A Depressing Thought

So it seems that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan will be extended until 2017 or so...or until the next president extends it again because we're this close to turning the corner....

So when I read this piece by David Swanson, I realized he'd put his finger on it:

The idea that year 15 or year 16 is going to go better in Afghanistan than the first 14 years have gone is based on no evidence whatsoever, but merely the hope that something will change combined with a misguided and arrogant sense of responsibility to control someone else’s country. As numerous Afghans have been saying for nearly 14 years, Afghanistan will be a disaster when the U.S. occupation ends, but it will be a larger disaster the longer it takes to do so.

Afghanistan need not be “abandoned.” The United States owes Afghanistan reparations in the form of significant actual aid, the cost of which would of course be less than that of continuing the war.

Student of history that I am, I did some cursory Googling of the history of Western involvement in Afghanistan (another good article here). The British originally sent an army there in 1839, in part to thwart perceived Russian influence in the region.  The Afghans rose up, and in 1842 drove the invading army out of Kabul:

On January 6, 1842, the British began their withdrawal from Kabul. Leaving the city were 4,500 British troops and 12,000 civilians who had followed the British Army to Kabul. The plan was to march to Jalalabad, about 90 miles away.

The retreat in the brutally cold weather took an immediate toll, and many died from exposure in the first days. And despite the treaty, the British column came under attack when it reached a mountain pass, the Khurd Kabul. The retreat became a massacre.

Slaughter in the Mountain Passes of Afghanistan

A magazine based in Boston, the North American Review, published a remarkably extensive and timely account titled “The English in Afghanistan” six months later, in July 1842. It contained this vivid description (some antiquated spellings have been left intact):

On the 6th of January, 1842, the Caboul forces commenced their retreat through the dismal pass, destined to be their grave. On the third day they were attacked by the mountaineers from all points, and a fearful slaughter ensued…

The troops kept on, and awful scenes ensued. Without food, mangled and cut to pieces, each one caring only for himself, all subordination had fled; and the soldiers of the forty-fourth English regiment are reported to have knocked down their officers with the butts of their muskets.

On the 13th of January, just seven days after the retreat commenced, one man, bloody and torn, mounted on a miserable pony, and pursued by horsemen, was seen riding furiously across the plains to Jellalabad. That was Dr. Brydon, the sole person to tell the tale of the passage of Khourd Caboul.

More than 16,000 people had set out on the retreat from Kabul, and in the end only one man, Dr. William Brydon, a British Army surgeon, had made it alive to Jalalabad.

The above history lesson is offered without further comment.

Grim Milestone

Via Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars.  Not with a bang, but a whimper, we've reached a grim milestone: U.S. Marines Cpl Taylor J Baune, 21, Andover, MN, officially became the 2000th soldier to die in Afghanistan.

My heart goes out to his family in recognition of the unfillable hole that his loss will always leave.  And my heartfelt sympathy to all the other 1999...and counting.

The American Way of War

Via Dianne at Cab Drollery on 17 April, a great David Horsey cartoon from the LA Times entitled War, The American Way:

[click to enlarge, then ESC to return]

The post then goes on to quote from cartoonist Horsey's review of the new Rachel Maddow book, "Drift":

Maddow's core thesis is that in the decades since the end of the war in Vietnam, there has been a steady and dramatic shift in the way the United States goes to war. There was a time when Congress stepped up to its constitutional responsibility to say when the country would send troops into battle. Once engaged, the entire country took part. Now, Maddow writes, the president can churn up a war anytime he wants, Congress rolls over, and only a tiny fraction of Americans do the fighting while the rest blithely carry on with their normal lives.

Fight, Talk, Build

Marcy Wheeler got it right last week, as she points out some irony with respect to the U.S. position on Afghanistan:

As the US stumbles around, trying to find its way out of a country it has occupied for over ten years, the path "forward" remains as murky as ever.  Just under two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was chosen as the point person for introducing the new US catchphrase "fight, talk, build" that is meant to describe US strategy in the region.  As I noted at the time, the US seemed to completely miss the irony of using the country's chief diplomat to introduce a new strategy that is based on the concept of shoot first and ask questions later.

SNIP

That bit at the beginning should not be overlooked: the success of the "fight, talk, build" strategy "depends on a positive outcome for several variables that currently appear headed in the wrong direction."  Mechanisms for reversing the current direction of these variables are not presented in the article.

