The Rag Blog: U.S. Military

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04 September 2013

Rabbi Arthur Waskow : Drop Gas Masks, Not Bombs

Think out of the box. Digital art by Neho / deviantART.

Act out of the box:
Drop gas masks, not bombs

Use the power of the U.S. in nonviolent, non-military, nonlethal ways to counter Assad’s (or the rebels’) possible use of chemical weapons.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog / September 4, 2013

If moving to the right is violently destructive and moving to the left is disgustingly immoral, then something is wrong with the box we are in.

Think out of the box, act out of the box.

That’s where the U.S. is in regard to Syria: All the “official” choices -- from Do Nothing to One Strike to Overthrow the Regime -- are destructive to us, to the Syrian people, to the U.S. Constitution, and/or to international law.

So -- think fresh.

Drop gas masks, not bombs.

That’s a metaphor.

Translate: use the power of the U.S. in nonviolent, non-military, nonlethal ways to counter Assad’s (or the rebels’) possible use of chemical weapons.

If gas masks would not meet the need, drop antidotes to the nerve gas Sarin, sending instructions in Arabic by radio and social media.
Test out what would happen if the U.S. invited physicians to be parachuted into Syria, as brave as the soldiers that some U.S. politicians want to send.
Drop leaflets and broadcast radio and social-media messages denouncing the use of chemical weaponry and offering amnesty and monetary rewards to anyone in the military who comes forward with information on their use.
Bollix the Syrian military’s computer system just as the U.S. bollixed the Iranian nuclear-research system without killing anyone.
Ask the government of Iran to intervene with its ally Syria to demand a total end to any use of chem-war, and offer Iran relaxation of U.S. sanctions against it if it does so.
(In Iran there is fierce opposition to chem-war because Saddam used it in Iraq’s war against Iran, killing tens of thousands. The U.S., by the way, uttered not a peep of criticism of Sadaam’s use of chem-war, because the U.S. government saw Iran as an enemy. Indeed, the U.S. may have assisted Saddam in using chem-war.)
Go to the UN Security Council as well as Congress for approval of such nonlethal, nonviolent interventions.
And so on. Get it?

What is wrong with the box we are in?

What Obama was publicly proposing, “One Strike” to “punish” and “deter” chem-war, had a very risky flaw: It was essentially assuming “one-man chess.” Either the OneStrike would accomplish nothing real -- a useless act -- or if it did hurt, it might well push Assad into retaliating. If there were a response, a retaliatory attack on U.S. forces or assets or on Israel, etc., would the U.S. then shrug and do nothing -- or would the U.S. then re-retaliate? And then?

Meanwhile, the BBC is reporting that in fact, under pressure from hawkish Senators, Obama is now actually planning much more than One Strike -- rather, an attack to “degrade,’ not only “deter,” Assad’s military, with the intention of regime change.

And there are other reports that the actual text of the resolution that Obama is asking Congress to approve is considerably broader than the One Strike he has said he wants.

So we may after all be standing on our tiptoes at the very edge of the precipice of still another immoral, illegal, unwinnable, self-destructive war.

If our own government pushes us over the edge of that precipice, the real losers will be the American and Syrian peoples. There, even greater devastation. Here, another wave of failure to meet the real and increasingly urgent civilian needs for schools, bridges, solar and wind energy, firefghters, and much more.

More deaths and disasters from forest fires, floods, droughts. Another wave of justifying, in the name of anti-terrorism, intrusive unconstitutional surveillance of practically everyone; police infiltration of peaceful mosques and political activists; and vigilante attacks on Muslims.

What to do? Call 202/224-3121 (the U.S. Capitol) and ask for your Senators and House member, one at a time. When you get each office, leave a message vigorously opposing any resolution authorizing military force against Syria, and pointing to nonviolent, nonlethal alternatuve ways of intervening.

Write a similar letter to your local newspaper.

Forward this message to your friends and to listserves you are on.

Try to start a viral message: Drop gas-masks, not bombs.

One of the metaphors of Rosh Hashanah is that we plead with God -- which means also with ourselves -- to move from the throne of Punitive Justice to the throne of Compassionate Repair.

If not now, when?

[Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of The Shalom Center. His newest book, co-authored with R. Phyllis Berman, is Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness across Millennia (Jewish Lights), available from Shouk Shalom our on-line bookstore. Read more articles by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on The Rag Blog.]

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Ron Jacobs : Cruise Missile Morality

Tomahawk cruise missile launched from the Navy destroyer USS Halsey during a 2007 test. Image from U.S. Navy / NBC News.

Here they go again:
Cruise missile morality

If one examines the overall policy of Washington towards Syria over the years, any response other than skepticism about its purported goals in its current policy rings exceedingly hollow.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / September 4, 2013

Here Washington goes again, talking about blowing up homes, military buildings, and people in faraway lands. Of course, the reason presented to the U.S. populace for this bluster before the crime is based on a morality that considers a military response to have some kind of moral foundation.

Yet, even if we believe the president’s rationale of a chemical attack, the accusations against the Assad government in this case remain flimsy and impossible to prove. Indeed, all of the evidence against either side in this case is purely circumstantial. In other words, there is plenty of reasonable doubt as to who the perpetrators of the attack were and even if it happened at all.

Why do Americans pretend that their weaponry is somehow more moral than that of other combatants? Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton lobbed cruise missiles at his perceived enemies the way kids throw rocks. The net result ended up being dead innocents, unnecessary destruction, angry governments, and negligible political results.

Cruise missiles always seemed to me to be nothing more than car bombs of U.S. imperialism. Ostensibly targeting certain buildings or people, they often kill with little regard to who happens to be near the target. In addition, like the drones favored by Obama, the element of surprise these weapons depend on intensifies the likelihood that innocents will be killed. Just more collateral damage.

Tomahawk cruise missiles were originally manufactured by General Dynamics, one of the few corporations in the U.S. (if not the world), that makes all of its profit from designing and manufacturing weapons systems and the software required to target and deliver the ammunition those systems exist for. The missiles are now manufactured by Raytheon, another corporation whose profits are derived primarily from the machinery of death.

The weapons can be launched from ships and from land. They travel at a subsonic speed and the newer versions can be redirected in flight, should a “juicier” target present itself. Their payload can consist of several smaller armed missiles. Each Tomahawk costs around $569,000 to $1.5 million.

It is not my purpose here to dismiss the grotesquery of the images presented to the world portraying an alleged chemical attack in Syria. However, to pretend that there is genuine proof as to who perpetrated the attack is at the least a cynical manipulation of the facts available. Furthermore, the plan from Washington and other Western capitals to launch an attack on Syria in “response” is not a solution. It is as morally repugnant as the alleged attack and just as likely to expand the death and killing as it is to lessen it.

If one examines the overall policy of Washington towards Syria over the years, any response other than skepticism about its purported goals in its current policy rings exceedingly hollow. This becomes even more so when one examines the comments made regarding Syria since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One such comment came from then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in testimony before a Congressional committee in October 2005:

Unless we commit to changing the nature of the Middle East [italics mine], and if we tire and decide that we are going to withdraw and leave the people of the Middle East to despair, I can assure you that the people of the United States are going to live in insecurity and fear for many, many decades to come.

As the past years have shown, it is that insistence on changing the Middle East to fit Washington’s goals that is causing the insecurity and fear anticipated by Ms. Rice.

Sending cruise missiles or, god forbid, something more lethal to attack Assad’s troops and military bases will not decrease Washington’s insecurity or that of its populace. Nor is it likely to cause any participants in that nation’s conflict to change their stance.

Instead, we are likely to see an increase in all of the negatives associated with the war. The least of these negatives will be Washington's claims of a higher moral purpose and the worst will be the ramping up of the murder this and all wars revel in.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, was published in 2013, along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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16 July 2013

Steve Russell : Unfriendly Fire at Fort Hood

Police car outside judicial hearing at Fort Hood, Texas, July 9, 2013. Photo by Tony Gutierrez / AP.

Workplace violence:
Unfriendly fire at Fort Hood, Texas

I am gobsmacked by a particular elevation of form over substance being practiced before our eyes by the Army.

By Steve Russell / The Rag Blog / July 16, 2013

The Rag Blog's Steve Russell -- a Texas trial judge by assignment and a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma -- will hold a book signing event at Austin's Black Star Co-op Brewpub, Thursday, July 18, 2013, from 4:30-7:30 p.m. He will sign his three books -- Sequoyah Rising: Problems in Post-Colonial Tribal Governance, Wicked Dew, and Ceremonies of Innocence: Essays from the Indian Wars -- and all three books will be available for purchase. The Black Star Co-op is located at 7020 Easy Wind Drive, Austin, Texas.

Meanings vary when people repeat that things can be done “the right way, the wrong way, or the Army way.” “The Army way” may represent teamwork so instinctive that orders are not necessary. For most GIs, “the Army way” is elevation of form over substance.

I am gobsmacked by a particular elevation of form over substance being practiced before our eyes by the Army. The substance began on November 5, 2009. My son was due back from his second tour in Iraq any day and the question in the family was whether he would be home for the holidays.

