Pat Lang seems to think so. This may be a case of cry wolf. No one believes it anymore, because it hasn’t happened despite warnings yet.
But remember, when the boy cried wolf the second time there was a wolf.
We’ll see.
Category: Military Page 10 of 11
Intentional, or a side effect?
In the last war, much of the fighting took place on open scrubland, Merli said. But the deployment of United Nations forces in southern Lebanon had forced Hezbollah into built up areas where troops from the international UNIFIL force have no authority.
Not good. Note that Hezbollah fought outside built up areas for military reasons: they felt they were more effective there, because outside of population centers they were also away from informants. UNIFIL’s mission means the next war will be fought in population centers.
Somehow that does not seem to be something a UN peacekeeping operation should be ensuring.
I recently wrote that Obama has chosen to stay in Afghanistan because war spending is one of the only reliable forms of stimulus he has. I am baffled by many of the responses to that article. What do readers think would happen to the US economy if all that spending stopped and wasn’t replaced by anything?
Retired People’s Liberation Army Major General Xu Guangyu said in the newspaper commentary that China wanted a minimal nuclear deterrent and would avoid any arms race. “China resolutely adheres to a defensive nuclear strategy, and has always adhered to a policy that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances,” wrote Xu
The Barack Obama administration’s declaration in its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that it is reserving the right to use nuclear weapons against Iran represents a new element in a strategy of persuading Tehran that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites is a serious possibility if Iran does not bow to the demand that it cease uranium enrichment.
Although administration officials have carefully refrained from drawing any direct connection between the new nuclear option and the Israeli threat, the NPR broadens the range of contingencies in which nuclear weapons might play a role so as to include an Iranian military response to an Israeli attack.
A war involving Iran that begins with an Israeli attack is the only plausible scenario that would fit the category of contingencies in the document.
The NPR describes the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in those contingencies as a “deterrent”. A strategy of exploiting the Israeli threat to attack Iran would seek to deter an Iranian response to such an attack and thus make it more plausible.
In other words, if Israel attacks Iran, the US says it might nuke Iran if Iran strikes back after an Israeli attacks.
Say what? Oh, I see “You’re going to let my friend Israel beat the shit out of you, or I’m going to pull the trigger of this gun I have pointed at your head. Because you’re a bad country, and Israel and the US are the good guys.”
Gee, the idea of those crazy Iranians getting nukes seems so much scarier than the US having them, doesn’t it?
A force for peace, and the home of the free, indeed.
Seriously, Sean-Paul’s my friend, but this sort of thing (which is hardly unique to him) in reference to the video of the killing of reporters and other civilians is waffling of the highest order:
As for the actions of the soldiers? At first, I wasn’t sure how to feel, but I know enough about war to know I know nothing of war, so I reserve judgment. Alas, I can’t help but to think that the rules of engagement were violated here in some fashion. But again, I cannot say with any certainty and so withhold judgment.
Waffle irons have nothing on this.
No, the fact that you haven’t been to war doesn’t mean you can’t judge, and especially the fact that you aren’t a civilian doesn’t mean you can’t judge. This constant mantra of “oh, the troops aren’t to blame” excuses acts of barbarity.
And as a civilian, it’s in your best interest to not brush aside acts of barbarity by militaries.
Somehow the argument “I don’t understand” never gets applied in reverse. It gets applied to American soldiers, but not to say, Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters. They commit atrocities and we have no hesitation in condemning them.
Imagine you did understand. What possible reason could these soldiers have for their actions which would excuse them? That they’re under pressure? So what? That may make it understandable, it doesn’t make it excusable. Any more than if I think I understand why some terrorist kills a bunch of civilians, that understanding makes it acceptable.
The knee-jerk “support the troops! Never say anything bad about our boys” stuff is noxious. A proper functioning military in a civilized society court-martials people who do things like this.
And this is not an isolated incident. As Siun notes:
At the time the New York Times reported that “the military has paid more than $32 million to Iraqi and Afghan civilians for noncombat-related killings, injuries and property damage, an Army spokeswoman said. That figure does not include condolence payments made at a unit commander’s discretion.” And given that the average payment for a dead adult civilian was $3,000, you begin to get some sense of the scale of devastation we have brought to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
You do the math… And that’s just deaths where they felt they had to pay someone off, where payments are on the record.
This is military policy. The reason it was covered up is that it’s not an aberation, it’s policy. As Greenwald notes, this is what the US military does. The rot goes all the way to the top.
And no, “following orders” is not an excuse.
Enough waffling. What happened in that video was wrong. What’s even worse is that there’s no reason to believe it was an isolated incident.
Let’s talk about the American way in the context of the assassination strategy used against the Taliban, for the last 8 years.
First, a simple fact: this strategy hasn’t worked worth a damn against the Taliban. They’re winning, the US is losing.
