Part 2 - Most Serious Military Campaign in US History

Recap From Part One of This Series

In part one of this two part series, MeanMesa took a look at the recent changes in the national security structure.  Although it is not particularly unusual for a President to reorganize a few things as he moves into the election campaign for his second term, the changes we note in this instance may have an even more important meaning than usual.

Do we think that the Petraeus/Panetta relocations mean something more than a simple political adjustment designed to take a couple of "news cycles?"

Yes.  In fact, the "something more" we mentioned above may, actually, amount to a "great deal more."  Let's begin with a very short recap of the conditions Panetta will encounter on his first day at his new office.

Defense Department

Defense, Expense and No Common Sense

The fundamental mission of the nation's defense establishment has, long ago, been severely contaminated by a predictable and -- for those of who can remember "Ike" Eisenhower -- also "predicted" deflection into a state which has had consistently less to do with defense and more to do with "looting" and wealth redistribution.  The American war making machine now finds itself primarily a business venture which, by the way, carries out military missions as a sideline.

Don't be mistaken.  The "defense industry" is a great business opportunity.  

Enjoying a half $Trillion dollar annual budget, the Defense Department has attracted "business leaders" the same way neglected mayonnaise at a hot, summer picnic attracts salmonella.  Once the initial "infection" is first accomplished, things are destined to only grow worse, never better.  

The cycle is not particularly mysterious, either.  The weapons merchants, just like the pharmaceutical crooks and the petroleum frauds, have long ago discovered that investments in "campaign contributions" have a far more lucrative "return on investment" than any foolish, "bad business model" ideas about the good of the country.

So far, things have worked out "roses, simply roses" for these "captains of industry" who have been working so hard to keep our country safe.  In the past, after capitalist thugs, always under the cover of US national foreign policy, have managed to rape, pillage and plunder some defenseless population somewhere, our country always seems to "wind up" with another "incomprehensible" enemy.

No one, absolutely no one, can understand why such folks hate us so much or exactly why this seems to simply "keep happening to us."

Oh well, nothing to do but increase our own weapons stock pile and get ready for another "oil war."  In the meantime, an extremely accommodating domestic media just "happens" to pump every American voter who will listen full of both outrage and fear.  The next step for the weapons merchants is to instruct their Congressmen to purchase another round of expensive additions to what is already a massive junk pile of equipment designed for the last war.

The "State of Affairs" in the Defense Department

Panetta will find all of this and more.  Not only are the arms merchants "ready to go," but standing between them and the new Secretary will be a coven of Congressional toadies equally ready to lay hands on more of the half $Trillion per year prize.  Even worse, all through the Pentagon are even more well lubricated lackeys, constantly prepped to promote the "absolute, immediate necessity" of the latest $10 Million dollar truck.

All these endless "procurement requirements" are littered with cost over runs, design changes and plenty of profit.  No matter how awful the design, development and manufacturing scheme might be, once these monstrosities are anchored with some sort of six digit "initial payment," they become, aside from their role as "military albatrosses," invulnerable to "program termination."

The characters inhabiting this alternate world facing Panetta have their own scheme for perpetual durability.  They begin as military men, become staffers or Congressmen, retire or lose an election and turn into invulnerable lobbyists for the weapons merchants.  Exaggerated?  Not really.  It's hard to find  so much as a single face in the system which does not occupy one stage or another of this cycle of metamorphosis.

In many cases, not even the Pentagon wants some of this stuff.

However, contract termination will cost jobs in the constituent states of the Congressmen.  These contracts began their life as pork, but after they have set their roots into the rich, job starved soil of a "home state," they are soon plated with local gold, sold in the Congress as worth their weight in silver and hosted in the minds of the residents as an employment "life blood."

As far the tax payers are concerned, these "procurements" may as well be built of pot metal.

Does MeanMesa think that the military should be starved?  Denied whatever might be necessary for war making?

Absolutely not.  However, what we see now -- and what Panetta will face -- has much more to do with this looting scheme than it does with national security.  It doesn't take much imagination to see that the results of such "military procurement" has left only a hyper expensive, poorly equipped force which must spend $50,000,000 ($50 Million) to kill a single Taliban. 

(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26521.htm 

http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article32304 
http://cryptogon.com/?p=18094, etc.)

This amazingly high combat "effectivity price" isn't all new, either.  During the two decades of the Viet Nam war, the cost of killing a single opponent cost around $70,000.  That war cost an average of a $1 Million dollars a minute for almost twenty years.  Every minute.

Osama bin Laden and others like him discovered this "weak spot" in Western militaries during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  They didn't miss the lesson.  While an opposing army cannot be defeated in direct assaults configured to attain a military victory, the combat goals can be adjusted away from the traditional goal of simply winning.  The cost of combat can be increased when the goal of increasing cost replaces the goal of a combat victory.

