The Agonist - USA: Armed Forces

"You Can't Pick Your Side in a Race Riot"

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:09:05 -0800

The title of the post is a quote from an inmate who survived the infamous Santa Fe Prison Riot in 1980. The sentiment is obvious, when the worst, most atavistic tribal impulses of human beings take over, people can't make rational choices about which side to take, and often don't even have the choice of remaining neutral.

This unfortunate reality of the human condition greatly complicates the internal politics of a polyglot nation like the U.S.

It's been that way since the American Revolution. Certain ethnic/socio-political groups remained more loyal to the Crown and many were driven out of the country at the end of the war. I'm familiar with this because my father's family were tories who migrated from New York to New Brunswick after the Revolution.

My home state of Texas infamously oppressed the Tejanos who played leading roles in the Texas Revolution once independence from Mexico had been achieved.

German-Americans famously suffered the brunt of an angry populace during WWI, from Wikipedia:

The Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. One man was hanged in Illinois, apparently for no other reason than that he was of German descent. The killers were found not guilty of the crime and the hanging was called an act of patriotism by a jury. A Minnesota minister was tarred and feathered when he was overheard praying in German with a dying woman. Some Germans during this time "Americanized" their names (e.g. Schmidt to Smith, Müller to Miller) and limited their use of the German language in public places. Newspapers also printed blacklists of names of Germans, including their addresses, headlined as German Enemy Aliens.

During WWII, Japanese-Americans had it even worse, being interned in concentration camps.

It shouldn't be surprising that our current ~~wars to export freedom and Democracy~~ state of war with two Muslim countries is putting yet another subset of Americans in a very awkward spot. And when one individual snaps, rather than being seen as an example of aberrant individual psychology or criminal evil, the jingo-artists among us seize on this to make the situation even worse.

From TPM:

One conservative writer is already declaring -- without citing any evidence -- that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter who killed 13 at Fort Hood yesterday, was acting at the behest of the Muslim Brotherhood.

and from Raw Story:

In the wake of a shooting rampage at Fort Hood by a military psychiatrist of Middle Eastern lineage, the hosts at Fox News have begun suggesting that all Muslims in the military should be treated as potential threats.

"Do you think it's time for the military to have special debriefings of Muslim Army officers -- anybody enlisted?" Fox's Brian Kilmeade asked Geraldo Rivera on Friday morning. "Because if I'm going to be deployed in a foxhole, if I'm going to be sticking in an outpost, I got to know the guy next to me is not going to want to kill me."

I hope we can pull out of this downward spiral before it gets stupider and more deadly.

Some excerpts from an interview with a local newspaper editor near Fort Hood in the full entry. She takes a much more measured and responsible approach than the national media.

From Boing Boing's interview with Amanda Kim Stairrett, the military editor at the Killeen Daily Herald.

Besides the families, people really want to know more about the alleged shooter himself. What are you seeing in this coverage?
AKS: A lot of the news organizations are very much wanting to push his religion. Him being Muslim and the impact of that on the incident itself. We don't have anything with that confirmed yet, so I've been really hesitant to say that that played a big part in the incident. We did had a reporter who was at the shooter's off-Post apartment and talked to neighbors. They said he was outspoken about being Muslim and had a lot of pride in his faith. But right now, I've stayed away from saying whether that played a hand in the shooting. I don't know if it's a big problem that people are speculating. I think it's first instinct. But I don't know why new organizations are so prominently featuring surveillance footage of him in a convenience store in traditional clothing. They're building this background in case it turns out that his religion did come into this. But we just don't know right now. And we're not willing to go that route with our reporting at this time.

What's your take on the speculation that's running rampant on TV news with this incident, in general? How does that compare to the actual facts that you know?
AKS: It's been interesting. Very early after the incident yesterday, I was pretty amazed to stand by and listen to, mostly, TV reporters go on air and speculate and report on rumors they'd heard. Whereas, our newspaper is right next to Fort Hood. We have a close relationship and it's always been our policy where we find that it's best to wait for correct information rather than to speculate. Because there's a large family population that isn't necessarily on Post, and don't know what's going on. It's a dangerous situation to get those people worried and worked up for reasons that maybe aren't correct. It's been really frustrating to see all the speculation. I've even been avoiding watching the TV coverage too closely, because I don't want the speculation to accidentally influence what I write.

As many as 9 killed in Fort Hood shootings, officials say

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:41:45 -0800

11/5/09

CNN - (CNN) -- Two gunmen in military uniforms shot and killed as many as nine people and wounded as many as 20 at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday, officials said.

