by Cliff Schecter - Nov 7, 2007
Rudy Giuliani's record prior to September 11 shows him in an unflattering light - and now his costly mistakes are catching up with him.
Rudy Giuliani grows more absurd by the day. One of his most recent ridiculous pronouncements to an Iowa audience was an oldie-but-goody from the right-wing playbook on xenophobic demagoguery: "If we are not careful and you don't elect me, this country will be to the left of France."
No, not France! You mean that place with the nude beaches and the cheese and the free healthcare system that covers everyone? Run for the hills!
Yes, this kind of thing is what passes for discourse in a country where the race for the presidency has in recent decades morphed into a never-ending episode of Bay Watch.
But I'll share with you a something even goofier - an industry term - than Rudy's Franco-paranoia: many Americans still think Rudy Giuliani is a 9/11 hero.
It's still an uphill battle to question Giuliani's Churchillian poses of that day; the majestic manner in which he carried himself while George Bush was preoccupied with reading mono-syllabic phrases to school children and using Air Force One as the largest hide-and-seek hiding spot in the world.
But even though Rudy hasn't yet donned his Top Gun flight suit, that doesn't change the fact that the serial-marrying former mayor of New York was in fact quite the opposite of a "hero" in the years before 9/11. In fact, his actions, or inaction, are responsible for getting firefighters killed.
The record is clear, and still hasn't received the coverage in the US media it deserves. It seems however, that might be about to change.
Last week, New York city councilman Eric Gioia, the chairman of the committee on oversight and investigations, was visited by political activists in New York. As any polite New Yorkers would, they came bearing a gift: enough signatures on a petition calling for an investigation into Giuliani's decisions to fill City Hall.
The reasons given for this investigation are the following (full disclosure, I work for Brave New Films, which made a video calling for this investigation):
(1) Rudy Giuliani knew that the radios New York firefighters were relying upon would not work in a 9/11-type scenario, as they failed during the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993.
(2) It took Rudy seven years to do anything about it (1994-2001), and when he did, he granted a no-bid contract to Motorola for radios that were never field-tested.
(3) When those radios failed in March of 2001, Rudy gave the firefighters their old, dangerously outdated radios back again.
(4) On 9/11, while the members of the New York Police Department heard the call to evacuate the north tower before it fell, many firefighters did not, and 121 of the bravest men and women in New York that day died largely because of this.
This would almost seem to be an open and shut case, and yet it has never really been investigated or widely reported in the American mainstream press despite the heroic efforts of a few, such as investigative reporters Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins. Meanwhile, Giuliani has turned the halo of his "successes" that day into a personal enrichment plan and presidential platform.
Gioia, upon reviewing the petition and watching the video, agreed that questions need to be answered and has called for an investigation. He has sent letters to agencies such as the New York fire and police departments to see what limited inquiries, if any, have already taken place.
He is also reaching out to the speaker of the council, Christine Quinn, to gain her support (in New York city politics, the council speaker can easily quash such efforts - Quinn is a Democrat and presumably a Giuliani foe). But make no mistake, the process has already begun.
Rudy's hero Winston Churchill once said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, save for all the others." Yet, if this master of narcissistic negligence can evade the accountability that is supposed to come with democracy, one might be led to ask what's so much worse about "the others".
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
The Justice Department’s Culture of Torture
by Scott Horton - Nov 7, 2007On Friday, Nov. 2, ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson carried a story with a series of stunning accusations. Jan Crawford Greenburg provided a report that cleared up a long-standing mystery: why did Daniel Levin, the acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel who authored the second in the Justice Department’s series of highly controversial “torture memoranda,” suddenly depart his post? The story that unfolded was grotesque, almost impossible to believe. I have been a critic of the Bush Justice Department for some time, but this story even I was reluctant to believe. So I waited, expecting that the Justice Department would denounce ABC’s report as some sort of hoax or falsehood. In the intervening four days, however, the Justice Department has maintained a steady silence on the story which can be explained only one way: the story is true.
A senior Justice Department official, charged with reworking the administration’s legal position on torture in 2004 became so concerned about the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding that he decided to experience it firsthand, sources told ABC News. Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent the procedure to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques.
After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn’t die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning. Levin, who refused to comment for this story, concluded waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision. And, sources told ABC News, he believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use.
Daniel Levin is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republican. Now, recall Michael Mukasey’s suggestion that he didn’t know what waterboarding was. Levin took a logical approach: he decided to experience it firsthand. And he came to a conclusion that, in my mind, shows unacceptable flexibility in accepting the technique. But how did the Bush White House react to this? It was swift and simple: Levin was forced out of office.When Levin took over from Goldsmith, he went to work on a memo that would effectively replace the Bybee memo as the administration’s legal position on torture. It was during this time that he underwent waterboarding. In December 2004, Levin released the new memo. He said, “Torture is abhorrent” but he went on to say in a footnote that the memo was not declaring the administration’s previous opinions illegal. The White House, with Alberto Gonzales as the White House counsel, insisted that this footnote be included in the memo.
But Levin never finished a second memo imposing tighter controls on the specific interrogation techniques. Sources said he was forced out of the Justice Department when Gonzales became attorney general.
The Bush Administration’s swift reaction: any deviation from the torture litmus test results in dismissal.
The matter raises some more very unpleasant questions. Levin was trying to impose some guidelines on the use of waterboarding as a technique. The purpose of the guidelines was to preserve some very questionable basis to argue that the practice was not torture. So why did the administration put a stop to that? I can see one explanation: they wanted complete flexibility. That means that they contemplated practices that would venture into the most extreme, cruel and horrible treatment. No limitations–let the torturer have at it.
Note that Alberto Gonzales insisted on the inclusion of an infamous footnote which stated that, notwithstanding the different analysis, it was not overturning the advice given by the Yoo/Bybee torture memorandum. Although Levin grudgingly included this, that was not enough to save his job. Why did the administration insist on this footnote? Because people had in fact been waterboarded, and this occurred with the authority of some of the seniormost officials of the Administration: Cheney, Addington, Gonzales, and Rumsfeld, for instance. Without this, the door would be open for their criminal prosecution. Senior officials of the Administration were manipulating the issuance of opinions in the Justice Department to shield themselves from criminal prosecution.
This incident dramatically demonstrates the fixation that Gonzales and Cheney’s team in particular have with the torture issue, including waterboarding. Their fixation has nothing to do with the camouflage they generally put up about torture allowing the nation to defuse nuclear bombs like Jack Bauer in “24.” It is directly tied to their own perception that they are guilty of criminal conduct and their determination to abuse the powers of Government to block any effort to prosecute them.
Waterboarding is torture. It has been understood to be torture since the sixteenth century. Waterboarding was used to torture Black slaves in America before the Civil War. American prosecutors have indicted and tried criminal defendants for torture in connection with the use of waterboarding—bringing and succeeding in cases against both Americans and others. Judge Wallach’s excellent law review article, “Drop by Drop,” covers this well-documented history which the Administration insists that all its lawyers forget. Wallach’s op-ed summarizing his conclusions can be found here.
There is no serious or competent basis upon which waterboarding can be claimed to be legal. The persistence of these bogus arguments is just more evidence of the deterioration of public discourse. Our habit as a nation has always been to accept anything that our political leadership states as a respectable contention, even if worthy of criticism. But with the arrival of the Bush Administration this has become an extremely dangerous premise. There is no respectable opinion that can hold waterboarding legal. It is criminal depravity. When we allow its justification as an article of polite conversation, we deal our society and its values a potentially mortal wound.
“Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,” George Orwell reminded us in “Politics and the English Language.” In the waterboarding debate, Orwell’s warning has found its most literal application.
Dr Strangelove Returns!
by Harry Saloor - Nov 7, 2007In the early 60s, though you heard about ‘nuclear deterrence,’ ‘mutual assured destruction (MAD),’ ‘first strike capability,’ ‘counterforce,’ ‘second strike capability,’ ‘fail-deadly’ and ‘missile gap,’ there was still optimism in the air. For one thing, the Commanders-in-Chief could still be portrayed as decent guys. For another, most of the Zionist and Nazi Scientists had become US citizens. And Israel had not yet declared its intention to rule the world by proxy. And then, of course, there was Dr Strangelove!
Dr. Strangelove, probably one of the best political satires of all times, satirized the Cold War apparatus ridiculing the comic strip characters who created the doctrine of ‘mutual assured destruction’ and the alphabet soup of terminologies that accompanied the farcical concept of ‘nuclear deterrence.’
In ‘Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,’ a delusional US Air Force general orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union to foil an imaginary Communist conspiracy to ’sap and impurify’ the ‘precious bodily fluids’ of the US Citizens replacing it with fluoridated water, which he believes was the cause of his impotence.
His warmongering buddy, Air Force General Buck Turgidson, loosely based on Air Force General Curtis LeMay character, tries to convince the President to launch a full scale nuclear attack against the Soviets. He believes a first strike against the Soviets would destroy their capability to retaliate effectively. Moreover, he believes the human cost of the US victory is ‘acceptable’ with the collateral (American) casualties of, ‘no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops…’
In the 2007 somewhat twisted rerun of Dr Strangelove, it’s the commander-in-chief [sic] himself who is ‘running around like a madman with a razor blade in his hand.’ He strikes other countries in his ‘shock and awe’ bombardments on the pretext of his bogus ‘war on terror,’ and dispatches most of his fleet to exotic places throughout the world to threaten other countries [and create strategic footholds, in addition to the existing inventory of 737 U.S. Military Bases throughout the world.] Armed nuclear weapons go missing after ‘routine’ flights across the country. And to top it all, the madman crows about starting WW III.
His reason is no longer just ‘impotence’ caused by the Communists’ fluoridated water [or was it ‘incompetence,’ ‘psychosis’ and ‘derangement’ caused by alcohol and the snowbirds?] In fact he has little to do with anything, except for rubberstamping the ZioCon cabal’s ideologies in his self-proclaimed role as the ‘decider.’
The cabal perceive the ‘Soviets,’ Chinese, Indians, Sunni and Shi’a respectively as strategic, resource-depleting, ecological (polluting) and ideological threats to their ‘last-man-alive-wins’ theology.
In Dr Strangelove the US bomb explodes in Soviet Union triggering the Soviets’ ‘Doomsday Device’ which would guarantee MAD. According to their estimates, life on Earth’s surface would be extinct in ten months. So the mad scientist recommends sending a small numbers of people to deep mineshafts to protect them against the nuclear fallout while they repopulate USA.
See your World War III and raise you by ten mineshafts and ‘20 million killed, tops…’; raise you 50 million killed in Russia, 200 million in china and no collateral damage …
Pat Robertson Backs Giuliani
One would think that a "Christian" would support a man of peace...
by LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press - Nov 7, 2007
Pat Robertson, a prominent Christian leader and social conservative, endorsed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday.
"It is my pleasure to announce my support for America's Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, a proven leader who is not afraid of what lies ahead and who will cast a hopeful vision for all Americans," Robertson said in a statement issued by the Giuliani campaign.
The former New York mayor backs abortion rights and gay rights, positions that put him in conflict with GOP orthodoxy, and has been trying to persuade cultural conservatives to overlook their differences with him on those issues.
Robertson made no mention of the differences on social conservative issues in the statement.
"Rudy Giuliani took a city that was in decline and considered ungovernable and reduced its violent crime, revitalized its core, dramatically lowered its taxes, cut through a welter of bureaucratic regulations, and did so in the spirit of bipartisanship which is so urgently needed in Washington today," Robertson said.
Conservatives have split in their support for the leading Republican candidates. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback planned to endorse John McCain on Wednesday. Mitt Romney recently announced that Paul Weyrich and Bob Jones III were on board with his candidacy.
Robertson, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1988, founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Christian Coalition and Regent University in Virginia Beach.
by LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press - Nov 7, 2007
Pat Robertson, a prominent Christian leader and social conservative, endorsed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday.
"It is my pleasure to announce my support for America's Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, a proven leader who is not afraid of what lies ahead and who will cast a hopeful vision for all Americans," Robertson said in a statement issued by the Giuliani campaign.
The former New York mayor backs abortion rights and gay rights, positions that put him in conflict with GOP orthodoxy, and has been trying to persuade cultural conservatives to overlook their differences with him on those issues.
Robertson made no mention of the differences on social conservative issues in the statement.
"Rudy Giuliani took a city that was in decline and considered ungovernable and reduced its violent crime, revitalized its core, dramatically lowered its taxes, cut through a welter of bureaucratic regulations, and did so in the spirit of bipartisanship which is so urgently needed in Washington today," Robertson said.
Conservatives have split in their support for the leading Republican candidates. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback planned to endorse John McCain on Wednesday. Mitt Romney recently announced that Paul Weyrich and Bob Jones III were on board with his candidacy.
Robertson, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1988, founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Christian Coalition and Regent University in Virginia Beach.
Dr. Ron Paul Tightens the Screws – Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Money Bomb
by Rick Fisk - November 7, 2007
When the dust cleared, there were over seven million dollars collected and deposited into the Ron Paul campaign coffers, just 5 days into the second month of the quarter. While there was a push sometime past midday, November 5, 2007, to beat Mitt Romney's one-day fund-raising drive of 3.1 million dollars, there was a huge difference in the result and the methods used. Romney received pledges. Ron Paul received real money – or, as real as they allow us plebes to possess nowadays.
The number reported by the Associated Press was "more than 4.2 million" raised in a single day. Ron Paul Graphs puts it at 4.014 million if you don't count the offline donations of 326,000 added to the mix just after midnight. Counting those offline donations, the number was 4.3 million. This was an event completely scripted outside campaign officialdom and embraced by his grassroots supporters. It was the largest single-day haul on-line in the history of politics. For those who are discounting the value and strength of Dr. Paul’s grassroots support, this should kill their arguments dead. They may have a chance to salvage their careers. They can start by admitting that only real people with real money can buy an internet connection or a cell-phone.
Press outlets didn't really know how to handle this historic event. The first old-media outlet to report it found their numbers had already gone stale by hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time they could post their copy. During a late surge, the rate of donations had reached 220,000 dollars per hour.
Folks, neoconservatism is officially dead. Guy Fawkes may have the last laugh after all.
Even at Free Republic, home to the most cartoonish versions of "conservatives" ever assembled on the web, posters who had previously dropped out of sight, came back to revel in the carnage that was the Fifth of November. The thread there starts out with the usual detractors. However, if you can gird your loins past the first couple of pages, it gets real interesting.
Money didn't talk on what has become known as Guy Fawkes Day. I hate that cliché. Money can't talk. People voted with their pocket books. The market moved. The most brilliant part of this was not necessarily the choice of days or the efforts by supporters to spread the word but the choice to show in real-time what was happening. Only 17,500 people pledged on the November 5th website. There were double that many who actually participated. The lesson of economics is being taught in real time by the one candidate who speaks that language fluently.
Hear that sound? It's fear. The screws are being tightened against the limbs of the status quo. Who needs gunpowder when you have the Internet, the Constitution and forty thousand credit cards?
The New York Times, USA Today and CNN jumped on the news bandwagon late in the afternoon with fairly positive stories of the day's events and the Washington Post reported too but couldn't do it with a straight face. Come on, how could you report on an event like this without mentioning that some obscure, wrestling porn-star-wannabee posted to a blog in support of Ron Paul? Why, it would be a 'Dog Bites Man!' story otherwise.
Reading some of these old-media produced stories can be frustrating. The old media had a chance to tell the story correctly, but generally couldn't bring themselves to do it. The caption in the NY Times story below Dr. Paul's scowling picture stated: "Representative Ron Paul’s use of Guy Fawkes Day to encourage donations to his presidential campaign netted millions."
Ugh. Ron Paul had nothing to do with the event. According to the best old-media article of the day, written by ABC's Z. Byron Wolf, Trevor Lyman operated the November 5th site collecting pledges but didn't actually come up with the idea himself. He simply acted on a post he read in one of the Ron Paul meet-up forums. That was October 18th, a mere 3 weeks prior to the historic event.
Here's another great lesson to be learned from the Austrian school. If you allow a market to self-organize and operate freely, the results can be staggering.
That's true in more ways than one. The 4.3 million dollar pick-me-up is obviously an end unto itself, but the resulting value of the media's discussion of what it means, could be worth 5 times that amount. For better or worse, the next week and perhaps even Sunday's political shows will see the old media covering what has happened and discussing what it means to the future of politics. There's no getting around that. George "That's not going to happen" Snuffleufflelgus might learn to talk through his teeth. Those of you with televisions can fill me in Monday.
For fans like myself, watching events unfold was by far the most exciting experience of this campaign thus far but I dare say it will only be a milestone among many. Thomas Woods gets the award for most humorous observation, and the Lew Rockwell team of bloggers gets the "thank God they're around for people without television" award. I coded up an SMS text messaging router today with the donation counter on one screen and the Lew Rockwell blog just behind it. I can't imagine that I was alone. New Media articles were too numerous to read and started showing up just prior to the clock's race toward midnight.
The truly exciting result of this day will be the number of fence-sitters and "leaners" who jump on the bandwagon. Politics is generally a wait and see affair. Rasmussen has reported that a full 60% of the Iowa Straw Poll voters said they could envision changing their minds before the Iowa Caucuses:
However, the race in Iowa is very fluid. For each of the top four candidates, between 57% and 61% of their supporters say they might change their mind before the caucus is held.
That didn't get reported much, if at all. Ron Paul's two biggest hurdles now are name recognition and skepticism. The skepticism is normal. A significant number of people have been waiting to see if Ron Paul really has a chance. Well....I think we've seen that myth blown apart today by a money bomb. The name recognition will commence to increase but don’t expect that the old media will be reporting any poll number jumps. It may just be that the Paul campaign mirrors Kerry’s who polled at 4% nationally before winning New Hampshire and Iowa.
Bombs away…..
When the dust cleared, there were over seven million dollars collected and deposited into the Ron Paul campaign coffers, just 5 days into the second month of the quarter. While there was a push sometime past midday, November 5, 2007, to beat Mitt Romney's one-day fund-raising drive of 3.1 million dollars, there was a huge difference in the result and the methods used. Romney received pledges. Ron Paul received real money – or, as real as they allow us plebes to possess nowadays.
