We Owe the Troops an Exit

We Owe the Troops an Exit
By BOB HERBERT
New York Times
31 Aug 2010

At least 14 American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan over the past few days.

We learned on Saturday that our so-called partner in this forlorn war, Hamid Karzai, fired a top prosecutor who had insisted on, gasp, fighting the corruption that runs like a crippling disease through his country.

Time magazine tells us that stressed-out, depressed and despondent soldiers are seeking help for their mental difficulties at a rate that is overwhelming the capacity of available professionals. What we are doing to these troops who have been serving tour after tour in Afghanistan and Iraq is unconscionable.

Time described the mental-health issue as “the U.S. Army’s third front,” with the reporter, Mark Thompson, writing: “While its combat troops fight two wars, its mental-health professionals are waging a battle to save soldiers’ sanity when they come back, one that will cost billions long after combat ends in Baghdad and Kabul.”

In addition to the terrible physical toll, the ultimate economic costs of these two wars, as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes have pointed out, will run to more than $3 trillion.

I get a headache when I hear supporters of this endless warfare complaining about the federal budget deficits. They’re like arsonists complaining about the smell of smoke in the neighborhood.

There is no silver lining to this nearly decade-old war in Afghanistan. Poll after poll has shown that it no longer has the support of most Americans. And yet we fight on, feeding troops into the meat-grinder year after tragic year — to what end?

“Clearly, the final chapters of this particular endeavor are very much yet to be written,” said Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, during a BBC interview over the weekend. He sounded as if those chapters would not be written any time soon.

In a reference to President Obama’s assertion that U.S. troops would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan next July, General Petraeus told the interviewer: “That’s a date when a process begins, nothing more, nothing less. It’s not the date when the American forces begin an exodus and look for the exit and the light to turn off on the way out of the room.”

A lot of Americans who had listened to the president thought it was, in fact, a date when the American forces would begin an exodus. The general seems to have heard something quite different.

In truth, it’s not at all clear how President Obama really feels about the awesome responsibilities involved in waging war, and that’s a problem. The Times’s Peter Baker wrote a compelling and in many ways troubling article recently about the steep learning curve that Mr. Obama, with no previous military background, has had to negotiate as a wartime commander in chief.

Quoting an unnamed adviser to the president, Mr. Baker wrote that Mr. Obama sees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as “problems that need managing” while he pursues his mission of transforming the nation. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking on the record, said, “He’s got a very full plate of very big issues, and I think he does not want to create the impression that he’s so preoccupied with these two wars that he’s not addressing the domestic issues that are uppermost in people’s minds.”

Wars are not problems that need managing, which suggests that they will always be with us. They are catastrophes that need to be brought to an end as quickly as possible. Wars consume lives by the thousands (in Iraq, by the scores of thousands) and sometimes, as in World War II, by the millions. The goal when fighting any war should be peace, not a permanent simmer of nonstop maiming and killing. Wars are meant to be won — if they have to be fought at all — not endlessly looked after.

One of the reasons we’re in this state of nonstop warfare is the fact that so few Americans have had any personal stake in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no draft and no direct financial hardship resulting from the wars. So we keep shipping other people’s children off to combat as if they were some sort of commodity, like coal or wheat, with no real regard for the terrible price so many have to pay, physically and psychologically.

Not only is this tragic, it is profoundly disrespectful. These are real men and women, courageous and mostly uncomplaining human beings, that we are sending into the war zones, and we owe them our most careful attention. Above all, we owe them an end to two wars that have gone on much too long.

Good Grief Camp; For Children of our KIA's

Camp allows youngest victims of war to express their loss

Fayetteville News & Observer
Sun Aug 22, 2010

PINEHURST- The small children of fallen soldiers and Marines covered James Gobble, laughing as he pushed his way off the floor and gently tossed them off his back.

