ThinkProgress filed this report from Ames, Iowa.

In his bid for the White House, Rick Santorum is trying to shed the perception that he is mainly a religious right candidate. In recent days, he’s pushed hard to position himself as a far right hawk on foreign policy as well.

At a recent campaign stop in Ames, Iowa, Santorum spoke at length on Middle East policy. Lamenting the rise of democracy in Egypt, Santorum said Obama thew former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak “under the bus.” Santorum explained that he would have stood with autocratic leaders against the growing protest movement deemed the Arab Spring:

SANTORUM: Let’s go after America’s allies because America’s going to back down and not support them. Well obviously the first ally in the region is Israel. So why are we seeing, boldly, the Egyptians post Mubarak bringing Hamas and the Palestinian authority together in an alliance. So Obama throws Mubarak under the bus, the new military regime in Egypt brokers a deal between Hamas and the PA and now the President rewards that by saying we’re going to go back to the 1967 [Israeli] borders. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist if you’re sitting in the Arab-Muslim world thinking, “Well how do we deal with this guy?”

Watch here:

First, Obama never said on Israel, “We’re going to go back to the 1967 borders.” But it’s good to know that despite all of Santorum’s talk of freedom and liberty, apparently that rhetoric doesn’t extend to the people of Egypt. And it appears that if he were to become president, he would stand with the world’s most autocratic regimes as long as they’re pro-U.S.

Today is national Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Awareness Day. As the number of U.S. soldiers returning home from combat in Afghanistan and Iraq increase, so will the number of veterans struggling with this under-reported disease. To date, the military has diagnosed 78,000 cases of PTSD among veterans, but the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) says “the real number is closer to 800,000.” The latest military mental health survey finds that 20 percent (one in five) Afghanistan veterans suffer from “acute stress, depression or anxiety.” However, less than half — 46 percent — actually seek medical help. Without treatment, soldiers suffering from PTSD are more likely to face unemployment, domestic abuse, divorce, homelessness, and suicide among our troops:

– PTSD Creates More Unemployment: Post-9/11 veterans have an unemployment rate of “10.9 percent, compared to 8.5 percent unemployment overall.” That rate is actually higher than the rate for all veterans, which is 7.7 percent. The Labor Department recently found that “more than 20 percent of young Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans were unemployed last year,” and some think PTSD is a contributing factor to this number. “People just frown upon us nowadays, thinking we’re all flying-off-the-handle crazy guys,” said one veteran to USA Today of employers. “They don’t even give us a chance.”

– PTSD Destroys Marriages: PTSD also takes a toll on marriages and other relationships. For example, research has found that 38 percent of “Vietnam veteran marriages failed within six months of the veteran’s return from Southeast Asia.” Research also finds that “veterans with PTSD are more likely to report marital or relationship problems, higher levels of parenting problems, and generally poorer family adjustment than veterans without PTSD.” A 2005 Pentagon study found that the divorce rate for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans was up 78 percent since 2003.

– PTSD Leads To Domestic Violence: According to military mental health experts, “The increasing number of veterans with [PTSD] raises the risk of domestic violence and its consequences on families and children in communities across the United States.” VA research finds that “male veterans with PTSD are two to three times more likely than veterans without PTSD to engage in intimate partner violence and more likely to be involved in the legal system.” What’s more, several studies found that female partners of veterans with PTSD also “self-reported higher rates of perpetrating family violence than did the partners of veterans without PTSD” as PTSD “can also affect the mental health” of a veteran’s partner.

– PTSD Leads To Homelessness: There is an alarming rate of homelessness among America’s soldiers. While only 10 percent of the population, veterans make up one-third of the homeless population. The VA “estimates 107,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. Over the course of a year, approximately twice that many experience homelessness.” A recent federal study found that “the 136,334 veterans who spent at least one night in a shelter” in 2009 amounted to “one of every 168 veterans in the USA and one of every 10 veterans living in poverty.” As the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans notes, a leading reason for the high rate is because at-risk veterans “live with lingering effects of [PTSD] and substance abuse.”

