WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama's studied silence on the subject of Israel's 10-day-old war against Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip is only partly out of deference to the man who still has the big job for two more weeks.
Obama's reserve is also a political calculation that saying nothing is the better of his unappealing options. At least it lets all sides think he's in their corner for a little while longer.
Obama's promises to start fresh in the Middle East, and Arab hopes for a more sympathetic U.S. ear are part of that calculation. So are the strongly pro-Israel views of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's choice for secretary of state.
Anything Obama says about the crisis, either now or on Jan. 21, will be taken as a clue to his longer-term approach to peacemaking, and it is bound to disappoint someone.
There is little in Obama's resume or his public statements to suggest he suddenly would be tough on Israel or brimming with fresh ideas to address the dismal web of interlocking economic, political and security problems in the Palestinian territories. Obama's only extensive remarks about the Israel-Palestinian conflict during the presidential campaign were strongly pro-Israel.
Clinton was considered naive for a gaffe as first lady in which she kissed PLO leader Yasser Arafat's wife, but as a New York senator she's been consistently pro-Israel.
Nonetheless, Palestinians look to Obama.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki expressed disappointment that the president-elect has refused to comment on the Israeli offensive in Gaza, even though he made a statement on the recent attacks in Mumbai, India.
"We expected him really to be open and responsive to the situation in Gaza," Malki said Monday. "And still ... we expect him to make a strong statement regarding this as soon as possible."
Talking about the crisis in the same terms Bush uses would drain the goodwill of Palestinians and the Arab intermediaries Obama needs, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and a scholar at The Century Foundation. It also would limit Obama's maneuvering room later.
Talking about Gaza in markedly different terms — for instance, by calling for an unconditional truce — would be awkward in the extreme, Levy said.
"I've been getting briefed every day. I've had consistent conversations with members of the current administration about what's taking place," Obama told reporters Monday in his only comments on the Gaza crisis.
"I will continue to insist that when it comes to foreign affairs, it is particularly important to adhere to the principle of one president at a time, because there are delicate negotiations taking place right now, and we can't have two voices coming out of the United States when you have so much at stake."
The voice that is coming out belongs to a president who is a stout defender of Israel, as he affirmed Monday.
"I understand Israel's desire to protect itself," President George W. Bush said in the Oval Office. "The situation now taking place in Gaza was caused by Hamas."
Over the weekend, Israel began moving tanks and troops into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip after a week of punishing aerial bombing of Hamas targets, which caused dozens of civilian casualties and drew widespread condemnation in the Muslim and Arab world. By moving ground forces into Gaza, Israel has raised the risk of escalating the latest Mideast conflict into urban warfare, which would surely increase the casualties and consequences for the region.
Bush, however, laid the blame squarely on Hamas, which the United States labels a terrorist organization.
Israel may end its broad ground war before Obama takes office on Jan. 20, but the festering problem of Israeli-Arab hostilities will remain.
In the near term, if the Israeli incursion continues under an Obama administration, Obama must decide whether to continue Bush's policy of defending Israel even in the face of mounting world criticism of civilian deaths.
If the war ends quickly, Obama would be left to help administer whatever cease-fire terms or other international arrangement Israel agreed to, and to choose a response in the very likely event that the truce proves imperfect.
Even if Obama isn't talking, there's no shortage of Mideast hands hoping he is listening.
The advice includes a position paper provided to The Associated Press that carries the signature of one of Obama's own transition advisers, former diplomat Wendy Chamberlin.
"The Obama administration should lead an international effort to arrange a two-phase process: an immediate cease-fire, followed by a longer term armistice," the paper from the Israel Policy Forum said.
"Thus, if a cease-fire has not been established by the time Obama takes office, his team should work assiduously, through intermediaries, to establish a viable cease-fire," said the paper signed by Chamberlin and a dozen others.
Viser opslag med etiketten amerikansk udenrigspolitik. Vis alle opslag
Viser opslag med etiketten amerikansk udenrigspolitik. Vis alle opslag
tirsdag den 6. januar 2009
lørdag den 3. januar 2009
More Oddities in the U.S. "Debate" over Israel/Gaza
By Glenn Greenwald
Jnuary 02, 2009 "Salon" -- -This Rasmussen Reports poll -- the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza -- strongly bolsters the severe disconnect I documented the other day between (a) American public opinion on U.S. policy towards Israel and (b) the consensus views expressed by America's political leadership. Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive -- by a 24-point margin (31-55%). By stark constrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62-27%).
It's not at all surprising, then, that Republican leaders -- from Dick Cheney and John Bolton to virtually all appendages of the right-wing noise machine, from talk radio and Fox News to right-wing blogs and neoconservative journals -- are unquestioning supporters of the Israeli attack. After all, they're expressing the core ideology of the overwhelming majority of their voters and audience.
Much more notable is the fact that Democratic Party leaders -- including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi -- are just as lockstep in their blind, uncritical support for the Israeli attack, in their absolute refusal to utter a word of criticism of, or even reservations about, Israeli actions. While some Democratic politicians who are marginalized by the party's leadership are willing to express the views which Democratic voters overwhelmingly embrace, the suffocating, fully bipartisan orthodoxy which typically predominates in America when it comes to Israel -- thou shalt not speak ill of Israel, thou shalt support all actions it takes -- is in full force with this latest conflict.
Is there any other significant issue in American political life, besides Israel, where (a) citizens split almost evenly in their views, yet (b) the leaders of both parties adopt identical lockstep positions which leave half of the citizenry with no real voice? More notably still, is there any other position, besides Israel, where (a) a party's voters overwhelmingly embrace one position (Israel should not have attacked Gaza) but (b) that party's leadership unanimously embraces the exact opposite position (Israel was absolutely right to attack Gaza and the U.S. must support Israel unequivocally)? Does that happen with any other issue?
Equally noteworthy is that the factional breakdown regarding Israel-Gaza mirrors quite closely the factional alliances that arose with regard to the Iraq War. Just as was true with Iraq, one finds vigorous pro-war sentiment among the Dick Cheney/National Review/neoconservative/hard-core-GOP crowd, joined (as was true for Iraq) by some American liberals who typically oppose that faction yet eagerly join with them when it comes to Israel. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world -- Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East, the U.N. leadership -- opposes and condemns the attack, all to no avail. The parties with the superior military might (the U.S. and Israel) dismiss world opinion as essentially irrelevant. Even the pro-war rhetorical tactics are the same (just as those who opposed the Iraq War were demonized as being "pro-Saddam," those who oppose the Israeli attack on Gaza are now "pro-Hamas").
Substantively, there are certainly meaningful differences between the U.S. attack on Iraq and the Israeli attack on Gaza (most notably the fact that Hamas really does shoot rockets into Israel and has killed Israeli civilians and Israel really is blockading and occupying Palestinian land, whereas Iraq did not attack and could not attack the U.S. as the U.S. was sanctioning them and controlling their airspace). But the underlying logic of both wars are far more similar than different: military attacks, invasions and occupations will end rather than exacerbate terrorism; the Muslim world only understands brute force; the root causes of the disputes are irrelevant; diplomacy and the U.N. are largely worthless. It's therefore entirely unsurprising that the sides split along the same general lines. What's actually somewhat remarkable is that there is even more lockstep consensus among America's political leadership supporting the Israeli attack on Gaza than there was supporting the U.S.'s own attack on Iraq (at least a few Democratic Congressional leaders opposed the war on Iraq, unlike for Israel's bombing of Gaza, where they virtually all unequivocally support it).
* * * * *
Ultimately, what is most notable about the "debate" in the U.S. over Israel-Gaza is that virtually all of it occurs from the perspective of Israeli interests but almost none of it is conducted from the perspective of American interests. There is endless debate over whether Israel's security is enhanced or undermined by the attack on Gaza and whether the 40-year-old Israeli occupation, expanding West Bank settlements and recent devastating blockade or Hamas militancy and attacks on Israeli civilians bear more of the blame. American opinion-making elites march forward to opine on the historical rights and wrongs of the endless Israeli-Palestinian territorial conflict with such fervor and fixation that it's often easy to forget that the U.S. is not actually a direct party to this dispute.
