Category Archives: Obama administration

Why has the U.N. been so silent about the U.S. drone program?

Colum Lynch writes: Of the 60 people who have died in 14 reported drone attacks in Pakistan tribal areas since September, the names of all but one of the victims, an alleged leader of the Haqqani terror network named Janbaz Zadran, remain classified.

Since 9/11, the United States has dramatically expanded its covert drone program, killing between several hundred to more than 2,000 people, mostly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, according to human rights groups. Carried out it in near total secrecy (even the existence of the drone program is classified), it’s impossible for outsiders to assess whether U.S. kill operations meet the standards of international law.

The drone program has proven highly controversial in Yemen — where a U.S. strike, prompted by bad intelligence, in May, resulted in the killing of a Yemeni official — and in Pakistan, where it has strained U.S. relations with a key ally in the war on terror. Last month, the Central Intelligence Agency temporarily suspended drone operations in Pakistan in an effort to repair the two countries’ relationship. But the U.N. leadership has shown little interest in registering concern about a practice considered highly controversial — even before the United States launched its war on terrorism after 9/11. While some of Washington allies’ are reportedly troubled by the scope of the U.S. killing campaign they have registered little public concern about it at the United Nations, leaving Iran as a relatively lone voice of protest against the program following their capture of an American surveillance drone in December.

Last month, Turtle Bay asked U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at his year-end press conference about his views on the use of drones, and whether he worries about countries like Iran or Russia taking up the practice. “I don’t have much to say about all this, what kind of means the member states use,” Ban answered. “This is something which national governments, military authorities, they may decide.”

Ban said that while he hoped these nations act within the bounds of “international regulations and understandings” he realizes that “with the rapid development of technology, many countries develop their own military means of getting, collecting information. Other than that, I do not have comments on this matter.”

Ban’s reluctance to address the drone policy stands in contrast to his predecessor Kofi Annan’s criticism of other controversial aspects of the U.S. led war on terror, particularly its detention and rendition policies.

Facebooktwittermail

Iran-U.S. tensions over Gulf send oil prices soaring

The Guardian reports: The price of oil jumped by $4 a barrel on Tuesday as tension between Iran and the US fuelled fears of disruptions to supply.

Brent crude spot prices rose from $107 to $111 after Iran threatened to take action if the US navy moves an aircraft carrier into the Gulf.

US light crude, which dropped below $100 a barrel before Christmas, hit $102.23 a barrel – a rise of $3.40 on the day.

Analysts said the jump in prices was likely to continue as long as Tehran appeared ready to use force against US warships patrolling the strategically vital strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf.

Iran’s army chief, General Ataollah Salehi, warned a US aircraft carrier not to return to the Gulf or risk attack by new surface-to-sea missiles tested by the military in recent days.

Tehran’s latest tough rhetoric over the waterway is part of a feud with the US over new sanctions designed to discourage the Iranian state from developing nuclear weapons.

Salehi spoke as a 10-day Iranian naval exercise ended near the strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials have said the drill aimed to show that Iran could close the shipping route, as it has threatened to do if the US brings into force strong new sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Facebooktwittermail

The gloves are off but the U.S. and Iran are just swinging

Tony Karon writes: US President Barack Obama doesn’t want, or intend, to go to war with Iran. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t do so. Neither Mr Obama nor his Iranian counterparts imagine that their game of brinkmanship could lead to a conflagration that neither seeks, but both sides could make political choices that amount to opting for war rather than compromise.

Iran spent last week test-firing surface-to-surface missiles in war games near the Strait of Hormuz, apparently seeking to signal its ability to close off the sea lane through which some 40 per cent of global oil supplies travel. A couple of Iranian officials even threatened to do just that if Iran is blocked from selling its own oil on global markets – although other, more senior officials quickly walked back that threat.

Nevertheless, the US Navy vowed to prevent militarily any closure of the Strait, creating a media firestorm in the news-starved holiday season Western media.

President Obama, of course, was spending his Christmas break in Hawaii, but he took time off from golf and snorkelling to sign into law a dramatic escalation of US sanctions against Iran – and any company from any country doing business with Iran’s central bank. The new measures threaten to exclude any bank or firm that trades with Iran from doing business in the US, which remains the hub of global finance. That legislation could be used to effectively stop Iran selling oil on world markets.

