Avuncular American

Message Control: The Admiral Will Now Take Questions

Civilian Control of the Military

As much as I might sympathize with soon-to-be-retired Admiral William "Fox" Fallon's view that "this constant drumbeat of conflict... is not helpful and not useful" (apropos of Administration war drums on Iran), it is not surprising that his record of brutally frank talk in the presence of journalists caused his departure from the top slot at Central Command.  For the most concise summary of the likely "insubordination" verdict, here's an excerpt from "The Nelson Report" (subscription only), thanks to The Washington Note's Steve Clemons:

... Fallon was fired for hubris which amounted to insubordination, Congressional and other sources feel.  It is both understandable and justifiable, given the chain of command and civilian control ethos of the US military.  Any administration, and not just Bush and Gates, would rapidly conclude that they could not tolerate having their hand-picked commander for Iraq and Afghanistan seeming to take on responsibility for deciding whether to go to war with Iran (or any other country)...

What Chris Nelson is talking about is a basic democratic fact: elected civilians decide matters of war and peace, and uniformed military execute orders.  Of course, you'd like it if the "elected civilians" include, in the American example, the Senate, as in "advice and consent."

It's worth reading the article in Esquire Magazine by Thomas P. M. Barnett, "The Man Between War and Peace," which was the proximate cause of Fallon's dismissal.  You get a feel for a man who had nothing to prove: at close to four decades in the Navy, he could have retired long ago, especially after successfully heading one of the US Navy's prime posts, the four-star billet at Pearl Harbor, Pacific Command or PACOM, which covers a sizable chunk of the globe.

Masters of (Their) Universe

Apart from Fallon's well-publicized objections to the war talk coming from the White House, it is worth reading all of Barnett's piece to appreciate other ingredients in the Fallon story.  Describing a quiet moment in Egypt, accompanying the Admiral on a annual CENTCOM exercise, Barnett recounts this exchange with Fallon:

I can tell that the cover story in this morning's Egyptian Gazette landed hard on somebody's desk at the White House. U.S. RULES OUT STRIKE AGAINST IRAN, read the banner headline, and the accompanying photo showed Fallon in deep consultation with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Fallon sidles up to me during a morning coffee break. "I'm in hot water again," he says.

"The White House?"

The admiral slowly nods his head.

"They say, 'Why are you even meeting with Mubarak?' " This seems to utterly mystify Fallon.

"Why?" he says, shrugging with palms extending outward. "Because it's my job to deal with this region, and it's all anyone wants to talk about right now. People here hear what I'm saying and understand. I don't want to get them too spun up. Washington interprets this as all aimed at them. Instead, it's aimed at governments and media in this region. I'm not talking about the White House." He points to the ground, getting exercised. "This is my center of gravity. This is my job."

It is not unheard of for four star American commanders of the "Combatant Commands" (CENTCOM, PACOM, AFRICOM, etc.) to meet with foreign heads of state and government in their respective "areas of responsibility" (AORs).  This "military diplomacy" is an increasingly common facet of American engagement with the world.  So if the White House was peeved at Fallon's meeting with Mubarak, it probably wasn't because he was playing diplomat.  Rather, it may be a reflection of pique with the Egyptian leader, who may not be sufficiently "with the program" - the Bush program for the Middle East.

The President's Representative... Is Where?

We're not told, in the above instance, who else was huddling with Mubarak.  The American Ambassador to Egypt - was he there?  Elsewhere in the Barnett article, we learn about Fallon's meeting with the Pakistani President:

"I didn't do any preaching," Fallon says about his talks with Musharraf. "In a previous life here [reference to his PACOM days], I had two extra constitutional events: a coup in Thailand, and a head of the military took over in Fiji. So I talked to the president for quite a while yesterday, both with the ambassador and then alone.

