Across the Aisle » Military

Are We Ready: The Consequences of ‘Bomb Iran’

Taylor Jo Isenberg — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:13:17 +0000

Saturday, Iran celebrated their great victory over the “arrogant powers” by opening their first nuclear power plant at Bushehr. The opening coincided with dynamic conversation on Jeff Goldberg’s recent article in The Atlantic painting a picture of military action as a foregone conclusion, and prominent foreign policy leaders such as former UN Ambassador John Bolton fanned the flames by renewing calls for a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Dangerously, the discussion on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program has moved away from the case for bombing Iran to who and when, ignoring the painful lessons learned from depicting military action as a clean and straightforward solution. We are still reeling from the burdensome commitments of Iraq and Afghanistan: a military response by either the United States or Israel will take much more than just bombs and have major potential consequences beyond Iran, realities noticeably absent from much of the conversation.

The most obvious and immediately damaging example is world oil supply. Iran could block the Strait of Hormuz, and therefore an astounding 20% of the world’s oil supply. Its estimated oil prices would shoot from $80-$100 to $400-$500, creating a devastating strain on the world economy and possibly result in increased military action.

Beyond the economic blow, the United States would face a whole new set of challenges with the ensuing shifts in the regional power balance, and with decreased leverage to confront them. Many of the advances in foreign policy goals laid out in Obama’s Cairo speech would be discredited, and while Arab heavyweights such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia might privately condone an attack on a regional threat, the public rebuke would support the goals of Islamic extremists by playing right into their rhetoric of the American aggressor.

Another likely consequence is exacerbated regional instabilities through attacks by proxies: Hizbullah would threaten Lebanon’s fragile state, and Israel would face increased attacks from Hamas and destroy any chance of a Middle East peace deal. Iran could leverage their growing regional authority and connections to terrorist groups, even cause complete breakdown in Iraq and Afghanistan. If a decision to bomb occurs before IAEA inspectors are removed from Iran or before verification that Iran violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States risks condemnation from Turkey, Russia, China, and other regional powers, effecting a broad set of policy issues and their willingness to cooperate on regional priorities beyond Iran. It would be a stinging and debilitating blow to our diplomatic and strategic goals.

Further, since Bushehr, Arak, Natanz, and other known nuclear sites are jointly run by Russia or monitored by the IAEA, the development of weapons-grade uranium would likely occur at a secret site, similar to Qom. An effective military strike would require bombing multiple locations over an extended period of time, including nuclear sites, research facilities, and military installations, resulting in an inevitably high number of Iranian and international civilian casualties. Moreover, the lack of knowledge on the exact nature of the targets could result in extensive civilian and environmental devastation due to nuclear fallout. There is also a possibility bombing could be futile, and Iran would pursue a nuclear weapon with fervor under the guise of legitimatized self-defense.

On a domestic front, the degree to which the election protests took the United States by surprise reveals our limited understanding of Iran’s politics. The country’s rising prominence in the region increases the significance of their domestic situation to the outside world. The protests, while harshly contained, indicated the hard-liners’ hold on the country is not absolute. A time-tested result of outside military intervention in the region is a surge of national unity: if there is a bomb Iran policy would likely drive Iranian’s moderates into the arms of the regime, snuffing out any potential future generation of leaders and reforms.

A nuclear weaponized Iran is a real and pressing threat. But before we resort to a military option, calculating what would happen the next day, the following week, and subsequent years is equally critical to our security priorities. We need to ask questions about the challenges and the capability of meeting them. Attacking Iran’s nuclear ambitions may seem like an easy short-term response for a militarily dominant United States, but the last ten years of American involvement in the Middle East demonstrate the extensive commitments required beyond just a few bombs.

The Limited Utility of Bullets and Bombs

John Eden — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:37:59 +0000

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:

(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
(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.
(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.

Up is Down, Night is Day, and Restructuring is “Cuts”

David Isenberg — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:30:03 +0000

To understand how perverse the perennial debate, which in itself is a weak word for what passes as supposed scrutiny and argumentation over U.S. military spending, always deliberately and euphemistically called defense spending, one has only to read the “Statement on Department Efficiencies Initiative” delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on August 9 when he proposed some modest changes in military command structures, such as the proposed closing of the Joint Forces Command, l along with other organization adjustments which theoretically, in aggregate, could save billions of dollars over five years.

To read the subsequent whining and rhetorical rending of government by corporate CEOs and their Congressional allies one might think Mahatma Gandhi had been brought back from the dead and been made Secretary of Defense.

The fact that the prospect of “Thousands Of Defense Jobs To Be Eliminated,” as the Washington Post headlined it the following day, in a military-industrial corporate sector which employs hundreds of thousands in the most limited definition of the phrase, excited so much whining is the very epitome of farce.

First, considering Gates called for finding more than $100 billion in overhead savings over the next five years, when combined direct military spending is likely to total over $3.5 trillion dollars is what you call having very low expectations. Note this does not include other military related spending which would jack the total even higher. For detail see the newly released Report of the Task Force on A Unified Security Budget for the United States.

