Who would have thought that two years after George W Bush’s departure from the White House we could look back and say: there was a man with greater integrity and moral stature than the current occupant.
Believe me, that is not a compliment to Bush. It is an expression of utter contempt for Barack Obama and his inability to take a stand and speak unequivocally with moral clarity (a virtue the neocons insisted they owned yet never convincingly displayed).
This is what happened today in Bahrain on one of the streets approaching Pearl Roundabout. No commentary or explanation is required.
This is how the Al Khalifa royal family handles non-violent political dissent.
And this is Obama’s response:
I am deeply concerned by reports of violence in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen.
The United States condemns the use of violence by governments against peaceful protesters in those countries and wherever else it may occur. We express our condolences to the family and friends of those who have been killed during the demonstrations.
Wherever they are, people have certain universal rights including the right to peaceful assembly.
The United States urges the governments of Bahrain, Libya and Yemen to show restraint in responding to peaceful protests, and to respect the rights of their people.
The United States is deeply indebted to the Al Khalifa family for being so gracious as to host the US Fifth Fleet. It would be impolite to do anything more than urge them to show restraint. After all, if — God forbid — in the near future they were all to end strung up through a swift application of justice as Bahrain came under Shia majority rule, then the strategic implications for the United States would be unthinkable.
So, a strong but carefully tempered presidential condemnation was in order. But note that America’s “model partner” did not get singled out. The rebuke was dished out collectively and universally as an observation about behavior that the United States condemns without consequence.
And this is what the world has come to see as Obama’s signature: empty words from a hollow man.
In President Obama’s latest statement on events in Egypt, he does not swerve from the position he has maintained from day one: that of a concerned but impotent spectator.
“In these difficult times, I know that the Egyptian people will persevere, and they must know that they will continue to have a friend in the United States of America.”
But does this friend intend to do anything other than express beliefs and hopes about a desirable outcome?
“As we have said from the beginning of this unrest, the future of Egypt will be determined by the Egyptian people.” And in another nod to people power: “The Egyptian people have made it clear that there is no going back to the way things were: Egypt has changed, and its future is in the hands of the people.”
And yet the whole world knows that the US is not an impotent and innocent onlooker — it is deeply invested in supporting Egypt’s military.
The White House claims it supports democracy in Egypt and that the US should have no role in determining who governs, yet Obama can certainly make the continuation of military aid contingent on the existence of a democratic government.
At this decisive moment when the Egyptian military has to choose between supporting an embattled and increasingly desperate president or siding with the people, the risk of losing one third of the country’s military funding could bring some much-needed clarity to the generals’ thinking.
The New York Times, in its role as state storyteller, spins a fine yarn about how the White House artfully engineered Hosni Mubarak’s removal. A pivotal place in the narrative goes to “Frank G. Wisner, an adroit ex-diplomat whom President Obama had asked hours before to undertake a supremely delicate mission: nudging President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt out of power.”
Senior officials say that as Mr. Wisner traveled to Egypt, Obama officials in Washington were working on his message to Mr. Mubarak: to announce that he would not run for re-election (he did that), and to promise that his son would not run for election (he did not do that).
“No one wanted it to seem as if we were pushing him out,” one administration official said. “That would not serve American interests. It was important for President Mubarak to make the decision.”
Two hours after Mr. Wisner’s plane left Andrews Air Force Base, White House officials sent an e-mail to more than a dozen foreign policy experts in Washington, asking them to come in for a meeting on Monday morning. “Apologies for the short notice in light of a very fluid situation,” the e-mail said.
The Roosevelt Room meeting, led by Benjamin Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and two other National Security Council officials, Daniel Shapiro and Samantha Power, examined unrest in the region, and the potential for the protests to spread, according to several attendees.
Significantly, during the meeting, White House staff members “made clear that they did not rule out engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood as part of an orderly process,” according to one attendee, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to talk publicly about the meeting. The Muslim group had been suppressed by Mr. Mubarak, and Bush administration officials believed it was involved in terrorist activities. It renounced violence years ago.
Several times, two other attendees said, White House staff members said that Mr. Obama believed that Egyptian politics needed to encompass “nonsecular” parties: diplomatic-speak for the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Orderly transition” is now the name of the game, but what remains unclear is whether Mubarak intends on sticking to the script.
