Spotted on Biden's Palm - "Iraq War Bad, Afghanistan War Good"

Recently the mainstream media was howling with derision over the fact that Sarah Palin had written a few words on the inside of her hand to remind herself of the key themes she wanted to address in her speech at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville last week.

Admittedly, one would have expected subjects such as Energy, Tax Cuts, and Lift American Spirits to be top-of-mind for Palin, who has consistently and admirably embodied these stances throughout her career, including her 2008 vice-presidential run.

What the MSM did not explain was how Obama's ubiquitous reliance on his TelePrompTer, including at a recent pep talk with sixth-graders in Falls Church, Virginia, somehow reflected a greater skill at extemporizing or a more masterful command of facts on his part.

The Associated Press chided Palin for relying on a memory aid after having mocked Obama's use of his TelePrompTer. It's true: Palin did jot down a few notes to help her stay focused during her 40-minute Tea Party Convention keynote address, the second-most important speech of her career. Was Obama's five-minute chat with 11-year-olds at Graham Road Elementary School so important to his legacy that it required twin, six-foot-tall TelePrompTer monitors to help him get every word right?

Meanwhile, Joe "Gaffe-tastic" Biden has continued to demonstrate his propensity for committing more blunders in any given week than Palin has made in her entire life. Appearing on Larry King last week, Biden stated that the Iraq War "could be one of the great achievements of this administration."

This is the same Iraq War, you'll recall: (a) that Obama voted against, (b) that Biden voted for but later turned against, and (c) whose troop surge Obama and Biden voted against and denounced throughout 2008, even after it had demonstrably worked. In 2007, Biden condemned General David Petraeus as "dead flat wrong" for wanting to go through with the surge rather than immediately withdrawing our soldiers and partitioning Iraq into three ethnic regions.

It would be one thing if circumstances had improved dramatically in Iraq since Obama took office, and the administration had acted quickly to remove troops ahead of schedule, thus saving the U.S. time and money and improving relations with Iraqis. But the drawdown of 90,000 troops currently taking place was spelled out in 2008, according to a George W. Bush-negotiated arrangement, the Status of Forces Agreement, and is unfolding exactly as written. So Obama doesn't even deserve credit for "ending" the war in Iraq.

Saying that Iraq could be one of the great successes of the Obama administration is like saying that the stagehand who pulled the curtain on the debut of Così Fan Tutte is responsible for one of the great successes of the Metropolitan Opera House.

Then there's Biden's nutty defense of the Justice Department's decision to read Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights after just 50 minutes of questioning. Biden noted that the Bush administration gave the same treatment to shoe bomber Richard Reid in 2001. Unfortunately, Biden is blissfully ignorant of the fact that the military commissions to detain Islamic terrorists had not even been set up by the time the shoe bomber had struck. Reid attempted his attack three months after 9/11, whereas Abdulmutallab attempted his attack eight years and three months after 9/11.

Let's not forget that Biden was one of the chief opponents of the Afghanistan surge Obama reluctantly ordered in late 2008. Biden had argued behind the scenes for increasing drone attacks to pick off Al-Qaeda members, and against sending more troops to fight counterinsurgents. Fortunately, Obama didn't listen to Biden, and the surge is already demonstrating results, as in Tuesday's apprehension of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the most significant Taliban capture in over eight years.

This has been the pattern for a year-and-a-half now: Palin makes true statements-that the Vice-President is the head of the Senate, that the health care bill would require panels of bureaucrats to ration care-that are denounced as "gaffes" and "lies," while Biden regularly weaves twisted fantasies out of cotton candy and is heralded as the voice of wisdom and experience.

The clincher that the MSM held Palin to a higher standard than Biden throughout the 2008 presidential campaign is that they constantly compared her record to Obama's, not Biden's. ("The Republicans' #2 doesn't have that much more executive and business experience than the Democrats' #1!")

It takes a serious degree of intellectual dishonesty for Democrats to claim we are safer with Biden as Vice President than we would have been with Palin.

http://www.scottspiegel.com

The Case For Ending the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - Now

After almost one trillion dollars spent and over 4,000 lives lost, it is time to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring our troops home.

The arguments are pretty clear by now and the people responsible are standing, not in front of the forest, where they cannot see the trees, but in the middle of the forest. They have been lost and wandering so long that they cannot see the path out. In the meantime, the people in the village-the American Public-are waiting for visionary leadership-not on how to help Afghanistan but how to help our own citizens, here, at home. And it has not come.

General McCrystal has done what he has been tasked to do...offer a military solution. The diplomats have been working on what they have been tasked to do...find a diplomatic solution to the intractable lifestyle of the orthodox Muslims who live in that far off land, two centuries behind us and the rest of the modern world.

The answer is staring them in the face. Stop. Assemble our troops and equipment. Do an about-face and come home. Then begin planning to help the Afghanis. Don't forget them. Help them. Help them not merely with military, if they should need that, but with other resources, which they most definitely need. Then and only then will they and other nations like them begin to help us.

The evidence is overwhelming. It is the politics that is intractable. It is sad to realize that we cannot trust the words of any member of the Neoconservative Obstructionist Party any longer. (The Neoconservative Obstructionist Party is the name of the Party that used to be called The Republican Party but which was taken over by Neoconservatives and Obstructionists, largely former Dixiecrat Southern segregationists like Strom Thurmond, who when he was still alive and in the Senate was the hero of recent Senate Republican leader Trent Lott.)

For centuries, and particularly since World War II, we had a valuable counter-opinion to any administration international policy. We had strong opposition leaders in the former Republican Party. Now we merely have a buffoon, Rush Limbaugh, and a group of lobbyist-paid, Neocon-Obstructionist lackeys who are afraid of their own shadows, and who pander to the aggressive group of the military and to the military-industrial complex.

The Neocon-Obstructionists shout and yell slogans and beat their chests like Tarzan. They keep their sons home, while sending poor blacks and Hispanics and other dedicated, patriotic young volunteers off to fight a war. Most of these Senators and members of Congress have never worn the uniform of their country. We cannot trust our security to them. It is sad, but true. They know little about war or the military and, in addition, they lie about everything. Congressional Democrats put up with them. Therefore, we must make our own analysis.