Though the ins-and-outs of Israeli grievances and strategic considerations are endlessly examined, there is virtually no debate over whether the U.S. should continue to play such an active, one-sided role in this dispute. It's the American taxpayer, with their incredibly consequential yet never-debated multi-billion-dollar aid packages to Israel, who are vital in funding this costly Israeli assault on Gaza. Just as was true for Israel's bombing of Lebanon, it's American bombs that -- with the whole world watching -- are blowing up children and mosques, along with Hamas militants, in Gaza. And it's the American veto power that, time and again, blocks any U.N. action to stop these wars.
For those reasons, the pervasive opposition and anger around the world from the Israeli assault on Gaza is not only directed to Israel but -- quite rationally and understandably -- to America as well. Virtually the entire world, other than large segments of the American public, see Israeli actions as American actions. The attack on Gaza thus harms not only Israel's reputation and credibility, but America's reputation and credibility as well.
And for what? Even for those Americans who, for whatever their reasons, want endlessly to fixate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, who care deeply and passionately about whether the Israelis or the Palestinians control this or that West Bank hill or village and want to spend the rest of their days arguing about who did what to whom in 1948 and 1967, what possible interests do Americans generally have in any of that, sufficient to involve ourselves so directly and vigorously on one side, and thereby subject ourselves to the significant costs -- financial, reputational, diplomatic and security -- from doing so?
It's one thing to argue that Israel is being both wise and just by bombing the densely populated Gaza Strip. It's another thing entirely to argue that the U.S. should use all of its resources to support Israel as it does so. Those are two entirely separate questions. Arguments insisting that the Gaza attack is good and right for Israel don't mean that they are good and right for the U.S. Yet unstinting, unquestioning American support for whatever Israel does is just tacitly assumed in most of these discussions. The core assumption is that if it can be established that this is the right thing for Israel to do, then it must be the right thing for the U.S. to support it. The notion that the two countries may have separate interests -- that this may be good for Israel to do but not for the U.S. to support -- is the one issue that, above all else, may never be examined.
The "change" that many anticipate (or, more accurately, hope) that Obama will bring about is often invoked as a substance-free mantra, a feel-good political slogan. But to the extent it means anything specific, at the very least it has to entail that there will be a substantial shift in how America is perceived in the world, the role that we in fact play, the civil-liberties-erosions and militarized culture that inevitably arise from endlessly involving ourselves in numerous, hate-fueled military conflicts around the world. Our blind support for Israel, our eagerness to make all of its disputes our own disputes, our refusal to acknowledge any divergence of interests between us and that other country, our active impeding rather than facilitating of diplomatic resolutions between it and its neighbors are major impediments to any meaningful progress in those areas.
UPDATE: One related point: I have little appreciation for those who believe, one way or the other, that they can reliably predict what Obama is going to do -- either on this issue or others. That requires a clairvoyance which I believe people lack.
Some argue that Obama has filled key positions with politicians who have a history of virtually absolute support for Israeli actions -- Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel -- because Obama intends to continue, more or less, the Bush policy of blind support for Israel. Others argue the opposite: that those appointments are necessary to vest the Obama administration with the credibility to take a more active role in pushing the Israelis to a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, and that in particular, Clinton would not have left her Senate seat unless she believed she could finish Bill Clinton's work and obtain for herself the legacy-building accomplishment of forging an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians (this morning's NYT hints at that scenario).
I personally find the latter theory marginally more persuasive, but there is simply no way to know until Obama is inaugurated. Whatever else is true, the more domestic political pressure is exerted demanding that the U.S. play a more even-handed and constructive role in facilitating a diplomatic resolution, the more likely it is that this will happen.
Jnuary 02, 2009 "Salon" -- -This Rasmussen Reports poll -- the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza -- strongly bolsters the severe disconnect I documented the other day between (a) American public opinion on U.S. policy towards Israel and (b) the consensus views expressed by America's political leadership. Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive -- by a 24-point margin (31-55%). By stark constrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62-27%).
It's not at all surprising, then, that Republican leaders -- from Dick Cheney and John Bolton to virtually all appendages of the right-wing noise machine, from talk radio and Fox News to right-wing blogs and neoconservative journals -- are unquestioning supporters of the Israeli attack. After all, they're expressing the core ideology of the overwhelming majority of their voters and audience.
Much more notable is the fact that Democratic Party leaders -- including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi -- are just as lockstep in their blind, uncritical support for the Israeli attack, in their absolute refusal to utter a word of criticism of, or even reservations about, Israeli actions. While some Democratic politicians who are marginalized by the party's leadership are willing to express the views which Democratic voters overwhelmingly embrace, the suffocating, fully bipartisan orthodoxy which typically predominates in America when it comes to Israel -- thou shalt not speak ill of Israel, thou shalt support all actions it takes -- is in full force with this latest conflict.
Is there any other significant issue in American political life, besides Israel, where (a) citizens split almost evenly in their views, yet (b) the leaders of both parties adopt identical lockstep positions which leave half of the citizenry with no real voice? More notably still, is there any other position, besides Israel, where (a) a party's voters overwhelmingly embrace one position (Israel should not have attacked Gaza) but (b) that party's leadership unanimously embraces the exact opposite position (Israel was absolutely right to attack Gaza and the U.S. must support Israel unequivocally)? Does that happen with any other issue?
Equally noteworthy is that the factional breakdown regarding Israel-Gaza mirrors quite closely the factional alliances that arose with regard to the Iraq War. Just as was true with Iraq, one finds vigorous pro-war sentiment among the Dick Cheney/National Review/neoconservative/hard-core-GOP crowd, joined (as was true for Iraq) by some American liberals who typically oppose that faction yet eagerly join with them when it comes to Israel. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world -- Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East, the U.N. leadership -- opposes and condemns the attack, all to no avail. The parties with the superior military might (the U.S. and Israel) dismiss world opinion as essentially irrelevant. Even the pro-war rhetorical tactics are the same (just as those who opposed the Iraq War were demonized as being "pro-Saddam," those who oppose the Israeli attack on Gaza are now "pro-Hamas").
Substantively, there are certainly meaningful differences between the U.S. attack on Iraq and the Israeli attack on Gaza (most notably the fact that Hamas really does shoot rockets into Israel and has killed Israeli civilians and Israel really is blockading and occupying Palestinian land, whereas Iraq did not attack and could not attack the U.S. as the U.S. was sanctioning them and controlling their airspace). But the underlying logic of both wars are far more similar than different: military attacks, invasions and occupations will end rather than exacerbate terrorism; the Muslim world only understands brute force; the root causes of the disputes are irrelevant; diplomacy and the U.N. are largely worthless. It's therefore entirely unsurprising that the sides split along the same general lines. What's actually somewhat remarkable is that there is even more lockstep consensus among America's political leadership supporting the Israeli attack on Gaza than there was supporting the U.S.'s own attack on Iraq (at least a few Democratic Congressional leaders opposed the war on Iraq, unlike for Israel's bombing of Gaza, where they virtually all unequivocally support it).
* * * * *
Ultimately, what is most notable about the "debate" in the U.S. over Israel-Gaza is that virtually all of it occurs from the perspective of Israeli interests but almost none of it is conducted from the perspective of American interests. There is endless debate over whether Israel's security is enhanced or undermined by the attack on Gaza and whether the 40-year-old Israeli occupation, expanding West Bank settlements and recent devastating blockade or Hamas militancy and attacks on Israeli civilians bear more of the blame. American opinion-making elites march forward to opine on the historical rights and wrongs of the endless Israeli-Palestinian territorial conflict with such fervor and fixation that it's often easy to forget that the U.S. is not actually a direct party to this dispute.
