The Cost of War

I know there's no direct connection, but I couldn't help but think of those complaints about the cost of the Iraq war to the state when I read this bit of rare positive news:

A California aerospace company is scouting locations in Rhode Island in order to open a facility to build armored boats by the end of the year.

Kelly Space & Technology is looking for a 20,000- to 30,000-square-foot building to accommodate manufacturing operations and engineering offices, according to chief executive officer Michael J. Gallo. The company has opened an office in Warwick near T.F. Green Airport and has one employee evaluating potential sites, Gallo said. ...

... Gallo, a native of Fitchburg, Mass., also was drawn by Rhode Island's expertise in the boat-building industry and the defense contractors in the state and nearby.

The company also was attracted by assistance from the state's Business Innovation Factory, a nonprofit company that includes government officials and that seeks to support experimentation and innovation.

Fallon vs. Spitzer: Which is the Most Consequential Story?

I know that the resignation of a combatant commander who has publicly challenged the policies of his commander-in-chief is not nearly as riveting as the resignation of an arrogant, self-righteous, nanny-state Democratic governor who seeks out sex with prostitutes, but in the greater scheme of things, the former story is more consequential.

On Tuesday, Admiral William Fallon, commander of US Central Command, stepped down after an article in Esquire made it very clear that he was actively undermining the Bush adminstration policy in the Middle East, especially with regard to Iran.

In a piece posted on the Daily Standard website of The Weekly Standard, I address this issue. I contend that as commander of CENTCOM, Fallon acted in a way that exceeded his authority and had Fallon not stepped down, the president would have been perfectly justified in firing him, just as Abraham Lincoln fired Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, as Franklin Roosevelt fired Rear Admiral James O. Richardson, and Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

I suppose this would be a bigger story if it weren't for the Gov. Whoremonger scandal. Let's see: politician's sex scandal or civil-military relations crisis--which would the press prefer to cover? Sigh!

Sen. Reed Suffering from Fonzi Syndrome*

Senator Jack Reed is in Iraq assessing the situation.

While revising his earlier view of the surge strategy — too small and too gradual to work, he said when Mr. Bush proposed it last January — Reed said he stands by his prescription for the path ahead in Iraq: a U.S. declaration of policy that fixes a date to begin reducing U.S. forces in Iraq and shifts their mission from combat to counterterrorism, and the training and support of Iraqi troops.

Ahh yes, "revising his earlier view." That's one way of saying "I was wrong."

*Fonzi Syndrome, sometimes called the Fonzi Factor.

Even Those Who Think Iraq is a Tragedy Should Resist Offering Commentary That is a Farce

In the Washington Post, John Podesta, Lawrence J. Korb and Brian Katulis make a case against the success of the American military surge in Iraq that includes this sentence (h/t Mickey Kaus)…

But the progress being made at the local level often undermines the stated goal of creating a unified, stable, democratic Iraq.

Isn't this the liberal internationalist's way of saying that we must let the villages be destroyed in order to save them?

Even Those Who Think Iraq is a Tragedy Should Resist Offering Commentary That is a Farce

In the Washington Post, John Podesta, Lawrence J. Korb and Brian Katulis make a case against the success of the American military surge in Iraq that includes this sentence (h/t Mickey Kaus)…

But the progress being made at the local level often undermines the stated goal of creating a unified, stable, democratic Iraq.

Isn't this the liberal internationalist's way of saying that we must let the villages be destroyed in order to save them?

Well Done, Veterans

I apologize for a paucity of posts lately. Of course, some people might think that fewer things by me is not such a bad thing. In any event, my light posting has to do with the old adage about alligators and draining the swamp.

Today is, of course, Veterans Day. I have a piece on the topic today at NRO. It is here. In it, I use the recent Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair at The New Republic to make the case that the press is predisposed to believe the worst about American troops. This is something that began with Vietnam.

Saturday was also the 232nd birthday of the Marine Corps. I always receive a birthday greeting from one of my old colleagues, Jack Higgins. When I do, I am reminded that Jack and the other Marines with whom I served in Vietnam were the best men I have ever known. I will never forget them, or the ones who didn’t make it back.