After a half-hour conversation this evening, the only element of Mubarak’s thinking that Obama disclosed during his televised remarks was this: “He recognizes that the status quo is not sustainable and that a change must take place.”
That seems to leave open a wide range of possibilities — and one inconvenient fact: Mubarak is still Egypt’s president.
As the Million Egyptian March takes to the streets of Cairo, is President Obama finally ready to take a strong stand on the side of the people?
In The Guardian, Michael Tomasky writes “Obama is in no position to offer the moral thunder the protesters and their supporters everywhere crave.” Why? Because “the US should not be dictating outcomes any more. The modern world requires a US posture that is more fluid and subtle, and that no longer seeks to call the global shots.”
Having watched events over the last week as closely as one can from a great distance, I would say there has been no lack of moral thunder. It has come from the voices of the Egyptian people.
Having demonstrated their pride, dignity, and collective power with such force, I don’t think they crave anything from Washington or anywhere else — bar the fulfillment of their single demand: that Hosni Mubarak stand down.
To the extent that the expectations of many Egyptians and others are directed towards Washington and Obama, it is perhaps with the hope that anyone who supports democracy would celebrate the extraordinary sight of democracy being born.
Obama’s inhibitions probably say less about the fear of being perceived in the Middle East as the leader of an imperial power which still insists on calling the global shots, than in being seen by his fellow Americans supporting a revolution that they fear.
Indeed, as Benjamin Netanyahu compares the Egyptian revolution of 2011 with the Iranian revolution in 1979, Obama surely fears some form of retribution from AIPAC in 2012 if he is portrayed as having undermined Israel’s security. Above all, the 2012 incumbent presidential candidate does not want to be cast as having played a role in shaping Egypt’s future.
The most courageous thing Obama could do at this point would not be to make some grandiose expression of American support for the Egyptian people — an expression which this late in the day would carry little credibility. No, if he wants to stand up in defense of democracy, he should addressing a domestic audience — one that apparently has lost faith that democracy is a good thing.
If Americans can’t support the democratic rights of Egyptians, what does that say about how seriously we want to protect our own rights? After all, the unalienable rights upon which America was founded were not conceived as American rights but universal human rights. If we don’t stand in solidarity with Egyptians, have we not also lost faith in the principles upon which America was founded?
Obama once declared:
I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.
But what held the greater significance? The sentiment and meaning of Obama’s words or the fact that he delivered them as the honored guest of Hosni Mubarak?
Maybe Barack Obama thinks of himself as some kind of Taoist president — attuned to the moment, like water that effortlessly flows around rocks, the warrior who can deflect every blow through the power of non-resistance.
Before he entered office, he exhibited a certain kind of poise that allowed some of us to indulge in fantasies about how radically different he might be from his predecessor.
An abundance of possibility was wrapped in an equal amount of mystery, but once he assumed office we’d all get to find out who Obama really is — except, two years later it sometimes seems harder to determine what, if anything, this president stands for than it was when he was a candidate.
Midway through his first term, some observers will say it’s too early to make judgments about the man, but if we can’t judge him now, what’s the basis on which to judge whether he’s worth voting for again? The next two years during which most of his actions will have been tailored to enhance his re-electability?
When it comes to determining what Obama stands for, I’d say the absence of evidence is already evidence of absence. We don’t know what Obama stands for because he doesn’t stand for anything — which is precisely why some of his wild-eyed enemies see him as some kind of Manchurian candidate.
That suspicion no longer seems so far off the mark. There is plenty of evidence that he has allowed himself to become an instrument of external forces — those forces simply aren’t as exotic as the ones the conspiracy theorists imagined.
Quick quiz: In one sentence, describe FDR’s political philosophy. Good, now summarize Reaganism. Pretty easy, right?
OK, do the same for President Obama. Still thinking? Don’t worry, Mr. Obama is, too. And that’s bad news for all of us. Because no matter how you feel about Obama, his lack of clear philosophical values is not only a political problem for Democrats but a moral problem for America.
It didn’t start like this. Obama surfed into the White House on a wave of seeming principle: change, bipartisanship, reason, deliberation, pragmatism. What we didn’t realize is that all these concepts are methodological. They concern the process of forming public policy. But they are not bedrock principles upon which we can orient the ends of government.
