In response to a reader query wondering if Rick Santorum’s strong showing in El Paso County in last week’s Colorado Caucus demonstrated a “military problem” for Mitt Romney that could come into play on Super Tuesday, Andrew Gelman points to some research by political scientists Jason Dempsey and Bob Shapiro from several years back showing a bifurcation within the military ranks.

It is true that the upper echelons of the military tilt right. My own research confirmed that about two-thirds of majors and higher-ranking officers identify as conservative, as previous studies found. But that tilt becomes far less pronounced when you expand the pool of respondents. That is because only 32 percent of the Army’s enlisted soldiers consider themselves conservative, while 23 percent identify as liberal and the remaining 45 percent are self-described moderates. These numbers closely mirror the ideological predilections of the civilian population. . . .

The political differences between officers and enlisted personnel can be partly explained by a demographic divide. Whereas officers are predominantly white, have at least a bachelor’s degree, and draw incomes that place them in the middle or upper-middle class, the enlisted ranks have a higher proportion of minorities, make less money than officers, and typically enter service with only a high school diploma. Nevertheless, even when controlling for factors like race and gender, officers are significantly more likely than soldiers to identify as conservative. . . .

In addition to its ideological moderation, the Army is not as partisan as popularly portrayed. Whereas 65 percent of Americans think of themselves as either Republican or Democrat, according to the Annenberg survey, my study shows that only 43 percent of the military identifies with one of the two major political parties. Two out of three officers consider themselves either Republican or Democrat, but only 37 percent of enlisted personnel do so.

Officers tend to be not only more partisan, but also more Republican, with GOP affinity strongest among the highest ranks. While I [Dempsey] was unable to fully parse the reason for this, the evidence strongly suggests the pattern is generational. Today’s senior officers entered the Army during the late 1970s and 1980s, a time when the Republican Party had a strong advantage on issues of national defense and the Democratic Party was seen as antiwar if not anti-military. By contrast, junior officers who joined the Army after 2001 are almost as likely to be Democrats as they are Republicans, foreshadowing a possible shift in officer attitudes.

Joshua Tucker posts a note from Major Jim Golby, a Stanford PhD and West Point instructor.

To my knowledge, there are no current polls about military preferences for the GOPcandidates. There are a few unscientific polls done by a newspaper, The Military Times, that measure military approval of the president, but that is it. They show approval for president Obama within the military at around 25%.

I have done some research in this field, however [paper available here]. One of the main take-aways from my research is that Republican officers in the military and elite veterans are no different, on average, than Republican civilian elites once we control for demographic factors. Although my work focuses on senior officers and veterans, Jason Dempsey’s book,Our Army, and Jeremy Tiegen’s paper support this general claim for soldiers and veterans, respectively.

[...]

[T]here is no evidence suggesting that any GOP nominee would have trouble winning the ‘military vote’ since there really is no such thing. There are not many Democrats in the military and there are even fewer liberals in the ranks; in general, most Democrats in the military are moderate or conservative Democrats (especially in the higher ranks).

In the comments, our own Chris Lawrence observes,

I’d caution against conflating officers and enlisted personnel; officers do tend to be overwhelmingly Republican, but NCOs and lower enlisted are much more mixed in partisanship and ideology, although also much less likely to vote, particularly in the E-1-4 ranks, probably in large part due to age. As Jim suggests probably a large part of the differences between the military and the public at large are due to ethnicity, SES, and region (the officer corps of the Army and Air Force, at least, tend to be substantially more southern than the public at large).

As far as the “military vote” might go, given the relatively small size of the officer corps and their lack of political organization or geographic concentration (military people, including their spouses and other dependents, tend to retain residency in their hometowns rather than registering to vote locally when reassigned, so even “military towns” will have few active-duty military/dependent voters), I doubt it could ever be all that influential even if their turnout was much higher.

There’s a lot to unpack here but the takeaways would seem to be:

1. The military, and especially its senior officers, are more Republican and conservative than the country as a whole. But the extent of this is grossly exaggerated, because the media naturally focuses on the attitudes of the officer corps, particularly more senior officers.

2. These differences are almost entirely explainable by the demographic makeup of the military, which is self-selected.

3. As with the rest of the country, the younger cohorts of the military–including its officer corps–are less Republican and less conservative. See, for example, the enormous swings in attitudes on gays in the military over the last 20 years.

4. The notion that the “military vote” plays a major role in choosing our presidents is vastly overstated. In addition to the issues Lawrence notes, a third of the states essentially disenfranchise military personnel by mailing absentee ballots too late. The caveat is that, because a disproportionate number of military personnel claim Florida as their home of record in order to avoid paying state income taxes, they could potentially serve as a decisive swing vote in an incredibly close contest along the lines of the 2000 election. Those are, of course, quite uncommon.

The Marine Corps on Thursday once again did damage control after a photograph surfaced of a sniper team in Afghanistan posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the notorious Nazi SS — a special unit that murdered millions of Jews, gypsies and others.

The Corps said in a statement that using the symbol was not acceptable, but the Marines in the photograph taken in September 2010 will not be disciplined because investigators determined it was a naïve mistake.

The Marines believed the SS symbol was meant to represent sniper scouts and never intended to be associated with a racist organization, said Maj. Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton, where the Marines were based.

“Sniper scouts?”  That’s a new one. 