The plummeting of Iran’s currency since Monday suggests that the measures are having an impact, although few analysts expect them to change the stance of Iran’s leadership. On the contrary, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will hope to rally nationalist sentiment by blaming economic hardships on Western pressure over a nuclear programme that remains popular.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports: Iran’s army chief on Tuesday warned an American aircraft carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf in Tehran’s latest tough rhetoric over the strategic waterway, part of a feud with the United States over new sanctions that has sparked a jump in oil prices.

General Ataollah Salehi spoke as a 10-day Iranian naval exercise ended near the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf. Iranian officials have said the drill aimed to show that Iran could close the vital oil passage, as it has threatened to do if the United States enacts strong new sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program.

The strait, leading into the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea, is the only possible route for tankers transporting crude from the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf to markets. A sixth of the world’s oil exports passes through it every day.

Oil prices rose to over $101 a barrel Tuesday amid concerns that rising tensions between western powers and Iran could lead to crude supply disruptions. By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for February delivery was up $2.67 to $101.50 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Facebooktwittermail

The NDAA’s historic assault on American liberty

Jonathan Turley writes: President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment, to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country … and citizens partied in unwitting bliss into the New Year.

Ironically, in addition to breaking his promise not to sign the law, Obama broke his promise on signing statements and attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely (see the text of the statement here).

Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.

The latest claim is even more insulting. You do not “support our troops” by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the president. The “American way of life” is defined by our constitution and specifically the bill of rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.

Facebooktwittermail

Ron Paul, the anti-war candidate

Mary Meehan writes: Voters who are weary of endless war may have no choice at the presidential level next November. This is a very large group to be denied a vote on a key issue.

A CNN/ORC poll released in November found that 68 percent of Americans opposed the war in Iraq and 63 percent are against the one in Afghanistan. Yet, we keep hearing that only hawks have a chance to be elected president.

Or, in the case of Barack Obama, reelected. Although President Obama has withdrawn U.S. troops from Iraq, the war in Afghanistan grinds on. Mr. Obama expanded the drone warfare that has killed many civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He ordered military action in Libya without even consulting Congress.

President Obama also supports war-related violations of the Bill of Rights, such as the misnamed Patriot Act and the indefinite detention — without trial — of terrorism suspects. And his administration failed to prosecute U.S. officials from the previous administration who authorized or practiced torture.

All of this makes many people think about voting for Rep. Ron Paul, the anti-war Republican congressman from Texas. Establishment political observers insist Dr. Paul has no chance to win the Republican nomination. They have been shocked, though, by recent headlines such as “Ron Paul rising in Iowa polls” and “Can Ron Paul win New Hampshire?”

BuzzFeed reports: Ron Paul — poised to finish strong in the Iowa caucuses – has begun to implement a quiet, complex plan to force a long battle with Mitt Romney for delegates to the Republican National Convention in August. His advantages: Experience, organization, and the legacy of the 2010 Tea Party revival, which convinced Republicans that anti-government figures like Paul just aren’t as weird as they’d thought.

Paul is following the roadmap set by Barack Obama’s 2008 strategy: Start early, learn the rules, and use superior organization and devoted young supporters to dominate the arcane but crucial party procedures in states your rivals are ignoring — states where caucuses and conventions that elect the delegates who will ultimately choose the Republican candidate. The plan begins in places like Minnetonka, Minnesota, a Minneapolis suburb where Paul has based his state headquarters, and where staffers have already begun running “mock-auses” — practice runs for Minnesota’s February 7 caucuses.

Paul’s rivals dismiss his chances. “Ron Paul’s not going to be our nominee,” Mitt Romney said flatly in December. But Paul’s organization is girding for the long haul, and while the 76-year old Texan is vanishingly unlikely to be the nominee — primaries in big states like New York and California could shut him out — observers in the caucus states say they expect Paul to win, and perhaps sweep, dozens of delegates from unexpected corners of the map. Those delegates, in turn, will give him at least a prominent position at the Republican National Convention, and a plausible shot at emerging as a kingmaker if a strong mainstream challenger to Romney emerges.

Facebooktwittermail

Military action isn’t the only solution to Iran

William H. Luers and Thomas R. Pickering write:

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”

— Archibald MacLeish, 1945,preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO

The American people hear from government officials and presidential candidates nearly every day about military action against Iran. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently said that the United States and Israel would not allow Iran to get a bomb. Are these words standard fare for an election year? A strategy to restrain Israel from unilateral action? Or do these threats signify that war is in the “minds of men”?

