But it is so true

Wake Up: America Can’t Afford Its Military

By Doug Macgregor

Through the last year the defense industries and their supporters in Congress worked overtime to ensure the federal government kept the armed forces in a perpetual procurement cycle. Inside the Pentagon, the generals and admirals who lead the defense bureaucracies worked to minimize procurement costs. This was not altruistic behavior. It’s the only way to protect the armed forces’ outdated force structures from more debilitating cuts; cuts that threaten the single service way of warfare along with the bloated overhead of flag officer headquarters.

Meanwhile, public pronouncements from the office of the Secretary of Defense on cost savings initiatives or about imminent strategic disaster if defense spending is reduced fell flat. In fact, everything in 2011 related to defense, from the controversial F-35 program to the multi-billion dollar contracting fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan, looked like window dressing designed to buy more time for an anachronistic, insolvent defense establishment.

It’s no secret what’s required in 2012 and beyond: an efficient and effective organization of military power for the optimum utilization of increasingly constrained resources. More specifically, a serious audit of the U.S. Department of Defense, along with a national reset where the roles of politicians, bureaucrats and four stars are recast as servants, not masters, of the national interest. Unfortunately, inside the Beltway where accountability is a dirty word, political and military leaders are free to conflate their personal and bureaucratic interests with the national interest.

As a result, there is still no willingness to comprehend or, at least, admit the truth: America’s current national security posture is fiscally unsustainable. Today, the United States’ national debt is so large it will swallow almost any legislation the President and Congress agree to pass. It is only a question of time before the U.S. government is compelled to make drastic cuts in federal spending.

Despite this reality, like the politicians in both parties, the four Chiefs of Service are desperate to save the military status quo from significant reductions in defense spending, a policy stance that could easily lead to a serious degradation of American military power after the 2012 election. In the midst of America’s fiscal crisis, Congress is equally inept. The best Congress could do in this legislative season to was announce its intention to add yet another four-star (this time from the National Guard) to the Joint Chiefs of Staff; an action comparable to adding a fifth wheel to a car that’s already got four flats.

Instead of adding more generals to an already top-heavy force, America’s ignominious withdrawal from Iraq should help sober up politicians of all stripes and parties. It should impart the timeless strategic lesson that the use of American military power, even against weak opponents with no navy, no army, no air force and no air defenses — can have costly, unintended strategic consequences. Today, Iran, not the United States, is the dominant power inside Iraq and Americans are beginning to understand why.

Iranian interests prevailed in Baghdad because Tehran’s agents of influence wore an indigenous face while America’s agents wore foreign uniforms and carried guns. Regardless of whatever the US decides to do, Iran will remain the dominant actor in Iraq so long as it maintains even the thinnest veil of concealment behind the façade of the Maliki government and its successors.

While these unassailable facts are ignored inside the Beltway, “Main Street” is figuring things out. According to a recent CBS poll 77 percent of the American electorate approves of President Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. Two in three Americans say the Iraq war was not worth the cost, and only 15% of Americans support military intervention to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

More important, nearly one-half of American voters now think the United States can make major cuts in defense spending without placing the country in danger. They see no risk in cutting way back on what America spends to defend other countries. The old notion that the United States should maintain expensive military bases in foreign countries, just to ensure troublesome foreigners do not get “out of hand,” is rapidly losing support.

Conventional wisdom says American society’s broader consciousness is shaped by the forces of hype and publicity, and national defense is often subject to it, but the recent polling data suggest a different explanation. Americans are focused on economics, not national defense. Perhaps, the American electorate perceives the Federal Reserve is running out of ammunition to restart America’s stalled recovery?

Perhaps, Americans are concerned the collapse of the Eurozone will eventually lead to a serious financial crisis in the United States, wiping out the savings of many millions of Americans? Or, perhaps Americans are worried the sudden termination of “free services” in America’s largest cities would lead to a surge in poverty and violence, putting American society on a collision course with itself. It’s hard to tell.

What we can say is that Americans are signing up for President Eisenhower’s philosophy in the aftermath of the Korean War. He insisted the nation deserved both “solvency and security” in national defense. Like Eisenhower, Americans seem to understand the nation’s vital strategic interests are only secure when the United States’ scientific-industrial base is productive and our society prospers. Predictably, there is also a growing recognition that the million dollars a year it costs to keep one American soldier or Marine on station in Afghanistan makes no sense when, for a fraction of the cost, the U.S. Army and other federal agencies could easily protect America’s borders from the wave of criminality, terrorism and illegal immigration washing in from Mexico and Latin America.

