Middle East Strategy – Page 23

Monday Wake Up Call – January 12, 2015

Rod Stewart turned 70 over the weekend. Married three times with eight children, he is worth about $150 million, give or take, and is still working. There are hundreds of Stewart songs to choose from, but here is the Rodster with Jeff Beck and Ronnie Wood, from the Jeff Beck Group’s album “Truth” recorded in 1968, doing “Rock My Plimsoul”:

A Plimsoul is a guitar pedal. While Beck and Stewart give themselves writing credit for “Rock My Plimsoul“, it is actually by BB King, written in 1964. Here is his “Rock Me Baby“:

Monday linkage:

Remember sub-prime loans? They’re back as auto loans, with the same delinquencies:

Over 8.4% of subprime auto loans taken out in the first quarter of 2014 were already delinquent by November, according to an analysis of Equifax data by Moody’s Analytics…That’s the highest rate of early subprime delinquencies since…2008.

Is our nuclear waste a goldmine? Possibly.

Professional Cuddlers: The Snuggling Industry Takes Off, but Clothes Stay On. The WSJ is on top of all the new trends.

Doctor offers abortions from a ship: In her documentary, “Vessel”, Rebecca Gomperts, provided abortions on a ship in offshore waters.

Tiny computer with Windows 8.1, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for $149, debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

Is it time for another George Zimmerman defense fund? Who could have predicted that Zimmerman would be in trouble again? Well, anyone with two functioning brain cells could have predicted it.

5 months of air strikes in Iraq and Syria in 4 charts: Since Aug. 8, the US has carried out 1,689 strikes in Iraq and Syria against more than 3,200 ISIS targets. From the first day of strikes through Jan. 2, the bombing has cost $1.2 billion, with an average daily cost of $8.2 million a day.

Analog search before Google: People sent their questions to reference librarians, no matter how strange. The New York Public Library had the foresight to write the questions down, including ones pre-dating the library’s reference desk itself. Like this one:

Ya sleep with a guy worth $27 million, and you don’t get his name? You deserve to remain single and poor.

Thought for the week: Give up on trying to appeal to reason. If appeals to reason worked, the GOP would get fewer votes than the Libertarians or Greens. During Adlai Stevenson’s 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!”

Stevenson replied: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”

Monday Wake Up Call – January 5, 2015

Let’s start the first Monday of the New Year with this photo of a hermaphrodite Northern Cardinal:

The half-red, half-white plumage of this northern cardinal is caused by its sex chromosomes not segregating properly after fertilization, so the bird is half-male, half-female. You can read more in New Scientist magazine here.

Last night, Wrongo watched Martin Scorsese’s film, The Last Waltz, which documents the last concert by the roots-rock group, The Band. Late in the movie, Robbie Robertson recounts jamming with the great harmonica player, Sonny Boy Williamson in the early 1960s, and making (never-realized) plans to work together. Obviously, Robertson, Helm, et al. went on to be the band that backed Bob Dylan in the 1970s.

Here is your Monday musical wake-up: Sonny Boy Williamson playing and singing “99”, in which he can’t come up with that last dollar to make the $100 his girlfriend wants:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP668KiaY7E

Here are links that you may have missed:

Drone etiquette is one of several issues covered in the WSJ’s “21 Tech Do’s and Don’ts for 2015.” Really, drone etiquette is gonna be a thing in 2015?

Dynamic scoring is not about succeeding in the bar scene, it’s a new Republican way of using the Congressional Budget Office to make tax cuts look good. The Wrongologist wrote about this in December.

Georgia police chief shoots wife (twice) while “moving” his Glock pistol in their bed. Yea, well, more for the “good guy with a gun” file. BTW, Glocks don’t accidentally fire, they have a unique safety mechanism, so you have to pull the trigger to fire it.

California colleges see surge in efforts to unionize adjunct faculty. At nearly a dozen private colleges in California, adjunct professors are holding first-time contract negotiations, or are campaigning to win the right to do so.

Almost one-fifth of the nation’s enclosed malls have vacancy rates considered troubling by real estate experts (10% or greater). Over 3% of malls are considered to be dying, with 40% vacancies or higher. That is up from less than 1% in 2006. Another impact of income inequality: High-end malls are thriving, while malls with anchor stores like Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney falter.

Don’t try this at home: In 2015, the European Union is increasing taxes on purchases of digital content like e-books and smartphone applications. The taxes are part of a continuing push to tax the region’s digital economy more heavily. It will raise over $1 billion.

