lighten up, buddy

I'm not normally a fan of Bob Herbert's columns because they tend to wander into the obvious but today's piece is interesting and fully damning of Robert McNamara. What strikes hardest is the accusation that McNamara must have found it hard to look in the mirror knowing what he knew and doing what he did. The admission by McNamara that he knew the war was a massive mistake, yet he continued execution of that mistake, is probably something lost on the public as his death is being overshadowed by Michael Jackson Tribute Month. My first association is to Colin Powell who we may not remember as being a huge cog in the war machine but whose actions were the straw that broke the dissenters. By the time Secretary Powell sat down at the UN to give his "brief" on Iraq there had already been plenty of time for the Bush Administration's quality to be questioned. The number of Americans, who were ready to walk away from Bush/Cheney and probably the Iraq War, was growing rapidly. I think that as a country we were back to realizing just how inept we felt the Administration had been between Jan 2001 and Sep 11, 2001 and there was a realization that what happened between 2001 and late 2003 wasn't so much leadership as it was a course of events. The war in Afghanistan was justified to most but it wasn't going awfully well and there was still no way out or any endgame in sight. The idea of Iraq was lunacy yet we fell for it because of Powell's UN appearance. He was the one who unwittingly or not, and I don't believe he was played for a fool, brought enough independent and wavering Americans onboard the war idea. As he walked away after that first term – having been the cheerleader for the war and the man who essentially got Bush re-elected – I often wondered how he looked in the mirror every morning. I had great hopes for Powell but I vividly remember watching his testimony that day while I was sitting in a hotel lobby on Crete ; I was shocked to see and hear everything he provided. It was shabby information that wouldn't have passed muster to the most basic intelligence officer or analyst, and I know because I was the most basic intelligence analyst type. But you know what? It didn't pass those desks because they were removed from the process and the rest were bullied by the herd-to-war executive branch. What makes it all the more egregious when comparing McNamara and Powell is that Powell had spent his life in the military; working, supporting, and protecting the troops – he knew the cost. McNamara, if you discount his advisory service in statistical analysis, was a desk jockey with no real military experience or interaction. For Powell to know the dangers of this war and yet still saddle-up that day at the UN and spout the party line is a massive reflection on his failure to continue doing what had been his life's work. No amount of post-event analysis or dramatized Hollywood scenes where "Powell" is trying to speak truth-to-power will undo his mistake; any more than McNamara's mistake is undone by his admission. We can debate all day long the issue of war execution with Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, and Myers, and etc. and their overall responsibility for what happened, and that responsibility is whole, but the accelerator was the sale made by Powell. Could he have stopped it? Who knows? Could he have resigned and chosen to not be a part of it? Yes. In the end, I think he now claims that working from the inside was in the best interest of the country but that's a weak stance. I'm sure McNamara felt that working from the inside on something he knew was wrong and horrific was the best option; what good did that do? I'll never be convinced that Powell's best position wasn't to be a vocal opponent of a war he felt was wrong. I believe his position as an outsider, had he left the Administration, would not have been questioned as sour grapes or a case of a disgruntled employee as so often happens. He made a choice – McNamara made a choice – and they were both horribly wrong. And it isn't the being wrong that the most grievous result, it's the dead bodies, ruined lives, and broken families.

what are all those people doing out there?

I've come across an op-ed in today's NYTimes by Yu Hua. I first encountered Yu after hearing a review of his book, Brothers, on NPR. (Am I liberal enough? Reading the Times and getting my reviews from NPR; and then blogging about it?) Brothers is a monster work and details the life of Baldy Li. I'll leave the reviews to others because I haven't finished the book and because they're much better at writing book reviews. (You can hear/read the NPR review here, the LATimes review here, and the NYTimes review here.) What the book has struck me as - in the first portion - is something akin to the writing of both Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ismail Kadare; a bit fantastical and vaguely surreal. What's more important to this day is Yu's commentary on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests from 20 years ago. He purports there were two facts that have become apparent since then, the second being that "... after the summer of 1989 the incident vanished from the Chinese news media. As a result, few young Chinese know anything about it." What strikes me isn't do much a direct comparison between the pro-democracy rallies in China (or the government crackdowns) and the eight years of the Bush Administration, but a process where something is forgotten or exiled to the past because was wrong. Who resigns something to the vault if it were a just or correct choice? If they don't leave it broken and shattered the dark corner they end up justifying it until it becomes such a weary and threadbare memory that people eventually let the dog lie.

