{"id":18958,"date":"2016-03-17T11:13:59","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T16:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18958"},"modified":"2016-03-17T11:13:59","modified_gmt":"2016-03-17T16:13:59","slug":"tomgram-gregory-foster-a-case-for-demilitarizing-the-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18958","title":{"rendered":"Tomgram: Gregory Foster, A Case for Demilitarizing the Military"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomgram: Gregory Foster, A Case for Demilitarizing the Military<\/a><\/h3>\n
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General Lloyd Austin, the outgoing head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), recently testified before Congress,\u00a0suggesting<\/a>\u00a0that Washington needed to up its troop levels in Iraq and Syria.\u00a0 Meanwhile, in his own congressional testimony, still-to-be-confirmed incoming CENTCOM chief General Joseph Votel, formerly head of U.S. Special Operations Command, seconded that recommendation and said he would reevaluate the American stance across the Greater Middle East with an eye, as the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u2019s Spencer Ackerman\u00a0put it<\/a>, to launching \u201ca more aggressive fight against the Islamic State.\u201d\u00a0 In this light, both generals called for reviving a\u00a0dismally failed<\/a>\u00a0$500 million program to train \u201cmoderate\u201d Syrian rebels to support the U.S. fight against the Islamic State (IS).\u00a0 They both swear, of course, that they’ll do it\u00a0differently<\/a>\u00a0this time, and what could possibly go wrong?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Meanwhile, General David Rodriguez, head of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), pressed by Senator John McCain in\u00a0congressional testimony<\/a>, called on the U.S. to \u201cdo more\u201d to deal with IS supporters in Libya.\u00a0 And lo and behold, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter had only recently presented an AFRICOM and Joint Special Operations Command plan to the president\u2019s \u201ctop national security advisers.\u201d\u00a0 They were evidently \u201csurprised\u201d to discover that it involved potentially wide-ranging air strikes against 30 to 40 IS targets across that country.\u00a0 Meanwhile, in Afghanistan — U.S. Special Operations units and regular troops having recently been\u00a0rushed<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>once again into embattled Helmand Province in the heartland of that country\u2019s\u00a0opium poppy trade<\/a>\u00a0—\u00a0General Austen and others are\u00a0calling<\/a>\u00a0for a reconsideration of future American drawdowns and possibly the dispatch of\u00a0more troops<\/a>\u00a0to that country.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomgram: Gregory Foster, A Case for Demilitarizing the Military General Lloyd Austin, the outgoing head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), recently testified before Congress,\u00a0suggesting\u00a0that Washington needed to up its troop levels in Iraq and Syria.\u00a0 Meanwhile, in his own congressional testimony, still-to-be-confirmed incoming CENTCOM chief General Joseph Votel, formerly head of U.S. Special Operations Command, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12996,12995,1239,446,447,3046,522,3104,776,7413,827,844],"class_list":["post-18958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-demilitarisation","tag-gregory-foster","tag-is","tag-isis","tag-islamic-state","tag-john-mccain","tag-middle-east","tag-mission-creep","tag-syria","tag-tomdispatch","tag-united-states","tag-us-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18959,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18958\/revisions\/18959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}