The absence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda--and, apparently, the critical media response to that absence--has prompted the Pentagon to squelch a report on the matter.
Produced by the the Institute for Defense Analyses and titled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents," only the executive summary (redacted, natch) has been made available.
The summary document includes quotes such as this one from Saddam: " ... when they say anything about Iraq--[like] Iraq supports terrorism--then they have to say that Iraq has documents on this issue and [we] don't ..."
Says the study, although the "Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism ... [of a] disparate mix of pan-Arab revolutionary causes and emerging pan-Islamic radical movements ... this study found no 'smoking gun' (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda."
Further, the study noted, "the predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq."
Of course, the report runs counter to repeated claims by the Bush Administration that Saddam worked with al-Qaeda.
George Bush in September 2002: "al Qaeda hides, Saddam doesn't, but the danger is, is that they work in concert. The danger is, is that al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world. Both of them need to be dealt with. The war on terror, you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."
And to think--what a surprise--that a taxpayer-funded report contradicting administration "intelligence" on the matter hasn't been released to the public (technically, it is available "only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia," according to ABCNews, but it won't be posted online as originally intended.).
Several conservative outlets, such as the Weekly Standard, have in the past repeated the assertion of a linkage between Saddam and al-Qaeda. In 2005, Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn wrote, "the evidence we present below, compiled from revelations in recent months, suggests an acute case of denial on the part of those who dismiss the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship."
What follows is a list of what I imagine an attorney would term, at best, circumstantial evidence--for example:
"1. from 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades.
2. A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994.
3. The detainee admitted he was a member of the Taliban.
4. The detainee pledged allegiance to the supreme leader of the Taliban to help them take over all of Afghanistan," among others.
My goodness. That surely proves a connection between--what?--a single Iraqi and the Taliban? It's obvious to all of us that, therefore, Osama bin-Laden plotted with Saddam Hussein to bring down the WTC, defeat the US and establish a global Caliphate ruled jointly by Hussein and bin-Laden.
Ah, but there's that pesky 9/11 Report which has this:
"Responding to a presidential tasking, [counter-terrorism chief Richard] Clarke’s office sent a memo to Rice on September 18, titled 'Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks.' Rice’s chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda.The memo found no 'compelling case' that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks ... arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconventional weapons."
(emphasis added)
And let us might remind ourselves of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Report which found, "the data reveal few indications of an established relationship between al-Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein's regime before September 11, 2001."
Nevertheless, as George Bush said in 2004, "the reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda."
Behold that Bushism: It's the truth because it's the truth.
Even though it isn't.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
An Admiral "Resigns" and More War Threatens
It's a bad sign, to put it mildly, that Admiral William Fallon, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East (CENTCOM), has "resigned" due to his opposition to the Washington nomenklatura's lip-licking, salivating insistence on attacking Iran.
Depressingly, this increases the possibility/probability of an expansion and acceleration of this seemingly eternal War on Terror.
It would be an understandable, were this administration possessed with some equanimity, to argue that Fallon's departure is the result of an unacceptable divergence from policy by a subordinate. After all, this is a republic where the military must defer to the civilian leadership.
And as a matter of principle, few would disagree.
But--and this is certainly obvious nearly eight years into a disastrous "governance"--George Bush and Co. remain as arrogant, belligerent and threatening as ever. And all signs point to more of the same following Fallon's departure. In any case, there was no "official" disagreement between Fallon and the White House to begin with, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Speaking with utter believability, Gates said of Fallon's resignation/retirement, "I believe it was the right thing to do, even though I do not believe there are, in fact, significant differences between his views and administration policy ... [although] I think there is this misperception out there that there were."
Then again, when Fallon was interviewed by al-Jazeera last September, he said of Iran, as reported by the Financial Times, "this constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me, which is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war and that is what we ought to be working for."
Prior to that, he apparently ruffled feathers in Washington by improving military relations with China which resulted in, as Esquire put it, "the Pentagon and Congress ... realizing that their favorite 'programs of record' (i.e., weapons systems and major vehicle platforms) were threatened by such talks that the shit hit the fan."
Said Fallon, "I blew my stack. I told [then-Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld, Just look at this shit. I go up to the Hill and I get three or four guys grabbing me and jerking me out of the aisle, all because somebody came up and told them that the sky was going to cave in."
Sec. Gates said that Fallon "told me that, quote, 'The current embarrassing situation, public perception of differences between my views and administration policy, and the distraction this causes from the mission make this the rigbt [sic] thing to do,' unquote."
Gates insisted, throughout the course of his public statement on the matter, that Fallon "was fully supportive of" administration policy regarding Iran, that there was a public "misperception" about it, but that there were no "differences at all" between the admiral and the White House.
Yet, as Esquire put it, "well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way."
When a reporter at Gates' press conference, referring to the Esquire article, said "there was a line in that ... story that said that basically if Fallon gets fired, it means we're going to war with Iran. Can you just address that --"
Gates said, "well, it's just ridiculous. It's ridiculous ... the notion that this decision portends anything in terms of a change in Iran policy is, to quote myself, ridiculous."
Huh.
Okay, then.
I guess that's settled.
Depressingly, this increases the possibility/probability of an expansion and acceleration of this seemingly eternal War on Terror.
It would be an understandable, were this administration possessed with some equanimity, to argue that Fallon's departure is the result of an unacceptable divergence from policy by a subordinate. After all, this is a republic where the military must defer to the civilian leadership.
And as a matter of principle, few would disagree.
But--and this is certainly obvious nearly eight years into a disastrous "governance"--George Bush and Co. remain as arrogant, belligerent and threatening as ever. And all signs point to more of the same following Fallon's departure. In any case, there was no "official" disagreement between Fallon and the White House to begin with, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Speaking with utter believability, Gates said of Fallon's resignation/retirement, "I believe it was the right thing to do, even though I do not believe there are, in fact, significant differences between his views and administration policy ... [although] I think there is this misperception out there that there were."
Then again, when Fallon was interviewed by al-Jazeera last September, he said of Iran, as reported by the Financial Times, "this constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me, which is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war and that is what we ought to be working for."
Prior to that, he apparently ruffled feathers in Washington by improving military relations with China which resulted in, as Esquire put it, "the Pentagon and Congress ... realizing that their favorite 'programs of record' (i.e., weapons systems and major vehicle platforms) were threatened by such talks that the shit hit the fan."
Said Fallon, "I blew my stack. I told [then-Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld, Just look at this shit. I go up to the Hill and I get three or four guys grabbing me and jerking me out of the aisle, all because somebody came up and told them that the sky was going to cave in."
Sec. Gates said that Fallon "told me that, quote, 'The current embarrassing situation, public perception of differences between my views and administration policy, and the distraction this causes from the mission make this the rigbt [sic] thing to do,' unquote."
Gates insisted, throughout the course of his public statement on the matter, that Fallon "was fully supportive of" administration policy regarding Iran, that there was a public "misperception" about it, but that there were no "differences at all" between the admiral and the White House.
Yet, as Esquire put it, "well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way."
When a reporter at Gates' press conference, referring to the Esquire article, said "there was a line in that ... story that said that basically if Fallon gets fired, it means we're going to war with Iran. Can you just address that --"
Gates said, "well, it's just ridiculous. It's ridiculous ... the notion that this decision portends anything in terms of a change in Iran policy is, to quote myself, ridiculous."
Huh.
Okay, then.
I guess that's settled.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Hollywood, the Wars and an Untrusting Audience
Where does the American public stand, really, on the Iraq War specifically and the War on Terror generally?
Many people have, since these wars began, protested vociferously, loudly and repeatedly for them to end (indeed, in the case of Iraq, for it not to begin).
And yet they go on.
Is it because we've, collectively, failed to persuade elected representatives of our rejection of them? Is it that those representatives feel safe to disregard that rejection out of the belief that only fringe elements feel so strongly? In short, is it that, at bottom, there simply aren't enough people who stand against perpetual war compared with those who reflexively support the Bush Administration?
According to recent polling data from Rasmussen Reports, "46% of likely voters believe the U.S. and its allies are winning the War on Terror," while a combined 49% say either "the terrorists" are winning or neither is the case.
"Short-term optimism about the War in Iraq is greater than long-term optimism" where "45% say it will ultimately be judged a failure".
Gallup, meanwhile, polled Americans in late January/early February and found "that a majority of Americans continue to express opposition to the war in Iraq, attitudes that are unchanged in the last two months ... 57% of Americans say it was a mistake for the United States to send troops to Iraq, while 41% say it was not a mistake. Those numbers are identical to what Gallup measured in late November/early December.
This broad measure of the correctness of the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq has not changed much, even with more positive assessments of U.S. progress in Iraq in the last three months."
It seems safe to say that most Americans aren't generally happy with their government's war-related policies.
Yet Hollywood's attempts to to address the issue through such films as Redacted, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, Grace is Gone, Lions for Lambs, and A Mighty Heart (which, I suppose, doesn't count since it's a non-American film) have been met with a box office thud. Surely they weren't all poor films (although Time's Richard Corliss says, fairly or not, "the great Iraq movie--like a solution to the current Iraq quandary--is still a thing to hope for").
Rendition brought in less than $10 million. The Valley of Elah under $7 million. Redacted slightly more than $65 thousand. Lions for Lambs a little more than $15 million. And A Mighty Heart with Angelina Jolie generated a mere $9 million.
How did they do on dvd? According to Rotten Tomatoes, Rendition has brought in $5 million thus far. In The Valley of Elah some $4.5+ million.
What, then, does this reveal about public attitudes and Hollywood's efforts?
NY Times critic A.O. Scott, in a November 2007 review of Brian De Palma's Redacted, wrote that "Mr. De Palma’s premise, implicit in his choice of title and stated in many interviews and public pronouncements, is that the truth about Iraq has been edited and obscured, kept away from the American public," but that "I think he may have misdiagnosed the condition of the audience, which is not lack of information about Iraq but rather a pervasive moral and political paralysis."
But "pervasive moral and political paralysis" is a better description of American politicians than its citizens.
Many have tried to explain why it's taken so long to make such movies and/or why audiences aren't responding.
Michael Cieply of the NY Times noted that "in the past, Hollywood usually gave the veteran more breathing space. William Wyler’s 'Best Years of Our Lives,' about the travails of those returning from World War II, was released more than a year after the war’s end. Similarly Hal Ashby’s 'Coming Home' and Oliver Stone’s 'Born on the Fourth of July, both stories of Vietnam veterans, came well after the fall of Saigon."
But today, according to Scott Rudin who's a producer of the upcoming Stop-Loss, "media in general responds much more quickly than ever before. Why shouldn’t movies do the same?"
To John Patterson of the Guardian, this has been anything but a quick response: "The Hollywood studios have taken their own sweet time facing up to the Iraq war. The conflict has dragged on for four and a half years, longer than America's involvement in the second world war, yet only now is Hollywood beginning to address it head on. And even though documentarists have been tearing into the subject almost from the beginning ... Iraq seems to have utterly paralysed Hollywood's ability to address war with its usual vigour and bloodthirsty enthusiasm."
Lew Harris of Movies.com said, in an AFP article, that "these movies have to be entertaining. You can't just take a movie and make it anti-war or anti-torture and expect to draw people in. That's what happened with 'Rendition' and it has been a disaster. People want war movies to have a slam-bang adventure feel to them ... But Iraq is a difficult war to portray in a kind of rah-rah-rah, exciting way."
Equally bizarre was the view of John Cooper of the Sundance Film Festival that audiences are "ready for funny. Film-makers haven't said all there is to say about the war in Iraq, but I think audiences are saturated."
I suspect audiences are less saturated than wary and are simply not inclined to trust Hollywood or other media when it comes to coverage--dramatic or otherwise--of these wars.
Why should they? The mainstream media, inclusive of Hollywood, is part of the elite and the seller of bills of goods.
When Harris Interactive found that "over half of Americans say they tend not to trust the press," they were of course referring to cable and network news, print media and radio. Had they included Hollywood, those numbers might have been worse.
Many people have, since these wars began, protested vociferously, loudly and repeatedly for them to end (indeed, in the case of Iraq, for it not to begin).
And yet they go on.
Is it because we've, collectively, failed to persuade elected representatives of our rejection of them? Is it that those representatives feel safe to disregard that rejection out of the belief that only fringe elements feel so strongly? In short, is it that, at bottom, there simply aren't enough people who stand against perpetual war compared with those who reflexively support the Bush Administration?
According to recent polling data from Rasmussen Reports, "46% of likely voters believe the U.S. and its allies are winning the War on Terror," while a combined 49% say either "the terrorists" are winning or neither is the case.
"Short-term optimism about the War in Iraq is greater than long-term optimism" where "45% say it will ultimately be judged a failure".
Gallup, meanwhile, polled Americans in late January/early February and found "that a majority of Americans continue to express opposition to the war in Iraq, attitudes that are unchanged in the last two months ... 57% of Americans say it was a mistake for the United States to send troops to Iraq, while 41% say it was not a mistake. Those numbers are identical to what Gallup measured in late November/early December.
This broad measure of the correctness of the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq has not changed much, even with more positive assessments of U.S. progress in Iraq in the last three months."
It seems safe to say that most Americans aren't generally happy with their government's war-related policies.
Yet Hollywood's attempts to to address the issue through such films as Redacted, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, Grace is Gone, Lions for Lambs, and A Mighty Heart (which, I suppose, doesn't count since it's a non-American film) have been met with a box office thud. Surely they weren't all poor films (although Time's Richard Corliss says, fairly or not, "the great Iraq movie--like a solution to the current Iraq quandary--is still a thing to hope for").
Rendition brought in less than $10 million. The Valley of Elah under $7 million. Redacted slightly more than $65 thousand. Lions for Lambs a little more than $15 million. And A Mighty Heart with Angelina Jolie generated a mere $9 million.
How did they do on dvd? According to Rotten Tomatoes, Rendition has brought in $5 million thus far. In The Valley of Elah some $4.5+ million.
What, then, does this reveal about public attitudes and Hollywood's efforts?
NY Times critic A.O. Scott, in a November 2007 review of Brian De Palma's Redacted, wrote that "Mr. De Palma’s premise, implicit in his choice of title and stated in many interviews and public pronouncements, is that the truth about Iraq has been edited and obscured, kept away from the American public," but that "I think he may have misdiagnosed the condition of the audience, which is not lack of information about Iraq but rather a pervasive moral and political paralysis."
But "pervasive moral and political paralysis" is a better description of American politicians than its citizens.
Many have tried to explain why it's taken so long to make such movies and/or why audiences aren't responding.
Michael Cieply of the NY Times noted that "in the past, Hollywood usually gave the veteran more breathing space. William Wyler’s 'Best Years of Our Lives,' about the travails of those returning from World War II, was released more than a year after the war’s end. Similarly Hal Ashby’s 'Coming Home' and Oliver Stone’s 'Born on the Fourth of July, both stories of Vietnam veterans, came well after the fall of Saigon."
