All the time the Pentagon is thinking...

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Andrew Cockburn's article about how a low-tech, explosive device that can be whipped up in a neighborhood machine shop for about twenty bucks has the entire R+D establishment of America's mastodontic military-industrial complex stymied, reminds me of of a famous boxing story.

Jack Dempsey, one of the greatest heavyweight champions in history fought another boxer who was supposedly very scientific. Dempsey recalled, "All the time he was boxing, he was thinking, and all the time he was thinking, I was hitting him."

Creating immensely complicated and astronomically expensive weapons systems, totally divorced from the reality of America's war fighting, would appear another sign of decadence. It reminds me of Swift's scientists that attempted to extract sunbeams from cucumbers.

I'd like to make it clear that I don't for a minute believe that the American people themselves are decadent: there are too many fresh, eager immigrants arriving every day for that to be true. But clearly dry rot seems to have set in at the top. DS

Andrew Cockburn: In Iraq, anyone can make a bomb - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: EFPs are simple to make for anyone who knows how to do it. Far from a sophisticated assembly operation that might require state supervision, all that is required is one of those disks, some high-powered explosive (which is easy to procure in Iraq) and a container, such as a piece of pipe. I asked a Pentagon analyst specializing in such devices how much each one would cost to make. "Twenty bucks," he answered after a brief calculation. "Thirty at most."(...) "You can do as much or more damage with a 5-pound EFP, which is aimed, as with a 200-pound conventional IED, where most of the energy is dissipated away from the target," the Pentagon analyst said. The U.S. has (belatedly) responded to the IED threat by "up-armoring" Humvees and other vulnerable vehicles, but EFPs can cleave through the very thickest armor "like butter," as one Iraq veteran told me. As of now, these weapons represent only a small fraction of the bombs used against U.S. forces. Last month, according to my Pentagon sources, out of 3,000 IEDs directed at occupation troops, only 2.5% were EFPs. But a further statistic explains why these particular weapons are so feared by soldiers encased in their armored vehicles: Despite the relatively tiny number deployed, since November they have accounted for fully 15% of U.S. bomb casualties, and that percentage is ticking up. Anyone pondering the implications of this trend need only look to the Israeli experience in Lebanon during the 1990s to see where it might end. "These bombs drove the Israelis out of Lebanon," a former Pentagon weapons-effects expert told me unequivocally.(...) Hezbollah's expertise with EFPs is one reason why the administration, despite minimal intelligence, has been quick to blame Hezbollah's Iranian allies for the proliferation of the devices in Iraq. But EFPs have a venerable history. The IRA used them with lethal effect against British troops in Northern Ireland, as did French resistance fighters against the Germans in World War II. It is only a question of time before someone shows the Taliban how to make them, and then NATO forces in Afghanistan will begin the same ordeal. Despite their known lethality, these weapons weren't taken into account by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's program of military "transformation." Indeed, Rumsfeld bequeathed the Army the Future Combat Systems, a $168-billion extravaganza of computers, sensors and robots deemed by its proponents so deadly to a foe that armor on U.S. military vehicles might be dispensed with altogether. Once it became impossible to ignore the threat of all kinds of "home-made" bombs, and EFPs in particular, Rumsfeld responded in orthodox fashion by throwing money at the problem. A "joint IED defeat" task force was created to address the issue, and last year it was granted $3.32 billion, but with little result. True, each Humvee patrolling Iraqi roads now carries two specially designed jammers, costing $100,000 apiece, that jam radio signals detonating roadside bombs. The other side has simply switched to wire detonators or infrared systems. One hundred towers spouting remote cameras, at $12 million each, watch main roads for bomb planters, with no improvement in attack and casualty statistics. Rumsfeld's mentor, defense intellectual Andrew Marshall, marketed the phrase "revolution in military affairs" as a justification for high-tech programs such as Future Combat Systems. But those copper disks represent the real revolution in military affairs, and it is not in our favor. READ IT ALL

Who are we finally?

