Distorting Obama’s Views on Israel

Barack Obama has alienated key sectors of his progressive base with statements and policy proposals regarding Israel in which he allies himself with right-wing Republicans.

These have included: rejecting calls by human rights activists to condition military aid to Israel on an improvement in the government’s human rights record; defending Israel’s massive 2006 assault against Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, which killed more than 800 civilians; disputing findings by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other reputable human rights organizations citing Israeli violations of international humanitarian law; calling for an undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel without supporting the right of the Palestinian-populated eastern half of the city to be the capital of a Palestinian state; making exaggerated claims about Iran’s threats towards Israel while refusing to express any concerns regarding Israel’s threats towards Iran; and bringing in Dennis Ross — a prominent supporter of Israeli government policies — as his principal Middle East advisor.

Nevertheless, the Republican Jewish Coalition has launched a series of ads in Washington Jewish Week, Detroit Jewish News, and other major Jewish newspapers across the United States claiming that the stridently pro-Israel Obama is actually “reckless,” “naïve,” and “dangerous” when it comes to Israel and its security. One ad not-so-subtly warns of “tragic outcomes for the Jewish people” in a headline over a photo of Obama speaking in Berlin.

Guilt by Association

One major point of the ads is to declare guilt-by-association. Many of these efforts are as tenuous as the Republican attacks regarding Obama’s connections with education professor and former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers. One ad, for example, is dominated by a photograph of Obama next to a photograph of the right-wing political commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. The ad quotes the Anti-Defamation League as saying Buchanan “publicly espouses racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-immigrant views. Yet, Buchanan calls his views on Israel, Iran and the Palestinians the same as Obama’s.” In reality, Buchanan never claimed that the staunchly pro-Israel Obama has the same views as him. Instead, he has said that on certain specific questions — such as negotiating with Iran and recognizing the suffering of the Palestinians — he agrees with Obama more than McCain.

Another ad falsely claims that “Barack Obama surrounds himself with a number of individuals and advisors who are hostile to Israel and American Jews,” warning readers “You know a man by the company he keeps.” Every example given, however, either grossly misrepresents the political positions of the people in question and/or exaggerates their role in the campaign.

For example, former Democratic Congressman David Bonior, along with Middle East scholar and former peace negotiator Robert Malley, are labeled as “anti-Israel.” In reality, while they have been critical of Israel’s illegal colonization of occupied Arab territories and some conduct by Israeli officials in negotiations, both have steadfastly upheld Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, and have emphasized that their support for a two-state solution is based in large part because it’s necessary for Israel’s survival.

Despite supporting tens of billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional military and economic aid to Israel while in House of Representatives, Bonior is labeled in one ad as “a stalwart opponent to Israel.” The ad also claims Bonior “refused to stand by Israel while in Congress, after repeated terrorist attacks.” In reality, Rep. Bonior strongly and consistently condemned terrorist attacks by Palestinian extremists. His refusal to “stand by Israel” was in reference to his opposition to a resolution introduced by right-wing House Republican leader Tom DeLay which defended Israel’s massive April 2002 military operations in the West Bank, which Amnesty International reported as appearing “as though the main aim was to punish all Palestinians” through actions “which had no clear or obvious military necessity,” but which the resolution claimed were “aimed only at dismantling the terrorist infrastructure.”

Malley — who worked with President Bill Clinton at the 2000 Camp David summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasir Arafat — is further attacked as “a Palestinian apologist” for pointing out that Israel shared the blame with the Palestinians for the breakdown of the peace talks. Ironically, Malley has had virtually no contact with the Obama campaign and whatever limited ties he did have were formally severed when it was learned that, as part of a conflict resolution initiative through the International Crisis Group, he had met with some civilian Hamas leaders.

The ad even goes after two of the more conservative members of the national security establishment who are allied with the Obama campaign, whom the ads also falsely claim are “anti-Israel.” Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski — that one ad, in citing his opposition to Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon, refers to as having “an aggressive dislike for Israel” — has had only a very marginal advisory role and has apparently never talked with Obama about Israel. General Tony McPeak is attacked for having expressed concern back in 2003 over how right-wing American Jews had made it difficult for the United States to more aggressively pursue the peace process. Obama strongly denounced that statement. McPeak himself is actually a supporter of Israel and has developed close relationships with top Israeli security officials.

Another example of the alleged “company he keeps” is Obama’s now-estranged former pastor Jeremiah Wright, whom the ads refer to as an “an anti-Semite.” The Jerusalem Post has argued that the allegation is completely unsubstantiated, noting how, despite some statements critical of Israel, “Wright is not known to have targeted Jews and had friendly relations with Chicago Jewish groups.”

Ironically, the person who has emerged as Obama’s principal advisor on Middle East issues is Dennis Ross, a former top official in the senior Bush administration, an analyst for Fox News, and a fellow at the right-wing Washington Institute on Near East Policy. Ross, long a staunch defender of Israeli policies, was a leading supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and remains an outspoken hawk on Iran.

Misrepresenting Obama on Iran

Two of these ads in Jewish newspapers falsely claim that Obama said he would meet personally with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. In reality, Obama said he would meet with “Iranian leaders,” which is in reference not to the Iranian president — who does not wield much real political power — but to the less extremist Iranian clerical leadership, who actually run the country and control its military.

One of these ads misleadingly claims that “Obama is opposed to critical legislation labeling Iran’s revolutionary guard a terrorist organization.” This particular piece of legislation was a non-binding amendment, so it could hardly be considered “critical legislation.” Obama opposed it because other language in the amendment raised concerns that it effectively gave the Bush administration a green light to attack Iran.

More importantly, Obama actually has supported labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Ironically, this puts Obama to the right of the Bush administration, which has been unwilling to designate the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group. The government has instead correctly recognized that this would be an irresponsibly sweeping characterization of the largest branch of Iran’s armed forces. (The Bush administration only designated the al-Quds Force — a sub-unit of the Revolutionary Guards that has indeed engaged in terrorist operations, but doesn’t always operate with the full knowledge and consent of the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards or even Iran’s central government — as a terrorist group.) In short, these Republican ads are criticizing Obama for taking a position he actually opposes but which has actually been adopted by the Bush administration.

The ads quote out-of-context an Obama statement in which the Democratic nominee challenged the hyperbole regarding the Iranian threat by noting how less serious it was compared to the Soviet Union, which once possessed thousands of nuclear missiles capable of striking the United States. According to one ad, this shows that “Obama has not shown the wisdom, experience or strength to stand up to the people who would do us harm.”

Rather than being “soft on Iran,” Obama has taken increasingly hawkish positions. He has emphasized that any talks with Iran would be focused on ending Iran’s nuclear program and its support of terrorist groups and that such talks would serve as a step in building international support for imposing even tougher sanctions and other measures targeting Iran. He has sponsored legislation that would protect pensions that divest from companies dealing with Iran from lawsuits. And he has also refused to rule out unilateral military action against that country.

Misrepresenting Obama on Jerusalem

Another ad cited a speech in which Obama called for an undivided Jerusalem but claims that he shortly thereafter “changed his tune” as a result of “facing criticism from the Palestinian Authority and Arab nations” by then saying that the future of Jerusalem should be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians. The ad declared that therefore “His shifting views on Jerusalem are reckless.”

The ad is misleading on several counts.

First of all, the main criticism he faced from his initial statement was from progressive Democratic Party activists — including prominent liberal Jews — concerned that he was endorsing Israel’s illegal annexation of Palestinian-populated occupied East Jerusalem. The annexation not only violates international law and a series of unanimous UN Security Council resolutions, but endorsing such a predetermined status precluding any Palestinian control would effectively end any hope of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

In addition, there is no contradiction in saying that a city should be physically undivided and that it could be under two sovereigns. Furthermore, the view that the future of Jerusalem would need to be decided through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians has been U.S. policy under the Bush administration as well as previous administrations. Indeed, the United States is obligated to uphold this position as the guarantor of the 1993 Memorandum of Understanding between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Obama’s Hawkish Positions Not Helping

Despite the ad campaign and similar tactics, polls indicate American Jews support Obama by a more than 2:1 margin. However, even assuming an Obama victory with overwhelming Jewish support, by raising doubts within the Jewish community and beyond over Obama’s commitment to Israel’s legitimate security needs, it will make it all the more difficult politically for an Obama administration to take the necessary steps to apply the needed pressure to make a peace settlement possible. As a result, the dovish pro-Israel group J Street has mounted a campaign against the Republican attacks.

Apologists for Obama have insisted that his hard-line positions on issues related to Israel don’t indicate actual right-wing proclivities on his own part regarding foreign policy. Instead, it’s argued, they are simply a means of protecting himself from being targeted by the Republicans for being anti-Israel. However, Obama is being attacked for being “anti-Israel” anyway.

For example, Obama acknowledged last year how the Palestinians had suffered more than anybody as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Soon thereafter, he insisted that their suffering wasn’t because of the ethnic cleansing suffered at the hands of Israel in 1948 or the more than 40 years of Israeli occupation, colonization, and repression, but “from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region.” Though Obama’s defenders have insisted that his “clarification” was necessary to prevent right-wing attacks, the original quote without the later clarification is still highlighted in this recent series of ads.

Rather than being necessary for getting him to the White House, Obama’s right-wing positions regarding Israel and its neighbors are actually hurting him. They have become a major target of Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney and independent candidate Ralph Nader, who correctly observe that their more evenhanded positions are supported by a majority of the American people, and have weakened his support within the peace and human rights community.

Meanwhile, as indicated by this recent series of Republican ads, they’ve done nothing to stop attacks from the Republicans.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/distorting_obamas_views_on_israel

Biden’s Foreign Policy ‘Experience’

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s choice of Joseph Biden as his running mate has drawn sharp criticism from many Democrats as a result of the Delaware senator’s support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, his flagrantly false claims about the alleged Iraqi threat, and the abuse of his position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to suppress antiwar testimony before Congress prior to the invasion.

A look at the senator’s 35-year record on Capitol Hill indicates that Iraq was not an isolated case and that Biden has frequently allied with more hawkish Democrats and Republicans. This is of particular significance, since Obama and other leading Democrats have acknowledged that the choice of Biden was largely because of his foreign policy leadership, thereby raising concerns that, as president, Obama may end up appointing people to important foreign affairs and security matters of a similar ideological orientation.

At the same time, Biden has not consistently allied with neoconservative intellectuals or the unreconstructed militarists who have so heavily influenced the foreign policies of the Bush administration and the foreign policy positions of Republican presidential nominee John McCain. Indeed, Biden has often taken some rather nuanced positions and, rather than being a right-wing ideologue, is generally recognized by his colleagues as being knowledgeable and thoughtful in addressing complex foreign policy issues, even if often taking more hard-line positions than the increasingly progressive base of his party.

For example, he has called for diplomatic engagement with the Iranian government and — unlike Clinton and some other Democratic senators — voted against the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which was widely interpreted as potentially paving the way for war with Iran. Biden has challenged the Republicans’ unconstitutional insistence that the executive has the power to wage war without consent of Congress, even going so far as to threaten impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush if he attacked Iran without congressional authorization. He has also raised strong objections to some of the Bush administration’s efforts to develop new nuclear weapons systems and abrogate existing arms-control treaties. He helped lead the fight against Bush’s nomination of the far-right John Bolton to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

During the 1980s, Biden opposed aid to the Nicaraguan Contras and vigorously challenged Reagan administration officials during the Iran-Contra hearings (in contrast to the tepid leadership of the special committee chairman, Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.) He was also a cosponsor of a 1997 resolution that would have effectively banned the U.S. production and deployment of landmines, an initiative taken despite objections from the Clinton administration.

Yet Biden’s progressive foreign policy positions have often been the exception rather than the norm. In fact, his positions have sometimes been so inconsistent as to defy clear explanation. For example, Biden is one of the very few members of Congress who voted against authorizing the 1991 Gulf War — which the UN Security Council legitimized as an act of collective security against the illegal Iraqi conquest of Kuwait — but then voted in favor of authorizing the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which the UN Security Council didn’t approve, and was an illegitimate war of aggression.

Center-Right Agenda

On most foreign policy issues, Biden has allied with congressional centrists and conservatives. For example, despite all the recent media attention given to Biden’s working-class roots and his support for labor, and despite his more recent opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), Biden has largely embraced corporate-backed neoliberal globalization, particularly during the 1990s. Biden voted to ratify the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), which have both proven so devastating for American workers and have so greatly contributed to increased inequality and environmental damage worldwide.

Despite Biden’s support for the principle of “free trade,” even with some governments that suppress labor rights, Biden supports tough economic sanctions against Cuba. He has even opposed Obama’s restrained proposals for loosening restrictions on the right of Americans to travel to that socialist country and the right of Cuban-Americans to provide remittances for family members still living there.

Biden has aggressively pushed for NATO expansion eastward. He supports NATO membership for the former Soviet republic of Georgia, despite that government’s attacks on South Ossetia and the risks that such a formal military alliance could drag U.S. forces into a war in the volatile Caucasus region. Biden correctly criticized Russia for its military incursion deep into Georgian territory and its disproportionate use of force. But in rhetoric reminiscent of the darkest days of the Cold War, he incorrectly assigned all the blame for the recent fighting on the Russians, failing even to mention the Georgian assault on the South Ossetian capital that provoked it. While condemning Moscow for its efforts “to subvert the territorial integrity” of Georgia, Biden seems to have forgotten that he was a key cosponsor (along with Senators McCain and Lieberman) of a Senate resolution introduced last year that called for active U.S. support for the independence of the autonomous Serbian region of Kosovo.

Biden was perhaps the Senate’s most outspoken supporter of the 1999 U.S. war on Yugoslavia. He teamed up with McCain as one of the two principal sponsors of the resolution authorizing the 11-week bombing campaign of Serbia and Montenegro, which short-circuited efforts by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and pro-democracy Serbian groups to resolve the crisis nonviolently. Biden’s efforts to use Serbian oppression of Kosovar Albanians as an excuse for advancing post-Cold War U.S. hegemony in Eastern Europe became apparent in his insistence that “if we do not achieve our goals in Kosovo, NATO is finished as an alliance.”

In addition to stacking his Senate committee’s hearings prior to the Iraq war vote with fabricators of WMD claims and supporters of a U.S. invasion, Biden has often failed to use his platform to ask tough questions during confirmation hearings for many of the Bush administration’s more controversial nominees. For example, during John Negroponte’s three confirmation hearings Biden avoided any questions regarding the controversial official’s alleged support for right-wing death squads while ambassador to Honduras during the 1980s.

As ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee during the 1990s, Biden teamed up with the right-wing Republican chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC) to try to squash efforts by Russell Feingold (D-WI) and other liberals to end U.S. military training of Indonesian counterinsurgency forces repressing occupied East Timor. Biden was among a minority of Democrats to support increasing military aid — in the name of anti-narcotics efforts but in reality for counter-insurgency operations — to Colombia’s repressive government. He even voted against an amendment that would have transferred some of the money to support effective but underfunded drug treatment programs in the United States.

Biden also was among a minority of Senate Democrats to vote against a resolution that would have required the administration to certify, prior to selling or otherwise providing cluster bombs to a foreign government, that they would not be used in civilian areas. Such opposition to this important and widely supported humanitarian effort likely indicates that Biden would use his position as vice president to stifle efforts by other administration officials who might press for greater sensitivity in U.S. foreign policy toward human rights concerns.

Despite embracing much of the Bush administration’s alarmist rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear program, Biden’s actual concerns regarding nonproliferation are rather suspect. For example, he voted against a number of proposed amendments that would have strengthened provisions of the nuclear cooperation agreement with India designed to insure that U.S. assistance would not help India’s nuclear weapons program.

While opposing some Reagan-era weapons programs, such as the Pershing II missile, Biden supported full funding of the Trident D-5 Submarine Missile Program a full decade after the end of the Cold War for which it was designed. He has also voted against a series of amendments that would have redirected wasteful military spending to support domestic education programs and limited war profiteering by military contractors with links to the current administration. Biden has also been a strong advocate of increasing military spending even beyond the Bush administration’s bloated levels.

Far Right Agenda on Israel/Palestine

In addition to Iraq, (on which he was among the minority of congressional Democrats who voted to authorize the illegal invasion of that oil-rich country and supports continued unconditional war funding) the foreign policy issue with which Biden has most closely aligned himself with right-wing Republicans is Israel. Long opposed to Palestine’s right to exist as an independent country, he came around to supporting the idea of creating some kind of Palestinian state alongside Israel only after the Bush administration and the Israeli government went on record accepting the idea. Similarly, Biden has long insisted that it isn’t the Israeli occupiers, but the Palestinians under occupation, who constitute the “one…side that can impact on ending [the conflict.]”

Biden has defended extra-judicial killings by Israeli forces in the occupied territories, Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, Israel’s annexation of greater East Jerusalem and other Arab territories seized by military force, and collective punishment against Palestinian civilians in retaliation for crimes committed by the radical Hamas movement.

When Bush goaded Israel into attacking Lebanon during the summer of 2006 — blocking international efforts to impose a cease fire even as civilian casualties mounted into the hundreds — Biden argued that the Bush administration didn’t back Israel quickly or vehemently enough. As the outcry from human rights groups and UN agencies mounted over the widespread devastation inflicted on Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, Biden declared “we’re left with no option here, in my view, but to support Israel in what is a totally legitimate self-defense effort.”

Following the war, Biden blocked investigations into Israeli violations of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act despite a report provided to his Senate committee from the State Department indicating that there was considerable evidence of widespread use of U.S.-supplied cluster bombs against civilian targets. His refusal to allow for such congressional oversight does not give much hope that, once in the executive branch himself, he would support an Obama administration upholding its legal obligations either.

Obama had previously criticized the Clinton administration for its one-sided approach to the peace process and, more recently, has pledged to make facilitating an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement a priority as president. Nevertheless, Biden insists that the United States should not take any role in the peace process that isn’t coordinated with the Israeli government. Indeed, Biden explicitly insists that that there should be “no daylight between us and Israel” and that “the idea of being an ‘honest broker’… like some of my Democratic colleagues call for, is not the answer.”

Unfortunately, there’s little to suggest that any mediating party has ever successfully facilitated a peace settlement between two hostile nations without being an honest broker. Indeed, Biden strongly objected to findings by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and widely supported by the majority of the foreign policy establishment. The Group’s report emphasized the importance of the United States pressing for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement in order to restore its credibility in the greater Middle East.

Democrats Unify Around Biden

Even the party’s left wing largely refused to support proposals challenging the Biden nomination from the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Prominent Democratic antiwar stalwarts such as Rep. Lynne Woolsey (D-CA) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) — in the name of “party unity” — rejected calls by some delegates for a roll-call vote in which Biden would be pitted against an antiwar challenger for the vice-presidential nomination

The residual grumblings from antiwar Democrats, and threats to defect to the campaigns of Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney or independent Ralph Nader in response to the Biden nomination largely evaporated, however, when Republican nominee John McCain announced his choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Despite Biden’s history of notoriously poor judgment on some foreign policy issues, the veteran senator’s knowledge and experience began to look increasingly important compared with his strikingly inexperienced, unknowledgeable, and extremely right-wing Republican counterpart.

For example, in one of the few public statements Palin had made on the Iraq war, she insisted that the invasion was part of “God’s plan” and that prosecuting the war is “a task that is from God.” In contrast, the Roman Catholic church (of which Biden is a member) and virtually every mainline Protestant denomination came out in opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Only the right-wing fundamentalist denominations went on record supporting it. While Biden’s support for the 2002 Iraq war resolution did put him on the side of right-wing Christian fundamentalists on the critical question of what constitutes a just war, he has never claimed the invasion of that oil-rich country was part of God’s plan.

Similarly, while Biden’s hard-line views regarding Israel also put him at odds with the moderate positions taken by the Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant denominations, Palin goes so far as to embrace the dispensationalist wing of Christian Zionism. As such, she believes that a militarily dominant Israel is a necessary requisite for the second coming of Christ and the Israeli government should therefore not be pressed to withdraw from any occupied Arab lands.

The Task at Hand

Obama’s choice of Biden — the quintessential figure of the Democratic Party foreign policy establishment on Capitol Hill — raises serious questions as to whether the Illinois senator really represents “change we can believe in.” At the same time, Biden has demonstrated a greater-than-average willingness to shift to more moderate positions if the prevailing pressure is from the left. His growing skepticism over Bush policy in Iraq, his calls for the withdrawal of most American combat forces, his outspoken opposition to the surge when it was put forward last year, and his tough questioning of General David Petraeus in hearings before his committee has undoubtedly been a reflection of the growing antiwar sentiment within the Democratic Party.

When Biden first ran for the Senate in 1972, he was willing to represent the prevailing mood at the time in strongly denouncing the Vietnam War, calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, and voting against aiding the dictatorial South Vietnamese government of Nguyen Van Thieu. The following decade, his initial support for U.S. backing of the repressive junta in El Salvador was reversed in the face of growing opposition to U.S. intervention in Central America. While not among the first to endorse the proposed freeze on the research, testing, development and deployment of new nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons systems, he did throw his weight behind the initiative as the nuclear freeze campaign grew in popular support.

As a result, continued advocacy by peace and human rights activists for a more enlightened foreign policy can likely minimize the damage that Biden might otherwise have on an Obama administration’s foreign policy.

In addition, Obama may have selected the hawkish Biden as his running mate primarily as a political maneuver to enhance his chances of winning the November election rather than as an indication of the kind of people he would appoint for key foreign policy positions or the kinds of policies he would pursue. Indeed, despite the more recent inclusion of some of the more hawkish former Clinton advisors into his foreign policy team, Obama’s core advisors on international affairs have generally hailed from the younger, more liberal, and more innovative wing of the Democratic Party.

Like Dick Cheney, Biden pushed for an invasion of a country on the far side of the world that was no threat to us, misled the public regarding nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction,” and sought to silence critics of the war. However, even assuming the worst regarding Biden’s hawkish worldview, he would not be able to use his office in the same manner. Though bringing into an Obama administration a certain gravitas on foreign affairs as a result of his knowledge and experience, the fact remains that Biden — unlike the current vice-president — would be serving a president who is quite intelligent and who is quite capable of making his own decisions on the critical foreign policy issues facing the United States.

http://www.fpif.info/fpiftxt/5549

The 2008 Democratic Party Platform and the Middle East

The excitement over the nomination of Barack Obama as the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party has been tempered by some key foreign policy planks in the 2008 platform, particularly those relating to the greater Middle East region. These positions appear to run counter to Obama’s pledge early in the primary race to end the mindset that led to the Iraq War.

At the same time, substantial improvements in some foreign policy planks of the 2004 platform indicate at least modest successes by progressive Democratic activists in challenging the more hawkish proclivities of the party’s traditional leadership.

Among the positive aspects of the platform is a commitment to take concrete steps towards nuclear arms control and eventual disarmament. These include ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and recognizing U.S. obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The platform also contains new commitments to sustainable development in the Global South and treating Latin American nations as “full partners” with “mutual respect.” There is also a call to develop a civilian capacity to promote global stability and improve emergency response by creating a Civilian Assistance Corps of skilled experts to provide aid in international emergencies. And the platform pledges to rebuild international alliances, partnerships, and institutions so badly damaged by the arrogant unilateralism of the Bush administration.

Regarding the greater Middle East, however, the Democrats don’t appear to have yet learned the lessons of the past 40 years: that the more the United States militarizes the region, the less secure we become. Indeed, while rebuking some of the excesses of the Bush administration, the platform in some areas appears to be taking the country down the same dangerous path.

Iraq

In 2004, the Democratic Party platform supported the ongoing Iraq War and occupation. Its only criticism of Bush policy was that the administration did not send enough troops or adequately equip them. With the defeat in the primaries and caucuses of Hillary Clinton and others who voted to authorize the Iraq invasion, the Democratic Party – with a standard-bearer who had forcefully opposed the invasion at the outset – might be expected to have adopted a strong antiwar plank. And, indeed, this year’s platform calls for the redeployment of U.S. combat brigades by the middle of 2010.

Still, however, the 2008 platform endorses an ongoing U.S. military role in that violent oil-rich nation. It calls for an unspecified number of U.S. troops to remain as a “residual force” for such “specific missions” as “targeting terrorists; protecting our embassy and civil personnel; and advising and supporting Iraq’s Security Forces, provided the Iraqis make political progress.”

A troubling aspect to these exceptions is the vagueness of the language. Given that the Bush administration has referred to all Iraqi insurgents fighting U.S. forces as “terrorists,” it raises questions as to what degree U.S. military operations and the number of troops to sustain them will actually be reduced. In addition, the U.S. “embassy” – the largest complex of its kind in the world, taking up a bigger area than Vatican City and situated in the heart of Baghdad – requires a substantial military force to adequately defend. And the number of “civil personnel” in the country is in the tens of thousands and would presumably require many thousands of troops to protect them. It is also unclear what kind of “support” is required for Iraqi Security Forces, which have thus far shown little ability to engage in major military operations without substantial U.S. personnel involved.

The platform also fails to mention that the invasion was an illegal war of aggression in violation of the UN Charter, the U.S. constitution and the most fundamental principles of international law, raising concerns as to whether the Democratic Party is willing to renounce the Bush Doctrine of “preventative war.” Indeed, the platform insists that the United States “must also be willing to consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense.”

Another concern is that rather than calling for bringing the troops home to their families following their withdrawal from Iraq, the platform insists that they will instead be redeployed on unspecified “urgent missions.” Given that, despite the withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Iraq, the Democratic Party platform also calls for increasing the armed forces by nearly 100,000 troops and dramatically increasing the already-bloated military budget, it is quite troubling to consider what future battlefronts the Democrats will deem as “urgent.”

On a positive note, the platform recognizes the humanitarian crisis created by the U.S. invasion and occupation. It calls for the United States to provide “generous assistance to Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons.” In addition, recognizing that diplomacy is “the only path to a sustainable peace,” the platform declares that the United States should “launch a comprehensive regional and international diplomatic surge to help broker a lasting political settlement in Iraq,” though there are some questions as to whether, even under a Democratic administration, the United States still has the credibility to lead such an effort. Importantly, the platform also declares that “we seek no permanent bases in Iraq.”

Afghanistan

Even as it promises a de-escalation of the war in Iraq, the Democratic platform proposes to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending “at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, and use this commitment to seek greater contributions – with fewer restrictions – from our NATO allies.” Even assuming that the threat the Taliban poses to Afghanistan and the threat al-Qaeda poses to the United States and other countries require military responses, there is little evidence that sending additional combat brigades to Afghanistan will improve a situation that is deteriorating – not because of the lack of adequate U.S. war-making capability but in part in reaction to it.

Recognizing that the current emphasis on conventional army forces and airpower is inadequate, the platform does call on the United States to place greater emphasis on “special forces and intelligence capacity, training, equipping and advising Afghan security forces, building Afghan governmental capacity, and promoting the rule of law.” It also calls for increasing economic assistance to the Afghan people, grass roots economic development, support for education, investing in alternatives to poppy-growing for Afghan farmers, and cracking down on drug trafficking and corruption.

The platform also recognizes the danger posed by al-Qaeda’s sanctuary in the tribal regions of Pakistan and criticizes the Bush administration’s support for the Pakistani dictator recently forced from power.

Yet there is no indication in the platform that the Democratic Party recognizes what may be the most critical policy shift needed in Afghanistan: to cultivate stronger ties to more moderate, responsible, and democratic leaders within the national and regional governments, and end the Bush administration’s counterproductive policies of backing warlords and other criminal elements simply because they are willing to oppose the Taliban.

Combating Terrorism

While warning that there must be “no safe haven for those who plot to kill Americans,” the platform also calls for a “comprehensive strategy to defeat global terrorists” that “draws on the full range of American power, including but not limited to our military might.” In an implied rejection of the unilateral approach of the Republican administration, the Democratic platform calls for “a more effective global response to terrorism” [emphasis added] and enhanced counter-terrorism cooperation with countries around the world.

Recognizing the need to empower the vast majority of Muslims who “believe in a future of peace, tolerance, development, and democratization,” the platform recognizes how “America must live up to our values, respect civil liberties, reject torture, and lead by example.” The platform calls for the United States “to export hope and opportunity – access to education that opens minds to tolerance, not extremism; secure food and water supplies; and health care, trade, capital, and investment.” The platform also pledges the Democratic Party will “provide steady support for political reformers, democratic institutions, and civil society that is necessary to uphold human rights and build respect for the rule of law.” However, given the extreme anti-Americanism that has grown in Islamic countries in recent years, overt backing of opposition elements could in some cases backfire and be used to discredit indigenous movements for human rights and democracy.

