At the Expense of Domestic Programs, Obama’s Plan to Save the Military From Cuts

Sunday, February 19, 2012 by The Nation
by George Zornick

As budget wonks comb over President Obama’s outline for fiscal year 2013, a startling White House plan has become clear: the administration is seeking to undo some mandatory cuts to the Pentagon at the expense of critical domestic programs. It does so by basically undoing the defense sequester that kicked in as a result of the Congressional super committee on debt. This wasn’t a featured part of the White House budget rollout, and for good reason—it undercuts the administration’s carefully crafted message of benevolent government action and economic fairness.

The process for this shift is complicated, and has been flagged by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Essentially, Obama wants to eliminate individual spending caps for both military and non-military spending, and institute one single discretionary spending cap instead. Here’s the basic rundown.

To understand how deep the retreat really is, one first needs to understand the difference between security spending and defense spending. Spending on defense applies to the “National Defense Function”—that is, the entire Pentagon budget, plus $24 billion for nuclear weaponry and environmental cleanup programs at the Department of Energy, the defense activities of the FBI, and a small handful of other defense programs. Security spending, on the other hand, excludes some of the Department of Energy money, along with some of the other FBI and small program funding—but includes the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security and the “International Affairs” part of the budget, which is mainly State Department funding and foreign aid.

So from a progressive point of view, to cut the most fat from the military budget you want defense cuts, not security cuts—otherwise funding for veterans’ health and diplomatic efforts is also in jeopardy.

Next: when the debt ceiling deal passed in August, it implemented discretionary spending caps through 2021. This meant that if Congress appropriated money above certain levels for discretionary spending—which is basically everything the government spends money on, minus entitlement benefits and interest on the debt—something called sequestration kicks in, which entails automatic, across-the-board cuts to bring the budget back under the spending caps.

Under the debt ceiling deal, those spending caps were split between security and nonsecurity spending areas in 2012 and 2013. Nonsecurity spending is the important domestic stuff: everything besides security spending, entitlement benefits and interest on the debt. Think scientific research, the NASA budget, national parks and forests, environmental protection, social services, Head Start and so on. Then, in every year from 2014 through 2021, there would just be one cap. So starting in 2014, Congress could theoretically take everything from nonsecurity spending in order to maintain a healthy security budget and meet the spending cap.

The failure of the super committee changed all this. When the twelve members failed to reach an agreement in November, the budget laws automatically changed—now, there is no single cap starting in 2014, but dual caps in both defense and non-defense spending through 2021. That’s why hawks like Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain were so upset when the super committee failed—with mandatory caps in defense and nondefense spending through 2014, it was a worst-case scenario for defenders of the Pentagon budget.

The Obama budget plan, quite disappointingly, proposes to reverse the configuration of these caps. It would have caps in 2013, split between security and nonsecurity spending—not defense and nondefense—and then beginning in 2014, a single cap is reinstituted anyhow. All the firewalls ensuring that defense spending is reduced would thus be torn down.

The president’s budget for 2013 follows this new scheme: Obama proposes around $5 billion in spending above the defense cap, and $5 billion in spending below the nondefense cap. This would violate the current budget laws—unless the categorization was changed to security and nonsecurity spending. Then it would comply. And every year after, the distinction wouldn’t matter anyhow under one spending cap.

This is a dramatic shift in priorities, and one that not many people are discussing. Given the massive lobbying potential of the defense industry—and the comparably weak advocates for things like Head Start funding—it’s a virtual certainty that, under the White House proposal, these strict spending caps would be met by raiding nonsecurity spending heavily in years to come. Even the president’s own budget does that. One shudders to imagine the budget of President Romney or President Rubio.

Sooner or Later Our Children Will Ask: "How Did This Happen?"

Saturday, June 18, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
“Sweetheart, I Guess We Just Forgot”
by Thomas S. Harrington
 

That it hasn’t happened yet, continues to amaze me. But sooner or later it will. Sooner or later our children, saddled with our debts, our endless wars and the ever more onerous demands of a predatory “national security state”, will turn to us in large numbers and ask how it happened. They will want to know how the many millions of us who were lucky enough to grow up in the American middle class of the 1960s and 1970s, let it come to this. They will want to know why we who enjoyed personal freedoms and opportunities to “find our bliss”, opportunities that they can only dream of, decided to leave them with a world structured, most of all, by fear and dread.

The smooth talkers among us—and there are many--will no doubt start by explaining just how complicated life really is, how processes over which we “have no control” such as globalization and terrorism, have chipped away at our good life and left them holding the bag. They will repeat over and again, and in one form or another, that these were “natural” and/or “unforeseen” developments that simply overwhelmed the ability our existing institutions. In other words, as they sit in the 4,000 square foot house they did not really need, a house that, in fact, no one really needs, they will paint themselves as victims of history.

They will of course being lying, to their children, and more importantly, for the umpteenth time, to themselves.

If they were really interested in have a profitable dialogue with their children, something that might actually begin the process of delivering us to a better place, they would start with something simple like: “Sweetheart (or Buddy), I guess we just forgot”.

