Why I Won't be Voting for President Obama in 2012

I voted for President Obama in 2008. My reasons were a little different than most. Given that and one look at this chart, it should be no surprise that he won't be getting my vote in 2012.

Seriously, if McCain had won do you really think this chart would look a lot different? The withdrawal of US troops from Iraq was widely hailed, but it has been made up for by increasing troops in Afghanistan and using more private military companies (mercenaries) in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice...

War and Decision

Recently I started reading Doug Feith's War and Decision.

I say "started reading" because I have not finished it yet. The book is about how the Bush Administration and in particular the Defense Department reacted to 9/11 and managed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I have read most of the material on 9/11 and Afghanistan, but have not gone into the deeper material on Iraq.

I would highly recommend the book. Feith takes a very analytical approach that is full of insight and is though provoking. However, the book certainly has its faults. If you take the book as an extended position paper, then I would view these faults as fatal. If you take the book as a memoir, then these faults are perhaps the most valuable aspects of the narrative.

First off, Feith devotes a lot of the book to calling out statements by journalists and political opponents, and completely disproving these statements. From a literary perspective, this is easily the greatest weakness of the book. It is really beneath Feith to so painstakingly thumb his nose at detractors. How much joy can we really take in disproving pundits? This just in, journalists exaggerate and twist the truth in the quest for sensationalism...

I guess you can forgive Feith for all of this, as it must be frustrating to have to hear so many false claims in the press on a daily basis. Fine. However, the other mistake that Feith makes is not as annoying, but is in many was much worse. The funny part is that it is a mistake that, if we buy into Feith's characterizations, that his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, would have immediately pointed out. Feith claims to build up logical arguments for the decisions made by the Bush Administration, but he fails to point out the assumptions behind these decisions and their severe consequences. According to Feith, Rumsfeld was notorious for demanding to know the assumptions made by his analysts and advisors, hence the irony of Feith's prose.

The most basic and essential example of this is the reaction to the 9/11 attacks. Feith & co. immediately started thinking about how to broaden the response beyond just the perpetrators. This assumption, that the response needed to be broad, is hardly questioned. The only hand-waving given for it is that such a response would be more like a police action (punish the criminals) and thus ineffective. Justifications are only developed after the initial idea is pursued. For example, one justification is that a broad military action is the most likely way to prevent further attacks without negatively affecting the American way of life. Maybe this is true, the book is certainly thought provoking, but this justification is only developed ex post facto.

So more examples... Feith states that Iraq having WMDs was a given that everyone just accepted. He says that in late 2001 nobody would have argued that Iraq did not have WMDs. Feith also states that another given was that another 9/11-ish attack was imminent. It is not hard to see that if you start out assuming that the U.S. needed to make a broad military reaction, that Iraq had WMDs, and that devastating attacks were imminent, then you have to conclude the U.S. had to invade Iraq.

Anyways, I will reiterate that the book is good read, especially if you are an opponent of the war, as I am. Feith does admit early on that the Administration did not do a good job of communicating to the public. He underplays this (at least in the first third of the book or so, perhaps this changes.) Poor communication and an act of war have no place together in a democracy, at least in my opinion.

A Great Day ... and A Day of Infamy

Today is a great day for America, and a day of infamy. Do you want the good news or the bad news first?

The good news is that today is the beginning of the end of the Iraq War. This war has been going on for so long, and has mostly faded into the back of people's minds. This is especially true these days as people are more concerned with the economy than anything else. But let's not forget how this war started.

The Iraq War became a certainty on 9/11/2001. On that day, just hours after terrorists from Saudi Arabia killed 2,974 Americans, the US government began preparing to attack Iraq. There was only one problem. Iraq was not involved in 9/11. The US is an ally of Saudi Arabia, where the terrorists has come from, so nothing could be done there. All that could be done was to go after the leader of the al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and he was in Afghanistan. Luckily plans for attacking Afghanistan had been drawn up before 9/11. Those plans did not involve any US troops, just air support and special forces. It only took a few months to topple the Afghani government, and install drug traffickers to run Afghanistan. Given such a plan, it was not surprising that bin Laden was not found in Afghanistan.

With that little detail out of the way, it was time to move on to Iraq. But how to justify the war? We all got to learn a new term: Weapons of Mass Destructions or, in militaryspeak: WMDs. The US government produced all kinds of propaganda about Iraq and WMDs. Everything from yellowcake uranium to aluminum tubes were used to convince Americans that Iraq had The Bomb and was going to give it to terrorists who would use it on America.

