Robert L. Terrell Blog

These days lots of US citizens have their knickers in knots due to their recognition that the terrorist threat is not gong to abate any time soon.

The common response of many is to insist that government officials do more to end the threat. Moreover, a discouragingly large percentage of those who have come to see themselves as prey are ready to tear up the Constitution, throw out all laws which require lawful government responses to the threat, and unleash lawless terror on the terrorists themselves, or those somehow suspected of being such.

Blind, unreasoned, fear of the sort I am addressing is responsible for the stiff resistance the Obama administration is facing in response to its feeble, fumbling, effort to close the Guantanamo Bay military base, where, according to numerous reports, prisoners are commonly subjected to terrifying episodes of brutality.

Given such reports, I assume George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other high-ranking members of that discredited administration, are being extremely careful regarding travel outside the United States due to fear of being arrested and charged with crimes against humanity. To the extent that Barack Obama, and the Ivy League mafia he has amassed around him, continue Bush administration policies, they, too, will spend the remainder of their lives furtively traveling, and worrying about ending up in prison cells of the sort used to confine Nazis convicted at Nuremburg.

But this posting is not about criminal abuse of authority by high-ranking US officials. Instead, it is a short comment on the fear that stalks our land because of the activities of those committed to killing as many of us as they possibly can via violent, terrorist, attacks.

The angst-ridden crowd demanding that government do something to end the terrorist threat has grown exponentially since the thwarted Christmas day attack aboard the Northwest Airline jetliner in the vicinity of Detroit. In response, President Obama, and numerous other members of his administration, have taken to the nation’s airwaves uttering words as reassuring as they can muster in order to calm people’s nerves, and convince them that government leaders understands the problem, and possess a dead certain remedy.

It is nonsense.  They don’t understand, and there is no remedy short of a fundamental redesign of US foreign policy. Time will reveal the fact that there is little that a government committed to a foreign policy agenda of the sort pursued by ours to make us 100 percent safe from the murderous terrorists. If such protection was available, I assume the Pentagon would have used it to protect itself from attack on 9-11.

The point to be understood is that little can be done to stop terrorists who are not afraid to die. This does not mean that we will not prove capable of intercepting bungled plots, or inept attackers here and there. The events, which played out not among terrified passengers on that Northwest Airlines airplane on Christmas day are indicative of the fact that this is true.

But the larger truth is that it is just a matter of time before terrorists manage to mount another successful assault. Making this observation gives me no pleasure, and I am distressed that there is a need to make it.  Nonetheless, the key point to be understood is that the number of ways we can be attacked, and the number of significantly important targets vulnerable to attack, will always render our very best defensive strategies and tactics symbolic at best.

Our leaders need to change their thinking. Terrorism is a political problem, and it should be addressed as such. There is a proper role for police and military agencies where fights against terrorists are concerned. But such agencies should take a back seat in such struggles to leadership exercised in the political arena.

When the political dimensions of such confrontations are appropriately addressed, potential solutions become apparent. Short such an approach at this time, the US is condemned to depend foolishly on propaganda, bullets, mortars, drones and torturers in order to ostensibly defend itself. But there is a growing recognition by our frightened citizenry that terrorists are probably capable of striking devastating blows in virtually every section of the nation.

This is, of course, what the terrorists want. Their strategy is to raise the level of fear among us to so high that people will demand a change in government policies.
Consider the Apartheid regime’s response to terrorist attacks waged against South Africa’s white minority government to acquire a good understanding of the arc of such confrontations as envisioned by terrorists. After decades of insisting that it would never negotiate with ANC terrorists, the white minority government did just that. Furthermore, once it acknowledged the political issues at the heart of its extremely violent confrontation with the ANC, deadly terrorist attacks on the civilian populace ceased, and peace came relatively quickly. Sooner or later, a similar change of course will take place here in the US.

