June 12, 2013| Military spending, Military-industrial complex, News, US Military | Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

President Obama is expected to make an announcement this week on whether his administration will begin arming the Syrian rebels in their suddenly uncertain effort to topple the autocratic regime of Bashar Assad. All signs point to a lifting of the White House restriction on “lethal assistance” to the rebellion for the first time since the armed resistance began two years ago.

mehThis would mark a major development in U.S intervention in the civil war, which has been complicated by the infusion of radical Sunni extremists from outside the country, as well as the Iranian proxy Hezbollah, and untold resources for both Assad and the rebels, from the Gulf States on one side, and Russia on the other. Millions of refugees are pouring over the borders and into the already beleaguered states of Jordan and Lebanon. The Sunni resistance in Syria is sparking a Sunni resistance in Iraq, whose sectarian tensions mirror those of its neighbor and threaten to boil over at any time.

And how much did the giant annual convocation of national security state interests sponsored by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS)  talk about this on Wednesday?

Not much.

In fact, the “pivot to China” (or “pivot to the Pacific”) was a much more attractive topic of conversation today – in fact an entire panel was dedicated to “the future rebalancing to China” this afternoon, proving again that the defense community loves girding up for conflicts that are less likely to happen much more than a) learning lessons from real wars that aren’t quite over yet, or b) talking about very real intervention in a very real tinderbox much closer to our supposed “threat zone” in the Middle East.

This was reflected in the prepared remarks and in the back-n-forth banter by the featured guests throughout the morning, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, who, when asked by a Reuters reporter about the Pentagon’s preparation for Syria, said simply, “I don’t have anything for you.” He barely uttered the word Afghanistan, other to say the government will keep funding the war.

Interestingly, Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN., the author of the Syria Transition Support Act with Sen. Bob Menendez, D-NJ., which passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 15 to 3 last month, was the only one to talk extensively about Syria and that was because he is so gung-ho to get in there.

“We are the only county that has the ability to bring all the neighbors in the region together,” he said, pretty optimistically, considering the “neighbors” are already involved and doing their own thing. They are also a bit irritated with the U.S for not “bringing all the neighbors together” when it was more feasible, that is, before every foreign proxy including al Qaeda started popping up in the country.

“What is of great international interest right now is the aftermath of Assad and the great war that is happening right now,” Corker added. Also optimistic, considering that Assad’s forces are on the march toward taking the strategic strongholds of Homs and Aleppo and look less likely to negotiate than ever.

“We have to change the balance of power,” the senator insisted, and help push things toward a negotiated settlement. “I do believe, this is the very best way forward and if I could make a bet …I bet that is what the president is going to to.”

The level of excitement in the room after this rousing plea for intervention was somewhere between zero and “meh.” Quietly, afterward, some national security types (both Marines and Air Force) told me they didn’t think there was any enthusiasm from the military for pushing our way into the Syrian mess. That seems to be an understatement.

Last summer, the Pentagon was on board with a plan by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Chief David Petraeus to send arms to the rebels. By April, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Martin Dempsey was backing off from that position and Sec. Def. Chuck Hagel was saying military involvement would be a bad idea.

Who knows who might convince the President otherwise as they continue these hot discussions in the White House this week. It looks like my friend Gareth Porter was right the other day when he said the “National Security State,” which includes the armed services, the Pentagon, and the Joint Chiefs, “are fine with what is going on in Syria” as of this moment. “But getting involved, it would be a tax on their resources,” and that the “cost to the National Security State would be greater than the benefit” of getting involved.

Talk about Nat Sec State interests — these are CNAS’s financial supporters here.  Most likely a good number of them had representatives at today’s conference. That most of the talk in the morning evolved around the budgets — how the Pentagon was going to work with sequestration, how it would survive with leaner budgets, indicates where the hive’s head is right now (on itself). They only want to know where the next-gen threats are in as much as they can offer new opportunities for federal contracts.

Not surprisingly, CNAS’s 7th Annual Conference was called “Looking Forward: U.S National Security Beyond the Wars.” After COIN fell this crowd couldn’t wait to get away from the war fast enough (interestingly, CNAS just issued a paper on “Toward A Successful Outcome in Afghanistan,” yet no panel was arranged to discuss it). CNAS seemed perfectly happy to talk budgets, China and Cyber, energy and whatever the room full of suits wanted. Painful strategy debates involving protracted conflicts (we still don’t know how many troops will be left behind in Afghanistan after 2014) and a possibly messy intervention that may in fact be decided this week, were not on the docket.