"Both with the ambassador and then alone..."  Now, US ambassadors are expected to be the President's personal representative in the countries to which they are assigned.  One of the fears of ambassadors, in big countries or small, is that American generals will be popping into those same countries and hobnobbing with the government.  Or giving orders to the Ambassador's staff, this time touring outlying provinces in Afghanistan:

... the governor piles on with a new complaint: Every winter, a local river becomes impassable for a local migratory tribe that is then stranded outside the valley.

Fallon asks the deputy chief of mission, "Are you aware of this?"

The DCM ["deputy ambassador"] replies, "No, I wasn't, and I promise to look into that."

None of this, individually, amounts to much, but taken as a whole, it underlines several sore points in the military-diplomatic relationship: who's in charge here?

Fallon appears to be brilliant, projects a can-do attitude, and has served his country honorably.  His departure after speaking his mind shows the limits of "freedom of speech" in a chain of command that ends at the Oval Office.  It is unfortunate, I think, that Admiral Fallon did not leave on his own time, and that if he truly feels that the War Party is in the ascendancy, he did not make an impassioned resignation statement and go his own way.  This way, it leaves a feeling of irresolution, a hint of "insubordination" followed by an "acceptance" of retirement.

There is a way to clear away the lingering doubt.  Hold a press conference.  And join the growing club of generals critical of the Bush Administration's way in the world.

Dr. Brown To General Powell: Doing The Right Thing

Five years ago today, American diplomacy lost a very worthy practitioner, John H. Brown, when he resigned over the impending US invasion of Iraq.  Here is his letter:

To: Secretary of State Colin Powell

March 10, 2003

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am joining my colleague John Brady Kiesling in submitting my resignation from the Foreign Service (effective immediately) because I cannot in good conscience support President Bush’s war plans against Iraq.

The president has failed:

To explain clearly why our brave men and women in uniform should be ready to sacrifice their lives in a war on Iraq at this time;

To lay out the full ramifications of this war, including the extent of innocent civilian casualties;

To specify the economic costs of the war for ordinary Americans;

To clarify how the war would help rid the world of terror;

To take international public opinion against the war into serious consideration.

Throughout the globe the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force. The president’s disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century.

I joined the Foreign Service because I love our country. Respectfully, Mr. Secretary, I am now bringing this calling to a close, with a heavy heart but for the same reason that I embraced it.

Sincerely,

John H. Brown
Foreign Service Officer

Hindsight might make Brown's list of grievances look banal; we all know that "the President has failed" on a number of fronts, notably his treatment of the truth.  But how many Americans - let alone how many American diplomats and senior officers - knew it at the time, AND were willing to put their careers on the line?  Three diplomats (Brown and Kiesling, and Ann Wright), to be exact, part of a total of some 42 civil servants and military officers who left careers in the US Government because of opposition to Bush, many over Iraq.

I am happy to report that John Brown has continued to render patriotic service as the conscience of public diplomacy.  His "Public Diplomacy Press & Blog Review" (currently in hiatus) started out as a homemade newsletter, and has disseminated a steady flow of commentary on the image of America in the world.  His articles in such respected publications as The Guardian are a reflection of his experience and erudition.  He is Adjunct Professor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown University, and is on the Editorial Board of "Place Branding and Public Diplomacy," a scholarly journal dedicated to the notion that countries too represent a "brand," and that just as products can trigger unwanted associations (think Kool-Aid and Jonestown), so too can countries (as in Bush, George W. and American foreign policy).

Maybe in some future administration, those who left government service under a tainted regime will be valued for their prescience and their consciences.  I have no doubt that John Brown's help on "place branding" will be needed for the foreseeable future.

Get With the Program: Tools For Torture

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror -- the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives.  So today, I vetoed it."

President George W. Bush, March 8, 2009 (Weekly radio address - audio)

Torturers Know When It's Torture - For The Rest Of Their Lives

If you're like me, you might not like getting water in your nose while taking a shower.  Nasty sensation, even a few drops, plus it makes you cough and sneeze for a while afterwards.  But there's nothing to worry about - you're in control, and no, you're not going to drown.

