Dogs of war

I had a dog as a kid that had been, supposedly, abused by a hunter/trainer. Everytime she heard a fire cracker she'd panic. What must it be like for a dog in a theater of war? Does anything make any sense at all?

Poor dog. But this is more than an un-cute animal story—a contrast to the heartrending videos of dogs greeting their soldier-masters, home safe. (In Afghanistan, the number of service members who didn’t make it home is fast approaching a thousand.) Gunner is the canine in the coal mine, so to speak—a reminder that war is awful, whichever side you’re on, whatever role you’re in. And dogs, like people, react in a variety of ways. A lab named Zoom

refused to associate with the Marines after seeing one serviceman shoot a feral Afghan dog. Only after weeks of retraining, hours of playing with a reindeer squeaky toy and a gusher of good-boy praise was Zoom willing to go back to work.

What was he being trained not to mind? What can break a dog is not going to spare people. Feral dogs are not the only bystanders who have been killed. One could say that our reason means we can better make sense of war than dogs can—if only everything (or even most things) that happened in a war were reasonable or made sense. But we are smart enough to know how contingent things are once you step into a battlefield. (Whether you are bitten by a feral dog or shoot someone’s pet might just be a matter of hearing a bark at the wrong, unlucky time.) We have better and more elaborate imaginations—and, one presumes, a greater capacity for being haunted. We can dream about war.

Keystone Kops and Robburs

I am sitting in a medical provider's lobby -- or rather, the third circle of hell as epitomized by the relentless, forced application of the Today Show -- while Madame Cura undergoes a procedure that is a wonder of modern health care and seemingly medieval in technique. Meanwhile, I recommend you read Paul Campos's explanation of why al Qaeda continues to make increasingly ridiculous attempts to blow up an airliner using various modes of the would-be bomber's apparel when a couple of car bombs exploding a couple times of year in a few of our major cities would accomplish the group's terror-inducing goal. In short, airlines are the perfect medium for the terrorists, our politicians, and the media.

Nuanced policy discussions

Last night on NPR, though it's not in the transcript, Davey Brooks said, in an aside, that he was "surprised" that fiscal concerns were playing into the strategy discussions of what's next in Afghanistan. No surprise there. War seems to be the one thing the federal government spends on over which conservatives feel there should be no ceiling.

At a stop at a military base in Alaska on Thursday, President Obama told a gathering of soldiers that he would not risk more lives “unless it is necessary to America’s vital interests.” He added during his visit to Tokyo on Friday that he wanted to avoid taking any step that could be seen as an “open-ended commitment.”

The administration said Friday that it planned to cut up to 5 percent at domestic agencies in fiscal 2011 as part of an effort to reduce the federal budget deficit, which rose to $1.4 trillion with the economic stimulus and financial bailouts.

Several leading Republicans have criticized Mr. Obama’s willingness to spend more freely on domestic programs and urged him to provide General McChrystal with the resources he is seeking in Afghanistan.

“Keeping our country safe: Isn’t that the first job of government?” said Senator Christopher S. Bond, a Republican from Missouri and the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “If we have just a minimalist counterterrorism strategy, the Taliban will come back over the mountains from Pakistan, and they will be followed by their co-conspirators from the Al Qaeda organization.”

The Taliban are already coming "back over the mountains from Pakistan." But that aside, how after eight years of futile war, staying there indefinitely will "keep our country safe," is not mentioned. But nuance isn't the thing for the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The new Taliban

Steve Coll reads a new anthology of the latest scholarship on the Taliban. He's impressed and disturbed.

Overall, the work Giustozzi has pulled together here is as up-to-date as scholarship can be. There is an emphasis on how the Taliban have evolved and changed in local settings since 2001. Equally striking, however, is the portrait that accumulates of the Taliban’s continuity. The book’s essays describe how national and provincial figures from the nineties-era Taliban government, formally known the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, remain intact and operate as a shadow administration, holding portfolios similar to their previous ones.

The Taliban were not shattered in December, 2001, and then forced to reassemble. Rather, their national government in Kabul and Kandahar retreated into exile in Pakistan, survived a relatively brief period of disarray, and then reassembled itself to return to its southern and eastern strongholds in Afghanistan.

Skeptical

This deliberation, this proclivity to absorb all the options, which makes John McCain batshit insane and Dick Cheney choke on the blood that fills his mouth, is one of the central reasons Obama was elected. And in Afghanistan (if anon-sourced reports can be trusted), he appears to be asking the obvious question: How does this thing end?

As Mr. Obama convened his war council for 2 hours and 20 minutes on Wednesday, the final session before departing for a trip to Asia on Thursday, he suggested he was not satisfied with his options. It was the eighth Situation Room meeting in the last two months on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and officials said Mr. Obama pressed for clarifications on a series of questions.

Where are the off-ramps for the military? What is the exit strategy? When will Americans and their allies hand responsibility to the Afghanistan government? Can the Afghan government improve its credibility?

I find that encouraging.

It's 3AM. Do you know where Joe Lieberman is?

