Comment about veteran advocacy

I posted this as one part of a comment reacting to a neoneocon post:

Humble veterans. I don’t mind when veterans are open about their military histories. I encourage it. I just care that they’re real histories. Much of why many veterans are silent about their military histories isn’t out of intrinsic humility about their service but because, as with any esoteric field of knowledge, it’s awkward to talk about things with people who don’t understand. I’ve found that to be the case even as a peace-time veteran, and it’s more the case with war veterans. When veterans get together? Believe me, the stories come out.

I encourage veterans to be open about their service because I was a campus military advocate in college who was sensitive to the civil-military gap. I believe veterans should take it upon themselves to build a greater presence and profile in our society, so that, one, our extended military community has a greater role in mainstream culture and infuses more military-related values into general civil society, and two, so veterans’ hard-earned honor and their years given to service can be meaningfully transferred as a competitive advantage in the civilian world. As it stands, many veterans earn their honor with years of sacrifice for the greater good of country and people, only to find out that they’ve lost those years as prime career-building time in the civilian world. Veterans deserve better, and to make it better, they have to compete for it just like any other identity-based special interest in our society.

Eric

Provincial Reconstruction Team

The always-excellent Small Wars Journal has posted the link to a Princeton study about Provincial Reconstruction Teams or PRTs in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am very interested in the progress of PRTs because they represent a necessary strategic and tactical integration in peace-building, and I would like to be part of the evolution. What are PRTs?

EXCERPT:

I. Introduction

Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) are civil military organizations designed to operate in semi-permissive environments usually following open hostilities. They were designed as a transitional structure to provide improved security and to facilitate reconstruction and economic development.

While the concept of integrated civil-military units has existed since the 1990s, PRTs were first implemented by the United States in 2002 during Operation Enduring Freedom following the invasion of Afghanistan. PRTs have since become a model used in Iraq and Afghanistan by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United States, and European and other coalition members for introducing post-conflict, reconstruction, security, and development activities in areas still too hostile for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and United Nations (UN) relief agencies.

PRTs have become an integral part of peacekeeping and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they have also been criticized for their mixed effectiveness, over-emphasis on military objectives and priorities, failure to effectively coordinate and communicate with UN and NGO organizations, and differences in staffing and mission. Today, there are 50 PRTs: 25 in Afghanistan under the authority of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (NATO/ISAF), and 25 in Iraq.5 Of these, the United States leads 12 in Afghanistan and 22 in Iraq.

Read the rest of the study.

Eric

Snapshot of early challenges and our hope for Iraq

In the excellent Belmont Club, anti-war commentator desert rat referred to a wonderfully instructive snapshot from the Washington Post of the early challenges and our hope for Iraq: Occupation Forces Halt Elections Throughout Iraq by William Booth and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, June 28, 2003. (Article at commondreams.org) The article has been widely cited by anti-war people as proof that the liberal American promise for Iraq was a lie. I understood the article differently.

My reaction:

desert rat,

Thank you. That Washington Post article, in its entirety, is a highly worthwhile read as a snapshot of both the challenges we faced and the justification for our hopes at a critical early stage in the post-war. The WP piece agrees with stories told to me by a friend of mine who served in OIF I (as a soldier, not a CPA civilian). He was an EOD team leader whose jobs were the WMD hunt and destroying ammo stockpiles. He told me how local Iraqi leaders sought out any Americans in leadership positions - even him, an EOD SSG on a non-diplomatic mission - to start the process of building the post-Saddam Iraq. The problem was, while our soldiers were the only practical interface with Iraqis, it was not their job (as it is now) to manage the transition. It was the CPA's job, but they were absent on the ground.

It's terrific reporting by the WP. The Bush admin has been widely accused of being unaware of the conflictual complexities of Iraqi society. If anything, the record shows that the Bush admin was, perhaps, overly sensitive and cautious about those complexities (eg, Bremer's fear of Baathists and Sadrists filling the vacuum).

Given the internal conflicts, missing the right political structure, the Bush admin clearly didn't trust the Iraqi factions to avoid a civil war. In hindsight, perhaps we should have taken a step back from the outset, focused on security, and simply helped the Iraqis while they took the initiative in building their post-Saddam civil society. We would have needed to trust them that they could make that leap from their own history.

In any case, the WP piece captures the caution by Bremer over the complexities of Iraqi society, the desire to avoid the risks of local factions undermining national reconciliation, and the desire by Bremer for a deliberate controlled transition to a stable post-Saddam Iraq. He didn't want a nation-building project doomed to fracture due to a rushed transition cracked with instrinsic structural flaws.

Remember, we had recently watched Afghanistan and Yugoslavia fracture with bloody civil war. We didn't want that to happen in Iraq on our watch, and it was Bremer's job with the CPA to make sure it didn't happen.

The choice of Iraqi military leaders wasn't about creating a puppet government and keeping popularly elected leaders out of the political process, as was expressed by the disillusioned Iraqis in the article. Those generals were supposed to be interim managers who were trained to take orders, top-down, while the CPA organized a national political structure, according to a blueprint, that could incorporate democratically chosen leaders without the nation fracturing.

Sensitive tasks. On their face, Bremer's decisions made sense. In a more 'laboratory' setting, if Bremer had fewer variables, fewer destructive agents, more time, and better constructive agents, he maybe could have done his job.

Unfortunately, we know what happened. Bremer failed. He could not implement his blueprint for post-Saddam transition in Iraq in the deliberate controlled fashion he - and most of us - wanted.

The WP piece backs up my ex-EOD friend's experience that Iraqis did, in fact, trust Americans and were willing to work with us in the early post-war. Clearly, however, that trust was (understandably) conditional and it had its limits. The enemy successfully moved to exploit those limits at the same time Bremer and the CPA, while well-intentioned, were insufficiently competent to accomplish their mission.

