For the vast majority of Americans, watching the last American boot leave Iraqi soil is nothing short of good riddance. The numbers have become seared in Americans minds: Nearly nine years. Nearly a trillion dollars spent. Nearly 35,000 US soldiers wounded. Nearly 4,500 US soldiers dead.

The long-term effect of the Iraq War is pretty obvious—a national sentiment for retrenchment—a streak of isolationism that is being espoused by both sides of the political spectrum. It’s hard not to watch Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry warn against “military adventurism” without comparing him to his predecessor.

But despite the desire to go inward, the simple fact is that if there was any hope for the US to go on the sidelines, that’s changed forever with the onset of the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring has reminded the world of the danger of failed states. With long-time dictators losing power, militant Salafists (not solely Al Qaeda) are looking to fill the vacuum.

But the Arab Spring also comes with a new challenge—a new type of interventionism.

That new interventionism will not look like Afghanistan of 2009-2011—where we put boots on the ground in order to take out a ruling, rogue power. It will also not look like Pakistan—where our intervention will largely rely on airpower (unmanned predator drones in particular) with a small, light on-the-ground footprint to conduct reconnaissance and special operations, but with no motive to change the leadership.

The new interventionism will be a mix of two factors. Like Pakistan, it will be heavy on airpower, light on boots. Like Afghanistan in 2001, the effort will involve removing a rogue power, but with a slight difference. The intervention will not lead the effort to remove a rogue power, but will enable an indigent rebel to do the job.

In other words, it’s the fullback strategy of foreign intervention. The new intervention does not mean playing the halfback, taking the ball to the endzone for the touchdown. It means playing the full-back, creating the hole for the indigenous rebel groups to score the winning touchdown.

In this case, the main objective is very different. The hope is helping enable a victory on the ground that forestalls a long, drawn out war that creates the type of environment where a terrorist group can take hold.

The merits of the new (or fullback) approach to interventionism contrasts, for example, how the Iraq War was executed.  Because the new interventionism does not do the heavy lifting, it doesn’t overrule the will of the people in a given country.

Also, because the interventionism largely relies on airpower, with limited if any boots on the ground, it makes it easier and more likely to develop the type of multilateral coalition that is associated with legitimate and successful interventionist endeavors. And because of the airpower focus and multi-lateralist character of the intervention, the result is greater political legitimacy, a substantially decreased likelihood of casualties, and, therefore, staying power to finish the job.

In short, the new paradigm of successful intervention is not Afghanistan or Pakistan, but Libya. Heavy on firepower, multi-lateralism, and a limited mandate that paves the way for a rebel victory, not a Western one. While the removal of Qaddafi is an enormous immediate benefit, the long-term goal is preventing the drawn-out civil war that would make Libya a terrorist launchpad.

But ignoring the inclination towards isolationism is not only good for the Middle East. Successful, limited intervention also benefits the United States. When the US is involved in liberation that increases US influence in the world. This is not only an upside in the Arab World, but it means improving our soft power in other parts of the world, including areas where we are competing for influence with China.

And it also revives the notion of American humanitarian sway. The greatest casualty of the Iraq War is that it dampened our ability in the eyes of the world. We were distracted from ongoing operations in Afghanistan. We had a slow response to atrocities in Darfur. Now, the fullback humanitarian approach is attached to the heightened likelihood of intervention. That could have a deterrent effect on would be genocidaires and reinvigorates the idea of American power.

It’s not easy to ignore a nine-year war where America lost valuable blood and treasure. But isolationism is the easy approach. Isolationism was the approach after 1919 and the world was in the midst of another world war twenty years later. The goal is not taking the ball and going home. The goal is finding a pragmatic approach that means greater political stability, the return of American influence, and the preservation of innocent life. Just don’t call it leading from behind.

Related posts:

1. A Time to Lead
2. No-Fly Zone Over Libya: A Case for Multilateralism
3. Graeme Bannerman: Libya, A Costly Victory

A subdued but respectful ceremony marked the end of combat operations in Iraq.  A flag was rolled and encased, and speeches respectful of the fallen and hopeful for the future were made.  Signs of friendship between the two countries were left in the hearts of both peoples and policies are in place to continue non-military support to a continually developing democracy in Iraq.  A joyous America will see her military members return celebrating a job well done and remembering those who paid the ultimate price.

This is in stark contrast to the images scared into the American psyche of a helicopter rising from the roof of the embassy in Saigon in April of 1975, an event that most recognize as the end of a terrible chapter in America’s history.

The Vietnam experience still reflects one of the worse times in our history.  The failed political policies that resulted in only marginal military successes during this time period are only rivaled in grandeur by the incense of the American public for the war.  The nightly reports on a budding television news medium of the American dead, eventually summing over 58,000, brought the graphic images of war to the American public for the first time.

This American public, already gushing with disdain for an unpopular war was further galvanized by events such as the My Lai Massacre and the shooting of students at Kent State University.  The resulting wave of anti-war protest reflecting the overall feeling of the country produced not only a backlash against the politicians involved and their failed policies, but also contempt for the very soldiers that were fighting and dying in the war.

