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Posted on: Monday, November 23, 2009

Military’s tactics criticized in lead-up to Afghanistan attack

Report faults Army’s heavy-handedness in lead-up to Wanat

PDF: Cubbison Report on Battle at Wanat

PDF: U.S. Army executive summary of battle

PDF: U.S. Army briefing on Wanat battle for David Brostrom

• Bad Blood: The Ambush of Chosen Company in Afghanistan

By William Cole

Advertiser Military Writer

Two months before he died in eastern Afghanistan, 1st Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom made a surprise Mother’s Day visit to his parents’ home in ‘Aiea.

“Some friends of his were over and made me dinner,” his mother, Mary Jo, recalled. “At about 10 at night there was a knock on the door. One of the girls said, ‘Mary Jo, there’s a soldier with a bouquet of flowers at the door for you.’ I thought she was joking, but there he was, straight from Afghanistan in his fatigues with a bouquet of flowers.”

There also was a troubling side to Jon Brostrom’s visit during his 15 days of rest and recuperation leave, revealed in private to his father, David Brostrom, a retired Army colonel.

The 24-year-old platoon leader showed his father videos of airstrikes with 500-pound bombs and other heavy ordnance being called in on Afghan homes harboring enemy fighters.

In one, taken with a camera held up to an optical device, the sound of an approaching jet can be heard as the camera focuses on a two-story brick or stone hillside home in a congregation of multistory dwellings.

The home disappears in a flash of red and an eruption of smoke and debris.

“Oh! Damn!” one of the soldiers says at the devastation.

The elder Brostrom, a helicopter pilot who had served in Operation Desert Storm, said he got into a heated discussion with his son over the tactics employed by the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team during its 2007-08 deployment to the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

“I said, ‘Why did you blow up that village? Why didn’t you just walk away? Come back another day?’ ” David Brostrom said. “He said, ‘You don’t understand. I called in the mission, (but) it had to be approved at a higher level.’ ”

David Brostrom told his son that what they were doing wasn’t “COIN,” shorthand for the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy of showing firepower restraint and protecting the people. Not doing COIN just made more enemies.

“He didn’t like (the bombings). I could tell. It’s not what he was raised to do,” David Brostrom said. “I kind of got into an argument with him. I said, ‘You can’t be doing this,’ and he goes, ‘It’s not my decision.’ ”

No platoon leader has the authority to call in an airstrike. That has to come from higher battalion and brigade levels, Brostrom said. His opinion is that his son’s battalion commander “was too aggressive.”

“I think he just kind of overstepped his bounds, and once you go there, you can’t turn back,” David Brostrom said. Using that amount of force in Afghanistan is like throwing down a gauntlet, he said.

173rd faulted

It was the overly aggressive approach of the 173rd Brigade over 14-plus months in eastern Afghanistan that alienated the populace and led to the deadly Battle of Wanat on July 13, 2008, according to the Army’s Combat Studies Institute analysis.

Nine soldiers were killed and 27 were wounded at Wanat.

The report, written by military historian Douglas Cubbison, faults the 173rd Brigade for essentially not moving beyond the “clear” stage of the “clear, hold and build” approach to counterinsurgency, which calls for clearing an area of enemy, holding that area, and building relations and infrastructure.

The highly “kinetic,” or aggressive, approach favored by the 173rd Brigade over counterinsurgency efforts made previously by the U.S. in the region, “rapidly and inevitably degraded the relationship between the U.S. Army and the Waigal Valley population,” Cubbison said.

Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has since banned airstrikes against residential areas, even if the enemy is firing from the buildings.

“We run the risk of strategic defeat by pursuing tactical wins that cause civilian casualties or unnecessary collateral damage,” McChrystal said in an Aug. 30 security assessment.

Soldiers who were in eastern Afghanistan with the 173rd Brigade from May 2007 to August 2008 describe an increasing spiral of violence and abandonment of humanitarian aid projects as mistrust deepened.

In a counterinsurgency environment, such a degradation in relations cannot be permitted to occur, and it was attendant on senior leadership to identify and reverse that, Cubbison said.

“This did not occur,” Cubbison said.

“COIN” is defined in the Army’s 2006 field manual on counterinsurgency as a simultaneous combination of offensive, defensive and stability operations.

To be sure, the paratroopers of the 173rd faced a confounding culture and an influx of Taliban in a remote area where they were overstretched. When the American soldiers left a village, militants flowed back in.

The militants in eastern Afghanistan were likely an amalgam of foreign fighters; “Afghan-centric” fighters such as Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin, a group allied with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida; and local fighters, Cubbison said.

The U.S. counterinsurgency strategy was having only limited success against these enemy fighters.

“COIN” in practice is extremely challenging, wrote Col. William Ostlund, Brostrom’s battalion commander, in the July-August edition of Military Review. Ostlund led the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, which had responsibility for a large part of eastern Afghanistan.

“Clearing the mountainous valleys was impossible, holding them was problematic, and building capacity was a long-term venture,” he said.

In the article, Ostlund said his soldiers spent 90 percent of their time on counterinsurgency. Ostlund told Cubbison “our focus was on living with the population,” but Cubbison takes issue with the claim, saying the paratroopers had almost no interaction with the locals.

What was building most was animosity, Cubbison said.

“Waigal (Valley) history is replete with deception, dishonesty, two-faced tactics, actions counter to Afghan culture and Islam,” Ostlund was quoted by Cubbison as saying.

Ostlund did not respond to attempts to contact him. His superior, Col. Charles “Chip” Preysler, commander of the 173rd Brigade at the time, declined to comment.

Ostlund’s battalion was engaged in 1,100 firefights, called in 3,800 bombs and gun runs, and lost 26 soldiers in its more than 14 months in eastern Afghanistan.

Cubbison said the missteps that led to the Army’s overly aggressive approach in eastern Afghanistan can be traced to before the 173rd Brigade even arrived in the region.

The 3,500 soldiers who make up the 173rd were told in February 2007 that their mission was changing. Instead of going to Iraq, they would be sent to Afghanistan in three months.

