Category Archives: Politics

These thoughts don’t fit together

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The following two snippets aren’t necessarily related, but they’ve been percolating in my mind for a few days now, so I thought I’d include a little of each.

1) Buy Andrew Bacevich’s book Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. Bacevich is currently a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and was formerly a colonel in the U.S. Army. Washington Rules is a deeply insightful critique of what Dwight Eisenhower so presciently labeled the “military-industrial complex.”

“The Washington rules” of the title, Bacevich explains in his introduction, “were forged at a moment when American influence and power were approaching their acme. That moment has now passed.” What follows is a brilliant historical overview of the American drift from moderate isolationism to strident interventionism. Bacevich, like many on the disaffected left, fears perpetual war. Entrenched interests in both the public and private sectors never cease to make use of fear-mongering tactics to frighten a restive population into acquiescence. This is how the CIA and Strategic Air Command, two institutions whose central role in establishing American militarism is thoroughly dissected in Washington Rules, managed to upend decades upon decades of American reluctance to flex its muscles in the global arena.

It is also how the United States finds itself enmeshed in three simultaneous wars right now. The legacy of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden (and yes, their legacies are forever linked) is not simply the overreaction, the blind rage that led the United States into endless wars against unseen enemies with unclear objectives, all accompanied by the impossibility of victory. More enduring still is the zombie-like, unquestioning deference with which American citizens approach their warrior-leaders. Bush accomplished in eight years what the decades-long Cold War never could: permanent war, it seems, has become the new norm. Civil liberties are but a noble casualty along the way.

All one needs to do to confirm this sudden, collective disavowal of the pursuit of peace is to witness the nearly inaudible protest to President Barack Obama’s decision to intervene in the Libyan revolution. Where the war in Iraq invited some (albeit relatively muted, especially in light of the still-heightened emotions following September 11) immediate condemnation, our Libyan incursion barely raised eyebrows. Osama bin Laden may be dead, but the terror attacks he masterminded laid bare an uncomfortable truth: it takes very little to galvanize the American public in support of a perceived cause, however dubious the rationale and however vague the endgame.

Washington Rules was published in 2010, before the Jasmine Revolution and before today, when the key provisions of the Patriot Act that authorize controversial surveillance techniques were renewed for four years by Congress, despite the warnings of two U.S. senators that the bill is being interpreted in very dangerous ways. One can only imagine the blistering new foreword Bacevich could pen now.

2) Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this week was chock-full of half-truths, prevarications, and outright lies. In fact, his entire visit to the States was an exercise in exaggeration and hyperbole, as the reaction he provoked following Obama’s speech on the Middle East was completely unwarranted. Obama stated that Israeli-Palestinian borders must be based on the 1967 lines, something every American and Israeli leader has known for years. (This includes Netanyahu himself as recently as six months ago.)

Ultimately, Netanyahu is a coward, and his intransigence will only harm Israel in the long run. What I found far more disturbing was the appalling sycophancy displayed by the United States Congress, which was roused to twenty-nine standing ovations, including once — inexplicably — that immediately followed Netanyahu’s statement that Israel was not occupying Palestinian land.

As Glenn Greenwald of Salon has demonstrated on many occasions, American politicians’ obsequiousness to the Israeli right-wing knows no bounds. This absurd rubber-stamping (not to mention heavy financing) of what is in many ways a racist regime owes in large part to the enormous influence of the Israel lobby (yes, the one so strongly debated following the eponymous book by Walt and Mearsheimer).

But a word of caution may be in order. As any sane person who follows Middle Eastern politics with even a passing interest knows, yes, the Israel lobby is indeed a powerful force, perhaps the most influential outside group (especially in proportion to its immediate constituency, American Jews) affecting American politics today. One of the hallmarks of this lobby is to stifle any critique of Israel, no matter how thoughtful or well-reasoned, by using the threat of being branded an anti-Semite as a deterrent.

Of course, anti-Semitism does exist, and whether it’s John Galliano or Lars von Trier spouting racist ideas in public, it’s wrong, always. But wielding the “anti-Semite” label as a baton in order to smother dissent is not just wrong, it’s undemocratic. The dilemma, then, lies in criticizing the lobby itself. Care must be taken to avoid being perceived as an adherent of the age-old, harebrained conspiracy theories that “Jews control the media,” “Jews control the government,” and so on. They do not. But they do, unlike many underrepresented minority groups in the U.S., exert enormous influence on American policy. To acknowledge this fact is not to exhibit anti-Semitism; it simply proves one has eyes and ears.