Second, in no way whatsoever can what Gates proposed be considered a cut, as happened in most press accounts. As Gates took pains to note, “Let me be clear, the task before us is not to reduce the department’s top line budget. Rather, it is to significantly reduce its excess overhead costs and apply the savings to force structure and modernization.”

Third, it is a sign of how utterly dependent government is on private military contractors that Gates’ call for a 10 percent annual reduction in spending on contractors who provide support services to the military, including money for intelligence-related contracts, and he placed a freeze on the number of workers in the office of the secretary of defense, other Pentagon supervisory agencies and the headquarters of the military’s combat commands brought about cries of anguish. Why, anyone should possibly think this is a significant impediment to ongoing military outsourcing is beyond understanding. As Winslow Wheeler, Director, Straus Military Reform Project, Center for Defense Information, noted:

(The total number of these contractors appears to be unknown. One estimate is that the DOD contractors number 790,000; other numbers are higher. In any case, the denominator for this 10% reduction appears to be unknown. Also, it is unclear if this 10% reduction pertains to all contractors or a subset. If the correct number is 790,000, will there actually be three years of reductions of 79,000 of these people?)

Note what this recent Congressional Research Service report said:

The largest savings appear likely to come from a 30% reduction over three years in funding for ‘service support contractors.’… [but] There appears to be some significant overlap in the proposals, so their impact may not be cumulative….. Aside from the overlaps, several of the initiatives involve only relatively small amounts…. Many of the potentially larger savings appear to involve scrubbing the recent very large increases in intelligence spending.”

None of Gates initiatives has anything to do with a rational military budgeting process; something which has been AWOL for decades. What it means, as all people conversant with military spending issues understand, is that by trimming the Defense Department’s civilian and military bureaucracies, Gates is hoping to persuade Congress and outside critics that the department is eliminating waste on its own to head off future reductions in overall military spending. Gates still sees military spending increasing in real terms; only by a somewhat lesser amount due to projected cuts.

Yet paltry as they are, even these very limited initiatives have the regular military ritualistically outraged. Perhaps it is because they see it as an affront to the magical illusion that military spending is the most efficient and least corrupt of all government spending. Note to readers; that particular illusion would not be possible without massive, witting assistance from a largely compliant, and usually clueless, mainstream media establishment.

As Michael Brenner, Professor of International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, recently wrote on the National Journal Security Expert Blog:

For the past decade they have a deep sense of entitlement. Their presumed entitlement has no basis in law as do the much maligned Social Security programs funded through dedicated withholdings entirely separate from the tax revenues that keep the Pentagon machine well lubricated. There indeed does exist a defense establishment whose self-interested thinking pervades what passes for strategic planning in Washington these days. That was demonstrated when the Congress called upon the United States Institute of Peace to conduct an ‘independent’ review of needs and programs juxtaposed to the Quadrennial Defense Review made public this spring. The USIP project had as co-chairs Bush administration National Security Advisor Steven Hadley and Clinton administration Secretary of Defense William Perry. They led a twenty member panel chosen by DoD and Congress whose distinctive trait was that all but one had some financial stake in the Pentagon’s activities.

So it came as little surprise that the panel’s advisory report solemnly pronounced that the QDR understated America’s defense requirements and that spending substantially above that requested by DoD was imperative.

For those wanting to see a useful critique of the utter vapidity of the panel see this column by Winslow Wheeler, one of the relatively few analysts who actually understands its utter dysfunctional nature.

All in all, Gates pronouncement is just another reminder of the prescience of President Eisenhower’s farewell address:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Too bad we didn’t take it to heart when we still had the chance.

The Things We Left Behind: Fifty Years Later, American Cluster Bombs Continue to Kill in Laos

Alexis Collatos — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:30:54 +0000

One of the most striking statistics from the U.S. war in Vietnam doesn’t concern Vietnam at all, but its neighbor, Laos. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. dropped over 2.5 million tons of ordnance on Laos. This works out to the equivalent of one B-52 load of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. The sheer tonnage of explosives dropped on Laos makes the tiny, land-locked nation the most heavily-bombed country in history, with half a ton of bombs dropped for every inhabitant.

This dubious distinction carries a terrible legacy. According to U.S. estimates, approximately 30% of ordnance dropped over Laos failed to detonate upon impact. This unexploded ordnance, or UXO, remains scattered and buried throughout an area that covers one third of the country. In the past five decades over 50,000 Laotians – a fifth of them children – have been killed or maimed by American UXO. Currently, around 300 Laotians needlessly die every year from accidents involving UXO. Particularly deadly have been cluster bombs, which consist of sub-munitions that scatter over a wide area and are notorious for causing indiscriminate civilian casualties. Experts estimate that of the 260 million cluster bombs, or “bomblets” American forces dropped on Laos, 80 million remain unexploded.

