Obama's contempt for voters

Barack Obama emailed me again this week. His campaign did, that is.

In the arms race that is the presidential campaign, Obama for America sends out requests for support, by way of pleas for money, which is no surprise. But these emails treat his supporters, or Democrats (I am not one but I got the emails in '08 and they've kept up since then) or just its recipients as partisan fanboys/girls that root for the blue team, therefore they must believe the red team is pure evil, must be stopped and our president is the true defender of their values. The emails are reductive of its recipients and insulting to their intelligence given Barack Obama's actions in the White House are rarely consistent with his promises, nor of what progressives believe in and want to see from their standbearer. But maybe I'm projecting onto the Projection President.

For example, his latest:

(Recipient) --

We now know who our opponent is.

But what we're really fighting against is what our opponent has pledged to do if elected.

He would shower billionaires with more huge tax breaks, oppose setting a timeline to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, starve investments in clean energy research, and make it harder for students to afford to go to college. He'd outlaw a woman's right to choose and completely cut funding for Planned Parenthood.

We can't afford an endless war in Afghanistan, a return to policies that hurt the middle class, and a social agenda from the 1950s.

The stakes and the differences are profound. The outcome of this election will determine the course of this country for decades to come.

I need you by my side.

Make a donation of $3 or more today:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Ready

Thank you,

Barack

So the president points to Republicans', or, likely, Mitt Romney's, positions on serving the economic interests of the most wealthy Americans, a timeline in Afghanistan, clean energy, affordable higher education and reproductive rights.

Let's look at what has came out of Obama's administration in the last couple weeks on these issues.

Matt Taibbi on the JOBS Act, which Obama enthusiastically signed on April 5:

The "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market.

In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets.

Ostensibly, the law makes it easier for startup companies (particularly tech companies, whose lobbyists were a driving force behind its passage) to attract capital by, among other things, exempting them from independent accounting requirements for up to five years after they first begin selling shares in the stock market.

The law also rolls back rules designed to prevent bank analysts from talking up a stock just to win business, a practice that was so pervasive in the tech-boom years as to be almost industry standard.

Even worse, the JOBS Act, incredibly, will allow executives to give "pre-prospectus" presentations to investors using PowerPoint and other tools in which they will not be held liable for misrepresentations. These firms will still be obligated to submit prospectuses before their IPOs, and they'll still be held liable for what's in those. But it'll be up to the investor to check and make sure that the prospectus matches the "pre-presentation."

The JOBS Act also loosens a whole range of other reporting requirements, and expands stock investment beyond "accredited investors," giving official sanction to the internet-based fundraising activity known as "crowdfunding."

This Trojan horse is billed as a helping hand to the little guy, the ever-hailed small business. But as Taibbi pointed out, this is a giveaway to Silicon Valley that could cause major havoc later on and "invite a replay of the disastrous tech-stock bubble of the late nineties. That mess was made possible by a historic collapse in accounting standards, with the great investment banks the pioneers of the collapse."

What about Afghanistan? The Pentagon isn't taking the impending drawdown very well, as the AP reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON — Adm. Bill McRaven, the head of U.S. special operations, is mapping out a potential Afghanistan war plan that would replace thousands of U.S. troops with small special operations teams paired with Afghans to help an inexperienced Afghan force withstand a Taliban onslaught as U.S. troops withdraw.

While the overall campaign would still be led by conventional military, the handfuls of special operators would become the leading force to help Afghans secure the large tracts of territory won in more than a decade of U.S. combat. They would give the Afghans practical advice on how to repel attacks, intelligence to help spot the enemy and communications to help call for U.S. air support if overwhelmed by a superior force.

[...]

McRaven’s proposal amounts to a slimmed-down counterinsurgency strategy aimed at protecting the Afghan population as well as hunting the Taliban and al-Qaida. It’s not the counterterrorist plan advanced by Vice President Joe Biden, which would leave Afghan forces to fend for themselves while keeping U.S. special operators in protected bases from which they could hunt terrorists with minimum risk, according to a senior special operations official reached this week.

Thousands of U.S. troops could remain in harm’s way well after the end of combat operations in 2014, tasked with helping Afghans protect territory won by U.S. forces.

Let's not forget the administration did not want to stick to the BUSH TIMETABLE to leave Iraq, but the Iraqi government refused. So now Obama takes credit for ending the Iraq war, even though he didn't want to, it was Bush's plan and the sectarian violence continues there. Why should we think Afghanistan will be any different? Insulting.

Next, clean energy. I don't doubt the administration is committed to clean energy research. But I do doubt it is doing much to actively block oil and gas exploration. On April 9, TPM detailed Obama's "oil boom" in light of the GOP blaming him for higher gas prices because, they say, Obama refuses to allow for adequate oil drilling in the U.S. The argument is false, as TPM notes, not only because no president has that kind of power over oil prices but also because, well, the industry is doing just fine in this struggling economy. Oil and gas extraction has skyrocketed in the last year-plus.

Oil and gas extraction is a relatively small industry, but it has prospered in the weak economy, even as other industries climb slowly out of the great recession. Energy experts say that the oil boom itself is also due to factors outside of Obama’s control, but this gives the lie to the notion that Obama’s been actively squelching it.

