“For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen — with a drone, or with a shotgun — without due process, nor should any President deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.”

In saying this during his speech yesterday at the National Defense University, Barack Obama was following the lead of his political mentor, George W Bush. Which is to say: in anticipation of the possibility that either president might at some point in the future face prosecution for crimes such as murder or torture, each has wanted to present himself as having acted in good faith while following the advice of their legal counselors.

Obama is treating “due process” as a term that can be applied in whatever novel way his administration determines it can be used. His idea of due process amounts to nothing more than a process of review, yet in the US legal system it has quite specific elements — none more important than the principle that someone accused of a crime is entitled to a defense.

Who served as Anwar Awlaki’s defense counsel before Obama decided to execute him? He had no defense. He had no due process.

In his speech, Obama made a string of accusations about Awlaki and presented them all as though they were indisputable facts. Where’s the evidence? And why should the evidence be regarded as credible if no one reviewed it other than Awlaki’s de facto prosecutors?

A New York Times editorial said: “The acknowledgment of the killing of Mr. Awlaki in 2011, and, more important, the supplying of compelling evidence that he was organizing terrorist attacks and not just preaching jihad on the Internet, was a much-needed step.”

Have the editorial writers seen this “compelling evidence” or are they, like many other journalists, making no distinction between references to evidence unseen, and the evidence itself. In other words, are they accepting the president’s word on blind faith?

Obama says he’s declassified this action, yet the documentation will most likely remain heavily redacted and the declassification thus amount to nothing more than a PR exercise.

[B]efore any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured — the highest standard we can set.

Now, this last point is critical, because much of the criticism about drone strikes — both here at home and abroad — understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties. There’s a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties and nongovernmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in every war. And for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In June 2011, when John Brennan — at that time Obama’s chief counter terrorism adviser — said that for ‘almost a year’ no civilian had been killed by drone strikes in Pakistan, he didn’t sound like a man haunted by civilian casualties; he sounded like a government official who believed he could lie with impunity. His ability to tell straight-faced lies is perhaps what made Obama think that Brennan was best qualified to become the head of the CIA.

An editorial in The Guardian says:

The speech is an attempt to invite the final curtain down on a calamitous and bloody decade-and-a-half of warfare. But the battles themselves will continue, and Mr Obama has not resiled from the past. He has largely tried to justify it.

Mr Obama’s second attempt to shut Guantánamo Bay is also studded with ifs and buts, particularly his call on Congress to allow the transfer of some of the detainees to a site in the US. Much though the words are welcome, this commander in chief’s actions will never match the expectations that he, as president, arouses in his speeches. He will restrict drones, but targeted killings are here to stay.

In the fifth year of his presidency, we should be well past the point where we naively entertain the hope that any speech Obama delivers might represent a “momentous turning point” (as the New York Times dubbed yesterday’s speech).

If Bush was the reckless “decider,” Obama can be seen as the dispassionate “observer” — the man whose speeches persist in sounding like a wishlist of the things he would do if he was president.

In South East London yesterday, when Ingrid Loyau-Kennett approached Michael Adebolajo who in his blood-drenched hands held a knife and a meat cleaver after having just murdered a British soldier, she displayed exceptional courage. But she also showed there is an alternative to trying to crush violence with greater violence: diffuse the violence by creating a space within which anger can be translated into words.

Behind most acts of political violence there are statements that the perpetrators imagine can be heard by no other means. Sometimes, all that de-escalation requires is simply to listen to whatever they have to say.

Politicians and some security experts often argue that to listen to terrorists is to capitulate to terrorism — that it is akin to being manipulated by a child’s tantrum and will “reward” terrorism.

The opposite — that refusing to listen, merely closes off alternatives to violence — can just as persuasively argued.

Indeed counter-terrorism seems as much as anything to be driven by its own counterproductive emotional logic. Terrorism emasculates the powers of the state. It makes those who struggle to prevent such violence appear impotent and thus provokes what in some ways are ritualistic displays of counter-violence.

In these displays, paradoxically, the power of the enemy has to be simultaneously inflated and thwarted. Events that are in many ways isolated and involve tiny numbers of people, get woven together into a global phenomenon: the multi-headed hydra of terrorism.