That's OK, we can just hope that things will kinda sorta get better, can't we?  Then Marcy in her perceptive way pulls back the veil just a bit more:

While the Obama administration begins to think about preparing to maybe get the Pentagon perhaps to agree to withdraw a few more troops out of Afghanistan,  we see the terrain being softened a bit more for the eventual realization that all of the US efforts  and investments in "training" Afghan forces are destined for failure.  It appears from this article that David Petraeus, who is touted in the press as responsible for training when it is described as being successful, will escape blame for the failure in Afghanistan because William Caldwell is described in the article as having "overseen all NATO training in Afghanistan for the past two years".  In true Petraeus fashion, the slate for the previous eight years is not just wiped clean, but ceases to exist.  Petraeus' name does not appear in the article.

Prospects for more and more dead and maimed improve as our reputation circles the bowl....

 

Afghanistan, Continuing

Looks like we are indeed staying the course--whatever that means--in our perpetual war in Afghanistan.

From John Bennett in TheHill.com on 12 Oct 2011: 

New Joint Chiefs Chairman Predicts Current Wars Won't End 'During My Tenure'

Newly installed Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey predicted Wednesday that U.S. forces will still be fighting and keeping the peace in Afghanistan and Iraq when his tenure expires.

Dempsey began a two-year term as the military's top officer earlier this month, meaning his first of two possible terms will run out in October 2013. If he serves four years as chairman, he could remain in the post until late 2015.

A slide that accompanied his remarks at an Association of the U.S. Army forum in downtown Washington on Wednesday stated that one of the military's goals during his stint is to "achieve our national objectives in the current conflicts."

Methinks our national objective is to remain there forever, doing something.  Mission accomplished.

 

Eyebrows In Afghanistan

From a page 1 article in the Wall Street Journal on 13 Oct:

Emerging amid the camouflage and crewcuts is the latest in combat chic: male soldiers with eyebrows professionally shaped into slender arches."I just wanted them to shape up my eyebrows," explains Private First Class Richard Guillemette, whose job is to call in artillery barrages from the front lines.

....

These threaded, plucked or shaved young soldiers are proving befuddling to an older generation of bushier warriors. Army regulations are silent on the subject of male eyebrows, except to say that one's hair must not reach so far south.

In 2007, however, the Marine Corps added a line to its grooming regulations stating that "excessive plucking or removal of eyebrows is not authorized, except for medical reasons." The Marines left open the question of what constitutes a pluck too far, though the Corps did make a half-hearted, circular attempt to define what would count as eccentric and faddish (bad), compared with conservative and inconspicuous (good).

This article just tickled me, though I can’t put my finger on exactly why.  Maybe it's seeing "the man" squirm a bit uncomfortably.  Or the juxtaposition of a harmless cosmetic procedure being done to, well, young men who in their day jobs are trained killers (not being judgmental here, just recognizing that the end product of the military is arguably death and destruction).  Or just the fact that this seems to be a classic case of gallows humor, where people in a potentially lethal situation turn to diversions, any diversions, just to keep their sanity.

Regardless, this trend could almost make me enlist, except I'm too old.

  

Everlasting Afghanistan

Image credit theBRIGADE.com, here.

Just in case you thought we were going to leave Afghanistan anytime soon, you ought to check out this post on 26 August 2011 from William Rivers Pitt at The Smirking Chimp:

A pair of vitally important news reports were lost recently amid a blizzard of stories about the gyrating stock market and a rogue East Coast earthquake. The first came from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who announced that a deal had been struck to keep US forces in Iraq beyond the oft-publicized December 31st withdrawal deadline and into 2012, contrary to Mr. Obama's promises...A few days after this announcement came a report from the UK Telegraph that is nothing short of staggering:

America and Afghanistan are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The agreement would allow not only military trainers to stay to build up the Afghan army and police, but also American special forces soldiers and air power to remain.

Both Afghan and American officials said that they hoped to sign the pact before the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in December. Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai agreed last week to escalate the negotiations and their national security advisers will meet in Washington in September.

Pitt is dumbfounded, writing:

2024. More than twelve years from now.  Seven congressional elections and three presidential elections from now.

I, too, am struck speechless.  We never are going to leave, are we?

Moon Over Afghanistan

This cartoon, which appeared last week in the science blog Pharyngula, neatly ties into my posts from last Thursday and Friday.