In which Harold Myerson imagines a threesome in the White House.

McCain's meshugas didn't really get the attention it deserved, however. He was fortunate that his descent into fantasy occurred in the same week as Barack Obama's reverend crisis and Wall Street's near-meltdown. He got a pass from most of the media, too, in part because his statements in Jordan ran so completely counter to his image as an expert on national security.

What's been missing from the prevailing narrative of McCain's national security expertise, however, is any serious assessment of the nature of his beliefs. As early as 1999, McCain was recommending "rogue state rollback" as our policy toward such nations as Iraq. He remains an unabashed advocate of preventive war, as his comments on bombing Iran have made clear, and of permanent war, as his comments on remaining in Iraq have made clear. His advocacy of a missile defense system is rooted in a preference for military unilateralism -- though it may stimulate a new arms race -- over diplomacy. If you liked Bush's foreign and military policy, you'll love McCain's.

UPDATE: Damn you, Hilzoy!

The military industrial complex

War profiteering for dummies.

AEY is one of many previously unknown defense companies to have thrived since 2003, when the Pentagon began dispensing billions of dollars to train and equip indigenous forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its rise from obscurity once seemed to make it a successful example of the Bush administration’s promotion of private contractors as integral elements of war-fighting strategy.

But an examination of AEY’s background, through interviews in several countries, reviews of confidential government documents and the examination of some of the ammunition, suggests that Army contracting officials, under pressure to arm Afghan troops, allowed an immature company to enter the murky world of international arms dealing on the Pentagon’s behalf — and did so with minimal vetting and through a vaguely written contract with few restrictions.

In addition to this week’s suspension, AEY is under investigation by the Department of Defense’s inspector general and by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prompted by complaints about the quality and origins of ammunition it provided, and allegations of corruption.

Mr. Diveroli, in a brief telephone interview late last year, denied any wrongdoing. “I know that my company does everything 100 percent on the up and up, and that’s all I’m concerned about,” he said.

He also suggested that his activities should be shielded from public view. “AEY is working on a moderately classified Department of Defense project,” he said. “I really don’t want to talk about the details.”

He referred questions to a lawyer, Hy Shapiro, who offered a single statement by e-mail. “While AEY continues to work very hard to fulfill its obligations under its contract with the U.S. Army, its representatives are not prepared at this time to sit and discuss the details,” he wrote.

As part of the suspension, neither Mr. Diveroli nor his company can bid on any further federal work until the Army’s allegations are resolved. But he will be allowed to provide ammunition already on order under the Afghan contract, according to internal military correspondence.

In January, American officers in Kabul, concerned about munitions from AEY, had contacted the Army’s Rock Island Arsenal, in Illinois, and raised the possibility of terminating the contract. And officials at the Army Sustainment Command, the contracting authority at the arsenal, after meeting with AEY in late February, said they were tightening the packaging standards for munitions shipped to the war.

And yet after that meeting, AEY sent another shipment of nearly one million cartridges to Afghanistan that the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan regarded as substandard. Lt. Col. David G. Johnson, the command spokesman, said that while there were no reports of ammunition misfiring, some of it was in such poor condition that the military had decided not to issue it. “Our honest answer is that the ammunition is of a quality that is less than desirable; the munitions do not appear to meet the standards that many of us are used to,” Colonel Johnson said. “We are not pleased with the way it was delivered.”

Several officials said the problems would have been avoided if the Army had written contracts and examined bidders more carefully.

Public records show that AEY’s contracts since 2004 have potentially been worth more than a third of a billion dollars. Mr. Diveroli set the value higher: he claimed to do $200 million in business each year.

Several military officers and government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the investigations, questioned how Mr. Diveroli, and a small group of men principally in their 20s and without extensive military or procurement experiences, landed so much vital government work.

“A lot of us are asking the question,” said a senior State Department official. “How did this guy get all this business?”

No written contracts? No wonder we're winning.

Emerald City

If this isn't a metaphor for our misadventure in Mesopotamia, then I don't what is.

The massive U.S. embassy under construction in Baghdad could cost $144 million more than projected and will open months behind schedule because of poor planning, shoddy workmanship, internal disputes and last-minute changes sought by State Department officials, according to U.S. officials and a department document provided to Congress.

The embassy, which will be the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, was budgeted at $592 million. The core project was supposed to have been completed by last month, but the timetable has slipped so much that the State Department has sought and received permission from the Iraqi government to allow about 2,000 non-Iraqi construction employees to stay in the country until March.

Two key office buildings, including the new chancery, will not be finished until early 2009, according to the document.

Completing the sprawling, 21-building compound is viewed by some officials as a key element of building a sustainable, long-term diplomatic presence in Baghdad. It will allow U.S. personnel to vacate their offices in Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace and consolidate operations that are spread across the Green Zone. The new facility is also intended to provide diplomats with housing that is better protected to withstand mortar and rocket attacks.

And understand, we can't protect against those attacks without a very large force. Regardless of who ends up in the White House, how the hell will we ever get out?