Michael O’Hanlon has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post that proposes we create a volunteer “peace operations division” to deploy to third-world crisis spots, particularly to stabilize Congo. O’Hanlon spent time in Congo a generation ago in the Peace Corps, and believes that there is a moral imperative to fix the situation.

O’Hanlon probably realizes that the significant number of American troops still in Iraq and increasing commitments in Afghanistan mean that Congo is far down on the Obama administration’s list of priorities. He probably expects someone to respond in impolite terms that this is an unnecessary and unwise deployment of Americans into harms way in a potential quagmire with no discernable national security interest, allowing him to take the moral high ground and speak of how our military should make the world a better place for everyone.

Okay, I’ll bite. I haven’t spent any time in the Congo or in the Peace Corps, but my time in the Infantry and Special Forces tells me that this is exactly the kind of idea we should avoid.

Let’s go by the numbers.

The notion is this: Ask for volunteers to join a peace operations division for two years. They would begin their service with, say, 12 weeks of boot camp and 12 weeks of specialized training and then would be deployable. They would receive the same compensation and health benefits as regular troops, given their age and experience. Out of a division of 15,000 troops, one brigade, or about 3,000 to 4,000 soldiers, could be sustained in the field at a time.

Creating a force of amateurs trained at a level far below that of the all-volunteer force is asking for American blood to be spilt unnecessarily. The career officers and NCO’s in today’s force mean that experienced leaders keep troops alive and doing their job. Military service isn’t service in the Peace Corps; let’s not confuse the two. Either you are in for following the lawful orders of the Commander-in-Chief and the officers appointed above you, or you aren’t. Don’t sign up for politically correct missions. Sign up because you want to be in the military – or not at all.

This type of training would be modeled after standard practices in today’s Army and Marine Corps. To be sure, soldiers and Marines in regular units usually go beyond this regimen to have many months of additional practice and exercise before being deployed.

That’s because peacekeeping missions inevitably favor a government or faction that faces opposition from some of the populace and/​or other factions. Troops supporting that government or faction will eventually engage in combat. This involves training that revolves around things like “close with and destroy the enemy” or “find, fix, and finish.” This might be related to the Peace Corps’ “toughest job you’ll ever love,” but I’m not sure how.

The dangers of deploying such units to missions such as the one in Congo, would be real, but the risks would be acceptable. First, those volunteering would understand the risks and accept them. Second, in most civil conflicts such as Congo’s, possible adversarial forces are not sophisticated. Soldiers in the new division would not need to execute complex operations akin to those carried out during the invasion of Iraq or current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They would largely monitor villages and refugee camps, inspect individuals to make sure they did not have illicit weapons, and call for help if they came under concerted attack. Their jobs could be somewhat dangerous and would require discipline and reasonable knowledge of some basic infantry skills — but they would not be extremely complex.

I’m not certain any soldier or senior leader can understand the risks and accept them. The last time we deployed troops in such an open-ended peacekeeping mission in Africa (Somalia), it was draped in humanitarian aid language until we found that a goodly portion of the populace didn’t appreciate our presence or assistance. “Possible adversarial forces” do not start out sophisticated, but repetitive tasks such as monitoring villages and refugee camps and searching for illicit weapons create opportunities for insurgents that conduct pattern analysis of what we are doing over and over at static security positions and on predictable routes, creating opportunities for ambushes and attacks when we least expect them.

Troops may be able to “call for help if they came under concerted attack,” but more likely they will have to fight pitched battles. Basic infantry combat quickly becomes extremely complex. Whole books have been written about the fog of war and the difficulties of command in a combat zone. The messy business of identifying insurgents amongst a sheltering populace continues to plague our efforts in Afghanistan. It is not solved by goodwill, and is not easily performed by a token force that will surely get its nose bloodied and become a rallying cry for reinforcements.

Eastern Congo may be the most magical place on the planet; I remember thinking it did not even belong on this planet, so surreal were its mountains, lakes, volcanoes, and lush forests and farmland.

