Category: News

Justin Logan, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, notes the gap between public opinion and U.S. foreign policy at the National Interest blog:

It’s a bit striking how different public opinion and elite opinion are regarding U.S. foreign policy. One useful juxtaposition I’ve found is using National Journal’s “national security insiders” polls and contrasting them with polls of the public. Two recent examples:

– In a June “insiders” poll, 57 percent of the experts said that President Obama should remove a “modest” number—“5,000 or fewer”—of troops from Afghanistan this summer. A March poll from the Washington Post/ABC News indicated that 73 percent of the public favored “substantial” withdrawals this summer.

– In the new insiders poll, 70 percent of experts favor keeping troops in Iraq beyond the deadline in President Bush’s SOFA agreement with that country. (It’s not clear exactly how they would have us do so, considering Iraqi politics.) Contrast that with a poll from Gallup last August that asked the more leading question whether Washington should “keep its troops in Iraq beyond 2011 if Iraqi security forces are unable to contain insurgent attacks and maintain order in Iraq.” The answer to that question, according to the public, was 53 percent “leave regardless,” 43 percent “stay if Iraqis cannot maintain order.”

When Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton asked members of the Washington foreign-policy elite what the public thought about 11 international political questions, the elites only gave the correct answer on two of the 11 issues.

He’s quite right to point this out. I was reminded of this 2005 study from American Political Science Review (PDF) which assessed multivariate foreign policy preferences and their influence on actual policy, considering business, elite opinion, labor, and the general public. It found that business interests along with elite opinion within the foreign policy establishment basically dictate foreign policy.

The strongest and most consistent results are the coefficients for business, which suggest that internationally oriented business corporations are strongly influential in U.S. foreign policy…Business people (along with experts) are estimated to exert the strongest effects on policy makers overall and, especially, on administration officials…

And as for the public, the researchers favored their models to account for possible miscalculations in their models’ emphasis in popular opinion:

Even with these reduced and refined models, the public does not appear to exert substantial consistent influence on the makers of foreign policy…A more plausible interpretation of these borderline-signifcant coefficients, however, is that the public simply has no effect at all…In short, in spite of generous model specifications, the effect of public opinion on the preferences of foreign policy makers appears to be to be – at best – modest when critical competing variables are controlled for. In general, public opinion takes a back seat to business and experts.

Even accounting for the overwhelming evidence that the public is disregarded when constructing foreign policy in this supposedly democratic state, we should keep in mind the vigorous indoctrination the public goes through as a result of the media, which also primarily reflects business and elite opinion. The public are more dovish, as Logan evidences, but once the general hawkishness of even supposedly left-wing media is accounted for, the public would likely have even more anti-interventionist stances.

Note also Senator Obama’s spirited campaign rhetoric against corporate control over government policy and even President Obama’s railing against the influence of special interests in our democracy, reminding us all along the way that his predecessor’s policies were overly aligned with these business elites. He then gave 80 percent of his top campaign donors senior positions in government and doubled down on all of Bush’s foreign policies (and ramped up a few new ones). Unfortunately, this fooled far too many people, only some of whom now admit their gullible folly.

Addendum: Let it be said that the falling for Obama’s lies is not nearly the most prominent obstruction in the way of changing corporate control over foreign policy or any other policy. The more fundamental “gullible folly” is the constant belief that any particular candidate can change this aspect of our government as opposed to rethinking the government’s relationship with corporations towards one of separation. If we have an antiwar movement that wants less business influence in constructing foreign policy, yet continues to support active integration of the public sector and the private, we have little hope of overcoming this systemic feature of our “democracy.”

Last week’s post on U.S. support for atrocities in Colombia was unfortunately vague on exactly how much tangible support we give, and if you heard my conversation with Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio I drastically misspoke when I tried to recall annual U.S. aid to Colombia. To clarify, the U.S. has given almost $3 billion to the Colombian government since 2007, making it one of the highest recipients even compared to Middle Eastern tyrannies. For fiscal year 2012, over $400 million is allocated to Colombia.

Of course, this is merely in addition to the billions of dollars military and law enforcement training, arms and equipment sales, etc., data for which can be viewed here, with official U.S. documentation.

For additional reading on an issue left out of my previous post (that is, besides rising massacres of the civilian population, elaborate and embedded government corruption and collusion with paramilitaries, support for a military that dressed slaughtered innocents in enemy clothing in response to official policy, perpetuating the underground drug trade, chemical warfare, etc.) see this report reviewing widespread illegal spying practices by Colombia’s intelligence agencies.

