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America’s Iraq Legacy

December 16, 2011 by Haviland Smith

By the end of this month, there will be no more American troops stationed in Iraq, and if the American logistical team is as good as we hear, there won’t be any US military hardware, not even uniforms and toothbrushes left there either.

March 19, 2012, would mark nine spent years in Iraq.  Precise numbers of casualties are disputed, but it would seem that over that period of time, we have suffered almost 4500 deaths and over 33,000 wounded.  The only dispute here is on the numbers of US wounded, with some sources claiming that over 100,000 would be closer to the truth.  In any event, the care and treatment of wounded, whatever the number truly is, will continue for decades and cost close to a trillion additional dollars.

In direct financial costs, the Brown University “Costs of War” project estimates that the Iraq war alone has already cost in excess of 1 trillion dollars.  That number does not count any future costs, whether medical or interest payments on the billions borrowed to pursue the war, or anything else.  It’s not too hard to remember Bush Administration officials telling us that the Iraq war “would pay for itself”!

Saddam Hussein, unless you were on his team, was a horrific leader.  He murdered countless numbers of his fellow Iraqis, using poison gas on his own people.  On the other hand, if you take a totally self-serving, cynical point of view, he represented a number of things that have been important to United States administrations in the past.  He maintained a stable government and country – by repression, of course.  He maintained the flow of Iraqi oil to the West. He and his large army represented the only truly effective deterrent to Iranian hegemonic goals in the Gulf region.  He was on “our side” in the Cold War.  Additionally, he attacked and made war against Iran between l980-88.  All of these things, at one time or another, have been important to, approved and encouraged by American administrations, particularly the war with Iran, which took place during Ronald Reagan’s administration.

One of the things our attack on Iraq accomplished was to end all of the above practices which were appreciated, even encouraged by a variety of US Administrations.  So, what good did it do for anyone?

The roughly 100,000 Iraqi dead didn’t appreciate our invasion.  The Sunnis, a minority in Iraq’s complex ethnic and secular structure, who had ruled mercilessly there, have not fared well in the aftermath of the invasion.  It’s really hard to figure just how the Kurds have made out.  If they can continue their semi-autonomy there, which they clearly plan to fight to do, they could conceivably be considered winners.

Regional Sunnis are not pleased with Shia ascendancy in Iraq since that basically empowers contiguous, Shia Iran.  After all, Sunni Iraq had been the major bulwark against Iran’s quest for Gulf hegemony at the expense of the Sunnis.  Thus, the Shia, who represent 60+% of the Iraqi population are clear winners.  Having been horribly repressed by a succession of Sunni governments, they are finally in charge.

The far most important winner in the region is Iran.  With their confessional confederates in charge in Iraq, they no longer are faced with an implacable Sunni neighbor.  With our final expulsion from Iraq, Iran is now virtually free to pursue its hegemonic goals in the Gulf.  There is literally no army in the region that is remotely capable of taking them on.  Their active duty military establishment is over half a million strong with an additional 600,000 in the active reserve.  Iran is a country of 78 million people living on 1.6 million square kilometers, the 18th largest country in the World.  They are intelligent, capable people who, in the millennium before Christ, ruled the entire region that we now call the Middle East.  It was, at the time, the largest empire ever constructed by man.  Iranians have not forgotten these facts and seek to be taken more seriously in their region today.

How is the future shaping up for Iraq today?  With Nuri al-Maliki heading a government made up largely of pro-Iranian, Shia Islamists, hope is fading for a calm transition to a secular Islamic government.  It now appears that the national and sectarian instabilities of the past, Sunni/Shia, Arab/Kurd and Arab/Iranian are likely to determine the future.

Any country that is inherently politically unstable and volatile, like Iraq with its history of sectarian conflict, is heading for trouble.  There is every possibility that a renewal of the sectarian fighting of 2006-2007 that killed thousands of Iraqis could be just around the corner.

And remember, this time, the Shia will be in power, not our old “friends” the Sunnis, with Iran not very far behind.


Posted in foreign policy, Iraq, Middle East, Military Polilcy | Leave a Comment »

Egyptian Democracy?

November 28, 2011 by Haviland Smith

As the situation in Egypt heated up last week, we learned that the Obama administration is applying the heat to Egyptian military rulers in the hope it can influence Egypt’s political future.  According to press reports, the administration’s concern is focused on the need for faster democratic reforms and stricter restrictions on the Egyptian security forces that are being blamed for the many deaths during the recent street protests in and around Tahrir Square.