In any event, between now and the time the US government changes course in its so-called War Against Terrorism, I have two recommendations for my terrified fellow citizens: 1) avoid big crowds whenever you can, and 2) spend more time in colored communities—because the terrorists are not after us…

I suspect that few of those who have closely watched President Barack Obama’s actions since he took office were surprised by his announcement last night that he intends to send 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan. If nothing else, the length of time it took for him to make the decision was a clear indication that he was leaning toward escalating the interminable conflict.  If he had intended to get out, less time would have been needed to decide how to do so. Given this, it was clear from the beginning of his Hamlet-like approach to the highly publicized White House conferences on Afghanistan, that he was leaning toward escalation.

Now that the decision has been publicly announced, we are left to ponder the ramifications for Afghanistan, the United States, and our tarnished, deeply confused, hero in the Oval Office, who will travel to Oslo, Norway in a few days to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.  If he maintains his current trajectory, he will end up giving peaceniks a bad name.

Such irony.

The president’s decision will inevitably produce a rise in the number of Afghans being killed as a result of the war in their star-crossed nation. Furthermore, events associated with the troop increase will motivate more young men and women in the region to join the fight against the foreign invaders. For reasons that should not be that difficult to comprehend, the troop increase will also have the counterproductive impact of undermining morale among Afghan police and military units, who will have to bear the stigma of helping foreigners kill their relatives. The net result is that the people of Afghanistan are headed for much harder times.

They deserve better.

The president’s decision provides a different, but no less momentous, set of problems for U.S. citizens.  More of us will experience dismemberment and violent death, more families will be destroyed, more money that we really don’t have will be spent, we will be less safe, and our tattered stature in the world will continue its precipitous decline.

As far as the president is concerned, it pains me to say it, but the raw, unavoidable truth is that last night Barack Obama threw his presidency under the proverbial bus. Several factors are responsible: hubris, insufficient understanding of history and culture, personal insecurities, insufficient common sense, and imperial fantasies of the sort that have run erstwhile great powers to ground on more occasions than need to be specifically addressed here.

However this unnecessary, violent travesty works out over the tortured years immediately ahead, from this point forward President Barack Obama will be a wounded duck; a gifted, talented man, who was swept into office before he was ready for the job by the buoyant, joyous dreams of a generation hungering for change. All is not lost. But we need acknowledge that last night our hero came up tragically short. My heart is heavy today.

We deserve better.

Like most U.S. citizens, I am prone to go long stretches of time without thinking much about the ruling class. This is due to several factors, the most important being the highly sophisticated phalanx of barriers used by members of the clan to hide their prodigious wealth, unmatched power, and pervasive influence, from public scrutiny.

The gated communities, exclusive resorts, private airports, country clubs, limited entry neighborhoods, palatial, urban safe houses, rural estates, isolated islands, and other such that they use to avoid contact with the rest of us are important components of the phalanx.

Members of the ruling class also tended to be loyally protected by the mass media minions (their employees) who shape public perception and opinion via the press, advertising, public relations, motion pictures, art, and political dialogue.

Educators routinely participate in maintaining the phalanx of protection provided the nation’s ruling class via pedagogical paradigms that conspicuously ignore the definitive ways in which the ruling class use the rest of us to facilitate their best interests. As they have since the Middle Ages, the mainstream religious establishment tends to accept and condone the current social order in ways that provide invaluable aid, comfort and protection for the ruling class.

Maybe most important, the ruling class is protected at every level of government protected by those who exercise definitive political power. There is no better proof of this truth than the current smarmy debacle taking place in Washington over the Obama administration’s proposed plans for health care reform.

Even though public opinion polls consistently confirm that a definitive majority of the nation’s citizens want a comprehensive health care system that includes a public option, and even though Democrats control the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, there is a good chance that entrenched interests favorable to the ruling class will ensure that the public interest is inadequately served.

The fact that people without health insurance, or affordable medical options, routinely die on the streets of the nation’s cities in great numbers each year, has little impact on the overall situation as regards the best interests of the ruling class versus those of the rest of us.

