The Wrongologist – Page 232 – Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Turkey’s Role in ISIS Oil Smuggling

The US and its allies aim to degrade the power and influence of ISIS, and that means reducing its flow of oil money. According to a New York Times article, US diplomats are pressuring Turkey to cut off the stream of oil smuggled across its border.

ISIS is producing between 25,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) in Iraq. Since they cannot sell this oil legitimately, they sell it on the black market. The Times quotes energy analysts who think ISIS is pocketing between $1.2 and $2 million per day. Luay al-Khatteeb, a fellow at the Brookings Institute’s Doha Center, told the Times:

The key gateway through that black market is the southern corridor of Turkey…Turkey is becoming part of this black economy.

Oil Price reports that smuggled oil could be a pivotal issue for the US and its coalition as it seeks to destroy ISIS. The militant group sells oil at a reduced price – around $25 per barrel. Initially, it sold the oil to middlemen, who moved the oil to Iran, Syria, Jordan and Turkey. From Oil Price:

But as ISIS’ operations grew, they forced out the middlemen, beat back other militant groups, and are now providing security to their own convoys of oil tanker trucks heading out of their territory to market.

This raises the question of Turkey’s role in the oil smuggling. They apparently do not condone it, but have done little to stop it. Al-Monitor reports that smuggling is a well-established tradition across Turkey’s southeastern borders with Iraq and Syria. Oil is expensive in most of Turkey, but cheap in the south. This has created an illegal, but widespread south-north trade route. The smuggling economy is not just about oil, however. It also includes other popular items and commodities, such as tea. Al-Monitor:

If one orders tea in southeastern Turkey, the servers often ask, ‘Do you want normal tea or smuggled tea’?

Overall, cutting off this source of revenue has as much strategic value as the effort to take out weapons systems (tanks and artillery) that ISIS seized in the move against Mosul. Turkey can be of help to this effort through better control of its borders.

This raises a more basic question: Where exactly does Turkey stand on ISIS?

This is a matter of controversy between Turkey and the West. The Turkish government has been criticized on three main points: that it has not done enough to close its borders to the flow of foreign fighters joining ISIS; that it has not done enough to curb radical groups at home that recruit for ISIS; and that ISIS makes much of its money by selling oil via Turkey.

These criticisms were not openly discussed before the Sept. 20 release of 49 Turks held by ISIS, who were taken hostage in June when ISIS captured Mosul. The Turkish paper Daily Hurriyet reported that there was a swap with ISIS: The Syrian rebel group Liwa al-Tawhid, another offshoot of the al-Nusra Front, released 50 members of ISIS, including the family of a slain ISIS leader.

Prior to their release, the Turkish government argued that its hands were tied, that it could not join the US-led coalition against ISIS. Now, with the end of the hostage crisis, Ankara must think more concretely about the threat just across its southern border.

In fact, Turkey has just closed its borders to ISIS militants who want to move into Syria to become fighters, while continuing to allow Syrian Kurd refugees into Turkey. However, it still has a major problem with ISIS recruiting inside Turkey. The Daily Hurriyet has traced ISIS in five Turkish cities. They report that 4,000 Turks have joined ISIS in Syria.

The NYT quotes Juan Zarate, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

Turkey in many ways is a wild card in this coalition equation…It’s a great disappointment: There is a real danger that the effort to degrade and destroy ISIS is at risk. You have a major NATO ally, and it is not clear they are willing and able to cut off flows of funds, fighters and support to ISIS.

Unlike the US, Turkey actually has to live right next door to ISIS and Iraq. The Turkish army is big enough to help cripple ISIS and is close enough to do it. They want to see Syria’s Assad leave power. They know how to deal with terrorists and have done so successfully for decades. Turkey is a NATO member. Strictly speaking, ISIS hasn’t attacked a NATO member, so Turkey can be remain coy about their ultimate involvement with the current coalition.

The success of the effort against ISIS depends as much on Saudi Arabia and Iran as it does on Turkey, but we should expect more than Turkey is currently providing to the coalition.

Do Demonstrations Matter Anymore?

