Author Archives: Paul Woodward

Trump takes cue from Assad by casting critics as terrorists

A couple of days ago, a Syrian-American tweeted:


Even though Trump didn’t make the call, he clearly has no shame in following Assad’s example by accusing a protester of having ties to ISIS after rushing the stage at a Dayton rally.


Needless to say, Trump’s accusation is baseless, as Heavy.com reports:

Tommy Dimassimo, a student at Wright State University in Dayton, has been an avid supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on social media.

The video [which Trump tweeted] seems to have been created by a troll, the same person who started a Facebook page called “Tommy dimassimo wasn’t hugged enough as a kid.”

The Arabic caption on the original video appears to be a joke, including a phrase that roughly translates to saying Dimassimo thought he’d be a big man by standing on the American flag, but really has a small penis.

When George Bush launched the war on terrorism, his rhetoric was a bountiful gift to tyrants around the world. In its response to 9/11, the U.S. had effectively issued a free license for global political oppression which could henceforth all be conducted in the name of fighting terrorism.

Donald Trump has brought that gift back home and anyone who wonders how he would operate as president, merely needs to see how he now demonizes his adversaries.

Yet among some reactionary anti-imperialists, there is a notion that, bad as Trump might be, Hillary Clinton would be worse. Clinton is supposedly the ultimate war-maker whereas Trump strangely gets cast as some sort of man of peace.

For instance, at Counterpunch, William Blum says of Trump:

He speaks of Russia and Vladimir Putin as positive forces and allies, and would be much less likely to go to war against Moscow than Clinton would.

On the Syrian dictator, Trump said last September: “Assad, to me, looks better than the other side,” and in January he claimed that Clinton and Obama “created ISIS.”

Those who want to see Trump as an anti-interventionist should note that in the same speech in Biloxi, Mississippi, he proudly asserted in front of a crowd of thousands of supporters, “I am the most militaristic person in this room.”

On the nuclear deal that Obama struck with Iran, Trump warns: “I will police that [deal], to a level that they [Iran] will not believe even exists.”

Anyone who thinks that a president Trump who has vowed to expand America’s military strength would turn out to be a stabilizing influence in the world, seems to be indulging in wishful thinking.

But let’s suppose that Trump did indeed turn out not to start any wars overseas, there isn’t a shred of evidence that he has the capacity to be the “great unifier” at home that he claims to be.

Trump builds unity in the same way that every tyrant employs: by fomenting hatred of the enemy.

The enemy is a revolving target. It alternates between immigrants, Muslims, the media, China, and now, disruptive protesters.

The result of this approach is always the same: division.

Although he keeps on winning primary after primary, Trump is viewed across America more unfavorably than any other major candidate — and yet he’s likely to become the Republican nominee.

He may even become president. As he correctly says, Clinton’s supporters lack “fervor,” while Bernie Sanders faces a struggle in the Democrat delegate count.

The risk is that out of cynicism about the political process, or out of a sense perhaps that America might be getting what it deserves, Trump’s half-hearted critics may hand him power — power gained not because of the breadth of his support but because too many people underestimated the threat he poses to this country.

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Most Israeli Jews think they deserve preferential treatment — almost half favor ethnic cleansing

Universally, the targets of discrimination are more conscious of being treated unfairly than are the perpetrators of discrimination. Israel is no exception.

A new Pew Research report includes the following findings:

Roughly one-third of Muslims report having experienced at least one incident of discrimination in the past 12 months

Whereas only 21% of Israeli Jews see “a lot” of discrimination against Muslims, 79% of Israeli Arabs (Muslim and non-Muslim) do.

Vast majority of Arabs see 'a lot' of discrimination against Muslims

Perhaps the reason so few Israeli Jews see discrimination is because so many believe that as Jews, they deserve preferential treatment.

Most Jews say Israel should give preferential treatment to Jews

For half of Israeli Jews, a privileged status is apparently not enough — they would like to see Arab Israelis kicked out.

Majorities of Haredim, Datim agree Arabs should be expelled

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Trump on ISIS: ‘You have to play the game the way they’re playing the game’

When the Bush administration developed its torture program, it deployed legal arguments to obscure the fact that the techniques being used, such as waterboarding, were indeed forms of torture.

Where it appears to have been non-deceptive was in claiming that the purpose — ill-conceived as this might have been — was gathering intelligence. (Abu Graib, on the other hand, demonstrated the inevitable proliferation of abuse that followed from presidentially sanctioned torture.)

The use of extreme methods was justified, the proponents of what were euphemistically described as “harsh interrogation techniques” said, because of the magnitude of threat posed by terrorist plots.

In contrast, when Donald Trump talks about torture and about reducing the legal restrictions on what is currently permitted, he’s not talking about interrogation. He’s talking about the use of torture as a weapon of intimidation.

ISIS doesn’t decapitate its captives in order to extract information. It’s use of brutality is designed to intimidate its opponents and to force populations into submission.

Like ISIS, Trump sees all things in terms of the power dynamics of domination.

Since brutality has been one of the most effective weapons in ISIS’s arsenal, when Trump says, “You have to play the game the way they’re playing the game,” he is arguing that the United States needs to become as capable of provoking terror as are any of the terrorists it wants to combat.

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Donald Trump’s strongman strategy

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To the mild frustration of reporters and commentators, Donald Trump has thus far run a presidential campaign that is virtually content-free when it comes to policy substance.

The main thing he promises to deliver if he becomes president is Donald Trump. He isn’t asking voters to support what he stands for; he wants Americans to support him.

And as for why anyone should support him, his reason is plain: I’m the man. I’m stronger than anyone who tries to challenge me. I can make America great because I am great.

