U.S. defense outlays keep growing and growing

"How much is enough? And could the money be better spent on domestic programs?"

US militarism threatens to unleash regional conflagration

by Bill Van Auken - Global Research - October 24, 2007

Following on the heels of President George W. Bush’s warning last week that those countries “interested in avoiding World War III” should align themselves with Washington’s escalating threats against Iran, a series of unfolding developments point to the danger of armed violence engulfing a broad swath of the Middle East and Central Asia and, indeed, posing the threat of a new world war.

Six years after the US invasion of Afghanistan and four-and-a-half years after the invasion of Iraq, the continuation and deepening of the conflicts in both of these countries is setting into motion a political chain reaction of incalculable dimensions.

It is igniting military conflict in a region that extends from the borders of Europe in the West to those of India in the East, including the countries of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while threatening to draw in other major powers with strategic interests in the region.

The stage is being set for armed confrontations that threaten the deaths of hundreds of millions and, indeed, the destruction of the entire planet.

In the first instance, the danger of a widening war is posed against Iran. Vice President Richard Cheney continued to ratchet up the menacing rhetoric against Teheran over the weekend, while also vilifying and threatening Syria.

“The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences,” Mr. Cheney said in a speech on Sunday. “The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” Cheney’s remarks were made before a meeting of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a prominent think tank that includes some of the key architects of the war of aggression against Iraq.

Cheney denounced Iran as “the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism,” adding that “our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions.”

Cheney’s speech, which echoes the rhetoric about “weapons of mass destruction” used by the vice president in the fall of 2002 in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq, carried the unmistakable implication that Washington is preparing to attack Iran militarily on the pretext of blocking the Teheran government from continuing its nuclear program.

These threats are not being made under conditions in which Washington has succeeded, either in Iraq or in Afghanistan, in suppressing popular resistance and installing viable puppet regimes. Bush was forced Monday to request another $46 billion to pay for military operations in both countries, where fighting has continued to intensify. The request brings the total amount budgeted for the fiscal year that began on October 1 to $196 billion.

The Bush administration and the American ruling elite as a whole have concluded that there is no way out of these intractable colonial-style wars in which the US military is already mired. The impact of these festering conflicts takes on a momentum of its own throughout the region. While there appears to be an element of madness in the policy of escalation now being pursued by Washington, underlying it is the logic of the combined crisis of US and world capitalism.

The prospect that the current wars will be further expanded has triggered deep disquiet within the military command itself, as was reflected in remarks by the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in an interview published by the New York Times Monday.

While stressing that he intended to press for a continued increase in the military budget, the new chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, warned: “We’re in a conflict in two countries out there right now. We have to be incredibly thoughtful about the potential of in fact getting into a conflict with a third country in that part of the world.”

Armed attacks inside Iran

But in relation to Iran itself, there are growing indications that armed actions have already begun. Citing British Defense Ministry sources, the London Times reported Sunday that “British special forces have crossed into Iran several times in recent months as part of a secret border war against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Quds special forces.”

According to the paper, British SAS commandos, operating jointly with US and Australian special forces units, have engaged in at least a “dozen intense firefights” with Iranian forces in the border area. The Times cited “persistent reports of American special-operations missions inside Iran preparing for a possible attack.”

One only needs imagine what would happen if one of these special forces units were to be wiped out inside Iran. No doubt, the claim would be made that they were attacked on the Iraqi side of the border, thereby providing the casus belli for a US attack.

The paper also reported the redeployment of seven American U2 spy planes to bases in Cyprus and Abu Dhabi, for use in mapping out targets for a US air assault on Iran.

Meanwhile, the Iraq war also threatens to spill across the Iraqi-Turkish border, with reports that a Turkish military convoy of some 50 vehicles carrying troops and weaponry is being sent to the border area after Kurdish separatist guerrillas of the PKK carried out one of their bloodiest attacks in nearly a decade. The operation Sunday left as many as 17 soldiers dead, with another eight reported captured by the PKK.

Last week, before this latest attack, the Turkish parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution authorizing the government to send the army across the border into Iraq to strike PKK bases there.

In London for a two-day visit, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stated, “If a neighboring country is providing a safe haven for terrorism ... we have rights under international law and we will use those rights and we don’t have to get permission from anybody.”

Erdogan went on to blame the US invasion and occupation of Iraq for the deteriorating situation on the Iraqi-Turkish border and the mounting threat of a wider war.