I guess we just forgot:

• That globalization didn’t just happen, but was rather carefully planned by US and to some extent, European political leaders during the last three decades (take a look at the genesis of GATT, NAFTA and a whole host of other trade deals) as a means of guaranteeing that our countries’ economic elites would continue exert control over grotesquely inordinate amount of the world’s valuable resources and pecuniary wealth.
   
• That the relatively impressive middle class freedoms and security we enjoyed as kids didn’t just come about by accident. Rather, they were the result of people like your grandparents making sacrifices, and yes, sometimes even saying no to things that might have benefited them personally because they knew that doing so would have a deleterious effect on the broader progress of the community.
   
• That being entertained is not the same as being engaged. I like ESPN as much as the next guy. But it is no substitute for the careful following of public events. Only a cadre of citizens engaged citizens able, and willing, to pitilessly call out, and yes, embarrass, elected officials on the basis of policy details andtheir counterproductive effects is, sadly enough, the only thing that garners their respect, and therefore the possibility of fundamental change.
   
• That “journalists” unable or unwilling to identify with these same engaged citizens and who prefer instead to shy away from conflict in the name of guaranteeing their continuing “access” to power are not part of the solution but rather, a big part of the problem.
   
• That working within the system, or as our generation loves to say, “getting a place at the table in order to effect change” is a technique that has well-known limits, one that leads much more often than we have wanted to admit to the co-optation of good intentions by very powerful and ruthless forces.
   
• That when it comes to the creation of “public-private partnerships” the private part of the equation almost always gets more of what it wants or needs than does a broad swathe of the public.
   
• That just because Soviet-style Communism collapsed under the weight of its bastardized decrepitude, that didn’t mean that the problem of social class and the tendency of society’s economic elites to want to endlessly maximize their power over us has became a non-issue.
   
• That in America, the primary function of the government has never, ever, as the last two presidents like to endlessly tell us, been to “protect the nation from external attack”. No nation, especially one that maintains a world-wide empire and that arrogates to itself the “right” to engage in torture, kidnapping, extra-judicial killing and the unprovoked invasion of countries can, or should, be immune from the slightest suggestion of blowback. To suggest otherwise is to spin infantilizing fantasies that, in the end, lead only to the curtailment of our own liberties.
   
• That a society that allows laws to be portrayed (and used) not as the blueprint of universal hopes and desires across time, but rather as the plaything of the rich and powerful, condemns itself to a downward spiral of seething internecine conflict, or, alternatively, to the ever-greater imposition, by those same rich and powerful people, of repressive measure designed to keep that seething sense of injustice from threatening their interests.
   
• That being enduringly happy on the individual level is, more than anything else, about learning to know and govern your fears and anxieties in such a way that other things and, more importantly still, other people are allowed to become something more than a screen upon which to play out your personal needs, desires and impulses.
   
• That, as Phil Rockstroh reminded us the other day in this same space, the libido is much more than what our media culture, with its desire to make us believe that all is ultimately saleable and thus controllable tells us it is. Yes, the libido is about sex. But, more fundamentally, it is about freedom and creativity. It is the force that impels us to do things against our better judgment, to talk to the person we “shouldn’t” talk to, to take up the leisure or vocational pursuit “we have no business” taking up, to express the thoughts that no prudent person one “in his or right mind” should ever utter in public.
   
• That constantly putting your moist finger up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing (and building a political system around this “principle”) is not only quite boring, but ultimately quite soul-deadening…as is assuming, in the face of all historical evidence to the contrary, that the rules and pressures that govern you life today (including the vaunted two party system) more or less eternal and that, in the light of this “reality”, you’re best off, trying to cut the best deal you can with the parade of false and unsavory characters around see around you.

Yes, Sweetheart, we have forgotten a lot of things. And this is just the beginning of the list.

The Merger of Military, Law Enforcement and Public Safety

America's Judge Dredd Moment
By JOHN STANTON

According to the US Department of Justice, “Defending national security from both internal and external threats remains the [Department’s] highest priority. National security threats are constantly evolving and adapting, requiring additional resources to address new critical areas. Increasing global access to technological advancements results in new vulnerabilities that must be addressed…. technological and human capital [is needed] to detect, disrupt, and deter threats to our national security.” The DOJ’s FY 2012 Budget requested a total of $128.6 million and 170 positions in program increases that provide essential technological and human capital to detect, disrupt, and deter threats to our national security.

Wait! Isn’t that the Pentagon’s gig?

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta expressed this view on the new national security planning and operating environment. “In the post-September 11th era, there have been significant benefits due to increased unity of effort and interagency cooperation. Civilian-military collaboration has improved, and our military commanders expect to operate in a coordinated and joint, multi-service environment. Diplomats, development experts, intelligence analysts, and law enforcement must work together in today’s complex operations.”

Does Panetta mean all levels of law enforcement in the USA?

According to the National Military Strategy of the United States, 2011, “There are no more vital interests than the security of the American people, our territory, and our way of life… Military power complements economic development, governance, and rule of law – the true bedrocks of counterterrorism efforts…We will defend the homeland and play a critical role in supporting homeland security…”

Isn’t the rule of law determined and enforced by civilians? Doesn’t he mean supports rather than “complements”?