The number reported by the Associated Press was "more than 4.2 million" raised in a single day. Ron Paul Graphs puts it at 4.014 million if you don't count the offline donations of 326,000 added to the mix just after midnight. Counting those offline donations, the number was 4.3 million. This was an event completely scripted outside campaign officialdom and embraced by his grassroots supporters. It was the largest single-day haul on-line in the history of politics. For those who are discounting the value and strength of Dr. Paul’s grassroots support, this should kill their arguments dead. They may have a chance to salvage their careers. They can start by admitting that only real people with real money can buy an internet connection or a cell-phone.
Press outlets didn't really know how to handle this historic event. The first old-media outlet to report it found their numbers had already gone stale by hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time they could post their copy. During a late surge, the rate of donations had reached 220,000 dollars per hour.
Folks, neoconservatism is officially dead. Guy Fawkes may have the last laugh after all.
Even at Free Republic, home to the most cartoonish versions of "conservatives" ever assembled on the web, posters who had previously dropped out of sight, came back to revel in the carnage that was the Fifth of November. The thread there starts out with the usual detractors. However, if you can gird your loins past the first couple of pages, it gets real interesting.
Money didn't talk on what has become known as Guy Fawkes Day. I hate that cliché. Money can't talk. People voted with their pocket books. The market moved. The most brilliant part of this was not necessarily the choice of days or the efforts by supporters to spread the word but the choice to show in real-time what was happening. Only 17,500 people pledged on the November 5th website. There were double that many who actually participated. The lesson of economics is being taught in real time by the one candidate who speaks that language fluently.
Hear that sound? It's fear. The screws are being tightened against the limbs of the status quo. Who needs gunpowder when you have the Internet, the Constitution and forty thousand credit cards?
The New York Times, USA Today and CNN jumped on the news bandwagon late in the afternoon with fairly positive stories of the day's events and the Washington Post reported too but couldn't do it with a straight face. Come on, how could you report on an event like this without mentioning that some obscure, wrestling porn-star-wannabee posted to a blog in support of Ron Paul? Why, it would be a 'Dog Bites Man!' story otherwise.
Reading some of these old-media produced stories can be frustrating. The old media had a chance to tell the story correctly, but generally couldn't bring themselves to do it. The caption in the NY Times story below Dr. Paul's scowling picture stated: "Representative Ron Paul’s use of Guy Fawkes Day to encourage donations to his presidential campaign netted millions."
Ugh. Ron Paul had nothing to do with the event. According to the best old-media article of the day, written by ABC's Z. Byron Wolf, Trevor Lyman operated the November 5th site collecting pledges but didn't actually come up with the idea himself. He simply acted on a post he read in one of the Ron Paul meet-up forums. That was October 18th, a mere 3 weeks prior to the historic event.
Here's another great lesson to be learned from the Austrian school. If you allow a market to self-organize and operate freely, the results can be staggering.
That's true in more ways than one. The 4.3 million dollar pick-me-up is obviously an end unto itself, but the resulting value of the media's discussion of what it means, could be worth 5 times that amount. For better or worse, the next week and perhaps even Sunday's political shows will see the old media covering what has happened and discussing what it means to the future of politics. There's no getting around that. George "That's not going to happen" Snuffleufflelgus might learn to talk through his teeth. Those of you with televisions can fill me in Monday.
For fans like myself, watching events unfold was by far the most exciting experience of this campaign thus far but I dare say it will only be a milestone among many. Thomas Woods gets the award for most humorous observation, and the Lew Rockwell team of bloggers gets the "thank God they're around for people without television" award. I coded up an SMS text messaging router today with the donation counter on one screen and the Lew Rockwell blog just behind it. I can't imagine that I was alone. New Media articles were too numerous to read and started showing up just prior to the clock's race toward midnight.
The truly exciting result of this day will be the number of fence-sitters and "leaners" who jump on the bandwagon. Politics is generally a wait and see affair. Rasmussen has reported that a full 60% of the Iowa Straw Poll voters said they could envision changing their minds before the Iowa Caucuses:
However, the race in Iowa is very fluid. For each of the top four candidates, between 57% and 61% of their supporters say they might change their mind before the caucus is held.
That didn't get reported much, if at all. Ron Paul's two biggest hurdles now are name recognition and skepticism. The skepticism is normal. A significant number of people have been waiting to see if Ron Paul really has a chance. Well....I think we've seen that myth blown apart today by a money bomb. The name recognition will commence to increase but don’t expect that the old media will be reporting any poll number jumps. It may just be that the Paul campaign mirrors Kerry’s who polled at 4% nationally before winning New Hampshire and Iowa.
Bombs away…..
State of Emergency: Could Bush ever arbitrarily declare martial law like Musharraf has in Pakistan?
by Justin Finney, Op Ed News - November 7, 2007
President Musharraf’s declaration of martial law in Pakistan has engendered two sorts of reactions in the world: mutiny and uproar from the legislative arm within Pakistan and doleful finger-wagging from most Western governments, nowhere more so than in the US.
Speaking in front of reporters at a press conference beside Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Bush expressed disappointment with President Musharraf’s decision. “We expect there to be elections as soon as possible…and the president should remove his military uniform.” But any doubts about the Bush administration’s dependence on Musharraf were quickly dispelled. “We want to continue working with him to fight these terrorists and extremists,” Bush said. In addition, it’s been made clear that cuts in aid are extremely unlikely. “We are reviewing all of our assistance programs, although we are mindful not to do anything that would undermine ongoing counterterrorism efforts,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Given that the vast majority of arrests in Pakistan since martial law was declared have been lawyers, it’s somewhat ambiguous what President Bush means by “terrorists and extremists.” Of course, Pakistan does have a problem with Islamic extremists who are angry with Musharraf’s turnabout since 9-11. Previous to Musharraf’s deal with Washington— which for his help in Afghanistan lifted sanctions initially enacted over Pakistan’s nuclear defiance and poured in aid which has totaled $10.59 billion currently—he was a critical supporter to the Taliban. According to a policy paper written by Leon T. Hadara of the CATO Institute, “leading Pakistani political, military, and religious figures and radical Islamic groups were providing direct support in the form of financial resources and military assistance…(to the)…Taliban and al-Qaeda.”
If Washington’s support for Musharraf as he seizes power to forestall a court decision on the legality of his dual power as president and military commander teaches us anything, it’s that democracy promotion is an afterthought in US foreign policy. Or better put, a euphemism for free-market promotion, whether in the cone of South America during the seventies or in Iraq today.
But what about democracy at home? Here in the US? If the Bush administration ever felt desperate enough politically, could it or would it ever arbitrarily declare martial law? A yes answer might not be so far out there, and it would arguably be legal, thanks to a rider inserted in the 2007 Defense Authorization Act.
Defense Authorization Acts are passed every fiscal year to authorize appropriations for the Department of Defense. When the 2007 draft was written, amendments were made to the “Insurrection Act,” a bill passed in 1807 to give the president power to deploy troops in the event of an insurrection or rebellion. The main changes made to the Insurrection Act were primarily in §333. The Defense Authorization Act of 2007 summarized the changes as follows:
[(Sec. 1076) Revises federal provisions allowing the President to utilize the Armed Forces in connection with interference with federal and state law to allow the President to employ the Armed Forces and National Guard in federal service to restore public order in cases of natural disaster, epidemic or other public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or domestic violence. Requires the President to notify Congress within 14 days of the exercise of such authority. Authorizes the President, when exercising such authority, to direct the Secretary to provide supplies, services, and equipment to persons affected by the situation.]
So in short, where the original Insurrection Act only permitted the declaration of martial law in the face of a rebellion, the new changes allow the president to declare martial law for virtually anything deemed an emergency.
Also alarming was a phrase added to §334 of the new Insurrection Act.
[Whenever the President considers it necessary to use the militia or the armed forces under this chapter, he shall, by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents or those obstructing the enforcement of the laws to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.]
“Those obstructing the enforcement of the laws” could of course potentially be interpreted to apply to anyone the administration saw as an obstruction to its policies i.e. peaceably demonstrating activists, opposition political leaders, etc.
So now that the president has new broad powers to declare martial law, and, unlike Pakistan, a supreme court that’s in many ways philosophically aligned with the Bush Administration, the question is: are there any feasible scenarios under which Bush might declare martial law before his term is up? Though the likelihood for such a move might require a fickle time-line of events, it’s probably not as unlikely as some might think.
Imagine the following occurs seven months from now: The Bush Administration is intent on bombing Iran but has been forestalled by a worsening of events in Iraq, perhaps Turkey invades the North. The administration fears a Democrat won’t take care of Iran as they see fit, and polls show the Democratic nominee has a fifteen point lead in the looming election. Then a hurricane devastates the Gulf Coast again. Claiming as its motive a wish to respond quicker than it did with Katrina, Bush declares martial law and suspends the upcoming election. Suddenly, there’s that critical extra time needed to expand the war.
Again, though it requires a darkly fortuitous turn of events for the Bush administration, such reasoning might appeal to them if Vice President Dick Cheney’s reported fascination with expanding the war in the Middle East is threatened by something as burdensome and capricious as the people’s choice for change in the next election. In fact, I would argue that the Bush administration, apparently unbothered by low poll numbers, might see it as a necessity.
So pay special attention to what happens in Pakistan in the coming weeks and months. Despite the multitude of geopolitical reasons that the Bush Administration is supporting President Musharrafs’ usurpation of democracy lays the fact that Bush and Co. might be looking to do the same themselves in a worst-case scenario of their hegemonic scheming. With their track record of deceit at home and corporate crusading in the Middle East, the images we see on television of Pakistani lawyers being thrown into paddy-wagons might be a sneak preview of things to come in the US. Stranger things have happened in the last seven years.
President Musharraf’s declaration of martial law in Pakistan has engendered two sorts of reactions in the world: mutiny and uproar from the legislative arm within Pakistan and doleful finger-wagging from most Western governments, nowhere more so than in the US.
Speaking in front of reporters at a press conference beside Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Bush expressed disappointment with President Musharraf’s decision. “We expect there to be elections as soon as possible…and the president should remove his military uniform.” But any doubts about the Bush administration’s dependence on Musharraf were quickly dispelled. “We want to continue working with him to fight these terrorists and extremists,” Bush said. In addition, it’s been made clear that cuts in aid are extremely unlikely. “We are reviewing all of our assistance programs, although we are mindful not to do anything that would undermine ongoing counterterrorism efforts,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Given that the vast majority of arrests in Pakistan since martial law was declared have been lawyers, it’s somewhat ambiguous what President Bush means by “terrorists and extremists.” Of course, Pakistan does have a problem with Islamic extremists who are angry with Musharraf’s turnabout since 9-11. Previous to Musharraf’s deal with Washington— which for his help in Afghanistan lifted sanctions initially enacted over Pakistan’s nuclear defiance and poured in aid which has totaled $10.59 billion currently—he was a critical supporter to the Taliban. According to a policy paper written by Leon T. Hadara of the CATO Institute, “leading Pakistani political, military, and religious figures and radical Islamic groups were providing direct support in the form of financial resources and military assistance…(to the)…Taliban and al-Qaeda.”
If Washington’s support for Musharraf as he seizes power to forestall a court decision on the legality of his dual power as president and military commander teaches us anything, it’s that democracy promotion is an afterthought in US foreign policy. Or better put, a euphemism for free-market promotion, whether in the cone of South America during the seventies or in Iraq today.
But what about democracy at home? Here in the US? If the Bush administration ever felt desperate enough politically, could it or would it ever arbitrarily declare martial law? A yes answer might not be so far out there, and it would arguably be legal, thanks to a rider inserted in the 2007 Defense Authorization Act.
Defense Authorization Acts are passed every fiscal year to authorize appropriations for the Department of Defense. When the 2007 draft was written, amendments were made to the “Insurrection Act,” a bill passed in 1807 to give the president power to deploy troops in the event of an insurrection or rebellion. The main changes made to the Insurrection Act were primarily in §333. The Defense Authorization Act of 2007 summarized the changes as follows:
[(Sec. 1076) Revises federal provisions allowing the President to utilize the Armed Forces in connection with interference with federal and state law to allow the President to employ the Armed Forces and National Guard in federal service to restore public order in cases of natural disaster, epidemic or other public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or domestic violence. Requires the President to notify Congress within 14 days of the exercise of such authority. Authorizes the President, when exercising such authority, to direct the Secretary to provide supplies, services, and equipment to persons affected by the situation.]
So in short, where the original Insurrection Act only permitted the declaration of martial law in the face of a rebellion, the new changes allow the president to declare martial law for virtually anything deemed an emergency.
Also alarming was a phrase added to §334 of the new Insurrection Act.
[Whenever the President considers it necessary to use the militia or the armed forces under this chapter, he shall, by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents or those obstructing the enforcement of the laws to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.]
“Those obstructing the enforcement of the laws” could of course potentially be interpreted to apply to anyone the administration saw as an obstruction to its policies i.e. peaceably demonstrating activists, opposition political leaders, etc.
So now that the president has new broad powers to declare martial law, and, unlike Pakistan, a supreme court that’s in many ways philosophically aligned with the Bush Administration, the question is: are there any feasible scenarios under which Bush might declare martial law before his term is up? Though the likelihood for such a move might require a fickle time-line of events, it’s probably not as unlikely as some might think.
Imagine the following occurs seven months from now: The Bush Administration is intent on bombing Iran but has been forestalled by a worsening of events in Iraq, perhaps Turkey invades the North. The administration fears a Democrat won’t take care of Iran as they see fit, and polls show the Democratic nominee has a fifteen point lead in the looming election. Then a hurricane devastates the Gulf Coast again. Claiming as its motive a wish to respond quicker than it did with Katrina, Bush declares martial law and suspends the upcoming election. Suddenly, there’s that critical extra time needed to expand the war.
Again, though it requires a darkly fortuitous turn of events for the Bush administration, such reasoning might appeal to them if Vice President Dick Cheney’s reported fascination with expanding the war in the Middle East is threatened by something as burdensome and capricious as the people’s choice for change in the next election. In fact, I would argue that the Bush administration, apparently unbothered by low poll numbers, might see it as a necessity.
So pay special attention to what happens in Pakistan in the coming weeks and months. Despite the multitude of geopolitical reasons that the Bush Administration is supporting President Musharrafs’ usurpation of democracy lays the fact that Bush and Co. might be looking to do the same themselves in a worst-case scenario of their hegemonic scheming. With their track record of deceit at home and corporate crusading in the Middle East, the images we see on television of Pakistani lawyers being thrown into paddy-wagons might be a sneak preview of things to come in the US. Stranger things have happened in the last seven years.
CBS Labels Ron Paul a "Meaningless Fruitcake" With "No Chance" Of Winning
by Paul Joseph Watson - November 7, 2007
Despite a general begrudging acceptance amongst a large swathe of the corporate media that Ron Paul is a real contender for the Republican nomination following the hugely successful November 5th "money bomb" campaign, a CBS News op-ed piece today labels the Texas Congressman a "meaningless" "fruitcake" with "no chance" of winning.
The article is entitled Ron Paul, Fruitcake and its writer, Kevin Drum, attempts to make the point that anyone who even expresses an interest in the Congressman's campaign is a "political infant" who needs to "grow up".
In reality, it's Drum who needs to grow up - his four paragraph whine reads like the literary equivalent of a baby throwing its toys out of a playpen.
"Ron Paul raised a buttload of money yesterday. This doesn't really change anything, and everyone knows it, but I guess it's something to write about. So people are writing about it," seethes Drum.
"But look: can we stop pretending to be political infants, even if we happen to be bored this week? It's cheap and easy to take extreme, uncompromising positions when you have no actual chance of ever putting them into practice, so Paul's extreme, uncompromising positions really don't mean a thing," writes Drum.
"They're meaningless, and I wish grown adults who know better would stop pretending otherwise."
"Seriously, folks. Can we all please grow up?" he concludes.
The words of Officer Barbrady from South Park come to mind - "Nothing to see here folks. Move along..."
On what foundation does Drum claim that Congressman Paul's campaign is irrelevant? His growth curve and fundraising is outstripping any other candidate from either party and bookmakers are slashing his odds of winning the Republican nomination left, right and center.
Granted, the average geriatric Giuliani supporter cited in telephone surveys is going to keep Paul's poll digits low, but the fact that he routinely trounces the opposition in TV and Internet polls and has been widely lauded for shaking up the debates is hardly "meaningless" as Drum claims.
What's really happening here is that, whether wittingly or unwittingly, the establishment minions are terrified that their perch on the peanut gallery can be so forcefully undermined by a grass roots rebellion against the stranglehold of the elite - who carefully screen presidential candidates year after year - ensuring only establishment lackeys ever have a chance of winning.
What the Ron Paul Revolution has created is bigger than whether or not Ron Paul will win the nomination in 2008.
This is about setting a benchmark and getting a foothold in an otherwise stage-managed and contrived electoral process, and having a candidate of the people front and center who the corporate media cannot possibly ignore.
In that sense, the Ron Paul phenomenon is far from "meaningless" and Kevin Drum is the one who needs to "grow up", for his political infancy betrays a complete ignorance of what is taking place.
In addition, if Ron Paul is so "meaningless" then why is Drum, along with an army of other establishment media stooges and Neo-Con cult members, wasting his time in attacking the Congressman?
In the words of William Shakespeare, Methinks this CBS hack doth protest too much.
Despite a general begrudging acceptance amongst a large swathe of the corporate media that Ron Paul is a real contender for the Republican nomination following the hugely successful November 5th "money bomb" campaign, a CBS News op-ed piece today labels the Texas Congressman a "meaningless" "fruitcake" with "no chance" of winning.
The article is entitled Ron Paul, Fruitcake and its writer, Kevin Drum, attempts to make the point that anyone who even expresses an interest in the Congressman's campaign is a "political infant" who needs to "grow up".
In reality, it's Drum who needs to grow up - his four paragraph whine reads like the literary equivalent of a baby throwing its toys out of a playpen.
"Ron Paul raised a buttload of money yesterday. This doesn't really change anything, and everyone knows it, but I guess it's something to write about. So people are writing about it," seethes Drum.
