Month: July 2013

Noting Rosie Gray’s ridiculously smug piece in that learned journal of policy wonkdom known as Buzzfeed, our own Lucy Steigerwald reflects on the burning question of why Sen. Rand Paul and Rep.  Justin Amash, “should-be friends to the whistleblower  remained oddly quiet” on the subject of Bradley Manning’s recent conviction on espionage charges.

Yes, I  wondered about that,  too. From what  I’ve heard, they’ve yet to comment on the campaign to free Mumia Abu Jamal.  And now that you mention it — has anyone asked them about Jonathan Pollard?

As for Rosie Gray and BuzzFeed — however you’re supposed to spell it — they have a history. And here’s my own encounter with the charming Rosie, who, you can probably tell, lives and works in New York  City (I’m guessing Brooklyn). I’ll take their sudden interest in the cause of liberty seriously when @BuzzfeedBen runs an outraged editorial protesting the Manning verdict and demanding Bradley’s immediate pardon.

There isn’t anything “odd” about the “silence” of Paul, Amash, Wyden, et al. What’s really odd is the idea that these political figures have some kind of moral responsibility to speak out about every issue at every point in time.

See my latest piece at The Huffington Post: Bradley Manning Revealed Crimes Far Worse Than the Ones He Supposedly Committed.

Here’s a riddle: How do you make it easier to push through legislation in Congress that is overwhelmingly opposed in the public without any political consequences?

Answer: Keep the votes secret.

That’s exactly what’s happened to an Obama administration plan to provide weapons directly to the Syrian rebels. The Senate committee that approved the plan was, unusually, allowed to classify their votes, presumably in order to insulate themselves from any repercussions from their constituents. Because really…why should elected representatives have to tell the people they supposedly represent how they are doing the job they were elected to do!?

McClatchy:

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reportedly gave its approval last week to an Obama administration plan to provide weapons to moderate rebels in Syria, but how individual members of the committee stood on the subject remains unknown.

There was no public debate and no public vote when one of the most contentious topics in American foreign policy was decided – outside of the view of constituents, who oppose the president’s plan to aid the rebels by 54 percent to 37 percent, according to a Gallup Poll last month.

In fact, ask individual members of the committee, who represent 117 million people in 14 states, how they stood on the plan to use the CIA to funnel weapons to the rebels and they are likely to respond with the current equivalent of “none of your business:” It’s classified.

Those were, in fact, the words Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the committee, used when asked a few days before the approval was granted to clarify her position for her constituents. She declined. It’s a difficult situation, she said. And, “It’s classified.”

She was not alone. In a string of interviews over days, members of both the Senate intelligence committee or its equivalent in the House were difficult to pin down on their view of providing arms to the rebels. The senators and representatives said they couldn’t give an opinion, or at least a detailed one, because the matter was classified.

It’s an increasingly common stance that advocates of open government say undermines the very principle of a representative democracy.

“It’s like a pandemic in Washington, D.C., this idea that ‘I don’t have to say anything, I don’t have to justify anything, because I can say it’s secret,’” said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank.

In our increasingly Orwellian country, it’s getting hard to tell the difference between parody and reality. But this is very real. And Harper is correct: it is a pandemic.

Everything is secret in Washington. Who are we at war with? That’s classified. Who is the government spying on? That’s classified. Are we bombing multiple countries on a regular basis with remote-controlled airplanes? That’s classified. Which senators voted for an incredibly unpopular and dangerous plan to give weapons to unaccountable Syrian militias as they fight in a chaotic civil war that should have nothing to do with us? None of your god damned business.

The US government in 2012 rejected public requests for documents more often than at any time since President Barack Obama took office, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

“The administration cited exceptions built into the law to avoid turning over materials more than 479,000 times, a roughly 22 percent increase over the previous year,” The Associated Press reports.

“The government cited national security to withhold information at least 5,223 times – a jump over 4,243 such cases in 2011 and 3,805 cases in Obama’s first year in office. The secretive CIA last year became even more secretive: Nearly 60 percent of 3,586 requests for files were withheld or censored for that reason last year, compared with 49 percent a year earlier.”

According to Information Security Oversight Office, the Executive Branch alone made 92,064,862 classifications decisions in 2011. In the same year, it cost the federal government $11 billion just to keep its own secrets.

