Professor Nacos warns about Senator McCain's "100 years" in Iraq

From National Review Online, posted on the CBS News website: He was asked about President Bush’s comment that we could stay in Iraq for 50 years. McCain replied, “Make it 100. We’ve been in South Korea . . . we’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that’s fine with me. I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaeda is training, recruiting and equipping and motivating people every single day.”

Professor Nacos, as a warning to battling Obama and Clinton supporters who claim they would vote for McCain rather than the other Democrat (I don't believe they would), points at McCain's "100 years" comment as a scary portent. I replied (edited):

Professor,

C'mon - you know - as much as anyone who lived through the 20th century - what Senator McCain meant. You, better than most. "100 years" doesn't sound so scary to me, considering that, as an American soldier, I served on a driver-escort detail in Seoul during the 50th anniversary of the Korean War commemoration. Our forces have served as a war-fighting or stabilization and security presence in Korea for over 60 years (we often forget to count the period before the Korean War), and the same can be said for our forces in Europe, especially Germany. Will our forces still be in E.Asia and Europe in 2045? Who knows, but "100 years" in either place is something we seem prepared to do. As much as those relationships seem normal now, I'm sure the prospect was as disconcerting in the early 1940s as the prospect of long-term organic partnerships in the Middle East today.

Of course, if you consider the start point of American entry into Europe as World War One, then we are now over 90 years as an organic presence in Europe, which makes "100 years" realistic, indeed. (Arguably, President Bush Jr is the most controversial liberal US President since President Wilson. At least President Truman could blame the USSR and Maoist China for the Korea War.) I suppose for any remaining die-hard southern American Confederates, American presence in the lands of the short-lived CSA is now close to 147 years and counting.

Which goes to show that even in the nation-v-nation wars we're familiar with, sustained presence, even "100 years", is not abnormal. The key is to remember that each of those years is dissimilar and the American military has historically performed a myriad of functions in service of our nation's foreign policy. When I served before 9/11, we already grumbled then how much soldiers, we active-duty types as well as reservists, were being deployed away from home.

Today's Global War on Terror, or Long War, is a different kind of war. It's very much the insurgency-v-counterinsurgency that President John Kennedy prognosticated before his assassination, rather than the Cold War formula we're more comfortable with. If sustained involvement has been a regular feature of even our more-traditional nation-v-nation wars, then it is a central feature of an insurgency-v-counterinsurgency war.

After decades in which our counterinsurgency capability was deliberately starved by 'realist' policy makers inside and outside the military, at the same time insurgency matured as the sensible exploiter of an obvious American weakness, we've only begun - with GEN Petraeus as its chief champion - to institutionalize counterinsurgency and its emphasis on peace-building. In a changing world in which our competitors learn in evolutionary fashion, it's critical that we allow the time, space, and resources so our counterinsurgency capability can mature in Iraq, not only for the good of Iraq, but for long-term American foreign policy strategy.

Final note: Of the remaining presidential candidates, I believe Barack Obama has the potential to be the best representative of President Bush's definitively liberal strategy in the War on Terror. However, his assertion that the Democrat victories in the 2006 senatorial elections are the cause of the "Surge"/Counterinsurgency successes under GEN Petraeus is far more jaw-dropping for a prospective US President than Senator McCain's gaffe about who sponsors which Islamic extremist insurgents in Iraq.

Update: Professor Nacos' reply and my response.

Eric

Cool website of the day: South Park Studios

The official South Park website, South Park Studios, has all the South Park episodes on-line. The episodes have sharp resolution, unlike the recorded quality found at the unofficial South Park Zone, which also has all the South Park episodes on-line. However, the episodes at South Park Studios continually pause while loading, which gets annoying quickly.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone prove again and again that they are the preeminent satirists and covert commentators of Generation-X. You may not like what they say through their animated alter-egos, but they are insightful, incisive, and honest - confidently independent - jesters.

Thanks to blog Winds of Change for the tip.

Eric

Politicizing KIA in Iraq

I responded to Intel Dump post 4,000:

I'm bothered that the KIAs of OIF have been portrayed as though they are of a distinct - politicized - nature from KIAs away from Iraq. Would OIF casualties be more acceptable if they were OEF casualties? Would they be different if they happened in the initial invasion of OIF rather than in the protracted 'post-war'? What if they happened in OEF due to a much larger invasion force and occupation of Afghanistan (if presumably, manpower headed for Afghanistan wasn't diverted to Iraq)? Or, from an al-Qaeda-chasing invasion into the Islamist strongholds of Pakistan? Or, intervention in a 'non-permissive' area like Darfur?