Newsweek reported that The People’s Climate March on Sunday in New York was perhaps the largest climate change protest in history. Between 300,000 and 400,000 people took to the streets. Celebrities and high-profile politicians were among the marchers. The protest was big on social media, but it was largely ignored by the TV talking heads. HuffPo reported:

All in all, it was a perfect opportunity for some of America’s biggest news organizations to cover the topic of climate change, something that usually gets either ignored or badly handled. For Sunday talk show hosts, there was even a nice political hook, since the march was pegged to a UN summit that President Obama will be attending.

But HuffPo said that no Sunday morning show except MSNBC’s “Up” so much as mentioned climate change, or the march. There was one reference on “This Week” by The Nation’s Katrina van den Heuvel, who pointed out that the march was actually gathering right outside the ABC studios in Lincoln Center where the show is taped. The fact that more people actually showed up for climate change than an iPhone 6 sale in New York City is big news and it should have been covered!

Why no coverage? And more important, do demonstrations matter anymore? From Juan Cole:

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for demonstrating and admire everyone who came out in New York City on Sunday (some 400,000 according to Time magazine) to demand that world leaders deal urgently with climate change.

Cole makes the point that in the current political climate, holding large rallies rarely results in any political change. But, there have been exceptions. Consider the 1963 March on Washington. That was a case where succinct demands were associated with ground-up mass actions across America. It did not bring about immediate results, but the demonstrations combined with months, and sometimes years of base-level organizing, delivered energy and momentum to that same cohesive set of demands.

But the 21st century is not the 1960’s. Now, people just send a tweet and think they’ve accomplished something. The failure of demonstrations today is symptomatic of the failure of our democracy, which refuses to separate corporate money from elections, or from influencing the mass media. Pew Research reports that only 40% of Americans think that it is important for Congress and the White House to tackle the issue of climate change. The public already knows about climate change and sees it as a problem, yet nothing is done by either party, because it would inconvenience their corporate patrons, and anger the Koch brothers.

A 2010 Stanford University poll showed that voters are unpersuaded by the usual arguments against taking action on global warming:

Only 18% believe that slowing climate change would cause unemployment, and only 14% think the US should wait for other countries to go first.

What climate change activists must first realize that the obstacle is oligarchy, not public awareness of the issue.

Large demonstrations can help build local organizations, can bring together a broad range of activists who would not otherwise have face-to-face contact and can show like-minded people that they are not alone, that there are large numbers of people who share their views. These things are all valuable to any movement for social justice.

The writers of the US Constitution believed it important enough to explicitly provide for ‘the right of the people peaceably to assemble’, although recent efforts in cities across America to abridge that right in the name of public safety have been growing. Assembly should still be seen as a form of pressure that requires many other steps to move the needle on the status quo.

The movement also needs a charismatic leader, a compelling story and a skilled group to coordinate all activities.

The next stage has to be competing for mind-share of our Congresspersons and Senators, against the entrenched and very wealthy hydrocarbon industries.
Gerrymandering that has produced a structural Republican majority in the House means that climate activists need to find GOP challengers who are deeply concerned about global warming and who are willing to primary the incumbent.

In the end, a single-issue Climate PAC, if very well-funded, could make a difference. Much of the climate change action will have to be done or coordinated by politicians, and at the moment most of those in Washington are owned by Big Oil, including by the Koch brothers.

Finally, it is clear that in addressing climate change, we address multiple ills in our society, including the tremendous waste of resources caused by the pursuit of war. We have long needed a political movement that ties together the various threads of what is wrong with our society and shows how they are interrelated.

Climate change activism has the potential to do that.

Is a New World Order Coming?

In the prologue to his 1987 book of essays, Hidden History: Exploring Our Secret Past, historian Daniel Boorstin wrote about “the Fertile Verge”, a place where something and something else, something unexplored, meet.

A verge is like a frontier region, a place where ecosystems, or ideas, mingle. Verges between land and sea, between civilization and wilderness, between state and national governments, between city and countryside – all are a part of the American experience. Boorstin said that the movement westward by colonists into the American continent was a verge between European civilization and the culture of the American Indians.

America is clearly now on the verge of something new, possibly a big change in the world order. The old rules are broken. New states may emerge out of conflict in the Africa and the Middle East. Our old allies see their future drifting away from ours. The old order is rapidly disintegrating. But is there a new order that will replace it? Will it happen only in America, or will it be a global change?

