Month: December 2013

The New York Times is hardly a progressive newspaper – but when it comes to the surveillance state and ongoing militarism of the Obama White House, the establishment’s "paper of record" puts MoveOn.org to shame.

And so, the same day that the Times editorialized to excoriate President Obama for his latest betrayal of civil liberties, MoveOn sent out a huge email blast sucking up to Obama.

The Times was blunt in its Saturday editorial: "By the time President Obama gave his news conference on Friday, there was really only one course to take on surveillance policy from an ethical, moral, constitutional and even political point of view. And that was to embrace the recommendations of his handpicked panel on government spying – and bills pending in Congress – to end the obvious excesses. He could have started by suspending the constitutionally questionable (and evidently pointless) collection of data on every phone call and email that Americans make."

But, the newspaper added: "He did not do any of that."

As the Timeseditorial went on to say, "any actions that Mr. Obama may announce next month would certainly not be adequate. Congress has to rewrite the relevant passage in the Patriot Act that George W. Bush and then Mr. Obama claimed – in secret – as the justification for the data vacuuming."

Let’s reiterate that the Times is far from a progressive outlet. It serves as a highly important megaphone for key sectors of corporate/political elites. Voicing the newspaper’s official stance, its editorials are often deferential to spin and half-truths from favored political figures. And much of the paper’s news coverage feeds off the kind of newspeak that spews out of the Executive Branch and Congress.

But on crucial matters of foreign policy, militarism and surveillance, the contrast between Times editorials and MoveOn is stunning. The "progressive" netroots organization has rarely managed to clear a low bar of independence from reprehensible Obama policies.

Continue reading “Is MoveOn Less Progressive Than the New York Times Editorial Board?”

Over at the Huffington Post, I interview Chris Coyne, professor of economics at George Mason University and author of the recent book Doing Bad By Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails, on the humanitarian interventions in Central African Republic.

Here’s an excerpt:

Q: What was your reaction to the Obama administration’s decision to increase support to French and African troops in CAR?

Chris Coyne: Given what I know, it is very predictable. For the past several months the U.S. has been pushing back on UN intervention because of the cost of UN peacekeeping missions. I believe the U.S. would have to pay somewhere in the range of 27 percent of the costs of the peacekeeping mission based on the formula the UN uses. This push back occurred despite the fact that violence was already in full effect and well known. So one way to read the U.S. commitment of resources is as a relatively cheap way to placate the growing push for the UN to intervene. Making a lump sum payment to “support” French and African troops is cheaper than paying a percentage of a very costly peacekeeping mission. People keep pointing out how the U.S. has no strategic or economic interests so that this is purely a morally-based assistance. But in my review the push back by the Obama administration over the past several months shows that it is not about some higher moral principle, but responding to political incentives (cost of UN peacekeeping mission vs. lump-sum payment).

Q: This is an extremely limited intervention compared to other recent actions (Balkans, Libya, etc.). What difference might this make?

CC: Well, the U.S. has limited exposure right now. The worst case scenario is that $100 million is lost or wasted. In the scheme of things this is not much money and U.S. citizens won’t even know about it. Best case some kind of peace is established and then the U.S. government can take partial credit for supporting the effort. More broadly, beyond the U.S., right now the goal of the intervention seems to be to achieve some semblance of peace. But from everything I have read it isn’t that easy. Like most conflicts similar to this this there are no clear “good” or “bad” sides. Further, both sides have weaponry. So there are no clear victims and criminals. In my view, the worst case would be if mission creep sets in and peacekeeping becomes nation building.

Continue reading “‘Humanitarian Intervention’ in Central African Republic”

The big, scary terrorism argument for having an unwieldy and unconstitutional NSA surveillance apparatus has been slowly disintegrating since the start of Snowden’s leaks. This week was really the death knell, with all three branches of government agreeing, at least, that the bulk metadata program doesn’t actually thwart terrorists.

The Washington Post:

From the moment the government’s massive database of citizens’ call records was exposed this year, U.S. officials have clung to two main lines of defense: The secret surveillance program was constitutional and critical to keeping the nation safe.

But six months into the controversy triggered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the viability of those claims is no longer clear.

In a three-day span, those rationales were upended by a federal judge who declared that the program was probably unconstitutional and the release of a report by a White House panel utterly unconvinced that stockpiling such data had played any meaningful role in preventing terrorist attacks.

But there is more evidence that the terrorism justification for these programs is bullshit. Today the New York Times reports that “Secret documents reveal more than 1,000 targets of American and British surveillance in recent years, including the office of an Israeli prime minister, heads of international aid organizations, foreign energy companies and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses.”

It’s funny how NSA officials, when they are pulled onto Capitol Hill to testify in front of Congress, never mention the fact that a large part of NSA surveillance targets allies and bureaucratic heads of innocuous aid organizations. It’s hard to create domestic political acceptance of Big Brother when not even the most paranoid phobic considers their surveillance targets a threat.

The targeting of foreign businesses is especially noteworthy, since it is essentially economic espionage. The government can’t seriously claim that spying on Joaquín Almunia, the vice president of the European Commission, is done to protect Americans from foreign attacks. The commission “has broad authority over local and foreign companies, and has punished a number of American companies, including Microsoft and Intel, with heavy fines for hampering fair competition,” the Times reports.

NSA has been spying on the Brazilian oil company Petrobras and in October President Obama ordered the NSA to halt surveillance of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The White House has explicitly denied that the NSA spies for economic warfare. “We do not use our intelligence capabilities for that purpose. We use it for security purposes,” spokesman Jay Carney insisted.