Conservative ideologues taste the possibility that a leader whom they might influence may return to the White House. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich has already pledged to appoint John Bolton, a neoconservative superstar, as his secretary of state. Is it surprising that Gingrich, who has said he would rather plan a joint operation with Israel against Iran than force the Israelis to go it alone, is the candidate with the strongest commitment to military action?

Have we forgotten what Iraq and the United States have been through since 2002? Were it not for that ill-begotten war, thousands of Americans (and Iraqis) might still be living. America would be a trillion dollars richer and still be the proud, respected and economically healthy nation the world had known.

The defenses of peace were built in many of America’s most illustrious minds since World War II — but only after those minds had been humbled by the ravages wrought by their earlier decisions. Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy recognized, after the fact, the disasters caused by their certitude in Americanizing the Vietnam War. Super Cold Warrior Dean Acheson turned out to be the most influential member of Lyndon Johnson’s “Wise Men” to urge him to stop the failed war in Vietnam. More recently, dozens in leadership positions at the start of the Iraq war realized too late the folly of that decision and the incompetence of its execution.

Asked in the mid-1950s whether he would consider strikes against the Soviet Union to preempt its nuclear weapons program, Dwight D. Eisenhower, our president most expert on the limits of military power, replied: “A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one, if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled? . . . That isn’t preventive war; that is war.”

Facebooktwittermail

With reservations, Obama signs act to allow indefinite detention of U.S. citizens

ABC News reports: In his last official act of business in 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act from his vacation rental in Kailua, Hawaii. In a statement, the president said he did so with reservations about key provisions in the law — including a controversial component that would allow the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge.

The legislation has drawn severe criticism from civil liberties groups, many Democrats, along with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who called it “a slip into tyranny.” Recently two retired four-star Marine generals called on the president to veto the bill in a New York Times op-ed, deeming it “misguided and unnecessary.”

“Due process would be a thing of the past,” wrote Gens Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar. “Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States – and hand Osama bin Laden an unearned victory long after his well-earned demise.”

The president defended his action, writing that he signed the act, “chiefly because it authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, crucial services for service members and their families, and vital national security programs that must be renewed.”

Senior administration officials, who asked not to be named, told ABC News, “The president strongly believes that to detain American citizens in military custody infinitely without trial, would be a break with our traditions and values as a nation, and wants to make sure that any type of authorization coming from congress, complies with our Constitution, our rules of war and any applicable laws.”

The Associated Press adds: The administration also raised concerns about an amendment in the bill that goes after foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank, barring them from opening or maintaining correspondent operations in the United States. It would apply to foreign central banks only for transactions that involve the sale or purchase of petroleum or petroleum products.

Officials worry that the penalties could lead to higher oil prices, damaging the U.S. economic recovery and hurting allies in Europe and Asia that purchase petroleum from Iran.

The penalties do not go into effect for six months. The president can waive them for national security reasons or if the country with jurisdiction over the foreign financial institution has significantly reduced its purchases of Iran oil.

The State Department has said the U.S. was looking at how to put them in place in a way that maximized the pressure on Iran, but meant minimal disruption to the U.S. and its allies.

In response to the threatened penalties, Iran warned this past week that it may disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf waterway. U.S. officials say that while they take all threats from Iran seriously, they view this latest warning as little more than saber rattling because disrupting the waterway would harm Iran’s economy.

The $662 billion bill authorizes money for military personnel, weapons systems, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and national security programs in the Energy Department for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

The measure also freezes some $700 million in assistance until Pakistan comes up with a strategy to deal with improvised explosive devices.

Facebooktwittermail

Once again the United States supports a strongman in Iraq

The New York Times reports: The Obama administration is moving ahead with the sale of nearly $11 billion worth of arms and training for the Iraqi military despite concerns that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is seeking to consolidate authority, create a one-party Shiite-dominated state and abandon the American-backed power-sharing government.

The military aid, including advanced fighter jets and battle tanks, is meant to help the Iraqi government protect its borders and rebuild a military that before the 1991 Persian Gulf war was one of the largest in the world; it was disbanded in 2003 after the United States invasion.