Consider the following about America:
• In August, the Wall Street Journal reported on an FBI database that contains a file on one in three adults, or 77.7 million Americans.
• Our schools aren’t succeeding,
• Our infrastructure is crumbling,
• American corporations are heading for the exits (to tax havens).
• 45 Million Americans live in poverty, and that number hasn’t changed since 2010.

We are taking on some of the trappings of a police state. And there is no reason to suppose that the FBI’s (and the NSA’s) increased sophistication in domestic spying, and data storage and retrieval will do anything but make that trend more efficient, and penalties more severe and long-lasting. That is not a prescription for maintaining a united Homeland.

Our coffers are shrinking, yet we march off to one risky war after another, with all of those billions going where, and for what? Our Republic now seems to want only compliant workers and consumers. All others need not apply.

Last bit of history; the Principate, (27 BC – 284 AD) was the first stage of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire succeeded the Roman Republic. The Principate was characterized by a concerted effort by its Emperors to preserve the illusion of the continuance of the Roman Republic. And just like the Principate, the illusion of the American Republic is what now remains.

The order of things that underpinned our era is in crisis. Part of peoples’ concern is the sense that the old order isn’t holding, but we’re not quite yet able to see the terms of any new order, one that may be based on different states, different global powers, or on different principles.

So, what’s next for America? A nation founded explicitly on an idea of individual freedoms and representative governance, the US has always identified its success with the spread of liberty and democracy. Today, those very rights are threatened here at home.

The post-WWII bipolar world ended when the USSR collapsed under their own weight. That brought about a different world order, a uni-polar era, with the US as the sole superpower, possessing the only military strong enough to deter any other potential rival from engaging in aggressive war.

Even that order is ending. We are on the frontier of something completely new in global politics in addition to change in our domestic society. Consider what is happening around the globe:
• Our people see what’s happening in Ukraine; what’s happening in Syria, with what Assad has wrought on his own people; in Iraq, where Sunni, Shia and Kurd fail to compromise, even in the face of invasion; the war between Israel and Gaza; the challenge of ISIS.
• Libya is in civil war, Pakistan is close to one, and Afghanistan’s democracy may be on the verge of paralysis. Egypt again has a military-dominated government.
• Add to these troubles the relationship between the US and China, that bounces between pledges of cooperation and public recrimination.

In Africa and the Middle East, the 21st Century has collided with the 8th Century, and the 8th Century is armed with 21st Century weaponry, so it is winning on the ground. An entirely new paradigm for deciding our priorities is required.

What will that new paradigm be? The most important questions to ask are – what is in the best interest of our country?
• What do we seek to prevent, no matter how it happens, and if necessary, alone?
• What do we seek to achieve, even if not supported by a multilateral effort?
• What do we seek to achieve, or prevent, only if supported by an alliance?
• In what should we not engage, even if urged on by a “responsibility to protect”, or by a multilateral group or alliance?”

All of our intermediating of trouble in the world has weakened us. Continuing to do so will only hasten our eclipse as the indispensable power. Our role in the world depends on a strong economy and few structural/societal problems at home. Shouldn’t taking care of the Homeland be our primary concern?

We may feel that a new “Fertile Verge” is almost upon us, but no one knows yet what it will be, or if we will make it across to the other side.

Or, if crossing to the other side will be better for America.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 22, 2014

Will this be the Military Service Patch for our never-ending involvement in Iraq?

The Old Lady from South Carolina (OLFSC), on Fox a week ago: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

This is a war we’re fighting! It is not a counterterrorism operation. This is not Somalia. This is not Yemen. This is a turning point in the war on terror. Our strategy will fail yet again. This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home.

He said the same thing a decade ago. Then-freshman Sen. Lindsey Graham (OLFSC) worried that Saddam’s (nonexistent) cache of nerve gas “could kill millions of people”.

Some people think Arabs are an existential threat, but climate change is a myth?

