Afghanistan: What Are These People Thinking?

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6407

Afghanistan: What Are These People Thinking?

Conn Hallinan | September 10, 2009

Editor: John Feffer

Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

One of the oddest – indeed, surreal – encounters around the war in Afghanistan has to be a telephone call this past July 27. On one end of the line was historian Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History. On the other, State Department special envoy Richard Holbrooke and the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. The question: How can Washington avoid the kind of defeat it suffered in Southeast Asia 40 years ago?

Karnow did not divulge what he said to the two men, but he told Associated Press that the “lesson” of Vietnam “was that we shouldn’t have been there,” and that, while “Obama and everybody else seems to want to be in Afghanistan,” he, Karnow, was opposed to the war.

It is hardly surprising that Washington should see parallels to the Vietnam debacle. The enemy is elusive enemy. The local population is neutral, if not hostile. And the governing regime is corrupt with virtually no support outside of the nation’s capital.

But in many ways Afghanistan is worse than Vietnam. So, it is increasingly hard to fathom why a seemingly intelligent American administration seems determined to hitch itself to this disaster in the making. It is almost as if there is something about that hard-edged Central Asian country that deranges its occupiers.

Delusion #1
In his address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Obama characterized Afghanistan as “a war of necessity” against international terrorism. But the reality is that the Taliban is a polyglot collection of conflicting political currents whose goals are local, not universal jihad.

“The insurgency is far from monolithic,” says Anand Gopal, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor based in Afghanistan. “There are shadowy, kohl-eyed mullahs and head-bobbing religious students, of course, but there are also erudite university students, poor illiterate farmers, and veteran anti-Soviet commanders. The movement is a mélange of nationalists, Islamists, and bandits…made up of competing commanders and differing ideologies and strategies who nonetheless agree on one essential goal: kicking out the foreigners.”

Taliban spokesman Yousef Ahmadi told Gopal, “We are fighting to free our country from foreign domination,” adding, “Even the Americans once waged an insurgency to free their country.”

Besides the Taliban, there are at least two other insurgent groups. Hizb-I-Islam is led by former U.S. ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyer. The Haqqani group, meanwhile, has close ties to al-Qaeda.

The White House’s rationale of “international terrorism” parallels the Southeast Asian tragedy. The U.S. characterized Vietnam as part of an international Communist conspiracy, while the conflict was essentially a homegrown war of national liberation.

Delusion #2
One casualty of Vietnam was the doctrine of counterinsurgency, the theory that an asymmetrical war against guerrillas can be won by capturing the “hearts and minds” of the people. Of course “hearts and minds” was a pipe dream, obliterated by massive civilian casualties, the widespread use of defoliants, and the creation of “strategic hamlets” that had more in common with concentration camps than villages.

In Vietnam’s aftermath, “counterinsurgency” fell out of favor, to be replaced by the “Powell Doctrine” of relying on massive firepower to win wars. With that strategy the United States crushed the Iraqi army in the first Gulf War. Even though the doctrine was downsized for the invasion of Iraq a decade later, it was still at the heart of the attack.

However, within weeks of taking Baghdad, U.S. soldiers were besieged by an insurgency that wasn’t in the lesson plan. Ambushes and roadside bombs took a steady toll on U.S. and British troops, and aggressive countermeasures predictably turned the population against the occupation.

After four years of getting hammered by insurgents, the Pentagon rediscovered counterinsurgency, and its prophet was General David Petraeus, now commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia. “Hearts and minds” was dusted off, and the watchwords became “clear, hold, and build.” Troops were to hang out with the locals, dig wells, construct schools, and measure success not by body counts of the enemy, but by the “security” of the civilian population.

This theory impelled the Obama administration to “surge” 21,000 troops into Afghanistan, and to consider adding another 20,000 in the near future. The idea is that a surge will reduce the violence, as a similar surge of 30,000 troops had done in Iraq.

Delusion #3
But as Patrick Cockburn of The Independent discovered, the surge didn’t work in Iraq.

With the possible exception of Baghdad, it wasn’t U.S. troops that reduced the violence in Iraq, but the decision by Sunni insurgents that they could no longer fight a two-front war against the Iraqi government and the United States. The ceasefire by Shi’ite cleric and Madhi Army leader Muqtada al-Sadr also helped calm things down. In any case, as recent events have demonstrated, the “peace” was largely illusory.

Not only is a similar “surge” in Afghanistan unlikely to be successful, the formula behind counterinsurgency doctrine predicts that the Obama administration is headed for a train wreck.

According to investigative journalist Jordan Michael Smith, the “U.S/ Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual” – co-authored by Petraeus – recommends “a minimum of 20 counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents. In Afghanistan, with its population estimated at 33 million, that would mean at least 660,000 troops.” And this requires not just any soldiers, but soldiers trained in counterinsurgency doctrine.

The numbers don’t add up.

The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies currently have about 64,000 troops in Afghanistan, and that figure would rise to almost 100,000 when the present surge is completed. Some 68,000 of those will be American. There is also a possibility that Obama will add another 20,000, bringing the total to 120,000, larger than the Soviet Army that occupied Afghanistan. That’s still only a fifth of what the counterinsurgency manual recommends.

Meanwhile, the American public is increasingly disillusioned with the war. According to a recent CNN poll, 57% of Americans oppose the war, a jump of 9% since May. Among Obama supporters the opposition is overwhelming: Nearly two-thirds of “committed” Democrats feel “strongly” the war is not worth fighting.

Delusion #4
Afghanistan isn’t like Iraq because NATO is behind us. Way behind us.

The British – whose troops actually fight, as opposed to doing “reconstruction” like most of the other 16 NATO nations – have lost the home crowd. Polls show deep opposition to the war, a sentiment that is echoed all over Europe. Indeed, the German Defense Minister Franz-Joseph Jung has yet to use the word “war” in relation to Afghanistan.

