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Nawaz Wins: What’s Next in Pakistan?

 By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The count’s still contested here and there—and loudly, especially in Karachi, which is no surprise. But the outcome is clear: the Pakistan Muslim League (N) won enough seats in last week’s parliamentary election to form a government all by itself. No need for coalition building in Islamabad.

That’s good. One-party government makes it easier to get things done, especially when there’s a responsible opposition to temper ideological excesses. Such an opposition the out-going People’s Party, whose lackluster performance in power made electoral defeat inevitable, has pledged itself to be.  Even so, the PPP won slightly more seats in Parliament than the perky new kid on the block, the Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice Party) founded by ex-cricketeer Imran Khan, which had hoped to win a parliamentary majority.  The U.S. should be happy.  Khan has been very critical of Pakistan's relations with the U.S.

A Milestone

Before we start looking toward the future via a rather murky crystal ball, let’s pause to note an important milestone. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the 2013 election will allow a civilian-led government to hand the baton to another civilian government. U. S. President Barack Obama has already congratulated PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, and maybe this time—having been granted a third go as Pakistan’s Prime Minister—Nawaz will manage to complete a term in office. In 1999, Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf, with whom Nawaz had just waged (and lost) a high-altitude, mid-winter, mini-war against India, staged a coup and sent him scampering into exile in Saudi Arabia.

A New Nawaz?

“I’ve mellowed.” So says Nawaz, but the world around him may have changed more than he has. To name just a few of the more dramatic events of the past decade or so: the Twin Towers catastrophe in New York; U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq; the rise of drone warfare; the elimination of Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein; the Arab spring and its messy aftermath; the still raging civil war in Syria; the earth-shaking awakening of the Chinese dragon; the death of Kim Jung Il.There's more, but the point has been made.

A New Military?

Nawaz also faces a different Chief of Army Staff.

Many times during the lead up to last  Saturday’s polling, I thought that the level of election-related violence—car bombs set off; candidates, party officials and ordinary people murdered; a high-level kidnapping—must surely have reached coup level. The Army would step in, declaring with the usual paternalistic panache that poor old Pakistan still isn’t ready for democracy. It didn’t happen.

Perhaps the Pakistani military under General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has also mellowed. At the very least, Kayani honored his pledge (or inclination) to keep the Army out of the electoral process, even if that meant the Pakistani Taliban’s selective violence might skew the results toward parties they gauged to be more sympathetic to the Islamist cause. Taliban targets tended to belong to the MQM, the PPP and the AWP, all openly secular in orientation.  An interesting note: the PML-N insists that it too was harrassed, as if Nawaz feels some need to show there's air and light between him and the Taliban.  Even more important: Taliban threats notwithstanding, people in most constituencies flocked to the polls to exercise their right to vote.

Double Standards: Buddhists, Muslims and Murder

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Buddhist mobs have been killing Muslims in Myanmar. Where’s the outrage? Why aren’t all major Buddhist leaders, those supposed paragons of compassion, loudly, unequivocally, calling for a halt to it? Why aren’t Buddhist practitioners world wide wringing their hands with guilt? Buddhists are expected to hate the very idea of swatting a mere mosquito. Aren’t Muslims sentient beings?

Evidently, given what’s expected of all Muslims whenever a single Muslim commits an atrocity, there’s a double standard for mea culpas.

When Islamist terrorists go on a killing binge, the non-Muslim world immediately puts pressure on all Muslim intellectuals and the great mass of ordinary people as well. Again and again they must dissociate themselves explicitly and just as explicitly condemn actions with which they clearly have no personal connection. On the street and in the media innocent Muslims are routinely tarred with communal guilt. They’re racially profiled, and those with common names, the Muslim equivalent of John Smith, find themselves stuck forever on no fly lists. Although Christians, both clergy and their congregations, are not obliged to dissociate themselves from every mass murder by culturally Christian maniacs, Muslim silence is taken as proof of culpability. What’s more, the bloody passages in the Bible and the Koran get different readings, the former (take a look at Leviticus) being taken as embarrassing anachronisms, the latter as the present day intention of all Believers. To be a Muslim is to live under suspicion.