Apparently, most of the heat came as a result of administration fears that the ongoing Egyptian unrest is threatening what the Obama administration hopes will be a smooth transition to democratic rule in that country.  And therein lies the rub!

“Smooth transitions to democratic rule” have certain prerequisites.  Most important, irrespective of the location of the hoped-for changeover, is some sort of history or experience with the most important aspects of democratic rule.  Those are:  the active, unfettered participation of the people in politics and civil life; national tolerance of pluralism; the right to vote in free elections; the existence of the rule of law and unbiased courts; the guarantee of basic human rights, particularly religious; the separation of powers and freedom of speech, opinion, press and religion.  Absent these preconditions, the struggle for democracy will rarely be won.

Egypt formally ended its colonial period in 1922 when England issued a unilateral declaration of Egypt’s independence, resulting in the creation of the Kingdom of Egypt.  That kingdom limped along with persistent British manipulation until 1953 when the Egyptian military, led by Gamal Abdul Nasser took power.  From then until the January 2011 uprising, the Egyptian military, successively under Generals Naguib, Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, has maintained control of Egypt.  In fact, they control Egypt today.

The Egyptian election cycle started on November 28.  The question that needs to be examined is what are the likely outcomes of this process?

Given the fact that Egypt has virtually no experience with democracy, it is difficult to see the cohesive support that a triumph for democracy would demand.  There are, essentially, two national organizations that have the requisite organizational and political experience to compete effectively in these elections.  They are the military establishment that has ruled the country, to the ire of much of the population, for almost 60 years and the Muslim Brotherhood that was founded in Egypt in 1928 and has been actively engaged in Egyptian politics, albeit often surreptitiously, ever since.

There is no democratic organization in Egypt that has the political or organizational experience that would make it a contender in these ongoing elections.  Even if there were, such an organization would be perpetually in the crosshairs of both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Why, then, have we Americans staked so much on a “democratic” outcome for Egypt or any other Muslim country, if such a result in so unlikely?  Of course, we do it because we believe it is the absolute best system of government for all of mankind.  We do it because we are a collection of ethnocentric human beings who have little to no understanding of Egypt or Islam.

Egypt has Islam.  Islam provides its Egyptian believers with complete and comprehensive rules for behavior.  Most believers are comfortable with those rules.  Many see no benefit to them, either nationally or individually, in democracy.  In fact, the existing Islamic parties offer a viable alternative to the corrupt, repressive, long-serving dictators who have clearly been seen by Muslims to have been kept in power by western “democratic” governments.

On November 25th, Morocco’s first post-Arab Spring elections were won by an Islamist Party.  The only thing that is important here is that the Moroccan and other Islamist parties actually reflect the will of their peoples.  What we should be concerned about here is not “democracy” but “self-determination”.   Once these Muslim nations have decided what form or forms of government they wish to have, we should support them unreservedly, while maintaining our own convictions that our system has something to offer the rest of mankind – if they agree and if they should choose to adopt it.

It is absurd and counterproductive for the Obama administration to be up in arms about the Eqyptian elections.  The notion in the administration and in Congress that we will refuse to contribute foreign assistance to them because they “do not become a democracy” is absolutely absurd, particularly if it is in our national interest to support them. They will become what they become and no amount of American pressure will change that.

Posted in Egypt, foreign policy | Leave a Comment »

Draft-free America

November 20, 2011 by Haviland Smith

America’s involvement in wars in the Middle East has opened a number of difficult discussions here at home.  First and foremost, why did we get involved in the first place and why have we mortgaged our future pursuing those wars?

But those are questions that have been discussed since our invasion of Iraq and that will be discussed for decades to come.  It is possible that before all the Bush era decision-makers have passed on, we might even learn why we got so involved.

There is one more issue that is now beginning to be discussed.  It is an issue that is even more difficult than those above and that stems from the way America has come to run its military and to make wars.  It is, moreover, an issue of how we treat those who actually fight those wars.

In 1971, a nation tired of the Viet Nam war passed legislation ending the military draft in favor of an All-Volunteer Force (AVF).  The end of the draft was formally announced in 1973.  This status quo went along relatively smoothly until we got involved in our first unpopular post-Viet Nam war.

In that regard, in 2010, roughly seventy percent of Americans said the Iraq war was not worth it.   Sixty percent are opposed to our continued military involvement in Afghanistan.  It is parenthetically interesting to note that in the Muslim Middle East, 90% are against US military involvement where 57% of Israelis support that involvement.  And we thought we were in it to bring democracy to Islam!

