Glenn Greenwald, Oligarchical decay, Salon.com, 30 December 2007.
An outstanding analysis of the current condition of the American establishment in government, politics, media, and business.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Monday, December 03, 2007
Three small collections of essays by Gore Vidal (Vidal calls these books pamphlets):
Gore Vidal page, Third World Traveler.
(Excerpts from the above listed books.)
- Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated.
New York: Thunder's Mouth Press / Nation Books, May 2002.
(publisher, Amazon.com) - Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta.
New York: Thunder's Mouth Press / Nation Books, December 2002.
(publisher, Amazon.com) - Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia.
New York: Nation Books, June 2004.
(publisher, Amazon.com)
Gore Vidal page, Third World Traveler.
(Excerpts from the above listed books.)
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Chalmers Johnson.
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic.
New York: Metropolitan / Owl Book, Henry Holt and Co., 2005.
(Originally published: New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.)
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
Militarism and the American Empire, Conversations with History, 29 January 2004.
Johnson discusses The Sorrows of Empire; an excellent introduction to the book.
The Last Days of the American Republic: A Conversation with Chalmers Johnson, Conversations with History, 07 March 2007.
Johnson discusses his most recent book, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.
I provided additional links regarding Chalmers Johnson and The Sorrows of Empire here, 17 April 2007.
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic.
New York: Metropolitan / Owl Book, Henry Holt and Co., 2005.
(Originally published: New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.)
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
Militarism and the American Empire, Conversations with History, 29 January 2004.
Johnson discusses The Sorrows of Empire; an excellent introduction to the book.
The Last Days of the American Republic: A Conversation with Chalmers Johnson, Conversations with History, 07 March 2007.
Johnson discusses his most recent book, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.
I provided additional links regarding Chalmers Johnson and The Sorrows of Empire here, 17 April 2007.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Andrew J. Bacevich.
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.
Oxford University Press, August 2006 (paperback edition with a new Afterward).
(Originally published in March 2005.)
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
You can get a very good introduction to this book from Bacevich's appearance in the excellent "Conversations with History" series (Google Video link).
Andrew Bacevich:
Online Video (Bacevich discussing The New American Militarism and U.S. Foreign Policy):
Some Book Reviews:
Other Essays, etc.:
Some Related Books (most of which I have not yet read):
Additional Comments and Notes:
Bacevich's thesis is that the increased militarism of the United States, especially since the end of the Cold War, is not attributable to a single faction, political party, or President, but rather the confluence of many factors present in American society since the end of the Vietnam War, with support from all sides of mainstream politics regardless of political party. (Personally I think the key turing point(s) occurred much earlier, including World War II, the beginning of the Cold War, and the United States' filling the void left by the decline of the British Empire, but Bacevich focuses on events and trends since the Vietnam War. I also agree with Chalmers Johnson's analysis in The Sorrows of Empire that identifies events in the 1890s that led to the creation of an Army general staff after the Spanish-American War.)
Those factors include:
the U.S. Army's reforms in the 1970s and 1980s following its mistreatment by the civilian leadership during the Vietnam War;
the All-Volunteer Force (and the decline of the citizen-soldier);
the Neoconservative movement;
the military buildup of the Reagan administration;
popular culture in the Reagan years including, for example: Reagan's praise of individual service men and women in his speeches; films such as An Officer and a Gentleman, the Rambo series, and Top Gun; and techno-thriller novels such as those by Tom Clancey;
the rise of the Religious Right;
the theorizing of "defense intellectuals" beginning after World War II with the strategic problems of nuclear war, continuing with the advent of precision guided munitions in the last days of the Vietnam War, and several other developments in military technology since then, the 1990s discussion of a "Revolution in Military Affairs" prompted by developments in information technology, all of which acted to lower policymakers' threshold for using military force.
Bacevich refers to militarism in several meanings, not just the propensity of the U.S. government to approach its foreign policy problems with military force rather than other means.
In the first chapter Bacevich discusses four manifestations of increasing American militarism:
1. "the scope, cost, and configuration of America's present-day military establishment" (page 15);
2. "an increased propensity to use force, leading, in effect, to the normalization of war" (page 18);
3. "the appearance in recent years of a new aesthetic of war" (page 20);
4. "an appreciable boost in the status of military institutions and soldiers themselves" (page 25).
Bacevich discusses his concept of the new American Militarism in the "Conversations with History" interview as a particularly American form of militarism, not the militarism of Japan or Germany of the World War I and World War II eras. Bacevich highlights:
1. "a greatly overstated confidence in the efficacy of force; that force is an eminently useful tool in American hands; and that therefore military power is an opportunity to be exploited, rather than something to be viewed skeptically";
2. "a conviction that military power has come to be the chief emblem of national greatness; its not the productivity of our factories or the quality of our education system, it's by golly that we've got twelve carrier battle groups and that's what makes America stand apart from other nations of the world;"
3. "a romanticization of soldiers; an inclination to at least give lip service to the notion of soldiers being America's best and brightest and a group of people morally, not simply set apart, but morally superior to the average citizen."
Lest we forget how busy the U.S. military has become, consider this paragraph from pages 18-19:
"The new American militarism also manifests itself through an increased propensity to use force, leading, in effect, to the normalization of war. There was a time in recent memory, most notably while the so-called Vietnam Syndrome infected the American body politic, when Republican and Democratic administrations alike viewed with real trepidation the prospect of sending U.S. troops into action abroad. Since the advent of the new Wilsonianism, however, self-restraint regarding the use of force has all but disappeared. During the entire Cold War era, from 1945 through 1988, large-scale U.S. military actions abroad totaled a scant six. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, they have become almost annual events. [endnote 23: Cold War episodes included Korea, Lebanon (twice), Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and Grenada. By some calculations, the U.S. confrontation with Libya culminating in the bombing of Tripoli in 1986 might also qualify.] The brief period extending from 1989's Operation Just Cause (the overthrow of Manuel Noriega) to 2003's Operation Iraqi Freedom (the overthrow of Saddam Hussein) featured nine major military interventions. [endnote 24: Panama, the Persian Gulf (twice), Kurdistan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.] And that count does not include innumerable lesser actions such as Bill Clinton's signature cruise missile attacks against obscure targets in obscure places, the almost daily bombing of Iraq throughout the late 1990s, or the quasi-combat missions that have seen GIs dispatched to Rwanda, Colombia, East Timor, and the Philippines. Altogether, tempo of U.S. military interventionism has become nothing short of frenetic."
The "Albright Question": Madeline Albright asked General Colin Powell in the early 1990s "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"
In Chapter Seven "Blood for Oil" Bacevich discusses the Carter Doctrine originating in President Carter's January 1980 State of the Union address: "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." See also Carter's Presidential Directive/NSC-63 [PDF], 15 January 1981. Bacevich goes so far as to characterize this as World War IV which began in 1980 ("World War III" was the Cold War, 1947-1989) and has seen a steady increase of American attention and overt military force in that region, culminating (so far) in the current occupation of Iraq and the building of several permanent U.S. military bases there (Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, A Nation At War: Strategic Shift; Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access To Key Iraq Bases, The New York Times, 20 April 2003; Tom Englehardt, Can You Say "Permanent Bases"? The American Press Can't, TomDispatch.com, 14 February 2006).
I found this chapter especially insightful. President Carter enunciated that Doctrine after the failure of his policy that encouraged the U.S. to conserve energy and seek alternatives to imported oil. It seems clear that U.S. efforts to maintain access to relatively cheap oil through military means will not end soon; that this policy is supported by the party establishments of both the Democrats and Republicans - I think the huge capital investment in the current petroleum economy explains much of this policy inertia; and this policy will be prolonged by the U.S.' continuing failure to develop and implement alternative energy sources and, as Bacevich describes, while the U.S. continues to define freedom as affluence based on cheap oil. This chapter also appears as: The Real World War IV, The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2005.
Bacevich describes World War IV as the implementation of the Carter Doctrine since 1980 in rebuttal to the Bush administration's "global war on terror" neologism and in particular against neoconservative Norman Podhoretz's concept of World War IV as a struggle against "Islamofascism" [How to Win World War IV, Commentary, February 2002; World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win, Commentary, September 2004; The War Against World War IV, Commentary, February 2005; World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Doubleday, September 2007 (publisher, Amazon.com)].
For additional rebuttals of Podhoretz see:
John Brown, The Return Of The World Warriors, TomPaine.com, 07 October 2004.
Tom Englehardt, Are We in World War IV?, TomDispatch.com, 10 March 2005.
John Brown and Tom Englehardt, Why World War IV Can't Sell, TomDispatch.com, 30 March 2005.
The publication of Podhoretz's 2007 "Islamofascism" book has probably prompted many more rebuttals in book reviews.
If the U.S. continues to follow the Bush policy of using military force to seek control over natural resources, then it would not surprise me to see additional U.S. attempts to militarily dominate other oil and gas exporting regions, especially in Africa (i.e., Nigeria) and South America (i.e. Venezuela), over the next ten to twenty years; currently the nations of Central Asia are too close geographically / culturally / diplomatically to Russia and China. Southeast Asian oil & gas production would probably be marketed mainly to industrial nations closer to that region (i.e., India, China, Japan, South Korea) and the U.S. seems to have that region well enough covered by bases. However the U.S. government clearly needs to reorient its policy back to the natural American focus on innovation in science and technology in order to satisfy its energy and other natural resource needs.
Digression on Central Asia:
(Note: Kazakhstan has significant oil & gas reserves; NYT 06 May 2006.)
The U.S. has been attempting to establish itself in Central Asia; for much of the first 4 years of the Afghanistan war the U.S. had access to air bases in both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, but there was/is strong and continuing diplomatic pressure from China, Russia and other Central Asian nations to evict the Americans (NYT 05 Nov 2001; NYT 09 Jan 2002; NYT 20 Apr 2003; NYT 23 Sept 2003; NYT 28 Mar 2004; NYT 06 July 2005; NYT 08 July 2005; NYT 14 July 2005; NYT 21 Oct 2005; NYT 15 July 2006; NYT 10 Sept 2006; NYT 17 Oct 2007).
