Jerry Brown starts major ad campaign in California attorney general's race

Jerry Brown is starting an aggressive advertising campaign in his race for state attorney general against rightwing Republican Chuck Poochigian: Brown Airing Attack Spots: The Democrat's ads paint GOP attorney general rival Poochigian as an extremist by Eric Bailey Los Angeles Times 09/15/06

Jerry Brown

Bailey reports:

Brown, mayor of Oakland and a former California governor, hits Poochigian, a state senator from Fresno, in his 30-second spots for Poochigian's opposition to a ban on 50-caliber sniper rifles, abortion rights, stem cell research and tougher environmental rules. A fourth commercial extols Brown's support from California police chiefs and other law enforcement groups.

With early polls showing Brown enjoying a big lead over Poochigian, the start of a fight on the airwaves nearly two months before election day may signal a quick escalation of the "down-ballot" race, which has attracted national attention because of the presence of the former governor.

Hans Küng and Pope Ratzinger I's "dogmatic rigidity"

The Swiss theologian Hans Küng, who has been at the German University of Tübingen for many years, says that in his controversial recent visit to Germany, Pope Ratzinger I displayed his "dogmatic rigidity":  Theologe Küng sieht bei Papst «dogmatische Starre» Yahoo! Nachrichten/DDP.

His actual Papal title is Benedict XVI, but I call him Ratzinger I because the reactionary reputation he earned as Cardinal Ratzinger when he was head of the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith still fits.

Hey, all I said was that the Prophet Muhammad brought nothing but evil.  I'm sorry all you heathens are so upset about it.

Christian ecumenical theologian Küng on the other hand, is arguably the most influential living Christian theologian.  And my own personal favorite.  I've done several posts dicussing his major book on Islam.

Speaking of Ratzinger's retrograde polemics against Islam, Küng said Ratzinger showed that he understands neither the Reformation and Enlightenment nor Islam from within."  ("weder Reformation und Aufklärung noch den Islam von innen her versteht").

Between Dear Leader Bush declaring the coming of a new Christian Great Awakening in America and Benedict bashed the Prophet Muhammad, we may get to that "clash of civilizations" yet.

Juan Cole has been harshing on Pope Ratzinger I for his anti-Islam polemic at his Informed Comment blog.  In Pope Gets it Wrong on Islam 09/15/06, he writes:

The address is more complex and subtle than the press on it represents. But let me just signal that what is most troubling of all is that the Pope gets several things about Islam wrong, just as a matter of fact.

He notes that the text he discusses, a polemic against Islam by a Byzantine emperor, cites Qur'an 2:256: "There is no compulsion in religion." Benedict maintains that this is an early verse, when Muhammad was without power.

His allegation is incorrect. Surah 2 is a Medinan surah revealed when Muhammad was already established as the leader of the city of Yathrib (later known as Medina or "the city" of the Prophet). The pope imagines that a young Muhammad in Mecca before 622 (lacking power) permitted freedomof conscience, but later in life ordered that his religion be spread by the sword. But since Surah 2 is in fact from the Medina period when Muhammad was in power, that theory does not hold water.

In fact, the Qur'an at no point urges that religious faith be imposed on anyone by force.

These aren't minor slips.  Aside from the fact that the Pope is, well, the Pope and therefore has a small army of theological resources at his disposal, Ratzinger himself was also a highly-regarded theologian back in the day.  Hell, he was even a liberal theologian in his earlier years!  Yet he includes bonehead mistakes like these in a major speech on Islam?  More from Cole:

Another irony is that reasoned, scholastic Christianity has an important heritage drom Islam itself. In the 10th century, there was little scholasticism in Christian theology. The influence of Muslim thinkers such as Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) reemphasized the use of Aristotle and Plato in Christian theology. Indeed, there was a point where Christian theologians in Paris had divided into partisans of Averroes or of Avicenna, and they conducted vigorous polemics with one another.

Finally, that Byzantine emperor that the Pope quoted, Manuel II? The Byzantines had been weakened by Latin predations during the fourth Crusade, so it was in a way Rome that had sought coercion first. And, he ended his days as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.

