Posted on

Chuck Spinney: Questions Not Asked in Presidential Debates

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Military
0Shares
Chuck Spinney

National Insecurity Questions That Won’t Be Asked in the Presidential Debates

How Bad Will Things Get in Afghanistan?

by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY.

Counterpunch, October 08, 2012

For reasons that were quite clear well before the Afghan “surge” began (see here and here), America’s Afghan adventure is now ending without achieving its goals. The prospects for a civil life in Afghanistan are likely to become even more remote than they were before we intervened.  Indeed, some experts think the ground work has been laid for an even more destructive civil war than that which occurred after the Soviets left Afghanistan with their tail between their legs in 1989.  Only time will tell how bad things will be, but it is a virtual certainty that events will be ugly and murderous.

One would expect a healthy accountable democratic government, intent on learning from its errors, would be inclined to seek an understanding of how it got itself into such a mess.

For example, will there be soul searching lessons-learned exercise by a military that repeated most of the strategic and tactical blunders it made in Vietnam? To wit: it dumbed down strategy into a mindless attrition strategy driven by body counts and assassinations in the name of winning hearts and minds.  It substituted high-cost contractor-intensive technologies for low-cost tactical smarts in a guerrilla war.  It over-relied on air power and killing from a safe distance.  It allowed its reactive obsessions with force protection to the displace tactical initiative of small unit commanders.  And perhaps most decisively, it relied on a fatally flawed grand strategy to quickly create a huge, materiel-intensive, indigenous army out of whole cloth, trained and equipped in the US military’s image.  Don’t expect to hear any questions about these issues in the Presidential debates.  And don’t expect to see any serious introspection by a military – industrial – congressional complex (MICC) intent on perpetuating its lucrative business-as-usual.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Questions Not Asked in Presidential Debates”

Posted on

Marcus Aurelius: As Military Suicides Rise, DoD Focuses on Private Weapons

Ineptitude, Military
0Shares
Marcus Aurelius

Troops' concerns are well-founded.   A few years ago, a company commander in the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, KY, developed his own multi-faceted program that caused a big flap.  He had his own policies, registration forms, etc.  Believe he was requiring troops living off-post and owning private weapons to turn those weapons into the company arms room for “secure storage,” etc.  Vastly exceeded both his authority and anything remotely reasonable.  Troops are right to be scared of stuff like this.

As Military Suicides Rise, Focus Is On Private Weapons

By James Dao

New York Times, October 8, 2012, Pg. 13

With nearly half of all suicides in the military having been committed with privately owned firearms, the Pentagon and Congress are moving to establish policies intended to separate at-risk service members from their personal weapons.

The issue is a thorny one for the Pentagon. Gun rights advocates and many service members fiercely oppose any policies that could be construed as limiting the private ownership of firearms.

But as suicides continue to rise this year, senior Defense Department officials are developing a suicide prevention campaign that will encourage friends and families of potentially suicidal service members to safely store or voluntarily remove personal firearms from their homes.

“This is not about authoritarian regulation,” said Dr. Jonathan Woodson, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. “It is about the spouse understanding warning signs and, if there are firearms in the home, responsibly separating the individual at risk from the firearm.”

Dr. Woodson, who declined to provide details, said the campaign would also include measures to encourage service members, their friends and their relatives to remove possibly dangerous prescription drugs from the homes of potentially suicidal troops.

Read full article.

Posted on

Chuck Spinney: Predictable Meltdown in Afghanistan – Strategic Decrepitude and Lack of Integrity Go Hand in Hand

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Lessons, Military, Officers Call
0Shares
Chuck Spinney

The below BBC report, Afghanistan's ‘green on blue' collapse of trust,  places the fatal flaw in the McChrystal plan used by Mr. Obama to justify the Afghan surge in 2010 — namely General McChrystal's failure to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the plan to rapidly build up the Afghan Army/police — into sharp relief.

