More of the shine of the Golden State’s real estate market lost a bit more of its luster as the total value of California’s properties fell for the second year in a row — and for the second time since records were first kept in 1933 at the depths of the Great Depression.

The value of all types of properties fell 1.8% this year to $4.4 trillion, the California Board of Equalization reported Thursday. The total value fell 2.4% last year.

Forty-eight of California’s 58 counties saw totals fall — nine by more than 5%. Only two counties, oil-rich Kern and tourist-destination San Francisco, posted expansions of their property tax rolls of 2% or more.

The negative numbers make for more bad news for county governments. They’ve had to curtail spending on basic municipal services because falling values have resulted in lower property tax revenues.

“It’s a decline that’s outside of their control” and unlikely to reverse itself until California starts creating tens of thousands of new jobs, said Board of Equalization Vice Chairman Jerome Horton.

The contraction of the last two years contrasts with California’s historic growth in its real estate value, Horton said, with “constant increases of 5% to 15% per year” for the last 77 years.

“Those numbers tell us we have a ways to go, and we have some work to do to bring balance back in our economy,” he said.

Some experts suggest that things could get even worse before they get better.

Many homeowners purchased or refinanced residences in 2005 or 2006 and could face interest rate hikes from the variable-rate mortgages, said Tracey Seslen, a real estate professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business. Tight financial markets and underwriting standards could make it hard for them to refinance at lower rates, she said.

“With the stricter lending measures in place, removal of the home-buyer’s tax credit and with uncertainty in the economy and the jobs picture, we have a large confluence of factors that are all going to be putting downward pressure on the housing market,” she said.

Other housing specialists, though, think that the board’s data, based on Jan. 1 figures, already may be out of date.

“In many areas of California, prices have found a floor and have even recorded three or four months of guarded recovery,” said Stuart A. Gabriel, director of the Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

“Hopefully, we have found or are close to a bottom” of the market,” Gabriel said, “and, we’ll be able to see some recovery of prices.”

The board’s data found that Los Angeles County, which accounted for about a quarter of the value of all property statewide, lost 1.8% of its property value. The steepest drops were in the high-desert cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, local officials said.

Plummeting commercial property values also are contributing to the reduction in the size of tax rolls, Los Angeles County Assessor Robert Quon said.

The county got hit with a one-two punch of “fewer changes of ownership and less new construction,” he said.

The weak market spurred Los Angeles assessors to review about 600,000 homes and condominiums. They lowered annual property tax bills on 400,000 properties purchased between July 1, 2003, and June 30, 2009, Quon said.

By getting their properties reassessed to reduce taxes, homeowners were able to save an average of $1,800 on a single-family home and $1,500 on a condominium, according to the county.

Across Southern California, property values fell 4.4% in Riverside County, 4.3% in San Bernardino County, 1.5% in San Diego County, 0.5% in Orange County and 0.3% in Ventura County.

Inland areas lost about twice as much of their property value as coastal areas did. The state’s hardest-hit counties were in the Sacramento and Northern San Joaquin valleys and the Inland Empire, the board said.

marc.lifsher@latiimes.com
Value of California’s properties falls 1.8% to $4.4 trillion

As employers struggle with rising healthcare costs and a sour economy, U.S. workers for the first time in at least a decade are being asked to shoulder the entire increase in the cost of health benefits on their own.

The average worker with a family plan was hit with 14% premium increase this year, pushing the bill to nearly $4,000 a year, according to a survey by the nonprofit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.

That is the largest annual increase since the survey began in 1999 and a marked change from previous years, when employers generally split the rise in the cost of premiums with their employees.

The average employer contribution to a family plan did not go up at all this year, meaning the entire increase was borne by workers.

At the same time, nearly a third of employers reported that they either reduced the scope of benefits they are offering this year or increased the amount that workers must pay out of pocket for their medical care.

Workers saw average copayments for routine office visits increase 10% and deductibles continue their surge upward.

