[1575] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: SIN
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Presley H Cannady)
Wed Oct 20 11:49:20 2004
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:48:17 -0400
From: Presley H Cannady <revprez@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <2aec938104102007247f1d8041@mail.gmail.com>
Quoting "Pius A. Uzamere II" <pius.uzamere@gmail.com>:
>
>
> Hehe, just marginally?
Yes, just marginally. You can do the math yourself.
Go to the Report on Allied Contribution on the Common Defense, check out
Selected Indicators (C-2). Here's the URL.
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/allied_contrib2003/C-2.html
The first thing you should notice is the only non-Arab fighting member of the
First Gulf War Coalition that is not participating today is France. Either
way, if you use this data just do a back of the enveloped high end estimate of
the force that *should* be available for the mission in Iraq, you'll end up
with an American force burden of 70% and a reserve of between 40,000 and 50,000
troops. In reality, it's gonna be noticably less than that (because, if you
recalculate C-3 to mind the Coalition, the American strategic mobility burden
is something like 84%). In actuality, the American ground combat capability
share in Iraq is somewhere around 84%, and non-US Coalition members have
provided 28,600 troops. If you think France can add a good deal more, remember
they still don't have 50,000 readily deployable troops and 33,000 are already
committed to missions both France and the US consider to further important
national interests.
So I expect that Kerry could probably up the Coalition count by 10,000 more
troops, but 10,000 more troops isn't going to do anything. That leaves over
means of supporting the Coalition. Is he going to raise more money? Doubtful.
Once again, take out Arab money expended on the First Gulf War (which was
primarily spent to stand up the defense of Saudi Arabia), you've only got $21
billion (adjusted for inflation) in financial contributions. That was with a
war where you had a UN Security Council resolution authorizing lethal action.
The Bush Administration has pulled that much in today, plus we've got debt
relief and restructuring. You may say the money's only been pledged but it
took a full year in a half to collect the receipts in 1991.
What about supporting operations out of theater? First and foremost, every
country that explicitly refused direct requests to join in the Coalition in
Iraq is commiting troops to Afghanistan. The American IC still cooperates on
intelligence matters with DGSE and ANBw, as well as far more services around
the globe. Kerry promised in the first debate he was going to get the
Jordanians involved in training Iraqi troops. Guess what? ING units have been
training and standing up in Jordan since last year.
That leaves our public image around the world, and there the Pew data is clear.
Under this President the US has seen its image tank in Europe, although that's
quickly abating and Americans are now viewed favorably at least by a majority
of Britons. Our image in the threat area is also in the gutter, but Bush
didn't start that trend or even lead Americans below 50%--that began and tanked
under Clinton. But saying "we need better public diplomacy" be better? It
couldn't hurt. But public diplomacy, despite the ridiculous assertion to the
contrary in the DNC platform, is not articulating a strategy for winning the
war against militant Islam.
> I don't know which is more amazing -- how
> quickly Bush used up the Clinton-built budget surplus or how quickly
> Bush burnt the Clinton-built surplus of foreign goodwill the United
> States had amassed over the previous 8 years.
Clinton-built surpluses? Don't make me laugh. For one, it was a $200 billion
dollar surplus--that was money on hand. And money gets spent when you're at
war. Or are we going to complain that FDR was running up a 120% debt-to-GDP
ratio fighting not only Japan, which only wanted American acquiesance to its
Greater East-Asia Coprosperity Sphere--but waging war against a country that
never attacked us--Germany. Hell, before OIF we had better cause to go to war
with Hussein than we did with Germany when WWII kicked off.
And a surplus of foreign good will? What good will? Where? Western Europe
where it buys you nothing? Let's face it, when we talk about the threat of
poor public diplomacy we're talking about the Middle East, and CLinton never
built a resevoir of goodwill in that region. Has the President expended
foreign political capital in the way he's fought the War on Terror. He sure
did, but that has to be weighed against the cost of not acting as Bush has. If
we were to listen to Kerry (Kerry today, not Kerry in 20002), we'd be talking
about 500 tons of stockpiles we don't even know exists is not good enough
reason to go to war. The Americans would have withdrawn forces (but cause you
can't sustain a MTW posture for very long), and we'd have seen a repeat of
November 1997 and February 1998, only this time UNMOVIC wouldn't be followed up
by a new initiative and Hussein would've effective collapsed sanctions. And as
we know from the Duelfer report, Hussein could've spun up his WMD arsenal
within a matter of months.
If Bush has been a failure at anything as a President, it's been his inability
to remind people of what happened not more than six or seven years ago and his
willingness to let people who should know better--like Kerry, Wesley Clark, and
others--lie by omission to further their cheap political aims.
> Either way you slice
> it, we've got a big hole to dig ourselves out of. I plan on starting
> now by voting for John Kerry.
You know, voting for a major US strategic defeat in the Middle East is not a way
to start digging out of that hole (I'd call it the trough of a very trying but
necessary experience). And let's not kid ourselves, that's what Kerry's
talking about. His exit strategy is to use the January elections to start
moving troops out--even if it is premature. Anything short of the Bush
Administration Iraq political transformation endstate will lead to American
defeat in the desert. And that imposes far more costs consequences than a
hundred billion dollars and the lowest casualty rate in American MTW-SASO
history. It leaves Iran free to do what it wants in the region for years and a
nuclear-armed Russia dangerously exposed to militant Islamists on its southern
flank.
A vote for Kerry may not be a vote for the devil, but it is a vote for who will
be the worst Commander-in-Chief since James Buchanan and the worst defender of
the free world since Lyndon B. Johnson.
Rev Prez
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