"But look: can we stop pretending to be political infants, even if we happen to be bored this week? It's cheap and easy to take extreme, uncompromising positions when you have no actual chance of ever putting them into practice, so Paul's extreme, uncompromising positions really don't mean a thing," writes Drum.
"They're meaningless, and I wish grown adults who know better would stop pretending otherwise."
"Seriously, folks. Can we all please grow up?" he concludes.
The words of Officer Barbrady from South Park come to mind - "Nothing to see here folks. Move along..."
On what foundation does Drum claim that Congressman Paul's campaign is irrelevant? His growth curve and fundraising is outstripping any other candidate from either party and bookmakers are slashing his odds of winning the Republican nomination left, right and center.
Granted, the average geriatric Giuliani supporter cited in telephone surveys is going to keep Paul's poll digits low, but the fact that he routinely trounces the opposition in TV and Internet polls and has been widely lauded for shaking up the debates is hardly "meaningless" as Drum claims.
What's really happening here is that, whether wittingly or unwittingly, the establishment minions are terrified that their perch on the peanut gallery can be so forcefully undermined by a grass roots rebellion against the stranglehold of the elite - who carefully screen presidential candidates year after year - ensuring only establishment lackeys ever have a chance of winning.
What the Ron Paul Revolution has created is bigger than whether or not Ron Paul will win the nomination in 2008.
This is about setting a benchmark and getting a foothold in an otherwise stage-managed and contrived electoral process, and having a candidate of the people front and center who the corporate media cannot possibly ignore.
In that sense, the Ron Paul phenomenon is far from "meaningless" and Kevin Drum is the one who needs to "grow up", for his political infancy betrays a complete ignorance of what is taking place.
In addition, if Ron Paul is so "meaningless" then why is Drum, along with an army of other establishment media stooges and Neo-Con cult members, wasting his time in attacking the Congressman?
In the words of William Shakespeare, Methinks this CBS hack doth protest too much.
Coalition of the unwilling
Nato's whole mission is in doubt if its members won't provide necessary support in Afghanistan
by Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian - November 7, 2007
Yesterday's suicide bomb in northern Afghanistan, the country's deadliest attack since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, is a huge blow to Nato, as well as President Hamid Karzai's rickety government. The credibility of Nato, established to deter the mass battalions of the Soviet Union and its satellites at the start of the cold war, is in danger of crumbling in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.
In its first ground combat mission since the US-dominated alliance was set up in 1949, its members have not deployed enough troops and equipment to defeat an enemy driving around in pick-up trucks, armed with rockets and small arms. Motivated as much by western temerity as Islamist ideology, Taliban leaders are now importing al-Qaida-inspired foreign fighters and terrorist tactics, notably suicide bombers, that have killed so many in Iraq.
There are some 50,000 European and North American troops in Afghanistan, most of them American but including 7,700 British backed up mainly by Canadian and Dutch soldiers. France has committed no troops for combat. Nor has Germany, whose soldiers are in the hitherto more stable and peaceful north.
Timo Noetzel, visiting fellow at Chatham House, describes his country's attitude in the latest issue of the thinktank's magazine the World Today. "The political debate," he writes, "focuses on two issues: the potential German involvement in combat, and criticism of the American conduct of operations. The complaint is that actions of the US forces are fuelling the insurgency, with collateral damage and mounting civilian casualties eroding community support."
Afghanistan, according to Gordon Brown, is the front line in the fight against international terrorism. Des Browne, the defence secretary, describes the fight against the Taliban as a "noble cause". Yet six years after US bombs drove the Taliban out, all the evidence is that, with support from across the border in Pakistan, it is regrouping and the insurgency is intensifying.
Insurgent and terrorist attacks are 20% higher this year than in the whole of 2006, according to the UN. There were more than 100 suicide attacks in the first eight months of this year compared to 123 last year and just 17 in 2005. More and more of the country is classified as being too risky for UN agencies and NGOs such as Oxfam to operate in.
Deprived of reinforcements on the ground, army commanders call for help from the air. Aerial bombing leads inevitably to more civilian casualties and provokes more hostility. While shiny new helicopters stand idly in the hangars of Europe, Nato soldiers in Afghanistan are having to hire civilian machines from Russia and Ukraine to carry supplies.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies says that "a vicious cycle of drug-trafficking proceeds [are] sustaining the insurgency and 'shadow governments' in Kandahar and Helmand provinces". Corruption and tribal loyalties are sabotaging ambitious plans to build up an Afghan army and police force.
Brigadier John Lorimer, who returned last month after commanding British forces in southern Afghanistan, said his troops had made a "huge difference" there. The question is, for how long? And it is certainly not thanks to Nato.
The following day, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, addressed the Conference of European Armies in Heidelberg. "If an alliance of the world's greatest democracies cannot summon the will to get the job done in a mission that we agree is morally just and vital to our security," he warned, "then our citizens may begin to question both the worth of the mission and the utility of the 60-year-old transatlantic security project itself." They already are.
by Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian - November 7, 2007
Yesterday's suicide bomb in northern Afghanistan, the country's deadliest attack since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, is a huge blow to Nato, as well as President Hamid Karzai's rickety government. The credibility of Nato, established to deter the mass battalions of the Soviet Union and its satellites at the start of the cold war, is in danger of crumbling in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.
In its first ground combat mission since the US-dominated alliance was set up in 1949, its members have not deployed enough troops and equipment to defeat an enemy driving around in pick-up trucks, armed with rockets and small arms. Motivated as much by western temerity as Islamist ideology, Taliban leaders are now importing al-Qaida-inspired foreign fighters and terrorist tactics, notably suicide bombers, that have killed so many in Iraq.
There are some 50,000 European and North American troops in Afghanistan, most of them American but including 7,700 British backed up mainly by Canadian and Dutch soldiers. France has committed no troops for combat. Nor has Germany, whose soldiers are in the hitherto more stable and peaceful north.
Timo Noetzel, visiting fellow at Chatham House, describes his country's attitude in the latest issue of the thinktank's magazine the World Today. "The political debate," he writes, "focuses on two issues: the potential German involvement in combat, and criticism of the American conduct of operations. The complaint is that actions of the US forces are fuelling the insurgency, with collateral damage and mounting civilian casualties eroding community support."
Afghanistan, according to Gordon Brown, is the front line in the fight against international terrorism. Des Browne, the defence secretary, describes the fight against the Taliban as a "noble cause". Yet six years after US bombs drove the Taliban out, all the evidence is that, with support from across the border in Pakistan, it is regrouping and the insurgency is intensifying.
Insurgent and terrorist attacks are 20% higher this year than in the whole of 2006, according to the UN. There were more than 100 suicide attacks in the first eight months of this year compared to 123 last year and just 17 in 2005. More and more of the country is classified as being too risky for UN agencies and NGOs such as Oxfam to operate in.
Deprived of reinforcements on the ground, army commanders call for help from the air. Aerial bombing leads inevitably to more civilian casualties and provokes more hostility. While shiny new helicopters stand idly in the hangars of Europe, Nato soldiers in Afghanistan are having to hire civilian machines from Russia and Ukraine to carry supplies.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies says that "a vicious cycle of drug-trafficking proceeds [are] sustaining the insurgency and 'shadow governments' in Kandahar and Helmand provinces". Corruption and tribal loyalties are sabotaging ambitious plans to build up an Afghan army and police force.
Brigadier John Lorimer, who returned last month after commanding British forces in southern Afghanistan, said his troops had made a "huge difference" there. The question is, for how long? And it is certainly not thanks to Nato.
The following day, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, addressed the Conference of European Armies in Heidelberg. "If an alliance of the world's greatest democracies cannot summon the will to get the job done in a mission that we agree is morally just and vital to our security," he warned, "then our citizens may begin to question both the worth of the mission and the utility of the 60-year-old transatlantic security project itself." They already are.
A scar on the nation
The bitter divisions between secular and religious in Israel that brought about Yitzhak Rabin's murder 12 years ago are as deep as ever.
by Seth Freedman - Nov 7, 2007
Yigal Amir? They should have done him like Eichmann", spat a woman I met at Yitzhak Rabin's memorial, unable to keep the rage from penetrating her veneer of calm. A few days earlier, at a ceremony to mark Meir Kahane's assassination, I witnessed similar fury - albeit from the other direction - as a firebrand speaker cursed the Israeli government for "freeing vicious Arab terrorists every day whilst Amir rots in jail".
Despite a chorus of calls for Rabin's killer to be dealt justice, whether by executing or releasing him, the authorities have thus far stuck to the middle ground. Amir has been incarcerated ever since shooting the prime minister 12 years ago, and as a result has scarcely been out of the national consciousness ever since. His controversial wedding, his attempts to smuggle semen out to inseminate his wife, and his subsequent receiving of permission for conjugal visits, have all been widely reported on and dissected in the national media, reopening old wounds every time his name is mentioned.
"The assassin always dies", says Eleanor Shaw in the Manchurian Candidate - "it helps the national healing". In Amir's case, the fact that he's still alive and kicking (and, just this weekend, attending his son's circumcision), means that the public still can't put to bed the tragic events of 1995. The bitter divisions that brought about the murder, namely the tremendous polarisation between the secular and religious camps, are still evident in today's Israel, as I discovered in Rabin Square as 150,000 people gathered to remember his death.
The size of the crowd was impressive, with the numbers swelled - as Hillel Schenker noted - by people wanting to counter Amir's celebration of his son's circumcision. However, conspicuous by their absence were the religious Israelis, who - despite their political feelings - might have been expected to follow the Jewish custom of honouring the dead on their yahrtzeit (memorial date). "Look around you", said Blair, a left-wing activist who had been present on the fateful night of Rabin's killing. "Where are the kipot [skullcaps]? Some of the religious might feel bad that he died, but not enough to make them come and pay their respects".
Another woman I met told me that, whilst her husband loathed the killing, his politics prevented him coming to a rally that "he feels has been hijacked by the peace camp". This was a view I heard expressed several times during the evening, as people complained that Rabin had been adopted as an overarching "emblem of peace" by all of the left wing parties, rather than being remembered for his individual politics. "It's a shame that people are conflating his memorial with the chance to push a particular brand of politics", a man told me, gesturing to the banners of the various political parties dotted amongst the crowd.
Rabin's murder scarred the nation in a way that few other events have during Israel's turbulent history. Jew-on-Jew violence, manifested in such a deadly and deadpan fashion, touched a nerve that is still almost as raw over a decade later. The killing rent asunder any bonds between the secular public and the national religious camp, and saw both sides entrench themselves in a state of deep distrust and loathing for their opponents.
And, it would appear, the lessons of 1995 have still not been learned. Today, as reported in the Israeli press, the Jewish National Front distributed posters of Shimon Peres decked out in an Arab keffiyeh, underneath the slogan "Releasing terrorists - a president of Arabs". This incendiary tactic is exactly the same strategy as was employed by the far right in the lead up to Rabin's slaying, and is indicative of how disenfranchised the right wing are feeling whilst Kadima and co. are in power.
Lurking in the shadows of those driving the nationalist wagon is the spectre of religious dictums being used to justify extremism. Just like their terrorist counterparts on the other side of the security wall, the likes of the hilltop settlers and their backers are impossible to reason with whilst they claim to be "acting in God's name". Even Rabin's murder was allegedly a result of a rabbi issuing a Din Rodef - akin to a fatwa, making Rabin a legitimate target to be killed, to prevent him endangering other Jews' lives with his policies.
When Amir - a young, religious man who was easily-led - heeded this call and shot his way into the history books, his act was met by scores of commentators whose only reaction was that Rabin deserved what he got, under Jewish law. For a country reeling with the shock of what had just happened to their leader, to hear the slaying justified by so-called religious leaders was a shot across the bows of co-operation and understanding between the two sides.
Shimon Peres, speaking at the rally in honour of his late friend, fired the crowd up with his declaration that "we're not just here to remember him, but to carry out his will". "His torch is now in your hands", he cried, to thunderous applause. But, for all that the audience cheered him on and stamped their feet in approval of his sentiments, he was merely preaching to the converted. His words, impassioned as they were, weren't strong enough to carry to the places they most needed to be heard - because those people were too busy decrying him as an "Arab president" and sowing the seeds for another decade of sectarian division.
by Seth Freedman - Nov 7, 2007
Yigal Amir? They should have done him like Eichmann", spat a woman I met at Yitzhak Rabin's memorial, unable to keep the rage from penetrating her veneer of calm. A few days earlier, at a ceremony to mark Meir Kahane's assassination, I witnessed similar fury - albeit from the other direction - as a firebrand speaker cursed the Israeli government for "freeing vicious Arab terrorists every day whilst Amir rots in jail".
Despite a chorus of calls for Rabin's killer to be dealt justice, whether by executing or releasing him, the authorities have thus far stuck to the middle ground. Amir has been incarcerated ever since shooting the prime minister 12 years ago, and as a result has scarcely been out of the national consciousness ever since. His controversial wedding, his attempts to smuggle semen out to inseminate his wife, and his subsequent receiving of permission for conjugal visits, have all been widely reported on and dissected in the national media, reopening old wounds every time his name is mentioned.
"The assassin always dies", says Eleanor Shaw in the Manchurian Candidate - "it helps the national healing". In Amir's case, the fact that he's still alive and kicking (and, just this weekend, attending his son's circumcision), means that the public still can't put to bed the tragic events of 1995. The bitter divisions that brought about the murder, namely the tremendous polarisation between the secular and religious camps, are still evident in today's Israel, as I discovered in Rabin Square as 150,000 people gathered to remember his death.
The size of the crowd was impressive, with the numbers swelled - as Hillel Schenker noted - by people wanting to counter Amir's celebration of his son's circumcision. However, conspicuous by their absence were the religious Israelis, who - despite their political feelings - might have been expected to follow the Jewish custom of honouring the dead on their yahrtzeit (memorial date). "Look around you", said Blair, a left-wing activist who had been present on the fateful night of Rabin's killing. "Where are the kipot [skullcaps]? Some of the religious might feel bad that he died, but not enough to make them come and pay their respects".
Another woman I met told me that, whilst her husband loathed the killing, his politics prevented him coming to a rally that "he feels has been hijacked by the peace camp". This was a view I heard expressed several times during the evening, as people complained that Rabin had been adopted as an overarching "emblem of peace" by all of the left wing parties, rather than being remembered for his individual politics. "It's a shame that people are conflating his memorial with the chance to push a particular brand of politics", a man told me, gesturing to the banners of the various political parties dotted amongst the crowd.
Rabin's murder scarred the nation in a way that few other events have during Israel's turbulent history. Jew-on-Jew violence, manifested in such a deadly and deadpan fashion, touched a nerve that is still almost as raw over a decade later. The killing rent asunder any bonds between the secular public and the national religious camp, and saw both sides entrench themselves in a state of deep distrust and loathing for their opponents.
And, it would appear, the lessons of 1995 have still not been learned. Today, as reported in the Israeli press, the Jewish National Front distributed posters of Shimon Peres decked out in an Arab keffiyeh, underneath the slogan "Releasing terrorists - a president of Arabs". This incendiary tactic is exactly the same strategy as was employed by the far right in the lead up to Rabin's slaying, and is indicative of how disenfranchised the right wing are feeling whilst Kadima and co. are in power.
Lurking in the shadows of those driving the nationalist wagon is the spectre of religious dictums being used to justify extremism. Just like their terrorist counterparts on the other side of the security wall, the likes of the hilltop settlers and their backers are impossible to reason with whilst they claim to be "acting in God's name". Even Rabin's murder was allegedly a result of a rabbi issuing a Din Rodef - akin to a fatwa, making Rabin a legitimate target to be killed, to prevent him endangering other Jews' lives with his policies.
When Amir - a young, religious man who was easily-led - heeded this call and shot his way into the history books, his act was met by scores of commentators whose only reaction was that Rabin deserved what he got, under Jewish law. For a country reeling with the shock of what had just happened to their leader, to hear the slaying justified by so-called religious leaders was a shot across the bows of co-operation and understanding between the two sides.
Shimon Peres, speaking at the rally in honour of his late friend, fired the crowd up with his declaration that "we're not just here to remember him, but to carry out his will". "His torch is now in your hands", he cried, to thunderous applause. But, for all that the audience cheered him on and stamped their feet in approval of his sentiments, he was merely preaching to the converted. His words, impassioned as they were, weren't strong enough to carry to the places they most needed to be heard - because those people were too busy decrying him as an "Arab president" and sowing the seeds for another decade of sectarian division.
US generals planning revolt over Iran
Press TV News - Nov 7, 2007
A group of senior US military commanders have reportedly decided to resign, should the White House order a military strike against Iran.
The reports come as tension in the Persian Gulf region has raised fears that US President George W. Bush might order an attack on Iran before his term expires.
"There are four or five generals and admirals we know would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran," a source with close ties with British intelligence services said. "There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”
A British defense source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. "All the generals are perfectly clear that they don't have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.”
The threat of a wave of resignations coincided with a warning by Vice-President Dick Cheney that all options, including military action, remained on the table.
According to a report in The New Yorker magazine, the Pentagon has already set up a working group to plan airstrikes on Iran. The panel initially focused on destroying Iran's nuclear facilities.
However, army chiefs fear an attack on Iran would lead to a rise in oil prices and a full-blown regional war.
A group of senior US military commanders have reportedly decided to resign, should the White House order a military strike against Iran.
The reports come as tension in the Persian Gulf region has raised fears that US President George W. Bush might order an attack on Iran before his term expires.
"There are four or five generals and admirals we know would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran," a source with close ties with British intelligence services said. "There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”
A British defense source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. "All the generals are perfectly clear that they don't have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.”
The threat of a wave of resignations coincided with a warning by Vice-President Dick Cheney that all options, including military action, remained on the table.
According to a report in The New Yorker magazine, the Pentagon has already set up a working group to plan airstrikes on Iran. The panel initially focused on destroying Iran's nuclear facilities.
However, army chiefs fear an attack on Iran would lead to a rise in oil prices and a full-blown regional war.
Russian Duma endorses CFE suspension
Press TV News- Nov 7, 2007
The Russian Duma has voted unanimously to suspend a key European arms control treaty (CFE) limiting conventional forces in Europe.
In a 418-0 vote, on Wednesday, lawmakers in the state Duma - Russia's lower house of parliament - approved legislation under which Moscow would temporarily abandon its obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty.
