Month: May 2013

Reports from May 1 protests around the US, particularly in Seattle, may look disturbingly familiar to anyone worried about police militarization.

To be fair, this outlet suggests Seattle saw a contingent of aggressive marchers and rioters who were determined to provoke a response from law enforcement. Some protesters allegedly threw bottles and chunks of concrete at police who responded with pepper spray, and potentially-lethal flashbang grenades. Eight officers were injured, and 17 protesters arrested. Maybe some of those 17 deserved it.

But at least since Occupy led to middle class white kids being pepper sprayed, Tasered, and cuffed on Smartphone camera, the militarization of police has become worthy of general debate — and it must be debated. This week it was Mayday, the week before it was the heavy-handed manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers that provoked argument over the rightness of domestic policing turning jackbooted. Less common knowledge, and harder to suss out than police brutality footage on Youtube, though, is the close ties that the Department of Homeland Security has to law enforcement militarization. This is to the tune of billions of dollars in DHS loans for tanks, surveillance, and other tech that have helped turn Officer Friendly into the riot-ready or even war-ready soldiers you see at every protest, and sometimes at your doorstep.

In March, the American Civil Liberties Union launched an investigation into this phenomenon. They’re calling the project “Towns Don’t Need Tanks.” So far they have “[f]iled over 260 public records requests with law enforcement agencies and National Guard offices to determine the extent to which federal funding and support has fueled the militarization of state and local police departments.”

It didn’t start with DHS, or fears of terrorism, however. Police have looked like soldiers — or even worked with them — since the days of Reagan. Several 1980s amendments to the post-Reconstruction 1878 Posse Commitatus Act — designed to restrict the armed forces from turning into a domestic police force, ironically enough —  explicitly allow use of drug-fighting military tech by cops. Officers you see today are descended from hysteria and paranoia over narcotics, but they’ve got lots of different jobs to do now.

The Seattle protest perhaps wasn’t the poster child for outrageous police aggression against meek activists. However, it brings all the same questions about the status quo police reaction to nearly every threat. Alright, cops get to use pepper spray and flashbang grenades when they’re getting hit by bottles. But we have to ask where and when law enforcement who look like soldiers won’t be allowed such methods. SWAT and riot tactics are now the appropriate response to nonviolent protest and standing around at your own college, drug use, gambling, graffiti, and cockfighting. So why blink when anarchists in black blocs bring about police violence, too?

A recent New York Times article ascribing the label “isolationist” to those skeptical of military intervention in Syria and North Korea has generated a flurry of commentary about the overall foreign policy debate.

Matt Duss summarizes the controversy well:

Ask yourself: Do you oppose putting U.S. troops everywhere, all the time? If you answered yes, you might be an isolationist, according to the word’s new definition. A piece in Tuesday’s New York Times, based on a new NYT/CBS poll, warned that “Americans are exhibiting an isolationist streak, with majorities across party lines decidedly opposed to American intervention in North Korea or Syria right now.”

In the very next paragraph, however, we are told that, “While the public does not support direct military action in those two countries right now, a broad 70 percent majority favor the use of remotely piloted aircraft, or drones, to carry out bombing attacks against suspected terrorists in foreign countries.”

In other words, if you only support bombing unspecified foreign countries with flying robots, you’re exhibiting an isolationist streak.

The “isolationist” epithet actually reared its ugly head a week before the NYTimes article on Tuesday, when Joseph I. Lieberman and Jon Kyl of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute wrote a piece in The Washington Post warning of “the danger of repeating the cycle of American isolationism.”

And even before that, The National Review published a piece criticizing Obama’s “neo-isolationist” approach to foreign policy, which I tore apart on this blog. As Robert Golan-Vilella wrote at The National Interest, that label “only begins to make sense if your default assumption is that the United States can and should be intervening everywhere, all the time.”

“The problem is the default assumption for many in our political elite,” Duss writes, “seems to be that the United States has the right—nay, the duty—to get into everyone’s business, everywhere, all the time. Anything less represents an abdication.”

Indeed, it’s easy enough to see that throwing around the word “isolationist” is a rhetorical attempt to narrow the foreign policy debate to exclude anyone who questions the wisdom of intervening in virtually every corner of the planet.

As Stephen Walt explains:

Hawks like to portray opponents of military intervention as “isolationist” because they know it is a discredited political label. Yet there is a coherent case for a more detached and selective approach to U.S. grand strategy, and one reason that our foreign policy establishment works so hard to discredit is their suspicion that a lot of Americans might find it convincing if they weren’t constantly being reminded about looming foreign dangers in faraway places. The arguments in favor of a more restrained grand strategy are far from silly, and the approach makes a lot more sense than neoconservatives’ fantasies of global primacy or liberal hawks’ fondness for endless quasi-humanitarian efforts to reform whole regions.

