"Russia calls on US to probe WikiLeaks documents," Daily Star (Lebanon)/AFP, October 29, 2010.

[You won't find this article in the North American free press, but the Daily Star (Lebanon) is a pretty good rag. --jlt]

MOSCOW: Russia called on the US Thursday to carry out a detailed investigation into allegations contained in leaked Iraq war documents published by WikiLeaks.

“The US authorities bear the responsibility to conduct a thorough, independent and transparent investigation of all the reports that have appeared in the media,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“We are convinced that such a position will demonstrate the US adherence to the high standards in the human rights sphere that it constantly calls on other countries to observe."

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Miyume Tanji, "Community, Resistance and sustainability in an Okinawan village: Yomitan," Japan Focus, March 2, 2009.

Yomitan village and the sea

Introduction

The presence of some 737 US military outposts around the world imposes great strains, and there is always the possibility of rejection by the inhabitants of adjacent communities. Chalmers Johnson, author of the acclaimed trilogy on US imperial expansion and its costs, highlights the tensions between overseas US bases and the countries where they are deployed, most prominently Okinawa.[1] Nearly one-fifth of the land surface of Okinawa’s small, crowded main island is devoted to 38 bases and facilities for the US military (almost 75% of the US forces stationed in Japan). Johnson depicts Okinawa as a hotspot among other US military outposts, where anti-American opposition might undermine the US alliance network in the Asia-Pacific. He draws particular attention to the US forces’ exemption from the local criminal justice system, as well as from responsibility to overcome the environmental contamination of local sites caused by US military usage.[2]

Politicians and media commentators often talk of friction between overseas US forces and locals in terms of crimes, accidents, noise and other hazards associated with US military deployment. Yet occasional crimes, risks and hazards barely scratch the surface. From the perspective of local populations living cheek by jowl with the bases, social, economic and cultural well-being is constantly insecure and subject to the priorities of the US military. One key question constantly arises concerning the legitimacy of the bases: Do US military bases protect and advance the well-being of the local populations or undermine it? If the latter is the case, what can local people do about it?

The concept of community is explained in terms of five defining elements by Ife and Tesoriero: a scale of population small enough to know each other and manage autonomous social structures; a sense of belonging and identity; holistic interactions among villagers in the realm of personal development beyond functional ties (gemeinschaft rather than gesellschaft); members’ active engagement in the community; and existence of a unique local-specific culture that members create, as opposed to consumption of globalised, mass culture.[3]

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Dave Cullen, "Gulf War Illness report shows cancers ignored by US government scientists," ICBUW, December 12, 2008.

A US Congressional report on Gulf War illness has accused US Government scientists of ignoring key data on the impact of depleted uranium on veterans' health.

This led the committee to declare that the way the series was commissioned did not fulfil Congress's legal requirements, and it recommends that the government office that commissioned them should be stripped of responsibility for future research.

This is an updated version of a story first published on ICBUW's site on Dec 12th 2008. We have now added additional detail and a full review of the report. A PDF of this is available at the end of the article

In mid November, a committee set up by the US Congress released a landmark report on Gulf War Illness (GWI), an event widely reported by the media. It was considered a landmark study, as it stated categorically that the ill effects suffered by veterans of the 1990-1991 Gulf War were real, and amounted to a distinct medical condition.

The report identified two probable causes of this illness - pyridostigmine bromide (PB) pills which were given to troops to protect them from nerve agents, and pesticides which were liberally used to protect troops from insects.

However, amidst all the fuss, some damning information on the US government's response to the use of uranium weapons was completely ignored by the media. The section on DU supported ICBUW's finding that a touchstone study on US veterans affected by DU shrapnel ignored an incidence of cancer in the group.

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William S Lind, "On War #286: America's Defense Meltdown," Defense and the National Interest, December 15, 2008.

...we must stop asking our armed services to do things that are impossible for them, like turning fly-blown, flea-bitten Third World hellholes into Switzerland.

America’s Defense Meltdown is the title of a new book on military reform, edited by Winslow Wheeler and published by the Center for Defense Information. In it, some of the leading figures from the military reform movement of the 1970’s and ‘80’s update their work and relate it to today’s challenges, including that posed by Fourth Generation war.

The book is timely. For years, Chuck Spinney and I have said that there will be no reform until the money simply isn’t there anymore. If that day has not yet arrived, it is on the calendar. The combination of a severe recession or depression and vast New Deal-type public works programs means something has to give. As the largest element in the discretionary federal budget, defense spending is an obvious target. More, it is a worthy target, in that much of what we spend buys little or no capability. The problem is not only mismanagement, but outdated and fundamentally wrongheaded approaches to war.

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Obama to Delay Repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" Washington Times, November 21`, 2008.

[Anyone who thinks the neoconservative right has been swept away by the rising tide of Obamamania should check out the Media Research Center. -jlt]

"Homosexual activists are overconfident because they have not yet seen a counterforce emerge as occurred in 1993," said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute at the Media Research Center, an organization that seeks to balance perceived liberal bias in mainstream news coverage.

