Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (28 page)

5
. Kim Murphy, “A Fog of Drugs and War,”
Los Angeles Times
, April 7, 2012.

6
. Richard A. Friedman, “Why Are We Drugging Our Soldiers?,”
New York Times
, April 22, 2012.

7
. Nancy Montgomery, “Reports of Family Violence, Abuse within Military Rise,”
Stars and Stripes
, July 10, 2011,
http://www.stripes.com/reports-of-family-violence-abuse-within-military-rise-1.148815
, accessed June 28, 2012; Luiza Oleszczuk, “Divorce Rate Among Afghanistan, Iraq War Vets Increases by 42 Percent,”
Christian Post
, January 2, 2012,
http://www.christianpost.com/news/divorce-rate-among-afghanistan-iraq-war-vets-hits-42-percent-66195/
, accessed June 28, 2012.

8
. Mike Nichols, “Study Shows Very High Rate of PTSD among Veterans,”
Anxiety, Panic, & Health
, July 21, 2009,
http://anxietypanichealth.com/2009/07/21/study-shows-very-high-rate-of-ptsd-among-veterans/
, accessed June 29, 2012.
PTSD
, or
post-traumatic stress disorder
, became part of the American vernacular.

9
. TBI, for traumatic brain injury, was another military acronym with which Americans became familiar. Greg Zoroya, “360,000 Veterans May Have Brain Injuries,”
USA Today
, March 5, 2009.

10
. Robert Burns, “Military Suicides Average Nearly One a Day This Year,”
Virginian-Pilot
, June 8, 2012,
http://hamptonroads.com/2012/06/military-suicides-average-nearly-one-day-year
, accessed June 28, 2012.

11
. To understand the American national identity in 1779, with its wariness of the coercive potential of the state, the place to look was the army, George Washington’s continentals mixing uneasily with various state militias. Something of that identify had survived in 1879 and even in 1979. Today it has vanished, with state troops effectively amalgamated into the regular army. Rightly or wrongly, most Americans assume that the army is politically benign; antistatists instead direct their ire at government efforts to ensure universal access to health care—an odd definition of tyranny.

12
. For details, see Andrew J. Bacevich,
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War
(New York, updated edition 2013), chap. 2.

13
. Milton Friedman, “Why Not a Volunteer Army?” December 1966,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1258&Itemid=290
, accessed September 7, 2012.

14
. Mary Louise Kelly, “Calculating the Cost of the War in Afghanistan,” National Public Radio, October 29, 2009,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114294746
, accessed September 7, 2012.

15
. Aaron Smith, “A Cost of War: Soaring Disability Benefits for Veterans,”
CNN Money
, April 27, 2012,
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/27/news/economy/veterans-disability/index.htm
, accessed September 9, 2012.

16
. Linda J. Blimes, “Current and Projected Future Costs of Caring for Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars,” June 13, 2011, Costs of War Project, costsofwar.org/sites/default/files/ … /Bilmes%20Veterans%20Costs.pdf, accessed September 9, 2012.

17
. “Petraeus Confirmation Hearings,”
Transcripts
, January 23, 2007,
http://www.cnn.com
, accessed July 2, 2012.

18
. By extension, COIN enthusiasts became known as “COINdinistas.”

19
. “Interview Col. H. R. McMaster,”
Frontline
, February 21, 2006,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/insurgency/interviews/mcmaster.html
, accessed July 2, 2012. McMaster was not the only commander to recognize the need for radically different methods. Another was Colonel Sean MacFarland. See Jim Michaels, “An Army Colonel’s Gamble Pays Off In Iraq,”
USA Today
, May 1, 2007.

20
. For a skeptical view, offered by a retired army officer who served in Baghdad during the surge, see Douglas A. Ollivant, “Countering the New Orthodoxy: Reinterpreting Counterinsurgency in Iraq,” New America Foundation, June 2011,
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/16/143832121/as-the-iraq-war-ends-reassessing-the-u-s-surge
, accessed July 2, 2012.

21
. Kimberly Kagan,
The Surge: A Military History
(New York, 2008), p. 202.

22
. Sahar Issa, “15 Die in Iraq Bombings as Nation Prepares for Arab League Summit,” March 7, 2012, McClatchy Newspapers,
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/07/v-print/141124/15-die-in-iraq-bombings-as-nation.html
, accessed July 2, 2012.