Gobble was among the adult volunteers at Good Grief Camp, an event held at a Pinehurst resort hotel Saturday aimed at helping families cope with the loss of loved ones who died in Iraq and Afghanistan, or who committed suicide after returning from combat.

"Most of these guys lost their dad, and it's the dad that usually does the wrestling," Gobble, a former Marine who lives in Wilmington, said after the kids eventually let him up off the carpet. "With some of them, you can really tell there's a deficit, so I'm a jungle gym for a day."

Among those seeking piggyback rides were brothers Ethan and Tristan Hotchkin. Their father, Army Pfc. Gunnar R. Hotchkin, died in Afghanistan on June 16. A paratrooper based at Fort Bragg, he was 31 years old.

"He was in a vehicle, and there was a bomb underneath," explained Ethan, 8. "I'm sad about it every day."

On his T-shirt, the boy wore a large button embossed with a photo of his father, a square-jawed man wearing glasses and the scarlet beret of the Airborne Corps. If his dad could be alive for one day, Ethan said, they would go fishing. Tristan, 4, rarely ventured more than a few feet from his big brother.

While the nation celebrates the end of combat operations in Iraq this month, images of happy soldiers and Marines returning home can be difficult for the families of those whose spouse, parent or sibling returned in a flag-draped steel coffin.

In another part of the hotel, mothers and other adult family members were receiving encouragement, advice and counseling from volunteers, most of whom had also lost loved ones. The "Survivor Seminar" was organized by the nonprofit Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, known as TAPS.

Play, therapy
For the children, who varied in age from toddlers to teens, the day was a mix of play and therapy.

Vanessa Gabrielson, 27, lost her father, Army 1st Sgt. Dan H. Gabrielson, when his convoy in Iraq was attacked on July 9, 2003. A former third-grade teacher, she traveled from Fort Hood, Texas, to help lead a group of kids on Saturday.

"Survivors are their own best experts," Gabrielson said, quoting a key TAPS tenet. "I draw a lot of strength from being here, seeing how brave some of these kids can be. When you're with them, it can't be about you. If it were, you'd sit in the corner and cry."

Among the activities, the youngsters were asked to write messages to their lost fathers.

With a marker, Ethan carefully scrawled: "Dad, I love you so much." He signed his name and drew two angels with haloes on the thin paper.

Later, the Hotchkin brothers and the other children gathered on the lawn of the landmark Carolina Hotel. Their messages were tied to balloons, and they released them into a brilliant blue sky.

They squinted to see as the balloons rose into the wind and drifted out of sight.

"Dad is an angel, and he's in the clouds with God," Ethan said with certainty. "He's in heaven."

CIA & Taliban Both Illegal Combatants??

America's Unlawful Combatants
By Gary Solis
March 12, 2010

In our current armed conflicts, there are two U.S. drone offensives. One is conducted by our armed forces, the other by the CIA. Every day, CIA agents and CIA contractors arm and pilot armed unmanned drones over combat zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Pakistani tribal areas, to search out and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. In terms of international armed conflict, those CIA agents are, unlike their military counterparts but like the fighters they target, unlawful combatants. No less than their insurgent targets, they are fighters without uniforms or insignia, directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary to the laws and customs of war. Even if they are sitting in Langley, the CIA pilots are civilians violating the requirement of distinction, a core concept of armed conflict, as they directly participate in hostilities.

Before the 1863 Lieber Code condemned civilian participation in combat, it was contrary to customary law. Today, civilian participation in combat is still prohibited by two 1977 protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Although the United States has not ratified the protocols, we consider the prohibition to be customary law, binding on all nations. Whether in international or non-international armed conflict, we kill terrorists who take a direct part in hostilities because their doing so negates their protection as civilians and renders them lawful targets. If captured, the unlawful acts committed during their direct participation makes them subject to prosecution in civilian courts or military tribunals. They are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status.

