Our peace-seeking Army Posted by Lorelei Kelly

It's ten thirty and I just got home from a two day Army workshop on Peace and Stability.  Change is in the air!
But first,

REVISED WITNESS LIST: A STELLAR LINEUP!
Bipartisan Congressional Forum on How to Bring the Troops Home

When: Thursday, September 15, 2005
10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
webcast here.

Who:   U.S. Representative Lynn Woolsey and Other Members of Congress ( couple dozen other Members) with:

U.S. Senator Max Cleland, former member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, former Director of the Veterans  Administration and Vietnam veteran.   General Joseph Hoar (Ret. USMC), former Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command.  Ambassador David Mack, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, former U.S. Ambassador to  the United Arab Emirates, and current Vice President of the Middle East Institute.    Dr. Ken Katzman, Middle East analyst and Iraq specialist at the Congressional Research Service.   Antonia Chayes, Director of the Project on International Institutions and Conflict Management at Harvard Law School.   Visiting Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and former Under Secretary of the Air Force during the Carter Administration.  Anas Shallal, founder of  "Iraqi-Americans for Peaceful Alternatives."
 

The Army workshop I attended this week was the best yet. The overarching theme was to discuss and  develop ways to educate about Peace and Stability.

Of course, the challenge for everyone was deciding what these "in between war and peace" activities should be called. It  is a vocabulary with more political correctedness than a Berkeley kindergarten--with the current indecision being over  whether the words like "peace" and "support" should appear along with "stability" (the latest Army field manual btw, only calls it "stability ops")  but from what I could tell at the workshop--which was about 75% military--Army people are fine  with the peace part.  Stability and Support  Operations (SASO) each has its own division of labor. Stability may still  require use of force while  support is primarily addressing humanitarian needs.  In my view, it seems the stability-only title is hedging  bets--postponing the inevitable day when the military--but the Army specifically--is going to have to decide  whether to: 1. be responsible for all of these tasks 2. share resources 3. ask for more on behalf of other agencies--or 4. pray that Congress  becomes enlightened.

This day may not be far away.  This year, Secretary Rumsfeld and Secretary Rice co-signed a letter asking specifically  for $200 million dollars from DoD's budget to be transferred to a rapid response fund for the State Department.  Members of Congress obstinately opposed this sensible action.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have given the military permission to talk openly about squishy things like peace and prevention, negotiation and dialogue.  This is a welcome change. The Army has actually been quite good at these tasks  over the years--but they are precisely the activities that they have never wanted to take credit for.

The excited uncertainty has engendered great creative tension--obvious at the conference. My own opinion: I think the  Army should be the Executive Agent for SASO-- this would force some clarification of terms and boundaries. Also, it  would give credence to the 15 years of peace operations experience resident in the US military.   This sentiment has flipped--while not exactly embracing SASO, the military (mostly the landpower folks, Army, Marines and Special Forces) now realize that we all need to be able to talk confidently about SASO in order to understand returning troops,  their needs and the lessons they've learned.  This Executive Agency could be shared, over time, to a co-equal partnership either with State or a new entity.

Today’s Stability and Support Operations SASO evolved from  decades of trying out different names:  small wars,  irregular war, conflict termination,  low-intensity conflict, military  operations other than war (MOOTW). The United  Nations cornered the market on peace words long ago  and many of them influence the American military definition of  SASO.  Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding and Peace  Enforcement come straight from the UN charter. Appreciative lessons learned  from these partnerships were present  throughout the workshop.

Now there's a good political molotov:  Anti-UN reactionaries must hate the troops! (Just kiddin! well,' sort-of).   

Comments

[JohnFH]

Thanks, Lorelei, for keeping us abreast of these developments.

However, the test for liberals who recognize the irreplaceable role of the US military in the world today will be to articulate a willingness to see the military engage in acts of war.

Reconstruction and democracy promotion have been and will continue to be tasks of the military in consequence of the use of overwhelming force.

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