And Americans believed it. Why? Are we all that stupid? Was the propaganda that good? Well maybe, but the real reason is that we wanted to believe it. We had malice in our hearts and wanted vengeance. The "victory" in Afghanistan had not satisfied this bloodlust. Maybe if we had caught bin Laden and let the NYPD beat him to death with nightsticks on primetime television (tape delayed for the west coast of course) then we would have been satiated and a little more likely to call BS when the "facts" about Iraq were presented. Who knows.

So the war began... It was definitely a more satisfying war for television views. We got Shock and Awe. We got to see huge numbers of troops marching through the desert. We got to see the statue of Saddam Hussein toppled and the American flag raised. We got to see our leader declare victory on an aircraft carrier. Good stuff. Great television.

Meanwhile there were massive casualties, but they were not the kind we cared about. They were not American casualties. They were not even Iraqi military casualties. No, the Iraqi military was virtually non-existent after years of economic sanctions against Iraq. The casualties were Iraqi civilians. Most agree that were tens of thousands, with some estimating hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens killed as a result of the war. It does not matter what the exact number is. It could have been millions of Iraqis killed, and it was still not newsworthy in the US.

However, not too long after victory was declared, the US started suffering casualties. There was a civil war going on, created by the vacuum of power left behind when the US overthrew the Iraqi government. US troops were prime targets, as Iraqi militants knew that the best way to get the US to leave their country was to kill US troops.Soldiers being killed by road side bombs is newsworthy in the US as it turns out.

The situation only got worse in Iraq, until finally in February of 2007, the US increased troop levels to support policing of Iraqi streets. Many folks, including John McCain, had been saying this was needed and should have been done before victory had been declared. After more than six months of this, the violence had only increased. In August of 2007, religious bloodshed caused the leader of one of the chief combatants, Mugtada al-Sadr, to call for a cease fire. In September of 2007, the US government claimed that violence was down by 50% and took full credit for this.

In 2008, as part of his campaign for President,Barack Obama promised to withdraw from Iraq. This was viewed as a weakness in his campaign. During debates analysts would claim that Obama was a little weak on foreign policy, but strong on the economy. The economy won out, and Obama is President. Today he announced a plan to withdraw the bulk of US forces by 2010. This is pragmatically about as fast as is possible. It's not easy to move 100,000+ troops and all of their supporting infrastructure and equipment.

This post ran long, so you'll have to wait for the bad news...

Distractions

Distractions are everywhere. Some people say that Ron Paul is a distraction. Is Sarah Palin a distraction? Or maybe it was Hurricane Gustav. I say that the economy is a distraction.

The focus of the election has become the economy. The economy is important, right? For two years in college, I actually double-majored in economics. If I wouldn't have been so lazy during my senior year, I would have a degree in it. However, it is not the most important issue in this election year, at least not to me. That distinction is still the war.

Sometimes other libertarian leaning people question me for voting for Democrats. I always say that I would rather have my economic freedoms violated than personal freedoms. In one case I am broke, in the other I am in jail. I don't want to be broke, but I really don't want to go to jail. There are worse things than jail, namely death. U.S. foreign policy has been dealing out death in a big way over the last eight years. War is worse than any economic or personal freedom violations. Of course war actually cause these violations as well.

Look at the Patriot Act. Clearly a war-time measure that is one of the most egregious violations of personal freedom in the checkered history of the United States. Look at our budget deficit and how much money we are spending on wars. Go beyond that and look at the weakness of the dollar and the problems that is causing.

If you keep looking, you'll soon notice the price you pay for gasoline. How much did gasoline cost before we started waging war in Iraq? I know better than most that correlation does not imply causality, but what do you think the price of gasoline would be today if the United States never invaded Iraq?

If we gasoline was in the $2/gallon range, the deficit was a fraction of what it is currently, and the dollar was stronger, do you think the economy would be much of an issue at all?

There is a price to pay for war. We have tried to push all of that cost to our children in the form of budget deficits, but it has not worked. We are paying it at the pump. We are paying it at the grocery store. We are paying it when we buy "cheap" goods at Wal-Mart.

War is the most important issue. The only hope for less war is to vote for Obama. I wish Obama would pull all of our troops out of Iraq and not even leave behind any bases. I am frightened that he will expand military activities in Afghanistan and maybe Pakistan. He is not a perfect choice, by far. But in the interest of Country First, he is the only responsible choice that I can make.