So while the email's claim that the administration holds clean energy in high regard is clearly true, that doesn't tell the whole story. Obama cannot be legitimately considered the oil and gas sector's number one enemy.

How about affordable higher ed? Bloomberg broke this story in late March:

With $67 billion of student loans in default, the Education Department is turning to an army of private debt-collection companies to put the squeeze on borrowers. Working on commissions that totaled about $1 billion last year, these government contractors face growing complaints that they are violating federal laws by insisting on stiff payments, even when borrowers’ incomes make them eligible for leniency.

The Obama administration had no problem throwing drowning citizens to loan predators. It took the release of the story (which is a good read) for the administration to give a shit, claiming it will re-examine this practice and overhaul the system. But promises are often just words.

I guess he gets one and a half (clean energy) of five right, that one being reproductive rights.

But, hey, he's doing loads for the LGBT community, right? No. WaPo (April 12): "... White House officials revealed Wednesday that President Obama would not sign an executive order sought by activists to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity."

Pretty words. Contempt for voters. Do what it takes to simply get re-elected. The liberal standardbearer.

Critical thinking on Memorial Day

I think we can all agree that thanking military personnel is warranted, Memorial Day or not. But what we don't do enough is analyze what they (and their families) are asked to do. Civilians are asked to do next to nothing to support our wars in Iraq (4,404 American soldiers dead, approx.) and Afghanistan (1,076 dead) -- well, we feel the economic toll, and future generations will have to actually pay for them. But our all-volunteer military is asked to do more than their fair share. As of yesterday, we've spent $1 trillion in Iraq/Afghanistan. Are we putting them in harm's way for good reason?

If you're persuaded more by economic factors, Derrick Crowe flags some poignant statistics.

According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s (CEPR) Dean Baker:

"In standard economic models, defense spending is a direct drain on the economy, reducing efficiency, slowing growth and costing jobs. …[S]tandard economic models…project that the increase in defense spending since 2000 will cost the economy close to two million jobs in the long run."

Baker’s point in his article was that groups that scream about potential "job loss" from government "interference" never put that "loss" in any context. Government spending does stimulate economic activity during a downturn. The question is, how stimulative is one type of spending versus another? So let’s make sure we’re playing fair and put this in some perspective in terms of job creation.

It turns out that, excluding tax cuts for consumption, war spending is the least stimulative type of government spending.

An October 2007 study by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) found that per $1 billion invested in the following fields, you create wildly different numbers of jobs:

Defense: 8,555 jobs
Construction for home weatherization/infrastructure: 12,804 jobs
Health care: 12,883 jobs
Education: 17,687 jobs
Mass transit: 19,795 jobs

So if you take $1 billion in taxpayer dollars and spend it on war versus on building energy efficient homes and other infrastructure, the opportunity cost for that spending is 4,249 potential jobs. Spending it on war versus mass transit costs you 11,240 potential jobs.

This is getting unreasonable, to say the least.

If that isn't enough, this Washington Post headline says a lot about the tenuous alliances we've made that aren't built to last, but to serve as a foreign policy Band-Aid: In Afghan region, U.S. spreads the cash to fight the Taliban. I'm not so naive as to believe this is the first time civilians in a war-torn country have been bought out, but then let's never kid ourselves that Democracy is on the march. Like it is for many of us, in Afghanistan, it's about who's got their economic interests in mind.

There are many factors pushing the war machine forward. Those forces can seem overwhelming. But the onus to end war is ultimately ours. We have to decide how we engage our country's often militaristic view of the world. Where is the drone leading us? What does indefinite detention of prisoners mean for our future? How are we actively inflaming the Muslim world in the name of security? What does national security mean in the 21st century?

The only way we can survive, and thrive, as a people is to think. What are our priorities? What would you do with $1 trillion?

The battle for Kandahar

Get ready for a tough, bloody summer in Kandahar.

NYT:

The Taliban gunned down the deputy mayor of Kandahar, perhaps the city’s most effective and admired public official, late on Monday, demonstrating their ability to kill almost anyone in a region where security continues to worsen ahead of a planned summer offensive.

And in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, a NATO convoy shot to death four unarmed civilians in a vehicle, including a police officer and 12-year-old student, according to local Afghan officials. But without offering proof, NATO described the dead as two insurgents and their “associates” — a disagreement that could prompt another dispute with the Afghan government over civilian casualties.


Kandahar was the power center of the Taliban before the United States-led invasion in 2001, and attempts to secure the surrounding province from Taliban guerrillas and institute new governance programs this summer could be crucial to the fate of the eight-and-a-half-year occupation. With only weeks to go before the offensive, the Taliban have been stepping up violence in the city with a series of assassinations and attacks on American and Western contractors, political officials and religious leaders.

Military commissions are back by unpopular demand

You wanted indecision, you got it! The Obama administration is going forward with military commissions (and its stellar record of convictions ... that was sarcasm) today, reports the Miami Herald.

Still operating under Bush-era policies that President Barack Obama last year called "a mess," the Pentagon will resume military commission hearings for accused terrorists Wednesday in a top-secret compound originally designed for the trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

War court critics denounced the decision to go ahead with hearings this week, saying that without new rules the Obama administration has yet to complete the commissions are operating with uncertain procedures.

"It's really like a lame-duck commission," bristled Mike Berrigan, deputy chief defense counsel.