23
. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Ollivant, quoted in Greg Jaffe, “Army at Crossroads, Facing Budget Cuts, and Uncertainty About Future Role,”
Washington Post
, November 22, 2012.

24
. Victor Davis Hanson, “Winning in Afghanistan: We Have Everything but a Confident Commander in Chief,” (Lorain, Ohio)
Morning Journal
, November 6, 2009.

25
. Greg Jaffe, “In One of Final Addresses to Army, Gates Describes His Vision for Military’s Future,”
Washington Post
, February 26, 2011.

26
. William Kristol, “The Gates of Resignation,”
Weekly Standard
, March 14, 2011.

27
. John McHugh and Raymond Odierno,
2012 Army Posture: The Nation’s Force of Decisive Action
(February 2012), pp. 2, 6, 17. McHugh was serving as secretary of the army.

28
. Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, “Defense Budget Cuts Would Limit Raises and Close Bases,”
New York Times
, January 27, 2012.

29
. As General Lloyd Austin, the last U.S. commander of the Iraq War, supervised the final extraction of U.S. forces from that country, a reporter asked what advice he had for Iraqis. Austin responded, “If I were them, I would ask for help because we are the best in the world,” thereby demonstrating a remarkable absence of awareness as to what U.S. military “help” had delivered over the previous eight years. “U.S. General Sees Turbulent Future for Iraq,”
Boston Globe
, November 22, 2011.

30
. Elisabeth Bumiller, “West Point Is Divided on a War Doctrine’s Fate,”
New York Times
, May 27, 2012.

31
. David Feith, “The Warrior’s-Eye View of Afghanistan,”
Wall Street Journal
, May 12, 2012. At the end of his tenure as Pentagon chief, Robert Gates remarked, “I have learned a few things in four and a half years, and one of them is to try to stay away from loaded words like ‘winning’ and ‘losing,’” thereby capturing in a single sentence the impact of Iraq and Afghanistan on Washington’s expectations of what force could accomplish. Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, “Gates Stresses the Importance of Ties with Pakistan,”
New York Times
, June 16, 2011.

8. SMEDLEY AND FRIENDS

1
. “Smedley Butler on Interventionism,”
http://www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm
, accessed August 1, 2012.

2
. Lee Butler, “Chaining the Nuclear Beast,” October 3, 1996,
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/1996/10/03_butler_chaining.htm
, accessed August 1, 2012.

3
. Lee Butler, “University of Pittsburgh Speech,” May 13, 1999,
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/1999/05/13_butler_upitt-speech.htm
, accessed August 1, 2012.

4
.
Attack Upon Pearl Harbor by Japanese Armed Forces,
Senate Document 159, 77th Congress, 2nd Session, January 23, 1942. The damning language providing the basis for the subsequent relief of Admiral Husband Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short is found in paragraph 17 on pp. 20–21.

5
. William H. Standley, “More About Pearl Harbor,”
U.S. News and World Report
, April 16, 1954, pp. 40–46.

6
. The report of the court of inquiry to include Admiral Moorer’s endorsement is readily available online. See, for example,
http://www.ussliberty.org/ncitext.htm
.

7
. “Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on USS Liberty, the Recall of Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Ship was Under Attack, and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government,” October 22, 2003,
http://www.usslibertyinquiry.com/evidence/usreports/moorer.html
, accessed August 1, 2012.

8
. Did Dwight D. Eisenhower develop a case of Smedley’s syndrome? The case for the soldier-president as a speaker of inconvenient truths rests primarily on his Farewell Address, which identified the dangers posed by the military-industrial complex. Yet why did Ike wait until the very end of his term in office to warn of this threat to American democracy? Was it his own impending departure from public life that allowed him to recognize as a problem something that he had hitherto found tolerable?

9
. Declan Walsh, “US Had ‘Frighteningly Simplistic’ View of Afghanistan, Says McChrystal,”
Guardian
, October 7, 2011.

10
. Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,”
Rolling Stone
, July 8–22, 2010.

11
. At approximately the same time, another retired senior army officer weighed in with a thoughtful critique of the all-volunteer force. Lieutenant General (and former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan) Karl W. Eikenberry stopped short of calling for conscription. See his article “Re-Assessing the All-Volunteer Force,”
Washington Quarterly
, Winter 2013, pp. 7–24.