Each time Trump casually generates outrage, he demonstrates his growing power. He parades his ability to act without constraint and baits the media which promptly and obediently declares, “this time Trump’s gone too far.”

Yet as both he and they know, on the contrary, he’s just shown that none of his rivals or critics have the power to rein him in. Like a boxing champion, he continues waiving his fist in the air to the delight of his admirers.

When Trump refused to disavow the Ku Klux Klan this weekend, did this have anything to do with his views about the KKK? I very much doubt it. Instead, it much more likely revealed what he thinks of Jake Tapper and CNN. Trump wasn’t about to jump through a disavowal hoop on the command of a journalist.

Trump has made it abundantly clear how he views the media, not only through his countless verbal expressions of contempt, but also through demeaning the press at campaign rallies by forcing them into pens, like farmyard animals — a humiliation that news organizations accept because of their own greed.

Since Trump is running as a strongman for America, all he has to do is pick fights and win them. It doesn’t matter what the fight is about — just that he’s the one who comes out on top.

When the pope seemed to be picking a fight with him, Trump backed down — that was a fight that offered no reward.

When Trump runs as the Republican candidate in the general election, he won’t need to be the most popular candidate in order to win — he’ll just need to get the most votes. In other words, it probably won’t matter who he is running against if he is successful in generating a higher turnout from his supporters than that of his opponent.

In this regard, Trump’s trump card is the fact that he mostly appeals to Americans who are loyal to strong leaders and obedient to their commands.

Last month, Max Ehrenfreund wrote:

One of the reasons that Donald Trump has flummoxed pollsters and political analysts is that his supporters seem to have nothing in common. He appeals to evangelical and secular voters, conservative and moderate Republicans, independents and even some Democrats. Many of his supporters are white and don’t have a college degree, but he also does well with some highly educated voters, too.

What’s bringing all these different people together, new research shows, is a shared type of personality — a personality that in many ways has nothing to do with politics. Indeed, it turns out that your views on raising children better predict whether you support Trump than just about anything else about you.

Matthew MacWilliams, a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, conducted a poll in which Republicans were asked four questions about child-rearing. With each question, respondents were asked which of two traits were more important in children:

  • independence or respect for their elders;
  • curiosity or good manners;
  • self-reliance or obedience;
  • being considerate or being well-behaved.

Psychologists use these questions to identify people who are disposed to favor hierarchy, loyalty and strong leadership — those who picked the second trait in each set — what experts call “authoritarianism.” That many of Trump’s supporters share this trait helps explain the success of his unconventional candidacy and suggests that his rivals will have a hard time winning over his adherents.

When it comes to politics, authoritarians tend to prefer clarity and unity to ambiguity and difference. They’re amenable to restricting the rights of foreigners, members of a political party in the minority and anyone whose culture or lifestyle deviates from their own community’s.

“For authoritarians, things are black and white,” MacWilliams said. “Authoritarians obey.”

When Donald Trump calls out his troops on November 8, they will obey.

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The politics of greed: Disney blocks Leonardo DiCaprio’s message on climate change

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Truth Dig reports: Upon being named winner of the 2016 Oscar for best actor for his leading role in the Alejandro Innaritu-directed film “The Revenant,” Leonardo DiCaprio, a committed environmental activist with a long record of backing campaigns, led the political charge at the awards show and pleaded with listeners to “work collectively together and stop procrastinating” and take action to stop climate change.

“Making The Revenant was about man’s relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history,” DiCaprio said. “Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.”

DiCaprio even urged support for political candidates who do not rely on corporations and their interest groups to finance their campaigns. That appears to be an endorsement of candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, as opposed to Hillary Clinton and most of the Republicans.

“We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this. For our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed … Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted.” [Continue reading…]

The YouTube clip of DiCaprio’s acceptance speech used by Truth Dig has been blocked by Disney Enterprises Inc — apparently they are more concerned about copyright infringement than they are about climate change. But this isn’t the first time the actor has spoken on this issue. To hear him speak at slightly greater length, watch his 2014 address to the UN in New York:

The Guardian adds: Over the last few years, DiCaprio has steadily donated his celebrity – and at least $30m in funding according to his foundation – to help advance the United Nations climate negotiations, protect coral reefs and tigers, and spread public awareness about the dangers of climate change.

The actor has become a fixture at events focused on global challenges since 2014, dropping in at the Davos economic forum to pick up an award last January, and holding a private chat on the sidelines with Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary general, on the sidelines of the Paris climate negotiations last December. [Continue reading…]

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Living under business surveillance in America

One of the ironies of Libertarianism in America is its soft-spot for Capitalism — as though anything that brands itself free, like free-enterprise, actually promotes freedom. Libertarians never tire of warning about the threats posed by the NSA and other intrusive government agencies, while the coercive and covert power of commerce generates far less fury.

Yet anyone who is genuinely concerned about infringements on civil liberties through electronic systems of surveillance, probably needs to be more wary of business than they are of government.

Most of the data the government collects gets poured into digital black holes — the data being collected for business applications, however, is constantly being mined to extract all its value.

Government might be watching you, but business is telling you where to go.

The New York Times reports: Pass a billboard while driving in the next few months, and there is a good chance the company that owns it will know you were there and what you did afterward.

Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, which has tens of thousands of billboards across the United States, will announce on Monday that it has partnered with several companies, including AT&T, to track people’s travel patterns and behaviors through their mobile phones.