This is the premise of Dick Cheney. If his misdeeds had been left in the dark, if no one had questioned his thuggery, then we never would have seen him again; a better future for us all. Instead, he's been forced into the light - no doubt against his will or desire - in an attempt to convince "the people", as Yu says, that his decisions were in the best interests of "the people". The problem with this tack is that there's a huge difference between our looking to the past and seeing that the intention was good but execution poor, and trying to convince me that your intentions were ever good. Cheney's intentions were never good and the longer he stays in the spotlight blathering like an ass the sooner "the people" will get the truth. His intention was always solely focused on his desire for retribution and revenge; there isn't an unselfish bone in his body. Instead of wanting him to disappear, I'm perfectly happy to see his mug all over the TV and newspapers because the house of cards will fall much quicker the longer we're exposed to the lies. The people can be right - remember the millions around the World that protested the Iraq War? - and the leaders wrong not because they misjudged but because they believe their good is greater than our good. Cheney still believes he can muscle his malfeasance into truth by merely changing his story, scowling at the press, or reaching for anything that will either justify his actions or make us forget. He has been, and still is, supported in this belief by both Republicans and Democrats whose hold that their political life is their actual life. It's disappointing to see how spineless and shallow the Congress has been.

As Yu says in his op-ed, there are loads of young Chinese who don't remember Tiananmen because it's been hidden in a closet. What Cheney really wanted was the same process; hidden away so nobody would remember and he could live his dying days as some type of hero in his own mind. Instead, we have the pleasure of seeing him unwind and attempt to define his legacy as something other than shitty. When not a single piece of good comes from your eight years of work in leading your county, you are a failure.

A light Sunday chat.

t

it's not light; it's not easy

It’s Friday and time for some pop psychology. My hand was forced by a piece in the NYTimes that drew me into the abyss. I remember reading about the four, execution-style killings in Iraq shortly after they happened. I think Vanity Fair or some other mag did a long piece describing what happened that night and added some background on the four soldiers involved. The verdict is in on the first soldier with three more courts-martial to follow. I’m not of the mind to debate the trials of war and the actions of players in that arena because I don’t have any experience with gunfire, killing, destruction, and that sort of misery. I do have some experience with any number of survival schools and the techniques involved: we were trained in what to expect if we became a POW. The survival training that’s managed by the AF does not – contrary to letters and stories about other services’ training – provide any type of training that would be applied if we were dealing with POWs. One thing you learn very quickly is that a lack of sleep, endless playing of loud music, yelling, screaming, and the answering of endless stupid questions will break you down almost immediately. When continued for any period of time – maybe two days? – you’ve got nothing but mush for brains and any ability you might have had to reason had started to fade away. The psychological effects could easily become permanent if you didn’t at least have some sense that there was an end in sight; without that hope, it would be unbearable.