But the sales of the weapons — some of which have already been delivered — are moving ahead even though Mr. Maliki has failed to carry out an agreement that would have limited his ability to marginalize the Sunnis and turn the military into a sectarian force. While the United States is eager to beef up Iraq’s military, at least in part as a hedge against Iranian influence, there are also fears that the move could backfire if the Baghdad government ultimately aligns more closely with the Shiite theocracy in Tehran than with Washington.

United States diplomats, including Ambassador James F. Jeffrey, have expressed concern about the military relationship with Iraq. Some have even said it could have political ramifications for the Obama administration if not properly managed. There is also growing concern that Mr. Maliki’s apparent efforts to marginalize the country’s Sunni minority could set off a civil war.

“The optics of this are terrible,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, an expert on national security issues at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a critic of the administration’s Iraq policy.

The program to arm the military is being led by the United States Embassy here, which through its Office of Security Cooperation serves as a broker between the Iraqi government and defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Among the big-ticket items being sold to Iraq are F-16 fighter jets, M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks, cannons and armored personnel carriers. The Iraqis have also received body armor, helmets, ammunition trailers and sport utility vehicles, which critics say can be used by domestic security services to help Mr. Maliki consolidate power.

Facebooktwittermail

The Tea Party’s ‘utopian market populism’

Jefferson Morley writes: In his new book, “Pity the Billionaire,” Tom Frank turns his mordant eye on the unlikeliest political development of the Obama presidency: how the crash of 2008 served to strengthen the political right. The deregulation of Wall Street, championed for 30 years by right-wing leaders, had led to an economic catastrophe so frightening that the country elected a liberal Democrat to the presidency. Yet two years later, the most conservative faction of the Republican Party, the Tea Party, had taken effective control of the House of Representatives, the regulation of Wall Street had stalled, and the champions of economic deregulation in Washington had emerged stronger than ever.

Frank, author of the bestselling book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” provides a pithy and nuanced explanation of what he calls the “hard-times swindle.” He spoke with Salon from his father’s home in Kansas City, Mo.

Early in the book, you describe the moment in the spring of 2009 when free-market economics had been so thoroughly discredited that Newsweek could run a cover story proclaiming, “We’re all socialists now.” What happened? Why did that moment dissipate?

I saw that cover so many times [at Tea Party events]. For these people, that rang the alarm bell. I think the AIG moment [when the bailed-out insurance behemoth used taxpayer relief to dole out huge bonuses to its executives] was in some ways the high point of the crisis, when [the politics] could have gone either way. There was this amazing public outrage, and that for me was the turning point. Newsweek had another cover, “Thinking Man’s Guide to Populism,” and I remember this feeling around the country, that people were just furious. Somehow the right captured the sense of anger. They completely captured it. You could say they had no right to it, but they did. And one of the reasons they were able to do it was because the liberals were not interested in that anger.

I’m speaking here of the liberal culture in Washington, D.C. There was no Occupy Wall Street movement [at that time] and there was only people like me on the fringes talking about it. The liberals had their leader in Barack Obama … they had their various people in Congress. But these people are completely unfamiliar with populist anger. It’s an alien thing to them. They don’t trust it, and they have trouble speaking to it. I like Barack Obama, but at the end of the day he’s a very professorial kind of guy. The liberals totally missed the opportunity, and the right was able to grab it.

Looking back on it, I feel like people like myself were part of the problem. We sort of assumed with the Democrats in power, the system would correct itself.

One of the problems with liberalism in this country is that it’s headquartered in Washington and its leaders are a very comfortable class of people. Washington is one of the richest cities in the country, maybe the richest. It’s not a place that feels the crisis, that feels the economic downturn. By and large, the real estate market stayed OK. The city continued to boom. The contracts continued to flow. What we’re talking about here is the failure of modern liberalism. At one time it was a movement of working-class people. The idea that liberals wouldn’t feel economic pain was ridiculous. That’s who liberals were. No more. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Remote warfare for an ‘oddly passive’ president

The Washington Post reports: When Obama was sworn into office in 2009, the nation’s clandestine drone war was confined to a single country, Pakistan, where 44 strikes over five years had left about 400 people dead, according to the New America Foundation. The number of strikes has since soared to nearly 240, and the number of those killed, according to conservative estimates, has more than quadrupled.