Israel and Palestine

Though the Middle East is awash in arms, the Democratic Party platform endorses President Bush’s memorandum pledging an additional unconditional $30 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel. The platform thereby rejects calls by human rights activists that military assistance to foreign governments be made conditional on their compliance with international humanitarian law and outstanding UN Security Council resolutions. U.S.-supplied Israeli weapons and ordnance have killed thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in recent decades, and Israel continues to violate a series of UN Security Council resolutions regarding its illegal settlements, its nuclear program, its annexation of greater East Jerusalem, and other policies.

Though strategic parity has long been considered the most peaceful and secure relationship between traditional antagonists, the Democrats instead call upon the United States “to ensure that Israel retains a qualitative edge” in military capabilities. As such, the platform implies that the principal U.S. concern isn’t Israeli security but the expansion of the U.S. ally’s hegemonic role in the region. Indeed, the platform doesn’t call for a reduction in the large-scale U.S. arms transfers to Arab governments historically hostile to Israel, a logical step if the Democrats actually were concerned about that country’s security.

The Democratic Party platform does support the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, which reverses the categorical rejection of Palestinian statehood that the party maintained as recently as 16 years ago. Yet the platform calls only for compromises from the Palestinian side in order to make such a two-state solution possible. Even though the Palestinians have already unilaterally recognized Israeli sovereignty over 78% of historic Palestine and are demanding statehood only on the remaining 22%, the Democratic platform dismisses as “unrealistic” any obligation for Israel to completely withdraw from lands seized in its 1967 conquests. It also denies the right of return to Palestinian refugees, insisting that they should instead only be permitted to relocate to a truncated Palestinian state that Israel might allow to be created some time in the future. While the Palestinians may indeed be open to minor and reciprocal adjustments of the pre-1967 borders and would likely offer a concession on the right of return, the Democratic platform unfortunately demands specific compromises by those under occupation while making no specific demands for compromises by the occupier.

Similarly, the Democratic platform appears to endorse the Bush administration’s racist double standards regarding Israel and Palestine. It pledges to “continue to isolate Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and abides by past agreements” while failing to call for isolating Likud and other extremist Israeli parties that similarly fail to renounce attacks against civilians, recognize Palestine’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements. Similarly, the platform insists that “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel” without mentioning the possibility of it becoming the capital of an independent Palestine.

Still, this one-sided party platform – which appears to be more closely aligned with Israel’s center-right than more progressive Israelis – seems at odds with the increasingly balanced perspective of Democratic voters. Party supporters are beginning to recognize the interrelatedness of Israeli security and Palestinian rights as well as the platform’s stated goal for the United States “to lead the effort to build the road to a secure and lasting peace.”

Human Rights

The platform takes what appears to be a strong stand in support of human rights and freedom, arguing that the United States must be “a relentless advocate for democracy” and a steadfast opponent of repressive regimes. Promoting democracy became a key rationalization in the bipartisan call for the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Ironically, however, the platform only mentions by name autocratic governments over which the United States has relatively little influence. For example, the platform states, “We will stand up for oppressed people from Cuba to North Korea and from Burma to Zimbabwe and Sudan.” Meanwhile, the platform fails to mention any allied autocracies over which the United States could potentially have far more significant influence. It says nothing about standing up for oppressed people from Saudi Arabia to Equatorial Guinea and from Brunei to Egypt and Azerbaijan, whose governments all receive U.S. aid and diplomatic support.

Like the Bush administration, the Democrats seem to believe that defending freedom is not important if your government is deemed to be a U.S. ally. (Ironically, the platform criticizes the U.N. Human Rights Council for being “biased and ineffective.”)

Regarding Cuba, the Democratic platform insists that the United States “will be prepared to take steps to begin normalizing relations” only if that socialist country “takes significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the unconditional release of all political prisoners.” However, the platform makes no demands for the release of the tens of thousands of political prisoners held by allied dictatorships. Nor does it call for withholding normal relations or even suspending military aid or police training and assistance to regimes pending “significant steps toward democracy.” What appears to most bother the Democrats, then, is not Cuba’s authoritarianism, but its socialism.

Similarly, while the platform demands that “Russia abide by international law and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors,” it says nothing in regard to such obligations regarding U.S. allies Morocco and Israel – over which the United States has far more leverage – which are engaged in illegal military occupations of neighboring countries.

When prominent Democrats do criticize human rights abuses by allied governments, the party leadership attempts to silence them. For example, in what was perhaps the most dramatic repudiation ever of a former president by his own party at a national convention, the Democrats marginalized Jimmy Carter in apparent retaliation for his outspoken support for Palestinian human rights. They limited his appearance in Denver to a videotaped segment speaking in praise of Barack Obama and interviewing survivors of Hurricane Katrina. (Some of Obama’s aides have falsely accused Carter of referring to Israel as an apartheid state, when he in fact had explicitly stated he was referring only to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the establishment of Jewish-only roads, Jewish-only settlements, and other strict segregation policies do indeed resemble the old South African system.)

Iran

Though scores of countries currently possess nuclear power plants and nuclear reprocessing facilities, the Democratic Party platform singles out Iran by insisting that it alone be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. Though calling for “aggressive, principled, and direct high-level diplomacy, without preconditions” with the Islamic republic, the platform also calls for tougher sanctions against that country. Curiously, the platform demands that Iran abandon its “nuclear weapons program” even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the most recent U.S. National Security Estimate recognize that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program. Nor does the platform mention the already-existing nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems of India, Israel or Pakistan. It fails to even mention proposals for a nuclear weapons-free zone for the region – such as those already in effect for Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and Latin America. As such, the platform is in apparent agreement with the Bush administration’s position that the United States, not international treaties based on principles of universality and reciprocity, should determine which countries can and cannot have nuclear weapons.

The platform also demands that Iran end its “threats to Israel,” but does not call on Israel to end its even more explicit threats against Iran. Failure to accept such demands, according to the platform, will result in “sustained action to isolate the Iranian regime.” Furthermore, despite years of U.S. refusal to even negotiate with Iranian officials, the Democrats insist that “it is Iran, not the United States, choosing isolation over cooperation.”

Toward a More Progressive Platform

Though many aspects of the 2008 Democratic Party platform’s language regarding the Middle East and related issues are well to the right of most Democrats, delegates at the national convention in Denver could do little about it. In 1968, despite the successful efforts by party bosses to hand the presidential nomination to Vice President Hubert Humphrey instead of the more popular antiwar candidates, the convention at least allowed debate and discussion of minority planks by liberal opponents to hawkish aspects of the party platform. This time around, however, the leadership allowed no such challenges from the floor.

This silencing of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing comes despite its critically important support of Barack Obama for the party’s presidential nominee. Furthermore, based on a series of foreign policy statements related to the Middle East and other policy areas prior to becoming a serious contender for the nomination, Obama himself may be somewhat to the left of the platform on a number of issues. The Democratic Party establishment, powerful military and economic interests, and an apparent fear of right-wing attacks have all apparently forced Obama to abandon some of his more principled foreign policy positions.

With a few conscientious exceptions, Democratic Party leaders have rarely led. They have usually been forced to adopt more progressive policies as a result of pressure from the grass roots of the party. For example, the Democratic Party in 1968 had a platform supporting the war in Vietnam War and a pro-war nominee. By the next presidential election in 1972, the Democratic Party had a strong antiwar platform and an outspoken antiwar nominee in Senator George McGovern, which helped force the Nixon administration to sign a peace treaty by January of the following year. The four years in between saw massive antiwar mobilizations with hundreds of thousands of people protesting in Washington, DC, and elsewhere, as well as large-scale civil disobedience campaigns, widespread draft resistance, and other forms of opposition.

Other examples include the Nuclear Freeze campaign’s success in pushing the party to support major arms-control treaties, the anti-apartheid movement’s successful campaign to get the party to support sanctions against South Africa, the Central America solidarity movement’s eventual victory in forcing the party to challenge the Reagan administration’s support for the Nicaraguan Contras and the Salvadoran junta, and supporters of self-determination for East Timor forcing a reluctant Clinton administration to a cut off military aid and training for the armed forces in Indonesia.

Grassroots pressure has already helped shift the foreign policy positions of leading Democrats in this decade. Indeed, every single candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2008 advocated more progressive positions on Iraq, Iran, international trade, nuclear weapons, climate change, and a number of other foreign policy issues than did the 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry, who was then considered one of the more liberal members of the U.S. Senate. As such, although aspects of this year’s Democratic platform fall short on the Middle East and some other foreign policy issues, an engaged activist community can ensure that a better platform will emerge by the next elections.

http://www.fpif.info/fpiftxt/5510

Obama and AIPAC

In many respects, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has played right into the hands of cynics who have long doubted his promises to create a new and more progressive role for the United States in the world. The very morning after the last primaries, in which he finally received a sufficient number of pledged delegates to secure the Democratic presidential nomination and no longer needed to win over voters from the progressive base of his own party, Obama — in a Clinton-style effort at triangulation — gave a major policy speech before the national convention of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Embracing policies which largely backed those of the more hawkish voices concerned with Middle Eastern affairs, he received a standing ovation for his efforts.

His June 3 speech in Washington in many ways constituted a slap in the face of the grass roots peace and human rights activists who have brought him to the cusp of the Democratic presidential nomination.

In other respects, however, he pandered less to this influential lobbying group than many other serious aspirants for national office have historically. And at least part of his speech focused on convincing the largely right-wing audience members to support his positions rather than simply underscoring his agreement with them.

Much of the media attention placed upon his speech centered on the ongoing debate between him and incipient Republican presidential nominee John McCain on Iran. While embracing many of the same double-standards regarding nuclear nonproliferation issues and UN resolutions as does the Bush administration and congressional leaders of both parties, Obama did insert some rationality into the debate regarding the need for negotiations with that regional power rather than maintaining the current U.S. policy of diplomatic isolation and threats of war.

When it came to Israel and Palestine, however, Obama appeared to largely embrace a right-wing perspective which appeared to place all the blame for the ongoing violence and the impasse in the peace process on the Palestinians under occupation rather than the Israelis who are still occupying and colonizing the parts of their country seized by the Israeli army more than 40 years ago.

Progressive Israeli Reactions

While there were some faint glimmers of hope in Obama’s speech for those of us who support Israeli-Palestinian peace, progressive voices in Israel were particularly disappointed.

Israeli analyst Uri Avneri, in an essay entitled “No, I Can’t!”, expressed the bitterness of many Israeli peace activists for “a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning.” Avneri goes on to observe the irony of how Obama’s:

“dizzying success in the primaries was entirely due to his promise to bring about a change, to put an end to the rotten practices of Washington and to replace the old cynics with a young, brave person who does not compromise his principles. And lo and behold, the very first thing he does after securing the nomination of his party is to compromise his principles.”

Avneri addressed the view of many Israelis that “Obama’s declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people.”

Support for Further Militarization

In his speech, Obama rejected the view that the Middle East already has too many armaments and dismissed pleas by human rights activists that U.S. aid to Israel — like all countries — should be made conditional on adherence to international humanitarian law. Indeed, he further pledged an additional $30 billion of taxpayer-funded military aid to the Israeli government and its occupation forces over the next decade with no strings attached. Rather than accept that strategic parity between potential antagonists is the best way, short of a full peace agreement, to prevent war and to maintain regional security, Obama instead insisted that the United States should enable Israel to maintain its “qualitative military edge.”

Over the past three years, the ratio of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip killed by Israeli forces relative to the number of Israeli civilians in Israel killed by Palestinians is approximately 50 to one and has been even higher more recently. However, Obama chose only to mention the Israeli deaths and condemn Hamas, whose armed wing has been responsible for most of the Israeli casualties, and not a word about the moral culpability of the Israeli government, which Amnesty International and other human rights groups have roundly criticized for launching air strikes into Gaza’s densely crowded refugee camps and related tactics.

Since first running for the U.S. Senate, Obama has routinely condemned Arab attacks against Israeli civilians but has never condemned attacks against Arab civilians by Israelis. This apparent insistence that the lives of Palestinian and Lebanese civilian are somehow less worthy of attention than the lives of Israeli civilians have led to charges of racism on the part of Obama.

Despite his openness to talk with those governing Iran and North Korea, Obama emphasized his opposition to talking to those governing the Gaza Strip, even though Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian parliament in what was universally acknowledged as a free election. Though a public opinion poll published in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz showed that 64% of the Israeli population support direct negotiations between Israel and Hamas (while only 28% expressed opposition), Obama has chosen to side with the right-wing minority in opposing any such talks.

Furthermore, Obama insists that Hamas should have never been even allowed to participate in the Palestinian elections in the first place because of their extremist views, which fail to recognize Israel and acts of terrorism by its armed wing. Yet he has never objected to the Israelis allowing parties such as National Union — which defends attacks on Arab civilians and seeks to destroy any Palestinian national entity, and expel its Arab population — to participate in elections or hold high positions in government.

He insisted that Hamas uphold previous agreements by the Fatah-led Palestine Authority with Israel, but did not insist that Israel uphold its previous agreements with the Palestine Authority, such as withdrawing from lands re-occupied in 2001 in violation of U.S.-guaranteed disengagement agreements.

In reference to Obama’s speech, the anchor to Israel’s Channel 2 News exclaimed that it was “reminiscent of the days of Menachem Begin’s Likud” referring to the far right-wing Israeli party and its founder, a notorious terrorist from the 1940s who later became prime minister. By contrast, back in February, while still seeking liberal Democratic votes in the primaries, Obama had explicitly rejected the view which, in his words, identifies being pro-Israel with “adopting an unwaveringly pro-Likud view of Israel.” Now that he has secured the nomination, however, he has appeared to have changed his tune.

Endorsing Israel’s Annexation of Jerusalem

Most disturbing was Obama’s apparent support for Israel’s illegal annexation of greater East Jerusalem, the Palestinian-populated sector of the city and surrounding villages that Israel seized along with the rest of the West Bank in June 1967.

The UN Security Council passed a series of resolutions (252, 267, 271, 298, 476 and 478) calling on Israel to rescind its annexation of greater East Jerusalem and to refrain from any unilateral action regarding its final status. Furthermore, due to the city’s unresolved legal status dating from the 1948-49 Israeli war on independence, the international community refuses to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, with the United States and other governments maintaining their respective embassies in Tel Aviv.

Despite these longstanding internationally-recognized legal principles, Obama insisted in his speech before AIPAC that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

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 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. Furthermore, Israel’s annexation of greater East Jerusalem and its planned annexation of surrounding settlement blocs would make a contiguous and economically viable Palestinian state impossible. Such a position, therefore, would necessarily preclude any peace agreement. This raises serious questions as to whether Obama really does support Israeli-Palestinian peace after all.

According to Uri Avneri, Obama’s “declaration about Jerusalem breaks all bounds. It is no exaggeration to call it scandalous.” Furthermore, says this prominent observer of Israeli politics, every Israeli government in recent years has recognized that calls for an undivided Jerusalem

“constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to any peace process. It has disappeared — quietly, almost secretly — from the arsenal of official slogans. Only the Israeli (and American-Jewish) Right sticks to it, and for the same reason: to smother at birth any chance for a peace that would necessitate the dismantling of the settlements.

Obama argued in his speech that the United States should not “force concessions” on Israel, such as rescinding its annexation of Jerusalem, despite the series of UN Security Council resolutions explicitly calling on Israel do to so. While Obama insists that Iran, Syria, and other countries that reject U.S. hegemonic designs in the region should be forced to comply with UN Security Council resolutions, he apparently believes allied governments such as Israel are exempt.

Also disturbing about his statement was a willingness to “force concessions” on the Palestinians by pre-determining the outcome of one of the most sensitive issues in the negotiations. If, as widely interpreted, Obama was recognizing Israel’s illegal annexation of greater East Jerusalem, it appears that the incipient Democratic nominee — like the Bush administration — has shown contempt for the most basic premises of international law, which forbids any country from expanding its borders by force.

However, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Obama campaign, in an attempt to clarify his controversial statement, implied that the presumed Democratic presidential nominee was not actually ruling out Palestinian sovereignty over parts of Jerusalem and that “undivided” simply meant that “it’s not going to be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967.” The campaign also replied to the outcry from his speech by declaring that “Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties’ as part of “an agreement that they both can live with.” This implies that Obama’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel does not necessarily preclude its Arab-populated eastern half becoming the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Israel, however, has shown little willingness to withdraw its administration and occupation forces from greater East Jerusalem voluntarily. Obama’s apparent reluctance to pressure Israel to do so makes it hard to imagine that he is really interested in securing a lasting peace agreement.

It Could Have Been Worse

Perhaps, as his campaign claims, Obama was not rejecting the idea of a shared co-capital of Jerusalem. And perhaps his emphasis on Israeli suffering relative to Palestinian suffering was simply a reflection of the sympathies of the audience he was addressing and was not indicative of anti-Arab racism. If so, the speech could have been a lot worse.

Indeed, Obama’s emphasis on peace, dialogue, and diplomacy is not what the decidedly militaristic audience at AIPAC normally hears from politicians who address them.

Obama did mention, albeit rather hurriedly, a single line about Israeli obligations, stating that Israel could “advance the cause of peace” by taking steps to “ease the freedom of Palestinians, improve economic conditions” and “refrain from building settlements.” This is more than either Hillary Clinton or John McCain was willing to say in their talks before the AIPAC convention. And, unlike the Bush administration, which last year successfully pressured Israel not to resume peace negotiations with Syria, Obama declared that his administration would never “block negotiations when Israel’s leaders decide that they may serve Israeli interests.”

Furthermore, earlier in his career, Obama took a more balanced perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, aligning himself with positions embraced by the Israeli peace camp and its American supporters. For example, during his unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama criticized the Clinton administration for its unconditional support for the occupation and other Israeli policies and called for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He referred to the “cycle of violence” between Israelis and Palestinians, whereas most Democrats were insisting that it was a case of “Palestinian violence and the Israeli response.” He also made statements supporting a peace settlement along the lines of the 2003 Geneva Initiative and similar efforts by Israeli and Palestinian moderates.

Unlike any other major contenders for president this year or the past four election cycles, Obama at least has demonstrated in the recent past a more moderate and balanced perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As president, he may well be better than his AIPAC speech would indicate. Though the power of the “Israel Lobby” is often greatly exaggerated, it may be quite reasonable to suspect that pressure from well-funded right-wing American Zionist constituencies has influenced what Obama believes he can and cannot say. As an African-American whose father came from a Muslim family, he is under even more pressure than most candidates to avoid being labeled as “anti-Israel.”

Ironically, a strong case can be made that the right-wing militaristic policies he may feel forced to defend actually harm Israel’s legitimate long-term security interests.

A Political Necessity?

If indeed Obama took these hard-line positions during his AIPAC speech in order to seem more electable, it may be a serious mistake. Most liberal Democrats who gave blind support to the Israeli government in the 1960s and 1970s now have a far more even-handed view of the conflict, recognizing both Israeli and Palestinian rights and responsibilities. In addition, voters under 40 tend to take a far more critical view of unconditional U.S. support for Israeli policies than those of older generations. There is a clear generational shift among American Jews as well, with younger Jewish voters — although firmly supporting Israel’s right to exist in peace and security — largely opposing unconditional U.S. support for the occupation and colonization of Arab lands. The only major voting group that supports positions espoused by AIPAC are right-wing Christian fundamentalists, who tend to vote Republican anyway.

Furthermore, Obama has been far more dependent on large numbers of small donors from his grassroots base and less on the handful of wealthy donors affiliated with such special interest groups as AIPAC. This speech may have cost him large numbers of these smaller, progressive donors without gaining him much from the small numbers of larger, more conservative donors.

Indeed, there may not be a single policy issue where Obama’s liberal base differs from the candidate more than on Israel/Palestine. Not surprisingly, the Green Party and its likely nominee, former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, along with independent candidate Ralph Nader, are both using this issue to gain support at the expense of Obama.

Only hours after his AIPAC speech, the Nader campaign sent out a strongly worded letter noting how, unlike Obama and McCain, Nader supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements and would change U.S. Middle East policy. The widely-circulated response to the speech makes the case that, in contrast to Obama, “Nader/Gonzalez stands on these issues with the majority of Israelis, Palestinians, Jewish-Americans and Arab Americans.”

Betraying the Jewish Community

Through a combination of deep-seated fear from centuries of anti-Semitic repression, manipulation by the United States and other Western powers, and self-serving actions by some of their own leaders, a right-wing minority of American Jews support influential organizations such as AIPAC to advocate militaristic policies that, while particularly tragic for the Palestinians and Lebanese, are ultimately bad for the United States and Israel as well. Obama’s June 3 speech would have been the perfect time for Obama, while upholding his commitment to Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, to challenge AIPAC’s militarism and national chauvinism more directly. Unfortunately, while showing some independence of thought on Iran, he apparently felt the Palestinians were not as important

Taking a pro-Israel but anti-occupation position would have demonstrated that Obama was not just another pandering politician and that he recognized that a country’s legitimate security needs were not enhanced by invasion, occupation, colonization and repression

“That truly would have been “change you can believe in.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/obama-and-aipac_b_106611.html

Barack Obama on Diplomacy

The rise in popular support for Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy reflects the growing skepticism among Democratic and independent voters regarding both the Bush administration’s and the Democratic Party establishment’s foreign policies. Indeed, on issues ranging from Iraq to nuclear weapons to global warming to foreign aid, as well as his general preference for diplomacy over militarism, Obama has also staked out positions considerably more progressive than the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

In my previous FPIF commentary, Barack Obama on the Middle East, I analyzed both the enlightened and disturbing aspects of Obama’s positions regarding Iraq, Iran, Israel/Palestine and related Middle East issues. This article examines Obama’s overall foreign policy positions which, while containing many positive attributes that are bolstering the presidential candidate’s popularity, also reveal that he’s far less progressive than many of his enthusiastic supporters tend to believe. It therefore remains an open question as to whether these positions really represent the kind of sweeping changes his campaign has promised an Obama presidency would bring.

Obama’s Advisers

Obama’s foreign policy advisers run the gamut from mainstream strategic analysts who have worked with previous Democratic administrations to outspokenly liberal academics and activists. On the one hand, those from the Democratic foreign policy establishment tend to be associated with its more enlightened wing. On the other hand, even those among the liberal activists seem to be more inclined to criticize the U.S. government for failing to take a firmer stand against the crimes of others than acknowledge the crimes, past and present, for which the United States bears responsibility. While maintaining a strong stated commitment to international humanitarian law and a belief in the responsibility of the international community to respond to crises such as Darfur, there’s little open recognition of U.S. culpability in humanitarian crises elsewhere or any real critique of empire.

Still, there’s a marked contrast between the team for foreign policy experts assembled around Obama and those of his principal rival, New York Senator Hillary Clinton. In contrast with Clinton’s foreign policy advisers – most of whom strongly supported the invasion of Iraq – virtually all of Obama’s advisers opposed the war from the beginning. The Nation magazine noted that members of Obama’s foreign policy team, who also tend to be younger than those of the former first lady, are “more likely to stress ‘soft power’ issues like human rights, global development and the dangers of failed states.” As a result, “Obama may be more open to challenging old Washington assumptions and crafting new approaches.”

Human Rights

Unlike his other rivals for the Democratic Party’s nomination, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards and Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, Obama has refused to unconditionally endorse U.S. ratification of the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. He has stated his openness, however, to ratification after addressing what he claims are inadequate safeguards protecting members of the U.S. armed forces.

Unlike the Bush administration, which has focused its rhetoric on human rights and democracy solely at countries opposed by the U.S. government, Obama has taken a broader perspective, demonstrating a willingness to criticize the policies of autocratic allied regimes as well. For example, Obama has argued that the United States should “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.”

Recognizing that, despite the rhetoric, the Bush administration has “done little to advance democracy around the world,” Obama has promised to “focus on achieving concrete outcomes that will advance democracy.” While calling for increased U.S. government financial support for independent institutions supporting pro-democracy movements abroad, he recognizes that “direct financial assistance from the U.S. government will not always be welcome or beneficial.” He has also called for increased support – through foreign aid, debt relief, technical assistance and investment – for countries undergoing post-conflict and post-authoritarian transitions.

Despite all this, he has fallen short of promising to end security assistance to repressive regimes.

Though unwilling to impose sanctions against most right-wing dictatorships, Obama apparently has fewer problems with supporting strict economic sanctions against left-wing dictatorships, joining the other major presidential contenders in refusing to call for an end to most U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba. Unlike Senator Clinton, however, Obama has called for lifting the ban on family travel and on remittances.

Nuclear Weapons

In a break with the other leading presidential contenders, Obama supports the United States’ commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to work to ultimately eliminate nuclear stockpiles. However, although the United States possesses by far the largest number of nuclear weapons and delivery systems on earth, Obama hasn’t indicated support for any unilateral American initiatives to move the process forward, such as cuts in weapons or delivery systems where the United States has a qualitative advantage.

Though he has called for a “worldwide ban on weapons to interfere with satellites and a ban on testing anti-satellite weapons,” he has not endorsed a ban on nuclear weapons in space as called for by virtually the entire international community. And, though critical of the enormous wastes incurred from Bush’s missile defense program, he has announced his support for the continued development of missile defense capabilities.

On a positive note, Obama has pledged to work vigorously to better secure the world’s nuclear weapons materials, work with Russia to take both countries’ nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, and to negotiate with Russia and other nuclear powers for a dramatic reduction in nuclear stockpiles. He is also on record strongly opposing the Bush administration’s efforts to build a new generation of nuclear weapons and supporting ratification of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT.)

Use of Force

Obama has harshly criticized the Bush administration’s unilateralism and militarism and promises to be far more cautious regarding sending Americans off to war. Yet he leaves loopholes big enough to drive a tank through. Rather than categorically declaring he would use military force only as a last resort, he insists that “no president should ever hesitate to use force – unilaterally if necessary,” not only “to protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked,” but also to protect what he refers to as “our vital interests” when the president believes they are “imminently threatened.” And, rather than calling on the United States to strictly abide by the United Nations Charter and other international treaty obligations regarding the use of military force, he simply says “we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others.”

At the same time, Obama has demonstrated enough of an awareness of history to indicate that he would be less likely to repeat some of the mistakes of the past, telling The New York Times, “For most of our history our crises have come from using force when we shouldn’t, not by failing to use force.”

Obama strongly supports the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Despite recent pleas by the democratically elected Afghan president Harmid Karzai that the ongoing U.S. bombing and the over-emphasis on aggressive counterinsurgency operations was harming efforts to deal with the resurgence of violence by the Taliban and other radical groups, Obama has promised to send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan. He has also threatened bombings and incursions into Pakistan to root out al-Qaeda cells.

Though critical of the billions of dollars wasted annually on anachronistic Cold War-era military procurement projects, Obama calls for increasing America’s already-bloated military budget. Even though U.S military spending already totals more than all the military budgets of all the other countries in the world combined, Obama insists that Bush’s military spending spree of recent years has somehow not been enough.

Indeed, Obama has promised to enlarge the size of the uniformed armed forces by more than 92,000 troops. Given that the United States – surrounded by two oceans and two weak friendly neighbors – is essentially safe from any potential conventional attack, this position inevitably raises the question of what he intends to do with that expanded military capability.

Broadened Concepts of Security

Despite these disturbing indications of his readiness to use military force, Obama appears to recognize U.S. national security interests in much broader terms than virtually any major presidential contender past or present. He has called for a much greater emphasis on preventative diplomacy as well as the creation of a civilian corps that can “participate in post-conflict, humanitarian and stabilization efforts around the globe.”

He appears to more fully recognize the complexities of challenges faced in today’s world and carries a refreshingly less state-centric approach than most leaders of either party, both in terms of emerging threats as well as in terms of potential good. He argues that “while America and our friends and allies can help developing countries build more secure and prosperous societies, we must never forget that only the citizens of these nations can sustain them.”

Obama has recognized the pernicious influence of corporate interests in promoting dangerous foreign policies, illustrated in his criticism of “the arms merchants in our own country” for “feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe” and his call on the United States to “wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.”

In addition to calling on the United States to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, Obama has called for a series of policy initiatives “to bring developing countries into the global effort to develop alternative sources of energy and prepare for the ravages of a changing climate,” including “funding to leverage the investment and venture capital needed to expand the developing world’s renewable energy portfolio.” Despite his emphasis on climate change as a national security issue, however, many environmentalists find that his proposals do not go nearly far enough.