Looking forward into 2012, American voters seem to understand what many of the men running for President do not: Given America’s fragile economic health, 2012 is no time for uninformed decisions regarding the use of force. The deficit Americans worry most about is not fiscal; it’s a national deficit of integrity and reason.

Col (ret) Douglas Macgregor, a member of AOL Defense’s Board of Contributors, is a decorated Army veteran and author of important books on military reform and strategy including, Breaking the Phalanx (Praeger, 1997), and Transformation under Fire (Praeger, 2003). He is executive vice president at Burke-Macgregor Group, LLC, in Reston, Va.

Click to access MilitaryReview_20120229_art007.pdf

Don

I will begin posting Chuck’s stuff here as well, it is that good.

I am going to start a series of columns directed at our nation, and its leadership crisis. I continue to support Ron Paul.

As for “racism” committed some 20 years ago, I checked the references to that article. Even CNN never said he actually wrote the articles (actually about four lines of one article) himself. He never defended their content (said they were taken out of context – a standard excuse I realize) and it is not unlikely he did not read them prior to publication. He was in Congress and still practicing medicine at the time and yes he was negligent and should have caught it but didn’t. At the time the LA riots had just occurred. The rioters had behaved pretty badly, among other things dragging innocent people from their cars and beating them to death, and feelings were running high. If this is Dr. Paul at his worst then he is a saint by Washington DC standards.

As for Dr. Paul’s social policies, some of you may recall his opposition to the Federal War on Drugs, whose consequences fall disproportionately heavily on black people. There is also the disproportionately large black prison population, which would be much reduced by Dr. Paul’s plan to pardon all non-violent drug offenders. If this is racism maybe we need more of it. I don’t see Barak Obama stepping up to the plate on this issue.

Besides, if we don’t like Dr. Paul who will we support instead? How about the “peace laureate” Barak “Bush on steroids” Obama? Then there’s Mitt “Bush on even more steroids” Romney or how about four years of that freedom loving, constitution supporting marriage expert Newt Ginrich? If the Republicans have a brokered convention, maybe we could slip in John “bomb ’em back to the stone age” McCain or Lindsay “send ’em all to Guantanamo” Graham.

The passage of that infamous NDAA, should have removed any doubt that we should support the only candidate who is even promising to reverse it. If you can be executed, tortured or imprisoned for life without charges on somebody’s whim what difference do economics make? Without basic liberties what do we really have left? Where are out true priorities?

These events help the book “sales” immensely. Please feel free to e-mail the schedule/link to any e-mail lists, which I will do later tis week.
_____________________________
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information
301 791-2397

Imperial Hubris

A Review of The Pentagon Labyrinth

By Werther

Electric Politics, March 6, 2011 12:33 PM

https://www.electricpolitics.com/2011/03/imperial_hubris.html

* Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.

In a recent radio interview, the British historian Timothy Garton Ash stated that his overall impression of the United States was one of dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit, such as in the Silicon Valley. But Washington, D.C., he said, reminded him of Moscow in the former Soviet Union.

In the context of the interview, he probably intended that as a criticism of the U.S. capital as being stagnant, status quo, and wedded to obsolete theories. But in a more pointed way he may not have consciously meant, it is equally true that Washington is remarkably like late-Brezhnev era Moscow in the sense of being very visibly the capital of a garrison state. With its billboard adverts for fighter aircraft in local Metro stations, radio spots recruiting for “the National Clandestine Service,” its ubiquitous Jersey Wall checkpoints, and its electronic freeway signs admonishing motorists to report suspicious activity (whatever that may be), the District of Columbia quite accurately simulates the paranoid atmosphere of a cold war era capital of Eastern Europe, say, East Berlin or Bucharest, albeit at two orders of magnitude greater cost.

And as in the USSR, according to Washington’s rules the military gets first priority on all resources. Since 1998, the “core” Department of Defense budget — i.e., excluding the costs of supplemental spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (1) — has doubled, even as the number of ships, aircraft, and tanks has shrunk. The military’s generals enjoy private, members-only shopping subsidized by the taxpayer (commissaries and post exchanges), quite similar to the special stores that were a privilege of ranking members of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Military bases are a world unto themselves, with the aforementioned stores, subsidized housing, a comprehensive private health care system that is next to free, and so forth.

