Category: War

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Obama’s Sell-Out

Barack Obama supported and voted in favor of the recent wiretapping bill that grants immunity to the telephone companies who didn’t bother to ask government agents if they had a warrant to look at telephone records of individuals they were curious about. They just handed them over. You’re the government, so you can’t possibly be doing something illegal.

Republicans– who seem to believe in the ruthless application of the law in all instances– or say they do– should be screaming bloody murder. But we know all about the Republicans. But Obama?

If the government’s actions were legal, there is no need for immunity. If they were not illegal, then the Senate should initiate proceedings against the Bush administration. They should bloody well impeach him and indict the attorney-general.

We know why Obama voted in favour of the bill. He was terrified of the Republicans portraying him as “soft” on terror if he didn’t. Here’s my fantasy: Obama rails against the bill and tells Americans that he is standing up for the rule of law and for the constitution, and all those Americans who just can’t stand the thought of the federal government intruding on their sacred rights– like the right to own sub-machine guns– say Amen and vote for him.

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Bush Pardons

You undoubtedly remember vividly the apoplectic outrage of conservative commentators when Bill Clinton issued his list of pardons just before leaving office. That outrage, of course, is reserved only for occasions on which the Democrats appear to be doing what the Republicans think the Democrats would do if they had the ethics of Republicans.

I might be wrong, but I believe we are about to see George Bush make Bill Clinton look like a piker when it comes to pardons. I’ll even stick my neck out and predict it: George Bush is going to have to issue a large number of pardons… for people who will not admit to having committed any crimes.

The problem is this: Barack Obama wins the election. Do you think Obama will interpret the constitution to mean that the President of the United States can make torture legal by commanding his minions to torture?

Maybe he will. Or maybe he will feel the same way that most civilized western leaders have felt for 100 years: that the use of torture is repugnant to the fundamental principles of human rights. Okay. So what do all the torturers in the CIA do? Quietly quit their jobs and move to Switzerland or Argentina? Apologize? I’m really, very, very sorry that I tortured you– I had thought it was legal. And resort to the standard “I was only following orders” defense?

I suspect that an understanding might be reached, that would see the federal government under the new administration not ask any embarrassing questions, provided that the violations of fundamental human rights comes to a quick stop. But what if any of the victims are put on trial? What if their lawyers challenge the validity of evidence obtained against their clients because it was adduced under torture? Sticky wicket, isn’t it? What if they call in the FBI witnesses who objected to what they termed “rough treatment” of suspects by their colleagues in the CIA and Defense Department?

Bush is going to have perform that goofy voodoo thing wherein you forgive people for crimes you claim they haven’t committed. He tried to do a similar thing by getting Congress to grant immunity to corporations that he swears were merely obeying the law when they allowed the government to spy on individuals in the U.S. without warrants. If they were obeying the law, why do they need immunity? This kind of hypocritical bullshit should not be allowed to pass: why will anyone need a pardon if, as Bush says, everything they did was legal?

Congress should make a simple demand– it should insist that no one can be pardoned unless they have committed a crime. So Mr. Bush may only pardon torturers if they admit they illegally tortured people. And then we may turn to the President and impeach him in the hour before he leaves office.

By golly– George Bush really does understand the constitution. He just willingly shits on it.

Update

2011-03 I was wrong. George Bush — much to Cheney’s displeasure, apparently– refused to pardon anybody, not even Scooter Libby.

Yes, I do think more highly of him than I did before. Barack Obama, on the other hand, basically continued the same policies. So, yes, I think much less of him for that. By continuing the policies, of course, he erased the possibility of charging members of the Bush Administration with violating the rights of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. That’s exactly what Bush needed and wanted and I do wonder just how overt this kind of understanding between one President and another is.

Don’t forget Karl! There are strong grounds for suspicion that Karl Rove orchestrated the malicious and false prosecution of Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman. A Republican lawyer has sworn, under oath, that she was told that Rove directed the United States attorney for Montgomery to undertake proceedings against Siegelman though there was no real evidence of any crime.  For a political operative to instigate such an investigation is a felony.

Congress has subpoenaed Rove but he refuses to testify. How on earth can he get away with that? The Attorney General is ultimately responsible for enforcing the law. George Bush appoints the Attorney General. There you go.

