Petraeus Political Spokesman for Bush

Republicans have had a fit about Move-On.org's ad changing Petraeus to Betray-us, but Bush put him in this position. The criticism may not be correct, but the Right has no justification for criticizing it because Petraeus is wearing a uniform. He's not appearing as a soldier; he's appearing as a spokesman for the administration, and thus must be open to criticism. He and Crocker are Bush's shills. They deserve to be suspect and must support their testimony with facts. They have been somewhat, but not totally successful. But they have been a lot more successful than would have been Secretary of Defense Gates and Secretary of State Rice, who in an honest world would have been the witnesses. Gates still has some credibility, but Rice has none; she's been around Bush too long.

Can Abe Survive Bush?

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has staked his job on passage by the Japanese Diet of the continuation of a law that allows Japanese ships to continue to refuel American ships on their way to Afghanistan, according to the Financial Times. He's doing this for George Bush. Friendship with Bush has often been the kiss of death for foreign leaders, e.g., Tony Blair. It will be interesting to see if Abe survives friendship with Bush.

Petraeus Can't Speak to Congress

How ironic that after many introductory speeches by Congressmen pro and con the war, depending on whether they are Republicans or Democrats, General Petraeus was unable to speak because his microphone did not work. Time for the most anticipated testimony in years, and the microphone did not work! Congress in general, and Chairman Ike Skelton in particular, are incompetent, worthless fools! Throw the bums out! They hate America! But they love to hear themselves talk.

It is more than coincidence that Petraeus and Crocker will be testifying to Congress on 9/11. The Bush administration has clearly scheduled the testimony to link the Iraq war to the 9/11 attacks, although there is no connection, except in Bush's mind. The Republicans, in their pre-testimony remarks, criticized Move-On.org for the Petraeus/Betray-us ad in the NYT, with some justification, but the Republicans started the dispute by turning to the military to give a political justification for the war. The Republicans have politicized the military, while they send thousands to die in Iraq. The Republicans, under the leadership of Sen. John Warner among others, are destroying the military establishment, both in terms of fighting capability and intellectually.

Rep. Duncan Hunter's comments before the testimony were particularly interesting because he praised Gen. MacArthur, who was fired by Pres. Truman because MacArthur failed to obey civilian direction during the Korean War. It's odd that a civilian Congressman would hint to a general that the general should not obey civilian orders.

Improper Use of Military

On HBO's Bill Maher show, Col. Larry Wilkerson, Gen. Colin Powell's aide when he was Secretary of State, talked about the dangers of Bush's use of the military. Wilkerson cited a column by Bruce Ackerman in the September 5 Financial Times.

Ackerman says "nobody is noticing the threat to civilian control" of the military. "Despite the president's grandiose pretentions as commander-in-chief, the future of the Iraq war is up to Gen. Patraeus." As a contrast, Ackerman cites Harry Truman, who fired Gen. MacArthur, rather than have McArthur decide how the Korean War would be fought. He says that as Bush sends Petraeus up to Congress on the 9/11 anniversary, "it is now up to a military man to defend the principle of civilian control."

If you are cynical, you think:
1) Bush is too cowardly to face Congress himself and call for continuing the war; so, he sends Patraeus, dressed in his uniform, like Reagan sent up Ollie North to defend Iran-Contra; and
2) Bush has chosen Patraeus because he can manipulate Patraeus like he and Rumsfeld did Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs Myers and Pace.

It's a real problem as Maher may have unintentionally illustrated by one of his questions to Col. Wilkerson: "Why is the military so loyal to Bush?" Think of the alternative! What if the military were not loyal to Bush? Would we have a coup? We had better hope the military is loyal, but that is one reason why they should be insulated from the politics of declaring war.

Incompetence Run Amok

I just finished reading Woodward's State of Denial, and he stresses the incompetence of the Bush White House, particularly Rumsfeld. Woodward talks about how hard Andy Card, who was obviously a somewhat self-serving source, tried to get rid of Rumsfeld as the war went more and more badly, but Bush stuck by him.

Interestingly, the NYT just ran an long article on Condi Rice's failure as Secretary of State. Josh Bolten, Card's replacement, was just on the PBS News Hour tonight saying that Condi would stay through the end of Bush's administration.

You can be pretty sure that nothing major is going to happen in the Middle East, or anywhere else. Condi's supposed to be a Russian expert, but relations with Russia are going down the tubes. North Korea is somewhat of a success, but mainly because she got rid of John Bolton and let Chris Hill do his thing.

