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okinawa
What US Militarism Has to Do With Japan's Quest to Slaughter More Whales
Whaling, it turns out, has very little to do with whaling and much more to with how powerful nations want to dominate the world's oceans.
Aug 26, 2024
In early August, the crew on Japan’s new whaling factory ship dismembered a male fin whale, the first commercial catch of the species in several decades. A few days earlier, Paul Watson was arrested in Nuuk, Greenland. He sits in a Danish prison, waiting a decision on his extradition to Japan. Given the Japanese courts’ record of 99.9% conviction rate for criminal cases, and issues with Japanese justice system, if extradited, he will probably spend the rest of his life imprisoned.
A few months ago, a paper led by Norwegian government scientists showed that there are around 50,000 fin whales in just one small part of the Southern Ocean. Also in Antarctic waters, the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research has been running a research program which, as the the Institute states, is the “aimed at the sustainable use of whale resources in the Antarctic Ocean.” A new era of commercial whaling in the Antarctic looms.
Forty years ago, the International Whaling Commission introduced the whaling moratorium—a pause in slaughter, to allow whale populations to recover. At the time, the belief by most in the whale conservation community was that by the time that whale populations finally recovered, those still engaged in whaling would have given up, making the moratorium permanent. That’s not what’s happened. Three nations—Japan, Norway, and Iceland—still engage in commercial whaling.
There are many arguments against whaling: it’s cruel, it has to be subsidized, most people in whaling nations don’t care about it, it’s traditional in very few places in Japan, whales don’t eat all the fish, instead they’re ecosystem engineers that contribute to carbon sequestration. These points have been made for many years, and have never had the slightest impact on the Japanese whaling bureaucracy. They’re not only irrelevant, they’ve proven pointless.
Whaling, it turns out, isn’t about whales at all. Japan’s primary interest in commercial whaling is to maintain their geopolitical clout to exploit other marine wildlife (“living marine resources”) internationally. Tuna, for example. This point’s been made recently in a couple of forums. For the Japanese government, whaling’s a thin-edge-of-the-wedge problem. The moratorium was a big win for marine conservation that couldn’t be repeated with other international fisheries.
Given this framing, the actions of the Japanese whaling industry over the past forty years are rational. Whaling is primarily about asserting dominance in international negotiations over access to marine wildlife, so whether or not Japanese people eat much whale meat is irrelevant. What matters is access to other fisheries by Japan’s pelagic fishing fleets. Subsidizing whaling is a minuscule price to pay. The primary role of Japan’s new floating factory, the Kangei Maru, is as a flagship, a symbol of Japanese hegemony in international maritime negotiations. So its $48 million price tag is trivial. A Ford class US aircraft carrier, with a build cost of around $13 billion and an annual upkeep of $700 million, puts that in perspective. The Kangei Maru’s costs are a rounding error.
Despite Japan leaving the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in late 2018, the Japanese fisheries bureaucracy still controls the activities of the pro-whaling bloc. This September, the IWC meets again. One rumor currently swirling is that the Japanese will rejoin the IWC with a reservation to commercial whaling, one way to demolish the whaling moratorium. Another appeared a couple of weeks ago, when the prestigious scientific journal Nature published an opinion piece calling for the IWC to be dismantled. The article’s first author is a former chair of the IWC, who with his coauthors, argue that the IWC is now a “zombie” organization that has outlived its usefulness and should be dismantled.
Interesting timing.
Once, the threat of US sanctions in response to “diminishing the effectiveness” of the IWC regulated the manner in which the whaling bloc engaged there. That threat—obviously—no longer exists. How have the whalers brought the U.S. to heel on whaling? What’s their lever?
There was a belief in the NGO community that the threat of withholding IWC quotas on U.S. Inuit bowhead whaling was driving U.S. acquiescence. The pro-whaling bloc engaged in brinkmanship on this several times in the past. But the “Aboriginal Subsistence” whaling issues at the IWC have been resolved, removing this threat. Besides, ending the IWC would put bowhead whaling management back entirely with the U.S., internally. It can’t be that.
It’s here the military comes in. The U.S. has around 55,000 military personnel based in Japan. This is, for example, almost the size of the Australia’s active duty defense forces. Their weaponry includes some the most advanced in the U.S. arsenal. Most of those personnel are based in Okinawa, where there were over 6,000 criminal cases involving U.S. military personnel in the 50 years since the island was handed back to Japan in 1972. That’s a couple of crimes a week. And they include reported 134 rapes, or two to three reported rapes per year, including recent charges of the sexual assault of a child. Understandably, there is a vocal anti-US-base movement in Okinawa that regularly engages in mass protest.
These put Paul Watson’s “accomplice to assault” and “ship trespass” charges in context.
At the same time, the U.S. is reconstituting its forces in Japan, a buildup in response to the perceived threat to U.S. hegemony now posed by China. The Japanese government has leverage. Getting its way on whaling is Japan’s price for U.S. bases.
What could happen? Possibilities include Japan rejoining the IWC with a reservation that allows it to conduct commercial whaling wherever it wants. Perhaps the IWC will collapse. The recent Nature article shows that destroying the IWC is being considered. Returning the management of whaling to whaling nations? We know how that worked. And allowing Japan’s return to the IWC with a reservation will return the IWC’s role to that of a toothless body overseeing mass slaughter.
The huge U.S. military presence in Japan matters to the national security apparatus of the United States. The bureaucracy has worked with the Japanese government to see commercial whaling return. The return of commercial whaling is the U.S. military's quid pro quo for its regional dominance in the Pacific—not to mention its rapists in Okinawa.
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Okinawa Governor Meets AOC and Others in DC Over Burden of US Military Bases
Governor Denny Tamaki traveled to DC to lobby US officials to oppose construction of a new US base in Okinawa and urged diplomacy with China.
Mar 15, 2023
Denny Tamaki, the recently re-elected Governor of Okinawa, traveled to DC for a weeklong trip to lobby lawmakers and officials to reduce the disproportionate burden of US military bases in Okinawa, which hosts over 70% of US military presence in Japan. The Governor met with leading US officials including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers and aides, as well as government officials, diplomats, and academics, to discuss the critical issues pertaining to the US bases and stress the need for diplomacy to ease tensions with China.
Tamaki told reporters he met with AOC for over 30 minutes to brief the Congresswoman on the local opposition against the construction of a new US base at Henoko. He explained the US and Japanese governments are ignoring the will of Okinawans through this construction, as well as noting that toxic PFAS chemical contamination of soil and water from the bases are worsening and require immediate studies by the US government. During the meeting, AOC indicated concern over these issues and expressed willingness to work together on a solution, including through potential legislation. She told the Okinawa Times that her office will review the contents of the meeting and consider what action is necessary.
During last week’s visit, Governor Tamaki also met with Senator Todd Young (R-IN) and Representative Jill Tokuda (D-HI), as well as aides of Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Ed Markey (D-MA), and the Senate Armed Services Committee. Other meetings including with State Department officials, the Japanese Ambassador, and DC think tank experts, sought to emphasize the need for constructive dialogue. A panel discussion co-hosted by the Quincy Institute, Okinawa Prefectural Government, and George Washington University, with Tamaki, professor Mike Mochizuki, and senior research fellow Michael Swaine, stressed the importance of addressing the issues with the bases and for the US to engage diplomatically in the Asia-Pacific, instead of escalating its already high military presence.
As US tensions with China continue to rise, Governor Tamaki asked lawmakers “to tell the US government to conduct diplomacy peacefully and relieve tensions to not bring war to Okinawa''. With increased Japanese military spending, expanded US-Japanese joint military drills, and plans from Tokyo to station surface-to-air missiles in Okinawa, Tamaki instead brought to the US a message of diplomacy, urging dialogue over military buildup on the issue with Taiwan.
The Governor’s visit follows growing opposition to the US bases in Okinawa, including from organizations such as the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), as well as DSA state and local elected officials in the US who signed a recent letter outlining the issues and opposition to the bases. While hardliners against China dominate US mainstream politics, people in the Asia-Pacific region who feel their voices are ignored by the US government are the ones paying the burden of this rising militarism.
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'Alarming' Levels of 'Forever Chemicals' Found in Water Near US Bases in Okinawa
"The U.S. military is supposedly there to protect people. It does the opposite."
Dec 28, 2021
As the U.S. military continues construction of a controversial new base at Henoko Bay, Okinawa, the recent discovery of extreme levels of highly toxic "forever chemicals" in local waterways and groundwater has renewed long-standing opposition to the American occupation of large portions of the Japanese archipelago.
"Imagine the uproar if China were responsible for this PFOS contamination. But since the U.S. is to blame, it will be swept under the rug."
