 million in the small group market, and $541 million in the large
group market. In the small group market, rebates will be issued for nearly 5
million enrollees, and in the large group market, 7.5 million. 

In
the individual market, (these are the
people who buy their insurance individually) this translates to an
average rebate of $127 that will go to 3.4 million people. So, nearly a third of the people in the individual
market will get a check from their insurance company, with
consumers in Texas (92%), Oklahoma (86%), South Carolina (84%), and Arizona
(83%) most likely to be eligible based on insurer estimates.

With all this good news, the insurance industry has weighed
in, continuing to spread the message of doom about the ACA and the MLR rebate. Robert Zirkelbach, spokesperson for
America’s Health Insurance Plans, said:

“Given the inherently
unpredictable nature of health care costs, it is not surprising that some
health plans expect to pay rebates to consumers in certain markets…However, the
coverage disruptions and other unintended consequences of imposing a new arbitrary
federal cap on health plan administrative costs are likely to outweigh any
benefit these rebates will provide to consumers.”

OK, more spin from
the plutocrats about uncertainty, future coverage disruptions and cost
increases. As we said here,
is the industry threatening increases above the 25%-35% we have experienced
lately?

Let’s hope that the
Supreme Court sees the news on the rebates. Will they thumb their collective
noses at 15 million people by invalidating the ACA?

What’s
Wrong Today:

A smaller percentage
of Americans currently serve in the U.S. Armed Forces than at any time since the
era between World Wars I and II. Yet, during the past decade, our military has
been engaged in the longest period of sustained conflict in the nation’s
history, but just one-half of one
percent of American adults has served on active duty at any given time.

So,
What’s Wrong?

We are now
seeing the convergence of three bad trends
that are driven by multiple deployments to an Afghan war that seems unwinnable
in historical contexts:

1. As the
Wrongologist has reported, after
two long-running wars with escalating levels of combat stress, more than 110,000 active-duty Army troops
last year were taking prescribed antidepressants, narcotics, sedatives,
antipsychotics and anti-anxiety drugs, according to figures recently
disclosed by the U.S. Army Surgeon General. Nearly 8 percent of the active-duty
Army is now on sedatives and more than 6 percent is on antidepressants – an
eightfold increase since 2005. See also, this.

2. The
drip, drip, drip of gross-out acts and indiscipline by our troops in Afghanistan have
us waiting for the next ugly shoe to drop. The tragedy of Army
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, on his fourth combat tour, allegedly slaughtering
17 civilians underscores this bad trend. Also, we have seen other bad behavior,
including this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
all wrapped up in a surprising lack
of accountability by leadership for these acts, which are called “isolated
events”, and counter to “who we are as a people”. If fault is found, leadership
invariably fixes responsibility and imposes penalties at echelons well below
the people in charge. The fall guy
ends up being the little guy.

Anyone
who understands the military’s professional ethic will see these explanations, whatever
their value in providing context, for what they are: excuses for a repeated failure
to enforce standards. This kind of failure undermines mission success and,
regardless of how loosely defined, is a failure of leadership. However, we
shouldn’t overstate the reach
of command authority. Only someone lacking in military experience would believe
that a directive from an American four-star general elicits enthusiastic and
universal agreement. Orders are misconstrued, reinterpreted, overlooked or
selectively disobeyed, hence, the need to restate them continually while demanding full compliance.

We
know that protracted armed conflicts undermine discipline, and this conflict has been the longest in U.S. history. Soldiers are sent to wage frustrating
and possibly unwinnable wars to which the public has become indifferent.  Under these circumstances our troops deserve
considerable sympathy. In the Vietnam era, when the war went desperately wrong
for desperately long, a U.S. draft army began to disintegrate
into rebellion and chaos. 

In
Afghanistan, an all-volunteer professional army may be cracking under stress-related trauma, drug use, and freak out.  The simple fact is that,
however spun, repeated combat stress affects everything in countless, often
hard to quantify ways.

