On Wednesday, President Obama will address a joint session of Congress
on health care. Later this year he will decide whether to deploy
additional troops to the war in Afghanistan, in addition to the 69,000
troops already deployed. The struggle for health care and the struggle
to end warfare are inextricably linked. The cost for substantive
(though imperfect) health care reform as envisioned in the House of
Representatives approach (with the public option) is projected to
average $100 billion per year for the next 10 years. The cost to
continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are projected to cost
anywhere from $55 to $100 billion a year. Make a few modest reductions
to the baseline military budget and the difference is paid.
The choice is clear: healthcare or warfare; the Common Good or Common Destruction.
Two
key developments in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will likely take
place this month. Congress will more than likely pass the Defense
Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2010 (which begins on October 1)
and General McChrystal will likely request that additional troops be
deployed to Afghanistan. The Defense Appropriations Bill contains
about $130 billion to wage the wars and occupations in Iraq and
Afghanistan through September 30, 2010. General McChrystal is expected
to request that 15,000 to 45,000 additional U.S. troops be deployed to
Afghanistan--bringing overall U.S. troops levels in Afghanistan to
84,000 to 114,000.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes and out of the public eye, the Army,
Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force are preparing their respective budget
requests for FY 2011 (which begins October 1, 2010 and runs through
September 30, 2011).
The publication "Inside the Pentagon" reports:
"Now, as the
Pentagon weighs the FY-11 base budget and OCO requests submitted by the
services on August 14, it is finding the services' FY-11 OCO requests
are larger than expected. Instead of a 'substantial' decrease tied to
the draw down in Iraq, the OCO total is 'roughly flat' compared with
FY-10, a Pentagon official said, noting it is only a bit under the
FY-10 level."
In other words, the military services seem to be seeking $120 to
$130 billion in war funds for 2011, during a time period when
ostensibly the U.S. will be reducing troop levels in Iraq and at a time
when much is made about the $100 billion per year projected cost for
providing substantive (though not perfect) healthcare reform. ("OCO"
is the new term of art for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the
abbreviation for Overseas Contingency Operations.)
These initial requests likely will be modified to some extent as
they wind their way through the Department of Defense and the White
House. However, the size of these requests indicate the importance of
current organizing efforts to end funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars and occupations.
Regrettably, though, it gets worse, as the U.S. will, without
substantive troop reductions, likely continue to expend anywhere from
$70 billion to $100 billion per year to continue on-going military
operations in Afghanistan in 2012 and beyond.
The decidedly non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS)
issued a report in August that projects average monthly troop levels in
Iraq and Afghanistan through FY 2012 (i.e., through September 30,
2012). It then draws upon the work of the Congressional Budget Office
to project future war costs. What emerges is a never ending war with
never ending costs unless pressure can be brought to bear upon
President Obama and Congress to reverse course in Afghanistan and to
maintain the course of troop withdrawal in Iraq.
The Congressional Research Service bases its analysis upon average
monthly troop levels over the course of a year rather than numbers of
troops on the ground in any given month. For example, if 100,000
troops are deployed to a country for the first 6 months of 2010 but
then are reduced to 50,000 troops for the final 6 months of 2010, the
average monthly troop level in 2010 is 75,000 troops. Using the
monthly average over the course of a year evens out the increases and
decreases in troop levels as troops are deployed into and redeployed
out of a country.
The CRS projects average monthly troop strength in Iraq with the
implementation of President Obama's troop drawdown. In 2010 it
projects average monthly troop strength at 88,300, with the number of
troops deployed to Iraq falling to 45,000 troops by August 30, 2010
(reflecting the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces--and, for the moment,
leaves aside the question of whether combat forces are truly removed
from Iraq or are simply renamed and "retasked"). In 2011 monthly
average troop strength falls to 42,750 troops (reaching complete
withdrawal of all but a small residual force of about 4000 troops by
December 31, 2011).
While arguably the troop withdrawals should occur on a more rapid
timetable, pressure must be maintained upon Obama to ensure that he
does not allow any slippage to occur in his own proposed timetable.
The U.S. could, possibly, maintain a high level of troops in Iraq even
after a supposed "withdrawal" of combat troops if remaining troops were
to be retasked to other missions and redesignated. Also, a new
agreement could be reached with Iraq to maintain a larger U.S. military
presence in Iraq beyond the end of 2011.
Second, pressure must be exerted to prevent any expansion of the
U.S. military force in Afghanistan and then to reverse troop levels in
that country. Approximately 69,000 troops are currently deployed to
Afghanistan. McChrystal will likely seek an additional 15,000 to
45,000 troops. President Obama will most likely decide about troop
levels in Afghanistan by the end of this year.
And this is where the wave of substantive (though imperfect) healthcare reform comes crashing upon the shoals of warfare. Keep $100
billion in mind--the projected cost for each year of healthcare
reform--as you read the following based upon reports from the
Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office
(CBO).
In January 2009, the CBO projected the costs of maintaining troops
in Iraq and Afghanistan. It updated these projections in August 2009.
Caution is in order about drawing too firm a conclusion of war costs
based upon these projections. However, the projections do give a very
strong indicator of the likely lower end costs of continuing these wars.