I was reminded of the peculiarities of this double standard problem as I encountered a fresh variant in American media reactions to reports of Muslims murdered just for being Muslims by members of the Buddhist majority in Myanmar. Buddhists there have raided several Muslim enclaves, torching houses, looting shops, killing people. It’s one of the less savory aspects of the relaxation of military rule in that country. These reports from Myanmar reminded me, in turn, of the continuing, largely ignored maltreatment of non-Buddhist Tamils by the chauvanistic Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka.

Although there are many interesting aspects to the history of Islam in Myanmar, they aren’t the point here. The point is that Muslims are being slaughtered by Buddhists, yet Buddhism isn’t coming in for criticism. No one is asking this Venerable or that Venerable to grovel as imams must grovel to atone for the actions of every misguided, bomb-planting Muslim youth.

This chain of thought got underway a couple of weeks ago, when I received the latest issue of a twice-yearly Buddhist publication called (ever so appropriately, I once thought) “The Inquiring Mind.” The Burmese vein of Theravada Buddhism has been very influential in the spread of the Dharma in the U.S., and it occurred to me that I might find in “IM” some mention of the distressing events in Myanmar. I found nothing. The inquiring mind wasn’t inquiring.

I guess I’m not surprised. I can’t recall having read any significant “IM” commentary on the distinctly uncompassionate victimization of non-belligerent Hindu or Christian Tamils by Buddhists during the guerilla war in Sri Lanka. But “IM” isn’t the only example of non-feasance. I subscribe to another Buddhist publication, a glossy monthly aptly named “Tricycle.” Its latest issue also fails to mention the situation in Myanmar. And I can’t remember any “Tricycle” issues grappling in a serious way with the implications of the violence in Sri Lanka over the years. (I’m happy to be enlightened if I missed anything major.)

Meanwhile, mainstream American publications have also failed to demand an explanation of how adherents of a creed based on non-violent compassion for all sentient beings can behave so murderously. Buddhists pride themselves on their deep study of consciousness and the workings of the mind, and yet they seem to have little or no interest in plumbing, exposing and expiating this very obvious chasm between core beliefs and bloody actions.

Perhaps the most influential leaders of Theravada Buddhism, the branch of Dharma practiced in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, have decided not to wash dirty laundry in public. If so, even though Buddhists haven’t declared war on Westerners, which doesn’t mean that Western values aren’t regularly trashed, it’s time for the rest of us to insist that Buddhist leaders face the harsh music Muslim leaders have had to face. (The Dalai Lama wouldn’t be the most useful apologist here. He leads a sub-branch of another vein of Buddhism.) And how about some engagement from the many Buddhist lay people in America, especially those who teach and write about Dharma? Although the Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has called for a socially-engaged Buddhism, most American practitioners seem to prefer the navel-gazing variety. The beguiling injunction to practice loving-kindness degenerates, in all too many instances, into a mind-numbing mantra practice.

Particularly poignant in regard to the Muslim-bashing in Myanmar has been the restraint and remoteness of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s virtual saint, who is reputed to have meditated regularly while under house arrest. During those long years as a political prisoner she was globally admired as a martyr of conscience, and she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent resistance to military rule. Since she’s been free to speak out, however, she seems to have lost her tongue. She certainly hasn’t been campaigning very vigorously to protect the lives and human rights of Myanmar’s Muslims. The Lady is a politician, it seems, not a Buddhist saint. Why is the world giving her such an easy pass?

Mainly Continuity: Foreign Policy during a Second Obama Administration

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The following piece is also appearing in the Bengali daily published by the Times of India in Kolkata, India

U.S. President Barack Obama had practically nothing to say about foreign policy in his second inaugural address, but the figures he has chosen for his new national security team tell us almost all we need to know.  There will be no internal squabbling over foreign affairs, there will be an emphasis on diplomacy and there will be continuity. 

Above all, it is highly likely that disproportionate attention will be paid to foreign policy.  One indication?  The new White House Chief of Staff won’t be a domestic policy specialist.  He will be Denis R. McDonough, who has been deputy national security advisor this past few years.  Already a member of Obama’s inner circle of trusted counselors, McDonough shared in planning for the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden.  He was also instrumental in shaping Obama’s decision to ignore military preferences by accelerating the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.  In short, the era of high and mighty generals is over.   Not only McDonough, but the new secretaries of State and Defense will see to that.