The Asahi Shimbun reported Tuesday that water quality checks near U.S. bases in Okinawa found "alarming" levels of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) at 38 locations, or more than 70% of tested sites.
More than 1,000 nanograms of PFOS and other substances per liter of water--or 20 times higher than the Japanese Environment Ministry's provisional target of 50 nanograms per liter--were detected at eight sites near two U.S. bases. Groundwater collected from below a private home in Kadena town tested at 2,300 nanograms per liter of PFOS and other substances, or 46 times higher than the government target.
"The U.S. military is supposedly there to protect people. It does the opposite," said Jon Reinsch, a Seattle-based writer specializing in American bases in Okinawa. "Imagine the uproar if China were responsible for this PFOS contamination. But since the U.S. is to blame, it will be swept under the rug."
Commonly called "forever chemicals" because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)--which include PFOS, PFOA, and GenX--have many uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam.
According to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, PFAS is linked to cancers of the kidneys and testicles, low infant weight, suppressed immune function, and other adverse health effects.
A study published in October by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found nearly 42,000 potential sources of PFAS that could contaminate drinking water throughout the United States. Additionally, EWG reported in August that Pentagon documents showed at least 385 U.S. military facilities nationwide are contaminated with PFAS.
In Okinawa, elevated PFAS levels have been detected in waterways, soil, residents' blood, and the drinking water consumed by 450,000 people.
In August, the U.S. Marines at Air Base Futenma defied a desist order from local authorities and dumped 64,000 liters of PFOS-contaminated water into the public sewer system, an act that sparked protests and drew condemnation from the Okinawan and Japanese governments. The toxic wastewater was produced during firefighting drills using foam containing PFOS and other hazardous chemicals. Cleanup costs, expected to run around U.S. $800,000, will be shouldered by the Japanese government.
"We are at a loss for words at the erratic attitude and behavior of the U.S. forces stationed in Okinawa Prefecture."
"We are at a loss for words at the erratic attitude and behavior of the U.S. forces stationed in Okinawa Prefecture," Asahi Shimbun editors wrote at the time. "The act is downright impermissible... The U.S. forces' high-handed manner will only deepen the rift between themselves and the Okinawans and entrench the latter's mistrust into something indelible."
That mistrust is as old as the U.S. military presence in Okinawa, which was conquered during the closing months of World War II at the cost of over 100,000 civilian lives.
Since then, U.S. troops--who occupy 31 bases in an archipelago roughly half the land area of Long Island--have committed thousands of crimes, including dozens of alleged murders and over 120 alleged rapes, often with impunity due to a status of forces agreement (SOFA) written by Americans for their own protection.
U.S. military forces have also fired and lost nuclear weapons in local waters, leaked the deadly nerve agent sarin, and exposed residents to chlorine gas, to name but a handful of the most egregious environmental incidents over the decades.
Although the 1995 gang-rape of a 12-year-old girl by two Marines and a sailor led to a revision of the U.S.-Japan SOFA so that Japanese authorities could convict and imprison Americans who commit the most heinous offenses--a development that led to scores of convictions--crimes against Okinawans and the local environment continue to this day.
"Japanese officials are kept totally in the dark about what amount of toxic materials [Americans] possess and how they are administering those substances," the Asahi Shimbun editors wrote. "That is because the supervisory authority over U.S. military bases in Japan lies with the U.S. forces under the status of forces agreement. A supplementary agreement on environmental stewardship took effect in 2015, but the competence of Japanese authorities in that field remains ambiguous."
Peace groups have pointed to toxic contamination as one of the numerous reasons to halt construction on the relocated Futenma air base at Henoko Bay.
"This new base will wreak havoc on the environment, violate human rights, oppress Indigenous Luchuans, and desecrate the dignity of war victims (including Indigenous Okinawan civilians and American, Okinawan, Japanese, and Korean soldiers) whose remains are believed to reside in the soil being used by the U.S. to fill the ancient coral reef of Henoko," CodePink says in a petition urging the Biden administration to immediately end construction on the facility.
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'Extremely Regrettable': Okinawa Governor Rips US for Letting Covid-19 Infections Surge on American Military Bases
"Infections are rapidly spreading among U.S. personnel when we Okinawans are doing our utmost to contain the infections."
Jul 13, 2020
Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki slammed the U.S. military over the weekend for not taking sufficient action to prevent the spread of Covid-19 after dozens of Marines stationed on the Japanese island tested positive, threatening to spark a large outbreak in a community where the virus has otherwise been well-contained.
Tamaki said during a press conference Saturday that "Okinawans are shocked" by the surge in cases among American Marines on the island. The Associated Press reported that the U.S. military only disclosed the number of cases among U.S. Marines after Okinawan officials repeatedly demanded transparency.
"We now have strong doubts that the U.S. military has taken adequate disease prevention measures."
--Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki
The U.S. Marine Corps reported 94 confirmed Covid-19 infections since July 7 Marine Corps Air Station Futenma and Camp Hansen, American military bases that ordinary Okinawans have wanted removed for years. Excluding cases among U.S. Marines, Okinawa has reported just 153 coronavirus cases since February.
"It is extremely regrettable that the infections are rapidly spreading among U.S. personnel when we Okinawans are doing our utmost to contain the infections," said Tamaki. "We now have strong doubts that the U.S. military has taken adequate disease prevention measures."
Around 20,000 U.S. troops are stationed at more than 30 locations on Okinawa. While it is not known how the U.S. personnel were infected, Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported Saturday that local officials were concerned "about a sudden spike of infections because he saw many U.S. military service members wandering around outside the bases on the Fourth of July."
"We have raised the level of warning because we believe that infections are already spreading within our community," said Mayor Masaharu Noguni of Chatan, Okinawa.
As the New York Times reported Monday, the new Covid-19 cases in Okinawa "are a new strain on relations between the military and the local government, where the presence of American bases, dating to the end of World War II, has been an ongoing source of friction."
"Citizens have long complained of noise, crime, and aircraft accidents, and have repeatedly questioned why nearly half of the 55,000 American troops in Japan--which include personnel from all of the military branches--are stationed on Okinawa," the Times noted.
Tomonari Kiyuna, a worker at a noodle shop in Chatan, told the Times that he is "scared" by the surge in coronavirus infections among U.S. troops.
"We're very careful, wearing masks, washing hands, and sanitizing," Kiyuna said. "I want them to disclose the information. They are Americans but they are staying in Okinawa, Japan. Okinawans or the Japanese people have the right to know."
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Okinawa Residents Warned of Chlorine Gas Exposure After Fire Erupts at US Military Hazmat Facility
Locals have long protested U.S. military presence in Okinawa.
Jun 22, 2020
Residents of Okinawa learned Monday morning that they should seek treatment if they experience signs of chlorine gas or smoke exposure after a fire broke out inside a hazardous materials facility at the U.S, air base located on the Japanese island.
Emergency workers eventually put out the fire, which burned for several hours in the morning at the 18th Wing Hazardous Materials Pharmacy. The base was evacuated and 45 workers were treated for "mild symptoms" of exposure to smoke and gas, which can cause eye irritation, vision problems, a runny nose, throat irritation, and trouble breathing.
"Bioenvironmental personnel and emergency responders remain on the scene to monitor the situation and ensure there's no safety risk to the community," air base officials said in a press release.
More than 13,000 people live in the town of Kadena, which hosts the Kadena Air Base, the largest U.S. military base in Japan where more than half of the 50,000 U.S. troops in the country are stationed.
Residents of Okinawa have long protested the U.S. military presence there, demanding an end to environmental hazards and noise pollution at the base as well as crimes linked to U.S. personnel. In April, more than 140 tons of toxic fire-fighting foam leaked out of Marine Air Station Futenma, also located in Okinawa in the city of Ginowan.
Ginowan Mayor Masanori Matsukawa said at the time he would "demand the cause of the spill and discuss the environmental impact" at a meeting with base officials.
Last week, officials at Kadena Air Base criticized Okinawa media outlets for reporting on a U.S. soldier and an American civilian working at the base who are accused of robbing a nearby currency exchange store. Local journalists, the authorities claimed, had portrayed the U.S. military in a "negative light."
A prefectural spokesman did not defend the news outlets, but denied that Okinawa officials encouraged negative coverage of the alleged robbery. The Japanese government is supportive of U.S. military bases remaining in Okinawa under a bilateral security agreement.
In 2016, Okinawa residents held their largest anti-U.S. military protest in decades, with tens of thousands rallying after an American civilian contractor at Kadena Air Base was accused of raping and murdering a local woman.
"I hereby express my unflagging resolve to push for drastic review of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement and withdrawal of Marines [from Okinawa]," then-Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga, a vocal critic of the U.S., told protesters at the time.