Here’s the photo, that apparently first appeared in a blog entry (url not cited) at the Knight’s Armament website:

It is impossible to know, just from the photo, what the deal is.  One thing is for sure:  it is a pretty shocking (and indeed, jarring) image.   At best is an example of howling ignorance and at worst is suggesting something more sinister (at least in terms of one or more of the individuals in this photo).  To wit:  where in the world would the flag have come from in the first place?  It would seem that someone would have had to have brought it with them to Afghanistan (as I can’t imagine that there is a local branch of “Neo-Nazis R Us” out in rural Afghanistan).  This is suggestive that someone in this group has unsavory political leanings.  It is bad enough to own such a flag and several quanta worse to think that it was sufficiently important to a person that it was something that they would have brought with them to a combat zone in the middle of nowhere.

After the American troops departed in December, life became more difficult for the thousands of diplomats and contractors left behind. Convoys of food that were previously escorted by the United States military from Kuwait were delayed at border crossings as Iraqis demanded documentation that the Americans were unaccustomed to providing.

Within days the salad bar at the embassy dining hall ran low. Sometimes there was no sugar or Splenda for coffee. On chicken wing night, wings were rationed at six per person. Over the holidays, housing units were stocked with Meals Ready to Eat, the prepared food for soldiers in the field.

The horrors.

via Andrew Exum, Jeremy Scahill, and others laughing hysterically as they tweeted

Later today, the New York Giants, fresh off their victory in Super Bowl XLVI, will become the latest group to parade to New York City’s Canyon of Heroes as the city celebrates. That’s leading some people to wonder where the parade for Iraq War Veterans is:

The New York Giants on Tuesday will be showered with confetti and greeted by throngs as they are feted with the city’s most storied honor: a parade through its Canyon of Heroes.

But all the fanfare — the parade this week is the fourth since 2000 to honor a sports team — has touched off anger and unease among some returned Iraq veterans, who are eagerly awaiting their own recognition.

“Everybody recognizes that the Giants deserve a parade,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. But, he added, “If a football team gets a parade, shouldn’t our veterans?”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has long expressed his regret that the United States did not do a better job honoring veterans of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, has cited advice from the Pentagon in deciding it was not appropriate to hold a parade while American soldiers are still fighting in Afghanistan.

But a growing coalition of veterans, elected officials and other public figures are disagreeing, saying it is time to celebrate the men and women who served in Iraq.

Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former correspondent for The New York Times and a board member of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, called the Pentagon’s position “supercilious sensitivity” and “Washington-think.”

“Celebrating the Iraqi vets doesn’t negate a future celebration for the Afghan vets or deny that we’re still at war,” Mr. Gelb said, adding that “if we had to wait to honor our servicemen and women until wars were over, that would take a long time.”

And former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who in 1981 was the host of a “ticker-tape” parade for American hostages released from Iran over the objection of Alexander M. Haig Jr., then secretary of state, said he thought a parade for Iraq veterans was important and timely. Mr. Koch, who also hosted a belated parade for Vietnam War veterans in 1985, said the Pentagon was making “a political decision” that he termed “ridiculous.”

“It’s not premature,” he said. “I believe that a parade is required, is necessary, and New York City is the place to have it.”

At least one large city, St. Louis, has gone ahead with a parade for Iraq veterans, on Jan. 28. And on Monday, the White House announced that President Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, would hold a dinner on Feb. 29 to honor troops who had served in Iraq.

But the Defense Department, noting that American soldiers are still fighting in Afghanistan, says it is too soon for a celebration with the recognition and symbolism of a New York City parade.

Col. David Lapan, a spokesman for Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “We simply don’t think a national-level parade is appropriate while we continue to have America’s sons and daughters in harm’s way.”

The Pentagon’s position doesn’t really make sense. Iraq and Afghanistan are, after all, separate conflicts fought in separate countries for very different reasons. While there’s no small degree of overlap between veterans of the two conflicts, it seems somewhat silly to say that veterans from the Iraq War shouldn’t be honored until the conflict in Afghanistan is over, or as long as American troops are “in harm’s way,” which seems pretty darn open ended to me.

That’s certainly not the way we’ve handled these things in the past. When the V-E Day came in May 1945, the nation didn’t wait to celebrate that achievement until V-J Day had come three months later (and few people had reason to know that the end of the war in the Pacific Theater might be that near at the time). In fact, on June 10th, 1945, just a month after the end of the conflict in Europe, New York City held a ticker-tape parade for General Dwight D. Eisenhower while the conflict in the Pacific still raged. It was the first time that type of event had occurred in the city since 1939. A parade honoring “the troops” wasn’t held until 1946 when the 82nd Airborne Division marched down Broadway, but that was likely due to the logistical realities of bringing forces home from Europe and the Pacific in the 1940s. If it was acceptable to celebrate the Supreme Allied Commander Of The Allied Expeditionary Force while men were still in harm’s way in the Pacific, then why can’t we do the same thing for Iraq War Vets, who are pretty much all back in the United States now?

It’s a minor thing, perhaps, but when you realize that it took until ten years for Vietnam War veterans, and nearly forty years for Korean War veterans, to get this same recognition, the Pentagon’s reasoning sounds like very weak tea. The Iraq War was controversial to begin with, and the war in Afghanistan is winding down with American public opinion decidedly against it, but that’s no reason for veterans to have to wait decades to receive some kind of recognition for their service even if it is just a parade.

I speculated last week that, notwithstanding the American public’s rather obvious war wariness,  making the public case for military action against Iran wouldn’t be all that difficult given the three decades of antipathy between the United States and the Islamic Republic that started with the Iranian Hostage Crisis. A new poll from The Hill would seem to confirm that suspicion:

Nearly half of likely voters think the United States should be willing to use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to this week’s The Hill Poll.

Forty-nine percent said military force should be used, while 31 percent said it should not and 20 percent were not sure.

Sixty-two percent of likely voters said they were somewhat or very concerned about Iran making a terrorist strike on the United States, while 37 percent said they were not very concerned or not at all concerned about it.

