obama - Robert Maguire on Diigo

01 Dec 09

As Obama Sends More Troops, Giant Shadow Army Of Contractors Set To Grow In Afghanistan | TPMMuckraker

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US politics reference statistics private contractors waronterror military afghanistan iraq bush obama xe blackwater

The Administration seemingly hasn't addressed the issue, and the word "contractor" doesn't appear much in media coverage -- for example, in the Times and Post stories on the escalation today.
But David Berteau, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells TPM that as Obama increases troop levels to at least 100,000, "there will definitely be an increase in the number of contractors."
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- the majority of whom are Afghan nationals, according to a Congressional study --
- Between 7% and 16% of the total are Blackwater-style private security contractors, according to various estimates.
- That includes goodwill-draining episodes like the May shooting of two Afghan civilians in Kabul by contractors working for Xe, formerly Blackwater.
- The best count we and the experts we spoke with could find is a September study by the Congressional Research Service, with numbers through June provided by the military. It notes that last December, contractors made up 69% of the DOD workforce, "the highest recorded percentage ... in any conflict in the history of the United States."
- The number of contractors in Afghanistan as of June was 73,968, compared with 55,107 troops. Of the total contractors, about 10,000 are Americans, 51,000 are locals, and roughly 12,000 are third-country nationals. Take a look at this graph from the study:
- It's not just discussions of troop levels -- which typically ignore contractors -- that obfuscate the size of the American commitment in Afghanistan. According to a powerful piece in the Los Angeles Times, almost 1,600 civilian workers have died in the Iraq and Afghan wars.
- "They're off the books and don't really count, even though you have to pay for them."
- The White House said today that each additional 10,000 troops will cost roughly $10 billion. But does that number include any increase in the contractor force? It's not clear.
- A comprehensive study of the issue by the Commission on Wartime Contracting, created by Congress in 2008, is due in the summer of 2011.

In praise of George W. Bush - James Fallows

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cheney style bush US politics decorum conservatives republicans obama attacks lies

Since the results of the 2008 election became clear, the 43rd President of the United States has behaved in a way that brings honor to him, his family, his office, and his country. By all reports he did what he could to smooth the transition to his successor, including dealing with the house-is-burning-down world financial crisis. Since leaving office he has -- like most of his predecessors in their first years out of power -- maintained a dignified distance from public controversies and let the new team have its chance. He has acted as if aware that there are national interests larger than his own possible interests in score-settling or reputational-repair.
The former vice president, Dick Cheney, has brought dishonor to himself, his office, and his country. I am not aware of a case of a former president or vice president behaving as despicably as Cheney has done in the ten months since leaving power, most recently but not exclusively with his comments to Politico about Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. (Aaron Burr might win the title, for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, but Burr was a sitting vice president at the time.) Cheney has acted as if utterly unconcerned with the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people now trying to make difficult decisions. He has put narrow score-settling interest far, far above national interest.
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- The mystery is that Cheney has been through this process before. As chief of staff in Gerald Ford's White House, he was in charge of the transition to the Jimmy Carter team after Ford narrowly lost in 1976.

What Obama Gained In Asia - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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obama china style diplomacy russia media press politics economy iran

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Bitter And Afraid - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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US politics cheney conservatives republicans law justice obama attacks waronterror afghanistan ksm trial

The former vice president, the man who imported torture into the American constitutional system, failed to capture bin Laden, invaded a country under false pretenses, allowed the Afghanistan campaign to disintegrate, and added $5 trillion to the next generation's debt burden, is attacking a sitting president on a day he announces a critical military strategy in front of his troops.
The attack on Obama is an accusation of treason:

“Here’s a guy without much experience, who campaigned against much of
what we put in place ... and who now travels around the world
apologizing,” Cheney said. “I think our adversaries — especially when
that’s preceded by a deep bow ... — see that as a sign of weakness.”

Specifically, Cheney said the Justice Department decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, in New York City is “great” for Al Qaeda.