First up on the war court's agenda is a pretrial hearing in the case of Noor Uthman Mohammed, a Sudanese man who was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and brought here soon after for interrogation as a suspected al-Qaida operative.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder approved Noor's military trial in November on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism for allegedly helping to run the Khalden terror training camp in Afghanistan.

At that same time, Holder approved civilian trials for the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - and this week's hearings also are a reminder that the Justice Department remains undecided on how to proceed with the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four accused co-conspirators.

After New York officials objected to holding the 9/11 trial in lower Manhattan, the White House announced that it would reconsider the decision. It remains unclear where and in what forum Mohammed and the other alleged plotters will face charges.

That indecision will be on display as the court convenes Noor's case in the maximum security, $12 million Expeditionary Legal Compound that the Bush administration built for the accused 9/11 conspirators.

USA! USA! USA!

Update: Though the defendant has spent 8 years in U.S. custody, the judge said today it will take up to another YEAR to sift through his evidence. Sorry kid.

Update II: Daphne Eviatar highlights the case of the detainee (Noor Muhammad) as a prime example of a colossal government fuckup.

How treating Bagram as the new Gitmo could backfire

Dawinder Sidhu on the prospects for habeas rights at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan:

Reports are now emerging that the White House is considering making Bagram Air Base, the main U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan, the functional replacement for Guantánamo.

Understandably, this has provoked significant outcry from civil liberties advocates, who charge that any such move would be a conscious effort to evade the rule of law. But it might actually be a blessing in disguise, because if the administration does pursue this course it would set the stage for a long-overdue court ruling that could very well vest Bagram’s prisoners with the right to challenge their detention.

At issue is the precarious reach of the writ of habeas corpus -- the time-honored legal right to petition a court to ensure that the executive has sufficient cause to detain an individual. In 2008, the Supreme Court held in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantánamo detainees are entitled to habeas. As the Boumediene case resolved only whether habeas applies to detainees at Guantánamo -- and not other international post-9/11 American facilities -- it remains unclear whether foreign detainees at Bagram can invoke the habeas writ.

Indeed, this very question is at the heart of al Maqaleh v. Obama -- an ongoing legal battle between several current Bagram detainees and the Obama administration. Because these Bagram detainees have not yet been accorded the habeas right, there is concern that the administration’s proposal would place all prospective foreign terrorism suspects beyond the rule of law, without fundamental habeas protections.

In reality, though, this could actually open the door to the al Maqaleh court ultimately holding -- against the government -- that habeas does extend to foreign detainees in Bagram. In other words, in resolving an important policy question, the administration could seriously weaken its legal case.

Sidhu goes on to explain how the U.S. couldn't just pass off "official" oversight of Bagram to the Afghan government, all the while ultimately controlling operations there.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that the government may not "game" the system -- that the habeas writ "cannot be contracted away" and that the administration can’t decide for itself "when and where [the Constitution’s] terms apply." For this reason, when the government posited that habeas proceedings cannot take place in Bagram because it is an "active theater of war," the district court responded by pointing out that it is the government that was responsible for bringing the detainees, captured outside of Afghanistan, to Bagram.

From nearly the beginning of Obama's term, the administration has argued against affording detainees in legal black holes like Bagram any rights to trials. Indefinite detention has been the priority from the start in a continuation of one of the most egregious Bush-era disparagements of basic human rights. To think that this scenario would be a surprise to them would be pretty naive. I'm sure they have a plan to combat habeas corpus rights at Bagram no matter what.

The Orwellian logic of our government pertaining to U.S. detainee and foreign policy in the midst of "democracy promoting" ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan consistently amazes. Indefinite detention = justice, brute force = democracy, reckless Predator drone strikes = a kinder, safer insurgent eradication, war = peace, the examples are endless.

But Sidhu's explanation gives some hope. Unfortunately, when your only speck of hope is the government (maybe) losing the right to imprison suspects indefinitely without a trial, the climb back to respectability and the rule of law is long and steep.

Never mind killing pregnant Afghans, Tiger's back!

The International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), led by U.S. General Stanley A. McChrystal, has admitted its own guilt in the deaths of five Afghan civilian (two were pregnant) during a night raid in Gardez in February.

That's a tragedy on its face. But NATO led a cover-up operation of this incident following a Times of London report on the inconsistencies that existed between NATO's explanation of the raid and the claims of survivors and witnesses.

A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times.

The operation on Friday, February 12, was a botched pre-dawn assault on a policeman’s home a few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan. In a statement after the raid titled “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery”, Nato claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room.

A Times investigation suggests that Nato’s claims are either wilfully false or, at best, misleading. More than a dozen survivors, officials, police chiefs and a religious leader interviewed at and around the scene of the attack maintain that the perpetrators were US and Afghan gunmen. The identity and status of the soldiers is unknown.

This story appeared in the Times on March 13. ISAF proceeded to obfuscate further, going as far as to call out the reporter, Jerome Starkey, by name in response.

KABUL, Afghanistan (March 13) - The allegation made by Times UK reporter Jerome Starkey that NATO "covered up" an incident that was conducted outside Gardez in Paktia province is categorically false.

Additionally, Mr. Starkey incorrectly quoted Rear Adm. Greg Smith of ISAF when he did not include the word "armed" in the following sentence: "If you have got an [armed] individual stepping out of a compound, and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don't have to be fired upon to fire back."

