Korea: Funding the Mission

The Korean War, at least from the American side, was a conflict operated on a proverbial shoestring budget. To be sure, the total defense budget increased significantly during the first half of the 1950's, but those funds were directed toward strengthening defenses in Europe against a possible Soviet attack, toward defending the American homeland against strategic attack, and toward developing a strategic nuclear arsenal. The land war in Korea, or so it seemed to the soldiers fighting there, was an afterthought in terms of funding men and equipment.

Not only did the Army face a shortage of soldiers during the Korean War, but the organization of those soldiers was such that the conflict was manned largely by short-term draftees, while many experienced infantrymen were stationed in Europe. The greenness of the United States Army not only robbed combat operations of the expertise and insight which come with experience, but also created distrust when large bodies of short-term conscripts were managed by career officers. William Donnelly writes:

The Army’s manpower dilemma during the Korean War’s last two years was unlike its most serious manpower problem during World War II, which was more a matter of distributing the resources provided by full national mobilization, and in particular, providing sufficient numbers of men for the infantry. The Korean War manpower dilemma instead was a foreshadowing of problems the service would face in the Vietnam War. Again, decisions by senior civilian and military leaders created a war in a secondary theater fought primarily by noncareer soldiers who served for only two years of active duty, and who became increasingly distrustful of career soldiers. Vietnam, too, would see the serious erosion of readiness in units not committed to the battlefield, but unlike Korea, the Army did not enjoy a period where the manpower dilemma was cushioned by a major mobilization of the reserve components. The Army during Korea, however, was spared the tremendous change and conflict in American society that was underway as major ground forces arrived in Vietnam, change and conflict that intensified during the war, in part because of growing opposition to the war among the American people. Finally, another manpower dilemma in another war lacking the traditional measures of progress showed that problems in the service’s institutional culture — “oversupervision,” a reliance on evaluation by statistics, and ticket-punching — had worsened during the years after the armistice in Korea.

With both a shooting war in Korea, and a global Cold War overshadowing the planet, the political leaders in Washington could easily justify tax increases to fund defense. The immediacy of Korea made obvious the need for infantry and equipment, but the emphasis drifted to strategic needs with regards to the Europe, North America, and NATO. Historian Russell Weigley writes:

Congress enacted three wartime tax increases, and the combined impact of the rate increases and an economic boom stimulated by the war was to raise federal revenues from $36.5 billion in fiscal year 1950 to $47.6 billion in the next fiscal year, $61.4 billion in fiscal 1952, and $64.8 billion in fiscal 1953. Expenditures for national security purposes rose from $13 billion in fiscal 1950 to $22.3 billion, $44 billion, and $50.4 billion, respectively, in the following three fiscal years. These increased defense expenditures went first, naturally, into creating the necessary instruments to fight the war in Korea. Frightened by the unreadiness the Korean War demonstrated, however, and by the its unarguable evidence that the deterrent powers of the country's atomic weaponry had not been complete, government and military leaders generally agreed that the growing funds available for national security must be used to seek a larger security beyond the immediate demands of the war.

After WWII, the Army's reduction in force and accompanying decreases in defense spending, while appropriate for the circumstances, left the United States with few extra infantrymen for Korea when the conflict began in June and July of 1950. Those U.S. soldiers who were first put into combat in Korea were inexperienced, poorly led, and disorganized. They were men who'd been doing the relatively easy duty of occupying Japan, a task, which by mid-1950, consisted of simply being present. They were not prepared for intense combat, and neither were the officers who led them. It was clear that the Army would have to quickly upgrade and reorganize its forces in Korea.

While the Army did succeed in making a significant and sufficient improvement in its forces in Korea, this pressing need was still obscured by an emphasis on preparing a globally strategic force, a nuclear arsenal, and stationing trained and equipped troops in Europe. Much of what happened in the U.S. defense establishment during the Korean War era had little to do with the Korean War. Historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

Amply funded and skillfully managed, the Korean War rearmament program nevertheless had its intrinsic confusions, since it was two mobilizations for two wars. The real war in the Far East required fast and large reinforcements in men and materiel, especially after the Chinese intervention. The Department of Defense, however, had a more compelling concern, the possibility of a war with the Soviet Union. The administration's military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers estimated that by 1952 the Russians would have an optimum opportunity to initiate a general war with the United States and its NATO allies. By that time the Soviets were likely to have sufficient nuclear weapons - including hydrogen bombs - and aircraft to carry them to launch an attack on the continental United States. Just the threat of such an attack might so intimidate the United States that it would not use its own nuclear weapons to meet a Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe, where the Russian forces still outnumbered Western forces on an order of three to one in manpower and weapons. Even if the Soviets did not actually attack, the threat of such an attack might bring Soviet-leaning neutrality to most of Europe. The Truman administration accepted the "year of maximum danger" concept, but its dilemma extended far beyond 1952. It had to weigh the immediate demands of proxy war with the Communists against the long-term requirements of deterring general war.

