A small article from The Hill caught my attention Friday evening, because it illustrates how complex the federal appropriations puzzle really is.  The Congressional Black Caucus is upset after White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel promised Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) $1.5 billion in farm disaster relief in exchange for her support of the (soon-to-be filibustered) small-business bill.  The CBC is miffed because the administration is stonewalling them on the settlement of Pigford v. Glickman:

Six members of the Congressional Black Caucus wrote to President Obama on Thursday calling on him to find a way to compensate black farmers who suffered discrimination in government loan programs during the 1980s and 1990s.
[snip]
…the administration has told black farmers it lacks the funds to pay a $1.2 billion agreement they reached with the Department of Agriculture in 1999 to settle the Pigford class-action lawsuit.
[snip]
The lawmakers say that Obama should also take administrative action to pay $3.4 billion the federal government promised to settle claims that it mismanaged Native American trust funds. Elouise Cobell is the lead plaintiff in the case against the Interior Department.

Lincoln’s $1.5 billion was originally part of the small-business bill and was later removed in a vain effort to curry Republican support.

What does this have to do with defense spending?

Read more

Iraq & Afghanistan, Congress, Defense Spending, Congressional Black Caucus (all tags)

Two months after the Senate first passed their version of the war supplemental, the House passed the final version of the bill yesterday, 308-114.  Now all that stands between the military and a delicious $37.1 billion is the stroke of President Obama’s pen, coming in the next few days.

We’ve reported on this bill twice already, tracking its progress through Congress.  

A quick recap:

The Senate version of the bill, passed May 27, contained $58.8 billion in spending, including $37.1 billion for the war, over $13 billion for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange, $5.1 billion for FEMA, and $2.9 billion for Haiti disaster relief, as well as a host of smaller expenditures.

The House then passed its version of the bill on July 1, which accepted the Senate version while adding $22.8 billion in spending fully offset by $23.5 billion in cuts and law modifications.  This included a $10 billion education jobs fund, $1 billion for youth summer jobs, $5 billion in Pell grants, $4.6 billion to settle two class-action lawsuits, and $701 million for border security.

Read more

Security Matters, Iraq & Afghanistan, Defense Spending, War supplemental, Congress (all tags)

Update 7/28/10: The House approved the war supplemental later on Tuesday by a vote of 308-114. Obey was among the nays.

As the House nears a vote on the war supplemental, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey says he will not vote for the bill.

“I would be willing to support additional war funding – provided that Congress would vote – up or down – explicitly on whether or not to continue this policy after a new National Intelligence Estimate is produced. But absent that discipline, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and say that this operation will hurt our enemies more than us.”

Since President Obama first requested $33 billion in supplemental fiscal 2010 funds for the Pentagon in February, Congress’ concerns about the war in Afghanistan have increased.  Not helping, of course, is the recent leak of over 90,000 internal military documents detailing the war… the night before the vote.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stated that despite concerns about the war in Afghanistan, members should vote for the funding bill.

“We may want to reconsider [the mission of the U.S. forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan], but the fact is those troops are there now.”

Read more

Security Matters, Defense Spending, Iraq & Afghanistan, Congress (all tags)

After weeks of intense debate, the House passed an approximately $80 billion emergency supplemental appropriations bill last night that will lend an additional $33 billion to the wars in Afghanistan in Iraq.

In the end, the vote to advance the nearly $60 billion Senate-passed measure came under a vote on the rule, an obscure process used to allow the House to vote to set the terms for debate on the bill, but not on the underlying bill.  Inside the rule, the bill was deemed passed after the rule passed.  The vote was close, but eeked by at 215-210.  The budget resolution (that isn't really a budget resolution) was included within the self-executing rule.

The House then took up five separate amendments.

(after the jump)

Read more

Iraq & Afghanistan, Security Matters, Defense Spending, Congress (all tags)

Over the past several months, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others have urged Congress to pass a $33 billion supplemental spending request to continue funding the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  In recent weeks, the tone of the rhetoric has intensified, with Gates warning that the military may have to start doing “stupid things” if the supplemental is not passed by the upcoming July 4th recess.  Even General David Petraeus has weighed in on the issue in recent days, urging the House to pass the bill during his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

Reversing the usual pattern, the Senate passed its version of the bill on May 27, but the bill has stalled in the House, largely due to two concurrent factors:

1) Large-scale defections of Democratic representatives who do not wish to go on record as having voted for more war funding, and;
2) Republican resistance to billions in spending that has been tacked on to the bill for programs unrelated to the war.  These include aid to Haiti, other disaster relief funds, disability payments to veterans, and much more.

