Tag: Military

Critical mess: According to Inter Press Service, an all-star lineup of ex-advisors has been imploring the Bush administration to act strategically, not just tactically in the Israel-Lebanon war to avoid setting off a chain reaction through the volatile region. Chief among them is former ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who characterizes the state of the region in chilling starkness:

“A chain reaction could spread quickly almost anywhere between Cairo and Bombay,” Holbrooke warned. “…The combination of combustible elements poses the greatest threat to global stability since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, history’s only nuclear superpower confrontation.”

‘That this entire affair was ginned up by Bush/Cheney and certain political leaders in Tel Aviv to give cover for the eventual attack by the U.S. on Iran. At first, I refused to believe what seemed to be such insanity. But I am not so certain any longer.’
— Lawrence Wilkerson

Among other things, noted Holbrooke, a top candidate for secretary of state if Democrats had won the presidency in 2000 or 2004, Turkey is threatening to invade northern Iraq; the world’s largest anti-Israel demonstrations are taking place in downtown Baghdad; Syria may yet be pulled into the Lebanon war; Afghanistan is under growing threat from a resurgent Taliban; and India is threatening about punitive action against Pakistan for its alleged involvement in the recent train bombings in Bombay.

The apparent complacency of the Bush administration in the face of these events has inspired a succession of former top Republican policy-makers including Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to former presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush; George W. Bush’s former deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage; and Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass to publicly call for a major reassessment of U.S. Middle East policy and its conduct of the “global war on terror.” Leading Democrats, including former President Jimmy Carter and his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former secretaries of state Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, have joined the chorus.

The lone exception to the administration’s complacency has been Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice whose State Department has been under attack since the outset of the Lebanon crisis by the same coalition of neo-conservatives, assertive nationalists and Christian rightists led by Vice President Dick Cheney that pushed for war in Iraq.
[…]

Truth or distortion: One of my guilty pleasures is subscribing to the World Socialist Web Site. Not because I am a socialist, per se, but because it offers a perspective on world events that is very different from the U.S. mainstream media that has some value in occasinally jarring one’s mind out of its rhetorical ruts. Today’s column by Bill Van Auken, “Israeli war crimes aimed at ‘cleansing’ south Lebanon,” raises issues and draws parallels that question U.S. and Israeli motives in the region.

And while the world responds with condemnation of Hugo Chavez’ incediary comments about how Israel is doing to the Lebanese what Hitler did to the Jews, Van Auken makes a couple of similar discomfiting assertions, but uses different — and more effective — examples. You can read the entire column here. I have excerpted some of the more interesting points below:

[The] real context in which the United Nations Security Council is going through the motions of considering a US-French resolution [is] designed not to end the fighting, but to allow it to continue until US-Israeli objectives are met. This document demands that Hezbollah disarm, while it allows the 10,000 Israeli troops occupying Lebanese territory to remain and permits Israel to continue “defensive” air strikes and artillery bombardments.

It essentially demands that Hezbollah, a mass movement of Lebanon’s impoverished Shiite population, commit suicide and that the government of Lebanon accept the status of an occupied protectorate. By presenting an utterly unacceptable proposal, Washington aims at provoking Lebanese rejection and then using this supposed opposition to “peace” as a justification for continuing the month-old war.

Like the one-sided wars waged by fascist regimes that shocked the world’s conscience in the 1930s — from the rape of Ethiopia to the incineration of Guernica — the destruction of Lebanon contains the seeds of a global conflagration.

In a further indication that it has no intention of compromising on the terms of its UN diktat to the Lebanese people, the Bush administration Tuesday dismissed a Lebanese proposal to send 15,000 Lebanese troops to the south to take control of the area from the Israeli army. A State Department spokesman declared that the Lebanese army is not “a robust enough entity to be able to, on their own, exercise total control of that southern area of Lebanon.”

This word “robust” is endlessly repeated to describe a proposed multinational force to be sent into the region. It is a euphemism for an occupation army that will utilize murderous force against the local population to achieve US and Israeli war aims.
….