One of the shooters has been apprehended, Fort Hood spokesman Sgt. Maj. Jamie Posten told CNN.

"At this point we're looking for the other shooter," Posten said. Asked for a description, he said, "we're trying to develop that information."

The shooters were wearing military uniforms, but it was unclear whether they were soldiers, said U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas

President Obama has been informed of the incident, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters.

New row over Colombia-US accord

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:03:29 -0800

Nov 5

BBC - Colombian opposition groups have reacted angrily after details of a controversial military deal with the US were made public.

Under the 10-year deal, the US military will not only have access to military bases, but also be able to use major international civilian airports.

US personnel and defence contractors will also enjoy diplomatic immunity.

President Alvaro Uribe says the agreement will help rid Colombia of drugs gangs and left-wing rebel groups.

But leading opposition senator Gustavo Petro, of the left-wing PDA party, said the deal amounted to a virtual US occupation of Colombia.

The accord was signed last Friday but full details were only made public on Tuesday.

Who is seeing the real Afghanistan?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:20:48 -0800

Last week the Washington Post printed two letters from different sources who had spent time on the ground in Afghanistan that came to very different conclusions about the American presence there.

First, there is the letter from Matthew Hoh, the former Marine captain who had fought in Iraq and had recently taken a temporary foreign service assignment in Zabul province. One State department official referred to this area as, “one of the five or six provinces always vying for the most difficult and neglected.” Hoh had developed great misgivings about the war and had become so disillusioned that he chose to resign. Hoh wote in his resignation letter,

I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditure of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war…. The United States presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency.

Matthew Hoh has served his country bravely in combat and he has responded to a policy with which he disagreed by making the honorable choice to resign. His observations about the situation in Zabul province merit serious consideration. I wish that many others in the previous administration who had serious misgivings about policy but waited to reveal them until after leaving office had, instead, followed Hoh’s example.

Several days later, a letter to the editor appeared in the Washington Post from Benjamin Joseloff, an American serving as a fellow at the Afghanistan Legal Education Project. This initiative, started by Stanford Law students, is devoted to a helping Afghan universities improve the quality of their legal education. Joseloff writes....

continue reading Brian Vogt's post at http://blog.psaonline.org/2009/11/03/who-is-seeing-the-real-afghanistan/

"Cost Free War"

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:47:38 -0800

From The Guardian:

In Wired for War, author Pete Singer speculates the machines are harbingers of a new era of "cost-free war".

"It's an historic change," said Singer. "Going to war has meant the same thing for 5,000 years. Now going to war means sitting in front of a computer screen for 12 hours. Then you go home and talk to your kids about their homework."

Am I the only one who finds this method of war tantamount to terrorism? And despicable, to boot?

Oh yeah, they hate us for our freedoms. Sorry, I forgot.

Obama Signs Largest Military Budget since World War II

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:23:22 -0800

Earlier this week, President Obama signed into law the $680 billion FY 2010 Defense Authorization Bill, the largest such budget since the end of World War II. If you missed that aspect of the story, you weren’t alone. Many news stories chose instead to focus on the hate crime provisions tacked onto the bill.

I’ve often quarreled with the inclusion of superfluous legislative riders, and the hate crime provision is more superfluous than most. (Indeed, as my Cato colleague David Rittgers has pointed out, it might be worse than superfluous.)

But I want to focus on the president’s failure to halt the inexorable growth in military spending. His capitulation on a number of spending programs — even as he complains of rampant waste and abuse within the Pentagon — signals to American taxpayers that they should expect more of the same. It sends an equally harmful message to our friends and allies around the world: stand back, we’ll take care of it.

You see, most of the money we spend on our military is not geared to defending the United States. Rather, it encourages other countries to free-ride on the U.S. military instead of taking prudent steps to defend themselves.

The massive defense bill represents only part of our military spending. The appropriations bill moving through Congress governing veterans affairs, military construction and other agencies totals $133 billion, while the massive Department of Homeland Security budget weighs in at $42.8 billion. This comprises the visible balance of what Americans spend on our national security, loosely defined. Then there is the approximately $16 billion tucked away in the Energy Department’s budget, money dedicated to the care and maintenance of the country’s huge nuclear arsenal.

All told, every man, woman and child in the United States will spend more than $2,700 on these programs and agencies next year. By way of comparison, the average Japanese spends less than $330; the average German about $520; China’s per capita spending is less than $100.