The Marine birthday ball at the Hyatt in Newport was spectacular. BTW, so was my date. What can I say? The heavenly Doreen always makes me look awfully good. Semper Fi, Marines.

Guess Who's One of Only Six States To Fully Tax Military Pensions

In discussing an Ohio proposal to exempt military pensions from the state income tax, the Toledo Blade names Rhode Island as one of only five states imposing an income tax on military pensions…

With one of its members now on military duty and another about to return to Iraq, [the Ohio House] suddenly fast-tracked a proposal - just in time for Veteran's Day - affecting nearly 39,000 military retirees that has languished in the chamber for months.

Ohio is one of just five states imposing income taxes on pensions earned from military service. The bill now heads to the Senate….

Only Ohio, California, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Nebraska still tax at least some portion of military pensions.

…but I don't think the Blade story has it quite right.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Rhode Island is one of six states (the five listed above, plus Minnesota) allowing no exemption at all for income received in the form of a military pension. There are 12 states that fully exempt military pensions from their income taxes, another 21 that exempt at least some portion of military pensions, 2 that have some form of general income exemption for retirees, and 9 states that have no income tax to be exempted from.

In some way, shape or form, Rhode Island should get with the 33 states exempting at least some portion of military pensions from the state income tax. It would be the very least we could do as a community to help take care of the soldiers and sailors who've volunteered to help protect our country.

U.S. Marines Didn't Commit War Crimes in Haditha, U.S. Press Disappointed

I heard a story on NPR this morning about the trial of Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich--a leader of the Marine squad accused of killing 24 civilians in Haditha a year and a half ago. (NPR also included multiple excerpts from an interview that Wuterich gave to CBS' Scott Pelly---here's the text version of the NPR report). All in all, it was a decent job of telling the story, but there was something missing. The story didn't include this:

Since May, charges against two infantrymen and a Marine officer have been dismissed, and dismissal has been recommended for murder charges against a third infantryman. Prosecutors were not able to prove even that the killings violated the American military code of justice.

That from the NY Times (h/t). It makes it a little more clear that maybe, just maybe, the war crimes charges were a little tenuous to begin with. Now, there were certainly some problems. One officer has been convicted because his actions delayed the investigation months after the incident. But while there appears to have been negligence up the chain-of-command, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (USCMJ) is a different ruleset than U.S. criminal law and gives fighting men leeway in these matters.

Experts on military law said the difficulty in prosecuting the marines for murder is understandable, given that action taken in combat is often given immunity under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

“One could view this as a case crumbling around the prosecutor’s feet, or one could see this as the unique U.C.M.J. system of justice in operation,” said Gary D. Solis, a former Marine judge who teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University Law Center and at West Point.

Prosecuting the Haditha case was especially difficult because the killings were not thoroughly investigated when they first occurred. Months later, when the details came to light, there were no bodies to examine, no Iraqi witnesses to testify, no damning forensic evidence.

On the other hand, some scholars said the spate of dismissals has left them wondering what to think of the young enlisted marines who, illegally or not, clearly killed unarmed people in a combat zone.

“It certainly erodes that sense that what they did was wrong,” Elizabeth L. Hillman, a legal historian who teaches military law at Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, said of the outcomes so far. “When the story broke, it seemed like we understood what happened; there didn’t seem to be much doubt. But we didn’t know.”

Walter B. Huffman, a former Army judge advocate general, said it was not uncommon in military criminal proceedings to see charges against troops involved in a single episode to fall away under closer examination of evidence, winnowing culpability to just one or two defendants.

In the first place, this is a story about predispositions. Some of us are predisposed to give the military the benefit of the doubt in these matters, other are not. What is egregious, though, is when the individuals are exonerated and are not still given the benefit of the doubt. Witness the disappointment in the Times piece.

If the legal problems that have thwarted the prosecutors in other cases are repeated this time, there is a possibility that no marine will be convicted for what happened in Haditha....