The latest ISIS offensive in Iraq’s Anbar Province may have reversed weeks of progress by Iraq’s government forces. And it only took a few hours. No airstrikes were launched by US coalition forces in time to support the ground troops.

“From 07:00 until 11:00, we lost territory that had taken us two weeks to gain. In a few hours, it was gone,” said a senior officer from the Iraqi Army’s 7th Division.

Is ISIS the Khmer Rouge With Prayer Mats?

Does our military history show us anything helpful for dealing with ISIS today? Do we have a former foe that resembles ISIS?

The best analogy to ISIS is the Khmer Rouge (KR). The Khmer Rouge managed to kill 2 million Cambodians (close to 30% of the nation’s population), from 1975 to 1979. Ideology played an important role in the KR genocide. The KR wanted to return Cambodia to its “mythic past”, to stop foreign aid, which they saw as a corrupting influence, and to restore the country to an agrarian society based on Stalinist and Maoist ideals.

The Khmer Rouge worked at it for 4 years until 1979, when, after the US failed to stem the tide with airpower and a brief 1970 boots on the ground adventure (the Cambodian incursion), the army of the Republic of Vietnam ousted the KR and its leader Pol Pot, liberating the Cambodian people. Our response to the KR overthrow was to impose economic sanctions on Cambodia. Their crime was to be liberated by our enemy, who had also defeated us.

Nixon had reached out to China in 1972, and created a few strange political bedfellows. Throughout the 1980s, the US, the European powers and China continued to recognize the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia and blocked moves to place Pol Pot and his colleagues on trial. In fact, Zbigniew Brzezinski has said:

I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.

It took until 2014 to try the KR on genocide. The case is still working its way through the Cambodian courts.

The KR goal of purifying the nation via aggressive conversion of its people is starkly similar to the goals of ISIS, and in many ways, ISIS are the Khmer Rouge with prayer mats. Both wear (wore) black. Both morphed from destabilization engendered by the West. Both ruthlessly murdered rival factions, aiming to become the sole standard-bearer for fellow travelers in their region.

The parallels are sickly similar: The KR used brutality as a compliance technique − ripping fetuses from living women, smashing babies against trees – as does ISIS, randomly beheading and tweeting the result, burying women and kids alive. The KR were fundamental atheists – promising to tear down every temple, and kill all the monks, which they often did. Just as ISIS are fundamental believers, slaughtering the infidels, the heathens, the Christians, the Shia, or even certain Sunni tribes.

Fast forward to 2014 and there are obvious parallels between Cambodia and the Middle East. Both situations out of which the KR and ISIS emerged, were in part created by the West’s meddling in the geopolitics of the two regions.

The war in Iraq exposed that country’s deep sectarian divide. The Arab Spring toppled the Gaddafi regime. That led directly to Libya’s descent into lawlessness and fragmentation. After Libya came Syria, where ISIS currently constitutes the dominant opposition to Assad. Their faction includes thousands of foreign fighters, all of whom hew to a barbaric methodology that is similar to that of the Khmer Rouge. They have no political center to negotiate with, or anything to offer the region, except more sectarian violence and bloodletting. This is why Mr. Obama said they must be destroyed.

The lens of the KR’s frenzy may be a good way to view ISIS. First there was the KR’s bloodlust, whereby they slaughtered their own, including nominal KR supporters, who were thought to be less than true believers. Then they invaded a more powerful neighbor, Vietnam, leading to their own destruction. Thirteen years after the fall of Pol Pot and the KR, communism itself came tumbling down at the Berlin Wall. It turned out that the KR was the Meta example of extreme communism.

Far from ushering in a global Marxist Utopia, KR brought about its own demise.

That is also similar to the disjuncture between Islam and ISIS. As the KR’s brand of communism was rejected as a perversion by the vast majority of communists in the world, so the ideology of ISIS seems to be at least outwardly rejected by the bulk of the world’s Sunni Muslims, on the same grounds.

Could ISIS represent the final form of radical Islam? We can only hope that is true.

Finally, remember that Syria and Iran are nominal “enemies” of the US who are now confronting ISIS in Syria and Iraq. We have, for the most part, exited Iraq and are bombing ISIS, much like our less-than-successful bombing of the KR in the early 1970s.

We had no stake on the ground in Cambodia. We eventually reconciled with Vietnam and with Cambodia. Today, we have a limited stake in Syria and Iraq. Can we, or should we, work with a different set of “strange bedfellows” to blunt the challenge of ISIS in the Middle East?

