Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies June 13, 2012.
[Republished by National Catholic Reporter & ZNetwork]
In another resolution apparently designed to prepare for war against Iran, the U.S. House of Representatives, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 401–11 vote, has passed a resolution (HR 568) urging the president to oppose any policy toward Iran “that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat…” Indeed, the rush to pass this bill appears to have been designed to undermine the ongoing international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program…
Category: FPIF Commentary
FPIF Commentary
Yemen on the Edge
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies May 13, 2011
Since Obama came to office in January 2009, U.S. security assistance to the Yemeni regime has gone up 20-fold. Despite such large-scale unconditional support, however, the 32-year reign of autocratic President Ali Abdullah Saleh may finally be coming to an end. Yet the Obama administration has been ambivalent in its support for a democratic transition… [Source]
Pro-Democracy Protests Spread to Oman
Foreign Policy In Focus/Insitute for Policy Studies
March 7, 2011. Also in Eurasia Review and Huffington Post
Oman’s autocratic monarchy has long been one of the closest U.S. allies in the Middle East. And, as with authoritarian U.S. allies in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen, a largely nonviolent, pro-democracy struggle has arisen in Oman as well. Protests began in the capital of Muscat on February 19 but soon spread…
Fraudulent Egyptian Election
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies December 7, 2010
The November 28 Egyptian parliamentary elections were a farce. The vast majority of Egyptians boycotted the charade. But even those who did try to vote witnessed massive ballot-stuffing, vote-buying, intimidation, multiple voting in pro-government precincts, interminable delays in pro-opposition precincts, and mass arrests of opposition supporters.
Senate Again Undermines Obama’s Middle-East Peace Efforts
Huffington Post October 11, 2010. Also by ZNetwork.
Once again, as President Barack Obama began pressuring the right-wing Israeli government to freeze the expansion of its illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, leading Congressional Democrats have joined in with Republicans to try to stop him.
U.S. Lawmakers Support Illegal Annexation
In yet another assault on fundamental principles of international law, a bipartisan majority of the Senate has gone on record calling on the United States to endorse Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony invaded by Moroccan forces in 1975 on the verge of its independence. In doing so, the Senate is pressuring the Obama administration to go against a series of UN Security Council resolutions, a landmark decision of the International Court of Justice, and the position of the African Union and most of the United States’ closest European allies.
More disturbingly, this effort appears to have the support of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), head of the Senate Intelligence Committee and principal author of the recent Senate letter supporting Moroccan aggrandizement, claims that the two “are on the same wavelength” on the issue.
The letter, signed by 54 senators, insists that the United States endorse Morocco’s “autonomy” plan as the means of settling the conflict. As such, the Senate opposes the vast majority of the world’s governments and a broad consensus of international legal scholars, who recognize the illegality of such an imposed settlement. More than 75 countries recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which represents the people of Western Sahara under the leadership of the Polisario Front. The SADR is also a full member state of the African Union, and has governed nearly half of the people in liberated zones in Western Sahara as well as refugee camps in Algeria for nearly 35 years. The majority of Congress, however, wants the United States to pressure Polisario to surrender the Western Saharan people’s right to self-determination and accept the sovereignty of a conquering power.
How Much “Autonomy”?
The autonomy plan is based on the assumption that Western Sahara is part of Morocco rather than an occupied territory, and that Morocco is somehow granting part of its sovereign territory a special status. This is a contention that the United Nations, the World Court, the African Union, and a broad consensus of international legal opinion have long rejected. To accept Morocco’s autonomy plan would mean that, for the first time since the founding of the UN and the ratification of the UN Charter nearly 65 years ago, the international community would be endorsing the expansion of a country’s territory by military force, thereby establishing a very dangerous and destabilizing precedent.
If the people of Western Sahara accepted an autonomy agreement over independence as a result of a free and fair referendum, it would constitute a legitimate act of self-determination. Outstanding UN Security Council resolutions explicitly call for such a referendum (which the Senate letter ignores). However, Morocco has explicitly stated that its autonomy proposal “rules out, by definition, the possibility for the independence option to be submitted” to the people of Western Sahara, the vast majority of whom favor outright independence.
International law aside, there are a number of practical concerns regarding the Moroccan proposal. For instance, centralized autocratic states have rarely respected the autonomy of regional jurisdictions, which has often led to violent conflict. In 1952, the UN granted the British protectorate of Eritrea autonomous status federated with Ethiopia. In 1961, however, the Ethiopian emperor revoked Eritrea’s autonomous status, annexing it as his empire’s 14th province. The result was a bloody 30-year struggle for independence and subsequent border wars between the two countries. Similarly, the decision of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to revoke the autonomous status of Kosovo in 1989 led to a decade of repression and resistance, culminating in the NATO war against Yugoslavia in 1999.
Moreover, the Senate-backed Moroccan proposal contains no enforcement mechanisms. Morocco has often broken its promises to the international community, such as in its refusal to allow the UN-mandated referendum for Western Sahara to go forward. Indeed, a close reading of the proposal raises questions about how much autonomy Morocco is even initially offering, such as whether the Western Saharans will control the territory’s natural resources or law enforcement beyond local matters. In addition, the proposal appears to indicate that all powers not specifically vested in the autonomous region would remain with the kingdom. Indeed, since the king of Morocco is ultimately vested with absolute authority under Article 19 of the Moroccan constitution, the autonomy proposal’s insistence that the Moroccan state “will keep its powers in the royal domains, especially with respect to defense, external relations and the constitutional and religious prerogatives of His Majesty the King” appears to give the monarch considerable latitude in interpretation.
In any case, the people of Western Sahara will not likely accept autonomy rather than independence. For years, they have engaged in largely nonviolent pro-independence protests only to be subjected to mass arrests, beatings, torture, and extra-judicial killings. The Moroccan authorities would not likely change their ways under “autonomy.”
That did not stop Clinton from apparently endorsing Morocco’s “autonomy” plan during a visit to Morocco last November, a controversial statement cited by the Senate letter’s authors to bolster their case. Just days after Clinton’s visit, the emboldened Moroccan authorities expelled Aminatou Haidar, Western Sahara’s leading pro-independence activist. Haidar’s resulting month-long hunger strike nearly killed her before President Barack Obama pressured Morocco to allow her to return.
The Senate Letter
There has long been concern that Morocco’s ongoing illegal occupation of Western Sahara, its human rights abuses, and its defiance of the international community has jeopardized attempts to advance the Arab Maghreb Union and other efforts at regional economic integration and security cooperation. However, the Senate letter turns this argument on its head, arguing that the international community’s failure to recognize Morocco’s annexation of the territory is the cause of the “growing instability in North Africa.” The letter ominously warns that “terrorist activities are increasing” in the region, ignoring the fact that the Polisario Front has never engaged in terrorism, even during the years of guerrilla warfare against Moroccan occupation forces between 1975 and 1991. The Polisario has scrupulously observed a ceasefire ever since, despite Morocco breaking its promise to allow for a UN-sponsored referendum. Furthermore, Islamist radicals have little sympathy for the secular Polisario and the relatively liberal version of Islam practiced by most Western Saharans.
The letter’s signatories included 24 Republicans, including ranking Intelligence Committee member Kit Bond (R-MO), Assistant Minority Leader Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and John McCain (R-AZ). There were also 30 Democratic signatories of the letter, including such erstwhile liberals as Ron Wyden (D-OR), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Carl Levin (D-MI), and Mark Udall (D-CO). Not surprisingly, most of the signers have also gone on record defending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory, and previously supported Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor. A majority of the signatories also voted to authorize the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. When a majority of the Senate goes on record calling on the administration to pursue a policy that fundamentally denies an entire nation its right to self-determination, undermines the UN Charter and other basic principles of international law, and challenges a series of UN Security Council resolutions, it shows just how far to the right this Democratic-controlled body has become.
U.S. support for Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor didn’t end until human rights activists made it politically difficult for the Clinton administration and members of Congress to continue backing it. Similarly, voters who care about human rights and international law must make it clear they won’t support any lawmaker who favors the right of conquest over the right of self-determination.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/us_lawmakers_support_illegal_annexation
Obama Stumbles on Human Rights
It was a relatively short response to a question in a town hall-style meeting in Florida, yet it said much about President Barack Obama’s lack of concern about human rights in his foreign policy. The question came not from a hostile Republican opponent, but from a young college student who had volunteered on Obama’s campaign. She spoke directly to an issue that has alienated much of Obama’s Democratic base since the president took office: ongoing U.S. support for Israeli and Egyptian human rights abuses. The Israeli and Egyptian governments, both of which have notoriously poor human rights records, are the two largest recipients of U.S. security assistance.
The student’s question was simple: Given that Obama had spoken about “America’s support for human rights,” she asked, “Why have we not condemned Israel and Egypt’s violations of human rights against the occupied Palestinian peoples [while continuing to support such oppression] with billions of dollars coming from our taxes?”
Obama didn’t even try to answer her question. He didn’t even utter the words “human rights” at any point in his rambling four-and-half-minute response (though he did praise Israel as “a vibrant democracy”).
Perhaps he could be forgiven in some respects. Obama looked tired. It wasn’t a formal White House press conference or a one-on-one interview with a knowledgeable reporter, but a town-hall meeting with an audience for whom he may have felt he needed to frame the larger subject. Perhaps he was intimidated by right-wingers in the audience, who booed the student’s question at the outset.
Yet Obama’s fumbled answer seemed to underscore the administration’s dismissive attitude toward human rights overall. Indeed, at the end, Obama even implied that the student’s question was inappropriate, saying, “I think that it’s important, when we’re talking about this issue to make sure we don’t use language that’s inflammatory.” What the president apparently found inflammatory was the very suggestion that the United States should object to human rights abuses committed by its “strategic allies.”
At the UN
Obama directed the U.S. delegation at the United Nations last week to vote against a General Assembly resolution, which called on the Palestinians and Israelis to conduct “independent, credible” investigations into alleged war crimes by their forces during the Gaza War of December 2008-January 2009. The United States was one of only seven countries to vote no.
Previously, Obama administration officials denounced the Goldstone Report as “unacceptable” and “deeply flawed.” The meticulously researched 575-page report, led by the eminent South African jurist Richard Goldstone and a blue-ribbon panel of investigators, documented likely war crimes by both Israel and Hamas. A similar report by Amnesty International called for an international moratorium of arms transfers to both Israel and Hamas. After that report was released, the Obama administration announced increased military aid to Israel.
Obama has also failed to show any greater concern about human rights abuses by Egypt, even when Egyptian security forces charged and beat hundreds of Americans and other internationals seeking to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip late last year. In an interview with the BBC, Obama rejected the journalist’s characterization of Hosni Mubarak as an authoritarian ruler, and praised the Egyptian dictator as a “stalwart ally” and “a force for stability.” He then evaded a question on the thousands of political prisoners being held by the Egyptian regime by saying the United States shouldn’t impose its values on other countries.
Tongue-Tied
The young woman’s question at the Florida town hall appeared to trip up the usually articulate Obama from the outset. He began his response with a tautology reminiscent of former Vice President Dan Quayle: “The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.” After setting the audience straight on that score, he goes on to say that “both sides are going to have to make compromises,” ignoring the fundamental asymmetry between one side, which is an occupying power, and the other side, which is under foreign military occupation. If Obama had been president in late 1990, he wouldn’t have told Iraqis and Kuwaitis that “both sides are going to have to make compromises.” Obama appears to share his predecessors’ view that issues of conquest and self-determination shouldn’t be based upon universal legal principles, but on whether the occupier is seen as an ally or an adversary. The call on both sides to compromise is also rather bizarre, given that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have recognized Israeli control of 78 percent of historic Palestine, while Israel has insisted that Palestinian demands for an independent state on the remaining 22 percent are too much and that it should control much of that territory as well.
“As a first step, the Palestinians have to unequivocally renounce violence and recognize Israel,” Obama also insisted. However, he failed to likewise insist that the Israelis unequivocally renounce violence and recognize Palestine — as a “first step” or at any other time. The ratio of Palestinian civilians killed to Israeli civilians killed in recent years has been roughly 200:1, which makes his one-sided demand particularly bizarre. He also ignored the fact that the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization — the recognized ruling bodies of the Palestinian territories — have already renounced violence and recognized Israel. He seems to imply that until Hamas, which illegally seized control of the Gaza Strip three years ago, also unilaterally renounces violence and recognizes Israel, which it won’t do until Israel is willing to reciprocate — then Israel can continue to deny statehood to the majority of Palestinians who live under the PA-administered West Bank.
The only thing that Obama insisted that Israel needed to do was to “recognize legitimate grievances and interests of the Palestinians.” He is unclear as to what that entails, other than a brief reference to the right to education and employment. He didn’t insist, however, on their right to be free of the threat of massive bombardments against civilian population centers, like an Israeli assault on Gaza that killed more than 700 civilians, nearly 300 of whom were children.
Such lack of concern for human rights not only raises serious ethical and legal concerns, but makes the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace even more remote. It’s also bad politics. Thousands of young people, like the student who posed the question, volunteered for Obama and other Democrats partly because they thought the party would offer a foreign policy based upon strong ethical and legal principles, such as respect for international humanitarian law.
Until the Obama administration is willing to live up to that promise, and governments like Israel and Egypt know they can no longer get a blank check from the U.S. government no matter how terrible their human rights record, U.S. complicity in war crimes and other abuses will be obvious to all. As a result, many who worked for Obama and the Democrats in 2008 — like that young woman from Florida — will question how different they are from Republicans, and whether they deserve their continued support.
Obama’s State of the Union: Little Focus on the World Beyond Our Borders
For eight years, I wrote annotated critiques of the foreign policy segments of George W. Bush’s State of the Union speeches. Despite two ongoing wars, it was striking that Obama focused so little in his first State of the Union speech on the world outside our borders other than the call to be competitive in the global economy. Indeed, he dedicated only eight minutes of the 70-minute speech to foreign policy.
Yet many of the pressing economic problems the country faces that were addressed in the speech are directly related to foreign policy. And, despite promises of change, much of this foreign policy shows disappointing continuity with previous administrations.
Military Blind Spot
For example: Obama declared, to enthusiastic applause, “I do not accept second place for the United States of America.” He is certainly making sure that the United States remains number one in military spending. Indeed, the United States spends six times more than China, the number-two country in military appropriations. In his rejection of the single-payer option as being too expensive, however, Obama seems quite willing to accept the 37th place that the United States occupies in the health care ranking.
In announcing a freeze on domestic spending, he dismissed “some in my own party [who] will argue that we can’t address the deficit or freeze government spending when so many are still hurting” by emphasizing that “if we don’t take meaningful steps to rein in our debt, it could damage our markets, increase the cost of borrowing, and jeopardize our recovery.” If Obama really cared about the deficit, however, he would have called for major cuts in military spending. Not only did he refuse to do so, he specifically exempted the Pentagon budget from the freeze, underscoring his commitment to spend more and more taxpayer dollars to ensure the profits of military contractors and the continued prosecution of overseas wars, even as the country’s social services and domestic infrastructure deteriorate still further.
The president talked of strengthened sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear program, adding – to enthusiastic bipartisan applause – that “as Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise.” While it is certainly true that Iran and North Korea are in defiance of demands by the UN Security Council regarding their nuclear programs, it is also true that Israel, India, and Pakistan are in defiance of the UN Security Council regarding their nuclear programs as well. However, the Obama administration has shown little inclination to impose or even threaten sanctions against its allies, which not only are engaged in far more advanced nuclear reprocessing but – unlike the Iranians – actually possess nuclear weapons. UN Security Council resolution 487 calls on Israel to turn its nuclear facilities over to the trusteeship of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Pakistan and India, meanwhile, remain in defiance of UNSC resolution 1172, calling on them to eliminate their nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable missiles altogether. Indeed, Obama is continuing his predecessor’s practices of providing all three countries with nuclear-capable aircraft and other delivery systems as well as directly facilitating India’s nuclear program.
To his credit, Obama acknowledged the importance of the two largest nuclear powers – the United States and Russia – completing negotiations on a far-reaching arms control treaty as part of “a strategy that reverses the spread of these weapons and seeks a world without them.” This, however, is a long-overdue legal obligation of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which requires the existing nuclear weapons states to make good-faith efforts to pursue complete nuclear disarmament, something which even such Cold War hawks as Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, William Perry, and Sam Nunn have acknowledged as necessary. Again, it will be hard to convince Iran and North Korea to live by their NPT obligations as long as the United States and the other major nuclear powers fail to do so as well.
Similarly, it will be virtually impossible to control the threatened spread of nuclear weapons as long as nuclear power remains a preferred source of energy. Obama’s oxymoronic call for taxpayer-funded incentives for the construction of “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country” will make non-proliferation efforts all the more difficult.
On the Side of Freedom?
Obama, as he often does, eloquently appealed to both the moral obligation and the enlightened self-interest of the United States in declaring that “America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity.” He noted that such principles were why “we support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran” and “why we advocate for the young man denied a job by corruption in Guinea.” The influence the United States has on these countries, however, is far less than those of such U.S. allies as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Equatorial Guinea, whose corrupt and repressive regimes are bolstered by American economic and security assistance.
