If you ever needed convincing that the world of American “national security” is well along the road to profligate lunacy, read the striking three-part “Top Secret America” series by Dana Priest and William Arkin that the Washington Post published last week. When it comes to the expansion of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), which claims 17 major agencies and organizations, the figures are staggering. Here’s just a taste: “Twenty-four [new intelligence] organizations were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. In 2002, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction, collect threat tips, and coordinate the new focus on counterterrorism. That was followed the next year by 36 new organizations; and 26 after that; and 31 more; and 32 more; and 20 or more each in 2007, 2008, and 2009. In all, at least 263 organizations have been created or reorganized as a response to 9/11.”
More striking yet, the articles make clear (admittedly a few years late) that no one has a complete picture of the extent of the American intelligence quagmire -- from its finances (announced at $75 billion but, the authors assure us, significantly higher) to its geography, its output (the 50,000 top-secret reports it churns out yearly that no one has time to read or track), its composition, or even its office space. (“In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001.”) And keep in mind that all of this and more was created not to keep track of or fight a series of covert wars with another major imperial power like the Soviet Union, but to track and hunt down a rag-tag terrorist outfit with a couple of thousand members, including modest-sized groups in countries like Yemen and small numbers of individual wannabe terrorists like the “underwear bomber.” In much of this, as anyone who bothers to scan front-page headlines knows, the IC has been remarkably unsuccessful. Such staggeringly out-of-control expansion should, of course, be a major scandal, but along with our constant wars, it’s already so much a part of the new national security norm that the publication of the Post series is unlikely to have any significant effect.
All this has, in turn, been driven by Fear Inc. To fuel its profitable if cancerous growth, it has vastly exaggerated the relatively minor and largely manageable danger of Islamic terrorism -- since 9/11, above shark attacks but way below drunken-driving accidents -- among the many far more serious dangers this country faces. If the IC actually worked as an effective intelligence delivery system, we would be a Mensa among states. But how could such a proliferation of overlapping agencies and outfits, aided and abetted by a burgeoning privatized, mercenary version of the same, provide “intelligence”? With more than two-thirds of all intelligence programs militarized and overseen by the Pentagon, itself driven to paroxysms of spending and expansion since 2001 (despite the fact that all major military challengers to the U.S. are long gone), labeling this morass “intelligence” should be considered a joke. However absurd, though, don’t expect any of those organizations or agencies to disappear any time soon. They’re ours for the duration.
It’s into such national security institutional madness that Andrew Bacevich, author of the bestselling The Limits of Power, strides in his latest work, to be published this week, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. It is the single best source for understanding how Washington came to garrison the planet, intervene regularly in distant lands, and turn war-making -- and not even successful war-making at that -- into an American norm. It’s simply a must-read. Think of today’s TomDispatch post as a little introduction to just a few of that book’s themes. (And while you’re at it, catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Bacevich discusses his new book by clicking here, or to download it to your iPod, here.) Tom
The End of (Military) History?
The United States, Israel, and the Failure of the Western Way of War
By Andrew J. Bacevich“In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world history.” This sentiment, introducing the essay that made Francis Fukuyama a household name, commands renewed attention today, albeit from a different perspective.
[Note for TomDispatch readers: Don’t miss the review Dan Froomkin, the Huffington Post’s senior Washington correspondent, wrote about my new book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, under the title “The Essential, Undistractable Engelhardt” for his Neiman Watchdog website (cross-posted at the Huffington Post). Here are a few excerpts: “The mainstream media have always been easily distracted and beguiled... This makes us particularly fortunate to have a few relentless souls like Tom Engelhardt around, using the Internet not to chase the latest chatter but to tenaciously chronicle, explore, and illuminate the unspoken realities that shape our political discourse... Engelhardt, a longtime book editor, is the creator and editor of the TomDispatch.com website… He is the finder and cultivator of important progressive voices… But at the heart of TomDispatch.com is Engelhardt's own work and his... thesis that America is a modern empire that has become addicted to the wars that are hastening its decline... His new book is a seamlessly edited collection of his writings... and establishes him as one of the grand chroniclers of the post-9/11 era.” And keep in mind that if you buy my book, or anything else, after arriving at Amazon.com via a book link at this site, TD gets a small percentage of your purchase at no cost to you. If you’re an Amazon shopper, get in the habit. It’s an easy way to support TomDispatch and is greatly appreciated! Keep an eye out for the next TD post Thursday on our more relaxed summer schedule, a new piece by Andrew Bacevich. Tom]
The Opposites Game
All the Strangeness of Our American World in One Article
By Tom Engelhardt
Have you ever thought about just how strange this country’s version of normal truly is? Let me make my point with a single, hardly noticed Washington Post news story that’s been on my mind for a while. It represents the sort of reporting that, in our world, zips by with next to no reaction, despite the true weirdness buried in it.