That little piece of fiction went a-glimmering in June, when three Bundeswehr soldiers were killed near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Indeed, as U.S. Marines go on the offensive in the country’s south, the Taliban are pulling up stakes and moving east and north to target the Germans. The tactic is as old as guerrilla warfare: “Where the enemy is strong, disperse. Where the enemy is weak, concentrate.”

While Berlin’s current ruling coalition of Social Democrats and conservatives quietly back the war, the Free Democrats – who are likely to join Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government after the next election – are calling for bringing Germany’s 4,500 troops home.

The opposition Left Party has long opposed the war, and that opposition gave it a boost in recent state elections.

The United States and NATO can’t – or won’t – supply the necessary troops, and the Afghan army is small, corrupt and incompetent. No matter how one adds up the numbers, the task is impossible. So why is the administration following an unsupportable course of action?

Why We Fight
There is that oil pipeline from the Caspian that no one wants to talk about. Strategic control of energy is certainly a major factor in Central Asia. Then, too, there is the fear that a defeat for NATO in its first “out of area” war might fatally damage the alliance.

But when all is said and done, there also seems to be is a certain studied derangement about the whole matter, a derangement that was on display July 12 when British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament that the war was showing “signs of success.”

British forces had just suffered 15 deaths in a little more than a week, eight of them in a 24-hour period. It has now lost more soldiers that it did in Iraq. This is Britain’s fourth war in Afghanistan.

The Karzai government has stolen the election. The war has spilled over to help destabilize and impoverish nuclear-armed Pakistan. The American and European public is increasingly opposed to the war. July was the deadliest month ever for the United States, and the Obama administration is looking at a $9 trillion deficit.

What are these people thinking?

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus.

NYT article on Hawai’i renewable energy plans

This is something that environmental, economic justice and peace activists have said for a long time: Hawai’i needs to be more energy self-sufficient. And we have the natural resources for it, but there hasn’t been the political will or capital to make it a reality.  Closing and converting the infrastructure of military bases to research, development and production of renewable energy technologies could provide a new economic base for Hawai’i.  When Barbers Point Naval Air Station closed under the BRAC process, the state failed to capitalize on this opportunity to develop an engine for innovation and economic alternatives.  The base conversion was a dismal failure with a lack of vision, haphazard planning, and a redevelopment agency that was powerless by design.    By contrast San Francisco converted the Presidio into an urban center of synergistic social innovation and an economic stimulus.

>><<

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/science/earth/15hawaii.html
September 15, 2009

Hawaii Tries Green Tools in Remaking Power Grids

By FELICITY BARRINGER

NAALEHU, Hawaii – Two miles or so from this tiny town in the southernmost corner of the United States, across ranches where cattle herds graze beneath the distant Mauna Loa volcano, the giant turbines of a new wind farm cut through the air.

Sixty miles to the northeast, near a spot where golden-red lava streams meet the sea in clouds of steam, a small power plant extracts heat from the volcanic rock beneath it to generate electricity.

These projects are just a slice of the energy experiment unfolding across Hawaii’s six main islands. With the most diverse array of alternative energy potential of any state in the nation, Hawaii has set out to become a living laboratory for the rest of the country, hoping it can slash its dependence on fossil fuels while keeping the lights on.

Every island has at least one energy accent: waves in Maui, wind in Lanai and Molokai, solar panels in Oahu and eventually, if all goes well, biomass energy from crops grown on Kauai. Here on the Big Island of Hawaii, seawater is also being converted to electricity.

Still, the state faces enormous challenges in delivering the power to the people who need it. While the urban sprawl around Honolulu consumes the bulk of the energy, most potential renewable sources are far from the city, 150 miles southeast or 100 miles to the northwest.

Each of the state’s six electric grids belongs to its own island and is unconnected to the others. And according to state figures, Hawaii still relies on imported oil to generate 77 percent of its electricity, a level of dependency unique in the United States. Coal-fired power provides 14 percent, and 9 percent comes from renewable sources like the wind or the sun.

Hawaii’s governor, Linda Lingle, a Republican, has resolved to throw off the yoke of oil dependence and harness the state’s potential.

Under an agreement reached last year with the federal government and the dominant local utility, the Hawaiian Electric Company, Hawaii plans to generate 40 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2030. The state’s six grids will be connected by cables, and planners hope that conservation steps like reducing the air-conditioning load at high-rise hotels will cut Hawaii’s energy consumption by nearly a third.

“The goals are very, very aggressive,” said Debra Lew, a senior project leader for the federal National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Three decades ago, Hawaii mapped out a similar vision, if in less detail, that came to nothing. But this time, planners say, failure is not an option. “We don’t have anywhere else to go,” said Ted Peck, the point man for the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, overseen by the State Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

Even if the state were indifferent to the environmental costs of burning oil and gas, including carbon-dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming, it would have to embrace renewable energy sources, said Robert Alm, a vice president of the Hawaiian Electric Company. “Our hedge won’t be buying oil futures, it will be buying wind,” Mr. Alm said.

Heavy reliance on imported oil has proved economically perilous. When oil prices hit $147 a barrel a year ago, electricity rates approached or briefly exceeded 50 cents per kilowatt hour on Maui and Kauai, about five times the national average.

The spike in prices lent urgency to the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, which Governor Lingle unveiled in January 2008.

The technical and political obstacles have since become clearer.

Hopscotching around this brightly colored archipelago by plane, a visitor gets a vivid sense of Hawaii’s essentially rural nature and the scope of the challenge.

The biggest priority is laying undersea cables between the outer islands and Oahu. Once those connections are made – first with cables stretching from Molokai and Lanai, the islands nearest Oahu – the capital will get power through them.

Then there is the daunting challenge of feeding fluctuating wind and solar power into the small electric grids on the individual islands while devising backup systems to keep the energy output smooth and reliable.

