Printing Gossip As News

Robert Gates has now added his opinion to the debate over the public comments of Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Afghanistan:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that President Obama's advisors should keep their guidance private, in effect admonishing the top commander in Afghanistan for publicly advocating an approach requiring more troops even as the White House reassesses its strategy.

The comment by Gates came a day after Obama's national security advisor, James L. Jones, said that military commanders should convey their advice through the chain of command -- a reaction to Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's public statements in support of his troop-intensive strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan.

The exchanges suggested some disarray in the Obama administration's attempts to forge a new policy on Afghanistan and underscored wide differences among top officials over the correct approach.

I don't know that the comments suggested anything but the plain fact that the media treats generals like heroes whose pronouncements should never be questioned, unnecessarily distorting policy debates about foreign policy. News outlets are never going to be good at figuring this out because they try very hard not to understand the impact they have on political debates. But simply put, McChrystal makes a public statement for more troops, and the narrative immediately becomes "will the President go against the advice of his generals? How COULD he?" So a policy of not allowing that narrative to form seems perfectly reasonable, especially because generals have a narrow focus on their own area of responsibility and are not supposed to have a big-picture approach, and furthermore because they have a very explicit chain of command for recommendations of this types. McChrystal probably knows how this works and is using the system to his advantage, but his is not the first sin. It's a media failure to properly contextualize in favor of a yen to sensationalize.

Nancy Pelosi parroted Gates last night, so it's a full-on talking point, but again, her target is McChrystal instead of the media process that turns McChrystal into a deity. That's probably because it's impossible to get the media to understand their personal failure, so you have to shut down the debate entirely. And now, of course, the gossip-mongers on cable news are headlining: "Gates and Pelosi SLAM McChrystal," turning it into a personality-based he-said/she-said, when if they were the least bit responsible about handling public comments from leaders of the military this wouldn't even be a problem.

...And Americans have subconsciously figured out how this all ends: it doesn't. Because we cannot have a serious debate on anything in this country without it devolving into bitchy gossip and meta-critiques of how things "play" politically, tough decisions just don't get made. And so 68%, in this poll, said America will not win or lose the war in Afghanistan; it will just go on without resolution.

Tragically, people have actually gotten USED to this outcome.

Listen To The Afghanis

I guess there was a big confab of the War Council yesterday about what to do in Afghanistan, and clearly the team has split over a counter-insurgency or a counter-terrorism strategy. Now, in many ways that's two sides of the same coin, just a matter of how to explain the killing of foreigners. And I don't know if either strategy gets us closer to an exit - we're not going to kill every terrorist, as surely as we're not going to convert every Afghani into a tribune of democracy. But I do think it's clear that shifting away from a COIN strategy at least offers the possibility of getting us out of the region in a shorter period of time, and hopefully with less blood on our hands. So I'm rooting for the Biden faction. It appears that Bob Gates is the key swing vote here.

That said, the next War Council meeting could maybe have a representative of the people from the country whose destiny is being decided.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - Take advice from locals instead of trying to impose your own ideas on a tribal society. Invite the Taliban to the negotiating table. Use traditional governing structures rather than reinventing the wheel. And spend a lot more money on plowshares than on swords [...]

Afghans interviewed in their shops and on the streets have plenty of advice for the U.S. president and his allies: Don't necessarily leave, but for your sake and for ours, you'd better get a lot smarter about what you do here.

Several said they welcomed the presence of U.S. and NATO troops, whom they view as far more benign than the Soviets who occupied the country in the 1980s. They fear that a rapid withdrawal of foreign forces could throw the country into another civil war.

But they don't necessarily think a foreign military buildup is the answer.

"I'm afraid the Taliban will only get stronger," said Obiadullah Zahir, 30, a dress merchant, standing beside a row of attired mannequins with broken noses and missing arms. "I'm afraid America will leave and war return." [...]

Either you try to get the Taliban to buy in, said Amin Khatir, 24, a student in the capital, or you face an enemy that is increasingly entrenched, organized and more broadly distributed. That's a big problem, no matter how many pieces of fancy equipment foreign armies may wield.

"The Americans only want to deal with those they meet with, who speak English, not the ones farther away," Khatir said. "An election can't solve more than 1% of our problems. We must find a new way, and the main issue is security." [...]

Rather than sanction some minimally acceptable election, he said, Afghanistan should convene a traditional loya jirga, or meeting of power brokers from around the country, as it did after the Taliban was ousted.

"If you pile more bricks onto an unstable house, the whole thing will collapse," he said.

Are any of these sentiments making it into the War Council?

Mr. President, you're being very deliberative about this process. Be sure you get some local perspectives, too. It's their county, after all.

Speeding The Withdrawal In Iraq

I know that the fate of 140,000 troops half a world away isn't "in the news" at the moment, but we may be accelerating withdrawal in Iraq.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said today that he sees "some chance of a modest acceleration" of U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq.

Gates, returning from a trip to Iraq, told reporters aboard his plane that perhaps one combat brigade would come out of Iraq ahead of schedule. He did not give a precise timetable.

Gates said that Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. general in the country, told him that the security situation in Iraq is better than expected.

President Obama has announced plans to withdraw American combat forces from Iraq by Aug. 31, 2010, leaving 30,000 to 50,000 U.S. troops in advising and training roles until the end of 2011.

Kevin Drum thinks that recent tensions between Iraqi security forces and US troops could be a reason for this. But this is a modest acceleration, basically an extra brigade by the end of the year. Looks like a standard ROI to me. It's clear that Iraqi commanders and the political class have asserted a measure of control over their own country, and that's a good thing. But if it were really the case that American forces were hassled every time they tried to fight, they'd be leaving sooner.

Meanwhile, the legitimate problem in Iraq concerns the Kurdish-Arab civil war that could break out within a matter of months, particularly over control of Kirkuk. I don't think US forces have much of a role to play in that, but it could entrench them further in the conflict if the violence spreads from the north into Baghdad. I'd love to see more discussion on how to stop that from happening, because I fear it's inevitable.

Gates on the F-22

Remember, this is Robert Gates, who served under a Republican President both at the CIA and the Defense Department, arguing in the most explicit language I've seen from a public official against the dictates of the military-industrial complex:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made an impassioned case Thursday for terminating the F-22 program after production of 187 planes, as the Obama administration sought to blunt a bipartisan push to add money to the defense budget for the fighter jet.