It is not surprising that such panjandrums are groveled to. Let any cabinet secretary of a domestic agency testify on Capitol Hill, and Congressmen of the opposing party are sure to assail him with persiflage about his incompetence, bad faith, and general political hackery. Yet any general who appears as a witness, even though he is theoretically of inferior rank to a cabinet secretary, is accorded elaborate deference. When the witness is David Petraeus the flattery reaches such lengths as would make the Gracchi blush. Whenever General Petraeus occupies the witness stand, the tres amigos of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Messrs. McCain, Lieberman, and Graham, launch verbal bouquets so extravagant as to make the listener seek an explanation in Freudian analysis. All this despite the fact that General Petraeus’s actual martial accomplishments, when placed against those of the great captains of history, are modest.

How Washington came to be Potsdam on the Potomac, and why achieving that result is so damnably expensive, is the subject of the book, The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Essays to Help You Through It. The book is free, available for download here. The authors of these essays are experts in their field: they have decades of knowledge about the U.S. military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC). What is remarkable about their expertise is that they did not sell out to a defense contractor or a think tank years ago.

The first essay is written by Franklin C. “Chuck” Spinney, a 33-year veteran of the Pentagon wars. He warns us to follow the money. Behind all the arcane pronouncements of strategy that emanate from the Pentagon there lies one fundamental fact: the only way to advance in Washington is to keep the money flowing. In the former USSR, it was said that Moscow was downhill from everywhere, because all the riches of the world’s largest country flowed downhill to the Soviet capital. And so it is in the United States, circa 2011: the assets of Poughkeepsie, Peoria, and Paducah all tumble towards the District of Columbia, where they disappear into the ravening maw of the MICC.

George Wilson writes about the MICC from the journalist’s point of view. He began covering the Department of Defense during the Pleistocene era of airborne alerts and mutual assured destruction, and so he has a wealth of experience. He provides several examples of how journalists can effectively navigate the MICC establishment.

Bruce Gudmundsson offers a hilarious — and dead-on — anthropological dissection of Pentagon Speak: the impenetrable acronyms, nonce phrases, and circumlocutions beloved of military bureaucrats. The Pentagon Tribe, he concludes, behaves in a fashion quite similar to a tribe in New Guinea, albeit empowered to waste billions of dollars of your money.

Winslow Wheeler, a three-decade veteran of Congress and the Government Accountability Office, describes what is facetiously called Congressional oversight of the Pentagon. Oversight might better be called “overlook,” so eager are members of Congress to avoid any inquiry that might resemble criticism of DOD. He also writes about the Pentagon budget, and how deceptively it is presented.

G.I. Wilson contributes an essay on careerism. The bane of careerism is particularly virulent in the contemporary Pentagon, where the great majority of generals and admirals cap their careers in lucrative fashion on the boards of defense contractors, but his piece bears close reading because it applies to all forms of professional endeavor.

Chet Richards performs a laparoscopy on the so-called U.S. national military strategy. He walks the reader through a decision matrix for determining military threats, and concludes that the current U.S. strategy is based on three parts threat inflation and two parts balderdash.

Andrew Cockburn takes up where Spinney left off and follows the money with the zeal of Inspector Javert. It is now unquestionably true that the real metric of the defense budget is not how much evanescent “security” it provides, but rather how many S-class Mercedes automobiles, how many mansions on Foxhall Road, and how many corporate board memberships it supplies to those favored with the right credentials — so like the Nomenklatura of the former USSR.

Pierre Sprey dissects DOD’s weapons purchases of the last 40 years and finds them gravely wanting. He demonstrates there is no correlation between the price and alleged technological sophistication of a system, and its real-world performance.

Thomas Christie comments on the lamentable state of operational testing of DOD’s weapons, and why aircraft like the V-22 are such death traps.

These essays are a commendable description of the Pentagon as it really is, shorn of contractor hype and guilt-laden Congressional paeans to “our warfighters.” (2) The only weakness of the book lies, perhaps ironically, in the authors’ desire to be constructive. If we just cleaned up operational testing and evaluation; if military officers were not so careerist; if we somehow got our national strategy right. But these things are not likely to happen this side of eternity.

Why?

At some point in the 1980s, when the cold war turned a generation old, the MICC became so institutionalized and embedded that there was no throwing it off. Even the collapse of the Warsaw Pact did not change anything of significance: military budgets declined, slightly, but the cold war paradigm remained intact. All it took was 9/11 for the American psyche to suffer a kind of mental breakdown, and then the MICC could move into imperial overdrive.

