TED: Thomas Barnett - The Pentagon's New Map for War and Peace

Lately I've been watching a lot of the talks given at the TED conference. TED takes place each year in Monterrey, CA and shows off the ideas of some of the world's most inspired thinkers. Most of the talks and performances are now posted on YouTube, so it is a great way to spend the occasional 20 minutes or so of down time. They are all pretty thought provoking, and I'll probably be posting many of them here.

Here's one to get you started:

Thomas Barnett is a strategic planner who has been working for the Pentagon since the cold war ended. He gave an entertaining briefing at TED about how the Pentagon needs to adapt for post cold war conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan. Specifically, he outlines a procedure for processing politically bankrupt states and proposes a dedicated force of people to manage the peace before and after conflicts. He argues that we have a brilliant Secretary of War, but we also need a Secretary of Everything else.

Here's a few choice quotes. The link is embedded below.

We field a first half team in a league that insists on keeping score until the end of the game. That’s the problem. We can run the score up against anybody and then get our asses kicked in the second half.
...
What are we missing? A functioning executive to translate will into action. Because we don’t have it every time we lead one of these efforts we have to whip ourselves into this immanent threat thing. We haven’t faced an immanent threat since the Cuban missile crisis – 1962. But we use this language from a bygone era to scare ourselves into doing something because we’re a democracy and that’s what it takes. If that doesn’t work, we scream “He’s got a gun!” just as we rush in. Then we look over the body, and we find an old cigarette lighter and we say “Jesus it was dark.”
...
What we need downstream is a great power enabled Systems Administration force. We should have had 250,000 troops streaming into Iraq on the heels of that Leviathan force sweeping towards Baghdad. What you get then is no looting, no military disappearing, no ammo disappearing, no Muqtadah Al-Sadr. No insurgency. Talk to anybody who was over there in the first six months: We had six months to feel the love, get the job done, and we dicked around for six months. Then they turned on us.
...
The question is, how do we reconnect American national security with global security to make the world a lot more comfortable and to embed and contextualize our employment of force around the planet?... Let's have a Department of War and a Department of Something else. Some people say, "Hell, 9/11 did it for you. Now we got a home game: an away game." Department of Homeland Security is a strategic feel-good measure. It's going to be the Department of Agriculture for the 21st century. TSA: Thousands Standing Around. Just be grateful Robert Reed didn't shove that bomb up his ass.

Farewell Andy Olmsted

Major Andrew Olmsted, a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq and frequent blogger at Obsidian Wings, was killed in action on on January 3rd. He left behind a final post to be published in the event of his death. Here's an excerpt:

Soldiers cannot have the option of opting out of missions because they don't agree with them: that violates the social contract. The duly-elected American government decided to go to war in Iraq.... As a soldier, I have a duty to obey the orders of the President of the United States as long as they are Constitutional. I can no more opt out of missions I disagree with than I can ignore laws I think are improper. I do not consider it a violation of my individual rights to have gone to Iraq on orders because I raised my right hand and volunteered to join the army. Whether or not this mission was a good one, my participation in it was an affirmation of something I consider quite necessary to society. So if nothing else, I gave my life for a pretty important principle; I can (if you'll pardon the pun) live with that.
...
Sometimes going to war is the right idea. I think we've drawn that line too far in the direction of war rather than peace, but I'm a soldier and I know that sometimes you have to fight if you're to hold onto what you hold dear. But in making that decision, I believe we understate the costs of war; when we make the decision to fight, we make the decision to kill, and that means lives and families destroyed. Mine now falls into that category; the next time the question of war or peace comes up, if you knew me at least you can understand a bit more just what it is you're deciding to do, and whether or not those costs are worth it.

It is a very insightful and moving post from a self-effacing, fallen soldier. I hope you will read it.

Andy was killed by a sniper while attempting to convince suspected insurgents to surrender before he and his men opened fire. Andy is survived by his wife Amanda.

[Thanks to Cosmic Variance.]