A crucial distinction is in order, then. The Israel lobby exists, and it is powerful. But it is not synonymous with Judaism, nor even American Judaism. AIPAC, while purporting to act on behalf of both American Jews and the state of Israel, in reality is little more than a well-connected conduit between the most radically right-wing voices in both camps and the United States government. So while many are understandably reluctant to give voice to their misgivings about the Israel lobby for fear of conflation with actual anti-Semites, it is vital to differentiate between criticism of Israeli policies and hatred of a race. It is also important to remember that AIPAC, in portraying itself as the public mouthpiece of Jews in both the U.S. and Israel, is actually doing both nations a huge disservice in its unquestioning support of continually failing policies. It is only when reasoned criticism becomes the norm that the United States and Israel will both be able to enact sensible policies with regard to the Holy Land.

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Bruins win! And Tim Thomas is simply divine.

Humor, Politics, Sports, ,

The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Tampa Bay cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Tim Thomas, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the hockey elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.

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Death by execution? The questions just keep on coming

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Early on, it seemed as if the daring raid to “capture or kill” Osama bin Laden took place amidst a veritable explosion of gunfire, blood pouring everywhere. But the story keeps on a-changin’. Now The New York Times tells us this:

The new details suggested that the raid, though chaotic and bloody, was extremely one-sided, with a force of more than 20 Navy Seal members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden.

Administration officials said that the only shots fired by those in the compound came at the beginning of the operation, when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding.

After the Seal members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired upon again.

(Bolded words mine.) MSNBC, likewise, casts doubt on the early official story:

As the U.S. commandos moved through the house, they found several stashes of weapons and barricades, as if the residents were prepared for a violent and lengthy standoff — which never materialized.

The SEALs then made their way up a staircase, where they ran into one of bin Laden’s  sons on the way down. The Americans immediately shot and killed the son, who was also unarmed.

Once on the third floor, the commandos threw open the door to bin Laden’s bedroom. One of bin Laden’s wives rushed toward the NAVY SEAL in the door, who shot her in the leg.

Then, without hesitation, the same commando turned his gun on bin Laden, standing in what appeared to be pajamas, and fire two quick shots, one to the chest and one to the head. Although there were weapons in that bedroom, Bin Laden was also unarmed at the time he was shot.

Instead of a chaotic firefight, the U.S. officials said, the American commando assault was a precision operation, with SEALs moving carefully through the compound, room to room, floor to floor.

In fact, most of the operation was spent in what the military calls “exploiting the site,” gathering up the computers, hard drives, cellphones and files that could provide valuable intelligence on al Qaeda operatives and potential operations worldwide.

(Bolded words mine again.) Two days ago, by the way, Ben Smith of Politico pointed out the nuance in President Obama’s speech announcing bin Laden’s death:

Obama said Sunday night:

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

The key word there is “after,” not “during,” and it matches the revised White House account. You had to be listening extremely carefully the first night to catch that nuance.

In less formal remarks last night, Obama offered a similar sequence, describing “an operation that resulted in the capture and death of Osama bin Laden.”

“Capture and death.”

Dave Weigel at Slate is similarly skeptical as to the government’s consistently inconsistent narrative (and provides a useful timeline of the administration’s shifting statements as well):

What changed in three days? It depends how you define the “firefight.” There was a firefight at the start, but the confrontation between the commandos and OBL was one-sided — they were shooting, OBL and the woman weren’t. The “weapon” part of the story has changed slightly, and if you graphed it it would be a sine wave. We went from no details about OBL, to a detail about OBL at least trying to get a gun, to a detail about OBL not having a gun, to a detail about OBL being within reach of a gun.

Alright, then. Everybody clear?

Finally, Michael Crowley at Time asks:

A major question lingers unanswered at the center of this story: Why was bin Laden killed? Michael Scherer has reported that the Navy Seals who landed at Osama bin Laden’s safehouse were not given orders specifically to kill, but were on a “kill or capture” mission. That implies they were prepared to accept bin Laden’s surrender. It didn’t work out that way. But despite earlier reports to the contrary, including from White House counter-terror adviser John Brennan, Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday that bin Laden was in fact unarmed. (“Resistance does not require a firearm,” he said.) So, what happened?

Indeed, what exactly did take place here? It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the Obama administration took pains to cast the operation in a favorable light, and that this interpretation has steadily unraveled in the face of newly available evidence. What just days ago resulted in near-universal celebration (Osama bin Laden’s death) is now causing serious head-scratching. Did the United States execute bin Laden in cold blood? And if so, do we care?

I would argue that yes, we do. To execute someone (as opposed to shooting him in a firefight), regardless of the heinous nature of his crimes, is to run directly counter to well-established rules of engagement. In World War II, in the Persian Gulf War, and in countless other examples, when someone surrendered, he was taken prisoner and accorded humane treatment. Of course, we have no evidence that Osama bin Laden actually surrendered (even if he was unarmed, there are other ways his behavior could have been justifiably deemed threatening), but the initial stories as to his “resistance” have been almost entirely discredited now, leading one to wonder exactly what the Obama administration is trying to conceal.