Ft. Hood is covered by local media in Austin, so when Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center and opened fire, I was probably paying attention before the firing stopped. Where was Paul? Iraq? Kuwait? Or was he in SRP, though which every soldier passes being deployed or coming home?

My son was not in SRP, but of those who were, 13 died. The victims were soldiers ranging in age from 21 to 56 and in rank from PFC to Lt. Colonel, as well as one civilian, 62 year old Michael Cahill, who died trying to stop the shooter. The youngest soldier killed, PFC Francheska Velez, was pregnant, and the fetus also died. Another 31 soldiers were wounded by gunfire, along with civilian police Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who was wounded while exchanging gunfire with the shooter.

The shooter was seriously wounded in the gunfight with civilian police. While waiting for him to recover so he could be put on trial for mass murder, we learned that Maj. Hasan admired the teachings of Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico born imam who had presided at his father’s funeral. Hasan and al-Awlaki had substantial email communication before the killings at Ft. Hood.

In March 2010, al-Awlaki released a statement complaining that the Obama administration was failing to credit him properly, saying in part:

Until this moment the administration is refusing to release the e-mails exchanged between myself and Nidal. And after the operation of our brother Umar Farouk the initial comments coming from the administration were looking the same -- another attempt at covering up the truth. But Al Qaeda cut off Obama from deceiving the world again by issuing their statement claiming responsibility for the operation.

The “brother” referred to was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab AKA “the underwear bomber” because he was inspired by al-Awlaki to attempt blowing up an airliner but succeeded only in lighting up his tidy whities.

A month later, to a chorus of criticism, Obama placed al-Awaki on the CIA “kill list.” His father filed a lawsuit to get him removed from the “kill list” on due process grounds, but the case was thrown out because the father lacked standing. al-Awaki himself would, of course, have had standing, but if he came to court, the reason he was on the list would disappear.

When al-Awaki was not directly counseling on how to kill Americans, he was overseeing the editing of Inspire, Al Qaeda’s English language organ where the Boston Marathon bombers allegedly read, “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.” The criticism of Obama fired up again when a CIA drone strike nailed al-Awaki in September of 2011.

At the time of the drone strike, al-Awaki was hiding in the lawless areas of Yemen and a Yemeni court had issued a warrant for his arrest on terrorism charges. Obama is supposed to have violated his rights by putting him on the “kill list,” but the way I read the law, a violent felon who poses a continuing danger and cannot be arrested can be killed.

This is the case without regard to citizenship and across national borders in the sense that a violation of state sovereignty is a beef between governments, not between the U.S. government and the individual targeted. Further, the standard for deciding the fact of the matter -- that he’s a continuing danger and can’t be taken into custody -- is not “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It’s “probable cause,” or what a reasonable person would believe about the facts as they sit. If the target wants more facts developed and the reasonable doubt standard met, then he can come to court, where more process is due.

Therefore, the only reason there’s any more legal or moral problem with the drone strikes than with the cops shooting a fleeing robber or rapist is the secrecy. You can’t turn yourself in if you don’t know you are wanted. But secrecy was not an issue in al-Awaki’s case. I’m sure he considered himself a soldier who died on an active battlefield, which is highly ironic given that the whole argument about the unlawfulness of drone strikes turns on claiming there was no active battlefield where he was killed and therefore he was simply assassinated.

But I digress.

After Hasan became physically able to come to court, the first military judge assigned to the case elevated form over function by engaging in a six-month battle with a dead man over shaving his full fundamentalist Muslim beard.

Nidal Hasan is a dead man rolling, since he can no longer walk as a result of his gunshot wounds. Apparently proud of his “accomplishment, “ he wished to plead guilty, but the Army won’t allow a guilty plea in a capital case and the prosecutors won’t waive the death penalty.

Those of us who oppose the death penalty can’t make an exception for Hasan like most of us did for Osama bin Laden, because Hasan would not be a hostage magnet if allowed to live in custody. But the posture of the case is what it is, and if you want to attack the death penalty, Nidal Hasan is not your poster child.

Since there is no question that Hasan did the shooting, the lawyers tasked with defending him must bring forward evidence of his mental state -- a complete defense if he’s legally insane or a mitigating circumstance if he’s sane. Understandably, Hasan does not wish to litigate his mental state, so he fired his lawyers.

Hasan informed the new and more goal-directed judge that he wishes to argue that his conduct was justified as “defense of third parties.” What third parties? Mullah Omar and the rest of the Taliban.

This will not fly because the soldiers murdered were not about to harm Mullah Omar, among many other reasons. One of the more interesting reasons is that a defender of a third party can have no more right to use deadly force than the third party would have had. Nidal Hasan is stretching for some way to put the Afghanistan war on trial, since the force he was allegedly defending against would have to be “unlawful.”

U.S. soldiers are taught that they must refuse unlawful orders, and I remember no war in my lifetime when somebody did not refuse deployment for the purpose of making a court rule on the legality. They lost, but they got to make the argument. I don’t think you can raise that argument as a justification for shooting fellow soldiers.

I understand why we generally don’t let people plead guilty in a death penalty case. We want to see the evidence. We don’t want innocent persons executed even if they volunteer to save guilty persons. In the Hasan case, that can’t happen.

Not accepting his guilty plea turns the “trial” into a slow motion guilty plea and a political circus. I’m OK with the political circus part, having been the ringmaster of several. It’s the nature of our system that trials are political, even though many of us try to pretend otherwise. But I am offended by a slow motion guilty plea.

Meanwhile, the Army has categorized the shootings as “workplace violence” rather than terrorism. There are substantial benefits for the families of soldiers killed or wounded in combat. These benefits are not available to the soldiers who signed up to fight the “war on terror” and then got shot by a turncoat whose stated purpose was to protect the enemy from his fellow soldiers on the instructions of a radical imam who repeatedly called killing Americans a religious duty.

Had my son been in the SRP that day, I would have to sue the Army for the good of my daughter in law and my grandchildren. Because he wasn’t, I’m just another opinion from the cheap seats when I say that respect for the law is the right way, but denying benefits to the victims’ families is the wrong way, and this entire process is making a mockery of the Army way.

[Steve Russell lives in Sun City, Texas, near Austin. He is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and associate professor emeritus of criminal justice at Indiana University-Bloomington. Steve was an activist in Austin in the sixties and seventies, and wrote for Austin’s underground paper, The Rag. Steve, who belongs to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is also a columnist for Indian Country Today. He can be reached at swrussel@indiana.edu. Read more articles by Steve Russell on The Rag Blog.]

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25 June 2013

Ron Jacobs : Onward, Through the Fog of War

Syrian refugees in Arsaal, Lebanon, on the Syrian border. Photo by Ed Ou / NYT.

Enter Obama:
Onward, through the fog of war

There will be no progressive secular government in Syria after the bloodshed ends. Indeed, there may not even be the nation the world now knows as Syria.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / June 25, 2013

The world waits. Washington and other western capitals ponder war. Tehran and Moscow assume their positions, wary of their flanks and the rear. Syria suffers.

Groups within and without Syria's borders position themselves as representatives of the Syrian people, almost every one of them hoping for some kind of Western support now that Obama and his White House have decided to publicly join the fray.

The question remains: How much military aid and of what nature? Does the White House honestly think it can get away with providing small arms and ammunition to the rebels in Syria? Or is it quietly planning to jump into the shitstorm with the the wild man and warmonger John McCain, eventually providing anti-tank weapons, lethal air support, and RPGs to the rebel elements with the greatest chance of victory?

Meanwhile, opposition to the White House decision remains muted, despite opinion polls showing over 80% disapproval of the decision. In fact, the primary opposition comes from libertarian and other right-wing quarters, some of them who oppose it only because Obama is spearheading it.

As for members of the left? If they spoke 10 times as loud they would still be but a whisper.

Syria is in the throes of a civil war. The government is winning, thanks in some part to the recent entrance of Hezbollah forces into the battle. The rebellion which began almost three years ago as popular protests against a repressive regime sold to the neoliberal marketplace has long since stopped being what it originally was. The violent repression of those protests by the Assad government provoked a violent response and the formation of what is called the Free Syrian Army.

Since that time, various regional governments and groups with their own agendas have sent in fighters, provided funds and weapons, and generally helped expand the conflict into almost every sector of Syrian society. The politics of the rebel forces grow murkier each day while the influence of outside forces seems to grow. This latter phenomenon will grow exponentially once Washington begins to play its latest hand.

There will be no progressive secular government in Syria after the bloodshed ends. Indeed, there may not even be the nation the world now knows as Syria.

If we are to use recent history as an example, the rationale of the previous statement is clear. Iraq, a once singular state run by an authoritarian Baathist government is now a fragmented collection of regions controlled by local rulers often at odds with the nominally central government in Baghdad.

The reasons for Iraq's current situation are related directly to Washington's 1991 invasion, a decade of low-intensity warfare against Iraq, and the culminating invasion by U.S. forces in 2003. Since none of these series of actions were able to install a regime beholden to Washington, the resulting fragmentation has had to do.