Some say that the Iraqis had to go through the bloody turmoil of the last 5 years, a cruel learning curve, to arrive at where they are today. I can't be certain that view is wrong, but I disagree. I believe if GEN Petraeus and his COIN warriors had been in charge in Iraq immediately in the post-war, we would have a far different story in Iraq today.

As is, the Iraqis gave us a real chance to fulfill the American promise in 2003, and we failed them then. If they've given us another chance, I hope we don't fail the Iraqi people again.

Thanks, desert rat.

Eric

Cool website of the day: choose your candidate with Glassbooth Election 2008

Check out the Glassbooth Election 2008 website, which "connects you to the 2008 presidential candidate that represents your beliefs the best" using an interactive poll. It's not a deep study of the candidates and it's not meant to be, but it's definitely a user-friendly broad introduction to the candidates. I like how it asks you to tailor your priorities as a voter and then adjusts its questions accordingly. My strongest priority, is of course, the Long War and foreign policy.

I took the poll three times while tweaking my priorities, and interestingly, I matched up best with Mike Huckabee the first two times when I mixed domestic and foreign policy issues, which surprised me since I only know him through the media as an evangelical and I'm not religious (though I am a progressive, which is related). Second and third place flip-flopped between John McCain and Barack Obama. The third time, when my only priority was Iraq and foreign policy, John McCain was the runaway favorite with Huckabee 2nd and Obama 3rd. Basically, I'm liberal (foreign aid and humanitarian missions, diplomatic relations) and hawkish (win the war!) on foreign affairs and liberal (healthcare, unions, education, etc) in domestic politics.

I'll probably tweak my priorities some more and make a few more runs in the glassbooth. I'd love to try out similar websites if they're out there.

Thanks to tdaxp for the tip.

Update: In the comments of tdaxp's post, there's a referral to another candidate-matching website: selectsmart.com. In it, of the candidates still running, Obama (3rd) and Clinton (4th) tied for the lead as 'my' candidate , while McCain (6th) was slightly behind. In contrast to glassbooth, Mike Huckabee was a distant 14th. My guess is that the discrepancy stems from the simplified priority adjustor that fails to account for how much I'm weighting my foreign policy beliefs over my domestic beliefs in the 2008 election.

Eric

President Kennedy's Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs

President Kennedy was only President from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. His main accomplishment in that short time was to set a firm direction for the young liberal superpower with eloquently and powerfully stated ideals and ideas.

Where his inaugural speech laid a foundation of American ideals, President Kennedy's Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs on May 25, 1961 built upon that foundation a set of clear goals and ideas. Most striking is Kennedy's grasp of the evolving nature of geo-politics and warfare, the kind of military we need, the challenges they face, and the kind of missions they need to perform.

Since we are in the midst of the type of war for which Kennedy sought to prepare our nation, pay special attention to that part of his speech. I won't excerpt from it because the entire speech is worth reading, most of all for any American politician who fancies himself or herself a successor of JFK and a champion of his legacy. Anytime you forget what it means to be a liberal, go back to your John Kennedy and refresh yourself.

Eric

Young veterans need to become a social movement

I feel very strongly about building the product and brand of 'veteran' in American society moving forward. I spent much of my college career focused on that goal. With that idea, I responded to a comment by Tigerhawk in his post "American soldiers then and now":

Tigerhawk: "Moreover, I think the Iraq veterans, as a generation, will have a very different influence over American institutions, political and otherwise, than the Vietnam generation did."

I hope that's true. However, the numbers gap and the civil-military gap argue against that happening. With numbers, such a relatively small number of the current young generation will have served, in peace- or war-time. Even fewer from the educated middle and upper classes that produce most of our civil leaders will have served. I doubt that by themselves, young veterans will be able to form a critical mass to be influential. More likely, young veterans will be forced to put away their hard-earned military heritage and assimilate into, rather than transform, civil society.

The civil-military gap further and dramatically diminishes the value of military experience in the young generation. For many young Americans - or Americans period - military service is at best an alien concept outside of their understanding, and at worst, they believe the negative stereotypes. Praise for the military is often cliched, thoughtless lip service. After all, the bestowed honor of military service derives from the deep appreciation of selfless service, sacrifice, and duty, yet those civic values have not been emphasized in our society, even after 9/11. Formative pop culture and many young people don't view the Long War as a noble cause, rather the opposite. Without that counter-balance of popular honor, the more-tangible consequences of military service, eg, life-long physical and mental injuries, deaths, reluctant participation in a frightening war, and highly visible loss of life, career, and academic opportunities are more tangible proof of the negative value of military service to the young generation . . . in other words, the civil-military gap.

With that said, I *very much* want the veterans of the current young generation to be and act proud of their military heritage and the honor they have earned. They did the harder right instead of the easier wrong and deserve to be rewarded. More importantly, their achievements ought to be set as the social standard for future generations. I want their service to translate as a positive influence in their lives and for society as a whole, with tangible benefits everyone can understand. I want the veterans' life-long civilian generational peers to come to wish, with regret, that they had volunteered to serve in the military, too. With the numbers and civil-military gaps, though, I just don't believe that phenomenon is going to happen by itself.

Moving forward, young veterans - if they want their military service to be valued and beneficial in their lives - need to take it upon themselves to build upon their military heritage in civil society rather than put it away.

We need many more visible, active, and attractive groups like the US Military Veterans of Columbia University (military veterans who are students at Columbia U.) and Hamilton Society (Columbia U.'s ROTC cadets and USMC officer candidates group) sprouting at grass roots in esteemed corners of civil society.