While they had prepared for dealing with the situation in Iraq, they had little time to prepare for Afghanistan, Cubbison said.

“Adequate intelligence preparation of the battlefield was never conducted,” Cubbison said.

Once in Afghanistan, the 173rd soldiers were immediately hit with a level of violence that made the COIN principles difficult to follow.

Long before the battle of Wanat, the 173rd Brigade suffered a series of setbacks that shaped relations in eastern Afghanistan:

• Its first casualty was Honolulu-born Pfc. Timothy Vimoto, the son of the 173rd Brigade’s command sergeant major, who was killed by small-arms fire on June 5, 2007. The early loss left the newly arrived soldiers “with a distinctly negative impression,” Cubbison said.

• In August 2007, an “incompetent and corrupt” Afghan Security Guards security chief at an outpost called Ranch House was fired by the Americans, and humiliated in the process, Cubbison said.

Shortly after, 60 or more insurgents attacked the 25 U.S. troops at the outpost with a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades. Aircraft repelled the attackers, but 11 paratroopers were wounded in the battle.

• On Nov. 9, 2007, there was an even more deadly attack. American soldiers participated in a shura, or town council meeting, near the Ranch House outpost. After leaving the meeting and while traveling to the Bella base, the American platoon was ambushed on a mountain ridge.

Five paratroopers with the 173rd, a Marine and two Afghan soldiers were killed. First Lt. Brostrom would help recover the bodies.

“After this ambush, the Chosen Company soldiers no longer fully trusted the Afghan people of the Waigal Valley. From this moment on, Chosen Company’s emphasis shifted to kinetic operations, rather than counterinsurgency,” Cubbison said.

• On Jan. 26, 2008, Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Ryan Kahler, 29, who had trained 2nd Platoon, was killed by an Afghan Security Guard near Combat Outpost Bella in what was determined to be a friendly fire incident, but that U.S. soldiers suspected was an intentional killing.

A soldier’s view

Chosen Company early on operated from three bases: Camp Blessing, Combat Outpost Bella and Ranch House. Wanat, about five miles from Blessing, was to replace Bella and Ranch House.

Sgt. Tyler Stafford, a Wanat survivor, remembers when Chosen Company first arrived in eastern Afghanistan, there wasn’t much contact with the enemy.

But after the Nov. 9 ambush, “that’s when everything really started to pick up big-time,” Stafford said. “That’s when we were getting hit at least twice, three times a week.”

The ambush “was a big morale boost for (the enemy), and then they started recruiting,” he said.

Sgt. 1st Class David Dzwik, who also was in the Wanat battle, reacted to Cubbison’s accusation that the 173rd Brigade was too “kinetic” by saying, “We didn’t start out that way.”

In the deadly Korengal Valley, which was near the Waigal Valley and a place of violent opposition from the start, the 173rd soldiers didn’t call in airstrikes on houses — at first, he said.

“The insurgents would get in the house, put the civilian on top of the house and shoot from the house,” Dzwik said. “And the attacks got worse there because we wouldn’t hit that.”

At some point, that policy changed.

Once the decision was made to start bombing houses “that area actually came over to our side because the village elders were tired of the enemy showing lack of respect for their people,” Dzwik said. “And once they did, our guys were able to come in and build that bridge again, and the Korengal Valley actually started shaping up because we showed a higher force than the enemy.”

While the Korengal was always notoriously violent, the Waigal Valley, where Wanat is located, was the exact opposite, Dzwik said.

“We were working with the people. We were completely non-kinetic, built a school for them,” Dzwik said. “Village elders all the time were telling us they were our friends. We hired the local people, put tons of money into that.”

But all along, many of those Afghans were cooperating with the enemy, he said.

“The Cubbison report said none of us respected the local people. Here’s one of the reasons why,” Dzwik said.

At the Nov. 9, 2007, shura, village elders told the Americans they weren’t responsible for an earlier attack. But enemy forces used knowledge of the meeting to ambush the U.S. troops immediately afterward.

“Now, not only under Muslim law, but under tribal law, we were safe to come talk to them to and from their meeting. It’s not that we didn’t respect them, it’s just they never followed their own rules,” Dzwik said.

Dzwik disagrees with Cubbison’s contention that the 173rd Brigade was too kinetic for the counterinsurgency being pursued.

“My feeling is we didn’t go on the offensive enough,” Dzwik said. “We were always reacting to (the enemy), because at that point in time, they had freedom of movement and they could always keep an eye on our bases. So we were always on the defensive.”

Mission impossible?

Cubbison maintains the 173rd Brigade took its eye off counterinsurgency strategy. But some experts question whether the strategy is even possible in the eastern provinces of Afghanistan, where soldiers were strung out at mountain bases in an area historically known to be hostile to outsiders.

In a July report, the Institute for the Study of War said the U.S. strategy in the east required “massive amounts of artillery and airpower to defend” the bases. But the use of artillery and airpower alienated the very population the U.S. was trying to secure, the institute said.

An example of that came on July 4, 2008, nine days before the Wanat attack. A pair of pickup trucks full of Afghans and possibly fleeing from the vicinity of a mortar attack on an American camp were destroyed by Apache helicopters, Cubbison said.

Among the 17 dead were all the healthcare providers from the Bella Health Clinic, he said.

A U.S. investigation, which speculated that the death toll likely was lower, said the truck was observed with two to three people in the bed carrying a mortar.

“This attack, whether justified or not by U.S. forces, aggravated public opinion throughout the Waigal Valley against the Americans,” Cubbison said.

Dzwik, the platoon sergeant at the time of the Wanat attack, said the enemy “pounced on that sucker really quick to say, ‘Oh, look what the Americans are doing, they indiscriminately killed,’ ” when in actuality, fleeing militants may have mixed with civilians for cover.

But further damage had been done to relations, and the helicopter attack fueled the attack on Wanat, Dzwik said.

“God yeah. Absolutely,” Dzwik said.

In September, the U.S. started to withdraw troops from some of the eastern Afghan outposts in what amounted to an admission that the strategy there had failed.