What Ratzinger quoted from Manuel II was probably the most provocative part of the speech for Muslims, as well.  The Pope said:

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and ofman, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (F×< 8`(T) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The Vatican's official English text can be found at Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections 09/12/06.  I assume he delivered the lecture in his native German; the official German text is Glaube, Vernunft und Universitär: Erinnerungen und Reflexionen:

All dies ist mir wieder in den Sinn gekommen, als ich kürzlich den von Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) herausgegebenen Teil des Dialogs las, den der gelehrte byzantinische Kaiser Manuel II. Palaeologos wohl 1391 im Winterlager zu Ankara mit einem gebildeten Perser über Christentum und Islam und beider Wahrheit führte. Der Kaiser hat vermutlich während der Belagerung von Konstantinopel zwischen 1394 und 1402 den Dialog aufgezeichnet; so versteht man auch, daß seine eigenen Ausführungen sehr viel ausführlicher wiedergegeben sind, als die seines persischen Gesprächspartners. Der Dialog erstreckt sich über den ganzen Bereich des von Bibel und Koran umschriebenen Glaubensgefüges und kreist besonders um das Gottes- und das Menschenbild, aber auch immer wieder notwendigerweise um das Verhältnis der, wie man sagte, „drei Gesetze“ oder „drei Lebensordnungen“: Altes Testament – Neues Testament – Koran. Jetzt, in dieser Vorlesung möchte ich darüber nicht handeln, nur einen – im Aufbau des ganzen Dialogs eher marginalen – Punkt berühren, der mich im Zusammenhang des Themas Glaube und Vernunft fasziniert hat und der mir als Ausgangspunkt für meine Überlegungen zu diesem Thema dient.

In der von Professor Khoury herausgegebenen siebten Gesprächsrunde (διάλεξις – Kontroverse) kommt der Kaiser auf das Thema des Djihād, des heiligen Krieges zu sprechen. Der Kaiser wußte sicher, daß in Sure 2, 256 steht: Kein Zwang in Glaubenssachen – es ist eine der frühen Suren aus der Zeit, wie uns die Kenner sagen, in der Mohammed selbst noch machtlos und bedroht war. Aber der Kaiser kannte natürlich auch die im Koran niedergelegten – später entstandenen – Bestimmungen über den heiligen Krieg. Ohne sich auf Einzelheiten wie die unterschiedliche Behandlung von „Schriftbesitzern“ und „Ungläubigen“ einzulassen, wendet er sich in erstaunlich schroffer, uns überraschend schroffer Form ganz einfach mit der zentralen Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Religion und Gewalt überhaupt an seinen Gesprächspartner. Er sagt: „Zeig mir doch, was Mohammed Neues gebracht hat, und da wirst du nur Schlechtes und Inhumanes finden wie dies, daß er vorgeschrieben hat, den Glauben, den er predigte, durch das Schwert zu verbreiten“. Der Kaiser begründet, nachdem er so zugeschlagen hat, dann eingehend, warum Glaubensverbreitung durch Gewalt widersinnig ist. Sie steht im Widerspruch zum Wesen Gottes und zum Wesen der Seele. „Gott hat kein Gefallen am Blut”, sagt er, „und nicht vernunftgemäß, nicht „σὺν λόγω” zu handeln, ist dem Wesen Gottes zuwider. Der Glaube ist Frucht der Seele, nicht des Körpers. Wer also jemanden zum Glauben führen will, braucht die Fähigkeit zur guten Rede und ein rechtes Denken, nicht aber Gewalt und Drohung… Um eine vernünftige Seele zu überzeugen, braucht man nicht seinen Arm, nicht Schlagwerkzeuge noch sonst eines der Mittel, durch die man jemanden mit dem Tod bedrohen kann...".

Torture in the Bush Gulag: Five quotes relating to Congress' latest torture debate

"I wouldn't join the International Criminal Court. It's a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors can pull our troops or diplomats up for trial.

"And I wouldn't join it. And I understand that in certain capitals around the world that that wasn't a popular move. But it's the right move not to join a foreign court that could -- where our people could be prosecuted." - George W. Bush 09/30/04

"Men without conscience are capable of any cruelty the human mind can imagine." - Dick Cheney 01/26/05

David Brooks, PBS Newshour 09/15/06, arguing the Cheney-Bush administration's case for torture while pretending to feel uncomfortable about doing so:

Now, the White House case, they do have a case. One, as the president said, it's the Geneva Convention is vague. Two, that, you know, when our soldiers are - our Marines are captured, they're not going to be treated fine. The idea that there's going to be any reciprocity is nonsense. And, third, that we're in a different technological age, that if we capture somebody, they know about some plot that's about to kill millions of people, don't you want us to be able to do whatever we need to do?