Recall how Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus attempted to undermine the authority of the newly inaugurated President Barack Obama, which is to say, how they challenged civilian control of the military?  McChrystal allowed his contempt to be expressed in print, and Petraeus lobbied publicly to undermine the President’s determination not to expand the U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan.  And what happened to these supposedly PR-savvy generals?  McChrystal was invited to resign.  Petraeus, soon to be compromised by personal arrogance as well as stalemate in Afghanistan, was kicked upstairs to CIA director—no uniform, no chestful of medals, and no imperial general staff.

Obama’s new Secretary of Defense will be no more easily cowed by top military brass than his boss. He will also be invulnerable to criticism from the hawkish right.  Chuck Hagel, a heartlander and Republican maverick, served as a much-decorated enlisted man during the Viet Nam war.  It’s widely expected that Hegel, after a brief but obligatory grilling by his old colleagues in the Senate, will be confirmed, as will ex-senator John Kerry, who’s been nominated  to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

And so, surge over, troop reductions accelerating, soon there will be a mere remnant of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, whose government will have to provide its own defense using an army whose professionalism—i.e., loyalty to a secular national government in Kabul—cannot be guaranteed, despite sustained training efforts by US and NATO troops.  Moreover, should the Taliban come to power in a year or so, the Obama administration will not intervene—at least, not unless or until a credible threat of cross-border  terrorism al Qaeda style results.  In that case, the response will be swift.  Thanks to pilotless drones, the world offers few safe havens to violent extremists.  Whether or not Pakistan’s military was harboring Osama bin Laden, the brain behind the 9/11 attacks was found and killed.  Also consider the assassination by drone of Al Awlaki,  the American-born Islamist propagandist long headquartered in Yemen.

Tipping Point in Pakistan?

 By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Some months ago I swore off writing about Pakistan. I got tired of calling attention to the same old problems over and over again.

What were the characteristics of this status quo? Bear with me. The army playing two dysfunctional parties off against one another, while preserving the pleasant fiction of civilian rule. Successive governments headed by non-tax-paying elites propped up (along with the army) by U.S. largesse, both salving pride by biting the hand with the aid. A well-armed and well-trained military-industrial complex tolerating (and perhaps encouraging) murderous sectarian violence throughout the country, especially since Taliban-allied fanatics may be guaranteed to assassinate any credible, secular civilian leader with the potential to challenge military supremacy. A social structure that punishes women and girls who aspire to be more than brood mares and/or mutely acquiescent wives for males whose perverted sense of honor (at all levels of the social structure) resides in female degradation. And so on. Oh dear, I forgot to mention the corruption. Think Swiss cheese. Total. Plus this: any decent, relatively moderate religious leader who doesn’t keep his mouth shut is also likely to be assassinated.

Enter—after six or seven years in Canada, no less— Dr Tahirul Qadri, who announced that he would lead a “million man march” from Lahore to Islamabad to cleanse the country.

Nowhere Near a Million

In fact, only some tens of thousands converged on Pakistan’s capital, where many remain, peaceably, but closely watched by security forces. I had wondered how many unhappy people would join the march on Islamabad. The numbers, while considerable, fall well below the regime-toppling minimum, I’d guess.

And yet, the prime minister Raza Pervez Ashraf has been arrested and hauled before the Supreme Court on charges of graft. He may be the second People’s Party Prime Minister to lose his job this way in very short order. Jusuf Raza Gilani was dismissed last June, also on charges of massive corruption. Is there any connection between the fate of the current PM and the Qadri march?

The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has been at odds with military and civilian governments for years now. General Pervez Musharraf, as president, tried to get rid of this troublesome Chief Justice, who survived to become the bane of the country’s sitting President Asaf Zardari, also PPP, the widower of Benazir Bhutto. Given CJ Chaudery’s feistiness, I’d suspect he hasn’t been cowed. He’s being opportunistic. Is this sagacious?  Or is it evidence that the Supreme Court, at the moment, isn’t feeling powerful or confident enough to act without serendipitous populist cover? A Supreme Court that doubts its mission and capacity to act constitutionally is not a very good bastian of the rule of law. This would be very troubling.

Could Qadri be the One?

