Military Strategy – Page 16

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 14, 2014

In this week’s “Parade of Bad News”: Yes, the Wrongologist remembers where he was on 9/11, but where we are today is way more important:

Mr. Obama must plan carefully whenever the “Coalition” gets together:

Nobody said building an ISIS “strategy” would be easy:

After the speech, the “coalition of the willing” didn’t include the 535 Commanders-in-Chief in Congress:

In other news, here’s why the NFL didn’t get it right the first time:

Friday Music Break – September 12, 2014

Today’s music break is a reflection on 9/11. It’s still hard to process those events, despite the millions of words written about the attacks. Musically speaking, it was a very creative time. But there were bad calls too. After the attack, a Clear Channel program director took it upon himself to identify a number of songs that certain markets or individuals may find insensitive: No less than 165 songs were purportedly banned, ranging from Peter Paul and Mary’s “Leaving on a Jet plane,” to Sugar Ray’s “Fly,” to REM’s “The End of the World as We Know It”, and all songs (!) by Rage Against the Machine.

The music created in the aftermath of 9/11 documents America reacting to our collective trauma. There is sentimentalism. Anger. Calls to arms. Revenge. This long after 9/11, you already know many of the tunes that, like in church, are played on each anniversary, and you know where to find them, they are not here today.

For the 13th anniversary, here are a few songs (and a short film by Woody Allen) that you may not have heard/seen as much that memorialize how we felt after the attacks.

Among the best songs produced after the attack is On That Day by Leonard Cohen from his 2004 album, Dear Heather. Cohen is simply “holding the fort” for a “wounded New York.” No pointing fingers, no aggression, its a healing number to get you started on your day of reflection:

Here is the key lyric:
Some people say
It’s what we deserve
For sins against god
For crimes in the world
I wouldn’t know
I’m just holding the fort
Since that day
They wounded New York

If there was nuanced reaction to 9/11, it was Springsteen’s 2002 album, The Rising. With “You’re Missing,” Springsteen translates the horror of 9/11 into raw pain:

Lyric:
Pictures on the nightstand, TV’s on in the den
Your house is waiting, your house is waiting
For you to walk in, for you to walk in
But you’re missing, when I shut out the lights
You’re missing, when I close my eyes
You’re missing, when I see the sun rise
You’re missing

Children are asking if it’s alright
Will you be in our arms tonight?

Next, from the British band James, here is Hey Ma. James’ lead singer Tim Booth sings, “Now the towers have fallen, so much dust in the air,” on this title track from the Brit-pop group’s 10th studio album. The song examines the price paid for revenge. Many of us felt a need to avenge the wrong that was done, perhaps by making “choices worse than the fall.” Some images are disturbing:

Next, Juliana Hatfield takes us through the early parts of the 5 stages of grief with her song, “Hole In The Sky”. This is a conversation by the artist and DJ George Bodarky on WFUV, Fordham radio,with her song mostly in background. Hatfield admits that she was terrified about going into New York City after the 9/11 tragedy. She was also too afraid to fly. She talks about creating some of the lines in the song as well:

Finally, a short film by Woody Allen made for the Concert For New York City, 2001. Watch it and laugh:

Best lines:
“I was mugged coming back from the Opera. They took my gas mask, my flashlight, all my Cipro™“.
(You may remember that Cipro™ was for the deeply paranoid who thought that there would be anthrax attacks)

Bebe Neuwirth: “I heard that Rudy Giuliani and Al Sharpton got a house together on Fire Island”

Coalition of the Willing? An Editorial

Why are the media so willing for America to go up against ISIS? Why are the media letting John McCain go on endlessly, and why are they acting as if Lindsay Graham is the second coming of Douglas MacArthur?

Our post-Cold War American politicians can’t do the intellectual heavy lifting that connects policy to strategy. They are incapable of articulating a realistic vision of the political ends that are the desired outcome of a decisive use of military force.

US foreign policy in the Middle East for nearly a century has been based on one simple principle: Maximize the security of the delivery of fossil fuels from the region to the US. The corollary: While we’re doing that, let’s make sure to maximize the profits of the big corporations that benefit from the oil trade, and the corporations that make big profits by getting America to defend the oil companies.

“I listen to the commanders on the ground” isn’t strategy. And strategy shouldn’t be formulated by the military. They have the operational role, but strategy should be based in the hands of our elected officials. Let’s see what Commander-in-Chief Obama says about our strategy for the Middle East on Wednesday. We shouldn’t second-guess the strategy BEFORE it is promulgated, we can wait to do that.