Regardless of what happened to charges against the other defendants, there is still great public pressure on the Marine Corps to investigate and punish any wrongdoing in a case in which so many civilians died.

It seems that what the Times really wants is to criminalize war and those who prosecuted it: from the Commander-in-chief on down. Surprised?

More on the president's VFW speech

"Sophisticated" writers and policiticans continue to criticize the president's invocation of Vietnam during a speech last week before the VFW. As everyone knows, he argued that a premature withdrawal from Iraq would lead to the same sort of bloodbath as ocurred in Vietnam after the US Congress perpetrated the most shameful act in American history--literally pulling the rug out from under a US ally faced with a threat to its very existence.

One Democrat who has not joined the chorus of howels is my friend and fellow Marine infantry veteran of Vietnam, Jim Webb. Maybe that's because of an op-ed he wrote for the Wall Street Journal in April of 2000. Speaking of the final offensive that led to the North Vietnamese victory, Webb placed a great deal of the blame on the "Watergate" Congress. Webb wrote:

"This Congress was elected in November 1974, only months after Nixon's resignation, and it was dominated by a fresh group of antiwar Democrats. One of the first actions of the new Congress was to vote down a supplemental appropriation for the beleaguered South Vietnamese that would have provided $800 million in military aid, including much-needed ammunition, spare parts and medical supplies.

"This vote was a horrendous blow, in both emotional and practical
terms, to the country that had trusted American judgment for more than
a decade of intense conflict. It was also a clear indication that
Washington was abandoning the South Vietnamese even as the North
Vietnamese continued to enjoy the support of the Soviet Union, China
and other Eastern bloc nations. The vote's impact was hardly lost on
North Vietnamese military planners, who began the final offensive only
five weeks later, as the South Vietnamese were attempting to adjust
their military defenses.

"Finally, the aftermath of Saigon's fall is rarely dealt with at all.
A gruesome holocaust took place in Cambodia, the likes of which had
not been seen since World War II. Two million Vietnamese fled their
country — usually by boat — with untold thousands losing their lives
in the process. This was the first such diaspora in Vietnam's long and
frequently tragic history. Inside Vietnam a million of the South's
best young leaders were sent to re-education camps; more than 50,000
perished while imprisoned, and others remained captives for as long as
18 years. An apartheid system was put into place that punished those
who had been loyal to the United States, as well as their families, in
matters of education, employment and housing. The Soviet Union made
Vietnam a client state until its own demise, pumping billions of
dollars into the country and keeping extensive naval and air bases at
Cam Ranh Bay."

Good stuff. I hope Jim will argue that the president is correct, at least with regard to his Iraq-Vietnam analogy.

The President, Iraq and Vietnam

The president has taken a lot of heat for his reference to Vietnam in yesterday's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. it appears to be the case that he is the only person in the United States who is not permitted to refer to Vietnam when speaking about Iraq. My take on the reaction to his VFW speech is here on NRO. The title of the NRO piece refers, of course, to Bugs Bunny's second best known line: "What a maroon."

Langevin Stuck in November '06

I had a chance to hear a portion of Dan Yorke's interview with Congressman Jim Langevin yesterday afternoon. When asked about Iraq, Rep. Langevin continued to trumpet the line that things are getting worse in Iraq and that the "surge" won't work. They've already made up their minds and this unwillingness to reassess the situation when things may actually be changing is indicative of the quandary the Democratic Congress finds itself in.

They have staked their political fortunes to the popular perception of Iraq--it's bad and getting worse--that they believe got them elected to a majority last November. After years of calling for change in strategy and finally getting their wish with General Petraeus' new plan, they've now moved the goalposts and said, "Sorry, it's too late." Whether it is or isn't too late is still a question, but one that can't be answered by just saying so. The reality is that the recent successes in Baghdad are an example of how there is an inherent problem in trying to manage a war legislatively. The situation "on the ground" can change quickly. Washington bureaucracy: not so much.

