International Law Matters (Except When It Doesn’t)

Aug30

(It was my intention to post another lost poem of Rudyard Kipling, but the administration’s blathering and dithering over Syria requires a few words.)

Among the plethora of generally vague reasons offered by the administration as justification for some sort of attack on Syria far and away the most hypocritical is Assad’s violation of international law by deploying chemical weapons. The President, along with members of his administration, specifically cited this abuse of international covenants as a reason to go to war – or at least quasi-war. A spokesman for the President stated at a press conference that international laws are “important” and that it was “not appropriate to flout them with impunity.”

The hypocrisy is staggering. We constantly violate or fail to enforce traditional international behavior and covenants we have pledged to honor; in the case of Israel we refuse even to talk about blatant transgressions of international agreements we are legally bound to uphold. We have invaded the airspace and sovereignty of other countries with “impunity,” and we have engaged in torture, which is specifically outlawed by several major conventions. And now, thanks to the “traitor” Snowdon, we discover that we are violating agreements with and the domestic laws of close allies, whose concerns are dismissed with incredible arrogance.

We are of course right in condemning Assad’s use of poison gas, which not even Hitler was tempted to use. It is an indiscriminate killer, hard to control, and unlike artillery shelling, which also kills many innocents, it is virtually impossible to escape. That chemical weapons kill innocents as well as combatants is the major reason they are banned, and correctly so. But we are killing innocents on a regular basis with our drone strikes, and while the civilian casualties from each attack are limited, at least compared to what is happening in Syria, the numbers are steadily growing.

Humanitarian outrage is rarely the primary reason behind foreign policy decisions (Kosovo was an exception, but of course that happened in Europe), and more than two thirds of Americans oppose intervention, regardless of any outrage. Naturally, the administration pays little attention to public opinion unless it relates to elections, and consequently the President has brought out the heavy weapon of “national security,” since this trumps the opinion of the public. In addition to the usual list of security reasons – Middle East stability, security of Israel, terrorism – we were actually told these chemical weapons could be a threat to the United States – not United States interests but the United States itself. When questioned about this ludicrous assertion, the spokesman simply avoided answering.

But what about American credibility? Well, if losing face is a problem, then it is solely the fault of President Obama and his non-existent policy in the region. In any case, who cares? One would think a country with a $600 billion military and eleven carrier groups had plenty of credibility. It is the administration’s credibility that is at risk, not America’s, and for that reason we will lash out.

So once again America is about to commit an act of war against a country that has done absolutely nothing to injure us, an act that would result in massive retaliation were it done against us, which in fact is what happened in December 1941. (At this very moment on the TV behind me John Kerry is telling us that even though we are weary of war we cannot ignore our responsibilities. Responsibility for what exactly in this instance?) And we will be doing it without Congressional authorization and (with the likely exception of France) apparently alone; even faithful little Britain has opted out, since Parliament still decides on war and peace there. This is to say, we are once again about to violate international law, which is supposedly a major reason why we are about to go to war.

One does not need a military expert to understand that firing even hundreds of missiles at Syria will have little to no impact on the general situation. But it will make Obama feel better and save the credibility that most would suggest he no longer has. Meanwhile, more Syrians will die, this time killed by our government, mostly in the service of domestic politics. What has happened to us?

should be hanging from a lamp post

under alien mind control?

sarin gas

A Lost Poem by Lord Byron

Aug8

(This may be an early draft of the famous “Destruction of Sennacherib.” If it is, Byron was certainly prescient.)

The Destruction of Obama

The American came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were loaded with silver and gold;

And the sheen of their guns was like stars in the sky,

When the Hellfires roll nightly to kill on the fly.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,

That host with their weapons in Kabul were seen:

Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,

That host in a decade lay scattered and strown.

For the fighters of God spread their creed with a blast,

And shot at the face of the foe as he passed;

And the hopes of the soldiers waned deadly and chill,

As their friends tread the mines and forever grew still!

And there lay the Humvee, just blown on its side,

With the gas spilling out and the bodies inside;

And the blood of the wounded lay red on the ground,

And the dead and the dying made hardly a sound.

And there lay the soldier all mangled and torn,

With comrades and sweethearts now ready to mourn:

And the barracks were silent, the colors alone,

The rifles unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the women now widows are loud in their wail,

And policy lies broke in the Afghani pale;

And the force of the US, almighty before,

Hath melted like snow in the Taliban’s war.

King Obama

King Sennacherib

Lord Byron

Wogs Need Not Apply

Aug2

This is an issue of small significance compared to the revelation of our government’s massive surveillance programs and the administration’s Gestapo approach to dealing with informants, but it is symptomatic of our lopsided and self-destructive support for Israel. And you are hardly likely to hear about this in the mainstream media.

Congress is now considering two bills (S. 462 and H.R. 938), which are both versions of the United States-Israel Strategic Partner Act of 2013. Though the US and Israel have been joined at the hip for forty years, Congress continually passes bills such as these in order to fine tune the relationship, which is to say, add more clauses. These are inevitably in favor of Israel, often to the detriment of Americans, and some are simply baffling. For example, last year Congress passed the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Act of 2012, which commits the US to “the security of the state of Israel as a Jewish state.” What does that mean? How (and why) are we to guarantee the cultural make-up of a foreign society? What exactly does “Jewish state” mean anyway, when twenty percent of Israel’s citizen body is not Jewish?

This new partnership act includes a visa waiver agreement with Israel. The Visa Waiver Program permits the US and a foreign country (currently thirty-seven of them) to allow their citizens to visit one another for up to ninety days without a visa. This is of course an excellent arrangement for friendly nations, but not surprisingly the agreement with Israel will contain a provision absent from previous agreements: Israel will retain the right, not extended to the US, to deny entry to any American citizen without explanation. Apart from being blatantly unfair and insulting to Americans (who were not consulted about this), this provision is a humiliation for America.