Young veterans need to make 'veteran' a dynamic, powerful product and - even more importantly - build a positive, attractive marketing brand for 'veteran' in civil society. This can only work as a growing movement; if more young veterans opt to sell out (and wholy assimilate) to the civil-military gap rather than buy into (and build the 'veteran' brand in) a veterans' movement, no one will make this social change happen for them.

Of course, any help from civilian supporters and members of older American generations would be helpful and appreciated. :)

Eric

Revisiting Tom Junod's "The Case for George W. Bush, i.e., what if he's right?"

"... war is undertaken at the risk of the national soul. The moral certainty that makes war possible is certain only to unleash moral havoc, and moral havoc becomes something the nation has to rise above. We can neither win a war nor save the national soul if all we seek is to remain unsullied—pristine. Anyway, we are well beyond that now. The question is not, and has never been, whether we can fight a war without perpetrating outrages of our own. The question is whether the rightness of the American cause is sufficient not only to justify war but to withstand war's inevitable outrages. The question is whether—if the cause is right—we are strong enough to make it remain right in the foggy moral battleground of war." - Tom Junod

I believe Barack Obama could be exactly the charismatic, thoughtful, liberal President I want to succeed President Bush in the War on Terror. However, I've been badly shaken since 9/11 as many of our most important (self-identified) liberal leaders have betrayed core American liberal principles for parochial political gain. I fear the anti-war leftists who seemingly dominate the Democratic party, but I also hope a Democrat President can break their hold by adopting, like FDR, the Wilsonian mantle of liberal war-time American President.

The Case for George W. Bush i.e., what if he's right? by Tom Junod, originally published in the August 2004 Esquire, is a terrific essay on why liberals should support President Bush's strategy in the War on Terror:

It happened again this morning. I saw a picture of our president—my president—and my feelings about him were instantly rekindled. The picture was taken after his speech to the graduating seniors at the Air Force Academy. He was wearing a dark suit, a light-blue tie, and a white shirt. His unsmiling visage was grim and purposeful, in pointed contrast to the face of the elaborately uniformed cadet standing next to him, which was lit up with a cocky grin. Indeed, as something more than a frozen moment—as a political statement—the picture might have served, and been intended to serve, as a tableau of the resolve necessary to lift this nation out of this steep and terrible time. The cadet represented the best of what America has to offer, all devil-may-care enthusiasm and willingness to serve. The president, his hair starting to whiten, might have represented something even more essential: the kind of brave and, in his case, literally unblinking leadership that generates enough moral capital to summon the young to war. Although one man was essentially being asked to stake his life on the wisdom of the other, both were melded in an attitude of common purpose, and so both struck a common pose. With the cadet bent slightly forward and the commander in chief leaning slightly back, each man cocked his right arm and made a muscle. They flexed! I didn't know anything about the cadet. About President George W. Bush, though, I felt the satisfaction of absolute certainty, and so uttered the words as essential to my morning as my cup of Kenyan and my dose of high-minded outrage on the editorial page of the Times : "What an asshole."

Ah. That feels better. George W. Bush is an asshole, isn't he? Moreover, he's the first president who seems merely that, at least in my lifetime. From Kennedy to Clinton, there is not a single president who would have been capable of striking such a pose after concluding a speech about a war in which hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis are being killed. There is not a single president for whom such a pose would seem entirely characteristic—not a single president who might be tempted to confuse a beefcakey photo opportunity with an expression of national purpose. He has always struck me as a small man, or at least as a man too small for the task at hand, and therefore a man doomed to address the discrepancy between his soul and his situation with displays of political muscle that succeed only in drawing attention to his diminution. He not only has led us into war, he seems to get off on war, and it's the greedy pleasure he so clearly gets from flexing his biceps or from squaring his shoulders and setting his jaw or from landing a plane on an aircraft carrier—the greedy pleasure the war president finds in playacting his own attitudes of belligerence—that permitted me the greedy pleasure of hating him.

Then I read the text of the speech he gave and was thrown from one kind of certainty—the comfortable kind—into another. He was speaking, as he always does, of the moral underpinnings of our mission in Iraq. He was comparing, as he always does, the challenge that we face, in the evil of global terrorism, to the challenge our fathers and grandfathers faced, in the evil of fascism. He was insisting, as he always does, that the evil of global terrorism is exactly that, an evil—one of almost transcendent dimension that quite simply must be met, lest we be remembered for not meeting it . . . lest we allow it to be our judge. I agreed with most of what he said, as I often do when he's defining matters of principle. No, more than that, I thought that he was defining principles that desperately needed defining, with a clarity that those of my own political stripe demonstrate only when they're decrying either his policies or his character. He was making a moral proposition upon which he was basing his entire presidency—or said he was basing his entire presidency—and I found myself in the strange position of buying into the proposition without buying into the presidency, of buying into the words while rejecting, utterly, the man who spoke them. There is, of course, an easy answer for this seeming moral schizophrenia: the distance between the principles and the policy, between the mission and "Mission Accomplished," between the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Still, I have to admit to feeling a little uncertain of my disdain for this president when forced to contemplate the principle that might animate his determination to stay the course in a war that very well may be the end of him politically. I have to admit that when I listen to him speak, with his unbending certainty, I sometimes hear an echo of the same nagging question I ask myself after I hear a preacher declaim the agonies of hellfire or an insurance agent enumerate the cold odds of the actuarial tables. Namely: What if he's right?

As easy as it is to say that we can't abide the president because of the gulf between what he espouses and what he actually does , what haunts me is the possibility that we can't abide him because of us—because of the gulf between his will and our willingness. What haunts me is the possibility that we have become so accustomed to ambiguity and inaction in the face of evil that we find his call for decisive action an insult to our sense of nuance and proportion.