The Arab Nations really are backing our ISIS effort…Really:

We will see if we truly have an exit strategy:

In other news, independence remains elusive in Scotland:

Friday Music Break – September 19, 2014

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Our political class has been banging their spoons on the table, crying for war all summer. But now that they’ve got one, they’re not sure they like it. On Wednesday, the House approved President Obama’s plan to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels to counter the growing threat of the Islamic State organization. But the vote was 273 to 156, which shows widespread misgivings in both parties about the plan’s chances of success, even among lawmakers who voted in favor of it.

Since our representatives are authorizing the third significant US military operation in Iraq in the past 25 years, today’s music is about war, loss and the last Iraq war.

We start with Michael Franti & Spearhead’s “Light Up Ya Lighter” from their 2006 album “Yell Fire”:

The key lyrics:
Here’s what you get
An M-16 and a Kevlar vest
You might come home
With one less leg
But this thing will surely keep a bullet out of your chest

So come on, come on
Sign up, come on
This one’s nothing like Vietnam
Except for the bullets, except for the bombs
Except for the youth that’s gone

Tell me president, tell if you will
How many people does a smart bomb kill?
How many of em do you think we got?
The general says we never miss a shot
And we never ever ever keep a body count
We killin’ so efficiently we can’t keep count

Next, a song from the Vietnam era that still resonates today. Creedence Clearwater Revivals’ “Fortunate Son”, from their album, “Willy and the Poor Boys” is an anti-war anthem. It criticizes militant patriotic behavior, and those who support the use of military force without having to pay the costs themselves, either financially or by serving in a wartime military. Fortunate Son came out 45 years ago, in September 1969. The Wrongologist was discharged in March of that same year. He wasn’t “no millionaire’s son”.

Which, by the way, was how it worked. And how it still works. Let Congress send their sons and daughters to Iraq to degrade and destroy ISIS. That would be called “leadership”.

Let’s close with “Élegie” by Gabriel Faure´. While this isn’t an anti-war piece, it was written to express sorrow at the death of a friend. This is sad story music. It starts with an angry meditation: the person is angry, and as he mulls what is lost, his anger increases. Thus, the music grows even more intense than at the beginning. But at the very end, there is resignation.

Sort of 5 stages of grief for cello and piano.

The artist is Julian Lloyd Webber, brother of, you know, THAT Lloyd Webber. In April 2014 he announced that he would no longer be performing the cello in public, due to a neck injury:

We Have No Syrian Strategy

The Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on Tuesday about the US policy to combat the Islamic State. It featured testimony from Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey. You can find transcripts of their testimony here. During their pitch, they called each other “Chuck” and “Marty”. What happened to “Mr. Secretary” and “General”?

Is this the level of professionalism these guys show in the field, or with our allies?

Anyway, the idea of the hearing was for Secretary Hagel and General Dempsey to explain to the Senators how we will conduct the “degradation and destruction” of ISIS. It didn’t go well for those of us who think we should really have a strategy before we head off to Iraq and Syria.

The headline from the hearing is that the disconnect in the ISIS strategy, that we saw when Mr. Obama said we had no Syrian strategy, remains. We still have no Syrian strategy, at least no strategy that has a high probability of working.

Aside from the air strikes that you know about, there was a discussion of training a new force to go into Syria. General Dempsey expects that we will recruit 5,400 previously untrained Syrians from refugee camps, send them to about a year’s military training in Saudi Arabia, organize maybe a few more contingents in later training cohorts, and then send them into Syria, where they will defeat ISIS, and then move against Assad.

That’s believable. Hope you didn’t think we should be doing something sooner, because no other ME country will be sending actually breathing, trained troops to help out against ISIS in Iraq or Syria.

The Obama strategy reads as a multi-track effort. On the one hand, we will combat ISIS; then we will effect regime change in Syria. That’s a maximalist strategy, but is it realistic? The plan has additional risks, (American boots on the ground, quagmire, and creation of additional Islamists who hate America) plus, there is little chance it will work. Too many moving parts.

Maybe Mr. Obama’s real plan for training 5400 Syrians to become a new kind of “Bay of Pigs Brigade” (that didn’t go well) is to delay having to do anything about Syria and Assad, and leave that decision to his successor. The peril is, should the Bay of Pigs Brigade fail, McCain & Co then have a better reason to call for an all-out invasion of Syria, because Assad just killed off our 5400 trusty unicorns.

And because America would lose face if we let Assad get away with it.