If nothing else, it has made the once regional power of Iraq a non-factor. This pleases not only Washington and Tel Aviv, but Saudi Arabia and the other emirates as well. If Washington is unable to install a client government in Damascus, one imagines that a weakened and fragmented Syria will suffice. Given the current role of Hezbollah, one assumes that Washington also hopes to weaken its role in the region.

These are at least some of Washington's desired goals. After all, Assad's authoritarian rule has never been too much of a problem before, especially when one understands that Washington maintained relations of various kinds with the Assad regime until quite recently.

Much like the relationship various U.S. administrations shared with Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, the commonality of interests and enemies insured numerous joint ventures between Damascus and Washington, including the rendition of U.S. captives to Syria for interrogation under torture. Now, however, it appears that Washington is going to throw its lot in with whatever lies past the long and brutal history of the Assads.

Like Libya and Iraq, this decision means that Washington's new commitment will be broader than it is letting on to the U.S. public. What are now small arms shipments to certain groups in Syria could soon become no-fly zones and bombing raids; drone strikes and helicopter gunships; bombardment from the sea and Marines on the ground.

If the usual contingencies are being followed, it is fairly safe to assume that special forces and CIA paramilitaries are already involved inside Syria. If the military piece of this war continues like it has, Syrian government forces and their allies will continue to win. That, in turn, means that the only way in which the forces Washington prefers can win is with ever greater U.S. support. If the scenario begins to include Iranian forces and more sophisticated Russian weaponry, all bets are off.

The decision by Obama and his henchmen to arm some Syrian rebels came in the wake of those forces suffering some major defeats. It also makes the moves toward negotiations touted about a couple weeks ago moot. In other words, Washington has chosen war over negotiation once again. The reasons are numerous and certainly include a desire to decrease Iran’s stature in the Middle East. The lives of the Syrians, already made cheap by the armed assaults of their government, have been made even cheaper by this decision.

There is nothing noble in Obama's decision. Like so many U.S. leaders before him, he has chosen to expand a war instead of negotiating to end it. In doing so, he has calculated that the Syrian people will continue to pay the ultimate price in hopes that Washington's hegemony in the region can continue.

As I write this, Robert Fisk is reporting in the British newspaper The Guardian that Iran will be sending at least 4,000 troops to Syria in support of the Assad government. If true, this move almost demands that Washington step up its support for its favorite rebels in response.

There are those on the left who are convinced that the rebel forces they support can accept arms from Washington and maintain their hopes for a progressive, secular, and democratic government when all the killing is done. This type of thinking is as naive as that of the liberals who believe Washington's entrance into the war is a humanitarian act devoid of imperial machinations.

To begin with, those who believe this assume that U.S. support will go to leftist and progressive forces. The likelihood of this is minimal, especially since there are elements in the opposition that share Washington's plans for Syria and the Middle East. For the most part, the leftist elements do not.

The plain truth is that imperialist acts never flow from pure humanitarian motives. The very nature of imperialism demands that any action, especially in the arena of warfare, is taken to further the goal of hegemony.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Barack Obama understands this. No matter what he or any of his spokespeople say in the upcoming months regarding the U.S. commitment in Syria, the fact is that his decisions are based on his understanding of the risks involved and the potential benefits to be gained -- for Washington, Tel Aviv, himself, and whomever else he and his regime are beholden to (and that doesn't include the U.S. public).

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novels, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, and Short Order Frame Up will be republished by Fomite in April 2013 along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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20 June 2013

Harry Targ : Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, Again!

Smoke from fighting in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, December 1, 2012. Photo by Javier Manzano / AFP / Getty Images.

One more time:
Waist deep in the Big Muddy

The case is clear that increasing the United States' military involvement in Syria has negative consequences for the Middle East, international relations, the inspiration of Arab Spring, American politics, and the people of Syria.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / June 20, 2013

In 2011 the grassroots revolts that spread all across the Middle East caught the traditional imperial powers in the region -- the United States, Great Britain, and France -- by surprise. Even more so, the Middle East theocracies and dictatorships -- Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and others -- were threatened by those young people, workers, unemployed, and women, who took to the streets motivated by the vision of another world.

The United States watched the street protests hoping against hope that the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt would weather the storm. The Obama administration did not move publicly to aid these regimes to crush the protest but withheld its endorsement of the grassroots democracy movement.

The idea of popular revolt spread to places all across the globe including Madison, Wisconsin; Santiago, Chile; Athens, Greece; Madrid, Spain; and Quebec, Canada. The Occupy Movement in the United States expanded.

Globally, movements for a 21st century democratization seemed to be replicating 1968.

In this historic context, the imperial powers needed to transform the Middle East narrative from demands for jobs, worker rights, women’s rights, and democratization, to the more traditional religious and ethnic conflict model of Middle East politics.

The United States organized a United Nations/NATO coalition to intervene to encourage rebellion in Libya coupled with a game-changing air war against the Libyan military. The result was the overthrow of the government of Muammar Gaddafi and its replacement by a quarrelsome ungovernable regime rife with ethnic strife.

The UN/NATO war on Libya was billed as the next phase of Arab Spring, while actually it imposed religious and ethnic conflict on a relatively stable but authoritarian regime.

The anger over the U.S. encouragement and military intervention in the Libyan civil war was reflected in the killings by Libyan terrorists of CIA operatives in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012. What intervention in Libya did was to destabilize that society and eliminate its former dictator who was opposed to the growing U.S. military expansion in North Africa.

Most important, it took off the front pages and the hearts and minds of youth, the poor, women, and trade unionists the hope of mass movements to bring about democratic change in the region.

U.S. covert and military intervention has shifted now from Libya to Syria. Mobilization against the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria was applauded by the United States. As the protest escalated into civil war in that country with contestants including secular and religious groups fighting against Assad’s army, the United States, Sunni countries of the Arab League, and NATO countries escalated their support to the rebels.

Another Libya-style UN/NATO military operation was thwarted by strong opposition from Russia and China and the threat of growing military support for the Syrian regime by Iran.

Part of the ongoing story of Syria is the following:

The United States launched its diplomatic involvement in the Syrian civil war by insisting that Bashar al-Assad must step down. This precluded any possibility of a diplomatic settlement of the civil war and the eventual dismantling of the Assad regime. Most important, the United States' non-negotiable demand made diplomatic collaboration between the United States and Russia all but impossible.

Support for various rebel factions, diplomatic and presumably covert, has encouraged the escalation of opposition violence which has been matched by state violence.

Rebel factions, ironically, have included groups with profiles that resemble the terrorists who were responsible for the 9/11 murders in the United States and terrorist attacks on various targets in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Violence and political instability have begun to spread to Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, and have drawn Israel and Iran closer into regional war.

As the Syrian civil war has escalated it has become a “proxy” war between the United States and Russia and Sunni and Shia Muslims.

In the United States, the civil war in Syria has rekindled the war factions. These include the “neoconservatives” who were responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Using 9/11 and lies about weapons of mass destruction, the neoconservatives influenced the Bush administration to pursue their agenda to use United States power to transform the globe in its interests.

The escalation of the civil war, the growing military role of the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, NATO, Hezbollah from Lebanon, and Israel has led to nearly 100,000 Syrian deaths and more than a million refugees. As in most international wars, innocent people suffer and die as military decisions are made in government capitals.

The case is clear that increasing the United States' military involvement in Syria has negative consequences for the Middle East, international relations, the inspiration of Arab Spring, American politics, and the people of Syria.

The hope for a more just and peaceful future requires support for the resumption of the spirit and vision of the original Arab Spring that began in Tunisia and Egypt and spread all across the globe. Otherwise the United States will once again be “waist deep in the big muddy” as in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Jack A. Smith : Obama, China, and the Middle East

Samantha Powers, Susan Rice ("two cats among pigeons"), and President Obama. Photo by Charles Dharapak / AP.

Foreign policy pivot?
Obama, China, and the Middle East

Obama has transferred the brunt of U.S. foreign/military policy away from the Middle East and the war on terrorism and toward Asia to better manipulate the conditions of China’s inevitable return to big power status.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / June 20, 2013

There is an obvious connection between the first summit conference attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barrack Obama in California June 7-8 and Obama’s major speech two weeks earlier redefining the future of America’s 12-year military role in the Middle East.

In effect, Obama has transferred the brunt of U.S. foreign/military policy away from the Middle East and the war on terrorism and toward Asia to better manipulate the conditions of China’s inevitable return to big power status. The process Washington began two years ago to contain China’s influence -- the “pivot” to Asia, now termed the “Asia Pacific rebalancing strategy” -- can now be accelerated.

I have located no mention of this connection in the Chinese press, but it undoubtedly added to President Xi’s concern about the “rebalancing” just before his talks with Obama. The only mention in the U.S. mass media I know of was a single paragraph in a March 25 New York Times article about Obama’s comments:

Left unsaid in Mr. Obama’s speech was one of the biggest motivations for his new focus: a desire to extricate the United States from the Middle East so that it can focus on the faster-growing region of Asia.