By aggregating the trove of data from these companies, Clear Channel Outdoor hopes to provide advertisers with detailed information about the people who pass its billboards to help them plan more effective, targeted campaigns. With the data and analytics, Clear Channel Outdoor could determine the average age and gender of the people who are seeing a particular billboard in, say, Boston at a certain time and whether they subsequently visit a store. [Continue reading…]

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Syria and Barack Obama’s surplus powerlessness

Fred Hof writes: In his excellent Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, Joby Warrick quotes White House wordsmith Benjamin Rhodes as saying, “I think, candidly, that a lot of people have used this debate to position themselves for posterity as being for doing something in Syria when in fact it wouldn’t have made much difference.” Leave aside that the use of the word “candidly” is an indicator that the thought articulated is anything but candid. Leave aside the broad brush nature of the accusation. What is important is not the view of a staffer, but that of his boss. If President Obama thinks that his critics are poseurs and their ideas are all useless, what does it imply about his willingness to correct a disastrous course during the time left to him in the presidency?

Mr. Kerry too is perfectly free to claim that nary a “realistic alternative” has been offered by critics. This critic takes special exception to the claim. What is important, however, is whether or not the President of the United States recognizes that a significant policy shift is required. What is critical is whether or not he is energizing his national security apparatus to produce alternatives for his consideration. If he is satisfied with the present course, if he is at peace with the political implications for allies of Syria emptying itself, and if he is satisfied that mass murder in Syria can go unanswered on the grounds that it is not genocide, then it will likely be up to his successor to stop digging and eventually climb out of the hole. [Continue reading…]

The phrase, surplus powerlessness, comes from Michael Lerner, who in his 1991 book of the same name, defined it this way:

the set of feelings and beliefs that make people think of themselves as even more powerless than the actual power situation requires, and then leads them to act in ways that actually confirm them in their powerlessness.

Lerner describes the shift from idealism to cynicism that has shaped the thinking of so many of our generation — including a president who once in office, traded hope for realism:

The cynical chic that dominates social and political discourse in the 1990s — and which finds its highest expression in the elitist put-downs of all forms of idealism that weekly emanate from The New Republic, national columnists, and television news commentators and analysts — is a defensive compensation for the pain that many people experienced when they found that their unrealistic hopes for total transformation could not immediately be gratified. The tendency of the mass media to foster a desire for immediate gratification of all our desires made many people expect that the minute they could formulate the notion of a very different kind of world, the moment they could see its importance and desirability, they should be able to achieve it without too much struggle. A year or two, perhaps. But if nothing happened that quickly, then perhaps nothing would ever happen, and the very possibility of things changing must be an illusion. How quickly the demand for instant gratification turns revolutionaries into cynics. Suddenly the Saddam Husseins and Mu’ammar Qaddafis, the virulent nationalists of Eastern Europe, the totalitarian oppressors in China, the multinational firms that seem to have little compassion for the communities they uproot or destroy or the ecology they pollute in pursuit of their profits — all seem to be inevitable, as though built into the structure of necessity. All we can do as individuals, we begin to believe, is to become “realistic,” which is to say, to act in the same selfish and self-centered way as everyone else, expecting that anyone who can will hurt us if we don’t get the advantage first.

The power of an American president can be overstated and yet the description — most powerful man on Earth — remains true, even at this time of dwindling American power.

The president might view Syria as though he is no different from the millions of other onlookers who feel powerless to influence events and yet his posture has always involved the exercise of choice.

Some might argue that Obama now serves as a much needed role model in a rare, unappreciated virtue: American humility.

I suspect, however, that the lesson more commonly drawn from his example will be that presidents can’t actually accomplish much. Having fueled hope, he ended up breeding apathy.

Whether that turns out to be the case will likely become evident as the Bernie Sanders campaign advances.

Some of the early signs are not too promising as strong youth support fails to be matched in voter turnout.

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In Libya, Obama chose to lead from behind; in Syria it’s now feed from behind

The New York Times reports: Most of the Russian and American aircraft traversing Syria have been warplanes firing missiles and dropping bombs. But under an international agreement to aid Syrians trapped in the fighting, Russian planes will soon be dropping food in an operation partly financed by the United States.

The United Nations World Food Program will start its first airdrops in Syria in coming days, relief officials said Thursday. The main focus is Deir al-Zour, an eastern Syrian city where more than 200,000 inhabitants are ringed by forces of the Islamic State, which has made land access impossible.

Under the emergency aid agreement, truck convoys began supplying food and medicine to five besieged towns in other parts of Syria on Wednesday. Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy for the Syrian conflict who helped to negotiate the final arrangements, had hinted that airdrops were an option for areas that are unreachable by land.

The World Food Program will use aircraft provided by a Russian contractor for the drops, which are conducted by parachute from high altitudes, said Bettina Luescher, a spokeswoman for the agency. [Continue reading…]

If the U.S. administration wanted to salvage a few crumbs of credibility among the Syrians who it has otherwise deserted, it could have seized this opportunity in public diplomacy — just as the Russians have.

It’s all very well to say that getting aid to those in need is more important than taking credit, but somehow, I doubt very much that U.S. decision-making at this juncture has been guided by humility. Moreover, Russia’s interest in taking the lead is surely guided by its own desire to do exactly what the Assad regime has in its long-running manipulation of UN aid distribution: support it’s military strategy by steering aid towards its own supporters.

Obama might persist in his passive approach to Syria because he sees himself as the choreographer of America’s departure from the Middle East, but walking away is much easier said than done.

Syria has become a global crisis precisely because so many governments and populations outside the conflict thought it could be ignored or viewed calmly from a comfortable distance.

Meanwhile, many of those who in the past argued most vehemently against Western intervention have since become cheerleaders of Russia’s intervention — erstwhile anti-militarists who turn out to be secret admirers of Vladamir Putin’s muscularity.