All the while, keep in mind that McChyrstal has implemented policy (announced BEFORE Gardez) limiting night raids in Afghanistan -- ignoring Hamid Karzai's call for an outright band -- to curb civilian casualties.

Then, ISAF released this late Easter Sunday:

KABUL, Afghanistan (Apr. 4) – A thorough joint investigation into the events that occurred in the Gardez district of Paktiya Province Feb. 12, has determined that international forces were responsible for the deaths of three women who were in the same compound where two men were killed by the joint Afghan-international patrol searching for a Taliban insurgent.

The two men, who were later determined not to be insurgents, were shot and killed by the joint patrol after they showed what appeared to be hostile intent by being armed. While investigators could not conclusively determine how or when the women died, due to lack of forensic evidence, they concluded that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men.

So what is the physical proof of the coverup? There have to be bullet holes, right? The New York Times:

A NATO official also said Sunday that an Afghan-led team of investigators had found signs of evidence tampering at the scene, including the removal of bullets from walls near where the women were killed. On Monday, however, a senior NATO official denied that any tampering had occurred.

[...]

The admission was an abrupt about-face. In a statement soon after the raid, NATO had claimed that its raiding party had stumbled upon the “bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed” and hidden in a room in the house. Military officials had also said later that the bodies showed signs of puncture and slashing wounds from a knife, and that the women appeared to have been killed several hours before the raid.

And in what could be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also “dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath” and then “washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.”

A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said that he did not have any information about the Afghan investigation, which he said remained unfinished.

In an interview, a NATO official said the Afghan-led investigation team alerted American and NATO commanders that the inquiry had found signs of evidence tampering. A briefing was given by investigators to General McChrystal and other military officials in late March.

“There was evidence of tampering at the scene, walls being washed, bullets dug out of holes in the wall,” the NATO official said, adding that investigators “couldn’t find bullets from the wounds in the body.”

The investigators, the official said, “alluded to the fact that bullets were missing but did not discuss anything specific to that. Nothing pointed conclusively to the fact that our guys were the ones who tampered with the scene.”

Digging bullets out of the victims? Denying medical treatment to buy time for cover? Of course, the investigation is (supposedly) ongoing, but the implications are quite dire here.

But, true to form for the likes of cable news, it's too bad this isn't a major story this morning. CNN and Fox are all over a Tiger Woods press conference (SEX!), scheduled today for 2 p.m. One would think this atrocity and cover-up would be front and center for any news outlet. Not so. That's a commentary on the sad state of mainstream news outlets. I credit sites like Rethink Afghanistan (not to mention Jerome Starkey, who broke this story, and the NY Times for ... at least having it) for keeping focus on this unfolding exposition. But Rethink Afghanistan is no cable news conglomerate. I sincerely hope this gets attention down the road. Without coverage, such egregious behavior in our name goes without accountability. It's time the media stand up to the Pentagon's PR machine.

Update: Glenn Greenwald expands on the American media's failure in this case, specifically that of CNN and the New York Times, as opposed to international reporting that relied on actually legwork and not official Pentagon sources.

Long live the military-industrial complex

Writing for Salon, Michael Lind examines the connections between America's continued Cold War militarism and its crippling trade deficits.

During and after the Korean War, the U.S. rebuilt its military and stationed troops along "tripwires" from Central Europe to East Asia. The U.S. encouraged the formation of the European Common Market (now the European Union) in part to provide the West Germans with markets. In Asia, Mao Zedong's victory in China cut off Japan's China market, so the U.S. offered the American market to Japanese exporters, which initially were not considered a threat to American businesses.

Thus began the Grand Bargain at the heart of U.S. Cold War strategy toward West Germany and Japan, the "markets-for-bases" swap. In return for giving up an independent foreign policy to their protector, the United States, the West Germans and Japanese would be granted access to American markets (and, in the case of the Germans, access to Western European markets).

[...]

For half a century America's economic establishment, turning a blind eye to Asia's crude and Germany's subtle mercantilism, pretended that American protectionism was the greatest threat to the world economy. It is gradually dawning even on former free-trade fundamentalists that you cannot have a liberal global trading system in which three of the four largest industrial capitalist countries -- China, Japan and Germany -- pursue policies that permit them to enjoy perpetual trade surpluses, which require perpetual trade deficits by the U.S. and other countries.

Meanwhile, the security half of America's global strategy is headed for a crash as well. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has mindlessly sought to fill every power vacuum from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf to Central Asia, while spending far less on the military than it did in the Cold War. The U.S. has gone into debt to finance the Iraq and Afghan wars. You don't have to be a grand strategist to figure out that extending territorial commitments without commensurately expanding funding and troop levels is a formula for strategic and perhaps national bankruptcy.

By declaring that the new deficit commission would not consider any cuts in military spending, only in entitlement spending, President Obama reflected the preferences of America's policy elite. Its members would gladly cut Social Security and Medicare in order to pay for bases and "nation-building" abroad. In the same way, for half a century, America's foreign-policy elite tolerated the targeted deindustrialization of America by Asian mercantilist states, as long as those countries did not challenge America's global military hegemony.

At some point, one would think the U.S. would realize that perpetual war was counterproductive. Since mass death, preserving human rights and the Geneva Conventions, maintaining international relations and upholding basic level of compassion don't seem to be deterrents, maybe basic economics could be the tool to curb the Pentagon's spending.