What got me going on this subject was the testimony of Col. Charles Hoge. Here’s the excerpt from the Times article:

“In closing arguments earlier, Leahy's civilian lawyer, Frank Spinner, argued that Leahy went along with the killings because he was dazed from a lack of sleep and numb from being in a war zone for months. It was a sentiment bolstered on Thursday in testimony from Col. Charles Hoge, a doctor and director of psychology and neuroscience at the Army's Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.” (italics added)

I obviously don’t know the colonel and I have no idea what his opinion might be on torture, or whatever it was that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld so loved. If an Army soldier, or soldiers, are willing to execute bound Iraqis – Iraqis released by their own superiors due to lack of any evidence of involvement in an attack – because they were “dazed from a lack of sleep and numb from being in a war zone for months”, what do you think the lack of sleep and numbness caused by being held without charge, without a trial, and tortured for five or six years might do to someone’s mental state? I don’t know if the four killed were guilty or not, but someone in that chain-of-command decided there wasn’t enough reason to hold them, and yet, at least one Sgt. decided that murder was the answer. I don’t know how many of those held and released, or still held, in Guantanamo (or other locations) are guilty or innocent. We do know that something like 500 have been released because there wasn’t enough evidence to charge them. Do we think that all 500 of those just sat around a nice comfortable holding cell while those in charge sorted out the evidence for five years? Probably not.

And so, it comes to this: we have the Army testifying that sleep deprivation and the numbness of war can lead U.S. soldiers to murder. Yet, a majority of Americans don’t think that sleep deprivation, numbness from incarceration, and fear of death is actually torture.

Let me close with this: I obviously don’t condone murdering anyone. I think that based on my survival training – and trying to extrapolate into some combat environment – these soldiers were mentally fucked up. Maybe the only way for them to express their anger or relieve their pain was to get together and decide to blow some heads off. More than the sadness of all the lives ruined, this story is far more important to me because there’s this little piece of what Col. Hoge supported in his testimony. Hoge let’s us know that there are people that see what an environment or external actions can do to another human being. Even with the knowledge out there that putting someone in a this type of situation can lead to such horrible acts; we chose to directly, and willfully, apply the same techniques to other. Unfortunately, we too often see the result of those events as something that only happens to us.

t

see june, see bill

The other day while I was cleaning up the kitchen after some creation, X looks over the counter at me and says, “Where does the June Cleaver in you come from?” If she’s wondering about my wipe down, tidy up, and try to keep the kitchen in order, then it’s probably my mother. I found the above picture, The June Cleaver dress from Instant Vintage, as my sexy update on the style. What a look.

The Cubs and be infuriating. They’re hanging around the best record in baseball and then go into Pittsburgh and lose the last two games of the series in the same manner: giving up a run in the bottom of the ninth and then losing in extras. They beat the Dodgers at Wrigley today.

I’ve read a lot of Bill Kristol’s op-eds since he joined the NYTimes and I’ve watched him often as a talking head. The problem I have with him is that he’s of the debate theory that if I open with the “all due respect” pre-debate then all’s well. I read his piece today and it’s a prime example of exactly what some people skate right over.

(Warning: bad language, pissy politics, and heinous opinions are coming from me. Consider the above the funny and joke-like part of today’s entry.)

Feel free to call me on taking it out of context because I’m giving you the three consecutive paragraphs I’ve chosen from his entire op-ed. If you want to read the whole thing, here you go.

“This doesn’t mean Americans are indifferent to the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform. In fact, I suspect that many of us feel so much in debt to our servicemen and women, and so much in awe of the ultimate sacrifice some of them have made and all of them are willing to make, that we worry any effort to honor them wouldn’t be commensurate with their deeds.”

“One retired general I know urges civilians to go out of their way to say thank you to servicemen and women they happen to encounter. At first I thought such a gesture might be intrusive, or awkward, or unwelcome. I was wrong. When civilians walk over to express appreciation to men and women in uniform, in airports or restaurants or the like, the recipients seem a little embarrassed — but grateful. So perhaps we all should be less shy about thanking our troops for their service.”

“The men and women in the military know their fellow citizens are grateful to them. Many of them say, though, that they’re not confident their countrymen are aware of what they’re accomplishing.”