On Maui, for instance, General Electric is working on ways to modulate demand and store energy for later use either in electric batteries or by pump storage – filling an elevated reservoir in low-demand periods to produce hydropower when needed.

“The whole trick is making the system work in the right way, like conducting an orchestra,” said Bob Gilligan, G.E.’s vice president for transmission and distribution.

On the financial side, the state must attract developers with enough financing to help underwrite their own wind, solar, wave or other renewable projects, carry out the required environmental reviews and secure local approval. Addressing local concerns can be especially challenging. As in any state with a rural-urban divide, residents of Hawaii’s less populous outlying areas are wary about being pushed around by planners in Honolulu.

The outer islands have higher concentrations of Native Hawaiians who are well versed in a local history of exploitation, from the American overthrow of their monarch in 1893 to environmental costs of sugar plantations and tourism.

Some have formed groups like the Pele Defense Fund, which sprang up here in the 1980s to protect religious gathering rights in the rain forest on the Big Island. The fund seeks to prevent desecration of Pele, the native goddess of fire and volcanoes, and finds geothermal energy projects sacrilegious.

One avenue for developers, utilities and state officials is to offer outlying communities support or financing for needs that the local population identifies, like fish conservation. “We’re asking the small islands to be significantly burdened on behalf of Oahu, so Oahu needs to do well by them,” said Mr. Alm, the utility’s vice president.

For all the optimism, planners studiously remind themselves of the detritus of past failures, like the dismembered and rusting wind turbines of a defunct wind farm near the southern end of the Big Island.

“This transformation is going to take a generation,” said Ted Liu, director of the state economic development department. “There are no short-term easy solutions.”

Mental health program to aid Guard, Reserves

Mental health program to aid Guard, Reserves

By Helen Altonn

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Sep 13, 2009

Mental Health America of Hawaii is launching a program called “Healing the Trauma of the War” to address combat stress, depression and other needs of returning National Guard soldiers and Reservists.

“We’re going to do a review of what happens when they return home and who is falling through the cracks,” said Marya Grambs, MHA-Hawaii executive director.

The study will include spouses and look at marital problems and the impact on children of multiple deployments, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder, brain injury, suicide and employment issues, she said.

About 1,700 Hawaii Air and Army Guard and Army Reserve personnel have returned home after 10-month assignments in Kuwait.

MHA-Hawaii has retained theStrategist , an advisory firm to health care corporations and agencies, on a one-year consultant contract to work on the project.

Noe Foster, chief executive officer of the firm, said she is assembling a broad task force of National Guard and Reserve leaders, soldiers, families and other stakeholders. They will meet at least monthly over the next year to identify needs of Hawaii’s 5,500 National Guard soldiers and 5,300 Reservists, she said.

She said mental health studies of soldiers show PTSD and suicides increase dramatically with frequency of deployments and, compared to other U.S. Guard and Reserve troops, Hawaii’s soldiers have the highest frequency of deployments.

On a national level, statistics show 12 percent have some serious combat stress or depression on the first deployment, 19 percent on the second and 27 percent after the third, Foster said, adding that the task force is trying to get specific data on Hawaii soldiers.

U.S. Sen Daniel Akaka, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said at a hearing at the Oahu Veterans Center in Salt Lake last month that more should be done to help families of returning National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers, MHA-H said.

Grambs said the returning troops face a “triple whammy” because of high unemployment and economic problems.

“Those in my generation saw what happened to kids coming back from Vietnam,” she said. “We have to all join together and take responsibility and figure out how not to let anything that happened to our Vietnam veterans happen again.”

She said the task force will talk to soldiers, spouses, the school system, professionals, and National Guard and Reserve leaders and hold focus groups “to come to an understanding of what’s not working and what’s missing and create a plan of action to get needs filled.”

Town hall meetings will be held next year to bring the public together with Guards and Reservists and their families “about how the whole community can do a better job of supporting our own soldiers,” Grambs said.

Foster said Guard and Reserve unit members face challenges of housing and health care and “they don’t have the camaraderie of troops they would have on active duty. … They’re coming back to a world that changed in the past year.”

“To help these soldiers and their families, we need to see things from the 30,000-foot level to the foxhole level and every point in between,” Foster added.

Source: http://www.starbulletin.com/news/hawaiinews/20090913_Mental_health_program_to_aid_Guard_Reserves.html

Schofield soldier dies in barracks

l308523-1

Nathan Spangenberg sent this lighthearted picture to his mother, Lois Spangenberg, when he was deployed in Iraq in 2007. Courtesy of lois spangenberg

Tucson GI made it through Iraq duty, died in barracks

By Carol Ann Alaimo
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.11.2009

The Army is investigating the death of a Tucson soldier who survived a war, only to be claimed by an apparent illness back at his home base.

Spc. Nathan Spangenberg, 21, was found dead in his room at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii on Tuesday, a few days after he told loved ones by phone that he wasn’t feeling well, family members said.

It isn’t clear when he died, they said. Because of the holiday weekend, the soldier wasn’t noticed missing until he failed to report for work on Tuesday.

Spangenberg, an infantryman, returned in February from a 15-month tour in Iraq with the 2nd Stryker Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, his family said.

Loved ones who rejoiced when he came home from the war safely were stunned to see Army officers at their doorstep Wednesday.

“You worry so much while they’re gone and then he comes home and you think you can stop worrying. And now this,” said the soldier’s girlfriend, Aleisa Krug, 19, of Tucson, a student at Arizona State University.

Nathan’s mother, Lois Spangenberg, a northwest-side resident, said her son called her from Hawaii late last week and said he had strep throat. He also said he was undergoing more medical tests because he had blood and protein in his urine, she said.

He told his mother he planned to stay in his barracks for the weekend to watch movies and rest.