"Waterboarding," or simulated drowning, carries none of these reassuring safeguards for the waterboardee, despite the President's assurances about "these safe and lawful techniques."  Imagine yourself strapped down, possibly naked (why not?) on some freezing, dirty toilet floor (the use of nudity and extreme temperatures has been a constant in American "alternative procedures," as the President called them yesterday).  And if you're going to get the maximum effect out of your procedure, who says that the water has to be clean, or even has to be water?

So on a Saturday morning, on a weekend where most Americans might be worried about setting their clocks forward to Daylight Savings Time, President Bush announces that he's going to veto what a majority (but crucially, not a veto-proof two thirds majority) of the Senate and the House of Representatives has deemed a standard of American decency: that US intelligence agencies be limited to using those interrogation techniques found in the Army Field Manual.  That is what Bush vetoed.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned in thinking that it's only the creepy enemy guys in black leather trench coats who torture their prisoners in dingy basements - perhaps I've seen too many films (but, after enjoying the first season of TV's "24," I had to turn it off in the first minutes of the second season, when, as Vice President Cheney would say, the gloves came off).  I guess that I'm in that 32% of Americans who oppose torture - which means that more than 60% approve of torture.

I hope some of these armchair torturers read "Am I a Torturer?" in the current Mother Jones (part of an issue entitled "Torture Hits Home"), where writer Justine Sharrock interviews Ben Allbright, a young Iraq War veteran and former prison guard at Camp "Tiger."  Ben, who is trying to answer his own question through his blog "Operation Comeback" (devoted in part to fellow veterans who suffer from PTSD), at least does not have this on his conscience:

About a month after Ben left Tiger for good, an insurgency leader detained there, Maj. General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, was suffocated in a sleeping bag—a technique that, like waterboarding, Ben had heard was used but had never seen. The General, as he was known, was one of the 160-plus detainees who have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002, according to ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi. Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, the man accused of murdering Mowhoush, claimed he'd been following orders. In 2006, he was convicted of negligent homicide and dereliction of duty and sentenced to 60 days of barracks confinement, the equivalent of house arrest.

Confined to barracks for the murder of a prisoner of war - a Major General no less?  But Americans are immune - because we say we are - from international jurisdiction over war crimes.  If an American major general, or major, or private were murdered in the custody of a foreign army, would there not be a massive outcry?  Maybe if the victim's name were Jones or Smith, instead of Abed Hamed...

Words like "program" or "tools" and Orwellian euphemisms like "alternative procedures" have their equivalent in the Bush Administration's approach to war, where "targets" (not people) are flattened, and "collateral damage" is inflicted (on civilians whose misfortune is to be Iraqi).  Maybe the 60% who condone torture are reassured by the President's use of these terms, or his deeming it "an effective program," like a TV ad for an anti-allergy regimen.

Daddy, Were You In The SS Or The Wehrmacht?

Yesterday's presidential veto - supported, yes, by the Senate's sole torture victim, John McCain - may only provide transitory reassurance to Americans who have been involved in torture.  See "Central Intelligence Anxiety" by Laura Rozen in the same issue of MJ:

[A] division emerged between what a former senior Agency official described to me as the "SS crowd" and the "Wehrmacht crowd," the "hard edged" and the "smarter and better informed." He said, "People managed not to take assignments. There were senior people who would not go to meetings if they thought that extraordinary rendition or enhanced interrogation techniques were going to be discussed."

When CIA people start dividing themselves into "SS" and "Wehrmacht" camps and voting with their feet, you know things are going to come to a head, probably starting circa January 21, 2009.

Senators Clinton and Obama, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, were "absent from the vote but have said they support the vetoed bill. Neither has made it a campaign issue, however, and neither commented on Bush's veto."  So here's their chance to stake out a common Democratic candidate position, in contrast to McCain: if they indeed support the vetoed bill, they should - jointly or separately - pledge to sign it when they enter the White House.