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Pope Francis and the Republican Party’s unchristian values

Religion should be kept out of politics — unless we’re talking about abortion, gay marriage, family values or any other issue where apparently it’s reasonable for religion to enter politics.

But for an Argentine pope to shove his nose into a U.S. presidential election, ranks in audacity close to Fidel Castro threatening America.

No doubt there are lots of Republicans who are convinced that Francis is really just a commie dressed in white — another Latino revolutionary out to stir up trouble.

In fact, the remarks the pope made yesterday that were reported as an attack on Trump were simply a rather basic enunciation of Christian values — as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount.

Maybe the Republicans would prefer the pope to refrain from preaching altogether. They might be happier if henceforth he simply be the Catholic church’s chief smiley face.

Michael Sean Winters writes: The difference could not be more stark. Pope Francis, in Ciudad Juarez yesterday, called for justice for migrants and an economic structure that serves people before profits and measures its health by the degree to which it includes everybody. Meanwhile, the Republican party’s presidential candidates are falling all over themselves to see who can be the toughest on immigration and the idea that profit is not the final arbiter of economic relations is viewed not just skeptically but as a kind of heresy.

The pope gave three talks in Ciudad Juarez, one to prisoners, one to workers, and a sermon at a Mass alongside the border with the United States. All three were a kind of rhetorical photographic negative of the attitudes we see championed by today’s Republican Party. [Continue reading…]

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How to lose sight of war crime immorality

msf-hospital

After the U.S. dropped bombs on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Afghan city of Kunduz on October 3, Glenn Greenwald wrote:

Doctors who travel to dangerous war zones to treat injured human beings are regarded as noble and trustworthy. They’re difficult to marginalize and demonize. They give compelling, articulate interviews in English to U.S. media outlets. They are heard, and listened to.

MSF has used this platform, unapologetically and aggressively. Its staff are clearly infuriated by the attack on their hospital and the deaths of their colleagues and patients. From the start, they have signaled an unwillingness to be shunted away with the usual “collateral damage” banalities and, more important, have refused to let the U.S. military and its allies get away with spouting obvious falsehoods.

Greenwald shared MSF’s disgust in response to statements which amounted to justifications for war crimes.

Following the latest airstrikes on MSF hospitals in Syria, Greenwald’s reaction has so far been much more muted. It has yet to go beyond a couple of tweets which rather than being directed at the likely culprit of these war crimes, Russia, focus instead on the hypocrisy of the U.S. government.


Indeed, the U.S. can’t credibly denounce Russia for bombing MSF hospitals in Syria when it has done the same in Afghanistan.

By the same token, however, how can Greenwald credibly denounce American war crimes if he’s going to refrain from denouncing Russia’s?

He can’t be accused of being a hypocritical U.S. official. He doesn’t represent the American government.

Maybe at the moment he’s suspending judgment about who was responsible for the latest airstrikes in Syria — even though MSF says the attack was “deliberate” and says “either the [Syrian] government or Russia” was “clearly” responsible:


That’s a pointless question in this case since as far as Russia is concerned, there is nothing to investigate.

As TASS reports:

Asked for a comment regarding reports a hospital in Syria’s Idlib province had been bombed, as well as claims the Russian air group was responsible, [Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry] Peskov invited everybody to rely “on the root source first and foremost.” “In this particular case the representatives of Syrian authorities are the root source,” he said.

Peskov recalled that Syria’s ambassador to Russia, Riyadh Haddad, said on Tuesday the hospital in Idlib province was destroyed by the Americans, and not the Russian air group.

If Greenwald actually believed Haddad’s claim, I would expect him to be now denouncing U.S. airstrikes on MSF hospitals in Syria, but he isn’t — most likely because he realizes the Syrian ambassador was spouting obvious falsehoods.

Instead, Greenwald’s primary interest is in using these war crimes as an opportunity to take shots at the U.S. government — even though as Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and others have documented, attacks on medical facilities are neither accidental nor incidental to the conflict: they are an integral feature of the war strategy used by Assad and his allies.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine in December, doctors with PHR said:

Since the conflict began in 2011, PHR has documented the killings of 679 medical personnel, 95% of them perpetrated by government forces. Some personnel were killed in bombings of their hospitals or clinics; some were shot dead; at least 157 were executed or tortured to death.

The issue here is that anyone who wants to resolutely challenge American double standards needs, for the sake of credibility, to avoid having their own double standards on war crimes.

As for the notion that Greenwald, as an American, has a duty to challenge his own government rather than Russia’s, he might pause to consider that his tweets and articles probably attract more attention in the Kremlin than they do in the White House.

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Russian airstrikes targeted hospitals: ‘The planes returned several times,’ says eyewitness

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Syria Direct reports: Reported Russian airstrikes knocked three hospitals in northern Syria out of service on Monday, depriving more than 5,000 patients a month of care ahead of the deadline for a “cessation of hostilities” deal worked out between major powers at last week’s annual Munich Security.

The ceasefire, notably, excludes the Islamic State in addition to Jabhat a-Nusra, one of the lead factions in the Victory Army that controls nearly all of Idlib province.

Two hospitals, one belonging to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), were bombed in Idlib province on Monday. A third, a women and children’s hospital in the city of Azaz near the Turkish border, was also hit.

The National Hospital, also in Maarat al-Nuaman, was bombed shortly after the strikes on the MSF facility, Amjed al-Idlibi, a first responder with the Civil Defense who worked to extract the dead and wounded, told Syria Direct Tuesday.

