Thursday, September 23, 2010

General McChrystal and Obama's Contradictory Strategy

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Drew, you seem to place formality above entelechy, the vital element of war. Throughout history an ethic, no matter how laudable and worthy, in critical circumstances is degraded to a lower status if it is not made totally inutile. Winning the war is the primal goal and that can only be achieved by professionals, not by ‘drone’ like Bidens. You also seem to forget, that it was precisely this unconditional devotion to “conditional civilian control” that lost the war in Vietnam. My position is, so you won’t misunderstand me, certainly a general has to abide the commands of the executive branch, but no general worth his salt who has the ultimate responsibility of deploying his troops to win a war, a responsibility that has been given to him by his Commander-in-Chief, is obliged to execute commands that are contradictory in winning the war without expressing his deep concerns critically about the incongruence of the war plan that was designed by the Executive. One cannot increase the Surge by thirty thousand more troops and at the same time announce a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in two years time. This is the fundamental contradiction of Obama’s doltish strategy in Afghanistan. No one but a modern Tiresias could predict that the war against the Taliban would be won in two years or that the Karzai forces would be able to handle the insurgency by their own steam. Obama set the scene for a strategy that for the next two years American blood and valuable resources would be spend not for the goal of victory, but for the purpose of a withdrawal. This is the quintessence of McChrystal’s criticism of the Obama administration although he did not explicitly express it in these words.


Moreover, McChrystal could no more “undermine the executive branch” that was already undermined by itself. Also your accusation of McChrystal of being incompetent and of losing the respect of his troops by commanding them to patrol without cartridges in their guns, except maybe in some rare circumstances, is incredulous and is closer to phantasy than reality. McChrystal and Petraeus were the sagacious heroic victors of the war in Iraq. That one of the architects of this unprecedented victory, that even the wise Kissinger considered it to be unattainable, would lose the respect of his soldiers is pure phantasy. Further, that a most competent commander of the elite Special Forces, a “killing machine,” would put his soldiers at risk is beyond belief. I am curious to know the evidence from which you deduced this transformation of a deadly ‘seal’, who all his life has been trained for the tasks of the infernal world, into an unarmed Gandhian votary.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Swarm of Jellyfish Attempt to Break the Camel's Back of John Bolton

By Con George-Kotzabasis
A reply to: Do Arab & Muslim Lives Matter?
By Steve Clemons The Washington Note September 12, 2010


Only moral and intellectual weaklings would not accept that there is no “moral equivalence” between civilians killed by deliberate “malicious terrorist acts” and those killed by inadvertent “military action in self-defence.” Ambassador Bolton’s quote (“But it is a mistake to ascribe a moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts, the very purpose of which are to kill civilians, and the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths as a result of military action taken in self-defense.”) that Clemon dubs as a zinger and uses to make his case, is intellectually reprehensible and will haunt his conscience remorselessly to his grave. One can hardly infer from Bolton’s quote that he claims that innocent lives lost are not of equal value. It is Clemons that meretriciously and sans intellectual shame attributes such a position to Bolton.


Clemons proudly mentions his mentor Hans Baerwald on the issue of “stress.” But equally this stress applies to Clemons himself, who under the stress of intellectual debate shows his true character: Wantonly and perversely distorting the position of his opponent to make his easy point. Clearly, Clemons is too weak on the knees to hold up the heavy banner of Vergil’s tu ne cede malis.


The above emitted the following replies.


Nadine says,

Kotz, those who have imposed on themselves as a moral duty the refusal to acknowledge evil, will always yield to it, since they have convinced themselves that it does not exist.


I must read Berman's "Flight of the Intellectuals" (I've only read reviews so far); he seems to have an explanation of the thinking behind this.


DonS says, 


"One can hardly infer from Bolton’s quote that he claims that innocent lives lost are not of equal value. It is Clemons that meretriciously and sans intellectual shame attributes such a position to Bolton."


Kotz, you twist the simple meaning, as does Bolton. The deeper flaw is Bolton's attempt to insinuate the common Israeli linguistic trick, adhered to by the Bolton's (and, truth be told, the cowardly US enabler) that all military actions undertaken by Israel are in "self defense". Only fools and jingoists salute such stupidity. Similar in its way to those fools who justify the invasion of Iraq as self-defense -- after all 'they' attacked us first. Not innocent? those hundreds of thousands of Iraq civilians dead as a result of the US-unleashed whirlwind?


I don't subscribe to the ubiquitous '911' excuse for endless war, by the US or its Israeli mini.


But if you want to degrade yourself intellectually, not to mention morally, be my guest.


Kotzabasis says,


DonS


Clearly your vocation in the ‘market of argument’ is to be a peddler in non sequiturs. Why are you shifting the ground of the argument, is it because your pockets are empty of all coins of counter reasoning on the issue? The question as was initially put by Clemons’s use of the Bolton quote was not whether Israel’s and America’s wars were self-defensive or not but whether there was “moral equivalence” between the deliberate and non-deliberate killing of civilians. Clemons by cheating intellectually, by speciously transforming this argument of moral equivalence into an argument of devaluation of “Muslim and Arab lives” has made himself intellectually and morally persona non grata.


The great statesman Talleyrand, eloquently and boldly said the following in the face of Napoleon, when the latter deposed the legitimate heir Ferdinand II and placed his brother Joseph on the throne of Spain, “Sire, un enfant de famille may gamble away his last farthing—the heritage of his ancestors—the dower of his mother—the portion of his sisters—and yet be courted and admired for his wit—be sought for his talents and distinction—but let him once be detected in cheating at the game, and he is lost—society is forever shut against him.” You likewise, partaking in this Napoleonesque cheating of Clemons “at the game,” have become your own “guest” as an intellectual and moral pariah.