PZ Myers comments that it'd be funnier if it were a little less true. 
(Try clicking on the image to make it bigger):

 

Budget Trade-Offs

I'm beating on an old drum here, but with the present standoff over the budget and deficits, a post from Think Progress back in June is relevant. 

That post was written at the time that President Obama was set to announce his troop drawdown strategy for Afghanistan (which for the near-term only pulls out the troops he had "surged" in and so effectively isn't much of a reduction at all...in other words, the long slog in Afghanistan continues with no end in sight).  Here are some things that we gave up this year alone (FY 2011) to pay $113 billion for this war:

1. Provide 57.5 Million Children With Low-Income Health Care For 2011
2. Provide 23 Million People With Low-Income Health Coverage In 2011
3. Give 20.2 Million $5,500 Pell Grants To Students In 2011
4. Provide 14.35 million Military Veterans With VA Medical Care In 2011
5. Give 14.7 million Children Head Start Funding In 2011
6. Give 14.26 Million Scholarships To University Students In 2011
7. Employ 1.93 million Firefighters In 2011
8. Hire 1.75 Million Elementary School Teachers In 2011
9. Hire 1.65 Million Police Officers In 2011
10. Equip 67.8 Million Households With The Ability To Use Wind Power In 2011
11. Equip 25.39 Million Households With The Ability To Use Solar Photovoltaic Energy In 2011

Oh, to say nothing of the dead and maimed soldiers and civilians.  Yet a serious discussion of war funding seems not to be on the table...while cuts in our social programs for our most vulnerable citizens are. 

How misguided is that?

 

REPOST: Habituated to War

While I am down after arm surgery and can't type, I am recycling some posts from a year ago.

This from 30 May 2010, here (you'll need to click back to see any images, I could not easily or quickly insert them in this re-post):

Via Andrew Sullivan, I wound up over at Travels With Shiloh. The author there attended a COIN Symposium 11-13 May at Fort Leavenworth, KS (COIN meaning Counter Insurgency).

He observed the following:

There were about 100 attendees at the conference with a pretty even mix of military and civilian personnel (both contractors and what appeared to be a smattering of reps from other departments). While primarily American there were other nations represented, particularly Canadian, British and Australian. There were no representatives from Afghanistan which was disappointing but apparently logistics got in the way of that.

Most of the military attendees were field grade officers (between major and colonel) with a few scattered captains and senior enlisted (SFC and MSGs) thrown in.

On an interesting note I don't recall hearing the terms 'War on terror', 'long war' or anything similar over the three days. The conflict in Afghanistan was (rightly, I think) divorced from some greater project.

While, current U.S. policy states that we'll begin withdrawing our forces in 2011 there was a universal recognition that any real effort to apply COIN in Afghanistan would take a very long time. While the subject wasn't addressed (except for one question at the final Q&A roundtable) my impression was that all of the speakers (British, Canadian and U.S.) were operating under the assumption that forces would be in place well beyond 2011. I heard no discussion about how to conduct any sort of hand off to the Afghans within 18 months, alterations to COIN theory or doctrine or trains of thought about alternate ways militaries could support/conduct COIN without significant numbers of forces on the ground. I would interpret that to mean that the military has been given the word (explicitly or implicitly) that that 2011 deadline is NOT set in stone. I would, in fact, go further and predict that barring some unforeseen change in the operating environment we will almost definitely have a significant presence in Afghanistan for some time.

With respect to that last paragraph, are you much surprised? Didn’t think so. Beyond the reality of continuing occupation, the fact that it isn’t surprising is perhaps the other point of the story.

Somehow we have become habituated to war since we've been at it 9 years and counting (in our current iteration). Rather than the use of military force being an exceptional condition, only invoked and perpetuated in the gravest of situations, it’s sort of become part of the background noise.

Move along people, there's nothing for you to see here, just an endless war with a blank check, no success criteria, and no discernable exit strategy. In the meanwhile, service men and women keep coming home in boxes.

See also my post on Congressman Grayson's attempt to rein in defense spending, via The War is Making You Poor Act.

Running in Chicago...and the TSA

This week, perhaps as you read this, I will be in the skies above this nation flying to and from a business destination.  My business is in Chicago, where I will be staying at an airport hotel, but will not have a rental car.  Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I was able to find out that there is a trail, only a mile from my hotel, along the Des Plaines River near O'Hare Airport, that apparently stretches some miles.

