Category: National Security

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National Security Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

A Reactionary Politics Leads To Torture

[digg-reddit-me]Adam Serwer over at The American Prospect:

We’re not seeing too many “professionals” argue the case for torture — instead we see those who believe fighting terrorists is about some kind of contest of will between Islam and the West romanticizing criminal behavior as “necessary” because, for some reason, they think protecting American society requires that take our cues from those we’re fighting.

H/t Andrew Sullivan.

Which brings them roughly in line with my earlier definition of reactionaries:

[R]eactionary groups are defined primarily by their worst fears of their enemy – which they then internalize and model their own organization on.

Categories
New York City Reflections The Bush Legacy The War on Terrorism

What We Forgot All Too Quickly

[digg-reddit-me]This morning, I re-read George W. Bush’s September 20, 2001 address to a Joint Session of Congress. You should too.

It is an impressive speech – both in its temperance and quality of rhetoric and how it so clearly set up the tragedies that were to come. Re-reading the words written so near the aftermath of this attack, it is remarkable how clearly they foreshadow what came next. It is as if the Bush administration never recovered from this attack – and never took time to reflect after those panicked moments when the towers fell. Bush used the now ubiquitous formulation, “We will never forget,” repeatedly in the speech – though all too quickly, we seemed to forget all of those things he said we never would:

America will never forget the sounds of our National Anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris, and at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.

We will not forget South Korean children gathering to pray outside our embassy in Seoul, or the prayers of sympathy offered at a mosque in Cairo.

We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning in Australia and Africa and Latin America.

Nor will we forget the citizens of 80 other nations who died with our own: dozens of Pakistanis; more than 130 Israelis; more than 250 citizens of India; men and women from El Salvador, Iran, Mexico, and Japan; and hundreds of British citizens.

Yet too often since then, “We will never forget,” is used as a code word for the other elements of his speech that came to dominate the polarizing battles as America re-polarized: from his declaration that every nation must be either with us or with the terrorists to his declaration that terrorism was motivated by the hatred of our freedom to his understated plea for more centralized executive power. (I’ve always found it interesting that the loudest voices railing against any curbs on government power used to defeat terrorism seem to live in areas remote from danger. The cities – where terrorism is much more likely – are hotbeds of liberalism and civil libertarianism. I, for one, work in a landmark building and pass through Penn Station, Times Square, and Grand Central Station.) Ignored from the text are the pleas for understanding of those different from us, his appreciation for the support of the world, and his declaration that in our response, America proved itself resilient and strong.

But for me, the two most memorable lines are the following – at the beginning and then end of the speech:

Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done…

Fellow citizens, we’ll meet violence with patient justice – assured of the rightness of our cause, and confident of the victories to come.

This is the path not taken. In our response, we often failed to live up to these words, these noble goals. Our justice system was deemed too weak for terrorists. Patience was abandoned in favor of short-term actions.  And all too quickly, the Baby Boom generation re-polarized along partisan lines as Karl Rove sought to turn what he saw Bush’s greatest weakness into his strength. And, in neglecting to reflect on the events of that day, we learned the wrong lessons – focusing on a “by any means necessary” response indicative of panic that undermined our power rather than the true lesson about America’s core strength that was revealed in the efficacy of the local responses and in the only thwarted attack:

The best defense of our way of life, of our institutions, of our government, of our people is the American people themselves – properly informed.

We should never forget this – and remembering this day should reinforce our resolve to “meet violence with patient justice” and to stand for the civilization, freedom, the rule of law in the face of fear and terrorism rather than being cowed into preemptive surrender.

[Image by amarine88 licensed under Creative Commons.]

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National Security Politics The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

A World Where 24 Is “Believable” and Orwell Is Misquoted

[digg-reddit-me]I know that defending torture is difficult as well as unconscionable – but just because an editor will publish such trash doesn’t necessary mean they are bad at their job. However, if the evidence from this past weekend is any indication, it seems they are. Pat Buchanan began his piece with a quote that has been famously and erroneously attributed to George Orwell:

Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Buchanan tries to use this quote to defend the Orwellian abuse of language that John Yoo and other Bush administration members used to legally justify the proposition that torture wasn’t “torture.” I have the feeling that Orwell would have appreciated the irony. But more importantly, wouldn’t any editor take a moment to check if the quote was actually by Orwell? A Google search will quickly turn up the fact that it has been misattributed to him. Maybe I’m naive, but I would presume an editor – or someone – would take a moment to double check a citation.