Though the ins-and-outs of Israeli grievances and strategic considerations are endlessly examined, there is virtually no debate over whether the U.S. should continue to play such an active, one-sided role in this dispute. It's the American taxpayer, with their incredibly consequential yet never-debated multi-billion-dollar aid packages to Israel, who are vital in funding this costly Israeli assault on Gaza. Just as was true for Israel's bombing of Lebanon, it's American bombs that -- with the whole world watching -- are blowing up children and mosques, along with Hamas militants, in Gaza. And it's the American veto power that, time and again, blocks any U.N. action to stop these wars.
For those reasons, the pervasive opposition and anger around the world from the Israeli assault on Gaza is not only directed to Israel but -- quite rationally and understandably -- to America as well. Virtually the entire world, other than large segments of the American public, see Israeli actions as American actions. The attack on Gaza thus harms not only Israel's reputation and credibility, but America's reputation and credibility as well.
And for what? Even for those Americans who, for whatever their reasons, want endlessly to fixate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, who care deeply and passionately about whether the Israelis or the Palestinians control this or that West Bank hill or village and want to spend the rest of their days arguing about who did what to whom in 1948 and 1967, what possible interests do Americans generally have in any of that, sufficient to involve ourselves so directly and vigorously on one side, and thereby subject ourselves to the significant costs -- financial, reputational, diplomatic and security -- from doing so?
It's one thing to argue that Israel is being both wise and just by bombing the densely populated Gaza Strip. It's another thing entirely to argue that the U.S. should use all of its resources to support Israel as it does so. Those are two entirely separate questions. Arguments insisting that the Gaza attack is good and right for Israel don't mean that they are good and right for the U.S. Yet unstinting, unquestioning American support for whatever Israel does is just tacitly assumed in most of these discussions. The core assumption is that if it can be established that this is the right thing for Israel to do, then it must be the right thing for the U.S. to support it. The notion that the two countries may have separate interests -- that this may be good for Israel to do but not for the U.S. to support -- is the one issue that, above all else, may never be examined.
The "change" that many anticipate (or, more accurately, hope) that Obama will bring about is often invoked as a substance-free mantra, a feel-good political slogan. But to the extent it means anything specific, at the very least it has to entail that there will be a substantial shift in how America is perceived in the world, the role that we in fact play, the civil-liberties-erosions and militarized culture that inevitably arise from endlessly involving ourselves in numerous, hate-fueled military conflicts around the world. Our blind support for Israel, our eagerness to make all of its disputes our own disputes, our refusal to acknowledge any divergence of interests between us and that other country, our active impeding rather than facilitating of diplomatic resolutions between it and its neighbors are major impediments to any meaningful progress in those areas.
UPDATE: One related point: I have little appreciation for those who believe, one way or the other, that they can reliably predict what Obama is going to do -- either on this issue or others. That requires a clairvoyance which I believe people lack.
Some argue that Obama has filled key positions with politicians who have a history of virtually absolute support for Israeli actions -- Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel -- because Obama intends to continue, more or less, the Bush policy of blind support for Israel. Others argue the opposite: that those appointments are necessary to vest the Obama administration with the credibility to take a more active role in pushing the Israelis to a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, and that in particular, Clinton would not have left her Senate seat unless she believed she could finish Bill Clinton's work and obtain for herself the legacy-building accomplishment of forging an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians (this morning's NYT hints at that scenario).
I personally find the latter theory marginally more persuasive, but there is simply no way to know until Obama is inaugurated. Whatever else is true, the more domestic political pressure is exerted demanding that the U.S. play a more even-handed and constructive role in facilitating a diplomatic resolution, the more likely it is that this will happen.
tirsdag den 9. december 2008
A Whitewash for Blackwater?
The federal manslaughter indictment of five Blackwater Worldwide security guards in the horrific massacre of more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad may look like an exercise in accountability, but it's probably the exact opposite -- a whitewash that absolves the government and corporate officials who should bear ultimate responsibility.
If what Justice Department prosecutors allege is true, the five guards -- Donald Ball, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten and Paul Slough -- should have to answer for what happened on Sept. 16, 2007. The men, working under Blackwater's contract to protect State Department personnel in Iraq, are charged with spraying a busy intersection with machine-gun fire and grenades, killing at least 14 unarmed civilians and wounding 20 others. One man, prosecutors said yesterday, was shot in the chest with his hands raised in submission.
The indictment, charging voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations, demonstrates that those who engage "in unprovoked attacks will be held accountable," Assistant Attorney General Patrick Rowan claimed.
But it demonstrates nothing of the sort. As with the torture and humiliation of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, our government is deflecting all scrutiny from the corporate higher-ups who employed the guards -- to say nothing of the policymakers whose decisions made the shootings possible, if not inevitable.
Prosecutors did not file charges against the North Carolina-based Blackwater firm -- the biggest U.S. security contractor in Iraq -- or any of the company's executives. The whole tragic incident is being blamed on the guards who, prosecutors say, made Baghdad's Nisoor Square a virtual free-fire zone.
The Blackwater guards were nervous because of a car bombing elsewhere in the city that day. The company says the Blackwater convoy came under attack by insurgents, prompting the guards to fire in self-defense. "Tragically, people did die," defense attorney Paul Cassell told reporters.
There is a huge difference between self-defense and the kind of indiscriminate fusillade that the Blackwater team allegedly unleashed. Proper training and supervision -- which was the Blackwater firm's responsibility -- would have made it more likely for the guards to make the right split-second decisions amid the chaos of Nisoor Square. Rather than give Blackwater a free pass, the Justice Department ought to investigate the preparation these men were given before being sent onto Baghdad's dangerous streets.
Blackwater no doubt has rules and regulations about when and where its people can discharge their weapons. But were those rules enforced? Did the guards who were indicted yesterday have any reason to believe they would be punished for the rampage? Or were the shootings considered acceptable inside the Blackwater bunker? Company executives should have to answer these and other questions -- under oath.
But a real attempt to establish blame for this massacre should go beyond Blackwater. It was the Bush administration that decided to police the occupation of Iraq largely with private rather than regular troops.
There are an estimated 30,000 security "contractors" in Iraq, many of them there to protect U.S. State Department personnel. The presence of these heavily armed private soldiers has become a sore point between the U.S. and Iraqi governments. Until now, the mercenaries -- they object to that label, but it fits -- have been immune from prosecution by the Iraqi courts for any alleged crimes. This will change on Jan. 1, when the new U.S.-Iraqi security pact places them under the jurisdiction of Iraqi law. Blackwater and other firms are likely to have a harder time retaining and recruiting personnel, given the possibility of spending time in an Iraqi prison. Yet it is presumed that more private soldiers, rather than fewer, will be needed as the United States reduces troop levels.
Barack Obama has criticized the Bush administration's decision to outsource so many essentially military tasks in Iraq and elsewhere. The officials who made that decision, however, are not being held accountable -- not yet, at least. We deserve, at a minimum, a thorough investigation of what security contractors have done in the name of the United States.
Putting national security in the hands of private companies and private soldiers was bad practice from the start, and incidents such as what happened at Nisoor Square are the foreseeable result. The five Blackwater guards may have fired the weapons, but they were locked and loaded in Washington.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/12/09/ST2008120900107.html
If what Justice Department prosecutors allege is true, the five guards -- Donald Ball, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten and Paul Slough -- should have to answer for what happened on Sept. 16, 2007. The men, working under Blackwater's contract to protect State Department personnel in Iraq, are charged with spraying a busy intersection with machine-gun fire and grenades, killing at least 14 unarmed civilians and wounding 20 others. One man, prosecutors said yesterday, was shot in the chest with his hands raised in submission.
