Page 1 of 2 Handicapping the global field
By Tom Engelhardt
You can't turn on the TV news or pick up a paper these days without stumbling
across the latest political poll and the pros explaining how to parse it, or
some set of commentators, pundits, and reporters placing their bets on the
midterm elections. The media, of course, love a political horse race and, as
those 2010 midterms grow ever closer, you can easily feel like you're not
catching the news but visiting an off-track betting parlor.
Fortified by rounds of new polls and all those talking heads calibrating and
recalibrating prospective winners and losers, seats "leaning Democratic" and
"leaning Republican", the election season has essentially become an endless
handicapping session. This is how American politics is now framed - as a
months- or years-long serial election for which November 2 is a kind of
hangover. Then, only weeks after the results are in, the next set of polls will
be out and election 2012, the Big Show, will be on the agenda with all the
regular handicappers starting to gather at all the usual places.
Doesn't it strike you as odd, though, that this mania for handicapping remains
so parochially electoral? After all, it could be applied to so many things,
including the state of the world at large as seen from Washington. So consider
this my one-man tip sheet on what you could think of as the global midterms,
focused on prospective winners and losers, as well as those "on the cusp,"
including crucial countries and key personalities.
Prospective winners Osama bin Laden: Who woulda thunk it? More than nine years after
9/11, Osama bin Laden and his number two compadre, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are
believed to be alive, well, and living comfortably in the Pakistani borderlands
with not a cave in sight, according to the best guesstimate of a "NATO official
who has day-to-day responsibility for the war in Afghanistan."
With the globe's "sole superpower" eternally on his trail - admittedly, the
George W Bush administration took a few years off from the "hunt" to crash and
burn in Iraq - he's a prospective global winner just for staying alive.
But before we close the books on him, he gets extra points for a singular
accomplishment: with modest funds and a few thousand ragtag masked recruits,
swinging on monkey bars and clambering over obstacles in "camps" in
Afghanistan, he managed to lure the United States into two financially
disastrous, inconclusive wars, one in its eighth year, the other in its tenth.
To give credit where it's due, he had help from the Bush administration with
its dominatrix-like global fantasies. Still, it's not often that someone can
make his dreams your nightmares on such a scale.
The Taliban: Here's another crew heading toward the winner's
circle after yet another typically fraud-wracked Afghan parliamentary election
conferring even less legitimacy on President Hamid Karzai's toothless
government in Kabul. Think of the Taliban as the miracle story of the global
backlands, the phoenix of extreme Islamic fundamentalist movements.
After all, in November 2001, when the Taliban were swept out of Kabul, the
movement couldn't have been more thoroughly discredited. Afghans were generally
sick of their harsh rule and abusive ways and, if reports can be believed,
relieved, even overjoyed, to be rid of them (whatever Afghans thought about
their country being invaded). But when night fell in perhaps 2005-2006, they
were back, retooled and remarkably effective.
And it's only gotten worse (or, from the Taliban point of view, better) ever
since. Yes, they are now getting pounded by a heightened American bombing
campaign, a special operations night-raids-and-assassination campaign, and
pressure from newly surging US forces in the southern part of the country.
Nonetheless, as the Wall Street Journal reported recently, they are achieving
some remarkable successes in northern Afghanistan.
After all, the Taliban had always been considered a Pashtun tribal movement and
while there are Pashtuns in the north, they are a distinct minority. The
Journal nonetheless reports: "The insurgency is now drawing ethnic Uzbeks,
Tajiks, and other minorities previously seen as unsympathetic to the rebel
cause."
If, more than nine years later, the Taliban - the Taliban! - are attracting
groups that theoretically loathe it, have few cultural affinities with it, and
long fought or opposed it, then you know that the American campaign in
Afghanistan has hit its nadir. Thanks to us and our man in Kabul, the Taliban
is increasingly the fallback position, the lesser of two disasters, for Afghan
nationalists. This helps explain why more than US$27 billion dollars in
American training funds hasn't produced an Afghan military or police force
capable of or willing to fight, while Taliban guerrillas, lacking such aid,
fight fiercely anyway.
Iran (in Iraq): Remember that old witticism of the neo-cons of
the ascendant Bush moment back in 2003: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real
men want to go to Tehran"? Well, it's turned out to be truer than they ever
imagined. Just recently, for instance, Iraq's caretaker prime minister, Nuri
al-Maliki, went to Tehran to try to hammer out a deal to keep his position (see
Sadr, Muqtada al-, below).
It's undeniable that Iran, a moderate-sized regional power the Bush
administration expected to crush and instead found itself struggling with by
proxy in Iraq for years, now has a preponderant position of influence there.
Despite so many billions of dollars and American lives, not to speak of years
of covert destabilization campaigns aimed at Iran, Tehran seems to have
outmaneuvered Washington in Baghdad (and perhaps in Lebanon as well). Call that
an on-going win against the odds.
China: Here's the bad news when it comes to China - a weak third
quarter dropped the growth rate for its gross domestic product to 9.6%. Yep,
you read that right: only 9.6% (down from 10.3% in the second quarter). For
comparison, the US rate of growth leaped from 1.7% in the second quarter to
2.3% in the third quarter, with some experts predicting no growth or even
shrinkage by year's end. Make no mistake, China has its lurking problems,
including an overheating urban real-estate market verging on bubbledom (which,
post-2008, should cause any leadership to shudder) and tens of millions of
peasants left in dismal poverty in the long decades when "to get rich" was
"glorious".
