Sunday, April 20, 2008
The Latest Dereliction of Duty: TV News Military Analysts and the Military Industrial Complex that Feeds Them
I'm glad to see that the media has finally done its job and uncovered the completely unsurprising links between the retired generals who serve as supposedly-independent Military Analysts on TV news and the Pentagon and Military Contractors whose talking points they invariably echo. It's one thing to know that there's no way these guys were picked because of their complete independence from the Pentagon and its big business contractors. It's another to have evidence that it goes so much further than that. It's a must-read.
A minor point I think deserves to be rebutted is this one from Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman:
If you believe this, you don't know the military very well. These guys all retired at the rank of Colonel or higher, and if there's anything a soldier could tell you about the guys at the top of the pyramid, it's that they seem to have no idea what goes on at the bottom of it. The Colonels and Generals I've seen in Iraq rarely leave their offices, except to take other Generals and Colonels on tours in their helicopters. They are briefed more than once a day on operations, but those briefings are often a bit... sanitized to protect their subordinates. They simply don't have the feel that the guys outside the wire have for what's going on. Given the lack of recently retired Buck Sergeant hired to be a Military Analyst on MSNBC, this makes for a somewhat skewed view of the battlefield.
But more tragically, there's a system in place that almost ensures that by the time you reach the rank of General, you've spent so much time with your nose up the ass of the people who made it before you that it's the only way you know how to operate. You see, there aren't all that many openings for Generals in the military, so they can be choosy in who they pick to wear those stars. One of the main criteria for making it that far is having a spotless or near-spotless OER (Officer's Evaluation Report). To get a good OER, you basically have to be competent in your position and not piss off your commander.
And what might piss off a commander? Well, considering that he's got an OER of his own to look after, anything that might wreck his next promotion is pretty high on that list. All this basically means that the last thing you want to do as a junior officer looking up at the stars is think outside the box, take risks, put yourself on the line, or any of those other things that businesses were hiring consultants to tell them to do 10 years ago. The people who make General tend to be above average in intelligence, but risk-averse, thanks to a system that encourages lockstep thinking and looks askance at anything that bucks tradition.
So no, Mr. Whitman, it's not "a bit incredible" that retired Generals are puppets of the system. That's how they got there in the first place. And thanks to the extremely lucrative after-market in the defense contracting and lobbying business, these retired Generals know they've got to dance with the one that brung 'em. The quote from retired Colonel John C. Garrett in an email to the Pentagon shows just how closely tied these guys are to the system that created them. Preparing to go on FOX News to talk about the (then-upcoming) surge, he stated:
"Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay."
Almost as painful as the system that reduces America's military leaders into glad-handing yes-men is the pathetic cravenness of a figure such as Garrett, whose pitiful servility to the Administration and the Pentagon is so clearly expressed in this quote. He's not a man, he's a robot, sent out to do the bidding of his masters. Instead of leading, he's following, like a Private in Basic Training. Instead of getting the opinion of a Pattonesque leader, a man of action, a thick-skinned, no-nonsense man's man that the viewers imagine they'll get when the magic words "Retired General" flash across the screen, they get this mincing courtier saying nothing that we hadn't already heard from Ari Fleischer or Sean Hannity. We want Chesty Puller, but we get Willy Loman.
Cross-posted at OOIBC.
A minor point I think deserves to be rebutted is this one from Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman:
It was, Mr. Whitman added, "a bit incredible" to think retired military officers could be "wound up" and turned into "puppets of the Defense Department."
If you believe this, you don't know the military very well. These guys all retired at the rank of Colonel or higher, and if there's anything a soldier could tell you about the guys at the top of the pyramid, it's that they seem to have no idea what goes on at the bottom of it. The Colonels and Generals I've seen in Iraq rarely leave their offices, except to take other Generals and Colonels on tours in their helicopters. They are briefed more than once a day on operations, but those briefings are often a bit... sanitized to protect their subordinates. They simply don't have the feel that the guys outside the wire have for what's going on. Given the lack of recently retired Buck Sergeant hired to be a Military Analyst on MSNBC, this makes for a somewhat skewed view of the battlefield.
But more tragically, there's a system in place that almost ensures that by the time you reach the rank of General, you've spent so much time with your nose up the ass of the people who made it before you that it's the only way you know how to operate. You see, there aren't all that many openings for Generals in the military, so they can be choosy in who they pick to wear those stars. One of the main criteria for making it that far is having a spotless or near-spotless OER (Officer's Evaluation Report). To get a good OER, you basically have to be competent in your position and not piss off your commander.
And what might piss off a commander? Well, considering that he's got an OER of his own to look after, anything that might wreck his next promotion is pretty high on that list. All this basically means that the last thing you want to do as a junior officer looking up at the stars is think outside the box, take risks, put yourself on the line, or any of those other things that businesses were hiring consultants to tell them to do 10 years ago. The people who make General tend to be above average in intelligence, but risk-averse, thanks to a system that encourages lockstep thinking and looks askance at anything that bucks tradition.