“One of their top people will be given the opportunity — courtesy of
the United States government and the Obama administration — to have a
platform from which they can espouse this hateful ideology that they
adhere to,” he said. “I think it’s likely to give encouragement — aid
and comfort — to the enemy.”
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- If you truly use a position of such authority to show contempt for the sitting president, to accuse him of treason, to attack him on the day he addresses the nation in a critical address, to divide him from the troops, to use sacred issues of war and peace which a president is solemnly engaging as a political weapon or as a vain and self-serving attempt to make your own record look better, then you have no core respect for the institutions and traditions and civility that make a constitutional democracy possible.
- What Cheney cannot see - because he has no deep appreciation of it - is the beauty of treating a monster like KSM to the stringent calm of Western justice. And what Cheney fears - for he is no fool - is that the trial will also reveal Cheney's torture regime, how it distorted intelligence, prevented bringing suspects to justice and tarred the US for ever as a country that now does what its enemies used to do: abuse, torture and mistreat prisoners in wartime.

Matthew Yglesias » Harris’ Evidence-Free “Storytelling” Thesis

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Obama's Surprising Afghanistan Surge - Jeffrey Goldberg

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As president, I would pursue a new
strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat
brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops,
more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary
assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our
military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided
desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

Matthew Yglesias » The War

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US obama politics waronterror afghanistan war tax costs spending economy budget style taxes

I don’t think the kind of effort that as best I understand it we’re undertaking in Afghanistan meets any kind of plausible cost benefit test. At the same time, unlike conservatives who only invoke this principle opportunistically I do think it makes sense to pay attention to what military professionals have to say about operational aspects of defense policy.
I think the reaction to David Obey’s “war tax” idea is telling—nobody seems to really think there are national interests at stake that are critical enough to be worth paying slightly higher taxes for.

GOP-leaning voters support bipartisan action on energy « Climate Progress

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The Revival Of Fiscal Conservatism - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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us politics conservatives republicans bush cheney approvalrating obama economy stimulus spending

The GOP is a party that has become increasingly conservative,
particularly on fiscal issues. Obama's stimulus package of nearly $800
billion, bailouts for banks and the auto industry, and a health-care
bill with a price tag of nearly $900 billion over 10 years have aroused
strong opposition on the right.

Almost three-quarters of Republicans and GOP-leaners identify
themselves as "conservative" on most issues, up sharply from a couple
of years ago... On fiscal issues, the percentage calling themselves conservative has
soared to more than eight in 10. More striking is that a majority
considers themselves to be "very conservative" on fiscal issues, up
about 20 points in two years.
The better news is that Republican voters understand that the GOP is also responsible for the fiscal mess:

Just 1 percent pick George W. Bush as the best reflection of the
party's principles, and only a single person in the poll cites former
vice president Richard B. Cheney. About seven in 10 say Bush bears at
least "some" of the blame for the party's problems.
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- The problem, it seems to me, is that most sane people understand that offering no stimulus this year and no bank bailout and no auto industry bailout would have led to an unemployment rate far higher than we have now, and a much, much steeper recession which would have compounded the debt, not helped it. McCain could have opposed TARP in the campaign but didn't. Maybe a president could have just said: let it all collapse, it will revive soon enough. I just doubt that any actual president could ever have actually done that.
- And the base is far less interested in obstructing climate change legislation than expanding private health insurance through public subsidy. So polarization may actually decline next year if health reform passes.

In Indiana, practice for 'civilian surge' in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com

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civilian surge afghanistan US politics waronterror reference statistics indiana obama statedept dod funding counterinsurgency

When President Obama announced what the White House called a "comprehensive new strategy" for the Afghanistan war last March, he called for a "dramatic increase in our civilian effort" that included additional diplomats and experts in agriculture, education, health and rule of law sent to Kabul and to provincial reconstruction teams across the country. Despite early difficulties finding and clearing sufficient numbers of volunteers, Deputy Secretary Jacob L. Lew said during a visit to Indiana on Thursday that the State Department was "on track" to triple the number of civilians, to 974, by early next year.
U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry has asked for at least 300 more civilians over the next three years, as the number of both civilians and U.S. military troops in Afghanistan is expected to surpass those in Iraq. The 2010 Defense budget for the first time projected higher expenditures for the Afghan war than for the waning Iraq conflict; the State Department has $6 billion to spend in combined 2009 and 2010 funds.
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- Senior Pentagon officials and soldiers on the ground have repeatedly complained that promised civilians have been slow to arrive and sometimes ill-equipped for their assigned tasks. The State Department, massively outmanned and out-resourced by the military, is ever-suspicious of being overwhelmed.
- The soldiers are real. So are the Afghans -- recruited by a Virginia Beach-based defense consulting firm, the McKellar Corporation, from U.S. immigrant communities. The search began at the Bamiyan, an Afghan restaurant in Falls Church, contractor Jim McKellar said. Through word of mouth, he assembled a stable of 500 Afghan actors like Mohammed Pir Mohammad, a former Afghan diplomat who frequently plays the role of provincial governor or district official.