Col. Gian P. Gentile, who has gained notoriety questioning U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan, opined in a blog on Wanat that if the forces aren’t present and the conditions don’t support counterinsurgency, a different approach is required.

Gentile, who runs the Military History Program at West Point, said it’s possible to blame the losses at Wanat on the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO-led security force in Afghanistan, or the regional U.S. command in the east of the country, “for not resourcing the mission they chose with the proper forces.”

Experts say a classic counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan would require 250,000 to 300,000 U.S. troops — far more than the 68,000 there.

But Ostlund, the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry commander to whom Chosen Company reported, should be spared criticism “for supposed improper application of dubious population-centric COIN tactics in the most extreme of environments,” Gentile said.

In May 2008, during his visit home, Jon Brostrom had showed his father another video. It was of a night artillery ambush by the Chosen Company soldiers in the Waigal Valley.

Some insurgents had been killed before dawn, and the Americans left the bodies and marked the location, David Brostrom said.

When suspected insurgents returned to collect the bodies, artillery was fired, including round after round of white phosphorous, Brostrom said.

White phosphorous is a controversial combustible : It can burn down to the bone. The U.S. military said in May that coalition forces used white phosphorous in compliance with international law, for marking targets, illumination, destroying unoccupied bunkers and other uses, but that it was not intended for use against personnel.

“I asked my son if he had positive ID that he was actually engaging insurgents and not villagers who had returned to the ambush site to pray for their loved ones,” David Brostrom said. “We then had an argument over his answer.”

Brostrom said he has provided the video to U.S. military officials, who are now re-investigating Wanat.

In his analysis of the battle, Cubbison said it is “absolutely conclusive” that the relationship between the American soldiers and the population of the Waigal Valley had deteriorated to the point of open animosity by early July, 2008 — just days before they were attacked.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Alaska Native Corporations have scored billions of dollars in no-bid government contracts in the last decade, leading lawmakers to suggest Thursday that the firms, created to provide economic benefits to Alaska’s native populations, have exploited a loophole at the expense of taxpayers nationwide.

At issue is an ANC’s ability to receive contracts of any size from a federal agency as part of a Small Business Administration program for minority and disadvantaged small businesses.

Government investigations and news reports have exposed how companies take advantage of the unique benefit, often winning large contracts with the departments of Defense or Homeland Security, and sometimes creating complex business partnerships with firms that have no ties to the SBA program or Alaska.

“Nobody begrudges giving small, disadvantaged businesses a chance to win federal contracts,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), the chairwoman of a Senate subcommittee on contracting oversight. She noted that several government-backed economic development programs provide assistance to minority groups, women-owned businesses and veterans.

“But the Alaska Native Corporations have used their special preference to bust the door down.”

No-bid contracts awarded to ANCs ballooned from $508.4 million in 2000 to $5.2 billion in 2008, according to an analysis of the 19 largest ANCs prepared by McCaskill’s staff. Despite the earnings, ANCs pay only roughly $615 each per year in benefits to the 130,000 Alaska Natives who are company shareholders. The report also suggests that Alaska Natives have not enjoyed enough of the revenues, since approximately 5 percent of ANC employees are Alaska Natives and most executive compensation is earned by managers who are not Alaska Natives.

The latest findings mirror a SBA inspector general report released last week and similar investigations conducted by the Government Accountability Office, including a 2006 report that called the ANC loophole an “open checkbook” for the companies.

Defenders note, however, that the firms have donated millions of dollars to scholarships, internship programs and other civic organizations, providing economic assistance the native Alaskan populations might otherwise not receive.

“Here’s a federal program that the government actually got right for native people. The program is making a difference,” said Sarah Lukin, executive director Native American Contractors Association.

“To cut the program that got us this far is absolutely wrong.”

Alaska’s two senators, Lisa Murkowski (R) and Mark Begich (D) also attended the standing-room only hearing as guests of the subcommittee. Murkowski warned colleagues that changes to the ANC program would have an adverse effect on other business operated by Indian tribes or Hawaiian natives.

“The sad truth is that there are very few business models that have provided any modicum of success for tribes and Alaska Native Corporations,” she said.

“Our Native leaders have entered into contracts, hired people, created systems, and focused all of their energies on learning this business. Now that same federal government threatens to pull the rug out from under them.”

There has been no criticism 0f Obama’s quip:  “I look forward to seeing you all decked out in flowered shirts and grass skirts, because today I’m announcing that we are bringing this forum to my home state of Hawai’i in 2011.” Joking about such racist stereotypes of Pacific Islanders normally would meet sharp criticism or at least analysis.  Why the silence?  Why, Barry from Punahou couldn’t possibly be racist?  Yes, people of color can be racist too.  We participate in racist ideology and behavior because we are enmeshed in a racist system. It comes from different places of power and has different effects but it happens all around.   In Hawai’i this racism is manifested in the infantilization of Hawaiian people and culture.  “Do you live in grass shacks?  Do you have electricity?”  Or it is manifest in the Asian and Haole (white) domination of mid-level government and management positions.  Going to college to ride the luna’s* horse and carry his whip.  Obama may have been born here, but he doesn’t know Hawai’i.

What is most offensive is how casually the military occupation of these islands is tossed about as a bonus.  Hawai’i will be used again to showcase the military might of the empire, dressed up in all the tropical kitch drag of a Waikiki luau.

* Luna was the term for overseerer or boss on the sugar plantation, someone who carried the whip and barked orders at the workers but was just one step above these workers in power, carrying out the plans of the owners.

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http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091122/NEWS01/911220370/Hawaii+lands+coveted+APEC+meeting+with+concerted+effort+

Posted on: Sunday, November 22, 2009

Hawaii lands coveted APEC meeting with concerted effort

Leaders touted strong ties to Asia-Pacific, ‘superior security advantages’

Honolulu’s bid to host the 2011 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders Meeting, featuring President Obama and 18 other heads of state, began with a phone call to state tourism liaison Marsha Wienert from a former U.S. ambassador to APEC with local ties.

