No Excuses

I take no joy in the death of any man.

On May 1, 2011, nearly ten full years after the destruction of the World Trade Center in NYC on September 11, 2001, by suiciders who had commandeered passenger airliners, President Barack Hussein Obama announced the death of Usama bin Laden, the leader of an underground paramilitary group which overtly declared war on the United States and its people for their complicity in occupying traditional Caliphate territories and which has been widely credited with carrying out these attacks.

bin Laden's announced strategy was "to bleed America bankrupt." He predicted that a few strategically targeted, high-profile attacks on American assets would provoke an over-reaction on our high-strung, hyper-militaristic leadership. He was right. In an earlier post, I called this a "blunderbuss" response.

President George W. Bush and his administration lost focus on, al Qaeda, the perpetrators of the 9-11 atrocity, early on. Here is Bush at a press conference not six months later:



And, not surprisingly, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld junta failed to capture bin Laden, despite their blustering promise to get him "dead or alive." They managed to capture and very publicly kill another Arab/Muslim leader Saddam Hussein, the autocratic ruler of Iraq, and his two sons, who had nothing to do with the attacks on American soil. But that was something they'd pretty much planned to do anyway.

Shortly after taking over the Constitutional role of civilian Commander-in-Chief of U.S. armed forces, Obama re-tasked the vast war machine and state-security apparatus Golem roused to life by Bush with the explicit purpose of tracking down and killing bin Laden. This day marks a successful pinnacle of that strategy.

We may have moral qualms about purposing our warriors to assassinate individual persons, but bin Laden was an avowed enemy combatant. He understood the risks of his action. But for incompetence, there was no other outcome. "He who lives by the sword..."

Many in America and around the world are cheering this action much the way they cheer on their favorite football team. Sports, with their sublimation of violent opposition, condition us to respond in precisely this manner: "Our team won a great victory today. Rah! Rah!" I cannot say this isn't a genuine feeling on their part. Frankly, it isn't that much different than Achilles dragging the body of Hector around the walls of Troy to the glorious shouts of his men.

Yet, it isn't my feeling.

Like Homer's Odysseus, we are a war-weary nation (though, by all rights, no "war" has Constitutionally been declared by Congress). Our economy is the proof: we cannot sustain sufficient growth to create the level of employment we had before 9-11 or to pay off the enormous burden of debt this precipitous turn to militarism has imposed upon us. In this sense, bin Laden was successful. We have exhausted our resources—material and spiritual—in pursuit of the Procrustean target Bush called "terror". And we are paying the price for that now.

I am tired of this "war", and I welcome the death of bin Laden as, hopefully, the beginning of its end. I supported Obama's Afghan "surge" initially, because I believed it was a necessary tack to wind down our involvement there. The death of bin Laden is clearly its first fruit. C'est la guerre.

As part of his surge strategy, Obama has planned to begin the drawdown of troops from Afghanistan this summer. I urge the President to stay true to his vision: bring home the troops. End our occupations. Repurpose our economy to productivity instead of destructivity.

bin Laden is dead. Now, there can be no excuse.

Declare Victory and Go Home

A quick follow up on the previous post:

Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, recently brayed that Afghanistan is "a war of Obama's choosing." This is not contrary to my point; the surge, urged by Petraeus and McChrystal, certainly is. That Obama might have been cowed into it is part of the jab. As Steele goes on to say: "This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in." I'm not at all convinced that this "Obama is a pussy" statement was a gaffe. And it certainly generated a lot of press, the sure sign of effective PR.

BDR points us to this piece by Andrew J. Bacevich. Bacevich concludes:

"The responsibility facing the American people is clear. They need to reclaim ownership of their army. They need to give their soldiers respite, by insisting that Washington abandon its de facto policy of perpetual war. Or, alternatively, the United States should become a nation truly "at" war, with all that implies in terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities. Should the people choose neither course -- and thereby subject their troops to continuing abuse -- the damage to the army and to American democracy will be severe."

BDR may not be wrong in thinking that, given the state of things, choice may no longer be an option. The drumbeat for perpetual war keeps pounding in the background: North Korea, Iran, and now, we read, Yemen.