The Pentagon is now so enmeshed in the political economy of the ruling elite and their coat holders in the media, foundations, and other institutions that “reform” — other than wholly symbolic actions intended to create an illusion of change — are out of the question in practical terms. The MICC will stagger on, as a monstrous parasite on the state, fending off efforts at real change. Reformers will come and go, incredulous that the truth of their corrective suggestions are not appreciated.

Thus was it ever. When imperial Spain blundered its way through the Thirty Years’ War, the Count-Duke of Olivares had comprehensive plans for reform and retrenchment; but history took its course, impelled by hubris and disregard. When the Dutch Republic reeled from setbacks in the Anglo-Dutch War and the War of Spanish Succession, we may be sure that a Stadhouder believed he could halt and reverse the rot, but in vain. Winston Churchill firmly held that he did not become prime minister to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire, but dissolve on his watch it did.

The Pentagon is strong enough, and has a tight enough web of power relations with the rest of the American power structure, to resist domestic efforts at reform; but its very triumph in so doing will hasten the day that the United States becomes a very different country than it is now. In all probability, the parasite will only release its grip on the host when that host has slid into financial, political, and moral bankruptcy.

* Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.

(1) Apparently we have a parade-ground military: $550 billion, give or take, is what is required simply to sustain it in garrison and have the Blue Angels perform the requisite number of air shows during a year. Should we ask it to do anything, even merely adjust its normal deployment schedules to sail down to Haiti and deliver supplies, that costs a billion or two extra. Actual wars, needless to say, cost hundreds of billions extra. Imagine a fire department that charges residents a premium every time its fire engines leave the station house, and you have understood the U.S. military.

(2) It would be a fascinating exercise to trace the decline of the United States from a constitutional republic into a ramshackle plutocratic empire by linguistic means. In retrospect, it was obvious that when people stopped referring to military personnel as soldiers, GIs, dogfaces, or grunts, and started parroting the DOD-approved term “warfighter” or “warrior,” something bad was happening.

Obama has failed to even try to boost the minimum wage, despite campaign promises. Minimum wage is 50% lower than in the 1960s, which means that millions of full-time working Americans don’t earn enough to live in their own efficiency apartment, much less pay for an “insured” car, health care, or a family. If you want to help the working poor, reduce welfare, discourage illegal immigration, and improve service throughout the private sector, you should support boosting the minimum wage to a livable $10 an hour. Ignore constant corporate propaganda that boosting the minimum wage increases unemployment, which has been disproved by every legitimate study. Anyone who has worked for minimum wage knows they are the most essential workers. It’s not like MacDonald’s has a couple of extra workers loitering around in the back who would be laid off if they were forced to raise wages to a livable level. Here is my old SRA article on mass immigration from July 25, 2007 that remains relevant:

Open Borders Insanity

Libertarians have good ideas about free societies. However, some advocate the naive idea of open borders, which they call “the free movement of labor.” Such people have no grasp of the world beyond the windows in their ivory tower. There are billions of desperate poor people around the world who would move to a modern nation if allowed. This is why no modern nation on Earth allows open borders. Nevertheless, rapid population growth has resulted in large migrant flows into developed nations, both legal and illegal. This has become a major problem resulting in political battles.

Corporations want cheap labor to push down wages. A favorite tactic is to portray foreign workers as ignorant simpletons who only perform mindless tasks. In reality, only a small percentage of illegal immigrants work in agriculture. An unlimited number of work visas are available for farm workers, but wealthy American farmers dislike the program because it requires them to provide health insurance, so their foreign workers do not burden the local county medical system. Many illegal workers are highly skilled and earn high wages as electricians, plumbers, carpenters, computer programmers, and nurses. Corporate spokesmen assert that mass immigration is needed to fill worker shortages, while they also peddle the myth that a higher minimum wage will increase unemployment.

Senator John McCain has never labored in his life, having been on the government dole since they day he was born. He is an open borders advocate, while representing the border state of Arizona where polls show that stopping illegal immigration is the primary concern. Last year, McCain argued that Americans are too lazy to work. He told a working class audience that Americans would not work for $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona. He dismissed angry shouts from the crowd with a demeaning: “You can’t do it, my friends.”[1]

McCain seems unaware that 1.7 million U.S. citizens work for minimum wage, which was just boosted to $5.85 an hour; the first increase in a decade. These workers make less in one year than McCain earns from one month of “government service.” President Bush and many U.S. Congressmen frequently insult American workers.[2] They often say the nation is at full employment, ignoring the 7 million unemployed Americans looking for work, and another 1.5 million who want to work but are not counted as unemployed since they had not applied for a job during the past month.[3] If just 5 million of the estimated 20 million illegal aliens were deported, this would help these U.S. citizens obtain jobs. Bush often states that deporting illegal aliens is unrealistic, ignoring the fact that thousands are deported each day.

