Ian Welsh

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

Category: US Military

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

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On April 7, 2010

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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.

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion

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On February 8, 2010

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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.

McChrystal continues to undercut Obama

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On September 28, 2009

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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

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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.

American Voters Approve of Force Against North Korea: AKA American Voters Are Fools

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On April 6, 2009

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Image by Joffley

Image by Joffley

Most of the time I’m angry US elites pay so little attention to popular opinion, but sometimes I’m glad:

American voters across lines of age, party and gender support a military approach to eliminate North Korea‘s nuclear capabilities, according to a Rasmussen Reports survey released Sunday morning — and conducted in the two days prior to North Korea’s test missile launch on Saturday.

The poll shows that 57 percent of all voters support such a response, while just 15 percent oppose it. A military response is favored by a majority in both parties — 66 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Democrats — and by 57 percent of both men and women.

A majority of respondents, 51 percent, also oppose the U.S. offering economic aid to North Korea in exchange for it agreeing to dismantle its nuclear program.

Uh huh. North Korea has a very large army, poised at the border with South Korea. Strikes against North Korea would lead to retaliation against South Korea.  In this case, the capital, Seoul.  North Korea, unlike Iraq, has a lot of chemical weapons.  They are pointed at Seoul.  If the North Korean army decided to shell Seoul, there would be huge loss of life. If they invaded, and there’s a good chance they would, they would overrun Seoul, and, since I know most Americans could care less if hundreds of thousands of foreigners die, they’d also overrun US forces in South Korea, killing thousands.

The only thing that might allow an attack to work would be heavy use of nuclear weapons.  I believe that would meet the definition of irony.

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