Will Middle Eastern Democracies be Friends or Foes?

Will Middle Eastern Democracies be Friends or Foes?

Citing the Reichstag fire just one month after to solidify his grip on power, Hitler shredded the constitution and outlawed all other political parties. Six years later WWII began, costing some 60 million lives

The Americano
By J.D. Gordon
25 Feb 2011

Many in the West have cheered the prospect of Western-style democracies taking hold in the Mid-East, siding with protest movements that have toppled autocratic regimes in Egypt and Tunisia while spreading like dominoes to Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Libya and Algeria.

That’s a natural reaction, given the fact that democracies have yielded successful outcomes in Western societies and embodied the concepts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

However, a closer look at existing social conditions in the Middle East and North Africa, combined with a quick glance at some past “democracies” ought to give one pause.

In condemning violent crackdowns, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay cited the root of anger as, “decades of neglect of people’s aspirations to realize not only civil and political rights, but also economic, social and cultural rights.”

While true, it doesn’t address why there has been so much neglect of people’s aspirations. As if a sudden switch to democracy might fix everything?

Realistically speaking, most Middle Eastern and North African countries don’t enjoy the social conditions that would fulfill such needs – regardless of the type government.

There religious leaders wield the type of power and influence over daily lives in ways we haven’t seen in America for centuries. And their standard fare is preaching intolerance, demanding subservience of women, and blaming the West and Israel for all their problems. In a society of devout followers, most people naturally become conditioned to view the West unfavorably, just as public polls show. Truly representative democracies under these circumstances would likely be deeply hostile to U.S. interests.

Those still pushing democracy for the sake of an egalitarian “power to the people” should at least take a look at some case studies. History is full of notionally democratic, yet also deeply troubled societies that do not have happy endings.

For instance:

Germany, 1933 – As the elected leader of the Weimar Republic’s Majority Nazi Party, Adolph Hitler was appointed as Chancellor by octogenarian President Paul von Hindenburg to form a coalition government that would pull Germany out of the Great Depression. Citing the Reichstag fire just one month after to solidify his grip on power, Hitler shredded the constitution and outlawed all other political parties. Six years later WWII began, costing some 60 million lives.

Iran, 1979 – After a pro-democracy movement toppled the U.S.-backed Shah, the Mullahs quickly instituted Sharia Law — legitimized through a national referendum. Declaring that protests against the Ayatollah were the same as protests against God, Iran has ruthlessly suppressed any form of dissent ever since. Dedicated to its nuclear program in pursuit of regional dominance, Iran is just years away from producing the bomb.

Algeria, 1991 – In reaction to centuries of colonization and a few decades of secular yet incompetent autocratic leaders, Algerians elected the Islamic Salvation Front which promised to enact Sharia Law. Seeing the nightmare that unfolded in Iran, Algeria’s Army launched a coup and removed the Islamists from their elected posts. The result? A decade long civil war that killed over 150,000 people.

Venezuela, 1999 – Failing to take power in a coup, Hugo Chavez was elected by a populist movement fed up with poverty and a lack of social mobility. Since then, the murder rate has quadrupled, foreign investment has all but dried up, and chronic food shortages plague the nation.

Gaza, 2006 – Once Palestinians finally had the chance to pick their elected leaders, they chose Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization. Cut off from Western aid, Hamas wasted little time before firing rockets into Israel.

So what can we learn from all this?

First, though democracy may represent the ideal form of government, successful ones must be accompanied by the social conditions that can lead to positive results for its people.

Second, instant democracies in the Middle East and North Africa are most likely to result in highly antagonistic nations, given the prevailing anti-Western sentiments and climate of intolerance. This is particularly true if Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood come to power – either directly via general elections, or through steamrolling political opposition within their respective legislatures.

Navigating this crisis will be difficult for America, even with the wisest policy decisions from Washington. If the current administration’s waffling through the Egyptian chaos gives any indication of things to come, we may be in real trouble.

================
J.D. Gordon is a communications consultant to several Washington, DC think tanks and a retired Navy Commander who served in the office of the secretary of defense from 2005 to 2009 as the Pentagon’s spokesman for the Western Hemisphere. For more info: www.jdgordoncommunications.com [1]

Corporate America suppoting the troops - Crown Royal Steps Up

Iconic Crown Royal Bags Being Shipped to Troops Overseas

It’s still purple! The iconic Crown Royal purple bag is heading to Afghanistan, but in camouflage

ATLANTA (Sept. 16, 2010) – On their most important mission to date, camouflage-designed Crown Royal purple bags will be packed with gift items for America’s bravest, just in time for the holidays. Crown Royal, teaming up with non-profit Operation Troop Aid, is dispatching 10,000 of the specially designed bags to legal-drinking age troops on overseas deployment, including Afghanistan and Iraq. Volunteers in select events across the country will stuff the bags with personal care items, snacks and phone cards. “I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for troops to be away from their family and friends, especially during the holidays,” said Yvonne Briese, Crown Royal Brand Director. “We hope they like the CAMObags
and that this small gesture shows we are thinking about them back home and wishing them a safe return.”

Included in the bag, service members will receive well-wishes in the form of a hand-written message from each member of the Crown Royal team, including NASCAR driver Matt Kenseth, legendary football coach Jimmy Johnson, along with thousands of Diageo employees and partners.

To kickoff the program, a special event was held earlier today in Atlanta at Piedmont Park. During the event, hosted by legendary football coach and Crown Royal spokesperson Jimmy Johnson, the first Operation CAMO Care Packages were filled, and the parties unveiled a special mural that represents the program’s mission to ensure that soldiers serving abroad are reminded that those at home truly admire
and acknowledge their on-going commitment to protecting this country.

“After traveling to Afghanistan last year, I witnessed first-hand the daily struggles experienced by our troops to keep this great country of ours safe, and it had a profound affect on me,” Johnson said. “When one of the troops opens a Crown Royal CAMO bag, I hope they crack a smile and are reassured that home is not that far away.”

Operation CAMO Care Package kits include personal care items such as a toothbrush, toothpaste,comb, soap, shampoo, body wash, shaving cream, disposable razor and sunscreen. Soldiers will also find snacks such as trail mix, peanuts, cookies and candies. Select units will also receive 120-minute international phone cards to call their loved ones.

For more information on Operation CAMO Care Package and Crown Royal’s commitment to supporting the military, visit www.crownroyal.com/military. Crown Royal reminds adult consumers to always please drink responsibly.

TAPS Program - Support for families of fallen soldiers

Mentors support families of fallen soldiersBy Renee Chou
WRAL.com
August 21, 2010

Coping with a soldier's death can be a lonesome and difficult journey. But survivors of fallen soldiers don't have to go through it alone.

The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) offers peer mentor training to help survivors grieving a military loss.

Randy and Betsy Beard learned about TAPS after their 22-year-old son was killed in 2004 in Ramadi, Iraq.“He took shrapnel in the head and died about three hours later,” Randy Beard said.

Brad Beard was an Army mechanic who worked on howitzers. He was stationed in Korea for two years and volunteered to go to Iraq when he heard the Army needed mechanics.
“When someone really close to you dies, it just shatters your whole world,” Betsy Beard said.

“My heart was ripped apart,” Randy Beard said. “You are helpless. You can't help your wife. You can't help your family. There is nothing you can do to make it better.”

Overwhelmed with grief, the Beards contacted TAPS for help. A program mentor reached out to Betsy Beard by telephone.“She was a mom like me who lost a son in the military. She lived in Vermont,” Betsy Beard said. “I knew if she could survive, I could survive as well.”

The Beards are taking part this weekend in a TAPS camp in Pinehurst where about 150 people are learning how to survive military loss.“We are here to reach out our hand to those walking behind us,” Randy Beard said. “What that does for grief is that it helps us feel not so isolated,” Betsy Beard said.

The support is crucial because the Beards say they have learned that time does not heal the pain.“Time just moves on. What we do with our time can help or hinder us I think,” Randy Beard said.

The Beards, who live in Louisburg, travel to Fort Hood, Fort Campbell and Fort Lewis to provide peer mentoring. They also run a monthly support group for military families dealing with loss in Raleigh.

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."

U.S. anti-Islam protest seen as lift for extremists

U.S. anti-Islam protest seen as lift for extremists

Rhetoric over planned Islamic center near ground zero feeds anti-U.S. sentiment
New York Times
By Scott Shane
updated 8/21/2010 3:58:25 AM ET

WASHINGTON — Some counterterrorism experts say the anti-Muslim sentiment that has saturated the airwaves and blogs in the debate over plans for an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan is playing into the hands of extremists by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.

Opposition to the center by prominent politicians and other public figures in the United States has been covered extensively by the news media in Muslim countries. At a time of concern about radicalization of young Muslims in the West, it risks adding new fuel to Al Qaeda’s claim that Islam is under attack by the West and must be defended with violence, some specialists on Islamic militancy say.

“I know people in this debate don’t intend it, but there are consequences for these kinds of remarks,” said Brian Fishman, who studies terrorism for the New America Foundation here.

He said that Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric hiding in Yemen who has been linked to several terrorist plots, has been arguing for months in Web speeches and in a new Qaeda magazine that American Muslims face a dark future of ever-worsening discrimination and vilification.

“When the rhetoric is so inflammatory that it serves the interests of a jihadi recruiter like Awlaki, politicians need to be called on it,” Mr. Fishman said.

Feeding into anti-American sentiment Evan F. Kohlmann, who tracks militant Web sites at the security consulting firm Flashpoint Global Partners, said supporters of Al Qaeda have seized on the controversy “with glee.” On radical Web forums, he said, the dispute over the Islamic center, which would include space for worship, is lumped together with fringe developments like a Florida pastor’s call for making Sept. 11 “Burn a Koran Day.”

“It’s seen as proof of what Awlaki and others have been saying, that the U.S. is hypocritical and that most Americans are enemies of Islam,” Mr. Kohlmann said. He called the anti-Islam statements spawned by the dispute “disturbing and sad” and said they were feeding anti-American sentiment that could provoke violence.

While some critics of the Islamic center have carefully limited their objection to its proximity to the site of the Sept. 11 attacks, and have rejected any suggestion that they are anti-Muslim, the issue has tapped into a well of suspicion and hostility to Islam across the country.

Many Republican politicians, including Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, have said that the proposed location of the center showed insensitivity to the victims of 9/11.

Others political leaders, including President Obama, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Gov. Christopher J. Christie of New Jersey, have defended the right of Muslims to build the center or warned against anti-Muslim hysteria.

Strong emotions

The dispute has tapped strong emotions in the wake of a series of terrorist plots and attacks over the last year aimed at American targets, several of them inspired or encouraged by Mr. Awlaki. The events included the killing of 13 people in November at Fort Hood, Tex., by an Army psychiatrist, Nidal Malik Hasan; the failed attack on a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25 by a young Nigerian man; and the attempted bombing of Times Square in May by Faisal Shahzad, a financial analyst who had worked for a Connecticut cosmetics company.

Mr. Awlaki, whose Web diatribes calling for attacks on the United States have turned up repeatedly in terrorism investigations, has sought to counter the notion that American tolerance extends to Muslims.

In a March posting, Mr. Awlaki, who lived in the United States for nearly 20 years, predicted that America would become “a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps.”

“Don’t be deceived by the promises of preserving your rights from a government that is right now killing your own brothers and sisters,” he wrote. “Today, with the war between Muslims and the West escalating, you cannot count on the message of solidarity you may get from a civic group or a political party, or the word of support you hear from a kind neighbor or a nice co-worker. The West will eventually turn against its Muslim citizens!”

'Demoralizing'
Dalia Mogahed of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies said the outcry over the proposed center “plays into Awlaki’s arguments and Osama bin Laden’s arguments” by suggesting that Islam has no place in the United States.

She said that extreme anti-Muslim views in the United States ironically mirror a central tenet of extreme Islamists: “That the world is divided into two camps, and they’re irreconcilable, and Muslims have to choose which side they’re on.”

Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker and a potential 2012 presidential candidate, said in a Fox News interview that “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington,” a comment that drew criticism for appearing to equate those proposing the Islamic center with Nazis.

Asked about the view that such remarks could fuel radicalism, Mr. Gingrich sent an e-mail response on Friday that did not directly address his critics but said that “Americans must learn to tell the truth about radical Islamists while being supportive of and inclusive of moderate Muslims who live in the modern world, respect women’s rights, reject medieval punishment and defend American laws and the American Constitution.” He added that he believed “it is possible to be a deeply religious Muslim and a patriotic American.”

Muqtedar Khan, an associate professor of political science at the University of Delaware, said he was not sure the Islamic center dispute alone would radicalize anyone. But he said it was “demoralizing” for Muslims like him who defend the United States as an open and tolerant society.

“For the first time, anti-Islamic rhetoric has gone mainstream,” he said. “What this really does is weaken the moderates and undermine their credibility.”

Hey Mom - you're not forgotten!!

A stand-in Mother’s Day card
By Luke Larson

On this Mother’s Day millions of heartfelt cards will be sent. When opened they will reveal great appreciation for all the sacrifices mothers endured for their children. However there will be one group who desperately would love such a card - although their mailbox has the highest chance of remaining empty - they are the mothers of the 180,000 service members presently in Iraq and Afghanistan. These moms would gladly forfeit their card for the knowledge that their grown children are safe.

So I offer this letter as a stand-in to my own mother for my twin-brother, a Marine officer, who is currently deployed to Helmand Province in Afghanistan I also offer this to all the mothers whose adult children are in a combat zone a world away in dangerous cities such as Ar Ramadi, or Marjah.

During my two tours to Iraq in 2005 and 2007 I did not write my dear mother on Mother’s Day. It was not for lack of appreciation but rather my total commitment to the task at hand. As an infantry officer I felt tremendous pressure to get my platoon and company back to the States safely. While some in uniform had an opportunity to send a card or an email, my focus on men and mission too often blocked out my duties to my own family- like writing Mother’s Day letters.

I do not envy what a mother experiences during a deployment. What the wives and mothers experience is far worse than that of the Marine or soldier experience because they are thinking worst case. They need to be consoled in knowledge that the soldiers and Marines fight hardest to bring each other home.

In these years of multiple deployments, many mothers wonder “Do they appreciate that I’m worried sick about them?” I can assure you they do. After yet another long day in Ramadi, I found no greater joy than to open a letter from my mom and read about how, “They’re calling for rain and everything’s same ol’ same ol’ in Johnsonville.”
So to the Mother’s of sons and daughters deployed on this day I offer this as a stand-in Mother’s-day card, and convey my deepest gratitude for your continued support of your children’s service to our country. Don’t take an empty mailbox as lack of gratefulness, but rather their commitment to send their fellow sons and daughters home safely to you.

=========

Luke Larson served two tours in Iraq as a Marine Infantry Officer. He lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife, Kristen and is author of “Senator’s Son: An Iraq War Novel

Why is Gates Delaying Troop Request?

Afghan Troop Request Simmers

By Yochi J. Dreazen
Wall Street Journal
September 26, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, is expected to formally ask the Pentagon for up to 40,000 additional U.S. troops this weekend, military officials said, despite a plan to delay the request.

Gen. McChrystal has held off on the request for several weeks at the! direction of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Pentagon's civilian leadership, while the Obama administration conducts a broad reassessment of its strategy in Afghanistan.

Aides to Mr. Gates say the defense chief won't forward the request to the White House until that review has been completed -- and if its conclusion is to maintain the current war strategy.

On Friday, Gen. McChrystal flew to Germany to deliver a briefing on the request to Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other senior military commanders.

Adm. Mullen, the nation's top military officer, requested the half-day meeting at an American base at Ramstein, "to gain a better understanding of the pending resource requirements," according to a military official familiar with the meeting. "He wanted to talk about it face to face with Gen. McChrystal, to really hear him out."

Another military! official said Gen. McChrystal used the session to detail the numbers of additional troops he wants and his overall plans for using them to beat back the resurgent Taliban.

Military officials familiar with the matter say Gen. McChrystal's written report lays out several options for additional forces, including one that would ask for more than 40,000 reinforcements. About 65,000 American troops are now in Afghanistan, the most since the war began in 2001.

It is far from clear that Gen. McChrystal will get the additional troops, which the commander says are vital to turning around the flagging U.S.-led war.

The Obama administration announced a new Afghanistan strategy in March that focused on protecting Afghan civilians from Taliban attack rather than hunting individual militants. It is now weighing whether to modify or jettison that approach in the wake of a lingering controversy over the country's flawed presidential elections and a wave of Taliban violence.

Gen. McChrystal also faces hurdles in Congress, where many Dem! ocrats have expressed resistance to a troop increase and have been pressing for an exit strategy.

Five U.S. troops were killed in volatile southern Afghanistan Thursday, part of a surge of American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troop fatalities that is sapping public support for the war in the U.S. and Europe.

Thursday's casualties pushed the U.S. death toll in Afghanistan to 218 this year, including 36 this month, a sharp increase over last year's record toll of 155. Britain, which maintains the second-largest troop contingent, has lost 80 soldiers this year.

In a sign of the growing doubts about the war on both sides of the Atlantic, a British military commander who had led its forces in Afghanistan resigned suddenly after reportedly accusing the government of failing to provide its troops with the proper protective equipment and vehicles.

Maj. Gen. Andrew Mackay, who led the British forces in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province in 200! 7 and 2008, submitted his resignation Thursday. An American officer wh o served with him in Afghanistan said Gen. Mackay had come to believe British troops there were being exposed to unnecessary risk.

Osama bin Laden, the fugitive head of al Qaeda, apparently sought to seize on the war's unpopularity in Europe by releasing a recording Friday demanding that European nations withdraw troops and threatening attacks against European targets. U.S. officials said they believed the recording to be authentic.

The five-minute monologue by the terrorist mastermind made specific mention of a recent airstrike ordered by German forces and was part of a video that featured German subtitles, a still photo of Mr. bin Laden and a map of Europe.

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.

Tom Friedman:The Policy Better Match their Sacrifice

The Policy Has To Match The Sacrifice

By Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times
September 13, 2009

On Sept. 3, this newspaper published a very revealing front-page article from Iraq about a bizarre bank-robbery that summed up the challenge of where we are in Baghdad and Kabul and how to think about what it will take to succeed in both places.

The article began with an appalling tale: bodyguards for one of Iraq’s most powerful men, Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, tied up eight security officers at a Baghdad bank, executed them point blank and then made off with $4.3 million in cash. It is the sort of story that leaves war supporters shaking their heads, asking what have we accomplished in six years of U.S. involvement there, and war opponents saying, “I told you so.”

But then, suddenly, the story took an interesting turn. It noted that the robbers were quickly identified by witnesses, and most were arrested. After a short trial, a court in Baghdad sentenced four out of the nine robbery suspects to death. One man was acquitted; the other four are still missing.

Although the plotters are still on the loose, “the robbery also demonstrated in some rickety way that Iraq’s young institutions, the judiciary, the news media and its increasingly democratic politics, make it difficult for even the country’s most powerful people to snap their fingers and make an embarrassing case go away,” the article noted. “And, contrary to the state of affairs under Saddam Hussein, there was an open trial free for anyone to criticize — and they did — even if death sentences were handed down in only two and a half days.” All the money was reportedly recovered.

Why is this story revealing? First, Iraqis and Afghans have one big thing in common: They are like battered children. And battered children often grow up to be battering adults. That is, to survive under Saddam in Iraq or to survive the Russian occupation and the Taliban years in Kabul was to survive terrifying levels of brutality. And it made many people brutal and corrupt to get by.

What you see in this bank robbery story is the struggle between Iraq’s old political culture of brutality and corruption and its incipient new one of democracy and the rule of law.

Now that Saddam is gone, we have to hope “that a new generation will grow up with enough rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and democracy that it will be able to overcome the culture of brutality that Saddam instilled,” said Joseph Sassoon, the Baghdad-born author of “Iraqi Refugees” and an adjunct professor at Georgetown. “But we should have no illusions; the batterers may still win.”

That is what we have accomplished in Iraq so far: At a huge cost, we have given a chance for a more democratic political culture to emerge in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world. That is not insignificant. But changing a political culture is hard. It will take a long time before one trend decisively wins — and more American help will be needed to keep it on track.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. military is advocating a new strategy, designed to make the Afghan people feel safe in order to get their cooperation in defeating the Taliban. It, too, requires changing the political culture and state-building from bottom up, another long historical process. You can’t visit a Greg Mortenson school for girls there without being touched by the necessity of such an effort. But you can’t walk through an Afghan town made of mud huts, or observe how our Afghan “allies” perverted the last election, without sensing how hard it will be.

While visiting Afghanistan in July, I met a U.S. diplomat in Helmand Province who told me this story: He had served in Anbar, in Iraq, and one day a Marine officer came to him, after carrying a wounded buddy off the battlefield on his back, and said to him, “The policy had better match the sacrifice.”
In Iraq, for way too long, our policy did not match the sacrifice of our soldiers. It was badly planned and under-resourced. Before we proceed with this new strategy in Afghanistan we have to give our generals a chance to make their case, we also have to insist that Congress debate it anew, hear other experts, and, if Congress decides to go ahead, to formally authorize it. Like Iraq, it would involve a long struggle, and we can’t ask our soldiers to start something we have no stomach to finish.

In short, President Obama has to be as committed to any surge in Afghanistan as President Bush was in Iraq, because Mr. Obama will have to endure a lot of bad news before things — might — get better.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told an American Legion convention about Afghanistan: “Let’s take a good hard look at this fight we’re in, what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I’d rather see us as a nation argue about the war, struggling to get it right, than ignore it. Because each time I go to Dover to see the return of someone’s father, brother, mother, or sister, I want to know that collectively we’ve done all we can to make sure that sacrifice isn’t in vain.”

Sect Gates interviewed by Al-Jazeera

Al Jazeera English (english.aljazeera.net)
September 8, 2009

Mr. Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, says bringing peace and security to Afghanistan and Iraq represents a major challenge, but one that the US is committed to achieving.

In a wide-ranging interview with Al Jazeera's Abderrahim Foukara, Gates spoke about: the US strategy for peace in Afghanistan facing a "war of necessity", the divide between two wars, fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan's role in the region, the "threat" of a nuclear Iran:

Strategy for peace in Afghanistan
Q - There are rumblings of discontent with the war in Afghanistan among many Americans. Is that cause for concern to you personally as secretary of defence?

Americans know that our country has been at war for a number of years ever since we were attacked in 2001.

Obviously we've lost a lot of our young men and women in combat, not to mention the casualties in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11.

And so there is a sort of war awareness on the part of the American people.

By the same token, I believe that they and members of our congress vividly remember that it was from Afghanistan that the attack was launched. And that the Taliban did not just provide a safe haven for al-Qaeda, but actively co-operated with them, colluded with them and provided them with a worldwide base of operations.

And so I think the American people know that we have to work with the Afghan government and people so that they can establish control over their own territory and prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for al-Qaeda in the future.

The reality is also that al-Qaeda has killed many more Muslims than it has Americans, Europeans and others. So this is a challenge we all face and I am confident the American people will sustain their committment to help the Afghan people.

Q - How much is the US in a pickle in Afghanistan?
I think the picture is mixed. It's clear that the Taliban have had success in reinfiltrating back into the country.

They have intimidated a lot of Afghans. And so we and our allies and a lot of the security forces, clearly have our work cut out for us.

The situation is serious, but General McChrystal and, I must say, the Afghan defence minister [Abdul Rahim] Wardak have told me that we can be successful.

Q - In light of the US attack in Kunduz, which resulted in the killing of many civilian Afghans, how much of a real problem are civilian deaths in Afghanistan?I think it's a real problem, and General McChrystal thinks it's a real problem too.

Clearly, we regret any loss of civilian life in Afghanistan, and I've addressed this issue while in Afghanistan as well in the United States. And one of the central themes of General McChrystal's new approach in Afghanistan is significant change in our tactical approach to try and minimise the number of innocent civilians that are killed.

So he has changed the rules in terms of air power. He has issued a directive that convoys obey Afghan traffic laws, and, in fact, that our troops take some additional risk to themselves to avoid innocent Afghan casualties.

Part of the challenge here is that the Taliban actively target innocent civilians and they al so create circumstances where they mingle among innocent civilians.And they are willing to put innocent civilians at risk.

But we are trying to figure out new tactics that minimise this.

But it is a challenge. Central to the success of the 42 nations that are trying to help the Afghan people and government at this point is that the Afghan people continue to believe that we are their friends, their partners and here to help them.

So civilian casualties are a problem for us and we are doing everything conceivable to try and avoid that.

I think that based on the latest polling that we have, nationwide, in Afghanistan, fewer than 10 per cent of the people support the Taliban.

The Taliban's approach is one principally of intimadation of villagers and others, and Afghans don't want to live under those circumstances. They don't want to live under the Taliban rule again.

While they may not actively support the US, neither do they support the Taliban.

The Afghan people have been at war for over 30 years. What they want is peace and security. Over time, we and all of the international community with us, along with the Afghan security forces, are in a position to try to bring that to them.

Facing a 'war of necessity'
Q - Do you think saying the US is in Afghanistan to help the people holds water despite the fact that Afghans have traditionally been hostile to foreign forces in their country? In the past they rejected occupation, first by the British and later on by the Soviets, for example.

I think that the historical rejection of foreign powers has been because the Afghan people have come to see those powers, whether it's Britain or the Soviet Union or anyone else, as being there for their own imperial interests, rather than being there in the interests in the Afghan people.

We have no interest in a permanent presence in Afghanistan; no interest in bases in Afghanistan.

What our interest is, is in giving the Afghan people the capacity to protect its own people and to prevent Afghanistan from being a centre for violent extremists again. And then we'll leave.

And I think that's an important message from us to the Afghan people. We want to give them the capacity to protect their own security as well as the security of other nations around the world from threats emanating from Afghanistan, and then we'll be gone.

When Barack Obama said the war in Afghanistan was a war of necessity, did he say that because he knew it could be a winnable situation or because if he said otherwise and he talked about exiting Afghanistan, people would say President Obama does not have what it takes to look after the national security concerns of Americans?

I do not believe that President Obama would have made trhe committment he has made if he did not believe we could achieve our objectives in Afghanistan, which as I have described are giving them the capacity to secure their own territory and prevent al-! Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan.

If he didn't think, he could achieve those objectives, I don't believe he would have committed the additional forces he has, or made the statement in support of the strategy as he did a few weeks ago.

Q - So you think the war in Afghanistan is winnable?

I don't like to speak in terms of winning or losing. I think we need to speak in terms of achieving our objectives.

This is not just about the United States, it's about the Afghan government and people, about dozens of nations and nongovernmental organisations that are in Afghanistan that all share the same objectives that I have just described.

Which is to bring peace and security to the Afghan people and to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a haven for violent extremists.

I think that those objectives are achievable and I think that's the way we ought to think about it.

Q - There is a debate about the level of US troops in Afghanistan. Some people say to secure the gains the US makes in Afghanistan, the troop le vel needs to be increased. Others say the more you increase the level of troops, the more you increase the targets for the Taliban.

We are not yet beginning to think about significant troops in Afghanistan.

The next step for us is to evaluate General McChrystal's assessment of the situation and the way he intends to implement the president's strategy going forward. And once we've done that, then we will look at the question of whether additional resources are needed to achieve those objectives.

I have been concerned about ... I have had a number of reservations about the number of US troops.

One of those is - as we were just talking - about whether our forces come to be seen by the Afghans at some point as occupiers rather than partners.

General McChrystal's point, which I think has great validity, is: it's really how those forces are used and how they interact with the Afghan people that determines how they are seen by the Afghans.

And I think that the approach that he has taken, in terms of partnering with the Afghans, and interacting with the Afghan people, and supporting them, mitigates the concerns that I had.

There are issues on both sides of [the argument] and, frankly, I haven't made up my own mind at this point, in terms of whether more forces are needed.

Q - So, as far as you are concerned, thinking about withdrawing the US militarily from Afghanistan, even thinking about it, is out of the question?That's my view.

The divide between two wars
Q - This takes me back to the original point you made about 9/11. President Bush made the original decision to go to war in Afghanistan, which he did, and then subsequently made the decision to go to war in Iraq, opening himself to criticism that he diverted crucial attention from Afghanistan to Iraq. And yet, now we have President Obama saying that it is a war of necessity. A lot of people would argue it was a war of necessity then, but having moved away from it, then come back to it a gain, it's become a war of choice.

It is a matter of first of all, this gets very tied up into US politics and the controversies of the war in Iraq and so on. I think that success in achieiving our objectives in Afghanistan has been a consistent theme since 2002, for both the Bush administration and the Obama administration.

I think President Obama would say as you suggested that our attention was diverted by Iraq and now it is important to focus, again, on the situation in Afghanistan, and the truth is the situation in Afghanistan has changed, and it really began to change in 2005 and 2006.

Frankly, when agreements were reached on the Pakistani side of the border, it essentially relieved the pressure from the Pakistan side, on the Taliban who were then in Pakistan.

And so we have seen a steady increase in violence that really began late in 2005 and early 2006, and the Taliban have gotten better and better over that time.

You also now have aliances of convenience between the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - his group - and al-Qaeda. So it is now perhaps a more complex situation than it was in 2002.

But in terms of the determination to deal with this problem and partner with the Afghans in achieving these objectives, the president is absolutely firm.

Q - When you say the situation now is much more complex, to what extent is that synonymous with saying we, US politicians, missed the bandwagon?The way I would phrase it, and the way we have phrased, it is that we did not provide the resources in Afghanistan early enough to stem this change in the situation in 2005 and 2006.

And we have to speak frankly: because of the troop commitments in Iraq, we didn't have the resources to move in reinforcements if you will as the situation in Afghanistan began to deteriorate.

When I first arrived in this job, I extended one brigade in Afghanistan in January 2007 and added another brigade later in spring 2007 but that was really about all the resources that we had at that time.

As we have drawn down in Iraq, more capability has become available.

Q - I would like to ask you about the 'shenanigans' with the news agency Associated Press over the publication of the picture of the dead US marine. Doesn't that put you in a difficult position, leaving you open to the accusation of infringing or violating freedom of expression?

I have, in a letter that I sent to the head of the Associated Press, I said this is not a matter of law, this is not a matter of policy, this is not a constitutional issue, this is a question of judgement, of common decency, and out of respect for the family.

What I asked was, that they defer to the wishes of the family that these pictures of their maimed and stricken child not be provided the newspaper all over the United States. They chose to go ahead and do it anyway.

Q - And you are not concerned that this may have been interpreted as an infringement on the freedom of press?
No I don't think. There is no question, no issue of infringement of the freedom of the press whatsoever. I was asking them, I didn't pressure them, I didn't threaten them.

All I did was ask the. In fact, the words that I used with the head of the Associated Press was that "I beg you to defer to the wishes of the father of this marine".

That's all I asked. That's not an infringement of the freedom of the press. That's an appeal to common decency.

Pakistan's role in the region
Q - [Washington Post columnist] George Will recently wrote about Pakistan, saying that it is the country that really matters. What do you make of that, given that the implications are that Afghanistan does not really matter, that the US should get out of Afghanistan?

Pakistan is very important. It is important intrinsically to the United States.

We have been a friend of Pakistan's for a long time and an ally of Pa! kistan's. We've had a very close relationship and we look forward to b uilding that relationship, going forward completely independent of Afghanistan.

I think one of the new aspects of the president's strategy with respect to Afghanistan is the recognition that the problem we face there, we and the Afghans, is a regional problem.

And as we've seen in recent months, it is a problem that the Pakistani government faces and so I think Pakistan clearly is important.

It is important in its own right to the United States, as a friend and ally, but it is also important in terms of violent extremists that cross back and forth across that border and put both the government of Afghanistan and the government of Pakistan at risk.

Given the difficulties that successive Pakistani civilian governments have had, how dependable, from a US point of view, do you think the current government in Pakistan is, in terms of being able to deal not only with the volatility of Pakistan but also the regional volatility, Afghanistan, India and so f! orth?

I think if you look back, 15 or 16 months, the Pakistani government has performed admirably.

No one I think would have predicted the political consensus that has emerged in Pakistan in terms of the effort to take on these violent extremists in the North West Frontier Province, in the Fata [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] and in that area.

I think people would not have predicted the success of the Pakistani army. I think people would not have predicted the success in the Pakistani government's effective dealing with internally displaced persons as a result of a military operation and how many of them have returned to Swat and how effective the Pakistani government has been in this respect.

So all of that is simply to say I believe that the Pakistani government, both the civilian side and the military side, have performed better than almost anyone's expectations in the region, or in this country, or elsewhere, and we are very impressed by that and we are prepared to be helpful, to help the Pakistanis in any way we can.

Q Given the serious misgivings that the United States had in the past about the role of Pakistani intelligence, in terms of dealing with the Taliban, there were accusations tothe Pakistani intelligence at that time that they were actually lending a hand of support to the Taliban.Are you100 per cent satisfied now that that has stopped and thatyou, the US, the Pakistani military and the Pakistani civiliangovernment are all in the same trench, working for the samegoal?

First of all, I believe we are in the same trench, working for the same goal.

I think you have to go back a little bit in history. I was very much involved in the American effort 20, 25 years ago in co-operation with Pakistan to support the muhajidin in Afghanistan when they were fighting against the Soviet Union.

One of the vehicles that we used in that effort was the connection between the Pakistani intelligence and vario! us muhajidin groups within Afghanistan.

So these relationships with groups in Afghanistan and with Pakistanis go back a long way and at that time we were very productive and very useful.

My own view is that the connections were maintained largely as a hedge because the Pakistanis are very concerned about the stability of their border area and about the stability of Afghanistan and they weren't sure whether we would continue our efforts in Afghanistan.

So I believe we're on the same page, I believe we're working for the same goals. I have a lot of confidence in the Pakistanis.

Q- Basically the implication of what you're saying is that the United States will not do again what it did after the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which is to cut loose and leave the regional players to fend for themselves, undermining the credibility of the US in that part of Asia?
I think that's absolutely right. And I have to say I was in the American g! overnment at the time we did that and it was a serious strategic mista ke.

As soon as the Soviets left Afghanistan, we turned our backs on Afghanistan and we did not cultivate our relationship with the Pakistanis properly. And so I think we gave rise to doubts in the region about whether we are prepared to stay there and be their partner on a continuous basis, and I believe we've learned our lesson and that both Afghanistan and Pakistan can count on us for the long term.

In terms of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, you are absolutely categorically sure that there is no risk that they may fall into the wrong hands given the pressures that the Taliban in Afghanistan are exerting not just on the Pakistanis but also on the United States in Pakistan?

I'm quite comfortable that the security arrangements for the Pakistani nuclear capabilities are sufficient and adequate.

Q - What sort of guarantees do you have to cover that?
I would say it's based both on our own understanding of the security arrangements that the Pakistanis have for their weapons and their capabilities, their laboratories and so on. But also the insurances we have been given by the Pakistanis.

Q - Were you baffled by President Obama's envoy Richard Holbrooke, when he was asked how he would measure progress and he said 'we will know it when we see it'?
I probably would have answered the question differently.

Q - How would you have answered it?
I would have answered it: I believe that success or progress will be as when we see the Afghan national security forces, the army and the police, assuming a greater and greater role in security operations protecting Afghanistan and the Afghan people, so that we can recede, first into an advisory role and then leave altogether.

So in some way, it's somehow comparable to the situation in Iraq where our role has become less and less prominent, where the Iraqis have taken a more and more prominent role protecting their own security, and I think tha! t will be one way we will be able to measure success in Afghanistan as we see the Afghan security forces taking a more and more prominent and leading role in protecting their own security.

Fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq
Q - In the latest press conference that you gave, together with Admiral Mike Mullen, you talked about the analogies people often make between Afghanistan and Iraq. You said that the fundamental difference is that in Iraq there has been a strong central government but in Afghanistan, there has never been a strong central government. And in terms of fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, that's obviously making your work a lot more difficult. How confident are you that the Iraqi central government, led by Nuri al-Maliki, at the present time, can hold the country together after you leave?

I think we have real confidence that they can do that and I think the best evidence that a sense of Iraqi nationalism has returned is that al-Qaeda has made very strong efforts in recent weeks and months to try and provoke a renewal of the sectarian violence between the Sunnis and the Shias in Iraq through suicide bombers, and what has been interesting and encouraging is that they have failed in that effort.

The Shia understand this is al-Qaeda trying to provoke that kind of a conflict and they're having none of it, so there has not been any renewal of sectarian violence.

Our generals have very high regard of the Iraqi army and, increasingly, Iraqi police, and I think we would not have felt comfortable agreeing to the arrangements we have to pull out of Iraqi cities, and to put a deadline on the withdrawal of American combat troops, if we didn't have confidence in the Iraqis. I think [commander of US forces in Iraq] General [Ray] Odierno would say they have developed better and faster than he would have anticipated.

So we are very encouraged by the developments in Iraq with respect to the security situation despite these suicide bombings that we think are mostly th! e efforts of al-Qaeda.

Q - A lot of the people in the region will look at Iraq post-2003, now that you say al-Qaeda has been trying to stoke up sectarian strife in Iraq. A lot of people will look at 2003, and at what the United States did post 2003, and say: Actually that was the engine of sectarian strife in Iraq in the first place.

Well, I wasn't in government at the time and I was no expert on Iraq before I came into government. I wouldn't pretend to be an expert now either but ...

Q - But would you say the US getting out of Iraq would necessarily put an end to sectarian strife or would it actually increase the prospects of sectarian strife?
I think that what we have already seen in Iraq, despite the provocations by al-Qaeda, the Iraqis are ready to move beyond the violence of the last several years and to grove their economy and to have peace.

I think that's why you have not seen renewed sectarian violence and that's why we are comfortable with the arrangements in which we have withdrawn from cities and in which we will withdraw all our combat troops by the end of August next year.

We are very comfortable with that, and that means we do not believe there will be a renewal of the sectarian violence with our departure.

Q - My understanding is that President Obama has pledged that the US will not build any permanent military bases in Iraq after leaving. Does that pledge still stand?
Absolutely.

Q - Now how do you define permanent? Because bases in Germany have been there for about 60 years now. In Korea for a similar period of time. How do you define permanent and how do you define temporary?

Temporary is based on the fact that another part of this agreement is that all US forces will be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. That is the agreement that we have with the Iraqi government: all US forces. No bases, no forces.

Q - Unless the Iraqis ask you to stay?
Unless there is some new agreement, or some new negotiation which would clearly be on Iraqi terms.

But we will not have any permanent bases in Iraq. We have no interest in permanent bases in Iraq and we are now planning on withdrawing all American military forces by the end of 2011.

The 'threat' of a nuclear IranQ - A lot of people, including some of your closest allies in the Gulf, think that at the end of the day, the real winner after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is Iran, and, you listen to US politicians here in DC, you have a real problem with Iran.

I think Iran has been a challenge for the United States, and for the international community for that matter, for 30 years. I think that a strong and democratic Iraq, particularly one with a multi-sectarian government, becomes a barrier to Iranian influence and not a bridge for it.

So I think, in the short term, perhaps Iran's position was strengthened somewhat but I think if you look to the longer term, and the role that Iraq can play in the region going forward, I think that Iran's position may well be diminished.

Q - But many people feel that you took out one fundamental bastion against Iranian influence in the region and that is the regime of Saddam Hussein. You changed the political configuration in the country, bringing a Shia government to power. Everybody knows there are Iraqi politicians in the Iraqi government who are very close to Iran or have some sort of sensibility that makes them close to the government of Iran. How is that going to be a bastion against Iranian influence even in the long term?

Well, I think first of all we've seen over the past years a genuine assertion of Iraqi nationalism from Prime Minister Maliki and from other leaders inside Iraq.

I have no doubt that at the end of the day, the leaders in Iraq are first and foremost Iraqis. After all none of them have forgotten the eight years of war that they fought with Saddam Hussein and they haven't forgotten that Saddam Hussein started that war.

So I think that, by all accounts that we can see and the actions we have seen the government of Iraq take, including for example Prime Minister Maliki's offensive in the Basra area over a year ago, made clear they are most concerned with maintaining Iraqi sovereignty.

If the United States has learned anything in the last year as we have negotiated the framework agreement with the Iraqis it is that the Iraqis are very sensitive about their sovereignty and, as with almost any other country, are not going to tolerate other countries trying to interfere in their internal affairs.

Brotherhood & Combat - Ethos of the Marines

<Till Death Do Us Part
By Matthew Bogdanos
Washington Post
August 16, 2009


"Any man in combat who lacks comrades who will die for him, or for whom he is willing to die," William Manchester wrote of his time as a Marine in World War II, "is not a man at all. He is truly damned." A century earlier, Robert E. Lee famously remarked that it was good that war "is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it." Neither was glorifying war;they hated its carnage. They were, rather, paying homage to the unique bonds forged in war, especially the one that enables so many to risk their lives, not only for friends but also for those they might have just met or have nothing in common with back home.

This extraordinary feature of combat is depicted in movies in bold, heroic colors, without depth or explanation. Most leaders in the military, however, spend a lifetime trying to understand its complexity. Our pursuit usually starts at Thermopylae, a mountain pass in northern Greece where, in 480 B.C., 300 Spartans faced the entire Persian army. Leonidas, the Spartan king, had a choice: retreat, and live to fight another day, or stand. When the Persian king offered, "We do not want your lives, only your arms," Leonidas answered, "Molon labe" (come and get them). They held out for seven days, fighting until their weapons broke and then, Herodotus says, "with bare hands and teeth." Their spirit lives whenever wounded soldiers ask to return to their units rather than rotate home or sentries rest their chins on the point of a bayonet to stay awake so others sleep safely.

Before going into harm's way, we reflect on this remarkable aspect of combat. Using its history as a source of pride and inspiration, we make this bond part of our ethos. We are humbled to follow, yet hopeful to live up to, those who have gone before -- as at Belleau Wood in 1918. When his men were being cut to pieces by German machine guns, Marine 1st Sgt Dan Daly, already the recipient of two Medals of Honor, charged the guns shouting, "Come on, you sons-of-bitches! Do you want to live forever?" More than just history, this retelling to each new generation becomes a pledge: Although some will die, those who follow will keep the faith by keeping our memory; a promise of immortality that asks instead, "Don't you want to live forever?"

Post-deployment, we are also engaged. Despite countless other tasks after a combat tour and the need to begin preparing for the next mission, we pause to value what has occurred, trying - not always successfully - to reconcile the horrors of combat with the bond created during those horrors. Perhaps it is the dimly perceived recognition that together we are better than any one of us had ever been before - better maybe than we ever would be again. Or the dawning awareness that if we store up enough memories, these might someday be a source of strength, comfort or even our salvation.

Take the simple act of goodbye, of wishing comrades in arms fair winds and following seas. Those who have seen action together are not morbid about it. Just serious. It is, after all, the nature of the profession of arms that goodbyes are frequent and often final. But there is also the recognition that each of us has our own life and family to go back to in the "world." And even if we do "keep in touch," it will never be with the same intensity, never again as pure as it was when I had your! "six," (your six o'clock, your back) and you had mine.

We examine as well the many contradictions of life in a combat zone. Our eyesight and hearing are sharp, our other senses keen. The water always quenches our thirst. The sky is bluer than we thought possible. And we're with the best friends we'll ever have. The good gets better, but the bad gets worse. We always have some minor eye or ear infection, our feet hurt all the time, and sleep is sporadic at best. The heat is sweltering, the cold bone-chilling. We're constantly tense to the breaking point. And lonelier than we ever imagined.

Once you've experienced it, the memory never leaves - even after those fair winds and following seas have taken you as far as they did Sen. Mike Mansfield. After serving two years in the Marines as a teenager, he spent 34 years in Congress (the longest-serving majority leader ever) and 11 years as ambassador to Japan. He died in 2001 at age 98. His tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery bears seven words: "Michael Joseph Mansfield, PVT, US Marine Corps."

Ultimately, because of the business we are in, expected to fight, suffer and die without complaint, we also cultivate this bond to call on when needed. At times, it means being ruthlessly hard, as at Balaclava in 1854. When the "thin red line" of the 93rd Highlanders were all that stood between the Russian onslaught and the British camp, Sir Colin Campbell commanded the regiment he loved, "there is no retreat from here, men, you must die where you stand." At times, it means having compassion, as on Tulagi Island in the South Pacific in 1942. After an all-night attack, Marine Pfc. Edward "Johnny" Ahrens lay quietly in his foxhole. He'd been shot twice in the chest, and blood welled slowly from three deep bayonet wounds. Thirteen dead Japanese soldiers lay nearby; two others were draped over his legs. Legendarily tough Lewis Walt, later assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, gently gathered the dying man in his arms. Ahrens whispered, "Captain, they! tried to come over me last night, but I don't think they made it." Choking back tears, Walt replied softly, "They didn't, Johnny. They didn't."

Being effectively ruthless and genuinely caring are each manifestations of courage. The ability to effect their integration and foster the bond between leader and led can spell the difference between defeat and victory, because wars - fought with weapons - are won by people. Your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers. We are honored to lead them.

======

Matthew Bogdanos, a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves who has served tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa, is an assistant district attorney for New York City and the author of "Thieves of Baghdad."

A Marine Corps Love Story

Love Pulls Him Through
Here is the story of Marine Corporal Aaron Mankin and his wife Diana.

Corporal Mankin was badly burned from an IED attack during an operation to stop insurgents flowing into Iraq from Syria. His vehicle was blown over 10 feet into the air. Afterwards, Mankin remembered “I opened my eyes and I realized I was on fire.”

Mankin was so badly burned that it was six weeks before he could even bear to look at himself in a mirror. But the turning point came when his sweetheart Diana accepted his marriage proposal from his hospital bed. “At that moment, I realized that I was still the same man inside,” he said later. That realization, and Diana’s consistent love for him -- sustained him through 30 reconstructive surgeries.

Aaron and Diana Mankin are now the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl. Of his injuries, Mankin says they help him appreciate what he has been given. “I work harder at loving my daughter because of my injuries,” Mankin says,” I want her to see my scars as an advantage.”

That's love and family values - Marine Corps Style!

(Taken from Great Americans, Vienna, Va)

Why So Few Medals of Honor - Peralta ??

Few Medals of Honor for Iraq, Afghanistan
Just six medals bestowed despite duration of two Mideast wars The Associated Press
updated 9:02pm, Aug 1, 2009

WASHINGTON - Eight years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. About 4,000 members of the U.S. military killed in action. More than 34,000 wounded. Just six considered worthy of America's highest military award for battlefield valor.

For some veterans and members of Congress, that last number doesn't add up.

They question how so few Medals of Honor — all awarded posthumously — could be bestowed for wars of such magnitude and duration.

Pentagon officials say the nature of war has changed. Laser-guided missiles destroy enemy positions without putting soldiers in harm's way. Insurgents deploy roadside bombs rather than engage in firefights they're certain to lose.

Those explanations don't tell the whole story, said Rep. Duncan Hunter, a first-term lawmaker who served combat tours as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has sponsored legislation that directs the defense secretary to review current trends in awarding the Medal of Honor to determine what's behind the low count.

The bill passed the House. If Senate negotiators go along, Secretary Robert Gates would have to report back by March 31.

Congressman thinks standards have been raised
"It seems like our collective standard for who gets the Medal of Honor has been raised," said Hunter, R-Calif.

"The basis of warfare is you've got to take ground and then you've got to hold it. That takes people walking into houses, running up hills, killing bad guys and then staying there and rebuffing counterattacks," he said. "That's how warfare has always been no matter how many bombs you drop and how many predators you have flying around."

Military officials said they welcome the opportunity to conduct an in-depth review of the award process. Still, they dispute Hunter's theory.

"Nominations go through no more or less scrutiny than in the past," said Eileen Lainez, a Pentagon spokeswoman. "The standard for the Medal of Honor is high, as one would expect for our nation's most prestigious military decoration."

AMVETS, a veterans' advocacy group, said it supports Hunter's efforts. It held a banquet for Medal of Honors in January, and the low number of medals was a big topic of discussion, said Jay Agg, the group's communications director.

Deed must be above and beyond call of duty

The Medal of Honor has been awarded 3,467 times since the Civil War. Almost half — 1,522 — were awarded in that conflict alone. The next highest tally came from World War II — 464. In the Vietnam War, 244 were awarded.

To earn the medal, at least two eyewitnesses have to view a deed so outstanding that it clearly distinguishes gallantry above and beyond the call of duty. No margin of doubt is allowed. Nominations make their way through military channels until eventually they're approved at the highest levels of the Pentagon and then by the president.

Drew Dix, 64, of Mimbres, N.M., received the medal for actions taken during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam when he risked his life during a 56-hour battle to rescue civilians. He said he didn't feel comfortable judging the current Medal of Honor process.

"We've trusted the military to fight this war," Dix said. "We've got to trust the military in all aspects of it, including the awarding of medals."

Jack Jacobs, 64, received the award for actions taken in Vietnam to rescue wounded soldiers. He said the Pentagon's explanation for the low Medal of Honor count is logical, but he would not rule out other factors because of the subjective nature of the award.

"I'm not a fan of single factor analysis," Jacobs said. "There are lots of reasons why things occur and that is only one of them. Human attitudes also play a great role."

Jacobs, a military analysis at MSNBC, predicted the war in Afghanistan will involve more of the kind of close combat that leads to Medal of Honors being awarded.

It's unclear exactly how many soldiers have been nominated for the award from the two wars.

Seven have made it all the way to the defense secretary, and six were approved. The exception is Sgt. Rafael Peralta of San Diego. Hunter said the Peralta case shows that a higher standard is being used for the medal than in previous wars.

Peralta died on Nov. 15, 2004, during fighting in Fallujah, Iraq. The military's investigation showed he was probably hit by friendly fire from a member of his unit as they engaged insurgents inside a house.

Soldiers say Peralta covered live grenade with body
Witnesses said Peralta, a Mexican immigrant who became a U.S. citizen while in the Marines, fell to the ground face first after being shot in the crossfire. A fleeing insurgent threw a hand grenade into the room, which bounced off a couch and landed near Peralta's head.

"Sgt. Peralta grabbed the grenade and pulled it underneath him while we took cover," said an unidentified soldier whose name is blacked out as part of the investigative file the military released publicly.

Peralta's nomination was sent back for further investigation after a preliminary autopsy report stated the head wound would have been immediately incapacitating and "he could not have executed any meaningful motions."

In the end, Lt. General Richard F. Natonski, stuck with his recommendation: "I believe Sergeant Peralta made a conscious, heroic decision to cover the grenade and minimize the effects he knew it would have on the rest of his Marine team."

Gates assemble an independent panel to review the nomination — something he did not do in the other six cases sent his way. The reviewers included a former commanding general, a Medal of Honor recipient, a neurosurgeon and two pathologists.

"The reviewers each individually concluded that the evidence did not meet the exacting 'no doubt' standard necessary to support award of the MOH," Gates said in a letter to Hunter.

Robert Reynolds, a lance corporal at the time, was about three feet to five feet behind Peralta when the grenade exploded. He has no doubt that Peralta purposefully attempted to place the grenade underneath himself to save others.

"It wasn't just something he barely did. He physically reached out and pulled it into his body," said Reynolds, 31, and now a corrections office and father of two daughters in Ritzville, Wash.

In the end, Peralta received the Navy Cross, the branch's second-highest honor. Several California lawmakers have petitioned President Barack Obama to order a review of Peralta's case. AMVETS said all recipients of the second-highest honor for bravery for their branch of the military should have their case reviewed to determine if their actions merit the Medal of Honor.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

WSJ trashes the "Birthers"

It’s Certifiable
The last word on President Obama’s place of birth.
By JAMES TARANTO
Wall Street Journal
30 July 2009
Several readers have written over the past few days taking us to task for dismissing so-called birthers as lunatics without bothering to refute their claims. We reluctantly concede their point. The birthers have managed to sow confusion in the minds of some who are not lunatics, and for the latter group’s benefit it is worth clarifying matters.

Compounding the confusion, some rebuttals of the birthers’ claims have been based in part on misinformation. National Review, for example, asserts that it would not matter if the president had been born in a foreign country: “His mother was a native of Kansas, whose residents have been citizens of the United States for a very long time, and whose children are citizens of the United States as well.”

In fact, although some people born outside the U.S. are natural-born citizens (including John McCain, born in Panama, where his father was stationed as a naval officer), the timing and circumstances of Obama’s birth make the place a necessary condition for natural-born citizenship. The State Department Web site explains the law that would have applied if Obama were born overseas:

Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock: A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) INA provided the citizen parent was physically present in the U.S. for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child’s birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen are required for physical presence in the U.S. to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.

Obama was born before 1986 to married parents, and his father was an alien. Thus if it were an overseas birth, his mother would have to have lived in the U.S. for 5 years after age 14 in order for her child to be a natural-born American. Mrs. Obama was only 18 when Barack was born, so she had not even lived 5 years after age 14.

This is something of a technicality: Someone born overseas and after 1986, but otherwise in identical circumstances to Obama, would be a natural-born citizen thanks to a law signed by President Reagan. We don’t recall any outcry back then about the threat that some such person could grow up to be president, nor, as far as we are aware, are any birthers calling for a change in this law to return to the status quo ante 1986. Even if the birthers’ conspiracy theory were true, it would be hard to square the intensity of their emotion over the subject with the practical effect of Obama’s (hypothetical) overseas birth, which would be roughly nil.

Ah, but the law is the law, the birthers will reply--and who can disagree? The birthers can. Whether out of ignorance or dishonesty, they misrepresent the law at every turn. Back in November, as we noted, the birthers were claiming that the Supreme Court had ordered Obama to “prove” his eligibility for the presidency. In fact, all that had happened was that a lawyer had asked the high court to hear an appeal of a lower court’s decision throwing out his frivolous lawsuit for lack of standing. The justices, of course, denied the petition, and all such lawsuits have been summarily dismissed for lack of standing. The law is the law.

The birthers have also misrepresented the law in the claims they have made about Obama’s birth certificate. In truth, Obama has proved that he is a native of Hawaii, and this proof would hold up in any legal or administrative proceeding.

In order to explain the birthers’ deception on this point, it is necessary to delve into the arcana of Hawaiian vital records. The document that Obama has released, which carries the title “certification of live birth,” confirms that the president was born in Honolulu. It is a legal birth certificate, and, as the Honolulu Star-Bulletin notes, it is the only kind of birth certificate the state of Hawaii issues.

FactCheck.org has a close-up photo of the certificate, which states clearly at the bottom: “This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.” If a court were somehow to take up the question of Obama’s eligibility, then, the birth certificate would almost certainly be sufficient to resolve the question in his favor. The opposing side would have to provide serious evidence calling into question the veracity of Hawaii’s official state records. Innuendo and hearsay would not be admissible.

Further, if Congress were to pass the so-called birther bill, Obama would be able to comply easily. The bill would require presidential campaigns to submit “a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate” to the Federal Election Commission. The certificate Obama has released publicly would meet this requirement.

Ah, but what about the original birth certificate? This is the nub of the birther “case,” and this is where things get really obscure.

As the Star-Bulletin notes, Hawaiian birth certificates have changed in form since Obama was born. Back then, the official record was a paper document with the title “certificate of live birth” (rather than “certification”), and it included “more information, such as the name of hospital, certifier’s name and title; attendant’s name and title, etc.” Hawaii no longer issues those old-style birth certificates:

[Spokeswoman Janice] Okubo explained that the Health Department went paperless in 2001.

”At that time, all information for births from 1908 (on) was put into electronic files for consistent reporting,” she said. Information about births is transferred electronically from hospitals to the department.

”The electronic record of the birth is what (the Health Department) now keeps on file in order to provide same-day certified copies at our help window for most requests,” Okubo said.

CNN has reported--or rather, CNN executive Jon Klein reported to staffers in an email that others reported--that the obsolete paper certificates were destroyed when the department switched to electronic record-keeping. Klein’s information appears to have been in error. The Honolulu Advertiser reported yesterday that Okubo and her boss, Chiyome Fukino, both confirm that Obama’s original birth certificate still exists. Fukino says she has seen it and that the information matches the now-official electronic records reflected on the certificate Obama has released.

So why doesn’t Obama release the original certificate? The Advertiser says it is “unclear” whether the president “would even be allowed to see it if he asked.” It is clear, though, that the Hawaii statute governing disclosure of public records does not prohibit state officials from providing him with a copy, since he is “the registrant” and therefore has “a direct and tangible interest” in the record. One would think that Obama could persuade state officials to give him a copy, even if that is not their usual policy.

But the real question is: Why should he? The demand has no basis in principle and would have no practical benefit.

Obama has already provided a legal birth certificate demonstrating that he was born in Hawaii. No one has produced any serious evidence to the contrary. Absent such evidence, it is unreasonable to deny that Obama has met the burden of proof. We know that he was born in Honolulu as surely as we know that Bill Clinton was born in Hope, Ark., or George W. Bush in New Haven, Conn.

The release of the obsolete birth certificate would not “resolve the issue” to those for whom it is not already resolved. They claim without basis that today’s birth certificate is a fake; there is nothing to stop them from claiming without basis that yesterday’s is as well.

The president would gain nothing politically for his trouble. By acknowledging the birthers’ demands, he would lend them a modicum of credibility. By ignoring them, he actually reaps political benefits from their efforts. His critics, even those who are not birthers, end up looking like cranks by association. His supporters use the birthers to paint Obama foes as racist--which is probably unfair even to the birthers, as we argued Tuesday, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t effective.

In a Commentary article last year, William F. Buckley recounted the way he, Sen. Barry Goldwater and a handful of other top conservatives worked to stigmatize the John Birch Society, whose founder, Robert Welch, maintained, among other things, that President Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and that the U.S. government was “under operational control of the Communist Party.” The Birchers, like the birthers, made respectable conservatives look like kooks, and in preparation for a prospective Goldwater presidential campaign, Buckley and his associates “thought it best to do a little conspiratorial organizing of their own against it.”

They succeeded in “excommunicating” the Birchers. It’s probably impossible to do the same to the birthers, because today the right wing is too vast to mount much of a conspiracy. The birthers are likely to be with us for as long as Obama is president--and because of them, it is more likely that this will be for the next 7½ rather than just 3½ years.

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.