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Because: Imperialism! — Crooked Timber

4 Apr

Some very interesting comments by someone identified only as Z:

Graeber posits that actors buy T-bonds because the US has a central role in the world system and also notes that this central role is being contested; both by other industrial powers in the conventional economic sense and by a world movement in the political arena (I am not necessarily endorsing those claims, just trying to present Graeber’s thesis accurately). Confronted to these challenge to its central position, and seeing that its central position is crucial to the functioning of its economy (because it is in massive debt), the US has to maintain its predominance in one way or another. Now think about it as an economist: what is the one comparative advantage that the US has on the rest of the world? Obviously military power. So, on the short term, it might be tempting to US elites to try to organize the world around military power as a way to maintain their quite surprising position within the world economy. This, as I understand it, is Graeber’s thesis: not we buy T-bond because we fear we will be bombed but as long as the world is organized around geo-strategical lines, the US will be able to live off the rest of the world.

via Because: Imperialism! — Crooked Timber.

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Top general can’t spin Afghan failures – Afghanistan – Salon.com

27 Mar

The general’s candor sometimes belied his spin. While the Taliban has tried hard to infiltrate the Afghan forces, Allen said the insurgents accounted for less than 50 percent of “green on blue” attacks that have claimed the lives of 15 allied soldiers in the last three months. A majority of the attacks, he went on, have been perpetrated by Afghans whom he described as “self –radicalized.” He cited the influence of the viral video of U.S. soldiers urinating on dead Afghans, the burning of the Koran at a U.S. base, and “the recent events in Panjwai,” a delicate reference to the killing of 17 people by a U.S. army sergeant last week. In other words, the actions of the U.S. military are more effective than Taliban ideology in inspiring Afghans to kill Americans. This was less than reassuring.

I put that line in bold. It’s something the Ron Paul knows, and knows well. He’s the only one running for President who knows that.

via Top general can’t spin Afghan failures – Afghanistan – Salon.com.

For Lawyer in Afghan Killings, the Latest in a Series of Challenging Defenses – NYTimes.com

25 Mar

Legendary defense attorney, John Henry Browne, agrees to defend Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, charged with 17 counts of murder in Afghanistan.

“People understand that we have created these soldiers,” Mr. Browne said in an interview. “Your tax dollars, my tax dollars are funding this. We all have responsibility there. That’s why the government wants to paint him as a rogue soldier, because the government doesn’t want to take responsibility. I’m not sure if this is a good metaphor, but in the Frankenstein movies, Frankenstein was not the monster. The monster was Dr. Frankenstein, who created Frankenstein.”

“We’re putting these young men and women in impossible situations,” he continued. “I think the general public knows that, and I think this has brought to the public attention a dialogue about the war that the government would rather not have.”

via For Lawyer in Afghan Killings, the Latest in a Series of Challenging Defenses – NYTimes.com.

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Obama’s Afghanistan Disaster – James Kitfield – International – The Atlantic

23 Mar

“War is hell” is no mere clilche.

The U.S. military’s inadvertent burning of Korans in Afghanistan triggered a backlash that left almost 40 dead, including six American service members, culminating in this week’s horrific killing of 16 Afghan civilians–allegedly by a U.S. soldier. These events may or may not represent a milestone in the Afghan war. Having stared into the abyss of the recent riots over the Koran burnings, both governments have stepped back and attempted to calm matters. What already seems clear, however, is that real life is defying the Obama administration’s determined portrayal of a war that is winding down toward a negotiated settlement and a relatively smooth transition to Afghan security forces by the end of 2013.

via Obama’s Afghanistan Disaster – James Kitfield – International – The Atlantic.

Meanwhile, suicides are on the rise in the US military:

From 1977 to 2003, suicide rates in the Army closely matched the rates of suicide in the civilian population, and were even on a downward trend. But after 2004, the rates began to climb fast, outpacing the rates in civilians by 2008.

In 2007 and 2008 alone, 255 active duty soldiers committed suicide. The vast majority of the suicides since 2004 were by men; and 69 percent had seen active combat duty. Nearly half were between ages 18 and 24. And 54 percent of those who committed suicide were from among the lower ranks of enlisted personnel.

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The modern war canon – The Browser – Salon.com

13 Mar

After the  war in Vietnam we said, never again. Now we’re in Afghanistan, making the same fundamental mistake.

One of the reasons I have chosen Halberstam is because I think it applies today to what the Western powers are trying to do in Afghanistan. There are so many parallel structures – the massive application of firepower and not much understanding of the people. To the Afghans, we tend to be just another foreign invader, however well-intentioned. Which is why, like Vietnam, I think it’s an unwinnable war.

We need to get out of Afghanistan, now, and STOP trying to remake the world by war, one or two nations at a time.

via The modern war canon – The Browser – Salon.com.