A small bomb goes off in Boston or a man is brutally cut down in London, and governments respond as though the first shot had been fired in the run up to an invasion. The more the threat is inflated, the easier it becomes to justify what objectively often constitutes a massive over-reaction.

Terrorism is political and psychological and requires a political and psychological response — a response that reflects a realistic assessment of the actual magnitude and diverse nature of the threat and a recognition that those who choose to speak with violence generally regard such violence as a means to an end.

Even if their methods have no moral justification, the issues that trigger acts of terrorism will retain the power to inspire further bloodshed for as long as governments insist that security alone must be their preeminent concern.

As Ingrid Loyau-Kennett demonstrated, there are times when it actually requires more courage to listen than it does to fight back.

Clyde Haberman, a columnist for the New York Times, seems to have more interest in telling readers what he ate for lunch, than in attempting to imagine or convey what it might be like to be force-fed — even when the ongoing hunger strike at Guantánamo features prominently in his most recent piece.

Maybe he felt like there was some delicious irony in having a conversation about America’s political prisoners — who having been offered no due process are now driven to the ultimate act of desperation — while enjoying a meal at a trendy Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village.

Haberman had invited Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University’s law school, for lunch at Morandi.

Ms. Greenberg, who said she was but an occasional visitor to the restaurant, selected the insalata di farro, or spelt salad. Her tablemate had cavatappi alla Norma, a corkscrew-shaped pasta with tomatoes, roasted eggplant and mozzarella. The main event lay ahead, though. “I only eat so that I can have dessert,” said Ms. Greenberg, a slender woman of 57. She chose the torta di ricotta with sliced strawberries, which she happily shared over coffees.

Are these the observations of a journalist who offers a richer view of the world by tossing in seemingly accidental details that add color to his reporting, or someone so steeped in the Times’ genteel culture that he hasn’t a clue when he’s portraying himself as an asshole? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

Turning to the topic at hand — the ability of America’s legal system to meet the challenge from terrorism — we learn:

Ms. Greenberg (who is not a lawyer) sides with President Obama and others who believe that by holding prisoners indefinitely at Guantánamo, this country has, as she put it, “turned its legal premises upside down.” To be practical about it, she notes that 509 terror-related cases have been settled in federal courts since Sept. 11, 2001, with a conviction rate of 89 percent, while military commissions have produced a mere seven convictions.

“Yes, I understand that self-defense is an extremely important issue,” she said. “But self-defense with a measure of wisdom would be a lot better than self-defense that screams fear and a lack of confidence in your ability to keep yourself safe.”

Her vexation extends to fearful politicians, the ones who recoiled at the Obama administration’s original plan to hold a trial in Lower Manhattan — in the shadow of the vanished towers, as it were — for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. They ignored how New York has had many terrorism trials, sometimes several at once. Throughout, the city barely blinked.

“We can take in an awful lot,” Ms. Greenberg said. “New Yorkers are tough. They’re savvy. And so are New York juries.”

There is a disquieting question that one always hesitates to ask. But it found its way unavoidably into the discussion: How is it that we have dodged suicide attacks on seemingly soft targets? A New York bus, for instance. Or, say, a supermarket, in another part of the country.

Vigilant law enforcement is a factor, Ms. Greenberg said, but something else is at work: Killing other people, not to mention oneself, is “hard to do, and hard to want to do, and hard to want to go through with it.” For the most part, she said, “human beings are constructed to stay on this side of civilized society.”

As for striking an out-of-the-way target, “it’s not really Al Qaeda’s message that you’re not safe anywhere,” she said. “Al Qaeda’s message is, ‘The United States needs to be taught a lesson.’ It’s very much focused on New York. Mayor Bloomberg’s right when he says every terrorist has a map of New York City in their pocket. It’s about the spectacle.”

In the counter-terrorism narrative with which Americans have been indoctrinated for over a decade, a massive security apparatus has been constructed which tirelessly thwarts threats, seemingly coming from every direction. The absence of another 9/11 scale attack has led many of America’s leaders to claim or accept credit for qualified success in “keeping America safe.”