To begin...why are we still there? We are still in Afghanistan, after 8 years, ostensibly to find and kill members of Al Qaeda, including Osama Bin Laden, those who not only attacked us but still plan and carry out actions against us. Many knowledgeable military and diplomatic and media sources say that Al Qaeda is now, by and large, outside of Afghanistan, or marginally on the border with Pakistan. It is clear that they have taken up actions against Pakistan, hoping to discourage that country...not yet totally disenchanted with Al Qaeda's violent, insane actions...from working with us.

We need to initiate a different policy. While Afghanistan may have many problems, they are their problems. We can help them, but we need not be there to help them, and the solution has nothing to do with the military.

Let us look at this rationally. Let's say that we had a Taliban school here in the United States and it were theoretically in a community where we could not simply change the attitudes by law or police action. Let's say that they advocated such things as no education for women, mistreatment of women, stoning women and murder of women for perceived adultery...whether true or not...then what would we do? We would spend an extraordinary amount of money and effort to start a huge public relations campaign to change their minds. We would do what we always do here in the U.S. We would bring knowledge and advocacy and reason to bear on an irrational situation as we did with civil rights or women's rights. We would not go in and blow up the neighborhood, kill all those of opposite opinion and in the process damage the school...even if that option were open to us.

Are we to assume that because it is Afghanistan we can do that? I don't think so. If we should decide that we have that authority, then that is a different situation from the reasons we are currently in Afghanistan and we need an entirely new plan. So, unless we intend to change the country, the religion, the legal system, the tribal customs...by force or intimidation...we should not be in Afghanistan...at least not for that reason.

Let's consider the practical aspects of our situation right now. We have had 8 years of war in two different parts of the world. We have...whether we like it or not...advanced and tested our war-making apparatus, including soldiers, weaponry and general staff. We have young soldiers who have seen combat and who may be in the service for twenty more years, providing a skilled cadre on which to build any force that might become necessary.

We have depleted our military resources. We need to replenish them, but this is a time of great domestic need and anxiety, not a time for more military expenditure. This is not World War II. Iraq and Afghanistan will not pull us out of recession. These conflicts will, in fact, drive us deeper into recession. In addition, we need to alter and modify our military equipment to support a new strategy of engagement with terrorists wherever we find them, especially when there are threats in several areas of the world simultaneously.

What would the result from a total pull-out of our troops? In Iraq, it is pretty clear and we are already coming home on a timetable. We can hope that Iraqis will overlook our disastrous attack on their country, forgive us for electing two fanatical war mongers as President and Vice President (although it will be difficult to explain why they have not been prosecuted) and welcome us as world partners in advancing civilization and culture.

In Afghanistan, it will mean a temporary set back in what seems to be our attempt to change the country from one that we would consider very uncivilized to one marginally civilized. We can still continue to support attempts by Afghanis to do so. Perhaps we have passed the time and the opportunity to solve the world wide antagonism against the United States. But we can assist in restoring the American identity in a positive way throughout the Muslim world if we remove our troops from Afghanistan.

What to do about the terrorists? Leaving Afghanistan will neither help nor hurt. We must do what we currently do when a band of criminals is loose in the world and they have robbed or murdered someone in the United States. We ask other countries to help us locate them and, once located, help us imprison them if they have committed crimes. We ask other countries to allow us to bring in our police and investigative teams to help find them.

On the other hand, perhaps the President has made significant enough strides in the world to improve our image and our message to the world that we are not the greedy, diabolical, imperialists that Osama Bin Laden had claimed we are.

We must strengthen this image in order for us to be welcomed into the many different countries around the world where Al Qaeda cells are hiding. We need to launch efforts to find them and kill them in those countries or at least work with other countries to insure that these individuals are brought to justice. Our continued military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq makes justifying our stated objectives in this effort more difficult to believe in other Muslim countries..

We should always measure war in the number of lives that it sacrifices in return for the security of the United States. We should never send our soldiers out to die or be wounded for anything less than the protection of our citizens. Furthermore, we should never accidentally kill or maim civilian citizens of other nations without an extraordinary reason having to do with imminent danger of death or injury to our soldiers. Those should be inflexible rules that should guide our military operations at all times and in all theaters of operation. Which we can be pretty certain already do to some extent.

On the other hand, we must also continue to examine the actual monetary costs of a war to insure that we are, in fact, spending our security dollars with maximum efficiency. The United States now spends more money on security-in other words, protection for our citizens-than any other nation and more than, for example, all our European allies combined.

We have spent nearly a trillion dollars on Iraq. And what did we get for that? What did we get for the more than 4,000 dead, the 30,000 wounded, and the wild civil unrest we created in that country? We allowed terrorism, open religious war, devastation and a breakdown of society plus the deaths of 100,000 to 150,000 Iraqi civilians.

The cost of the Iraq war is already over $900,000,000,000.00. On top of that, this year's military budget will be $515,000,000,000.00, plus the Black Operations budget which is estimated this year to be about $50,000,000,000.00. In addition, we will spend over the next 25 year a minimum of $25,000,000,000.00 to care properly for the more than 30,000 wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, if those wars were to end today.

We have a national debt of $11,500,000,000,000.00. The interest alone on the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan is $27,000,000,000.00.

There was no huge group of Iraqi expatriates living here in the United States or elsewhere in the world, marching on Washington to ask us to come and attack Saddam Hussein. Certainly there was no one asking Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld to come and kill literally hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens, destroy the water supply, the electrical grid, damage the oil fields and loot the most ancient and historically significant national museum in the world.

There was no need for the Iraq war. None. It was an elective war, started for personal reasons by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and their friends.

It is time to simply lay down our arms in Iraq and Afghanistan and pick them up again in this country to prepare for a long struggle against a world-wide menace. In order to do that, we must return our troops to this country and reorganize. It is time to take the money we are spending on killing people we do not know and bring those troops home to prevent, among other things, the invasion of illegal immigrants coming in waves across our southern border. We need their help to expel illegal immigrants and begin to put our economy back together again.