Lauren Moriarty, daughter of David M. Peters, former executive assistant to U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye and past chairwoman of the Queen Lili’uokalani Trust, called Wienert in early 2008 to encourage her to rally government, business and civic leaders to mount a bid to host up to 20,000 dignitaries, advisers, support staff, security forces, business executives and global media expected to attend the international conference.

Wienert said she followed up by talking with officials involved in the 2007 meeting in Sydney, Australia, to get their spin on the pros and cons of hosting the event, checking with hoteliers with properties both in Hawai’i and APEC countries, and contacting a long list of people involved in federal, state, city, private-sector and community affairs.

“Everyone said we ought to do this,” she said.

There also was a sense that Honolulu just might have an inside track on the host selection process because Obama was born and raised here, and in some Asian cultures, inviting guests to your native home is a sign of highest respect.

White House spokesman Adam Abrams said the president “is looking forward to putting his home state front and center, showcasing both Hawaiian hospitality and American ingenuity to the world.”

“As the president mentioned in Singapore, when he announced that Hawai’i would host the 2011 APEC leaders summit, America is a Pacific nation whose economic ties to the Asia-Pacific are strong and enduring and whose president was shaped by this part of the globe,” Abrams said.

Wienert said Obama administration officials would not reveal which other cities expressed interest in hosting the 2011 APEC Leaders Meeting, but she heard that the list included Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, which first dropped out to pursue the 2016 Olympic Games and then, after losing that bid, re-entered the competition for APEC host city.

gaining momentum

Honolulu’s campaign gained momentum in November 2008, when the U.S. Department of State issued an invitation to major resort and hotel destinations to present proposals to hold the APEC Leaders Meeting, Nov. 12 to 20, 2011.

The notice, published Nov. 19, 2008, in the Federal Register, said the agenda would include official and informal gatherings, bilateral talks, media events and other meetings.

“With this many high-profile visitors, security will be a major consideration for the selection of the city and conference venues,” the notice said.

The list of requirements included an international airport with good connections to Asia-Pacific nations; 20,000 hotel rooms “of international standard,” including 80 suites for heads of state and Cabinet-level ministers; conference facilities for multiple meetings; and support from political, business and community leaders.

The notice asked for information on ground transportation, airport immigration and customs facilities, cultural attractions and shopping, and the availability of museums, parks, monuments and similar places of interest where formal receptions, official dinners and other events could be held.

Organizers also wanted a description of the city’s population groups from APEC countries, and information on the host’s ability to handle the arrival of private airplanes carrying government heads and other VIPs.

The invitation, which did not require a specific financial commitment, set a Dec. 15 deadline for submittals from potential host cities that was later extended by two weeks, Wienert said.

Once the invitation was issued, a meeting was convened with representatives from Gov. Linda Lingle’s office, the state Department of Defense, the Hawai’i Convention Center, the Hawai’i Tourism Authority, the Legislature, the East-West Center and other interests, she said.

“At the end of the meeting, of course, we decided we were going to go big on this,” Wienert said. “It would be great for the economy and if we were successful in getting the bid, it would position Hawai’i not just as a place to do leisure travel but it would allow us to finally be recognized as a place to do business where East and West meet.”

morrison’s role

Charles Morrison, president of the East-West Center, took the lead in preparing an 80-page proposal that was submitted, as requested, in a 3-inch binder.

Wienert described Morrison, who participated in meetings at three prior APEC summits and is familiar with hosting requirements, as “our savior and our guide” during the process.

As part of Honolulu’s submission, Lingle, Inouye, Mayor Mufi Hannemann and Moriarty prepared video statements touting Hawai’i’s advantages in hosting the APEC Leaders Meeting and assuring their commitment to its success. Also included were letters of support from county chambers of commerce and ethnicity-based chambers with ties to APEC nations.

“This has been a collaborative effort of a magnitude that is unbelievable,” Wienert said.

In a Jan. 5 letter and executive summary to Edward Malcik, director of the Office of International Conferences at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Morrison said the state offered “a welcoming, visitor-oriented economy, a symbolic trans-Pacific location” and “a rich and distinct culture.”

He noted that Hawai’i businesses have strong links with the Asia-Pacific region and that 2 million tourists from APEC nations visit the state annually.

“In Hawai’i, the leaders meeting would naturally have the desired informal atmosphere, enhanced by aloha wear,” the summary said.

Morrison also promoted the state’s “superior security advantages, not simply because our distant island geography minimized chances of outside disruption but also because Honolulu’s hotel/conference facilities are compactly located away from the central business area and are easily secured.”

Addressing the security issue, he said Honolulu already has the police, fire and emergency services required to meet the needs of its residents and the 100,000 tourists present at any one time.

He said the city was prepared to block off streets for security, another requirement contained in the State Department’s invitation for proposals.

security issues

Security concerns take up a good portion of the invitation notice, with questions about how the host city will provide security for the delegates and VIPs including Obama, whether the city is prepared to block off streets around the conference venue and hotels for heads of government, and how the city expects to fund the extra security required for the conference.

The State Department noted that U.S. Secret Service details are provided only to the president and heads of state, who will receive around-the-clock protection and limousines.

Traditionally, the local police department provides route, motorcade and intelligence support to the Secret Service and has lead responsibility for providing crowd control and riot response, the notice said.

“Cities that bid on such events must take into account and budget for the extensive costs of the security and public safety, as that responsibility lies solely with the host city,” the notice said. “Local police will not be reimbursed for costs of supporting visiting foreign dignitaries.”

Although U.S. cities hosting international events in the past have received congressional appropriations to cover security costs, the State Department cautioned there is no guarantee of that happening with the 2011 APEC Leaders Meeting.

Cities submitting proposals also were asked about public safety infrastructure, such as hospitals, communication systems, capabilities in explosives, chemical, biological and nuclear detection and response, and emergency management for mass casualties, terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Wienert said that because federal agencies would be playing a key role in coordinating security plans for the event, “we kept it vague” in the proposal. “None of us knew what they are going to be. We don’t control it,” she said.

Hawai’i officials did assure APEC organizers that Honolulu Police Department officials are “comfortable” they can handle the event with the assistance of the state Department of Public Safety and other agencies, Wienert said. Officials also expect substantial participation by the military’s U.S. Pacific Command.