That was their last conversation. When she came home Wednesday from her job at Sunquest Information Systems, men in uniform were waiting for her.

“It’s so hard to believe,” she said. “It’s hard not knowing what happened.”

She said officials told her the investigation could take some time, and they couldn’t immediately say when her son’s body would be returned to Tucson.

Army officials couldn’t be reached for comment late Thursday.

Nathan was the baby of the Spangenberg clan, and the family clown, his mother said.

After he deployed to Iraq in late 2007, he sent home a string of comical photos, she said. In one, the soldier is sitting on his bunk in Iraq, holding up a sign that says “I (heart) my Mommy.”

In another, taken as he marked his 20th birthday in Iraq, he’s in full battle gear wearing a cone-shaped birthday hat atop his helmet.

“He really cared about people. He was a very giving and loving person and a lot of fun,” his mother said.

“His friends would all describe him as a person who could make them laugh.”

The soldier attended Mountain View High School from 2004 to 2006, then transferred to Mountain Rose Academy, a charter school, before earning a general equivalency diploma. He joined the military in 2007.

He is the fifth service member with ties to Mountain View High School to die since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began.

He also worked for a time as a custodian at Casas Adobes Baptist Church, his mother said.

Nathan Spangenberg also is survived by his brother Colin, 23, his sister Megan Bette, 26, and a niece and a nephew. His father, Glenn, died of cancer when the soldier was 4 years old.

Contact reporter Carol Ann Alaimo at calaimo@azstarnet.com or at 573-4138.

Source: http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/308523

Defense appropriations subcommittee led by Inouye increases war funding 20%

As reported in the Washington Post, Senator Inouye pushed for more funding for C-17s:

In a separate action Wednesday, the subcommittee joined the House in adding funds to the appropriations bill to purchase an additional 10 C-17 transport airplanes. The Obama administration has said it does not need the planes.

“We expect that in re-examining its airlift fleet the Defense Department will eventually conclude that purchasing additional C-17’s … is the right solution” for meeting the increasing need for airlift, Inouye said.

But according to an article in Politico.com,

Senate appropriators have backed the White House and bucked the House over two major Pentagon programs – a fleet of helicopters for the president and an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

There is nothing to resolve regarding the F-22 Raptor. The Senate subcommittee followed the House’s lead, providing over $560 million for maintenance of the fifth-generation fighter jet.

>><<

Updated at 2:38 p.m., Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Senate subcommittee led by Inouye OKs 20% increase in Afghan funding

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post

WASHINGTON – A key Senate subcommittee on Wednesday trimmed $900 million from the amount requested by the Obama administration to support Afghan security forces next year, but the $6.6 billion approved in the funding measure will still permit a 20 percent increase over this fiscal year to help train and equip the army and police in Afghanistan.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has indicated that improving the Afghan security forces is central to defeating the Taliban insurgency, providing security for the country’s population and permitting broader reconstruction to take place.

In announcing details of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defense, said Wednesday: “While we strongly concur with the administration that increased funding is needed to train and equip our Afghan army and police forces, it makes no sense to provide more funding than can be spent when other shortfalls exist.”

Members of the subcommittee said the administration had agreed that the $7.5 billion it originally requested for Afghan security forces could not be spent in the 2010 fiscal year. The committee decided instead to increase by $1.2 billion the amount to be spent on so-called “baby MRAPs,” all-terrain vehicles used to safeguard troops from improvised explosive devices.

In broad terms, the subcommittee’s bill, which provides $636.3 billion for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, is $3.9 billion less than the amount requested by President Obama. Of the amount approved, $128.2 billion is for “overseas contingency operations,” essentially meaning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under the Bush administration, funds for Iraq and Afghanistan were approved in supplemental appropriations bills, a process that critics said obscured the full cost of the fighting.

In a separate action Wednesday, the subcommittee joined the House in adding funds to the appropriations bill to purchase an additional 10 C-17 transport airplanes. The Obama administration has said it does not need the planes.

“We expect that in re-examining its airlift fleet the Defense Department will eventually conclude that purchasing additional C-17’s … is the right solution” for meeting the increasing need for airlift, Inouye said.

Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., who noted that 4,000 Boeing workers in Long Beach will now keep their jobs, hailed the subcommittee’s decision as “good news for our workers and our military service members.”

Inouye said the subcommittee had cut by $300 million from last year the value of earmarks pushed by members, reducing the number overall by “nearly 200 projects.”

He said, “I hope that that our colleagues can support this package with its streamlined approach to earmarking.”

Because Inouye is chairman of the full Senate Appropriation’s committee, his subcommittee’s decisions are expected to easily pass the full panel on Thursday and be sent to the Senate floor.

Source: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090909/BREAKING01/90909076/Senate+subcommittee+led+by+Inouye+OKs+20++increase+in+Afghan+funding+

Big U.S. Bases Are Part of Iraq, but a World Apart

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/world/middleeast/09bases.html?_r=2&ref=middleeast

Big U.S. Bases Are Part of Iraq, but a World Apart

08bases_600

Johan Spanner for The New York Times. At the Subway at Joint Base Balad, workers from India and Bangladesh make sandwiches for American soldiers.

MARC SANTORA
Published: September 8, 2009

JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq – It takes the masseuse, Mila from Kyrgyzstan, an hour to commute to work by bus on this sprawling American base. Her massage parlor is one of three on the base’s 6,300 acres and sits next to a Subway sandwich shop in a trailer, surrounded by blast walls, sand and rock.

09bases_map
The New York Times. Joint Base Balad is spread over 6,300 acres.
At the Subway, workers from India and Bangladesh make sandwiches for American soldiers looking for a taste of home. When the sandwich makers’ shifts end, the journey home takes them past a power plant, an ice-making plant, a sewage treatment center, a hospital and dozens of other facilities one would expect to find in a small city.