3.   Finally, the Afghanistan war has become this generation’s Vietnam,
despite our desire to make sure it wouldn’t happen, and our inability to see
the parallels. As
Nick Turse reports at TomDispatch:

“The conflict in
Afghanistan began with its American commander declaring, “We don’t do body counts,” but a quick glance at
recent U.S. military press releases touting supposed “high-value kills” or large numbers of dead insurgents indicates otherwise.  As in Vietnam, the
U.S. is once again waging a war of attrition, even as America’s Afghan enemies
employ their own very different attrition strategy.  Instead of slugging
it out toe-to-toe in large suicidal offensives, they’ve planned a savvy,
conservative campaign meant to save fighters and resources while sending an
unmistakable message to the Afghan population, and simultaneously exposing the
futility of the conflict to the American public…”

Like
in Vietnam, the precipitous attrition of U.S. support for the Afghan war is
unmistakable.  As
Pew Research is reporting,

As
late as 2008, 61% of Americans believed the Afghan War was worth
fighting.  Today, the numbers are reversed: 60% of Americans say we should
remove the troops as soon as possible. Whatever the Pentagon’s spin about enemy
dead, they seem to be powerless to reverse this trend. 

In this era of an all-voluntary military, American
public opinion probably matters less than in the Vietnam era, but it still makes
a political difference.  The Taliban and its allies may or may not  be taking territory, but in this guerrilla
war, it turns out that the territory
that really matters is the territory inside people’s heads and it is there the
Pentagon is losing. More than a decade
after our forces swept into Kabul, what began as a rag-tag, remnant Taliban insurgency
has grown stronger and continues to
play to a draw the most skilled, heavily armed, technologically
advanced, and best-funded military on the planet. 

All of America’s tactical gains and
captured territory, especially in the Taliban heartland of Helmand Province,
however, haven’t led to anything close to victory.

One after another of our highly publicized light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel offensives, like the
much-hyped 2010 Marjah campaign, have faded away. 

Leaders shape institutions. Sometimes
nothing beats replacing a few near the top to focus the attention of the rest.
For an American military well into a second exhausting decade of continuous
war, this may one of those times.

Otherwise,
we should expect these Three Bad Trends to continue.

What’s
Wrong Today:

Lawmakers
in 13 states are trying to pass
legislation
that would allow their state government to issue their own currency as an
alternative to the US dollar. Unlike individual communities, which are allowed
to create their own currency, the Constitution
bans states from printing their own paper money or issuing their own currency. It
does allow the states to make “gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of
Debts.” To state legislators who are proposing state-issued
currencies, this clause means gold and silver are fair game as the basis of an
alternative currency.

And since
gold has grown more valuable relative to the U.S. dollar, the notion has appeal
to some state lawmakers who worry that the Federal Reserve has the U.S. dollar
on the brink of collapse. The states considering currency legislation include Minnesota,
Tennessee, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, South and North Carolina, Washington, Virginia
and Georgia. The legislatures in all
but one of these states (Washington) are controlled by the Republican Party.
Three years ago, only three states had similar proposals in the works.

These
proposals have been gaining steam among Tea Partiers and Republicans, some of
whom also endorse a nationwide return to the gold standard, which would
require the U.S. dollar to be backed by gold reserves. For example, Ron Paul is
sponsoring “The
Free Competition in Currency Act” which would allow states to
introduce their own currencies, while Newt Gingrich has called for a
commission
to look at how the country can get back to the gold standard.

Utah
became the first state to introduce its
own alternative currency when Governor Gary Herbert signed a bill into law last
March that recognized gold and silver coins issued by the U.S. Mint as an
acceptable form of payment.

So,
What’s Wrong?

These
people are trying to repeal both the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and that
portion of the Constitution that allows states to control the issuance of currency.
There have been times in our
history when we had no national bank and no national currency. They brought
about repeated periods of economic boom and bust.

Bad
enough, but this effort is a symptom of something much bigger. We’re
not dealing simply with a return to the gold standard or the repeal of the
Federal Reserve.

We’re dealing with the whole
perception of who we are as a nation, our place in the world, and how
we live. We’re looking at the end of trust as we know it. We are describing
the first steps in the reaction to a spreading loss of faith in institutions!