The number of strikes in Pakistan has declined this year, partly because the CIA has occasionally suspended them to ease tensions at moments of crisis. One lull followed the arrest of an American agency contractor who killed two Pakistani men; another came after the U.S. commando raid that killed bin Laden. The CIA’s most recent period of restraint followed U.S. military airstrikes last month that inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border. At the same time, U.S. officials have said that the number of “high-value” al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan has dwindled to two.

Administration officials said the expansion of the program under Obama has largely been driven by the timeline of the drone’s development. Remotely piloted aircraft were used during the Clinton and Bush administrations, but only in recent years have they become advanced and abundant enough to be deployed on such a large scale.

The number of drone aircraft has exploded in the past three years. A recent study by the Congressional Budget Office [PDF] counted 775 Predators, Reapers and other medium- and long-range drones in the U.S. inventory, with hundreds more in the pipeline.

About 30 of those aircraft have been allocated to the CIA, officials said. But the agency has a separate category that doesn’t show up in any public accounting, a fleet of stealth drones that were developed and acquired under a highly compartmentalized CIA program created after the Sept. 11 attacks. The RQ-170 model that recently crashed in Iran exposed the agency’s use of stealth drones to spy on that country’s nuclear program, but the planes have also been used in other countries.

The escalation of the lethal drone campaign under Obama was driven to an extent by early counterterrorism decisions. Shuttering the CIA’s detention program and halting transfers to Guantanamo Bay left few options beyond drone strikes or detention by often unreliable allies.

Key members of Obama’s national security team came into office more inclined to endorse drone strikes than were their counterparts under Bush, current and former officials said.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, former CIA director and current Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, and counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan seemed always ready to step on the accelerator, said a former official who served in both administrations and was supportive of the program. Current administration officials did not dispute the former official’s characterization of the internal dynamics.

The only member of Obama’s team known to have formally raised objections to the expanding drone campaign is Dennis Blair, who served as director of national intelligence.

During a National Security Council meeting in November 2009, Blair sought to override the agenda and force a debate on the use of drones, according to two participants.

Blair has since articulated his concerns publicly, calling for a suspension of unilateral drone strikes in Pakistan, which he argues damage relations with that country and kill mainly mid-level militants. But he now speaks as a private citizen. His opinion contributed to his isolation from Obama’s inner circle, and he was fired last year.

Obama himself was “oddly passive in this world,” the former official said, tending to defer on drone policy to senior aides whose instincts often dovetailed with the institutional agendas of the CIA and JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command].

Facebooktwittermail

Iran and the U.S. trade threats

The Associated Press reports: Oil prices fell on Wednesday, after Saudi Arabia said it will offset any loss of oil from a threatened Iranian blockade of a crucial tanker route in the Middle East.

The U.S. Navy warned that any disruption of traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz “will not be tolerated.”

In New York, benchmark crude fell $1.98, or about 2 percent, to finish at $99.36 a barrel.

Brent crude fell $1.71 to end at $107.56 a barrel in London.

On Tuesday Iran’s vice president said that his country was ready to close the Strait of Hormuz — a vital waterway through which a third of the world’s tanker traffic flows — if western nations embargo the country’s oil because of Iran’s ongoing nuclear program. The head of the country’s navy added on Wednesday that his fleet can block the strait if need be. His comments came as Iran held a 10-day drill in international waters near the strategic route, which is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point.

A Saudi oil ministry official told The Associated Press that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers are ready to provide more oil if Iran tries to block the strait. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue. He didn’t specify other routes that could be used to transport oil, although they would likely be longer and more expensive for getting crude to the region’s customers.

“Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated,” said Lt. Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is responsible for naval operations in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.

Steve LeVine writes: Is Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz — the seaway chokepoint for some 17 percent of the world’s daily oil supply — as empty as its vow to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth? Oil traders by and large think so — a day after Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi issued the threat, global oil prices were sharply lower.

Traders say the main reason for their non-chalance is the extent of U.S. military forces deployed in the area. The idea is that, if Iran mines the waterway — which links the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean — or harasses oil tankers with its fast patrol boats (such as the one pictured above), the U.S. Navy will swiftly come to the rescue.

At the Financial Times, Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Javier Blas say we may be witnessing a reflection of Iranian politics ahead of March parliamentary elections.