In yet another dose of doublespeak from the US military, Admiral Mike Mullen said of the recent increase in violence in southern Afghanistan,

There are going to be these kinds of spikes, in particular these spectacular assassinations. There are some who believe this is all they can do, given the challenges that the Taliban have faced over the course of the last couple of seasons.

So rather than acknowledging that the United States still faces a surmountable enemy, the military establishment has spun the upswing in attacks on NATO forces and Afghan officials as a last resort tactic of the Taliban fighters. The military is fearful, however, that these attacks will “erode citizens’ confidence in the Afghan government’s ability to protect its own people, and undercut U.S. efforts to turn security over to the Afghans.”

As has been seen many times during America’s fruitless war in Afghanistan, the Afghan army, intelligence, and police have proven to be woefully corrupt and inept. Just a few weeks ago, the Afghan military and police were left embarrassed as they failed to stop a suicide bombing and gun fight at the Intercontinental Hotel where Afghan and other international leaders were holding a conference. After being unable to control the situation, NATO forces were requested to put an end to the situation which was done via an all out assault using helicopters and ground forces.

Afghan distrust of the American installed, Kabul government runs deep. As Afghanistan is a tribal country, this distrust and lack of loyalty to the central government is ingrained into the minds of the Afghan people. The Afghan government’s complicity in the American led war, as well as rampant corruption and a remarkably incompetent central government, signals that the Afghan people will not have a radical shift in their views anytime soon.

These attacks by the Afghan Taliban and other associated groups are not tactics of last resort, but strategic decisions to make a mockery of what little hope there is left in winning the Afghan war on terror. Additionally, if such attacks continue, and there is no sign that they will stop otherwise except during the historical winter lull, Afghanistan will become just like Iraq. Deadlines for troop withdrawals will come and go, but no meaningful withdrawals will be made. Expect for America’s longest war in its history to go on well past the 2014 deadline, and don’t be surprised if the American military makes every effort to stay there as long as possible as is being done in Iraq today.

Human Rights Watch recently drew our attention to a recent spate of killings by armed groups in Colombia, gone virtually unreported here. On July 2, members of the Marxist guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) murdered seven civilians. FARC is very much against the U.S.-supported government of Colombia and has been wreaking havoc on the people for a very long time, receiving most of their funding from the lucrative drug trade. But incidents like the one on June 25, wherein eight civilians were murdered and some in late June and early July, where armed men shot and killed numerous indigenous leaders, have been attributed to disparate successor groups to right-wing paramilitaries formerly associated with the United Self-Defense Forces of Columbia (AUC). The successor groups to the AUC “regularly commit massacres, killings, forced displacement, rape, and extortion, and create a threatening atmosphere in the communities they control” often targeting “human rights defenders, trade unionists, victims of the paramilitaries who are seeking justice, and community members who do not follow their orders.” Seventeen massacres, “resulting in 76 deaths, were reported between January and May,” according to Human Rights Watch. “Successor groups,” said the report, “contributed to a 34 percent increase in massacres in 2010, the highest annual total since 2005.”

Why are the rising AUC-tied atrocities particularly germane to the concern of Americans? Because they are intricately tied with the Colombian government which is enthusiastically supported by the U.S. government. Plan Colombia, of course, is a U.S. plan to concentrate military and counter-narcotics cooperation and aid to Colombia under the pretext of fighting the Drug War and left-wing guerrilla groups (like FARC). Even if it means supporting equally vicious right-wing terrorists and perpetuating problems with the drug trade.

The most infamous widespread offense as of late regarding the Colombian government’s tolerance of and even collusion with these paramilitary groups was the para-political scandal, summarized well in this Congressional Research Service report (starting on page 15).

Virtually the entire government had ties to these terrorist groups, and many powerful elements within the government attempted to obstruct the criminal investigations addressing those ties. But it goes deeper than just ties with corrupt politicians. The Colombian police forces ignore the crimes committed by these groups and allow them to operate freely in various communities.

In Nariño, for example, one man complained that “the Black Eagles interrogate us, with the police 20 meters away… [Y]ou can’t trust the army or police because they’re practically with the guys.” In Urabá, a former official said the police in one town appeared to work with the successor groups: “It’s all very evident… The police control the entry and exit [of town] and … they share intelligence.” In Meta, an official said he received “constant complaints that the army threatens people, talking about how ‘the Cuchillos’ [the main successor group in the region] are coming… In some cases, the army leaves and the Cuchillos come in.”