Consider this nice chart: We all know
that faith and trust in our institutions have been weakened. Where it shows up
most acutely is in institutions that have
authority over us and over which we feel we have little sway.

Polls like these show that we are
witnessing a massive de-legitimization of both our government AND our way of
life. For parallels, one would have to look at the nation during the “disruption
of democracy” between 1853 and 1860 or, during the great depression from
1929 to 1937.

 

This distrust,
ironically, plays into the hands of the powerful, since people need to have enough faith in each other to organize successfully
against vested interests to get their needs met.

 

Americans’ relationships
with organizations have always been tenuous. The relationship that we want to
be the most stable, our employment, is rapidly becoming quite fragile and in
too many cases, short.

Today, the most damaged lynchpin in American
life is our belief in the ability of America’s elected leaders to solve the
biggest problems facing the country. Government at all levels is paralyzed by
partisanship and ideology.

Both
parties are no longer responsive to public opinion that, in the past, would have
spurred them to achieve consensus. But, Congress hasn’t passed a budget,
arguably it’s most fundamental job, in three years and seems unlikely to do so
before the 2012 elections.

In the
past, America’s leaders could draw the nation together to solve problems. At another
moment of gaping income inequality, when the country was transitioning from a
farm economy to a manufacturing economy, President Theodore Roosevelt reminded
Americans in his 1905 inaugural address:

“…the tremendous
changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last half
century are felt in every fiber of our social and political being. Never before
have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of administering
the affairs of a continent under the forms of a Democratic republic….To us, as
a people, it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life…There
is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why
we should face it seriously.” (emphasis by the
Wrongologist)

But, American politics in 2012 does not
encourage serious conversation. In particular,
how do we rebuild a sense of trust in our institutions, in ourselves
as a nation?

Do either the
sitting President, or the turnaround expert who pretends to that position possess
the skills and character to help us reverse course and move rapidly to restore
trust in our institutions and each other?

 

Do the American
people still have what it takes to engage in this serious conversation?

Mother, should I build the wall?
Mother, should I run for president?
Mother, should I trust the government?

“Mother”

The Wall  – Pink Floyd

 

What’s
Wrong Today

Yesterday, The LA times reported that, after two long-running wars with
escalating levels of combat stress, more than 110,000 active-duty Army troops
last year were taking prescribed antidepressants (similar to zoloft generic), narcotics, sedatives,
anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety drugs, according to figures recently disclosed
by the U.S. Army Surgeon General. Nearly 8 percent of the active-duty Army is
now on sedatives and more than 6 percent is on antidepressants – an eightfold
increase since 2005.

Across
all branches, military spending on psychiatric drugs has more than doubled
since 2001, to $280 million in 2010, according to numbers obtained from the
Defense Logistics Agency by a Cornell University psychiatrist, Dr.
Richard A. Friedman.

The
problem has become particularly acute in specialized units for wounded troops,
where commanders say the trading of prescription medications is rampant. A report released last
month by the Army Inspector General estimated that up to a third of all
soldiers in these Warrior Transition Units are overmedicated, dependent on
medications or have easy access to illegal drugs.

But the
response of modern psychiatry to modern warfare is not perfect. Psychiatrists do
not have good medications for post traumatic stress (PTSD) so they mix and
match drugs, trying to relieve the symptoms of social withdrawal, nightmares
and irritability.

So,
What’s Wrong?

Our soldiers
probably need the drugs if they are to continue as warriors. Despite the fact that we have been
at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than 10 years, the military medical
system cannot meet the demand for therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists. The New York Times
reported
that the military continues to report shortages of personnel in these
specialties, even though prescription medications have been readily available to
our soldiers for the last 10 years.

That has not always
been the case. There was some use of psychotropic drugs in the Vietnam War (not
to mention unauthorized use of LSD, marijuana and heroin), but the modern Army psychiatrist’s deployment
kit is likely to include nine kinds of
antidepressants, benzodiazepines for anxiety, four antipsychotics, two kinds of
sleep aids, and drugs for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder,
according to a 2007 review in the journal Military Medicine, in some peoples eyes the use of something such as full spectrum CBD vape oil could negate the need for the majority of those prescription pills to be included in an Army psychiatrist kit.