Let’s have the real story, shall we?

P.S. As usual, MacLeod Cartoons gets it just right.

Osama bin Laden’s death: a Pyrrhic victory?

Politics, , ,

I am very weirded out by all the sudden bursts of patriotism following Osama bin Laden’s death. Even President Obama said something to the effect of, “This goes to show that when Americans set out to do something, we can accomplish anything.” Really? An assassination (and one that took 10 years, no less) is a symbol of our can-do spirit? (There were also impromptu rallies outside the White House, Ground Zero, Times Square, etc.)

Nothing is more ironic to me than the fact that, in Osama Bin Laden’s assassination, we have achieved the ultimate Pyrrhic victory: we have finally eliminated the physical presence of the principal challenger of American values over the last decade, and yet our collective reaction to this killing demonstrates how clearly and decisively bin Laden won the war on our values. We lost sight of absolutely everything and went crazy for ten years (torture, followed by a national refusal to call it torture, not to mention the bloodlust that led us to attack an unrelated country, Iraq, and even now continues to agitate for military action against Iran, etc. etc.). Then, to cap it all off, it took less than a day following bin Laden’s killing for people to come out of the woodwork and claim torture was the reason we were able to find him.

Somehow, I think Osama bin Laden would be OK with all of this.

A rant, following the good news from Palestine

Politics, , , , ,

The below was taken from an email I sent earlier today and has been slightly edited for this blog:

—

Today, The New York Times is reporting that Fatah, the Palestinian government in the West Bank, and Hamas, the government in Gaza, have announced a plan for a reunified government and are planning elections within a year.

This is huge news. For one, the West Bank is looking more and more like a stable economy and quasi-nation and is, in fact, planning to declare itself a sovereign state in September in the UN. By joining with Hamas, they can lend legitimacy to the idea that the Palestinian people finally speak with one voice, as opposed to being divided between two mutually hostile governments. This is especially important in peace negotiations with Israel, since one of the principal complaints by pro-Israel supporters is that they don’t have anyone to negotiate with that represents all Palestinians.

So you’d think Israel would welcome this news of reunification. But no. Here’s the NYT quote:

While the deal, reached after secret Egyptian-brokered talks, promised a potentially historic reconciliation for the Palestinians, Israel warned that a formal agreement would spell the end of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

In a televised address on Wednesday, even before the Fatah-Hamas press conference, the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, sent a stern warning to the Palestinian Authority president and Fatah chief, Mahmoud Abbas.

“The Palestinian Authority has to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding, “Peace with both of them is impossible, because Hamas aspires to destroy the state of Israel and says so openly.”

The choice, he said, was in the authority’s hands.

So now, after years of claiming it didn’t want to negotiate because Palestine was divided, Israel now threatens to cut off peace negotiations as soon as they announce reunification. The irony is unreal. Every single time Palestinian leadership concedes something in negotiations that Israel claims was necessary, it brings up something new to hold against them. They’re in the process of a perpetual “peace process” so they can continue siphoning off land through “settlements” until there’s nothing left. (Imagine negotiating with someone else over how much cake to eat, but as you’re negotiating they’re eating it piece by piece. Israel’s been doing this for 43 years.)

One last point: “Asked why the deadlocked talks had come back to life, Mr. Nounou said, “The will was there for everyone.” He also credited the new mediators from Egypt, put in place after that country’s revolution, with “an exemplary performance,” including weeks of courtship at private meetings with each side before they met face to face with each other for the first time today” (bold font mine).

Yet another reason US support of dictators in the Middle East serves no one’s best interests, and in fact inhibits real progress. Fatah and Hamas have been at odds for years; and yet two months after the Egyptian revolution, they’re announcing a deal. This is how democracy works, and it’s why Israel, far from being our “only democratic ally in the Middle East,” is in fact inhibiting democracy all across the region, by handcuffing US foreign policy in incredibly damaging ways.

Rant over.
—
Updated (11:30 PM 4/27): In the above portion of this post, I stated: “So now, after years of claiming it didn’t want to negotiate because Palestine was divided, Israel now threatens to cut off peace negotiations as soon as they announce reunification.” Documentation is provided below:
The dozens of Israelis we interviewed, whether they were members of the Knesset, academics, or local entrepreneurs, all communicated a depressing lack of hope about the prospects for a peace settlement. Their main explanation for this failure was that the Palestinian leadership was divided between Fatah in the West Bank and the “terrorist group” Hamas in Gaza. As one Knesset member put it, “We simply do not have a viable political partner in peace.”
Israelis and Palestinians each placed the onus for fruitful peace negotiations on the other side Sunday, with Benjamin Netanyahu saying Israel needed a “real partner” for peace, and Saeb Erekat warning that the upcoming talks were a test for the Jewish state, dpa reported.Commenting on the proposed negotiations, announced Friday by the US and the EU, Netanyahu told his cabinet Sunday morning that the talks required both sides to take the necessary steps, “and not just the Israelis side and not just the Palestinian side.”