The massive imbalance between what Americans spend on our military, and what others spend, flows directly from our foreign policy. Several decades ago, Washington opted to be the world’s policeman, and has ever since discouraged other countries from spending more on their own defense. President Obama has tacitly questioned this approach in the past, and has called on other countries to step forward and do more. But by signing this monstrosity, his actions drown out his words.

The president has defended his support for continued bloated military spending, with additional monies going especially to a larger conventional army, as a way to reduce the strains on our troops and their families. This is a noble impulse. But a far better way to relieve the burdens on our overstretched force is to rethink all of our global military commitments, and align our strategy to our means. A new grand strategy, predicated on self-reliance and restraint, would relieve the burdens from the backs of our troops and from taxpayers. That new strategy would compel other countries to finally assume their rightful responsibilities in defending themselves and their respective regions.

The governing class in Washington has consistently resisted such a change. It is enamored of its ability to manage not just the rest of the country, but indeed the rest of the world, and sees no reason to change. Neither, it would seem, does President Obama. By embracing a military budget explicitly geared toward sustaining the status quo, the president virtually ensures that other countries will not share in the costs of keeping the world relatively prosperous and at peace.

I’ll be discussing our massive military spending and other aspects of U.S. national security policy next Friday with Daniel Wirls, a professor at UC Santa Cruz, and the author of a forthcoming book on U.S. military spending that looks terrific. The event is sponsored by the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and will be held at the UC’s Washington Center from 10:00 to 11:30. To learn more and to register, visit their web site.

By Christopher Preble. To read more, visit http://blog.psaonline.org

Military refines a 'constant stare against our enemy'

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:53:51 -0800

Julian E. Barnes | Washington | November 2

LAT - The Pentagon plans to dramatically increase the surveillance capabilities of its most advanced unmanned aircraft next year, adding so many video feeds that a drone which now stares down at a single house or vehicle could keep constant watch on nearly everything that moves within an area of 1.5 square miles.

The year after that, the capability will double to 3 square miles.

Military officials predict that the impact on counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan will be impressive.

"Predators and other unmanned aircraft have just revolutionized our ability to provide a constant stare against our enemy," said a senior military official. "The next sensors, mark my words, are going to be equally revolutionary."

[...]

Computers will take the Gorgon Stare images and "quilt" them into a mosaic that shows a large swath of territory, military officials said. That will enable the Defense Department to keep unblinking watch on a midsize city or village -- turning the Reapers into a kind of heavily armed traffic camera.

Such "pattern of life" intelligence is considered crucial for analysts who are trying to hunt down members of an insurgent network. Using the video feeds, analysts will be able to zoom in on different parts of the city, or follow the movement of particular people.

[...]

Predator and Reaper drones also can intercept electronic communications from radios, cellphones or other communication devices.

Last year, the Air Force overhauled how it organized its intelligence analysts. For the first time, video-feed analysts worked side by side with those listening to the audio.

"It is not just video resolution, it is not just signals, it is not just access to analysts," said the Defense official. "What has really evolved is the fact we can integrate a variety of information and analyze it in real time."

The number of Air Force unmanned drones available for deployment has increased significantly. In 2006, the Air Force was able to fly six drones at a time. Now operators are able to keep 38 aloft at once -- and the Air Force hopes to reach 50 by 2011.

With the wide-area surveillance technologies, the number of video feeds collected at one time is due to expand exponentially -- from 38 today to nearly 3,000 by 2013.

"This is Buzz Lightyear technology," said a military officer. "This is an unprecedented amount of information in warfare."

Hope wanes for finding survivors of Coast Guard-Marines crash

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:57:06 -0700

Jeanette Steele | San Diego | Oct 30

San Diego Union Tribune - As rescuers plan to search into the night for nine service members missing after a Thursday aircraft collision off San Clemente Island, aviation officials are looking at how a hulking Coast Guard plane crashed into a Camp Pendleton helicopter in good weather.

“All of our available assets are on the scene searching,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Allyson Conroy of the Coast Guard. Two helicopters and six cutters are scouring a 644-square-mile area around the island, which is about 70 miles west of San Diego.

But the chances of anyone surviving through another night in the 50-to 60-degree ocean looks increasingly dim, and the Pentagon has said it's unlikely anyone survived.

The Coast Guard has found debris, including aircraft wreckage, in a stretch roughly 12 miles long by 5 miles wide. No bodies have been recovered, Conroy said.

Pentagon Dirty Bombers: Depleted Uranium in the USA

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:16:37 -0700

Dave Lindorff | Washington | October 26

The Public Record - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold hearings tomorrow and Wednesday in Hawaii on an application by the US Army for a permit to have depleted uranium at its Pohakuloa Training Area, a vast stretch of flat land in what’s called the “saddle” between the sacred mountains of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island, and at the Schofield Barracks on the island of Oahu.