If George W. Bush wants Waterboard to be his middle name, that's his personal legacy issue.  As an American citizen, I do not want my country to be branded "Torturers R' Us" - and I would appreciate Madam Experience and Mister Change deigning to vote for a future version of this bill.  Unless either of them are President, in which case they should simply sign it, and start turning the page on this sorry chapter of American history.

Trop Beau Pour Toi: Does America Deserve Obama?

"Trop Belle Pour Toi" was a mostly forgettable 1989 film starring Gerard Depardieu, Carole Bouquet, and Josiane Balasko.  In which Depardieu's character inexplicably throws away his marriage with picture-perfect Bouquet for a fling with rather "dumpy" (as Roger Ebert describes her) secretary Balasko.  Bouquet, in her perfection, was "Too Beautiful For You."

As we enter what may be the longest six weeks in recent American political history before the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, just how excruciatingly painful will it be?  Barack Obama has just had to accept the resignation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign policy advisor Dr. Samantha Power for having used the "m" word about rival Hillary Clinton - surely worse unmentionable nouns have been on Obama camp lips?  "Monster" is pretty tame in the greater scheme of political insults, and perhaps Power thought that by resigning she might spark a sense of "do the right thing" in the Clinton stable of campaign advisers.  In your dreams.

Here's today's Bob Herbert Op-ed in the NYT, in which Senator Clinton is confronted with another "m" word:

And then there was Mrs. Clinton on “60 Minutes,” being interviewed by Steve Kroft. He had shown a clip on the program of a voter in Ohio who said that he’d heard that Senator Obama didn’t know the national anthem, “wouldn’t use the Holy Bible,” and was a Muslim.

Mr. Kroft asked Senator Clinton if she believed that Senator Obama is a Muslim. In one of the sleaziest moments of the campaign to date, Senator Clinton replied: “No. No. Why would I? No, there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know.”

As far as I know.

If she had been asked if she thought President Bush was a Muslim, would her response have included the caveat “as far as I know”? What about Senator McCain? Why, then, with Senator Obama?

It must be one of the lowest points of this campaign, that respected rising star Senator Barack Obama is  repeatedly forced to explain his religious origins/beliefs - and feels compelled to paraphrase a mantra redolent of the bad old McCarthy blacklisting days: "I am not, nor have ever been, a member of the... ."  Talk about the precedent-setting nature of a woman or an African-American president: the day that a Muslim-American will have a serious run on the White House will be the day that American acceptance of "diversity" will be truly tested.

Don't try to read too much into my "Trop Belle" analogy (no, Hillary Clinton is not "dumpy," and John McCain is not Gerard Depardieu).  But given the essentially good choices confronting the American electorate (if you doubt that, consider some of those who have dropped out of the race), is Barack Obama "Trop Beau" - too upright, too principled, not "down and dirty" enough - for the US Presidency?  Are expectations so low for Hillary Clinton's nastiness that she gets away with slurring her Democratic rival?  The old truism, "you get the leaders you deserve" - is it self-fulfilling?  Is Barack Obama constitutionally capable of tit for tat?

Perhaps not.  Last week London's "Independent" ran an article by longtime Obama associate Cass Sunstein.  He explains some of the reasons why Obama breaks the partisan mold:

As president, Obama would set a new tone in US politics. He refuses to demonise his political opponents; deep in his heart, I believe, he doesn't even think of them as opponents. It would not be surprising to find Republicans and independents prominent in his administration. Obama wants to know what ideas are likely to work, not whether a Democrat or a Republican is responsible for them.

In his book The Audacity of Hope, he asks for a politics that accepts "the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point". Remarking that ordinary Americans "don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal", Obama wants politicians "to catch up with them".

In short, Obama's own approach is insistently charitable. He assumes decency and good faith on the part of those who disagree with him. And he wants to hear what they have to say. Both in substance and in tone, Obama questions the conventional political distinctions between "the left" and "the right". To the extent that he is attracting support from Republicans and independents, it is largely for this reason.

