Romanian party ships

It's funny when The Corner devolves into infighting. This case is KLo's blathering about the problems of porn on military bases "bears scrutiny." Lisa Schiffren talks some sense, and gets into some interesting cases of supplying "R&R" for the troops in the First Gulf War.

Back in 1991, during Desert Storm, I worked at the Pentagon. I was, at first, taken aback to see routine message traffic cross my desk discussing explicitly the logistical arrangements for "R&R" for the troops. How were the boys at bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and how were they going to get action? The problem, I still recall, was that the normal ports of call in nearby Africa were having problems with AIDS, which was still newish. Whichever country was the traditional port was very miffed at losing the business, because those soldiers at the bars and brothels were a big source of hard currency. Almost anywhere in a reasonable distance was under the sway of the mullahs. I bet you're wondering how the military solved this problem. My recollection is a little hazy, since this was something I followed mainly for entertainment (as did my Special Ops colleagues). But I believe the government of Romania made an offer. Eastern Europe was just emerging from the Soviet boot, and a bunch of those countries really wanted the business. Romania was judged to have better resort infrastructure than most. And I also believe that one of the less religious Gulf emirates decided that it would allow a few huge "party ships" to dock just offshore. I suppose we transported our troops to Romania. I don't know who brought the hookers to the ships. Everyone winked and nodded, and the troops carried on.

It's continually hilarious how Republicans bleat about moral problems, then create situations that exacerbate the things they fear. Of course, this allows them to increase their outraged cries of moral crisis, which then helps get them re-elected. Nice racket they have there.

Beauchamp lesson plan

A comparative occupations course would do well to consider the unique problems of occupation in a media age. Media policy and control have always been useful in war, but today in Iraq they present doubled difficulty. Each soldier can also be a reporter -- sometimes without knowing it, simply through their cameraphones. The Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair of 2007 is a natural case study for this problem. This is my effort at a comprehensive link collection to guide a student through the affair using the original documents.

The initial TNR piece ("Shock Troops") was a war story out of occupied Iraq in which the pseudonymous narrator and other soldiers make mean-spirited comedy out of the tragedy surrounding them. A roundup post at Obsidian Wings chronicles the outrage that ensued. (TNR links are tricky; I tried to get stable ones. If they fail over time, check the issues for July-August, October, December 2007.) The roundup is two weeks after publication, and Thomas has just revealed himself as a soldier... The right had at first denied his very existence, as they had with Iraqi police captain Jamil Hussein.

In the middle phase, as Private Thomas' story is challenged in the media and by the Army, some left-academic blogs revealed a connection between this single incident and the larger context of the right's "One Endless Rathergate". (Jon Swift provided a comprehensive roundup of winger crybabiness).

To get a flavor of the venom slung during the exchanges, you have to go into the original red-side posts. Glen later chronicled the National Review and respectable-right media's reactions (in the context of wondering why they were later excusing plagiarism in their own ranks.) Example:

They repeatedly posted one self-righteous attack on TNR after the next over what they insisted was TNR's reckless, even deliberate, deceit. They re-printed a vicious anti-TNR rant by Charles Krauthammer, first published in The Washington Post, in which Krauthammer accused TNR of publishing the Beauchamp stories only because "it fits perfectly into the most virulent narrative of the antiwar Left."

For the intelligent left, some of the comments on threads like these are just gold. It's an amazing new world when there is so much expertise on so many subjects available for exchange. One former military guy expresses what's been my take all along (without the real-world cred to back it up, but hey, I read a lot):

Having spent 22 years in the Army, I can say with some emphasis that there is almost nothing that most privates, and NOTHING that some privates, won't do, including incredibly stupid, hitting-self-in-head-with-hammer type of things. So the idea that this stuff didn't happen because "they wouldn't do it"? don't make me laugh.

And remember, you're talking about a bunch of 19-year-old guys with guns in a pretty much broken down Third World country. If your squad leader/PSG/1SG are weak, bored, stupid or distracted? Let the fun begin!

