Antiwar.com’s Week in Review | October 28, 2011
IN THIS ISSUE
Breaking news – A Bosnian gunman reportedly attacked the US embassy in Sarajevo: he has been shot by police and arrested. I guess this is a “thank you” note for Bill Clinton’s efforts on their behalf.
When you’re shilling for a war in Iran as regularly as the Washington Times does, you’re constantly making up allegations centering around what anonymous officials totally bet is the case. That and hiring artists to make caricatures of an Ayatollah made of nukes.
The downside to doing this for so long is that your stories have to be bigger and scarier every time, and after years upon years of “Iran totally almost has nukes” being the slogan, they had to up the ante.
So now, with former CIA spy “Reza Kahlili” taking the byline and a convoluted story that would make Tom Clancy blush filling in the details, the Washington Times is now reporting, as though it is absolute fact, that Iran “already has nuclear weapons.”
Putting aside the nonsensical story for a minute, neither Kahlili nor the Times appears to understand that if Iran not only has nuclear weapons but, as they claim, has had them for many years, the whole narrative they’ve been pushing about such a weapon being an imminent threat in the hands of Iran is proven false by them never using these supposed Soviet surplus nukes.
It’s a sad day when those on the left end of the political spectrum understand Frédéric Bastiat’s simple economic lesson of the seen and the unseen better than billionaire businessmen. But something tells me they know better. Fear-mongering estimates about the terrible job losses that would occur if cuts to defense budgets actually take place are ignoring – knowingly, I bet – the jobs that would be created if the taxes taken from the economy and given to defense firms were allowed to stay in the hands of the people for projects that don’t end in destruction, war, and murder. Entrepreneurial Americans are largely peaceful people; keeping the moolah in their hands will lead to productive economic activity – and thus, more jobs.
Robert Greenwald and Derrick Rowe:
In their attempt to protect pay packages that would shame a Goldman Sachs executive, the CEOs of the biggest military contractors are again releasing bogus “analysis” on job creation related to massive military budgets. Don’t be fooled: the spin coming out of the Second To None lobbying front is about one job, and one job only: the job of the guy at the top of the war corporation, along with its massive salary.
Let’s dispense with the war profiteers’ so-called economic analysis (.pdf). The study released today at a war-contractor-convened press conference tries to obscure the massive jobs cost of military spending by citing all the jobs that are tied to the current Pentagon budget.
- simple analysis of how many more jobs would be created through virtually any other kind of spending (even plain old consumer spending) compared to military spending in the short term, and
- the huge jobs cost caused by the “brain drain” imposed by huge military R&D budgets, which pull engineers and scientists out of more productive civilian fields, leading to a loss of competitiveness in U.S. manufacturing. This brain drain far outweighs any spillover benefits caused by military technology finding its way into the civilian sector. This brain drain, according to Lloyd Dumas, has cost us literally millions of jobs.
So there is talk of Obama ending the Iraq War? And planning to draw down in Afghanistan sometime soon? Well, yes and no, on a number of levels. As we know, the decision to not keep thousands of US troops in Iraq was forced upon the Obama administration by the Iraqis, after the administration spent years pressuring for a remaining force. And withdrawing, is not exactly withdrawing when you consider the thousands of private mercenaries that will remain, the expanded “diplomatic” mission there, and the bases throughout the country (not to mention the largest Embassy in the world, essentially a military fortress). And for Afghanistan, there is still almost 150,000 troops there, and US and NATO military officials have repeatedly confirmed a remaining occupation of that country for at least the foreseeable future, and perhaps into the 2020s.
But The Atlantic gave us yet another perspective on the so-called drawdown of troops and supposed ending of wars. It speaks to what Nick Turse has called the “Secret War in 120 Countries,” namely the increasing use of covert elite forces like Joint Special Operations Command. This is a largely secret army that will again be another step back from those in power ever needing to declare war when they seek to wage it. As Obama supposedly “withdraws” from Iraq and Afghanistan, he is taking out the ordinary military we all know, and putting in his secret military:
The strain on the highly-trained forces will only increase as the Obama administration expands its shadow war against high-ranking militants in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, all of which have been the scene of targeted raids by elite troops in recent months. Senior Pentagon officials have also made clear that Special Operations troops will be used to conduct counter-terror raids in Afghanistan even as overall U.S. troop levels there begin to decline.
Elite forces like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force don’t deploy for as long as conventional Army and Marine units, which usually spend six to 15 months in the war zones per tour of duty. But they deploy far, far more often. Many conventional troops have done four or five deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. By contrast, Special Operations troops have done 10, 12, and even 14 tours.
“We’re getting real close to double-digit deployments across a number of different formations,” Lt. Col. Tom Bryant, a spokesman for the Army Special Operations Command, said in an interview. “Those numbers are becoming increasingly common and will be even more the norm down the road.”