Uzbekistan finally ordered the U.S. to leave in July 2005 (NYT 27 July 2005; NYT 31 July 2005; NYT 01 Aug 2005).
The U.S. has retained Manas Air Base (U.S. Air Force, Manas Air Base; Wikipedia; GlobalSecurity.org) in Kyrgyzstan (NYT 12 Oct 2005; NYT 15 July 2006; NYT 17 Oct 2007) in the face of continuing pressure against it especially from Russia.
Tajikistan allows NATO to refuel airplanes on Afghanistan-related missions in its territory but there is no NATO or American base (NYT 01 Aug 2005; NYT 14 Nov 2006).
Details on U.S. bases in Iraq:
The U.S. "super-bases" / "mega-bases" in Iraq may include:
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.
Oxford University Press, August 2006 (paperback edition with a new Afterward).
(Originally published in March 2005.)
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
You can get a very good introduction to this book from Bacevich's appearance in the excellent "Conversations with History" series (Google Video link).
Andrew Bacevich:
- Andrew Bacevich, Wikipedia.
- Andrew J. Bacevich, Department of International Relations, Boston University.
- Andrew J. Bacevich. American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy. Harvard University Press, March 2004. (publisher, Amazon.com)
- Andrew J. Bacevich, The Real World War IV, The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2005.
- Chester, Blog Interview with Dr. Andrew Bacevich, The Adventures of Chester: War and Foreign Policy, 09 May 2005.
- Tom Engelhardt, "Tomdispatch Interview: Bacevich on the Limits of Imperial Power and the Arrogance of American Power"
Part 1: The Delusions of Global Hegemony, TomDispatch.com, 23 May 2006;
Part 2: Drifting Down the Path to Perdition, TomDispatch.com, 25 May 2006.
This interview also appears in the book:
Tom Engelhardt. Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts & Dissenters.
New York: Nation Books, 2006. (publisher, Amazon.com) - Andrew J. Bacevich, Warrior Politics, The Atlantic Monthly, May 2007.
"The U.S. military is becoming more politically assertive. This is not a welcome development."
Justine Isola, The Activist Soldier, TheAtlantic.com, 28 March 2007.
"Andrew J. Bacevich, author of 'Warrior Politics,' talks about the increased politicization of the American military and its troubling potential consequences." - Tragically, Bacevich's son, Lt. Andrew J. Bacevich, was killed in Iraq 13 May 2007.
Andrew J. Bacevich, I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty., The Washington Post, B01, 27 May 2007.
Excerpt:
The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."
To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.
To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.
Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.
Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month [$100,000; Death Gratuity, About.com].
Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.
This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.
Webchat with Andrew Bacevich, WashingtonPost.com, 29 May 2007.
Bacevich answers various questions, including this reply on the inefficacy of U.S. elections in ending the Iraq war:
"I don't have any easy answers on this. But it does seem to me that we should no longer assume that 'democracy' provides the best one-word descriptor of our political system. In a superficial sense, we remain a democratic nation. But peer beneath the surface and the reality is something else again."
David F. Burrelli & Jennifer R. Corwell, Military Death Benefits: Status and Proposals [PDF], 23 June 2005.
Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, A failure in generalship, Armed Forces Journal, May 2007. - Adam Reilly, Bacevich’s war: The politics of personal tragedy, The Phoenix (Boston), 02 July 2007.
- Andrew J. Bacevich, Vietnam's real lessons: The war is indeed relevant to Iraq -- but not the way Bush thinks, Los Angeles Times, 25 August 2007.
- Andrew J. Bacevich, Sycophant Savior: General Petraeus wins a battle in Washington — if not in Baghdad, The American Conservative, 08 October 2007.
- You can find articles by Andrew Bacevich at The Nation; The American Conservative; The New Republic; London Review of Books; Commonweal; The Los Angeles Times; The Washington Post; and elsewhere.
Online Video (Bacevich discussing The New American Militarism and U.S. Foreign Policy):
- The Military and U.S. Foreign Policy, A Conversation with Andrew J. Bacevich, Conversations with History, Series Host Harry Kreisler, The Institute of International Studies, The University of California at Berkeley, 09 May 2005.
Transcript here.
Another link to the video is on this page. - The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, World Affairs Council of Northern California, May 2005.
- The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, Books Of Our Times - Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, October 2005.
- The Last Days of the American Republic: A Conversation with Chalmers Johnson, Conversations with History, 07 March 2007.
Bacevich echoes the ideas of Chalmers Johnson (and others). One observation they share is that throughout the course of American history when a major conflict ended the armed forces were significantly cut back (e.g., Civil War, World War I, World War II). However with the end of the Cold War the United States continued to maintain a massive military force deployed around the world. Why? It has become clear that the purpose of this world-wide force is not a matter of self-defense but something else: the preservation of a distinct kind of overseas empire which the United States began acquiring in the late nineteenth century (for example: Hawaii; the territories acquired through the Spanish-American war - Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines; Panama) and expanding more vigorously after World War II under the guise of resisting communism, and with the decolonization movement as European nations dissolved their overseas empires. Maintaining an empire fundamentally contradicts the principles and traditions of the United States' domestic republican government and democracy, and perhaps threatens their continued existence.
Some Book Reviews:
- Paul Craig Roberts, The New American Militarism, AntiWar.com, 18 January 2005.
- Anthony Day, Book Review; Facing problems with a sword, Los Angeles Times, E10, 12 April 2005.
A good, concise review. - Tom Englehardt, Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich on the New American Militarism, TomDispatch.com, 20 April 2005.
Not exactly a traditional review, Englehardt reviews/discusses the book, then provides excerpts. Very useful. The excerpts continue:
Tom Englehardt, Tomgram: Bacevich on the Neocon Revolution and Militarism, TomDispatch.com, 22 April 2005. - Richard K. Betts, The Lure of Military Society, The American Conservative, 23 May 2005.
- Christopher Preble, Resisting the Charms of War, The National Interest, June 2005. (copy at the Cato Institute, 01 June 2005)
- no author named, U.S. Military Policy, Voice of America, 13 June 2005.
This article includes extensive rebuttal quotes from Gary Schmitt identified as Executive Director of the Project for a New American Century (source of neoconservative manifestos). - Greg Guma, Addicted to War: An Insider Examines the Seductive Myths of Militarism, CommonDreams.org, 24 June 2005.
- Jim Lobe, Specters of Militarism, Nationalism Dog Independence Day, CommonDreams.org, 02 July 2005.
This review also appears as: Militarism and Nationalism, LewRockwell.com, 04 July 2005; and Book Review: The specter of two 'isms', Asia Times, 09 July 2005.
Lobe reviews Anatol Lieven's America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism and Andrew Bacevich's The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War. - Tony Judt, The New World Order, The New York Review of Books, Volume 52, Number 12, 14 July 2005.
- Anatol Lieven, We do not deserve these people, London Review of Books, 20 October 2005.
- Walter Russell Mead, Book Review, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2005.
Mead doesn't have much good to say about the book; given the "interventionist" orientation of Foreign Affairs and the CFR, this shouldn't suprise. - Robert B. Killebrew, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, Parameters, Winter 2005-06.
- Edward A. Olsen, Book Review, The Independent Review, Volume 10, Number 3, Winter 2006.
- Bob Avakian, The Christian Fascists and the U.S. Military, Revolution #031, 22 January 2006.
Observations by the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. - Gerald Loftus, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, 19 September 2007.
- James Webb, American Scholar, JamesWebb.com, no date.
(the U.S. Senator from Virginia)
Other Essays, etc.:
- Militarism, Wikipedia.
- Michael T. Klare, Endless Military Superiority, The Nation, 15 July 2002.
- The Chickenhawks, no date.
This website presents comprehensive evidence that the most vocal advocates for the Iraq war have no military experience (or no combat experience, as in the case of a certain National Guard AWOL president). Meanwhile, many war opponents do have combat experience. The Republican Party's slanders of Democrats, for example of Max Cleland and John Kerry, are obscene forms of mendacious propaganda. - Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, American Empire, Not 'If' but 'What Kind', The New York Times, 10 May 2003.
- Nick Turse, Bringing the War Home: The New Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex at War and Play, TomDispatch.com, 16 October 2003.
Mr. Turse is scheduled to publish a book on this topic in 2008. See the list of related books below for details. - Michael T. Klare, Oil Wars: Transforming the American Military into a Global Oil-Protection Service, TomDispatch.com, 07 October 2004.
This article is based on Klare's book, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency, New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt, 2004 (publisher, Amazon.com). - John Cassidy, Pump Dreams: Is energy independence an impossible goal?, The New Yorker, 11 October 2004.
Includes a survey of the Carter Doctrine and its implementation since 1980 that is similar in content to Bacevich's discussion of it. This essay surveys the geopolitics of energy (oil & gas) and policy pronouncements of the U.S. presidential candidates immediately prior to the 2004 general election. - Scott McConnell, Hunger for Dictatorship: War to export democracy may wreck our own, The American Conservative, 14 February 2005.
- Jesus Camp:
- Jesus Camp, official website (Warning: music).
- Jesus Camp (2006), IMDb.
- Jesus Camp, Wikipedia.
An astonishing view of religious faith, indoctrination, and a church militant. You owe it to yourself to watch this outstanding film. - Militainment Inc.: The Militarization of Pop Culture, a documentary film.
Official Website; Written, Produced, and Narrated by Roger Stahl, University of Georgia.
Militainment, Wikipedia article defines the concept, with links to various examinations of it. - Michael T. Klare, Is Energo-fascism in Your Future?: The Global Energy Race and Its Consequences (Part 1), TomDispatch.com, 14 January 2007.
Alternate title: The Pentagon as an Energy-Protection Racket.
Michael T. Klare, Petro-Power and the Nuclear Renaissance; Two Faces of an Emerging Energo-fascism (Part 2), TomDispatch.com, 16 January 2007.
Alternate title: Is Big Brother in Your Energy Future? - Justin Raimondo, Militarism – America's State Religion; One soldier's literary blasphemy, AntiWar.com, 27 July 2007.
