[Peace-discuss] Believe it or not…

Wed Apr 7 16:35:30 CDT 2010

Omg!!! And the Republicans are complaining that we can't afford healthcare reform??? Or another extension of unemployment benefits???  And how much do we owe China??? I cannot get my head around all this. --Jenifer

--- On Wed, 4/7/10, Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu> wrote:

From: Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Believe it or not…
To: "peace-discuss Discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Date: Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 12:06 PM

Would the N-G print this? How about the Tea Partyers taking this on?  --mkbBelieve It or Not (2010 Imperial Edition) 
		U.S. War-Fighting Numbers to Knock Your Socks Off
 by Tom Engelhardt

	In my 1950s childhood, Ripley's Believe It or Not was part 
of everyday life, a syndicated comics page feature where you could 
stumble upon such mind-boggling facts as: "If all the Chinese in the 
world were to march four abreast past a given point, they would never 
finish passing though they marched forever and forever."  Or if you were
 young and iconoclastic, you could chuckle over Mad magazine's 
parody, "Ripup's Believe It or Don't!"With our Afghan and Iraq wars on my mind, I've been wondering whether
 Ripley's moment hasn't returned.  Here, for instance, are some figures offered
 in a Washington Post piece by Lieutenant General James H. 
Pillsbury, deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, 
who is deeply involved in the "drawdown of the logistics operation in 
Iraq":  "There are... more than 341 facilities; 263,000 soldiers, 
Defense Department civilians and contractor employees; 83,000 
containers; 42,000 vehicles; 3 million equipment items; and roughly $54 
billion in assets that will ultimately be removed from Iraq." Admittedly, that list lacks the "believe it or not" tagline, but 
otherwise Ripley's couldn't have put it more staggeringly.  And here's 
Pillsbury's Ripley-esque kicker: the American drawdown will be the 
"equivalent, in personnel terms alone, of relocating the entire 
population of Buffalo, New York."  When it comes to that slo-mo drawdown, all the numbers turn out to be
 staggering.  They are also a reminder of just how the Pentagon has been
 fighting its wars in these last years -- like a compulsive shopper 
without a 12-step recovery program in sight.  Whether it's 3.1
  million items of equipment, or 3 million, 2.8
 million, or 1.5 
million, whether 341 "facilities" (not including perhaps ten 
mega-bases which will still be operating in 2011 with tens of thousands 
of American soldiers, civilians, and private contractors working and 
living on them), or more than 350
 forward operating facilities, or 290
 bases are to be shut down, the numbers from Iraq are simply out of this
 world. Those sorts of figures define the U.S. military in the Bush era -- 
and now Obama's -- as the most materiel-profligate war-making machine 
ever.  Where armies once had baggage trains and camp followers, our camp
 followers now help plant our military in foreign soil, build its 
housing and defenses, and then supply it with vast
 quantities of food, water, fuel, and god knows what else.  In this 
way, our troops carry not just packs on their backs, but a total, 
transplantable society right down to the PXs,
 massage
 parlors, food courts, and miniature
 golf courses.  At Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan, there was until
 recently a "boardwalk" that typically included a "Burger King, a Subway
 sandwich shop, three cafes, several general stores, a Cold Mountain 
Creamery, [and an] Oakley sunglasses outlet."  Atypically
 enough, however, a TGI Friday's, which had just joined the line-up, was
 recently ordered shut
 down along with some of the other stores by Afghan war commander 
General Stanley McChrystal as inimical to the war effort. In Ripley's terms, if you were to put all the vehicles, equipment, 
and other materiel we managed to transport to Iraq and Afghanistan "four
 abreast," they, too, might stretch a fair way around the planet.  And 
wouldn't that be an illustration worthy of the old Ripley's cartoon -- 
all those coffee makers and port-a-potties and Internet cafes, even that
 imported sand which, if more widely known about, might change the 
phrase "taking 
coals to Newcastle" to "bringing sand to Iraq"?
						For
 all the sand Iraq did have, from the point of view of the U.S. military
 it didn't have the perfect type for making the miles of protective 
"blast walls" that became a common
 feature of the post-invasion landscape.  So, according
 to Stephen Farrell of the New York Times, U.S. taxpayer 
dollars floated in boatloads of foreign sand from the United Arab 