If the CIA civilian personnel recently killed by a suicide bomber in Khost, Afghanistan, were directly involved in supplying targeting data, arming or flying drones in the combat zone, they were lawful targets of the enemy, although the enemy himself was not a lawful combatant. It makes no difference that CIA civilians are employed by, or in the service of, the U.S. government or its armed forces. They are civilians; they wear no distinguishing uniform or sign, and if they input target data or pilot armed drones in the combat zone, they directly participate in hostilities -- which means they may be lawfully targeted.

Moreover, CIA civilian personnel who repeatedly and directly participate in hostilities may have what recent guidance from the International Committee of the Red Cross terms "a continuous combat function." That status, the ICRC guidance says, makes them legitimate targets whenever and wherever they may be found, including Langley. While the guidance speaks in terms of non-state actors, there is no reason why the same is not true of civilian agents of state actors such as the United States.

It is, of course, hardly likely that a Taliban or al-Qaeda bomber or sniper could operate in Northern Virginia. (In 1993, a Pakistani citizen illegally in the United States shot and killed two CIA employees en route to the agency's headquarters. He was not, however, affiliated with any political or religious group.)

And while the prosecution of CIA personnel is certainly not suggested, one wonders whether CIA civilians who are associated with armed drones appreciate their position in the law of armed conflict. Their superiors surely do.

====
Gary Solis, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, is the author of "The Law of Armed Conflict."

TTP in Afghanistan

TTP in Afghanistan

After six weeks in Afghanistan, those slight differences between the branches of our Armed Forces finally became noticeable. For the sake of all you deskbound strategists, and in an attempt to avoid writing something serious today, I’ve taken a few minutes to summarize these differences for you:

MARINE CORPS Rules:
1 – Be polite, be courteous, and have a plan that includes killing everyone.
2 – Have a back-up plan, with same goal
3 – Anything worth shooting is worth shooting at least twice. Ammo is cheap; your
life is not.
4 – Do not carry any handgun whose caliber does not start with a ‘4’
5 – It’s not cheating if you live. Cheat often.
6 – Marine Artillery; Reach out and touch someone with H.E.
6 – No one remembers what caliber, stance, or tactics you used; they’ll only
remember who lived and who didn’t.

ARMY RANGER Rules:
1 – Walk 50 miles carrying 75 lbs to capture HVT’s
2 – Curse bitterly when Army Higher refuses permission to kill HVT’s because ISAF
doesn’t want to hurt Taliban’s feelings.
3 – Walk out 50 miles hoping Air Force doesn’t mistake you for an HVT

NAVY SEAL Rules:
1 – Look cool in sunglasses
2 – Stuff washcloth down speedo to impress (the Afghans love this!)
3 – Imitate Marines

US ARMY Rules:
1 - Curse bitterly when ordered off FOB into the field.
2 – Inspect XBOX and Play Stations, assume your rifle will clean itself
3 – Practice falling back on chowhall if attacked.
4 – Check on ice cream supplies; ammunition will take care of itself.

US AIR FORCE Rules:
1 – Adjust temps on air conditioner in private trailer
2 – Enjoy a cocktail
3 – Drop bombs. Let someone else wonder how those targets Nellis identified as HVT’s
turned into women and children
4 – Worry about making 1330 tee-time
5 – Wonder who lost those pesky nuclear weapons again
6 – Enjoy a cocktail

US NAVY Rules:
1 – Go to Sea
2 - Drink coffee
3 - Deploy Marines

Yet ANOTHER Contractor Scandal...

Pakistan Police Raid U.S. ContractorAssociated Press
Sept 19, 2009

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistani police raided a local security firm that helps protect the U.S. Embassy on Saturday, seizing dozens of allegedly unlicensed weapons at a time when unusually intense media scrutiny of America's use of private contractors has deepened anti-U.S. sentiment here.

Pakistani police raided a local security firm that has a contract with the U.S. Embassy, seizing dozens of allegedly unlicensed weapons at a time when American use of private contractors is under unusual scrutiny here, officials said.