There's an epilogue to the affair in which the Army puts STB on lockdown, conducts a bunch of interviews and concludes that they cannot verify the stories -- on which they are pronounced an illegitimate leftist plot... by the supposedly left-leaning TNR.

TNR did their investigation, the story held up. Their statement in the August 2 issue had a revealing last bit:

Although we place great weight on the corroborations we have received, we wished to know more. But, late last week, the Army began its own investigation, short-circuiting our efforts. Beauchamp had his cell-phone and computer taken away and is currently unable to speak to even his family. His fellow soldiers no longer feel comfortable communicating with reporters.

They followed this up with a "Scott Beauchamp Update" in October as this thing was still going on. It underscores the broader significance of the episode for the manipulation of the media by an unchecked executive fighting a counterinsurgency in a media age.

The New Republic is deeply frustrated by the Army’s behavior. TNR has endeavored with good faith to discover whether Beauchamp’s article contained inaccuracies and has repeatedly requested that the Army provide us with documentary evidence that it was fabricated or embellished. Instead of doing this, the Army leaked selective parts of the record—including a conversation that Beauchamp had with his lawyer—continuing a months-long pattern by which the Army has leaked information and misinformation to conservative bloggers while failing to help us with simple requests for documents.

Glen Greenwald wrote on the Army's selective leaking of documents to right-wing bloggers (while they at the same time withheld them from TNR's FOIA request), a move right out of the Bush administration playbook. Glen fears that the Army under Petraeus is getting as politicized as everything else under Bush's influence.

A few days later Glen received "a bizzare, unsolicited email" from Petraeus' spokesman. (He's posted the full text here.) But Glen noted that this was no refutation:

Col. Boylan does not deny the central point of my post, because he cannot: namely, throughout the Beauchamp matter, the U.S. Army has copied almost exactly the standard model used by the Republican Party's political arm in trying to manage news for domestic consumption: namely, they deny access to the relevant information only they possess while selectively leaking it to the most extremist and partisan elements of the right-wing noise machine: in this case, the Drudge Report, Weekly Standard, and right-wing blogs.

(Another aspect of the story is the military's cooperation with right-wing bloggers in the persecution of Jamil Hussein, who is still being held without charges 1.5 years after the Malkin flying monkey brigade first fingered him as a terrorist-sympathizing reporter. The same tactics are even more effective against foreign journalists trying to operate in occupied Iraq.)

Glen concluded:

I would think Col. Boylan would have more important matters to attend to than writing me emails about how Alan Colmes is the "real talent" and how I lack the balls to go visit him in Iraq -- beginning with finding out who has been working secretly with right-wing outlets in the Beauchamp and Bilal Hussein matters, if he does not already know. The linchpin of a republic under civilian rule -- as well as faith in the armed services by a cross-section of Americans -- is an apolitical military. Like all other branches of the government intended to be apolitical, this linchpin is eroding under this administration, and that ought to be of far greater concern to Boylan and Petraeus than hurling petty insults.

Later, hilarious denials from the Colonel that he sent the email. Snotty, dismissive tone that

stands in stark contrast to the extremely eager and cooperative conduct in which they engage when passing on information to the right-wing blogs and pundits whose political views are apparently aligned with theirs. That takes us back to the first and most important point -- the U.S. military, which has an obligation to conduct itself apolitically and professionally, appears in many cases to be doing exactly the opposite.

All that's in Glen's blog linked above. John Cole posted here on the issue, highlighting the long-term danger to our democracy that this implies. Politics is being outsourced to veterans and officers who cannot be criticized, and a significant segment of the officer corps seems likely to go along with a brewing Dolchstosslegende should we ever abandon the occupation.