This situation constitutes a severe humanitarian issue for which the U.S. is ultimately responsible. Due to the ubiquity of UXO, difficult economic conditions, and lack of education, reducing the damage by UXO has proved a formidable task for the Lao government. It is almost impossible for Laotians to avoid living and working in areas contaminated by UXO, making de-mining the only viable option for addressing the problem. Laos’s economy is heavily dependent on farming: 80% of the population is involved in agriculture, which makes up 30% of the national GDP. Unfortunately, UXO has rendered 37% of agricultural land unsafe for farming. Farmers who ignore or are unaware of UXO contamination are injured or killed by UXO that has sunk underground over time and is then detonated by digging.

In addition to farmers accidentally uncovering UXO, injuries and fatalities are caused when people actively seek out UXO for scrap metal. Laos is an extremely poor country, ranking 133rd on the UNDP’s Human Development Index. The scrap metal of UXO and bomb shells are often seen as a valuable addition to low-income farmers, prompting many people to ignore the risks of UXO in favor of meager fiscal benefits.

Ironically, the UXO that some Laotians collect to relieve their personal poverty is also partially responsible for the poverty of the entire country. Besides constituting a severe humanitarian problem, UXO is also a significant impediment to Lao’s economic development. As the UNDP has reported,

“High levels of poverty in rural [Laotian] communities often correlate with high levels of UXO contamination. UXO/Mine Action is the absolute pre-condition for the socio-economic development of Lao PDR and for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and National Socio Economic Development Plan (NSEDP).”

In short, UXO directly inhibits the health and development of the Lao economy. Much of Laos’ economic development depends on its ability to exploit its abundant natural resources for mining, hydropower, forestry and tourism. The presence of UXO in over a third of the country renders efforts to grow these industries unsafe. Thus, clearing UXO is not only a humanitarian priority but an economic one.

The U.S. has recognized the terrible impact of UXO on Laos, most recently in an April 22, 2010 hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment. However, American financial assistance in rectifying the problem has been less than satisfactory, to put it mildly. The Lao government’s National Regulatory Authority (NRA), which is responsible for de-mining along with UXO Laos, has been spending between $12 and $14 million a year to clear UXO. Only a small part of that cost is covered by U.S. donations. According to a State Department representative, from 1993 to 2009 the U.S. contributed $25 million to de-mining efforts, or an average of $1.5 million a year. In 2009 that number rose slightly, to $3.7 million, and FY 2010 has seen the highest contribution so far, at $5 million. Unfortunately, the State Department’s proposed FY 2011 allotment for de-mining in Laos is significantly smaller at $1.9 million. As Channapha Khamvongsa, Executive Director of the nonprofit Legacies of War, has pointed out, the U.S. spent more money in three days of dropping bombs on Laos than it has in the past fifteen years cleaning those bombs up.

The lack of U.S. fiscal assistance to Laos is both embarrassing and wrong. Laos already receives very little in the form of generalized American foreign assistance- $5 million in 2009. Regionally, this is in comparison to Thailand’s $15 million, Burma’s $17 million, Cambodia’s $65 million, and Vietnam’s $102 million. Since de-mining activities in Laos began in 1994, only 500,000 bomblets (out of an estimated 80 million) have been destroyed and only 1% of contaminated land cleared. A significant hindrance to progress is related to the lack of funding, particularly for equipment. Were the U.S. to commit to greater levels of funding, progress could be faster, thus reducing the unnecessary loss of life and stagnation of development in Laos.

The U.S. has no excuse for not taking full financial responsibility for clearing UXO in Laos. On the rather rare occasions when the problem of UXO Laos is discussed by the American government and media, it is done so in a way that fails to adequately accept responsibility for the problem. This is unacceptable. Secretary Clinton may have told Southeast Asia that “the U.S. is back,” but when it comes to Laos, that remains to be seen. Let’s hope she means it.

Forget Victory: Not Losing is Good Enough

David Isenberg — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:22:21 +0000

If nothing else, the Wikileaks release of the Afghanistan War Diaries has had the positive effect of focusing public attention back of Afghanistan. Of course, there has increasing coverage this year, as the surge of troops ordered by President Obama last fall has been implemented. But the war there has not received nearly the coverage it deserves, given the intensified fighting and increased brittleness of American strategy and goals.

Let there be no mistake, the costs are high. The United States, as this Congressional Research Service report details will, most likely, suffer more killed and wounded this year, than in any year since it invaded Afghanistan in 2001. As of July 12 that was 218 killed and 2000 wounded. In 2009, by comparison the numbers were 311 killed and 2,131 wounded. Total U.S. military deaths thus far from Oct. 11, 2001 are 1,154 and wounded is 6,773.

We should note that the deaths of at least 66 soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen have made July the deadliest-ever month for American troops in the nine-year war in Afghanistan. The tally includes six American service members who died in four separate attacks in southern Afghanistan last Thursday and Friday.

One of the salutary effects of the Wikileaks documents is to illustrate the incoherent response of the federal government when it comes to dealing with the reality of its policies. As the Project On Government Oversight noted:

There is no doubt this episode also exposes the ridiculous problems created by the overclassification of government information. The Administration cannot have it both ways—they claimed that there was nothing important in the 92,000 documents, then also claimed that this was a terrible breach of national security. There is no doubt that the release produced a better-informed populace about one of our most important public policy issues, the ongoing war in Afghanistan. But at what cost?