DonS says,


Kotz; whatever.


As far as shifting ground, I guess my logical leaps were a bit too facile for you to follow. I often forget to show all my work. Make no mistake, Bolton's sole intent in the omitted sentence was to justify Israeli action in any and every way he could. I simply highlighted the historical rhetoric up which that assertion is based.


Bolton would always prefer we watch the monkey and pretend we don't see the organ grinder.


Posted by larry birnbaum, Sep 16 2010, 7:19PM - Link



I see I've nothing, really, to add to kotzabasis's remarks above.
There are lots of reality-based objections Clemons could make to
Bolton's world-view. This one is so obviously specious that it
leaves no alternative but to see him as not just a partisan -- there
is such a thing as an honest partisan -- but a shill.


The world is seriously fucked up and lots of ill-meaning idiots gain
genuine authority. But "policy intellectuals" never gain respect and
authority this way.











































Monday, September 6, 2010

Liberals Continue to Jab Cheney

By Con George-Kotzabasis

 
It's amusing to see all the passionate and incorrigible haters of Cheney to have a jab at him even "posthumously" Out of Office. Emily Bazelon on Slate Magazine speaks for all these haters but the context with 'revenge' belies what she says about Cheney. The latter did not say at anytime that the documents on torture should be 'declassified,' but once they were, they should not have been declassified selectively without also revealing the positive aspects of the harsh interrogations.


The Bush-Cheney administration prudently--knowing thy enemy--unlike the imprudent Obama who apparently lacks rudimentary knowledge of the kind of enemy America is fighting, were unwilling to disclose to their Islamist enemies some of the methods by which the key holy warriors held as enemy combatants were "spilling the beans."


Halliburton says


Since the memos thus far released were all part of FoIA filings, it was not up to the administration to release them. Based on the Obama administration's own FoIA policies, the memos had to be released. I might point out that Cheney's own FoIA request is selective, listing only two documents, and then only some of the pages from those documents.


The "disclosing of interrogation methods" meme is claptrap. All of the methods the Bush administration sought to use are centuries old; SERE-derived methods are duplicates of torture used by the Chinese and North Koreans during the Korean War. There's nothing new to disclose.


Kotzabasis says


Certainly you are right that the memos according to President Obama’s FoIA policies had to be released since in January 21, 2009 he loosened Bush’s Executive order of November 2001 pursuant to national interests by repealing some provisions of the order. Cheney’s selectivity is consistent in this respect with the political acumen of the previous administration in being determined not to reveal to the enemy—even out of office-- unlike Obama in office, its secret procedures in this matter.


As for the “disclosing of interrogation methods,” the sting of the “claptrap” is in you. To say, as you do, that these “methods...are centuries old...duplicates of torture used by the Chinese and North Koreans,” says more about the fertility of your imagination than of the complexity of the situation. Is it conceivable to you that Pentagon and CIA Intelligence confronting a unique enemy such as suicidal fanatical warriors would be using the same techniques and methods of the past without innovating new ones? But I suppose your intellectually barren answer would be “there is nothing new to disclose.”


Halliburton says


It's certain that Cheney wants to keep portions of the reports he wants released secret, but I don't have your faith in his judgment. After all, we are talking about the man who helped create the 1976 "Team B" report on the capabilities of the USSR, which was wrong on every detail, notably the nuclear-powered laser beam weapons the Soviets were supposedly building. Cheney also thought it a good idea to undercut Gorbachev in 1989, and Brent Scowcroft and James Baker squelched him. I'd be more likely to believe that Cheney doesn't want portions of those reports released because they might undercut his assertions.


My "infertile imagination" seeks exceptional proof in the case of exceptional claims. Nothing about Al Qaeda and its fellow travelers is unique in history. Your claim that the CIA has some "new" methods of torture - "enhanced interrogation" if you wish - is an exceptional one, and would require exceptional proof. Only disclosure would provide that. It's far more likely, however, that your imagination is overheated.


kotzabasis says


I don’t want to go back to the past, mistakes can be made and only the Pope is infallible. And just as someone can be ‘serially’ correct in the past he is not bound to be correct all the time in the future. The same logic applies in inverse to Cheney.


But your belief is misplaced as already the portions of the reports released have “undercut” The Bush administration’s “assertions.” Cheney therefore is more concerned to prove that the “enhanced interrogation” did work in preventing the jihadists launching further attacks and releasing those memos that provide this evidence while ‘clinically’ isolating them from the overall intelligence that would be invaluable to the jihadists.


All the professionals in matters of war in contrast to laypersons consider al Qaeda to be a UNIQUE enemy. Of course there have been fanatics and their “fellow travelers” in all ages. But just give one example from ‘your own’ history where the mortal foes of a nation were operating within it clad in civilian clothes and in the carapace of cutting-edge technology and armed with the most modern deadly weapons, including potentially with nuclear ones, and crashing airbuses into the sky scrapers of a metropolis. If you cannot provide such an example of an enemy then you too must logically come to the conclusion that the holy warriors of Islam are verily unique foes.


In view of this incontrovertible fact do you consider an “exceptional claim” that needs “exceptional proof” that the intelligence services of a superpower such as America confronting such a ‘supernally’ dangerous enemy in times of asymmetrical warfare would not have developed new interrogation methods that would be appropriate in extracting vital information from their captives saving thousands of lives? It would take lukewarm imagination to have come to this deduction.