- Glenn Greenwald, The rigid pro-war ideology of the foreign policy community, Salon.com, 20 August 2007.
- Glenn Greenwald, American war culture in a nutshell, Salon.com, 15 September 2007.
Greenwald discusses the Kagan family of warmongers. More about the Kagans: here; here. - Tom Engelhardt, American Exceptionalism Meets Team Jesus: A Tomdispatch Interview with James Carroll, TomDispatch.com, 17 September 2007.
The recent American militarism becomes even more dangerous when militarism is mixed with fundamentalist religion. For more on this topic see:
Michael L. Weinstein & Davin Seay. With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military. Thomas Dunne Books, October 2006. (publisher, Amazon.com) - Michael Schwartz, Why Did We Invade Iraq Anyway?, TomDispatch.com, 30 October 2007.
Schwartz's article echos / supports / confirms / tells the same story as Bacevich and his Chapter Seven "Blood for Oil" / Wilson Quarterly essay. - William J. Astore, The Enemy Within: Finding American Backs to Stab, TomDispatch.com, 06 November 2007.
On the genealogy of the stab-in-the-back myth, its exploitation throughout history by unscrupulous politicians and militarists, and its emerging application by Bush Iraq policy supporters to explain that policy's failure.
See also:
Eric Alterman, The Coming 'Stab in the Back' Campaign, The Nation, 15 October 2007.
Alterman notes that the leading propagandists of this campaign are: Norman Podhoretz; National Review; Tony Blankley of the Washington Times; George W. Bush; William Kristol and his Weekly Standard. I would add to this list another person currently promoting his new book: Kenneth R. Timmerman, Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender, Crown Forum, November 2007 (publisher, Amazon.com). - Justin Raimondo, John Edwards Takes on the War Party, AntiWar.com, 07 November 2007.
i.e., the neoconservatives, who are radicals and not conservatives. Ominously, the neoconservatives and other warmongers are shifting their support to Hillary Clinton; she is complicit in Bush's war policy. - Leonard Doyle, Weapons Industry Dumps Republicans, Backs Hillary, AlterNet.org, 31 October 2007.
Originally published in The Independent (UK), 19 October 2007.
Some Related Books (most of which I have not yet read):
- Note: The topic of American Militarism is of course inextricably inter-related with the topic of American Empire and Imperialism; the following list focuses on Militarism and excludes books mainly about Empire and Imperialism.
- Alfred Vagts. A History of Militarism: Civilian and Military. Meridian Books, 1959; Free Press, 1967; Greenwood Press, 1981.
- Joseph Gerson & Bruce Birchard, editors. The Sun Never Sets: Confronting the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases. Boston: South End Press, An American Friends Service Committee Book, April 1991. (publisher, Amazon.com)
- William Greider. Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace. PublicAffairs, December 1999. (Amazon.com)
- Chris Hedges. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. PublicAffairs, September 2002. (publisher, Amazon.com)
Chris Hedges writes frequently on the topic of American militarism. See his articles at (the following links give the author's archive at the respective publications): The Nation; TruthDig.com; AlterNet.org. - Carl Boggs, editor. Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire. Routledge, 2003. (publisher, Amazon.com)
Carl Boggs. Imperial Delusions: American Militarism and Endless War. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., January 2005. (publisher, Amazon.com)
Carl Boggs & Tom Pollard. The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture. Paradigm Publishers, September 2006. (publisher, Amazon.com) - Robert Higgs. Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11. Oakland, California: The Independent Institute, October 2005. (publisher, Amazon.com)
- Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. Holt Paperbacks, December 2004. (publisher, Amazon.com)
Bacevich's book prompted me to re-read Johnson's The Sorrows of Empire and I'm glad I'm doing so; Johnson very insightfully supplements and complements Bacevich.
Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. Metropolitan Books, February 2007. (publisher, Amazon.com)
See also the other books in the series The American Empire Project. - James Carroll. House of War: The Pentagon and the Disasterous Rise of American Power. Houghton Mifflin, May 2006. (publisher, Amazon.com)
- Norman Solomon. War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. John Wiley & Sons, June 2006. (book website, Amazon.com)
Norman Solomon. Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State. Polipoint Press, October 2007. (book website, Amazon.com) - Ismael Hossein-zadeh. The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism. Palgrave Macmillan, June 2007. (publisher, Amazon.com)
- Nick Turse. The Complex: Mapping America's Military-Industrial-Technological-Entertainment-Academic-Media-Corporate Matrix. New York: Metropolitan Books, March 2008. (publisher, Amazon.com)
- Preston C. Enright, Veterans for peace, Listmania, Amazon.com, 25 October 2007 (date as of the last time I saw that web page).
Additional Comments and Notes:
Bacevich's thesis is that the increased militarism of the United States, especially since the end of the Cold War, is not attributable to a single faction, political party, or President, but rather the confluence of many factors present in American society since the end of the Vietnam War, with support from all sides of mainstream politics regardless of political party. (Personally I think the key turing point(s) occurred much earlier, including World War II, the beginning of the Cold War, and the United States' filling the void left by the decline of the British Empire, but Bacevich focuses on events and trends since the Vietnam War. I also agree with Chalmers Johnson's analysis in The Sorrows of Empire that identifies events in the 1890s that led to the creation of an Army general staff after the Spanish-American War.)
Those factors include:
the U.S. Army's reforms in the 1970s and 1980s following its mistreatment by the civilian leadership during the Vietnam War;
the All-Volunteer Force (and the decline of the citizen-soldier);
the Neoconservative movement;
the military buildup of the Reagan administration;
popular culture in the Reagan years including, for example: Reagan's praise of individual service men and women in his speeches; films such as An Officer and a Gentleman, the Rambo series, and Top Gun; and techno-thriller novels such as those by Tom Clancey;
the rise of the Religious Right;
the theorizing of "defense intellectuals" beginning after World War II with the strategic problems of nuclear war, continuing with the advent of precision guided munitions in the last days of the Vietnam War, and several other developments in military technology since then, the 1990s discussion of a "Revolution in Military Affairs" prompted by developments in information technology, all of which acted to lower policymakers' threshold for using military force.
Bacevich refers to militarism in several meanings, not just the propensity of the U.S. government to approach its foreign policy problems with military force rather than other means.
In the first chapter Bacevich discusses four manifestations of increasing American militarism:
1. "the scope, cost, and configuration of America's present-day military establishment" (page 15);
2. "an increased propensity to use force, leading, in effect, to the normalization of war" (page 18);
3. "the appearance in recent years of a new aesthetic of war" (page 20);
4. "an appreciable boost in the status of military institutions and soldiers themselves" (page 25).
Bacevich discusses his concept of the new American Militarism in the "Conversations with History" interview as a particularly American form of militarism, not the militarism of Japan or Germany of the World War I and World War II eras. Bacevich highlights:
1. "a greatly overstated confidence in the efficacy of force; that force is an eminently useful tool in American hands; and that therefore military power is an opportunity to be exploited, rather than something to be viewed skeptically";
2. "a conviction that military power has come to be the chief emblem of national greatness; its not the productivity of our factories or the quality of our education system, it's by golly that we've got twelve carrier battle groups and that's what makes America stand apart from other nations of the world;"
3. "a romanticization of soldiers; an inclination to at least give lip service to the notion of soldiers being America's best and brightest and a group of people morally, not simply set apart, but morally superior to the average citizen."
Lest we forget how busy the U.S. military has become, consider this paragraph from pages 18-19:
"The new American militarism also manifests itself through an increased propensity to use force, leading, in effect, to the normalization of war. There was a time in recent memory, most notably while the so-called Vietnam Syndrome infected the American body politic, when Republican and Democratic administrations alike viewed with real trepidation the prospect of sending U.S. troops into action abroad. Since the advent of the new Wilsonianism, however, self-restraint regarding the use of force has all but disappeared. During the entire Cold War era, from 1945 through 1988, large-scale U.S. military actions abroad totaled a scant six. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, they have become almost annual events. [endnote 23: Cold War episodes included Korea, Lebanon (twice), Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and Grenada. By some calculations, the U.S. confrontation with Libya culminating in the bombing of Tripoli in 1986 might also qualify.] The brief period extending from 1989's Operation Just Cause (the overthrow of Manuel Noriega) to 2003's Operation Iraqi Freedom (the overthrow of Saddam Hussein) featured nine major military interventions. [endnote 24: Panama, the Persian Gulf (twice), Kurdistan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.] And that count does not include innumerable lesser actions such as Bill Clinton's signature cruise missile attacks against obscure targets in obscure places, the almost daily bombing of Iraq throughout the late 1990s, or the quasi-combat missions that have seen GIs dispatched to Rwanda, Colombia, East Timor, and the Philippines. Altogether, tempo of U.S. military interventionism has become nothing short of frenetic."
The "Albright Question": Madeline Albright asked General Colin Powell in the early 1990s "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"
In Chapter Seven "Blood for Oil" Bacevich discusses the Carter Doctrine originating in President Carter's January 1980 State of the Union address: "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." See also Carter's Presidential Directive/NSC-63 [PDF], 15 January 1981. Bacevich goes so far as to characterize this as World War IV which began in 1980 ("World War III" was the Cold War, 1947-1989) and has seen a steady increase of American attention and overt military force in that region, culminating (so far) in the current occupation of Iraq and the building of several permanent U.S. military bases there (Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, A Nation At War: Strategic Shift; Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access To Key Iraq Bases, The New York Times, 20 April 2003; Tom Englehardt, Can You Say "Permanent Bases"? The American Press Can't, TomDispatch.com, 14 February 2006).
I found this chapter especially insightful. President Carter enunciated that Doctrine after the failure of his policy that encouraged the U.S. to conserve energy and seek alternatives to imported oil. It seems clear that U.S. efforts to maintain access to relatively cheap oil through military means will not end soon; that this policy is supported by the party establishments of both the Democrats and Republicans - I think the huge capital investment in the current petroleum economy explains much of this policy inertia; and this policy will be prolonged by the U.S.' continuing failure to develop and implement alternative energy sources and, as Bacevich describes, while the U.S. continues to define freedom as affluence based on cheap oil. This chapter also appears as: The Real World War IV, The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2005.