Veterans of the Korean War can feel, and rightly so, that they were asked to fight a war as an afterthought. Much of the military and the civilian defense organization was devoted to Cold War strategizing, while infantrymen were asked to do the fighting, bleeding, and dying without the measure of funding, the quantities and quality of equipment, and the amount of trained experienced officers which might be desired for actual combat.

Whose Tax Policy?

At the end of 2013, many U.S. citizens learned that they were going to pay more income tax than ever before. Social Security, funded largely through the FICA tax, took a bigger percentage of paychecks. Income taxes increased. Tom Herman, writing for The Wall Street Journal, noted that there was also

an additional 0.9% Medicare tax on wages, other compensation and self-employment income.

Taxes went up a bit, and deductions - people's ability to shelter some of their wages from taxes - went down a bit. As a result of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, career-age people are paying income tax on their healthcare expenditures:

Many people under 65 with large medical bills will discover they can't deduct as much as they could a year ago.

But whose tax policy is this? Many voters blame Obama, but that may be a bit oversimplified. Congress had a hand in these matters as well.

Rethinking Obama

The various news media have presented a spectrum of understandings concerning Barack Obama. He mystifies both liberals and conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans. Those who voted for him, and those who voted against him, are equally mystified as to his essence. The thoughtful reader may quickly dismiss both the demonizations and the hagiographies.

Over time, interpretations of Obama have become nuanced. Observers have watched his actions in a variety of settings, with a variety of people, concerning a variety of issues. What emerges is not the simplistic view of a typical liberal Democrat. Whether one considers the phrase 'liberal Democrat' to be a compliment or an insult, the phrase does not apply in any straightforward fashion to Obama. Although the word 'progressive' has come back into fashion at the beginning of the twenty-first century - it was quite stylish at the beginning of the previous century as well - its application to Obama is not unproblematic. While Obama is in some senses very much a progressive, he also departs from the Wilsonian template. Obama's most obvious deviation from Woodrow Wilson can be found in the fact that Wilson introduced segregation into many branches of the federal government in which African-Americans and whites had previously worked side-by-side.

The questions to be answered are these: What is Obama's ideology? What is his personality? What is his value system? What are his goals? Which means will he countenance to achieve those goals?

Readers will note that the media's interpretations of Obama have carefully redesigned themselves over the years.

Discerning journalists note the tension between various aspects of Obama's persona. These different facets give rise to questions about what lies behind them - Who is the real Obama? Which features does his true personality have? Dinesh D'Souza outlines the competing visions of what Obama might be:

Barack Obama is an enigmatic figure, a puzzle both to his adversaries and to his supporters. Somehow the Obama of the 2008 election campaign seems to have metamorphosed into a very different President Obama. The two men are not merely politically different — different in their policy agenda — but also psychologically different. The centrist, reassuring Obama is gone and has been replaced by a more detached, unreadable and, to some, even menacing Obama. It’s hard for Americans to respond to Obama because we aren’t sure where he is coming from, what motivates him.

The above paragraph was written in 2010, by which time Obama had occupied the White House for about a year and a half. The earliest persona which Obama projected for the nation was a feel-good image, the moderate man of hope and compromise. Earlier personae, which he may have projected in local politics in Chicago, or in his Ivy-League student years, were not broadly presented to the nation.

the dramatic contrast between the two faces of Obama. What then are these two faces? The first is the face of the healer and unifier. This is the Obama who wrote in his book The Audacity of Hope, "We will need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, a bond that will not break." Obama promised "a new kind of politics, one that can excavate and build upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans." The same Obama spoke at the Democratic convention in 2004, in which he said, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America and an Asian America. ... We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all us of defending the United States of America." That speech resounded with conservative themes, as when Obama described "the people I meet in small towns and big cities and diners and office parks - they don't expect government to solve all of their problems. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and they'll tell you that they don't want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the Pentagon. Go into any inner-city neighborhood and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn." This is the kind of talk you normally hear at the Republican convention. And when Obama was elected he pledged, "And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president too." Let's call the Obama who uttered these inspirational words Obama I.

After his inauguration, a distinctly post-election tone emerged in Obama's words, and that tone was reflected in his deeds. The moderation and conciliation seemed gone; he promoted his agenda assertively, with little regard for the opinions of the voters:

Obama II, a very different character. This is the Obama who lambasts the banks and investment houses and forces them to succumb to federal control; the Obama who gives it to the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies, bending them to his will; the Obama who demonizes his predecessor and his opponents, portraying them as the source of all the problems that only he can solve. This Obama pushed through health care reform, essentially establishing government control over one-sixth of the U.S. economy, and he did it without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. Nor did it matter to Obama that a majority of the American people, in poll after poll, rejected the proposed changes. Despite Scott Brown's stunning victory in Massachusetts, turning Ted Kennedy's Senate seat over to the Republicans, Obama found a way to make his health care reform the law of the land. This same Obama seeks to impose expensive environmental regulations on companies in the form of cap and trade legislation; he is going to sharply hike taxes on businesses and the affluent; he is scaling back the military budget and has announced a withdrawal of American troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan. Here, as before, Obama can be expected to trample over his opposition to achieve his goals. This Obama has dismayed Republicans and conservatives, and an activist Tea Party movement has mobilized against him.