Another tactic is to portray those who oppose mass immigration as racists. While this is a factor for some, the people hurt by mass immigration are the poor and minorities who face job losses, higher rents, less healthcare, and more crime. Poor immigrants crowd into the poorest neighborhoods and cause problems that go unnoticed by those living on estates or posh gated communities. Cultural conflicts also cause problems for native-born Americans. For example, employers in parts of the USA prefer applicants that speak Spanish to deal with the large numbers of non-English speaking customers.

Imagine if Great Britain opened its borders to all the world’s peoples. Enterprising ship owners would soon find profitable cargo in the form of human migrants. They could ship people en masse to Britain for maybe $100 a head. Millions of refugees would board ships in India, Pakistan, Iraq, China, the Philippines, and all of Africa for the land of riches. Thousands would file off docks at British seaports each day with no money, no food, few skills, and no grasp of English.

The population of British cities would double within four years. Schools, hospitals, and prisons would be overrun. Parks and sidewalks would teem with homeless refugees desperate for food. Crime rates would soar as homeowners erect high fences to keep out squatters, scavengers, and criminals. Millions of Britons would lose their jobs as immigrants are hired for a sterling a day. If mass immigration continues, the thousands of refugees who arrive each day would find themselves herded into massive refugee camps. These people want to work and become Britons, but there simply isn’t room.

On the positive side, corporations would see large increases in profits as labor costs plunge. More people mean more economic activity, so GDP surges. Private security firm work would explode as every small business and house needs a security guard. Since governments must double in size to accommodate this larger population, government officials gain rapid promotions and spending power, boosting GDP further. This is because GDP is not a measure of prosperity, but activity. Therefore, mass immigration is good for GDP, as well as smoking, hurricanes, earthquakes, crime, automobile accidents, and wars.

“The free movement of labor” into Britain would require a sharp rise in taxes to accommodate immigrants, even if they all find employment. This is because the existing modern infrastructure is inadequate, so new schools, universities, hospitals, parks, roads, fire stations, buses, and government offices would be needed in short order. Since space for new facilities is finite, citizens would be forced to live in a far more congested environment. As these poor immigrants soon outnumber native Britons, they would discover that democracy can address their needs. The nation’s wealth and good jobs would be concentrated among the native born, so laws are passed to raise taxes and share the wealth, and to allow newly arrived minorities a fair share of good jobs, even if they are less qualified. This has already occurred in the USA, which accepts more legal immigrants each year than all of Europe, and explains America’s stronger GDP growth.

The British are beginning to learn about this problem as well. In 2004, Britain took a step toward open borders by allowing the free movement of labor from European Union (EU) members. Industrialists fooled the public by suggesting that only 30,000 skilled foreigners would arrive to fill shortages. Two years later, that number grew to more than 600,000, and may be much higher since new immigrants are not talkative about their status.

The “Economist,” Europe’s most influential financial magazine, has long advocated open borders. However, Britain’s recent experience has dampened their enthusiasm, and they now report on unexpected problems. For example, teenagers from impoverished Romania and Bulgaria have discovered that they can “visit” London by hitchhiking, and then as a minor, sign up for free housing and welfare payments. Most are poorly educated, few speak English, and some arrive pregnant.[4]

Britain has since limited open migration to EU tourists, banning work and state benefits. However, millions remain to help friends and relatives find illegal work in the land of plenty, or how to live off the generosity local churches and charities, or by begging on the street. Britain will find it impossible to control these perpetual tourists since nothing prevents EU deportees from returning the next day. As in the USA, rackets will develop for forged documents and phony marriages. Hospitals will become flooded by “tourists” who require emergency medical care. Businessmen and the wealthy will enjoy the benefits of lower wage workers, and press the government for more “temporary” work visas, and “immigration reform” in the form of an amnesty program.[5]

The idea of “open borders” to allow “the free movement of labor” is favored only by anarchists, greedy industrialists, and some hopelessly naïve libertarians. The best level of immigration is open for debate, but restrictions are essential. Unfortunately, many good people evade this issue because they fear criticism that they are heartless or a racist. The solution is to address the root cause, rapid population growth in poor nations, which is also a major cause of warfare, environmental destruction, and pollution.[6] It is far more cost effective to use government and charity funds to improve conditions in poor nations, rather than to accommodate a flood of desperate refugees.