The proposed smashing of Hezbollah would be seen by the Shiite population as an attempt to disenfranchise and oppress them, reversing the results of Lebanon’s previous civil war and restoring the power once wielded by Israel’s traditional ally in the country, the Maronite Christian right.

Such social reengineering of the country — carried out under George Bush’s slogans of “freedom” and a “new Middle East” — would undoubtedly ignite a new round of bitter sectarian warfare.

What the US-Israeli offensive aims to accomplish as its immediate goal is the thorough ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon.

This is a term that never appears in the mainstream media in relation to the present war in Lebanon. It appears only in the occasional stories following the continuing tensions in former Yugoslavia, where US-led NATO forces intervened in 1999 with a savage bombing campaign against Serbia, which was carried out under the pretext of halting ethnic cleansing in the province of Kosovo. The end result has been a thorough ethnic cleansing of the Serb population at the hands of the Kosovar nationalists whom Washington supported.
….
[…]

Washington bullets: “Congress Daily” reports that Boeing Co. and two subcontractors are threatening to stop development work and lay off as many as 1,300 employees working on the manned vehicle portion of the Army’s $164 billion Future Combat Systems program because it has run out of money, according to the Army said.

Of course, work can continue and employees stay employed if two congressional committees that oversee the defense budget approve a transfer of $295 million, the Army said Monday, as reported by Bloomberg News.

“That money has now been exhausted and must be restored,” Army Lt. Col. William Wiggins said in an e-mail. Wiggins said he did not know when a stop-work order or layoffs might begin.

London-based BAE System’s North American unit and Falls Church-based General Dynamics are the primary companies developing eight models of manned tactical and support vehicles for the Army’s Future Combat Systems program.

A General Dynamics spokesman referred all comment to the Army, and a BAE Systems spokesman had no immediate comment.

But a Boeing spokeswoman said that “reports of imminent layoffs on the FCS program due to funding issues are incorrect.

“It is our understanding that a funding reprogramming request was submitted to the congressional defense committees and is proceeding through approvals,” she wrote. “The reprogramming approval needs to occur in a timely fashion, however, to allow the FCS program to continue to execute on plan.”

So the request is wending its way through the approval process, just not as fast as the Army — and probably Boeing — wants it to.

The Future Combat Systems program is described as “a new family of faster manned and unmanned battle vehicles linked by high-speed, digital communications, unmanned drones and new combat radios organized into brigade-combat teams taht are lighter than today’s Army.”

Interesting, but TradingMarkets.com reports today that Boeing is losing money wing over rudder:

Boeing Co. announced financial results for its second quarter, reporting a loss as the company took $1.1 billion of previously announced charges to settle government investigations into its defence unit and to cover the costs of delayed surveillance aircraft.

Ouch! I don’t suppose $294 million will go far to offset that kind of loss, but hey, it’s a start, right?

About the oil: Yeah, I didn’t know where it was, either. It’s on the southwestern Atlantic coast of Africa, and our military presence there is growing dramatically. Why? Because about 15 percent of our oil comes from southern Africa (not to mention timber, iron ore, copper and other useful stuff). And where there’s oil, there’s U.S. military might to protect it.

I found out about this from the Department of Defense, which is so proud of our enhanced military presence in the Gulf of Guinea that it sent out a press release about it. Here are some highlight excerpts:

U.S. military engagement along southwestern Africa’s Atlantic coast has increased exponentially, Navy Capt. Tom Rowden, commander of Task Force 65, said during a Pentagon interview last week. It’s increased from almost no activity in 2004 to 130 “ship days” in 2005 to even more planned ship days this year, he said. The goal is to build long-term relationships that promote greater security and stability in the region, Rowden explained.

The focus is on helping African nations increase their naval capabilities

The region faces several potentially destabilizing factors: narcotics trafficking from South America, smuggling of illegal aliens into Europe, about $1 billion a year in illegal fishing, and pollution that threatens the coast and the local food supply, among them.