As Ed Morrissey notes, support for the idea of military action against Iran is at majority or near-majority levels across nearly all reported demographic groups:

Among the youngest voting set that would have to disproportionately contribute to that effort (18-39YOs), support is almost exactly equal to the overall survey, 49/30.  In fact, there is almost no difference between any of the three age demos.  Income demos are all in favor of it by majorities or large pluralities; the most supportive are the under-$20K demo (53/32) and $40-60K demo (56/27).  There is no real difference between those with children at home (50/28) and those without (49/32).  Democrats narrowly support the idea (41/37) although self-described liberals (32/42) do not.  In fact, the only real partisan difference in the entire poll comes on those who approve of Barack Obama’s performance.  The more people approve of it, the less likely they are to support the idea of attacking Iran to stop the nuclear weapon.

Of course, if the President making the case for military action at some point in the near future happens to be Barack Obama that last group is likely to come along with everyone else. There will be dissenters, of course, but what numbers like this suggest to me is that the idea of military action against Iran is already so engrained in the American psyche that it’s unlikely that any future President would have to worry about the legacy of the unpopular wars in Iraq or Afghanistan in making their case to the American public for action in Iran.

Not surprisingly, the Commander of the Military District of Washington has chosen to accept the findings of a preliminary hearing held last year, and ordered that Pfc. Bradley Manning face a General Court Martial for the charges that he stole hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents which eventually ended up in the hands of Wikileaks:

The commander of the Military District of Washington has ordered a court-martial for Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the former intelligence analyst accused of giving hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Maj. Gen. Michael S. Linnington made the decision Friday after reviewing testimony and arguments from a preliminary hearing at Fort Meade in December, officials said.

There was no word on whether the as-yet-unscheduled court-martial would also be held at Fort Meade, one of three installations within the military district equipped to host such a proceeding.

Manning, 24, is charged with aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Manning is accused of sending raw field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world and a video of a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad to be published online.

The U.S. Army Trial Judiciary will now assign a military judge, who will set a date for Manning’s arraignment, motion hearings and trial.

During a preliminary hearing in December, Army prosecutors called computer forensic investigators who testified that materials uploaded to WikiLeaks came from computers on which Manning worked.

Manning’s attorneys sought to portray him as a troubled young man who struggled with gender identity, was isolated from his fellow soldiers and should not have been given access to the classified materials.

Manning, who lived in Potomac and studied at Montgomery College before he enlisted in the Army in 2007, attended the hearing but did not speak. It was his first public appearance since his arrest in Iraq in May 2010.

During his detention, his case became a cause celebre among anti-war activists, who say the footage of the 2007 Apache helicopter attack that he is alleged to have released appears to show evidence of a war crime.

At least one of the charges against Manning, Aiding The Enemy, carries with it a potential death sentence but it appears that military prosecutors will demur from seeking that sentence and instead ask for life in prison. Between that charge and the others than Manning faces it’s fairly certain that, if convicted, he would never see the outside of a military prison again for the rest of his life. Judging from last year’s preliminary hearing, the outcome of the case hardly seems to be in doubt. Manning’s lawyers offered no real defense at that hearing, not that they were required to, but it was rather clear from the arguments they did make that they didn’t really have much to argue on their clients’ behalf beyond questioning and testing the elements of the prosecutions case. The logical thing at this point would be for them to try to cut a deal on Manning’s behalf, but it’s possible that Manning himself doesn’t want to plead guilty.

The other unresolved question in the Manning case, of course, is the status of Julian Assange and others associated with Wikileaks. As I noted while the hearing was ongoing, military prosecutors revealed at the time that they had recovered online communications between Manning and Assange that apparently predated the time when Manning stole the classified material. This material has been turned over to civilian prosecutors who are apparently investigating the matter further. Whether there’s enough there to charge Assange under the Espionage Act or anyone else remains unclear at this time, though. Of course, American prosecutors probably aren’t in a rush when it comes to getting something on Assange, he remains under house arrest in the United Kingdom where he’s fighting an order that he be extradited to Sweden to face rape charges. If we want him, we’re going to know where to find him.

Shortly after Secretary of Defense Leon Pannetta announced the other day that the United States would be winding down its combat role in Afghanistan at least six months earlier than originally planned, Mitt Romney came out with a statement criticizing the move:

LAS VEGAS — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday night blasted President Obama and his administration for “putting in jeopardy” the nation’s military mission by signaling it hopes to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by the middle of 2013.

Appearing at a campaign rally here shortly after landing in Nevada, Romney said Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s statement Wednesday that U.S. forces would transition from a combat mission in Afghanistan next year “makes absolutely no sense.”

“He announced that so the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it,” Romney said. “Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with and tell them the day you’re pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense. [Obama's] naivete is putting in jeopardy the mission of the United States of America and our commitments to freedom. He is wrong. We need new leadership in Washington.”

Spencer Ackermann points out the logical flaws in Romney’s statement:

It’s not just Obama that’s announcing the accelerated schedule. It’s NATO. NATO wants this war wrapped up. The alliance will provide substance for how it concludes its combat mission by 2013 at the May summit in Chicago. That means all 28 heads of state and government are going to sign on to a plan to turn the Afghanistan war over to the Afghans next year. (Not that they’re actually going to leave, entirely, which is a big asterisk.) Right in time for people to start paying attention to a presidential election.

And what’s Romney going to do? Say that as president, he’s going to convince NATO — and Karzai! — not to hew to a 2013 (or 2014!) timetable for ending combat? That he’d keep the U.S. fighting in Afghanistan beyond that point? How’s he going to sell that in Brussels and the NATO capitols? How’s he gonna sell that in Kabul? How’s he gonna sell that in Kansas?