The Department of Justice describes law enforcement as “the prevention, detection, and investigation of crime and the apprehension and detention of individuals suspected of law violation.”

Not Civil, Not Military: Judge Dredd

The fact is the uniformed services of the USA are not the premier caretakers of the American people’s security or freedom. That is myth. National security has become a team effort and it’s time to recognize that. The USA has gone completely paramilitary in every aspect of its local-state-national-international life. America has transmogrified into the movie character Judge Dredd played by Sly Stallone.

But what happens to a democratic republic, say the USA, when military and civilian law enforcement/public safety functions merge and become indistinguishable?

No one has a definitive answer to that question.

Most say that the civil-military divide is clear cut, a Rubicon that will never be crossed by the executive branch, the military, the defense industrial base and its many civilian employees, and uncritical supporters in the US Congress.

Admiral Mullen, outgoing Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that civilian rule in the USA will be maintained at all costs. In fact, in his National Military Strategy of the USA, emphasis is placed again and again on the matter of civilian control of the military.

That’s good, of course, but why the reminder now in 2011? After all, Americans know that the US Constitution makes the military subordinate to civilians.

And yet determining who is in charge/responsible for the nation’s security, public safety and law enforcement has become more difficult over the last decade. In fact, the US military and US law enforcement operate with the same end game in mind: preempt, deter, neutralize, and remediate. Or, in US COIN parlance-- clear, hold, and build (CHB). CHB applies to a drug infested neighborhood in Washington, DC, as it does in a community in Afghanistan.

The special operations units in the US military have much in common with their law enforcement/public safety counterparts. As far as the end game of an operation is concerned, SWAT and SEAL teams operate on similar kill-pacify chains and “jointness of operations”.

Perhaps it is time for a grand restructure of the national security machinery.

If it is to be the case that military and law enforcement/public safety operate under the same strategies, operations and tactics, should domestic and global law enforcement/public safety functions be placed under some sort of civil-military geographic combatant command based on legislation similar to the Goldwater-Nichols model?

Should the Pentagon, Department of Justice, Central Intelligence Agency, Department of State and Homeland Security, etc., be merged into some sort of National Security Department? Would centralization of the national security function alleviate interagency madness?

Can the President and Secretary of Defense continue to maintain direct control over the expanding national security machinery? This question speaks not to a military coup, but instead to how two human beings—and their Cold War era staffs—can make the best decisions for the USA in the face of waves of near instantaneous information/events that flood national security decision making centers? Should the role of the largely national security illiterate members of the US House and Senate be changed?

And who are the American people supposed to honor and salute—sometimes deify--each day? Is it the brave men and women of the US military stationed at an outpost in Afghanistan? The contractor who serves the food at CENTCOM HQ or the security contractor—from Peru, say—that guards a US State Department official? Is it the courageous Predator pilot sitting in an air conditioned trailer thousands of miles away from his/her target package? How about the uniformed “bean counters” in the Pentagon?

Or is it the law enforcement/public safety personnel in Detroit, Washington, DC, or Houston who should be thanked for their service? Or the FBI agent shot to death while serving an arrest warrant? How about the guards at a state prison who detect, deter and disrupt plans for an inmate rebellion?

According to the Pew Center, “Second only to Medicaid, corrections has become the fastest growing general fund expenditure in the United States. Two million three hundred thousand people in the U.S. are now in prison or jail—more than one in 100 adults. On any given day 7.3 million adults are under federal, state, or local correctional control (including those on probation, parole, and other forms of supervision)—one in 31 adults. In FY2008, the most recent year data are available, states spent an estimated $47 billion of general funds on corrections, an increase of 303 percent since 1988. They spent an additional $4 billion in special funds and bonds and $900 million in federal funds, bringing total corrections expenditures to nearly $52 billion.” And this excludes the scores of US military/intelligence clandestine prisons located around the globe.

It has all gotten very confusing.

Kill ‘em All or Lock ‘em All Up

Arguably, the security of the American people is primarily the responsibility of civilian law enforcement and public safety personnel. An F-16 pilot or SOF operator in Libya, Somalia, Mexico or Guatemala is of no consequence to Americans living in high crime areas who want to get to school or work without being murdered, raped, assaulted or robbed.

The latest uniformed crime statistics for the period January to December 2010 published by the Department of Justice show that:

•   14, 627 Americans were murdered; 
•   53, 481 were forcibly raped; 
• 442, 932 were robbed, and 
• 649, 650 were brutally assaulted. 

The Virginia Association of Police Chiefs reports that 56 law enforcement officers were “feloniously killed” in 2010.

The neighborhood fire station is more relevant to security in a local US community than a forward operating base or outpost in Afghanistan/Iraq. It’s a good thing too as the Department of Justice reports that there were 40,070 cases of arson from January to December 2010. That excludes the daily calls that firefighters must make to subdue other incendiary events. According to the US Fire Administration, “an estimated 103,000 multifamily residential building fires are reported each year and cause an estimated 390 deaths, 4,050 injuries, and $1.2 billion in property loss.” Over the first five months of 2011, 33 fire fighters lost their lives in the line-of-duty, according to the US Fire Administration.

