There's a Future for You, Willie Pete...

...on yet another topsy-turvy day in the Obama administration, I'm thinking of white phosphorus, what it does, what it means, what it makes us do.

In response to local outrage over recent civilian casualties, among which are wounds inflicted by white phosphorus shells, on May 10 we issued a flat denial with a suggestion that it must have been somebody else burning little children, not us. Next day the Pentagon released summaries of incidents in which Taliban/Al Qaeda forces used white phosphorus against NATO/ISAF, rolling with the previous day's hypothesis. The release consists of one-line Pentagon accounts, without a timeline, eyewitnesses, photos, video or local Afghan government corroboration. Human Rights Watch isn't buying it.

This response is interesting to me: the pattern of denial is craven, where the Bush pattern was merely brazen. When confronted about WP use in Fallujah, the Bush DoD said first that it didn't happen, contradicting soldiers' accounts, then acknowledged use of white phosphorus but stressed that such use was legal. Sure we fired incendiary devices into civilian areas, devices whose contents chemically bind to adipose and burn until fuel or oxygen is removed, and it was legal.

The deny-and-shrug was also used in last winter's war in Gaza. The IDF's first response to charges that it had fired white phosphorus into densely populated areas in Gaza was a flat denial, followed by a promise of investigation. When the investigation concluded, Israel determined that any such use was legal.

The NYT piece covering the investigation's release called the dispute over the use of white phosphorus a "proxy" for larger discussions of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, Israeli fears about Iran, usw.

Which is funny because civilian casualties are the whole ballgame. The "larger issues" boil down to civilian casualties. Israel's vision of itself as a willing partner in peace is put into question by its own perpetration of war crimes. (And that's not me, that's HRW again.) The threat that Hamas-Iran pose is mooted by white phosphorus. White phosphorus is a battlefield illuminator. What interested parties then need is their own paper trail, a counterargument, any counterargument.

Debate, no matter how absurd, excuses the main issue from our concern. As soon as two sides can set up camp -- HRW vs. NATO, UN vs. IDF -- the issue is up for grabs. It is only at the level of debate that discussion of things like war on innocents can be taken up neutrally. No one can be pro the execution of civilians; there has to be some other thing to talk about. Only then can writers point to "the broader picture," revealing brutally burned children to be part of a "proxy argument."

SO, congratulations to the Obama administration -- the "blame the other guy" response creates a much more interesting debate than the Bush administration's "when we do it it's not illegal" response. Now, instead of asking Is Hamid Karzai governing anything?, or Can we begin finally to distinguish friend from foe?, or How do we get reconstruction aid / hearts-and-minds work going?, or Why are we making Afghanistan safe for a bunch of opium barons?, or What the Christ are we doing in a place that crippled Alexander the Great?, we're busy figuring out whose WP shells those were, what size the Russians used thirty fucking years ago, etc., etc. And there's definitely a future in that...
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We Are a Bunch of Rubes

Make no mistake. I am pleased that the American people saw fit to elect President the only responsible actor still running for office. I like BHO. I'm a fan. But I have principles that were operative during Bush, and to suspend their operation for a guy I like can only be done for so long before it is unjustified. So, you know, put that in your Situation Ethics and smoke it.

I'm tired of getting played for a fairy; I hope the left does boot Democrat moderates out of the party. There deserves to be an all-do-nothing party, an American Kadima, the USA Patriot Waterheads. Or the Know-Nothings.

And I understand why BHO's situation in Afghanistan is different from GWB's in Iraq. A surge is necessary to stop the bloodletting. We cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan. Unfriendly regional powers, read Iran, will be emboldened by our failure, which I repeat is imminent without the surge. It's going to be hairy.

Wait, those are all the same rationalizations for Bush's surge...my mistake. Will the Afghan Surge work? In Afghanistan, the other key elements of quelling civil war -- paying off militants to form US-legitimized gangs, and the major militant group's discovery that politics is more lucrative than assassination -- are absent.

So let's repeat, 15,000 more US troops are moving into the world's worst country, with an illiterate population of poppy growers, entirely cowed by terror, to hunt an entrenched guerrilla force with a cross-border safe zone, no natural enemies, and no interest in the political process?

Got it. This sort of thing was not OK in 2006. And it's OK now. I totally understand. It's called triangulatin', and I did not just fall off the turnip truck.