This, by the way, is a realistic appraisal of Wikileaks, as opposed to the predictable hysteria from such rightwingers as Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute.

Maybe people think that much of this is moot; that come next year the U.S. will redeploy its troops back home from Afghanistan. If so, they should ponder this exchange from the interview that ABC’s This Week with Christine Amanpour did with Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates on August 1:

Let me put something up that David Kilcullen, the counter-insurgency expert, a former adviser to General Petraeus, said about the timetable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID KILCULLEN: They believe that we had stated a date certain, that we were going to leave in the summer of 2011. And they immediately went out and spoke to the population and said, the Americans are leaving in 18 months, as it was then. What are you doing on the 19th month? Who are you backing? Because we’ll still be there and they won’t be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So that question is out there. So many people are arranging their schedules for 2011 — the summer of 2011.

But my question to you is this, what can General Petraeus do to defeat the Taliban at their own game?

What can he do now in Afghanistan to avoid this deadline that they’re setting for themselves?

GATES: Well, first of all, I think we need to re-emphasize the message that we are not leaving Afghanistan in July of 2011. We are beginning a transition process and a thinning of our ranks that will — and the pace will depend on the conditions on the ground. The president has been very clear about that. And if the Taliban are waiting for the nineteenth month, I welcome that, because we will be there in the nineteenth month and we will be there with a lot of troops.

As the New York Times reported on Sunday when President Obama announced his new war plan for Afghanistan last year, the centerpiece of the strategy was to safeguard the Afghan people, provide them with a competent government and win their allegiance. But the counterinsurgency strategy has shown little success; that counterinsurgency strategy has shown little success, as demonstrated by the flagging military and civilian operations in Marja and Kandahar and the spread of Taliban influence in other areas of the country.

The alternative approach is targeted killings of insurgents from Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It is not clear that killing enemy fighters is sufficient by itself to cripple an insurgency.

But even if it works well the best that can be hoped for is a political settlement with the Taliban. That is pretty thin beer, considering the past, present, and future American sacrifices in Afghanistan.

One sign of rationality, despite all the conservative grumbling and spinning, is that the American public is leading, not following the politicians and pundits. As Frank Rich pointed out in the New York Times:

the logs won’t change the course of our very long war in Afghanistan, but neither did the Pentagon Papers alter the course of Vietnam.

What Ellsberg’s leak did do was ratify the downward trend-line of the war’s narrative. The WikiLeaks legacy may echo that. We may look back at the war logs as a herald of the end of America’s engagement in Afghanistan just as the Pentagon Papers are now a milestone in our slo-mo exit from Vietnam.

…

Yet the national yawn that largely greeted the war logs is most of all an indicator of the country’s verdict on the Afghan war itself, now that it’s nine years on and has reached its highest monthly casualty rate for American troops. Many Americans at home have lost faith and checked out. The war places way down the list of pressing issues in every poll.

Nearly two-thirds of those asked recently by CBS News think it’s going badly; the latest Post-ABC News survey finds support of Obama’s handling of Afghanistan at a low (45 percent), with only 43 percent deeming the war worth fighting.

The bottom line of Afghanistan is that the U.S. not fighting to win. Instead it is fighting not to lose. What is the difference? Here is how Leslie Gelb, former president of the establishment Council on Foreign Relations explains it. He starts with the situation President Lydon Johnson found himself in with respect to Vietnam:

“I can’t win, and I can’t get out.” He was trapped between his awareness that victory was impossible at any reasonable price, and his fear that losing would be catastrophic for the United States, and himself. LBJ was stuck, and so was the United States.

…

Though President Obama himself and General Petraeus, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, still call for victory there, it is probably true that Obama and maybe even the general have come to LBJ’s conclusion: “I can’t win, and I can’t get out.”

Like Voltaire’s Candide, Gelb tries to see the best of all possible worlds:

Like President Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Obama and his team can drown the aftereffects of Afghanistan in powerful diplomacy and continued, focused commitment to Afghans. In these ways, he can both continue to protect against terrorism in Afghanistan and start strengthening efforts against the new homes for terrorists-in Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and in American cities.

This approach is not a cop out. It is a way to redefine victory. It was done in Vietnam. And people forget that the president of Vietnam visited George W. Bush in the White House during his last year in office. People hardly noticed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just visited there. People hardly noticed that Vietnam now looks to the United States as a protector against China.

If President Obama is also creative in the use of America’s power, we can mostly withdraw from Afghanistan-and not lose.

So when all is said and done and the last U.S. troops leave Kabul the American public can rejoice for not having lost. Good luck in selling that to the American Gold Star Mothers.

Nothing is Too Good For Our Boys So That’s What We’ll Give Them: Nothing: Part 3

David Isenberg — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:22:59 +0000

It has been nearly two months since I last wrote about the health of American military personnel and veterans so let’s look at it again. The news, unfortunately, isn’t any better.

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.