Demonstrators at the historic protest carried signs reading, "Marines, Withdraw" and "Our anger has reached the limit."
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America's Commandos Deployed to 141 Countries
What did they do and where did they do it?
Mar 19, 2020
Last October, a group of eight Apache attack and CH-47 Chinook helicopters carrying U.S. commandos roared out of an airfield in Iraq. They raced through Turkish airspace and across the Syrian border, coming in low as they approached a village just north of Idlib Province where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, his bodyguards, and some of his children were spending the night. The helicopters opened up with their machine guns, while military jets circled above and 50 to 70 members of the U.S. Army's elite Delta Force stormed into a compound just outside the village of Barisha. When it was all over, Baghdadi's home was rubble, an unknown number of people living in the area, including civilians, had been killed, and he and two of his children were dead -- victims of a suicide vest worn by the ISIS chief.
That commando raid in Syria was the highest profile U.S. Special Operations mission of 2019, but it was just one of countless efforts conducted by America's most elite troops. They also fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq while carrying out missions, conducting training exercises, or advising and assisting local forces from Bulgaria to Romania, Burkina Faso to Somalia, Chile to Guatemala, the Philippines to South Korea.
Last year, members of the Special Operations forces -- Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and Marine Raiders among them -- operated in 141 countries, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). In other words, they deployed to roughly 72% of the nations on this planet. While down from a 2017 high of 149 countries, this still represents a 135% rise from the late 2000s when America's commandos were reportedly operating in only 60 nations.
As General Richard Clarke, chief of Special Operations Command, told members of the House Appropriations Committee last year:
"Our worldwide access and placement, our networks and partnerships, and our flexible global posture enable the Department [of Defense]... to respond across the spectrum of competition, especially below the threshold of armed conflict where our competitors -- particularly Russia and China -- continue to hone their skills and advance their strategic objectives."
This near-record level of global deployment came as questions swirled about mounting malfeasance by some of America's most elite troops and was accompanied by handwringing from leaders at Special Operations Command over possible ethical failings and criminal behavior among their troops. "Recent incidents have called our culture and ethics into question and threaten the trust placed in us," Clarke wrote in an August 2019 memo. Those "incidents," ranging from drug use to rape to murder, have spanned the globe from Afghanistan to Colombia to Mali, drawing additional attention to what actually happens in the shadows where America's commandos operate.
Special Operations Forces Deployed to 82 Countries Weekly
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has leaned ever more heavily on its most elite troops. While U.S. Special Operations forces (USSOF or SOF) make up just 3% of American military personnel, they have absorbed more than 40% of the casualties of these years, mainly in America's conflicts across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa.
During this period, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has grown in every way imaginable -- from its budget and size to the pace and the geographic sweep of its missions. For example, "Special Operations-specific funding," which stood at $3.1 billion in 2001, has, according to SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw, increased to approximately $13 billion today.
There were roughly 45,000 SOF personnel in 2001. Today, about 73,000 members of Special Operations Command -- military personnel and civilians -- are carrying out a broad range of activities that include counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, security force assistance, and unconventional warfare. In 2001, an average of 2,900 commandos were deployed overseas in any given week. That number now stands at 6,700, says SOCOM's Ken McGraw.
According to statistics provided to TomDispatch by Special Operations Command, more than 62% of those special operators deployed overseas in 2019 were sent to the Greater Middle East, far outpacing any other region of the world. This represented a rebound for special operators in the Central Command, or CENTCOM, area of operations. While more than 80% of America's commandos deployed overseas at the beginning of the decade were stationed there, that number had dropped to just over 50% by 2017 before beginning to rise again.
The remainder of America's forward-deployed special operators were scattered across the globe with just over 14% active in Africa, more than 10% in Europe, 8.5% in the Indo-Pacific region, and 3.75% in South and Central America as well as the Caribbean. During any given week, commandos are deployed in about 82 nations.
Traditionally, America's elite forces have placed a heavy emphasis on "security cooperation" and "building partner capacity"; that is, the training, advising, and assisting of indigenous troops. In testimony to members of Congress last April, for instance, SOCOM commander General Richard Clarke asserted that, "for developing countries, security cooperation activities are key tools for strengthening relationships and attracting new partners while enabling them to tackle threats and challenges of common concern."
Common concerns are not, however, always of the utmost importance to the United States. In that same testimony, Clarke made special mention of so-called 127e ("127-echo") programs, named for the budgetary authority that allows U.S. Special Operations forces to use certain local troops as proxies in counterterrorism missions, especially those directed at "high-value targets."
"It allows," said Clarke, "small-footprint USSOF elements to take advantage of the skills and unique attributes of indigenous regular and irregular forces -- local area knowledge, ethnicity, and language skills -- to achieve effects that are critical to our mission objectives while mitigating risk to U.S. forces. This is especially true in remote or politically sensitive areas where larger U.S. formations are infeasible and/or the enemy leverages safe havens that are otherwise inaccessible to USSOF."
Used extensively across Africa and the Middle East, 127e programs can be run either by Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the secretive organization that controls the Navy's SEAL Team 6, the Army's Delta Force, and other special mission units, or by more generic "theater special operations forces." In Africa, these programs typically involve small numbers of U.S. special operators working with 80 to 120 specially trained and equipped indigenous personnel. "The use of 127e authority has directly resulted in the capture or killing of thousands of terrorists," Clarke claimed.
So-called direct action missions have led to the deaths of Baghdadi, Osama bin Laden, and countless other supposedly high-value targets, but some experts question the utility of these many attacks. Retired Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who served 10 tours in Afghanistan, including as the combined joint special operations component commander there, as well as the chief of Special Operations Command Africa from 2015 to 2017, is one of them. Now running for the Senate in New Hampshire, he is critical of what he sees as an obsessive focus on killing one leader after another while not putting in the hard work of training local forces to achieve actual security and stability without U.S. technology and assistance. "You just can't kill your way to victory," Bolduc told TomDispatch.
Commando Crimes
In addition to questions about the efficacy of their tactics and strategy, Special Operations forces have recently been plagued by scandal and reports of criminal activity. "After several incidents of misconduct and unethical behavior threatened public trust and caused leaders to question Special Operations forces culture and ethics, USSOCOM initiated a Comprehensive Review," reads the executive summary of a January report on the subject. But that review is itself a bit of a puzzle.
SOCOM commanders have repeatedly called out wrongdoing by America's elite forces. In November 2018, then-SOCOM chief General Raymond Thomas co-authored an ethics memorandum for his troops. A month later, he also sent an email to them in which he wrote: "A survey of allegations of serious misconduct across our formations over the last year indicates that USSOCOM faces a deeper challenge of a disordered view of the team and the individual in our SOF culture."
In February 2019, SOCOM underwent an ethics review followed by a 90-day "focus period on ethics." Not long after, Thomas's successor also decried moral turpitude within the command. "In the recent past, members of our SOF units have been accused of violating that trust and failing to meet our high standards of ethical conduct this command demands," SOCOM commander General Richard Clarke told members of the House Appropriations Committee in April 2019. "We understand that criminal misconduct erodes the very trust that enables our success." Clarke, in fact, inherited self-assessments of SOCOM components ordered by Thomas and used them as the basis for that Comprehensive Review issued in January.
"This is a very detailed review that takes a hard look at ourselves," Clarke wrote in a letter to the SOF community released with the report. But despite employing a 12-person advisory team and an 18-person review team, despite their "55 engagements" and canvassing of more than "2,000 personnel across the SOF enterprise," there's no evidence of the review being "detailed" or the look all that "hard." In fact, the 69-page report fails to offer even an inkling of what "misconduct and unethical behavior" it was examining.
In 2019 alone, however, many examples came to light that could have been included in just such a review. For instance, a Marine Raider, Staff Sgt. Kevin Maxwell, Jr., pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in military prison for his role in the killing of Staff Sergeant Logan Melgar, an Army Green Beret, in Mali in 2017. Navy SEAL Adam Matthews was also sentenced to a year's confinement and a bad conduct discharge after pleading guilty to conspiracy, unlawful entry, hazing, obstruction of justice, and assault with battery, among other charges, in the attack on Melgar by fellow special operators. (It was meant to be a sexual assault, but led to the Green Beret's strangulation and death.) Another Navy SEAL and a Marine Raider accused in Melgar's death both face life in prison.
Last July, reports emerged that not only had members of SEAL Team 10 been caught using cocaine, but that commandos had long been cheating on urinalysis screenings. That same month, an entire platoon of Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 7 was removed from Iraq following reports of serious misconduct, including the rape of a female service member attached to the unit. Meanwhile, there have been rumors about even more serious misbehavior involving another SEAL Team 7 detachment in Yemen. In September 2019, three senior leaders of SEAL Team 7 were fired for failures in leadership that led to a breakdown of good order and discipline.