Obama’s early and prescient opposition to the Iraq War was largely responsible for his securing the Democratic presidential nomination from his initially pro-war opponents. In his State of the Union speech he reiterated “As a candidate, I promised that I would end this war, and that is what I am doing as President.” Specifically, he promised that “We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this August.” Unfortunately, what constitutes “combat troops” remains vague. By most accounts, the United States will still have over 50,000 troops in Iraq after this “withdrawal,” virtually all of whom will be fully armed and will still be authorized to use lethal force whenever they deem necessary. He also promised to “support the Iraqi government as they hold elections” despite their banning of prominent opposition politicians from running, engaging in ongoing human rights abuses, and remaining one of the most corrupt regimes in the world.
In the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon insisted that escalating the war in Vietnam and its neighbors and training the armed forces of a corrupt and fraudulently elected allied government was necessary to bring American troops home. Similarly, Obama declared that “in Afghanistan, we’re increasing our troops and training Afghan security forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home.” In Vietnam, nearly four years elapsed between the time when U.S. troops began to come home and the withdrawal was finally completed, during which an additional 20,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were killed. Even Obama administration officials acknowledge that U.S. forces could remain fighting in Afghanistan for at least another decade.
Though this year’s critique of the foreign policy segments of the State of the Union address is not nearly as long as those I wrote under Bush, I am still disappointed to have to write one at all. Yes, the problems with the Obama administration’s foreign policy are not nearly as egregious as its predecessor. But U.S. citizens must continue to push the administration to pursue a more rational and more ethical global agenda.
Human Rights: C+
The Obama administration’s record on human rights has been a major disappointment.
In part because the Bush administration abused the promotion of democracy and human rights to rationalize its militaristic policies in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Obama administration has at times been reluctant to be a forceful advocate for those struggling against oppression. For example, Obama was cautious in supporting the ongoing freedom struggle in Iran, in part because he believes that more overt advocacy could set back what he sees as the more critical issue of curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He is also aware of how the history of U.S. interventionism in that country, overt threats of “regime change” by the previous administration, and the U.S. invasion of two neighboring countries in the name of promoting democracy could lead to a nationalist reaction to such grandstanding. (Despite this caution, however, the Iranian regime has falsely accused Obama of guiding the massive pro-democracy movement that is challenging the increasingly repressive rule in that country.)
Harder to defend is Obama’s continuation of the Bush administration’s policy of arming and training security forces in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, Jordan and other dictatorial regimes in the region.
During his highly anticipated address in Cairo last June, Obama failed to praise his autocratic host, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. He also invited leading critics of the regime, including secular liberals and moderate Islamists, to witness his speech. On the other hand, he refused to criticize the Mubarak regime, acknowledge its autocratic nature, or address any concern over its thousands of political prisoners — even when pushed to do so in a BBC interview. Indeed, Egyptian grassroots pro-democracy group Kefaya chose to boycott the speech, demanding that Obama show his commitment to democracy in deeds, not just words. Obama’s foreign aid budget includes over $1.5 billion in unconditional aid to the Mubarak dictatorship. And Washington didn’t publicly express concern when Egyptian police attacked American human rights activists attempting to deliver relief supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip last month.
Most of the opposition to Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been based on cost and the dubious prospects of victory. But there is concern that the government for which Americans are expected to fight and die is a serious abuser of human rights. Not only did U.S.-backed Hamid Karzai steal the most recent presidential election, but his cabinet includes a number of notorious warlords who have engaged in serious crimes against humanity. Furthermore, U.S.-backed Afghan security forces have engaged in gross and systematic human rights violations, and U.S. bomb and missile attacks killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan since Obama assumed office.
Similarly, U.S. forces remain in Iraq, and billions of dollars support the sectarian regime despite ongoing violations of human rights by Baghdad’s rulers. The recent dismissal of charges against U.S. Blackwater mercenaries, who massacred 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad’s Al-Nusur Square, and the Obama administration’s refusal to extradite them to face justice have also raised concerns regarding the U.S. commitment to basic human rights.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Obama administration rejected calls by Amnesty International and other human rights groups to suspend military aid to Israel following its use of U.S. weaponry against civilian targets in last year’s war on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in more than 700 civilian deaths, over 300 of whom were children. Even worse, Obama has pledged to increase military aid over and above the more than $10 billion provided to the Israelis by the Bush administration. The Obama administration called on Israel to freeze expansion of its colonization efforts in the occupied West Bank and threatened to cut planned loan guarantees to the Israeli government if it continues to refuse. But Obama still rejects conditioning direct aid and has similarly refused to call on Israel to withdraw from the its illegal settlements, as required under international humanitarian law and confirmed through a series of UN Security Council resolutions.
When the UN Human Rights Council investigation led by Richard Goldstone documented war crimes by both Hamas and the Israeli government — confirming previous investigations by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others — the Obama administration rejected the commission’s findings, calling them “deeply flawed.” Rather than challenge the content of the meticulously documented 575-page report, U.S. officials instead issued strong but vague critiques. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was particularly critical of the report’s recommendation that Palestinians and Israelis suspected of war crimes should be tried before the International Criminal Court. “Our view is that we need to be focused on the future,” she argued.
The human rights community was initially pleased when Obama appointed Michael Posner, cofounder and director of Human Rights First, as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights. However, Posner took the lead in quashing the Goldstone Commission report, insisting it “should not be used as a mechanism to add impediments to getting back to the peace process.” Ironically, just weeks earlier, the Obama administration argued during a UN debate on Darfur that war crimes charges should never be sacrificed for political reasons.
The Obama administration has shown a lack of concern for democracy and human rights outside the Middle East as well. Washington initially raised objections to the coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. But then Obama — in opposition to virtually the entire hemisphere — recognized the November elections that took place under a censured media, widespread political repression, and a boycott by pro-democracy forces. The administration also pledged to continue sending over half a billion dollars of aid annually to the Colombian regime, despite its notoriously poor human rights record. It even signed an agreement that allows U.S. forces to be stationed at seven military bases across that country. Though ostensibly the focus is to curb the drug trade, such aid has also been used in broader counterinsurgency efforts that have serious human rights consequences.
Rejecting calls by liberal Democratic members of Congress, leading human rights groups, Pope Benedict XVI, and most of the international community to participate, the Obama administration decided to boycott the UN Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Geneva. And most disturbingly, the Obama administration decided to continue the Bush administration’s policy of remaining one of the few nations in the world to refuse to sign the international treaty banning landmines, completing its review process in secret without allowing for any input from human rights organizations.
Despite all this, there have been some gestures in support of individual human rights activists. For example, in an unprecedented move, the White House hosted the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, with Obama personally honoring this year’s recipients, Women of Zimbabwe Arise, who have been struggling for human rights under the repressive Mugabe regime. The White House also intervened on behalf of the 2008 winner, Western Saharan nonviolent activist Aminatou Haidar, as she verged on death from a hunger strike following expulsion from her country by Moroccan occupation authorities. The Obama administration has failed, however, to demand that Morocco honor a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a World Court ruling allowing the people of Western Sahara the right of self-determination.
To Obama’s credit, there is now a subtle but important shift in the U.S. government’s discourse on human rights. The Bush administration pushed a rather superficial structuralist view of human rights. It focused, for instance, on elections — which can easily be rigged and manipulated in many cases — in order to change certain governments for purposes of expanding U.S. power and influence. Obama has taken more of an agency view of human rights, emphasizing the rights of free expression, particularly the right of protest, and recognizing that human rights reform can only come from below and not through imposed means.
In the short term, however, Obama’s failure to more boldly address human rights concerns have alienated much of Obama’s progressive base of support. The right wing, meanwhile, disingenuously portrays Obama as retreating from his predecessor’s supposed support for democracy and human rights. Although the Bush administration provided even more assistance to governments engaged in human rights abuses and used pro-democracy rhetoric largely as a ruse for empire, Obama’s lukewarm support for human rights has enabled right-wingers to seize the moral high ground. As a result, the perceived weakness of the Obama administration’s human rights record raises important ethical and political questions.
A Tale of Two Human Rights Awardees
The annual Robert F. Kennedy Award ceremony took place at the White House this year for the first time in its 28-year history. Also for the first time, the president of the United States was there to honor the awardees.
This year’s winner was the group Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), represented by Magodona Mahlangu and Jenni Williams. Since its founding six years ago, WOZA has campaigned against domestic violence and rape, for rebuilding their country’s crumbling health and education systems, and for ending government repression. Despite their commitment to nonviolence, WOZA activists have been routinely threatened, abducted, and beaten, and over 3,000 of its members have been detained or imprisoned. This show of support from President Obama is particularly important in light of the trial of the two WOZA activists, scheduled to begin next week, for “conduct likely to cause a breach of [the] peace,” which could result in a five-year prison sentence if convicted.
Such public support from the White House is in stark contrast with its silence on the fate of last year’s winner, Aminatou Haidar, who is widely known as the Saharan Gandhi. Earlier in November, when she was returning from the United States after receiving the Civil Courage Award from the Train Foundation, Moroccan occupation authorities arrested and expelled Haidar from her homeland of Western Sahara.
Belated Response
Haidar is Western Sahara’s leading human rights campaigner. She has led the nonviolent struggle to free her people from an illegal 34-year Moroccan occupation, and was nominated on several occasions for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Like many Western Saharans who travel abroad, she declared Western Sahara as her country of origin on the immigration entry form when she landed at the airport in El Aioun, in the occupied territory. This time, however, Moroccan authorities confiscated her Moroccan passport, held her overnight for interrogation, and — claiming she had renounced her Moroccan citizenship — expelled her to Spain’s Canary Islands. It is a direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention for an occupying power to expel anyone from their country of origin.
For nearly two weeks, the State Department was silent on Haidar’s fate. It spoke out only this past Thursday, as Haidar’s physical well-being came into question when she entered the eighth day of a hunger strike. Spokesman Ian Kelly expressed U.S. concerns about her health situation, but simply called for “a speedy determination of her legal status.” Rather than calling on Moroccan authorities to live up to their international legal obligations, Kelly instead appeared to endorse Morocco’s right to “determine” that she is persona non grata and has no right to return.
The RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, which grants the annual award, has sent its director and senior advocacy director to the Canary Islands to be with Haidar, now entering the third week of her fast in the Lanzarote Airport. They also called upon UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay to immediately investigate the circumstances of Haidar’s forced exile and to establish a formal mechanism for protecting the human rights of the people of Western Sahara. However, despite the RFK Center’s efforts and those of Kerry Kennedy, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and others, the Obama administration has refused to demand Haidar’s return.
It was Leahy who, standing in for his ailing colleague Edward Kennedy at last year’s ceremony, praised Haidar’s struggle for human rights against Moroccan repression and promised that, with the incoming Obama administration, “help was on the way.” Unfortunately, Obama ended up appointing Hillary Clinton, a longtime supporter of the Moroccan occupation, to oversee his foreign policy.
Currying Favor with Morocco
Indeed, Secretary of State Clinton may bear partial responsibility for Haidar’s situation. The activist’s arrest and expulsion is part of a broader Moroccan crackdown that appears to have received Clinton’s endorsement during a visit to Morocco early last month. Rather than joining Amnesty International and other human rights groups in condemning the increase in the already-severe repression in the occupied Western Sahara, Clinton instead chose to offer unconditional praise for the Moroccan government’s human rights record. Just days before her arrival, Moroccan authorities arrested seven other nonviolent activists from Western Sahara — Ahmed Alansari, Brahim Dahane, Yahdih Ettarouzi, Saleh Labihi, Dakja Lashgar, Rachid Sghir, and Ali Salem Tamek — on trumped-up charges of high treason. Amnesty International has declared the seven activists (who are currently awaiting trial) prisoners of conscience, and called for their unconditional release. But Clinton decided to ignore the plight of these and other political prisoners held in Moroccan jails.
Under such circumstances, it appears that the Moroccan authorities decided they need not fear a negative reaction from Washington for engaging in further repression, especially since the United States has given the country billions of dollars in military assistance since its conquest of Western Sahara in 1975. International law requires that the people of non-self-governing territories such as Western Sahara deserve the right of self-determination, confirmed in the case of Western Sahara by a landmark opinion of the International Court of Justice. However, Clinton — in an interview during her recent visit — appears to have endorsed Morocco’s plans for annexing the territory under a dubious “autonomy” plan. Though a series of unanimous UN Security Council resolutions supported by previous U.S. administrations have called for a UN-supervised referendum on the fate of the territory, Clinton has simply called for “mediation” between the Moroccan kingdom and the exiled nationalist Polisario Front, a process that would not offer the people of the territory a say in their future.
I have worked with both Jenni Williams and Aminatou Haidar. They are both deserving of the RFK Prize, and they both deserve the support of the U.S. government as well. A test of a government’s sense of justice is whether it sees human rights as a universal principle or simply as a political tool to advance its foreign policy agenda. The Obama administration appears to have opted for the latter. It is easy to support human rights activists like the women of WOZA, since they are battling against a regime opposed by the United States. When it comes to human rights activists who challenge a U.S. ally, however, the Obama administration appears no different than previous administrations in tolerating their oppression.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/a_tale_of_two_human_rights_awardees
Stephen Zunes is a Foreign Policy in Focus senior analyst. He is a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and is the author, along with Jacob Mundy, of the forthcoming Western Sahara: Nationalism, Conflict, and International Accountability (Syracuse University Press).
The Goldstone Report: Killing the Messenger
On October 1, the Obama administration successfully pressured the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva to drop its proposal to recommend that the UN Security Council endorse the findings of the Goldstone Commission report. The report, authored by renowned South African jurist Richard Goldstone, detailed the results of the UNHRC’s fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict. These findings included the recommendation that both Hamas and the Israeli government bring to justice those responsible for war crimes during the three weeks of fighting in late December and early January. If they don’t, the report urges that the case be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for possible prosecution.
The Obama administration has declared — in the words of U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice — that such a recommendation is “basically unacceptable.” It has insisted that any legal remedies be handled by the respected parties internally. Since neither Hamas nor the Israeli government will likely prosecute those responsible for war crimes, the administration’s action will essentially prevent these Palestinian and Israeli war criminals from ever being brought to justice.
Indeed, the Obama administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress appear to be continuing the Bush administration’s policy of ignoring and denouncing those who have the temerity to report violations of international humanitarian law by the United States or its allies.
The Role of the UN
The UN has special responsibility for human rights in territories under belligerent military occupation, since the treatment of civilians in such territories falls under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel withdrew its illegal settlements and its soldiers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, in belated compliance with a series of UN Security Council resolutions. But the territory legally remains under this status as a result of the continued Israeli siege of the region, including the blockading of its port, control of its air space, as well as most land access. The original mandate given by the UNHRC was for the creation of a commission to investigate “all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power, Israel, against the Palestinian people.”
Goldstone, who has had a longstanding reputation for fairness and objectivity and previously led the war crimes prosecutions for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, is a Zionist Jew and longtime supporter of Israel. Goldstone agreed to accept the appointment only if the commission’s mandate were expanded to look at the actions of both sides of the conflict. The HRC agreed to these conditions and the investigation went forward looking into violations of international humanitarian law by both Israel and Hamas. The Goldstone Commission report cited in detail a whole series of violations of the laws of war by Hamas, including rocket attacks into civilian-populated areas of Israel, torture of Palestinian opponents, and continued holding of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
What has upset Obama administration officials and congressional Democrats, however, was that the report also concluded that Israel’s military assault on Gaza was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish humiliate and terrorize a civilian population,” citing Israel’s deadly attacks against schools, mosques, private homes and businesses nowhere near legitimate military targets. These conclusions echo detailed empirical reports released in recent months by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, among others.
Response to Report
Despite the report’s evenhandedness, both Hamas and the Israeli military rejected the commission’s finding. They denied ever targeting civilian populations and claimed that their actions were in self-defense.
The United States has rejected the commission’s findings as well, calling it “deeply flawed.” Rather than challenge the content of the meticulously documented 575-page report, U.S. officials have instead issued strong but vague critiques. For example, Ambassador Rice was particularly critical of the report’s recommendation that those Palestinians and Israelis suspected of war crimes should be tried before the International Criminal Court. “Our view is that we need to be focused on the future,” she argued. Though Rice had argued just a few months earlier during a UN debate on Darfur that war crimes charges should never be sacrificed for political reasons, she reinforced Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley’s insistence that the report “should not be used as a mechanism to add impediments to getting back to the peace process.”
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill Democrats were echoing their Republican counterparts in denouncing the Goldstone report. Sixteen leading Senate Democrats joined an equal number of Republicans in signing a letter written by the Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attacking what they insisted was a “biased report.” The recently appointed Democratic senator praised the State Department’s efforts to quash the report, claiming that “legitimizing the report sends a dangerous message to countries defending themselves against terrorism.”
The letter insisted that any legal action regarding Israeli human rights abuses must not be taken up in international fora. Instead, despite the Israeli government’s long history of covering up war crimes by its armed forces, the Israeli justice system should handle the matter internally. The signatories praised what they called “the extraordinary measures taken by the Israel Defense Forces to minimize civilian casualties,” acknowledged the State Department for publicly raising its significant concerns about the report, and called upon the Obama administration to “denounce the unbalanced nature of this investigation.” Among the 32 signatories were such leading Democratic liberals as Carl Levin (D-MI), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) , Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Russ Feingold (D-WI).