Pulling quotes from the pre-election version of Obama and contrasting them with quotes from the post-inauguration Obama, the contrasts are highlighted.

The obvious question, as D'Souza frames it, arises: "So which is the real Obama?" Voters and journalists phrased it in various ways, but the question was the same. The distinct personae were presented; which one was real? D'Souza, in 2010, proposed a novel solution: neither was real. Instead, "we are in search of Obama III, an account that transcends and reconciles Obama I and Obama II." A deeper psyche might lie behind these two contrasting personae.

To find the common source of these two images, one must attempt to investigate the observable signs of Obama's inner world. Minds are not publicly measurable or visible, but concrete actions, words, and experiences can give clues about what might be in a mind - in this case, in Obama's mind.

To grasp Obama’s story, we have to put aside the multicultural mantras and the conservative boilerplate and enter Obama’s world. Imagine a little boy growing up in the sunbathed beauty of Hawaii, soaking in the culture, hearing about how the innocent natives were crushed and overrun by horrible invaders and profiteers. Imagine a slightly older child on a bicycle on the crowded streets of Indonesia, learning from his stepfather the harsh code of a developing country, shaped out of the history of European colonialism. Now imagine a young man undertaking a journey to Kenya, for many people a journey to nowhere, but for him a journey to his own past, where through inner soul-searching and conversations with relatives he discovers who his father really was, and what he must do to make good on the dead man’s unfulfilled dreams. This is Barack Obama. But for him these aren’t imaginings; they are memories. These memories are formed out of the indelible ink of experience, and they have by his own account marked the man. By attentively examining his experience as he tells it himself, and as elaborated by others who have researched his background, we can understand Obama in a way that he has not been understood before.

The set of experiences, then, which shaped Obama's psyche include: living the first ten or more years of his life with no personal contact from his biological father; living those years in an environment, carefully designed by his mother, which included many Asians and whites, but no Africans or African-Americans; living those years without ever attending an American public school; living most of those years outside the United States.

The first ten, twelve, or fifteen years of Obama's life were, then, filled with factors which nudge him into the role of an outsider: a United States citizen who spent the majority of his time outside the United States; an African-American who was raised primarily, almost exclusively, among whites and Asians; an American child who never attended an American public school.

Perpetually playing the role of outsider has taught Obama the peculiar ways in which he projects his various personae, and the content of those personae.

All of the above represents the state of the public's understanding of Obama circa 2010. As time elapses, more data become available; Obama's policies and words continue to unfold, revealing more clues as to the common root of his various exteriors. By 2012, a more nuanced understanding of Obama was within reach.

Obama's mysterious policy actions, and cryptic statements, give clues about an underlying ideology which is aimed, not at America's role in helping other nations lift themselves to a first-world standard of living, but rather at a process in which the United States would lose a significant amount of its economic, military, and political status among the world's nations, and a process in which the average American family would see its net worth and its real income shrink. These, it emerged, were Obama's goals. In 2012, D'Souza wrote:

Obama is not merely the presiding instrument of American decline, he is the architect of American decline. He wants America to be downsized. He wants Americans to consume less, and he would like to see our standard of living decline relative to that of other nations. He seeks a diminished footprint for America in the world. He detests Americas traditional allies, like Britain and Israel, and seeks to weaken them; he is not very worried about radical Muslims acquiring a nuclear bomb or coming to power in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. He is quite willing to saddle future generations of Americans with crippling debt; he has spent trillions of dollars toward this end, and if he had been permitted, he would have spent trillions more. He has shown no inclination, and has no desire, to protect America’s position as number one in the world; he would be content to see America as number 18, or number 67, just another country seated at the great dining table of nations. The strength of my thesis is that it is completely congruent with who Obama is and what he does. We don’t have to assume that he is always getting results opposite to what he intends; we simply have to see that he intends the results he is getting. He emphasized in his inauguration speech his goal of "remaking America" – and he is doing it, recognizing that in order to remake America he must first unmake America.

Between 2010 and 2012, as a clearer understanding of Obama emerged, the reading public became aware that Obama neither liked nor trusted America as a civilization, as a society, or as a culture. Of the many attempted explanations for Obama's 2012 reelection, none have countenanced the notion that his general policy direction was popular. He was reelected despite his policies and despite the murky ideology that fueled them. Obama has no confidence in the United States Constitution, a document which codifies the governmental process which is most apt at preserving and protecting freedom. Obama has no affection for the worldview embodied in texts like the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights, and no affinity for the ideas and writings crystalized political, religious, and economic liberty in America - ideas and writings like those of John Locke, Thomas Paine, George Washington, and the others who together made possible the highest degree of freedom to be found among the nations of the world.