Today in the NYT, Tom Friedman finally makes some sense:

Here’s another question: What’s this war really about?
“This is a war over the soul of Islam — that is what differentiates this moment from all others,” argues Ahmad Khalidi, a Palestinian scholar associated with St. Antony’s College, Oxford. Here is why: For decades, Saudi Arabia has been the top funder of the mosques and schools throughout the Muslim world that promote the most puritanical version of Islam, known as Salafism, which is hostile to modernity, women and religious pluralism, or even Islamic pluralism.

Our Mesopotamian Badlands

We have been stuck in Iraq for 23 years, starting in 1991 when Pappy Bush gathered a coalition to chase Saddam Hussein’s invading forces from Kuwait. In 2003, George the Younger invaded Iraq, looking for WMDs. He killed Saddam and then got stuck in the quagmire. It took a commitment of large numbers of American troops to bring sectarian violence under control, and help a democratically elected Iraqi government to take hold. Then, Barack Obama extricated us from Iraq in 2011.

We are now back on track to be Iraq’s air force. Mr. Obama has America returning to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the ISIS jihadists who burst out of Syria and have reached the gates of Baghdad.

We have been asked to spend another $500 million to train Iraq’s fighters. Who pays to train the ISIS fighters? They seem to learn on the job. In fact, today’s New York Times reports on a Turkish ISIS fighter who trained for 15 days before assignment to a unit where he shot two people and was part of a public execution. From the NYT:

It was only after he buried a man alive that he was told he had become a full ISIS fighter.

And they make $150/day, plus all they can intimidate out of Iraqi businesses.

We are told that the effort will take many years. We are told that it will cost many more billions. NBC News estimates that costs will ramp towards $20 Billion per year:

The Defense Department budget for fiscal year 2014 authorized over $550 billion in spending on national defense, with an additional $80 billion for what’s called “Overseas Contingency Operations,” or OCO. That OCO fund is where officials have said funds for the ISIS fight will come from.

We are told that is quite possible that the effort will fail, because the (mostly) unwilling coalition Mr. Obama has rounded up really doesn’t want to fight ISIS. Why are most of them unwilling? The reasons vary. The Economist has a great chart that shows who sides with whom in the ME today:

The chart shows the degree to which America needs to play a delicate diplomatic game in holding together allies that may not always be friends with each other. Although ISIS is popular among young Muslim fundamentalists, the group has no allies on the political stage. But no country wants to put boots on the ground to cut ISIS off from their supply lines, their sources of cash, their command and communications. Dan Froomkin of the Intercept reports:

The big news out of the new “Global Coalition to Counter ISIL” meeting in Paris was that “several” Arab nations were willing to join President Obama’s latest bombing campaign.

But there were no details announced. And even the US’s most stalwart partner, the UK, wouldn’t actually commit to any specifics, because they are worried about the impact on the vote for Scotland secession. The “several” Arab countries are evidently “two”, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The Guardian reports that Saudi Arabia felt so threatened by Isis that it was prepared to act in a front-line role:

There is a very real possibility that we could have the Saudi air force bombing targets inside Syria…That is a remarkable development, and something the US would be very pleased to see

A Grand Coalition is the military answer. But can Mr. Obama bring so many incompatible parties together and weld them into a coordinated military campaign?

It requires a far greater fear of ISIS for Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Shias and Sunnis, Alawites and Kurds to be military allies, while working with Western military powers, whom several Arab nations actively dislike.

For at least the past decade, there has been no oxygen in the room for Non-Middle East/Non-Arab problems. And yet, the world is still full of problems, many of which could benefit from resources and attention by a Grand Coalition. Those problems will wait while we try to win a war we don’t want, against an enemy who doesn’t truly threaten us.

There is a logic against doing nothing. ISIS has grown faster (up from 8,000, to nearly 40,000 militants), while also improving qualitatively much faster than any other terrorist group in the last 40 years. With control of part of the oil revenues in Syria and Iraq, they are on a trajectory for even further growth.

So, once again we trek back into the badlands. As Springsteen says:

Badlands you gotta live it every day
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you’ve gotta pay
We’ll keep pushin’ till it’s understood
And these badlands start treating us good

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”

Thinking About the Slurry Wall on 9/11

It’s 13 years since that beautiful sky-blue September day when our world changed.