So how about this Qadri character? Not only is he a Shi’a, which is to say a member of the minority sect in Pakistan, he’s a Sufi, which may somewhat overcome that disadvantage, since many South Asian Sunnis are attracted to the mystical elements of Sufism. Nevertheless, the Pakistani Taliban in their various guises have been waging a very violent, very aggressive war against Shi’ism and all other deviations from their own notion of pure Islam. It’s been open season on Shias in Karachi and Lahore for decades. More recently there were ghastly massacres in Quetta which targeted the Hazara, who are ethnically distinct Shi’a refugees from the chaos in Afghanistan. The survivors planted the coffins of the victims in the middle of the city and refused to inter the fallen until the government guaranteed they wouldn’t be mowed down while burial rites were being conducted. In the end, an unresponsive unsympathetic state government was dismissed and the funerals went ahead, but the declaration of Governor’s Rule in Baluchistan has created its own chain of violent protest. This is Pakistan. So fraught with violence is the religious situation that the self-declared pacifist Qadri has had to travel behind bullet proof glass.

The sectarian divide in Pakistan may explain why Qadri’s march has been less overwhelming than he’d hoped or predicted, however unhappy most Pakistanis may be with the current political situation. The country is 75% Sunni, only 20% Shia. This demographic split may also suggest why this nevertheless fairly impressive turnout may not be a tipping point. Qadri may rail all he wants against corruption and elitism. He may also be absolutely right. Yet, especially if the military continues to keep its cool and manages not to shoot a lot of noisy, demanding people, Qadri is not likely to be the figure who brings down the government or the regime.  But he's had more stying power, so far, than might have been expected.

With parliamentary elections scheduled for May in Pakistan, it’s likely that Qadri’s influence will be no greater, and possibly less, than Anna Hazare’s wildly popular, religiously-inspired anti-corruption, pro-reform hunger strike in India a little less than two years ago. But maybe not.  India, for all its problems and complications, is considerably stronger and stabler than Pakistan.  However, my guess is that there's no Arab-style spring ahead for Pakistan.  The most radical thing that's likely to happen is that the military will decide it’s time to step in and take over, again. They won’t if elections produce a sufficiently pliable figurehead government, as usual.  Or if a miracle happens and a truly capable, popular, honest government emerges, which (I regret to say) is hard to imagine, given the peformance of the major parties, in Islamabad and the state capitals, which have been granted far more power in recent years.

And so the cycle will begin again. 

Unless the Taliban get strong enough to attack the "settled areas" with more than car bombs, at which point the Army will be faced with a very interesting decision.  Will it continue to protect, in its own way, the current constitutional order?  Will it protect Qadri whose reform demands, so far, fall far short of the requirements of radical Islam, thus allowing him to agitate without rick of assassination?  Or will it perpetuate its power by throwing in with the Taliban, more or less covertly as the military in Egypt have done with the Brotherhood?

Crystal ball anyone?

 

 

Vindication and a Happy Ending: A Rebuke to the U.S. Consulate in Kolkata

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

U.S. public diplomacy in India was in shocking disarray, I discovered, when I visited Kolkata during the winter of 2011. In several posts I described incompetence when it came to interacting with the Indian public and callous if not downright cruel personnel policy.  You can refresh your memories by reviewing theses posts: The Big Jingle Jangle, The Maharani and her Scion and America the Imperial.

The latter is the one that concerns us here.  It described the sacking of a talented, veteran Foreign Service National—whoops! wrong term.  These people who were once regarded as professional colleagues have been demoted to mere Locally Employed Staff.  (I ask you.  Which denotes more respect and collegiality?  Which category would you prefer to fall into? )

Yes, I discovered that the U.S. Consulate in Kolkata had fired a veteran information assistant, a man with whom I had worked for two years, on a trumped up charge of electronic sabotage.  I can vouch for this person’s competence, character and creativity.  He was really fired so that a sexier candidate from the fashion world could be hired to fill a newly vacant post to which he should have been promoted.

Today, I am happy to report that my ex-colleague has landed on his feet.  In fact, he has been offered a position with far more prestige than anyone gets for doing the bidding of a foreign power.  Even as I write he will be taking up his new responsibilities as Assistant Editor of the Bengali daily that the prestigeous Times of India is launching in Kolkata.

In short, America’s loss is India’s gain—and my friend’s too. 