That same month, a complaint filed with the Department of Defense Inspector General accused Naval Special Warfare commander Rear Admiral Collin Green of "duplicitous actions" that were "done in an attempt to bolster his own reputation and protect his own career." A month later, four members of the Naval Special Warfare Command were arrested in Okinawa on various charges related to unruly behavior.
Accounts of rampant drug use among SEALs also emerged in the court martial of SEAL Edward Gallagher who, in a circus-like case, was acquitted of charges that he had killed noncombatants in Iraq, but convicted of posing for photographs with the corpse of a teenager he was accused of murdering. (After Navy officials sought to discipline Gallagher, potentially stripping him of the Trident pin that signifies membership in the SEALs, President Donald Trump intervened to reverse the decision.)
And all of this followed a string of black eyes for elite troops in recent years, including allegations of massacres, unjustified killings, murder, prisoner abuse, child rape, child sexual abuse, mutilations, and other crimes, as well as drug trafficking and the theft of government property by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, Air Force special operators, and Marine Raiders.
Despite this startling record of malfeasance, SOCOM's Comprehensive Review came to an unstartling conclusion. The review team (whose members were almost exclusively connected to the Special Operations community) largely absolved the command and its commandos of responsibility for much of anything. The team claimed that special operators had only been involved in "several" incidents of misconduct and unethical behavior instead of a laundry list of criminality. The review appeared to conclude that, instead of criminal activity, Special Operations Command's greatest failing was actually its insistence on not failing -- what it termed (11 times in 69 pages) a culture focused on "mission accomplishment." And the report ultimately concluded that SOCOM did not have a "systemic ethics problem."
With thousands of commandos operating -- with little visibility -- in scores of countries on any given day, it's little wonder that discipline has eroded to a point where the command could neither fully gloss over nor cover it up. "I am forming an implementation team that will follow through on these findings and recommendations, assess results, and refine our policies accordingly," Clarke announced following the release of the Comprehensive Review.
But can an organization producing a report that avoids outside oversight, reads like a whitewash, and won't even name all the countries it operates in be counted on to be honest with the American people? Special Operations Command still has an opportunity to, as their report promises, "ensure transparent accountability." If they're serious about such outside oversight, they should feel free to contact me.
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America's Endless Wars Persist Because They Don't Exist (For Americans)
Even though the U.S. now lives in a state of perpetual war, for most Americans it’s a peculiar form of non-war.
Feb 24, 2020
There is no significant anti-war movement in America because there's no war to protest. Let me explain. In February 2003, millions of people took to the streets around the world to protest America's march to war against Iraq. That mass movement failed. The administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had a radical plan for reshaping the Middle East and no protesters, no matter how principled or sensible or determined, were going to stop them in their march of folly. The Iraq War soon joined the Afghan invasion of 2001 as a quagmire and disaster, yet the antiwar movement died down as U.S. leaders worked to isolate Americans from news about the casualties, costs, calamities, and crimes of what was by then called "the war on terror."
And in that they succeeded. Even though the U.S. now lives in a state of perpetual war, for most Americans it's a peculiar form of non-war. Most of the time, those overseas conflicts are literally out of sight (and largely out of mind). Meanwhile, whatever administration is in power assures us that our attention isn't required, nor is our approval asked for, so we carry on with our lives as if no one is being murdered in our name.
War without dire consequences poses a conundrum. In a representative democracy, waging war should require the people's informed consent as well as their concerted mobilization. But consent is something that America's leaders no longer want or need and, with an all-volunteer military, there's no need to mobilize the rest of us.
Such lies serve only to distract us. Instead, Americans need to turn "eyes front" and face the ugly realities of permanent war.
Back in 2009, I argued that our military was, in fact, becoming a quasi-foreign legion, detached from the people and ready to be dispatched globally on imperial escapades that meant little to ordinary Americans. That remains true today in a country most of whose citizens have been at pains to divorce themselves and their families from military service -- and who can blame them, given the atrocious results of those wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere across the Greater Middle East and Africa?
Yet that divorce has come at a considerable cost. It's left our society in a state of low-grade war fever, while accelerating an everyday version of militarism that Americans now accept as normal. A striking illustration of this: President Trump's recent State of the Union address, which was filled with bellicose boasts about spending trillions of dollars on wars and weaponry, assassinating foreign leaders, and embracing dubious political figures to mount illegal coups (in this case in Venezuela) in the name of oil and other resources. The response: not opposition or even skepticism from the people's representatives, but rare rapturous applause by members of both political parties, even as yet more troops were being deployed to the Middle East.
What a Youthful Hobby Has Taught Me About America's Wars
When I was a kid, I loved to collect American stamps. I had a Minuteman stamp album, and since a stamp and coin dealer was within walking distance of my house, I'd regularly head off on missions to fill the pages of that album with affordable commemorative stamps. I especially liked ones linked to military history. Given the number of wars this country has fought, there were plenty of those to add to my album.
Consider, for instance, the stamps issued after the December 7, 1941, U.S. entry into World War II. Unsurprisingly, for a war that entailed mass mobilization and involved common sacrifice, many of them were meant to highlight the war in progress and what it was all about. So, for example, stamps were issued to remind Americans about subjects like: the countries overrun by Nazi Germany; Chinese resistance to the Japanese occupation of their country; President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms (FDR, too, was an avid stamp collector); and, as the tide turned, this country's momentous victory against the Japanese on the island of Iwo Jima. Other stamps enjoined Americans to "win the war" and work "toward [a] United Nations." These and similar stamps formed a tiny part of a vast war effort accepted by nearly all Americans as necessary and just. And when the war finally ended in August 1945, Americans rightfully celebrated.
Now, try to bring to mind stamps from America's wars since then. If you're old enough, try to recall ones you stuck on envelopes during the Korean War of the 1950s, the Vietnam War of the 1960s, or especially the war on terror of this century. How many of them celebrated momentous U.S. victories? How many hailed allies working in common cause with us? How many commemorated an end to such wars?
I pay close attention to stamps. I still enjoy walking to my local post office and seeing the new commemoratives as they come out. And I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that, in stamp terms, there's simply nothing to commemorate in America's recent wars. Shouldn't that tell us something?
I'm not saying that there are no stamps whatsoever related to those wars. In 1985, for instance, 32 years after the signing of an armistice not-quite-ever-ending the Korean War, a stamp in honor of its veterans was issued and, in 2003, another for the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington. Several stamps have similarly highlighted Vietnam veterans and Maya Lin's iconic memorial to them.
But stamps that told us what either of those wars were for or that sought to mobilize Americans in any way? Not a chance. Ditto when it comes to this century's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or to the larger never-ending war on terror. Yes, a 2002 "Heroes USA" stamp featured firefighters raising the flag at the World Trade Center and was meant to provide money for injured first responders; and yes, there's currently a "Healing PTSD" stamp for sale that raises money for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But as for stamps celebrating decisive victories in Kabul or Baghdad or Tripoli, you know the answer to that one as well as I do; nor, of course, were there any reminding us of the freedoms we were supposedly fighting to uphold in those wars.
In that context, let's return to that FDR Four Freedoms stamp, which was very popular during World War II. Its message couldn't have been more succinct. It read: "Freedom of speech and religion, from want and fear." Of course, World War II was an atrocious war, as all wars are. But what (partially) redeemed it were its ideals, however imperfectly realized in the post-war world.
Still, when's the last time the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp that so perfectly summed up "why we fight"? There are no such stamps today because our present wars have no higher purpose. It's that simple.
We're not supposed to notice that, since we're not supposed to notice those wars to begin with, not in any visceral way at least. Even stamps like the recent PTSD one (with a 10-cent surcharge that goes to veterans) are an artful dodge. Should we really feel any better donating a few nickels or dimes to help veterans with their physical and mental struggles from wars made more horrendous because they were (and remain) so unnecessary?
Or thought of another way, why is the post office raising money for veterans' health care? Perhaps because a staggering (and still rising) Pentagon budget only ensures that there will be more war -- with more wounded veterans.
Looking Back, Yet Again, to World War II
I never miss the opening ceremonies to the Super Bowl. As an exercise in pure Americana, they have no equal. This year's included the usual trappings: a military color guard, an oversized flag, and a flyover by combat jets, including the new F-35 stealth fighter, a trillion-dollar boondoggle of the military-industrial complex. Since 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the National Football League as well as the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, the opening ceremony featured centenarian veterans of that war helping with the pre-game coin toss. It was heartwarming to see those redoubtable vets and recognize their service.