They are so general that they provide little analytical or moral traction. Who objects to deliberation and evidence-based policy? Well, maybe George W. Bush, which is why Obama’s “change” narrative worked so well in the election. But since his inauguration, Obama’s methodological political theory has proved thin and sometimes incoherent. He will never support tax cuts for the rich, until he will. He criticizes Bush’s expansive view of presidential war powers, then adopts it. The list goes on.
It’s not that he breaks his policy promises more than other politicians. It’s not that he seeks compromise – a virtue. It’s not even that his policies are wrongheaded. It’s the fact that when he compromises, when he reaches policy conclusions, there’s no sense that it derives from anything other than ad hoc balancing.
There is no well of enduring principle upon which he seems to draw. Even if he’s a pragmatist, eschewing universal principles in favor of context-specific values and concerns, we still don’t know what those temporal values and concerns are, or why he believes in them. So far he’s the piecemeal president.
“An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot,” wrote TE Lawrence in The Evolution of a Revolt.
Whatever ones views about the legitimacy or morality of the use of violence, it’s hard not to at least sympathize with the sentiment. How indeed is it possible to reason with those who are impervious to reason?
Consider, for instance, the Jewish settler in the video below. This is his argument in favor of the theft of Palestinian land and property: “The Bible says that we have to conquer the land. So we believe… the land is ours. We believe in the Bible.” As if to say, I can’t think; I can only believe. I can’t see through my own eyes; I can only see what the Bible reveals. I am a slave to ideas crafted from afar — ideas whose authority I gladly and blindly trust.
But here’s the problem in Lawrence’s proposition: in the contest between reason and conviction, it’s the man with the conviction who most likely holds the gun.
On October 5, 1995, as the Knesset was meeting to ratify the second Oslo agreement, thirty thousand Greater Israel zealots, Likud Party supporters, militant West Bank settlers, and right-wing nationalists rallied in Jerusalem’s Zion Square. For months, certain ultra-Orthodox rabbis and scholars had been suggesting that, because Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was willing to consider territorial concessions in negotiations with the Palestinians, it would be permissible, even obligatory, to kill him. In Zion Square, protesters carried pictures of Rabin, doctored to show him in Nazi uniform or with crosshairs over his face. The crowd chanted “Rabin boged!”—“Rabin is a traitor!”—and, again and again, “Death to Rabin!” From a balcony, prominent opposition politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu, looked on benevolently and uttered no rebukes. A month later, at another, larger rally, this one for peace, Rabin was assassinated.
In 1995 in Jerusalem, the connection between talk and action was direct and unmistakable. The killer, Yigal Amir, a student of Jewish law, was an activist of the organized religious right. He was neither delusional nor incoherent. “I did this to stop the peace process,” he explained at a court hearing. “We need to be coldhearted.” He acted with a clear political purpose, one that he shared with much of the mainstream religious and secular right. Within six months, Netanyahu was Prime Minister; Rabin’s widow, Leah, and many other Israelis never forgave him for what they saw as his cynical tolerance of the extremist stew that had nurtured the murderer.
The context for Hertzberg’s re-telling of this well-known narrative is the ongoing debate, following the Tucson shootings, about the dangerous effects of hate-filled rhetoric.
In President Obama’s Tucson speech last week — “his finest speech as President, and the truest to his essential character,” at least in Hertzberg’s opinion — Obama noted: “We are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do.”
Intolerance does indeed color much of the political discourse in America and the attitudes that make this such a fractured world. But let’s not pretend that a shift in tone initiated by conciliatory words from this president either have much depth or will have any lasting effect.
This is a president who, with the words “Predator drones,” once made light of his ability to shred and vaporize the bodies of men, women and children whose names will never be known beyond the villages and valleys where they once lived.
This week we learned that in October, during what in the euphemistic language of war is dubbed the Afghan “surge” — a wave of death and destruction designed to diminish the Taliban’s strength — 25 tons of explosives were used by US forces to reduce a whole village to dust.
Obama might have brought a change in tone and manner to the White House but violence is no less the American way now than it was under the Bush administration.
A Democratic party less inclined to use the vitriolic language of its gun-loving counterparts, is disingenuous in its claim to be a party of civility while it acquiesces to the perpetuation of an unwinnable war and the funding of a military machine that dwarfs all others.
The reactions to the Tucson shootings revealed less about the inflammatory effect of hateful language and much more about America’s unwillingness to face the fact that this is a nation that condones, honors, venerates and at times worships the use of violence.