Remember, a major part of Romney’s foreign policy critique of Obama is that Obama callously mistreats and neglects U.S. allies. The allies, however, want the 2013 timetable. Romney surely had to bash the change in the timetable; that’s all in the game. But Mitt doesn’t seem to have thought through the angles here. Or, alternatively, he’s banking on Obama to bail President Romney out of the Afghanistan war while posturing as an opponent of the incumbent’s policy — much as Obama banked on President Bush to bail him out of the Iraq war with the SOFA accord while doing the same.

Daniel Larison tries to find some logic in Romney’s position, but ultimately isn’t able to for the simple reason that there isn’t any. Much as Republicans refused to acknowledge the reality that the Bush Administration had negotiated a Status Of Forces Agreement with Iraq that called for American forces to be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011 and that the Iraqi government was unwilling to enter into a new SOFA with the United States to extend the time that our forces would be there, they are refusing to recognize reality here. The 2014 deadline was set in stone quite some time ago, and the withdrawal is going to be in full effect if and when President Romney takes office in 2013. Surely, Romney doesn’t really believe he can reverse course on this does he? Actually, I don’t think he does. This is just another talking point for the GOP in its mostly ham-handed attack on President Obama’s foreign policy.

Which brings us to the other part of Ackerman’s argument. The same Mitt Romney who has accused the President of abandoning our allies is now criticizing him for supporting a decision that all of NATO supports. Does he really believe that his first task as President would be to reverse a decision that everyone else in the Afghan coalition agrees to, and that they’ll just go along with it? Again, this assumes that Romney has actually thought through what he’s saying here. What we actually have in this statement isn’t a coherent statement of an alternative Afghanistan strategy so much as it is yet another opportunity to bash the President for making what, in the end, seems to be the only reasonable, responsible decision that can be made about a war that has already gone on far longer than it needs to.

As Larison notes, these two positions that Romney is taking are completely contradictory, but does anyone think Republicans are either going to notice or care? Of course they won’t. Outside of Ron Paul, there isn’t a candidate left in the race who is going to disagree with what Romney’s saying here and he’s unlikely to get called on it, if at all, until he’s face-to-face with the President in a General Election Debate. At that point, he’s going to mostly look like an idiot for making an argument that makes no sense at all in favor of continuing a war that the vast majority of Americans wish had ended years ago.

USA Today reports, “A change in federal law to keep experienced officers in uniform allows top generals and admirals to make more in retirement than they did on active duty.” It’s interesting, if not precisely true.

The new pension rules were part of the 2007 Defense Authorization Act to address concerns that the military would lose too many experienced generals and admirals during wartime.

Previously , the maximum annual pension was based on an officer’s pay at 26 years of service. Now, a four-star officer retiring in 2011 with 38 years’ experience would get a yearly pension of about $219,600, a jump of $84,000, or 63% beyond what was once allowed. A three-star officer with 35 years’ experience would get about $169,200 a year, up about $39,000, or 30%.

The highest pension, $272,892, is paid to a retired four-star officer with 43 years of service, according to the Pentagon. Before the law was changed, the typical pension for a retired four-star officer was $134,400. The top pay for an active-duty officer is capped at $179,900; housing and other allowances boost their compensation an additional third.

“These changes cumulatively provide consistent recognition across an individual’s entire career, not just the first 26 years of service,” Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said. “This recognition also translates into increased readiness through the increased retention of our most experienced leaders.”

Naturally, at a time when we are talking about serious cuts in our defense budget–including drastic pension reform–this will raise some eyebrows. But it’s likely quite true that some significant number of general officers–99 percent of whom could easily walk out the door an quadruple their salaries in the private sector–would have retired at the outset of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq given that their retirement benefits were already capped.

So, how does an officer make more in retirement than on active duty? Well, active pay is capped at $14,975.10 per month ($179,701.20 annually) by statute but the top members of the Joint Chiefs are allowed to make $20,597.80 monthly, or $247,174.60 annually.

Under the system these folks entered under, soldiers are eligible to retire after 20 years of service and receive 50 percent of their base pay for life. For each additional year of service, they added another 2.5 percent, meaning they would receive 75 percent of their base pay for life after 30 years. At 40 years–statutorily unattainable for all but senior generals and admirals–they’d be eligible for 100 percent. Presumably, after 43 years–again, a ridiculously unusual case–uncapping it would allow them to draw 107.5 percent of their base pay.

But note that I keep referring to “base pay.” That’s the amount of guaranteed salary that they pay taxes on. Military personnel can, depending on circumstances, receive substantial additional pay for housing, subsistence (known as “food” in civilian circles), and various specialty pay and hazardous duty pay–all tax exempt. That all goes away upon retirement. And it’s highly unlikely that even 107.5 percent of this officer’s base pay exceeded what he was actually pulling in on active duty.

Via Micah Zenko 

Andrew Exum notes that most analysts who call for military intervention–Syria is the particular case, but I’d argue it’s true in almost all cases–fail to specify the particulars.

I’m reminded of a line from Top Gun in which Goose exclaims, “Come on, Mav, do some of that pilot shit!”

On the one hand, it’s not a particularly useful bit of advice. The pilot is well aware of a need to do some of what it is he does and needs no additional encouragement. The problem is making a choice under the worst kind of  stress–when making the wrong one will get you dead.

On the other hand, it’s a perfectly understandable thing for Goose to say: he’s under stress, too, and perfectly helpless in dealing with the situation.

With respect to bad things happening across the world being shown on Western television screens,Don Snow, my major professor in grad school, coined “the Do-Something Syndrome.” Like Goose, they’re horrified with a situation and want America to do something–anything–to fix it. Naturally, that “something” is often coming to the rescue with our powerful military.