This flaw was unconscionable for at least two reasons:
First, Obama's surge was premised on achieving quick results that would enable a rapid withdrawal of the “surge” force.  That withdrawal that has now take place, despite the fact the surge did not achieve its desired result, namely weakening the Taliban to a level where it would be forced to parley on our terms.
Second, our disastrous experience with South Vietnamese army should have taught the American military the fallacy of rapidly building up a huge army, cut out of whole cloth, in America's own high-cost, logistics-intensive image.  Armies — at least successful ones — take time to build and must be compatible with the culture from which they emanate.
That this fatal flaw was easy to see well before the fact. For example, I wrote about it  here, here,  here, and here in 2009 and early 2010, before the surge took effect — and I was not alone.  
This grotesque oversight proves the post-Vietnam reforms touted by the US military and the Reagan Administration (which chose to throw money at the problem) were entirely cosmetic and did not get to the roots of the malaise that led to our defeat in Vietnam, notwithstanding the parades, yellow ribbons, and juvenile braggadocio that accompanied  our rout of Saddam's tin pot army in 1991.  Kosovo (for reasons explained in Domestic Roots of Perpetual War), the 2nd Iraq War (the existence of which gave made a lie of our claim of a decisive victory in 1991), and now our clear defeat in Afghanistan are or ought to be lessons to the contrary.  They certainly would be treated as such in a healthy society that endeavors to correct its errors instead of compounding them by sweeping them under a rug.
Posted on

Marcus Aurelius: Is retirement an option for Fort Bragg Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, who is accused of forcible sodomy?

Corruption, Military
0Shares
Marcus Aurelius

We have yet to hear from GEN DEMPSEY, current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as to what he thinks should happen to BG SINCLAIR. Chairman was on record yesterday as saying that MG WARD, former CDRUSAFRICOM and charged by DoDIG with a whole litany of offenses, should retire as a four-star general.

Fayetteville (NC) Observer, October 7, 2012, Pg. 1

Is retirement an option for Fort Bragg Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, who is accused of forcible sodomy?

Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair is being investigated for sexual misconduct and other charges.

By Henry Cuningham and Drew Brooks, Staff Writers

Under military law, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair may be able to ask the secretary of the Army for permission to retire rather than face possible court-martial for forcible sodomy.

Fort Bragg officials declined to discuss whether retirement is a possibility for Sinclair or if he has made such a request.

“It is premature to discuss this,” Ben Abel, a Fort Bragg spokesman, said.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Is retirement an option for Fort Bragg Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, who is accused of forcible sodomy?”

Posted on

Yoda: Muslim Rebels and Philippine Government Agree on Peace

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
0Shares
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Good news this is.

Philippines, Muslim rebels agree on peace pact

EILEEN NG, Associated Press, JIM GOMEZ, Associated Press | Sunday, October 7, 2012 | Updated: Sunday, October 7, 2012 8:44pm

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine government and the country's largest Muslim rebel group have reached a preliminary peace deal that is a major breakthrough toward ending a decades-long insurgency that killed tens of thousands and held back development in the south.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said the “framework agreement” calling for an autonomous region for minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation was an assurance the Moro Islamic Liberation Front insurgents will no longer aim to secede.

The agreement, announced Sunday and to be signed Oct. 15 in Manila, spells out principles on major issues, including the extent of power, revenues and territory of the Muslim region. If all goes well, a final peace deal could be reached by 2016, when Aquino's six-year term ends, officials said.

“This framework agreement paves the way for final and enduring peace in Mindanao,” Aquino said, referring to the southern Philippine region and homeland of the country's Muslims. “This means that the hands that once held rifles will be put to use tilling land, selling produce, manning work stations and opening doorways of opportunity.”

He cautioned that “the work does not end here” and that details of the accord still need to be worked out. Those talks are expected to be tough but doable, officials and rebels said.

Rebel vice chairman Ghadzali Jaafar said the agreement provides a huge relief to people who have long suffered from war and are “now hoping the day would come when there will be no need to bear arms.”

Continue reading “Yoda: Muslim Rebels and Philippine Government Agree on Peace”