The switch makes practical sense. It has evidently occurred to the Oval Office that a monomaniacal obsession with a small, scattered enemy possessing primitive weapons undermines America’s imperial interests. The main geopolitical prize for the U.S. government obviously is in East and South Asia, not the Middle East, which has transfixed Washington’s attention since September 11, 2001, at a huge cost in prestige and treasure -- probably $5 trillion or more when it’s finally paid off in several decades.

Clarifying this new foreign/military policy thrust is the main reason President Obama delivered his important speech May 23 redefining America’s wars, drones, and Guantanamo. His main message was that “we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”

“Rebalancing” to Asia does not signify the Obama Administration has the slightest intention to ignore the Middle East. It means these small so-called terror wars are no longer Washington’s first international priority. The U.S. will continue the fighting, but with much smaller numbers of special forces, drones and other cheaper means of domination, not with large armies of occupation and trillions in treasure.

The Afghan, Iraq, and “terror” wars combined with a conservative political atmosphere, regressive economic and political trends, and the impotence of the two-party system in these first years of the 21st century have made a mockery of American democracy: Massive government erosion of civil liberties and the right to privacy; an election system based on corporate money, not the voters; and a ruling elite indifferent to burgeoning inequality and the plight of the poor and destitute.

Osama bin-Laden, the symbol of the terror wars is dead (USA!, USA!,USA!), but not before he tricked the world’s most powerful country into launching two unnecessary and embarrassingly stalemated wars against much weaker foes, creating havoc in those two countries and criticism of American aggression throughout much of the region. Credit card war spending created a mile-high domestic deficit that Congress is using as a hatchet to cut social programs and substantially weaken civil liberties and privacy rights.

The Obama-Xi talks

More details about the speech follow but I’ll focus now on President Xi’s visit first. It is too early to fully assess the June 7-8 meetings during which the two heads of state spent eight hours together in discussions with hardly any of the usual formalities. There were two main issues, from Washington’s point of view, cyber theft and North Korea, plus several other discussions and agreements.

Cyber theft: Obama informed Xi of his extreme displeasure over China’s alleged massive “cyber-enabled economic theft of intellectual property and other kinds of property in the public and private realm in the United States by entities based in China.” Last March, National Intelligence Director James Clapper testified that cyber threats appear to have largely replaced terrorism as posing the greatest risks to U.S. national security.

Obama directed considerable pressure upon his Chinese guest, but did not obtain much satisfaction. At the end of the cyber meetings, Tom Donilon, Obama’s national security advisor (soon to be replaced by UN Delegate Susan Rice), could only report: “It's quite obvious now that the Chinese senior leadership understand clearly the importance of this issue to the United States.”

The American leader’s cyber presentation was somewhat upstaged the same day when the Guardian (UK) reported, “Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for U.S. cyber-attacks.” This top-secret 18-page presidential directive was provided to columnist Glen Greenwald by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Obviously, the U.S. engages in cyber crime as do most major countries. It even launched the first cyber “war” by corrupting Iran’s computer network.

Xi criticized the U.S. media for ignoring cyber attacks against China. He also commented, “by conducting good-faith cooperation we can remove misgivings and make information security and cyber security a positive area of cooperation between China and the U.S. Because China and the United States both have a need and both share a concern, and China is a victim of cyber attacks and we hope that earnest measures can be taken to resolve this matter.”

Soon after the summit, according to Associated Press, “China's Internet security chief told state media that Beijing has amassed huge amounts of data on U.S.-based hacking. The official held off blaming the U.S. government, saying it would be irresponsible and that the better approach is to cooperate in the fight against cyberattacks.”

On June 13, whistleblower Snowden, in Hong Kong, revealed to the South China Morning Post that the National Security Agency was spying on China and Hong Kong. The same day, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chungying said China is a "major victim" of cyber attacks but did not lay blame.

North Korea: Both sides discussed relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). At the end of the meetings, Donilon announced what the White House perceives as a victory:

With respect to North Korea, I think the important point here is full agreement on the goals -- that is denuclearization; full agreement that in fact the Security Council resolutions which put pressure on North Korea need to be enforced, and full agreement that we will work together to look at steps that need to be taken in order to achieve the goal.

Rumors were circulating before the meetings that this might be China’s new position toward its old ally, but in summing up the talks on Korea a leading member of the Chinese delegation only said that Xi and Obama "talked about co-operation and did not shy away from differences."

New relationship: The Beijing government stresses that China seeks a "a harmonious, peaceful rise to power and on becoming a responsible stakeholder in the international system.” During the meetings President Xi said he favored a “new type of great power relationship” based on mutual trust, respect, cooperation on important issues, and better ways to resolve differences.

Xinhua news agency reported:

According to Yang Jiechi, Xi's senior foreign policy adviser, Obama responded actively to the proposal, saying that the U.S. side placed high importance on its relations with China and is willing to construct a new state-to-state cooperation modal with China based on mutual benefit and mutual respect, so as to jointly meet various global challenges.

Climate change: The U.S. is history’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but relative newcomer China is biggest in recent individual years. At the summit, both agreed to reduce hydrofluorocarbon emissions, one of the most potent of the greenhouse gases. This is not a major step but a beginning. China on its own made an important announcement last month, vowing to put a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2016. This is considered a major breakthrough that will influence other nations, possibly even the U.S.

Omitted from the meeting was Washington’s customary complaint that China manipulated its currency to America’s disadvantage. For the last several years Beijing has been cautiously but systematically appreciating the value of its currency until it now approximates natural value.

The summit was productive in its way, but that does not change either Washington’s geopolitical objectives or the threats implicit in its “rebalancing” to Asia.

Beijing is exceptionally anxious to keep the peace with Washington. It is a developing country with many crucial tasks ahead for decades to consolidate the economic and social conditions of a country which must feed, house, educate, and gainfully employ 1.3 billion people in a land area somewhat smaller than the U.S. with 314 million people.

China is also decades behind the U.S. in military terms, a gap that will continue indefinitely because the Pentagon constantly spends fortunes to maintain its weapons and logistic superiority. A war would wipe out the incredible advances China has made since the success of the communist revolution 64 years ago, which includes bringing about 700 million people out of poverty, creating a substantial middle class, and becoming the center of world production.

Washington wants friendly relations with the Beijing government, as it does with all countries. However, it imposes strict conditions for such relations. This is based on the fact that the U.S. has been one of two sharply contending, dominant global powers from the end of World War II in 1945 to1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved, and the single dominant world power -- indeed, the mightiest hegemonic state in history -- ever since.

Those who rule the U.S. believe that it is the “indispensible nation,” ordained to lead, even as its economy suffers stagnation and Washington appears to have a penchant for “leading” the world from one war to another.

The great majority of countries enjoy friendly relations with Washington because they are willing to recognize the U.S. as world leader with special privileges and dispensations up to, and often including, getting away with the murder attendant to its illegal wars. Only a handful of countries do not accept U.S. hegemony -- Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran among them -- and Uncle Sam extracts a hefty price for such insolence.

Beijing seeks friendly relations with Washington for obvious reasons. Successive Chinese leaders have assured the U.S. government that China does not seek world leadership.

China does not challenge American dominion, at least openly, but it is extremely independent. Its tilt toward Iran and Syria, which frustrates the White House, are examples, as is its protection of what it believes are China’s economic, political, and territorial prerogatives regardless of intense U.S. criticism in certain areas. In theory, China opposes unipolar (one country) world leadership, preferring a multipolar system, as do a number of developed and developing countries, but no nation will push the issue for the foreseeable future.

America’s leaders are apprehensive that if China largely continues for the next 10 or 20 years the unprecedented development of the last 20 years its mere success in relation to what could be America’s slow decline will result in Washington’s displacement.

That seems to be where the “Asia Pacific rebalancing strategy” comes into play. It has several purposes but two stand out. The main purpose is not to prevent China’s rise or economic success but to confine it in terms of global power, not that Beijing has evidenced a desire to wield such authority. The other purpose is to further integrate the U.S. into the region’s dynamic economic climate.

The U.S. is bringing three of its strengths into the endeavor -- alliances, money/trade, and military power.

Alliances: Washington is organizing the many Asia/Pacific countries historically within its superpower orbit to join a united crusade to keep China from exercising leadership even within its own geographical sphere of interest.

Such clients include Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam (lately), Australia, and quite possibly those on the periphery -- India, perhaps Myanmar and Cambodia. Indonesia and Taiwan may not want to get involved. Since Obama first announced his focus on Asia two years ago, the U.S. has been inserting itself into regional squabbles, particularly the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, always on the side of Beijing’s opponents to make them more grateful to their protector.

Most of these countries are rising economically or are already established, and they are beginning to develop close economic, political and military ties with each other, but it is unlikely they could form a possible bloc that would some day “balance” China without the U.S.

Money and trade: The U.S. is in the process of forming a free trade association of nations in the Asia/Pacific region, including countries in the Americas bordering the Pacific. It’s called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. China supports the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), but is “considering" membership in the TPP as well.