This is not a message that we must cease all military operations and become Sweden or Switzerland. It is simply time to examine a military policy that is wasting lives and money for no good reason. It does not have benefits to the American people for the number of lives and the amount of money being spent. We need to shut it down and bring the troops home. If we reorganize our anti-terrorist program from here and begin again with a new, more rational approach, we will be far more secure than we are with present policies.

Joseph O'Shaughnessy, the editor of Populist Daily, (http://www.populistdaily.com) writes regularly on social, political and economic issues.

Neural Circuits

It is said that we the humans react and respond to our proximate environment, and absolutely ignore the power (within) us that influence our ends, do blame the external forces. This intuitive question has made many of us to speak on the issue.

Charles Darwin presented his line of reasoning- the survival of fittest by means of natural selection (biological evolution)-the secular version.

Carl Marx, his wits responded to the (adaptation issues) in a rather melancholic fashion, and blamed the religion to be the force of defilement -"religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress, religion is the sigh of oppressed creatures, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people-the demand to give up the illusion about its condition was the demand to give up a condition that needs illusions".

Seneca perception of the issue -courtesy the German legend 'Dr Faustus', in Christopher Marlowe's-play- the selling of a soul to the devil. Shakes Peare withdrew himself in a scalding sense-as flies to the wanton boys are we to gods; they kill us for their sport (King Lear). GB Shah, in Pygmalion gave an outlet to his pent up emotions by hurling suggestion to the protagonist lady that- "you should find a sentimental hog with a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and thick a pair of boots to kick you with".

And Andrew Brown adapted himself to the misperception (Guardian.co.uk), "the return of the ideology has taken us all by surprise, because no one expected it all to be about religion. Twenty years ago, when the Berlin Wall fell and it seemed reasonable to suppose that all the big questions about how to organize society had been solved by history, if you had asked what could possibly disrupt this progressive consensus? Hardly anyone would have supposed that the answer had any thing to do with God.

There may have been a few prescient pessimists-would you mind naming them, who thought Islam would be an important and dangerous disruption on the forward march to the future-perhaps important and dangerous enough to need quelling with a few brisk, punitive expeditions-but even such pessimists could hardly have imagined the fiasco that what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned out to be, nor 9/11 attacks and the widespread fear and loathing they have produced. Nor could anyone have foreseen the emergence of the religious right as such a dominant force in American politics and its extraordinary takeover of the Republican Party.

The Reaganite model of capitalism is collapsing around the world, liberal democracy is no longer poised to take over the world but worrying about the where and how it might survive, and that the arguments about religion were back as fiercely as ever and almost as popular.

This is extraordinary. Communism would not have fallen in the way it did were it not for the passionate Roman Catholicism of the Poles, and even in the other countries of Eastern Europe there were Christian groupings at the forefront of the revolutions of 1989.

Sure enough, the Catholic Church in Ireland imploded in scandals, and even in Poland lost its influence, the slow growth of liberal Protestantism continued. The simple message of hedonistic liberalism-there is probably no God; there is nothing to worry about; enjoy yourselves-seemed in the West entirely self-evident.

The weirdos who did not know the enjoyment of life was all one could hope for were clearly dying off and religion was no more than a "licensed insanity", in the words of John Bowker, then dean of Trinity College Cambridge.

What changed, what brought us to the contemporary world, where millions of Hindus, Christians, Muslims and atheists understand the existence of infidels and heretics as an existential threat against which almost any degree of violence is something justified?"

The Reaganite model of capitalism was collapsing around the world, liberal democracy was no longer poised to take over the world but worrying about the where and how it might survive, and that the arguments about religion were back as fiercely as ever and almost as popular".

There is a sharp contrast even in all the reflex actions, and a reflection of misperception on the part of people who spoke on the issue, God and for that matter religion has nothing to do with the power politics, we the perpetrators are responsible for the tribulations in the World we reside.
What we lack is the understanding of neural hijacking-instinctive behavior, and the understanding of neural circuit-the procedure of the overlapping of knowledge in human mind, what neural hijacking does is that it takes direct route - apparently the survival route, without taking the sane route of getting the information processed duly by the proper neural circuit in more refined and even manner.

The men of intellect who have been endowed with the wisdom say that- the charity of the intellect is to tolerate the talk of the ignorant, many of us in our childhoods used to believe the false notions owning to our ignorance but such false notions proved wrong, when we reached maturity, there are many aspects that used to be considered as Para psychological are know known as psychological aspects.

In the ever changing world where no final judgment is possible, what actually we, do is that we simply behave impulsively, and often we are unable to withstand the pressure that "Time" poses to our wits. There is a saying in Arabic that- do not curse time, because it is from me (God). The solution-the command of intellect over instinct, we the humans should stop taking selfish route and strive for mutual benefits than strike for the benefit.

Imran Zaka, Faisalabad, Punjab Pakistan,00926636545

Democracy Is Alive And Well In Northern Iraq

There is a saying among the Kurds: "No friends but the mountains." The reason for this seems to be due to their past misfortunes brought on by ruler after ruler through the years. Even as recently as Saddam's regime, this pattern continued. Yet, instead of being bitter, they are leaders in changing their country for the better. They believe in a Democratic form of government much like we Americans cherish. Today there is opportunity in the Kurdish section of Iraq. They have preserved their culture, language and way of life. Saddam did great harm to the Kurds but he didn't kill their spirit. He hurt them but thankfully they survived. I was fortunate to have lived amongst them for over a year recently. In this wonderful place, known as Kurdistan, the natives live a happy liberated life now. They are building up their area and providing a better life for their citizens.

Tracing their history, a visit to the land of the Kurds is a trip through Biblical history. The prophets: Nahum, Jonah, Habakkuk, and Daniel are all buried within the vast borders of this land. I was fortunate to have visited the burial grounds of Noah, the Lost Village and waterfalls while living there for over a year recently. After centuries, the people fell to the forces of Alexander, and later became traders along the Silk Road. The Mongols would make them prisoners, the Ottomans who would then make them princes. At the end of WW I, the Kurdish people were finally promised independence. Instead, Kurdistan was parceled out among Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. They are neither Arabs, nor Turks, and certainly not Persians. They are majority Sunni Muslims, but are a different nation indeed. Kurds are a different ethnic group because of that background and because of the suffering they have seen.