President-elect Barack Obama will not move for months, and perhaps not until 2010, to ask Congress to end the military's decades-old ban on open homosexuals in the ranks, two people who have advised the Obama transition team on this issue say.

Repealing the ban was an Obama campaign promise. However, Mr. Obama first wants to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his new political appointees at the Pentagon to reach a consensus and then present legislation to Congress, the advisers said.

"I think 2009 is about foundation building and reaching consensus," said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. The group supports military personnel targeted under the ban.

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Andy Worthington, "The collapse of Omar Khadr's Guantánamo trial," Antiwar.com, October 28, 2008.

[Stephen Harper may be the last to notice. -jlt]

...would shame all but the most vile totalitarian regimes.

Hardly a day goes by without some extraordinary news from the military commissions, the system of "terror trials" conceived in the office of the vice president in November 2001, and their days now seem to be as numbered as those of the Bush administration itself.

Following the outspoken resignation of former prosecutor Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld and the Pentagon's desperate decision to drop charges against five prisoners to prevent Vandeveld from testifying for the defense, the latest news to rock the commissions is that the trial of Omar Khadr – a supposedly flagship case, along with that of the Yemeni Salim Hamdan, who received a surprisingly light sentence after a trial this summer – has been delayed until after the administration leaves office.

This is a bitter blow for the government, which has been pushing to prosecute Khadr for war crimes since 2005. Its first attempt failed, when the Supreme Court ruled that the whole enterprise was illegal, but after the commissions were bandaged up by Congress and resumed their ghoulish existence in 2007, Khadr was once more put forward for trial.

Those who have been pressing for the young Canadian's release will now be hoping that the Canadian government (which is also a signatory to the UN Convention [on the rights of children in wartime]) will finally discover its spine, and will take advantage of the change of administration to demand his return to Canada...

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"Iraq War resister Robin Long sentenced to 15 months," Courage to Resist, August 23, 2008.

Robin Long, an Iraq War resister deported from Canada into U.S. military custody last month, was sentenced today to 15 months of confinement and dishonorable discharge, receiving credit for 40 days of time served.

Long’s supporters, who flooded the Fort Carson, Colorado courtroom where the court martial was held and held a vigil in his honor, expressed dismay at the harsh verdict. “It sets a very chilling precedent that someone who is brought back gets the book thrown at them,” said Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army Colonel who publicly resigned in opposition to the invasion of Iraq and served as a witness at Long’s trial. “I hope the Canadian government recognizes that.”

Three years ago, Robin Long fled to Canada rather than fight a war in Iraq he deems immoral and illegal. On July 15th, the Canadian government forcibly returned Long to U.S. military custody, making him the first war resister deported from Canadian soil since the Vietnam War.

The Canadian government's actions flaunt its long-standing tradition of providing safe haven for U.S. war resisters and ignore a non-binding parliamentary resolution to allow U.S. soldiers to stay in Canada.

Long is a part of a growing movement of GI resistance against the Iraq War, and his case has been met with widespread support from friends and allies throughout the United States and Canada

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"Retired Military Leaders Oppose Provocative House Resolution on Iran," CommonDreams, June 11, 2008.

WASHINGTON - July 11 - Three retired military leaders sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to abandon a resolution currently making its way through Congress that might lead to a blockade or the use of force against Iran. The retired military leaders say H.Con.Res. 362 is “poorly conceived, poorly timed, and potentially dangerous.”

The full text of the letter – signed by Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr., U.S. Army (ret.); former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Lawrence J. Korb; and Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, U.S. Navy (ret.) – is available online here.

All three signatories to the letter are available for interviews. Media inquiries for Lt. General Gard should be directed to Carah Ong at 202.378.3334; inquiries for Admiral Shanahan should be directed to Lauren Coletta at 202.841.2381; inquiries for Dr. Lawrence Korb to 202.741.6388.

Both Common Cause and Council for a Livable World solicited the opinions of these experienced individuals to gain a better understanding of the potential military implications of the resolution.

The military leaders cite language in the resolution demanding the President initiate an international effort “prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran,” as particularly concerning. The retired military leaders believe that implementation of inspections of this nature could not be accomplished without a blockade or the use of force.

According to their letter, “Immense military resources would be required to implement such inspections of cargo moving through the seas, on the ground and in the air. The international community has shown no willingness to join in such an activity. Without a Security Council Resolution, implementation of these measures could be construed as an act of war.”

Additionally, the retired military leaders say, “Implementation of measures called for in the resolution could complicate our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and could cause oil prices to soar.”

The letter concludes that while H. Con. Res. 362 as a concurrent resolution does not have the force of law, it clearly risks sending a message to the Iranians, the Bush Administration, and the world that Congress supports a more belligerent policy toward Iran.

According to the military experts, “In our view, H. Con. Res. 362 in no way furthers our diplomatic efforts or those of our European allies and should be abandoned.”

The full text of the letter is available online here.

Founded by nuclear scientist Leo Szilard in 1962, Council for a Livable World provides Members of Congress with technical information and operates a Candidate Fund that helps elect candidates who support sensible national security policies. Visit the Council online at http://www.clw.org.

Common Cause is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1970 by John Gardner as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest. Visit Common Cause online at www.commoncause.org.

