Government Executive - Authors - Jamie Tarabay

Global Opportunity Costs: How the Iraq War Undermined U.S. Influence

Jamie Tarabay, The Atlantic — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:06:41 -0400

When people talk about the cost of the war in Iraq, they speak about the hundreds of billions of dollars that frittered away in the Mesopotamian dust and the spilled blood of Iraqi, American, British, Italian, Polish, Spanish and countless other souls swept up in a conflict that has no natural ending.

They talk about the domestic opportunity cost and just what those hundreds of billions of dollars could have bought at home instead of the military hardware that began falling apart less than two years after the invasion began, or idealistic infrastructure projects all over Iraq that deteriorated in a pit of corruption and neglect.

They talk about the advancements in education, healthcare and a national transportation system that could have been funded instead, or the possibility that the global financial crisis might not have hit the U.S. economy quite so hard had that money not been spent on a war at a time of the U.S.'s choosing.

While all those costs should be taken into consideration, another looms just as large: the international opportunity cost.

Obama says those accountable in Afghan killings will face 'full force of the law'

Jamie Tarabay, National Journal — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:16:05 -0400

Speaking to reporters in the Rose Garden on Tuesday, Obama said he was "heartbroken over the loss of innocent life." An American soldier is accused of leaving his base in a remote part of southern Afghanistan on Sunday and going door to door, shooting Afghan civilians. At least 16 died, including nine children.

"The United States takes this as seriously as if it were our own citizens and our own children who were murdered," he said.

The president said he has directed the Pentagon to spare no effort in conducting a full investigation. "I can assure the American people and the Afghan people that we will follow the facts wherever they lead us," he said. "And we will make sure that anybody who was involved is held fully accountable with the full force of the law."

So far one soldier is in custody while the Pentagon investigates.]]>

Obama signs debt deal, turns to job creation

Rebecca Kaplan and Jamie Tarabay — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0400

President Obama's appearance in the Rose Garden Tuesday seemed like the end of a storm. He announced that the Senate had passed the deal he brokered with Congressional leaders, thanked the American people for "keeping up the pressure" on Congress, and talked the important work to be done after the August recess to create jobs.

To all those caught up in the frenzy of the debt-ceiling fight in Washington these past few weeks, it seemed like a moment of relief. But it was only the eye of the storm, the "first step," as Obama called it.

"I've said it before. I will say it again. We can't balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession," Obama said at the podium, replaying his words of a week or two ago, before he conceded to a deal that did not immediately raise revenues. "Since you can't close the deficit with just spending cuts, we'll need a balanced approach. Where everything's on the table."

Progressive Democrats angry with Obama for what they see his role in abandoning calls for tax increases on the wealthy will welcome his remarks, promising a fight as a Congressional committee considers ways to cut the deficit by an additional $1.5 trillion.

"Everyone has to chip in. It's only fair. That's the principle I'll be fighting for during the next phase of this process," Obama said, citing priorities he had to abandon in the final phase of the debt fight: reforming the tax code to increase revenues from the wealthy. Eliminating taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas companies and other tax loopholes that allow the rich to pay lower taxes than middle-class workers.

His message: this fight is not over. This is just halftime.

Obama's remarks came within the hour after the deal passed the Senate in a 74-26 vote. White House press secretary Jay Carney later announced that the president had signed into law the 2011 Budget Control Act.

The legislation guarantees at least $2.1 trillion in a deficit reduction over 10 years, with negotiators hopeful that it will achieve closer to $3 trillion in savings if Congress can enact further deficit-reduction measures by December. It mandates no tax increases and sets up a super committee to cut $1.5 trillion from the federal deficit.

The speech also afforded the president the opportunity to shift to an agenda focused on job creation, something he's struggled to do since January. Interrupted by crisis after crisis -- the Arab Spring, the earthquake in Japan, and, most recently, the debt ceiling fight -- his recent push for public-private partnerships to build jobs and push legislation through Congress has played second fiddle.

Obama said the millions of Americans who are unemployed "want us to solve problems, they want us to get the economy growing and create jobs." Of course, that will have to wait for the rest of August as Congress takes its annual summer vacation. But when they return, Obama promised, he will call on them to extend tax cuts for middle class families, extend unemployment benefits, pass patent reform, approve three trade deals that have been stalled in Congress, create more opportunities for construction workers, and create an infrastructure bank.

"We have workers that need jobs, and a country that needs building," he said.

Of course, for every item on Obama's agenda, there will be disagreement from Congress on what he is requesting. Many of his priorities, such as the trade deals, have been held up for months over disagreements on policies like Trade Adjustment Assistance, which provides aids to workers whose jobs were displaced by more free trade agreements. To some extent, he can work around those disagreements. His recent manufacturing policy, for example, has been built around administration initiatives that don't require approval from Congress.

But he'll do his best to convince Congress they share the burden of fixing the economy. "Both parties share power in Washington. Both parties need to take responsibility for improving this economy," Obama said. "It's not a Democratic responsibility or a Republican responsibility. It is our collective responsibility as Americans."