"If we can't bring ourselves to make this tough but straightforward decision -- reflecting the judgment of two very different presidents, two different secretaries of defense, two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the current Air Force secretary and chief of staff -- where do we draw the line?" he said in a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago. "If we can't get this right, what on earth can we get right?" [...]

The normally staid Gates became especially animated Thursday describing his frustration with lawmakers' efforts to keep building F-22s. "The more they buy of stuff we don't need, the less we have available for the stuff we do need," he told reporters, his voice rising. "It is just as simple as that. It ain't a complicated problem."

Even if Congress acquiesces on the F-22, Gates warned, the Pentagon has to do a better job of setting realistic goals for its weapons programs.

"We must break the old habit of adding layer upon layer of cost, complexity and delay to systems that are so expensive and so elaborate that only a small number can be built and are usable in only a narrow range of low-probability scenarios," he said.

Jack Murtha seems to think there won't be a veto. I actually hope that the White House doesn't compromise on this. If they do, there will be no political will to go up against the MIC again, at least for a while. However, now that the defense bill has become a legislative vehicle for the bill expanding hate crimes legislation to sexual orientation, which passed the Senate with 63 votes yesterday, it does need to go through. But the President has the upper hand here - the defense bill is must-pass, and Congress doesn't exactly inspire fear in anyone.

Hopefully the Senate can vote this out of the bill next week. It'll be close.

Congress Sides With The Military-Industrial Complex

Damn.

Lawmakers defy veto threat on F-22 fighter

Congress on Thursday moved forward with plans to build more Lockheed Martin F-22 fighter jets, disregarding a veto threat from the Obama administration.

Lawmakers also moved to authorize the funding for an alternative engine for the Joint Strike Fighter F-35.

Congress is setting the stage for a showdown over the 2010 defense authorization bill with the administration and in particular Defense Secretary Robert Gates, as the Office of Management and Budget issued a statement outlining the veto threat Wednesday over both issues.

Gates proposed the cuts earlier this year as part of an effort that he said would better spend taxpayer dollars on military priorities. He has said he’s confident the Air Force will have enough F-22s.

Lawmakers pushing to save the programs say the F-22 and second engine for the F-35 are vital to national security.

They also argue eliminating the F-22 program would kill off jobs during a brutal recession.

I hope even the lawmakers saying that first line aren't dumb enough to believe it.

As for the "weaponized Keynesianism" of the second, keep in mind that these are the same people who constantly bite their nails about the budget deficit, who claim that government never created a job, or that a spending bill is not a stimulus bill. Not to mention the fact - a fact I don't even like - that the total military budget will expand this year, as funding for the F-22 and the needless new engine for the F-35 will shift into other military priorities, ones that also create jobs. My preference would be to shift all this military spending into something creative instead of destructive, but without being able to close out these projects when they outlive their usefulness, we just create a monster. This country spends nearly as much on our military than the rest of the world combined, and far too much of that leaks into the pockets of contractors who build things that go unused, or gets put toward projects which quadruple in cost from projection to completion. The money is wildly inefficient, comparatively speaking, and this entire notion of military spending as sacrosanct makes it impossible to fund the rest of government without the fiscal scolds carping about deficits.



To segue into a separate point, there will be a conference committee on this, and so the White House certainly has the ability to use that tool, which the Republican majority used time and again, to take this funding which the Pentagon did not seek out of the bill. Practically every bill that passed through Congress from 1994-2006 got scrubbed of anything remotely progressive and sent back to each chamber with a nice big "take it or leave it" Post-It Note on the front. Many think that this is the way a decent health care reform bill can be pushed through the Congress, and that this is all part of the 31-dimensional chess the White House is playing. While they've already offered the veto threat on the military spending, and that might come about, it's important to look at the past experience with conference committees and this Administration. The short answer is: they don't like to use them and are more concerned about their personal schedule. The credit card reform bill can be instructive here.

In the Senate vote for that legislation, Tom Coburn added a supposed poison pill amendment allowing concealed weapons in public parks. The Senate passed the bill, and the House had already passed a version without that amendment. But rather than go to a conference committee, the House just up and passed the Senate's bill, with the guns in parks amendment, Obama signed it, and now we all can take our snub-noses to Yosemite. The official reason given was that the President wanted a bill on his desk by Memorial Day.

And they did exactly the same thing with the war supplemental. Many people had problems with provisions like the IMF loans or cash for clunkers, which certainly could have been fixed if anyone cared to do so. But the White House wanted it to move quickly, and so the Senate passed the House's bill.

I should note that at the end of Ezra's post today comes this:

(The President) wants to sign a bill in October.

I'm happy to believe that the White House has a secret strategy to fix the health care bill in conference, but recent history shows that they are far more interested in scheduling than these fixes. Maybe if they really, really care about a certain provision, it will get excised or included. But none of us actually know what those concerns truly are.

Gates Defenders, Ball's In Your Court

Some liberals have had a field day praising Bob Gates for his courageous maneuvers to stick it to the military industrial complex and stop the continued funding of some of the most obsolete Cold War weapons out there. I consistently argued that Gates wasn't trying to put a shiv in the bloated military budget, he was trying to save it - by shifting spending to other priorities currently in vogue, but keeping the same baseline numbers that remain larger than the rest of the entire world combined. Winslow Wheeler echoes this in an article for Politico. He adds up all the money appropriated to the military and veterans, whether in the Pentagon budget or other accounts, and comes up with nearly $1 trillion dollars for the next fiscal year. And then, this:

Finally, what about all those “sweeping changes” the think-tank pooh-bahs will declare they see in the Pentagon budget — well, actually, in its press release?

Didn’t happen.

For example, while Gates’ excellent decision to stop making ultra-high-cost, badly underperforming F-22 fighters opened the door for reform, he slammed it shut when he took advice to go with the F-35 fighter-bomber.

It is not just that the F-35 is literally designed to be a failure as a fighter and a mediocrity as a bomber; the program to acquire it is the antithesis of reform.

Consider this: The plan Gates has been persuaded to follow is to buy 510 F-35s before the flight testing is complete, and that testing will verify only 17 percent of the aircraft’s performance characteristics. The rest will be validated — if that’s the word you want to use — by simulation and desk studies.

It’s business as usual, pure and simple.

I'm looking for those same Gates defenders to respond to this, but so far they have not taken the opportunity. Hopefully they will soon.