Absent their efforts, had there been no war on terrorism, no massive expansion of intelligence agencies, and no hyper-focusing on asymmetric threats, could America have survived? Would its imperial power have suffered a fatal blow? I think not — and I’m reminded of a scene from Woody Allen’s Annie Hall:

Have you ever swerved out of the way as an oncoming driver who seemed intent on causing a suicidal head-on collision? No? Me neither. But it’s the kind of thing that’s very easy to imagine. And that’s what the imagination does: conjures up a million and one possibilities of events that rarely or never happen.

There are all sorts of things that are possible, but which we should never allow to govern our lives. More Americans get killed by lightening than killed by terrorism, yet that risk has not prompted an effort to protect this country with a lightening-proof dome.

So why has the terrorism threat been such an easy sell?

Rarely fatal lightening strikes, much more commonly deadly tornadoes, devastating hurricanes, and occasional earthquakes are all viewed as dangers that Americans will always face. But terrorism is the great other which taps into this nation’s pervasive xenophobia and fosters a sense of America’s inner light by placing darkness on the outside. Terrorism makes Americans feel good as they tell themselves the greatest forces of evil all emanate from elsewhere.

Keep fear on a slow simmer and then we can all be reassured that our money’s being well spent, keeping us safe.

“So many foreign fighters have joined the Syrian insurgency that one wonders if their [sic] is role left for any indigenous Syrian insurgent,” writes “Bernhard” at Moon of Alabama today. To back up this “observation”, he cites nine news reports each referring to the presence of several hundred (or less) foreigners fighting in Syria.

A report last month from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation based at King’s College London acknowledged that there was “no ‘true census’ of foreign fighters” but nevertheless attempted an empirical analysis “based on more than 450 sources in the Western and Arab media as well as the martyrdom notices that have been posted in jihadist online forums.”

The report stated:

The Syrian government has — at various times and for different reasons — claimed that many fighters that are involved in the current conflict are foreigners. Our numbers do not support this assertion.

Even when juxtaposing the most liberal estimate for the number of foreign fighters over the course of the entire conflict (5,500) with the most conservative estimate for the current size of rebel forces (60,000), foreigners would represent less than 10 per cent. The actual figure is likely to be lower.

An empirical analysis based on hundreds of news reports along with other sources has its limitations, but it should carry a bit more weight than the anti-imperialist posturing of a blogger who is doing nothing more than cherry-picking news snippets that appear to reinforce his longstanding opinions.

As has long been clear however, there is a sector of the blogosphere in which statements like the one I cited at the top are regarded as authoritative — an illustration perhaps of the strange melding of skepticism and naivety that leads some people to disbelieve virtually any piece of information that emanates from Western official or mainstream sources, yet discard any semblance of critical analysis when appraising statements coming from alternative sources. Self-appointed “truth-tellers” have an uncanny ability to acquire devoted followers.

In an interview published in the Argentine daily Clarin, Bashar al-Assad reiterates his government’s longstanding claim that Syria is under attack from terrorists and foreigners.

Multiple internal and external elements have contributed to the crisis, outside intervention being the most important factor. At the same time, the calculations made by the countries that have wanted to intervene were erroneous. Those states thought that the plan could end in weeks or months, but this did not take place. Instead, the Syrian people have resisted and we continue to do so. For us, it is about defending our homeland.

Do you know that, according to the UN, this war has already caused more than 70,000 deaths?

You would have to ask those who raise these figures about the credibility of their sources. Every death is horrible, but many of the dead they speak of are foreigners who came here to kill the Syrian people. We cannot omit that there are also many Syrians who have gone missing. What is the number of Syrian deaths and what is the number of foreign ones? How many missing persons are there? We cannot give a precise figure. Of course, this constantly changes since the terrorists kill and sometimes bury their victims in mass graves.

Do you dismiss the possibility that your troops may have used excessive, disproportionate force in the repression?

How could one determine whether or not there has been excessive force? What is the formula? It is not very objective to speak of that. One reacts according to the type of terrorism one faces. At the beginning, the terrorism was local and then it came from the outside, which led to the sophistication of the weapons they brought. The debate here is not about the amount of force employed or the type of weaponry. It is about the amount of terrorism that we suffer and the resulting duty to respond.