We need to start a campaign now to head off the inevitable. The campaign should focus on the demand that no pardons should be issued by President Bush for anyone who has not publicly admitted that they have committed the crimes for which they are being pardoned. (It’s probably too much to ask that they actually be charged with those crimes and put on trial.) It’s simple: no confession, no pardon. So all those intelligence agents who tortured and generals who lied and secretaries of state who lied and phone companies who allowed the government to eavesdrop on conversations without a warrant and so on and so on should have to line up on television and takes turns telling us exactly what they did that requires a pardon. It would be the ultimate reality show, and it would be GREAT for the country. These are the sonsofbitches who have been running your country for the past eight years. What do you think?

But I was only following orders!

Right. America supported the findings of the Nuremburg judges that the “following orders” defense does not exculpate actions that a reasonable person would perceive to be illegal and abhorrent. So Nazi soldiers that participated in atrocities, unless they had good grounds to fear for their lives, were not excused from their sins. The same standard was applied to the William Calley case.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure a judge in the U.S. in today’s political climate would agree with me that anyone participating in the use of torture has no excuse. America is moving backwards, towards barbarism. The idea that torture is “abhorrent” prevails in civilized countries. What is a civilized country?

 

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The Naked Army

There are moments, inevitably, when the unblushing face of real American foreign policy–as an extension of commercial corporate dominance– reveals itself. Here it is: the treaty governing future American relations with Iraq, a little document Bush is hoping will tie the hands of future administrations.

The Bush Administration claims that the document is not a “treaty” because a treaty would require congressional approval, which would require a relatively transparent discussion of all of its provisions, which might alert the opposition parties in Iraq to the fact that they are unwillingly surrendering their national sovereignty in exchange for American military protection of a government that could never survive on its own, and would alert Americans to the fact that this quagmire grows ever more gooey.

Oh my– all the screeching conservative voices that swore with wounded dignity that the invasion of Iraq was all about liberation, not about extending American military might into the oil-rich middle east, and — heavens, no!– never, ever about installing and preserving a pro-American government in Baghdad, or intimidating the Iranians. Oh my, no. What a coincidence that, due to instability and those wicked Al Qaeda insurgents, we’ll have to stay for, oh, a decade or so, or at least until the oil runs out.

Where is the coverage of this issue in the media?  Practically non-existent.

As I’m typing away here, the Blue Jays broadcasters are wondering why, oh why, are home runs down this year.

Could it be the cold weather?

Could it be better pitching?

Injuries?

What, oh what could it be?

Hmmmm. No idea.

No mention of the testing for performance enhancing drugs that has kicked in..

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A “Finding” Does not Make it Legal

You might think that torture is actually presently legal in the U.S., given all the efforts by Bush and his Attorney Generals to make it so. And maybe you just don’t care that it is– or you approve– because you are a God-fearing patriotic American and you don’t take bullshit from foreigners– whatever— I don’t care. Jesus loves you, whatever, because you approve of the use of torture, and you really can’t remember or think of or imagine any reason why that would make you less of a human being than, say, believing in witchcraft or astrology. Whatever.

Back to my point: I don’t believe torture is, technically, “legal”. It is, in fact, quite illegal, no matter what Bush says it is. Then why hasn’t anybody been arrested? Who would arrest who? Because Bush is in command of the only apparatus that can enforce the law: the Attorney General’s Office and the FBI (which is accountable to it) and he has ordered it not to.

[added October 22, 2008: if a New York City cop on the beat, for example, stumbled into a group of men treating an individual the way they are, in fact, treating the detainees in Guantanamo, he would surely make an arrest and lay charges.  Nobody would or could excuse the crime with a “finding”.]

If Bush or his Attorney-General issues a “finding” that torture is legal (he calls it “enhanced interrogation techniques” but no court is so stupid as to not see through that), and thereby instructs federal officials to abide by that “finding”, he hasn’t really changed any aspect of the law. What would it take to activate the apparatus on behalf of the courts? Well, how about a new executive who believes in the constitution?

Take for example any prisoner being held currently in Guantanamo, who had previously been tortured, either through rendition, or by CIA officers at locations outside of the U.S. Bush has succeeded in blocking this individuals access to any court with the power to respond to his circumstances with directives that will actually be obeyed by Federal agencies. At the moment, Bush simply ignores any legal motions he doesn’t like and then obfuscates.

Now suppose a new Chief Executive– a new President– instructs the new Attorney General (John Edwards?) to investigate whether anybody involved in the handling of prisoners by American forces or intelligence agencies or proxies has broken the law, or violated the rights of these prisoners.