And in more than six years, that is what Americans have created here: cities in the sand.

With American troops moved out of Iraq’s cities and more than 100 bases across the country continuing to close or to be turned over to Iraq, the 130,000 American troops here will increasingly fall back to these larger bases.

While some are technically called camps or bases, they are commonly referred to as forward operating bases, or F.O.B.’s. The F.O.B. is so ingrained in the language of this war that soldiers who stayed mainly on base were once derisively called Fobbits by those outside the wire. But increasingly, the encampments are the way many Americans experience the war.

To be sure, thousands of Americans are with Iraqis at small bases, where they play an advisory role, and thousands more are on the roads and highways providing the protection needed to carry out the withdrawal.

But the F.O.B. has become an iconic part of the war, both for those fighting it and for the Iraqis, who have been largely kept out of them during the war.

They are in some ways a world apart from Iraq, with working lights, proper sanitation, clean streets and strictly observed rules and codes of conduct. Some bases have populations of more than 20,000, with thousands of contractors and third-country citizens to keep them running.

But the bases are also part of the Iraqi landscape. Mortar shells still occasionally fall inside the wire, and soldiers fall asleep to the constant sounds of helicopters, controlled detonations and gunfire from firing ranges.

“It is definitely a strange place,” said Capt. Brian Neese, an Air Force physician. “I’ve asked the Civil Affairs guy if there is anything that I can do off base, and there just isn’t anything for me to do. What kills is not the difficulty of the job but the monotony.”

At the height of the war, more than 300 bases were scattered across Iraq. Over the next few months, Americans hope to be at six huge bases, with 13 others being used for staging and preparing for a complete withdrawal.

The first people you encounter when driving up to an American base are not actually American. They are usually Ugandans, employed by a private security company, Triple Canopy, and those at Balad had enough authority to delay for five hours an American Air Force captain escorting an American reporter onto the base.

The Ugandans make up only one nationality of a diverse group of workers from developing nations who sustain life on the F.O.B.’s for American soldiers. The largest contingents come from the Philippines, Bangladesh and India. They live apart from both Western contractors and soldiers on base, interacting with them only as much as their jobs demand.

“Everyone stays pretty much separate,” said Mila, the massage therapist, whose last name could not be used out of security concerns. She has been in Iraq a year, but she said other workers had been here as long as six years, some never taking a break to go home. “You miss nature, trees and grass,” she said.

The base has two power plants, and two water treatment plants that purify 1.9 million gallons of water a day for showers and other uses. The water the soldiers drink comes from yet another plant, run by a bottling company, which provides seven million bottles of water a month for those on base.

Fifteen bus routes crisscross the complex, with 80 to 100 buses on the roads at any given moment. The Air Force officers who run the base have meetings to discuss road safety; with large, heavily armored vehicles competing for space with sedans, there are bound to be collisions.

There are two fire stations as well, and because Balad has the single busiest landing strip in the entire Defense Department, they can handle everything from an electrical fire in a trailer to a burning airplane.

The Americans also installed two sewage treatment plants, given how deeply troubled Iraq’s sewage system remains.

The facilities, like much in Iraq, are run by KBR, a company based in Houston. But as Americans prepare to turn bases over to Iraqis, they are working to bring in Iraqi companies to run some facilities, a process that has been slow and complex largely because of safety concerns.

One of the few places Iraqis can be seen, in fact, is the “Iraqi Free Zone,” a fenced-in area enclosed with barbed wire and blast walls. There, Iraqis sell pirated movies, discount cigarettes, electronics and Iraqi tchotchkes.

Each large base in Iraq takes on its own distinct flavor. Most large American bases were once Iraqi bases, but some, like Camp Bucca in southern Iraq near the Kuwaiti border, were created where there was only sand.

An Iraqi interpreter at Bucca who was living in Texas with his family when the war started said that when a contracting firm approached him, he asked where he would be working.

“They told me, ‘You would be going to a place called Bucca,’ ” said the interpreter, whose name the military asked not to be printed for security reasons. “I said, ‘There is no city called Bucca.’ They showed me it on the map and I said, ‘I am from Iraq and there is no city called Bucca.’ ”

It turned out that the interpreter was correct. Bucca, which would house the largest American-run prison in Iraq, was named after Ronald Bucca, a soldier with the 800th Military Police Brigade and a fire marshal in New York who was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Entertainers come to American bases here, the most frequent being N.F.L. cheerleaders. When the Minnesota Vikings cheerleaders visited Bucca this spring, one could only wonder what the thousands of detainees, among them Muslim extremists for whom the flash of an ankle is cause for severe punishment, would have made of the spectacle less than a mile from their cells.

American Militarism on Steroids

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175110/william_astore_american_militarism_on_steroids

posted September 03, 2009 10:48 am

Tomgram: William Astore, American Militarism on Steroids

Here’s what Cheryl Bartholomew, described as an “Omaha Early Childhood Parenting Examiner,” wrote recently about an event happening at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, for the local affiliate of the national web portal Examiner.com:

“The Offutt Air Show, Defenders of Freedom ’09 looks to be a great outing for the younger kids this year… Performers include the US Navy Blue Angels, US Army Golden Knights parachute team, an assortment of US Air Force aircraft, fake dog fights, and Tops in Blue will perform Saturday at 4pm. Static displays from the Air Force, Navy, and retired aircraft will be available to the public. There is even a B-2 Motorcycle crafted by Northrop Grumman to celebrate 20 years of the B-2 Stealth Bomber. Units from local organizations and military presenters will have booths set up around the flightline. The Fun Zone will be set up for children including 17 inflatables, glitter temporary tattoos, and photos in a[n] F-4 Phantom Cockpit are offered at the event. There will be food and drink vendors available throughout the event.”