“There’s no success that I can see,” he said. “There’s only the deaths of tens of thousands of people. There’s just an Iraq whose entire infrastructure and superstructure has collapsed.”

Turkey is well aware that the US has turned a blind eye towards the PKK’s operations, while actively supporting its sister organization in carrying out terrorist attacks against Iran in the name of Kurdish separatism.

The latest PKK attack provoked demonstrations organized by opposition parties demanding military action. In Ankara, thousands marched chanting “Down with the PKK and USA!”

Turkey’s move towards retaliation threatens to plunge into chaos the one region of Iraq that has been spared the murderous violence elsewhere.

While Washington’s neo-colonialist intervention in Iraq is spilling across the borders of Turkey and Iran, so too the continuing warfare in Afghanistan is threatening to ignite a political powder keg in neighboring Pakistan.

The massive bomb attack against the convoy of Benazir Bhutto last Thursday that killed 136 people and left hundreds of others wounded may well prove the opening shot in a far wider bloodletting and civil war in Pakistan.

Bhutto, who was deposed as prime minister nearly a decade ago amid corruption charges, was brought back to Pakistan as part of a deal brokered by Washington with the country’s military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf. The aim is to forge a power-sharing agreement that would rescue the pro-US regime from mounting popular unrest, while paving the way for the incursion of US forces into the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, where the Taliban enjoys refuge and popular support.

The implications of the joining together of the failing attempt by the US and its allies to suppress the resistance in Afghanistan and the mounting crisis in Pakistan was spelled out by former top United Nations envoy Paddy Ashdown in an interview last week with the Reuters news agency.

“I believe losing in Afghanistan is worse than losing in Iraq,” said Ashdown. “It will mean that Pakistan will fall and it will have serious implications internally for the security of our own countries and will instigate a wider Shiite, Sunni regional war on a grand scale.”

Ashdown added, “Some people refer to the First and Second World Wars as European civil wars and I think a similar regional civil war could be initiated by this...to match this magnitude.”

Mounting tensions with Moscow

These developments threaten to thrust the US military into countries that span more than a 2,500-mile swath of territory extending from the Black Sea to the Arabian Sea. This region also constitutes the southern flank of the former Soviet Union, posing an ever more explicit threat to Moscow, against whom Bush’s World War III remarks were principally directed.

US-Russian tensions found fresh expression last Thursday with a nationally televised broadcast by President Vladimir Putin in which he characterized the US intervention in Iraq as an attempt to seize that country’s oil wealth and warned that Russia had the military capacity to prevent any American attempt to do the same thing on its soil.

“Thank God, Russia is not Iraq,” he said. “It is strong enough to protect its interests within its national territory and, by the way, in other regions of the world.”

The broadcast included footage of the test launching of Russia’s new Topol-M ballistic missile, which was said to have hit a target thousands of miles away in the Pacific.

Putin vowed to invest heavily in the rebuilding of Russia’s military. “We will pay attention not only to developing the nuclear triad but other weapons as well.” He also warned that if Washington goes ahead with its proposal to deploy a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, “We will certainly take steps in response to ensure the security of Russian citizens.”

Asked about Bush’s remark about World War III, White House press spokesperson Dana Perino insisted that he was only “using that as a rhetorical point.”

A survey of the instability and conflicts that US military interventions have unleashed across this region, which not incidentally contains the lion’s share of the world’s remaining energy reserves, makes it abundantly clear that the threat of a far wider conflagration is anything but rhetoric.

Underlying this threat lie the conflicting interests of rival capitalist nations and above all the drive by US imperialism to offset its economic decline in relation to rivals in Europe and Asia by exploiting its military superiority to seize hold of vital natural resources and markets.

Under these conditions, the danger that US militarism will plunge mankind into a new world war is all too real, as Washington’s increasingly reckless interventions cut across the vital interests of other major powers.

This is the inescapable logic of the doctrine of “preventive war” elaborated by Bush and embraced by the predominant sections of America’s ruling establishment.

Within this US ruling elite, there exists no genuine political opposition to the turn towards global warfare. The Democrats, the ostensible opposition party, have continued to fund both the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars, while joining with the Republicans in the US Senate to pass a resolution branding Iran’s main security forces a “terrorist organization,” thereby providing the political pretext for an unprovoked attack on yet another nation.

The real and growing danger of a far wider and more devastating war, threatening the lives of hundreds of millions, can be answered only by means of the independent mobilization of the working class, both in the US and internationally, on the basis of a common socialist program to put an end to war and the capitalist system that creates it.

