Month: July 2012

Via Glenn Greenwald, Bruce Ackerman on Obama and the rule of law:

Spinning plates can get confusing. For months, the war hawks in Washington have been vigorously calling for an intervention in Syria. Depending on the direction the wind was blowing that day, they might have been arguing for intervention to stop the bloodshed, or they might have been saying war was necessary to eliminate Assad and isolate Iran. You might have heard them pushing for a no-fly zone, and when they heard from the experts that this would dramatically worsen the situation, they might have retreated to simply arming the rebels. When they heard the rebels committed serious crimes and have ties to al-Qaeda and other extremists, they vacillated between calling them freedom fighters and arguing still for arming the opposition – just to do it carefully.

Now, the pro-war crowd is folding in on themselves again. Now we’re supposed to open up a second war in Syria to fight al-Qaeda. Seth Jones in the Wall Street Journal:

The United States and its allies should consider opening a second front in the Syrian war. In addition to helping end Bashar Assad’s rule, there is a growing need to conduct a covert campaign against al Qaeda and other extremist groups gaining a presence in the country.

…Al Qaeda’s presence appears to be growing in several cities, especially Aleppo, Damascus, Deraa and Idlib, where the group has established cells. Its leadership structure is headed by Abu Muhammad al-Julani, a veteran jihadist.

…The danger is clear. Assuming Assad’s regime eventually collapses, a robust al Qaeda presence will undermine transition efforts and pose a major threat to regional stability.

Well then genius, it might have been good not to have initiated regime change, no? US support for the rebel militias has emboldened the opposition, deepened the conflict, and allowed extremist insurgents to destabilize the Assad regime. Jones admits that one thing explaining al-Qaeda’s rise in Syria is “the draw of a new jihad—smack in the middle of the Arab world.” Like in Iraq, the US has helped create an al-Qaeda presence in Syria, which is now justifying even more military intervention.

Jones’s position is pitifully confused. Which policy is the US supposed to pursue in Syria – supporting the rebels in a proxy war against Assad, or fighting the rebels and eliminating the main threat to Assad’s regime? This isn’t quantum mechanics; we can’t exist in two different realities at once. Or are we just supposed to take any excuse to intervene at face value?

Jones is also contradictory: He admits al-Qaeda fighters are swarming to Syria because of the draw of jihad. Yet, he wants to “launch a covert campaign to ramp up intelligence-collection efforts against al Qaeda, capture or kill its senior leaders, and undermine its legitimacy.” Right, because nothing snuffs out al-Qaeda like an unprovoked US war in the Middle East.

As we all know, it is very right and good to excuse President Obama for not coming through as the peace candidate he used to be on issues like Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. Hope and Change will have to wait until we tackle those existential threats.

But how about the brutal policies Obama refuses to rescind towards the one country not even the worst of the hawks in Congress claim threatens us at all? AP:

Cuban President Raul Castro said Thursday that his government is willing to mend fences with bitter Cold War foe the United States and sit down to discuss anything, as long as it is a conversation between equals.

…He echoed previous statements that no topic is off-limits, including U.S. concerns about democracy, freedom of the press and human rights on the island, as long as it is a conversation between equals.

“Any day they want, the table is set. This has already been said through diplomatic channels,” Castro said. “If they want to talk, we will talk.”

…Washington and Havana have not had diplomatic relations for five decades, and the 50-year-old U.S. embargo outlaws nearly all trade and travel to the island.

The senselessness of the ongoing economic warfare against the Cuban people is really a thing to marvel at, to say nothing of Washington’s utter indifference to the suffering it has caused. Here, the Castros practically beg for a reopening of diplomatic ties, to no avail. Obama don’t wanna talk!

Jacob Hornberger:

Consider the brutal economic embargo that the U.S. government has enforced against Cuba for some 50 years. By now, U.S. officials cannot claim ignorance of how much suffering the embargo has caused the Cuban people.

In the beginning, U.S. officials said the same thing they always say when they’re imposing sanctions on foreign regimes — that they have no intent to target the citizenry but only the dictator. But after decades of experience with sanctions, everyone knows that the dictator gets along fine notwithstanding the sanctions. It’s the citizenry who pay the price. In fact, as both Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro learned, the U.S. sanctions against their countries actually helped them to centralize their power.

…What are sanctions if not a direct violation of economic freedom — not only of the Cuban people, who are denied economic intercourse with Americans, but also the economic liberty of the American people, who are prohibited from traveling to Cuba and spending their money there?