Bacevich describes World War IV as the implementation of the Carter Doctrine since 1980 in rebuttal to the Bush administration's "global war on terror" neologism and in particular against neoconservative Norman Podhoretz's concept of World War IV as a struggle against "Islamofascism" [How to Win World War IV, Commentary, February 2002; World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win, Commentary, September 2004; The War Against World War IV, Commentary, February 2005; World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Doubleday, September 2007 (publisher, Amazon.com)].
For additional rebuttals of Podhoretz see:
John Brown, The Return Of The World Warriors, TomPaine.com, 07 October 2004.
Tom Englehardt, Are We in World War IV?, TomDispatch.com, 10 March 2005.
John Brown and Tom Englehardt, Why World War IV Can't Sell, TomDispatch.com, 30 March 2005.
The publication of Podhoretz's 2007 "Islamofascism" book has probably prompted many more rebuttals in book reviews.
If the U.S. continues to follow the Bush policy of using military force to seek control over natural resources, then it would not surprise me to see additional U.S. attempts to militarily dominate other oil and gas exporting regions, especially in Africa (i.e., Nigeria) and South America (i.e. Venezuela), over the next ten to twenty years; currently the nations of Central Asia are too close geographically / culturally / diplomatically to Russia and China. Southeast Asian oil & gas production would probably be marketed mainly to industrial nations closer to that region (i.e., India, China, Japan, South Korea) and the U.S. seems to have that region well enough covered by bases. However the U.S. government clearly needs to reorient its policy back to the natural American focus on innovation in science and technology in order to satisfy its energy and other natural resource needs.
Digression on Central Asia:
(Note: Kazakhstan has significant oil & gas reserves; NYT 06 May 2006.)
The U.S. has been attempting to establish itself in Central Asia; for much of the first 4 years of the Afghanistan war the U.S. had access to air bases in both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, but there was/is strong and continuing diplomatic pressure from China, Russia and other Central Asian nations to evict the Americans (NYT 05 Nov 2001; NYT 09 Jan 2002; NYT 20 Apr 2003; NYT 23 Sept 2003; NYT 28 Mar 2004; NYT 06 July 2005; NYT 08 July 2005; NYT 14 July 2005; NYT 21 Oct 2005; NYT 15 July 2006; NYT 10 Sept 2006; NYT 17 Oct 2007).
Uzbekistan finally ordered the U.S. to leave in July 2005 (NYT 27 July 2005; NYT 31 July 2005; NYT 01 Aug 2005).
The U.S. has retained Manas Air Base (U.S. Air Force, Manas Air Base; Wikipedia; GlobalSecurity.org) in Kyrgyzstan (NYT 12 Oct 2005; NYT 15 July 2006; NYT 17 Oct 2007) in the face of continuing pressure against it especially from Russia.
Tajikistan allows NATO to refuel airplanes on Afghanistan-related missions in its territory but there is no NATO or American base (NYT 01 Aug 2005; NYT 14 Nov 2006).
Details on U.S. bases in Iraq:
- Iraq Facilities, GlobalSecurity.org.
- Thom Shanker & Eric Schmitt, Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access To Key Iraq Bases, The New York Times, 20 April 2003.
- David Isenberg, The ever-growing US military footprint, Asia Times, 10 June 2003;.
- Chalmers Johnson, America's Empire of Bases, TomDispatch.com, 15 January 2004.
- Tom Engelhardt, Twenty-first Century Gunboat Diplomacy, TomDispatch.com, 30 March 2004.
- Michael T. Klare, Imperial Reach, The Nation, 25 April 2005.
- Bradley Graham, Commanders Plan Eventual Consolidation of U.S. Bases in Iraq, The Washington Post, 22 May 2005.
- If the U.S. is ultimately leaving Iraq, why is the military building 'permanent' bases?, Friends Committee on National Legislation, 2005.
- Tom Engelhardt, Can You Say "Permanent Bases"?: The American Press Can't, TomDispatch.com, 14 February 2006.
- Associated Press, Extended Presence of U.S. in Iraq Looms Large; $1 billion for construction of American military bases and no public plans, CommonDreams.org, 21 March 2007.
- The Bases Are Loaded, Alternative Focus, 2007.
- Medea Benjamin, A New Network Forms to Close U.S. Overseas Military Bases, Transnational Institute, 14 March 2007.
Refers to:
No Bases: International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases. - Chalmers Johnson, 737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire, AlterNet.org, 19 February 2007.
Excerpt from his book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. - Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram: The Mother Ship Lands in Iraq; The Colossus of Baghdad; Wonders of the Imperial World, TomDispatch.com, 29 May 2007.
- Matt Sanchez, Dispatches From The Front Lines: Inside Saddam's 'Lion' mega-base; A guided tour of al Asad airbase, where U.S. soldiers 'rip in' and out of Iraq, WorldNetDaily.com, 25 October 2007.
- Tom Engelhardt, Advice to a Young Builder in Tough Times; Imperial Opportunities Abound, TomDispatch.com, 04 November 2007.
- William Langewiesche, The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad, Vanity Fair, November 2007.
(Note: This article/webpage is not designed/formatted to print properly with Mozilla Firefox but does print correctly with MS Internet Explorer, using MS Windows XP.)
The U.S. "super-bases" / "mega-bases" in Iraq may include:
- Balad Air Base / LSA Anaconda: GlobalSecurity.org, Wikipedia
- Camp Victory / Baghdad International Airport: Wikipedia
- Ali Air Base (formerly "Tallil") / LSA Adder, near Nasiriyah in the south: Wikipedia, GlobalSecurity.org
- Al Asad, in the west: GlobalSecurity.org, Wikipedia, where Bush shook hands (NYT 04 Sept 2007; WP 04 Sept 2007) with Abu Risha, sealing his fate (WP 14 Sept 2007; Patrick Cockburn, Greet Bush and Die, CounterPunch.org; Keith Porter, Foreign Policy Can Mean Life or Death). Aka "Camp Cupcake."
- Bashur Air Base, in the north
- Irbil?
- Qayyarah / FOB Endurance: GlobalSecurity.org
- LSA Diamondback, at Mosul: Wikipedia, GlobalSecurity.org
- LSA Viper / Jalibah Air Base, near the Kuwaiti border: GlobalSecurity.org
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Noam Chomsky.
Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post 9/11 World.
Interviews with David Barsamian.
New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt and Company, September 2005.
Book series: The American Empire Project.
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post 9/11 World.
Interviews with David Barsamian.
New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt and Company, September 2005.
Book series: The American Empire Project.
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
Monday, October 08, 2007
David Kilcullen appeared on the Charlie Rose show last Friday, 5 Ocober 2007. Watch the interview at Google Video or at the Charlie Rose website (no need to click the "Buy" button). In that (full-show-length) interview Kilcullen presented an excellent explanation of American strategy in Iraq, one that I find far more coherent than those offered by American political and military figures.
I provided links to many of Kilcullen's publications in the Counterinsurgency section of this post.
I provided links to many of Kilcullen's publications in the Counterinsurgency section of this post.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Tom Engelhardt.
Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts & Dissenters.
New York: Nation Books, 2006.
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
Tom Engelhardt:
The Interviews:
The interviews in this book originally appeared at TomDispatch.com and you can still read them there. Links to them follow.
Engelhardt has started doing a new series of "Tomdispatch Interviews." The first to appear is:
Tom Engelhardt, American Exceptionalism Meets Team Jesus: A Tomdispatch Interview with James Carroll, TomDispatch.com, 17 September 2007.
Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts & Dissenters.
New York: Nation Books, 2006.
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
Tom Engelhardt:
- About Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.
- Engelhardt is an editor of The American Empire Project book series at Metropolitan Books.
- Engelhardt is also the author of:
The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation, revised/second edition. University of Massachusetts Press, July 2007. (publisher, Amazon.com)
The Interviews:
The interviews in this book originally appeared at TomDispatch.com and you can still read them there. Links to them follow.
- Howard Zinn, The Outer Limits of Empire, 08 September 2005.
- James Carroll, The Mosquito and the Hammer, 11 September 2005.
- Cindy Sheehan, Katrina Will Be Bush's Monica, 29 September 2005.
- Voices from the Frontlines of Protest, "No Iraqis Left Me on a Roof to Die", 25 September 2005.
- Ann Wright, "A Felon for Peace", 11 November 2005.
- Juan Cole, Part 1: The Treasure, the Strongbox, and the Crowbar, 17 October 2005; Part 2: Throwing Grenades in the Global Economic Cockpit, 18 October 2005.
- Mark Danner, You Can Do Anything with a Bayonet Except Sit on It, 26 February 2006.
- Chalmers Johnson, Part 1: Cold Warrior in a Strange Land, 21 March 2006; Part 2: What Ever Happened to Congress?, 22 March 2006.
- Katrina vanden Heuvel, A World at 36/7 Speed, 20 April 2006.
- Mike Davis, Part 1: Humanity's Ground Zero, 09 May 2006; Part 2: The Imperial City and the City of Slums, 11 May 2006.
- Andrew Bacevich, Part 1: The Delusions of Global Hegemony, 23 May 2006; Part 2: Drifting Down the Path to Perdition, 25 May 2006.
- Barbara Ehrenreich, A Guided Tour of Class in America, 04 June 2006.
- Tom Engelhardt, Part 1: Reading the Imperial Press Back to Front, 20 June 2006; Part 2: On Not Packing Your Bag and Heading Home When Things Go Wrong, 22 June 2006; (Interview by Nick Turse).
Engelhardt has started doing a new series of "Tomdispatch Interviews." The first to appear is:
Tom Engelhardt, American Exceptionalism Meets Team Jesus: A Tomdispatch Interview with James Carroll, TomDispatch.com, 17 September 2007.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Glenn Greenwald.
A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency.
New York: Crown Publishers, June 2007.
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
Glenn Greenwald is an outstanding analyst of American political culture; I highly recommend his always insightful blog at Salon.com (here). Chapter Five is a very good summary of the Bush administration's lawlessness.