While Barack Obama has penned The Audacity of Hope, the New York Times' Gail Collins opines that Hillary Clinton only understands the "audacity of audacity."  Pyhrric victories the Democrats do not need.  Here's a reader's comment (my translation) on a "Le Monde" article on the asymmetric (in terms of playing dirty) Clinton-Obama campaigns:

The Democrats' ability to shoot themselves in the foot, not just with a single round but with an entire magazine, is mind-boggling.  Americans have a choice between a woman, a black man, and an old man.  The odds are that they'll choose the latter.

The biggest danger to the Democrats is that if voters - especially the millions of young Obama supporters who have helped set primary turnout records - are turned off by internecine warfare, those who can still bring themselves to vote in November may go for an above-the-fray John McCain.

"Why We Fight" - Overseas Americans Discuss Militarism

Thanks to cinephile members of Democrats Abroad Belgium, last night DAB featured the award-winning 2005 Eugene Jarecki film "Why We Fight," followed by a discussion of American militarism.  For readers unfamiliar with Jarecki's film, I recommend Andrew O'Hehir's January 2006 interview with the documentary film maker in Salon.com.  Jarecki explains why he used President Dwight Eisenhower's famous "military-industrial complex" farewell address as the centerpiece of his film:

Dwight Eisenhower's Farewell Address was the catalyst for me in making this film.  [T]he last moments of a World War II hero and two-term Republican president sharing with the American public a warning about what he called the "military-industrial complex."  When I heard him say it, given the context of who he was and is for Americans, it struck me that at no point before or since in our history has an American president been as truthful with the American public about any subject, let alone a subject as significant as war.

The Americans gathered in Brussels yesterday were largely a generation X crowd, and this may have been the first time that many had seen the Eisenhower footage.  Jarecki's film puts the address in the context of the Cold War, the Thermonuclear Age, and Eisenhower's own long history of military service.  Most of all, watching the film helps Americans frame the debate over Iraq and the Bush legacy in terms of its historical precedents.  American interventions are not new, nor are they uniquely Republican.

In the context of the American presidential elections, it is intriguing to watch wannabe Commander in Chief Senator John McCain in a reflective mood, basically agreeing with Eisenhower's premise, and - in his best "Straight Talk Express" persona - coming close to calling the American pork barrel, PAC-funded, revolving-door system "corrupt."  In what has to be one of the film's best "gotcha" moments, however, Straight Talk Express comes to a screeching halt when, about to address a question about the Cheney-Halliburton defense contracting connection, McCain has to abruptly end the interview to answer a phone call from... the Vice President.  Amusing, but slightly spooky.

Mostly though, "Why We Fight" avoids Michael Moore polemics, and probably gives equal face time to critics (including Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity, co-editor of "Making a Killing: The Business of War") and neocons like Richard Perle, one of the architects of the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war.  The Democrats Abroad discussion participants, while generally Among The Converted, did acknowledge - as does Jarecki - that defense is necessary, but agreed with the Eisenhower premise that "balance" was lacking in the overwhelming size and influence of the US defense establishment.

In the wake of recent public discussion and Congressional testimony on the costs of the Iraq War, the DAB group focused on a wider reading of the term "national security."  Some called attention to Al Gore's campaign against global warming, where the links between environmental and energy security are most evident.  Others were concerned about the economic underpinnings of national security, where deficit defense budget spending and unending "supplementals" are underwritten by Chinese and Gulf emirate lending.   How sustainable is a military program that relies on foreign money?  Yet others, considering the film's clear explanation of how military equipment programs are evenly distributed among the 50 states and just about every Congressional district, questioned whether it would ever be possible to rein in on profligate spending - especially in times of an impending recession.