The U.S.-dominated TPP will bring some economic benefits to all its members, but the main objective is to provide the United States with an important vehicle to become a major player in the region, political as well as economic, and thus a rival to China in East Asia.

There are various complications and intrigues involved with the TTP that I won’t go into, except for one progressive critique from the Council of Canadians:
The TPP is globally controversial because of how it will entrench a myopic vision of market-based globalization that is the main cause of runaway climate change and which has done little to create good, sustainable jobs or reduce poverty worldwide. The TPP also enhances corporate rights to sue governments when public policies interfere with how, when and where they make profits.
Military power: The unparalleled supremacy of the U.S. military/national security/surveillance apparatus -- inefficient against guerrilla war (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) but capable of becoming an unparalleled death machine if deployed against China -- is not only coming to the Asia/Pacific region but it’s mostly there already, in certain places going back to World War II.

The U.S. pivoted to Asia 70 years ago and never left. China has been virtually surrounded for years with U.S. naval, air, and troop bases through the region from small islands dotting the western Pacific to Japan and South Korea in the northeast to the Philippines in the southeast, to Afghanistan in the west. This does not include air power, long-range missiles, surveillance satellites, and nuclear weapons at the ready.

More recently Obama opened a new Marine base in western Australia and ordered the majority of the U.S. fleet, from aircraft carriers to nuclear submarines, to move from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Why does the Obama Administration feel the need to show the flag and its martial trappings, up close, intentionally too close for Beijing’s comfort? To show who’s boss. If Beijing ever dared provoke Washington in such manner, the U.S. would prepare for war.

An article titled “The Problem With The Pivot” appeared in the December 2012 Foreign Affairs, declaring: “Obama’s new Asia policy is unnecessary and counterproductive.” Written by Robert S. Ross of Boston College and Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the essay stated:

[T]he Obama Administration’s pivot has not contributed to stability in Asia. Quite the opposite: it has made the region more tense and conflict-prone. Military aircraft and naval ships now crowd the region’s skies and waters. And the United States risks getting involved in hostilities over strategically irrelevant and economically marginal island [in the South China Sea]....

Washington’s increased activity on China’s periphery has led Beijing to conclude that the United States has abandoned "strategic engagement," the cornerstone of U.S. policy toward China since the end of the Cold War. In contrast to previous administrations, the Obama Administration has dismissed China’s legitimate security interests in its border regions, including even those that are not vital to U.S. security.

Obama and the Middle East

Now I’ll return to Obama’s May 23 speech “ending: the war on terrorism,” and the “new” U.S. policy in the Middle East. Aside from clearing the way for deeper involvement in Asia, what are we to make of this manipulative and defensive 7,000-word lecture?

Obama sought to convey the impression -- in the words of a New York Times article the next day --

that it was time to narrow the scope of the grinding battle against terrorists and begin the transition to a day when the country will no longer be on a war footing.... As part of a realignment of counterterrorism policy, he said he would curtail the use of drones, recommit to closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and seek new limits on his own war power.

Progressive and left commentators excoriated the speech with a “there he goes again” approach to what they viewed as a deceptive, self-justifying attempt to deflect criticism of his war policies.

President Obama’s pledge to take steps toward removing the U.S. from its “perpetual war footing” was widely questioned. A May 25 front page article in The New York Times noted:

Nor can Mr. Obama escape his own role in putting the United States on a war footing. He came into office pledging to wind down America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but within a year had ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and oversaw a significant expansion of the Bush administration’s use of clandestine drone strikes.

Anthony Romero, ACLU executive director, commented:

President Obama is right to say that we cannot be on a war footing forever -- but the time to take our country off the global warpath and fully restore the rule of law is now, not at some indeterminate future point.

The antiwar Answer Coalition summed up the speech in these words:

While there is much to dissect in his speech, the bottom line is that President Obama is attempting to respond to criticism of his war on terror policies while creating a new framework to institutionalize many of these same policies.

Answer was convinced that the

speech must be seen as a direct response to the individuals and organizations who have consistently been challenging the actions of the administration on these issues. It is unavoidably clear that the firestorm of criticism around drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay Prison, and the extent of domestic surveillance created a climate in which Obama was forced to defend his policies.

Other commentators tore apart Obama’s efforts to rationalize his killer drone policy when he declared: “Beyond the Afghan theater, we only target al-Qaeda and its associated forces. And even then, the use of drones is heavily constrained.” (The Afghan theater includes western Pakistan.) Critics also panned the few superficial reforms he promised to introduce into the program.

Progressives refused to accept his justification for not closing Guantanamo concentration camp as he promised five years ago. Some articles pointed out that despite a recalcitrant Congress, Obama could have used the vast authority of the presidency to actually close the prison and release its hapless inmates. When Obama boasted that he “ended torture” it was pointed out that the forced-feeding of hunger striking Guantanamo prisoners was torture according to the American Medical Association.

Unfinished business: Iran and Syria

The Obama Administration still has much unfinished business in the Middle East that guarantees it will remain indefinitely -- though not in “global war on terrorism” rampages as in Iraq. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be stationed in or close to the region, on land and at sea. Special forces troops and drones will continue to kill suspected terrorists in the Middle East and now deeper into Africa. In addition, Obama seeks to keep 10,000 U.S. troops and nine bases in Afghanistan to 2024, 10 years after “combat forces” withdraw at the end of 2014.

The White House has many other plans for the Middle East and North Africa. The first task is to insure that Israel, America’s main dependency and factotum in the region, remains the Pentagon’s virtual forward base in the Arab world. America’s second task, at which it has been laboring for many years, is regime change in Iran and Syria -- the only two countries in the entire region not within Washington’s hegemonic orbit. Iraq and Libya used to make it four countries, until Bush (2003), then Obama (2012), reduced the number.

Iran, now an Islamic Republic that adheres to the Shia branch of Islam, is the main target because it is a powerful, oil-rich state that will not bend the knee to Washington. The Iranian people have not been forgiven for the last 34 years for the intolerable affront of kicking out the vicious dictatorial monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, installed on the Peacock Throne by American-British imperialism a quarter-century earlier. Were Iran willing to kowtow to the U.S. today, it wouldn’t be suffering extreme sanctions and the constant threat of U.S.-Israeli war.

Iran was greatly strengthened when the U.S. invaded its main enemy, Iraq, bringing down the minority Sunni government in Baghdad led by secularist Saddam Hussein. The majority Shia Iraqi population then elected a government of their own. Now there are Shia regimes in Tehran, Baghdad, and Damascus (secular President Bashar Assad and government leaders are Alawites, a branch of Shia Islam), forming a contiguous Shia region 1,500 miles wide, bordered by Turkey on the west and Afghanistan to the east.

The Sunnis are the great majority in the Middle East and throughout Islam. Certain Sunni Arab countries -- such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf dictatorships, among others -- seek to reduce Shia power by supporting the overthrow of the minority Alawite government led by President Assad, weakening Iran with the loss of its main Arab supporter. The moderate Islamist government of NATO member Turkey is a big supporter of the rebels, partly to gain influence in the Sunni Arab world, partly to impress the U.S.

Escalation in Syria?

The beginning of the popular struggle for democracy in Syria two years ago consisted largely of nonviolent protests that were met with government repression. We will never know if certain government concessions to the original peaceful protests would have led to reform instead of mayhem. The conflict, however, very soon transformed beyond calls for a broader democracy into a deadly civil war led by Sunni rebels, including jihadist elements, seeking to eliminate the secular regime and take power.

This war, in its second year, has become exceptionally vicious, destructive of people and infrastructure. The UN says at minimum 93,000 Syrians have been killed. A large number of the dead have been soldiers on both sides.

The U.S. and its closest NATO allies have supported regime change from the beginning, but only if it is possible to place a government submissive to Washington’s dictates in Damascus. That proviso is important.

It is incorrect to assume Obama is disinterested in overthrowing the Assad regime simply because he refused to commit to an American air and ground war to support of the anti-government forces. Obama’s problem is that the insurgents are thoroughly disunited despite receiving arms and money from Sunni countries and “non-lethal” aid from the U.S. and others for well over a year.

White House efforts to form a reliable, united pro-U.S. rebel front have failed repeatedly. At the same time, Islamic jihadist fighting elements are stronger than the other warring groups in the Free Syrian Army. This suits the wealthy Saudi Arabian dictatorship, the major sponsor of the war, but is anathema to Washington for obvious reasons.

As we write, the Obama Administration has just announced, “following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.” Up to 150 people are alleged to have died from the gas.

Nerve gas may have been used but I remain dubious that the Syrian government ordered its use. Assad fully understood that if even a small amount of gas was deployed it would cross Obama’s “red line,” leading anywhere from a marked increase in U.S. support for the rebels to massive retaliation.

Assad clings tenaciously to his life, his office, and his constituency. Why would he, in effect, toss it all away by approving the use of a small amount of sarin knowing it could trigger his doom? War hawks in Washington -- liberal and conservative, as well as within the State Department -- are demanding a drastic response from the White House, from arming the rebels with sophisticated weapons to establishing a no-fly zone to putting “boots on the ground.”