____________________________________________________

[1] “Labor Leaders boo McCain on immigration, Iraq”, AP, Apr. 4, 2006, https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12155322/

[2] “Insulting the American Worker”, SRA, May 25, 2006,

[3] “Employment Situation Summary”, U.S. Govt. BLS, June 2007, https://stats.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

[4] “Come and fall on Slough, Economist, May 17, 2007, https://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9193822

[5] An effort to reward illegal immigration to Britain is underway.

See “Illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay under amnesty, says influential think tank”, This is London, July 16, 2007

[6] “The Refugee Threat”, SRA, Oct. 12, 2006,

Don

Does The U.S. Really Have A Fiscal Crisis?

By Simon Johnson, The Baseline Scenario, 24 February 2011

Does The U.S. Really Have A Fiscal Crisis?

The United States faces some serious medium-term fiscal issues, but by any standard measure it does not face an immediate fiscal crisis. Overindebted countries typically have a hard time financing themselves when the world becomes riskier – yet turmoil in the Middle East is pushing down the interest rates on US government debt. We are still seen as a safe haven.

Yet leading commentators and politicians today repeat the line “we’re broke” and argue there is no alternative other than immediate spending cuts at the national and state level.

Which view is correct? And what does this tell us about where our political system is heading?

Our main fiscal issues are three (see my testimony to the Senate Budget Committee earlier this month). The most immediate problem is that our largest banks and closely related parts of the financial system blew themselves up in 2007-08. The ensuring recession and associated loss of tax revenue will end up pushing up our government debt, as a percent of GDP, by around 40 percent. Very little of this debt increase was due to the fiscal stimulus.

The financial system poses a major risk to our fiscal outlook over the next few years. Unless you think that the Dodd-Frank reform bill really ended “too big to fail” and the associated excessive risk-taking culture, you should worry a great deal about the boom-bust-bailout-fiscal damage scenario that the Bank of England now refers to routinely as the “doom loop”.

Of the national level politicians now pushing for spending cuts, almost none showed up to fight to contain the fiscal risks posed by our largest banks. The Brown-Kaufman amendment to Dodd-Frank – which would have placed a limit on the size and debt (relative to equity) was supported by 33 Senators, only a handful of whom were Republican.

But, then again, the Obama administration also fought hard against Brown-Kaufman. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner argues that the TARP bank bailouts will end up costing the tax payer very little. He is forgetting the broader fiscal damage done by the collapse of the real economy and the loss of 8 million jobs.

Second, we need to control healthcare spending as a percent of GDP. The issue is most definitely not about cutting the current level of such spending or immediately reducing the benefits in Medicare (although if you have ideas for that, send them along). But in the projections, by 2030 or 2040, the growth of healthcare spending ruins us all – whether or not we get the government to pay for it.

During the healthcare debate of 2009-10 there was very little attempt to explain this issue and discuss the options. The administration made a half-hearted move in this direction but backed away as soon as leading Republicans began to claim there were “death panel” proposals on the table.

Third, our tax system is completely antiquated. For the same level of tax revenue relative to GDP, we could greatly reduce the distortions (e.g., disincentives to work) just by modernizing. The right and the left agree we should tax consumption more and income less, but neither is willing to make any kind of meaningful move towards a value added tax (VAT).

The right seems afraid that this tax will be too effective and power an expansion of government. The left thinks a VAT is necessarily regressive (imposing more burden on poorer people), despite all the evidence that the impact of VAT depends on how it is designed – because you can choose what gets zero taxes (e.g., baby clothes) and high taxes (e.g., yachts).

The only room for bipartisan consensus here seems to be what we got in December 2010 – a big tax cut. Cutting taxes is nice, but only if it is consistent with keeping the budget on a sustainable path.

How does the Republican initiative to cut spending fit in with these budget issues? Not very much is the generous answer. Their proposed cuts at the federal level are for discretionary nonmilitary spending, but this is small as a percent of the budget (and therefore of the economy).

