I love it when highly- trained, experienced professional people come up with the same conclusions I do.
This is from Tom Engelhardt, author and a Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Speaking about the inflating Afghanistan bubble and the games being played by the military, Tom highlights the Petraeus factor; I’d forgotten about Petraeus, who disappeared into Centcom the minute Bush was defeated last fall.
Bush loved Petraeus, he looked like a general with all of his decorations – to me he looked more like a Christmas tree with too many ornaments. Ulysses Grant was a real general who won a war who never bothered with the seaweed … but then, he never had to lobby the American people and their leadership for bailouts.
Another reason he was a Bush favorite was that he never publicly embarrassed himself like the other Bush cronies. Also unlike the others, Petraus was and is clearly ambitious, perhaps positioning himself to make a Giuliani- like run for the Republican presidential nomination as the terrorism pimp du jour.
“Holy hamburger, Batman!” This would be worth living for; the overweening and calculating Petraeus and the looney Sarah Palin on the same ticket! Is America a great country or what? Talk about opening up the insane asylum and letting the inmates escape … to appear over and over on television! I might have to buy a TV for this!
Engelhardt gives Petraeus the largest share of weaseling responsibility:
On taking over, McChrystal, who had previously been a counterterrorism guy (and isn’t about to give that up, either), swore fealty to counterinsurgency doctrine (that is, to Petraeus) by proclaiming that the American goal in Afghanistan must not be primarily to hunt down and kill Taliban insurgents, but to “protect the population.” He also turned to a “team” of civilian experts, largely gathered from Washington think-tanks, a number of whom had been involved in planning out Petraeus’s Iraq surge of 2007, to make an assessment of the state of the war and what needed to be done. Think of them as the Surgettes.
As in many official reassessments, the cast of characters essentially guaranteed the results before a single meeting was held. Based on past history and opinions, this team could only provide one Petraeus-approved answer to the war: more — more troops, up to 40,000-45,000 of them, and other resources for an American counterinsurgency operation without end.
Hence, even if McChrystal’s name is on it, the report slipped to Bob Woodward which just sandbagged the president has a distinctly Petraeusian shape to it. In a piece linked to Woodward’s bombshell in the Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung wrote of unnamed officials in Washington who claimed “the military has been trying to push Obama into a corner.” The language in the coverage elsewhere has been similar.
Engelhardt points to president Obama’s greatest character flaw, his insecurity:
He took up Afghanistan (“the right war”) in the presidential campaign as proof that, despite wanting to end the war in Iraq, he was tough.
If he was really tough he would have simply blown the Pentagon off. He’s the president; what he’d lose in the Executive Office Building hallways, he’d gain in the country’s living rooms. The Pentagon would make trouble, and that would give Obama all the reason he needs to clean house! If he needed to explain, he could point out the whip hand in the Middle East and elsewhere is not driven by the Taliban or other militant groups but by the price of petroleum.
The price is a kind of Goldfinger- esque time bomb requiring the greatest delicacy in handling to avoid blowing everything – including the military’s ambitions – into the stratosphere.
Once in office, Obama compounded the damage by doubling down his bet on the war. In March, he introduced a “comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan” in his first significant public statement on the subject, which had expansion written all over it. He also agreed to send in 21,000 more troops (which, by the way, Petraeus reportedly convinced him to do). In August, in another sign of weakness masquerading as strength, before an unenthusiastic audience at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, he unnecessarily declared: “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity.” All of this he will now pay for at the hands of Petraeus, or if not him, then a coterie of military men behind the latest push for a new kind of Afghan War.
Obama is a fool, a weak one and not even clever. He had the best chance by doing and committing nothing.
How does this stand with Iran? Here lies more trouble as the Pentagon believes Iraq/Afghanistan is down road from Belgium rather than next door to Iran’s oil fields and the Strait of Hormuz. The Kool aid the Israelis peddle to themselves and their associates in Washington has rotted the minds of those most closely involved. What passes for a Mid-East policy is co- opted by Israel’s anti- Iran fomenting.
Here’s what Haggai Ram has to say on Juan Cole’s site:
In my recent book, Iranophobia (2009), I have demonstrated how the Jewish state has time and again (ab)used the specter of the “Iranian threat” in order to cover up, and divert attention away from, both domestic oversights and the continuing apartheid regime in the Palestinian territories. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s incumbent Foreign Minister, is a case in point. When asked in the wake of the devastation that the Israeli military had sown in Gaza last year, “What you think is the first most strategic threat to Israel,” Lieberman responded: “Iran, Iran, Iran… As long as there’s no solution to the Iranian problem we will deal with neither the settlements nor the settlers… Only after we will have taken care of … Iran it will become possible to talk about… the problem in Judea, Samaria, and the Golan Heights.”
Blackmail has multiple dimensions with all pushing as hard as possible on the very pushable Obama.