Consider the parallelism. Today, as we remember the terrorist attack 13 years ago, we begin another “war” against yet other group of Sunni terrorists. Mr. Obama, who was elected in 2008 to get us out of wars in the Middle East, has us on track to lead another “coalition of the willing” into the ME. The purpose of this crusade sounds depressingly familiar: To blunt the threat of another attack on the Homeland, despite little evidence that an attack is possible or imminent. And we do this because the people who face a direct ISIS threat can’t (or won’t) handle it for themselves.

The rise of ISIS is in part a consequence of US policy in the ME. Our war in Iraq and the subsequent 8 years of Iraqi internal political squabble have left many Sunnis in Iraq willing to support any challenge to the Shia central government. And now, 13 years after 9/11, we’re again strapping on our weapons and heading into war.

So today, let’s talk about the slurry wall at the World Trade Center. The Wrongologist took this photo in July, 2014 of the portion of the slurry wall that remains exposed in the Foundation Hall of the National September 11 Memorial Museum:

The slurry wall is the outer wall of what WTC engineers called the “Bathtub” in the 1960’s:

The bathtub is the 9-block area of the World Trade Center site that is excavated down to bedrock…and ringed by the slurry wall. The bathtub was created to enable the building of the Twin Towers’ foundations, and was ultimately filled with seven stories of basements housing the parking garage, mall, and building services.

Except that this bathtub kept water out of the 70’ deep basement. The ground water level at the WTC site is just a few feet below the surface, while bedrock is about 70 feet below the surface. Creating the bathtub required first building a 7-story dam below the water level of the adjacent Hudson River – that was the slurry wall.

After the 9/11 attack, the concern was that the slurry wall would fail. A breach in the wall and a flooding of the bathtub might have also flooded other adjacent below-grade structures, such as the PATH tunnels that passed through the bathtub. The NY subway, built below the PATH tubes could also have flooded with a breach of the wall.

On 9/11, most of the central portion of the wall’s south side (bordering Liberty Street) had moved inward by more than 10 inches. But, it held. According to the New York Times, George Tamaro, a former staff engineer at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who was closely involved with the construction of the trade center, believes: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[The slurry wall construction]…may have helped prevent the Hudson River from flooding parts of Lower Manhattan

According to Tamaro’s report on the aftermath of the attack, the PATH tunnels in Jersey City, New Jersey, at the Exchange Place Station, were 5 feet lower in elevation than at the WTC PATH Station. Exchange Place became a sump for fire water, river water, and broken water mains discharging into the bathtub. But the slurry wall held.

Looking up at the exposed portion of the slurry wall in Foundation Hall, one can’t help but be thankful for the work of engineers and construction workers back in the sixties who built the bathtub, and the engineers and firefighters who stabilized the walls after 9/11. Since the attack, that unseen wall is now a symbol of the resilience of both New Yorkers and America.

But the world has spun off its normal axis since September 11, 2001. Isn’t it interesting that 9/11 was supposed to be about America striking back against a foreign enemy of freedom. Yet in the process of attempting to win the “War on Terror”, American citizens have given up a significant part of their personal freedoms. And just this month, we are starting to have a national discussion about how, since 9/11, the US Department of Homeland Security has transformed our local police into a paramilitary force. For example, the Los Angles School District Police got a MRAP (mine resistant vehicle) and 3 grenade launchers.

Schools need grenade launchers now? James Madison said in 1787:

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home…

Today, Americans own enormous numbers of weapons. Pew Research reports that the number of guns in the US is between 270 and 310 million, or roughly one for each of us. But, estimates are that about 37% of us actually own all the weapons.

So, today on the 13th anniversary of 9/11, we need to ask each other: What are we to make of a country in which:
• Local police are militarizing
• Citizens continue to arm themselves
• The federal government tramples on our Bill of Rights

Let’s think about what has been won and lost so far in the War on Terror. And let’s think about what remains of our social fabric. Is it as strong as that slurry wall? Will it hold when attacked? Do we still have that same problem-solving genius that built a slurry wall that was strong enough to survive attack?

Is America still built to last?