And the Israeli answer - and they face this every day - is that, in that kind of extreme circumstance, you break the law, but otherwise you keep the rules. (my emphasis)

Telford Taylor, US Chief Counsel at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals, Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy (1970):

There are at least two reasons - or perhaps one basic reason with two formulations — for the pre ervation and continued enforcement, as even-handededly as possible, of the laws of war. The first is strictly pragmatic; They work. Violated or ignored as they often are, enough of the rules are observed enough of the time so that mankind is very much better off with them than without them. The rules for the treatment of civilian populations in occupied countries are not as susceptible to technological change as rules regarding the use of weapons in combat. If it were not regarded as wrong to bomb military hospitals, they would be bombed all of the time instead of some of the time.

It is only necessary to consider the rules on taking prisoners in the setting of the Second World War to realize the enormous saving of life for which they have been responsible.  Millions of French, British, German and Italian soldiers captured in Western Europe and Africa were treated in general compliance with The Hague and Geneva requirements, and returned home at the end of the war.  German and Russian prisoners taken on the eastern front did not fare nearly so well and died in captivity by the millions, but many survived.  Today there is surely much to criticize about the handling of prisoners on both sides of the Vietnam war, but at least many of them are alive, and that is because the belligerents are reluctant to flout the laws of war too openly.  (my emphasis)

Richard Falk in Crimes of War: Iraq (2006):

[R]ecourse to war, conduct in war, and the severe abuse of state power within a sovereign state are regulated by international law that deserves respect by all governments.  It follows from this claim, as confirmed by the war crimes trials after World War II, that those responsible for deliberate violations of this prohibition on aggressive war making and other international legal norms should be held personally accountable.  Historically, the United States government, more than any other government, has supported this approach and was the mam architect of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials of German and Japanese leaders in 1945.  More recently, in the 1990s, the U.S. government was a strong advocate of establishing special criminal tribunals under the auspices of the United Nations to try individuals responsible for international crimes in connection with the breakup of Yugoslavia and those associated with the 1994 massacres in Rwanda. In these instances, the central idea is that the doctrine of sovereignty no longer trumps the Rule of Law.

It would seem that theU.S. government has now repudiated this development, at least with respect to the accountability of its own leaders.  While initially backing the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), Washington gradually backed away from the undertaking as the ICC moved from proposal to reality. In the end, the U.S. government signed the Rome Treaty setting up the ICC in 2000, on the last day of the Clinton presidency. President Bush, accentuating his unilateralist approach to foreign policy, withdrew the American signature, something that had never previously been done with respect to a negotiated treaty.  It was a gratuitous slap at the idea of individual accountability, as the Bush administration could have avoided American participation in the ICC simply by failing to submit the treaty for ratification to the U.S. Senate.  Even so, it was widely known that the treaty would never have received the two-thirds vote in the Senate required for ratification.  When the ICC came into being in 2002, the Bush leadership worked feverishly to conclude agreements with as many foreign countries as possible that Americans would never be turned over for prosecution to the ICC regardless of the evidence against them.

... [I]t would seem that two conclusions emerge:  The Untied States government, for understandable yet not acceptable reasons, uses its power to exempt its leaders from potential international accountability for for aggressive war making and illegal conduct in wartime; at the saem time, the U.S. has not hisitation about imposing such accountability on those it considers to be its enemies [e.g., Saddam Hussein].  This manner of conduct can be understood either as "empire's law" or as simple hypocrisy.  (my emphasis)

Jimmy Carter in Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2005):

[I]n a time of conflict, the hatred and brutality of the battlefield are very likely to be mirrored within military prison walls. Other well-known factors are that wartime secrecy often cloaks the orders and policies of superiors and the actions of subordinates, and some elements of national hatred and fear are elevated by the psychology of war.

My own family experienced the impact of these factors when my favorite uncle, navy petty officer Tom Gordy, was brutally treated as a prisoner of war after being captured in Guam by the Japanese within a month of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. After two years he was reported to be dead but was found after Japan's surrender, weighing eighty-five pounds, debilitated by four years of physical and psychological mistreatment.