Though Obama has indicated a willingness to take international law and the United Nations more seriously than the current administration, he still appears to accept the same double standards regarding to whom such international legal standards apply. For example, while he has called for the strict enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions targeted at Iran and Syria, he has not called for the strict enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions targeted at U.S. allies like Israel and Morocco.

On a positive note, despite strong criticism from Republicans and from Senator Hillary Clinton, Obama has promised to talk with foreign leaders of governments labeled by the United States as “rogue states,” rejecting the current thinking dominant in Washington that isolating and threatening foreign governments is somehow more effective than talking with them over issues of mutual concern.

Development

Obama has called for making “the critical investments needed to fight global poverty” by doubling foreign non-military assistance and has pledged that his administration would work to “build the capacity of weak states to confront the common, transnational challenges we face including terrorism, conflict, climate change, proliferation and epidemic disease.” In the Senate, Obama co-sponsored legislation in support of the United Nations millennium development goals over the Bush administration’s objections. He has called for the establishment of a $2 billion Global Education Fund to develop primary education in impoverished regions and for increased funding to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Significantly, Obama has called for 100% debt cancellation for the world’s most heavily indebted poor countries. He has promised to press the World Bank to provide poor countries with grants rather than loans and to enact reforms that ensure that “countries have the resources they need to respond to the external shocks that threaten to derail economic progress.” He has also pledged to lead a multilateral effort to address the issue of “odious debts” created by previous corrupt non-elected governments and to seek out ways in which “loan sanctions” could be enacted to create disincentives to discourage private creditors from lending money to repressive, authoritarian regimes.

At the same time, while making vague calls “modernization and reform,” he has failed to critique the neoliberal policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Forum.

Global Leadership

Obama has rejected calls from both the left and the right, smitten by the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq, for the United States to disengage from playing a leading role in international affairs. He has warned against isolationism and the country turning inward and has called for the United States to reassert its global leadership, albeit tempered by a skeptical view towards unilateralism and an emphasis on partnership with other nations.

With a Kenyan father and having spent much of his childhood in Indonesia, Obama understands the non-Western world unlike any president to date. Combined with his mixed racial heritage, spending his formative adolescence in Hawaii (a state where people of color are a clear majority) and having worked as a community organizer in impoverished African-American neighborhoods in Chicago, he would be able to show the world a new face of America and thereby do much to heal the U.S. image. At the same time, his emphasis on America’s global leadership – including the assumption that the world would be willing to follow if only the United States had a decent and responsible administration – may prove naïve. Even during the the1990s, resentment at the United States – particularly towards American unilateralism and the ways the Clinton administration was taking unfair advantage of the country’s new status as the world’s sole superpower – was at an all-time high.

Whether for good or ill, Obama would likely be very much an activist president on foreign policy. His outlook is reminiscent of President John F. Kennedy’s grandiose view of U.S. global leadership, emphasizing threats abroad and the power of American ideals as imperatives for the United States to exercise a predominant role. For example, he has promised to that to “renew American leadership in the world, I will strengthen our common security by investing in our common humanity. Our global engagement cannot be defined by what we are against; it must be guided by a clear sense of what we stand for. We have a significant stake in ensuring that those who live in fear and want today can live with dignity and opportunity tomorrow.”

A Mixed Prognosis

Despite his rather limited experience in national office, Obama appears to be one of the smartest, most visionary and most knowledgeable members of the U.S. Senate on foreign policy. As a result, he would be more likely to take creative and independent initiatives and less reliant on the traditional foreign policy establishment than any modern president of ether party.

As many of the examples above illustrate, however, that doesn’t mean he’ll always be right. A combination of his limited vision and the constraints imposed upon any president by the imperatives of powerful economic and strategic interests make it doubtful that Obama will be able to move the country significantly forward in ways that will address the most important challenges facing the country and the world today on his own. However, there are indications that he could be more open to a more progressive foreign policy if the growing social movements in this country for peace and justice are able to mobilize effectively and provide the necessary counter-pressures. Obama’s strong showing thus far in the race for the Democratic nomination is a direct result of such movements. If he wins the presidency, he would be obliged to listen to those who would play such an important role in bringing him to the White House.

In summary, we must neither be naïve about Barack Obama’s limitations nor cynical about his potential.

There are genuine reasons for hope regarding certain aspects of U.S. foreign policy in the event of an Obama administration. If he secures the Democratic Party’s nomination, therefore, these more enlightened positions will subject him to organized attacks from the right-wing that will likely be even worse than those unleashed against the less progressive John Kerry four years earlier. As a result, Obama will need to be vigorously defended.

At the same time, he must also continue to be challenged by those who support a more progressive foreign policy. Ultimately, the directions that we as an informed electorate give the new president matter far more than who wins the election.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/barack_obama_on_diplomacy

Obama and the Middle East: Will He Bring About “Change?”

The strong showings by Senator Barack Obama of Illinois in the early contests for the Democratic presidential nomination don’t just mark a repudiation of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy and “war on terrorism.” They also indicate a rejection of the Democratic Party establishment, much of which supported the invasion of Iraq and other tragic elements of the administration’s foreign policy.

There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that voters found Senator Obama’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in contrast to the strong support for the invasion by his principal rivals for the Democratic Party nomination, a major factor contributing to his surprisingly strong challenge to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in the race for the White House. Indeed, while his current position on Iraq is not significantly different than that of Clinton or the other major challenger, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Obama’s good judgment not to support the war five years ago has led millions of Democratic and independent voters to find him more trustworthy as a potential commander-in-chief.

At the same time, while he certainly takes more progressive positions on Middle East issues than Senator Clinton or the serious Republican presidential contenders, he backs other aspects of U.S. policies toward Iraq, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that have raised some troubling questions. This is one factor that has tempered support for the trailblazing African-American candidate among liberal and progressive voters.

Iraq in the Illinois State Senate

In October 2002, while Senators Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were in Washington leading Congressional efforts to authorize President George W. Bush to invade that oil-rich country at the time and circumstances of his choosing, Obama–then an Illinois state senator who had no obligation to take a stand either way–took the initiative to speak at a major anti-war rally in Chicago. While Clinton and Edwards were making false and alarmist statements that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was still a danger to the Middle East and U.S. national security, Obama had a far more realistic understanding of the situation, stating: “Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors.”

Recognizing that there were alternatives to using military force, Obama called on the United States to “allow UN inspectors to do their work.” He noted “that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.”

Furthermore, unlike the the Iraq War’s initial supporters, Obama recognized that “even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.” Understanding the dangerous consequences to regional stability resulting from war, Obama accurately warned that “an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.”

Iraq in the U.S. Senate

Once elected to the U.S. Senate, however, his anti-war voice became muted. Obama supported unconditional funding for the Iraq War in both 2005 and 2006. And–despite her false testimonies before Congress and her mismanagement of Iraq policy before, during, and after the U.S. invasion in her role as National Security Advisor–Obama broke with most of his liberal colleagues in the Senate by voting to confirm Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state during his first weeks in office.

Obama didn’t even make a floor speech on the war until a full year after his election. In it, he called for a reduction in the number of U.S. troops but no timetable for their withdrawal. In June 2006, he voted against an amendment by Senators Russ Feingold and John Kerry for such a timetable.

In addition, during the 2006 Democratic congressional primaries, he campaigned for pro-war incumbents–including Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman against his eventually victorious primary challenger Ned Lamont–and other conservative Democrats fighting back more progressive anti-war challengers.

Iraq as a Presidential Candidate

It was only after the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton, called for setting a date to withdraw U.S. combat troops, and only after Obama formed his presidential exploratory committee, that he introduced legislation setting a date for troop withdrawal. And it was only this past spring that he began voting against unconditional funding for the war.

In a speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in November 2006, Obama appeared to buy into the Bush administration’s claims that its goal in Iraq was not about oil or empire, but to advance freedom, by criticizing the Bush administration for invading Iraq for unrealistic “dreams of democracy and hopes for a perfect government.” Instead of calling for an end to the increasingly bloody U.S.-led military effort, he instead called for “a pragmatic solution to the real war we’re facing in Iraq,” with repeated references to the need to defeat the insurgency.

Despite polls showing a majority of Americans desiring a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces, he acknowledged that U.S. troops may need to stay in that occupied country for an “extended period of time,” and that “the U.S. may have no choice but to slog it out in Iraq.” Specifically, he called for U.S. forces to maintain a “reduced but active presence,” to “protect logistical supply points” and “American enclaves like the Green Zone” as well as “act as rapid reaction forces to respond to emergencies and go after terrorists.”

Obama has committed to withdraw regular combat troops within 16 months and launch diplomatic and humanitarian initiatives to address some of the underlying issues driving the ongoing conflicts. He has also pledged to launch “a comprehensive regional and international diplomatic initiative to help broker and end of the civil war in Iraq, prevent its spread, and limit the suffering of the Iraqi people.”

If elected, as president Obama would almost certainly withdraw the vast majority of U.S. forces from Iraq. Yet thousands of American troops would likely remain to perform such duties as he has described as necessary. Indeed, he has explicitly ruled out any guarantee for a total U.S. withdrawal from Iraq by the end of his first term in 2013. At the same time, he has recognized the need to “make clear that we seek no permanent bases in Iraq” and has increasingly emphasized that most U.S. troops that remain in the area should be “over the horizon,” such as in Kuwait, rather than in Iraq itself.

Iran: Mixed Messages

Obama has criticized the Bush administration for its belligerent policy toward Iran and has warned against precipitous military action. In addition, though being out on the campaign trail when the vote was taken made it impossible to formally go on record, Obama has harshly criticized Senator Clinton for supporting the bellicose Kyl-Lieberman amendment targeting Iran, which many saw as paving the way for the Bush administration to launch military action against that country.

Despite this, Senator Obama has appeared to buy into some of the more alarmist and exaggerated views of Iran’s potential threat. For example, he has referred to Iran–a mid-level power on the far side of the globe that currently does not have a nuclear weapons program and is nearly a decade away from having the capability to produce nuclear weapons–as a “genuine threat.”

In remarks Obama prepared for a speech to an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Forum in March of last year, he said: Iranian nuclear weapons would destabilize the region and could set off a new arms race. Some nations in the region, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, could fall away from restraint and rush into a nuclear contest.” He has not been able to explain why–given that Israel itself has had nuclear weapons for at least 35 years and no other Middle Eastern country has yet gone nuclear–Iran obtaining nuclear weapons would suddenly lead other countries in the region to immediately follow suit.

Because of this alleged threat, Obama insisted that “we should take no option, including military action, off the table.” One option he has not endorsed, however, is the proposed establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone for the Middle East, similar to initiatives already undertaken in Latin America, Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific. Rather than embrace such a comprehensive approach to non-proliferation in the Middle East, he apparently accepts the Bush administration’s contention that the United States gets to decide which Middle Eastern countries can have nuclear weapons and which ones cannot.

To his credit, Obama has distinguished himself from both the Bush administration and Senator Clinton in supporting direct negotiations with Iran, arguing in his speech at the AIPAC policy forum that “sustained and aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions should be our primary means to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.” At the same time, this raises the question as to why he has he not also called for aggressive diplomacy and tough sanctions against Israel, India, and Pakistan for their already-existing nuclear arsenals, especially since these three countries–no less than Iran–are also in violation of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their nuclear programs.

Israel: Shifting Positions

Earlier in his career, Obama took a relatively balanced perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, aligning himself with positions embraced by the Israeli peace camp and its American supporters. For example, during his unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Obama criticized the Clinton administration for its unconditional support for the occupation and other Israeli policies and called for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He referred to the “cycle of violence” between Israelis and Palestinians, while most Democrats were referring to “Palestinian violence and the Israeli response.” He also made statements supporting a peace settlement along the lines of the Geneva Initiative and similar efforts by Israeli and Palestinian moderates.

During the past two years, however, Obama has largely taken positions in support of the hard-line Israeli government, making statements virtually indistinguishable from that of the Bush administration. Indeed, his primary criticism of Bush’s policy toward the conflict has been that the administration has not been engaged enough in the peace process, not that it has backed the right-wing Israeligovernment on virtually every outstanding issue.

Rejecting calls by Israeli moderates for the United States to use its considerable leverage to push the Israeli government to end its illegal and destabilizing colonization of the West Bank and agree to withdraw from the occupied territories in return for security guarantees, Obama has insisted “we should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests” and that no Israeli prime minister should ever feel “dragged” to the negotiating table.

Despite Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s refusal to freeze the construction of additional illegal settlements, end the seizure of Palestinian population centers, release Palestinian political prisoners, or enact other confidence-building measures–much less agree to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state–Obama claimed in his AIPAC policy forum speech that Olmert is “more than willing to negotiate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will result in two states living side by side in peace and security.” And though, as recently as last March, Obama acknowledged the reality that that “nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people,” as a result of the stalled peace process he has since placed the blame for the impasse not on the Israeli occupation but on the Palestinians themselves.

In addition, rejecting calls by peace and human rights activists that U.S. military aid to Israel, like all countries, should be contingent on the government’s adherence to international humanitarian law, Obama has called for “fully funding military assistance.”

Backing Israeli Militarism

In the face of widespread international condemnation over Israel’s massive attacks against Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure during the summer of 2006, Obama rushed to Israel’s defense, co-sponsoring a Senate resolution defending the operation. Rather than assign any responsibility to Israel for the deaths of over 800 Lebanese civilians, Obama claimed that Hezbollah was actually responsible for having used “innocent people as shields.” This assertion came despite the fact that Amnesty International found no conclusive evidence of such practices and Human Rights Watch, in a well-documented study, had found “no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack,” an analysis confirmed by subsequent scholarly research.

(When I contacted Obama’s press spokesperson in his Senate office to provide me with evidence supporting Obama’s claim that, despite the findings of these reputable human rights groups, that Hezbollah had indeed used “human shields,” he sent me the link to a poorly-documented report from a hawkish Israeli research institute headed by the former chief of the Mossad–the Israeli intelligence service that itself has engaged in numerous violations of international humanitarian law. The senator’s press spokesman did not respond to my subsequent requests for more credible sources. This raises concerns that an Obama administration, like the current administration, may be prone to taking the word of ideologically driven right-wing think tanks above those of empirical research or principled human rights groups and other nonpartisan NGOs.)

Indeed, Obama’s rhetoric as a senator has betrayed what some might view as a degree of anti-Arab racism. He has routinely condemned attacks against Israeli civilians by Arabs but has never condemned attacks against Arab civilians by Israelis.

Closet Moderate?

Unlike any other major contenders for president this year or the past four election cycles, Obama at least has demonstrated in the recent past an appreciation of a more moderate and balanced perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As president, he may well be better than his more recent Senate votes and public statements would indicate. Though the power of the “Israel Lobby” is often greatly exaggerated (see my articles The Israel Lobby Revisited and The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is It Really?), it’s quite reasonable to suspect that pressure from well-funded right-wing American Zionist constituencies has influenced what Obama believes he can and cannot say. As an African-American whose father came from a Muslim family, he is under even more pressure than most candidates to avoid being labeled as “anti-Israel.” Ironically, a strong case can be made that the right-wing militaristic policies he may feel forced to defend actually harm Israel’s legitimate long-term security interests.

Still, Obama has indicated greater interest in promoting a comprehensive peace settlement, acknowledging that the “Israeli government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart.” And, unlike the Bush administration, which successfully pressured Israel not to resume peace negotiations with Syria, Obama has pledged never to block an Israeli prime minister from the negotiation table. (See my article: Divide and Rule: U.S. Blocks Israel-Syria Talks.)

As a result, several prominent Americans allied with the current Israeli government have expressed deep concern about the prospects of Obama’s election while Democrats aligned with more progressive Israeli perspectives have expressed some cautious optimism regarding Obama becoming president.

How Much Change?

Despite building his campaign around the theme of “change you can believe in,” there are serious questions regarding how much real change there would be under an Obama presidency regarding the U.S. role in the Middle East. While an Obama administration would certainly be an improvement over the current one, he may well turn out to be quite sincere in taking some of the more hard-line positions he has advocated regarding Iran, Israel, and Iraq.

However, many are holding out hope that, as president, Obama would be more progressive than he is letting on and that he would take bolder initiatives to shift U.S. policy in the region further away from its current militaristic orientation than he may feel comfortable advocating as a candidate. Indeed, given how even the hawkish John Kerry was savaged by the right-wing over his positions on Middle East security issues during his bid for the presidency, the threat of such attacks could be enough to have given Senator Obama pause in making more direct challenges to the status quo during the campaign. In other words, he could be open to more rational and creative approaches to the Middle East once in office.

However, many are holding out hope that as president, Obama would be more progressive than he is letting on and that he would take bolder initiatives to shift U.S. policy in the region further away from its current militaristic orientation than he may feel comfortable advocating as a candidate. Indeed, given how even the hawkish John Kerry was savaged by the right-wing over his positions on Middle East security issues during his campaign for the presidency, the threat of such attacks could be enough to have given Senator Obama pause in making more direct challenges to the status quo as a candidate. But he could be open to more rational and creative approaches to the Middle East once in office.

The Illinois Senator’s intelligence and independent-mindedness, combined with what’s at stake, offers some hope that at least for pragmatic reasons–if not moral and legal ones–a future President Obama would have the sense to recognize that the more the United States has militarized the Middle East, the less secure we have become. He would perhaps also recognize that arms control and nonproliferation efforts are more likely to succeed if they are based on universal, law-based principles rather than unilateral demands and threats based upon specific countries’ relationship with the United States. And that exercising American “leadership” requires a greater awareness of the needs and perceptions of affected populations.

Most importantly, given that the strength of the anti-war movement brought Obama to his position as a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, just such a popular outpouring can also prevent him from further backsliding in the face of powerful interests that wish to see U.S. policy continue its dangerous course. Those who support peace and human rights in the Middle East and beyond must be willing to challenge him–as both a candidate and as a possible future president–for advocating immoral or illegal policies that compromise the security and human rights of people in the region and here in the United States.

http://www.alternet.org/story/73715/obama_and_the_middle_east%3A_will_he_bring_about_%22change%22/?page=entire

Barack Obama on the Middle East

The strong showings by Senator Barack Obama of Illinois in the early contests for the Democratic presidential nomination don’t just mark a repudiation of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy and “war on terrorism.” They also indicate a rejection of the Democratic Party establishment, much of which supported the invasion of Iraq and other tragic elements of the administration’s foreign policy.

There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that voters found Senator Obama’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in contrast to the strong support for the invasion by his principal rivals for the Democratic Party nomination, a major factor contributing to his surprisingly strong challenge to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in the race for the White House. Indeed, while his current position on Iraq is not significantly different than that of Clinton or the other major challenger, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Obama’s good judgment not to support the war five years ago has led millions of Democratic and independent voters to find him more trustworthy as a potential commander-in-chief.

At the same time, while he certainly takes more progressive positions on Middle East issues than Senator Clinton or the serious Republican presidential contenders, he backs other aspects of U.S. policies toward Iraq, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that have raised some troubling questions. This is one factor that has tempered support for the trailblazing African-American candidate among liberal and progressive voters.

Iraq in the Illinois State Senate

In October 2002, while Senators Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were in Washington leading Congressional efforts to authorize President George W. Bush to invade that oil-rich country at the time and circumstances of his choosing, Obama–then an Illinois state senator who had no obligation to take a stand either way–took the initiative to speak at a major anti-war rally in Chicago. While Clinton and Edwards were making false and alarmist statements that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was still a danger to the Middle East and U.S. national security, Obama had a far more realistic understanding of the situation, stating: “Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors.”

Recognizing that there were alternatives to using military force, Obama called on the United States to “allow UN inspectors to do their work.” He noted “that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.”

Furthermore, unlike the the Iraq War’s initial supporters, Obama recognized that “even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.” Understanding the dangerous consequences to regional stability resulting from war, Obama accurately warned that “an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.”

Iraq in the U.S. Senate

Once elected to the U.S. Senate, however, his anti-war voice became muted. Obama supported unconditional funding for the Iraq War in both 2005 and 2006. And–despite her false testimonies before Congress and her mismanagement of Iraq policy before, during, and after the U.S. invasion in her role as National Security Advisor–Obama broke with most of his liberal colleagues in the Senate by voting to confirm Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state during his first weeks in office.

Obama didn’t even make a floor speech on the war until a full year after his election. In it, he called for a reduction in the number of U.S. troops but no timetable for their withdrawal. In June 2006, he voted against an amendment by Senators Russ Feingold and John Kerry for such a timetable.

In addition, during the 2006 Democratic congressional primaries, he campaigned for pro-war incumbents–including Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman against his eventually victorious primary challenger Ned Lamont–and other conservative Democrats fighting back more progressive anti-war challengers.

Iraq as a Presidential Candidate

It was only after the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton, called for setting a date to withdraw U.S. combat troops, and only after Obama formed his presidential exploratory committee, that he introduced legislation setting a date for troop withdrawal. And it was only this past spring that he began voting against unconditional funding for the war.

In a speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in November 2006, Obama appeared to buy into the Bush administration’s claims that its goal in Iraq was not about oil or empire, but to advance freedom, by criticizing the Bush administration for invading Iraq for unrealistic “dreams of democracy and hopes for a perfect government.” Instead of calling for an end to the increasingly bloody U.S.-led military effort, he instead called for “a pragmatic solution to the real war we’re facing in Iraq,” with repeated references to the need to defeat the insurgency.

Despite polls showing a majority of Americans desiring a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces, he acknowledged that U.S. troops may need to stay in that occupied country for an “extended period of time,” and that “the U.S. may have no choice but to slog it out in Iraq.” Specifically, he called for U.S. forces to maintain a “reduced but active presence,” to “protect logistical supply points” and “American enclaves like the Green Zone” as well as “act as rapid reaction forces to respond to emergencies and go after terrorists.”

Obama has committed to withdraw regular combat troops within 16 months and launch diplomatic and humanitarian initiatives to address some of the underlying issues driving the ongoing conflicts. He has also pledged to launch “a comprehensive regional and international diplomatic initiative to help broker and end of the civil war in Iraq, prevent its spread, and limit the suffering of the Iraqi people.”

If elected, as president Obama would almost certainly withdraw the vast majority of U.S. forces from Iraq. Yet thousands of American troops would likely remain to perform such duties as he has described as necessary. Indeed, he has explicitly ruled out any guarantee for a total U.S. withdrawal from Iraq by the end of his first term in 2013. At the same time, he has recognized the need to “make clear that we seek no permanent bases in Iraq” and has increasingly emphasized that most U.S. troops that remain in the area should be “over the horizon,” such as in Kuwait, rather than in Iraq itself.

Iran: Mixed Messages

Obama has criticized the Bush administration for its belligerent policy toward Iran and has warned against precipitous military action. In addition, though being out on the campaign trail when the vote was taken made it impossible to formally go on record, Obama has harshly criticized Senator Clinton for supporting the bellicose Kyl-Lieberman amendment targeting Iran, which many saw as paving the way for the Bush administration to launch military action against that country.

Despite this, Senator Obama has appeared to buy into some of the more alarmist and exaggerated views of Iran’s potential threat. For example, he has referred to Iran–a mid-level power on the far side of the globe that currently does not have a nuclear weapons program and is nearly a decade away from having the capability to produce nuclear weapons–as a “genuine threat.”

In remarks Obama prepared for a speech to an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Forum in March of last year, he said: Iranian nuclear weapons would destabilize the region and could set off a new arms race. Some nations in the region, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, could fall away from restraint and rush into a nuclear contest.” He has not been able to explain why–given that Israel itself has had nuclear weapons for at least 35 years and no other Middle Eastern country has yet gone nuclear–Iran obtaining nuclear weapons would suddenly lead other countries in the region to immediately follow suit.

Because of this alleged threat, Obama insisted that “we should take no option, including military action, off the table.” One option he has not endorsed, however, is the proposed establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone for the Middle East, similar to initiatives already undertaken in Latin America, Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific. Rather than embrace such a comprehensive approach to non-proliferation in the Middle East, he apparently accepts the Bush administration’s contention that the United States gets to decide which Middle Eastern countries can have nuclear weapons and which ones cannot.

To his credit, Obama has distinguished himself from both the Bush administration and Senator Clinton in supporting direct negotiations with Iran, arguing in his speech at the AIPAC policy forum that “sustained and aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions should be our primary means to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.” At the same time, this raises the question as to why he has he not also called for aggressive diplomacy and tough sanctions against Israel, India, and Pakistan for their already-existing nuclear arsenals, especially since these three countries–no less than Iran–are also in violation of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their nuclear programs.

Israel: Shifting Positions

Earlier in his career, Obama took a relatively balanced perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, aligning himself with positions embraced by the Israeli peace camp and its American supporters. For example, during his unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Obama criticized the Clinton administration for its unconditional support for the occupation and other Israeli policies and called for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He referred to the “cycle of violence” between Israelis and Palestinians, while most Democrats were referring to “Palestinian violence and the Israeli response.” He also made statements supporting a peace settlement along the lines of the Geneva Initiative and similar efforts by Israeli and Palestinian moderates.

During the past two years, however, Obama has largely taken positions in support of the hard-line Israeli government, making statements virtually indistinguishable from that of the Bush administration. Indeed, his primary criticism of Bush’s policy toward the conflict has been that the administration has not been engaged enough in the peace process, not that it has backed the right-wing Israeligovernment on virtually every outstanding issue.

Rejecting calls by Israeli moderates for the United States to use its considerable leverage to push the Israeli government to end its illegal and destabilizing colonization of the West Bank and agree to withdraw from the occupied territories in return for security guarantees, Obama has insisted “we should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests” and that no Israeli prime minister should ever feel “dragged” to the negotiating table.

Despite Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s refusal to freeze the construction of additional illegal settlements, end the seizure of Palestinian population centers, release Palestinian political prisoners, or enact other confidence-building measures–much less agree to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state–Obama claimed in his AIPAC policy forum speech that Olmert is “more than willing to negotiate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will result in two states living side by side in peace and security.” And though, as recently as last March, Obama acknowledged the reality that that “nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people,” as a result of the stalled peace process he has since placed the blame for the impasse not on the Israeli occupation but on the Palestinians themselves.

In addition, rejecting calls by peace and human rights activists that U.S. military aid to Israel, like all countries, should be contingent on the government’s adherence to international humanitarian law, Obama has called for “fully funding military assistance.”

Backing Israeli Militarism

In the face of widespread international condemnation over Israel’s massive attacks against Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure during the summer of 2006, Obama rushed to Israel’s defense, co-sponsoring a Senate resolution defending the operation. Rather than assign any responsibility to Israel for the deaths of over 800 Lebanese civilians, Obama claimed that Hezbollah was actually responsible for having used “innocent people as shields.” This assertion came despite the fact that Amnesty International found no conclusive evidence of such practices and Human Rights Watch, in a well-documented study, had found “no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack,” an analysis confirmed by subsequent scholarly research.

(When I contacted Obama’s press spokesperson in his Senate office to provide me with evidence supporting Obama’s claim that, despite the findings of these reputable human rights groups, that Hezbollah had indeed used “human shields,” he sent me the link to a poorly-documented report from a hawkish Israeli research institute headed by the former chief of the Mossad–the Israeli intelligence service that itself has engaged in numerous violations of international humanitarian law. The senator’s press spokesman did not respond to my subsequent requests for more credible sources. This raises concerns that an Obama administration, like the current administration, may be prone to taking the word of ideologically driven right-wing think tanks above those of empirical research or principled human rights groups and other nonpartisan NGOs.)

Indeed, Obama’s rhetoric as a senator has betrayed what some might view as a degree of anti-Arab racism. He has routinely condemned attacks against Israeli civilians by Arabs but has never condemned attacks against Arab civilians by Israelis.

Closet Moderate?

Unlike any other major contenders for president this year or the past four election cycles, Obama at least has demonstrated in the recent past an appreciation of a more moderate and balanced perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As president, he may well be better than his more recent Senate votes and public statements would indicate. Though the power of the “Israel Lobby” is often greatly exaggerated (see my articles The Israel Lobby Revisited and The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is It Really?), it’s quite reasonable to suspect that pressure from well-funded right-wing American Zionist constituencies has influenced what Obama believes he can and cannot say. As an African-American whose father came from a Muslim family, he is under even more pressure than most candidates to avoid being labeled as “anti-Israel.” Ironically, a strong case can be made that the right-wing militaristic policies he may feel forced to defend actually harm Israel’s legitimate long-term security interests.

Still, Obama has indicated greater interest in promoting a comprehensive peace settlement, acknowledging that the “Israeli government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart.” And, unlike the Bush administration, which successfully pressured Israel not to resume peace negotiations with Syria, Obama has pledged never to block an Israeli prime minister from the negotiation table. (See my article: Divide and Rule: U.S. Blocks Israel-Syria Talks.)