Links:
A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency.
New York: Crown Publishers, June 2007.
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
Glenn Greenwald is an outstanding analyst of American political culture; I highly recommend his always insightful blog at Salon.com (here). Chapter Five is a very good summary of the Bush administration's lawlessness.
Links:
- Glenn Greenwald, Wikipedia.
- Glenn Greenwald's Unoccupied Territory, his column/blog at Salon.com.
- Before Greenwald's blog was published by Salon.com it was here: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/.
- Greenwald is also the author of: How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok; San Francisco: Working Assets Publishing, 2006 (publisher, Amazon.com).
- Greenwald appeared on Democracy Now!, 6 August 2007 (MP3, transcript).
- Book Forum, The Cato Institute, 07 August 2007.
Greenwald and others discuss his book. I recommend listening to the MP3. - Truth, Power, and the Iraq Debacle: A Conversation with Mark Danner, Conversations with History, Series Host Harry Kriesler, Institute of International Studies, The University of California at Berkeley, 27 July 2007.
Danner discusses the Manichean outlook of Bush, among other things. - Glenn Greenwald, Profiles in Journalism, Salon.com, 16 April 2007.
Greenwald observes: the Pulitzer Prize awarded to 'Charlie Savage of The Boston Globe won for national reporting for his revelations that President Bush often used "signing statements" to assert his controversial right to bypass provisions of new laws.' In this essay Greenwald highlights and links to Mr. Savage's notable articles.
An acknowledged source for Savage was Philip Cooper's paper "George W. Bush, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Use and Abuse of Presidential Signing Statements" [PDF].
The Pulitzer Priz Winners of 2007.
Glenn Greenwald, Interview with Charlie Savage, Salon.com, 24 April 2007.
Charlie Savage. Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy. Little, Brown and Company, September 2007 (publisher, Amazon.com). - David Weigel, Right All Along, Unfortunately; The "Chicken Littles" win the civil liberties debate, Reason, June 2007.
- Glenn Greenwald, Dick Cheney's top aide: "We're one bomb away" from our goal, Salon.com, 04 September 2007.
Jeffrey Rosen, Conscience of a Conservative (i.e., Jack L. Goldsmith), The New York Times Magazine, 09 September 2007.
Jack L. Goldsmith. The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration. W. W. Norton & Company, September 2007 (publisher, Amazon.com).
Recent developments on the lawlessness of the Bush administration: David Addington, warrantless wiretaps, FISA, the "torture memos" of John Yoo.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Greg Palast.
Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild.
New York: Plume / Penguin Group, May 2007 (paperback edition, has additional chapters).
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com
I think this is an excellent book on American politics. Particularly valuable is Palast's investigation and exposure of the many techniques the Republican Party uses to steal elections. The comfortable classes who take their rights for granted must become aware of those shameful anti-democratic practices; rights denied for one can be denied for anyone, and by that I mean you. In our age, we the inheritors of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 appear to have squandered that inheritance. In order for America to reform itself the people must know how deeply America has fallen short of its ideals; I find it a tremendously ugly situation. Palast's discussion of how class war is practiced in America is also very valuable. I also found his speculations on the motivation of the U.S. government to depose Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq intriguing and convincing; however, I qualify my agreement by observing that singling out one motivation, though possibly the dominant one in the most influential circle, does not tell the whole story; it seems to me that the many groups acquiescing and participating in the Iraq invasion and occupation have many motivations (most of them not openly admitted, and without the American public's consent) that allow those different interests to enjoy the various benefits of that common undertaking.
Links:
Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild.
New York: Plume / Penguin Group, May 2007 (paperback edition, has additional chapters).
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com
I think this is an excellent book on American politics. Particularly valuable is Palast's investigation and exposure of the many techniques the Republican Party uses to steal elections. The comfortable classes who take their rights for granted must become aware of those shameful anti-democratic practices; rights denied for one can be denied for anyone, and by that I mean you. In our age, we the inheritors of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 appear to have squandered that inheritance. In order for America to reform itself the people must know how deeply America has fallen short of its ideals; I find it a tremendously ugly situation. Palast's discussion of how class war is practiced in America is also very valuable. I also found his speculations on the motivation of the U.S. government to depose Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq intriguing and convincing; however, I qualify my agreement by observing that singling out one motivation, though possibly the dominant one in the most influential circle, does not tell the whole story; it seems to me that the many groups acquiescing and participating in the Iraq invasion and occupation have many motivations (most of them not openly admitted, and without the American public's consent) that allow those different interests to enjoy the various benefits of that common undertaking.
Links:
- www.GregPalast.com, his website (articles, videos of his BBC broadcasts, etc.).
- Greg Palast. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. New York: Plume, April 2004.
- Greg Palast, Jerrold Oppenheim, Theo MacGregor. Democracy and Regulation: How the Public Can Govern Essential Services. London: Pluto Press, January 2003.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Conversations With History - Mark Danner, 27 July 2007.
An extremely clear summary of the Bush/Cheney clusterf@ck (i.e., the U.S. government since January 2001).
One in the series Conversations With History.
Mark Danner, His Books and Articles:
An extremely clear summary of the Bush/Cheney clusterf@ck (i.e., the U.S. government since January 2001).
One in the series Conversations With History.
Mark Danner, His Books and Articles:
- www.MarkDanner.com, his website.
- Mark Danner, Wikipedia.
- Mark Danner - The New York Review of Books
Links to his articles at The New York Review of Books. - The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History, New York Review Books, 2006.
- Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror, New York Review Books, 2004.
- Words in a Time of War: Taking the Measure of the First Rhetoric-Major President, TomDispatch.com, 31 May 2007.
- The Secret Way to War, The New York Review of Books, Volume 52, Number 10, 09 June 2005.
- Mark Danner articles at TomDispatch.com
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
After last week's article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, China threatens to trigger US dollar crash (The Daily Telegraph, 08 August 2007) it becomes evident that (a) Evans-Pritchard is a right-wing crank, and (b) it is not in China's strategic interest to destabilize the U.S. economy. Nevertheless and obviously, a creditor does have a great interest in and ability to influence it's debtor's behaviour. I would also add that many alarmist stories such as Evans-Pritchard's have a tendency to focus on only one aspect of far more complicated situations; for example, in his article Evans-Pritchard never mentions that the U.S. is also China's largest trading partner, that China's political and economic stability depends upon maintaining and increasing its trade with the U.S., and that China obviously wants to preserve the value of its dollar denominated assets. The following articles and associated comments delve a little further into this subject.
Andrew Leonard, Will China drop the bomb on the U.S. dollar?, How the World Works, Salon.com, 08 August 2007.
Richard McGregor, China affirms dollar’s reserve status, Financial Times, 12 August 2007.
Jeremy Goldkorn, China's nuclear option — dumping dollars, Danwei.org, 13 August 2007.
Not about Evans-Pritchard's irresponsible aritlce, but too good not to read:
The mandarins of money: Central banks in the rich world no longer determine global monetary conditions, The Economist, 09 August 2007.
Last but not least, I look forward to reading this book:
Barry Naughton. The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth. The MIT Press, January 2007.
Andrew Leonard, Will China drop the bomb on the U.S. dollar?, How the World Works, Salon.com, 08 August 2007.
Richard McGregor, China affirms dollar’s reserve status, Financial Times, 12 August 2007.
Jeremy Goldkorn, China's nuclear option — dumping dollars, Danwei.org, 13 August 2007.
Not about Evans-Pritchard's irresponsible aritlce, but too good not to read:
The mandarins of money: Central banks in the rich world no longer determine global monetary conditions, The Economist, 09 August 2007.
Last but not least, I look forward to reading this book:
Barry Naughton. The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth. The MIT Press, January 2007.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Updates to some recent posts: additional articles.
America in Afghanistan and Iraq:
Financial System:
America in Afghanistan and Iraq:
- Nathaniel Fick, To Defeat The Taliban: Fight Less, Win More, The Washington Post, 12 August 2007.
Fick discusses his experience in training U.S. and Afghan soldiers in Afghanistan in Counterinsurgency. He explains four "paradoxical" (his term) principles of Counterinsurgency: (1) "The first tenet is that the best weapons don't shoot. Counterinsurgents must excel at finding creative, nonmilitary solutions to military problems." (2) "The second pillar of the academy's curriculum relates to the first: The more you protect your forces, the less safe you may be. To be effective, troops, diplomats and civilian aid workers need to get out among the people." (3) "The third paradox hammered home at the academy is that the more force you use, the less effective you may be." (4) "The academy's final lesson is that tactical success in a vacuum guarantees nothing. Just as it did in Vietnam, the U.S. military could win every battle and still lose the war." - Glenn Greenwald, The truth behind the Pollack-O'Hanlon trip to Iraq: An interview with Michael O'Hanlon highlights the scope and breadth of this P.R. fraud, Salon.com, 12 August 2007.
- British MPs Urge Break With Bush On Iraq, Escalation ‘Not Likely To Succeed’, ThinkProgress.org, 13 August 2007.
Financial System:
- Paul Craig Roberts, In the Hole to China: Uncle Sam, Your Banker Will See You Now ..., CounterPunch.org, 08 August 2007.
- Julian Delasantellis, Central banks' easy virtue, easy money, Asia Times, 13 August 2007.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
George Packer.
The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 2005.
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
(Note: The publisher has also prepared a Reading Group Guide [PDF] for this book. When printing pages 2 and 3 I recommend you turn off color printing; there is something wrong with those pages of the document in the version I downloaded. I have not use the Guide.)
Since the publication of The Assassins' Gate, Packer has published additional articles in The New Yorker that I think should be considered additional chapters of the book. They are:
The Assassins' Gate is an excellent survey of the Iraq quagmire and complements (does not overlap) other books such as Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III and Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. I finished reading Packer's book more than a month ago; I delayed this post to finish reading Packer's New Yorker articles and in the meantime was distracted by reading other books. It seems unlikely that I will soon get around to reading the longer counterinsurgency items and government reports listed below.
Some Book Reviews:
George Packer and Some of His New Yorker Articles:
Counterinsurgency:
United States Government Reports:
PBS Frontline Documentaries:
Buying the War, Bill Moyers Journal, 25 April 2007.