TNR retracted the story on a technicality -- it turned out one of the fact-checkers for it was STB's wife. According to their final account of the investigation showed, under weeks of pressure from both TNR and the Army, small cracks began to appear in the story. (Such as the fact that Iraqi driving liscences have no organ donor status about which to joke. STB admitted he added the detail as a joke.) There are real issues here about journalistic standards, but none of them touched the major points of the piece. But journalistic misdemeanors like these were a way for TNR to avoid the felony charge of treasonous reporting, to which they now tacitly pled guilty.

In the end, Army collaborated with right-wing bloggers to ruin personally and publicly an American citizen whose words could be taken as harmful to the cause of the occupation. STB's act of free speech (leaving aside, for the moment, his technical loss of constitutionally protected speech while in uniform) did not even contain political content. No political party was named, no individual politician or officer called on the carpet. No policies criticized. It was a war story -- a banal one, even, to those who have read the literature of war since 1914. But the administration well knows the anti-war and anti-occupation political consequences of showing the true face of these beasts. And so this media generation's war stories must be carefully controlled not to criticize war and occupation, but to support it.

True believers of the Army line consigned Thomas himself to the category of lair and denied him any present or future in national conversation. They gained another reason to ignore unpleasant stories in the "liberal media" of which they believed TNR to be a part. And they demonstrated to soldiers on the ground that they could only speak if their words matched propaganda.

And this of course is the goal of the right-wing outrage machine: to silence real reports coming out of Iraq so that all we have to rely on is official truth. This allows them to control the message coming out of the occupation zone. They can then continue to justify the occupation by planting hopes of success and eliminating images of violence.

more reaction "shocks"

More on the Shock Troops controversy. On the one hand, it's frustrating to go through the hyper-analysis exercise every time the right wing hears something it doesn't like (see Crooked Timber's "One Endless Rathergate", and Jon Swift's comprehensive roundup of winger crybabiness).

On another hand, such controversies occasion really interesting bits of writing, like this one from a semiotics professor who sees in "Thomas"s prose style a poseur type of wanna-be bad boy who evidently infests MFA programs.

And some of the comments on threads like these are just gold. It's an amazing new world when there is so much expertise on so many subjects available for exchange.

One former military guy expresses what's been my take all along (without the real-world cred to back it up, but hey, I read a lot):

Having spent 22 years in the Army, I can say with some emphasis that there is almost nothing that most privates, and NOTHING that some privates, won't do, including incredibly stupid, hitting-self-in-head-with-hammer type of things. So the idea that this stuff didn't happen because "they wouldn't do it"? don't make me laugh.

And remember, you're talking about a bunch of 19-year-old guys with guns in a pretty much broken down Third World country. If your squad leader/PSG/1SG are weak, bored, stupid or distracted? Let the fun begin!

"Shock Troops", "Scott Thomas", and war reporting comtroversies

So TNR publishes a piece called "Shock Troops" by a "Scott Thomas", who writes about all the terrible things he and his buddies did over in Iraq. Another entry in the 'war is hell' genre, with a heavy dose of self-reflection on the implications for one's morality, sanity, etc. (Point #1: this is a great bit of soldier storytelling, whether fiction, semifiction, or nonfiction is hard to tell.)

Needless to say, the warbloggers are not pleased. They call it a made-up hack job whose purpose s to smear the troops. Now the "Thomas" has revealed himself as Scott Thomas Beauchamp, real soldier and aspiring writer, they find other ways to ignore reality. That's what they do best. (Point #2: the story is the latest exhibit of the right blogosphere's descent into cultural combat straight out of Weimar.)

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has the best piece I've read on the controversy surrounding the story. He connects it to a video he saw once of college students abusing baboons they were supposed to be experimenting on:

I saw not only cruelty to animals, but also a profound failure on the part of the professors who should have been there to prevent this sort of thing from happening. .... [A]nyone who puts a student in a morally dangerous situation like this has an obligation to try to see that they get out of it without moral injury. But no one did that for these students. They were left to find their way on their own. And that's just wrong.

