Author: John Glaser

The horror the Assad regime is unleashing on the Syrian people is the culmination of some of the worst atrocities in this Arab Spring. Details like body counts are occasionally available from elsewhere in Syria, but in Jisr al-Shughour, where thousands of Syrian troops have amassed to quell an uprising after an alleged conflict with security forces, little information is getting out. Tanks, heavy gunfire, and mass arrests have descended upon the town as refugees flee to Turkey in droves. The reality on the ground is almost surely worsening since Human Rights Watch released a report last week, the title of which was self explanatory: “We’ve Never Seen Such Horror“.

European leadership is reportedly building a case for a UN resolution against Syria. There are some calls for the U.S. to intervene as well. Steve Coll walks the line in calling for the U.S. to “press hard” on Assad, seeming to lean more towards the international route, specifically suggesting an investigation by the International Criminal Court, as they’ve done with Qaddafi.

There are a few considerations which should preclude any mention of a direct U.S. military intervention in Syria. First, we should consider the negative consequences of our latest direct (covert) intervention there, and consider to what extent that would be multiplied if we were to fully engage (let history be some guide here). Second, unless and until the U.S. government halts its own support of such atrocities in Yemen, in Bahrain, in Iraq, in Afhganistan, in Pakistan, in Palestine, and elsewhere, we have no moral or practical standing to intervene in Syria.

With the 40-year-late full release of the Pentagon Papers, CNN conducted an interview with the famous whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg. To me, this was the central question:

On June 23, 1971, in an interview with CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, you said,  “I think the lesson is that the people of this country can’t afford to let the President run the country by himself, even foreign affairs, without the help of Congress, without the help of the public. I think we cannot let the officials of the Executive Branch determine for us what it is that the public needs to know about how well and how they are discharging their functions.” How concerned are you that elected officials haven’t learned those lessons?

The implication behind the question is obvious to antiwar readers. Our current political leaders and national security state are acting out secretive, unaccountable, unconstitutional, and dangerous political careers and the Imperial Presidency has garnered so much concentrated power and become so natural a characteristic of our system that few question its authority or prerogative. They have learned absolutely nothing from the lessons of 40 years ago.

So it makes sense that Obama is implementing a war on whistle-blowers from Julian Assange to Bradley Manning to Thomas Drake. It’s obvious though, that this war is not being waged for the stated reasons.

What is clear is that major leaks of secret government behavior or operations – while extremely important for the public to know – almost never threaten the so called national security or the safety of American citizens. It wasn’t long ago at all that crazed establishment types were hysterically calling Assange a terrorist for having released the diplomatic cables. Funny that they seemed to have quieted. Could it be that the transparency-terrorism they accused Assange of actually didn’t put any U.S. officials or citizens in danger, despite their initial claims and reactions?

The primary reason for government secrecy is to protect the government from their own populations, not monsters abroad. To classify in modern American government means essentially to hide government missteps, crimes, and wrongdoing and avoid the accountability that the public may demand if they were made aware of such activity.

There are too many examples to point to, but take just the last one I’ve read about. In one of the cables obtained by Wikileaks, and just reported on by the Nation among other publications, it was shown that the U.S. supported a fraudulent election in Haiti.

The United States, the European Union and the United Nations decided to support Haiti’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections despite believing that the country’s electoral body, “almost certainly in conjunction with President Preval,” had “emasculated the opposition” by unwisely and unjustly excluding the country’s largest party, according to a secret US Embassy cable.

…Haiti’s electoral body, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), banned the Fanmi Lavalas (FL) from participating in the polls on a technicality. The FL is the party of then-exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was overthrown on February 29, 2004, and flown to Africa as part of a coup d’état that was supported by France, Canada, and the United States.

…Less than 23 percent of Haiti’s registered voters had their vote counted in either of the two presidential rounds, the lowest electoral participation rate in the hemisphere since 1945, according to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Now, it’s not that the U.S. government keeps this secret because of sensitive war policy that if made public might induce an invasion or leave U.S. troops vulnerable. It’s because the U.S. wants to hold a reputation (based on pure myth) that it stands for freedom, democracy, and peace. This latest piece of undemocratic imperialism the U.S. has imposed on Haiti is barely a fraction of the whole: there is a very long U.S. history of secret coups, support for butchers and terrorists, invasions, and general savagery toward Haiti. But Haiti doesn’t represent any sort of threat to America. The classification of U.S. policy in this regard is to prevent the U.S. population from knowing about it. When people know about the criminal and murderous nature of U.S. imperialism, it’s harder to get away with it. Therefore, classify it.

One of the amazing things to me is that Dan Ellsberg is widely considered a hero nowadays. Even political leaders will laud and praise him. I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before accusations of terrorism recede into the ashamed dustbin of history, and Assange and Manning are equally thought of as heros. But I’m sure the political class will still condemn whatever contemporary is leaking their crimes.

