Category Archives: Barack Obama

Obama’s take-no-prisoners approach

A year ago, when President Obama signed his executive order to close Guantanamo he said: “the message we are sending around the world is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism, and we are going to do so vigilantly; we are going to do so effectively; and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals.”

It is now plain that Obama’s solution to the dilemma of how to interrogate and incarcerate suspected terrorists is chillingly simple: kill them.

The Obama administration’s kill-first policy relies first and foremost on this fact: the United States can act with impunity. Indeed, a president who was welcomed by the world largely because he was seen as the antithesis of his predecessor, appears in fact to believe that under the protection of a cool and sophisticated persona he has latitude to go further than Bush — as though the former president’s greatest failing was his style.

The Washington Post reports:

When a window of opportunity opened to strike the leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa last September, U.S. Special Operations forces prepared several options. They could obliterate his vehicle with an airstrike as he drove through southern Somalia. Or they could fire from helicopters that could land at the scene to confirm the kill. Or they could try to take him alive.

The White House authorized the second option. On the morning of Sept. 14, helicopters flying from a U.S. ship off the Somali coast blew up a car carrying Saleh Ali Nabhan. While several hovered overhead, one set down long enough for troops to scoop up enough of the remains for DNA verification. Moments later, the helicopters were headed back to the ship.

The strike was considered a major success, according to senior administration and military officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified operation and other sensitive matters. But the opportunity to interrogate one of the most wanted U.S. terrorism targets was gone forever.

The Nabhan decision was one of a number of similar choices the administration has faced over the past year as President Obama has escalated U.S. attacks on the leadership of al-Qaeda and its allies around the globe. The result has been dozens of targeted killings and no reports of high-value detentions.

Gaza: BBC takes Obama to the streets

Mariam Hamed writes:

“[After] one year of Obama… What has changed?”

The BBC has raised this question 430 times in banners featuring U.S. President Barack Obama in key locations across Gaza. The banners confront Gazans on morning and evening commutes, and as a result Obama has become the talk of the town.

Gaza’s BBC correspondent Shohdy Al-Kashef explains the banners are part of an ad campaign for a recent a BBC Arabic-language program, and the Obama banners have gone up in cities across the Palestinian territories. The BBC called on Palestinians to interact with the program, especially asking for comments about the Obama presidency one year later, via text and interactive internet forum. Said Al-Kashef, “The main goal is for… the people to ask questions [about Obama] without restrictions.”

I wandered up to a number of people looking at the Obama banners and asked them to answer the question the signs raise.

Abu Mohammed, a falafel vendor, sees the BBC sign everyday, as it is suspended on the side of the street opposite his. About the question, he answers, “There is nothing new under the sun. Obama’s sleeping in honey – [he has gotten comfortable where he is], and he does not mind ruin of the Palestinian people.”

Can Obama take charge?

Paul Krugman describes the current crisis in Washington and its parallels with the collapse of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century:

…given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session.

Don’t hold your breath. As it is, Democrats don’t even seem able to score political points by highlighting their opponents’ obstructionism.

It should be a simple message (and it should have been the central message in Massachusetts): a vote for a Republican, no matter what you think of him as a person, is a vote for paralysis. But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries. Sure enough, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, accused Mr. Shelby of “silliness.” Yep, that will really resonate with voters.

After the dissolution of Poland, a Polish officer serving under Napoleon penned a song that eventually — after the country’s post-World War I resurrection — became the country’s national anthem. It begins, “Poland is not yet lost.”

Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.

The problem with locating the root of the problem in what has become a dysfunctional Senate, is that it turns the administration into a victim. Krugman might bemoan the White House’s ineffectual defense mechanisms but he’s essentially sidelining the heart of the problem: a weak president.

The inner circle that is destroying the Obama presidency

From the Financial Times:

At a crucial stage in the Democratic primaries in late 2007, Barack Obama rejuvenated his campaign with a barnstorming speech, in which he ended on a promise of what his victory would produce: “A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again.”

Just over a year into his tenure, America’s 44th president governs a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington’s ways. What went wrong?

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons – from Mr Obama’s decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president’s inability to convince voters he can “feel their [economic] pain”, to the apparent ungovernability of today’s Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis – and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

In dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington – most of them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval Office – each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people – Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief.

Two, Mr Emanuel and Mr Axelrod, have box-like offices within spitting distance of the Oval Office. The president, who is the first to keep a BlackBerry, rarely holds a meeting, including on national security, without some or all of them present.

With the exception of Mr Emanuel, who was a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, all were an integral part of Mr Obama’s brilliantly managed campaign. Apart from Mr Gibbs, who is from Alabama, all are Chicagoans – like the president. And barring Richard Nixon’s White House, few can think of an administration that has been so dominated by such a small inner circle.

Steve Clemons, who provides an extended analysis of the FT piece, comments that unless Obama swiftly installs a Team B, “the Obama brand will be totally bust in the very near term.”

Off with his head!

Matthew Yglesias writes:

If the President wants to do something like implement a domestic policy proposal he campaigned on—charge polluters for global warming emissions, for example—he faces a lot of hurdles. He needs majority support on a House committee or three. He also needs majority support on a Senate committee or three. Then he needs to get a majority in the full House of Representatives. And then he needs to de facto needs a 60 percent supermajority in the Senate. And then it’s all subject to judicial review.