Guantanamo East=Not Change

Robert Gates lets the cat out of the bag by acknowledging that up to 100 Guantanamo detainees could be held on US soil once the prison camp closes. What shocked me is that he acknowledged that these would be detainees who remain in a legal limbo, without an awaiting trial but without a release. That represents no difference from keeping Gitmo open. The problem was not the location, but the indefinite detention going on there.

Mr. Gates said discussions had started this week with the Justice Department about determining how many of the Guantánamo detainees could not be sent to other countries or tried in courts. He did not say which detainees might be in that group, but independent experts have said it probably would include terrorism suspects whom the military has not yet brought charges against, among them detainees from Yemen and the Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah, who was subjected to brutal interrogation in secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency.

“What do we do with the 50 to 100 — probably in that ballpark — who we cannot release and cannot try?” Mr. Gates said in a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee.

He did not say whether the detainees would be imprisoned temporarily or indefinitely or under what law they would be held. The Obama administration is debating how to establish a legal basis for incarcerating detainees deemed too dangerous to be released but not appropriate to be tried because of potential problems posed by their harsh interrogations, the evidence against them or other issues.

Eric Holder gave a slightly better answer while in Berlin, saying “We have to determine what would be our basis for holding that person that would to the world appear to be fair and that would in fact be fair... How could you ensure that due process was being served by the detention of such a person?” In addition, Holder appeared to be making headway on releasing some detainees in Europe, as countries seem willing to accept them. Similarly, Gates did defend the expected action of the United States settling the 17 Uighurs whose life has been a nightmare, cleared for release from Guantanamo but unable to return to China for fear of persecution. But the idea that we would continue indefinite detentions on anyone truly worries me. Here's Sharon Franklin of The Constitution Project:

"If the United States were to simply move the detainees onto U.S. soil and continue to detain them without charge or legal process, then the act of closing Guantanamo would have been meaningless," said Sharon Bradford Franklin, a lawyer for the Constitution Project, an advocacy group.

As for the Congressional NIMBYs who don't want to see detainees imprisoned in their districts, they might want to appropriate more money for their prisons, then, if they find them so insecure. Ali al-Marri, a legal resident who was held without charges at a Navy brig for five years before being charged through the criminal justice system, just pleaded guilty to conspiring with Al Qaeda operatives, and will spend 15 years in prison at a minimum. Should Illinois lawmakers be wary of his entry into jail? Should they want to offshore him? How about a carjacker? How far does this go? Saying that dangerous terrorists shouldn't be allowed in the jails equals saying that jails in America aren't secure. Is that the message they want to send?

"Then We Realized We ARE Getting Paid Off!"

Read beyond the headline on this one:

Lockheed Martin will not spend any more time and effort trying to overturn Defense Secretary Robert Gates' decision to halt production of F-22 Raptor fighter jets, a top company official said Tuesday.

After making a vigorous case for the F-22 with Gates, other senior Pentagon officials and Congress in recent months, Lockheed plans to move on and meet its commitments for other major defense programs such as the F-35 joint strike fighter.

"We had our chance to lobby this matter," Bruce Tanner, executive vice president and chief financial officer, said in a quarterly conference call with financial analysts.

"We think we had a full hearing of that discussion," Tanner said. "We are disappointed by the decisions, but we will accept those and go on."

I don't know if you've ever seen the military-industrial complex in action over the past 50 years or so, but they frequently, um, don't take "no" for an answer. So the idea that they had a serious debate on the merits and came up short doesn't scan. But it does, if you add this additional information:

Loren Thompson, a staunch F-22 advocate with the Lexington Institute, said Lockheed officials realized that their company stands to benefit more than any major contractor from Gates’ defense-spending plans, including a decision to accelerate work on the F-35 [...]

Lockheed’s biggest program, the $300 billion F-35 joint strike fighter being developed in Fort Worth, is designated for $3 billion or more in additional funding in 2010 under the Gates plan to increase the pace of flight testing and production work.

The liberal supporters of Bob Gates' transformation strategy always seem to leave out the fact that it's a lateral strategy. Lockheed's going to do just fine under this new management. And the military budget will remain as bloated as ever.

Robert Gates Is Not A Gangster

Somehow, the Defense Secretary got the Air Force to acquiesce to his demands to ramp down production of the F-22.

Top Air Force officials said Monday that they supported the Obama administration’s decision to buy only four more of the advanced F-22 fighter jets, making it less likely that Congress will insist on extending its production.

The Air Force had previously said it needed 60 more of the planes, a position that had built expectations for a fierce battle in Congress over the program’s future.

Legislators from Georgia, Connecticut and other states with major suppliers are still likely to push for more planes. But it will be much harder for them to succeed if the Air Force is not quietly supporting their efforts, military analysts said.

Several industry officials and former Air Force officers said they would not be surprised to see Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor on the plane, pull back from a lobbying campaign emphasizing how many jobs would be lost if production was halted.

Michael Donley and Norton Schwartz, the secretary and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, even penned an op-ed in the WaPo arguing to move forward from the F-22.

I confess that I assumed this fight would be much more protracted. And it may still be - I wouldn't put it past defense-state lawmakers to insist on building what even the Air Force doesn't want. But let's again read between the lines here. The next paragraph after the ones I cited in the Times article are:

Under the administration’s plan, the Pentagon would speed up the testing of another Lockheed Martin fighter, the F-35, which it plans to buy in much greater quantities. Industry officials said the company might not want to risk angering the new administration as it already had many other lucrative defense contracts.

In other words, we're talking about moving from one Lockheed assembly line to another. Don't take my word for it, look at Donley and Schwartz' op-ed:

Much rides on the F-35's success, and it is critical to keep the Joint Strike Fighter on schedule and on cost. This is the time to make the transition from F-22 to F-35 production. Within the next few years, we will begin work on the sixth-generation capabilities necessary for future air dominance.

In other words, let's just switch assembly lines and keep the contractor money flowing.

Gates' budget isn't necessarily bad, and I was heartened by President Obama's statement in his economic speech today that it was a good start but "we can do more." But the outpourings of praise just seem to me misplaced. Ultimately, Gates is protecting the bloated military budget.

But Only A Step

You have to consider this a victory for the Gates/Obama effort to radically shift expenditures in the Defense Department.

Bloomberg reported over the weekend that Levin is bullish on the proposal. "It's the right direction," Levin said. "This is how can we be armed more effectively at a more affordable cost."

Levin added that the committee would tackle the plan several weeks from now, starting with testimony from outside experts. In the meantime, he's taking issue with the claims of certain Republicans that Gates and the Obama administration are trying to gut the defense department.