Directed by his own inner ideology, which see America as a neocolonialist oppressor rather than as a liberator, Obama finds little or nothing laudable in the American tradition. Forgetting, or choosing to ignore, that the United States was the incubator for abolitionism and for women's suffrage, his ideology categorizes American success as a priori evil. Rather than see America as having the opportunity help other nations rise in economic and political freedom, Obama believes that the United States must decline in order for others nations to grow. His ideology is captive to zero-sum thinking, not only in matters of economics, but in matters of cultural and political capital as well. Rather than see the United States as a leader of nations, a first among equals, in a scenario in which a rising tide lifts all boats and prosperity can flourish simultaneously in many nations, Obama asserts that only by diminishing the United States can he offer a chance to other countries. D'Souza continues:

Never before in American history have we had a president who seeks decline, who is actually attempting to downsize his country. Presidents are elected to protect and strengthen their country, so why would a president weaken it? We cannot answer this question without understanding Obama himself, his background, and his ideology. Without such understanding, we are vulnerable to all kinds of crazy theories. I am certainly not one of those who say that Obama hates America, or that Obama is a traitor, or that Obama is a Manchurian candidate who is being manipulated by some secret cabal. Not so – Obama is doing these things because of who he is, because of what he believes. He subscribes to an ideology that says it is good for America to go down so that the rest of the world can come up. He wants Americans to be poorer so that Brazilians and Colombians can be richer. He thinks it would be beneficial to us and to the world for there to be many rich and powerful nations, with no single nation able to dominate or dictate terms to any other. Obama is a visionary for global justice. He wants to set right the ship of the world that, in his view, has been tilted to one side for nearly five hundred years, ever since Western civilization began to

flourish in the sciences, in technology, and in political development. Obama sees Western Civilization's forward movement not as illuminating a path which other nations might follow, but rather as a form of theft. Rather than encouraging the third world to develop itself as the first world has done, Obama wants to dismantle the first world. He does not envision the possibility of the first world helping, or working in partnership with, the third world; he believes that only harm can come from the first world, and nothing beneficial. His solution, in light of his beliefs, is to deflate the first world. The humbling and humiliation of the first world is on Obama's policy agenda.

While the use of terms like 'liberal' and 'conservative' and 'Democrat' and 'Republican' leads quickly to oversimplification and overgeneralization, it is nonetheless true that many - not all! - of Obama's opponents, who are called and would call themselves "Republicans" or "conservatives," mistakenly attempted to understand Obama through the template of traditional American leftism - the Democrat Party and its version of liberalism. Obama is not cut of the same political cloth as George McGovern or Franklin Roosevelt.

Obama is not a conventional liberal; he is not from the same mold as Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, or Jimmy Carter. Rather, Obama draws his identity and his values from a Third World, anti-American ideology that goes by the name of anti-colonialism. Obama’s philosophy can be summed up in David Gelernter’s phrase: America the Inexcusable. Notice that this is an affirmation of American exceptionalism, but exceptionalism of a special kind. According to this ethos, America is exceptional in being exceptionally militaristic, violent, greedy, selfish, and rapacious. For Obama, America is the plunderer; and he is the restorer. Traditional Democrats want to preserve American leadership and have America be a model for the World; Obama wants to displace American hegemony and realign America in the world. Traditional Democrats want a bigger economic pie so they can redistribute income in America; Obama wants to curb America's growth and redistribute wealth globally so he can reduce the gap in living standards between America and the rest of the world.

As an axiomatic principle, Obama's desire to humble the United States explains other policy decisions. Seen in this light, Obama's educational policies are not about education, but rather about weakening the nation; his environmental policies are not about the environment, but about weakening the nation; his healthcare policies are not about healthcare, but about weakening the nation; his economic policies are not about prosperity, but about weakening the nation; his energy policies are not about supplying the United States with fuel, but rather about weakening the nation. Only when understood from the standpoint of Obama's desire to harm the United States to his policies make a sort of consistent sense.

As a matter of political necessity and political expediency, Obama has needed to disguise his goal, and thereby enlist the support of environmentalists, economists, educators, and other specialists. But these segments of support become gradually disillusioned by the gnawing feeling that Obama doesn't have their interests at hearts: he mouths environmentalist slogans and issues enough executive orders to appear supportive of environmental causes. Yet, while banning allegedly for environmental reasons certain energy sources in the United States, he facilitates those same activities in other nations. Viewed through the lens of environmentalism, these actions seem self-contradictory; viewed through the lens of Obama's desire to damage the United States, these actions are consistent.

The Obama administration has been blocking oil drilling in America, and it is already moving to restrict and control the use of fracking. Indeed, Obama actively promotes policies that reduce America's access to energy, raise energy prices, and cost jobs which often end up moving abroad. These policies seem not only ill-advised, but politically risky for Obama. So why would he do this? The obvious explanation is that Obama is a dedicated environmentalist, deeply worried about global warming and oil spills and wary of the environmental and safety risks involved in the relatively new technology of fracking.

Obama has made no significant moves to encourage the world's big polluters - mainland China foremost among them - to clean up their environmental usage. Obama sees environmental policy as a tool to harm the United States economy. His feigned passion for environmental causes would quickly disappear if he calculated that they offered him no opportunities injure the American economy.