The military has been pretty much tarred by the Iraq campaign. Bush keeps talking about how great they are, but they're losing. Part of the problem is that Rumsfeld put cowardly yes-men like Richard Myers and Peter Pace in senior positions. In general, peacetime conditions breed a military that's not much good for fighting. When a war comes, somebody like General George Marshall has to put some fighting generals in charge. In Iraq, nobody ever did this.

There Was No Civil War Under Saddam

With all the talk about what to do in Iraq after Gen. Petraeus makes his report, there is a lot of discussion about Iraq descending into civil war. I think that's likely, although today on ABC, Zakaria said that the civil war is basically over; the ethnic cleansing has already taken place. I don't think so, or otherwise things in Iraq would be quieting down. A US departure could well escalate a civil war into a regional war where the Iranians and the Saudis (to whom we are selling $20 million in military equipment to prepare) fight each other in support of their Shiite and Sunni proxies. Maybe some other neighbors will join in.

In any case, before the US invasion, there was no civil war in Iraq. After we defeated Saddam for his invasion of Kuwait, things were relatively quiet. The no fly zone and other limitations kept Saddam in his box. It was a successful containment (a la the cold war) on a small scale. So if Saddam could prevent civil war among the Iraqi populace, the US should also be able to, but it would require many more resources that we are willing to put in.

We should go back to square one: re-occupy the country with something like 1,000,000 men, and mete out something close to Western justice (not Abu Ghraib justice) to Iraqis who do anything wrong, from stealing hubcaps to insurrection. The US occupation failed when looting broke out after we entered Baghdad, and we did nothing to stop it.

Saddam kept order by terror; we could keep order by establishing a real occupation with real justice, but we won't do it.

Kurds & Ethnic Cleansing

In recent NYT columns, Tom Friedman has praised the Kurds, and David Brooks has a "center last" process of bringing peace to Iraq.

Tom Friedman talks about how well things are going in Iraqi Kurdistan. It sounds as if the Kurds have long been one of the motivations for the Iraq war. Bush 1 basically abandoned them to Saddam's treachery after the first Iraq war. Then according to one of the Iraq war books --
Fiasco, Cobra II, State of Denial -- a lot of the people who pushed for the war liked, visited, and helped the Kurds, including Wolfowitz, some of the military men, and Jay Garner, who was originally designated for the job to head the Iraq occupation that Jerry Bremer ended up getting. I don't know exactly what the connection is, but Jews seem to like the Kurds, perhaps they see the Kurds as less threatening Muslims than the Arabs. In any case, I think the Jews that wanted the Iraq war -- Wolfowitz, Perle, Adelman, Feith, Kristol, et. al -- were motivated in part by their impressions of Kurds and Kurdistan. This may also include Jay Garner, who as a general before he retired had close connections with Israel, which may have been carried over to his retirement as some kind of armaments dealer. So, it's not surprising that Tom Friedman would find Kurdistan is wonderful. Maybe it is, but Jews love of Kurds helped get us into a horrible war in the rest of Iraq.

David Brooks' column on how the tribes are going to bring democracy to Baghdad probably has some merit. But there is also the possibility that success at the tribal level is as much about ethnic cleansing as about democracy. The test will be whether tribes from other regions, sects, etc., Kurds and Sunnis, or Sunnis and Shiites will be willing to work together. I'm not so sure. They want security for their tribes. They don't care that much about Iraq as a country.

Fed Rate Cut & Fiscal Policy

It seems like when I studied economics in college, they talked about monetary and fiscal policy. Today it's only about monetary policy. Everybody on Wall Street wants the Fed to cut interest rates. They want Bernanke to reinstate the "Greenspan put" to shield traders from their losses. I oppose the "Greenspan put" but that's not my main point.

My question is, "What happened to FISCAL policy?" Basically, with the Bush tax cuts and deficit spending, fiscal policy is based on a perception of the economic climate as, "Oh my God, we're all going to die!" The government has to spend and encourage businessmen with tax breaks as if we were in a deep depression and there was no tomorrow. Of course, that is not the case. It's just that businessmen like you better if you give them money; so, Bush and his cronies have given them tons of money. And he has a 27% approval rating to show for it.

But that puts Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson is a tough spot, because half of their tools -- the fiscal policies -- are gone. Dick Cheney has already shot his friend in the face and doesn't have any ammunition left. So, it's all on Bernanke, who so far seems to be taking his job seriously, much more seriously than Congress, Tony Snow, or George Bush. Bernanke may actually care about this country. If so, hooray for him! But he should not have to fight this battle alone. (Somehow, he, unlike Tony Snow, can live on a government salary.)

