Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Military Page 14 of 15

Enough BS About “I can’t judge because I’ve never been a soldier”

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On April 7, 2010

23 Comments

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.

The Modern American Way

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On February 22, 2010

12 Comments

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.

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion

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On February 8, 2010

28 Comments

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.

Pakistan Army assault on Warziristan Taliban forces begins

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On October 17, 2009

18 Comments

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.

McChrystal continues to undercut Obama

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On September 28, 2009

6 Comments

It seems McChrystal, the Afghanistan theater commander, continues to undercut Obama to the media: in this case noting that Obama has only talked to him once.

Well well.  I hope Obama is pleased that he ok’d McChrystal for the job, eh?

You reap what you sow, and Obama is getting the commander he promoted: a political officer happy to use the media to get his way, whether that hurts the Commander in Chief or not.

A lot like his mentor, Petraeus.

Petraeus and his cadre should have been been sidelined when Obama took office, for their rampant political actions during the Bush administration.  They proved they were political officers, and Republican inclined officers.

But as usual, Obama wanted to play nice with conservatives.

He’s getting what he deserves, but I’m sure he won’t learn from it, since so far he’s shown no ability to understand the fundamental point that playing nice with modern American conservatives doesn’t work.

(One might suggest that McChrystal is standing up and saying honestly what he thinks he needs to “win” the war as did General Shinseki before the Iraq war.  Even if one takes that view, he should still be canned for insubordination.    The difference between him and Shinseki,  is that Shinseki gave his testimony to Congress, he didn’t run around to the media undercutting President Bush.)

Parable of the Scorpion and the Frog

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.

The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn’t see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.

Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.

“Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”

“Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.

“Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”

Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”

“This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”

“Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.

“Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”

So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back.

“I could not help myself. It is my nature.”

Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

Restructuring America’s Military

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On September 4, 2009

16 Comments

Military spending by country, 2008

Military spending by country, 2008

Here’s a truth for you.  No one, and I mean no one, can invade the US.  The US spends more on its military than the next 10 nations combined, and more naval tonnage than the next 13 navies combined.  For this the US gets an army which, sorry American jingoists, is bloody awful at brushfire wars.

The US army should be cut in three quarters, at the very least.  The air force should be disbanded, since it refuses to do its job anymore (it hates doing close support of troops and its planes are too expensive to be used in most circumstances, which is one main reason for the rise of drones) and the army and navy can pick up the necessary pieces.

The navy should be America’s main arm, but even it needs some cuts, and the carrier flotillas need a serious rethink, they’re nothing but big targets in the case of a war against a real enemy..  The army should be a much smaller expeditionary force, designed so it can be ramped up in the case of the sort of war that requires a mobilization.

The US cannot afford its current military.  The budget should be cut in half, at a minimum.  That budget, and the huge distortions that the military industrial complex is inflicting on America, are a large part of what is destroying America as an economic power.  The best and smartest techies are flooding into the military industrial complex as fast as they can get security clearances, because post dot-com bubble it pays far better and has far better salaries than any other part of the economy except the financial industry. Certainly the military industry isn’t the only thing destroy America’s economy (who needs them when you have the banks) but in the long term, they’re doing more than their fair share.

With a much smaller expeditionary force the US will stick to bombing and shelling, and occasionally kick over small Caribbean countries, which is as it should be, because even the large army has proved radically bloody incompetent at very great cost for almost zero results (what, exactly, is the benefit to the US of the Iraq war?  An Iraq aligned with Iran?)

And Americans need to stop talking about being invaded.  No one can, no one will.  You’re a continental power with a huge nuclear arsenal, even if they could get to your borders, the idea of invading a continental mass the size of the US is insane: there is no one who can do it.

Go back to a pre-WWII army, with a relatively large navy (though not as large as what you have, which is over 50% of the entire world’s naval tonnage).  You’ll be fine.  Honest.  And so will the world.  The world is not being made safer by US brushfire wars and neither is America.

And hey, maybe you can take the money and give yourselves real universal healthcare as opposed to some garbage bill that forces you to buy insurance you can’t afford to use.

In Memoriam

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On May 25, 2009

1 Comment

black-angel-by-sy-parrishIt’s Memorial Day.  I gather for many it’s just another long weekend, but I know that for many it’s what Remembrance Day is for Canadians like myself: a day to remember those who have died in war.  I won’t say “died to protect our freedom” or any such trite BS, because with few exceptions, most wars had nothing to do with protecting anyone’s freedom, but they did die, nonetheless, for us.

Their blood is on our hands, sticky and wet, and it will never dry. Why?