Yet this environmental explanation of Obama's behavior is clearly wrong. Even as Obama blocks and restricts energy exploration in America, he has been helping other countries exploit their energy resources. Specifically, the Obama administration has bankrolled oil drilling in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. This oil is destined not for export to America, but for Brazil’s, Colombia’s, and Mexico’s own use, which includes selling some of it to the Chinese. Obama also supports massive wealth transfers from the West to the developing world so that developing countries can grow and meet their increasing demands for energy.

Between 2010 and 2012, then, readers and voting citizens got a more distinct concept of Obama as his policy objectives emerged with sharper clarity. Obama was neither a moderate centrist nor a typical leftist in the tradition of America's Democrat Party. Instead, his policies are shaped by geopolitical view in which the third world nations are cast in the roles of victims, America is seen as capable only of exploitation, and the solution to the world's problems lies in the dismantling of America's global influence and demolition of America's domestic prosperity.

WMDs in Iraq

In late 2002 and early 2003, intelligence agencies of not only the United States, but also of many other nations, obtained information revealing that Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in Iraq was manufacturing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), including biological weapons, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons.

While Iraq's technological infrastructure was working at a furious pace to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a fission bomb, it was prevented from achieving that goal by the combat that would erupt in March 2003. It did, however, produce large numbers of usable biological and chemical weapons.

As the data became more clear, the United Nations, not the United States, issued several resolutions, which stated that Saddam's government would face consequences if it failed to open its facilities to weapons inspectors. The United Nations hoped to stop WMD production in Iraq and begin dismantling WMD stockpiles.

When Saddam Hussein and the Baath party proved consistently uncooperative, the consequences promised by the United Nations were delivered by a coalition of thirty nations when combat began in March 2003. In the following months and years, the war unfolded, first under the name Operation Iraqi Freedom, and later, in the popular press, simply as the Iraq War.

As the war unfolded, the conflict itself receded in importance, and the news media focused more on the political struggle within the United States. This struggle, over the continuation of the war, the importance of the war, and the justification for the war, became a rhetorical exercise, and the actual facts of the war were increasingly ignored.

The other countries in the coalition, however, remained focused on the reality of the grave threat posed by Saddam's WMDs. The United Nations directed several other governments, including some not part of the coalition, to begin dealing with enormous stockpiles of chemical weapons found hidden in various weapons depots around Iraq.

One of the governments, Germany, assigned the task of dealing with large quantities of WMDs began coordinating and training technicians and scientists to process stockpiles of lethal chemical weapons. A statement issued by the German government says that these

experts will be trained in how to use German technology to destroy the remaining chemical weapons stockpiles left over from Saddam Hussein’s regime.

As the various nations began the UN's work of neutralizing Saddam's vast store of WMD's, it became clear that there were more such weapons to be processed than could reasonably be handled by the member nations of the coalition. The decision was made to hand over the processing of chemical WMD's to the Iraqis, who by now were stabilizing their own free government in the wake of Saddam's demise. The German government stated that it

will provide Iraq with a mobile laboratory equipped with state of the art detection and measuring devices for the analysis of chemical warfare agents, to be used at the remaining chemical weapons sites in Iraq.

Because Germany was not part of the coalition in March 2003, it was seen as more objective or neutral in its handling of the WMDs, and it also gained thereby an opportunity to make an effort even though it had not been part of the initial coalition. Its statement continues:

In this way the Federal Government is making an essential contribution to the first phase of the safe and environmentally responsible disposal of chemical weapons in Iraq.

The technology provided by Germany not only helps to neutralize the caches of WMDs around Iraq, but to do so in a way which was safe and friendly to the environment. Because Germany, as a nation which was not part of the original coalition, had no vested interest in the amounts or types of chemical weapons, it was seen as being capable of producing a responsible inventory of Saddam's vast hoards of WMDs. The German government stated that

This will enable Iraq to analyse the highly toxic legacy of the Saddam regime and to draft a technical strategy for its safe and environmentally responsible destruction.

As an example of one of sites found to being hiding a large collection of WMDs, this description was released about one of the locations:

For many years, grenades filled with the nerve gas sarin have been stored in the bunkers of a former chemical weapons production plant in Iraq. The site also contains several hundred tonnes of chemical precursors for the production of chemical weapons. The exact composition and condition of the warfare agents are unknown. The Federal Government had agreed to assist Iraq with the destruction of its old chemical weapons stockpiles following the country’s accession to the international Chemical Weapons Convention.

As the Iraq war become history, and not a current event, time allows for a more detailed analysis of the data. The record will show that a collection of nations, working loosely under UN leadership, managed to deactivate and disarm a massive stockpile of chemical weapons. The region is today safe from WMD threats in large part due to the efforts of German technologists who began the work themselves and then turned over the completion to the Iraqis they had trained.

Competing Values - Political Matrices

Why are tensions and conflicts necessarily part of political life? If asked, the overwhelming majority of voters would certainly say that they desire justice, peace, prosperity, and security. But this apparent agreement does not lead to harmony. Why? At least two reasons are apparent: first, because each of these good-sounding concepts is susceptible to competing definitions (exactly what are justice, peace, prosperity, and security?); second, because while each of these four is desired, they sometimes are in conflict or in competition with each other.