As the military returned home, their limited tactical successes were dwarfed in the public eye by the view of the military as a failure, albeit due to numerous factors beyond its control.  Thousands of military members with lifelong mental or physical scars were practically discarded by a disinterested public.  There were no ceremonies, no parades, only a country ready to bury this memory and forget all things associated with Vietnam.  A single helicopter flying away from an overrun embassy seemed to be a fitting end.

As the Iraq war comes to a close, so much is different about this ending than the ending of the Vietnam experience.  Some may question the policies and politicians that brought us into the war, but by in large no one questions the way the military has performed its duties.

This is not to say that the military has escaped this lengthy conflict unscathed by controversy.  The events such as the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the killings in Haditha, friendly fire incidents and the recent controversy of the handling of the remains of the war dead all call into questions tactics used by military members, but never the overall conduct of the military during the conflict.

American public’s support has endured these controversies as well as other tough times throughout the war.    It has endured a persistent conflict despite President Bush’s declaration of “mission accomplished,” an Iraqi insurgency that expanded our involvement, a 2007 call for a troop surge, continued reports of Improvised Explosive Devices killing U.S service members and the reports of the bloody conflicts in places like Fallujah and Anbar.  All of these were challenging times for the military, yet support for the troops remained.

There were, however, events along the way that highlighted the courage of our service members and produced recognition by Americans of the contributions the military was making to a free Iraq.  The capture of Saddam Hussein and the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, are just two examples of the courage and valor of our military displayed every day during this conflict.  One of the most poignant moments celebrated by our country was when an Iraqi woman stood from her seat in the U.S. Capitol during a State of the Union speech proudly displaying an ink stained finger having just voted in an Iraqi election for the first time.  A proud moment made possible by the sacrifices of our military.

As military members have returned home from Southwest Asia over the years (sometimes after 2, 3 or more deployments) they arrive to a different reception from the members that served in Vietnam.  Rousing applause by Americans on airplanes and in airports, a reception that moves most military members to tears, replaced being spat upon, harassed and jeered in airports when military members returned from service in Vietnam.  Overwhelming support for our wounded warriors, as exemplified by enormous contributions to programs like the Wounded Warrior Project, is common place versus the neglect experienced by the wounded returning from Vietnam.

There will be no national victory parade recognizing the end of the Iraq War, like the one seen after Operation Desert Storm.  However, there will be celebrations across America, much as we’ve seen over the past 10 years, to recognizing military men and women for their sacrifices as they return home.   A free and independent Iraq exists today because of the valor displayed by the U.S. military and our allies, another reason to celebrate as we welcome our troops home.

A simple ceremony and a grateful nation mark the end of the Iraq War.  The goodbye to the Iraq War is different in so many ways from the goodbye we said to the Vietnam War so many years ago.  For the veterans who endured the sacrifices during any war, thank you.  For an American public who persevered the Iraq War – job well done.

Related posts:

1. Guns, Butter, And Band-Aids: A Three-Tiered Approach to Foreign Policy
2. A New Approach to Interventionism
3. Will Senators Have the Midas Touch?

Among the many issues that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta must ponder in the coming months will likely be whether to recommend shifting U.S. strategy in Afghanistan from counterinsurgency to counterterrorism.

Some critics argue that our current policy of deploying large numbers of ground troops puts more of our men and women at risk for questionable gain and even encourages more Afghans to join the Taliban, fighting against what they claim is an invasion force. Yet the recent gains in clearing out Taliban strongholds and helping to build schools, medical facilities and other civic institutions argue, instead, for staying the course for several more years.

Related posts:

1. William Cohen: What the U.S. Should Do About Iran
2. Too Important to Fail: The Least Bad Call on Afghanistan
3. Crossing the Rubicon

“Virtually all serious observers of national security affairs now recognize the current structure of the national security system militates against unified problem-solving when the problem is a multiagency issue. The question is what to do about it.”

Counter-proliferation, counterinsurgency, food security, energy policy – all examples of complex and multifaceted issues that increasingly dominate America’s security priorities and starkly highlight the chronic limitations of the U.S. national security structure. The Project on National Security Reform and others stress the critical need for a Goldwater-Nichols Act of national security to take on the colossal and outdated bureaucracy built around the security challenges of the post WWII period.

In a recent report released by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, Christopher Lamb and Edward Marks take on one facet by proposing a solution to the bureaucratic ‘stovepiping’ that hinders security missions requiring multi-agency approaches, such as counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan or WMD proliferation. They pinpoint the inability of the President to delegate executive authority as the crux of the problem. For example, while czars have been used as a way to coordinate across departments, they are not given the resources or authority to execute their missions – and become what Lamb and Marks describe as ‘cajolers-in-chief’. This is also evident in the role of Special Envoys, PRTs, and lead agencies. Described as a tension between ‘unity of command’ and ‘unity of effort,’ they argue the solution can be modeled after the Chief of Mission (COM) approach where executive authority is delegated to resident country Ambassadors.