Israel’s history of hassling visitors and denying many access to Israel or the Occupied Territories, often seemingly capriciously or for incomprehensible reasons, is so rich that the Department of State felt compelled to post a travel advisory on its website: “U.S. citizens are advised that all persons applying for entry to Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza…may be denied entry or exit without explanation.” One would think that this essentially guts the agreement as far as Americans are concerned, but nothing is impossible in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of our relationship with Israel. And the advisory specifically notes that “U.S. citizens whom Israeli authorities suspect of being Arab, Middle Eastern, or Muslim origin may face additional, often time-consuming, and probing questioning by immigration and border authorities, or may be denied entry.”

Indeed! Negroes and Irish need not apply. This sort of blatant profiling and discrimination is technically illegal in America and counter to our stated values, but one might argue that given Israel’s experience with Palestinian terrorism, it is a perfectly sensible policy. Perhaps, if the profiling actually only dealt with reasonable suspicion of a threat, but example after example demonstrates that this is quite obviously not the case. If there is even the vaguest suspicion that you are pro-Palestinian or a critic of Israel, that you work for an NGO that has been critical of Israel or that you have simply visited a country hostile to Israel, you will be hassled and possible thrown out. That this sort of thing really does happen is clear from the State Department advisory, since the statement must necessarily be an implicit criticism of Israel, something that is normally a mortal sin for the US government.

Here is a particularly obnoxious though typical example. Nour Joudah, a US citizen, began teaching high school in the West Bank town of Ramallah last year; she had a one year multiple entry visa and a residency permit. After one semester she took a vacation out of the country, and when she returned in January via the Allenby Bridge from Jordan, she was held up for six hours and then denied entry with no explanation. Acting on the advice of the Israeli embassy in Washington, she tried again through Ben Gurion airport. This time she was interrogated for hours, strip searched, taken to a detention center and deported back to Jordan the next day. A surprisingly frank call from the US Consulate in Jerusalem informed her that nothing could be done to help “when it comes to Israel.”

There are endless stories similar to this, and I also experienced this petty behavior, though on a much smaller scale. In 1991 I entered Israel through the Ben Gurion airport and made the mistake of accompanying my travel companion to the same customs station. He was a Black from Cincinnati who had converted to Islam and adopted the very unlikely name of Herb Mohammed. When the official saw Mohammed on his passport, she asked me if I was with him, to which I said yes. We were then both sent to a room occupied by what looked like the Israeli military, who took our passports. After cooling our heels for an hour or so we were given our passports and dismissed without a word of explanation. Trivial perhaps, but common – and insulting, especially for a citizen of a country that is sending Israel, a very wealthy state for its size, a few billion dollars every year. Incidentally, when I left Israel on El Al, I received the most thorough search I have ever experienced, and I had crossed frontiers in the Warsaw Pact curing the Cold War.

Why are our national politicians so willing to do this sort of thing? Can you imagine this arrangement being proposed for any other country? Are they afraid to be called anti-Semites? Do they believe in some Jewish international financial cabal that will finance their campaigns? It must be some sort of fear thing, since it is very hard to believe that virtually all our national politicians are so enamored of Israel, a state that frequently spits in our face and violates almost as many international agreements as the Third Reich, that they would continually adopt positions that are actually detrimental to the US. Apparently the powerful Zionist lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, looms over the frightened gentiles in Congress like some Lord of Hosts, ready to smite those who will not do Their will.

Actually, the Christian extremists perhaps have a positive reason: watch over Israel and lobby for the third temple, which would bring on the End of Times they desire so much. Then those pesky Jews will either become good Christians or be slaughtered. Meanwhile, better that Jews should live in Israel instead of their neighborhoods.

terrorists

not a terrorist

No Worry Unless You Have Something To Hide

Jul26

(I have nothing novel to say here; even allowing for the technology, no state in antiquity, even Egypt under their god-king, experienced this level of surveillance. I just need to vent on this subject.)

President Obama’s assault on the First and Fourth Amendments is in full swing. (The Second is completely safe.) It was bad enough to learn what our government was doing – in our name – under the Bush administration, but Obama’s security apparatus and his actions to protect it are staggering. We may no longer have renditions and blatant torture (force-feeding and prolonged periods of solitary confinement may qualify), but a Democratic and supposedly progressive President is actually laying the foundations of a police state, and Congress is helping, having found a bipartisan cause.

The public had long been aware, if unconcerned, of the constitutionally and morally questionable things the CIA has been doing, especially in conjunction with our seemingly endless wars, but inasmuch as the operations generally affect only other countries, the American public is mostly unconcerned. The recently revealed surveillance programs of the NSA, however, do affect Americans, and while most of our citizens have probably never heard of the Fourth Amendment, they do understand when they are being spied on. And so do our closest allies, even if their spooks and governments are enthusiastically cooperating with ours.

Amerikanische Reichssicherheitsdienst

The situation has become even more threatening – and surreal – with the revelation of the Insider Threat Program, something right out of Stalinist Russia. By this directive federal employees and contractors are legally bound to watch for and report “high-risk persons or behavior” among their fellow workers, and failure to do so could result in penalties, including criminal charges. And any leaks concerning the program and its operation will be treated as espionage, even if the leak reveals illegal behavior. The only thing missing to complete the journey back to Moscow in the 1930s is any reference to “counterrevolutionaries, Trotskyites and wreckers.” Will this vigilance be rewarded with medals? Perhaps “Hero of America” or “Order of Washington”?