Update: See here for how absurd government secrecy attempts have become post-Wikileaks:

In spite of the cables’ widespread availability, the government has continued to maintain that documents released by WikiLeaks and published by national and international newspapers are classified. The government’s decision to cling to a legal fiction rather than conform its secrecy regime to reality has led to absurd consequences. Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysts are blocked by the Library of Congress from using these widely available documents, even as Congress relies on CRS reports to inform new legislation. The Air Force blocked the entire websites of the New York Times and other major media outlets that posted the leaked cables. Perhaps the most troubling consequence of the government’s adamant refusal to incorporate common sense into its secrecy regime is that lawyers for Guantánamo detainees have been barred from reading or discussing leaked documents concerning their clients, even though these documents are posted on the websites of major national and internationalnewspapers and available to anyone in the world. The government has gone so far as to claim it is unable to comply with a court order that it provide guidance to lawyers representing Guantánamo detainees regarding how the lawyers may use those documents that are already publicly available.

The decision to make Leon Panetta Secretary of Defense was a very conscious one. Fundamentally, it wasn’t so much a strategic change in personnel, but rather a calculated decision to expel the American people from any consciousness of foreign policy. It is easier to conduct broad, intricate campaigns of international terrorism without having to deal with the meddling public (who are supposed to shut up and give their betters in Washington free reign).

Spencer Ackerman on Panetta’s new plans:

At his Thursday confirmation hearing to become secretary of defense, CIA Director Panetta made a broad case for expanding the U.S.’ already extensive shadow wars. Now that bin Laden is dead, “we’ve got to keep the pressure up,” Panetta urged senators. Expect a lot of drone strikes and a lot of special ops raids — some conducted by future CIA Director David Petraeus. In a lot of places.

…In his written responses to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Panetta endorsed a command scheme that would place select U.S. military personnel temporarily under the authority of the CIA director for the most sensitive counterterrorism operations. Panetta told the committee that it’s “appropriate for the head of such department or agency [read: CIA] to direct the operations of the element providing that military support while working with the Secretary of Defense.” A “significant advantage of doing so,” he continued, “is that it permits the robust operational capability of the U.S. Armed Forces to be applied when needed.”

That’s contentious: it would put the military in the territory of performing operations that the government can legally deny all knowledge of ordering, something obviously problematic for uniformed military personnel. ”A potential disadvantage,” Panetta conceded, “is that the department or agency receiving the support may not be specifically organized or equipped to direct and control operations by military forces.”

This fits a trajectory of increasingly secret shadow-government defense policy that Panetta leans toward:

Panetta expanded the list of targets that Predator drones could hit far beyond the seniormost al-Qaida operatives. Already, the skies above Yemen are filled with armed planes hunting terrorists — a JSOC mission “closely coordinated” with the CIA, according to the New York Times.

The U.S. military and intelligence agencies already operate essentially as a private security force for the personal use of the President. I think we can expect to see this all increasing as Panetta moves to the Defense Secretary and Patraeus  moves to CIA. Obama doesn’t want any more of this haranguing or discussion about his imperial dictates. So he’ll keep it in the shadows.

In Singapore last week, Defense Secretary Gates spoke at an International Institute for Strategic Studies meeting and argued for “sustaining a robust [U.S.] military presence in Asia.” He spoke of overcoming “anti-access and area denial scenarios” that the U.S. military faces in Asia, which threatens America’s access to strategic markets and resources. Predominantly, Gates explained, U.S. military presence in Asia-Pacific is important in “deterring, and if necessary defeating, potential adversaries.”

While perhaps more straightforward than reigning politicians and diplomats, Gates’ explanation of U.S. military strategy was nothing new. As was reiterated in the 2002 National Security Strategy, it was of foremost importance that “our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.” Similarly, in former Secretary of Defense William Cohen’s 1999 annual report to President Clinton the crucial task was to “retain the capability to act unilaterally” to prevent “the possibility that a regional great power or global peer competitor may emerge” and to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.” Under the subheading Additional Security Concerns was mention of China and its “potential to assert its military power in Asia.”

Maintaining global hegemony through the threat or use of military force has been the singular approach in American foreign policy for some time. Keeping Europe dependent on our military through NATO was effective in preventing any competitors, but also in extending the jurisdiction of U.S. security interests to the entire continent.

The general approach in the Middle East was to implement a vast array of proxies, peppering the region with military troops and permanent installations, but balancing them against each other to prevent any one state from gaining too much power or influence. Only America is supposed to have power and influence, and if it means propping up dictatorships throughout an entire region and making the lives of millions of innocent people utterly miserable, so be it. Tyranny and war are legitimate tools to prevent competitors and to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources,” according to the doctrine. After all, the world is our jurisdiction, so they’re our resources.

With America losing its grip on many proxies in the Middle East with the eruption of the current independence movement, and with NATO increasingly seen as antiquated, Gates of course is placing our crosshairs over Asia. That’s a region of emerging markets that the U.S. national security state wants command over. It’s also one where attempts to terrorize the world into deference to U.S. hegemony has failed to prevent a rising military rival like China. We can only hope that signs of the American empire ripping at the seams in Europe and the Middle East are indications that another half century of ruling the world by force and aggression fails when we attempt to make all of Asia our jurisdiction as well.