“Both hospitals were hit directly…the planes returned several times to conduct air raids, with roughly 10 minutes between each raid,” said al-Idlibi. He said that the planes were Russian. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, Russia’s TASS reports: The Kremlin has dismissed as unacceptable the allegations the Russian air group in Syria has destroyed a hospital in Syria.

“We are strongly against such claims, the more so, since each time those who come up with such charges prove unable to somehow confirm their groundless accusations,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Asked for a comment regarding reports a hospital in Syria’s Idlib province had been bombed, as well as claims the Russian air group was responsible, Peskov invited everybody to rely “on the root source first and foremost.” “In this particular case the representatives of Syrian authorities are the root source,” he said.

Peskov recalled that Syria’s ambassador to Russia, Riyadh Haddad, said on Tuesday the hospital in Idlib province was destroyed by the Americans, and not the Russian air group. [Continue reading…]

Note the reasoning of the propagandists: The allegations that the airstrikes on hospitals were carried out by Russia are firstly dismissed as “groundless accusations” and secondly dismissed by repeating a groundless accusation made by Syria’s ambassador to Russia — that these were U.S. airstrikes.

Unfortunately, there exists an uncritical audience all too willing to swallow this kind of shameless lying and tortured reasoning.

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Obama called Putin and Putin agreed to carry on taking calls from Obama

Following a phone conversation between President Obama and President Putin “to discuss the decisions and agreements made at the February 11 meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG),” the White House said: “The leaders agreed that the United States and Russia will remain in communication on the important work of the ISSG.”

That’s it: they’ll remain in communication.

Obama can stress the importance, emphasize the importance, reiterate the importance, and do as much urging as he wants. To Putin, this is just yada yada yada.

The Washington Post reports: President Obama and Russian President Vladi­mir Putin have agreed to intensify diplomatic and military cooperation to implement a cease-fire and the delivery of aid in Syria, the Kremlin said early Sunday.

A statement from Putin’s office said that Obama initiated a telephone conversation between the two. The White House, which said the call took place Saturday, did not mention increased U.S.-Russia cooperation but said that Obama stressed the importance “of rapidly implementing humanitarian access to besieged areas.” Obama also urged Putin to cease Russia’s air campaign against “moderate opposition forces” in Syria, according to a White House statement released Sunday.

The call came amid reports that at least one siege had been broken with the first delivery of humanitarian aid to the rebel-held Douma area, east of the Syrian capital of Damascus. Douma had been cut off by government troops since 2013. A United Nations spokesperson said from Geneva, where a task force is organizing aid under an agreement reached Friday in Munich, that the Douma delivery was a previously scheduled shipment by the Syrian Red Crescent. [Continue reading…]

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For Bernie Sanders, foreign policy is an afterthought

David Ignatius writes: Sanders’s statements on Syria suggest that he would take a position embraced by many self-described realists. His first priority, he has said, would be a “broad coalition, including Russia,” to defeat the Islamic State. “Our second priority must be getting rid of [President Bashar al-Assad], through some political settlement, working with Iran, working with Russia.”

Some critics would argue that it’s immoral to make replacing a leader who used chemical weapons a secondary concern. But Sanders’s defenders could argue that foreign policy is about making clear choices, especially when they aren’t easy.

Foreign policy just hasn’t been on Sanders’s radar: His campaign website lists 22 important issues. “Income and wealth inequality” is at the top, and 19 are about domestic policy. Just three involve foreign concerns, and one of these is climate change, which Sanders has described as the biggest threat to national security.

Unease about Sanders partly reflects the fact that he seems to have no real foreign policy mentors. The Sanders campaign made comical missteps in the past few weeks when it tried to name his key foreign policy advisers. Several of them said they had briefed the candidate just once or twice; one was a full-time White House staffer. [Continue reading…]

In place of foreign policy advisers, Sanders is most likely relying on foreign policy advice: the less said, the better.

Politically, that might be sound advice during an election campaign, but it has a corrosive effect because it does nothing to challenge the affliction that always distorts the way America deals with the world: the prevailing sense that the rest of the world doesn’t matter.

Isolationists can’t effectively tackle global issues — including climate change.

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Aleppo airlift: Maybe the U.S. has not run out of options in Syria

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After I posed the question, can the U.S. take action to protect Aleppo? a reader reasonably asked: What would a productive engagement look like? Indeed.

For several years, the off-the-shelf answer to this question has included imposing a no-fly zone. The frequency with which this option has been proposed — and then ignored or dismissed — has undermined its credibility. Even so, it’s worth remembering that the northern no-fly zone enforced following the First Gulf War in 1991 provided the basis for the development of enduring Kurdish self-rule in what has since become the most stable part of Iraq. American actions in the Middle East are not always destined to make things fall apart.

The U.S. and its allies could have imposed a no-fly zone in Syria. But President Obama delayed long enough for that option to get knocked off the table by Vladimir Putin.

The latest high-profile proponents of a no-fly zone, Michael Ignatieff and Leon Wieseltier, seem to be engaged in an exercise in wishful thinking.

I don’t doubt that their outrage over American inaction is heartfelt. Even so, they gloss over the fact that since Russia now controls Syrian airspace, there isn’t the faintest chance the Obama administration would be willing to try and impose a no-fly zone because — as officials keep on saying — the U.S. isn’t going to risk starting World War Three.

Does that mean, therefore, that U.S. Syria policy now rests in the hands of John Kerry and his efforts to breath life into a political track — an approach that has little more vitality than the Middle East peace process? If that’s true, then the conventional wisdom is probably right: nothing can be done.