The piece by Craig Whitlock appeared on June 19th and was headlined, “U.S. military criticized for purchase of Russian copters for Afghan air corps.” Maybe that’s strange enough for you right there. Russian copters? Of course, we all know, at least vaguely, that by year's end U.S. spending on its protracted Afghan war and nation-building project will be heading for $350 billion dollars. And, of course, those dollars do have to go somewhere.
Admittedly, these days in parts of the U.S., state and city governments are having a hard time finding the money just to pay teachers or the police. The Pentagon, on the other hand, hasn’t hesitated to use at least $25-27 billion to “train” and “mentor” the Afghan military and police -- and after each round of training failed to produce the expected results, to ask for even more money, and train them again. That includes the Afghan National Army Air Corps which, in the Soviet era of the 1980s, had nearly 500 aircraft and a raft of trained pilots. The last of that air force -- little used in the Taliban era -- was destroyed in the U.S. air assault and invasion of 2001. As a result, the "Afghan air force” (with about 50 helicopters and transport planes) is now something of a misnomer, since it is, in fact, the U.S. Air Force.
Still, there are a few Afghan pilots, mostly in their forties, trained long ago on Russian Mi-17 transport helicopters, and it’s on a refurbished version of these copters, Whitlock tells us, that the Pentagon has already spent $648 million. The Mi-17 was specially built for Afghanistan’s difficult flying environment back when various Islamic jihadists, some of whom we’re now fighting under the rubric of “the Taliban,” were allied with us against the Russians.
Here’s the first paragraph of Whitlock’s article: “The U.S. government is snapping up Russian-made helicopters to form the core of Afghanistan's fledgling air force, a strategy that is drawing flak from members of Congress who want to force the Afghans to fly American choppers instead.”
So, various congressional representatives are upset over the lack of a buy-American plan when it comes to the Afghan air force. That’s the story Whitlock sets out to tell, because the Pentagon has been planning to purchase dozens more of the Mi-17s over the next decade, and that, it seems, is what’s worth being upset about when perfectly good American arms manufacturers aren’t getting the contracts.
But let’s consider three aspects of Whitlock’s article that no one is likely to spend an extra moment on, even if they do capture the surpassing strangeness of the American way of war in distant lands -- and in Washington.
[Note for TomDispatch readers: If you have a moment, check out my latest piece, "Advice for General Petraeus on the Rules of Engagement: It's Neither/Nor, Not Either/Or." It appeared Tuesday at Juan Cole’s invaluable Informed Comment website as part of my minuscule campaign to get word out about my new book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s. You can check out the first reviews of the book by clicking here. The next TomDispatch piece will be posted Monday on a slightly slower summer schedule.]
Consider a strange aspect of our wars since October 2001: they have yet to establish a bona fide American hero, a national household name. Two were actually “nominated” early by the Bush administration -- Jessica Lynch, a 19-year-old private and clerk captured by the Iraqis in the early days of the American invasion and later “rescued” by Army Rangers and Navy Seals, and Pat Tillman, the former NFL safety who volunteered for service in the Army Rangers eight months after 9/11 and died under “enemy” gunfire in Afghanistan.
Both stories were later revealed to be put-up jobs, pure Bush-era propaganda and deceit. In Lynch’s case, almost every element in the instant patriotic myth about her rescue proved either phony or highly exaggerated; in Tillman’s, it turned out that he had been killed by friendly fire, but -- thanks to a military cover-up (that involved General Stanley McChrystal, later to become Afghan war commander) -- was still given a Silver Star and a posthumous promotion. Members of his unit were even ordered by the military to lie at his funeral, and he was made into a convenient “hero” and recruitment poster boy for the Afghan War. Both were shameful episodes, involving administration manipulation and media gullibility. Since then, as TomDispatch regular and retired lieutenant colonel William Astore points out, U.S. troops as a whole have been labeled “our heroes,” but individual heroes have been in vanishingly short supply.