– PTSD Leads To Much Higher Rates Of Suicide Attempts: Studies show that having PTSD correlates to having a higher chance of committing suicide; over “50 percent of all trauma survivors worldwide will attempt suicide in their lifetimes.” The National Institute of Health estimates that people suffering from PTSD are six times more likely to committ suicide. Among the military population, suicide has reached alarming levels. American veterans now account for one in every five suicides. This past April, the Veterans Administration’s suicide hotline received a record number of calls — nearly 14,000 over the month, 400 a day. A VA investigation found last year that there were an average of 33 suicide attempts by veterans a day, with 18 being successful.

The prevalance of PTSD among Americans is a silent epidemic, and many of those who are suffering feel as if no one is speaking for them. But there are organizations you can contribute to that dedicate themselves to battling this plague, particularly among American veterans. The Disabled American Veterans, National Center for PTSD, USO, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and other organizations welcome your support.

Last year, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus persuaded Afghan President Hamid Karzai to authorize a new program to establish local defense forces there — seemingly modeled after the “Sons of Iraq” — that U.S. officials thought would help with security and thwarting the Taliban in remote parts of the country. Karzai had initially resisted, fearing that the “forces could harden into militias that his weak government could not control.”

This is exactly what appears to be happening. According to a new report to be released tomorrow from Refugees International (RI), the Afghan Local Police (ALP) units are “a major threat to civilians and stability” because they are “poorly vetted, ill-trained and unsupervised.” “These armed groups,” the report says, “have allegedly committed abuses including murder, theft, extortion, bribery and intimidation.” From the report (emphasis added):

RI interviewed IDPs who reported that newly formed militias had been sent to their village in Jawzjan province and proceeded to loot, harass and forcibly tax the population. In March, a UN report cited concerns regarding the ALP’s “weak oversight, recruitment, vetting and command and control mechanisms, limited training for recruits…”

Afghans, government officials, UN staff and aid workers all told RI that many recruits are receiving as little as “a couple of days” of training, a highly concerning trend given the fact that a large majority are illiterate and lack policing experience. They reported that local leaders are circumventing the ALP vetting process due to pressure to expedite recruitment. Moreover, RI was told of instances where powerful warlords pressure local leaders to formalize pre-existing militias into the ALP – often around tribal, ethnic or political lines – so they can use these units to avenge personal disputes or strengthen their influence.

Indeed, the New York Times reported earlier this month that former Taliban members who have switched allegiances and joined ALP are imposing an “Islamic tax” on Afghans. Similarly, RI reported that one former Taliban “reintegree” was recruited to serve as an ALP commander, but he “is notorious for using his position for personal gain and ordering night raid operations against those who get in his way.”

The report also says that the number of Afghans who have fled their villages has more than doubled in the first five months of this year (91,000), compared to the same time period last year (42,000). RI blames Afghan forces’ military operations against the Taliban, the increasing use of airstrikes, and night raids by U.S. Special Forces.

As for Petraeus’s ALP program, RI recommends that Congress withhold funding until the secretary of defense “certifies that adequate recruitment, vetting, discipline and command/control structures have been established, as well as a clear timeframe for the program’s integration into the ANP.”

With the huge stink raised by Republican hawks over President Obama’s announced plan to reduce troop levels in the Afghanistan war, you’d think Obama decided to withdraw troops and simply give up on the nearly 10-year-long war. But on Fox News this weekend, hawk extraordinaire Bill Kristol argued that Obama’s big mistake was to not sustain troop levels for a mere four more months of the conflict — ending the surge in September 2012 instead of January 2013.

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Kristol how long he wanted to keep a robust level of troops — at “surge” levels — in Afghanistan. Kristol, in a long answer, accused the president of playing politics with the surge drawdown, timing its completion right before the presidential election, saying that January 2013 would’ve been more “responsible”:

The key of the speech is the end of summer: September 2012. There is no military, economic, diplomatic, any rationale for advancing the withdrawal for advancing the withdrawal to Sept 2012, except it allows to stand up in the presidential debates in Oct 2012 and say see I finished the withdrawal. That is a kind of political move that is indefensible. …Why is it September 2012 instead of January 2013, which was the militarily responsible thing to do?