Unfortunately, the Cold War mentality persists, and Barack Obama, who was supposed to usher in a new generation of leadership, refuses to change course. Maybe it isn't "politically convenient" to stop the war machine right now, so we'll just have to wait for leaders with the spine to stand up to the Booz Allens and Boeings and Northrop Grummans (as well as their enablers) of the world. In the meantime, I can't wait for the 'Invade Iran in 2012' posters to spring up. Now that sounds politically convenient.

Continued waste in war contracting

Now that both political parties and the establishment media have had a 'coming to Jesus' moment in the past year regarding the federal debt and waste amid government spending, it's always a wonder to me why more people outside of Sen. Claire McCaskill and a handful of others don't make a bigger example of the sieve that is war contracting.

Christine Spolar, of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, writes this week:

An estimated 56,000 more contractors—almost double the 30,000 additional troops to be deployed this year—are expected to be working in Afghanistan by the end of 2010, according to the Congressional Research Service. The number of contractors could top 160,000, exceeding the ranks of U.S. troops fighting the Taliban.

But that’s just an estimate. A key official in the inspector general’s office established to oversee Afghan reconstruction spending said that simply “defining the universe” of contractor spending has been difficult.

“It is a frustration,” said John Brummet, chief auditor in the Office of the Special Inspector General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan. “Everyone assumes the information is there but it just is not. You’d think the [U.S. command in Kabul] could say they have 200 contractors there but…it’s just not there.”

Spending on Afghan reconstruction represents about 20 percent of the total cost of the war, which reached $230 billion by the end of 2009. About half of the reconstruction spending goes toward training Afghan security forces.

Attempts to oversee the billions of dollars flowing to the contractors have been complicated by congressional inattention, severe gaps in manpower and ineffective training for the military officers and bureaucrats shipped off to Afghanistan to monitor reconstruction work, according to agency audits and interviews with auditors.

[...]

The electronic record-keeping systems of the three biggest spenders on reconstruction—Defense, State and USAID—are incompatible, according to the inspectors general for Afghanistan and Iraq. So coordinating spending by the agencies remains beyond the capacity of the inspector general’s office and the government’s chief accountant, the Government Accountability Office.

(Emphasis mine)

Like so many other issues beyond contracting, the lessons of Iraq are lost on those running our war in Afghanistan:

On Capitol Hill, the oversight of contract spending in Afghanistan—like the war itself—was long treated as secondary to the challenges in Iraq. Only in 2008 did Congress establish a special inspector general’s office to audit Afghan nation-building.

That inspector general’s office for reconstruction has been working with far fewer staff members than the equivalent office for contract spending in Iraq, run by Stuart W. Bowen. At work since the first year of the Iraq war, Bowen has produced 164 inspections, 160 audits and one book. In his last report, Bowen found that coordination still was lacking in the war zone and recommended a single federal office to oversee reconstruction contracting.

Bowen goes into more detail on lesson transference in an accompanying video to the piece:



Granted, the amount of money pissed away here isn't exactly a sum that would solve many of the government fiscal quandaries. But if players in Washington, especially Republicans like Jim Bunning, are going to whine about profligate spending, I would think setting up a coherent system for contracts might be a priority. Unless, of course, we're all following the familiar paradigm in which questioning of war funding and the like is the last thing anyone cares about since one must be a champion of supporting wars to be considered thoughtful or serious in Washington.

Washington stenography is alive and well

Building on that steaming pile of Beltway nonsense David Broder laid in the Washington Post last week on Sarah Palin's supposed brilliance, George Packer assesses the state of political journalism in Washington.

Anyone covering Washington, not excluding me, will sooner or later turn to a phrase like “refocus its image” or “a perception that the President has come to look” or “a pitch-perfect recital of the populist message,” because they come so easily, and because they make it unnecessary to say anything substantial, which means thinking hard and perhaps suffering the consequences. Still, as an exercise in accountability, political journalists should ask themselves from time to time: Would I write this about a war, or a depression?

Further up in the piece, he imagines what a typical American journalist would write about Afghan President Hamid Karzai's recent inauguration speech:

“Speaking at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr. Karzai showed himself to be at the top of his game. He skillfully co-opted his Pashtun base while making a powerful appeal to the technocrats who have lately been disappointed in him, and at the same time he reassured the Afghan public that his patience with civilian casualties is wearing thin. A palace insider, who asked for anonymity in order to be able to speak candidly, said, ‘If Karzai can continue to signal the West that he is concerned about corruption without alienating his warlord allies, he will likely be able to defuse the perception of a weak leader and regain his image as a unifying figure who can play the role of both modernizer and nationalist.’ Still, the palace insider acknowledged, tensions remain within Mr. Karzai’s own inner circle. At one point during the swearing-in ceremony, observers noted that Mohammad Hanif Atmar, his interior minister, seemed to ignore the greeting of Amrullah Saleh, the intelligence chief. The two have been rumored to be at odds ever since last year’s controversial election. A palace spokesman, speaking on background, denied that the incident had any significance. ‘The sun was in Hanif’s eyes—that’s it,’ the spokesman said.”

Write down the quotes, type them up, run 'em through spell check and be home for dinner.