Monday Wake Up Call – December 8, 2014

We wake up this morning remembering that it is 34 years to the day since John Lennon was killed outside the Dakota in NYC.

The Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So Right lived in a loft in the Wall Street area in 1980 when Lennon was killed. That night, December 8, 1980, we were listening to Vin Scelsa on the (at the time) free-form radio station, WNEW-FM, when Vinny announced that Lennon had been shot. He later announced that John had died.

Why kill Lennon? Certainly he was not everyone’s cup of Earl Gray. The common view of The Beatles was that Paul was cute, Ringo was funny and George was cerebral. John was the thinker and renegade, clearly too edgy for some. Here is a Lennon song that was sung at our wedding just the year before:

John did more than write and sing music. He was an advocate against the Vietnam War and marched with people in protest on the streets of New York. Nixon tried to get him deported. But that didn’t work, although Mark David Chapman had a different plan for sending John away.

Your Monday Links:

How did that Arab Spring work out for Egyptians? Maybe not well at all.

Newborns in India are now dying at alarming rates from infections that used to be curable. We may have reached the apocalyptic scenario with antibiotics.

Here is a handy map that shows the geography that ISIS controls today.

Eight Los Angeles police officers who shot at two women over 100 times will not lose their jobs. They won’t even be suspended. They’ll just get some additional training.

Is “pay for performance” medical care helping or hurting patients?

Everything you think you know about Clausewitz is wrong.

Confirming just what you thought: Southern states have the lowest economic mobility in the country. Red states run by white Republicans, filled with people who have the blues.

Here is a thought for the day of Lennon’s death:

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner, from Requiem for a Nun

Cheaper Oil Prices: Who Wins?

When OPEC announced on Thanksgiving Day that it would maintain oil production at 30 million barrels per day, a volume above the world’s current supply/demand equilibrium, the global price of oil dropped precipitously. Today, you can pay more for a gallon of milk than a gallon of gas.

After the meetings ended, the Saudi oil minister was smiling victoriously, while representatives of several other OPEC nations were steaming. That group included Venezuela, Algeria, and Iran. From Reuters:

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister told fellow OPEC members they must combat the US shale oil boom, arguing against cutting crude output in order to depress prices and undermine the profitability of North American producers. Ali al-Naimi won the argument at Thursday’s meeting, against the wishes of ministers from OPEC’s poorer members such as Venezuela, Iran and Algeria which had wanted to cut production to reverse a rapid fall in oil prices.

The question before the house is who gets hurt by lower priced oil?

• Iran, Venezuela, Algeria, Mexico, Iraq, Nigeria, and Ecuador have built their domestic budgets based on oil prices that exceed $100/barrel of oil. But, yesterday’s price was $70.54. Venezuela already borrowed $4 Billion from the Chinese, and then spent $1 Billion in a week to cover domestic needs.
• Russia’s break-even budget price of oil is over $100/barrel.
• Canada has managed to increase its production of oil by a million barrels a day over the last decade. But almost all of that increase has come from oil sands that are unprofitable at today’s price.
• Mexico’s oil was selling for $63.72/ barrel on Monday, its lowest point since July 2009. Mexico cannot survive for long at this price, especially considering that oil revenues account for roughly one-third of government finances.
• Keystone Pipeline: The Fiscal Times reports today that it may never be completed. Lower oil prices may make Canadian oil sands output (it is supposed to travel via Keystone to Louisiana) too costly to ship. Also, Saudi is taking aim at Canada, since the Saudi crude competes directly with Canada’s tar sands oil, which is the highest cost oil being produced today.
• The Koch Brothers may now have to produce oil at a loss from their vast holdings of tar sands. But, their party is the Saudis’ best friend, so in a way, this may cause some Republicans to recalibrate their love of Saudi Arabia.

We should be happy with lower oil prices, right?

• Gas prices at the pump are down dramatically. Lower gas prices are an increase in take-home pay for Americans who drive.
• Iran’s foreign policy is very expensive, since it supports Syria, Hamas and Iraq. They may soon have to make difficult choices that entail scaling back their regional commitments. They may have trouble maintaining those commitments and their nuclear program.
• Russia’s currency has fallen steeply along with the price of oil, meaning that it may have to restrict imports of key goods. Russia imports a lot of basic products, including beef, cheese, shoes, TV’s, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. According to Bloomberg, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov estimates that Russia would also lose about $100 billion in revenue next year because of falling oil prices.