CONTACT: Council for A Livable World / Common Cause
Carah Ong, 202.378.3334, cong@clw.org
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FEATURE"A year in context, part 1/2: Is it the end of the world?" September 11, 2007.

Back in 1969, I had a gig as a photographer on a project that produced a preliminary scan of pollution along the Fraser River. We stopped at communities along the way—Abbotsford, Hope, Lytton, Lillooet, Quesnel, Williams Lake. When we got to Prince George, our host took us down to a sandy spot at the side of the river.

We sat down and made ourselves comfortable. It was the end of a long day. He lit up a joint, and as he reached it slowly in my direction, said, “So, is it the end of the world?”

Looking back over the last year, the main theme of World Report has been multipolar realignment, the return of a multinational world order.

Multipolar realignment is a shift, real or anticipated, from a world order dominated by the “sole remaining superpower” to one in which leadership must be shared. It is—or would be--a new balance of power.

Is it really happening? What does it or will it or is it likely to look like? As an end point, a multipolar world order would be one in which no single state was able to achieve (or impose) its will without the cooperation of the other powers.

The defining dynamic of a shift to such an order would be a decline in the effectiveness of the “sole remaining superpower” accompanied by an increase in the power of one or more nations or groups.

We would expect this realignment, if it is happening at all, to proceed in the manner of a hiistorical evolution. It's progress would be ragged and uncertain. For every eight steps taken in one direction, seven will go in the other, with some events too ambiguous to interpret one way or the other.

I have some biases I should be clear about. Two years ago, I said that the term “superpower” is “borderline gibberish.”

I said that in 2003,

“Everyone, including the President, whose public speech is heavily laced with such linguistic junk food, called the US 'the world's only superpower.' People all across the political spectrum asked what country was next on America's hit list, as if nothing could prevail over US military might.

It was a delusion. But it was, in those days, a very common delusion.”

In my opinion, the President's use of language hasn't improved in the last four years. But the number of people who share the delusion that a big, expensive army is invincible seems to be declining.

By 2005, with the mission still not accomplished, the perception was beginning to take root “that Washington could be opposed effectively without incurring unacceptable costs" (Weinstein and Bendersky Realignment Jun 20 05).

This inevitably led to whispers that Uncle Sam's ability to become “the unquestioned political and military arbiter of the globalizing world economy” was less than you might expect from such an amazing collection of military hardware.

Indeed, the status of the US as the world's sole remaining superpower comes from three sources: military, economic and political dominance.

Viewed in this way, one of the most important events of the last twelve months was the Chinese test of an anti-satellite weapon in January. The test brought the possibility of asymmetrical warfare to outer space, a special worry to Americans and Canadians who believe that space has not already been “weaponized.”

According to John Pike, a satellite expert at globalsecurity.org, "Our space assets are the first asset on the scene....

"They are absolutely central to why we are a superpower; a signature component to America's style of warfare" (qtd Brooks Bulletin Jan 18 07).

But the trouble had started before that. By this time last year, the official cessation of hostilities in the Lebanon war (July 12 to August 14) had taken place nearly a month before on August 14, 2006. Here was yet another war that appeared to demonstrate that an army could establish full spectrum dominance, and still lose the more important political war both abroad and at home.

The collapse of domestic support for Israeli PM Ehud Olmert was certainly striking. But much bigger surprises came from Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese Prime Minister.

Siniora is a strong supporter of the western influence in Lebanon and is even described by some as a puppet of America. But as President Bush found out last month when Hamid Karzai described Iran as “a helper and a solution” indeed as “a supporter of Afghanistan, in the peace process that we have and the fight against terror and the fight against narcotics in Afghanistan" the puppets seem to be acquiring minds of their own.

In a series of press conferences during the war in Lebanon, Siniora repeatedly called attention to the Palestinian refugees' right of return. He also repeated that sooner or later Israel would have to establish friendly relations with its neighbours and one time expressed the view that Lebanon would be the last Arab state to recognize Israel.

In Afghanistan, all three pillars of American dominance—military, economic and political—are on the line. More, the future of NATO is in question. Former Indian diplomat to the region M K Bhadrakumar observes

“it was apparent to anyone that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a divided house and that the United States' old European allies didn't share its apparent intention to turn Afghanistan into a client state under a NATO flag from where US power projection into the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and South Asia and Central Asia would become possible” (ATol May 19 07).

By this time last year, it was clear that the Taliban, which had been driven from the field in 2002, was back in force.

Last year was the worst for Canadian troops, and it seemed that 2007 might be even worse yet. That hasn't turned out to be the case. Canadian casualties for 2007 are slightly lower than for 2006. The Taliban's spring offensive that was talked about all winter didn't materialize.

Even so, we do not appear to feel threatened by the Taliban. For whatever reason, the reconstruction of Afghanistan has not gained traction with Canadians as a great national project.

Nagging NATO didn't put any more troops in the field either.

Bhadrakumar again: quote

“There is an Afghan opinion building up over the imperative of an intra-Afghan dialogue leading to genuine power-sharing. But the US and NATO pretend they aren't seeing the groundswell of opinion.