The indictment, charging voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations, demonstrates that those who engage "in unprovoked attacks will be held accountable," Assistant Attorney General Patrick Rowan claimed.
But it demonstrates nothing of the sort. As with the torture and humiliation of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, our government is deflecting all scrutiny from the corporate higher-ups who employed the guards -- to say nothing of the policymakers whose decisions made the shootings possible, if not inevitable.
Prosecutors did not file charges against the North Carolina-based Blackwater firm -- the biggest U.S. security contractor in Iraq -- or any of the company's executives. The whole tragic incident is being blamed on the guards who, prosecutors say, made Baghdad's Nisoor Square a virtual free-fire zone.
The Blackwater guards were nervous because of a car bombing elsewhere in the city that day. The company says the Blackwater convoy came under attack by insurgents, prompting the guards to fire in self-defense. "Tragically, people did die," defense attorney Paul Cassell told reporters.
There is a huge difference between self-defense and the kind of indiscriminate fusillade that the Blackwater team allegedly unleashed. Proper training and supervision -- which was the Blackwater firm's responsibility -- would have made it more likely for the guards to make the right split-second decisions amid the chaos of Nisoor Square. Rather than give Blackwater a free pass, the Justice Department ought to investigate the preparation these men were given before being sent onto Baghdad's dangerous streets.
Blackwater no doubt has rules and regulations about when and where its people can discharge their weapons. But were those rules enforced? Did the guards who were indicted yesterday have any reason to believe they would be punished for the rampage? Or were the shootings considered acceptable inside the Blackwater bunker? Company executives should have to answer these and other questions -- under oath.
But a real attempt to establish blame for this massacre should go beyond Blackwater. It was the Bush administration that decided to police the occupation of Iraq largely with private rather than regular troops.
There are an estimated 30,000 security "contractors" in Iraq, many of them there to protect U.S. State Department personnel. The presence of these heavily armed private soldiers has become a sore point between the U.S. and Iraqi governments. Until now, the mercenaries -- they object to that label, but it fits -- have been immune from prosecution by the Iraqi courts for any alleged crimes. This will change on Jan. 1, when the new U.S.-Iraqi security pact places them under the jurisdiction of Iraqi law. Blackwater and other firms are likely to have a harder time retaining and recruiting personnel, given the possibility of spending time in an Iraqi prison. Yet it is presumed that more private soldiers, rather than fewer, will be needed as the United States reduces troop levels.
Barack Obama has criticized the Bush administration's decision to outsource so many essentially military tasks in Iraq and elsewhere. The officials who made that decision, however, are not being held accountable -- not yet, at least. We deserve, at a minimum, a thorough investigation of what security contractors have done in the name of the United States.
Putting national security in the hands of private companies and private soldiers was bad practice from the start, and incidents such as what happened at Nisoor Square are the foreseeable result. The five Blackwater guards may have fired the weapons, but they were locked and loaded in Washington.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/12/09/ST2008120900107.html
US: Blackwater used grenades on unarmed Iraqis
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Blackwater Worldwide security guards opened machine gun fire on innocent, surrendering Iraqis and launched a grenade into a girls' school during a gruesome Baghdad shooting last year, prosecutors said Monday in announcing manslaughter charges against five guards.
A sixth guard involved in the attack cut a plea deal with prosecutors, turned on his former colleagues, and admitting killing at least one Iraqi in the 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. Seventeen Iraqis were killed in the assault, which roiled U.S. diplomacy with Iraq and fueled anti-American sentiment abroad.
The five guards surrendered Monday and were due to ask a federal judge in Utah for bail.
"None of the victims of this shooting was armed. None of them was an insurgent," U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said. "Many were shot while inside civilian vehicles that were attempting the flee from the convoy. One victim was shot in the chest while standing in the street with his hands up. Another was injured from a grenade fired into a nearby girls' school."
The guards were charged with 14 counts of manslaughter and 20 counts of attempted manslaughter. They are also charged with using a machine gun to commit a crime of violence, a charge that carries a 30-year minimum prison sentence.
The shootings happened in a crowded square where prosecutors say civilians were going about their lives, running errands. Following a car bombing elsewhere in the city, the heavily armed Blackwater convoy sought to shut down the intersection. Prosecutors said the convoy, known by the call sign Raven 23, violated an order not to leave the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.
"The tragic events in Nisoor Square on Sept. 16 of last year were shocking and a violation of basic human rights," FBI Assistant Director Joseph Persichini said.
Witnesses said the contractors opened fire unprovoked. Women and children were among the victims and the shooting left the square littered with blown-out cars. Blackwater, the largest security contractor in Iraq, says its guards were ambushed and believed a slowly moving white Kia sedan might have been a car bomb.
"We think it's pure and simple a case of self-defense," defense attorney Paul Cassell said Monday as the guards were being booked. "Tragically people did die."
Prosecutors said the Blackwater guards never even ordered the car to stop before opening fire. In his plea agreement with prosecutors, former guard Jeremy Ridgeway, of California, admitted there was no indication the Kia was a car bomb.
Though the case has already been assigned to U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina in Washington, the guards surrendered in Utah. They want the case moved there, where they would presumably find a more conservative jury pool and one more likely to support the Iraq war.
The indicted guards are Donald Ball, a former Marine from West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard, a former Marine from Knoxville, Tenn.; Evan Liberty, a former Marine from Rochester, N.H.; Nick Slatten, a former Army sergeant from Sparta, Tenn.; and Paul Slough, an Army veteran from Keller, Texas.
Ridgeway's sentencing on manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and aiding and abetting has not yet been scheduled.
An afternoon court hearing was scheduled on whether to release the guards. Defense attorneys were filing court documents challenging the Justice Department's authority to prosecute the case. The law is murky on whether contractors can be charged in U.S. courts for crimes committed overseas.
The shootings caused an uproar, and the fledgling Iraqi government in Baghdad wanted Blackwater, which protects U.S. State Department personnel, expelled from the country. It also sought the right to prosecute the men in Iraqi courts.
"The killers must pay for their crime against innocent civilians. Justice must be achieved so that we can have rest from the agony we are living in," said Khalid Ibrahim, a 40-year-old electrician who said his 78-year-old father, Ibrahim Abid, died in the shooting. "We know that the conviction of the people behind the shooting will not bring my father to life, but we will have peace in our minds and hearts."
Defense attorneys accused the Justice Department of bowing to Iraqi pressure .
"We are confident that any jury will see this for what it is: a politically motivated prosecution to appease the Iraqi government," said defense attorney Steven McCool, who represents Ball.
Based in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater is the largest security contractor in Iraq and provides heavily armed guards for diplomats. Since last year's shooting, the company has been a flash point in the debate over how heavily the U.S. relies on contractors in war zones
The company itself was not charged in the case. In a lengthy statement, Blackwater stood behind the guards and said it was "extremely disappointed and surprised" that one of the guards had pleaded guilty.
A sixth guard involved in the attack cut a plea deal with prosecutors, turned on his former colleagues, and admitting killing at least one Iraqi in the 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. Seventeen Iraqis were killed in the assault, which roiled U.S. diplomacy with Iraq and fueled anti-American sentiment abroad.
The five guards surrendered Monday and were due to ask a federal judge in Utah for bail.
"None of the victims of this shooting was armed. None of them was an insurgent," U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said. "Many were shot while inside civilian vehicles that were attempting the flee from the convoy. One victim was shot in the chest while standing in the street with his hands up. Another was injured from a grenade fired into a nearby girls' school."
The guards were charged with 14 counts of manslaughter and 20 counts of attempted manslaughter. They are also charged with using a machine gun to commit a crime of violence, a charge that carries a 30-year minimum prison sentence.
The shootings happened in a crowded square where prosecutors say civilians were going about their lives, running errands. Following a car bombing elsewhere in the city, the heavily armed Blackwater convoy sought to shut down the intersection. Prosecutors said the convoy, known by the call sign Raven 23, violated an order not to leave the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.