Thus, president George W. Bush spent much of his time in office promulgating policies beneficial to those who rule. His ruinous tax cuts are but one of the many benefits awarded to the wealthy and powerful who dominate public and private power in this nation. Moreover, it was patently clear throughout his eight years in the White House that he had little or no interest in those aspects of public policy pertinent to the best interests of average citizens.

Barack Obama has a different resume. Nonetheless, much of his time these days is being spent touting policies virtually identical to those of his predecessor. I might note the Obama administration’s approach to the current financial crisis in order to elaborate the point. The Wall Street financiers have been taken care of by the administration’s following through on the bailout strategy initially formulated by the Bush administration. Banks, corporations, and other “too big to fail” segments of the financial system, are being protected by the Obama administration in ways that are even alarming many Conservative Republicans.

All the while, members of the working class, and those trapped in the poverty required by the structure and normal operations of the economic system, are largely being ignored by the Obama administration. It might not be entirely appropriate to accuse the Obama administration of practicing “trickle down” economics. But such accusations are not entirely inaccurate.

Most of those who supported Obama’s improbable candidacy for the presidency hoped for much more. But now that the candidate of change is in office, the mantra emanating from the White House tends to be composed of Reaganesque “stay the course” platitudes. As a result, president Obama is conspicuously avoiding his opportunity to make meaningful history where the best interests of average citizens are concerned. But our problems extend beyond the fragile ego, timid policies, and vague legislative aspirations of President Barack Obama.

Our key problem is that we are being led by a class of people who don’t have a clue about which policies to pursue in order to provide sounder, healthier, balanced, productive lives for the majority of the people who reside in this nation. Drunk with power, wallowing in wealth of the sort that could only be envied by ancient kings, they are largely out of touch with reality as experienced by average citizens.

When they discuss major social problems such inadequate health care, endemic hunger, homelessness, criminally under funded educational systems, and the appalling lack of working-class jobs necessary for basic survival, it is obvious that the vast majority of them might as well be addressing unicorns and wizards. From the perspective of those who are more familiar with hunger and desperate prospects than are their privileged rulers , the casual, slovenly nature of their dialogue is startling, if not terribly frightening.

Desultory ruling class leadership is not new. As a matter of fact, weak, unfocused, self-centered leadership has been the group’s forte for generations. But in the past, the U.S. had more room for error, and the hard-working millions who compose the working classes generally proved sufficient productivity to nullify the inadequacies of those who consider themselves our betters.

The unified, global economy has changed the equation. Nation’s with weak, clueless leaders pay a steep price these days. And those that prove incapable of appropriately addressing their problems end up mired in massive, structural poverty of the sort commonly associated with Third World failed states.

Given this, president Obama’s recent trip to Asia should be seen as a bad omen regarding the immediate future of the United States. The loyal, see-no-evil mainstream press lauded the trip as just another instance of the U.S. president touching bases with adoring, subordinate nations situated on the periphery of the American Empire. But there was more serious business afoot than the neo-colonial fantasies of the obedient minions employed by the mainstream press.

From the Asian perspective, Obama’s trip was a form of official acknowledgement that the U.S. is in the process of losing control of its economic destiny. As a result, Obama’s most important efforts were focused on getting Asia’s expansively wealthy leaders to believe that the once highly admired, and soberly feared, economy has not run terminally aground.
In short, the U.S. president was on a begging mission.

If the Japanese, Chinese, and other wealthy Asians, decide that investing in the U.S. is not worth the trouble because of the nation’s faltering economic system, much of what we have come to know as the American-way-of-life will become as much a symbolic relic of monumentally incompetent leadership as is the former Soviet Union. President Obama was graciously received during the public segments of his Asian sojourn. But I am rather certain that he didn’t convince any of those who heard his deferential commentary that they need worry any time soon about the U.S. altering its surprisingly precipitous slide toward economic dependency.