I think about this a lot. I can imagine that nothing will happen, if the new President turns out to be gutless and decides that he can live with simply stopping any more torture from happening. That’s hard to imagine, however, because the lawyers for all of the prisoners being held by agents of the U.S. Federal Government will be clamoring for due process and habeas corpus and dozens of other constitutional rights we all used to think Americans treasured dearly. And I can’t see this new President doing what Bush did, which is, instructing his staff to find ways around the courts, so we can suppress the rights of these individuals.  [Update: that is, in fact, exactly what Obama did.]

So imagine instead that President Obama (or Clinton) allows the attorney general to investigate and he finds out that there has been some torture going on… and he decides that his interpretation of the constitution is that torture is never allowed.

Just imagine.

[2011-03: of course, it didn’t happen. Odd, but not really surprising now that I think about it. Would a politician who was seriously intent on enforcing the law survive the primary process in the U.S.? I doubt it. ]

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Have You Heard of Hugh Thompson

Hugh Thompson, Larry Colburn, Glenn Andreotti. You probably don’t know their names. I didn’t know their names, off hand, until just recently.

Hugh Thompson was a warrant officer and helicopter pilot in Viet Nam in 1968. He happened to be flying over My Lai at the time of the massacre. When he realized what was going on, he lowered his helicopter between William Calley and several women and children and demanded that he stop the killing. Calley was a Lieutenant, and Thompson a mere warrant officer. Calley stopped, for the moment, and Thompson was able to evacuate several women and children. When Thompson returned to his base, he demanded the someone intervene to stop the slaughter. Nobody did much of anything.

It’s human nature that today we all know the names of Mark Spitz and Jessica Simpson and Michael Jackson and Regis Philbin…. but I’ll bet most people could never tell you who Hugh Thompson is.

The Remarkable Lt. William Calley apparently massacred more than 500 civilians all by himself. No one else has ever been convicted of participation in the My Lai massacre.

Calley, nevertheless, was only charged specifically for the deaths of 109.

What is the punishment for 109 counts of murder? This is America, the land of law and order, remember? This is the bible-believing Godly nation of belt-buckle blustering bible-thumping believers… The nation that believes justice should be swift and true…. the nation that sentences drunk drivers to life in prison, and video-tape thieves to 30 years, and charlatans to 144 years…

So what should be the sentence for 109 cold-blooded murders?

Three and one half years of house arrest.

And then there was an outcry from the “Pro-Life” Christian community and our evangelical leaders that this sentence made a mockery of the lives of those innocent Viet Namese civilians….

Well, no, not that I remember.

I think most of our evangelical leaders were actually calling for Calley to be pardoned. After all, you know, boys will be boys.

I’ll bet you didn’t know

  • Calley is 5′ 4″ tall
  • He’s still alive today.
  • Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, as a 31-year-old Major, was part of the cover up. He investigated complaints about U.S. behavior towards Viet Namese civilians in the region and came to the conclusion that “relations were excellent”. In fact, they were a slam-dunk of good relationships.

So I went home and talked to my friends and my relatives and all of my people who I thought had been my mentors. They all, almost to the person, said, ‘Shut up. Shut up. This is none of your business—leave it alone.'” – Ron Ridenhour.

We think we are a moral people, a nation with principles and integrity. But Ron Ridenhour came home from Viet Nam aware of an awful atrocity that had been committed by U.S. soldiers and he asked his friends and relatives what to do and they did not say: speak up, report it, let justice be done. They had been to the parades and monuments and speeches and dedications, and they all knew that all of it was a lie. Freedom? Democracy?

Ridenhour ignored his friends’ advice and followed his own conscience and reported what he had heard to his congressman, among others. Eventually, at the insistence of Morris Udall, an investigation was initiated and the My Lai Massacre was exposed.

How does a soldier decide if the orders he has received are lawful or not lawful? From the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, 1971, the United States vs. William Calley:

[16] The acts of a subordinate done in compliance with an unlawful order given him by his superior are excused and impose no criminal liability upon him unless the superior’s order is one which a man of ordinary sense and understanding would, under the circumstances, know to be unlawful, or if the order in question is actually known to the accused to be unlawful.