The move will take effect on December 12, after final approval by the upper house of parliament and President Vladimir Putin.
The vote amounted to legislative confirmation of a decision to freeze Russian adherence to the pact, already announced by Putin in July.
The plan was announced amid increasing Russian anger over US efforts to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe and growing Western influence in the former Soviet Union.
The 1990 CFE treaty limits the number of tanks, aircraft and other conventional weapons in Europe.
But Putin's decision to suspend participation is seen as being driven less by security concerns than by an increasingly confident Russia's desire to emphasize to the West that its interests cannot be ignored.
The Russian Duma has voted unanimously to suspend a key European arms control treaty (CFE) limiting conventional forces in Europe.
In a 418-0 vote, on Wednesday, lawmakers in the state Duma - Russia's lower house of parliament - approved legislation under which Moscow would temporarily abandon its obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty.
The move will take effect on December 12, after final approval by the upper house of parliament and President Vladimir Putin.
The vote amounted to legislative confirmation of a decision to freeze Russian adherence to the pact, already announced by Putin in July.
The plan was announced amid increasing Russian anger over US efforts to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe and growing Western influence in the former Soviet Union.
The 1990 CFE treaty limits the number of tanks, aircraft and other conventional weapons in Europe.
But Putin's decision to suspend participation is seen as being driven less by security concerns than by an increasingly confident Russia's desire to emphasize to the West that its interests cannot be ignored.
Taliban stage a coup of their own
by Syed Saleem Shahzad - Nov 7, 2007
While the world's attention focused on the troubles of President General Pervez Musharraf following his declaration of a state of emergency in Pakistan at the weekend, the Taliban have launched a coup of their own in Afghanistan and the Pashtun areas of Pakistan.
Pakistani troops had prevented the Taliban from launching their planned post-Ramadan (Muslim holy month) offensive into Afghanistan by invading the Pakistani North Waziristan and SouthWaziristan tribal areas on October 7.
The Taliban managed to set up a counter engagement by stirring their network in the Swat Valley in North-West Frontier Province, which took the pressure off the Waziristans. The November 4 declaration of an emergency and the preparations before it was enforced distracted the military. As a result, several villages and towns in the Swat Valley, only a drive of four hours from Islamabad, have fallen to the Taliban without a single bullet being fired - fearful Pakistani security forces simply surrendered their weapons.
The Taliban have secured similar successes in the northwestern Afghan province of Farah and the southwestern provinces of Uruzgan and Kandahar, where districts have fallen without much resistance.
A new wave of attacks is expanding the Taliban's grip in the southeastern provinces of Khost and Kunar. And on Tuesday, the Taliban are suspected to have been responsible for the massive suicide attack in northern Baghlan province in which scores of people died, including a number of parliamentarians, most notably Sayed Mustafa Kazimi, the Hazara Shi'ite leader.
Such unexpected offensives have become a hallmark of the Taliban. They surprised many with their successful spring offensive in 2006, when the West had already anticipated their demise.
The Taliban occupied several key districts in the southwest and then as the winter snows closed in - normally a time for the guns to fall silent - they struck ceasefire deals with coalition troops. The aim was that once the weather improved, they would launch a mass uprising and force the surrender of major cities.
However, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) coalition sprung a surprise of its own by breaking the ceasefire agreements and conducting military operations one after the other from December 2006 onwards against the unprepared Taliban.
This forced the Taliban's abrupt retreat from important arteries and effectively ended the dream of a mass uprising this spring. Instead, the Taliban turned more to the use of improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks to irritate the enemy rather than cause serious damage.
NATO was relaxed during the month of Ramadan as Afghans generally don't fight in this period, and with the winter setting in, it was believed that the next Taliban action would only take place next spring.
But the Taliban have taken advantage of Pakistan's political troubles - the Pakistani army is busy saving its political interests in Islamabad - to keep on fighting in what is probably their first real winter offensive.
The fate of the Taliban's offensives in Afghanistan and Pakistan are closely linked with the fate of Musharraf's second coup. He will have to restore the country to normalcy very quickly. If not, the Taliban will go from strength to strength and a vital US-led "war on terror" theater will be closed.
Political shambles
"It is the duty of every citizen, and especially lawyers, to struggle for the supremacy of law, independence of the judiciary and real democracy," lawyer Shaukat Rauf cited Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry as saying in a telephone address to the bar in Islamabad on Tuesday.
Chaudhry is one of thousands of lawyers and opposition members to have been arrested or placed under house arrest since Saturday.
Chaudhry's defiant call illustrates that rolling back the emergency is only a part of the problem - what is wanted is the reinstatement of deposed judges and the full restoration of an independent judiciary.
The imposition of the emergency came as the Supreme Court was about to deliver its verdict on whether Musharraf could run for president while still serving as army chief. Last month, he was reelected by an overwhelming majority in national and provincial assemblies.
The opposition boycotted the polls and asked the Supreme Court to intervene and the judges ordered that official results be withheld until a verdict was reached. It is thought the court planned to rule against Musharraf, hence emergency rule.
Chaudhry has had run-ins with Musharraf before. He was suspended in March for alleged malfeasance (the real reason was the judiciary's opposition to Musharraf's role as army chief). Widespread protests and violence followed, and eventually when the Supreme Court reinstated Chaudhry, the Musharraf regime had little choice but to accept the decision.
Chaudhry might be detained for now, but he has emerged as a formidable foe for Musharraf, and his following is growing by the day.
While the world's attention focused on the troubles of President General Pervez Musharraf following his declaration of a state of emergency in Pakistan at the weekend, the Taliban have launched a coup of their own in Afghanistan and the Pashtun areas of Pakistan.
Pakistani troops had prevented the Taliban from launching their planned post-Ramadan (Muslim holy month) offensive into Afghanistan by invading the Pakistani North Waziristan and SouthWaziristan tribal areas on October 7.
The Taliban managed to set up a counter engagement by stirring their network in the Swat Valley in North-West Frontier Province, which took the pressure off the Waziristans. The November 4 declaration of an emergency and the preparations before it was enforced distracted the military. As a result, several villages and towns in the Swat Valley, only a drive of four hours from Islamabad, have fallen to the Taliban without a single bullet being fired - fearful Pakistani security forces simply surrendered their weapons.
The Taliban have secured similar successes in the northwestern Afghan province of Farah and the southwestern provinces of Uruzgan and Kandahar, where districts have fallen without much resistance.
A new wave of attacks is expanding the Taliban's grip in the southeastern provinces of Khost and Kunar. And on Tuesday, the Taliban are suspected to have been responsible for the massive suicide attack in northern Baghlan province in which scores of people died, including a number of parliamentarians, most notably Sayed Mustafa Kazimi, the Hazara Shi'ite leader.
Such unexpected offensives have become a hallmark of the Taliban. They surprised many with their successful spring offensive in 2006, when the West had already anticipated their demise.
The Taliban occupied several key districts in the southwest and then as the winter snows closed in - normally a time for the guns to fall silent - they struck ceasefire deals with coalition troops. The aim was that once the weather improved, they would launch a mass uprising and force the surrender of major cities.
However, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) coalition sprung a surprise of its own by breaking the ceasefire agreements and conducting military operations one after the other from December 2006 onwards against the unprepared Taliban.
This forced the Taliban's abrupt retreat from important arteries and effectively ended the dream of a mass uprising this spring. Instead, the Taliban turned more to the use of improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks to irritate the enemy rather than cause serious damage.
NATO was relaxed during the month of Ramadan as Afghans generally don't fight in this period, and with the winter setting in, it was believed that the next Taliban action would only take place next spring.
But the Taliban have taken advantage of Pakistan's political troubles - the Pakistani army is busy saving its political interests in Islamabad - to keep on fighting in what is probably their first real winter offensive.
The fate of the Taliban's offensives in Afghanistan and Pakistan are closely linked with the fate of Musharraf's second coup. He will have to restore the country to normalcy very quickly. If not, the Taliban will go from strength to strength and a vital US-led "war on terror" theater will be closed.
Political shambles
"It is the duty of every citizen, and especially lawyers, to struggle for the supremacy of law, independence of the judiciary and real democracy," lawyer Shaukat Rauf cited Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry as saying in a telephone address to the bar in Islamabad on Tuesday.
Chaudhry is one of thousands of lawyers and opposition members to have been arrested or placed under house arrest since Saturday.
Chaudhry's defiant call illustrates that rolling back the emergency is only a part of the problem - what is wanted is the reinstatement of deposed judges and the full restoration of an independent judiciary.
The imposition of the emergency came as the Supreme Court was about to deliver its verdict on whether Musharraf could run for president while still serving as army chief. Last month, he was reelected by an overwhelming majority in national and provincial assemblies.
The opposition boycotted the polls and asked the Supreme Court to intervene and the judges ordered that official results be withheld until a verdict was reached. It is thought the court planned to rule against Musharraf, hence emergency rule.
Chaudhry has had run-ins with Musharraf before. He was suspended in March for alleged malfeasance (the real reason was the judiciary's opposition to Musharraf's role as army chief). Widespread protests and violence followed, and eventually when the Supreme Court reinstated Chaudhry, the Musharraf regime had little choice but to accept the decision.
Chaudhry might be detained for now, but he has emerged as a formidable foe for Musharraf, and his following is growing by the day.
Four More Wars? Candidates' Foreign Policy Advisors Dominated by Hawks
The 2008 hopefuls promised a change in foreign policy -- and then they hired the old guard.
by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, The American Conservative - November 7, 2007.
It may surprise no one that former deputy secretary of defense and ousted World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz still enjoys the red-carpet treatment among Washington's elite. That he indulged in it at the screening of an HBO documentary about 10 wounded Iraq War veterans who barely made it home alive from the conflict Wolfowitz helped to engineer might raise an eyebrow.
Yet he was singled out as a VIP at the Sept. 5 premier of "Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq" and was still smiling after the screening, which featured insurgent footage of IED attacks, severed limbs, shredded brains, and left hardly a dry eye in the place. Organizers discreetly overlooked Wolfowitz's marquee role in justifying the invasion that brought them all together.
The continued deference to former administration officials extends to the very lifeblood of the city right now -- the presidential election, where neoconservative war boosters still enjoy A-list invites, give and get tons of money, and have the ear of top-tier GOP candidates. Meanwhile, old and new Democratic hawks have largely pushed anti-war liberals to the margins of the establishment, creating think tanks with muscular names and erudite journals to catapult their colleagues into top-level jobs in a new Democratic administration.
Despite the declining appetite for war among regular Americans, the message is clear: when it comes to shaping future foreign policy for either party, hawks and internationalists are in, doves and realists are out.
"My view is, if you want a shift in strategy, you aren't going to get it from these people, who are just hungry for a job in the next administration," observed one Beltway policy wonk. Any conceivable Democratic White House, he noted, would smell a lot like the status quo. Reappearing would be a phalanx of Clinton I protagonists with names like Albright, Holbrooke, Lake, and Berger, followed by a lesser-known generation of liberal interventionists like Peter Beinart, Lee Feinstein, Martin Indyk, and Anne-Marie Slaughter.
They inhabit a growing galaxy of politically ambitious Democrats, most of whom have been careful to criticize President Bush's war in Iraq on mostly tactical points, for hubris and unilateralism, but not his doctrine of regional democratization and preemptive intervention.
It is not so far from their own humble beginnings, after all. Most of the Democratic policy advisers today cut their teeth in the Clinton administration, where they oversaw a disastrous military-humanitarian mission in Somalia, approved strategic strikes and sanctions on Iraq, believed Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction, and ultimately supported his ouster.
But it was in the 1994 NATO bombing of Serbia and the subsequent Dayton Peace Accords that Team Clinton found its foreign-policy mojo.
Richard Holbrooke, today a key adviser to Hillary Clinton , has called the Balkans a huge show of strength and moral authority. "There will be other Bosnias in our lives," the former assistant secretary of state declared in his 1998 memoir, To End a War, about the peace accords he helped broker, "areas where early outside involvement can be decisive and American leadership will be required. ... The world will look to Washington for more than rhetoric the next time we face a challenge to peace."
Anthony Lake, Clinton's national security adviser during the Balkan war, said in a 1993 speech, "We have the blessing of living in the world's most powerful and respected nation at a time when the world is embracing our ideals as never before. We can let it slip away. Or we can mobilize our nation in order to enlarge democracy, enlarge markets and enlarge our future." He's now a top adviser in the Obama campaign.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, considered a close adviser of Mrs. Clinton, was right there with them. In his memoir An American Journey, Colin Powell recalled how, in 1993, he urged the newly-minted Clinton team not to bomb Bosnia too hastily. According to Powell, Albright countered exasperatedly, "what's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"
"I thought I would have an aneurysm," wrote Powell, whose similar protests on the road to Iraq would earn him a slow isolation from the Bush inner circle a decade later.
Nonetheless, Holbrooke, Albright, Lake, and former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger are "first spear" centurions leading a larger army of Clintonites -- now with wife Hillary or chief rival Barack Obama -- seeking to advance the goals they nurtured in the 1990s. Nearly all were in support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq or discreet about their reservations. Nearly all have re-emerged this campaign season with a renewed belief in Wilsonian international engagement, a continued presence in Iraq, and a hawkish stance on the Middle East.
In Hillary's camp, Jim Steinberg, former Clinton deputy national security adviser and Brookings Institute fellow, joins Martin Indyk, who served as a special assistant for Middle East affairs on the Clinton National Security Council after eight years at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy and several years at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Indyk heads Brookings' Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which is funded by Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban. The center also employs Kenneth Pollack, another booster of the 2003 invasion who has been linked to Sen. Clinton, and analyst Michael O'Hanlon, who confirms that he supports her. Center fellow and former Clinton official Bruce Riedel has reportedly been advising the Obama camp.
Lee Feinstein, a Council on Foreign Relations director and former Clintonite, fits right in with Hillary's campaign. In April 2003, he told CNN that he was confident "U.S. forces over time will find weapons of mass destruction and also find evidence of programs to build weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, even though it was becoming increasingly clear they would not.
More recently, Feinstein has been aligned with a bustling coterie of what one writer called "hot policy wonks for the Democrats," expounding on the virtues of democracy building and intervention, particularly to stop genocide in places like Darfur. To this end, Feinstein teamed up in 2004 with Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and another oft-mentioned future White House official, to write "A Duty to Prevent" for Foreign Affairs, the lede of which extols, "The international community has a duty to prevent security disasters as well as humanitarian ones -- even at the price of violating sovereignty."
Slaughter is ambitious, though it isn't yet clear which camp she supports. Her résumé is long and prestigious; her work a year ago with G. John Ikenberry on the Princeton Project on National Security generated buzz that continues today. Their final report, "Forging a World of Liberty Under Law," outlines a "liberal international order" for ultimate peace and security worldwide.
If the United Nations cannot be reformed to give determined democracies real authority to intervene in countries in crisis, they argue, then an alternative world body should be established that would. At some point, according to the writers, such a confederation might include a military arm "to confront their mutual security challenges."
Peter Beinart, who insists he is not advising anyone, has reportedly inspired the top-tier candidates with his recipe for a liberal return to muscular global democracy in The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. At what The Hotline called a "smashingly well-attended book party at the home of Nancy Jacobson and [Hillary for President pollster] Mark Penn," both Clintons were on hand to praise him.
Hillary also spoke at the August launch of a new think tank of centrist Democrats and a smattering of Republicans called the Center for a New American Security founded by former Clinton defense officials Michele Flournoy and Kurt Campbell. (The ironic similarity in name to the neoconservative Project for the New American Century has not been lost.)
The group, which includes Derek Chollet, a key adviser to the John Edwards campaign, supports a long-term, albeit smaller, U.S. presence in Iraq, but insists that future foreign interventions shouldn't be curtailed because of Iraq's failures.
To be fair, Obama's team has reached out to more of a mixed crowd, engaging former Clintonites Susan Rice, an African expert at Brookings, and Washington lawyer Mark Brzezinski. Obama also snagged the endorsement of Brzezinski's father, Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense, is also working with Obama. He is one of many from the Center for American Progress -- headed by former Clinton deputy chief of staff and Hillary supporter John Podesta -- working with the top tier. Korb has championed a redeployment plan for U.S. troops and recently co-authored an op-ed for the Boston Globe entitled "How to withdraw quickly and safely."
While Hillary has been courting military brass -- most notably Ret. Gen. Jack Keane, who co-wrote the current surge strategy with Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute -- Obama has reportedly sought advice from Ret. Gen. Powell.
"I think the neoconservatives have certainly been discredited," Korb insisted to TAC. "I think that's what we're coming back to -- getting rid of extremes."
That said, no less than eight names associated with the Clinton and Obama campaigns -- including Indyk, Steinberg, and O'Hanlon -- have turned up, in some cases multiple times, on statements and letters authored by the Project for the New American Century, the brainchild of neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, launched to "accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles."
Republican candidate and frontrunner Rudy Giuliani not only believes in the Bush doctrine, he pumped it up with steroids in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs. Beginning with, "we are all members of the 9/11 generation," and ending with "only principled strength can lead to a realistic peace," the 6,000-word manifesto has the prints of his predominantly neoconservative team all over it.
Led by former Reagan aide and Hoover Institution fellow Charles Hill, there is Harvard Professor Martin Kramer, who works with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Peter Berkowitz of Hoover; Kim Holmes of the Heritage Foundation; Stephen Rosen of Harvard; Enders Wimbush of the Hudson Institute; Commentary eminence Norman Podhoretz; and the newest addition, author Daniel Pipes, who has been waging an online war against American "Islamofascist" college professors.
Giuliani, who recently said he is not averse to using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran, has no doubt found his muse in Podhoretz. Upon releasing his latest opus, World War IV, Podhoretz predicted in a National Review Online Q&A that his toddler granddaughters will be in their 30s by the time the global war on Islamofascism is won and that "confusion" over the real mission in Iraq may detract from George W. Bush's legacy, which will ultimately be that of "a great president."
He compared Giuliani to Reagan, said Americans who did not support his World War IV construct were living in fear-induced denial, and did not back off earlier claims that ongoing violence in Iraq is just a symptom of its nascent democracy.