I think it’s time the government drop the issuance of public denials on that front. It’s clear NSA spies for the sake of the government and the business elite, not to protect the people.

A lengthy report in the Spring 2012 issue of the Washington Quarterly, the journal published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reiterates the argument I have repeatedly put forth, that the U.S.’s pivot to Asia is exacerbating tensions in the region by emboldening China’s neighboring rivals and putting Beijing on the alert.

“As China rises in economic power,” Leszek Buszynski writes, “its maritime interests similarly expand (and with it its naval power), bringing it into conflict with the dominant naval power in the Western Pacific – the United States.”

To counter this, the U.S. “has been searching for positions from which forces may be surged forward into conflict zones in the Western Pacific,” and “has moved to strengthen defense ties with ASEAN states that share concerns about China.”

I cover these issues often here at the blog, but I also published two pieces this month, one at The American Conservative and another at The Washington Times, reviewing these kinds of arguments. The tensions between China and its smaller neighbors like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and others are intensified by the U.S.-China fight for geopolitical supremacy in the Asia Pacific. I’ve argued that if the U.S. backed off of trying to dominate the region, problems may be mitigated.

“From the Chinese perspective,” the report explains, “the U.S. naval presence in the Western Pacific prevents the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland and emboldens the ASEAN claimants in the South China Sea to oppose Chinese claims.”

Continue reading “US Meddling Is Making China More Aggressive”

“The message to the NSA is now coming from every branch of government and from every corner of our nation: NSA, You have gone too far.”

Those are the words of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) from the Senate chamber yesterday. And he’s right.

The metadata program, in which the NSA collects, stores, and analyzes the call records of virtually all Americans without individualized court approval or warrants, has proven one of the most controversial program revealed in the leaks from Edward Snowden. And from the very beginning, it has been challenged.

In response to intense criticisms of overreach, NSA officials claimed that the bulk metadata program had helped foil up to 54 terrorist plots. Patrick Leahy and others in the Senate pressed them on that claim, which ultimately resulted in the NSA revoking it unapologetically.

“There is no evidence that [bulk] phone records collection helped to thwart dozens or even several terrorist plots,” Leahy asked NSA chief Keith Alexander in October.

“These weren’t all plots and they weren’t all foiled,” he said. In other words, our initial claim that this program has thwarted terrorist plots was untrue.

Then, earlier this week a federal judge found the NSA’s bulk metadata program to be likely unconstitutional, adding that “the Government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack.” Judge Richard Leon said that the program’s apparent lack of effectiveness and utility helped lead him to the conclusion that it is a violation of Americans’ right to privacy.

Presumably, the government lawyers fighting to keep the metadata program would have had a profound incentive to demonstrate to the judge how vital and useful this program is. But they couldn’t offer any such justification.

Finally, President Obama’s not-so-independent panel tasked with performing oversight and suggesting reforms of NSA programs in light of Snowden’s leaks released its findings this week. The panel’s 300-page report includes 46 recommended reforms, and also includes this little nugget: “Our review suggests that the information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional section 215 orders.”

Politico reporter Josh Gerstein:

Vacuuming up all that data the National Security Agency collects in its call-tracking database, the panel says, hasn’t actually done much to protect the country from terrorism.

And so the panel’s report raises a pointed question: If collecting huge volumes of metadata on telephone calls from, to and within the United States doesn’t bring much benefit, just how much political capital is Obama willing to spend to keep the program going?

That’s a darn good question.

In a move made almost explicitly on behalf of Egypt’s military junta, the Obama administration worked with allied Senators to draft legislation that would “give the White House flexibility to decide if, and how, to maintain aid” to post-coup military regimes. That legislation just successfully passed a committee vote.

Foreign Policy:

On Wednesday, the Egypt Assistance Reform Act sailed through the committee in a 16-1 vote. Its key backers, Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn), said the bill allows the U.S. government to maintain ties with strategically important countries like Egypt while imposing strict restrictions on any financial or military aid to their governments.

“This legislation reaffirms the enduring U.S. commitment to our partnership with the Egyptian government by authorizing continued assistance and endorsing the importance of ongoing cooperation,” said Menendez, chairman of the committee.

But opponents criticized it for lifting restrictions on U.S. aid to unelected military juntas. The committee “voted to weaken existing law and give the president more authority to send billions in aid to countries who violently overthrow their governments and engage in violence against their own citizens,” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told The Cable in a statement.

If it makes it into law, the bill would theoretically prevent the awkward situation the Obama administration found itself in this summer when it refused to call the Egyptian military’s overthrow of its democratically-elected government a coup. The administration avoided making that determination because of Section 7008 of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Law, which prohibits aid to post-coup countries. The White House feared that cutting off all aid to Egypt would further diminish U.S. influence in the country, so instead of calling a coup a coup, the administration remained silent.

President Obama recently, and reluctantly, suspended most (not all) U.S. aid to Egypt’s post-coup government, something he dragged his feet on for months. Few people, I think, were fooled that it was some kind of principled decision to not support anti-democratic forces in a country long subjected to U.S.-backed dictatorship.

But this legislation seals the deal. How proud Obama and his Democratic devotees must be to have undone laws on the books that block U.S. aid to post-coup governments. How Nobel-Peace-Prize-winner of him!

Do you think Egyptians are chuckling at the irony, given what Obama said in his much-lauded speech in Cairo in June 2009? It went something like this: “No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by another.”