Since the administration and nearly everyone else on Earth agrees that ISIS is a threat to at least some degree, the questions are:
• In what way is ISIS a threat to America’s security? To what extent are they a threat?
• What do we want the political end state to be in the ME if/when the threat of ISIS is contained, diminished or destroyed?
• What is it worth for America to accomplish this outcome in light of our other, competing, American interests, in the region and globally?

Once we answer those questions, Mr. Obama can give our military leaders definitive policy guidance. The Generals in turn can then give the administration the best possible advice on how military force could secure our aims, or how to use it in conjunction with other elements of national power, such as diplomacy, economic coercion or covert operations.

Moving forward, as McCain, Graham, Rubio and others want, without answering these questions, is another exercise in flailing about, hoping that using sufficient force opportunistically will cause good geopolitical things to happen.

It is important to see that ISIS is different from Al-Qaeda. ISIS focuses on the near enemy, the Iraqi and the Syrian Governments and their supporters, while Al-Qaeda focuses on the far enemy (think 9/11). That should be a pointer for our strategy. The US only attacked ISIS when the Kurdish oilfields were threatened. The message should be that ISIS can do whatever they want in northern Iraq and Syria − once they step out of their box they will get slapped hard.

We should ask if a militant and backward-looking form of Islam is what the people living in Islamic countries want. They are the ones who have to contend with the Muslims who financed the growth of militant Islam, and the Imams who preach it. The citizens in Muslim countries also have to take responsibility for their actions. They can’t just point at the Russians and Europeans and Americans and say “you made us do this.” There is some culpability among the Western powers, but we didn’t suggest, or encourage, Sunnis and Shiites to kill each other. That was a decision made by Muslims, some of whom are in power because of actions by the US.

Solving the problem presented by ISIS is primarily the job of the countries that have common borders with Syria and Iraq. We have a role, but it isn’t our problem to solve. The US and its European allies do not possess the wisdom, or the will, or the tools to fix whatever it is that ails much of the Islamic world.

This is the principal lesson that the long Iraq war taught us. The direction of our future ME strategy lies in recognizing that fact.

No doubt, ISIS poses a danger. But for the US and Europe, the present danger is negligible. Regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran are both more directly threatened and far better positioned to deal with it. Offering indirect assistance might be helpful, however, the US would be better served simply to butt out. We’ve done enough damage.

Let’s ask some final questions on the way to developing a new ME strategy.

First, if it’s unacceptable to have an antidemocratic Sunni fundamentalist regime that routinely beheads people, denies women basic human rights, and uses oil money to support worldwide terrorism – what are we doing about Saudi Arabia?

Second, nobody’s saying that it’s fine for the ISIS lunatics to form a Sunni caliphate. But the regional powers who should able to and interested in stopping ISIS: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Iran, and Egypt must do the heavy lifting. Some have even participated in making ISIS what they are today. Let them clean it up.

If ISIS defeats its local opponents, and then truly threatens the world, there’d be sufficient reason to step in.

But so far, it has not.

We Have to do Something!

Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and ISIS: We have to do something! What’s the plan, Obama? In fact most Americans have heard that Mr. Obama said “we don’t have a strategy yet” to deal with ISIS.

WTF? In fact, Obama was speaking solely about ISIS in Syria. A reporter asked last Thursday:

Do you need Congress’s approval to go into Syria?

Obama replied:

We don’t have a strategy yet…We need to make sure that we’ve got clear plans, that we’re developing them. At that point, I will consult with Congress

This has led to the “We have to do something” chorus. Consider Fox Anchor Heather Childers:

https://twitter.com/HeatherChilders/status/506918798298198018

Ever hear of the “Politician’s Syllogism”? It is a logical fallacy that takes this form:
1. We have to do something
2. This is something
3. Therefore, we have to do this.