In 2010, more than a quarter of American workers with employer-provided health coverage were in plans with deductibles of at least $1,000.

“It’s really bad news for everybody,” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, an organization of large employers that provide coverage to about 50 million workers, retirees and dependents.

Overall, premium growth slowed slightly this year to 3%, with the average annual cost of a family health plan reaching $13,770. Workers picked up 30% of that bill. The average plan for an individual cost $5,049.

The squeeze, reported by employers between January and May, largely reflects the fallout of the ongoing economic slowdown and may be ameliorated in future years as the new healthcare law is implemented.

But it could further complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to rally support for the law, which is expected to do relatively little in the short term to contain rising medical bills.

“There have been times when employers have been able to absorb costs. This is not one of those times,” said James Gelfand, health policy director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a leading critic of the new law.

The law, which focused on expanding coverage for Americans who don’t get insurance through work, was designed to largely preserve the existing employer-based healthcare system.

Independent analyses of the law estimate that most Americans will continue to get insurance through their employer, as about 157 million do now.

Administration officials Thursday pointed to two new studies from the Rand Corp. and the Commonwealth Fund that predicted small businesses in particular would probably expand coverage in coming years, in part with help from billions of dollars of in new tax credits.

“We have really just begun our efforts,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, emphasizing the growing number of tools government regulators have to control insurance premiums.

The Kaiser survey found that the percentage of firms offering health benefits rose to 69% from 60% this year, an unexpected increase that analysts speculate may reflect the failure of many businesses that didn’t offer benefits.

But the survey suggests that the coverage workers are being offered is becoming increasingly unattractive as employers try to control their costs in the down economy.

“We were all so focused on the reform debate that I think we took our eyes off the fact that what we call heath insurance in this country is changing,” said Kaiser foundation President Drew Altman. “What workers get looks less and less like the comprehensive coverage their parents had.”

U.S. employers push increase in cost of healthcare onto workers

Israeli and Palestinian leaders formally reopened peace talks Thursday by setting a work plan for the next year, but adjourned without progress on their conflict over Israeli housing construction in disputed areas, an issue that threatens to quickly undermine the negotiations.

Meeting at the State Department, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to meet again on Sept. 15 and to work out an outline as the first step to reaching a final peace deal by next September. The two leaders, whose last face-to-face session was 20 months ago, plan to hold discussions every two weeks.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hosted the four hours of talks, praised the two leaders.

“The decision to sit at this table was not easy,” she said. “We’ve been here before and we know how difficult the road ahead will be.”

But diplomats said officials on both sides as well as their American colleagues remain deeply anxious over the settlement construction dispute. A partial Israeli moratorium on new settlements in the occupied West Bank ends on Sept. 26 and Jewish leaders are reluctant to extend it. At the same time, Palestinians have threatened to walk out on the talks if construction resumes.

U.S. officials have urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to stop publicly declaring their positions, in hopes that it will be easier for each to give ground in coming weeks, according to diplomats who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the talks.

U.S. officials are hoping that if the talks gain momentum in the coming weeks, it will give officials on both sides the political cover to make compromises that, at the moment, only are likely to inflame their constituencies.

As talks continue, it also will become more difficult for the leaders to break off their participation, diplomats noted.

Yet diplomats and outside observers also say it’s still difficult to see how a compromise could be reached.

Under one proposal, by Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Daniel Meridor, Israel would allow construction only in the large settlement blocs in the West Bank that Israel expects to annex in a final peace deal.

But critics say it will be difficult to sort out precisely which areas would be headed for annexation.

Akiva Eldar, a columnist for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, said on Israel Radio on Thursday that the Meridor proposal would be hard to implement because it would require both sides to agree, before negotiations take place, on which settlements would be part of Israel and which would be dismantled.

He said there will probably be sharp disagreement over settlements such as Ariel, which is about 12 miles inside the West Bank.