Their emphasis is on the existential challenge posed by [the] Afghan war to NATO's global role. They look over the Afghan ridge toward the new cold-war horizon. Meanwhile, the US is inexorably losing its monopoly over conflict resolution in Afghanistan. And regional powers include some that are against the open-ended presence of NATO forces.”

Blaming Pakistan has shaken Musharraf's hold on power, but it doesn't appear to have made Pakistanis glad at the prospect of Americans flying missions into their country.

In fact, the whole matter of air support for NATO forces has been identified as the main cause of the increase in civilian casualties inflicted by NATO forces.

The economic source of the US status as the world's sole superpower is scarcely more secure than the military one. In October, former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank delivered a 700-page report that called climate change "the greatest and widest ranging market failure ever seen" (Oct 30 06).

A few days later, a study published in Science magazine concluded that at the rate species were being lost there would be no more viable fish or invertebrate species available to fisheries by 2050. Another market failure requiring intervention since the results also showed that these trends are still reversible.

Economic dominance of institutions like the IMF and the World Bank are in decline because China and Venezuela have emerged as alternate sources of development funding.

Cold War analysts keen to see the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a new version of the Warsaw Pact have seized on joint military exercizes and the presence of Iran as key features. But it's more complex than that and we're getting short of time. Suffice it to say for the moment that the SCO is another alternate source of funding and energy cooperation for countries of the region.

The WTO negotiations known as the Doha Round are also in trouble. Whether you think all this superpower in decline stuff is bad news or good, there have been some developments that run in the other direction that might make a good starting point for next week.

So is that the end of the world? Maybe not. My Prince George friend and I were not ready to embrace a secular version of the apocalypse, until after we had examined a few other catastrophes of varying scope—say the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Great Depression, and the Fall of the Roman Empire.

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Lt. General William E. Odom (US Army Ret.), "Strategic Errors of Monumental Proportions: What Can Be Done in Iraq?" CounterPunch, January 24, 2007.

...the policy of spreading democracy by forces of arms has become the main source of regional instability....Any new strategy that does realistically promise to achieve regional stability at a cost we can prudently bear, and does not regain the confidence and support of our allies, is doomed to failure.

Text of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, January 18, 2007.

Good afternoon, Senator Biden, and members of the committee. It is a grave responsibility to testify before you today because the issue, the war in Iraq, is of such monumental importance.

You have asked me to address primarily the military aspects of the war. Although I shall comply, I must emphasize that it makes no sense to separate them from the political aspects. Military actions are merely the most extreme form of politics. If politics is the business of deciding "who gets what, when, how," as Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall in New York City once said, then the military aspects of war are the most extreme form of politics. The war in Iraq will answer that question there.


Strategic Overview

The role that US military forces can play in that conflict is seriously limited by all the political decisions the US government has already taken. The most fundamental decision was setting as its larger strategic purpose the stabilization of the region by building a democracy in Iraq and encouraging its spread. This, of course, was to risk destabilizing the region by starting a war.

Military operations must be judged by whether and how they contribute to accomplishing war aims. No clear view is possible of where we are today and where we are headed without constant focus on war aims and how they affect US interests. The interaction of interests, war aims, and military operations defines the strategic context in which we find ourselves. We cannot have the slightest understanding of the likely consequences of proposed changes in our war policy without relating them to the strategic context. Here are the four major realities that define that context:

1. Confusion about war aims and US interests. The president stated three war aims clearly and repeatedly:

* the destruction of Iraqi WMD;
* the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and
* the creation of a liberal democratic Iraq.

The first war aim is moot because Iraq had no WMD. The second was achieved by late Spring 2003. Today, people are waking up to what was obvious before the war -- the third aim has no real prospects of being achieved even in ten or twenty years, much less in the short time anticipated by the war planners. Implicit in that aim was the belief that a pro-American, post-Saddam regime could be established. This too, it should now be clear, is most unlikely. Finally, is it in the US interest to have launched a war in pursuit of any of these aims? And is it in the US interest to continue pursuing the third? Or is it time to redefine our aims? And, concomitantly, to redefine what constitutes victory?

2. The war has served primarily the interests of Iran and al Qaeda, not American interests.

We cannot reverse this outcome by more use of military force in Iraq. To try to do so would require siding with Sunni leaders and the Baathist insurgents against pro-Iranian Shiite groups. The Baathist insurgents constitute the forces most strongly opposed to Iraqi cooperation with Iran. At the same time, our democratization policy has installed Shiite majorities and pro-Iranians groups in power in Baghdad, especially in the ministries of interior and defense. Moreover, our counterinsurgency operations are, as unintended (but easily foreseeable) consequences, first, greater Shiite openness to Iranian influence and second, al Qaeda's entry into Iraq and rooting itself in some elements of Iraqi society.

3. On the international level, the war has effectively paralyzed the United States militarily and strategically, denying it any prospect of revising its strategy toward an attainable goal.

As long as US forces remained engaged Iraq, not only will the military costs go up, but also the incentives will decline for other states to cooperate with Washington to find a constructive outcome. This includes not only countries contiguous to Iraq but also Russia and key American allies in Europe. In their view, we deserve the pain we are suffering for our arrogance and unilateralism.