Having scheduled my flights to have plenty of time on either end, I will be able to fit in a nice long run.  Will report after the fact on how it went.

Now, switching over to the aviation side of the equation, turns out that Just an Earth-Bound Misfit just ranted long and hard about airport security and the TSA:

It was pretty clear then, and it is clearer now, that the TSA's job is purely theatrical.

Meanwhile, the pilots and the flight attendants are not at all happy about having to undergo trial by X-ray several times a duty day, and I cannot blame them for that. The TSA says those scanners are safe, but really, does anybody trust for a picosecond anything that the TSA says? It's already come out that the assurance of the TSA that the scanners don't store the images is a lie.

The part about screening the pilots is especially inane. In the cockpit of airliners is a crash ax which, if my recollection is correct, has on its head one really pointy end and one very sharp end. So the TSA makes sure that the pilots don't have a little bitty knife, they feel all happy of their screening the pilots, and then the pilots get to sit in a itty bitty room with the modern equivalent of a war axe. And that doesn't even get into the point that a determined pilot could just crash the airplane and kill all aboard if that was his goal.

Love that last point about the ax!  Don't misunderstand--I am all for security that really and truly makes us safer.  But don't waste our time with security theater.

Along these lines, I can't help but draw a parallel with the broader impacts of 9/11.  Via Spencer Ackerman's Trapped Within a Frame:

Here I was, set to write a long post about the new Woodward book excerpts, when Gulliver distills my intended point in a tweet:

"Does not compute: if we could "absorb" another 9/11, why are we wasting $70B/yr on war that won't prevent it anyway?"

He's referring to an Obama quote about how the U.S. proved resilient after 9/11.

--SNIP--

It’s also a point that ultimately cuts against the massive expansion of the Afghanistan war that Obama has instituted. One way of getting close to squaring it is to say that we’re going to go big for a limited period of time in order to mitigate what we can in Afghanistan — the ol’ “so it doesn’t go back to being a safe haven” argument. But that still doesn’t address the basic resource-interest mismatch. And it’s hard to avoid the conclusion from Woodward’s excerpts that the factor inhibiting Obama from addressing it is an inability to break out of the fear-driven politics that surround terrorism, which inhibit counterterrorism vigilance under the guise of bolstering it.

Then there’s this:

Woodward quotes Petraeus as saying, “You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It’s a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”

Feeling safer and better about your (grand) kids' future?

Morally Culpable

I lately find myself blogging more and more about my feelings on the Afghanistan war. In summary, if the purpose of the war was to deny safe haven to the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11, we succeeded long ago and should have declared victory and gotten out. Now nobody's sure of the mission, the military strategy, the criteria for success, the exit strategy....Afghanistan has become a big black hole, sucking even more blood and more treasure. With no end in sight.

Ask yourself this: is staying in Afghanistan making you any safer? And if you bring up the point that we owe it to the Afghan people to try to fix up the country we wrecked, I do agree and we should send humanitarian aid rather than combat troops. We should offer--on the condition of safe passage and non-interference--to build schools and wells and hospitals and roads and bridges, and provide vaccines and medical care. We could do a lot rather than squander a million dollars per U.S. soldier per year.

But rather than debate the issue, probably futilely, let me post a quote that you may also find interesting.  From the blog, WarIsACrime.org (formerly AfterDowningStreet), a post by John Grant on 3 August, "The New Afghanistan Policy: Murder Inc."  He poses a tricky philosophical question:

Let me get this straight. Robert Gates, the Secretary-Of-Defense-For-Life, is touring the TV news shows and major newspapers pleading with great angst lines in his forehead that WikiLeaks is “guilty” and “morally culpable” for releasing 75,000 field reports from Afghanistan to the American public because they endanger Afghans allied with US forces.

But he and the US militarists who initiated the war in Iraq and who have continued the war in Afghanistan for nine years, the people who keep everything about these wars secret except what is useful to sustain them, the people who finance these wars on credit without raising taxes, dumping the costs on future generations – these people are not “morally culpable,” “guilty” or endangering anyone?

Do I have that right?

In other words, to reveal information about the war makes one morally guilty of endangering people, while being responsible for the war itself does not.