But today, according to Scott Rudin who's a producer of the upcoming Stop-Loss, "media in general responds much more quickly than ever before. Why shouldn’t movies do the same?"
To John Patterson of the Guardian, this has been anything but a quick response: "The Hollywood studios have taken their own sweet time facing up to the Iraq war. The conflict has dragged on for four and a half years, longer than America's involvement in the second world war, yet only now is Hollywood beginning to address it head on. And even though documentarists have been tearing into the subject almost from the beginning ... Iraq seems to have utterly paralysed Hollywood's ability to address war with its usual vigour and bloodthirsty enthusiasm."
Lew Harris of Movies.com said, in an AFP article, that "these movies have to be entertaining. You can't just take a movie and make it anti-war or anti-torture and expect to draw people in. That's what happened with 'Rendition' and it has been a disaster. People want war movies to have a slam-bang adventure feel to them ... But Iraq is a difficult war to portray in a kind of rah-rah-rah, exciting way."
Equally bizarre was the view of John Cooper of the Sundance Film Festival that audiences are "ready for funny. Film-makers haven't said all there is to say about the war in Iraq, but I think audiences are saturated."
I suspect audiences are less saturated than wary and are simply not inclined to trust Hollywood or other media when it comes to coverage--dramatic or otherwise--of these wars.
Why should they? The mainstream media, inclusive of Hollywood, is part of the elite and the seller of bills of goods.
When Harris Interactive found that "over half of Americans say they tend not to trust the press," they were of course referring to cable and network news, print media and radio. Had they included Hollywood, those numbers might have been worse.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Republican Free Traders--But Only Kinda
The Air Force's $35 billion re-fueling tanker contract decision has generated simultaneously amusing, pathetic, bizarre and, without-the-grace-to-blush hypocritical sputterings from our political elite. The decision to award the contract to a team led by Northrop-Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) has caused much tooth gnashing.
Witness, for example, the statement of senators Pat Roberts, Sam Brownback and Rep. Todd Tiahrt, Republicans all, as reported by the Seattle Post Intelligencer: "We have just met with the Air Force, and we remain unconvinced that the Airbus team will provide a better aircraft than the men and women of Boeing."
Thus opined these aerospace experts.
But oh, those Europeans! Roberts noted that much of the work will be done in France and Germany! Why, he blustered, thereby underscoring the soundbite idiocy of his party, the Pentagon's decision "supports a socialist kind of government."
This from members of a party committed to free trade, open markets and competition? Yes, it's so.
But it's not just Republicans. Here's a letter to Defense Secretary Gates from Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA): "A bipartisan delegation of Senators from Washington state and Kansas today called on Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ensure that the Air Force debriefs Boeing on the justification for their tanker contract decision this week."
It's remarkable, really, the coincidental aspect of the bipartisan nature of this missive, that members are from Washington state and Kansas. Why, could it be that both states have Boeing facilities?
Lost in the apoplectic reaction was the news, as reported by the International Herald Tribune, that "final assembly of the tankers would take place at a new plant that EADS plans to build near Mobile, Alabama. As a sweetener to its bid, EADS offered in January to build a second assembly line to produce a cargo version of the A330 for commercial use, raising the number of expected new jobs at the Alabama site to 1,300. Northrop and EADS have said the tanker program will eventually create as many as 25,000 new jobs in the United States through supplier contracts."
But the Republican Party's presidential candidate, that maverick John McCain, is--thankfully--a supporter of free trade. And if his defense of NAFTA in response to statements by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton isn't persuasive enough on philosophical grounds, why, there's always the not-so-veiled threat of payback/extortion/blackmail, call it what you will.
Said McCain, "one of our greatest assets in Afghanistan are our Canadian friends. We need our Canadian friends, and we need their continued support in Afghanistan. So what do we do? The two Democratic candidates for president say they're going to unilaterally abrogate NAFTA .... How do you think the Canadian people are going to react to that?"
Too bad McCain doesn't consult with Sen. Roberts. "Our Canadian friends," after all, have a "socialist kind of government" with universal health care.
But in defense of Republicans, we might call to mind Emerson's observation that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Although Batleby.com reminds us that "Emerson does not explain the difference between foolish and wise consistency."
Or hypocrisy.
Witness, for example, the statement of senators Pat Roberts, Sam Brownback and Rep. Todd Tiahrt, Republicans all, as reported by the Seattle Post Intelligencer: "We have just met with the Air Force, and we remain unconvinced that the Airbus team will provide a better aircraft than the men and women of Boeing."
Thus opined these aerospace experts.
But oh, those Europeans! Roberts noted that much of the work will be done in France and Germany! Why, he blustered, thereby underscoring the soundbite idiocy of his party, the Pentagon's decision "supports a socialist kind of government."
This from members of a party committed to free trade, open markets and competition? Yes, it's so.
But it's not just Republicans. Here's a letter to Defense Secretary Gates from Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA): "A bipartisan delegation of Senators from Washington state and Kansas today called on Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ensure that the Air Force debriefs Boeing on the justification for their tanker contract decision this week."
It's remarkable, really, the coincidental aspect of the bipartisan nature of this missive, that members are from Washington state and Kansas. Why, could it be that both states have Boeing facilities?
Lost in the apoplectic reaction was the news, as reported by the International Herald Tribune, that "final assembly of the tankers would take place at a new plant that EADS plans to build near Mobile, Alabama. As a sweetener to its bid, EADS offered in January to build a second assembly line to produce a cargo version of the A330 for commercial use, raising the number of expected new jobs at the Alabama site to 1,300. Northrop and EADS have said the tanker program will eventually create as many as 25,000 new jobs in the United States through supplier contracts."
But the Republican Party's presidential candidate, that maverick John McCain, is--thankfully--a supporter of free trade. And if his defense of NAFTA in response to statements by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton isn't persuasive enough on philosophical grounds, why, there's always the not-so-veiled threat of payback/extortion/blackmail, call it what you will.
Said McCain, "one of our greatest assets in Afghanistan are our Canadian friends. We need our Canadian friends, and we need their continued support in Afghanistan. So what do we do? The two Democratic candidates for president say they're going to unilaterally abrogate NAFTA .... How do you think the Canadian people are going to react to that?"
Too bad McCain doesn't consult with Sen. Roberts. "Our Canadian friends," after all, have a "socialist kind of government" with universal health care.
But in defense of Republicans, we might call to mind Emerson's observation that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Although Batleby.com reminds us that "Emerson does not explain the difference between foolish and wise consistency."
Or hypocrisy.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
The Great Game: 21st Century Style
As the US seeks to strengthen ties with India, the effort dovetails with attempts to weaken the historical ties between India and Russia (particularly with respect to weaponry) and offset China's increase in defense expenditures and foreign policy objectives.
To that end, Defense Secretary Robert Gates' visit to India was not surprising given that, as the LA Times reported, "Gates spent more time discussing New Delhi's security challenges with Beijing than with its traditional regional rival Pakistan."
Gates, of course, is an old hand at such things and thus took the path of diplomacy by saying "I don't see our improving military relationship in the region in the context of any other country, including China. These expanding relationships don't necessarily have to be directed against anyone."
***
True enough, on its face.
Yet Washington is--as it must be--mindful of the challenges China, and to a lesser extent Russia, presents going forward. From Thaindian News comes this:
"On his part, [Indian Defence Minister A.K.] Antony pointed to the close India-US engagement through forums like the Defence Policy Group, the Joint Working Group on Defence, the Military Cooperation Group, the Joint Technical Group and the Executive Steering Groups at the military-military level, saying that all of them had been meeting 'without slippages'."
"This degree of engagement hardly exists with other countries," Gates noted, adding, interestingly, that, "... they see it as we do -- a long term enterprise by two sovereign states. We are mindful of India’s long tradition of non-alignment and are respectful of that, but I think there are a lot of opportunities to expand on this relationship, and I think that was the feeling on the part of the Indian leaders that I met with, as well."
***
While the issue of the moment was the arms sale of six Lockheed Martin C-130J Hercules (valued at $1 billion), Gates said he was interested in having US defense contractors bid on 126 combat aircraft valued at roughly $10 billion: "I indicated that we obviously are interested and believe we are very competitive in the selection of the new fighter ... and we ask no special treatment. We simply are pleased to have a place at the table, and we believe that in a fair competition that we have a very good case to make."
And this is in the context of the rumored, potential Indian purchase of the soon-to-be-decommissioned US aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. According to BusinessWeek, "India desperately needs aircraft carriers, too, as its purchase of the Russian ship Admiral Gorshkov is delayed, and India's own carrier, the INS Viraat, is aging fast."
(A Navy spokesman dismissed the rumor, saying, "We're not doing it. The Navy has no plans to transfer the Kitty Hawk to India, nor is this a subject of discussion between our navies at any level.")
***
But beyond specific weapons purchases and potential carrier purchases/transfers is the strategic calculus regarding Russia and China. As an anonymous "senior Pentagon official" put it (notwithstanding Gates' denial that the visits to India, Indonesia and Australia weren't designed with China in mind), "there is a fundamental commonality of interests between the US and these three democracies that we have visited. There are reasons for having interoperable weapons systems ... not in an aggressive sense but certainly as a hedge."
And this hedge is to be against more than just conventional weaponry, namely missile defense. Gates: "We’re just beginning to talk about perhaps conducting a joint analysis about what India’s needs would be in the realm of missile defence and where cooperation between us might help advance that."
***
Of course, the larger issue affecting US-India bilateral relations is the civilian nuclear agreement between the two nations. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman, Joe Biden, said, "time is of the essence. If we don't have the deal back with us clearly prior to the month of July it will be very difficult to ratify the deal -- not on the merits (of the deal) but on the mechanics on which our system functions." He stressed that if an agreement didn't reach Congress in time, "it is highly unlikely the next president will be able to present the same deal ... [and that] it will be renegotiated."
***
Nevertheless, US-India relations are most likely to strengthen in the coming years. As K. Alan Kronstadt of the Congressional Research Service assessed, India's suspicions and "sense of insecurity ... regarding China’s long-term nuclear weapons capabilities and strategic intentions in South and Southeast Asia," are easily understood.
"In fact, a strategic orientation focused on China appears to have affected the course and scope of New Delhi’s own nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Beijing’s military and economic support for Pakistan — support that is widely understood to have included WMD-related transfers — is a major and ongoing source of friction; past Chinese support for Pakistan’s Kashmir position has added to the discomfort of Indian leaders. New Delhi takes note of Beijing’s security relations with neighboring Burma and the construction of military facilities on the Indian Ocean. The two countries also have competed for energy resources to feed their rapidly growing economies; India’s relative poverty puts New Delhi at a significant disadvantage in such competition.
Analysts taking a realist political theory perspective view China as an external balancer in the South Asian subsystem, with Beijing’s material support for Islamabad allowing Pakistan to challenge the aspiring regional hegemony of a more powerful India. Many observers, especially in India, see Chinese support for Pakistan as a key aspect of Beijing’s perceived policy of 'encirclement' or constraint of India as a means of preventing or delaying New Delhi’s ability to challenge Beijing’s regionwide influence."
That alone would explain a strengthening of US-India relations.
And so the "Great Game" continues.
It's just a shame its played by wasting such vast resources.
To that end, Defense Secretary Robert Gates' visit to India was not surprising given that, as the LA Times reported, "Gates spent more time discussing New Delhi's security challenges with Beijing than with its traditional regional rival Pakistan."
Gates, of course, is an old hand at such things and thus took the path of diplomacy by saying "I don't see our improving military relationship in the region in the context of any other country, including China. These expanding relationships don't necessarily have to be directed against anyone."
***
True enough, on its face.
Yet Washington is--as it must be--mindful of the challenges China, and to a lesser extent Russia, presents going forward. From Thaindian News comes this:
"On his part, [Indian Defence Minister A.K.] Antony pointed to the close India-US engagement through forums like the Defence Policy Group, the Joint Working Group on Defence, the Military Cooperation Group, the Joint Technical Group and the Executive Steering Groups at the military-military level, saying that all of them had been meeting 'without slippages'."
"This degree of engagement hardly exists with other countries," Gates noted, adding, interestingly, that, "... they see it as we do -- a long term enterprise by two sovereign states. We are mindful of India’s long tradition of non-alignment and are respectful of that, but I think there are a lot of opportunities to expand on this relationship, and I think that was the feeling on the part of the Indian leaders that I met with, as well."
***
While the issue of the moment was the arms sale of six Lockheed Martin C-130J Hercules (valued at $1 billion), Gates said he was interested in having US defense contractors bid on 126 combat aircraft valued at roughly $10 billion: "I indicated that we obviously are interested and believe we are very competitive in the selection of the new fighter ... and we ask no special treatment. We simply are pleased to have a place at the table, and we believe that in a fair competition that we have a very good case to make."
And this is in the context of the rumored, potential Indian purchase of the soon-to-be-decommissioned US aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. According to BusinessWeek, "India desperately needs aircraft carriers, too, as its purchase of the Russian ship Admiral Gorshkov is delayed, and India's own carrier, the INS Viraat, is aging fast."
(A Navy spokesman dismissed the rumor, saying, "We're not doing it. The Navy has no plans to transfer the Kitty Hawk to India, nor is this a subject of discussion between our navies at any level.")
***
But beyond specific weapons purchases and potential carrier purchases/transfers is the strategic calculus regarding Russia and China. As an anonymous "senior Pentagon official" put it (notwithstanding Gates' denial that the visits to India, Indonesia and Australia weren't designed with China in mind), "there is a fundamental commonality of interests between the US and these three democracies that we have visited. There are reasons for having interoperable weapons systems ... not in an aggressive sense but certainly as a hedge."
And this hedge is to be against more than just conventional weaponry, namely missile defense. Gates: "We’re just beginning to talk about perhaps conducting a joint analysis about what India’s needs would be in the realm of missile defence and where cooperation between us might help advance that."
***
Of course, the larger issue affecting US-India bilateral relations is the civilian nuclear agreement between the two nations. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman, Joe Biden, said, "time is of the essence. If we don't have the deal back with us clearly prior to the month of July it will be very difficult to ratify the deal -- not on the merits (of the deal) but on the mechanics on which our system functions." He stressed that if an agreement didn't reach Congress in time, "it is highly unlikely the next president will be able to present the same deal ... [and that] it will be renegotiated."
***
Nevertheless, US-India relations are most likely to strengthen in the coming years. As K. Alan Kronstadt of the Congressional Research Service assessed, India's suspicions and "sense of insecurity ... regarding China’s long-term nuclear weapons capabilities and strategic intentions in South and Southeast Asia," are easily understood.
"In fact, a strategic orientation focused on China appears to have affected the course and scope of New Delhi’s own nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Beijing’s military and economic support for Pakistan — support that is widely understood to have included WMD-related transfers — is a major and ongoing source of friction; past Chinese support for Pakistan’s Kashmir position has added to the discomfort of Indian leaders. New Delhi takes note of Beijing’s security relations with neighboring Burma and the construction of military facilities on the Indian Ocean. The two countries also have competed for energy resources to feed their rapidly growing economies; India’s relative poverty puts New Delhi at a significant disadvantage in such competition.