That the report examined violations of international humanitarian law by both sides does not alter these senators’ insistence of bias since, according to the letter, “the vast majority of the report focuses on Israel’s conduct, rather than that of Hamas.” The senators fail to note, however, that the ratio of civilian casualties inflicted by the Israelis relative to those inflicted by Hamas was more than 250:1, which would seem to indicate a legitimate reason to focus primarily on the former. Furthermore, these senators ignore the likelihood that the report’s criticism of Hamas would have likely been longer and harsher had the Israeli government agreed to meet with the commission and allow its members to visit Israel. In their effort to hear from both sides, the UN was forced to fly Israeli victims to Geneva for interviews.
In the House of Representatives, Elliot Engel (D-NY) and Shelley Berkley (D-NV), senior members of the Middle East subcommittee, issued a joint statement claiming the Goldstone Commission report was “biased against Israel.” Even more critical of the report was Gary Ackerman (D-NY), whom the Democrats have named the Mideast subcommittee chairman and vice-chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. “In the self-righteous fantasyland inhabited by the authors, there’s no such thing as terrorism, there’s no such thing as Hamas, [and] there’s no such thing as legitimate self-defense,” he said. In reality, the report refers to “terrorism” (or “terror” or “terrorists”) more than 100 times, mentions Hamas more than 400 times, and failed to challenge the dubious claim that Israel launched its war on Gaza in self-defense. Ackerman even goes so far as to claim that the commission believes that “war is like a sporting event or a debate, rather than the most ghastly, destructive, chaotic phenomenon we human beings are capable of creating.” In truth, the report goes into graphic detail of the violence, destruction, and terror the conflict inflicted on both sides.
These Democratic critics have insisted that the Goldstone Commission Report ignored how the Israelis supposedly went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties by dropping leaflets and sending robo-calls to Palestinian homes warning them of impending attacks. In reality, the report examined these claims in detail, but concluded that many of the calls and leaflets were sent out too late or were too vague for civilians to reach safety. Furthermore, Israeli calls for civilians to flee to downtown Gaza City led those who heeded such advice right into the line of Israeli fire, as when the Israelis attacked the UN compound and school with mortars and phosphorous bombs where hundreds of fleeing residents had sought refuge. The Goldstone Commission report confirmed the conclusions of previous investigations that there were no legitimate military targets in the area. Furthermore, the report cited 11 incidents where Israeli armed forces engaged in direct attacks against civilians, including cases where people were shot “while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags.”
The Democratic Party leadership, however, apparently believes such attacks against civilians constitute legitimate self-defense. Not surprisingly, Ackerman, Engel, Berkley and other Democratic House leaders defending Israel’s attacks on civilian targets in the Gaza Strip also insisted that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq constituted legitimate self-defense.
And it is not just the Democratic Party’s old guard that attacks human rights groups and the UN for their defense of international humanitarian law. Gary Peters (D-MI), without mentioning any specifics, condemned the Goldstone Report as “flawed,” insisting that it “unfairly criticizes Israel despite its strong efforts to protect all civilians,” and that is was yet another example of Israel being “wrongly assailed for defending its own borders and citizens.” In reality, neither the UN report nor the reports from Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch in any way question Israel’s right to defend its own borders and its citizens.
This past January, the entire U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution by a 390-5 margin (with 22 abstentions) claiming that Hamas alone deserved the blame for the high civilian death toll and that Israel was simply exercising its “right to self-defense.” The resolution also insisted that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields — a charge repeated by Engel and Berkley, among others, in their attack on the Goldstone Commission report. Exhaustive investigations by the commission, Amnesty International, and others found no evidence of even one such incident during the three-week conflict.
Impunity
On the one hand, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats have insisted that the issue stay confined to the UN’s Human Rights Council. On the other hand, they have repeatedly attacked that body as being “anti-Israel.” Why, then, would they insist that the issue remain confined to an entity that they consider biased against Israel?
If the matter is taken to the UN Security Council, as the Goldstone Commission recommended, it would place debate on violations of international humanitarian law by a key U.S. ally before a body that, unlike the UNHRC, has an enforcement mechanism. It would also allow far greater media exposure of Israeli war crimes, the bulk of which were implemented using U.S. weapons systems and ordinance.
Washington Democrats are even more concerned about the issue going before the International Criminal Court where those Palestinians and Israelis guilty of war crimes might actually face justice. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats are determined that such war criminals be granted impunity.
This latest assault against the human rights community by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats is not an example of their being too “pro-Israel.” Indeed, such war crimes and other gross and systematic human rights abuses by the Israeli government endanger Israel’s security, and have led to the rise of extremist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah in the first place. Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership in Washington has joined the Republicans in a campaign, in effect, to kill the messenger: attack the United Nations, Amnesty International, or anyone else — be they journalist, scholar, activist, or even one of the world’s most respected jurists — who dares put forward credible evidence of human rights abuses by the United States or its allies.
“A culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long,” Goldstone told the UNHRC when presenting his report. “The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible war crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point.” The Obama administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress are part of this problem, not part of its solution.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_goldstone_report_killing_the_messenger
Showdown in ‘Tegucigolpe’
One of the hemisphere’s most critical struggles for democracy in 20 years is now unfolding in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa (nicknamed “Tegucigolpe” for its long history of military coup d’états, which are called golpes de estado, in Spanish). Despite censorship and repression, popular anger over the June 28 military overthrow of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya is growing. International condemnation has been near-unanimous, and the Organization of American States has suspended Honduras, the first time the hemisphere-wide body has taken so drastic an action since 1962.
In a reversal of many decades of U.S. support for right-wing golpistas in Latin America, the Obama administration has denounced the coup. However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, rather than backing the largely nonviolent popular uprising for Zelaya’s unconditional return to power, has instead been pushing for the country’s legitimate ruler to compromise with the very forces which illegally exiled him from the country and have been violently suppressing his supporters.
The United States is now offering support for mediation efforts to be led by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias. The Obama administration tried to discourage the exiled Honduran president from his attempt this past Sunday to return to his country and has apparently succeeded, for the time being, in preventing him from trying again. Clinton pressed this point on Tuesday in pushing for mediation, arguing that it would be a “better route for him to follow than attempt to return in the fact of the intractable opposition of the de facto government.”
Clinton also said, “Instead of another confrontation…let’s try the dialogue process.” What this ignores is that while the coup plotters have no legitimate standing, the Honduran people have a constitutionally guaranteed right to rebel under such circumstances. According to Article 3 of the Honduran constitution:
No one owes obedience to a government that has usurped power or to those who assume functions or public posts by the force of arms or using means or procedures that rupture or deny what the Constitution and the laws establish. The verified acts by such authorities are null. The people have the right to recur to insurrection in defense of the constitutional order.
What the Obama administration apparently fears is that if it allows the burgeoning pro-democracy movement to take its course, it may end up with a similar outcome to what transpired in Venezuela in 2002 — following a similar coup against that country’s left-leaning president, Hugo Chávez. Within days, a popular movement had forced right-wing elements of the military and their wealthy civilian allies to step down. Chávez returned to govern and emboldened by such a popular outpouring of support, he moved the country further to the left.
The United States could help such a movement succeed if it wanted to. If the Obama administration chose, the United States could impose strict economic sanctions on Honduras that would, combined with ongoing strikes and other disruptions, grind the economy to a halt and force the illegitimate junta in Tegucigalpa to step down.
Unfortunately, while there’s no evidence suggesting that the United States was responsible for the coup, there appear to be reasons the Obama administration may not want the coup plotters to suffer a total defeat.
Zelaya’s Significance
Despite being a wealthy logger and rancher from the centrist Liberal Party, Zelaya has moved his government well to the left since taking office in 2005. During his tenure, he raised the minimum wage and provided free school lunches, milk for young children, pensions for the elderly, and additional scholarships for students. He built new schools, subsidized public transportation, and even distributed energy-saving light bulbs. He also had Honduras join with Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, and three small Caribbean island states in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an economic alliance challenging the neoliberal orthodoxy that has dominated hemispheric trade in recent decades.
None of these are particularly radical moves, but it was nevertheless disturbing to the country’s wealthy economic and military elites. More frightening was that Zelaya had sought to organize an assembly to replace the 1982 constitution written during the waning days of the U.S.-backed military dictator Policarpo Paz. A non-binding referendum on whether such a constitutional assembly should take place was scheduled the day of the coup, but was cancelled when the military seized power and named Congressional Speaker Roberto Micheletti as president.
Calling for such a referendum is perfectly legal under Article 5 of the 2006 Honduran Civil Participation Act, which allows public functionaries to perform such non-binding public consultations regarding policy measures.Despite claims by the rightist junta and its supporters, Zelaya was not trying to extend his term. That question wasn’t even on the ballot. The Constitutional Assembly would not have likely completed its work before his term had expired anyway.
Yet the Obama administration is implying that the country’s legitimate democratic president somehow shared responsibility for his illegal overthrow. The initial White House response was rather tepid, initially failing to denounce the coup, simply calling upon “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.” Similarly, Clinton insisted the day after the coup that “all parties have a responsibility to address the underlying problems that led to yesterday’s events.” When asked if her call for “restoring the constitutional order” in Honduras meant returning Zelaya himself, she didn’t say it necessarily would. Similarly, in a press conference on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly evaded reporters’ questions as to whether the United States supported Zelaya’s return. This places the United States at odds with the Organization of American States, the Rio Group, and the UN General Assembly, all of which called for the “immediate and unconditional return” of Zelaya.
There are serious questions as to whether Clinton can be trusted to make a clear stance for democracy, given her traditionally pro-interventionist position on Latin America. As a senator, she argued that the Bush administration should have taken a more aggressive stance against the rise of left-leaning governments in the hemisphere, arguing that Bush has neglected such developments “at our peril.” In response to recent efforts by democratically elected Latin American governments to challenge the structural obstacles that have left much of their populations in poverty, she expressed alarm, saying, “We have witnessed the rollback of democratic development and economic openness in parts of Latin America.” Though no doubt aware that U.S. policy toward leftist regimes in Latin American in previous decades had included military interventions, CIA-sponsored coups, military and financial support for opposition groups, and rigged national elections, she argued that “We must return to a policy of vigorous engagement.”
The United States and Honduras
The United States certainly has a history of “vigorous engagement” in Honduras, actively supporting a series of military dictatorships from 1963 through the early 1980s. Though military rule formally ended by the end of 1982, the weak civilian presidents who followed in the subsequent decade served only at the pleasure of Honduran generals and the U.S. embassy. John Negroponte, who later served as George W. Bush’s ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations, as well as his Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras during this period.
During the 1980s, thousands of U.S. forces were sent to Honduras to train Honduran security forces as well as train and support the rightist Nicaraguan contras, which were engaged in a series of cross-border terrorist attacks. The CIA organized, trained, and equipped a special military unit known as backed Battalion 316, bringing in Argentine counterinsurgency experts as advisors on surveillance and interrogation. These advisors had been part of the “dirty war” in their country during the 1970s, in which more than 10,000 people were murdered. Honduran armed forces chief Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez personally directed the unit with strong U.S. support, even after acknowledging to Negroponte that he intended “to use the Argentine method of eliminating subversives.” Though Alvarez’ personal involvement in large-scale human rights abuses were well-known to State Department and other U.S. officials, the Reagan administration awarded him the Legion of Merit for “encouraging the success of democratic processes in Honduras.”
Former Honduran congressman Efraín Díaz told the Baltimore Sun, in reference to U.S. policy towards human rights abuses in his country, “Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.” Under Negroponte, CIA officers based in the U.S. Embassy frequently visited a secret prison where captured dissidents were routinely tortured. It was one of a number of facilities to which U.S. officials had regular access that were off-limits to civilian Honduran officials, including judges looking for victims of kidnapping by right-wing paramilitary units.
Despite this history, including revelations of his role in covering up for such human rights abuses, Negroponte had little trouble on Capitol Hill during the Bush administration. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), then the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised Negroponte for having “served bravely and with distinction,” and for bringing “a record of proven leadership and strong management.” Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), then the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, praised him as “a seasoned and skilled diplomat, who has served with distinction,” saying he was a “smart choice” to become the first DNI. This enthusiastic support for Negroponte among leading congressional Democrats, despite his well-documented role in human rights abuses while U.S. ambassador to Honduras, is indicative of how little regard the majority party in Congress cares about democracy in Central America.
The Legacy Today
The legacy of U.S. support for repression in Honduras is very much part of recent events.
The leader of the June 28 coup, Honduran General Romeo Vásquez, is a graduate of the notorious School of the Americas, a U.S. Army training program nicknamed “School of Assassins” for the sizable number of graduates who have engaged in coups, as well as the torture and murder of political opponents. The training of coup plotters at the program, since renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” isn’t a bygone feature of the Cold War: General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, who played an important role in the coup as head of the Honduran Air Force, graduated as recently as 1996.
Former members of Battalion 316 were involved in the coup as well.
Unfortunately, while far more knowledgeable of recent history than most recent presidents, Obama doesn’t seem willing to apologize, much less make amends, for U.S. complicity in supporting repression in Latin America. I am writing this article en route to Chile, where the United States played a major role in the downfall of another democratically elected leftist leader, Salvador Allende, back in September of 1973. Just five days before the coup in Honduras, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet visited President Obama in Washington. When asked by Chilean reporters whether he was willing to apologize for the U.S. role in bloody 1973 coup and its aftermath, Obama brushed off the suggestion by saying, “I’m interested in going forward, not looking backward.”
Meanwhile, U.S.-armed and trained security forces have violently dispersed largely nonviolent demonstrators protesting across the country, including shooting into a crowd of demonstrators near the airport on Sunday, killing two. Rather than acknowledge the widespread popular opposition to their illegitimate rule, the Honduran junta, like its authoritarian counterparts in Iran, have instead tried to blame outsiders for the unrest, in this case Cuba and Venezuela. Yet the Honduran people, like the Iranians, don’t need outside agitators or foreign funding in order to resist. This isn’t about geopolitics but about democracy. Unfortunately, backers of the rightist junta in Honduras, like backers of the rightist regime in Iran, are repeating fabricated stories of outside interference to discredit a genuine home-grown pro-democracy movement.
What may be at work in these U.S. and Costa Rican-led mediation efforts is some kind of deal where Zelaya can return, but under conditions that would preclude a constitutional assembly, any challenges to oligarchic interests, or any further efforts to promote economic justice. Similar kinds of pre-conditions were forced upon the deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, prior to U.S. assistance in his initial return from exile in 1994.
How much the junta leaders are willing to compromise will depend on what is going on outside the meeting rooms.
One factor would be the ability of the pro-democracy movement to organize, think strategically, expand their ranks and maintain a nonviolent discipline. Fortunately, the rebellion thus far has been largely nonviolent, which would be far more effective in such circumstances.
For various historical reasons, Hondurans don’t have the same kind of history of armed revolution as their neighbors. Even during the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s— while the country’s immediate neighbors Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua experienced major armed insurrections — the armed Honduran revolutionary movement was quite small and never had much of an impact.
By contrast, civil society organizations engaged in strategic nonviolent conflict have grown dramatically in recent years, including peasant organizations, indigenous and Afro-Honduran movements, human rights monitoring groups, environmental groups, women’s groups, an anti-militarization movement, and student groups, as well as three major labor federations. A series of strikes, blockages of major highways, and land seizures occurred over the past year as civil society became increasingly mobilized.
The second factor which could tip the balance is how firmly the United States comes down in support for democracy. Obama has at times been clear in his support for the legal process, declaring, “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the democratically elected president there.” Recognizing larger implications of this stance, he added, “It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backward into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition rather than democratic elections.”
Still, it was a full week before the United States announced it would slash aid to Honduras, and there have been no imminent signs of tougher sanctions. Unlike most Latin American countries, the United States has not withdrawn its ambassador from Tegucigalpa.
The United States, which hosts a U.S. Southern Command task force at the Soto Cano Airbase, 50 miles northwest of Tegucigalpa, exerts enormous influence on Honduras. Therefore, the pressure pro-democracy forces in the United States can bring to bear upon our government may prove as crucial as the efforts of brave pro-democracy forces within Honduras.
How Not to Support Democracy in the Middle East
President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo to the Muslim world marked a welcome departure from the Bush administration’s confrontational approach. Yet many Arabs and Muslims have expressed frustration that he failed to use this opportunity to call on the autocratic Saudi and Egyptian leaders with whom he had visited on his Middle Eastern trip to end their repression and open up their corrupt and tightly controlled political systems.
Imagine the positive reaction Obama would have received throughout the Arab and Islamic world if, instead of simply expressing eloquent but vague words in support of freedom and democracy, he had said something like this:
“Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.”
Could he have said such a thing?
Yes. In fact, those were his exact words when, as an Illinois state senator, he gave a speech at a major anti-war rally in Chicago on October 2, 2002.
Coddling Tyrants
Egypt is the second-largest recipient of U.S. military aid, while Saudi Arabia is the number-one buyer of U.S. arms. Obama would have enormous leverage, should he choose to wield it, in pressing these two regimes to end oppression of their own people, suppression of dissent, toleration of corruption and inequality, and mismanagement of their economies. Yet he was apparently unwilling to take advantage of his highly publicized visits with the leaders of these two countries to break with his predecessors’ coddling of these tyrannical regimes.
