View from the Loft

Afghanistan: past time to get out

I was one of relatively few lefties who opposed the military invasion of Afghanistan. At the time I thought, and still think, that those who leveled the Twin Towers should have been treated as criminals. They were not acting on behalf of any particular nation, after all. That they were said to be hiding in Afghanistan seemed to me no reason to bomb the hell out of that country. And when you consider the warlords we did, and are still doing, business with there, it all just seems unjustifiable. What the invade-Afghanistan crowd wanted more than anything was revenge, on whom it didn't matter. Americans felt vulnerable and they were angry, so it was easy to whip the populace, as well as the politicians and "leaders," into a frenzy of war lust..

But now here we are, eight years later, still mired in a losing battle.

Ask Russia about the "Soviets' Vietnam", as their decade-long war in Afghanistan has been called. You might also care to reflect on the British experience there a century ago.

And the mujahideen we're now fighting? We supported them during their fight against the Soviets. The Afghan government at the time was avowedly Marxist, so the U.S., doing what it usually does, supported whoever was seen as anti-Communist--in this case, Islamic rebels. Well, we know how that turned out ...

Now it looks as if Obama intends to send tens of thousands more troops into that country. As Jeff Leys writes:

War spending in 2010 will exceed $190 billion if indeed the Pentagon seeks-and Congress approves—$50 billion in “emergency” funding. That’s more than the $179 billion spent under President Bush in 2008, the previous high water mark for war spending. War spending in 2010 will also far exceed spending in 2009 (which is about $145 billion).

While Admiral Mullen did not announce a new war strategy for Afghanistan, it is difficult to conceive for what this additional $40 to $50 billion will be used if not used to expand the war in Afghanistan (and to perhaps continue the occupation of Iraq at near current troop levels without the substantive reductions promised earlier this year).

We know that General McChrystal has asked for 40,000 additional troops. Not only that, but he--or someone on his behalf--leaked word of such a request, based on his Initial Assessment to the press, no doubt to try to force Obama's hand, perhaps fearing that Obama was leaning toward rejecting requests for additional troops. In my opinion, McChrystal (or his people, on his behalf) acted insubordinately and ought to be stripped of his post as Commander of US Forces, Afghanistan. Let's not forget his role in the Pat Tillman coverup, either. Frankly, because of McChrystal's role in the abuse of detainees, I was horrified at his appointment to his current post. He seems to me a dangerous man, one who believes that the ends justify the means, whether the means are leaking sensitive information or torturing detainees.

It is to be hoped that Obama and his advisors deliberate carefully here without caving to the pressure being exerted by McChrystal and other officers. But the Democrats are super-sensitive to accusations that they're soft when it comes to foreign policy, so I don't hold out much hope.

The problem, of course, is that extra troops are not going to change the facts on the ground. Says Chris Hedges:

Success in Afghanistan is measured in Washington by the ability to create an indigenous army that will battle the Taliban, provide security and stability for Afghan civilians and remain loyal to the puppet government of Hamid Karzai. A similar task eluded the Red Army, although the Soviets spent a decade attempting to pacify the country. It eluded the British a century earlier. And the United States, too, will fail.

Further,

American military commanders in Afghanistan, rather than pump out statistics about enemy body counts, measure progress by the swelling size of the ANA. The bigger the ANA, the better we are supposedly doing. The pressure on trainers to increase the numbers of the ANA means that training and vetting of incoming Afghan recruits is nearly nonexistent.

The consequences are all too predictable:

American military advisers who work with the Afghan National Army, or ANA, speak of poorly trained and unmotivated Afghan soldiers who have little stomach for military discipline and even less for fighting. They describe many ANA units as being filled with brigands who terrorize local populations, exacting payments and engaging in intimidation, rape and theft. They contend that the ANA is riddled with Taliban sympathizers. And when there are combined American and Afghan operations against the Taliban insurgents, ANA soldiers are fickle and unreliable combatants, the U.S. advisers say.

So what is the U.S. role in Afghanistan? We're having no luck at all training an indigenous army; we've failed to stabilize the country or to keep corruption out of government; opium production continues unabated; the population is terrorized by the Taliban, the ANA, and U.S. bombings alike; the social fabric of the country has completely broken down--what was left of it after years and years of war; warlords rule the outlying areas of the country (i.e., anything outside of Kabal and perhaps one or two other cities); the population is starving; and we've now targeted parts of Pakistan, surely not a gesture toward a lessening of conflict.