"Secretary Gates is not going to disarm America," Levin said. "President Obama is not going to disarm America. The question is: how can we be effectively armed?"

I agree with Levin's assessment while saying once again that this is only a step, and would not address the profound inequity in the budget between defense and non-defense discretionary spending. We do not need more weapons of mass destruction when that money could be channeled into clean energy or health care.

That said, I do agree with David Axe that the claims about 95,000 jobs being supported by the F-22 is completely bogus, and a symbol of what garbage reformers have to deal with to make progress in this area.

Problem is, that 95,000 number counts indirect employment at firms for whom the F-22 program is just one of many clients. And it also counts Lockheed assembly workers who are in high demand for other aviation projects. In fact, ending Raptor production today might not result in a single unemployed aerospace worker.

Consider Lockheed’s plant in Meridian, Mississippi:

“As far as the facility here in Meridian is concerned, there are only about 20 workers devoted to the manufacturing of the tail assembly on the Raptor,” [plant manager Joe] Mercado added. “That is out of a total work force of almost 200 people. I don’t mean to lessen the importance their jobs mean to the families of those 20 people. It is very possible we could transition those workers to the C-130 product line, which is the major contract we have. But would the loss of the Raptor contract cripple us here in Meridian? No.”

It’s the same across the U.S. aerospace industry. A year ago the industry was worried about huge labor shortages. Shutting down the Raptor line would see thousands of workers snapped up for active production lines churning out F-16s, F-35s, C-130s and modernized C-5s for Lockheed, not to mention the prospect that industry rivals Boeing and Northrop might lure Lockheed workers for their own active production lines for the F-15, F/A-18 and others.

I personally wouldn't have a problem with losing some production jobs, or shifting them to building high speed rail cars. But the misinformation really grates on me.

Why Increasing The Pentagon Budget Isn't Real Change

For what it's worth, I thought Joe Sestak did an admirable job explaining why we need to change funding of the military based on the wars we fight and the threats we face, not based on the threat of a USSR that doesn't exist.



Which is fine, but he dances around the larger point that, for example, we don't NEED 187 F-22 fighters, which is the level AFTER this shift in emphasis in the Pentagon budget. I would go further and hint that we don't need troops based in 130 countries either, unless we are planning a major imperial expansion anytime soon. Similarly, Robert Gates explained, to his credit, that we don't need each armed service to have duplicative machinery and personnel when fighting jointly in a theater, but he nonetheless has increased the Pentagon budget even when accounting for this duplication, or at least being mindful of it for the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review.

Now, Matthew Yglesias makes a moderately compelling argument that you have to crawl before you can walk and walk before you can run, on this issue.

I would urge progressives who are having trouble getting themselves excited about this fight to recognize two points. One is that it really is nice to reorient a given quantity of military spending in more useful directions even if it doesn’t lead to cuts in the headline number. But the other is that if you ever do want to see further-reaching reform, we need to pass something like this budget first. It’s a key political test of whether it’s even possible to defy what the defense contractors and the joint chiefs want. If that does prove possible, then in years to come many things are possible, including a long-term trajectory that has defense declining as a percent of GDP. If it’s not possible then nothing is possible, and no future president will tackle it.

I recognize the first point and strongly disagree with the second, especially in light of the initial reaction. Conservatives and those who want to protect their parochial interests were ALWAYS going to characterize this as a cut. They know they can score political points off of it, and furthermore they have sufficiently brainwashed the media into believing that military spending is magic and doesn't affect the budget. In this way, Republicans can very easily call spending on giant weapons programs stimulus after arguing for months that federal spending isn't stimulative. They have wired the political establishment to orient themselves this way. Heck, they have media embeds who extoll the virtues of various weapons systems in the media without having to disclose how they profit off of them.

That being the case, why would anyone want to have this fight TWICE? If you're going to provoke the reaction that your Administration is cutting military spending, why not actually cut military spending in the process? This is a familiar Democratic technocrat argument, where they argue for a half-measure and a go-slow approach because we'll have the upper hand on talking points. "See, it's really an INCREASE!" And thus progress gets delayed and eventually denied.

It may hold that the Obama Administration doesn't actually want to cut military spending, which is my view, based on the fact that as a candidate, the President consistently said that he would increase the budget. While I appreciate the logic behind transformation and the need for more efficiently orienting our military toward actual things that could happen, I don't appreciate so-called progressives assuring me that this is some step toward a less insane balance in the military budget as a percentage of GDP. There's no evidence for that whatsoever, and it strikes me as the typical Democratic skittishness to actually embrace real change.

Remember What Pol Pot Said...

More wingnuts and their enablers are out there describing the Obama-Gates increase in the military budget as a "cut." I've already said my peace on this, but it's certainly interesting to see this Wall Street Journal op-ed from some AEI functionaries invoke the founder of the KKK to defend their position:

However, warfare is not a human activity that directly awards virtue. Nor is it a perfectly calculable endeavor that permits a delicate "balancing" of risk. More often it rewards those who arrive on the battlefield "the fustest with the mostest," as Civil War Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest once put it. If Mr. Gates has his way, U.S. forces will find it increasingly hard to meet the Forrest standard.

I should hope we do find it hard to meet the Forrest standard! In fact, the nature of our President's origin practically ensures it!

I tire of arguing from the "no, it's really an increase" position as if that's a good thing, because I don't agree with that position. But, it's not hard to note the facts. There are no budget cuts to the military. There OUGHT to be, and considering the uproar over slighter increases they might as well have made cuts, but they didn't. The authors tweak Gates for saying that the budget talks were "almost exclusively influenced by factors other than simply finding a way to balance the books," but that's pretty clear from the result.

It's also amusing to see the self-styled "fiscal conservatives" go apeshit that the military budget isn't increasing as fast as they'd like.

Just Changing The Facade Of The Complex

Brian Beutler has the scoop that the media is reporting inaccurately. I know, I'm as blown away as you.

In other words, by retooling the Pentagon, Obama and Gates plan to move a lot of money around, but they also plan to increase the overall defense budget. In the final year of the Bush administration (and excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) the defense budget was $513 billion. In FY 2010, if Gates and Obama get their way, it will be $534 billion--$534 billion that will be spent much differently than last year's outlays were.

But you'd never know that from the news coverage.

Here's how Politico reports it:

"Now that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has rolled out major cuts to some of the Pentagon's largest weapons systems, the decision to accept or reject those changes falls on Congress....