Commenter Publius responded:

"I'm bothered that the KIAs of OIF have been portrayed as though they are of a distinct - politicized - nature from KIAs away from Iraq. Would OIF casualties be more acceptable if they were OEF casualties?"

Maybe. It all depends on perceptions of whether or not Just War principles apply. 350K dead in WW2 were not politicized. But, then, Eric, welcome to my war—Vietnam—where 58K dead are forevermore politicized.

You may be bothered all you like, but the fact is that Afghanistan is commonly viewed as the "good" war, whereas for more and more of the populace, Iraq is viewed as the "bad" war. Casualties in a "bad" war will always be viewed through a political prism and will never be as acceptable as those in a "good" war. If you believe as I do that the so-called Operation Iraqi Freedom (a grotesque term in and of itself) was an unnecessary and fruitless endeavor accompanied by a bodyguard of lies concocted by an inferior president and a host of self-interested henchmen, then, yes, I think one might see where each and every death would be politicized. One death was too many; the thought of four thousand Americans who should be walking the face of the earth today is unbearably sad.

All wars are not created equal. The deaths are the same. The fine young people who are the fallen are the same. But the motives and the execution are not the same.

To which I said:

Publius: "One death was too many; the thought of four thousand Americans who should be walking the face of the earth today is unbearably sad."

Would they be, though?

I can concede that most soldiers' deaths in war are not due to targeted assassinations, so as a matter of odds, the same soldier killed in Iraq may have lived if he was instead deployed to Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Darfur - even if his or her mission had the same degree of risk in either place that it had in Iraq. But I can't concede that our soldiers who've deployed to Iraq over the last 5 years, if President Bush had chosen to maintain the pre-OIF sanctioning and 'containment' of Saddam-led Iraq through his administration, would have been kept out of harm's way. More likely, they would have been sent into harm's way for other missions in the War on Terror, which may or may not have suffered from the same unbearably sad 'bad war' unpopularity inflicted upon OIF. Deployed somewhere other than Iraq, maybe fewer of our soldiers would have died, but maybe the same number, maybe more.

Eric

Reaction to Barack Obama's Wright controversy

I like Barack Obama a lot. In many ways, I agree with his supporters that we need someone like him and what he stands for to be President. With the appeal of his ideas on racial and cultural progress, Obama is also charismatic and rhetorically gifted. However, as the exposure of a Presidential campaign catches up to him, the phrase "too good to be true" seems to apply to Obama more and more. It's not that he's been revealed to be crooked for a politician, he's just not as special as he first seemed. Professor Nacos wrote about him here. I responded (note: I copy-edited out the spelling mistakes):

Professor,

I am receptive to Obama's ideas on the "race issue". They resonate strongly with me as a member of a - if anything - lower regarded ethnic group. (Even in your post, Professor, you refer to a "black-white divide" as yet one more pundit who marginalizes my, I suppose, yellow group in our nation's race conversation.) The problem, what disturbs me in this episode, is that Obama uses these important ideas crassly to defend himself. His record in the Wright controversy has been an alarming display of a lack of integrity for a candidate whose wide appeal is based largely on the appearance of extraordinary principles and decency - now, as revealed, not so much:

On April 11 2007, Obama said, "I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus, but I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group".

While saying this about Don Imus, and long before he made this statement, Obama was closely tied with Reverend Wright. Rev Wright isn't just some low-level maverick campaign staffer or even outspoken and influential political ally. Rev Wright has been interwined with Obama in multiple close ways, closer to Obama than the vilified Karl Rove ever was/is to George W Bush.

In reacting to the controversy, Obama has misdirected and spun, obfuscated, even lied. Perhaps, these are normal reactions for a politician under threat in the political arena, but that's what's so disappointing. Obama isn't supposed to be just another politican; he's supposed to be a transcendent force for our country, whether his time to be President was now or, with more seasoning, later. Then again, if Obama really was as special as we believed, he wouldn't have been involved in this controversy with Rev Wright in the first place.

How could Obama have campaigned on such a high-minded platform, all the while hypocritically continuing his close relationship with Rev Wright? I haven't decided yet if Obama's arrogance grew from a belief that he was immune to judgements of hypocrisy, above it perhaps, or if he believed his charisma and rhetorical brilliance could extricate him from the (inevitable) exposure of hypocrisy.