But I can tell when my emotions are being manipulated. Watching them, I knew I was supposed to get warm and fuzzy about military service and maybe feel better about the NFL as well. Yet my respect for them and "the good war" they fought (to use Studs Terkel's ironic title for his oral history of World War II) didn't stop me from wanting to shower hot wrath on the leaders who have lied us into so many bad wars since then.
Speaking of warm fuzzies, consider the long opening commercial for the NFL that kicked off this year's ceremonies. It featured an African-American boy running with a football, dodging various obstacles on a transcontinental journey to the Super Bowl, during which he pauses, reverentially, before a statue of Pat Tillman, the safety for the Arizona Cardinals who famously gave up a multimillion-dollar contract to enlist in the Army after 9/11. Tragically, he was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, a fact the U.S. military attempted to cover up in a conspiracy that went as high as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Even though it was just a commercial, it was right for that young boy to honor Tillman's memory. But to what end? To make the NFL look patriotic or perhaps to overcome any lingering taint from principled (yet widely misunderstood) take-a-knee protests by players like Colin Kaepernick?
An honest accounting of America's recent wars by the NFL might reflect on the fact that no other players have ever joined Tillman in giving up millions to enlist in the war effort. In fact, no players from any major league sport, whether baseball, basketball, or hockey, have done so. Not even NASCAR drivers, supposedly the salt of the earth, have, as far as I know, exchanged race cars for Humvees. Why should they? America's recent wars might as well not exist for them -- and, to be honest, for most of us as well.
I'm not calling for major sports stars to be drafted into the military as they were in World War II (though many athletes of that era volunteered first). What I'm suggesting is that, some 18-plus years later, they -- like the rest of us -- should begin paying real attention to America's wars and what they're about. Because that's the only way, as a nation, we'll ever come together and put a stop to them.
The answer to our collective apathy is not that war must become bloody awful here in the "homeland" before we finally do something to end it. Instead, it's to listen to those who have seen the awfulness of war and the atrocious behaviors it enables and rewards.
Consider the words of E.B. Sledge, a Marine who fought at Peleliu and Okinawa in World War II's Pacific island campaign against the Japanese. Nightmares haunted him for 25 years after the brutal fighting on those islands ended. He described the war he experienced as an exercise in sheer terror with grown men screaming in agony and sobbing in pain, with fighting so sustained that soldiers moved about like zombies, having been in the line of fire for days on end. Exhaustion bred murderous mistakes that too often were dismissed with a mind-numbing euphemism I've already succumbed to in this piece: "friendly fire." And that, mind you, was "the good war."
So, while saluting those photogenic centenarian vets featured by the NFL, we should also remember those who didn't come home and those who came home with radically altered lives. Sledge, for instance, recalled a buddy of his, Jim Day, who dreamed of running a horse ranch in California after the war. But as Sledge recounted in a talk in 1994, "At Peleliu, a Japanese machine gun shattered one of Jim's legs." All that was left was a stump with blood spurting out of it.
"Later, when Jim came to the First Marine Division reunions (maybe some of you can't conceive of this), we would have to help him go to the bathroom. His wife had to do that at home. The poor man couldn't handle it by himself, because of that stump of a leg cut off at the hip. He died a premature death after years of pain and back trouble."
Sledge and his horrific nightmares, his friend Jim and his crippling injury, those are glimpses of the true face of even the least indefensible of wars (and America's twenty-first-century versions of the same are, unfortunately, anything but defensible). The question is: why don't more Americans react with genuine horror when a draft dodger like Donald Trump boasts of all those wonderful weapons this country is buying (and using and selling) that are proudly "Made in the USA"?
No longer should we permit the powerful to obfuscate war, to boast (as George W. Bush did) of "mission accomplished" or of game-changing "surges," or of "turning corners." Such lies serve only to distract us. Instead, Americans need to turn "eyes front" and face the ugly realities of permanent war.
Do that and we may well reinvigorate our democracy. If not, we may well kill what's left of it.
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Welcome to a World in Which All Hell Is Breaking Loose
What the U.S. military will be doing in a climate crisis future
Nov 13, 2019
The Situation Room, October 2039: the president and vice president, senior generals and admirals, key cabinet members, and other top national security officers huddle around computer screens as aides speak tokey officials across the country. Some screens are focused on Hurricane Monica, continuing its catastrophic path through the Carolinas and Virginia; others are following Hurricane Nicholas, now pummeling Florida and Georgia, while Hurricane Ophelia lurks behind it in the eastern Caribbean.
On another bank of screens, officials are watching horrifying scenes from Los Angeles and San Diego, where millions of people are under mandatory evacuation orders with essentially nowhere to go because of a maelstrom of raging wildfires. Other large blazes are burning out of control in Northern California and Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State. The National Guard has been called out across much of the West, while hundreds of thousands of active-duty troops are being deployed in the disaster zones to assist in relief operations and firefighting
With governors and lawmakers from the affected states begging for help, the president has instructed the senior military leadership to provide still more soldiers and sailors for yet more disaster relief. Unfortunately, the generals and admirals are having a hard time complying, since most of their key bases on the East and West Coasts are also under assault from storms, floods, and wildfires. Many have already been evacuated. Naval Station Norfolk, the nation's largest naval base, for example, took a devastating hit from Monica and lies under several feet of water, rendering it inoperable. Camp Pendleton in California, a major Marine Corps facility, is once again in flames, its personnel either being evacuated or fully engaged in firefighting. Other key bases have been similarly disabled, their personnel scattered to relocation sites in the interior of the country.
Foreign threats, while not ignored in this time of domestic crisis, have lost the overriding concern they enjoyed throughout the 2020s when China and Russia were still considered major foes. By the mid-2030s, however, both of those countries were similarly preoccupied with multiple climate-related perils of their own -- recurring wildfires and crop failures in Russia, severe water scarcity, staggering heat waves, and perpetually flooded coastal citiesin China -- and so were far less inclined to spend vast sums on sophisticated weapons systems or to engage in provocative adventures abroad. Like the United States, these countries are committing their military forces ever more frequently to disaster relief at home.
As for America's allies in Europe: well, the days of trans-Atlantic cooperation have long since disappeared as extreme climate effects have become the main concern of most European states. To the extent that they still possess military forces, these, too, are now almost entirely devoted to flood relief, firefighting, and keeping out the masses of climate refugees fleeing perpetual heat and famine inAsia and Africa.
And so, in the Situation Room, the overriding question for U.S. security officials in 2039 boils down to this: How can we best defend the nation against the mounting threat of climate catastrophe?
The Unacknowledged Peril
Read through the formal Pentagon literature on the threats to American security today and you won't even see the words "climate change" mentioned. This is largely because of the nation's commander-in-chief who once claimed that global warming was a "hoax" and that we're better off burning ever more coal and oil than protecting the nation against severe storm events or an onslaught of wildfires. Climate change has also become a hotly partisan issue in Washington and military officers are instinctively disinclined to become embroiled in partisan political fights. In addition, senior officers have come to view Russia and China as vital threats to U.S. security -- far more dangerous than, say, the zealots of ISIS or al-Qaeda -- and so are focused on beefing up America's already overpowering defense capabilities yet more.
"Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security," the Department of Defense (DoD) affirmed in its National Defense Strategy of February 2018. "Without sustained and predictable investment to restore readiness and modernize our military to make it fit for our time, we will rapidly lose our military advantage."
Everything in the 2018 National Defense Strategy and the DoD budget documents that have been submitted to Congress since its release proceed from this premise. To better compete with China and Russia, we are told, it's essential to spend yet more trillions of dollars over the coming decade to replace America's supposedly aging weapons inventory -- including its nuclear arsenal -- with a whole new suite of ships, planes, tanks, and missiles (many incorporating advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and hypersonic warheads).
For some senior officers, especially those responsible for training and equipping America's armed forces for combat on future battlefields, weapons modernization is now the military's overriding priority. But for a surprising number of their compatriots, other considerations have begun to intrude into long-term strategic calculations. For those whose job it is to house all those forces and sustain them in combat, climate change has become an inescapable and growing concern. This is especially true for the commanders of facilities that would play a critical role in any future confrontation with China or Russia.
Many of the bases that would prove essential in a war with China, for example, are located on islands or in coastal areas highly exposed to sea-level rise and increasingly powerful typhoons. Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, a major logistical and submarine base in the Indian Ocean, for example, is situated on a low-lying atoll that suffers periodic storm flooding and is likely to be submerged entirely well before the end of the century. The Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, focused on preparing American defenses against the future use of nuclear missiles by either North Korea or China, is located on Kwajalein Atoll in the midst of the Pacific Ocean and is also destined to disappear. Similarly, the country's major naval base in Asia, at Yokosuka, Japan, and its major air facility, at Kadena on the Japanese island of Okinawa, are located along the coast and are periodically assaulted by severe typhoons.