Analysts taking a realist political theory perspective view China as an external balancer in the South Asian subsystem, with Beijing’s material support for Islamabad allowing Pakistan to challenge the aspiring regional hegemony of a more powerful India. Many observers, especially in India, see Chinese support for Pakistan as a key aspect of Beijing’s perceived policy of 'encirclement' or constraint of India as a means of preventing or delaying New Delhi’s ability to challenge Beijing’s regionwide influence."
That alone would explain a strengthening of US-India relations.
And so the "Great Game" continues.
It's just a shame its played by wasting such vast resources.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
African Resistance to AFRICOM
Since February 2007, when the US made public its desire to establish a central command for Africa, the project has been met in Africa with growing resistance and suspicion over what the US military really intends to do with such a command structure.
Would they build superbases chock full of military hardware and troops to protect access to oil supplies and other natural resources and, not incidentally, limit Chinese access to the same?
For many Africans, the project smacked of the first shot at re-colonizing the continent.
President Bush described AFRICOM as, "this new command [which] will strengthen our security cooperation with Africa and create new opportunities to bolster the capabilities of our partners in Africa. Africa Command will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa."
National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, explained AFRICOM as "a different command .... It would be a partnership, really, between military and civilians, and its principal focus would be to continue some of the activities that we're already doing to try and train peacekeeping forces so that countries in Africa and regional organizations in Africa can take more of a role in dealing with the conflicts and the problems on the continent .... I'm sure it will be an item of discussion on the trip, but I wouldn't be looking for any announcements at this point in time."
Few Africans have been persuaded by these seemingly benign descriptions. Since the US already has 1500 troops stationed in Djibouti, many wondered at the need for a second base.
In November, 2007, Robert G. Berschinski, a former intelligence officer in the US Air Force who served in Iraq, wrote a report titled AFRICOM’S DILEMMA: THE "GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM, "CAPACITY BUILDING," HUMANITARIANISM, AND THE FUTURE OF U.S. SECURITY POLICY IN AFRICA, for the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College. In it, he says AFRICOM's "critics allege that the command demonstrates a self-serving American policy focused on fighting terrorism, securing the Africa’s burgeoning energy stocks, and countering Chinese influence.
To overcome such misgivings, AFRICOM must demonstrate a commitment to programs mutually beneficial to both African and American national interests. Yet a shrewd strategic communication campaign will not be enough to convince a skeptical African public that AFRICOM’s priorities mirror their own. Indeed, much African distrust is justified. Since September 11, 2001 (9/11), the Department of Defense’s (DoD) most significant endeavors in Africa have been undertaken in pursuit of narrowly conceived goals related to the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Operations in North and East Africa, though couched in a larger framework of development, long-term counterinsurgency, and a campaign to win 'hearts and minds,' have nonetheless relied on offensive military operations focused on short-term objectives."
In the African blogosphere, suspicion and untrustworthiness dominate the discussion. As Sokari Ekine, who blogs at Black Looks sees it, "the question should not be whether Africa NEEDS Africom but why the US believes it NEEDS to have a military presence in Africa. We should be asking ourselves the following questions. Why does the US feels it needs a military presence in Africa? What will the US military presence consist of in terms of military hardware and numbers of personnel? How does the US intend to operate and in what circumstances will it’s forces be mobilized? In what way will the US military presence dictate or determine the price of Africa’s natural resources and who gets access to them? In what way will the US military presence infringe on the internal affairs of independent African countries and determine their foreign policy towards other AU members? How will the US military presence influence the foreign policy of independent African states towards non AU countries such as China? How will the US enhanced military presence infringe of the rights of African citizens? How will Africom impact on continental migration and the rights of the millions of Africans without citizenship and the rights of refugees?
Tristan at Contrary To Authority offered this assessment: "Africa is under a new wave of exploitation, this time, instead of people, rubber and gold, it is Chinese and American interests competing for oil."
Reasonable questions and assessments, made all the more so given global suspicions over the issue of permanent bases in Iraq.
When in Ghana, President Bush was told at a private meeting by Ghana's President John Kufuor, "you're not going to build any bases in Ghana," to which Bush responded, "I understand. Nor do we want to."
Bush added, "We do not contemplate adding new bases, in other words the purpose of this is not to add military bases. I know there are rumours in Ghana: 'All Bush is doing is coming to try to convince you to put a big military base here.' That's baloney."
But he then said: "That doesn't mean that we won't try to develop some kind of office in Africa. We haven't made our minds up. It's a new concept."
Definitely, suspicions will continue.
Would they build superbases chock full of military hardware and troops to protect access to oil supplies and other natural resources and, not incidentally, limit Chinese access to the same?
For many Africans, the project smacked of the first shot at re-colonizing the continent.
President Bush described AFRICOM as, "this new command [which] will strengthen our security cooperation with Africa and create new opportunities to bolster the capabilities of our partners in Africa. Africa Command will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa."
National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, explained AFRICOM as "a different command .... It would be a partnership, really, between military and civilians, and its principal focus would be to continue some of the activities that we're already doing to try and train peacekeeping forces so that countries in Africa and regional organizations in Africa can take more of a role in dealing with the conflicts and the problems on the continent .... I'm sure it will be an item of discussion on the trip, but I wouldn't be looking for any announcements at this point in time."
Few Africans have been persuaded by these seemingly benign descriptions. Since the US already has 1500 troops stationed in Djibouti, many wondered at the need for a second base.
In November, 2007, Robert G. Berschinski, a former intelligence officer in the US Air Force who served in Iraq, wrote a report titled AFRICOM’S DILEMMA: THE "GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM, "CAPACITY BUILDING," HUMANITARIANISM, AND THE FUTURE OF U.S. SECURITY POLICY IN AFRICA, for the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College. In it, he says AFRICOM's "critics allege that the command demonstrates a self-serving American policy focused on fighting terrorism, securing the Africa’s burgeoning energy stocks, and countering Chinese influence.
To overcome such misgivings, AFRICOM must demonstrate a commitment to programs mutually beneficial to both African and American national interests. Yet a shrewd strategic communication campaign will not be enough to convince a skeptical African public that AFRICOM’s priorities mirror their own. Indeed, much African distrust is justified. Since September 11, 2001 (9/11), the Department of Defense’s (DoD) most significant endeavors in Africa have been undertaken in pursuit of narrowly conceived goals related to the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Operations in North and East Africa, though couched in a larger framework of development, long-term counterinsurgency, and a campaign to win 'hearts and minds,' have nonetheless relied on offensive military operations focused on short-term objectives."
In the African blogosphere, suspicion and untrustworthiness dominate the discussion. As Sokari Ekine, who blogs at Black Looks sees it, "the question should not be whether Africa NEEDS Africom but why the US believes it NEEDS to have a military presence in Africa. We should be asking ourselves the following questions. Why does the US feels it needs a military presence in Africa? What will the US military presence consist of in terms of military hardware and numbers of personnel? How does the US intend to operate and in what circumstances will it’s forces be mobilized? In what way will the US military presence dictate or determine the price of Africa’s natural resources and who gets access to them? In what way will the US military presence infringe on the internal affairs of independent African countries and determine their foreign policy towards other AU members? How will the US military presence influence the foreign policy of independent African states towards non AU countries such as China? How will the US enhanced military presence infringe of the rights of African citizens? How will Africom impact on continental migration and the rights of the millions of Africans without citizenship and the rights of refugees?
Tristan at Contrary To Authority offered this assessment: "Africa is under a new wave of exploitation, this time, instead of people, rubber and gold, it is Chinese and American interests competing for oil."
Reasonable questions and assessments, made all the more so given global suspicions over the issue of permanent bases in Iraq.
When in Ghana, President Bush was told at a private meeting by Ghana's President John Kufuor, "you're not going to build any bases in Ghana," to which Bush responded, "I understand. Nor do we want to."
Bush added, "We do not contemplate adding new bases, in other words the purpose of this is not to add military bases. I know there are rumours in Ghana: 'All Bush is doing is coming to try to convince you to put a big military base here.' That's baloney."
But he then said: "That doesn't mean that we won't try to develop some kind of office in Africa. We haven't made our minds up. It's a new concept."
Definitely, suspicions will continue.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Wandering, Wondering NATO
NATO's creaking, uneven Afghanistan effort promises to grow yet more wobbly with Canada threatening to leave the country by the end of 2011. The BBC reports that Canada's parliament will soon vote on the proposal to extend Canada's commitment (which was to expire in February, 2009) that also includes the date for withdrawal.
The Canadian government has been under pressure to declare a withdrawal date given the refusal of several NATO member states to send troops into combat areas (Germany, chief among them).
So, has Canada's domestic debate been one of the reasons for the Taliban's resurgence? Canada's Chief of Defense Staff, Gen. Rick Hillier, thinks so. He's argued that the Taliban have watched Canada's internal politics closely, and believes an extension beyond 2009 of a Canadian presence in Afghanistan is essential: "We are, in the eyes of the Taliban, in a window of extreme vulnerability. And the longer we go without that clarity, with the issue in doubt, the more the Taliban will target us as a perceived weak link."
He cited, inferentially, a suicide attack this week that killed 80 people, one of Afghanistan's deadliest since the 2001 American invasion: "I'm not going to stand here and tell you that the suicide bombings of this past week have been related to the debate back here in Canada. But I also cannot stand here and say that they are not."
That the Taliban is aware of NATO's commitment problems isn't surprising (they have Internet access, too), but it's a bit hard to accept that the Taliban organizes its tactics around Canadian domestic debate.
It's probably sufficient to say that NATO's half-heartedness is obvious to the entire planet, the Taliban included.
Canada's in something of a tough spot since some of its European allies, primarily Germany, won't agree to send additional troops to the Kandahar region where Canadian troops are fighting.
The Manley Report, issued in January 2008, stated the obvious in proposing "a Canadian strategy that integrates military, diplomatic and development actions for a more coherent, effective engagement in Afghanistan. We have recommended that some of these actions be contingent on timely actions by other governments, and on measurable progress in Afghanistan itself."
But that doesn't seem likely and, indeed, is really the essential point. Consider the recent comments by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said she was "worried" about some NATO ally comments regarding commitment, but that she had "absolutely no time" for suggestions/demands that Germany shift combat troops from the north to the south in Afghanistan: "We decided only a few years ago on a division of labour among Nato partners," that "continuity and stability" were the order of the day, and that "we're not just digging wells and building houses; we also have a military mission."
She emphasized that a critical obstacle--"one of the biggest weaknesses"--to Afghanistan reconstruction success lay in Kabul and the Karzai government: "Afghanistan must say more clearly what it wants."
Yet, according to Reuters, "Karzai has repeatedly urged Western allies to provide more funds and resources to the Afghan security forces, rather than send more troops."
Secretary of State Rice phrased it this way: "let's be very frank about it, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen here; we have a lot of countries that want to help Afghanistan. And ... [that entails] overlapping authorities and many different bureaucracies and many different groups, not to mention the very fine NGOs who work here and the UN, I can understand why sometimes there may be some confusion on priorities and what needs to get done when."
In a recent poll, 61% of Canadians did not think their government "ha[d] effectively explained the mission in Afghanistan."
According to the BBC, "ask most French people about the country's troop commitment in Afghanistan, and they will have little idea what you are talking about."
And in the UK, there is uncertainty over NATO's strategy. James Arbuthnot, House of Commons Defence Committee Chair, said "we don't want to see another 9/11. [And] 90% of the heroin on our streets comes from Afghanistan, [so our] political commitment is weakened by questions about whether we are actually doing the right things to solve those two problems."
Obviously, confusion and dissatisfaction dominate debate within NATO countries over Afghanistan, regarding all elements of the "mission."
The question is, does NATO really have a mission -- comprehensively and comprehensibly understood -- in Afghanistan?
The Canadian government has been under pressure to declare a withdrawal date given the refusal of several NATO member states to send troops into combat areas (Germany, chief among them).
So, has Canada's domestic debate been one of the reasons for the Taliban's resurgence? Canada's Chief of Defense Staff, Gen. Rick Hillier, thinks so. He's argued that the Taliban have watched Canada's internal politics closely, and believes an extension beyond 2009 of a Canadian presence in Afghanistan is essential: "We are, in the eyes of the Taliban, in a window of extreme vulnerability. And the longer we go without that clarity, with the issue in doubt, the more the Taliban will target us as a perceived weak link."
He cited, inferentially, a suicide attack this week that killed 80 people, one of Afghanistan's deadliest since the 2001 American invasion: "I'm not going to stand here and tell you that the suicide bombings of this past week have been related to the debate back here in Canada. But I also cannot stand here and say that they are not."
That the Taliban is aware of NATO's commitment problems isn't surprising (they have Internet access, too), but it's a bit hard to accept that the Taliban organizes its tactics around Canadian domestic debate.
It's probably sufficient to say that NATO's half-heartedness is obvious to the entire planet, the Taliban included.
Canada's in something of a tough spot since some of its European allies, primarily Germany, won't agree to send additional troops to the Kandahar region where Canadian troops are fighting.
The Manley Report, issued in January 2008, stated the obvious in proposing "a Canadian strategy that integrates military, diplomatic and development actions for a more coherent, effective engagement in Afghanistan. We have recommended that some of these actions be contingent on timely actions by other governments, and on measurable progress in Afghanistan itself."
But that doesn't seem likely and, indeed, is really the essential point. Consider the recent comments by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said she was "worried" about some NATO ally comments regarding commitment, but that she had "absolutely no time" for suggestions/demands that Germany shift combat troops from the north to the south in Afghanistan: "We decided only a few years ago on a division of labour among Nato partners," that "continuity and stability" were the order of the day, and that "we're not just digging wells and building houses; we also have a military mission."
She emphasized that a critical obstacle--"one of the biggest weaknesses"--to Afghanistan reconstruction success lay in Kabul and the Karzai government: "Afghanistan must say more clearly what it wants."
Yet, according to Reuters, "Karzai has repeatedly urged Western allies to provide more funds and resources to the Afghan security forces, rather than send more troops."
Secretary of State Rice phrased it this way: "let's be very frank about it, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen here; we have a lot of countries that want to help Afghanistan. And ... [that entails] overlapping authorities and many different bureaucracies and many different groups, not to mention the very fine NGOs who work here and the UN, I can understand why sometimes there may be some confusion on priorities and what needs to get done when."
In a recent poll, 61% of Canadians did not think their government "ha[d] effectively explained the mission in Afghanistan."
According to the BBC, "ask most French people about the country's troop commitment in Afghanistan, and they will have little idea what you are talking about."
And in the UK, there is uncertainty over NATO's strategy. James Arbuthnot, House of Commons Defence Committee Chair, said "we don't want to see another 9/11. [And] 90% of the heroin on our streets comes from Afghanistan, [so our] political commitment is weakened by questions about whether we are actually doing the right things to solve those two problems."
Obviously, confusion and dissatisfaction dominate debate within NATO countries over Afghanistan, regarding all elements of the "mission."