On the one hand in its religious bearings America adopts the posture of an Old Testament moral absolutism, yet when it comes to that fundamental injunction: thou shalt not kill, there are a hundred and one caveats which expose the chasm separating moral principle and moral practice.
I make this observation, however, not for the purpose of condemning violence but in order to point to a more fundamental issue: the need for truthfulness.
Embedded in the reason which is impervious to reason — the conviction which has a voice but no ears — is a false relationship to language. It demands from its audience the very thing it lacks: receptivity. It simultaneously expresses a demand to communicate and an unwillingness to communicate. It is, in a word, dishonest.
At the same time, those who are to a much lesser degree the slaves of conviction, nevertheless rarely have a greater love of truth, since for most, the guiding force in their approach to politics is not a ruthless honesty but the power of affiliation. Tribal instincts are at play just as much on the left as on the right.
After Obama’s speech, the “atmosphere smelled cleaner,” declared Hertzberg, but is that all that is called for — the occasional squirt of presidential air freshener?
If Obama truly had the capacity and desire to courageously lead, he would have to do something much more profound than change the ambiance in political discourse. He would have to inject a level of honesty that two years into his presidency he no longer has the ability to credibly project. He would have to replace a willow spine with some steel. He would have to acknowledge that the political center is not sacred territory — it provides just as much a refuge for political opportunists as do the ideological extremes.
Investors are often among the most sober of political analysts — after all, their single interest is in finding the safest and most profitable places to put their money and right now, Egypt does not look like such a location.
Reuters reports, “Cairo’s stock index tumbled to an 11-week low on Wednesday on fears of a contagion from the unrest that toppled Tunisia’s president and further volatility is expected as investors eye Egypt’s 2011 presidential election.”
At the same time, analysts say that the greater political freedom enjoyed by opposition groups in Egypt — relative to their Tunisian counterparts — serves as a pressure valve that can release political tension without undermining the Mubarak regime.
The Egyptian dissident Mohamed ElBaradei has warned of a “Tunisia-style explosion” in his country as self-immolation protests proliferated and anti-government activists announced plans for a nationwide “day of anger” next week.
But the former UN nuclear weapons chief stopped short of calling on his supporters to take to the streets, prompting scathing criticism from opposition campaigners who believe ElBaradei is squandering a rare opportunity to bring an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s three decades of autocratic rule.
Today Ahmed Hashem el-Sayed, 25, from the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, died in hospital after setting himself alight on the roof of his home. It was the latest in a series of self-immolation incidents that have spread through Egypt over the past two days, after the Tunisian vegetable trader Muhammad Bouazizi’s self-immolation provided the catalyst for the toppling of his country’s president last week.
“What has transpired in Tunisia is no surprise and should be very instructive both for the political elite in Egypt and those in the west that back dictatorships,” ElBaradei told the Guardian. “Suppression does not equal stability, and anybody who thinks that the existence of authoritarian regimes is the best way to maintain calm is deluding themselves.”
Within hours of Elbaradei refusing to throw his weight behind street protests as he told The Guardian “I would like to use the means available from within the system to effect change, such as the petition we are gathering demanding political reform,” he expressed a different sentiment on Twitter: “Fully support call 4 peaceful demonstrations vs. repression & corruption. When our demands for change fall on deaf ears what options remain?”
Swiftly and sarcastically, Demagh MAK in Cairo responded: “@ElBaradei Are u going to join us in the streets or you just supporting on twitter #Egypt #Jan25?”
Not withstanding pro forma expressions of support for “democratic reform,” it seems unlikely the Obama administration would welcome the prospect of democracy in Egypt.
When President Obama addressed the Muslim world from Cairo in 2009 he did so without a murmur of criticism directed at his dictator host, Hosni Mubarak. If Mubarak was to fall from power or fail to successfully pass the presidency to him son Gamal, the inevitable result would be an Egyptian government in which the Muslim Brotherhood would wield significant power — a prospect that both Washington and Israel fear.
While George W Bush was president it was possible to sustain what turned out to be a naive hope: that much of the harm he had done could be undone once he was out of office and the neoconservatives had been dislodged from power. But the harm personified by Bush and Cheney is now being institutionalized and by the removal of ideological baggage, lightened, with the effect that the post-Bush era is nowhere near in sight.