The problem, even aside from niceties like national sovereignty, the rule of law, and regional spillover effects, is that military force is very seldom the ideal tool to deal with the situation at hand. In the particular case of Syria, it’s not at all clear what form intervention would take. We could set up a no-fly zone and take out bad guys shooting at civilians–but we’d probably kill as many civilians as we’d save. We could send in ground forces. But to do what? A regime change? And then what? As we’ve seen recently, taking out a Ba’athist regime doesn’t necessarily mean the end to violence.

Exum adds,

A broader problem here, as I was discussing with both Adam Elkus and Robert Caruso, is that regional specialists rarely understand military capabilities and options well enough to make an argument for or against, and those who understand military capabilities and options rarely understand the regional dynamics well enough to make an argument for or against.

This is indeed problematic. I’m a former Army officer with a PhD specializing in national security policy and some 25 years experience in the field. I’ve got a reasonable clue about the nature of the military problem from both the 10,000 feet and the platoon view. But I’ve got only a tangential understanding of the nature of the opposition forces in Syria or the dynamics likely to play out if all the al-Assads were suddenly terminated.

Hardly a day goes by it seems without a news article, column, or statement from a prominent leader on the likelihood of war with Iran. Yesterday’s example was this column by David Ignatius:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a lot on his mind these days, from cutting the defense budget to managing the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But his biggest worry is the growing possibility that Israel will attack Iran over the next few months.

Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June — before Iran enters what Israelis described as a “zone of immunity” to commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon — and only the United States could then stop them militarily.

Mr. Ignatius is an opinion writer (it says so right below his name). His column does not offer an explicit opinion, an odd choice for an opinion writer. I do not know whether he has an opinion on the subject or has some reason to avoid taking a stand.

In the months before the U. S. invasion of Iraq, there were complaints, too few, unfortunately, of a “drumbeat to war”. I believe that columns of this sort are just that sort of drumbeat. By not taking an explicit position against a U. S. attack on Iran, a column like this renders the idea more acceptable, part of the prevailing wisdom. As I read Mr. Ignatius’s columns, he is the doyen of the prevailing wisdom.

I do have an opinion. I do not believe that, in the absence of a direct attack by Iran on the U. S. or U. S. interests, the U. S. should bomb or invade Iran. I know of no evidence that Iran is preparing to attack the United States. An attack by the U. S. in the absence of such evidence such an attack would be preventive in nature. Preventive war is immoral.

Furthermore, our on-the-ground intelligence in Iran is notoriously bad. I find it highly unlikely that limited strikes against presumed nuclear weapons development sites will do more than slow a nuclear weapons development program by more than a few years and it will certainly incentivize such a program. It also might rally the people to the present regime, very much the opposite of what we might wish to happen.

Finally, Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq. Remember what Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: if you strike at a king you must kill him.

I invite my colleagues at OTB to update this post with their own opinions on the subject. Commenters, weigh in in the comments. Please keep your remarks as succinct and dispassionate as I have attempted to keep mine.

UPDATE (James Joyner): Longtime readers will know that I oppose military intervention in Iran to prevent their acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Given the regime’s enmity toward the United States and history of promulgating terrorist violence  against the United States and its allies, I have no moral objections to doing so. Rather, I think there are no politically acceptable military solutions to the problem. Further, I’m not entirely convinced that an Iranian regime with a handful of nuclear weapons even constitutes a particularly significant threat to the United States.

Among people whose views on the matter I respect, few think we can significantly disrupt Iran’s nuclear drive from the air. The most notable exception is Chuck Wald, who made his case in an August 2009 WSJ op-ed. But even he allows that it would set of a perpetual game of cat and mouse rather than being a permanent solution.

We could, of course, follow an air attack with a ground invasion, decapitate the regime, and establish a long term occupation aimed at dismantling the nuclear program and installing a more friendly government. That option, however, is not only not politically viable at home but would almost surely create ripple effects in the region that would leave us less secure than we’d be if we just let Iran alone.

Finally, the notion that a nuclear Iran would pose some sort of existential threat to the United States–or even Israel–seems far-fetched. While the notion that the ayatollahs are a bunch of madmen eager for martyrdom may have been plausible 30 years ago, they’ve certainly demonstrated in the interim that they’re rational actors interested in long term survival. Frankly,  we’ve had some really bad actors in charge of significant nuclear arsenals over the years. Joe Stalin. Mao Zedong. Kim Jong Il. Not to mention the unstable morass that is Pakistan. None has ever launched a nuclear attack on their enemies.

Indeed, while my strong preference would be that Iran not get nukes, there’s an argument to be made that being a possessor nation would actually make them less threatening simply because they’d feel less threatened. Right now, they have to live under the constant specter of an Israeli, American, or Arab attack. As North Korea demonstrated, it’s better to be the nuclear end of the axis of evil than the non-nuclear end. And, as Libya demonstrated, it’s probably not a good idea to give up your nuclear program for a bag of magic beans.

Update (Doug Mataconis): I generally agree with James and Dave on this issue. Absent an attack or direct threat to the United States, or vital American interests, I see no justification for military action against Iran. Not only should our experiences in Iraq  and elsewhere educate us on this regard, but the rather obvious potential consequences of war should cause anyone in the “Bomb Iran” crowd to pause before pumping their fist in victory. Increased terrorism, threats to shipping in the Persian Gulf, and a massive oil spike are only the most obvious unintended consequences of military action, any one of which would turn an “easy” military strike into something that has long term consequences for the region and the world.