But wait, there’s more! In the name of security the government will also violate the First Amendment! That’s two Amendments for the price of one administration! No government has been friendly to leakers, not because of the typically stated reason of security but since the leak usually reveals the government has been doing something questionable, like monitoring all private communications. Under the Great Engineer of American Security, however, leakers are now being prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, even though they are not passing information to a foreign government, which I mistakenly thought was part of the basic definition of espionage.
Unless of course the news media is considered a foreign entity, which is certainly the view of every autocrat, even the elected ones, like Recep Erdoğan of Turkey, who is close to setting records for jailing journalists. The traditional method for punishing journalists, like Judith Miller of Valeria Plame fame, is to demand the names of their sources and then jail them for contempt when they will not reveal them. In the case of John Risen, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who was threatened with contempt if he did not testify against a former CIA source, a federal appeals court has just ruled that he was not covered by the First Amendment. This means that potentially every reporter is facing jail if he does not reveal sources.

And now there is a new twist: the journalist receiving the leaked information can also be charged with committing a crime, the exact nature of which the administration has not made clear. Journalist Glenn Greenwald was recently threatened with such a charge. Does this mean if you find a pile of classified documents on the ground, read them and talk to your friends about them, you are eligible for criminal prosecution? On the other hand, the government can spy on you all it wants apparently. For years the government has been monitoring Risen’s phone calls and emails, not in pursuit of a terrorist but to discover his sources. So, the security agencies can acquire taps on innocent civilians for the fairly specious reason that someone is revealing things to them.

The public opposes the NSA PRISM program by a 2 to 1 margin, but a recent effort to halt it was defeated in Congress, the amendment to the Defense bill being the subject of intense lobbying by the President (the liberal guy), the spooks and the contractors who make stuff for the spooks. Those who support the NSA of course talk about damaging our security, suggesting they know better than the average American, which has some basis in truth since we can find out virtually nothing about the program – or that it even existed until Snowden popped up. “Trust us” is not very convincing, coming from people who have regularly lied to the public.

The biggest joke of all is the fact that Obama touts his administration as the most transparent ever, when in fact it is actually one of the most opaque in history. The secrecy mania is out of control. In fiscal year 2011 more than 92 million documents were classified at a cost of more than $11 billion; the full numbers are unknown because at some agencies classification and its cost are classified. Are these all secrets that could harm the country if revealed? That is hard to believe. Classification covers mistakes, malfeasance, outright criminality and violations of the Constitution and civil rights, and very important, it enhances the status of the bureaucrat doing the classification.

And all this behavior for what? Because without such massive surveillance and secrecy one or two terrorists might blow up some people? Is this a sufficient reason to assault our own Constitution and freedom, especially when innocents are being killed in far greater numbers because of our love affair with the gun and inclination to solve problems with violence? Surveying the increased and constitutionally dubious powers of the government and its security apparatus and the concomitant free fall of America’s image in the world, I can only conclude that the 9/11 terrorist have won.

(The title is classified.)

Jun20

We are now beginning to see the staggering extent to which the Patriot Act has undermined our Constitution and privacy, thanks to the actions of a man who is being labeled a traitor by politicians and a hero, if a self-righteous one, by more sensible people. The broad and ambiguous powers granted the FBI are enough of a cause for concern, and now we learn the NSA has been conducting secret surveillance of apparently everyone on the planet who has access to a telephone, computer or credit card. That would include Americans, whom the NSA is of course not empowered to spy on, but we cannot afford to be obsessive about details when it comes to national security. Besides, the FBI, which is in fact commissioned to pry into our lives, is too busy with its own vastly expanded powers.

Is this process of collecting and analyzing astronomical amounts of data at all effective in combating terrorism? Perhaps, but an independent estimation is impossible when virtually everything – including the very existence of the program – is classified, and the public knows only what the government deigns to release. “Trust us, your elected officials,” says the President. Trust Congress, which seems to be generally in the dark itself and in any case is focused on politics? Trust the military, which has a long and rich history of lying to the people? Trust the spooks, whose whole existence is deception? Keep in mind that the Man, Director of Intelligence James Clapper, when asked before a Congressional committee if data on Americans was being collected, said no, deliberately lying to the body that is supposed to be providing oversight.

Head of the NSA

Perhaps the saddest thing in all this is that fully half the American population accepts this massive invasion of the Fourth Amendment. This is hardly a surprise. Judging from the apparent abandon and relish with which people, especially younger people, place personal and revealing information and photos on social media platforms, it would appear that many Americans have little interest in the Fourth Amendment. Of course, most Americans would not be able to identify the Fourth Amendment, but most do have a sense that the Constitution guarantees privacy. Besides, what is a little snooping if it prevents terror attacks? Further, many are taken by the assurance – second only to national security as a reason for undermining civil liberties – that you have nothing to worry about if you are doing nothing wrong. Well, at least until the government has some reason to find wrongdoing.

That the odds of being injured by a terrorist are infinitesimal compared to being shot or by a gun or hit by a drunk driver is seemingly unimportant. For some obscure reason killing a couple of people with a bomb and a cause is a threat to national security, while gunning down a dozen people in the streets of Chicago is just crime. And the mere mention of national security means the Constitution is likely to be assaulted. I am constantly amazed that the same people who constantly remind us that men died to preserve the freedoms we exercise, especially when we criticize the government and military, are among the first to accept limitations on those freedoms whenever the cry of national security is raised.

