Mark Casey Online

The troop surge in Iraq, which was “working” in terms of making our presence even more necessary, was also working because it happened concurrently with several diplomatic initiatives. These initiatives included both striking a tenuous truce with influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and simultaneously bribing leaders of the violent Sunni insurgent groups.

Hey, I’m all for that sort of thing. If it works, it works. But, it’s starting not to work.

Fighting is breaking out again, and even with recent and surprising pleas from al-Sadr to keep any protests “peaceful,” it’s starting to seem like even he has lost control of his sector of the insurgency. There’s no telling whether it will have died back down or not a month from now, but today it’s looking like “fragile” has turned into “broken.”

Meanwhile, after news broke that our military accidentally shipped nuclear rocket materials to Taiwan last year, defense secretary Gates has ordered that all U.S. nukes be inventoried and located by serial number. Hey, that sounds like a good idea. If Barnes and Noble can do it, why not the nuclear weapons division of our armed forces?

I’ve said since 2004 that the reason we’re invading Iraq is because the people in charge had no idea how things worked in the middle east. I’ve said that our poor understanding of the politics and culture of Middle Eastern nations is why we’re having such a hard time “winning the hearts and minds” in Iraq. And I’ve said that I’m all for sending in Green Berets and Navy Seals and whoever you want to send into any nation you want to carry out small, covert missions against terrorist cells. I’m all for that, yes I am.

But invasion is wrong. It’s destructive, it’s inefficient, and it kills almost nothing but civilians — we saw that in Iraq. These countries, of all the places in the world, need their infrastructure. They need their power grids. They need their water supply. For God’s sake, this isn’t Nazi Germany we’re dealing with — this is a nation of oppressed people whose lives we make nothing but worse by invading their countries. And so all it accomplished was to initiate a huge, visible, agit-prop marketing campaign against our own country.

That’s why I support the Democrats in this election. Very simple. We need someone who is willing to learn and understand the culture of the region. Someone whose policies will be informed by the actual situation on the ground — not the situation as we’d like to be.

But I was conflicted, because John McCain is a pretty smart cookie when it comes to foreign policy. Or so I thought. Until today, when he was discussing his imminent plans to invade Iran, and said that Iran was supplying and training Al-Qaeda. Yes, that’s Iranian Shiites that he claims are aiding Sunni’s in Al-Qaeda. It’s not true, it’s impossible, and most importantly — it’s the same faulty argument we heard for invading Iraq. So Joe Lieberman whispered in his ear, and he corrected himself “Oh, I mean extremists, not Al-Qaeda.” Right.

I’m willing to forgive a slip of the tongue. I hate the “gotcha!” game. But he’s basically talking about invading Iran, and it seems to me like the act of invasion is primary, and the reasons why and how are secondary. We can’t afford that again.

Jamie Leigh Jones came forward this month to claim that she’d been gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR employees, then locked in a room for 24 hours so a rape kit could not be administered.

An army rape kit proved that she had been raped vaginally and anally–then promptly disappeared.

For her part, Jones was told not to tell. Sound familiar? It’s not that there’s a conspiracy among Halliburton or Blackwater or The Administration to commit these evil acts and then cover them up. It never is–it’s just the opposite. These evil acts occur in an unsupervised, hostile, stressful and undisciplined environment. Then the companies cover them up like a scared 13-year-old who accidentally set a fire in his parents garage. Like the boy’s parents, it’s up to the media, and the public, to discover and punish these events.

There’s no option for the companies themselves–either get in trouble, or don’t. If there were millions at stake, what would you do?