Military Resistance Forced Shift on Iran Strike

by Gareth Porter - Oct 19, 2007

The George W. Bush administration's shift from the military option of a massive strategic attack against Iran to a surgical strike against selected targets associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker earlier this month, appears to have been prompted not by new alarm at Iran's role in Iraq but by the explicit opposition of the nation's top military leaders to an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

The reorientation of the military threat was first signaled by passages on Iran in Bush's Jan. 10 speech and followed by only a few weeks a decisive rejection by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of a strategic attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Although scarcely mentioned in press reports of the speech, which was devoted almost entirely to announcing the troop "surge" in Iraq, Bush accused both Iran and Syria of "allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq." Bush also alleged that Iran was "providing material support for attacks on American troops."

Those passages were intended in part to put pressure on Iran, and were accompanied by an intensification of a campaign begun the previous month to seize Iranian officials inside Iraq. But according to Hillary Mann, who was director for Persian Gulf and Afghanistan Affairs on the National Security Council staff in 2003, they also provided a legal basis for a possible attack on Iran.

"I believe the president chose his words very carefully," says Mann, "and laid down a legal predicate that could be used to justify later military action against Iran."

Mann says her interpretation of the language is based on the claim by the White House of a right to attack another country in "anticipatory self-defense" based on Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. That had been the legal basis cited by then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had in September 2002 in making the case for the invasion of Iraq.

The introduction of a new reason for striking Iran, which also implied a much more limited set of targets related to Iraq, followed a meeting between Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Dec. 13, 2006 in which the uniformed military leaders rejected a strike against Iran's nuclear program. Time magazine political columnist Joe Klein, reported last May that military and intelligence sources told him that Bush had asked the Joint Chiefs at the meeting about a possible strike against the Iranian nuclear program., and that they had unanimously opposed such an attack.

Mann says that she was also told by her own contacts in the Pentagon that the Joint Chiefs had expressed opposition to a strike against Iran.

The Joint Chiefs were soon joined in opposition to a strike on Iran by Admiral William Fallon, who was nominated to become CENTCOM commander in January. Mann says Pentagon contacts have also told her that Fallon made his opposition to war against Iran clear to the White House.

IPS reported last May that Fallon had indicated privately that he was determined to prevent an attack on Iran and even prepared to resign to do so. A source who met with Fallon at the time of his confirmation hearing quoted him as vowing that there would be "no war with Iran" while he was CENTCOM commander and as hinting very strongly that he would quit rather than go along with an attack.

Although he did not specifically refer to the Joint Chiefs, Fallon also suggested that other military leaders were opposing a strike against Iran, saying, "There are several of us who are trying to put the crazies back in the box," according to the same source.

Fallon's opposition to a strike against Iranian nuclear, military and economic targets would make it very difficult, if not impossible for the White House to carry out such an operation, according to military experts. As CENTCOM commander, Fallon has complete control over all military access to the region, says retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, an expert on military strategy who has taught at the National War College.

Douglas McGregor, a retired Army Lt. Col. who was a tank commander in the 1991 Gulf War and has taught at the National Defense University, agrees. "I find it hard to imagine that anything can happen in the area without the involvement of the Central Command," says McGregor.

The possibility that Fallon might object to an unprovoked attack on Iran or even resign over the issue represents a significant deterrent to such an attack.

Former NSC adviser Mann believes the Iraq-focused strategy is now aimed at averting any resignation threat by Fallon or other military leaders by carrying out a very limited strike that would be presented as a response to a specific incident in Iraq in which the deaths of US soldiers could be attributed to Iranian policy. She says she doubts Fallon and other military leaders would "fall on their swords" over such a strike.

Gardiner agrees that Fallon is unlikely to refuse to carry out such a limited strike under those circumstances.

Mann believes the Bush-Cheney purpose in advancing the strategy is to provoke Iranian retaliation. "The concern I have is that it would be just enough so Iranians would retaliate against US allies," she says.

But the issue of what evidence of Iranian complicity would be adequate to justify such a strike evidently remains a matter of debate within the administration. A story published by McClatchy newspapers Aug. 9 reported that Vice President Dick Cheney had argued some weeks earlier for a strike against camps in Iran allegedly used to train Iraqi Shiite militiamen fighting US troops if "hard new evidence" could be obtained of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-US forces in Iraq.