But if Scooter Libby obstructs justice, the president has an un-reviewable, un-checkable power to offer him a pardon or clemency. If Bill Clinton wants to bomb Serbia, then Serbia gets bombed. If George W Bush wants to hold people in secret prisons and torture them, then tortured they shall be. And if Barack Obama wants to issue a kill order on someone or other, then the order goes out. And if Congress actually wants to remove a president from office, it faces extremely high barriers to doing so.

Whether or not you approve of this sort of executive power in the security domain, it’s a bit of a weird mismatch. You would think that it’s in the field of inflicting violence that we would want the most institutional restraint. Instead, the president faces almost no de facto constraints on his deployment of surveillance, military, and intelligence authority but extremely tight constraint on his ability to implement the main elements of the his domestic policy agenda.

This kind of presidential power looks “weird” if viewed from a constitutional vantage point but maybe not as weird as an expression of American culture.

Having moved to this country twenty years ago from the country that America successfully wrestled its independence from, it’s often struck me that Americans did not fully reject the concept of monarchical rule; they simply wanted a kind of modified monarchy.

First off, the monarch would need to be a native — a vehement “no” to foreign rule.

Next, the monarch would need to be one of the people, be elected and not restricted to a line of inheritance. It wasn’t that Americans did want a king; they simply wanted everyone to be able to nurture the fantasy that some day they too might become the king.

But dynasties are OK. In fact, the occasional dynasty helps burnish the executive’s regal image.

And what’s more befitting of the powers of an American king than that he should be able to occasionally proclaim: “Off with his head!”

Who knows, maybe in a few years the old regal custom of hosting public executions will be re-instituted. No doubt they’d get excellent ratings on cable news.

Murder with impunity

Glenn Greenwald writes:

… even if you’re someone who does want the President to have the power to order American citizens killed without a trial by decreeing that they are Terrorists (and it’s worth remembering that if you advocate that power, it’s going to be vested in all Presidents, not just the ones who are as Nice, Good, Kind-Hearted and Trustworthy as Barack Obama), shouldn’t there at least be some judicial approval required? Do we really want the President to be able to make this decision unilaterally and without outside checks? Remember when many Democrats were horrified (or at least when they purported to be) at the idea that Bush was merely eavesdropping on American citizens without judicial approval? Shouldn’t we be at least as concerned about the President’s being able to assassinate Americans without judicial oversight? That seems much more Draconian to me.

It would be perverse in the extreme, but wouldn’t it be preferable to at least require the President to demonstrate to a court that probable cause exists to warrant the assassination of an American citizen before the President should be allowed to order it? That would basically mean that courts would issue “assassination warrants” or “murder warrants” — a repugnant idea given that they’re tantamount to imposing the death sentence without a trial — but isn’t that minimal safeguard preferable to allowing the President unchecked authority to do it on his own, the very power he has now claimed for himself? And if the Fifth Amendment’s explicit guarantee — that one shall not be deprived of life without due process — does not prohibit the U.S. Government from assassinating you without any process, what exactly does it prohibit?

Greenwald makes a series of excellent points but I would add one major point that really should come in front of the whole discussion: the idea that a legal distinction should be made between American citizens and non-Americans is a thoroughly un-American idea.

The Declaration of Independence does not say:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Americans are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It didn’t say “Americans”, it said “all men” — a declaration of what were taken to be universal human values.

To be concerned about whether the president has claimed to right to murder Americans is really missing the point. What in practice this and the former president are doing is not exercising any kind of specially fabricated legal right; they are committing murder exclusively where they believe they can get away with it.

Assassinations taking place in the tribal areas of Pakistan, in Yemen and Somalia, are all occurring in environments whose lawlessness means that US government officials can be reliably confident that they can act with relative legal impunity.

‘It’s better to join the Taliban; they pay more money.’

A Canadian trainer instructs Afghan National Police officers at a joint checkpoint near Sangasar, west of Kandahar.
When President Obama announced his 30,000-strong troop surge in December he said: “these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.”

It was another example of what has become all too familiar: Obama’s ability to govern like Bush without sounding exactly like Bush. He might as well have simply reused Bush’s line and said: “As Afghan forces stand up, we will stand down.” The difference in language is trivial. The real difference between now and 2005 when Bush said that in reference to Iraqi forces is that it turns out Bush’s objective was a bit more realistic.

Consider Rod Nordland’s portrayal or the way the Afghan National Police force is shaping up:

The NATO general in charge of training the Afghan police has some tongue-in-cheek career advice for the country’s recruits.

“It’s better to join the Taliban; they pay more money,” said Brig. Gen. Carmelo Burgio, from Italy’s paramilitary Carabinieri force.

That sardonic view reflects a sobering reality. The attempts to build a credible Afghan police force are faltering badly even as officials acknowledge that the force will be a crucial piece of the effort to have Afghans manage their own security so American forces can begin leaving next year.

Though they have revamped the program recently and put it under new leadership, Afghan, NATO and American officials involved in the training effort list a daunting array of challenges, as familiar as they are intractable.