Obama is hesitant. According to The New York Times he has “decided to begin supplying the rebels for the first time with small arms and ammunition.” I suspect he will insist that the shipments must not end up with jihadist rebels. He can be expected to resist pressure to establish a no-fly zone in Syria backed with U.S. jets, as he did in Libya. Syria has sophisticated air defenses as opposed to nearly defenseless Libya.

Another factor causing hesitation is that despite a year of press and U.S. government exaggerations that Assad is on the precipice of defeat, the Alawite government controls most of the territory and nearly all the large cities. Recent battlefield support from Lebanon’s Shia self-defense organization Hezbollah has been an important asset for the government and has contributed to rebel setbacks and loss of territory in recent months.

The sarin announcement, and the subsequent American decision to openly send arms, benefits the insurgents at a time when they need a morale boost and an infusion of weapons with which to mount counterattacks. Obama will do what he can to keep the rebels in the field and bring about regime change. But he knows history will be unforgiving if he aligns with known terrorists, and justly suspects that the American people will oppose another U.S. ground war in the Middle East.

There is one important unknown factor: the influence on Obama from newly named security adviser Susan Rice, the former UN Delegate, and her replacement, Obama adviser Samantha Powers. Both are liberal war hawks and staunch advocates of so-called “humanitarian intervention.” They may push for a tougher line on Syria and elsewhere.

At the UN Rice has been publicly rude to chief delegates from both China and Russia. Powers is said to have been a major influence on Obama’s decision to attack Libya. Veteran analyst M.K. Bhadrakumar, writing June 8 in India Punchline, commented that by advancing both advisers Obama “is letting loose two cats among pigeons, a reference to State and Defense Secretaries Kerry and Hagel.”

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.]

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05 June 2013

Tom Hayden : Can Obama 'Rein In' His Presidency?

Obama: Who's making the call? Image from TomHayden.com.

Competing forces at play:
Can Obama ‘rein in’ his presidency?

Obama often follows a confusing pattern of leaning toward the military’s preference while planning in his private chambers to later change course.

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / June 6, 2013

President Barack Obama’s important speech at the National Defense University on deescalating his drone war should be seen as a window into the state of play among competing forces in the national security state.

Obama is trying, in his own words, to “rein in” the vast executive power directing the secret operations of the Long War, which was originally unleashed by George Bush after 9/11. Obama ended the Iraq phase of American combat and has promised the same by 2014 in Afghanistan while sharply escalating the drone war and special operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and beyond.

So far he has avoided direct intervention in Syria, which would require ground troops, and Iran, which would ignite an unpredictable storm.

In the process, Obama has grown a cancer on his presidency in the form of tens of thousands of disgruntled and difficult-to-control Special Forces, CIA personnel, a legion of spies and mercenaries, mainly in the Middle East and South Asia, but including also a steel defensive ring along the U.S. border with Mexico and Central America.

The apparatus of this Long War is well described by Jeremy Scahill in Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield, and his previous work, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Their numbers are classified but, according to Nick Turse, the Special Ops are 60,000 or more, with their personnel deployed abroad quadrupled since 9/11; their budget jumping from $2.3 billion after 9/11 to $6.3 billion today, not including funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Additionally there are 7,000 armed border patrol agents and thousands more in the DEA.

These forces constitute the cancer, and they may not be willing to follow a presidential command to wind it down. They might fight back to the end. According to Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, the generals tried to manipulate Obama into escalating Afghanistan into a “forever war.” The same forces undoubtedly have their objections to much of Obama’s recent speech as well.

Pentagon objections

The purposes of the Obama speech, as parsed by The New York Times on May 28, were to scale back the use of drones, target only those who actually threaten the U.S., remove the CIA from drone and targeting killing, and end the paradigm of the Global War on Terrorism.

The speech and its policies were “two years in the making,” reflecting the depth of unresolved tensions surrounding the administration. Obama, himself, first spoke of “reining in” the national security state in a Jon Stewart interview in October 2012.

There is no doubt that criticisms by Obama supporters, civil liberties lawyers, and many mainstream journalists helped the administration change its calculations. But greater pressures were exerted behind the scenes by the advocates of drones and counterterrorism.

Obama kept secret until the day before the speech that he was lifting the moratorium on repatriating Guantanamo detainees, many of them on hunger strike, to Yemen, and appointing a new lead person to implement the transfers. Similarly, in 2009, when Obama announced his 33,000 troop escalation in Afghanistan, he slipped in a paragraph at the last minute pledging to begin his withdrawals in 18 months. The military objected.

Against CIA objections, Obama decided to declassify the fact that U.S. drone strikes had killed Anwar al-Awlaki and three other Americans who “were not intentionally targeted.”

The CIA and Pentagon “balked” at tighter restrictions on drones, and the CIA’s counterterrorism center resisted the president’s proposal “to take its drones away.”

A fierce debate broke out over whether “signature strikes” would continue, the drone war version of racial profiling. The new Obama policy remains murky as a result of internal compromise, and the CIA reportedly succeeded in keeping control of the drone war in Pakistan through 2014.

The criterion for drone strikes was modified from targets that are “significant threats to U.S. interests” to targets representing “a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” No sooner was the tighter standard announced than the CIA killed a Pakistan Taliban leader in apparent revenge for his organizing a suicide bombing which killed seven CIA operatives. Ignored in the militarized targeting criteria was the fact that the same figure was considered a “moderate” Taliban leader favoring a peaceful settlement of Pakistan’s internal bloodshed.

Obama was unable to use his own speech to endorse a mechanism to carry forward an independent review of how and when drone attacks would occur. He could achieve no consensus in the administration.

Enlisting public opinion

Many will see these compromises and deferrals as evidence of Obama indecisiveness. But this is a leader who campaigned like a man of steel in 2008 and 2012, so the problem more likely lies in the nature of the state itself and the permanent forces contesting for power. If that is so, the Obama speech was designed to enlist public opinion in the internal arguments to come.

Obama often follows a confusing pattern of leaning toward the military’s preference while planning in his private chambers to later change course. Obama escalated in Afghanistan, then deescalated. He escalated the drone attacks, then sharply reduced them this past year.

He escalated deportations, then sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio and legalized the status of 1 million Dreamers by executive order. He dispatched DEA and even CIA agents in Mexico’s bloody drug war, then called for a new “conversation” about shifting to a harm-reduction approach.

In this zigzagging course Obama has sent thousands of largely clandestine troops and police into battles they could not win, causing enormous potential resentment and pushback. When the union representative of 7,000 border patrol agents testifies in defiance against Obama’s relaxed enforcement policies, you can assume that many in the national security state are considering forms of refusal to obey their commander-in-chief. Many will not deescalate quietly or loyally.

There is a disturbing analogy here with the 1960-63 John F. Kennedy era. JFK campaigned on a Cold War pledge to fight a long twilight struggle against communism. Like Obama, JFK became enthralled with special forces as a secret counterforce against radical insurgencies in Latin America.

The counterterrorism policies unleashed by JFK would lead eventually to the CIA’s tracking down Che Guevera, whose assassination was witnessed by a CIA agent in 1967, a parallel with Obama’s raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Kennedy gradually evolved toward a greater wisdom in the three years of his presidency; antagonizing many in what Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. At first, Kennedy went along with the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation, conceived by the CIA under Eisenhower. But Kennedy refused to be drawn into sending American ground troops, which doomed the invasion of Cuba and provoked a violent right-wing Cuban backlash in Miami. Those Cuban exiles remained a virulent force in American politics down through the present time.

Then, after the near-apocalypse of the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy moved steadily toward ending the nuclear arms race with the Russians, and turned instead to supporting the domestic goals of the 1963 March on Washington. JFK sent advisers to South Vietnam but showed a strong reluctance to dispatch American ground troops. In November 50 years ago, he was dead, to the unforgettable cheers of the John Birchers and the Cuban exiles, and to the more muted satisfaction of elements in the CIA and military-industrial complex.

It is by no means inevitable or even likely that Obama will meet JFK’s fate, although even the Homeland Security Agency has reported rising assassination threats due to the election of a black president and economic depression for many in the white working class. What is most important is to realize that change can evolve unexpectedly, due first to the experiences of a president while in office -- JFK regarding Cuba and nuclear weapons -- and the persistent pressure of activists demanding change -- the Freedom Riders, SNCC, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

At the same time, the reaction against the “threat” of change is relentless and explosive -- the Goldwater movement, the Reagan presidency.

In the Republicans' seemingly crazed opposition to everything Obama represents, and their well-organized “fixes” to their electoral deficit -- Citizens United, voter suppression, a partisan Supreme Court, reapportionment to gain Electoral College advantage, etc. -- there is a pattern of resistance that Obama himself may have underestimated.

The Republican intransigence is at least, on the surface, something that can be seen and confronted. But it is also connected to the cancerous tumors of the security state, which citizens hardly encounter and cannot easily access.

The question at hand is what force can be strong enough to offset the power of those wishing to trap Obama in the legacy of an Imperial Executive he does not want to pass to an unpredictable successor. And if there is not a civic power strong enough to put the cancer in remission, what does that say about the state of American democracy?