The prevalence of such abuse of captured servicemen and -women during World War II induced the community of nations to come together to define quite precisely the basic guarantees of proper treatment for prisoners.  These restraints are the result of an international conference held in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1949, and redefined and expanded what are known as the "Geneva Conventions." The authenticity and universal applicability of these guarantees were never questioned by a democratic power - until recently, and by America! Instead of honoring the historic restraints, our political leaders decided to violate them, using the excuse that we are at war against terrorism. It is obvious that the Geneva Conventions were designed specifically to protect prisoners of war, not prisoners of peace. ...

Aside from the humanitarian aspects, it is well known that, under excruciating torture, a prisoner will admit almost any suggested crime.  Such confessions are, of course, not admissible in trials in civilized nations.  The primary goal of torture or the threat of torture is not to obtain convictions for crimes, but to engender and maintain fear. Some of our leaders have found that it is easy to forgo human rights for those who are considered to be subhuman, or "enemy combatants."  (my emphasis)

Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo blog 09/16/06:

The torture debate in Congress - I never expected to write such words - is as surreal to me as watching the collapse of the Twin Towers. If the Democrats are able to take control of at least one chamber in November, then surely the President's pro-torture bill will be viewed in hindsight as the nadir of the Bush presidency. If not, how much lower can things go?

I am beyond being able to assess the political implications, one way or the other, of this spectacle. Regardless of which version of the bill finally passes, this debate is a black mark on the soul of the nation. Of course passage of a pro-torture bill willdiminish U.S. standing internationally and jeopardize the safety and well-being of U.S. servicemen in future engagements. But merely having this debate has alreadyaccomplished that. Does anyone honestly believe that if Congress rebuffs the President in every respect that the rule of law and the inviolability of human rights will have been vindicated? Of course not.   (my emphasis)

"The President is always right." - Steve Bradbury, Acting Deputy Attorney General, 07/11/06

The Cheney-Bush administration and the "end of days"

Karen Armstrong had a Guardian piece in July about the Christian Right, the Cheney-Bush administration and US Middle East policy that is really good,  Bush's fondness for fundamentalism is courting disaster at home and abroad 07/31/06:

Is there a connection between a religiously motivated mistrust of science, glaring social injustice and a war in the Middle East? Bush and his administration espouse many of the ideals of the Christian right and rely on its support.  American fundamentalists are convinced that the second coming of Christ is at hand; they have developed an end-time scenario of genocidal battles based on a literal reading of Revelation that is absolutely central to their theology.  Christ cannot return, however, unless, in fulfilment of biblical prophecy, the Jews are in possession of the Holy Land. Before the End, the faithful will be "raptured" or snatched up into the air in order to avoid the Tribulation. Antichrist will massacre Jews who are not baptised; but Christ will defeat the mysterious "enemy from the north", and establish a millennium of peace.

This grim eschatology, developed in the late 19th century, was in part a reaction to the "social gospel" of the more liberal Christians, who believed that human beings were naturally evolving towards perfection and could build the New Jerusalem here on earth by fighting social injustice. The fundamentalists, however, believed that God was so angry with the faithless world that he could save it only by initiating a devastating catastrophe; they would see the terrible battles of the first world war, which showed that science could be used to lethal effect in the new military technology, as the beginning of the End. ...

Fundamentalists do not want a humanly constructed peace; many, indeed, regard the UN as the abode of Antichrist. (my emphasis)

One qualification here: some fundamentalists claim reservations about the "dispensationalist" theology Armstrong describes.  But it's often hard to know whether such reservations are substantial, or just relate to some (for outsiders) obscure detail, or whether it's just plain old deceptive talk, since even those critics also seem to sharer total enthusiasm for supporting hardline Israeli policies and the extremist settler movement.

The more grimly explicit Christian Reconstruction or dominionist view tends to be more overtly anti-Semitic and more explicitly hostile to Israel.  If dominionist ideas continue to gain in popularity among the Christian Right, their "pro-Israel" views may become more and more explicitly hostile to Jews.  Even as it is, you don't have to look too hard and long at the Christian Right End Times theology to see that it relies on old-fashioned Christian Jew-hatred at its core.