As a result, several prominent Americans allied with the current Israeli government have expressed deep concern about the prospects of Obama’s election while Democrats aligned with more progressive Israeli perspectives have expressed some cautious optimism regarding Obama becoming president.

How Much Change?

Despite building his campaign around the theme of “change you can believe in,” there are serious questions regarding how much real change there would be under an Obama presidency regarding the U.S. role in the Middle East. Whilean Obama administration would certainly be an improvement over the current one, he may well turn out to be quite sincere in taking some of the more hard-line positions he has advocated regarding Iran, Israel, and Iraq.

However, many are holding out hope that, as president, Obama would be more progressive than he is letting on and that he would take bolder initiatives to shift U.S. policy in the region further away from its current militaristic orientation than he may feel comfortable advocating as a candidate. Indeed, given how even the hawkish John Kerry was savaged by the right-wing over his positions on Middle East security issues during his bid for the presidency, the threat of such attacks could be enough to have given Senator Obama pause in making more direct challenges to the status quo during the campaign. In other words, he could be open to more rational and creative approaches to the Middle East once in office.

However, many are holding out hope that as president, Obama would be more progressive than he is letting on and that he would take bolder initiatives to shift U.S. policy in the region further away from its current militaristic orientation than he may feel comfortable advocating as a candidate. Indeed, given how even the hawkish John Kerry was savaged by the right-wing over his positions on Middle East security issues during his campaign for the presidency, the threat of such attacks could be enough to have given Senator Obama pause in making more direct challenges to the status quo as a candidate. But he could be open to more rational and creative approaches to the Middle East once in office.

The Illinois Senator’s intelligence and independent-mindedness, combined with what’s at stake, offers some hope that at least for pragmatic reasons–if not moral and legal ones–a future President Obama would have the sense to recognize that the more the United States has militarized the Middle East, the less secure we have become. He would perhaps also recognize that arms control and nonproliferation efforts are more likely to succeed if they are based on universal, law-based principles rather than unilateral demands and threats based upon specific countries’ relationship with the United States. And that exercising American “leadership” requires a greater awareness of the needs and perceptions of affected populations.

Most importantly, given that the strength of the anti-war movement brought Obama to his position as a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, just such a popular outpouring can also prevent him from further backsliding in the face of powerful interests that wish to see U.S. policy continue its dangerous course. Those who support peace and human rights in the Middle East and beyond must be willing to challenge him–as both a candidate and as a possible future president–for advocating immoral or illegal policies that compromise the security and human rights of people in the region and here in the United States.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/barack_obama_on_the_middle_east

Lantos’ Tarnished Legacy

Pundits responded to news of the retirement of Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) at the end of his current term with platitudes and praise. They have focused primarily on his heroic role as a Holocaust survivor and member of the anti-Nazi resistance in his native Hungary as well as his leadership on human rights issues in Congress, serving as the founder and longtime co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.

There’s no question that his personal history is both courageous and noble. Nor is there any debate that he stood up in support for the International Criminal Court, the people of the occupied nations of Tibet and East Timor, and the victims of oppression in Iran, Burma, Zimbabwe, Vietnam and other countries.

At the same time, most peace and justice activists have found Lantos – who has chaired the House Committee on Foreign Affairs since the Democrats regained their Congressional majority – as a very inconsistent advocate for human rights.

Indeed, the Congressman has openly challenged the United Nations as well as reputable independent human rights organizations when they have raised concerns about human rights abuses by certain key U.S. allies, even to the point of directly contradicting their findings. In addition, his leadership in support of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and his resulting culpability in the human rights tragedies that followed, will no doubt be the most significant negative mark on his legacy.

Iraq Deceptions

Lantos’ desire to have the United States take over Iraq was so strong that he was apparently willing to grossly exaggerate that oil-rich country’s military capabilities to frighten the American public into giving up on diplomatic efforts and launch a war. In 2001, Lantos claimed Iraq was developing long-range missiles “that will threaten the United States and our allies” even though – as arms control experts correctly noted at the time – this was not actually the case. Similarly, though the International Atomic Energy Agency had confirmed that Iraq no longer had a nuclear weapons program and strict international sanctions prevented that country from restarting it, Lantos claimed that such peaceful and diplomatic means to eliminate Iraq’s nuclear program had actually failed and that military means were necessary to prevent Iraq from developing its nuclear capability.

As the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs committee, his willingness to co-sponsor the resolution granting President George W. Bush unprecedented power to invade a foreign country at the time and circumstances of his own choosing was critical in making the disastrous Iraq War possible.

The resolution co-sponsored by Lantos contained accusations that were known or widely assumed to be false, such as claims of Iraqi support for al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States despite the fact that a definitive report by the Department of Defense noted that not only did no such link exist, but that no such link could have even been reasonably suggested based upon the evidence available at that time.

The resolution also falsely claimed that Iraq was “actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability.” In reality, Iraq had eliminated its nuclear program long before, a fact that was confirmed in a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1998, four years prior to the resolution. It also falsely claimed that Iraq at that time continued “to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability” when, in reality, as the U.S. government now admits, Iraq had rid itself of its chemical and biological weapons nearly a decade earlier and no longer had any active chemical and biological weapons programs.

Though Saddam Hussein’s regime was notorious for its human rights abuses, this was not apparently what motivated Lantos to support the invasion. The September 30, 2002 issue of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz quoted Lantos telling an Israeli Knesset member, in reference to Saddam Hussein, “We’ll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we’ll install a pro-Western dictator.”

Indeed, his support for a number of U.S.-backed dictatorships in the Middle East has raised serious questions regarding his actual commitment for human rights.

Denying Israeli Atrocities

Lantos has also been an outspoken defender of the U.S.-backed Israeli government in its frequent application of military force, even when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have engaged in serious violations of international humanitarian law.

For example, during the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented that both Hezbollah and Israelis forces were engaged in war crimes by attacking civilian areas, which resulted in the deaths of 43 Israeli civilians and more then 800 Lebanese civilians. In response, Lantos joined leading House Republicans in co-sponsoring a resolution praising Israel for its “longstanding commitment to minimize civilian loss” and even welcomed “Israel’s continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties.” The resolution also claimed, in the face of a broad consensus of those familiar with international humanitarian law to the contrary, that Israel’s actions were “in accordance with international law.”

Similarly, in April of 2002, Amnesty International published a detailed and well-documented report regarding the Israeli military offensive in the occupied West Bank, noting how “the IDF acted as though the main aim was to punish all Palestinians. Actions were taken by the IDF which had no clear or obvious military necessity.” The report went on to document unlawful killings, destruction of civilian property, arbitrary detention, torture, assaults on medical personnel and journalists, as well as random shooting at people in the streets and houses.

In response, Lantos introduced a resolution challenging Amnesty’s findings, claiming that “Israel’s military operations . . . are aimed only at dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas.” In an apparent retort to growing demands by peace and human rights groups to suspend military aid to Israel in response to these violations of international humanitarian law, the Lantos resolution called for an increase in military aid, which many of these activists felt was, in effect, rewarding Israel for its repression and attacking the credibility of Amnesty International, winner of the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize. (See my article Congress Ignores Human Rights Groups In Pro-Israel Resolution.)

Contempt for International Law

Lantos has also been an outspoken critic of the International Court of Justice in its ruling on the applicability of international humanitarian law, such as the 2004 decision against Israel’s construction of a separation barrier deep inside occupied Palestinian territory. Lantos condemned the near-unanimous decision as a “perversion of justice” and praised Bush for “his leadership in marshalling opposition” to the UN’s judicial arm.

Lantos also sponsored a resolution last year defending Israel’s annexation of greater East Jerusalem, despite a series of UN Security Council resolutions citing the inadmissibility of any country expanding its territory by force and declaring the annexation illegal. His resolution also claimed that Israel had “respected the rights of all religious groups” during its 40-year occupation of that city and environs. However, a number of UN bodies – along with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights organizations – have frequently cited Israel for its ongoing violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention in East Jerusalem and surrounding areas, including the confiscation and destruction of homes and other property belonging to longstanding Muslim and Christian residents. (See my article Jerusalem: Endorsing the Right of Conquest.)

On a number of occasions, Lantos placed himself to the right of the Bush administration regarding Israeli violations of international humanitarian law. For example, when Bush expressed concerns that the Israeli government’s policy of assassinating Palestinian opponents was leading to the deaths of innocent bystanders, hurting moderate Palestinian forces and proving counter-productive in enhancing Israeli security, Lantos expressed that he was “deeply dismayed” by the president’s comments and insisted that such Israeli actions constituted legitimate self-defense and deserved “the full support of the United States.”

Morocco’s Occupation

Israel is not the only occupier power whose human rights abuses have been denied and defended by the Congressman. Lantos has been a strong supporter of Morocco’s efforts to annex the Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony invaded by Morocco in 1975, in defiance of a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a landmark decision by the International Court of Justice. He has declared Morocco’s proposal for limited autonomy of that illegally occupied country as “a breakthrough opportunity” and a “realistic framework for a political solution.” Given the widespread opposition in the international community to legitimizing Morocco’s act of aggression, the letter concludes by urging Bush to “embrace this promising Moroccan initiative so that it receives the consideration necessary to achieve international acceptance.” (See my article The Future of Western Sahara.)

Despite well-documented reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other reputable human rights groups monitoring the situation in the occupied territory that public expressions in support for self-determination are routinely suppressed, Lantos has also expressed his confidence that “Morocco will do nothing to stifle debate among the people of Western Sahara.”

Blaming Victims

Lantos also has a history of exaggerating human rights abuses by governments and movements he opposes.

For example, despite consistent reports by United Nations monitors that the Western Sahara nationalist Polisario Front has scrupulously honored its 1991 ceasefire agreement with Morocco – despite the Moroccans’ refusal to honor their reciprocal commitment to allow for a UN-sponsored referendum on independence – Lantos has insisted that “peace has been summarily rejected by the rebel Polisario Front in favor of guerilla ambushes.” He has also falsely accused the Polisario Front – the Western Sahara nationalist movement – of forcing most of the Western Saharan population to live in arid refugee camps in neighboring Algeria, ignoring that fact that the refugees were forced to flee to these camps as a direct result of Moroccan repression in their occupied homeland.

In addition, Lantos cosponsored a resolution accusing Hezbollah of “cynically exploiting civilian populations as shields” during the fighting with Israel in 2006 despite the fact that Amnesty International found no conclusive evidence of such practices and Human Rights Watch, in a well-documented study, had found “no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack.”

Tarnished Legacy

As these and other examples illustrate, Lantos’ advocacy for human rights has been far from consistent.

For human rights advocacy to be credible, it must be based on empirical evidence rather than ideological biases. It must hinge on universal principles of international humanitarian law rather than a given country’s relations with the United States.

The failure of Representative Lantos to recognize this fundamental reality will scar an otherwise noble legacy.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/lantos_tarnished_legacy

John Edwards’ Foreign Policy

A sizable number of progressive activists, celebrities and unions who, for various reasons, are unwilling to support the underfunded long-shot bid of Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich are backing the presidential campaign of former North Carolina Senator John Edwards as their favorite among the top-tier candidates for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Indeed, the charismatic populist has staked out positions on important domestic policy issues, particularly addressing economic justice, that are more progressive than any serious contender for the nomination of either party in many years.

On foreign policy, however, his record is decidedly mixed.

On one hand, he’s the first serious candidate in the past two decades to seriously dispute the neo-liberal orthodoxy on international trade. He has challenged the hawkish front-runner Hillary Clinton on a number of issues and has called for the withdrawal of the vast majority of American forces from Iraq. He has questioned calls by President George W. Bush and some of his Democratic rivals to expand the armed services by nearly 100,000 troops. He has disagreed with the Bush administration’s framing of the struggle against Islamist extremists as a “war on terror” as well as its over-emphasis on military means, instead arguing for “a comprehensive strategy to respond to terrorism and prevent it form taking root in the first place.”

Edwards has called for a dramatic increase in spending for development programs aimed at the world’s poor, particularly in health care and education, as well as an expansion of support for microcredit programs. He has proposed dramatic reform and better accounting of the military budget. And, he has recognized that climate change is a major threat to national security that needs to be addressed seriously.

These are significant and genuinely progressive positions that not only distinguish him from the Republicans, but from Senator Clinton and some of his Democratic rivals as well. (See the Foreign Policy In Focus Spotlight on the Candidates.)

Serious Concerns

Despite these positive points, however, Edwards has also taken a number of foreign policy positions that have raised serious concerns among those who are desperately seeking a real alternative to the Bush administration.

As a Senator, Edwards distinguished himself as one of the more conservative Democrats through supporting such controversial measures as providing unconditional military aid to the repressive government of Colombia and voting for funding the dangerous and expensive Trident D-5 submarine nuclear missile program. He also voted in favor of an amendment that prohibits the United States from cooperating in any way with the International Criminal Court in its prosecution of individuals responsible for serious crimes against humanity. This vindictive law also restricts U.S. foreign aid to countries that support the ICC and authorizes the president of the United States to use military force to free individuals from the United States or allied countries detained by the ICC.

Unlike Senator Clinton, Edwards has apologized for his October 2002 vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq and has been one of the most outspoken of the Democratic presidential contenders calling for an end of the war, which he refers to as “one of the greatest strategic failures in U.S. history.” While refusing to promise a complete withdrawal of American troops by the end of his first term should he be elected, he has called for an immediate reduction of forces and a complete withdrawal of combat troops within a year.

However, he has called on maintaining sufficient military forces in Baghdad to protect the Green Zone and its sprawling U.S. embassy complex as well American personnel elsewhere in that country. He has also called for a sufficient U.S. military presence, perhaps in neighboring Kuwait, to “prevent genocide, a regional spillover of the civil war, or the establishment of an al Qaeda safe haven” as well as “a significant military presence in the Persian Gulf.” (The direct quotes above were included in Edwards’ recent Foreign Affairs article.)

Iraq Invasion

Edwards’ single biggest problem with progressive voters has been his pivotal role back in 2002 as one of the most strident among the minority of Democrats on Capitol Hill who supported Bush’s demand for Congressional authorization to invade Iraq. Indeed, were it not for the support by Edwards and his Democratic colleagues–who then controlled the Senate–there would be no need to be concerned about a genocide, an al-Qaeda safe haven, the spread of a civil war, the protection of a Green Zone or American personnel, or any of the other functions for which he would spend billions of dollars and risk American lives in the coming years if elected.

In September of 2002, in the face of growing public skepticism of Bush’s calls for an invasion of Iraq, Edwards rushed to the administration’s defense in a Washington Post op-ed. Apparently aware of public opinion polls showing that a majority of Americans would support a U.S. invasion of Iraq only if it constituted a threat to our national security, he set about to claim just that, insisting that Iraq, which had actually been successfully disarmed several years earlier, had somehow become “a grave and growing threat” and that Congress should therefore “endorse the use of all necessary means to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.”

Edwards insisted that “our national security requires” that Congress grant Bush unprecedented war powers to use against Iraq, even though it was located on the far side of the world and posed no threat to the United States. Furthermore, in an apparent effort to undermine respect for the United Nations Charter–which forbids such wars of aggression–in his support for the Bush administration’s quest for U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, he further insisted that “we must not tie our own hands by requiring Security Council action.”

The Bush administration was so impressed with Edwards’ arguments that they posted the article on the State Department website.

The former Senator’s defenders reject critics’ charges that he deliberately exaggerated the supposed Iraq threat in order for the United States to take over than oil-rich country and that he was instead simply fooled by the phony intelligence the Bush administration gave him. But the episode still raises questions as to what other wars he might be talked into waging as commander-in-chief.

Contempt

Edwards was one of only seven Democratic co-sponsors of the Senate bill authorizing Bush to attack Iraq whenever and under whatever circumstances he chose. Indeed, his contempt for international law became even more apparent when he voted against a resolution introduced shortly beforehand authorizing a U.S. invasion of Iraq only if first approved by the United Nations Security Council as legally required. Edwards’ wife Elizabeth, who is also a lawyer, challenged him over the absence of any legal justification for an invasion, but this was apparently of little concern to him. In effect, like Bush, Edwards believes that the United States need not abide by international legal standards that forbid countries from invading one another.
In calling on his fellow Senators to support his resolution, he stated, in reference to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, “We know that he has chemical and biological weapons.” This was totally false, however. Iraq had rid itself of its chemical and biological weapons stockpiles years earlier.

Edwards also claimed, “We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal. Iraq has continued to seek nuclear weapons and develop its arsenal . . .” This was also totally untrue. As far back as 1998, the International Atomic Energy Agency had reported that Iraq’s nuclear program had been completed eliminated.

Dismissive

Edwards was also dismissive of the plethora of evidence challenging the claims that he and the Bush administration were making about Saddam Hussein’s alleged military prowess: “Almost no one disagrees with these basic facts…that he has weapons of mass destruction and that he is doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons” and “that he is a grave threat to the region, to vital allies like Israel, and to the United States.” He went on to ridicule opponents of the war, saying, “Yet some question why Congress should act now to give the President the authority to act against Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” apparently failing to consider the fact that he didn’t have any, and insisting that “it is a decision we must make. America’s security requires nothing less.”

Ignoring arguments by strategic analysts that an invasion of Iraq would deflect personnel, intelligence, money and other resources from challenging the real threat from al-Qaeda, Edwards insisted, “Our national security requires us to do both, and we can.”

When the invasion went forward despite Iraq’s belated cooperation with UN inspectors and the absence of any signs that Iraq had rebuilt the offensive military capability Edwards and Bush had claimed, Edwards voted in support of a Republican-sponsored resolution which directly challenged the consensus of the international legal community that such an offensive war was illegal by insisting that the war was somehow “lawful.” The also resolution commended and supported “the efforts and leadership of the President . . . in the conflict against Iraq.”

Post-Invasion Support

For the next three years, despite growing public disenchantment with the Bush administration’s Iraq policy, Edwards continued to support the ongoing U.S. occupation and increasingly bloody counter-insurgency war. In an interview on “Meet the Press” in November 2003, interviewer Tim Russert asked the North Carolina Senator if he regretted giving Bush “in effect a blank check for the war in Iraq.” Edwards replied by saying, “I still believe it was right.”

When Russert noted the absence of any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or any ongoing WMD programs, Edwards insisted that Iraq still posed a threat regardless of whether Saddam Hussein actually “had them at the time the war began or not” because “he had been trying to acquire that capability” previously and therefore posed “an obvious and serious threat to the stability of that region of the world.” Such a statement indicates that Edwards believes that the United States has the right to invade any country that at some point in the past had tried to develop biological, chemical or nuclear weapons capability.

Given that that would total more than 50 countries in the world today, the prospects of Edwards as commander-in-chief is rather unsettling.

Unlike Senator John Kerry, who was deeply torn about his support for the war, his 2004 running mate remained an enthusiastic supporter. The New York Times reported how “Mr. Kerry had increasing doubts about the war. But Mr. Edwards argued that they should not renounce their votes–they had to show conviction and consistency.”

It was not until 2005, when he started making plans for his second presidential bid, that Edwards finally came around to an anti-war position. Critics argue that this was simply a response to public opinion polls that were beginning to show that no pro-war candidate could win the 2008 Democratic nomination. His supporters, however, argue that his conversion to his current anti-war position is indeed genuine, noting how Edwards has provided some of the most articulate and passionate criticisms of any candidate.

Even assuming that his regrets regarding his vote and his current opposition to the war are sincere, however, it is unclear as to whether his reversal is simply a reflection of his belated recognition of the tragic results of the invasion of Iraq or whether he now categorically rejects the Bush Doctrine, which holds that the United States should be able to invade foreign countries at will.

Hawkish on Iran

Edwards’ statements on Iran are not encouraging in this regard. To his credit, he has criticized Senator Clinton for her support for the dangerous Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which attempted to declare Iran’s entire Revolutionary Guard as a “terrorist organization” and he has stressed the need for direct negotiations with the Islamic regime, which the Bush administration has thus far rejected.

In other respects, however, Edwards has placed himself to the right of the Bush administration, even to the point of accusing the president of downplaying the alleged threat from Iran and not doing enough to counter it. In a speech earlier this year, Edwards told an Israeli audience, “For years, the U.S. hasn’t done enough to deal with what I have seen as a threat from Iran. As my country stayed on the sidelines, these problems got worse. To a large extent, the U.S. abdicated its responsibility to the Europeans. This was a mistake.”

He also criticized the United Nations for not taking a more confrontational position toward Iran and threatened unilateral U.S. military action:

“The recent UN resolution ordering Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium was not enough. We need meaningful political and economic sanctions. We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table. Let me reiterate: ALL options must remain on the table.” (Emphasis in original.)

Iran and Nuclear Weapons

What is particularly disturbing about Edwards’ dire warnings about Iran’s supposed nuclear threat is that, like his similarly dire warnings about Iraq’s alleged nuclear threat five years ago, he was simply not telling the truth. For example, Edwards expressed concern about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “attempts to obtain nuclear weapons over a long period of time.”

However, given that Iran ended its nascent nuclear weapons program back in 2003 and Ahmadinejad has been president of Iran only since 2005 (and was a mayor with no ties to the country’s nuclear sector prior to that), it raises questions as to how he possibly could have been attempting “to obtain nuclear weapons over a long period of time.”

Critics have charged that, given that Edwards has not made false accusations about nuclear weapons programs from non-oil-producing states, he may simply be trying to frighten the American public into supporting a U.S. takeover of Iran in order to control the country’s natural resources, as some alleged he also did in regards to Iraq. Edwards’ supporters counter by arguing that “all options on the table” does not mean that he is actually considering a full-scale invasion as he advocated with Iraq and the fact that these two countries just happen to sit on two of the world’s largest oil reserves is just a coincidence.

Though Edwards’ exaggerated notions of nuclear threats emanating from anti-American regimes in the Middle East are more likely a reflection of ignorance than deception, his logic regarding the issue of nuclear proliferation has at times stretched credulity. One of his arguments regarding the alleged danger from Iran is his categorical statement that “Once Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the Middle East will go nuclear, making Israel’s neighborhood much more volatile.” This begs the question: Given that Israel itself has had nuclear weapons for at least 35 years and no other Middle Eastern country has yet gone nuclear, why would Iran obtaining nuclear weapons suddenly lead other countries in the region to immediately follow suit? And, if non-proliferation is really Edwards’ concern, why has he refused to support the proposed establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone for the Middle East, similar to similar zones already successfully established in Latin America, Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific? And why has he not also called for tough sanctions against Israel, India and Pakistan for their ongoing violations of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their already-existing nuclear arsenals?

In an example of either his profound ignorance or irresponsible obfuscation, Edwards has even refused–in face of a direct question by a reporter–to even acknowledge the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons.

Like Bush, Edwards is also prone to greatly exaggerate Iran’s hostile intentions. For example, he warned an influential group of Israeli political and military leaders that Ahmadinejad’s “goals to wipe Israel off the map indicate that Iran is serious about its threats,” ignoring the fact that the Iranian president never actually said that and, even if physically destroying Israel really was his goal, Iran is many years away from having that capability. Furthermore, since the Iranian president is not commander-and-chief of that country’s armed forces, Ahmadinejad couldn’t order an attack on Israel in the first place. (See My Meeting with Ahmadinejad.)

Given that most Israelis currently oppose going to war against Iran, it’s disappointing that Edwards would exaggerate the Iranian threat before an Israeli audience, given that the impact would be to strengthen the position of Israeli hawks and weaken that of Israeli moderates.

Israel and its Neighbors

Edwards certainly does not support Israeli moderates who are seeking to resolve conflicts with their Arab neighbors, either. Indeed, he has consistently voiced his strident support for the occupation policies of rightist Israeli governments. This has included his backing of Bush’s endorsement for the unilateral Israeli annexation of large swaths of the occupied West Bank in order to incorporate illegal Jewish settlements which the UN Security Council has called on Israel to dismantle. Edwards also criticized former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for raising questions regarding the legality of Israel’s separation wall in the occupied West Bank, declared illegal in 2004 in a 14-1 ruling by the International Court of Justice.

In the face of widespread criticism by reputable human rights organizations over Israel’s systematic assaults against civilian targets in its April 2002 offensive in the West Bank, Edwards went on record link defending the Israeli actions, opposing United Nations efforts to investigate alleged war crimes by Israeli occupation forces and criticizing Bush for calling on Israel to pull back from its violent incursions into Palestinian cities as called for in a series of UN Security Council resolutions.

Similarly, in 2006, Edwards backed the Bush administration’s policy of pushing Israel to launch a massive assault on Lebanon as a surrogate strike against Iran, even though it led to the deaths of over 800 civilians and caused billions of dollars worth of damage to that country’s civilian infrastructure. Dismissing charges from human rights groups and the international legal consensus that Israel, like Hezbollah, was guilty of war crimes–as well as the fact that it actually hurt legitimate Israeli security interests–Edwards simply claimed that “Israel has the right to defend itself.”

Even though Israel had rejected repeated calls by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for negotiations based on proposals made by Israeli representatives from previous more moderate governments at talks in Taba in 2001 and Geneva in 2003, Edwards proclaimed earlier this year that, “While Israel is willing to go back to the negotiating table, little has been seen on the Palestinian side.” Though Bush was finally willing to invite the Palestinians to sit down with the Israelis at the U.S.-sponsored conference in Annapolis, Edwards appeared to be pushing Israel for a military response instead, telling an Israeli audience that, “For peace, Israel needs a partner. Absent this partnership, Israel not only has the right to defend itself, it has an obligation to defend itself.”

It appears, then, that despite Edwards’ nominal support for a two-state solution, his propensity to place primary responsibility for resolution of the conflict on those subjected to foreign military occupation rather than on the occupying power raises questions as to whether he is fully committed to the “land for peace” formula endorsed by all presidents–Democratic and Republican–prior to Bush.

Similarly, in response to a Syrian proposal to unconditionally open bilateral peace talks with Israel, Edwards appeared to side with the Bush administration and Israeli hardliners in rejecting the offer, saying, “Talk is cheap. Syria needs to go a long way to prove it is ready for peace.” (See U.S. Blocks Israel-Syria Talks )

Liberal Hawk

Despite presenting himself as a new kind of politician, in many ways Edwards is a throwback to the 1960’s Cold War liberalism of such leading Democrats of that era as Hubert Humphrey, who had a strong record in support of labor, economic justice, and the environment, yet supported criminal and disastrous military adventurism overseas, most notably the war in Vietnam.

Indeed, Edwards is yet to explain how the United States can afford his ambitious and progressive domestic agenda while simultaneously having to fund large-scale military interventions overseas. He has called for dramatic increases in military spending, most of which has nothing to do challenging the threat from al-Qaeda.

Edwards’ call that America should “reclaim the moral high ground that defined our foreign policy for much of the last century” sounds noble until one considers that taking the moral high ground has been more the exception than the rule in U.S. foreign relations over the past 100 years. Though calling for a return to the policies of previous administrations that “built strong alliances and deepened the world’s respect of us,” he uses the presidency of Ronald Reagan as an example.

In reality, however, Reagan greatly alienated the international community through his support of contra terrorists and other attacks on Nicaragua in contravention of international law and a ruling by the International Court of Justice; his threats of a nuclear first-strike against the Soviet Union; his support for a series of brutal dictatorships in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East; his defense of Israel’s devastating 1982 invasion of Lebanon and subsequent U.S. intervention in that country; his 1986 attacks on two Libyan cities; his support for the apartheid regime in South Africa, its occupation of Namibia and their invasion of Angola; and, related unilateralist policies.

To be sure, a John Edwards administration would be real improvement over the administration of George W. Bush in the foreign policy realm, but it would clearly not be as progressive as many of his supporters would hope for.

Since first entering politics less than a decade ago, Edwards has greatly deepened his understanding of important policy issues and has moved to the left on his domestic agenda. His learning curve on foreign policy matters has thus far not been as impressive, but could potentially improve as well if, and only if, Democrats at the grass roots demand it.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/john_edwards_foreign_policy

Hillary Clinton’s Militarism Exposed

While much attention has been given to Senator Hillary Clinton’s support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, her foreign policy record regarding other international conflicts and her apparent eagerness to accept the use of force appears to indicate that her fateful vote authorizing the invasion and her subsequent support for the occupation and counter-insurgency war was no aberration. Indeed, there’s every indication that, as president, her foreign policy agenda would closely parallel that of the Bush administration. Despite efforts by some conservative Republicans to portray her as being on the left wing of the Democratic Party, in reality her foreign policy positions bear a far closer resemblance to those of Ronald Reagan than they do of George McGovern.