“If we find that we have a genuine partner on the Palestinian side, an honest and serious negotiating partner … if we find such a partner, we can soon reach a historic peace agreement between the two peoples,” he said at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

Surely the place for setting out stalls is precisely at the negotiating table away from the glare of the media? Israel has been sitting at that table for 21 months, waiting for a negotiating partner to arrive at the other side.

Why wouldn’t the New York Times promote its own reporting?

Media, Politics, , , ,

Because editor Bill Keller would rather bury his paper’s own accomplishments than admit that Julian Assange and his organization conduct proper journalism, that’s why. Forbes‘ Andy Greenberg blogged today about the curious absence of Wikileaks reporting in yesterday’s Pulitzer Prize ceremonies:

Continue reading Why wouldn’t the New York Times promote its own reporting? →

The timeline of war (copied and pasted from 2003, with minor revisions)

Politics

Friday: President Obama warned Libya to halt the violence. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Clinton changed her mind and began to support intervention, claiming she “had the proof” of Arab League support.

Saturday: American and European forces officially began an incursion “to impose a United Nations-sanctioned no-fly zone and keep Colonel Qaddafi from using air power against beleaguered rebel forces.” Multiple administration officials assured the public that “the United States would step back within days and hand over command of the coalition to one of its European allies.”

Sunday: American officials again reiterated the limited scope of U.S. involvement:

White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said Libyan leader Gaddafi had “lost legitimacy” and was isolated but the focus of military action was on protecting Libyan civilians, not ousting the veteran ruler from power.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking as he flew to Russia, said the U.S. will not have a “preeminent role” in the coalition that will maintain a no-fly zone over Libya, and expected to turn over “primary responsibility” for the mission to others within days.

Meanwhile, the Arab League was already backing out. And suspicious bombings raised the possibility that enforcing a no-fly zone was not all the Allies had in mind:

As the assault unfolded late Sunday, an explosion thundered from Colonel Qaddafi’s personal compound in Tripoli, and a column of smoke rose above it, suggesting that the allied forces may have struck either his residence there or the nearby barracks of his personal guards. Unnamed Western officials were quoted in various news reports as saying the building was a military command and control center.

Admiral Mullen did not help to make the no-fly zone mission any clearer (emphasis mine), while undisciplined messaging coordination among the Allies threw doubt over the entire objective:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, spoke about how allied forces had grounded Colonel Qaddafi’s aircraft and worked to protect civilians — both objectives stated by the United Nations Security Council in approving the military mission. “We hit a lot of targets, focused on his command and control, focused on his air defense, and actually attacked some of his forces on the ground in the vicinity of Benghazi,” Admiral Mullen told Fox News.

But the campaign may be balancing multiple goals. President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and British and French leaders have also talked of a broader policy objective — that Colonel Qaddafi must leave power. In his comments on Sunday, Admiral Mullen suggested that objective lay outside the bounds of the military campaign, saying on NBC that Colonel Qaddafi’s remaining in power after the United States military accomplished its mission was “potentially one outcome.”

Monday: A top French official conceded that the Libya mission, whatever it is, could take “a while.”

The rewording, prevarication, and general confusion surrounding all aspects of the Libya intervention could hardly be less reassuring.

And finally, one cartoonist perfectly captures the absurd inconsistencies here.

Mike Huckabee keeps talking himself into a bigger hole

Media, Politics

On the same day that he incorrectly claimed President Obama was raised in Kenya, FOX News personality and sometime presidential candidate Mike Huckabee also committed a Freudian slip that garnered much less public attention but showcased the same befuddling absence of logic. Referencing Natalie Portman’s allusion to impending motherhood at the Oscar ceremonies on Sunday night, Huckabee lamented, “People see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine.'”

But it was his next comments that made the least sense: “There aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. And I think it gives a distorted image…Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out-of-wedlock children.”

For someone occupying the more extreme fringe of the conservative movement, it seems a bit ideologically blasphemous for Huckabee to concede that, without government, disadvantaged children would not only be malnourished but would also not receive health care. Even excluding the very poor families that are eligible for Medicaid, this leaves plenty of financially struggling families, often unemployed due to the recession, who would have no health care at all under the (Republican-approved) old system.

Perhaps Huckabee should really think twice before campaigning for a job that requires a functioning brain, and stick to his day job with his far more lenient employer, where no such requirements are made of its employees.