Holiday weekend links roundup

Here are links to articles on military and foreign policy I found interesting, and you might find interesting, too.

Words of Peace and Acts of War.  David Bromwich examines the strange fact that President Barack Obama articulates as well as anyone why perpetual warfare, indiscriminate drone killings and Guantanamo Bay detention contradict American ideals and the rule of law, and yet he acts as if he somehow were helpless to stop doing it.

A Profound Lack of Self-Awareness.  “B Psycho” analyzes the contradictions in President Obama’s terrorism speech Thursday.

Military Quietly Grants Itself the Power to Police the Streets Without State or Local Consent.  Jed Morey of AlterNet says the U.S. military may have crossed a Rubicon.

Spycraft in Moscow .  Philip Giraldi makes the case in The American Conservative that Ryan Fogle, arrested in Moscow recently on espionage charges, really was a CIA agent, and speculates on why the Russian government chose to publicize the case.

Iran Hangs on in Quiet Desperation. Pepe Escobar of Asia Times explains how the clerics on Iran’s Guardian Council have rigged the results of the June 14 Presidential election by refusing all the serious opposition candidates permission to run.  I wouldn’t want to live under Iran’s government, but I don’t think the country’s governance would be improved by dropping bombs.

‘This Is What Winning Looks Like’

This three-part documentary by filmmaker Ben Anderson for Vice magazine is heartbreaking.  It shows American troops and some brave Afghans attempting to do the impossible—to organize effective resistance to the Taliban out of a force riddled with grafters, racketeers, drug traffickers and sexual abusers of young boys.

To me, the most shocking part of the documentary was the part about “chai boys”—how certain Afghan commanders regard it as part of their privilege of rank to have underage boys kidnaped to serve as sex slaves.   It is no wonder that an ordinary Afghan would prefer to be ruled by murderous fanatics such as the Taliban or would not care which side won.

The hero of the video, if there is one, is a Marine Major Steuber.  He is dedicated to duty and, as Anderson said, incapable of lying.  There is one segment in which Major Steuber wants to throw a sheet around a dead Taliban teenager, as respect due to a warrior, and he is prevented from doing it.   There is nothing in these videos that makes me, as an American, to be anything less than proud of our troops, but it shows that what they are doing is an exercise in futility.

The title of the video is taken from a speech by President Obama, claiming that the American war effort in Afghanistan was a success.   The truth is that the only goal of the current war effort is to save face and avoid the appearance of defeat, much like President Nixon’s war effort in Vietnam.

For more, click on ‘This Is What Winning Looks Like’: Ben Anderson’s War Diary and or view the videos below.

The threats: Iran vs. North Korea

Which is the greater threat, North Korea or Iran?

Juan Cole, who teachers Middle East history at the University of Michigan, made an interesting comparison on his web log.

Another comparison. Click to enlarge.

North Korea has eight nuclear weapons.  As Cole noted, its ruler, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, has threatened to attack United States territory.  North Korea has 1,106,000 troops under arms, including 85,000 in its Air Force.   Its armed forces have 3,500 tanks and 8,500 artillery pieces

Iran has zero nuclear weapons.  As Cole pointed out, its ruler, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has stated that Iran will never use nuclear weapons because killing innocent civilians is contrary to Islam.  Iran has 585,000 troops under arms, including 30,000 in its Air Force.  Its armed forces have 1,613 tanks and 3,500 artillery pieces.

Why, then, does the United States treat North Korea’s government with such forbearance while threatening and waging economic warfare against Iran?  Part of the answer is that it is safer to threaten a nation that might someday get nuclear weapons than a country that already has nuclear weapons.  But I don’t think this is the main reason.   The North Korean government must know that the United States military has the power to obliterate its armed forces.

The main reason that the North Korean government has the power to engage in threats and blackmail is that it is perpetually on the brink of political and economic collapse, and that if that happened, the U.S., Chinese and South Korean governments would be faced with the question of how to deal with 25 million desperate starving people in a state of anarchy.  It is easier to tolerate provocations—up to a point—than to deal with that responsibility.   I wish I knew a better answer, but I don’t.

Click on If N. Korea Is the Threat, Why Is All the War Talk About a Weak Iran? for Prof. Cole’s post on his Informed Comment web log.

Counting the costs of the Iraq war

Bush administration spokesmen said the invasion of Iraq was going to be a cakewalk, and the cost would be paid out of Iraq oil revenues.  Ten years later, we know the true costs.

Click to enlarge.

For details, click on The Iraq War Ledger by the Center for American Progress.