For example, rather than challenge President George W. Bush’s dramatic increases in military spending, Senator Clinton argues that they are not enough and the United States needs to spend even more in subsequent years. At the end of the Cold War, many Democrats were claiming that the American public would be able to benefit from a “peace dividend” resulting from dramatically-reduced military spending following the demise of the Soviet Union. Clinton, however, has called for dramatic increases in the military budget, even though the United States, despite being surrounded by two oceans and weak friendly neighbors, already spends as much on its military as all the rest of the world combined.

Mama Warbucks

Her presidential campaign has received far more money from defense contractors than any other candidate — Democrat or Republican — and her close ties to the defense industry has led the Village Voice to refer to her as “Mama Warbucks.” She has even fought the Bush administration in restoring funding for some of the very few weapons systems the Bush administration has sought to cut in recent years. Pentagon officials and defense contractors have given Senator Clinton high marks for listening to their concerns, promoting their products and leveraging her ties to the Pentagon, comparing her favorably to the hawkish former Washington Senator “Scoop” Jackson and other pro-military Democrats of earlier eras.

Clinton has also demonstrated a marked preference for military confrontation over negotiation. In a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations, she called for a “tough-minded, muscular foreign and defense policy.” Similarly, when her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination Senator Barack Obama expressed his willingness to meet with Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro or other foreign leaders with whom the United States has differences, she denounced him for being “irresponsible and frankly naive.”

Senator Clinton appears to have a history of advocating the blunt instrument of military force to deal with complex international problems. For example, she was one of the chief advocates in her husband’s inner circle for the 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 to attempt to resolve the Kosovo crisis.

Though she had not indicated any support for the Kosovar Albanians’ nonviolent campaign against Serbian oppression which had been ongoing since she had first moved into the White House six years earlier, she was quite eager for the United States to go to war on behalf of the militant Kosovo Liberation Army which had just recently come to prominence. Gail Sheehy’s book Hillary’s Choice reveals how, when President Bill Clinton and others correctly expressed concerns that bombing Serbia would likely lead to a dramatic worsening of the human rights situation by provoking the Serbs into engaging in full-scale ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Hillary Clinton successfully pushed her husband to bomb that country anyway.

Military Intervention

She has also defended the 1998 U.S. bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan which had provided that impoverished African country with more than half of its antibiotics and vaccines, falsely claiming it was a chemical weapons factory controlled by Osama bin Laden.

Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Clinton went well beyond the broad consensus that the United States should go after al-Qaeda cells and their leadership to declare that any country providing any “aid and comfort” to al-Qaeda “will now face the wrath of our country.” When Bush echoed these words the following week in his nationally-televised speech, she declared “I’ll stand behind Bush for a long time to come.”

She certainly did. Clinton voted to authorize the president with wide-ranging authority to attack Afghanistan and was a strong supporter of the bombing campaign against that country, which resulted in more civilian deaths than the 9/11 attacks against the United States that had prompted them.

Despite recent pleas by the democratically elected Afghan president Harmid Karzai that the ongoing U.S. bombing and the over-emphasis on aggressive counter-insurgency operations was harming efforts to deal with the resurgence of violence by the Taliban and other radical groups, Clinton argues that our “overriding immediate objective of our foreign policy” toward Afghanistan “must be to significantly step up our military engagement.”

Nuclear Weapons

Particularly disturbing has been Senator Clinton’s attitudes regarding nuclear issues. For example, when Senator Obama noted in August that the use of nuclear weapons — traditionally seen as a deterrent against other nuclear states — was not appropriate for use against terrorists, Clinton rebuked his logic by claiming that “I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons.”

Senator Clinton has also shown little regard for the danger from the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries, opposing the enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions challenging the nuclear weapons programs of such U.S allies as Israel, Pakistan and India. Not only does she support unconditional military aid — including nuclear-capable missiles and jet fighters — to these countries, she even voted to end restrictions on U.S. nuclear cooperation with countries that violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

She has a very different attitude, however, regarding even the possibility of a country the United States does not support obtaining nuclear weapons some time in the future. For example, Senator Clinton insists that the prospect of Iran joining its three Southwest Asian neighbors in developing nuclear weapons “must be unacceptable to the entire world” since challenging the nuclear monopoly of the United States and its allies would somehow “shake the foundation of global security to its very core.” She refuses to support the proposed nuclear weapons-free zone for the Middle East, as called for in UN Security Council resolution 687, nor does she support a no-first use nuclear policy, both of which could help resolve the nuclear standoff. Indeed, she has refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against such non-nuclear countries as Iran, even though such unilateral use of nuclear weapons directly contradicts the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the same treaty she claims the United States must unilaterally and rigorously enforce when it involves Iran and other countries our government doesn’t like.

Senator Clinton also criticized the Bush administration’s decision to include China, Japan and South Korea in talks regarding North Korea’s nuclear program and to allow France, Britain and Germany to play a major role in negotiations with Iran, claiming that instead of taking “leadership to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of rogue states and terrorists … we have outsourced over the last five years our policies.” In essence, as president, Hillary Clinton would be more unilateralist and less prone to work with other nations than the Bush administration on such critical issues as non-proliferation.

Latin America

In Latin America, Senator Clinton argues that the Bush administration should take a more aggressive stance against the rise of left-leaning governments in the hemisphere, arguing that Bush has neglected these recent developments “at our peril.” In response to recent efforts by democratically elected Latin American governments to challenge the structural obstacles which have left much of their populations in poverty, she has expressed alarm that “We have witnessed the rollback of democratic development and economic openness in parts of Latin America.”

Apparently wishing that the Bush administration could have somehow prevented the elections of leftist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and elsewhere, she argues that “We must return to a policy of vigorous engagement.” Though she has not clarified what she means by “vigorous engagement,” regional examples in recent decades have included military interventions, CIA-sponsored coups, military and financial support for opposition groups, and rigged national elections.

She also supports Bush’s counter-productive and vindictive policy towards Cuba, insisting that she would not end the trade embargo — recently denounced in a 184-4 vote by the United Nations General Assembly — until there was a “democratic transition” in that country. She has even backed Bush’s strict limitations on family visitations by Cuban-Americans and other restrictions on Americans’ freedom to travel.

Israel and Palestine

Regarding Israel, Senator Clinton has taken a consistently right-wing position, undermining the efforts of Israeli and Palestinian moderates seeking a just peace that would recognize both the Palestinians’ legitimate national rights and the Israelis’ legitimate security concerns. For example, she has defended Israeli colonization of occupied Palestinian territory, has strongly supported Israel’s construction of an illegal separation barrier deep inside the occupied territory, and has denounced the International Court of Justice for its near-unanimous 2004 decision calling on Israel to abide by international humanitarian law.

Senator Clinton has consistently put the onus of responsibility on the occupied Palestinians rather than their Israeli occupiers.

She has been particularly outspoken in her condemnation of the Palestine Authority, even prior to Hamas gaining the majority in their parliament, for publishing textbooks which she claims promotes “anti-Semitism,” “violence,” and “dehumanizing rhetoric” and thereby breeds a “new generation of terrorists.” On several occasions she has blamed this alleged anti-Semitic indoctrination — and not the Israeli occupation — for Palestinian violence.

The only source she has cited to uphold these charges, however, has been the Center for the Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), a right-wing Israeli-based group whose board includes Daniel Pipes and other prominent American neo-conservatives, which was founded in 1998 as part of an effort to undermine the peace process by attempting to portray the Palestinians as hopelessly hostile to Israel’s existence. It has been directly challenged by other studies from more objective sources.

Senator Clinton’s insistence on repeating the propaganda of long-discredited reports by a right-wing think tank instead of paying attention to well-regarded investigations by credible scholars and journalists may be a dangerous indication of how little difference there is between her and Bush in terms of what sources she would rely upon in formulating her policies.

Israel and Lebanon

Senator Clinton was also an outspoken supporter of Israel’s massive military assault on the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip last summer, which took the lives of at least 800 civilians. She claimed that the carnage was justified since it would “send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians [and] to the Iranians,” because, in her words, they oppose the United States and Israel’s commitment to “life and freedom.” Despite detailed reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch noting that there was no evidence to suggest that Hezbollah used Lebanese civilians as human shields, Senator Clinton has repeatedly insisted that they did, in an apparent effort to discredit these human rights groups and absolve Israel of any responsibility for the enormous civilian casualties inflicted during the assault.

Senator Clinton’s statements were challenged by her opponent in last year’s Democratic primary for Senate in New York, union activist Jonathan Tasini, who pointed out that “Israel has committed acts that violate international standards and the Geneva Conventions.” Her spokesperson, however, dismissed Tasini’s concerns about Israeli violations of international humanitarian law as “beyond the pale.” Senator Clinton supporters also denounced him as “anti-Israel,” even though he is a former Israeli citizen who has lost close relatives in the Arab-Israeli wars and to Palestinian terrorism, whose father fought with Zionist forces in the Israeli war of independence, and has repeatedly referred to himself as a “friend of Israel.”

Clinton even continues to defend Israel’s decision to launch the devastating 2006 war on Lebanon even though an Israeli government report released earlier this year acknowledged it was a major setback to Israeli security.

Syria

Senator Clinton has also aimed her militaristic sights at Syria. In a typical example of her double-standards, she was a co-sponsor of the 2003 “Syrian Accountability Act,” which demanded — under threat of sanctions — that Syria unilaterally eliminate its chemical weapons and missile systems, despite the fact that nearby U.S. allies like Israel and Egypt had far larger and more advanced stockpiles of chemical weapons and missiles, not to mention Israel’s sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons. (See my article, The Syrian Accountability Act and the Triumph of Hegemony.)

Included in the bill’s “findings” were charges by top Bush Administration officials of Syrian support for international terrorism and development of dangerous WMD programs. Not only have most of these particular accusations not been independently confirmed, they were made by the same Bush Administration officials who had made similar claims against Iraq that have since been proven false. Yet Senator Clinton naively trusts their word over independent strategic analysts familiar with the region who have challenged many of these charges. Her bill also called for strict sanctions against Syria as well as Syria’s expulsion from its non-permanent seat Security Council for its failure at that time to withdraw its forces from Lebanon according to UN Security Council resolution 520.

This could hardly be considered a principled position, however, since she defended Israel’s 22-year long occupation of southern Lebanon that finally ended just three years earlier which was in defiance of this same resolution, as well as nine other UN Security Council resolutions. Nor had she ever called for the expulsion of Morocco, Turkey or Indonesia from the Security Council when they held non-permanent seats despite their violations of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their occupations of neighboring countries.

Despite the fact that Syria is far weaker than it was 20 years ago when it was being generously armed by the Soviet Union, Senator Clinton insists that it is now “among the most difficult and dangerous [countries] in the world” and that it somehow poses “direct threats to . . . neighbors . . . and far beyond the region.” She also offered her “strong support” for Israel’s unprovoked air strikes in northern Syria in September. She has echoed the administration’s charges that Syria is a major supporter of Hamas, even though the bulk of the Islamist Palestinian group’s foreign support has come from Saudi Arabia and Iran, not the secular regime in Damascus. And, despite Syria’s longstanding opposition to Sunni extremists and Iraqi Baathists — the major components of the insurgency fighting U.S. forces in Iraq — she has also accused Syria of backing anti-American forces in that country.

Iran

In response to the Bush administration’s ongoing obsession with Iran, Senator Clinton’s view is that the Bush has not been obsessive enough. In a speech at Princeton University last year, she argued that the White House “lost critical time in dealing with Iran,” and accused the administration of choosing to “downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations” as well as “standing on the sidelines.”

She has insisted that “we cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran — that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons.” Though going to war is still very high on her list of options, apparently supporting a nuclear weapons-free zone for the entire Middle East, normalizing economic and strategic relations in return for eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, and other possible negotiated options are not.

In defending her vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq in 2003, she has claimed that Bush “deceived all of us” in exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Yet, when it comes to the similarly exaggerated Iranian threat, she has again repeated the Bush administration’s talking points almost verbatim. Indeed, as recently as last month she was insisting that “Iran is seeking nuclear weapons,” even though the consensus of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies was that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.

Senator Clinton was the only Democratic member of Congress seeking the presidential nomination to support the Kyl-Lieberman amendment which, among other things, called on the Bush administration to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — the largest branch of the Iranian military — as a foreign terrorist organization. To designate a branch of the armed forces of a foreign state as a terrorist organization would be unprecedented and was widely interpreted to be a backhanded way of authorizing military action against Iran. Indeed, Virginia Senator Jim Webb referred to it as “Cheney’s fondest pipe dream.”

She initially justified her vote in part because of the Revolutionary Guard’s alleged involvement in Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a position she has had trouble defending since it was revealed such a program has not existed for at least four years.

In language remarkably similar to her discredited rationalization for her 2002 vote to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq, she claimed that it was not actually a vote for war, but simply to give Bush a means “to apply greater diplomatic pressure on Iran.” (Fortunately, Senator Clinton’s position was too extreme even for the Bush administration, which designated only the al-Quds Force — a sub-unit of the Revolutionary Guards which doesn’t always operate with the full knowledge and consent of the central government — as a terrorist organization.)

She has also decried Iran’s “involvement in and influence over Iraq,” an ironic complaint for someone who voted to authorize the overthrow of the anti-Iranian secular government of Saddam Hussein despite his widely predicted replacement by pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalist parties. She has also gone on record repeating a whole series of false, exaggerated and unproven charges by Bush administration officials regarding Iranian support for the Iraqi insurgency, even though the vast majority of foreign support for the insurgency has come from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries and that the majority of the insurgents are fanatically anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite.

Though Iran’s threat to the national security of the United States is grossly exaggerated, they are a far more powerful country today in terms of their military prowess than was Iraq in 2002, when Senator Clinton supported invading that country because of its alleged danger to U.S. national security. It would be naïve, therefore, to ignore the very real possibility that, if elected president, she would find reason to invade Iran as well.

A Liberal?

Given Senator Clinton’s militaristic foreign policy, why are so many of her supporters apparently in denial of this unfortunate reality?

Part of the problem is that most of the public criticism of the former first lady has been based on false and exaggerated charges from the far right, often infused with a fair dose of sexism. As a result, many liberals become defensive and reluctant to criticize her. Many also ironically start believing some of the lies of the far right when they claim she is some kind of left-winger. There is also an understandable nostalgia for the eight years of relative peace and prosperity under her husband’s administration after the horrors of nearly seven years under President George W. Bush, which have made it easy to forget the lesser but very real failings of President Bill Clinton.

There is also the fact that after 43 male presidents, the prospect of finally having a woman as chief executive is understandably appealing. Yet, what’s the advantage of a female president if her foreign policies are still centered on patriarchal notions of militarism and conquest? What would it mean to the women of Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and other countries who would suffer as a result of her policies? Did the position of British women improve as a result of the militaristic policies of their first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher?

These are the kinds of questions, along with a critical examination of her overall foreign policy record, that need to be considered by Democrats before making Hillary Clinton their nominee for president.

http://www.alternet.org/story/70860/hillary_clinton%27s_militarism_exposed/?page=entire

Hillary Clinton Can’t be Trusted on Iraq

Public opinion polls have consistently shown that the majority of Americans — and even a larger majority of Democrats — believe that Iraq is the most important issue of the day, that it was wrong for the United States to have invaded that country, and the United States should completely withdraw its forces in short order. Despite this, the clear front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination for president is Senator Hillary Clinton, a strident backer of the invasion who only recently and opportunistically began to criticize the war and call for a partial withdrawal of American forces.

As a result, it is important to review Senator Clinton’s past and current positions regarding the Iraq War. Indeed, despite her efforts in response to public opinion polls to come across as an opponent of the war, Hillary Clinton has proven to be one of the most hard-line Democratic senators in support of a military response to the challenges posed by Iraq. She has also been less than honest in justifying her militaristic policies, raising concerns that she might support military interventions elsewhere.

Pre-War Militarism

Senator Clinton’s militaristic stance on Iraq predated her support for Bush’s 2003 invasion. For example, in defending the brutal four-day U.S. bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998 — known as Operation Desert Fox — she claimed that “[T]he so-called presidential palaces … in reality were huge compounds well suited to hold weapons labs, stocks, and records which Saddam Hussein was required by UN resolution to turn over. When Saddam blocked the inspection process, the inspectors left.” In reality, as became apparent when UN inspectors returned in 2002 as well as in the aftermath of the invasion and occupation, there were no weapons labs, stocks of weapons or missing records in these presidential palaces. In addition, Saddam was still allowing for virtually all inspections to go forward at the time of the 1998 U.S. attacks. The inspectors were withdrawn for their own safety at the encouragement of President Clinton in anticipation of the imminent U.S.-led assault.

Senator Clinton also took credit for strengthening U.S. ties with Ahmad Chalabi, the convicted embezzler who played a major role in convincing key segments of the administration, Congress, the CIA, and the American public that Iraq still had proscribed weapons, weapons systems, and weapons labs. She has expressed pride that her husband’s administration changed underlying U.S. policy toward Iraq from “containment” — which had been quite successful in defending Iraq’s neighbors and protecting its Kurdish minority — to “regime change,” which has resulted in tragic warfare, chaos, dislocation, and instability.

Prior to the 2003 invasion, Clinton insisted that Iraq still had a nuclear program, despite a detailed 1998 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), subsequent studies that indicated that Iraq’s nuclear program appeared to have been completely dismantled a full decade earlier, and a 2002 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that made no mention of any reconstituted nuclear development effort. Similarly, even though Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programs had been dismantled years earlier, she also insisted that Iraq had rebuilt its biological and chemical weapons stockpiles. And, even though the limited shelf life of such chemical and biological agents and the strict embargo against imports of any additional banned materials that had been in place since 1990 made it physically impossible for Iraq to have reconstituted such weapons, she insisted that “It is clear … that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”

In the fall of 2002, Senator Clinton sought to discredit those questioning Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and others who were making hyperbolic statements about Iraq’s supposed military prowess by insisting that Iraq’s possession of such weapons “are not in doubt” and was “undisputed.” Similarly, Clinton insisted that Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 2005 speech at the UN was “compelling” although UN officials and arms control experts roundly denounced its false claims that Iraq had reconstituted these proscribed weapons, weapons programs, and delivery systems. In addition, although top strategic analysts correctly informed her that there were no links between Saddam Hussein’s secular nationalist regime and the radical Islamist al-Qaeda, Senator Clinton insisted that Saddam “has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members.”

The Lead-Up to War

Though the 2003 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq was inaccurate in a number of respects, it did challenge the notion of any operational ties between the Iraqi government and Al-Qaeda and questioned some of the more categorical claims by President Bush about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). However, Senator Clinton didn’t even bother to read it. She now claims that it wasn’t necessary for her to have actually read the 92-page document herself because she was briefed on the contents of the report. However, since no one on her staff was authorized to read the report, it’s unclear who could have actually briefed her.

During the floor debate over the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq, Clinton was the only Democratic senator to have categorically accepted the Bush administration’s claims regarding Iraq’s alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, Iraq’s alleged long-range missile capabilities, and alleged ties to al-Qaeda. (Some Democratic senators accepted some of those claims, but not all of them.)

In the months leading up the war, Senator Clinton chose to ignore the pleas of the hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in her state and across the country against the war and similarly brushed off calls by religious leaders, scholars, community activists, and others to oppose it. Perhaps most significant was her refusal to consider the anti-war appeals by leaders of the Catholic Church and virtually every mainline Protestant denomination, which noted that it did not meet the traditional criteria in the Christian tradition for a just war. Instead, Senator Clinton embraced the arguments of the right-wing fundamentalist leadership who supported the war. This categorical rejection of the perspective of the mainstream Christian community raises concerns about her theological perspectives on issues of war and peace.

In March 2003, well after UN weapons inspectors had been allowed to return and engage in unfettered inspections and were not finding any WMDs, Senator Clinton made clear that the United States should invade that Iraq anyway. Indeed, she asserted that the only way to avoid war would be for Saddam Hussein to abide by President Bush’s ultimatum to resign as president and leave the country, in the apparent belief that the United States had the right to unilaterally make such demands of foreign leaders and to invade and occupy their countries if they refused. Said Senator Clinton, “The president gave Saddam Hussein one last chance to avoid war and the world hopes that Saddam Hussein will finally hear this ultimatum, understand the severity of those words, and act accordingly.”

When President Bush launched the invasion soon thereafter and spontaneous protests broke out across the country, Senator Clinton voted in favor of a Republican-sponsored resolution that “commends and supports the efforts and leadership of the President . . . in the conflict against Iraq.”

Aftermath of invasion

Even after the U.S. forces invaded and occupied Iraq and confirmed that — contrary to Senator Clinton’s initial justification for the war — Iraq did not have WMDs, WMD programs, offensive delivery systems, or ties to al-Qaeda, she defended her vote to authorize the invasion anyway. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that December, she declared, “I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote” and was one that “I stand by.”

In the face of growing doubts about American forces involved in a deepening counter-insurgency war, she urged “patience” and expressed her concern about the lack of will “to stay the course” among some Americans. “Failure is not an option” in Iraq, she insisted. “We have no option but to stay involved and committed.” Indeed, long before President Bush announced his “surge,” Senator Clinton called for the United States to send more troops.

During a trip to Iraq in February 2005, she insisted that the U.S. occupation was “functioning quite well,” although the security situation had deteriorated so badly that the four-lane divided highway on flat open terrain connecting the airport with the capital could not be secured at the time of her arrival and a helicopter had to transport her to the Green Zone. Though 55 Iraqis and one American soldier were killed during her brief visit, she insisted — in a manner remarkably similar to Vice President Cheney — that the rise in suicide bombings was evidence that the insurgency was failing.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” that same month, she argued that it “would be a mistake” to immediately withdraw U.S. troops or even simply set a timetable for withdrawal, claiming that “We don’t want to send a signal to insurgents, to the terrorists, that we are going to be out of here at some, you know, date certain.” Less than two years ago, she declared, “I reject a rigid timetable that the terrorists can exploit.” And, just last year, on an appearance on ABC’s Nightline, she described how “I’ve taken a lot of heat from my friends who have said, ‘Please, just, you know, throw in the towel and say let’s get out by a date certain. I don’t think that’s responsible.” When Representative John Murtha made his first call for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in November 2005, she denounced his effort, calling a withdrawal of U.S. forces “a big mistake.”

As recently as last year, when Senator John Kerry sponsored an amendment that would have required the redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq in order to advance a political solution to the growing sectarian strife, she voted against it.

Rewriting History

Senator Clinton has never apologized for her vote to authorize the invasion. She insists that her eagerness for the United States to invade Iraq had nothing to do with its vast petroleum reserves. Like President Bush, she claims that she did not lie about her false accusations about Iraq’s weapons programs. She says she was misled by faulty intelligence, though she has refused to make public this intelligence that she claims demonstrated that Iraq had somehow reconstituted its WMD.

Senator Clinton has also claimed that Bush — at the time of the resolution authorizing the invasion — had misled her regarding his intention to pursue diplomacy instead of rushing into war. But there was nothing in the war resolution that required him to pursue any negotiations. She has tried to emphasize that she voted in favor of an unsuccessful amendment by Senator Byrd “which would have limited the original authorization to one year.” However, this resolution actually meant very little, since it gave President Bush the authority to extend the war authorization “for a period or periods of 12 months each” if he determined that it was “necessary for ongoing or impending military operations against Iraq.”

Despite the fact that Iraq had several weeks prior to the October 2002 vote already agreed unconditionally to allow UN inspectors to return, she categorically insisted that her vote “was a necessary step in order to maximize the outcome that did occur in the Security Council with the unanimous vote to send in inspectors.”

She has also subsequently claimed that her vote “was clearly intended to demonstrate support for going to the United Nations to put inspectors into Iraq” and was “not a vote for pre-emptive war.” The record shows, however, that Senator Clinton voted against an amendment by Senator Carl Levin that would have allowed for U.S. military action to disarm Iraq of any weapons of mass destruction and weapons systems pursuant to any future UN Security Council resolution authorizing such military actions, which would presumably have taken place had Iraq not allowed the inspectors back in as promised. In other words, she not only was willing to ignore U.S. obligations under the UN Charter that forbids such unilateral military actions by its member states, she tacitly acknowledged that she was unconcerned about supporting UN efforts to bring inspectors back into the country. Indeed, in her floor speech, she warned that this vote “says clearly to Saddam Hussein – this is your last chance – disarm or be disarmed” and the resolution that she did support clearly authorizes President Bush to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing, regardless of whether inspectors were allowed to return to Iraq and regardless of whether the Bush administration received UN support.

Senator Clinton has never criticized the Bush administration for its flagrant violation of the UN Charter or its responsibility for the deaths of the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. She has limited her criticism to the way the administration handled the invasion, implying that, as president, she would do invasions better. Indeed, she insisted that while not regretting her vote to authorize the invasion, she did regret “the way the president used the authority.”

Senator Clinton has criticized the administration for not acting to gain more international support for the invasion, ignoring the fact that they actually had tried very hard to do so but failed. The Bush administration was unable to get authorization for the use of force from the UN or, with the exception of Great Britain, to get any substantial troop support from other countries not because they didn’t try, but because the vast majority of the international community recognized that an invasion of Iraq was illegal and unnecessary.

Current Policy

A careful look at her current policy toward Iraq reveals that Senator Clinton is not as anti-war as her supporters depict her.

She would withdraw some troops, just as President Bush has been promising to do eventually, but insists that the United States should maintain its “military as well as political mission” in Iraq for the indefinite future for such purposes as countering Iranian influence, protecting the Kurdish minority, preventing a failed state, and supporting the Iraqi military. On ABC’s “This Week” in September, she insisted that “withdrawing is dangerous. It has to be done responsibly, prudently, carefully, but we have said that there will be a likely continuing mission against al-Qaeda in Iraq. We have to protect our civilian employees, our embassy that will be there.”

If Senator Clinton were really concerned about the threat that al-Qaeda currently poses in Iraq, however, she would never have voted to authorize the invasion, which led to the predictable rise of al-Qaeda and other militant groups in that country. Similarly, there would not be the huge embassy complex nor would there be tens of thousands of civilian employees she insists that U.S. troops are necessary to defend if the United States had not invaded Iraq in the first place. In addition, only because the United States overthrew the stridently secular anti-Iranian regime of Saddam Hussein has Iran gained such influence. And since the risks of a collapse of Iraq’s internal security was one of the main arguments presented to her prior to her vote, Clinton should not have voted to authorize the invasion if a failed state was really a concern for hers.

Since most estimates of the numbers of troops needed to carry out these tasks range between 40,000 and 75,000, the best that can be hoped for under a Hillary Clinton presidency is that she would withdraw only about one-half to two-thirds of American combat forces within a year or so of her assuming office. Indeed, she has explicitly refused to promise, if elected president, to withdraw troops by the end of her term in 2013. As Senator Clinton describes, it, “What we can do is to almost take a line sort of north of, between Baghdad and Kirkuk, and basically put our troops into that region — the ones that are going to remain for our anti-terrorism mission; for our northern support mission; for our ability to respond to the Iranians; and to continue to provide support, if called for, for the Iraqis.” This hardly constitutes a withdrawal.

Senator Clinton tries to downplay the risk of keeping U.S. forces bogged down indefinitely by emphasizing that she would put greater emphasis on training the Iraqi armed forces. But much of the Iraqi armed forces are more loyal to their respective sectarian militias than they are to protecting Iraq as a whole. Nor has she expressed much concern that the Iraqi armed forces and police have engaged in gross and systematic human rights abuses. As with her backing of unconditional military assistance and security training to scores of other allied governments that engage in a pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations, she appears unconcerned not only with the immorality of such a policy but the long-term strategic risks from the blowback that would result from the United States becoming identified with repressive regimes.

Little Difference from Bush

As her record indicates, Senator Clinton’s position on Iraq differs very little from that of President Bush. For her to receive the nomination for president would in effect be an endorsement by the Democratic Party of the Iraq war.

In 2004, the Democrats selected a nominee who also voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, falsely claimed that Iraq still had WMDs, and — at that time — insisted on maintaining U.S. troops in that country. As a result, Senator John Kerry failed to mobilize the party’s anti-war base and went down to defeat. What timid concerns Kerry did raise about President Bush’s handling of the Iraq war during the campaign were used by the Bush campaign to focus attention away from the war itself and highlight the Democratic nominee’s changing positions. Had the Democrats instead nominated someone who had opposed the war from the beginning, the debate that fall would have been not about Senator Kerry’s supposed “flip-flopping” but the tragic decision to illegally invade a country on the far side of the world that was no threat to us and the squandering of American lives and tax dollars that have resulted.