4. Overthrowing the Iraqi regime in 2003 insured that the country would fragment into at least three groups; Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. In other words, the invasion made it inevitable that a civil war would be required to create a new central government able to control all of Iraq. Yet a civil war does not insure it. No faction may win the struggle. A lengthy stalemate, or a permanent breakup of the country is possible. The invasion also insured that outside countries and groups would become involve. Al Qaeda and Iran are the most conspicuous participants so far, Turkey and Syria less so. If some of the wealthy oil-producing countries on the Arabian Peninsula are not already involved, they are most likely to support with resources any force in Iraq that opposes Iranian influence.

Many critics argue that, had the invasion been done "right," such as sending in much larger forces for re-establishing security and government services, the war would have been a success. This argument is not convincing. Such actions might have delayed a civil war but could not have prevented it. Therefore, any military programs or operations having the aim of trying to reverse this reality, insisting that we can now "do it right," need to be treated with the deepest of suspicion. That includes the proposal to sponsor the breakup by creating three successor states. To do so would be to preside over the massive ethnic cleansing operations required for the successor states to be reasonably stable. Ethnic cleansing is happening in spite of the US military in Iraq, but I see no political or moral advantage for the United States to become its advocate. We are already being blamed as its facilitator.

Let me now turn to key aspects of the president's revised approach to the war, as well as several other proposals.

In addition to the president, a number of people and groups have supported increased US force levels. As General Colin Powell has said, before we consider sending additional US troops, we must examine what missions they will have. I would add that we ask precisely what those troops must do to reverse any of these four present realities created by the invasion. I cannot conceive of any achievable missions they could be given to cause a reversal.

Just for purposes of analysis, let us suppose we had unlimited numbers of US troops to deploy in Iraq. Would that change my assessment? In principle, if two or three million troops were deployed there with the latitude to annihilate all resistance without much attention to collateral civilian casualties and human rights, order might well be temporarily reestablished under a reign of US terror. The problem we would then face is that we would be opposed not only by 26 million Iraqis but also by millions of Arabs and Iranians surrounding Iraq, peoples angered by our treatment of Muslims and Arabs. These outsiders are already involved to some degree in the internal war in Iraq, and any increase of US forces is likely to be exceeded by additional outside support for insurgents.

I never cease to be amazed at our military commanders' apparent belief that the "order of battle" of the opposition forces they face are limited to Iraq. I say "apparent" because those commanders may be constrained by the administration's policies from correcting this mistaken view. Once the invasion began, Muslims in general and Arabs in particular could be expected to take sides against the United States. In other words, we went to war not just against the Iraqi forces and insurgent groups but also against a large part of the Arab world, scores and scores of millions. Most Arab governments, of course, are neutral or somewhat supportive, but their publics in growing numbers are against us.

It is a strategic error of monumental proportions to view the war as confined to Iraq. Yet this is the implicit assumption on which the president's new strategy is based. We have turned it into two wars that vastly exceed the borders of Iraq. First, there is the war against the US occupation that draws both sympathy and material support from other Arab countries. Second, there is the Shiite-Sunni war, a sectarian conflict heretofore sublimated within the Arab world but that now has opened the door to Iranian influence in Iraq. In turn, it foreordains an expanding Iranian-Arab regional conflict.

Any military proposals today that do not account for both larger wars, as well as the Iranian threat to the Arab states on the Persian Gulf, must be judged wholly inadequate if not counterproductive. Let me now turn to some specific proposals, those advocated by independent voices and the Iraq Study Group as well as the administration.



Specific Proposals

Standing up Iraqi security forces to replace US forces. Training the Iraqi military and police force has been proposed repeatedly as a way to bring stability to Iraq and allow US forces to withdraw. Recently, new variants, such as embedding US troops within Iraqi units, have been offered. The Iraq Study Group made much of this technique.

I know of no historical precedent to suggest that any of them will succeed. The problem is not the competency of Iraqi forces. It is political consolidation and gaining the troops' loyalties to the government and their commanders as opposed to their loyalties to sectarian leaders, clans, families, and relatives. For what political authority are Iraqi soldiers and police willing to risk their lives? To the American command? What if American forces depart? Won't they be called traitors for supporting the invaders and occupiers? Will they trust in a Shiite-dominated government and ministry of interior, which is engaged in assassinations of Sunnis? Sunni Arabs and Kurds would be foolish to do so, although financial desperation has driven many to risk it. What about to the leaders of independent militias? Here soldiers can find strong reasons for loyal service: to defend their fellow sectarians, families, and relatives. And that is why the government cannot disband them. It has insufficient loyal troops to do so.