“Talking about the settlement blocs without a detailed map is like playing chess with yourself,” he said. “The Palestinians [will] say, ‘You won’t get them for free. Show us a map.’ “

Another possibility is for Israel to privately agree to construction limits while publicly announcing that the moratorium is over. Netanyahu reportedly agreed to such a deal in recent months regarding building in Jerusalem.

Under such an arrangement, Netanyahu could use his influence to block any large-scale construction.

But Yossi Beilin, a left-leaning analyst and former Knesset member, said that without a moratorium, the possibility would exist for a project to proceed and set off an uproar that would bring the talks to a halt.

“This is the wrong way to have negotiations,” he said.

Despite behind-the-scenes U.S. pressure, Palestinian officials insist their position on the issue is firm. Some officials privately suggested they are willing to face the political consequences of publicly embarrassing President Obama by breaking off the talks.

Middle East talks begin with work plan

“Chefs-d’Oeuvre?”

The question — “Masterpieces?” — posed by the inaugural exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz is a matter of many opinions.

Four months after the quirky museum with a swooping white fiberglass and Teflon roof, designed by Shigeru Ban of Japan and Jean de Gastines of France, opened its doors in this little-known town 175 miles east of Paris, visitors continue to ask if the strikingly modern building near the majestic old train station resembles a Chinese straw hat, a hut for the Smurfs or a manta ray in flight.

The masterpieces query is a weightier matter and it comes with lots of historical baggage. Composed of about 800 works, the sprawling show is a think piece about the ever-changing meaning of a term coined in the Middle Ages to judge the work of craftsmen in the European guild system but often dismissed as quaintly irrelevant these days.

“I have no definitive definition of a masterpiece,” Laurent Le Bon, director of the Metz museum and curator of the exhibition, states in a publication accompanying the show, “but, in my view, it is a work that permits diverse interpretations, indeed contradictions.”

Critical reactions to the show include proclamations that it’s the most impressive assembly of 20th century art in all of Europe and accusations that it’s so confusing and anti-hierarchical as to be meaningless. In art historical circles, the exhibition has revived a debate about the concept of masterpieces. Interviews with curators indicate that there’s hardly a consensus on the subject, with some saying it’s a valuable way of measuring quality and others pointing out the flaws of any such system.

The Pompidou Center, a Parisian cultural powerhouse that houses the French National Museum of Modern Art, built the satellite in Metz to share its 60,000-piece collection with a city of about 200,000 people. But visitors expecting the Pompidou’s greatest hits are in for a surprise. What they get is an eclectic array of paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, installations, architectural models, furniture and printed material.

An introductory section on the ground floor tracks the evolution of masterpieces “from Middle Ages to revolutionary genius” in works lent by various institutions. But the bulk of the show ending Oct. 25, which continues on three upper floors, is drawn from the Pompidou’s 20th century and 21st century holdings. The final display, “Masterpieces ad infinatum,” grapples with notions of uniqueness in an age of endless reproductions.

As the exhibition unfolds, major works by such stalwarts as Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Louise Bourgeois and Bruce Nauman share gallery space with examples by relatively little known European figures and a few sculptures from Africa, Asia and Oceana. The works on view rarely conform to conventional ideas about masterpieces as paragons of beauty or tours de force of skill and they aren’t necessarily the best examples of the artists’ output.

But pieces such as Bourgeois’ enormous installation “Precious Liquids” sum up essential themes — in her case, conflict between the artist and her father and bodily liquids that symbolize pleasure and pain. Other works mark zeitgeist moments that have influenced ideas about what a masterpiece might be.

Marcel Duchamp, who famously said that a masterpiece is created by the viewer, not the artist, is represented by his first “readymade,” a bicycle wheel mounted on a wood stool in 1913. Georgio De Chirico’s 1914 painting “Premonitory Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire” is a Surrealist tribute to a leading avant-garde poet and critic, portrayed as a classical statue wearing sunglasses.