The Cost of Dropping the Ball in Kyrgyzstan

Volha Charnysh — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:09:58 +0000

Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet state in Central Asia, has made many headlines after its corrupt President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was toppled in April. On June 10th, riots erupted between the Kyrgyz and the Uzbek minority in Bakiyev’s stronghold Osh, leaving hundreds dead and sending a flood of refuges to neighboring Uzbekistan. The June 27th constitutional referendum ratifying a new constitution was deemed successful, but true peace is elusive in southern Kyrgyzstan. The violence continues as the Kyrgyz police abuse ethnic Uzbeks, and the unrest threatens to spread to neighboring countries. Riots may flare up anew when the local clans start vying for power in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Kyrgyzstan’s weak central authorities are unable to rein in the violence.

During this time, only the lazy refrained from opining about the Kyrgyz misfortune, but nevertheless world governments have not followed words with actions. Russia and the United States have limited their response to Kyrgyz pleas for help to providing humanitarian relief. Their continued inaction may have dire consequences. Even in the unlikely scenario that the conflict resolves itself, the indecisiveness of the two world powers will leave a bitter aftertaste in the former Soviet republics.

Just recently, Moscow and Washington were so anxious about securing their military bases that they were cutting deals with Bakiyev’s authoritarian regime: in 2008, Bakiyev threatened to close the U.S. military base to secure a Russian loan, changed his mind when the U.S. more than tripled its rent for the base, and appeased Russia by allowing it a second base in the country. Now that their bases are secured, both countries are indifferent to Kyrgyz problems. To be sure, Russia fears chaos in its backyard, and the United States hopes for a stable Kyrgyzstan as it wages war in Afghanistan. However, Moscow and Washington have so far shunned responsibility for stabilizing the region.

When asked to send peacekeeping troops by both sides in the conflict in June, the Kremlin refused, citing the “internal” nature of the unrest. Russia has never hesitated to use force in the past; twenty years ago the Soviet troops were sent to Kyrgyzstan’s Osh to quell a very similar conflict. Russia’s recent foray into Georgia proves the Kremlin is willing to go far to achieve its objectives in the region. Moscow’s objectives may also explain – though not excuse – its current inertia. The international opprobrium after the August 2008 war has made Russia wary of sending its troops to intervene in the affairs of other states, whatever the reason. Today, any presence of Russian peacekeepers in Kyrgyzstan could be criticized by neighboring Uzbekistan, if not by the international community. Russia sees no need to interject itself between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek, potentially angering both sides. If anything, the unrest between the two pro-Russian ethnic groups could, conveniently for Moscow, put the U.S.’s feet to the fire by endangering the Manas transit hub for Afghanistan supplies, even more crucial after Uzbekistan closed a US base in 2005, making it more dependent on Russia’s cooperation.

Hiding its inaction with an image of a law-abiding state that shuns unilateral action, Russia called a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and had CSTO uncover an excuse for inaction in its own charter, which allows for collective military actions only in response to a threat from another state. As a leader of CSTO, which also includes Belarus (which sheltered the deposed Bakiyev), Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Russia could easily find an appropriate chapter in the U.N. Charter allowing it to deploy CSTO troops, had it wanted to do so. However, inaction is what Russia has consciously chosen.

The United States has no less responsibility in maintaining stability in the region. After all, it was among the supporters of the Tulip revolution that had brought the now deposed Bakiyev to power. Where the previous U.S. administration may have not thought twice before intervening, the Obama administration called for multilateral action and is demurely exchanging “opinions on potential solutions to the crisis” with Uzbekistan, which it had once criticized for human rights violations and authoritarianism.

Not unwisely, the United States seeks to coordinate its security response with Moscow. Washington hopes Russia takes the lead. There is only one difference between the U.S.’s and Russia’s equally passive approaches to the problem: Russia shields its inaction behind CSTO, while the United States covers up with the Organization for Security and Cooperation for Europe (OSCE). Washington favors sending in an OSCE police force – a measure that is being decided by the OSCE Security Council this week. Clearly, an unarmed mission will not be able to stop another outbreak of violence, and only a strong dose of peacekeeping and mediation can fix the problem. While the United States cannot act too boldly in a post-Soviet state like Kyrgyzstan, it can surely be more active in advocating multilateral action beyond humanitarian aid.

The United States and Russia have a shared responsibility in stabilizing Kyrgyzstan, and the costs of their inaction are growing. The two countries cannot ignore ethnic conflicts in the region and should work on developing a common approach to security problems in Central Asia. If neither Moscow nor Washington take the lead in Kyrgyzstan (which may become the first parliamentary republic in Central Asia, if the fall elections succeed), China (which is far less tolerant of democratic developments) may have to step up to fill their roles. If they continue to stand idle, Russia and the United States may miss an opportunity to strengthen their positions in the region and instead allow the suffering of many innocent people.

Gen. McChrystal is no Gen. MacArthur

David Isenberg — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:24:57 +0000

I was out of town when the kerfuffle about the article about Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Rolling Stone magazine became public.