She makes an important connection between fundamentalist anti-science attitudes and this kind of apocalyptic theology:

The fundamentalists' rejection of science is deeply linked to their apocalyptic vision. Even the relatively sober ID theorists segue easily into Rapture-speak.  "Great shakings and darkness are descending on Planet Earth," says the ID philosopher Paul Nelson, "but they will be overshadowed by even more amazing displays of God's power and light.  Ever the long-term strategist, YHVH is raising up a mighty army of cutting-edge Jewish End-time warriors."  They all condemn the attempt to reform social ills.  When applied socially, evolutionary theory "leads straight to all the woes of modern life", says the leading ID ideologue Philip Johnson: homosexuality, state-backed healthcare, divorce, single-parenthood, socialism and abortion.  All this, of course, is highly agreeable to the Bush administration, which is itself selectively leery of science.  It has, for example, persistently ignored scientists' warnings about global warming. Why bother to implement the Kyoto treaty if the world is about to end? Indeed, some fundamentalists see environmental damage as a positive development, because it will hasten the apocalypse.  (my emphasis)

Armstrong, who is the author of a book on Genesis, also mentions that their basis for those particular end-of-the-world views is a sloppy reading of Scripture:

This nihilistic religiosity is based on a perversion of the texts. The first chapter of Genesis was never intended as a literal account of the origins of life; it is a myth, a timeless story about the sanctity of the world and everything in it.  Revelation was not a detailed programme for the End time; it is written in an apocalyptic genre that has quite a different dynamic. When they described the Jews' return to their homeland, the Hebrew prophets were predicting the end of the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BC - not the second coming of Christ. The prophets did preach a stern message of social justice, however, and like all the major world faiths, Christianity sees charity and loving-kindness as the cardinal virtues.  Fundamentalism nearly always distorts the tradition it is trying to defend.  (my emphasis)

She argues, correctly I think, that fundamentalist End Times views actually do play a significant role in Bush's particular approach toward Middle East policy:

Whatever Bush's personal beliefs, the ideology of the Christian right is both familiar and congenial to him.  This strange amalgam of ideas can perhaps throw light on the behaviour of a president, who, it is said, believes that God chose him to lead theworld to Rapture, who has little interest in social reform, and whose selective concern for life issues has now inspired him to veto important scientific research. It explains his unconditional and uncritical support for Israel, his willingness to use "Jewish End-time warriors" to fulfil a vision of his own - arguably against Israel's best interests - and to see Syria and Iran (who seem to be replacing Saddam as the "enemy of the north") as entirely responsible for the unfolding tragedy.  (my emphasis)

Fighting today's wars

US Army Lt. Col Nate Freier in the September monthly editorial for the Strategic Studies Institute, "What If?" - A Most Impertinent Question Indeed 09/06/06, writes about the need to adjust the orentation of military planning away from large conventional war and more towards irregular (counterinsurgency) warfare.  He uses strategic-planner's terminology in doing so.  He begins:

We are in an era of persistent, purposeful, and increasingly complex resistance to American primacy.

Freier doesn't ask any "impertinent questions" about this assumption.  But it's worth thinking about what that means.  Ther certainly is resistance to the current Cheney-Bush policies.  And in a longer term view, the trade and aid policies based on the "Washington Consensus" are also being challenged by more and more countries.

But is any country or alliance attempting to supplant the "primacy" of American military power?  No.  The United States is now generally understood to be spending half or more of the military budgets of the entire world.  Andrew Bacevich has observed thatif the US had a military budget equal to the sum of the ten next-highest national military budgets, it would still mean a huge cut in US military spending.

No other country is currently driving for such a goal.  And why would would they?  Why would they want to take on some many dubuious and far-flung military commitments as the US has?  And why would they want to insert themselves into situations like the Iraq War?  Why do we even want such a thing?

Freier is somewhat tentative in the way he poses his "impertinent questions" about war planning:

The principal question?  Are recent changes in the environment’s dynamics additive - new challenges added to old or instead qualitative - new challenges replacing old?  Specifically, has there been a real revolution in the character of competition and strategic hazard in the international system?  Are endemic insecurity and under-governance, in fact, the most significant threats to American primacy over the long-term?

To translate from the "strategic planning" lingo: does it make sense to keep structuring US forces to fight a conventional war against Soviet Army Group Central in Europe since the Soviet Union dissolved a decade and a half ago?