Also click on Invading Iraq: What We Were Told at the Time by James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly.

A politician who was right about the Iraq invasion

The invasion of Iraq by U.S. troops and allies began 10 years ago today. Senators Hillary Clinton and John Kerry voted in favor of the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to use force, and ex-President Bill Clinton heartily supported the invasion.   One person who spoke out against the invasion was Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, who said the following in a speech in October, 2002.

I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein.  He is a brutal man.  A ruthless man.  A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power…. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors … and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

via Speech by Illinois State Senator Barack Obama in October, 2002.

I read a lot of complaints about how pundits, politicians and government officials who were wrong about Iraq are still as powerful and influential as they were before, while those who were right about Iraq are still marginalized.  Barack Obama is the exception to this.  If he had not spoken out against the Iraq invasion, he would not be President today.

Obama, the state legislator, manifested a lot of wisdom about the dangers of open-ended Presidential authority to engage in military action, and about why the United States should not start wars with countries that are not a threat to us.  I hope that President Obama can recapture some of that wisdom.

Why I was wrong about the Iraq invasion

George Orwell wrote somewhere that a good way to maintain a sense of humility is to keep a diary of your political opinions.  Looking back on what you thought five or ten years before will remind you of your fallibility.

Saddam Hussein

The United States and its Coalition partners began military operations against Iraq 10 years ago today.  I didn’t keep a diary, but I well remember what I thought then.

I was aware that the claims that Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction were based on faked evidence.  I knew that far from being implicated in the 9/11 attacks, the secular nationalist Saddam was hated by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.  I feared that starting a war on the basis of a lie could come back to haunt us Americans, and yet I hoped it might turn out well.

This would not have been the first war launched by the United States on the basis of a lie.  The Mexican War was started on the basis of the lie that Mexican troops had fired on American troops on American soil.  The Spanish-American War was started on the basis of the lie that the Spanish blew up the battleship Maine in Havana harbor.  The Vietnam intervention was authorized on the basis of the lie that the North Vietnamese had attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.  Yet the first two of these wars turned out well—that is, well from the American perspective, not from the point of view of the victims of aggression.

I thought it possible that the Iraq invasion would turn out well for all concerned.  Iraq was ruled by a cruel and hated dictator.  I thought that after U.S. forces liberated Iraq from the dictator, Iraq would become a country whose people were friendly to the United States, and whose rulers would be more dependable military allies and oil suppliers than the royal family of Saudi Arabia.

In addition, the United States had been waging a low-level war against Iraq for more than 10 years, following Operation Desert Storm in 1991.  All through the Clinton administration, Iraq was under economic blockade, with intermittent bombing, which had caused enormous hardship and suffering.  I thought that the human suffering from a quick invasion.

The George W. Bush administration quickly proved me wrong.  Military forces occupied the Iraqi oil ministry and oil fields, and let the rest of the country sink into chaos.  Local Iraqi leaders were pushed aside, and U.S. appointees installed in their place.  For some reason, the Iraqi military was disbanded, but individual soldiers were allowed to keep their weapons, when the obviously sensible thing to do would have been to confiscate the weapons but keep the soldiers on a payroll and under control.  American commanders installed themselves in some of Saddam Hussein’s old palaces, and sent prisoners to his old torture chamber in Abu Ghraib.

But even if the Bush administration had been sincerely interested in creating a democratic Iraq, this probably would not have been feasible for a foreign invading army to do.  I went through the same stages in my thinking about Iraq that I did about Vietnam, but over a shorter period of time—from thinking U.S. policy was flawed but justified to thinking that U.S. policy was a big mistake to thinking that U.S. policy was a crime. Of course it should have been obvious in both cases that unleashing total war on a small country that does not threaten you is a crime.

I was wrong about Iraq, and wiser friends of mine were right.  Now I was not a decision-maker, or even, in those days, a blogger.  My wrongness had few consequences.  But I am an American citizen.  Politicians ultimately answer to the citizens.  I have my small share of the responsibility for the Iraq tragedy.

A brief history of the Holy Land

Click on Who’s Killing Who? A Viewer’s Guide for background on this animation.

Click on Nina Paley’s Blog for more from this artist.

Hat tip to kottke.org.

Life under the flying killer drones

Faculty of the New York and Stanford university law schools have come out with a report, Living Under Drones, about the use of flying killer drones in the border area of Pakistan, where members of the Taliban are believed to hide out.  Based on interviews with eyewitnesses and people familiar with the region, they concluded that the drones have (1) killed a lot of civilians, including children, (2) killed very few identifiable leaders of the Taliban or Al Qaeda and (3) made a lot of new enemies for the United States.

