CG Estabrook
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All true and agreed. But he is part of the military order and he breaks ranks to call the wars stupid and offers several alternate views. That is something. When asked about how the US should have responded, he outlines an international police system. I assume the sort used to track down other terrorist groups as criminal conspiracies. This was the general approach during the 70s and 80s with the hijacking and bombing cases.
My main criticism, he was way too careful about how he criticized the military command and troop conduct. He should have pointed out, what we are seeing is the internal breakdown of discipline, judgment, and the military justice system from command on down. It comes from the top, the civilian side. It starts with bad political decisions that arise from even mistaken perspectives on the world. He sort of points this out and draws a parallel with Vietnam. He should have pointed out the parallel to Israel and their actions in the occupied territories.
He should have pointed out another aspect. The whole concept of counterinsurgency is a corrupted idea. It comes down to military personnel acting as a police force with no laws who are presumed to be supporting some government or creating a government that represents the interest of the people. This is an absurd contradiction. It can't be done. If a manufactured or existing government needs foreign military support, it obviously does not represent its people and their interests.
It gets worse. The foreign military gets used to shooting civilians for reasons that have nothing to do with military objectives or reality. It further devolves from there into political killings. First we have unaccountable contractors running around as para-military death squads, and then `black' operations with no political or military accountability, and now we've got drones and targeted assassinations.
No matter how you dress counterinsurgency, it usually reduces to what was depicted in Goya's Disasters of War. This goes back to Napoleon's invasion of Spain. These are all criminal activities against presumed political enemies. In other words these are the actions of unpopular criminal state.
All of that has in turn corrupted our political system. It wasn't already corrupt? Well, yes through the process of going to war in the first place. That's why I was hoping (naively or whatever) that the Obama administration would see this dangerous system and clean it up. The way to do that was obvious. Undo all the illegal, quasi-legalism that Bush erected to cover up the illegal and criminal conduct in the national security state apparatus.
I guess I was dreaming. But let's get out the documentation and make all this public. That's what you are supposed to do in a representative democracy. The same goes for all the secret bullshit going on over at the Treasury and bailouts.
The US state has undergone a phase change. It seems to me early last summer Obama had a chance to change direction because various court cases were reaching decision points. There were a lot of different ways to go about this. He could have done a clean up, by changing the internal policies and procedures of the WH, DoD, and DoJ. I was hoping he would assign AG Holder the job and let the cases against the government actions take their proper course. That course would have exposed much of this military and government wrong doing. Sooner or later much of this would be exposed in court. There would be a big stir. So Obama could have talked to Pelosi and Reid and said, set up a committee like the Church Committee and let's get this over with. He could have told the relevant cabinet, comply and don't drag this out. It was a politically smart thing to do and it would have discredited the GOP.
So that didn't happen. So here we are with another administration doing the same things for the same reasons and covering up all kinds of wrong doing. Eventually, Obama will get discredited the way Bush did.
Obama's empty postures are already exposed in the stall to close Guantanamo, the failure to charge or release several hundred prisoners who are still in limbo. If they release them, then the prisoners come back with law suits. If they charge them, the cases get thrown out, and the prisoner sues the government. There is no way out.
This stuff is really toxic. If the government refuses to hand over evidence, and appeals decisions to compel discovery, it goes up to be reviewed by SCOTUS. The ACLU has been very, very careful about how it manages these cases and the basis of the appeals. They are steering the process to make maximum gain likely, with minimum damage.
CG