This little blurb catches something larger — the way military displays of every sort have increasingly been woven into the interstices of our everyday lives as spectacle in movies, video games, ever more militarized ceremonies surrounding the country’s honored dead, and in so many other ways. Americans largely prefer not to notice. On our own militarism, we are generally in denial. We seem to take it all in not as a reflection of a more militarized country with a Pentagon budget unparalleled in history, but as so much passing entertainment, in part because the militarized land we live in conforms to no notions we hold of militarism.

Abroad, the U.S. has developed a unique global presence in which our military is both everywhere and nowhere. This is the case because our version of imperialism is focused not on acquiring colonies, but on building scads of military outposts, what Chalmers Johnson calls “our empire of bases.” We may literally garrison the planet (and patrol its seas and oceans), fighting constant wars in distant lands, and yet it all makes only a minimal impression on what is these days regularly referred to as “the homeland” (a word now inseparable from its companion “security”).

Similarly, the creeping militarization of this society in these last decades has followed an unfamiliar route. No massed parades of troops, no vast, visible military presence in the streets, nothing we would recognize as typically militaristic is in evidence. And yet an in-your-face, militarized version of patriotism filled with threat, fear, and an almost tangible desperation has enveloped the society, a style of patriotism that would have made past generations of Americans deeply uncomfortable — and does exactly that to TomDispatch regular retired Lieutenant Colonel William Astore. But let him explain why and what we should do about it. Tom

Whatever Happened to Gary Cooper?

A Seven-Step Program to Return America to a Quieter, Less Muscular, Patriotism

By William Astore

I have a few confessions to make: After almost eight years of off-and-on war in Afghanistan and after more than six years of mayhem and death since “Mission Accomplished” was declared in Operation Iraqi Freedom, I’m tired of seeing simpleminded magnetic ribbons on vehicles telling me, a 20-year military veteran, to support or pray for our troops. As a Christian, I find it presumptuous to see ribbons shaped like fish, with an American flag as a tail, informing me that God blesses our troops. I’m underwhelmed by gigantic American flags — up to 100 feet by 300 feet — repeatedly being unfurled in our sports arenas, as if our love of country is greater when our flags are bigger. I’m disturbed by nuclear-strike bombers soaring over stadiums filled with children, as one did in July just as the National Anthem ended during this year’s Major League Baseball All Star game. Instead of oohing and aahing at our destructive might, I was quietly horrified at its looming presence during a family event.

We’ve recently come through the steroid era in baseball with all those muscled up players and jacked up stats. Now that players are tested randomly, home runs are down and muscles don’t stretch uniforms quite as tightly. Yet while ending the steroid era in baseball proved reasonably straightforward once the will to act was present, we as a country have yet to face, no less curtail, our ongoing steroidal celebrations of pumped-up patriotism.

It’s high time we ended the post-Vietnam obsession with Rambo’s rippling pecs as well as the jaw-dropping technological firepower of the recent cinematic version of G.I. Joe and return to the resolute, undemonstrative strength that Gary Cooper showed in movies like High Noon.

In the HBO series The Sopranos, Tony (played by James Gandolfini) struggles with his own vulnerability — panic attacks caused by stress that his Mafia rivals would interpret as fatal signs of weakness. Lamenting his emotional frailty, Tony asks, “Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?” Whatever happened, in other words, to quiet, unemotive Americans who went about their business without fanfare, without swagger, but with firmness and no lack of controlled anger at the right time?

Tony’s question is a good one, but I’d like to spin it differently: Why did we allow lanky American citizen-soldiers and true heroes like World War I Sergeant Alvin York (played, at York’s insistence, by Gary Cooper) and World War II Sergeant (later, first lieutenant) Audie Murphy (played in the film To Hell and Back, famously, by himself) to be replaced by all those post-Vietnam pumped up Hollywood “warriors,” with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger-style abs and egos to match?

And far more important than how we got here, how can we end our enduring fascination with a puffed up, comic-book-style militarism that seems to have stepped directly out of screen fantasy and into our all-too-real lives?

A Seven-Step Recovery Program

As a society, we’ve become so addicted to militarism that we don’t even notice the way it surrounds us or the spasms of societal ‘roid rage that go with it. The fact is, we need a detox program. At the risk of incurring some of that ‘roid rage myself, let me suggest a seven-step program that could help return us to the saner days of Gary Cooper:

1. Baseball players on steroids swing for the fences. So does a steroidal country. When you have an immense military establishment, your answer to trouble is likely to be overwhelming force, including sending troops into harm’s way. To rein in our steroidal version of militarism, we should stop bulking up our military ranks, as is now happening, and shrink them instead. Our military needs not more muscle supplements (or the budgetary version of the same), but far fewer.

2. It’s time to stop deferring to our generals, and even to their commander-in-chief. They’re ours, after all; we’re not theirs. When President Obama says Afghanistan is not a war of choice but of necessity, we shouldn’t hesitate to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Yet when it comes to tough questioning of the president’s generals, Congress now seems eternally supine. Senators and representatives are invariably too busy falling all over themselves praising our troops and their commanders, too worried that “tough” questioning will appear unpatriotic to the folks back home, or too connected to military contractors in their districts, or some combination of the three.

Here’s something we should all keep in mind: generals have no monopoly on military insight. What they have a monopoly on is a no-lose situation. If things go well, they get credit; if they go badly, we do. Retired five-star general Omar Bradley was typical when he visited Vietnam in 1967 and declared: “I am convinced that this is a war at the right place, at the right time and with the right enemy — the Communists.” North Vietnam’s only hope for victory, he insisted, was “to hang on in the expectation that the American public, inadequately informed about the true situation and sickened by the loss in lives and money, will force the United States to give up and pull out.”

There we have it: A classic statement of the belief that when our military loses a war, it’s always the fault of “we the people.” Paradoxically, such insidious myths gain credibility not because we the people are too forceful in our criticism of the military, but because we are too deferential.