But even more annoying than the surveillance programs and the sanctimonious defense of the same is the stupefying and frequently ludicrous application of secrecy. Is there nothing done by our government that is not classified? Of course, left to itself the government, in all its manifestations, would classify everything; it is the easiest way to cover mistakes, avoid blame and embarrassment and do illegal things. The spooks obviously feel better when the public knows nothing, but generals and politicians can also operate more freely and feel superior and important when they know stuff the public is unaware of.

The constant refrain is that revealing pretty much anything about our security apparatus damages national security, though exactly how is inevitably left vague. We are told, for example, that the outing of NSA’s PRISM program has caused “serious and irreversible damage to this nation.” What, now all of a sudden the terrorists realize it is dangerous to use cell phones and credit cards? Those plotting acts against America could hardly be that stupid; the stupid guys get to blow themselves up in Kabul. Except among the stupid in the US, of whom there seem to be many (one even sits on the Intelligence Committee – Michele Bachmann), such outlandish claims only further undermine the already almost non-existent credibility of the government on these issues. Incidentally, that same person, General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, also claimed the revelation undermined our relations to our allies, a rare burst of truth from such a source.

Why is the very budget of the NSA secret? What can our enemies conclude from knowing exactly how much money is poured into the agency, when simply knowing that is a very large amount is enough to make a terrorist wary? The only sensible reason is to hide the coast and extent of the NSA’s activities from the American public, which is exactly what is happening. And for political reasons the government is now revealing little bits of information regarding the NSA’s programs. Well, if this stuff can be declassified now without hurting our security, why was it classified in the first place?

This can get very silly. James Clapper lied to Congress because he would have violated the laws binding him to secrecy had he replied truthfully. Rep. Peter King, a poster child for ignorance, further explained that the Committee had placed the Director in an “untenable” position by asking him the question at all, even though Clapper was advised ahead of the hearing that he would be asked this. Sen. Ron Wyden, who asked the question, later stated that he knew Clapper was lying but could not say so without violating his own security clearance agreements. Clapper later explained that faced with the problem he answered “no” as the “most truthful, or least untruthful” reply. He might just as well used the expression “truthiness.” He lied, plain and simple, and his explanation only makes him look either disingenuous or stupid – or perhaps both.

But the whole business is in fact very serious for us, the people. The Patriot Act is of course a public document, but apparently exactly how the government interprets its clauses is different from what one might suppose from reading the law. Naturally, that interpretation is secret, presumably because any terrorist can read the law and thus undermine its effectiveness by understanding its provisions. Or because the government is abusing even the broad unconstitutional powers granted by the Act.

And the most nefarious and ultimately destructive part of this compilation of police state laws is the provision for the establishment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is to provide the “oversight” promised by the politicians. Of course, the court is secret. It is staffed by judges appointed by the Chief Justice for seven year terms, and this should comfort us inasmuch as the Supreme Court is the defender of the Constitution, which, however, many scholars believe has already been violated by the Patriot Act itself. There is no defense; the Justice Department makes its case for a warrant, and the judge decides, apparently positively in the vast majority of instances. The arguments, the targets, the outcome and the information acquired are all secret.

No one is actually being tried before this court, although the decision to grant a warrant to the FBI might be considered the first step in a judicial process that could culminate in an individual’s arrest or death. Nevertheless, it is a secret court, an institution traditionally associated with oppressive governments. Like blowing up American citizens with a Hellfire missile (after a secret judgment in the White House), this court rests on a very slippery slope and establishes an incredibly dangerous precedent. The next step is a secret court to try American citizens because the evidence used by the prosecution must be kept secret in the interests of national security, a development already emerging is the trials of foreign nationals and resident aliens. The Patriot Act is transforming the Federal Bureau of Investigation into an actual Geheime Staatspolizei.

Head of the FBI

I see little hope. The technology of spying has become so sophisticated, especially in connection with the information and communications structures, that resistance seems futile. Not only has it become easier for the security services to spy and keep their operations secret, but the new electronic technologies are just too damn useful to the government, particularly regarding domestic concerns, and a generally ignorant Congress will continue to legalize activity ultimately destructive to a democratic society. The Constitution is of course protected by the Supreme Court, but some of their recent decisions do not fill me with hope. Besides, I am guessing that most of this stuff is also kept secret from the Justices.

One final thing: is Michele Bachmann actually entrusted with secrets?

War without End, Amen

Jun7

Chancellor Obama

On September 21, 2001 Congress passed the Authorization to Use Military Force act, the legislation that essentially allowed the President and military to wage war on “terrorism” anywhere, anytime and seemingly forever. In an impressive imitation of the German parliament under Hitler Congress, after virtually no debate, approved the act with an almost unanimous vote; apart from a few abstentions there was only a single nay cast in both houses. That no vote was cast by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Cal), who is now sponsoring a bill, HR 198, that would repeal the AUMF.

The Patriot Act, another demonstration of incredible political cowardice, is of course much more pernicious domestically, with its constitutionally dubious provisions for dramatically enhancing the powers of the country’s security apparatus while undermining civil liberties. The Patriot Act (always be suspicious of legislation with the word “patriot” in the title) immediately reminded me of the Enabling Act of 1933, which essentially allowed Hitler to henceforth govern by decree: both were justified by “threats” to national security (9/11, the burning of the Reichstag) and both increased the power of the state and undermined the democratic constitution. And since no government will voluntarily surrender power the life of the Patriot Act, like the Enabling Act, has been constantly extended, most recently by that defender of freedom, Barack Obama, whom we now know is collecting information on Americans on a scale unmatched by any dictatorship in history.

In some ways the AUMF is the foreign affairs counterpart to the Patriot Act. It dramatically increases the power and scope of the executive, military and CIA in waging war overseas and obviously allows the transgression of international covenants we are pledged to defend, once again in the name of national security, the favorite excuse of every authoritarian state. Even better than the Patriot Act, the AUMF has no sunset clause, presumably because the war against terror will last so long as there is even a single individual contemplating violence against the United State, which is to say, forever.