The question is, does NATO really have a mission -- comprehensively and comprehensibly understood -- in Afghanistan?
Thursday, February 21, 2008
McCain's Straight Talk Express Derails
In a speech last August at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, Barack Obama said, I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.
President Bush, confusing things as usual, said "I certainly don't know what [Obama] believes in. The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad."
Then John McCain, taking the cue from his leader, criticized Obama for the statement, saying "Well, the best idea is to not broadcast what you're going to do. That's naive. You don't broadcast that you are going to bomb a country that is a sovereign nation and that you are dependent on ... in the struggle against (the) Taliban and the sanctuaries which they hold." He added that the US could not afford "confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally Pakistan."
Ally? From World Public Opinion: "Pakistani views of the United States are quite negative. About two-thirds (64%) do not trust the United States 'to act responsibly in the world.' Very large majorities believe the US military presence in Afghanistan and in Asia is a critical threat to Pakistan's interests (68 percent and 72 percent respectively). Only 27 percent feel that the cooperation between Pakistan and the United States on security and military matters has benefited Pakistan."
That is one weak definition of ally.
As for Pakistan being a sovereign nation, well, so is Iran. Of course, Obama in his speech did not threaten to invade or bomb Pakistan. Yet President Bush and McCain both felt free to put those words into his mouth. So would they object to anyone concluding that McCain intends to bomb or invade Iran? Here's what McCain said about Iran earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC): I intend to make unmistakably clear to Iran we will not permit a government that espouses the destruction of the State of Israel as its fondest wish and pledges undying enmity to the United States to possess the weapons to advance their malevolent ambitions.
"Unmistakably clear ... we will not permit ...," sounds like invasion and/or bombing talk to me, if we employ the method of parsing that McCain used on Obama's speech and, of course, if we recall his "Bomb, bomb, Iran" "joke" sung to a Beach Boys tune.
And then there's this November 2007 example of McCain's "straight talk":
"Everybody says that they’re against the special interests. I’m the only one the special interests don’t give any money to." Even though he's received more than $500,000 from PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
And when McCain challenged Obama on public funding for the general election campaign, saying "I made the commitment to the American people that if I were the nominee of my party, I would accept public financing, [and that] I expect Senator Obama to keep his word to the American people as well," he didn't mention that, in a letter to the Federal Election Commission dated February 6, 2008, he announced his intention to withdraw from the federal primary-election program, due--perhaps?--to an increase in private contributions now that he's the nominee-to-be.
I wonder, if it's good enough for the general election why not the primaries?
And, as the Guardian notes, that letter has drawn "unwelcome scrutiny from the agency that monitors US elections" since it "questions his ability to withdraw from the presidential public financing system – and avoid the spending limits that come with it."
As the Center for Responsive Politics concluded, "McCain's campaign has done a 180-degree turn in the last nine months, going from nearly broke after the 1st Quarter to recently emerging as the Republican frontrunner. It took early layoffs and a $3 million loan in November of 2007, but McCain managed to turn his campaign around and raise $41.1 million last year ...."
And what ever became of McCain's outright rejection of torture? He once said of waterboarding, "all I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today ... it is not a complicated procedure. It is torture." Yet he voted against recent Senate legislation banning the practice.
But let us not forget McCain's 2000 campaign speech in which he referred to the religious right's leaders as "agents of intolerance," denounced their strategy of "division and slander," and castigated them for their "corrupting influences on religion and politics." And now? In 2006 he said of the late founder of the Moral Majority, "Rev. Falwell came to see me and said he wanted to put our issues behind us — and I did, too. I believe the worst thing you can do in life, much less politics, is to hold grudges."
Grudges? Charges of intolerance, slander and corruption seem a good deal more serious than the mild lets-put-our-issues-behind us attitude.
Grover Norquist of the retrogressive/conservative Americans for Tax Reform, offered this assessment: "[McCain has] got to overcome the original sense of betrayal and the new sense of flip-flopping. This is not easy. You can't be the straight-talk express with two positions on every given issue."
Of course, one can shrug and say "politics," and that would be understandable. Except that it's John McCain who chose Straight Talk Express as his slogan, proudly displays it on his campaign bus, and has it on his website.
Truly, there's nothing like straight talk.
Except when it isn't.
President Bush, confusing things as usual, said "I certainly don't know what [Obama] believes in. The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad."
Then John McCain, taking the cue from his leader, criticized Obama for the statement, saying "Well, the best idea is to not broadcast what you're going to do. That's naive. You don't broadcast that you are going to bomb a country that is a sovereign nation and that you are dependent on ... in the struggle against (the) Taliban and the sanctuaries which they hold." He added that the US could not afford "confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally Pakistan."
Ally? From World Public Opinion: "Pakistani views of the United States are quite negative. About two-thirds (64%) do not trust the United States 'to act responsibly in the world.' Very large majorities believe the US military presence in Afghanistan and in Asia is a critical threat to Pakistan's interests (68 percent and 72 percent respectively). Only 27 percent feel that the cooperation between Pakistan and the United States on security and military matters has benefited Pakistan."
That is one weak definition of ally.
As for Pakistan being a sovereign nation, well, so is Iran. Of course, Obama in his speech did not threaten to invade or bomb Pakistan. Yet President Bush and McCain both felt free to put those words into his mouth. So would they object to anyone concluding that McCain intends to bomb or invade Iran? Here's what McCain said about Iran earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC): I intend to make unmistakably clear to Iran we will not permit a government that espouses the destruction of the State of Israel as its fondest wish and pledges undying enmity to the United States to possess the weapons to advance their malevolent ambitions.
"Unmistakably clear ... we will not permit ...," sounds like invasion and/or bombing talk to me, if we employ the method of parsing that McCain used on Obama's speech and, of course, if we recall his "Bomb, bomb, Iran" "joke" sung to a Beach Boys tune.
And then there's this November 2007 example of McCain's "straight talk":
"Everybody says that they’re against the special interests. I’m the only one the special interests don’t give any money to." Even though he's received more than $500,000 from PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
And when McCain challenged Obama on public funding for the general election campaign, saying "I made the commitment to the American people that if I were the nominee of my party, I would accept public financing, [and that] I expect Senator Obama to keep his word to the American people as well," he didn't mention that, in a letter to the Federal Election Commission dated February 6, 2008, he announced his intention to withdraw from the federal primary-election program, due--perhaps?--to an increase in private contributions now that he's the nominee-to-be.
I wonder, if it's good enough for the general election why not the primaries?
And, as the Guardian notes, that letter has drawn "unwelcome scrutiny from the agency that monitors US elections" since it "questions his ability to withdraw from the presidential public financing system – and avoid the spending limits that come with it."
As the Center for Responsive Politics concluded, "McCain's campaign has done a 180-degree turn in the last nine months, going from nearly broke after the 1st Quarter to recently emerging as the Republican frontrunner. It took early layoffs and a $3 million loan in November of 2007, but McCain managed to turn his campaign around and raise $41.1 million last year ...."
And what ever became of McCain's outright rejection of torture? He once said of waterboarding, "all I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today ... it is not a complicated procedure. It is torture." Yet he voted against recent Senate legislation banning the practice.
But let us not forget McCain's 2000 campaign speech in which he referred to the religious right's leaders as "agents of intolerance," denounced their strategy of "division and slander," and castigated them for their "corrupting influences on religion and politics." And now? In 2006 he said of the late founder of the Moral Majority, "Rev. Falwell came to see me and said he wanted to put our issues behind us — and I did, too. I believe the worst thing you can do in life, much less politics, is to hold grudges."
Grudges? Charges of intolerance, slander and corruption seem a good deal more serious than the mild lets-put-our-issues-behind us attitude.
Grover Norquist of the retrogressive/conservative Americans for Tax Reform, offered this assessment: "[McCain has] got to overcome the original sense of betrayal and the new sense of flip-flopping. This is not easy. You can't be the straight-talk express with two positions on every given issue."
Of course, one can shrug and say "politics," and that would be understandable. Except that it's John McCain who chose Straight Talk Express as his slogan, proudly displays it on his campaign bus, and has it on his website.
Truly, there's nothing like straight talk.
Except when it isn't.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Kosovo Independence & The Calculus of International Law
Kosovo's declaration of independence, recognized by the US and 17 (of 27) European Union member states, has widened the rift between those nations who supported it, those who did not and, perhaps more importantly, eroded the integrity of international territorial law. States rejecting Kosovo's declaration did so largely because they have minority populations seeking either independence or autonomy that might eventually lead to independence.
As the NY Times has it, even those nations who supported Kosovo's independence "took pains to point out that it should not serve as an invitation or precedent for other groups hoping to declare independence. That is because one of the biggest unknowns remains whether Kosovo’s declaration could rekindle conflicts elsewhere, including in ethnically divided Bosnia."
And not just Bosnia; China isn't enamored with the support for Kosovo given its hold on Tibet and its repeated claim to Taiwan. And Spain, another dissenter, has problems with its Basque population, as does Russia with Chechnya (among several others).
The European Union tried to square the circle by claiming "that in view of the conflict of the 1990s and the extended period of international administration under SCR 1244, Kosovo constitutes a sui generis [i.e., unique] case which does not call into question these principles and resolutions."
But, as the adage goes, does the exception prove the rule? Not according to those who oppose Kosovan independence. The Cypriot Foreign Minister, Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, said "Cyprus, for reasons of principle, cannot recognise and will not recognise a unilateral declaration of independence. This is an issue of principle, of respect of international law, but also an issue of concern that it will create a precedent in international relations." She added, not too believably, that Cyprus' position had "nothing to do with the occupied Cyprus, it's not because we're afraid that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) would declare independence because they already did it in 1983 and got a very strong reaction from the (UN) Security Council."
Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon would only offer "I am not here to say ‘legal’ or ‘illegal.'".
Serbia, for its part, dismissively rejected Kosovo independence. Serbian President Boris Tadic called it "unilateral and illegal ... null and void ... Serbia will never recognize the independence of Kosovo. We shall never renounce Kosovo and we shall not give up the struggle for our legitimate interests. For the citizens of Serbia and its institutions, Kosovo will forever remain a part of Serbia."
It will be particularly interesting to see what happens going forward. What impact will this have on the UN and on international law? Opinio Juris asks, for example, "does the Security Council have the power under the U.N. Charter to forcibly divide up its member states?"
Russia seems to be asking the question as well: "Now that the situation in Kosovo has become an international precedent, Russia should view existing territorial conflicts taking into account the Kosovo scenario."
Says the London Times, "Russia has threatened to recognise the secession of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, a former Soviet republic now allied with the West, as retaliation for the 'dismemberment' of Serbian territory. The acceptance by the West of an independent Kosovo, the declaration stated, gave Russia precisely that right."
The European Union might plead sui generis, but Russia, one of many objectors, isn't buying it.
____________________
As the NY Times has it, even those nations who supported Kosovo's independence "took pains to point out that it should not serve as an invitation or precedent for other groups hoping to declare independence. That is because one of the biggest unknowns remains whether Kosovo’s declaration could rekindle conflicts elsewhere, including in ethnically divided Bosnia."
And not just Bosnia; China isn't enamored with the support for Kosovo given its hold on Tibet and its repeated claim to Taiwan. And Spain, another dissenter, has problems with its Basque population, as does Russia with Chechnya (among several others).
The European Union tried to square the circle by claiming "that in view of the conflict of the 1990s and the extended period of international administration under SCR 1244, Kosovo constitutes a sui generis [i.e., unique] case which does not call into question these principles and resolutions."
But, as the adage goes, does the exception prove the rule? Not according to those who oppose Kosovan independence. The Cypriot Foreign Minister, Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, said "Cyprus, for reasons of principle, cannot recognise and will not recognise a unilateral declaration of independence. This is an issue of principle, of respect of international law, but also an issue of concern that it will create a precedent in international relations." She added, not too believably, that Cyprus' position had "nothing to do with the occupied Cyprus, it's not because we're afraid that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) would declare independence because they already did it in 1983 and got a very strong reaction from the (UN) Security Council."
Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon would only offer "I am not here to say ‘legal’ or ‘illegal.'".
Serbia, for its part, dismissively rejected Kosovo independence. Serbian President Boris Tadic called it "unilateral and illegal ... null and void ... Serbia will never recognize the independence of Kosovo. We shall never renounce Kosovo and we shall not give up the struggle for our legitimate interests. For the citizens of Serbia and its institutions, Kosovo will forever remain a part of Serbia."
It will be particularly interesting to see what happens going forward. What impact will this have on the UN and on international law? Opinio Juris asks, for example, "does the Security Council have the power under the U.N. Charter to forcibly divide up its member states?"
Russia seems to be asking the question as well: "Now that the situation in Kosovo has become an international precedent, Russia should view existing territorial conflicts taking into account the Kosovo scenario."
Says the London Times, "Russia has threatened to recognise the secession of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, a former Soviet republic now allied with the West, as retaliation for the 'dismemberment' of Serbian territory. The acceptance by the West of an independent Kosovo, the declaration stated, gave Russia precisely that right."
The European Union might plead sui generis, but Russia, one of many objectors, isn't buying it.
____________________
Monday, February 18, 2008
The Anti-Democratic Superdelegate
With the delegate count as close as it is between Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY), much of the attention has understandably switched to how the party's superdelegate structure works and who these people will support.
But that focus overlooks the more fundamental question--why do we have superdelegates at all?
It seems obvious that the very existence of such a mechanism is inherently undemocratic and certainly elitist. Here are a few examples of such elitism, from the AP: "'It raises the age old political question. Are we elected to monitor where our constituents are ... or are we to use our best judgment to do what's in the best interests of our constituents,' said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, a Clinton supporter even though Obama won his district."
Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina believes the role of the superdelegate is similar to that of a member of Congress: "We ought to be doing the nation's business when we go to the floor of the House to vote," likening it to the superdelegate role at the party convention.
Nice, huh? One would be hardpressed to think of a better way to patronize one's constituents. Apparently, the children out there--also known as voters--need adult members of the party to decide what's in their best interests.
MoveOn.org has tried to bridge the divide with an online petition, which says:
Let the Voters Decide
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are still taking their case to the voters, and millions have yet to cast their ballots. Join 350,000 MoveOn members to tell the superdelegates to let the voters decide who our nominee is.
The rationale for the existence of superdelegates includes this sort of thing:
"The difference I see between the congressional representatives opinions and those of the public are:
1.) Congressional representatives have to operate right in the bowels of the political ecosystem everyday and may have better insight as to which candidate could fare in the ecosystem to achieve the party's goals. (There's a lot of unbelievable shenanigans that you don't see being reported outside of DC.)
2.) That's tempered by the money flows and other forms of influence going on in DC.
While you may not agree with the Superdelegate system -- which puts the delegates under no obligations to vote in one way or another -- those were the rules that were put in place by the Democratic party, and the fact is that voters chose their congressional representatives to make decisions on their behalf when they voted for them at the ballot box."