To his credit, while in Egypt Obama did engage in a few symbolic efforts to demonstrate a concern for human rights. He didn’t praise his Egyptian host, the dictatorial president Hosni Mubarak, from the podium, as is generally customary on such occasions. Nor did he physically embrace Mubarak or Saudi King Abdullah or otherwise offer visual displays of affection, as is typical during such visits to leaders in that region. The Obama administration invited some leading critics of the regime, including both secular liberals and moderate Islamists, to witness his University of Cairo speech. However, Kefaya, Egypt’s leading grassroots pro-democracy group, boycotted the speech. It demanded that Obama show his commitment to democracy in deeds, not words.
Since his address was directed to the Muslim world as a whole, and not just to Egypt, it may not have been appropriate in that particular speech to specify particular human rights abuses in that country or explicitly call on Mubarak to release political prisoners or allow for free elections. However, it appears that there was no clear effort by Obama, at any point during his Middle East trip, to pressure the Egyptian dictator or his Saudi counterpart to end the repression in their countries.
Despite taking a conciliatory role in the Arab-Israeli conflict in recent years, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah reigns over a brutal and misogynist theocracy. The royal family, with the consultation of reactionary Wahhabi religious scholars, rules by decree. There’s no constitution and no elections (save for one male-only poll for some powerless local advisory councils in 2005.) No public non-Islamic religious observance is allowed. Political prisoners are routinely tortured and the execution rate (through beheading) is the second-highest in the world. The country is routinely ranked as one of the most repressive on the planet. During his visit to the kingdom last week, however, Obama refused to utter a word of public criticism about the family dictatorship, but did praise the king for “his wisdom and his graciousness.”
Ignoring Egyptian Repression
As with Saudi Arabia, the repressive nature of Egypt’s Mubarak dictatorship has been well-documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and other groups. This is a country where a simple gathering of five or more people without a permit is illegal. Peaceful pro-democracy protesters are routinely beaten and jailed. Martial law has been in effect for more than 28 years. Independent observers are banned from monitoring the country’s routinely rigged elections, from which the largest opposition party is banned from participating and other opposition parties are severely restricted in producing publications and other activities.
It’s well documented that the Egyptian government engages in a pattern of gross and systematic human rights abuses against perceived opponents of the regime, including massive detentions without due process, torture on an administrative basis, and extra-judicial killings. Targets of government repression have included not just radical Islamists, but leftists, liberal democrats, feminists, gay men, independent-minded scholars, students, trade unionists, Coptic Christians, and human rights activists.
It’s therefore quite disappointing that, even though the human rights situation in Egypt has actually worsened since his 2002 speech in which he advocated fighting to end repression in that country, Obama now refuses to even acknowledge that country’s authoritarianism. In an interview with the BBC just prior to his departure to the Middle East, Justin Webb asked him directly, “Do you regard President Mubarak as an authoritarian ruler?”
Obama’s reply was “No,” insisting that “I tend not to use labels for folks.” Obama also refused to acknowledge Mubarak’s authoritarianism on the grounds that “I haven’t met him,” as if the question was in regard to the Egyptian dictator’s personality rather than his well-documented intolerance of dissent.
In further justifying his refusal to acknowledge the authoritarian nature of the Egyptian government, Obama referred to Mubarak — whom he dismissed as a “so-called” ally back in 2002 — as “a stalwart ally, in many respects, to the United States.” He praised Egypt’s despotic president for having “sustained peace with Israel, which is a very difficult thing to do in that region,” though — given that no Arab government has waged war with Israel for over 35 years — this is hardly so unique an accomplishment as to justify shying away from legitimate criticism of the Egyptian leader’s dictatorial rule.
Obama went on to insist that “I think he has been a force for stability. And good in the region.” Such an assessment is in marked contrast to his remarks from less than seven years ago, where he publicly acknowledged that Mubarak’s corrupt and autocratic rule was creating conditions where Egyptian youth “grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.” Since coming to Washington, Obama has surely read the intelligence reports that note many young Egyptians have been radicalized in reaction to Mubarak’s corrupt and autocratic rule, and some have gone on to play key roles in al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups that have dangerously destabilized the region.
When the BBC’s Webb asked Obama how he planned to address the issue of the “thousands of political prisoners in Egypt,” he answered only in terms of the United States being a better role model, such as closing the prison at Guatánamo Bay, and the importance of the United States not trying to impose its human rights values on other countries. While these are certainly valid points, they offer little hope for the thousands of regime opponents now languishing in Egyptian prisons. Obama said nothing about the possibility of linking even part of the more than $1.5 billion in annual U.S. aid to the Mubarak regime on providing freedom for these prisoners of conscience.
The most negative assessment Obama could muster for Mubarak’s dictatorial regime in the interview was, “Obviously, there have been criticisms of the manner in which politics operates in Egypt.” Given that there have also been criticisms of the manner in which politics is conducted in every country of the world, including the United States, this can hardly account for a public display of disapproval. Even the Washington-based Freedom House ranks Egypt in the bottom quintile of the world’s countries in terms of political rights and civil liberties. Webb’s question was not about whether there have been criticisms of the manner in which politics operates in Egypt. The question was whether Mubarak was an authoritarian leader. Even if Obama did not feel comfortable labeling the Egyptian president himself as an authoritarian, he should have at least acknowledged that Mubarak leads an authoritarian government.
The Return of Realpolitik
In his recent speech, Obama claimed to have “an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose.” Emphasizing that such concepts are not just American ideas but basic universal human rights, he pledged that the United States “will support them everywhere.”
Yet few on the proverbial Arab Main Street are going to believe the United States actually supports human rights until such noble rhetoric is matched by action, specifically an end to the arming and funding of repressive governments in the Middle East. As Shirin Sadeghi said, “Obama’s inevitable message to the Muslim world” is that “the United States will look the other way at your governments’ repressive policies because a working relationship with them is more important than a consideration of the peoples’ rights.”
Similarly, while Israel is an exemplary democracy for its Jewish citizens, that country’s U.S.-supplied armed forces have engaged in massive violations of international humanitarian law against Arab and Muslim peoples, with bipartisan support from Washington.
It appears, then, that in rejecting the dangerous neoconservative ideology of his predecessor, Obama is largely falling back onto the realpolitik of previous administrations by continuing to support repressive regimes through unconditional arms transfers and other security assistance. Obama’s understandable skepticism of externally mandated, top-down approaches to democratization through “regime change” is no excuse for arming these regimes, which then use these instruments of repression to subjugate popular indigenous bottom-up struggles for democratization (and then, in turn, justify the large-scale unconditional support for Israel because it’s “the sole democracy in the Middle East”).
Because this is the aspect of U.S. foreign policy most Arabs and Muslims experience firsthand, support for these corrupt and despotic regimes is arguably the single biggest motivation for the young disenfranchised men that join the ranks of radical Islamists against the United States, even more so than U.S. support for Israel or the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Continued support for the dictatorial regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other countries, therefore, ultimately places Americans at risk.
Largely as a result of the longstanding bipartisan U.S. effort to prop up the Mubarak dictatorship, the percentage of Egyptians who look favorably upon the United States in recent years has plunged into the single digits, which is a significantly lower percentage than even Iranians. With more than 80 million people, Egypt is by far the world’s largest Arab country and remains the center of Arab and Islamic culture, media, and scholarship. It’s therefore not a country whose people the Obama administration should risk alienating. Like the series of administrations from Eisenhower to Carter, which insisted on supporting the despotic Shah of Iran, Obama’s insistence on continuing to arm and support the Mubarak regime could be sowing the seeds of yet another disastrous anti-American reaction.
Another problem with Obama’s apparent willingness to continue America’s strategic and economic support for these dictatorships is that it provides the neocons and other right-wing critics an opportunity to appear to seize the moral high ground. Despite the fact that U.S. military and economic support for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other repressive regimes in the greater Middle East actually increased under the Bush administration, Obama’s failure to speak out more forcefully for greater freedom and democracy in the region is now becoming a Republican line of attack. Just because Bush and his supporters disingenuously used “democracy promotion” as a rationalization for its invasion of Iraq and other reckless policies, however, it doesn’t therefore follow that supporting democracy is a bad thing.
Almost none of the dozens of successful transitions to democracy in recent decades have come from foreign intervention. The vast majority have come from democratic civil society organizations engaging in strategic nonviolent action from within. While the United States cannot instigate such “people power” movements, at least we can stop providing autocratic regimes with the means to suppress them. And there’s no better place to start than the Middle East.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/how_not_to_support_democracy_in_the_middle_east
Defending Israeli War Crimes
In response to a series of reports by human rights organizations and international legal scholars documenting serious large-scale violations of international humanitarian law by Israeli armed forces in its recent war on the Gaza Strip, 10 U.S. state attorneys general sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defending the Israeli action. It is virtually unprecedented for state attorneys general — whose mandates focus on enforcement of state law — to weigh in on questions regarding the laws of war, particularly in a conflict on the far side of the world. More significantly, their statement runs directly counter to a broad consensus of international legal opinion that recognizes that Israel, as well as Hamas, engaged in war crimes.
The wording of the letter closely parallels arguments by Bush administration officials in support for Israel’s devastating offensive during their final days in office. Having been signed nearly 11 weeks after the end of the fighting and made public only late last month, it may have been part of an effort to undermine tentative efforts by the Obama administration to take a more balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A statement by state attorneys general putting forth a legal rationale for the large-scale killings of civilians is particularly distressing as concerns about civilian casualties from U.S. air and missile strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan has grown.
The attorneys general signing on to the letter included Republicans Rob McKenna of Washington, Mike Cox of Michigan, John Suthers of Colorado, Bill McCollum of Florida, Jon Bruning of Nebraska, and Mark Shurtleff of Utah. Signatories also included such prominent Democrats as Richard Cordray of Ohio, Patrick Lynch of Rhode Island, Jack Conway of Kentucky, and Buddy Caldwell of Louisiana.
Facile Legal Reasoning
The legal rationale put forward in the March 30 letter is extraordinarily facile. For example, they claim that the war waged on the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip was taken in furtherance of Israel’s “right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.” In reality, however, while Article 51 does allow countries the right to resist an armed attack, it doesn’t grant any nation the right to engage in such a disproportionate response.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak admitted that the Israeli invasion had been planned for months, back when a six-month cease fire was still in effect. Even when Hamas resumed firing rockets into Israel in December, following a deadly Israeli raid into Gaza the previous month, there were few casualties. Indeed, not a single Israeli had been killed by Hamas rocket attacks for more than half a year prior to Israel launching its war on December 27. During the subsequent three weeks of fighting, Palestinians killed 10 Israelis, three of whom were civilians, while Israeli forces killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were civilians.
Incredibly, these attorneys general insist that these mass killings by Israeli forces were “justified and, in our view, met the international legal standards.”
The attorneys general also ignored the fact that Article 33 of the UN Charter explicitly prohibits nations going to war unless they “first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.” However, Israel — with strong bipartisan U.S. support — had refused to even meet with Hamas to negotiate a long-term ceasefire, which Hamas had offered prior to the breakdown of the six-month lull in return for a lift in the Israeli siege of the enclave.
The letter correctly accuses Hamas, which had lobbed rockets into civilian-populated areas in southwestern Israel, of violating Article 48 of Protocol I to the Geneva Convention of 1948, which states: “Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.”
However, the attorneys general refused to acknowledge that Israel had also violated that same provision on a far grander scale. While virtually every human rights organization, intergovernmental organization, and international legal authority that researched this recent conflict recognizes both Hamas and Israel were guilty of war crimes, these attorneys general still insist that Hamas alone was to blame and that Israel’s actions were perfectly legal.
Ignoring the Facts
Human Rights Watch (HRW) — which has been highly critical of Hamas attacks on civilian areas of Israel as well as repression by the Islamist group of Palestinian opponents within the Gaza Strip — reported during the fighting that in using heavy shelling against heavily-populated civilian areas, “Israel is committing indiscriminate attacks in violation of the laws of war.” In a comprehensive report published in March, HRW noted that “Israel’s repeated firing of white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza during its recent military campaign was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes.”
Similarly, while Amnesty International also “found evidence of war crimes and other serious violations of international law by all parties to the conflict” and attacks by both sides against civilian areas in which no fighters were present, the attorneys general insisted that the Palestinian side alone was guilty of such illegal actions.
An independent United Nations inquiry documented six major Israeli attacks against UN buildings, including schools in which children were killed, noting that actions by Israeli forces “involved varying degrees of negligence or recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and to the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries and extensive physical damage and loss of property.” The report concluded that “no military activity was carried out from within the United Nations premises in any of the incidents.”
Without presenting any evidence to the contrary, the attorneys general categorically rejected such findings, insisting that Israel was engaged only in “a limited and directed action against the source of Hamas’s military acts.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) focused on other war crimes, noting how the “Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded,” citing instances in which Israeli forces prevented Red Cross or other medics safe access to assist seriously wounded civilians. The Israeli chapter of Physicians for Human Rights reported with “certainty” that Israel violated international humanitarian law by attacking medics, damaging medical buildings, engaging in indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and delaying medical treatment for the injured. The ICRC declared Israel’s “delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable.” In addition, Israel rejected pleas by international humanitarian agencies by closing border crossings days at a time, denying access to food, medical supplies, fuel, and water sanitation equipment. Despite this, the attorneys general instead praised Israel for “allowing the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza.”
A report by a delegation of prominent U.S. attorneys which visited Gaza Strip soon after the fighting reported that “that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians during the Gaza offensive.” The Israeli press has reported testimony of Israeli soldiers who killed Palestinian civilians under highly permissive rules of engagement that allowed soldiers to kill any Palestinian in certain areas regardless of whether they were armed, and were ordered to intentionally destroy civilian property. An investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian revealed a series of Israeli missile attacks against clearly distinguishable civilian targets.
United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories Richard Falk, noting Israel’s “unlawful uses of force on a large scale” against Gazan society as a whole, referred to the operation as a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, as set forth in the Geneva Conventions.” Falk, an American Jew and emeritus professor at Princeton University who is arguably the country’s preeminent international legal scholar, also noted the illegality of Hamas rocket attacks into Israel, but stressed that Israeli airstrikes “were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world.”
Ignoring such evidence, the attorneys general insisted that Israel was directing its artillery, bombings and missile attacks only towards “the source of Hamas’s military attacks” and the Israeli government should therefore not be held responsible for any military action which harmed Palestinian civilians because they did so “unintentionally.”
Defending Mass Killings of Civilians
These attorneys general try to absolve Israel of any responsibility of the hundreds of civilian deaths by accusing Hamas of “using these civilians as human shields.” They provide no evidence for this charge, however, save for a quote from the notoriously right-wing editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
Independent human rights groups have accused Hamas of less-severe violations of international humanitarian law, such as not taking all necessary steps it should to prevent civilian casualties when it positioned fighters and armaments too close to concentrations of civilians. However, this isn’t the same thing as deliberately using civilians as shields. Furthermore, the nature of urban warfare, particularly in a territory as densely populated as the Gaza Strip, makes the proximity of retreating fighters and their equipment to civilians unavoidable in many cases.
Even if Hamas were using human shields in the legal definition of the term, it still does not absolve Israel from its obligation to avoid civilian casualties. Amnesty International has noted that the Geneva Conventions make it clear that even if one side is shielding itself behind civilians, such a violation “shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians.”
To argue otherwise, as do these attorneys general, is a dangerous legal position for the chief law enforcement official of a state to take, such as ordering their state police to kill innocent people in a hostage situation. By this logic, if a botched bank robbery led the would-be robbers to hold bank employees and customers at gunpoint, these attorneys general could then order state patrolmen to kill the gunmen and hostages alike, defending their action on the grounds that the bad guys were using “human shields.”
Denying Political Reality
It’s not just this flawed legal reasoning that underscores how this initiative by these attorneys general was based not upon a legitimate interpretation of law but for narrow ideological purposes. They reveal their political prejudices in their insistence in the letter to Clinton in claiming that “Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005” but that the Palestinians failed to establish “a flourishing independent state.” In reality, despite the removal of illegal Israeli settlements and the withdrawal of occupation forces from that crowded urban enclave, Israel has maintained sole control over Gaza Strip’s airspace and territorial waters, thereby prohibiting movement of people and goods by land and sea, as well as largely controlling the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt. Effectively preventing any exports or imports, except for occasional humanitarian aid, the economy has collapsed and, even prior to the war, the territory was experiencing a serious humanitarian crisis. Since Israel’s “withdrawal,” the Israeli government has also controlled the Gaza Strip’s electricity, water and telecommunications and has periodically engaged in air strikes and armed incursions into the enclave, murdering and kidnapping suspected militants. No people could reasonably be expected to establish “a flourishing independent state” under such circumstances. Furthermore, in maintaining their siege on the enclave, Israel legally remains the occupying power.