Sound familiar? We see and hear it every Sunday morning on “Bloviating with The Old Pundits”, also known as the network week in review shows. Here is what this can lead to: The Hill reports that House and the Senate are considering action to “do something”:

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., said in a statement Wednesday he will introduce legislation when Congress reconvenes next week that would authorize the use of military force against ISIS and other terror groups around the world, including al Nusra, Ansar al Sharia, al Shabaab and Boko Haram

House Speaker Boehner said in an appearance on conservative Hugh Hewitt’s radio show that the president will need congressional authority if he wants to strike at ISIS in its Syrian strongholds:

…If he’s going after ISIS…I think he would have to provide a War Powers notification to the Congress…And then it would be up to the House to make a decision about whether we dealt with the issue or not

Are you feeling better? We saw the pitfalls of “We must do something” following 9/11. Initial reactions to the attacks on America were shock and confusion. Traditional ideological divides were blurred, but then the Right trotted out a line that resonated with all Americans and caused the antiwar left to dissolve: We have to do something!

In US political speak, the one thing we have to do “something” about always refers to a foreign policy concern. Politicans don’t feel that we “have to do something” about domestic problems. Poverty? No need to act. Corrupt bankers? Inaction is fine.

In foreign policy, when a crisis flares up overseas, and especially if it involves possible opponents that the War Hawks, the defense industry and the media can categorize as bad guys, “we have to do something” means military action.

But, there are always supplements to military action. Half-measures can come in both military (money and weapons, but no boots on the ground), quasi-military (military and political advisers) and geo-political or diplomatic forms (coalitions, sanctions or embargoes). We can employ some, or all of those options. Or, after careful consideration of our short and long term interests, we can do nothing.

Any and all of that is called “strategy”.

And that’s the problem. We need to do something effective that has long and short term benefits, and that doesn’t bankrupt the nation. We can drop some more bombs and send more advisers. To have a useful strategy, we have to come to grips with these facts:
• We’re going to have to give Assad a pass for killing his countrymen and doing mean things with chemical weapons, because we have to work together on eliminating ISIS
• We may need to ally with Iran, a non-democratic and anti-Sunni regime that most Americans think of as an enemy
• We may need to confront our allies, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who have, at best, been “soft” on ISIS
• We have to accept that we now bomb our own weapons that have been seized by ISIS. Are we OK with more of that down the road, if that is the outcome of arming the “moderates” in Iraq and Syria?

With two beheadings, American opinion is being whipped up by certain politicians and the media to get us to strike back, hard. Fine, but let’s spend a few seconds thinking about WHY ISIS is whacking the hornets’ nest that is America. We are told that it is to get America to stop the bombing in Iraq.

Could it be just the opposite, that it is their invitation to join in yet another Middle East quagmire?

Could it be that they want a chance to defeat the “sole superpower” on their way to creating their caliphate? The logic of this form of asymmetric terror is pretty straightforward. But our “tough on defense” politicians fall for it every time. They take another bite of the “counter-insurgency” apple.

It may just be that their strategy (emulating Osama bin Laden), is to:

…in any way possible, enmesh the US and NATO in unwinnable wars, and then watch as the imperial powers disintegrate

ISIS and Al Qaeda are playing a long game. By doing flashy terrorist actions they empower the War Hawks and American conservatives. War Hawks and conservatives thereafter use their rejuvenated mandate to insist on crude and violent actions in the Middle East. They push reluctant centrists and liberals to do the same.

America then completely messes up the campaign, and further weakens its economy and social contract.

Perhaps we should let ISIS terrify Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Gulf States to the point where they will all work together to destroy ISIS and its sources of funding instead of begging us to waste American lives and money there.

That is a strategy that is not exactly a do-nothing strategy, but you can already hear the War Hawk chorus, telling America to expect beheadings on Main Street next week.

What’s Erbil Got to do With It?

David Brooks:

We are now living in what we might as well admit is the Age of Iraq. The last four presidents have found themselves drawn into that nation because it epitomizes the core problem at the center of so many crises: the interaction between failing secular governance and radical Islam.

While Lawrence of Arabia said “on to Aqaba”, President Obama says, “on to Erbil”.

From the 2-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Steve Coll, writing in The New Yorker:

To the defense of Erbil: this was the main cause that drew President Obama back to combat in Iraq last week, two and a half years after he fulfilled a campaign pledge and pulled the last troops out.

Remember the Gulf of Tonkin Incident?

August 4th is the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an event that led to Congress giving President Johnson the legal authorization to begin the Vietnam War. On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox exchanged fire with three North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, the Maddox fired on radar targets, which it reported had launched torpedoes at the Maddox.

And on August 10th, Congress passed a joint resolution giving the president the use of “conventional” military force against North Vietnam.