Peter Breggin, a New York psychiatrist who has
written widely about psychiatric drugs and violence, says:

“Prior to the Iraq war, soldiers could not go
into combat on psychiatric drugs, period. Not very long ago, going back maybe
10 or 12 years, you couldn’t even go into the armed services if you used any of
these drugs, in particular, stimulants, but they’ve changed that.”

The truth is you
probably would have had difficulty landing a job anywhere 12 years ago (2000),
not just in the military, if you used these drugs. Times have changed. We now
know that you can function quite well on many of them with careful monitoring
by a qualified professional.

But the military
environment, particularly in war zones, makes regulating the use of
prescription drugs a challenge compared with the civilian world. There is
limited monitoring since follow-up appointments in the battlefield are often
few and far between. Soldiers are sent out on deployment typically with 180
days’ worth of medications and an in-theater prescription refill for another
180 days, allowing them to trade with friends or self-medicate by taking more
or less than the prescribed number of pills at the end of an anxious day.

This shouldn’t be a
partisan political issue.
Why is it that we can’t just agree that our service members deserve the best care
we can possibly give them? The trade-off we have made, having an all volunteer
army augmented by volunteers in the reserves fighting two hot wars for 10 years
means too few fighters and more chance that people are going to break under the
pain and stress.

For the Army and the
Marines, prescribing these drugs has become a bet that whatever problems may occur
can be contained, said James Culp, a former Army paratrooper and now a high-profile
military defense lawyer:

“What do you do when 30 to 80 percent of the
people that you have in the military have gone on three or more deployments,
and they are mentally worn out? What do you do when they can’t sleep? You make
a calculated risk in prescribing these medications,”

This
isn’t a revelation. Since the dawn of time we’ve known that war has a cost, both
physically and mentally. The problem is that the human brain may just be the
most complicated thing we know of in the universe. We can’t just make it
all better with a pill cocktail.

Both
over-treatment and under-treatment invite risk, finding the right balance is even more difficult if nobody routinely
monitors the pill-taking.

For
our Congress not to demand more for troops facing multiple rotations and
exposure to pain and stress is WRONG!

What’s
Wrong Today:

In a press conference
that was not well-covered by the MSM, our ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker
told The
Daily Telegraph that if the West were to leave Afghanistan too early,
al-Qaeda would be able to increase its presence:

“Al-Qaeda is still
present in Afghanistan. If the West decides that 10 years in Afghanistan is too
long then they will be back, and the next time it will not be New York or
Washington, it will be another big Western city.”

Ambassador Crocker,
an Arabic speaker who took up his post in Kabul last year, having previously served as ambassador
to Iraq, said al-Qaeda remained a potent threat despite suffering setbacks. With the US preparing
to withdraw the majority of its combat forces from Afghanistan next year, Mr.
Crocker warned:

“We have killed all
the slow and stupid ones. But that means the ones that are left are totally dedicated.
We think we’ve won a campaign before our adversaries have even started to
fight. They have patience, and they know that we are short on that.”

Crocker claimed that
by killing many alleged al Qaeda militants, we have somehow made them stronger
by leaving their most dedicated fighters alive.

He continued:

“We think we’ve won a
campaign before our adversaries have even started to fight. They have patience,
and they know that we are short on that…If we decide we’re tired, they’ll be back.”

The
Christian Science Monitor also reported on Crocker’s thinking about the Strategic
Partnership Agreement that is under negotiation between the US and
Afghanistan, saying it will be:

“a powerful signal to
the Taliban that the international community will remain committed to
Afghanistan into the future.”

He
went on to say that the Taliban need to understand:

“this isn’t going to
be about holding out until 2014. It’s you getting killed, or dying of old age
and your sons facing the prospect of having to fight a war.”

So,
What’s Wrong?