The attorneys general go on to accuse Hamas of taking advantage of Israel’s “withdrawal” to “cause a civil war with the Palestinian Authority, leading to a coup d’etat in 2007.” However, while Hamas is indeed guilty of innumerable political intrigues and inexcusable violence towards its Palestinian opponents, this is a gross misrepresentation of recent history: Rather than making war against the Palestinian Authority, Hamas was part of the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, they controlled the legislative branch of government as well as the post of prime minister and most other ministries as a result of winning the plurality of the vote in parliamentary elections in January 2006. The following year, Saudi officials negotiated a power-sharing agreement between Hamas and Fatah, which still controlled the presidency. U.S. officials, however, unsuccessfully encouraged President Mahmoud Abbas to renounce the agreement, dismiss the entire government and abolish parliament.
The Bush administration then began secretly arming Fatah groups to enable them to fight Hamas and pushing Fatah to stage a coup. This is what led Hamas to launch a countercoup by overrunning Fatah offices and taking full control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. Alvaro de Soto, former UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, stated in his confidential final report leaked to the press a few weeks before the Hamas takeover that “the Americans clearly encouraged a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas” and “worked to isolate and damage Hamas and build up Fatah with recognition and weaponry.” De Soto also recalled how in the midst of Egyptian efforts to arrange a cease-fire following a flare-up in factional fighting earlier that year, a U.S. official told him that “I like this violence…[I]t means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.”
Though all this has been well-documented and is widely known in both Israel and Palestine, this bipartisan group of attorneys general has instead sought to defend the Bush administration’s provocative and illegal intervention by putting the entire blame on Hamas.
This letter to the Secretary of State was put together by a right-wing group calling itself the American-Israel Friendship League (AIFL), which boasts that the organization has sent 42 states attorney general to Israel in the past 21 years. It refers to the letter as “a strong rejoinder to those who have castigated Israel over its role in Gaza and used it in an attempt to delegitimize the Jewish State.”
Dangerous Precedent
The Bush administration strongly supported Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip as an extension of its “war on terror.” It was in the name of this “war on terror” that President George W. Bush shamelessly politicized the U.S. Justice Department to justify spying on nonviolent dissidents at home and the torture of suspects abroad. Now we have a bipartisan group of state attorneys general who have shown themselves similarly willing to politicize their offices by putting forward twisted and perverse interpretations of the law in the name of fighting terrorism. Unless these rogue attorneys general are challenged by elected officials and ordinary citizens in their respective states for their signing on to such a reckless statement, it could mark a dangerous precedent regarding respect for human rights and the rule of law.
The War on Yugoslavia, 10 Years Later
It has been 10 years since the U.S.-led war on Yugoslavia. For many leading Democrats, including some in top positions in the Obama administration, it was a “good” war, in contrast to the Bush administration’s “bad” war on Iraq. And though the suffering and instability unleashed by the 1999 NATO military campaign wasn’t as horrific as the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years later, the war was nevertheless unnecessary and illegal, and its political consequences are far from settled.
Unless there’s a willingness to critically re-examine the war, the threat of another war in the name of liberal internationalism looms large.
Crisis Could Have Been Prevented
Throughout most of the 1990s, the oppressed ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo waged their struggle almost exclusively nonviolently, using strikes, boycotts, peaceful demonstrations, and alternative institutions. The Kosovar Albanians even set up a democratically elected parallel government to provide schooling and social services, and to press their cause to the outside world. Indeed, it was one of the most widespread, comprehensive, and sustained nonviolent campaigns since Gandhi’s struggle for Indian independence. This was the time for Western powers to have engaged in preventative diplomacy. However, the world chose to ignore the Kosovars’ nonviolent movement and resisted consistent pleas by the moderate Kosovar Albanian leadership to take action. It was only after a shadowy armed group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged in 1998 that the international media, the Clinton administration and other Western governments finally took notice.
By waiting for the emergence of guerrilla warfare before seeking a solution, the West gave Serbia’s autocratic president Slobodan Milosevic the opportunity to crack down with an even greater level of savagery than before. The delay allowed the Kosovar movement to be taken over by armed ultra?nationalists, who have since proven to be far less willing to compromise or guarantee the rights of the Serbian minority. Indeed, the KLA murdered Serb officials and ethnic Albanian moderates, destroyed Serbian villages, and attacked other minority communities, while some among its leadership called for ethnic cleansing in the other direction to create a pure Albanian state. Despite such practices, as well as ties to the international heroin trade, it was KLA’s leadership which came to dominate the subsequent autonomous and now independent Republic of Kosovo.
It’s a tragedy that the West squandered a full eight years when preventative diplomacy could have worked. The United States rejected calls for expanding missions set up by the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo, or to bring Kosovo constituencies together for negotiations. Waiting for a full-scale armed insurrection to break out before acting has also given oppressed people around the world a very bad message: Nonviolent methods will fail and, in order to get the West to pay attention to your plight, you need to take up arms.
When Western powers finally began to take decisive action on the long-simmering crisis in the fall of 1998, a ceasefire was arranged where the OSCE sent in unarmed monitors. While the ceasefire didn’t hold, violence did decrease dramatically in areas where they were stationed. Indeed, the OSCE monitors could have done a lot more, but they were given little support. They were largely untrained, they were too few in number and NATO refused to supply them with helicopters, night-vision binoculars or other basic equipment that could have made them more effective.
Ceasefire violations by the Yugoslav army, Serbian militias, and KLA guerrillas increased in the early months of 1999, including a number of atrocities against ethnic Albanians by Serbian units, with apparent acquiescence of government forces. Western diplomatic efforts accelerated, producing the proposal put forward at the Chateau Rambouillet in France, which called for the withdrawal of Serbian forces and the restoration of Kosovo’s autonomous status within a greater Serbia. Such a political settlement was quite reasonable, and the Serbs appeared willing to seriously consider such an agreement. But it was sabotaged by NATO’s insistence that they be allowed to send in a large armed occupation force into Kosovo, along with rights to move freely without permission throughout the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and other measures that infringed on the country’s sovereignty. Another problem was that it was presented essentially as a final document, without much room for negotiations. One of the fundamental principles of international conflict resolution is that all interested parties are part of the peace process. Some outside pressure may be necessary — particularly against the stronger party — to secure an agreement, but it can’t be presented as a fait accompli. This “sign this or we’ll bomb you” attitude also doomed the diplomatic initiative to failure. Few national leaders, particularly a nationalist demagogue like Milosevic, would sign an agreement under such terms, which amount to a treaty of surrender: Allowing foreign forces free reign of your territory and issuing such a proposal as an ultimatum.
Smarter and earlier diplomacy could have prevented the war.
The Bombing Campaign
Many liberals who had opposed U.S. military intervention elsewhere recognized the severity of the ongoing oppression of the Kosovar Albanians and the need to challenge Serbian ethno-fascism, and therefore initially supported the war. Had such military intervention led to an immediate withdrawal of Yugoslav forces and Serbian militias, one could perhaps make a case that, despite the war’s illegality, there was a moral imperative for military action in order to prevent far greater violence. But, as many experts of the region predicted, this wasn’t the case.
The bombing campaign, which began March 24, 1999, clearly made things worse for the Kosovar Albanians. Not only were scores of ethnic Albanians accidentally killed by NATO bombing raids, but the Serbs — unable to respond to NATO air attacks — turned their wrath against the most vulnerable segments of the population: the very Kosovar Albanians NATO claimed it would be defending. While the Serbs may have indeed been planning some sort of large-scale forced removal of the population in areas of KLA infiltration, both the scale and savagery of the Serbian repression that resulted was undoubtedly a direct consequence of NATO actions. Subsequent U.S. claims that the bombing was in response to ethnic cleansing turns the reality on its head.
By forcing the evacuation of the OSCE monitors, which — despite their limitations — were playing something of a deterrent role against the worst Serbian atrocities, NATO gave the Serbs the opportunity to increase their repression. By bombing Yugoslavia, they gave the Serbs nothing to lose. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were forced from their homes into makeshift refugee camps in neighboring Macedonia.
As the bombing continued, the numbers of Serbian troops in Kosovo increased and the repression of Kosovar Albanians dramatically escalated. Those doing the killing in Kosovo were primarily small paramilitary groups, death squads, and police units that couldn’t have effectively been challenged by high-altitude bombing, and weren’t affected by the destruction of bridges or factories hundreds of miles to the north. If protecting the lives of Kosovar Albanians was really the motivation for the U.S.-led war, President Bill Clinton would have sent in Marine and Special Forces units to battle the Serbian militias directly instead of relying exclusively on air power.
The war against Yugoslavia was illegal. Any such use of force is a violation of the UN Charter unless in self-defense against an armed attack or authorized by the United Nations as an act of collective security. Kosovo was internationally recognized as part of Serbia; it was, legally speaking, an internal conflict. In addition, the democratically elected president of the self-proclaimed, if unrecognized, Kosovar Albanian Republic, Ibrahim Rugova, didn’t request such intervention. Indeed, he opposed it.
The war was also illegal under U.S. law. The Constitution places war-making authority under the responsibility of Congress. While it’s widely recognized that the president, as commander-in-chief, has latitude in short-term emergencies, the 1973 War Powers Act prevents the executive branch from waging war without the express consent of Congress beyond a 60-day period. Only rarely has Congress formally declared war, but it has passed resolutions supporting the use of force, as with the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution concerning Vietnam, the January 1991 approval of the use of force to remove Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait, and the October 2002 authorization for the invasion of Iraq. Clinton, however, received no such congressional approval. That he got away with such a blatant abuse of executive authority marked a dangerous precedent in war-making authority in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The 11-week bombing campaign resulted in the widespread destruction of Yugoslavia’s civilian infrastructure, the killing of many hundreds of civilians, and — as a result of bombing chemical factories, the use of depleted uranium ammunition and more — caused serious environmental damage. Far more Yugoslav civilians died from NATO bombing than did Kosovar Albanian civilians from Serb forces prior to the onset of the bombing. A number of human rights groups that condemned Serbian actions in Kosovo also criticized NATO attacks that, in addition to the more immediate civilian casualties, endangered the health and safety of millions of people by disrupting water supplies, sewage treatment, and medical services.
U.S. Motivations
There are serious questions regarding what actually prompted the United States and NATO to make war on Yugoslavia. While the Serbian nationalism espoused by Milosevic had fascistic elements, and his government and allied militias certainly engaged in serious war crimes throughout the Balkans that decade, comparisons to Hitler were hyperbolic, certainly in terms of the ability to threaten any nation beyond the borders of the old Yugoslavia.
As today, there was civil strife in a number of African countries during this period, resulting in far more deaths and refugees than Serbia’s repression in Kosovo. As a result, some have questioned U.S. double standards towards intervention such as why the United States didn’t intervene in far more serious humanitarian crises, particularly in Rwanda in 1994, where there clearly was an actual genocide in progress.
But a more salient question is why the United States has never been held accountable for when it has intervened — in support of the oppressors. In recent decades, the U.S. government provided military, economic, and diplomatic support of Indonesia’s slaughter of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese, and of Guatemala’s slaughter of many tens of thousands of its indigenous people.
While Clinton tried to justify the war by declaring that repression and ethnic cleansing must not be allowed to happen “on NATO’s doorstep,” he was not only quite willing to allow for comparable repression to take place within NATO itself, but actively supported it: During the 1990s, Turkey’s denial of the Kurds’ linguistic and cultural rights, rejection of their demands of autonomy, destruction of thousands of villages, killing of thousands of civilians and forced removal of hundreds of thousands bore striking resemblance to Serbia’s repression in Kosovo. Yet the Clinton administration, with bipartisan congressional support, continued to arm the Turkish military and defended its repression.
Such questions necessarily raise uncharitable speculation about what might have actually motivated the United States to lead such a military action. For some advocates of U.S. military intervention, there was no doubt some genuine humanitarian concern, which — unlike many other cases around the world — support for those being oppressed didn’t conflict with overriding U.S. strategic or economic prerogatives. There may have been other forces at work, however, which saw the use of force as advantageous for other reasons than a sincere, if misplaced, hope of assuaging a humanitarian crisis.
For example, the war created a raison d’être for the continued existence of NATO in a post-Cold War world, as it desperately tried to justify its continued existence and desire for expansion (This resulted in a kind of circular logic however: NATO was still needed to fight in wars like Yugoslavia, yet the war needed to be continued in order to preserve NATO’s credibility.).
The war also benefitted influential weapons manufacturers, leading to an increase in U.S. military spending by more than $13 billion, largely for weapons systems that most strategic analysts and even the Pentagon said weren’t needed. This came on top of an increase in military spending passed before the onset of the war (By contrast, aid from the United States to help with the refugee crisis was very limited, and efforts by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees were severely hampered by lack of funds, in large part a result of the refusal by the United States to pay more than $1 billion in dues it then owed to the UN, equivalent to approximately one week of bombing.).
Whatever its actual motivations, why would the United States lead NATO into a long, drawn-out war with no guarantee of fulfilling its objectives, given the real political risks involved? Much of the problem may have been that of arrogance. There’s a fair amount of evidence to suggest that the Clinton administration falsely assumed the threat of bombing would lead to a last-minute capitulation by Milosevic, but, having made the threat, felt obligated to follow through.
Even after the bombing began and Finnish and Russian mediators began working on a ceasefire agreement, greater U.S. flexibility regarding Serbian concerns could have brought the war to an end much sooner. What a number of NATO members suggested, but the Clinton administration refused to consider, was to agree that the postwar peacekeeping force in Kosovo be placed under the control of the UN or the OSCE. Instead, the United States insisted that peacekeeping should be a NATO operation.
This effectively would have forced the nationalistic Serbs into accepting demands that a part of their country effectively be placed under occupation by the same military alliance that attacked them. As a result, despite suffering ongoing death and destruction, the Serbs continued fighting. The Clinton administration, meanwhile, seemed more intent on dominating the postwar order politically and militarily than agreeing to a ceasefire which could have prevented further bloodshed and allowed refugees to return sooner.
Eventually, a compromise was reached whereby the peacekeeping troops sent into Kosovo following a Serb withdrawal would primarily consist of NATO forces, but under UN command.
Perhaps the greatest myth of the war was that the Serbs surrendered and NATO won. In reality, not only was there a compromise on the makeup of postwar peacekeeping forces, but the final peace agreement also omitted the most objectionable sections of the Rambouillet proposal and more closely resembled the counter-proposal put forward by the Serbian parliament prior to the bombing. In other words, rather than being a NATO victory as it has been repeatedly portrayed by Washington and much of the American media, it was at best a draw.
Ramifications of the War
The war had serious consequences besides death and destruction in Serbia and Kosovo. One of the original justifications was to prevent a broader war, yet it was the bombing campaign that destabilized the region to a greater degree than Milosevic’s campaign of repression. It emboldened ethnic Albanian chauvinists, not just in Kosovo where they have come to dominate, but in the neighboring country of Macedonia and its restive ethnic Albanian minority, which has twice taken up arms in the past 10 years against the Slavic majority.
At the NATO summit in April 1999, the member states approved a structure for “non-Article 5 crisis response,” essentially a euphemism for war (Article 5 of the NATO charter provides for collective self-defense; non-Article 5 refers to an offensive military action like Yugoslavia.). According to the document, such an action could take place anywhere on the broad periphery of NATO’s realm, such as North Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, essentially paving the way for NATO’s ongoing war in Afghanistan. This expanded role for NATO wasn’t approved by any of the respective countries’ legislatures, raising serious questions about democratic civilian control over military alliances.
Furthermore, the U.S.-led NATO war on Yugoslavia helped undermine the United Nations Charter and thereby paved the way for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant violation of the international legal order by a major power since World War II.
The occupation by NATO troops of Serbia’s autonomous Kosovo region, and the subsequent recognition of Kosovar independence by the United States and a number of Western European powers, helped provide Russia with an excuse to maintain its large military presence in Georgia’s autonomous South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, and to recognize their unilateral declarations of independence. This, in turn, led to last summer’s war between Russia and Georgia.
Indeed, much of the tense relations between the United States and Russia over the past decade can be traced to the 1999 war on Yugoslavia. Russia was quite critical of Serbian actions in Kosovo and supported the non-military aspects of the Rambouillet proposals, yet was deeply disturbed by this first military action waged by NATO. Indeed, the war resulted in unprecedented Russian anger towards the United States, less out of some vague sense of pan-Slavic solidarity, but more because it was seen as an act of aggression against a sovereign nation. The Russians had assumed NATO would dissolve at the end of the Cold War. Instead, not only has NATO expanded, it went to war over an internal dispute in a Slavic Eastern European country. This stoked the paranoid fear of many Russian nationalists that NATO may find an excuse to intervene in Russia itself. While in reality this is extremely unlikely, the history of invasions from the West no doubt strengthened the hold of Vladimir Putin and other semi-autocratic nationalists, setting back reform efforts, political liberalization, and disarmament.
The war also had political repercussions here in the United States. On Capitol Hill, it created what became known as an “aviary conundrum,” where traditional hawks became doves and doves became hawks. It provided a precedent of Democratic lawmakers supporting an illegal war and allowing for extraordinary executive power to wage war, with which the Bush administration was able to fully take advantage in leading the country into its debacle in Iraq.