Dualistic thinking is always convenient. Debate gets simplified if we only have to weigh up two options. Other options are easy to marginalize, not necessarily because they are unworthy of consideration but because the debate risks becoming open-ended if too much gets brought to the table. Thus the current debate has largely been reduced to military action versus diplomacy and with the former ruled out, Kerry ends up as the embodiment of U.S. Syria policy. Unfortunately for him, diplomatic successes are much harder to accrue than frequent flier miles — especially when the U.S. has no bargaining power.

The Russians now say that they intend to carry on bombing Syria through the rest of this month while proposing a truce in March. Translated into plain English, that means they will continue bombing until their current military objectives have been accomplished.

Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin says that their airstrikes are being conducted in a “transparent manner” and says Russia’s critics are politically exploiting humanitarian issues.

“They rather crudely use humanitarian matters in order to play, we believe, a destructive role as far as the political process is concerned,” he says.

So this is Russia’s position: It claims it’s military actions are constructive while it accuses the proponents of diplomacy of undermining the political process.

No one should be in any doubt: for Assad and his powerful allies, Geneva is now just a sideshow — a useful distraction and an occasional stage for diplomatic games.

With no military options and no effective diplomacy, it’s easy to see why so many have concluded that nothing can be done.

But there’s never nothing…

In 1948, having as many as one million soldiers based in Germany, the Soviet Union tightened a blockade around Berlin. At that time, the U.S. had 31,000 combat troops in West Germany. It seemed very reasonable to conclude that there was nothing the West could do to prevent the whole of Berlin coming under the control of the Soviets. The only way of preventing that outcome was to break the blockade and launch an airlift, unprecedented in scale.

The airlift began on June 24 and was anticipated to run for three weeks. The Communist press in East Berlin mocked the project, describing it as “the futile attempts of the Americans to save face and to maintain their untenable position in Berlin.”

Over the following weeks and months, the U.S., Britain, and France, succeeding in delivering up to 6,000 tons of supplies every day, as a result of which on May 12, 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade. The operation continued through the end of September in order to amass a sufficient stockpile of supplies in the event that the airlift needed to be restarted.

In the course of the airlift’s operation, 2,326,406 tons of supplies were carried on 278,228 flights. And this was at a time that Europe was still weighed down by the economically crippling effects of World War Two.

The cost of the Berlin airlift was equivalent to less than the United States gives to Israel each year in military aid.

In August 2014, President Obama was persuaded to intervene in Iraq to provide humanitarian assistance to 40,000 Yazidis, trapped in the Sinjar Mountains, under threat from ISIS. The operation continued for a few days and the Yazidis were led to safety by Kurdish fighters from the PKK and YPG. This wasn’t reminiscent of 1948, but it was an emergency response.

At times of crisis the U.S. has often shown its willingness and capacity to make constructive interventions. (Acknowledging that fact doesn’t require we ignore America’s destructive impact on the world.)

What the U.S. did in Berlin and the Sinjar Mountains does not offer a template for humanitarian operations in Syria, although it might suggest new ways to consider the application of military resources to serve humanitarian goals.

Obama might be unwilling to risk direct conflict between American and Russian fighter jets patrolling the same skies, but when the U.S. started sending cargo planes into Berlin, in was on the assumption that the Soviets would not risk a war by attacking non-combatant aircraft. The same principle could apply to Syria. Whatever Churkin claims, delivering food, clothing, and medicine to those in need is a legitimate humanitarian endeavor.

UN Resolution 2165 was passed with Russia’s support to “ensure that humanitarian assistance, including medical and surgical supplies, reaches people in need throughout Syria through the most direct routes,” but the UN’s ability to make good on that promise is currently being obstructed by both Russia and the Assad regime.

Moreover, the UN has increasingly come under fire from Syrians who see humanitarian aid being used to support the Assad regime. “For many of us in Syria, the UN has turned from a symbol of hope into a symbol of complicity,” besieged Syrians wrote in a letter to Stephen O’Brien, the UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs.

There are cities across Syria under siege with populations facing starvation. If the U.S. was to start humanitarian airlift operations whose scope might initially be quite limited, it would send several important messages:

  • Assad’s policy of siege warfare will not continue unchallenged
  • The West has not turned its back on those Syrians now facing starvation
  • Russia is not being given a free hand in shaping Syria’s future

This isn’t a political solution for the war in Syria and the logistical challenges would be huge, but facing emergencies has more to do with the willingness to act than it has with being able to construct the perfect plan.

Discovering what is possible often requires ignoring the many ways in which one risks failing. If the Berlin airlift had been proposed on the assumption that it would need to continue for 15 months, it would most likely have been dismissed as impossible and never undertaken.

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Can the U.S. take action to protect Aleppo?

flight-from-Aleppo

Michael Ignatieff and Leon Wieseltier write: Aleppo is an emergency, requiring emergency measures. Are we no longer capable of emergency action? It is also an opportunity, perhaps the last one, to save Syria. Aleppo is the new Sarajevo, the new Srebrenica, and its fate should be to the Syrian conflict what the fate of Sarajevo and Srebrenica were to the Bosnian conflict: the occasion for the United States to bestir itself, and for the West to say with one voice, “Enough.” It was after Srebrenica and Sarajevo — and after the air campaign with which the West finally responded to the atrocities — that the United States undertook the statecraft that led to the Dayton accords and ended the war in Bosnia.

The conventional wisdom is that nothing can be done in Syria, but the conventional wisdom is wrong. There is a path toward ending the horror in Aleppo — a perfectly realistic path that would honor our highest ideals, a way to recover our moral standing as well as our strategic position. Operating under a NATO umbrella, the United States could use its naval and air assets in the region to establish a no-fly zone from Aleppo to the Turkish border and make clear that it would prevent the continued bombardment of civilians and refugees by any party, including the Russians. [Continue reading…]

Any military strategy that’s designed “to recover our moral standing” is dubious — and not simply because there are those who doubt that the U.S. possessed much the moral standing in the first place.