One in five recruits tests positive for drugs, while fewer than one in 10 can read and write — a rate even lower than the Afghan norm of 15 percent literacy. Many cannot even read a license plate number. Taliban infiltration is a constant worry; incompetence an even bigger one.

Now consider this description of the resistance that US Marines are facing in Helmand Province:

In areas where they have built bases, the Marines have undermined the Taliban’s position. But the insurgents have consolidated and adapted, and remain a persistent and cunning presence.

On the morning of the sweep, made by Weapons Company, Third Battalion, First Marines, a large communications antenna that rose from one compound vanished before the Marines could reach it. The man inside insisted that he had seen nothing. And when the Marines moved within the compounds’ walls, people in nearby houses released white pigeons, revealing the Americans’ locations to anyone watching from afar.

The Taliban and their supporters use other signals besides car horns and pigeons, including kites flown near American movements and dense puffs of smoke released from chimneys near where a unit patrols.

“You’ll go to one place, and for some reason there will be a big plume of smoke ahead of you,” said Capt. Paul D. Stubbs, the Weapons Company commander. “As you go to the next place, there will be another.”

“Our impression,” he added, “is the people are doing it because they are getting paid to do it.”

The people are getting paid… right.

You don’t have to be a Holywood screenwriter to see this description — the smoke signals, pigeon alerts and so forth — as a classic image of resistance. The foreign fighters are better armed, but the resistance fighters have the home-turf advantage — they’re being protected by the civilian population. Do the civilians have to get paid for their services? Conceivably, but I kind of doubt it. More likely it simply comes down to knowing who are “our boys”.

Covering up homicide

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama said: “… in the last year, hundreds of al Qaeda’s fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008.”

He could have said “we have killed…” just to make it clear that he includes himself as an actor, not an observer, in the killing process. And he could also have said “and we killed a bunch of innocent bystanders as well.” But maybe when it comes to al Qaeda, there is in Obama’s mind no such person as an innocent bystander. Maybe the children, wives and grandparents are “affiliates”.

In Pakistan the concept of an innocent bystander has not been abandoned and what Obama touts as great success is perceived as an ongoing unrelenting massacre.

Here are some of the latest damning numbers – numbers that no doubt many an American journalist will hesitate to report because they haven’t been confirmed by the holiest of sources, the Pentagon:

Afghanistan-based US predators carried out a record number of 12 deadly missile strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan in January 2010, of which 10 went wrong and failed to hit their targets, killing 123 innocent Pakistanis. The remaining two successful drone strikes killed three al-Qaeda leaders, wanted by the Americans.

The rapid increase in the US drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan can be gauged from the fact that only two such strikes were carried out in January 2009, which killed 36 people. The highest number of drone attacks carried out in a single month in 2009 was six, which were conducted in December last year. But the dawn of the New Year has already seen a dozen such attacks.

Note that all of these Predator attacks came after the CIA team widely reported as having been responsible for Predator targeting had been killed in the Khost bombing.

Now if it became known that the US government was responsible for sending gunmen into restaurants where mafia-style they left their targets riddled with bullets in front of horrified onlookers, even if there were no innocent bystanders killed, there would be public outrage. The government would be accused of having stooped to using the methods of gangsters.

Instead, we fire missiles, destroy the restaurant and kill everyone in it and even if it turns out the target had already left, somehow it’s OK. It was an innocent mistake. It happened in a distant country. We’ll never hear the names of the dead.

Israel is very pleased with the cage in which it has trapped Obama

Zvi Bar’el in Haaretz:

Speeches, so it turns out, are an excellent substitute for policy. There’s no solution to the problem of radical Islam? Talk about reaching out in friendship to moderate Islam. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is stuck? Talk about the legitimate rights of the Palestinians. The war on Al-Qaida is not progressing? Speak of building a nation in Afghanistan. Iran is being impudent? Issue an elegant warning. Wait a year. Let it be forgotten and then make another speech. Erase all that did not succeed, bypass the major crises and continue on to the next year.

Indeed, President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address reveals that what stirred the world’s imagination during the past year, what led to his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, what caused sandstorms in Middle Eastern and Muslim states and sowed terror in Israel – simply popped like a bubble. Not a single word on the Middle East peace process. Only a restrained “promise” to Iran’s leaders of “growing consequences.” No new outstretched arm to moderate Islam. A word about human rights? Nothing. Just let us make it through the year in peace.

The great vision came down to local politics. To fighting against tribes, gangs, or, in the case of Israel, nationalist parties. Whoever thought that Obama would fulfill the message of Arab-Israeli peace can, like Obama, kick himself for nurturing lofty expectations. But if Obama can chalk up his meager achievements in the Middle Eastern marketplace to inexperience – as if every U.S. president has to reinvent the wheel – that doesn’t absolve the Israelis from paying the bill.

Gideon Levy:

Looking at the way the right acts makes one go green with envy and want to learn from them. Four hundred criminal cases opened against opponents of the 2005 Gaza Strip disengagement, people who threw oil, acid, garbage and stones at soldiers and police, were closed last week and their criminal record expunged. Fifty-one MKs voted in favor of the closure, nine against. That is the true map of Israeli politics (and society). Only about seven percent of the lawmakers believed that this was a worthless and dangerous decision. All the rest agreed with it, or did not bother to vote or take an interest.