Alain Jacquet’s 1964 painting “Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe” is part of his “Camouflages” series based on widely distributed reproductions of masterpieces from bygone times. His version of Edouard Manet’s celebrated Impressionist work recasts the luncheon on the grass as a poolside picnic obscured by a silk-screen pattern.

The most recently made pieces have yet to pass the test of time. A stunningly detailed photograph of commercial goods packed into a 99 Cents Only Store is a seminal image by Andreas Gursky. But it was made in 1999 by a German artist whose reputation and work continue to grow.

Experts’ views

Once upon a time, a masterpiece was a creation that met rigid standards of artistry and craftsmanship. These days, the term usually refers to the best work of an artist’s career or an example of outstanding creativity or skill, but there’s little agreement on the meaning and relevance of the term, particularly in modern and contemporary art.

Consider what a few Southern California authorities have to say in interviews and e-mail exchanges:

Douglas Fogle

Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, Hammer Museum

That word has so many heavy connotations with connoisseurship and a certain attitude about art history, that one masterpiece comes after the other. There are great works, absolutely. In contemporary art, there are seminal or building-block works that changed everything. You can point to a Rauschenberg combine painting. “Monogram” is a great work in that way. You can point to Jackson Pollock’s first drip paintings.

It’s a masterpiece, whatever that means

The fate of the U.S.-sponsored peace talks launched Thursday in Washington could hinge in part on how things play out in this hotly disputed West Bank city, where extremists on opposite sides suddenly find they share a common purpose: to sabotage the process.

The militant Palestinian movement Hamas, which hasn’t openly attacked West Bank settlers in about two years, renewed its campaign of violence this week with two drive-by shootings. It claimed responsibility for killing four settlers near Hebron on Tuesday and injuring two others a day later near Ramallah.

Jewish settlers around Hebron responded by throwing rocks at Palestinians and setting fire to a field. On Thursday, they demonstrated their contempt for what they termed the “fancy ceremonies” in Washington by rolling out bulldozers and cement mixers to resume construction in defiance of Israel’s 10-month moratorium. Settlers are also calling for the reinstallation of West Bank checkpoints and the waiving of gun permits to enable settlers to carry weapons.

The developments serve as a reminder that before Israeli and Palestinian negotiators can tackle big-picture issues such as the borders of a Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem and refugees, the peace process will have to survive some daunting short-term challenges. Among them are the Sept. 26 expiration of Israel’s construction moratorium and a spike in Palestinian violence.

Hebron, home to more than 150,000 Palestinians and 400 Jewish settlers, is often at the center of the storm, and it is once again. Residents are bracing themselves and warn that violence could spread to other parts of the West Bank.

“The talks have renewed the cycle of violence,” said Khaled Amayreh , a Palestinian journalist and analyst. “Things are heating up.”

The next month will test the resolve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, analysts say. Friction and violence at the launch of peace talks is nothing new. The question is whether the leaders will press ahead despite provocations or use them as justification to walk away.

The two leaders agreed in their first direct talks Thursday to meet again in the Middle East in two weeks, and then to reconvene about every two weeks thereafter. U.S. envoy George J. Mitchell cited a “constructive and positive mood” in the meeting.

However, the unresolved conflicts also were apparent. Netanyahu raised the issue of the attacks on Israelis in the West Bank this week. Abbas called on Israel to end all settlement activity.

“In every conflict, the closer the sides have gotten to an agreement, the more the peace spoilers started coming out of the woodwork,” said Professor Tamar Hermann, senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a research group. “But this is a transitional phase and if we give in to it, we will miss the opportunity.”

The settlement construction issue could offer the first glimpse of how committed both sides are to talks. Netanyahu has resisted Palestinian demands to extend the freeze, whereas Abbas has threatened to quit talks unless the freeze continues. Both men are under tremendous domestic pressure to stick to their positions and equally strong pressure from the U.S. and international community to bend.

Analysts have said that the two sides need to find a way to finesse the issue in coming weeks so they can move on to other, equally weighty topics.