And the voter is to take on faith the "insight" of the representative who, because of familiarity with the "ecosystem," is more in the know than the typical voter? Well, sure, that representative is deeply knowledgeable about the workings of government, particularly as it relates to point #2--"the money flows and other forms of influence going on in D.C."
And yet, it ought to be noted, isn't point #2 a large chuck of the problem? Doesn't that make up an exceptionally large piece of voter discontent (lobbying/special interest influence)?
But worse is the final point, that "voters chose their congressional representatives to make decisions on their behalf when they voted for them at the ballot box."
Yes, that is so, as regards legislative decisions, but not regarding the party's presidential candidate. By that logic, why do we have primaries and caucuses at all? Why not simply defer to the wisdom of our elected representatives?
Sen. Clinton and her representatives have made clear where they stand on the issue (from the Washington Post):
--Clinton: "'Superdelegates are a part of the process. They are supposed to exercise independent judgment,' said Clinton ..., who wants to put into play hundreds of the unelected delegates, as well as large contingents from Michigan and Florida, where the candidates did not campaign."
--"Clinton strategist Harold Ickes, himself a superdelegate, told reporters Saturday that the delegates should exercise 'their best judgment in the interests of the party and the country,'" and said of a potential re-vote of the Michigan and Florida primaries not contested by Sen. Obama [due to the Democratic Party's decision to penalize those states for moving up their primary dates], 'we don't need a redo," said Ickes, who voted as a Democratic rules committee member to penalize the states. He said of Michigan: 'The people have spoken there.'"
Beautiful. Nothing like the (D)emocratic process at work in all its glory. Of course, one might argue that it's the business of the Democratic Party as to how it organizes itself and what constitutes it's rule structure. Then again, it is the Party that has chosen to cast itself as the voice of the people by stating, among other things, that "honest government" is part of its "vision."
As Princeton professor of history and public affairs, Julian Zelizer, observed: "It couldn't be more ironic; these are two people that party reforms were meant to bring into the Democratic Party. They might need the bosses to kind of decide which of the 'new Democrats' wins."
But Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) sees the situation clearly enough: "It's the people [who are] going to govern who selects our next candidate and not superdelegates. The people's will is what's going to prevail at the convention and not people who decide what the people's will is."
The best way to ensure that is to have the superdelegates stand down and let the voters decide. How's that for a revolutionary and democratic idea?
But that focus overlooks the more fundamental question--why do we have superdelegates at all?
It seems obvious that the very existence of such a mechanism is inherently undemocratic and certainly elitist. Here are a few examples of such elitism, from the AP: "'It raises the age old political question. Are we elected to monitor where our constituents are ... or are we to use our best judgment to do what's in the best interests of our constituents,' said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, a Clinton supporter even though Obama won his district."
Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina believes the role of the superdelegate is similar to that of a member of Congress: "We ought to be doing the nation's business when we go to the floor of the House to vote," likening it to the superdelegate role at the party convention.
Nice, huh? One would be hardpressed to think of a better way to patronize one's constituents. Apparently, the children out there--also known as voters--need adult members of the party to decide what's in their best interests.
MoveOn.org has tried to bridge the divide with an online petition, which says:
Let the Voters Decide
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are still taking their case to the voters, and millions have yet to cast their ballots. Join 350,000 MoveOn members to tell the superdelegates to let the voters decide who our nominee is.
The rationale for the existence of superdelegates includes this sort of thing:
"The difference I see between the congressional representatives opinions and those of the public are:
1.) Congressional representatives have to operate right in the bowels of the political ecosystem everyday and may have better insight as to which candidate could fare in the ecosystem to achieve the party's goals. (There's a lot of unbelievable shenanigans that you don't see being reported outside of DC.)
2.) That's tempered by the money flows and other forms of influence going on in DC.
While you may not agree with the Superdelegate system -- which puts the delegates under no obligations to vote in one way or another -- those were the rules that were put in place by the Democratic party, and the fact is that voters chose their congressional representatives to make decisions on their behalf when they voted for them at the ballot box."
And the voter is to take on faith the "insight" of the representative who, because of familiarity with the "ecosystem," is more in the know than the typical voter? Well, sure, that representative is deeply knowledgeable about the workings of government, particularly as it relates to point #2--"the money flows and other forms of influence going on in D.C."
And yet, it ought to be noted, isn't point #2 a large chuck of the problem? Doesn't that make up an exceptionally large piece of voter discontent (lobbying/special interest influence)?
But worse is the final point, that "voters chose their congressional representatives to make decisions on their behalf when they voted for them at the ballot box."
Yes, that is so, as regards legislative decisions, but not regarding the party's presidential candidate. By that logic, why do we have primaries and caucuses at all? Why not simply defer to the wisdom of our elected representatives?
Sen. Clinton and her representatives have made clear where they stand on the issue (from the Washington Post):
--Clinton: "'Superdelegates are a part of the process. They are supposed to exercise independent judgment,' said Clinton ..., who wants to put into play hundreds of the unelected delegates, as well as large contingents from Michigan and Florida, where the candidates did not campaign."
--"Clinton strategist Harold Ickes, himself a superdelegate, told reporters Saturday that the delegates should exercise 'their best judgment in the interests of the party and the country,'" and said of a potential re-vote of the Michigan and Florida primaries not contested by Sen. Obama [due to the Democratic Party's decision to penalize those states for moving up their primary dates], 'we don't need a redo," said Ickes, who voted as a Democratic rules committee member to penalize the states. He said of Michigan: 'The people have spoken there.'"
Beautiful. Nothing like the (D)emocratic process at work in all its glory. Of course, one might argue that it's the business of the Democratic Party as to how it organizes itself and what constitutes it's rule structure. Then again, it is the Party that has chosen to cast itself as the voice of the people by stating, among other things, that "honest government" is part of its "vision."
As Princeton professor of history and public affairs, Julian Zelizer, observed: "It couldn't be more ironic; these are two people that party reforms were meant to bring into the Democratic Party. They might need the bosses to kind of decide which of the 'new Democrats' wins."
But Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) sees the situation clearly enough: "It's the people [who are] going to govern who selects our next candidate and not superdelegates. The people's will is what's going to prevail at the convention and not people who decide what the people's will is."
The best way to ensure that is to have the superdelegates stand down and let the voters decide. How's that for a revolutionary and democratic idea?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The Abuse of the State Secrets Privilege
Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee followed last month's House Judiciary Committee hearing into the Bush Administration's abuse of the "state secrets" privilege. The administration has used the privilege to thwart examination in the clear light of day of its activities, from its illegal wiretapping (domestic surveillance) program, the so-called rendition of suspected terrorists such as Khaled el-Masri, the torture/interrogation of prisoners, or the secret gathering of banking records.
Just yesterday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit on the grounds of the state secrets privilege. The suit was brought against a Boeing subsidiary accused of flying alleged terrorists, on behalf of the CIA, to foreign countries to undergo torture.
In his ruling, the US District Court judge, James Ware, wrote "the court's review of Gen. Hayden's public and classified declarations confirm that continuing the case would jeopardize national security and foreign relations and that no protective procedure can salvage this case." (emphasis added) The State Secrets Protection Act seeks to remedy this since it will require a court to actually examine the evidence.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) noted, because of the administration's repeated invocation of the privilege, "it is through the press that we first learned about secret surveillance of Americans by their own government in the years after 9/11, secret renditions abroad in violation of U.S. laws, secret prisons abroad, secret decisions to fire some of the nation’s top prosecutors, and the secret destruction of interrogation tapes that may have contained evidence of torture. Having relied on an overly expansive, self-justifying view of executive power, the Bush administration now seeks secrecy for its actions. It has taken a legal doctrine that was intended to protect sensitive, national security information and seems to be using it to evade accountability for its own misdeeds."
Louis Fisher, a specialist in Constitutional law at the Law Library of the Library of Congress, testified on the need to reform the state secrets privilege as "necessary to protect constitutional principles, particularly the system of checks and balances. It is critical that we be able to rely on an independent judiciary to weigh the competing claims of litigants and preserve the adversary process. No litigant, including the executive branch, should be presumed in advance to be superior to another. A sense of fairness in the courtroom is essential in protecting the integrity and credibility of the judiciary."
This sounds stunningly reasonable. So how does the Bush Administration respond? Naturally, it cites the threat from al-Qaeda specifically and terrorists generally.
Carl Nichols, Assistant Deputy Attorney General: "litigation may risk disclosing to al Qaeda or other adversaries details regarding our intelligence capabilities and operations, our sources and methods of foreign intelligence gathering, and other important and sensitive activities that we are presently undertaking in our conflict."
But former federal Appeals Court Judge Patricia Wald noted that judges frequently deal with classified information without revealing anything to the nation's enemies:
"To my knowledge there have been no court 'leaks' of any such information."
Of course, the administration casts aside the privilege when politically convenient. Despite its past assertions that even revealing the existence of any program would damage national security, it then selectively dribbles out information to the public or to Congress. One recent example was cited by Kevin Bankston, an attorney for the Electronic Freedom Foundation, in his testimony to the House: "The timing of the Administration’s belated disclosure to House members of materials related to the NSA program, after over a year of Congressional demands and at the height of the debate over whether to give AT&T and the other carriers immunity, was clearly dictated not by a need to protect state secrets but by political considerations."
And on Monday, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, knowing telecom immunity would be granted by the Senate, said this about FISA violations, illegal wiretapping and the telecommunications companies who participated: "The telephone companies that were alleged to have helped their country after 9/11 did so because they are patriotic and they certainly helped us and they helped us save lives." (emphasis added). Note that "alleged," apparently a reflexive use of the word on Perino's part, becomes "did so."
The Senate's State Secrets Protection Act is intended to remedy these several abuses. Caroline Frederickson of the ACLU said "the state secrets privilege has been used in recent years as a legal ‘A’ bomb, annihilating cases that may expose the government," and that the time had come "for Congress to intervene and to reinforce the system of checks and balances."
Whether that will be the case remains to be seen.
Just yesterday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit on the grounds of the state secrets privilege. The suit was brought against a Boeing subsidiary accused of flying alleged terrorists, on behalf of the CIA, to foreign countries to undergo torture.
In his ruling, the US District Court judge, James Ware, wrote "the court's review of Gen. Hayden's public and classified declarations confirm that continuing the case would jeopardize national security and foreign relations and that no protective procedure can salvage this case." (emphasis added) The State Secrets Protection Act seeks to remedy this since it will require a court to actually examine the evidence.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) noted, because of the administration's repeated invocation of the privilege, "it is through the press that we first learned about secret surveillance of Americans by their own government in the years after 9/11, secret renditions abroad in violation of U.S. laws, secret prisons abroad, secret decisions to fire some of the nation’s top prosecutors, and the secret destruction of interrogation tapes that may have contained evidence of torture. Having relied on an overly expansive, self-justifying view of executive power, the Bush administration now seeks secrecy for its actions. It has taken a legal doctrine that was intended to protect sensitive, national security information and seems to be using it to evade accountability for its own misdeeds."
Louis Fisher, a specialist in Constitutional law at the Law Library of the Library of Congress, testified on the need to reform the state secrets privilege as "necessary to protect constitutional principles, particularly the system of checks and balances. It is critical that we be able to rely on an independent judiciary to weigh the competing claims of litigants and preserve the adversary process. No litigant, including the executive branch, should be presumed in advance to be superior to another. A sense of fairness in the courtroom is essential in protecting the integrity and credibility of the judiciary."
This sounds stunningly reasonable. So how does the Bush Administration respond? Naturally, it cites the threat from al-Qaeda specifically and terrorists generally.
Carl Nichols, Assistant Deputy Attorney General: "litigation may risk disclosing to al Qaeda or other adversaries details regarding our intelligence capabilities and operations, our sources and methods of foreign intelligence gathering, and other important and sensitive activities that we are presently undertaking in our conflict."
But former federal Appeals Court Judge Patricia Wald noted that judges frequently deal with classified information without revealing anything to the nation's enemies:
"To my knowledge there have been no court 'leaks' of any such information."
Of course, the administration casts aside the privilege when politically convenient. Despite its past assertions that even revealing the existence of any program would damage national security, it then selectively dribbles out information to the public or to Congress. One recent example was cited by Kevin Bankston, an attorney for the Electronic Freedom Foundation, in his testimony to the House: "The timing of the Administration’s belated disclosure to House members of materials related to the NSA program, after over a year of Congressional demands and at the height of the debate over whether to give AT&T and the other carriers immunity, was clearly dictated not by a need to protect state secrets but by political considerations."
And on Monday, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, knowing telecom immunity would be granted by the Senate, said this about FISA violations, illegal wiretapping and the telecommunications companies who participated: "The telephone companies that were alleged to have helped their country after 9/11 did so because they are patriotic and they certainly helped us and they helped us save lives." (emphasis added). Note that "alleged," apparently a reflexive use of the word on Perino's part, becomes "did so."
The Senate's State Secrets Protection Act is intended to remedy these several abuses. Caroline Frederickson of the ACLU said "the state secrets privilege has been used in recent years as a legal ‘A’ bomb, annihilating cases that may expose the government," and that the time had come "for Congress to intervene and to reinforce the system of checks and balances."
Whether that will be the case remains to be seen.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Surveillance State, Torture State, Terminal State
As we continue our national metamorphosis from a nation of laws to an intrusive, abusive and Constitution-discarding state, we're left to ponder the whys and wherefores of our descent into darkness.
The Senate yesterday passed legislation to expand warrantless surveillance and grant immunity to the telecommunications companies that illegally participated in warrantless surveillance from at least the onset of 9/11, if not before.
As reported by the NY Times, Sen. Leahy's (D-VT) view of it was that "some people around here get cold feet when threatened by the administration."
Michael Sussman, a former Justice Department attorney, said "this is a dramatic restructuring" of the law, "and the thing that’s so dramatic about this is that you’ve removed the court review. There may be some checks after the fact, but the administration is picking the targets."
That was followed today by a Senate ban on "interrogation methods," or torture, such as waterboarding that are not permitted under Army Field Manual. The vote, however, did not carry a veto-proof majority and President Bush has promised a veto of any such legislation, saying it "would prevent the president from taking the lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack in wartime," even though torture is illegal and a war crime. (emphasis added)
Sen. McCain (R-AZ) voted against the ban although he'd earlier said of waterboarding, "all I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today ... it is not a complicated procedure. It is torture." (McCain sponsored the 2006 Detainee Treatment Act which prohibited waterboarding; nevertheless, the Bush administration, as the Washington Post put it, "maintained that the law did not apply to the CIA and other intelligence agencies, leading to today's vote.")
Yet today, McCain chose the "presidential" path and reversed himself.
And so here we are. There are some in Congress, such as Sen. Feingold (D-WI), who still have clarity of thought and character.
On the torture ban: I made my position clear. I could not support the CIA’s program on moral, legal, or national security grounds. When I was finally fully briefed on the program, it was clear that what was going on was profoundly wrong. It did not represent what we, as a nation, stand for, or what we are fighting for in this global struggle against Al Qaeda. And it was not making our country any safer .... I also concluded that if the American people knew what we in the Intelligence Committee knew, they would agree.