In fact, the only specific figures who get the heroic treatment these days are our military commanders. They tend to be written about like so many demi-gods (until they fall). General McChrystal, before his ignominious nosedive, was presented in the press (with the Tillman incident all but forgotten) as a cross between a Spartan ascetic and a strategic genius (with the brain of a military Stephen Hawking). Present war commander General David Petraeus regularly receives even more fawning media treatment and seems to be worshipped in Washington these days as if he were not only “an American hero,” but a genuine military god (as well as a future presidential candidate). Yet, in the way they’ve been treated, both of these figures seem closer to celebrities than heroes in any traditional sense.
Perhaps this catches something essential about America’s unending wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and also what used to be called the Global War on Terror but now has no name. Like the drone pilots who sit at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, killing peasants and terrorists 7,000 miles away and to whom new standards of “valor” are now being applied, most Americans are remarkably detached from the wars our “all volunteer” military force (and its vast contingent of for-profit mercenary warriors) fight in distant lands. Our forces have become generically heroic, but no one cares to look too closely at the specifics of these bloody, dirty wars that will never end in victory, not close enough to end up with actual heroes. Our “heroic” troops have no real names, any more than the wars they fight, and so individual heroics are perhaps beside the point. (Check out the latest TomCast audio interview in which William Astore discusses heroism and the military by clicking here, or to download to your iPod, here.) Tom
“Our American Heroes”
Why It’s Wrong to Equate Military Service with Heroism
By William J. AstoreWhen I was a kid in the 1970s, I loved reading accounts of American heroism from World War II. I remember being riveted by a book about the staunch Marine defenders of Wake Island and inspired by John F. Kennedy’s exploits saving the sailors he commanded on PT-109. Closer to home, I had an uncle -- like so many vets of that war, relatively silent on his own experiences -- who had been at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941, and then fought them in a brutal campaign on Guadalcanal, where he earned a Bronze Star. Such men seemed like heroes to me, so it came as something of a shock when, in 1980, I first heard Yoda’s summary of war in The Empire Strikes Back. Luke Skywalker, if you remember, tells the wizened Jedi master that he seeks “a great warrior.” “Wars not make one great,” Yoda replies.
[Note for TomDispatch readers: If you haven’t gotten around to picking up my new book,The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, here’s your chance to get an increasingly rare copy of the first printing. (The book is already back on press for a second go-round.) In the meantime, I’ve embarked on what, for me, is something like a mini-radio blitz in the coming weeks -- my first stop being with historian and radio host Jon Weiner, always a wonderful experience. You can catch that encounter (at the 40-minute mark) by clicking here, or watch me talk about the book on Timothy MacBain’s first TomCast video here, or listen to me on a new TomCast audio interview here. Remember that if you buy the book (or anything else) at Amazon.com via a TD link, we get a little cut of the proceeds at no cost to you. Tuesday, by the way, I’ll turn 66. In honor of that moment, TD will take a brief breather. Expect the next post Thursday. Tom]
I don’t know about you, but when I see a headline like this one (from the July 11th Washington Post), “White House Confident Latest BP Effort Will Work,” my heart immediately sinks. Of course, there’s a first time for everything, but amid the ever worsening news from the Gulf of Mexico’s waters about astonishingly high methane concentrations, dangerous levels of arsenic, the lack of testing of seafood for absorption of toxic compounds from the dispersant BP has been massively pumping out, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “hoarding” of raw scientific data about the disaster, and both BP's and the government's “stranglehold on media access” in the Gulf, that oily undercurrent of a positive narrative has been relentless (even as press coverage slowly begins to drop off). At the end of the storm lies hope and a rainbow. Or at least a permanently sealed well on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.
Of course, three days after that confident headline, the same government showed something less than confidence in BP. It suddenly moved to freeze that company’s work on closing the new version of “top hat,” the massive "3 ram capping stack" meant to seal off the well, until further testing could be done. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu and his experts feared that closing the cap’s valves might actually cause even more harm to a possibly already damaged well bore. In the meantime, the oil, essentially cap-less, continued to gush forth, as it had for days, even as work on the first relief well, the supposed permanent solution to the problem, was halted for fear of further problems while the testing went on.