The national security consciousness is preeminent now in the minds of Americans. Everything from seeds used to plant corn for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes to rare earth minerals are a matter of national security, of survival (agroterrorism). Americans have a dangerous disregard now for the sovereignty of other nations terminating-- 21st Century gang land style--any real or perceived enemy of the state.

The USA has planted the seeds of reprisal. American Homeland watch out!

There is only one other nation with a similar psyche as this and that is Israel. That nation provides a very useful comparative template, a sort of mirror in which to look. There is much to be admired about Israel and its people, but adopting their narrow security-minded view of the world is absolutely wrong for the USA. How has it come to pass that an Israeli official speaking before members of the US Congress receives more applause than the President of the United States of America delivering a State of the Union Address? Is there a clearer message of America’s move away from itself and its ideals?

The Always-Expanding Bipartisan Surveillance State

Friday, May 20, 2011 by Salon.com

by Glenn Greenwald

 

When I wrote earlier this week about Jane Mayer's New Yorker article on the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers, the passage I hailed as "the single paragraph that best conveys the prime, enduring impact of the Obama presidency" included this observation from Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin: 

"We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state."  

There are three events -- all incredibly from the last 24 hours -- which not only prove how true that is, but vividly highlight how it functions and why it is so odious.

First, consider what Democrats and Republicans just jointly did with regard to the Patriot Act, the very naming of which once sent progressives into spasms of vocal protest and which long served as the symbolic shorthand for Bush/Cheney post-9/11 radicalism:

Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil.

The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government. . . .

From its inception, the law's increased surveillance powers have been criticized by liberals and conservatives alike as infringements on free speech rights and protections against unwarranted searches and seizures.

Some Patriot Act opponents suggest that Osama bin Laden's demise earlier this month should prompt Congress to reconsider the law, written when the terrorist leader was at the peak of his power. But the act's supporters warn that al-Qaida splinter groups, scattered from Pakistan to the United States and beyond, may try to retaliate.

"Now more than ever, we need access to the crucial authorities in the Patriot Act," Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This will be the second time that the Democratic Congress -- with the support of President Obama (who once pretended to favor reforms) -- has extended the Patriot Act without any changes.  And note the rationale for why it was done in secret bipartisan meetings:  to ensure "as little debate as possible" and "to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government."  Indeed, we wouldn't want to have any messy, unpleasant democratic debates over "the expanded power the law gives to the government."  Here we find yet again the central myth of our political culture:  that there is too little bipartisanship when the truth is there is little in Washington but that. And here we also find -- yet again -- that the killing of Osama bin Laden is being exploited to justify a continuation, rather than a reduction, in the powers of the National Security and Surveillance States.

Next we have a new proposal from the Obama White House to drastically expand the scope of "National Security Letters" -- the once-controversial and long-abused creation of the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to obtain private records about American citizens without the need for a subpoena or any court approval -- so that it now includes records of your Internet activities:

White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. . .
Stewart A. Baker, a former senior Bush administration Homeland Security official, said the proposed change would broaden the bureau's authority. "It'll be faster and easier to get the data," said Baker, who practices national security and surveillance law. "And for some Internet providers, it'll mean giving a lot more information to the FBI in response to an NSL." . . .

To critics, the move is another example of an administration retreating from campaign pledges to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security. The proposal is "incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the government is already getting," said Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel.

The critics say its effect would be to greatly expand the amount and type of personal data the government can obtain without a court order. "You're bringing a big category of data -- records reflecting who someone is communicating with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location information -- outside of judicial review," said Michael Sussmann, a Justice Department lawyer under President Bill Clinton who now represents Internet and other firms.

So first they conspire with the GOP to extend the Patriot Act without any reforms, then seek to expand its most controversial and invasive provisions to obtain the Internet activities of American citizens without having to bother with a subpoena or judicial approval -- "they" being the Democratic White House.

Most critically, the government's increased ability to learn more and more about the private activities of its citizens is accompanied -- as always -- by an ever-increasing wall of secrecy it erects around its own actions.  Thus, on the very same day that we have an extension of the Patriot Act and a proposal to increase the government's Internet snooping powers, we have this:

The Justice Department should publicly release its legal opinion that allows the FBI to obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process, a watchdog group asserts.

The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel violated federal open-records laws by refusing to release the memo.

The suit was prompted in part by McClatchy's reporting that highlighted the existence of the memo and the department's refusal to release it. Earlier this year, McClatchy also requested a copy and was turned down.

The decision not to release the memo is noteworthy because the Obama administration -- in particular the Office of Legal Counsel -- has sought to portray itself as more open than the Bush administration was. By turning down the foundation's request for a copy, the department is ensuring that its legal arguments in support of the FBI's controversial and discredited efforts to obtain telephone records will be kept secret.