There are three dangers that we need to be aware of as we get closer to what seems like a final decision point. First, the antipathy toward Iran in the United States that goes back some three decades makes it far too easy for pro-war advocates to whip up war fervor among the public. Second, Iran itself seems intent on acting in a manner that provokes its enemies. Barring inspectors, war games in the Straits of Hormuz, and apparently plotting terrorism inside the United States are just a few of the actions we’ve seen most recently that seem guaranteed to help raise tensions to a tripwire level very quickly. Finally, this decision may not be entirely in our control. Israel is likely to strike out if it feels it has no other choice, and that is likely to lead to a wider conflict. So far, we’ve been successfully in convincing the Israelis to calm down vis a vis Iran but we may be nearing the point where those assurances aren’t going to be good enough. At that point, we may have war whether we want it or not.

Following up on the comments that Secretary of Defense Panetta and many Republican politicians made as long ago as November when the so-called “super committee” failed to come up with a workable debt reduction package, a group of Republican Senators is working to stop the automatic cuts to defense spending negotiated last August as part of the debt ceiling deal:

Senate Republicans on Thursday offered a plan to delay for a year more than $1 trillion in mandatory cuts – half of which would come from the Pentagon — by trimming the federal workforce and extending a pay freeze for federal employees imposed by the Obama administration.

At a news conference, the senators appealed to President Barack Obama to negotiate on the proposal, noting that it contained ideas Democrats have previously supported. They quoted Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s dire warning that allowing the cuts to take effect in January would be “shooting ourselves in the head.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said Panetta “either needs to be fired because he’s so off-base or we need to listen to him and fix the problem … this is now a time for both parties to come together and fix something that has to be fixed.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called the GOP effort to undo sequestration “unfair” and vowed to oppose the legislation.

“I believe that an agreement is an agreement. I believe that a handshake is a handshake. Here we have more than a handshake – we have a law that is in place in our country,” Reid said at a news conference. “They should keep their word. That’s what the American people expect them to do, and that’s what I expect them to do.”

Other Democrats also panned the proposal, sticking to their insistence that increased tax revenues be part of the solution.

“If Republicans are serious about replacing the automatic spending cuts,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said, “then they are going to need to work with Democrats to find an equal amount of balanced deficit reduction that doesn’t simply increase the pain for the middle class.”

The Republican proposal apparently centers around using attrition to reduce the size of the Federal workforce, and keeping the Federal Pay Freeze in effect, although that by itself doesn’t amount to nearly enough money to make up the amount of the defense cuts. Of course, it may not matter at all because President Obama has said that he would veto any attempt to rollback the sequestration cuts agreed to in August unless it was accompanied by a replacement package of cuts and tax increases that would decrease the deficit by at least as much as the sequestration cuts. Before it even got to President Obama, though, it would have to get through the Senate and, based on the reaction of Senate Democrats, it really doesn’t seem like this package is going to go anywhere at all.

Of course, that isn’t going to stop Republicans and commentators on the right from assertion that these cuts are going to “gut” the military. We started seeing that argument being made before the ink was even dry on the debt ceiling deal, and it’s been repeated many times since then.  As usually is the case in Washington, though, what we’re talking about here aren’t spending cuts, but cuts in the rate of growth of spending and, in the end, the Pentagon won’t end up much worse off under the current law than it would have under the budget that was under consideration last August before the deal was made:

Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, the current debt proposal trims $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had been expecting over the next decade.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, experts said, the overall change in defense spending practices could be minimal: Instead of cuts, the Pentagon merely could face slower growth.

“This is a good deal for defense when you probe under the numbers,” said Lawrence Korb, a defense expert at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning research center. “It’s better than what the Defense Department was expecting.”

Moreover, it’s no small point that, in real terms, we are spending more on defense now than we have at any time since the end of World War II:

Adjusted for inflation, the United States spent at most $580 billion a year on defense at the height of the Cold War. In the 2011 fiscal year, the Pentagon’s baseline budget is $549 billion, with another $159 billion allotted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for a total of $708 billion. That total figure drops slightly to $670 billion in the 2012 budget proposal.

The total amount of the sequestration cuts amount to about $50 billion less in projected spending every year for ten years. As I noted back in November, if we can’t afford to cut that, then we’re doing something wrong:

If we cannot afford to cut $50 billion a year from the defense budget then we will never get a handle on the exploding Federal Budget deficit, and the idea that the cuts that would have to be implemented would endanger America is the same kind of fearmongering we  hear every time one weapons system or another gets questioned.  You can be sure, for example, that the defense industry lobby has been whispering in the ears of Republicans all over Capitol Hill, because their chief concern isn’t what’s best for the United States, but what’s best for the defense industry.

There’s another part to this equation, of course. Many of the Senators who have signed on to this effort to reverse the sequestration cuts and replace them with a gimmick that may or may not reduce spending are among the most supposedly fiscally conservative members of the upper chamber. Instead of coming up with a credible comprehensive package of spending cuts, they’re working to eliminate a mechanism that, although far from perfect, does impose some degree of fiscal discipline on the Federal Budget. It’s not perfect, but it was a start. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the Kamikaze Caucus in the House that didn’t want to raise the debt ceiling at all and the insane GOP insistence that taxes are never on the table when the budget is discussed, it’s probable that we could have gotten a much better deal in August than we actually did. That’s water under the bridge, of course, but when it’s combined with this obvious effort to undo a package of actual cuts in the growth of spending, one has to wonder just how committed these Senators actually are.

No, you really don’t have to wonder. Just as Democrats will never allow real entitlement cuts, Republicans (except those of the Ron and Rand Paul variety) will never allow real defense cuts. And our problems will just continue to get worse.