They have a completely different outlook. They are accustomed to living with people of many different religions and cultures. As in the days of old, you will find in the hearts of the people, ethnic and religious tolerance. They are a beacon of hope for oppressed people in the Mideast. They are not unkind to others like in other parts of Iraq and other neighboring countries. In Kurdistan, you see churches beside mosques. There are Christians, Armenians, Yezidies, Muslims, and Jews. They are all welcomed as neighbors and friends. They have been living together for ages and this shows how understanding the Kurdish people are.

They don't disrespect people with different religious views or different customs. They treat others the way they expect to be treated. If I had the say, I'd let them rule the rest of the country and I know they would ensure peace and justice for all. Knowing how to create a robust economy is just another aspect that would help improve the livelihood of the new nation. They would instill good will to all the people of Iraq, the way God intended.

John Sprague is an American currently working in the mideast. He enjoys writing and working on his websites in his free time. He has a new site at http://marketingkindreds.com. His website has photos of the mideast and marketing articles that you may be interested in viewing.

Capt. Nichola Goddard

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - Canada suffered its first-ever death of female combat soldier during a lengthy firefight with Taliban insurgents Wednesday evening.
Capt. Nichola Goddard, of 1st Royal Canadian Horse Artillery based in Shilo, Man., was killed in action at 6:55 p.m. local time, 24 kilometres west of Kandahar city, said Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, commander of the multinational brigade based in Kandahar.
Goddard's age and hometown were not immediately available. She was married, with no children.
"Our hearts, our prayers and our sympathies go out to the family of Nichola Goddard," said Fraser, standing in front of a Canadian flag at half-mast.
"It's a hard day but it's also a day of achievements here. The government of Afghanistan and the Afghan national security forces have had a good successful day. There was significant Taliban casualties both killed and captured."
"Unfortunately, the cost today was the life of Nichola."
Although Canadian women lost their lives in action in both the First and Second World Wars, Goddard was the first to do so in a combat role.
"I believe it's safe to say she was the first woman in a combat-arms military occupation (such as artillery, infantry, or armoured) killed in front-line combat," said Lieut. Morgan Bailey, a media liaison officer in Ottawa.
Goddard was serving as a forward artillery observer, helping to target the artillery guns by observing where the shells fell.
Combat roles were first opened to Canadian women in 1990.
Canadian forces were acting in support of the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Army, who had received information a large number of Taliban fighters were massing in the Panjwai district, about 24 kilometres west of Kandahar, an area that has seen off-on fighting for weeks, said Fraser.
Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, to which Goddard had been attached, were supporting the Afghans by forming a ring around the battle area, Fraser said.
"We were there to back them up and support them, providing outer cordons. All the inner work was being done by the Afghan security forces."
Coalition air support was also involved.
Details were still sketchy around Goddard's death, said Fraser.
"There was a firefight out there and sometime during the firefight she was killed."
Fighting had stopped Wednesday night but Fraser said the operation was expected to continue Thursday.
As debate about Canada's mission raged on Parliament Hill, Fraser said the commitment of Goddard and all Canadian soldiers has never wavered.
"This is an important mission," he said.
"This a mission that the soldiers believe in. This is a mission that the soldiers continue to go out every day and prosecute with passion."
"Nichola was doing a job that she loved. Everyone around me said that she loved what she was doing."
"She's indicative of all the men and women serving over here in Afghanistan and Canadians should be proud of the work that their soldiers are doing in a very difficult environment."
"But the Afghan people deserve no less than our continued support to see through this fight to its end."
Five women were killed in action in the Second World War. The First World War saw 29 female combat deaths.
Goddard has become the 17th Canadian killed in Afghanistan since 2002: one diplomat and 16 soldiers, including four who died in the friendly-fire bombing by a U.S. plane.
Her death came on a day when Canadian troops tried to relax and enjoy themselves.
Earlier that afternoon, the military had relaxed its strict no-alcohol policy allowing soldiers two bottles of beer apiece to sip in the hot Afghan sun and the evening saw a four-hour musical performance by Canadian stars such as singer Michelle Wright.
In Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed the regret of a mourning country.
"Captain Goddard died while helping to bring peace, stability and democracy to a troubled region of the world," Harper said in a statement.
"She and the other men and women who serve in Afghanistan are involved in a difficult and dangerous mission. They are serving our country and its people with distinction."
"Our nation will not forget their sacrifice."
Manitoba Premier Gary Doer also expressed regret.
"On behalf of the people of Manitoba, we respect her life of bravery and honour on behalf of Canada and we offer our condolences to the family and to the community of Shilo," he told CJOB radio in Winnipeg.
Canada has about 2,300 troops in Afghanistan, most of them in Kandahar, as part of an international effort to help the Kabul government assert its authority and fight Taliban insurgents, who have been engaging the U.S.-led coalition and NATO forces in hostilities in many parts of the country.
Kandahar, in the south, is regarded as a hotbed of insurgent attacks and the spiritual home of the extremist Taliban movement.
The Taliban were ousted from power by U.S.-led forces after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Taliban regime was blamed for harbouring Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist organization while it was in power.
naked truth

Pfc. Brian M. Moquin Jr.