Two employees of the Inter-Risk company were arrested during the raids in Islamabad, police official Rana Akram told a news conference. Reporters were shown the disputed weapons -- 61 assault rifles and nine pistols. Mr. Akram said police were seeking the firm's owner.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Rick Snelsire said the U.S. contract with Inter-Risk took effect at the start of 2009. It is believed to be the first contract the firm has signed with the U.S., said Mr. Snelsire, who did not have a figure for its amount.

"Our understanding is they obtained licenses with whatever they brought into the country to meet the contractual needs," he said. "We told the government that we had a contract with Inter-Risk, that Inter-Risk would be providing security at the embassy and our consulates."

Mr. Akram said he had no idea about any U.S. links to Inter-Risk, but the company was recently mentioned in local media reports that have been trying to establish the types of private security firms American diplomats use in Pakistan.

In particular, Pakistani reporters, anti-U.S. bloggers and others have suggested the U.S. is using the American firm formerly known as Blackwater -- a claim that chills many Pakistanis because of the company's alleged involvement in killings of Iraqi civilians.

The U.S. Embassy denies it uses Blackwater - now known as Xe Services - in Pakistan.

Scandals involving U.S. private contractors have occurred elsewhere in the region.

In Washington on Friday, the Commission on Wartime Contracting heard testimony about another contractor - ArmorGroup North America --involving alleged illegal and immoral conduct by its guards at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan.

The Iraqi government refused to grant Xe Services an operating license earlier this year amid continued outrage over a 2007 lethal firefight involving some of its employees in Baghdad, although the State Department has temporarily extended a contract with a Xe subsidiary to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

Many of the reports in Pakistan have been fueled by U.S. plans to expand its embassy space and staff. Among the other rumors the U.S. denies: that 1,000 U.S. Marines will land in the capital, and that Americans will set up a Guantanamo-style prison.

The U.S. says it needs to add hundreds more staff to allow it to disburse billions of dollars in additional aid to Pakistan.

Legislation making its way through Congress will triple nonmilitary aid to Pakistan -- one version would provide $1.5 billion a year over five years in humanitarian and economic aid. The goal is to improve education and other areas, lessening the allure of extremism.

The U.S. considers stability in Pakistan critical to helping the faltering war effort in neighboring Afghanistan, and has pressed Pakistan to crack down on extremism on its soil.

Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are believed to use Pakistan's northwestern regions bordering Afghanistan as hide-outs. Their presence has fueled violence in Pakistani territory, including attacks that pit Sunni Muslims against Shiite Muslims.

Copyright © 2009 Associated Press

Army Picks Woman to Train D.I's

Army Picks First Woman To Train Drill Sergeants
Sgt. Maj. with 28 years service

By Susanne M. Schafer, Associated Press
September 19, 2009

FORT JACKSON, S.C.--Command Sgt. Maj. Teresa King can dress down a burly, battle-hardened sergeant in seconds with a sharp phrase and a withering look, then turn around and tell trainee soldiers to be sure they get seven hours of sleep.

As the first woman to take charge of the Army’s school for its order-barking drill sergeants, the sharecropper’s daughter said she’s used to breaking down barriers in military roles normally reserved for men.

“It’s so easy because I love it,” said Sgt. King, a single, 48-year-old North Carolina native who has been in the Army 28 years. “I have a family in the Army. It is my family.”

The stern discipline dispensed by her late father to his 12 children set her on a path of taking responsibility for herself and her siblings early on, Sgt. King said during a recent interview on the Army’s training base near Columbia.

She learned to “give a hard day’s work for whatever I earned and take no short cuts,” said Sgt. King, who enjoys passing her values to young soldiers and watching them grow into senior officers and enlisted men and women.

Lt. Col. Dave Wood, Sgt. King’s battalion commander, said she was chosen for her approach to “the business of taking civilians and making them into soldiers.”

Gone are the days of two decades ago, Col. Wood said, when his drill sergeant made him clean wax off a floor with a razor blade or run around the barracks loaded down with a full duffel bag.

