Tag: war

An unexpected suggestion of Harvard as coal mine canary:

a few days ago, Harvard University divested themselves entirely out of all their Israeli investments. Why did they do that? In my view they anticipate that the United States will not be behind Israel when it will attack Iran. The United States will do to Israel what they did to South Vietnam, which is to say that they will abandon Israel. Nobody will support them. So the shekel and the Tel Aviv stock exchange are probably gonna be marked down by 80-90%. Harvard University obviously understands this. That’s why they dumped every shekel-based security they have in their portfolio, because that exchange is gonna go belly-up. Hold onto your matzahs, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

I have no idea if Israel actually will attack Iran over its newly operational nuclear reactor, but given the Obama administration’s proclivity to favor Islamic countries, it does appear increasingly likely that the present US government would be inclined to sit out any Israeli-Iranian conflict.

There are few words sufficient to express the joy that one sees in the faces of the children and women in this video. But underlying that joy, one can also see an occasional glimpse of the stark terror of loss in which they have been living for months, if not years. The young woman who completely dissolves into tears after being surprised by the man in the wool hat is perhaps the most revealing example of this. It should be sobering to recall that there are 5,638 American soldiers, many more than were seen in this video, whose flag-draped return to their loved ones would be too painful to watch in a similar montage. The dream of a free and civilized Afghanistan and a free and peaceful Iraq is not an intrinsically bad thing. But even if it was a reasonably obtainable one, it is not in the American national interest and it is not worth the cost in American lives and American blood. It is not even worth tearing these fine men from their wives, children, and loved ones for a time. Bring them home. Bring them home now.

Joe Lieberman on the Wikileaks document dump: “The disclosure of tens of thousands of classified documents on the Afghanistan war is profoundly irresponsible and harmful to our national security. The Obama administration is absolutely right to condemn these leaks. Most of these documents add nothing to the public understanding of the war in Afghanistan. The materials – which cover the period from 2004 to 2009 – reflect the reality, recognized by everyone, that the insurgency was gaining momentum during these years while our coalition was losing ground. That is precisely why President Obama carried out a policy review in late 2009 and subsequently ordered a surge of forces to Afghanistan as part of a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency strategy that is now under way under the command of General Petraeus.”

James Jay Carafano of NRO on the same: “For sure, the “Afghan Diary” will be used to trash the U.S.-led war effort, just as the Pentagon Papers were used to undermine the war in Vietnam. But we must remember that (1) selectively released documents lack context and don’t tell the whole story; and (2) these documents are about the past. Wars are won in the future. The U.S. has a new general and a new strategy and more forces. Past performance is no guarantee of future earnings. While the documents may be less useful for understanding where we go from here in Afghanistan, their release certainly speaks volumes about the timeless challenges faced by democracies trying to wage wars. That should be the real focus of public concern. It looks as if information that was released could well put lives at risk in the future.”

One Democrat + One Republican = One War Party. And note the incoherency of the message that they’re pushing with more unity than JournoList. The leaked documents don’t matter and add nothing to the understanding of the war because they are so ancient and from the past… but at the same time they harm national security and are putting lives at risk in the future! I’d be interested to hear a defense of the logic upon which that argument rests.

It’s interesting to see how the War Party, which is ostensibly fighting wars to bring freedom and democracy to the rest of the world, desperately wants to shut off the flow of relevant information to the free and democratic people who are theoretically supposed to be deciding if they wish to engage in war or not. It’s almost as if the War Party is really more dedicated to the “fighting wars” part of the equation than the “to bring freedom and democracy to the rest of the world” bit.

Joseph Farah flips on the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq:

For the life of me, I cannot begin to understand our objectives in either Iraq or Afghanistan any more.

Because I appreciate the sacrifice our men and women are making over there, it is with a heavy heart that I make this proclamation. But enough is enough. We have spent over $1 trillion on these two wars and spilled far too much American blood. We are obviously unwilling as a country to do what is necessary to kill the bad guys in either place, so what is the point? Isn’t it time to declare victory and get out? What is the point? Can someone, anyone, tell me?

I admit I was a supporter of both of these campaigns. I was obviously wrong.

Being one who flipped on the Iraqi War in 2004, I’m hardly in any position to condemn latecomers. I made the mistake of supporting the war under the misconception that the ceasefire Hussein had violated was an agreement between Iraq and the USA, (it was actually an agreement between Iraq and the UN and therefore had absolutely nothing to do with the USA or its national security), but I was always against any potential military occupation. Pat Buchanan, to his credit, was one of the very few who had it right from the start. As for Afghanistan, we never had any business fighting the Taliban in the first place, much less attempting to occupy the country.

Anyhow, it’s good to see relatively mainstream Republicans beginning to join the libertarians in opposing the ongoing occupations. What a pity that the anti-war Democrats have again decided that they like war after all so long as a Democrat is the Commander-in-Chief. But given the history of 20th century American military conflict, it is a mystery that anyone believes Democrats are anti-war.

WWI – Wilson (D)
WWII – Roosevelt (D)
Korea – Truman (D)
Vietnam – Johnson (D)

That is not the track record of an antiwar party. Which, of course, is why I predicted that Obama would not end the wars, but rather, expand them.

As if there wasn’t enough reason to stop occupying Iraq and Afghanistan:

For those of us working in the US military it was clear that by the surge in 2007 the US forces were in terrible shape. By 2007, the repeated deployments resulted in an estimated 30 per cent of the US Army with some degree of post traumatic stress disorder. Every indicator of morale showed problems. Divorce and suicide were way up. Officers leaving the service after repeated deployments meant that the promotion selection of those remaining rose to 100 per cent. Before the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars lower performing officers were weeded out on the promotion lists from captain to major and major to lieutenant colonel. Competition for promotions ensured high standards in the officer corps. Normally only about 60 per cent of majors were selected for promotion to lieutenant colonel and those not promoted retired.

Yet by 2007 officer retention was so low that virtually all officers below full colonel were being selected for promotion to the next higher rank. The joke in the US Army was that the new standard for promotion was “fogging a mirror.” This also means that a lot of incompetent officers are moving higher in rank. This means big trouble now and even more in the future.

The absurd thing about these occupations, as with the Korean occupation, is that they have absolutely NOTHING to do with national security except to threaten it. Meanwhile, the southern border is being invaded on a daily basis. And both political parties are culpable.

Then bring the troops home. Does this report give you any reason to believe that the US military is on the verge of achieving victory?

But the bigger problem with McChrystal’s leadership has always been the general’s devotion to unreasonably restrictive rules of engagement that are resulting in the unnecessary deaths of American and coalition forces. We have had many, many accounts of the rules endangering Americans, and the Rolling Stone article provides more evidence. In the story, a soldier at Combat Outpost JFM who had earlier met with McChrystal was killed in a house that American officers had asked permission to destroy.

McChrystal’s devotion to restrictive rules of engagement isn’t totally ridiculous; the Coalition is an army of occupation, not conquest, after all. But, the fact is that Afghanistan isn’t going to be pacified by the mere presence of 100,000 troops over a period of ten years; the incompetence of the US strategy is exhibited by the fact that America’s military leaders had to already know that going in.

If McChrystal wasn’t, like most of the US military’s general class, a politician at heart, he would have resigned, not whined about his Commander-in-Chief to a magazine. Obama does not personally merit respect, but no soldier who fails to respect the chain of command should be permitted to retain his command unless he has some very, very good reasons for not doing so.

UPDATE – Looks like Gen. McChrystal did the honorable thing.

According to an unnamed source ‘Gen. McChrystal has submitted his resignation’ – Joe Klein on Rick Sanchez, CNN…