Netanyahu’s position will demonstrate how serious his intentions are, wrote Eitan Haber, Israeli analyst and former advisor to assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, on the Ynet news site Thursday. “Americans and Palestinians will view the freeze as a test case.”

At the same time, if Netanyahu refuses to budge, Abbas will face a similar dilemma over whether to reverse his stance or abandon what many experts believe could be the last round of negotiations for some time.

The attacks against Israeli settlers upped the ante for both men.

Netanyahu rejected immediate calls for him to quit the talks and return home.

David Wilder, spokesman of the Jewish Community of Hebron, blasted the U.S.-brokered peace process as an attempt to “sink Israel…. These attacks cannot continue, and the only way to stop them is to stop acquiescing to Obama and the terrorists who want to destroy us.”

The killings also hardened the resolve of many Israelis against pressure to extend the construction moratorium, a move they argue could now be seen as rewarding terrorism.

For Abbas, the killings meant being forced onto the defensive just as negotiations began. They bolstered Netanyahu’s demand that talks begin on the issue of security, rather than borders or settlements, which are Palestinian priorities.

Hamas leaders promised the violence would only continue, calling the first two attacks the start of a “series of operations” to be carried out by its militant wing.

Although Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, where 1.5 million Palestinians live, its operatives in the West Bank moved underground after the 2007 split with Abbas’ more moderate Fatah movement. In response to the Hamas attacks this week, Palestinian Authority security officers arrested several hundred Hamas supporters, Hamas officials said.

The attacks marked a turning point for Hamas, which has generally avoided armed assaults and rocket attacks against Israeli citizens since Israel’s 22-day assault against Hamas’ positions in the Gaza Strip in late 2008 and early 2009. Though rocket attacks from Gaza have continued to strike southern Israel, other militant groups claimed responsibility and Hamas had even tried to prevent such attacks, arguing that they were not in the “Palestinian national interest.”

That informal policy appears to have changed, probably because of the resumption of peace talks. Hamas officials say the resumption of armed attacks in the West Bank is not an attempt to spoil peace talks, but critics note that the Islamist movement has been harshly critical of the process.

The group’s attacks could soon present another challenge to budding peace talks. So far, Israel has not responded militarily, but Hamas officials are bracing for a round of retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza once Netanyahu concludes the peace summit in Washington.

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

Batsheva Sobelman in The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau and special correspondent Rushdi abu Alouf in Gaza City contributed to this report.
West Bank city of Hebron could be powder keg as Mideast peace talks begin

After a difficult August, Wall Street began September with a big rally thanks to encouraging news about the manufacturing sectors in the United States and China.

The Dow Jones industrial average shot up 254.75 points, or 2.5%, to 10,269.47. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index soared 3%, as did the tech-dominated Nasdaq composite index.

In Europe, key stock indexes shot up 3.8% in France and 3.5% in Spain.

The surge came after the major U.S. indexes sank more than 4% in August on economic data that indicated a slowdown in economic growth and raised fears of a double-dip recession.

The manufacturing data Wednesday encouraged investors who thought the bearish sentiment had gone too far. Only 20.7% of investors ended August with a bullish outlook, the smallest percentage since the stock market hit bottom in March 2009, according to a index of market sentiment compiled by the American Assn. of Individual Investors.

“The catalyst allows you to look at things with a clearer head,” said Jim Paulsen, the chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management. “The pessimism got extreme at the end of August there, and extreme pessimism is a sign that people are overdoing it.”

Wall Street opened higher Wednesday after a report from China indicated faster-than-expected growth in the country’s manufacturing sector.

The rally soon accelerated on an unexpected increase in a similar index of U.S. manufacturing activity. The Institute for Supply Management’s gauge rose to 56.3 from 55.5 last month; anything above 50 suggests the sector is growing.

The manufacturing numbers were particularly encouraging because factory sector has been one of the leading drivers of the economic recovery since it began.

