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Author: TriSec    Date: 07/08/2008 10:38:02

Good Morning.

Today is our 1,938th day in Iraq.

We'll start this morning as we always do, with the latest casualty figures from the warron terra, courtesy of antiwar.com:

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 4116
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 3977
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 3655
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3257
Since Election (1/31/05): 2679

Other Coalition Troops: 314
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 542


We find this morning's cost of war starting to move too quickly for the eye to follow. It's passing through $ 534,896,150,000.00



So now turning to our friends at IAVA, there's an interesting take on the candidates and what they're focusing on. A combat veteran writes about the "illusory comfort" of campaign platitudes and tries to make us civilians understand what the new commander in chief really needs to do. And please go and read it from the source; there's a ton of embedded links with plenty more information.


Senator Barack Obama recently gave an interview to the Military Times family of newspapers, in which he made the following remarkable statement:

I don’t know a higher [military] priority than making sure that the men and women who are putting themselves in harm’s way, day in and day out, are getting decent pay and decent benefits … These are just basic requirements of a grateful nation.

Lest anyone think I’m taking a partisan stance, I should point out that Senator John McCain’s website makes almost the exact same assertion:

There can be no higher defense priority than the proper compensation, training, and equipping of our troops.

Sadly, it is an example of how skewed our national debate about roles and missions of our Armed Forces has become that these assertions are accepted without challenge. Such statements threaten to turn our fellow Americans in the profession of arms into that oddest of military aphorisms, the “self-licking ice cream cone” - an object that exists for no other reason except to consume itself. The statements above are popular because they make us feel good that we are taking care of folks who are shouldering a burden the nation is deeply ambivalent about them bearing. But we use such illusory comfort as an excuse to turn away from hard choices about roles and missions in the coming years.

Let’s set aside for the moment that fact that Commander in Chief is only one of the many roles given to the Chief Executive by the Constitution, and that the excessive focus on the “CINC test” is completely out of proportion to what the founders intended. What both candidates have gotten wrong here is the old adage of “Mission First, Troops Always.” This is a hard and necessary lesson learned and internalized by military leaders, from the most junior NCO to the most senior general and admiral. Simply put, it’s the idea that no matter how much you want to take care of those under your command, your unit’s assigned mission has to come before their personal well-being. It’s one of the toughest lessons of military leadership to internalize, but it’s also essential to a professional force that contains a core identity of Servant of the Nation. We’ve already lived through a previous period where this mantra got reversed - during our missions in the Balkans, when deployed forces were told repeatedly that force protection was to be the number-one priority of the force. The illogic in this is not hard to spot - if the top priority here is taking care of our soldiers, then the easiest way to do that is to not deploy them into harm’s way. In the words of an old saw, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what a ship is for.”

Want a better way? Rather than sending out feel-good platitudes about “honoring those who serve”, let’s create a strategy that’s worthy of their sacrifice. Rather than build an elaborate construct where we shower our troops with praise and benefits even as we ask them to take on more ill-defined missions, let’s give them, as I put it during the primary season, a “coherent, consistent vision of American power.”

If you do that, then the resourcing, the training, the equipping follows. It won’t be easy - it will involve difficult choices that nobody wants to make. But if you set those conditions, then, in the words of those who know, “we need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.”




Turning to another veteran of Iraq, we find a remarkable missive penned a few day ago...about how our Independence Day is essentially meaningless.
Independence Day means nothing significant to me. It is the one time of year that we allow children to play with pyrotechnic devices. We turn them loose with matches and low grade explosives. In Darwinian fashion some return with fewer fingers or with scars that will warn future prospective mates that the barer may not be the ideal parent due to a lack of good judgment.

In addition to the rash of maimed children, there will be barbecues, keg parties and fireworks displays. There will be sales at car dealerships, hardware stores and the mall.

I will cringe at every pop and bang until I have totally assumed a frame of mind that will not associate these sounds with the sounds of mortar and rifle fire. I have found that setting off fireworks with the kids is the best way to get into that peaceful state. Even then I will wake from sleep grasping for a pistol every time there is a late night explosion.

All of this is fairly divorced from the intention of the holiday itself. The mythology behind the United States becomes more and more diluted each time it crosses another line. Each dirty little secret that is revealed crushes an ideal that we once held as the gold standard. When we find out that we torture we can no longer claim to be champions of human rights. When it comes to light that we have an extensive domestic spying program we can no longer look down our collective noses at countries that violate the privacy of their citizens. These were things that the Soviets did. They were things that happened in backwards dictatorships, not the United States.

Even the education on the subject that one receives in school is far removed from the reality. Few school children actually read the Declaration of Independence. From the point of view of the State this is a good thing, as children who read it might feel impelled by patriotism to engage in acts of sedition and revolution. Certainly, there are parts that apply to our situation today where the United States is the oppressive imperial power.

Describing the reasons that they decided to take up arms against their own country the Founding Fathers wrote:

“He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.”

Black Water and Armour Group rely heavily on foreign mercenaries to do their work. Iraq is rotten with Afrikaner mercs running around with AKs in Datsun pickups.

They also wrote:

“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.”

There is a case to be made here as well. An article in the January 30, 2008 edition of the Boston Globe reports that the President declared he is not bound by Congress's laws when they apply to the military. He claims that since he is Commander-in-Chief, laws passed by Congress that limit his authority with regard to foreign affairs and the military are unconstitutional.

The United States that those early malcontents fought and died for is long gone. The new state that overthrew an imperialist oppressor is now seen by the rest of the world as an aggressive enemy of peace. Their radical ideas about personal freedom have been eviscerated by the Patriot Act....




Finally today, it was reported yesterday that the government of Iraq is demanding a timetable for a US pullout. Of course, the Pentagon wants nothing to do with it.
In a rebuff to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the Pentagon said Monday that any timetable for a US withdrawal from Iraq would depend on conditions on the ground there.

Maliki told Arab ambassadors on Monday he was pressing for such a timetable in negotiations with Washington on an agreement on the status of US forces in Iraq beyond 2008.

Asked about the prime minister's comments, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters: "With respect to timetables I would say the same thing I would say as respects to the security situation -- it is dependent on conditions on the ground."

Whitman said the United States had made clear "that we have no long term desires to have forces permanently stationed in Iraq."

"But timelines tend to be artificial in nature," he said. "In a situation where things are as dynamic as they are in Iraq, I would just tell you, it's usually best to look at these things based on conditions on the ground."

Maliki's comments to Arab ambassadors to the United Arab Emirates marked the first time he has specifically demanded a timetable for a US withdrawal.

"The direction we are taking is to have a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or to have a timetable for their withdrawal," a statement from Maliki's office quoted him as saying.

"The negotiations are still continuing with the American side, but in any case the basis for the agreement will be respect for the sovereignty of Iraq," he added.

A UN mandate that provides the legal basis for the US military presence in Iraq expires at end of the year, and the two countries are negotiating a bilateral agreement to replace it.




 

311 comments (Latest Comment: 07/09/2008 07:06:02 by Shane-O)
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