This is the legacy of the war on terrorism. On one side we find tyrants and authoritarian governments who gladly redeploy the American narrative on the necessity of combating terrorism. And in parallel among some of the opponents of war and imperialism, the preferred way of tarring Assad’s critics is to suggest that they are fostering terrorism. “Terrorism” as an ill-defined phenomenon has become an all-purpose tool that can be used to further political agendas on both the right and the left.

The effect of ideas that bounce around unquestioned inside an echo chamber is that they simply reinforce beliefs within a community of faith. The sense of solidarity this engenders then serves as a substitute for individual critical analysis. The word of those promoting the gospel (whatever that gospel might be) is treated as authoritative not because it stands up against challenges, but because it’s easier to rely on a trusted source than it is to think, do research, and refine ones own critical faculties.

The Boston Globe reports: The secret transport of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body from Worcester to a small community near Richmond, Va., was set in motion by a woman who said she was upset to hear about protests to his burial and wanted to see an end to the weeklong burial saga.

Martha Mullen, 48, of Richmond, said she was dismayed reports of protests outside of Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester that she heard on National Public Radio.

“It portrayed America at its worst,” she said in an interview with the Globe this morning. “The fact that people were picketing this poor man who was just trying to help [funeral director Peter Stefan] really upset me.”

Mullen, a licensed professional counselor who has lived in Richmond for most of her life, said she was sitting in a Starbucks Tuesday when it hit her: She could be the one to end the controversy.

“Jesus says [to] love our enemies,” said Mullen, who holds a degree from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. “So I was sitting in Starbucks and thought, maybe I’m the one person who needs to do something.”

Matthew 5:43-45: Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Under the umbrella of the notion that America is a Christian nation, there really seem to be two faiths that compete for the prominent role of offering spiritual guidance to this country: Christianity and Americanism, and Americanism invariably is much more dominant.

Christian and non-Christian alike are generally aware that the teaching, love your enemy, is fundamental to Christianity. It’s not off on some doctrinal periphery — some kind of quaint injunction to be followed merely by the most pious among the faithful. On the contrary, it can be seen as a kind of litmus test that separates the faithful from the hypocrites. Yet there is a transparent contradiction between this feature of Christianity and American values.

For over a decade, American national fervor has been wrapped around the idea that nothing is of greater importance than national defense and combating terrorism. America’s need to assert global dominance is at the core of Americanism — evident whenever the chant, USA — USA — USA, articulates an allegiance to power. But there is nothing Christian about this identification with national power, which makes it all the more absurd that so many Americans seem to believe that you can wrap yourself in the flag, crush your enemies, and still claim to follow Jesus.

Micah Zenko writes: Like many former senior Obama administration officials, Harold Koh has expressed his concerns about U.S. drone strike policies. As the former State Department legal adviser, he played an essential role in articulating and defending the international legal principles that supported “U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles,” as he stated in a March 2010 speech. Koh was also responsible for coordinating the official U.S. government response to questions raised by U.N. special rapporteurs and within the Human Rights Council. As Koh proclaimed last summer, “I did not come to government because I wanted to work on killing people.”

Unfortunately for him, because President Barack Obama authorized over 375 drone strikes killing over 3,000 people while Koh was the State Department’s lead lawyer, he’s been forced to dedicate a great deal of time to killing people.

Unfortunately, in a speech made two days ago at the Oxford Union, Koh demonstrated that he plans to maintain the fundamental myth of the Obama administration’s targeted killing program: that everyone killed is a senior al Qaeda official or member who poses an imminent threat of attack on the U.S. homeland. In April 2010, Koh claimed, regarding targeted killings: “I have never changed my mind. Not from before I was in the government — or after.” Apparently, that sentiment remains true today. [Continue reading…]

Micah Zenko continues in his relentless effort to focus critical attention on the Obama administration’s inexcusable use of drone warfare, but there’s one point on phrasing where he and others could help shift the way we talk about this issue: abandon the use of the term “targeted killing.”