With all the advance speculation about Gates' cuts, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, has already put forward a few recommendations of his own...."

Republican members of Congress are characterizing the budget changes as cuts, too.

Allow me to interrupt the great love-fest between liberal foreign policy bloggers and Bob Gates by stating the obvious - isn't the fact that the Pentagon budget is increasing, um, THE PROBLEM? And considering that the media-Congressional complex will characterize any effort to put an end to outdated Cold War-era weapons systems as a "defense cut", in the most irresponsible way possible, why aren't we limiting expenditures on a military budget that costs far more than any country on Earth, depriving us of the flexibility to pursue meaningful social investment? I think Ezra Klein has this right.

One problem with the conversation over cutting the budget is that the 20 percent of federal dollars that go towards the defense sector are considered sacrosanct. This is not a very wise move. Defense spending is second only to entitlement spending in total cost. And while it's hard to make the case that seniors need less in the way of guaranteed pensions and that the poor need less in the way of health care coverage, it's certainly arguable that America could get by with less in the way of defense spending. The following graph is ugly, but telling:



But though we know that Robert Gates' proposed military cuts will increase the value we get for our military dollars, we don't know if they will actually cut spending. Gates has announced his intention to end an array of wasteful programs, but we don't know if he means to replace them with new programs. We should have more clarity in a few days, when the Pentagon sends its budget up to the Hill. If Gates is leveraging his credibility to actually make cuts to the military's bloated budget, however, he'd deserve every encomium he's been given.

Right now, I'm not sure he deserves much for seemingly transferring that bloated budget from one set of contractors to another. For instance, the makers of the F-22 may not be happy today, but the makers of Predator drones, who will see a 127 percent increase in their spending, are giddy. While missile defense gets a cut that is intolerable to the likes of Joe Lieberman, we're still putting $800 million in taxpayer money into a system that doesn't actually work.

Let me say that there is much to like in the proposal - in particular the hiring of civil servants and firing of contractors who perform procurement - and maybe down the road, with the big lift of shiny weaponry out of the way, we can get around to balancing the unsustainably large and inefficient size of our military. But really, let's not go overboard with the "Obama and Gates go to China" talk, when together they increased the Pentagon budget.

Gates v. The Military Industrial Complex... or Just Building a New One?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a budget recommendation that is shocking in its sweeping change, extremely unusual for the Pentagon's go-along, get-along approach to military contracting over the past 50 years or so. Robert Farley summarizes.

1. No more F-22s.
2. Replacement Air Force bomber delayed indefinitely.
3. Ballistic missile defense funding leans toward the Navy.
4. Aircraft carrier acquisition slowed, with the fleet eventually dropping to 10 carriers.
5. Next generation cruiser (CGX) delayed indefinitely.
6. VH-71 Presidential helicopter dead.
7. No more than three DDG-1000, and maybe only one.
8. Future Combat Systems funding slashed.

Farley says "This is why Bob Gates is still secretary of defense; Obama didn't believe that such cuts would be possible under a Democratic secretary." Perhaps so. And I agree with a lot of it; the F-22 is obselete in the context of current wars, for example. Cold War-era weapons systems have no place in the modern military. These cuts aren't THAT deep - missile defense still gets about $1 billion, for example - but they are significant.

But let's consider these "cuts" fully - they would not represent an overall scaling down of the Pentagon budget, but a lateral move into a forward-looking belief that the wars of the future will be counter-insurgencies and not wars of territory. I agree with Noah Schachtman that this makes a certain amount of sense, as major weapons programs are useless in such combat missions, while warm bodies are at a premium. I see this as an effort to SAVE the military budget, not slash it. While it makes sense to focus on funding the services needed for the wars we actually fight, in the final analysis the total budget still swamps the rest of the world many times over, troops are still based in 130 countries, and the Pentagon still dwarfs the rest of the budget on discretionary spending. It seems to me like this is trading one set of contractors for another, in a fashion. That's why those who represent the counter-insurgency faction of the military are thrilled.

There may be savings in the acquisitions and the contracting process in this request - I certainly hope so. And Gates' comment that "this is a reform budget" gives cause for optimism. In addition, with lots of this budget devoted to health care and veteran's services, perhaps engaging in less wars will drop costs substantially, in ways that could not be done while building giant weapons systems. But I'm not seeing much of a challenge to the idea that military budget must be outsized relative to the overall budget forever. And a perusal of the Congressional reaction to this recommendation is pretty telling:

"Secretary Gates has set out major changes to the defense budget based on changed assumptions about the wars our military must be prepared to fight. This is a good faith effort, and I appreciate the hard work and thoughtful consideration Secretary Gates and his staff put into these proposals.

"However, the buck stops with Congress, which has the critical Constitutional responsibility to decide whether to support these proposals. In the weeks ahead, my colleagues and I will carefully consider these proposals and look forward to working with Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen as we prepare the Fiscal Year 2010 defense authorization act."

In other words, nice budget, now move over while I mark it up.

Significantly, John McCain seems to be on the side of reform. Jim Webb said this: "The secretary's announcement today is highly unorthodox ... Secretary Gates has proposed funding increases, reductions, deferrals, and cancellations in numerous defense programs. In the absence of a more detailed description of the strategic underpinnings justifying his funding priorities--including an assessment of the level of risk posed to U.S. national security interests--it is difficult to evaluate them in isolation."

The weapons contractor industry will be quick to strike against this budget as well, and almost for that reason alone, I see value in Gates' product. But it's hard to see this as much more than a juggling of numbers in what remains too high a budget for war.

...Predictable blather from James Inhofe:

"I cannot believe what I heard today," Inhofe said in a statement. "President Obama is disarming America. Never before has a president so ravaged the military at a time of war."

Yes, "ravaged" them by eliminating weapons systems that aren't being used in this war. Sadly, such demagoguery is likely to work.

The Coming Military-Industrial Complex Battle

A Senate panel that I assume doesn't include Evan Bayh or Ben Nelson passed unanimously a bill to rein in the contracting process at the Pentagon. There's a lot to like about this bill, which is co-sponsored by John McCain.

The bill would require the Pentagon to do more extensive engineering studies before embarking on new weapons programs and to rebuild its oversight staff, which was sharply reduced after the end of the cold war.

It would create a position for a project-testing director at the Pentagon and make it easier to end programs that exceed their original budget estimates by 25 percent.

Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan who is chairman of the committee, said before the vote on Thursday that the changes were meant to be “tough medicine.”