Guess it just wasn’t in their “interest.”

Hear-No-Evil-See-No-Evil-Speak-No-Evil

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June 12, 2013| News | Jason Ditz

Sign the petition

With all the talk about Edward Snowden and the attempts to persecute/prosecute him as a leaker, it’s easy to forget that this battle is already going on with Pfc. Bradley Manning, the source of a large amount of information on US overseas war crimes by way of WikiLeaks.

Manning’s partially-secret military trial is just now getting under way, even though he was arrested in May of 2010 and the Uniform Code of Military Justice explicitly guarantees the right to a speedy trial, which it specifies as 120 days.

During those years of detention Manning was repeatedly subjected to abuse by security forces, with the scandals around his mistreatment at Quantico getting so bad that they actually ended up closing the whole site permanently.

Manning’s crime is materially no different than Snowden’s: a desire to make the American public aware of things we desperately needed to know. 3+ years of pre-trial abuse is already more than enough for that, and it’s time to let Bradley go.

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June 11, 2013| Antiwar movement, Liberal Interventionism, Liberals, Libertarianism, News, Syria | Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

It shouldn’t be easy for a group of Antiwar.com writers and supporters to just walk in and dish about foreign policy at the Left Forum, which claims to be the biggest annual convocation of Leftwing activists in the country.

But it was — easy, that is. In fact, some of us probably made it harder for the Leftwing participants at the New York City confab to prove to us that that they weren’t just humanitarian “imperialists” in disguise. Imperialists – that’s a dirty word in these parts, on any side of the aisle.

Which made for an interesting panel discussion on Saturday, moderated by this writer, who was trying to drill down on the question of whether the United States had any moral obligation to intervene in Syria because a) there was (or at least it began as) an organic freedom movement trying to topple a repressive government that had been tacitly supported by America for years, and b) there is a growing human crises that stands to get worse, not just for Syria but for the entire region, which is already fragile from war, refugees and sectarian strife.

This question is particularly salient today because the Obama Administration is expected to “decide” this week whether the U.S will start assisting the rebels with heavy arms (something my co-panelists and many in the audience clearly oppose). And while President Obama has already ruled out “boots on the ground,” there is an ongoing debate about the “less likely” option of helping to impose a no-fly zone and “deploying American air power to ground the regime’s jets, gunships and other aerial assets,” according to an Associated Press report on Sunday.

With help from the Russians and Hezbollah on the ground fighting for Bashar Assad’s Syrian Army forces, the government has in the last week taken back the city of Qusair and is on the march north to recapture Homs and Aleppo, the very source of the rebellion’s strength. The fall of Qusair blocks a strategic supply route for the rebels and the fall of the two other major cities would reopen the government’s access to the coast and a vital corridor of predominantly Shia-Allawite support. In other words, it’s not looking too good for the revolution.

I was joined Saturday to talk about these developments and more by Gareth Porter, John Walsh, Chase Madar, Evan Siegel, and Lorraine Barlett, all of whom who would either consider themselves Left or libertarian, but decidedly anti-war and comfortable working with the Right end of the spectrum on national security issues. All save for Seigel have written for Antiwar.com or The American Conservative magazine.

The audience was decidedly Left, and, judging from the exhibition hall downstairs, way more comfortable with Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky than Randolph Bourne or Ron Paul. But judging from many of the knowing smiles and murmurs of agreement throughout the nearly two-hour discussion – surprise – we had a lot in common, at least on foreign policy.

First off – there seemed to be a hard line against intervention in Syria or anywhere else. “Bombs for peace” didn’t hold well with this crowd. “(Intervention) will only complicate and cause more death than help in Syria,” said Siegel, an adjunct professor at the New York City College of Technology and veteran peace activist. “They have to work it out for themselves,” said Walsh, a microbiology professor who co-founded ComeHomeAmerica.us and over the course of his own activism has shifted from Left, closer to libertarianism. He appeared the most unyielding of them all on the panel, saying any move to assist the rebels would be seen as imperialist in nature.