In fact, what the Army is asking for is a permit to leave in place the DU left over from years of test firing of M101 mortar “spotting rounds,” that each contained close to half a pound of depleted uranium (DU). The Army, which originally denied that any DU weapons had been used at either location, now says that as many as 2000 rounds of M101 DU mortars might have been fired at Pohakuloa alone.

But that’s only a small part of the story.

The Army is actually seeking a master permit from the NRC to cover all the sites where it has fired DU weapons, including penetrator shells that, unlike the M101, are designed to hit targets and burn on impact, turning the DU in the warhead into a fine dust of uranium oxide.

[...]

Among the sites identified by the NRC as being contaminated with DU are:

Ft. Hood, TX

Ft. Benning, GA

Ft. Campbell, KY

Ft. Knox, KY

Ft. Lewis, WA

Ft. Riley, KS

Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD

Ft. Dix, NJ

Makua Military Reservation, HI

Other locations identified as having DU weapons contamination are:

China Lake Air Warfare Center, CA

Eglin AFB, Florida,

Nellis AFB, NV

Davis-Monthan AFB

Kirtland AFB, NM

White Sands Missile Range, NM

Ethan Allen Firing Range, VT

New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

An application for a 99-year permit to test DU weapons at the NM Inst. Of Mining and Technology claimed that that site’s test area was “so contaminated with DU…as to preclude any other use”!

Colombia, US to sign controversial deal on military bases this week

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:34:12 -0700

Washington | Oct 27/Updated

DPA - Colombia and the United States are planning to sign 'at the end of the week' a controversial military deal, Colombian Defence Minister Gabriel Silva said Tuesday in Washington.

The deal whereby Colombia is set to allow the United States use of seven military bases on Colombian soil was announced this summer, although it has yet to be signed by Washington and Bogota.

The US-Colombian plan has drawn sharp criticism from Latin American leaders who worry that the US presence could threaten the sovereignty of neighbouring countries and promote meddling in internal affairs.

Bogota and Washington have insisted that the bases will be used only to combat drug-trafficking and terrorism within Colombia's borders

** Colombia counters critics over U.S. bases row ~ UPI
** A Summer Fling in South America: US Bases and a Weapons Race?(PDF) ~ISN
** Colombian Government Irked Judicial Opinion on Base Deal Was Leaked ~ Latin American herald Tribune
** Colombia: Trusted American Ally? ~ DCProgressive
** U.S. Aid Must Leverage Reforms, Rights Groups Urge ~ IPS

UPDATE OCT 30: Colombia, U.S. sign military base deal: U.S. official

Does Military Service Turn Young Men Into Sexual Predators?

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:11:47 -0700

TruthDig/Alternet, By Penny Coleman, October 23

Every day, for four years as a West Point cadet, Tara Krause lived and worked alongside the men who had gang-raped her.

Still, she managed to graduate in 1982. She served as a field artillery officer during the Cold War and was attached to the 518th Military Intelligence Brigade during the Gulf War. In what she calls "an act of incredible self-destruction," she married a three-tour Vietnam vet in 1985 and, for the next eight years, lived "the private hell of his PTSD."

"Suicidal behavior, violence and degradation were common threads of daily life," she told me. She survived only because when he put his gun to her head one day, it finally gave her the courage to flee. "Like Lot’s wife," she says, she struggles not to look back.

It’s been almost 30 years since the rape, and Krause says she still "dance(s) the crushing daily struggle" of her own PTSD: "The nightmares, panic attacks, flashbacks, cold sweats, suicidal thoughts, zoning out, numbing all emotion and desperately avoiding triggers (reminders)—I have become a prisoner in my own home."

[...]

For all the work she has done to heal her own injuries, she still has no answer for the question: "How do you get a group of Southern white teenagers, all of whom were Eagle Scouts, class presidents, scholars and athletes, to be capable of raping a classmate?"

The question deserves an answer, and not a simplistic one. A 2003 survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the Gulf War found that almost 8 in 10 had been sexually harassed during their military service, and 30 percent had been raped.

Yet for decades, in spite of the terrible numbers, the military has managed with astonishing success to get away with responding to grievances like Krause’s with silence, or denial, or by blaming "a few bad apples." But when individual soldiers take the blame, the system gets off the hook.

And it can be shown that the patterns of military sex crimes are old and widespread—for generations, military service has transformed large numbers of American boys into sexual predators.