Consider justice and peace. Both are desirable. But if military force is required to obtain justice, then the quest for peace might be compromised: hence the famous tension between peace lovers and peace makers.

Security and prosperity are both appealing; but an economic system which maximizes prosperity is a system which includes risk, and there compromising the sense of economic security.

Political conflicts can therefore arise among voters who agree about the importance of a set of values, but who weigh these values differently when they come into competition with each other.

Political scientists conceptualize this as a matrix with four dimensions. Consider each of the four axes:

• In a system of freely-elected representatives, and of different layers of government, one value will be to move as much decision-making as possible to entities at the lower end of the scale: cities, counties, and townships should have more decision-making power than the state or federal government. Local governments are more accessible to citizens and more adeptly absorb petitions and appeals, and more flexibly respond to them.
• As one nation-state among others, one value is to project an image of strength - politically, economically, and militarily. Weakness is provocative, and the failure to convince other nations of one nation's resolve and willingness to act is to invite aggression.
• The liberty and dignity of an individual are maximized with economic freedom: therefore, one value is to keep taxation at what is agreed to be a practical minimum; to reduce or eliminate governmental spending, debt, and deficits; and to reduce regulation or interference in manufacturing, in consumption, and in the marketplace.
• People enter voluntarily to various associations, the natural organs of society. There are a wide range of such groupings: clubs, teams, music groups, professional associations, chambers of commerce, religious groups, neighborhoods, etc. Just as individuals seek freedom, so the liberty of groups is also a value: cooperative activity should not be impeded by government; therefore, legislation prohibiting actions in private life is to be avoided, to the same extent as legislation prohibiting these social groups from regulating private life is to be avoided. Just as a government has no right to require or prohibit private actions within the private sphere, it also has no right to restrict a private and free association from determining private actions within the private sphere.

If each of the above is considered as an axis along which increasing or decreasing levels of preference for that one value, relative to the other three, is measured, then we have system for categorizing various political points of view. One voter may value the ability of the nation-state to be robust among the other countries of the world, but this same voter may be willing to sacrifice the freedom which the private voluntary associations within society have. A different voter may value the primacy of local governments over national governments, and in the process be willing to sacrifice the notion of a free market, if it is the local and not the national government seeking to regulate.

To the extent that such a framework allows us to accurately characterize political disagreements, it also allows us to perhaps envision the types of compromise which might be negotiated to the satisfaction, if not to the delight, of various parties. To the extent that this framework is nuanced, it allows a more detailed and perceptive discussion than the polemics which distill disagreement to binary opposites: liberals/conservatives, Republicans/Democrats.

Analyzing 9/11

The task of understanding exactly what happened on September 11, 2001 has gone on for a decade, and will go on long into the future. To be sure, the basic events are simple and clearly acknowledged. Nineteen Islamic terrorists, mostly from Saudi Arabia, hijacked four airplanes, flying two of them into the World Trade Center (WTC) and one into the Pentagon. The final plane crashed as a result of passengers who resisted the hijacking; the passengers had learned of the plot, and prevent the final aircraft from reaching its target. Approximately 3,000 people died.

Beyond those basic facts, many details of the attacks remain the topic of research. Discovering the minutia of the plot is difficult because it was conceived in secrecy, and because much of the reporting is biased, coming from sources in the Muslim world. Senator Al Franken offers an example:

Six months after 9/11, the Gallup Poll of Islamic Countries found that an overwhelming majority of those surveyed believed that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had not been the work of Arabs. Well-educated Egyptians and Saudis believed that the Israelis were behind the murder of the three thousand innocents on 9/11, in large part because of articles in their countries' official state newspapers. One of the widely disseminated stories was that no Jews died in the collapse of the Trade Towers because they had received calls telling them not to go to work that day.

When such stories are widely circulated and believed, the historian's task becomes more difficult. Sources must be examined carefully. Another factor which makes the work difficult is the premature release of information. If data are published while investigation and research are still in progress, the released data can contaminate the data which is still to be gathered by creating expected narratives. If an expected narrative about an event exists, then researchers may be predisposed to fit evidence into that narrative, rather than letting the evidence suggest other possible alternatives. Likewise, witnesses being interviewed may reformulate their memories and statement to conform to the expected narrative. This process may be conscious or subconscious.

The same types of concern are at work when a crime lab is asked to examine a sample, without being told the details of the case from which the sample comes. The goal is to keep the research as unbiased as possible.

Naturally, it is expected that all such data will eventually be made available to the pubic.

Franken offers an example data released prematurely in the chaos and emotional trauma following 9/11:

A clearly rattled Orrin Hatch was all over the news that day, blaming Clinton because he had "de-emphasized" the military. Hatch was also the first to confirm al Qaeda's involvement by disclosing classified intercepts between associates of Osama bin Laden about the attack. Asked about it on ABC News two days later, a miffed Donald Rumsfeld said Hatch's leak was the kind that "compromises our sources and methods," and "inhibits our ability to find and deal with terrorists who commit this kind of act."

