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Serial Denial and the Permanent War System
Two months ago, I wrote that the Obama administration and the U.S. command in Afghanistan faced an "Iraq 2006 moment" in the second half of 2010 - a collapse of domestic political support for a failed war paralleling the political crisis in Bush's Iraq War in 2006. Now comes Republican Congressman Frank Wolf to make that parallel with 2006 eerily precise.
Wolf published a letter to President Obama last week calling for the immediate establishment of an "Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group". It would be the son of the Iraq Study Group. Wolf is the Congressman who authored the legislation in 2005 creating the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group to come up with fresh ideas for that failing war. The Wolf proposal came nearly a year after American public had turned against the war decisively in January 2005, when support for the war fell to 39 percent.
The U.S. public had withdrawn its support because it had become obvious that the war was a failure. The Bush administration had overthrown the Saddam Hussein regime only to unleash a violent Sunni-Shi'a sectarian power struggle that the U.S. military couldn't control. Even worse, the U.S. military presence was objectively supporting one side in that power struggle by building up a clearly sectarian military and police sector, even as it pretended by the honest broker between Sunni and Shi'a.
By 2006 it had become apparent even to the political elite that the war was failing and that something had to be done. But for war supporters like Wolf, the idea was not to find a way out of a criminally stupid war but to tweak the war strategy so that the administration could rebuild public support for it.
The problem with the Baker-Hamilton group was not that it didn't have the information it needed to call for end to the U.S. war. Bob Woodward's The War Within reveals that the commander of all U.S. ground forces in Iraq, Pete Chiarelli, told the Iraq Study Group that the sectarian character of the Shi'a-dominated Iraqi government was the primary problem. And the officer in charge of training the Iraqi army, Gen. Martin Dempsey, told the group that, without Sunni-Shi'a reconciliation, "[T]here are not enough troops in the world to provide security."
Elementary logic would have suggested that with Sunni-Sh'ia reconciliation there would be no need for U.S. troops and that without it, U.S. troops would be unable to change the situation. Either way, the U.S. military presence was irrelevant to the future of Iraq. After nearly four years of fighting, with enormous casualties on both sides, the U.S. military had succeeded only in helping Iran consolidate Shi'a rule in Iraq.
Nevertheless the Study Group's report went along with an indefinite continuation of the U.S. military role in Iraq.
Now we have the same nightmare of a stupid war that the political class can't bring itself to end.
Wolf says he's been talking with retired figures in the national security elite, who tell him that "our Afghanistan policy is adrift". And he warns of a "palpable shift in the nation's mood and in the halls of Congress" on the war. He notes that 62 percent of the American public in a July 2010 poll said the war is "going badly".
So now Wolf proposes the same kind of bipartisan study group that he says helped rebuild support for the Iraq war to come up with "fresh strategies" for the war in Afghanistan. Wolf makes no effort to hide his hope to "reinvigorate national confidence in how America can be successful" in Afghanistan.
Wolf is the poster child for the deep denial on U.S. wars practiced by a very large segment of the political elite. On one hand, his proposal is the clearest evidence of the desperation that has overtaken Washington about the palpable failure of Obama's war. But on the other hand, Wolf suggests that all we need is a group of "respected" war supporters to offer a new strategy for the Afghan War to be back on the road to victory again.
This refusal to face up to reality that the United States cannot succeed in Afghanistan, despite all the evidence to the contrary, suggests that something much deeper is going on here. Wolf and his fellow deniers in the political elite are not just refusing to give up on the specific war in Afghanistan. They are doing it because they are desperately clinging to the broader system of global military hegemony which impels the U.S. national security state to continue that war.
In his latest book, Washington Rules, historian Andrew Bacevich points to this largely un-discussed aspect of recent U.S. wars. The "Washington rules" to which the title refers are the basic principles of U.S. global policy that have been required beliefs for entrance into the U.S. political elite ever since the United States became a superpower. The three rules are U.S. global military presence, global projection of U.S. military power and the use of that power in one conflict after another.
Bacevich suggests that personal and institutional interests bind the U.S. political elite and national security bureaucrats to that system of global military dominance. The politicians and bureaucrats will continue to insist on those principles, he writes, because they "deliver profit, power and privilege to a long list of beneficiaries: elected and appointed officials, corporate executives and corporate lobbyists, admirals and generals, functionaries staffing the national security apparatus, media personalities and policy intellectuals from universities and research organizations."
That description of the problem provides a key to understanding the otherwise puzzling serial denial by the political elite on Iraq and Afghanistan. It won't do much good for anti-war people to demand an end to the war in Afghanistan unless they are also demanding an end to the underlying system that has now produced quasi-permanent American war.
