Very interesting...

No sooner did I post my wish for the demilitarization of David Petraeus than the Obama administration stepped up to grant it. Even though nobody in the punditocracy is interpreting the general's move to the CIA in the light I presented it a few days ago — they honestly couldn't now, could they? — I'm hoping the groundwork is set for a more efficient withdrawal from Afghanistan than we've been led to expect.

A new military assessment claims that seven — count 'em, seven — provinces now can be taken over "successfully" by the Afghan military. Our military drawdown is scheduled to start this summer, shortly after the US leadership shuffle takes place, and it may be that more provinces will be added to the list by then — no matter what actually is happening on the ground. In addition to the Petraeus transfer, the rest of the shuffle looks promising as well.

Robert Gates did a fine job of de-escalating the craziness of Donald Rumsfeld, and I sincerely wish him a pleasant retirement. I think he probably has the grace to keep his face off the cable news networks and spend his time enjoying golf or gardening or grandchildren or whatever. Leon Panetta should be a fine replacement — politically astute, low key, and not seeking further advancement. He should do quite well deflecting criticism from Congressional hawks as he explains how we actually "won" the longest war in our history.

Scarcely anybody outside top military brass seem to know anything about Lt. General John Allen, and one only can hope it stays that way. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy to revel in press conferences, so he's probably a fine choice to take the lead in Afghanistan. It's time for the civilian leaders to reassert power over the military, and Allen is unlikely to stand in the way.

As for Petraeus, he can have the pleasure of continuing to piss off the ISI by lobbing drone-borne bombs at Haqqani network bases in Pakistan. He and the Haqqanis deserve each other, and Predator strikes are about all the CIA is (moderately) good at these days. As an intelligence gathering agency, they've been pretty useless for the past decade or so. (I wonder what the CIA assessment of Gadaffi's ability to hang on in Libya looked like.)

Army of World Capitalism

Since Robert Gates recently called for reductions in defense spending, an interesting and, to many, surprising statistic has been in the press — the fact that the United States military is larger than all the other armies in the world, combined. Some even are daring to ask why. Why is our Department of Defense so large, what is it defending, and what is it defending against?

Thirty years ago, we could be told it was defending us from "the Communist threat." These days, it's hard to justify such a force to "protect" us from Cuba, North Korea and (maybe) Vietnam. China's system, over the years, has "developed" into fascism, and they're hardly likely to try to destroy us while we owe them so much money.

Right now we have roughly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan "defending" us from a few hundred "terrorists," most of whom are in Pakistan. There are close to another 50,000 still in Iraq — but they're not (ahem!) "combat" troops. We have troops deployed in over 150 countries around the world, and some questions are in order:

• Why are there as many troops in Germany as in Iraq? Are the Nazis making a comeback?
• Why almost 10,000 troops in the UK? Are we expecting another blitz?
• Why do we need another 10,000 in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar if Iraq is "at peace?"
• From what threat are nearly 33,000 US troops defending Japan?
• With all those troops in Japan, what's the need for another 28,000 in South Korea? Foot soldiers would not be especially effective against North Korean nukes.
  

Let's not forget the Navy, which has ships sailing around every body of water in the world big enough to hold them. In brief, why does the United States need a worldwide military presence?

To me, the answer if fairly obvious. Multinational corporations have a worldwide presence, and the United States seems to be stuck with the task of defending them (and their profitability) worldwide. Which leads to another question: why us? There are plenty of European and Asian and Middle Eastern plutocrats profiting from World Capitalism, and even some Latin Americans and Africans getting into the mix. Upholding the world plutocracy is expensive! Why can't some of those other countries pick up some of the expense?

Notice that I'm not calling for the plutocrats to pay for their own protection from popular uprisings, sticky fingered premiers and prime ministers with a penchant for nationalization, and those who want to replace the current monopolists with new monopolists. I know that's impossible.

The plutocrats don't pay — they just take. It follows that I'm not expecting anybody in the US government to make a serious effort to block raising the debt ceiling. Where would their corporate patrons go for their "defense?"