…If U.S. officials were really interested in the economic well-being of the Cuban people and if they were genuinely interested in spreading freedom and democracy there, they would immediately lift their cruel and inhumane embargo that has contributed so much the suffering of the Cuban people.

In the news section, Jason Ditz points to the recent World Bank report which considers a Palestinian state not viable because “the economy is currently not strong enough to support such a state.” Here, Israeli policy ends up serving as strategy: the persistent military occupation, economic restrictions, and destruction of Palestinian infrastructure – justified by Israel’s “security needs” – is making Palestinian statehood impossible.

The push to annex the entire West Bank has accelerated as of late. Earlier this month, the Israeli government’s Levy Committee made headlines when it concluded that Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank should be retro-actively legalized (in effect, to appropriate the territory into Israel proper). This was shocking in its boldness and absurdity, but it was not new.

Right-wing politicians in Israel pretty consistently argue for annexing existing (and illegal) Jewish settlements in the West Bank, while ramping up construction of new ones. In February, the Likud Party pushed a bill in the Knesset that would annex more than 60 percent of the occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank. The plan, introduced by former Yesha Council Director Naftali Bennett, would unilaterally end military occupation in the section of the West Bank designated by Israel as “Area C” and fully apply Israeli law there. Israel would then “naturalize” some 50,000 Palestinians from the seized territory.

Such initiatives have not been successful because, as The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg has written, “The right-wing wants the land, but not the people.” The better option, Israeli policy seems to judge, is to smoke them out.

If the economic warfare that has strangled the Palestinian economy for so long has now made an independent state impracticable, then Israel gets everything by default. Similar strategies have been employed in Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza. Bombing Palestinian roads, farms, greenhouses, dairy parlours, livestock, chicken coops, and orchards served the purpose of exacerbating the effects of the blockade. Its aim was “the destruction of all means of life.” And in the West Bank, the complex system checkpoints, barriers, and permits serves to harass the population and make ordinary life impossible.

A recent EU report explained how “a combination of house and farm building demolitions; a prohibitive planning regime; relentless settlement expansion; the military’s separation barrier; obstacles to free movement; and denial of access to vital natural resources, including land and water, is eroding Palestinian tenure of the large tract of the West Bank on which hopes of a contiguous Palestinian state depend.” If this erosion can pass a certain point, Palestine becomes moot. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud Party Charter declares Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza as “the realization of Zionist values” and “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river,” will get his way.

Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy reports that top Senators, including those who support Romney, can’t explain what his policy on Syria is…because he doesn’t have one:

“Mitt Romney believes the United States should pursue a strategy of isolating and pressuring the Assad regime to increase the likelihood of a peaceful transition to a legitimate government. We should redouble our push for the U.N. Security Council to live up to its responsibilities and impose sanctions that cut off funding sources that serve to maintain the regime’s grip on power,” the campaign website reads.

But the Obama administration is already pursuing a more aggressive strategy than that, announcing this week that it is abandoning the diplomacy track at the U.N. and ramping up various levels of support to the Syrian opposition. CIA teams are also reportedly vetting rebels fighters and aiding in their efforts to get weapons from countries including Qatar and Saudi Arabia.Administration officials say that increased communications and intelligence assistance is also on the way.

Romney has said repeatedly that the United States should “work with partners” to arm the Syrian opposition but has stopped short of calling for Washington to give the rebels direct, lethal aid. On July 19, after the U.N. Security Council again failed to impose punitive measures on the Assad regime following Russian and Chinese vetoes, Romney again criticized the administration’s policy without saying what he would do differently.

It’s well known by now that Romney has failed to differentiate himself from Obama on foreign policy, in part because one can’t get much more hawkish than Obama already is without falling off the deep end and marginalizing himself with wacko interventionists. Without admitting it, Romney has essentially endorsed Obama’s policies on Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Asia-Pacific, et al.

Rogin wrote a similar piece last week, except the hook was that top Senators couldn’t explain Romney’s Afghanistan policy. See here for my response to that, in which I said Romney is “intentionally evading because he is about as unprincipled as he was portrayed in the primary campaign. Romney’s convictions depend on their current political advantage. If having a conviction is unlikely to yield political benefits, Romney becomes indistinct, noncommittal. He seems to be rendering a crude imitation of exactly the sort of ’empty suit’ Obama was accused of being in 2008.”