All of this rests on a teetering platform where a miscalculation of some kind tips the NYMEX or spot price of petroleum over the magic $78 and the market explodes into outer space and Peak Oil comes out of the closet again.
The oil manipulators and investment banks are all over this – why not? It wouldn’t be the first time the insiders talked their book and ignited the market. Nobody in charge seems to care about the country! Why should Goldman- Sachs?
Here, Engelhardt talks HIS book; he makes an (obvious) point about the evolution of US military (foreign) policy dating from Vietnam:
The question is: will an already heavily militarized foreign policy geared to endless global war be surrendered to the generals? Depending on what Obama does, the answer to that question may not be fully, or even largely, clarified this time around. He may quietly give way, or they may, or compromises may be reached behind the scenes. After all, careers and political futures are at stake.
But consider us warned. This is a question that is not likely to go away and that may determine what this country becomes.
It’s hard not to be cynical about the president, but the direction of policy has already been cast by events and the military is in a race with circumstances. The best/only question is how many trillions in hard cash will disappear down the Pentagon rat hole before the system falls apart under the weight … of all those lost trillions and the inexorable rise in oil prices. In the new New World Order, what the Pentagon and its sock puppet Petraeus is looking for is its own TARP- sized bailout.
My solution from a few days ago, McChrystal Does A Paulson, is still apt:
In a perfect world the President would pick up McChrystal’s report, glance at it, then toss it into the trash can. All of this could be done on television. The President would then fire McChrystal on the spot. He would order the Pentagon to draft a plan to remove all US forces from Afghanistan in six weeks. The President would inform all and sundry that the efforts begun in 2002 were successful and additional efforts are unnecessary. To outmaneuver the fear mongers, he would propose a large tax increase to pay for added military activities if the public was so inclined.
The ambitious and conniving weasel Petraeus should be fired as well. Thanks for reminding me, Tom.
Moral hazard is dead and buried, why shouldn’t all the swine have their turn at the trough? Who in charge ever asks that question? This war business is simply another form of consumption, soldiering is another ‘branding opportunity’. Honor, bravery and patriotism are trivialized and the natural capital of our country’s youth – its idealism – is squandered for ambition and profit. Hello, Vietnam!
Petraeus and McChrystal should know the country is in trouble because of over- consumption, but maybe they don’t. Ignorance of priorities is no excuse and pretending ignorance is despicable. Which country is the Pentagon charged with defending? Saudi Arabia?
What of Obama’s ignorance pretense?
Meanwhile, (more)over @ Baseline Scenario which is Simon Johnson and James Kwak’s blog, there is an interesting bit posted by some dude named ‘Statsguy’ about money, China and capital flows. Some of this has been touched upon over here and some not. Interesting article and comments/discussion with Bondgirl … with the comment that preceded the article being most interesting:
The Fed is discovering just how much monetary policy, like fiscal policy, is constrained by international flows (trade and capital) when there is lack of coordination. We already know that asymmetric fiscal stimulus “bleeds” into other economies through imports. Asymmetric monetary stimulus also bleeds, it seems, though conventional macro- economists don’t seem to be getting this yet. The bleed occurs through asset price inflation induced by expectations of devaluation. In other words, the fed can run Monetary stimulus, which decreases investor willingness to hold dollars. In a closed economy, this forces investors into other assets – including investment assets. Investment/consumption spending surges, restoring the investment/savings equilibrium (which was broken by a spike in perceived default risk) as holding cash or reserves becomes unattractive and higher demand decreases default risk.
In an OPEN economy, however, this can simply force investors into non-dollar assets, including foreign investments and investment in commodities and exporting firms. In other words, capital flight. Note the recent trends in the markets… The extreme of this is an anti-dollar carry trade in which investors borrow at low US dollar rates and buy foreign government securities. This depresses the dollar, and accelerates devaluation – which might normally be stimulative, unless it results in commodity driven price inflation. But even commodity inflation might be OK (it finally got us to seriously think about our oil addiction).
But devaluation is politically difficult because China vigorously opposes this (for fear of devaluing its currency reserves) and at the same time does not want to allow the dollar to depreciate for (apparently) fear that it will lose its export advantage and go the way of Japan in the lost decade. China, in short, wants to have its cake and eat it to… They want to maintain a huge export surplus to a country whose currency does not depreciate, and the only way this can happen is if that country (the US) keeps borrowing ever larger sums.
… which is happening less and less …
Statsguy gets the cart in front of the horse; money flows are circular around the center of gravity which is our insatiable consumption, like water around a drain. ‘Oil addiction’ is the drain. Good to see it creeping around the edges and into the consciousnesses of the economics profession. Acknowledging the centrality of petroleum to money matters will be the next ‘big bang’ of the field to equal Keynesianism.
Any economist who does not from the very first acknowledge the primacy of energy over all other principles is not an economist.
He or she is simply a trash collector.