The presence of large-scale human rights abuses, as was occurring in Kosovo under Serb rule, shouldn’t force concerned citizens in the United States and other countries into the false choice of supporting war and doing nothing. This tragic conflict should further prove that, moral and legal arguments aside, military force is a very blunt and not very effective instrument to promote human rights, and that bloated military budgets and archaic military alliances aren’t the way to bring peace and security. As long as such “conflict resolution” efforts are placed exclusively in the hands of governments, there will be a propensity towards war. Only when global civil society seizes the initiative and recognizes the power of strategic nonviolent action, and the necessity of preventative diplomacy, can there be hope that such conflicts can be resolved peacefully.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_war_on_yugoslavia_10_years_later
The Budget’s Foreign Policy Handcuffs
Hopes that a Democratic administration with an expanded Democratic congressional majority might lead to a more ethical, rational, and progressive foreign policy were challenged with last week’s passage of the 2009 omnibus budget bill, which included many troubling provisions regarding the State Department and related diplomatic functions.
In the House of Representatives, all but two dozen Democrats supported and all but 20 Republicans opposed the bill. It passed the Senate by voice vote, believed to have been mostly divided by strict party lines.
While the Obama administration had little to do with putting the bill together and seemed willing to wait to put its imprint on the budget for the 2010 fiscal year, it was nevertheless disturbing that the new president didn’t challenge the inclusion of segments of the legislation that seemed to be designed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, and other Democratic congressional leaders to undercut his authority to pursue a different Middle East policy than his predecessor.
Most notably, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders refused calls for conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel, Egypt, and other countries in the region on their adherence to internationally recognized human rights standards. In addition, in reaction to the United Nations Human Rights Council raising concerns about human rights abuses by Israel and other U.S. allies in the region, Pelosi’s bill bars the use of any U.S. funds to be appropriated as part of the annual contribution of UN member states to support the Council’s work.
Also problematic is that — while Congressional Democrats formally dropped their longstanding opposition to Palestinian statehood in the 1990s (in contrast to President Barack Obama, who has supported Palestinian statehood since his days as a student activist in the early 1980s) — the Democratic-sponsored appropriations bill contains a series of measures which appear to be designed to prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Fueling the Arms Race
Challenging the widespread consensus by arms control specialists and other observers that the Middle East already has too many armaments, Pelosi and the Democrats have clearly determined that, in their view, the region doesn’t have enough armaments and that the United States must continue its role as supplier of most of the region’s weaponry. As teachers, librarians, social workers, health care professionals, and other Americans are losing their jobs due to a lack of public funding, the Democrats’ appropriation bill pours billions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer funding into sophisticated weapons for both Israel and neighboring Arab states. And, with his signature, it appears Obama agrees with these distorted priorities.
Pelosi and the Democrats made clear their outright rejection of recent calls by Amnesty International and other human rights groups to suspend U.S. military aid to Israel in response to the use of U.S. weapons in war crimes during the assault on the Gaza Strip in January, instead siding with the former Bush administration in allocating $2.5 billion of unconditional military aid to the Israeli government this fiscal year.
Rather than being directed toward counterterrorism or other defensive measures, the bill stipulates that funds will be used for the procurement of advanced weapons systems, roughly three-quarters of which will be purchased from American arms manufacturers.
An additional $1.3 billion in foreign military financing is earmarked for the Egyptian dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, $235 million for the autocratic monarchy in Jordan, $58 million for Lebanon, and $12 million for the repressive regime in Tunisia. The only other country specifically targeted for military aid in this legislation is Colombia, which will receive $53 million.
While last year’s appropriations bill blocked Egypt from access to part of its military aid until it had taken clear and measurable steps to “adopt and implement judicial reforms that protect the independence of the judiciary” and “review criminal procedures and train police leadership in modern policing to curb police abuses,” such provisions were removed from this year’s bill, yet another indication of the Democratic majority’s lack of concern for human rights.
Sabotaging a Palestinian Unity Government
As European governments and others, recognizing that some kind of government of national unity between Fatah and the more moderate elements of Hamas is necessary for the peace process to move forward, Pelosi and her colleagues are attempting to sabotage such efforts. This year’s appropriations bill prohibits any support for “any power-sharing government” in Palestine “of which Hamas is a member,” unless Hamas unilaterally agrees to “recognize Israel, renounce violence, disarm, and accept prior agreements, including the Roadmap.”
By contrast, there are no such provisions restricting the billions of dollars of aid to the emerging coalition government in Israel, which includes far right parties that have likewise refused to recognize Palestine, renounce violence, support the disarming of allied settler militias, or accept prior agreements, including the roadmap.
In short, to Pelosi and other Democratic congressional leaders, Palestinians simply do not have equal rights to Israelis in terms of statehood, security, or international obligations. The Democrats are willing to sabotage any Palestinian government that dares include — even as a minority in a broad coalition — any hard-line anti-Israeli party, yet they have no problems whatsoever in pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into supporting an Israeli government dominated by hard-line anti-Palestinian parties.
There’s a word for such double-standards: racism.
Other Anti-Palestinian Provisions
Migration and refugee assistance are other areas where the anti-Palestinian bias of Pelosi and other Democratic leaders becomes apparent. There are dozens of countries in which the United Nations, assisted in part through U.S. aid, is involved in relief operations, including those dealing with Rwandans, Kurds, Congolese, Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis, and other refugee populations from which terrorist groups operate or have operated in the recent past. However, Pelosi and the Democratic leadership have determined that it’s among Palestinian refugees alone that the State Department is required to work with the UN and host governments “to develop a strategy for identifying individuals known to have engaged in terrorist activities.”
Pelosi’s bill stipulates that not less than $30 million in funds for migration and refugee assistance should be made available for refugee resettlement in Israel. None of the other 192 recognized states in the world are specifically earmarked to receive this kind of funding, which is normally made available on assessment of humanitarian need. In recent years, successive Israeli governments have encouraged immigrants to live in subsidized Jewish-only settlements, illegally constructed on confiscated land in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights, in violation of a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a landmark advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. The inclusion of this funding is widely interpreted as an effort by Pelosi and other Democratic lawmakers to encourage further Israeli colonization in occupied Palestinian and Syrian territory so as to decrease the likelihood of a peace settlement.
Only $75 million in aid is allocated to the West Bank and none of it is allocated to the Palestinian Authority itself. In contrast, annual U.S. economic assistance to Israel (which doesn’t include the billions in military aid) goes directly to the Israeli government and has usually totaled more than 15 times that amount, even though the per-capita income of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is less than one-twentieth that of Israeli Jews.
Pelosi’s bill contains lengthy and detailed conditions and restrictions on programs in the West Bank, with extensive vetting, reporting, and auditing requirements required for no other place in the world. This year’s bill adds requirements that all funds are subjected to the regular notification procedures, also an unprecedented requirement. There are also a number of other stipulations not found for any other nations, such as the provision banning any assistance to the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation.
Despite all the additional administrative costs such restrictions require, the bill caps administrative expenses at $2 million; no such limitations exist involving aid to any other nation.
The Democrats’ goal appears to be to make it all the more difficult for Palestinians — already suffering under U.S.-backed Israeli sieges — to meet even their most basic needs for health care, education, housing, and economic development.
Roadblocks for Palestinian Statehood
Though the United States remains the world’s number one military, economic, and diplomatic supporter of repressive Middle Eastern governments — including absolute monarchies, military juntas, and occupation armies — the appropriations bill includes language insisting that the “governing entity” of Palestine “should enact a constitution assuring the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and respect for human rights for its citizens, and should enact other laws and regulations assuring transparent and accountable governance.” No such language exists in regard to any other nation.
There are also provisions blocking U.S. support for a Palestinian state unless it meets a long list of criteria regarding perceived Israeli security needs. Again, no such conditions exist for any other nation in terms of its right to exist.
One target of Pelosi and other Democratic leaders is the Palestinians’ desire to regain the Arab-populated sections of East Jerusalem, which have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. In addition to its religious significance for both Palestinian Christians and Palestinian Muslims, Jerusalem has long been the most important cultural, commercial, political, and educational center for Palestinians and has the largest Palestinian population of any city in the world. Given the city’s significance to both populations, any sustainable peace agreement would need to recognize Jerusalem as the capital city for both Israel and Palestine.
In an apparent effort to delegitimize any Palestinian claims to their occupied capital, however, Pelosi’s bill prohibits any “meetings between officers and employees of the United States and officials of the Palestinian Authority, or any successor Palestinian governing entity” in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem “for the purpose of conducting official United States Government business with such authority.” Even if the Israelis do agree to end their occupation of Arab East Jerusalem, Pelosi and the Democrats have inserted language that no funds could be used to create any new U.S. government offices in Jerusalem that would interact with the Palestinian Authority or any successor Palestinian government entity.
Nuclear Nonproliferation
Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues continue to pursue nonproliferation based on ideological litmus tests rather than universal law-based principles. For example, the bill requires that any assistance to Russia be withheld until the Russian government has “terminated implementation of arrangements to provide Iran with technical expertise, training, technology, or equipment necessary to develop a nuclear reactor, related nuclear research facilities or programs, or ballistic missile capability.” However, there are no such restrictions on the United States itself continuing its nuclear cooperation with India, despite India’s maintaining and expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1172, nor are there any objections included regarding ongoing U.S. ballistic missile development with Israel, despite Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal and its ongoing violation of UN Security Council Resolution 487.
The appropriations bill stipulates that the United States will support the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency — which successfully dismantled Iraq’s nuclear program in the early 1990s — “only if the Secretary of State determines (and so reports to the Congress) that Israel is not being denied its right to participate in the activities of that Agency.” This appears to be an effort to prevent one of the means by which the United Nations could conceivably pressure Israel into ending its ongoing violation of Resolution 487, which calls on Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the trusteeship of the IAEA. There are no other countries whose potential exclusion from the IAEA would jeopardize U.S. funding.
Moving Forward
It should also be noted that there were a number of positive changes to the FY2009 budget impacting the Middle East. Language that required the State Department to designate the birthplace of U.S. citizens born in Israeli-occupied parts of greater East Jerusalem as “Israel” — thereby effectively recognizing Israel’s illegal annexation of Palestinian territory — was dropped. There was also a new segment in the bill directing the Secretary of State to report on Moroccan suppression of human rights in the occupied Western Sahara.
Most significant is a provision banning nearly all cluster-bomb exports to Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, an initiative which had been defeated during the last session of Congress thanks to near-unanimous Republican opposition, as well as negative votes from such leading Democratic senators as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Obama — who, in contrast, voted in favor of the resolution — apparently helped to insure the inclusion of this provision in the bill, which has been applauded by human rights groups.
Meanwhile, a number of additional anti-Palestinian amendments introduced from the floor by Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) were voted down after vigorous lobbying by Americans for Peace Now and other liberal groups.
Nevertheless, it’s disappointing that so many other right-wing provisions involving the Middle East were included in the omnibus spending bill, particularly since this year’s appropriations were put together by a Congress with the largest Democratic majority in decades.
It will be President Obama, and not the Democratic-controlled Congress, who will ultimately determine the direction of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere in the coming years. Unfortunately, even assuming the best of intentions by a president who came to office in large part due to popular dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. policy in the region, he won’t be able to fundamentally change the direction of that policy if Congress continues to pursue policies supporting militarization, occupation, and repression.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_budgets_foreign_policy_handcuffs
Neocons 1, Obama 0
The Obama administration’s choice to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC) recently withdrew in face of a concerted right-wing attack. Veteran diplomat Chas Freeman would not have had to face Senate confirmation. Instead, he had to face attacks in the right-wing press and blogosphere. His withdrawal was a victory for Bush-era neoconservatives and their allies regarding intelligence and broader Middle East Policy.
The NIC chairmanship is structured to offer a skeptical view on U.S. intelligence. With his broad knowledge and experience in East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, Freeman would appear to be an ideal appointee. Fluent in both major dialects of Chinese, he accompanied President Richard Nixon on his historic 1972 trip to China. Later, he served as principal deputy assistant secretary of State for African affairs, assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs, and as ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War. After retiring from the State Department, Freeman succeeded former senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern as head of the Middle East Policy Council, a centrist Washington think tank.
Those closest to Freeman have confirmed that his decision was indeed his own. Neither the president nor Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who had offered Freeman the position, asked him to withdraw his acceptance of the NIC post. At the same time, the White House’s refusal to come to Freeman’s defense in the face of misleading and defamatory attacks is reminiscent of the Clinton White House’s abandonment of assistant attorney general nominee Lani Guinier in similar circumstances back in 1993.
The Sin of Being Right on Iraq
Freeman announced his withdrawal just hours after Blair praised Freeman before the Senate Intelligence Committee for his “wealth of knowledge and expertise in defense, diplomacy and intelligence.” The seven Republican members of the committee didn’t, however, welcome these attributes when they spoke out strongly against his appointment. Particularly upsetting to Freeman’s right-wing opponents were his statements acknowledging the disastrous consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a decision backed not only by Republicans but by such key Senate Democrats as Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), an outspoken supporter of the invasion, kept pressing Blair on the Freeman appointment during the hearing, to which Blair replied that such criticism was based on a misunderstanding of the position. “I can do a better job if I’m getting strong analytical viewpoints to sort out and pass on to you and the president than if I’m getting precooked pablum judgments that don’t really challenge,” Blair said. Lieberman, clearly unsatisfied with Blair’s response, promised he would continue to press the issue.
Freeman had raised the ire of war supporters in his articles and speeches exposing the errors of Bush policy in the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. “Al-Qaeda has played us with the finesse of a matador exhausting a great bull by guiding it into unproductive lunges at the void behind his cape,” Freeman said, noting how invading Iraq appeared to the world’s Muslims as “a wider war against Islam.” Freeman further observed: “We destroyed the Iraqi state and catalyzed anarchy, sectarian violence, terrorism, and civil war in that country.”
Not surprisingly, the bipartisan group attacking the appointment was led by such staunch supporters of the invasion of Iraq as Representatives Mark Kirk (R-IL), Steve Israel (D-NY), John Boehner (R-OH), Shelley Berkley (D-NV), and Eric Cantor (R-VA). Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), another outspoken supporter of the invasion of Iraq, insisted that “Freeman was the wrong guy for this position.” Schumer even tried to take credit for Freeman’s withdrawal, claiming, “I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing.”
By contrast, those supporting intelligence assessments based on the facts rather than ideology had praised the appointment as an example of a shift away from the Bush administration policy. Freeman has “spent a goodly part of the last 10 years raising questions that otherwise might never get answered — or even asked — because they’re too embarrassing, awkward, or difficult,” Dan Froomkin of NiemanWatch observed. “For him to be put in charge of [the NIC]…is about the most emphatic statement the Obama administration could possibly make that it won’t succumb to the kind of submissive intelligence-community groupthink that preceded the war in Iraq.”
James Fallows of The Atlantic noted how “anyone who has worked in an organization knows how hard it is, but how vital, to find intelligent people who genuinely are willing to say inconvenient things even when everyone around them is getting impatient or annoyed. The truth is, you don’t like them when they do that. You may not like them much at all. But without them, you’re cooked.”
Smear Campaign
In the days following Blair’s appointment of Freeman, the attacks grew more and more bizarre. For example, since the Middle East Policy Council had received some grants from some Saudi-based foundations, Freeman was accused of thereby being “on the Saudi payroll” and even being a “Saudi puppet.” In The New Republic, Martin Peretz insisted that Freeman was “a bought man.” But it’s certainly not unprecedented for presidential appointees to have worked with nonprofit organizations that have received support from foreign governments. Indeed, Dennis Ross, appointed last month as Special Advisor for the Gulf and Southwest Asia, is still listed as the board chair of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, which is supported by the Israeli government.
To set the record straight, Blair told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Freeman had “never lobbied for any government or business (domestic or foreign)” and that he had “never received any income directly from Saudi Arabia or any Saudi-controlled entity.”
In another irony, the person identified as the principal orchestrator of the attacks against Freeman — including the charge that he was a Saudi agent — was Steven Rosen, former director of the right-wing American-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosen currently faces espionage charges for transferring classified materials to the Israeli government. M.J. Rosenberg, a former colleague of Rosen who now serves as policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, said “you couldn’t have picked anyone less credible to lead the charge” against Freeman. But Rosen’s smear campaign was apparently credible enough to force Freeman to turn down the position.
Another line of attack was that Freeman, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, was a “China apologist.” Critics cited quotes allegedly made by Freeman, many taken out of context, that appeared to justify repression by the Beijing regime, including the 1989 crackdown against pro-democracy activists. According to Blair, however, Freeman — who has spoken of the Tiananmen Square massacre as a “tragedy” — wasn’t describing his own views but was simply observing what he considered to be “the dominant view in China.” Similarly, a number of leading China experts came to Freeman’s defense as well, with Jerome Cohen noting that claims of Freemen endorsing the 1989 repression were “ludicrous” and Sidney Rittenberg observing that as a U.S. diplomat in Beijing, Freeman was “a stalwart supporter of human rights who helped many individuals in need.”
Yet Peretz falsely claimed that Freeman had “made himself a client of China” and was a man with “no humane or humanitarian scruples” who wanted the United States to “kow-tow to authoritarians and tyrants.” Nor did it stop the National Review from claiming that Freeman’s appointment proved “you can go directly from effectively working for the Saudis and Chinese to being the country’s top intelligence analyst.”