Neither did anyone think to apply a similar rule to 800 protesters against Operation Cast Lead, who were arrested and charged, perhaps because they are Arabs, nor to the dozens arrested for protesting in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, perhaps because they are leftists. Left-wing demonstrators never acted as violently as the settlers do, but no one thinks about pardoning them. Not even a semblance of equality before the law, not even the appearance of justice for all – that is unnecessary in a place where public shame no longer exists.

Robert Fisk:

Area C doesn’t sound very ominous. A land of stone-sprinkled grey hills and soft green valleys, it’s part of the wreckage of the equally wrecked Oslo Agreement, accounting for 60 per cent of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that was eventually supposed to be handed over to its Palestinian inhabitants.

But look at the statistics and leaf through the pile of demolition orders lying on the table in front of Abed Kasab, head of the village council in Jiftlik, and it all looks like ethnic cleansing via bureaucracy. Perverse might be the word for the paperwork involved. Obscene appear to be the results.

Palestinian houses that cannot be permitted to stand, roofs that must be taken down, wells closed, sewage systems demolished; in one village, I even saw a primitive electricity system in which Palestinians must sink their electrical poles cemented into concrete blocks standing on the surface of the dirt road. To place the poles in the earth would ensure their destruction – no Palestinian can dig a hole more than 40cm below the ground.

Inside Israeli land grabs, Real News Network:

Uri Avnery:

He hops here and he hops there. Hops to Jerusalem and hops to Ramallah, Damascus, Beirut, Amman (but, God forbid, not to Gaza, because somebody may not like it). Hops, hops, but doesn’t take anything out of his pouch, because the pouch is empty.

So why does he do it? After all, he could stay at home, raise roses or play with his grandchildren.

This compulsive traveling reveals a grain of chutzpah. If he has nothing to offer, why waste the time of politicians and media people? Why burn airplane fuel and damage the environment?

The sanctity of military spending

The sanctity of military spending
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, January 26, 2010

In sum, as we cite our debtor status to freeze funding for things such as “air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks” — all programs included in Obama’s spending freeze — our military and other “security-related” spending habits become more bloated every year, completely shielded from any constraints or reality. This, despite the fact that it is virtually impossible for the U.S. to make meaningful progress in debt reduction without serious reductions in our military programs.

Public opinion is not a legitimate excuse for this utterly irrational conduct, as large percentages of Americans are receptive to reducing — or at least freezing — defense spending. A June, 2009 Pew Research poll asked Americans what they would do about defense spending, and 55% said they would either decrease it (18%) or keep it the same (37%); only 40% wanted it to increase. Even more notably, a 2007 Gallup poll found that “the public’s view that the federal government is spending too much on the military has increased substantially this year, to its highest level in more than 15 years.” In that poll, 58% of Democrats and 47% of Independents said that military spending “is too high” — and the percentages who believe that increased steadily over the last decade for every group.

The clear fact is that, no matter how severe are our budgetary constraints, military spending and all so-called “security-related programs” are off-limits for any freezes, let alone decreases. Moreover, the modest spending freeze to be announced by Obama tomorrow is just the start; the Washington consensus has solidified and is clearly gearing up for major cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with the dirty work to be done by an independent “deficit commission.” It’s time for “everyone” to sacrifice and suffer some more — as long as “everyone” excludes our vast military industry, the permanent power factions inside the Pentagon and intelligence community, our Surveillance and National Security State, and the imperial policies of perpetual war which feed them while further draining the lifeblood out of the country. [continued…]

Obama liquidates himself
By Paul Krugman, New York Times, January 26, 2010

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)

It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.

And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.” [continued…]

Obama would ‘rather be really good one-term president’
By Mark Mooney, ABC News, January 25, 2010

President Obama, buffeted by criticism of his massive health care reform bill and election setbacks, said today he remained determined to tackle health care and other big problems despite the political dangers to his presidency.

“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” he told ABC’s “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview today. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — As though he’s in a men’s store trying out a new suit for size, Obama’s trying on the One-Termer — wants to see if he likes the cut.

If as a bold political choice this president was to make a commitment not to run for re-election, that could be a decisive way of breaking free from the stranglehold of powerful interest groups. But with this statement, as in so many others, there’s nothing bold about what Obama is doing.

Bob Herbert, who is clearly clutching hold of the last straws of hope, sees tomorrow’s State of the Union speech as an slim opportunity for the renewal of faith: “Americans want to know what he stands for, where his line in the sand is, what he’ll really fight for, and where he wants to lead this nation. They want to know who their president really is.”

This really is the most damning statement: that after one year Americans have less of a sense of who occupies the White House than they did before he took office – back when he was perceived as an unknown.

The One-Termer — Obama doesn’t need to decide whether it’s a good fit or he can afford it — they’re giving them away for free. Try it on and it’s yours for keeps.