I don't have the sense that anyone knows what we're really doing there any more, or what the goals are. Oh, wait--there's one group very clear on the matter: the private contractors that are raking in money while our soldiers, and the soldiers of other nations, and all too often Afghan civilians, die in vain.

 “American and Afghan soldiers are putting their lives at risk, Afghan civilians are dying, and yet there’s this underlying system in place that gains more from keeping all of them in harm’s way rather than taking them out of it,” the officer complained. “If we bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, we may profit morally, we might make gains for humanity, but moral profits and human gains do not contribute to the bottom line. Peace and profit are ultimately contradictory forces at work in Afghanistan.”

The wells that are dug, the schools that are built, the roads that are paved and the food distributed in Afghan villages by the occupation forces are used to obscure the huge profits made by contractors. Only an estimated 10 percent of the money poured into Afghanistan is used to ameliorate the suffering of Afghan civilians. The remainder is swallowed by contractors who siphon the money out of Afghanistan and into foreign bank accounts. This misguided allocation of funds is compounded in Afghanistan because the highest-paying jobs for Afghans go to those who can act as interpreters for the American military and foreign contractors. The best-educated Afghans are enticed away from Afghan institutions that desperately need their skills and education.

“It is this system that has broken the logistics of Afghanistan,” the officer said. “It is this system of waste and private profit from public funds that keeps Kabul in ruins. It is this system that manages to feed Westerners all across the country steak and lobster once a week while an estimated 8.4 million Afghans—the entire population of New York City, the five boroughs—suffer from chronic food insecurity and starvation every day. When you go to Bagram Air Base, or Camp Phoenix, or Camp Eggers, it’s clear to see that the problem does not lie in getting supplies into the country. The question becomes who gets them. And we wonder why there’s an insurgency.”

And that's what it all boils down to, as usual: profits for the few at a horrendous cost of lives and treasure for the many.

It's time to get out of Afghanistan and stop the murderous plunder. There's no way to "win." All we can look forward to is some really, really hellacious blowback.

Say no to military escalation in Afghanistan

I was in the minority at the outset of the post-9/11 U.S. military attacks on Afghanistan. While most lefties felt that military action was justifiable in the wake of 9/11, I was not convinced that making an entire country pay for the terrorist acts perpetrated by a few would be either morally defensible nor particularly effective.

Nothing has happened since to make me change my mind. We have achieved nothing in Afghanistan.

Due to corruption on a massive scale, the U.S. has failed to rebuild Afghanistan or to provide services like clean water and electricity, this despite early Bush administration calls for reconstruction and the building of a stable society.

The Taliban are regaining power and evolving as a fighting force: 

In the first ten months of this year, 255 US and NATO troops were killed in Afghanistan, more than all those who died in the first four years of the war in Afghanistan put together. Entire swaths of southern Afghanistan, in provinces along the Pakistan border south and east of Kabul, are controlled by the Taliban and their allies. Lately they have been able to strike with impunity even within Kabul, the Afghan capital. The CIA has been warning for more than two years that Afghanistan was spinning out of control. A forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate, representing the views of sixteen US intelligence agencies, warns that Afghanistan is in a "downward spiral" and, according to the New York Times, "casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban's influence there." The enemy has also evolved as a fighting force. Already by 2006, according to a report for West Point by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Taliban were fielding battalion-size units of more than 400 fighters. In some provinces the Taliban and their allies are creating a parallel state, appointing governors and provincial officials and establishing Sharia-style courts.

Unfortunately, the incoming administration's plans to increase troop levels in Afghanistan by 20,000 to 30,000 will have little effect on this situation. Derrick Crowe's diary on Daily Kos quotes The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency  Field Manual as advising that 20 counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents is considered the minimum troop density for effective operations. That would amount to nearly 655,000 troops! Does anyone reading this think the U.S. currently has the capability, let alone the will, to commit this many troops to Afghanistan?

General David McKiernan, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has warned

that the mission in Afghanistan will require a "sustained commitment" lasting many years, and the United States has announced plans to help more than double the size of the Afghan National Army (ANA), to 134,000 troops. "This is a decades-long project," says Ashley Tellis, a former National Security Council specialist on South Asia, who adds that it will take at least ten years before the United States can withdraw and let the ANA fight its own battles. "The transition alone will take a decade, until you can switch to the ANA," he says.

