WASHINGTON – Secretary of Defense is the second most important and the toughest job in the US government after President.

Since the 9/11 attacks, US foreign policy has become highly militarized. The Pentagon today dominates US relations with the rest of the world, not the State Department or CIA.

The Pentagon’s 2013 total budget will be $800 billion when all programs, including “black” projects, are included.

This mammoth sum represents almost 50% of the world’s total military spending. Add close US allies in Europe, the Mideast, and Asia, and the figure is 80%.

Contrary to what most Americans believe, the US Defense Department is not really about defense of America’s shores, but about offensive operations abroad. The US has some 1,000 bases and powerful air, naval and land forces scattered across the globe enforcing the Pax Americana.

Americans are relentlessly bombarded by media and Republicans about alleged dire threats from abroad, conjuring still raw memories of 9/11, though evidence is scanty or absent.

But something remarkable has just occurred in Washington, a place that rarely produces much good news.

President Barack Obama, now in his last term and freed of many political constraints, has challenged powerful vested special interests by naming former US Republican Senator and decorated war veteran Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. Hagel, wounded twice in Vietnam, is the first former enlisted man to head the Pentagon.

On taking office, Hagel called on the US to resume being a “force for good” in the world and avoid “dictating” to other nations. These were breathtaking words after all the Republican claims of “American exceptionalism” – code for world domination.

Washington is notorious for grinding down men in office and thwarting their hopes. The nation’s capitol and particularly Congress have been deeply corrupted by special interest money.

Hagel’s nomination caused a firestorm among Congressional Republicans who accused Hagel of everything from being anti-Israel and pro-Iranian to accepting money from North Korea.

The former Nebraska senator was slandered, defamed and vilified by fellow Republicans. It was as sickening a display of hypocrisy and pandering as this veteran journalist (and army veteran) has seen.

Verbally warlike senators and congressmen who had dodged national service during the Vietnam War (we call them “chickenhawks”) had the nerve to accuse decorated veteran Hagel of being unpatriotic for opposing the disastrous US war against Iraq and for failing to advocate war against Iran.

Behind all this, of course, was the hugely powerful pro-Israel lobby. In official Washington, it is taboo to even say there is an Israel lobby, though in reality everyone knows it dictates Mideast policy to Congress.

When accused some years ago of being insufficiently pro-Israel, the tough-talking Hagel shot back that he was a senator from the US, not Israel. This flaming heresy forever branded Hagel an enemy to the pro-Israel lobby and its ardent Republican supporters.

Obama’s appointment of Chuck Hagel was also a stinging slap in the face to Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who had humiliated Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on numerous occasions and even worked with Republicans to defeat Obama in the last presidential elections.

Hagel must now fend off his foes in Congress and the media while wrestling with sharp cuts in military spending, layoffs of some of the 800,000 civilian Pentagon employees, and delays or cancellations of sacred cow weapons programs like the absurdly expensive F-35 fighter, new aircraft carriers, and anti-missile programs.

The US military-industrial complex has cleverly put arms plants in most US states, assuring that cuts in Pentagon spending will produce howls of national opposition from senators and congressmen.

Still, Secretary Hagel speaks for many moderate Americans, and even for members of the Pentagon and CIA, who want to end America’s post-9/11 heavy-handed policies, stop the fear-mongering over so-called “terrorism,” and use the mighty US armed forces to help people around the world.

That’s the hope. But slowing down the Pentagon juggernaut will be very difficult. Reports say US special forces are now entering Niger and planning to stay on in Afghanistan. Anti-China fever is growing at a time when the US must work out a way to peacefully manage China’s rising power.

Secretary Hagel will have his work cut out for him.
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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2013

The Mideast is stumbling into one of its most dangerous crisis in decades.  I’m just back from the region – and as an old Mideast hand,  I am very worried.

This region is always tense, but right now a series of separate conflicts are rapidly beginning to intersect.   We see the Mideast, North Africa and the Sahara buffeted by revolutions and counter-revolutions.  Old colonial powers France and Britain, and the US,  are trying to reassert their domination in the region. The jihadist are back.

In a brazen act of war, Israel launched airstrikes on Syria last Wednesday in a clear attempt to worsen the crisis in that war-torn nation and challenge Syria’s ally, Iran.  Israel’s forces are on high alert and may invade Syria, whose strategic Golan Heights were seized and annexed by Israel.   Will more Syrian land follow?

Goaded by Israel, Iran thundered “any attack on Syria is an attack on Iran.”   An Iranian general warned Tel Aviv might come under attack.  Hot air, as they say in Farsi.   Separated from ally Syria by Iraq,  Iran’s not very mobile ground forces would be unable to intervene in Syria in any substantial way.  Israel’s air force would devastate any Iranian columns advancing in open terrain.

Iran’s feeble air force is barely operational after decades of crushing embargos by the United States and its allies.    Tehran’s dilapidated warplanes are far more menacing to their pilots than their enemies. Iran’s passenger airliners are flying coffins thanks to the US embargo of new aircraft and spare parts.

The only way Iran could strike at Israel is by firing medium-ranged Shahab-III missiles and a small number of Sajjil-2 solid propellant missiles.   Both are inaccurate.  Their 750-1,000 kg conventional warheads  would only do limited damage – unless they made a lucky hit on  Israel’s heavily defended Dimona nuclear reactor.

Israel estimates that a major Iranian non-nuclear strike would only cause a few hundred casualties. Israel is fast deploying a multi-layer anti-missile system: the Arrow-III, which has shown high hit probability in tests against missile warheads.  The low level Iron Dome system, which had an 80% hit probability against rockets fired from Gaza, and the new, highly accurate David’s Sling high altitude system, and more systems in the pipeline, give Israel’s the world’s most advanced and accurate anti-missile system that could be relied on to knock down a majority of incoming missiles from far-away Iran.