Given the shoddy treatment meted out to this man, does anyone imagine a principled, first rate journalist will ever again be willing to work for America in Kolkata?  But it gets worse.  It’s hard to imagine this story hasn’t made the rounds in the newspaper world throughout India.  The message is clear.  Work for America.  Get kicked in the face.

Aung San Suu Kyi: Should She or Shouldn’t She?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Some Americans boast of not voting in 2010.  Others strut and say they’ve never voted!  The system is too corrupt, too unresponsive, too dirty.  Idiots! They’re so pure they don’t exist, politically.  I wonder sometimes if WhirledView has any impact. And yet, without tossing a few well-chosen stones into the ocean, how to make a splash?

What's in a Win?

Just such questions of purity and efficacy have arisen in the aftermath of the recent Burmese elections.  Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League of Democracy have won 43 of the 44 seats available to civilian voters, which leaves 80% of the seats in Parliament controlled by the military (to say nothing of the presidency and other offices held by figures who have “resigned” from the military).  Suu Kyi herself has pointed out that the elections were flawed.  Observers from the European Union stopped short of praising the process as anything more than a step in the right direction. 

The elections, which were not nation-wide, evidently, were scheduled for many districts where cynics would have predicted no hope for reform-minded candidates, a devious way of tipping the scales even further against the opposition.  Most hard-headed observers expected voters in the four districts around the new capital and those in districts hosting military installations to back regime sympathizers.  Who employs them?  Who fills their rice bowls?  You don’t usually bite the hand that feeds you.  In addition, analysts assumed, the people in hilly tribal areas would vote for fellow tribals, not a Berman lowlander, whatever her glamor or her opposition to a repressive army.  This, too, would hurt Suu Kyi’s NLD.

Voters Thought for Themselves

The “realists” turned out to be wrong.  Suu Kyi and her party members won all but one available district, a Shan constituency, which did indeed send a tribal to the new Parliament, although the National League of Democracy won in a neighboring Shan district.  The NLD even came out ahead in those army-dominated districts.  This achievement should remind us all that military men and women can think for themselves, even if they spend most of their time following orders.

But let’s not over-hype the election results. Aung San Suu Kyi and her party have won a resounding victory in an election guaranteeing, by its very design, that she and her NLD colleagues will be hopelessly outnumbered in Parliament.  This clever bit of engineering on the part of the regime has led to the big question: should The Lady claim the seat she has won—or should she not, lest she legitimize a junta that kept her under house arrest for two decades and treated too many other justice-seekers worse by far? 

Is She Just a Tool?

Some analysts worry that Suu Kyi is being manipulated by a deeply-hated regime that has turned Myanmar into an economic basket case during its decades of iron-fisted control.  The Generals, they believe, have dug themselves into a hole they can’t get out of by themselves.  However, with Suu Kyi as a decorative but ineffectual figurehead in Parliament,  it may be that the US and other sources of economic aid will be sufficiently charmed and bamboozled to lift sanctions, allow trade and investment and provide the country with humanitarian assistance. 

What a contrast to the regime’s policy in the wake of the devastating cyclone Nargis in 2008, when the Generals preferred to allow people to die rather than risk the interference that would inevitably come with accepting commensurate emergency aid!  No doubt this callous policy lost them more than a few votes in the recent election.  Having monks shot during the Saffron uprising a few years ago didn’t help either. 

The Koran Burning Episode: Negligence or Stupidity?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

In Afghanistan (and Pakistan) even locals can lose their lives for mishandling a Koran, which mostly they don’t do, although accusations of Koran abuse occur with some regularity.  The best way to carry out a land grab is to accuse a landowner of mishandling a Koran.  If you are lucky, the accused will get lynched and you can snatch the land with little futher ado.  If you aren’t lucky, the accused will end up with a long prison sentence, but the land might still end up as yours.

An American contact was annoyed with me recently.  I’d declared that anyone and everyone serving in the U.S. Army (or with any of the allied forces) should know that Afghans are pretty touchy about how Korans are treated.  Ordinary American soldiers aren’t going to know that, he said.  Even if they’re told, it won’t make any impression.  They won’t remember.