Now that I am back and have read the article I am amazed at how little it takes to get a general fired. I mean, for pity’s sake, this was not something on the order of Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur. It was not as if McChrystal was seriously criticizing Obama’s war strategy, like MacArthur did about Truman. How could he? This was the strategy, after all, that McChrystal had successfully persuaded Obama to sign off on and one that McChrystal’s successor, Gen. David Petraeus has pledged to continue. I venture to say one hears more venomous remarks around the average office water cooler than what I read in the article.

Contrary to what some in the media write this was not a sign of a “dysfunctional civilian-military relationship.” To me it is a sign of posturing on the part of President Obama and, perhaps, an attempt to burnish his hawk credibility, and to sweep under the rug, at least for a little bit longer that his Afghanistan strategy is not working.

Let’s cut to the chase. As I see it successful counterinsurgency doctrine comes with a price; the commitment to stay for years and years, if necessary. When President Obama announced his latest surge last fall it came with an exit time, next year. Although one hears the usual rightwing objections, setting an exit date will only encourage the Taliban it is unlikely the American public will stand for keeping the current number of forces beyond next summer, when troops are scheduled to start exiting. And clearly that is far too soon to win at counterinsurgency. So, in that sense the war was already lost.

And that assumes the counterinsurgency strategy is workable. And there is reason to be doubtful about that, as this recent article in Tom Dispatch details.

What will most likely happen is that both sides, the U.S. and the afghan government, such as it is, will make polite noises and the U.S. will say to President Karzai, see you, wouldn’t want to be you

This future seems even more likely given recent news. Let me cite just a few examples.

A recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found that the system the United States used for the past five years to rate the readiness of Afghanistan’s Army and police force was seriously flawed and there was no reliable way to measure any progress.

Despite spending by the United States of $27 billion on the training of Afghan security forces since 2002, the report found that even top-rated Afghan units could not operate independently and that the ratings of many security forces overstated their actual capabilities. In addition, the report said some parts of the country were so dangerous that assessment teams could not rate the security forces in those areas at all.

Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, said that she would strip $3.9 billion in aid for Afghanistan from next year’s spending bill over concerns about rampant graft in the country and alleged efforts by President Hamid Karzai’s government to derail corruption probes.

According to a National Journal article last month U.S. forces are encountering record numbers of improvised explosive devices. Every measure of the danger has neared or exceeded the records set last August, according to the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization,

From the last (relatively) quiet month, February, through the end of May, the number of U.S. and allied troops killed by IEDs per month rose 13 percent; the number wounded was up 34 percent. Explosions that succeeded in inflicting casualties jumped by 40 percent; and the total number of IEDs encountered, including those that detonated harmlessly or were found and neutralized, increased by 43 percent to an unprecedented 1,128 in May — that’s more than 36 a day.

Drones: Unlawful Response to Unlawful Combatants?

Volha Charnysh — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:28:30 +0000

In a room full of computer screens, a US civilian with a joystick on the console kills a man thousands of miles away. Having aced a course on drones with ferocious names like Reaper, Hunter, and Tigershark, he is competent to take down a target — a dangerous terrorist, a drug lord connected with the Taliban, a farmer planting IEDs, or, accidentally, an innocent civilian, as the drones are liable to targeting errors. The drones often save American lives and tax dollars at the expense of the lives of innocent civilians: just last month, an air strike mistake led to 23 civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

However, instead of addressing the targeting failures or keeping the drones in the combat zone, the United States sometimes dismisses problems by defining its enemies as “unlawful combatants” and keeping the drone operations secret. If Washington continues to excuse itself from the rule of law in this manner, the use of armed unmanned vehicles may create more problems than it solves.

Last week, a 29-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council called on the United States to exercise greater restraint in its use of drones outside of war zones because the use of drones undermined global constraints on the use of military force. The report stressed that the drone technology is changing the rules of conflict and undermining the foundations of humanitarian behavior in war. Here are just some grounds on which the US use of drones could be challenged.

First, although the drones have become a prominent feature of US counterterrorism efforts, Washington keeps the limits and the justification of drone killings secret. Such secrecy stifles public debate on the use of drones, prevents the investigation of civilian casualties, and allows the United States to avoid following the rules of combat.

Second, while it views its own right to self defense in a very expansive and open-ended manner, the United States denies such a right to the suspect targeted by the drone. Frequently operated outside of combat zones, the drones target not only terrorists, but also those who help them and, depending on the nature of the help, may deserve a punishment far less severe than killing.

Third, the use of drones violates Washington’s own 1947 National Security Act, which separates intelligence and military functions. The drones in Pakistan are operated by the CIA – a civilian agency tasked with intelligence gathering that has no privileged combatant status under the Geneva Conventions- and are exempt from the well-established protocols that cover military operations.

To maintain its legitimacy when conducting military operations abroad, the United States must fully comply with international humanitarian law and adhere to the standards of the so-called ‘just war against terror’ not only in motivation, but also in execution. This means establishing clear limitations and rules for drone targeting, removing the CIA from drone operations, lifting the veil of secrecy from the issue, keeping drone use within the limits of the acknowledged battlefield, and protecting civilians from drone attacks more rigorously. Simply admitting that accidents do happen despite the highest levels of standards and practices is not enough.