Tony Snow & Average Americans

Tony Snow said he is leaving as spokesman for the White House because he can't live on a salary of $168,000 per year, according to the Washington Post. If the average salary is something like $50,000 per year, what does this say to average people? Inflation is crazy out of control; people in hedge funds and private equity are making thousands of times more than average people, according to the Kansas City Star. Salaries in wealthy sectors are going up so fast that the government can't hope to keep up, especially when taxes on the rich people making these obscene salaries are going down instead of up.

And what does Tony Snow's resignation say about government service. For Snow, working for $168,000 a year was a tremendous sacrifice that he wouldn't continue. What about an enlisted man serving in Iraq? I don't know what he makes, but it's a lot less than $168,000 per year. Of course the deep pockets Republican sector is hiring the best special forces soldiers away from the military at something like Tony Snow's government salary to serve in the private security services in Iraq, such as Blackwater, Triple Canopy and their ilk.

It's pretty clear that Republicans and maybe most Americans of any political persuasion, love money more than they love their country.

Warner Less than Courageous

The George C. Marshall Foundation honored Sen. John Warner at this 2007 celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. Winston Churchill praised General Marshall as the "organizer of victory." Looking at the war in Iraq, has Sen. Warner been an organizer, and has the US been victorious? No. Warner, as chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee, has presided over the destruction of the US military. Too few men and women were assigned too large a task in bringing a new government to Iraq. The military has been over-stretched and under-supplied, often lacking flack jackets and armored vehicles, even for the too few troops who were set there.

Now Warner has called for pulling out 5,000 troops of the 160,000 currently there, if the President wants to. It's almost nothing. It's too few to be noticeable, and probably too few to make a difference one way or another. It's symbolic, and that's something, but it's not much. What George Marshall did was more than symbolic. He took a small, peacetime military, much like America's today, and transformed it into a huge fighting machine that made the difference in World War II. He made hard choices; he replaced peacetime generals with generals who could fight. He drafted millions of men; he turned America's industrial base on its heels toward the production of military equipment. Bush and Warner kept their yes-man generals and gave huge tax breaks to the rich. They said, "Keep us in power and we'll give you lots of money and send some worthless farm boys and ghetto kids to die in Iraq. And we'll do it with generals who won't rock the boat." Their contempt for average Americans is boundless.

Warner may not be the worst politician in the Senate, but he certainly does not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath with General George Marshall.

Bush Criticizes Cowards on Vietnam, Injures Foot

By comparing Iraq to Vietnam, Bush shot himself in the foot, as chronicled by many commentators, including this WP op-ed. Bush would have had other, poorer, less educated, less beautiful people fight on for years in Vietnam, while he partied during his ignored National Guard service. At least we tried, putting at least 500,000 troops in Vietnam for a while. Why doesn't Bush try that in Iraq? He's afraid to. But he'll probably do his best to see that the career military gets blamed for losing another war that he tried valiently to win. He'll blame the military for not fighting hard enough and not supporting him enough.

Tax Cuts and Moral Hazards

The main recipients of Bush's tax cuts are the same people responsible for the turmoil in the financial markets. The rich are so greedy that they first made bad mortgage loans to people who couldn't afford them. But the bad mortgages created "paper" that they could then sell to more unsuspecting buyers. Thus they could get the bad mortgages off their books and pass them off to someone else. It was a game of musical chairs until the music finally stopped and someone ended up holding some bad paper. Some people are going to get stuck with some losses, but others have made out like bandits and will have huge profits with which to take advantage of Bush's tax cuts, which particularly benefit those in hedge funds and private equity, some of the main villains in the bad-paper game.

In discussing what to do about this situation, the concept of "moral hazard" gets mentioned occasionally, as it does in this Financial Times editorial. The moral hazard concept is that you should not bail out people who got themselves in financial difficulty. It certainly applies to the hedge fund and private equity types; it is less clear that it applies to the average homeowner who might lose his house because he got a disadvantageous mortgage. There should be a level playing field. The hedge fund types certainly knew what they were doing; most have MBAs. Homeowners may or may not have known; they may have been cheated by mortgage brokers who didn't explain exactly what they were getting into. But the homeowners should have been smart enough to understand that if it sounds too good to be true, it's probably not true.