Then of course Amanda Bowman in the Wall Street Journal explains the reason Americans watch 24:

[T]he Obama Administration is going to pay a big political price for indulging the civil libertarians of their party. The American television show 24 is in its 7th season because its portrayal of a life-and-death fight against terrorism in the face of political meddling appears to most Americans—and I would add Britons—both believable and justified. [my emphasis]

I like 24; I still watch it – one of a slowly dwindling number of Americans who still does. But anyone who calls it “believable” clearly isn’t familiar with the show. When Jack Bauer wanted to stop a terrorist in a van, he jumped in front of the van. Jack Bauer once died multiple times in a single episode – and was running around the next. Jack Bauer extracts the truth from his prisoners with surgical precision – whether by shooting them in the leg, electrocuting them, or whatever other means are necessary. (Bauer’s techniques were so ineffective and so unrealistic that the U.S. military actually sent a team to talk to the show’s producers a few years back.) To get people to talk – some of them innocent – Bauer has threatened babies and kidnapped and mock executed children. Every terrorist attack is financed and controlled by some convoluted plot involving nefarious American corporations seeking profits. Bauer manages to never eat or go to the bathroom in the 24-hour period covered by the show. Perhaps most unrealistically, Bauer lives in a world where nuclear weapons have gone off several times on American soil and spectacular terrorists attacks are common – yet the Congress in Bauer’s world insists on holding hearings that are more onerous than any held to this day by our Congresses, despite the respite from attacks in real life.

24 may be many things, but “believable” isn’t one of them.

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National Security Politics The Bush Legacy The War on Terrorism

The CIA Hired Blackwater to Help with Covert Killings

Mark Mazzetti gleans another detail in the “executive assassination ring” that Leon Panetta finally found out about earlier this summer and promptly informed Congress of: the always upstanding, peace-loving organization Blackwater was involved, having been hired by the CIA to help in some unclear capacity. As Mazzetti points out, hiring a private organization to participate in a covert killing program adds yet another layer of bureacracy and legal protections that makes accountability all the harder. This is especially true of Blackwater, given its byzantine structure and secretive leader, Erik Prince.

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Iraq National Security Politics The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

Censoring the Truth About the Crusader Prince?

[digg-reddit-me]Scott Horton apparently reported on several declarations filed in Federal Court in Eastern Virginia that included explosive allegations regarding the military contractor Blackwater and its owner Erik Prince. Andrew Sullivan linked to him – but between Sullivan’s linking and my clicking on Sullivan’s link, the article was taken down. A search of The Daily Beast for Scott Horton’s article turns up nothing except a link to Jeremy Scahill of The Nation‘s recent piece on the same subject. Andrew Sullivan had excerpted this summary of the charges contained in the Declarations on his blog:

  • Both men requested anonymity to avoid mortal threats. “It appears that Mr. Prince or his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities,” said John Doe #1. John Doe #2 says he received personal threats after leaving Blackwater.
  • Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.” He “intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis.”
  • Blackwater “employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms of Iraqis and other Arabs, such as ‘ragheads’ or ‘hajis.’”
  • Blackwater deployed to Iraq individuals who (a) made “statements about wanting to… ‘kill ragheads’ or achieve ‘kills’ or ‘body counts,’” (b) drank excessively, (c) used steroids, and (d) failed to follow safety and other instructions governing the use of lethal weapons. Mental-health professionals who raised concerns about deployment of such individuals were fired.
  • Prince obtained “illegal ammunition… designed to explode after penetrating within the human body” and smuggled it into Iraq for use.
  • Prince distributed other illegal weapons for use in Iraq.
  • Prince was aware of the use of prostitutes, “including child prostitutes,” at Blackwater’s “Man Camp” in Iraq, which he visited.

The actual declarations can be found here – John Doe 1 (pdf) – and here – John Doe 2 (pdf). These papers were part of opposition to a motion – the complete set of which can be found here. (Beware – it’s a few hundred pages of pdfs). I have emailed Scott Horton to see if he has any comment/explanation for why his article is no longer up on the Daily Beast.

Edit: The Daily Beast still has not gotten back to me. Mr. Horton replied telling me that he was looking into why his article was taken down himself.

[Image by John Rohan licensed under Creative Commons.]