Why should we remember the Gulf of Tonkin? Because the Iraq War wasn’t the first time we went to war where the intelligence and facts were fixed to conform to the policy. Jessica Desvarieux of the Real News Network interviews Daniel Ellsberg about his experience with the decision-making about the Gulf of Tonkin incident:

For those who don’t remember the Vietnam Era, Daniel Ellsberg was the Edward Snowden of his time. Ellsberg was physically present when the Gulf of Tonkin “facts” were “fixed” to conform to Vietnam policy. Daniel Ellsberg was a highly placed adviser in the Pentagon. He had been a Marine officer, assigned to a ship in the Suez Canal during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Starting in 1964, he worked in the Pentagon for McNamara, and starting in 1967, served 2 years in Vietnam as a civilian working for the State Department. Here is part of what Ellsberg says in the video: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

…my boss–the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, John McNaughton–[was] with McNamara in his office on the morning of August 4, when I came into the office at 9 o’clock they were actually already planning the possible response to an attack…because of indications that the commodore on the spot…thought that he was being shadowed for a possible ambush…a courier rushed in…with a flash cable saying that Commodore Herrick on the patrol in the South China Sea…was under attack at that very moment, that there was a torpedo coming at him, he was taking evasive action…

More from Ellsberg: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…at about 1:30, while…McNamara…was over at the White House, and I think McNaughton was with him, conferring with the president on the exact nature of the retaliation, [in] comes a very dramatic table from Commodore Herrick saying, hold everything…All the torpedo reports except the first one are now suspect and, it turned out, he said, were reports of an overeager sonar man who was mistaking the beat of the ship’s propeller against the wake as they took evasive action, circled in the water. That was being mistaken for incoming torpedoes…

And Ellsberg tells us that the ship’s captain ultimately reported 21 torpedoes. He goes on to say that all but one were false reports, and that the captain said many years later that he was also wrong about the first torpedo: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Now, I took it for granted that anything I was seeing was, of course, also available to the president and to McNamara…So I assumed that they were quite well aware that there was a good deal of uncertainty about what had happened. The commodore at the time, Herrick, did say that there was one torpedo, but one had to take that with a good deal of salt, because he had been just as certain about the next 20 torpedoes, and it really took him many years before, looking at the evidence, he finally acknowledged that he had been mistaken about the first one as well. But even on that night, we knew that what the president proceeded to say and what McNamara proceeded to say to the press in television interviews, that the attack was unequivocal, we knew that that was false…

Just like years later, when it turned out that the assertions by Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush that they had unequivocal evidence of WMDs in Iraq, their evidence was at best, equivocal. Later, we learned it was false.

Just as there were no torpedoes in the Tonkin Gulf, there were no WMDs in Iraq.

Just like Johnson and McNamara got a blank check for war with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Rumsfeld and Bush got the Iraq Resolution, essentially a predated declaration of war given by the Congress to the president, in violation of the Constitution. We can go back further: the USA always has a pretext for war; remember the Maine! The patterns and degree of deception from Vietnam to Iraq appear to be eerily similar.

Add to that, whatever caused the downing of MH17 is not clear cut and unequivocal either. The US says it has evidence, but it has not provided that evidence to us. It is shrouded in mystery, doubt and propaganda, just as the supposed WMDs in Iraq, the Syrian government gas attacks, what started the latest Gaza/Israeli war, and many other incidents.

It is useful to add more skepticism into the current geopolitical climate. Today’s average Congressional staffer can remember GWB and WMDs, since they were 18-20 years old when that happened, while Vietnam is ancient history to them.

Both wars were started with a lie, but the equally big lie was that when the promoters got their wars, they were smart enough to know that neither war could actually be won.

So, who benefited?

And who will benefit if we engage again in Iraq? If we engage more deeply in Ukraine, or in Syria, or in Gaza?

Hint: It isn’t “freedom”.

What Can America Learn from its Competitors?

(This is the third column about US foreign policy. The other two columns are here and here.)

The past two columns have argued that our foreign policy does not employ any non-military strategies in areas where we compete with other nations or where there is local or regional conflict.

We have an insular view of our competition. We tend to see Vladimir Putin as a military strategist, massing his troops on the border of Ukraine, rolling over Crimea, providing the missiles to shoot down civilian airliners. Some, or all of that may be true, but Mr. Putin is a busy man who also uses soft power and commercial power. China, our great Asian competitor, follows a similar strategy to Russia’s.