So no, Mr. Whitman, it's not "a bit incredible" that retired Generals are puppets of the system. That's how they got there in the first place. And thanks to the extremely lucrative after-market in the defense contracting and lobbying business, these retired Generals know they've got to dance with the one that brung 'em. The quote from retired Colonel John C. Garrett in an email to the Pentagon shows just how closely tied these guys are to the system that created them. Preparing to go on FOX News to talk about the (then-upcoming) surge, he stated:
"Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay."
Almost as painful as the system that reduces America's military leaders into glad-handing yes-men is the pathetic cravenness of a figure such as Garrett, whose pitiful servility to the Administration and the Pentagon is so clearly expressed in this quote. He's not a man, he's a robot, sent out to do the bidding of his masters. Instead of leading, he's following, like a Private in Basic Training. Instead of getting the opinion of a Pattonesque leader, a man of action, a thick-skinned, no-nonsense man's man that the viewers imagine they'll get when the magic words "Retired General" flash across the screen, they get this mincing courtier saying nothing that we hadn't already heard from Ari Fleischer or Sean Hannity. We want Chesty Puller, but we get Willy Loman.
Cross-posted at OOIBC.
Labels: Framing, Iraq, military, OOIBC
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Islam Isn't the Problem
Regarding the motivations of the insurgents I interrogated in Iraq, a week ago I wrote:
I saw this dynamic when I was an interrogator in Iraq. Coalition forces would arrest an insurgent, humiliate him in front of his family, keep him in prison for months, and then release him without charges. In the meantime he learned to hate us (even if he hadn't before) and, more importantly, his family learned to hate us. While he was learning to hate us, he was in a population that was uniquely qualified to fan the flames of his hatred and teach him how he might better act on it. Meanwhile his family and close friends were now easy targets for recruitment. In getting rid of one "terrorist," we created several. Is it any wonder that the estimated number of insurgents in Iraq jumped from 5,000 (total) in 2003 to 70,000 (Sunni) in 2007, while the prison population skyrocketed from 10,000 to 60,000? (See pp. 25-26 of this Brookings Institute report for details.)
When will we realize that our presence in the Middle East and our support of tyrants such as Mubarek and the Saudi Royal Family are not only not helping ease the troubles in the region, they are the primary cause for those troubles? Middle Easterners are not stupid. They can see that America has a long history of supporting brutal dictators (remember the Shah?) and they have learned from that experience that we are not to be trusted. They see us stomping around the world with our big stick and turn to whatever means of resistance they can find to resist what they see as the assault on their culture by the biggest bully on earth. The fact that militant Islam is their only major option should not cause us to confuse their motives
Cross-posted at OOIBC.
The vast majority of them weren't radical Muslims, bin Laden acolytes or Saddam hardliners; they were motivated by nationalism. They opposed the U.S. occupation of what they saw as their sovereign land (silly them!) so they lashed out in the most meaningful way they could: at the "collaborators" in their midst aiding and abetting the occupying, colonial power. It's basic insurgency doctrine, folks. In my experience, "religious fanaticism" is the veneer that some in Iraq, and even more in the West, use to cover what is essentially the struggle to get out from under the thumb of a strongman.Later last week, The Washington Monthly published an article by Andrew Tilghman, former Stars & Stripes reporter, that came to a similar conclusion, and on Tuesday Gallup released a poll analysis that supports my anecdotal experience. (Thanks to Framing Science for the link) The pollsters discovered that political grievances, rather than religious ones, are the prime motivating factors behind Violent Islamic Extremism:
After analyzing survey data representing more than 90% of the global Muslim population, Gallup found that despite widespread anti-American sentiment, only a small minority saw the 9/11 attacks as morally justified. Even more significant, there was no correlation between level of religiosity and extremism among respondents. Among the 7% of the population that fits in the politically radicalized category -- those who saw the 9/11 attacks as completely justifiable and have an unfavorable view of the United States -- 94% said religion is an important part of their daily lives, compared with 90% among those in the moderate majority. And no significant difference exists between radicals and moderates in mosque attendance.
Gallup probed respondents further and actually asked both those who condoned and condemned extremist acts why they said what they did. The responses fly in the face of conventional wisdom. For example, in Indonesia, the largest Muslim majority country in the world, many of those who condemned terrorism cited humanitarian or religious justifications to support their response. For example, one woman said, "Killing one life is as sinful as killing the whole world," paraphrasing verse 5:32 in the Quran.
On the other hand, not a single respondent in Indonesia who condoned the attacks of 9/11 cited the Quran for justification. Instead, this group's responses were markedly secular and worldly. For example, one Indonesian respondent said, "The U.S. government is too controlling toward other countries, seems like colonizing."
