Tag Archives: military

Political Rants

Pulling us up to the brink again

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I’m not in the greatest state of mind right now, so I’ll be brief. I just wanted to take a moment to amend my post from last week, Examining the Three Crises Three. In short, I missed a crisis or two. And the one that appears to be percolating up into the national consciousness is the Ukraine Crisis.

Now, the national conversation about this conflict is enough to drive anyone mad. I have never seen so many policy cross-currents between left and right as over this question. Trumpist right-wingers are adapting a narrow anti-war stance that appears to be counseling caution with respect to Russia and crackpot aggression toward China. “Muscular” liberals and centrists appear to be hell bent on building an iron wall around the Soviet …. I mean, Russia. Dogs are dancing with cats. What a mess.

What about the Minsk agreement?

There is a diplomatic solution to this. Anatol Lieven, writing for The Nation, details The Minsk II agreement, worked out in 2015, which provided for limited autonomy for some of the disputed parts of Ukraine. He writes:

“A solution exists that was drawn up by France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine and endorsed by the US, the European Union, and the United Nations. This solution corresponds to democratic practice, international law and tradition, and America’s own past approach to the settlement of ethnic and separatist conflicts. Moreover, it requires no concessions of real substance by either Ukraine or the US.” (Ukraine: The Most Dangerous Problem in the World)

Lieven works with the Quincy Institute, a foreign policy think tank headed by Andrew Bacevich, none of whose researchers are likely to show up on Morning Joe anytime soon.

So why are we ….? Oh, yeah.

We appear to be beefing up our presence in Eastern Europe, preparing to wield crippling sanctions against Russia, etc. The one thing we don’t appear eager to do is simply admit that Ukraine is not in the short line for NATO membership. Frankly, it shouldn’t be in the long line either. And most of the commentators closest to power claim that the U.S. has no intention of defending Ukraine militarily within its borders.

Okay, but what is this conflict about? Why are we facing off at the front lines of what has the potential to be a disastrous, perhaps world-ending war? My guess is that it’s because we always lead with the military. That’s where we hold the strongest hand, so we always play it. See Iraq. See Libya. See Syria.

Instant money – just add congress

Congressional leadership on both sides of the aisle – Democrats and Autocrats (formerly Republicans) – are falling over each other trying to shovel money into Ukraine’s military. The price tag is around $500 million.

When it comes to this sort of thing, there’s always money. When it comes to pulling people out of poverty, even children, the cupboard is bare. Let’s hope this little investment in bellicosity doesn’t trigger the global holocaust we’ve been arming up for since before I was born.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Keeping an eye on the foreign policy blob

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After a week of nearly non-stop domestic news, good and bad, I’m going to talk about foreign policy. Think of this as the latest in an ongoing series of posts about how bad Biden’s foreign policy is. Frankly, the only good thing I can say about it at this point is that it is better than Trump’s version, albeit not by much.

Longtime readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast Strange Sound (now on hiatus) know that I have been critical of Biden’s imperial world view from the beginning. Since his candidate days, he has de-emphasized foreign affairs. His campaign web site, for instance, included almost no detailed information about his plans in this regard. That was not because he had no plans – it was because he didn’t want to talk about them.

Target Asia (again)

If you watch the mainstream media, you can’t miss the extent to which they are obsessing over China. They don’t do that unless our nation’s political leaders give them the space to bloviate. This is true of the so-called liberal networks, like MSNBC.

Morning Joe, for instance, platformed Indiana Senator Todd Young, who stuck to his party’s current insistence on referring to the nation of China as “The Chinese Communist Party”. (See Young’s pinned tweet about his “Endless Frontier Act”.) Young spent some of his time warning of China’s undue influence in the South China Sea (which, as the name suggests, is closer to them than it is to us). There have been multiple stories, also, about China’s supposed military hardware, like hypersonic missiles, and so on.

Enter the killer subs

This would be laughable if it weren’t so potentially dangerous. The United States accusing another country of throwing its weight around militarily is objectively ridiculous. We have a much, much more muscular presence on the periphery of China than China does. That includes massive military installations throughout the region, thousands of troops, fighter/ bomber squadrons, and a fleets of warships.