They succinctly describe what such a structure would look like: as ‘mission managers’ with presumptive Presidential authority,  individuals would have expanded legal, operational and resource authority to carry out specific missions that clearly (and intrinsically) cut across departments and agencies. Senate approval and legislation codifying integration powers would give Congressional legitimacy, and require mission managers to make their case to Congress for funding. In addressing the most obvious obstacle –turf wars between departments – the role of the President would be paramount to ensure respect and proper use of authority by the different departments.  Mission managers could achieve the kind of interagency cooperation that has previously failed with the ability to “oversee the management of the problem ‘end to end’, from policy and strategy to planning and execution.”

The idea of mission managers is worthy of further discussion and analysis in the larger dialogue on creating a more nimble and effective 21^st century national security infrastructure. However, while based on an existing ‘best practice’ of interagency cooperation, it would still be a drastic departure from the current approach. Inevitably, it would face resistance from the established organizational cultures. Where the greatest obstacle lies – as Lamb and Marks point out– is making national security reform a political possibility.

‘Chief of Mission Authority as Model for National Security Integration’ can be found in pdf form here.

Related posts:

1. Can Panetta Cut DOD Spending Any Further?
2. James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton Op-Ed: Breaking the War Powers Stalemate
3. OP-ED: How to Weaken the Power of Foreign Oil

Can you hear that grinding noise? That’s the sound of an overused, overextended military breaking down.  We seem to spend a lot of our time deliberately avoiding our gaze from obvious trouble signs. But for those who care to observe reality the warning signs are plentiful.

Consider just a few news reports in the past week.

New York Times
September 30, 2010

Four Suicides In A Week Take A Toll On Fort Hood

By James C. McKinley Jr.

HOUSTON — Four veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan died this week from what appeared to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds atFort Hood in central Texas, raising the toll of soldiers who died here at their own hands to a record level and alarming Army commanders.

So far this year, Army officials have confirmed that 14 soldiers at Fort Hood have committed suicide. Six others are believed to have taken their own lives but a final determination has yet to be made. The highest number of suicides at Fort Hood occurred in 2008, when 14 soldiers killed themselves, said Christopher Haug, a military spokesman.

About 46,000 to 50,000 active officers and soldiers work at the base at any given time, making this year’s suicide rate about four times the national average, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at 11.5 deaths per 100,000 people.

National Journal
October 2, 2010

A Prescription For Tragedy

More veterans of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are getting prescriptions for antidepressants and other drugs than ever before. They’re also killing themselves in record numbers. Is there a connection?
…
The Pentagon is wrestling with a rising tide of military suicides that shows no signs of cresting. In 2003, when U.S. forces invaded Iraq, the Army’s suicide rate was 11.4 per 100,000 soldiers. By last year, it had soared to 21.8 per 100,000 soldiers, surpassing the suicide rate in the general population for the first time. This year is shaping up to be even worse, with at least 156 soldiers having committed suicide as of the end of August, compared with 162 in all of 2009. The suicide rate in the Marine Corps has increased even more sharply, jumping from 14.4 per 100,000 marines in 2005 to 24 per 100,000 in 2009.

In the foreword of a 350-page report on military suicide issued in July, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff, noted that it was the third-leading cause of death for soldiers, trailing only combat and accidental deaths from drug overdoses and drunken driving.

“Simply stated, we are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy,” Chiarelli wrote.

Philadelphia Inquirer
October 2, 2010

U.S. Troops Pose With Corpses

By Gene Johnson, Associated Press

SEATTLE – Those who have seen the photos say they are grisly: soldiers beside newly killed bodies, decaying corpses, and severed fingers.

The dozens of photos, described in interviews and in e-mail messages and military documents obtained by the Associated Press, were seized by Army investigators and are a crucial part of the case against five soldiers accused of killing three Afghan civilians earlier this year.

Troops allegedly shared the photos by e-mail and thumb drive like electronic trading cards. Now 60 to 70 of them are being kept tightly shielded from the public and even defense attorneys because of fears they could wind up in the news media and provoke anti-American violence.
…
Among the most gruesome allegations is that some of the soldiers kept fingers from the bodies of Afghans they killed as war trophies. The troops also are accused of passing around photos of the dead and of the fingers.

Seattle Times
September 30, 2010
Pg. 1

Was Fatal Attack In Iraq Staged?

By Hal Bernton, Seattle Times staff reporter

Staff. Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, a central figure in the Afghanistan war-crimes case against Western Washington-based soldiers, talked about killing a family while he served in Iraq, according to a sworn statement from a fellow soldier obtained by The Seattle Times.

When Gibbs arrived in Afghanistan, he began talking to other soldiers about “getting away with some of these things,” according to Spc. Jeremy Morlock, 22, a soldier who is accused of helping Gibbs murder three civilians in Afghanistan.

Morlock told Army investigators that Gibbs told some platoon members he had developed a plan to kill Iraqis driving in a car, and looked for a chance to carry it out.