That first paragraph is bullshit. We are totally indifferent to those sacrifices; I’m indifferent, either by choice or by shear misery – I’m not sure which. I was in the military and I have some background. Believe me, if I’m indifferent than anyone who doesn’t have a loved one or very close friend involved is way beyond indifferent. I’m as guilty as the next. The faded, junky, hollow yellow ribbon magnet on the back of your car counts for shit. The idea that “we worry any effort to honor them wouldn’t be commensurate with their deeds” makes me steam. This coming from one of the greatest supporters of this Administration; a President that refuses to either show, attend, or recognize a single returning dead military member. Not one. He hasn’t showed those that make that sacrifice any more respect than he shown any tree on his Crawford ranch. There is not an ounce of honor in either Kristol or Bush’s recognition of the dead.

The second paragraph? Nice, Kristol. I’m glad to see that you’re too goddamn shallow to think that any military member would be embarrassed to get any props from you. I smile every time anyone says thanks when I’m passing through the airport and they look at my retired AF ID card. Kristol’s thought process about the war – that it’s over there, that I’ll finally write something on Memorial Day, that maybe a little thanks and honor through my backhanded effort could be worthwhile is a questionable joke.

The third paragraph is the ultimate example of how the military is twisted into a tool for this political mission. The military doesn’t wonder “…how the public views their accomplishments” – what they aren’t sure of is if the public could even understand what they’re going through while doing the yeoman’s work in Iraq and Afghanistan. As I’ve said before; completing that mission, whether they agree with the political premise, is what they do: Nothing more, nothing less.

I'm done.

channeling

Rob Riggle from The Daily Show in the role of me - even the language is appropriate.



I have little more to say on this fine early Summer day.

t.

general thoughts

Generals are strange birds. The single-page interview in this week’s Sunday New York Times Magazine is with Wesley Clark. I always assume that military men, through and through, are most likely to be deeply embedded and in favor of the current armed operation – that image has change drastically over the last three years as various retired honchos speak up. One of Clark’s questions dealt with the Global War on Terrorism and its impact on the World. He points out that when we try to amass the threat of terrorism against the behemoth of the Cold War (with the implications of each confrontation) we are conflating the religious intensity and horrors involved in terrorism in a desire to grant the confrontation a greater import. (Okay, I added a bit to what I think is his thought process…he only got one line answers to each question published in article...I’ve got endless space.) His idea seems to come from the math that 200 million Russians, and a government with a capability to destroy the globe, was a far greater threat to this country than 50,000 hardcore religious extremists and their current methods of attack. As of today, even though the threat is real and the results of terrorism frightening, we seem to live as if the experience comes from the same cache of fears we carried post-WWII through the late 80s – a belief that our way of life was constantly under attack, we needed to stay vigilant, or be at the ready to dive under the school desk. Maybe it’s time we take a long look at the world situation and decide exactly how threatened we are; how much of our daily lives have changed in the last six years due to terrorism? I put forth that it’s a change of miniscule proportion. There’s certainly not representative of a fear of hemispheres being blasted into oblivion and cities melting away. Maybe the focus of the lens can be drawn in on the threats that can be reached, contained, and disarmed. Is it really a global war? Enough of that; I’ll ponder it.

T.

scurrilous george

I don’t really get George Tenet. Let’s see what I can make of the bits-and-pieces that have rolled into public view. Bear in mind that I don’t have TV so I haven’t seen any of the 60 Minutes interview he gave last night. The man was Director of the CIA in the build-up to the war, he was a part of the inner circle that’s either trying to convince Bush of the WMD or convince him of their absence, he uses a term like “slam dunk” in some conversation, and he finally walks away and/or resigns and/or is fired in 2004. That same year he’s awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. See George start to write a book. See George not utter a peep about just how bad the planning or intelligence was prior to the war. See George take his medal. See George…blah blah blah. I never had much hope for George; I had hope for Colin Powell. Both of them, particularly George if we are now to believe him, tell us that they stood their ground, that they tried to do good, that their intentions were true. Neither one did anything. Nada. Zero. Suddenly we are supposed to jump on the bandwagon and realize that they were sheep led to slaughter by the wolf? Sorry George, I’m not buying. What makes it worse? It’s been three years, he’s said nothing…still…but now that his book is out he comes knocking on my door. Well done. Here are George’s “Tenet’s Tenets”:

Know who you are.
Good. I’m riding along with this one. Je suis Todd. (is that right?)