I don’t think American troops are stupid.  I don’t believe that they are incapable of learning respect for local custom.  It’s far more likely that their commanders and their commanders’ commanders haven’t done a very good job of providing the cultural sensitization that (we’re told) is routine.  Maybe sensitizing is on the syllabus, so to speak, but carried out so badly, so offhandedly, with so little sense of urgency, that anyone in the audience would fall asleep. Or maybe it’s done in an off-putting preachy way. Sermons do get boring.  How clearly are the troops taught that Koran handling is a life and death matter?  Your buddy could die.  Your vehicle could get blown up.  Etc

Like many observers, I was pretty outraged by this unnecessarily provocative act, but it may be that I’m even more puzzled by it.  Nowhere in my reading have I found any reference to clear cut, codified procedures for handling Korans, step by step procedures to be followed without fail.

The Military Way With Development: It Doesn't Work Very Well

By Patricia Lee Sharpe.

Drip, drip, drip, and whoooosh: that’s the sound of our hard-earned personal income, once taxed, going down the drain in the Pentagon.  And now I know why the military gets away with it.

America the Fearful

First off, there’s the fear factor.  Too many Americans have been terrorized by military fear-mongering into granting whatever the Pentagon asks for.  As for “our” representatives, they have a different fear.  They’ll support the iffiest military project, lest campaign donations dwinde to a dribble that won’t be enough to get them re-elected in our increasingly plutocratic star-and-serf system.

Here’s some context: the U.S. spends nearly as much money on its military-related functions as the rest of the world altogether and nearly half of all U.S. discretionary funding is allocated for the use of the Pentagon, yet all those trillions are still not enough, we’re told.  No, we sheep are not yet 100% safe from free-wheeling, copy cat terrorists, let alone the occasional malefactor dispatched by organizations like Al Qaeda.  So the dictum is: give up your Social Security, give up your Medicare, give up your carefully-inspected food, give up your well-tested medical devices, and fork it all over to the national security apparatus.   

Playing expertly on those fears, Leon Panetta, Obama’s new Secretary of Defense, accompanied for intimidation purposes by the usual be-medaled general, in this case the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey, was in Congress this week, doing his best to protect the humongous Pentagon budget from cuts that may go beyond the present $450 billion over the next ten years.  The specter of a $1.2 trillion lopping looms.  To put all those zeros (count ‘em: eleven)  in perspective, that’s the cost of three or four military aircraft.  Seems entirely doable at a time when ordinary people have been losing their jobs and homes, doesn’t it?  Not to the military.

An Audit for the Pentagon, at Last

Meanwhile, Panetta also let a very interesting, very relevant and potentially damaging cat out of the bag: the military doesn’t know how it spends all its money—or whether the funds have achieved their nobly intended goals, which (in practice) may come down to box-checking or  promotion-seeding (see Van Buren below). Evidently, while other executive departments are being hounded to stop waste, fraud and abuse right down to the last paperclip, the Pentagon has escaped thorough scrutiny.  Panetta, clearly on the defensive, has promised to expedite “a full audit” of the Pentagon budget—and (wow! what speed!) to have it done by 2014, not the previously anticipated 2017.  Says Panetta: “ I have also directed increased emphasis on accountability and a full review of the Department’s financial controls....”  Who’d have thunk the Pentagon wasn’t already paying attention to such basics?  Even I had more faith, and I’ve got pretty cynical in recent years.

The FederalTimes reports that “many lawmakers have latched onto the Pentagon’s inability to pass an audit as a [relatively painless] way to make the Department more efficient in light of upcoming budget cuts.  However,” the report continues, “most defense analysts agree that efficiencies alone will not generate the kind of budget savings needed.” 

Indeed!  But easier said than done, as Americans have discovered, whenever attempts to cut military programs or eliminate military bases have been advanced.  Can you say pork?  Have you ever heard, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”  Today, if you listen closely enough, you’ll discover that many of the stingiest no-more-taxes Tea Party freshmen have already learned these little tricks.

The Need for Anecdotes

Still, it might help those who are really, not just cosmetically, trying to put an end to the malallocations of business as usual, if we had a trustworthy accounting of exactly where the Pentagon-designated money goes (including the security stuff that’s being turned against us)—and whether this billion or those millions actually achieved anything but ribbon-cutting publicity (also see Van Buren).  Until we have this complete and systematic audit, we’re left with various outrage-producing but isolated examples and anecdotes of a sort that are easily criticized as “atypical” or “merely subjective.”