Now my head hurts and I'd better go for a trail run.  If I'm getting strident about war, it's just that I'm becoming increasingly worried about the future of the Mister Tristans (the human being, not the blog) of this world.

 
 

"An Apology to the Woman Without a Nose on the Cover of Time Magazine"

As always, I am in awe of the slice-and-dice wit of the Rude Pundit, a blogger who does not suffer fools gladly, and who uses foul language and crude sexual analogies to make valid points.  He is a dark pleasure, and I read his blog daily.  You should too.

Many of you have seen the photo on the cover of Time Magazine last week, featuring Aisha, an unfortunate Afghanwoman who was horribly disfugured by the Taliban.  The photo is here; I don't want to post it.  Let me turn to the Rude Pundit, from 2 August 2010:

An Apology to the Woman Without a Nose on the Cover of Time Magazine:

Aisha, the 18 year-old Afghan woman on the cover of last week's Time magazine who  deserves all our sympathy, as does every victim of the particularly horrific violence committed against women by the savage and backwards men of places like the Congo, Somalia, and Pakistan. But, to Aisha and the women of Afghanistan, we owe an apology.

....

We owe Aisha an apology because we have fucked up the Afghanistan war so badly for us and for the Afghans that the only meaningful thing we can do now is get out. And even if that means more violence against women and more repression, we have to do it. For we are now in Afghanistan in a vain attempt to transform a society that won't transform.

....

We screwed it up, Aisha. First George W. Bush did by making Afghanistan into the Junior Pep Squad version of the misbegotten Iraq conflict. Now Barack Obama is screwing it up by thinking he can unscrew it. He can't. And now, Aisha, we can't. We have to leave. It's just that simple. We have to leave because things are so fucked up here, because we can't afford it anymore. The wars were the luxury of an empire bloated with cash and hubris. Now we have hubris and no cash. And every day we stay is another day that life will not get better for the women of your country, and we're sorry we promised that it would. Yes, there are ways we can make it better, but not this one. For what we are attempting to do, despite every effort to win hearts and minds, is bomb a culture into change. That ain't gonna happen. It didn't work even back in the 1990s.

....

(Note: we're never leaving Afghanistan.)

 

In Memoriam

From Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars, the casualty reports from last week, in which we lost 11 service members in Afghanistan:

US Marines LtCol Mario D Carazo, 41, Springfield, OH
US Marines Maj James M Weis, 37, Toms River, NJ
US Army SSG Conrad A Mora, 24, San Diego, CA
US Army SGT Daniel Lim, 23, Cypress, CA
US Army SPC Joseph A Bauer, 27, Cincinnati, OH
US Army SPC Andrew L Hand, 26, Enterprise, AL
US Marines LCpl Frederik E Vazquez, 20, Melrose Park, IL
US Marines Abram L Howard, 21, Williamsport, PA
US Navy PO3 Jarod Newlove, 25, Renton, WA
US Army CPT Jason E Holbrook, 28, Burnet, TX
US Army SSG Kyle R Warren, 28, Manchester, NH

These are real people with real families, and whose loss will be felt forever.  May our leaders somehow see through all the fog and finally have the aha! moment when they realize that there is really no good reason for our continued combat presence in that country.

And as for these unlucky souls, may they rest in peace.

Afghanistan: Winning vs Not Losing

Once again, the Europeans are morally and pragmatically ahead of us.  From the London Times, July 21, 2010, Support For Military Campaign Is Waning Across Europe,  by David Charter.

Pressure to pull troops out of Afghanistan is growing across Europe, with politicians increasingly promising withdrawal plans in the face of hardening public opinion.

"There is definitely something happening across Europe, which stems from the December 1 announcement by President Obama that American troops would begin to be withdrawn from the middle of next year," Alex Nicoll, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said. "It is only logical for European governments to be thinking about their own exit strategies because there will be an increasing push to reduce combat presence in Afghanistan starting as soon as they reasonably can."

I just can't see where we can "win" (which begs the question as to whether the U.S. winning is the correct outcome).  I think our leaders now recognize that we can't win, but their thinking has only progressed to the point where they think the next best outcome is "Don't lose."

Wrong.  The next step should be to replace our combat soldiers with humanitarian aid and otherwise get out of their country.