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been scrutinizing the most troubled programs and is expected to propose cuts in several major programs soon.

The Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm of Congress, reported this week that nearly 70 percent of the Pentagon’s 96 largest weapons programs were over budget last year, for a combined total of $296 billion above the original estimates.

Obviously, it's easy to change the PROCESS for procurement - a fair bit of the bill concerns realistic cost estimates (read: higher ones). The proof of whether Congress can really push back against out-of-control contracting comes when Bob Gates releases his Pentagon budget.

Reporting from Washington -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will announce his plans for a sweeping overhaul of the defense budget on Monday, Pentagon officials said today.

Gates will announce his decisions first in telephone calls to congressional leaders Monday morning and then in an afternoon news conference.

Gates has been working for weeks on an overhaul of the defense budget and has been contemplating tough decisions on whether to cancel the Air Force's F-22 fighter plane, Navy shipbuilding programs, the Army's Future Combat System and a host of other weapons programs.

In an unusual move for the Pentagon, Gates will announce his budget recommendations before shipping the formal recommendation to the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

"It ... reflects the magnitude of the decision," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. "These aren't changes on the margins. It is a fundamental shift in direction."

Already Holy Joe and his pals in the GOP are pushing back against this. They cannot conceive of an armed forces without bloated budgets the size of the rest of the world combined. It doesn't matter that America can't afford it, because military spending is magic.

This will be an epic fight.

Don't Ask About Don't Ask Don't Tell

Robert Gates, on Fox News Sunday, argued for a delay in implementing any change to the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy on gays in the military.

Don't expect any change soon to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy about gays in the military.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says both he and President Barack Obama have "a lot on our plates right now." As Gates puts it, "let's push that one down the road a little bit."

The White House has said Obama has begun consulting with Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on how to lift the ban. Gates says that dialogue has not really progressed very far at this point in the administration.

Of course we're in the midst of two wars right now, but I have to agree with Matt Yglesias - this is a truly weak excuse.

It’s simply the nature of the military that this “a lot on our plates right now” excuse will almost always be available. In retrospect, the 1990s were a period of relative peace and quiet for the military, but at the time it was seen as a stressful period of multiple deployments (to Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia) around the world mixed with efforts at containment in the Gulf and the Korean peninsula. The Joint Chiefs are never going to say “eh . . . we don’t really have much going on these days.”

As Matt notes, racial desegregation policies were carried out by the military at the height of the Cold War. The "we have a lot on our plates" excuse is too commonly used to delay important changes, particularly with respect to civil liberties. And let's flip this on its head. At a time when troops are stressed by multiple deployments, don't we have too much on our plate right now to dismiss willing soldiers for no other reason than their sexual orientation?

The Cold War Ended 20 Years Ago

Overshadowed by the continuing (and perfectly appropriate) furor over AIG bonuses, the Obama Administration appears to be readying the first assault on the military-industrial complex since Dwight Eisenhower coined the phrase.

Now, as the only Bush Cabinet member to remain under President Obama, Gates is preparing the most far-reaching changes in the Pentagon's weapons portfolio since the end of the Cold War, according to aides.

Two defense officials who were not authorized to speak publicly said Gates will announce up to a half-dozen major weapons cancellations later this month. Candidates include a new Navy destroyer, the Air Force's F-22 fighter jet, and Army ground-combat vehicles, the offi cials said.

More cuts are planned for later this year after a review that could lead to reductions in programs such as aircraft carriers and nuclear arms, the officials said.

As a former CIA director with strong Republican credentials, Gates is prepared to use his credibility to help Obama overcome the expected outcry from conservatives. And after a lifetime in the national security arena, working in eight administrations, the 65-year-old Gates is also ready to counter the defense companies and throngs of retired generals and other lobbyists who are gearing up to protect their pet projects.

The article claims that other Defense Secretaries have tried and failed to end the defense industry welfare schemes. I think this Defense Secretary is better positioned. First of all, his service for both George Bush and Barack Obama gives this a bipartisan sheen. And Obama has folded the issue of procurement into his overall budget strategy. Finally, this is likely to happen because Gates doesn't come at it with the attitude of a budget-cutter. Steve Hynd is right to note that this will not signal the drawing down of the military budget, at least not in the short term.

This isn't about reducing the overall military budget - it's about repurposing it. While shiny toys are to get the axe (presuming Gates and the Obama administration can overcome recalcitrance from lawmakers and officers as well as intense industry-funded lobbying) there's still going to be a lot of stuff to spend lots of money on.

The U.S. Army and Marines are to collectively add about 92,000 personnel, an increase of about 12% in manpower but since most will be slated for active duty combat brigades it is likely to mean more like a 20% ($30 billion) increase in annual running costs and an initial stand-up bill of about $80 billion. Standing up these new troops will be far better stimulus spending than any other kind of defense spending but don't expect to get clear answers about costs from the Pentagon or White House. Those figures are back-of-the-envelope estimates based on what is known of current costs but no military department has ever done a full assessment of the cost of sustaining its operations so they have to be estimates.

Then there's all the other military spending Obama and Gates intend - the transformation of the military into a COIN force as promised on WhiteHouse.Gov: "civil affairs, information operations, and other units and capabilities that remain in chronic short supply; invest in foreign language training, cultural awareness, and human intelligence and other needed counterinsurgency and stabilization skill sets; and create a more robust capacity to train, equip, and advise foreign security forces." None of that is cheap, especially when you're talking about tens of thousands of people to be trained. Add in "greater investment in advanced technology ranging from the revolutionary, like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and electronic warfare capabilities", increasing the number of Maritime Pre-Positioning Force Squadrons and investing in more small ships to see even more savings being swallowed up by the military machine instead of going to solve other problems. Add in the expenses for Iraq until withdrawal and the expected one to two decades in Afghanistan that no COINdinista really wants to talk about, neither of which will be funded by supplementals anymore, and the bill could easily swallow any savings from cutting F-22 and other big-ticket programs.

For Gates, this is not about reducing the military budget, but about transforming it. I agree that the military should be constructed to meet modern challenges, and costly weapons systems do little in that respect. However, he will not be leading the Pentagon forever. And the labor-intensive weapons systems will be much harder to phase out than a reduction in force capacity or winding down wars. At the end of the day, the United States will still spend more on its military than any other nation combined, including too much on functions that could be performed by the State Department. The table would be set, then, for medium- and long-term reductions in military budgets. I'm happy to have Gates doing the heaviest lifting in the near term. Ultimately, defense cuts are intimately tied to ending the culture of interventionism in this country, and stopping the constant production of annihilation systems is a necessary precursor.