In purely practical terms, the AVF has amounted to a Praetorian Guard for both the Republicans under Bush and the Democrats under Obama.  Aided and abetted by a compliant Congress that has largely opted out of its constitutional responsibility for declaring war, those administrations have been able to do pretty much whatever they wished with the AVF, including initiating and continuing two very expensive, unfunded and unpopular wars.

Today’s AVF is often criticized for not being representative of the US population.  According to a 2006 Rand study, “Recruits come primarily from families in the middle or lower middle classes. Few recruits come from upper-income families”, and recruits from the Southern states are overrepresented.  Nevertheless, despite such criticism, the AVF has functioned extremely well in its combat role.

So what’s the complaint?  We have a AVF that does its job well, in the process, using less privileged Americans and thus absolving the “upper classes” of bearing any responsibility for manning our military.

When we had an army of conscripts, as was the case in Viet Nam, jut about all of us had a dog in the fight.  We had relatives or friends who were in uniform.  For that reason, when we turned against the Viet Nam war, we had real influence.

We were able to actually affect the conduct of the war and that reality led to our withdrawal.  That is no longer the case.  Now, only a few of us have that dog in the fight.  There is little personal incentive to do the things necessary for a citizen to affect policy.

The toughest aspect of this new reality comes in the way we treat those who are in the fight.  We all remember how badly we Americans treated our troops when they came back from Viet Nam.  We spat on them, both figuratively and literally.  We don’t do that now.  Now we shower them with platitudes.  “Thank you for your service to our country” we say, thanking the Lord that we don’t really know them and that they are not actually related to us.

So, what do you do if you think that these 21st Century wars never should have been undertaken?  What do you say when you consider the trillions of dollars that our Middle East adventures have cost us?  Precisely how do you deal with the dichotomy that very brave and dedicated young men and women have been and now are participating in conflicts that you think are the result of terrible errors in leadership judgment?

The increasing number of Americans who believe that these wars have not been in our national interest clearly have to continue to argue against such involvements.  However, far more importantly than that, we have to recognize the extraordinary physical and mental damage these wars have done to those who actually participated in them.  The effects of that involvement will be with us as long as those veterans live.  It will be monumentally and increasingly expensive.

What we can all do is accept that fact and support those troops that way, irrespective of how we feel about the wars that caused that reality.

Posted in Middle East, Military Polilcy, United States | Leave a Comment »

Israel’s soul at stake

November 6, 2011 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in the Rutland Herald and the Barre Times-Argus

Article published Nov 6, 2011

Currently, the Arab world seems to be in nearly complete ferment, not necessarily heading for liberal democracy as we know it but probably toward self-determination, the result of which, if fulfilled, is likely to add to stability in the region.

Even though the process of getting to self-determination is likely to be exceedingly rough — take Libya, for example — it is inexorably under way. Every country in the region will be profoundly affected, most emphatically including Israel, which in the long run could face an even more united, less accommodating Arab world. Even today there is talk in Egypt of doing away with the 1979 peace agreement with Israel.

Recently, more than 110 members of the United Nations General Assembly announced their support for a Palestinian state. It is possible that in the coming months, the General Assembly will vote to recognize Palestine as a state defined by its pre-1967 borders. Such a motion would not be subject to Security Council veto and would have far-reaching ramifications for both countries.

And through all of this, Israel and the United States are talking about restarting Palestine-Israel negotiations. However, the likelihood of their taking place seems daily more remote.

The Palestinians, backed by the Arabs, and Israel, backed by the United States, remain equally resolute in setting up preconditions that the other side cannot or will not meet. Mutual recognition, establishing borders, negotiating the right of return and the ongoing Israeli settlement program are prominent among those issues.

To further complicate matters, UNESCO has just voted overwhelmingly to admit Palestine as a member state. Such a motion will not be subject to Security Council veto and is also likely to have a direct effect on Palestine’s ongoing attempts in the General Assembly to become a member state.

These could be ominous events for an Israel intent on maintaining the status quo. Remember, absent a two-state solution, the threat is to Israel’s Zionist roots of Jewishness and democracy, not to Palestine, which after half a century of statelessness has nothing much left to lose.

In addition, at a time when both Palestinians and Israelis need flexibility to reach any kind of acceptable solution, Israeli politics appear to be increasingly in the political grip of the settlers and their supporters, among whom we find Israel’s religiously conservative political right, the most strident of Israeli’s Christian and Jewish American supporters and the increasingly dogmatic Russian immigration to Israel.

For anyone who really cares about the Zionist future of Israel, a quick look is enough to bring tears to one’s eyes. It really doesn’t matter who is at fault; everything that is happening, every inescapable trend, every policy in place, every incontrovertible reality represents a virtually iron-clad guarantee that Israel is in the process of giving up its soul — its Zionist democratic and Jewish roots.