Still, the country has managed to pass Japan for number two
global-economic-power status, to corner a startling range of future
global-energy reserves so that its economy can drink deep for decades to come,
and to forge a front-running position in various renewable-energy fields. Its
leaders have accomplished all this thanks to economic muscle, diplomacy, and
cash (think: bribes) without sending its soldiers abroad or fighting a war (or
even a skirmish) overseas.
They have even learned how to be thoroughly belligerent while relying only on
economic power. Check out, for instance, the over-the-top way they crushed
Japan in a recent stand-off over a Chinese trawler captain in Japanese custody,
wielding only the threat to withhold rare-earth metals (necessary to various
advanced industrial processes), 95%-97% of which are, at the moment, produced
by China. We're definitely talking global winner here.
Drone makers: If America's wars are eternal field laboratories
for new weaponry, then the grand winners of the latest round of wars are the
drone makers. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the jewel in the crown of
Southern California's drone industry, now employs 10,000 workers and runs
double shifts in, as W J Hennigan of the Los Angeles Times writes, a
"fast-growing business ... fueled by Pentagon spending - at least $20 billion
since 2001 - and billions more chipped in by the CIA and Congress". Washington
has been plunking down more than $5 billion a year for its drone purchases, the
development of future drone technology, and the carrying out of 24/7 robot
assassination campaigns as well as a full-scale Terminator war in the Pakistani
borderlands.
These "precision" weapons are capable of taking out people, including civilians
in the vicinity, from thousands of miles away. The drones themselves - termed
by Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta "the only game in town"
when it comes to stopping al-Qaeda - turn out to be capable of settling
nothing.
For every bad guy they kill, they kill civilians as well, seeding new enemies
in what is essentially a war to create future terrorists. But that hardly
matters. Terminator wars are hot and the drone, as a product, is definitely a
global winner. Not only are American companies starting to export the craft to
allies willing to pay in global hotspots, but other countries are lining up to
create drone industries of their own. Expect the friendly skies to continue to
fill.
Muqtada al-Sadr: Here's a heartwarming winner's circle story
about a highly experienced political operator, still known in the US press as
the "anti-American cleric" who just couldn't be kept down. Muqtada led an armed
Shi'ite movement of the poor in Iraq that, in 2004, actively fought US forces
to a draw in the old city of Najaf. He himself was hunted by the US military
and, at one point during the years when Washington ruled in Baghdad, warrants
were even put out for his arrest in a murder case.
Still, the guy survived, as did his movement, armed and then un- (or less)
armed. In 2007, he packed his bags and moved to the safety of neighboring Iran
to "study" and move up in Shi'ite clerical ranks. In the most recent Iraqi
elections, now seven months past, for a parliament that has yet to meet, his
movement won more than 10% of the vote and with that he was declared a
"kingmaker".
He has always unwaveringly called for a full American withdrawal from his
country. Now, with the potential power to return Maliki (for whom he has no
love) to the prime ministership, he is evidently insisting that Washington
retain not a single future base in Iraq - and the Obama administration is
twitching with discomfort.
General Stanley McChrystal: And here's another heartwarming
winner's circle story. Once upon a time, McChrystal was essentially the US
military's assassin-in-chief. For five years he commanded the Pentagon's
super-secret Joint Special Operations Command, which, among other things, ran
what Seymour Hersh called an "executive assassination wing" out of former vice
president Dick Cheney's office.
Then, the general was appointed Afghan War commander by Barack Obama and, under
the worst of circumstances, tried to implement his boss's textbook version of
counter-insurgency doctrine (see COIN and Petraeus, General David, below). He
actually cut back radically on the US air war in Afghanistan in an attempt to
kill far less of the civilians he was supposed to "protect" and have a better
shot at winning "hearts and minds".
The result: Utter frustration. The Taliban grew, Afghans remained miserably
unhappy, and American troops hated his new war-fighting policy that meant they
couldn't call in air support when they wanted it. He and his circle of former
special ops types flew to Paris to greet NATO allies (for whom, it seems, he
had nothing but contempt), drank hard, and vented their feelings toward the
Obama administration, all in the presence of a Rolling Stone reporter.
Next thing you know, the president has canned his war commander, putting him
momentarily in the loser's circle - and that was his good fortune. He was shown
the door out of Afghanistan before the going got worse. He is now in the
process of retooling himself via a teaching position at the Jackson Institute
for Global Affairs at Yale University as a budding leadership guru and
inspirational speaker. ("Few people can speak about leadership, teamwork, and
international affairs with as much insight as General Stanley McChrystal ...")
If you're a typical American of a certain age laid off in today's bad times,
the likelihood of getting a half-decent job is next to nil (and retraining
isn't going to help much either). On the other hand, if you begin high enough
and, say, the president of the United States axes you, all's well with the
world.
On the cusp General David Petraeus: The Great Surgifier of Baghdad and the
Seer of Kabul is now, it seems, in something of a rush. For one thing, his
fabulous 2006-2008 surge in Iraq turns out to have been for the benefit of
Iran, not Washington (see Iran in Iraq above). In addition, as members of the
Sunni Awakening movement reportedly peel off in disillusionment or disgust with
the present largely Shi'ite government and rejoin the insurgency in significant
numbers, his modest success is threatening to unravel behind him - and so is
American support for the Afghan War he now commands, according to the opinion
polls.
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