The opportunity arrived while he was crossing a road carrying a Squad Automatic Weapon, a powerful machine gun, according to Morlock.

Gibbs told the soldiers he “turned around and sprayed down the vehicle” that carried the family and covered up the slayings by telling his commanders the car had failed to stop, according to Morlock’s statement.
New York Times
September 30, 2010

Gates Fears Wider Gap Between Country And Military

By Elisabeth Bumiller

DURHAM, N.C. – The United States is at risk of developing a cadre of military leaders who are cut off politically, culturally and geographically from the population they are sworn to protect, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told an audience at Duke University on Wednesday night.

In a speech aimed at addressing what he sees as a growing disconnect between the country as a whole and the relatively few who fight its wars, Mr. Gates said that although veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan were embraced when they came home, “for most Americans the wars remain an abstraction – a distant and unpleasant series of news items that do not affect them personally.”

Even after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Gates said, “in the absence of a draft, for a growing number of Americans, service in the military, no matter how laudable, has become something for other people to do.”

The defense secretary said that military recruits came increasingly from the South, the mountain West and small towns, and less often from the Northeast, West Coast and big cities. The military’s own basing decisions have reinforced the trend, he said, with a significant percentage of Army posts moved in recent years to just five states: Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas and Washington.
Washington Times
September 30, 2010
Pg. 9

War Veterans’ Care To Cost $1.3 Trillion

The unfunded liability for those who fought in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will rival Social Security.

By Shaun Waterman, The Washington Times

The expense of caring for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is an unfunded budget liability for U.S. taxpayers that in years to come will rival the cost of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, lawmakers will be told Thursday.

The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee will hear new estimates of the cost of lifetime medical care and benefits for returning troops disabled by their service – a total of more than $1.3 trillion.

“It’s somewhere between Medicare and Social Security in terms of its potential impact” on the budget, said Rep. Bob Filner, California Democrat and committee chairman.

“This is another entitlement that we have committed ourselves to that is going to break the bank unless we deal with these issues as soon as possible,” he told reporters.

And the beat down goes on. But not to worry; Fox News will say America loves its heroes and the majority of people who don’t actually have sons and daughters or husbands or wives in the military will return to watching “reality” tv shows.

Related posts:

1. Too Important to Fail: The Least Bad Call on Afghanistan

“This is what worries me most,” General Peter W. Chiarelli confided at a September 22, 2010, meeting at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative DC think tank.  I had asked a question that I’ve posed to other high ranking generals, admirals, and policymakers with similar results.  The Army, the U.S. Marine Corps, and, indeed, the nation is banking on the U.S. military’s operational tempo (the pace of deployments, which has been quite high since 2003) dropping, which should allow dwell time (the period that soldiers and Marines are not deployed) to increase.

The hope that operational tempo will drop, however, rests on at least three key strategic assumptions:

(1) Troop levels in Iraq will remain relatively low, which means that things will not hit the fan in Iraq and require redeployment to the area.  Could we really stand by if Iraq implodes?

(2) Troop levels in Afghanistan will begin to come down next year, which means that we will begin to reap the rewards of that surge and can begin withdrawal.  Alternatively, we see little payoff for the surge and begin leaving regardless.

(3) There will be no “wild cards,” meaning pop up contingencies or, God forbid, full blown wars that require not only the deployment of troops, but a rotation base.  It’s one thing to send troops overseas for a quick engagement.  It’s an entirely different calculation if those troops need to be replaced by more troops.  From North Korea to Iran to Pakistan – the rest of the world will not be still while U.S. forces catch their breath.

Thus the question to General Chiarelli:  “What happens if one or more of those heroic assumptions don’t hold?”

After acknowledging his concern, General Chiarelli shared that in his office hangs the “Chart of Failed Assumptions.”  The timeline starts with Iraq in 2003, and recounts the failure of policymakers and military leaders alike to predict when demand for forces will reduce.  The horizontal line represents the march of time, with the vertical axis tracking number of troops.  Actual troop deployments, otherwise known as reality, are represented with a green line, with a red line depicting assumptions of troop requirements, or demand.  The green line, reality, tracks high and appears horizontal.  Meanwhile, since 2003, the red line (assumptions) makes sharp dips.  In short, our predictions in just the last seven years have been horribly wrong, and assume we will need many fewer troops and rotations than we actually do.

If our ability to prognosticate on such an important topic as the demand for U.S. forces is so awful, one can only marvel at our certainty now.  Moreover, the stakes of this guesswork are incredibly high, and are no less than a national treasure: the U.S. All Volunteer Force.

General Chiarelli rightly noted that the resiliency of U.S forces is nothing short of remarkable.  Many soldiers, Marines, and their families have lived through four or even five deployments in the last decade of fighting.  In interviewing Army and Marine officers in 2004, I was told that when the troops reached three deployments, we would start to see the force break.  These predictions, too, have proven false.  Almost a decade into war, energy spent on predicting when the force will break is better used trying to think of anything possible to ensure that we never see that happen.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is right to cut the defense budget by $100 billion.  It would be misplaced to use the Chart of Failed Assumptions to undercut the Secretary’s laudable goals.  Given the country’s financial realities, spending must be reeled in.  As we are doing so, however, we must keep any and all ideas or programs that can increase our service members’ dwell time.  The health of our troops depends on it, just as we depend on them.