The people who dislike George W. Bush have convinced themselves that opposition to his presidency is the most compelling moral issue of the day. Well, it's not. The most compelling moral issue of the day is exactly what he says it is, when he's not saying it's gay marriage. The reason he will be difficult to unseat in November—no matter what his approval ratings are in the summer—is that his opponents operate out of the moral certainty that he is the bad guy and needs to be replaced, while he operates out of the moral certainty that terrorists are the bad guys and need to be defeated. The first will always sound merely convenient when compared with the second. Worse, the gulf between the two kinds of certainty lends credence to the conservative notion that liberals have settled for the conviction that Bush is distasteful as a substitute for conviction—because it's easier than conviction.


IN 1861, AFTER CONFEDERATE FORCES shelled Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus from Philadelphia to Washington and thereby made the arrest of American citizens a matter of military or executive say-so. When the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court objected to the arrest of a Maryland man who trained troops for Confederate muster, Lincoln essentially ignored his ruling. He argued that there was no point fixating on one clause in the Constitution when Southern secession had shredded the whole document, and asked, "Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" During the four-year course of the Civil War, he also selectively abridged the rights of free speech, jury trial, and private property.

Not that the war went well: His army was in the habit of losing long before it learned to win, and Lincoln did not find a general to his liking until he found Ulysses S. Grant, whose idea of war was total. He financed the bloodbath by exposing the nation to ruinous debt and taxation, and by 1864 he had to contend with an antiwar challenge from Democrats and a political challenge from a member of his own Cabinet. On August 23, 1864, he was motivated to write in a memorandum that "it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be reelected," and yet his position on peace never wavered: He rejected any terms but the restoration of the union and the abolition of slavery. The war was, from first to last, portrayed as his war, and after he won landslide reelection, he made a vow not only to stay the course but to prosecute it to the brink of catastrophe and beyond: "Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.' "

Today, of course, those words, along with Lincoln's appeal to the better angels of our nature, are chiseled into the wall of his memorial, on the Mall in Washington. And yet if George Bush were to speak anything like them today, we would accuse him of pandering to his evangelical base. We would accuse him of invoking divine authority for a war of his choosing, and Maureen Dowd would find a way to read his text in light of the cancellation of some Buffy spin-off. Believe me: I am not comparing George W. Bush to Abraham Lincoln. The latter was his own lawyer as well as his own writer, and he was alive to the possibilities of tragedy and comedy—he was human —in a way that our president doesn't seem to be. Neither am I looking to justify Bush's forays into shady constitutional ground by invoking Lincoln's precedents with the same; I'm not a lawyer. I am, however, asking if the crisis currently facing the country—the crisis, that is, that announced itself on the morning of September 11, 2001, in New York and Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia—is as compelling a justification for the havoc and sacrifice of war as the crisis that became irrevocable on April 12, 1861, in South Carolina, or, for that matter, the crisis that emerged from the blue Hawaiian sky on December 7, 1941. I, for one, believe it is and feel somewhat ashamed having to say so: having to aver that 9/11/01 was a horror sufficient to supply Bush with a genuine moral cause rather than, as some would have it, a mere excuse for his adventurism.

We were attacked three years ago, without warning or predicate event. The attack was not a gesture of heroic resistance nor the offshoot of some bright utopian resolve, but the very flower of a movement that delights in the potential for martyrdom expressed in the squalls of the newly born. It is a movement that is about death—that honors death, that loves death, that fetishizes death, that worships death, that seeks to accomplish death wherever it can, on a scale both intimate and global—and if it does not warrant the expenditure of what the self-important have taken to calling "blood and treasure," then what does? Slavery? Fascism? Genocide? Let's not flatter ourselves: If we do not find it within ourselves to identify the terrorism inspired by radical Islam as an unequivocal evil—and to pronounce ourselves morally superior to it—then we have lost the ability to identify any evil at all, and our democracy is not only diminished, it dissolves into the meaninglessness of privilege.


YEAH, YEAH, I KNOW: Nobody who opposes Bush thinks that terrorism is a good thing. The issue is not whether the United States should be involved in a war on terrorism but rather whether the war on terrorism is best served by war in Iraq. And now that the war has defied the optimism of its advocates, the issue is no longer Bush's moral intention but rather his simple competence. He got us in when he had no idea how to get us out. He allowed himself to be blinded by ideology and blindsided by ideologues. His arrogance led him to offend the very allies whose participation would have enabled us to win not just the war but the peace. His obsession with Saddam Hussein led him to rush into a war that was unnecessary. Sure, Saddam was a bad guy. Sure, the world is a better place without him. But . . .

And there it is: the inevitable but . Trailed by its uncomfortable ellipsis, it sits squirming at the end of the argument against George Bush for very good reason: It can't possibly sit at the beginning. Bush haters have to back into it because there's nothing beyond it. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, but . . . but what ? But he wasn't so bad that we had to do anything about him? But he wasn't so bad that he was worth the shedding of American blood? But there are other dictators just as bad whom we leave in place? But he provided Bush the opportunity to establish the doctrine of preemptive war, in which case the cure is worse than the disease? But we should have secured Afghanistan before invading Iraq? But we should have secured the cooperation of allies who were no more inclined to depose Saddam than they—or we, as head of an international coalition of the unwilling—were to stop the genocide in Rwanda ten years before? Sure, genocide is bad, but . . .

We might as well credit the president for his one great accomplishment: replacing but with and as a basis for foreign policy. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, and we got rid of him. And unless we have become so wedded to the politics of regret that we are obligated to indulge in a perverse kind of nostalgia for the days of Uday and Qusay, we have to admit that it's hard to imagine a world with Saddam still in it. And even before the first stem-winder of the Democratic convention, the possibility of even limited success in Iraq has reduced the loyal opposition to two strategies: either signing up for the oversight role they had envisioned for the UN, or else declaring the whole thing a lost cause, in their own war of preemption.

