Month: April 2013

In response to a question about the hunger strike currently sweeping the prison, President Obama today once again promised to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama spoke eloquently about the issue, saying “It is inefficient, it hurts us in terms of our international standing, it lessens co-operation with our allies on counter-terrorism efforts, it is a recruitment tool for extremists, it needs to be closed.” He also said “Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe.”

Commendable, heartening words! Similar to ones said back in October when the president assured comedian Jon Stewart that the prison had to close.  Similar, too, to Obama’s speechifying while on the campaign trail in 2008.

Indeed, today’s press conference president sounded a bit like old Obama; that mythical creature who existed circa 2007-2009, and who was going to bring about transparency in government, stop the wars, be “cool” about drugs, and…close Gitmo.

And it sounds good every time he says it…Obama said today that his administration was going to “examine every option that we have administratively to try to deal with this issue. But ultimately, we’re also going to need some help from Congress.” Congress isn’t blameless, but there’s been more than 1500 days of Gitmo under Obama’s watch. If presidents are going to claim the staggering number of powers they currently possess — say, the power to put anyone, American citizen or not, on a kill list — it’s fair for them to bear the brunt of criticisms when inhumane institutions like Gitmo remain open, no?

Congress should be shamed for their inability to accept that Gitmo cannot continue forever. But there are very real things that Obama either should have done, can do, or can stop in order to begin the process of shutting down the prison.

Eighty-six men at Gitmo are cleared for release. If Obama was that interested in bringing back America’s standing in the world, he wouldn’t have signed the National Defense Authorization Act in 2011 and ’12. But that ship — along with indefinite detainment — has sailed. So what now? Currently around 90 of the 159 Gitmo prisoners are  from Yemen. If Obama was sincere today, he might try removing the three-year-old suspension of transfers to that nation. 

Obama might truly be uncomfortable with Gitmo’s existence, which would be a good sign that he’s not a sociopath. But there are people suffering and dying there now. People who have been held without charge for more than a decade. Obama is right that that sort of “justice” doesn’t fit with the ideals of America. And settling this mess is going to be a pain in the ass. But just because you’ve said a lot of serious words about the seriousness of the issue doesn’t get you off the hook when you do nothing.

A truly moral person — an absurd concept for a leader — wouldn’t let his own party, or a contentious Congress stand in his way. Even if that meant political ruin. Obama hasn’t done that. And besides, indefinite detainment isn’t going anywhere anyway. As Mother Jones noted back in November:

Experts from both sides of the aisle do agree that when Obama talks about closing Guantanamo, he’s not talking about ending the practice of indefinitely detaining terrorist suspects without trial. Instead, he’s talking about what to do with the prisoners already in US custody, whose future is uncertain.

Obama should (but probably won’t) act before this hunger strike proves fatal for scores of men. But even if Gitmo goes, Obama will continue doing what he does best — playing a shell game with the powers Bush, and 42 other presidents, claimed before him, and acting like they’re gone, when they’ve simply been moved around. And since it’s legislative, judicial, and executive powers combining to let this human rights debacle continue, Gitmo will probably end up just a small speck of dust on Obama’s legacy. Spread the blame around enough, and nothing gets done, and it’s nobody’s fault.

When the news about chemical weapons use in Syria hit the headlines again last week, I wrote that the whole debate on the issue was bogus. I argued that the alleged use of chemical weapons didn’t change the fact that the administration sees war in Syria as too costly and that, in any case, chemical weapons aren’t any different from the conventional military means that have already killed tens of thousands.

Over at Foreign Affairs, John Mueller argues Obama should “erase the red line.” He explains that not only is the chemical weapons “red line” bogus in the way I argued last week, but that the history of how chemical weapons occupied a special place in the international psyche is filled with as much war propaganda as Obama’s red line position.

The notion that killing with gas is more reprehensible than killing with bullets or shrapnel came out of World War I, in which chemical weapons, introduced by the Germans in 1915, were used extensively. The British emphasized the weapons’ inhumane aspects as part of their ongoing program to entice the United States into taking their side in the war. It is estimated that the British quintupled their gas casualty figures from the first German attack for dramatic effect.