IOZ rightly points out "There is no evidence that Obama 'wants nothing more than to rid himself of his war.' There's no evidence that he wants to rid himself of his war at all." Likewise, true. (h/t BDR)

But let's not forget the charges leveled by the now-"discredited" Rep. Eric Massa against Petraeus and quelle surprise former Vice President Dick Cheney:

"Four retired generals — three four-stars and one three-star — had informed him, he said, that General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, had met twice in secret with former vice president Dick Cheney. In those meetings, the generals said, Cheney had attempted to recruit Petraeus to run for president as a Republican in 2012.

The generals had told him, and Massa had agreed, that if someone didn't act immediately to reveal this plot, American constitutional democracy itself was at risk. Massa and I had had several conversation on the topic, each more urgent than the last. He had gone to the Pentagon, he told me, demanding answers. He knew the powerful forces that he was dealing with, he told me. They'd stop at nothing to prevent the truth from coming out, he said, including destroying him."

Read more here.

On whose behalf and at whose beckoning did Massa deliver that broadside on potential treason as he fell on his sword. Certainly (as I don my tin foil hat) running Petraeus back to Kabul would tend to put the kibosh on that particular coup.

In the comments to my previous post, Frances Madison points out that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also been a hawk on the wars and, along with SecDef Gates, an advocate for the surge. To which I have no answer. Is it 'good cop/bad cop'? Would the generals like to march alongside her into the White House? One may only surmise.

But, from all this ferment, I do suspect there's more going on here than meets the eye, and the long knives are, at a minimum, at the ready. I don't pretend to know what is happening behind the scenes; as my profile says I'm just a blogger. But if—and this is a big if—if Obama were attempting to end these wars in a manner befitting his own sense of cautious professionalism and presidential dignity, what would the effort look like? Mightn't it initially take the form of leaked conspiracies and toppled conspirators? Perhaps.

One does not have to be a true believer or Kool-Aid drinker to hope that Obama is living up to his promise to end these disastrous imperial warlike foreign military adventures. Nor does one need to be an Obamapostate to think he has become hopelessly compromised by forces over which his office may have little or no control.

I do believe that institutional war strategy is not something that can pivot on a dime. Short of the 'great war' and its truce, one simply can not just pack up one's war things and go home unilaterally. (Hell, it took well over a year to get a health care bill passed.)

Personally, I believe we should extricate our armies from Iraq and Afghanistan with all due speed. I also believe that demilitarizing our country's budgets and politics is the only way to get the U.S.'s, and thus much of the world's, economy going again. And reduce the deficit to boot.

I would like to believe Obama holds these same beliefs and is working against the entrenched interests at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill and around his own Cabinet table to achieve these ends—however deliberately. But I can't be sure.

Victory Is Ours

In November of last year, I penned a post about the Afghan surge strategy. It generated a lot of comment here and, thanks to Frances Madeson, was nominated for a 3QuarksDaily political essay prize. The gist of that piece was that the U.S. should focus on the original, limited mission of the Afghan incursion, root out al-Qaeda (the ostensible perpetrators of 9/11) and its supporters, and get out.

New information has come to light that is causing me to rethink some aspects of that piece.

First, General Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan and chief proponent of the U.S. troop surge, was recalled to Washington by President Obama and relieved of his command after some of his and his staff's remarks about the civilian leadership were published. (Score one for the DFHs.)

Second, Gen. McChrystal's boss, General David Petraeus, commander of CENTCOM, was demoted and sent back to a battlefield command in Asia.

Now we learn, according to Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), there are only approximately 50 to 100 al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. And in Pakistan there are upwards of only 300 or so.

AYFKM? Are we to believe that these events are unrelated? Seems to me the dots can be connected readily: Petraeus and McChrystal bullied the relatively new and possibly militarily naive President Obama into supporting what they deemed a "necessary" surge of 40,000 U.S. counterinsurgency troops to fight an intransigent enemy, then 'intelligence' comes to light showing that there are only a few dozen bad guys left in Afghanistan, so Obama shitcans his scheming generals. (A demotion is a demotion is a demotion. A rose by any other name...)