The Wall Street Journal's Dan Henninger has a piece that contrasts the military vs. legislative reality (here's his source). A sample:

On Jan. 23 Gen. Petraeus offered the Senate Armed Services Committee an outline of the surge. By Feb. 8, U.S. paratroopers and engineers in Baghdad had quickly put together 10 Joint Security Stations, the new command centers to be operated with Iraq's security forces...On Feb. 10, Gen. Petraeus arrived to take command of these forces in Baghdad. In the second week of February, U.S. troops conducted 20,000 patrols compared to 7,400 the week before.

On Feb. 16, the House of Representatives passed a resolution, 246-182, to oppose the mission. Nancy Pelosi: "The stakes in Iraq are too high to recycle proposals that have little prospect for success."

...On March 4, 600 U.S. and 550 Iraqi forces commenced house-to-house searches in Sadr City's Jamil neighborhood. Also in early March, with little fanfare, U.S. and Iraqi forces arrested 16 individuals connected with the Jaysh al-Mahdi cell, suspected of sectarian kidnappings and killings.

On March 23, the House voted 218-212 to remove these U.S. forces by August's end, 2008.

It's not quite three months since the surge began in Iraq, and some early assessments of the operation have emerged. They are positive. Keep in mind that this strategy emerged from military reassessment over the past year, led largely by Gen. Petraeus; this isn't a pick-up team.

But the Democrats are locked into a narrative of predetermined failure in Iraq. Henninger recommends a way out:

If the Iraq surge is succeeding, the Democrats' surge should stand down. If a year from now the Petraeus plan is foundering, the Democrats will have plenty of time to hang it around the GOP's neck by demanding a legitimate withdrawal date--November 2008. But not now.

Copperheads, Then and Now

While recovering from surgery recently, I had the good fortune to read a fine new book about political dissent in the North during the Civil War. The book, Copperheads: The Rise an Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North, by journalist-turned-academic-historian Jennifer Weber, shines the spotlight on the “Peace Democrats,” who did everything they could to obstruct the Union war effort during the Rebellion. In so doing, she corrects a number of claims that have become part of the conventional wisdom. The historical record aside, what struck me the most were the similarities between the rhetoric and actions of the Copperheads a century and a half ago and Democratic opponents of the Iraq war today.

In contradistinction to the claims of many earlier historians, Weber argues persuasively that the Northern anti-war movement was far from a peripheral phenomenon. Disaffection with the war in the North was widespread, and the influence of the Peace Democrats on the Democratic party was substantial. During the election of 1864, the Copperheads wrote the platform of the Democratic party, and one of their own, Rep. George H. Pendleton of Ohio, was the party’s candidate for vice president. Until Farragut’s victory at Mobile Bay, Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, and Sheridan’s success in driving the Confederates from the Shenandoah Valley in the late summer and fall of 1864, hostility toward the war was so profound in the North that Lincoln believed he would lose the election.

Weber demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the actions of the Copperheads materially damaged the ability of the Lincoln administration to prosecute the war. Weber persuasively refutes the view of earlier historians such as the late Frank Klement, who argued that what Lincoln called the Copperhead “fire in the rear” was mostly “a fairy tale,” a “figment of Republican imagination,” made up of “lies, conjecture and political malignancy.” The fact is that Peace Democrats actively interfered with recruiting and encouraged desertion. Indeed, they generated so much opposition to conscription that the Army was forced to divert resources from the battlefield to the hotbeds of Copperhead activity in order to maintain order. Many Copperheads actively supported the Confederate cause, materially as well as rhetorically.

In the long run, the Democratic party was badly hurt by the Copperheads. Their actions radically politicized Union soldiers, turning into stalwart Republicans many who had strongly supported the Democratic party’s opposition to emancipation as a goal of the war. As the Democrats were reminded for many years after the war, the Copperheads had made a powerful enemy of the Union veterans.

The fact is that many Union soldiers came to despise the Copperheads more than they disdained the Rebels. In the words of an assistant surgeon of an Iowa regiment, “it is a common saying here that if we are whipped, it will be by Northern votes, not by Southern bullets. The army regard the result of the late [fall 1862] elections as at least prolonging the war.”

