The Political Conundrum!

Two more Navy SEALs from an extraordinarily elite and supersecret counterterrorism unit have been killed in Afghanistan, following the death two weeks ago of a SEAL from the same clandestine unit.

Details were - not surprisingly - vague. There is no direct evidence they died fighting in the new CIA-led offensive against Al Qaeda and the Taliban along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. But their loss in Afghanistan is certainly significant and a real blow to their fellow operators in the Joint Special Operations Command, which includes the Army’s Delta Force.

The two SEALs were killed September 11 somewhere “in Afghanistan,” according to military press releases, and were part of the shadowy Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the elite counterterrorism force once known as SEAL Team 6. Typically, the military identifies which Afghan town, district, city or province where American troops perish. But for the third time since August 30, when Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Thomas Harris, a Bronze Star recipient, was reported killed after being swept away during a combat river crossing, the precise location of the latest “DEVGRU” combat casualties is unknown.

Killed last week were Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator John Wayne Marcum, 34, and Chief (select) Special Warfare Operator Jason Richard Freiwald, 30, the Navy said. Each man had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was a highly decorated SEAL. Before Harris, no DEVGRU SEAL had fallen in Afghanistan since March 2002, according to a review of Operation Enduring Freedom deaths at iCasualties.org.

Marcum earned four Bronze Star medals with the combat “V” distinguishing device, as well as the Joint Service Commendation medal, four Combat Action ribbons and a chestful of other decorations in his career. The younger Freiwald had also earned a Bronze Star and Combat Action ribbon, the Navy said.

Sadly, both SEALs leave behind a wife and daughter. The Naval Special Warfare Foundation, which accepts donations, will likely provide support for each family.

The expulsions last week of the U.S. Ambassadors to Venezuela and Bolivia, and the U.S.'s reciprocal response should not have been unexpected. They illustrate the current condition of long deteriorating relations between the U.S. and those countries, as well as with Ecuador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, over the course of the Bush Administration. They are also an unsurprising result of systemic neglect of the U.S. relationship with Latin America more generally.

It’s difficult to imagine any Administration having a happy relationship with Hugo Chavez, who is the most difficult (and obnoxious) Latin American leader the U.S. has encountered since Fidel Castro. Chavez has combined cheesy domestic populism, socialistic and anti-Yankee rhetoric, Machiavellian uses of burgeoning oil revenues, corruption, and outright support for terrorists in neighboring countries to create a problem for the region that the U.S. cannot solve alone.

The need for a more inclusivist, collaborative U.S. strategy to combat Chavez’s excesses, and to minimize the harm he can do to such critical policies as combating narcotics and terrorism, has been evident for years. To date, that strategy has been largely Colombia focused, and largely law enforcement focused, and to that extent, it has been largely successful, as the capture of the FARC documents in the Raul Reyes computers last March demonstrated.

But the failure of the Bush Administration to put in place a wider diplomatic and development strategy, by which the U.S. would be able to make common cause with the many governments in Latin America who are infuriated and even threatened by Chavez, is striking. Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, have each recalled their own ambassadors from Chavez's Venezuela in previous years, and merely constitute the starting places for partners in such a strategy. The U.S. will need separately to redevelop its relationships over time with Chavez's erstwhile allies in Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua, irrespective of its issues with Chavez. Figures such as Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega may find provocative behavior towards the U.S. helpful in the short-run, but are likely to find that longer-term political survival is facilitated by rapprochment with a post-Bush United States.

The newfound Russian and Iranian interest in the region highlights the weakness of the U.S. position in the region after two terms of President Bush. Neither country has natural strategic reasons to be involved in Latin America. Each is responding to the opportunity presented by Chavez’s hostility to the U.S., and the U.S. incapacity to date to respond effectively.

The opportunities for the two Presidential campaigns would seem obvious, at least in substantive terms, while U.S. politics remains focused on bridges to remote places in Alaska.

Pakistani security forces taking part in fresh clashes near the Afghan border killed 10 suspected militants and wounded 25 others. More than 100 people, most of them militants, have been reported killed in the fighting in Bajur tribal region in the last five days.