President Obama, who was apparently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize simply for replacing George Bush, is now using the AUMF to “wage war,” i.e., assassinate people, to an extent the Bush administration could only dream of. Obama thus joins such notables as Henry Kissinger, Menachim Begin and Yasser Arafat in the contest to see which Nobel Peace laureate has the most blood on his hands. And his administration has just made it clear, at least in White House language, that the war is likely to continue for another ten or twenty years. We could be going for a record here.

Lee’s bill is doomed to failure, because the forces perpetuating the forever war are simply too strong for Congress to resist, not that it takes that much to cow our noble leaders. Unlike the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, it is not economic pressures that play a major role, since drone warfare is relatively cheap, and for Haliburton, Blackwater Mercs, Amalgamated Latrine Diggers, et al. there is in this case little “money to be made, supplying the army with the tools of the trade.” Instead, the forces behind the forever war are institutional: the Presidency, federal security and intelligence agencies and the military.

Governments are the ultimate beneficiaries of wars, assuming they win them. Threats to national security, particularly those that are seen as internal to the country, have always been a grand justification for the state, especially the executive, to accumulate more power, and the security threat is most obvious and useful when the country is actually at war, whether or not the enemy is seriously a threat. The beauty of the forever war, of course, is that is in fact forever. Crises need not be invented, because inasmuch as the country is always in a state of war, it is also always in the midst of a politically useful crisis. Further, not only can we not lose the war on terror but it also does not need to be won, so long as terrorists (or reasonable facsimiles) are being blown up. Even a failure, such as a successful serious terror attack in the country, provides a platform for seeking more authority and more leeway in the exercise of that authority. It’s a politician’s dream come true.

The Executive branch clearly benefits, certainly in its relationship to the Congress. The President of the United States now has more power, both in domestic and foreign affairs, than he has ever had, even, I would suggest, during the Second World War. Governments do not willingly surrender power. Much of the power accumulated during the war against Germany and Japan was retained by the Presidency, and more was added by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a fine example of war – or shadow war – playing into the hands of the executive and military. Some of that authority was rescinded by the War Powers Act, but not all, and the measure in fact enshrines the idea that the President can commit the country to war without getting anyone’s approval by granting an exception: in case of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

Presidential authority and the mechanisms for exercising that authority clearly skyrocketed after 9/11, leading to two costly wars that really did not involve the American public. Barack Obama has now dramatically underscored the point that all governments crave power; the putative liberal and one time critic of the Bush administration’s abuses has preserved all those emergency powers, which are now being used on a whole new scale. The obsession with secrecy and leaks, which has resulted in an administration even more opaque than the previous one, obviously has a lot to do with preventing the public from realizing just how extensive and questionable the government’s activities are.

New digs for CIA spooks

The forever war is a bonanza for the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and whatever other security and intelligence groups that are mucking about the country. Since the war against terrorism has a domestic component our secret police, the FBI, has an unending excuse for enhanced activities, even those of constitutional questionable nature, and a basis for demanding more money. Nobody, probably not even members of Congress, really knows exactly what the mandate and powers of the NSA are since this set of spooks makes the CIA look positively transparent, but clearly it is involved in domestic affairs, whether legally or illegally, who knows? Intelligence agencies always do well in times of war, and we can expect the NSA to see increases in its funding, though we will not see them, since the agency’s budget is also secret.

The big winner in the forever war is the CIA (probably; who knows what the NSA is doing?), inasmuch as it is directly involved in foreign affairs and external threats to the US. Such agencies inevitably grow larger in times of war, and in this regard the forever war is perfect, since it is against shadowy individuals scattered around the planet. Consequently, the CIA becomes more important and plays a bigger role than the military, and the organization that was formally prohibited from assassination in 1975 now does so openly and with heavy weapons. Why drone warfare and serious weaponry was put in the hands of an intelligence agency, particularly one with a history of incompetence and law-breaking, rather than the military is not at all clear. Perhaps because they were considered better at secrecy and deception than the military.

While the forever war is essentially in the hands of its competitors, the military still benefits, since a war is a war, even one in which traditional armed forces have only a limited role. Any war means budget increases for the Pentagon and provides them squealing points should any traitorous politician suggest their budget be cut. Besides, the forever war is everywhere, which means more military personnel planted around the world. And those aircraft carriers will be real handy for launching drones.

NSA. Try to get in there.

None of these people have any serious reason to see the war on terror end; it is simply too good for business. And it will not end, since it is unlikely there will ever come a moment when nobody is interested in killing Americans, especially since every drone strike, every violation of others’ national sovereignty is creating more jihadists. So, the war on terror can even be good for terrorists.

The only real losers are the American people and their Constitution.

How Dare Those Wogs Bomb Us?

Apr26

The Boston marathon terror bombings have revealed again the extensive – and typically negative – role American media plays in such attacks. Regardless of the extent of the damage, regardless of the real impact of the event and inevitably regardless of any sense of perspective the media outlets, especially the television news channels, play any attack for all its worth, indulging in an orgy of strained and meaningless coverage and righteous indignation. To be sure, this sort of thing also happens when students are massacred, especially children, but the attention only comes when the casualty list is long and fades without any action taken by government.