"Why We Fight," as a contribution to citizens' understanding of the strength, resilience, and ubiquity of the military-industrial complex, is as important as the work of Andrew Bacevich, author of "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War."  Bacevich, in a 2005 Mother Jones article "The Normalization of War," quoted an Eisenhower contemporary to illustrate our current predicament:

Thus has the condition that worried C. Wright Mills in 1956 come to pass in our own day. "For the first time in the nation's history," Mills wrote, "men in authority are talking about an ‘emergency' without a foreseeable end." While in earlier times Americans had viewed history as "a peaceful continuum interrupted by war," today planning, preparing, and waging war has become "the normal state and seemingly permanent condition of the United States." And "the only accepted ‘plan' for peace is the loaded pistol."

This is mighty stuff, coming from Bacevich - Vietnam veteran, former career Army officer, and father of a soldier killed in Iraq.  Like Eisenhower, Bacevich knows firsthand the cost of war.  Yesterday's viewing of "Why We Fight" only explored tentative answers to Jarecki's (and Frank Capra's original) question, but its main merit is found in Eisenhower's corollary to his warning about the military-industrial complex:

Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Some of that citizenry was on hand last night in Brussels.  They think - and they vote.

The Backstory To Blowback - Neocon Vs. Neocon

Today US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has given her umpteenth speech on the Israel-Palestine "Peace Process," as the absence-of-peace process has been called for at least the last 40 years.  She, President Bush, and - let's not forget him, ex-British PM and sometime Quartet representative - Tony Blair can be counted on to deliver the most upbeat, optimistic prognostications on the prospects for peace-in-their-time, or at least a Palestinian state by the end of 2008.  Perhaps.  Inshallah.  But a glance at the destruction on both sides of the Gaza-Israel border would give anyone pause.

That's why David Rose's article in the April Vanity Fair, "The Gaza Bombshell," is such essential, urgent reading.  It's a long article, but well worth plowing through for its wealth of detail on what - as one of the sections is entitled - resembled "Iran-Contra 2.0."  It's the story of blowback (see last para) from the US plan to overturn the Hamas parliamentary election victory, and how the backfiring US plan in fact cemented Hamas control of Gaza.  (For a condensed but authoritatively annotated comment on the Vanity Fair article, you might also check out Helena Cobban's post in "Just World News," her excellent Mideast news blog.)

I won't even attempt to summarize the story, but suffice it to say that Rose's sources - both named and background - are impressive, and cover the gamut from Palestinian and Israeli to Bush Administration officials.  And you will be surprised, perhaps, that some of the fiercest critics are those neocons who are now outside the Administration:

Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.  Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.  The botched plan has rendered the dream of Middle East peace more remote than ever, but what really galls neocons such as Wurmser is the hypocrisy it exposed. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he says. “It directly contradicts it.”

Irony alert: Wurmser is not the only former Administration official exercised over White House meddling in this particular Pandora's box.  So is former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton.  He deems the plan:

“an institutional failure, a failure of strategy.” Its author, he says, was Rice, “who, like others in the dying days of this administration, is looking for legacy. Having failed to heed the warning not to hold the elections, they tried to avoid the result through Dayton." [note: Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, then U.S. security coordinator for the Palestine Authority]

Okay, the entire story is Byzantine, but shows the limits of American ability to meddle successfully in Middle Eastern affairs.  Which brings me back to "blowback."  I leave you with the Chalmers Johnson (author of "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire") definition of the term:

"Blowback" is a CIA term first used in March 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the US government's international activities that have been kept secret from the American people. The CIA's fears that there might ultimately be some blowback from its egregious interference in the affairs of Iran were well founded. Installing the Shah in power brought twenty-five years of tyranny and repression to the Iranian people and elicited the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution. The staff of the American embassy in Teheran was held hostage for more than a year. This misguided "covert operation" of the US government helped convince many capable people throughout the Islamic world that the United States was an implacable enemy.

Johnson wrote the above in September 2001, in attempt to explain the "unintended consequences" that led to 9/11.  Johnson always stresses that these are "activities that have been kept secret from the American people."  Thanks to Vanity Fair and David Rose, that is no longer the case, and at least we now have the backstory to blowback.