No related posts.

I have been a regular visitor to Iraq since the early 1990’s.  Traveling around Iraq the past few weeks, it’s been difficult to find remnants of the optimism (outside the booming Kurdish region) that had been trending upward in the last few years and led to an unusually high voter turnout during elections last March.  The increase in violence following the drawdown in our “combat” troops combined with not having a government for half a year has become reminiscent for Iraqis of the uncalm that ushered in previous bouts of civil war.

Six months after the parliamentary elections in Iraq and two weeks since President Obama addressed the nation to declare that the U.S. had “met our responsibility” in Iraq, Vice President Biden landed in Baghdad with a plan to break the political stalemate.   Even many of the outspoken anti-American elements greeted the news with a sigh of relief.  It is about time. The Americans “did not forget about us like they did Pakistan after the Soviet war,” one prominent Shia told me.  I got the feeling that he and his friends would be just as happy being part of an opposition party as that of a ruling coalition as long as a legitimate government assumed the reins – averting another civil war. The formerly occupied are calling for the old occupiers to help facilitate the transition.

The military occupation, by all accounts, had run its course.  The surge seemed to work.    American troops served more as lucrative targets than effective peacekeepers. The main political plank of all the primary parties dealt with who best to continue the trend toward rule of law and provision of government services following the end of U.S. military rule.

The hope for a new era stimulated a higher turnout than expected.  Political candidates, arguably for the first time, actually reached out to the voters with actual campaign events.  In the northern Kurdish area, a local upstart party, Goran or “Change” took on the establishment in a bruising, personal competitive campaign.  (We Californians understand that there is little better to illustrate a democratic process like a campaign containing slick messages containing allegations of corruption, nepotism and the buying of votes.)

Security considerations in the south and central parts of the country limited large rallies.  Paid advertisements and small meetings took the place of larger rallies.  It was fun to see the Sunni population go to the polls in higher than expected numbers and exercise their new found freedom of expression in animated coffee shop debates that would have been unthinkable in Saddam’s Iraq.  An interesting if unintentional result of an overly complex election law was that active manipulation of the polling process was near impossible.  The election was a significant leap forward, or so we thought.

President Obama eschewed the aircraft carrier pulpit for a less militaristic Oval office address, announcing that the U.S. met its responsibilities in Iraq.  Operation New Dawn replaced Operation Iraqi Freedom.  The Americans went home, leaving the Iraqis to fester in sectarian distrust.   U.S. “noncombat troops” are now waging firefights and dying alongside Iraqi troops. The most significant government activity since March was the banning of motorcycles from the streets of Baghdad.  The nascent political institutions that were painfully nurtured over the years since being dismantled by the U.S. invasion were left to flutter in the wind.

American attention went back to domestic jobs, midterm elections and Koran burning while the folks in Tehran rushed to fill the void.  The population may not have welcomed the invasion forces with flowers and open arms, but today, most of the country wonders why the diplomats joined the military drawdown.  This after a trillion dollar expenditure and tens of thousands of lost lives– leaving Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to gain leverage in this most strategic country.

In this disheartening environment, Biden’s foray back into Iraqi politics (did he ever leave?) may be warmly received but not the best solution.  The Vice President called for a major compromise; a power-sharing arrangement that would have Nouri al-Maliki lead a coalition government…again. The trade off being that the powers of the prime minister would be significantly diminished.

This disempowered unity government concept, with no mandate to make the hard decisions, is truly a western construct. The distrust and ideological cleavages between the parties will only allow a weak coalition government without the authority to effectively tackle the country’s festering issues, such as the enactment of laws dealing with petroleum revenue sharing, demarcation of the Kurdish region, and consolidation of armed militias.

Debate among the Western talking heads and pundits following the inauguration of Operation New Dawn has largely focused on the decision to go to the war – either self-serving explanations of doing the Lord’s work against terrorists and tyranny or self-righteous “I told you so’s” from pacifists and isolationists.  However, the world might be better served if the forensic analysis takes into account both the evilness of Saddam’s Iraq as well as the incompetent post-war civil occupation.

No doubt miscalculation and pure incompetence wrecked what was left of Iraq during the occupation. Tens of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives were lost during the counterinsurgency and reconstruction years. But President Obama need not pile on bad policy after bad policy by unilaterally abdicating the American position in Iraq, regardless of how we got here.

Next week from Afghanistan and another election.

No related posts.

I just made it through Hitch 22, Christopher Hitchen’s memoir.  For those of you unacquainted with Mr. Hitchens, he – and please, never call him “Chris” – is a journalist and political dissident of the first rank who deploys with unequalled deft the English language to challenge tyranny in all its varied guises and disguises.  Mr. Hitchens has engaged in spirited struggle against a wide array of ghouls and scoundrels, from Saddam Hussein (for inflicting terror on his own people) to the Ayatollah Khomeini (for issuing a fatwa on Salman Rushdie’s head) to our own Henry Kissinger (for a range of offenses too long to list).