[19] Colonel William Winthrop, the leading American commentator on military law, notes: … Where the order is apparently regular and lawful on its face, he [the subordinate] is not to go behind it to satisfy himself that his superior has proceeded with authority, but is to obey it according to its terms, the only exceptions recognized to the rule of obedience being cases of orders so manifestly beyond the legal power or discretion of the commander as to admit of no rational doubt of their unlawfulness. … Except in such instances of palpable illegality, which must be of rare occurrence, the inferior should presume that the order was lawful and authorized and obey it accordingly. … Winthrop’s Military Law and Precedents, 2d ed., 1920 Reprint, at 296–297.

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The Sand Creek Massacre

Sometimes people who read about events like the Sand Creek Massacre become passionate about the injustice they have read about and make overly broad generalizations about American history that make it easy for jerks like James Dobson to assert that such commentary only comes from the “fringe” and that America is fundamentally a good nation that consistently — until “Leave it to Beaver” got cancelled — seeks to do the will of God.

This is the story about an act of terrorism committed by our noble forefathers, by soldiers under the direction of their commanders, of whom one, that we know of, refused his orders.

This is a classic template for the treatment of native peoples by the U.S. government. A treaty is negotiated in which the native peoples concede vast quantities of valuable land to the white settlers and move off to a new reservation on lands the whites consider worthless and undesirable. Then something of value– gold, in this case– is discovered on the reservations, and a new treaty is “negotiated”. In this case, the Cheyenne were generously offered a new reservation 1/13th the size of the land they were given originally, and slightly out of the way of the stampeding settlers headed for the gold rush.

Some militants among the Cheyenne thought they had been tricked and cheated. That seems a reasonable assumption. Nevertheless, some native leaders felt they had no choice but to accept the new treaty– or be massacred. In this instance, it didn’t matter. Shortly after the new treaty was signed, on November 29, 1864, the Colorado Militia attacked an undefended encampment and slaughtered 150-200 old men, women, and children. Many of the soldiers committed rapes and atrocities.

Some of them took genitals and scalps for souvenirs, which they proudly displayed to admiring crowds in Denver.

“to admiring crowds…”

Is the average American complicit, in any way, with the genocide that was the basis of the rapid expansion of the American frontier in the 19th century? What about those “admiring crowds”– masses of people who clearly approved and encouraged the slaughter though most of them never lifted a finger, personally, against native peoples. They admired. They received the murderers kindly. They embraced them morally and literally. Just as the citizens who forgave William Calley thereby revealed their complicity in the Viet Nam atrocities.

I personally haven’t read any American history books lately– and I’m curious about whether they pay any attention to stories like this. They would be wise to. If you find out about these things when you are older, you almost have to come to the conclusion that your parents and teachers and government have been deceiving you all along– maybe those big tax breaks for oil companies don’t make sense after all….

Even the government was shamed by this one.

The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War concluded:

Whatever influence this may have had upon Colonel Chivington, the truth is that he surprised and murdered, in cold blood, the unsuspecting men, women, and children on Sand Creek, who had every reason to believe they were under the protection of the United States authorities, and then returned to Denver and boasted of the brave deed he and the men under his command had performed.

Jis’ to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds, up thar at Sand Creek. His men shot down squaws, and blew the brains out of little innocent children. You call sich soldiers Christians, do ye? And Indians savages? What der yer s’pose our Heavenly Father, who made both them and us, thinks of these things? I tell you what, I don’t like a hostile red skin any more than you do. And when they are hostile, I’ve fought ’em, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would.

— Kit Carson to Col. James Rusling[37]

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Torture

“The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,” said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public.
NY Times, April 27, 2008

This is the Bush Administration at it’s most astonishingly acute. This is from a letter drafted by the Attorney-General’s office to the intelligence services to enlighten them as to how they may torture.

Or was it drafted by the Arch-Bishop of Seville in 1300 to enlighten the Jesuits as to how much torture could be applied to a heretic? Let’s paraphrase: “the fact that an act is undertaken to prevent the spread of heresy rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse…” Or if Marxist guerrillas in Guatemala in the 1970’s had captured a suspected CIA mole: “the fact that an act is undertaken to prevent the oppression of the proletariat and exploitation of the working classes…”

Are there any government or military or paramilitary entities out there who only torture for the purpose of humiliation or abuse? Stop that right now– you are violating international law! But if you have some purpose, divine or otherwise, in mind, well, we do it, so why shouldn’t you?

We had formerly thought that such people were monsters of depravity, bereft of all that makes us human and civilized. They used to be our enemies. But now, they are merely like us, as long as their first reason is not “humiliation or abuse”. As long as they do not, as they approach their helpless victims with a tong, or electrodes, or a barrel of water, tell them, “and now I will inflict terrible suffering on you for the sole purpose of humiliation and abuse! Once I have humiliated and abused you, I will stop!