New York Times:

The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials.

…On Friday, American jets killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel Qaeda operative, and several other militant suspects in a strike in southern Yemen. According to witnesses, four civilians were also killed in the airstrike. Weeks earlier, drone aircraft fired missiles aimed at Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who the United States government has tried to kill for more than a year. Mr. Awlaki survived.

I predicted as much a few days ago in a blog post on Yemen’s power vacuum and the potential for a covert approach:

My guess is that for the moment the Saudis are in the front seat in terms of external influence, and I speculate that any decisive action by the U.S. will be kept secret for now. Yemen is too unpredictable and potentially dangerous from the perspective of the Obama administration, but also extremely important to maintain dominion over because of its geography as well as the concentration of al Qaeda there.

Much of where the action is in Yemen right now is in urban areas. Unlike the mountains of Pakistan which are often more rural with less population density, any unwanted progress on the part of targeted Yemeni groups will be in these population centers. This makes the specter of mounting civilian casualties from drone strikes much more significant. Since it is secret, we are unlikely to know the truth about how many civilians are actually killed or how many targets are actually al Qaeda rather than some other group the U.S. prefers not gain influence. The bottom line is that the current official policy towards Yemen is one in which high civilian casualties are expected and in which alleged enemies, including American citizens, are murdered without charge or trial. And we’re not meant to know anything about it.

Most amazing, though not surprising, from all this that while some at least question (albeit meekly) the legitimacy of such a murderous and lawless policy, nobody even begins to suggest that perhaps those in charge of setting and implementing this policy should be held accountable for the consequences of it. Just as an example, Stephen Walt just wrote today that he received an email from the Council on Foreign Relations about the release of a report entitled “Justice Beyond the Hague: Supporting the Prosecution of International Crimes in National Courts.” It argues that the U.S. ought to do a better job of engaging international courts so that they can better investigate and prosecute war crimes and other atrocities. “Sounds laudable,” Walt writes, “except the report is almost completely silent on whether the United States also needs to do a much better job of investigating and prosecuting U.S. officials who might be guilty of war crimes themselves.”

As I’ve written before, if international court systems do not address the world’s greatest aggressor, their reason for being dissolves.

The Afghanistan Study Group blog draws our attention to a particularly egregious example of pro-war propaganda at the Washington Post. Apparently Monday’s headline “Support for Afghan war rises, poll shows” was technically true, but still a clear misrepresentation of what the poll actually showed. But the Post has a particular story it would like to write:

“The number of Americans who say the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting has increased for the first time since President Obama announced at the end of 2009 that he would boost troop levels, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The finding may give Obama slightly more political breathing room as he decides how many troops to withdraw from Afghanistan in July, the deadline he set 18 months ago to begin bringing home the additional U.S. forces.”

Support for the war, according to the WaPost/ABC poll, is up about ten percentage points from March. But this story is still only half the truth. As Will Keola Thomas put it:

Why would Americans, whose support for the fight in Afghanistan has declined precipitously over the last few years in response to the war’s skyrocketing cost in dollars and lives, all-of-a-sudden decide that the enormous price tag is worth it?

Oh, wait. They didn’t.

That’s right. The poll showed that all in all, 43 percent think the Afghan war is worth it, while 54 percent think it is not worth it. Additionally, 73 percent support a full withdrawal this summer, compared to 23 percent who think we should stay. Curious that the Post, read by millions of Americans, would choose to focus on the rise in support and not the fact that a majority of Americans oppose the war. And notice how this information is treated: we’re told that this rise gives Obama “political breathing room” to continue to conduct a war that doesn’t have the support of most Americans. The mainstream media are so helplessly subservient to the political and military class, they’ll construct any headline and news story that serves those interests.

A study by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats came out today (go here to download the PDF) which says essentially that we are wasting billions of dollars, fostering corruption, distorting local economies…basically that our nation building efforts are a failure.

The violent and bloody side of the war is uglier than most people perceive, too. After a couple years of pleading diplomatically with the U.S. political leadership and military to stop killing civilians, Hamid Karzai tried again last week in a “last warning.” What was the U.S. response? More blood and violence.

NATO’s response to Karzai’s threat has been to launch 12 airstrikes a day, a slight increase in the rate of attack runs that coalition planes have typically flown this year. NATO aircraft fired their weapons on 48 sorties in the four days following Karzai’s pronouncement, according to U.S. military statistics. 31 of those attack flights came last Friday, June 3.

Needless to say, this causes immense human suffering. Yet many in the American public perceive the war to have progressed in a positive direction. The primary reason for that is that they have no idea about the realities of this war. This is why that poll didn’t show 80 or 90 percent opposition. The media doesn’t tell them, and the political and military leadership repeat utter distortions about how it’s all going down. This war continues in large part because of the ignorance of the American people, a citizenry totally unaware. Just how the media and political class like it.