12
. Josh Rogin, “McChrystal: Time to Bring Back the Draft,” Foreign
Policy.com
, July 3, 2012,
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/07/03/mcchrystal_time_to_bring_back_the_draft
, accessed August 5, 2012.

9. WINNERS AND LOSERS

1
. Hammering produces beneficial side effects for those at the top. During the decade of war that followed 9/11, while U.S. forces increased only modestly in overall size, the ranks of admirals and generals swelled. See “Increase in U.S. Military Ranks from 2001 to 2011,”
http://pogoblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c68bf53ef015393c126eb970b-pi
, accessed August 30, 2012.

2
. Or at least shouldn’t. During the 2012 presidential campaign, a group styling itself “Special Ops OPSEC” and claiming to consist of former Navy SEALs launched an anti-Obama effort, charging the president with exploiting the bin Laden raid and leaking national security secrets for political advantage. See
http://opsecteam.org/index.html
, accessed August 27, 2012.

3
. For a carefully documented case study of the armaments industry, see William Hartung,
Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military Industrial Complex
(New York, 2011). One illustration of the relationship between defense contractors and members of Congress: Representative Howard “Buck” McKeon (a Republican from California) chairs the House Armed Services Committee and is an ardent supporter of big military budgets. Between 2009 and 2010, his campaign committee and political action committee together took in $116,000 from defense aerospace companies; $49,000 from defense shipbuilders; $39,000 from defense electronics contractors; and another $20,000 from “miscellaneous” defense-related firms.
Open Congress
,
http://www.opencongress.org/people/money/400267_Howard_McKeon
, accessed August 14, 2012. McKeon receives more money from Lockheed Martin than from any other single source.

4
. By 2012, the United States controlled the vast preponderance of the global arms market. Robert Dreyfuss, “U.S. Sells Three-Fourths of Worldwide Arms,”
Nation
, August 27, 2012.

5
. Also encroaching on the battlefield are increasing numbers of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) pursuing their own agendas.

6
. Michael M. O’Brien, “The ‘Military-Industrial Complex’: Revolving Door for Retired Generals,”
Warfare, Inc
., January 5, 2011,
http://americasfailureiniraq.com/2011/01/05/the-military-industrial-complex-revolving-door-of-retired-generals/
, accessed August 27, 2012.

7
. The benignly titled Knowledge International, located near Washington, D.C., offers one example. Its CEO is a retired air force officer, Daniel Monahan. Its “strategic advisory board” consists of McChrystal and two other retired four-stars plus one civilian. The company’s self-described vision is to become the “automatic partner of choice in facilitating international transactions between the United States and the United Arab Emirates.” Substantively, the transactions focus on bolstering military capabilities in the UAE and elsewhere in the Middle East. The company’s Web site at
http://www.knowledgeintllc.us/
provides details, albeit cloaked in a cloud of euphemisms.

8
. Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Transforming Wartime Contracting
(Washington, D.C., 2011), pp. 20, 24–25.

9
. Ibid., p. 5.

10
. Leo Shane III, “Report: “U.S. Wasted $60 Billion in Fraud, Abuse,”
Stars and Stripes
, August 31, 2011.

11
.
Transforming Wartime Contracting
, pp. 11, 32.

12
. Prominent accounts include Thomas C. Bruneau,
Patriots for Profit
(Palo Alto, Calif., 2011); Shawn Engbrecht,
America’s Covert Warriors
(New York, 2010); David Isenberg,
Shadow Force
(New York, 2008); Jeremy Scahill,
Blackwater
(New York, 2007); Suzanne Simons,
Master of War
(New York, 2009); and Peter Singer,
Corporate Warriors
(Ithaca, N.Y., 2004). An authoritative source on all things related to PSCs is Isenberg’s excellent Web site:
http://isenberg.securitycontracting.net/david-isenbergs-pmsc-writings/
. But see also William D. Hartung, “The Military-Industrial Complex Revisited: Shifting Patterns of Military Contracting in the Post-9/11 Period,” undated (2011), prepared under the auspices of the Brown University “Costs of War Project” and available at
http://costsofwar.org/article/growth-corporate-power-and-profiteering
.