Worcester soldier among 10 killed in Afghanistan crash
WORCESTER, Mass. -- A 19-year-old Worcester man was among 10 soldiers killed when their helicopter crashed during combat operations in eastern Afghanistan last week, the Army announced Wednesday.
Pfc. Brian M. Moquin Jr. died Friday in the remote mountains of Kunar Province, Afghanistan, after the CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter crashed while on a mission to find al-Qaida and Taliban militants believed to be hiding in the rugged terrain near the border with Pakistan.
Army officials said the helicopter was conducting operations on a mountaintop landing zone when it fell into a ravine. All 10 soldiers aboard the helicopter were killed.
Military officials said the helicopter was not downed by hostile fire. An investigation into the cause of the crash is continuing, Julie Curren, a spokeswoman for the Army, said Wednesday.
Moquin's mother, Tracy Vaillancourt, said she was in Chicago on a business trip Sunday morning when an Army officer called her on her cell phone and told her of the death of her only child.
"He was too young," Vaillancourt told the Telegram and Gazette of Worcester. "He just wanted to do something to make everybody proud. I'm very proud of him."
Vaillancourt said that from a young age, her son had expressed interest in joining the military.
Moquin enlisted in the Army in March 2005 and attended basic training at Fort Knox, Ky.
He was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division in August and deployed to Afghanistan in February.
Moquin had received numerous military awards and decorations, including the Bronze Star, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Afghan Campaign Medal and Combat Action Badge.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

CWO Eric W. Totten

St. Paul native dies in helicopter crash in Afghanistan
Pilot who grew up in Frogtown was on second tour of duty
BY DAVID HAWLEY
Pioneer Press
A combat-hardened Army helicopter pilot who grew up in St. Paul's Frogtown neighborhood was among the 10 U.S. troops killed Friday in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, his family and the military said Wednesday.
Chief Warrant Officer Eric W. Totten, who would have celebrated his 35th birthday Wednesday, was a veteran of military actions in Bosnia and Iraq and was on his second tour in Afghanistan.
He died with nine others when a CH-47 helicopter crashed while scouring remote Afghan mountains along the Pakistan border for al-Qaida and Taliban militants as part a major action involving U.S. and Afghan troops.
The military said the crash was not caused by hostile fire, though Taliban forces claimed to have shot down the helicopter. It was the deadliest single incident for U.S. forces in Afghanistan in a year and is still being investigated.
A Defense Department announcement did not identify Totten as the pilot of the helicopter. But his older brother, Noel Totten of Bloomington said Totten was rated to fly helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft and was primarily serving as a pilot.
"I never really worried about him because he was so intelligent and competent and because he wasn't cocky," Noel Totten said. "I worried about the younger ones, the 19- and 20-year-olds, but not Eric."
The son of a prominent Twin Cities building contractor, Totten grew up on Lafond Avenue in the Frogtown neighborhood and attended Ramsey Junior High School before his family moved to Golden Valley.
Noel Totten said a major change in his brother's life occurred when a close childhood friend died of drug-related causes.
"He said, 'I don't want to go that way — I want to make something of myself,' " Noel Totten recalled. "And he did. We're very proud of him."
Eric Totten joined the Army shortly after graduating from high school and took Ranger training before getting into aviation. A bachelor, he moved at the whim of Army. He had recently been living in Fort Campbell, Ky., the home of the 101st Airborne Division.
In Afghanistan, he was with the 3rd Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division. The division is based in Fort Drum, N.Y.
One of six children, Totten was fond of dropping in on his siblings and their families — he had 21 nieces and nephews — at their homes in various parts of the country.
A cousin, Avalon Totten-Denton, posted a note on a Web site that was created after the family learned of the aviator's death. The Web site is filled with slideshows of family gatherings, with many pictures of Eric Totten at birthday parties and at family gatherings near a lake.
"I wish there was a way to set off fireworks on this site because encounters with Eric were always such a blast," Totten-Denton wrote. "Until we meet again, enjoy the ride, my friend. Bless you for your sacrifice and know you are forever loved."
Noel Totten said his brother loved the military and living an active, athletic life, though he was also an accomplished musician who played piano and a number of other instruments.
"They were always training and promoting him," Totten said of his brother's Army career. "He was always excited about his next new challenge. They gave him a lot of pats on the back."
Totten's funeral will be Saturday in Augusta, Kan., where the family has a burial plot. He will be laid to rest near his parents.
His survivors, in addition to Noel, his eldest brother, include a sister, Thais Hinz, of Duluth. Other siblings are a sister, Judy Jackson of Oklahoma City, and brothers Jim of Tallahassee, Fla., and Ottis of New Orleans.
Totten is the third Minnesota soldier to die in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001. Three Wisconsin soldiers also have been killed there.
At least 234 U.S. military personnel have died in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan and Uzbekistan since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime, according to the Defense Department.
More than 2,400 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the war started there in March 2003. The total includes 30 Minnesota military deaths and 52 Wisconsin military deaths.
The Totten family's memorial site is online at at www.eric-totten.memory-of.com.

World Reviews

A Strategy for Heroes

A Strategy for Heroes
What's wrong with the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review.
by Frederick W. Kagan
02/20/2006, Volume 011, Issue 22

THE PENTAGON RELEASED ITS QUADRENNIAL Defense Review on February 6. The latest installment of the congressionally mandated report on the state of the military declares, "manifestly, this document is not a 'new beginning.'" Indeed it is not. The new QDR reflects a concerted effort by the Pentagon to return to its pre-9/11 course, focusing on long-term dangers as though the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had never happened, as if America's ground forces were not badly overstretched, as if the nation were not really at war.

Wise commanders design plans that can be executed by ordinary soldiers. They know that if they expect every soldier to be a hero and every commander a genius, they will inevitably be disappointed. Wars are never neat. The unexpected happens. The enemy gets a vote in determining how things go. Sound planning therefore builds in a margin of error: attacking with more force than necessary; maintaining larger reserves; expecting greater friction; and preparing for stronger enemy resistance. This approach has been the American way of war for decades. It is so no longer. Although the Pentagon officially promises to "overmatch" any potential adversary, a military policy of "just barely enough" has been the reality since the beginning of the Bush administration. The 2006 QDR continues in this mold. It propounds a strategy that only heroes could make succeed.

By refusing to propose radical growth in the defense budget even in this time of war, the administration has forced choices about whether to prioritize the present or the future. And as this QDR shows, the Pentagon remains firm in its determination to organize for tomorrow's potential problems rather than today's actual crises.

President Bush placed military transformation at the center of his defense agenda from the time of his first address on national security issues as a candidate, the 1999 Citadel speech. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made transformation the hallmark of his tenure within a few months of taking office. Transforming the military to prepare for the challenges of the future was the theme of the 2001 QDR, as it is of the just-released 2006 QDR. The administration at least has been steadfast.