Yet the characters in this latest Persian Gulf drama are among the most unpredictable on the big geopolitical chessboard. While Iran may very well be simply huffing and puffing, it is not out of the question that it would, as it has before, make trouble for oil traffic in the Strait. If it does, that would be serious stuff because of those who are dispatching the 13 oil and liquefied natural gas supertankers that ply Hormuz every day — in addition to Iran, they are Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In his daily note to clients today, Connecticut-based oil analyst Peter Beutel steps away from the machismo of other traders, and notes the stakes should Iran make good on its threat: “Under any scenario, [it] would be a game-changer. It could keep millions of barrels a day from moving out of the Petroleum Gulf — perhaps as much as 19 million barrels per day — and would instantly draw all consuming nations into opposition with Tehran. The U.S. and its Arab allies would be compelled to open [the strait] by military force.”

I remarked last week on the poor record of sanctions in terms of achieving foreign policy objectives. But it is hung up because, notwithstanding the lobby that earns a living by urging war with this or that country, there is very little upside, and much in the way of downside, in any military solution. So if you wish to forestall a nuclear-armed Iran, and war is too risky, sanctions are about all there is.

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. and Israel consider ‘red lines’ triggering war on Iran?

“Israel and the U.S. are discussing ‘red lines’ in Iran’s nuclear program, that if crossed would justify a preemptive strike on its nuclear facilities,” reports Haaretz citing an article in the Daily Beast. But no one in the Obama administration is spelling out what those red lines would be. It sounds less like preparation to issue concrete threats to Iran and more like the latest display of a threatening posture — which is not to say there’s no reason for concern, but simply that the headlines with ‘red lines’ and ‘triggers’ may overstate what’s happening.

Eli Lake reports: Until recently, current and former Obama administration officials would barely broach the topic in public, only hinting vaguely that all options are on the table to stop Iran’s program. Part of the reason for this was that Obama came into office committed to pursuing negotiations with Iran. When the diplomatic approach petered out, the White House began building international and economic pressure on Iran, often in close coordination with Israel.

All the while, secret sabotage initiatives like a computer worm known as Stuxnet that infected the Siemens-made logic boards at the Natanz centrifuge facility in Iran, continued apace. New U.S. estimates say that Stuxnet delayed Iran’s nuclear enrichment work by at most a year, despite earlier estimates that suggested the damage was more extensive.

Last week in a CBS interview, Panetta said Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon is a “red line.” White House advisers have more recently broached the subject more specifically in private conversations with outside experts on the subject.

Patrick Clawson, the director of research for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said, “If Iran were found to be sneaking out or breaking out then the president’s advisers are firmly persuaded he would authorize the use of military force to stop it.” But Clawson added, “The response they frequently get from the foreign policy experts is considerable skepticism that this is correct, not that these people are lying to us, but rather when the occasion comes we just don’t know how the president will react.”

Facebooktwittermail

Obama’s freedom to kill anyone anywhere

Glenn Greenwald writes: [A] new Washington Post article which contains three short passages that I really want to highlight because they so vividly capture the essence of so much. The article, by Greg Miller, is being promoted by the Post this way: “In 3 years, the Obama administration has built a vast drone/killing operation”; it describes the complete secrecy behind which this is all being carried out and notes: “no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.” Here is the first beautifully revealing passage:

Senior Democrats barely blink at the idea that a president from their party has assembled such a highly efficient machine for the targeted killing of suspected terrorists. It is a measure of the extent to which the drone campaign has become an awkward open secret in Washington that even those inclined to express misgivings can only allude to a program that, officially, they are not allowed to discuss.

In sum: the President can kill whomever he wants anywhere in the world (including U.S. citizens) without a shred of check or oversight, and has massively escalated these killings since taking office (at the time of Obama’s inauguration, the U.S. used drone attacks in only one country (Pakistan); under Obama, these attacks have occurred in at least six Muslim countries). Because it’s a Democrat (rather than big, bad George W. Bush) doing this, virtually no members of that Party utter a peep of objection (a few are willing to express only the most tepid, abstract “concerns” about the possibility of future abuse). And even though these systematic, covert killings are widely known and discussed in newspapers all over the world — particularly in the places where they continue to extinguish the lives of innocent people by the dozens, including children — Obama designates even the existence of the program a secret, which means our democratic representatives and all of official Washington are barred by the force of law from commenting on it or even acknowledging that a CIA drone program exists (a prohibition enforced by an administration that has prosecuted leaks it dislikes more harshly than any other prior administration).