This article was also published at TomHayden.com.

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource center and editor of The Peace Exchange Bulletin. Read more of Tom Hayden's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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30 May 2013

Lamar W. Hankins : We Must Heal Our Wounded Vets

Wounded Army vet waiting for a prescription for anti-seizure medication at a Colorado Springs doctor's office. Photo by Michael Ciaglo / Colorado Springs Gazette.

We must 'heal the wounded':
The military’s abuse of enlistees

At this point, almost a decade since his last combat, it is unclear whether Jim will ever recover from his injuries. His treatment by the military has been callous and devastating for his family as well as for him.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / May 30, 2013

This Memorial Day my thoughts went back to about 10 years ago, when I learned as close to first-hand as one can get, short of being in the Army, just how abusive and uncaring the military establishment can be. A close family member was deployed to Iraq to fight in “Shock and Awe,” George W. Bush’s destabilizing effort to free Iraqis from the rule of Saddam Hussein. I’ll call him Jim.

Jim had been in Special Forces for most of his 18 years in the military. He had fought in the first Iraq War and had participated in many classified operations. His missions and training had caused him chronic pain and other long-term problems -- skin cancers, unexplained neurological symptoms, and a back injury that required surgery.

When Jim was deployed to Iraq for George W. Bush’s war, he had not fully recovered from his back surgery and had not been released for full active duty. He required regular pain medicine to cope with his recovery from the surgery. Nevertheless, he was sent to fight with his unit in Iraq.

During the worst of Jim’s pain, he sought a private doctor to prescribe pain medication so that he could avoid letting his command know how bad his back was. He did not want to appear weak. He was strongly motivated to continue to be a part of his unit. He knew that if he let his next-in-command know of his condition, he would no longer be allowed to continue in his Special Forces unit. His “band of brothers” feelings were strong.

About six weeks into his deployment to Iraq, Jim’s dependency on drugs for pain control became so apparent that he was sent home from Iraq before his unit returned. As I learned eventually, in addition to physical pain, Jim suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He had trouble sleeping, exhibited startle responses frequently both when asleep and when awake, had nightmares and flashbacks, was uncomfortable in crowds, had an uneven temperament, was often agitated, and had trouble concentrating.

Soon after Jim returned home, military doctors sent him to Walter Reed Army Hospital (now phased out of service) for another back surgery. I accompanied him for the surgery and stayed with him for several days afterward, including driving him home after he was released from Walter Reed. On this trip, I observed most of the symptoms mentioned above.

But these were the least of Jim’s troubles. Soon after returning to his base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, his command started court martial proceedings, intent on washing him out of the Army because of his dependence on pain medication. They wanted to give him a bad conduct discharge. After he hired (at great expense) a civilian attorney with extensive military law experience, his punishment became a general discharge. He was not allowed to retire, though he had 19 years in the service.

After he was discharged, he filed for VA benefits and another struggle ensued, during which he had to prove that his disability was service connected. His attorney proved his high fees were worth the cost. With much support also from his family, eventually, Jim prevailed and received VA benefits and continues his recovery from his 19 years in the military.

At this point, almost a decade since his last combat, it is unclear whether he will ever recover from his injuries. His treatment by the military has been callous and devastating for his family as well as for him.

Unfortunately, Jim’s story is not unique or even a worst-case example of what the military does to men and women who join up. Those in the armed servies suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and PTSD are commonly dumped into the civilian sector without benefits -- no pension, no health insurance, no support.

According to the Department of Defense, these conditions together likely affect more than half a million veterans of the last 11 years of American wars in the Middle East. They represent about one-quarter of all those who have served during this period.

As reported by Dave Phillips in the Colorado Springs Gazette, what happened to Jim seems to be standard operating practice for today’s volunteer military:

After the longest period of war in American history, more soldiers are being discharged for misconduct than at any time in recent history, and soldiers with the most combat exposure are the hardest hit. A Gazette investigation based on data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act shows the annual number of misconduct discharges is up more than 25 percent Army-wide since 2009, mirroring the rise in wounded.

At the eight Army posts that house most of the service's combat units, including Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, misconduct discharges have surged 67 percent. All told, more than 76,000 soldiers have been kicked out of the Army since 2006. They end up in cities large and small across the country, in hospitals and homeless shelters, abandoned trailers and ratty apartments, working in gas fields and at the McDonald's counter. The Army does not track how many, like Alvaro, were kicked out with combat wounds.

Figures supplied by the Army Human Resources Command indicate that soldiers discharged for alleged misconduct rose by about 63% during the six-year span between 2006 and 1012. Mark Waple, a civilian attorney who handles military cases and a retired Army officer told The Gazette: "I've been working on this since the '70s, and I have never seen anything like this. There seems to be a propensity to use minor misconduct for separation, even for service members who are decorated in combat and injured."

Politicians are quick to declare our duty to provide support for our troops, including when they return. Last October, President Barack Obama called it "the single most sacred obligation this country has." More recently, Colorado Sen. Mark Udall said, "The American people have an unbreakable covenant with our veterans and we must provide them the very best health care."

But the military and the VA seem unable to provide that support and recognize that what we require volunteer service men and women to do leads directly to PTSD and often causes them to be wounded in ways that are not immediately apparent.

Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men, Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, told the attorney prosecuting two Marines for the murder of another Marine, “You can’t handle the truth.”

At least in part, what Col. Jessup refers to is the perceived need to do horrible things in the service of this country, as well as actually taking actions that would be perceived by most people as despicable -- killing children, bombing families going peacefully about their daily lives, destroying homes. Sometimes such deeds are purposeful, other times accidental. But all take a toll on the human psyche.

Our fighting men and women are not super humans, unfazed by what they do as members of the military. They are not playing video games for the highest score. They are placed in life-and-death situations in the service of their country.

What they do sometimes makes them lose their moorings. Sometimes it makes them sick. Sometimes it leads them to make wrong choices. No matter what some military leaders may claim, they are not weaklings or cowards if their mental and physical health deteriorates. They are human.

Twenty-two veterans of our wars commit suicide each day. That should be sufficient for anyone to understand how wrong it is to compel our military men and women to do what we have made them do, and then discard them.

It is long past time to start treating our service men and women as the sentient human beings they are. We should not expect more from them than the human mind and body can be reasonably expected to endure. When we do ask them to commit horrible deeds, we need to expect that some of them will not respond to their experiences well.

For these, and all the rest, we need a system that is compassionate, not one that is operated by the self-righteous and arrogant. We need to stop punishing people for the logical consequences of what we require them to do.

If our politicians really care about the service and sacrifice of our military members, they will change a system that is unfair, degrading, and inhumane into one based on what we know about human psychology, neurology, and physiology. We will stop treating these service men and women as automatons and recognize that what they have become is partly, if not largely, a result of what we had them do.

We will take some responsibility for their circumstances and do our best to make up for our own transgressions manifest in the tasks we gave them. It is the very least that should be expected of a great country.

As many veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan said one year ago at a rally in Chicago, it is long past the time that we should “Honor the Dead, Heal the Wounded, Stop the Wars.”

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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22 May 2013

Jack A. Smith : Afghanistan's Karzai Lets Cat Out of the Bag

Afghan president Hamid Karzai. Photo by Massoud Hossaini / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images.

But then, again...
Afghan War may end by 2024

Washington evidently was taken aback by Karzai’s unexpected public revelations that made it clear President Obama is anxious, not hesitant, to keep American troops in Afghanistan.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / May 23, 2013

Hamid Karzai has let the Pentagon’s cat out of the bag -- to the displeasure of the Obama Administration. The Afghan president revealed inside information about President Obama’s war plans after all U.S. “combat troops” completely withdraw in 17 months at the end of 2014.

As was known in recent years, the Obama Administration actually plans to keep troops in Afghanistan after the “withdrawal,” at least to 2024. They won’t be “combat troops,” so Obama didn’t actually mislead the American people. Instead they are to be Special Forces troops, who certainly engage in combat but are identified by a different military designation, as well as U.S. Army trainers for the Afghan military, CIA contingents, drone operators, and various other personnel.

The White House has kept other details secret, such as troop numbers and basing arrangements, until it is certain a final Strategic Partnership Declaration is worked out with the Kabul government. When that occurs, the White House expects to make the announcement itself at a time of its choosing, sculpting the information to convey the impression that another 10 years of fighting is not actually war but an act of compassion for a besieged ally who begs for help.

On May 9, however, during a speech at Kabul University, President Karzai decided to update the world on the progress he was making in his secret talks with the U.S., evidently without Washington’s knowledge.

“We are in very serious and delicate negotiations with America," Karzai said. "America has got its demands, Afghanistan too has its own demands, and its own interests... They want nine bases across Afghanistan. We agree to give them the bases.

"Our conditions are that the U.S. intensify efforts in the peace process [i.e., talks with the Taliban], strengthen Afghanistan's security forces, provide concrete support to the economy -- power, roads and dams -- and provide assistance in governance. If these are met, we are ready to sign the security pact."