Which introduces the other terrorist element in Colombia being directly supported by the U.S. government: the Colombian military. Due to an army policy which rewarded high body counts of leftist guerrillas, Colombian soldiers engaged in systematic massacres of Colombian civilians, dressing their dead bodies in the garb of the guerrilla fighters in order to inflate military body counts. The Prosecutor General’s human right’s team investigated “more than 1,200 cases of extrajudicial executions,” prompting the then-U.N. Special Rapporteur Philip Alston to write in 2009 that “the sheer number of cases, their geographic spread, and the diversity of military units implicated, indicate that these killings were carried out in a more or less systematic fashion by significant elements within the military” (CRS report, p 18-19).

The drug war aspects of this U.S. funded campaign of atrocities is similarly troubling. Programs of aerial eradication of drug crops (a crime in and of itself) give the impression this is really about drugs, but the fact that these U.S. supported terrorist groups receive probably a majority of their revenues from the drug trade, being “directly involved in processing cocaine and exporting cocaine from Colombia,” counters against that impression.

There are, however, both military and economic benefits to the U.S. government which apparently outweigh the nightmarish suffering being endured by the Colombian people for well over a decade. Initially, legislation in support of Plan Colombia was passed as part of the Military Construction Appropriations Act of 2001 and

On October 30, 2009, the United States and Colombia signed an agreement to provide the United States access to seven military facilities in Colombia to conduct joint counternarcotics and anti- terrorism operations over a 10-year period. The seven facilities include three Colombian air force bases at Palanquero, Apiay, and Malambo; two naval bases; and two army installations (CRS, p 32).

At the same time, the Obama administration has stepped up efforts to exploit Colombia’s oil production for the benefit of U.S.-based corporations.

The humanitarian situation in Colombia is dire. But not only is it barely reported here in the U.S., but Obama has received exactly zero flack for being a party to these ongoing atrocities. A popular opening phrase here at Antiwar.com has become, “depending on how you qualify a war…” Well perhaps Colombia ought to be tagged on that growing list of countries our interventionist in chief is terrorizing through imperial policy.

As I’ve written earlier, al-Shabaab is competing for the title of “Terror Group of the Month” with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Thanks to America’s collective, short-term memory loss, the Underwear Bomber and printer bomb plot have been all but forgotten. Al-Shabaab is the young, rising star. Pushing it to further prominence was a congressional report released today that claimed that 40 Muslim Americans have joined the fight in Somalia, 15 of which have been killed:

A report by his [Rep. Peter King] staff found that more than 40 Muslim Americans and 20 Canadians have been recruited to al Shabaab and at least 15 Americans were killed in fighting, including three suicide bombers.

“Senior U.S. counterterror officials have told the committee they are very concerned about individuals they have not identified who have fallen in with al-Shabaab during trips to Somalia, who could return to the U.S. undetected,” King said during a hearing he convened on al Shabaab.

Of the more than 40 Americans who have joined the cause, as many as 21 are believed to still be at large and unaccounted for, according to the staff report.

While the merits of this report and its accuracy can be debated, and will be with further information, what cannot be debated is al-Shabaab’s rise to notoriety. Whether it be earning the title of radicalizing America’s first ever suicide bomber or banning aid agencies from helping victims of the Horn of Africa’s record drought, the radical Islamist group is slowly earning its boogeyman status.

The recent drone strikes and the discovery of yet another secret, American prison in Mogadishu suggests that American security officials deem al-Shabaab to be a serious threat and Somalia to be a hotbed for terrorism. Perhaps they are also trying to figure out how al-Shabaab, much less glorious than its counterpart, al-Qaeda, has been so successful at recruiting American citizens. Although their motives have not been made explicitly clear, the recent surge in American activity in the stateless country is troubling.

Then again, Somalia would be an extremely valuable asset for the United States. The lack of any effective, central government would give American officials and proxies operating there even more impunity than they experience throughout the world. Additionally, its location, a stones throw away from the Arabian peninsula and in the backyard of Mogadishu, would allow for yet another point to monitor terrorism in East Africa and the Middle East.

Just as a reminder, al-Shabaab has only once attacked outside of Somalia.

The target: Uganda. The justification: foreign intervention.