"The tragic events in Nisoor Square on Sept. 16 of last year were shocking and a violation of basic human rights," FBI Assistant Director Joseph Persichini said.
Witnesses said the contractors opened fire unprovoked. Women and children were among the victims and the shooting left the square littered with blown-out cars. Blackwater, the largest security contractor in Iraq, says its guards were ambushed and believed a slowly moving white Kia sedan might have been a car bomb.
"We think it's pure and simple a case of self-defense," defense attorney Paul Cassell said Monday as the guards were being booked. "Tragically people did die."
Prosecutors said the Blackwater guards never even ordered the car to stop before opening fire. In his plea agreement with prosecutors, former guard Jeremy Ridgeway, of California, admitted there was no indication the Kia was a car bomb.
Though the case has already been assigned to U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina in Washington, the guards surrendered in Utah. They want the case moved there, where they would presumably find a more conservative jury pool and one more likely to support the Iraq war.
The indicted guards are Donald Ball, a former Marine from West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard, a former Marine from Knoxville, Tenn.; Evan Liberty, a former Marine from Rochester, N.H.; Nick Slatten, a former Army sergeant from Sparta, Tenn.; and Paul Slough, an Army veteran from Keller, Texas.
Ridgeway's sentencing on manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and aiding and abetting has not yet been scheduled.
An afternoon court hearing was scheduled on whether to release the guards. Defense attorneys were filing court documents challenging the Justice Department's authority to prosecute the case. The law is murky on whether contractors can be charged in U.S. courts for crimes committed overseas.
The shootings caused an uproar, and the fledgling Iraqi government in Baghdad wanted Blackwater, which protects U.S. State Department personnel, expelled from the country. It also sought the right to prosecute the men in Iraqi courts.
"The killers must pay for their crime against innocent civilians. Justice must be achieved so that we can have rest from the agony we are living in," said Khalid Ibrahim, a 40-year-old electrician who said his 78-year-old father, Ibrahim Abid, died in the shooting. "We know that the conviction of the people behind the shooting will not bring my father to life, but we will have peace in our minds and hearts."
Defense attorneys accused the Justice Department of bowing to Iraqi pressure .
"We are confident that any jury will see this for what it is: a politically motivated prosecution to appease the Iraqi government," said defense attorney Steven McCool, who represents Ball.
Based in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater is the largest security contractor in Iraq and provides heavily armed guards for diplomats. Since last year's shooting, the company has been a flash point in the debate over how heavily the U.S. relies on contractors in war zones
The company itself was not charged in the case. In a lengthy statement, Blackwater stood behind the guards and said it was "extremely disappointed and surprised" that one of the guards had pleaded guilty.
mandag den 8. december 2008
'2025' Report: A World of Resource Strife
Michael Klare | December 2, 2008
A new report by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) on the emerging strategic landscape, "Global Trends 2025," has attracted worldwide attention because it forecasts a future environment in which the United States wields less power than it does today and must contend with a constellation of other, newly ambitious great powers. "Although the United States is likely to remain the single most important actor," the report notes, "the United States' relative strength — even in the military realm — will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained." Of all the many revealing findings in the study, this has been the most widely quoted.
That the United States is likely to experience a decline in its strength relative to other great powers over the next 10 to 15 years is, of course, an observation bound to attract keen attention around the world, where criticism of U.S. foreign policy — over the Iraq War, the handling of the war on terror, our failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change — remains strong. The fact that "Global Trends 2025" emanated from a U.S. government agency — the NIC is part of the "national intelligence community" and reports to the Director of National Intelligence — lends additional weight to its findings. Still, when all is said and done, it's hardly surprising that professional analysts would come to this conclusion, given the enormous toll on America's military and economic resources taken by five-and-half years of fighting in Iraq and the accompanying loss to our influence, prestige, and goodwill abroad.
Climate and Competition
Far more striking and original, I believe, is the report's emphasis on the role of climate change and resource competition in the world of 2025 and beyond. Until now, these issues have appeared solely on the margins of U.S. strategic and intelligence studies. Now, for the first time, they have moved front and center.
"Resource issues will gain prominence on the international agenda," the NIC report notes. "Unprecedented global economic growth — positive in so many other regards — will continue to put pressure on a number of highly strategic resources, including energy, food, and water, and demand is projected to outstrip easily available supplies over the next decade or so."
The likely future availability of energy and water receives especially close attention. Oil, in particular, is seen as being at risk of failing to meet anticipated world requirements: "Non-OPEC liquid hydrocarbon production — crude oil, natural gas liquids, and unconventionals such as tar sands — will not grow commensurate with demand. Oil and gas production of many traditional energy producers already is declining…Countries capable of significantly expanding production will dwindle; oil and gas production will be concentrated in unstable areas." The bottom line: global oil supplies will be inadequate to satisfy demand, and importing nations will be forced to consume less and/or speed the production of alternatives.
Water scarcity is seen as an equally significant problem: "Lack of access to stable supplies of water is reaching critical proportions, and the problem will worsen because of rapid urbanization worldwide and the roughly 1.2 billion persons to be added [to the world's population] over the next 20 years." At present, we are told, some 600 million people in 21 countries are suffering from inadequate water supplies; by 2025, an estimated 1.4 billion people in 36 countries will face this peril.
Global warming will further exacerbate resource pressures, especially with respect to water and food. Although the impact of climate change will vary from region to region and cannot be predicted with precision, "a number of regions will begin to suffer harmful effects, particularly water scarcity and loss of agricultural production." Some areas will suffer more than others, "with declines disproportionately concentrated in developing countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa." For many of these countries, "decreased agricultural output will be devastating because agriculture accounts for a large share of their economies and many citizens live close to subsistence levels."
Resource Wars
That resource scarcity and climate change will become increasingly severe in the decades ahead are hardly novel observations — many "peak oil" and environmental groups have been saying the same thing for years. But the NIC report takes this one step further by describing how these phenomena will intrude into international affairs and could provide the spark for armed violence. Increased scarcity, it suggests, could lead to greater efforts by states to secure control over overseas sources of energy and other key resources, producing geopolitical struggles among the major energy-deficit nations and possibly provoking all-out war.
"The rising energy demands of growing populations and economies may bring into question the availability, reliability, and affordability of energy supplies," the report notes. "Such a situation would heighten tensions between states competing for limited resources…In the worst case this could lead to interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources to be essential to maintaining domestic stability and the survival of the regime."
Even in the absence of major interstate conflict, the report argues, growing competition for dwindling energy supplies could lead to heightened tensions, internal conflict, and terrorism. "Even actions short of war will have important geopolitical implications as states undertake strategies to hedge against the possibility that existing energy supplies will not meet rising demands." For example, "energy-deficient states may employ transfers of arms and sensitive technologies and the promise of a political and military alliance as inducements to establish strategic relationships with energy-producing states." Such relationships are already emerging in Central Asia, where China, Russia, and the United States are all competing for access to and control over the region's oil and gas reserves.
The growing concentration of wealth in the hands of petro-elites in places like Angola, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria will be another source of potential conflict. Because such elites rarely allocate oil revenues on an equitable basis or allow for a democratic transfer of power, any alteration in national governance (and the distribution of wealth) is likely to be accompanied by violence — often in the form of attacks on pipelines, refineries, and other oil-industry infrastructure. This, in turn, could invite "military intervention by outside powers to stabilize energy flows."
Several areas of the world are likely to figure in energy conflicts of this sort, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Each is the site of overlapping lines of conflict produced by a combination of ethnic and religious schisms, internal disputes over the allocation of resource revenues, and the contending geopolitical interests of the major powers. Under these circumstances, it would not take much for a minor skirmish — such as that between Georgia and Russia last August — to escalate into something much greater.