I’m heartened to see so many respectable academics and journalists call out the “isolationist” allegations for what they are, but it’s also important not to run from the label completely. Ohio State political scientist Bear Braumoeller, for example, invalidates the “isolationist” label as used by people like Joe Lieberman, but also insists real isolationism “rarely if ever deserves a place in the analysis of American foreign policy.”

To an extent, the term “isolationist” should be rejected because of its associated connotations of xenophobia and “turning inward.” As readers of this site know, non-interventionist is a better term to describe those with a preference for open borders and engaging in commerce with the world, but who firmly oppose military adventures that go beyond counteracting a specific and imminent threat to Americans.

If we’re serious about accurately characterizing current US foreign policy, it should be readily admitted that it is imperial in nature (the polar opposite of “isolationism,” or non-intervention if you prefer). America’s Grand Strategy is one that seeks global hegemony, total military, economic, and political domination over the world. Any state that dares rival America’s influence is to be met with force, according to the worldview of US foreign policy-makers.

Since World War II, America’s military has spanned the globe and is now postured in over 148 countries, or over 75 percent of the world’s states. Washington has sought to check Russian power in Europe, China’s power in East Asia, and any regional power in the Middle East. It’s zero sum for Uncle Sam: keeping the world weaker means more power for the government and it’s associates. And what is this power worth? It’s worth trillions of dollars extracted from productive sectors of the economy, it’s worth oceans of blood from Americans in uniform and desperate foreign masses unfortunate enough to be on the receiving of our imperialism.

This imperial grand strategy is not only ruthless in its projection abroad, it degrades us here at home. The rule of law takes a back seat to “national security,” so that statutory restrictions and the system of checks and balances that curb arbitrary state power slowly erode. The excessive costs of a massive military-industrial complex with “unwarranted influence,” paying for elective wars and the security of client states, and the world’s most imposing standing army all put total bankruptcy on the proverbial horizon.

In the current climate, I personally feel much more comfortable embracing the isolationist label, despite its unattractive connotations, than embracing any association at all with the status quo. Still, the debate would be better served if everyone from Joe Lieberman to Stephen Walt employed the term “non-interventionist” to describe the dissent. At least then Antiwar.com could be proud to be a part of the debate.

There are rumors going around that President Obama “is preparing to send lethal weaponry to the Syrian opposition,” although he has said no such thing publicly.

Nevertheless, the rumors are sparking a new debate on the wisdom of directly arming the Syrian rebels. I say “directly” because Washington has been arming the rebels through proxies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar for a very long time as it is. In fact, just acknowledging this should pull the rug out from under those who think arming the rebels directly is even remotely a good idea.

Simply increasing the amount of weapons the Syrian rebels receive will prolong the conflict and probably make things a lot worse before they get better. Indeed, foreign meddling is a big reason the conflict has gone on so long in the first place.

“A continuous supply of weapons to both sides—whether from Russia, Iran or the Gulf States—only maintains the parties’ perception that fighting is a better option than negotiating,” Dr. Florence Gaub, a researcher at the NATO Defense College, writes at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This explains why, in terms of statistical probability, an external supply of weapons lengthens a civil war.”

“Syria indeed has become an arena for outside meddling, but the meddling has been far more effective at sustaining the fighting than ending it,” said a report last year from the International Crisis Group.

So if rebels get more of the same kinds of weapons from the US that they’ve been getting from the Gulf states, no positive appreciable change will come because the facts on the ground will not change. But what if the Obama administration sends what policy wonks call “decisive” aid, like antitank weapons and surface-to-air missiles? Will that tip the balance in favor of the rebels and against the Assad regime?

Probably not. As Wired‘s Spencer Ackerman reports “few strategists consider that realistic. Assad has a variety of advantages — an adaptive military estimated at over 50,000; complete air superiority; chemical weapons — that he will retain even if Obama opens a new arms pipeline.” The rebels can’t overcome those advantages with newer and better weapons, according to Ackerman.

Beyond making interventionists feel better, boosting arms to the rebels won’t do anything but make the situation worse. And history bears this out. As Prof. Eva Bellin and Prof. Peter Krause in the Middle East Brief from Brandeis University found in their study of the Syria situation, “The distillation of historical experience with civil war and insurgency, along with a sober reckoning of conditions on the ground in Syria, make clear that limited intervention of this sort will not serve the moral impulse that animates it. To the contrary, it is more likely to amplify the harm that it seeks to eliminate by prolonging a hurting stalemate.”