What's extraordinary about the Obama DOJ's refusal to release this document is that it does not reveal the eavesdropping activities of the Government but only its legal rationale for why it is ostensibly permitted to engage in those activities.  The Bush DOJ's refusal to release its legal memos authorizing its surveillance and torture policies was unquestionably one of the acts that provoked the greatest outrage among Democratic lawyers and transparency advocates (see, for instance, Dawn Johnsen's scathing condemnation of the Bush administration for its refusal to release OLC legal reasoning: "reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."

The way a republic is supposed to function is that there is transparency for those who wield public power and privacy for private citizens.  The National Security State has reversed that dynamic completely, so that the Government (comprised of the consortium of public agencies and their private-sector "partners") knows virtually everything about what citizens do, but citizens know virtually nothing about what they do (which is why WikiLeaks specifically and whistleblowers generally, as one of the very few remaining instruments for subverting that wall of secrecy, are so threatening to them).  Fortified by always-growing secrecy weapons, everything they do is secret -- including even the "laws" they secretly invent to authorize their actions  -- while everything you do is open to inspection, surveillance and monitoring.

This dynamic threatens to entrench irreversible, absolute power for reasons that aren't difficult to understand.  Knowledge is power, as the cliché teaches.  When powerful factions can gather unlimited information about citizens, they can threaten, punish, and ultimately deter any meaningful form of dissent:  J. Edgar Hoover infamously sought to drive Martin Luther King, Jr. to suicide by threatening to reveal King's alleged adultery discovered by illicit surveillance; as I described earlier today in my post on New York's new Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer was destroyed in the middle of challenging Wall Street as the result of a massive federal surveillance scheme that uncovered his prostitution activities.  It is the rare person indeed with nothing to hide, and allowing the National Security State faction unfettered, unregulated intrusive power into the private affairs of citizens -- as we have been inexorably doing -- is to vest them with truly awesome, unlimited power.

Conversely, allowing government officials to shield their own conduct from transparency and (with the radical Bush/Obama version of the "State Secrets privilege") even judicial review ensures that National Security State officials (public and private) can do whatever they want without any detection and (therefore) without limit or accountability.  That is what the Surveillance State, at its core, is designed to achieve: the destruction of privacy for individual citizens and an impenetrable wall of secrecy for those with unlimited surveillance power.  And as these three events just from the last 24 hours demonstrate, this system -- with fully bipartisan support --- is expanding more rapidly than ever.

(And throw in the Kentucky vs King SCOTUS decision in which the Police don't have to have a warrant to enter your home now if they "suspect" something. By extension, that means neither do the FBI, NSA, etc. Both parties want to control us not protect our rights. Anybody pissed off yet?--jef)

Petraeus' CIA Move Raises Awkward Questions

Friday, April 29, 2011 by Reuters
by Phil Stewart and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON - While political Washington is cheering General David Petraeus' nomination to head the CIA, the mood at the agency's headquarters and in Pakistan's intelligence service is less celebratory.

Petraeus, the architect of the current U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, is expected as CIA director to embrace the campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, a nominally covert CIA operation that has fueled anti-American sentiment but put heavy pressure on militant safe havens.

Continuing or stepping up drone attacks is likely to further strain relations between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) and, according to some experts, possibly exacerbate the awkward personal chemistry between Petraeus and top Pakistani officials.

Petraeus, nominated by President Barack Obama on Thursday to replace CIA director Leon Panetta, has a reputation for brainpower and political savvy, which he used to help salvage the U.S. campaign in Iraq.

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee will soon begin the confirmation process for Petraeus, which is expected to proceed smoothly. Petraeus is not expected to take up his new post until September.

But at the CIA, he will be confronted by unfamiliar issues that include cybersecurity, North Korea and Iran's nuclear programs, Latin American drug cartels and even climate change.

Current and former U.S. national security officials also say there is concern among some veteran spies about Petraeus' advocacy of controversial military policies, particularly his expansion of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

One of the CIA's principal roles, the officials say, is to provide the president and his top advisors with objective, non-politicized advice about world events and the effectiveness of American foreign policy in responding them.

But in his role as U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Petraeus has been a developer of the counterinsurgency strategy whose results are incomplete as the Obama administration plans to begin a withdrawal of U.S. soldiers this summer.

RELATIONS WITH ISI

Because he helped to craft U.S. policy and has publicly defended it against critics, some officials wonder how open Petraeus will be in his new role to critiquing his own work.

They wonder if he will faithfully represent to the White House a CIA view of Afghanistan and Pakistan that is more pessimistic than that of Pentagon brass.

Paul Pillar, formerly the CIA's top analyst on the region, said future CIA assessments of Afghanistan will cover developments since Petraeus' departure as U.S. commander.

But Pillar noted "any such assessments inevitably would reflect well or poorly on the military strategy that had been pursued there for several years. Petraeus would continue to have a strong vested interest in how that strategy is perceived."

Besides Afghanistan, perhaps the biggest issue on Petraeus's agenda at the CIA will be the agency's relations with Pakistan's ISI, which over the last six months have suffered a series of grave setbacks.

"I think it is going to be a very strained and difficult relationship," said Bruce Riedel, a former adviser to President Barack Obama on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Riedel characterized the relationship between Petraeus and Pakistani leaders as "mutual distrust."