The trend towards reckless classification in government will prove to be one of the most pernicious in the very near future. The one opportunity for Americans, in our ostensibly three branched government, to challenge the absurd levels of secrecy are the courts. Unfortunately, they have given the state incredible deference when it comes to state secrets privileges.

The GOP leadership is engaged in rank ideological policing. Increasing numbers of Republicans are deviating from the neo-conservative platform and Rand Paul is at the top of the naughty list.

The headlines were ablaze last week when the conspicuously rotund New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a 2016 presidential contender, condemned the segments of the Republican Party willing to criticize dragnet NSA surveillance of Americans’ communications and endless U.S. wars abroad. Those are “very dangerous thought[s]” according to Christie. The big man is apparently not shy about accusing people of thought crimes. Reason’s Matt Welch discussed the controversy last week on Fox:

John McCain, the elderly Republican superintendent, threw the first stone back in March when he called Rand Paul and his Tea Party brethren “wacko birds.” Now, in an interview with The New Republic’s Isaac Chotiner McCain says if the 2016 presidential election comes down to Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul, he doesn’t know who to vote for.

IC: I want to talk about the Senate. It seems to me that the GOP leadership has been frozen by Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

JM: I am not sure if it has been frozen, but certainly there is an element in the party that has been there prior to [World War II], the isolationist, America-Firsters. Prior to World War I, it was Western senators, and then Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, and then Taft versus Eisenhower. Even Reagan—Reagan’s presidency was perfect without ever a problem [said sarcastically]—there was an isolationist wing that fought against Reagan. And now the bad economy has exacerbated what has always been out there. […]

IC: The GOP leadership—Mitch McConnell, Minority Whip John Cornyn—is from the same states as Cruz and Paul. Is that a particular problem?

JM: Sure, yeah.

IC: When Hillary Clinton versus Rand Paul occurs in 2016, I guess you are going to have to decide who to vote for, huh?

JM: It’s gonna be a tough choice [laughs].

Not only are big name GOPers hurling rhetoric at their Republican contenders (three years ahead of the next election, no less), but there are sinister and subtle forces in the neo-conservative camp launching political campaigns, seemingly with the sole purpose of checking the Republican Party’s (partial) shift away from the national security state. The “warlord” Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick, announced an uncouth primary challenge against a fellow Republican and subsequently had a spat with Rand Paul over it.

Here’s Welch again today on the McCain interview:

It’s important to remember that the GOP interventionists currently gunning for Paul also do not like him because he is serious about cutting all government, not just defense. Recall that National Greatness Conservative William Kristol reacted to the sweeping Democratic victory in 2008 by warning Republicans against advocating limited-government principles in opposition to the big-government president. No really, he did…

…Neo-conservatives are big-government conservatives, period. Libertarian Republicans are the opposite. It’s a stark choice, and given the depth of the interventionists’ commitment to blank-check executive-branch prosecution of war and American hegemony, no one should be surprised by the burgeoning Republicans For Hillary caucus.

Jeeze. I never expected it, but if anything can wither away my wholesale political apathy it’s a fight between one half of the Republican Party committed to war and civil liberties infringements and the other half skeptical of both.

Popcorn please.

A UN report documents 1,319 civilian deaths and 2,533 injuries in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2013, a 23 percent increase over the same period in 2012. The study finds “a 14 percent increase in deaths, 28 percent increase in injuries and 23 percent increase in total civilian casualties.”

Most of the civilian casualties, according to the report, came from what are called “Anti-Government Elements” (74 percent). But civilian casualties by U.S.-NATO forces can be hard to substantiate when these authorities flatly deny accusations.

Take, for example, an issue Jason Ditz covers in today’s news section:

Months after loudly dismissing the allegations of Wardak civilians that U.S. Special Forces have been kidnapping, torturing and killing them, the U.S. Army has announced that it has begun a new investigation into the claim[s] under orders from Gen. Dunford, the commander for troops in occupied Afghanistan.

Afghan officials loudly demanded the U.S. withdraw from Wardak Province over the allegations in February, but quickly dropped the demand when NATO insisted the allegations were false.

The issue didn’t die down, however, as civilian bodies kept being found outside the U.S. base and a tape eventually emerged showing the torture of a local civilian, whose body was later found in a ditch near the base.

In any case, the question of how to put an end to the suffering of Afghan civilians is more and more pertinent as casualties increase. Hawks in Washington insist U.S. forces stay in there, continue the nation-building project, and beat back the insurgency. That’ll do it, right!?