We live in a complex world:

1. Our major ally, the Dark Ages Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, perhaps the world’s largest funder of terrorism in the ME, is attempting to prevent our move towards energy independence. As long as the Saudis control much of our energy supply, we will remain involved in these ME wars. Many people think that our State Dept. may have encouraged the Saudis in order to punish Russia for blocking our takeover in the Ukraine.
2. Oil is not used to generate much electricity in the US. Cheaper oil does nothing to effect the economic viability of solar or wind, whose main competitors are coal and natural gas. The primary effect here in the US is twofold:

• Reduce the economic attractiveness of fracking (a good percentage of fracking is for natural gas, and will not be effected by cheaper oil).
• Reduce the demand for electric cars to the extent that their sales are a function of lower gas prices.

Low oil prices over a long enough period will burst the US fracking bubble. We could react to cheap oil by ending fracking and never starting it up again. We could plug the wells, clean the soil, repair the damage from earthquakes, pay the medical bills of the innocent folks forced to live near these sites. And, in a time of water scarcity, save the billions of gallons of water that are used to frack today.

Finally, the economic pressure lower priced oil puts on our so-called “enemies” brings with it the real cost of confirming the neo-con view that the US can still muscle its way around in the world. So, will our relations with Iran, Syria, and Russia will remain intractable? Or, can it lead to a nuclear deal with Iran and a political accommodation with Russia? That has to be the underlying bet by Saudi Arabia and the US.

The “oil weapon” was used in 1973 against the US. We hated OPEC’s war on our economy back then. We of course, used that very same old oil weapon when we embargoed oil sales by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Skip ahead a couple of decades, and it is now smart policy, it’s effective, and it’s now the American way.

Oil, as always, remains the centerpiece of our Middle East strategy.

Monday Wake Up – November 24, 2014

Today’s wake-up is for the American people.

The NYT reported on Saturday that the Obama administration has changed the rules for American soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan. It means that our troops could have a more direct role in the fighting for at least another year. From the NYT:

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops, or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year…

The new orders clarify the rules of engagement before US forces engage in combat. They can go after terrorist organizations; they can protect themselves, and they can come to the assistance of Afghan forces in need. This last rule has the potential to bog us down, despite the fact that troop levels are coming down to about 10,000.

Then, on Sunday, came this from the NYT under the headline: “Hour’s Drive Outside Kabul, Taliban Reign”. From the article:

…southern Kapisa Province has quietly become one of the greatest challenges of the war for the new government…In the absence of international troops or their air support, the Taliban have eclipsed the legitimacy of government forces there and in several other parts of the country… the insurgents…already control a crucial stretch of a highway leading into Kabul, and some local officials believe the militants are trying to carve a large area of Taliban rule across the lower two-thirds of the province.

Apparently, our generals have been lobbying Mr. Obama for a more aggressive posture on the ground, which explains the new rules of engagement.

Why is it so hard for us to quit Afghanistan? It was super easy to decide to go in there, and we seem to be bent on playing in that sandbox forever. We have failed once again to leave well (bad) enough alone.

But it was not just the generals and politicians who failed, it was the American people. We were astonishingly easy to corrupt. We can point to any number of contributing factors for that, overly emotional after 9/11, improper education about the Middle East, out-of-control capitalism, rapid social change − you name it, we looked the other way rather than think about consequences. Now, we are where we are, and none of us as individuals are in a position to do much of anything about it. But as a nation and as a people, we didn’t rise to the occasion.

And when was the last time the American people and their politicians actually “rose to the occasion”? Watergate? At least then both parties seemed to understand that a response was needed to the “mistake”. The Church Commission hearings and legislation on the CIA’s abuses? The Savings and Loan clean-up of the late 80s?

Let’s just say it’s been a while. Maybe it’s time we did again.

The question is whether we have any better understanding of what we are doing today. We seem to just recycle the same failed ME strategy. And it seems to be dictated more by the Congressional politics than by some informed sense of how to deal with the multiple threats we have in front of us.

On that happy note, here is today’s wake-up tune, “Sorry I Stole Your Man” by The Detroit-based Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas. They were on Letterman last week doing the same song, but the Wrongologist prefers this live version performed at the Magic Bag in July, 2012:

Some think she sounds like Amy Winehouse, but not the Wrongologist. Like their sound, and you can get up and dance to it.