Water and land scarcity brought about or exacerbated by climate change could also trigger armed conflict, suggests the NIC report, although mostly of the internal sort. "Climate change is unlikely to trigger interstate war, but it could lead to increasingly heated interstate recriminations and possibly to low-level armed conflicts." A particular danger zone is the Himalayan region, where the ongoing melting of major glaciers is expected to diminish the annual flow of vital rivers in Bangladesh, China, India, and Pakistan — many of them shared by two or more of these countries and a perennial source of friction among them.
Clusters of Hostility
Terrorist violence will also be spurred by the struggle over critical resources. As climate change and water scarcity renders many rural areas uninhabitable — especially in high-population-growth areas of North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia — hundreds of millions of unemployed young men will pour into the sprawling mega-cities of the developing world, often facing unfriendly reception from the original inhabitants of these areas (who often will be of another religion or ethnicity). Some of these desperate, bitter young men will be drawn to crime; others to militant ideologies and movements.
"As long as turmoil and societal disruptions, generated by resource scarcities, poor governance, ethnic rivalries, or environmental degradation, increase in the Middle East, conditions will remain conducive to the spread of radicalism and insurgencies," the report concludes. And these clusters of hostility will not be confined to the Middle East: "Increasing interconnectedness will enable individuals to coalesce around common causes across national boundaries, creating new cohorts of the angry, downtrodden, and disenfranchised."
As the report makes clear, these phenomena will have an ever-increasing impact on world affairs. For one thing, the growing uninhabitability of large parts of North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Central America will force more and more people to migrate to the cities — producing political and social unrest, as noted — or across international boundaries, to countries less severely affected by climate change and resource scarcity. This surely will produce increased political debate over immigration in receiving countries — and, in all likelihood, an increase in anti-immigrant violence. At the same time, it will complicate the task of combating international terrorist networks that recruit from and hide within immigrant communities in Europe and elsewhere.
New Technologies
Eventually, the report suggests, entrepreneurs and their government backers in the industrialized world will develop new materials and technologies to replace substances in short supply or methods for using them more sparingly. For example, we can expect further improvements in wind and solar power, advanced biofuels, hydrogen fuel-cells, and other alternative energy systems making them more efficient and affordable. This technological revolution will be well underway by 2025 — but not so far advanced as to erase the problems raised by inadequate supplies of oil and natural gas. Also, land and water scarcity will remain a significant worry no matter how much progress is made in other areas. The report's warning of intensified resource strife in 2025 and beyond should, therefore, be read with considerable alarm.
A new report by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) on the emerging strategic landscape, "Global Trends 2025," has attracted worldwide attention because it forecasts a future environment in which the United States wields less power than it does today and must contend with a constellation of other, newly ambitious great powers. "Although the United States is likely to remain the single most important actor," the report notes, "the United States' relative strength — even in the military realm — will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained." Of all the many revealing findings in the study, this has been the most widely quoted.
That the United States is likely to experience a decline in its strength relative to other great powers over the next 10 to 15 years is, of course, an observation bound to attract keen attention around the world, where criticism of U.S. foreign policy — over the Iraq War, the handling of the war on terror, our failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change — remains strong. The fact that "Global Trends 2025" emanated from a U.S. government agency — the NIC is part of the "national intelligence community" and reports to the Director of National Intelligence — lends additional weight to its findings. Still, when all is said and done, it's hardly surprising that professional analysts would come to this conclusion, given the enormous toll on America's military and economic resources taken by five-and-half years of fighting in Iraq and the accompanying loss to our influence, prestige, and goodwill abroad.
Climate and Competition
Far more striking and original, I believe, is the report's emphasis on the role of climate change and resource competition in the world of 2025 and beyond. Until now, these issues have appeared solely on the margins of U.S. strategic and intelligence studies. Now, for the first time, they have moved front and center.
"Resource issues will gain prominence on the international agenda," the NIC report notes. "Unprecedented global economic growth — positive in so many other regards — will continue to put pressure on a number of highly strategic resources, including energy, food, and water, and demand is projected to outstrip easily available supplies over the next decade or so."
The likely future availability of energy and water receives especially close attention. Oil, in particular, is seen as being at risk of failing to meet anticipated world requirements: "Non-OPEC liquid hydrocarbon production — crude oil, natural gas liquids, and unconventionals such as tar sands — will not grow commensurate with demand. Oil and gas production of many traditional energy producers already is declining…Countries capable of significantly expanding production will dwindle; oil and gas production will be concentrated in unstable areas." The bottom line: global oil supplies will be inadequate to satisfy demand, and importing nations will be forced to consume less and/or speed the production of alternatives.
Water scarcity is seen as an equally significant problem: "Lack of access to stable supplies of water is reaching critical proportions, and the problem will worsen because of rapid urbanization worldwide and the roughly 1.2 billion persons to be added [to the world's population] over the next 20 years." At present, we are told, some 600 million people in 21 countries are suffering from inadequate water supplies; by 2025, an estimated 1.4 billion people in 36 countries will face this peril.
Global warming will further exacerbate resource pressures, especially with respect to water and food. Although the impact of climate change will vary from region to region and cannot be predicted with precision, "a number of regions will begin to suffer harmful effects, particularly water scarcity and loss of agricultural production." Some areas will suffer more than others, "with declines disproportionately concentrated in developing countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa." For many of these countries, "decreased agricultural output will be devastating because agriculture accounts for a large share of their economies and many citizens live close to subsistence levels."
Resource Wars
That resource scarcity and climate change will become increasingly severe in the decades ahead are hardly novel observations — many "peak oil" and environmental groups have been saying the same thing for years. But the NIC report takes this one step further by describing how these phenomena will intrude into international affairs and could provide the spark for armed violence. Increased scarcity, it suggests, could lead to greater efforts by states to secure control over overseas sources of energy and other key resources, producing geopolitical struggles among the major energy-deficit nations and possibly provoking all-out war.
"The rising energy demands of growing populations and economies may bring into question the availability, reliability, and affordability of energy supplies," the report notes. "Such a situation would heighten tensions between states competing for limited resources…In the worst case this could lead to interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources to be essential to maintaining domestic stability and the survival of the regime."
Even in the absence of major interstate conflict, the report argues, growing competition for dwindling energy supplies could lead to heightened tensions, internal conflict, and terrorism. "Even actions short of war will have important geopolitical implications as states undertake strategies to hedge against the possibility that existing energy supplies will not meet rising demands." For example, "energy-deficient states may employ transfers of arms and sensitive technologies and the promise of a political and military alliance as inducements to establish strategic relationships with energy-producing states." Such relationships are already emerging in Central Asia, where China, Russia, and the United States are all competing for access to and control over the region's oil and gas reserves.
The growing concentration of wealth in the hands of petro-elites in places like Angola, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria will be another source of potential conflict. Because such elites rarely allocate oil revenues on an equitable basis or allow for a democratic transfer of power, any alteration in national governance (and the distribution of wealth) is likely to be accompanied by violence — often in the form of attacks on pipelines, refineries, and other oil-industry infrastructure. This, in turn, could invite "military intervention by outside powers to stabilize energy flows."
Several areas of the world are likely to figure in energy conflicts of this sort, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Each is the site of overlapping lines of conflict produced by a combination of ethnic and religious schisms, internal disputes over the allocation of resource revenues, and the contending geopolitical interests of the major powers. Under these circumstances, it would not take much for a minor skirmish — such as that between Georgia and Russia last August — to escalate into something much greater.
Water and land scarcity brought about or exacerbated by climate change could also trigger armed conflict, suggests the NIC report, although mostly of the internal sort. "Climate change is unlikely to trigger interstate war, but it could lead to increasingly heated interstate recriminations and possibly to low-level armed conflicts." A particular danger zone is the Himalayan region, where the ongoing melting of major glaciers is expected to diminish the annual flow of vital rivers in Bangladesh, China, India, and Pakistan — many of them shared by two or more of these countries and a perennial source of friction among them.