Andrew Exum has more.

No Base For You

I think this is the reason we haven't heard about any additional troop deployments in Afghanistan:

Kyrgyzstan said on Friday its decision to shut a U.S. air base was final, dealing a blow to Washington's efforts to retain what has been an important staging post for U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan.

The United States said it was still "engaged" with Kyrgyzstan about keeping the Manas base in the poor, former Soviet republic and traditional Russian ally. But one senior Kyrgyz official said no talks were currently taking place.

Kyrgyzstan's stance has set a tough challenge for new U.S. President Barack Obama, who plans to send more troops to Afghanistan to try to boost NATO efforts to defeat Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents.

The Kyrgyz leaders are saying that there aren't any talks going on, either. Tajikistan has tentatively offered air space rights, and the Uzbeks potentially a rail supply route, but that's going to take some time. And so this delayed decision on additional troops until a strategy decision is made could be true, but it also could be that there's nowhere to put the troops to get them into the country. The deadline for the strategy review is April which should be enough time to come up with some basing solution.

However, the longer this review takes, the more President Obama may look closer at the deteriorating situation on the ground, the perils of escalation, and the difficulty finding allies in the region, and he may decide that it's just not worth it:

The Pentagon was set to announce the deployment of 17,000 extra soldiers and marines last week but Robert Gates, the defence secretary, postponed the decision after questions from Obama.

The president was concerned by a lack of strategy at his first meeting with Gates and the US joint chiefs of staff last month in “the tank”, the secure conference room in the Pentagon. He asked: “What’s the endgame?” and did not receive a convincing answer.

Larry Korb, a defence expert at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank, said: “Obama is exactly right. Before he agrees to send 30,000 troops, he wants to know what the mission and the endgame is.”

The President is being very smart by insisting on knowing what the hell is going on before committing American lives and more treasure. Afghanistan as it's currently constructed is dysfunctional and perhaps impossible to save, especially with the lack of leadership at the top. Reports are that Karzai is hated inside the country and he still thinks he can con the Americans:

KABUL, Afghanistan — A foretaste of what would be in store for President Hamid Karzai after the election of a new American administration came last February, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator, sat down to a formal dinner at the palace during a visit here.

Between platters of lamb and rice, Mr. Biden and two other American senators questioned Mr. Karzai about corruption in his government, which, by many estimates, is among the worst in the world. Mr. Karzai assured Mr. Biden and the other senators that there was no corruption at all and that, in any case, it was not his fault.

The senators gaped in astonishment. After 45 minutes, Mr. Biden threw down his napkin and stood up.

“This dinner is over,” Mr. Biden announced, according to one of the people in the room at the time. And the three senators walked out, long before the appointed time.

Today, of course, Mr. Biden is the vice president.

The domestic wrangling has been disheartening, but America is better served by this more deliberate and reality-based foreign policy. Hopefully that continues even after the basing problems are solved. See also: Don't escalate in Afghanistan.

A Man Called Petraeus Storms The White House

Well, we expected this, didn't we? From an excellent piece by Gareth Porter:

CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn't convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.

One thing we can say about Obama is that, for good or for ill, he has generally kept to his bigger campaign promises. In this case, he knows that his foreign policy success is in large part predicated on getting us out of Iraq, and he refuses to bend to both the foreign policy establishment and institutional military pushback. Not only that, but reneging on a signed agreement with the Iraqis would endanger American troops and ensure chaos in Iraq and abroad. Sure, the warmongers will get a war (Obama is likely to hold to his promise in Afghanistan), but not Iraq.

According to Porter, the Gates-Petraeus plan was to reclassify combat troops as "support troops" to get around that little status of forces agreement mandating set withdrawals of US forces. Apparently Obama wasn't willing to risk American credibility in that shell game.

Of course, Petraeus is trying to circumvent his commander-in-chief, which I believe they call insubordination:

Obama's decision to override Petraeus's recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama's decision.

Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, "Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama."

Looks like Petraeus is using those handy Pentagon embeds to implement this strategy, too:

The opening argument by the Petraeus-Odierno faction against Obama's withdrawal policy was revealed the evening of the Jan. 21 meeting when retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, one of the authors of the Bush troop surge policy and a close political ally and mentor of Gen. Petraeus, appeared on the Lehrer News Hour to comment on Obama's pledge on Iraq combat troop withdrawal.

Keane, who had certainly been briefed by Petraeus on the outcome of the Oval Office meeting, argued that implementing such a withdrawal of combat troops would "increase the risk rather dramatically over the 16 months". He asserted that it would jeopardise the "stable political situation in Iraq" and called that risk "not acceptable".

The assertion that Obama's withdrawal policy threatens the gains allegedly won by the Bush surge and Petraeus's strategy in Iraq will apparently be the theme of the campaign that military opponents are now planning.

Here we go again. Honestly, I don't know why anyone would even want the Presidency, beset as it is by palace intrigue on all sides. Then again, nobody told Obama to hang on to Bob Gates. By the way, this epic whine about Obama actually following through on his promise is all about properly assigning blame:

The source says the network (of military officials), which includes senior active duty officers in the Pentagon, will begin making the argument to journalists covering the Pentagon that Obama's withdrawal policy risks an eventual collapse in Iraq. That would raise the political cost to Obama of sticking to his withdrawal policy.

If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the "collapse" they expect in an Iraq without U.S. troops.

I heard Bill Kristol parrot this strategy on Fox News Sunday, answering a question about why Obama hasn't officially announced drawdowns in Iraq by saying "Because he's a responsible man, and he won't withdraw if it isn't safe to do so." Kristol, who has never met a disaster he wasn't responsible for, has his own neocon fantasy agenda of keeping troops in the region to teach Arabs a lesson and enable them to fight in the 8 or 9 other wars he keeps in a list on his Blackberry. And the people who have been wrong about every foreign policy situation for decades upon decades are certainly not the people to listen to about "collapse."

As for Petraeus, it was clear that he was nothing more than a political animal for a while. He figured that his public stature was such that the President of the United States would have to take orders from him. And now he wants to use the media, which is enamored of him, to exact a price on Obama for disobeying him. Maybe he should just declare for 2012 now.

You could see this clash between the military and the young President coming. They don't like taking orders from lowly Democrats and they don't mind undermining their superior officer to make their point.

