There have been wars that Sen. McCain didn't support?

"I will not place the lives of young Americans, men and women, at risk without having a plan that has every possibility of succeeding, a way in, a way to beneficially affect the situation, and a way out, and we do not have."

The words of John McCain, opposing intervention in Bosnia. It turns out our favorite warmonger has found wars he doesn't love. I forgot that I used to like the guy. 

(Pulled this quote from Rachel Maddow's Drift.)

Bullets and Ballots: American officials still selling "progress" in Afg...

Bullets and Ballots: American officials still selling "progress" in Afg...: Mugs you can trust? It seems to be almost a historical inevitably: American military leaders and government officials cannot help them...

American officials still selling "progress" in Afghanistan

Mugs you can trust?

It seems to be almost a historical inevitably: American military leaders and government officials cannot help themselves when it comes to optimistic statements about “progress” in a war zone. We saw it in Vietnam and in Iraq; and we’re witness to it time and again concerning Afghanistan.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General John Allen are currently tasked with selling progress in a shitty situation. The Independent:

"There is pretty clear evidence that the surge has accomplished a great deal," Gen Allen told The Independent during a visit to Uruzgan province. "It has not been just a surge of military, but a surge of capacity building. The Afghan security forces have made tremendous progress and they are moving into the lead very effectively. They are having tremendous success in the battlefield and this will continue." 

Gen Allen held that many in the insurgent ranks are seeking peace. "They see their leaders safe in Pakistan while they are doing the fighting. We have seen how the process of reintegration is progressing," he said. "This time last year we had 600 to 700 going home, now this is more than 4,000."

Gen. Allen’s rosy comments seem to directly contradict other official reports. Back in February a classified US military report leaked to the press found that Afghan Taliban fighters are rather optimistic about their prospects, seeing victory as an inevitability once NATO forces withdraw. Additionally, divisions within the Taliban may not necessarily affect the overall insurgency, given the peculiarities of the AfPak region. According to The New York Times:

Secure across the border, and tightly controlled by Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies, the top Taliban leadership remains uncompromising. At the urging of their protectors in Pakistan, Taliban members say, they continue to push midlevel Taliban commanders back across the border to carry on the insurgency, which extends Pakistan’s influence in southern Afghanistan. 

The midlevel commanders have little choice but to comply, as they also depend on sanctuaries in Pakistan, where they maintain their families, say residents in Kandahar who know the Taliban well. The Taliban commander said in his interview that the field commanders would obey their orders to resume the fight, however reluctant they might be. 

In a meeting across the border in Pakistan this month, Taliban leaders ordered each commander to send four or five men back into their home areas to resume operations by planting bombs, he said. “While commanders are worried for their lives, they have to go, or at least send some people,” he said.

Internal cleavages don't necessarily mean the end of violence. In fact, a divided insurgency often produces the conditions for the escalation of violence, as competitors within guerrilla armies use violence to attract supporters and undercut leaders. Centralized guerilla movements with secure executives are better able to control violence. This may be occurring as the “neo-Taliban” – younger, more radical militants – rise within the ranks replacing slain commanders, as the Times article relates.

We should also treat this “neo-Taliban” thesis – which has been bandied about since the middle of the last decade – with some degree of skepticism as well. The internal circumstances of the Taliban, Haqqani Network, and Hizb-i-Islami are likely far more complex than the simplistic depictions created by war boosters and opponents alike for public consumption.

Gen. Allen’s comments on the success of the reintegration program are also highly problematic. Past reports have indicated that the much-vaunted program has produced uneven results and have been exploited by corrupt officials and warlords. According to the Telegraph:

New figures have now shown that over the last 18 months the "reintegration" scheme which Britain has funded with £7 million has attracted only 19 militants in Helmand province, where British troops are fighting. 

And in at least one Afghan province, the insurgents pledging to change their ways and uphold the Afghan constitution were not what they seemed, officials have disclosed. 

Some 200 insurgents in the northern province of Sar-e Pol have recently been struck off the programme, officials told The Sunday Telegraph, because checks subsequently found they were not genuine fighters but instead imposters seeking cash handouts 

The news will not surprise the scheme's sceptics who allege that Western tax-payers are being duped by criminals, the unemployed and corrupt local officials while the real fighters stay in the conflict, or only join the government temporarily… 

Around 3,000 men have joined nationwide in the past 18 months, but figures show the take-up in the southern and eastern strongholds of Taliban support, including in Helmand were Britain has been fighting for six years, has been negligible compared to that in the relatively peaceful north.

Though the program may be worthwhile in theory – Taliban soldiers must be offered an alternative to fighting if peace is to be achieved – in practice it mainly provides Western officials with convenient narrative of a breakthrough. The could produce a feedback cycle wherein officials, now believing their own bullshit, propagate ineffective measures on a broader scale until finally realizing that there's been no actual progress and we're back to square one. And still at war.

The general rosy picture painted by Allen and Crocker is further contradicted by a Defense Department report, which takes into account not simply military metrics, but the social and political factors that will determine the possibilities for a peace settlement in Afghanistan:

 “The insurgency remains a resilient and determined enemy and will likely attempt to regain lost ground and influence this spring and summer,” the department wrote in a semi-annual report sent to Congress yesterday and planned for release in Washington today. “Additionally, the Afghan government continues to face widespread corruption that limits its effectiveness and legitimacy”… 

The report cited “pervasive mistrust” as hindering U.S.- Pakistan relations and said that the Pakistan-based Haqqani network threatens a “stable political solution” in Afghanistan. 