We could learn a lot from our competitors. Last week saw Russia and China making soft power and commercial initiatives in South America. The Economist reports that Brazil’s President Rousseff hosted Mr. Putin, and China’s Xi Jinping as part of a summit of the BRICS group of emerging countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

While in South America, Mr. Putin also visited Cuba where he announced plans to re-open an intelligence base. Russia also agreed to write off 90% of Cuba’s $35 billion Soviet-era debt. Putin then went on to pitch the export of Russian nuclear technology to Argentina and a $1 billion anti-aircraft missile defense system to Brazil.

Mr. Xi met with the leaders of CELAC, a club of all 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries. In Venezuela he met with officials regarding China’s $50 billion in oil-backed loans. Chinese trade with the region has grown more than 20-fold in this century:

China has become a big investor, trading partner and lender in the region. While Latin America’s ties with China are far more recent than those with Russia, they are also much more important. Russia, which had made major inroads into Latin America in the 1960’s and 1970’s is now playing catch-up in many countries, and is closest to Venezuela.

By contrast, the US has a history of attempted and successful overthrows of governments, and meddling that have kept South America suspicious of our motives for decades. We have diplomatic problems with Brazil stemming from the NSA’s tapping of Ms. Rousseff’s personal mobile phone. We are deeply involved in a debt default to private US hedge fund lenders by Argentina, which was heard by our Supreme Court, who found in favor of the lenders not the country. We continue to view Cuba through a Soviet-era lens. The region no longer looks only to the United States and Europe.

While the BRICS countries were in Brazil, they agreed to establish a New Development Bank (NDB) at their summit meeting. The NDB will have a president (an Indian for the first six years), a Board of Governors Chair (a Russian), a Board of Directors Chair (a Brazilian), and a headquarters (in Shanghai). They also created a $100 billion Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA), meant to provide additional liquidity protection to member countries during balance of payments problems.

The BRICS wanted a vehicle that matches their rising economic strength, and they wanted a bigger voice than they have in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Although the BRICS are one-fifth of the global economy, they are just 11% of the votes at the IMF. The BRICS bank/CRA could challenge World Bank-IMF hegemony. The new bank’s partners already lend more than the World Bank, which made $52 billion in loans last year, while China made loans of $240 billion and Brazil made $88 billion.

The WaPo Monkey Cage reported that Mr. Putin extolled the NDB and CRA as a way to prevent the “harassment” of countries whose foreign policy clashes with America or Europe (like his annexation of Crimea, perhaps?). They also observed that Mr. Xi Jinping sees a geopolitical role for the BRICS as part of his push to set up a new alternative to US ‘hegemony’. Mr. Xi has a vision of China as a leader of the non-aligned nations, a concept first developed in the 1950s. He says this despite taking an increasingly militarized stance on disputed maritime borders in Asia.

Taking a step back, China and Russia are seeking economic dominance of huge swaths of the world, while the US is trying to maintain its current dominance of the same swaths.

And one way China and Russia attempt to do this is through trade, investment and lending, while the US uses military and currency dominance. One major issue in the next decade or two will be whether the dollar can remain the world’s reserve currency. Although at this moment there is no contender in sight, the BRICS’ NDB and CRA could be the first step in China and Russia’s grand plan.

How we respond with soft power, how well we solve our domestic economic problems will go very far towards determining whether the US can blunt the geopolitical challenges from China and Russia.

Guns ain’t gonna get it done.

Can We Learn from Our Middle East War?

Yesterday, the Wrongologist wrote that we do not have a non-military response to any foreign geopolitical problem, that we fail to recognize what is defeating us, or why things are happening that are beyond our control.

Andrew Bacevich has an article in Notre Dame Magazine, entitled: “Lessons From America’s War for the Greater Middle East” that opens the door to understanding how to begin to make things better. He makes the point that for well over 30 years, the US has been engaged militarily in various parts of the Islamic world, and no end to that involvement is in sight. Bacevich asks:

What is the nature of the military struggle we are waging?

After 9/11, we called it the Global War on Terror. Bacevich says we should be calling it America’s War for the Greater Middle East. The original premise was that the Islamic world poses a growing threat to vital US national security interests, and the application of hard power would enable the United States to check those threats and thereby preserve the American way of life. Bacevich points out:

At the time President Carter declared the Persian Gulf a vital national security interest — that was the literal meaning of the Carter Doctrine — he did not intend to embark upon a war. Nor did he anticipate what course that war was going to follow — its duration, costs and consequences.