No less at risk are radar facilities and bases in Alaska intended for defense against Russian Arctic air and naval attacks. Many of the early-warning radars overseen by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, a joint U.S.-Canadian operation, are located on the Alaskan and Canadian shores of the Arctic Ocean and so are being threatened by sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and the thawing of the permafrost on which many of them rest.
Equally vulnerable are stateside bases considered essential to the defense of this country, as well as its ability to sustain military operations abroad. Just how severe this risk has become was made painfully clear in late 2018 and early 2019, when two of the country's most important domestic installations, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, were largely immobilized by extreme storm events -- Hurricane Michael in one case and a prolonged rainfall in the other.
Tyndall, located on a narrow strip of land projecting into the Gulf of Mexico, housed a large fraction of America's F-22 "Raptor" stealth fighter jets along with the 601st Air and Space Operations Center (601st AOC), the main command and control unit for aerial defense of the continental United States. In anticipation of Michael's assault, the Air Force was able to relocate key elements of the 601st AOC and most of those F-22s to other facilities out of the hurricane's path, but some Raptors could not be moved and were damaged by the storm. According to the Air Force, 484 buildings on the base were also destroyed or damaged beyond repair and the cost of repairing the rest of the facilities was estimated at $648 million. It is, in fact, unclear if Tyndall will ever again serve as a major F-22 base or house all the key military organizations it once contained.
Offutt Air Force Base plays a similarly critical role in America's defense operations, housing the headquarters of the Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), which is responsible for oversight of all U.S. nuclear strike forces, including its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Also located at Offutt is the 55th Wing, the nation's premier assemblage of reconnaissance and electronic-warfare aircraft. In March 2019, after a severe low-pressure system (often called a "bomb cyclone") formed over the western plains, the upper Missouri River basin was inundated with torrential rains for several days, swelling the river and causing widespread flooding. Much of Offutt, including its vital runways, was submerged under several feet of water and some 130 buildings were damaged or destroyed. USSTRATCOM continued to operate, but many key personnel were unable to gain access to the base, causing staffing problems. As with Tyndall, immediate repairs are expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and full restoration of the base's facilities many millions more.
Wildfires in California have also imperiled key bases. In May 2014, for example, Camp Pendleton was scorched by the Tomahawk Fire, one of several conflagrations to strike the San Diego area at the time. More than 6,000 acres were burned by the blaze and children at two on-base schools had to be evacuated. At one point, a major munitions depot was threatened by flames, but firefighters managed to keep them far enough away to prevent a catastrophic explosion.
An even more dangerous fire swept through Vandenberg Air Force Base, 50 miles north of Santa Barbara, in September 2016. Vandenberg is used to launch satellite-bearing missiles into space and houses some of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense missile interceptors that are meant to shoot down any North Korean (or possibly Chinese) ICBMs fired at this country. The 2016 blaze, called the Canyon Fire, burned more than 12,000 acres and forced the Air Force to cancel the launch of an Atlas V rocket carrying an earth-imaging satellite. Had winds not shifted at the last moment, the fire might have engulfed several of Vandenberg's major launch sites.
Such perils have not (yet) been addressed in Pentagon documents like the National Defense Strategy and senior officers are normally reluctant to discuss them with members of the public. Nonetheless, it's not hard to find evidence of deep anxiety among those who face the already evident ravages of climate change on a regular basis. In 2014 and 2017, analysts from the U.S. Government Accountability Office visited numerous U.S. bases at home and abroad to assess their exposure to extreme climate effects and came back with startling reports about their encounters.
"At 7 out of 15 locations we visited or contacted," the survey team reported in 2014, "officials stated that they had observed rising sea levels and associated storm surge and associated potential impacts, or mission vulnerabilities." Likewise, "at 9 out of 15 locations we visited or contacted, officials stated that they had observed changes in precipitation patterns and associated potential impacts," such as severe flooding or wildfires.
Look through the congressional testimony of top Pentagon officials and you'll find that similar indications of unease abound. "The Air Force recognizes that our installations and infrastructure are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including those from weather, climate, and natural events," said John Henderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and energy, at a recent hearing on installation resiliency. "Changing climate and severe weather effects have the potential to catastrophically damage or degrade the Air Force's war-fighting readiness."
Threats to the Home Front
At a time when U.S. bases are experiencing the ever more severe effects of climate change, the armed forces are coming under mounting pressure to assist domestic authorities in coping with increasingly damaging storms, floods, and fires from those same climate forces. A prelude to what can be expected in the future was provided by the events of August and September 2017, when the military was called upon to provide disaster relief in the wake of three particularly powerful hurricanes -- Harvey, Irma, and Maria -- at the very moment California and the state of Washington were being ravaged by powerful wildfires.
This unprecedented chain of disasters began on August 26th, when Harvey -- then a Category 4 hurricane -- made landfall near Houston, Texas, and lingered there for five agonizing days, sucking up water from the Gulf of Mexico and dumping it on that area in what proved to be the heaviest continuous rainfall in American history. With much of Houston engulfed in flood waters, the DoD mobilized 12,000 National Guard and 16,000 active-duty Army troops to assist in relief operations.
Such cleanup operations were still under way there when Irma -- a Category 5 storm and one of the most powerful hurricanes ever detected in the Atlantic Ocean -- struck the eastern Caribbean, Puerto Rico, and southern Florida. Guard units sent by Florida's governor to assist in Texas were hastily recalled and the Pentagon mobilized an additional 4,500 active-duty troops for emergency operations. To bolster these forces, the Navy deployed one of its aircraft carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln, along with a slew of support vessels.
With some Guard contingents still involved in Texas and cleanup operations just getting under way in Florida, another Category 5 storm, Maria, emerged in the Atlantic and began its fateful course toward Puerto Rico, making landfall on that island on September 20th. It severed most of that island's electrical power lines, bringing normal life to a halt. With food and potable water in short supply, the DoD commenced yet another mobilization of more than 12,000 active-duty and Guard units. Some of them would still be there a year later, seeking to restore power and repair roads in remote, harshly affected areas.
If finding enough troops and supply systems to assist in these relief operations was a tough task -- akin to mobilizing for a major war -- the Pentagon faced a no less severe challenge in addressing the threats to its own forces and facilities from those very storms.
When Hurricane Irma approached Florida and the Keys, it became evident that many of the Pentagon's crucial southern installations were likely to suffer severe damage. Notable among them was Naval Air Station (NAS) Key West, a major hub for U.S. operations in the Caribbean region. Fearing the worst, its commander ordered a mandatory evacuation for all but a handful of critical personnel. Commanders at other bases in the storm's path also ordered evacuations, including at NAS Jacksonville in Florida and Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia. Aircraft at these installations were flown to secure locations further inland while Kings Bay's missile-carrying submarines were sent to sea where they could better ride out the storm. At least a dozen other installations were forced to relocate at least some personnel, planes, and ships.
Clusters of Extreme Events
While the extremity of each of these individual climate disasters can't be attributed with absolute certainty to climate change, that they occurred at such strength over such a short time period is almost impossible to explain without reference to it. As scientists have indicated, the extremely warm waters of the Atlantic and Caribbean contributed to the fury of the three hurricanes and extreme dryness in California and the American West has resulted in severe recurring wildfires. All of these are predictable consequences of a warming planet.
That means, of course, that we can expect recurring replays of summer 2017, with multiple disasters (of ever-increasing magnitude) occurring more or less simultaneously. These, in turn, will produce ever more demands on the military for relief services, even as it is being forced to cope with the impact of such severe climate events on its own facilities. Indeed, the National Research Council (NRC), in a report commissioned by the U.S. Intelligence Community, has warned of just such a future. Speaking of what it termed "clusters of extreme events," it noted that warming temperatures are likely to generate not just more destructive storms, but also a greater concentration of such events at the same time.
"Given the available scientific knowledge of the climate system," the report notes, "it is prudent for security analysts to expect climate surprises in the coming decade, including... conjunctions of events occurring simultaneously or in sequence, and for them to become progressively more serious and frequent thereafter, and most likely at an accelerating rate."
Combine the ravages of Harvey, Irma, Maria, Katrina, and Sandy with the wildfires recently blasting across California and you get some sense of what our true "national security" landscape might look like. While the Pentagon, the National Guard, and local authorities should be able to cope with any combination of two or three such events, as they did in 2017 (although, according to critics, the damage to Puerto Rico has never been fully repaired), there will come a time when the climate assault is so severe and multifaceted that U.S. leaders will be unable to address all the major disasters simultaneously and will have to pick and choose where to deploy their precious assets.