Weber quotes the response of a group of Indiana soldiers to letters from Copperhead “friends” back home:

Your letter shows you to be a cowardly traitor. No traitor can be my friend; if you cannot renounce your allegiance to the Copperhead scoundrels and own your allegiance to the Government which has always protected you, you are my enemy, and I wish you were in the ranks of my open, avowed, and manly enemies, that I might put a ball through your black heart, and send your soul to the Arch Rebel himself.

It is certain that the Union soldiers tired of hearing from the Copperheads that the Rebels could not be defeated. They surely tired of being described by the Copperheads as instruments of a tyrannical administration trampling the legitimate rights of the Southern states. The soldiers seemed to understand fairly quickly that the Copperheads preferred Lincoln’s failure to the country’s success. They also recognized that the Copperheads offered no viable alternative to Lincoln’s policy except to stop the war. Does any of this sound familiar?

Today, Democratic opponents of the Iraq war echo the rhetoric of the Copperheads. As Lincoln was a bloodthirsty tyrant, trampling the rights of Southerners and Northerners alike, President Bush is the world’s worst terrorist, comparable to Hitler.

These words of the La Crosse Democrat responding to Lincoln’s re-nomination could just as easily have been written about Bush: “May God Almighty forbid that we are to have two terms of the rottenest, most stinking, ruin working smallpox ever conceived by fiends or mortals…” The recent lament of left-wing bloggers that Vice President Dick Cheney was not killed in a suicide bombing attempt in Pakistan echoes the incendiary language of Copperhead editorialist Brick Pomeroy who hoped that if Lincoln were re-elected, “some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good.”

Anti-war Democrats make a big deal of “supporting the troops.” But such expressions ring hollow in light of Democratic efforts to hamstring the ability of the United States to achieve its objectives in Iraq. And all too often, the mask of the antiwar politician or activist slips, revealing what opponents of the war really think about the American soldier.

For instance, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Rep. Charles Rangel have suggested that soldiers fighting in Iraq are there because they are not smart enough to do anything else. Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois has suggested a similarity between the conduct of U.S. troops in Iraq and that of Nazi soldiers in World War II. His Illinois colleagues, Sen. Barack Obama, claimed that the lives of soldiers lost in Iraq were “wasted.” And recently William Arkin, a military analyst writing online for the Washington Post, said of American soldiers that they are “mercenaries” who had little business taking critics of the war to task.

The Copperheads often abandoned all decency in their pursuit of American defeat in the Civil War. One Connecticut Copperhead told his neighbors that he hoped that all the men who went to fight for the Union cause would “leave their Bones to Bleach on the soil” of the South. The heirs of the Copperheads in today’s Democratic party are animated by the same perverted spirit with regard to the war in Iraq. Nothing captures the essence of today’s depraved Copperhead perspective better than the following email, which unfortunately is only one example of the sort of communication I have received all too often in response to articles of mine over the past few months.

Dear Mr. Owens

You write, "It is hard to conduct military operations when a chorus of eunuchs is describing every action we take as a violation of everything that America stands for, a quagmire in which we are doomed to failure, and a waste of American lives."

But Mr. Owens, I believe that those three beliefs are true. On what grounds can I be barred from speaking them in public? Because speaking them will undermine American goals in Iraq? Bless you, sir, that's what I want to do in the first place. I am confident that U.S. forces will be driven from Iraq, and for that reason I am rather enjoying the war.

But doesn't hoping that American forces are driven from Iraq necessarily mean hoping that Americans soldiers will be killed there? Yes it does. Your soldiers are just a bunch of poor, dumb suckers that have been swindled out of their right to choose between good and evil. Quite a few of them are or will be swindled out of their eyes, legs, arms and lives. I didn't swindle them. President Bush did. If you're going to blame me for cheering their misery, what must you do to President Bush, whose policies are the cause of that misery?

Union soldiers voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln in 1864, abandoning the once-beloved George McClellan because of the perception that he had become a tool of the Copperheads. After Vietnam, veterans left the Democratic party in droves. I was one of them. The Democratic party seems poised to repeat its experience in both the Civil War and Vietnam.