In the early months of Obama’s presidency, the American Right did to him what they do to every Democratic politician: they accused him of being soft on defense (specifically “soft on Terror”) and leaving the nation weak and vulnerable to attack. But that tactic quickly became untenable as everyone (other than his hardest-core followers) was forced to acknowledge that Obama was embracing and even expanding — rather than reversing — the core Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism. As a result, leading right-wing figures began lavishing Obama with praise — and claiming vindication — based on Obama’s switch from harsh critic of those policies (as a candidate) to their leading advocate (once in power).
As early as May, 2009, former Bush OLC lawyer Jack Goldsmith wrote in The New Republic that Obama was not only continuing Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, but was strengthening them — both because he was causing them to be codified in law and, more important, converting those policies from right-wing dogma into harmonious bipartisan consensus. Obama’s decision “to continue core Bush terrorism policies is like Nixon going to China,” Goldsmith wrote. Last October, former Bush NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden — one of the most ideological Bush officials, whose confirmation as CIA chief was opposed by then-Sen. Obama on the ground he had overseen the illegal NSA spying program — gushed with praise for Obama: “there’s been a powerful continuity between the 43rd and the 44th president.” James Jay Carafano, a homeland-security expert at the Heritage Foundation, told The New York Times’ Peter Baker last January: “I don’t think it’s even fair to call it Bush Lite. It’s Bush. It’s really, really hard to find a difference that’s meaningful and not atmospheric.”
Those are the nation’s most extreme conservatives praising Obama’s Terrorism policies. And now Dick Cheney himself — who once led the “soft on Terror” attacks — is sounding the same theme. [Continue reading…]
In Washington, when a cabinet level official is facing calls for his resignation, he is likely to take cover behind that regal phrase, “I serve at the president’s pleasure.” Most of the Arab world’s autocratic leaders could use the same expression since most would find their positions untenable without American support.
Last Wednesday, when Hillary Clinton said “we are not taking sides,” as demonstrators clashed with Tunisian security forces, she could have dispensed with protocol and said with more honesty, “we are no longer taking sides.”
Up until that moment the United States had unequivocally taken sides with Tunisia’s dictatorial ruler, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, but thereafter he knew he was on his own. He rapidly lost his grip on power.
The Obama administration’s relationship with the Tunisian regime was mirrored on a smaller scale by that of the Washington Media Group, a consulting firm that severed its contract with the Tunisian government on January 6.
“We felt on principle that we could not work for a government that was shooting its own citizens and violating their civil rights with such abuse,” said WMG’s President Gregory L. Vistica. Was he claiming that his client’s record had suddenly taken a turn for the worse, or that his firm had only just discovered it had principles?
The point is that WMG, just like the US government, prefers to blur the distinction between statements of principle and actions of self-interest.
On Friday, when President Obama said, “I applaud the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people,” observers across the region might have appreciated the sentiment yet seen no reason to attach much gravity to his words. After, Ben Ali had already fled.
“No one thinks Obama is serious about democracy,” says Shadi Hamid from Brookings Doha Center. “In some ways they have given up hope. And that I think is one of the key post-Cairo Speech stories: that after a lot of optimism about Obama’s election, people realized that when it comes to the issue of democracy-promotion in the Arab world — and that is a very important one for many Arabs — Obama’s really not on board.”
What more damning an indictment could be made against an American president than to say that he does not support democracy?
Hamid is joined in conversation with fellow Middle East analyst Issandr El Amrani from The Arabist, for a fascinating discussion on the implications on the people’s uprising in Tunisia.
“When we align our values with our actions, great things can happen,” says Bemporad Baranowski Marketing Group (BBMG), a New York-based branding agency dedicated to nonprofits and socially responsible businesses.
President Obama shares the same philosophy.
Addressing the memorial service in Tucson this week, Obama said:
We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this Earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame -– but rather, how well we have loved — and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.
And that process — that process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions –- that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires.
When two things are brought into alignment, repositioning can take place from both sides, but just as wheels can get knocked out of alignment with the chasis of a car, when it comes to values and actions, it is most often our actions that need moving into alignment with our values — not the other way around.
Americans score high when it comes to cherishing high values — the fall comes in our failing to align our actions with our values.