At that moment, the notion of focusing all our attention on managing military rivalries with China and Russia (or other potential adversaries) will appear dangerously distracting. Count on this: U.S. forces sent to foreign bases and conflicts (as with the never-ending wars of this century in the Greater Middle East and Africa) will undoubtedly be redeployed homeward to help overcome domestic dangers. This may seem improbable today, with China and Russia building up their arsenals to counter American forces, but scientific analyses like those conducted by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the NRC, suggest that those two countries are then no less likely to be facing multiple catastrophes of their own and will be in no position to engage in conflicts with the United States.
And so there will come a time when a presidential visit to the Situation Room involves not a nuclear crisis or the next major terrorist attack, but rather a conjunction of severe climate events, threatening the very heartbeat of the nation.
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Helping Students Keep Their Humanity by Not Signing Up for War
We Are Not Your Soldiers brings exposure of imperial wars to a generation of youth largely unaware of the crimes being carried out throughout the world in their names.
Nov 10, 2019
On this Veterans Day, 2019, for the United States, making war is less about amassing human air, land and sea forces to attack "the enemy" as it is increasingly about amassing technological superiority in which machines replace humans enabling politicians and corporate bosses to pursue their goals without the pesky problem of waves of homeward-bound body bags and caskets.
Yet, the Pentagon was confronted with the obstacle of conscience being applied to technological research in mid-2018 when Google employees protested working on Project Maven, a program that would use artificial intelligence to assist in drone killing, causing Google to drop Maven. Tech workers at Amazon and Microsoft have also protested working on technology that supports repression and killing.
While work on Maven has been picked up by another firm and Amazon and Microsoft leadership have apparently felt free to ignore the pleas of their workers these protests illustrate the increasing power of individuals to throw monkey wrenches into the gears of the war machine.
Hence, the increasing importance of the task of educating all students on the consequences of war, whether or not they plan to join the military.
This is what We Are Not Your Soldiers has been doing for 13 years by bringing veterans into classrooms. Being knowledgeable of the realities of fighting in or, by inertia, supporting the wrong side of imperialist wars can lead to people speaking and acting in opposition to them.
Veterans Dialogue With Students About U.S. Wars
During 2018-19, all We Are Not Your Soldiers visits were in New York State, including:
- Four colleges in New York City
- Seven NYC high schools - from very traditional to very non-traditional
- A progressive NYC public middle school
- A NY State church social action program whose members are primarily immigrant youth
Speaking to:
- 17 college classes
- 41 high school classes (including one JROTC class)
- Four middle school classes
- One church youth group
... averaging out to deep discussions with approximately 1,600-1,700 students.
A teacher from one of the schools messaged us: "Just wanted to thank you again for spending a truly engaging, thought-provoking day with us. The work you do is incredibly vital for young people like my students, all of whom were enthusiastic, moved and grateful in their responses when I asked them for their thoughts on your visit in class the next day. I'm constantly trying to raise consciousness (and consciences...), but it is often a tough uphill trek, so I'm happy to have your help in the mission. I would love to have you back next year to meet a new batch of students! In the meantime, please keep doing the work you're doing -- I know how exhausting it is but I promise you it is worth it!"
Our Speakers
Miles Megaciph, a spoken word artist, tells the story of his time in the Marines, in Guantanamo and Okinawa, via hip-hop. Lyle Rubin, who served as a Marine lieutenant, focuses on several key incidents during his time in Afghanistan. John Burns, a former Army bomb technician, enlisted to save lives not to be turned into a robot. Will Griffin, a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, was just elected to the board of About Face (formerly Iraq Veterans Against the War).
If Vietnam is being studied, Joe Urgo, an Air Force Vietnam veteran who had been a principal organizer of the Winter Soldier Investigation, speaks. Bruce Dancis, a Vietnam resister who spent 19 months in federal prison, also speaks.
Our messages
The veterans share their own personal stories of how they were affected by their time in the military, bringing another vision of these wars in which so many have been sacrificed by losing their lives and/or their humanity. And, they address the effects on the peoples of the countries under attack and what has happened when social structures have been destroyed. Not many veterans can do this.
Speaking openly of such experiences is very difficult and can open raw wounds - which is why even those students with veterans in their family or close circles have not heard much of what comes out in these discussions. Many veterans confront either denial or shame in revealing information contrary to the beliefs of those who "thank them for their service," an issue for so many dealing with post-traumatic stress.
We are very grateful to these speakers who share their lives. They struggle to do this in order to help others avoid the trauma they have suffered and to avoid the horrific violence being aimed at so many others around the world.
We Are Not Your Soldiers brings this exposure of imperial wars to a generation of youth largely unaware of the crimes being carried out throughout the world in their names. As awareness and activism grows among young people around the climate crisis, immigration, racism, gun violence and the Trump administration, we show the connections between these issues and U.S. wars.
We emphasize students don't have to believe us any more than they have to believe media advertising or the recruiters who approach them. They need to investigate on their own, researching conflicting claims to be able to get a true grasp on reality. Students ask questions and state their own opinions and thoughts. As a retired teacher with long-term experience in the New York City school system, I work with educators to align the presentation with their curriculum and be as relevant as possible to the needs of their students.
One student wrote: "Thank you for coming to our school. I appreciate that you shared your experience with us. It opened my eyes about the military because I didn't know any of the stuff you shared with us. Your story made me realize how cruel the military can be. Also, you're brave and kind-hearted for thinking about other people's lives."
Sometimes, we show students "Collateral Murder," footage released by Chelsea Manning via Wikileaks of the US helicopter killing of Reuters journalists and others in Baghdad, or excerpts from "Unmanned," a feature film about the moral quandary of a drone pilot stationed in the United States. After watching "Collateral Murder" students in a JROTC class asked, "Why did they kill children?" "Why did they talk about people in Iraq in such a messed up way?"
Morality is a key word or core idea we always introduce for students to consider throughout the presentation and discussion - knowing the difference between right and wrong and what to do when you know that something is wrong.
Coming to your school
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Winter Is Coming
Castle Black, the Syrian withdrawal, and the Battle of the Bases.
Nov 05, 2019
They called it Castle Black, an obvious homage to the famed frozen citadel from the HBO series Game of Thrones. In the fantasy world of GoT, it's the stronghold of the Night's Watch, the French Foreign Legion-esque guardians of the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms.
This Castle Black, however, was all too real and occupied by U.S. Special Operations forces, America's most elite troops. In its location, at least, it was nearly as remote as its namesake, even if in far warmer climes--not on the northern fringe of Westeros but at the far edge of eastern Syria.
Today, the real Castle Black and most of the archipelago of U.S. outposts only recently arrayed across the Syrian frontier are emptying out, sit abandoned, or are occupied by Russian and Syrian troops. At least one--located at the Lafarge Cement Factory--lies in partial ruins after two U.S. Air Force F-15 jets conducted an airstrike on it. The purpose, according to Colonel Myles Caggins, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), the U.S.-led military coalition fighting ISIS, was to "destroy an ammunition cache, and reduce the facility's military usefulness."
"Only yesterday they were here and now we are here," a Russian journalist announced after taking selfies at the abandoned base at Manbij where U.S. forces had served since 2015 alongside allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of mainly Kurdish and Arab fighters. "It appears as though the U.S. servicemen fled in their armored vehicles," said another reporter with RT's Arabic service, as she walked in front of American tents and equipment at the hastily abandoned outpost. Photographs show that when U.S. troops bugged out, they also left behind other standard stuff from American bases abroad: "crude dick drawings," a football, fridges stocked with Coca-Cola, an open package of animal crackers, a can of Pringles, and a paperback copy of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
"I see a big problem with it. And it shows just how unplanned and half-assed this 'withdrawal' is," U.S. Marine veteran Anderson Bryant, who--in 2016--fought alongside the SDF after leaving the Corps, told Military Times. "Though ISIS doesn't have the infrastructure to take and hold territory or bases anymore, just leaving equipment to be taken after a retreat looks bad for sure."
Bryant was just one of many to decry the abandonment of most of Washington's Syrian outposts. "U.S. troops and their allies feel humiliated after abandoning their bases in Syria to be taken over by gleeful Russians," read the headline of a Business Insider article, while a New York Times piece put it this way: "Pullback Leaves Green Berets Feeling 'Ashamed,' and Kurdish Allies Describing 'Betrayal.'"
A Base by Any Other Name...
After President Trump abruptly ordered the withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Syria earlier this month, a Turkish military incursion into the area those troops had previously occupied set off a humanitarian catastrophe--sending nearly 200,000 civilians fleeing from the Syrian frontier, about one third of them children. President Trump implied the troops were coming "back home," but his secretary of defense promptly contradicted him and indicated they would simply be redeployed in the region. After being abandoned by their U.S. allies, the SDF struck a deal with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Syrian and allied Russian troops moved into the area as well. In the chaos, some Islamic State prisoners escaped from SDF prisons.