President George W. Bush initiated the use of flying killer drones to kill people identified as leaders of Al Qaeda or the Taliban.  President Barack Obama has stepped up the use of such “targeted killings” and initiated the use of “signature strikes,” which kills people whose patterns of behavior are suspicious.  Another Obama practice is the “double tap,” where a second strike is used to kill rescuers or mourners.

Drones as such are not worse than other weapons of war.  They are a more precise means of killing than carpet bombing or napalm bombing or dropping of land mines or a full-scale invasion.  The problem with drones is that they make killing all too easy.  They make it easy to commit acts of war by creating an illusion that this can be done with impunity.

I don’t know anything about the people who live in the drone kill zones of Pakistan, Yemen and other countries.  I’d guess that the majority of people in those areas are more concerned about living their lives and going about their business than they are about the conflict between the United States and its far-flung enemies.  I suspect that there are a lot of people in these areas who don’t necessarily support Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “militant Islam” (whatever that is), but are still friendly with relatives and neighbors who do.

What is the intended end result of the drone strikes?  Does somebody in Washington think that that some point flying killer drones will have killed all the enemies and potential enemies of the United States, and we Americans will then be safe?  When U.S. forces leave Afghanistan, they will leave behind more sworn enemies of the United States than there were at the time of the invasion.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats object to President Obama’s use of flying killer drones.  We Americans complain about the deadlock in our government caused by extreme partisan conflict, but our worst policies have bipartisan support and are never discussed.

Click on Drone attacks on Pakistan are counterproductive, report says for an article in The Guardian about the report.

Click on ‘Every Person Is Afraid of the Drones’ for Conor Friedersdorf’s discussion of how people in the kill zones live in constant fear.

Click on Living Under Drones for the web site for the report.

Click on Living Under Drones: Stanford / NYU Report for the text of the report.

Hat tip to Oidin.

A pragmatic case for voting for Obama

Click to enlarge.

Click on Ted Rall’s Rallblog for more cartoons.

Hat tip to AZspot.

The fortunes of war

The following is from George Orwell’s “As I Please” column in the London Tribune for October 13, 1944

Recently I was told the following story, and I have every reason to believe it is true.

Among the German prisoners captured in France there are a certain number of Russians.  Some time back two were captured who did not speak Russian or any other language that was known either to their captors or their fellow prisoners.  They could, in fact, only converse with one another.  A professor of Slavonic languages, brought down from Oxford, could make nothing of what they were saying.  Then it happened that a sergeant who had served on the frontiers of India heard them talking and recognized their language, which he was able to speak a little.  It was Tibetan!  After some questioning, he managed to get their story out of them.

Some years earlier they had strayed over the frontier into the Soviet Union and had been conscripted into a labor battalion, afterwards being sent to western Russia when the war with Germany broke out.  They were taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to North Africa; later they were sent to France, then exchanged into a fighting unit when the Second Front opened and taken prisoner by the British.  All this time they had been able to speak to nobody but one another and had no notion of what was happening or who was fighting whom.

It would round the story off neatly if they were now conscripted into the British army and sent to fight the Japanese, ending up somewhere in Central Asia, quite close to their native village, but still very much puzzled as to what it is all about.

Here’s a similar story told a few weeks ago in The Daily Mail of London.

American paratroopers in Normandy in June 1944 thought they had captured a Japanese soldier in German uniform, but he turned out to be Korean.  His name was Yang Kyoungjong.

In 1938, at the age of 18, Yang had been forcibly conscripted by the Japanese into their army in Manchuria.  A year later, he was captured by the Red Army after the Battle of Khalkhin-Gol and sent to a labor camp.  The Soviet military authorities, at a moment of crisis in 1942, drafted him, along with thousands of other prisoners, into their forces.

Then, early in 1943 he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Kharkov in Ukraine by the German army.

In 1944, now in German uniform, he was sent to France to serve with one of the Wehrmacht’s eastern battalions made up of Soviet prisoners to defend Normandy at the base of the Cotentin peninsula.   After time in a prison camp in Britain, he went to the United States.  Yang settled there and died in Illinois in 1992.

via Mail Online.

Hat tip to SLICETHELIFE for Yang’s story.

I don’t draw any particular conclusions from these stories, except to take note of the tens of millions of people in the 20th century who were dispossessed, conscripted, uprooted, exiled and killed by totalitarian governments and global wars, and to be thankful I lived where I did when I did.   I hope that Mr. Yang had a good life in the United States.