Such steadfastness is remarkable considering the dramatically changed national security circumstances of the past five years. Military transformation was all the rage in the post-Cold War 1990s, when most analysts believed we would enjoy a "strategic pause," a period in which there were few visible threats. Most transformation discussions in the 1990s assumed that the military should therefore prepare for enemies in the 2020-2025 time frame. Transformation enthusiasts were regularly frustrated that so many resources were being devoted to current operations they felt were less important than the challenge of preparing for massive change decades away.

Bush and Rumsfeld embraced this focus on the distant horizon. Throughout 2001, rumors flew that the Army would lose as much as 40 percent of its active-duty combat forces to pay for transformative airpower and missile programs. These rumors ended with the September 11 attacks, but the transformationists continued to argue that ground forces were outmoded, expensive, risky, and likely to generate far more casualties than the American public would tolerate in a conflict.

Recent history has not been kind to the transformation worldview. September 11, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom have shown that the strategic pause, if it ever existed, is over. Recent conflicts have also shown that ground forces remain central to accomplishing meaningful political goals in war. A nearly pure airpower campaign in Afghanistan did not obviate the need to keep an Army division there for the next four years (and likely into the indefinite future). A land-air campaign in Iraq relying heavily on the air component merely created the preconditions for the long-term maintenance of 140,000 American soldiers there. Astonishingly, the 2006 QDR shows that these facts have not swayed the Pentagon from its commitment to focusing on airpower solutions to long-term threats.

Because a Quadrennial Defense Review occurs every four years, it would seem natural for such a review to focus not just on long-term goals and strategies but also on important national security events likely to shape the subsequent four years. The QDR is meant, after all, to be an input into the defense budget process, and that process is generally much more concerned with the next five years than with the next 25. One might have expected this QDR to begin with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to consider scenarios for the development of those conflicts, and to evaluate the ability of the military to handle the likeliest of those scenarios. If, as seems clear, the administration believes that U.S. force levels in Iraq will be dramatically reduced by the end of 2006, then the QDR might well have addressed the problem of recapitalizing the worn-out equipment and transitioning, in general, to a largely peacetime force engaged in normal training. This issue is nowhere addressed in the QDR, though, which is unfortunate, because this complex, confusing, and costly transition will probably be the defining activity of the next four years within the military--always assuming it happens on schedule.

From an evaluation of the end of current large-scale deployments and the move back to a garrison military, the QDR should then have considered other likely threats and challenges in the near-and mid-term. Only then would it make sense to think about the challenges of transformation to meet distant threats and to consider the right balance among the tasks of handling the present, dealing with likely imminent problems, and preparing for dangerous possibilities in the distant future. Such an approach is anathema to the Pentagon, however, because the military establishment is still fundamentally in a "strategic pause" mindset.

THE NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY, a document released in mid-2005 that serves as the strategic basis for the QDR, declared: "Uncertainty is the defining characteristic of today's strategic environment. We can identify trends but cannot predict specific events with precision." In the preface to the QDR, we similarly find references to an era characterized by the "unexpected," the "unpredictable," "uncertainty," and "surprise." The document lays much emphasis on the need to develop agile thinking, agile management methods, and rapid deployment capabilities to respond to these many uncertainties.

The United States, the document declares, is in the fifth year of a "long war" against "violent extremists who use terrorism as their weapon of choice." This conflict presents "a challenge that is different in kind, but similar in scale, to the Cold War." The QDR repeatedly states that this war will not be won by military means alone, and regularly implies that kinetic operations--the use of military forces on a large scale in combat--will play little or no role in determining the outcome. It proposes a fundamental reorientation of military capabilities away from large-scale conventional war and toward irregular war (which seems to be largely code for insurgency and counterinsurgency) and counterterrorism.

These sorts of operations, it emerges, fit nicely into the pattern of ideas prevalent in Rumsfeld's Pentagon well before the September 11 attacks. Speed of action, agility, special forces, and long-range precision-strike capabilities are all important. The QDR presents counterterrorism operations as primarily missions to identify, target, and kill individual terrorists. Irregular warfare means mainly sending increased numbers of special forces soldiers to hundreds of countries around the world to train their own militaries and police in the tasks of governance and counterinsurgency. The QDR notes that even the increased number of special forces soldiers it proposes will not be adequate for this mission, and so proposes that the regular forces of the Army and the Marines also be prepared to perform the basic functions of training indigenous soldiers that are normally the province of the special forces.

The heavy emphasis on training local police and military forces to win their own wars bears closer examination. The assumption that this is the right way to focus our resources is clearly drawn from administration strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet it seems premature to conclude that we should shift the focus of the ground forces establishment based on the outcome of those experiments to date. There is a deeper problem with this approach, however.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, we began to train indigenous military and police forces after U.S. forces smashed brutal dictatorships and set those countries on a path to democracy. The QDR makes it clear (and the national security strategy documents from which the QDR draws its strategic rationale make it clearer) that the Bush administration believes that winning the "long war" requires loosening the bonds of authoritarian control that now constrict so many states in the Muslim world. The U.S. military can train Pakistani, Egyptian, or Saudi armies and police to do their jobs better--indeed, it has been doing so for a long time. But it is not at all clear that training these agents of repression to be more effective is compatible with convincing the ruling regimes in those states to democratize. The idea of subcontracting the fighting of the "long war" to native militaries and police is really only useful if it is not that important to spread freedom in the Muslim world. If democratization is an important part of national strategy, as the president has repeatedly declared, then simply turning the job of "irregular warfare" over to the locals is not an approach that is likely to succeed.

But the emphases on the length of this war, its novel nature, its unpredictability, and the surprises it holds in store for us are all really ways of salvaging the "strategic pause" mindset. In fact, the current epoch really is not all that unpredictable, and we do not need to go out to 2020 to find meaningful challenges or meaningful threats.