No. A decade of doing exactly that with worsening results should indicate as much. The Kabul government we’re propping up is weak. The Afghan army is feeble and untenable. And the insurgency is alive and well after years of counter-insurgency.

Pentagon sources say the “zero option” of withdrawing all U.S. troops in 2014 that has floated into the press in recent weeks is off the table. That means the military occupation of Afghanistan and the propping up of this corrupt and decrepit government will continue, as planned, until about 2024. This means the armed insurgency will also continue for another decade, which therefore means Afghan civilians will continue to suffer – seemingly indefinitely. They largely have America to thank for it.

At this point, the obstinate continuation of the war parallels the perpetuation of the Vietnam War. The Pentagon Papers proved what had been long suspected, that the horrible, murderous war was kept going primarily for the sake of the political reputation of the leadership in Washington. They didn’t want to “lose” a war. So they lied to Americans about how important “victory” was and how achievable it was.

There is no victory in Afghanistan. The “zero option” is the only option: get out fast.

On Tuesday, Pfc. Bradley Manning was found guilty of a long list of crimes, and  in a few hours comes the sentencing hearing, leading to what may be a very long prison term for the leaker and whistleblower. The one bright spot for Manning supporters — and First Amendment advocates — was that though this still sets a precedent for prosecution under the 1917 Espionage Act, Manning at least wasn’t found guilty of “aiding the enemy.” As various commentators, journalists, activists, and supporters have noted, the inference from that tacked-on charge was that the media, and by extension the public, American or otherwise, was the enemy. Also, that if making information freely available (and therefore probably accessible to any old terrorist with a WiFi connection or a New York Times subscription) is all that’s needed for that charge to stick, we’re all in for a serious cold snap when it comes to freedom of the press.

To the hawkiest of hawks in Congress, the failure to pin Manning with that most serious charge is a downer. But South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham (R) told Slate‘s Dave Weigel that everything seems to have worked out pretty well. Even Graham admitted that a leaker probably has to mean to do it, but said “I think [Manning] should have been tried for all the crimes, including aiding the enemy.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) has been gunning for Manning and Wikileaks’ Julian Assange since 2010, so she was no doubt disappointed by the scrap of good news Tuesday.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the quality spectrum in politics, should-be friends to the whistleblower  remained oddly quiet. Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich), whose anti-NSA amendment came heartstoppingly close to success last week had no comment for Buzzfeed’s Rosie Gray. Neither did Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky), or Ron Wyden (D-Ore), or Mark Udall (D-Colo), three of the senate’s toughest fighters for privacy and government accountability on behalf of the American people. (If you haven’t read Wyden’s anti-NSA speech from July 23, please do. It’s great, and scary as hell.) Gray briefly muses that even for most civil liberty – and leak-friendly — politicians, there’s a difference between pushing for the government to voluntarily release information and actually praising someone who dared to take the law into their own hands and supposedly endangered national security, the military, or the public.

And again, poor, heroic Manning, maybe more than his comrade Edward Snowden, faced an uphill battle in gaining support for his actions. This website and other high-profile supporters not withstanding, Manning was still seen by many as having betrayed his duties as a soldier. For example, on June 6 a Rasmussen poll reported that 52% percent of people said Manning was a “traitor.” A July 29 poll revealed that a third of people believed Manning deserved life in prison, and just a little over half believed that he had damaged national security. A June 12 Gallup poll reported that 44% of total respondents approved of Snowden’s decision to become a leaker. Even if people disapprove of government spying, they often seem to be waiting for a morally pure angel to acquire important information without sullying themselves in any way.

Regardless, the job of a politician is to uphold the law, or, at best to rally to change the is as Amash, Wyden, Udall, and Paul do. It’s tempting to ask why they don’t all support Snowden and Manning hell-bent for leather. Maybe they were all too busy to comment, but even the best politicians (which is…them) have to sell out daily as part of their job. And we need those men in Congress. This means they probably need to stay timid on some issues the rest of us should be shouting about.

We should be shouting about Bradley Manning. Or  at least thanking him for treating us all like adults and individuals who deserve to know the truth about what’s done in our name;  even while most officials demand we put our fingers in our ears and scream that no, no, no, we don’t want to know what war really looks like.