When I look at statements like that, all I see is a gigantic sinkhole down which too many American (and NATO, and Afghani) lives and billions and billions of U.S. dollars will disappear, to no avail. Look at the experience of the Soviets in Afghanistan, and of the British well over a century before them.

The idea of the troop increase in Afghanistan is to be able to weaken the Taliban militarily and then negotiate with Taliban leaders from a position of strength. I just don't see this happening. The "Taliban" are in fact a complicated and confusing mix of tribal alliances and religious extremists of varying stripes. The military has identified at least fourteen separate insurgent groups in Afghanistan. How do you know who to negotiate with? And how do you know whether negotiated terms will be honored? And will the U.S., with a mere 20,000 to 30,000 more troops, be able to weaken the Taliban? Recent events in Gaza have inflamed Muslims everywhere and recruited more jihadists; any intensification of U.S. military action in Afghanistan will almost certainly draw more extremists into the fight.

For all these reasons and more, I oppose any escalation of military troop numbers in Afghanistan and would urge the incoming administration to look for ways to extricate our troops from the deepening morass. Ideas for alternatives to escalation can be found here, here (RAWA), and here.

To believe that the only solution to the Afghanistan problem is a military one is to acquiesce in the johnny-one-note thinking of the past eight years. It's time to try some other approaches that will not drain lives and treasure in a prolonged exercise in futility.

(Please visit Get Afghanistan Right! for more on this crucial issue, including counterarguments to the pro-escalation talking points.)

What Chris Hedges says ...

Please, just read it. I promise it will move you and make you think.

Our common humanity: why is it so easy to forget that?

[UPDATE] There's still time to nuke Iran!

[See below for additional information supplied in Comments by freelearner.]

Yes, one can imagine all too well Dick Cheney urging this line of thought around town with only nine months left until the next presidential inauguration.

I've been planning to write a blog post about all the predictions I've made that have turned out to be wrong, and no one could be happier than I to be wrong about the reinstatement of the draft, avian flu, immigration as a winning issue for the GOP, and most of all, a U.S. attack on Iran. Unfortunately, it's too soon to tell about some of these things, and particularly in the case of Iran, recent events have made a lot of people wonder whether military aggression against that nation in the near future is still very much a possibility:

• Joint Chiefs Chairmans Says U.S. Preparing Military Options Against Iran
• Israeli attack on Syria a prelude to Arak, Iran?
• Petraeus has been named to replace Admiral Fallon as CENTCOM head; Fallon repeatedly had said there would be no attack on Iran on his watch, while as we all know, Petraeus is nothing if not George Bush's lackey--or should I say Cheney's?--who never voices a dissenting word.

The ostensible reason for "preparing military options against Iran" is that Iran is meddling in Iraq and endangering our forces there. But the real reason is Iran's heavy-water nuclear reactor in Arak, Iran. There is some speculation that Israel may be planning a strike on that reactor. If that were to happen, there would certainly be retaliation by iran followed by counterattacks backed up by U.S. military power. Or, perhaps the U.S. would have to "soften up" Iran to make an Israeli strike possible. Iran does have some sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry.

The reactor's start-up date is scheduled for 2009, so time is of the essence. Israel has not been shy about voicing its outrage over Iran's reactor, fearing that it will be used to make nuclear weapons. And in March, we discovered that

The Pentagon is looking into the possibility of Israel launching a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. In the past months there were several working-level discussions trying to map out the possible scenarios for such an attack, according to administration sources who were briefed on these meetings.

Moreover (from the same source):

Israeli and US sources have said in the past weeks that the US did not convey any message to Israel in which it asked to refrain from an attack and has not raised the issue in bilateral discussions with the Israelis. Both countries share intelligence on the situation in Iran and the advance of the nuclear program, but do not discuss - according to sources who took part in bilateral talks - the possibility of using military force to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Of course the U.S. didn't tell the Israelis to "refrain from an attack." There's nothing dearer to the heart of Cheney (what's left of it) than the thought of more carnage, blood, and destruction, and if nuclear fallout could be a part of all that, so much the better!

One of my fears is that some sort of terrorist or other act will be manufactured ( a la the Gulf of Tonkin) by the U.S. and blamed on Iran to justify an attack. Then would it be post-9/11 all over again, with the country deciding it needed a Bush clone and electing McCain by a landslide?

Do you really think they haven't thought about this? These are people for whom power and power alone gives life meaning. Nothing they could do would surprise me.