Unfortunately for Israel, time is not on its side. Demographics will do it in. The only answer for an Israel that decides to retain both its Jewish and democratic character lies in the two-state solution. As time goes on, however, the ongoing West Bank settlement program and ingrained Arab hostility toward the very existence of Israel make that outcome less feasible — some say, impossible.

So, absent the two-state solution, Israel has two options: giving up its democracy for apartheid, or giving up its Jewishness for a one-state solution. Retaining both seems highly unlikely, and neither would be acceptable for a true Zionist.

Recently, some committed Zionist supporters of Israel are showing subtle changes in attitude toward the future. The media contain daily articles questioning the settlement movement and the Likud’s approach to human rights. Israel’s daily Haaretz has just asked, “Is Israel confusing legitimate criticism of its policies with anti-Semitism to avoid having to make difficult existential decisions?”

Here in America, a new organization called J Street, “The political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans,” is gaining membership, particularly among younger Americans, while being totally rejected by the Netanyahu government.

Will American Jewry be able to continue to support Israel if it maintains its current political, social and religious orientations?

Is the situation reaching a point where liberal American Jews will be forced to choose between their values and their emotional attachment to Israel? That would be a sad day, particularly when successful negotiations on four issues — security, borders, refugees and Jerusalem — could save Zionist Israel at the cost of some of the settlements.

That is an impossible goal if Israel continues to refuse to even try. Lose some settlements or lose your Zionist soul.

Posted in foreign policy, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

America ‘Losing Its Marbles’ Over Afghanistan

October 27, 2011 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in The Herald of Randolph

Our national leadership over the last decade, from Presidents Bush and Obama through the House and Senate leadership to General Petraeus and C/JCS Admiral Mullen, has collectively informed us that as long as the Taliban insurgency has a sanctuary in Pakistan, we will never defeat them in Afghanistan.

Despite that, Americans collectively refer to the Afghan adventure as part of the “War on Terror,” overlooking the fact that there are few to no terrorists there and that we are dealing with a pure insurgency in our struggle with the Taliban.

America is losing its marbles. Our policy in the region shows either an almost total lack of understanding, or a total disregard of historical realities. Our policy is based cynically and dangerously on internal domestic political pressures, not on facts on the ground. Unfortunately, people who know and understand history didn’t make our Afghan policy. Those who made that policy did not and do not understand or appreciate history.

Have we learned nothing from our past adventures? From Iraq, Vietnam, Korea? Have we learned nothing from others’ experiences in Afghanistan? From the British, the Soviets? The knowledge necessary for a cogent policy there has always existed here in America. It has simply not been used.

Current support of war will cost Republicans politically here where two-thirds of the population is against the Afghan war. It will also cost the Democrats where Obama, having spoken bravely during the 2008 campaign about leaving Afghanistan and Iraq, has adopted the Bush policy, lock, stock and barrel.

As difficult as the term is to define, “national interest” represents a country’s military, economic, and cultural goals and ambitions. The concept is important in foreign affairs, where pursuit of the national interest is critical to foreign policy formulation. National interests are occasionally, but never always, identical with those of other nations.

On October 1, 2011, NBC News questioned Pakistan’s commitment to fight terror. On that same day, Secretary of State Clinton said that the Pakistanis are “making a serious strategic error” in supporting the Taliban.

Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, couching his comments in terms of terrorism rather than insurgency, told Fox News that U.S. should consider military action against Pakistan because of Pakistani support of Taliban attacks on US troops and other personnel in Afghanistan.

No rational person could possibly suggest that course of action! Look at our troop numbers. We haven’t enough to deal with the insurgency in Afghanistan, let alone take on Pakistan. With an Afghan population of about 30 million, the accepted ratio of 20 counterinsurgent troops per 1,000 residents requires a commitment of 600,000 troops. By the same formula, Pakistan, with a population of just under 190 million would require an additional commitment of 3.8 million troops.

Where will those troops come from when, as of 2009, the United States had a grand total of just under 1.5 million troops in uniform to cover all its commitments at home and abroad?

We are considering this action because we are frustrated that the Pakistanis see it in their national interest to support the Taliban. They always have. U.S. policy makers have to learn that this will not change, no matter how much they hope or wish that it will. In terms of Pakistan national interests, support of the Taliban is an integral part of their India policy, and therefore critical for them to continue.

As to Pakistani commitment to “fighting terrorism,” the same is true. We want them to go after the Taliban, which is not an issue of terrorism, but of insurgency. They do not see it as being in their national interest.