The argument for it would be that killing leaders messes up the Taliban. This is marginally true at best. Loss of a leader may cause a slight delay and occasional fights within the Taliban, but it doesn’t stop them from getting stronger and continuing to win.
Americans think that good leaders are hard to come by because modern America produces bad leaders regularly, and rarely produces even marginally competent leaders.
Or, to be more accurate, average leaders are not sufficient to make anything in America work because America is set up to force people to do the wrong thing and people who care about doing the right thing are systematically kept out and forced out if they make it in.
The Taliban doesn’t need brilliant leaders, all it needs is leaders able to execute its strategy, and its’ strategy is simple enough that your average leader can implement it, whereas the US strategy couldn’t be executed by a Napoleon.
Killing leaders at the cost of bombing weddings and funerals and killing civilians does not work in the context of counter-insurgency unless your strategy is scorched earth, which the US’s is not. There is also an opportunity cost to anys treategy.
This is the same strategy the Israelis have used for decades against the Palestinians and Hezbollah
You’ll notice that the problem has not gone away.
Americans think leaders matter far more than they actually do. In the context of an actual ideological movement with substantial popular support, there’s always another one. And, in fact, he’s somewhat more likely to be competent than whoever he replaced.
Take a look at the evolution of Hezbollah’s leadership to see how this works. The leadership keeps getting more competent, not less competent, as does the organization. The Israelis act as a nice Darwinian force, making sure the most able wind up on top and that strategies which don’t work end, because the people executing them die. Likewise the Taliban is more deadly now than it was 2 years ago, 2 years ago it was more deadly than 2 years before that, and so forth.
The war should have ended years ago, and the assassination strategy is not producing results.
But by all means, keep trying a strategy which hasn’t worked for 8 years. It’s the American way, if at first, second, third, fourth, tenth a strategy doesn’t work—do it harder. Doesn’t matter whether it’s taxes, warmaking, healthcare or anything else: the easy stupid way is always the right way, even after it hasn’t worked, over and over again.
Wonderful.
Eric Margolis nails it as usual:
Obama’s total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret black programs (about $70 billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan; 225,000 military “contractors” (mercenaries and workers); and veterans’ costs. Add $75 billion (nearly four times Canada’s total defence budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees…
…The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama’s Afghan “surge” of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion — more than Germany’s total defence budget.
No wonder U.S. defence stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama’s “austerity” budget….
…Military and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as unemployment heads over 10% and the economy bleeds red ink. America has become the Sick Man of the Western Hemisphere, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire.
The Pentagon now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add America’s rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75%….
…There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea.
Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. During the Bush administration, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — funded by borrowing — cost each American family more than $25,000.
Like Bush, Obama is paying for America’s wars through supplemental authorizations — putting them on the nation’s already maxed-out credit card. Future generations will be stuck with the bill.
Margolis is right. This is how Empires die. It’s not precisely the finances that matter, but what they represent, the gutting of real economic activity and growth for activities which return no real growth or strength. To the military I would add at least three quarters of all financial activity in the US.
A sane policy would be to reduce the US military budget by a half, slash the “intelligence” budget by three quarters (they produce virtually no actionable intelligence not available through public sources), break up the banks and spend money on refitting every building in America, in making education work again, in high speed trains and so on.
But that’s not going to happen.
So yes, Margolis is right, the US is in terminal decline.
And no, it isn’t going to stop till the US crashes out.
Apparently we’re looking at three columns of troops, about 30K in number, with air and artillery support against somewhere between 10 to 25K Taliban and allied groups. The army has said that they figure everyone in the area is Taliban or supporters since everyone else should have left, but al-Jazeera is noting that the population is about 500K, and only 150K or so have left.
The obvious model for the Taliban to use is the Hezbollah model, so successful against the Israelis during the last Israeli attack on Lebanon. However Pakistan forces are a lot more willing to take losses than Israelis, and I can’t imagine the Taliban have the discipline, iron-clad secrecy, and technical chops of Hezbollah. Let alone years to build up a bunker/comm/tunnel network.
That said, if I were the Taliban and I’d decided to fight, certainly I would be trying to copy Hezbollah. Heavy heavy dig in, well camouflaged. They have to blunt the enemy’s air power, channel them into killing fields, and make it into a morale battle (the one place where they had better have an advantage, if they hope to have a chance in hell of winning.)
The army stating they consider everyone remaining a Talib or a supporter means they don’t intend to let the Taliban go to ground in the population—they’ll kill civilians if necessary.
Isolate – concentrate – annihilate. The anti-guerrilla playbook.
We’ll see if the Taliban is playing by that book.
My bet is on the army, at least for the duration of the operation (they’ll get cut up by pinprick attacks later). But if they lose the operation outright, it will be fascinating.