The 9/11 attacks were themselves highly targeted. The hijackers were very precise about which buildings they wanted to strike and they did indeed hit their selected targets, yet most people would find it deeply offensive to describe these attacks as forms of targeted killing.

Why? Because targeted implies that the killer has identified his victims and that the killing is not indiscriminate.

But consider this fact. As a memorial has been created and a memorial museum will soon be opened in remembrance of every single innocent victim of 9/11 all of whose identities are known, the majority of the people killed in Obama’s drone war are people whose names were unknown to the U.S. government at the time they were killed. Some were identified merely as being males of military age and others not identified in any way at all as buildings were destroyed with no way of knowing who or how many people might reside within.

The precision of a missile’s guidance system should not be used to disguise its role in indiscriminate killing.

Robert E. Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, writes:

[T]he president can be said to have painted himself into a corner with Syria on two occasions, initially as early as August 2011, and repeated since, by declaring that “Assad must go.”

Of course, Assad has not gone, thus demonstrating once again the first rule of being US President: never call for something, especially in a simple declaratory sentence, if you are not prepared to follow through and make it happen.

There’s a lot of talk these days about ways in which President Obama appears to be undermining the credibility of the office of the presidency. Laying down “red lines” only to later move them and making ineffectual statements about what “must” happen, ends up making an American president sound… well, just not presidential enough.

It’s taken as a given that the word of the American president should be sufficient to make things happen — much like a papal edict. Obama says Assad must go and thus Assad’s fate has been sealed.

If I wanted to be generous I might suggest that Obama has an ulterior motive in his “lead from behind” approach: that he has purposefully set about trying to modify international perceptions of America and its president and wants to tone down its all-powerful image.

Remember these lines from his first inaugural address?

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the role that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who at this very hour patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.

We honor them not only because they are the guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service — a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.

That was back in the days when much of the nation was still drunk on Obama kool-aid.

Four years later it’s much more obvious the degree to which this president, deliberative as he might generally sound, has a casual approach which suggests there must be days when alone in the Oval Office, the president sits back in his chair and wonders: what the hell am I doing here?

Last August, when Obama laid down his red line on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, the problem wasn’t so much that he forgot his word is supposedly meant to carry world-shaking authority, it was that he was free-wheeling — making it up as he goes along.

“The idea was to put a chill into the Assad regime without actually trapping the president into any predetermined action,” said one senior official, who, like others, discussed the internal debate on the condition of anonymity. But “what the president said in August was unscripted,” another official said. Mr. Obama was thinking of a chemical attack that would cause mass fatalities, not relatively small-scale episodes like those now being investigated, except the “nuance got completely dropped.”

When White House officials start talking about what the president is thinking — as though we are supposed to place more confidence in his invisible thoughts than his audible words — then the issue becomes one not of a president who fails to follow unwritten rules about being presidential, but instead the reality that we do not in fact know what the president thinks.

Maybe when Obama blurted out his red line it had less to do with Syria and more to do with Netanyahu. Having been badgered for months on the need to lay down a red line for Iran, Obama might have wanted to demonstrate that he’s capable of laying down red lines — but not under pressure from an Israeli prime minister.

Such speculation is merely that and it again underlines the most disturbing quality of this president: that after one full term he remains as opaque as the day he entered office.

This invisibility is a feature of Obama’s character but it is also a product of the institution of the American presidency — a political office endowed with way too many features reminiscent of popes and monarchs. We should have less desire that a president has the power to makes things happen, and a much stronger desire to be provided with a more transparent view of who holds this office.

Daniel Larison writes:

Bill Keller confirms that he has not really learned any of the lessons of the Iraq war:

Of course, there are important lessons to be drawn from our sad experience in Iraq: Be clear about America’s national interest. Be skeptical of the intelligence. Be careful whom you trust. Consider the limits of military power. Never go into a crisis, especially one in the Middle East, expecting a cakewalk.

But in Syria, I fear prudence has become fatalism, and our caution has been the father of missed opportunities, diminished credibility and enlarged tragedy.