Thus, it seems reasonable to me to conclude that it is just a matter of time until they pull the plug on the flow of funds that have helped keep the U.S. economy viable during recent decades. When and if this occurs, the consequences will be highly destructive for tens of millions of average Americans in ways that make the current recession appear mild in comparison.

Given this, it is clear that the time has come for the U.S. ruling-class to radically upgrade its overall performance pertinent to the nation’s social, economic and political destiny. Moreover, if its members are too busy perusing their stock options, trust accounts, tax breaks, foreign investments and expanding fortunes to radically upgrade their performance in ways which take the best interests of the rest of us into account, they need to step aside—because the rest of us can no afford the luxury of carrying them, while ignoring the massively inadequate nature of their destabilizing, clueless leadership.

I have had the good fortune to live for long periods of time in Third World settings that I believe provide me important insights into the strategic military dilemma Afghanistan poses for the United States and its allies. The first, and most important, dimension of the situation that everyone needs to grasp regarding this catastrophically dangerous confrontation is the fact that critically important strategic, military factors pertinent to success favor the groups our leaders are vowing to defeat. Let me elaborate.

Revolutionaries the world over compulsively study, and in minute detail, every significant movement dedicated to rapid change that has taken place over the past couple centuries. Particular attention is devoted to the struggles waged in Russia, India, China, Cuba, South Africa and Algeria. They also consistently examine smaller, less familiar struggles waged by organizations such as the Irish Republican Army, Shining Path, the Sandanistas, Tupamaros and Mau Mau.

This list is neither balanced, nor complete. But it doesn’t need to be. The key point to be understood is that the groups the U.S. and its allies are currently confronting in Afghanistan are prepared to do serious battle. As a matter of fact, it is probably true that many of the participants have been waiting and hoping for a battle such as this for a long time. Moreover, on the basis of lessons learned, I assume they are pretty much convinced that time and strategic circumstances are on their side.

Here are some of the reasons this is the case. Until now, two kinds of settings have been identified as essential for military parity, and possible success, when fighting armies of the sort currently deployed in Afghanistan by the United States and its allies. The first is a battle arena providing wide, dense remote swaths of triple deck jungle cover of the sort that exists in Viet Nam. The second is large cities with dense populations. Baghdad’s Sadr City comes to mind.

When used properly, triple deck jungle nullifies the strategic advantage of superior air power. The U.S. Government’s use of napalm, and other herbicides, during the Viet Nam conflict was not sufficient to the task of eliminating the advantages provided by such cover. Napalm notwithstanding, the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” remained intact, and functional, at least to the extent that those who depended on it were never left without viable opportunities to effectively conduct punishing military assaults unseen from the air.

The strategic military advantages that large cities with dense populations provide for irregular armies are relatively obvious. In order to defeat such armies, opponents must dismount their armored vehicles go forth into crowded neighborhood along paths and winding lanes too narrow for motorized vehicles larger than motorcycles.  This is necessary because attacking urban targets with carpet bombing is no longer acceptable, and any nation which might be foolish enough to pursue such a massively destructive approach to war will be universally condemned.  This was not the case where Hiroshima and Nagasaki were concerned.

But we are no longer living in the kind of lawless world that existed during World War II.  Wars must be fought in accordance with legally prescribed norms, and those who significantly violate them are subject to prosecution.  Thus, those who engage in war against irregular opponents of the sort in Afghanistan are forced to resort to chasing them through neighborhoods on foot.  This is a difficult task in and of itself.  But it is complicated in setting such as Afghanistan because the people  support local forces in ways that provide them incalculable advantages. This is what Mao Zedong was referring to when he asserted that “we (his soldiers) are fish, and the people are the sea.”

The chances that Afghanistan’s common people are going to withdraw support from the “fish” among them, and support the U.S. and its allies, are slim to none. Moreover, Afghanistan’s terrain provides another strategic military advantage to the “fish.”  This is due to the fact that much of the fighting must take place in remote areas at extremely high altitudes. There are few roads in many of the areas where the most intense fighting is taking place, and those that exist are commonly mined with explosive devices.  This is due in part to the fact that the remotely detonated roadside bombs that have proven effective against the U.S. and its allies in Iraq are now being used with devastating effectiveness in Afghanistan.