Watch the video:

Make what you will of the president’s motivations for making his decision, but it seems rather unlikely that four months would make or break the war effort. A quick glance at the “In the News” page of the Kristol-led Foreign Policy Initiative shows Kristol and his neoconservative allies accusing Obama of a “disgraceful decision” and “putting [the] progress at risk and raising the specter of a return to [an] under-resourced and unsuccessful strategy.”

Though these critics accuse Obama of playing politics, one wonders what they have on their minds when they attack Obama for planning the draw down with a 120-day shorter time frame than they would have. Do they really expect that completing a draw down four months later will make all the difference in the world to the ten-year-old morass of the Afghanistan war?

 

Two American troops were killed in northern Iraq yesterday while “conducting operations.” The New York Times reports that the military “did not elaborate, but that terminology is usually meant to indicate the deaths were caused by enemy attack.” And earlier this month, an Iranian-backed Shiite militia group attacked and killed six U.S. soldiers. Now, total U.S. combat deaths in Iraq in June has reached 11, the most since May 2009. But despite the fact that Americans are still dying combat related deaths in Iraq, President Obama announced last year that the U.S ended hostilities in Iraq and said as recently as last week in his speech that America’s combat mission there was already over:

Yet tonight, we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding. Fewer of our sons and daughters are serving in harm’s way. We have ended our combat mission in Iraq, with 100,000 American troops already out of that country.

This simply isn’t the reality that troops on the ground are facing. Putting the number of recent U.S. combat deaths in Iraq aside, militants there are still attacking U.S. forces there with continuing regularity even though the Americans are relegated to their bases and cannot conduct combat operations without permission from the Iraqis. U.S. forces are facing “an increasingly dangerous environment in southern Iraq,” the AP reported last month, “where Shiite militias trying to claim they are driving out the U.S. occupiers have stepped up attacks against bases and troops.”

Indeed, the Irainian-backed group Kataib Hezbollah, which claimed responsibility for the attack earlier this month, said its attacks on U.S. troops were aimed at stopping the “occupation interference” in Iraq’s affairs and forcing the U.S. to abide by the withdrawal deadline. And while it’s unclear how much Muqtada al-Sadr’s supporters are participating in attacks on U.S. forces, he has pledged to unleash his Mehdi Army if the Americans stay past 2011.

One analyst has also said that he has seen an increase in the use of armor piercing IEDs called explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs. “The increase in attacks shows that Iranian-backed cells enjoy greater freedom of movement than they have in the past,” said Michael Knights, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

At the same time, top U.S. officials like incoming Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have said that if the Iraqis ask, the U.S. will keep an unspecified number of troops (some have estimated around 10,000) past the Dec. 31 total withdrawal deadline. Some have cited increased sectarian tentions as one reason for the Americans to stay, but as journalist Mark Kukis noted recently, a prolonged American presence there will only exacerbate the problem:

Secular, nonsectarian Sunni militants, men who consider themselves Iraqi nationalists for resisting a foreign military presence, drift into the company of Iraq’s al-Qaeda contingent when seeking help to lash out at U.S. forces. This drift in effect bolsters al-Qaeda radicals, allowing them to pursue more easily sectarian violence against Shi’ites. Increased sectarian aggression on the part of al-Qaeda produces a violent response from Shi’ite militias such as the Mahdi Army and the Iraqi government, whose security forces are quick to indulge in brutal crackdowns against Sunni communities where militants are thought to be active.

Whether sectarian tensions in Iraq will rise to level of the civil war days of 2006 and 2007 if the Americans leave is uncertain but unlikely. However, there is one certainty if U.S. troops withdraw on time: After Dec. 31, 2011, Iraqi militants will no longer launch attacks on and kill American soldiers.