From Prussia, With Love

 --Emad Hajjaj (Jordan) 

We'll sign some trashy treaties
And protocols galore,
(They won't make any difference
If I decide for war)  
--Stuff and Nonsense: A Book of War Verses, 
Sir Ian Malcolm

If I listened long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true 
--Reason to Believe,
Rod Stewart
_________________________

The first assumption of United States' nation-building protocol is to build up an army and a militarized police force as the basis for establishing the nation we wish to create. The idea is, the government will fall into place if backed by sufficient force.

As a recent New Yorker piece on the Sykes-Picot treaty observed: "[Iraq and Syria] trained plenty of men in uniform. But both had weak public institutions, teeny civil societies, shady and iniquitous economies, and meaningless laws. Both countries were wracked by coups and instability . . . (t)he glue that held both countries together was repressive rule and fear."

But the balled-up belief in democracy issuing from force is echoed all 'round. Lieutenant General (ret'd) James M. Dubik allowed in a recent BBC America interview that Iraq was terribly off-balance, but stated that the army would not hold if the government falls.

We need only look back 40+ years to Vietnam, the modern prototype for counterinsurgency warfare, to see the failure of  this approach. And since this model failed so spectacularly in the Republic of Vietnam, why do we think it would work in Iraq or Afghanistan today?

The U.S. operates in bad faith, as though armies buy freedom, but the shallowest tour of history debunks that theory. In the most charitable reading, we optimistically operate on that misbegotten template because the Continental Army was created by fiat to expulse the British army and create a new democratic union.

In contradiction, the armies the U.S. creates in Iraq and all of the other oil countries exist simply to quell internal threats. They subdue their citizens and don't even pretend to be democratic. When an army is habitually used to suppress its citizens, this defines a totalitarian regime. 

The late, great Prussia serves as a cautionary example of a state which existed for the benefit of its army. This attitude is the opposite of democratic thought, and since the U.S. fought Prussia in two World Wars, it could be inferred that we opposed the construct.

Sadly, 21st century U.S. thought has devolved to the Prussian template: the U.S. invades, destroys, then nation-builds upon the assumption that out of strong armies and police will grow a democratic  nation. Not.

While this is the statehood pattern followed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, et al., there is no reason to believe that the equation will endure when the state is placed under extreme stress. An army plus militarized police do not ensure statehood, and especially not when they are simply uniformed militias dedicated to a sect opposed to the concept of nation statehood.

The state does not exist for the army; the army exists to defend the state. When the U.S. builds strong armies and police in foreign ventures, it is creating the conditions for repression, not democracy.

Could somebody remind our leaders why we fought two world wars, and why conventional wisdom warns against secret and entangling alliances?

COPD: Combat Outpost, Detroit

It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a Long Time Gone.
And it appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long
Time, yes, a long, long, long, long time before the dawn 
--It's Been a Long Time Coming, CSNY

I have no choice but to dismiss you.
It breaks my heart, but I can't expose my guests
to your firearms.
It may be wrong of them, but they value their lives 
--Rules of the Game (1939) 

I mean - come on! You can have a Billion Man March! 
If you don't put down that malt liquor and chicken wings, 
and get behind someone other tha
 a running back who stabs his wife, 
you're NEVER gonna get rid of somebody like me! 
--Bulworth (1998)

  To me you were the greatest thing
this boy had ever found
And girl it's hard to find nice things
On the poor side of town 
--The Poor Side of Town, Johnny Rivers
_____________________

 [Alternate title: COPD -- Chronic Obstructive Problem, Detroit.]

As Ranger grew up in Cleveland, he watches the unspooling of fellow Rust Belt city Detroit with keen fascination. Not that Detroit's bankruptcy claim is a surprise; hardly ... the nails have been being driven into that coffin for a long time.

It seems intractable: only a third of Detroit's ambulances are in service; police take 58 minutes to respond to emergency calls; 78,000 abandoned buildings; average home price: $7,000 (America's Most Miserable City, Forbes).

But idealism rears its head when he asks, "We're all Americans, right? Don't we all sink or swim together?" It's pretty to think so, no?

He asks, "Why have two Presidents used the Michigan National Guard (among others) to (re-)build two entire nations while a major United States metropolis flounders -- shouldn't nation-building begin at home?" It is biblical: "Love thy neighbor as thyself"; translated: "Don't go stomping about thinking to help others until your own house is in order." There is no answer apart from profiteering -- a time-honored human endeavor -- that answers the question.

Our friend FDChief @ GraphicFiringTable recently gave a precis of his wife's dissertation cataloging the ills that plagued that once productive city, along with her recommendations to her committee ("Heart of Darkness"). It is an apolitical, scientific approach and we can do no better than her findings.