These are the strategic reasons not to directly arm the rebels. But there are other reasons, like, for example, that the rebels can’t be trusted.

It’s no secret that the strongest fighting force in the rebel opposition is Jabhat al-Nusra, an off-shoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Do we want to help bring them to power? Beyond the ties to officially designated terrorist organizations, many of the rebels have committed  war crimes. Is Washington prepared to back these people?

Advocates of intervention like to claim that there are at least some rebels of an acceptable caliber, who haven’t committed crimes, don’t have ties to terrorist groups, and want a secular political transition post-Assad. But realists don’t buy it.

“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of,” The New York Times reported last week.

For those of us trying to look beyond the basest, most immediate policy satisfaction, what happens after we arm the rebels is important. Who would come to power after Assad? Where will the weapons go if and when the fighting dies down? In Libya, an influx of weapons and fighters had repercussions across the region, destabilizing neighboring states and bolstering jihadists across north Africa. Are the interventionists really so sure similar unintended consequences won’t happen in Syria – which, by the way, is far more complicated than Libya?

The most immediate consequences of directly arming the rebels are all bad. But what’s worse is that there is little chance, once Obama takes this escalatory step, of avoiding a deeper involvement in the conflict. Mission creep will come and the advocates for “limited intervention” will soon become advocates for boots on the ground or an all-out bombing campaign that will take considerable resources in blood and treasure. A new US war would precipitate 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.

Photo credit: Reuters

Nietzsche is incorrectly often associated with fascism, especially Nazism. When he descended into insanity, his sister Elizabeth took control of his works and selectively edited them to support the Third Reich. This is a shame, because Nietzche wrote many prescient passages in his early aphoristic days.  In The Wanderer and His Shadow, Nietzsche writes, “No government admits any more that it keeps an army to satisfy occasionally the desire for conquest. Rather the army is supposed to serve for defense, and one invokes the morality that approves of self-defense.”

This insight elucidates American foreign policy. How many foolish ventures have begun in the “national defense”? From the domino theory to the Bush doctrine to drone strikes, American foreign engagements have always been cloaked under the guise of “defense.” Nietzsche’s unfair assessment is particularly appalling since he held antithetical views. He hopes for the day when,

“a people, disgusted by wars and victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for these things, will explain of its own free will, ‘We break the sword’ and will smash its entire military establishment down to its lowest foundations. Rendering oneself un-armed on hone had been the best-armed, out of a height of feeling-that is the means to real peace…”

Rather than being a rabid fascist, Nietzsche was a sensitive pacifist. Before he lost control of his mental faculties Nietzsche saw a horse being violently flogged, he ran to the horse and threw his arms around the beast to protect it. And he may well be right. Paul Collier finds that violent conflict is one of the greatest inhibitors to economic growth. Costa Rica and Iceland are doing fine without a standing army.

But it’s doubtful we’ll soon disband our army and convert our guns into plowshares. As Nietzsche notes:

Our liberal representatives, as is well known, lack time for reflecting on the nature of man: else they would know that they work in vain when they work for ‘a gradual decrease of the military burden.’ Rather the tree of war-glory can only be destroyed all at once by a stroke of lightning…”

Could there be a better description of the half-assed mutual disarmament? But could Nietzsche imagine that the man who sanctioned the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and the man who plans weekly signature strikes on small villages would both be awarded an international prize for peace?

President Obama this week defended the US’s policy of force feeding detainees in Guantanamo Bay who are protesting their due process-free indefinite detention by going on a hunger strike.

On Wednesday, UN human rights officials declared that force feeding amounts to torture, saying “it is unjustifiable to engage in forced feeding of individuals contrary to their informed and voluntary refusal of such a measure.”

…[A]ccording to the World Medical Assembly’s Declaration of Malta, in cases involving people on hunger strikes, the duty of medical personnel to act ethically and the principle of respect for individuals’ autonomy, among other principles, must be respected. Under these principles, it is unjustifiable to engage in forced feeding of individuals contrary to their informed and voluntary refusal of such a measure. Moreover, hunger strikers should be protected from all forms of coercion, even more so when this is done through force and in some cases through physical violence. Health care personnel may not apply undue pressure of any sort on individuals who have opted for the extreme recourse of a hunger strike. Nor is it acceptable to use threats of forced feeding or other types of physical or psychological coercion against individuals who have voluntarily decided to go on a hunger strike.

They also called for an immediate end to the indefinite detention without charge or trial of 166 prisoners at Gitmo, warning “the continuing and indefinite detention of individuals without the right to due process is arbitrary and constitutes a clear violation of international law. This situation is particularly clear with respect to those prisoners—at least 86—who have been cleared for transfer by the Government of the United States of America,” but have been denied their freedom still.