3. It’s time to redefine what “support our troops” really means. We console ourselves with the belief that all our troops are volunteers, who freely signed on for repeated tours of duty in forever wars. But are our troops truly volunteers? Didn’t we recruit them using multi-million dollar ad campaigns and lures of every sort? Are we not, in effect, running a poverty and recession draft? Isolated in middle- or upper-class comfort, detached from our wars and their burdens, have we not, in a sense, recruited a “foreign legion” to do our bidding?

If you’re looking for a clear sign of a militarized society — which few Americans are — a good place to start is with troop veneration. The cult of the soldier often covers up a variety of sins. It helps, among other things, hide the true costs of, and often the futility of, the wars being fought. At an extreme, as the war began to turn dramatically against Nazi Germany in 1943, Germans who attempted to protest Hitler’s failed strategy and the catastrophic costs of his war were accused of (and usually executed for) betraying the troops at the front.

The United States is not a totalitarian state, so surely we can hazard criticisms of our wars and even occasionally of the behavior of some of our troops, without facing charges of stabbing our troops in the back and aiding the enemy. Or can we?

4. Let’s see the military for what it is: a blunt instrument of force. It’s neither surgical nor precise nor predictable. What Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago remains true: when wars start, havoc is unleashed, and the dogs of war run wild — in our case, not just the professional but the “mercenary” dogs of war, those private contractors to the Pentagon that thrive on the rich spoils of modern warfare in distant lands. It’s time to recognize that we rely ever more massively to prosecute our wars on companies that profit ever more handsomely the longer they last.

5. Let’s not blindly venerate the serving soldier, while forgetting our veterans when they doff their spiffy uniforms for the last time. It’s easy to celebrate our clean-cut men and women in uniform when they’re thousands of miles from home, far tougher to lend a hand to scruffier, embittered veterans suffering from the physical and emotional trauma of the battle zones to which they were consigned, usually for multiple tours of duty.

6. I like air shows, but how about — as a first tiny step toward demilitarizing civilian life — banning all flyovers of sporting events by modern combat aircraft? War is not a sport, and it shouldn’t be a thrill.

7. I love our flag. I keep my father’s casket flag in a special display case next to the very desk on which I’m writing this piece. It reminds me of his decades of service as a soldier and firefighter. But I don’t need humongous stadium flags or, for that matter, tiny flag lapel pins to prove my patriotism — and neither should you. In fact, doesn’t the endless post-9/11 public proliferation of flags in every size imaginable suggest a certain fanaticism bordering on desperation? If we saw such displays in other countries, our descriptions wouldn’t be kindly.

Of course, none of this is likely to be easy as long as this country garrisons the planet and fights open-ended wars on its global frontiers. The largest step, the eighth one, would be to begin seriously downsizing that mission. In the meantime, we shouldn’t need reminding that this country was originally founded as a civilian society, not a militarized one. Indeed, the revolt of the 13 colonies against the King of England was sparked, in part, by the perceived tyranny of forced quartering of British troops in colonial homes, the heavy hand of an “occupation” army, and taxation that we were told went for our own defense, whether we wanted to be defended or not.

If Americans are going to continue to hold so-called tea parties, shouldn’t some of them be directed against the militarization of our country and an enormous tax burden fed in part by our wasteful, trillion-dollar wars?

Modest as it may seem, my seven-step recovery program won’t be easy for many of us to follow. After all, let’s face it, we’ve come to enjoy our peculiar brand of muscular patriotism and the macho militarism that goes with it. In fact, we revel in it. Outwardly, the result is quite an impressive show. We look confident and ripped and strong. But it’s increasingly clear that our outward swagger conceals an inner desperation. If we’re so strong, one might ask, why do we need so much steroidal piety, so many in-your-face patriotic props, and so much parade-ground conformity?

Forget Rambo and action-picture G.I. Joes: Give me the steady hand, the undemonstrative strength, and the quiet humility of Alvin York, Audie Murphy — and Gary Cooper.

William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a TomDispatch regular. He teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology and can be reached at wastore@pct.edu.

Copyright 2009 William J. Astore

Students need to be able to make informed decision on military service

VIEWPOINT: Students need to be able to make informed decision on military service

By ANN PITCAITHLEY

POSTED: September 2, 2009

The federal No Child Left behind Act of 2001 contains a little-known provision that threatens the federal funding of any school refusing to turn over the personal contact information of students in grades 7 through 12 to military recruiters. This action is in violation of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

Given the current economic recession, more high school age youth are considering joining the military. At this impressionable age, we must entrust our public schools with the responsibility to protect our children’s rights to privacy. Students and parents have complained of multiple cell and home phone calls from military recruiters as well as uninvited recruiters arriving at their houses.

The Hawaii Department of Education offers a form that parents or legal guardians can sign to prevent this release of student information. It can be downloaded at doe.k12.hi.us. The American Friends Service Committee also offers this form in 11 languages at www.afschawaii.org. Forms are due by Sept. 15, but will be accepted anytime during the school year. In mid-October, the Department of Education is required to turn over a student list to recruiters.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act also grants military recruiters access to campuses, with their presence far outnumbering college recruiters and prospective employers. Recruiting is currently a $4 billion industry. According to Army spokesman Douglas Smith, the military spent an average of $16,199 for each of its 73,373 recruits in 2005.

Youth advocacy programs such as Careers in Peacemaking (CIP) have been forming across the nation to provide youth with informed choices about military enlistment. We believe that before making this life-altering decision, a young person should be exposed to data from as many different sources as possible. Consulting with school administrators and teachers, we offer presentations in high school classrooms and attend career fairs to make known the realities of current military life and war, and to introduce nonmilitary sources of funding for jobs and college.