The problem here is one of competing American and Pakistani national interests. The problem is not that Pakistan’s national interests are different from ours. The problem is that those who created our policy there have either shamefully not known the facts, or have willfully ignored them.

Either way, foreign policies rooted in American domestic politics that ignore or overlook facts and realities on the ground abroad are doomed to failure.

Posted in Afghanistan, foreign policy | Leave a Comment »

A divided Iraq is our legacy

October 23, 2011 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

Existing U.S.-Iraq bilateral agreements stipulate that we will withdraw all our troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

The Obama administration’s ongoing demand, originated by the Bush administration, that the Iraqi government permit thousands of American troops to remain in Iraq after the existing departure deadline of the end of this year appears to have run into serious trouble in the Iraqi approval process.

Apparently the Iraqis have not made a final decision, but the real issue here is the precise meaning of the American and Iraqi inability to come expeditiously to agreement on an item of considerable importance to both sides.

The sticking point appears to be that we have demanded that all our troops who remain in Iraq must have immunity from Iraqi courts. It is difficult to think that we would agree to a status of forces agreement with any country, including Iraq, that did not provide such immunity, which has existed in virtually all of such agreements we have concluded around the world since World War II.

The problem for Iraq lies in the inherent composition of the country and government. There is apparently a consensus within Iraqi leadership both that the American troops should stay and that they should be granted the requested immunity.

However, our State Department lawyers have determined that immunity from Iraqi courts, even if granted by the existing Iraqi government, would be guaranteed only if formally approved by the Iraqi Parliament.

Therein lies the rub. Even though the administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki seems willing to grant this immunity, the Parliament is not. The 2010 elections produced a government composed of nine different alliances and parties. It is fragmented and so weak that it cannot conceivably support the grant of immunity to American troops that is an absolutely inflexible condition of the Obama administration. Far too many Iraqis see this grant as a continuation of the “American occupation” and do not support it. Parenthetically, al-Maliki has said from the start that approval of the Iraqi Parliament would be impossible.

Of course, this impasse is a reflection on the entire American experience in Iraq. It says a great deal about any chances we might have thought we had for “success” in that country when we invaded in 2003. And it says a lot about our hopes for future influence there.

However, what it says a great deal more subtly is about Iraq itself. Imagine a country whose parliament is made up of nine groups and parties that received, in descending order, 24.7 percent, 24.2 percent, 18.1 percent, 14.5 percent, 4.1 percent, 2.6 percent, 2.5 percent, 2.1 percent and 1.3 percent of the popular national vote, which was made up of 62.4 percent of the total population.

Given our normal level of participation in American national elections, that is a most respectable and representative turnout.

However, what it should tell you is how incredibly fragmented Iraq really is. Iraq has three very different main population groups: the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds, and each of those is politically and at times tribally divided.

Sunnis make up only 15 percent to 20 percent of the Iraqi population, yet during the 20th century they absolutely dominated Iraq’s government and economy. It didn’t help that the last Sunni leader was Saddam Hussein and that he brutally repressed the Shiites (60 percent of the population) and the Kurds (18 percent of the population), making nothing but enemies among them.

Their control and repression were so complete that many Sunnis actually believed they represented a majority in the Iraq population.

And now we have the majority Shiites finally in control — but of what? They are in control of the Sunnis, who deeply resent their loss of control of the country, and the Kurds, who think of themselves primarily as Kurds, not Iraqis, and who are part of a total of about 50 million Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a state of its own.

Both the Shiites and the Kurds suffered mightily under the Sunnis. Thousands of Kurds were indiscriminately murdered by Saddam’s Sunni regime. The Shiites have no love for the Sunnis who dominated them murderously for decades. The Sunnis are bewildered by their loss of power, wealth and influence.

The Kurds simply want a home of their own. They all want Iraqi oil.

Iraq is an unhappy country that is sharply divided among three groups with different goals and imperatives, with no one group particularly liking the other.

What form Iraq takes after years of war, insurrection and occupation is difficult if not impossible to predict. Logic, which rarely prevails, might have it that Iraq would split quietly into its three component parts — Shiite, Kurd and Sunni. However, it is unlikely that the transition, whatever it is to be, will be smooth.


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Fostering revolution

October 9, 2011 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in the Rutland Herald and the Barre Times-Argus

By Haviland Smith

When 700 people called “Occupy Wall Street” were arrested last weekend on the Brooklyn Bridge, they were accused of not knowing what they were organizing for.