UPDATE from freelearner (moved here from Comments):

In an April 18th article (http://tinyurl.com/3qsvtr), Paul Craig Roberts cited other information suggesting a coming attack on Iran, from two sources:

-----
On March 30, the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited "a high-ranking security source: "The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran." 1 According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future."

The chief of Russia's general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last November that Russia was beefing up its military in response to US aggression, but that the Russian military is not "obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans." 2.
-----

And you've probably heard the gist of the second source:

-----
On March 29, OpEdNews cited a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz, which was picked up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi newspaper reported on March 22, the day following Cheney's visit with the kingdom's rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors." 3.
-----

I think they will have to engineer a false-flag terrorist or insurgent attack on a fairly massive scale against US troops in Iraq or against a Navy ship in the Gulf. Or, if anything happens to the Strait of Hormuz (like we bomb the shipping channel and blame the Iranians), we might attack to try and keep the oil lines open.

Don't let your gas tank get below half, I guess-- and a 5-gallon jug of gas in the garage isn't a bad idea either.

Forty years ago today

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Perhaps, like me, you're old enough to remember the shock and grief this news brought.

Perhaps, like me, you had the misfortune of hearing an expression of triumph. My aunt, whom I'd never thought was an overt racist, burst out, "Good! I'm glad they got the sonofabitch!"

That was nearly as shocking to me as King's murder.

This diary over on Kos marks the tragic occasion by recalling a speech given by King exactly one year before his death. That speech was "Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence." Sadly, it is still sharply relevant today, when the US is embroiled in Iraq, still raining down carnage on innocent people it views merely as "collateral damage."

I urge you to read both the diary and the speech itself. Let me leave you with this, from near the end of the speech, after King's call for a "revolution of values" that shifts America from being "thing-oriented" to being "people-oriented":

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

[text omitted]

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

I'm afraid that thanks to the corrupt, venal, mendacious sociopaths who have been running this country, we will indeed suffer a legacy of shame--and worse.

But Dr. King never gave up hope, and neither should we. Yes, I often despair; but you can't work for change if you're paralyzed by despair.

Despair is a luxury we can't afford.

Driftglass

Check out Driftglass's "Sunday Morning Coming Down." You will experience catharsis, if only briefly, and marvel at how he seemed to read your mind as you watched the Sunday talking head shows. And you will laugh, even if only a bitter, mirthless laugh.

Hersh on Iran and the "redirection" of Middle East policy

Yes, another dreary--and frightening--Iran post. Before or after reading this, provided you can take more stomach-churning news, you might want to sign this petition or go here to take action against this insane plan.

Seymour Hersh has written yet another article detailing ongoing activities already being undertaken by the US in Iran, particularly clandestine activities directed by the office of the Vice President. The "redirection" of American policy in the US seems designed to foment a Sunni-Shiite Cold War:

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public . . . The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

*    *    *    *    *    *

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney.

And that clandestine activity goes back to Iran-Contra. Hersh points out the similarities between the secrecy of the Reagan administration in the Iran-Contra scandal, when the administration tried to fund the Contras illegally through arms sales to--ironically--Iran. Most troubling of all is this:

Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.

Congress is being deliberately kept in the dark about clandestine activities--and their funding. According to a former National Security Council aide,

Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”

The key players in such operations don't learn the lessons that people with moral sensibilities wish they would learn; instead, they learn how to better cloak their criminal activities in secrecy. Here's another such instance, which also has a historical parallel:

American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.

Cambodia, anyone? Those of us old enough to remember the Vietnam War will recall, as Chuck Hagel did during Condi's appearance before the Senate in January, that our government lied to us, saying we did not cross over into Cambodia, when in fact we did. Well, it's deja vu all over again ...

While all this clandestine activity goes on outside of Congressional oversight, there's also the public side of our increasingly confrontational actions in regard to Iran. Hersh reports the arrest of hundreds of Iranians in Iraq. According to a former senior intelligence official,

“They had five hundred locked up at one time. We’re working these guys and getting information from them. The White House goal is to build a case that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been doing it all along—that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of Americans.” The Pentagon consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by American forces in recent months. But he told me that that total includes many Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who “get scooped up and released in a short time,” after they have been interrogated.

"Working" these guys. "Interrogated." Given US policy, I think we can assume that we're talking about torture here, at least in some cases.