"In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the US government's claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties to Saddam Hussein went mostly unchallenged by the media. Four years after 'shock and awe,' how the government sold the war has been much examined, but a big question remains: how and why did the press buy it? Bill Moyers and his team piece together the reporting that shows how the media were complicit in shaping the 'public mind' toward the war, and ask what has happened to the press's role as skeptical 'watchdog' over government power. The program features the work of some journalists who didn't take the government's word at face value, including the team of reporters at Knight Ridder news service whose reporting turned up evidence at odds with the official view of reality. Buying the War includes interviews with Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of Meet the Press; Bob Simon of 60 Minutes; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay, and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers, which was acquired by the McClatchy Co. in 2006."
You can watch Buying the War online here.
You must watch this.
Other Essays, Interviews, News Reports, etc.:
The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 2005.
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
(Note: The publisher has also prepared a Reading Group Guide [PDF] for this book. When printing pages 2 and 3 I recommend you turn off color printing; there is something wrong with those pages of the document in the version I downloaded. I have not use the Guide.)
Since the publication of The Assassins' Gate, Packer has published additional articles in The New Yorker that I think should be considered additional chapters of the book. They are:
- The Lesson of Tal Afar: Is it too late for the Administration to correct its course in Iraq?, 10 April 2006;
- Knowing the Enemy: Can social scientists redefine the "war on terror"?, 18 December 2006;
- Betrayed: The Iraqis who trusted America the most, 26 March 2007.
The Assassins' Gate is an excellent survey of the Iraq quagmire and complements (does not overlap) other books such as Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III and Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. I finished reading Packer's book more than a month ago; I delayed this post to finish reading Packer's New Yorker articles and in the meantime was distracted by reading other books. It seems unlikely that I will soon get around to reading the longer counterinsurgency items and government reports listed below.
Some Book Reviews:
- Michael Hirsh, Confessions of a humvee liberal, Washington Monthly, September 2005.
Subtitle / description: "The New Yorker's George Packer has written a penetrating, unblinking account of the catastrophic Iraq war that he supported. He just can't admit he was wrong." - Michiko Kakutani, Grand Theories, Ignored Realities, The New York Times, 07 October 2005.
- Gideon Rose, Welcome to the Occupation; A rueful liberal hawk explores the road to war in Iraq and its chaotic aftermath, The Washington Post, 09 October 2005.
See also:
Book World Live; George Packer, "The Assasins' Gate", transcript of a webchat with George Packer, WashingtonPost.com, 11 October 2005. - Fareed Zakaria, 'The Assassins' Gate': Occupational Hazards, The New York Times, 30 October 2005.
- Peter Berkowitz, A Worthy War Critic, Policy Review, Number 133, October & November 2005.
- Scott McConnell, The Worst and the Dullest, The American Conservative, 19 December 2005.
The reviewer notably emphasizes the book's survey of the Neoconservative origins of the 2003 Iraq invasion. - Peter W. Galbraith, The Mess, The New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 4, 09 March 2006.
- Michael Young, How Did Iraq Go Wrong? Liberal hawks blame incompetence but sidestep American narcissism, Reason, April 2006.
- W. Andrew Terrill, Book Reviews, Parameters, Autumn 2006, pp. 124-126.
- Michael Rubin, Assassinating the truth about the Iraq war, The Middle East Forum, American Enterprise Institute, 20 December 2005.
A warmonger's perspective.
George Packer and Some of His New Yorker Articles:
- George Packer, Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia article contains links to his articles about the Iraq war; a full list of his articles in The New Yorker is here. - Interesting Times, George Packer's blog at The New Yorker.
Appears to have started in June 2007. - George Packer, David Halberstam, The New Yorker, 07 May 2007.
Notes the relevance of Halberstam's Vietnam classic The Best and the Brightest to today's quagmire. - George Packer, Betrayed: The Iraqis who trusted America the most, The New Yorker, 26 March 2007.
A major article "about how many of the Iraqi translators who helped the American occupation now face uncertainty about their own survival." One should consider this article a supplementary chapter to The Assassins' Gate which ends with events in early 2005. The article is particularly good at illustrating cultural differences between Iraqis and Americans and also makes plain the continuing deficiencies of U.S. policy towards Iraq. - George Packer, Save Whomever We Can, The New Republic, 26 November 2006.
An earlier and shorter article than the one above, also about Iraqis who assisted the Americans and are now becoming refugees. - George Packer, Knowing the Enemy: Can social scientists redefine the "war on terror"?, The New Yorker, 18 December 2006.
One should consider this a supplementary chapter to The Assassins' Gate.
This major article attracted widespread attention; it focuses mainly on Kilcullen and McFate, and also discusses work of Barton and Hoffman:
David Kilcullen, formerly of the Australian Army, is a specialist in counterinsurgency warfare, now assisting the Americans in Iraq. Links to some essays by Kilcullen are given below in the Counterinsurgency section.
Montgomery McFate is a cultural anthropologist. Links to some essays by McFate are given below in the Counterinsurgency section.
Frederick Barton, Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Bruce Hoffman, Center for Peace and Security Studies, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Author of Inside Terrorism, Columbia University Press, 2006. Packer describes Hoffman as "a former RAND Corporation analyst who began to use the term 'global counterinsurgency' around the same time as Kilcullen."
According to Packer, Kilcullen's thinking is informed by texts such as:
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (1951);
Philip Selznick, The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics (1952);
Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (2004);
Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (2004).
Academic anthropologists comment on using anthropological insights in counterinsurgency warfare:
Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain, Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog, 18 May 2005.
Packer's article also mentions a relatively new project of the Department of Defense, the Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain. See "Human Terrain" references in the Counterinsurgency section.
Sharon Chadha, George Packer, Know The Enemy, 08 January 2007.
Summarizes and comments on Packer's article.
Patricia Kushlis, Fighting Global Counterinsurgency is not a War on Terror, WhirledView, 29 December 2006.
Summarizes and comments on Packer's article.
Knowing the Enemy, Part 1: The Ghosts of Vietnam, Opposed Systems Design, 20 December 2006;
Knowing the Enemy, Part II: Strategic Perspective, Opposed Systems Design, 21 December 2006.
Summarizes and comments on Packer's article. - George Packer, Unrealistic, The New Yorker, 27 November 2006.
Discusses some Iraq war policy consequences of the 2006 congressional election win by the Democratic party. - George Packer, The Megacity: Decoding the chaos of Lagos, The New Yorker, 27 November 2006.
A major article on Lagos, Nigeria, one of the world's major slum cities.
Packer mentions several books about slum cities:
Davis, Planet of Slums;
Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A Urban New World;
Mehta, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found;
The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003;
Koolhaas, Lagos: How It Works. - George Packer, The Moderate Martyr: A radically peaceful vision of Islam, The New Yorker, 11 September 2006.
A major article on Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, his advocacy for the reform of Islam in Sudan, and his legacy. For those efforts Taha was executed by Sudan in 1985. Interestingly, the now notorious Judith Miller was present at Taha's hanging and wrote about it in her book God Has Ninety Nine Names: Reporting from a Militant Middle East (1996); Miller was The New York Times' Cairo bureau chief 1983-1987. Packer includes in his article an excerpt from Miller describing the scene of Taha's hanging.
More on Sudan: Sudan in Crisis, The Washington Post.
More on Taha:
Mahmoud Muhammud Taha, The Second Message of Islam, Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Mohamed A. Mahmoud, Quest for Divinity: A Critical Examination of the Thought of Mahmud Muhammad Taha, Syracuse University Press, 2006.
Abdullahi Ahmed an-Na'im, School of Law, Emory University; see especially Naim's book and related project: The Future of Shari'a: Secularism from an Islamic Perspective. Other recent work by Naim: Islam and Human Rights: Advocacy for Social Change in Local Contexts, 2006. - George Packer, Fighting Faiths: Can liberal internationalism be saved?, The New Yorker, 10 July 2006.
Book review; items discussed:
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom;
Peter Beinert, "A Fighting Faith: An Argument for a New Liberalism", The New Republic, 13 December 2004;
Peter Beinart, The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again;
Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy;
James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power;
David Rieff, At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention;
Josef Joffe, Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America. - George Packer, Not Wise, The New Yorker, 08 May 2006.
Comments on Bush administration Iraq policy ineffectuality as of that date. - George Packer, The Lesson of Tal Afar: Is it too late for the Administration to correct its course in Iraq?, The New Yorker, 10 April 2006.
A major article that should also be considered a supplementary chapter to The Assassins' Gate. Discusses the evolution of Iraq war strategy, from the long period of denial by senior military leaders that they were confronting an insurgency, to the open implementation of a counterinsurgency strategy (however the efficacy of counterinsurgency in Iraq is now debated due to the emergence of civil war, which is strategically different from just insurgency). Among the people Packer interviewed is Army Colonel H. R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (1997), his University of North Carolina PhD dissertation in History, and Crack in the Foundation: Defense Transformation and the Underlying Assumption of Dominant Knowledge in Future War (November 2003), available here and here. McMaster's Crack in the Foundation is discussed in its larger political-military context here, i.e., McMaster's work helped discredit Rumsfeld's "transformation" or "revolution in military affairs"; more articles on the RMA debate are here.
The last third of the article somewhat updates The Assassins' Gate through early 2006; for example, the psychiatrist Dr. Butti makes an appearance in the article. - George Packer, Name Calling, The New Yorker, 08 August 2005.
Observations on the Bush administation's language shift to "Islamist extremism" in place of "Global War on Terrorism." Says that the administration has implicitly admitted that its militaristic and unilateral strategy since September 11, 2001 has failed. Could this indicate that they have finally recognized that the American occupation of Iraq has only served to further provoke the extremism that produces terrorism? I doubt it.