The positive news relieved some of the pressure on the market for U.S. Treasury bonds, which some investors had bought as a hedge against a worsening of the economy. The yield on the benchmark 10-year T-notes jumped to 2.58% from Tuesday’s 19-month low of 2.47%.

The shift in sentiment Wednesday was such that investors appeared to shake off some economic reports that were less encouraging.

ADP, a payroll-service company, said private companies cut a net 10,000 jobs in August; analysts had expected an increase.

Analysts on average expect the Labor Department to report Friday that U.S. employers, including governments, shrank their payrolls by 100,000 jobs in August.

Other reports Wednesday showed weak car sales in August and a bigger-than-expected drop in construction spending in July.

Despite Wednesday’s sharp gains, stocks are unlikely to see a sustained rebound as long as the U.S. continues to suffer from high unemployment, said John Stoltzfus, chief market strategist at Ticonderoga Securities.

“The reality is we’ve been here before where we’ve seen rallies followed by sell-offs,” Stoltzfus said. “We expect that until some substantial catalyst arrives on the landscape the market is likely to be a giveth and taketh market, with short rallies and short sell-offs.”

nathaniel.popper@latimes.com

Stocks surge amid signs of growth in manufacturing

Democratic Govs. Bev Perdue of North Carolina and Martin O’Malley of Maryland declared states of emergency in their states, and federal authorities have warned people along the coast to be prepared to evacuate if necessary.

The evacuation of the Outer Banks, a stretch of thin barrier islands, had begun in North Carolina, and hundreds of cars were backed up on the highway that is the sole link to the mainland. Earl’s strongest winds were expected to hit the coast Thursday night into Friday morning.

Earl’s effect on the East Coast will depend on when it makes its expected turn to the northeast.

A later-than-expected turn could mean the storm’s eye makes landfall on the extreme eastern tip of North Carolina as a Category 3 hurricane late Thursday or early Friday.

If that happens, hurricane-force winds could reach Long Island, N.Y., and Cape Cod, Mass.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, declared a state of emergency as a precaution, allowing the state to mobilize staff and resources before the storm. Emergency officials as far north as Maine urged people to have disaster plans and supplies ready.

Earl was on track to approach the North Carolina shore and then blow north along the coast, but forecasters cautioned that it was still too early to tell how close the storm might come to land.

The National Weather Service issued a hurricane warning for much of the North Carolina coast and hurricane watches from Virginia to Delaware.

Not since Hurricane Bob in 1991 has such a powerful storm had such a large swath of the East Coast in its sights, said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center.

“A slight shift of that track to the west is going to impact a great deal of real estate with potential hurricane-force winds,” Feltgen said.
Hurricane Earl approaches East Coast

Bill and Beverly Osborn still can’t bring themselves to erase the phone message from their son Ben. He had called from Afghanistan in June to assure them that he was safe. Four days later, he was killed in a Taliban ambush.

The Osborns long ago accepted the risks faced by their son, an Army specialist. But what they can’t accept now are the military rules of engagement, which they contend made it possible for the Taliban to kill him.

“We let the enemy fire first, and they took my son from us,” Beverly Osborn said of the rules, which in most instances require U.S. forces to identify an enemy threat before firing, and to withhold fire if civilians are close by. The rules also place restrictions on close air support and artillery, prompting complaints from some service members that their lives are put at risk against an enemy that fights by no rules at all.

As American combat deaths have reached record levels this summer, public support is eroding for the 9-year-old conflict. Several recent opinion polls found that more than half of those surveyed oppose the war, with the high casualty rate among concerns most often cited. American combat deaths reached 60 in June, 65 in July, and 55 in August, according to icasualties.org. That is by far the highest three-month total of the war.

Criticism is mounting among military families too. An antiwar group of families of service members in Afghanistan and Iraq has called for an end to the Afghanistan war. At the same time, families like the Osborns, who describe themselves as conservative, are questioning the way the war is being waged.