“We’re looking at building the capacity and capability of the nations down there to secure the maritime domain to address these destabilizing activities,” Rowden said.

Basically, we need to make sure we can get all that oil and raw materials out of Africa cheaply and efficiently, so we’re helping the Africans help themselves. Helping — kind of like what we’re doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, but with fewer bulets and bombs — so far.

The focus is on helping African nations increase their naval capabilities, with help from the United States, [Rowden] said.

Toward that end, the submarine tender USS Emory S. Land recently wrapped up a three-month deployment to the region, where its crew conducted a series of security cooperation activities. The deployment included port visits to Senegal, Sao Tome and Principe, Gabon, Ghana, Angola, and the Republic of the Congo.

U.S. Navy training teams helped their West African counterparts increase their capabilities in damage control and ship maintenance. They provided survey teams to help develop more accurate navigational charts. They also helped the African navies build leadership within the ranks and strengthen their noncommissioned officer corps.

But it’s not so much a military operation as it is a diplomatic mission, which leads to the most over-the-top quote in the whole hyperbolic release:

“There’s no better ambassador for the United States of America than the sailor of the United States Navy,” Rowden said. “I was absolutely blown away by their ability to go out and make friends and the willingness on their part to give.”

Well, given our recent military-industrial-oil-protection history let’s hope that the Africans get it together, otherwise we know who’s going to really get “blown away.”

Coalition communications: This is probably something that will engender the disdain of Editor Trish, but I find myself drawn to the Department of Defense press releases like an IED to the roadside. It’s weird because these releases are terrible. They are poorly written, full of doublespeak and just plain old B.S., and often don’t make a lick of sense.

But nonetheless, I find myself every few months back on the DoD site, signing up like a G.I. junky for e-mailed press releases. I’ll keep getting them for a couple of weeks and then unsubscribe when I can’t stand it anymore. So, occasionally, until I make myself ill, I’ll share some of the choicer gems from these military missives in this space.

In a release about an al Qaeda operative who was captured and a suspicious individual was killed who was later determined to be a “non-combatant,” we find this quote:

“Coalition forces take every precaution to mitigate risks to civilians while in pursuit of terrorists, and deeply regret any injury or death to non-combatants,” a Multinational Force Iraq statement issued after the incident said.

In the same release, for some reason, there was a bit about 450 detainees being released back into the population to this cheery speech:

Iraq’s national security adviser, Muwafaq al-Rubai, addressed the detainees at the Abu Ghraib theater internment facility and asked them to return to their jobs and share in the wealth of their country.

He said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has declared a reconciliation program for all those who are not tied to terrorism, and that there is no room for terrorists in Iraq.

I suppose the “Abu Ghraib theater internment facility” must be where the prisoners stage skits and plays as part of their rehabilitation.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, important work was getting done on Wednesday:

Labor and Defense Department officials celebrated the federal government’s support of National Guardsmen and reservists and the government’s role as a “model employer” at a ceremony here today.

“The message to America, to employers, to Guardsmen and reservists is your government is a model employer — your agencies, your secretaries,” Thomas F. Hall, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, said.

Today’s ceremony concluded an initiative to have all 16 cabinet secretaries sign an Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve statement of support. The heads of all 80 federal agencies also have signed the statement, Hall said.

The statement signed is a 5-Star Statement of Support for the Guard and Reserve, meaning that the highest support criteria established by the Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve have been met. Those criteria include an employer’s willingness to sign a public statement of support, compliance with the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-Employment Rights Act and adopting policies that go “above and beyond” what’s required by law in supporting Guardsmen and reservists.

“This is the first document in U.S. history that has been signed by all the members of a president’s Cabinet in support of the National Guard and Reserves,” said Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, the first non-defense cabinet member to sign statement, said. “This is an historic and sweeping pledge to support our Guard and Reserve.”

Wow, a 5-Star statement! That should shame all those folks with “Support Our Troops” ribbons on their Hummers.

And then there are the items that you wonder didn’t make it into the MSM. Like the 500 weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. Seems like that should have garnered more attention:
[…]