This is
Ryan Crocker speaking, not that pilot who freaked out on the Jet Blue flight.

So begins
the effort to counter American public opinion, which
now thinks we should get out of Afghanistan. It is clear that Crocker is putting
forth the same fear mongering and
disinformation as so many of our current and former government officials have.

NATO believes that there
may be 100 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, based mainly in the Kunar and
Nuristan provinces near the border with Pakistan.

Of course, Ambassador
Crocker’s view is flawed given the fact that in reality, IF al-Qaeda is capable
of conducting another 9/11 style attack, they
could plan and initiate it from anywhere.

Does it
really matter that they might try to use Afghanistan a second time for this
purpose?

After
all, can’t they just as readily use Pakistan,
where they are today? Not to mention dozens of other places, including England,
France or Germany, or the US, to prepare such plots?

In reality, the
threat of domestic terrorism may
be more significant than potential
terror launched from Afghanistan, so
says this study by George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy
Institute. In September, 2011 the study indicated that there have been 52
homegrown plots since September 11, 2001. Despite the numbers, Homeland Security seems to be doing
a pretty good job of intercepting terrorist plots.

So, will spending
billions of incremental dollars and the attendant loss of life and limb on the
part of our military in Afghanistan prevent such threats? It will not.

Bush
invaded Afghanistan with the perfectly understandable motive of revenge for
9/11 and because we knew Bin Laden was there. Since then we have been treated
to a succession of increasingly ludicrous justifications as to why we must remain
there to the detriment of our young soldiers’ lives, our financial security and
our reputation in the third world.

It’s
over. The Taliban will return once we leave, whenever that is. All of our
technology, loss of lives and billions will have not been enough to make us
feel safe from terror.

To stay one day longer than the earliest we can leave is WRONG!

Can I interest you in a nice, shiny new war with Iran instead?

What’s
Wrong Today:

Gen.
John Allen, the top allied commander in Afghanistan told Congress on
Tuesday
that he would not recommend further American troop reductions until late this
year, after the departure of the current “surge” forces and the end of the
summer fighting season. Gen. Allen, a Marine four-star general, said that he
remained optimistic about eventual success but that it was too early to begin
shifting forces from battles in the south to the country’s turbulent eastern
provinces.

General
Allen’s testimony comes after a violent period in Afghanistan, beginning with
public protests and a series of murders of American troops by Afghan security
forces, after the burning of Korans by United States military personnel,
followed by a rampage attributed to an American soldier that left 16 Afghan
civilians dead.

He acknowledged
the current diplomatic crisis with Afghanistan, in which we will hand over
complete security control to Afghan forces, and stop the commando night raids, are
the subject of intense negotiation.

He
observed:

“Throughout
history, insurgencies have seldom been defeated by foreign forces,… Instead,
they have been ultimately beaten by indigenous forces. In the long run, our
goals can only be achieved and then secured by Afghan forces. Transition, then,
is the linchpin of our strategy, not merely the ‘way out.’ ”

We also hear
from Sens. McCain, Lieberman and Graham, or as the Wrongologist likes to call
them, the Mendacity Trio.

Today,they
have an Op-ed
in the Washington Post about staying the course in Afghanistan, informing
us that our efforts in Afghanistan have been successful to date, and that we
should listen closely to them in order to sustain that success:

 “To sustain this
fragile progress, it is critical that President Obama resist the shortsighted
calls for additional troop reductions, which would guarantee failure. Our
forces are slated to draw down to 68,000 by September — a faster pace than our
military commanders recommended, which has significantly increased the risks
for our mission…Two weeks ago, …our governments agreed on a timetable for
handing over detention operations. We are optimistic that a similar resolution
can be found soon regarding the gradual transfer of the lead for “night raids”
to Afghan forces. Already, Afghans increasingly lead these operations. The
success rate is overwhelming, and in most cases no shots are fired.”

So,
What’s Wrong?