If we applied Keller’s Iraq lessons to the Syrian case, it would warn us away from military action or any deeper involvement in the conflict. Wading into a new conflict in Syria or anywhere else would be detrimental to U.S. national interests. The U.S. has nothing at stake in the Syrian conflict. Keller claims that “we have a genuine, imperiled national interest, not just a fabricated one,” and he is referring to the danger of a failed state serving as a haven for terrorists, but all of the proposed options for intervention involve hastening the failure of the Syrian state and aiding in the empowerment of jihadist groups. If the U.S. has an interest in preventing state failure in Syria, that is a reason to avoid intensifying and prolonging the conflict by backing the opposition.

Keller and Larison seem to agree that with Syria (and presumably in all international affairs) America should be guided by the same principle: the service of U.S. national interest. They disagree on the method for accomplishing that aim.

Rhetorically, ‘national interest’ is treated like an impregnable fortress inside which reside patriotic, honorable Americans of all political stripes unified in their dedication to the protection of the nation — except they don’t happen to agree on what constitutes this incontestable good, the national interest.

If there is in fact no agreement about what serves the national interest, then why do so many so solemnly declare that such-and-such cannot be, or must be, in the national interest?

No doubt when the CEOs of all the major banks were assembled by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, there was a clear consensus around that table that it was neither in the national interest nor their personal interest that any of the banks should fail. Plenty of other Americans begged to differ, but they weren’t the ones who got to define the national interest at that moment.

Still, the example does serve to illustrate that national interest is a form of self interest — supposedly the collective self interest of all Americans.

Which begs a question: is there something unique about Americans such that the service of their needs would demand disregarding the needs of others, or conversely, that the service of the needs of others would necessarily result in a loss for Americans?

But here’s a novel idea: what if the question about America’s role in Syria was framed in the following way — that the central question became: what will serve the interests of the Syrian people?

If America was to serve a greater good, there would surely be some reward this side of heaven. Likewise, if American action (or inaction) is generally seen as having caused more harm, then there will be a price.

So the questions then becomes much more humble and realistic and less focused on American identity, interests, or strategic objectives: Can America firstly act in a way that avoids creating more harm — can it avoid prolonging the war in Syria? — and secondly, does it have the capacity to play a constructive role in bringing about a positive outcome?

The issue is far more complex than suggested by the crude reduction, for or against intervention.

As a precursor to answering those questions it would be useful to be clear about ways in which much of the debate is currently skewed.

Neither Iraq nor Libya provides a lens for looking at Syria — even while each should offer lessons learned.

Whatever is done in the name of combating terrorism is almost certainly ill-conceived.

Counter-terrorism afflicts the world much more pervasively and destructively than terrorism.

The value of a human life is not defined by nationality, race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

National interest is a mirage. How can the common good be circumscribed by the artifice of national boundaries?

If our concern is not first and foremost with human interest then is not the alternative simply another name for self interest?

Cynical as it might sound, religious teachings are marketing tools — indeed, there is nothing in commerce that makes claims as grandiose as those made by any religion. The success of religious marketing is always evident when something happens that seems to expose a glaring gap between a religion and the behavior of some of its adherents.

Since Buddhism with its humanistic values and lack of doctrinal baggage has wide appeal in this secular age, it seems particularly jarring when Buddhists — and not just the laity but worst of all those donning the colors — are out on the streets beating up their opponents.

Aren’t Buddhists, as the Dalai Lama advises, meant to regard their adversaries as teachers — not enemies to be crushed?

That is of course what the Middle Way teaches, but just like every other religion, Buddhism has throughout the ages progressed as a social force by aligning itself to power. Moreover, through institutionalizing the lifestyle of the sannyasin — the renunciate who gives up home and possessions and wanders alone relying on the charity of others — Buddhist monasticism never adopted the values of self-reliance which gave other monastic systems a higher degree of autonomy and thus a measure of economic and cultural insulation from forces in society at large.

Buddhist monks cannot so easily rise above the political passions of the people who feed them.

Alan Strathern writes:[H]istorically, Buddhism has been no more a religion of peace than Christianity.

One of the most famous kings in Sri Lankan history is Dutugamanu, whose unification of the island in the 2nd Century BC is related in an important chronicle, the Mahavamsa.