But Cheney and his allies have been frustrated in the search for such evidence. Mann notes that British forces in southern Iraq patrolled the border very aggressively for six months last year to find evidence of Iranian involvement in supplying weapons to Iraqi guerrillas but found nothing.

After several months of trying to establish specific links between Iraqis suspected of trafficking in weapons to a specific Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard contact, the US command has not claimed a single case of such a link. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the US commander for southern Iraq, where most of the Shiite militias operate, admitted in a Jul. 6 briefing that his troops had not captured "anybody that we can tie to Iran."

Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is known to be closely allied with Cheney on Iran policy, has betrayed impatience with a policy that depends on obtaining proof of Iranian complicity in attacks. On Jun. 11 he called for "strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

Lieberman repeated that position on Jul. 2, but thus far it has not prevailed.

Paul leads in donations from military voters, with Obama next

by BENNETT ROTH, RICHARD S. DUNHAM and CHASE DAVIS, Houston Chronicle - Oct 18, 2007

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, the congressman from the Houston area who opposes the Iraq war, has gotten more contributions than any other White House contender from donors identified as affiliated with the military.

According to a Houston Chronicle analysis of campaign records from January through September, Paul received $63,440 in donations from current military employees and several retired military personnel.

Democrat Barack Obama, another war critic, was second in military giving. The Illinois senator got $53,968 during the nine months.

He was followed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, a decorated Navy pilot and former Vietnam prisoner of war, who received $48,208 in military-related giving. McCain has been one of the most vigorous defenders of President Bush's decision this year to increase U.S. troops in Iraq.

The military contributions — nearly 1,000 of them are listed in Federal Election Commission records for this year — represent a small fraction of the overall contributions to the candidates.

Paul, whose campaign Web site notes his military service as a flight surgeon in the Air Force in the 1960s as well as his opposition to the current war, raised a total of $5 million from July through September alone. Also, many contributors do not disclose their occupations, making it difficult to determine the total extent of military contributions to any one candidate.

Nevertheless, analysts said the ability of Paul and Obama to rake in as much money from military employees as they did suggests there is a certain degree of dissatisfaction with the Iraq campaign among veterans and those in uniform.

One of the contributors to Paul's campaign was Lindell Anderson, 72, a retired Army chaplain from Fort Worth, who donated $100 to the Texas lawmaker.

"As a Christian, I think he speaks to a theme that the United States shouldn't be the policeman of the world," said Anderson.

Anderson said he strongly disagrees with Republicans who call Paul anti-military: "He spent five years in the military. People in the military have to respect his integrity" whether or not they agree with him on the war.

But an official with the American Legion, the veterans' service organization that has supported the Iraq war, said she didn't know why military employees support Paul.

"I don't know the rhyme or reason behind it," said Ramona Joyce. "It's America. Anybody can throw their money at who they want to."

At the Texas headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Austin, state adjutant Roy Grona said military personnel do not vote as a bloc.

"There's probably a lot of veterans that aren't happy with the war in Iraq," he said.

Grona said Paul has been endorsed by the VFW in his congressional races in part because of his support for veterans' benefits.

The average size of Paul's contributions from military sources is $500, with donations ranging from $50 to the maximum $2,300.

More than a third of Paul's military-related contributions came from Army affiliates; a third came from the Air Force; and a fourth from Navy donors. The rest came from affiliates of the Marines and other branches.

Jennifer Duffy, an analyst with the non-partisan Cook Political Report, speculated that Paul might be an attractive candidate for military personnel who oppose the war, "but don't want to cross the line and vote for a Democrat."

Paul has made withdrawal of troops from Iraq and a criticism of aggressive U.S. foreign policy central themes of his maverick campaign.

Kent Snyder, Paul's campaign chairman, said the contributions were evidence that many in the military agreed with the candidate's position.

"I guess they want to get out of Iraq, too," said Snyder.

Texas A&M political science professor George C. Edwards III attributed support for Obama among the military to the factors that he attracts support from many black voters, and blacks are a bigger proportion of the military than their overall share of the national population.

Edwards, who was a guest professor at West Point for three years, said "an awful lot of people in the military just think this war has been a disaster for the Army."

He said they believe the war has "stretched it thin, used its supplies and has been bad for morale."

"They may be quite upset and this is a way they can do something about it," he said.

Obama's support came from across the military, including a squad leader in the Army, a member of the Navy stationed at the U.S. embassy in Iraq, and state Rep. Juan Garcia, a Democrat from Corpus Christi.