Graphic via The Fiscal Times

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced this afternoon that the timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is being accelerated:

BRUSSELS — In a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home.

Mr. Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time that the United States had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. The defense secretary’s words reflected the Obama administration’s eagerness to bring to a close the second of two grinding ground wars it inherited from the Bush administration.

Promising the end of the American combat mission in Afghanistan next year would also give Mr. Obama a certain applause line in his re-election stump speech this fall.

Mr. Panetta said no decisions had been made about the number of American troops to be withdrawn in 2013, and he made clear that substantial fighting lies ahead. “It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be combat-ready; we will be, because we always have to be in order to defend ourselves,” he told reporters on his plane on his way to a NATO meeting in Brussels, where Afghanistan is to be a central focus.

The United States has some 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, but 22,000 of them are due home by this fall. There has been no schedule set for the pace of the withdrawal of the 68,000 American troops who will remain, only that all are to be out by the end of 2014.

Mr. Panetta offered no details of what stepping back from combat would mean, saying only that the troops would move into an “advise-and-assist” role to Afghanistan’s security forces. Such definitions are typically murky, particularly in a country like Afghanistan, where American forces are spread widely among small bases across the desert, farmland and mountains, and where the native security forces have a mixed record of success at best.

The defense secretary offered the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq as a model. American troops there eventually pulled back to large bases and left the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis.

This isn’t necessarily a surprise, of course. The President had previously announced that American forces would be out of the country by 2014, and there has been pressure from other participants in the NATO mission such as France to bring the mission to an end as soon as possible. Moreover, the war itself remains as unpopular here at home as it has been for a long time. Add into this the increasing tensions with Pakistan ever since the raid that got Osama bin Laden and last year’s mistaken drone strike that killed Pakistani soldiers, and this is probably the wisest decision at this point.

The BBC is reporting on a leaked NATO report claiming that elements of Pakistani intelligence are directly aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan even as the U.S.-led NATO forces are fighting them:

The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC.

The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people.

A BBC correspondent says the report is painful reading for international forces and the Afghan government.

(…)

The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says the report – on the state of the Taliban – fully exposes for the first time the relationship between the ISI and the Taliban.

The report is based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.

It notes: “Pakistan’s manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly”.

It says that Pakistan is aware of the locations of senior Taliban leaders.

“Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad,” it said.

It quotes a senior al-Qaeda detainee as saying: “Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can’t [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching.”

“The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad.”

Pakistani official are not surprisingly dismissing the report as “old wine in an even older bottle”:

“We can disregard this as a potentially strategic leak,” [Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar] said, adding that Pakistan and Afghanistan should stop blaming each other for cross-border problems.

“These claims have been made many, many times. Pakistan stands behind any initiative that the Afghan government takes for peace,” she said. “We have no hidden agenda in Afghanistan.

“We consider any threat to Afghanistan’s independence and sovereignty as a threat to Pakistan’s existence.”

For their part, NATO officials are saying that conclusions should not be drawn from the report given that the source of much of the information contained therein came from highly motivated extremists:

KABUL, Afghanistan — A spokesman for the NATO-led coalition on Wednesday confirmed the existence of a report that summarizes the views of Taliban detainees, who claim that they are winning the war thanks to cooperation from some Afghan government officials and soldiers and who say their movement is controlled by Pakistan’s intelligence service.

But the official, Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings of the International Security Assistance Force, disputed accounts of the NATO report that suggested the alliance’s analysts accepted the Taliban views as valid.

“This document aggregates the comments of Taliban detainees in a captive environment without considering the validity of or motivation behind their reflections,” Colonel Cummings said, in an unusually detailed rebuttal of accounts of the classified report’s contents. “Any conclusions drawn from this would be questionable at best.”

(…)

NATO’s response indicated it was more concerned at suggestions that Afghan officials and soldiers were demoralized and expected a Taliban victory once coalition troops pull out than about the claims of Pakistani collaboration.

“It is important not to draw conclusions based on Taliban comments or musings,” Colonel Cummings said. “These detainees include some of the most motivated and ruthless of the insurgents who are inspired to play up their success. It is what they want us to believe they think.”

“We also dispute the idea that somehow the Afghan national security forces might be working with the Taliban. Many dedicated patriotic Afghan security force members have lost their lives defending Afghanistan from insurgents.”

This is all well-taken, of course. However, given the other evidence we’ve seen over the years linking Pakistani actors to the Taliban and apparently al Qaeda, would it really be all that surprising if this was true?

My latest for The Atlantic explains, “Why We Should Be Glad the Haditha Massacre Marine Got No Jail Time.”

When Marine Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich was handed a suspended sentence of three months on Wednesday for his role as squad leader of a group that massacred 24 unarmed Iraqis in Haditha six years ago, it naturally sparked an outrage. To many here in the U.S., in Iraq, and in the Muslim world writ large, this will likely be seen as the U.S. military excusing a heinous crime. But we should instead look at this, even if it is difficult to do so, as the price we pay for a justice system that prioritizes the rights of the accused over a desire to punish criminals.

[...]

Even though we now have a pretty good idea what happened that day, it’s incredibly hard to prove it in court without the active cooperation of reliable witnesses. Alas, as the Associated Press reports, “The prosecution was also hampered by squad mates who acknowledged they had lied to investigators initially and later testified in exchange for having their cases dropped, bringing into question their credibility.” And the few Iraqi survivors declined to testify, fearing for their safety.

[...]

Awis Fahmi Hussein, who survived the attacks, lamented, “I was expecting that the American judiciary would sentence this person to life in prison and that he would appear and confess in front of the whole world that he committed this crime, so that America could show itself as democratic and fair.”