She indicted generationally-disordered family systems, which dovetailed with a disordered city plan. Her suggestions were creative, including the idea of farming out city denizens to live cheek-by-jowl with more functioning citizens elsewhere in the hopes that they might assimilate some functional behaviors via proximity, much as average tea becomes the exceptional Jasmine through simple positioning next to the flower's blossoms, the fragrance now an integral part of its "tea-ness". Not that exposure or immersion therapy is a bad thing, but unlike inert Camellia sinensis, people are the wild card, no?

This idea parallels the actual plan implemented upon the citizens of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (2005) when scores of N.O. residents were transplanted across the nation. However, aside from the National Institutes of Health one-year study on the results of that experiment, DNORPS (Displaced New Orleans Residents Pilot Survey), we do not really know if new ideas can be impregnated into fully-formed humans en masse (shy of Moonie-type indoctrination.)

The core of the (our) problem is, the game's rigged. Why has Robert Kiyosaki's book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad been on the New York Times Best Seller's list for six years? Because not everyone is born sucking a silver spoon, but some people have figured out that they might like to know some of the rules of the game. We then cry alligator tears over National Public Radio's expose of the usurious 29.5% car loans that poor people take out, without asking the salient question -- which is NOT, "Why are car lots financing loans for those people?"

That sort of simple-minded question does not address the heart of the beast, which is that Capitalism is a system of profit-making, and everyone wants nice things, and credit allows people to live beyond their means. And America has always been a Scarlet O-Hara nation ("tomorrow will be a better day"), and Thorstein Veblen revealed our conspicuous consumption which has not become a source of shame but rather, a foolish pride. Pawn shops and Payday Loans exist because they are a logical presence in our capitalistic culture. If people eschewed them, or had no need of them -- voila! -- they would be gone.

We recently met a woman from Detroit, "Beatrice", who shared a sad story which for her encapsulated one piece of the puzzle. Her daughter, who taught in a program for young unwed 13-14 year-old mothers, asked her class of 25, "How many of you have been on a proper date?" Precisely two of the girls felt that they had. Now, if one is an affluent mature woman and pays for artificial insemination, that is one way to civilly avoid the date trap. But for the rest of us?

As for what to do with the dregs? Ranger suggests a "strategic hamlet"-type program in which services can be provided more readily to a concentrated population. Rather than risk a potential Cabreni-Green, why not try a social program on the scope of those in Iraq or Afghanistan? Schools, hospitals, vocational programs, all from the ground up.

We could use Ms. Clinton's "It Takes a Village" concept, outstripping Reagan's compassionate conservatism and moving beyond having churches shoulder the brunt of the burden, as if to say, "Only God can help you now, you poor suckers." This would be a multi-pronged approach to social engineering, and would be stated as such. Detroit and its denizens need more than a tweak.

Deploy the National Guard to patrol and augment civilian police. Maybe even try a stateside "Sons of Liberty" program wherein the indig are trained, armed and paid to assist the police and not kill their fellows. Oh, and we have a program title, though it sounds unfortunately like a pejorative: OAF ("Operation American Freedom"). It has ring: "We are working for the OAF's". Get another Paul Bremer type in Army boots to over see the OAF Detroit Provisional Authority.

What idea do you have that could be added to our OPLAN? How to solve bankruptcy -- moral, economic, national?

And still the question hangs: "Do we pay taxes to build other countries or to destroy ours?" This question is exclusively aimed at America, which has been in this business since World War II, with Japan, Italy, Greece and beyond that -- South Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq and Afghanistan.

Will any of those nicely reconstructed countries (save the last couple) now volunteer to rebuild a single city, Detroit? Where are you, Hugo Chavez?


[See another perspective, here: "What Really Ails Detroit"; an extended version will be published @ The Globalist 9.15.13..]

A Lost Heart and Mind

--Les Tournesols, van Gogh

War is done they've come back home
But they're the ones that lost
--Shiloh Town, Tim Hardin

I can see his face and I hear the words he said
And my memories ache and my senses burn
Did he dream too late will we ever learn
-- Testify,
Melissa Etheridge

Another soldier dies slippin’ into a ditch,
we call it a “combat death,”
just to give it a meaning…
My point is that sometimes the army
has to be concerned with something
bigger than the truth
--The Messenger (2009)

It's the same old seven and six
____________________

We Meant Well is a fine tragi-comedic telling of one man's experience with nation-building in Iraq.

Subtitled, "How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People," Peter van Buren, a career Foreign Service officer, offers a series of vignettes which puts the surrealism of the State and Military Department's efforts on display. One -- "Missing Him" -- deals with a troop's suicide, and the story is sadly timeless, dovetailing as it does with Ranger's experiences in his war many years before.

The "him" is Private First Class Brian Edward Hutson, who committed suicide in Iraq "after only a few months in the Army and even less time at the Forward Operating Base. ... Nobody really had befriended him" (243).