Of course, Iraq might be a lost cause. It might be a disaster unmitigated and unprecedented. But if we permit ourselves to look at it the way the Republicans look at it—as a historical cause rather than just a cause assumed to be lost—we might be persuaded to see that it's history's judgment that matters, not ours. The United States, at this writing, has been in Iraq fifteen months. At the same point in the Civil War, Lincoln faced, well, a disaster unmitigated and unprecedented. He was losing . He didn't lose, at least in part because he was able to both inspire and draw on the kind of moral absolutism necessary to win wars. Bush has been unable to do the same, at least in part because he is undercut by evidence of his own dishonesty, but also because moral absolutism is nearly impossible to sustain in the glare of a twenty-four-hour news cycle. In a nation incapable of feeling any but the freshest wounds, Bush cannot seek to inspire moral absolutism without his moral absolutism becoming itself an issue—indeed, the issue. He cannot seek to engender certainty without being accused of sowing disarray. And he cannot speak the barest terms necessary for victory in any war—that we will stay the course, through good or through ill, because our cause is right and just, and God is on our side—without inspiring a goodly number of his constituents to aspire to the moral prestige of surrender.

THERE IS SUPPOSED TO BE a straight line between Bush's moral absolutism—between his penchant for calling our enemies "evildoers" or even, well, "enemies"—and Guantánamo, and then between Guantánamo and the case of Jose Padilla, and then between Padilla and the depravities of Abu Ghraib. More than a mere demonstration of cause and effect, the line is supposed by those opposed to a second Bush presidency to function as a geometric proof of the proposition that the American position in Iraq is not only untenable but ignoble. It's supposed to prove that victory in any such enterprise is not worth the taint and that withdrawal is tantamount to victory, because it will save the national soul. In fact, it proves something quite different: It proves that just as the existence of the animal-rights movement is said to depend on the increasing American distance from the realities of the farm, the liberal consensus on the war in Iraq depends on the increasing American distance from the realities of soldiering. All Abu Ghraib proves is what Lincoln made clear in his writings, and what any soldier has to know from the moment he sizes up another soldier in the sight of his rifle: that war is undertaken at the risk of the national soul. The moral certainty that makes war possible is certain only to unleash moral havoc, and moral havoc becomes something the nation has to rise above. We can neither win a war nor save the national soul if all we seek is to remain unsullied—pristine. Anyway, we are well beyond that now. The question is not, and has never been, whether we can fight a war without perpetrating outrages of our own. The question is whether the rightness of the American cause is sufficient not only to justify war but to withstand war's inevitable outrages. The question is whether—if the cause is right—we are strong enough to make it remain right in the foggy moral battleground of war.

In 1861, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and historians today applaud the restraint he displayed in throwing thousands of American citizens in jail. By the middle of 2002, George W. Bush had declared two American citizens enemy combatants, and both men are still in jail at this writing, uncharged. Both presidents used war as a rationale for their actions, citing as their primary constitutional responsibility the protection of the American people. It was not until two years later that Congress took up Lincoln's action and pronounced it constitutionally justified. Our willingness to extend Bush the same latitude will depend on our perception of what exactly we're up against, post-9/11. Lincoln was fighting for the very soul of this country; he was fighting to preserve this country, as a country, and so he had to challenge the Constitution in order to save it. Bush seems to think that he's fighting for the very soul of this country, but that's exactly what many people regard as a dangerous presumption. He seems to think that he is fighting for our very survival, when all we're asking him to fight for is our security, which is a very different thing. A fight for our security? We can handle that; it means we have to get to the airport early. A fight for our survival? That means we have to live in a different country altogether. That means the United States is changing and will continue to change, the way it did during and after the Civil War, with a fundamental redefinition of executive authority. That means we have to endure the constitutional indignity of the president's declaring Jose Padilla an enemy combatant for contemplating the still-uncommitted crime of blowing up a radioactive device in an American city, which seems a constitutional indignity too great to endure, unless we think of the constitutional indignities we'd have to endure if Padilla had actually committed the crime he's accused of planning. Unless we think of how this country might change if we get hit again, and hit big. In defending his suspension of habeas corpus, Lincoln sought to draw the distinction between liberties that are absolute and those that are sustainable in time of war. Bush seems to be relying on the same question, and the same distinction, as an answer to all the lawyers and editorial writers who suggest that if Jose Padilla stays in jail, we are losing the war on terror by abrogating our own ideals.

Losing the war on terror? The terrible truth is that we haven't begun to find out what that really means.


I WILL NEVER FORGET the sickly smile that crossed the president's face when he asked us all to go shopping in the wake of 9/11. It was desperate and a little craven, and I never forgave him for it. As it turned out, though, his appeal succeeded all too well. We've found the courage to go shopping. We've welcomed the restoration of the rule of celebrity. For all our avowals that nothing would ever be the same, the only thing that really changed is our taste in entertainment, which has forsaken the frivolity of the sitcom for the grit on display in The Apprentice . The immediacy of the threat was replaced by the inexplicability of the threat level. A universal war—the war on terror—was succeeded by a narrow one, an elective one, a personal one, in Iraq. Eventually, the president made it easy to believe that the threat from within was as great as the threat from without. That those at home who declared American moral primacy were as dangerous as those abroad who declared our moral degeneracy. That our national security was not worth the risk to our soul. That Abu Ghraib disproved the rightness of our cause and so represented the symbolic end of the war that began on 9/11. And that the very worst thing that could happen to this country would be four more years of George W. Bush. In a nation that loves fairy tales, the president seemed so damned eager to cry wolf that we decided he was just trying to keep us scared and that maybe he was just as big a villain as the wolf he insisted on telling us about. That's the whole point of the story, isn't it? The boy cries wolf for his own ends, and after a while people stop believing in the reality of the threat.