None of those attacking Blair’s appointments on the grounds of supposedly supporting authoritarian regimes has ever raised concerns about Admiral Blair himself. Blair served as the head of the U.S. Pacific Command from February 1999 to May 2002, as East Timor was finally freeing itself from a quarter-century of brutal Indonesian occupation. As the highest-ranking U.S. military official in the region, he worked to undermine the Clinton administration’s belated efforts to end the repression, promote human rights, and support the territory’s right to self-determination. He also fought against congressional efforts to condition support for the Indonesian military on improving their poor human rights record.
When human rights activists raised concerns about having a defender of death squads as the Director of National Intelligence, the Obama White House rushed to Blair’s defense, something they were clearly not willing to do for Chas Freeman.
Criticizing Israeli Policies
Freeman’s rightist critics also claimed that Freeman was “anti-Israel.” For instance, Freeman rejected the Bush administration’s policy of defending Israeli violence against Palestinians while insisting that the Palestinians had to unilaterally end their violence against Israelis. A number of Freeman’s critics cited in horror Freeman’s observation that until “Israeli violence against Palestinians” is halted, “it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance.”
Freeman has been concerned for some time that U.S. policy is radicalizing the Palestinian population to the point of jeopardizing Israel’s security interests. The United States had “abandoned the role of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel’s efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoized Arab populations,” he observed. “We wring our hands while sitting on them as the Jewish state continues to seize ever more Arab land for its colonists. This has convinced most Palestinians that Israel cannot be appeased and is persuading increasing numbers of them that a two-state solution is infeasible.”
Ironically, a number of prominent Israeli academics, journalists, security analysts, military officers, and political leaders have made similar observations. Freeman’s critics, however, believe that expressing such concerns makes Freeman — in the words of the Wall Street Journal — an “Israel basher.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a strident supporter of Israeli government policies, claimed that Freeman’s views were “indefensible” and urged President Barack Obama to withdraw his appointment.
In his withdrawal statement, Freeman reiterated his concern that “the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel.” He went on to observe that this “is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.”
Obama’s Silence
A number of diplomats and other State Department professionals who had known Freeman as a colleague spoke up in favor of his nomination, and challenged the defamatory and libelous attacks against him. For example, a letter signed by former UN ambassador Thomas Pickering, former ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis, former ambassador to Afghanistan Samuel Neumann, and more than a dozen other current and former ambassadors noted: “We know Chas [Freeman] to be a man of integrity and high intelligence who would never let his personal views shade or distort intelligence assessments.”
Similarly, a group of prominent former intelligence officials called the attacks against Freeman “unprecedented in their vehemence, scope, and target,” noting how they were perpetrated by “pundits and public figures…aghast at the appointment of a senior intelligence official able to take a more balanced view of the Arab-Israel issue.”
Yet despite so many mainstream officials coming to his defense, the Obama White House chose to remain silent.
Most pundits, as well as Freeman himself, have blamed the so-called “Israel Lobby” for forcing him out. While AIPAC itself was apparently not involved in the smear campaign, many of Freeman’s harshest critics were among the strongest supporters of the Israeli right. However, the battle over Freeman’s appointment was about a lot more than simply his views on Israel — or Saudi Arabia or China; it was about the integrity of our nation’s intelligence system. Those who most exploited the false claims about nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” in order to frighten the American public into supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq were the most eager to deny Freeman the chairmanship of the NIC.
And Freeman’s willingness to ask the big questions frightened many on the right. For example, following 9/11, Freeman shared his disappointment that “instead of asking what might have caused the attack, or questioning the propriety of the national response to it, there is an ugly mood of chauvinism.” His ability to look inward instead of simply attack “the other” is what apparently made him unworthy in the eyes of his critics.
Prior to Freeman’s decision to withdraw, Chris Nelson of the influential Nelson Report, a daily private newsletter read by top Washington policymakers, wrote: “If Obama surrenders to the critics and orders [Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair] to rescind the Freeman appointment to chair the NIC, it is difficult to see how he can properly exercise leverage, when needed, in his conduct of policy in the Middle East. That, literally, is how the experts see the stakes of the fight now under way.”
Obama apparently didn’t order Freeman’s appointment to be rescinded. But Obama’s refusal to come to Freeman’s defense will make it all the more difficult for the president to challenge future right-wing attacks on his administration’s policies in the Middle East and beyond. Smelling victory, the right will only become bolder in challenging any progressive inclinations in Obama’s foreign policy.
As Joe Klein so aptly put it in his Time blog, “Barack Obama should take note. The thugs have taken out Chas Freeman. They will not rest. Their real target is you, Mr. President.”
Obama and Israel’s Military: Still Arm-in-Arm
In the wake of Israel’s massive assault on heavily populated civilian areas of the Gaza Strip earlier this year, Amnesty International called for the United States to suspend military aid to Israel on human rights grounds. Amnesty has also called for the United Nations to impose a mandatory arms embargo on both Hamas and the Israeli government. Unfortunately, it appears that President Barack Obama won’t be heeding Amnesty’s call.
During the fighting in January, Amnesty documented Israeli forces engaging in “direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects in Gaza, and attacks which were disproportionate or indiscriminate.” The leader of Amnesty International’s fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip and southern Israel noted how “Israeli forces used white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the USA to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes.” Amnesty also reported finding fragments of U.S.-made munitions “littering school playgrounds, in hospitals and in people’s homes.”
Malcolm Smart, who serves as Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East, observed in a press release that “to a large extent, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza was carried out with weapons, munitions and military equipment supplied by the USA and paid for with U.S. taxpayers’ money.” The release also noted how before the conflict, which raged for three weeks from late December into January, the United States had “been aware of the pattern of repeated misuse of [its] weapons.”
Amnesty has similarly condemned Hamas rocket attacks into civilian-populated areas of southern Israel as war crimes. And while acknowledging that aid to Hamas was substantially smaller, far less sophisticated, and far less lethal — and appeared to have been procured through clandestine sources — Amnesty called on Iran and other countries to take concrete steps to insure that weapons and weapon components not get into the hands of Palestinian militias.
During the fighting in early January, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization initially called for a suspension of U.S. military aid until there was no longer a substantial risk of additional human rights violations. The Bush administration summarily rejected this proposal. Amnesty subsequently appealed to the Obama administration. “As the major supplier of weapons to Israel, the USA has a particular obligation to stop any supply that contributes to gross violations of the laws of war and of human rights,” said Malcolm Smart. “The Obama administration should immediately suspend U.S. military aid to Israel.”
Obama’s refusal to accept Amnesty’s call for the suspension of military assistance was a blow to human rights activists. The most Obama might do to express his displeasure toward controversial Israeli policies like the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied territories would be to reject a planned increase in military aid for the next fiscal year and slightly reduce economic aid and/or loan guarantees. However, in a notable departure from previous administrations, Obama made no mention of any military aid to Israel in his outline of the FY 2010 budget, announced last week. This notable absence may indicate that pressure from human rights activists and others concerned about massive U.S. military aid to Israel is now strong enough that the White House feels a need to downplay the assistance rather than emphasize it.
Obama Tilts Right
Currently, Obama is on record supporting sending up to $30 billion in unconditional military aid to Israel over the next 10 years. Such a total would represent a 25% increase in the already large-scale arms shipments to Israeli forces under the Bush administration.
Obama has thus far failed to realize that the problem in the Middle East is that there are too many deadly weapons in the region, not too few. Instead of simply wanting Israel to have an adequate deterrent against potential military threats, Obama insists the United States should guarantee that Israel maintain a qualitative military advantage. Thanks to this overwhelming advantage over its neighbors, Israeli forces were able to launch devastating wars against Israel’s Palestinian and Lebanese neighbors in recent years.
If Israel were in a strategically vulnerable situation, Obama’s hard-line position might be understandable. But Israel already has vastly superior conventional military capabilities relative to any combination of armed forces in the region, not to mention a nuclear deterrent.
However, Obama has failed to even acknowledge Israel’s nuclear arsenal of at least 200-300 weapons, which has been documented for decades. When Hearst reporter Helen Thomas asked at his first press conference if he could name any Middle Eastern countries that possess nuclear weapons, he didn’t even try to answer the question. Presumably, Obama knows Israel has these weapons and is located in the Middle East. However, acknowledging Israel’s arsenal could complicate his planned arms transfers since it would place Israel in violation of the 1976 Symington Amendment, which restricts U.S. military support for governments which develop nuclear weapons.
Another major obstacle to Amnesty’s calls for suspending military assistance is Congress. Republican leaders like Representatives John Boehner (OH) and Eric Cantor (VA) have long rejected calls by human rights groups to link U.S. military aid to adherence to internationally recognized human rights standards. But so have such Democratic leaders, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who are outspoken supporters of unconditional military aid to Israel. Even progressive Democratic Representative Barney Frank (MA), at a press conference on February 24 pushing his proposal to reduce military spending by 25%, dismissed a question regarding conditioning Israel’s military aid package to human rights concerns.
Indeed, in an apparent effort to support their militaristic agenda and to discredit reputable human rights groups that documented systematic Israeli attacks against non-military targets, these congressional leaders and an overwhelming bipartisan majority of their colleagues have gone on record praising “Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and…efforts to prevent civilian casualties.” Although Obama remained silent while Israel was engaged in war crimes against the civilian population of Gaza, Pelosi and other congressional leaders rushed to Israel’s defense in the face of international condemnation.
Obama’s Defense of Israeli Attacks on Civilians
Following the 2006 conflict between Israeli armed forces and the Hezbollah militia, in which both sides committed war crimes by engaging in attacks against populated civilian areas, then-Senator Obama defended Israel’s actions and criticized Hezbollah, even though Israel was actually responsible for far more civilian deaths. In an apparent attempt to justify Israeli bombing of civilian population centers, Obama claimed Hezbollah had used “innocent people as shields.”
This charge directly challenged a series of reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. These reports found that while Hezbollah did have some military equipment close to some civilian areas, the Lebanese Islamist militia had not forced civilians to remain in or around military targets in order to deter Israel from attacking those targets. I sent Obama spokesperson Ben LaBolt a copy of an exhaustive 249-page Human Rights Watch report that didn’t find a single case — out of 600 civilian deaths investigated — of Hezbollah using human shields. I asked him if Obama had any empirical evidence that countered these findings.
In response, LaBolt provided me with a copy of a short report from a right-wing Israeli think tank with close ties to the Israeli government headed by the former head of the Israeli intelligence service. The report appeared to use exclusively Israeli government sources, in contrast to the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports, which were based upon forensic evidence as well as multiple verified eyewitness accounts by both Lebanese living in the areas under attack as well as experienced monitors (unaffiliated with any government or political organization) on the ground. Despite several follow-up emails asking for more credible sources, LaBolt never got back to me.
Not Good for Israel
The militaristic stance by Congress and the Obama administration is hardly doing Israel a favor. Indeed, U.S. military assistance to Israel has nothing to do with Israel’s legitimate security needs. Rather than commencing during the country’s first 20 years of existence, when Israel was most vulnerable strategically, major U.S. military and economic aid didn’t even begin until after the 1967 War, when Israel proved itself to be far stronger than any combination of Arab armies and after Israeli occupation forces became the rulers of a large Palestinian population.
If all U.S. aid to Israel were immediately halted, Israel wouldn’t be under a significantly greater military threat than it is today for many years. Israel has both a major domestic arms industry and an existing military force far more capable and powerful than any conceivable combination of opposing forces.
Under Obama, U.S. military aid to Israel will likely continue be higher than it was back in the 1970s, when Egypt’s massive and well-equipped armed forces threatened war, Syria’s military rapidly expanded with advanced Soviet weaponry, armed factions of the PLO launched terrorist attacks into Israel, Jordan still claimed the West Bank and stationed large numbers of troops along its border and demarcation line with Israel, and Iraq embarked on a vast program of militarization. Why does the Obama administration believe that Israel needs more military aid today than it did back then? Since that time, Israel has maintained a longstanding peace treaty with Egypt and a large demilitarized and internationally monitored buffer zone. Syria’s armed forces were weakened by the collapse of their former Soviet patron and its government has been calling for a resumption of peace talks. The PLO is cooperating closely with Israeli security. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel with full normalized relations. And two major wars and a decade of strict international sanctions have devastated Iraq’s armed forces, which is in any case now under close U.S. supervision.
Obama has pledged continued military aid to Israel a full decade into the future not in terms of how that country’s strategic situation may evolve, but in terms of a fixed-dollar amount. If his real interest were to provide adequate support for Israeli defense, he wouldn’t promise $30 billion in additional military aid. He would simply pledge to maintain adequate military assistance to maintain Israel’s security needs, which would presumably decline if the peace process moves forward. However, Israel’s actual defense needs don’t appear to be the issue.
According to late Israeli major general and Knesset member Matti Peled, — who once served as the IDF’s chief procurement officer, such fixed amounts are arrived at “out of thin air.” In addition, every major arms transfer to Israel creates a new demand by Arab states — most of which can pay hard currency through petrodollars — for additional U.S. weapons to challenge Israel. Indeed, Israel announced its acceptance of a proposed Middle Eastern arms freeze in 1991, but the U.S. government, eager to defend the profits of U.S. arms merchants, effectively blocked it. Prior to the breakdown in the peace process in 2001, 78 senators wrote President Bill Clinton insisting that the United States send additional military aid to Israel on the grounds of massive arms procurement by Arab states, neglecting to note that 80% of those arms transfers were of U.S. origin. Were they really concerned about Israeli security, they would have voted to block these arms transfers to the Gulf monarchies and other Arab dictatorships.
The resulting arms race has been a bonanza for U.S. arms manufacturers. The right-wing “pro-Israel” political action committees certainly wield substantial clout with their contributions to congressional candidates supportive of large-scale military and economic aid to Israel. But the Aerospace Industry Association and other influential military interests that promote massive arms transfers to the Middle East and elsewhere are even more influential, contributing several times what the “pro-Israel” PACs contribute.
The huge amount of U.S. aid to the Israeli government hasn’t been as beneficial to Israel as many would suspect. U.S. military aid to Israel is, in fact, simply a credit line to American arms manufacturers, and actually ends up costing Israel two to three times that amount in operator training, staffing, maintenance, and other related costs. The overall impact is to increase Israeli military dependency on the United States — and amass record profits for U.S. arms merchants.
The U.S. Arms Export Control Act requires a cutoff of military aid to recipient countries if they’re found to be using American weapons for purposes other than internal security or legitimate self-defense and/or their use could “increase the possibility of an outbreak or escalation of conflict.” This might explain Obama’s refusal to acknowledge Israel’s disproportionate use of force and high number of civilian casualties.
Betraying His Constituency
The $30 billion in taxpayer funds to support Israeli militarism isn’t a huge amount of money compared with what has already been wasted in the Iraq War, bailouts for big banks, and various Pentagon boondoggles. Still, this money could more profitably go toward needs at home, such as health care, education, housing, and public transportation.
It’s therefore profoundly disappointing that there has been so little public opposition to Obama’s dismissal of Amnesty International’s calls to suspend aid to Israel. Some activists I contacted appear to have fallen into a fatalistic view that the “Zionist lobby” is too powerful to challenge and that Obama is nothing but a helpless pawn of powerful Jewish interests. Not only does this simplistic perspective border on anti-Semitism, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Any right-wing militaristic lobby will appear all-powerful if there isn’t a concerted effort from the left to challenge it.
Obama’s supporters must demand that he live up to his promise to change the mindset in Washington that has contributed to such death and destruction in the Middle East. The new administration must heed calls by Amnesty International and other human rights groups to condition military aid to Israel and all other countries that don’t adhere to basic principles of international humanitarian law.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/obama_and_israels_military_still_arm-in-arm
Feinstein: Bad Choice for Intelligence
Ignoring the pleas of those calling for a more credible figure, Senate Democrats have instead chosen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to lead the Senate Committee on Intelligence. Feinstein was among those who falsely claimed in 2002 — despite the lack of any apparent credible evidence — that Saddam Hussein had somehow reconstituted Iraq’s arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, as well as its nuclear weapons program.
She used this supposed threat to justify her vote in October 2002 to grant President George W. Bush the unprecedented authority to invade Iraq. Most congressional Democrats voted against the resolution. So it is particularly disturbing that Democrats would award the coveted Intelligence Committee chair to someone from the party’s right-wing minority.
She took this extreme hawkish position out of her own predilection, not because of political pressure. Indeed, Senator Feinstein acknowledged at the time of her vote that calls and emails to her office were overwhelmingly opposed to her supporting Bush’s war plans. She decided to ignore her constituents and vote in favor of the resolution anyway.
Background to the Vote
Public opinion polls in the fall of 2002 showed a majority of Americans would support a U.S. invasion of Iraq only if it posed a serious threat to the national security of the United States. Unfortunately for Senator Feinstein and others eager for the United States to conquer that oil-rich country, Iraq wasn’t a threat to the United States. Though Iraq once had an arsenal of chemical weapons as well as an active chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons development program, these were all destroyed or otherwise eliminated by the mid-1990s, as were their missiles and other delivery systems. With strict sanctions prohibiting imports of requisite technologies and raw materials, and a lack of adequate internal capacity to produce them in Iraq, it was physically impossible for the Iraqis to have reconstituted its “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs).
Former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had briefed Senator Feinstein before the 2002 vote, and presented evidence that Iraq had achieved at least qualitative disarmament and could in no way be a threat to U.S. national security. According to Ritter, “I had her look me in the eye and I asked her if she had seen any credible evidence contradicting my conclusions. She said she had not.”