What Carter and his presidential successors found in the ME caused them to initiate a sequence of military actions that collectively should be called a war. The dots connect. Seemingly disparate events such as the Beirut bombing in 1983, the “Black Hawk Down” debacle of 1993 and the Iraq invasion of 2003 (plus others) form part of a single narrative. Acknowledging the existence of that narrative — seeing America’s War for the Greater Middle East as a whole — is a prerequisite to understanding where we are today. From Bacevich:

Let me state plainly my own overall assessment of that war. We have not won it. We are not winning it. And simply pressing on is unlikely to produce more positive results next year or the year after

Bacevich lists “10 lessons” we should take from the “Middle East War” if we are going to make our future different from the past. Let’s review a few:

First, the center of gravity:

The center of gravity refers to the factor upon which a war’s outcome ultimately turns. It could be a valuable terrain, an army or a city. Bacevich says that Carter and George H. W. Bush thought the terrain was the desert. But the key terrain in the ME War is urban, and people are this war’s center of gravity. That means we can’t just kill adversaries, but we must influence urban populations to succeed. When American soldiers venture onto this key terrain they are alien intruders. They arrive in cities like Baghdad or Kabul as heirs to a Western civilization that has seldom furthered the well-being of Muslims.

The phrase “Anglo-American” for us, conjures up glorious memories of a partnership forged to free a continent gripped by Hitler. Islamic residents of the Middle East inevitably see “Anglo-American” purposes as a desire to conquer.

Sixth, the US military system:

9/11 revealed defects in America’s approach to raising its military forces. Notwithstanding the virtues of a professional military, notably durability and tactical prowess, the all-volunteer army has failed. It encourages political irresponsibility. It’s undemocratic. It turns out to be exorbitantly expensive. And it hasn’t won a war.

It makes the relationship between the US military and US society dishonest. Rhetorically, we “support the troops”, but the support is seldom more than skin-deep. As authorities in Washington commit US forces to wars that are unnecessary, or ill-managed, or unwinnable — Americans seem close to indifferent. The bungled rollout of Obamacare generated both public attention and outrage, while a bungled military campaign would only elicit shrugs.

Our reliance on professional soldiers relieves citizens of any responsibility to contribute to the nation’s defense. Can that be a good thing?

Seventh, the political economy of war:

Washington’s appetite for waging war in the ME has exceeded the willingness of young Americans to volunteer for military service, and the ability for the standing army to continue the fight for 12+ years. This has created a gap: Too much war, too few warriors.

This gap has created an opening for profit-minded “private security firms” in the war zone. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, contractors ultimately outnumbered uniformed military personnel. The results have fallen well short of being satisfactory. Waste and corruption have occurred on a colossal scale — so much so that the Pentagon is literally unable to say where all the money went. War has always created opportunities for some people to make money. America’s War for the Greater Middle East has become a means for many private firms and individuals to get rich.

Ninth, our regional allies:

The longer America’s War for the Greater Middle East drags on, the more apparent it becomes that Washington has done a lousy job of picking allies. Consider Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for example. The United States seeks to reduce the prevalence of violent Islamic radicalism. The governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia actively promote it. It’s time to stop pretending otherwise.

Then there is Israel. US interests and those of the Jewish state have diverged. To ensure the security and well-being of its citizens, Israel vigorously employs its military muscle to preempt perceived threats and ensure Israeli control of vital terrain and resources.

The chief US interest in the region lies in promoting stability. Anything else falls into the category of “nice to have.” In that regard, the US has an interest in responding to the grievances of the Palestinian people. Yet the government of Israel will respond to those grievances only on Israeli terms. In the meantime, the persistence of those grievances provides either a genuine cause of, or a pretext for, anti-American and anti-Western attitudes across much of the Islamic world.

When it comes to waging the War for the Greater Middle East, Israel belongs in the same category as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: As allies, all three are unhelpful.

Bacevich closes by saying:

Does the Islamic world pose a problem for the US? You bet, in all sorts of ways. But after more than three decades of trying, it’s pretty clear that the application of military power is unlikely to provide a solution

His Tenth issue is religion. But, he has a simplistic view of the role of religion in the failure of our military strategy for the Middle East. Read his comments and then draw your own conclusions.