Emirates and Qatar to create those 15-ton blast walls at $3,500 a pop.  
U.S. planners are now evidently wondering whether to ship some of the 
leftover walls thousands of miles by staggeringly roundabout routes to 
Afghanistan at a transportation cost of $15,000 each. 
When it comes to the U.S. drawdown in Iraq and the build-up in 
Afghanistan, in fact, the numbers, any numbers, are little short of 
unbelievable. * Believe it or not, for instance, U.S. commanders in our 
war zones have more than one
 billion congressionally mandated dollars a year at their disposal 
to spend on making "friends with local citizens and help[ing] struggling
 economies." It's all socked away in the Commander's Emergency Response 
Program.  Think of it as a local 
community-bribery account which, best of all, seems not to require 
the slightest accountability to Congress for where or how the money is 
spent. * Believe it or not (small change department), the Pentagon 
is planning to spend an initial $50
 million from a "$350 million Pentagon program designed to improve 
the counterterrorism operations of U.S. allies" on Croatia, Georgia, 
Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, all of whom, in the latest 
version of the Coalition of the Billing, just happen to have small 
numbers of troops deployed in Afghanistan.  The backdrop for this is 
Canada's decision
 to withdraw its combat forces from Afghanistan in 2011 and
 a fear
 in Washington that the larger European allies may threaten to bail as 
well.  Think of that $50 million as a down payment on a state bribery 
program -- and the Pentagon is reportedly hoping to pry more money loose
 from Congress to pay off the smaller "allies" in a bigger way in the 
future. * Believe it or not, the Defense Logistics Agency shipped 1.1
 million hamburger patties to Afghanistan in the month of March 2010
 (nearly doubling the March 2009 figure).  Almost any number you might 
care to consider related to the Afghan War is similarly on the rise.  By
 the fall, the number of American troops there will have nearly
 tripled since President Obama took office; American deaths in 
Afghanistan have doubled
 in the first months of 2010, while the number of wounded has tripled; 
insurgent roadside bomb (IED) attacks more
 than doubled in 2009 and are still rising; U.S. drone strikes almost 
doubled in 2009 and are on track to triple this year; and fuel 
deliveries to Afghanistan have nearly
 doubled, rising from 15 million gallons a month in March 2009 to 27
 million this March. (Keep in mind that, by the time a gallon of gas has
 made it to U.S. troops in the field, its cost is estimated at up
 to $100.)* Believe it or not, according
 to a recent report by the Pentagon inspector general, private 
contractor KBR, holding a $38 billion contract to provide the U.S. 
military with "a range of logistic services," has cost Washington $21 
million in "waste" on truck maintenance alone by billing for 12 hours of
 work when, on average, its employees were actually putting in 1.3 
hours.* Believe it or not, the State Department has paid another 
private contractor, Triple Canopy, $438
 million since mid-2005 simply to guard the massive, 104-acre U.S. 
Embassy in Baghdad, the largest on the planet.  That's more than half 
the price tag to build the embassy, the running of which is expected to 
cost an estimated $1.8
 billion dollars in 2010.  Triple Canopy now has 1,800 employees 
dedicated to embassy protection in the Iraqi capital, mainly Ugandan and
 Peruvian security guards.  At $736
 million to build, the embassy itself is a numbers
 wonder (and has only recently had its sizeable playing field 
astroturfed - "the first artificial turf sports field in Iraq" -- also 
assumedly at taxpayer expense).  Fans of Ripley-esque diplomatic 
gigantism should have no fears about the future either: the U.S. is now
 planning to build
 another "mother ship" of similar size and cost in Islamabad, Pakistan.* Believe it or not, according to Nick Turse of 
TomDispatch.com, nearly 400
 bases for U.S. troops, CIA operatives, special operations forces, 
NATO allies, and civilian contractors have already been constructed in 
Afghanistan, topping the base-building figures for Iraq by about 100 in a
 situation in which almost every bit of material has to be transported 
into the country.  The base-building spree has yet to end.  * Believe it or not, according
 to the Washington Post, the Defense Department has awarded
 a contract worth up to $360 million to the son of an Afghan cabinet 
minister to transport U.S. military supplies through some of the most 
dangerous parts of Afghanistan -- and his company has no trucks.  (He 
hires subcontractors who evidently pay off the Taliban as part of a large-scale