Porter agreed. “Don’t be suckers,” he said simply. A mantra for our times. More seriously, Porter entered into an exposition in which he explained that the National Security State — the Armed Forces, the National Security Council, Joint Chiefs and Pentagon — were disinterested in a Syrian intervention anyway. “It’s not in the interest of the National Security State,” he insisted, “because they believe the cost of war to the National Security State itself would be greater than the benefit to the National Security State. In other words, it’s about their bottom line.”

In that vein, Madar, who has written extensively on recent U.N. Ambassador nominee Samantha Power, said fierce liberal interventionists like her pick and choose their “crises” and show their bias when they conspicuously leave politically unfeasible or inexpedient conflicts off their list of struggles worthy of outside assistance.

When I interviewed a few of the audience members after the session they seemed to share much of the sentiments. “It’s ridiculous to push on one side and not give them the chance to decide for themselves,” said Linda D’Angelo from Ohio. “We can’t put our fingers in all of the dykes.”

Not everyone was digging the tone and direction of the speakers, who were basically asserting that the excuse of “humanitarianism” was often used to meddle, but that the United States has only really intervened for its own interests, and in Syria, there was no interest at stake. Furthermore, whether there was an “interest or not,” all five speakers advocated a consistent hands-off policy. For at least one bespectacled man in the audience who spoke up, this equated with allowing a “slaughter” to continue.

He waited patiently to be called upon and when he was, unleashed a Gatling gun of invectives on the panel, calling them and Antiwar.com, “apologists for genocide,” “Islamophobes,” and “crypto-Stalinists.”

Interestingly, after a brief skirmish broke out, with members of the panel and the audience defending the speakers from his accusations, the man abruptly walked out. But not before he was quietly jeered by both sides on his way to the door.

Siegel, Madar, Porter, Walsh & Barlett at LeftForum 2013

Siegel, Madar, Porter, Walsh & Barlett at LeftForum 2013

But the question of whether the U.S might have some obligation to do something in the face of a humanitarian crisis that stands to affect half of Syria’s 20 million population by the end of the year (already, 1.5 million refugees have left Syria, while 4.5 million are displaced inside), still seems to make some uncomfortable. The conversation often drifted toward the history of U.S war policy, empire and the broader principles of anti-interventionism. There seemed to be some consensus around imposing a total arms embargo in order to let both sides fight it out without interference from the Gulf States, Europe, Russia, Iran, U.S.., etc., but then most conceded that it was likely too far gone for that anyway.

Probably the most heartening thing to come out of the 50-minute exchange in that university classroom was the largely positive (not counting the singular fury that left the room) reaction from the audience. One gentleman admitted he had no idea there was this common ground with “the other side” of the political spectrum before.

There were nodding heads all around. Mission accomplished? Perhaps.

 

 

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June 10, 2013| News | Jason Ditz

A new petition at the White House’s portal is calling for President Obama to immediately an unconditionally pardon Edward Snowden for leaking the truth about the NSA’s huge overarching surveillance of everyday Americans.

The US hasn’t charged Snowden yet, of course, but officials have made it clear they intend to, and have been throwing out works like “treason” for an action which, at its core, was simply about informing the American public of something they desperately needed to know.

Of course I’m not so naive as to think that Obama would actually pardon someone who revealed such gross violations of civil liberties under his watch – that’s not how these things work. At the very least, however, the petition would compel President Obama to make a comment on the matter, and would prevent him from passing the buck on the persecution/prosecution of Snowden and dodging responsibility for it.

The petition has already gotten 37,000 signatures in the first day, and a decisive victory for it will make it even harder for the administration to ignore.

33 Comments

June 10, 2013| News | Jason Ditz

The leaks about America’s ever growing (and already ridiculously large) surveillance state came with a handy list of nine companies that joined the program. Those companies are, per the NSA’s own leaked data, giving the NSA direct access to their servers and, according to officials, the PRISM Nine also went out of their way to redesign their systems to easier facilitate the NSA’s spying on Americans.

Microsoft was the first on the list, joining way back when PRISM was just getting started. We all know Microsoft, and with its creation of Bing and its acquisition of Skype (another of the PRISM Nine), it is a big player in this scandal.

Here’s where it gets even worse (as it always does). Microsoft is coming out with a new video game console later this year. It will cost $499. I like video games. I even own Microsoft’s current video game system. But then it dawned on me – this new system will:

1. Require a constant connection to the Internet to even function.
2. Require the new version of Kinect to be always connected, and it is always on.

