Iraq and Terrorism

by hilzoy

Note to self: if I am ever put in charge of contracting out services in the Pentagon, I will require that all work come with a warranty. Especially when its malfunction could cost people their lives. I will then insist that whoever fails to take steps to make sure that malfunctions that risk injuring or killing people are fixed is immediately fired. Then I won’t have to read stories like this:

“Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.

During just one six-month period — August 2006 through January 2007 — at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.

And while the Pentagon has previously reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted in Iraq, many more have been injured, some seriously, by shocks, according to the documents. A log compiled earlier this year at one building complex in Baghdad disclosed that soldiers complained of receiving electrical shocks in their living quarters on an almost daily basis. (…)

The Army report said KBR, the Houston-based company that is responsible for providing basic services for American troops in Iraq, including housing, did its own study and found a “systemic problem” with electrical work.

But the Pentagon did little to address the issue until a Green Beret, Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Maseth, was electrocuted in January while showering. His death, caused by poor electrical grounding, drew the attention of lawmakers and Pentagon leaders after his family pushed for answers. Congress and the Pentagon’s inspector general have begun investigations, and this month senior Army officials ordered electrical inspections of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR.

“We consider this to be a very serious issue,” Chris Isleib, a Pentagon spokesman, said Thursday in an e-mail message, while declining to comment on the findings in the Army documents.”

But not serious enough to actually do anything about until the family of a dead soldier, who should by rights have had their son with them, alive, and if not, then at least be able to mourn for him in peace, were instead forced to “push for answers.” The Army ought to do right by its people, and by their families, and that means both doing what it takes to keep them alive and not forcing them to “push for answers”. It also means not telling them that he might have brought his electrocution on himself when it wasn’t true, which is despicable.

Back to the NYT:

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by hilzoy

Both Obama and McCain made major foreign policy speeches today. It’s worth reading both in their entirety. They are very interesting, and very different. Obama got at one of the most important differences here:

“Our men and women in uniform have accomplished every mission we have given them. What’s missing in our debate about Iraq – what has been missing since before the war began – is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq and its dominance of our foreign policy. This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities we could seize. This war diminishes our security, our standing in the world, our military, our economy, and the resources that we need to confront the challenges of the 21st century. By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe. (…)

Senator McCain wants to talk of our tactics in Iraq; I want to focus on a new strategy for Iraq and the wider world.”

This is exactly right. If you read the two speeches together, it’s striking how much Obama focusses on understanding our foreign policy goals not just one by one, but in terms of their relation to one another, and to our broader interests: the costs of the war in Iraq to Afghanistan, to our military, and to our broader interests; the importance of having a good Pakistan policy to Afghanistan, terrorism, and nuclear nonproliferation; the relationship of our energy policy and our alliances to each of these things.

If you look at McCain’s speech, by contrast, it does not have much strategic vision at all. (It’s worth noting that his major new proposal is to create separate Czar-ships for Iraq and Afghanistan: to separate, not to combine.) Here, as best I can tell, is what he says about the relationship between Iraq and Afghanistan:

“Senator Obama will tell you we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backwards. It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan.”

I take it that by the claim that Obama thinks “we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq”, McCain is referring to the idea that we can’t send more troops to Afghanistan until we bring some of them home from Iraq. This is, of course, true, and it’s worth asking whether McCain’s Iraq policy makes enough troops available to allow him to do what he says he wants to do in Afghanistan. He does not consider that question, as far as I can tell. And that’s the only way in which he discusses the impact those two wars have on one another.

The relationship he’s really interested in is quite different: it’s not about the effects our policies in Iraq and Afghanistan have on one another, but the idea of using what we did in Anbar province as a model for Afghanistan:

“It is by applying the tried and true principles of counter-insurgency used in the surge — which Senator Obama opposed — that we will win in Afghanistan. With the right strategy and the right forces, we can succeed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I know how to win wars. And if I’m elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory.”

McCain also notes that there are differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, and that these need to be taken into account. That’s good, since a lot of his speech consists in saying: we need to take the approach that has worked in Iraq, and use it in Afghanistan. And at times, he doesn’t take nearly enough account of those differences. For instance, he says — apparently about Pakistani tribes — that “We must strengthen local tribes in the border areas who are willing to fight the foreign terrorists there — the strategy used successfully in Anbar and elsewhere in Iraq.” But there are huge, huge disanalogies between these two cases. One is that we are, thank God, not occupying Pakistan, which means both that we have a lot less control over what’s going on and that thr tribes do not in any way have to deal with us. Another is that the Sunnis in Anbar province were facing the threat of an extremely hostile government composed of people they believed to be dedicated to their destruction, and needed our protection and support while they beefed up their militias. Nothing of the kind is true in Pakistan.

But to my mind, the most important difference between the two speeches, apart from the enormous differences in policy, is that Obama consistently relates one foreign policy goal to another, while McCain seems to view them in isolation. As for the policy differences, they’re pretty obvious. Obama:

“I strongly stand by my plan to end this war. Now, Prime Minister Maliki’s call for a timetable for the removal of U.S. forces presents a real opportunity. It comes at a time when the American general in charge of training Iraq’s Security Forces has testified that Iraq’s Army and Police will be ready to assume responsibility for Iraq’s security in 2009. Now is the time for a responsible redeployment of our combat troops that pushes Iraq’s leaders toward a political solution, rebuilds our military, and refocuses on Afghanistan and our broader security interests.

