Does a Bigger Army Mean Another Iraq? - Mark Benjamin, Salon
Hillary Clinton wants 80,000 more soldiers in the Army. Republican hopeful Mitt Romney and Democrat Joe Biden are calling for 100,000 additional troops. Barack Obama thinks the military needs 92,000 more soldiers and Marines. In a speech at the Citadel this spring, Rudy Giuliani said he would add 70,000 new soldiers to the Army. John McCain seems to want 200,000 more soldiers and Marines. John Edwards has said the U.S. “might need a substantial increase of troops,” but has not given a number.
With the Army and Marine Corps stretched to a breaking point because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has become a no-brainer for the major presidential candidates to call for the biggest increase in ground forces since the 1960s. All three Democratic front-runners are either on board or open to the idea, perhaps because for Democrats in particular, it's a risk-free way to look hawkish and burnish national security credentials. "[Democrats] don't want to look weak on defense," said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Calling for more troops "is an easy signal of your bellicosity and your willingness to be serious about defense policy."
The next president, therefore, is almost certainly going to be an advocate of adding tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines. But setting aside where these fresh recruits will come from, given current recruiting woes, adding troops will have serious consequences that may not be obvious more than 13 months before the general election. And the consequences may not please antiwar Democratic primary voters. Committing to an expanded Army and Marine Corps implies spending a great deal of additional money on the military. But it also means the presidential candidates are choosing sides in an internal Pentagon dispute -- and they are choosing the side that wants a military designed to fight another war just like the unpopular war the United States has been waging in Iraq since 2003...
Lessons From an Anbar Sheik - Sterling Jensen, Washington Post
From May 2006 until May 2007, I was an interpreter for most of the meetings between U.S. government officials and Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the Sunni sheik killed by a car bomb Sept. 13 in Ramadi. I watched as Abu Risha changed over time from an unknown local tribal leader to arguably the United States' best hope in Iraq. His death was a shock to me, but it was not unexpected, given the dangers surrounding him. Unfortunately, though, Abu Risha's life and efforts are being misinterpreted by some in Washington.
Abu Risha was no ordinary sheik or ordinary man -- he was fearless, even if it meant being branded pro-American in an area that not long before had been crawling with al-Qaeda forces…
Abu Risha had hit on how we are going to win the war in Iraq. It's not about having more American troops on the ground. Success will come from supporting local leaders and their security forces…
Sycophant Savior - Andrew Bacevich, The American Conservative
In common parlance, the phrase “political general” is an epithet, the inverse of the warrior or frontline soldier. In any serious war, with big issues at stake, to assign command to a political general is to court disaster—so at least most Americans believe. But in fact, at the highest levels, successful command requires a sophisticated grasp of politics. At the summit, war and politics merge and become inextricably intertwined. A general in chief not fully attuned to the latter will not master the former.
George Washington, U.S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower were all “political generals” in the very best sense of the term. Their claims to immortality rest not on their battlefield exploits—Washington actually won few battles, and Grant achieved his victories through brute force rather than finesse, while Ike hardly qualifies as a field commander at all—but on the skill they demonstrated in translating military power into political advantage. Each of these three genuinely great soldiers possessed a sophisticated appreciation for war’s political dimension.
David Petraeus is a political general. Yet in presenting his recent assessment of the Iraq War and in describing the “way forward,” Petraeus demonstrated that he is a political general of the worst kind—one who indulges in the politics of accommodation that is Washington’s bread and butter but has thereby deferred a far more urgent political imperative, namely, bringing our military policies into harmony with our political purposes...
Not a Nation at War - Donald Horner Jr., Baltimore Sun
Recently at the Naval Academy, there has been a lot of focus on America's being "a nation at war." This emphasis is shared at the other service academies and at military training bases. Drill sergeants use the phrase "nation at war" to heighten the awareness of recruits as they go about the process of training and preparing young American servicemen and women for their shared destiny: Most will soon be in combat.T
he "nation at war" concept, however, fails to resonate or meet with much enthusiasm outside the military. That's because, upon reflection, one finds that America is not really a nation at war. Only America's military is at war. And servicemen and women know this.
The war is little more than a headline or sound bite to most Americans. It poses no inconvenience and is regarded as little more than a newsworthy nuisance to a public more interested in following the Major League Baseball pennant races or the recent arrest of O. J. Simpson. The war is background noise...
Bob Gates Victory – Michael Hirsh, Newsweek
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is, quite by choice, the anti-Rumsfeld—a man so low-key and consensus-oriented that it’s hard to find his fingerprints on any particular policy. But no one can win internal battles the way Gates has been doing in Washington lately without leaving a few traces. To scant notice in recent weeks, Gates seems to have scored a significant victory in the Bush administration’s internal fight over troop withdrawals from Iraq, and he has been perhaps the key player in quelling moves toward a military confrontation with Iran.
You may remember all the hullabaloo over Gen. David Petraeus’s report on the Iraq “surge” a couple of weeks ago. By most media accounts, he came, he testified and then he conquered Capitol Hill. Not so. In the days after the testimony, Gates appears to have won a crucial debate behind the scenes with Petraeus and administration hard-liners who were pushing to keep U.S. deployments at current or at least "pre-surge" levels for the forseeable future. The proof is that he seems to be bringing the president onto his side…
War Outsourcing Boom – Claude Salhani, Washington Times
The private armies employed by the United States as auxiliary forces in the war in Iraq have come under criticism following an incident that drew the ire of Iraq's prime minister, who demanded their immediate withdrawal.
However, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's wishes are far removed from the economic realities of the war, at least as far as the Bush administration is concerned, and the prime minister's edicts will carry little impact, if any.
If the deployment of tens of thousands of armed contract workers in Iraq may seem somewhat unethical given that they are held accountable to neither Iraqi nor U.S. laws, their involvement in the war is nevertheless a wise business decision that will save the U.S. taxpayer billions of dollars…
The Long Arm of Iran – Dan Senor, Wall Street Journal
… Iran is not the Soviet Union and the post-9/11 struggle is not the Cold War. The deterrence camp is willing to stand by as Iran develops nuclear weapons, presumably on the model that Iran will eventually collapse as the Soviet Union did. But the Argentinean case demonstrates what Tehran was willing and able to do when it had no nuclear umbrella. If, as the 9/11 Commission Report argues, the U.S. suffered from a "failure of imagination" regarding how far terrorists would go, a nuclear Iran risks encouraging the terrorist imagination to take another quantum leap…
Muzzling in the Name of Islam – Paul Marshall, Washington Post
Some of the world's most repressive governments are attempting to use a controversy over a Swedish cartoon to provide legitimacy for their suppression of their critics in the name of respect for Islam. In particular, the Organization of the Islamic Conference is seeking to rewrite international human rights standards to curtail any freedom of expression that threatens their more authoritarian members.
In August, Swedish artist Lars Vilks drew a cartoon with Mohammed's head on a dog's body. He is now in hiding after Al Qaeda in Iraq placed a bounty of $100,000 on his head (with a $50,000 bonus if his throat is slit) and police told him he was no longer safe at home. As with the 2005 Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoons, and the knighting of Salman Rushdie, Muslim ambassadors and the OIC have not only demanded an apology from the Swedes, but are also pushing Western countries to restrict press freedom in the name of preventing "insults" to Islam.
The Iranian foreign ministry protested to Sweden, while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted that "Zionists," "an organized minority who have infiltrated the world," were behind the affair. Pakistan complained and said that "the right to freedom of expression" is inconsistent with "defamation of religions and prophets." The Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs called for rules specifying new limits of press freedom…
See No Evil, Speak No Truth – New York Times editorial
After decades of brutal military rule, Myanmar’s people have taken to the streets to demand democracy, and they are being mowed down. China, India and Russia have the means — but apparently not the will — to stop Myanmar’s vicious junta from murdering more of its citizens. The three countries regularly proclaim themselves world powers, yet they refuse to accept the moral responsibility that must come with that position.
China is Myanmar’s chief trading partner and protector. Many other countries, including the United States, refuse to do business with the regime, but India and Russia are comfortably making money off the generals and helping keep them in power, with arms and energy deals. So far, they all have refused to use that leverage — a shocking demonstration of greed and political cowardice…
The Junta’s Enablers in Beijing – Boston Globe editorial
Burma’s military junta has been showing its true colors this week, firing automatic weapons at peaceful demonstrators and raiding monasteries to beat and kill Buddhist monks. But the junta's criminal disdain for human rights has also cast a harsh light on China, the principal commercial partner, strategic ally, and diplomatic protector of the junta.
While protesters were being shot in Burma, China was preventing the United Nations Security Council from considering sanctions on the killers - or even issuing a condemnation of the junta's use of lethal force. China's ambassador to the UN justified his government's stance on the grounds that the bloodletting in Burma does "not constitute a threat to international peace and security."
China used the same rationale last January, when it joined with Russia to veto a Security Council resolution that would have called on the junta to release all political prisoners, open a political dialogue with the democratic opposition, and cease its assaults on Burma's ethnic minorities…
The Power of Faith Against the Bullet – Sam Leith, London Daily Telegraph
Those monks again. The scenes we saw on the streets of Rangoon are amazingly moving, and strangely familiar.
Something old is playing out. On one side, shaved heads and ranks of red robes; on the other, frightened and angry young men in uniforms, banging their batons against their riot shields and raising their rifles. Barricades, plumes of smoke from teargas canisters. And Buddhist monks, wearing sandals, staring down the guns.
It's very moving. But more than that, it is food for thought. This - these monks staring down the guns - presents a problem for a militant secularist in the Dawkins or Hitchens mould. I don't mean that it has any bearing on the argument about whether there is or is not a God. Buddhist monks don't worship anything resembling the God on whom the Dawkins guns are trained in any case; and the fact that they stare down the guns doesn't make a difference to whether or not what they believe is true…
Our Disgraceful Refugee Score Card - Anna Husarska, Los Angeles Times
For those who help resettle refugees in this country, the big date annually is Sept. 30, the end of the federal government's fiscal year. Because refugee arrivals are allotted per fiscal year, that's when we can measure how well -- or poorly -- the administration performed in accepting refugees. This year's score card is not good; the numbers have only slowly increased after the drop in admittees since the 9/11 attacks.
Although the Bush administration set a ceiling of 70,000 total refugees for fiscal year 2007, and budgeted for them, only 41,765 had arrived by Sept. 14, and the plan is to bring in 6,000 more before Sunday's deadline.
Why such low numbers? One factor is the outrageous practice of denying admittance to bona fide refugees because of post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislation, which brands some of them as terrorists or supporters of terrorism.
The Hmong who fought under CIA command in Laos, for example, have been deemed under the post-9/11 laws as belonging to a "terrorist organization," and they and those associated with them are now denied entry to the U.S. The same applies to Montagnards from Vietnam, staunch U.S. allies. Colombians who paid ransoms to save the lives of their kidnapped loved ones are considered guilty of giving material support to terrorists and denied access...
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