Hatch's gaffe was twofold. First, by highlighting Clinton's lack of military preparation, he biased historians' analyses; other contributing variables should have received consideration in the absence of Hatch's emphasis on this one variable. Second, Hatch unwittingly alerted Muslim terrorists to the fact that their communications had been compromised; had Hatch not done this, further data might have been mined from such intercepts. As it was, the terrorists quickly changed their communications protocols.

In hindsight, while Hatch's blunder deprived investigators of valuable data which might have saved lives, it did not contaminate the general understanding of 9/11. But it is an example of the type of slip which could have misdirected the analysis. Franken continues:

The disclosure that al Qaeda was responsible did allow Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to identify the "root of the problem" just hours after the attack: "We had Bill Clinton backing off, letting the Taliban go, over and over again."

Documents revealed that Clinton had been briefed on the Taliban, on al Qaeda, and on Osama bin-Laden. Clinton had nixed various action plans to neutralize the threat of al Qaeda, had weakened the intelligence-gathering of the United Stated, and had weakened the military's ability to carry out such operations.

When Clinton left the White House in January 2001, the incoming administration was concerned about the weakened state of both the military and the various intelligence agencies. Incoming National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice noted:

I knew that there was a serious threat. I'd made that clear in a radio station interview in Detroit during the campaign, stating, "There needs to be better cooperation [among U.S. intelligence agencies] because we don't want to wake up one day and find that Osama bin Laden has been successful on our territory."

Clearly, Condoleezza Rice was well aware of bin Laden long before the 9/11 attacks. Although the various intelligence agencies were aware of the threat from al Qaeda, they had few details, and even fewer concrete suggestions about what to do about that threat. If they had such suggestions, the military lacked the resources to carry them out at that time. The NSC's counterterrorism advisor, Dick Clarke, briefed Rice when the new administration moved into the White House. She recalls that Clarke's presentation was

short on operational content. There was a lot that described al Qaeda but not very much about what to do. He made the point that al Qaeda was a network dedicated to the destruction of the United States. There were numerous slides with faces of al Qaeda operatives and a discussion of their safe haven in Afghanistan. There was very little discussion of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. At the end I asked Clarke and his team whether we were doing all we could to counter al Qaeda. He made mention of some covert activities and said that he would later brief me on some other efforts.

Despite the numerous failures of the Clinton White House, the new administration did not want to spend time enumerating such shortcomings. In support of George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, Vice President Cheney wrote that

I was a strong supporter inside the White House of what Tenet and the CIA were trying to do. When there were suggestions after 9/11 that we have a group similar to the Warren Commission investigate intelligence failures, I had argued against it, saying it would too easily turn into a witch hunt and that what we needed to do was focus on preventing the next attack.

It is worth noting the broad agreement: liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, Clinton appointees and Bush appointees. Al Franken, Condi Rice, Orrin Hatch, Dana Rohrabacher, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Clarke, George Tenet, and Dick Cheney - that is indeed a broad spectrum of political views.

Desert Storm: the View from inside a Tank

The first Gulf War, as Operation Desert Storm is sometimes called, presents the historian with a good object for study, because it was limited in both time and space, allowing the student to capture a comprehensive overview of the conflict. By comparison, a scholar might study WWII for years, only to realize how much more he has yet to learn about it.

There was a clear and defined buildup to the war. Planners and strategists had access to reliable intelligence, knew the terrain, and measured their resources carefully. Historians Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh write:

The Vietnam War had as profound an influence on American calculations as the war with Iran had on Iraq. Key actors in the American political process were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the 1960s: the administration was resolved not to get trapped in an unwinnable war; the military would not allow civilians to impose artificial restrictions that would deny them the possibility of a decisive victory; Congress refused to be railroaded into giving the executive carte blanche to wage war; and the diplomats did not wish to find themselves supporting a military campaign in isolation from natural allies.

But there was more to the Desert Storm strategy than merely working to avoid "another Vietnam," a phrase which was common in public discussions of the conflict. As the Foreign Service's Sol Schindler writes,

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf’s strategy, crafted by a special team of planners brought in from the Pentagon was fairly simple. The Marines would attack along the coast hitting the heavily fortified Iraqi Army positions. It was thought the Republican Guard would then stream south to reinforce the troops under attack. At that point, the VII Corps under Lt. Gen. Frederick “Freddie” Franks on the left would hook round to come in on their flank and crush the Republican Guard.

Schwarzkopf was commanding a coalition of at least 35 nations. Iraq stood essentially alone, with no material or military support from any ally. The Republican Guard was the elite unit of the Iraqi army. Although the coalition was militarily far superior to the Iraqi army, Schwarzkopf and other planners did not want overconfidence to become a weakness, and so they planned as if the enemy were strong, and attempted to organize a provision for worst-case scenarios. Yet, as is almost always the case in war, once hostilities commenced, the most careful planning and strategizing can quickly dissolve in the fog of war, as something will inevitably not go according to plan. Despite the attempt to foresee every unexpected possibility, there's always one scenario for which nobody accounted. War begins, and plans start to dissolve.