The report, covering the six months ended March 31, recounted “significant shocks” to relations between the NATO- led coalition and the Afghan government. They included video of U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban fighters’ corpses, news that American troops inadvertently burned copies of the Koran, attacks by Afghan security personnel on coalition forces and the March killing of 17 Afghan civilians allegedly committed by a U.S. soldier.

In yet another example of war-spin, it seems that the American military is underreporting “green-on-blue” violence in Afghanistan: the military only reports incidents when NATO soldiers are killed by their purported Afghan allies. If NATO troops are merely wounded, if attacks fail to cause injuries, or if plots by Afghan soldiers and police are uncovered prior to their execution, the information is withheld from the public.

UPDATE: Michael Cohen makes two important points related to this post. First, he argues that the American focus on killing Taliban may only be serving to radicalize insurgents. Second, and in contrast to Gen. Allen's argument, Cohen points out that it is the Taliban leadership, and not the rank-and-file, that seems to be pushing for peace.

The "moderate base" is a common fallacy of research on insurgent movements which sees leaders as inherently more radical than the rank-and-file. But this "radicalism" usually applies only to ideology, as leaders tend to be more well-versed and have the time to ponder matters of political theory. However, leaders are often more "moderate" than followers when it comes to violent. Often, the rank-and-file push for action, especially when the leadership argues for nonviolent politics in pursuit of strategic goals.

Arnaldo Otegi's sentence reduced, kinda

Here’s the thing about the Spanish Government: they really don’t want an end to the Basque conflict. Without ETA’s “terrorism,” they would have to address the legitimate nationalist aspirations of roughly half of the Basque population. And, if Basque nationalism were to be disassociated from terrorism, more Basques would probably come to support self-determination. Add to this those pesky Catalan nationalists, and Spain’s got itself a real problem – one that not only affects the Spain's self-image (“Una, Grande y Libre”), but its pocketbook as well.

This partially explains why this week the Spanish judiciary threw yet another monkey wrench into the Basque peace process by "reducing" the prison sentence of Basque political leader Arnaldo Otegi by just enough so that he can't win office in the next elections in the region.

Some background first. Arnaldo Otegi is the most well-known political figure on the Basque nationalist left ("well-known" meaning "not at all known" in the US). After becoming the leader of Herri Batasuna in 1997, he was instrumental in moving the Basque left away from political violence toward nonviolent politics. For his efforts, Otegi was undermined by ETA – when it unilaterally ended the 2006 peace process through violence – and imprisoned by the state for much of the last decade. In 2009, the Spanish Audencia Nacional convicted Otegi and other political leaders of the Basque left for attempting to form a political party. Never mind the fact that the party's formation was seen by Otegi and his colleagues as a necessary step toward ending political violence in the Basque Country. From the perspective of the Spanish judiciary, the politicos were acting “in full collusion and following the directives” of ETA. And if terrorist want it, it must be terrorism. Even ending terrorism is terrorism. Such is the logic of the Spanish judiciary. It's also the logic of the United States Supreme Court.

There’s much more to “The Strange Case of Arnaldo Otegi.” But for now, this will have to suffice. Here’s a brief rundown of the man’s legal history.

Earlier this week, the Spanish High Tribunal “reduced” Otegi’s sentence of from ten to six years. Good news? Maybe. But the interesting thing isn’t the reduction, but how much of a reduction. The ruling will keep Otegi behind bars until well after the next elections in the Basque Autonomous community. This means that Otegi will not be able to become lehendakari (president of the Basque Autonomous Community) in 2013.

This is not great news for conflict resolution in the Basque Country. Since September 2010, ETA has held to its unilateral ceasefire. The Spanish judiciary responded to the ceasefire by imprisoning youth activists, pardoning police officers convicted of torture, and banning a newly formed political party that formally rejected political violence. Releasing Otegi would move the process forward with little cost, thus providing the Spanish Government with some leverage in their demands that ETA disarm and disband. By keeping Otegi behind bars, however, the judiciary has yet again validated ETA’s argument for armed struggle, i.e. that Basque separatists have no peaceful, legal means to work toward Basque self-determination.

Unsurprisingly, the Basque nationalist left has interpreted the ruling as politically motivated. According to Pernando Barrena, a longtime politico of the Basque left, the ruling “seeks to thwart the hegemony” of the Basque left in the coming elections. Clomunist Iñaki Iriondo argues that rather than undermining the political support for the Basque left, the political ruling will produce greater turnout and perhaps draw new support for the Basque Left in the 2013 elections. And Otegi, via his personal website, accused the judiciary of being “enemies of peace” and called on the Basque left to respond to the “neutralization” of his candidacy for the presidency by continuing with the Basque left post-violence strategy of electoral contention and nonviolent civil disobedience.

The idea of Arnaldo Otegi as President of the Basque Autonomous Community would be rather embarrassing for the conservative Spanish Government, which has over the last four decades portrayed the Basque conflict as one pitting an isolated and marginal terrorist organization against the majority of Basques that want to remain part of Spain. Therefore, denying Basque’s the right to self-determination is part of Spain’s “war on terror,” not the infringement of the democratic rights of a political community. Plus when you’re fighting terrorists, you get to do all kinds of undemocratic things, like banning political parties, arresting youth activists, and undoing freedoms of assembly and expression. 

If a “terrorist” like Otegi were to become lehendakari, this narrative would be undone. Democratic majorities don’t elect terrorists. Well, other than Mandela and Arafat and Kenyatta and others whom I don't feel like googling.