CJCS no help in US future security

I love Obama but I hope he doesn't place much power in the hand of Admiral Mullen.

Admiral Mullen’s release of the U.S. national security strategy update in the form of his “CJCS Guidance for 2008-2009” fails America by promoting the three same “inter-related strategic priorities for our military” that got us into the current freedom, prosperity and security deficit.
Mullen says “First, we must increase stability and defend our vital interests in the broader Middle East”. As if supporting Iraq’s, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan’s status quo and defending our vital oil interests before 9-11 worked perfectly. “second” he says “we must reset, reconstitute, and revitalize our Armed Forces” as if having the most powerful, vital and constituted military prior to 9-11 was useful in stopping the mass murder of Americans. And “Third” he believes “we must deter conflict and be prepared to defeat foes globally by rebalancing our strategic risk”, as if deterrence worked well to prevent religious extremists from violently expressing themselves over the last few decades.
Mullen does later express the fact that military force is not sufficient to defeat terrorism but it appears his pre 9-11 thinking is more focused on the threat of China or Russia than the non state threats that actually put America’s future and our freedoms and prosperity at risk.

While he does mention the importance of increasing international cooperation US military force applications in most places have worked against such essential cooperation.
What our military needs is the moral force of protecting all human rights instead of focusing on our strategic interests.

Maverick: Another name for cowboy.

Somewhere between Andrew Bacevich’s “He told us to go Shopping” and the Washington Post news story “Standard Warfare May be Eclipsed by Nation-Building” (both in Sunday 10-5-08) lies the answer to this nation’s economic crisis, our defeat of terrorism and our future leadership in this increasingly troubled world.
If after or even before the attacks on 9-11 President Bush had asked Americans to buckle down economically and invest a small part of our relative wealth in boosting the wealth of all people in all nations via foreign aid -- instead of shopping domestically or visiting Disney world, we wouldn’t be in the world of hurt we are today.
Stability operations, nation building or ‘development’ -- whatever you want to call it -- is as vital to our economic prosperity as it is to draining the swamp of future terrorists. But, expecting the U.S. Army or the American tax payers to achieve this essential endeavor alone is futile.
After the suffering of the last great depression and the horrors of the last World War America led the world in creating a new international institution aimed at preventing war and suffering for future generations. But when we gave the UN the most aspirating objectives, we failed to give it the power or the resources to achieve them. And now we either blame the UN or ignore it when its ideals and an empowered reforms are needed most urgently.
Our next President will inherit a giant sucking sound of dollars and power leaving our still great nation. Investment in a new global marshall plan as outlined in H. Res 1078 could help prevent more costly crisis that are inevitable. Both candidates are calling for change but small change isn’t going to do it. And, H.Res 1078 proposes funding changes for nation building that won’t add to our deficit or detract from our military readiness.
On Sept. 18, 2001, when then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said "We have a choice, either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way that they live, and we chose the latter." He was dead wrong. Both presidential candidates know admit we need change. And one of them clearly articulates the change we need to make in how we relate to the rest of the world. And “maverick”? That’s just another name for cowboy.

National security vs capitalism

Dear Editor,

Frank Gaffney, Jr. accurately details the lethal dilemma in US military systems relying on “foreign suppliers” for key logistical needs, but, then states that our ‘tanker’ capabilities are “arguably one of the most important determinants of US ability to project power around the world”.

Mr. Gaffney simply doesn’t understand several other components that are far more important to protecting the lives, freedoms and prosperity of the American people.

First, our nation’s prosperity is key to maintaining any semblance of military superiority that Gaffney and others believe are the key to our nation’s survival. Yet this ‘national’ prosperity is entirely dependent upon a global capitalist system that currently has an absence of enforceable national government controls. And we can clearly see that unregulated private capital investments anywhere (U.S. Mortgage finance rules or OPEC oil supply decisions) can harm prosperity everywhere.

Second, Gaffney makes a catastrophic error in assuming military threats are the only (or even the greatest) threat we Americans face. Pandemics, climate change or natural disasters could cause far more devastation than some European country failing to join with us in executing yet another questionable war.

Third, Gaffney assumes that domestic companies will provide near perfect military systems -- yet current examples of corruption in ‘cost plus contracts’ with Halliburton or their incompetence in supplying US troops with clean water or body armor, or the repeated instances of spies within U.S. companies to providing useful information to our enemies.

Forth, there is also the military itself that provides weapons and advanced weapon systems and technology to those who are the ‘enemy of our enemy’, who will likely someday become our enemy again. Arming the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in 1980s or providing Saddam with chemical and biological weapons components as he was gassing the Kurds and Iranians before he became our enemy are just two of hundreds of such examples of such insanity.

Last, military power is not ‘one of the most important determinants” of US power projection. Our moral ideals expressed within our ‘Declaration of Independence’, our ultimate devotion to the rule of law instead of the law of force, and our innate tolerance for diversity of thought, religious belief and phenotype are far more powerful in influencing human behavior throughout the world – when we chose to practice them.

Mr. Gaffney and others like him must eventually come to grips with reality. We cannot rely on independent forces to protect us in an irreversibly and entirely interdependent world. We must either chose a globally regulated capitalism system where national sovereignty does not reign supreme, or continue retaining the faulty ideal of national sovereignty and abandon any and every aspect of an unregulated or even partially regulated global capitalist world. Trying to maintain both is truly a “ plane wreck” in the making.