In any case, the moral hazard argument is that we should not bail out those who profited from taking risks that have now come home to roost. Therefore, in general, the Fed should not bail them out by cutting interest rates. But the economy does have a problem if the market turmoil threatens to bring on recession. It's the old story, "If you own the bank $100,000 and can't pay, you're in trouble. If you owe the bank $100,000,000 and can't pay, the bank is in trouble." So, it's possible the hedge fund types have the Fed over a barrel. But certainly the Fed should resist the temptation to bail out the market losers, like Jim Cramer of CNBC, according to Barrons. Bush has already given them a ton of help by cutting their taxes to almost nothing. Bush works for them; maybe Bernanke doesn't. Maybe he works for America. We'll see.

Little Genuine Support for the Troops in Iraq

The Army doesn't see much genuine support from the American public for the troops in Iraq. A NYT story on American troops in Germany being reassigned to Iraq says their commanding general told the families not to go back home to the States, because they wouldn't find much support there. They would find more support at their Army base in Germany. The article said:

One thing General Hertling pointedly did not suggest was for the families of the soldiers to return to the United States. The Army’s goal is to create a support network strong enough that the spouses will decide to wait out the deployment on the base in Germany, a country that many of them scarcely know and that pointedly declined to take part in the Iraq war. “We tell them, ‘You will not get the support you think you will, if you go back home,’ ” he said in an interview.

But it also demonstrates, General Hertling said, how the gap between American society and its volunteer military has widened as the Iraq war has dragged on. “Many people there have just moved on,” he said.

The extension of the last deployment — which came at the last minute after some troops had already reunited with their families in Germany — strained relations between the families and the Army. “There have been so many changes in what we’ve asked soldiers to do, that we may have put spouses in a position where they question what comes next,” said General Hertling, who has had two sons and a daughter-in-law serving in Iraq.

For most Americans, supporting the troops means putting a bumper sticker on their car, or watching a program about the Army on TV. The real way to support the troops is to enlist in the Army or the Marines to go fight. Because nobody does that, those in the service go back to Iraq again and again. Bush and Cheney don't care. They were both draft dodgers during Vietnam who have contempt for the military; to them, serving in the military is something that poor, stupid people do who can't get a real job working for Halliburton or the Texas Rangers.

To me an example of contempt for the military is that the last two Democratic candidates for President, Al Gore and John Kerry, were both Vietnam veterans. The public said, "Naw, we don't like veterans. We didn't serve, and we don't trust those do-gooders who did serve. Give us a draft dodger." And the public got what it deserved: cowards who were afraid to fight in Iraq, who got us into a horrible war that will destabilize the Middle East because they were afraid to fight hard enough to win. Why? Because they would have to raise taxes and re-institute the draft to get enough soldiers to fight and win the war they started. Cowards! Republicans, draft dodger Rudy Giuliani included, are cowards, except for John McCain, Chuck Hagel, and a few other veterans.

I'm not happy with Sen. John Warner, who was Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee during the invasion of Iraq and during the first years of the war, although he is a veteran. He did not support the military, and has let Bush and Cheney virtually destroy the military by not providing the necessary manpower and equipment to fight the war in Iraq. Warner just got an award from the George Marshall Foundation, but instead of an award he should have gotten a censure for doing the exact opposite of what Marshall did to build up the Army to win World War II. It's time for Warner to go. He has failed his country.

Congress' Disdain for National Security

The word is that the Democratic Congress (Senate and House) passed the revision to the overseas wiretapping law requiring FISA review because it was afraid it would be labelled weak on national security by Bush if it didn't. Maybe it would have been, but the questionable law it passed opens it up to the same criticism, albeit not from Bush, but from freedom loving Americans. The NYT reports that the new law may give Bush more latitude for spying than he had, and not only for wiretapping. It didn't just correct an oversight, it opened new loopholes for the Administration to drive through.

The bad thing is that the Congress cared so little about what the law said that it passed it without debating it, without even reading it closely, if at all. The lesson: August vacation is more important to Congress than America's national security. Congress is a national disgrace!

China's Economic Nuclear Option

There has been talk of China using it's economic "nuclear option" against the US, that is dumping its US dollar holdings, thus killing the value of the dollar against other currencies, as for example in this report. But this would be sort of mutually assured destruction, a MAD economic doctrine. The US would be hurt, but so would China. It would lose its best customer, the US, which would no longer be able to afford all the stuff it now imports. Plus, it would be hard for China to dispose of all of its US dollar denominated assets before the dollar started to crash; so, China would take a big loss on whatever it got caught holding as the dollar tanked. In addition, as the article points out, the US has been trying to get China to increase the value of the yuan relative to the dollar, albeit not by so much; so, China would be to some extent doing what the US wants it to do, delink the yuan from the dollar and let the yuan float up versus the dollar.