“She’s got this unique way of dealing with soldiers where she can be correcting them, but it’s in a manner that they’re wanting to please her and wanting to do the right thing,” he said. “It’s not degrading to them.”

Sgt. King takes over command of the Drill Sergeant School on Tuesday at Fort Jackson, the Army’s largest training installation. This year the school will churn out about 2,000 of the in-your-face instructors.

The tough-love approach came through as Sgt. King conducted her barracks inspections and daily walkabout to meet with senior enlisted men and women on a recent weekday.

A touch of bright red lipstick and kohl-dark eyeliner doesn’t soften her stern gaze when she spots a sheet corner not properly tucked or a young soldier with a uniform askew.

“What’s going on here?” she asks, soldiers jumping to attention as she enters a room as they relax between classes on becoming finance clerks or legal aides. “Get back to school and get back to doing something!”

Sgt. King’s face softened once she determined one soldier in exercise gear wasn’t goofing off, but had just gotten back from the dentist and a root canal. “Get some rest, soldier,” she advised the woman with a swollen face and jaw.

The Time to Leave Iraq is Now

Military memo on Iraq: Time to leave
Blunt military assessment comes despite Iraqi forces' ongoing problems
By Michael R. Gordon
The New York Times
updated 1545 EST, July 30, 2009

WASHINGTON - A senior American military adviser in Baghdad has concluded in an unusually blunt memo that the Iraqi forces suffer from deeply entrenched deficiencies but are now capable of protecting the Iraqi government, and that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home.”

Prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military’s Baghdad command, the memorandum asserts that the Iraqi forces have an array of problems, including corruption, poor management and the inability to resist political pressure from Shiite political parties.

For all of these problems, however, Colonel Reese argues that Iraqi forces are competent enough to hold off Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias and other internal threats to the Iraqi government. Extending the American military presence in Iraq beyond 2010, he argues, will do little to improve the Iraqis’ military performance while fueling a growing resentment.

“As the old saying goes, ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,’ ” Colonel Reese wrote. “Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.”

Not the official stance of U.S. military
A spokeswoman for Gen. Ray Odierno, the senior American commander in Iraq, said that the memo did not reflect the official stance of the United States military, was not intended for a broad audience, and that some of the problems the memo referred to had been solved since its writing in early July.

Referring to the Iraq Security Forces, the memo said: “The massive partnering efforts of U.S. combat forces with I.S.F. isn’t yielding benefits commensurate with the effort and is now generating its own opposition. We should declare our intentions to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Iraq by August 2010. This would not be a strategic paradigm shift, but an acceleration of existing U.S. plans by some 15 months.”

Before deploying to Iraq, Colonel Reese served as the director of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, the Army’s premier intellectual center. He was an author of an official Army history of the Iraq war — “On Point II” — that was sharply critical of the lapses in postwar planning.

Colonel Reese’s memo comes at a sensitive time in the Iraq conflict as American forces are gradually shifting to an advisory role. American combat troops moved out of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities last month, as required by the Status of Forces Agreement concluded by the United States and Iraq.

Colonel Reese’s memo lists a number of problems that have emerged since the withdrawal. They include, he wrote, a “sudden coolness” to American advisers and the “forcible takeover” of a checkpoint in the Green Zone. Iraqi units, he added, are much less willing to conduct joint operations with their American counterparts “to go after targets the U.S. considers high value.”

The Iraqi Ground Forces Command, Colonel Reese wrote, has imposed “unilateral restrictions” on American military operations that “violate the most basic aspects” of American-Iraqi agreement.

“The Iraqi legal system in the Rusafa side of Baghdad has demonstrated a recent willingness to release individuals originally detained by the U.S. for attacks on the U.S.,” he added.