Petraeus' relationship with Pakistan's military chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, is publicly perceived to be less than friendly and has become a topic of discussion on Pakistani TV talk shows.

Kayani last month issued a rare public condemnation of a U.S. missile strike in a Pakistani region near the Afghan border that killed more than 40 tribesmen. Last week, he said the drone strikes undermined Pakistan's own war on militants.

Still, U.S. officials told Reuters the drone program would move ahead regardless of Pakistani objections.

As commander in Afghanistan, Petraeus increased the use of air strikes but also took steps to limit civilian casualties.

But in a move unlikely to win him new friends in Islamabad, Petraeus as CIA chief is expected to renew U.S. demands that the ISI sever ties with anti-Western insurgents attacking American forces in Afghanistan -- accusations reflecting continuing deep mistrust between uneasy allies.

The Real National Security Budget

The Figure No One Wants You to See
By CHRISTOPHER HELLMAN

What if you went to a restaurant and found it rather pricey? Still, you ordered your meal and, when done, picked up the check only to discover that it was almost twice the menu price.

Welcome to the world of the real U.S. national security budget. Normally, in media accounts, you hear about the Pentagon budget and the war-fighting supplementary funds passed by Congress for our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. That already gets you into a startling price range -- close to $700 billion for 2012 -- but that's barely more than half of it. If Americans were ever presented with the real bill for the total U.S. national security budget, it would actually add up to more than $1.2 trillion a year.

Take that in for a moment. It's true; you won't find that figure in your daily newspaper or on your nightly newscast, but it's no misprint. It may even be an underestimate. In any case, it's the real thing when it comes to your tax dollars. The simplest way to grasp just how Americans could pay such a staggering amount annually for "security" is to go through what we know about the U.S. national security budget, step by step, and add it all up.

So, here we go. Buckle your seat belt: it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Fortunately for us, on February 14th the Obama administration officially released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget request. Of course, it hasn't been passed by Congress -- even the 2011 budget hasn't made it through that august body yet -- but at least we have the most recent figures available for our calculations.

For 2012, the White House has requested $558 billion for the Pentagon's annual "base" budget, plus an additional $118 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At $676 billion, that's already nothing to sneeze at, but it's just the barest of beginnings when it comes to what American taxpayers will actually spend on national security. Think of it as the gigantic tip of a humongous iceberg.

To get closer to a real figure, it's necessary to start peeking at other parts of the federal budget where so many other pots of security spending are squirreled away.

Missing from the Pentagon's budget request, for example, is an additional $19.3 billion for nuclear-weapons-related activities like making sure our current stockpile of warheads will work as expected and cleaning up the waste created by seven decades of developing and producing them. That money, however, officially falls in the province of the Department of Energy. And then, don't forget an additional $7.8 billion that the Pentagon lumps into a "miscellaneous" category -- a kind of department of chump change -- that is included in neither its base budget nor those war-fighting funds.

So, even though we're barely started, we've already hit a total official FY 2012 Pentagon budget request of:

$703.1 billion dollars.

Not usually included in national security spending are hundreds of billions of dollars that American taxpayers are asked to spend to pay for past wars, and to support our current and future national security strategy.

For starters, that $117.8 billion war-funding request for the Department of Defense doesn't include certain actual "war-related fighting" costs. Take, for instance, the counterterrorism activities of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. For the first time, just as with the Pentagon budget, the FY 2012 request divides what's called "International Affairs" in two: that is, into an annual "base" budget as well as funding for "Overseas Contingency Operations" related to Iraq and Afghanistan. (In the Bush years, these used to be called the Global War on Terror.) The State Department's contribution? $8.7 billion. That brings the grand but very partial total so far to:

$711.8 billion.

The White House has also requested $71.6 billion for a post-2001 category called "homeland security" -- of which $18.1 billion is funded through the Department of Defense. The remaining $53.5 billion goes through various other federal accounts, including the Department of Homeland Security ($37 billion), the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion), and the Department of Justice ($4.6 billion). All of it is, however, national security funding which brings our total to:

$765.3 billion.

The U.S. intelligence budget was technically classified prior to 2007, although at roughly $40 billion annually, it was considered one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington. Since then, as a result of recommendations by the 9/11 Commission, Congress has required that the government reveal the total amount spent on intelligence work related to the National Intelligence Program (NIP).

This work done by federal agencies like the CIA and the National Security Agency consists of keeping an eye on and trying to understand what other nations are doing and thinking, as well as a broad range of "covert operations" such as those being conducted in Pakistan. In this area, we won't have figures until FY 2012 ends. The latest NIP funding figure we do have is $53.1 billion for FY 2010. There's little question that the FY 2012 figure will be higher, but let's be safe and stick with what we know. (Keep in mind that the government spends plenty more on "intelligence." Additional funds for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP), however, are already included in the Pentagon's 2012 base budget and war-fighting supplemental, though we don't know what they are. The FY 2010 funding for MIP, again the latest figure available, was $27 billion.) In any case, add that $53.1 billion and we're at:

$818.4 billion.