Propaganda about the dangers Iran poses is taking on an increasingly aggressive tone. Just as in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, alarming reports are being circulated about Iran's weapons capability and its nuclear program. Most intelligence experts have said that Iran is five to ten years away from being able to manufacture a nuclear weapon, yet the administration insists repeatedly that this is an imminent threat. We are also being told that Iran now has

a three-stage solid-fuelled intercontinental missile capable of delivering several small warheads—each with limited accuracy—inside Europe.

This information--which comes from Israeli agents working in Iran--is of debatable validity. Israel is desirous of a strike against Iran, so this rumor is, to my mind, questionable and very much in need of verification if we are to take it seriously.

Hersh also says that

a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours.       

In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible regime change. [my bold]

Hersh's article has a wider scope than the possibility of war with Iran, discussing administration policies throughout the Middle East and clandestine operations that seek to undermine Shiite governments and groups such as Hezbollah. It's worth reading in its entirety, although here I am interested mainly in what he has to say about the increasing possibility (or probability) of war with Iran. Policy toward Iran, however, cannot be taken out of the context of the administration's sweeping plans for a completely rearranged Middle East. The arrogance, the sheer hubris, of this decision to arrange the entire region according to the desires of a group of neocons is breath-taking--and frightening. They would like nothing better, apparently, than to see the entire region become a conflagration, and if in the process they ensure that the Muslim world interprets US actions as a war on Islam, so be it.

Let's never forget that this is all about the oil, about securing enough oil in the near future:

On Fox News on January 14th, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, “of a nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world.” [my bold]

For these people, of course, diplomacy is out of the question as a means to ensuring energy security (again, for the near future; Peak Oil is a reality). Endless war is the only solution the neocons can imagine, for to engage in diplomacy is to show weakness. They envision the United States as the sole superpower of the world forever, a mighty empire that will rule the globe and have its way with countries large or small that impede its exertion of power.

That thousands or perhaps millions will die is of no consequence. These are the madmen who are running the show. Why are we allowing them to stay in power?

Plans complete for attacking Iran

Writing in The New Statesman, Dan Plesch reveals just how much military power is being amassed against Iran. It's frightening.

American military operations for a major conventional war with Iran could be implemented any day. They extend far beyond targeting suspect WMD facilities and will enable President Bush to destroy Iran's military, political and economic infrastructure overnight using conventional weapons.

*    *    *    *    *    *

The US army, navy, air force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Admiral Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, has inherited computerised plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).

The Bush administration has made much of sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf. But it is a tiny part of the preparations. Post 9/11, the US navy can put six carriers into battle at a month's notice. Two carriers in the region, the USS John C Stennis and the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, could quickly be joined by three more now at sea: USS Ronald Reagan, USS Harry S Truman and USS Theodore Roosevelt, as well as by USS Nimitz. Each carrier force includes hundreds of cruise missiles.

Then there are the marines . . .

*    *    *    *    *    *

Today, marines have the USS Boxer and USS Bataan carrier forces in the Gulf and probably also the USS Kearsarge and USS Bonhomme Richard. Three others, the USS Peleliu, USS Wasp and USS Iwo Jima, are ready to join them. Earlier this year, HQ staff to manage these forces were moved from Virginia to Bahrain.

There is in place a "Global Strike" plan that means that "any US general planning to attack Iran can now assume that at least 10,000 targets can be hit in a single raid, with warplanes flying from the US or Diego Garcia."

There is no point in Iran more than an hour's flying time from an American base or carrier. Three bases have been built in Azerbaijan; there are also rumors that bases in Bulgaria and Romania could be used in an attack. There may also be in Bulgaria new facilities for refuelling Stealth bombers, which would spearhead any attack on Iran.

Let's not forget that Seymour Hersh's claim last year that special forces were already in Iran conducting secret missions there. Further,

The regime in Tehran has already complained of US- and UK-inspired terror attacks in several Iranian regions where the population opposes the ayatollahs' fanatical policies. Such reports corroborate the American journalist Seymour Hersh's claim that the US military is already engaged in a low-level war with Iran. The fighting is most intense in the Kurdish north where Iran has been firing artillery into Iraq. The US and Iran are already engaged in a low-level proxy war across the Iran-Iraq border.

And that the USAF has been flying an increasing number of aggressive patrols along that border.

All of this indicates that there are those in the Bush administration--including Bush and Cheney themselves--who are setting up situations that make confrontation much more likely.

Is anyone in charge thinking about the carnage? Of the fact that real people will die in such an attack? Does anyone care that the entire infrastructure of Iran will be destroyed? More children orphaned, more human beings killed and maimed?