After the Massachusetts massacre

After the Massachusetts massacre
By Frank Rich, New York Times, January 24, 2010

It was not a referendum on Barack Obama, who in every poll remains one of the most popular politicians in America. It was not a rejection of universal health care, which Massachusetts mandated (with Scott Brown’s State Senate vote) in 2006. It was not a harbinger of a resurgent G.O.P., whose numbers remain in the toilet. Brown had the good sense not to identify himself as a Republican in either his campaign advertising or his victory speech.

And yet Tuesday’s special election was a dire omen for this White House. If the administration sticks to this trajectory, all bets are off for the political future of a president who rode into office blessed with more high hopes, good will and serious promise than any in modern memory. It’s time for him to stop deluding himself. Yes, last week’s political obituaries were ludicrously premature. Obama’s 50-ish percent first-anniversary approval rating matches not just Carter’s but Reagan’s. (Bushes 41 and 43 both skyrocketed in Year One.) Still, minor adjustments can’t right what’s wrong.

Obama’s plight has been unchanged for months. Neither in action nor in message is he in front of the anger roiling a country where high unemployment remains unchecked and spiraling foreclosures are demolishing the bedrock American dream of home ownership. The president is no longer seen as a savior but as a captive of the interests who ginned up the mess and still profit, hugely, from it. [continued…]

The man Obama needs to fix America is … Karl Marx
By Tony Karon, The National, January 23, 2010

There is something almost tragi-comic in Hillary Clinton’s use of the Berlin Wall as an analogy for China’s internet censorship. The Chinese Communist Party hardly shares the American view of Cold War history; the implication that unrestrained Googling will bring down authoritarian regimes is unlikely to persuade Beijing that internet censorship is a bad thing.

But while Winston Churchill’s metaphorical “iron curtain” separated western capitalism from the sclerotic planned economies of the socialist world, what lies behind the US secretary of state’s “information curtain” is the world’s most dynamic capitalist economy, providing credit on which the US’s own economy now depends. While the West endures anaemic growth rates and massive unemployment, China’s double-digit stimulus-based recovery is the envy of all.

The transition from third-world agrarian basket case to the world’s second largest economy in just three decades has been overseen by a Communist Party with a monopoly on power and complete dedication to the pursuit of wealth through capitalism. Its response to the recession was to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure projects, consumer subsidies and measures to ensure that banks kept on lending.

Despite (indeed, perhaps because of) that programme’s evident success, doom-mongers abound in the western media. China will overheat; its property bubble will burst; it will be dragged down by over-capacity; the absence of democracy will strangle its entrepreneurs. And so on. But these prophecies are not new, and Chinese capitalism has proven remarkably resilient, nurtured by a government that is authoritarian but not unresponsive. [continued…]

Unholy alliance at war with Obama’s foreign policy

Unholy alliance at war with Obama’s foreign policy
By Philip Stephens, Financial Times, January 14, 2010

Mr Cheney’s outburst [as he recently accused Barack Obama of being soft on terrorism]… is part of a bigger story in Washington. The aim reaches beyond self-exculpation for his lead role in the calamities of George W. Bush’s administration. It represents the sharp tip of a broader assault on Mr Obama’s foreign policy.

The proposition is that the world’s superpower has a binary choice – between aggression and appeasement – in the conduct of foreign policy. It can get its way by beating up enemies and bullying friends; or it can sacrifice the national interest to weak-kneed engagement and soggy multilateralism. Mr Obama has chosen appeasement.

On one level, there is nothing new in the charge. Republicans have accused the Democrats of being weak on defence ever since the end of the second world war, even if the attacks have rarely been infused with as much partisan vitriol. Soft on terrorism has become a substitute for soft on communism.

For all that, one might have thought that the events of the past few years would have given even the most partisan ideologues on the right pause for thought. The war in Iraq did more than any military adventure since the Vietnam war to drain American power and prestige. It was Mr Cheney and his chums who allowed the Taliban to return to Afghanistan and Mr bin Laden to escape. How did any of this make America safer?

The critics have moved on. The underlying charge now is that Mr Obama has decided that the US should accommodate the big shifts in global power that presage a relative weakening – relative is a vital qualification – in US primacy. Simply put, the president stands accused of standing idly by while other nations rise. America should be blocking the advance of future adversaries rather than inviting them to join a new global order.

Beguiling though the thought might be that history can be stopped in its tracks to preserve the west’s global hegemony for another couple of centuries, there is no accompanying explanation of how precisely Mr Obama can turn back the geopolitical tides. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — At his inauguration, President Obama evinced an understanding that the primary challenge facing America is not whether it can retain its power but whether it has the flexibility to adapt — as he said: “the world has changed, and we must change with it.”

With the New American Century having lasted less than a decade, Obama recognized that the neoconservative vision of American hegemony was a fundamentally unrealistic imposition of the past on the present. But he has yet to clearly articulate a new vision of America’s role in the world and all too frequently falls back on familiar references to America’s greatness.

The strange thing about America’s enduring imperial pretensions is that they are rooted in an underlying sense of inferiority. What other nation engages in such frequent declarations about its own virtues? It’s as though in the absence of continuous self-praise, American pride would rapidly melt into a pool of self-doubt.

For America to meaningfully engage with the world, it also needs to engage with itself. In that process it must begin to move towards an era of national adulthood where it can look in the mirror and see its real face, without having to cling to a childish fantasy.