"In Iraq, America has run up against the limits of war in an ideological contest. The Administration is right to reconsider its strategy, starting with the language. Will anything else follow? The global struggle against violent extremism would inspire more confidence if, for example, the Administration hadn’t failed to include funding for democracy programs in Iraq beyond the next round of elections there; or if Karen Hughes, the President’s choice as Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, hadn’t left the job empty for five months while waiting for her son to graduate from high school; or if the White House weren’t resisting attempts by Congress to regulate the treatment of prisoners; or if Karl Rove would stop using 9/11 to raise money and smear Democrats. No one really knows how American influence can be used to disinfect Islamist politics of violent ideas. This is the first problem. The second is that the Bush team has shown such bad faith, arrogance, and incompetence since September 11th that it seems unlikely to figure it out." - George Packer, Invasion vs. Persuasion, The New Yorker, 20 December 2004.
Contrasts the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004-2005 in which a stolen election was peacefully challenged, the culmination of many years or decades of cultivating a democratic civil society in Ukraine, versus the (failing) American attempt to impose a democratic culture on Iraq. - George Packer, The Playing Field: Iraqis and Americans find themselves in opposite positions, The New Yorker, 30 August 2004.
Attending the 2004 Athens Olympics with some Iraqi illegal immigrants in Greece. - George Packer, Ten Years After, The New Yorker, 01 March 2004.
A very brief survey of the political upheavals in Haiti over the ten years preceeding February 2004. President Aristide was deposed again on 29 February 2004 (this time by the U.S. government - see An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President). I read or heard somewhere authoritative that a good introduction to Haiti is Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People 1492-1995 by Nancy Gordon Heinl. Also I'd like to call attention to Paul Farmer's The Uses of Haiti. - George Packer, A Democratic World: Can liberals take foreign policy back from the Republicans?, The New Yorker, 16 February 2004.
This is a very insightful essay, in my opinion the best of Packer's New Yorker articles I have listed in this blog post. The status of foreign policy in American politics as described in the essay has changed very little in the three and a half years since it was published, so despite its age the article is still very useful. Sadly, the weakness of the Democratic Party identified by Packer, the party's lack of a vigorous foreign policy amenable to promotion in TV shouting matches and robust enough to counter Republican and White House fear-mongering, war-mongering demogogery, etc., still persists, as evidenced by the Democrats' capitulation to expanding surveillance authority under FISA passed in early August 2007 (see Eric Lichtblau, James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law, The New York Times, 11 August 2007; Glenn Greenwald has also discussed this Democratic Party weakness: Attention Democrats: GOP fear-mongering does not work, Salon.com, 06 August 2007). In preparing the essay Packer interviewed Senator Joe Biden, Ivo H. Daalder, General Wesley Clark, and Thomas Carothers. Rather than attempting to summerize it here, I encourage you to read this essay. - George Packer, Gangsta War: Young fighters take their lead from American pop culture, The New Yorker, 03 November 2003.
A major article on Ivory Coast (official name: Côte d'Ivoire) rebels.
Counterinsurgency:
- Note: You can find an abundance of additional information on counterinsurgency warfare at the Reference Library - Counterinsurgency webpage of Small Wars Journal. See the Reference Library Main Page for even more information. ~~ David Petraeus ~~
- David Petraeus, Wikipedia.
- Counterinsurgency [PDF], Field Manual No. 3-24 and Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3-33.5. Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 15 December 2006.
(Forward by David H. Petraeus & James F. Amos.)
Contains a very helpful Annotated Bibliography.
Also published as:
John A. Nagl (Foreword), David H. Petraeus (Foreword), James F. Amos (Foreword), Sarah Sewall (Introduction).
The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.
University of Chicago Press, July 2007.
(publisher, Amazon.com) - Counterinsurgency Reader [PDF]. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combined Arms Center, October 2006.
(Preface by David H. Petraeus.)
Considered a required supplement to the Counterinsurgency field manual. - Glenn Greenwald, How much credence should Gen. Petraeus' reports be given?, Salon.com, 19 July 2007.
- Glenn Greenwald, Further politicization of the U.S. military's public statements, Salon.com, 24 July 2007.
- Michael R. Gordon, U.S. Is Seen in Iraq Until at Least ’09, The New York Times, 24 July 2007.
- Frank Rich, Why the White House Keeps Hiding Behind General Petraeus, The New York Times, 30 July 2007.
- Andrew J. Bacevich, Army of One: The Overhyping of David Petraeus, The New Republic, 06 August 2007. ~~ David Kilcullen ~~
- David Kilcullen, Wikipedia.
- David Kilcullen, Countering Global Insurgency [PDF], 30 November 2004. (A shorter version was published in Journal of Strategic Studies vol. 28, no. 4 (Aug 2005), pp. 597–617.)
Said to be a very influential paper. - David Kilcullen, "Twenty-Eight Articles": Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency [PDF], published in both IO Sphere, Summer 2006 and Military Review, May/June 2006.
Said to be a popular article in the U.S. military. - David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency Redux [PDF] (published in: Survival vol. 48, no. 4 (Winter 2006-2007), pp. 111–130).
- David Kilcullen, Edward Luttwak’s "Counterinsurgency Malpractice", Small Wars Journal Blog, 15 April 2007.
Killcullen's essay refers to:
Edward Luttwak, Dead end: Counterinsurgency warfare as military malpractice, Harper's Magazine, February 2007. - David J. Kilcullen, New Paradigms for 21st Century Conflict, eJournal USA, Volume 12, Number 5, May 2007.
- David Kilcullen, Understanding Current Operations in Iraq, Small Wars Journal Blog, 26 June 2007.
Read this.
~~ Montgomery McFate ~~
- Montgomery McFate, United States Institute of Peace.
- Montgomery McFate, The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture [PDF], Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 38, 3rd Quarter 2005.
- Montgomery McFate, Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their Curious Relationship [PDF], Military Review, March-April 2005.
Also posted at RedOrbit.com, 18 May 2005. - Montgomery McFate, Iraq: The Social Context of IEDs [PDF], Military Review, May-June 2005.
- Montgomery McFate, The Cultural Knowledge Gap and Its Consequences for National Security, Fellow Project Report Summary, United States Institute of Peace, 10 May 2007.
- As Packer notes, the academic anthropology community is not happy with Montgomery McFate's work. An example of this: Anthropologists as Counter-Insurgents, Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog, 19 May 2005.
- Matthew B. Stannard, Montgomery McFate's Mission: Can one anthropologist possibly steer the course in Iraq?, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 April 2007.
A profile of McFate and a summary of American anthropology's relationship with the U.S. military since the Civil War.
~~ Other Counterinsurgency ~~
- Tanya, A Call to Curiosity, INTEL DUMP, 12 July 2005.
- Audrey Roberts, Navigating the Human Terrain: The Importance of Cultural Understanding in Contingency Operations, Journal of International Peace Operations, Vol. 2, No. 6, May-June 2007.
- Jacob Kipp, et al., The Human Terrain System: A CORDS for the 21st Century [PDF], Military Review, September-October 2006.
- Laboratory for Human Terrain, Dartmouth College.
- Ralph Peters, The Human Terrain of Urban Operations, Parameters, Spring 2000, pp. 4-12.
- Jeffrey Record, The American Way of War: Cultural Barriers to Successful Counterinsurgency, Policy Analysis, Number 577, 01 September 2006.
- Steven Metz & Raymond A. Millen, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceputalizing Threat and Response, Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, November 2004.
- Steven Metz, Learning from Iraq: Counterinsurgency in American Strategy, Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, January 2007.
- Thomas R. Mockaitis, The Iraq War: Learning from the Past, Adapting to the Present, and Planning for the Future, Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, February 2007.
United States Government Reports:
- Quadrennial Defense Review Report, United States Department of Defense, 06 February 2006.
(PDF Link). - Iraq Study Group Report, 6 December 2006:
- Iraq Study Group, Wikipedia.
- Iraq Study Group, the group's official webpage.
- Report download webpage.
- President George W. Bush, Initial Benchmark Assessment Report, The White Hose, 12 July 2007.
(PDF Link)
Robert Burns, Iraq Report May Mean Longer U.S. Surge, Associated Press, 13 July 2007.
PBS Frontline Documentaries:
- Index to programs: Reports by Year, PBS Frontline.
- Endgame, PBS Frontline, 19 June 2007.
Program descriptions:
"What went wrong, and why, in America's tragically failed effort to find a strategy for success in Iraq.
As the United States begins one final effort to secure victory through a 'surge' of troops, FRONTLINE investigates how strategic and tactical mistakes brought Iraq to civil war. The film recounts how the early mandate to create the conditions for a quick exit of the American military led to chaos, failure, and sectarian strife. In Endgame, producer Michael Kirk (Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question, The Dark Side, and The Lost Year in Iraq) traces why the president decided to risk what military planners once warned could be the worst way to fight in Iraq -- door-to-door -- and assesses the likelihood of its success. Top administration figures, military commanders, and journalists offer inside details about the new strategy." - Webchat with Michael Kirk, WashingtonPost.com, 20 June 2007.
- Frontline's Shocking Exposé of Iraq War Endgame Strategy, DailyKos.com, 20 June 2007.
- The Lost Year in Iraq, PBS Frontline, 17 October 2006.
Program descriptions:
"They came to rebuild and bring democracy, but soon were hardened by the postwar realities. WHen it came time to leave, they left behind lawlessness, insurgency and economic collapse.
In the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, a group of Americans led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III set off to Baghdad to build a new nation and establish democracy in the Arab Middle East. One year later, with Bremer forced to secretly exit what some have called 'the most dangerous place on earth,' the group left behind lawlessness, insurgency, economic collapse, death, destruction--and much of their idealism. Three years later, as the U.S. continues to look for an exit strategy, the government the Americans helped create and the infrastructure they designed are being tested. FRONTLINE Producer Michael Kirk follows the early efforts and ideals of this group as they tried to seize control and disband the Iraqi police, army and Baathist government--and how they became hardened along the way to the realities of postwar Iraq. The Lost Year in Iraq is based on numerous first-person interviews and extensive documentation from the FRONTLINE team that produced Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question and The Dark Side."
Reviews the "reigns" of Jay Garner and Paul Bremer in post-invasion Iraq, April 2003 - June 2004. - The Insurgency, PBS Frontline, 21 February 2006.
Program descriptions:
"An investigation into the people who are fighting against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq.