Unsatisfying as it seems, a democratic outcome is exactly what we got. In an authoritarian society — probably even in today’s post-Saddam Iraq — governments will happily sentence citizens to jail to slake the public thirst for justice. In a liberal democracy, however, we put a very high burden on the state in taking away the liberty of a citizen accused of a crime.

Much more detail at the link–the piece is over 1300 words–but that’s the gist.

One of the most powerful moments of President Obama’s speech last night came when President Obama evoked the memory of SEAL Team Six, the unit that hunted down Osama bin Laden and, as we learned this morning, rescued two civilians from Somali pirates at nearly the same time that official Washington was gathering in the Capitol Building for the President’s speech. It framed both the beginning and the end of the speech, actually. Unusually for a State Of The Union, the President started with foreign policy:

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world.  (Applause.)  For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq.  (Applause.)  For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.  (Applause.)  Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated.  The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.

These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces.  At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations.  They’re not consumed with personal ambition.  They don’t obsess over their differences.  They focus on the mission at hand.  They work together.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.

And then, at the close of the speech more than an hour later, Obama said:

Which brings me back to where I began.  Those of us who’ve been sent here to serve can learn a thing or two from the service of our troops.  When you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian, Latino, Native American; conservative, liberal; rich, poor; gay, straight.  When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails.  When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one nation, leaving no one behind.

One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden.  On it are each of their names.  Some may be Democrats.  Some may be Republicans.  But that doesn’t matter.  Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates — a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary — and Hillary Clinton — a woman who ran against me for president.

All that mattered that day was the mission.  No one thought about politics.  No one thought about themselves.  One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission.  It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job — the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs.  More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other — because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s somebody behind you, watching your back.

So it is with America.  Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those 50 stars and those 13 stripes.  No one built this country on their own.  This nation is great because we built it together.  This nation is great because we worked as a team.  This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.  And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard.  As long as we are joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, and our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.

As James Joyner noted in his SOTU Post Mortem this morning, this is fine rhetoric and great speechcraft but it’s unclear what it actually means in the real world. At some point in their Presidency, every President has made this kind of an appeal to national unity and called on Americans to put aside partisanship for one purpose or another. Then, they fly out of Washington the next day giving a serious of stump speeches to sell their SOTU message during which they take as many shots at the opposition as they can. Obama is doing that himself starting today with a speech in Iowa that starts off a three-day, five state (all of them swing states of course) tour of the country to sell his message. This is not to mention the fact that it is more than a little amusing to kick off a Presidential election year with a speech that derides partisanship. Good luck with that one, Mr. President.

More broadly, though, Max Boot expresses concern over the use of analogies to military service in arguments about domestic politics as well as the President’s Tom Brokaw-like nostalgia for the post World War II era in American history:

[N]ostalgia should not mask the fact that the “Mad Men” world is not one most of us would like to live in today. It was, after all, a world where big institutions-whether big government, big media, big business or big unions-had far more power than they do today. The downside of this arrangement was captured in numerous contemporary critiques such as “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit” and “The Organization Man” and “The Lonely Crowd” that were a touchstone for Baby Boomers rebelling against the conformism of the 1950s.

From our standpoint today, there are some good aspects of the 1950s-the hard work, the sense of common purpose-but also much that we would reject, especially the pervasive racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, homophobia, and other social attitudes-not to mention the pervasive drinking, smoking, and other bad habits. America today is far more individualistic and far more meritocratic with far less tolerance for rank prejudice and far less willingness to blindly follow the orders of rigid bureaucracies.

(…)

Make no mistake: the military works well. But that’s because it’s comprised of volunteers with a mission-defending America. Members of the armed forces are willing to accept privations and hardships, and respond unquestioningly to orders, in a way that civilians will not and should not. Let’s temper our admiration of the military: For all its virtues, it is not a model for the rest of society.

Boot’s first point is self-evident I think. Notwithstanding the praise that the World War II generation has deservedly received thanks largely in part to Tom Brokaw’s books, it’s worth remembering that the 1950s weren’t necessarily the nirvana that they are sometimes portrayed as, especially if you were a member of a minority group. It was odd to hear a Democratic invoking this kind of nostalgia only because it’s usually something you expect to hear from a socially conservative Republican who bemoans the breakdown in “the family” that has supposedly occurred since the halcyon days of Leave It To Beaver. In either case, though, it’s a rather myopic view of the era that papers over the many flaws that Boot points out. In most ways that matter, America is a better place than it was in the 1950s, and that’s partly because we don’t have the kind of mindless “unity” that a culture of conformity creates.

It’s Boot’s second point, though, that I think is most important. Barack Obama isn’t the first President to invoke the qualities that we all admire about the military, the qualities that allow it to get its job done, and argue that the civilian population should emulate it in some respects. For one thing, in the military orders are strictly followed and dissent is unheard of, is this really a model we want for society? Well, maybe if you’re a politician in Washington frustrated by the fact that the messiness of domestic politics makes it difficult to get your agenda enacted you might see the advantages in that, but it’s hardly the kind of society a free individual should want to live in. It would be much more convenient if dissent would just be quiet and everyone would just “work together” to achieve all those important “national objectives, ” wouldn’t it? Perhaps, but that’s not the kind of political system we have, nor is it one we should aspire to.

Of course, much of this is just flowery rhetoric, just as the vast majority of any State Of The Union Address is largely flowery rhetoric. Perhaps it shouldn’t be taken quite as seriously as Boot does. Nonetheless, as I’ve noted before, the prevalence of militaristic rhetoric in American politics is something that helps reenforces the imperialistic view of the Presidency that has come to dominate American politics, and that alone is reason to be concerned about it.