While supporting the mission of global American hegemony, Martin Kramer makes it clear that not all nations, particularly Muslim ones, are destined for the "advance of human freedom" Bush described to a joint session of Congress in 2001. Admitting his ideas clash with the president's, Kramer has publicly explained that undemocratic regimes that nevertheless ensure security, avert war, and combat terrorism should be left alone.
At an AEI-sponsored event in June, Kramer explained his brand of neorealism as an Arab-regime thing: "any attempt to promote democracy, far from making things better, might make [conditions] worse," for broader U.S. and Israeli interests in the region.
Kramer did not name the regimes in question, but his new Giuliani colleague Berkowitz did in a column for the Israeli-based Ha'aretz newspaper in 2005, pointing to West-friendly Jordan, Kuwait, and Egypt. One might as well throw in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which are now considered Petri dishes of Islamic revolution because of what Kramer appraisingly called "consensual authoritarianism."
Canvassing the campaigns, it is hard to find a conservative of any other stripe advising the top tiers, indicating that like Wolfowitz's continued celebrity, neoconservativism is far from being upstaged.
Earlier reports indicated that old Bush I realists like Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, who before the Iraq invasion said he was "scared to death that the Richard Perles and Wolfowitzes of this world are arguing that we can do [Iraq] in a cakewalk," had the ear of Sen. John McCain. They were to be outnumbered, however, squeezed in with hawks like James Woolsey, Max Boot, Henry Kissinger, and Robert Kagan -- all of whom made pre-war prognostications that were more eerily off the mark.
"This isn't surprising," Fred Barnes, editor of the Weekly Standard, told the Washington Times in August. "This is where the national security expertise and wisdom is among Republican conservatives."
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney -- who has also said he would go nuclear on Iran -- has engaged J. Cofer Black, who led the CIA operations in Afghanistan and is vice chairman of the controversial Blackwater USA, a security contractor in Iraq that has recently been banned from the country.
Reportedly, Romney is also consulting with Dan Senor, the former mouthpiece for the Coalition Provisional Authority in post-invasion Iraq. In his exposé of the occupation, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Life in Iraq's Green Zone, Rajiv Chandrasekaran described Senor as "viceroy" of L. Paul Bremer's inner circle. Senor, he wrote, "never conceded a mistake, and his efforts to spin failures into successes sometimes reached the point of absurdity."
Fred Thompson has, so far, a more ideologically varied staff, but a common Bushian thread is evident. There is Mary Matalin, Dick Cheney's media henchwoman; Liz Cheney, Bush State Department official and daughter of the vice president; former Energy Secretary Spence Abraham; and Rich Galen, who served in Iraq as an occupation devotee and spin doctor.
"In Washington, nothing succeeds more than failure," declares Ted Carpenter, defense policy expert for the CATO Institute. "How else do you explain it?"
Some insiders try. Big donors influence campaigns and endow think tanks that breed advisers candidates want. "Outside the box" thinking is not only seen as limp cache in this self-sustaining scene, but it's openly despised by an establishment that quickly closes ranks when it feels threatened. The big loser? The American public, which will find few alternatives at the voting booth and a future as certain as the recent past.
by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, The American Conservative - November 7, 2007.
It may surprise no one that former deputy secretary of defense and ousted World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz still enjoys the red-carpet treatment among Washington's elite. That he indulged in it at the screening of an HBO documentary about 10 wounded Iraq War veterans who barely made it home alive from the conflict Wolfowitz helped to engineer might raise an eyebrow.
Yet he was singled out as a VIP at the Sept. 5 premier of "Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq" and was still smiling after the screening, which featured insurgent footage of IED attacks, severed limbs, shredded brains, and left hardly a dry eye in the place. Organizers discreetly overlooked Wolfowitz's marquee role in justifying the invasion that brought them all together.
The continued deference to former administration officials extends to the very lifeblood of the city right now -- the presidential election, where neoconservative war boosters still enjoy A-list invites, give and get tons of money, and have the ear of top-tier GOP candidates. Meanwhile, old and new Democratic hawks have largely pushed anti-war liberals to the margins of the establishment, creating think tanks with muscular names and erudite journals to catapult their colleagues into top-level jobs in a new Democratic administration.
Despite the declining appetite for war among regular Americans, the message is clear: when it comes to shaping future foreign policy for either party, hawks and internationalists are in, doves and realists are out.
"My view is, if you want a shift in strategy, you aren't going to get it from these people, who are just hungry for a job in the next administration," observed one Beltway policy wonk. Any conceivable Democratic White House, he noted, would smell a lot like the status quo. Reappearing would be a phalanx of Clinton I protagonists with names like Albright, Holbrooke, Lake, and Berger, followed by a lesser-known generation of liberal interventionists like Peter Beinart, Lee Feinstein, Martin Indyk, and Anne-Marie Slaughter.
They inhabit a growing galaxy of politically ambitious Democrats, most of whom have been careful to criticize President Bush's war in Iraq on mostly tactical points, for hubris and unilateralism, but not his doctrine of regional democratization and preemptive intervention.
It is not so far from their own humble beginnings, after all. Most of the Democratic policy advisers today cut their teeth in the Clinton administration, where they oversaw a disastrous military-humanitarian mission in Somalia, approved strategic strikes and sanctions on Iraq, believed Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction, and ultimately supported his ouster.
But it was in the 1994 NATO bombing of Serbia and the subsequent Dayton Peace Accords that Team Clinton found its foreign-policy mojo.
Richard Holbrooke, today a key adviser to Hillary Clinton , has called the Balkans a huge show of strength and moral authority. "There will be other Bosnias in our lives," the former assistant secretary of state declared in his 1998 memoir, To End a War, about the peace accords he helped broker, "areas where early outside involvement can be decisive and American leadership will be required. ... The world will look to Washington for more than rhetoric the next time we face a challenge to peace."
Anthony Lake, Clinton's national security adviser during the Balkan war, said in a 1993 speech, "We have the blessing of living in the world's most powerful and respected nation at a time when the world is embracing our ideals as never before. We can let it slip away. Or we can mobilize our nation in order to enlarge democracy, enlarge markets and enlarge our future." He's now a top adviser in the Obama campaign.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, considered a close adviser of Mrs. Clinton, was right there with them. In his memoir An American Journey, Colin Powell recalled how, in 1993, he urged the newly-minted Clinton team not to bomb Bosnia too hastily. According to Powell, Albright countered exasperatedly, "what's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"
"I thought I would have an aneurysm," wrote Powell, whose similar protests on the road to Iraq would earn him a slow isolation from the Bush inner circle a decade later.
Nonetheless, Holbrooke, Albright, Lake, and former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger are "first spear" centurions leading a larger army of Clintonites -- now with wife Hillary or chief rival Barack Obama -- seeking to advance the goals they nurtured in the 1990s. Nearly all were in support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq or discreet about their reservations. Nearly all have re-emerged this campaign season with a renewed belief in Wilsonian international engagement, a continued presence in Iraq, and a hawkish stance on the Middle East.
In Hillary's camp, Jim Steinberg, former Clinton deputy national security adviser and Brookings Institute fellow, joins Martin Indyk, who served as a special assistant for Middle East affairs on the Clinton National Security Council after eight years at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy and several years at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Indyk heads Brookings' Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which is funded by Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban. The center also employs Kenneth Pollack, another booster of the 2003 invasion who has been linked to Sen. Clinton, and analyst Michael O'Hanlon, who confirms that he supports her. Center fellow and former Clinton official Bruce Riedel has reportedly been advising the Obama camp.
Lee Feinstein, a Council on Foreign Relations director and former Clintonite, fits right in with Hillary's campaign. In April 2003, he told CNN that he was confident "U.S. forces over time will find weapons of mass destruction and also find evidence of programs to build weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, even though it was becoming increasingly clear they would not.
More recently, Feinstein has been aligned with a bustling coterie of what one writer called "hot policy wonks for the Democrats," expounding on the virtues of democracy building and intervention, particularly to stop genocide in places like Darfur. To this end, Feinstein teamed up in 2004 with Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and another oft-mentioned future White House official, to write "A Duty to Prevent" for Foreign Affairs, the lede of which extols, "The international community has a duty to prevent security disasters as well as humanitarian ones -- even at the price of violating sovereignty."
Slaughter is ambitious, though it isn't yet clear which camp she supports. Her résumé is long and prestigious; her work a year ago with G. John Ikenberry on the Princeton Project on National Security generated buzz that continues today. Their final report, "Forging a World of Liberty Under Law," outlines a "liberal international order" for ultimate peace and security worldwide.
If the United Nations cannot be reformed to give determined democracies real authority to intervene in countries in crisis, they argue, then an alternative world body should be established that would. At some point, according to the writers, such a confederation might include a military arm "to confront their mutual security challenges."
Peter Beinart, who insists he is not advising anyone, has reportedly inspired the top-tier candidates with his recipe for a liberal return to muscular global democracy in The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. At what The Hotline called a "smashingly well-attended book party at the home of Nancy Jacobson and [Hillary for President pollster] Mark Penn," both Clintons were on hand to praise him.
Hillary also spoke at the August launch of a new think tank of centrist Democrats and a smattering of Republicans called the Center for a New American Security founded by former Clinton defense officials Michele Flournoy and Kurt Campbell. (The ironic similarity in name to the neoconservative Project for the New American Century has not been lost.)
The group, which includes Derek Chollet, a key adviser to the John Edwards campaign, supports a long-term, albeit smaller, U.S. presence in Iraq, but insists that future foreign interventions shouldn't be curtailed because of Iraq's failures.
To be fair, Obama's team has reached out to more of a mixed crowd, engaging former Clintonites Susan Rice, an African expert at Brookings, and Washington lawyer Mark Brzezinski. Obama also snagged the endorsement of Brzezinski's father, Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense, is also working with Obama. He is one of many from the Center for American Progress -- headed by former Clinton deputy chief of staff and Hillary supporter John Podesta -- working with the top tier. Korb has championed a redeployment plan for U.S. troops and recently co-authored an op-ed for the Boston Globe entitled "How to withdraw quickly and safely."
While Hillary has been courting military brass -- most notably Ret. Gen. Jack Keane, who co-wrote the current surge strategy with Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute -- Obama has reportedly sought advice from Ret. Gen. Powell.
"I think the neoconservatives have certainly been discredited," Korb insisted to TAC. "I think that's what we're coming back to -- getting rid of extremes."
That said, no less than eight names associated with the Clinton and Obama campaigns -- including Indyk, Steinberg, and O'Hanlon -- have turned up, in some cases multiple times, on statements and letters authored by the Project for the New American Century, the brainchild of neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, launched to "accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles."
Republican candidate and frontrunner Rudy Giuliani not only believes in the Bush doctrine, he pumped it up with steroids in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs. Beginning with, "we are all members of the 9/11 generation," and ending with "only principled strength can lead to a realistic peace," the 6,000-word manifesto has the prints of his predominantly neoconservative team all over it.
Led by former Reagan aide and Hoover Institution fellow Charles Hill, there is Harvard Professor Martin Kramer, who works with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Peter Berkowitz of Hoover; Kim Holmes of the Heritage Foundation; Stephen Rosen of Harvard; Enders Wimbush of the Hudson Institute; Commentary eminence Norman Podhoretz; and the newest addition, author Daniel Pipes, who has been waging an online war against American "Islamofascist" college professors.
Giuliani, who recently said he is not averse to using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran, has no doubt found his muse in Podhoretz. Upon releasing his latest opus, World War IV, Podhoretz predicted in a National Review Online Q&A that his toddler granddaughters will be in their 30s by the time the global war on Islamofascism is won and that "confusion" over the real mission in Iraq may detract from George W. Bush's legacy, which will ultimately be that of "a great president."
He compared Giuliani to Reagan, said Americans who did not support his World War IV construct were living in fear-induced denial, and did not back off earlier claims that ongoing violence in Iraq is just a symptom of its nascent democracy.
While supporting the mission of global American hegemony, Martin Kramer makes it clear that not all nations, particularly Muslim ones, are destined for the "advance of human freedom" Bush described to a joint session of Congress in 2001. Admitting his ideas clash with the president's, Kramer has publicly explained that undemocratic regimes that nevertheless ensure security, avert war, and combat terrorism should be left alone.
At an AEI-sponsored event in June, Kramer explained his brand of neorealism as an Arab-regime thing: "any attempt to promote democracy, far from making things better, might make [conditions] worse," for broader U.S. and Israeli interests in the region.
Kramer did not name the regimes in question, but his new Giuliani colleague Berkowitz did in a column for the Israeli-based Ha'aretz newspaper in 2005, pointing to West-friendly Jordan, Kuwait, and Egypt. One might as well throw in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which are now considered Petri dishes of Islamic revolution because of what Kramer appraisingly called "consensual authoritarianism."
Canvassing the campaigns, it is hard to find a conservative of any other stripe advising the top tiers, indicating that like Wolfowitz's continued celebrity, neoconservativism is far from being upstaged.
Earlier reports indicated that old Bush I realists like Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, who before the Iraq invasion said he was "scared to death that the Richard Perles and Wolfowitzes of this world are arguing that we can do [Iraq] in a cakewalk," had the ear of Sen. John McCain. They were to be outnumbered, however, squeezed in with hawks like James Woolsey, Max Boot, Henry Kissinger, and Robert Kagan -- all of whom made pre-war prognostications that were more eerily off the mark.
"This isn't surprising," Fred Barnes, editor of the Weekly Standard, told the Washington Times in August. "This is where the national security expertise and wisdom is among Republican conservatives."
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney -- who has also said he would go nuclear on Iran -- has engaged J. Cofer Black, who led the CIA operations in Afghanistan and is vice chairman of the controversial Blackwater USA, a security contractor in Iraq that has recently been banned from the country.
Reportedly, Romney is also consulting with Dan Senor, the former mouthpiece for the Coalition Provisional Authority in post-invasion Iraq. In his exposé of the occupation, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Life in Iraq's Green Zone, Rajiv Chandrasekaran described Senor as "viceroy" of L. Paul Bremer's inner circle. Senor, he wrote, "never conceded a mistake, and his efforts to spin failures into successes sometimes reached the point of absurdity."
Fred Thompson has, so far, a more ideologically varied staff, but a common Bushian thread is evident. There is Mary Matalin, Dick Cheney's media henchwoman; Liz Cheney, Bush State Department official and daughter of the vice president; former Energy Secretary Spence Abraham; and Rich Galen, who served in Iraq as an occupation devotee and spin doctor.
"In Washington, nothing succeeds more than failure," declares Ted Carpenter, defense policy expert for the CATO Institute. "How else do you explain it?"
Some insiders try. Big donors influence campaigns and endow think tanks that breed advisers candidates want. "Outside the box" thinking is not only seen as limp cache in this self-sustaining scene, but it's openly despised by an establishment that quickly closes ranks when it feels threatened. The big loser? The American public, which will find few alternatives at the voting booth and a future as certain as the recent past.
Fear, Hate and Hand Grenades: Extremists' Unrelenting Assault on Immigrants
Northern Virginia residents are hell-bent on driving undocumented immigrants away. With demonstrations and lawsuits, the immigrants are fighting back.
By Tara McKelvey, The American Prospect. Posted November 7, 2007.
It was a May afternoon in Washington's meridian Hill Park. Forty-year-old Ricardo Juarez Nava was at a rally in support of immigrants when he saw a neatly dressed man approaching the group. As it turned out, the man, Tyler J. Froatz Jr., was protesting the rally and had brought along an anti-immigration flyer (a crudely drawn illustration of border officers firing on an immigrant with the caption, "THE ONLY WAY TO STOP A FLOOD ..."), and a back- pack with a claw hammer, a Taser, and pepper spray inside. Froatz, who is 24 and a New Jersey native, also had a fully automatic M1 carbine rifle in the trunk of his car.
"He was pushing and trying to fight with me. He had a knife here," Juarez says, gesturing toward a front pocket in his jeans as he describes Froatz's efforts to disrupt the pro-immigration rally, which had been organized by a local group Juarez founded called Mexicans Without Borders. After Froatz's arrest, police discovered a hand grenade, a Molotov cocktail, and 1,000 rounds of ammunition in his Northwest Washington apartment.
On the afternoon of our September interview, four months after the assault, Juarez is sitting in a bookstore in Woodbridge, Virginia, sipping coffee. One of 12 children, Juarez was raised in Mexico by his widowed mother, who did laundry and sold firewood to support the family. He attended Mexico City's School of Sciences and Humanities and came to the United States in April 1995, where he found work in construction. In 2002 he founded Mexicans Without Borders to provide legal advice, counseling, and other kinds of support for immigrants in the Mid-Atlantic region.
For Juarez, it has been a rocky summer. In July, members of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors took aggressive steps against undocumented immigrants in Woodbridge and other cities in the county where Juarez lives. The July 10 county resolution passed by the Prince William Board recommended restricting such public services as access to senior centers for undocumented residents. The still more controversial aspect of the resolution instructs police to check into the immigration status of suspected illegals who have been detained -- even for minor traffic violations; previously, police had checked on the immigration status only of those accused of violent crimes.
The resolution is the most stringent anti-illegal immigrant measure to be passed in Virginia. It was first drafted in June with the help of a 1,850-member group called Help Save Manassas, which works to oppose illegal aliens. After the resolution was approved in July, a series of public meetings on the details took place this fall. As the Prospect went to press, the board was still debating how to implement the restriction of services to illegal immigrants and whether to provide training for police in checking on immigration status at a total cost of roughly $14 million; the vote had yet to be scheduled.
Juarez and Mexicans Without Borders, which now has approximately 3,000 members, have been fighting the board's efforts. They organized a week-long boycott of local businesses that had not supported their organization (the group had asked businesses to display posters) and brought more than 3,000 people to a Sept. 2 rally at the seat of the Prince William County government. During the rally, Juarez stood close to a microphone and -- over a frayed sound system --shouted to his followers. "Our constitutional and civil rights are being violated by this resolution," he said. "We are taking the case to court against the county of Prince William." The crowd broke into thunderous cheers and applause.
There have been death threats by e-mail, angry phone calls, and accusations from Republican county leaders that Mexicans Without Borders is trying to bully its opponents and whip up fear and hysteria in the Hispanic community. Meanwhile, bloggers and activists are investigating to see if Juarez and his family are legal, and have been posting their (inconclusive) findings on a Web site, Black Velvet Bruce Li, considered "the most influential local blog in Virginia" by some in the anti- illegal immigrant community.