Much like the Soviets, the US defense management "missed" this message.  Even when combat costs were exploding beyond a sustainable level, we simply continued to increase costs, pouring more and more money into our fixation on a military combat victory.

Further, if the procurement outrage isn't egregious enough, the cost of world wide military bases can be added to the pile.  Just like the procurement contracts, these Cold War colonial carry overs have their own benefactors and, hence, protectors.  At any moment when even the slightest hint at any alternate course emerges, the domestic media flood voters with another "terror message."

I.E. - "Them Aaarabs gonna' cum over heah and git the whaht wimmen!"

We see a costly "image mix" between the geo-political necessities of a Defense Department and an immense, dated, unimaginative, ineffective foreign policy looting scheme and budget drain.  Mortally costly.

Nothing, Absolutely Nothing, Can Be Done

Although the corporate media has worked very hard to establish this false certainty in the minds of American voters, this exact sort of challenge seems to be one of Obama's favorites.  We've seen this unfold repeatedly with health care, Wall Street regulation and efforts for the economic recovery.

MeanMesa suspects that we are now seeing the latest addition to that impressive list of accomplishments.  It has been kept very quiet, but the silent movement of Earth below our feet has, with these new personnel moves, made its first rumbling.

Obama intends to cut defense spending.  Further, he intends to cut defense spending much more than a few hundred billion here and there.

The media toadies, in their relentless effort to resurrect some vestige of validity in the GOPCon position, have constantly referred to government spending divided into three elements:

discretionary spending

"entitlement" spending, and

military spending

Of course, grisly manifestations of the most recent looting scheme, i.e. the  Ryan "make every American who doesn't have a lobbyist bleed" budget, targets the discretionary spending.  The "fear mongering" back up threat to  further expand the "bleeding" is to cut "entitlement" spending.  The President has already drawn his line in the sand on both of these cynical GOPCon ambitions.

It's no coincidence that not so much as a single word about cutting military spending has escaped this latest media "thought instruction" death trap.

With Petraeus heading the CIA, Obama has introduced the existential possibility of reducing the $50 Million dollar price tag for a dead Taliban. or any other insurgent.  With Panetta heading the Defense Department, Obama has introduced a similar possibility of combating the financial train wreck the national security scheme has become.

To his credit, the retiring DoD head, Gates, cut a respectable swath of useless military spending during his tenure, especially in the case of a $300 Billion dollar jet fighter program.  There can be no question but that the President was firmly standing behind this effort.  However, the scope of Panetta's "marching orders" will range far beyond even this sort of massive reduction.

Obama's new target for making sense from the current "nation eating defense budget" will go much farther.  Of course, doing this sensibly will be an essentially military effort, but the political side -- not the military side -- to the task has always proved to be its undoing in the past.

Naturally, the tactical advantage of having "seasoned troops" on the front line has not been missed by the President, except that the "seasoning" of those "seasoned troops" has finally been correctly established as a "political seasoning," not a "military seasoning."  Panetta's "political seasoning" is formidable.

Let's wish the President "good hunting," supporting him in every possible way -- especially in his campaign to be re-elected.  

These days hold no comfort for the timid.

Part 1 - Most Serious Military Campaign in US History

Obama War Council In the News

The administration's reorganization of the "command structure" conducting the Bush 9/11 war in Afghanistan and the Bush oil war in Iraq made its way to the media this week.  Chastened by the President's remarks about the "silliness" of the over published birth certificate scheme, perhaps the media dug deeply into its cess pool of "approved" news to inform us about the changes.

Granted, it's hard to walk away from "The Donald" in favor of news beyond the intellectual capacity of most hill billies.  Rather than consider this momentary departure back to pursuing normal 4th Estate responsibilities as some sort of permanent change, MeanMesa sees it more as a "two day sulking" episode at best.

However, media cracks aside, the news is fascinating.  The President's new configuration of the Defense Department and the CIA management possibly reveals more than a casual "mid term" shift.  Yes, the retirement of Robert Gates may well have this re-design program loose, but the depth and nature of the proposed changes tells us more than a simple, quiet Gates replacement would.

Even Bigger Changes 

Than They Looked Like At First

So, what, exactly, is going on in Washington?  What is Obama's plan?

First, Leon Panetta moves from being Director of CIA to being the Secretary of Defense.

Second, General David Petraeus moves from being the commanding general in Afghanistan to being the Director of the CIA.

There were two more important nominations in the reconfiguring move by the President.  Although perhaps not as "media noteworthy" as the two mentioned above, both serve to "fill out" the Obama plan to finally extract the nation from  the "Death Grip" of the autocrat's swan song March to the Sea.

"Death Grip?"

Yes, once the W's Oval Office bunker had been thoroughly filled with the terrifying likelihood of not only losing the election but probably facing war crimes trials, every effort was made to leave absolutely nothing that still worked for the "next guy."  This meant two failing wars, the economy in shambles, the country divided and the entire Congress hiding in the cloak closet instead of helping with anything.