Kidnappings. Suicide bombers. Beheadings. Roadside bombs. The Iraqi insurgency continues to challenge the most highly trained and best-equipped military in the world. FRONTLINE peels back the layers and gets beyond the propaganda to take a complex look inside the multi-faceted insurgency in Iraq. The investigation includes special access to insurgent leaders, as well as commanders of Iraqi and U.S. military units battling for control of the country and detailed analysis from journalists who have risked their lives to meet insurgent leaders and their foot soldiers. FRONTLINE explores the battle for one Iraqi town and presents vivid testimony from civilians whose families were targeted by the insurgents."
Buying the War, Bill Moyers Journal, 25 April 2007.
"In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the US government's claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties to Saddam Hussein went mostly unchallenged by the media. Four years after 'shock and awe,' how the government sold the war has been much examined, but a big question remains: how and why did the press buy it? Bill Moyers and his team piece together the reporting that shows how the media were complicit in shaping the 'public mind' toward the war, and ask what has happened to the press's role as skeptical 'watchdog' over government power. The program features the work of some journalists who didn't take the government's word at face value, including the team of reporters at Knight Ridder news service whose reporting turned up evidence at odds with the official view of reality. Buying the War includes interviews with Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of Meet the Press; Bob Simon of 60 Minutes; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay, and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers, which was acquired by the McClatchy Co. in 2006."
You can watch Buying the War online here.
You must watch this.
Other Essays, Interviews, News Reports, etc.:
- The Architects of War: Where Are They Now?, ThinkProgress.org, no date.
- William Langewiesche, Welcome to the Green Zone; The American bubble in Baghdad, The Atlantic Monthly, November 2004.
- Anthony Bubalo & Greg Fealy, Joining the Caravan? The Middle East, Islamism and Indonesia, Lowy Institute for International Policy (Australia), March 2005.
- Harold Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics, Nobel Lecture, 2005.
Pinter considers the concept of Truth for the Artist and the Citizen: the Citizen no less than the Artist is morally obligated to speak the Truth as he experiences it. These considerations logically and morally compel Pinter as a Citizen to speak out on one of the overwhelming Truths of our age: the United States has abandoned its principles since the Second World War by how it conducts its foreign policy. The United States government's actions are a betrayal of its own people and the people of the world. He concludes:
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man. - Tom Tomorrow (aka Dan Perkins), Hell in a Handbasket: Dispatches from the Country Formerly Known as America, Tarcher, 2006.
Book review:
Glenn Greenwald, Tom Tomorrow's Hell in a Handbasket, 10 October 2006. - R. Hutchinson, Neocon Dream, R.I.P (Died in Iraq in 2005), Listmania, Amazon.com, 27 April 2007.
- Edward Luttwak, The Middle of Nowhere, Prospect, May 2007.
"Western analysts are forever bleating about the strategic importance of the middle east. But despite its oil, this backward region is less relevant than ever, and it would be better for everyone if the rest of the world learned to ignore it." - Countering the Terrorist Mentality, eJournal USA, May 2007.
Single topic issue. - Michael C. Desch, Bush and the Generals, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007.
"Summary: The rift between U.S. military and civilian leaders did not start with George W. Bush, but his administration's meddling and disregard for military expertise have made it worse. The new defense secretary must restore a division of labor that gives soldiers authority over tactics and civilians authority over strategy -- or risk discrediting civilian control of the military even further." - John Chuckman, The Historical Significance of the War in Iraq, Dissident Voice, 10 May 2007.
Comments on this essay at OneBigTorrent.org (a very good website for political documentaries). - Interview of Major General John Batiste (retired) by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! 25 May 2007 (MP3 file here).
Interview transcript here.
I strongly recommended one read or listen to this. - Mark Danner, Words in a Time of War: Taking the Measure of the First Rhetoric-Major President, TomDispatch.com, 31 May 2007.
A quick survey of the history of the United States during the Bush administration, partiuclarly with reference to events after September 11, 2001, the invasion of Iraq, and the Bush government's revocation of civil liberties previously guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Especially recommended for those not inclined to read a whole book on the subject. - Tom Engelhardt, How Permanent Are Those Bases?, TomDispatch.com, 07 June 2007.
Other title: The Great American Disconnect; Iraq Has Always Been "South Korea" for the Bush Administration. - Powell: Close Guantanamo Now, Restore Habeas, ThinkProgress.org, 10 June 2007. (includes video of Powell's television appearance)
Colin Powell speaks out, finally. - Shut Guantanamo now, says Powell, The Australian, 12 June 2007.
- Sean Parnell and Mark Dodd, 'Legoland' braces for invasion as part of troops' urban war games, The Australian, 12 June 2007.
Joint U.S.-Australia exercise in Queensland. - Jonathan Freedland, Bush's Amazing Achievement, The New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 10, 15 June 2007.
"One of the few foreign policy achievements of the Bush administration has been the creation of a near consensus among those who study international affairs, a shared view that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft, from the antiwar protesters on the streets of San Francisco to the well-upholstered office of former secretary of state James Baker. This new consensus holds that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a calamity, that the presidency of George W. Bush has reduced America's standing in the world and made the United States less, not more, secure, leaving its enemies emboldened and its friends alienated. Paid-up members of the nation's foreign policy establishment, those who have held some of the most senior offices in the land, speak in a language once confined to the T-shirts of placard-wielding demonstrators. They rail against deception and dishonesty, imperialism and corruption. The only dispute between them is over the size and depth of the hole into which Bush has led the country he pledged to serve." - Steven Simon & Ray Takeyh, Out of Iraq: We've Lost. Here's How To Handle It, The Washington Post, B01, 17 June 2007.
- Robin Wright, For U.S. and Key Allies in Region, Mideast Morass Just Gets Deeper, The Washington Post, A16, 17 June 2007.
Political instability and outright chaos in Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt and Iraq, all places where the leadership has American backing. Article doesn't venture into Pakistan. - Ahmed Rashid, The General in His Labyrinth: America's Bad Deal With Musharraf, Going Down in Flames, The Washington Post, B01, 17 June 2007.
As in the Middle East, the U.S. supported military dictatorship in Pakistan is also facing strong and more legetimate opposition. - Thom Shanker & Michael R. Gordon, G.I.’s in Iraq Open Big Offensive Against Al Qaeda, The New York Times, 17 June 2007.
- Karen J. Greenberg, Blowback, Detainee-style: The Plight of American Prisoners in Iran, TomDispatch.com, 18 June 2007.
- David Morgan, Iraq now ranked second among world's failed states, Reuters.com, 18 June 2007.
- Justin Raimondo, Rise and Fall of the Bizarro Empire: The internal contradictions of U.S. imperialism, AntiWar.com, 18 June 2007.
Argues that America will fall by being tripped up by the Pentagon bureaucracy / military-industrial complex. - Juan Cole, Cole's Advice to Hillary on Iraq, Informed Comment, 21 June 2007.
- Glenn Greenwald, Everyone we fight in Iraq is now "al-Qaida", Salon.com, 23 June 2007.
Observes that Bush administration rhetoric/propaganda has shifted from refering to "insurgents" or "Sunni" or "Shia'a" fighters in the Iraq Civil War to now "using the term 'Al Qaeda' to designate 'anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq'". - It's like déjà vu all over again. It's like déjà vu all over again, DailyKos.com, 23 June 2007.
Repeated claims over the years of intentions to reduce troop numbers in Iraq. Excellent observations in this diary. - David H. Petraeus, Beyond the Cloister, The American Interest, July-August 2007.
Comments on Petraeus's article:
Phillip Carter, Do smarter soldiers make better soldiers?, INTEL DUMP, 24 June 2007. - Insurgency and Australian Intellectualism, SouthSeaRepublic.org.
Commentary on work of David Kilcullen and David Petraeus. - Pepe Escobar, Hamastan and Red Zoneistan, Asia Times Online, 29 June 2007.
Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War, 2007. - William E. Odom, 'Supporting the troops' means withdrawing them, Nieman Watchdog, 05 July 2007.
- Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, Administration Shaving Yardstick for Iraq Gains; Goals Unmet; Smaller Strides to Be Promoted, The Washington Post, 08 July 2007.
- Gary Kamiya, Leave the Muslim world alone, Salon.com, 17 July 2007.
"Bush's moralistic Middle East crusade has backfired, creating more enemies than it destroys. It's time for a tactical retreat." - Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, Exit Strategies, The Washington Post, 17 July 2007.
- Peter Galbraith, The Iraq war is lost, Salon.com, 18 July 2007. Also published: New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 13, 16 August 2007.
- Juan Cole, Bush Falsehoods about Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Informed Comment, 25 July 2007.
- Chris Hedges, Beyond Disaster, TruthDig.com, 06 August 2007.
Considers the future of Iraq and the geopolitics of the Middle East. - David Rees, Cormac Ignatieff's "The Road", The Huffington Post, 07 August 2007.
This VERY funny essay is a critique of:
Michael Ignatieff, Getting Iraq Wrong, The New York Times Magazine, 05 August 2007.
One should also read Rees' essay on an earlier Ignatieff article:
David Rees, My Old Bus Stop, The Huffington Post, 29 July 2005. - Michael Young, Bush's Gulf Gambit: By containing Iran, the U.S. remains in Iraq, Reason online, 02 August 2007.
- Anthony H. Cordesman, The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq: A Trip Report [PDF], Center for Strategic and International Studies, 06 August 2007.
- Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates; Violence Rises in Shiite City Once Called a Success Story, The Washington Post, 07 August 2007.
- Glenn Greenwald, The foreign policy community: America's bipartisan foreign policy orthodoxies and their scholar-guardians are in desperate need of challenge, Salon.com, 08 August 2007.
Samantha Power, Conventional Washington versus the Change We Need, 03 August 2007. - Damien McElroy, Iraq needs a dictator, says US group, The Daily Telegraph, 09 August 2007.
- Warren P. Strobel, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef, Cheney urging military strikes on Iran, McClatchy Newspapers, 09 August 2007.
The United States' next war of aggression (i.e., war crime) and foreign policy disaster?
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