It says that he placed a Buddhist relic in his spear and took 500 monks with him along to war against a non-Buddhist king.

He destroyed his opponents. After the bloodshed, some enlightened ones consoled him: “The slain were like animals; you will make the Buddha’s faith shine.”

Burmese rulers, known as “kings of righteousness”, justified wars in the name of what they called true Buddhist doctrine.

In Japan, many samurai were devotees of Zen Buddhism and various arguments sustained them – killing a man about to commit a dreadful crime was an act of compassion, for example. Such reasoning surfaced again when Japan mobilised for World War II.

Buddhism took a leading role in the nationalist movements that emerged as Burma and Sri Lanka sought to throw off the yoke of the British Empire. Occasionally this spilled out into violence. In 1930s Rangoon, amid resorts to direct action, monks knifed four Europeans.

More importantly, many came to feel Buddhism was integral to their national identity – and the position of minorities in these newly independent nations was an uncomfortable one. [Continue reading…]

Faith-based skepticism might seem like a contradiction in terms and thus it never fails to amaze me the frequency with which doubt and blind faith are conjoined in some people’s minds when they think about Syria.

The latest example comes in response to claims that chemical weapons have been used.

If U.S. government officials assert that sarin has been used by Assad forces in Syria, should that claim be viewed with skepticism? Yes.

If a blogger asserts that the claim is bogus because it rests on what he regards as “fake” evidence — a YouTube video showing people foaming at the mouth — then should that blogger’s own assertion also be viewed with skepticism?

For the faith-based skeptic that blogger’s opinion carries enough weight. And with respect to this particular video, if something looks like shaving foam, then it must be shaving foam. ‘Nough said.

But here’s what the White House actually said — note: no reference to video evidence:

Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin. This assessment is based in part on physiological samples. Our standard of evidence must build on these intelligence assessments as we seek to establish credible and corroborated facts. For example, the chain of custody is not clear, so we cannot confirm how the exposure occurred and under what conditions. We do believe that any use of chemical weapons in Syria would very likely have originated with the Assad regime.

Note the number of caveats embedded in this statement: limited confidence; that the collection of evidence is still ongoing; that it is unclear where the existing evidence came from; and that it is even unclear whether exposure to chemical weapons necessarily has come from their intentional or authorized use. The strongest assertion — though stated as a belief, not a fact — is that the Assad regime would “very likely” be the source of chemical weapons used in Syria.

Underlining the fact that in the midst of so much hedging, the Obama administration is not willing to make its own determination on whether chemical weapons have in fact being used, the White House says: “we are currently pressing for a comprehensive United Nations investigation that can credibly evaluate the evidence and establish what took place.” And while the U.S. “presses” for such an investigation, if Syria (with a nod and a wink from Russia) stands in the way, be assured that a great deal of hand-wringing will continue in Washington as the administration persists in expressing its concern but lack of certainty around the use of chemical weapons.

As for what “physiological samples” look like and how they can be tested to determine the use of sarin, an explanation provided by Danger Room makes it clear that such an analysis has nothing to do with images appearing on YouTube:

The U.S. military initially tests for evidence of nerve gas exposure by looking for the presence of the enzyme cholinesterase in red blood cells and in plasma. (Sarin messes with the enzyme, which in turn allows a key neurotransmitter to build up in the body, causing rather awful muscle spasms.) The less cholinesterase they find, they more likely there was a nerve gas hit.

The problem is, some pesticides will also depress cholinesterase. So the military employs a second — and sometimes a third — test.

When sarin binds to cholinesterase it loses a fluoride. The pesticides don’t do this. This second test exposes a blood sample to fluoride ions, which partially reconstitutes sarin if it’s there. If that doesn’t work, military technicians can run a third test — considered the gold standard — which isolates from the plasma one form of cholinesterase, and then uses the enzyme pepsin the chew up the cholinesterase into smaller pieces. Sarin binds to some of the these smaller chunks, and liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry should be able to detect it if it’s there up. “You would be sure it’s a nerve agent and not a pesticide,” says a scientist who works with such tests, which are reliable for two to three week after exposure.