Similarly, I was among a number of scholars, arms control analysts, and other constituents who briefed her staff on how — given the ongoing strict international sanctions imposed on that country and rigorous UN inspections through the end of 1998 — there was no way for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to have reconstituted his biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs. Citing reports from the UN, reputable think tanks, and recognized arms control experts — as well as articles from respected peer-reviewed academic journals — we thought we had made a convincing case that Iraq was no longer a threat to the United States or its neighbors.
Despite all this, Senator Feinstein insisted that Iraq somehow remained a “consequential threat” to the national security of the United States and claimed that Iraq still possessed biological and chemical weapons. And, in an effort to defend Bush’s call for a U.S. invasion, she tried to discredit the UN inspections regime that had successfully disarmed Iraq by falsely claiming that “arms inspections, alone, will not force disarmament.”
Similarly, even though the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency had correctly noted in 1998 that Iraq’s nuclear program had been completely eliminated, Feinstein also falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein “is engaged in developing nuclear weapons.”
When asked about such exaggerated claims regarding Iraq’s military prowess, she insisted that she was somehow “privy to information that those in California are not.” However, despite repeated requests to her office to make public what she was supposedly privy to, the only information her office provided has been the White House’s summary of a 2003 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Based on the testimony of a handful of disreputable Iraqi exiles, this NIE met with widespread derision at the time of its release for its clearly inaccurate and politicized content.
Feinstein’s supporters insist that her false claims about Iraqi WMDs were an honest mistake. But Ritter and other critics argue that it wasn’t just ignorance and stupidity that led Feinstein to make these false statements about Iraq’s military capabilities. She may very well have lied about the WMDs in order to frighten the public into supporting a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country. Whether out of deceit or unawareness, however, Feinstein is clearly not suited to chair the committee.
Consequences of the Vote
I was also among a number of scholars specializing in the Middle East who warned Senator Feinstein that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would likely spark a disastrous armed insurgency, sectarian violence, and an increase in anti-American extremism in the Middle East and beyond. Despite this awareness of the likely consequences, however, she insisted that the United States should invade Iraq anyway. Such a decision raises serious questions as to whether she has the ability to rationally assess the costs and benefits of national security policies, which someone chairing the Intelligence Committee presumably should possess.
If her real goal was to protect our country from Iraq’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” however, she would have presumably called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops once they invaded and occupied Iraq and discovered that there really weren’t such weapons after all. It should have also been obvious that the longer U.S. troops stayed in that country, with its long tradition of resistance to foreign invaders, the more likely it would provoke a major armed insurgency and the rise of extremists groups. Despite this, Feinstein called on American troops to remain in Iraq for more than four years after the invasion. She voted to send hundreds of billions of dollars worth of taxpayers’ money to support Bush’s war effort even as California sank deeper and deeper into fiscal crisis.
During this occupation, U.S. authorities helped to rewrite the country’s economic laws to allow American corporations to take over Iraqi industries and repatriate 100% of profits. Under U.S. tutelage, the new Iraqi government slashed corporate taxes and provided generous oil concessions to American conglomerates. In this way, the war has been extremely profitable for some giant corporations. Among these were the firms URS and Perini, both of which Feinstein’s husband served as the majority owner. The Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, under her leadership, steered government contracts to these very companies.
The Democratic Party’s decision to appoint as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee someone with such a history of dubious judgment on intelligence matters is hardly new. The party chose Jay Rockefeller (WV) — who is leaving his post to chair the Commerce Committee — to chair the Intelligence Committee in January 2007, although he also made false claims about Iraq’s WMD programs similar to those of Feinstein in order to justify his vote in favor of the invasion.
In the world of Senate Democrats, therefore, it appears that the quickest path to leadership in Intelligence comes from getting things wrong.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/feinstein_bad_choice_for_intelligence
The Cooties Effect
During the McCarthy era of the 1950s, in what became known as “guilt by association,” simply being friends with someone suspected of being a Communist could ruin your career. Today that’s been extended to guilt by spatial proximity, which could appropriately be called the “cooties effect.” If you sit on the same board, have appeared on the same panel, or otherwise have been in close physical proximity to someone deemed undesirable, you therefore must have been infected by their politics or, at minimum, have no problems with things they may have done in their past.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain and his runningmate Sarah Palin have adopted such a strategy, which Hillary Clinton originated during the primary campaign. They have raised alarms over the possibility that Barack Obama may have picked up radical terrorist cooties from Bill Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago, who was active in the Weather Underground nearly 40 years ago.
Palin insists that Obama sees America as “being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” Similarly, a recently released McCain ad declared, “Obama worked with terrorist William Ayers when it was convenient,” a charge that Bob Shrum, a senior fellow at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, notes “all but alleges that the candidate was there planting bombs.” Palin defended such attacks on her Democratic rivals, arguing “We gotta start telling people what the other side represents.”
As investigated by The New York Times, Politifact and other media, the links between Obama and Ayers are so minimal that it defies rationality how — in the midst of two wars and the greatest financial crisis in generations — this became a major campaign issue just four weeks before the general election. But it did.
Though it’s easy to dismiss such attacks as absurd, as they certainly are, otherwise rational people can sometimes fall prey to such twisted logic. I know. During the past year, some colleagues of mine and I have been subjected to a remarkably similar smear campaign by some elements of the far left, who have effectively accused us of picking up imperialist cooties through similarly tenuous contacts. And I have seen the damage such accusations can have.
Sitting on the Same Boards
I serve as an academic advisor for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), a strictly nonpartisan, nonprofit educational foundation that promotes the study and utilization of nonmilitary strategies by civilian-based movements to establish and defend human rights, social justice, and democracy. ICNC maintains a strict policy of accepting no grants, contracts, or funding of any kind from any government or government-related organization.
A little over a year ago, however, a series of articles in Green Left Weekly and other publications began accusing ICNC of having links to the CIA. The basis of this allegation apparently came as a result of ICNC President Jack DuVall’s “connection to former CIA head James Woolsey.” In a remarkable parallel to the right-wing attacks over Obama’s service on the same nonprofit board as Ayers, DuVall’s “connection” to Woolsey, as it turns out, consisted of the two of them overlapping for less than a year back in 2001-2002 on the board of the Arlington Institute, a think tank. By all accounts, they were both present at the same time for only two meetings of that board and they never once engaged in a one-on-one conversation. There is not, nor has there ever been, any personal connection between the two of them.
The article also tried to discredit ICNC through one of its senior advisors, Shaazka Beyerle — a Canadian human-rights activist best known for her work in support of the Palestinian cause and of women’s rights movements — for having served alongside the now-World Bank President Robert Zoellick on the board of the European Institute, a public policy forum on transatlantic relations.
Australian blogger Michael Barker and other conspiracy theorists have also tried to demonstrate that ICNC is part of an imperialist plot because cofounder Peter Ackerman’s wife, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, serves on the board of the International Crisis Group and thereby “rubs boardroom shoulders” with George Soros, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Wesley Clark, and Kenneth Adelman. Further alleged proof of imperialist cooties infestations of ICNC through Ackerman’s wife is that she serves on the board of both Human Rights Watch and the International Center for Journalists, which Barker accuses of having links to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which Barker then insists “maintains close ties with the CIA.” This illustrates, according to this theory, just how contagious this kind of infection can be: CIA cooties are contracted by the NED, which are then spread to Human Rights Watch, which are thereby picked up by board member Leedom-Ackerman, who passes them on to her husband, who then infects ICNC.
I responded by pointing out the absurdity of attacking ICNC and its work as a result of such tenuous connections. Having worked with both DuVall and Beyerle, I could state clearly that neither had picked up any imperialist cooties despite their having been in the same room as Woolsey and Zoellick.
The reaction was swift: John Bellamy Foster, editor of the Monthly Review, wrote a response that noted that Ackerman is a director of U.S. Institute of Peace, an ideologically diverse organization that Foster nevertheless labeled as “right-wing.” Foster then argued that USIP “is connected directly through its chair, J. Robinson West, to the National Petroleum Council, which includes CEOs of all the major U.S. energy corporations.” Foster told his readers that “if all of this isn’t reason to begin to ask searching questions” regarding “Zunes’s ICNC and its role in the U.S. imperial system, we don’t know what is.” As a result, he added that — despite my having been an outspoken anti-imperialist activist, writer, and scholar since the 1970s — I should decide “whose side” I am on in the struggle against imperialism.
Similar attacks against me, ICNC and related organizations and individuals soon began circulating throughout the left-wing blogosphere, including Counterpunch, ZNet, Mathaba, MRZine, VenezuelaAnalysis and scores of other websites and list-serves. A number of speaking invitations I had scheduled were rescinded. As far away as Europe, word began circulating that I had sold out and was now working with the Bush administration’s “democracy-promotion” agenda.
One apparently does not have to be on a board to get somebody’s cooties. Just as Obama has been attacked for the fact that he and Ayers “appeared together at various public engagements,” my appearing on the same panel or speaking at the same conference of someone with alleged imperialist cooties can apparently lead to an infestation as well. For example, my relationship with Bob Helvey — a retired U.S. Army officer who has subsequently embraced nonviolent action as an alternative to war but has been falsely accused of plotting the overthrow of governments from Serbia to Venezuela — has been limited to twice being a speaker at the same conference. Nevertheless, the prominent leftist Canadian blogger Stephen Gowans insists that that somehow makes him “an associate” of mine.
Similarly, just as the upset over the $200 contribution Ayers made in the spring of 2001 to Obama’s campaign for re-election to the Illinois State Senate is indicative of concern over the spread of cooties through money, it has recently been alleged that I have picked up imperialist cooties through a research grant I received nearly 20 years ago. Gowans has argued that since I once served as a fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, which “receives funding from Congress, and has a board of directors appointed by the President . . . and [other] . . . advocates of the pursuit of U.S. corporate and investor interests abroad,” I therefore must be an apologist for U.S. imperialism. In reality, what made me a “fellow” is that I received a one-semester non-residential fellowship back in 1989 when I was a grad student in order to conduct research on the Western Sahara. My findings were highly-critical of U.S. policy and quite sympathetic with that country’s national liberation struggle led by the leftist Frente Polisario. Despite this, leftist blogger Gilles d’Aymery — who refers to me as a “neoliberal agent” as a result of my questioning Gowans’ assertions — insists that my receiving this grant from a congressionally funded institute “should tell anyone that the government approves of the work one does. When the United States Institute of Peace grants you some money, it says loud and clear that your work serves the elites.”
The ICNC and Nonviolence
The mission of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict is to help educate the global public on the history and ideas of strategic nonviolent conflict through video programming, books and articles as well as conducting meetings and briefings, co-sponsoring conferences, and making available articles and features to encourage international institutions, decision makers and activists to support civilian-based, nonviolent movements as an alternative to war. As a veteran of a series of nonviolent action campaigns here in the United States against imperialism, militarism, economic injustice and environmental destruction, I have been asked to play an active role in a series of ICNC-supported workshops in response to requests by activists groups from around the world to promote a better understanding of the history and dynamics of strategic nonviolent conflict. Over the past two years, for example, I’ve assisted in such workshops attended by Egyptians struggling against the Mubarak regime, Palestinians challenging the Israeli occupation, West Papuans resisting the Indonesian occupation, Maldivians struggling against their corrupt and autocratic government, Western Saharans challenging the Moroccan occupation, Burmese active in their country’s pro-democracy struggle, Guatemalan Indians struggling against violence and repression, and Mexican-Americans fighting for immigrants’ rights.
Unable to find anything wrong with the actual work of ICNC, however, far-left critics still insist that the cootie infestation must have somehow affected our work anyway. For example, Gowans warns readers of people like me, who “hide the pursuit of U.S. foreign policy objectives behind a high-sounding commitment to peace,” insisting that “genuine progressives and anti-imperialists should carefully scrutinize the backgrounds” of those who are as “tightly connected to Western governments and ruling class activist foundations as Zunes is.” Despite the bulk of ICNC’s international outreach efforts being with those struggling against regimes backed by the U.S. government, Gowans insists that what “the ICNC and Stephen Zunes are all about” is “nonviolent direct activism in the service of U.S. foreign policy goals” in support of opposition movements beholden to “U.S. and Western governments and Western ruling class foundations.” (As someone who has been listed by such prominent conservatives as Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, and Sean Hannity as being among the most “dangerous” and “anti-American” left-wing professors in the country, such charges against me have more than a little irony.)
Like many of the recent attacks on Obama from the right about his alleged “links to terrorists,” there are some on the far left who are quite willing to simply make stuff up in a desperate effort to try to prove that the cooties effect is real. For example, Gowans — in his widely-circulated article Stephen Zunes and the Struggle for Overseas Profits — claims that ICNC has been “heavily involved in successful and ongoing regime change operations, including in Yugoslavia,” which he insisted was a revolution “Zunes and his colleagues assist[ed].” This charge comes despite the fact that neither I nor ICNC has ever been involved in “regime change” of any kind, including the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, which took place two years prior to ICNC being founded in 2002. Indeed, no one in ICNC’s leadership had even been to that country at that time. Other bizarre fabrications in that article include the claim that “wherever Washington seeks to oust governments that pursue economically nationalist or socialist policies, you’ll find Helvey (and perhaps Zunes as well) holding seminars on nonviolent direct action.”
Even more strangely, because of the insistence that I and everyone else with ICNC has been infected with imperialist cooties, Gowans therefore assumes that I have never engaged in “training U.S…grassroots activists to use nonviolent direct action to stop the machinery of war” and that my work has been exclusively “directed outward, not on his own government, but on the governments Washington and ruling class think-tanks want overthrown.” In reality, for more than 30 years I have been training American antiwar activists in nonviolent direct action, working with groups like Peace Action, War Resisters League, Movement for a New Society, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Ruckus Society, Direct Action Network, and Direct Action against the War. Of the more than 100 seminars, trainings, workshops, and related events designed to educate people on nonviolent action with which I have been involved, only three have primarily consisted of participants from countries with governments opposed by the United States, approximately a dozen have consisted primarily of those from foreign countries with governments supported by the United States, and the remaining 85% or more have been for Americans struggling against U.S. government and corporate policies.
Any look at my personal history, the books and articles I have written, and the speeches and interviews I have given demonstrates where I’m actually coming from politically, just as any similar examination of Obama’s record disproves the current right-wing attacks. Despite this, ideologues of the far left and right argue that what is important is not what someone has actually done or said, but whether someone has — either directly or through several degrees of separation — had contact with someone with nefarious political viewpoints and actions, either now or in their past.
Prominent leftists such as Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn have tried to defend ICNC and other promoters of strategic nonviolent action. But rather than reconsidering their accusations, far-left conspiracy buffs simply raise the alarm that the cooties epidemic has widened to include them as well. For example, prominent British Green Party activist Richard Roper has claimed that it “poses the question where Chomsky, Zinn, Zunes, et al. actually stand. At the moment, unless they change their position, they stand with the forces of reaction, imperialism, and [the] drive for global domination.” Similarly, leftist playwright John Steppling insists that my denial that ICNC and similar groups have imperialist cooties makes me an “apologist and a deeply compromised reactionary — and one wouldn’t at all be surprised to find this creep on the State Department payroll.” Lack of any evidence to support any of their charges of alleged ICNC involvement in various CIA intrigues is simply attributed to government secrecy. All the “evidence” that is needed, apparently, is from the cooties effect.
Ramifications
It’s quite disturbing that a major party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees, along with many of their supporters, are now engaging in smear tactics and guilt-by-spatial-proximity in their attacks against Obama. Also troubling is that such attacks are being communicated as fact on the country’s largest cable news channel and in a #1 best selling book, and are thereby being taken seriously by tens of millions of ordinary Americans.
It will be difficult to counter such desperate right-wing efforts, however, much less work for the more radical changes that are needed in U.S. policies at home and abroad, if elements of the left engage in similar tactics. In an era of all-too-real conspiracies emanating from the Bush administration, such attacks have led many well-meaning if uninformed leftists to buy into them.
Such attacks can have an impact. Although the vast majority of Americans haven’t bought into the disinformation directed at Obama, many voters who otherwise would have supported him are now reluctant to do so out of concerns that the Democratic nominee really is closely associated with terrorists. Similarly, while dozens of civic and dissident groups struggling for rights and social justice still seek ICNC’s assistance, the spurious accusations against ICNC have led a number of others engaging in strategic nonviolent action that could have benefited from the group’s resources to distance themselves out of concerns for being seen as associated with an alleged CIA-linked group.
It’s a sad testimony about that political discourse in both the presidential campaign and within the left has been essentially reduced to the level of schoolyard taunts about catching cooties from someone you don’t like. Perhaps this is a reflection of the sense of powerlessness felt by people from across the political spectrum when so much feels beyond their control. Perhaps people are afraid to recognize the real hope represented by the Obama campaign nationally and the dramatic growth of nonviolent action campaigns globally (even though both may still fall well short of bringing about the more fundamental changes that are so desperately needed). Any chance of creating truly democratic and just societies will necessarily remain remote, however, until people are willing to reject defamatory accusations from ideologues, and judge individuals and movements objectively by their merit, real deeds, and sincere aspirations.