...By the way, defense spending will increase by 8% in the 2010 FY budget and unnamed sources at the Pentagon are pissed because it's 10% less than what they asked for, portraying this increase as a spending cut. It never stops.

...Shorter PowerTools - You can't cross David Petraeus because he got a lot of applause at the Super Bowl.

Actually that's almost verbatim.

Villagers Let Their Freak Flag Fly

This is a reversal:

President Barack Obama, who pledged during his campaign to shift U.S. troops and resources from Iraq to Afghanistan, has done little since taking office to suggest he will significantly widen the grinding war against a resurgent Taliban.

On the contrary, Obama appears likely to streamline the U.S. focus with an eye to the worsening economy and the cautionary example of the Iraq war that sapped political support for President George W. Bush.

"There's not simply a military solution to that problem," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said last week, adding that Obama believes "that only through long-term and sustainable development can we ever hope to turn around what's going on there."

Less than two weeks into the new administration, Obama has not said much in public about what his top military adviser says is the largest challenge facing the armed forces. The president did say Afghanistan and Pakistan are the central front in the struggle against terrorism, a clue to the likely shift toward a targeted counterterrorism strategy.

After Obama's first visit to the Pentagon as president, a senior defense official said the commander in chief surveyed top uniformed officers about the strain of fighting two wars and warned that the economic crisis will limit U.S. responses. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Obama's meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff was private.

I think the reporter is playing mind-reader a little bit. What's happening right now is a strategy review. Wisely, President Obama is actually looking at the situation and taking input from everyone, even detractors. Publicly, those who will be closest to making the decision are offering a very balanced view, full of warnings and caveats. Bob Gates' Senate testimony this week was quite honest.

Gates, a cautious advocate of bolstering U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that he worries that “Afghans [will] come to see us as the problem, not the solution, and then we are lost.” He warned that increased levels of U.S. troop deaths in 2009 were “likely.”

In December, Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, stated that he needs an increase of nearly 30,000 troops “for the next few years” — in other words, a sustained troop increase, not a brief surge in U.S. forces as occurred in Iraq in 2007. In the last few days Obama administration officials have begun telling reporters off the record not to presume that the president has made a decision on the size or duration of any prospective troop increase.

Gates said Tuesday that he backs McKiernan’s request — but signaled that the troop spigot would not remain open. “I would be very skeptical about additional force levels beyond what Gen. McKiernan asked for,” Gates told the Senate panel. A former senior CIA official during the Russian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Gates recalled that “the Soviets couldn’t win that war with 120,000 troops and a ruthless approach” to Afghan civilians, since they adopted “the wrong strategy.” [...] “Above all,” he said, “there must be an Afghan face on this war.” More important to Gates than increasing U.S. troop levels, he said, was increasing the numbers of Afghan security forces, and he said the government of Hamid Karzai supports a U.S.-backed effort to increase the Afghan National Army to 130,000 troops from its current 80,000, though he said he was unsure “even that number will be large enough.” At several points in the hearing, Gates worried that the U.S. was losing support from the Afghan people, saying that the U.S. has “lost the strategic communications war” to the Afghan insurgency about U.S.-caused civilian casualties. Proposing a policy of “first apologiz[ing]” when U.S. troops kill civilians in error, Gates said, “We have to get the balance right with the Afghan people or we will lose this war.”

Gates was adamant that there's no military solution in Afghanistan, and that the goals should be minimal, narrowed to denying Al Qaeda a safe haven. “If we set as the goal [creating] a Central Asian Valhalla, we will lose,” he said. Similarly, this week Adm. Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said to the Washington Post "I don't have enough troops in the United States military to make the difference that needs to be made" in Afghanistan.

Some of this may come from the large protests against the President's first forward action in the region, an airstrike in the Waziristan area that killed civilians. This may have shown that aerial strikes will only inflame the population and possibly turn Pakistan toward religious parties. While the theory behind additional troops is that less airstrikes would be necessary, it would increase the foreign occupier footprint at a time when the population is less supportive of them. The fact that NATO help appears unlikely is being factored into their thinking as well, as is the relative weakness and corruption of the Karzai government. While top officials press Karzai for more, there is a lot of thought to throwing Karzai over, or at least not offering him any support, in the next Presidential election, which has now been postponed until August due to the rising violence. So it looks like no big decisions have been made.

Throughout this there have been great, strident voices contextualizing the situation in Afghanistan and warning against a deeper commitment. Barnett Rubin, Juan Cole, Steve Clemons and Scott Ritter are just a few. What's been notable in the past couple days is, while the Administration undergoes this strategy review, the chattering class is going nuts. Newsweek decided that eleven days and a noncommital stance was enough to call this "Obama's Vietnam," as if he ordered the invasion in 2001 and neglected the war for seven years. They've somehow justified this by distancing from dirty hippies who analogize every war to Vietnam, and then... analogizing the war to Vietnam:

"Vietnam analogies can be tiresome," they write. "To critics, especially those on the left, all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential "quagmires." But sometimes clichés come true, and, especially lately, it seems that the war in Afghanistan is shaping up in all-too-familiar ways."

And you should have seen Bob Woodward on ABC this morning, yipping away with "What is the strategy?" and "Why aren't we leaving yet," sounding like a latter-day Country Joe McDonald. And there have been other big-picture pieces in the print media.

I agree that troops shouldn't be committed in the absence of goals or strategy, and it's good that the establishment is starting to question the slow roll in Afghanistan. Forgive me, however, for questioning their motives. Although Obama is engaging in a deliberative process, it is characterized as a rush to war. They are making up for their own past while they analogize to the distant past. Obama stumbling into his own Vietnam "fits" for them. It's the perfect narrative and they're going to sell it.

I think it's very unsettling. The public is very split on Afghanistan and could be persuaded on either side. While I'm personally against escalation, I'm willing to deal with the outcomes of my decision. I don't think the Village is. They're interested in putting their imprint on the story no matter what happens. So if Afghanistan falls into chaos with an escalation, then Obama is stuck in a quagmire. If it falls into chaos without an escalation, then Obama make a strategic mistake and the blood is on his hands. Even if it succeeds, the voices will be raised about when we can leave. And throughout it all, there will be talk about how the commitment overseas will constrain Obama at home and ruin all of his plans to restore and transform the economy. They are not arguing in good faith, and while I'm glad to have a real public debate about Afghanistan, I think it's worth thinking about why the Village has put on their tie-dye and gone wild in the streets.