As a military planner working on the pacification programs in 1970-71 in Vietnam, I had the chance to judge the results of training both regular South Vietnamese forces and so-called "regional" and "popular" forces. Some were technically proficient, but that did not ensure that they would always fight for the government in Saigon. Nor were they always loyal to their commanders. And they occasionally fought each other when bribed by Viet Cong agents to do so. The "popular forces" at the village level often failed to protect their villages. The reasons varied, but in several cases it was the result of how their salaries were funded. Local tax money was not the source of their pay; rather it was US-supplied funds. Thus these troops, as well as "regional forces," had little sense of obligation to protect villagers in their areas of responsibility. For anyone who doubts that the Vietnam case is instructive for understanding the Iraqi case, I recommend Ahmed S. Hashim's recent book, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq. A fluent Arab linguist and a reserve US Army colonel, who has served a year in Iraq and visited it several other times, Hashim offers a textured study that struck me again and again as a re-run of an old movie, especially where it concerned US training of Iraqi forces.

US military assistance training in El Salvador is often cited as a successful case. In fact, this effort amounted to letting the old elites, who used death squads to impose order, come back to power in different guises. And death squads are again active there. The real cause of the defeat of the Salvadoran insurgency was Gorbachev's decision to cut off supplies to it, as he promised President George H. Bush at the Malta summit meeting. Thus denied their resource base, and having failed to create a self-supporting tax regime in the countryside as the Viet Cong did in Vietnam, they could not survive for long. Does the administration's new plan for Iraq promise to eliminate all outside support to the warring factions? Is it even remotely possible? Hardly.

The oft-cited British success in Malaysia is only superficially relevant to the Iraq case. British officials actually ruled the country. Thus they had decades of firsthand knowledge of the local politics. They made such a mess of it, however, that an insurgency emerged in opposition. A new military commander and a clean-up of the colonial administration provided political consolidation and the isolation of the communist insurgents, mostly members of an ethnic minority group. This pattern would be impossible to duplicate in Iraq.

An infusion of new funds for reconstruction. A shortage of funds has not been the cause of failed reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Administrative capacity to use funds effectively was and remains the primary obstacle. Even support programs carried out by American contractors for US forces have yielded mixed results. Insurgent attacks on the projects have provoked transfers of construction funds to security measures, which have also failed.

A weak or non-existent government administrative capacity allows most of the money to be squandered. Putting another billion or so dollars into public works in Iraq today ­ before a government is in place with an effective administrative capacity to penetrate to the neighborhood and village level ­ is like trying to build a roof on a house before its walls have been erected. Moreover, a large part of that money will find its way into the hands of insurgents and sectarian militias. That is exactly what happened in Vietnam, and it has been happening in Iraq.

New and innovative counterinsurgency tactics. The cottage industry of counterinsurgency tactics is old and deceptive. When the US military has been periodically tasked to reinvent them ­ the last great surge in that industry was at the JFK School in Fort Bragg in the 1960's ­ it has no choice but to pretend that counterinsurgency tactics can succeed where no political consolidation in the government has yet been achieved. New counterinsurgency tactics cannot save Iraq today because they are designed without account for the essence of any "internal war," whether an insurgency or a civil war.

Such wars are about "who will rule," and who will rule depends on "who can tax" and build an effective state apparatus down to the village level.

The taxation issue is not even on the agenda of US programs for Iraq. Nor was it a central focus in Vietnam, El Salvador, the Philippines, and most other cases of US-backed governments embroiled in internal wars. Where US funding has been amply provided to those governments, the recipient regime has treated those monies as its tax base while failing to create an indigenous tax base. In my own study of three counterinsurgency cases, and from my experience in Vietnam, I discovered that the regimes that received the least US direct fiscal support had the most success against the insurgents. Providing funding and forces to give an embattled regime more "time" to gain adequate strength is like asking a drunk to drink more whiskey in order to sober up.

Saddam's regime lived mostly on revenues from oil exports. Thus it never had to create an effective apparatus to collect direct taxes. Were US forces and counterinsurgency efforts to succeed in imposing order for a time, the issue of who will control the oil in Iraq would become the focus of conflict for competing factions. The time would not be spent creating the administrative capacity to keep order and to collect sufficient taxes to administer the country. At best, the war over who will eventually rule country would only be postponed.

This is the crux of the dilemma facing all such internal wars. I make this assertion not only based on my own study, but also in light of considerable literature that demonstrates that the single best index of the strength of any state is its ability to collect direct taxes, not export-import tax or indirect taxes. The latter two are relatively easy to collect by comparison, requiring much weaker state institutions.

The Iraq Study Group. The report of this group should not be taken as offering a new or promising strategy for dealing with Iraq. Its virtue lies in its candid assessment of the realities in Iraq. Its great service has been to undercut the misleading assessments, claims, and judgment by the administration. It allows the several skeptical Republican members of the Congress to speak out more candidly on the war, and it makes it less easy for those Democrats who were heretofore supporters of the administration's war to refuse to reconsider.

If one reads the ISG report in light of the four points in the strategic overview above, one sees the key weakness of its proposals. It does not concede that the war, as it was conceived and continues to be fought, is not "winnable." It rejects the rapid withdrawal of US forces as unacceptable. No doubt a withdrawal will leave a terrible aftermath in Iraq, but we cannot avoid that. We can only make it worse by waiting until we are forced to withdraw. In the meantime, we prevent ourselves from escaping the paralysis imposed on us by the war, unable to redefine our war aims, which have served Iranian and al Qaeda interests instead of our own.