PolitiFact | Krugman says Bush was first president to lead country into war and cut taxes

"This is a lot of money," liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Nov. 30, 2009. "And the point is, we should have been paying for these wars to begin with, right from the beginning. I mean, this was, if you want to talk firsts for Bush, this was the first time in American history that a president took us into a war and cut taxes."
Generally, we found, taxes and wars have followed a fairly predictable pattern: taxes rise during wartime and then come back down in the years afterward.
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- We'll start with the Civil War. Congress enacted various income and excise taxes to meet the rising cost of the war, most of which were repealed in the years after the war.
  
  During World War I, the 1916 Revenue Act and the War Revenue Act of 1917 increased tax revenue from $761 million in 1916 to $3.6 billion in 1918. After the war, in the 1920s, Congress cut taxes five times.
  
  The same was true during World War II. Tax increases over several years raised revenues from $8.7 billion in 1941 to $45.2 billion in 1945. Again, tax cuts followed the war.
- It's worth noting, however, that during all of those wars, the war expenses were much larger than today, relative to the size of the economy.
- The one notable exception is the Kennedy tax cuts, which took effect in 1964. The conflict in Vietnam stretched from 1959 to 1975, but when the Kennedy tax cuts were implemented, the Vietnam War did not have much of an impact on the U.S. budget. Within 18 months, when the tax cuts were in full bloom, the United States was spending plenty in Vietnam.
- But many argue the Kennedy tax cuts shouldn't count in Krugman's example because they came at a time when the United States did not anticipate the escalation of the war that followed.
- "The Kennedy tax cuts were proposed, and then adopted by Congress, before the Vietnam war was a big expenditure item,"
- It was not until 1968 that the Johnson administration proposed the surtax to help pay for the Vietnam War. ... Still, the Vietnam era surtax went into effect within five years of major spending on that war. We are now more than eight years into the 'war on terrorism,' and we’ve had only tax reductions; no tax hikes."
- "Traditionally countries raise taxes to pay for wars, then cut taxes by a portion of the amount raised once peace descends," agreed J.D. Foster, senior fellow in the economics of fiscal policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
  
  But Foster noted two caveats. One, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 came during a jobless recovery period after a recession. And the economic stimulus package championed by Obama includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years -- also in the midst of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

30 Nov 09

How's That Iraqi Surge Faring Now, General? - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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obama afghanistan iraq surge politics US waronterror

So let's confront reality and remember exactly what the Iraq "surge" was designed to achieve when it was launched in 2007. It was designed to create a security environment in which a new Iraqi political settlement could be hammered out between the various sectarian factions. On this critical test, the surge did prevent more chaos and disintegration, largely because of a well-exploited spontaneous shift in the loyalty of several Sunni tribes.
But the vital - indeed central - task of ensuring that the minority Sunnis have a real stake in the new Iraq (central because it's the core guarantee that a civil sectarian war won't break out again) has not been accomplished.
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- In fact, recent events suggest a move backwards as the entropy of the Arab and Muslim world reasserts itself. Sectarian violence is up. Little integration of Sunnis in the largely Shiite "national" military has occurred. Core questions of Sunni representation and central issues of territory - such as the Kurdish-Arab fight over Kirkuk - remain unresolved. Lawmakers who told the Americans they were past sectarianism are stoking it again:
  Mr. Hashimi, a Sunni who told me not long ago that Iraq was now ready
  for historic reconciliation, was widely accused of acting in a purely
  sectarian way to ensure more votes for his bloc. The Parliament’s
  Shiite and Kurdish blocs promptly joined forces in last week’s session
  and, despite intense American lobbying, passed yet another election law
  that would reduce Sunni seats even more.
- Adopting legislation to knit the country together; reforming the
  Constitution; strengthening independent security forces; reconciling
  Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — all were benchmarks, and all remain
  partly or wholly unmet, despite the security gains that were supposed
  to create the space for political progress and thus peace. Instead, Iraqis treat their Constitution — like the benchmarks — the way they treat what few traffic lights operate here.
  
