Tomgram: William Astore, A New Age of "Enlightened" War | TomDispatch

A reminder why our constitution was written the way it was.

Tomgram: William Astore, A New Age of "Enlightened" War | TomDispatch

Un-ending War

More and more I find myself agreeing with Andrew Bacevich of Boston University. The foreign policy of the United States is basically that we are going to be in an un-ending low level war in the middle east or SW Asia. Somewhere where we think we can engage the Islamic Jihadists in battle. Professor Bacevich asks the question "What is the strategic objective?" and finds the answer unsatisfactory.

An un-ending war is actually a death spiral for the economy of the United States. There is no multiplier if you use capital borrowed from the Chinese to manufacture an Humvee that is then blown up in Afghanistan. And then there is opportunity cost, the young men and women in the Humvee are either killed or maimed and therefore less able if at all to contribute to the economy. War is never a good long term investment.

How should the US interact with the rest of the World?

The Rise of China

The link above is to an essay in Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs. Here is my letter to the editor with my reaction:

To the Editor:

In “The Rise of China and the Future of the West” January/February 2008 G. John Ikenberry presents a reasonable case for a cooperative effort by the West led by the United States to integrate China into the current world order. I agree with his thesis that the United States will be better off to calculate its position in the world on a more global coordinate system, i.e. the West vs. China, rather than a more local system i.e. U.S. vs. China and that making common cause with the Western order is in the best interest of the United States. However, I have the following comments:

The article recommends that the US once again become “the foremost supporter of the global system of governance”. This recommendation is obviously the antithesis to the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and the PNAC’s antipathy for multilateralism in U.S. foreign policy. Given this stark contrast, I was struck by the muted criticism of the Bush administration contained in the article. I found only two instances, one encrypted and one explicit. I perceive that, when Professor Ikenberry writes, “…China will rise, but the Western order—if managed properly—will live on” (emphasis mine) he is making a thinly veiled comment on the management acumen of the chief executive of the Western order’s managing partner, the United States. The only explicit criticism is in the last section of the article where he states, “Many Bush administration officials have been outright hostile of to the multilateral, rule-based system that the United States has shaped and led. Such hostility is foolish and dangerous.”

Perhaps Professor Ikenberry believes the majority of the readers of Foreign Affairs have already been persuaded of shortcomings of unilateralism. Perhaps he believes that it is more important to emphasize the positive benefits of his recommended course of action rather than reiterate the costs of alternate Bush administration policies which include the loss U.S. moral authority. However, I consider the loss of U.S moral authority a grave issue. When I look back at recent history and compare that reality to the strengths of the Western order listed and assumed by Professor Ikenberry, I begin to seriously question the assumptions.

When the U.S. political system and society acquiesces to enhanced interrogation techniques, denial of the writ of habeus corpus, and rendition it leads me to question just how deep and wide the foundations of the rule based system really are. These are violations of long held civil tenets if not explicit violations of the U.S Constitution, i.e. the model for governance in which image, Professor Ikenberry argues, the U.S. created the rule-based system of the Western order. Given this behavior, will other members of the order remain truly committed to the rule-based system?

I would also submit the Western order’s fairness and openness is in the eye of the beholder. The Muslim street would more likely say that the rules of the West are written for the members benefit and particularly the benefit of the U.S. If the Western order was perceived to be open to membership, would socialism be making such a strong comeback in Latin America, a region where China is growing in influence?

Again, I am all for the West working together as a team to integrate China peacefully into the world order or on other important issues. But lets be frank, the captain of the team has been badly injured and will have to go through rehab.

I will let you know if it gets published.

Statecraft

An essay by Dennis Ross A Stable Iraq

Mr. Ross has a book about statecraft which is an art the Bush administration has yet to display any talent in.

SITREP (Situation Report) from Iraq

NYT Op-Ed by 82nd Abn NCO's

I no longer have to wait for Gen Petraeus's report. I think that these NCO's have told us what we need to know.

Over stating arguments

Juan Cole in his effort discredit the Bush administration propaganda against Iran overstates the evidence he finds.

Informed Comment 8/13/07

In this posting he says the Sunni insurgents are using explosive form projectiles (EFP) too. The only thing is the LA times article he references doesn't mention EFP. It only says that when the soldiers rushed the building where the sniper was believed to be, they were blown up by a pressure actuated device. From that description it could have been a plain old anti-personnel mine.

I found this excerpt at Today in Iraq

"Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a ``war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms. Wars waged by nations, whether by the United States or Israel, are a hundred times more deadly for innocent people than the attacks by terrorists, vicious as they are.

The repeated excuse, given by both Pentagon spokespersons and Israeli officials, for dropping bombs where ordinary people live is that terrorists hide among civilians. Therefore the killing of innocent people (in Iraq, in Lebanon) is called accidental, whereas the deaths caused by terrorists (on 9/11, by Hezbollah rockets) are deliberate.

This is a false distinction, quickly refuted with a bit of thought. If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a ``suspected terrorist" is inside (note the frequent use of the word suspected as evidence of the uncertainty surrounding targets), the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is ``inevitable."

So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians. And when you consider that the number of innocent people dying inevitably in ``accidental" events has been far, far greater than all the deaths deliberately caused by terrorists, one must reject war as a solution for terrorism. "

The original source is piece by Howard Zinn in the Boston Globe 9/2/06.

The United States military force structure was designed to fight the conventional, and possibly chemically enhanced forces of the Soviet Union in central Europe. It has proved itself twice to be more than adequate to defeat the conventional forces of Saddam Hussien's Iraq. The US Army, however, wasn't well prepared for irregular forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

And the force currently deployed in Iraq, Army and Marine Corps, is absolutely the wrong force today. It doesn't have the skills to be a colonial occupation force. But we're not in Iraq to occupy it as a colony, blah, blah blah. We unfortunately what needed or rather what was needed in 2003 was a colonial occupation force. Now its probably too late, chaos reigns.

Murtha and Hackett are right, there is no reason for our military to continue in Iraq. There is no mission that they can accomplish. Well there is one, we could take one side or the other in the civil war join in the killing, but that doesn't sound very noble. But the idea that we are going to continue to referee the situation, is just ridiculous.