As it happened, chemical weapons accounted for considerably less than one percent of the battle deaths in the war, and, on average, it took over a ton of gas to produce a single fatality. Only about two or three percent of those gassed on the Western front died. By contrast, wounds from a traditional weapon proved 10 to 12 times more likely to be fatal. After the war, some military analysts such as Basil Liddell Hart came to believe that chemical warfare was comparatively humane — these weapons could incapacitate troops without killing many.

But that view lost out to the one that the British propagandists had put forward — that chemical weapons were uniquely horrible and must, therefore, be banned. For the most part, the militaries of the combatant nations were quite happy to get rid of the weapons. As the official British history of the war concludes (in a footnote), gas “made war uncomfortable … to no purpose.”

Mueller also argues, as I did last week, that fears that the administration will use this news about chemical weapons to justify going to war in Syria “are probably misplaced.” The administration, and the military establishment, knows there is no viable opposition for a post-Assad Syria, any limited intervention would be vulnerable to mission creep and probably end up requiring boots on the ground and considerable resources in blood and treasure. A new US war could generate a descent into sectarian conflict on the order of post-Saddam Iraq and would spark a new jihadist cause in the broader Middle East, and potentially a regional war between states.

It’s worth noting that the media hype over the chemical weapons allegations distort the actual intelligence. According to one intelligence official speaking to McClatchy newspapers, there is “low or moderate confidence” that the Assad regime used chemical weapons.

But all you can hear on cable news is that Obama’s failure to invade Syria now that chemical weapons have allegedly, we think been used hurts “American credibility.” The word credibility here is instructive. What they mean is that unless the whole world fears US violence and aggression, it hurts the national interest.

As Daniel Larison has noted today at The American Conservative, going to war for “credibility” is foolish.

I am pleased to introduce the latest addition to the Antiwar.com staff, our new Contributing Editor, Lucy Steigerwald.

Lucy was previously an Associate Editor at Reason magazine, where she wrote on issues ranging from drones, the drug war, the US justice system, politics, the warfare state, and everything in between. Before that, Lucy worked briefly at the Pittsburgh City Paper.

Lucy is also a contributor to VICE magazine and has done freelance work for Mt. Lebanon Magazine and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. She has appeared as a commentator on HuffPost Live, Al-Jazeera, Russia Today, Reason TV, and America’s Future Foundation Radio.

Lucy will be an awesome addition to the Antiwar Blog and our whole staff is excited about her coming on board. Check out her very first post here, and be on the look-out for more.

As we noted in the news section yesterday, The New York Times reported this week on “bags of cash” that have been continually sent to Afghan President Hamid Karzai “courtesy of the CIA.”

Despite its unsurprising “revelations,” the story has received a lot of attention from Americans who are tired of fighting the lost war in Afghanistan and resentful that so many resources have gone to that sinkhole of a “nation-building” project.

In response to the report, Karzai admitted it matter-of-factly. An excerpt is featured in this Jake Tapper clip:

“…in a, eh, not big amount, no, small amount.” Well, I’ll take the description as relative, given that the Times reported, “All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai.”

This is a guy whose immense power over an entire country is totally illegitimate, having rose to the position in the aftermath of US-imposed regime change and military occupation and kept it by orchestrating fraudulent elections. The entire edifice of the Afghan government over which Karzai presides is sustained through a massive influx of US foreign aid – more than $16 billion since 2008 alone (not including the cost of conducting the war).

Under Karzai, Afghanistan has retained the title of being one of the most corrupt nations on the planet, and that is primarily in reference to the financial conduct of the government; never mind Karzai’s pettier preoccupations, like torturing prisoners and agreeing to pardon an imprisoned woman for the crime of being raped, on the one condition that she marry the man that raped her.

All this, and the CIA still sees fit to continue sending Karzai tens of millions of dollars in secret. Just as a reminder for those not as schooled in the art of pronouncing the utterly obvious, the CIA isn’t a corporation – they aren’t a business producing something in exchange for money. They have no money of their own. The wads of cash they’re regularly sending to people like Karzai come straight from the hard-earned paychecks of you and your neighbors.

As to Tapper’s question, Galbraith is correct that the payments have been a total waste. As the Times reported, “there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the CIA sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.”