  “So what?” a Kurdish lawmaker, Mahmoud Othman, said when asked about
  the risk of holding the election later than the Constitution demands.
  “Nothing in Iraq is very legitimate.”
- I pray I'm wrong. Maybe Iraq will teeter away from a second implosion. Maybe the Af-Pak strategy is credible in a way Iraq's surge never was. We have yet to hear the president's explanation and we would do well to ponder his proposal as thoroughly as he has.

Quote For The Day - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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mccain economy economics mark zandi conservatives republicans 2008presidentialelections obama stimulus advisers

"The stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do—it is contributing to ending the recession. In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent,"
Mark Zandi, economics adviser to the McCain campaign. More on Zandi here.

28 Nov 09

Fox Falsely Suggests OFA Compared Palin to a Terrorist • videosift.com

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foxnews fox obama palin lies terrorism right-wing extremists conservatives republicans

27 Nov 09

From Dollars To Death Panels: How Republicans Distorted Debates On Capitol Hill | TPMDC

Number Five: Paul Ryan Draws Line On Graph
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- Number Four: Senate Health Care Bill Will Cost $2.5 Trillion
- Number Three: Republicans Try Math
- cap and trade legislation could cost the average household $3,128 a year. Too bad the author of that study claimed it was all hogwash. That didn't deter leading Republicans, including House Minority Leader John Boehner, from repeating the number over and over again until the day the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed on the House floor.
- Number Two: Inhofe Says Obama 'Gutting Our Military'
- White House's call for a modest increase in defense spending amounted to a "defense spending cut."
- Number One: Death Panels

New Obama policy bars lobbyists from federal advisory panels - washingtonpost.com

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US politics lobbying lobbyists statistics reference obama

Hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists are likely to be ejected from federal advisory panels as part of a little-noticed initiative by the Obama administration to curb K Street's influence in Washington, according to White House officials and lobbying experts.
The initiative is aimed at a system of advisory committees so vast that federal officials don't have exact numbers for its size; the most recent estimates tally nearly 1,000 panels with total membership exceeding 60,000 people.
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- Under the policy, which is being phased in over the coming months, none of the more than 13,000 lobbyists in Washington would be able to hold seats on the committees, which advise agencies on trade rules, troop levels, environmental regulations, consumer protections and thousands of other government policies.
- "It's taken me years to learn what the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is," said Robert Vastine, a lobbyist for the Coalition of Service Industries who also serves as chairman of a trade advisory board. "It's a whole different and specialized world. It is not easily obtained knowledge, and they are crippling themselves terribly by ruling out all registered lobbyists."
- 1970s, when Congress approved the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

26 Nov 09

Running the Table | Foreign Policy

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foreignpolicy US politics healthcare statistics reference palestine israel iran afghanistan bioterror waronterror pakistan obama

We need a surge in Afghanistan. It worked in Iraq!
Afghanistan is Obama's Vietnam!
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- Afghanistan will turn into an al Qaeda safe haven unless more troops are sent!
- There's no reason for the war in Afghanistan. We should pull out now!
- Israel is trying to cooperate. We should put more pressure on the Palestinians!
- The Palestinians are trying to cooperate. We should put more pressure on Israel!
- Iran
  Diplomacy is failing. We need to bomb Iran before they can build nukes!
- There’s no proof Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. What are we worried about?
- Health Care
  America has the best health care in the world!
- Every country in Europe has created a single-payer system!
- Bioterror: The risk of an accident from the U.S. bioterrorism research program is greater than the risk of a bioterror attack.
- Green China: There's a lot less than meets the eye to China's efforts to get emissions under control.
- Iran's Green Revolution: Mir Hossein Moussavi, Mohammad Khatami, and Mehdi Karroubi have less influence over the movement than you think.