Facebooktwittermail

Vote Obama — if you want a centrist Republican for president

Glenn Greenwald writes: American presidential elections are increasingly indistinguishable from the reality TV competitions drowning the nation’s airwaves. Both are vapid, personality-driven and painfully protracted affairs, with the winners crowned by virtue of their ability to appear slightly more tolerable than the cast of annoying rejects whom the public eliminates one by one. When, earlier this year, America’s tawdriest (and one of its most-watched) reality TV show hosts, Donald Trump, inserted himself into the campaign circus as a threatened contestant, he fitted right in, immediately catapulting to the top of audience polls before announcing he would not join the show.

The Republican presidential primaries – shortly to determine who will be the finalist to face off, and likely lose, against Barack Obama next November – has been a particularly base spectacle. That the contest has devolved into an embarrassing clown show has many causes, beginning with the fact that GOP voters loathe Mitt Romney, their belief-free, anointed-by-Wall-Street frontrunner who clearly has the best chance of defeating the president.

In a desperate attempt to find someone less slithery and soulless (not to mention less Mormon), party members have lurched manically from one ludicrous candidate to the next, only to watch in horror as each wilted the moment they were subjected to scrutiny. Incessant pleas to the party’s ostensibly more respectable conservatives to enter the race have been repeatedly rebuffed. Now, only Romney remains viable. Republican voters are thus slowly resigning themselves to marching behind a vacant, supremely malleable technocrat whom they plainly detest.

In fairness to the much-maligned GOP field, they face a formidable hurdle: how to credibly attack Obama when he has adopted so many of their party’s defining beliefs.

Facebooktwittermail

Book examines America’s turn from science, warns of danger for democracy

McClatchy reports: Americans have trouble dealing with science, and one place that’s especially obvious is in presidential campaigns, says Shawn Lawrence Otto, who tried, with limited success, to get the candidates to debate scientific questions in the 2008 presidential election. Otto is the author of a new book, “Fool me twice: Fighting the assault on science in America,” which opens with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” And if the people and their leaders aren’t well informed and don’t use scientific information to solve modern problems, Otto suggests, the United States could soon skid into decline. “Without the mooring provided by the well-informed opinion of the people, governments may become paralyzed or, worse, corrupted by powerful interests seeking to oppress and enslave,” he writes. Today, he adds, Congress seems paralyzed and “ideology and rhetoric increasingly guide policy discussion, often bearing little relationship to factual reality.” In 2008, Otto and a group of other writers tried to organize a presidential debate on science issues. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain was interested. In the end, the two candidates agreed to respond to 14 questions in writing, and Otto’s group posted them on its ScienceDebate.org website. Otto said the group plans to try for another science debate in 2012. Reporters play a role in whether science is discussed in campaigns. A League of Conservation Voters analysis in early 2008 found that prime-time TV journalists asked 2,975 questions in 171 interviews. Only six questions were about climate change, “and the same could be said of any one of several major policy topoics surrounding science,” Otto writes in the book.

Facebooktwittermail

Careful what you wish for: an unstable world as U.S. declines

Tony Karon writes: Alarmed by the unchecked global dominance of Washington in the late 1990s, France’s then-foreign minister Hubert Vedrine described the US as a “hyperpower” whose influence needed to be checked for the greater good. This would be achieved, he suggested, by the construction of a “multipolar” world order, in which US influence would be balanced by the emergence of a number of different power centres.

As 2011 draws to a close, there can be no doubt that “multipolarity” is upon us, and then some: Washington has found its abilities limited to influence the dramatic political events unfolding across the wider Middle East and beyond. The US in 2012 faces a wave of crises that could have profound consequences for America’s well-being, yet with dramatically weakened levers of influence to shape the outcomes to those crises.

Today, decisions made in Ankara, Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Tehran, Riyadh and even Doha are having an effect on international affairs that might have been unthinkable just a few years ago. A quick glance at a few of the crises currently on the boil suggests the “multipolar” world may be a more unpredictable place than Mr Vedrine imagined.

President Barack Obama pulled the last US troops out of Iraq saying that it could become a “model for the entire region”, but the bloodbath visited on Baghdad by car bombers in the final weeks of 2011 was a grim reminder that Iraq may still be headed down the abyss of sectarian bloodshed. The attacks come against a backdrop of sharply rising sectarian tensions as the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki appears to be systematically removing leading Sunnis from the political scene, raising fears of a renewed insurgency.

Facebooktwittermail