This is a direct indictment of the Army and their concept of leadership. What kind of Army would have a personnel policy that sends young, unformed personalities into combat environments after only a few months of Army exposure? This young private was shipped over with only Basic and Advanced Individual Training (AIT) under his belt.

What kind of Commander would be so oblivious that he would not assign a mentor to buddy up with newly assigned troopers to help ease them into their new reality? This applies to leaders from Second Lieutenant to General Officer. What kind of NCO or Squad Leader would not be cognizant enough to recognize the danger symptoms of pre-suicidal behavior?

Did anybody care? It is too late once the bullets are launched. At the Army level (TRADOC) and recruiting command there must surely be a personality inventory taken before induction that would indicate potential problems before they occur. That is the point of taking pre-induction personality inventories.

Has the Army's pre-induction processing also suffered from a jaded attitude and budget cuts? What should be a fairly simple leadership problem is failing as far too many soldiers have slipped through the cracks.

While at Ft. Benning following return from Vietnam, Ranger clearly remembers the high suicide rate on post. His impression was that it was officially swept under the rug despite its being common knowledge. This was over 15 years before PTSD would become an official diagnosis in the DSM manual, thereby receiving legitimacy from the medical community.

*It is hard to find any definitive suicide figures for either Vietnam or the current conflicts. Some have reported more deaths from Vietnam veteran suicides over the years than from actual combat deaths, but it is hard to ascertain for the usual reasons: The death might have been a single-vehicle accident; drugs or alcohol may have been the culprit; the reporting agencies do not list "suicide" as a kindness to the survivors, or to allow for insurance benefits. Ranger is certain some of his fellows from the Vietnam War were suicides, though without the usual note left behind.

PFC Hutson died as a result of the negligence of poor command policies, or because of a lack of command policy. This is strange as the Army also has suicide-prevention programs. Clearly this shows another policy disconnect as these programs are still in effect and PFC Hutson is still dead.

We should have a memorial to the suicides of all of our wars.

Ranger's condolences to PFC Hutson's family and friends.

Thinking Afghanistan

Cover of 7/26 Newsweek. Subheading: "Nation Building Isn't Working. New Strategies for the War on Terror -- Richard N. Haass."

The word "Rethinking" has a mis-used prefix. It implies a prefatory condition. It is doubtful that the War on Terror was thought out prior to the U.S. invasion.

(And anyway, Haass, as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, should get on-board with the new name. WOT is sooo yesterday! It's gone past "Overseas Contingency Operations" -- it's now "CVE": Countering Violent Extremism. It's not just your backyard, garden-variety extremists anymore.)

Good News

Do not be afraid.
I bring you good news of great joy
--Luke 2:10-11

Eighty percent of the people who call themselves Democrats
don't have a clue as to political reality.
Put a little fear here and there
and you can get people to vote any way you want
--James Carville

A Working person voting for a Republican is like
a chicken voting for Colonel Saunders
--Bumper Sticker

Gee, the old place hasn't changed much.
I wonder if McKinley's still president?
--Good News (1947)
________________

Remember when James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid"? Then, as now.

Carville also said, "If you are on Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, a baby-boomer, unemployed, a minority, parent with school-aged children, a college student, without medical insurance, balancing your personal budget, not a CEO, purchasing gasoline, wanting clean air and water, a 401-K owner or earn less than $200,000 per year, then voting for George Bush is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders." Replace "a Republican" for Mr. Bush and you get the gist.

FSU's local public radio, Morning Edition, yesterday reported cheerily that the economy was improving in the state: The unemployment rate had dropped a whole 10th of a percentage point, from 10.8 to 10.7%. However, that is still a percentage point higher than the national rate of 9.7%.

Last month, Florida lost only about 21,000 jobs. Now that's progress you can believe in. Woo-hoo. Only, as NYT columnist Bob Herbert reminds us, this isn't the whole story (No Recovery in Sight; A World of Hurt.) The unemployment rate fails to figure in those off the unemployment rolls but not yet employed, those underemployed and those who have given up. If these figures were included, the actual number of unemployed would be at least 16-17%.

A recent economic survey based upon spring data shows "the recession has plunged 2.6 million more Americans into poverty, wiped out the household income gains of an entire decade and pushed the number of people without health insurance up to 46.3 million" (Millions More Thrust Into Poverty.)

Over 13% of your fellows live below the federal poverty line. For children, the statistics are more grim: according to a meta study by the National Urban League, almost one in every five children live in poverty.

One of every 140 homes in Florida is in foreclosure. The Good News leads one to ponder the unrealistic nature of U.S. government policies across the board. Do our leaders believe that unemployed people living in foreclosed upon homes are actually concerned about al Qaeda?

When one is living in a tent city, the fact that the Sonitrol is not working is of little concern. It's the economy, the mismanagement of which may yet bring about our worldwide leveling -- not necessarily a bad thing, though a very painful one.

Nation building is just not the important.