Despite the happy
talk by Gen. Allen and the Mendacity Trio, there is a lot of bad news. Between
the Koran burning, corpse urinating and late night civilian killings by a rogue
soldier; our latest strategy of counterinsurgency
(COIN) plus surge is clearly failing. The COIN doctrine invokes the
imagery of an “ink blot”: Operations begin in a small area then spread
out to adjacent villages and districts, winning people over and detaching them
from the insurgents.

However,
in Afghanistan, routine contact with locals all too often breeds contempt.

 

 

The remarkable failure of COIN is demonstrated by the epidemic
of killings
of Coalition troops by the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), the allies
we are supposed to train and work with in the transition described by Gen
Allen. Here are the data:

 

·   From
Sep. 2008 to May 2011, there were 21 incidents in which ANSF members killed 51 Coalition
personnel, with another 50 wounded

·  The
trend is worsening since mid-July 2010; 15 incidents led to 39 deaths of which
32 were US personnel

·  From
Nov. 2010 to May 2011, 16% of all
hostile deaths of our troops in Afghanistan were at the hands of ANSF
personnel

 These
sobering data come from a 70-page coalition report,
titled “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility”. It is a damning
description of the current antipathy between the Afghans and the Coalition
forces. The report warns that the magnitude of the killings “may be unprecedented between
‘allies’ in modern history…and…could undermine the entire war effort.”

The report was
written by Jeffrey Bordin, PhD. a political and behavioral
scientist working for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. Mr. Bordin and similar
researchers, are part of a so-called Red Team within the military, tasked with
finding weaknesses and shortcomings that the enemy may exploit. Their job is to
develop the worst-case scenario as part of planning for the future of the war.

 

They conducted 68
focus groups, surveying 613 Afghan soldiers and police officers, 215 American
soldiers and 30 Afghan interpreters who worked for the Americans.

While the
report focused on three areas of eastern Afghanistan, many of the Afghan
soldiers interviewed had served elsewhere in Afghanistan and the author
believes that they constitute a representative sample of attitudes elsewhere in
the country.

“There are pervasive feelings of animosity
and distrust that ANSF personnel have towards U.S. forces,” the report says,
using the military’s abbreviation for Afghan security forces. The list of
Afghan complaints against the Americans ran the gamut from the killing of
civilians to urinating in public and cursing.

The
findings for Afghan soldiers were divided into 4 tiers. The Top Tier groupings
were those which had led to a least
one serious altercation between US and Afghan forces. These were
mentioned by more than 33% of the ANSF members interviewed:

· US
shouldn’t conduct night raids

· US
soldiers do not respect Afghan women

· They
set up roadblocks and will not let us pass

·  If
attacked, they shoot indiscriminately

·  They
curse constantly

·  They
urinate in public even in front of women

Some comments
included: “U.S. soldiers don’t listen, they are too arrogant,” said one of the
Afghan soldiers surveyed, according to the report. “They get upset due to their
casualties, so they take it out on civilians during their searches,” said
another.

The
Americans were equally scathing. Because of the smaller cohort, their findings
were grouped into two tiers. The top tier included comments that were made by
50% or more of our troops:

· ANSF
are drug abusers (74%+ use hashish)

· They
are thieves

·  They
are traitorous

·  They
are unstable/dangerous

·   Incompetent
on a project/mission

·   They
have poor leadership

·   Unsafe
weapons handling

·   Gutless
in combat

·   Brutal
treatment of dogs

“U.S.
soldiers’ perceptions of ANSF members were extremely negative across
categories,” the report found. Those categories included “trustworthiness on
patrol,” “honesty and integrity,” and “drug abuse.” The Americans also voiced
suspicions about the Afghans being in league with the Taliban, a problem well
documented among the Afghan police.

“They are
stoned all the time; some even while on patrol with us,” one soldier was quoted
as saying. Another said, “They are pretty much gutless in combat; we do most of
the fighting.”

The report concludes that there is a dangerous “crisis of
trust” between Afghan forces and American soldiers that is being ignored
by top commanders. It
documents MANY occasions when Afghani
soldiers say that they have aimed weapons at US troops when there is a
conflict while on joint patrol.  Mr. Bordin goes on to
characterize the shootings of Americans by Afghan troops as “a severe and rapidly metastasizing
malignancy.”