The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering. New York Times

David Seaton's News Links

Really that is the question now: who are we? How did we get here and how do we get out? We all know the famous Herman Goering quote, You frighten the people and you take control of them. Since the beginning of the cold war we are living in the "National Security State". All those in power today are stakeholders in the national security state. This is a political construct that has finally produced something as bizarre as George W. Bush. Power is not acquired easily. Those that have it, have sought it all their lives, with all their being. Don't think for a minute that any of the candidates for president in 2008, if elected, would ever do anything fundamental to cut back the powers that Bush/Cheney are hoarding up now for their succesors. None of today's candidates would resist renouncing those powers from any special perversity on their part, but simply for the same reason that it would be difficult for you or me to unlearn riding a bicycle.

What must be done?

The only practical remedy I have seen offered by any mainstream politician so far, the only remedy that would have any chance of succeeding, is Howard Dean's "50 state strategy". Only a major grass roots movement that empowers "ordinary people" can save the Republic from this sinister, systemic dynamic that the cold war has engendered. Why? Because ordinary Americans have the republican values hard wired in their cultural DNA. These values are as central to the US culture as cold logic is to the French or methodical analysis is to the Germans. There is no sentimentality in this, there is simply no other language Americans can speak. Even fascism has to be dressed up as democracy to be sold to Americans.

Leaders cannot reclaim democracy for the American people. Only the people themselves can do that. The leaders must be turned into followers.

Fortunately, at the same time that the new technologies make all this sinister surveillance easier, Web.2 has placed a tool in the people's hands which makes resistance possible.

Web.2, and mass obesity, are the only two things that George Orwell did not envision in "1984". We are living in a period made for activists, not just for voters and leaders. The system has to be brought alive. Reform has to come from the bottom up, there is no other way it is going to happen. Seen from this perspective, we may be living at the beginning of the most attractive political culture in history, one with the possibility of everyone actually being invited to do their bit to create a better world. DS

Demagogy about a Third World War - William Pfaff

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I keep pushing William Pfaff at my readers, hoping they will finally become as enthusiastic about his deep knowledge, experience and uncommon, common sense as I am. Guru Jai Jai. Guru maharaj. I always knew he was good, but until the war in Iraq, I didn't know how good. He was one of the few (like chicken's teeth) American commentators that was exactly right about Iraq from day one. As Iraq is the major political, geostrategic, human and historical disaster of our time, from which an endless chain of disasters are flowing and will flow, therefore; the world of analysts is forever divided into those of us who got it right from the beginning and those who didn't. DS
Abstract: Last week at Harvard, General John Abizaid, head of the American Central Command, responsible for operations in Iraq, said that if a way is not found to stem the rise of Islamic militancy, there will be a third world war. I do not understand from where in the labyrinths of Pentagon and Washington think-tank deliberations, grounds are found for such sensationalist forecasts by people in responsible positions in and out of American government. Henry Kissinger has made the same forecast, while readjusting his personal position from support for the war, to a prediction that the war can’t be won, but that it nonetheless should continue. Who is going to fight this third world war? Presumably Islamic militants against the United States (with such allies as remain, now that Britain is leaving). That is not a world war. It is war of American intervention in foreign countries to stamp out movements supported by at least a part of the people there. We are doing that in Iraq and it’s not working, nor did it work in Somalia or Vietnam.(...) Ah, the promulgators of the new world war theory say, the terrorists have already told us that they will first seize power in Iraq (and Iran), proclaim a new universal caliphate, and take power with the support of the masses in Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, and the Maghreb. Then Western Europe, enfeebled by welfare governments and cowardice, in need of oil and subverted from within by Islamic minority populations, will submit to al Qaeda, or appease it (Europe’s people turning themselves into “Euarabs,” as one recent American scenario has it). That will leave a heroic America standing alone, battling the Islamic hordes. This is puerile fantasy. Yet Abizaid said to his Harvard audience: “Think of [today] as a chance to confront fascism in 1920. If we only had the guts to do it!” More fantasy and misinformation. There was nothing to confront in 1920. The Fascist party did not exist until 1921, and Mussolini did not form a government until 1923, when it won general praise in America and Britain for its spirit and efficiency.(...) The only way there now can be a “third world war” is for the United States to insist on staying on in Iraq, and go into Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other states as well, no doubt allied with Israel. Even in that case it would not be the great clash of ideology and geopolitics General Abizaid foresees. It would be a narrow war of illusion and ideology which most American allies would wish to avoid. It would be a struggle by the Islamic people to get the United States out of their countries and out of their lives. American intervention in the Islamic world started long before 9/11. The U.S. is fighting the ignored legacy of its own past policies. It is time to call an armistice, and go home.
READ IT ALL