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Lies make liars aggressively defend their lies - when they think they'll get away with it. The people are mostly fooled most of the time.
Did Republican Congressman Frank Wolf even check to be sure that Lee Daniels would be available to chair his Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group before calling on President Obama last week to establish such a commission? If not, it is symptomatic of the sloppiness of thinking on the part of our elected representatives that he did not first see to the make-up of the "Study Group" that would ensure the appropriate whitewash, but simply charged blindly ahead, depending on some ad hoc whitewash to come out of it. I'm sure our president will not be stampeded into setting up any "Study Group" that could possibly come up with findings other that those it was set up to come up with.
The New York Times reports that a new White House cat is out of the bag namely a kind of "desire" of the Obama administration and some unspecified Iraq politicians to extend the deadline for removal of all American troops from Iraq past December 31, 2011. Here are the pertinent articles from the SOFA-Iraq agreement signed for our country by President Bush but never ratified by the Senate:
Article 24
1. All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.
Article 30
2. This agreement shall be amended only with the official agreement of the Parties in writing and in accordance with the constitutional procedures in effect in both countries.
The pitfall for the White House is that paragraph 1 of Article 24 contains nothing about forces to be kept in Iraq for the protection of U.S. diplomats and civil rogues. The language is crystal clear: "ALL shall withdraw ...."
The White House has three major options. It can ignore Article 24 and simply tell the Iraq government how many armed soldiers will remain after December 31, 2011. Option 2 is to withdraw all "United States Forces" from Iraq, then negotiate a new agreement because SOFA-Iraq itself expires on December 31, 2011. Option 3, which seems to be on the table is to renegotiate SOFA-Iraq now under the guise of "Instability in the country".
The second pitfall is paragraph 2 of Article 30. What exactly does "in accordance with the constitutional procedures in effect in both countries" mean? Quite aside from what it means in Iraq can the White House bypass the Senate again?
President Obama, who is hiding once again behind his generals, is entering here a field replete with political cluster bombs. He is also making his "stupid" war an Obama war.
Note that Article 30 forbids all "secret understandings of the parties". Changes must be official and out in the open. Violation of this provision would be, in my opinion, grounds for impeachment and removal from office of Mr. Obama.
Not only has the underlying system, as Gareth Porter notes, produced quasi-permanent American it has also produced numerous people who have become the victims of America's endless wars. As the former British playwright Harold Pinter pointed out in his December 2005 Nobel Prize speech,
"The United States has supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile."
"Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? Are they in in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it."
"It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
Pinter's incisive, resplendent analysis of U.S. foreign policy and the effect that it has had on the indigenous populations of those countries can also be compared with the current occupations going on in Iraq and Afghanistan where civilians have been mowed down by American firepower while the American mainstream media remains largely silent about these killings and America's role in the deaths of these people. If that whistleblower had not leaked that video of the U.S. helicopter slaughtering 12 Iraqis in 2007 then, as Harold Pinter pointed out, this simply would never have happened in the eyes of the government, the military and the corporate media.
Speaking of puppet dictators, when they were prosecuting Pinochet they should have also prosecuted Kissinger.
That stinking, festering pustule is still around???
Thanks for the lead on Albert Nolan and his books. I had not heard of him before. The quotes you provide are intriguing. I will follow-up with him.
Bacevich somehow forgot to leave out the influence of AIPAC. Strange, no? Even in the face of Zionists trying to do the same thing with Iran. And it's the same meme pushed by posters here to give a pass to Zionism.
De-Countrify Israel Now.
Odierno recently claimed that the US must maintain a military presence inside IRAQ for the forseeable future to ensure foreign countries do not interfere in Iraqi affairs.
I mean GEEZ. I guess the first prerequisite to being a General in the US Military is you have to be clueless.
Watch C-SPAN to see our government in action planning what is right for Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, etc. The MIC is on a roll and has all of the politicians under their thumb. The policies and plans that are being discussed for these far away places, could probably be used in New Orleans just as well and might even be more effective than they are say in Haiti.
Crowsnest: In a recent article about Secretary Gates's planned reductions in defense spending, I read that our Vatican-sized embassy in Baghdad is to be staffed not with US Marines, as is traditional, but with 5000 to 6000 mercenaries. These folks will be funded by the State Department. So apparently all real troops CAN leave.
The embassy was so large because it was, apparently, to be used to house vulnerable foreigners like oil company executives rather than just diplomats. Since Iraq saw through our various reasons for invading it and recognized that it was all about their oil, we are not getting many contracts to drill there. Why we still plan to staff that huge place is unclear. What we should do is give it to Iraq to house its entire government or to establish a new university.
