Negotiating with ourselves

From the annals of "Who could have ever predicted?"

WASHINGTON — As pessimism mounted this week over the ability of a bipartisan Congressional committee to agree on a deficit-reduction plan, lawmakers began taking steps to head off the large cuts in Pentagon spending that would automatically result from the panel’s failure.

Members of both parties and both chambers said they increasingly feared that the 12-member committee would be unable to bridge deep partisan divisions and find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction as required under the law that raised the debt ceiling and created the committee in the summer.

As talks sputtered, one panel member publicly lamented that the process was not working, and the group was chastised by a bipartisan group of budget experts at a public hearing for failing to show progress. Several members of Congress, especially Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, are readying legislation that would undo the automatic across-the-board cuts totaling nearly $500 billion for military programs, or exchange them for cuts in other areas of the federal budget.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, has drafted a bill that would replace the military reductions that would occur under a process known in Congress as sequestration with 5 percent cuts to other, unspecified parts of the federal budget, and a 10 percent decrease in pay for members of Congress. In the House, similar measures are being assembled.

“If the joint select committee does not do what it needs to do,” said Representative K. Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, “most of us will move heaven and earth to find an alternative that prevents a sequester from happening.”

After listening to dire predictions by the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the effects of automatic cuts, Representative John Garamendi, Democrat of California, was even more blunt. “The sequester will never take place,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”

The richest Americans and the Pentagon brass need not worry. Nothing can be asked of them. In fact, should a Republican win the election, they will be showered with even more largesse.

Social Security versus John Philip Sousa

Although we already spend more on defense than all other nations combined, the killing machine known as William "the bloody" Kristol, along with the usual conservative welfare suspects argue that we are dangerously weak and might get pushed around if we don't start buying more stuff soon.

So today, we get three conservative luminaries -- Arthur Brooks, the head of the American Enterprise Institute; Edwin Feulner, the head of the Heritage Foundation; and Weekly Standard editor and policy entrepreneur William Kristol -- arguing in the Wall Street Journal that unless we start buying some weapons, disaster is around the corner:

Even with the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, this year the Department of Defense will spend some $720 billion -- about 4.9% of our gross domestic product, significantly below the average of 6.5% since World War II...

We should be vigilant against waste in every corner of the budget. But anyone seeking to restore our fiscal health should look at entitlements first, not across-the-board cuts aimed at our men and women in uniform.

Furthermore, military spending is not a net drain on our economy. It is unrealistic to imagine a return to long-term prosperity if we face instability around the globe because of a hollowed-out U.S. military lacking the size and strength to defend American interests around the world.

You've got to hand it to them: $720 billion per year on defense, as far as they're concerned, is a "hollowed out" military. And about that GDP number, the "average since World War II" utterly distorts the question. Through the 1950s, we spent more than 10 percent of GDP on defense every year, peaking at 14.2 percent in 1953. At our current level of GDP, that's the same as spending over $2 trillion a year on defense. The point is that the size of the economy should have nothing to do with what we spend on defense. I assume that Brooks, Feulner and Kristol don't think that when the economy contracted during the Great Recession of 2008-2009, we should have cut our defense spending, just because the economy was smaller. And if next year we have terrific growth, it doesn't mean that we suddenly face a need to spend more on defense.

I thoroughly enjoyed the line about the need to be "vigilant" in looking for waste in the military budget. Nevertheless, we must reduce popular and effective "entitlement" programs -- otherwise known as the social safety net -- so that we can have...music.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, when discussing his plans to cut back overhead and excessive spending in the military, often makes the comparison that the number of people in military bands is larger than the number of State Department Foreign Service officers. He never indicated that the bands were heading for the budget chopping block, but when I wrote about them two weeks ago the defensive response was so great that I decided to take a second look at their cost.

The Marine Corps provided the only solid number. It spent $50 million last year on its military bands, including $10 million to support the 130 elite musicians in the Washington-based Marine Band, known as "The President's Own," whose prime mission is to provide music for the White House.

The Marines have another 600 musicians in 12 bands around the country, costing $35 million, according to a Corps spokesman.

There are no comparative figures available for the overall costs of military bands in the Navy and Air Force, because they are carried as expenses for subsidiary organizations spread around the country and overseas.

The Army, according to a spokesman, estimates that it spends about $195 million a year on its bands, but that does not include those of the National Guard. Altogether, the Army says on its Web site that it has 5,000 musicians, describing itself as "the largest and oldest employer of musicians in the country."