What Obama once symbolized and the ideas he (still) expresses so well are important, which only makes my disappointment greater that he would cheapen them by using them for base cynical political expedience.

As it turns out, Obama is just another politician; worse, he's a disillusioning politician. It's time we re-examine our fellow Columbian, this charismatic would-be President. Who is he and who is he not, really?

Eric

President John. F. Kennedy - Remarks at West Point to the Graduating Class of the U.S. Military Academy, 6 June 1962

Go to Small Wars Journal and listen to President John Kennedy explain today's war to West Point graduates in 1962. It's captivating, a must-listen.

Add: Read JFK's copy of his prepared speech here.

13May13 add: Speech text here.

Eric

Lasik surgery is a gamble

I can empathize with this cautionary story in the March 13, 2008 New York Times: Lasik Surgery: When the Fine Print Applies to You.

I had Lasik surgery done by Dr. Raymond Fong in the summer of 2001. I had just finished my Army service and the corrective surgery was a welcome-home gift from my mom.

I agreed to it for several reasons. My brother had had the procedure with Dr. Fong and he was satisfied with the results. Vanity like Abby Ellin's, the author of the NY Times piece. I was accustomed to wearing glasses, but I never liked them: the dependency, persistent disgusting green growth between the lenses and the rims, the blinder effect, the thick lenses, the hit-or-miss nature of ever-changing prescriptions, the humid feel of them when I was sick, and the lenses fogging up, scratching up, and getting dirty. I gave up on contact lenses because of the expensive and annoying maintenance, their tendency to slip off my eyes, and the uncomfortable daily ritual of deliberately placing foreign objects onto my eyeballs. As a recent soldier, I also had fresh memories of the real vulnerabilities and danger of poor vision and the impracticality of eyeglasses in a tactical environment. The prospect of going from blind and sight-aided to perfect vision with a simple surgical procedure was tantalizing indeed.

Unfortunately, my Lasik surgery didn't leave me with perfect vision. I didn't expect 20/20 vision because with glasses, I had about 20/25 vision. I hoped for 20/20, but if I attained 20/25 with the surgery, I would be satisfied. My vision has been about 20/25 on an eyechart since the surgery, so it was successful in that regard. However, I've learned that many important aspects of vision are not measureable on an eyechart.

Since the Lasik, I've had problems with floaters, ghost images or double vision, contrast sensitivity, glare, halos and starbursts (night vision).

Floaters now have a permanent place moving across my field of vision. I don't know that the floaters were caused by the surgery; it may be that they were already floating free in my vitreous before the surgery, and the way my vision worked through my old glasses disguised them while the removal of glasses revealed them. Be that as it may, floaters continually distract me now and I didn't have a floater problem before the surgery.

When reading over an extended period of time, my vision eventually doubles with a ghost image effect that worsens if I attempt to push through it. This was especially troubling when I was a student. The double vision isn't due to a failure of my two eyes to coordinate, it's there if I use one eye. The effect takes a while to recover. It's happened when television watching, too.

The contrast sensitivity problem is most noticeable when I'm indoors facing the window during a bright day. Close people and objects will be dark against the backlighting from the window - think of a camera that can't be adjusted to fix the light contrast obscuring of an image.

At night, my glare, halo, and starburst problems didn't go away 3-to-4 weeks after the surgery as I had been informed to expect. They just stayed and are as bad now as they were immediately following the surgery. For starbursts, think of TV images where every light source (say, in an indoor sports arena), no matter how far in the background, is surrounded by spikes of light in the foreground that block out whatever's behind them, except the spikes of light in my vision are much more irregular and jagged. Unlike some others, I don't think I've lost my night vision as far as my eyes adjusting to the dark; however, it's hard to say for sure since I live in a city that's lit practically 24/7. I haven't driven a car at night since the surgery.

Like Abby Ellin's doctor, Dr. Fong seemed to "gaslight" my complaints and concerns. He kept insisting that the surgery was a success, and it was, if judged exclusively by the standard of an eyechart test. He eventually admitted that the technology to fix my side effects didn't exist yet. (Does it now? I should find out.) Maybe that's why Lasik practicioners seem so unconcerned about certain Lasik-related complaints - there really isn't anything they can do to solve those problems. It would seem that I fell into the percentage of Lasik recipients for whom the fine print applies.