Next time it contemplates the need for establishing rules for drone use and lifting the surrounding secrecy, Washington should imagine a lawless world where Iran and North Korea have acquired armed drones. Today, the United States is only one of over 40 states that have invested in the drone technology. Each of these nations has a long list of enemies and would find that when it comes to targeted killings, the more secrecy and the fewer rules, the better. One of the states whose use of drones is likely to rise in the near future is Russia, which currently has 18 drone programs and is also training personnel to operate Israeli-made drones. Having killed its enemies by means as exotic as Polonium poisoning in the past, the Kremlin will be able to take its assassination practices to a whole new level by using drones. Thus, to ensure that the drone programs of other countries don’t take a dangerous turn, the United States should set and abide by high standards while it still leads in drones technology.

By avoiding international law, the United States agrees to the absence of the rules not only for other sovereign states, but also for the very terrorists it targets. While Washington claims to attempt to win hearts and minds abroad, its actions stoke anti-Americanism and inspire more terrorist attacks, and the Taliban could well argue that the US drones are not that different from its remote control IEDs. It is important that the feeling of outrage at terrorist acts does not weaken American ethical considerations regarding the use of drones because even the so-called “unlawful combatants” should be fought in accordance with the law.

Was it good for the Jews? No!

David Isenberg — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:15:47 +0000

As a sign of how bad a mistake Israel made when its commandos boarded the Gaza bound ship Mavi Marmara on May 31 consider what Slate columnist Christopher Hitchens, a former liberal who moved rightward after 9/11 wrote yesterday:

The near-incredible stupidity of the Israeli airborne descent on the good ship Mavi Marmara, by troops well-enough equipped to shoot when panicked but not well-enough prepared to contain or subdue a preplanned riot, has now generated much more coverage and comment than Erdogan’s cynical recent decision to become a partner in the nuclear maneuvers of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

…

Israeli self-pity over Gaza—”You fire rockets at us! And after all we’ve done for you!”—may be incredibly unappetizing. An occupation that should never have been allowed in the first place was protracted until it became obviously unbearable for all concerned and then turned into a scuttle. The misery and shame of that history cannot be effaced by mere withdrawal or healed by the delivery of aid. It can only really be canceled by a good-faith agreement to create a Palestinian state.

Sad to say we have been down this road before with Israel. It does something wrong, countries and people object, and the pro-Israel crowd opens up the spin spigots, i.e., people who criticize Israel don’t understand that it is at war, that people who criticize are naïve leftists and terrorist travelers, or just plain old anti-Jewish bigots.

For an example of the last see what Rabbi Marvin Hier , dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in California, wrote in regard to White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Hier who frequently acts as a rabbinical equivalent of Jesse Jackson wrote, “Even the White House Correspondent, Helen Thomas thought it’s an opportune time to show off her bigotry telling the Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go back to Poland and Germany.” Helen, I got two things to say to you – first, the Jews are not in Palestine, they’re in the state of Israel where they belong and where their ancestors lived for two thousand years before Mohammed. Second, you’re the one who should go home – there should be no place for bigots in the White House press room.”

I find these arguments astonishingly unconvincing. Being Jewish myself let me first answer the age old question that arises among Jews when something notable happens involving us, namely is it good for Jews or bad for Jews. No question about it; this is bad for Jews.

Consider just a few points. A dual Turkish American citizen Furkan Dogan, 19 years old, was one of those killed aboard the Marmara. Early news reports said he had had one bullet in the chest and four bullets fired into his head from close range. That doesn’t sound like the sort of shots fired by soldiers being attacked. It sounds like the standard practice of commandos and covert ops personnel worldwide. In snap shooting, the target is the centre of the body mass – i.e., the abdomen. Being hit by a large caliber, subsonic round is normally adequate to stop the perpetrator. The main reason for shots to the head is to kill instantaneously, rather than immobilize, such as in the event of a suicide bomber. What it does not sound like is the shooting that is used as a last resort self defense measure.

More importantly, an American citizen has been killed. Does Israel and its supporters really believe that the United States should just stand aside and say nothing and let Dogan be branded as an activist, as if that is sufficient reason for killing him?

Another dismaying aspect is the fact that the Israeli assault confirms a transformation in Israel’s relationship to such individuals and the organizations they belong to. By attacking a humanitarian mission, even if it was consciously used by its organizers as much for public relations as humanitarian efforts, Israel has put itself squarely on the side of repressive regimes or violent militias, who often interpret the provision of relief and assistance to civilians as intervention on behalf of the enemy. It is a continuation of the trend that smeared Richard Goldstone, who authored the Goldstone report that criticized Israeli conduct in its was a three-week armed invasion, codenamed Operation Cast Lead, of the Gaza Strip during the winter of 2008–2009. With its naval assault Israel put itself on the same level as those who attack Red Cross or human-rights workers. No matter how you try to spin it this is wrong.