More on COIN pushback

Yesterday, I wrote of an open disagreement with Gen. Stanley McChrystal's COIN strategy in Afghanistan by a high-ranking Marine reported in the Washington Post yesterday.

Andrew Exum noticed as well, positing that the Marine culture must be taken into account when a strategy such as McChrystal's, which is based on protecting rather than aggression, is employed.

I've heard Col. Amland is a thoughtful officer, but I wonder if he's thoughtful enough to recognize that a) his decades-long education as a Marine officer might have prejudiced him toward a preference for violent offensive operations and b) many counterinsurgents through the years have been in exactly the same spot where Col. Amland finds himself today -- and have pursued violent offensive operations, like battalion sweep-and-clears, that have brought no lasting security. But as the author of the Post article notes, "hunkering down to the slow work of improving governance" is a lot less sexy than killing bad guys. But you have to do both, and if given the option of choosing between the two, the operational and strategic culture of the U.S. Marine Corps will lead its officers to do the former at the expense of the latter.

I think we sometimes focus too much on trying to understand the culture of the enemy without first recognizing our own cultural quirks, norms and biases. The individual services within the U.S. military are especially effective at conditioning their officers to believe that the service's preferred theory of victory is the one most appropriate for a conflict. As a remedy for this, I wish Marines would be more conscious of their "Marineness" -- and all the assumptions, biases and norms (most of them good) that entails. (The same goes, of course, for Air Force officers, Army infantry officers, Naval aviators, Army armor officers, Army Special Forces officers, submariners, etc., etc., etc.)

Open criticism of COIN strategy on the ground in Kandahar

There's an interesting section of the Washington Post's story today on the Fifth Stryker Brigade Combat Team responsible for securing the population around Kandahar. Seems consternation over Gen. Stanley McChrystal's new counterinsurgency plan in the disparate southern villages of Afghanistan is not taboo to speak of by a high-ranking commander.

Not everyone is sold on Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's "protect the population" mantra. Some military officials think an expansionary push by the Marines into Taliban territory in neighboring Helmand province is more effective than hunkering down to the slow work of improving governance.

"I'm not a big fan of the population-centric approach. We can't sit still. We have to pursue and chase these guys," said Col. George Amland, deputy commander of the Marine expeditionary brigade in Helmand province. "I haven't seen any evidence it's working. The only thing that's working is chasing them."

Interesting to note as 30,000 soldiers will soon be sent to enact McChrystal's strategy.

The MSM could give a damn

Once again, the job of keeping the government in check regarding nasty things like the legality of Predator drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan is left to diligent groups like the ACLU while our vacuous press masturbates to the latest gossip shitbrick book about the '08 campaign.

The ACLU, via Spencer Ackerman:

“The American public has a right to know whether the drone program is consistent with international law, and that all efforts are made to minimize the loss of innocent lives,” said Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow with the ACLU National Security Project. “The Obama administration has reportedly expanded the drone program, but it has not explained publicly what the legal basis for the program is, what limitations it recognizes on the use of drones outside active theaters of war and what the civilian casualty toll has been thus far. We’re hopeful that the request we’ve filed today will encourage the Obama administration to disclose information about the basis, scope and implementation of the program.”

As the ACLU inquires on what is possibly the most immediate concern within our modern warfare complex, the mainstream media prefers the low-hanging fruit fed to them by fellow anonymous-source obsessed, politics-as-celebrity hacks.

War spending comically dwarfs airport security spending

The title says it all:

US Spends Ten Times More On Afghanistan Than Airport Security

The numbers indeed are sobering. In fiscal year 2009, the Transportation Security Administration was allocated $7.99 billion, $5.74 billion of which was earmarked for aviation security (Page 154). Only $128 million of that total was geared towards "enhancements at passenger checkpoints to improve the detection of prohibited items, especially weapons and explosives" which is roughly $100 million less than the tax break granted to Alaska fishermen in the stimulus package passed early this Congress.

Contrast those numbers with the dollars being poured into the two wars. A report released in September by the Congressional Research Service estimated that $94.8 billion was spent in Iraq in FY09. Another $55.2 billion is going to Afghanistan (more than ten times the amount spent on aviation security) with the number rising to $72.9 billion in 2010. That total, does not include the expected $30 billion that will be required to pay for additional troops.

You're next Yemen.

The indistinguishables

I'm obviously six days late, but I've finally taken in what happened with Obama's speech six days ago. Who did he sound like last week? 9/11 this, 9/11 that. Fear, paranoia, 9/11. 18-year-old kids going to war next year were 10 years old on 9/11; this thing is fueled by legends and folklore to them at this point. I guess we knew he would do this, from day one. But that doesn't make it any less disheartening. A candidate Obama doesn't have near the responsibility and access to hard truths like a President Obama. It was another one of "those" dark days.

Holding it at West Point? Mistake. It was not a rousing speech. It was the most somber war escalation speech in history, I'd boldly presume. Like any other president that has sent troops to war -- much less a botched, near-impossible war started by someone else -- the soldiers that die are his kids now. Haunting stuff. But they're so paralyzed by the powerlust and sheer death hold the system has on them.