 

Guns Vs. Butter

From Eric Martin at Obsidian Wings. This type of smart-ass political commentary is why I love the left-wing blogosphere:

John Boehner Offers a Plan for Precipitous Withdrawal from Afghanistan

John Boehner, master strategist or stealth peacenik? You decide. Here, he predicts a strong showing and touts his Party's burgeoning prospects:

House Minority Leader John Boehner, the Ohio Republican with his eye on Speaker Nancy Pelosi's gavel, said the tide is turning the GOP's way.

"The American people have written off the Democrats," Boehner said Monday in an interview with Tribune-Review editors and reporters. "They're willing to look at us again."

Boehner stopped short of predicting Republicans would gain the 39 seats they need to retake control of Congress, but he said a backlash against President Obama's policies has energized Republican voters more than Democrats. Boehner said voters are angry at a government they believe is overreaching and indifferent.

OK, a bit cocky and boastful, but pretty much as expected for a political leader. Besides, the GOP was bound to make at least some gains during the midterms regardless, and you can't fault him for crowing about it. But then he goes and blows the wad:

Ensuring there's enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country's entitlement system, Boehner said. He said he'd favor increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation and limiting payments to those who need them.

Yeah, that ought to be a real popular message:


"People, you can either have 10 more years of this wonderful war in Afghanistan, or Social Security. Since the GOP has its finger on the pulse of the American people, we're going to go ahead and begin dismantling Social Security. Because that's what you want. Amirite?"

Gary here.  Not to be trite or anything, but isn't this the old Gun vs. Butter conundrum? Except that in this situation, there's no conundrum--you opt for butter.  Let me highlight what Boehner said, again: "Ensuring there's enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country's entitlement system." What a disgusting individual.

Afghanistan--Looks Like We're Staying

Via Corrente, we see that Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) has become a conspiracy theorist.

Q. What is the new definition of "Taliban"?
A. Anyone who lives above a lithium deposit

On Monday [14 Jun] we learned something that the Pentagon has known for years: Afghanistan is sitting on a trillion dollars worth of valuable minerals.

If you're wondering when the U.S. will withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, you now have your answer: Never. Our worst case scenario is peace. If war ends in Afghanistan, some subset of the Taliban would eventually become fantastically wealthy with the help of foreign mining operations. Nothing good can come from Taliban billionaires. That's the strategic risk that will keep us there forever.

I feel beyond head-shaking, beyond surprise, just sorta numb.  It's like we've sh*t the bed and there's just no good way to unsh*t it.

Habituated to War

Via Andrew Sullivan, I wound up over at Travels With Shiloh.  The author there attended a COIN Symposium 11-13 May at Fort Leavenworth, KS (COIN meaning Counter Insurgency).

He observed the following:

There were about 100 attendees at the conference with a pretty even mix of military and civilian personnel (both contractors and what appeared to be a smattering of reps from other departments). While primarily American there were other nations represented, particularly Canadian, British and Australian. There were no representatives from Afghanistan which was disappointing but apparently logistics got in the way of that.

Most of the military attendees were field grade officers (between major and colonel) with a few scattered captains and senior enlisted (SFC and MSGs) thrown in.

On an interesting note I don't recall hearing the terms 'War on terror', 'long war' or anything similar over the three days. The conflict in Afghanistan was (rightly, I think) divorced from some greater project.

While, current U.S. policy states that we'll begin withdrawing our forces in 2011 there was a universal recognition that any real effort to apply COIN in Afghanistan would take a very long time. While the subject wasn't addressed (except for one question at the final Q&A roundtable) my impression was that all of the speakers (British, Canadian and U.S.) were operating under the assumption that forces would be in place well beyond 2011. I heard no discussion about how to conduct any sort of hand off to the Afghans within 18 months, alterations to COIN theory or doctrine or trains of thought about alternate ways militaries could support/conduct COIN without significant numbers of forces on the ground. I would interpret that to mean that the military has been given the word (explicitly or implicitly) that that 2011 deadline is NOT set in stone. I would, in fact, go further and predict that barring some unforeseen change in the operating environment we will almost definitely have a significant presence in Afghanistan for some time.

With respect to that last paragraph, are you much surprised? Didn’t think so. Beyond the reality of continuing occupation, the fact that it isn’t surprising is perhaps the other point of the story.

Somehow we have become habituated to war since we've been at it 9 years and counting (in our current iteration). Rather than the use of military force being an exceptional condition, only invoked and perpetuated in the gravest of situations, it’s sort of become part of the background noise.