THE WORLD of 2006 is no more or less unpredictable than the world has always been--even during the Cold War. From 1945 to 1990, we knew that we had one overpoweringly dangerous enemy and we oriented all of our military forces to facing that enemy. For all the supposed predictability of that situation, U.S. forces never engaged Soviet troops at all (with the limited exception of CIA officers in Afghanistan in the 1980s). Instead, they fought North Korea and China (after a shocking surprise attack that no one had expected), intervened in the Dominican Republic, fought the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, and then waged a string of smaller-scale operations in the 1970s and 1980s against a series of "unexpected" foes, including pirates in East Asia (the Mayaguez incident), Muslim revolutionaries in Iran, terrorists in Libya, local militias in Lebanon, and Marxist revolutionaries in Grenada, culminating in the removal of a strongman drug lord in Panama. The halcyon days when the Soviet threat made everything simple are a myth.

The unpredictability of the 1990s is also a myth. A sober evaluation of the world in 1992 would have suggested that the collapse of Yugoslavia would be a major issue for Europe and the United States; that the U.N. sanctions on Iraq would occupy a great deal of America's time and energy; and that the North Korean nuclear program would be a significant concern. It would also have been clear that Afghanistan's fate after the Soviet withdrawal would be complicated and contentious, although the significance of that fact was harder to predict. After the first World Trade Center bombing of 1993, it should have been possible to imagine that radical Muslim terrorism might be an increasing problem as well. America's leaders were not, on the whole, surprised by these developments--but the national security community continued to write incessantly about the unpredictability of current and future problems.

The same situation holds today. It is virtually certain that Iran and the problem of the Iranian nuclear program will be a central strategic issue for years to come. There are many possible scenarios ranging from peaceful resolution to major war, but any prudent defense policy should be able to respond at the highest level of force to a collapse of the quasi-peaceful relationship between Tehran and the West.

It is also certain that both Iraq and Afghanistan will continue to be dominating national security issues at least for the remainder of the Bush years. Even if the extremely optimistic estimates of troop reductions in Iraq prove justified, the problem of helping the fledgling Iraqi democracy fend off both internal and external challenges will loom large. The situation in Afghanistan is in some respects at least as worthy of concern. Rising Taliban attacks, coupled with Pakistan's continued unwillingness or inability to clear out the tribal areas along Afghanistan's southeastern border, place the Kabul regime in danger and have already been providing a relatively safe haven for al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups. Instability in that region will not dissipate quickly, and it will continue to be a matter of vital import for U.S. national security.

The recent electoral victory of Hamas in Palestine raises the strong possibility that conflict in that war-torn region will once again take center stage in the Middle East. A prudent national security review should consider carefully what actions might be required of the U.S. military should the so-called peace process there collapse.

North Korea is also likely to remain in the front ranks of American national security concerns for the foreseeable future. A country starved for hard currency is unlikely to resist the temptation to sell nuclear weapons or materials and knowledge for making them to high bidders, who may include international terrorists. The prospect of the collapse of the North Korean regime conjures another series of scenarios. Sound defense policy is not based on the assumption that all will be rosy.

It is also nearly certain that the growth of Chinese military power will be a matter of concern for the foreseeable future. The Chinese probably will not attack Taiwan, but the expansion of the Chinese economy and Beijing's drive to expand its influence in the world may have the effect of creating new danger areas where conflict might emerge. Once again, wise national security planners must operate on the assumption that all will not necessarily be well in East Asia.

One could identify many other plausible trouble spots: Venezuela, Colombia, and many other places in Latin America; Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and other African states. The point is not to predict whether crises will actually emerge from any of these hotspots but to recognize the near-certainty that specific parts of the world will pose certain kinds of questions and challenges to the United States over the next five or ten years. Any review of U.S. national security policy should evaluate possible responses to these obvious potential problems before it goes on to speculate about the need to prepare to meet challenges x, y, and z that might crop up a generation from now.

The QDR does not proceed in this manner. The emphasis on a vague and ill-defined "long war," on the need for agility that can come only through certain kinds of transformation to meet an uncertain and unpredictable world, destroys the possibility of serious strategic thought. It gives free rein to those who wish to indulge particular ideas of what warfare could or should be, but it does not tie the development of American strategy to the real world. The result: a strategy that only heroes could execute.

FROM 1991 to 2001, American military forces were in theory sized to be able to fight and win two simultaneous major regional conflicts. It is far from clear that the armed forces ever really were large enough to accomplish that mission, but such at least was the stated strategy. In the first Bush QDR in 2001, the force-sizing construct was changed to a program with the unlovely moniker "1-4-2-some." The military was to be able to defend the U.S. homeland; maintain presence in four critical regions; win decisively in two "overlapping" military campaigns; and engage in "a limited number" of "smaller-scale contingencies."

The 2006 QDR changes this formula yet again. The armed forces, it declares, must perform three key missions: "Defend the Homeland"; "Prevail in the War on Terror and Conduct Irregular Operations"; and "Conduct and Win Conventional Campaigns." It breaks each mission down into "steady-state" requirements that the armed forces must perform all the time and "surge" capabilities needed only in a crisis. Thus, the armed forces should be able to "conduct a large-scale, potentially long-duration irregular warfare campaign including counterinsurgency and security, stability, transition and reconstruction operations" (such as the war in Iraq) and "wage two nearly simultaneous conventional campaigns (or one conventional campaign if already engaged in a large-scale, long-duration irregular campaign)." In the case of the conventional war, the armed forces must "[b]e prepared in one of the two campaigns to remove a hostile regime, destroy its military capacity and set conditions for the transition to, or for the restoration of, civil society."

In other words, the military must be able to wage a counterinsurgency campaign in, say, Iraq, and also take down the theocracy in Tehran, replace it with a new stable government, and defeat any insurgency there. Or it must be able to defeat, say, Iran and establish a new government there while also defeating, perhaps, North Korea--but leaving it to the South Koreans, the Chinese, the Japanese, and others to reestablish stability on the peninsula. All the while, the military must continue to defend the homeland and also pursue a handful of lesser engagements, including the continual involvement with local police and military forces around the world that is the hallmark of the QDR's proposed strategy.