And from Sen. Dodd (D-CT) on warantless wiretapping legislation:
I have seen some dark days in this chamber; in my mind, one of the worst was September 28, 2007: the day the Senate voted to strip habeas corpus and tolerate torture. Today, February 12, 2008, is nearly as dark: the day the Senate voted to ensure secrecy and to exempt corporations from the law. Frankly, I’ve seen a lot of darkness in recent years, as one by one our dearest traditions of Constitutional governance have been attacked.
And from Scott Horton, lawyer, Columbia Law School lecturer, and Harper's contributer: If things proceed on the course now set by the Bush Administration and its shortsighted collaborators, and the national surveillance state is achieved in short order, then future generations looking back and tracing the destruction of the grand design of our Constitution may settle on yesterday, February 12, 2008, as the date of the decisive breach.
How did we get to this point? Fear, I suppose, is the leading explanation, the one suggested by Sen. Leahy. But it isn't just the fear of another terrorist attack only, it's fear of political opposition, fear of the rhetorical skills of persuasion ("soft on terror") by one's opponents, fear of businesses with unholy lobbying clout.
Ultimately, though, these explanations serve to mask something darker--the cowardice and, essentially, contempt of the political class for its own and the nation's integrity.
The Senate yesterday passed legislation to expand warrantless surveillance and grant immunity to the telecommunications companies that illegally participated in warrantless surveillance from at least the onset of 9/11, if not before.
As reported by the NY Times, Sen. Leahy's (D-VT) view of it was that "some people around here get cold feet when threatened by the administration."
Michael Sussman, a former Justice Department attorney, said "this is a dramatic restructuring" of the law, "and the thing that’s so dramatic about this is that you’ve removed the court review. There may be some checks after the fact, but the administration is picking the targets."
That was followed today by a Senate ban on "interrogation methods," or torture, such as waterboarding that are not permitted under Army Field Manual. The vote, however, did not carry a veto-proof majority and President Bush has promised a veto of any such legislation, saying it "would prevent the president from taking the lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack in wartime," even though torture is illegal and a war crime. (emphasis added)
Sen. McCain (R-AZ) voted against the ban although he'd earlier said of waterboarding, "all I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today ... it is not a complicated procedure. It is torture." (McCain sponsored the 2006 Detainee Treatment Act which prohibited waterboarding; nevertheless, the Bush administration, as the Washington Post put it, "maintained that the law did not apply to the CIA and other intelligence agencies, leading to today's vote.")
Yet today, McCain chose the "presidential" path and reversed himself.
And so here we are. There are some in Congress, such as Sen. Feingold (D-WI), who still have clarity of thought and character.
On the torture ban: I made my position clear. I could not support the CIA’s program on moral, legal, or national security grounds. When I was finally fully briefed on the program, it was clear that what was going on was profoundly wrong. It did not represent what we, as a nation, stand for, or what we are fighting for in this global struggle against Al Qaeda. And it was not making our country any safer .... I also concluded that if the American people knew what we in the Intelligence Committee knew, they would agree.
And from Sen. Dodd (D-CT) on warantless wiretapping legislation:
I have seen some dark days in this chamber; in my mind, one of the worst was September 28, 2007: the day the Senate voted to strip habeas corpus and tolerate torture. Today, February 12, 2008, is nearly as dark: the day the Senate voted to ensure secrecy and to exempt corporations from the law. Frankly, I’ve seen a lot of darkness in recent years, as one by one our dearest traditions of Constitutional governance have been attacked.
And from Scott Horton, lawyer, Columbia Law School lecturer, and Harper's contributer: If things proceed on the course now set by the Bush Administration and its shortsighted collaborators, and the national surveillance state is achieved in short order, then future generations looking back and tracing the destruction of the grand design of our Constitution may settle on yesterday, February 12, 2008, as the date of the decisive breach.
How did we get to this point? Fear, I suppose, is the leading explanation, the one suggested by Sen. Leahy. But it isn't just the fear of another terrorist attack only, it's fear of political opposition, fear of the rhetorical skills of persuasion ("soft on terror") by one's opponents, fear of businesses with unholy lobbying clout.
Ultimately, though, these explanations serve to mask something darker--the cowardice and, essentially, contempt of the political class for its own and the nation's integrity.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
US Response To Islamist Insurgencies: Seriously Deficient
The NY Times reported yesterday that the US Army buried a Rand Corporation report that offered a "wide-ranging critique of the White House, the Defense Department and other government agencies [which] was a concern for Army generals, and the Army has sought to keep the report under lock and key."
As Rand concluded, "the report finds that large-scale U.S. military intervention and occupation in the Muslim world is at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, and, on the whole, infeasible. The United States should shift its priorities and funding to improve civil governance, build local security forces, and exploit information — capabilities that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan."
This is quite an indictment following several years of questionable "progress" by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report, titled "War by Other Means: Building Complete And Balanced Capabilities For Counterinsurgency," states what should be obvious: Military force is but one instrument of COIN [counterinsurgency] available for use in such contests, and it ought to be subordinate to a political strategy of offering the people a government deserving of their support. Improvements in local governance, legal systems, public services, and economic conditions may be at least as important as military operations, though the former often depend on the success of the latter.
That the report was buried tells us much about transparency, or lack of it, in the US government. One would think that the Rand report would be welcomed by no less than Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has spoken at length of the need to reinvigorate the so-called soft power piece of a multi-pronged effort to bring stability to insurgency-convulsed regions: One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win: economic development, institution-building and the rule of law, promoting internal reconciliation, good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications, and more – these, along with security, are essential ingredients for long-term success.
From Rand: "four of the strongest statistical predictors of successful insurgency exist in today’s Muslim world: populations excluded from politics and estranged from the state; authoritarian, unresponsive, inept, and corrupt government; insurgents committed to destroying such government; significant popular sympathy for insurgents."
How is that substanitally different from what Secretary Gates has concluded?
The letter from the Chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services, Rep. Ike Skeltion (D-MS), to Army Secretary Pete Geren stresses an important point, that the US Army, and military generally, ought to be above internal, domestic politics in an effort to accomplish the tasks set before it: "The United States Army has a long and honorable tradition of carrying out the nation's business in a professional, nonpolitical, and extremely competent manner. This makes it all the more important that when the Army finds itself involved in a situation that has not gone according to expectations, it undertake a critical assessment of what went wrong, even if that assessment reflects poorly on the Army, the Department of Defense, the Executive Branch, or Congress. We cannot improve future results without studying past failures any more than we can wish that the war in Iraq had proceeded as outlined in some of the rosier scenarios laid out before the war started."
This past Sunday at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Defense Secretary Gates said, "we have learned that war in the 21st century does not have stark divisions between civilian and military components. It is a continuous scale that slides from combat operations to economic development, governance and reconstruction – frequently all at the same time."
This ought to be obvious to all parties. That the Rand report was buried because it stated the obvious is disgraceful and clearly contrary to any reasonable notion of transparency, and destructive to the effort to create an effective counterinsurgency strategy.
Isn't responsive government, a lack of corruption, competency and transparency the proper prescription for succeeding at our "war on terror"? A buried report, buried because it illuminates a failing strategy, is precisely contrary to what ought to be US policy at home, and no less abroad.
As Rand concluded, "the report finds that large-scale U.S. military intervention and occupation in the Muslim world is at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, and, on the whole, infeasible. The United States should shift its priorities and funding to improve civil governance, build local security forces, and exploit information — capabilities that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan."
This is quite an indictment following several years of questionable "progress" by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report, titled "War by Other Means: Building Complete And Balanced Capabilities For Counterinsurgency," states what should be obvious: Military force is but one instrument of COIN [counterinsurgency] available for use in such contests, and it ought to be subordinate to a political strategy of offering the people a government deserving of their support. Improvements in local governance, legal systems, public services, and economic conditions may be at least as important as military operations, though the former often depend on the success of the latter.
That the report was buried tells us much about transparency, or lack of it, in the US government. One would think that the Rand report would be welcomed by no less than Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has spoken at length of the need to reinvigorate the so-called soft power piece of a multi-pronged effort to bring stability to insurgency-convulsed regions: One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win: economic development, institution-building and the rule of law, promoting internal reconciliation, good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications, and more – these, along with security, are essential ingredients for long-term success.
From Rand: "four of the strongest statistical predictors of successful insurgency exist in today’s Muslim world: populations excluded from politics and estranged from the state; authoritarian, unresponsive, inept, and corrupt government; insurgents committed to destroying such government; significant popular sympathy for insurgents."
How is that substanitally different from what Secretary Gates has concluded?
The letter from the Chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services, Rep. Ike Skeltion (D-MS), to Army Secretary Pete Geren stresses an important point, that the US Army, and military generally, ought to be above internal, domestic politics in an effort to accomplish the tasks set before it: "The United States Army has a long and honorable tradition of carrying out the nation's business in a professional, nonpolitical, and extremely competent manner. This makes it all the more important that when the Army finds itself involved in a situation that has not gone according to expectations, it undertake a critical assessment of what went wrong, even if that assessment reflects poorly on the Army, the Department of Defense, the Executive Branch, or Congress. We cannot improve future results without studying past failures any more than we can wish that the war in Iraq had proceeded as outlined in some of the rosier scenarios laid out before the war started."
This past Sunday at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Defense Secretary Gates said, "we have learned that war in the 21st century does not have stark divisions between civilian and military components. It is a continuous scale that slides from combat operations to economic development, governance and reconstruction – frequently all at the same time."
This ought to be obvious to all parties. That the Rand report was buried because it stated the obvious is disgraceful and clearly contrary to any reasonable notion of transparency, and destructive to the effort to create an effective counterinsurgency strategy.
Isn't responsive government, a lack of corruption, competency and transparency the proper prescription for succeeding at our "war on terror"? A buried report, buried because it illuminates a failing strategy, is precisely contrary to what ought to be US policy at home, and no less abroad.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Secrecy: The Bane of Democracy
That the Bush Administration is authoritarian, anti-democratic, and secretive is neither news nor a surprise to anyone, but that doesn't mean we ought to just shrug off its actions when they're put on public display, whether it's George Bush's grotesque FY 2009 budget or his sleight-of-hand regarding funding for the OPEN Government Act of 2007.
When the president signed the act on December 31, 2007, he did so without public comment due to, it now seems clear, the bill's establishment of an "Office of Government Information Services in the National Archives and Records Administration to review agency compliance with FOIA."
He never intended to fund this office but rather has insisted in his FY 2009 budget that the funds be moved to the Justice Department.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), a co-sponser of the legislation and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in response to the decision, "the White House has shown they intend to act contrary to the intent of Congress by removing the Office of Government Information Services from the non-partisan, independent office of the National Archives and Records Administration and moving it to the Department of Justice. The President signed legislation into law to establish the OGIS to respond to long outstanding FOIA requests. Now the President has repealed part of the law he signed just over a month ago."
As Ralph Lindeman of the Coalition of Journalists For Open Government put it, the move "would shift the office from a politically neutral National Archives to the Justice Department, which defends the government against requesters in lawsuits under FOIA." Of course, the conflict is obvious in a fox-guarding-the-henhouse-way: if the DOJ defends the government against requesters' petitions, it's hardly the appropriate department to monitor requests in the first place.
**
But, sad to say, the Bush Administration isn't alone in insisting upon anti-democratic secrecy. OpenTheGovernment.org highlighted this problem at the Congressional level in letters to Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
The letter to Reid noted that the passage in August 2007 of the Protect America Act, saw "substantial changes to FISA, crafted by the administration, [which] were passed by Congress without any public hearings with anyone other than administration witnesses speaking to Senators."
In the October 2007 letter to Pelosi, OTG said that "we are now faced with a law [PAA] that allows massive untargeted collection of communications into and out of the United States, without court review, and without any limit on how those communications can be distributed or used. This new legislation has serious Fourth Amendment implications and eviscerates the longstanding protections for Americans in FISA. There is substantial work to be done to put this law back in line with the Constitution and our values, work that should not be done in secret or behind closed doors.
We believe Congress cannot fulfill its constitutional responsibilities by voting on legislation making the PAA permanent, extending the law’s sunset or giving immunity
for past warrantless surveillance of Americans, without a public discussion about these very controversial proposals. The rights and civil liberties of Americans are too important to proceed without one."
**
How effective can a democracy be when the leadership of both parties work against open government?
When the president signed the act on December 31, 2007, he did so without public comment due to, it now seems clear, the bill's establishment of an "Office of Government Information Services in the National Archives and Records Administration to review agency compliance with FOIA."
He never intended to fund this office but rather has insisted in his FY 2009 budget that the funds be moved to the Justice Department.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), a co-sponser of the legislation and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in response to the decision, "the White House has shown they intend to act contrary to the intent of Congress by removing the Office of Government Information Services from the non-partisan, independent office of the National Archives and Records Administration and moving it to the Department of Justice. The President signed legislation into law to establish the OGIS to respond to long outstanding FOIA requests. Now the President has repealed part of the law he signed just over a month ago."
As Ralph Lindeman of the Coalition of Journalists For Open Government put it, the move "would shift the office from a politically neutral National Archives to the Justice Department, which defends the government against requesters in lawsuits under FOIA." Of course, the conflict is obvious in a fox-guarding-the-henhouse-way: if the DOJ defends the government against requesters' petitions, it's hardly the appropriate department to monitor requests in the first place.
**
But, sad to say, the Bush Administration isn't alone in insisting upon anti-democratic secrecy. OpenTheGovernment.org highlighted this problem at the Congressional level in letters to Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
The letter to Reid noted that the passage in August 2007 of the Protect America Act, saw "substantial changes to FISA, crafted by the administration, [which] were passed by Congress without any public hearings with anyone other than administration witnesses speaking to Senators."
In the October 2007 letter to Pelosi, OTG said that "we are now faced with a law [PAA] that allows massive untargeted collection of communications into and out of the United States, without court review, and without any limit on how those communications can be distributed or used. This new legislation has serious Fourth Amendment implications and eviscerates the longstanding protections for Americans in FISA. There is substantial work to be done to put this law back in line with the Constitution and our values, work that should not be done in secret or behind closed doors.
We believe Congress cannot fulfill its constitutional responsibilities by voting on legislation making the PAA permanent, extending the law’s sunset or giving immunity
for past warrantless surveillance of Americans, without a public discussion about these very controversial proposals. The rights and civil liberties of Americans are too important to proceed without one."
**
How effective can a democracy be when the leadership of both parties work against open government?
Sunday, February 3, 2008
What Wasn't Asked: The Democratic Debate
The most disturbing and disappointing aspect of the Democratic debate in Los Angeles on Thursday was the absence of several critical questions affecting functional, institutional democracy. Shouldn't that be a principal reason why candidates engage in debate to begin with?
Here are a few questions not asked of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton:
--What criteria would you use in selecting a Supreme Court nominee?