Kinect, for those unfamiliar, is an array of high definition cameras that can track movement in three dimensions. It was conceived of as a “joystickless” way to control games. It also includes a microphone, and that is always on on the new Xbox One, nominally so you can say commands and the system executes them without needing a remote control.

Which means Microsoft wants to install a three-dimensional surveillance array into your home, and require you to keep it always on, always feeding data to the Internet. And this company is a known facilitator of NSA surveillance of individual Americans. See the problem?

Microsoft was never high up on my “trust” list in the first place, but I hope no one is stupid enough to pay them $499 for the privilege of installing always-on surveillance equipment in your home to watch you knowing, not suspecting, but knowing that they are passing that information on to the NSA.

12 Comments

June 09, 2013| News | Lucy Steigerwald

Today Edward Snowden, a former computer analyst for the CIA recently employed at the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, voluntarily revealed his identity as the source of The Guardian and The Washington Post‘s massive scoops about the NSA’s PRISM program, as well as its system of logging the metadata from every single call made from Verizon phones (and Sprint and AT&T, turns out).

Snowden fled to Hong Kong on May 30, and was interviewed there on June 6 by Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald. In the interview he is amazingly well-spoken about the principles surrounding his decision to leak top-secret documents.Until late last month, the 29-year-old seems to have had a comfy life in Hawaii with a girlfriend and a $200,000 a year job with Booz Allen. But the reported Ron Paul supporter who voted for “a third party candidate” in 2008, wasn’t interested in keeping that level of coziness while possessing information that he believed the public has a right to know.

“I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under,” Snowden told Greenwald.

Snowden also seems eerily resigned to the likely consequences of his actions — namely that he may never see his home country again, and that government officials may come for him at any time.

So far the official response to this revelation has been limited. The White House didn’t comment. The NSA and Booz Allen were predictably outraged. Congressman Peter King (R-N.Y.) suggests that we prosecute Snowden “to the fullest extent of the law.” King, chairman of the Homeland Security subcommittee on Counterintelligence and Terrorism, also said that no other countries should grant Snowden asylum. Predictable hawks such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have yet to comment, but the up-coming work week will no doubt bring about a smorgasbord of outrage.

Meanwhile, whistleblower Pfc. Bradley Manning continues his trial for 22 charges, including violation of the Espionage Act, with the potentially life sentence-bringing crime of “aiding the enemy.” Though Manning has garnered heartening amounts of support support for his actions, initially it seems that Snowden could be a more compelling case for whistleblowing as heroism. Manning messed with the military, and was a member of (and therefore a “traitor” to) the armed forces. He dumped massive amounts of documents in what some claim was a less-than-careful manner, and he shared them with Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Contrast this with Snowden who claims to have combed through and made sure only to release things that were in the public interest, and who shared documents with reputable newspapers. (Though even officials have admitted that they can’t point to anyone in particular that Manning endangered with his releases, only a vague worry that he could have.)

Though the NSA and the CIA can be looked at as fighters in the war on terror (thereby counting as protectors of Americans), they don’t have the same cultural clout as do soldiers. There are no bumper stickers demanding that we all support NSA agents, no ribbons for them.. There’s that, and the unfortunate truth that most Americans care more about an injury to them (in the form of domestic spying) than they do about the ugly face of a war that their government started. Hell, it’s hard enough to get Americans to care about the surveillance state, getting them to object to war — especially when a soldier “betrays” his fellows is even harder. Manning is not the perfect everyman for this cause of transparency and antiwar activism (his tiny stature, his emotional difficulties even before his grim treatment in prison, and his sexual orientation unfortunately don’t help, either).

By all means, if people on the fence before re Manning decide that Snowden is speaking the truth, that’s great. Any catalyst for people joining in and saying enough is enough is a great thing. But if  Snowden becomes (and it’s very early yet, this is a lot of speculation) a better face for the noble art of whistleblowing, that doesn’t mean that Manning should be forgotten. Manning may have been impulsive and even reckless, but he acted in good faith, same as Snowden seems to have done.

Both men are heroes. They both risked their lives and their freedom to cast light into the nastiest, darkest corners of the powerful. And they’re both in serious trouble.

Please check out the full Greenwald/Guardian interview with Snowden, keep watching the Bradley Manning trial, and on Monday, when the usual suspects start howling about national security, don’t believe them.

And if you ever find yourself in possession of classified documents that show something wrong, leak them.  Be like Manning and Snowden, and leak them.

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