Supporting documents highlighted the largely uneventful Asian Development Bank meeting held in Honolulu in 2001, the state’s experience in dealing with hurricanes and other natural disasters over the years, and the close cooperation that exists between state and city police, federal law enforcement and the military.

costs still unclear

It’s too early in the planning process to estimate what the security costs might be, but the city already is facing an anticipated $147 million budget deficit in the current fiscal year.

Wienert said every effort will be made to secure congressional funding. Morrison’s executive summary said that local meeting organizers also are prepared to seek state funding, but doesn’t mention the $1 billion budget deficit the state expects to rack up through June 2011.

“Remember, this is the United States’ meeting — it’s not Hawai’i’s meeting. We have no idea at this point what the cost to the state may be. We have not had those discussions yet,” Wienert said.

“Our goal was to secure APEC for Hawai’i. As many of our hotel and business leaders said, ‘Let’s get it first and, if we get it, the money will come.’ ”

Honolulu appears well-equipped to accommodate the 10,000 to 20,000 people expected for the APEC Leaders Meeting. Morrison’s executive summary notes there are 17,000 rooms available in a range of prices within walking distance of the Hawai’i Convention Center, and that activities will be taking place at locations separate from the Downtown business area, reducing travel times and traffic congestion.

Wienert said it’s possible some events might be scheduled outside of Waikíkí or on the Neighbor Islands.

sworn to secrecy

On the question of handling private VIP aircraft, Morrison pointed out that Honolulu International Airport is adjacent to Hickam Air Force Base, the usual landing place for visiting U.S. presidents.

When Morrison learned in late September that the 2011 host city would be announced by Obama at the 2009 APEC Leaders Meeting this month in Singapore, local supporters launched an eleventh-hour effort to lobby decision-makers in Washington that Hawai’i was “no ka ‘oi.”

“From the governor to the congressional delegation, everyone was on the phone calling anyone they could think of who might be influential with the Department of State and putting in the good word for Hawai’i,” Wienert said. “We knew we would be able to deliver an APEC meeting that would be very successful.”

On Nov. 12, Morrison, Wienert and a select few others received an e-mail from the White House with the news that Hawai’i had been selected. Those in the know were sworn to secrecy until Obama made the announcement two days later at the APEC conference:

“The United States was there at the first meeting of APEC leaders on Blake Island, (Wash.), where President Clinton began the interesting tradition of having us wear outfits picked out by the host nation. And when America hosts APEC in a few years, I look forward to seeing you all decked out in flowered shirts and grass skirts, because today I’m announcing that we are bringing this forum to my home state of Hawai’i in 2011.”

Wienert said she doesn’t know whether Hawai’i was a shoo-in because of Obama’s fondness for the Islands.

“The final decision was made by the president. This is his event; he’s the host. We were told that at the end of the day, after taking into account the National Security Council, the State Department and other agencies, that it was his decision,” she said.

“But you never know.”

Even without friends in high places, Hawai’i’s bid to host the APEC meeting could stand on its own, she said.

“I think the case was made well enough, first and foremost, that Hawai’i is the best place for security, and when you convene a meeting with that many heads of state, that’s a priority ,” she said. “No. 2, we are a proven destination that handles large meetings.”

Considering the APEC tradition of dressing in local garb, maybe Hawai’i did enjoy an edge.

“We all laughed when (Obama) said that. Where else in the U.S. do you have indigenous clothing that can be shared with the delegates?” Wienert said.

What happens next is formation of an organizing committee to coordinate the logistics and details of the meeting with the White House, the State Department and other parties, she said.

APEC promotes economic growth, cooperation, trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region and has 21 members: Australia; Brunei Darussalam; Canada; Chile; People’s Republic of China; Hong Kong, China; Indonesia; Japan; Republic of Korea; Malaysia; Mexico; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea; Peru; The Republic of the Philippines; The Russian Federation; Singapore; Chinese Taipei; Thailand; the United States; and Vietnam.

Reach Christie Wilson at cwilson@honoluluadvertiser.com.

A Hawai’i soldier, Jonathan P. Brostrom, died in fighting in Wanat, Afghanistan. Another casualty in the graveyard of empires.   The Honlulu Advertiser published several in depth articles based on a review of Army reports on the battle and interviews with family members of the troops who died. The Army reports are posted on the Advertiser website here: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091122/NEWS08/911220303.

Time for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

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http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091122/NEWS08/911220304/Hawaii+platoon+leader+died+for+his+comrades+at+the+battle+of+Wanat

Posted on: Sunday, November 22, 2009

Hawaii platoon leader died for his comrades at the battle of Wanat

Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires — the British withdrew in defeat in the 1800s and the Soviet Union a century later.

Nowhere has that been more evident than along Afghanistan’s 1,600-mile mountainous eastern border.

In October, two lightly manned U.S. outposts were attacked by 150 to 200 militants who pounded the Americans with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire.

Eight American soldiers died.

The official Army dissection of those events is yet to come, but the attack bears a worrisome resemblance to another deadly battle about 20 miles away.

Nine U.S. soldiers were killed and 27 were wounded in the Battle of Wanat on July 13, 2008 — the worst loss for the U.S. in the Afghanistan war, excluding helicopter crashes.

Among the dead in Wanat was 24-year-old 1st Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom of ‘Aiea, a Damien Memorial School and University of Hawai’i graduate and father of a 5-year-old son, Jase.

Brostrom was leader of Chosen Company’s 2nd Platoon, part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. Just days earlier, he and his men were sent to establish a new outpost in Wanat in Kunar Province on the Pakistan border.

When up to 200 insurgents unloaded an arsenal on the Americans before dawn that July morning, Brostrom’s men “fought a tenacious defensive fight,” according to an Army analysis by the Combat Studies Institute.

The report goes on to sharply criticize Brostrom’s commanders for actions it said were disastrously flawed.

The parents of some of the soldiers who died that day say Army senior leadership was negligent in sending the soldiers on the mission and guilty of covering up the facts.