The solution, if there is one, must be found by looking beyond the military realm. If we were for example, to become the primary supplier of humanitarian aid to the displaced people in the Middle East, we could position ourselves as a positive force for change among many millions of Muslims, not just another country in a long line of infidel conquerors.

Read his entire article here.

Did 9/11 Change Everything?

“He didn’t know what was defeating him, but he sensed it was something he could not cope with, something that was far beyond his power to control or even at this point in time comprehend.” –Hubert Selby Jr.

The Wrongologist has changed the blog’s “Quotes We Like” sidebar to add the quote above. The quote is from Selby’s Requiem for a Dream. He also wrote Last Exit To Brooklyn. These are two gritty American novels of their time and place. Exit was published in 1964 and presents a view of 1950’s Brooklyn NY. Requiem was published in 1978. Both were made into movies. Selby died in 2004.

In a Salon article in 2000, Selby is quoted about Requiem:

The dream I’m referring to in the book, of course, is the great American dream: prosperity, property, prestige, etc. And the fact that it’ll kill you dead. Striving for it is a disaster. Attaining it is a killer. It takes many forms, and the results are not happy. It’s not a feel-good thing

Selby continues:

‘Requiem’ is about the cancer of that dream…Of course, there are a lot of people who are successful who work very hard. They’re not all George W. Bush. But the point is they’re misguided. That’s not what life is about. We believe, probably more than anywhere, that life is getting all this material stuff. It’s a case of misguided ambition and desire

We can take this further. Today, America doesn’t know what is defeating it. America senses that it can’t cope, that there are things happening that are beyond our control or comprehension:
• We can no longer solve our domestic problems
• We are powerless to deal with the Malaysian airline disaster in Ukraine
• We can’t resolve the tri-partite struggle in Iraq
• We can no longer restrain Israel in its non-proportional response to Hamas
• We are no longer on the same side as our long-term Middle East allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt
• We can’t figure out a non-military response for China’s initiatives throughout Asia

In fact, we no longer have a non-military response to any foreign problem. The power strategies that we employed throughout the 1950’s, continuing down to the end of the Soviet Union no longer work. Back then, we played chess, moving pieces across the board. We used whichever proxies or allies were at hand, we overthrew elected governments, thereby violating our own ideology. We supported and installed dictatorial governments. We promised freedom and prosperity, while helping to deliver hegemony, based on our military intervention, or the threat of it.

Today, we have no answers, only posturing from all of our leaders. We have become the kind of people who criticize, not the kind of people who can solve problems.

We are no longer king-makers in the third world, the neo-conservative approach of use of military power cannot stand in the face of asymmetric warfare and the devastating superiority of IEDs to up-armored military vehicles.

From Ian Welsh:

Deny the fruits of western ideology to those who reach for them, and of course they will turn against you. Pervert them even within your own countries by undermining your own democratic principles and by concentrating wealth and income in the hands of a few, while impoverishing the many; make it clear that modern neo-liberal capitalism doesn’t spread prosperity to even the core nations, and you have set up one of the preconditions of not just hegemonic collapse, but of internal collapse of a civilization

And here is Welsh’s money quote:

People who do not believe in the genuine goodness of what they are fighting for, hardly fight for it at all

That is what we see in Iraq. More importantly, that is what we see in America. Today, no one believes in the genuine goodness of what they are fighting for, be they job-hunting Millennials, unreconstructed 1960’s liberals, or today’s money-grubbing Republican and Democrat politicians.

When you no longer know how to solve problems, you turn to what is easy. You buy the next shiny object, you live through the lives of the rich and famous. Snark and incivility replace facts and discussion.

There was a display in the 9/11 Museum that showed a piece of debris about 3’ high by 6’ wide and 12’ long. It was rusty and seemed to be sedimentary in nature, visibly comprised of metal, concrete, and wires. It is actually part of 5 floors of the Trade Center, compressed by weight and softened by intense heat. Nothing of the desks, computers, phones and people are distinguishable in this artifact. The Museum calls it a “composite”. It brings home the destructive power of the falling towers on 9/11:

Photo is from before the “composite” went on display

After the Towers’ fall, the news media said that 9/11 changed everything, and we believed it. But changes to our view of the world, and its view of us, had started long before that. We stopped learning about geopolitics in the 1960’s, substituting false analogies and military aid to local strongmen for true knowledge of how to change the world.