If the Democrats select another war supporter as their nominee in 2008, the result may well be the same as 2004. Large numbers of people will refuse to vote for the Democratic nominee as part of a principled stance against voting for someone who authorized and subsequently supported the Iraq war. And Republicans will highlight the Democratic nominee’s shifting positions on Iraq as evidence that their opponent is simply an opportunistic politician rather than the kind of decisive leader the country needs.

http://www.alternet.org/story/70416/hillary_clinton_can%27t_be_trusted_on_iraq/?page=entire

Hillary Clinton on Military Policy

While much attention has been given to Senator Hillary Clinton’s support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, her foreign policy record regarding other international conflicts and her apparent eagerness to accept the use of force appears to indicate that her fateful vote authorizing the invasion and her subsequent support for the occupation and counter-insurgency war was no aberration. Indeed, there’s every indication that, as president, her foreign policy agenda would closely parallel that of the Bush administration. Despite efforts by some conservative Republicans to portray her as being on the left wing of the Democratic Party, in reality her foreign policy positions bear a far closer resemblance to those of Ronald Reagan than they do of George McGovern.

For example, rather than challenge President George W. Bush’s dramatic increases in military spending, Senator Clinton argues that they are not enough and the United States needs to spend even more in subsequent years. At the end of the Cold War, many Democrats were claiming that the American public would be able to benefit from a “peace dividend” resulting from dramatically-reduced military spending following the demise of the Soviet Union. Clinton, however, has called for dramatic increases in the military budget, even though the United States, despite being surrounded by two oceans and weak friendly neighbors, already spends as much on its military as all the rest of the world combined.

Mama Warbucks

Her presidential campaign has received far more money from defense contractors than any other candidate – Democrat or Republican – and her close ties to the defense industry has led the Village Voice to refer to her as “Mama Warbucks.” She has even fought the Bush administration in restoring funding for some of the very few weapons systems the Bush administration has sought to cut in recent years. Pentagon officials and defense contractors have given Senator Clinton high marks for listening to their concerns, promoting their products and leveraging her ties to the Pentagon, comparing her favorably to the hawkish former Washington Senator “Scoop” Jackson and other pro-military Democrats of earlier eras.

Clinton has also demonstrated a marked preference for military confrontation over negotiation. In a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations, she called for a “tough-minded, muscular foreign and defense policy.” Similarly, when her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination Senator Barack Obama expressed his willingness to meet with Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro or other foreign leaders with whom the United States has differences, she denounced him for being “irresponsible and frankly naive.”

Senator Clinton appears to have a history of advocating the blunt instrument of military force to deal with complex international problems. For example, she was one of the chief advocates in her husband’s inner circle for the 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 to attempt to resolve the Kosovo crisis.

Though she had not indicated any support for the Kosovar Albanians’ nonviolent campaign against Serbian oppression which had been ongoing since she had first moved into the White House six years earlier, she was quite eager for the United States to go to war on behalf of the militant Kosovo Liberation Army which had just recently come to prominence. Gail Sheehy’s book Hillary’s Choice reveals how, when President Bill Clinton and others correctly expressed concerns that bombing Serbia would likely lead to a dramatic worsening of the human rights situation by provoking the Serbs into engaging in full-scale ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Hillary Clinton successfully pushed her husband to bomb that country anyway.

Military Intervention

She has also defended the 1998 U.S. bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan which had provided that impoverished African country with more than half of its antibiotics and vaccines, falsely claiming it was a chemical weapons factory controlled by Osama bin Laden.

Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Clinton went well beyond the broad consensus that the United States should go after al-Qaeda cells and their leadership to declare that any country providing any “aid and comfort” to al-Qaeda “will now face the wrath of our country.” When Bush echoed these words the following week in his nationally-televised speech, she declared “I’ll stand behind Bush for a long time to come.”

She certainly did. Clinton voted to authorize the president with wide-ranging authority to attack Afghanistan and was a strong supporter of the bombing campaign against that country, which resulted in more civilian deaths than the 9/11 attacks against the United States that had prompted them.

Despite recent pleas by the democratically elected Afghan president Harmid Karzai that the ongoing U.S. bombing and the over-emphasis on aggressive counter-insurgency operations was harming efforts to deal with the resurgence of violence by the Taliban and other radical groups, Clinton argues that our “overriding immediate objective of our foreign policy” toward Afghanistan “must be to significantly step up our military engagement.”

Nuclear Weapons

Particularly disturbing has been Senator Clinton’s attitudes regarding nuclear issues. For example, when Senator Obama noted in August that the use of nuclear weapons – traditionally seen as a deterrent against other nuclear states – was not appropriate for use against terrorists, Clinton rebuked his logic by claiming that “I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons.”

Senator Clinton has also shown little regard for the danger from the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries, opposing the enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions challenging the nuclear weapons programs of such U.S allies as Israel, Pakistan and India. Not only does she support unconditional military aid – including nuclear-capable missiles and jet fighters – to these countries, she even voted to end restrictions on U.S. nuclear cooperation with countries that violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

She has a very different attitude, however, regarding even the possibility of a country the United States does not support obtaining nuclear weapons some time in the future. For example, Senator Clinton insists that the prospect of Iran joining its three Southwest Asian neighbors in developing nuclear weapons “must be unacceptable to the entire world” since challenging the nuclear monopoly of the United States and its allies would somehow “shake the foundation of global security to its very core.” She refuses to support the proposed nuclear weapons-free zone for the Middle East, as called for in UN Security Council resolution 687, nor does she support a no-first use nuclear policy, both of which could help resolve the nuclear standoff. Indeed, she has refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against such non-nuclear countries as Iran, even though such unilateral use of nuclear weapons directly contradicts the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the same treaty she claims the United States must unilaterally and rigorously enforce when it involves Iran and other countries our government doesn’t like.

Senator Clinton also criticized the Bush administration’s decision to include China, Japan and South Korea in talks regarding North Korea’s nuclear program and to allow France, Britain and Germany to play a major role in negotiations with Iran, claiming that instead of taking “leadership to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of rogue states and terrorists … we have outsourced over the last five years our policies.” In essence, as president, Hillary Clinton would be more unilateralist and less prone to work with other nations than the Bush administration on such critical issues as non-proliferation.

Latin America

In Latin America, Senator Clinton argues that the Bush administration should take a more aggressive stance against the rise of left-leaning governments in the hemisphere, arguing that Bush has neglected these recent developments “at our peril.” In response to recent efforts by democratically elected Latin American governments to challenge the structural obstacles which have left much of their populations in poverty, she has expressed alarm that “We have witnessed the rollback of democratic development and economic openness in parts of Latin America.”

Apparently wishing that the Bush administration could have somehow prevented the elections of leftist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and elsewhere, she argues that “We must return to a policy of vigorous engagement.” Though she has not clarified what she means by “vigorous engagement,” regional examples in recent decades have included military interventions, CIA-sponsored coups, military and financial support for opposition groups, and rigged national elections.

She also supports Bush’s counter-productive and vindictive policy towards Cuba, insisting that she would not end the trade embargo – recently denounced in a 184-4 vote by the United Nations General Assembly – until there was a “democratic transition” in that country. She has even backed Bush’s strict limitations on family visitations by Cuban-Americans and other restrictions on Americans’ freedom to travel.

Israel and Palestine

Regarding Israel, Senator Clinton has taken a consistently right-wing position, undermining the efforts of Israeli and Palestinian moderates seeking a just peace that would recognize both the Palestinians’ legitimate national rights and the Israelis’ legitimate security concerns. For example, she has defended Israeli colonization of occupied Palestinian territory, has strongly supported Israel’s construction of an illegal separation barrier deep inside the occupied territory, and has denounced the International Court of Justice for its near-unanimous 2004 decision calling on Israel to abide by international humanitarian law.

Senator Clinton has consistently put the onus of responsibility on the occupied Palestinians rather than their Israeli occupiers.

She has been particularly outspoken in her condemnation of the Palestine Authority, even prior to Hamas gaining the majority in their parliament, for publishing textbooks which she claims promotes “anti-Semitism,” “violence,” and “dehumanizing rhetoric” and thereby breeds a “new generation of terrorists.” On several occasions she has blamed this alleged anti-Semitic indoctrination – and not the Israeli occupation – for Palestinian violence.

The only source she has cited to uphold these charges, however, has been the Center for the Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), a right-wing Israeli-based group whose board includes Daniel Pipes and other prominent American neo-conservatives, which was founded in 1998 as part of an effort to undermine the peace process by attempting to portray the Palestinians as hopelessly hostile to Israel’s existence. It has been directly challenged by other studies from more objective sources.

Senator Clinton’s insistence on repeating the propaganda of long-discredited reports by a right-wing think tank instead of paying attention to well-regarded investigations by credible scholars and journalists may be a dangerous indication of how little difference there is between her and Bush in terms of what sources she would rely upon in formulating her policies.

Israel and Lebanon

Senator Clinton was also an outspoken supporter of Israel’s massive military assault on the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip last summer, which took the lives of at least 800 civilians. She claimed that the carnage was justified since it would “send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians [and] to the Iranians,” because, in her words, they oppose the United States and Israel’s commitment to “life and freedom.” Despite detailed reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch noting that there was no evidence to suggest that Hezbollah used Lebanese civilians as human shields, Senator Clinton has repeatedly insisted that they did, in an apparent effort to discredit these human rights groups and absolve Israel of any responsibility for the enormous civilian casualties inflicted during the assault.

Senator Clinton’s statements were challenged by her opponent in last year’s Democratic primary for Senate in New York, union activist Jonathan Tasini, who pointed out that “Israel has committed acts that violate international standards and the Geneva Conventions.” Her spokesperson, however, dismissed Tasini’s concerns about Israeli violations of international humanitarian law as “beyond the pale.” Senator Clinton supporters also denounced him as “anti-Israel,” even though he is a former Israeli citizen who has lost close relatives in the Arab-Israeli wars and to Palestinian terrorism, whose father fought with Zionist forces in the Israeli war of independence, and has repeatedly referred to himself as a “friend of Israel.”

Clinton even continues to defend Israel’s decision to launch the devastating 2006 war on Lebanon even though an Israeli government report released earlier this year acknowledged it was a major setback to Israeli security.

Syria

Senator Clinton has also aimed her militaristic sights at Syria. In a typical example of her double-standards, she was a co-sponsor of the 2003 “Syrian Accountability Act,” which demanded – under threat of sanctions – that Syria unilaterally eliminate its chemical weapons and missile systems, despite the fact that nearby U.S. allies like Israel and Egypt had far larger and more advanced stockpiles of chemical weapons and missiles, not to mention Israel’s sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons. (See my article, The Syrian Accountability Act and the Triumph of Hegemony.)

Included in the bill’s “findings” were charges by top Bush Administration officials of Syrian support for international terrorism and development of dangerous WMD programs. Not only have most of these particular accusations not been independently confirmed, they were made by the same Bush Administration officials who had made similar claims against Iraq that have since been proven false. Yet Senator Clinton naively trusts their word over independent strategic analysts familiar with the region who have challenged many of these charges. Her bill also called for strict sanctions against Syria as well as Syria’s expulsion from its non-permanent seat Security Council for its failure at that time to withdraw its forces from Lebanon according to UN Security Council resolution 520.

This could hardly be considered a principled position, however, since she defended Israel’s 22-year long occupation of southern Lebanon that finally ended just three years earlier which was in defiance of this same resolution, as well as nine other UN Security Council resolutions. Nor had she ever called for the expulsion of Morocco, Turkey or Indonesia from the Security Council when they held non-permanent seats despite their violations of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their occupations of neighboring countries.

Despite the fact that Syria is far weaker than it was 20 years ago when it was being generously armed by the Soviet Union, Senator Clinton insists that it is now “among the most difficult and dangerous [countries] in the world” and that it somehow poses “direct threats to . . . neighbors . . . and far beyond the region.” She also offered her “strong support” for Israel’s unprovoked air strikes in northern Syria in September. She has echoed the administration’s charges that Syria is a major supporter of Hamas, even though the bulk of the Islamist Palestinian group’s foreign support has come from Saudi Arabia and Iran, not the secular regime in Damascus. And, despite Syria’s longstanding opposition to Sunni extremists and Iraqi Baathists – the major components of the insurgency fighting U.S. forces in Iraq – she has also accused Syria of backing anti-American forces in that country.

Iran

In response to the Bush administration’s ongoing obsession with Iran, Senator Clinton’s view is that the Bush has not been obsessive enough. In a speech at Princeton University last year, she argued that the White House “lost critical time in dealing with Iran,” and accused the administration of choosing to “downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations” as well as “standing on the sidelines.”

She has insisted that “we cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran – that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons.” Though going to war is still very high on her list of options, apparently supporting a nuclear weapons-free zone for the entire Middle East, normalizing economic and strategic relations in return for eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, and other possible negotiated options are not.

In defending her vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq in 2003, she has claimed that Bush “deceived all of us” in exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Yet, when it comes to the similarly exaggerated Iranian threat, she has again repeated the Bush administration’s talking points almost verbatim. Indeed, as recently as last month she was insisting that “Iran is seeking nuclear weapons,” even though the consensus of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies was that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.

Senator Clinton was the only Democratic member of Congress seeking the presidential nomination to support the Kyl-Lieberman amendment which, among other things, called on the Bush administration to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps – the largest branch of the Iranian military – as a foreign terrorist organization. To designate a branch of the armed forces of a foreign state as a terrorist organization would be unprecedented and was widely interpreted to be a backhanded way of authorizing military action against Iran. Indeed, Virginia Senator Jim Webb referred to it as “Cheney’s fondest pipe dream.”

She initially justified her vote in part because of the Revolutionary Guard’s alleged involvement in Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a position she has had trouble defending since it was revealed such a program has not existed for at least four years.

In language remarkably similar to her discredited rationalization for her 2002 vote to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq, she claimed that it was not actually a vote for war, but simply to give Bush a means “to apply greater diplomatic pressure on Iran.” (Fortunately, Senator Clinton’s position was too extreme even for the Bush administration, which designated only the al-Quds Force – a sub-unit of the Revolutionary Guards which doesn’t always operate with the full knowledge and consent of the central government – as a terrorist organization.)

She has also decried Iran’s “involvement in and influence over Iraq,” an ironic complaint for someone who voted to authorize the overthrow of the anti-Iranian secular government of Saddam Hussein despite his widely predicted replacement by pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalist parties. She has also gone on record repeating a whole series of false, exaggerated and unproven charges by Bush administration officials regarding Iranian support for the Iraqi insurgency, even though the vast majority of foreign support for the insurgency has come from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries and that the majority of the insurgents are fanatically anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite.

Though Iran’s threat to the national security of the United States is grossly exaggerated, they are a far more powerful country today in terms of their military prowess than was Iraq in 2002, when Senator Clinton supported invading that country because of its alleged danger to U.S. national security. It would be naïve, therefore, to ignore the very real possibility that, if elected president, she would find reason to invade Iran as well.

A Liberal?

Given Senator Clinton’s militaristic foreign policy, why are so many of her supporters apparently in denial of this unfortunate reality?

Part of the problem is that most of the public criticism of the former first lady has been based on false and exaggerated charges from the far right, often infused with a fair dose of sexism. As a result, many liberals become defensive and reluctant to criticize her. Many also ironically start believing some of the lies of the far right when they claim she is some kind of left-winger. There is also an understandable nostalgia for the eight years of relative peace and prosperity under her husband’s administration after the horrors of nearly seven years under President George W. Bush, which have made it easy to forget the lesser but very real failings of President Bill Clinton.

There is also the fact that after 43 male presidents, the prospect of finally having a woman as chief executive is understandably appealing. Yet, what’s the advantage of a female president if her foreign policies are still centered on patriarchal notions of militarism and conquest? What would it mean to the women of Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and other countries who would suffer as a result of her policies? Did the position of British women improve as a result of the militaristic policies of their first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher?

These are the kinds of questions, along with a critical examination of her overall foreign policy record, that need to be considered by Democrats before making Hillary Clinton their nominee for president.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/hillary_clinton_on_military_policy

Hillary Clinton on International Law

Perhaps the most terrible legacy of the administration of President George W. Bush has been its utter disregard for such basic international legal norms as the ban against aggressive war, respect for the UN Charter, and acceptance of international judicial review. Furthermore, under Bush’s leadership, the United States has cultivated a disrespect for basic human rights, a disdain for reputable international human rights monitoring groups, and a lack of concern for international humanitarian law.

Ironically, the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president shares much of President Bush’s dangerous attitudes toward international law and human rights.

For example, Senator Hillary Clinton has opposed restrictions on U.S. arms transfers and police training to governments that engage in gross and systematic human rights abuses. Indeed, she has supported unconditional U.S. arms transfers and police training to such repressive and autocratic governments as Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Kazakhstan, and Chad, just to name a few. She has also refused to join many of her Democratic colleagues in signing a letter endorsing a treaty that would limit arms transfers to countries that engage in a consistent pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations.

Civilian Casualties

Not only is she willing to support military assistance to repressive regimes, she has little concern about controlling weapons that primarily target innocent civilians. Senator Clinton has refused to support the international treaty to ban land mines, which are responsible for killing and maiming thousands of civilians worldwide, a disproportionate percentage of whom have been children.

She was also among a minority of Democratic Senators to side with the Republican majority last year in voting down a Democratic-sponsored resolution restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas. Each of these cluster bomb contains hundreds of bomblets that are scattered over an area the size of up to four football fields and, with a failure rate of up to 30%, become de facto land mines. As many as 98% of the casualties caused by these weapons are civilians.

Senator Clinton also has a record of dismissing reports by human rights monitors that highlight large-scale attacks against civilians by allied governments. For example, in the face of widespread criticism by reputable human rights organizations over Israel’s systematic assaults against civilian targets in its April 2002 offensive in the West Bank, Senator Clinton co-sponsored a resolution defending the Israeli actions that claimed that they were “necessary steps to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas.” She opposed UN efforts to investigate alleged war crimes by Israeli occupation forces and criticized President Bush for calling on Israel to pull back from its violent re-conquest of Palestinian cities in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Similarly, when Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights groups issued detailed reports regarding Israeli war crimes during that country’s assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Senator Clinton insisted they were wrong and that Israel’s attacks were legal. Furthermore, though these groups had also criticized the radical Lebanese group Hezbollah for committing war crimes by firing rockets into civilian-populated areas in Israel, exhaustive investigations have revealed absolutely no evidence that they had used the civilian population as “human shields” to protect themselves from Israeli assaults. Despite this, Senator Clinton, without providing any credible evidence to the contrary, still insists that they in fact had used human shields and were therefore responsible for the death of more than 800 Lebanese civilians.

Senator Clinton has voted to send tens of billions of dollars unconditionally to Baghdad to prop up that regime, apparently unconcerned about the well-documented reports of death squads being run from the Interior Ministry that have killed many thousands of unarmed Sunni men.

In Senator Clinton’s world view, if a country is considered an important strategic ally of the United States, any charges of human rights abuses – no matter how strong the evidence – must be summarily dismissed. Indeed, despite the Israeli government’s widespread and well-documented violations of international humanitarian law, Senator Clinton has praised Israel for its “values that respect the dignity and rights of human beings.”

Illegal Use of Force

The UN Charter forbids its member states from using military force unless under direct attack or authorized by the UN Security Council. Customary international law allows for pre-emptive war only in cases of an imminent threat, such as troops massing along the border or missiles being loaded onto launchers. Senator Clinton believes that the United States had the legal right to invade Iraq, even though it constituted no threat to the national security of the United States and there had been no authorization by the UN Security Council to use force. Indeed, when the United States launched its invasion of Iraq in March 2003 in defiance of widespread global condemnation of this act of aggression, she voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution categorically declaring that the war was “lawful.”

Senator Clinton has tried to rationalize for her support for this illegal war by claiming that the UN authorized member states to take military action against Iraq in November of 1990. However, that resolution (687) only referred to using such means to enforce resolution 678, which demanded that Iraq withdraw its occupation forces from Kuwait. Once Iraqi forces withdrew – which took place more than a dozen years prior to the 2003 invasion – the resolution was moot.

Similarly, her claim that invading Iraq constituted a legitimate act of self-defense is particularly disturbing. Even if Saddam Hussein had been developing chemical and biological weapons as Senator Clinton falsely alleged, Iraq would have been just one of 40 countries to have developed such arsenals and Iraq had no delivery systems left that were capable of attacking other countries, much less the United States. Her belief that the United States somehow has the right to invade another country simply on the suspicion that it might be developing weapons for future use constitutes a radical departure from international legal norms and is a clear violation of the UN Charter. Hillary Clinton, however, believes the United States should not be bound by such restrictions and that the United States has the right to invade any country that the president believes could even potentially be a threat some time in the future.

A politician who supported preventive war in the past might do so in the future as well. Indeed, Senator Clinton has criticized Bush for allowing the Europeans to lead the diplomatic efforts with Iran over their nuclear program, insisting that the United States should keep “all options on the table,” presumably meaning military force.

Attacks on UN Institutions

Senator Clinton has also been one the Senate’s most outspoken critics of the United Nations, even appearing outside the UN headquarters in New York twice during the past four years at right-wing gatherings to denounce the world body. She has falsely accused the UN of not taking a stand against terrorism, even though terrorism has become – largely at the insistence of the United States – a major UN focus in recent years.

Senator Clinton’s hostility to international law and the UN system is perhaps best illustrated by her opposition to the International Criminal Court. In 2002, Senator Clinton voted in favor of an amendment by right-wing Senator Jesse Helms that prohibits the United States from cooperating in any way with the International Criminal Court, and its prosecution of individuals responsible for serious crimes against humanity, such as those responsible for the genocide in Darfur. In addition, this vindictive law also restricts U.S. foreign aid to countries that support the ICC. Nicknamed the “Hague Invasion Act,” the bill also authorizes the president of the United States “to use all means necessary and appropriate to free members of United States military and certain other allied persons if they are detained or imprisoned by an international criminal court,” including military force.

The International Court of Justice (also known as the World Court, which essentially serves as the judicial arm of the United Nations) has also been a target of Senator Clinton’s hostility toward international law. For example, in 2004, the ICJ ruled by a 14-1 vote (with only the U.S. judge dissenting, largely on a technicality) that Israel, like every country, is obliged to abide by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Laws of War, and that the international community – as in any other case in which ongoing violations are taking place – is obliged to ensure that international humanitarian law is enforced. Affronted that an important U.S. ally would be required to abide by its international legal obligations and that the United States should help ensure such compliance, Senator Clinton strongly condemned the decision.

At issue was the Israeli government’s ongoing construction of a separation barrier deep inside the occupied Palestinian West Bank, which the World Court recognized – as does the broad consensus of international legal scholarship – as a violation of international humanitarian law. The ICJ ruled that Israel, like any country, had the right to build the barrier along its internationally recognized border for self-defense, but did not have the right to build it inside another country as a means of effectively annexing Palestinian land. In an unprecedented congressional action, Senator Clinton immediately introduced a resolution to put the U.S. Senate on record “supporting the construction by Israel of a security fence” and “condemning the decision of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the security fence.” In an effort to render the UN impotent in its enforcement of international law, her resolution (which even the then-Republican-controlled Senate failed to pass) attempted to put the Senate on record “urging no further action by the United Nations to delay or prevent the construction of the security fence.”

Hillary Clinton vs. the World Court

Clinton’s resolution claimed that Israel had built a similar barrier “in Gaza [that] has proved effective at reducing the number of terrorist attacks.” Also, according to the resolution, “The United States, Korea, and India have constructed security fences to separate such countries from territories or other countries for the security of their citizens.” Such comparisons, however, fail to note – as did the World Court – that these other barriers were placed along internationally recognized borders and were therefore not the subject of legal challenge. Clinton’s resolution also claimed that “the International Court of Justice is politicized and critical of Israel,” ignoring that the World Court has actually been quite consistent in its rulings. In the only other two advisory opinions issued by the ICJ involving occupied territories – South African-occupied Namibia in 1971 and Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara in 1975 – the court also decided against the occupying powers.

In what was apparently an effort to misrepresent and discredit the UN, Clinton’s resolution contended that the request by the UN General Assembly for a legal opinion by the ICJ referred to “the security fence being constructed by Israel to prevent Palestinian terrorists from entering Israel.” In reality, the UN request said nothing regarding security measures preventing terrorists from entering Israel. Instead, the document refers only to the legal consequences arising from “the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory…” Moreover, the UN statement referred to the secretary general’s recently released report on the occupation, which reiterated the longstanding international consensus that Occupied Palestinian Territory refers only to the parts of Palestine seized by Israel in the 1967 War, not to any part of Israel itself.

Senator Clinton’s resolution also represented a departure from any previous congressional resolution in that it referred to the West Bank not as an occupied territory but as a “disputed” territory. This distinction is important for two reasons. The word “disputed” implies that the claims of the West Bank’s Israeli conquerors are as legitimate as the claims of Palestinians who have lived on that land for centuries. And disputed territories — unlike occupied territories — are not covered by the Fourth Geneva Convention and many other international legal statutes. As a lawyer, Senator Clinton must have recognized that such wording had the affect of legitimizing the expansion of a country’s territory by force, a clear violation of the UN Charter.

Denying the Humanitarian Impact

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Red Cross, and a number of Israeli human rights groups had documented the devastating impact of the separation barrier on the economic and social lives of the Palestinians, including access to schools, health care, and employment, findings confirmed by the World Court ruling. However, in an effort to discredit these reputable human rights groups along with the World Court, Clinton’s resolution contested their assertions that the route chosen for the wall has had a negative impact on the civilian population under Israeli occupation, declaring that “the Government of Israel takes into account the need to minimize the confiscation of Palestinian land and the imposition of hardship on the Palestinian people.” A longtime supporter of Israel’s colonization and annexation efforts in the West Bank, Senator Clinton took part in a photo opportunity at the illegal Israeli settlement of Gilo last year, in which she claimed – while gazing over the massive wall bisecting what used to be a Palestinian vineyard – “This is not against the Palestinian people. This is against the terrorists.”

The Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the government to re-route a section of the wall bisecting some Palestinian towns, because the “relationship between the injury to the local inhabitants and the security benefit from the contraction of the Separation Fence along the route, as determined by the military officer, is not proportionate.” And yet, Clinton’s resolution also claims that Israel’s barrier is a “proportional response to the campaign of terrorism by Palestinian militants.”

Dangers of a Hillary Clinton Presidency

Indeed, Senator Clinton’s response to the human rights abuses and violations of international law by this key strategic ally of the United States is emblematic of her disregard for international law and human rights overall.

Though an overwhelming majority of Americans, according to public opinion polls, believe that human rights should be a cornerstone of American foreign policy, Senator Clinton has repeatedly prioritized the profits of American arms manufacturers and the extension of Washington’s hegemonic reach in parts of the world. Similarly, a Hillary Clinton presidency would simply be a continuation of the efforts by the Bush administration to undermine the UN Charter and the basic international legal framework in place for much of the past century. Historically, it has been the right wing of the Republican Party that has opposed international legal restrictions on the activities of the United States and its allies to advance America’s hegemonic agenda. Now, however, the front runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination also shares this view, indicating a clear break with the internationalist and law-based principles espoused by such previous Democratic leaders as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. Indeed, Senator Clinton’s notions of what constitutes the legitimate use of force by the United States are so extreme, she would – if elected – likely become the most aggressive-minded Democratic president since James K. Polk.

The coming primaries and caucuses will test whether the Democratic Party can make a firm break with the hegemonic, unilateralist, and militaristic agenda of the Bush administration, or simply pursues an only somewhat nuanced version of the current dismissive attitudes toward human rights and international law that amounts to little better than Bush Lite.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/hillary_clinton_on_international_law

U.S. Denial of the Armenian Genocide

It continues to boggle the mind what the Democratic leadership in Congress will do whenever the Republicans raise the specter of labeling them “soft on terrorism.” They approve wiretapping without a court order. They allow for indefinite detention of suspects without charge. They authorize the invasion and occupation of a country on the far side of the world that was no threat to us and then provide unconditional funding for the bloody and unwinnable counter-insurgency war that inevitably followed.

Now, it appears, the Democrats are also willing to deny history, even when it involves genocide.

The non-binding resolution commemorating the Armenian genocide attracted 226 co-sponsors and won passage through the House Foreign Relations Committee. Nevertheless, it appears that as of this writing that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – in response to pressure from the White House and Republican congressional leaders that it would harm the “Global War on Terrorism” – will prevent the resolution from coming up for vote in the full House.