Mr Compromise might not be able to spot the difference. A man who so reflexively yields to pressure sees all things as relative. He yields so easily because he lacks an anchor to an unyielding center.
Speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in May, Barack Obama spotted teen pop band the Jonas Brothers in the audience. “Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but, boys, don’t get any ideas,” deadpanned the president, referring to his daughters. “Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming.” The crowd laughed, Obama smiled, the dinner continued. Few questioned the wisdom of making such a tasteless joke; of the US commander-in-chief showing such casual disregard for the countless lives lost abroad through US drone attacks.
From the moment he stepped foot inside the White House, Obama set about expanding and escalating a covert CIA programme of “targeted killings” inside Pakistan, using Predator and Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles (who comes up with these names?) that had been started by the Bush administration in 2004. On 23 January 2009, just three days after being sworn in, Obama ordered his first set of air strikes inside Pakistan; one is said to have killed four Arab fighters linked to al-Qaida but the other hit the house of a pro-government tribal leader, killing him and four members of his family, including a five-year-old child. Obama’s own daughter, Sasha, was seven at the time.
But America’s Nobel-peace-prize-winning president did not look back. During his first nine months in office he authorised as many aerial attacks in Pakistan as George W Bush did in his final three years in the job. And this year has seen an unprecedented number of air strikes. Forget Mark Zuckerberg or the iPhone 4 – 2010 was the year of the drone. According to the New America Foundation thinktank in Washington DC, the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan more than doubled in 2010, to 115. That is an astonishing rate of around one bombing every three days inside a country with which the US is not at war.
Nicely in time for the end-of-year job ratings, President Obama has crawled from the political graveyard, where only a month ago wreaths were being heaped around his sepulcher. The Commentariat now gravely applauds his recent victories in the US Congress: repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell inhibitions on gays in the military; Senate ratification of the new START treaty on nuclear weapons with the Russians; passage of a $4.3bn bill – previously blocked by Republicans – providing health benefits for emergency rescue workers in the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
Something missing from my list? You noticed? Yes indeed: first and absolutely foremost, the successful deal with Republicans on taxes, better described as a $4 trillion gift to America’s rich people, by extending the Bush tax cuts. With the all-important tax surrender under their belts the Republicans don’t seem too upset in having allowing Obama’s his mini-swath of victories. There aren’t too many votes in insisting that 1500 nukes aren’t enough for Uncle Sam, particularly since Obama did his usual trick a year ago of surrendering before the battle began, pledging vast new outlays to the nuclear-industrial-complex. Would it have been that smart to deny benefits to 9/11 responders or say that gays in the military have to stay in the closet. Presumably they’ll fight all the more fiercely now they can stand Out and Proud. On things that really matter, once they reassemble after the break, the Republicans will probably stay awake, though with a President who surrenders with the alacrity of Obama, excessive vigilance probably isn’t necessary.
You give $4 trillion to the rich and they express their thanks in measured terms. Their hired opinion formers laud the spirit of admirable compromise enabling responsible members of Congress to come together in bipartisanship to keep the hogwallow open for business.
One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian government is its fixation on hiding everything it does behind a wall of secrecy while simultaneously monitoring, invading and collecting files on everything its citizenry does. Based on the Francis Bacon aphorism that “knowledge is power,” this is the extreme imbalance that renders the ruling class omnipotent and citizens powerless.
In the Washington Post today, Dana Priest and William Arkin continue their “Top Secret America” series by describing how America’s vast and growing Surveillance State now encompasses state and local law enforcement agencies, collecting and storing always-growing amounts of information about even the most innocuous activities undertaken by citizens suspected of no wrongdoing. As was true of the first several installments of their “Top Secret America,” there aren’t any particularly new revelations for those paying attention to such matters, but the picture it paints — and the fact that it is presented in an establishment organ such as the Washington Post — is nonetheless valuable.
Today, the Post reporters document how surveillance and enforcement methods pioneered in America’s foreign wars and occupations are being rapidly imported into domestic surveillance (wireless fingerprint scanners, military-grade infrared cameras, biometric face scanners, drones on the border).
In this respect — whose significance can hardly be overstated — Barack Obama is worse than George Bush: Bush’s excesses and the ideology he represented could be circumscribed by his administration and in theory America could purge itself of the effects through the ritual purification of an election. What Obama is doing is normalizing those excesses so that the Bush era can be perpetuated without being tainted by the names Bush and Cheney.