Based on the Marine figures, total Defense Department spending could reach $500 million or more a year.

Clearly, our defense forces will be "hollowed out" if the armed forces are unable to release the CD, "This is Navy Country," from the Navy's own country and bluegrass band.

Today's needle drop

McChrystal's bad manners

Other than not wanting to read Holbrooke's emails, I haven't read anything in the excerpts from the Rolling Stone story that illustrates McChrystal disrespecting the president or VP. But the whole incident shows an amazing lack of judgment on his part and on the part of his staff. It's embarrassing stuff.

McChrystal gets called to the White House on Wednesday to direct the monthly Afghanistan/Pakistan briefing — oh, and to explain himself and see if he can keep his job. As I wrote for the Washington Independent, firing him carries its risks. There’s only a year to go before the July 2011 date to begin the transition to Afghan security responsibility and the Kandahar tide is starting to rise. It’ll be hard to fire McChrystal without ripping the entire Afghanistan strategy up, and I’ve gotten no indication from the White House that it’s interested in doing that. On the other hand, if senior administration officials are and I just haven’t picked up on it, McChrystal just gave them their biggest opportunity.

And what an opportunity. You can read the Rolling Stone profile through Politico. The amazing thing about it is there’s no complaints from McChrystal or his staff about the administration on any substantive ground. After all, McChrystal and his allies won the argument within the White House. All the criticisms — of Eikenberry, of Jones, of Holbrooke, of Biden — are actually just immature and arrogant snipes at how annoying Team America (what, apparently, McChrystal’s crew calls itself) finds them. This is not mission-first, to say the least.

In fact, you have to go deep in the piece to find soldiers and officers offering actual critiques — and what they offer is criticism of McChrystal for being insufficiently brutal. Everyone of them quoted here is a mini-Ralph Peters, upset because McChrystal won’t let them “get our fucking gun on,” as one puts it. I have a lot of respect for Michael Hastings, the author of the profile, but there are many greyer shades of on-the-ground military perspective than that, and I’ve seen them up close. But Hastings does a good and insightful job of showing that McChrystal is stepping into a diplomatic vacuum and acting as an advocate for Hamid Karzai despite Karzai’s performance in office.

"Bite me?" Really? That's the best they can do? It certainly puts Joe Biden in an even more elevated place in terms of strategy in Afghanistan. Not only can he say "I told you so," he can do it knowing that the leaders of the strategy he opposed can't come up with anything more substantive than immature name calling.

But the fact that McChrystal hasn't resigned tells me that the Administration has no interest in replacing him with just around a year to go before troop withdrawals begin.

Wish harder

David Brooks offers no suggestions for political reform in Afghanistan, no ideas on how many troops would be needed to protect aid workers, no thoughts on who we are actually fighting there, but he does offer a key insight: Obama may be a sophisticated thinker but he lacks the "tenacity" to "be a war president" and "win in Afghanistan."

No, that's not "shorter David Brooks."

For the past few days I have tried to do what journalists are supposed to do.

I’ve called around to several of the smartest military experts I know to get their views on these controversies. I called retired officers, analysts who have written books about counterinsurgency warfare, people who have spent years in Afghanistan. I tried to get them to talk about the strategic choices facing the president. To my surprise, I found them largely uninterested.

Most of them have no doubt that the president is conducting an intelligent policy review. They have no doubt that he will come up with some plausible troop level.

They are not worried about his policy choices. Their concerns are more fundamental. They are worried about his determination.

These people, who follow the war for a living, who spend their days in military circles both here and in Afghanistan, have no idea if President Obama is committed to this effort. They have no idea if he is willing to stick by his decisions, explain the war to the American people and persevere through good times and bad.

I'm thrilled he's doing what "journalists are supposed to do," by that I guess he means attributing anonymous quotes to "experts" known as "they." And like many "journalists" during our current endless war, the "experts" he speaks to "follow the war for a living," meaning they rely on constant war to make a living. Well played, sir.

Obama's "determination" won't do anything to overcome the lack of a coherent strategy for ending what Matthew Hoh, in his resignation letter, calls a 35 year civil war, nor will it overcome the lack of legitimacy of the country's political leadership.

Ah, but back to Brooks as he tells us how "winnable" the war would be if only Obama would squeeze his eyes shut and wish harder.