Remembering

I was watching a clip of Move.On's Eli Parser defending their ad against General Petraeus. He made the analogy that he wished he could have attacked then Secretary of State, General Colin Powell after Powell presented the "facts" about Iraq's WMD program to the UN just before the Iraq War started. The brought back memories of the beginning of the war.

Where Were You When?

I'll never forget where I was when the war started. I was on a JetBlue plane going to Las Vegas. I was meeting up with all my old college buddies for the opening weekend of March Madness. JetBlue was DirecTV onboard, so I got to watch CNN showing live coverage of "Shock and Awe." It was a moment that really showed what generation I belong to: flying on a plane, watching satellite television of the beginning of a war in the Middle East. 

Obligatory "I told you so" Rant

Later on that evening in Vegas, I was sitting in the coffee shop of the Monte Carlo, where we were all staying. I was talking to two of my friends about what was going on in Iraq. My stance then was simple: Give the public the real reasons for the war and maybe it is justified, but don't give false reasons. We live in a democracy, and we can't undertake the ultimate act of a nation-state, war, without honest reasons for it. My father was the veteran of three wars, and he taught me that war is the most horrible thing in the world, but sometimes it is necessary. Was Iraq necessary? There's no way to answer that question without the real reasons.

Alan Greenspan

Which brings me to Alan Greenspan. You gotta figure this guy is feeling some heat with the housing bubble (that he certainly helped create) busting all around. Talk about terrible timing, too: he just released his memoirs. Can't imagine too many of those foreclosure "victims" will be buying that. It did contain one nugget that has turned into controversy. Greenspan claimed that the "Iraq war is largely about oil." 

Wait a minute, didn't I see people in the streets of San Francisco four years ago claiming this? Of course Greenspan has changed his story, I mean clarified his statement. But it brings up an interesting what-if.

Any Reason Will Do

What if the President was honest and had said in 2003 "we need to invade Iraq to secure strategic resources vital to our economy." I'm not saying that would have been honest, though maybe Greenspan thinks it would. Would people have gone along with it? There might have been a typical red-blue divide on it, much more of a divide than we saw back in 2003, but so what? 

There was a lot of blood lust in the air because of 9/11, and that was the biggest reason why people were willing for us to go to war. Not lies from the President. Not fear of WMDs. Not thirst for oil. Nope, it was a thirst for payback that Afghanistan did not quench. Any Arabic target with any reason might have done just fine. There was probably no need for Colin Powell to lie to the UN.

The Blood on Our Hands

That's what nobody wants to admit. You can't just blame Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. We're all to blame. Look at all those Democrats who voted for the war, and who even now are reluctant to take real steps to bring it to an end. The American people would love to wash their hands of it now, but unfortunately it's not so easy. We're going to pay for this sin for a long time.

Thanks Nancy

I've been a registered Democrat since I turned 18. I voted for Bill Clinton twice, Al Gore, and John Kerry. Still, I generally disagree with the Democratic at least as often as I agree with them. That didn't stop me from being encouraged when the Democrats won control of Congress in November.

When I heard about the First 100 Hours Agenda, I wasn't overly impressed. I am definitely not a fan of raising the minimum wage or lowering student loan interest rates, for example. However, with President Bush preparing to announce his plan to increase troop levels in Iraq, I am relieved to finally see the Democrats stand up on Iraq. It's been one of the most disappointing things as a Democrat. They've been so afraid of being labeled unpatriotic or soft on terrorism that they've never gone out and demanded a withdrawal from Iraq. Granted a few Democrats have done this on their own, but the whole party. Pelosi is (supposedly) going do just that. No more "let's adopt the whatever-commissions recommendations" blah blah blah... Instead the Dems are goings to finally deliver the message their constituents have been shouting at them: "Get out of Iraq."

Election Results

There's a lot of happy Democrats these days. Tuesday's elections could not have gone much better for them. Crazybob pointed out that a big win on Tuesday was not necessarily a good thing in terms of winning in 2008. I'm generally pleased. Many libertarians like to point out that gridlock is a good thing in Washington. I'll more or less agree with that.

Of course part of me wonders why it took two years for people to realize what a terrible mistake Iraq was. That's the real difference between now and 2004, right? There are a lot more people willing to say something negative about us being in Iraq now, but in 2004 such people would be quickly labeled unpatriotic. So what's changed? It may sound glib, but I don't think most people are that bothered by the American casualties and they certainly don't give a damn about the Iraqi casualties. So I guess the main reasons are just the general lack of progress and probably more importantly, the fading of the blood lust inspired by 9/11.