I know how this story ends, because I've told it many times myself. I've told it so many times, in fact, that I'm always surprised when the wolf turns out to be real, and shows up hungry at the door, long after the boy is gone.

Barack Obama is Jerry McGuire

Senator Obama definitely owns desirable Presidential qualities, and his symbolic value as a black, multiethnic, cosmopolitan American is simply right for this time in our history. However, he is inexperienced, at this point in his career much more wonderful potential (a label with which I have bitter-sweet familiarity) than proven choice for the most important office of our nation.

In the upcoming Presidential election, as I have been since 9/11, I'm a one-issue voter: American leadership of the Long War. I believe Senator Obama has the right stuff to be the Wilsonian progressive liberal leader we need for the Long War, but I don't know if he is ready or even willing to be that leader (yet). I led with the Jerry McGuire analogy when I wrote this comment in response to a Baldilocks post:

Replace "love" with "I want to support" and I feel about Senator Obama how Dorothy Boyd felt about Jerry McGuire: "I love him for the man he wants to be. And I love him for the man he almost is."

A big part of me *very much* wants to support Barack Obama for President . . . except the overriding issue for me is American leadership for the Long War, and Obama scares me on that front. At best, Obama remind me of John Kerry in 2004 claiming, literally in the space of seconds, that he is both anti-war and a better choice than President Bush to lead in war.

My first impulse was to convince myself that, as a principled liberal, Obama, despite his inexperience, has all the necessary qualities to rise to the challenge and take ownership of the liberal strategy the Bush admin has chosen in the War on Terror:

[quoting myself from Jan 7] "I like that Obama is black, and better, multicultural and cosmopolitan, relatively young, which is to say, he's post-Baby Boom, Civil Rights campaign and Vietnam War, and a pragmatic progressive idealist. Obama is inexperienced, but he has the right stuff to rise quickly and well to the challenge. It doesn't hurt at all that he's a fellow Columbian. I also believe, despite the boilerplate (and infuriating) anti-war rhetoric - required of all Democrats - he espouses, that Obama would not do anything rash and irresponsible about Iraq, such as precipitous withdrawal. Obama's mantra is the Kennedy-esque, "Let's go change the world". Does that sound like someone who would so seriously undermine America's power to effect change and abdicate our nation's leadership and moral responsibilities by surrendering in Iraq? Like me, Obama has a desire to use American primacy and power to make a progressive difference in the world, which cannot work by subordinating American will to other nations. In that way, he's not unlike the post-9/11 liberal-convert George Bush. We are in the midst of a generational challenge, a multi-faceted global revolution and competition, and I believe Obama has a clearer perspective without the deficiencies and historical baggage of the Baby Boomer generation. He's not trapped in the Cold War. Once Obama is actually in position to decide Operation Iraqi Freedom, he's not going to pull us out of Iraq, or the Long War, in a manner that would cause harm to his greater idealistic mandate. He wants to change the world for the better as President, and retreat and surrender in Iraq by his orders would collapse his goals from the outset. No matter the controversial start to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the stakes in Iraq now are world-changing. Once we are clear of the baggage of President Bush, who did what needed to be done, if not always done well, the next President will be able to clarify those stakes. A charismatic and articulate progressive liberal like Obama, as opposed to the frustratingly inarticulate liberal-convert Bush, will have the opportunity to highlight the progressive nature of our Iraq mission for the American and global audiences as well as warn of the long-term harm to the liberal world order that would result from our failure there."

At some point, though, I have to weigh Obama's stated positions versus the man I wish Obama to be as a war-time leader. When Moveon.org endorsed Obama, I was - with much regret - compelled to shift my support away from him.

[Quoting myself from Feb 2] "A big part of me thinks of Obama as the President I badly want - charismatic, principled and decent, serious, post-Baby Boom, multiethnic and multicultural, cosmopolitan, idealistic and progressive in the Kennedy sense. Also, he's a fellow Columbia grad. Remove the Long War from the equation, and he'd have my full support. However, the fact remains that the issue that matters the most to me is that we win the peace in the Long War. Obama's pandering to the anti-war Left deeply disturbs me."

I still believe Barack Obama would be the best choice we have to be our President in the Long War . . . if only Obama believed it himself. For now, because of the one issue, John McCain has my support because he holds the most sensible position on the Long War. I still want to support Obama, and if Obama can convince me that he is ready to become the liberal champion of a liberal war, then I can see myself supporting him again.

Eric

Again with realists and Iraq

I chimed in on a neoneocon post about Barack Obama. Regarding the Iraq mission, Obama strikes me as a more-palateable redux of John Kerry in 2004 in that he holds promise for both Iraq mission supporters and opponents.

From the comments thread:

harry McHitlerburtonstein the Extremist Says:

February 13th, 2008 at 1:23 am
Eric ****:
“The various anti-war factions, from the incredibly harmful right-wing realist camp to the isolationists to the leftists, are illiberal. “

Thats interesting. Which faction are the “harmful right-wing realist camp”? Are you talking about those conservatives too anti-McCain to either vote for him or vote against him? Im not sure what you meant there. Other than that, the only truly anti-war Republican Im aware of is Ron Paul camp, and he strikes me more libertarian than right wing.

My response [with some copy editing]:

Eric **** Says:

February 13th, 2008 at 10:15 am
harry McHitlerburtonstein the Extremist:

President Bush, 2004: “Some who call themselves “realists” question whether the spread of democracy in the Middle East should be any concern of ours. But the realists in this case have lost contact with a fundamental reality. America has always been less secure when freedom is in retreat. America is always more secure when freedom is on the march.”