Mountains and lush forests make great places for staging an insurgency. Take combat power or stay home.

O’Hanlon is not blind to these realities, having previously written that nation building is “not for the fainthearted.”

The truth is that we are engaged in an open-ended commitment in Afghanistan that is consuming resources as fast as we can commit them. This is a place where nation building is being done not by Provincial Reconstruction Teams, but as Michael Yon notes, Provincial Construction Teams. It wasn’t constructed to begin with. Secretary of Defense Gates says that accomplishing our stated goals will take years of combat, and I have no reason to doubt him. Perhaps those goals should be re-examined.

O’Hanlon expresses optimism that “the peace operations units could be led by a cadre of experienced officers and NCOs — perhaps some of whom would be drawn back to military service after leaving.” If called back to service in a mission implicating a legitimate national security interest, I would pack up and go. But Task Force Best of Intentions has little allure for me and, I suspect, the vast majority of veterans he envisions willing to sign up for such a mission.

Any reader interested in state fiscal policy, particularly California’s, should read this excellent piece of journalism from NPR on the state’s prison predicament. (Actually, folks interested in reading why anti-drug policies and some “get tough on crime” efforts are counterproductive should also check this out.)

California’s prison system is a costly, overcrowded, criminal-spawning mess, and the chief culprit is the state’s prison employee union. But this isn’t just another story about public employee unions extracting exorbitant salaries and benefits at the expense of taxpayers:

In three decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support “three strikes” and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions. It donated $1 million to [former Governor Pete] Wilson after he backed the three strikes law. And the result for the union has been dramatic. Since the laws went into effect and the inmate population boomed, the union grew from 2,600 officers to 45,000 officers. Salaries jumped: In 1980, the average officer earned $15,000 a year; today, one in every 10 officers makes more than $100,000 a year.

[Former CA Dept. of Corrections & Rehabilitation Secretary Roderick] Hickman says the union was able to control the department’s policy decisions, including undermining efforts to divert offenders from prison and reduce the prison population. “Maybe I was just impatient,” he says, “or it wasn’t going to go fast enough, but [the department] is still in the same place I left it, with an over $8 billion budget. Now it’s over $10 billion.” Today, 70 percent of that budget goes to pay salaries and benefits to the union and staff. Just 5 percent of the budget goes to education and vocational programs — the kind of programs that study after study in the past 10 years has found will keep inmates from returning to prison.

This activity strikes me as downright criminal.

Again, the entire article is worth a read, especially with state politicians currently attempting to scare taxpayers into supporting tax increases in order to continue their profligate spending through the recession. Kudos to NPR’s Laura Sullivan for digging into a state’s operations before writing a piece bemoaning its alleged budget woes.

H/T: Reason’s Leonard Gilroy

The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Indiana takes Governor Mitch Daniels (R) to task for claiming that the burdensome identification requirements he’s implementing in the state are required by federal law.

Many states across the country have refused to participate in the REAL ID Act, preserving their citizens’ privacy and tax dollars. Not Governor Daniels, and in a recent press release he misstated federal identification requirements while acting as if he’s helpless to do anything about them.

Says the Journal Gazette: “[B]laming the federal government for non-existent requirements is disingenuous. If the governor wants Hoosiers to take extra steps to prove their identity, he should say so himself.”

President Obama, ed. secretary Duncan, and the nation’s governors and schools superintendents are almost unanimous in supporting uniform grade-by-grade national standards. In a recent letter to the editor of Education Week (HT: Bill Evers), a literature prof. criticizes this process on the grounds that no lit professors or high school language-arts teachers were included in the relevant standards-drafting panel.

As I write in today’s NY Daily News, that objection is small potatoes compared to a much more fundamental problem: all 12-year-olds do not learn every subject at the same pace. If you tie standards to school grades, you tie them to chronological age. But kids of the same age are all over the map when it comes to how fast they can progress through various subjects. One-size-fits-few.

I offer a better solution for improving American education in my NYDN piece. And as for the lit. professor’s objection, she writes:

we see a problem in the failure to include (as far as we can determine) not even one faculty member of a college literature or humanities department or high school English teacher on the English-language-arts standards-writing committee itself.