Some opined they were conducting a “haphazard petition for change,” or that they were focused on everything from ending capitalism, to racism, to global warming to unemployment. There is probably truth in all of that and, as this movement grows, it likely will attract anyone who has a gripe about our society.

Objectively, the demonstrators seem broadly preoccupied with their own powerlessness. They decry the inordinate amount of power and influence held by our very rich and our corporate enterprises and the power of lobbyists to further their goals in a Congress that is essentially for sale.

So far, in defiance of many detractors’ predictions, protests have been growing here and abroad. They have spread to Massachusetts, Washington, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, South Carolina and many others, including our own Burlington, Vt.

During the Cold War, largely because of its preoccupation with Soviet-sponsored “revolution” around the world, the U.S. intelligence community put together a profile of a country likely to be vulnerable to revolution. The primary indicators were: a large gap between the wealthy and the less affluent, an absent or shrinking middle class and the disaffection of large portions of society with those who hold power and their use of it.

How does America stack up against those criteria? Are we reaching a critical, revolutionary mass? Not likely, but we are certainly heading in that direction.

The richest 1 percent of the American population owns over 40 percent of the country’s wealth. The top 1 percent earn 24 percent of total national income while those 15 percent (46.2 million people) who live below the poverty line earn 3.4 percent.

The net loser, apart from the poor, is a disappearing American middle class. During the decade between 2000-2010, Americans in the middle of the pay scale saw income go down 7 percent, while the richest 40 percent actually gained wealth. And finally, 14 million Americans are unemployed and 8.8 million are part-time employees.

In our system, wage earners are not generally responsible for providing capital for job creation. That is the province of those whose income far exceeds their need for wealth. It is critical that those wealthy individuals and corporations continue to supply capital for job formation.

Nevertheless, it is equally important that wealthy corporations and individuals understand that there is such a thing as being too wealthy, particularly when the policies for which they lobby result in the destruction of the middle class and the widening the gap between the wealthy and the less affluent.

Additionally, politicians of all political persuasions must understand that positions on tax policy and government spending that feature unbending advocacy of the needs of one American constituency over another will prove disastrous for our country.

Moderate politicians have typically represented our predominately moderate middle class, which has always been the traditional strength and stability of our country. That is no longer the case as the sharp divisions in our political structure force that middle either to the right or the left, further widening the national divide and leading to increasing gridlock.

If we continue on our present course of dealing with our deficit by cutting back on taxes for the wealthy, eliminating federal programs, encouraging self-interested lobbying and ignoring the reality of our unbalanced income structure, we are likely to provide further incentive to the growing list of disaffected people that we now see in its infancy in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. If that continues, we will likely see today’s ranks of protesters swelled by joblessness, poverty and the perceived uneven application of power.

Somewhere between the legitimate needs and desires of the wealthy and those of the less affluent, there is a point where we should be able to find an uneasy but functioning balance between their legitimate competing priorities. We have, after all, been there before.

Without that sort of compromise and assuming the continuation of our present headlong congressional rush to kill taxation and federal regulation at the expense of programs that benefit all of our citizens, we are likely to see a continued move toward a revolutionary society.

America either will become more fair and even-handed, or we are likely to become much more revolutionary. That will benefit no one who believes in our system, least of all those wealthy individuals and corporations that have profited so much from it.

Moderation is in their vital self-interest.

Posted in United States | Leave a Comment »

Self-inflicted wounds

September 25, 2011 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in the Rutland Herald and the Barre Times-Argus

By Haviland Smith

It would be fascinating and probably terrifying to know even roughly what amount of money and resources it took for this country to prepare for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. A quick look at New York City shows the kind of money everyone wants to spend and no one wants to fund.

When Osama bin Laden first got geared up on his quest to bring down the United States, he said very clearly that one of his goals was to bankrupt us. Of course, what he meant was that he planned to create the conditions that would bring us to bankrupt ourselves.

It is critical to remember here that terrorism is not designed to overwhelm. It is designed to undermine. In that context, whatever it does to cause or initiate anxiety in targeted populations and governments, it relies on the reaction of those populations and governments equally as much to achieve its final goals. And America has reacted in ways that have haunted us and will continue to haunt us for decades. Bin Laden could not have wished for more.

The American measures that have flowed from 9/11 have cost us trillions of dollars. Our “War on Terror,” upon which our military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have been hung, our domestic “counterterrorism” operations and our intelligence operations designed to wipe out al-Qaida leaders have contributed to trillions of dollars of post-9/11 debt.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration and the country as a whole had a choice between two reactions. We could stick with the basic tenets of counterterrorism operations and go after al-Qaida with our police, special operations and intelligence resources, or we could introduce measures that would prolong the atmosphere already created by the attack by introducing countermeasures that would keep our country perpetually on edge.