I do not criticize the report for this failure. As constructed, the group could not advance a fundamental revision of our strategy. Its Republican and Democrat members could not be said to represent all members of their own parties. Thus the most it could do was to make it politically easier for the administration to begin a fundamental revision of its strategy instead of offering a list of tactical changes for the same old war aim of creating a liberal democracy with a pro-American orientation in Iraq.


What Would a Revised Strategy Look Like?

How can the United States recover from this strategic blunder?

It cannot as long as fails to revise its war aims. Wise leaders in war have many times admitted that their war aims are misguided and then revised them to deal with realities beyond their control. Such leaders make tactical withdrawals, regroup, and revise their aims, and design new strategies to pursue them. Those who cannot make such adjustments eventually face defeat.

What war aim today is genuinely in the US interest and offers realistic prospects of success? And not just in Iraq but in the larger region?

Since the 1950's, the US aim in this region has been "regional stability" above all others. The strategy for achieving this aim of every administration until the present one has been maintaining a regional balance of power among three regional forces ­ Arabs, Israelis, and Iranians. The Arab-Persian conflict is older than the Arab-Israeli conflict. The United States kept a diplomatic foothold in all three camps until the fall of the shah's regime in Iran. Losing its footing in Tehran, it began under President Carter's leadership to compensate by building what he called the Persian Gulf Security Framework. The US Central Command with enhanced military power was born as one of the main means for this purpose, but the long-term goal was a rapprochement. Until that time, the military costs for maintaining the regional power balance would be much higher.

The Reagan Administration, although it condemned Carter's Persian Gulf Security Framework, the so-called "Carter Doctrine," continued Carter's policies, even to the point of supporting Iraq when Iran was close to overrunning it. Some of its efforts to improve relations with Iran were feckless and counterproductive, but it maintained the proper strategic aim ­ regional stability.

The Bush Administration has broken with this strategy by invading Iraq and also by threatening the existence of the regime in Iran. It presumed that establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq would lead to regional stability. In fact, the policy of spreading democracy by forces of arms has become the main source of regional instability.

This not only postponed any near-term chance of better relations with Iran, but also has moved the United States closer to losing its footing in the Arab camp as well. That, of course, increases greatly the threats to Israel's security, the very thing it was supposed to improve, not to mention that it makes the military costs rise dramatically, exceeding what we can prudently bear, especially without the support of our European allies and others.

Several critics of the administration show an appreciation of the requirement to regain our allies and others' support, but they do not recognize that withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is the sine qua non for achieving their cooperation. It will be forthcoming once that withdrawal begins and looks irreversible. They will then realize that they can no longer sit on the sidelines. The aftermath will be worse for them than for the United States, and they know that without US participation and leadership, they alone cannot restore regional stability. Until we understand this critical point, we cannot design a strategy that can achieve what we can legitimately call a victory.

Any new strategy that does realistically promise to achieve regional stability at a cost we can prudently bear, and does not regain the confidence and support of our allies, is doomed to failure. To date, I have seen no awareness that any political leader in this country has gone beyond tactical proposals to offer a different strategic approach to limiting the damage in a war that is turning out to be the greatest strategic disaster in our history.

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Zia Mian, "The Three US Armies in Iraq," Antiwar.com, January 30, 2007.

The third American army in Iraq is an invisible army, driven not by duty or greed, but by need. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune revealed some of the ugly truth about the subcontractors that are paid to do the menial work for the bigger U.S. and other military contractors. An international network of such companies has apparently brought thousands of laborers to Iraq. The Tribune reporters found that "subcontractors and brokers routinely seized workers' passports, deceived them about their safety or contract terms, and, in at least one case, allegedly tried to force terrified men into Iraq under the threat of cutting off their food and water." The U.S. military has confirmed that laws banning human trafficking have been violated and has ordered contractors "to return passports that have been illegally confiscated from laborers on U.S. bases."

The Iraq War is coming up on its fourth anniversary. Increasingly embattled, even desperate, President Bush has decided to send another 21,500 American troops into the fight. They will join over 150,000 U.S. soldiers already deployed in Iraq.

[...]

U.S. troop numbers in Vietnam increased from less than 20,000 in early 1964 to more than half a million by 1969. But the difference between the force levels – and the two situations -- is a lot less than most people think. There is, after all, not just one U.S. Army in Iraq.

In December 2006, according to the Washington Post, "There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield."

These contractors, many founded and staffed by former American soldiers, provide essential services for the U.S. military, including interpreters who go out with military patrols, intelligence analysis, security guards, interrogating prisoners (including during the torture at Abu Ghraib), maintaining and even operating military equipment, constructing military bases, and cooking and cleaning for soldiers. Soldiers would ordinarily perform these jobs. Many contractor employees live with U.S. troops on military bases. At least 650 have been killed. These numbers suggest that the effective U.S. military commitment to Iraq is already about 250,000 strong and may be significantly larger.

While private military contractors are paid for by the U.S. government, and are an increasingly important part of the U.S. occupation in Iraq (and its military activities elsewhere), they have been subject neither to local law nor U.S. military law. To take but one example, a U.S. military court tried and sentenced some of the American soldiers involved in torture at Abu Ghraib, but the civilian interrogators involved, employed by U.S. contractors, faced no punishment.