Fear Factor: The Scary Cost of American "Defense"

In the excitement over today's primary elections in the US presidential race, readers may have only subliminally registered that the US launched missiles against an African country over the weekend.  Yes - it was just a footnote in the War on Terror - but Somalia was (again) the target of American forces.  Presumably the targets were people dressed like this.

One of the blessings of being an American expatriate is that I am not bombarded by Stateside TV ads, especially that noxious variety called campaign advertising.  So I have only heard of the Hillary Clinton "3:00 AM" attack on Barack Obama's national security credentials.  I understand that her campaign manager says that it is "swaying millions" of undecided voters.

But for those who don't need pictures to generate chills up their spine, I recommend some essential reading.  Today's New York Times oped by Bob Herbert, "The $2 Trillion Nightmare," should be effective in waking you up at 3:00 AM as you contemplate the economic impact of the Bush Administration and its one enduring legacy.  Herbert quotes testimony last week at the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress by Robert Hormats, former Reagan Administration Assistant Secretary of State and current vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, and Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist:

Hormats:  “Normally, when America goes to war, nonessential spending programs are reduced to make room in the budget for the higher costs of the war. Individual programs that benefit specific constituencies are sacrificed for the common good ... And taxes have never been cut during a major American war. For example, President Eisenhower adamantly resisted pressure from Senate Republicans for a tax cut during the Korean War.”

Stiglitz: “Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits (emphasis added). The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war."

In case $2 Trillion isn't scary enough, read Gary Kamiya's review in Salon of the Stiglitz (with co-author Linda Bilmes) book "The Three Trillion Dollar War"

As far as I know, Stiglitz and Bilmes' landmark book is the first to break the taboo against counting up the costs of an ongoing war. Not only does it reveal the staggering actual cost of Bush's war of choice -- at least $3 trillion -- it details what we could have done with that money if we had spent it more wisely. The book also argues that Iraq is partly responsible for the nation's current economic crisis: The Federal Reserve Bank under Alan Greenspan tried to offset the adverse effects of the war by lowering interest rates, which helped cause the subprime debacle when interest rates inevitably rose (emphasis added).

The import of their insistence on looking at the war's cost now, while it's still in progress, can't be underestimated. By forthrightly acknowledging that armed conflict should be subject to a cost-benefit analysis, they implicitly puncture the sacrosanct aura of patriotism surrounding war -- and make it harder for governments to launch future wars as ill-considered as the present one we find ourselves in.

The "cost" is not just economic.  Later this week, I will be reporting on a Brussels discussion of American militarism, but I leave you with the thoughts of President (and former General) Dwight Eisenhower, who, as he was saying farewell to the nation in January 1961, issued his famous "military industrial complex" warning:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry" can counter danger to "our liberties or democratic processes."  Be wary of "3:00 AM" scare ads and interestingly-timed foreign crises.  "Change" - in facing up to more than a half century of exponential growth in the MIC that Eisenhower warned of - would indeed be scary for the vested interests in the defense industry.  Guess who Susan Eisenhower, lifelong Republican and keeper of her grandfather's flame, is voting for?

The Dictators You Have - Whether You Want Them Or Not

"As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want."
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, December 8, 2004, answering soldiers' complaints over armoring in ongoing Iraqi combat.

“Sitting down at the table, having your picture taken with a tyrant…lends the status of the office and the status of our country to him.  He gains a lot from it by saying, ‘Look at me, I’m now recognized by the President of the United States.’”
George W. Bush, President of the United States, February 28, 2008, criticizing Barack Obama.

"Is it not funny that those with 160,000 forces in Iraq accuse us of interference?"
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, March 2, 2008, upon arrival in Iraq.