Congress won’t make its July 4 deadline for a conference agreement, but the House hopes to pass its version of the bill later today.  In the final scramble, the bill is changing by the hour, but as of June 30 it had ballooned to nearly $75 billion.

(Highlights of the bill after the jump)

Read more

Security Matters, Iraq & Afghanistan, war supplemental, pork, defense spending (all tags)

In an essay for the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Defense Secretary Robert Gates issues yet another welcome call for reform.  While the QDR may not exactly have been “shaped by a bracing dose of realism,” Gates does seem to be setting his priorities, one by one (very little by very little).

Yesterday in The Hill, Gordon Adams and Matthew Leatherman point out that the 2010 QDR:

… gives equal priority to every mission the Pentagon and the military want to undertake: current wars, future conventional deterrence and war-fighting, counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, stability operations, overseas presence, power projection, and homeland defense.  No mission is given lower priority. In fact, rather than change its mission planning, the Pentagon has added the new missions to the existing requirement of fighting two major wars at nearly the same time.

This is too much, and Gates seems to agree.  In Foreign Affairs, Gates argues that in the future, the U.S. will “only be as good as the effectiveness, credibility, and sustainability of its local partners” and lends credence to the Nixon Doctrine, which used military and economic assistance to resist Soviet-sponsored insurgencies without using U.S. troops.  

As we all know well today, military intervention is costly, both monetarily and morally.  Gates notes that, “The U.S. military, although resilient in spirit and magnificent in performance, is under stress and strain fighting two wars and confronting diffuse challenges around the globe.”

Read more

Security Matters, Defense Spending, FY11, Gates, Iraq & Afghanistan (all tags)

I’ve got a new article up over at the Royal United Services Institute website examining what UK defense priorities should be from an American perspective. Here’s my setup:

Looking ahead, the new US Quadrennial Defense Review released in February placed new emphasis on the non-traditional threats posed by irregular warfare, potential WMD proliferation and terrorist attacks, hybrid warfare combining high- and low-tech tactics, climate change, and the loss of shared access to the 'global commons' in air, sea, space, and cyberspace. Dependable access to these commons forms the backbone of the global order from which the UK benefits politically, economically, and militarily. Yet access to the commons is being contested today by state and non-state actors using asymmetric strategies and capabilities. The UK Ministry of Defence's recent Adaptability and Partnership Green Paper and Future Character of Conflict report offered similar assessments of a future security environment that will be contested, congested, cluttered, connected, and constrained.

To overcome these nontraditional threats, the Quadrennial Defense Review recommended rebalancing the US military to better support six key missions:

1. Defend the United States and support civil authorities at home;

2. Succeed in counterinsurgency, stability, and counterterrorism operations;
   
3. Build the security capacity of partner states;
   
4. Deter and defeat aggression in anti-access environments;
   
5. Prevent proliferation and counter weapons of mass destruction; and
   
6. Operate effectively in cyberspace.
   

Because of its historical and political comparative advantages, the UK is well-suited to orient itself toward missions 2, 3, 5, and 6.

On Mission 5, I have the following to say about UK Trident:

It is also worth noting that despite his disarmament rhetoric, President Obama seems committed to keeping the US nuclear deterrent - and by extension the nuclear umbrella protecting US allies - viable for as long as these weapons exist. For example, the Obama administration has announced plans to spend billions of dollars on refurbishment of the B61 gravity bomb, a next-generation bomber, and a successor to the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine. Such investments leave UK policymakers free to decide about Trident based on their own military and political calculations, not some misperception that the US plans to unilaterally disarm anytime soon.

Not the most inspiring analysis for arms controllers, I know, but still an important point to make in response to the “Folding our nuclear umbrella” meme.