Maui CIP is fortunate to have a veteran, a Maui high school graduate who has served in Iraq, share with students his experiences regarding military service and war. Through my CIP activities, I have learned that most of our island youth have no idea what military service entails, despite the fact that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been going on for eight years of their lives. Many haven’t given much thought to the U.S. role in these conflicts. They cannot define “civilian casualty,” or “collateral damage.”

Almost all students that we have spoken to are unaware that enlistment is a mandatory commitment of eight years, or that their rank, assignment and length of service can change without prior notice or consent. They don’t understand the implications of giving up their civilian rights when they sign the complex enlistment agreement or how this can impact them if they are troubled by what the military orders them to do. They are unaware of the rates of veteran suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder. Female students know nothing of the high statistics of sexual assault on women in the military.

One of the most common reason youth enlist is money for college. Others sign up to give their life a higher meaning, to help others or to serve their country. Many see it as their best opportunity to travel. These are all valid reasons. CIP’s concern is that in the course of fulfilling these desires, the student can lose their life, become severely wounded, or suffer mental disorders including long-term depression and disillusionment over what they experience in the military or combat. CIP believes it is important that students are provided with facts, testimonies and alternatives.

One alternative is Americorps, which recently received a large boost in federal funding. It is our hope that citizens will understand that our goals are not subversive but merely to engage in meaningful dialogue with our island’s children to help them make informed decisions.

Ann Pitcaithley is the current coordinator of Careers in Peacemaking, a project of Maui Peace Action. For more information, see the Web site: www.mauipeace.org

Source: http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/523102.html?nav=18

Military pays company to screen reporters

Posted on: Sunday, August 30, 2009

Media, military ties rocky

3-day symposium focuses on ways to improve relationship

By John Milburn
Associated Press

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. – A reporter died with George Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn, but the days of such a close kinship between journalists and military officers seem long gone.

The media-military relationship is often contentious enough that the Army’s war college devoted three days last week to consider and discuss ways to improve it even though no official military doctrine exists to foster good working relationships.

“We’re not enemies, but we’re not exactly allies, either,” two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Burns of The New York Times said Wednesday during one of the sessions hosted by the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

It was the seventh symposium by the institute, but the first to focus on media relations.

Burns, the Times’ former Baghdad bureau chief, said war correspondents depend on the military to give the access to the front lines. There’s potential for the relationship to go bad, but the military is within its rights to question a reporter’s motives.

“We need you guys. We can’t cover these wars without your help,” Burns said.

That relationship has increasingly been a rocky one. The three-day symposium comes as the U.S. military in Afghanistan has acknowledged that it pays a private company to produce profiles on journalists covering the war. Recent stories in the Stars and Stripes newspaper said journalists were being screened by Washington-based public relations firm, The Rendon Group, under a $1.5 million contract with the military.

Military officials have denied that the information is used to decide which media members travel with military units. But the International Federation of Journalists and others have complained about the policy saying it compromises the independence of media.

Tom Curley, chief executive of The Associated Press, has criticized the military for imposing tough restrictions on journalists seeking to give the public truthful reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since then, the AP has had several meetings and exchanges with top Army leaders, Curley said.

“We have found common ground on major points and are looking at a range of specific situations involving access-to-battlefield events,” Curley said yesterday. “The conversations have been both enlightening and encouraging.”

Many in the audience at the symposium were majors at the Army’s Command and General Staff College, where officers are required to improve their media acumen before they graduate by writing blog postings and conducting interviews.

“Ultimately, we each have a responsibility to the American people,” Caldwell said. “We can work with the media to reach each of our objectives. They’re not opposites, they are one in the same.”

Source: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090830/NEWS08/908300383

Injured soldier feels ‘betrayed’

Posted on: Sunday, August 30, 2009

Injured soldier feels ‘betrayed’

By William Cole
Advertiser Columnist

Sgt. Kaipo Giltner has been in the Hawai’i Army National Guard for 10 years.

The 28-year-old Hawai’i Kai man deployed to Iraq for a year in 2005, and was set to deploy to Kuwait last fall.

That’s when his service to the nation got complicated – in this case due to injury. Giltner’s battles have since been fought at home with the National Guard as he figures out what to do about a bad back.

Giltner said his Humvee hit a bump on a tank trail Sept. 2 during training at Fort Hood, Texas. He and other Hawai’i soldiers were preparing for the deployment to Kuwait.

Giltner, a 1999 Kaiser High School graduate, said he felt pain shooting down his leg, and numbness.

“He followed protocol” and went to sick call, said Giltner’s wife, Shelly. She was six months pregnant at the time. Kaipo Giltner was sent home and taken off active duty.

The National Guard initiated a special “line of duty” investigation, and Giltner recently got the results.

“They are going back and forth, (but) they are saying that it was a previous injury, and they are not responsible because I didn’t claim it at the time,” he said.

Giltner said he was in a Humvee that was hit by a roadside bomb in Iraq during the 2005 deployment. He had some back pain, “but it was really small and minor,” and Giltner said he didn’t report it. He then went through pre-deployment training in 2008.

“I was fine. I did all the necessary training,” he said. Giltner, who has a disc protrusion, said he should have been kept on active duty so he could receive pay as he pursued medical treatment.

“One doctor told me I might need surgery, so if I go through surgery, I’ll be out of work for a year,” said Giltner, who works part-time as a gate guard at Fort Shafter.

“I feel pretty much betrayed,” he added. “I fight for the country and put my life on the line and when it’s time to take care of me … they can’t do it.”

Lt. Col. Chuck Anthony, a Hawai’i National Guard spokesman, said he is prohibited from discussing specifics of Giltner’s case, which he called “very complicated.” Soldiers often are kept on active duty during injury treatment, he said.

“In most cases, it’s pretty clear cut,” Anthony said. Other cases “can be problematic because it’s not clear in terms off what caused a particular illness or injury (and) whether or not it was a pre-existing condition.”

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Source: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090830/COLUMNISTS32/908300357