George Bush and John McCain don’t have a strategy for success in Iraq – they have a strategy for staying in Iraq. They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down. They refuse to press the Iraqis to make tough choices, and they label any timetable to redeploy our troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government – not to a terrorist enemy. Theirs is an endless focus on tactics inside Iraq, with no consideration of our strategy to face threats beyond Iraq’s borders. (…)

So let’s be clear. Senator McCain would have our troops continue to fight tour after tour of duty, and our taxpayers keep spending $10 billion a month indefinitely; I want Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future, and to reach the political accommodation necessary for long-term stability. That’s victory. That’s success. That’s what’s best for Iraq, that’s what’s best for America, and that’s why I will end this war as President.”

Exactly.

One more bit from Obama’s speech is also worth thinking about. I’ve put it below the fold.

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by hilzoy

Bill Roggio has a story today called “Released Guantanamo detainee behind March suicide truck bombing at Combat Outpost Inman in Mosul”. The bombing itself is a few months old, and got some press at the time. From the Boston Globe:

“Pentagon officials yesterday said Ajmi, who was among more than 500 former Guantanamo inmates who have been released or transferred to other countries, was a dramatic reminder of the danger in releasing those who are avowed terrorists – even to US allies who promise to ensure they will not pose a future threat.”

Several months ago, I hadn’t just read the Seton Hall report on released detainees. But now that I have, I recognized the story. It’s a bit more complicated than those Pentagon officials make it sound.

“While Justice Scalia is clearly wrong about the number of detainee recidivists, his larger point seems to be that the Government, not the courts, should be trusted with separating the sheep from the goats. However, one of the greatest ironies of the whole recidivism debate is that not a single detainee has been released as a result of habeas corpus. All recidivists have been released by the Department of Defense, which has never explained why it released such individuals to “return to waging war” against us. Any assessment of the relative strengths of judicial and political processes should be made with full awareness of the story of ISN 220 [Ajmi], who “returned to the fight” not as the result of any judicial ruling but rather because of a decision made by the political appointees at the Department of Defense who released him despite the objections of the military. (…)

The Combat Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) declared ISN 220 to be an enemy combatant. See Appendix 2. The Tribunal held that he was a “fighter for” the Taliban who engaged in “hostilities” against either the United States or its coalition partners. The Tribunal based its first finding that ISN 220 was a Taliban fighter on two incidents. First, he went AWOL from the Kuwaiti military so that he could travel to Afghanistan to participate in the Jihad. Second, the Taliban issued ISN 220 an AK-47, ammunition, and hand grenades. With respect to the latter finding, the Tribunal considered allegations of five events to conclude that ISN 220 engaged in hostilities: he admitted that he fought with the Taliban in the Bagram area of Afghanistan; the Taliban placed him in a defensive position to block the Northern alliance; he spent eight months on the front line at the Aiubi Center in Afghanistan; he participated in two or three fire fights against the Northern Alliance; and he retreated to the Tora Bora region, and was later captured while attempting to escape to Pakistan.

Less than a year after ISN 220’s CSRT, on May 11, 2005, the Administrative Review Board of the Department of Defense affirmed the CSRT assessments and decided that ISN 220 should be further detained. See Appendix 3. Even with the extraordinary redaction of the Review Board’s report, ample evidence apparently existed for these assessments and the recommendation for continued detention. Specifically, a Government memorandum prepared for the ARB identified three factors that favored continued detention for ISN 220: (1) he is a Taliban Fighter; (2) he participated in military operations against the coalition; and (3) he is committed to Jihad. Moreover, the ARB primarily relied upon two factual bases for its conclusion that ISN 220 was committed to Jihad:

1. [ISN 220] went AWOL [from the Kuwaiti military] because he wanted to participate in the jihad in Afghanistan but could not get leave from the military.

2. In Aug 2004, [ISN 220] wanted to make sure that when the case goes before the Tribunal, they know that he is a Jihadist, an enemy combatant, and that he will kill as many Americans as he possibly can. (Emphasis added). (…)

While the documents which have been released strongly suggest that ISN 220 should still be detained, there are no available records indicating why he was released or who is responsible for the release. The only thing that can be said with assurance is that, Justice Scalia to the contrary notwithstanding, no federal judge is responsible. Perhaps if the process were more transparent, such a grave mistake would not have been made.”

So: Ajmi was captured on a battlefield. He said he was there because he wanted to join the jihad. He also said that if released, he would kill as many Americans as possible. That means that the government had plenty of evidence that he was an enemy combatant, as alleged. And this evidence wasn’t somehow suspect; it was his very own statements.

All that habeas motions give a detainee is the right to ask: is the government holding me for a good reason? If the answer is ‘yes’, then the detainee goes back to jail. (That’s why there’s no problem with allowing Osama bin Laden habeas rights: there’s more than enough evidence to hold him either as an enemy combatant or on any number of straightforward criminal charges, like murder.) In Ajmi’s case, the military seems to have had excellent reasons for thinking that Ajmi was an enemy combatant. Had he been allowed to file a habeas motion, he would probably have been sent back to jail.

The only reason why he might have been released is if all the evidence against him was produced under torture. That seems unlikely, given that some of the evidence that he was an enemy combatant was his having been captured at Tora Bora. But even if that were true, it would indicate not a problem with our legal system, but with this administration’s use of torture, which defied not only basic moral norms, but also the requirements the government should have followed if it wanted to convict actual terrorists in a court of law.

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