We chose the latter in violation of Benjamin Franklin’s injunction that “they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

We passed the Patriot Act, which added a layer to an already bureaucratized intelligence community. It also “legalized” major diminutions in our civil and individual liberties with highly questionable and warrantless surveillance and police programs and the new “national security letters.” We implemented a color-coded warning system, which, it seemed, was ramped up whenever our leadership thought we were getting complacent. We instituted Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, “enhanced interrogation” and renditions.

And we did all this in the face of sheep-like acquiescence of the American people and their elected representatives who clearly felt that safety was more important than freedom.

What would have happened if we had not orchestrated major military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and become involved up to our ears in Pakistan? Would we have suffered a second major attack here at home? No one can answer that question with certainty, and it is possible that we will ultimately suffer such an attack despite everything we have done that we think has prevented just that.

Part of that possibility lies in the fact that everything we have done has had the side effect of alienating those moderate Muslims (at least 99 percent of the Muslim world) who had no fundamentalist beef with us. Much of that damage has been done by the presence and operations of our military in the name of the “War on Terror” in Afghanistan, where there are practically no terrorists, and Iraq, where there were none until after our 2003 invasion.

What we have done in our paranoia is put ourselves at the mercy of our own federal, state and municipal governments, which are singularly preoccupied with covering their posteriors. They cannot afford to overlook anything they think is a “credible” threat.

Even worse than that, we have put ourselves in the position of being vulnerable to any provocations that the remnants of al-Qaida, or anyone else, might wish to run against us, and we have done so completely voluntarily.

We have fulfilled bin Laden’s and the other terrorists’ dreams. They can now simply whisper to anyone we consider to be a reliable source that there is an attack in the works and America will galvanize as we did on 9/11 of this year, raising national paranoia and spending billions. Curiously, that could be what just happened in New York City.

The big question here is how can we undo what we have already done to ourselves before we go bankrupt in an ultra-frightened and paranoid national security environment?

Posted in intelligence, terrorism, United States | Leave a Comment »

No longer king of the hill

September 11, 2011 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and the Rutland Herald

It now appears clear that Muammar Gaddaffi’s Libya will not survive. Like all repressive regimes that have exploited their people for decades, it will cease to exist. The $64 million question is what will replace it?

In a burst of bravado or compassion, or whatever you wish to call it, the United States decided to get involved in the ongoing civil unrest in Libya when it lurched onto the scene in the middle of February of this year. The issue here is not the insurrection, the wishes of our European allies or oil. The issue is very clearly how we view ourselves in today’s world. 

For reasons that probably lie at the heart of the American psyche, we genuinely view ourselves as today’s only benevolent world power. We are the people who are somehow destined to bring peace, prosperity and democracy to the rest of the world. If everyone in the world lived under the rules of our liberal democracy, there would be nothing but peace and prosperity. Having once become caught up in that scenario, it is difficult for us Americans to see the world the way it really is.

Whether or not we realize it, the world most of us grew up in ended with the death of the Soviet Union. That old Cold War world had resolved a very simple dilemma for the rest of the world. In the battle between democracy and communism, whose side were you on? With a variety of defense and aid packages, we and the Soviets signed or bribed the Third World into our respective camps and tolerated their brutalities in return for their support.

Today, no such Cold War competition exists. There are no further existential choices to be made between democracy and communism. This new reality has allowed all of the rest of the countries in the world to focus on and be guided by their national and regional interests. Yemen does not have to choose anymore because, frankly, the lack of Cold War competition means that there is no free lunch coming to them from either America or the USSR.

So in many respects, particularly given the results to date of our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, America has become a toothless tiger. We no longer hold sway over much of the rest of the world, as we had during the Cold War. 

Having found a startling level of foreign disinclination to help us with our Iraq adventure, we went ahead with a new, aggressive, unilateral policy. Under Bush, we would do whatever we wished whether the world agreed with us or not. As a basis for foreign policy, that approach is not likely to find many friends. In fact, over the years since that 2003 invasion, we have come to be known around the world as self-interested and hypocritical — touting democracy while running Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret jails, renditions, “enhanced interrogations” and a reduction in our own civil and individual rights. Not many countries outside NATO, and not all within, are interested in supporting our foreign adventures.

This would be acceptable if we had unlimited resources and imperial inclinations. As can be seen in American public opinion polls on Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Libya, the fact is that Americans are not so inclined. A quick look at our divisive governance, our financial problems and our seriously overcommitted “all volunteer army” gives no indication that we have the necessary imperial capabilities.