While reading this brilliant memoir, a thought kept haunting me about the way we think about achieving foreign policy goals with military means and methods.  We tend to think of these goals as ones that can be achieved scientifically.  For example, if you want to dethrone an insipid dictator, you must simply determine what is necessary to remove him.  Regime change, then, is a scientific problem that can be addressed with the tools of an amateur’s logic:  identify the problem, formulate a strategy, and then execute that strategy carefully.  A reasonably clever schoolboy could work it out, we seem to believe.

The problem with this little tradition of ours is not just that the military is not an institution structured to win over the hearts and minds of those who live in a life world far from our own – though this is certainly true.  The real bugbear is that many foreign policy objectives are not well suited to being achieved through bloody military campaigns.  And it’s not that the military needs to change, far from it; we must stop expecting our soldiers to handle problems best addressed through other means.Consider, the following observations, using the ongoing conflict in Iraq as an illustrative (though certainly not singular) example of why bullets and bombs are, by themselves, poor instruments of foreign policy:

1. (formulating the problem) If one were to endeavor to describe the “simple” goal of ousting Saddam Hussein, isn’t the presence of a megalomaniacal dictator evidence of a crisis within a culture, and that, preliminarily, ousting dictator would create significant social, economic and political challenges that the American military is ill-equipped to handle? If such a crisis is acknowledged, then one must assume that it is a blunder of the first order to deploy military forces to remove a dictator with no clear sense of how to deal with the fallout of a successful military campaign
2. (strategy creation) Again, if the goal were not just to oust an insipid and ghoulish dictator, but to also revitalize a country socially and politically, why in the world would the military be charged with the primary responsibility of making that happen?  And, more to the point, which specific departments or agencies of the American government are now charged with figuring out how to help Iraq revitalize itself so that it may be transformed into the democratic or “democratic-friendly” haven we wish it to be? The shocking answer is that when the Iraq invasion was planned, these questions were never addressed.  This is a clear failure on the part of the Bush Administration given that it costs (a) at least $390,000 per year to deploy one American soldier in Iraq and (b) $900 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars has been spent or allocated for spending in Iraq through 2010.
3. (strategy execution) Most thoughtful observers of what has happened in Iraq would concede, if grudgingly, that things have not gone as well as were expected.  But this tepid concession will not do.  The Iraq situation has gone badly because the non-military aims that are inherent in the goal of deposing Saddam – i.e., the aim of stabilizing the country – cannot be executed by the military.

This is not meant to detract from the talents and abilities of the sapient and dedicated top brass of the American military; these folks surely face daily burdens that civilians such as this author cannot possibly comprehend.  Nor do I mean to take away from the sacrifices that are made daily by American soldiers who have willingly placed their physical and emotional health in peril.

Yet it is beyond question that our military personnel are neither prepared nor able to properly undertake the counter insurgency efforts and the other essential tasks necessary to create stable, healthy political and social institutions in Iraq.

I do not want to leave the gentle reader with the impression that I loathe our intervention in Iraq, nor do I desire to suggest that Saddam should somehow still be sitting in the seat of power.  In all honesty, I think true humanitarians everywhere should rejoice in the fact that this craven fiend has been expired.  My principal point is that deposing a foreign dictator, even an execrable one such as Mr. Hussein, requires a comprehensive plan that will necessarily include components that cannot be executed by the military.  And it follows from this that we ought to stop thinking of the American military as a lissome tool for accomplishing all of our foreign policy objectives.  Though it may sound surprising, the military is just one arrow in our quiver.

No related posts.

First, let’s look at the past. Today the Los Angeles times reports that researchers have found that soldiers who suffered brain injuries can develop seizures decades — as long as 35 years — after the initial injury. A study published in the journal Neurology found that among a group of 199 Vietnam veterans, about 13% developed post-traumatic epilepsy more than 14 years after they had suffered a penetrating head wound, such as a gunshot injury or shrapnel that entered brain tissue. Penetrating head injuries are generally linked with a higher risk for epilepsy than other types of head injuries, such as concussions.

It is unclear how the study relates to combatants returning from Iraq and Afghanistan today, the authors said. The Vietnam veterans in the study suffered from penetrating brain injuries, which are rarer in soldiers fighting in the current conflicts because helmets have improved. Today, closed-head injuries (where the brain is not penetrated) are more common, in part because of the helmet improvements and partly because of a change in the weaponry used in modern warfare.

Nonetheless, Grafman said, the study underscores the importance of long-term follow-up for military civilians who have suffered traumatic brain injuries.

“It’s clear that this is life-long,” he said.

Now, let’s look at the present. Suicides among military personnel are up. Salon reported last week on the suicide of Marine Sgt. Tom Bagosy at Camp Lejune, North Carolina. The article noted that last year, 52 Marines committed suicide. The suicide rate among Marines has doubled since 2005, and the Corps has the highest suicide rate in the military.