But the idea doesn't look ripe for success, and it may not be necessary. 2200 Afghan civilians died in violence last year. That's a bad month in Iraq ca. 2006. Die-hard Al Qaeda members might number 300. We have drones in Pakistan that are both wasting dudes who need to be wasted (let's bracket the why-questions, shall we) and killing some innocents. How does this add up to imperative?

Pakistan thinks enough of itself that it can sign peace deals with militants and pay attention to real threats, you know, like India, or Baluch separatists. I haven't bought the "bomb slips out of Pakistan's hands" theory, largely because I think the Pakistani military establishment sees its long term, existential struggle as being with India. And India has the bomb. You think career men are gonna let some dudes with beards walk off with nuculur weapons? Nope. Then why do we have to shore up Pakistan, crumbling Pakistan? And even if we did need to do so, what good are 15,000 soldiers going to do for a nation of, holy shit, 200 million people?

What good will 52,000 Americans do for an Afghanistan still ruled by Hamid Karzai? Same amount of good 37,000 did.

But I'm not trying to player-hate. BHO is right to have different opinions about different surges. This surge is, it turns out, different from Bush's: it's even worse.
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First, a Note from the Future President

On 28 December 2006, Barry Hussein wrote:

Escalation Is Not The Answer

As the New Year approaches, we are told that the President is considering the deployment of tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq in the desperate hope of subduing the burgeoning civil war there.

This is a chilling prospect that threatens to compound the tragic mistakes he has already made over the last four years.

In 2002, I strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq because I felt it was an ill-conceived venture which I warned would "require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undermined cost, with undetermined consequences." I said then that an invasion without strong international support could drain our military, distract us from the war with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and further destabilize the Middle East.

Sadly, all of those concerns have been borne out.

Today, nearly three thousand brave young Americans are dead, and tens of thousands more have been wounded. Rather than welcomed "liberators," our troops have become targets of the exploding sectarian violence in Iraq. Our military has been strained to the limits. The cost to American taxpayers is approaching $400 billion.

Now we are faced with a quagmire to which there are no good answers. But the one that makes very little sense is to put tens of thousands more young Americans in harm's way without changing a strategy that has failed by almost every imaginable account.

In escalating this war with a so-called "surge" of troops, the President would be overriding the expressed concerns of Generals on the ground, Secretary Powell, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and the American people. Colin Powell has said that placing more troops in the crossfire of a civil war simply will not work. General John Abizaid, our top commander in the Middle East, said just last month that, "I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future." Even the Joint Chiefs of Staff have expressed concern, saying that a surge in troop levels "could lead to more attacks by al-Qaeda" and "provide more targets for Sunni insurgents." Once again, the President is defying good counsel and common sense.

As I said more than a month ago, while some have proposed escalating this war by adding thousands of more troops, there is little reason to believe that this will achieve these results either. It's not clear that these troop levels are sustainable for a significant period of time, and according to our commanders on the ground, adding American forces will only relieve the Iraqis from doing more on their own. Moreover, without a coherent strategy or better cooperation from the Iraqis, we would only be putting more of our soldiers in the crossfire of a civil war.

There is no military solution to this war. Our troops can help suppress the violence, but they cannot solve its root causes. And all the troops in the world won't be able to force Shia, Sunni, and Kurd to sit down at a table, resolve their differences, and forge a lasting peace. In fact, adding more troops will only push this political settlement further and further into the future, as it tells the Iraqis that no matter how much of a mess they make, the American military will always be there to clean it up.

That is why I believe we must begin a phased redeployment of American troops to signal to the government and people of Iraq, and others who have a stake in stabilizing the country - that ours is not an open-ended commitment. They must step up. The status quo cannot hold.

In November, the American people sent a resounding message of change to the President. But apparently that message wasn't clear enough.

I urge all Americans who share my grave concerns over this looming decision to call, write or email the President, and make your voices heard. I urge you to tell them that our soldiers are not numbers to add just because someone couldn't think of a better idea, they are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and friends who are willing to wave goodbye to everything they've ever known just for the chance to serve their country. Our men and women in uniform are doing a terrific job under extremely difficult conditions. But our government has failed them so many times over the last few years, and we simply cannot afford to do it again. We must not multiply the mistakes of yesterday, we must end them today.

May this New Year bring a turn in our policy away from the stubborn repetition of our mistakes, so we can begin to chart a conclusion to this painful chapter in our history and bring our troops home.

Sincerely,

U.S. Senator Barack Obama