Mel Goodman is a great American patriot. A former CIA and State Department analyst, he was one of just three former CIA analysts who testified against the nomination of Robert Gates to head the CIA in 1991, because of Gates' record of politicizing intelligence--a problem that has grown immerusably worse since his warnings went unheeded. Yesterday, Truthout published his most recent article, The self-inflicted wounds of 9/11, which is well reading in its entirety. He also appeared on a local Pacifica Radio program on KPFK (LA), Background Briefing, today. The article is highly recommended in its entirety, but I just wanted to share some excerpts and some thoughts.
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:
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