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The Nuclear ‘Implementation Study’ – NYTimes.com

12 Mar

China, the only major power expanding its arsenal, likely has 240 to 300 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, but experts say no more than 50 are capable of hitting the United States. Pakistan has perhaps 90, all aimed at India; North Korea has fewer than a dozen, none with the ability to hit the United States. Iran has no weapons, so far.

Just how many does the United States need? Many experts believe the United States can easily go down to 1,000 warheads in total — deployed and stored — without jeopardizing security. We agree.

1000 down from 5000 is quite a reduction, but zero would be better.

via The Nuclear ‘Implementation Study’ – NYTimes.com.

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The Rise of the Warrior Corporation: Win or Lose on the Battlefield, Big Business Always Comes Out on Top | World | AlterNet

24 Feb

Although early drone technology was already being used over North Vietnam, it’s in another sense entirely that drones have been heading into America’s future since 1973. There was an eerie logic to it: first came professional war, then privatized war, then mercenary and outsourced war — all of which made war ever more remote from most Americans. Finally, both literally and figuratively, came remote war itself.

It couldn’t be more appropriate that the Air Force prefers you not call their latest wonder weapons “unmanned aerial vehicles,” or UAVs, anymore. They would like you to use the label “remotely piloted aircraft” (RPA) instead. And ever more remotely piloted that vehicle is to be, until — claim believers and enthusiasts — it will pilot itself, land itself, maneuver itself, and while in the air even chose its own targets.

In this sense, think of us as moving from the citizen’s army to a roboticized, and finally robot, military — to a military that is a foreign legion in the most basic sense. In other words, we are moving toward an ever greater outsourcing of war to things that cannot protest, cannot vote with their feet (or wings), and for whom there is no “home front” or even a home at all. In a sense, we are, as we have been since 1973, heading for a form of war without anyone, citizen or otherwise, in the picture — except those on the ground, enemy and civilian alike, who will die as usual.

via The Rise of the Warrior Corporation: Win or Lose on the Battlefield, Big Business Always Comes Out on Top | World | AlterNet.

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Iran Raid Seen as Complex Task for Israeli Military – NYTimes.com

20 Feb

Well, yeah, it’s a complex task of Israeli military, and for American military too. It looks like another invitation to an endless swamp if senseless destruction. And who knows what signals this article is meant to send to whom.

Earlier this month, a Bipartisan Policy Center report by Charles S. Robb, the former Democratic senator from Virginia, and Charles F. Wald, a retired Air Force general, recommended that the Obama administration sell Israel 200 enhanced GBU-31 “bunker busters” as well as three advanced refueling planes.

The two said that they were not advocating an Israeli attack, but that the munitions and aircraft were needed to improve Israel’s credibility as it threatens a strike.

via Iran Raid Seen as Complex Task for Israeli Military – NYTimes.com.

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Swords into Plowshares: The Greening of Ron Paul

14 Feb

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. — Isaiah 2:4

In his farewell address, delivered on January 17, 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about what he termed “the military-industrial complex.”

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

Yet what worried Eisenhower in 1960 is nothing to the behemoth that sprawls across the globe fifty years later and is condemning America to an unending and fiercely wasteful “war on terror.” That military industrial complex is more terrible than any group or nation the Federal Government has designated as an enemy. Indeed, we cannot help but wonder, with Ron Paul, whether or not “our current policies provide incentive for more to take up arms against us.”

Yet however much we admire Paul’s “bring the troops home” stance on defense, we can’t help be wary of his disregard for the environment, as expressed, for example, in his energy policies.

Why not take the money we save from defense/war and put it into restoring the environment and rebuilding our infrastructure? Why not train the troops in the arts, crafts, and trades of sustainable agriculture and green design, construction, and manufacture? Why not turn spears into pruning hooks?

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The neocons’ big Iran lie – Salon.com

10 Feb

It’s crazy-time for the neocons. The war in Iraq was a disaster; the war in Afghanistan still is a disaster. And now they’re after Iran. Don’t they ever learn?

“War is an evil. But sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement,” wrote historian Niall Ferguson. “It feels like the eve of some creative destruction.” Illustrating the enormous chasm between clever and smart, the Foreign Policy Initiative’s Jamie Fly and the American Enterprise Institute’s Gary Schmitt suggested that, well, if we’re going to be there anyway, we shouldn’t stop at the nuclear sites, but instead go all the way and destroy the Iranian regime. “If strikes are chosen,” they wrote, “it would be far better to put the regime at risk than to leave it wounded but still nuclear capable and ready to fight another day.” The Wall Street Journal’s Brett Stephens concurred. “Destroying Iran’s nuclear sites will be a short-lived victory if it isn’t matched to the broader goal of ending the regime,” Stephens wrote. “The ultimate remedy is Iranian regime change,” chimed in Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.

As with the calls for war against raq, what all of these pieces share is a shockingly blithe attitude toward the likely costs of such a war, and a failure to seriously grapple with the consequences.

via The neocons’ big Iran lie – Salon.com.

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