Back in those old, dark days no one expected much to get better very quickly.  Now, a few months later, everyone seems to be demanding the opposite.  Most semi-informed Americans had only the sketchiest grip on how grave things had become.

Well, now things have begun to improve, and the President is finally ready to start being Presidential, that is, doing something more besides gallantly trying to rebuild the damage.  These moves may represent the national equivalent of being wheeled out of intensive care.

First, the predictable replacement for General Petraeus in Afghanistan is Marine Lt. General John Allen.  Most of the substantial criticisms of the US effort in Afghanistan can be boiled down to a basic issue of the Marines and the Army.  Under the effeminate direction of the autocrat (Remember? No "enemies," just "evil doers" and "criminals...") the Afghan conflict literally staggered from "shake down" to "stand off" and back for eight years.

Once the combat tasks were redistributed to forces most competent at various specialities, i.e. Army "occupation tasks" and Marine "combat aggression tasks," coupled with the Gates' "surge," Afghanistan slowly began to make more sense.  The thing is still certainly not beautiful, but better management is showing results.  Allen should do quite well.

The second change reflects the first except in a diplomatic arena.  MeanMesa suspects that absolutely no one has any idea why Eikenberry was ever chosen as ambassador to Afghanistan.  On the other hand, we did see the W's tragic codependent streak, "don't trust any one competent, and if someone competent manages to slip through, continue to value loyalty above competence," in appointments such as FEMA's "Brownie."

Crocker, remarkably, is lauded by both sides of the fence as the most capable of all possible diplomatic choices.  He was previously ambassador to both Iraq and Pakistan.  Like Allen, he should do very well with Afghanistan.

The "Bigger Changes:" Petraeus and Panetta

Leon Panetta & General David Petraeus (Image ABC News)

To understand MeanMesa's estimation of this new organization, each element will need to be considered twice, once in the "frontal sense" of Obama's expectation of improved "day to day" operations, and once in the sense of each position's part in the President's over all national reconstruction plan.

First, Petraeus.  In the frontal sense, the General has had "hands on" experience with the daunting task of applying the kind of intelligence which has traditionally come from the CIA to his day to day mission in combat arenas.  The management of the CIA has, of course, been trying to move the things into the present day, but the results seem to have a troubling, inertial tendency to revert to Cold War methods and outcomes.

During the Cold War, the CIA became incredibly good at what it was doing.  Recognition and promotion became institutionalized.  If a CIA operative was able to scoop the Soviets on some technical issue or international political scheme, he was considered to be doing his job well.  Confronting the Soviets was no simple task, and the stakes were high.

However, shifting the behemoth from Cold War mode into Al Qaeda mode turned out to be more touchy than at first thought in early 2000.  Today, this conversion still remains far from complete.  Also interesting, there may be a few culprits in the mix, but MeanMesa thinks the problem is basically one of institutional inertia.

Petraeus will know what to ask of the Agency.  His boots are still dusty with Afghan mud.  Petraeus knows that collecting good intelligence from jihadists is a very alien, challenging new undertaking and a vital one, that is, very much a "new game" with "new rules."  The General also knows that lots of the high tech Cold War secrecy issues have worked against US national security, not necessarily by providing bad intelligence but by being misdirected.

CIA "screw ups" have not always had to do with "missing something."  Too often, nothing was missed, but the intelligence never got to where it needed to be.

Second, Panetta.  Yes, Gates' shoes will be hard -- if not impossible -- to fill.  No, Obama doesn't particularly want to simply refill them, at least not with another "up and coming" Gates.  The President will need an equally competent but differently directed replacement, Leon Panetta.

In the "frontal sense," Panetta will prove to be quite competent at the Defense Department.  Of course, the "frontal" side of the job has everything to do with defense.  In recent times (since the autocracy) it has become more and more clear that the Secretary of Defense is also, crucially, the manager of one of the two most expensive things our nation does.

Being the Secretary of Defense has lots of "moving parts," and, as both Rumsfeld and Gates know by now,  some of them are seldom smiling.

Now, Panetta has already been roundly criticized as "not having enough military experience."  Don't worry about that.  The Defense Department is remarkably capable of carrying out its mission, at least temporarily, essentially on autopilot.  In fact, MeanMesa wouldn't be particularly worried if "Brownie" himself somehow wound up with the job so long as he didn't have it too long.

However, Obama's ambitious plan is not to be measured in the currency of simply managing the military combat affairs of the country.  Of course the competent, experienced and dedicated Panetta can handle this side of the equation, but if that is the "frontal sense," what is the "second sense," that is, the national reconstruction part?

The second part of this two part posting will take it from here. Naturally, by way of trotting out some cheap, MeanMesa style teaser, everyone is encouraged to stay with us.  We had to go through this part before we could get to the "good stuff."