He pledged to talk about job creation in August, while Congress recesses. But when they return in September, he may find himself just as lonely.

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Washington loses patience with counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

Michael Hirsh and Jamie Tarabay — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

John Nagl is the kind of guy who brings to mind F. Scott Fitzgerald's wicked line in The Great Gatsby about people who succeed at such an early age that "everything afterward savors of anticlimax." A star at West Point and a Rhodes scholar, the native Nebraskan was only 37 when he landed on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in January 2004. In that article, Nagl offered an inside-the-Sunni-Triangle tutorial on what he came to call "graduate-level war." Nagl's mantra: "We have to outthink the enemy, not just outfight him." In an era when small but wily bands of nonuniformed insurgents could stymie America's mighty military machine with stealthy guerrilla attacks and roadside bombs planted in the night, the U.S. had to figure out how to hunt down the bad guys and cut off their support from the local population. Nagl, after studying the British and French colonial experience, as well as America's handling of the Vietnam War, helped to develop what has since become famous as U.S. "counterinsurgency doctrine," or COIN. As his celebrity grew, Nagl proselytized about it everywhere, even on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

By the late 2000s, the precocious Army major had become part of a brain trust around America's uber-general, David Petraeus, the commander who implemented the Iraq troop surge. Commissioned by Petraeus, Nagl helped to author the official counterinsurgency manual that has since reoriented American military doctrine, shifting the center of gravity from rough-and-ready conventional war fighters to cerebral specialists in irregular warfare and targeted response. After retiring from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in early 2008-even though he seemed to be on the fast track to four-star fame-Nagl took over a little-known think tank, the Center for a New American Security, and turned it into what journalist Tara McKelvey called "counterinsurgency central in Washington."

Brilliant and brash as ever at the advanced age of 45, Nagl delivers a sober endorsement of the military's current COIN strategy in Afghanistan, which, because it was adapted from Iraq, is partly his brainchild. It is a strategy that many experts believe is not working-and the skeptics may now include President Obama himself. "I think any sane person would be disillusioned," Nagl says over a lunch of mussels and mozzarella salad at Finemondo, a lushly decorated restaurant around the corner from his office. Even some of those around Petraeus (who is retiring from the military to run the CIA) are losing heart. But Nagl says that the Janus-faced core of COIN strategy-winning over the Afghan population with kindness, aid, and a multibillion-dollar policy to "clear, hold, and build" towns and villages while ruthlessly killing off insurgents-is just starting to succeed. He laments that the debate in Washington is dominated by critics who complain that the war is almost 10 years long and already more hopeless than Vietnam.

What they don't fully appreciate, according to Nagl, is that Washington, distracted by Iraq, had mostly neglected Afghanistan until two years ago. "We took a little eight-year goddamn vacation." Grabbing a piece of paper, Nagl quickly sketches a map that shows how solvable the problem in Afghanistan is as long as COIN is applied. The mostly non-Pashtun (and therefore mostly non-Taliban) north largely takes care of itself; the strategy is working in the south under the Marines; and so the only task left is to secure the east. Meanwhile, Petraeus's "Anaconda strategy" of attacking the Taliban and choking off its resources is sowing doubt among the insurgent leadership. "I think we're on the verge of breaking the insurgency," Nagl says. "It's exactly the wrong time to change horses."

Yet a surprising number of military experts seem sure that COIN is failing; that it is not even a real strategy; and that guys like John Nagl, who are perhaps a little too smart for their own good, have been snowing us all along. The newly vocal doubters include some of those who helped develop counterinsurgency in the first place. They run the spectrum from those who think COIN is pretty much a crock to those who still believe in the idea but doubt Washington's ability to implement it. Among the latter is Lt. Gen. John Campbell, who just handed off command of Afghanistan Regional Command East, the most recalcitrant part of the country but the one Nagl has hopes for. Campbell notes that COIN typically takes a decade or more to work. "I think it's the way to go, but I don't think we have time," he told National Journal in a June 14 interview. "If we don't show progress, we're not going to have the money."

Already, Washington is losing patience. On Wednesday, Obama announced a faster-than-expected drawdown, saying he would bring home the entire 33,000-troop surge by the fall of 2012 and end the war by 2014. "It is time to focus on nation-building at home," Obama said. As the 2012 presidential campaign gets under way and the political debate centers on the debt ceiling and the deficit, the mounting cost of the war has eclipsed the casualty rate as Topic A. A new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press shows that nearly 60 percent of Americans believe that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has contributed "a great deal" to the nation's debt-more than, say, increased domestic spending or the tax cuts enacted over the past decade. The public is clearly growing disenchanted with COIN's expense and incremental progress. Even traditionally hawkish Republicans, particularly in the House, have begun to balk. "The budget math has caught up to the theory," says retired Gen. David Barno, who once commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan but now works for Nagl. Counterinsurgency, the theory goes, can work only with the right balance of war-fighting to take down the bad guys and nation-building to win over the people. It seems suddenly clear that America doesn't have the patience and cash for both.

Read the full story on National Journal.

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