Sound plausible?

Sounds like we won. Sounds like its time to mop up and get out.

What am I missing?

Blunderbuss

President Obama, according to press reports, is considering options for Afghanistan policy. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the current commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, has reportedly requested upwards of 40,000 troops for his counterinsurgency and 'hearts-and-minds' campaign needs. U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, himself a former U.S. general, has reportedly urged caution in expanding the Afghanistan counterinsurgency because the current Afghan government is rife with corruption and incompetence (which may be a nice way of saying the recipients of our aid and largesse are not necessarily loyally acting in our best interests). Interestingly, both reports, which were presumedly meant to be classified and for the President's eyes, came from leaks to the press.

The 'leak war' is a sideshow. The President of the United States is the Constitutional Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military. This President, Barack Obama, has a decision to make about the direction of the undeclared war in Afghanistan. He can continue along the path that was in place when he took office as urged by Gen. McChrystal (a tactical decision) or he can establish a direction of his own (a strategic decision). I urge the President to think strategically and refocus our effort on the original mission of the Afghan campaign

A brief history is in order here: On October 7, 2001, the United States and Great Britain invaded Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, an effort in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001 to take out al Qaeda, the perpetrators of that terrorist assault within the borders of the United States. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld set the operation in motion. This, in my view, was precisely the correct strategic response to the 9/11 attacks.

Since that initial incursion, however, the Afghan strategy has suffered from a lack of support from Washington and from mission creep. First, it was widely reported that in their zeal to expand what they termed the 'Global War on Terror' and take the fight to Saddam Hussein, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld decided to take the focus off the Afghan campaign and launch a new front in Iraq. Second, Rumsfeld is widely credited with implementing a policy that, essentially, sought to fight this 'war' "on the cheap." Third, as a result of this neglect, the initial mission in Afghanistan has lost its focus.

Throughout the Bush years, Afghan strategy was treated as the poor cousin to the favored Iraq adventure. Political attention and military materiel were diverted from destroying al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the military mission in Afghanistan expanded to include such efforts as fighting the Taliban, supporting democratic reforms, and nation building, recently implementing the same sort of counterinsurgency measures that succeeded, at long last, in quelling the Iraq situation.

The bottom lime is that in eight plus years, the vaunted American military has failed in its initial goal to capture and/or kill the perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This is a national disgrace. And there is plenty of blame to go around.

With the Iraq situation seemingly better in control, the current President has his first opportunity to do something about the situation—something he promised to do in his campaign. By all accounts, he has now turned his—and the country's—attention back to the conflict in Afghanistan. He should refocus on what was just and right about the Afghan campaign from the start. The military must accomplish its central mission: destroy al Qaeda. Then, and only then, should they worry about the rest—much of which can be dealt with politically and diplomatically.

Strategically, the Afghan campaign and, in my view, the entire 'Global War on Terror' should have been a surgical strike. Go in, find the perpetrators of 9/11 in their lairs, and take them out. End of story. Instead, the prior administration fired off what amounted to a blunderbuss: a noisy, blunt, and crude weapon lacking in accuracy or range. Its effort in response to 9/11 was too scattershot. They allowed their own political interests and ideologies to intervene, and they missed their true target. They wanted to get Saddam Hussein for peripheral reasons which they never convincingly articulated. This took the focus off Afghanistan, and we now find ourselves as occupiers in a country known as the place where empires go to die. And we still haven't gotten Usama bin Laden.

I urge Predsident Obama to refocus his, the nation's, and the military's attention on the true mission of the conflict in Afghanistan. His generals will continue to urge him to provide them with greater authority, a larger mission, and more materiel and troops. These are tactical requests and should be taken as such. The President's duty as Commander-in-Chief is to think strategically. He must define the mission and then, and only then, allocate resources accordingly. The generals' job is to implement this strategy. And the only just, strategic mission is to sew up al Qaeda and their enablers and supporters, get bin Laden, and get out. It was the correct strategic mission in 2001, and, despite nearly a decade of neglect and mismanagement, it is the correct mission now.