Since then, we have been compressed by the heat and weight of events we cannot understand. If you think about it, our decline after 9/11 came because we panicked, spent all of our money on pointless wars, and gave up our core values in the name of an illusion of safety, and pure vengeance.

So, yes, America doesn’t know what is defeating it. America senses that there are things happening that are beyond its control or comprehension.

But these things are knowable, and fixable. Hopefully, by Americans.

Bigger Threat: ISIS or Congress?

What is behind the fear of ISIS in the West? The ISIS crisis in Iraq and its parallel in Syria challenges both governments as well as the status quo in the Middle East. But why would people believe that this band of fighters is an existential treat to the West? Attorney General Eric Holder shared his alarmism yesterday that the threat from ISIS is:

…more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general

ABC News headlined “See the Terrifying ISIS Map Showing Its Five-Year Expansion Plan,” with the black flag of the Caliphate spreading like spilled crude oil across Africa, Central Asia, the Balkans, and Spain.

Lt. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of the Joint Special Operations Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week:

There’s risks to allowing things just to try to resolve themselves, particularly when there are interests that could affect our country…

All of this jowl-shaking goes on while the Obama administration is tumbling to the fact that there is no on-the-ground military option for us. According to a classified report leaked to The New York Times, our top brass believe:

That only about half of Iraq’s operational units are capable enough for American commandos to advise them if the White House decides to help roll back the advances made by Sunni militants in northern and western Iraq over the past month

Since Iraq’s political deadlock doesn’t look like it will be broken anytime soon, the US can’t take Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-sectarian side in a war against Iraq’s Sunnis without real repercussions from the billion Sunnis around the world.

But how serious is the ISIS threat? Most estimates say they have a core of perhaps 10,000 soldiers and maybe another 10k of new recruits. They are fighting the Syrian Army, Iranian-backed militias, the YPG, the Peshmerga, Al Nusra Front, the Free Syrian Army, in addition to the “Iraqi army” and Iraqi Shiite militias.

Let’s remember that we couldn’t hold Iraq with 168,000 troops, and the most advanced military equipment on earth. So the chance that ISIS can seize or even temporarily hold portions of Baghdad with some fraction of 10,000 is zero. From Gary Brecher at Pando News:

ISIS is about as scary as your neighbor’s yappy Shih Tzu: all noise and no teeth. Let’s just sober up, for Christ’s sake, and remember we’re talking about a half-assed Sunni militia that couldn’t face up to Assad’s mediocre Syrian Arab Army and still hasn’t found a way to occupy Sunni Iraqi towns that were outright abandoned by the [Iraqi] Army

ISIS is spread quite thin, but the Pentagon’s report says that Iraq’s armed forces and security apparatus are so badly run, so infiltrated with Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen and informers from ISIS, that there isn’t much of an opening for greater US involvement. The report is based on the findings of six teams of American Special Operations forces who were tasked with assessing the Iraqi Army that America trained and equipped at a cost of more than $25 billion.

Yet, in a show of cognitive dissonance, James Dubik, the retired Army Lt. General who oversaw the training of the Iraqi Army in 2007 and 2008, said that Iraq’s security forces could make gains against ISIS even if only half its divisions were effective, but that an advisory effort was very important:

Even if half was whipped into good enough shape, that would be enough to turn the tide

At a July 3rd Pentagon news conference, General Dempsey noted that, while Iraqi security forces were capable of defending Baghdad, they were not capable on their own of launching a counteroffensive and reversing the ISIS gains. So today, the three factions—Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shia Arabs—are holding their own, consolidating their turf, not trying very hard to occupy the other groups’ territories.

This is an existential crisis for America?

Did we liberate Iraq, or did we destroy it? If we destroyed Iraq, are we responsible for restoring the infrastructure to its previous capabilities? Taxing ourselves to restore Iraq might teach us that we shouldn’t attack countries that are not threatening us, but we can’t afford to pay that bill.

We have the most advanced military in the world, there is no real second place to us in military might. Yet as a nation, we are failing ourselves. We are down the global ladder when it comes to healthcare, public education, repairing our infrastructure and providing social services. We can’t get out of our own way on policy because of our divided politics. We are the global leader in incarcerating our own citizens.

Why do we look at ISIS and say that they are our existential threat?

Like Pogo said: “we have met the enemy, and he is us”.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Military Strategy