Finally-ish

Praise FSM and pass the stuffing.  Okay, there may be as many as 150 directly-employed US troops left, along with 5,000 or more indirectly employed troops and 11,000 other people at the US "embassy" in Baghdad, but the US will officially stop occupying at least one country this year.

After over eight years and nine months, George Bush's entirely unnecessary war will finally end.

A Hanging Curve

Back during the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, most of the arguments presented in favor of the war weren't very persuasive to me.  The evidence seemed flimsy, and the logic of Saddam Hussein giving Osama bin Laden weapons of mass terror or mass destruction was flawed.  A flurry of articles in the Guardian this week sheds further light on how the country was deceived into supporting the war.  Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who was dubbed "Curveball" by his handlers in the German and then US intelligence agencies, has admitted to a Guardian reporter that he lied about his knowledge of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons programs.  As it turned out, they didn't exist at all, except in the mind of Hussein.  But the Bush Administration, despite knowing that there were very good reasons to doubt him, constructed a case for war based on al-Janabi's dubious story.  Everything flowed from the assumption that his story was accurate, including the evidence shown during Colin Powell's "dramatic" presentation to the UN.  (Powell has been engaged in an active campaign to rehabilitate his reputation ever since.)

None of al-Janabi's revelations are really new, though.  Apart from the lack of hard evidence on the ground in Iraq for a weapons program, the internal doubts in the Bush Administration and Blair's Government have been reported before.   And that leads to an unpleasant truth: the new report just does not matter.  If the people who actively supported the Iraq War were willing to accept that the war was wrong and unnecessary, they would have done so by now.  They haven't, and won't, because the implications are too hard to face.  Their willful disregard for facts puts a burden of doing something on the people in the middle, who were passive supporters for one reason or another.  But they declared their apathy on the matter in 2004, when Bush was re-elected.  There are plenty on the left side of the political spectrum who would like to do something, such as prosecuting or at least exposing people who knew about al-Janabi's lies.  But they are busy trying to prevent the dismantling of America's already very weak safety net.  So the issue will be left to fester.

What is the fate of democracies that can't respond to internal, self-made crises?  The few prior examples are not encouraging.

ETA: Powell's good reputation was always undeserved.

Shit or Get Off the Pot

That's where we're at with Afghanistan. Here's the background: the security situation is getting worse, the Afghan government is a farce, Bin Laden is still not captured, neither Pakistan nor India will stop meddling, American citizens are tired of war, America's public discourse is juvenile, the President has boxed himself into a rhetorical corner, and the federal government is broke. But the only two options being discussed are more troops (shit), or altering strategy with the current level of troops (continue to sit). A third, withdrawing (get off), was preemptively dismissed. And that was a big mistake.

What (most) Americans don't understand is that their country is operating in imperial overreach territory. Literally. Afghanistan eats invaders for breakfast. Which is truly amazing - or entirely unsurprising - because there is no such thing as Afghanistan. As Alan Grayson put it, it's simply an empty place on a map. It's a label applied to an area not covered other labels, ones that more-or-less corresponded with a political entity.

I admit that, way back when, I was supportive of the invasion of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda was there, the Taliban was medieval, and the US did sort of abandon the country once the proxy war with the Soviet Union ended. When Bush started transferring resources to Iraq I worried that the moment for lasting change in Afghanistan - tenuous though it was - would be lost. And it has been.

Now, after six years of tragic stupidity in Iraq, the nation's somewhat bleary focus is back on Afghanistan. But the context has changed. In 2001 there was not a monumental hole in the federal government's finances. It was before the country had muddled through another 7 years of inaction on energy, global warming, health care, infrastructure, education, and a host of other issues. And it was before every segment of the private economy - except the ultra-rich - drowned themselves in debt. The federal budget deficit for FY09 is likely to reach a whopping 10% of GDP. Gross federal, state, and local debt is approaching 100% of GDP. All of which is by way of saying: the US can't afford to shit. Even if the economy were to recover robustly (unlikely), there would still be large structural budget deficit that needs to be resolved. Something will have to give - taxes, spending, or both.

At the risk of sounding like a DFH, I feel our attempt to police the world should be the first spending item to be scaled back. Too many people have come to conflate their own self-image with the country's ability to bomb foreigners. Yet, at home, we treat each other like dirt, forcing people to go to extraordinary lengths to get health care. The mis-allocation is unsustainable.

Thus I believe the United States should withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. The people of the non-country shouldn't be abandoned like they were at the end of the 1980s. But instead of attempting to impose security, we should send aid in two forms. One should be cash, distributed at all levels of government and to NGOs. The other should be equipment and supplies - construction equipment, steel beams and rebar, transportation equipment, telecommunications equipment, water and sewage equipment, and medical supplies. We should let the Afghans (Pashtuns, Tajikis, Hazarai, etc.) build their own country as they see fit. Or not. $10B between the two streams per year should be enough, considering that the country's current GDP is estimated to be $20B or $30B per year. It would be a bargain compared to the $65B that has been allocated directly to operations in Afghanistan for 2009.

Open Letter: Ending the War in Iraq

Dear Congressmen and Senators,

I am writing today to urge you to work even harder than you have so far to end the disastrous War in Iraq. The War in Iraq has killed thousands of Americans, wounded tens of thousands more, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. It has cost American taxpayers over $500 billion so far, and its ultimate costs will be well over $1 trillion. It was started under false pretenses for reasons that still remain unclear, and serves no discernible goal. The War in Iraq is wrong, pointless, bad for America, and must be ended as soon as possible.

I realize that any legislation which includes a clear withdrawal timeline will be vetoed by President Bush, and that at some point funding must be passed. Therefore I urge you to pass legislation which funds the War in Iraq for increments of not more than 3 months at a time. This will force the President to provide progress reports and justification for the war again and again. Hopefully after a time enough Republican legislators will defect and the war can be ended, or this process will continue until the 2008 election and the Republicans will be defeated.

If for some reason the President concedes defeat and agrees to end the troops, the withdrawal must be complete. All American troops should be removed from Iraq, including from Kurdistan, and construction on any long-term bases halted. There is no reason for an American presence in Iraq – the well has been too deeply poisoned, and as long as our troops are in the country the Iraqis will be distracted from rebuilding their country. Ideally, all troops would also be withdrawn from the larger Persian Gulf region, but that will take much more time and some significant political shifts here in America. Troops are also need for the War in Afghanistan – a war that was going well until the president foolishly diverted troops to Iraq.

I also urge you to properly fund the Veterans Administration. Our soldiers have served in Iraq honorably (with a very few exceptions) and deserve to receive proper medical treatment for injuries sustained during the war. The VA was doing quite well with the funding and patients it had until this war started, which broke a system not accustomed to treating new patients. I urge you to work hard to remedy yet another shameful failure of the Bush Administration.

But most of all I urge you to attempt to end the war in Iraq as soon as possible. Please do everything you can ,and make it your top priority. Lives are being wasted and families broken every day because of the War in Iraq, and it should not go on.

Thank you for your time.