Nothing obliterates all other news in America like a “terrorist” attack. More than a week later and with the bombers killed or captured CNN was still devoting all its airtime to this single issue; even ESPN and the NFL channel bumped their programming for a day or two to talk about the incident. This meant seeing the bombing videos over and over and over and being treated to increasingly vapid and uninformative interviews. And everyone felt obliged to put their own touch on the story: CNN of course trucked out the heavies, Blitzer, Cooper and Gupta, while my local media scored a couple of New Mexico runners who had been at the marathon. The unending expressions of grief and outrage could hardly fail to become unconvincing. Does Wolf Blitzer actually pray for the victims in the news, as he says he does?

The down side of all this media fawning is of course that we are in effect rewarding the terrorist scum with seemingly endless air time and vastly exaggerating the impact and importance of their petty (in the great scheme of things) murders. This is the dramatic overreaction that accompanies any attack involving an apparent foreign enemy, though the perpetrators themselves might actually be Americans. Reason and perspective fly out the window, and the deaths of four or five people become a national tragedy, even though such would be a slow day for murder in many American cities. The suggested message is clear: we can slaughter dozens of our own neighbors, but you foreigners watch out. And murdering on behalf of some weirdo notion of Islam means “foreigner,” even if the criminals are Americans. A clear sign of this distinction: donations to the Boston victims have reached $14 million, while those for the victims of the Texas fertilizer explosion, which killed fourteen, wounded hundreds and devastated an entire town, are up to only $1 million.

As Europe has observed, our rage and retaliation in the wake of such acts seems way out of proportion to the damage actually done. Granted, two skyscrapers obliterated and some 3000 people dead is serious business, but the reaction was two essentially pointless wars and several hundred thousand Iraqis and Afghanis dead, not to mention the squandering of American lives and treasure. Worse, 9/11 was our Reichstag moment, beginning an ongoing assault on American civil liberties and accepted international law, which has only escalated under the Obama administration. The Patriot Act, unread by those who voted for it and containing clearly unconstitutional provisions, was a product of fear, ignorance and pressure from the country’s security apparatuses. To be sure, it falls short of the 1933 Enabling Act that formed the foundation of Hitler’s power, but it has tremendously increased the power of the executive, particularly in the areas of domestic surveillance and detention and waging war independent of Congress.

The Brothers Tsarnaev: Tamerlan, we hardly knew ya.

This time the governmental response has been far more measured, perhaps because the casualties were so limited and the perpetrators were so quickly dealt with, but Rep. Peter King, a man who is as blatantly anti-Muslim as one can be and still hold office, is already calling for increased surveillance of the already over-surveilled American Muslim community. And of course the petty beings who inhabit Congress are carping about who is to blame and making demands for a level of security that could only be achieved by the complete abnegation of the Constitution. In contrast the Middleton school massacre has resulted in absolutely no action, even though an incredible 90% of Americans support better gun control. The jihadist lobby obviously lacks the clout of the NRA.

“National security” has always been the clarion call of political oppression, and now the threat of “terrorism” has allowed for a never ending crisis justifying a never ending period of emergency measures and war. The definition of these two terms is also deliberately left vague. In the most obvious meaning of the term there has not been a serious threat to our national security since the Japanese Empire and the USSR, and even terrorists with nuclear weapons could not really threaten the destruction of the state. Now, however, blowing up a single American raises the issue of national security as readily as an invading army heading for our shores, so long as that individual is blown up by a Muslim or a foreigner. I seem to recall that Timothy McVeigh did not elicit cries of national security. Nor was he generally called a terrorist, though destroying innocents to make a point is the typical understanding of terrorism. You simply must be acting for a foreign cause, which in the American mind means Islam.

There is of course in all this a huge element of hypocrisy and double standards. Presumably every national/ethnic group considers its own people more valuable than others, but with its superior technology the west was able to take the “wog” idea to extremes: “Human life is cheap for them.” Well, we may plead self-defense as we assassinate people around the world, but the “just wogs” attitude is perfectly clear in our disregard for the innocents we are killing daily. Because of the staggering amount of secrecy – they only acknowledge the drone strikes because an exploding missile is difficult to cover up – accurate numbers are difficult to obtain, but even allowing for the most conservative figures we are on the average slaughtering with each strike far more innocents than the Chechin brothers did. But of course they killed Americans. The President and his spooks are just killing wogs, who probably intended to hurt us anyway.

My poor country. What happened to us?

Updated Republican Policy Guide

Aug27

(Yes, this is essentially a repeat and it is being posted early, but it seems appropriate to post the Policy Guide on the occasion of the Republican Convention. If you have not seen it, you might want to check out the immediately preceding post: Das Mitt Romney Lied. Get together with you friends and sing!)

Economy

1. A graduated income tax is socialism.

2. Any government mandated distribution of wealth is socialism.

3. Specifically taxing the wealthy is class warfare.

4. Any wealthy person, even a market speculator, is a “job creator.”

5. Poverty is always the result of individual character failure.

6. The free market always works in our best interests.

7. The deficit can be eradicated by cutting government programs.

Government

1. Any government regulation is inherently bad, unless it is aimed at labor unions or recreational drugs.

2. Any government plan to supply medical care is socialism, unless the care is for veterans.

3. The only valid function of government is to support a strong military and security apparatus.

4. Our constitutional rights are given to us by God.

National Security

1. The most important element of national security is the military.

2. The defense of freedom requires giving up some freedoms.

3. Leaking any classified information, no matter how important it is for the people to know and no matter how old it is, is treason.

4. The military knows best what resources it should have.

5. A suspected terrorist, even if an American citizen, may be detained indefinitely.

6. Because of national security needs, the government may employ secret witnesses and evidence.

7. The free press is inherently a threat to national security.

8. Islam is inherently a threat to national security.

9. Allowing any authority besides the military and intelligence agencies to deal with foreign and domestic enemies is inherently a threat to national security.