It is open to question whether this capability would actually be adequate. The commitment of something like half of the brigade combat teams in the active Army to Iraq has not left the other half free to contemplate a major war. On the contrary--the entire active force, including units normally left undeployed to train other units, has been involved in the Iraq war. Almost all active Army units (and many Guard and Reserve units) are either in Iraq, training to replace units in Iraq, or recovering from a deployment to Iraq. A recent RAND report underlines the magnitude of the problem: "To meet [deployment] requirement levels in the upper range that we have considered--14 to 20 brigades--the Army would experience serious problems in A[ctive] C[omponent] unit readiness and the nation would have few if any ready AC brigades to turn to in a crisis." In January, the Pentagon announced that it would reduce the number of brigade combat teams in Iraq--from the high of 20, kept there to support the Iraqi elections, below the previous normal level of 17--to a new normal level of 15, with several in reserve--still well within the "upper range" of the RAND study.

It seems clear that America's foes are aware of this situation. The North Koreans and the Iranians have both clearly taken advantage of America's preoccupation with Afghanistan and Iraq to advance their nuclear programs and defy the international community. Neither has suffered significant repercussions for that defiance--and their nuclear programs have advanced. Whatever message the Pentagon wishes to send, our enemies are seeing weakness, not strength.

But the authors of the QDR were troubled neither by such signs of overcommitment nor by studies like RAND's. On the contrary, the QDR concluded that "the size of today's forces--both the Active and Reserve Components across the Military Departments--is appropriate to meet current and projected operational demands." The review recommends increasing only the special forces component of the ground forces--and recommends reducing the programmed number of active Army brigade combat teams by one to pay for the growth. The president's budget proposes eliminating the temporary addition of 30,000 soldiers to the Active Army within a few years, to bring the force down to the level of 482,000 troops. By comparison, the Active Army of the 1980s had 780,000 soldiers.

The Pentagon has long argued that we should not evaluate the strength of the military by the number of soldiers. The QDR asserts that technological advance will make the force more capable with fewer troops. This logic does not hold up in the face of the U.S. experience in Iraq. Technology has proven and will continue to prove enormously helpful in that and similar conflicts. But counterinsurgency is an inherently manpower-intensive undertaking. The aim of the counterinsurgent is not just to kill his enemies, but also to reassure his allies, provide visible security to the population, improve conditions, and help the indigenous government establish its legitimacy. These are not tasks performed by Tomahawk missiles, JDAMs, or any other sort of precision-guided munition. They have to be performed by soldiers, and the number of soldiers really matters.

Commanders in Iraq have repeatedly indicated (usually off the record) that they have been forced to constrain their operations for lack of soldiers. Many have now argued convincingly that the hyper-efficient ground war of March-April 2003, which used the smallest possible number of soldiers, set the stage not for stability but for insurgency. L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. proconsul in Baghdad after the war, recently declared that he had repeatedly asked for more U.S. troops--to no avail. The relative paucity of U.S. soldiers in Iraq has restricted the strategy of "clear, hold, build" to a handful of towns and villages and left significant areas in Baghdad and elsewhere up for grabs. The number of soldiers, it turns out, still matters a great deal to the outcome of a war.

Above all, a strategy that requires the military to fight one Iraq-type counterinsurgency while also waging a major conventional war, will require that all American soldiers be heroes and all the commanders geniuses. It will require the men and women of the U.S. military to be deployed for years at a time, or else to move from one fight to another with little or no rest in between. It will leave no margin of error.

The QDR's treatment of the National Guard and Reserves show the problem in particularly acute form. For decades, these forces have been the nation's strategic reserve. They were to be mobilized in the event of major war, providing a bridge between the active forces and national conscription. The "lesser conflicts" of the 1990s eroded this distinction. Critical logistics and military police units in the Guard and Reserve had to be mobilized to support operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. This trend continued until 2003, when it began to accelerate exponentially. Now Guard units perform critical combat missions in long-term deployments, and Guard and Reserve support units are regularly mobilized and deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The strategic reserve has become a force without which the Active Army cannot function; a pool of soldiers who have a normal deployment pattern. The Pentagon now states that reserves can expect to mobilize and deploy once every six years, while the active forces can expect to deploy once every three.

If the Guard and Reserve have become so intimately involved in day-to-day operations, where now is the strategic reserve, ready should catastrophe befall us either in one of the two wars underway or in another theater? There is none. This strategy requires getting it right and winning quickly every time, without fail. That is not a strategy for ordinary men.

THE QDR SHOULD HAVE PROPOSED a permanent increase in the Active Army of at least 100,000 soldiers; in the Marines of at least one combat division; and it should at least have held the size of the National Guard and the Reserves steady. Funding for this growth in forces would need to come primarily from an increase in the defense budget.

The armed forces of the 1990s were inadequate for their mission, starved of resources for modernization and transformation, and unprepared for the challenges of the future. Then the United States went to war. As urgent crises demand our attention, the task of preparing for future threats does not vanish. The QDR is right to insist that we are engaged in what will probably be a long war. Waiting until that war is over before modernizing the force will probably create danger in the future. But the greater danger is in the near term. And the Pentagon has made the wrong choice in neglecting it.

The hard truth is that the defense budget needs to be set high enough to fund both current requirements and a prudent modernization program. The Defense Department should not have to lade its policy-planning documents with discussions on the need to balance risks during wartime. It should not have to rely on its people to be heroic, or to defer an even greater modernization bill for a future generation. The United States is still spending a historically low proportion of its GDP on defense. The growth in defense spending during the Bush administration, although large in peacetime, is very small compared with defense budget changes in previous protracted conflicts. We can afford to spend more on defense, and we must do so or force impossible choices on an overstretched defense establishment.

America's soldiers and Marines have been heroic in the struggle so far. Excellent performance and high retention rates in the face of repeated deployments, extensions of those deployments, and harrowing conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan are ample testimony to that heroism. This generation of young Americans may turn out to be one of the greatest generations by this toughest of all standards. But we should not count on such heroism, and we should not demand it until we really need it. We should establish a defense program that can succeed with mere mortals.

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the forthcoming Finding the Target: The Transformation of the American Military (Encounter).

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