Fighting began not on the ground, but in the air, as Freedman and Karsh report:

The war began at 03:00 Kuwait time on January 17. A million men (with some 32,000 women on the coalition side) faced each other across the border but, as predicted, the initial stage of the war was turned over to the air campaign. The coalition command had earlier intended to begin with a phased campaign; the sustained attacks on ground forces were to be held back for a late stage. In the event, the considerable air armada gathered by the start of the war made it possible to begin attacks on ground forces from day one. Despite the intense speculation accompanying the lapse of the United Nations deadline, effective tactical surprise was achieved. Iraqi air defenses, confused by electronic warfare, achieved little. A high sortie rate, averaging about 2000 per day, was achieved almost immediately and sustained thereafter. A strategic phase of considerable efficiency was directed against Iraq's ability to command and supply its ground forces, and to develop and produce weapons of mass destruction.

Various forms of smart bombs - munitions guided by laser, radio and radar - gave the coalition both control of the air and the ability to inflict devastating damage on the enemy's military installations on the ground. After establishing air superiority, the ground war began, as Sol Schindler writes:

When the signal for the ground war in Kuwait was given, the 2nd Squadron (the Cougars) was more than ready. The troops had trained relentlessly in the desert, were sick of desert sand in their coffee, underwear and bedding, tired of the general dullness and boredom of their surroundings and, at the risk of being politically incorrect, could be described as eager for combat. They knew that only through offensive action could the war be brought to an end and they could finally leave the desert and return home.

Armor would play a major role in this war. Covering large amounts of desert quickly meant that the infantry would be less crucial than cavalry. Both the Iraqis and the coalition forces understood this. Freedman and Karsh report that

The coalition also had good reasons not to be overawed by Iraq's military capability. The major uncertainties surrounded its readiness and ability to use chemical weapons, and the potential effects of its ballistic missile force. Although fear of an eventual Iraqi nuclear capability was one of the reasons for defeating Saddam, no one thought that such a capability was then already available. Only a limited number of Iraqi divisions were considered compe- tent, and only the elite Republican Guard had modern Soviet T-72 tanks. Nearly half of the troops were mobilized reservists who had shown a read- iness to surrender during the war with Iran when the opportunity arose. There was also evidence that Iraq's less capable and youngest troops were being put in the lightly defended forward positions. The air force had been ineffective in close air support and the pilots were judged to be poor. The chain of command was heavily centralized and unresponsive. Generals who had made their names in the war with Iran were retired, dead, or under arrest. The defensive methods developed during the war with Iran had been based on massive earthworks combined with flooding to channel any offensive onto a killing ground. The Kuwaiti border did not offer the same potential for water barriers, nor were there any natural barriers such as the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. It was also apparent that the Iraqi force on the border to the west was more thinly spread.

In later years, popular memory would confuse and conflate the two Gulf wars, but a decade and significant differences lie between them. In 1991's Operation Desert Storm, both the Israeli and Saudi governments confirmed Iraq's possession of, and willingness to use, chemical and biological weapons; Senator Donald Riegle confirmed that Iraqi used these weapons, and that coalition forces had been exposed to them. Further, coalition forces were exposed to low levels of radiation in form of depleted uranium, a material used in manufacturing armor-piercing shells. The Iraqis did not have a functioning nuclear warhead (fission) during the conflict; one of the coalition's goal was to disrupt the Iraqi weapons program which was in the process of building such warheads.

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, by contrast, which began in 2003, featured less use of chemical and biological weapons; the coalition forces moved so quickly that the Iraqis did not have time to deploy them. Coalition troops found stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons - called weapons of mass destruction or WMDs - as well facilities producing material for nuclear weapons, facilities which had been restarted after the 1991 conflict had ended.

In both conflicts, armor was central. Tanks were decisive in Operation Desert Storm, and important in early phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In 1991's conflict, the superiority of the coalition forces was demonstrated in tank battle between the 2nd Squadron of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment of the VII Corps and the Republican Guard. Sol Schinlder writes:

After two days the 2nd Squadron, which was leading the advance finally made contact with the Republican Guard. The conflict that ensued was overwhelmingly in favor of the Americans. One squadron (cavalry speak for a battalion) wiped out an entire mechanized brigade. The entire battle cost the Americans one fatality while they managed to kill hundreds and captured even more.

Both in terms of equipment and in terms of training, the Iraqis were outpaced by coalition forces:

The Russian-built T72 tank was mechanically reliable but inferior to the American Abrams in the guns it used and in its range finders. More important, however, the American crews were better trained, better schooled, better led and infinitely more capable, making the results of the battle logical if somewhat unbelievable. What is truly unbelievable, however, is the faith the American leadership had in the fighting abilities of the Republican Guard, which prevented them from finishing it off.

Coalition officers overestimated the Republican Guard, and did not press the attack as quickly, as far, and as powerfully as they could have. The result was that many from the Republican Guard escaped or retreated, leaving them as threats for later. To which extent this surviving remnant of Republican Guard forces contributed to the second Gulf war, over a decade later, is not clear. But had the coalition been able to neutralize more of the Republican Guard in 1991, the Iraqi army of 2003 would have been to some extent weaker.