But the problem here is bipartisan – as it was with the tax cut last year. None of the leadership on either side is willing to talk openly about how our biggest banks caused great fiscal damage. No one is willing to explain why our healthcare costs continue to rise. And no top politicians currently champion real tax reform.

The Republicans have seized a moment. To them, this is not really about fiscal responsibility; this is about an opportunity to shrink the size of government.

But the Democrats have played perfectly into their hands. The heart of their mistake was the president’s refusal to explain clearly how the financial system produced a recession that has pushed up our national debt.

Both sides of our political elite have contributed to the sense of fiscal crisis. And as we continue down this path – dangerous big banks, out of control health care spending, significant tax cuts, small changes in nonmilitary discretionary spending, and irresponsible rhetoric on both sides – we are well on our way to a real crisis.

An edited version of this post appeared this morning on the NYT.com’s Economix blog; it is used here with permission. If you would like to reproduce the entire post, please contact the New York Times.

I think it would be a mistake to conclude that the situation being in a kind a balance, because we are in a strategic stalemate, however. While it is probably true we are in a strategic stalemate in the strictest sense of term ‘strategic,’ every year the Taliban is able to maintain its menacing posture gives the insurgents additional leverage at the far more decisive grand-strategic level of conflict: To wit, ask yourself if any of the following five trends (which are inversions of the five criteria defining a successful grand strategy) is way out of line:

(1) Polls tell us that the political will at home to continue this war is slowing deteriorating;

(2) our allies are also going wobbly and some have already pulled the plug;

(3) uncommitted countries are not being attracted to our cause and our warlike activities are alienating many in the Muslim world;

(4) the insurgents’ will to resist shows no sign of weakening; and

(5) no one the US government has a clue how to end this conflict on favorable terms for the United States that do not sow the seeds of future conflict in the region, or with Islam.

The Afghan insurgents may not understand grand strategy in these terms, but they understand instinctively that they can outlast invaders, because they believe they have done it before to Alexander the Great, the British at the height of their imperial power, and the Soviets. Is there anyone who not think the the insurgents’ moral is being boosted by the prospect of outlasting the Americans?

A simple grand-strategic analysis reveals that time is clearly on the Taliban’s side and to assume that battle hardened leaders of the Taliban do not understand this is just a tad optimistic, to put it charitably. In fact, the breakdown of President Obama’s strategic review last December, which devolved into a dispute over when to leave, simply reinforced the obvious.

Chuck Spinney
The Blaster

The Afghanistan War: Tactical Victories, Strategic Stalemate?

David Wood, Politics Daily, 13 February 2011

https://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/02/13/the-afghanistan-war-tactical-victories-strategic-stalemate/

The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, likes to describe the tactical gains his troops are making against insurgents. But a stream of independent data and analysis suggests a wide gap between those battlefield gains and the strategic progress needed to convince a skeptical President Obama, Congress and the public to stay with the war effort for at least three more years.

Recently, for instance, Petraeus asserted that his forces “achieved what we set out to achieve in 2010, which was to reverse the insurgency momentum.” He has said that Taliban insurgents “are losing momentum in some key areas” and noted that many are turning themselves into Afghan authorities.

But an estimated 7,000 insurgents who had given up and come over to the government later went back to fighting because of poorly managed and underfinanced programs to resettle and reintegrate them, according to a detailed study by the Afghan Analysts Network, an independent nonprofit research organization.

If lavish programs to court Taliban fighters are put in place in the future, large numbers might switch sides, said the study’s author, Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. But unless they are integrated into social, economic and political life, disillusioned Taliban might flood back to fighting, ultimately contributing to “strategic failure” of the United States in Afghanistan.

An Army brigade commander in Afghanistan recently put his finger squarely on the problem, using the military term “tactical ” to refer to “battlefield” and “strategic” to refer to the grand purpose of the fighting. Tactical is how you fight; strategic is why you fight.

“We’ve made a lot of progress … a lot of tactical gains,” said Col. Dan Williams, who commands the 4th Infantry Division’s Combat Aviation Brigade. “The question is, has that had a strategic … effect?”

In nine years of firefights, pitched battles, attacks, ambushes and raids, American troops have never lost. But what do those victories add up to?

Williams’ unanswered question put me in mind of a long-ago conversation between two bitter foes, American Army Col. Harry G. Summers and a North Vietnamese officer. It took place at the Paris peace talks five days before the fall of Saigon marked America’s final defeat in Vietnam. In a later essay he called “Tactical Victory, Strategic Defeat,” Summers recalled saying, “You know you never defeated us on the battlefield.” The North Vietnamese officer pondered this remark. “That may be so,” he replied, “but it is also irrelevant.”