**Their answers would be useful for all the obvious reasons (gay marriage, abortion, Church and State issues, etc.) but, more fundamentally, as an opportunity to address the issue of so-called Constitutional "original intent" or "strict constructionism." George Bush has cited this repeatedly, as befits a plank of the Republican platform, most recently in his State of the Union Address, where he said "on matters of justice, we must trust in the wisdom of our founders and empower judges who understand that the Constitution means what it says. I've submitted judicial nominees who will rule by the letter of the law, not the whim of the gavel."
But there has been little in the way of comments from either Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama on what would constitute an acceptable criteria for a Supreme Court nominee, so voters are left with inference.
**Obama, on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, said "last year, the Supreme Court decided by a vote of 5-4 to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban, and in doing so undermined an important principle of Roe v. Wade: that we must always protect women’s health. With one more vacancy on the Supreme Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a women’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe v. Wade. The next president may be asked to nominate that Supreme Court justice. That is what is at stake in this election." (emphasis added)
Yet you wouldn't know that's at stake judging by the lack of such questions regarding Supreme Court nominees.
Sen. Clinton said, in voting against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, that she wants judges who are "steadfast in protecting fundamental women’s rights, civil rights, privacy rights, and who will respect the appropriate separation of powers among the three branches." But we won't know what, specifically, she means by this unless questions are asked about Supreme Court nominees.
As Doug Kendall, the founder and Executive Director of Community Rights Counsel (CRC) phrased it, "when's the last time you heard one of the Democratic candidates talk about who they would nominate to the Supreme Court? Have they said anything at all interesting about the topic? Not that I've heard."
And what of questions relating to the FISA legislation currently in the Senate, or on the immunity from prosecution provision for telecom companies in that legislation?
Not a word. As Media Matters noted:
"Despite the controversy over the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance and whether telecommunications companies should receive immunity for their alleged involvement, only one question about wiretapping has been asked of any presidential candidate of either party during the numerous debates over the past year. The lone question was asked of Republican Mitt Romney in September 2007; no Democrat has been asked any question relating to the topic." (the Romney question related to eavesdropping on mosques "even without a judge's approval")
And isn't this statement revealing executive branch overreach worthy of a debate question? The NSA activities are supported by the President’s well-recognized inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs to conduct warrantless surveillance of enemy forces for intelligence purposes to detect and disrupt armed attacks on the United States.
After all, this statement explicitly disavows any Congressional role in surveillance, even one of oversight, and casts aside FISA as an oversight tool.
So where do Clinton and Obama stand on this matter, within the context of debate questions? We don't know.
And, perhaps most importantly, why are there no questions addressing the matter of impeachment? Conventional wisdom tells us that Democrats run from the subject lest they threaten their election chances this November. But impeachment goes beyond the personalities of either George Bush or Dick Cheney. It directly relates to institutional health and integrity, as Scott Horton at Harper's persuasively argues. In his article, Horton cites the late "conservative Harvard legal historian and Supreme Court scholar," Raoul Berger, that the Congressional power of impeachment "constitutes a deliberate breach in the doctrine of separation of powers, so that no arguments drawn from that doctrine (such as executive privilege) may apply to the preliminary inquiry by the House or the subsequent trial by the Senate."
As Horton notes, "the Bush White House has put up enormous battlements in anticipation of what is coming ... [in their] assert[ion of] executive privilege."
The issue of executive authority and its abuse are obviously questions worthy of a debate setting. The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage thought so when he asked candidates about executive power. Barack Obama, responding to the questions, said "the American people need to know where we stand on these issues before they entrust us with this responsibility - particularly at a time when our laws, our traditions, and our Constitution have been repeatedly challenged by this administration." (emphasis added)
Yet, again, no questions were asked about this issue.
Will we, before November, have a debate where such questions will be asked?
Here are a few questions not asked of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton:
--What criteria would you use in selecting a Supreme Court nominee?
**Their answers would be useful for all the obvious reasons (gay marriage, abortion, Church and State issues, etc.) but, more fundamentally, as an opportunity to address the issue of so-called Constitutional "original intent" or "strict constructionism." George Bush has cited this repeatedly, as befits a plank of the Republican platform, most recently in his State of the Union Address, where he said "on matters of justice, we must trust in the wisdom of our founders and empower judges who understand that the Constitution means what it says. I've submitted judicial nominees who will rule by the letter of the law, not the whim of the gavel."
But there has been little in the way of comments from either Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama on what would constitute an acceptable criteria for a Supreme Court nominee, so voters are left with inference.
**Obama, on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, said "last year, the Supreme Court decided by a vote of 5-4 to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban, and in doing so undermined an important principle of Roe v. Wade: that we must always protect women’s health. With one more vacancy on the Supreme Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a women’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe v. Wade. The next president may be asked to nominate that Supreme Court justice. That is what is at stake in this election." (emphasis added)
Yet you wouldn't know that's at stake judging by the lack of such questions regarding Supreme Court nominees.
Sen. Clinton said, in voting against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, that she wants judges who are "steadfast in protecting fundamental women’s rights, civil rights, privacy rights, and who will respect the appropriate separation of powers among the three branches." But we won't know what, specifically, she means by this unless questions are asked about Supreme Court nominees.
As Doug Kendall, the founder and Executive Director of Community Rights Counsel (CRC) phrased it, "when's the last time you heard one of the Democratic candidates talk about who they would nominate to the Supreme Court? Have they said anything at all interesting about the topic? Not that I've heard."
And what of questions relating to the FISA legislation currently in the Senate, or on the immunity from prosecution provision for telecom companies in that legislation?
Not a word. As Media Matters noted:
"Despite the controversy over the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance and whether telecommunications companies should receive immunity for their alleged involvement, only one question about wiretapping has been asked of any presidential candidate of either party during the numerous debates over the past year. The lone question was asked of Republican Mitt Romney in September 2007; no Democrat has been asked any question relating to the topic." (the Romney question related to eavesdropping on mosques "even without a judge's approval")
And isn't this statement revealing executive branch overreach worthy of a debate question? The NSA activities are supported by the President’s well-recognized inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs to conduct warrantless surveillance of enemy forces for intelligence purposes to detect and disrupt armed attacks on the United States.
After all, this statement explicitly disavows any Congressional role in surveillance, even one of oversight, and casts aside FISA as an oversight tool.
So where do Clinton and Obama stand on this matter, within the context of debate questions? We don't know.
And, perhaps most importantly, why are there no questions addressing the matter of impeachment? Conventional wisdom tells us that Democrats run from the subject lest they threaten their election chances this November. But impeachment goes beyond the personalities of either George Bush or Dick Cheney. It directly relates to institutional health and integrity, as Scott Horton at Harper's persuasively argues. In his article, Horton cites the late "conservative Harvard legal historian and Supreme Court scholar," Raoul Berger, that the Congressional power of impeachment "constitutes a deliberate breach in the doctrine of separation of powers, so that no arguments drawn from that doctrine (such as executive privilege) may apply to the preliminary inquiry by the House or the subsequent trial by the Senate."
As Horton notes, "the Bush White House has put up enormous battlements in anticipation of what is coming ... [in their] assert[ion of] executive privilege."
The issue of executive authority and its abuse are obviously questions worthy of a debate setting. The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage thought so when he asked candidates about executive power. Barack Obama, responding to the questions, said "the American people need to know where we stand on these issues before they entrust us with this responsibility - particularly at a time when our laws, our traditions, and our Constitution have been repeatedly challenged by this administration." (emphasis added)
Yet, again, no questions were asked about this issue.
Will we, before November, have a debate where such questions will be asked?
Friday, February 1, 2008
Afghanistan: Snags in the "War on Terror" Fabric
Several analyses have come out over the past few days examining the near-failure of the West's strategic approach to Afghanistan. They make for dismal reading but offer a number of recommendations for a course correction, despite recent comments from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that "I would say that the security situation is good," and Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher's comments before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, that "nobody can tell me it’s not going in a positive direction." He argued that "there is progress. It’s going in the right direction," that Afghanistan has "a government that works fairly well."
Perhaps a sign of "the right direction" is one found at the State Department's website which has, in a section called "Afghanistan Investment and Reconstruction Task Force" a notice that "a delegation of 10 Afghan rug businesses will exhibit their products at this winter’s Las Vegas Market at the World Center Market in Las Vegas."
Clearly, we have problems.
As for those analyses, they include: "Saving Afghanistan: An Appeal and Plan for Urgent Action" by The Atlantic Council Of The United States, which grimly observed "make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan." (hereafter ACUS); the National Defense University's report "Winning the Invisible War: An Agricultural Pilot Plan for Afghanistan" (hereafter NDU); the Center for the Study of the Presidency's "Afghanistan Study Group Report: Revitalizing Our Efforts and Rethinking Our Strategy" (hereafter ASGR); and, last November's "The Forgotten Front" by the Center For American Progress (hereafter CAP).
Each of these suggest recommendations for a more cohesive approach to that benighted , war-torn state. In sum, those suggestions amount to emphasizing the need to take Afghanistan's woes seriously in light of the Taliban and al Qaeda resurgences, and put in place a cohesive, comprehensive and comprehensible policy.
Yet these policy suggestions state what should be obvious to the US and its NATO partners.
Apparently not.
Here's Boucher stating the obvious: "Afghanistan is more than just a theater to fight enemies. It is a place of strategic opportunity. Afghanistan offers a rare opportunity to win a close, loyal, democratic ally in the heart of a continent with unmatched political and economic capital and potential. [It] is located at the crossroads of countries that are the focus of our foreign policy efforts and has the potential for becoming the linchpin for regional integration in South and Central Asia."
Okay. Nice summation of the region's importance. But, simply by looking at the lack of seriousness with which the US and NATO have approached the country, as evidenced by ineffective policy, one has to wonder whether the current Administration believes the words of its own officials, that Afghanistan "is ... at the crossroads of countries that are the focus of our foreign policy efforts ...."
ASGR: "The United States and the international community have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces, insufficient economic aid, and without a clear and consistent comprehensive strategy to fill the power vacuum outside Kabul and counter the combined challenges of reconstituted Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a runaway opium economy, and the stark poverty faced by most Afghans."
Too few resources. That doesn't sound like a serious policy.
CAP: "The United States must change its current approach. It must fully implement a counterinsurgency framework for all of Afghanistan. All elements of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, including development and reconstruction assistance, support for rule of law, counternarcotics strategy, and military operations should be coordinated within this framework."
Which means we've had, for the past six plus years an uncoordinated policy because, as CAP has it, "although the current administration has portrayed Iraq as the central front of the 'global war on terror,' Afghanistan and the borderlands of Pakistan remain the central battlefield."
Robert Gates: "militarily, NATO has had a very successful year in 2007. The Taliban is occupying no territory in Afghanistan on a continuing basis ... [he admitted to] a rising security issue [in Afghanistan but said] it’s because the Taliban are turning to terrorism, having failed in conventional military conflict with the NATO allies.
And so we are seeing more suicide bombings, more use of (improvised explosive devices), and so on. These are actions of people whose conventional military efforts have failed. The rise in violence and attacks like we saw in Kabul are manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms in 2007 and is turning to terrorism as a substitute for that."
Yet even as he said this at a press conference with French Defense Minister Herve Morin, the latter said, "the problem in Afghanistan is not only a military problem. We need a comprehensive solution."
Clearly there's not much unity of view there.
ACUS: "On the security side, a stalemate of sorts has taken hold. NATO and Afghan forces cannot be beaten by the insurgency or by the Taliban. Neither can our forces eliminate the Taliban by military means as long as they have sanctuary in Pakistan. Hence, the future of Afghanistan will be determined by progress or failure in the civil sector."
Gates: "The key, it seems to me, is how do we overcome this turn to terrorism on the part of the Taliban and, at the same time deal, as Minister Morin talked about, with the other aspects of concern in Afghanistan? And that is economic development, governance, counternarcotics and so on. All of these things need to be addressed for us to be successful."
It is astonishing beyond belief that the Defense Secretary talks of this in 2008--one would think these questions would have been asked and answered and policies designed and implemented at the beginning of 2002. Sec. Gates ought to be speaking of success at this point, not merely that "these things need to be addressed."
NDU: "When this paper was undertaken in the summer of 2007, one of its purposes was to sound the alarm over Afghanistan and the critical need for comprehensive action across all sectors of society to prevent that country from becoming a failed state. The second purpose was to lay out the major areas that needed immediate attention, largely within the civil side of reconstruction and development. The third was to propose specific pilot plans for rejuvenating the agricultural sector."
Doesn't this sound like something that should have been addressed by the Administration's vast stable of experts in 2002?
The NDU report adds: "it appears that the Bush administration and NATO are taking [our] warning seriously. At least three studies are underway: one at Central Command; a second at the State Department; and a third at NATO. Those studies need not take much time to finish. The issues are clear."
Three studies are underway! Even though "the issues are clear." They're certainly clear to Sen. Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
As I see it, here’s the situation in Afghanistan: Security is probably at its lowest ebb since 2001. Much of the country is only nominally under the control of Kabul. U.S. and coalition forces win every pitched battle, but the Taliban still grows stronger day by day.
Drug-trafficking dominates the national economy, and narco-barons operate with impunity. Reconstruction efforts have failed to bring substantial improvement to the lives of most Afghan citizens, and the slow pace is causing widespread resentment at both the Karzai government and the West.
And Bin Laden and the top Al Qaeda leaders enjoy safe haven somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
In fact, this summer, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Terror Threat found that Al Qaeda 'has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability.'
The Administration firmly believes that we are about to turn a corner and that we just need to give our policy a chance to work. I am curious as to what that policy is, because it’s not clear to me.
But that’s exactly what we’ve been hearing for the past five years: the tide is always about to turn.
I sure hope so. But I wouldn’t bet on it. If we’re not going to hold another hearing on Afghanistan next year, and have another retelling of the same story, we need a significant change in policy now."
So here we are, in the waning months of a presidency-gone-bad in so very many ways. And yet, this president's claim to "legacy" is his "war on terror." He will be compared, he seems to believe, to President Harry Truman: "By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundations for America's victory in the cold war." (2006 commencement address to the United States Military Academy)
Now, if President Bush had only built institutions, forged alliances and established doctrines, he might have such a claim.
He didn't and he doesn't.
Perhaps a sign of "the right direction" is one found at the State Department's website which has, in a section called "Afghanistan Investment and Reconstruction Task Force" a notice that "a delegation of 10 Afghan rug businesses will exhibit their products at this winter’s Las Vegas Market at the World Center Market in Las Vegas."
Clearly, we have problems.
As for those analyses, they include: "Saving Afghanistan: An Appeal and Plan for Urgent Action" by The Atlantic Council Of The United States, which grimly observed "make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan." (hereafter ACUS); the National Defense University's report "Winning the Invisible War: An Agricultural Pilot Plan for Afghanistan" (hereafter NDU); the Center for the Study of the Presidency's "Afghanistan Study Group Report: Revitalizing Our Efforts and Rethinking Our Strategy" (hereafter ASGR); and, last November's "The Forgotten Front" by the Center For American Progress (hereafter CAP).