Wanat has become a case study in what not to do in counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan. It stands as a frustrating symbol of a still-failing U.S. strategy and the subject of a new military investigation into what happened.

In their 14-plus months in Afghanistan, the soldiers of the 173rd Brigade gained a reputation for being overly aggressive, willing to bomb villages suspected of harboring insurgents. They made more enemies than allies as they pursued the Taliban, according to the Army analysis.

When a small group was sent to a remote and hostile valley to establish a new outpost, it was an opportunity for the insurgents to take revenge.

Many of the American soldiers who fought at Wanat predicted they would be attacked while in the village.

Wanat was a suicide mission that they knew “was going to be a bloodbath,” Cpl. Gunnar Zwilling, 20, told his father before being killed.

Wanat has been recorded in history as a grim milestone in the still evolving U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

Over the past five months, The Advertiser reviewed documents and interviewed survivors of Wanat and families of the soldiers who died there to piece together the events leading up to the fatal firefight, the firefight itself and lessons they hold for the continuing U.S. engagement in the graveyard of empires.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.

‘The Imperial Cruise’

Chapter 1: One Hundred Years Later

“I wish to see the United States the dominant power on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.” — Theodore Roosevelt, October 29, 1900

When my father, John Bradley, died in 1994, his hidden memory boxes illuminated his experience as one of the six men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. A book and movie — both named Flags of Our Fathers — told his story. After writing another book about World War II in the Pacific — Flyboys — I began to wonder about the origins of America’s involvement in that war. The inferno that followed Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor had consumed countless lives, and believing there’s smoke before a fire, I set off to search for the original spark.

In the summer of 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt — known as Teddy to the public — dispatched the largest diplomatic delegation to Asia in U.S. history. Teddy sent his secretary of war, seven senators, twenty-three congressmen, various military and civilian officials, and his daughter on an ocean liner from San Francisco to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, Korea, then back to San Francisco. At that time, Roosevelt was serving as his own secretary of state — John Hay had just passed away and Elihu Root had yet to be confirmed. Over the course of this imperial cruise, Theodore Roosevelt made important decisions that would affect America’s involvement in Asia for generations.

The secretary of war, William Howard Taft, weighing in at 325 pounds, led the delegation, and to guarantee a Roosevelt name in the headlines, the president sent his daughter Alice, the glamorous Jackie Kennedy of her day, a beautiful twenty-one-year-old known affectionately to the world as “Princess Alice.” Her boyfriend was aboard, and Taft had promised his boss he would keep an eye on the couple. This was not so easy, and on a few hot tropical nights, Taft worried about what the unmarried daughter of the president of the United States was up to on some dark part of the ship.

Theodore Roosevelt had been enthusiastic about American expansion in Asia, declaring, “Our future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe.” Teddy was confident that American power would spread across Asia just as it had on the North American continent. In his childhood, Americans had conquered the West by eradicating those who had stood in the way and linking forts together, which then grew into towns and cities. Now America was establishing its naval links in the Pacific with an eye toward civilizing Asia. Hawaii, annexed by the United States in 1898, had been the first step in that plan, and the Philippines was considered to be the launching pad to China.

Teddy had never been to Asia and knew little about Asians, but he was bully confident about his plans there. “I wish to see the United States the dominant power on the shores of the Pacific Ocean,” he announced.

Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of America’s most important presidents and an unusually intelligent and brave man. His favorite maxim was “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” This book reveals that behind his Asian whispers that critical summer of 1905 was a very big stick — the bruises from which would catalyze World War II in the Pacific, the Chinese Communist

Revolution, the Korean War, and an array of tensions that inform our lives today. The twentieth-century American experience in Asia would follow in the diplomatic wake first churned by Theodore Roosevelt.

In the summer of 2005 — exactly one hundred years later — I traveled the route of the imperial cruise.

In Hawaii, I rode the Waikiki waves like Alice had, saw what she had seen, and learned why no native Hawaiians had come to greet her.

Today the United States is asking Japan to increase its military to further American interests in the North Pacific, especially on the Korean peninsula, where both the Chinese and the Russians seek influence. In the summer of 1905, clandestine diplomatic messages between Tokyo and Washington, D.C., pulsed through underwater cables far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. In a top-secret meeting with the Japanese prime minister, Taft — at Roosevelt’s direction — brokered a confidential pact allowing Japan to expand into Korea. It is unconstitutional for an American president to make a treaty with another nation without United States Senate approval. And as he was negotiating secretly with the Japanese, Roosevelt was simultaneously serving as the “honest broker” in discussions between Russia and Japan, who were then fighting what was up to that time history’s largest war. The combatants would sign the Portsmouth Peace Treaty in that summer of 1905, and one year later, the president would become the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee was never made aware of Roosevelt’s secret negotiations, and the world would learn of these diplomatic cables only after Theodore Roosevelt’s death.

On July 4, 1902, Roosevelt had proclaimed the U.S. war in the Philippines over, except for disturbances in the Muslim areas. In 1905, the imperial cruise steamed into the port city of Zamboanga, a Muslim enclave 516 miles south of Manila. Princess Alice sipped punch under a hot tropical sun as “Big Bill” Taft delivered a florid speech extolling the benefits of the American way.

A century later I ventured to Zamboanga and learned that the local Muslims hadn’t taken Taft’s message to heart: Zamboangan officials feared for my safety because I was an American and would not allow me to venture out of my hotel without an armed police escort.

The city looked peaceable enough to me and I thought the Zamboangan police’s concern was overdone. One morning I was sitting in the backseat of a chauffeured car with my plainclothes police escort as we drove by city hall. The handsome old wooden building had once been headquarters of the American military. The U.S. general “Black Jack” Pershing had ruled local Muslims from a desk there, and the grassy shaded park across the street was named after him.

“Can we stop?” I asked the driver, who pulled to the curb. I got out of the car alone to take pictures, thinking I was safe in front of city hall. After all, here I was in the busy downtown area, in broad daylight, with mothers and their strollers nearby in a park named after an American.