Move along people, there's nothing for you to see here, just an endless war with a blank check, no success criteria, and no discernable exit strategy. In the meanwhile, service men and women keep coming home in boxes.

See also my post on Congressman Grayson's attempt to rein in defense spending, via The War is Making You Poor Act.

The Cost of Iraq

In my reading I've come across two reckonings of the cost of Iraq, the first at the macro scale, and the second at the micro (human impact) level.

1. The macro view...
 In a post by Matt Yglesias, he discusses an effort to "...tally up the full cost of Iraq—human, financial, and strategic—and discover that the price was very, very, very high."

We certainly have paid a severe price, squandering our nation's blood, treasure, and international moral authority.

Matt's link is to The Center for American Progress, here. From that Center for American Progress post, I found this quote to be most germane.

But when weighing those possible benefits against the costs of the Iraq intervention, there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy. The war was intended to show the extent of America’s power. It succeeded only in showing its limits.

2. The micro view....

Per Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars, in her regular weekly feature, the U.S. last week lost nine service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan (I also linked to her a week ago, here)

US Army 1LT Salvatore S Corma, 24, Wenonah, NJ
US Army SGT Anthony O Magee, 29, Hattiesburg, MI
US Air Force A1C Austin H Gates Benson, 19, Hellertown, PA
US Army SGT Ralph Mena, 27, Hutchinson, KS
US Army MSG Mark W Coleman, 40, Centerville, WA
US Marines 1st Lt Brandon A Barrett, 27, Marion, IN
US Army SPC Eric M Finniginam, 26, Colonia, FM
US Army SPC Wade A Slack, 21, Waterville, ME
US Marines LCpl Richard R Penny, 21, Fayetteville, AR

According to iCasualties, the total number of service members killed in Iraq is 4,715; in Afghanistan, 1,752. During this same period, Iraq Body Count lists 40 Iraqi civilians killed.

7 Service Members Killed Last Week

Over at the political blog Crooks and Liars, a regular--and sobering--weekly feature is called This Week in Memoriam.

Sunday's post, here, by Nicole Belle, lists the 7 service members who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan this past week. You should head over there to see Nicole's post because she has clickable links to each of the dead, often with a photograph.

It is good for us to gaze at the images of the dead, for they died on our behalf.

US Army SSG Christopher D Worrell, 35, Virginia Beach, VA
US Army SGT, 21, Ronald A Kubik, Brielle, NJ
US Army SGT Jason A Santora, 25, Farmingville, NY
US Marines LCpl Thomas E Rivers Jr, 22, Birmingham, AL
US Army SGT Grant A Wichmann, 27, Golden, CO
US Army SGT Keith A Coe, 30, Auburndale, FL
US Army SGT Nathan P Kennedy, 24, Claysville, PA

According to iCasualties, this brings the total number of allied service members killed in Iraq to 4,712; in Afghanistan, 1,741.

Christopher Worrell leaves his wife, Katrina, and four children ages 7 months to 6 years; Ronald Kubik was on his third deployment, and is survived by parents and two sisters; Jason Santora was on his fourth deployment, survived by parents and a sister; Thomas Rivers wanted to be a Marine all his life; Grant Wichmann died from wounds he suffered last month in Afghanistan; Keith Coe is survived by his wife, two sons, and a daughter; Nathan Kennedy, who was due to come home is less than a month, is survived by his father, two sisters and a brother.

The facts I teased out of the stories don’t come close to capturing the anguish that their families feel. Seven families ripped asunder. Seven families whose lives will NEVER be the same. Seven families whose loved one died for a cause whose origins are suspect and whose continuation is of dubious merit.

These families likely will project a stiff upper lip and assert that their loved one died in the cause of freedom, because to say that they died is vain is just too terrible to contemplate....but I am convinced that 50 years from now historians will be shaking their heads and asking, "What on earth was the United States thinking?"

I know that I could not look these families in the eye and tell them that their loved one's service and sacrifice was worth it.  The satisfaction will have to come from the fact that they did their duty. Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general and fervently devout Christian, once commented on reconciling military service with his Christian beliefs.

One of his sayings (that may not have originated with him) was:

Duty is ours; consequences are God's.

Rest in peace.

Photo credit here, of the return of Keith A. Coe's remains and his family