Kucinich Calls for Cutting Off Iraq War Funds - Democracy Now

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If the tooth fairy ever gave me three wishes, I think that one of them might be that Dennis Kucinich be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. DS

Abstract:"I want to say that there's one solution here, and it's not to engage in a debate with the President, who has taken us down a path of disaster in Iraq, but it's for Congress to assume the full power that it has under the Constitution to cut off funds. We don't need to keep indulging in this debate about what to do, because as long as we keep temporizing, the situation gets worse in Iraq. "We have to determine that the time has come to cut off funds. There’s enough money in the pipeline to achieve the orderly withdrawal that Senator McGovern is talking about. But cut off funds, we must. That's the ultimate power of the Congress, the power of the purse. That's how we'll end this war, and that’s the only way we’re going to end this war.(...) We have to take a whole new approach. We’re spending over $400 billion a year, money that's also needed for healthcare, for education, for job creation, for seniors. We have to take a new look at this. We need to be a strong country, but strength isn't only military. Strength is also the economic strength of the people, their chance to have good neighborhoods. We spend more money than all the countries of the world put together for the military. "It's time for us to start to shift our vision about who we are as a nation, because if we don't do that -- we’re borrowing money right now to wage the war in Iraq. We’re borrowing money from China. We’re not looking at our trade deficit. We’re not looking at conditions, where people are going bankrupt trying to pay their hospital bills. We need to shift our direction, and the direction has to be away from the continued militarization of the United States society." LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

Rummy, we hardly knew ye - Max Boot - Los Angeles Times

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Gee, the neocons are subtle folks, aren't they? Uber-neocon, Max Boot's article in the LA Times is like a transcript from a Stalinist show trial. I'll just give you a few phrases, but to indulge in the full cophragia flavor, follow the link*. (warning: set your chutzpah meter on 'high') DS
*Or try this more nuanced view from The NewYorker

Abstract: For a start, he is primarily associated with a cause — the democratization of Iraq — that he never gave much sign of believing in.(...) From the day that U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad, Rumsfeld was plotting to pull them out. It was this very resistance to a prolonged and massive troop commitment that probably doomed the mission from the start.(...) Another irony: Rumsfeld was a micromanager who took a hands-off attitude on the most important issues.(...) Yet he never accepted responsibility for the biggest decisions made in Iraq. Disbanding the Iraqi army? Talk to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III. Not sending more troops? See Gens. Tommy Franks and John Abizaid. Rumsfeld won total responsibility for all facets of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but he never accepted the blame, except in the most perfunctory way, when everything went awry. On the other hand, he was happy to accept accolades for the toppling of the Taliban even though the basic strategy — using commandos backed by air power — came from the CIA, not Central Command. A third irony: For a man with abundant experience running large organizations, he proved to be a surprisingly poor manager — one who needlessly alienated generals and congressmen alike with his in-your-face manner. Given his track record, Rumsfeld's departure came at least two years too late. (I first called for his ouster on this page in May 2004.)