Do I regret having the Lasik surgery? Yes. Correctable, even if inconveniently corrected with glasses, vision, with full utility of aspects of vision beyond the eyechart, is better than improved vision with uncorrectable side effects. Lasik has worked well enough for enough people so that I would not advise anyone who asked not to get the surgery, but I would caution them that it's a gamble.

Eric

Daily Show comedian Rob Riggle goes to Berkeley

Daily Show comedian Rob Riggle is also Major Robert Riggle, USMCR. Via the Daily Show, he did a mock(ing) news investigation of the anti-military protest of the Marines Officer Selection Office in Berkeley, California. Check it out:



The sketch reminds me of my experience as a campus civil-military advocate at Columbia University.

Eric

Reminder of what soldiering's about, even in Civil Affairs

The big picture concept of Civil Affairs attracts me and I relish its operational, tactical, and strategic value. I believe it to be a cornerstone entity in a critical evolution for civil-military operations. However, as excited as I am about Civil Affairs and hope to become a Civil Affairs Specialist (MOS 38B), I also have to remind myself what it means to be any lower-enlisted soldier - the thoroughly unromantic and stressful toil, sweat, and hard work. There are reasons I didn't re-enlist the first time. If I wanted to be a soldier for the sake of being a soldier, I could have stayed a soldier in 2001; heck, as an E-4 promotable in a Star MOS, I would have quickly made my '5' had I re-enlisted. I did my time as a "worker bee" (to quote my last Battalion Commander) and I left the Army in order to pursue a different life. More, that's how I felt in peace-time; frankly, the idea of going to war scares the heck out of me. I'm not 20 years old anymore, either, with years to wander. Re-enlisting wouldn't be a one-off to get it out of my system. I'd be making a multi-year commitment likely involving multiple deployments that would sharply reduce my ability to do anything else.

The thing is, while I don't want to be a soldier again, I do want to do my part - and earn my honor - in the Long War and I want to participate in peace operations, preferably in the civil-military area. So, I have to weigh honor and my belief in civil-military peace ops versus my reluctance to return to lower-enlisted soldiering; 2 out of 3 says, 'not perfect, but you do the best you can with what you have to work with'. 3 out of 4, if you add the fact that I'm not moving forward in my life otherwise, and a part of me has already decided that an honest attempt to become a 38B is the next thing for me to do.

If I join Civil Affairs, I would like to be a member of the locally based 353rd Civil Affairs, whose headquarters is in Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island. This Fort McCoy Triad article about the 353rd's pre-deployment training last summer is a stark reminder of what I'd be getting myself into if I re-enlisted: 353rd Civil Affairs conducts premobilization training by Rob Schuette, August 24, 2007.

Soldiers from the 432nd Civil Affairs Battalion are about to engage enemy targets during a convoy live-fire exercise. Col. Mark Calabrese, 353rd Civil Affairs Command, is observing from the turret. (Photo by Lt. Col. Robert Bensburg)











It would be going back to a place in my life I thought I'd left forever 7 years ago, and this time, far more than my first time, I'd be getting myself into some serious, serious shit.

Eric

Battle of the Korengal Valley

The Korengal Valley in Kunar Province is the site of the fiercest contest between American-led forces and the terrorist-led forces in Operation Enduring Freedom.

Thanks to Intel Dump for the New York Times story about the battle by Elizabeth Rubin. Thanks to Blackfive for the Vanity Fair story about the battle by Sebastian Junger. Read both.

Excerpt (from Vanity Fair):

The Korengal is so desperately fought over because it is the first leg of a former mujahideen smuggling route that was used to bring in men and weapons from Pakistan during the 1980s. From the Korengal, the mujahideen were able to push west along the high ridges of the Hindu Kush to attack Soviet positions as far away as Kabul. It was called the Nuristan-Kunar corridor, and American military planners fear that al-Qaeda is trying to revive it. If the Americans simply seal off the valley and go around, Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters currently hiding near the Pakistani towns of Dir and Chitral could use the Korengal as a base of operations to strike deep into eastern Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is rumored to be in the Chitral area, as are his second in command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and a clutch of other foreign fighters. While thousands of poorly trained Taliban recruits martyr themselves in southern Afghanistan, bin Laden’s most highly trained fighters ready themselves for the next war, which will happen in the East.

Eric

Cool website of the day: South Park Zone

South Park Zone has all the South Park episodes posted on its website.

Link from a post in Co-ed Magazine, another cool website.

Eric