The spokeswoman for General Odierno, Lt. Col. Josslyn Aberle, responded in a e-mail to questions about the memo. “The e-mail was written by Col. Timothy Reese at the beginning of July and sent to selected personnel within Multi-National Division Baghdad on our classified e-mail system,” Colonel Aberle wrote. “It was expressed to a limited audience, and not meant for wider/general distribution.

“The e-mail reflects one person’s personal view at the time we were first implementing the Security Agreement post-30 June. It does not reflect the official views of U.S. Forces in Iraq. Since that time many of the initial issues have been resolved and our partnerships with Iraqi Security Forces and G.O.I. partners now are even stronger than before 30 June.” G.O.I. is the abbreviation for Government of Iraq.

Rapid reduction in American forcesUnder the plan developed by General Odierno, the vast majority of the approximately 130,000 American forces in Iraq will remain through Iraq’s national elections, which are expected to be held next January. After the elections and the formation of a new Iraqi government, there will be rapid reduction in American forces. By the end of August 2010, the United States would have no more than 50,000 troops in Iraq, which would include six brigades whose primary role would be to advise and train Iraqi troops.

Some experts, such as Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former adviser to General David H. Petraeus, have argued that this timetable may be too fast given the host of remaining problems in Iraq, including differences between Kurds and Arab leaders, remaining Sunni-Shiite tensions and the possibility that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki might become more authoritarian.

“Renewed violence in Iraq is not inevitable, but it is a serious risk,” Mr. Biddle wrote in a recent paper. “A vigorous preventive strategy is clearly preferable, therefore. The most effective option for prevention is to go slow in drawing down the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Measures to maximize U.S. leverage on important Iraqi leaders — especially Maliki — can be helpful in steering Iraqis away from confrontation and violence, but U.S. leverage is a function of U.S. presence.”

During his recent appearance in Washington, Mr. Maliki also appeared to be contemplating a possible role for American forces after the December 2011 deadline for the removal of all American troops under the Status of Forces Agreement.

The Iraqi prime minister noted in an appearance at the United States Institute of Peace, a Washington-based research organization, that the Status of Forces Agreement, would “end” the American military presence in his country in 2011. “Nevertheless, if Iraqi forces required further training and further support, we shall examine this at that time based on the needs of Iraq,” he said.

During his visit to Iraq earlier this week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates indicated that might be a “modest acceleration” in the number of American forces that are withdrawn from Iraq this year. At the same time, Pentagon and military officials indicated that Kurdish-Arab friction remains a serious worry and that the American advisory role is still very important.

'Incapable of change'
But Colonel Reese questioned the value of an extended advisory role.

“If there ever was a window where the seeds of a professional military culture could have been implanted, it is now long past. U.S. combat forces will not be here long enough or with sufficient influence to change it,” he wrote. “The military culture of the Baathist-Soviet model under Saddam Hussein remains entrenched and will not change. The senior leadership of the I.S.F. is incapable of change in the current environment.”

Colonel Reese appears to have anonymously circulated a less colorful version of his memo on a blog dubbed “The Enchanter’s Corner.” The author is described as an active-duty Army officer serving as an adviser in Iraq who is “passionate about political issues.” Since word of the memo began to spread, the memo has been removed from the site.

Blackwater Thrown Out of Iraq

Iraq: Blackwater not welcome

U.S. embassy told to find new security after contractors' 'improper conduct'
The Associated Press
updated 4:54 a.m. ET, Thurs., Jan. 29, 2009

BAGHDAD - Iraq will not authorize Blackwater Worldwide, the U.S. Embassy's main security company, to operate in the country anymore, a senior Iraqi official said Thursday.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said his ministry's decision was sent last Friday to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and "they have to find a new security company."

Khalaf added that the decision was prompted by what he called the guards' "improper conduct and excessive use of force" in a shooting that killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured dozens of others in 2007.

He spoke to The Associated Press in a phone interview.

A new U.S.-Iraqi security agreement gives Iraq the authority to determine which Western security companies operate in Iraq.


© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved