A Speech for Endless War

September 6, 2010

By Norman Solomon

Beaver County Peace Links via Z-Net 

On the last night of August, the president used an Oval Office speech to boost a policy of perpetual war.

Hours later, the New York Times front page offered a credulous gloss for the end of “the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq.” The first sentence of the coverage described the speech as saying “that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home.” The story went on to assert that Obama “used the moment to emphasize that he sees his primary job as addressing the weak economy and other domestic issues — and to make clear that he intends to begin disengaging from the war in Afghanistan next summer.”

But the speech gave no real indication of a shift in priorities from making war to creating jobs. And the oratory “made clear” only the repetition of vague vows to “begin” disengaging from the Afghanistan war next summer. In fact, top administration officials have been signaling that only token military withdrawals are apt to occur in mid-2011, and Obama said nothing to the contrary.

While now trumpeting the nobility of an Iraq war effort that he’d initially disparaged as “dumb,” Barack Obama is polishing a halo over the Afghanistan war, which he touts as very smart. In the process, the Oval Office speech declared that every U.S. war — no matter how mendacious or horrific — is worthy of veneration.

Obama closed the speech with a tribute to “an unbroken line of heroes” stretching “from Khe Sanh to Kandahar — Americans who have fought to see that the lives of our children are better than our own.” His reference to the famous U.S. military outpost in South Vietnam was a chilling expression of affinity for another march of folly.

With his commitment to war in Afghanistan, President Obama is not only on the wrong side of history. He is also now propagating an exculpatory view of any and all U.S. war efforts — as if the immoral can become the magnificent by virtue of patriotic alchemy.

A century ago, William Dean Howells wrote: “What a thing it is to have a country that can’t be wrong, but if it is, is right, anyway!”

During the presidency of George W. Bush, “the war on terror” served as a rationale for establishing warfare as a perennial necessity. The Obama administration may have shelved the phrase, but the basic underlying rationales are firmly in place. With American troop levels in Afghanistan near 100,000, top U.S. officials are ramping up rhetoric about “taking the fight to” the evildoers.

The day before the Oval Office speech, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs talked to reporters about “what this drawdown means to our national security efforts in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia and around the world as we take the fight to Al Qaeda.”

The next morning, Obama declared at Fort Bliss: “A lot of families are now being touched in Afghanistan. We’ve seen casualties go up because we’re taking the fight to Al Qaeda and the Taliban and their allies.” And, for good measure, Obama added that “now, under the command of Gen. Petraeus, we have the troops who are there in a position to start taking the fight to the terrorists.”

If, nine years after 9/11, we are supposed to believe that U.S. forces can now “start” taking the fight to “the terrorists,” this is truly war without end. And that’s the idea.

Nearly eight years ago, in November 2002, retired U.S. Army Gen. William Odom appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program and told viewers: “Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic. It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism."

With his Aug. 31 speech, Obama became explicit about the relationship between reduced troop levels in Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan. “We will disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda, while preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists,” he said. “And because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to apply the resources necessary to go on offense.” This is the approach of endless war.

While Obama was declaring that “our most urgent task is to restore our economy and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work,” I went to a National Priorities Project webpage and looked at cost-of-war counters spinning like odometers in manic overdrive. The figures for the “Cost of War in Afghanistan” — already above $329 billion — are now spinning much faster than the ones for war in Iraq. [www.costofwar.com]

One day in March 1969, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Our government has become preoccupied with death,” George Wald said, “with the business of killing and being killed.” More than four decades later, how much has really changed?

__________________________________

Norman Solomon is the author of many books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is co-chair of the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America.

Photo: Walled West Bank Settlement Construction

Israel and Palestine: A true one-state solution

By George Bisharat

Washington Post Op-Ed

Friday, September 3, 2010

"Where is the Palestinian Mandela?" pundits occasionally ask. But after these latest Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington fail — as they inevitably will — the more pressing question may be: "Where is the Israeli de Klerk?" Will an Israeli leader emerge with the former South African president’s moral courage and foresight to dismantle a discriminatory regime and foster democracy based on equal rights?

For decades, the international community has assumed that historic Palestine must be divided between Jews and Palestinians. Yet no satisfactory division of the land has been reached. Israel has aggravated the problem by settling roughly 500,000 Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, eliminating the land base for a viable Palestinian state.

A de facto one-state reality has emerged, with Israel effectively ruling virtually all of the former Palestine. Yet only Jews enjoy full rights in this functionally unitary political system. In contrast, Palestinian citizens of Israel endure more than 35 laws that explicitly privilege Jews as well as policies that deliberately marginalize them. West Bank Palestinians cannot drive on roads built for Israeli settlers, while Palestinians in Gaza watch as their children’s intellectual and physical growth are stunted by an Israeli siege that has limited educational opportunities and deepened poverty to acute levels.

Palestinian refugees have lived in exile for 62 years, their right to return to their homes denied, while Jews from anywhere can freely immigrate to Israel.

Israeli leaders Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak have admitted that permanent Israeli rule over disenfranchised Palestinians would be tantamount to apartheid. Other observers, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have said that apartheid has already taken root in the region.

Clearly, Palestinians and Israeli Jews will continue to live together. The question is: under what terms? Palestinians will no more accept permanent subordination than would any other people.

The answer is for Israelis and Palestinians to formalize their de facto one-state reality but on principles of equal rights rather than ethnic privilege. A carefully crafted multiyear transition including mechanisms for reconciliation would be mandatory. Israel/Palestine should have a secular, bilingual government elected on the basis of one person, one vote as well as strong constitutional guarantees of equality and protection of minorities, bolstered by international guarantees. Immigration should follow nondiscriminatory criteria. Civil marriage between members of different ethnic or religious groups should be permitted. Citizens should be free to reside in any part of the country, and public symbols, education and holidays should reflect the population’s diversity.

Although the one-state option is sometimes dismissed as utopian, it overcomes major obstacles bedeviling the two-state solution. Borders need not be drawn, Jerusalem would remain undivided and Jewish settlers could stay in the West Bank. Moreover, a single state could better accommodate the return of Palestinian refugees. A state based on principles of equality and inclusion would be more morally compelling than two states based on narrow ethnic nationalism. Furthermore, it would be more consistent with antidiscrimination provisions of international law. Israelis would enjoy the international acceptance that has long eluded them and the associated benefits of friendship, commerce and travel in the Arab world.

The main obstacle to a single-state solution is the belief that Israel must be a Jewish state. Jim Crow laws and South African apartheid were similarly entrenched virtually until the eves of their demise. History suggests that no version of ethnic privilege can ultimately persist in a multiethnic society.

Israeli perspectives are already beginning to shift, most intriguingly among right-wing leaders. Former defense minister Moshe Arens recently proposed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israel annex the West Bank and offer its residents citizenship. Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin and Likud parliamentarian Tzipi Hotovely have also supported citizenship for West Bank Palestinians, according to the Haaretz. In July, Hotovely said of the Israeli government’s policies of separation: "The result is a solution that perpetuates the conflict and turns us from occupiers into perpetrators of massacres, to put it bluntly."

Is one of these politicians the Israeli de Klerk? That remains to be seen. Gaza is pointedly excluded from the Israeli right’s annexation debate. They still envision a Jewish state, simply one with a larger Palestinian minority. But their challenge to the two-state orthodoxy, which empirical experience has proven unrealistic, is healthy.

If Americans aspire to more than managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via perpetual and inconclusive negotiations, we should applaud this emerging discussion. Having overcome our own institutionalized racial discrimination, we can model the virtues of a vibrant, multicultural society based on equal rights. President Obama, moreover, would be a fitting emissary for this vital message.

The writer is a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestinian Studies.

Let’s Fact Check the AP’s

Fact Checking on Obama’s Speech

By David Swanson

Beaver County Peace Links via WarIsNotaCrime.org

FACT CHECK: Is Iraq combat really over for US?

By CALVIN WOODWARD and ROBERT BURNS (AP)

WASHINGTON — Despite President Barack Obama’s declaration Tuesday of an end to the combat mission in Iraq, combat almost certainly lies ahead. And in asserting the U.S. has met its responsibilities in Iraq, the president opened the door wide to a debate about the meaning of success in the muddle that most — but not all — American troops are leaving behind. A look at some of the statements Obama made in his Oval Office speech and how they compare with the facts:

___

OBAMA: "Tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended."

THE FACTS: Peril remains for the tens of thousands of U.S. troops still in Iraq, who are likely if not certain to engage violent foes. Counterterrorism is chief among their continuing missions, pitting them against a lethal enemy. Several thousand special operations forces, including Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, will continue to hunt and attempt to kill al-Qaida and other terrorist fighters — working closely with Iraqi forces. Obama said, "Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission," while stopping short of a full accounting of the hazards ahead for U.S. troops.

Excellent point, but let’s not leave out the thousands of mercenaries and tens of thousands of contractors.

___

OBAMA: "We have met our responsibility."

THE FACTS: That depends entirely on how the U.S. responsibility is defined.

Sectarian division — the danger that Obama said as a presidential candidate had to be addressed before Iraq could succeed — continues to deprive the country of a fully functioning government. U.S. goals for reconstruction are unmet. And although the U.S. says Iraqi forces can handle the insurgency largely on their own, Iraq is expected to need U.S. air power and other military support for years to control its own air space and to deter a possible attack by a neighboring state.

It was the U.S. that invaded Iraq, overthrew its government, disbanded its security forces and failed in the early phases of the conflict to understand the depth of Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic divisions and its political paralysis. The U.S. in some minds is responsible for putting Iraq back together again, yet today Iraq has no permanent government and its security forces arguably are not fully prepared to defend the country’s skies and borders.

In inheriting a war he opposed from the start, Obama did not accept U.S. responsibilities so broadly.

It will take time to see if his more limited view of success bears out. In May, he said: "This is what success looks like: an Iraq that provides no haven to terrorists; a democratic Iraq that is sovereign and stable and self-reliant."

Al-Qaida terrorists are "not gone" from Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday. But he hailed "an important victory against transnational terror" because "al-Qaida in Iraq has been largely cut from its masters abroad."

In fact, the United States has a legal responsibility to immediately and completely withdraw and to submit itself to the International Criminal Court with a confession of war crimes and the crime of aggression, and a moral responsibility to compensate the Iraqi people and to apologize.

The United States intentionally created sectarian strife, but much of the "insurgency" has always been a resistance to the occupation, something the Iraqi government will not have to handle if the occupation ends.

Iraq "is expected" to "need" the U.S. military for years? If that were written in the active voice who would be the subject? Who is doing the expecting here? The treaty that Obama said he would comply with requires the removal of all US forces by the end of next year. There’s a loophole for non-DOD forces, such as those employed by the so-called State Department. There’s no loophole for the military, no matter who expects one.

Obama has not opposed the war from the start. He funded it repeatedly as a senator, and insisted on continuing it as a president.

___

OBAMA: "Unfortunately, over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has shortchanged investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits."

THE FACTS: This is partly true. For sure, the costly Iraq and Afghanistan wars have contributed to the nation’s budget deficit — but not by as much as Obama suggests. The current annual deficit is now an estimated $1.5 trillion. But as recently as 2007, the budget deficit was just $161.5 billion. And that was years after war expenses were in place for both the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

Most of the current deficit is due to the longest recession since the 1930s. It has seriously depressed tax revenues while increasing costs to the government — including social safety-net programs such as unemployment insurance and spending by both the outgoing Bush and incoming Obama administrations on stimulus programs and on bailouts of banks and automakers.

War expenses "were in place"? This is a very large and dangerous lie. Simply because congress can be expected to always continue funding wars infinitely, we don’t have to pretend that they are somehow already pre-funded. Numerous times during the last year and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that, the House and Senate have had to vote on whether or not to fund more war. Each time, the Pentagon has moaned in pain about the desperate need for more funding. If the funding had already "been in place" years ago, what sense would any of this have made?

Blaming the deficit on the recession misses its largest causes. One of them is the tax cuts for the super-wealthy that have been put through in the past decade. The other is the wars and the Pentagon. The Pentagon eats up a trillion dollars a year. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already sucked up over a trillion dollars in taxes, and have had a multi-trillion dollar impact on the economy contributing to that recession the AP blames as if it came about all on its own.

___

OBAMA: "This was my pledge to the American people as a candidate for this office."

THE FACTS: At one stage of the presidential campaign, Obama spoke of an earlier departure of troops than he ultimately achieved. "I have put forward a plan that will get our troops out by the end of 2009," he said in a January 2008 Democratic candidates debate. But his pledge for most of the campaign was to withdraw combat troops within 16 months, a promise essentially kept.

Actually, his quick promise at rally after rally was to make ending the war the first thing he did. The war has not ended. Yes, 2009 has passed, but so have 20 months, which is not the same thing "essentially" as 16 months, but 4 more than 16 months. And there are still 50,000 troops plus mercenaries and contractors in Iraq.

___

OBAMA: "Our dedicated civilians — diplomats, aid workers, and advisers — are moving into the lead to support Iraq as it strengthens its government, resolves political disputes, resettles those displaced by war, and builds ties with the region and the world."

THE FACTS: Although Obama said the U.S. commitment to Iraq’s future does not end with the combat mission, he made no mention of an emerging debate in Congress over paying for the diplomatic mission the State Department says is necessary. Plans for U.S. diplomatic posts in Iraq already are being scaled back as Congress sees the winding down of the war as a signal to invest elsewhere.

Neither Obama nor the AP makes mention of the major military presence in the form of mercenaries planned to guard the massive diplomatic presence whose existence may be intended primarily as something worth guarding, in other words an excuse for the mercenaries to be there.

___

OBAMA: "Within Afghanistan, I have ordered the deployment of additional troops who — under the command of Gen. David Petraeus — are fighting to break the Taliban’s momentum. As with the surge in Iraq, these forces will be in place for a limited time to provide space for the Afghans to build their capacity and secure their own future."

THE FACTS: Obama is reciting almost the exact language of the Bush administration’s rationale for the Iraq surge: to buy time and space for the Iraqis to reach political accommodations and to strengthen their own security forces. That’s quite a change from Obama’s stand as a presidential candidate, when he criticized it. Obama seems to be embracing the troop surge logic now, even though it’s clear that the Iraqis have yet to achieve the necessary level of reconciliation to form an enduring government.

Associated Press writer Tom Raum contributed to this report.

Not only did the Iraq surge not achieve its political goals in Iraq, it also did not create the reduction in violence. The surge was miniscule. Important factors not mentioned here include: the promised withdrawal, the begun withdrawal, the bribes and negotiations, and the devastating levels of death and displacement in Iraq. These factors are not there in Afghanistan, a different place geographically, culturally, in terms of population distribution, and a different place because the United States has NOT named a date by which it will get the hell out. Marja failed. AP forgot that.

Aug. 28 March for Jobs, Peace and Justice

August 28, 2010
http://detnews.com/article/20100828/METRO/8280383

SANTIAGO ESPARZA
The Detroit News

Detroit — The chants of thousands of people demanding jobs filled the air downtown as UAW President Bob King and the Rev. Jesse Jackson led the crowd to Grand Circus Park.

The UAW and Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition announced the Rebuild America: Jobs Justice Peace kickoff today at the downtown park.

Jackson said the focus of the initiative is to ensure policy makers put people first when making decisions. The initiative calls for a moratorium on home foreclosures, a push for job creation and for ending armed conflicts overseas.

"Detroit and Michigan are ground zero of the urban crisis," Jackson said. "It’s time to enact real change for working families and all America."

About 30 percent of Detroit is unemployed, Jackson said. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., also said Detroit was chosen as the kickoff site for the campaign because it is at the heart of the nation’s economic fight.

"This is the epicenter for the struggle for jobs, justice and peace," she said. "We have come here because we have no choice."

Detroit and Michigan have been slower than other parts of the nation to recover from the economy’s downspin.

Carla Peterson of Detroit said the recovery has been slow because elected officials and even union officials have sometimes lost sight of the people they represent.

"Today is a good start," said Peterson, a UAW member. "They need to put people first."

Laura Clark of Lansing carried a sign at the rally that derided the North American Free Trade Agreement because she said it made it easier for companies to move job overseas.

"I want Detroit to recover the jobs they lost," she said.

Clark also would like to see some of the money spent on military actions diverted to putting people back to work.

"We can spend money on war, but not on our people?" she said. "That’s wrong."

The rally was attended by a host of local and national leaders including Congressmen John Conyers (D-Detroit) and John Dingell (D-Dearborn), Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Toledo) and local reverends, Wendell Anthony and Charles Ellis.

"Our region has suffered like yours," Kaptur said. "We have people who want to work but the jobs have been moved to other countries."

Lansing Mayor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero addressed the people gathered at the rally and asked for their vote.

"You have something precious with your vote," he said. "We are not up in some ivory tower. We are down in the street. We are Main Street. Not Wall Street."

Today’s march was held as a way of celebrating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s delivering his "I have a dream" speech in Detroit on Aug. 28, 1963 before reciting it in Washington D.C.

A series of similar marches will be held across the country leading up to one on Oct. 2 in Washington, D.C.

sesparza@detnews.com">sesparza@detnews.com (313) 222-2320

One Nation Working Together - 10.2.10, DC
Get Ready To March, This One is Going To Be Big!

It should be of no surprise that in an August 13th Gallup Poll the economy in general and unemployment/ jobs specifically topped the list of public concerns. The economy and jobs grabbed 58% of responses as top issues. War and fear of war lagged way behind in 8th place with only 4%. With millions across the nation struggling to keep their homes, make ends meet and keep or find jobs, the wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else is not uppermost on people’s minds. Taking care of business at home is first.

But people still care. Poll after poll shows that support for the war in Afghanistan is falling. A majority of people think the invasion of Iraq was a mistake and want U.S. troops to continue to pullout. Even with international issues on the backburner for most people, our efforts continue to be vitally important and effective. We are in a good position to move our work to end these occupations.

The last 18 months have been tough for the anti-war/peace movement. Progressive activism has been muffled and the hundreds of thousands we were able to turn out in the past have stayed home. All of that is about to change!

The rise of the Tea Party movement and profound disappointment with the slow pace of real change has slapped many people in the face. They are waking up from a post election daze to the realization that it takes a movement to make change happen. In this context, a new initiative called One Nation Working Together has emerged.

The NAACP, 1199 SEIU, the National Council of La Raza, Green for All, Center for Community Change and the United States Student Association initiated this campaign, and more than 150 other national and local groups have already signed on. The growing list of participating organizations includes United for Peace and Justice, Veterans For Peace, Peace Action, US Labor Against the War, Code Pink, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Progressive Democrats of America, United National Antiwar Committee, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance and other peace groups. Labor participation includes the AFL-CIO, AFT, SEIU, CWA, Transport Workers Union, Unite/HERE, UFCW and others. Some of the other national organizations that are part of this effort are: USAction, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Campaign for America’s Future, National Action Network, Center for American Progress, Jewish Funds for Justice.

The effort will kick off on October 2nd with a march in Washington, DC demanding that Congress and the Obama Administration adopt a peoples’ agenda for jobs and economic renewal. The mobilization is intended to be the beginning of an ongoing progressive coalition. With the reach, size and political breadth of the organizing partners, the 10.2.10 mobilization has potential to be huge and the continuing efforts very powerful.

The peace and anti-war movements must take advantage of this unique opportunity to work closely with allies to demand "Money for Jobs, Not For War", and "Jobs, Peace and Justice". Our work over the past 8 years has set the table for this unprecedented broad coalition to gather and work together.

Our participation in 10.2.10 deepens the antiwar and peace content of the demonstration and ultimately of the coalition that emerges from it. Our signs and voices will make more visible the connections between U.S. militarism, war spending and our nation’s lack of resources to resolve the current economic crisis. This strengthens the message of the mobilization and will help make continued efforts to push for real change successful.

The 10.2.10 mobilization affords us an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.

We urge your group - whether a community group or a national organization - to join us in the effort We encourage you to contact local organizers or if none exist near you, to convene a local coalition to organize as many people from your area as possible to be in Washington, DC on 10.2.10.

And then we hope you will continue efforts after the mobilization. The objective is to organize a coalition in each community that is as broad and diverse as that which is developing nationally - not just to mobilize for the march in DC, but to create the kind of cross-constituency, cross-movement alliance that will give real muscle to our common progressive agenda.

Now is the time to commit to making this mobilization and emerging local and national coalitions a success. It will not be easy, because coalition building is always hard. But the possibilities for advancing our work are great and success worth having never comes easy.

Please endorse the mobilization today. Click here for an endorsement form PDF.

Please contact One Nation Regional Directors for local contacts. Click here for a list of Regional Directors.

Partners in the 10.2.10 effort are requested to hold local coalition media events the week of August 28 through September 2 to launch their participation in One Nation Working Together’s massive national effort.  Join an existing event or organize your own to tell the media that your community is mobilizing for 10-2-10. Contact onwtcommunications@gmail.com to find an event or to let them know you are organizing one so it can be listed.  For more information about a peace contingent contact the One Nation Peace Table at onenationforpeace@gmail.com.

It’s time to hit the streets again with a strong and vibrant message: Money for Jobs, Not For War!  Jobs, Peace, and Justice!

This one is going to be big! Be there and help write a new page in the history of social struggle in the U.S.

Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace
Code Pink
Committee for Correspondence
Defending Dissent Foundation
Fellowship Of Reconciliation
Global Exchange
Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center
Institute for Policy Studies/New Internationalism Project
Just Foreign Policy
Majority Agenda Project (Boston)
National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
North Carolina Southern Anti Racism network
Northern Virginians for Peace & Justice (NVPJ)
Northern Virginia Greens
Peace Action
Peace Action, Main Line, PA
Pledge of Resistance
Progressive Democrats of America
United for Justice with Peace (Boston)
United for Peace and Justice
United National Antiwar Committee
Veterans For Peace
Voices for Creative Nonviolence
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras

Help us continue to do this critical work: Make a donation to UFPJ today.

UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545
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US Military ‘Overwhelmed’ by

Mental Health Problems of Soldiers

Thousands Strain Fort Hood’s Mental Health System

by Gregg Zoroya

Beaver County Peace Links via the August 23, 2010, USA Today

FORT HOOD, Texas - Nine months after an Army psychiatrist was charged with fatally shooting 13 soldiers and wounding 30, the nation’s largest Army post can measure the toll of war in the more than 10,000 mental health evaluations, referrals or therapy sessions held every month.

Col. Steven Braverman, head of the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center, says mental health counselors’ schedules are filled. "We are full to the brim," he says. (Erich Schlegel for USA TODAY

About every fourth soldier here, where 48,000 troops and their families are based, has been in counseling during the past year, according to the service’s medical statistics. And the number of soldiers seeking help for combat stress, substance abuse, broken marriages or other emotional problems keeps increasing.

A common refrain by the Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, is that far more soldiers suffer mental health issues than the Army anticipated. Nowhere is this more evident than at Fort Hood, where emotional problems among the soldiers threaten to overwhelm the system in place to help them.

Counselors are booked. The 12-bed inpatient psychiatric ward is full more often than not. Overflow patient-soldiers are sent to private local clinics that stay open for 10 hours a day, six days a week to meet the demand.

"We are full to the brim," says Col. Steve Braverman, commander of the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center on the post.

That doesn’t even count those soldiers reluctant to seek care because they are ashamed to admit they need help or the hundreds who find therapy outside the Army medical system, Braverman and other medical officials say.

Officials worry the problems may worsen - for the military and the country.

"If Fort Hood is representative of the Army - and 10% of the Army is assigned to Fort Hood - then if you follow the logic, our numbers should be scalable to any other post in the country," says acting base commander Maj. Gen. William Grimsley.

"I worry that if we don’t see this through the right way over the long haul … we’re going to grow a generation of people 10 or 15 years from now who are going to be a burden on our own society," he says. "And that’s not a good thing for the Army. That’s not a good thing for the United States."

Statistics provided to USA TODAY by Fort Hood commanders show the explosion of mental health issues here:

• Fort Hood counselors meet with more than 4,000 mental health patients a month.
• Last year, 2,445 soldiers were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), up from 310 in 2004.
• Every month, an average of 585 soldiers are sent to nearby private clinics contracted through the Pentagon’s TRICARE health system because Army counselors cannot handle more patients. That is up from 15 per month in 2004.
• Hundreds more see therapists "off the network" because they want their psychological problems kept secret from the Army. A free clinic in Killeen offering total discretion treated 2,000 soldiers or family members this year, many of them officers.
• Last year, 6,000 soldiers here were on anti-depressant medications and an additional 1,400 received anti-psychotic drugs.

"I don’t think we fully understand the total effect of nine years of continuous conflict on a force this size," Chiarelli says, reacting to those statistics.

"Those numbers are pretty staggering," says Kathy Beasley, a health care executive with the Military Officers Association of America. She wonders what will happen when those soldiers leave the military. "Do we have the supply and the people in our systems to take care of that?"

Every time more counselors are hired here, their schedules immediately fill up with patients. "It’s almost like a Field of Dreams," Braverman says, referring to the famous line from the 1989 film about a baseball field on an Iowa farm that spontaneously draws crowds. "If you build it, they will come."

‘Life can slowly slip away’

Staff Sgt. Josh Rivera came back from his third tour in Iraq this year eager to save his marriage.

"When a soldier is constantly gone and actually fighting, not just deploying and sitting in an office, life can slowly slip away," says Rivera, 32, a native of the Bronx, N.Y.

Thirty-nine cumulative months of war had left him distant from his family and confused about his role in their lives, Rivera says. All that made sense was the infantry, which he loves. Rivera resisted seeing a counselor until his marriage was in real trouble, he says.

The Army therapist who met with Rivera and his wife, Julie, gently guided them back to basics - what brought them together 10 years before, why each mattered to the other and what they wanted out of life, the couple say.

Chaplains provide marriage counseling, but for soldiers who want to see a licensed marriage counselor, the base’s social work department has two, each with a caseload of 60 couples, says Lt. Col. Nancy Ruffin, department director.

She has to refer some troubled marriages to private clinics, and not all the soldiers are willing to do that, Ruffin says.

The demand for other types of counseling also far exceeds supply. There are not enough social workers to treat soldiers suffering the emotional effect of sexual assault. Ruffin says she has one social worker, who is handling 50 cases.

Fort Hood has an intensive, three-week therapy program, followed by eight weeks of group therapy, for soldiers suffering stress-related issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder. It has a waiting list of 80 soldiers.

The child and adolescent psychiatric services at Fort Hood handle more than 1,000 visits, assessments or counseling sessions with military children each month, up from about 800 in 2004. It refers about 30 overflow cases off base each month, up from zero in 2004, the base statistics show.

Fort Hood has one of the most robust mental health programs in the Army. It has 171 behavioral health providers and 28 new hires are on the way, says Lt. Col. B. Kirk Phillips, a psychiatrist and director of mental health care at the Darnall medical center. This is up from about 50 mental health workers in 2004.

Because of war and deployments, not only are there more soldiers suffering emotional problems, they are sicker than ever and require more counseling sessions, Phillips says. Even after the latest round of hiring, Phillips says, a recent internal analysis showed the mental health staff will need an additional 58 counselors to meet the demand.

Suicides outpacing 2009

Despite the increase in mental health resources, there have been 14 confirmed or suspected suicides among Fort Hood soldiers this year. That figure outpaces 2009 and matched each of the three worst years for suicides in recent base history, 2006-2008. In June, the Army recorded 32 suicides overall, the highest monthly total since it began keeping records.

Army Sgt. Douglas Hale Jr., 26, was one of the most recent Fort Hood suicides.

On July, 6, Glenda Moss received this text message from Hale, her son: "i love u mom im so sorry i hope u and the family and god can forgive me."

Her son had tried to kill himself in May. She feared he might try again. She immediately called the Army and then drove the 90 minutes from her home in King, Texas, to the base.

It was too late. Hale had walked into a restaurant across Highway 190 from Fort Hood, asked to use the bathroom, locked the door and shot himself in the head with a newly purchased handgun, according to a police report. He was removed from life support a few days later.

Moss knew her son was very troubled. When his second combat tour to Iraq ended in 2007 after 15 months, he was diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression, began drinking heavily, saw his marriage disintegrate and, finally, left the base without permission last year.

He was brought back to Fort Hood in May after being taken into custody by police in King for being absent without leave, his mother said. He attempted suicide in his barracks that month.

The Army sent him to a psychiatric hospital in Denton, Texas. Army doctors told him "we don’t have enough people here (at Fort Hood) to help you," his mother recalls.

A statement released by Fort Hood in response to questions about Hale’s case says, "Space and staff shortages prevent us from treating all our patients on post. While it is our intent to treat patients within our facilities, the reality is we cannot at the present time."

Base officials declined to discuss the specifics of Hale’s case while an Army investigation continues.

Moss says her son seemed to be in good spirits after leaving the Denton hospital following a month of treatment in June. He spent the July 4th weekend at his mother’s home before she drove him back to Fort Hood on July 5.

Moss says the Army can do more to watch over troubled soldiers like her son. "They need to do as much as they can to stop this, because if they don’t, the Army’s going to be responsible for a lot more (suicides)," she says. "I don’t want another family to have to deal with what I went through.

‘Stigma was still a problem’

After the mass killings in November, Fort Hood launched a campaign to gauge the psychological health in the community. The goal was to see how many people needed help, whether they were getting it and how many counselors were needed. Part of the effort was an online, confidential survey in February to get soldiers’ views. Troops were offered incentives such as a day off from work to participate. More than 5,000 responded.

One in four said they would be viewed as weak, treated differently or harm their careers if they admitted suffering emotional issues, says Col. William Rabena, who led the campaign. The attitude was particularly strong among majors, lieutenant colonels and full colonels.

"Stigma was still a problem," Rabena says.

For those soldiers afraid to seek help, who decline to go to Army therapists or private clinics that contract with the military, there are alternatives.

A Pentagon program offers soldiers a limited number of counseling sessions with private therapists that will remain off their medical records. The program is called Military OneSource, and it provides up to 12 free and confidential therapy sessions when soldiers call a toll-free hotline. From May 2009 to May 2010, there was a 72% increase in sessions provided by the program in the Fort Hood area, from 822 to 1,412, says Air Force Maj. April Cunningham, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Another option for Fort Hood soldiers who want to keep their psychological problems secret from the Army is a free clinic in Killeen called Scott & White Military Homefront Services. The therapy provided at this clinic does not show up as a mental health diagnosis on a soldier’s medical record.

The five therapists at the project are booked solid, says the director, Maxine Trent, a psychotherapist and the wife of a retired Navy SEAL.

The clinic has seen 7,117 soldiers, spouses and their children since it opened in 2008, says Matthew Wright, a director with Scott & White Healthcare of Temple, Texas, which operates the project.

Soldiers, many of them officers, come into the clinic seeking therapy for the first time in their careers, Trent says.

"Generally, you have the parade rest," she says, demonstrating how they sit with backs straight, arms outstretched and palms on knees. The tension in their bodies, she says, is palpable.

"Those who have been back-to-back deployed vibrate. … There’s different energy. There’s hyper-vigilance that you won’t see anywhere else," Trent says. "They walk in here not sleeping. They walk in here having mood disruptions, angry driving, explosions at wife and/or husband and kids."

When her offices opened, Trent canvassed the wives of Fort Hood commanders to get a sense of what she was facing. "They told us basically, ‘We know everything we need to know about deployment. Please don’t set up any programs to teach us about deployment,’ " Trent recalls. " ‘What we don’t know how to do is to keep doing it (deployments). We’re tired. We’re exhausted.’ "

Even this program struggles to cope with all those needing help and getting the money to pay for it.

A $750,000 grant from the Dallas Foundation and the Association of the U.S. Army for the project is nearly gone and officials are trying to secure more funding, Wright says.

Adam Borah, who runs the outpatient psychiatric clinic at Fort Hood, sees progress in the many soldiers stepping forward to seek help. "The bad news is that there are a lot of people out there who need behavioral heath care," he says.

Braverman worries that if the number of patients keeps climbing, soldiers will give up waiting to see someone and avoid seeking help. Private clinics that contract with the military to handle overflow patients are overworked, says Chuck Lauer, a senior administrator at Darnall Hospital. "These guys (local private therapists) are putting in six days a week. Some of them have their practices open 10 hours a day," Lauer says.

Staff Sgt. Rivera, who got the marital help, worries for the soldiers. "The military needs to know that they are losing very good soldiers and squads and platoons to multiple deployments," he says. "The amount of help needed is actually overwhelming."

© 2010 USA Today

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/23-2

Does the Right-Wing

Want Never-Ending War?

By Joshua Holland

Beaver County Peace Links via AlterNet

August 24, 2010 - In a New York Times column titled “How Fox Betrayed Petraeus,” Frank Rich argues that the right-wing freak-out over the Islamic community center to be erected in downtown Manhattan hurts U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. “How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar,” asks Rich, “when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?”

One might call it the ‘national security argument,’ and it is irrefutable. Last week, Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who has interrogated several violent extremists, wrote, “When demagogues appear to be equating Islam with terrorism…it bolsters the message that radicalizers are selling: That the war is against Islam, and Muslims are not welcome in America.” Osama Bin Laden’s “next video script,” wrote Soufan, “has just written itself.” 

It is no doubt a tempting argument for the New York Times liberal and highly educated audience. It throws the neoconservative rhetoric back at the Right: if Islamic extremism is an existential threat to the United States — if the future of the country rests on its defeat — than surely sensitivity to how these protests are perceived by the rest of the world is a vital national security issue. “You’d think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan ‘surge’ would not act against their own professed interests,” writes Rich. “But they couldn’t stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country.”

Rich’s analysis is flawed, however, because he’s fallen into a trap of rationalism, unable to contemplate that those behind the “nontroversy” aren’t necessarily interested in “winning the war” in Afghanistan or defeating violent Islamic fundamentalism. It is no doubt the case that the cynical Republican politicians who have inserted themselves into the debate — Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and a host of others — are prioritizing short-term electoral gains over their hope of success in the Afghanistan conflict.

But Rich misidentifies “The prime movers in the campaign against the ‘ground zero mosque’.” He thinks of them as “American Hawks” who are “among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan.” The furor may be amplified daily by Fox news and the rest of the GOP establishment, but this is an issue being “ginned up” — in Rich’s words — by feverishly paranoid “War-bloggers” who for the past nine years have built their identities around not only the “War on Terror,” but also see themselves as fierce defenders who alone guard the homeland not only against dangerous invaders but also liberal Americans who don’t share their simplistic bloodlust.

Rich rationally assumes that they desire “victory,” but doesn’t contemplate the possibility that they might rationally see an enduring campaign against the Taliban or Al Qaeda as an inherently good thing, a trial that will eventually cleanse the U.S. of its weakness, its misguided devotion to liberal pluralism. Hw doesn’t get that while the “war” against the Taliban may be an obsession of “American hawks,” the battle against Islam is a product of the war-bloggers and dedicated Right-wingers whose poisonous invective taints the airwaves of AM talk-radio.

A moment that revealed that kind of personal investment occurred in 2006, when blogger and radio host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Time Magazine’s Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware by phone from Iraq. Ware had just narrowly escaped several bombings, but Hewitt wanted to brag of his own courageous contribution to the war effort, saying, “I’m sitting in the Empire State Building. Michael, I’m sitting in the Empire State Building, which has been in the past, and could be again, a target…. This was the front line four and a half years ago.”

The conservative writer Julian Sanchez offered a sort of taxonomy of war-bloggers in 2002. He noted that “there is a distinctly ideological ‘line’ that virtually all of these blogger types seem to embrace: the War is good, bracing, and invariably righteous, and all its opponents are wimps, traitors.” What’s more, they “were inspired by the onset of the war” and saw themselves as the sole keepers of an unvarnished truth. “The ‘Big Media’,” wrote Sanchez, “are being ‘challenged’ by these little one-man sites, kept honest, as it were.”

Chris Hedges wrote a book titled, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, and it is certainly true of the war-bloggers. Sanchez described a typical war-blogger as “some punk kid who thinks the world is a friggin’ computer game and cannot distinguish fantasy from reality.”

Peace is "boring," and only war is enough to excite the passion of our militant young nerd. Armed with the "galactic perspective" that only someone who has read the complete works of Isaac Asimov can possess, [the war-bloggers] are marching off to war, ready to lay low the entire Middle East.

Tim Cavanaugh, writing for the Annenberg School of Communications’ Online Journalism Review, noted that “The War On Terrorism, with all its world-historical moment, has combined with the relentless drive of the bloggers to create an explosion of unfathomed energy, vitality, and pure wind.” He wrote that without a war to give their lives meaning, many would be trapped in the doldrums of less bracing partisan battles:

Glenn Reynolds — whose title ‘Instapundit’ merrily undermines his credibility (or at least foregrounds his lack of credibility) — doesn’t have to be content with zinging Cornel West when he can rail against the treachery of the Saudis. Postrel gets to take on serious issues of rights and security where otherwise she might just be noting how some taxicab eureka she had proves the necessity of privatizing Social Security. Best of the Web editor James Taranto, who in some alternative universe has nothing else to discuss except how the Democrats are shamelessly using Enron as payback for Whitewater, now gets to pre-empt every argument with what appears to be the only weapon in his argumentative arsenal: ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?.’

For many, the “War on Terror” took on gendered aspects as well — it not only gave them vicarious excitement, but became integral to their sense of manhood (or womanhood, as the case may be). In a classic of its genre, the blog DBKP featured a rambling post titled, “Why Liberals Aren’t Real Men.” 

Try this simple exercise: Picture President Obama as a grunt on the front lines of a battle in Afghanistan, shooting at the enemy, and fighting for America. That image doesn’t compute, does it? In a nutshell, this is the difference between liberal males and real men.

Real men know that terrorists threaten our very existence. Liberal males choose to believe they are merely misunderstood victims of America’s excesses. Real men know that feelings count for zilch when faced with evil. Liberal males have bought into the notion that real evil exists only on the right.

For those whose entire identity is invested in the War on Terror, its continuation is anything but a bug — it’s a feature. That’s not to suggest that their feverish Islamophobia is a concerted effort to undermine our supposed “progress” in Afghanistan — they’re not conspiring to continue the war. It’s that they are detached from the actual conflict abroad and consumed with the ideological war at home. The real enemies aren’t some dusky devils hiding in a cave 4,000 miles away; the real enemies are their political opponents at home, those who challenged their worldview.

Frank Rich, who travels in far less unseemly circles, simply can’t appreciate how irrational and all-encompassing their hatred and fear really is. His rational national security argument, again, is irrefutable, but other than affirming the beliefs of those who already agree with him, it will continue to fall on deaf ears.

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. Drop him an email or Follow him on Twitter.

© 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/147935/

US Combat Ends in Iraq,

But Will Iraq ‘Invite’ US to Stay?

By Tom Hayden

Progressive America Rising

While the Obama administration struggles to keep its pledge to end the Iraq war, a behind-the-scenes plan is developing in which the Baghdad regime “invites” the American military to stay.

Managing the withdrawal of combat troops was a significant achievement for Obama. But while media attention focused this week on the last American combat brigade rolling out of Iraq, US diplomat Ryan Crocker was predicting that if the Iraqis “come to us later on this year requesting that we jointly relook at the post-2011 period, it is going to be in our strategic interest to be responsive.” [NYT, Aug. 19]

That means troops and bases, keeping a US strategic outpost in the Middle East. Otherwise, according to some Pentagon sources, the Iraq war will have been in vain.

To prevent backsliding on the agreement to withdraw all troops and bases by the end of 2011, peace advocates and Congress will have to revisit and reinforce those agreements using hearings and budgetary powers.

To review the history: in late 2008, a secret negotiation resulted in what the Iraqis called “the withdrawal agreement” and the Americans the “status of forces agreement.” The bilateral pact was never debated or approved by the US Congress. By its adoption, the Iraqis could claim a victory for sovereignty while the US could declare a diplomatic end to an unpopular war.

In reality, the Iraq war never ended. US casualties plummeted because fewer Iraqis wanted to shoot Americans who were leaving. Iraqi casualties declined from the feverish high of 2006-7, but continue to be several hundred per month. Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia, which did not exist when the war began, has survived. The forces of Moktada al-Sadr, who waged two uprisings against the US, are a powerful factor in Iraqi politics and on the ground. The Kurdish crisis is unsolved. Overall, Iran has prevailed strategically and politically. And the Baghdad regime originally installed by the Americans seems hopeless deadlocked, inefficient, and on the edge of imploding. The only Western winners are the oil companies headed by British Petroleum, now contracting for the Basra oil fields.

The State Department is expanding a militarized “civilian” intervention to fill the gap as Pentagon troops depart. Thousands of military contractors will conduct Iraqi police training, protect Iraq’s airspace, and possibly conduct continued counterterrorism operations. State Department operatives will be protected in mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles [MRAPS], armored vehicles, helicopters and its own planes.

The immediate future is uncertain. US soldiers currently being sent to Iraq are told their mission is “to shut it down.” But the real story is being hidden by the Obama administration’s insistence that its promise to end the war is being kept. The notion of a continued military presence, according to the Times, “has been all but banished from public discussion.” According to one official, “the administration does not want to touch this question right now.”
A war that started with dreams of bringing democracy to the Middle East is ending by keeping plans for more troops hidden from American voters during an election year. Sound familiar?

We’re Now the Antiwar Majority,

So Who Will Represent Us in 2010?

Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 oppose war in Afghanistan

Aug 20, 2010 LAWRENCE, MASS — A majority of Americans see no end in sight in Afghanistan, and nearly six in 10 oppose the nine-year-old war as President Barack Obama sends tens of thousands more troops to the fight, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

With just over 10 weeks before nationwide elections that could define the remainder of Obama’s first term, only 38 percent say they support his expanded war effort in Afghanistan — a drop from 46 percent in March. Just 19 percent expect the situation to improve during the next year, while 29 percent think it will get worse. Some 49 percent think it will remain the same.

The numbers could be ominous for the president and his Democratic Party, already feeling the heat for high unemployment, a slow economic recovery and a $1.3 trillion federal deficit. Strong dissent — 58 percent oppose the war — could depress Democratic turnout when the party desperately needs to energize its supporters for midterm congressional elections.

A majority of Americans do welcome Obama’s decision to end combat operations in Iraq. Some 68 percent approve, a number unchanged from earlier this year. The last American combat brigade began leaving Iraq on Thursday, ahead of Obama’s Aug. 31 deadline for ending the U.S. combat role there.

Seven years after that conflict began, 65 percent oppose the war in Iraq and just 31 percent favor it.

The growing frustration with the Afghanistan war was evident in Massachusetts’ 5th Congressional District, not far from Concord where Minutemen fought for a new nation in 1775. In Lawrence, whose textile mills once relied on the roaring Merrimack River, exasperation with the war in Afghanistan is evident.

"If they could resolve the issue, stabilize the government, that would be good. But we can’t do this forever and lose more lives," said Terry Landers, 53, an electrician from North Andover.

U.S. troops have suffered more than 1,100 deaths in Afghanistan since fighting began in October 2001, including a monthly record of 66 in July. Last fall, Obama authorized an increase in the force in Afghanistan by 30,000 to 100,000 troops — triple the level from 2008. Many in Congress are increasingly doubtful that the military effort can succeed without a tough campaign against bribery and graft that have eroded the Afghan people’s trust in their government.

Opinions in the poll — and among those interviewed — were more positive about Iraq as Obama’s deadline for the exit of U.S. combat forces approached.

"I think we really need to give them an opportunity to economically, socially grow," said Mary Campbell, 56, a Lawrence city worker. "I think it’s more helpful if we’re not in their face all the time, so the deadline is, I think, a good thing, to see how stable they are."

The congressional seat is held by Rep. Niki Tsongas, a Democrat who is the widow of a former senator and one of the party’s 1992 presidential contenders, Paul Tsongas. Four Republicans and one independent are seeking to oust her in November, with the primary next month.

Lawrence has lost two sons in Iraq of the more than 4,400 Americans killed since fighting began in March 2003. Obama ran for president in part on a pledge to pull out of Iraq and divert U.S. resources to Afghanistan, and that shift has been accompanied by a changing death toll in each country.

The war views expressed in a Lawrence diner, in a park across from City Hall and at an Essex Street hot dog cart, were echoed by poll participants across the country.

Bea Boynton, 57, of Marysville, Pa., said she is less supportive of the wars than when Obama took office.

"I just think it’s not going well. Too many of our men and women are being killed," she said of Afghanistan in particular.

Boynton, a registered Democrat who voted for Republican John McCain in 2008, added: "I don’t think what we initially set out to do has been done. I mean, we still don’t have (Osama) bin Laden."

Erika Hickert, 68, a retired school teacher in Maricopa, Ariz., said she is an independent who voted for Obama in 2008 and would do so again if given the chance. She felt the same about the wars.

"I’m just tired of taking care of the world," Hickert said. "They need to learn to take care of themselves, and war isn’t the way to teach them."

She also doesn’t distinguish between Iraq and Afghanistan, even with the conflict winding down in one while ramping up in the other.

"I think of them as one big conflict," said Hickert. "We’re militarily supporting both of them."

Landers, the electrician, was among those with split opinions about Afghanistan in particular.

A registered Republican who voted for McCain, Landers said he did not favor pulling out of Afghanistan despite his concern about the mounting death toll and his opposition to a long-term combat role.

"I think we need to get the government stabilized before we get out of there. I don’t know how we can do that, though," he said.

Campbell, the city worker, is a Democrat who voted for Obama. She has a son-in-law in the Marine Reserves who has already made one tour of Iraq and is slated to head back to the Middle East next year.

"I think it’s important that, as citizen of the United States, where we live in a free country … that we help support the mission of bringing along peace," she said.

Another poll respondent, Jeff Foust, 60, a retired public defender in Springfield, Ill., was more sanguine.

"All we can do is continue to provide some support but I think that we can’t stay in either country for a long term with large numbers of troops," said Foust, a Democrat who voted for Obama in 2008 and said he would again. "We’ve been there long enough in both places that winning is up to the people that live there."

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted August 11-16 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,007 adults nationwide, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

___

Associated Press Polling Director Trevor Tompson, AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and AP writers Lauren Sausser and Ileana Morales in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Iraq: What Will the Remaining

50,000 U.S. Troops Do?

By Mark Thompson / Washington

Beaver County Peace Links via Time Magazine

Aug 20, 2010 - There was a sigh of relief at the Pentagon Wednesday as the U.S. Army’s final combat brigade crossed from Iraq into Kuwait. Generals and their staffs have spent nearly a decade juggling soldiers to meet the needs of two wars, bruising many of the units and stretching the Army nearly to the breaking point in the process. Military experts agree that reducing troop strength in Iraq will ease the strain on the force, although it could allow tensions inside Iraq to flare. But the campaign’s sunk costs — more than 4,400 U.S. troops dead, 30,000 wounded (and far higher Iraqi casualties), along with a price tag that amounts to $2,500 for every person in America — is far higher than anyone expected when Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20, 2003.

But it’s not quite over yet. Just what will those 50,000 U.S. troops staying behind in Iraq be up to if not fighting? And what will fill the gap they’ve left? Nearly all of them are slated to stay in Iraq until they are required by a U.S.-Iraqi agreement to leave by Jan. 1, 2012. The U.S. troops have four missions, broadly defined as "stability operations":

1. Training Iraq’s security forces, now 660,000 strong.
2. Providing intelligence, aircraft and other assets to support Iraq’s counterterror campaign.
3. Protecting U.S. and allied civilian agencies as they continue to try to rebuild a shattered country that is still trying to put together a government five months after an election.
4. Preparing to go home. (See a timeline of seven years of combat during the Iraq war.)

The heart of the remaining U.S. force, while labeled "advise-and-assist brigades," has combat power that far outstrips that of the Iraqi military, and which could be deployed if Baghdad sought U.S. help and President Obama agreed.

General Ray Odierno, who has just finished a tour as the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said the remaining U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies can handle anything insurgents can throw at them. "I get a little frustrated because people think, ‘Well, you’re going to 50,000,’" Odierno said recently. "Fifty thousand U.S. soldiers is a lot — it’s a lot of capacity and capability." Odierno, who has spent 55 months on three deployments commanding U.S. troops in Iraq, believes the Iraqi people are tired of fighting. "My personal opinion is that Iraqis went through a significant amount of obviously sectarian violence and almost civil war in 2006 [and] the beginning of 2007," he said. "My read is most of them are beyond that."

There will be troublemakers, Odierno believes, "but I don’t think it would be at a level that the Iraqis can’t handle." (See photos of smuggling between Iraq and Iran.)

Some 2,400 U.S. government civilians will continue to work in Iraq, protected by at least twice as many private contractors once the U.S. troops pull out entirely. They’ll travel around Iraq in 60 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, hundreds of armored cars and a fleet of airplanes and helicopters. The cost of operations in Iraq has fallen sharply, from a peak of $11 billion a month in 2008 to less than half that figure now — and it is slated to drop to about $4 billion a month next year. The State Department will spend a further $4 billion for all of 2010 in Iraq, and a similar amount next year.

The new mission is not that different from the old one, because U.S. troops have been consigned to large bases outside Iraq’s cities and towns since June 2009, and violence, despite occasional spikes, is low. "The number of security incidents and casualties — that is, Iraqi civilian casualties, Iraqi security-force casualties and U.S. casualties — for the first five months of 2010 are the lowest on record," said Colin Kahl, the Pentagon civilian who oversees the Middle East. One reason: the U.S. and Iraq have killed or captured 34 of Iraq’s top 42 al-Qaeda leaders in the past three months. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq is weaker than ever," Kohl said Monday, adding that "we don’t currently see any credible threat to overthrowing the current system." (See photos in a bin Laden family album.)

Christopher Hill, who just left his post as U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, said Tuesday in Washington that something fundamental has changed in Iraq. "When you go out outside of the Green Zone and you see plate-glass window being installed in Iraqi shops," he said, "you realize it’s because the sense of insecurity that prevailed there a couple of years ago has been changed."

Not everyone is so optimistic. "The Iraq war is not over and it is not won," Anthony Cordesman of the Center for International and Strategic Studies warned Thursday. He expects it could take another decade for Iraq to become stable, and fears the U.S. government may not adequately fund the struggling government it helped create. "Iraq still faces a serious insurgency, and deep ethnic and sectarian tensions," he said. "In spite of its potential oil wealth, its economy is one of the poorest in the world."

The focus of the U.S. presence in Iraq will become the Baghdad embassy — Washington’s largest anywhere — and consulates (think of them as mini-embassies) in the southern city of Basra and the northern city of Arbil. The State Department also plans to establish what it’s calling two embassy "branch offices" in the north, in Kirkuk and Mosul, to deal with tensions there created by the Arab-Kurd contest for control. Unlike permanent consulates, those are expected to operate for no more than five years.

General George Casey, the Army Chief of Staff, recently pondered how his service has been able to survive the demands of two ground wars for nearly a decade, which gave many soldiers only a year at home between yearlong combat tours. "If you had asked me five years ago could we as an Army sustain one year in combat, one year home, for five years, I would have said you’re nuts." But Casey credits the courage and patriotism of today’s young soldiers and their families, and the support of the U.S. public, for the Army’s endurance. "Don’t underestimate this generation of young Americans," he said, "and what they’re capable of doing."