A regime that banishes truth, shuts down accountability, and ignores its own laws, is a regime that invites anything but peace.
Soon after taking office, President Barack Obama declared on the White House website, on a page devoted to “Transparency and Open Government,” that his,
Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
Obama then clearly stated, in a section headed by “Government should be transparent,” that, “Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing.”
This was not a once-off statement, an accident. It was repeated. On 20 January 2009, on the White House blog, his administration stated, in a section titled “Transparency”: “President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history.” (Unlike the blog of Iranian President Ahamdinejad, the White House blog is closed to comments—and I would have linked to Ahmadinejad’s, except American hackers believe you should not be allowed to see his blog.)
What “transparency” there has been comes in the form of a massive deluge of data that should always be publicly accessible—being about the public itself, and hardly about Obama’s government. Moreover, it is data in such quantity, unsorted and out of context, that no one except one dedicated computer scientist has been able to make much use of, and it proves to be pretty banal stuff.
When it comes to Freedom of Information Access requests, one year into his presidency, with its promise of greater government transparency, “the Obama administration is more often citing exceptions to the nation’s open records law to withhold federal records even as the number of requests for information declines” (source). Major government agencies cited an executive exemption from FOIA at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year (source)—the most transparent government in American history is in fact more secretive than Bush’s. Indeed, as AP reported, “the administration has stalled even over records about its own efforts to be more transparent” (source).
Barack Obama puts a brave face on it. The Afghan war is winnable, he insists. “We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum,” he told US troops at Bagram this month. He repeated the mantra today. But American commentators and analysts, across the political spectrum, are wondering aloud: will it happen the other way around? Will the war break Obama’s presidency?
Obama is not yet the Rose Garden prisoner of a failed policy – the fate that befell a Democrat predecessor, Jimmy Carter, whose administration was taken hostage by Iran’s revolutionary mullahs. But he’s uncomfortably close, for all the determined White House talk.
Obama the presidential candidate talked up the war, spoke of fighting the good fight in Afghanistan in contrast to Iraq, wrote Peter Feaver in Foreign Policy. But Obama the president struggles to communicate his aims, much as he struggled on healthcare. Feaver said:
“The administration’s strategy appears to be to drive the public narrative underground.”
In other words, Obama would rather not talk about it unless he cannot avoid it.
This reluctance is political and intellectual. Veteran foreign policy analyst Leslie Gelb, writing in the Daily Beast, said Obama can no longer persuasively answer the basic question: why are 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan, at an annual cost of $113bn?
A New York Times report from Kunduz indicates that as the US has focused its efforts on securing the south, the Taliban is now taking control of the north.
This city, once a crossroads in the country’s northeast, is increasingly besieged. The airport closed months ago to commercial flights. The roads heading south to Kabul and east to Tajikistan as well as north and west are no longer safe for Afghans, let alone Westerners.
Although the numbers of American and German troops in the north have more than doubled since last year, insecurity has spread, the Taliban are expanding their reach, and armed groups that purportedly support the government are terrorizing local people and hampering aid organizations, according to international aid workers, Afghan government officials, local residents and diplomats.
The growing fragility of the north highlights the limitations of the American effort here, hampered by waning political support at home and a fixed number of troops. The Pentagon’s year-end review will emphasize hard-won progress in the south, the heartland of the insurgency, where the military has concentrated most troops. But those advances have come at the expense of security in the north and east, with some questioning the wisdom of the focus on the south and whether the coalition can control the entire country.
To the President of the United States: Mr. President, We have been engaged and working inside Afghanistan, some of us for decades, as academics, experts and members of non-governmental organisations. Today we are deeply worried about the current course of the war and the lack of credible scenarios for the future. The cost of the war is now over $120 billion per year for the United States alone.
This is unsustainable in the long run. In addition, human losses are increasing. Over 680 soldiers from the international coalition – along with hundreds of Afghans – have died this year in Afghanistan, and the year is not yet over. We appeal to you to use the unparalleled resources and influence which the United States now brings to bear in Afghanistan to achieve that longed-for peace.
Despite these huge costs, the situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country. It is now very difficult to work outside the cities or even move around Afghanistan by road. The insurgents have built momentum, exploiting the shortcomings of the Afghan government and the mistakes of the coalition. The Taliban today are now a national movement with a serious presence in the north and the west of the country. Foreign bases are completely isolated from their local environment and unable to protect the population. Foreign forces have by now been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Red Army.