Freier certainly seems to think current practices are far from what they need to be:

Getting the right answers to these important questions will require a more thoughtful and nuanced appreciation of the strategic environment than we have corporately demonstrated the capacity to either undertake or consume. Institutional and bureaucratic interests are now conflated with national interests.  As a result, it may be impossible to either distinguish or act on what are real but unrecognized strategic imperatives.  If our national security institutions continue to value tradition, convention, and bureaucratic self-interest over strategic utility or necessity, we are doomed to understate the importance of nontraditional challenges and certain to under-invest intellectually and materially in the strategic solutions necessary to contend with them.  As a result, our traditional instruments of power and the institutions responsible for employing them will remain optimized for the unlikeliest and most manageable of our strategic challenges; thereby, putting our strategic position and interests at substantial risk.  (my emphasis)

One danger for the future, given the post-Vietnam War experience, is that a compromise will be achieved where the conventional-war advocates still get a heavy emphasis and new funds and human resources are poured into a supposedly alternative counterinsurgency capability, with the net result being an even more bloated military budget.

We also have to remember that the Rummy-Cheney concept of "military transformation" also justifies itself as saving money compared to traditional warfighting assumptions.  Their concept is based on the assumption of air power True Believers who argue that high-tech aircraft and bombs - including nuclear bombs - are the magic key to winning wars quickly and with minimum loss of American life.  Not only has this pitch achieved considerable public appeal, particularly among Republicans, who seem to be especially fond of the idea of big ole bombs levelling villages and cities.  Many of them seem to measure "toughness" in foreign policy by the extent of one's willingness to maximize the deaths of civilian noncombatants.

So statements like the following by Freier have to be regarded as potentially very ambiguous ones:

We cannot allow intellectual narrowness or blind loyalty to convention to perpetuate the most comfortable concepts and tools of traditional “warfighting” if dedication to them is born more of nostalgia and than of necessity. Indeed, America’s future strategic success may rely less on traditional battlefield outcomes than we would like to admit. It may, in fact, rely most on skillful management of persistent conflict and resistance and the ability to push both below the threshold of strategic significance.

Another risk for the future is that a kind of consensus has emerged among criticis of the Iraq War both left and right, and even among many of those who support the war (at least the ones not totally committed to Air Power Ueber Alles), that says the experiences of both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars show inadequate preparation for fighting counterinsurgency conflicts.  I agree with that viewpoint; it's hard to avoid that conclusion.

But it's also a critical question - and one that has no exactly "right" answer, much less a permanent and static one - is, what level of preparation do we need?  And that decision should be driven by *foreign policy* not by a general assumption that American "primacy" has to be defended anywhere and everywhere in the world from opposition.

There is also a tendency for a military capability to create a temptation to use it, not just on the part of generals but also of politicians.  So there actually are real risks in having *too much* capability.  Does the US need to capability to, for instance, unilaterally fight a new counterinsurgency Phillipine War?  Do we need to be prepared to occupy and fight counterinsurgency wars in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia?  Both simultaneously?

Assuming we get a Congress in a few years that operates as the Legislative Branch of the national government and not as a rubber stamp for an authoritarian Republican President, Congress needs to set some clear policies and priorities, and the military needs to be structured to support those priorities.

At least since 1979 (Iranian Revolution, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), there has been litte real discussion and debate in Congress that didn't assume in some form that more is better when it comes to the military.  So we've wound up where we are today, spending half the military budgets of the entire world and barely able to keep an army of 140,000 or so in Iraq with another 20,000 or so in Afghanistan.  In fact, it's even to the point that military recruiters are going after felons and allowing white supremacist activists into the ranks.  (See 12-Pentagon Steps to a Misfit Military by Nick Turse, TomDispatch.com 09/14/06.)

And both Congress and the Executive in the future need to be far more realistic about the type of wars they choose to fight and what the real requirements are to fight that war.  In both Iraq and Afghanistan, a military that was structured on the assumption of avoiding guerilla wars is being required to do just that, without a draft to bring in sufficient numbers of qualified personnel.

The military budget is way too important to be left to generals, lobbyists and Halliburton.