“The failure to include not even one.…” Ouch. Now you know why I didn’t hotlink that letter.

The trial of Nobel laureate and Burmese democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi has concluded as expected: with an extension of her term of house arrest. The official offense was an unauthorized visit by American John Yettaw, but the regime would have found another excuse had Yettaw, who was sentenced to seven years in prison, not made his unexpected appearance.

The Burmese military junta, which styles itself the State Peace and Development Council, is one of the worst governments on earth, having promoted war and prevented development as a matter of state policy. The regime continues to imprison Ms. Suu Kyi to better enable it to control the elections scheduled next year. But the poll will be a farce without the participation of Ms. Suu Kyi, who won the last free ballot two decades ago.

The junta also continues its brutal war in the east against ethnic groups, such as the Karen, which have long sought autonomy from the central government. Millions of people have been displaced within Burma (also called Myanmar) and hundreds of thousands of refugees have been driven across the border into Thailand by the conflict.

America’s options are limited. The U.S. and European Union already have applied economic sanctions against Burma, including controls targeted against regime elites and cronies. Unfortunately, China has exhibited no similar scruples, becoming the junta’s strongest backer. Other nations throughout the region also engage in substantial investment in and trade with Burma.

Any attempt to expand general sanctions is likely to fail and, even if successful, would hurt Burma’s vulnerable population more than regime elites. Instead, the U.S. and Europe should press India, the ASEAN states, and Japan and South Korea to adopt limited sanctions targeted against junta leaders and their economic allies. Moreover, Washington should engage Beijing over the issue, indicating that promoting political reform in Burma would enhance its international reputation and claim to global leadership.

Finally, the U.S., along with its Asian and European friends, should offer a positive package of economic and diplomatic benefits should the Burmese junta improve human rights and open Burmese society. Washington’s expectations should be limited: the regime is not likely to yield power irrespective of the inducements offered. However, the junta might decide that the benefits from more limited reform are worth the risks of change.

It’s not working. The president enjoys the use of the executive branch’s bountiful resources, control of Congress by his party, and aid of a sympathetic media. Yet support for expanding government control over health care is falling the more people learn about it.

Reports the Washington Post:

According to a USA Today/​Gallup poll, 69 percent of Americans are closely following news of town hall meetings on health care reform. Thirty-four percent say protests against the plan at the meetings have made them more sympathetic to the critics’ views, and 21 percent say the protests make them less sympathetic, according to the poll. Thirty-six percent say the protests have made no difference.

A separate USA Today/​Gallup poll reported that 49 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of health-care policy while 43 percent approve.

At least President Barack Obama isn’t whining (yet) about the terrible disadvantages that he is laboring under. As did President Bill Clinton, when he blamed his failure to push through health care reform on groups like Cato, whose activities put him at a great disadvantage, he claimed.

Tim Carney has an excellent opinion piece in today’s Washington Examiner:

Dear conservatives: Health insurance companies are not your friends. Keep opposing a new government-run insurer, a single-payer plan, and new regulations on the HMOs. But grant that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is correct on this: Insurance companies are villains (though not exactly the sort she has in mind).

Insurance companies lobby for big-government regulations, subsidies, mandates, and tax-code distortions that funnel them money, keep out competition, and stultify innovation. These policies preserve the employer-based health-care system that mocks the idea of free-market competition. Then they cry “unfair competition” when government threatens to encroach on their government-protected monopolies.

But they’re not just lobbying against a government option. Today, health insurers are lobbying to force you and me to buy their product or face a tax hike (the individual mandate).

They are lobbying to force entrepreneurs to buy insurance for employees (the employer mandate). They are lobbying for more subsidies paid for by us taxpayers. In short, they are lobbying against regular people and against the free market.…

Too often–as with last fall’s bailouts Republicans and conservatives practice pinstripe protectionism: worrying about the fate of a profitable industry. This time around, they would do well to instead embrace creative destruction.