Garcia, a retired Navy pilot, serves as an instructor at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi with the Naval Reserves.

"The men and women of the military are looking for a leader like Barack Obama who will turn the page on foreign policy and national security issues," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.

Edwards attributed McCain's backing to his being "a former military guy." McCain received the largest number of supporters from Navy, in which he served.

"John McCain has extremely strong support among veterans, especially in the early primary states," spokesman Brian Rogers said. "He's a veteran himself and he's been there for them on the issues for over 20 years."

'Many in the US Military Think Bush and Cheney Are Out of Control'

Many outside the military think Bush and Cheney are out of control too.

In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Amsterdam-based military historian Gabriel Kolko talks about the prospect of war with Iran and argues that many in the US military now view the White House as being 'out of control.'

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Kolko, editorials in US papers like the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review are pushing for military action against Iran. How does the leadership in the US military view such a conflict?

Gabriel Kolko: The American military is stretched to the limit. They are losing both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything is being sacrificed for these wars: money, equipment in Asia, American military power globally, etc. Where and how can they fight yet another? The Pentagon is short of money for procurement, and that is what so many people in the military bureaucracy live for. The situation will be far worse in the event of a war with Iran.

Many in the American military have learned the fundamental dilemma of modern warfare: More money and better weapons don't mean that you win. IEDs, which cost so little to make, are defeating a military which spends billions of dollars per month. IEDS are so adaptable that each new strategy developed by the United States to counter them is answered by the Iraqi insurgents. The Israelis were also never quite able to counter IEDs. One report quotes an Israeli military engineer who said the Israeli answer to IEDs was frequently the use of armored bulldozers to effectively rip away the top 18 inches of pavement and earth where explosive devices might be hidden. This is fantastic, as the cost of winning means destroying roads, which form the basis of a modern economy.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are people in the Pentagon getting nervous about how influential voices in the White House continue to push for conflict with Iran?

Kolko: Many in the US military think Bush and Cheney are out of control. They are rebelling against Bush and Cheney. Washington Post reporter Dana Priest recently said in an interview that she believed the US military would revolt and refuse to fly missions against Iran if the White House issued such orders.

Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, in charge of US forces in Japan, told the Associated Press last week that the Iraq war had weakened American forces in the face of any potential conflict with China. He was quoted as saying, "Are we in trouble? It depends on the scenario. But you have to be concerned about the small number of our forces and the age of our forces."

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you think that conflict with Iran is likely?

Kolko: All the significant economic journals (Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.) recognize that the American and European economies are now in a crisis, and it may be protracted. The dollar is falling; Gulf States and others may abandon it (as an investment currency). A war with Iran would produce economic chaos because oil would be scarce. There are states which the United States wishes to isolate, like Russia and Venezuela, who can develop great influence through their ability to sell oil in such a crisis. The balance of world economic power is involved, and that is a great issue.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But aren't the Gulf States interested in seeing Iran weakened through a conflict with the United States?

Kolko: The Gulf States do not like Shia Iran, but they export oil, which makes them rich. They are dependent on peace, not war.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How would Iran react to a provocation by the United States, say, on the border? Could the Iranian military in any way be a match for the United States?

Kolko: Iran fought Iraq for about a decade and lost hundreds of thousands of men. Perhaps they will roll over, but it is not likely. There are a number of tiny islands in the gulf they have had years to fortify. Can 90 percent of their weapons be knocked out? Even if this United States could achieve this, the remainder would be sufficient to sink many boats and tankers. The amount of oil exported through the gulf would thereby be reduced, perhaps cease altogether. This would only strengthen American rivals like Russia and Venezuela.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But what about the bunker-buster bombs? Wouldn't that be a technology which Iran could not match?

Kolko: Bunker busters are only able to knock out so many bunkers, but alas, not all. If bunker-buster bombs are nuclear they are very useful, but they are also radioactive. In addition to killing Iranians, they may also kill friends and nearby US soldiers.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What about the so-called 'Cheney plan' to let Israel attack Iran? What role would Israel play in a conflict with Iran? Isn't Israel also interested in seeing that the United States weakens its greatest threat in the region?

Kolko: Israel may be a factor. They must cross Syrian and Jordanian airspace, and the Iranians will be prepared if they are not shot down over Syria. Their countermeasures may be effective, but perhaps not ... War with Iran will lead to a rain of rockets and Israel would be left with an inability to deal with local priorities. Iran is likely to get nuclear bombs sooner or later. So will other nations. Israel has hundreds already. Israeli strategists believe deterrence will then exist. Why risk war?