Categories
Barack Obama Criticism Foreign Policy National Security The War on Terrorism

Military Envy

[digg-reddit-me]Under the Obama administration, the nonmilitary parts of America’s national security team have begun to increasingly imitate the Pentagon’s bureaucratic strategies and organization.

David Kilcullen, an Australian military officer embedded at various times in the State Department and in the Department of Defense during the Bush administration, one of the architects of the Surge, and a consultant to the Obama administration spoke at the Carneige Council about a number of problems with America’s approach to terrorism and its power – including what he saw as a serious mismatch between the “military and nonmilitary elements of national power.” He explained:

There’s 1.68 million people in the U.S. armed services, 2.1 million if you count all the civilians in the Department of Defense. I served in the State Department but this isn’t a State/Defense thing because I also served in the Defense Department, but between State and AID combined there are about 8,000 diplomats/foreign service officers in the U.S. So that’s 360 to 1 in terms of budget and 210 to 1 in terms of military guys to diplomats.

Contrast that to most other countries in the world, which have a ratio between 8 and 10 to 1. So we are dramatically out of proportion. We have this huge, well developed, highly expensive, well-coordinated military arm of national power and this tiny, shriveled, little puny diplomatic arm of national power. Not surprisingly we tend to see most problems as military problems and we tend to approach them with military solutions, because that’s the asset set that we have available.

By comparison there are five times as many accountants in the Department of Defense as there are diplomats in the U.S. diplomatic service. There’s as many lawyers in the Department of Defense as there are in the diplomatic service. There are actually more people playing as musicians in defense bands than there are diplomats. [Here the crowd titters.] So there’s a pretty substantial mismatch.

And of course that leads us to militarize our foreign policy.

He’s obviously right about this. But the military is not just seen to be bigger and better funded, but to be more effective than these other elements of national power. Its interesting to note that in the opening months of the Obama administration, the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Treasury have all sought to adopt elements of the Pentagon’s framework and seem to be using the Pentagon itself as a model.

Most recently, Noam Scheiber reported that the Treasury Department wanted to “put Treasury on a Pentagon-style footing.” He explained that in this new world of sudden financial movements, the Treasury needed to have greater capabilities to react to threats, as the military does:

Inevitably, it’s Treasury that must lead in this terrifying new order. Which is why its limitations have become so glaring. “The Pentagon is geared up to fight two wars at once, that’s the mission. The White House is a crisis management operation, it runs twenty-four hours a day,” says one Treasury official. “We want that capability.” And so, once the dust settles, Geithner is determined to put Treasury on a Pentagon-style footing. “One of things I hope to be able to do is leave a stronger institutional architecture in domestic finance with more depth in the career staff, more weight, more full-scale expertise in markets, regulatory policy, economics, the legal financial area,” he told me. When that day comes, you probably still won’t see much of Lee Sachs. But you can bet he’ll be manning the situation room. [my emphasis]

At the very start of this administration, Obama’s National Security Advisor, retired General Jim Jones pushed for the State Department and National Security Council to “reorganize their regional bureaus to conform with the military model,” according to Foreign Policy‘s Laura Rozen. So far, he has been unsuccessful.

But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself has sought to adapt at least one Pentagon practice to her new fiefdom – as she announced with great fanfare several weeks ago:

To deliver concrete results, we have to maximize our effectiveness. That’s why I’m excited to be here today to discuss a new enterprise, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which I announced at the State Department on Friday.

We are adopting this idea from the Pentagon. The Pentagon has successfully used this quadrennial review process to improve effectiveness and to establish a long-term vision. And I know from my time – about six years on the Senate Armed Services Committee – that the defense review helped convey the Department’s mission to all stakeholders, from members of Congress, to the members of the armed forces and their civilian colleagues, and to the rest of government, as well as to the American public. [my emphasis]

There has been a great deal of commentary in the past decade about the “creeping militarization” of America’s foreign policy. These changes seem more akin to powerful players in the Obama administration adopting the best practices of the Pentagon and adapting them across the government. In general, this is a good thing – but like the focus on technocratic, independent institutions solving intractable problems, this could also become problematic over time.

[Image by army.mil.]

Categories
Barack Obama National Security Politics The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

Sick of all this naivete about Obama

[digg-reddit-me]I’m sick of all this naivete about Obama.

And no, I’m not talking about those who moon over him and who believe he can do no wrong. I’m talking about those who now are on their high horse acting betrayed because Obama isn’t doing what they want.