In short, this seems like something that it would be very unlikely for China to do. It would hurt the US, but at a great price for China. The only scenario might be if there was a huge financial crash in China, so that adding to it would be relatively unnoticeable; then China might say, "If I'm going down, I'll take America with me."

Iraq War Czar Considers a Draft

CNN reports that Iraq war czar General Lute said that restoring a military draft should be considered as an option to provide enough troops to maintain the US military's ability to fight the Iraq war.

I think we need a draft. Too much is being asked of our all volunteer Army. Bush and Cheney, two draft dodgers, would never propose to restore the draft, although their war is the reason we need to do so. They are perfectly happy to destroy the Army, for which they have no respect, and let their successor figure out how to defend the US. We need to start planning for the future now, and the all volunteer Army won't meet the needs of the future unless we get out of Iraq now and let it start recuperating.

Insider Trading Common on Wall Street

The Financial Times did a study that showed that insider trading is common on Wall Street. This should be no surprise, given that Wall Street is populated by greedy, dishonest people. I was already mad with Wall Street because of its disregard for the war in Iraq. The Dow Jones index went through the roof as more and more Americans and Iraqis died in the war. Wall Street didn't care although to hear George Bush tell it, we went to war for Wall Street, because of the 9/11 attacks, despite the fact that smarter people have found no connection between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. The attacks on the World Trade center were directed at the US financial district. Since we can't find Osama bin Laden, we don't know exactly why, but part of the the reason was probably to make a high visibility attack that would get the world's attention, and part of it was probably because of the large role played by Jews in America's financial district.

In any case, the Financial Times study tends to reinforce the negative impression of Wall Street. The violent fluctuations currently going on in the market no doubt allow savvy traders, maybe not doing anything illegal, but just using their intimate knowledge of how trades are made these days by computer programs, to make money when the market goes up or down. Add to this the fact that many staffers, high and low, in banks and brokerages are aware of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, and can probably do some small trades using their inside knowledge that will not show up on the SEC's radar screen, but may show up on the overall statistical study done by the Financial Times.

Cowardly Democrats

Caving in to President Bush on the warrantless wiretapping law was total cowardice on the part of Democrats. Bush threatened to hold them in session unless they passed his law. They had the same choice the Iraqi Congress had -- work for national security or go on vacation during the month of August. The US and Iraqi Congresses chose to go on vacation, rather than try to better their countries.

Bush is worthless, but the Democrats are also worthless. I guess politicians are worthless. I'm particularly surprised that Diane Feinstein, Jim Webb, and my Democratic Senator Ken Salazar voted for the bill.

The bill may be okay, but it may not be. The quick vote was unseemly and showed that the Congress wanted to go on vacation more than it wanted to protect the US. Yesterday, two people debated the law on PBS and they had diametrically different ideas of what the bill actually said, much less what it meant.

Unoptimistic about Middle East

Condi Rice is doing her thing, supposedly bringing peace the Middle East, but I don't believe it. She's not a terrible Secretary of State, but she is not a good one either. She parades around and says the right things, but she doesn't back them up. She doesn't fight for anything. Christopher Hill got the North Korean nuclear agreement. She did support him, which is more than Colin Powell did on the issue. She was probably able to support him only because she got rid of John Bolton at State, and Don Rumsfeld and his allies were gone from Defense. Nick Burns negotiated the Indian nuclear deal, but that was much less successful than the North Korean one. The Indian deal is more likely to undermine US security than to improve it, because it undermines the whole nuclear non-proliferation regime by rewarding one of the holdouts of the regime.

While her subordinates have been out doing things, Condi has been giving interviews and making appearances around the world. But she is not going to make any tough decisions. Any progress in the Middle East will require getting Israel to make some sacrifices, and she won't do that because she and Bush won't, or don't want to, stand up to the Israel lobby, AIPAC and company. Thus, her initiative is doomed from the start.