The real difference between those who condone terrorist acts and all others is about politics, not piety. For example, the politically radicalized often cite "occupation and U.S. domination" as their greatest fear for their country and only a small minority of them agree the United States would allow people in the region to fashion their own political future or that it is serious about supporting democracy in the region. Also, among this group's top responses was the view that to better relations with the Muslim world, the West should respect Islam and stop imposing its beliefs and policies. In contrast, moderates most often mentioned economic problems as their greatest fear for their country, and along with respecting Islam, they see economic support and investments as a way for the West to better relations. Moderates are also more likely than the politically radicalized to say the United States is serious about promoting democracy.
Note how counter-intuitive this all seems from the Clash of Civilizations perspective through which the entire GWOT has been filtered for us. No significant difference in mosque attendance between radicals and moderates. The Quran cited only as justification for abhorring violence, not condoning it. American occupation and lack of respect are the reasons the radicals fight us, not the results of their fight against us.
The implications of a study such as this are enormous. The most obvious is that if we are going to claim to be serious about fighting terrorism, we need to focus our efforts on the factors that actually motivate people to become terrorists, not the factors we continue to insist motivate them. Killing or incarcerating a terrorist or insurgent may take one of them out of circulation, but if you create two new ones for every one you destroy, you are going backward, not forward.I saw this dynamic when I was an interrogator in Iraq. Coalition forces would arrest an insurgent, humiliate him in front of his family, keep him in prison for months, and then release him without charges. In the meantime he learned to hate us (even if he hadn't before) and, more importantly, his family learned to hate us. While he was learning to hate us, he was in a population that was uniquely qualified to fan the flames of his hatred and teach him how he might better act on it. Meanwhile his family and close friends were now easy targets for recruitment. In getting rid of one "terrorist," we created several. Is it any wonder that the estimated number of insurgents in Iraq jumped from 5,000 (total) in 2003 to 70,000 (Sunni) in 2007, while the prison population skyrocketed from 10,000 to 60,000? (See pp. 25-26 of this Brookings Institute report for details.)
When will we realize that our presence in the Middle East and our support of tyrants such as Mubarek and the Saudi Royal Family are not only not helping ease the troubles in the region, they are the primary cause for those troubles? Middle Easterners are not stupid. They can see that America has a long history of supporting brutal dictators (remember the Shah?) and they have learned from that experience that we are not to be trusted. They see us stomping around the world with our big stick and turn to whatever means of resistance they can find to resist what they see as the assault on their culture by the biggest bully on earth. The fact that militant Islam is their only major option should not cause us to confuse their motives
Cross-posted at OOIBC.
Labels: Framing, fundamentalism, GWOT, interrogation, Iraq, Islam, OOIBC, personal, politics, terrorism
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Maybe We Can Use Her Head; It's Already in the Right Position
This really, really doesn't help. It's bad enough that the opponents of the scientific consensus on global climate change paint everyone who sees the need for action to reduce carbon emissions as "environmental wackos," but when stupid celebrities stick their misinformed opinions into the debate, they only add fuel to the fire. Now everyone who makes the completely defensible claim that human activity is a primary contributing factor to melting ice sheets will have to deal with the thought in the backs of skeptics' heads that "this guy just wants me to use less toilet paper." Thanks a lot, Sheryl. Please return to your normal job of butchering Guns n' Roses songs and leave the advocacy to people who know how to frame their arguments.
As a corrective tonic, I submit the following site: How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic. It's a compendium of retorts to common misperceptions (and worse) about global climate change. This is the type of thing you will find if you click the above link:
Thanks to 3 Quarks Daily for pointing me to this valuable site.
As a corrective tonic, I submit the following site: How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic. It's a compendium of retorts to common misperceptions (and worse) about global climate change. This is the type of thing you will find if you click the above link:
Objection: Global warming has been going on for the last 20,000 years.
Answer: It is true that 20,000 years ago the temperature was some 8 to 10° C colder than it is today. But to draw a line from that point to today and say, "look, 20K years of global warming!" is dubious and arbitrary at best.
If you have look at this graph of temperature, starting at a point when we were finishing the climb out of deep glaciation, you can clearly see that rapid warming ceased around 10,000 years ago (rapid relative to natural fluctuations, but not compared to the warming today, which is an order of magnitude faster). After a final little lift 8,000 years ago, temperature trended downward for the entire period of the Holocene. So the post-industrial revolution warming is the reversal of a many-thousand-year trend.
A closer look at today's trend, within the context of the last 1,000 and 2,000 years, makes it even clearer that today's trend is striking -- opposite to what one would expect without anthropogenic interference.
(Courtesy of Global Warming Art. See source for details on the various reconstructions tangled above.)If you really want to play the "global warming started X years ago" game, you should talk about how we're reversing a 5-million-year cooling trend -- or go crazy and track global temperatures right back to the origins of the planet! Not that there'd be much point ...
Labels: Environment, Framing, global warming