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The Surge

It is quite amazing how many people who never admitted there was anything wrong with the original plan to invade Iraq now claim that the surge has fixed it. Even better, John McCain insists we are “on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism.” That’s an absolutely amazing statement since it has always been clear that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with “Islamic extremism” and everything to do with “I am the king of the world and I’m sitting on scads of oil”. It’s almost as if America is now in the business of creating its own enemies.

It would be more seemly for McCain to declare that America has destroyed Iraq and in so doing, incidentally, removed a really awful dictator from the face of the earth, at the cost of a trillion dollars, while doing virtually nothing to diminish the growth of extremism in other Islamic dictatorships like Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Syria.

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Media Perception

“The Media” is an amorphous term that seems to mean, as Alice says, whatever you want it to mean. “The Media”, according to Hillary Clinton, has been soft on Obama. It wasn’t “soft” on her when it nearly led the coronation back in September– that was simple inevitability. Hillary was enchanted. How rude of “The Media” to betray her trust. And she has always put her confidence in strangers.

Gloria Steinem, in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, opines that it would be somehow unjust if a woman were not the nominee this year because, after all a woman, has never been the nominee before, and this is the best chance ever of that happening.

So, so unjust.

Why, I never!

Who is this… this interloper!

Clinton has been steadily feeding the perception that Obama is a charismatic pretty boy without substance. That’s kind of odd– I first became aware of Obama when some journalists began writing about his new, broad-minded, non-partisan approach to politics– a rather daring approach given the eight years of Bush’s intensive partisan and vindictive approach to policy. What is more substantive? To challenge political orthodoxy like Obama, or to immerse yourself completely in the “the game” like the Clintons?

I’m liking Hillary Clinton less and less as the campaign wears on. Her attacks on Obama seem petty and mean-spirited. Her determined insistence that she has “experience” is ridiculous and tiresome– it is based on poll results, not on any kind of reality.

If the media themselves swallow the canard about the media being “soft” on Obama, it might also spare some indigestion for the idea that Clinton represents “experience”.

When Clinton’s team showed their “3:00 a.m.” ad to the media, a curious reporter asked when Ms. Clinton had ever experienced a “3:00 a.m. moment” in her career. Apparently, you could hear the crickets chirp in response.

I expect that a Hillary Clinton presidency will get the U.S. into a new shooting war within 18 months of her taking office. She will be out to prove to the generals and the Republicans that she has the toughness to take on America’s enemies, and she doesn’t have the creative independence of an Obama to stand up the maestros of international conflict.

 

[2022-05: well, Hillary got her chance, and lost the most winnable election in U.S. history.  Would Steinem have you believe it was because she was a woman?  Or was it because she campaigned badly, ignored the advice of her own husband, and used her own private email server — illegally– instead of the official White House server?  Or maybe the most repulsive fact of all: she was the wife of a former president.  The whole idea of a former President’s wife running for President is really, really appalling.]

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Hamas

America is in Iraq to bring freedom and democracy.
Why, when I see our boys raise the flag and salute— my heart just cramps all over.

There is only one example, in the Arab world, of a relatively free and fair election in which an autocratic government party was overthrown and replaced with another government that more accurately reflected the will of the electorate. It was Hamas, when, in January 2006, it defeated Yassir Arafat’s old party, Fatah, in elections in Palestine.

The reaction of the United States, which is determined to bring democracy and freedom to the Arab world? It denounced the results of the elections and encouraged Fatah to arm themselves in anticipation of an uprising.

This is not made up. This is not fantasy. This is not some satirical Hollywood movie. This is real U.S. foreign policy in action and if you still like to stand on your podium with your flag and your torch and your patriotic heart and recite all those platitudes about why the West is fighting terrorism, you deserve to be disillusioned.

The truth has always been that America is far more interested in promoting strategic alliances in the middle east than in any kind of democracy or freedom or even capitalism, if that gets in the way of the oil. How else would you explain U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, and so on and so on and so on?

As if the January 2006 election wasn’t ironic enough, the only other Arab government that is even remotely democratic is Iran. You may not like Ahmadinejad but, so far, he hasn’t tried to appoint his own son as his successor (unlike our so-called friends in Egypt, Libya, and Syria).

Hello America…. you help me in so many ways that I cannot even begin to express….