Specifically I’m talking about this and this.

The problem as I see it is simple: under Bush, many critics of the power grab that was Bush’s War on Terror rallied together against him – and in 2008, many of them rallied around Obama. In working for a common cause they seemed to forget that between them they had some pretty serious disagreements.

For example, on one hand, there were those who I’m going to label progressives and/or libertarians who believed that the proper response to terrorism was law enforcement and believed the term “war” was inappropriate and who opposed:

  • the illegal war for oil against Iraq;
  • the warrantless wiretapping that violated the Constitutional protections of the Fourth Amendment;
  • any form of indefinite detention;
  • torture;
  • the practice of rendition (from Bill Clinton to its expansion under Bush);
  • the state secrets privilege.

Also, progressives opposed:

  • the practice of targeted killing;
  • the flouting of international law.

And then there were the liberals who believed that “war” was the correct term for the nation’s struggle against terrorism, but who opposed:

  • the “dumb war” against Iraq – on the basis of the fact that it would hurt our interests;
  • the defiance of the FISA statute that limited the power of the executive branch;
  • indefinite detention at the sole discretion of the executive;
  • torture;
  • the expanded rendition program under George W. Bush;
  • the overuse of the state secrets privilege.

Also, liberals opposed:

  • the use of signing statements to eviscerate laws passed by Congress;
  • the defiance (even denial) of the checks and balances between the branches of government.

The liberals and progressives/libertarians agreed that they needed to oppose Bush’s power grab. They disagreed though on the proper response to terrorism.

Obama, being a politician, did not seek to emphasize these differences among those who supported him. He finessed the issues by stating the liberal positions strongly – but at the same time, he made no secret of the fact that he was a liberal instead of a progressive.

Obama has made his positions clear. As he said in the campaign:

Just because the President misrepresents our enemies does not mean we do not have them. The terrorists are at war with us…When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world’s most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.

He has since maintained that he believes we are “at war” with Al Qaeda:

Now let me be clear: we are indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates. We do need to update our institutions to deal with this threat. But we must do so with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process; in checks and balances and accountability.

On Iraq, he famously said:

I don’t oppose all wars… What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

When Obama voted for the FISA compromise, he did so on the grounds that the program was needed. He explained that he had opposed it because Bush had enacted it in defiance of the Congress and established law:

The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any President or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court. In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited.

Obama has repeatedly stated that he opposed indefinite detention at the whim of the executive – but did not say he was opposed to it in every form.

In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight.

On rendition and torture, Obama has kept his word. On state secrets, he has not so far.

This isn’t to say that progressives and libertarians shouldn’t criticize Obama – but on most of these issues Obama has been clear and consistent. And given the reasonable alternatives, it’s hard to see who was a better candidate. (Though I can already see the comments about Ron Paul being written.)

The fact is: Obama is a significant improvement over Bush – and the changes he has made and is making are significant. It matters whether or not there is a check on the executive branch; it matters whether or not we have a president who does not flagrantly disregard the law. That’s not a reason to give up what you believe – to keep pushing the civil libertarian case against Obama.

But at least be honest about it.

Categories
Law National Security Politics

Cokie Roberts Thinks the Rule of Law Might Be More Important Than A Pleasant Atmosphere in Washington

[digg-reddit-me]When I heard Cokie Roberts saying this on Sunday my jaw dropped:

The self-centeredness of the response – and the fact that she showed no shame about explaining this as her reasoning on national television when she was supposed to be acting as a serious commentator. Though it is pretty awesome that she is willing to undergo the inconvenience of the “bad atmosphere” in Washington as a result of attempting to uphold the Rule of Law. I’m glad she is willing to make the sacrifice for the rest of us.

It’s pretty telling that committing war crimes isn’t what is credited with souring the mood – but instead the blame is foisted onto those who uphold the law…

Categories
National Security The Bush Legacy The War on Terrorism

Is The Secret Plan Panetta Found Hersh’s “Executive Assasination Ring”?

[digg-reddit-me]Sam Stein of the Huffington Post got there first – but when I first heard the news about the secret plan so shocking that CIA Director Leon Panetta immediately shut it down and informed Congress late last week – my first thought was of the vague remarks by Seymour Hersh this March about “an executive assassination ring” run by Vice President Cheney.