Late Wednesday, the test of the cap finally began, only to be briefly interrupted by the discovery of a leak on a line attached to one of its valves. Everything was again halted briefly before those valves were finally closed and the oil did stop for the first time in 87 days; and yes, in the next few days, for all we know, that seal may hold, or maybe this nightmare won’t really end until the dog days of late July or mid-August, all dates repeatedly promised for the completion of the relief well. Or maybe not then either. The positive story line has been offered up and deep-sixed so many times already that, as with warnings on a cigarette pack, even with good news coming in, caution is still advised. Worse yet, if the happy ending does come, we already have a reasonable hint about how this story works out. As with the Exxon Valdez spill, big oil may prefer to learn remarkably few lessons from this disaster, as it prepares to head into far rougher waters in search of ever tougher oil to extract. After all, the big oil companies have preferred to learn next to nothing, as Ellen Cantarow makes clear, from a 50-year history of disastrous spills in Nigeria and a decades-long version of the same in the Amazon.
And of course, in these last weeks when the Northeast has been sizzling under record temperatures (with more to come), and researchers at the University of Alabama’s Earth System Science Center have concluded that the first five months of 2010 were the second hottest in human history (runner-up only to 1998) -- and this decade the warmest on record for the planet -- the worst disaster may prove to be not the gusher in the Gulf, but the gas in our tanks. (To catch Ellen Cantarow discussing what led her to this piece, listen to Timothy MacBain's latest TomCast audio interview by clicking here, or to download it to your iPod, here.) Tom
Big Oil Makes War on the Earth
The Gulf Coast Joins an Oil-Soiled Planet
By Ellen CantarowIf you live on the Gulf Coast, welcome to the real world of oil -- and just know that you’re not alone. In the Niger Delta and the Ecuadorian Amazon, among other places, your emerging hell has been the living hell of local populations for decades.
As early as this week, engineers could seal BP’s oil leak, fastening a new cap on the mile-deep well belching crude into the Gulf of Mexico. And if they do, and a relief well follows equally successfully, sooner or later news coverage of BP’s catastrophe will begin to wane (indeed it is already), as will the public’s interest, all of it receding (like the earthquake in Haiti) into background chatter and periodic anniversary pieces. Except, that is, for residents of the Gulf coast region, who will be living with the spill’s aftermath for decades to come. Because even if BP and the government’s legion of experts do finally install that cap and then the relief well successfully, shut down their response units, and leave the south behind, the spill’s impact, especially from a public health perspective, will remain.
Consider major oil spills of the past like the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989 or the Prestige spill off Spain’s northwestern coast in 2002. In the Spanish case, serious respiratory problems plagued cleanup workers for years afterward, and DNA testing revealed that the chemical exposure they suffered could cause hormone alterations or even cancer. Today, Gulf cleanup workers face these same risks. At the moment, the federal government doesn’t even require workers to wear respirators, and according to BP’s own data, 20% of workers have already been exposed to a chemical known to cause kidney and liver problems. A new report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) details one striking aspect of the Alaskan and Spanish catastrophes: the utter lack of any systematic public health response, despite the fact that workers had been exposed to startling amounts of toxic chemicals and oil.
These previous spills and an abundance of scientific evidence suggest the need for a top-down, coherent public-health response to the BP spill. The CAP report, however, finds -- and you undoubtedly won’t be surprised by this -- that the federal government has no such plan in place. Instead, it is relying on a jumble of agencies loosely overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) when instead, CAP argues, a top HHS official should take charge of the government’s response and roll out a comprehensive public health safety plan.
As prize-winning author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, John Barry points out, this lack of preparation characterizes another public-health emergency on the horizon: the next influenza outbreak. Written for the summer issue of a quarterly magazine we greatly admire, World Policy Journal, Barry’s piece is being posted here thanks to the kindness of that magazine’s editors. WPJ’s latest themed issue -- “Global Health: Protect and Cure” -- goes on sale July 20. (You can, by the way, subscribe to the magazine by clicking here.) Andy
How Prepared Are We for the Next Great Flu Breakout?
Why We’re Losing the War Against Influenza
By John M. Barry[This report appears in the Summer 2010 issue of World Policy Journal and is posted here with the kind permission of the editors of that magazine.]
It is the nature of the influenza virus to cause pandemics. There have been at least 11 in the last 300 years, and there will certainly be another one, and one after that, and another after that. And it is impossible to predict whether a pandemic will be mild or lethal.