Iraq War: Drawing down the troop levels

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

Remember all those predictions about how the number of troops would be drawn down by the end of next year?  You know, the ones in 2003, 2004,  2005 and 2006?  Check out U.S. troop levels in Iraq reach 147,000 by Gordon Lubold Army Times 09/13/06:

Troop levels in Iraq have topped 147,000, a big jump over the number of troops deployed there over the last several months, but Pentagon officials say it’s only a temporary spike as commands change over.

The number of U.S. troops in Iraq as of Sept. 13 marks a 16 percent increase over the number of troops reported by the Pentagon in late July, when it was around 127,000.

Although troop levels fluctuate routinely as troops move in and out of the Iraqi theater, the 20,000-troop increase from two months ago is a far more sizeable jump than usual. Part of the increase can be attributed to the decision to extend 3,500 members of the 172nd Stryker Brigade, based in Alaska, for another four months to help stem the violence in Baghdad. The remaining increase is a result of other American units transferring command to follow-on forces.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman acknowledged troop levels have increased, but said it is not because units have been extended or because the Pentagon is purposely increasing U.S. troop presence in Iraq.He could not be specific when levels would return to the 138,000-troop level that has been the baseline for many months.  (my emphasis)

"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05

Robert Dreyfuss on "the phony war"

I have often quoted Robert Dreyfuss and I've found his work in his columns, blogging and his book Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (2005) to be some of the most helpful material in understanding Islamic politics and extremists groups and the effects of American policies on them.

But I've always thought he was being excessively optimistic about the overall nature of the terrorist threat to Americans and the US.  I still think that, actually.  But I'm beginning to wonder.   In There Is No War On Terror TomPaine.com 09/13/06, he lays out 10 points he considers key about the Cheney-Bush administration's so-called Global War on Terrorism, with explanations for each of them.  His 10 points are:

I. The threat of terrorism is wildly exaggerated.

II. Al-Qaida barely exists at all as a threat.

III. There is no Terrorist International.

IV. Iraq will not, and could not, fall to al-Qaida.

V. The Taliban is not al-Qaida.

VI. Neither Iran nor Syria sponsor anti-U.S. terrorism.

VII. It is not a “war.”

VIII. There were never any al-Qaida sleeper cells in the United States.

IX. Vulnerabilities are not threats.

X. No one is in charge.

He also has an article with closely-related material in the current Rolling Stone: The Phony War by Robert Dreyfusss; 09/11/06 (09/21/06 issue).  Also available at Truthout.org.

This article gives a more nuanced picture of his understanding of the terrorist threat to the US, which is thinks is significant but not the monstrous existential threat that the Cheney-Bush team paints.  He writes:

Terrorism is not an enemy, but a method. As such, it can never be defeated - only contained and reduced. ...

In the short term, the cops and spies can continue to do their best to watch for terrorist threats as they emerge, and occasionally, as in London, they will succeed. But they are the first to admit that stopping a plot before it can unfold involves, more than anything, plain dumb luck. In the end, the advantage is with the conspirators. "Stopping a terrorist plot before it happens is rare," says Pillar, the government's former chief Middle East analyst. "It's tremendously satisfying, but rare. It's a mistake to think we can improve our intelligence specifically to come up with that sort of prevention."

Rather than waging a global war, experts say, the United States needs to work closely with foreign intelligence services that know the lay of the land in their own countries to take down terrorists one by one. "Progress is measured one terrorist at a time, one cell at a time," says [Paul] Pillar. "We will be attacked. But there's a chance that we will be attacked less often, and less lethally." As unsatisfying as it sounds, that approach suggests a definition of "victory" in battling terrorism: The best we can do is to reduce the threat of terrorism to that of an ugly nuisance.

In the longer term, with each passing day, the heavy-handed U.S. involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israel-Palestine conflict is producing new terrorists. By his very policies, President Bush is spreading the virus, not quarantining it. The war in Iraq has radicalized Muslims all over the world, and it has allowed them to portray the invasion of Iraq as an attack on Islam. "The president says Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, but Iraq has turned out to be the central front because we've made it so," says Wilkerson. "Osama bin Laden is probably chuckling in his cave. We gave it to him on a platter, with a knife and fork."

That, in the end, is the most important lesson of all to be learned from the campaign against terrorism. The hatred inflamed by the Bush administration cannot be fixed by cops, spies or soldiers. It can be fixed only by a more unified and coordinated stance toward the rest of the world - one that creates allies rather than inspiring hatred.  (my emphasis)