After Bill Osborn publicly criticized the rules of engagement just before his son’s wake, he said, other families of service members killed or serving in Afghanistan contacted him to express similar concerns. They don’t want to end the war, Osborn said, but to change the way it’s being fought.

“Our soldiers are forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. They’re not allowed to take care of business — and they know it,” Bill Osborn said in his living room, where his son’s Bronze Star, Purple Heart and campaign ribbons are on display.

Debbie Morris of Arnold, Calif., who lost her son in Afghanistan on June 10, said the rules of engagement protect Afghan civilians at the expense of American troops. She blames the rules, in part, for the death of her son, Marine Lance Cpl. Gavin Brummund, 22, from a roadside bomb.

If the rules prevent troops from aggressively pursuing Afghan militants who plot attacks against them while posing as civilians, “then the rules aren’t working, and why are we even there?” Morris said.

Brummund’s widow, Michaela, said Marines in her husband’s unit told her they were frustrated by the rules. Protecting civilians, many of whom are hostile to U.S. forces, “isn’t worth our guys’ lives,” she said.

On June 27, the Osborns wrote an impassioned e-mail to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan. They described how Ben, 27, volunteered to man the machine gun on an armored vehicle headed out on a patrol in Kunar province on June 15.

Their son’s unit of 20 men was ambushed by a Taliban force of 70 to 100 fighters, the e-mail said. According to the Osborns, who said they talked with members of their son’s unit, Ben had to wait to return fire until ordered to do so. He got off 10 rounds before he was shot and killed, they said.

The rules of engagement “led to the demise of our son … and other warriors like him,” the e-mail said. The Osborns asked Petraeus to revise the rules and lift restrictions.

“Winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans is not what’s best for America,” they wrote. “We are at war. The rules of engagement must be to empower our soldiers, not to give aid and comfort to the enemy.”

Petraeus responded within minutes, the Osborns said. His e-mail offered condolences, and noted that “commanders have a moral imperative to ensure that we provide every possible element of support to our troopers when they get into a tight spot.”

The general added: “And I will ensure that we meet that imperative.”

Petraeus, who wrote the military’s counter-insurgency doctrine with a focus on minimizing civilian casualties, has said he is reviewing the rules of engagement. Petraeus assumed command July 4 after the ouster of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who had tightened the rules when he took command in June 2009.

Military Families Speak Out, the antiwar group, has long demanded an end to the war in Iraq but for years refrained from demanding an end to the Afghanistan conflict — which many members considered “the good war.” After U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan rose early last year, the group formally called for ending that war and bringing troops home.

More families have joined the group since casualties jumped this summer, said Nancy Lessin, the organization’s co-founder. Military Families Speak Out, founded in 2002, represents 4,000 military families, with 25 to 30 chapters nationwide, Lessin said.

The group has no formal position on the rules of engagement, said Paula Rogovin, whose son is a Marine captain who served in Iraq. But bringing the troops home would eliminate any dangers they face as a result of the restrictions, she said.

By contrast, the Osborns say they believe the war in Afghanistan must be fought — and won. But they want it waged more aggressively.

Soon after Ben deployed in April, he began telling his parents that the rules of engagement were too restrictive and were putting him and his fellow soldiers at risk.

“He said he felt more like a Peace Corps worker than a warrior,” his father said. After Ben’s death, his comrades told his father they had the same concerns.

“I don’t know that if Ben had been able to fire spontaneously, he’d be alive today,” Bill Osborn added. “But I do know that he would have had a much better chance of surviving by being able to defend himself quickly.”

“It almost appears that our civilian leaders and military command think more of the natives than our own troops,” he said. “That’s a disturbing thought, and I don’t want to believe it.”

Ben left behind three brothers, a sister and a widow, Nicole, whom he had married in February.

“It’s too late for us and for Ben,” Bill Osborn said, sitting next to photos of his son in uniform. “But there are other families out there, and if we can help save just one soldier, it’ll be worth it.”

david.zucchino@latimes.com
As U.S. deaths in Afghanistan rise, military families grow critical