What, is he giving the generals "one last try" to get it right? How war-tested and noble of our commander-in-chief. What about all the death, of us and Afghanis? You can't stop fucking terrorism (in this case al-Qaeda), and you definitely will only help coalesce al-Qaeda and the Taliban. You think escalating is a deterrent for them? This is what they want: To contribute to America's self-inflicted bleeding of lives, resources, principles. And Washington, like most everyone else in the U.S. it seems, fiddles while Rome burns. That's what I thought of our president. It reminds me a little of the last scene in Orwell's "Animal Farm" sometimes.

Update: This post by Glenn Greenwald exemplifies the "Animal Farm" comparison:

As (Harper's Scott) Horton writes, the claim that government officials enjoy a virtually impenetrable shield of immunity even in the commission of war crimes "has emerged as a sort of ignoble mantra for the Justice Department, uniting both the Bush and Obama administrations." Indeed, that is the common strain of virtually every act undertaken by the Obama DOJ with regard to our government's war crimes and other felonies, from torture to renditions to illegal eavesdropping.

With revelations of serious, recent abuse at an ongoing "black site" prison in Afghanistan, serious questions have been raised about the extent to which detainee abuse has actually been curbed under Obama. But there's no question that the single greatest impediment to disclosure and accountability for past abuses is the Obama Justice Department, which has repeatedly gone far beyond the call of duty in its attempt to protect Bush war crimes and other illegal acts. This new Seton Hall Report regarding these three detainees deaths illustrates not only how perverse and unjust, but also how futile, such efforts are. War crimes never stay hidden, and the only question from the start was whether the Obama DOJ would be complicit in the attempt to shield them from disclosure. That question has now been answered rather decisively.

What did Osama bin Laden envision for America?

I've often wondered just what Osama bin Laden envisioned as he was planning 9/11. What did he think was probably going to happen in America if the attacks were anything like what they turned out to be: 3,000 dead and destruction that lingers today. Did he envision a war in Afghanistan, a holy war at that? In his wildest dreams, did he ever think we would turn out the way we did? And then, should we escalate when no one is sure what will happen, or, really, or whether we can ever claim this entire war was worth it?

Radley Balko gives his answer:

Here’s a question for the politicians who support Obama’s plan, as well as those to the right of him who think it isn’t warmongery enough: What exactly does “victory” in Afghanistan look like? Certainly no one in his right mind thinks the country is going to look like, say, Iowa in 20 years. Same for Iraq. Are we expending what in the end will be a few trillion dollars and likely the lives of 6,ooo-7,000 troops to create another . . . Saudi Arabia? Another Egypt?

We do have a pretty good idea how bin Laden pictured victory. It looks a lot like what we’re seeing now. He wanted a holy war. We gave him two. We’ve compromised our values, rolled back civil liberties, and let our politicians generally scare the crap out of us whenever they want new powers. Oh, and we’ve let the bastard live to gloat about it all.

This war should have been over the moment we disposed of the Taliban. The military doesn’t build liberal societies. They destroy illiberal ones (and they do it very well). I’ll wager we have at least 50,000 troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of Obama’s first term. In fact, I’ll bet it’s closer to 75,000. Lovely that this was the anti-war candidate.

I'm not convinced bin Laden had thought America would go quite as far as it did. Actually, I think going to Iraq was the unexpected, bombshell cherry-on-top for him, if he's still alive. At the very best, I think bin Laden expected America would come to Afghanistan and blitz the Taliban, have general "success" and leave after a few years. I'm sure the religious aspect was prominent in his mind. If he was anywhere near all of this, he's a genius. (I'm certainly not condoning mass murder, I'm just saying he would have had incredible foresight.)

But the economic costs? Humanitarian tragedies? Gitmo? Wiretapping? No way. And definitely not Iraq. Has this ever occurred to any of these neo-cons and hawk "tough guy" torture-enthusiast warmongers in our government and political establishment? That we gave him what he wanted and so much more? Doubtful.

Cheney (and Politico) could give a shit, apparently

All that can be said about Dick Cheney's despicable interview with Politico has been said already today. This is a sad, bitter, frightened man scrambling to preserve some shred of a legacy that doesn't put him at the center of preemptive war, torture, lies upon lies to the American people and a genuine disregard for humanity.

And Politico, as a so-called "news organization," sunk to new depths seeking (or being called by) Cheney to comment on the day Obama is ADDING troops (The irony here is stunning and, frankly, a bit confusing.). I have enough disdain already for Politico's vapid, sloppy, "win-the-day" bullshit journalism. But giving Cheney an open forum to say whatever he wants without, seemingly, follow-ups to his egregious answers is embarrassing at best, a gross malfeasance to the already sorry state of modern mainstream journalism at worst.

But back to Lord Death, from the interview:

In a 90-minute interview at his suburban Washington house, Cheney said the president’s “agonizing” about Afghanistan strategy “has consequences for your forces in the field.”

“I begin to get nervous when I see the commander in chief making decisions apparently for what I would describe as small ‘p’ political reasons, where he’s trying to balance off different competing groups in society,” Cheney said.

“Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they’ve been asked to do?”

[...]

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating.

[...]

“Here’s a guy without much experience, who campaigned against much of what we put in place ... and who now travels around the world apologizing,” Cheney said. “I think our adversaries — especially when that’s preceded by a deep bow ... — see that as a sign of weakness.”

Read the whole thing for a complete picture of this insidious, pathetic man.