"There are messages by e-mail that say they are going to kill me," Juarez says. He pulls on the collar of his red, checked shirt, fiddles with one of the buttons, and looks down at the table. "I don't want anyone to kill me."
Prince William County is a comfortable, though traffic-clogged, community 30 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. The county, like the rest of the area, has undergone demographic changes. In greater D.C., the Hispanic population has doubled over the past two decades, according to U.S. Census data. In 2005 the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that roughly 250,000 illegal immigrants live in Virginia and, as happens with any dramatic influx of immigrants, they are blamed for an array of problems: crowded elementary school classrooms and hospital emergency rooms; violent gang activity; run-down rental units in residential neighborhoods; even the high cost of diapers for newborns in a hospital maternity ward.
The undocumented immigrants in Prince William County work in construction and restaurants and other parts of the service industry. And while there is no state-by-state breakdown on the employment of undocumented immigrants, an April 2006 Pew Hispanic Center Fact Sheet revealed national employment patterns among undocumented workers. More than half of short-term undocumented workers have jobs in construction and service, which includes food preparation and other restaurant work. The rest can be found in farming, fishing, forestry, and various industries. Undocumented workers make an average of $350 per week, as compared with the $930 per week that immigrants who have become citizens take home.
As residential neighborhoods in Woodbridge and other cities in Prince William County absorbed newly arrived immigrants -- and elementary school classrooms filled up with Spanish-speaking children -- local activists began to push county leaders to take harsh measures against undocumented workers. For many of the activists, the goal was to arrest and deport undocumented residents as quickly as possible.
In some ways, the issues in Prince William County are similar to those being raised in state and local governments across the country. Political leaders are cracking down on immigrant communities and trying to drive them out -- imposing fines on landlords who rent to undocumented residents, for example, and penalizing employers who hire them. The situation is somewhat different -- and for this reason groundbreaking -- in Prince William County because county officials are involving police officers in their efforts to rid their community of illegal immigrants. Despite the differences in their approach, all of these ordinances have one thing in common: They are an attempt to enforce federal immigration policy at a local or state level.
In Prince William County, the conflict is sharp. Juarez and other immigrant workers, along with church leaders, a handful of unionists, and left-leaning activists, are on one side. Conservative political leaders -- and an eclectic group of bloggers, Ku Klux Klansmen, and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps -- are on the other. Business owners who serve mainly immigrants are opposed to the resolution because they will lose (and are already losing) business; many business owners who employ undocumented workers, including construction companies, also oppose the resolution. Everybody talks of war. Individuals on one side, and possibly both, are armed.
John Steinbach, 60, a "permanent substitute teacher" and a Mexicans Without Borders volunteer, says the group admires the organizing principles of the Zapatista rebels, who fought the Mexican government in 1994. Roughly 300 volunteers for Mexicans Without Borders, which does not embrace Zapatista-style violence, translate government documents into Spanish, hand out flyers, and work to defeat the Prince William resolution. With assets of roughly $2,000 at any given moment, Mexicans Without Borders partners with other organizations such as the Woodbridge Workers Committee and local churches to offer English-language classes and distribute food and winter coats, roughly 250 each year. In an odd alliance, the police, too, seem to oppose aspects of the resolution, as they believe it will make their jobs harder. County Police Chief Charlie T. Deane, who has been hostile toward the resolution, told the Prince William board of "a potential chilling effect on witness cooperation and victim-witness cooperation."
On the other side, the most public face of the pro-resolution forces is Greg Letiecq, a blond, deeply tanned, 43-year-old information technologies consultant and ex-infantryman in the Maryland National Guard who is president of Help Save Manassas and the lead blogger on Black Velvet Bruce Li. On an afternoon in September, Letiecq sits in a Taco Bell near his house, wearing a "USA" T-shirt and talking about his concerns for the safety of his daughters, ages 5 and 2, in their neighborhood. He looks out the window. Cars whiz past us on suburban Sudley Manor Drive. Someone wearing a Quiznos Sub costume -- an enormous, billowing white cup with a red straw -- trudges near an intersection. None of it looks particularly dangerous. "In the house down the road, there were transient people living there with a large number of unmarried males," Letiecq tells me. "A lot of questionable activity. ... Potential drug activity." He claims, though the resolution is not yet in place, that things have gotten better since its adoption. "Not all the way," he adds. "But they're improving."
Letiecq has a conservative coalition -- at local, state, and national levels -- at his back. Lawyers working for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based organization, crafted the language for the county resolution during meetings with Letiecq and other members of his organization, Help Save Manassas. A member of that group, John T. Stirrup Jr., who is also a supervisor on the Prince William County Board, eventually sponsored the resolution.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute is the legal arm of yet another organization, Federation for American Immigration Reform. FAIR has received funding from the Pioneer Fund, a group founded in the 1930s and known for its financing of research that examines whether blacks are genetically inferior to whites. The Ku Klux Klan also surfaced in Manassas in September, leaving around town flyers that warned of "'gangs, drugs and pornography' brought by immigrants."
The presence of the Klan, and the arrest of the armed protestor Tyler Froatz, who claims to be a member of the Herndon Minutemen, raises questions about the role of white supremacists, hate groups, and sociopaths in the controversy over undocumented immigrants. FAIR executives, as well as others on their side of the debate, make it clear they do not incorporate fringe elements or condone their actions. "Our SOPs [standard operating procedures] are very clear," Minutemen director Al Garza explains. "We do not practice carrying weapons at rallies."
Letiecq says he is appalled by the presence of white supremacists in his neighborhood. Racist policies are contrary to the spirit of this country, he says, and the Klan is "not welcome here." The issue, he says, is "'legal' versus 'illegal' -- who's got lawful presence and who doesn't. I'd be equally upset if it were a bunch of Canadians here." What gets him really worked up, though, is not so much the dark history of the Klan -- though he touches on that. ("They should be embarrassed," he tells me.) Rather, it is the way Klansmen have tried to hone in on his political turf. Now that gets under his skin.
"It just pisses me off. Everyone feels compelled to call the Klan up and ask for their opinion," he says. "Who cares what those guys say? They haven't done anything. They never tried to make things better here. We're working double time, and these guys want to come in and coattail. We didn't need them before. We certainly don't need them now."
Keeping the fight clean of extremists is key for Republicans, who are hoping to capitalize on local anti-immigrant sentiment to win elections in the next cycle. "Things have turned mean for them," explains Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics in Charlottesville. "They once controlled Virginia lock, stock, and barrel. That isn't true anymore. It's truly a competitive purple state." Hence, immigration. "Those communities that are now Democratic are concerned about immigration. Republicans see it as a way to get some of their votes back," he adds.
"We need to crack down on illegal immigration," says Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart, a Republican. "My take is, 'Look, this is predominantly a federal issue, but we're on the front line.'" Stewart is a 39-year-old, Polo-clad attorney and a graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. "My wife is a legal immigrant," he tells me. (She's from Sweden.) The day I meet him in his K Street office, he hands me a sheaf of papers from a Sept. 6 House Judiciary Committee immigration hearing at which he testified. "We've been getting dozens of phone calls," he says. "This has caught on like wildfire." It is an unanswered question whether the Prince William County resolution, as well as similar efforts in other parts of the country, really will help Republicans gain traction. Sabato says the strategy will backfire at both the state and national level. "The Latino vote is growing over time," he explains. "It's about twelve percent of the population but about six percent of the vote. That gap will close." The increasing clout of His- panic voters, who lean heavily toward Democratic candidates, means conservative Republicans, especially those who support strict anti-immigration policies, will face resistance during election campaigns.
An executive vice president of the Service Employees Inter- national Union, Eliseo Medina, agrees. "There's a feeling that this community is under attack," Medina says, "and that a lot of it is being driven by the Republican Party. I think that, to their dismay, people are going to remember them at the polls."
Juarez's work may help ensure that's true. Juarez meets regularly with small business owners who serve mainly the immigrant community, and many have agreed to give out Mexicans Without Borders flyers in their restaurants and grocery stores. In addition to working 45 hours a week in construction, Juarez also gets out the word of his anti-resolution effort in Spanish- language newspapers and radio and television interviews. He's hardly alone. One volunteer, Yolanda Marilena Lemus, a 32-year-old administrative assistant at a homeowners' title company, says she convinced between 15 and 20 friends and family members to attend the September rally at the county government offices. "I personally said, 'You got to come to this,'" she tells me. Martin Bernal, the owner of El Nopal Grocery Store in Culpeper, says he helped drive 60 people in cars and vans from their homes in Culpeper to the rally.
Mexicans Without Borders has been urging its members to register to vote. Many, however, are non-citizens and cannot. Lacking political clout and a political constituency, Mexicans Without Borders leaders have begun to form informal ties with members of organizations such as the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union; Tenants and Workers United, a grassroots organization committed to economic and social justice in Northern Virginia; and the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers.
More importantly, because the resolution will likely be approved this fall, among Mexicans Without Borders members, judicial means to defeat the resolution are seen as an especially powerful tool. (Every time the word "lawsuit" came up at the rally protestors screamed wildly.) They have been talking with lawyers from the New York-based Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, says legal coordinator Nancy Lyall. In October, a coalition including the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a lawsuit against the county contesting the constitutionality of the resolution. (The more established National Council of La Raza says it does not have formal ties with Mexicans Without Borders. "Some grassroots organizations choose certain tactics that other organizations do not feel comfortable with," says Flavia Jimenez, a Chicago-based senior policy analyst with La Raza. In other words, says Jimenez, "We're not litigators.")
Pro-resolution lawyers and activists are also prepared for a fight in court. Immigration Reform Law Institute lawyers have worked with Letiecq, Stirrup, and others to ensure that carefully chosen language, designed to withstand potential litigation, is used in measures targeting illegal immigrants. The policies, including ordinances in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, which refused to allow illegal immigrants to live or work in that community, have attracted attention for elected officials. But the measures don't seem to stick. In July, a federal judge threw out the Hazleton ordinances, and in Missouri a judge struck down a resolution in Valley Park that had been designed to impose fines on property owners who rent to undocumented immigrants.
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyers had filed lawsuits in Hazleton and Valley Park, as well as in other parts of the country, to contest the measures. In all of the cases, says Omar Jadwat, a New York-based staff attorney who works for the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, the measures were thrown out or scaled back because of the litigation.
"The general principle, constitutionally, is that immigration is the federal government's concern and state and local governments lack any kind of broad authority to act in the area of immigration," Jadwat explains. "If we're going to have a coherent national policy on immigration, we can't have a patchwork of laws."
The resolution was passed unanimously in July, and most observers of the political process in Prince William County believe chances are high that the members of the county board will go forward with its plan. "I think their minds are already set," Carlos Aragon, 56, the general manager of Radio Fiesta, tells me. "They're going to pass the resolution." For that reason, a lawsuit seems like the most plausible option for people who are dissatisfied with it.
These days, Juarez meets with people who say they have been discriminated against in Northern Virginia -- he carries around sheets of paper with dozens of their names and phone numbers in a worn leather satchel. He continues circulating among business owners and the media, and co-hosts meetings of hundreds of volunteers, which are held up to three times weekly during times of "crisis," as volunteer Steinbach puts it. As Juarez finishes his coffee, he looks tired (his eyes are bloodshot) and anxious about the work ahead of him. He says he believes groups like Help Save Manassas are "promoting hate and racism."
"The effect of the resolution is fear," he says. "It's affecting thousands, and people are leaving this county because of it. The risk is not from me -- even though that is what people say. But liberty and civil rights are at risk. I am now afraid because they have taken that direction."
By Tara McKelvey, The American Prospect. Posted November 7, 2007.
It was a May afternoon in Washington's meridian Hill Park. Forty-year-old Ricardo Juarez Nava was at a rally in support of immigrants when he saw a neatly dressed man approaching the group. As it turned out, the man, Tyler J. Froatz Jr., was protesting the rally and had brought along an anti-immigration flyer (a crudely drawn illustration of border officers firing on an immigrant with the caption, "THE ONLY WAY TO STOP A FLOOD ..."), and a back- pack with a claw hammer, a Taser, and pepper spray inside. Froatz, who is 24 and a New Jersey native, also had a fully automatic M1 carbine rifle in the trunk of his car.
"He was pushing and trying to fight with me. He had a knife here," Juarez says, gesturing toward a front pocket in his jeans as he describes Froatz's efforts to disrupt the pro-immigration rally, which had been organized by a local group Juarez founded called Mexicans Without Borders. After Froatz's arrest, police discovered a hand grenade, a Molotov cocktail, and 1,000 rounds of ammunition in his Northwest Washington apartment.
On the afternoon of our September interview, four months after the assault, Juarez is sitting in a bookstore in Woodbridge, Virginia, sipping coffee. One of 12 children, Juarez was raised in Mexico by his widowed mother, who did laundry and sold firewood to support the family. He attended Mexico City's School of Sciences and Humanities and came to the United States in April 1995, where he found work in construction. In 2002 he founded Mexicans Without Borders to provide legal advice, counseling, and other kinds of support for immigrants in the Mid-Atlantic region.
For Juarez, it has been a rocky summer. In July, members of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors took aggressive steps against undocumented immigrants in Woodbridge and other cities in the county where Juarez lives. The July 10 county resolution passed by the Prince William Board recommended restricting such public services as access to senior centers for undocumented residents. The still more controversial aspect of the resolution instructs police to check into the immigration status of suspected illegals who have been detained -- even for minor traffic violations; previously, police had checked on the immigration status only of those accused of violent crimes.
The resolution is the most stringent anti-illegal immigrant measure to be passed in Virginia. It was first drafted in June with the help of a 1,850-member group called Help Save Manassas, which works to oppose illegal aliens. After the resolution was approved in July, a series of public meetings on the details took place this fall. As the Prospect went to press, the board was still debating how to implement the restriction of services to illegal immigrants and whether to provide training for police in checking on immigration status at a total cost of roughly $14 million; the vote had yet to be scheduled.
Juarez and Mexicans Without Borders, which now has approximately 3,000 members, have been fighting the board's efforts. They organized a week-long boycott of local businesses that had not supported their organization (the group had asked businesses to display posters) and brought more than 3,000 people to a Sept. 2 rally at the seat of the Prince William County government. During the rally, Juarez stood close to a microphone and -- over a frayed sound system --shouted to his followers. "Our constitutional and civil rights are being violated by this resolution," he said. "We are taking the case to court against the county of Prince William." The crowd broke into thunderous cheers and applause.
There have been death threats by e-mail, angry phone calls, and accusations from Republican county leaders that Mexicans Without Borders is trying to bully its opponents and whip up fear and hysteria in the Hispanic community. Meanwhile, bloggers and activists are investigating to see if Juarez and his family are legal, and have been posting their (inconclusive) findings on a Web site, Black Velvet Bruce Li, considered "the most influential local blog in Virginia" by some in the anti- illegal immigrant community.
"There are messages by e-mail that say they are going to kill me," Juarez says. He pulls on the collar of his red, checked shirt, fiddles with one of the buttons, and looks down at the table. "I don't want anyone to kill me."
Prince William County is a comfortable, though traffic-clogged, community 30 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. The county, like the rest of the area, has undergone demographic changes. In greater D.C., the Hispanic population has doubled over the past two decades, according to U.S. Census data. In 2005 the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that roughly 250,000 illegal immigrants live in Virginia and, as happens with any dramatic influx of immigrants, they are blamed for an array of problems: crowded elementary school classrooms and hospital emergency rooms; violent gang activity; run-down rental units in residential neighborhoods; even the high cost of diapers for newborns in a hospital maternity ward.
The undocumented immigrants in Prince William County work in construction and restaurants and other parts of the service industry. And while there is no state-by-state breakdown on the employment of undocumented immigrants, an April 2006 Pew Hispanic Center Fact Sheet revealed national employment patterns among undocumented workers. More than half of short-term undocumented workers have jobs in construction and service, which includes food preparation and other restaurant work. The rest can be found in farming, fishing, forestry, and various industries. Undocumented workers make an average of $350 per week, as compared with the $930 per week that immigrants who have become citizens take home.
As residential neighborhoods in Woodbridge and other cities in Prince William County absorbed newly arrived immigrants -- and elementary school classrooms filled up with Spanish-speaking children -- local activists began to push county leaders to take harsh measures against undocumented workers. For many of the activists, the goal was to arrest and deport undocumented residents as quickly as possible.
In some ways, the issues in Prince William County are similar to those being raised in state and local governments across the country. Political leaders are cracking down on immigrant communities and trying to drive them out -- imposing fines on landlords who rent to undocumented residents, for example, and penalizing employers who hire them. The situation is somewhat different -- and for this reason groundbreaking -- in Prince William County because county officials are involving police officers in their efforts to rid their community of illegal immigrants. Despite the differences in their approach, all of these ordinances have one thing in common: They are an attempt to enforce federal immigration policy at a local or state level.
In Prince William County, the conflict is sharp. Juarez and other immigrant workers, along with church leaders, a handful of unionists, and left-leaning activists, are on one side. Conservative political leaders -- and an eclectic group of bloggers, Ku Klux Klansmen, and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps -- are on the other. Business owners who serve mainly immigrants are opposed to the resolution because they will lose (and are already losing) business; many business owners who employ undocumented workers, including construction companies, also oppose the resolution. Everybody talks of war. Individuals on one side, and possibly both, are armed.
John Steinbach, 60, a "permanent substitute teacher" and a Mexicans Without Borders volunteer, says the group admires the organizing principles of the Zapatista rebels, who fought the Mexican government in 1994. Roughly 300 volunteers for Mexicans Without Borders, which does not embrace Zapatista-style violence, translate government documents into Spanish, hand out flyers, and work to defeat the Prince William resolution. With assets of roughly $2,000 at any given moment, Mexicans Without Borders partners with other organizations such as the Woodbridge Workers Committee and local churches to offer English-language classes and distribute food and winter coats, roughly 250 each year. In an odd alliance, the police, too, seem to oppose aspects of the resolution, as they believe it will make their jobs harder. County Police Chief Charlie T. Deane, who has been hostile toward the resolution, told the Prince William board of "a potential chilling effect on witness cooperation and victim-witness cooperation."