Israel dislikes Iran and the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons, but they believe they can handle it with a deterrent relationship. Israel needs its army, which is not large enough for potential nearby problems -- for Palestinians and its Arab neighbors, who it rightfully fears and hates. That means Israel can be belligerent, but it is not capable of playing the US role, except of course with nuclear weapons.

So I regard the Israelis as opponents of a war with Iran which would involve them. They certainly noticed how during the war with Lebanon the Palestinians in Gaza used the opportunity to increase pressure on Israel from the south. Israelis opposed the Iraq war because it would lead to Iranian domination of the region, which it has.

Hence, the report that Cheney is trying to use Israel, if it is true, shows that he's confused and quite mad -- but also unusually isolated.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But what about the Democratic Party? Isn't it in the interest of the Democratic Party to do everything they can to end the war?

Kolko: All three leading Democratic Party presidential hopefuls -- Clinton, Obama and Edwards -- refused at a debate recently in New Hampshire to promise to pull the US military out of Iraq by the beginning of 2013. The American public is a small factor, as elections have repeatedly shown, but may play some role also. As the last election proved, anyone who thinks Democrats will stop wars is fooling him- or herself. But war with Iran would require new authorizations. Then the Congress would, potentially, be very important.

Saving the Military from Itself

by William Astore and Tom Engelhardt - Oct 5, 2007

When, in mid-September, General David Petraeus testified before Congress on "progress" in Iraq, he appeared in full dress uniform with quite a stunning chestful of medals. The general is undoubtedly a tough bird. He was shot in the chest during a training-exercise accident and later broke his pelvis in a civilian skydiving landing, but until he went to Iraq in 2003, he had not been to war. In the wake of his testimony, the New York Times tried to offer an explanation for the provenance of at least some of those intimidating medals and ribbons – including the United Nations Medal (for participants in joint UN operations), the National Defense Service Medal (for those serving during a declared national emergency, including 9/11) and the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal (for… well, you know…). Petraeus is not alone. Here, for instance, is former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Peter Pace, a combat Marine in Vietnam, with one dazzling chestful of medals and another of ribbons.

Medal and ribbon escalation has been long on the rise in the U.S. military. Here, for instance, was General William Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. forces in Vietnam, sporting his chestful back in that distant era. But the strange thing is: As you continue heading back in time, as, in fact, U.S. generals become more successful, those ribbons and medals shrink – and not because the men weren't highly decorated either. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who won World War II in Europe for the Allies seems, in his period of glory, to have chosen to wear between one and three rows. And General George C. Marshall, who oversaw all of World War II, after a distinguished career in the military, can be seen in photos wearing but three rows as well.

It's hard to believe that there isn't a correlation here – that, in fact, there isn't also a comparison to be made. For all the world, when I saw Petraeus on display, I thought of the full-dress look of Soviet generals, not to say the Soviet Union's leader Leonid Brezhnev, back in the sclerotic 1980s when, ambushed in Afghanistan, they were on the way down. Like the USSR then, the U.S., only a few years back hailed as the planet's New Rome, has the look of a superpower in distress – and it's hard to believe that generals with such chests full of medals, whether in the former USSR or the present USA, have the kind of perspective that actually leads to winning wars – or to assessing a losing war correctly. Consider what a retired military officer, Lieutenant Colonel William Astore, has to say on the subject. Tom

Saving the Military from Itself

Why Medals and Metrics Mislead - By William Astore

It's time to save the military from itself. I say this as a retired Air Force officer who served for twenty years, my last three in a "joint" assignment, working closely with Army, Marine, and Navy officers and enlisted men and women. As the Dean of Students at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, I saw hundreds of young troops cross the stage, graduating with new skills in Arabic and other strategic languages. With few exceptions, these (mostly) young men and women were highly motivated, committed to their service and country, and ready to go to war. They had no quit in them.

But in the words of Kenny Rogers, "You've got to know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run." The reference to his hit song, "The Gambler," is not facile. The Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote that war, in its complexities and uncertainties, most resembles a game of cards – let's say Texas Hold'em in honor of the President's adopted state. Over the last four-plus years, we've shoved hundreds of billions of dollars into the Iraqi pot, suffered sobering losses in killed-in-action/wounded-in-action, yet we're still holding losing cards dealt from a stacked deck. Even so, the Bush administration has recently doubled-down instead of folding, hoping to hit an inside straight despite long odds.

