Mel Goodman: The self-inflicted wounds of 9/11

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sun Sep 12, 2010 at 16:00

The article begins with the fundamental irrationality--the vast miss-match and misdireciton  between the the threat and our "response":

The attacks on Washington and New York City nine years ago extracted a terrible price in terms of blood and treasure. Unfortunately, the adverse US reaction to 9/11 has also extracted a terrible price with no end in sight. Although al-Qaeda is no longer a sophisticated terrorist organization capable of launching large-scale operations and is merely one of many jihadist groups based in Pakistan, the United States has thrown itself into the briar patch called Afghanistan.

Then the cost in lives and treasure:

Nearly twice as many Americans have died fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than were lost in the 9/11 attacks. The total cost of these long wars will be in the trillions of dollars. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the cost of oil was less than $25 a barrel; the price reached $140 a barrel in 2008 and, currently, the price is still three times the 2001 levels. The entire national security system has suffered as a result of the wrong-headed actions of the Bush administration in Iraq and the Obama administration in Afghanistan.

Obama's expansion of the madness:

President Obama inherited the war in Afghanistan, but last year he unwisely redefined and expanded it when he bowed to the demands of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Pentagon to send more than 30,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan. The president has defended this action as being part of the struggle against bin Laden and al-Qaeda, but we have been told authoritatively that there are only 50-100 al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan. In both wars, we have aligned ourselves with corrupt governments that are dysfunctional.

And the ridiculously outsized, astronomical costs:

These wars have been used to dramatically increase the size of the defense and intelligence budgets, which find the United States now spending more than the rest of the world in both categories. The $708 billion defense budget for FY 2011 is higher than at any point in our post-World War II history. In constant dollars it is 16 percent higher than the 1952 Korean War budget peak and 36 percent higher than the 1968 Vietnam War budget peak.

You might think that Obama is trying to get a grip on things.  Think again:

Historically, the costs to operate and maintain the US military tend to grow at about 2.5 percent a year. Not this year! The defense budget request for Operations and Maintenance is more than $200 billion, which represents an 8.5 percent increase.

And Congress is not even pretending to do its job overseeing the out-of-control intelligence "community" (You know it's not a real community, because they don't have crumbling infrastructure & darkened streetlights):

No genuine Congressional oversight of the intelligence community has been conducted since 9/11, and the Obama administration has made sure that the only internal oversight process at the CIA, the Office of the Inspector General, cannot function in any meaningful way.

In fact, you don't need any such sophisticated oversight to know that things are seriously wrong:

The unfortunate creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in the wake of 9/11 has led to a more sclerotic policy process as well as the growth of contractors who have been a drain on the national treasury. DHS has weakened key government agencies.; it took Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to expose the bureaucratic mess at DHS. Spending on intelligence has tripled since 9/11, marking the rise of a national security state that finds all branches of government, even the judiciary, bowing to the demands of the military and intelligence communities. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration used the state secrets privilege to block a lawsuit by former CIA prisoners who were tortured in overseas prisons.

His article concludes:

George Kennan wrote in his memoirs 60 years ago that it is the "shadows rather than the substance of things that move the hearts, and sway the deeds of statesmen." In his memoirs, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara finally acknowledged that "wars generate their own momentum and follow the law of unanticipated consequences." Since 9/11, the national security process has been in a state of decline with a dearth of statesmen and an abundance of shadows on issues dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism, insurgency and, now, cyber-war that are swaying the actions of American policymakers. President Eisenhower warned that the fears of the cold war were distorted and exploited for political advantage. Similar distortions have taken place in the wake of 9/11. As a result, we are on a glide path that has bankrupted US national security policy and threatens to bankrupt its treasury as well.

On Background Griefing, the host, Ian Masters, asked Goodman what, if anything might be able to shake America out of its sleepwalking state.  Goodman replied that he had thought Abu Ghraib might do it, or the related revelations about the extensive torture apparatus.  But these potentially earth-shattering revelations were contained, and he drew parallels to Nixon's re-election in 1972.

What struck me when he said this--not for the first time, of course, but with particular force given the deep background of understanding that he bring--was how Obama's actions essentially excusing, then continuing the multifaceted Bush malfeasance in the name of "stability," "continuity" or whatever, had fundamentally robbed America of the opportunity to reclaim our sanity, our self-respect, and the opportunity, over time, to reclaim our good name.

And this is arguably the greatest self-inflicted wound of all: the total disabling of our ability to confront and learn from our mistakes.