Insofar as the rationale that the blockade of Gaza is necessary and that ships cargo must be searched to prevent weapons reaching Hamas it has long been known that far more weapons are smuggled into Gaza via the tunnels under the Gaza-Egyptian border than are brought in by ship. And, more to the point, there were no weapons on the ship. The Israelis are no slouch in public relations. If there had been so much as a single AK-47 aboard we would be seeing it in endless video loops across the world.

And, the simple fact of the matter is that Israel had no right to attempt to board the ship in international waters. The humanitarian flotilla was in international waters, on the high seas. The principle of freedom of navigation is enshrined in international law, including in the Convention on the High Seas, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and has attained the status of customary international law by which all states are bound. Under this principle, all states have the freedom to sail ships flying their flags on the high seas. Sovereignty over a ship is exclusive to the state whose flag the ship is flying. Any attempt to board the ship of another flag-state is therefore considered a breach of that state’s sovereignty.

Maritime blockades can not be imposed in international waters. Contrary to Israel’s assertions, maritime blockades must be restricted to ports or coastal areas under the enemy’s control, and may not be imposed in international waters. Israel’s attempt to impose and enforce its blockade in international waters was therefore illegal. Israel’s claim that it has a right to pursue a ship intending to breach its blockade from the time it begins its voyage, based on the so-called doctrine of continuous voyage, is a minority position in international law. Israel’s reliance on this questionable doctrine does not justify its attack on the humanitarian flotilla and its infliction of many casualties.

Given that Israel’s attack against the humanitarian flotilla was itself illegal, Israel’s claim that its commandos were acting in self-defense is unfounded. The principle of self-defense applies only when a state is repelling an attack against it. Certainly, the flotilla ships were not attacking the Israeli naval forces. Moreover, even if Israel did have a right to board the ships, its use of force in doing so was unnecessary and disproportionate to any threat the unarmed civilians aboard the ships may have posed. Given the belligerent nature of the attack against them, the civilians aboard the ship had every right to defend themselves against the overwhelming force of the Israeli commandos.

Fare more important, however, is that the strategic reason for the blockade, i.e., to weaken and ultimately make the Gaza Palestinians reject Hamas is a failure. Ever since Hamas was elected into power in a fair election Israel has been furious and sought to pressure the Palestinians to overthrow Hamas. As Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told the Israeli media in early 2006, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” But Hamas is not weakened; quite the contrary. In fact it has been strengthened. This was entirely predictable. Generally, when a population is under attack it clings to the government in power, no matter what its faults.

And the coverage of the assault by most major media lends credence to Sarah Pailin’s description of it as the “lamestream media.” It says something disturbing about the American media when there is more critical – and by that I mean skeptical, as in good journalism – coverage of the assault in the Israeli media than there is in the American.

For those who don’t remember history what Israel did is uncomfortably similar to the case of the Exodus. As Israeli columnist Uri Avnery wrote on Sunday, that ship left France in 1947 with the hope of breaking the British blockade, which was imposed to prevent ships loaded with Holocaust survivors from reaching the shores of Palestine.

If it had been allowed to reach the country, the illegal immigrants would have come ashore and the British would have sent them to detention camps in Cyprus, as they had done before. Nobody would have taken any notice of the episode for more than two days.

But the person in charge was Ernest Bevin, a Labour Party leader, an arrogant, rude and power-loving British minister. He was not about to let a bunch of Jews dictate to him. He decided to teach them a lesson the entire world would witness. “This is a provocation!” he exclaimed, and of course he was right. The main aim was indeed to create a provocation, in order to draw the eyes of the world to the British blockade.

What followed is well known: the episode dragged on and on, one stupidity led to another, the whole world sympathized with the passengers. But the British did not give in and paid the price. A heavy price.

Many believe that the “Exodus” incident was the turning point in the struggle for the creation of the State of Israel. Britain collapsed under the weight of international condemnation and decided to give up its mandate over Palestine. There were, of course, many more weighty reasons for this decision, but the “Exodus” proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I AM not the only one who was reminded of this episode this week. Actually, it was almost impossible not to be reminded of it, especially for those of us who lived in Palestine at the time and witnessed it.

There are, of course, important differences. Then the passengers were Holocaust survivors, this time they were peace activists from all over the world. But then and now the world saw heavily armed soldiers brutally attack unarmed passengers, who resist with everything that comes to hand, sticks and bare hands. Then and now it happened on the high seas – 40 km from the shore then, 65 km now.

In retrospect, the British behavior throughout the affair seems incredibly stupid. But Bevin was no fool, and the British officers who commanded the action were not nincompoops. After all, they had just finished a World War on the winning side.

If they behaved with complete folly from beginning to end, it was the result of arrogance, insensitivity and boundless contempt for world public opinion.

Ehud Barak is the Israeli Bevin. He is not a fool, either, nor are our top brass. But they are responsible for a chain of acts of folly, the disastrous implications of which are hard to assess. Former minister and present commentator Yossi Sarid called the ministerial “committee of seven”, which decides on security matters, “seven idiots” – and I must protest. It is an insult to idiots.

Israel would do well to recognize that its increasing myopic approach to geopolitics, as in treating ever problem as if it were a nail that needs to be beaten down is self-defeating.