The Special Operations world is the most secretive and insular component of the military. The Pentagon maintains several units and taskforces whose work – typically hunter-killer missions designed to track and eliminate militants around the globe–is so secretive that Washington won’t disclose their names or formally acknowledge their existence.
Of all the daily affirmations liberals tell themselves, none soothes me more than the one about how an Al Gore presidency would have spared us the Iraq War. Why, wasn’t Al suitably smug about Dubya’s “cowboy” act in 2002? Didn’t Michael Moore open Fahrenheit 9/11 with a long rehash of hanging-chad chicanery? Who among us doesn’t yearn for the invention of time travel so that someone might mow down a certain consumer advocate with a sporty Corvair?
And yet … well, there is this from the Oct. 11, 2000, presidential debate:
MODERATOR: Well, let’s stay on the subject for a moment. New question related to this. I figured this out; in the last 20 years there have been eight major actions that involved the introduction of U.S. ground, air or naval forces. Let me name them. Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo. If you had been president for any of those interventions, would any of those interventions not have happened?
GORE: Can you run through the list again?
MODERATOR: Sure. Lebanon.
GORE: I thought that was a mistake. [See below.]
MODERATOR: Grenada.
GORE: I supported that.
MODERATOR: Panama.
GORE: I supported that.
MODERATOR: Persian Gulf.
GORE: Yes, I voted for it, supported it.
MODERATOR: Somalia.
GORE: Of course, and that again — no, I think that that was ill-considered. I did support it at the time. It was in the previous administration, in the Bush-Quayle administration, and I think in retrospect the lessons there are ones that we should take very, very seriously.
MODERATOR: Bosnia.
GORE: Oh, yes.
MODERATOR: Haiti.
GORE: Yes.
MODERATOR: And then Kosovo.
GORE: Yes.
So Gore had supported seven of the eight “major” U.S. military actions of the preceding two decades. Oh, make that all eight; he must have forgotten that he supported the U.S. intervention in Lebanon too. Less than a week before the bombing that killed 241 American servicemen in Beirut, Rep. Albert Gore Jr. was the subject of a story in The New York Times. He was asked about Lebanon:
Why had he voted to continue the presence of United States troops in Lebanon for 18 months? “The decision to send troops to Lebanon was not well thought through,” Mr. Gore said, “but since they are there and there are now negotiations with the Syrians, it would be a mistake to remove them.
“It’s important to learn the right lessons of Vietnam,” he continued. “A cat that sits on a hot stove won’t sit on a hot stove again, but he won’t sit on a cold stove, either.”
Well, cold stoves can get hot mighty quickly, but that’s no reason for a cat to just steer clear of stoves, is it?
Why am I revisiting all this ancient history? Here’s Al’s old running mate in Tuesday’s USA Today:
No one doubts that the road ahead for Iraq, under even the most optimistic scenario, will continue to be challenging. There is a world of difference, however, between a future in which Iraq’s inspiring but fragile democracy perseveres, versus one in which the country collapses back into civil war, becoming a failed state in the heart of the Middle East.
There is likewise a huge difference between a future in which Iraqis can secure their country for themselves, versus one in which Iran seizes controlling influence over Iraq’s security and politics.
In order to decrease the risk of the worst case scenarios for Iraq and America, our military leaders have long argued that it is critical to keep a small U.S. force in Iraq after this year, since the Iraqi Security Forces still lack key capabilities and the country’s stability is not yet secured. In fact, every military leader I have spoken to in recent years with any responsibility for Iraq has told me we must keep at least 10,000 troops there after this year to ensure that our hard-won gains are not lost.
It is therefore profoundly disappointing that, after all America and Iraq have been through together, President Obama and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki could not find the will or the way to reach agreement for a small U.S. force to remain in Iraq after this year, and instead gave up trying.
This decision stands in striking contrast with the spirit of the remarkable men and women in uniform who pulled Iraq back from the brink of chaos just a few years ago, and who refused to give up or accept failure even after all hope was seemingly lost.
This failure puts at greater risk all that so many Americans and Iraqis fought, sacrificed and, in thousands of cases, gave their lives to achieve. It also hands a crucial strategic opportunity to the fanatical regime that controls Iran and that threatens us all.
Rather than trying to portray the failure of these negotiations as a success, the Obama administration could still restart its efforts to reach agreement with the Iraqis to allow a small U.S. force to remain. For the sake of our national security, and all of the blood and treasure we have spent in Iraq, we should do so.
Don’t fret, Joe. Obama’s busy right now. But once he’s safely ensconced in a second term, he might be willing to have a beer summit with the 2000 Democratic vice-presidential nominee and reexamine this rare lapse in judgment.