Clusters of Hostility
Terrorist violence will also be spurred by the struggle over critical resources. As climate change and water scarcity renders many rural areas uninhabitable — especially in high-population-growth areas of North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia — hundreds of millions of unemployed young men will pour into the sprawling mega-cities of the developing world, often facing unfriendly reception from the original inhabitants of these areas (who often will be of another religion or ethnicity). Some of these desperate, bitter young men will be drawn to crime; others to militant ideologies and movements.
"As long as turmoil and societal disruptions, generated by resource scarcities, poor governance, ethnic rivalries, or environmental degradation, increase in the Middle East, conditions will remain conducive to the spread of radicalism and insurgencies," the report concludes. And these clusters of hostility will not be confined to the Middle East: "Increasing interconnectedness will enable individuals to coalesce around common causes across national boundaries, creating new cohorts of the angry, downtrodden, and disenfranchised."
As the report makes clear, these phenomena will have an ever-increasing impact on world affairs. For one thing, the growing uninhabitability of large parts of North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Central America will force more and more people to migrate to the cities — producing political and social unrest, as noted — or across international boundaries, to countries less severely affected by climate change and resource scarcity. This surely will produce increased political debate over immigration in receiving countries — and, in all likelihood, an increase in anti-immigrant violence. At the same time, it will complicate the task of combating international terrorist networks that recruit from and hide within immigrant communities in Europe and elsewhere.
New Technologies
Eventually, the report suggests, entrepreneurs and their government backers in the industrialized world will develop new materials and technologies to replace substances in short supply or methods for using them more sparingly. For example, we can expect further improvements in wind and solar power, advanced biofuels, hydrogen fuel-cells, and other alternative energy systems making them more efficient and affordable. This technological revolution will be well underway by 2025 — but not so far advanced as to erase the problems raised by inadequate supplies of oil and natural gas. Also, land and water scarcity will remain a significant worry no matter how much progress is made in other areas. The report's warning of intensified resource strife in 2025 and beyond should, therefore, be read with considerable alarm.
Drawing the Future From the Past...
The bombing was relentless. From 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos. That's a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. Laos has the unfortunate distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world.
"In the area of Xieng Khoang, the place of my birth, there was health, good earth, and fine weather," one survivor, a 33-year-old man, recalls of that period. "But then the airplanes came, bombing the rice fields and the forests, making us leave our land and rice fields with great sadness. One day a plane came bombing my rice field as well as the village. I had gone very early to harrow the field. I thought, ‘I am only a village rice farmer, the airplane will not shoot me.’ But that day truly it did shoot me and wounded me together with my buffalo, which was the source of a hundred thousand loves and a hundred thousand worries for me."
For nearly three decades, the U.S. secret war in Laos and the impact of the most massive bombing campaign in the world was nearly forgotten. For those who remembered, the events seemed surreal. They witnessed the reckless destruction of a people and their land, and careful efforts by the U.S. government to conceal it. For those too young to know, gathering information and knowledge of this history was scattered and fragmented. It seemed the secret war in Laos and its aftermath would remain a secret.
But then a remarkable set of drawings and eyewitness accounts came to light. Laotian villagers put their memories on paper in the 1970s to depict the secret bombing of their country. This trove of reminiscences became the inspiration for Legacies of War. Founded by Laotian Americans in 2004, the project raises awareness about the history of the Vietnam War-era bombing in Laos. Using a unique combination of art, culture, education, community organizing, advocacy, and dialogue, Legacies of War also works for the removal of unexploded bombs in Laos, to provide space for healing the wounds of war, and to create greater hope for a future of peace.
A Secret War, a People Scattered
When the United States withdrew from Indochina, the "Secret War" in Laos was lost to history. But the legacy of the war lives on. Up to 30% of the cluster bombs dropped by the United States in Laos failed to detonate, leaving extensive contamination from unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the countryside. That translates into 78 to 130 million unexploded bomblets. Over one-third of the land in Laos is contaminated. These "bombies," as the Lao now call them, have killed or maimed more than 34,000 people since the war's end, and continue to claim more innocent victims every day. About 40% of accidents result in death, and 60% of the victims are children. UXO remains a major barrier to the safety, health, livelihoods, and food security of the people of Laos.
The war also displaced up to one-third of the Lao population. Nearly 750,000 would eventually become refugees in France, Australia, and Canada, among other countries. Over 350,000 refugees from Laos came to the United States after having experienced war, destruction, death, imprisonment, family separation, loss of homeland, loss of identity, and loss of control over their destinies. Many had undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. But these weren't things Laotian refugees had the luxury to contemplate, for basic economic survival trumped all other needs.
Drawing on the Past
Between December 1970 and May 1971, Fred Branfman, an American, and Boungeun, a Lao man, collected illustrations and narratives in the Vientiane refugee camps, where bombing victims fled. The drawings and narratives represent the voiceless, faceless, and nameless who endured an air war campaign committed in secrecy. Drawn in pencil, pens, crayons, and markers, they are raw and stark, reflecting the crude events that shaped their reality. The simplicity of the narration and drawings emphasize the illustrators' identities as ordinary villagers who bore witness to a devastating event.
For instance, an 18-year-old woman remembers, "In the year 1967, my village built small shelters in the forest and we had holes in the bamboo thicket on top of the hill. It was a place to which we could flee. But there were two brothers who went out to cut wood in the forest. The airplanes shot them and both brothers died. Their mother and father had just these two sons and were both in the same hole with me. I think with much pity about this old father and mother who were like crazy people because their children had died."
Each of the illustrations demonstrates the violence of warfare. However, the images of blood and death are contradicted by the memories of the scenic and peaceful village life these survivors once lived. Scenes show farmers tending to their rice fields, monks praying at the temple, women going to the market, and children playing in the schoolyard. The drawings capture the very moments when their lives and society were forever altered. The illustrations and narratives are at the heart of the Legacies of War National Traveling Exhibition, which is accompanied by historical photos, maps and other relevant documents to give context to the decade-long bombings.
Only a small circle of individuals knew of the existence of these illustrations. The pictures hadn’t been seen in decades, not since the end of the war. A fortuitous meeting between me and Institute for Policy Studies director John Cavanagh led to the return of the illustrations to the Lao American community. In the last several years, thousands of visitors have seen the illustrations through the Legacies of War traveling exhibit and other community forums. Although most Laotian Americans didn't experience the same horrors depicted in the drawings, the illustrations invoke memory of their own stories of refuge, survival, and resilience.
The reaction to the drawings was instructive to Legacies’ work. Initially considered an artifact, the illustrations have become a living document. One at a time, each drawing tells the story of a survivor. Although the illustrations were from four decades ago, they inspire others to share their stories, contributing to a collective narrative that began long ago in Laos, but continues today through the voices of Laotian Americans.
Following a viewing of the illustrations at an exhibit in Lowell, Massachusetts, a Lao woman in the audience stood up to speak at a community forum, "The illustrations made me remember. I have not shared, not even with my family because I didn't think it was important. When I was a young woman in Laos, I worked as a nurse to help people hurt by the bombing. Every day, the airplanes would come: Boom! Boom! Boom! And then one day, it came so close to us, we had to hide in the cave and we hear right outside the cave, the sound so loud. It scared me so much. I feel so lucky I did not die. The pictures made me remember. I am so sad that today, people in Lao are still being hurt and dying from these bombs." The woman, whose husband had spoken on several occasions about his experience, had never shared hers. The illustrations and community forum gave her a chance to tell her story for the first time in 30 years. Today, she remains engaged in educating people in the Boston-area about the bombing and its aftermath.