(Point #3: the story itself, whether true or not, reflects the condition of the military as designed by Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Lack of leadership at the top creates atrocities at the bottom.)

(Link to the original story itself will have to wait until TNR gets its shit sorted out with my subscription. Starting to hate their customer service as much as their increasing illiberalism.)

sick and wrong

video of American soldiers in Iraq taunting kids with bottles of clean water. one to pair with the "Humvee Traffic Driving in Baghdad"

Now let's get out there and win those hearts and minds!!

Rethinking the War

Sullivan's change of heart continues... this edition, based on the recent survey on how our military morals have been flushed down the crapper.

He cites a WashPost story on psychological stress in the military:

"A considerable number of Soldiers and Marines are conducting combat operations everyday of the week, 10-12 hours per day seven days a week for months on end," wrote Col. Carl Castro and Maj. Dennis McGurk, both psychologists. "At no time in our military history have Soldiers or Marines been required to serve on the front line in any war for a period of 6-7 months."

And this is what transforms ordinary soldiers into torturers and killers. As wrong as Sully was in supporting the war initially, to his credit he has come around ever since the Abu Ghraib pics laid bare how we are losing our soul in this war. And in the long term, this damages us and our security in a very real way:

This is why the Iraq war, so far, must be seen as a huge al Qaeda propaganda victory. Their narrative is that Muslims are under siege by an evil, imperialist, infidel army that tortures and abuses Muslims at will. Before Iraq, this was an absurdity. After Iraq, less so. Iraq has helped sustain al Qaeda's narrative with imagery and violence that will always stain the image of America in the Middle East.

longer tours and solderis' mental health

Firedoglake description of a Pentagon report on soldiers' mental health. (Note that the report's release was delayed from November, so that it wouldn't impact the election of Bush's surge plan.) Links to an Editor & Publisher summary of the findings, which include:

• Only 47 percent of the soldiers and 38 percent of Marines said noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect.

• About a third of troops said they had insulted or cursed at civilians in their presence.

• About 10 percent of soldiers and Marines reported mistreating civilians or damaging property when it was not necessary. Mistreatment includes hitting or kicking a civilian.

• Forty-four percent of Marines and 41 percent of soldiers said torture should be allowed to save the life of a soldier or Marine.

• Thirty-nine percent of Marines and 36 percent of soldiers said torture should be allowed to gather important information from insurgents.

And so the once-vaunted morality of the American military takes another step down. Thanks Bush and Rummy!! You've turned us into murdering torturers like everyone else.

One of the biggest problems here is that longer tours lead to increased stress, which then warps attitudes.

The study team said shorter deployments or longer intervals between deployments would give soldiers and Marines a better chance “to reset mentally” before returning to combat. The Pentagon last month announced a policy that extends tours of duty for all active duty Army troops from a year to 15 months. Pollock acknowledged that was “going to be a stress” on troops.

Marine tours are seven months, one likely reason that soldier morale was lower than Marine morale, she said.

Pike contrasted Iraq’s campaign to World War I, saying: “The trenches were pretty stressful, but a unit would only be up at the front for a few months and then get rotated to the rear. There’s no rear in Iraq; you’re subject to combat stress for your entire tour.”

So the Iraq War is more stressful to the troops than WWI!?!? Jeezus.

Cleanliness and Godliness

I better stop reading these Sandbox posts before I lose the entire workday. Another fascinating one in which the author talks to his Afghani translator friend and reveals that he blogs about him. They talk about many crazy things, including that his friend shaves his armpits and groin on Friday to stay clean, because the world will end on a Friday.

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/2007/04/cleanliness_and.html

The Termite Mound

Blog post at The Sandbox - Doonesbury's military blog for soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. This one describes conditions at a combat outpost in baghdad - very WWI-like conditions it seems.

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/2007/04/the_termite_mou.html

Ends with news coming down that DoD has unilaterally extended rotations to 15 months... they find out through Yahoo news, not from the military itself. And they know some of them will die because of that decision.