And yet in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and all the other Middle East countries struggling for their freedom from homegrown oppressors, we continue to meddle in their internal affairs.

The problem here is that we, as a country and people, have not acknowledged this new world. We have not recognized the extent to which foreign countries and peoples have put aside their relationships with us in favor of concentrating on what they see to be their own true national interests.

All of these countries face major issues that will inhibit their transition into whatever they ultimately become. They share many of the following realities: A critical lack of direct experience with democratic governance, a lack of political movements that could evolve into actual governance, tribalism, ethnicity, corruption and increasing distrust of the West. None of these realities argues in favor of the successful installation of liberal democracy.

Democracy will not thrive in these kinds of environments. It really is time that we started to support true self-determination where the downtrodden people of these countries really do get to choose the kind of governments under which they live. Only then will any kind of stability come to the world. 

It will take a very long time.

Posted in Libya, Middle East, United States | Leave a Comment »

A decade later

August 28, 2011 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in the Rutland Herald and the Barre Times Argus

We are now getting close to the 10th anniversary of the al-Qaida attacks of 9/11. Although a decade is an insufficient period for most historians to comfortably draw firm conclusions about anything, it is possible to look at our world today and see how it appears to have been affected by that disastrous event and the ensuing decade. 

It is critical to remember that terrorism is not designed to overwhelm. It is designed to undermine. In that context, whatever it does to cause or initiate anxiety in targeted populations and governments, it relies on the reaction of those populations and governments equally as much to achieve its final goals. And America has reacted in ways that have haunted us and will continue to haunt us for decades. Al-Qaida could not have wished for more.

Domestically, we have seen major changes in our lives. Think of our color-coded terrorist warning system, our current airport controls, our paranoia over anyone who “looks like a Muslim” (whatever that is), or “acts differently.” What is that paper bag doing in the subway? Airport? Train station? Movie?

In the aftermath of 9/11, Americans were clearly prepared to and ultimately did surrender their civil liberties and individual rights in the hope that doing so would add to their own physical security. We forgot Benjamin Franklin’s injunction that “they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

The Patriot Act, where it was designed ostensibly to increase our security here at home, did many other things that have negatively affected the way we lead our lives. It increased the government’s ability to spy on us, to monitor our activities in a very broad and general way. It introduced warrantless wiretapping and the monitoring of fund transfers and Internet communications. It also initiated the national security letter process that required any person or organization to turn over records and data pertaining to individuals without warrant, and all this without probable cause or judicial oversight.

The other major domestic impact of the decade has been financial. During that period, we have gone from what was verging on a national surplus to a deficit that is now approaching $15 trillion and increasing at the rate of $3.95 billion every day. We got there through a combination of factors, including tax cuts, the “War on Terror,” and unfunded military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and now Libya. Brown University’s comprehensive June 2011 “Costs of War” project, factoring in all the costs associated with the decade, arrives at close to $4 trillion. Tax cuts add $2.8 trillion. There seems virtually no doubt that in the absence of our reaction to 9/11, we would be fiscally relatively healthy.

In addition to the foregoing difficult domestic situation, which we largely created for ourselves in the aftermath of 9/11, the changes we have seen in our foreign policy will haunt us for years to come. In that arena, our move to military-based, unilateral policy was a radical change. Yet our invasion and defeat of Iraq and the ascendence to power of the Iranian-allied Iraqi Shiites will likely prove to be our most egregious blunder.

It’s not that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was in any sense enlightened; it is very simply that Saddam’s Iraq was the only effective impediment to Iranian control over the Persian Gulf. From 1980-88, Iran and Iraq fought a war for supremacy in the gulf. In the absence of a clear resolution of that conflict, the fact that Iraq survived served as a critical deterrent to Iranian dreams for hegemony there.

Our invasion and defeat of Saddam’s Iraq was something the Iranians could never have accomplished on their own. With Shiites now assuming power under our new order in Iraq and Iran threatening the old Sunni positions in the Gulf States, Iran has come even closer. We have destroyed the last real impediment to Iranian dreams for the gulf.

We have had our chances to deal with 9/11 in ways that would have better favored our own national interests. Instead, we panicked, invoked questionable practices at home and became involved in military adventures abroad that will almost certainly ultimately be viewed as disasters.

Without the active, witless involvement and acquiescence of our government and Congress over the past decade, al-Qaida terrorism would have caused us far less pain than it ultimately has and we would be a great deal safer, richer, wiser and internationally more powerful and respected than is now the case.

Posted in foreign policy, terrorism, United States | Leave a Comment »

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