Case in point, as Noam Chomsky pointed out recently on Democracy Now!, a single Trident submarine holds enough nuclear weapons to destroy nearly 200 cities in Asia. We have more than one, of course, and have contracted with the Australians to ensure that there will be more killer subs patrolling the Chinese coast.

So, why the hell …. ?

Of course, this policy is about Asia writ large and who calls the shots in the region. American presidents have been focused on this for multiple administrations, with a significant uptick since the Bush II regime. A permanent presence is essential to our ability to project power – and, crucially, the credible threat of power – across the continent.

That’s why it’s target China time. Frankly, we can’t maintain a large military presence in the region without inventing some enemies. I’m personally convinced that that is the reason why the Korean conflict has remained in stasis for seven decades. We need to keep the threat level up to continue this toxic policy.

In short, regardless of what happens on the home front, we need to keep an eye on Biden’s foreign policy establishment, even – and really, especially – if they don’t want us to.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Onward christian soldiers.

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The president is seeking Congressional authorization for his current campaign in Syria and Iraq. Looks like he’s going to get it, though begrudgingly on the part of knee-jerk hawks like McCain, Graham, and their various appendages. Not open-ended enough. The generals are complaining! we’re told. They’re unhappy with limitations and micromanagement by the President of the United States, the pundits say. Okay … first thing: sorry you’re unhappy with your jobs, generals. Maybe you should consider stepping down. You take your orders from civilian leadership … that’s how it works in the American military. Don’t like it? Resign.

This turned out well.That said, our President is on the brink of another useless military adventure. As this is debated, will anyone in Congress ask, “When has this ever gone well?” Kosovo? Don’t say Kosovo. We made the killing worse, predictably. Afghanistan? Just as ungovernable as ever, only now with more dead people. Iraq? Please! Libya? Now divided between two hostile governments; a failed state shedding refugees by the thousand. Now the conversation is centered not so much on whether we should fight in Iraq / Syria, but rather how heavily we should get involved. I hear a lot of T.V. talkers advocating for a ground war. They should consider whether they would want their kids to fight it. Or if maybe they’d want to fight it themselves. Anything short of that is just talk.

Obama got in some trouble at the “National Prayer Breakfast” for bringing up the unfortunate history of Christianity, as a counterpoint to his condemnation of extremist Islam. Of course, he needn’t have gone back so far. There’s another extremist religion he might have talked about – one far more deadly than ISIS or any other crazed sham-Muslim group. It’s called American First-ism, and it’s killed hundreds of thousands over the past decade. Can ISIS match that? Can they even come close?

There’s only one way to stop groups like ISIS: stop creating them. ISIS would be nothing without the large disenfranchised Sunni community in Iraq – a community at war with its own government, for whom the arrival of Iraqi security forces means a death sentence. They support ISIS as a counterbalance to Baghdad. Until they have a stake in Iraq’s future, there will always be another ISIS.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Kill zones.

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Back when I was knee high to an antelope, in the scented 1960s, the U.S. was engaged in what is now described as “limited war” in Vietnam. Our concept of limitation is, well, somewhat limited, as it amounted to an all-out attack on Vietnamese society, particularly in the South Vietnam hinterlands, which took the brunt of the bombing, defoliation, and other depredations. Part of that policy was establishment of “Free-fire zones” – when night fell and the friendlies were inside the wire of the strategic hamlet, anything that moved beyond the wire was fair game. Hence the shooting, the bombing, etc.

This is our target?Our drone war in Pakistan-Afghanistan, and essentially everywhere else, runs on a similar principle. It isn’t as all-out, of course, but it appears to be nearly as random. And just as every living thing in the Vietnamese countryside was assumed to be Viet Cong, every military age male in the tribal areas of Pakistan is, by definition, an extremist, a combatant, a terrorist, and therefore the target of killer drones, piloted by some dude who works at a terminal in a trailer about fifty miles from where I’m sitting right now.

That definition of “military aged male” appears to be expansive enough to include the 67-year-old grandmother of Rafiq Rehman, a school teacher in North Waziristan. She was killed by a drone-fired  missile while tending her crop. (Rehman and his family were interviewed on Democracy Now! a couple of weeks ago.)