The effectiveness of a military strategy can’t be assessed on the basis of the worthiness of its non-military goals.

The authors in their sweeping assertion that they are offering “a perfectly realistic path,” dodge the awkward details on how this would work.

Are they assuming that once the boundaries of this no-fly zone had been defined, Russian and Syrian aircraft would then obediently comply?

Or do they assume that as soon as a few jets had been shot down the intended lesson would have swiftly been learned?

Turkey already shot down a Russian jet on the edge of this arena. What lessons, if any, have been drawn from that incident and are they now being applied to this future scenario?

“If the Russians and Syrians sought to prevent humanitarian protection and resupply of the city, they would face the military consequences,” we are told by the armchair generals.

“Military consequences” is a phrase of political bluster — especially when coming from two writers who profess no military expertise. If pressed to spell out what these military consequences might be, I expect Ignatieff and Wieseltier would defer to the actual generals.

My point here is not to dismiss the idea that at this late hour there might be a constructive military intervention in Syria, but simply to say that such an argument needs more detail and substance and fewer passionate declarations. It needs to credibly show how this would work rather than simply why it should be undertaken.

Currently, Obama administration officials are cynically curtailing all discussion about their military options by claiming that they only have two choices: start World War III or do essentially nothing (beyond repeating their mantra that their is no military solution in Syria).

“What do you want me to do, go to war with Russia?” John Kerry is reported to have asked a Syrian NGO representative in London last week.

The choice is false but it is gladly being picked up by ideological anti-interventionists who are attracted by the rhetorical utility of this device when offered to those who have little interest in questioning its validity.

To those who insist on framing this crisis in terms of World War III, I would ask two questions: What makes you think it hasn’t already begun? And why do you think its defining attribute necessarily involves a clash between the U.S. and Russia?

A world war involves global instability and a contagion of violent conflict. There are active conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, and Libya. There is unrest in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Palestine, Israel, and elsewhere.

As the EU struggles to handle the refugee crisis, European unity is being fractured, placing its future in jeopardy.

If through the power of inattention, Americans could indeed successfully insulate themselves from the effects of global strife, then perhaps this could endure as a land of blissful ignorance.

Instead, what is more predictable is that the more disengaged the U.S. becomes, the less influence it will have and the fewer options it can consider.

No one will benefit from America’s self-imposed paralysis.

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U.S. credibility is plummeting among Syrians and across the region

Josh Rogin writes: In the eyes of the Syrian opposition, Russia and Iran are making a mockery of the peace process, and Kerry’s reluctance to acknowledge this is putting them in deadly harm. It also creates more problems for America’s regional allies, aids the Islamic State and dims the prospects for future peace talks. “The failures of the negotiations end up lowering the credibility of the moderate opposition in front of the Syrian people,” said [Riyad] Hijab. [Hijab is leader of the High Negotiating Committee that represented the Syrian opposition at last week’s meetings in Geneva.] “United States credibility is plummeting within the population of Syria but also in the region as a whole.”

This week, it is Syrians near Aleppo who are paying the price. Regime forces, with Russian support, are advancing toward the Turkish border, threatening to cut off opposition groups and civilians from their source of aid. At least 35,000 people have joined the flood of refugees since the collapse of the talks, ahead of what many anticipate will be another in a long line of starvation sieges the regime is perpetrating on cities. Hijab said there are now 18 cities under siege, three more than when the talks began.

Moscow wants the peace talks to fail, Hijab said. He accused the Russian air force of using illegal cluster bombs indiscriminately against civilians. (Human rights groups support those claims.) “The situation has taken a horrible turn, specifically in terms of the scorched earth policy of the Russian aircraft and the way that they are bombing, literally destroying everything,” he said. “The other side has been moving to ensure the failure of any negotiation through horrendous bombardment.”

Hajib said the Obama administration is still pressuring the opposition to return to talks despite the ongoing offensive, but the opposition is insisting that Russia adhere by the UN resolutions first. In a press conference with reporters last week, Kerry said of the Syrian-Russian attacks on civilians, “It’s not going to stop just by whining about it.” He called on rebel leaders to return to the negotiating table. [Continue reading…]

While listening to U.S. State Department spokesmen John Kirby at yesterday’s press briefing, one might not have accused him of whining, but instead adopting President Obama’s standard position: a baseless confidence that whoever can make the most reasonable argument will win the day — as though politics conforms to the rules of a debating society.

Kerry and Obama must be very perplexed about how unreasonable it is that Russia regards bombing as more useful than diplomacy. But what is actually very unreasonable is the notion that anyone would be fooled by Washington’s toothless efforts at peacemaking.

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Putin, Assad, and the nexus of torture and terror

Assad

Last October, Patrick Cockburn welcomed the arrival of Russian forces in Syria, suggesting that the “intervention of Russia could be positive in de-escalating the war”. He wrote:

Overall, it is better to have Russia fully involved in Syria than on the sidelines so it has the opportunity to help regain control over a situation that long ago spun out of control. It can keep Assad in power in Damascus, but the power to do so means that it can also modify his behaviour and force movement towards reducing violence, local ceasefires and sharing power regionally.

Posturing as a neutral observer, Cockburn no doubt preferred the language of “de-escalation” rather than military solutions, yet having noted that “Russia is at least a heavy hitter, capable of shaping events by its own actions,” he could hardly have been surprised by the massive onslaught on Aleppo over the last few days.

After Obama’s hollow demands for Assad’s departure, Washington has now moved towards what almost amounts to a quiet alliance with the regime by shutting down what was left of a meager weapons supply to rebel groups.