According to Peter Singer, an expert on U.S. private military contractors, "Not one contractor of the entire military industry in Iraq has been charged with any crime over the last three and a half years, let alone prosecuted or punished. Given the raw numbers of contractors, let alone the incidents we know about, it boggles the mind."

This may be about to change. A little noted clause in the 2007 Defense Bill, enacted last October, placed contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military laws that govern the U.S. armed forces.

[...]

Another former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski passed an even harsher verdict. Writing in the Washington Post, Brzezinski described the Bush plan for a military "surge" in Iraq as "a political gimmick of limited tactical significance and of no strategic benefit. It is insufficient to win the war militarily. It will engage U.S. forces in bloody street fighting that will not resolve with finality the ongoing turmoil and the sectarian and ethnic strife, not to mention the anti-American insurgency."

For Brzezinski, the war in Iraq was always doomed. He has argued that "America is acting like a colonial power in Iraq. But the age of colonialism is over. Waging a colonial war in the post-colonial age is self-defeating. That is the fatal flaw of Bush's policy."

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Seth Robson, "FBI says U.S. criminal gangs are using military to spread their reach," Stars and Stripes (European edition), December 7, 2006.

GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — U.S. criminal gangs have gained a foothold in the U.S. military and are using overseas deployments to spread tentacles around the globe, according to the FBI.

FBI gang investigator Jennifer Simon said in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes this week that gang members have been documented on or near U.S. military bases in Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Iraq.

“It’s no secret that gang members are prevalent in the armed forces, including internationally,” Simon said, adding that the FBI is preparing to release a report on gangs in the military.

Among the cases:

¶ In Iraq, armored vehicles, concrete barricades and bathroom walls have served as canvasses for spray-painted gang art. At Camp Cedar II, about 185 miles southeast of Baghdad, a guard shack was recently defaced with “GDN” for Gangster Disciple Nation, along with the gang’s six-pointed star and the word “Chitown,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

¶ In Germany, a soldier is being prosecuted this week for the murder of Sgt. Juwan Johnson, beaten to death on July 4, 2005, allegedly during a Gangster Disciple initiation in Kaiserslautern.

¶ In September, Department of Defense Dependents Schools in Europe warned teachers and parents to watch out for signs of gang activity, including the deadly MS-13 gang. At the time, DODDS-Europe public affairs officer David Ruderman said there had been two incidents in the past 18 months that involved students fighting, wearing gang colors or claiming to be members of gangs. In one of the incidents, a student’s family member may have been a gang member, he said.

¶ Earlier this year, Kadena Air Base on Okinawa established a joint service task force to investigate gang-related activity involving high school teens linked through the Web site MySpace.com.

Last year, the U.S. Army conducted 11 felony investigations into gang activity, one of those being the death of Johnson, said Christopher Grey, a spokesman for the Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) in Virginia. Three of the incidents, including the Johnson case, took place in Europe, Grey said.

“We investigate all credible reports of gang activity,” Grey said, adding that CID has programs to combat gang activity in the Army.

Soldiers are reluctant to talk openly about gang problems. However, Spc. Bautista Kylock, 21, of the 2nd Cavalry (Stryker) Regiment in Vilseck, Germany, said last week that there are gang members within his unit.

Kylock blamed recent violence around Vilseck on soldiers affiliated with the Crips and Bloods street gangs.

Scott Barfield, a former Defense Department gang detective at 2nd Cav’s last duty station, Fort Lewis, Wash., told the Sun-Times earlier this year that he had identified more than 300 soldiers at the base as gang members.

“I think that’s the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

However, Vilseck Provost Marshal Maj. Robert Ray said there is not a big gang problem in Vilseck and he has no information on gang members within 2nd Cav.

“The military comes from all walks of lives, from rich to poor, and with that comes the ‘society,’” Ray said. “Are there members of the military that belong to gangs? No doubt about it. But the military is not rampant with gang members.

“The military chain of commands do not tolerate things like that and do their best to weed out problems,” he said.

There are no official statistics on gang membership in the military, but some experts have estimated that 1 percent to 2 percent of the U.S. military are gang members, Simon said. That compares with just 0.02 percent of the U.S. population believed to be gang members, she wrote.

“Gang membership in the U.S. armed forces is disproportional to the U.S. population,” she added.

Jim Kouri, vice president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, wrote recently that, in addition to the Gangster Disciples, other Chicago gangs such as the Latin Kings and Vice Lords have infiltrated the military along with neo-Nazi groups.

Although there are no numbers to back it up, Simon believes gang member presence in the U.S. military is increasing.

“The U.S. Army has reported an increase in gang-related activity in the military, although their numbers are low,” she said.

Gang-related activity in the military is highly underreported, and the Army is the only branch of the military that collects gang-related statistics, she wrote.

“It’s often in the military’s best interest to keep these incidents quiet, given low recruitment numbers and recent negative publicity. The relaxation of recruiting standards, recruiter misconduct and the military’s lack of enforcement (gang membership is not prohibited in the Army) have compounded the problem and allowed gang member presence in the military to proliferate,” Simon said.

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