On the other side, the most public face of the pro-resolution forces is Greg Letiecq, a blond, deeply tanned, 43-year-old information technologies consultant and ex-infantryman in the Maryland National Guard who is president of Help Save Manassas and the lead blogger on Black Velvet Bruce Li. On an afternoon in September, Letiecq sits in a Taco Bell near his house, wearing a "USA" T-shirt and talking about his concerns for the safety of his daughters, ages 5 and 2, in their neighborhood. He looks out the window. Cars whiz past us on suburban Sudley Manor Drive. Someone wearing a Quiznos Sub costume -- an enormous, billowing white cup with a red straw -- trudges near an intersection. None of it looks particularly dangerous. "In the house down the road, there were transient people living there with a large number of unmarried males," Letiecq tells me. "A lot of questionable activity. ... Potential drug activity." He claims, though the resolution is not yet in place, that things have gotten better since its adoption. "Not all the way," he adds. "But they're improving."
Letiecq has a conservative coalition -- at local, state, and national levels -- at his back. Lawyers working for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based organization, crafted the language for the county resolution during meetings with Letiecq and other members of his organization, Help Save Manassas. A member of that group, John T. Stirrup Jr., who is also a supervisor on the Prince William County Board, eventually sponsored the resolution.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute is the legal arm of yet another organization, Federation for American Immigration Reform. FAIR has received funding from the Pioneer Fund, a group founded in the 1930s and known for its financing of research that examines whether blacks are genetically inferior to whites. The Ku Klux Klan also surfaced in Manassas in September, leaving around town flyers that warned of "'gangs, drugs and pornography' brought by immigrants."
The presence of the Klan, and the arrest of the armed protestor Tyler Froatz, who claims to be a member of the Herndon Minutemen, raises questions about the role of white supremacists, hate groups, and sociopaths in the controversy over undocumented immigrants. FAIR executives, as well as others on their side of the debate, make it clear they do not incorporate fringe elements or condone their actions. "Our SOPs [standard operating procedures] are very clear," Minutemen director Al Garza explains. "We do not practice carrying weapons at rallies."
Letiecq says he is appalled by the presence of white supremacists in his neighborhood. Racist policies are contrary to the spirit of this country, he says, and the Klan is "not welcome here." The issue, he says, is "'legal' versus 'illegal' -- who's got lawful presence and who doesn't. I'd be equally upset if it were a bunch of Canadians here." What gets him really worked up, though, is not so much the dark history of the Klan -- though he touches on that. ("They should be embarrassed," he tells me.) Rather, it is the way Klansmen have tried to hone in on his political turf. Now that gets under his skin.
"It just pisses me off. Everyone feels compelled to call the Klan up and ask for their opinion," he says. "Who cares what those guys say? They haven't done anything. They never tried to make things better here. We're working double time, and these guys want to come in and coattail. We didn't need them before. We certainly don't need them now."
Keeping the fight clean of extremists is key for Republicans, who are hoping to capitalize on local anti-immigrant sentiment to win elections in the next cycle. "Things have turned mean for them," explains Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics in Charlottesville. "They once controlled Virginia lock, stock, and barrel. That isn't true anymore. It's truly a competitive purple state." Hence, immigration. "Those communities that are now Democratic are concerned about immigration. Republicans see it as a way to get some of their votes back," he adds.
"We need to crack down on illegal immigration," says Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart, a Republican. "My take is, 'Look, this is predominantly a federal issue, but we're on the front line.'" Stewart is a 39-year-old, Polo-clad attorney and a graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. "My wife is a legal immigrant," he tells me. (She's from Sweden.) The day I meet him in his K Street office, he hands me a sheaf of papers from a Sept. 6 House Judiciary Committee immigration hearing at which he testified. "We've been getting dozens of phone calls," he says. "This has caught on like wildfire." It is an unanswered question whether the Prince William County resolution, as well as similar efforts in other parts of the country, really will help Republicans gain traction. Sabato says the strategy will backfire at both the state and national level. "The Latino vote is growing over time," he explains. "It's about twelve percent of the population but about six percent of the vote. That gap will close." The increasing clout of His- panic voters, who lean heavily toward Democratic candidates, means conservative Republicans, especially those who support strict anti-immigration policies, will face resistance during election campaigns.
An executive vice president of the Service Employees Inter- national Union, Eliseo Medina, agrees. "There's a feeling that this community is under attack," Medina says, "and that a lot of it is being driven by the Republican Party. I think that, to their dismay, people are going to remember them at the polls."
Juarez's work may help ensure that's true. Juarez meets regularly with small business owners who serve mainly the immigrant community, and many have agreed to give out Mexicans Without Borders flyers in their restaurants and grocery stores. In addition to working 45 hours a week in construction, Juarez also gets out the word of his anti-resolution effort in Spanish- language newspapers and radio and television interviews. He's hardly alone. One volunteer, Yolanda Marilena Lemus, a 32-year-old administrative assistant at a homeowners' title company, says she convinced between 15 and 20 friends and family members to attend the September rally at the county government offices. "I personally said, 'You got to come to this,'" she tells me. Martin Bernal, the owner of El Nopal Grocery Store in Culpeper, says he helped drive 60 people in cars and vans from their homes in Culpeper to the rally.
Mexicans Without Borders has been urging its members to register to vote. Many, however, are non-citizens and cannot. Lacking political clout and a political constituency, Mexicans Without Borders leaders have begun to form informal ties with members of organizations such as the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union; Tenants and Workers United, a grassroots organization committed to economic and social justice in Northern Virginia; and the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers.
More importantly, because the resolution will likely be approved this fall, among Mexicans Without Borders members, judicial means to defeat the resolution are seen as an especially powerful tool. (Every time the word "lawsuit" came up at the rally protestors screamed wildly.) They have been talking with lawyers from the New York-based Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, says legal coordinator Nancy Lyall. In October, a coalition including the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a lawsuit against the county contesting the constitutionality of the resolution. (The more established National Council of La Raza says it does not have formal ties with Mexicans Without Borders. "Some grassroots organizations choose certain tactics that other organizations do not feel comfortable with," says Flavia Jimenez, a Chicago-based senior policy analyst with La Raza. In other words, says Jimenez, "We're not litigators.")
Pro-resolution lawyers and activists are also prepared for a fight in court. Immigration Reform Law Institute lawyers have worked with Letiecq, Stirrup, and others to ensure that carefully chosen language, designed to withstand potential litigation, is used in measures targeting illegal immigrants. The policies, including ordinances in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, which refused to allow illegal immigrants to live or work in that community, have attracted attention for elected officials. But the measures don't seem to stick. In July, a federal judge threw out the Hazleton ordinances, and in Missouri a judge struck down a resolution in Valley Park that had been designed to impose fines on property owners who rent to undocumented immigrants.
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyers had filed lawsuits in Hazleton and Valley Park, as well as in other parts of the country, to contest the measures. In all of the cases, says Omar Jadwat, a New York-based staff attorney who works for the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, the measures were thrown out or scaled back because of the litigation.
"The general principle, constitutionally, is that immigration is the federal government's concern and state and local governments lack any kind of broad authority to act in the area of immigration," Jadwat explains. "If we're going to have a coherent national policy on immigration, we can't have a patchwork of laws."
The resolution was passed unanimously in July, and most observers of the political process in Prince William County believe chances are high that the members of the county board will go forward with its plan. "I think their minds are already set," Carlos Aragon, 56, the general manager of Radio Fiesta, tells me. "They're going to pass the resolution." For that reason, a lawsuit seems like the most plausible option for people who are dissatisfied with it.
These days, Juarez meets with people who say they have been discriminated against in Northern Virginia -- he carries around sheets of paper with dozens of their names and phone numbers in a worn leather satchel. He continues circulating among business owners and the media, and co-hosts meetings of hundreds of volunteers, which are held up to three times weekly during times of "crisis," as volunteer Steinbach puts it. As Juarez finishes his coffee, he looks tired (his eyes are bloodshot) and anxious about the work ahead of him. He says he believes groups like Help Save Manassas are "promoting hate and racism."
"The effect of the resolution is fear," he says. "It's affecting thousands, and people are leaving this county because of it. The risk is not from me -- even though that is what people say. But liberty and civil rights are at risk. I am now afraid because they have taken that direction."
The Theology of American Empire
American foreign policy -- both good and bad -- has always been deeply influenced by Christian theology.
By Ira Chernus, Foreign Policy in Focus - November 7, 2007.
American foreign policy is built on a deep foundation of Christian theology. Some of the people who make our foreign policy may understand that foundation. Most probably aren't even aware of it. But foundations are hidden underground. You can stand above them, and even take a strong stand upon them, without knowing they are there. When it comes to foreign policy, we are all influenced by theological foundations that we rarely see.
For example, few Americans have read the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, the most influential American theologian of the 20th century. Many have never even heard the name. Yet Niebuhr's thought affects us all. In the 1930s, he launched an attack on the liberal Christianity of the Social Gospel, a movement that powerfully influenced U.S. foreign policy in the first third of the 20th century. The liberals were starry-eyed fools, Niebuhr charged, because they trusted people to be reasonable enough to resolve international conflicts peacefully. They forgot the harsh reality of original sin.
Niebuhr wrapped that traditional notion of sin in a new intellectual package and sold it successfully, not only to theologians but to the foreign policy elite. Since the 1940s, foreign policy has largely been reduced to an endless round of debates about how to apply Niebuhr's "realism." Policymakers who still tried to follow the Social Gospel path have been marginalized and stigmatized with the harshest epithet a Niebuhrian can hurl: "unrealistic.”
It’s a Jungle Out There
Many policymakers, like much of the public at large, have come to find a strange comfort in the world as Niebuhr described it. They see a jungle where evildoers, who are all around, must be hunted down and destroyed. Though frightening, this world can easily become the stage for simplistic dramas of good against evil. And the moral certainty of being on the side of good -- the side of God -- can provide a sense of security that more than makes up for the constant terror. That was not what Niebuhr had in mind. But as he found out so painfully, once you let ideas loose in the world, you can't control what others do with them.
Niebuhr would have been pained to see what the neoconservatives have done with his ideas. Their theory starts out from his own premise: All people are born naturally selfish and impulsive. The godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, was (like most of the early neocons) an intellectual -- a teacher, writer, and editor -- and (like many of the early neocons) a Jew. But he turned to Christian theology to describe his Niebuhrian view of human nature: "Original sin was one way of saying this, and I had no problem with that doctrine." Selfish impulses, when they get out of control, can tear society apart, he warned. To preserve social order we need a fixed moral order. We therefore need a clear sense of the absolute difference between good and bad, strict rules that tell us what is good, and powerful institutions that can get people to obey those rules.
According to this worldview, organized religion has been the most effective institution to promote moral absolutes and self-control. Religion now needs to be strengthened to stave off a rising tide of moral relativism that, along with secular humanism, is breaking down the bulwarks of social order and threatening to release a flood of selfish impulse to drown us all in chaos. A favorite neoconservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer, complains that American mass culture, dominated by skepticism and pleasure, is an "engine of social breakdown." The best antidote would be a "self-abnegating religious revival." Since that is not likely to happen, Krauthammer admits, the best place to recover moral discipline and will power is in foreign affairs: America must find the will to exercise its strength and become "confident enough to define international morality in its own, American terms."
Original Sin Goes Global
When neoconservatives apply their views to international relations, they deviate from Niebuhr's teaching. All people may be sinners, they imply, but not all nations. They assume an (often vaguely defined) hierarchy of nations. At the bottom are the enemies of America, consistently described as chaotic, irrational monsters who are incapable of self-control and bent on provoking instability and evil for its own sake. Above them are neutral nations and then U.S. allies near the top of the pyramid. At the top is the United States, in a class by itself because its national motives are good and pure, somehow untainted by original sin.
Neoconservatives insist on this hierarchy, with its dramatic contrast between the good United States and its evil enemies, because it gives them the sense of moral clarity and certainty that they rely on to hold back the relativism they fear. They bolster their sense of certainty by reducing international affairs to simplistic myths: black-and-white tales of absolute good versus absolute evil. (Here I use the word "myth" in its religious sense of a narrative story that expresses a community's worldview and basic values.) George W. Bush tapped into this mythic world when he said that the war on terrorism is "a monumental struggle between good and evil. But good will prevail." The outcome is certain, according to Bush, because "we all know that this is one nation, under God." But Americans must do their world-ordering job pretty much alone, since other nations and international institutions are too selfish to be trusted. The United States must rely primarily on military might, since the only language that the sinful evildoers understand is force.
The neoconservatives did not invent this myth. It goes back to the Puritan belief in "the new Israel" and Americans as God's chosen people, with the special privilege and responsibility of bringing order to a sinful, chaotic world. Most Americans are still likely to see their nation as the global hero fulfilling that sacred task. Only the United States, they believe in a great leap of faith, is moved by an unselfish desire to serve the good of all humanity by spreading ordered liberty.
Throughout the Cold War era, across the political spectrum, there was no doubting the name of the threatening evil: Communism. After a decade of drift and uncertainty in the 1990s, the September 11 attacks, despite their horror, allowed the nation to breathe easier, at least in terms of the theology of foreign policy. Once again, it seemed that everyone agreed on the name of the monstrous sinners, the source of instability. Rudolph Giuliani could have been speaking for most Americans when he explained that the cultural payoff of the war on terrorism was moral stability: "The era of moral relativism…must end. Moral relativism does not have a place in this discussion." That crusading tone of certainty gave Bush and the neoconservatives a very free hand in the early post-September 11 days, when they launched the invasion of Afghanistan. The administration then invaded Iraq with the approval of 75% of the U.S. public and nearly all the foreign policy elite.
Iraq War
The myth of U.S. moral and global supremacy -- Americans as the world's chosen people -- went largely unchallenged until the U.S. venture in Iraq went sour. The myth says that the good guys are supposed to win every time, because they are good. When the myth does not get played out in reality, people start to complain. If you look at the current debate about Iraq from the standpoint of myth and theology, the complainers fall into three broad groups.
First there is the mainstream of the foreign policy elite, made up of Democrats and more moderate Republicans. They complain that the Bush administration is pursuing the right goals but using the wrong tactics. That's because the elite still hold on to some shreds of the old Social Gospel view. They give most of the world a bit more credit for rationality; they fear the impulses of original sin a bit less. So they see military strength as one of several ways to secure America's global hegemony. They are more willing to take a multilateral approach and use the carrot as well as the stick — to pull diplomatic and economic levers before calling out the troops.
But these differences, though they can be very important, are largely ones of degree and tactics. Across the board, members of the foreign policy establishment, even the liberal Democrats, still give a very respectful (sometimes slavish) hearing to the great theologian Niebuhr. But they apply his "realistic" view of original sin only to other nations. The liberals among the elite, too, want their sense of moral clarity and certainty reassured by seeing it played out in a global drama of good against evil. So they make a huge exception for the supposedly pure and innocent motives of their own nation, the chosen people. They believe that the U.S. has a higher moral standing, which gives us the right and duty to rule. That's how they can justify the most ruthless policies against anyone who stands in their way.
The bipartisan elite may not value the display of American strength as an end in itself, the way neoconservatives do. They are willing to risk a short-term appearance of weakness in one place in order to bolster long-term U.S. strength everywhere else. But long-term strength (including a long-term military presence in Iraq) is still crucial, because they feel a sacred calling to enforce "stability" -- their favorite code word for a single global order that protects U.S. interests -- everywhere and forever.
The second group of war critics is on the right. A growing number of traditional conservatives criticize the administration and the bipartisan establishment for betraying genuine Niebuhrian "realism." These hard-core "realists" want the United States to recognize that it too is a sinful nation, limited in its goodness as well as its resources, all too likely to overreach and eventually destroy itself if it doesn't scale back its hubristic dream of enduring empire.
Thus the right-wing "realists" become strange bedfellows with the third group of war critics, the left-wingers, who, starting from very different principles, arrive at the same anti-imperialist conclusions. Though most of them don't know it, what makes leftists leftist is that they still champion many of the basic values of the Social Gospel movement. They do not accept the doctrine of original sin; they don't think people are inherently doomed to be selfish and unreasonable. They assume that the vast majority of people, if treated decently and given decent living conditions, will respond by being decent people. For the left, order and stability are not as important as human growth, creativity, and transformation. The key to a better world is not strength and dominance, but sharing and cooperation. And leftists often assume -- or at least hope -- that the long-term trend of history is leading to that better world, a view that is rooted in the biblical hope for redemption.
In Middle America
Leftists who are consistent extend their Social Gospel view to its logical conclusion: There are no monsters -- no inherently bad people -- only bad conditions. So the good guys versus bad guys myth always distorts reality. But a surprising number of leftists sacrifice logical consistency for the emotional pleasure of the traditional myth. For them, of course, the monsters are the Bush administration, the neoconservatives, sometimes the mainstream Democrats too, and always, above all, the corporate elite whose hand they see behind every gesture of U.S. imperialism.
This left-wing version of the myth does not play very well in middle America, or even on the coasts apart from a few ultra-liberal enclaves. The hardcore "realist" view may get slightly higher ratings, but not much. Most Americans still demand a heavy dose of moral idealism in their foreign policy. They want to continue believing in the myth of American innocence. They won't give in to a full-blown Niebuhrian pessimism about human nature -- at least not when it comes to American humans. And they don't want to believe that the economic and political leaders of their nation are utterly cynical "realists," devoid of ideals, caring only about money and power.
So the mass of the citizenry, sick and tired of losing in Iraq, swing in line behind the only critical voice they can support: the foreign policy elite. The public criticizes the administration for its inept effort in Iraq. But most citizens don't raise any questions about the long-term goals or the theological premises underlying them.
Only when something looks broken do people think about fixing it. The last time the U.S. foreign policy system broke down was when the United States suffered defeat in Vietnam. However, after a short period of radical questioning, a powerful reaction set in, fueled by the deep and widespread need for idealism and moral certainty. The neoconservatives got control of the public conversation in the late 1970s because they recognized that need and offered a Cold War myth that satisfied it.
