Requiem for State

The statue got me high
The monument of granite sent a beam into my eye
The statue made me die
--The Statue Got Me High,
They Might Be Giants
____________________

Peter Van Buren has given a poignant and informed requiem for the State Department at his site today (State Department: America’s Increasingly Irrelevant Concierge). They could have been a contender.

Here is an excerpt, but please read the entire piece:

The Militarization of Foreign Policy

The most obvious sign of State’s irrelevance is the militarization of foreign policy. There really are more military band members than State Department Foreign Service Officers. The whole of the Foreign Service is smaller than the complement aboard one aircraft carrier. Despite the role that foreign affairs has always played in America’s drunken intercourse abroad, the State Department remains a very small part of the pageant. The Transportation Security Administration has about 58,000 employees; the State Department has about 22,000. The Department of Defense (DOD) has nearly 450,000 employees stationed overseas, with 2.5 million more in the US.

At the same time, Congress continues to hack away at State’s budget. The most recent round of bloodletting saw State lose some $8 billion while DOD gained another $5 billion. The found fiver at DOD will hardly be noticed in their overall budget of $671 billion. The $8 billion loss from State’s total of $47 billion will further cripple the organization. The pattern is familiar and has dogged State-DOD throughout the war of terror years. No more taxi vouchers and office supplies for you! What you do get for your money is the militarization of foreign policy.

As Stephen Glain wrote in his book, State vs. Defense: The Battle to Define America’s Empire, the combatant commands are already the putative epicenters for security, diplomatic, humanitarian and commercial affairs in their regions. Local leaders receive them as powerful heads of state, with motorcades, honor guards and ceremonial feats. Their radiance obscures everything in its midst, including the authority of US ambassadors.

. . .

If It's Bears You Want ...

--God Offering Rope to Aging Adam,
R. Hanssen (Sweden)

If back stairs you like,
If love affairs you like
With young bears you like,
Why nobody will oppose!
--Anything Goes, Cole Porter

In shallow shoals English soles do it
Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love
--Let's Do It, Ella Fitzgerald

Pay my respects to grace and virtue
Send my condolences to good
Hear my regards to soul and romance
They always did the best they could
--Human, The Killers
_______________

I'm pretty nonplussed about the reaction surrounding the pull-out of Brett McGurk from his nomination to the Ambassadorship to Iraq.

Slate's Fred Kaplan wrote an apologia today for what seems the correct step-down of an entirely mediocre candidate for the position (Our Man in Baghdad). If the United States is trafficking in its moral rectitude, it can do a whole lot better than McGurk.

If the U.S. stands for dignity of all and morality, if we shun the degradation of women and frown on Afghan's dancing boys, then we must offer something better. Bigamy and adultery, and just generally bragging about your manly bits to women not your wife are behaviors we still frown upon. Such behavior just brought down Army Colonel Johnson, and Representative Anthony Weiner fell from grace last year this month for similar shenanigans.

But here's Kaplan whitewashing those two wild-and-crazy kids -- McGurk and Chon -- not addressing the real threats and offenses involved in the debacle, attempting to make the whistleblowers seem like some backwards malcontents. So what are we: A nation committed to human dignity, or are we dancing bears?

The lesson is, keep your Johnson in your BVD's, unless you are with your wifey. If that is becoming too provincial for us, then we should admit we're going French. However, that is something I have yet to hear any of society's machers proclaim. Not "trending", as they might say today.

My on-site reply to Kaplan's article follows:

"Does Mr. Kaplan honestly believe Mr. McGurk is the best the U.S. can front for Iraqi Ambassadorship?

"An ambassador should demonstrate impeccable personal judgement, being as he will be the face of our nation abroad. Kaplan offers a Frank Capra-esque tale, Chon's and McGurk's emails, "show(ing) a diplomat and a reporter exchanging flirtatious banter and, in the end, falling ga-ga for each other."

"'Ga-ga'? Puh-leeze spare us your Hollywood overlay. The exchanges were bumptious, sordid and sufficient to force a reporter to be released from her WSJ posting for violating company policy.

"Why are we not congratulating the sources for revealing what would have been yet another in a long line of mistakes in that hapless nation. Who is re-configuring the lines of what makes for suitable journalism? What would a Kaplan have said of a 1970's Woodward and Bernstein?"

Battle Buddy

The one fatal thing is to be a zombie,
and I think we're all in danger of
living that way
--Sister Wendy, Chiles High School

[H]e realized at once that he shouldn't
have spoken aloud, and that by doing so he had,
in a sense, acknowledged the stranger's right
to oversee his actions
--The Trial, Franz Kafka

This is surely the main problem of the twentieth century:
is it permissible merely to carry out orders
and commit one's conscience to someone else's keeping
--The Gulag Archipelago,
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
__________________

We have many friends and acquaintances here at RangerAgainstWar whom we have never met, save in the ether world. Among these is one each, Peter Van Buren, a true American patriot and razor sharp thinker.

We first heard Mr. Van Buren in an NPR interview regarding the topic of his book, We Meant Well -- How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (2011), and were impressed with his cogency and wit. It convinced us that at least one person in the State Department uses his head as something other than a hat rack. To the Department's shame, he seems to be in the minority.

Peter was fired by State this week in a confusing welter of accusations suggesting improper leaks, but it looks like a simple case of bullying an employee for exercising his right of free speech -- Oh, yeah, that thing that Peter was supposedly spreading at the behest of the U.S. with those Provisional Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). He has laid the situation and players out well over the past several weeks at his blog, WeMeantWell. com.