Back in the United States, rare bipartisan outrage erupted as members of Congress lambasted the president for his decision. Vice President Mike Pence was then dispatched to Turkey to try to mitigate what was widely hailed by the Washington establishment as a foreign policy disaster. Then, in the wake of a Pence-negotiated "ceasefire" that Turkey didn't agree to and that failed to fully materialize, President Trump took a victory lap after which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to "crush" the heads of America's abandoned Kurdish allies if they didn't ethnically cleanse themselves from the area. In the end, the withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. military personnel turned out to be largely illusory, as an influx of new forces to a different part of Syria left troop levels almost unchanged.
In the midst of this chaos, however, something strange occurred. Just as America's Syrian bases, including its two main headquarters--Advanced Operational Base West and Advanced Operational Base East--the Lafarge Cement Factory, and a facility at Manbij were being abandoned, in another sense entirely they suddenly came to exist (at least in news reports anyway). This is something that Castle Black, in its relatively brief life, never officially did. When I asked about its status in late August, for example, Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve refused to even acknowledge the existence of such a base. Now, the outpost and its status are no secret at all. "Castle Black is closed," CJTF-OIR's media team told TomDispatch more recently.
According to the Pentagon's official inventory of bases, the Department of Defense (DoD) "manages a worldwide real property portfolio" that spans 45 foreign countries. All told, there are 514 official "DoD sites" overseas, the majority of them in Germany (194 sites), Japan (121 sites), and South Korea (83 sites). This list, however, has never included mention of even one base in Syria--or, for that matter, any of the well-known U.S. garrisons, large and small, in Afghanistan or Iraq.
The common estimate of foreign U.S. military bases is actually around 800. Such a count is little more than an educated guess because of the cloak of secrecy the Pentagon has thrown over the subject. To obfuscate things further, the military employs a plethora of euphemisms to avoid calling U.S. military outposts like Castle Black precisely what they are.
Officially, Castle Black was never a base. It was, instead, a "Mission Support Site" or MSS. And while U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees United States military operations in the Middle East, acknowledges the existence of MSSes, it won't provide even a basic count of them, let alone more detailed information about such outposts, significant numbers of which exist across the region. The media operations staff of CJTF-OIR responded in an email to a TomDispatch request on the subject this way: "Due to operational security reasons, a total number and locations of the various mission support sites are not available."
And keep in mind that such Military Support Sites only begin to scratch the surface when it comes to the Pentagon's inventory of non-base outposts. So when else is a military base not a military base? When, for example, it's an Initial Contingency Location, which, according to a Pentagon "Contingency Basing" manual, is characterized by austere infrastructure and limited services. Or when it's a Temporary Contingency Location, which provides "near-term support for a contingency operation" and is characterized by "expedient infrastructure." Or even when it's a Semipermanent Contingency Location, which provides support for prolonged contingency operations and is characterized by "enhanced infrastructure." Or when it's a full-fledged Contingency Location--a "non-enduring location outside of the United States that supports and sustains operations during contingencies or other operations."
Such U.S. non-bases also include Forward Operating Sites (FOSes), which are officially defined as "scalable" locations intended for "rotational use by operating forces." While "rotational use" might make such a place sound like a distinctly temporary location, possibly one abandoned for long stretches, that's hardly the case. Camp Lemonnier in the sun-bleached Horn-of-Africa nation of Djibouti, for example, is not only an FOS, but also America's largest base on the African continent and the headquarters for Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), which includes soldiers, sailors, and airmen, some of them members of the Special Operations forces. The camp--which also supports CENTCOM--couldn't be less temporary, having expanded from 88 acres to 600 acres, while the number of troops stationed there has jumped by more than 500%, to 5,500, since 2002.
Another type of outpost is a cooperative security location, or CSL, which is supposedly neither "a U.S. facility or base." According to the Pentagon's official definition, it has "little or no permanent United States presence" and "is maintained by periodic Service, contractor, or host nation support." This, too, is completely disingenuous. A CSL in the remote smuggling hub of Agadez, Niger, for example, is the premier U.S. military outpost in West Africa. That drone non-base, located at Nigerien Air Base 201, not only boasts a $100 million-plus construction price tag but, with operating expenses, is expected to cost U.S. taxpayers more than a quarter of a billion dollars by 2024 when the 10-year agreement for its use ends.
The primary types of places that the Pentagon will actually call "bases" are huge World War II and Cold War legacy sites like Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, and Camp Humphreys in South Korea. These they call "Main Operating Bases." Humphreys, for example, began its existence in 1919 as Pyeongtaek Airfield, a product of the brutal Japanese occupation of Korea. Since the Korean War (1950-1953), the U.S. military has occupied the site, transforming it into America's largest overseas military base. The Pentagon refers to Forward Operating Sites, Cooperative Security Locations, and Main Operating Bases as "enduring locations" which are meant to afford "strategic access" to American forces and support Washington's security interests for the "foreseeable future."
Despite these and other euphemisms for bases that appear in the Defense Department's 2019 edition of Joint Publication 4-04 "Contingency Basing" and its most recent "Base Structure Report," many other types of smaller baselets get scant attention--including Combat Outposts and Fire Support Bases. Even more types are noted in various official publications and military news releases, often with conflicting definitions. The Army's Ranger Handbook, for instance, defines a "patrol base" as a "security perimeter" set up when a squad or platoon is "conducting a patrol," but notes that it should "not be occupied for more than a 24-hour period (except in an emergency)." An Army counterinsurgency manual, on the other hand, states that a "patrol base can be permanent or temporary." And a 2008 CENTCOM news release mentioned that soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment had been stationed at Iraq's Patrol Base Copper for seven months.
While Mission Support Sites are mentioned in a few Pentagon publications, they are also poorly defined. When asked just what an MSS actually is, an official at CENTCOM offered this none-too-illuminating response: "Mission support sites, or bases, are sites that temporarily exist to provide support for as long as a mission requires." That same official went on to note that the U.S. and its allies had "opened and closed numerous bases throughout the campaign in Syria and Iraq," but refused to provide details or even a simple count of how many bases had been closed, let alone opened. The CJTF-OIR media team was a bit more forthcoming, explaining that a mission support site is "comparable to an initial contingency location (ICL) or a patrol base" and that such facilities support up to 200 personnel for a "total duration of operations lasting less than six months."
Winter Is Coming for U.S. Military
Castle Black is now officially shuttered. Despite its closing and that of its sister outposts, as part of Donald Trump's "withdrawal" from Syria, American troops remain in that country. "CJTF-OIR continues to maintain a presence in Syria and Iraq as part of our mission to achieve the enduring defeat of Daesh," spokesperson Col. Myles Caggins III told TomDispatch, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Commander Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesperson, was even more specific. "U.S. forces continue a deliberate, phased, and orderly withdrawal from Syria, with the exception of the al-Tanf garrison," he told TomDispatch. While Robertson refused to "discuss operational details such as numbers or timelines," it has been widely reported that al-Tanf, a small base in the south of Syria, is still home to about 150 U.S. forces. (It, in turn, is supported from across the Jordanian border by a quick reaction force, additional troops, and artillery.) The CJTF-OIR media team also added that the "Kobani Landing Zone and other sites remain open to facilitate the additional movement of troops and equipment outside of Syria." Reports now indicate that U.S. troop levels will stabilize at around 900, just 100 troops less than before the announced withdrawal.
The abandonment of about a dozen outposts across northeastern Syria likely constitutes the largest mass closure of military bases of the Trump presidency. (Since the Pentagon refuses to provide an accurate count of overseas outposts, however, there's no way to make certain of that.) Still, while this reduction of outposts in Syria is significant, it hardly constitutes a substantial drawdown of U.S. forces in the region (especially at a moment when President Trump may be sending tanks and armored vehicles, with all the necessary supporting forces, into the area around Syria's oil fields). With the president either reshuffling troops in Syria or merely relocating them elsewhere in the Middle East and a new contingent of American forces deploying to Saudi Arabia, there will actually be a net gain in U.S. troops in the region at this moment of supposed reduction.
Perhaps the only true end result of the drawdown in Syria--given that the finale of Game of Thrones ran earlier this year--is the likely demise of U.S. military outposts named for that HBO show's fictional redoubts. With the real Castle Black gone and the fictional one consigned to the dustbin of pay-for-play streaming services, tomorrow's bases will undoubtedly be named for emerging cultural touchstones, not last season's leavings.
Still, given Washington's penchant for Middle Eastern military missions, the likelihood of yet more U.S. bases across the region (whatever their official designations), and talk of several Game of Thrones prequels still to come, there may be ample opportunities for the next set of off-the-books military bases to carry the names of even more ancient Seven Kingdoms castles, keeps, and citadels.
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