Call It Genocide

Between 1915 and 1918, under orders of the leadership of the Ottoman Empire, an estimated two million Armenians were forcibly removed from their homes in a region that had been part of the Armenian nation for more than 2,500 years. Three-quarters of them died as a result of execution, starvation, and related reasons.

Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during that period, noted that, “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact…” While issuing a “death warrant to a whole race” would normally be considered genocide by any definition, it apparently does not in the view of the current administration and Congress of the government he was representing.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, signed and ratified by the United States, officially defines genocide as any effort “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Raphael Lemkin was the Polish Jewish lawyer who originally coined the term “genocide” in 1944. The earliest proponent of an international convention on its prevention and the punishment of its perpetrators, Lemkin identified the Armenian case as a definitive example.

Dozens of other governments – including Canada, France, Italy, and Russia – and several UN bodies have formally recognized the Armenian genocide, as have the governments of 40 U.S. states. Neither the Bush administration nor Congress appears willing to do so, however.

Ironically, Congress earlier this year overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for refusing to acknowledge the German genocide of the Jews. That same Congress, however, appears quite willing to refuse to acknowledge the Turkish genocide of the Armenians.

While awareness of anti-Semitism is fortunately widespread enough to dismiss those who refuse to acknowledge the Holocaust to the political fringe, it appears that tolerance for anti-Armenian bigotry is strong enough that it is still apparently politically acceptable to refuse to acknowledge their genocide.

The Turkey Factor

Opponents of the measure acknowledging the Armenian genocide claim argue that they are worried about harming relations with Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire and an important U.S. ally.

In reality, however, if the Bush administration and Congress were really concerned about hurting relations with Turkey, Bush would have never asked for and Congress would have never approved authorization for the United States to have invaded Iraq, which the Turks vehemently opposed. As a result of the U.S. war and occupation of Turkey’s southern neighbor, public opinion polls have shown that percentage of the Turkish population holding a positive view of the United States has declined from 52% to only 9%.

Turkish opposition was so strong that, despite the Bush administration offering Turkey $6 billion in grants and $20 billion in loan guarantees in return for allowing U.S. forces to use bases in Turkey to launch the invasion in 2003, the Turkish parliament refused to authorize the request. Soon thereafter, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, in an interview with CNN in Turkey, expressed his disappointment that the Turkish military had not taken its traditional “leadership role” in the matter, which – given its periodic military intervention in Turkish governance – many Turks took as advocacy for a military coup. Furthermore, in testimony on Capitol Hill, Wolfowitz further angered the Turks by claiming that the civilian government made a “big, big mistake” in failing to back U.S. military plans and claimed that the country’s democratically elected parliament “didn’t quite know what it was doing.”

The United States has antagonized Turkey still further as a result of U.S. support for Kurdish nationalists in northern Iraq who, with the support of billions of dollars worth of U.S. aid and thousands of American troops, have created an autonomous enclave that has served as a based for KADEK (formerly known as the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist group. KADEK forces, which had largely observed a cease fire prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the resulting consolidation of the quasi-independent Kurdish region, have since been emboldened to launch countless forays into Turkish territory at the cost of hundreds of lives.

Since almost all House members who oppose this non-binding resolution on the Armenian genocide were among the majority of Republicans and the minority of Democrats who voted to authorize the invasion, antagonizing Turkey is clearly not the real reason for their opposition. Anyone actually concerned about the future of U.S.-Turkish relations would never have rejected the Turkish government’s pleas for restraint and voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq nor would they vote to continue U.S. funding of the pro-KADEK separatist government in northern Iraq.

Why a Resolution Now?

Another bogus argument put forward by President Bush and his bipartisan supporters on Capitol Hill is that Congress should not bother passing resolutions regarding historical events. Yet these critics have not objected to other recent successful congressional resolutions on historic events: recognizing the 65th anniversary of the death of the Polish musician and political leader Ignacy Jan Paderewski, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the American Jewish Committee, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland, or commemorating the 150th anniversary of the first meeting of the Republican Party in Wisconsin, just to name a few.

These opponents of the resolution also claim that this is a “bad time” to upset the Turkish government, given that U.S. access to Turkish bases is part of the re-supply efforts to support the counter-insurgency war by U.S. occupation forces in Iraq. However, it was also considered a “bad time” when a similar resolution was put forward in 2000 because U.S. bases in Turkey were being used to patrol the “no fly zones” in northern Iraq. And it was also considered a “bad time” in 1985 and 1987 when similar resolutions were put forward because U.S. bases in Turkey were considered important listening posts for monitoring the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

For deniers of the Armenian genocide, it is always a “bad time.”

The Bush administration, like both Republican and Democratic administrations before it, has refused to acknowledge that the Armenian genocide even took place. For example, under the Reagan administration, the Bulletin of the Department of State claimed that, “Because the historical record of the 1915 events in Asia Minor is ambiguous, the Department of State does not endorse allegations that the Turkish Government committed genocide against the Armenian people.”

Similarly, Paul Wolfowitz, who served as deputy secretary of defense in President Bush’s first term, stated in 2002 that “one of the things that impress me about Turkish history is the way Turkey treats its own minorities.”

The operative clause of the resolution simply calls upon President Bush “to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian genocide, and for other purposes.” Therefore, if President Bush really doesn’t want Congress to pass such a resolution, all he needs to do is make a statement acknowledging the genocide. Not surprisingly for someone with a notorious lack of knowledge of history, however, he has refused to do so. Bush has only gone as far as acknowledging that what happened to the Armenians was simply part of “a horrible tragedy” which reflects “a deep sorrow that continues to haunt them and their neighbors, the Turkish people,” even though Turkey has never expressed sorrow for their genocide.

Failure to pass a resolution calling on President Bush to acknowledge the genocide, then, amounts to an acceptance of his genocide denial.

Genocide Denial

Given the indisputable documentary record of the Armenian genocide, it would appear that at least some of those who refuse to go on record recognizing Turkey’s genocide of Armenians are, like those who refuse to recognize Germany’s genocide of European Jews, motivated by ignorance and bigotry. Claims that it would harm relations with Turkey or that the timing is wrong appear to be no more than desperate excuses to deny reality. If the Bush administration and members of Congress recognized that genocide took place, they should have no problem going on record saying so.

One problem may be that members of Congress, like President Bush, are themselves ignorant of history. For example, the Middle East scholar most often cited by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress as influencing their understanding of the region is the notorious genocide-denier Bernard Lewis, a fellow at Washington’s Institute of Turkish Studies. In France, where genocide denial is considered a criminal offense, he was convicted in 1996 following a statement in Le Monde in which the emeritus Princeton University professor dismissed the claim of genocide as nothing more than “the Armenian version of this story.” The court noted how, typical of those who deny genocide, he reached his conclusion by “concealing elements contrary to his thesis” and “failed in his duties of objectivity and prudence.”

This is not to say that every single opponent of the resolution explicitly denies the genocide. Some have acknowledged that genocide indeed occurred, but have apparently been convinced that it is contrary to perceived U.S. national security interest to state this publicly. This is just as inexcusable, however. Such people are moral cowards who apparently would be just as willing to refuse to acknowledge the Holocaust if the Bush administration told them that it might also upset the German government enough to restrict access to U.S. bases.

Though it has been Democratic members of the House, led by California Congressman Adam Schiff, who have most vigorously led the effort this time to recognize the Armenian genocide, opposition to acknowledging history has been a bipartisan effort. In 2000, President Bill Clinton successfully persuaded House Speaker Dennis Hastert to suppress a similar bill after it passed the Republican-led Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 40-7 and was on its way to easy passage before the full House. Currently, former Democratic House leader Dick Gephardt has joined in lobbying his former colleagues on behalf of the Turkish government. And now, the current Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, despite having earlier promised to place it before a vote of the full House, appears ready to pull the bill from consideration.

Not only is this a tragic affront to the remaining genocide survivors and their descendents, it is also a disservice to the many Turks who opposed their government’s policies at that time and tried to stop the genocide, as well as to contemporary Turks who face jail by their U.S.-backed regime for daring to acknowledge it. If the world’s one remaining superpower refuses to acknowledge the genocide, there is little chance that justice will ever be served.

Adolf Hitler, responding to concerns about the legacy of his crimes, once asked, “Who, after all, is today speaking of the destruction of the Armenians?” Failure to pass this resolution would send a message to future tyrants that they can commit genocide and not even have it acknowledged by the world’s most powerful countries.

Indeed, refusing to recognize genocide and those responsible for it in a historical context makes it easier to deny genocide today. In 1994, the Clinton administration – which consistently refused to fully acknowledge Armenia’s tragedy – also refused to use the word “genocide” in the midst of the Rwandan government’s massacres of over half that country’s Tutsi population, a decision that delayed the deployment of international peacekeeping forces until after 800,000 people had been slaughtered.

As a result, the fate of the resolution on the Armenian genocide is not simply about commemorating a tragedy that took place 90 years ago. It is about where we stand as a nation in facing up to the most horrible of crimes. It is about whether we are willing to stand up for the truth in the face of lies. It is about whether we see our nation’s glory based on appeasing our strategic allies or in upholding our longstanding principles.

http://www.fpif.info/fpiftxt/4660

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/22/4735

The Democrats’ Support for Bush’s War

The capitulation of the Democratic Party’s congressional leadership to the Bush administration’s request for nearly $100 billion of unconditional supplementary government spending, primarily to support the war in Iraq, has led to outrage throughout the country. In the Senate, 37 of 49 Democrats voted on May 24 to support the measure. In the House, while only 86 of the 231 Democratic House members voted for the supplemental funding, 216 of them voted in favor of an earlier procedural vote designed to move the funding bill forward even though it would make the funding bill’s passage inevitable (while giving most of them a chance to claim they voted against it).

The claim by Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and other Democratic leaders unconditional funding was necessary to “support the troops” and to “not leave them in harm’s way” is a lie. If they really supported the troops and wanted them out of harm’s way, they would have passed legislation that would bring them home. The Democrats had other priorities, however.

Pelosi claimed that they had to provide unconditional funding for President Bush’s war in Iraq because they could not get enough Republican support to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to override a presidential veto. However, they did not need a two-thirds majority to stop funding the war. All they needed to do was to refuse to pass any unconditional funding for the war and instead pass a funding measure that allocated money for the sole purpose of facilitating a safe and orderly withdrawal from Iraq, or, at the very least, a funding measure that set a strict deadline for the withdrawal of troops.

As Speaker, Pelosi could have set the legislative agenda and not allowed any funding bill to come to a vote unless it had such provisions. And, if Bush refused to sign it, he would have been the one to put the troops in harm’s way, not Congress.

No Excuses

Some apologists for the Democrats claim that to not support funding for the supplemental would have allowed political opponents to portray them as “not supporting our troops.” However, three conservative Republican senators—Coburn, Burr, and Enzi—voted against the supplemental because of the $20 billion in domestic, non-war-related expenditures without apparent fear of such charges. So why should the Democrats have been afraid to oppose the measure as well?

And it certainly is no longer the case—as apologists for the Democrats claimed when they supported supplemental spending for the war in previous years—that it would be politically difficult to oppose a key initiative of a popular president now that Bush is one of the least popular presidents in history, a ranking that has come largely as a result of the very war policy for which the Democrats have once again given him a blank check to continue.

There are precedents for Congress to stop war funding over presidential objections in the past. For example, in May 1970, Congress was able to eliminate funding for U.S. troops fighting in Cambodia and President Nixon was forced to withdraw them by June 30. The Democrats could have done the same regarding Iraq, but they obviously did not want to. Democratic majorities were also able to suspend U.S. military operations in Angola, limit U.S. troops in El Salvador to 50, end support for the Nicaraguan Contras, and provide similar restrictions to administration foreign policy without claiming that giving these previous Republican administrations a blank check was necessary to “support our troops.”

Polls show that 82% of Americans wanted Congress to either cut off funding for the war immediately or approve funds for the war with strict conditions. However, the Democrats—assuming they knew better than the American people—decided to go ahead and make possible a vote to provide unconditional funding for the war anyway.

Despite claims to the contrary, Pelosi and the Democrats apparently want the war to continue unabated, even if it means sacrificing the lives of countless additional American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, as well as our national treasury and our country’s long-term security, in their support for Bush’s agenda.

True, some senators and representatives voted for some of the previously unsuccessful measures earlier this spring, which included certain restrictions on funding or called for a deadline for withdrawal. However, if they voted for the supplemental funding bill or if they supported the decision to bring the resolution to the floor, they support the Iraq War and Bush’s policy. If they really opposed the policy, they would have voted against providing the unconditional funding to implement it. We need to make this clear and hold them accountable.

Fiscal Implications

The decision by the Democratic leadership of both houses and the majority of Democratic senators to vote for unconditional funding for the war is also a reflection of the majority party’s spending priorities. There is no Democratic proposal for a $100 billion supplemental spending bill for health care. There is no Democratic proposal for a $100 billion supplemental spending bill for education. There is no Democratic proposal for a $100 billion supplemental spending bill for environmental protection.

When I contacted a number of Democratic offices on Capitol Hill as to why they weren’t supporting comparable supplemental spending measures to meet human needs here in the United States, they insisted this was an unfair comparison. In one sense, this is true. Bush’s budget this year in health care, education, housing, public transit, and environmental protection was woefully inadequate, whereas his military budget is extraordinarily bloated. The Democrats should be cutting military spending, not increasing it by nearly $100 billion. And though the Democrats attached some supplemental domestic spending to the appropriations, the supplemental spending for all domestic programs combined is less than one-fourth the supplemental spending for military operations.

It appears, then, that the reason the Democrats are willing to supporting $100 billion for the Iraq War and not for health care, education, housing, public transit, or environmental protection is straightforward: the Democratic Party believes that continuing the war is more important than meeting the basic needs of Americans.

The Democrats’ support for the supplemental war funding is also evidence of fiscal irresponsibility. If the Democrats really want to spend that kind of money for war, at least they should find some way to pay for it, such as cutting spending for some of the Pentagon’s elaborate and unnecessary new weapons systems or by eliminating some of the tax breaks given to the wealthy. Instead, the Democrats insist on borrowing it from primarily foreign financial institutions or from future government revenue. By the time it is paid off with interest, the total cost will likely be more than twice the $100 billion the Democrats claim the war is costing. The costs of paying off the increased national debt as a result of this war will result in severely restricted funding in health care, education, housing, public transit, and environmental protection for decades to come. But that is of little concern to the Democrats, who place a higher priority in allowing Bush to fight the Iraq War as he sees fit.

It is also interesting to note the Democrats’ claim that the $100 billion only funds the war through the end of September and they will try to stop funding for the war again at that point. At that pace of spending, it would come to slightly under $25 billion per month. However, the war is currently costing the taxpayer about $10 billion per month. This means that either the Democrats are anticipating an imminent, costly escalation in the war or they are actually giving Bush the ability to fight the war well into the next year, thereby negating any leverage anti-war members of Congress might have by withholding additional funding after September.

Betraying the Voters

Despite promising during the 2006 election campaign that, if given the majority in Congress, they would no longer give Bush a blank check to prosecute the war, they have done just that. And despite polls showing that a majority of Americans want U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq and support setting a deadline for their departure, the Democrats have voted to instead to side with President Bush against the American people

In fact, the situation is even worse now than it was last fall. Since the Democrats became the majority in Congress and were given the power, through their fiscal oversight, to finally put curbs on the administration’s ability to wage war, the number of U.S. troops and the level of violence in Iraq have increased rather than decreased.

This comes despite exit polls from the November 2006 elections that showed that opposition to the Iraq War was by far the primary factor in giving the Democrats the majority in both houses for the first time since 1994. Particularly important to the Democratic victory were young voters, many thousands of whom volunteered countless hours going door-to-door in swing districts, and whose opposition to the war was strongest. With more than six out of 10 voters under 30 casting their ballots for the Democrats, hopes emerged for a Democratic majority for years to come. However, thanks to last week’s betrayal by the very Democrats whose leadership positions in Congress came as a result of burgeoning anti-war sentiment, the Democrats are likely to lose many of these young activists, embittered that their many hours of sacrifice for the party was for naught and now cynical at any hope for change through electoral politics.

Polls also indicate that an overwhelming majority of voters oppose U.S. military support and strategic cooperation with regimes that engage in gross and systematic human rights violations. But once again the Democrats are as out-of-step with the American public as the Republicans. Indeed, the vote for the supplemental is indicative of how far to the right the Democrats have gone regarding human rights in recent years. There was a time when the Democratic Party was willing to eliminate or restrict U.S. military support for repressive governments like Indonesia, El Salvador, and others due to their human rights abuses and use of death squads against perceived opponents. Despite the widespread and well-documented human rights abuses by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, including the death squads operating out of the Interior Ministry that have taken the lives of tens of thousands of Sunni civilians, the Democrats appear to have few moral qualms about providing the Iraqi regime with unrestricted taxpayer funding.

Signs of Hope

It is important, amid the anger and disappointment at the Democrats’ decision to continue funding the war, to acknowledge the growing strength of the anti-war movement and signs of hope that the American public can still force an end to the U.S. war in Iraq.

In the vote on supplemental funding last year, only 48 House Democrats voted against the Bush White House. This year, the number of Democrats voting against funding nearly tripled to 140.

And, as disappointing as it may be that only 10 Senate Democrats voted against war funding last week, it is important to remember that not a single Democrat voted against war funding in 2006.

All four of the candidates for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination who were in the U.S. Senate in 2002—Christopher Dodd, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Joe Biden—voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq in October of that year. All four had supported unconditional funding subsequently. This year, however, all but Biden opposed the supplemental. A fifth Democratic senator seeking the presidency, Barack Obama, who had opposed the war prior to be elected to the Senate in 2004 but had voted for the supplemental funding in his first two years in office, also voted against the supplemental this year. That traditional hawks like Dodd and Clinton, who had vehemently supported the war as recently as last year, feel obliged to vote against it now reflects the acknowledgement of a new political reality. It will be virtually impossible for anyone to win the Democratic presidential nomination without opposing funding for the war.

Shifts within leadership are also happening. Though Reid joined the majority of Senate Democrats on May 24 in voting in favor of the supplemental funding measure, just weeks earlier he co-sponsored—along with Senate anti-war stalwart Russ Feingold—another measure that would have required the withdrawal of the majority of U.S. forces within nine months.

This is a sign of the growing influence of the anti-war movement. The calls and emails to Capitol Hill offices, the tough questions at town hall meetings, the vigils outside district offices, the protests at public appearances, the letters to the editor, the sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience—all targeting the Democratic lawmakers on the Iraq War—are finally having an influence, even though it has not yet translated into effective legislative action.

Next Steps

In certain respects, the movement against the war in Iraq today is in a similar situation to the movement against the war in Vietnam in 1969. After more than four years of fighting, the majority of Americans and increasing segments of the news media and elite opinion are finally recognizing the need for a withdrawal of American troops. However, the Democratic majority in Congress still refuses to challenge the increasingly unpopular policies of the Republican administration. As a result, though it is widely recognized that a military victory is impossible and American forces are going to be pulled out, the administration and Congress remain determined to drag out the war still longer, costing many thousands additional lives and further draining our national treasury.

The United States will be forced to pull out of Iraq sooner or later. The question is how many people will die needlessly beforehand.

The war will last a long time and claim many more deaths as long as Democrats believe they can continue to bankroll Bush’s effort and get away with it. Every Democrat who voted for the supplemental must be challenged in primaries next year. If he or she is re-nominated anyway, a strong Green Party or independent challenger must try to defeat the incumbent in November. We must demand that Democratic Congressional leaders who allowed the unconditional supplemental funding measure to move forward be removed from their posts and replaced by representatives and senators who actually oppose the war. While individual anti-war Democrats still deserve our support, all contributions in time or money to the Democratic Party must cease until the leadership takes a firm and uncompromising position against further war funding.

And it may take heightened measures, including sustained nonviolent direct action. When Congress forced the withdrawal of American troops from Cambodia in 1970, it came only after anti-war protests shut down more than 300 colleges and universities across the country and more than 100,000 demonstrators converged on Capitol Hill in early May.

The betrayal by Congressional Democrats last week should be met not by despair but by escalating popular resistance to the war. The gains of recent months by the anti-war movement must not stagnate as a result of the Democrats’ capitulation on the supplemental funding, but must be built upon to demand an end to Democratic collusion with the war policies of the Bush White House enforced through binding legislative action.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_democrats_support_for_bushs_war

The Democrats and the “Human Shields” Myth

Israelis from across the political spectrum, emboldened by the interim report from the government’s Winograd Commission, which investigated Israel’s ill-fated assault on Lebanon, are expressing regrets over last summer’s conflict with their northern neighbor. Uproar over the way a relatively minor border incident managed to escalate into a full-scale war is leading to demands for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s resignation and other top government officials are under pressure or stepping down.

Meanwhile, in the United States Congress, leaders of both parties are not only still defending Israel’s decision to go to war, but its conduct of the war as well.

During the five weeks of fighting, 119 Israeli soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians were killed. It was the Lebanese who suffered the most, however. Massive Israeli bombardments took the lives of more than 1,100 people, the vast majority of whom were innocent civilians, and caused more than $3.5 billion in damage to the country’s civilian infrastructure and widespread environmental damage.

Moral and Legal Responsibility

Yet Congress continues to justify last summer’s widespread attacks on civilian targets by the U.S.-supplied Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) by claiming that Hezbollah used the Lebanese civilian population as “human shields,” thereby seeking to protect America’s closest Middle East ally from its moral and legal responsibility for its war crimes.

For example, on April 25, the House of Representatives passed by a near-unanimous voice vote a resolution (H. Res. 125) claiming that “throughout the summer of 2006 conflict with the State of Israel, Hezbollah forces utilized human shields to protect themselves from counterattacks by Israeli forces.” In defense of the Bush administration’s controversial backing of Israel’s 35-day assault on Lebanon, the Democratic-led House cited President George W. Bush’s claim that “Hezbollah terrorists used Lebanese civilians as human shields, sacrificing the innocent in an effort to protect themselves from Israeli response” and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s assertion that “`Hezbollah and its sponsors have brought devastation upon the people of Lebanon, … exploiting them as human shields.”

In an effort to make the case that it was Lebanese, not the Israeli armed forces, who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians, the resolution goes as far as claiming that “the majority of civilian casualties of that conflict might have been avoided and civilian lives saved had Hezbollah not employed this tactic.”

Similarly, as Israeli peace activists began protests against their country’s attacks on civilian targets in Lebanon last summer, the House of Representatives passed a resolution (H. Res. 921) defending the Israeli government’s controversial policies, praising “Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss” and welcoming “Israel’s continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties.” The resolution, co-sponsored by Tom Lantos (D-CA)–whom the Democrats have subsequently elected to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee–passed by a 410-8 vote with four abstentions, also condemned Hezbollah for “cynically exploiting civilian populations as shields, locating their equipment and bases of operation, including their rockets and other armaments, amidst civilian populations, including in homes and mosques.”

The problem is that it appears that none of these claims appear to be true.

No Evidence Found

Investigations by independent human rights groups during last summer’s fighting did not find clear evidence that Hezbollah deliberately used civilians to shield their personnel or equipment from Israeli strikes. For example, a detailed study published at the end of the fighting in August by Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that they had found “no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack.” Similarly, Amnesty International, in a well-documented report published in November observed, “While the presence of Hizbullah’s fighters and short-range weapons within civilian areas is not contested, this in itself is not conclusive evidence of intent to use civilians as ‘human shields’, any more than the presence of Israeli soldiers in a kibbutz is in itself evidence of the same war crime.”

Human rights groups noted that the Hezbollah militia–which, like most militias, is a volunteer force whose members lived with their families – did store weapons in or near homes and some of the militia’s hundreds of rocket launchers were found within populated areas, which are indeed violations of international humanitarian law since such practices put civilians at risk. However, Amnesty reported that while “The available evidence suggests that in at least some cases Katyushas were stored within villages and fired from civilian areas,” it was only long after most of the civilian population had been evacuated and that it was “not apparent that civilians were present and used as ‘human shields’.”

As Human Rights Watch noted, even the presence of armed personnel and weapons near civilian areas “does not release Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and civilian property during military operations.” Similarly, Amnesty International noted how Protocol I of the Fourth Geneva Convention also makes 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.”

Wanton Attacks on Civilian Areas

In any case, the vast majority of Israeli strikes in civilian areas were nowhere near Hezbollah military activity. As Human Rights Watch noted, “In dozens of attacks, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers, suggest that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians.”

Similarly, Amnesty International reported that Israeli forces “carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on a large scale,” including “those on civilian infrastructure” and “direct attacks on civilian objects.” Furthermore, they reported that “These attacks seem to have been aimed at inflicting a form of collective punishment on Lebanon’s people” and that “based on the available evidence and the absence of an adequate or any explanation from the Israeli authorities for so many attacks by their forces causing civilian deaths and destruction, when no evidence of Hizbullah military activities was apparent, it seems clear that Israeli forces consistently failed to adopt necessary precautionary measures.”

Though subsequent investigations have only reconfirmed that the large numbers of civilian casualties in Lebanon were a result of actions by the government of Israel, not Hezbollah, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), in a debate on the House floor on April 25 insisted that “The key reason that civilian areas were destroyed was the cynical strategy of Hezbollah guerrillas to stage their attacks from the middle of towns and residential areas” and that “the loss of civilian life in Lebanon was due solely to Hezbollah’s cruel and uncivilized use of civilian areas as military bases.”

Kucinich Raised Concerns

When Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) raised concerns about Israel’s use of cluster bombs in civilian areas which have led to the deaths of scores of Lebanese children both during and subsequent to last summer’s fighting, Rep. Ackerman responded by insisting that these dangerous anti-personnel weapons were “used in self-defense.”

Despite Ackerman’s eagerness to defend and cover-up for war crimes by this important Middle Eastern ally of the United States, the Democrats have elected him chairman of the important House Subcommittee on the Middle East, indicative that the new majority party shares their Republican counterparts’ lack of respect for international humanitarian law.

My efforts to ascertain where members of Congress get information to back up their defense of Israeli war crimes have revealed a rather startling inclination to rely on rather dubious right-wing sources for information. For example, following a speech in March, in which Senator Barack Obama repeated the myth that Hezbollah had used “innocent people as shields,” I contacted his spokesman as to what evidence the presidential hopeful had to make such charges. He referred me to a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, a right-wing Israeli think tank headed by the former chief of the Mossad which maintains close ties to the Israeli government. Despite repeated requests, Obama’s office was unable to provide any other source supporting the senator’s charge. This underscores serious concerns among human rights activists that Obama and other leading Democrats, like President Bush, have the same propensity to believe the findings of ideologically-driven right-wing think tanks above those of objective scholarship, reputable journalists, or principled human rights groups and other nonpartisan organizations.

Israel’s Use of Human Shields

Ironically, while Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights organizations–including the Israeli group B’tselem–have demonstrated that, while there is little conclusive evidence that the Hezbollah militia used human shields as a calculated policy, the Israeli Defense Forces have used this illegal maneuver as a standard practice, particularly earlier this decade following a right-wing coalition coming to power in Israel in early 2001. A recent HRW report notes how “Human Rights Watch and Israeli and Palestinian organizations documented numerous cases of Israeli forces using Palestinian civilians as human shields.” Similarly, Amnesty International has reported how Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank “have often used Palestinians effectively as human shields, endangering their lives in violation of international humanitarian law.
There have been no Congressional resolutions condemning Israel’s use of human shields, however. Congressional Democrats essentially share the Bush administration’s practice that if you are perceived as an adversary, your crimes will be exaggerated or even manufactured, while it you are perceived as an ally, your crimes will be covered up.

During the April 25 debate over the resolution condemning Hezbollah for its alleged use of human shields, Representative Dan Issa (R-CA)–a supporter of the measure–pointed out that “The use of human shields in the Middle East is unfortunately widespread” and showed a series of photographs of Israeli forces using Arab civilians as shields, including a 2004 photograph of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy tied to the hood of an Israeli police jeep in the West Bank. In response, Ackerman claimed that soldiers responsible “were charged, and the court found them guilty, and the court banned it.” In reality, however, while the Israeli Supreme Court did ban the use of human shields in 2005, no soldiers have been sentenced for engaging in this illegal practice. To the House Democrats’ chief spokesman on U.S. Middle East policy, however, the important distinction is that there is “a difference in moral values” between the Arab “perpetrators” and the Israeli “victims” whose only fault is that they may occasionally “go too far . . . in the pursuit of terrorists and evildoers.”