Irony abounds.  Rumsfeld is long gone, of course, but his legacy remains.  He who shook hands with enemy-of-my-enemy Saddam Hussein as a Reagan envoy in 1983 came to see the same dictator as a pillar of his new boss's "Axis of Evil" two decades later.  Five years ago, when the US was on the verge of invading Iraq, Rumsfeld and his sidekick Paul Wolfowitz berated (and eventually "retired") their chief military skeptic, General Eric Shinseki, when he dared suggest that neocon plans to occupy Iraq with token forces were doomed to failure.  Those soldiers who complained to the then Defense Secretary were among the victims of Rumsfeld's headstrong insistence on doing things his way.

Ken Silverstein of Harper's, in a wonderful little post entitled "President Bush, Without Irony, 'Assails Democratic Candidates' Foreign Policy Views,'" takes the above Washington Post quote and annotates it with appropriate links.  Links to photos of President Bush shaking hands with several world class tyrants, all of whom sit on pools of oil, and none of whom fear regime change from anyone other than their own oppressed peoples.  Presumably it's patriotic when Bush sups with "our" dictators, but suspect when Democrats propose to talk with recalcitrant dictators.

It's a good day in Baghdad, especially if you're name is Ahmadinejad.  What his "Axis of Evil" predecessors could not accomplish in a decade of war - victory over Sunni Iraq and its secular, Baath socialist strongman - was handed to him by that scourge of tyrants, George W. Bush, in March 2003.  Now it's not only surge-safe for Shiites of all nationalities in Baghdad - they rule the roost.  Iran - Iraq's most important neighbor - has a full fledged embassy in Baghdad, while no Arab country yet has - surely a sign that the Arab world has not given its vote of confidence in the current Iraqi government's longevity.

Irony, impunity - little sense of the former, plenty of the latter.  That is what we've had our fill of in the last eight years.  I leave you with a final quote, which should become the mantra of the Democratic campaign for the US presidency:

"I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place."

Senator Barack Obama, January 31, 2008

Just When You Thought You Had Belgium Sorted

The ace political cartoonist of Belgium's leading francophone daily Le Soir, Pierre Kroll, compiled a book of drawings last year, with mordant commentary by Pierre Bouillon, also of Le Soir.  Their book, "Draw Me Belgium," which was published prior to the June 2007 elections, was prophetic in its projections of record-breaking stalemates for coalition building.  One of Kroll's cartoons has a flying saucer with a couple of Martians, looking down on Earth.  "There's one country I've never understood," says the first alien.  The second Martian responds - "I see which one..."  Down on Earth, Belgium's politicians cavort, hand in hand.

I've flipped through the Kroll/Bouillon book for inspiration often these past few weeks, in preparation for the next milestone in the Belgian political process: the handover later this month from caretaker Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt to coalition leader Yves Leterme.  But the event has been troubled by (a) Leterme's hospitalization for stress-induced gastrointestinal problems (read: bleeding ulcer - he's just been released from hospital and will return to the scene on Monday) and (b) the defection from the putative coalition of Leterme's main Flemish nationalist partners.

Last November, when I started writing "Avuncular American," I would regularly provide updates on the emerging Belgian political situation.  That was a time when there was attention from the world press on the imminent breakup of Belgium - or so you would believe, given the dire statements from all sides.  Every day there were slights and hurts to the opposite political side (usually along linguistic, "community" lines instead of ideological left-right lines), which only served to reinforce the fears of looming divorce.

Finally, King Albert II, with help from lame-duck PM Verhofstadt, brokered a compromise that is now approaching its next stage: 9 months after the June 2007 elections, Flemish politician Yves Leterme is to take up the Prime Ministerial helm circa Easter.  "Dead or alive," as one of his political allies (with friends like this...) indelicately put it, referring to doubts about his political and physical stamina to resume tough "institutional reform" (read separatism) negotiations.  After the pre-Christmas royal truce, and an extension of the Verhofstadt reign, is Belgium now about to re-enter another period of sectarian tension?  It certainly looks like it.  Stay tuned.