The same need for moral clarity arose after September 11, but it's been bitterly betrayed by the failure in Iraq. How can we avoid a similar neoconservative reaction as we question the underpinnings of U.S. foreign policy in the years to come? And if the Iraq debacle boots the neoconservatives out of power for good, how can we use this window of opportunity to challenge the most powerful alternative view, the bipartisan establishment consensus? From the outset it won't help to scorn the average citizen's idealistic view of America. That's like wishing away the Rocky Mountains. Claiming that this worldview is unrealistic would be caving in to a simplistic Niebuhrian "realism." After all, we on the left believe in our own idealism. We are happy to hear right-wing "realists" argue that Americans are no more idealistic than anyone else. But we forget that Americans are no less idealistic either. That includes even the most powerful leaders of the nation. Rather than demonizing them and dismissing their claim to good intentions outright, we would do better to look for common values that we can all agree on and then find progressive programs that can put those values into practice.
Different Moral Certainties
Just about all Americans, from Bush and Cheney and the CEOs of Exxon and Lockheed-Martin on down, sincerely want the nation to be secure. As long as our notions of security are built on the myth of well-meaning Americans versus ever-threatening evildoers who embody original sin, we can never dispense with the evildoers. They are as necessary in U.S. foreign policy as sin is in Niebuhr's theology. They always have to be out there threatening us, in our imaginations at least, in order for our pursuit of national security to make any sense at all.
The bipartisan consensus on U.S. foreign policy calls for us to be powerful enough to dominate them. But every step we take to dominate only antagonizes more people and makes some of them really want to harm us. As long as we keep on this self-defeating road, we are not a national security state. We are a national insecurity state. So, we need to redefine national security in a way that meets people's need for a second value that so many of us share: moral certainty. This involves a faith in some rock-bottom kind of goodness in the world, which many Americans believe has a special home here in the United States.
There is a special kind of goodness, rooted in a special kind of theology, that does have an old and honored home here -- the goodness of nonviolence. There have always been Christians who were certain that the only moral way to treat others, even enemies, is with love, not violence. They knew it because Jesus said it, right there in the Bible. In 19th-century America, the abolitionists and Thoreau turned the theology of nonviolence into a homegrown strategy for political change.
Martin Luther King, Jr. took this strategy a crucial step further. He preached that it's the government's role to help bring all people together in what he called "the beloved community" (something very much like what the Social Gospel called the Kingdom of God). Every government policy should promote "the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother [and sister]" -- the responsibility to help every person fulfill their God-given potential.
In King's words, no matter how bad a person's behavior, "the image of God is never totally gone." So, government must serve everyone, everywhere. No one can be written off as a monstrous evildoer, sinful beyond redemption. That was a moral certainty for King, an essential foundation of his religious faith. King knew all about moral clarity and certainty. He was willing to die for the truths he believed in so firmly. But he was not willing to kill.
A Different Narrative
With King as our guide, we could have a distinctly American foreign policy based on the conviction of absolute moral certainty we find in the Social Gospel and nonviolence traditions.. Our goal would always be to move the world one step closer to becoming a universal beloved community. We would no longer act out the myth of good versus evil. We would not demonize a bin Laden or Saddam -- or a Bush or Cheney. We would recognize that when people do bad things, their actions grow out of a global network of forces that we ourselves have helped to create. King said it most eloquently: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."
We can never stand outside the network of mutuality, as if we were the Lone Ranger arriving on the scene to destroy an evil we played no part in creating. Just as Bush is tied to Osama, so each of us is tied to all those who do things that outrage us. We cannot simply destroy them and think that the outrages have been erased. To right the wrongs of the world, we must start by recognizing our own responsibility for helping to spawn those wrongs. Indeed, fixing our own part in the wrongs we see all over the world may be all that we can do.
But in the case of the United States in 2007, that alone would be more than a full time job for our foreign policy. We would have to, among other things:
By Ira Chernus, Foreign Policy in Focus - November 7, 2007.
American foreign policy is built on a deep foundation of Christian theology. Some of the people who make our foreign policy may understand that foundation. Most probably aren't even aware of it. But foundations are hidden underground. You can stand above them, and even take a strong stand upon them, without knowing they are there. When it comes to foreign policy, we are all influenced by theological foundations that we rarely see.
For example, few Americans have read the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, the most influential American theologian of the 20th century. Many have never even heard the name. Yet Niebuhr's thought affects us all. In the 1930s, he launched an attack on the liberal Christianity of the Social Gospel, a movement that powerfully influenced U.S. foreign policy in the first third of the 20th century. The liberals were starry-eyed fools, Niebuhr charged, because they trusted people to be reasonable enough to resolve international conflicts peacefully. They forgot the harsh reality of original sin.
Niebuhr wrapped that traditional notion of sin in a new intellectual package and sold it successfully, not only to theologians but to the foreign policy elite. Since the 1940s, foreign policy has largely been reduced to an endless round of debates about how to apply Niebuhr's "realism." Policymakers who still tried to follow the Social Gospel path have been marginalized and stigmatized with the harshest epithet a Niebuhrian can hurl: "unrealistic.”
It’s a Jungle Out There
Many policymakers, like much of the public at large, have come to find a strange comfort in the world as Niebuhr described it. They see a jungle where evildoers, who are all around, must be hunted down and destroyed. Though frightening, this world can easily become the stage for simplistic dramas of good against evil. And the moral certainty of being on the side of good -- the side of God -- can provide a sense of security that more than makes up for the constant terror. That was not what Niebuhr had in mind. But as he found out so painfully, once you let ideas loose in the world, you can't control what others do with them.
Niebuhr would have been pained to see what the neoconservatives have done with his ideas. Their theory starts out from his own premise: All people are born naturally selfish and impulsive. The godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, was (like most of the early neocons) an intellectual -- a teacher, writer, and editor -- and (like many of the early neocons) a Jew. But he turned to Christian theology to describe his Niebuhrian view of human nature: "Original sin was one way of saying this, and I had no problem with that doctrine." Selfish impulses, when they get out of control, can tear society apart, he warned. To preserve social order we need a fixed moral order. We therefore need a clear sense of the absolute difference between good and bad, strict rules that tell us what is good, and powerful institutions that can get people to obey those rules.
According to this worldview, organized religion has been the most effective institution to promote moral absolutes and self-control. Religion now needs to be strengthened to stave off a rising tide of moral relativism that, along with secular humanism, is breaking down the bulwarks of social order and threatening to release a flood of selfish impulse to drown us all in chaos. A favorite neoconservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer, complains that American mass culture, dominated by skepticism and pleasure, is an "engine of social breakdown." The best antidote would be a "self-abnegating religious revival." Since that is not likely to happen, Krauthammer admits, the best place to recover moral discipline and will power is in foreign affairs: America must find the will to exercise its strength and become "confident enough to define international morality in its own, American terms."
Original Sin Goes Global
When neoconservatives apply their views to international relations, they deviate from Niebuhr's teaching. All people may be sinners, they imply, but not all nations. They assume an (often vaguely defined) hierarchy of nations. At the bottom are the enemies of America, consistently described as chaotic, irrational monsters who are incapable of self-control and bent on provoking instability and evil for its own sake. Above them are neutral nations and then U.S. allies near the top of the pyramid. At the top is the United States, in a class by itself because its national motives are good and pure, somehow untainted by original sin.
Neoconservatives insist on this hierarchy, with its dramatic contrast between the good United States and its evil enemies, because it gives them the sense of moral clarity and certainty that they rely on to hold back the relativism they fear. They bolster their sense of certainty by reducing international affairs to simplistic myths: black-and-white tales of absolute good versus absolute evil. (Here I use the word "myth" in its religious sense of a narrative story that expresses a community's worldview and basic values.) George W. Bush tapped into this mythic world when he said that the war on terrorism is "a monumental struggle between good and evil. But good will prevail." The outcome is certain, according to Bush, because "we all know that this is one nation, under God." But Americans must do their world-ordering job pretty much alone, since other nations and international institutions are too selfish to be trusted. The United States must rely primarily on military might, since the only language that the sinful evildoers understand is force.
The neoconservatives did not invent this myth. It goes back to the Puritan belief in "the new Israel" and Americans as God's chosen people, with the special privilege and responsibility of bringing order to a sinful, chaotic world. Most Americans are still likely to see their nation as the global hero fulfilling that sacred task. Only the United States, they believe in a great leap of faith, is moved by an unselfish desire to serve the good of all humanity by spreading ordered liberty.
Throughout the Cold War era, across the political spectrum, there was no doubting the name of the threatening evil: Communism. After a decade of drift and uncertainty in the 1990s, the September 11 attacks, despite their horror, allowed the nation to breathe easier, at least in terms of the theology of foreign policy. Once again, it seemed that everyone agreed on the name of the monstrous sinners, the source of instability. Rudolph Giuliani could have been speaking for most Americans when he explained that the cultural payoff of the war on terrorism was moral stability: "The era of moral relativism…must end. Moral relativism does not have a place in this discussion." That crusading tone of certainty gave Bush and the neoconservatives a very free hand in the early post-September 11 days, when they launched the invasion of Afghanistan. The administration then invaded Iraq with the approval of 75% of the U.S. public and nearly all the foreign policy elite.
Iraq War
The myth of U.S. moral and global supremacy -- Americans as the world's chosen people -- went largely unchallenged until the U.S. venture in Iraq went sour. The myth says that the good guys are supposed to win every time, because they are good. When the myth does not get played out in reality, people start to complain. If you look at the current debate about Iraq from the standpoint of myth and theology, the complainers fall into three broad groups.
First there is the mainstream of the foreign policy elite, made up of Democrats and more moderate Republicans. They complain that the Bush administration is pursuing the right goals but using the wrong tactics. That's because the elite still hold on to some shreds of the old Social Gospel view. They give most of the world a bit more credit for rationality; they fear the impulses of original sin a bit less. So they see military strength as one of several ways to secure America's global hegemony. They are more willing to take a multilateral approach and use the carrot as well as the stick — to pull diplomatic and economic levers before calling out the troops.
But these differences, though they can be very important, are largely ones of degree and tactics. Across the board, members of the foreign policy establishment, even the liberal Democrats, still give a very respectful (sometimes slavish) hearing to the great theologian Niebuhr. But they apply his "realistic" view of original sin only to other nations. The liberals among the elite, too, want their sense of moral clarity and certainty reassured by seeing it played out in a global drama of good against evil. So they make a huge exception for the supposedly pure and innocent motives of their own nation, the chosen people. They believe that the U.S. has a higher moral standing, which gives us the right and duty to rule. That's how they can justify the most ruthless policies against anyone who stands in their way.
The bipartisan elite may not value the display of American strength as an end in itself, the way neoconservatives do. They are willing to risk a short-term appearance of weakness in one place in order to bolster long-term U.S. strength everywhere else. But long-term strength (including a long-term military presence in Iraq) is still crucial, because they feel a sacred calling to enforce "stability" -- their favorite code word for a single global order that protects U.S. interests -- everywhere and forever.
The second group of war critics is on the right. A growing number of traditional conservatives criticize the administration and the bipartisan establishment for betraying genuine Niebuhrian "realism." These hard-core "realists" want the United States to recognize that it too is a sinful nation, limited in its goodness as well as its resources, all too likely to overreach and eventually destroy itself if it doesn't scale back its hubristic dream of enduring empire.
Thus the right-wing "realists" become strange bedfellows with the third group of war critics, the left-wingers, who, starting from very different principles, arrive at the same anti-imperialist conclusions. Though most of them don't know it, what makes leftists leftist is that they still champion many of the basic values of the Social Gospel movement. They do not accept the doctrine of original sin; they don't think people are inherently doomed to be selfish and unreasonable. They assume that the vast majority of people, if treated decently and given decent living conditions, will respond by being decent people. For the left, order and stability are not as important as human growth, creativity, and transformation. The key to a better world is not strength and dominance, but sharing and cooperation. And leftists often assume -- or at least hope -- that the long-term trend of history is leading to that better world, a view that is rooted in the biblical hope for redemption.
In Middle America
Leftists who are consistent extend their Social Gospel view to its logical conclusion: There are no monsters -- no inherently bad people -- only bad conditions. So the good guys versus bad guys myth always distorts reality. But a surprising number of leftists sacrifice logical consistency for the emotional pleasure of the traditional myth. For them, of course, the monsters are the Bush administration, the neoconservatives, sometimes the mainstream Democrats too, and always, above all, the corporate elite whose hand they see behind every gesture of U.S. imperialism.
This left-wing version of the myth does not play very well in middle America, or even on the coasts apart from a few ultra-liberal enclaves. The hardcore "realist" view may get slightly higher ratings, but not much. Most Americans still demand a heavy dose of moral idealism in their foreign policy. They want to continue believing in the myth of American innocence. They won't give in to a full-blown Niebuhrian pessimism about human nature -- at least not when it comes to American humans. And they don't want to believe that the economic and political leaders of their nation are utterly cynical "realists," devoid of ideals, caring only about money and power.
So the mass of the citizenry, sick and tired of losing in Iraq, swing in line behind the only critical voice they can support: the foreign policy elite. The public criticizes the administration for its inept effort in Iraq. But most citizens don't raise any questions about the long-term goals or the theological premises underlying them.
Only when something looks broken do people think about fixing it. The last time the U.S. foreign policy system broke down was when the United States suffered defeat in Vietnam. However, after a short period of radical questioning, a powerful reaction set in, fueled by the deep and widespread need for idealism and moral certainty. The neoconservatives got control of the public conversation in the late 1970s because they recognized that need and offered a Cold War myth that satisfied it.
The same need for moral clarity arose after September 11, but it's been bitterly betrayed by the failure in Iraq. How can we avoid a similar neoconservative reaction as we question the underpinnings of U.S. foreign policy in the years to come? And if the Iraq debacle boots the neoconservatives out of power for good, how can we use this window of opportunity to challenge the most powerful alternative view, the bipartisan establishment consensus? From the outset it won't help to scorn the average citizen's idealistic view of America. That's like wishing away the Rocky Mountains. Claiming that this worldview is unrealistic would be caving in to a simplistic Niebuhrian "realism." After all, we on the left believe in our own idealism. We are happy to hear right-wing "realists" argue that Americans are no more idealistic than anyone else. But we forget that Americans are no less idealistic either. That includes even the most powerful leaders of the nation. Rather than demonizing them and dismissing their claim to good intentions outright, we would do better to look for common values that we can all agree on and then find progressive programs that can put those values into practice.
Different Moral Certainties
Just about all Americans, from Bush and Cheney and the CEOs of Exxon and Lockheed-Martin on down, sincerely want the nation to be secure. As long as our notions of security are built on the myth of well-meaning Americans versus ever-threatening evildoers who embody original sin, we can never dispense with the evildoers. They are as necessary in U.S. foreign policy as sin is in Niebuhr's theology. They always have to be out there threatening us, in our imaginations at least, in order for our pursuit of national security to make any sense at all.
The bipartisan consensus on U.S. foreign policy calls for us to be powerful enough to dominate them. But every step we take to dominate only antagonizes more people and makes some of them really want to harm us. As long as we keep on this self-defeating road, we are not a national security state. We are a national insecurity state. So, we need to redefine national security in a way that meets people's need for a second value that so many of us share: moral certainty. This involves a faith in some rock-bottom kind of goodness in the world, which many Americans believe has a special home here in the United States.
There is a special kind of goodness, rooted in a special kind of theology, that does have an old and honored home here -- the goodness of nonviolence. There have always been Christians who were certain that the only moral way to treat others, even enemies, is with love, not violence. They knew it because Jesus said it, right there in the Bible. In 19th-century America, the abolitionists and Thoreau turned the theology of nonviolence into a homegrown strategy for political change.
Martin Luther King, Jr. took this strategy a crucial step further. He preached that it's the government's role to help bring all people together in what he called "the beloved community" (something very much like what the Social Gospel called the Kingdom of God). Every government policy should promote "the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother [and sister]" -- the responsibility to help every person fulfill their God-given potential.
In King's words, no matter how bad a person's behavior, "the image of God is never totally gone." So, government must serve everyone, everywhere. No one can be written off as a monstrous evildoer, sinful beyond redemption. That was a moral certainty for King, an essential foundation of his religious faith. King knew all about moral clarity and certainty. He was willing to die for the truths he believed in so firmly. But he was not willing to kill.
A Different Narrative
With King as our guide, we could have a distinctly American foreign policy based on the conviction of absolute moral certainty we find in the Social Gospel and nonviolence traditions.. Our goal would always be to move the world one step closer to becoming a universal beloved community. We would no longer act out the myth of good versus evil. We would not demonize a bin Laden or Saddam -- or a Bush or Cheney. We would recognize that when people do bad things, their actions grow out of a global network of forces that we ourselves have helped to create. King said it most eloquently: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."
We can never stand outside the network of mutuality, as if we were the Lone Ranger arriving on the scene to destroy an evil we played no part in creating. Just as Bush is tied to Osama, so each of us is tied to all those who do things that outrage us. We cannot simply destroy them and think that the outrages have been erased. To right the wrongs of the world, we must start by recognizing our own responsibility for helping to spawn those wrongs. Indeed, fixing our own part in the wrongs we see all over the world may be all that we can do.
But in the case of the United States in 2007, that alone would be more than a full time job for our foreign policy. We would have to, among other things:
- end the occupation that creates a breeding ground for violent jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan;
- reverse the policy of supporting authoritarian regimes in the Middle East;
stop participating in the mad rush for power and resources in Africa, which breeds disasters like Rwanda and Darfur; - withdraw support for the corporations and financiers who would strangle the emerging popular democracies in Latin America;
- and treat everyone as our brothers and sisters, even the leaders of North Korea and Cuba and Iran.
In short, we would have to create a new notion of "national interest" based on the moral certainty that we are all threads in a network of mutuality that is the foundation of our national as well as individual life. Since our foundation is infinite and eternal, no one can threaten to destroy it, or us. Embracing that principle as the basis of foreign policy could set us on the road to a radically new way of thinking about genuine national security.
If that's not something all Americans can agree on, at least it's a program that gets the debate down to our most basic assumptions. This is a democracy. If the people want a religion-laden foreign policy based on the doctrine of original sin and the myth of good against evil, it's what we should have. But at least we should all talk about it together, openly and honestly.
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