Foreign Policy

1. America is qualitatively different from and consequently better than other industrial democracies.

2. America has the right to violate the sovereignty of any other country if it feels threatened.

3. Other countries have no right to violate the sovereignty of America for any reason.

4. America has absolutely no obligation to observe international law or conventions.

5. The United Nations is a tool of America’s enemies and seeks to limit our sovereignty.

6. Our only important and faithful ally is Israel.

7. American foreign policy in the Middle East is what Israel says it is.

8. Russia is the major threat to the United States.

9. Canada is a part of the United States filled with foreigners.

Energy and Environment

1. America’s best energy plan is to produce more oil and coal.

2. Coal is clean energy source.

3. Renewable energy is inherently a threat to national security and probably socialist.

4. The natural environment is to be mastered for the benefit of the economy.

5. Hunting is the natural relationship between humans and animals.

6. God gave Christians the world to use.

6. Global warming, if it even exists, is a natural cyclical phenomenon.

Society

1. Medical care need not be available to the average citizen to be considered “excellent.”

2. Failure is always the result of individual character defects.

3. Citizens should be permitted to practice any non-Christian false religion they wish to.

4. Catholicism may not be a Christian religion.

5. Mormonism is not a Christian religion.

6. The only valid purpose of science is to provide new technology.

7. Evolution is only a theory, unlike Genesis.

8. Sex education is inherently a threat to national security.

9. Fertilized eggs and corporations are “persons.”

10. While there is legitimate rape, most rape results from the woman “asking for it.”

11. Women are equal to men, but their natural place is in the home.

Patriotism

1. A patriot may be identified by his flag lapel pin.

2. Criticizing any military action is unpatriotic and dishonors the military personnel involved.

3. A veteran, no matter how decorated, dishonors himself and his country if he criticizes the war in which he fought.

4. Criticizing the government during wartime, that is, whenever we are being threatened, is unpatriotic and inherently a threat to national security.

5. Any protestor is a “hippie,” unless it is a conservative cause.

6. Believing “My country right or wrong” is unpatriotic since our country is never wrong.

7. Democrats are unpatriotic and inherently a threat to national security.

Politspeak

Jul27

Politicians are of course accustomed to spin every fact and carefully craft every public statement, attempting to insure that absolutely nothing negative, embarrassing or revealing is said (a habit that unfortunately has spread to NFL head coaches). The result is that a minimum of information is conveyed, and what there is is wrapped in platitudes and fine sounding nothing. But there is a sort of code that can be recognized and deciphered, although it is not as precise as that used by the military, which after all must generally deal with verifiable concrete facts (collateral damage – dead innocents; degraded military unit – bodies blown all over the countryside). Here is a sampling, many of them fairly familiar.

1. I want to spend more time with my family/explore new opportunities. (Polls show I will not be reelected/They just fired my ass.)

2. Mistakes were made. (I or someone under my supervision screwed up.)

3. The American people want… (My party wants…)

4. We need to energize the base. (We need to pander to the extremists in our party.)

5. The security of Israel is of paramount interest. (I want to get reelected.)

6. The level of military funding is dangerously low. (There is an armaments plant in my district.)

7. We must not infringe upon states’ rights. (My state does not like Blacks/gays/ abortions.)

8. The other party is playing politics. (The other party does not agree with me.)

9. We must protect the job creators. (We must protect the filthy rich who fund my campaigns.)

10. I am for protecting life. (I oppose abortion and support the death penalty.)

11. I am for choice. (I support abortion.)

12. I am a man/woman of the people. (My net worth is less than one million.)

13. I am proud to have served my country. (I’m glad I didn’t have to work for a living/serve in the military.)

14. To the best of my recollection… (I’m certainly not going to tell you anything incriminating.)

15. I am taking care of the people’s business. (I am running for reelection/on a junket/lining my pockets.)

16. We must defend religious freedom. (We must make the country safe for Christianity.)

17. I respect my colleague’s opinion. (My colleague is full of shit.)

18. At that point in time… (Then.)

19. We cannot afford to look weak. (There is an armaments plant in my district.)

20. The government requires these powers to maintain our national security. (We are the party in power.)

21. The government possesses too much power. (We are not the party in power.)

22. This is the worst sort of negative campaigning. (The ad is true.)

23. He is a Washington insider. (He has been in office longer than I have.)

24. We need to bring the country together. (Everyone should agree with us.)

25. He engages in class warfare. (He talks about income disparity.)

26. He is no friend to the poor. (Please believe that I am.)

27. This is a personnel matter. (We are engaging in illegal activity.)

28. This is still under investigation. (We don’t want to embarrass our colleagues.)

29. There are few rotten apples. (Most of us are guilty.)

30. This bill is filled with pork. (None of the pork in this bill is going to my state.)

31. I support free speech, but… (I support free speech unless I or my constituents find it offensive.)

32. I support the establishment of democracy. (I support the establishment of democracy until they elect someone we don’t like.)

33. We have a zero tolerance policy. (We can’t be bothered thinking/We don’t want to get sued.)

34. We are all in this together. (I won’t be losing my job.)

35. I love America. (Where else could I hold a state office?)

36. He is an elitist. (He uses words I can’t understand.)

37. We recognize the legitimate security needs of Israel. (We will ignore the international law we are sworn to uphold.)

38. He leaked classified material. (He revealed something embarrassing to my party.)

39. I have not yet studied the document. (My staff has not yet told me what I should say.)

40. We have reached across the aisle in a bipartisan spirit. (We are voting on our own benefits.)

President Obama and His Stone Cold Killers

Jun22

Barack Obama’s fall from grace has been startling. The laurel of the Nobel Peace Prize rests uneasy on the brow of a man who possesses and uses the power to kill anyone virtually anywhere on the planet, seemingly free from any oversight whatsoever. Apart from a better command of the English language it is becoming difficult to discern any difference between Obama and his predecessor, as he carries on the post-9/11 crusade of increased domestic surveillance, violation of international law and the endless war against terrorism that supposedly justifies this behavior.