So it seems reasonable to ask whether perhaps there is something about military culture or training or experience that can be identified as causative, and then, perhaps, changed.

The correlation is difficult to dismiss. The majority of veterans behind bars today are there for a very specific type of crime: violence against women and children. That fact has held true since the first Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) surveys of veteran populations in the nation’s prisons in 1981, and there is evidence that those surveys only identified a much older problem.

Danger Room What’s Next in National Security Rush Delivery for Mother of All Bunker Busters

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:08:20 -0700

Nathan Hodge | Washington | October 13

Wired - For several years, the U.S. military has been working on a 30,000-pound superbomb that can penetrate and destroy what the military calls “hardened targets“: Command bunkers or WMD facilities shielded by concrete and buried deep underground.

Now it looks as if the Pentagon is speeding delivery of the bomb, formally known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP. The Associated Press’ Anne Gearan reports today that the Defense Department awarded a contract worth around $52 million to speed up integration of the bomb aboard the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. According to the story, the MOP could be ready for B-2 delivery as early as next summer.

So why the rush? Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell offered a bland statement about the world being a dangerous place, but it’s tempting to see this as a response to Iran’s newly revealed nuclear site, buried deep inside a mountain near Qom. Gearan described the MOP “Plan B for dealing with Iran” if the diplomatic approach fails.

In fact, the Defense Department actually wanted the thing to be ready for delivery last year. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency began testing the MOP capability in 2007, But as Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told AP, development of the bomb was slowed by about two years because of budgetary issues.

Fox News: Meet the MOP: The Massive Ordnance Penetrator
AP: U.S. speeds up delivery of big bomb

The 13.6-tonne behemoth — called the “massive ordnance penetrator,” or MOP — will be the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal and carry 2,400 kilograms of explosives. The bomb is about 10 times more powerful than the weapon it is designed to replace.

VOA: US Advances Deployment of 'Bunker Buster' Bomb
CBC: U.S. boosts spending on bunker-buster bomb

U.S. tells Poland it could host new interceptors

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:18:26 -0700

Gareth Jones | Warsaw | Oct 16

Reuters - A senior U.S. official told Poland on Friday it could be one of the sites for interceptors envisaged under President Barack Obama's revised plans for missile defence in Europe.

Poland and the Czech Republic are still smarting from Obama's decision to shelve a Bush-era plan to install elements of a missile shield on their territory to protect against possible long-range missile attacks by Iran.

Under the new project, Washington will first deploy sea-based interceptors and then in a second phase deploy land-based systems involving SM-3 interceptors targeting short and medium-range missiles.

"Poland could host one of two land-based SM-3 sites, with of course the agreement of the Polish government," U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow told reporters.

** Ukraine in talks to host part of US missile shield: report
** Ukrainian Envoy, Pentagon Deny U.S.-Kyiv Talks On Missile Defense

Bush Preemptive Strike Doctrine Under Review, May Be Discarded

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:34:00 -0700

Tony Capaccio | Washington | October 15

Bloomberg - The Pentagon is reviewing the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemptive military strikes with an eye to modifying or possibly ending it.

The international environment is “more complex” than when President George W. Bush announced the policy in 2002, Kathleen Hicks, the Defense Department’s deputy undersecretary for strategy, said in an interview. “We’d really like to update our use-of-force doctrine to start to take account for that.”

The Sept. 11 terrorist strikes prompted Bush to alter U.S. policy by stressing the option of preemptive military action against groups or countries that threaten the U.S. Critics said that breached international norms and set a dangerous precedent for other nations to adopt a similar policy.

The doctrine is being reassessed as part of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review of strategy, force structure and weapons programs. Hicks is overseeing the review.

“We are looking very explicitly at use of force and use of forces,” she said. “We are looking at how to articulate the use of the U.S. military instrument -- how we use military force to achieve national objectives.”

Japan informs US it will stop Afghan naval mission

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:56:32 -0700

Oct 15

Raw`Story/AFP - Japan has told the United States it will end a naval refuelling mission backing its war in Afghanistan, a month before President Barack Obama visits Tokyo, a top defence official said Thursday.

The formal confirmation to the White House and Pentagon, days before Defense Secretary Robert Gates visits Japan, is part of efforts by the new centre-left government in Tokyo to recalibrate its security ties with Washington.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who took office last month, has said he wants "more equal" relations with the United States and that he opposes plans for a new US military air base to be built on southern Okinawa island.

Hatoyama, whose party in opposition spoke out against Japan abetting "American wars," has for months said it would not renew a naval refuelling mission in the Indian Ocean that was first launched in 2001.