My bodyguard thought otherwise. He jumped out of the car, his darting eyes scanning pedestrians, cars, windows, and rooftops, and his right hand hovered over the pistol at his side.

It was the same later, indoors at Zamboanga’s largest mall. I was shopping for men’s trousers, looking through the racks. I glanced up to see my bodyguard with his back to me eyeing the milling crowd. The Zamboangan police probably breathed a sigh of relief when I eventually left town.

Muslim terrorists struck Zamboanga the day after I departed. Two powerful bombs maimed twenty-six people, brought down buildings, blew up cars, severed electrical lines, and plunged the city into darkness and fear. The first bomb had cratered a sidewalk on whose cement I had recently trod, while the second one collapsed a hotel next door to Zamboanga’s police station — just down the street from the mall I had judged safe. Police sources told reporters the blasts were intended to divert Filipino and American army troops from their manhunt of an important Muslim insurgent.

Just as President Teddy was declaring victory in 1902, the U.S. military had been opening a new full-scale offensive against Muslim insurgents in the southern Philippines. Pacifying Zamboanga had been one of the goals of that offensive. A century later American troops were still fighting near that “pacified” town.

Today trade disputes dominate the United States–China relationship. In China, I strode down streets where in 1905 angry Chinese had protested Secretary Taft’s visit. At the time, China had suspended trade with the United States and was boycotting all American products. Outraged Chinese were attending mass anti-American rallies, Chinese city walls were plastered with insulting anti-American posters, and U.S. diplomats in the region debated whether it was safe for Taft to travel to China. Teddy and Big Bill dismissed China’s anger. But that 1905 Chinese boycott against America sparked a furious Chinese nationalism that would eventually lead to revolution and then the cutting of ties between China and the United States in 1949.

In 2005, I stood in Seoul, where, in 1905, Princess Alice had toasted the emperor of Korea. In 1882, when Emperor Gojong had opened Korea to the outside world, he chose to make his first Western treaty with the United States, whom he believed would protect his vulnerable country from predators. “We feel that America is to us as an Elder Brother,” Gojong had often told the U.S. State Department. In 1905, the emperor was convinced that Theodore Roosevelt would render his kingdom a square deal. He had no idea that back in Washington, Roosevelt often said, “I should like to see Japan have Korea.” Indeed, less than two months after Alice’s friendly toasts to Korea-America friendship, her father shuttered the United States embassy in Seoul and abandoned the helpless country to Japanese troops. The number-two-ranking American diplomat on the scene observed that the United States fled Korea “like the stampede of rats from a sinking ship.” America would be the first country to recognize Japanese control over Korea, and when Emperor Gojong’s emissaries pleaded with the president to stop the Japanese, Teddy coldly informed the stunned Koreans that, as they were now part of Japan, they’d have to route their appeals through Tokyo. With this betrayal, Roosevelt had greenlighted Japanese imperialism on the Asian continent. Decades later, another Roosevelt would be forced to deal with the bloody ramifications of Teddy’s secret maneuvering.

Since 1905, the United States has slogged through four major wars in Asia, its progress marked best not by colors on a map but by rows of haunting gravestones and broken hearts. Yet for a century, the truth about Roosevelt’s secret mission remained obscured in the shadows of history, its importance downplayed or ignored in favor of the myth of American benevolence and of a president so wise and righteously muscular that his visage rightly belongs alongside Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln in Black Hills granite. A single person does not make history, and in this case, Roosevelt did not act alone. At the same time, by virtue of his position and power, as well as by virtue of his sense of virtue, Teddy’s impact was staggering and disastrous. If someone pushes another off a cliff, we can point to the distance between the edge of the overhang and the ground as the cause of injury. But if we do not also acknowledge who pushed and who fell, how can we discover which decisions led to which results and which mistakes were made?

The truth will not be found in our history books, our monuments or movies, or our postage stamps. Here was the match that lit the fuse, and yet for decades we paid attention only to the dynamite. What really happened in 1905? Exactly one hundred years later, I set off to follow the churned historical wake in Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Here is what I found. Here is The Imperial Cruise.

In the bad old days of colonialism, it was standard racist fare to depict indigenous peoples as ‘savages’, ‘primitive’ ‘headhunters’.   These days, not much has changed.  Westerners project their fears, anxieties and hatreds onto the image of the bloodthirsty, Muslim terrorist who decapitates his victims.

But you almost never hear about 19th Century European or American headhunters.   Armed with weapons of scientific racism, anthropologists robbed the graves of native peoples around the world and subjected their ancestors’ bones to batteries of tests and measurements, all to prove the racial superiority of white folks. These bones were carted away to far away lands and kept in vaults as curiosities, artifacts of exotic, primitive races.  This week, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) retrieved 22 skulls from Sweden and another eight from Harvard University.   This is a bittersweet victory for Kanaka Maoli because the practice of desecration of ancestral burials continues unabated in places like Naue, Walmart (Ke’eaumoku St.) and Whole Foods (Ward), but without any pretenses of scientific inquiry or human progress.  This time, bones of the elders are being desecrated out of pure, unadulterated greed.

Ironically, the repartiation of skulls is taking place as the U.S. gears up to indulge in Thanksgiving, described by Robert Jensen in a thought provoking article as a “celebration of the European conquest of the Americas”. He writes:

I am afraid of Thanksgiving. More accurately, I am afraid of what Thanksgiving tells us about both the dominant culture and much of the alleged counterculture.

Here’s what I think it tells us: As a society, the United States is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt. This is a society in which even progressive people routinely allow national and family traditions to trump fundamental human decency. It’s a society in which, in the privileged sectors, getting along and not causing trouble are often valued above honesty and accountability. Though it’s painful to consider, it’s possible that such a society is beyond redemption. Such a consideration becomes frightening when we recognize that all this goes on in the most affluent and militarily powerful country in the history of the world, but a country that is falling apart — an empire in decline.

Now, before you take that bite of turkey, chew on that.