In Conclusion:

Where does
the war go from here? Reading
the horror-inducing findings in this report must call into question the Obama
Administration’s exit strategy and the assumptions on which it is based. The huge challenge facing the country
and President Obama is that we can’t trust our allies.

And it is very doubtful that this
will change in the next 12 months if it hasn’t changed in the last 10 years.
Without trust, how can the Transition proceed?

At the hearing
with Gen Allen, Rep. Walter B. Jones, (R-NC), asked:

“Over the past 10
years, I have been hearing from the administration and those who were in your
position prior to you being in here today,” Mr. Jones said. “Everything is:
‘Our gains are sustainable, but there will be setbacks. We are making progress,
but it’s — it’s fragile and reversible.’ ”

He paused,
and asked, “Why are we still there?”

Rep. Jones captures
the essence of the problem quite succinctly, if unintentionally:

Despite
today’s cheerleading by Sens. McCain, Lieberman and Graham, and Tuesday’s
cheerleading by Gen Allen; a member of the U.S. Congress with seventeen years
of service is asking the ranking General of the U.S. Armed Forces in
Afghanistan to justify to him the war we are fighting there.

Surely, it is the
other way around:
It is the responsibility of the U.S. Congress as representatives of all U.S.
citizens to provide us with cogent reasons for war. And if not to us, then to the
men and women who volunteer to serve in good faith, and if not to them, then at
least to themselves.

We built our strategy assuming at
its foundation that our two cultures could work toward a common goal in
Afghanistan. That the senior partners would turn over the job to the junior
partners as their capabilities grew.

We assumed that our troops and the
Afghan troops could work together.  

It is clear that these assumptions
and our entire strategy are WRONG!

What’s
Wrong Today:

This summer, health
insurance companies may have to pay more
than a billion dollars back to their own customers. The rebate
requirements were introduced as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and are
meant to benefit consumers.

It is known as the medical
loss ratio rule (MLR). According to Cheryl Clark of Health
Leaders Media, the health reform law requires insurance companies in the
individual and small group markets (less than 100 insured) to spend at least
80% of their premium dollars collected on medical care and quality
improvements. For companies in the large group market, the rate is 85%,

Under this provision, 80 to
85 cents of every dollar insurers collect in premiums must be spent on medical
care or activities that improve the quality of that care. If not, they must
send their customers a rebate for the difference. The goal, according to the
Department of Health and Human Services, is to limit the money insurers spend on administrative
costs and profit.

So, What’s Wrong?

An insurer-supported Senate
bill aims to roll back the rebates.

Last month, Sen. Mary
Landrieu, D-La., introduced a bill that would change what costs
companies can include in the 15 to 20 percent they are allotted for overhead,
salaries and marketing. The bill, similar to a House bill introduced in March
2011 that has 180
co-sponsors, but has yet to come up for a vote, focuses on protecting payments to insurance agents and brokers.

Traditionally, these
commissions are bundled into the administrative costs when making the final
calculation. But insurance regulators in 21 States, including Landrieu’s
Louisiana, have argued that fees paid to insurance agents and brokers
shouldn’t count.

If enacted into law, this change
could mean big savings for insurance companies — and much smaller rebates for
consumers.

This is the first year that
companies are required to send out rebates. According to a report by state
insurance commissioners, if rebates had been handed out last year, insurers would have had to pay
consumers almost $2 billion.
If broker fees were carved out, as proposed in the two current bills, consumers
would have gotten only about $800 million. While most insurance companies are
expected to hit the 80 to 85 percent target, those that do not may be required
to send out rebates this year.

Pro Publica quoted Sondra Roberto, a
spokesperson for Consumers Union, which also publishes Consumer Reports:

“[The bills] would
water down the standard to a point where it becomes ineffective…Some insurance
companies pay an inordinate amount, as much as 40 percent, on administration
and profit and not health care..”

Consumers Union has urged
members to oppose the bill.

The rebates have gotten
relatively little attention. Only 38
percent of the public
is even aware of the rule’s existence, according to a Kaiser poll.