Bottom line: The State Department (DoS) cannot brook free speech, and in that way is not unlike the Department of Defense (DoD), or any federal agency. So the U.S. spends Trillions of dollars exporting fanciful democratic ideals, all the while stomping on those very same concepts here in The Homeland ™.

The treatment of the Branch Davidians during the Clinton White House might reveal Secretary of State Clinton's proclivities when dealing with a DoS whistleblower. She will attempt to roll over him like an Engineer Assault vehicle crushing the Branch Davidian compound. Peter needs our support if that still has relevance in our democratic scheme.

His case is similar to that of Bradley Manning's in many respects, except Manning (being DoD) has less rights. At least Van Buren has not been charged with espionage (at least, not yet!)

Ranger finds it curious that there at least three Constitutions: One for domestic consumption, one for export, and one for DoD and DoS. We just presume that the military does not have free speech because they cannot criticize the Commander in Chief and Chain of Command (even if what they say is correct and factual.) If Van Buren is fired (following appeal), then free speech will not be tolerated in any government office, obviating the need for federal whistleblower laws.

Men who march in lock step to their next promotion talk the talk but don't walk the walk, and sadly, they will be the ones judging men like Van Buren, who do. Screw the War on Terror -- it's time to defend freedom over here.

Our best wishes go out to Peter Van Buren who is stuck out on point without a battle buddy.

Did We Really?

--Pee, Luojie (China Daily)

And my eyes couldn't stand the strain
Of that promised love
All the way from America
--All the Way from America,
Joan Armatrading

It is a popular delusion that the government wastes
vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth.
Enormous effort and elaborate planning
are required to waste this much money
--Parliament of Whores, P. J. O'Rourke

The street game is the only game
the white man can’t control
--American Pimp (1999)
_________________

If U.S. policy makers would listen strategically to rock-n-roll lyrics, they would realize that promised love is not the same as received love. Further, winning hearts and minds is not the same as a Love Fest, as we have re-learned in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©); even if it were, the results are destined to end up as disastrously.

We have mentioned Peter Van Buren's trenchant comic-tragic book, We Meant Well, when discussing the tragedy of suicide amongst the ranks. Van Buren, a career Foreign Service officer sent to help administrate a Provisional Reconstruction Team (PRT), offers a series of surreal vignettes displaying one man's view of the misled efforts of the State and Military Department in Iraq.

The very title is a challenge: Does invading and occupying a country, destroying its infrastructure and imposing the foreigner's concept of needful activities equate with well-meaning? The book dovetails well with Ranger's perspective of the PWOT ©, so he will offer some quotes from this fine primer on the failure of counterinsurgency to win hearts and minds.

The players and materiel are dissected rapier-style: KBR contractors are "fat as sheltered ponies"; "The DVDs all came from China. After oil, it seemed like illegal DVD sales made up the other half of the Iraqi economy." The milk episode embodies the entire debacle within a few pages, as a good parable might.

More observations, though each page is quotable,

"The Army and Embassy public relations people ordered the term [triangle of death] embargoed once they wanted us to seem like we were winning."

"The [U.S.] Army held elaborate ceremonies to "gift" the palaces back to the ungrateful Iraqis after they were done with them." "The programs they had initiated reflected months of constantly changing guidance from the Embassy ... To me, these were by and large people aggressively devoted to mediocrity, often achieving it."

"This is what the military would look like without NCOs -- a frat house with guns."

On Iraqis:

"There were Iraqis who worked for us ... our own imported Iraqi Americans. ... Many of them had not lived in Iraq for years yet we used them as cultural advisers. No one will ever know how much of our failure in reconstructing Iraq was caused simply by bad translation and subject matter ignorance, but it would be a decent percentage."

"Now there was literally more money than we could spend ... we wondered among ourselves whether we shouldn't be running a PRT in Detroit or New Orleans instead of Baghdad."

"A Commander could himself approve projects up to $200,000 with almost no technical or policy oversight. ... a 2009 audit ... found the Army could not account for $8.7 Billion in finds."

"Military units were graded on how much cash they spent ... spent meant more kudos on evaluation reports."

This random selection brings to mind the Social Security Administration's mistake with Ranger's benefits causing him to now owe them $10,740. (Their mistake was discussed HERE.)

Situation recap: A 65 y.o. U.S. pensioner who devoted his entire adult working career to the U.S. government and who, from 11 May 11 - Nov 2012 will not be receiving his Social Security benefits. My income will be docked due to their error, but every page of We Meant Well documents examples of fraud, waste and myopic policies that squandered U.S. tax dollars to phenomenal -- criminal -- levels, if the concept of criminality retains any meaning today.

100's of Billions of dollars were thrown down a shit hole, yet my government chicken shits me and others like me with a petty (for them) debt caused by their ineptitude. If we had applied this conservative approach (demanding strict oversight and accountability) to Iraq, we might have achieved something of value, though what that would have been remains undefined. At least, we would not have lost some things of irretrievable cost.

Ranger is torqued that his country busts him for a paltry sum, while his Army and State Department wiped Iraqi asses with newly-minted benjamins. Why embark on a foreign policy dependent upon gaining the hearts and minds of Iraqis? Ranger doesn't care if they love or hate us -- no American soldier's life should be spent on such a meaningless goal.

Our government should focus on its own citizen's hearts, minds and bodily welfare. When one sells love, one is pimping or whoring. WOT also means "War on Truth", and a war on truth equates well with a reign of terror.

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.