The CBO projects that the cost to maintain 112,500 troops in Iraq
and Afghanistan in FY 2012 will be $95 billion. The CBO in January
projected that it will cost $70 billion to maintain 75,000 troops in
Iraq and / or Afghanistan from FY 2013 onward (though it lowered this
projection to $55 billion for FY 2014 onward in its August 2009 report,
without an explanation for the lower figure). Now use these cost
projections of CBO with the troop projections of the Congressional
Research Service and you get the following prescription for never
ending warfare.
The CRS projects that average monthly troop levels in FY 2011 will
be 106,200. Looking at the $95 billion cost projection of the CBO (for
112,500 troops), one would think that the war costs in FY 2011 will be
in the range of $90 to $100 billion. Yet, as indicated at the start of
this article the military services are apparently seeking funding
somewhere in the range of $130 billion for FY 2011 (or slightly
lower). Either way--whether it's in the range of the $95 billion or so
projected by CBO or the perhaps nearly $130 billion in the military
services' initial budget requests--that's more than adequate funding to
pay for substantive healthcare reform in 2011.
The financial hemorrhaging will continue for as long as the U.S.
maintains military troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let's assume the
CRS projections are correct and the U.S. withdraws all but 4000 troops
from Iraq by December 31, 2011 and that the U.S. maintains troop levels
in Afghanistan at their current level, without any increase of the sort
that General McChrystal may propose.
The long term cost of the Afghanistan war will then likely be in
the range of $55 to $70 billion per year (with average monthly troop
levels of 4000 in Iraq and 67,500 in Afghanistan according to the CRS
projections). This is based upon the CBO projection that maintaining a
deployment of 75,000 troops will cost somewhere between $55 billion and
$70 billion per year from 2013 onward (on a slightly more optimistic
note, the CBO projects that it will cost somewhere in the range of $25
billion to $32 billion per year if U.S. troops levels are reduced to
30,000).
All of this leaves out any discussion of reframing the size of the
U.S. military following a decade of great expansion. In June 2001, the
U.S. maintained about 26,000 troops in the region. In December 2008
the Department of Defense's Defense Manpower Data Center's "Location
Report" stated that 294,000 troops were stationed in the region and
assigned to the military operations in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Of
these, 181,000 troops were deployed inside either Iraq or Afghanistan
(according to the DoD's "Boots on the Ground Report" for December
2008) President Obama has yet to address his plans for the
redeployment of the 100,000 plus troops stationed in the region as the
troop drawdown in Iraq commences.
At this moment of critical decision-making we should utilize all
legal and extralegal (i.e., nonviolent civil disobedience) methods and
techniques to send the strongest possible message to President Obama
and Congress that it is time to completely end the U.S. military
misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On October 5, nonviolent civil disobedience/civil resistance will
take place at the White House. Organized by such groups as the
National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Witness Against Torture,
War Resisters League and Atlantic Life Community, this effort is an
opening salvo in a renewed and revitalized effort to completely end the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to bring the U.S. into full
compliance with international law as regards torture and mistreatment
of those being held by the U.S. in the erstwhile "war on terrorism".
The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance website is with additional information available on the website of the War Resisters League.
The longer term Peaceable Assembly Campaign
is an umbrella effort being coordinated by Voices for Creative
Nonviolence in an effort to draw the connections between the continuing
pursuit by the U.S. and its allies of on-going Common Destruction in
Iraq, Afghanistan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories on the one
hand and the lack of funding for the Common Good--schools, health care,
full employment and living wage policies, the public infrastructure,
refugee services--on the other hand. The Peaceable Assembly Campaign
seeks as well to draw the connections between the ongoing
militarization of the United States and the critical necessity to
commit our country to a new environmentalism that, amongst other
things, makes the strong commitment to a renewable energy policy that
is safe for the environment.
The Peaceable Assembly Campaign begins, this fall, with the
development of local campaign committees to advance campaign objectives
and to lobby Congress regarding these objectives.
In January
2009, the PAC will focus upon President Obama. From January 19 to
February 2 we will maintain a daily vigil--which will include daily acts
of civil disobedience--at the White House seeking an end to funding for
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This time period is critical for a
final attempt to influence President Obama before he submits his budget
request for 2011 to Congress. January 19 marks the start of President
Obama's second year in office with February 2 being the date by which
he is supposed to submit his 2011 budget to Congress, a budget that
will include funding for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
After February 2, the Peaceable Assembly Campaign will once again
emphasize legal and extralegal lobbying work to achieve its
objectives. The extralegal lobbying work will consist of nonviolent
civil disobedience at the offices of Representatives and Senators who
do not agree with the objectives of the campaign--and especially who do
not commit to cutting off funding for warfare with a concomitant
redirection of funds to serve the Common Good. This phase of the
campaign is timed to the legislative calendar during which Congress
will be developing and enacting the Defense Appropriations Bill for
2011--a bill which will likely include funding for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. More than likely the House and Senate will act upon the
Defense Appropriations Bill for 2011 by the end of July 2010. The
Peaceable Assembly Campaign can be reached by email (pac@vcnv.org), by phone (773-878-3815) or on the web (https://peaceableassemblycampaign.org).
These next several weeks and months are critical in redirecting our
country away from Common Destruction and towards the Common Good.
Decisions will be made by President Obama and Congress which could send
hopes for health care, education, living wage jobs, a new environmental
policy crashing upon the shoals of never ending war in Iraq and
Afghanistan. We must insert ourselves into this decision-making
process. We cannot afford to not utilize legal and extralegal (civil
disobedience) lobbying, tactics and strategies to bring about an end to
the Common Destruction being waged globally in our name.