That was tragic. Even worse is that Bagosy died a year after a former Camp Lejeune psychiatrist risked his reputation and career to warn Navy officials that unless Camp Lejeune dramatically improved mental health services — and in particular, develop precise, rigorous protocols for handling Marines who might kill themselves or others — there would be deadly consequences.

That psychiatrist, Dr. Kernan Manion, repeatedly warned Camp Lejeune and Navy officials in writing starting in the spring of 2009 about the risk of more Marine suicides, murder and “immediate concerns of physical safety” if Camp Lejeune did not improve. Frustrated by what he saw as a lack of action by officials at Camp Lejeune, Manion took his concerns to a series of military inspectors general in late August. He was fired four days later.

The lessons from Bagosy’s suicide are especially provocative because minutes before his death, Bagosy was inside the Camp Lejeune Deployment Health Center, the place where doctors are supposed to help Marines like Bagosy. Healthcare workers there knew he had problems. They knew he had already been diagnosed with both a brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, the signature injuries of the current wars. He’d been seeing a doctor there and a therapist. He’d talked with his therapist about thoughts of suicide. Officials at the clinic the day he died also knew Bagosy was acutely suicidal that very morning and that he was armed, because his wife, Katie, had called.

In June USA Today reported that Marines are trying to kill themselves at a record pace this year despite a 2009 program aimed at stemming the problem, according to Marine Corps data.

Eighty-nine Marines tried to commit suicide through May, most commonly by overdose or lacerations. At that rate, there could be more than 210 attempted suicides this year. There were a record 164 attempted suicides in 2009.

With 21 confirmed or suspected suicides by Marines this year, the Corps is on track to near last year’s record number of 52. The Marine Corps suicide rate in 2009 was 24-per-100,000, the highest in the military. The latest demographically adjusted suicide rate among civilians in 2006 was 20 per 100,000, federal records show.

The suicide rate among American soldiers hit an all-time high last week. The Army reported 32 confirmed or suspected suicides, both active and reservists) in June – the highest number on record for a single month, soldiers killing themselves at the rate of one per day. So far this year, 145 soldiers have committed suicide, compared with 130 during the first six months of last year, which at the time was the worst on record.

Two days ago, the Washington Post reported that senior commanders have reached a turning point. After nine years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are beginning to recognize age-old legacies of the battlefield – once known as shellshock or battle fatigue – as combat wounds, not signs of weakness.

In spring 2009, the top brass in the Marine Corps and the Army were seeing troubling signs that the force was starting to fray. The suicide rate in the two services was on pace to set a record. The percentage of the Army’s most severely wounded troops who were suffering from PTSD or traumatic brain injury had climbed to about 50 percent, from 38 percent a year earlier.

Recognition is spreading, albeit far too slowly, that PTSD is a serious illness, not a sign of weakness. Earlier this month the government issued new rules that will make it substantially easier for veterans who have been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder to receive disability benefits, a change that could affect hundreds of thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

The regulations from the Department of Veterans Affairs will essentially eliminate a requirement that veterans document specific events like bomb blasts, firefights or mortar attacks that might have caused P.T.S.D., an illness characterized by emotional numbness, irritability and flashbacks.

Finally, thanks to the superb series done by ProPublica and NPR in June we know that the military medical system is failing to diagnose brain injuries in troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom receive little or no treatment for lingering health problems.

Officially, military figures say about 115,000 troops have suffered mild traumatic brain injuries since the wars began. But top Army officials acknowledged in interviews that those statistics likely understate the true toll. Tens of thousands of troops with such wounds have gone uncounted, according to unpublished military research.

Among their findings:

From the battlefield to the home front, the military’s doctors and screening systems routinely miss brain trauma in soldiers. One of its tests fails to catch as many as 40 percent of concussions, a recent unpublished study concluded. A second exam, on which the Pentagon has spent millions, yields results that top medical officials call about as reliable as a coin flip.

Even when military doctors diagnose head injuries, that information often doesn’t make it into soldiers’ permanent medical files. Handheld medical devices designed to transmit data have failed in the austere terrain of the war zones. Paper records from Iraq and Afghanistan have been lost, burned or abandoned in warehouses, officials say, when no one knew where to ship them.

Without diagnosis and official documentation, soldiers with head wounds have had to battle for appropriate treatment. Some received psychotropic drugs instead of  rehabilitative therapy that could help retrain their brains. Others say they have received no treatment at all, or have been branded as malingerers.

Related posts:

1. Too Important to Fail: The Least Bad Call on Afghanistan

Two years after my discharge from the Navy in 1977 I was doing undergraduate work at the University of Oregon. While there I was a member of a campus veterans group. We did a lot of advocacy on behalf of Vietnam and Vietnam era veterans, on issues that back then were still unknown, such as Agent Orange exposure and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

One thing I took away from that was that while most people were happy to talk about the sacrifices of veterans it was, in the end, mostly talk. When it came to actually doing something or putting their money where their mouth was, most people, rather like Dick Cheney’s famous excuse for avoiding the draft, had better things to do.  In short, as the classic mordant military humor puts it, nothing is too good for our boys in uniform so that’s what we’ll give them, nothing. 