Tactical victories were the theme of a Feb. 1 briefing for Pentagon reporters by Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, in charge of day-to-day fighting in Afghanistan. Citing progress in wrecking Taliban sanctuaries primarily in southern Afghanistan, Rodriguez reported that “in the last 12 weeks we have discovered, cleared, 1,250 [weapons] cache sites.” During the same period a year ago, he said only 163 enemy weapons caches had been uncovered.

Rodriguez said the most important reason for the increase is that more Afghans are tipping off U.S. and Afghan troops about local arms caches. The U.S. command in Kabul didn’t respond to questions about the number and increase in such tips.

The strategic effect, though, was unclear, given widespread reports that insurgents actually increased the tempo of fighting. A year-end analysis by the Afghan NGO Safety Office, an independent project that advises humanitarian organizations on conditions in Afghanistan, found “indisputable evidence that the situation is deteriorating.”

While Petraeus and other commanders say the higher tempo of fighting is because of increased U.S. attacks on Taliban strongholds, the NGO Safety Office survey found a 64 percent increase in attacks initiated by insurgents, mostly small arms ambushes. Noting that its findings are sharply at odds with public reports of the U.S. command, Safety Office Director Nic Lee observed that the military’s public assessments “are solely intended to influence American and European public opinion.”

U.S. commanders talk glowingly about the increased number of Afghan soldiers and police being trained, but the strategic benefit has yet to appear. More police are on duty in southern Afghanistan, for example. But a detailed public survey by the U.N. found favorable views of the national police dropped by 24 percentage points in the past year, to 54 percent in Helmand Province. Nationwide, 6 in 10 Afghans report “significant” corruption among the police, and more than a quarter reported having seen police using drugs. And despite the U.S.-led effort to build a criminal justice system, about half of Afghans polled said they would not take criminal complaints to the police, but would rely on tribal leaders or others.

Petraeus also has asserted that constant pressure from U.S ., allied and Afghan troops has begun to crack the Taliban’s spirit and its ability to carry on the war through the winter.

“They’ve tried to keep their fighters fighting through the winter,” he told NATO TV on Feb. 9. Trying to direct their fighters by cell phone or radio (“they lead from the rear,” Petraeus said disparagingly), the Taliban high command has told its soldiers to “get back in the fight. ‘We know it’s winter and cold but you all stay at it because we’ve lost a lot this year,”’ Petraeus said the Taliban command directed.

“Those orders have not been obeyed in all cases, so there’s a degree of friction, discord … that has not been characteristic of the past,” Petraeus said.

The suggestion of the Taliban on the run, though, doesn’t square with the independent reporting of John McCreary, former senior intelligence watch officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Using unclassified sources, McCreary reported that armed clashes in November were double the previous month and almost evenly divided between attacks initiated by insurgents and those initiated by U.S., allied and Afghan forces. He reported 1,381 armed clashes in November, up from 311 in October 2008 and 533 in October 2009.

Insurgents “displayed a new ability to sustain attacks for a month over a wider area than ever before,” McCreary said, and the number of fighters they can muster rose from the 10,000 to 15,000 they fielded in 2008 to about 25,000 today, “a measure of increased popular support,” he said.

But neither side seems able to turn its tactical gains into strategic advantage, despite the cost of the fighting and casualties (the Taliban lost 1,115 killed and wounded in November, a 70 percent increase over the October total of 657. U.S. combat dead and wounded declined slightly, to 556 in November from 633 in October). In the Pashtun strongholds of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where Petraeus has concentrated his forces, security deteriorated significantly, McCreary found, but “the Taliban still remained unable to secure their heartland.”

Overall, McCreary found that for both sides, “their achievements never seem worth their costs on the battlefields . They produce a lot more fighting without changing the security situation.”

If the United States maintains its current level of effort, “the security situation should be containable but not permanently improvable,” he concluded. “The government in Kabul will remain dependent on NATO forces for its survival for an indefinite period.”

On a broader canvas, the United States continues to suffer a negative strategic impact, in part because of its involvement in Afghanistan, according to James Clapper, director of national intelligence.

He testified in Congress on Thursday that al- Qaeda continues to be able to recruit willing new fighters by aggressively exploiting such explosive issues as “the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. support for Israel” all of which “fuel their narrative of a hostile West determined to undermine Islam.”