More important,  Israel would quickly counter-attack once its powerful radars (and a US-manned X-band radar based in Israel that can scan Iran) spot missile being launched by Tehran.  Israel has its own arsenal of accurate medium-ranged missiles, armed drones,  its powerful air force, and satellites watching Iran.

How would Israel know that an incoming Iranian missile was conventionally armed and not carrying a nuclear warhead?  Rather than gamble, Israel would probably hit Iran with its own nuclear arsenal, including nuclear-tipped cruise missiles fired by Israeli submarines lurking in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

Iran is not believed to have nuclear warheads – but how can Israel really be sure since it successfully concealed its own nuclear program from the United States.

Meanwhile, Egypt threatens to turn into another Syria.  The chief of staff of Egypt’s armed forces just warned his strife-torn nation is on the “brink of collapse.”  Conservative Arab nations, the US and Britain are fuelling a counter-revolution by Mubarakist forces and Christians.  Egypt’s economy has all but collapsed, igniting violent social unrest. A coup may be  imminent.

Syria is teetering on the brink of national collapse.  The Assad government has no popularity beyond its Alawi base, but half of Syrians don’t want to live in an Islamic state and fear what will happen to them if insurgent forces seize power.  Syria’s economy has almost ceased to function.  This bloody civil war threatens to turn Syria into a larger version of the ghastly 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war that I covered.

Russia is growling in the background.  Syria, recall, is as close to Russia’s southern border as northern Mexico is to Texas.   Washington is underestimating Russia’ growing anger.   Israel is still determined to push the US into war against Iran.  The Turks can’t decide whether to be neutrals or reborn Ottomans.  Caution: danger ahead.

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copyright  Eric S. Margolis 2013

NEW YORK -  The US has lost one war and is fast losing a second, yet what really upsets Americans seems to be a juicy sexual scandal; beautiful female general groupies;   US brass in  Tampa, Florida,  living like potentates; the FBI investigating CIA; and the fall of America’s most important intelligence official, former top general,  David Petraeus.

After America’s ugly, dreary election, it’s fun seeing the great and good caught with their pants down.   Petreaus’ slinky paramour, the ambitious femme fatale, Paula Broadwell, is easy on the eyes.  So are voluptuous Tampa temptresses Jill Kelley and her sister who ignited this scandal by sending catty emails to the FBI.

What business has  FBI in monitoring extra-marital escapades of the military brass – provided they are not bedding Chinese or Russian agents?

This combined boudoir farce and inter-governmental feud raises serious questions about the emergence of America’s surveillance state.

We see the FBI reading thousands of Petraeus’ emails and those of another senior officer dragged into the scandal, Marine Gen. John Allen, the US commander in Afghanistan.   This is the same FBI long locked in bitter institutional rivalry with CIA.

Meanwhile, CIA is being transformed from an intelligence gathering and analysis agency into a militarized outfit with its own fleets of lethal drones and combat units that will rival that other top secret military organization, the Joint Special Operations Command – America’s version of Britain’s elite killers, the SAS.

Thanks to legal changes made by the Bush administration during the post-9/11 hysteria,  the FBI,  CIA and National Security Agency can read  emails and text messages of anyone vaguely termed a “threat to national security.”  Anyone who has ever sent a message to the person of interest can also be investigated, and anyone who has sent them email, and so on.

Welcome the era of Big Internet Brother.

There’s an even bigger question.  Every war produces generals glorified into heroes by government, media and their own public relations efforts.  Gen. Petraeus, who commanded US occupation forces in first Iraq, then Afghanistan, continues to be hailed as a “military genius” and “war hero.”

Look again.  Petraeus and his fellow generals used every weapon in the US arsenal against Iraq’s eleven resistance groups (deceptively misnamed “al-Qaida” by Washington), including the mass ethnic cleansing of two million Sunni Iraqis,  death squads, torture, and brutal reprisals.

UN officials assert that some 500,000 Iraqis, mostly children, died due to the US-led blockade under Saddam Hussein. At least another half million died from the US 2003 invasion until 2011.  Yet after all this, the US forces were forced pull out of Iraq at the end of what Saddam Hussein vowed would be the “Mother of All Battles.”

Cost of Iraq:  $1.6-2.4 trillion; almost 5,000 US soldiers dead, 35,000 seriously wounded.   Some triumph.  America has yet to accept the painful fact that while it won all the tactical engagements in Iraq, it lost the bigger war.

Petraeus was then sent to work his magic in Afghanistan before returning to Washington to head CIA.  There, the brainy general, who had a knack for self-promotion and public relations,  tried again to crush the Pashtun resistance by massive bombardments, billions in high tech gear,  reprisals that wiped out entire villages,  search and destroy missions.  Torture and executions were as common as during the Soviet occupation.

A disgusted American public now wants out of the endless 11-year conflict, the longest in US history.  Most of the US garrison is supposed to withdraw by 2014.  Petraeus and other senior US commanders had the audacity to publically criticize President Barack Obama’s withdrawal plans.  They should have been dismissed at once, but the president lacked the nerve to stand up to the ever-more powerful military establishment.  The incoming US commander in Afghanistan just said he wants to keep US troops there after 2014.

Cost of Afghan  War:  $1 trillion and rising.  Afghan dead unknown.  US military, some 2,100 dead, 17,000 wounded.

The US military has clearly been fought to a standstill in Afghanistan by medieval tribesmen with AK-47’s, reconfirming its name -  “graveyard of empires.”

As for the military genius of Gen. Petraeus, recall the famous cry of King Pyrrhus,  “one more such victory and we are lost.”

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copyright  Eric S. Margolis  2012