The idea of shoring up Abbas and Fatah is unlikely to lead anywhere. Fatah meant something when Arafat headed it. The Israelis assassinated Arafat, and I think they will live to regret it. The Israelis may not have assassinated Arafat by actually killing him, although they may have. The reasons for his death given by the French hospital where he was treated were never very clear; he could have died from some virus or poison wafted into his ramshackle headquarters by Israel. Or he may have died simply because of the squalid conditions that Israel forced him to live in. In any case, he was a leader of the Palestinians who could actually follow through on promises he made. Abbas does not have they power. He is a puppet of Israel and the US and is perceived as such by the Palestinians and other Arab and Muslim states. The US money and weapons given to Fatah may help him stay in power, but it won't help him bring peace to the region. It would take a leader with more power than Abbas to do that.

Plights of Iraqi Refugees and US Iraq Veterans

This is the essence of letters to my senators and congressman prompted by an international conference on Iraqi refugees held on July 26 in Amman, Jordan.

I am distressed that by starting a war that it has now virtually lost, the United States has created a hell on earth in Iraq. According to the New York Times, 750,000 Iraqi refugees now live in Jordan, and 1.5 million live in Syria. Another 50,000 leave Iraq every month. Craig Johnstone, the UN deputy high commissioner for refugees, told the BBC, "The international community, I think, has neglected the plight of the refugees from Iraq so far, but they are beginning to act."

On a related issue, we need to help Iraqis who have worked for the US leave Iraq if their life is threatened. As a retired Foreign Service officer who worked frequently with “foreign service nationals” (FSNs) at embassies abroad, I feel particularly strongly that we should help them. I am distressed that we seem to be allowing only a handful of Iraqis to seek refuge in the US, when we should be helping thousands. It’s nothing compared to the number of Vietnamese who came to the US as a result of the Vietnam war.

I do not think immediate withdrawal from Iraq is the best course of action to bring closure to the Iraq war. I think we need to reinstate the draft and increase the number of troops in Iraq to 500,000 to 1 million until we can stop the terror there and bring enough peace for Iraqis to live in their own country. However, if we are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to bring peace to Iraq, then we should leave and let the Iraqis end the civil war as soon as possible with their own internecine bloodletting. As an American I am dismayed that we have brought upon ourselves this choice between two horrible alternatives.

I was a draftee who went to Vietnam, unlike Presidents Bush and Clinton, and Vice President Cheney. I was the Science Counselor at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, in the mid-1990s when then Vice President Gore visited for an anniversary marking the end of World War II. Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski introduced Gore to the audience of Polish war veterans at the Ambassador’s residence in Warsaw by noting Gore’s service in Vietnam. The Poles applauded loudly, but many Americans murmured, “Doesn’t he know Clinton didn’t serve?” As a Vietnam veteran, I will probably never forget the American hostility towards Gore for being a veteran and the difference in attitudes between the Poles and the Americans. I’ve seen it all my life; when I returned from Vietnam to the relatively conservative University of Alabama, all anybody wanted to hear about Vietnam was how many atrocities you committed or saw. I was grateful to have served along the DMZ where, unlike farther south, anybody you saw outside your perimeter was almost certainly a bad guy. For many in Vietnam telling the good guys from the bad guys was difficult, but it seems much more difficult in Iraq.
I realize that Americans are now trying to make up for their former open prejudice against veterans by praising those who fight in Iraq. But news reports make it clear that those fighting are a relatively small group of mostly white Christians from small towns in the mid-American heartland. Upper class and upper middle class citizens from comfortable cities and suburbs applaud them so that the wealthy don’t have to go. Until the last few days, Wall Street celebrated the carnage in Iraq by hitting new highs of the Dow Jones average.

Unless the US beefs up its military presence in Iraq, which unfortunately I doubt because of the unwillingness of most Americans to make any sacrifice for the “war on terror,” I pity the poor Iraqi war veterans. Because of the shoddy treatment of these vets by Walter Reed Hospital and the Veterans Administration, President Bush set up a commission led by former Senator Dole and former Secretary Shalala to help improve their treatment. This is a good start, but the problem for the future is that there will be so few Iraqi vets. Because they are being sent back again and again, the total number of vets is small, especially when compared to World War II or even Vietnam, where most soldiers served one tour. Thus, in the years to come they will have a very small political constituency to fight for the benefits they need. Once the war is off the front pages, they are unlikely to get much from the government.

I don’t know what happened, but the recent resignation announced by Coloradan Jim Nicholson as Secretary of Veterans Affairs is discouraging. I am guessing that, perhaps in private, the Dole-Shalala panel had some tough words for the VA because of its failure to meet Iraq war veterans’ needs.