Of all his promises to dismantle the immoral, legally questionable and frequently counterproductive practices of the Bush security apparatus he has kept only one: to ban the use of torture in interrogations (and one wonders how thoroughly this is observed in the back rooms and undisclosed locations of our countless intelligence agencies). Otherwise, Guantanamo remains open, detainees will receive military trials, more troops were sent to Afghanistan, none of the provisions of the Patriot Act have been rescinded, Israel continues to determine our policy in the Middle East, the “too-big-to-fail” banks are now even bigger and the military budget continues to grow.

In contrast to that of Bush his was to be the most transparent administration in history, when in fact it may be even more opaque. At this very moment he is using the ever popular “executive privilege” to withhold information potentially damaging to his Attorney General, Eric Holder. But much more telling are his efforts to plug leaks to the media. In 1917 Congress passed the Espionage Act, which, as the name suggests, was designed to provide the government with the tools to prosecute those supplying American secrets to a foreign power, i.e., spies. In the 95 years since then the Act has been used on nine occasions to prosecute Americans responsible for leaking classified information not to a potential enemy state but rather to the American media, and thus the American public. The legality of this use of the law has been questioned and the issue is still not settled, but this is of course a quibble for any government interested in employing this very useful political weapon. Of those nine instances of the Espionage Act being misused six fall under the Obama administration.

On the foreign front Obama is as oblivious to traditional international standards of behavior as was Bush. Regard for national sovereignty (except our own) continues to erode, as we carry on drone strikes in Pakistan against their wishes and violate the air space of Iran and other countries. Despite the objections of the Afghan government our military continues launching the night raids universally hated by the Afghanis. We are threatening a sovereign nation, Iran, with military action because they might be enriching uranium which might be used for a bomb which might be used against Israel, if the Iranian government could possibly be that stupid and suicidal. We have implemented economic and financial sanctions against them that would be considered tantamount to an act of war if done to us. We have fully adopted the Israeli notion that if you think a state might be a threat at some time in the future, you are justified in attacking them, an understanding of international relations that Hitler would have delighted in. And our chief legal authority, Attorney General Holder, has assured us that all this is completely in accordance with international law.

Then there is the drone, in the use of which Obama has made Bush seem a piker. Of course, it is cheap, it is an effective killer and it puts no Americans in harm’s way. More than 2300 individuals, including three American citizens, have been executed by drone launched missiles, requiring us to believe that over two thousand people were so threatening to our security that we had to kill them all. Well, not all of them were that threatening, since the figure includes hundreds of men, women and children who just happened to be too near someone the US decided was a top terrorist. How many dead innocents? Who knows? The government is reluctant to release that sort of information, and in any case we have only their word that the actual target was himself worth killing.

Now we know the President keeps a “to kill” list, but exactly how one manages to get on this list is of course classified. Given the great job the military did in rounding up innocent Afghan farmers for a stay at Club Gitmo, one might justifiably wonder about some of these deaths by Hellfire. Naturally, the Attorney General assures us that these “enemy combatants” must be “senior operational leaders,” who are planning an attack, cannot be captured easily and live in a country that has given us permission to assassinate its people. This apparently does not apply to operations in Pakistan, which constantly objects to our strikes. Or in Yemen, where lack of intelligence has lead the military/CIA to conclude from “patterns of behavior” – routines, places visited, associates, etc. – whether an individual is a terrorist who deserves to be exploded. Could this be getting out of hand?

It is wonderful to think of murdering barbarian scum being vaporized by American technology, but the problem is that many, if not most of those having their body parts scattered across the countryside are not in fact murdering scum but rather the inevitable innocent bystanders, or “splats” as the military more honestly calls them in private. This is hardly endearing us to the populations we ostensibly want to help and only contributes to the creation of martyrs. Another problem, more disturbing, is that in three instances the murdering scum were American citizens, meaning that the President, in consultation with his generals and spooks, has acted as judge and executioner in the deaths of Americans. The slopes do not get more slippery than this.

I fear for the Republic. Domestic surveillance, both legal and questionable, has increased dramatically in the wake of the destruction of the Reichstag..I mean, Twin Towers. American citizens can now be detained without charge for some indefinite period, and the constant cries of “secret” and “national security” make all terrorism trials problematic with regard to evidence. Somehow the CIA, an intelligence agency once prohibited from assassinating people, has now acquired heavy weaponry and the authority to blow up individuals around the world. The President, on very dubious grounds, seemingly now has the right to send American military forces virtually anywhere, never mind Congressional authorization. Like the dictators we frequently work with he may now order the execution of anyone he, the military and the intelligence agencies decide upon. And like the Japanese seventy years ago and the Israelis more recently we have adopted the concept of the “protective reaction strike,” which allows us to attack anyone we deem potentially threatening. This used to be called a “war of aggression” and we prosecuted Germans for it not so long ago.

The Obama administration is demonstrating something more cynical historians have long believed: the prime directive of any government, be it a democracy, military dictatorship, absolute monarchy or whatever, is to defend and increase its power. No government, even one momentarily controlled by a liberal speaking President, will ever willingly surrender power. And unfortunately the American people are demonstrating no inclination to change this situation, if it is even possible, given the utter stranglehold the Democratic and Republican parties hold over our system.

qqduckus

A professional historian and wise ass considers the contemporary world and the past

Category Archives: US