Google ‘realist Iraq’ or a similar variation, and you will find many articles by the top proponents of realism explaining their opposition to our Iraq mission. They have been prolific in their opposition of the mission since the first day the Bush admin made it a prospect. Indeed, it would almost seem that the vindication of their fundamental beliefs as relevant in the 21st century, ie, after the Cold War in which they made their mark, relies upon a defining failure of liberalism in Iraq. It’s been a symbiotic relationship between right-wing realists and radical anti-war protestors. You find few realists stridently protesting the Long War with guerilla theatrics, but their opposition has provided much of the substantive material and legitimacy for the anti-war movement, which in turn, has obliged the realists by applying theory to practical use. Why? Due to their Cold War legacy, realists are highly respected and entrenched authorities in the academic, military, and political (foreign policy) establishments. For its part, the anti-war movement is highly adaptable, because while most of it is ostensibly leftist, it is able to freely adopt and sample the right-wing realist opposition to the Iraq mission. Doing so is not a contradiction for them. The “anti-” of the anti-war movement means their standard of judgement is less about upholding an affirmative belief than whether something can be practically used to attack our nation’s strategy or more specifically target the Republican party or this Bush administration. As such, the realists have been eminently useful in fueling the anti-war movement.

In sum, the realists oppose the Iraq mission because it has been shaped as a Wilsonian progressive liberal mission. Much of the prevailing anti-war argument against the Iraq mission as a (liberal) “fool’s errand" is realist-based. However, Barack Obama presents himself as an enthusiastic, even aggressive, Wilsonian progressive liberal who wants the US to be a proactive, leading liberal change-agent in the world. So, how can Obama’s classically liberal principles square with his professed allegiance to the illiberal anti-war movement? Well, the hope - my hope - is that those principles cause him to be the enthusiastically liberal CinC upholding the Iraq mission that we’ve needed all along. Or, he could be anti-war. Much like John Kerry in 2004, Obama holds forth both promises.

BTW, I had close access to realist thinking as a recent Poli Sci/IR grad from Columbia University, where the realist school is dominant. As a campus activist, I also had close observations of the anti-war movement.

Eric

Funny parodies of Hitler reacting to Giants play-off wins

Preface: Over a 6-week period, from the highly competitive Week 17 loss to the then-undefeated Patriots, to play-off victories over the Bucs, heavily favored Cowboys, and Packers in sub-zero cold, culminating in the championship victory over the still-undefeated Patriots, the 2007-2008 play-off run to the championship by the Giants is just the latest example of why the post-season in professional sports is - potentially - the best entertainment around. When everything falls into place, the sheer quality of the drama is unsurpassed. The intensity, passion, expertise, preparation, and skill by individuals and teams are of the highest calibre. The story is not already decided when the play begins. No matter the reputations, expert predictions and analysis, truth is determined on the field. The outcome is decided in the arena and it is honest. Because the Patriots were a team on the verge of historic magnitude, the victory by the upstart Giants became such a special story.

These clips, based on the same scene from the 2004 movie Downfall, were posted on-line after the wins over the Cowboys and Patriots. The sound of the German language combined with the expository bursts of anger and pathos by the Hitler character are perfect for comedic parody. (Warning: the parodies really only work if you don't understand German.) Enjoy!

Hitler reacts to the Cowboys loss to the Giants:



Hitler reacts to the Patriots loss to Giants:



2nd Hitler reaction to the Patriots loss to Giants:



Eric

Shout-out to ESPN columnists Gregg Easterbrook and Bill Simmons

As a regular ESPN.com reader, I've been a fan of Bill Simmons' Sports Guy column for a few years now, although I think he's become stretched thin and uncomfortably close to formulaic of late. In that vein of accessible, iconoclastic, incisive, and insightful writing, I just read my first Gregg Easterbrook TMQ column on ESPN.com. Simmons is more witty, a sports pop culture magnate. Easterbrook is a heavier intellect. Check them both out.

Eric

Army NY Times: After Hard-Won Lessons, Army Doctrine Revised

Here is the link to the Small Wars Journal post - the link to the New York Times' Michael Gordon article is embedded in the SWJ post.

EXCERPT:

The Army has drafted a new operations manual that elevates the mission of stabilizing war-torn nations, making it equal in importance to defeating adversaries on the battlefield.

I really need to become part of this (military) peace-building evolution. I just hope the next President doesn't cave into realist, isolationist, and/or leftist pressure and drop the opportunity before we complete the transformation.

Eric

Hilarious: "The Farmer's Daughter"

Just really funny . . .



Eric

Democrats say they will enforce Solomon Amendment

See Democrats Say They'll Enforce Solomon Amendment.

EXCERPT:

Asked by moderator Tim Russert if they would “vigorously enforce” the law, known as the Solomon Amendment, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina all answered yes.

I say this not as a slight of Democrats, although we petitioned Democrats like Hillary Clinton without a positive response, but as a leader of a ROTC movement that was refused help from any mainstream politician: I'll believe it when I see it. Still, at least it's encouraging movement in the right direction.

Thanks to Instapundit.com.

Eric

USMC officer selection office in Berkeley attacked with city council's blessing

The Berkeley City Council has officially condemned the presence of a USMC officer selection office located at 64 Shattuck Square in Berkeley, California, which handles officer selection for area colleges, like UC Berkeley next door, rather than enlisted recruiting. During the ROTC movement at Columbia, I experienced first-hand the same hate-filled arguments and radical activist fervor now being directed against the Marines office in Berkeley. It is from that experience that I say the Marines must stay, even if before they were considering leaving. If they surrender their ground, the same forces that pushed them out will keep the military out, which I learned from our failure in the ROTC campaign. I hope the protests make the Marines even more adamant about staying at that location, and I hope our other branches join them by opening recruiting offices in Berkeley.