Washington evidently was taken aback by Karzai’s unexpected public revelations that made it clear President Obama is anxious, not hesitant, to keep American troops in Afghanistan. Few analysts thought there would be as many as nine bases. Neither the White House nor State Department confirmed requesting them but both emphasized that any bases in question were not intended to be permanent, as though that’s the principal factor.

If American engagement lasts until 2024 it will mean the U.S. has been involved in Afghan wars for most of the previous 46 years. It began in 1978 when Washington (and Saudi Arabia) started to finance the right wing Islamist mujahedeen uprising against a left wing pro-Soviet government in Kabul. The left regime was finally defeated in 1992 and the Taliban emerged as the dominant force among several other fighting groups in the mid-90s.

The CIA remained active in Afghanistan and was joined by the rest of the U.S. war machine weeks after the September 11, 2000, terror attacks in Washington and New York. The objective was to overthrow the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda, which also emerged from the Washington-financed wars. The U.S. swiftly took control of Kabul and al-Qaeda fled to Pakistan. Since then, the American foreign legion has been fought to a stalemate by a much smaller poorly equipped guerrilla force, which is where the situation remains today.

Negotiations with the Taliban

The U.S. has engaged in secret talks with the Taliban off and on for a couple of years. The hope is that the Taliban will agree to stop fighting and subordinate itself to the Kabul government in return for money, and a certain amount of administrative and political power within the national and certain provincial governments.

The Taliban will agree to nothing at this stage but an immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces and the closure of bases. The White House evidently thinks that a combination of U.S.-trained Afghan forces plus the remaining Americans might bring their opponents to the bargaining table. The nine bases also provide the U.S. with a strong bargaining chip to relinquish at the right time.

Washington has additional reasons for remaining in Afghanistan, as we wrote in the May 31, 2011, issue of the Activist Newsletter -- and little has changed:

The U.S. has no desire to completely withdraw from its only foothold in Central Asia, militarily positioned close to what are perceived to be its two main enemies with nuclear weapons (China, Russia), and two volatile nuclear powers backed by the U.S. but not completely under its control by any means (Pakistan, India). Also, this fortuitous geography is flanking the extraordinary oil and natural gas wealth of the Caspian Basin and energy-endowed former Soviet Muslim republics such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Lastly, Iran -- a possible future imperial prize -- is situated directly across Afghanistan’s western border.

The U.S. wants to keep troops nearby for any contingency. Washington’s foothold in Central Asia is a potential geopolitical treasure, particularly as Obama, like Bush before him, seeks to prevent Beijing and Moscow from extending their influence in what is actually their own back yard, not America’s.

Soon after this was written the Obama Administration revealed its “pivot” to Asia. Remaining in Central Asia is now part of what we have called America’s “ring of fire” around China, singeing North Korea as well.

Karzai occasionally makes strong public statements that criticize the U.S. They seem mainly intended to bolster his position by showing the Afghan people he is not Uncle Sam’s total puppet, but he’s to be praised for these statements.

For example, he often complains openly when the U.S. commits war crimes in his country, which have been numerous. He has demanded the U.S. discontinue night raids on homes. In late February, according to the Guardian, he ordered “U.S. Special Forces to leave one of Afghanistan’s most restive provinces, Maidan Wardak, after receiving reports from local officials claiming that the elite units had been involved in the torture and disappearance of Afghan civilians.”

He recently charged that Washington was allowing the Taliban to increase its violence to make it necessary for him to approve the U.S. demand to remain until 2024.

The issue of Karzai

The issue of Karzai.

Washington named Karzai acting president soon after the Bush Administration’s aggressive invasion 12 years ago. His job was to serve the interests of the United States while governing Afghanistan.

Karzai was elected president with decisive U.S. backing two years later. The Obama Administration maneuvered to oust him in the 2009 election, charging him with gross corruption, but its candidate withdrew just before the voting. Karzai legally cannot run for another term, but intends to continue playing a powerful role if he can pull it off.

Karzai is shrewd and realizes America’s intentions are far more corrupt than his own because he only wants money, power, and a somewhat better deal for Afghanistan, while the hypocritical U.S. wants everything there is to grab for its own geopolitical interests.

He has long been on the CIA’s generous payroll and also distributes payoffs to various warlords, some of whom are closer to the CIA than to the government. A week before the 2001 invasion the CIA was inside the country smuggling money to the warlords to join the impending war on the Taliban.

The White House dislikes the Afghan leader but he’s all they have at the moment. They desperately need him now, particularly until signing a final agreement on having U.S. troops remain until 2024. President Obama well remembers his humiliation when Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rejected demands to keep troops in Iraq after the “withdrawal” date, December 30, 2011.

Obama pressured Maliki for years to permit up to 30,000 U.S. troops in Iraq after the “combat troops” pulled out. In mid-October 2011 the Iraqi leader finally accepted 3,000 to 5,000 troops in a training-only capacity. The Iraqis then insisted that they remain largely confined to their bases, and refused Washington’s demand to grant legal immunity to the soldiers when they entered the larger society.

That was the deal-breaker. Washington routinely demands legal exemption for its foreign legions as a matter of imperial hubris, and would not compromise. The day after the deal collapsed, Obama issued a public statement intended to completely conceal his failure. "Today,” he said, “I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year."

The deal with Kabul

Several important issues in the Washington-Kabul post-2014 negotiations seem to have been decided, including a U.S. payment of at least $10 billion a year to train and pay for some 400,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers. Among the remaining issues are two of considerable importance -- troop strength and legal immunity for American personal (both for soldiers and tens of thousands of U.S. “contractors” who will remain in the country).

Reports circulated in the last few months that between 3,000 and 20,000 U.S. troops, mainly Special Forces, CIA contingents, drone operators and contractors of various kinds, will remain after 2014. The main air cover is expected to come from Navy aircraft carriers probably stationed in the Arabian Sea or Indian Ocean. Drones are expected to play a major role in battle as well as surveillance. Last year there were some 400 drone attacks in Afghanistan and that number is expected to continue increasing.

The New York Times reported January 3 that

Gen. John R. Allen, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, has submitted military options to the Pentagon that would keep 6,000 to 20,000 American troops in Afghanistan after 2014... With 6,000 troops, defense officials said, the American mission would largely be a counterterrorism fight of Special Operations commandos who would hunt down insurgents. There would be limited logistical support and training for Afghan security forces. With 10,000 troops, the United States would expand training of Afghan security forces. With 20,000 troops, the Obama administration would add some conventional Army forces to patrol in limited areas.

The May 11 New York Times reported that

The Obama administration has yet to decide how large a force it would like to keep in Afghanistan, but administration officials have signaled that it is unlikely to total more than 10,000 service members. They said it was more important now to hash out a range of issues, like whether American troops would continue to have legal immunity in Afghanistan after next year, than to talk about the specifics of where troops would be based.

The big remaining issue is immunity for U.S. personnel. Our guess is that, unlike in Iraq -- where conditions are far different -- Washington will find a way around the issue. It is difficult to see how the Kabul government of Karzai or his successor in next year’s elections can survive for long without substantial American financial support for a prolonged period.

The world as battleground

American forces are engaged in Obama’s drone wars in western Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and soon Africa. Regime change in Libya would not have occurred had the Obama Administration refused to participate. President Obama has been fanning the flames of regime change in Syria for nearly two years, and now he’s about to up the ante.

He’s strangling Iran with unjust sanctions and keeps warning that war is possible. He calls Hezbollah, the Shia self-defense organization in Lebanon, a terrorist organization, as he does Hamas in Gaza, the victim of overwhelming Israeli hatred and violence. And now Obama in moving more military power to East Asia to confront China.

If George W. Bush was in the White House today, a huge American peace movement would be out on the streets demanding an end to America’s endless immoral wars. But now a Democrat officiates in the Oval Office, his Nobel Peace Prize wisely hidden in a dark closet lest his militarist propensities provoke an unseemly contrast.

Obama’s many wars are but extensions of Bush’s wars plus killer drones, but the great majority of Americans either seem to have forgotten or simply don’t care about the wars, even though their tax money will amount to $80 billion for Afghanistan in fiscal 2014. Meanwhile, Pentagon generals anticipate various new wars of one kind or another well into the future. The battle against al-Qaeda is expected to last 20 more years. The world has become America’s battlefield.

Afghanistan? Didn’t we have a war there once? Oh, that’s right, it ended when we got rid of Bush, didn’t it?

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.]

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04 September 2013

Rabbi Arthur Waskow : Drop Gas Masks, Not Bombs

Ron Jacobs : Cruise Missile Morality

16 July 2013

Steve Russell : Unfriendly Fire at Fort Hood

25 June 2013

Ron Jacobs : Onward, Through the Fog of War

20 June 2013

Harry Targ : Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, Again!

Jack A. Smith : Obama, China, and the Middle East

05 June 2013

Tom Hayden : Can Obama 'Rein In' His Presidency?

30 May 2013

Lamar W. Hankins : We Must Heal Our Wounded Vets

22 May 2013

Jack A. Smith : Afghanistan's Karzai Lets Cat Out of the Bag

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