Politically, the settlement resulting from the 2001 intervention is unsustainable because the constituencies of whom the Taliban are the most violent expression are not represented, and because the highly centralised constitution goes against the grain of Afghan tradition, for example in specifying national elections in fourteen of the next twenty years.
The operations in the south of Afghanistan, in Kandahar and in Helmand provinces are not going well. What was supposed to be a population-centred strategy is now a full-scale military campaign causing civilian casualties and destruction of property. Night raids have become the main weapon to eliminate suspected Taliban, but much of the Afghan population sees these methods as illegitimate. Due to the violence of the military operations, we are losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Pashtun countryside, with a direct effect on the sustainability of the war. These measures, beyond their debatable military results, foster grievance. With Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban, it is not realistic to bet on a military solution. Drone strikes in Pakistan have a marginal effect on the insurgency but are destabilising Pakistan. The losses of the insurgency are compensated by new recruits who are often more radical than their predecessors.
James Galbraith, speaking at the ADA Education Fund’s Post-election Conference at the Harvard Kennedy School, said:
I want to raise a hard question — a question on which Americans are divided. It seems to me, though, we will get nowhere unless we realize where we are, what has actually happened, and what the future most likely holds.
Recovery begins with realism and there is nothing to be gained by kidding ourselves. On the topics that I know most about, the administration is beyond being a disappointment. It’s beyond inept, unprepared, weak, and ineffective. Four and again two years ago, the people demanded change. As a candidate, the President promised change. In foreign policy and the core economic policies, he delivered continuity instead. That was true on Afghanistan and it was and is true in economic policy, especially in respect to the banks. What we got was George W. Bush’s policies without Bush’s toughness, without his in-your-face refusal to compromise prematurely. Without what he himself calls his understanding that you do not negotiate with yourself.
It’s a measure of where we are, I think, that at a meeting of Americans for Democratic Action, you find me comparing President Obama unfavorably to President George W. Bush.
Peter Beinart facetiously congratulates Benjamin Netanyahu now that he’s thwarted President Obama’s Middle East peace efforts.
Now all you have to worry about is…Argentina. You see, Argentina just recognized a Palestinian state on 1967 borders. Brazil did so days earlier. Uruguay and Paraguay are expected to follow suit, and then Bolivia and Ecuador. Oh, and you have a small problem with rock stars: last year Elvis Costello and Carlos Santana cancelled Israel gigs because of the occupation, and more seem poised to follow. Dock workers are another worry: from Sweden to South Africa, they keep protesting the occupation and the Gaza blockade by refusing to offload Israeli goods. And then there’s Hanna King, the 17-year-old Swarthmore freshmen who along with four other young American Jews disrupted your speech last month in New Orleans because, as she told Haaretz, “settlements…are contrary to the Jewish values that we learnt in Jewish day school.” You should probably expect young Jews like her to protest all your big American speeches from now on.
I know, I know. You consider all this unfair, and in some ways it is. But when you’ve been occupying another people for 43 years, confiscating more and more of their land and denying them citizenship while providing it to your own settlers, it doesn’t do much good to insist that things are worse in Burma. Your only effective argument against the Elvis Costellos and Hanna Kings was that you were trying to end the occupation. That’s where Obama came in. As long as the U.S. president seemed to have a chance of brokering a deal, his efforts held the boycotters and protesters and Palestinian state-recognizers at bay. When Brazil and Argentina recognized Palestinian independence, the American Jewish Committee’s David Harris declared it “fundamentally unhelpful to the Arab-Israeli peace process.” But what if there is no peace process? What’s your argument then? Maybe you can tell the Ecuadorians that Israel deserves Hebron because Abraham bought land there from Ephron the Hittite.
Rest assured, the Obama administration won’t go along with these efforts to punish and isolate you. It may even denounce them. But as you may have noticed, the world doesn’t listen to America like it used to. Non-Americans have grown tired of hearing that only the U.S. can broker a deal, especially because you’ve now shown that to be false. And so the dam preventing countries and institutions from legitimizing Palestine and delegitimizing Israel may soon break. You didn’t like the American way? Get ready for the Brazilian way.
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