Why are we spilling blood and treasure with such reckless abandon? One answer is the military itself. Our military is a funhouse reflection of ourselves – purpose-driven, results-oriented, can-do, never-say-die, win-at-any-cost. Many commentators have noted that, in his recent testimony before Congress, General David Petraeus was hardly likely to criticize his own strategy in Iraq or, more crucially, the performance of the troops under his command. I have no doubt, however, that his belief in the viability of his mission reaches far deeper than that. Indeed, it surely taps into a core belief within the military that we can – and must – prevail in any conflict. We've been seduced by our own hype about being the world's "sole superpower," as if nuclear and technological supremacy had made us omnipotent as well as omni-competent.

Cheating the Kobayashi Maru

But how can you win someone else's civil war? In Iraq, our military faces a classic Kobayashi Maru – a no-win situation. In the Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, Admiral Kirk recounts how he triumphed over his own Kobayashi Maru – by cheating. He reprograms a computer simulation to allow for victory, even winning a special commendation for originality!

The U.S. military seems to think it can do the same. Its version of reprogramming is "metrics": Show enough colored charts with seemingly hard-and-fast numbers and you can claim, if not victory, at least progress of a sort. Antiwar critics have referred to this as "cooking the books," implying that the military is engaged in a deliberate campaign of lies. While it may be true that the first casualty of any war is truth, bald-faced lies have been the least of our problems when it comes to our armed forces. Far more devastating has been the ability of its commanders to mislead themselves, and so, us. Even when U.S. forces can't always "search and destroy" Iraqi insurgents and terrorists, it turns out that they can search and deploy metrics indicative of progress anyway.

But when such metrics are deployed, do they mean what our military thinks they mean? For example, General Petraeus noted that this year his troops had already found and cleared more than 4,400 weapons and explosive caches, 1,700 more than in all of 2006. Is this, then, proof of better intelligence and interdiction techniques, as he claims? Or is it a sign that these caches are proliferating? Or that the insurgents are learning to disperse their weapons more effectively? And what exactly constitutes a cache anyway? Two AK-47s and an old artillery shell? And is it possible that top-down pressure from the chain-of-command to show results has inflated this figure? In other words, is better counting (and possibly some creative accounting) behind these figures?

Here's a metric of a different sort. General Petraeus testified that Iraq has already committed $1.6 billion to the U.S. foreign military sales (FMS) program, and will likely commit another $1.8 billion to FMS by year's end. He presented this as positive news. Yet, is this not another way of saying that Iraq has $3.4 billion less to commit to desperately needed internal infrastructure repairs and improvements? Is it really the case that Iraq's ongoing civil war is best resolved by an infusion of billions of dollars worth of U.S. military equipment?

Lies, Damned Lies, and Metrics

One might be pardoned for asking: What makes our military think this way? For these and other metrics are not lies (although lies may be folded into them); rather, they are symptomatic of a state of ongoing self-delusion as well as self-congratulation. Our military is structured to recognize and reward performance, and institutionally we believe that "true" performance must be quantifiable. So we develop (invent is often a better word) "metrics" to feed the beast. Promotion ("fitness") reports exhibit the Lake Wobegon Effect, where nearly every officer and NCO turns out to be above average. Commanders do their best to quantify, showcase, and elevate the accomplishments of their units, even if results are nebulous or ephemeral. The status reports Petraeus offered Congress, displayed on those giant, colorful charts during the recent hearings, are at least in part a compilation of these glowing reports. The end result: an inherently flawed and overly optimistic vision, heavily weighted toward "progress" and ultimate success.

While this may, in part, be a military version of the grade-inflation endemic in our schools and culture, there are other signs that it is now rampant. Medals and ribbons, for instance, have proliferated to such an extent that few have any real meaning. Officers openly sneer about "PCS medals," almost pro forma awards received after a "permanent change in station" – that is, a new assignment, no matter how peaceable. Many medals shout "been there," rather than "done that." Some awards and decorations today are tied more to the military rank of the recipient than to objective measures of merit. Indeed, ribbons have proliferated like nuclear missiles during the Cold War. I counted nine rows on Petraeus' left breast during his Congressional hearings. If they were a valid metric across time, he would be roughly thrice as capable and valorous as George C. Marshall, perhaps America's greatest soldier-statesman, who somehow ran and won a world war while wearing only three rows of ribbons.