25 Nov 09

Fox News - No Terrorist Attack During Bush's Presidency • videosift.com

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Last words on Obama and China | The Progressive Realist

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US politics style china obama censorship internet freedomofspeech freedomofthepress foreignpolicy

And yet... my favorite newspaper of all, the (state-controlled) China Daily, has just indicated in its November 25 edition that China's recent year-long freeze on the value of the RMB may be about to end. (Thanks to my friend Jeremy Goldkorn, of Danwei.org in Beijing, for the tip.) If Obama had "demanded" this in public, or insisted that it be announced while he was standing next to Hu Jintao in Beijing, his "toughness" might have received better one-day coverage in the U.S. press or on SNL. But the chances of his getting what he was after would be nil. Of course, the chances are still uncertain. But this was the major item on the economic-rebalancing agenda; and the Administration's argument all along was that influencing China's behavior was a long game. This news story is not conclusive but does support rather than weaken the long-game approach.
But remember the moment when Obama turned to Ambassador Jon Hunstman and said more or less, "Jon, did any questions come in via the internet?" I now have heard from enough different informed sources to be comfortable saying that the Chinese government did not know this was coming, and that the ensuing discussion about the Great Firewall was not at all according to their script. Jeremy Goldkorn adds a note about that question -- whose answer, as I mentioned earlier, has the potential to resonate within China. Goldkorn says:

"The Great FireWall question at the Shanghai town hall came directly from the blogger briefing arranged by the Embassy and consulates in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

"I attended the briefing and live tweeted it. The bloggers included Anti and Bei Feng, two of the loudest voices calling for open media in China at the moment, but also Rao Jin from AntiCNN.com. The most common question, asked several times by different bloggers, was if Obama knew about the Great FireWall and if he would do something about it."
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- Most Americans don't know about the Southern Weekend interview -- the one interview Obama gave to a Chinese publication, and not to the People's Daily or CCTV but to a Guangzhou-based paper that is famed in China for its muckraking exposes of corruption and abuse.
- It would be as if a visiting head of state passed up CBS and the NYT and spoke instead only to Frontline or Mother Jones.
- The Obama team was well aware of what their meeting with Southern Weekend would symbolize -- not necessarily to the traveling press but to the educated population of China. As the government official I have previously quoted explained to me, "We wanted to highlight an edgy, aggressive Chinese paper that has run stories that others don't run. That was meant to be a statement encouraging serious journalistic effort in China."
- the authorities then interfered with the distribution of Southern Weekend in a comicly ham-handed way. For instance, they (apparently) tore out pages containing Obama's interview from copies headed for foreign news bureaus -- but let them in for ordinary Chinese readers. The government official said, after marveling at the crudeness of the censorship, "I read a piece somewhere saying how naïve we were thinking we could get it out that way. But we did get a message out to a fair number of people. Did we expect it to be uncensored? No. But again think what the episode shows about the American government, and the Chinese."

Obama’s Umbrella Habits Set a Standard - China Real Time Report - WSJ

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US politics style china obama umbrella

He had it clasped firmly in his left hand, a large black umbrella protecting him from a downpour as he stepped off Air Force One on arrival in Shanghai on Sunday evening. In a country where officials often have flunkeys to hold their umbrellas, the image of a U.S. president keeping his own head dry was poignant. Xinhua and other prominent Chinese media all captured the moment.

Robert Maguire's Library tagged obama → View Popular

As Obama Sends More Troops, Giant Shadow Army Of Contractors Set To Grow In Afghanistan | TPMMuckraker

In praise of George W. Bush - James Fallows

What Obama Gained In Asia - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Bitter And Afraid - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Matthew Yglesias » Harris’ Evidence-Free “Storytelling” Thesis

Obama's Surprising Afghanistan Surge - Jeffrey Goldberg

Matthew Yglesias » The War

GOP-leaning voters support bipartisan action on energy « Climate Progress

The Revival Of Fiscal Conservatism - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

In Indiana, practice for 'civilian surge' in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com

PolitiFact | Krugman says Bush was first president to lead country into war and cut taxes

How's That Iraqi Surge Faring Now, General? - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Quote For The Day - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Fox Falsely Suggests OFA Compared Palin to a Terrorist • videosift.com

From Dollars To Death Panels: How Republicans Distorted Debates On Capitol Hill | TPMDC

New Obama policy bars lobbyists from federal advisory panels - washingtonpost.com

Running the Table | Foreign Policy

Fox News - No Terrorist Attack During Bush's Presidency • videosift.com

Last words on Obama and China | The Progressive Realist

Obama’s Umbrella Habits Set a Standard - China Real Time Report - WSJ

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