The Democrats seem to believe that they are tapping into growing anti–Iraq War sentiment in the military. They might cite evidence of military antipathy towards the war reflected in, for example, the recent CBS Sixty Minutes segment entitled “Dissension in the Ranks.” But the Democrats are whistling past the graveyard. The Sixty Minutes segment was predicated on an unscientific Army Times poll, orchestrated by activists who now oppose the war. The fact remains that most active duty and National Guard personnel still support American objectives in Iraq. They may be frustrated by the perceived incompetence of higher-ups and disturbed by a lack of progress in the war, but it has always been thus among soldiers. The word “snafu” began as a World War II vintage acronym: “situation normal, all f****d up.”

Union soldiers could support the goals of the war and criticize the incompetence of their leaders in the same breath. But today’s soldiers, like their Union counterparts a century and a half ago, are tired of hearing that everything is the fault of their own government from people who invoke Gitmo and Abu Ghraib but rarely censure the enemy, and who certainly offer no constructive alternative to the current course of action.

The late nineteenth century Democratic party paid a high price for the influence of the Copperheads during the Civil War, permitting Republicans to “wave the bloody shirt” of rebellion and to vilify the party with the charge of disunion and treason. If its leaders are not careful, today’s Democratic party may well pay the same sort of price for the actions of its anti-war base, which is doing its best to continue the Copperhead legacy.

ADDENDUM:
This piece first appeared on National Review Online on March 19.

Time to End "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

I have to confess that I haven't really put a lot of thought into "Don't ask, don't tell," over the last few years. Now, comes this story about General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that he supports the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays serving in the military because homosexual acts "are immoral," akin to a member of the armed forces conducting an adulterous affair with the spouse of another service member.

Responding to a question about a Clinton-era policy that is coming under renewed scrutiny amid fears of future U.S. troop shortages, Pace said the Pentagon should not "condone" immoral behavior by allowing gay soldiers to serve openly. He said his views were based on his personal "upbringing," in which he was taught that certain types of conduct are immoral...

Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University who was instrumental in helping the Pentagon craft the "don't ask, don't tell" law, said it is unusual for a top commander to use morality as a justification for the policy. But he said he has repeatedly heard enlisted members use that reasoning when opposing gays in the military.

"With the enlisted, it's a question of cohesion, but morality is something they always bring up," said Moskos, who declined to comment specifically on Pace's remarks.

I respect General Pace's personal feelings on the matter and Moskos brings up the reason for which I've tended to support the current, "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Now, however, I think that "Don't ask, don't tell" has served its purpose. It was useful because it served as a pragmatic bridge between two different military generations. The older generation of officers, like Pace, understandably call on their personal experience and collective belief that having homosexuals in the ranks is disruptive to overall morale. They know that they would have been uncomfortable working alongside homosexuals and project this onto today's fighting men and women.

Today's soldiers, sailors and marines have grown up in a different time. I certainly don't have any particular insight into the attitudes of today's enlisted or officers. However, I think it's safe to say that they reflect the attitudes of their Gen X / Gen Y generation, who have grown up in an era of total exposure to homosexuals and the gay lifestyle. Thus, I think that most simply don't think it's a big deal to work with or be around homosexuals. They've probably done it already and their non-military peers do it every day.

Is the military a different entity than society in general? You bet. That is why "Don't ask, don't tell" was such an important policy. It was in no way an ideologically pure way to deal with the real issue, but it bought the military some time to acclimate itself to the broader cultural change in attitude towards homosexuals.

In a different time, African-Americans and Japanese-Americans had to prove their patriotism and fighting ability in a segregated military environment. Gay men and women also want to serve their country and, once they prove (if they haven't already) that they can do the job, I think that straight men and women in the military will accept them within their ranks.

Addendum: Incidentally, I agree with Pace on the adultery point. As Jonah Goldberg so eloquently put it, we don't "need to 'liberate' our troops so they can be free to boink other men's wives and other women's husbands," whether they're gay or not, I'd add.