But the disappointment goes beyond Cheney. We expect bile from him. Today, Barack Obama is just another George W. Bush. This is now his war. He's the pseudo-tough guy that will "win this war once and for all." He will leave the White House at 5:30 tonight, heading to West Point for his speech where he will outline a troop escalation of around 30,000, more troops than Bush's Iraq surge. Exit strategy optional. I'll be there in front of the White House with fellow protesters to see him off. I fear this is a colossal mistake, a cherry on top of a multi-faceted mess in America. Something has to give.

Obama gets no backup, headed for colossal mistake

Dan Froomkin again writes what I've been thinking, but have not been good enough at articulating. He dissects the debate in Washington over Afghanistan (sure escalation, if only for politicking's sake) vs. the national reality (more want to get the fuck out).

As it happens, in this case political reality actually diverges quite markedly from public opinion. The public overwhelmingly opposes the war -- 57 percent to 39 percent, according to the latest Associated Press poll. And disengagement from Afghanistan -- even though it's not even being discussed as a serious option in political circles -- is considerably more popular with the American public than escalation, which is almost all anyone in Washington can talk about. The latest CNN poll found that 49 percent of Americans favored reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan -- with 28 percent saying they should all be withdrawn immediately -- compared to less than 40 percent who want to send more.

Generalized public sentiment alone, however, is unlikely to force any American president to consider a military withdrawal without victory. "It is always easier in the short term to stay in than to get out," says Walt. "And therefore the temptation to take one more drink is always there."

What it would take is a great deal of organized political pressure. But there is no significant peace movement pushing for withdrawal. There is, in fact, almost no political manifestation whatsoever of what is the majority view. The political pressure is all coming from one side.

But no pushback. And that's on us. We are a country and a culture in a daze. We have too much shit to care about to adequately assess a faceless war half a world away. I'm not blaming anyone. I mean it. The economy, health care, swine flu, everything else the media tells us to worry about, crime, just living life, it all gets in the way. Our culture has fractured off into subgroups, fostered by the Internet's vast playgrounds and possibilities. Engaging in a war debate (unless you're a military family) is the furthest from the every day mindset.

The most fascinating thing to ponder is if Obama announced a re-institution of the draft in an effort to ramp up the war. I know that's completely unrealistic, but I really wonder how we would react. Would people start to change their attitude, draft-eligible or not?

Again, we are a country and a culture in an multifaceted daze and I don't know what to do about it.

Anesthetized

Agence France Presse on the lack of care in a sustained anti-war movement among the young:

When student Hemnecher Amen joined a protest outside the White House recently, it was the latest visible opposition here to US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hardly anyone took notice.

"There's a lot of apathy and a growing disconnectedness to what's going on in world affairs," the frustrated Howard University junior told AFP as some 200 people, including a handful of students, gathered for the march.

Students are more interested in trying to get a job and make money. That's essentially the bottom line."

With the US military several years into two faraway wars, American students like Amen are taking to the streets less often -- and to less effect -- than their Vietnam-era predecessors who were the vanguard of the anti-war movement in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Mounting economic and academic pressures on today's youth, intimidation by authorities, online distractions and conflicted views about the "good" war in Afghanistan, not to mention other causes such as health care and slashed school budgets clawing for attention, have conspired to snuff out anti-war activism on campus, experts and students say.

They acknowledge, too, that US President Barack Obama has paradoxically hampered the movement because many of the largely leftist protest groups haven't wanted to openly oppose him so early in his first term.

"There's this trust that he's going to fix it all," said Shara Esbenshade, 19, a sophomore at Stanford University and member of Stanford Says No To War.

What would it take to motivate this generation to mobilize, outside of a draft or a presidential election?

Two days, two big NYT reports

The New York Times reports that U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry (always good to see someone named Karl in high places) allegedly thinks 10,000 to 15,000 more troops in Afghanistan is the right path to follow. This despite calls from top general in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal.

The position of the ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, puts him in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops.

Mr. Eikenberry sent his reservations to Washington in a cable last week, the officials said. In that same period, President Obama and his national security advisers have begun examining an option that would send relatively few troops to Afghanistan, about 10,000 to 15,000, with most designated as trainers for the Afghan security forces.

The story also says Obama will likely wait until December to make a decision. Eikenberry's alleged recommendation is one of four options Obama is reportedly mulling.

And from yesterday, Blackwater allegedly tried to bribe Iraqi officials to look the other way after killing 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square, Baghdad, in Sept. 2007. Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater expert, went on Maddow last night to discuss:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Officials say 'more troops'

The New York Times reports that Obama's pending decision on Afghanistan -- likely to be announced around Nov. 7, according to Jake Tapper -- will definitely include a troop increase.

Mr. Obama has yet to make a decision and has other options available to him, but as officials described it, the debate is no longer over whether to send more troops, but how many more will be needed. The question of how much of the country should fall under the direct protection of American and NATO forces will be central to deciding how many troops will be sent.

At the moment, the administration is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters, officials said. The first of any new troops sent to Afghanistan would be assigned to Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual capital, seen as a center of gravity in pushing back insurgent advances.

Two things: One, I guess we already assumed there would be more troops going. The White House has been consistent about one thing in this debate, and that is that de-escalating is not option. And two, these are purely anonymous sources. We know how that goes. So, take it with a grain of salt or not. Call it obvious or not. But it still hurts to see those words.