This policy is not only criminal, it’s stupid, unless of course the objective is to generate future conflicts. People in these tribal areas live under the buzz of killer drones every day of their lives. There is simply no telling when you, your father, your daughter, your best friend will be blown to bits at random by an unaccountable power, an out-of-control empire pressing its advantage against people who cannot defend themselves against this deadly technology. As an American of a certain age, I grew up under the threat of nuclear war. There was a sense of danger that attended every day of my generation’s childhood. This drone war is much more tangible, much more immediate, but psychologically corrosive in a similar way.

We are investing in a generation of people who hate our guts. We need to stop this now.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

On serving.

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This is one for the veterans. I felt I had to write about this because of a story I heard on DemocracyNow! this week about wounded and PTSD soldiers receiving less-than-honorable discharges based on behavior attributable to their injuries … and in some cases, based on virtually nothing at all. This is one of the most maddening stories I have heard this year, but I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. It’s pretty much a given in this country that many of the people who fight our wars will be discarded after they’ve sacrificed dearly on our behalf. These past twelve years have brought us back to a place we hadn’t been since the end of the execrable Vietnam war – dealing with the aftermath of a prolonged, highly destructive conflict, and doing a very poor job of it.

Why do we – in the age of magnetic yellow ribbons – still suck so badly at this? A couple of things come to mind. First, this war is not broadly shared, so any improvement in our basic humanity since the end of the last war (and I like to think there has been some) is offset by the fact that, in the absence of conscription, only a tiny fraction of American families have any skin in this fight. 

The second is an institutional/political reason. When a large institution like the United States military, as an instrument of American power, is very good at something, that’s usually because it’s deemed of great importance to those in power. The opposite is true of things they are really bad at. Our leaders look bad when many Americans are killed on the battlefield, so we’re really good at getting soldiers out alive. Once they’re out of the action, they become statistically insignificant to those in power. If they suffer, it doesn’t cost our leaders anything. If they die, no one is counting the way they do when soldiers die overseas.

This phenomenon isn’t unique to this bogus war. When my dad returned from World War II and the occupation of Europe, he evidently had PTSD – nightmares, sleeping with a gun under his pillow, etc. There was no help for him, just as there was none for those returning from Korea and Vietnam. The philosophy was, suck it up. It’s up to us to say that this is as unacceptable today as it was then.

Raise your voice about this. These people deserve better.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Service.

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After a whirlwind lame duck session for the 111th Congress, it appears as though gays will soon be able to serve openly in the military. I must emphasize the modifier “soon”, as it is not yet safe to make your sexual orientation known in the service, and it won’t be until the Administration and the Pentagon completes their review process. None the less, this was a long time coming, and I am glad for those in uniform for whom the repeal of DADT means a kind of liberation. DADT was implemented before we started asking way too much of our military – multiple deployments to multiple simultaneous occupations, heavy fighting over stretches of months at a time, high casualty rates, etc. – and it has simply outlived its mandate, in addition to being dead wrong from the start.

That’s all good, but it’s just a step in the right direction. Gay Americans are still second-class citizens, barred from full civil rights as of this moment. As of now, there is an institutional necessity to allow gays to join the military – with an all-volunteer force like ours, we cannot wage two (or perhaps three) simultaneous wars without providing incentives to talented people of every persuasion to participate. The trouble is, when they return to civilian life (those who don’t choose to make the military a permanent career), they find themselves unable to marry, to raise a family, or to hold certain types of positions in some states. Not a dissimilar situation to that of the late 1940s, early 1950s, when black soldiers returned to the segregated south and a nearly equally racist north. My guess is that it’s just a matter of time before the crumbling edifice of discrimination against gays falls entirely to pieces.

It is worth saying, too, that while we’re now legislatively bound to start welcoming gays into our military, we might want to take this opportunity to consider more carefully what we’re asking our military to do. Right now, we are involved in two indefensible conflicts. This is not the fault of those who serve – this is the fault of our policy makers and, by extension, us. It gives me little satisfaction to know that, while gays need no longer serve in fear of exposure and expulsion, they are still compelled to participate in conflicts that are killing thousands while making us decidedly less safe from attack.

If we’re asking people – gay and straight – to sacrifice, let’s make certain it’s for a damn good reason… one good enough that each of us would be willing to sacrifice in kind.

luv u,

jp