Monday’s Links:

Mistakes were made: California officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of fracking waste water into underground aquifers. They were supposed to be off-limits, protected by EPA, who calls them “non-exempt” aquifers. They are underground bodies of water that “contain high quality water” that can be used by humans to drink, water animals or irrigate crops.

Don’t say it can’t happen here: Last week, Germany’s left-leaning Green party won, ending six decades of conservative rule in one of Germany’s wealthiest states. The 30 year-old party that former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt called “environmental idiots” have shaken up politics in their country.

Lower gas prices made gas stations more money: As gas stations cut the cost at the pump, they didn’t pass all of the savings along. The Labor Department reported that margins for fuel and lubricant retailers jumped by 26.1% in October, in a month when gasoline prices fell to an average of $3.12 a gallon from $3.46 in September.

Homeland Security is gathering in Ferguson MO: Facebook pictures of Homeland Security SUVs parked at a hotel cost a Navy veteran his job at the hotel.

Kill the robots: A vending machine that dispenses prescription drugs has been installed on Arizona State University’s campus, allowing any student or university employee to pick up their drugs from the dispenser.

RIP Mike Nichols. We remember you for films like: “The Graduate”, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, “Silkwood”, “Catch-22”, and “Charlie Wilson’s War”.

Your thought for the week: (especially you Republicans)

“The problem with doing nothing is not knowing when you’re finished.” – Ben Franklin

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 23, 2014

What to be thankful for this week? No Benghazi. Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-CA) and Chair of the House Intelligence Committee concluded the Benghazi affair by finding that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees. So, there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

A few things that will come up this week: First, the Grand Jury in Ferguson will finally give us the slow “He didn’t kill Michael Brown” decision. Who knows what will happen then. Tory Russell, co-founder of resistance group Hands Up United, Ferguson, MO said:

How can I prepare kids for the world if I’m not preparing the world for the kids?

Next, we could have a decision on Iran’s nuclear program. If the P5+1 make a deal with Iran, it will transform the Middle East. Don’t hold your Thanksgiving dinner waiting for it to happen. Finally, the mud wrestling in Washington will continue.

Immigration has always involved executive orders:

Why are Republicans so upset about Immigration?

Here’s why: They now have a very safe majority in the House, and an unsafe, but possibly sustainable majority in the Senate. If they actually pass an immigration bill, they will be primaried from the right in many of their less-than-safe House districts. So, the posturing about Obama being a “king” and “shredding the Constitution”.

Calls for meeting in the middle are meaningless:

Keystone and Immigration may be intimately connected:

Manson family values meets Cosby family values:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 16, 2014

The Wrongologist is reading Jay Winik’s April 1865: The Month That Saved America. It is about the end game in our Civil War. Winik describes how Lincoln, Lee and Grant actively decided to save America from the terrible fate that has befallen other countries afflicted by Civil War – countries like Bosnia, or Northern Ireland. Winik also reminds us of how old and durable the political split in this country has been.

And how breathtakingly vehement. And our current bitterness is consistent with our past bitterness. The names change, the parties re-configure, the particular issues in contention vary. And if you think you’ve seen the worst of it, well, read some history. They say it tends to repeat:

They say you have a mandate:

Keystone Pipeline looks like it will pass:

We either did, or did not, get an emissions deal with China:

Throughout his campaign for reelection, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell said it would be foolhardy to raise carbon dioxide emissions standards on American companies as long as China was sticking to business as usual. But now that China has agreed to take a big step away from using coal as its primary fuel source, McConnell still wants to fight implementation of the new agreement.

Then there is the collegiality shown by Mr. Boehner:

Who will work with Obama first?

Kerry’s Hair Seems Unconvinced

From the “One picture worth a thousand words” Department:

[State Department photo/ Public Domain]
A shopkeeper sells an oil lamp to Secretary of State John Kerry during Mr. Kerry’s visit to the Muttrah Souk in Muscat, Oman on November 10th, during a break in the stalled nuclear negotiations with Iran.

Kerry said:

Sometimes one has to resort to unusual measures to solve all these difficult problems.

The guy in the souk, apparently named Ali Baba (of course!) told Kerry:

This genie lamp will magically enlighten the world about your wisdom.

Really? Enlightenment about John F. Kerry’s wisdom? It is difficult to resist commenting. Is Kerry purchasing tchotchke to put in one of his many homes? Is he onboarding a new foreign policy tool for his team? Possibly, Kerry is asking, “what can you tell me about its provenance”? Maybe he’s thinking that it would be cool to bring an exotic, three wish device to his next Skull and Bones drink up, and that he could summon a young woman from the lamp.