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http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091116/NEWS01/911160329/Hawaiian+skulls+to+be+repatriated

Posted on: Monday, November 16, 2009

Hawaiian skulls to be repatriated

By Will Hoover

Advertiser Staff Writer

Having retrieved 22 iwi po’o, or Hawaiian skulls, from Stockholm’s antiquities museum over the weekend, a Native Hawaiian delegation arrived in Boston yesterday to take possession of eight more from Harvard University’s anatomical collection, William Aila, the group’s spokesman said last night.

“We’ll be repatriating eight more of what we call iwi kupuna,” Aila said from Boston. “So, we’ll have 22 from Sweden and eight from Harvard, for a total of 30 Hawaiians that we’re rescuing and returning home.”

The repatriation of indigenous remains is part of an increased worldwide effort among institutions to return human remains collected by scientists during previous centuries.

Like the Stockholm remains looted from Native Hawaiian burials, the Harvard po’o will be prayed over in a symbolic ritual before being returned to Hawai’i tomorrow, Aila said.

“Once we get home, we’re going to finish ceremoniously rewrapping them, and then we will take the additional task of reburying them,” he said.

That ceremony will include wrapping the bones in kapa cloth made from tree bark and placing them in what’s known as a hína’i, or lauhala basket.

Some will be reburied on the Big Island, while others will be reburied on other Neighbor Islands, Aila said.

“We know where most of them came from,” he said. “There are several we do not have enough information about to make that determination.”

Aila praised Swedish officials for their handling of the sensitive matter of handing over the Hawaiian remains, and said he believed the people at Harvard would do likewise.

“The people in Sweden were absolutely marvelous,” he said. “The government used the words we use at home: ‘These kupuna (or ancestors) were looted from their graves.’ ”

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/11/how-i-stopped-hating-thanksgiving-and-learned-to-be-afraid/

How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to Be Afraid

by Robert Jensen / November 13th, 2009

I have stopped hating Thanksgiving and learned to be afraid of the holiday.

Over the past few years a growing number of white people have joined the longstanding indigenous people’s critique of the holocaust denial that is at the heart of the Thanksgiving holiday. In two recent essays, I have examined the disturbing nature of a holiday rooted in a celebration of the European conquest of the Americas, which means the celebration of the Europeans’ genocidal campaign against Indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.

Many similar pieces have been published in predominantly white left/progressive media, while indigenous people continue to mark the holiday as a “National Day of Mourning.”

In recent years I have refused to participate in Thanksgiving Day meals, even with friends and family who share this critical analysis and reject the national mythology around manifest destiny. In bowing out of those gatherings, I would often tell folks that I hated Thanksgiving. I realize now that “hate” is the wrong word to describe my emotional reaction to the holiday. I am afraid of Thanksgiving. More accurately, I am afraid of what Thanksgiving tells us about both the dominant culture and much of the alleged counterculture.

Here’s what I think it tells us: As a society, the United States is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt. This is a society in which even progressive people routinely allow national and family traditions to trump fundamental human decency. It’s a society in which, in the privileged sectors, getting along and not causing trouble are often valued above honesty and accountability. Though it’s painful to consider, it’s possible that such a society is beyond redemption. Such a consideration becomes frightening when we recognize that all this goes on in the most affluent and militarily powerful country in the history of the world, but a country that is falling apart — an empire in decline.

Thanksgiving should teach us all to be afraid.

Although it’s well known to anyone who wants to know, let me summarize the argument against Thanksgiving: European invaders exterminated nearly the entire indigenous population to create the United States. Without that holocaust, the United States as we know it would not exist. The United States celebrates a Thanksgiving Day holiday dominated not by atonement for that horrendous crime against humanity but by a falsified account of the “encounter” between Europeans and American Indians. When confronted with this, most people in the United States (outside of indigenous communities) ignore the history or attack those who make the argument. This is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.

In left/radical circles, even though that basic critique is widely accepted, a relatively small number of people argue that we should renounce the holiday and refuse to celebrate it in any fashion. Most leftists who celebrate Thanksgiving claim that they can individually redefine the holiday in a politically progressive fashion in private, which is an illusory dodge: We don’t define holidays individually or privately — the idea of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can’t pretend to redefine it in private. To pretend we can do that also is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.

I press these points with no sense of moral superiority. For many years I didn’t give these questions a thought, and for some years after that I sat sullenly at Thanksgiving dinners, unwilling to raise my voice. For the past few years I’ve spent the day alone, which was less stressful for me personally (and, probably, less stressful for people around me) but had no political effect. This year I’ve avoided the issue by accepting a speaking invitation in Canada, taking myself out of the country on that day. But that feels like a cheap resolution, again with no political effect in the United States.

The next step for me is to seek creative ways to use the tension around this holiday for political purposes, to highlight the white-supremacist and predatory nature of the dominant culture, then and now. Is it possible to find a way to bring people together in public to contest the values of the dominant culture? How can those of us who want to reject that dominant culture meet our intellectual, political, and moral obligations? How can we act righteously without slipping into self-righteousness? What strategies create the most expansive space possible for honest engagement with others?

Along with allies in Austin, I’ve struggled with the question of how to create an alternative public event that could contribute to a more honest accounting of the American holocausts in the past (not only the indigenous genocide, but African slavery) and present (the murderous U.S. assault on the developing world, especially in the past six decades, in places such as Vietnam and Iraq).

Some have suggested an educational event, bringing in speakers to talk about those holocausts. Others have suggested a gathering focused on atonement. Should the event be more political or more spiritual? Perhaps some combination of methods and goals is possible.

However we decide to proceed, we can’t ignore the ugly ideological realities of the holiday. My fear of those realities is appropriate but facing reality need not leave us paralyzed by fear; instead it can help us understand the contours of the multiple crises — economic and ecological, political and cultural — that we face. The challenge is to channel our fear into action. I hope that next year I will find a way to take another step toward a more meaningful honoring of our intellectual, political, and moral obligations.

As we approach Thanksgiving Day, I’m eager to hear about the successful strategies of others. For such advice, I would be thankful.

Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Citizens of Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity and Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). His latest book is All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, published by Soft Skull Press. He can be reached at: rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu. Read other articles by Robert, or visit Robert’s website.