The fact that the war cannot be “won” plays into this endlessly-paying-billions-for-absolutely-nothing game Washington has been playing in Afghanistan. British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond said in January that there is a “growing realization on both sides of” the conflict in Afghanistan “that neither side can win outright.”

The Taliban actually control entire parts of the country, where they “collect taxes, maintain law and order, and adjudicate disputes,” Dexter Filkins reported in the New Yorker in July. An Afghan told Filkins, the “country will be divided into twenty-five or thirty fiefdoms, each with its own government,” as soon as they Americans leave.

“We are probably headed for stalemate in 2014,” says Stephen Biddle, a George Washington University political science professor who has advised U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“If that is the case, the U.S. will have to pump billions of dollars a year into Afghanistan for decades to prevent its collapse,” the AP reported Biddle as saying.

Drones are the weapon of choice for fighting undeclared wars all over the Middle East. Surveillance drones are on the cusp of becoming that for U.S. government and law enforcement officials as they continue their efforts to observe everyone as much as and as often as possible.

Today Real Clear Politics (RCP) has an article titled “Drones: Coming to a Sky Near You” and if that headline looks familiar, it’s because this is a familiar fear. Last year the FAA decided that by 2015, it must complete its guidelines on the integration of drones into U.S. airspace. Since that announcement, publications from The Miami Herald to Time have sounded a cautious alarm about the prospect of thousands of drones filling American skies by 2020. There seems to be a new article every day, lately none of them offering much beyond a restrained paranoia; a look at the State of the Union in terms of drones.

But maybe paranoia has done some good. RCP takes a look at recent push-back from various state bodies, including the Massachusetts legislature, noting that:

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 39 states are considering laws that would restrict drones. Virginia in February imposed a two-year moratorium on drone aircraft. Idaho this month passed a law prohibiting spying by drones without the consent of the persons being spied upon. Idaho state Sen. Chuck Winder (R), the bill’s author, said the measure was intended to “prevent high-tech window peeping.”

On the other hand, 39 states have also put their names into the federal hat to compete to be one of six states that will test integration of these unmanned  aerial vehicles into American airspace.

Last week the mayor of Boston suggested using drones for surveillance at next year’s marathon. This isn’t surprising, as the government is always fighting the last terrorist attack. No matter how unlikely there is to be another incident at any marathon, especially Boston’s; drones cruising above the runners in 2014 is one way to combine looking like you’re doing something, furthering a precedent for normalized, intrusive behavior, and making the burgeoning drone industry — which, by one estimate, may become a $90 billion one in the next decade — very happy. The reaction to the militarized police presence in Boston after the bombing has been mixed. Today former congressman Ron Paul suggested that the city-wide lockdown, the invasive searches and police presence should “frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.” But many people, especially in Boston, were just fine with cops that looked like soldiers patrolling the streets of an American city.

The RCP article also notes that the Department of Homeland Security — serving as the umbrella that covers both war and police issues and helps make them troublingly indistinguishable –will be offering grants to police departments in order to ease purchase of their own drones. No doubt this will prove irresistible to police departments. DHS has already played a generous part in the militarization of police in the last ten years with its grants for Bearcat armored vehicles and other SWAT-ready tech.

The power of drones abroad is obviously a more frightening animal. Today The Atlantic published an article headlined “Living in Terror Under a Drone-Filled Sky in Yemen”. If that exploration of the psychological (and physical) toll that the drone war puts on civilians looks familiar, perhaps you caught the recent study of the grim effects 24/7 hovering death-robots have on the collective psyche of Pakistani people. Drone use abroad continues to be supported by the majority of adult Americans, however.

The proliferation of drones will not long be an American issue alone. “The number of countries that have acquired or developed drones expanded to more than 75, up from about 40 in 2005, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress,” USA Today reported in January.

In spite of some heartening legislative attempts to rein in drones here at home, as well as protests over their international use, they cannot be fully put back into the box. That’s why endlessly rehashing the concerns that are fundamentally tied in with this technology is a good thing to do, even if it brings up a sense of Deja Vu for anyone even halfway paying attention. The RCP article contains no breaking news about drones, but the moment that such articles disappear, we’re in real trouble. That’s when drones have been fully accepted as the most efficient killing machines abroad, and the ideal mechanisms for surveillance at home.