Is Kerry hoping that genie power is stronger than nuclear power?

Another way to view it is that the merchant is trying to close the deal by reassuring Kerry that the magic genie lamp will definitely grant the US Secretary of State three wishes. After all, it was made in China.

Maybe Kerry thinks he can use the lamp to:

1. Make Assad disappear
2. Make Putin disappear
3. Make Xi Jinping disappear

All Departments of State want a secret diplomatic weapon. Sadly, ours is not John Kerry.

And it probably isn’t a Genie Lamp purchased at the Souk

What Have We Learned from 13 years of War?

“The Americans have all the clocks…but we have all the time” – Taliban Commander

On Veteran’s Day, the Wrongologist asked himself whether, after the last 13 years of war in the Middle East, conducted by four presidents, with the loss of many thousands of American lives, and the expenditure of trillions of dollars, what have we learned?

Maybe, not enough. So, here are three more credits in the Big Picture:

Syria became the 14th country in the Islamic world that US forces have invaded or occupied or bombed, and in which American soldiers have killed or been killed. And that’s just since 1980. Here’s the list:

Iran (1980, 1987-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-present), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-present), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002-present), Pakistan (2004-present) and now, Syria.

We need to figure out what we have learned from all of this intervention in the Middle East. We need to total up what we have accomplished in the Middle East, and what a sustained war footing has cost us as a nation. Our veterans and the American people deserve an accounting.

On Tuesday, the NYT had an op-ed by Daniel Bolger, a retired General who fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Bolger wants us to stop saying that the surge won the Iraq War:

The surge in Iraq did not “win” anything. It bought time. It allowed us to kill some more bad guys and feel better about ourselves. But in the end, shackled to a corrupt, sectarian government in Baghdad…the surge just forestalled today’s stalemate. Like a handful of aspirin gobbled by a fevered patient, the surge cooled the symptoms. But the underlying disease didn’t go away. The remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgents we battled for more than eight years simply re-emerged this year as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Please read Bolger’s book, “Why We Lost – A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars”. Its first paragraph:

I am a United Sates Army general, and I lost the Global War on Terrorism. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous; step one is admitting you have a problem. Well, I have a problem. So do my peers. And thanks to our problem, now all of America has a problem, to wit: two lost campaigns and a war gone awry.

Americans have the problem, our politicians have the problem, and so do our generals. We think that we can: i) bring stability wherever it is needed, or ii) remake parts of the world in our image. Well, we can’t. And the world doesn’t want us to even try to do it. America has many fine attributes and things to be proud of, but there is a naïve and possibly purposefully ignorant side of the American psyche that gets us into trouble. It is the myth of American exceptionalism. It bleeds into our politics, our popular culture, and much of our military. You only need to look at Tuesday’s Concert for Valor to see how deeply we are infected by the Exceptionalism myth.

We need a debate. What are we doing in the Middle East? Andrew Bacevich, a professor and retired army colonel has said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

You know, we live in a country where if you want to go bomb somebody, there’s remarkably little discussion about how much it might cost, even though the costs almost inevitably end up being orders of magnitude larger than anybody projected at the outcome. But when you have a discussion about whether or not we can assist people who are suffering, then suddenly we come very, you know, cost-conscious…

Has the Middle East become more or less stable? Has it become more democratic? Is there less anti-Americanism? The answer is “no” to all. So, it is time to recognize that US military intervention in the Middle East has failed us as a primary means of US policy.

Mr. Obama’s bet — the same bet made by each of his predecessors, going back to Carter — is that the application of US military power would solve the dilemma of the moment. All of them were wrong, and so is he. Without a real debate, when the 14th campaign runs its course, a 15th will be waiting.

One thing worthy of debate is whether we should return to a universal service based on a mandatory draft. Richard Nixon replaced the draft with a lottery. That morphed into our all-volunteer armed forces. And thus, the ideal of the citizen/soldier was another casualty of the Vietnam War.

Non-professional soldiers would assure that we debate what we are doing militarily. It would engage the public in our foreign military strategy, unlike their current engagement with an all-professional military.

Will Congress ever agree to a commission to examine our grand strategy in the Middle East? Not without real civilian pressure. Who in their wildest imagination, after Vietnam, would have thought we would commit to a military strategy and a foreign policy that produced the debacle we now have in the Middle East?

Then again, how long will Sisyphus continue to roll that rock up War Mountain?

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Middle East Strategy