Given the situation, the U.S. and its allies are being forced to rely—to a great, and probably crippling extent–on helicopters to transport troops and supplies to critically important battle stations. But helicopters are particularly unsuited to fly at high altitudes because of the thin air. Those who have been closely watching the evolving battle in Afghanistan during recent weeks are aware of the growing number of allied helicopter crashes. Official assurances that the helicopters are not being shot down by hostile forces are obviously meant to convey confidence and resolve.

That’s understandable. But the brutal truth of the matter is that however confident and determined the U.S, and its allies prove to be, Afghanistan’s high altitude battle sites will remain critically dangerous for helicopters. I am certain that the leaders of Russia’s military forces understand this. But there is little evidence that the people in Washington, D.C. who are mulling over the possibility of sending another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan possess such understanding. This is highly unfortunate. Before he makes an enormous error that will severely cripple his presidency through its conclusion, President Barack Obama needs to understand what those who he seeks to defeat already know: more troops equal more targets.

It is time for the U.S. and its allies to begin the process of radically reducing their military presence in Afghanistan. New strategies, tactics and objectives are in order. Without them, failure is pretty much certain.

Lightening bolts are beautiful, as long as you are not standing at, or near, their points of impact. I am moved to make the observation in response to President Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because his selection has hit the US populace like a huge, startling, bolt of lightening.

Obama is apparently a good egg. He has high hopes, and he is off to a relatively good start. He is a gifted speaker, and positively eloquent when he takes off on an inspired riff about some positively wonderful ideal. But we are still getting used to him as president. We are still, as it were, taking his measure, watching, questioning, comparing, critiquing. That’s what we do with new presidents.

But Barack Hussein Obama is vastly different from each of his predecessors in the oval office. As a result, it is taking us longer to adjust to his being in office than is normally the case. However much we seek to evade, deny, and move beyond, our unavoidable reality is that his race is largely responsible for the unusual complexity of the process of getting everyone comfortable with him as the nation’s preeminent leader. This is largely due to the fact that Obama’s election means that from this time forward everything involving race in the United States will be different. Thus, we are engaged in major social and psychological transformations. The Nobel Peace Price Committee has vastly complicated the process.

The key point to be understood is that Barack Obama is a new experience every day of the week for every one of us. Given that, if we had our druthers, we would have preferred to have had more time to get used to him before having to make the adjustment to seeing, and relating to, him as one of the world’s most highly regarded leaders. Up until now, this nation’s citizens have largely concentrated on what his election means to us. But his selection for the Nobel Peace Prize redefines our paradigm.

If nothing else, President Obama’s being honored in such an undeniably auspicious manner by prestigious foreigners is forcing us to acknowledge that he is as important to the rest of the world as he is to us. Moreover, we are also being forced to acknowledge that he is more honored, and more widely respected and accepted in much of the rest of the world, than he is here in the United States by his own countrymen and women.

Maybe most important, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has essentially called out the people of this nation regarding the matter of war. Needless to say, it is unseemly indeed for a recipient of the “peace prize” to be vigorously pursuing two wars. One might also reasonably argue that it is equally unseemly for the people led by a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize to be clamoring, as far too many of us are, for more military spending, more troops for combat, and more interminable killing on foreign battlefields.

Having been called out in a marvelously diplomatic manner regarding our outsized propensity to engage in bloody imperial episodes of the sort currently underway in Iraq and Afghanistan, my hope is that we will respond by forging peace in each setting as soon as possible. Only by doing so, will we justify the honor recently bestowed on the gentleman we elected to lead our government, and thereby ratify our long deferred dreams and aspirations for peaceful coexistence. In any event, however the situation develops, I should like to note that we are already deeply indebted to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for btilliantly nudging us in the proper direction.