 protection racket that allows the supplies through unharmed.)  This
 contract is, in turn, part of a $2.1 billion Host Nation Trucking 
contract whose recipients may be deeply involved in extortion and 
smuggling rackets, and over which the Pentagon reportedly exercises 
little oversight.    Believe it or not, the 
staggering logistics effort underway to transport part of the American 
way of war from Iraq to Afghanistan is now being compared by those 
involved to Hannibal
 (not Lecter) crossing the Alps with his cohort of battle elephants, or 
to that ancient conqueror of conquerors, Alexander the Great ("the 
largest building boom in Afghanistan since Alexander built Kandahar").  
It has become commonplace as well to say, as
 President Obama did at Bagram Air Base on his recent six-hour 
Afghan drop-in, that the U.S. military is "the finest military in the 
history of the world," or as his predecessor put
 it even more emphatically, "the greatest force for human liberation
 the world has ever known."The Ripley-esque numbers, however, tell a somewhat different story.  
If war were really a Believe It or Not matter, or victory lay 
in the number of hamburgers transported or the price of fuel consumed, 
the U.S. military would have been the winner long ago.  After all, it 
may be the most product-profligate military with the heaviest 
"footprint" in history.  Though it's seldom thought strange (and rarely 
commented upon in the U.S.), the Pentagon practices war as a form of 
mass consumption and so, not surprisingly, bears a striking resemblance 
to the society it comes from.  Like the Taliban, it carries its way of 
life to war on its back. It's striking, of course, that all this is happening at a moment 
when, domestically, small businesses can't get loans and close to 10% of
 the population is officially out of work, while state governments are 
desperately scrabbling for
 every available dollar (and some that aren't), even as they cut 
what would once have been considered

basic services.  In contrast, the Pentagon is fighting its distant wars 
as if American pockets had no bottoms, the national treasury had no 
limits, and there was quite literally no tomorrow. And there's one more small contrast to be made when it comes to the 
finest military in the history of the world: for all the private 
security guards, mountains of burgers, lakes of gasoline, miles of blast
 walls, and satchels of cash to pass out to the locals, it's been 
remarkably unsuccessful in its pacification campaigns against some of 
the motliest forces of our time.  The U.S. military has been fought to 
something like a draw by relatively modest-sized, relatively lightly 
armed minority insurgencies that don't even pass muster when it comes to
 shooting
 straight. Vast piles of money and vast quantities of materiel have been 
squandered; equipment by the boatload has been used up; lives have been 
wasted in profusion; and yet the winners of our wars might turn
 out to be Iran
 and China. 
 The American way of war, unfortunately, has the numbers to die for, 
just not to live by.

				Copyright 2010 Tom Engelhardt		Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American 
Empire Project,
 runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The
 End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, 
as well as of a novel, The
 Last Days of Publishing. His latest book, The
 American Way of War (Haymarket Books), will be published in 
May. To catch a special TomCast audio interview in which 
Jonathan Schell and Engelhardt discuss war and nuclear weapons from the 
1960s to late last night, simply click here
 or, if you prefer to download it to your iPod, here.

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