Veterans programs are an important part of the national security budget with the projected funding figure for 2012 being $129.3 billion. Of this, $59 billion is for veterans' hospital and medical care, $70.3 billion for disability pensions and education programs. This category of national security funding has been growing rapidly in recent years because of the soaring medical-care needs of veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars. According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, by 2020 total funding for health-care services for veterans will have risen another 45%-75%. In the meantime, for 2012 we've reached:

$947.7 billion.

If you include the part of the foreign affairs budget not directly related to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other counterterrorism operations, you have an additional $18 billion in direct security spending. Of this, $6.6 billion is for military aid to foreign countries, while almost $2 billion goes for "international peacekeeping" operations. A further $709 million has been designated for countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism, and clearing landmines planted in regional conflicts around the globe. This leaves us at:

$965.7 billion.

As with all federal retirees, U.S. military retirees and former civilian Department of Defense employees receive pension benefits from the government. The 2012 figure is $48.5 billion for military personnel, $20 billion for those civilian employees, which means we've now hit:

$1,034.2 billion. (Yes, that's $1.03 trillion!)

When the federal government lacks sufficient funds to pay all of its obligations, it borrows. Each year, it must pay the interest on this debt which, for FY 2012, is projected at $474.1 billion. The National Priorities Project calculates that 39% of that, or $185 billion, comes from borrowing related to past Pentagon spending.

Add it all together and the grand total for the known national security budget of the United States is:

$1,219.2 billion. (That's more than $1.2 trillion.)

A country with a gross domestic product of $1.2 trillion would have the 15th largest economy in the world, ranking between Canada and Indonesia, and ahead of Australia, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia. Still, don't for a second think that $1.2 trillion is the actual grand total for what the U.S. government spends on national security. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once famously spoke of the world's "known unknowns." Explaining the phrase this way: "That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know." It's a concept that couldn't apply better to the budget he once oversaw. When it comes to U.S. national security spending, there are some relevant numbers we know are out there, even if we simply can't calculate them.

To take one example, how much of NASA's proposed $18.7 billion budget falls under national security spending? We know that the agency works closely with the Pentagon. NASA satellite launches often occur from the Air Force's facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Air Force has its own satellite launch capability, but how much of that comes as a result of NASA technology and support? In dollars terms, we just don't know.

Other "known unknowns" would include portions of the State Department budget. One assumes that at least some of its diplomatic initiatives promote our security interests. Similarly, we have no figure for the pensions of non-Pentagon federal retirees who worked on security issues for the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, or the Departments of Justice and Treasury. Nor do we have figures for the interest on moneys borrowed to fund veterans' benefits, among other national security-related matters. The bill for such known unknowns could easily run into the tens of billions of dollars annually, putting the full national security budget over the $1.3 trillion mark or even higher.

There's a simple principle here. American taxpayers should know just what they are paying for. In a restaurant, a customer would be outraged to receive a check almost twice as high as the menu promised. We have no idea whether the same would be true in the world of national security spending, because Americans are never told what national security actually means at the cash register.

Fearful Nation

Washington's Internal Security Apparatus: a Long History
By RON JACOBS

US citizens of almost all political stripes tend to live their lives ignorant of what the government that operates in their name is really up to. Some of this is due to the government's obsession with secrecy and some of it is due to the people's political naivete (or ignorance). Perhaps the only exceptions to this statement are those that exist on what are considered the fringes of US political discourse. Thanks in part to this ignorance, most US residents live their lives unaware of the police state author Andrew Kolin describes in his recently published book State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W. Bush.

This isn't just another book raging against the excesses of the George Bush administration. In fact, it is a historical survey of the slow but steady journey of the US polity towards an authoritarian regime designed to protect a relative few from the democratic urgings of the people. Kolin begins his book with a brief look at the debates over the writing of the US Constitution and its eventual incarnation as a blueprint for a centralized authority whose intention was to keep government away from the hoi polloi. Adjunct to this endeavor was a desire to expand the nation. This was done by killing the indigenous peoples living on the land to be expanded into. In order to justify this genocide, it was necessary to delineate the natives as something other than human. According to Kolin, the need for such an "other" is essential to the development of an authoritarian state. The Native Americans and the African slaves filled the need quite nicely given their obvious physical and cultural differences.

Another aspect of Kolin's proposition that differentiates it from so many other commentaries that have been written on the police state tactics of the Bush administration is his contention that the US police state is not a future possibility. It already exists. We are living in it. He backs up this contention with an argument that dissects the elements generally considered essential to the definition of a police state and applies them to the present day United States. From torture to propaganda techniques; from the government's ability to eavesdrop on anyone to its ability to wage war at will--these are but a few of the indices Kolin examines in his study. According to Kolin, however, the ultimate indicator of a police state is defined by whether or not the leader of a particular government (in this case, that of the United States) exists above the laws of the nation and the world. In other words, if the leader does something, is it ever illegal? Kolin provides multiple examples of every administration since Abraham Lincoln's operating in a vein suggesting that they all operated in this way at times. However, it was not until the inauguration of George W. Bush and the events of September 11, 2001, that the word of the president became a law onto its own. When George Bush said he was "the decider" he wasn't joking. He and every president to follow him truly have that power. They can decide who to kill, who to spy on, who to lock up, and who to attack without any restriction other than their own morality. Furthermore, they can also determine how such actions are to be done. As far as the presidency is concerned, no laws--not the Bill of Rights nor the Geneva Conventions--apply.