Insurance companies have
supported both the House and Senate bills, claiming that the rebate rule will
cause them to lower broker commissions and stifle jobs. They also claim that it
drives up insurance premiums. A 2011 government report found that most
insurance companies were lowering broker commissions, while only one firm was in
fact, considering lowering their premiums to meet the requirements, as the
administration had hoped.

In all cases, the way the
ACA was written, insurance companies will be required to make all their costs
publicly available so consumers can see how their premium dollars are spent.

Let’s
get this straight: The insurance companies (through their regulators) are
moaning that the legislation will drive up premiums? Above the 25%-35% annual increases we have seen recently? Insurance brokers are saying that they may have to leave
the business if their commissions are reduced?

All of that seems doubtful.
So, what’s up with Mary Landrieu?

The Senator must owe
Louisiana’s insurance brokers.

Shows that the glad handing
is shrink-wrapped to ensure freshness.

And it is WRONG!

What’s Wrong Today:

White House Press Secretary
Jay Carney responded at Monday’s
White House press briefing about how we should react to the Qur’an
burning blowback with extended comments about how our goal in Afghanistan was
to defeat al Qaeda.

So, What’s Wrong?

Carney’s view of our strategy
would come as big news to our soldiers, who think they are fighting the
Taliban. BTW, THERE ARE NO AL QAEDA FIGHTERS IN AFGHANISTAN. None to speak of,
anyway.

But the Taliban are
apparently not the enemy. Carney said nothing about fighting them. Here are
some Carney excerpts:

“What the President
did when he reviewed U.S. policy in Afghanistan was insist that we focus our
attention on what our absolute goals in the country should be, and prioritize
them.  And he made clear that the number-one priority, the reason why U.S.
troops are in Afghanistan in the first place, is to disrupt, dismantle and
ultimately defeat al Qaeda.

We can’t forget
what the mission is, though, and the fact that the need to disrupt, dismantle
and defeat al Qaeda remains.

We will be unrelenting
in our pursuit of al Qaeda and unrelenting in our efforts to remove leaders of
al Qaeda from the battlefield.”

Displaying a remarkable
inability to process the meaning of current events in Afghanistan, White House
spokesman Jay Carney ventured dangerously close to “Baghdad
Bob” territory by declaring that there is no reason to change the strategy
or timetable for withdrawal in Afghanistan.  

Then ABC’s Jake Tapper
asked some good questions:

Q   
When I interviewed then-CIA director Leon Panetta a couple years ago, he said
there were fewer than 100 CIA — I mean, I’m sorry — he said there were fewer
than 100 al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan.  How many do we think are
there now?  About the same amount?

MR. CARNEY:  I
don’t have a specific number for you.

Q   
When is the last time U.S. troops in Afghanistan killed anybody associated with
al Qaeda?

MR. CARNEY: 
Well, I would refer you to ISAF and the Defense Department for that.  I
don’t have that information.

Here’s
More of What’s Wrong:
According to Carney, we are actually fighting someone to defeat someone else.
And the goal isn’t even to defeat the people we are fighting. And the people we
really want to defeat aren’t even fighting. Sort of through the looking glass,
isn’t it?

This has to be demoralizing
for U.S. troops who are being shot at by the people who the White House thinks are
not our enemies. The White House seems
to think:

Maybe we
can shoot at the Taliban, and if we miss, we’ll hit an al Qaeda operative
hiding in Pakistan.

The White House used to talk
about “breaking the Taliban’s momentum,” but now we’re not trying to do break anyone’s
momentum. If things weren’t so serious in Afghanistan, these statements by our
government’s spokesman would be merely comic.

But given the costs that we
are sustaining, these public statements and policies that underlie them are morally
repugnant.

We won in Iraq, but now
it’s fallen apart and will end up in a civil war. Afghanistan will be the same.
We engage in two wars where we never lose a battle, but we lose the wars.

The Administration knows better,
but we the people never learn.

Misstating our goal in
Afghanistan is reprehensible and WRONG!