Don't Put This on the Troops

The attitude that the general public has toward our warfighters (soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines) today seems overwhelmingly positive. You hear about spontaneous applause for them in airports, they are constantly being thanked for their service by strangers, and "Support Our Troops" stickers are ubiquitous. All of this is outstanding, particularly when you contrast it with the heat Vietnam era warfighters took from the anti-war movement in the 60's and 70's. It was as if the warfighters themselves were being blamed, irrationally, for the war and its outcome - this even though so many were drafted. Today, it seems that the vast majority of the public able to separate a warfighter's participation in a war from an administration's decision to undertake it.

That said, when I do occasionally run across some loon who finds it necessary to hold warfighters responsible for the Iraq war, my hide gets seriously chapped.

For example, here is an excerpt from a reader comment following an interview a close friend of mine did with the Huffington Post about her experience in Iraq, her return home, and her recovery from her injuries:

SCOOPDJOUR: My nephew was wounded on his second tour of Iraq. As much as I love him, he knew, his father and mother knew, IT'S A VOLUNTEER ARMY.
I did not ask you or him to volunteer, I am and was then 100% against this war. I cannot be proud of or grateful towards glory seekers coming back wounded.

Granted, comments like this are rare, but they make me seriously angry.

Yes, we have a volunteer military. So what? Even though they volunteer, we as a nation still have a responsibility to ensure that they aren't put in harm's way unnecessarily. They don't get to pick the wars they fight in. They don't get to opt out of conflicts that they think aren't worth while. Rather, warfighters voluntarily place themselves at the service of the country for whatever conflict in which they are needed. We don't get to write off an injury or fatality because someone volunteered. We are still responsible. If anything, the fact that they volunteered only increases our duty as a nation to make sure their commitment is not abused.

Here's another comment excerpt from a different interview with a different warfighter:

NORTHSHOREDUDE: If the troops would refuse to fight and unjust and illegal war - there would be no war.... So, in the meantime, if you support the troops - you are effectively supporting the war. And don't call me a traitor - just bringing up a reasonable argument.

Again, infuriating. It just shouldn't be a warfighter's job to figure out whether the war is just or not. They have enough on their plates without having to deal with a fuzzy moral/political question. Frankly, I can't imagine the experience. I can only guess that if, for example, I were trying to defend a police station that was under siege and taking fire from the outside while simultaneously trying to subdue a prison riot that was taking place inside, all the while desperately hoping that the preparations I have made for occurrences like this are enough to keep the soldiers under my command alive, then I might not want to be bothered with the question of whether or not I did the right thing by complying with my deployment orders.

We expect so much of them as it is. They put themselves at our mercy, yet someone would suggest that we should also expect them to also be martyrs - to accept a court martial when we fail to choose our wars wisely. Infuriating!

But, like I said, these comments are rare. The people to take these positions usually get put in their place pretty quickly by more reasonable folks. Thankfully, people opposed to the war have largely figured out that the warfighters aren't to blame.

Disturbingly, the folks who are for the war seem to be moving in the opposite direction. I'm starting to see instances where the hawks attempt to paint the choice to serve the country in the military as a personal adoption of administration policy.

For example, Rush Limbaugh caused a ruckus recently when he coined the term "phony soldiers" to identify warfighters who are opposed to the Iraq war. Here's an excerpt:

CALLER 2: ...what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.

LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined --

CALLER 2: A lot of them -- the new kids, yeah.

LIMBAUGH: Well, you know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you signed up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan or somewhere.

CALLER 2: Exactly, sir.

Obviously, the "phony soldier" thing is bad, really insulting. But I'm also concerned about the view that is being pushed right after it. Supposedly, the "kids" are signing up to go to Iraq, and in Limbaugh's eyes, that means they approve of the war itself. This makes me uncomfortable because the practice of equating service with approval would seem to embolden the arguments made above about the soldiers being responsible for the conflict itself. Suppose Rush were against this war, would he feel compelled to also hold them culpable for it because they are enlisting?

In my view, the warfighters have signed up to be skilled and responsible agents of our national security, and that is enough. We can't thrust upon them the responsibilities of the President, Congress, and the public to make policy decisions. We shouldn't blame them when we think things are going wrong, and we shouldn't parade them out when we think things are going right. We should just make damned sure we're being fair to them by honoring them with a commitment equal or greater to the commitment they have given us.