Each of these suggest recommendations for a more cohesive approach to that benighted , war-torn state. In sum, those suggestions amount to emphasizing the need to take Afghanistan's woes seriously in light of the Taliban and al Qaeda resurgences, and put in place a cohesive, comprehensive and comprehensible policy.
Yet these policy suggestions state what should be obvious to the US and its NATO partners.
Apparently not.
Here's Boucher stating the obvious: "Afghanistan is more than just a theater to fight enemies. It is a place of strategic opportunity. Afghanistan offers a rare opportunity to win a close, loyal, democratic ally in the heart of a continent with unmatched political and economic capital and potential. [It] is located at the crossroads of countries that are the focus of our foreign policy efforts and has the potential for becoming the linchpin for regional integration in South and Central Asia."
Okay. Nice summation of the region's importance. But, simply by looking at the lack of seriousness with which the US and NATO have approached the country, as evidenced by ineffective policy, one has to wonder whether the current Administration believes the words of its own officials, that Afghanistan "is ... at the crossroads of countries that are the focus of our foreign policy efforts ...."
ASGR: "The United States and the international community have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces, insufficient economic aid, and without a clear and consistent comprehensive strategy to fill the power vacuum outside Kabul and counter the combined challenges of reconstituted Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a runaway opium economy, and the stark poverty faced by most Afghans."
Too few resources. That doesn't sound like a serious policy.
CAP: "The United States must change its current approach. It must fully implement a counterinsurgency framework for all of Afghanistan. All elements of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, including development and reconstruction assistance, support for rule of law, counternarcotics strategy, and military operations should be coordinated within this framework."
Which means we've had, for the past six plus years an uncoordinated policy because, as CAP has it, "although the current administration has portrayed Iraq as the central front of the 'global war on terror,' Afghanistan and the borderlands of Pakistan remain the central battlefield."
Robert Gates: "militarily, NATO has had a very successful year in 2007. The Taliban is occupying no territory in Afghanistan on a continuing basis ... [he admitted to] a rising security issue [in Afghanistan but said] it’s because the Taliban are turning to terrorism, having failed in conventional military conflict with the NATO allies.
And so we are seeing more suicide bombings, more use of (improvised explosive devices), and so on. These are actions of people whose conventional military efforts have failed. The rise in violence and attacks like we saw in Kabul are manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms in 2007 and is turning to terrorism as a substitute for that."
Yet even as he said this at a press conference with French Defense Minister Herve Morin, the latter said, "the problem in Afghanistan is not only a military problem. We need a comprehensive solution."
Clearly there's not much unity of view there.
ACUS: "On the security side, a stalemate of sorts has taken hold. NATO and Afghan forces cannot be beaten by the insurgency or by the Taliban. Neither can our forces eliminate the Taliban by military means as long as they have sanctuary in Pakistan. Hence, the future of Afghanistan will be determined by progress or failure in the civil sector."
Gates: "The key, it seems to me, is how do we overcome this turn to terrorism on the part of the Taliban and, at the same time deal, as Minister Morin talked about, with the other aspects of concern in Afghanistan? And that is economic development, governance, counternarcotics and so on. All of these things need to be addressed for us to be successful."
It is astonishing beyond belief that the Defense Secretary talks of this in 2008--one would think these questions would have been asked and answered and policies designed and implemented at the beginning of 2002. Sec. Gates ought to be speaking of success at this point, not merely that "these things need to be addressed."
NDU: "When this paper was undertaken in the summer of 2007, one of its purposes was to sound the alarm over Afghanistan and the critical need for comprehensive action across all sectors of society to prevent that country from becoming a failed state. The second purpose was to lay out the major areas that needed immediate attention, largely within the civil side of reconstruction and development. The third was to propose specific pilot plans for rejuvenating the agricultural sector."
Doesn't this sound like something that should have been addressed by the Administration's vast stable of experts in 2002?
The NDU report adds: "it appears that the Bush administration and NATO are taking [our] warning seriously. At least three studies are underway: one at Central Command; a second at the State Department; and a third at NATO. Those studies need not take much time to finish. The issues are clear."
Three studies are underway! Even though "the issues are clear." They're certainly clear to Sen. Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
As I see it, here’s the situation in Afghanistan: Security is probably at its lowest ebb since 2001. Much of the country is only nominally under the control of Kabul. U.S. and coalition forces win every pitched battle, but the Taliban still grows stronger day by day.
Drug-trafficking dominates the national economy, and narco-barons operate with impunity. Reconstruction efforts have failed to bring substantial improvement to the lives of most Afghan citizens, and the slow pace is causing widespread resentment at both the Karzai government and the West.
And Bin Laden and the top Al Qaeda leaders enjoy safe haven somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
In fact, this summer, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Terror Threat found that Al Qaeda 'has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability.'
The Administration firmly believes that we are about to turn a corner and that we just need to give our policy a chance to work. I am curious as to what that policy is, because it’s not clear to me.
But that’s exactly what we’ve been hearing for the past five years: the tide is always about to turn.
I sure hope so. But I wouldn’t bet on it. If we’re not going to hold another hearing on Afghanistan next year, and have another retelling of the same story, we need a significant change in policy now."
So here we are, in the waning months of a presidency-gone-bad in so very many ways. And yet, this president's claim to "legacy" is his "war on terror." He will be compared, he seems to believe, to President Harry Truman: "By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundations for America's victory in the cold war." (2006 commencement address to the United States Military Academy)
Now, if President Bush had only built institutions, forged alliances and established doctrines, he might have such a claim.
He didn't and he doesn't.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Caution! Constitution-Shredding in Progress!
It's either ironic or simply hypocritical that President Bush continues to employ signing statements to trump Congressional statutes even as he rhetorically argues on behalf of the original intention of the Constitution's authors.
In his State of the Union speech on Monday, Bush said "on matters of justice, we must trust in the wisdom of our founders and empower judges who understand that the Constitution means what it says. I've submitted judicial nominees who will rule by the letter of the law, not the whim of the gavel."
Yet on the same day he uttered those words, he continued, as the Guardian put it, "his practice of disregarding portions of new laws, quietly reserving the right to build permanent military bases in Iraq, keep Congress in the dark on spying activity and block two accountability measures aimed at private security firms accused of wartime abuses."
In a Harvard Law Review article, David Barron and Martin Lederman argue that the Bush Administration's position is predicated on the argument that "the Commander in Chief Clause prevents Congress from interfering with the President’s operational discretion in wartime by 'direct[ing] the conduct of campaigns.' Or, as it is sometimes more broadly put, the idea is that Congress may not regulate the President’s judgments about how best to defeat the enemy — that the Commander in Chief’s discretion on such matters is not only constitutionally prescribed but is preclusive of the exercise of Congress’s Article I powers." (citations omitted)
Preclusive in that it precedes and therefore trumps Congress's Article I powers to enact legislative statutes that seek to exert Congressional authority, thereby explicitly reigning in an overreach of Presidential authority. Or, as it's described in a "Memorandum from Jay S. Bybee, Assistant Att’y Gen., Office of Legal Counsel, to Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President (Aug. 1, 2002)," Congress isn't permitted to "dictate strategic or tactical decisions on the battlefield."
**
The most recent Bush signing statement followed his signature on H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. As the official White House statement puts it, "provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President," or, simply ignore "such provisions."
The bill's sections involve "Commission on Wartime Contracting" (sec. 841); "Protection For Contractor Employees From Reprisal For Disclosure Of Certain Information" (sec. 846); "Communications With The Committees On Armed Services Of The Senate And The House Of Representatives" (sec. 1079); and "Limitation On Availability Of Funds For Certain Purposes Relating To Iraq" (sec. 1222)
**
Section 841 relate to Congress's duty to assess, among other things, "the extent of waste, fraud, and abuse under such contracts; the extent to which those responsible for such waste, fraud, and abuse have been held financially or legally accountable; [and] the extent to which contractors under such contracts have engaged in the misuse of force or have used force in a manner inconsistent with the objectives of the operational field commander; and the extent of potential violations of the laws of war, Federal law, or other applicable legal standards by contractors under such."
It's pretty clear why this merited a signing statement, given the behavior of Blackwater in Iraq and the several no-bid contracts that have been awarded to various companies.
Section 846 involves whistleblower protection ("increased protection from reprisal") for contractor employees. Again, given the objection to the previous section, the last thing the Administration wants is legal protection for those willing to testify to wrongdoing.
Section 1079 addresses the authority of Congress to receive testimony from intelligence officials: "The Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the Director of a national intelligence center, or the head of any element of the intelligence community shall, not later than 45 days after receiving a written request from the Chair or ranking minority member of the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate or the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives for any existing intelligence assessment, report, estimate, or legal opinion relating to matters within the jurisdiction of such Committee, make available to such committee such assessment, report, estimate, or legal opinion, as the case may be."
This section even includes the provision "unless the President determines that such document or information shall not be provided because the President is asserting a privilege pursuant to the Constitution of the United States."
But, recalling the Administration's assertion of preclusion, Congress lacks the authority to require this testimony at all. Apparently, a presidential assertion of privilege is beside the point.
Section 1222 is the kicker, since it relates to the prohibition of using appropriated funds for building permanent bases in Iraq:
"No funds appropriated pursuant to an authorization of appropriations in this Act may be obligated or expended for a purpose as follows:
(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq.
(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq."
The permanent base issue is particularly contentious (actually, they all are) since Defense Secretary Robert Gates said as recently as last week that "we have no interest in permanent bases."
Yet as Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) said in the Senate yesterday, "every time a senior Administration official is asked about permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, they contend that it is not their intention to construct such facilities. Yet this signing statement issued by the President yesterday is the clearest signal yet that the Administration wants to hold this option in reserve. Mr. President, that is exactly the wrong signal to send, both to the Iraqi government and its neighbors in the region."
Dawn Johnsen, a law professor at the University of Indiana (and a former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration) said, "Congress clearly has the authority to enact this limitation of the expenditure of funds for permanent bases in Iraq."
American Bar Association President Karen Mathis told members of the House Judiciary Committee today that "the potential for misuse in the issuance of presidential signing statements has reached the point where it poses a real threat to our system of checks and balances and the rule of law."
But absent the critical involvement of the Judiciary branch, George Bush will continue to ignore legislation he doesn't like even as he heaps contempt on the other two branches of government. If that doesn't define a Constitutional crisis, what does?
In his State of the Union speech on Monday, Bush said "on matters of justice, we must trust in the wisdom of our founders and empower judges who understand that the Constitution means what it says. I've submitted judicial nominees who will rule by the letter of the law, not the whim of the gavel."
Yet on the same day he uttered those words, he continued, as the Guardian put it, "his practice of disregarding portions of new laws, quietly reserving the right to build permanent military bases in Iraq, keep Congress in the dark on spying activity and block two accountability measures aimed at private security firms accused of wartime abuses."
In a Harvard Law Review article, David Barron and Martin Lederman argue that the Bush Administration's position is predicated on the argument that "the Commander in Chief Clause prevents Congress from interfering with the President’s operational discretion in wartime by 'direct[ing] the conduct of campaigns.' Or, as it is sometimes more broadly put, the idea is that Congress may not regulate the President’s judgments about how best to defeat the enemy — that the Commander in Chief’s discretion on such matters is not only constitutionally prescribed but is preclusive of the exercise of Congress’s Article I powers." (citations omitted)
Preclusive in that it precedes and therefore trumps Congress's Article I powers to enact legislative statutes that seek to exert Congressional authority, thereby explicitly reigning in an overreach of Presidential authority. Or, as it's described in a "Memorandum from Jay S. Bybee, Assistant Att’y Gen., Office of Legal Counsel, to Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President (Aug. 1, 2002)," Congress isn't permitted to "dictate strategic or tactical decisions on the battlefield."
**
The most recent Bush signing statement followed his signature on H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. As the official White House statement puts it, "provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President," or, simply ignore "such provisions."
The bill's sections involve "Commission on Wartime Contracting" (sec. 841); "Protection For Contractor Employees From Reprisal For Disclosure Of Certain Information" (sec. 846); "Communications With The Committees On Armed Services Of The Senate And The House Of Representatives" (sec. 1079); and "Limitation On Availability Of Funds For Certain Purposes Relating To Iraq" (sec. 1222)
**
Section 841 relate to Congress's duty to assess, among other things, "the extent of waste, fraud, and abuse under such contracts; the extent to which those responsible for such waste, fraud, and abuse have been held financially or legally accountable; [and] the extent to which contractors under such contracts have engaged in the misuse of force or have used force in a manner inconsistent with the objectives of the operational field commander; and the extent of potential violations of the laws of war, Federal law, or other applicable legal standards by contractors under such."
It's pretty clear why this merited a signing statement, given the behavior of Blackwater in Iraq and the several no-bid contracts that have been awarded to various companies.
Section 846 involves whistleblower protection ("increased protection from reprisal") for contractor employees. Again, given the objection to the previous section, the last thing the Administration wants is legal protection for those willing to testify to wrongdoing.
Section 1079 addresses the authority of Congress to receive testimony from intelligence officials: "The Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the Director of a national intelligence center, or the head of any element of the intelligence community shall, not later than 45 days after receiving a written request from the Chair or ranking minority member of the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate or the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives for any existing intelligence assessment, report, estimate, or legal opinion relating to matters within the jurisdiction of such Committee, make available to such committee such assessment, report, estimate, or legal opinion, as the case may be."
This section even includes the provision "unless the President determines that such document or information shall not be provided because the President is asserting a privilege pursuant to the Constitution of the United States."
But, recalling the Administration's assertion of preclusion, Congress lacks the authority to require this testimony at all. Apparently, a presidential assertion of privilege is beside the point.
Section 1222 is the kicker, since it relates to the prohibition of using appropriated funds for building permanent bases in Iraq:
"No funds appropriated pursuant to an authorization of appropriations in this Act may be obligated or expended for a purpose as follows:
(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq.
(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq."
The permanent base issue is particularly contentious (actually, they all are) since Defense Secretary Robert Gates said as recently as last week that "we have no interest in permanent bases."
Yet as Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) said in the Senate yesterday, "every time a senior Administration official is asked about permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, they contend that it is not their intention to construct such facilities. Yet this signing statement issued by the President yesterday is the clearest signal yet that the Administration wants to hold this option in reserve. Mr. President, that is exactly the wrong signal to send, both to the Iraqi government and its neighbors in the region."
Dawn Johnsen, a law professor at the University of Indiana (and a former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration) said, "Congress clearly has the authority to enact this limitation of the expenditure of funds for permanent bases in Iraq."
American Bar Association President Karen Mathis told members of the House Judiciary Committee today that "the potential for misuse in the issuance of presidential signing statements has reached the point where it poses a real threat to our system of checks and balances and the rule of law."
But absent the critical involvement of the Judiciary branch, George Bush will continue to ignore legislation he doesn't like even as he heaps contempt on the other two branches of government. If that doesn't define a Constitutional crisis, what does?
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