By no means do I intend to disparage General Petraeus or his record. In wearing a uniform festooned with medals, ribbons, badges, and tabs, he's the norm among U.S. military commanders. Yet those medals and militaria that our commanders wear are a kind of evidence. Our military, they indicate, is so busy patting itself on the back that its medal-bestowing has come to resemble those Little League tournaments where every kid gets a trophy, win or lose. We're so busy celebrating how great we are that we're failing to face reality. Not all problems can be solved by applying more elbow grease and shouting "Hooah."

Our military will continue to showcase the metrics of success in Iraq because the system itself is built on them. By nature as well as training, our military is composed of action-oriented problem solvers. This is a great strength, but also a potentially fatal flaw. It makes it unlikely indeed that military commanders will recognize how "bugging out and calling it even" – the jaded advice of Private Hudson in Aliens – can, at times, be the height of military wisdom. We magnet-ribbon people who sport "support our troops" on our SUVs need to learn that "support" sometimes means pulling the troops out, even when some of them are kicking and screaming to stay.

Generals and Train Wrecks

In a country founded on civilian control of the military, it's disturbing indeed that, as a New York Times/CBS poll indicated recently, Americans trust their generals three times as much as Congress and 13 times as much as the President. As unjust as the "General Betray Us" tag may have been in that Moveon.org ad, many other Americans, including most of Congress – and, above all, the President himself – seem to be chanting "General Please Save Us." Both chants are misguided, but the second is the more dangerous.

As French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau famously noted a century ago, "War is too important to be left to generals" – a fact illustrated recently by a serving Army officer. In "A Failure in Generalship," which appeared in Armed Forces Journal in May, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling argues that, prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, our generals "refused to prepare the Army to fight unconventional wars" and thereafter failed to "provide Congress and the public with an accurate assessment of the conflict in Iraq." Put bluntly, he accuses them of dereliction of duty. Bewailing a lack of accountability for such failures in the military itself, Yingling memorably concludes that "a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war."

When it comes to Iraq, we seem to suffer from a baffling case of collective amnesia. Think back to the spring of 2004. A friend of mine was then serving in the Green Zone with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), run by presidential appointee L. Paul Bremer III. Prior to the official handing over of "sovereignty" to the Iraqis in June of that year, he wrote me that the CPA staff "accepted as given" widespread "corruption, private militias, insecurity, and coming civil war." The "scariest" part, he added, "is that we're supporting a regime which is seen as completely illegitimate by the people it's supposed to rule in the name of democracy…. Even the Iraqis who welcomed us after Saddam have lost patience with us and are pursuing other routes to power and national control." The whole operation, he concluded, "is a train wreck waiting to happen, and the administration simply refused to acknowledge it, much less do anything about it." And for overseeing this train wreck, the Bush administration in December 2004 rewarded Bremer with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Saving the New 'Greatest Generation'

Yingling's recent cri de coeur and my friend's pessimistic, yet accurate, prediction highlight the crime we're committing against today's all-volunteer military. For I believe General Petraeus was right to salute our troops as a new "greatest generation." After all, our last one, the veterans of World War II (currently celebrated in Ken Burns' documentary series), contained a large percentage of more-or-less reluctant draftees. Today's troops may not have had in mind repeated 15-month deployments to Iraq when they raised their right hands to take the oath, but they still resolutely put themselves in harm's way. They deserve our respect and gratitude – but, even more, they deserve our attention.

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy: Ask not what your military can do for you, but ask what you can do for your military. In this case, "support our troops" should mean supporting the idea of pulling them out of a morale-sucking morass. The President won't act, so Congress must. Chaos may – or may not – ensue in Iraq after our troops withdraw, but buying time for more colorful benchmarks to be met, for more impressive metrics to be produced, is unconscionable when we know it will entail thousands of additional American casualties and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. These are the metrics that matter – blood and treasure. But what should matter even more to our country than body bags and billions is trust – the emotional and spiritual ties that bind our troops to ourselves. Those ties, currently being stretched in Iraq, must not be allowed to snap. For if they do, we'll be left with hollowed – instead of hallowed – legions.

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), earned a doctorate in modern history from the University of Oxford in 1996. He has taught military cadets at the Air Force Academy, officers at the Naval Postgraduate School, and now teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. His books and articles, focusing primarily on military history, include Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005). He can be reached at wastore@pct.edu.