Finally, they do not understand the president’s fundamental read on the situation. Most of them, like most people who have spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, believe this war is winnable. They do not think it will be easy or quick. But they do have a bedrock conviction that the Taliban can be stymied and that the governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be strengthened. But they do not know if Obama shares this gut conviction or possesses any gut conviction on this subject at all.

The experts I spoke with describe a vacuum at the heart of the war effort — a determination vacuum. And if these experts do not know the state of President Obama’s resolve, neither do the Afghan villagers. They are now hedging their bets, refusing to inform on Taliban force movements because they are aware that these Taliban fighters would be their masters if the U.S. withdraws. Nor does President Hamid Karzai know. He’s cutting deals with the Afghan warlords he would need if NATO leaves his country.

Nor do the Pakistanis or the Iranians or the Russians know. They are maintaining ties with the Taliban elements that would represent their interests in the event of a U.S. withdrawal.

No mention of China? Cambodia? Laos?

Shit, the Karzai government is not the only one who's been cutting deals with the warlords, the U.S. has been doing it since October 2001. Your mileage may vary.

So I guess the president’s most important meeting is not the one with the Joint Chiefs and the cabinet secretaries. It’s the one with the mirror, in which he looks for some firm conviction about whether Afghanistan is worthy of his full and unshakable commitment. If the president cannot find that core conviction, we should get out now. It would be shameful to deploy more troops only to withdraw them later. If he does find that conviction, then he should let us know, and fill the vacuum that is eroding the chances of success.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal has said that counterinsurgency is “an argument to win the support of the people.” But it’s not an argument won through sophisticated analysis. It’s an argument won through the display of raw determination.

For chrissakes, the U.S. has displayed "raw determination" just in my lifetime in more benighted countries than I can count on two hands. Usually it comes in the form of an overwhelming military presence, predator drones, hellfire missiles, and "stress positions."

Our eight years of "tenacity" in Afghanistan has made the U.S. military the ideological underpinning of the Pashtun "insurgency." Writes Hoh, who resigned as Senior Civilian Representative in Zabul Province,

Eight years into war, no nation has ever known a more dedicated, well trained, experienced and disciplined military as the U.S. Armed Forces. I do not believe any military force has evern been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the U.S. military has received in Afghanistan. The tactical proficiency and performance of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines is unmatched and unquestioned. However, this is not the European or Pacific theaters of World War II,but rather is a war for which our leaders, uniformed, civilian and elected, have inadequately prepared and resourced our men and women. Our forces, devoted and faithful, have been committed to conflict in an indefinite and unplanned manner that has become a cavalier, politically expedient and Pollyannish misadventure. Similarly, the United States has a dedicated cadre of civilians, both U.S. government emplooyees and contractors, who believe in and sacrifice for their mission, but have been ineffectually trained and led with guidance and intent shaped more by the political climate in Washington, D.C. than in Afghan cities, villages, mountains and valleys.

I hope Obama thinks about that as he looks in the mirror, not a contemplation of his own manly "determination" and "tenacity." We had seven years of that self-admiration and Brooks cheered on that "War President" even as he took our focus off of Afghanistan to level Iraq in The Great Hunt for old chemical weapons. Brooks cheered him on right up until it was no longer possible to cheer and be considered sane in polite company.

Dolchstoßlegende

Or the "dagger in the back legend," translated into the softer "pull the rug out from under us," but the intent may be the same.

A retired general who served in Iraq said that the military had listened, “perhaps naïvely,” to Mr. Obama’s campaign promises that the Afghan war was critical. “What’s changed, and are we having the rug pulled out from under us?” he asked. Like many of those interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals from the military’s civilian leadership and the White House.

In what form such retaliation against a retired officer would take is not mentioned.

Barry McCaffrey's greed and dishonesty

What got left out of the disgusting report of McCaffrey's ability to go on NBC as an "analyst" and promote wars and weapons systems that he profits from, was his role as "Drug Czar" during the Clinton era. It would be fascinating to see how much his current and past employers have benefited from our disastrous efforts at prohibition.

"Huzzah for the tunnel"

They're baaaaaaaack!

Meanwhile, it's great to know that even if the Pentagon is doing really creepy shit and not telling anyone where they're spending more than the combined budgets of the FDA, National Science Foundation, and NASA, the military industrial complex has a damned good sense of humor about it.