Honor the service and the sacrifice of the men and women who protect this country and our values.
Ooops. I think that you’re inability to take a stand way back in 2003, to plan for the meat grinder the troops live in, demolishes this pillar.

Follow your heart and dare to take risks.
Ooops. Missed again. If you wanted to take risks, you could have, you could have done it back then, you could have done it before you had a book to sell.

Fight hatred and prejudice wherever you see it.
The first one that I can’t quibble with…

Laugh as much as you can.
That sound George hears is my laughter.

Take care of the people around you.
Didn’t.

Pray.
If you did, it didn’t help.

Love and serve your country.
I believe he does, without question. He served a long term as DCI but he’ll always be remembered not for the ‘slam dunk’ debacle, but for his inability to stand-up for himself.

I vent. I'm going back to writing about haircuts.

T

the power of one

A few weeks back Sen. Hagel (I’m name dropping again) was asked something along the lines of “how easy will it be for you to run as an anti-war candidate?” He paused as he always seems to, and then answered thusly, “who said I’m anti-war? I’m not anti-war, but I don’t support the execution of this war.” And there it is.

What reminded me of the press conference was some talk in the car the other day as we were heading out to buy Easter Egg Hunt goodies for the kids (my idea; there will be four here on Sunday). And we don’t need to go into any discussion about holy days and candy; I honestly don’t think much about it…so there. Anyway, my stance when it comes to this point of war/anti-war classification is similar: I’m neither. In the case of Afghanistan – fire away, in the case of Iraq – I wasn’t onboard. Either way, the die was cast and we end up in Iraq…now what do we do? Well, as a jumping off point, we should have done what we did 15 years ago and sent in 400,000+ troops. The U.S. military is a machine and it's not too caught up in the politics of 'invade or stay home', or the worries of international support; it doesn’t care, nor does the enemy. The military does what it’s told to do, but the one thing you can't do is handcuff it by not supplying the overwhelming force needed for a given mission. The inability to manage the after-effects of the conventional combat mission (how did no one think beyond 5-10 days?) was criminal. Who plans for ten days when they decide to invade a country? This very first mistake laid the path to where we are right now. Four years later, innumerable opportunities to at least attempt to fix things, and what we get is 20,000 additional troops in Baghdad? Gen Petraeus, who’s now the commander of combat troops in Iraq, rewrote the Army’s counterinsurgency field manual in 2004, here’s basically what it says:

“The new field manual recommends a troop density of at least 20 combat troops to every 1,000 people in Iraq. There are 6 million people in Baghdad, which means the manual would suggest 120,000 combat troops to effectively secure the city. Right now, there are about 130,000 U.S. troops in all of Iraq, and of those 60,000 are support troops or personnel, American officials say.” (pbs.org)

My Nebraska math says that we had (pre-surge) about 70,000 combat troops in all of Iraq. That leaves a shortage of 50,000 troops IF we move all of them to Baghdad. Let’s say we do that, and we bring in 50,000 more; what do we do about Mosul, Tal Afar, the rest of the Sunni Triangle? We just ripped all those troops from the rest of the country so we’d need to backfill in order to continue to secure the country – in fact, based on the training manual we’d need a total of over 530,000 combat troops (July 2006 Iraq population estimate 26.7 million [www.cia.gov]) – so I’m at a total of nearly 450,000 additional troops if we really needed to secure the country, or a minimum of 120,000 if we were just securing Baghdad and backfilling in other areas. I’ll make this easier:

120,000 additional combat troops if you want to get off on the cheap
450,000 additional combat troops if you want to get the job done

Our answer: 20,000+.