Last night, reading the Wall Street Journal piece by Siobhan Gorman, this inkling seemed confirmed. Gorman reported:

According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn’t become fully operational at the time Mr. Panetta ended it…

One former senior intelligence official said the program was an attempt “to achieve a capacity to carry out something that was directed in the finding,” meaning it was looking for ways to capture or kill al Qaeda chieftains.

Most of the other pieces on this subject have linked it specifically to Cheney – which is little surprise as most of the more extreme measures taken in the aftermath of September 11 were instigated by Cheney. Stories have also noted that this program is not related to the interrogation of prisoners or the wiretapping of information.

Compare this to Hersh’s comments back in March:

Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command – JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him…

Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.

It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.

In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.

The glaring discrepancy between the program Hersh is describing – and the one news reports are now – is that one point being emphasized in the current coverage of the concealed program is that it was never fully operational. But Sam Donaldson – in an unusual bit of worthwhile commentary – pointed out Sunday on This Week that we didn’t know how operational was being defined. He asked: Were there pilot programs? Was this tested in the field? Was there training? These questions are important – especially given how a word such as torture was parsed out of existence. And of course the most basic question, being fooled once, can we trust that this secret operation was not actually operational?

[Image by askpang licensed under Creative Commons.]

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Barack Obama Criticism Foreign Policy History Iran Law National Security Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

McNamara, Cuomo, Bearing Witness, Iran’s Bomb, Sri Lanken Victories, and Historical Dignity

It’s that glorious time of the week – Friday. So, here’s my recommendations of some interesting reads for this weekend that came up this past week…

  1. There were a number of excellent obituaries of Robert McNamara published upon his death. But what I would recommend would be reading this speech given in 1966 at the height of his power.
  2. Another speech worth reading is Mario Cuomo’s “Our Lady of the Law” speech from November 2007 which was published for the first time on this blog earlier in the week.
  3. Roger Cohen in the New York Times tries to express the insufficiency of online reporting aggregating news and media – as Andrew Sullivan and Nico Pitney did so usefully did during the Iranian protests. As these two journalists amassed tweets, photos, videos, news stories and every other bit of information about what was going on in Iran, Roger Cohen himself was in Tehran having evaded the Iranian censors. He went to the protests, interviewed the protesters, ran from basij with them. What I could see then was that while what Sullivan and Pitney were doing was new and unique – and extremely useful for understanding what was happening, it was missing a certain urgency that Cohen was able to provide with his bylines from Tehran. So he writes here about the “actual responsibility” of the journalist – to “bear witness:

    “Not everyone realizes,” Weber told students, “that to write a really good piece of journalism is at least as demanding intellectually as the achievement of any scholar. This is particularly true when we recollect that it has to be written on the spot, to order, and that it must create an immediate effect, even though it is produced under completely different conditions from that of scholarly research. It is generally overlooked that a journalist’s actual responsibility is far greater than the scholar’s.”

    Yes, journalism is a matter of gravity. It’s more fashionable to denigrate than praise the media these days. In the 24/7 howl of partisan pontification, and the scarcely less-constant death knell din surrounding the press, a basic truth gets lost: that to be a journalist is to bear witness.

    The rest is no more than ornamentation.

    To bear witness means being there — and that’s not free. No search engine gives you the smell of a crime, the tremor in the air, the eyes that smolder, or the cadence of a scream.
    No news aggregator tells of the ravaged city exhaling in the dusk, nor summons the defiant cries that rise into the night. No miracle of technology renders the lip-drying taste of fear. No algorithm captures the hush of dignity, nor evokes the adrenalin rush of courage coalescing, nor traces the fresh raw line of a welt.

  4. Robert Patterson in Foreign Policy brings some measured historical analysis to what would happen if Iran got the bomb.
  5. Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic explains how the Sri Lankan government was able to achieve a monumental victory over a terrorist group – and also why America should not imitate its methods in any way. He concludes bleakly:

    So is there any lesson here? Only a chilling one. The ruthlessness and brutality to which the Sri Lankan government was reduced in order to defeat the Tigers points up just how nasty and intractable the problem of insurgency is. The Sri Lankan government made no progress against the insurgents for nearly a quarter century, until they turned to extreme and unsavory methods.

  6. David Brooks wrote about dignity:

    In so doing, [George Washington] turned himself into a new kind of hero. He wasn’t primarily a military hero or a political hero. As the historian Gordon Wood has written, “Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off from other men.”