After the earthquake, how to rebuild Haiti from scratch

After the earthquake, how to rebuild Haiti from scratch
By Jeffrey D. Sachs, Washington Post, January 17, 2010

President Obama has declared that the United States will not forsake Haiti in its moment of agony. Honoring this commitment would be a first for Washington.

To prevent a deepening spiral of death, the United States will have to do things differently than in the past. American relief and development institutions do not function properly, and to believe otherwise would be to condemn Haiti’s poor and dying to our own mythology.

In Haiti, we are facing not only a horrific natural disaster but the tectonics of nature, poverty and politics. Even before last week’s earthquake, roughly half of the nation’s 10 million inhabitants lived in destitution, in squalid housing built of adobe or masonry without reinforcements, perched precariously on hillsides. The country is still trying to recover from the hurricanes of 2008 as well as longtime social and political traumas. The government’s inability to cope has been obvious, but those of us who have been around Haiti for many years also know about the lofty international promises that follow each disaster — and how ineffectual the response has been each time. [continued…]

Why Haiti matters
By Barack Obama, Newsweek, January 15, 2010

… above all, we act for a very simple reason: in times of tragedy, the United States of America steps forward and helps. That is who we are. That is what we do. For decades, America’s leadership has been founded in part on the fact that we do not use our power to subjugate others, we use it to lift them up — whether it was rebuilding our former adversaries after World War II, dropping food and water to the people of Berlin, or helping the people of Bosnia and Kosovo rebuild their lives and their nations.

At no time is that more true than in moments of great peril and human suffering. It is why we have acted to help people combat the scourge of HIV/AIDS in Africa, or to recover from a catastrophic tsunami in Asia. When we show not just our power, but also our compassion, the world looks to us with a mixture of awe and admiration. That advances our leadership. That shows the character of our country. And it is why every American can look at this relief effort with the pride of knowing that America is acting on behalf of our common humanity. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — When human misery is at its most extreme and acute, is this the time to start singing praise to America?

President Obama is sending the fleet, soldiers, and relief to Haiti because… because that’s what we do: we’re Americans.

Instead, why not because… the Haitians, dirt poor, are nevertheless just like us (even though they’re not Americans)?

Is it possible to offer help without turning the occasion into a demonstration of national sainthood?

Of course there is nothing uniquely American about seeing crude nationalistic PR opportunities riding on tragedy.

Israelis, acutely conscious of the extent to which their national reputation has been shredded in recent years, clearly see in Haiti a stage for demonstrating the depth of compassion that exists in the Jewish state.

If the devastation wrought on southern Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza a year ago and the ongoing merciless siege of Gaza all serve to reinforce an image of Zionist brutality, then sending teams of doctors to Haiti might go some way to counter that impression.

That at least seems to be the thinking behind Haaretz‘s headline story today, “Life amid death: Baby born in Israeli field hospital in Haiti” – a gripping narrative from the intrepid Natasha Mozgovaya.

She starts:

Amid the tragedy and devastation encompassing the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince since Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake, a happy event took place Sunday inside the field hospital erected by the Israeli relief delegation in the city. Doctor Shir, who works at Hadassah, delivered the first healthy baby in the Israeli hospital.

The mother told Dr. Shir that she would name her son Israel. “Amid all the death around us,” the doctor said, “it is very symbolic.” He added that childbirth in Haiti doesn’t usually take place in a hospital in the impoverished country, and that this particular woman received the best care from the best doctors.

Oh my! Israeli doctors in an Israeli hospital delivering a baby called Israel! And who would have thought little Israel could do so much good so far away?

Here’s one Haitian who was dumb-founded:

One of the Israeli search and rescue teams on Saturday freed 69-year-old France Gilles from the rubble.

“We told him we were from Israel and he asked if we were mocking him,” one rescuer said.

As for the non-Israeli relief efforts, well, when non-Israelis try and rescue someone the victim doesn’t survive:

Elsewhere, a British team was able to make contact with a woman trapped beneath the debris but was unable to reach her. Before they could dig their way through, a Haitian bulldozer destroyed the remains of the building and the woman was recovered, dead.

Poor woman, that the Israelis couldn’t get there first. When they do, they heroically save lives:

At another site Israelis spoke with a trapped man, seemingly the only survivor after a building collapsed. Following several hours of excavation, rescuers had succeeded in injecting him with fluids, one worker said, and that the team hoped to extricate him within a few more hours.

“We’ve had to drill through a concrete girder, as he is trapped between pipes and planking,” said Liron Shapira, deputy commander of the Israeli delegation. “We have already removed most of the piping and have managed to attach intravenous drips to his torso. As far as we are concerned, as soon as the drips are attached we can proceed smoothly. Now we need to remove the debris from around his legs. Then we should be able to pull him free.”

And might there be a religious dimension in the league table of compassion?

Distress has clearly not bred solidarity and shouts and elbows fly as the needy jostle for food. Three young women from Wisconsin – Susan, Becky and Jamie, volunteers at a Catholic orphanage – are trying to board their flight. “Don’t tell her anything,” one of the girls warns her friend, pointing at me. “She’ll use it to take our place on the flight.” Only after I explain that I have no intention of stealing their seats do they calm down. “We were originally supposed to leave today but because there are no phones or communications we didn’t know if there was a flight, so we came anyway.”