Still, I had some minor hope that in the future, if only because the VA would never again want to be perceived as incompetent and ineffectual as it was back then that it and the regular military would do somewhat better in the future.

And, to be fair, some good things did happen in the intervening years. The VA set up its Vet Center program for Vietnam vets, slightly better educational benefits programs were instituted for active duty forces, and PTSD was recognized as a legitimate medical illness to name a few improvements.

Then the Walter Reed Army Medical Center neglect scandal happened, resulting from a series of allegations of unsatisfactory conditions and management at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) in Washington, D.C. culminating in two articles published by the Washington Post in February 2007. Cases of outpatient neglect, were reported as early as 2004, but generated substantial public and media attention only with release of the Post exposé.

It all seemed dreadfully familiar. There was the usual outrage, both genuine and feigned, on the part of the public and Congress and pundits; calls for action, investigations, establishments of commissions to study the problems, recommendations for improvement, et cetera, ad nauseum.

Indeed, less than a week after the article, new Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Walter Reed and said those responsible would be “held accountable.”

“I endorse the decision by Secretary of the Army Fran Harvey to relieve the Commander, Major General George W. Weightman of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The care and welfare of our wounded men and women in uniform demand the highest standard of excellence and commitment that we can muster as a government. When this standard is not met, I will insist on swift and direct corrective action and, where appropriate, accountability up the chain of command.

So, let’s fast forward to the present and see how we are doing three years later. Let’s just look at a few articles from this month.

USA Today reported April 1 that the Department of Veterans Affairs has no way of determining long-range health care costs for the veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal study on the wars’ impact released Wednesday shows.

The next day USA Today reported that soldiers who say they killed enemy troops in combat, are at greater risk of suffering combat stress and having emotional problems, according to a new study.

Those soldiers often pay a profound psychological and emotional toll, according to Shira Maguen, a staff psychologist at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and lead author of the study on soldiers and post-traumatic stress disorder. Of nearly 2,800 soldiers surveyed, 40% reported killing or being responsible for somebody’s death in Iraq.

Also that day the San Antonio Express-News reported that Fort Hood has had at least nine questionable deaths among young soldiers in the first three months of 2010, more than half of them confirmed suicides, despite Army efforts to reverse a trend linked to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The deaths of five GIs assigned to the post this year have been confirmed as suicides, with another suspected of killing himself. That’s about half the number for all of 2009, when 11 GIs committed suicide. Fort Hood, the biggest post in the Army as the year began with 46,500 troops, had a suicide rate of 26 per 100,000 people from 2006 to 2008, far above the civilian rate of 14.06 per 100,000.

The New York Times reported April 25 that Fort Carson’s Warrior Transition Battalion, a special unit created to provide closely managed care for soldiers with physical wounds and severe psychological trauma, is far from being a restful sanctuary. “For many soldiers, they have become warehouses of despair, where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of powerful prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers. Because of their wounds, soldiers in Warrior Transition Units are particularly vulnerable to depression and addiction, but many soldiers from Fort Carson’s unit say their treatment there has made their suffering worse.”

See the predictable Pentagon response taking exception to the NYT article here here.  Yet bear in mind that the Pentagon official in charge of the wounded warrior program said Sunday he has been forced to resign, as the military continues to struggle with how best to care for troops injured in combat.

Noel Koch said in an e-mail that he was asked to step down by Clifford Stanley, the undersecretary of defense for personnel. Koch had been serving as the deputy undersecretary of defense for wounded warrior care and transition policy.

The same day the Associated Press reported that Authorities believe that 21 soldiers from Fort Campbell, Kentucky killed themselves in 2009, the same year that the Army reported 160 potential suicides, the most since 1980, when it started recording those deaths. The number of patients being treated at the behavioral health clinic at the base hospital has increased by 60 percent, from 25,400 in 2008 to nearly 40,000 in 2009.

And finally, but surely not last, this morning USA Today reports that the Pentagon effort to consolidate two premier hospitals for treating wounded troops has more than doubled in price and is so rudderless that an independent review and a bipartisan group of legislators say the care could suffer.

The cost of closing Walter Reed Army Medical Center, replacing it with a larger complex at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and building a hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va., has risen from $1 billion to $2.6 billion, Pentagon records show.

Correcting the problems raised by Congress will cost another $781 million, according to a Pentagon report released Monday. And improvements must wait until after the new Bethesda facility — named the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — is finished in September 2011, the report says.

The independent review last year found that, without improvements, the center would lack an adequate number of operating rooms and some would be too small to accommodate the latest surgical technology. There would not be enough single-patient rooms, critical for controlling infections.

The center will not be “world-class” as Congress envisioned, legislators say. “Wounded warrior care will suffer,” they wrote to the Pentagon in a January letter made public last week.

No related posts.