As Emile Hokayem writes:

Just as Russia escalates politically and militarily, the Obama administration is cynically de-escalating, and asking its allies to do so as well. This is weakening rebel groups that rely on supply networks that the U.S. oversees: In the south, the United States has demanded a decrease in weapons deliveries to the Southern Front, while in the north, the Turkey-based operations room is reportedly dormant.

The result is a widespread and understandable feeling of betrayal in the rebellion, whose U.S.-friendly elements are increasingly losing face within opposition circles. This could have the ironic effect of fragmenting the rebellion — after years of Western governments bemoaning the divisions between these very same groups.

Assad is far from being able to declare he has won the war, but he is close to winning the argument about how it gets framed.

He always claimed that he was fighting terrorism — deploying the rhetorical gift which neoconservatism freely bestowed on authoritarian rulers around the globe after 9/11 — and before long, it looks like this is how the war in Syria will neatly be defined: the regime vs ISIS and al Qaeda. And that’s a fight Assad has no interest in winning.

Nevertheless, it’s worth being reminded why the continuation of Assad’s rule should not be mistaken as a harbinger of peace. If a year or two from now, violence no longer rains down from the sky in the form of barrel bombs and Russian airstrikes, it will most likely continue without restraint in the domain where this regime has always exercised its ruthless power: by imprisoning, torturing, and murdering its opponents.

In “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Deaths in Detention in the Syrian Arab Republic,” a newly released report for the UN Human Rights Council, we learn:

Interrogators and guards employed gruesome methods of torture to kill detainees. In 2014, a detainee held in a centre under the control of the 4th Division of the Syrian army had his genitals mutilated during torture. Bleeding severely and left without treatment, he died three days later. A detainee of a Military Security branch in Homs witnessed an elderly man being severely beaten, and then hung by his wrists from the ceiling. The guards burned his eyes with a cigarette, and pierced his body with a heated, sharp metal object. After hanging in the same position for three hours, the man died.

Other detainees died as a result of injuries and wounds sustained during torture. Victims received little or no medical care to treat the wounds and developed severe infections that eventually led to their demise. In the Air Force Intelligence Branch in Aleppo, a detainee suffered severely from an infected wound in his leg sustained during torture. Unable to stand up, he was eventually placed in the corridor outside the cell, receiving no medical care. After a few days, fellow detainees observed that he was dead. His family was later able to obtain the body through unofficial channels. Due to marks of torture and the severe emaciation of his corpse, his family could first only recognise him by an identifying tag. A 15-year-old boy detained in 2013 by the 4th Division in a detention facility near Yafour (Rif Damascus) reported seeing several male detainees dying due to torture and inhuman prison conditions and denial of medical assistance.

A large number of deaths were caused by the squalid conditions in which detainees were kept. Prison conditions were similar across detention facilities. They included severely overcrowded cells where prisoners were often forced to stand and sleep in shifts, stripped to their underwear. Lack of clean drinking water, sanitation, lice infestations and other unhygienic conditions caused the spread of disease and infections. Many prisoners were forced to use their toilet as a source of drinking water.

Anyone who believes this is “the lesser of two evils” or the kind of toughness required for “stability,” is delusional.

On the contrary, this type of institutionalized violence has long had an instrumental role in fostering terrorism.

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Invasion of the body snatchers

Jacob Weisberg writes: “As smoking gives us something to do with our hands when we aren’t using them, Time gives us something to do with our minds when we aren’t thinking,” Dwight Macdonald wrote in 1957. With smartphones, the issue never arises. Hands and mind are continuously occupied texting, e-mailing, liking, tweeting, watching YouTube videos, and playing Candy Crush.

Americans spend an average of five and a half hours a day with digital media, more than half of that time on mobile devices, according to the research firm eMarketer. Among some groups, the numbers range much higher. In one recent survey, female students at Baylor University reported using their cell phones an average of ten hours a day. Three quarters of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds say that they reach for their phones immediately upon waking up in the morning. Once out of bed, we check our phones 221 times a day — an average of every 4.3 minutes — according to a UK study. This number actually may be too low, since people tend to underestimate their own mobile usage. In a 2015 Gallup survey, 61 percent of people said they checked their phones less frequently than others they knew.

Our transformation into device people has happened with unprecedented suddenness. The first touchscreen-operated iPhones went on sale in June 2007, followed by the first Android-powered phones the following year. Smartphones went from 10 percent to 40 percent market penetration faster than any other consumer technology in history. In the United States, adoption hit 50 percent only three years ago. Yet today, not carrying a smartphone indicates eccentricity, social marginalization, or old age.

What does it mean to shift overnight from a society in which people walk down the street looking around to one in which people walk down the street looking at machines? [Continue reading…]

As one of those eccentric, socially marginalized but not quite old aged people without a smartphone, it means I now live in a world where it seems the mass of humanity has become myopic.

A driver remains stationary in front of a green light.

A couple sit next to each other in an airport, wrapped in silence with attention directed elsewhere down their mutually exclusive wormholes.

A jogger in the woods, hears no birdsong because his ears are stuffed with plastic buds delivering private tunes.

Amidst all this divided attention, one thing seems abundantly clearly: devices tap into and amplify the desire to be some place else.

To be confined to the present place and the present time is to be trapped in a prison cell from which the smartphone offers escape — though of course it doesn’t.

What it does is produce an itch in time; a restless sense that we don’t have enough — that an elusive missing something might soon appear on that mesmerizing little touchscreen.

The effect of this refusal to be where we are is to impoverish life as our effort to make it larger ends up doing the reverse.

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