OK, cynicism aside, Israel’s 220-strong relief team is impressive coming from a country of just 7.5 million. Mind you, Iceland, a country that’s bankrupt and has a population of just 320,000 has managed to send a 37-strong search and rescue team. Good on those plucky Icelanders!

From the Cairo Speech to the Cairo Declaration

From the Cairo Speech to the Cairo Declaration
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 2, 2010

In early June last year, after Barack Obama gave his Cairo speech, the think tanks in Washington were abuzz as analysts could barely contain their excitement at witnessing the new Democratic president making history.

“The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop,” Obama boldly declared in front of a youthful Egyptian audience giddy with hope inspired by the lofty oratory of America’s visionary leader.

When the embodiment of hope, invested with the authority of the White House, spoke, the world listened.

Six months later Obama’s authority seems to mean nothing and his words of hope have been soured by their apparent lack of authenticity.

Now comes the Cairo Declaration.

A few hundred activists whose hope of breaking the siege of Gaza got squashed like a bug under the heals of Egypt’s security forces, have signed a declaration. Will the world pay much attention?

Maybe not. But what the Gaza Freedom March lacks in authority it makes up for with authenticity and this — not political office — is ultimately what gives language its power.

End Israeli Apartheid
Cairo Declaration
January 1, 2010

We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state:

In view of:

* Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza;
* the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and settlements;
* the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza;
* the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006;
* the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago;
* the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel;
* and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;
* all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel;
* in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to behave with impunity;
* and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007)

We reaffirm our commitment to:

Palestinian Self-Determination
Ending the Occupation
Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine
The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees

We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law.

To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass, democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS.

Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose:

1) An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by Palestinian and South African trade unionists and civil society activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public internationally;

2) Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010;

3) A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products, involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors;

4) Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott;

5) Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries;

6) Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli government war criminals; coordination of Citizen’s Arrest Bureaux to identify, campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations;

7) Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

We appeal to organisations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign it and work with us to make it a reality. Continue reading →

Craving terrorist melodrama

Craving terrorist melodrama
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, December 30, 2009

The fact that Obama doesn’t hysterically run around like some sort of frightened chicken with his head cut off every time Al Qaeda sneezes — or swagger to the nearest camera to beat his chest and play the role of protective daddy-cowboy — is one of the things I like best about him. As for Armao’s “point” about how Janet Napolitano probably took it easy because the “boss was away” — and her belief that Terrorists will strike more on holidays if Obama isn’t affixed to his chair in the Oval Office, as though he’s the Supreme Airport Screener: those are so self-evidently dumb it’s hard to believe they found their way even into something written by one of Fred Hiatt’s editorial writers.

What this actually illustrates is that many people are addicted to the excitement and fear of Terrorist melodramas. They crave some of that awesome 9/12 energy, where we overnight became The Greatest Generation and — unified and resolute — rose to the challenge of a Towering, Evil Enemy. Armao is angry and upset because the leader didn’t oblige her need to re-create that high drama by flamboyantly flying back to Washington to create a tense storyline, pick up a bullhorn, stand on some rubble, and personally make her feel “safe.” Maureen Dowd similarly complained today that Obama “appeared chilly in his response to the chilling episode on Flight 253.”

That’s because Obama reacted as though this is exactly what it actually is: a lame, failed attempt to kill people by a fractured band of criminals. It’s not the Cuban Missile Crisis or the attack on Pearl Harbor, as disappointing and unfulfilling as it is to accept that. It merits analysis, investigation and possibly policy changes by the responsible government agencies — not a bright-red-alert, bell-ringing, siren-sounding government-wide emergency that venerates Al Qaeda into a threat so profound that the President can’t even be away from Washington lest they get us all. As always, Al Qaeda’s greatest allies are the ones in the U.S. who tremble with the most fear at the very mention of their name and who quite obviously crave a return of that stimulating, all-consuming, elevating 9/12 glory. [continued…]

The strange consensus on Obama’s Nobel address

The strange consensus on Obama’s Nobel address
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, December 11, 2009

Reactions to Obama’s Nobel speech yesterday were remarkably consistent across the political spectrum, and there were two points on which virtually everyone seemed to agree: (1) it was the most explicitly pro-war speech ever delivered by anyone while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize; and (2) it was the most comprehensive expression of Obama’s foreign policy principles since he became President. I don’t think he can be blamed for the first fact; when the Nobel Committee chose him despite his waging two wars and escalating one, it essentially forced on him the bizarre circumstance of using his acceptance speech to defend the wars he’s fighting. What else could he do? Ignore the wars? Repent?
[…]
Much of the liberal praise for Obama’s speech yesterday focused on how eloquent, sophisticated, nuanced, complex, philosophical, contemplative and intellectual it was. And, looked at a certain way, it was all of those things — like so many Obama speeches are. After eight years of enduring a President who spoke in simplistic Manichean imperatives and bullying decrees, many liberals are understandably joyous over having a President who uses their language and the rhetorical approach that resonates with them.