The march towards this police state that Kolin describes is best characterized by the phrase "two steps forward, one step back." Historically, for every presidential administration where excesses occurred, there followed another that saw a relaxation of some of those excesses. The repression of the Palmer Raids was followed by a decade where the Communist Party became legal; the McCarthy Era was followed by a relaxation of the anti-communist hysteria in the 2960s; Nixon's attempts to subvert the democratic process were answered with convictions and a series of laws that were supposed to prevent similar excesses. Yet, the march towards authoritarianism continued its quiet goosestep. Nowhere was this more obvious than in US foreign policy. After the US turmoil around its war against the Vietnamese, Congress passed a War Powers Act that supposedly limited the president’s ability to send US troops to other nations. In answer, every single president afterward pushed the limits of that law so that by the 1980s it was meaningless. Other attempts to limit the White House's ability to make war like the Boland amendment which made arming the Nicaraguan Contras illegal were just ignored. By the time Bill Clinton took power in 1991, the ability of the president to attack whenever and wherever was no longer seriously challenged by Congress, leaving the White House in sole control of the nations' military might.

The nation described in Kolin's book is a fearful one. It is a nation whose agents torture at will and whose military wages war for no apparent reason other than profit and power. It is a nation whose political police forces operate as both judge and jury and often fail to leave their personal prejudices at home. It is a nation whose judicial system rarely interprets a law different than the chief executive and when it does that executive ignores the ruling. It is a nation where so many of its citizens live their lives under the illusion that the authoritarian rule they increasingly live with is somehow protecting them. It is a nation that refuses to prosecute officials including the former president that were involved in torture that violated domestic and international laws. Finally, according to Kolin, it is a nation without redemption that will see the powers of the police state continue to grow unless its people wake up and dismantle it.

Lawmakers say Open-Ended Military Presence is Not productive to Security Goals

Feingold, McGovern, Jones Introduce Legislation to Require Timetable for Deploying US Troops from Afghanistan
Statement Released by Sen. Russ Feingold, Rep. Jim McGovern, and Rep. Walter Jones

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and U.S. Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Walter Jones (R-NC) announced they are introducing legislation requiring the president to develop a flexible timetable to draw down U.S. troops from Afghanistan, in order to enhance our national security and reduce the burden on our armed forces and on taxpayers. The bipartisan, bicameral legislation would require the president to provide a plan for drawing down our forces in Afghanistan. The legislation also increases oversight by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) over work done by private contractors with records of waste, fraud and abuse in order to safeguard U.S. taxpayer dollars.

“At the listening sessions I have held throughout Wisconsin over the last several months, people across the political spectrum have asked why we continue to have a massive military presence in Afghanistan,” said Senator Feingold. “A large, open-ended presence in Afghanistan is counterproductive to our global fight against al Qaeda. Rather than pour resources into a nation-building strategy in a country that isn’t even al Qaeda’s base, we should develop a timetable to end our massive presence in Afghanistan, so we are better able to go after al Qaeda’s global network. We need to be as agile as al Qaeda and we can’t do that if we are bogged down in Afghanistan.”

“After 8 long years, hundreds of billions of dollars and – most importantly – thousands of our brave soldiers killed or wounded, it is past time to re-examine this strategy. Instead of nation-building in Afghanistan, I believe we should be doing some more nation-building here at home. The American people deserve accountability – in terms of how and when our troops will be returned to their families and in terms of how taxpayer dollars are being spent,” said Representative McGovern.

“I believe the war on terror needs to be thought of in a different way. I believe there are other strategies that could be used, as I have discussed with several former generals. As recent as yesterday I visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Bethesda Naval Academy. Being there and seeing the true cost of war only strengthens my belief that it is time to change our strategy and reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan. It is time to put an end to the tremendous stress we are placing on our military and their families,” said Representative Jones.

Feingold, McGovern and Jones recently wrote to President Obama outlining their concerns that the military strategy for Afghanistan is “not in our best national security interest and makes us dependent upon an unreliable partner in the Afghan government.” In the letter urging the president to set forth a timetable, the legislators wrote, “The attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day serves as a reminder that we have not been adequately prioritizing the need to track down al Qaeda, especially in emerging safe havens such as Yemen. Rather than investing a disproportionate amount of our resources in Afghanistan, we need to shift resources to pursuing al Qaeda’s global network.”

The legislation:

Would require the president to provide a plan and timetable for drawing down our forces in Afghanistan and identify any variables that could require changes to that timetable.

Would safeguard U.S. taxpayer dollars by ensuring all U.S. activity in Afghanistan be overseen by an Inspector General.

Does not set a specific date for withdrawal.