Marine officers are a different breed, anyway. Getting to know Marines as I have since I started MilVets at Columbia, I suspect many Marines privately believe that any young man or woman who is deterred by the protests from joining the Corps wasn't worthy to pin on the hallowed Eagle, Globe, and Anchor to begin with.

Here is the open letter from the station's officer-in-charge, Marine Captain Richard Lund, to the anti-military protestors:

Commentary: An Open Letter to Code Pink
By Richard Lund

While the protest that you staged in front of my office on Wednesday, Sept. 26th, was an exercise of your constitutional rights, the messages that you left behind were insulting, untrue, and ultimately misdirected. Additionally, from the comments quoted in the Berkeley Daily Planet article, it is clear that you have no idea what it is that I do here. Given that I was unaware of your planned protest, I was unable to contest your claims in person, so I will therefore address them here.

First, a little bit about who I am: I am a Marine captain with over eight years of service as a commissioned officer. I flew transport helicopters for most of my time in the Marine Corps before requesting orders to come here. Currently, I am the officer selection officer for the northern Bay Area. My job is to recruit, interview, screen, and evaluate college students and college graduates that show an interest in becoming officers in the Marine Corps. Once they’ve committed to pursuing this program, I help them apply, and if selected, I help them prepare for the rigors of Officer Candidate School and for the challenges of life as a Marine officer. To be eligible for my programs, you have to be either a full-time college student or a college graduate. I don’t pull anyone out of school, and high school students are not eligible.

I moved my office to Berkeley in December of last year. Previously, it was located in an old federal building in Alameda. That building was due to be torn down and I had to find a new location. I choose our new site because of its proximity to UC Berkeley and to the BART station. Most of the candidates in my program either go to Cal or to one of the schools in San Francisco, the East Bay, or the North Bay. Logistically, the Shattuck Square location was the most convenient for them.

Next, you claim that I lie. I have never, and will never, lie to any individual that shows an interest in my programs. I am upfront with everything that is involved at every step of the way and I go out of my way to ensure that they know what to expect when they apply. I tell them that this is not an easy path. I tell them that leading Marines requires a great deal of self-sacrifice. I tell them that, should they succeed in their quest to become a Marine officer, they will almost certainly go to Iraq. In the future, if you plan to attack my integrity, please have the courtesy to explain to me specifically the instances in which you think that I lied.

Next, scrawled across the doorway to my office, you wrote, “Recruiters are Traitors.” Please explain this one. How exactly am I a traitor? Was I a traitor when I joined the Marine Corps all those years ago? Is every Marine, therefore, a traitor? Was I a traitor during my two stints in Iraq? Was I a traitor when I was delivering humanitarian aid to the victims of the tsunami in Sumatra? Or do you only consider me a traitor while I am on this job? The fact is, recruitment is and always has been a part of maintaining any military organization. In fact, recruitment is a necessity of any large organization. Large corporations have employees that recruit full-time. Even you, I’m sure, must expend some effort to recruit for Code Pink. So what, exactly, is it that makes me a traitor?

The fact is this: any independent nation must maintain a military (or be allied with those who do) to ensure the safety and security of its citizens. Regardless of what your opinions are of the current administration or the current conflict in Iraq, the U.S. military will be needed again in the future. If your counter-recruitment efforts are ultimately successful, who will defend us if we are directly attacked again as we were at Pearl Harbor? Who would respond if a future terrorist attack targets the Golden Gate Bridge, the BART system, or the UC Berkeley clock tower? And, to address the most hypocritical stance that your organization takes on its website, where would the peace keeping force come from that you advocate sending to Darfur?

Finally, I believe that your efforts in protesting my office are misdirected. I agree that your stated goals of peace and social justice are worthy ones. War is a terrible thing that should only be undertaken in the most dire, extreme, and necessary of circumstances. However, war is made by politicians. The conflict in Iraq was ordered by the president and authorized by Congress. They are the ones who have the power to change the policy in Iraq, not members of the military. We execute policy to the best of our ability and to the best of our human capacity. Protesting in front of my office may be an easy way to get your organization in the headlines of local papers, but it doesn’t further any of your stated goals.

To conclude, I don’t consider myself a “recruiter.” I am a Marine who happens to be on recruiting duty. As such, I conduct myself in accordance with our core values of honor, courage, and commitment. I will never sacrifice my honor by lying to anyone that walks into my office. I will never forsake the courage that it takes to restrain myself in the face of insulting and libelous labels like liar and traitor. And, most importantly, I will never waver from my commitment to helping individuals who desire to serve their country as officers in the Marine Corps.


Captain Richard Lund is the United States Marine Corps’ officer selection officer for the northern Bay Area.

Eric

. . . I can't support Barack Obama for President

I want to support Barack Obama for President, but I can't - not after he's received the endorsement of Moveon.org:

Dear MoveOn member,

With hundreds of thousands of ballots cast across the country, for the first time in MoveOn's history, we've voted together to endorse a presidential candidate in the primary. That candidate is Barack Obama.

This comment I left on Tigerhawk's blog sums up my heavy-hearted regret over Barack Obama:

A big part of me thinks of Obama as the President I badly want - charismatic, principled and decent, serious, post-Baby Boom, multiethnic and multicultural, cosmopolitan, idealistic and progressive in the Kennedy sense. Also, he's a fellow Columbia grad. Remove the Long War from the equation, and he'd have my full support. However, the fact remains that the issue that matters the most to me is that we win the peace in the Long War. Obama's pandering to the anti-war Left deeply disturbs me.

With Mayor Giuliani no longer a candidate, I support John McCain for President and Commander-in-Chief.

Eric