Preliminary blood samples are drawn from a pricked finger tip, and placed a field blood analyzer — a gizmo about the size of a scientific calculator that produces varying shades of yellow depending on the cholinesterase level. If the tests are positive, it’s best to tap a vein and draw more blood into a 10 milliliter tube so you can run the more sophisticated exams.

According to the Financial Times, one blood sample was analyzed by American analysts, while the other was examined by Britain’s Defence Science Technology Laboratory.

Exactly when the results came back isn’t clear. But only days ago, the Obama administration was throwing cold water on reports from Israeli and British officials of chemical weapon use in Syria. (“We have not come to the conclusion that there has been that use,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday.) But that changed Thursday morning, when the White House issued a letter (.pdf) to Senators Carl Levin and John McCain confirming the sarin discovery.

Wherever one stands on the question of intervention, the one thing that should be indisputable at this point is that there are few officials who are rushing to judgement on the issue of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The rush to judgement actually comes from those who insist that all claims regarding use of such weapons by the Assad regime must actually be fake. And that is how faith-based skepticism works: doubt all claims made by Western officials or appearing in Western media while at the same time treating as credible any claim emanating from a purported adversary to Western imperialism.

By claiming that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “game changer,” President Obama seems to have boxed himself in and made intervention in Syria inevitable — or his word becomes worthless.

Anne-Marie Slaughter writes: U.S. credibility is on the line. For all the temptation to hide behind the decision to invade Iraq based on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, Obama must realize the tremendous damage he will do to the United States and to his legacy if he fails to act. He should understand the deep and lasting damage done when the gap between words and deeds becomes too great to ignore, when those who wield power are exposed as not saying what they mean or meaning what they say.

The distrust, cynicism and hatred with which the United States is regarded in much of the world, particularly among Muslims across the Middle East and North Africa, is already a cancer. Standing by while Assad gasses his people will guarantee that, whatever else Obama may achieve, he will be remembered as a president who proclaimed a new beginning with the Muslim world but presided over a deadly chapter in the same old story.

The world does not see the complex calculations inside the White House — the difficulty of achieving any positive outcomes in Syria even with intervention, the possible harm to Obama’s domestic agenda if he plunges into the morass of another conflict in the Middle East. The world would see Syrian civilians rolling on the ground, foaming at the mouth, dying by the thousands while the United States stands by.

Mr. President, how many uses of chemical weapons does it take to cross a red line against the use of chemical weapons? That is a question you must be in a position to answer.

As a Washington insider, Slaughter asserts that American credibility is on the line, without questioning the underlying presupposition: that American credibility is currently intact.

That Obama is now equivocating on the nature of his red line — that having once been defined as the mere movement of chemical weapons, the threshold is now means that their use becomes “systematic” — should hardly be treated as credibility undermined. One can reasonably argue that American credibility was in severe disrepair well before Obama took office.

The American Century lasted about two years — that was roughly how long it took for it to become plain to the world that American power was not sufficiently great that the Greater Middle East could be shaped in accordance with American designs.

One of the knock-on effects of the neoconservative demonstration of the limits of American power was that autocrats across the region who had long held on to power because that power was supposedly shielded by the United States gradually lost their own appearance of invulnerability. It was in this sense that the war in Iraq became a prelude to the Arab Spring. It wasn’t that the war unleashed democratic possibilities but rather that it became a huge demonstration of American impotence.

So, if Obama wants to live up to the image he clearly has of himself — that of the cool realist — then the pivot he needs to make (“pivot” being Washington-speak for how to elegantly eat your own words) will involve shifting attention away from “red lines” towards the capabilities the U.S. and its allies do and don’t possess. The narrative will say less about what should or must be done, and more about what can be accomplished.

To intervene in Syria because America’s reputation is at stake would be to intervene for the worst possible motive — just as driving while preening oneself in the mirror is a sure way to get into a road accident.

In as much as the intervention or non-intervention argument has been dominated by ideologues on both sides, it needs to become focused on what is possible. And it might be time to revive one of George W Bush’s earliest promises (that he never lived up to) that it is time for America to engage in the world with humility. It is humility that has by this point surely been well-earned.