But that’s the real danger. Obama puts a pretty, intellectual, liberal face on some ugly and decidedly illiberal polices. Just as George Bush’s Christian-based moralizing let conservatives feel good about America regardless of what it does, Obama’s complex and elegiac rhetoric lets many liberals do the same. To red state Republicans, war and its accompanying instruments (secrecy, executive power, indefinite detention) felt so good and right when justified by swaggering, unapologetic toughness and divinely-mandated purpose; to blue state Democrats, all of that feels just as good when justified by academic meditations on “just war” doctrine and when accompanied by poetic expressions of sorrow and reluctance. When you combine the two rhetorical approaches, what you get is what you saw yesterday: a bipartisan embrace of the same policies and ideologies among people with supposedly irreconcilable views of the world. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — “I don’t think he can be blamed for the first fact; when the Nobel Committee chose him despite his waging two wars and escalating one, it essentially forced on him the bizarre circumstance of using his acceptance speech to defend the wars he’s fighting. What else could he do? Ignore the wars? Repent?”

Obama wasn’t forced into this situation. He could with dignity and humility have said that he was deeply honored to have been selected but that he must decline the award. That would have earned him far more respect.

Obama’s bloody re-election calculus

Obama’s bloody re-election calculus
By Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, Foreign Policy, December 10, 2009

Afghan National Army

Obama’s new “strategy” is no strategy at all. It is a cynical and politically motivated rehash of Iraq policy: Toss in a few more troops, throw together something resembling local security forces, buy off the enemies, and get the hell out before it all blows up. Even the dimmest bulb listening to the president’s speech could not have missed the obvious link between the withdrawal date for combat troops from Iraq (2010), the date for beginning troop reductions in Afghanistan (2011), and the domestic U.S. election cycle.

So we are faced with a conundrum. Obama is one of the most intelligent men ever to hold the U.S. presidency. But no intelligent person could really believe that adding 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, a country four times larger than Vietnam, for a year or two, following the same game plan that has resulted in dismal failure there for the past eight years, could possibly have any impact on the outcome of the conflict.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes used to say that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” The only conclusion one can reach from the president’s speech, after eliminating the impossible, is that the administration has made a difficult but pragmatic decision: The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, and the president’s second term and progressive domestic agenda cannot be sacrificed to a lost cause the way that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s was for Vietnam. The result of that calculation was what we heard on Dec. 1: platitudes about commitment and a just cause; historical amnesia; and a continuation of the exact same failed policies that got the United States into this mess back in 2001, concocted by the same ship of fools, many of whom are still providing remarkably bad advice to this administration. [continued…]

How America won the Nobel Peace Prize

How America won the Nobel Peace Prize
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 10, 2009

H Obama's war is peace aving been nominated for the peace prize after only ten days in office; having spent the previous three weeks as a president-elect who silently monitored the slaughter in Gaza; and having just assumed the role of commander-in-chief in two wars, for Barack Obama to then craft a credible way to accept an accolade as this year’s most celebrated man of peace, was always going to demand some rhetorical creativity.

Still, this surely ranks as a first: to use the peace prize ceremony as an opportunity to justify war.

Speaking in Oslo last night, Obama said: “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.”

Only within a nation that has largely managed to insulate itself from the effects of war could such a statement be made.

Sixty-four years earlier, in the shadow of two world wars, Americans had a much greater interest in condemning war than in presenting arguments for its justification.

“… our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Robert H Jackson, on August 12, 1945, when laying out the foundation for the Nuremberg Trials.

On that basis, every war that the United States has fought since World War Two has been branded as a war of necessity — not a war of aggression. Likewise the war that Obama has now made his own is one that he claims to be both necessary, just, and unavoidable. Yet its justness rests on a logical non sequitur: the war in Afghanistan is just because of 9/11.

To say “because of 9/11” is both to present a reason and to simultaneously seal that reason inside a locked box. The logical connection between 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan is apparently so direct and unswerving that even now, those who voice skepticism are generally viewed as either un-American, irrational or naive.

Even so, on September 11, 2001, few Americans had the conviction that this country, out of necessity, was about to go war. President Bush had to present a logical and moral argument and he did so by enunciating what became the first iteration of the Bush doctrine and the foundation for the war on terrorism: “we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

On that basis, the Bush administration constructed a legal argument for bombing Afghanistan and killing thousands of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks.

The unspoken truth was that the US government enacted and the American people supported a war of vengeance. Had the lust for reprisal been tempered with foresight of the carnage and chaos that the following eight years would bring, America’s war of necessity might have been seen then as no more necessary than it is widely seen now.

The “necessity” that took America to war in Afghanistan is no different than the choice Israel makes when it bulldozes the family home of a suicide bomber. This accords with the ancient principle of settling scores, rebalancing power, and reasserting a position of dominance. It’s about showing your enemies and showing the world that you remain top dog. And therein lies the intractability of this war. More troops have to sent in now to buy time for Obama to figure how, without loss of face to himself or this country, the troops can be pulled out later.

As the US president reflects on the principles of a just war, he’s sending young American men and women overseas on the promise that they’re heading out on a path that should bring them back home.

Remember when Obama talked about ending the mindset that took us to war?

I do, but apparently he doesn’t.