Unfortunately, we’ve got a shortage of troops these days and somehow believe that we can only rotate x number in-country on yearly tours. But, if as it's claimed, this is the most important war since WWII, and if we must contain the region and secure Iraq, then you send in every troop you have, you tell them they’ll be there ‘for the duration’, and you finish the job. Would that suck? Yes. Did WWII suck? Yes. If the guys in suits running this war want to win then they have to flood the country in order to secure it. At that point, and only at that point, can we talk about the political solution that is buzzing around the big blue sky. How does anyone expect Iraqis to be happy (or even content) with the security situation when daily life is so shitty? Never mind what John McCain says about ‘walking around Baghdad’ as if all is peachy…he’s lost his train of thought. I’ve read somewhere that Baghdad averages about six hours of electrical power each day…six hours! My bathtub backs up and I'm thoroughly pissed off. Power. Water. Security. According to Pentagon spokespeople the cost of the war started at $4.4 billion/month in 2003 and is up to a forecasted $8.8 billion/month in 2008. More math for me, and I’ll be generous to the Administration, says that by the end of 2007 we’ll be in this thing for upwards of $360 billion – we can’t get the power on in Baghdad? I’m pretty sure that in Todd’s Top Ten Ways to Prevent Hatred and Insurgency, infrastructure is pretty high on the list. If you want your money to fight the war, Mr. Bush, then make some hard decisions.

Here’s my support for the situation in Iraq: send in everyone or get the hell out. Throwing an additional 20,000 troops into the situation is putting 20,000 more military members in harm’s way for no good tactical or strategic mission. None. You want my anti-war stance? More troops. There you have it.

Now the 29% of Americans who still support this Administration can go back to reading Us Magazine, debating about Britney Spears' breakdown, and watching Fox News.

I’m done.

T.

post-war post

Andrew Sullivan posts an interesting reply on his blog to Christopher Hitchens’ non-mea culpa at slate.com. When I first read Mr. Hitchens’ post on Monday I was uncomfortable with most of the rearview mirror speculation he used when determining exactly which train station platform the supporters of the war should have disembarked from their ride; he determined there were none – apparently it was a one-way ticket to this destiny. I never thought the question was whether or not there were “actual or latent” WMD programs. I wasn’t one to debate the quality of the intelligence, and certainly not one to sit on my couch and parse anything about the details of intrigue swirling in the White House. What I wanted to decide was whether or not I was willing to follow this president into a war of choice – and I wasn’t: good intelligence or not. I had zero faith in this administration. It was hard to believe that the jingoistic remnants of September 11th were clouding our view of what the President was asking of the country. In many ways what bothered me then is what bothers Mr. Sullivan now:

The real question is: if we knew then what we know now about the caliber, ethics, competence and integrity of the president and his aides, would we have entrusted them to wage this war?

If the actual, unrigged intelligence data had been presented at the UN, if the statements of president, vice-president, defense secretary et al had been carefully parsed to ensure that we knew exactly the knowable risks of action and of inaction, then a ramped-up inspections regime might well have been preferable to war.

Would we have trusted their presentation of pre-war intelligence? And the answer to that, I venture to guess for my friend as well, is: no. If we had known that war meant sending Iraq into a vortex of uncontrollable violence…

Yes, I am glad Saddam is gone. Yes, I believe my own intentions before the war were honorable, if mistaken. Yes, I believe Hitch's were as well - and those of many others. But we were fools not to see the true nature of the people we were trusting; and too enraptured by our own sense of righteousness to realize that we could have been wrong. And wrong we were.

As for Mr. Hitchens’ assertion that some of us feel a need to crow for vindication for our opinions before war; I have no such need. All I ever wanted was for everyone to open their eyes and decide the degree of trust they held in this Administration. There’s an interesting opening essay in one of Hitchins’ books that speaks of England and Churchill in WWII – the blind admiration for a leader that may or may not have been warranted. I’ll go back and read that one tonight.

Peace.

T.