No, because as Tom Englehardt has written,

The belief in air power's ability to fell regimes and change the political essentials, to bring whole peoples to their knees, is long-lasting and deep-seated. Since well before World War II, we've been living with a belief system in which bombing others, including civilian populations, is a "strategic" thing to do; in which air power can, in relatively swift measure, break the "will" not just of the enemy, but of that enemy's society; and in which air power is the royal path to victory.

Too bad about that collateral damage, eh?

You might want a little refresher on signs of an impending attack on Iran.

More on the Civilian Reserve Corps

Thanks to a little sleuthing on my spouse's part, more has come to light about the Civilian Reserve Corps that Bush alluded to in his SOTU address (warning: pdf), and about which I've already written.

Bush's first mention of expanding the use of civilian volunteers that I can find was on May 18, 2005 according to the pdf link above:

We will also work to expand our use of civilian volunteers from outside our government, who have the right skills and are willing to serve in these missions.

And according to the State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, Bush has requested $25 million to establish a Civilian Reserve Corps.

In the comments of my last post on this topic, Hannah points to a Democracy Now interview with Jeremy Scahill of The Nation in which Scahill speculates that the Civilian Reserve Corps is a way to expand the use of private contractors like Blackwell, Halliburton, and KBR. That thought occurred to me as well, and I have no doubt that that is exactly the direction BushCo wants to take us in. They want to privatize everything else, after all; why not the military as well? See this article by Scahill, on the vast size of our mercenary army, which, as Scahill points out, has brought about largely done without the knowledge or input of American citizens--or the oversight of Congress.

In fact, the government document I linked to above does mention contractors, but as one of three components of civilian volunteers:

• First Responders, direct hires that would include both active and standby response corps
• Civilian Reserve Corps, which would "become Federal R & S [Reconstruction and Stiblization] hires when mobilized" and which would deploy for one year and serve in such capacities as "police, rule of law, public services, civil administration, etc."
• "Global Skills Network," which would be private contractors and NGOs; contracts would be pre-existing and personnel might be used for years.

The document goes on to ask "Why a Civilian Reserve?" and gives us some answers:

• the reserve would complement the government's civilian agency capacity
• it would have " 'just in time' surge capability" and would thus be more cost effective than adding permanent staff
• "strong US capacity will leverage parallel international and multilateral capacity," whatever that means
• "contracting networks pose reliability and command/control issues"
• civilian personnel would allow the military to phase down

Elsewhere the document suggests that the short-term use of the Civilian Reservists would be followed by the use of contract personnel.

The Civilian Reserve Corps would guarantee a volunteer the right to return to his or her job after being called up. And here's a plus (for the government): there would be an "enforceable obligation" to train and be deployed.

There is also an implication that contractors would be hired to oversee and direct such a program. Contractors, you see, can't do that with US Government employees, and thus the "need" for civilian volunteers.

The document lists the challenges of implementing the Civilian Reserve Corps, including:

• concerns from Iraq experience--personnel, contracts
• "reserve" name and functions problematic--creation of civilian capacity suggests plan to use it [ed. ya think??]--fear of pre-emptive planning and long occupation
• unlikely to garner sympathy for civilian reserves--business lobby unlikely to support re-employment rights

So what are we to make of this?

One thing that comes to mind is that the government would have in place the infrastructure and logistics to institute a skills draft. There isn't much support for a draft of any kind right now, so this would be one way to get everything in place without actually conscripting people.

But the Civilian Reserve Corps is just one piece of the puzzle. The other thing to look at here is the role of contractors in future military engagements, how that relates to a Civilian Reserve Corps, and how these different civilian branches support each other. It sounds like what the government is aiming for is a "surge capacity" for short-notice, short-term civilian personnel who would be overseen by private contractors and eventually replaced by contracted personnel.

In any case, the increasing use of companies like Blackwater should worry us all. From the Scahill article:

From Iraq and Afghanistan to the hurricane-ravaged streets of New Orleans to meetings with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger about responding to disasters in California, Blackwater now envisions itself as the FedEx of defense and homeland security operations. Such power in the hands of one company, run by a neo-crusader bankroller of the president, embodies the "military-industrial complex" President Eisenhower warned against in 1961.

It's something that should scare the living hell out of all of us.

"Let our children live"

Read this.

It is heartbreaking, but the writing of it and the reading of it are necessities. We do not take to heart enough the reality of the ongoing Palestinian crisis.

Just read it.