From the perspective of Ackerman and most of his colleagues, despite the fact that the majority of Israelis killed in last summer’s fighting were soldiers and the vast majority of Lebanese killed were civilians, Hezbollah’s violence constitutes “terrorism” whereas the Israelis’ violence constitutes “self-defense.” In taking this position, these lawmakers are shielding the United States–which provided Israel with most of the ordinance and delivery systems responsible for the carnage and which for weeks blocked a cease fire from going into effect– rom its moral and legal responsibility as well. Indeed, according to this bipartisan viewpoint, neither the United States nor its ally bears any blame for the slaughter of hundreds of Lebanese civilians, since those deaths were actually the fault of their fellow Lebanese.

Discrediting the Human Rights Community

Now having the majority in Congress, the Democrats appear to have made it a priority to use their position to discredit reputable human rights groups in an effort to defend the policies of important U.S. allies. Indeed, some leading Democrats, in a desperate effort to defend human rights abuses by the U.S.-backed Israeli government, have attacked human rights groups directly. For example, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), a member of the Democratic Leadership Team, has said that “a lot of those organizations, Amnesty International in particular, have always had bias against Israel.”

In reality, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and similar groups with a universal human rights agenda, rather than demonstrating any bias against Israel or any other state, have been quite rigorous in their uniform standards of reporting human rights abuses. Not only has Amnesty International been outspoken against human rights abuses by Middle Eastern governments opposed by the United States and Israel–such as Syria and Iran–but Amnesty also correctly concluded that Hezbollah, in the fighting last summer, had also “committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes.” HRW demonstrated how “the scale of Hizbullah’s rocket attacks on towns and villages in northern Israel, the indiscriminate nature of the weapons used, together with statements by Hizbullah’s leader, showed that Hizbullah carried out direct attacks on civilians as well as indiscriminate attacks and attacks on the civilian population as reprisal.”

Human rights groups are not the only target of Congress in its desperate effort to advance Bush’s Middle East policy agenda. Members also appear determined to attack the press for daring to report war crimes by America’s most important Middle East ally. For example, House Resolution 125 complains that “the news media made constant mention of civilian casualties but rarely pointed to the culpability…of Hezbollah for their endangerment of such civilians.” In reality, media watchdog groups noted that the

American news media actually tended to underplay the civilian casualties in Lebanon and uncritically repeated Israeli claims that Hezbollah was to blame.
Why Democrats Defend War Crimes

Despite claims to the contrary by some Democratic members of Congress, it is not likely that their support for Israel’s war on Lebanon has been motivated by a sincere desire to show solidarity with Israel since–as the Winograd Commission’s report demonstrated–the war actually harmed Israel’s legitimate security interests. The popular reaction in Lebanon to the widespread killing of Lebanese civilians by U.S.-backed Israeli forces and the successes by the Hezbollah in resisting the IDF ground offensive has led to a dramatic increase in popular support with Lebanon and throughout the Middle East of the radical and fanatically anti-Israel Shiite group.

In defending Israel’s attacks against innocent Arab civilians, the Democrats and their Republican allies will only embolden hard-liners in Israel to use such immoral, illegal and counter-productive tactics in the future.

Nor do claims by apologists for Congressional supporters of such resolutions that to oppose Israel’s illegal and self-destructive assault on Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure would endanger their chances of re-election. Polls showed that a majority of Americans found Israel’s assault on Lebanon last summer at best to have been excessive and every one of the 11 Democratic members of the House who refused to support H. Res. 921 in July 2006 supporting Israel’s attacks on Lebanon was re-elected in November by a bigger margin than they were two years earlier.

Perhaps the ultimate reason is that the Democrats’ agenda is essentially the same as the Republican administration and their Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill: to cover up for abuses of international humanitarian law by the United States and its allies and discredit human rights organizations that challenge these practices as a means of enhancing the hegemonic role of the United States in the Middle East and elsewhere.

In insisting that the large number of civilian casualties in Lebanon were a result of Hezbollah using the civilian population as human shields, Congress can try to make the case that–contrary to the findings of reputable human rights groups, United Nations agencies and others – Israel’s actions were not illegal. Otherwise, under U.S. arms control laws, the United States would be forced to restrict some of the lucrative arms exports to Israel by the politically powerful arms industry.

In addition, by challenging the credibility of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in their reports on Israeli violations of international humanitarian law in Lebanon, their reports on U.S. violations of international humanitarian law in Iraq and Afghanistan are less likely to be taken seriously by the American public. Similarly, by depicting Arab militias as sinister terrorists who use innocent civilians as shields, it makes it easier for the United States and its allies–which rely heavily on air power in their counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the heavy civilian casualties that result — to deny any legal or moral responsibility, even though the death toll from such air strikes greatly surpasses the numbers of civilians killed by the so-called “terrorists.”

Just as the American and Israeli people are beginning to challenge the morality and utility of their respective governments’ heavy-handed use of military power to address complex political challenges, the Democrats have decided to join the Republicans in rushing to defend it. As a result, it is imperative for peace and human rights groups to challenge the Democrats in Congress who continue to defend Israeli war crimes as vigorously as we do the Bush administration and Republican members of Congress.

http://www.fpif.info/fpiftxt/4233

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/17/1255

Hillary Clinton’s Hawkish Record

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has already assumed front-runner status for the Democratic Party nomination for president despite a foreign policy agenda that closely parallels that of the Bush administration.

Since most of the public criticism of the former first lady has been based on false and exaggerated charges from the right wing, often with a fair dose of sexism, many Democrats have become defensive and reluctant to criticize her. Some liberals end up believing conservative charges that she is on the left wing of the Democratic Party when in reality her foreign policy positions are far closer to Ronald Reagan than George McGovern.

For example, she opposes the international treaty to ban land mines. She voted against the Feinstein-Leahy amendment last September restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas. She opposes restrictions on U.S. arms transfers and police training to governments that engage in gross and systematic human rights abuses, such as Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Israel, Pakistan, Cameroon and Chad, to name only a few. She insists upon continuing unconditional funding for the Iraq war and has called for dramatic increases in Bush’s already bloated military budget. She has challenged the credibility of Amnesty International and other human rights groups that criticize policies of the United States and its allies.

Mrs. Clinton has been one of the Senate’s most outspoken critics of the United Nations, even serving as the featured speaker at rallies outside U.N. headquarters in July 2004 and last summer to denounce the world body. She voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq despite its being a clear violation of the U.N. Charter and in July 2004 falsely accused the United Nations of not taking a stand against terrorism when it has opposed U.S. policy. She was one of the most prominent critics of the International Court of Justice for its landmark 2004 advisory ruling that the Fourth Geneva Conventions on the Laws of War is legally binding on all signatory nations. She condemned the United Nations’ judicial arm for challenging the legality of Israel’s separation barrier in the occupied West Bank and sponsored a Senate resolution “urging no further action by the United Nations to delay or prevent the construction of the security fence.”

Mrs. Clinton has shown little regard for the danger from proliferation of nuclear weapons, not only opposing the enforcement of U.N. Security Council resolutions challenging Pakistan, Israel and India’s nuclear weapons programs but supporting the delivery of nuclear-capable missiles and jet fighters to these countries. This past fall she voted to suspend important restrictions on U.S. nuclear cooperation with countries that violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

At the same time, she insists that the prospect of Iran’s developing nuclear weapons “must be unacceptable to the entire world,” since challenging the nuclear monopoly of the United States and its allies in the region would somehow “shake the foundation of global security to its very core.” Last year, she accused the Bush administration of not taking the threat of a nuclear Iran seriously enough, criticized the administration for allowing European nations to take the lead in pursuing a diplomatic solution and insisted that the United States should make it clear that military options were still being actively considered.

Meanwhile, she insists that the United States should maintain the right to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries.

Mrs. Clinton was an outspoken supporter of Israel’s massive military assault on the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip last summer, which took the lives of over 1,000 civilians. She justified it by claiming it would “send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians [and] to the Iranians” because they opposed the United States and Israel’s commitment to “life and freedom.”

There are questions regarding her integrity. Long after credible, well-documented published reports by American and Israeli newspapers and research institutes had refuted it, Sen. Clinton continued to cite a right-wing group’s 1999 report claiming the Palestinian Authority was publishing anti-Semitic textbooks. Like President Bush, she is more prone to believe ideologically driven propaganda than independent investigative reporting or scholarly research.

Similarly, ignoring substantial evidence that Iraq had already rid itself of its chemical and biological weapons and no longer had a nuclear program, Mrs. Clinton justified her calls for a U.S. invasion of Iraq on the grounds that “if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.” Even after it was discovered that Iraq no longer had “weapons of mass destruction,” Mrs. Clinton acknowledged last year that she would have voted to authorize the invasion anyway.

Should Hillary Clinton become the Democratic presidential nominee, we can expect to find little differences between her and her Republican rival. Except for long shots Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Sen. Mike Gravel, none of the Democratic candidates have taken consistent positions supporting peace, human rights and international law. But with the possible exception of Sen. Joe Biden, Mrs. Clinton is the most hawkish Democrat in the presidential race.

The Democrats’ War

With power comes responsibility. Once they take over both houses of Congress on January 3, the Democrats will have the responsibility to get American troops out of Iraq as soon as practicable.

The United States has now been at war in Iraq longer than it fought the Axis powers in World War II. The American public has lost patience. Currently, public opinion polls show that only 31% of the population supports Bush administration policy toward the conflict. A majority of voters surveyed wants a withdrawal of American troops, and a majority of registered Democrats wants an immediate withdrawal. Despite efforts by Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to provide extensive funds for pro-war Democratic candidates while denying them to anti-war Democratic candidates, anti-war candidates actually out-performed pro-war candidates in defeating Republican incumbents.

However, in defiance of their constituents and oblivious to the polls, very few Democrats in the House and none in the Senate have been willing to call for immediate withdrawal, at most calling for some kind of “phased withdrawal” or “strategic redeployment.” Although most Democrats who have spoken out against the war have criticized the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, they have fallen short of declaring the war itself illegal and immoral. Nor have many acknowledged that the conquest by a Western power of such a large Middle Eastern state was doomed from the beginning.

Where’s the Spine?

The November 7 election provided a mandate to change U.S. policy toward Iraq. Early signs, however, indicate that the Democrats are unwilling to fulfill their anti-war mandate. By more than a 2:1 margin, the pro-war Rep. Steny Hoyer beat the anti-war Rep. Jack Murtha in the race for majority leader. Perhaps more significantly, it appears that the Democrats will have two outspoken supporters of the Iraq war as their chief foreign policy spokesmen.

Tom Lantos is slated to become chairman of the House International Relations Committee. Lantos has repeatedly denounced the United Nations and the International Court of Justice for their defense of the Fourth Geneva Conventions. In acknowledging the disproportionate impact the war has had on poor and working class Americans, Lantos–rather than calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces–has instead issued a “call upon all of the people of this country to do more to carry their fair share of the load.” He has criticized the waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq resulting from U.S. policies but he has not pressed the administration to do more than simply, in the words of last year’s “United States Policy in Iraq Act,” create “the conditions for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq.”

Lantos was also one of the chief congressional backers of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2001, in order to frighten the American public into supporting President George W. Bush’s calls for a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich Middle Eastern country, Lantos and other key Democrats claimed that Iraq was developing long-range missiles “that will threaten the United States and our allies,” even though–as arms control experts correctly noted at the time–this was not actually the case. Similarly, though the International Atomic Energy Agency had confirmed that Iraq no longer had a nuclear weapons program and strict international sanctions prevented that country from restarting it, Lantos claimed that such peaceful and diplomatic means to eliminate Iraq’s nuclear program had actually failed and that military means were necessary to prevent Iraq from developing its nuclear capability.

Meanwhile, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden is expected to take the helm of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Rejecting the UN Charter and other basic principles of international law, Biden is an outspoken supporter of the extremist view that the United States had the right to invade Iraq–and, by extension, any other country–simply on the grounds that the government might pose a threat some time in the future. In response to those who argued that there was no clear threat to America’s national security from Iraq, Biden declared, “If we wait for the danger to become clear and present, it could be too late.” In response to the ethnic and sectarian conflict that engulfed Iraq as a result of the U.S. invasion, Biden has emerged as a leading advocate of splitting Iraq into three, an action likely to lead to ethnic cleansing and other bloodshed.

Thanks to constituent pressure, however, Biden now advocates a withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2007. Like most Democratic senators, though, he continues to support unconditional funding for the war.

It is certainly a positive sign that more and more Democrats in Congress are finally distancing themselves from President Bush’s Iraq policies. However, Democratic calls for “strategic redeployment” may mean little more than concentrating U.S. forces in Kuwait or other nearby pro-U.S. dictatorships where they can escalate the air war, resulting in fewer American casualties but far greater Iraqi civilian casualties.

The year 2006 may be remembered in the same way as 1968, when elite opinion finally caught up with public opinion in recognizing that an increasingly costly counter-insurgency war was unwinnable and that the United States needed to develop some kind of exit strategy. Thanks to continued support for the Vietnam War by the Democratic-controlled Congress, however American troops were finally withdrawn only in 1973, with the strategic situation no better than it was five years earlier. Unless the Democrats are willing to show more spine this time around, U.S. forces could continue to fight a no-win war in Iraq War until at least 2011.

Turning Off the Spigot

As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the president has enormous power over the disposition of the U.S. military in Iraq ever since Congress–with the support of Democratic leaders–authorized the invasion in October of 2002. However, Congress holds the power of the purse. The House and Senate could force the withdrawal of American troops by withholding funding for U.S. military operations in Iraq after a certain date.

Congress has precedent for so using its influence. In May 1970, the Cooper-Church amendment eliminated funding for U.S. ground forces in Cambodia just weeks after President Richard Nixon launched a U.S. invasion of that Southeast Asian country. In January of 1976, the Clark amendment banned funding for U.S. military operations in Angola’s civil war (though this was later repealed during the Reagan administration after the Republicans captured the Senate.) The Boland amendment of 1982 restricted U.S. support for the Contras, forcing the Reagan administration to use illegal means to fund the war against Nicaragua. In late 1989, after the Salvadoran Defense Minister ordered the murder of six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America, Congress finally cut aid to El Salvador, leading to a peace settlement in that country’s decade-long U.S.-funded civil war.

However, Democratic Senator Harry Reid, slated to become Senate Majority Leader, explicitly stated on November 15 that the Democrats would not cut funding for the war, a position reiterated by other Democratic leaders. Indeed, rather than call for a reduction in spending for the Iraq war and other military boondoggles, Reid has promised to increase military spending by an additional $75 billion. Currently, U.S. military spending tops $500 billion annually, more than the military budgets of all other governments combined.

Democrats in the 1980s followed a similar strategy when they undermined the campaign for a mutual and verifiable U.S.-Soviet freeze in the research, development, and deployment of new nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons systems. The majority of Democrats–who controlled the House during this period and the Senate after 1986–were willing to vote for non-binding resolutions in support of a nuclear freeze. Yet they continued to expend tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars to fuel the arms race through the development of new, dangerous, and destabilizing nuclear weapons programs. This way, they could tell their constituents they supported the freeze while funding efforts to undermine it.

It appears, then, that congressional Democrats are likely to pass non-binding resolutions calling for the redeployment of American forces while continuing to unconditionally fund the ongoing prosecution of the Iraq War. So, the victory by anti-war voters on November 7 should be seen as only the first step in changing congressional policy on Iraq.

Movement Power

With only a few conscientious exceptions, Democratic politicians have rarely led on foreign policy. They have generally come around to taking progressive positions only as a result of constituent pressure through lobbying, legal protests, civil disobedience, and public education campaigns. For example, in 1980 Vice President Walter Mondale and others in the Carter Administration strongly opposed the call for a nuclear freeze. By the time he ran for president in 1984, however, Mondale was an outspoken freeze supporter. In the intervening four years, the Nuclear Freeze Campaign and disarmament activists had mobilized grass roots initiatives across the country, including the massive 1982 protest in New York City.

In 1977, Andrew Young–the African-American clergyman and former aide to Martin Luther King who then served as President Carter’s ambassador to the UN–vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for sanctions against South Africa. By 1986, the Republican-dominated Senate joined the Democratic-led House in overriding a presidential veto to impose sanctions against the apartheid regime. This dramatic shift came as a result of the divestment campaign and other actions of the anti-apartheid movement that sprung up on college campuses and elsewhere throughout the United States. The imposition of sanctions proved to be instrumental in the downfall of white minority rule.

Grassroots movements also proved essential in shifting U.S. foreign policy on El Salvador, East Timor, Burma, and many other issues. Both Democrats and Republicans have had to respond to organized pressure from an outraged citizenry. If the people lead, the leaders will follow.

The Democratic victory in the midterm elections does not automatically translate into meaningful legislative action to end the war. But the anti-war movement now has the potential to pressure Congress to take such meaningful action. The most critical phase of the anti-war struggle, then, did not end with the Republican defeat on November 7. It will only just begin when the Democrats formally assume power on Capitol Hill on January 3.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_democrats_war

Concern Grows over Democratic House Leader Pelosi’s Support for Iraq War

On January 4, Congressional Democrats re-elected California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi as minority leader in the House of Representatives. This comes despite that, since assuming her current leadership position two years ago, Pelosi has not only disappointed her liberal San Francisco constituency, but the majority of Democrats nationally as well, through her support for President George W. Bush’s policies toward Iraq.
Back in December of 2002, as independent strategic analysts were arguing that the evidence strongly suggested that Iraq had rid itself of its chemical and biological weapons some years earlier, Pelosi categorically declared on NBC”s Meet the Press that “Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There”s no question about that.”

Had she simply said that the Iraqi dictator had, at that time, “may” or even “probably” possessed such weapons, it could be assumed that she was simply being na”ve or foolish for failing to recognize the transparently false and inflated intelligence then being put forward by the Bush administration regarding Iraq”s weapons capability. However, in expressing such certitude, she not only seriously compromised her integrity, but she seriously undercut the then-growing anti-war movement.

Furthermore, by giving bipartisan credence to the Bush administration”s unprincipled use of such scare tactics to gain support for the U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country, she negated a potential advantage the Democrats would have otherwise had in the 2004 campaign. After it became apparent that administration claims about Iraq’s alleged military threat were false, the Democrats were unable to attack the Republicans for misleading the American public since their Congressional leadership had also falsely claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

During the first twelve weeks of 2003, there were a series of large demonstrations here in her California district against the war, including one on February 16 which brought out an estimated half a million people. The day the war broke out in March, San Francisco”s downtown business district was shut down by thousands of anti-war protesters in a spontaneous act of massive civil disobedience. In response, Pelosi denounced the protesters and rushed to the defense of President George W. Bush, voting in favor of a resolution declaring the House of Representatives” “unequivocal support and appreciation to the president “for his firm leadership and decisive action.” She personally pressed a number of skeptical Democratic lawmakers to support the resolution as well.
In response to those who argued that Iraq was not a threat to the United States and that United Nations inspectors should have been allowed to complete their mission to confirm that Iraq had disarmed as required, Pelosi went on record claiming that “reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone” could not “adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.”

In the race for last year”s Democratic presidential nomination, Pelosi helped lead an effort to undermine the anti-war candidacy of former Vermont governor Howard Dean, claiming that his call for a more balanced approach by the U.S. government in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process somehow brought into question his commitment to Israel”s right to exist in peace and security. Instead, she endorsed the hawkish Missouri congressman Richard Gephardt, who cosponsored the House resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his choosing. When Gephardt dropped out of the race, Pelosi threw her support to Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, another supporter of Bush”s war.

As a counter to those who argued that the war was a diversion of critical personnel, money, intelligence, and other resources from the important battle against Al-Qaeda terrorists, Pelosi also went on record declaring that the Iraq invasion was actually “part of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism.” As recently as this past September, despite a CIA report that Islamist terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zaqarwi — who allegedly has ties to Al-Qaeda — had not received sanctuary or any other support from the former Iraqi regime, Pelosi also went on record claiming that, under Saddam Hussein, “the al-Zarqawi terror network used Baghdad as a base of operations to coordinate the movement of people, money, and supplies.”

Such assertions proved costly to the Democrats in this past November”s election: exit polls showed that 80% of those who believed that the war in Iraq was part of the war on terrorism voted for President Bush.
In response to the consensus of disarmament experts that the invasion has hurt the cause of nuclear nonproliferation, Pelosi voted in favor of a Republican-sponsored amendment which claimed that the elimination of Libya”s nuclear program “would not have been possible if not for . . . the liberation of Iraq by United States and Coalition Forces.” This comes despite reports to the contrary by U.S. negotiators who took part in British-initiated talks.

Despite growing evidence that the resistance to the U.S. occupation is a popular nationalist reaction to a foreign occupation, Pelosi has gone on record insisting that it is simply the work of “former regime elements, foreign and Iraqi terrorists, and other criminals.”

Defenders of Pelosi point out that, as assistant minority leader in October 2002, she was the only member of the Democratic leadership in either house of Congress to vote against authorizing the invasion. Furthermore, they note how she has since raised some concerns regarding how the Bush administration has handled the occupation, such as not adequately preparing for the aftermath of the invasion, failing to utilize enough troops, not providing adequate training or armor for U.S. forces and for backing such dubious exile figures as Ahmad Chalabi.

However, to this day, Pelosi has refused to acknowledge that the United States should have never invaded Iraq in the first place. Religious leaders from around the globe have observed it did not meet the criteria for a “just war.” It was also a direct violation of the United Nations Charter, which the United States — as a party to such binding international treaties — is legally required to uphold. Furthermore, there is a growing consensus among even mainstream strategic analysts that the invasion and occupation has actually made the Middle East and the United States less secure.

Historically, opposition leaders in Congress have helped expose the lies and counter-productive policies of the incumbent administration. Pelosi, however, to her party”s detriment, has decided instead to defend them.
On January 12, Bay Area Congressional Representatives Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Pete Stark, and Sam Farr joined Democratic colleagues from across the country in signing a letter to President Bush calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq; Congresswoman Pelosi was notably absent from the list of signatories.

Indeed, to this day, Pelosi continues to support the U.S. occupation of Iraq, rejecting calls — in the face of a growing death toll of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians — to end the fighting and bring American troops home. This comes despite the fact that even many prominent Republicans, such as James Baker and General Brent Scowcroft, are now calling for the withdrawal of American forces.

Less than fifteen years ago, Pelosi was an outspoken liberal critic of the senior Bush administration”s militaristic policy toward Iraq. Now, however, she finds herself to the right of former President George Bush’s Secretary of State and his National Security Advisor.

That Pelosi would continue to support the war in the face of this past November’s city-wide referendum — in which a resounding 63% of San Francisco voters approved a measure urging the United States government to withdraw all troops from Iraq — is demonstrative of how out of touch she is with her own constituents. Already there is talk that, should Pelosi continue her support for the Iraq war, anti-war Democrats could organize a serious electoral challenge against her in the 2006 Democratic primary. (Some are citing a precedent from 1970 where, in an adjacent Congressional district, Democratic Congressman Jeffrey Cohelan — a liberal incumbent who nevertheless supported the Vietnam War — was defeated in the Democratic primary by anti-war challenger Ron Dellums, who went on to represent the East Bay in Congress for the next eighteen years.)

Thanks to the failure of the San Francisco Congresswoman and other Democratic leaders to more forcefully challenge the Bush administration where it was most vulnerable politically, her party not only lost a presidential race they should have easily won, but lost seats in the House and Senate as well. As long as people like Nancy Pelosi remain in leadership, the Democrats are destined to remain in the minority.

Reading Harry Reid: New Democratic Leader in Senate Unlikely to Oppose Bush Administration’s Foreign Policy Agenda

The overwhelming selection of Nevada Senator Harry Reid as minority leader of Congress’ upper house shows that the Democrats are still willing to give their backing for the Bush administration’s reckless militarism and contravention of international legal norms.

Despite evidence that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, WMD programs, or offensive delivery systems, Reid voted in October 2002 to authorize a U.S. invasion of Iraq because of what he claimed was “the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.” The Reid-backed resolution falsely accused Iraq of “continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability … [and] actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, thereby continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States.”

When Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the International Relations committee, tried to alter the wording of the resolution so as not to give President Bush the blank check he was seeking and to put some limitations on his war-making authority, Reid–as assistant minority leader of the Senate–helped circumvent Biden’s efforts by signing on to the White House’s version. As the Democratic “whip,” Reid then persuaded a majority of Democratic Senators to vote down a resolution offered by Democratic Senator Carl Levin that would authorize force only if the UN Security Council voted to give the U.S. that authority and to instead support the White House resolution giving Bush the right to invade even without such legal authorization. (By contrast, a sizable majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the Republican resolution.)

In March 2003, after Iraq allowed United Nations inspectors to return and it was becoming apparent that there were no WMDs to be found, President Bush decided to invade Iraq anyway. Reid rushed to the president’s support, claiming that–despite its clear violation of the United Nations Charter–the invasion was “lawful” and that he “commends and supports the efforts and leadership of the President.”

Following the invasion, President Bush asked Congress for $87 billion to pay for the first phases of the occupation. Despite record budget deficits, major cutbacks in valuable social programs, and polls showing that 59% of the public opposed the funding request, Reid supported the resolution, stating, “ I voted for President Bush’s $87 billion request because we have to support our troops … period.” To this day, Reid continues to defend the U.S. occupation of Iraq and taxpayer funding for it. Reid apparently believes that the best way to “support our troops” is not to demand that the Bush administration allow them to return home to safety but force them to fight in an unnecessary, unwinnable, counter-insurgency war on the other side of the planet.

Losing Checks and Balances

Historically, opposition leaders in the Senate have taken seriously Congress’ role under the U.S. Constitution to place a check on presidential powers. However, Reid has repeatedly demonstrated his naïve faith in President George W. Bush’s judgment, not only twice granting him unprecedented war-making authority, but justifying this betrayal of his constitutional responsibility by claiming that “no President of the United States of whatever political philosophy will take this nation to war as a first resort alternative rather than as a last resort.”

The last Senator from the inland West to lead the Democrats was Mike Mansfield of Montana, who served as Senate majority leader for most of the 1960s and 1970s. He courageously spoke out against the Vietnam War, not only when the Republican Richard Nixon was president, but also when Democrat Lyndon Johnson was president. Unlike Mansfield, however, who was willing to challenge the foreign policy of his own party’s administration, Reid refuses to speak out even when the administration is from the opposing political party.

Perhaps most disappointing aspect of the Senate Democrats’ selection of Reid as their leader is that it underscores the Democrats’ lack of support for international law and their blind support for the Bush administration’s position that the United States and its allies are somehow exempt from their international legal obligations.

For example, Reid justified his support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by echoing the administration’s claims that “this nation would be justified in making war to enforce the terms we imposed on Iraq in 1991” since Iraq promised “the world it would not engage in further aggression and it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict.”

First of all, Iraq had not engaged in further acts of aggression and it had already destroyed its weapons of mass destruction, demonstrating Reid’s willingness to defend the Bush administration’s lies in order to justify a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country.

Secondly, even if Iraq had been guilty as charged, the armistice agreement to which Reid referred–UN Security Council resolution 687–had no military enforcement mechanisms. Furthermore, resolution 678, which originally authorized the use of force against Iraq, had become null and void once Iraqi troops withdrew from Kuwait. An additional resolution specifically authorizing the use of force would have been required in order for the United States to legally engage in any further military action against the Baghdad regime.

Iraq is not the only area where Reid’s contempt for international legal standards is apparent: Reid is a cosponsor of a pending resolution condemning the International Court of Justice for its July decision, which held that governments engaged in belligerent occupation are required to uphold relevant provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention and related standards of international humanitarian law. Furthermore, despite a series of UN Security Council resolutions declaring Israel’s occupation, colonization, and annexation of Arab East Jerusalem illegal, Reid sponsored the Jerusalem Embassy Act that insists that “Jerusalem remain an undivided city” under Israeli control. In addition, Reid has supported Israel’s colonization of the occupied West Bank in contravention of a series of UN Security Council resolutions calling on Israel to withdraw these illegal settlements. Despite the protests of human rights groups, Reid has strongly defended Israeli attacks on civilian targets in the occupied territories and the construction of a separation wall deep into the occupied West Bank, also in contravention of international legal norms.

As a number of liberal activists have pointed out, Reid’s positions on trade, abortion, civil liberties, gay rights, spending priorities, and health care are also closer to the Bush administration than most Democratic voters. However, given what is at stake, it is foreign policy where the need for forceful congressional opposition to the Bush agenda is most important. In electing Harry Reid as their Senate leader, the Democrats have once again demonstrated that they are simply not up to the task.

http://www.fpif.info/fpiftxt/502