Because we live in democracies.  Because we elected the leaders who sent them to war.  Whether you think those wars are justified, or not, at the end of the day, we bear the collective guilt of their deaths.  They died due to the decisions we made, the society we live in.

Oh, we can say “I did everything I could to oppose the war”, whether that’s Iraq or Vietnam, or some other war.  But even if that’s true, well, you failed, didn’t you?  (Didn’t I?)   And so off went the young men and women, and they died, or they were maimed, or their brain case got knocked around and they came back shaking, and they wake up screaming at night, and they can’t control their emotions and they’ll never be the same again.

It’s one of the ironies of democracy that we’re all responsible, collectively, and yet each of us, individually, can say “but not me, I voted against him” or “I protested against that policy”.  And because it’s true, each of us can feel, in the end, that the deaths and suffering caused by the society, whether in war, or through a horrific medical system, or through abuses in the penal system, aren’t our fault.

But is it true?  Or is it true instead, that we failed, that we support the system with both our consent and our tax dollars, and that we are therefor complicit in what it does?

I don’t know.  But I do know this, on this Memorial day, even if it’s not a Canadian holiday, I’m thinking of those who died, both soldiers and civilian.

And at the very least, I know I failed.

Why Pakistan’s Decline Is Almost Inevitable

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On April 27, 2009

8 Comments

Image by takebackpackistan

Image by takebackpackistan

Benazir Bhutto’s niece, Fatima Bhutto, lays out the reasons for decline as  succinctly as anyone I’ve read:

The Taliban and their ilk, on the other hand, are able to seat themselves in towns and villages across Pakistan without much difficulty largely because they do not come empty-handed. In a country that has a literacy rate of around 30 percent, the Islamists set up madrassas and educate local children for free. In districts where government hospitals are not fit for animals, they set up medical camps—in fact, they’ve been doing medical relief work since the 2005 earthquake hit Northern Pakistan. Where there is no electricity, because the local government officials have placed their friends and relatives in charge of local electrical plants, the Islamists bring generators. In short, they fill a vacuum that the state, through political negligence and gross graft, has created.

To combat the Taliban’s incursions further into poverty-stricken parts of the country, Pakistan’s government only has to do its job less leisurely. That’s the frightening truth.

Napoleon once said that the moral is to the physical as ten is to one.  My simple rule of thumb for determining who will win civil and guerilla wars is “who is the government?”  Now if I were to ask 100 people who the government of northwest Pakistan is, 99 would probably say “the government of Pakistan.”

No.  Government is what government does and Taliban is the government in most of that region.  The organization which supplies security, social services and law is the government, and it doesn’t matter who is recognized by foreign powers.  This is a mistake which the West makes over and over and over again, most recently in Somalia when the US greenlighted and aided in the destruction of Somalia incipient government, the Islamic Courts Union, plunging the country back into even worse anarchy than before, and pretending that the foreign chosen “interim government”, which had no popular support, was actually a government.

Now Napoleon didn’t say the moral is to the physical as infinity to one.  If you’re badly enough outgunned and outnumbered, well, being the government may not be enough, especially if you’ve only been the government for a brief time.

This is why a lot of analysts believe that Pakistan can never “fall”, because the Pakistani army is very powerful.

I am far less sanguine.  The army has shown very little willingness or ability to fight the Pakistani Taliban.  It is unclear to me that the Pakistani army is willing to fight the Taliban, at least all out and if ordered to do so that it would obey that order, either at the top level, or at the operational level.  Which is to say, just because the “President” orders it to do something, doesn’t mean it will, and even if the military took back over through another coup (quite likely) that officers and even line soldiers are willing to be used against the Taliban, when the Taliban is actually a more effective government than they one they ostensibly serve.

The legitimacy of a government comes from doing what a government does.  The Pakistani “government” is less of a government to most of the country than the Pakistani Taliban.  The danger is that it will continue to expand into places where the Islamabad government is not actually acting as a government, till it controls most of the countryside and some of the smaller cities.  From there it will likely reach an accommodation with the army.

Although they aren’t communists, this is classical Maoist style countryside to city guerilla strategy.  By the time the major cities fall, they will be all that is left, completely isolated from the rest of the country.

The Pakistani army is powerful, but it is only an army, not a government.

Government is as government does.  If the current Pakistani government wants to stay in charge, Fatima is right, it needs to do its job.  If it doesn’t, those who are willing to do the job will take over.

Endnotes:

1. Fatima does have an axe to grind with the other faction of her family, but that doesn’t make her statements inaccurate.

2. Certainly Juan Cole is correct that the government is not likely to fall in the next 6 months to a year. In fact it might never fall, per se.  Despite the fact that Hezbollah is more powerful than the Lebanese central government, that government still exists.

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