Great post, Bernice.
We need a CiC who will send our Marines back in . . . if you get my drift.
Gareth Porter's analogy between the Iraq Study Group of 2006 and GOP Congressman Wolf's recent call for a similar bipartisan blue ribbon Commission to study and come up with a formula for more effectively pursuing US war aims in Afghanistan is very apt.
Yes, the Baker-Hamilton Group was a byproduct of pro-war elites' preceptions that the Bush regime's Iraq occupation strategy was floundering. And yes, the Study Group's report set down a smorgasboard of suggestions for rebranding and tinkering with the existing, failing US counteringsurgency strategy in Iraq in order to revive public support for prolonging the war there.
To its credit, the Iraq Study Group was at least reality based in its description of what was going on inside occupied Iraq, contrary to the jingoistic fairy tales being spewed forth by the the Bush White House neocons at that time. The Neanderthal wing of the GOP was declaring the mission gloriously accomplished, while simultaneously proclaiming that since the fate of all mankind hung in the balance, America must keep on hanging on regardless of the cost in blood and treasure. In that sense, the 2006 Iraq Study Group was George H W Bush's wise old men lecturing George W Bush's GOP true believers about how the Iraq fiasco might best be salvaged and stage managed for public consumption.
It is noteworthy that the timing of the Study Group's work reeked of partisan gamesmanship. There were well placed leaks prior to the 2006 Congressional elections (when the Dems retook control of the House), but the final Report was issued only after Rumsfeld was gone, replaced as Bush's Secretary of Defense by Robert Gates (who resigned as a member of the Iraq Study Group to smooth the war/occupation policy transition).
Although Gareth Porter's article does not mention it, the real back story here was that the Iraq Study Group's critique blunted Dick Cheney's near maniacal efforts to expand the US war effort further on into Persia in order to bring the blessings of regime change to the people of Iran. The Report, plus the 2007 NIE findings that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program, effectively put an end to the neocon Vulcans' pipe dream that "real men" would bomb and march on valiantly, from Baghdad to Tehran.
Sure, Congressman Wolf's call for a bipartisan Commission to reassess Obama's war in Afghanistan looks much like its Iraq Study Group 2006 predecessor. And indeed, the purpose is primarily what Porter describes - nothing much more than pro-war Washington elites again rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic in hopes of prolonging the voyage, with or without the cooperation of the current ship captain.
But the domestic politics of 2010 are quite different from the lay of the landscape in 2006. Both Barack Obama as a politician and the grassroots US peace movement generally would be suckers to jump on board Wolf's Ship of Fools.
Bill from Saginaw
If you follow these wars, it will make you sick, drive you crazy and kill you soon. I found this quote from The Washington Post today by Dana Milbank concerning Gibbs support for Obama:
"Combat in Iraq is ending in a matter of days."
As long as the US thinks of itself as ‘the good guy,’ it will continue to try to impose its will on the rest of the world.
The only way that the US will stop thinking of itself as ‘the good guy’ is if it gets a bloody nose, probably more than once (I think of Germany in the twentieth century).
We can only hope.
A reminder of what former Senator Robert Byrd said in 2003:
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1018-01.htm
The Emperor Has no Clothes
"I began my remarks with a fairy tale. I shall close my remarks with a horror story, in the form of a quote from the book Nuremberg Diaries, written by G.M. Gilbert, in which the author interviews Hermann Goering.
"We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
". . . But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Weapon after weapon conquers everything but chaos.
LaoTzu, 600BC
Thanks for pointing out what so rarely is mentioned in articles and columns about US wars: the reality that there is always a war. There is always some rationale, often a transparent lie, but some rationale for why we need to invade Country X now, and why we need to remain in Country X longer--until we "win," although what that means is never defined. But even the antiwar pieces rarely note that somehow, there is always a war. The US is never at peace--when was the last day in which no US bomb fell anywhere? Half a century ago? And why is this--what is the REAL reason for these endless wars? This piece suggests that it's because a long list of people benefit from the constant-war system, and perhaps that's true. I have a couple of other ideas on what the reasons might be. One is the fact that wars obscure the true size of the unemployment problem, as do our bursting prisons--and both primarily take young males off the employment lines, the group governments particularly fear. The other is that the war machine needs to endlessly use up materiel so it can endlessly churn out more, because there simply isn't sufficient demand for useful products to keep the economy in its growth state. And wars are also useful for politicians trying to wrap themselves in the flag, and politicians trying to suspend Constitutional rights.