Read more

Nukes on a Blog, Iraq & Afghanistan, New START, FY 2011 Budget Request, Trident (all tags)

When last month’s Operation Moshtarak descended upon the provincial town of Marjah, there was much justifiable skepticism amongst the policy community.  In the history of the long engagement in Afghanistan, operations designed to clear an area were common, while holding and building upon that progress was less frequently seen.  The New York Times neatly summarized the typical pattern:

For much of the past eight years, American and NATO forces have mounted other large military operations to clear towns and cities of Taliban insurgents. And then, almost invariably, they have cleared out, never leaving behind enough soldiers or police officers to hold the place on their own. And so, almost always, the Taliban returned — and, after a time, so did the American and NATO troops, to clear the place all over again. “Mowing the grass,” the soldiers and Marines derisively call it.

Moving Away from Mowing the Grass

Enter the UK’s Major General Gordon Messenger, who spoke yesterday at the New America Foundation about how to prevent a cyclical pattern of “mowing the grass” of insurgency in Afghanistan...

Read more

Iraq & Afghanistan (all tags)

The fourth of occasional postings
Guest Post by Afghanistan Ag Man

Perception is reality in Afghanistan. Anything and everything--from my appearance, to my actions, to my words--can have a positive or negative effect on our missions. In rural Afghanistan, situations may not be exactly as they appear and people may not be who they claim to be.

For example, before I left for Afghanistan in late 2009, I received a lot of advice on how to conduct myself while there. One suggestion was that I grow a beard in an effort to blend in. In Afghanistan, it is widely known that beards are a symbol of both status and wisdom.  In fact, the greyer the beard the better (alas, being only 25 years old, I was out of luck on the color, but that didn’t stop me from trying). When I left the United States, I was sporting a poorly grown, patchy beard. However, it didn’t take long working with Afghan locals and farmers before I realized that my attempts were somewhat foolish (and could perhaps have actually been counterproductive).

Let’s face it: I’m an outsider. Instead of denying this fact, I purposely wear Levi jeans, plaid shirts, and an old Tractor Supply Company hat.  Hell even if I could grow a grey beard it would not help me blend in, especially because I’m usually traveling with an entourage of camo-clad soldiers.  Not to mention it’s really hard to shave out in the field, since we’re often without showers, bathrooms, and running water.

Oddly enough, because of my appearance local Afghans find it easier to trust me. In a recent meeting I attended with the Provincial Agriculture Director and his employees, it was their opinion that I look different with "my green eyes and red face." They have seen pictures of stereotypical American farmers and I embody that picture.  To them, my appearance lends me legitimacy; it helps to convince them that I am indeed an agricultural advisor and not bent on gathering information for a secret Special Forces operation.

All of which provides a nice segue to the real purpose of this post.  Since arriving in Afghanistan I’ve become more attune both to what I think are ill-placed efforts on the part of some foreign civilians to blend in to the local communities and villages by simply growing a beard, and the hostility with which some Afghans still view U.S. military personnel.  A large part of my job is to build trust with local farmers and to work with them and Afghan ministry officials to identify and find solutions to agricultural and development problems. Yet while protocols do not allow me to travel the country without US and/or ISAF escorts, the fact that I am embedded with military personnel does not necessarily mean that my aid has become "militarized"…  

Read more

Iraq & Afghanistan (all tags)

The International Security Assistance Force – otherwise known as the American-led NATO force in Afghanistan – launched Operation Moshtarak in the Helmand province last week.  The largest military operation in Afghanistan since the initial invasion in 2001, Operation Moshtarak is the debut of ISAF’s new “civilian-friendly” attitude.

NATO announced that their new strategy was to center on protecting civilians and building up local support rather than focusing predominately on pursuing insurgent militants without explicit consideration for the largely non-combatant populations in which they take refuge.

However, the strategy has proven messier to implement than the military’s rhetoric suggested.  In Marjah, civilians have been used as human shields, while the economic and social infrastructure of the town has been riddled with bullets and laced with improvised explosive devices.  The Associated Press reported that:

Shops were riddled with bullet holes. Grocery stores and fruit stalls had been left standing open, hastily deserted by their owners. White metal fences marked off areas that had not yet been cleared of bombs.

Avoiding negative impacts on civilians during a massive urban operation is impossible, it seems.

However, while an explicit effort to minimize civilian casualties is to be lauded, General McCrystal’s strategy seems to have wholly neglected the displacement of civilians that his operation has caused.  For instance, General McCrystal rapidly apologized to President Karzai after a NATO airstrike today killed at least 27 civilians – most, if not all, of whom were women and children– but has been silent on the forced internal migration that the operation has caused.

Read more

Iraq & Afghanistan (all tags)