These new voices and stories are captured in various ways through Legacies of War: interactive exhibition pieces, community programs, oral history interviews, theater performance pieces, and new commissioned works of art. Based on oral histories collected from Laotian refugees and their descendents, the Refugee Nation theater piece reveals connections between U.S. and Southeast Asian history, and the unique challenges faced by political refugees and their American children. Touching on themes of identity, globalization, and activism, it brings a Laotian voice to a growing part of the Asian-American Diaspora that is yet to be included in the American experience. <
The integration of storytelling, art, and performance are critical in breaking the silence. By creating multiple access points of engagement, Legacies of War facilitates the connection of personal stories to a collective experience in recognition that we are not alone in our experiences, that we are connected to a larger narrative and a larger context. The acknowledgement of a shared journey and struggle could lead to collective strength and power.
Since the end to the U.S. wars in Southeast Asia, many other wars have been waged, in other parts of the world, in new terrain, villages, and communities. Yet, the wars in Southeast Asia lingers. And for the people living in Laos as well as those who became refugees, the lingering impact of war remains ever present in their daily lives. Although war and conflict created the refugee community, they don't have to define it. Through the transformative power of stories, art, and performance, Laotian Americans are evolving from victim to agency of change. "Now that I know about the secret war," said a Lao American student in Seattle, "I have to do something about the horrible things that are still happening to people. As Americans, we must do something."
Another victim, a 37-year old woman, reflects, "Our lives became like those of animals desperately trying to escape their hunters . . . Human beings, whose parents brought them into the world and carefully raised them with overflowing love despite so many difficulties, these human beings would die from a single blast as explosions burst, lying still without moving again at all. And who then thinks of the blood, flesh, sweat and strength of their parents, and who will have charity and pity for them?...In reality, whatever happens, it is only the innocent who suffer. And as for other men, do they know all the unimaginable things happening in this war?"
Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5719
"In the area of Xieng Khoang, the place of my birth, there was health, good earth, and fine weather," one survivor, a 33-year-old man, recalls of that period. "But then the airplanes came, bombing the rice fields and the forests, making us leave our land and rice fields with great sadness. One day a plane came bombing my rice field as well as the village. I had gone very early to harrow the field. I thought, ‘I am only a village rice farmer, the airplane will not shoot me.’ But that day truly it did shoot me and wounded me together with my buffalo, which was the source of a hundred thousand loves and a hundred thousand worries for me."
For nearly three decades, the U.S. secret war in Laos and the impact of the most massive bombing campaign in the world was nearly forgotten. For those who remembered, the events seemed surreal. They witnessed the reckless destruction of a people and their land, and careful efforts by the U.S. government to conceal it. For those too young to know, gathering information and knowledge of this history was scattered and fragmented. It seemed the secret war in Laos and its aftermath would remain a secret.
But then a remarkable set of drawings and eyewitness accounts came to light. Laotian villagers put their memories on paper in the 1970s to depict the secret bombing of their country. This trove of reminiscences became the inspiration for Legacies of War. Founded by Laotian Americans in 2004, the project raises awareness about the history of the Vietnam War-era bombing in Laos. Using a unique combination of art, culture, education, community organizing, advocacy, and dialogue, Legacies of War also works for the removal of unexploded bombs in Laos, to provide space for healing the wounds of war, and to create greater hope for a future of peace.
A Secret War, a People Scattered
When the United States withdrew from Indochina, the "Secret War" in Laos was lost to history. But the legacy of the war lives on. Up to 30% of the cluster bombs dropped by the United States in Laos failed to detonate, leaving extensive contamination from unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the countryside. That translates into 78 to 130 million unexploded bomblets. Over one-third of the land in Laos is contaminated. These "bombies," as the Lao now call them, have killed or maimed more than 34,000 people since the war's end, and continue to claim more innocent victims every day. About 40% of accidents result in death, and 60% of the victims are children. UXO remains a major barrier to the safety, health, livelihoods, and food security of the people of Laos.
The war also displaced up to one-third of the Lao population. Nearly 750,000 would eventually become refugees in France, Australia, and Canada, among other countries. Over 350,000 refugees from Laos came to the United States after having experienced war, destruction, death, imprisonment, family separation, loss of homeland, loss of identity, and loss of control over their destinies. Many had undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. But these weren't things Laotian refugees had the luxury to contemplate, for basic economic survival trumped all other needs.
Drawing on the Past
Between December 1970 and May 1971, Fred Branfman, an American, and Boungeun, a Lao man, collected illustrations and narratives in the Vientiane refugee camps, where bombing victims fled. The drawings and narratives represent the voiceless, faceless, and nameless who endured an air war campaign committed in secrecy. Drawn in pencil, pens, crayons, and markers, they are raw and stark, reflecting the crude events that shaped their reality. The simplicity of the narration and drawings emphasize the illustrators' identities as ordinary villagers who bore witness to a devastating event.
For instance, an 18-year-old woman remembers, "In the year 1967, my village built small shelters in the forest and we had holes in the bamboo thicket on top of the hill. It was a place to which we could flee. But there were two brothers who went out to cut wood in the forest. The airplanes shot them and both brothers died. Their mother and father had just these two sons and were both in the same hole with me. I think with much pity about this old father and mother who were like crazy people because their children had died."
Each of the illustrations demonstrates the violence of warfare. However, the images of blood and death are contradicted by the memories of the scenic and peaceful village life these survivors once lived. Scenes show farmers tending to their rice fields, monks praying at the temple, women going to the market, and children playing in the schoolyard. The drawings capture the very moments when their lives and society were forever altered. The illustrations and narratives are at the heart of the Legacies of War National Traveling Exhibition, which is accompanied by historical photos, maps and other relevant documents to give context to the decade-long bombings.
Only a small circle of individuals knew of the existence of these illustrations. The pictures hadn’t been seen in decades, not since the end of the war. A fortuitous meeting between me and Institute for Policy Studies director John Cavanagh led to the return of the illustrations to the Lao American community. In the last several years, thousands of visitors have seen the illustrations through the Legacies of War traveling exhibit and other community forums. Although most Laotian Americans didn't experience the same horrors depicted in the drawings, the illustrations invoke memory of their own stories of refuge, survival, and resilience.
The reaction to the drawings was instructive to Legacies’ work. Initially considered an artifact, the illustrations have become a living document. One at a time, each drawing tells the story of a survivor. Although the illustrations were from four decades ago, they inspire others to share their stories, contributing to a collective narrative that began long ago in Laos, but continues today through the voices of Laotian Americans.
Following a viewing of the illustrations at an exhibit in Lowell, Massachusetts, a Lao woman in the audience stood up to speak at a community forum, "The illustrations made me remember. I have not shared, not even with my family because I didn't think it was important. When I was a young woman in Laos, I worked as a nurse to help people hurt by the bombing. Every day, the airplanes would come: Boom! Boom! Boom! And then one day, it came so close to us, we had to hide in the cave and we hear right outside the cave, the sound so loud. It scared me so much. I feel so lucky I did not die. The pictures made me remember. I am so sad that today, people in Lao are still being hurt and dying from these bombs." The woman, whose husband had spoken on several occasions about his experience, had never shared hers. The illustrations and community forum gave her a chance to tell her story for the first time in 30 years. Today, she remains engaged in educating people in the Boston-area about the bombing and its aftermath.
These new voices and stories are captured in various ways through Legacies of War: interactive exhibition pieces, community programs, oral history interviews, theater performance pieces, and new commissioned works of art. Based on oral histories collected from Laotian refugees and their descendents, the Refugee Nation theater piece reveals connections between U.S. and Southeast Asian history, and the unique challenges faced by political refugees and their American children. Touching on themes of identity, globalization, and activism, it brings a Laotian voice to a growing part of the Asian-American Diaspora that is yet to be included in the American experience. <
The integration of storytelling, art, and performance are critical in breaking the silence. By creating multiple access points of engagement, Legacies of War facilitates the connection of personal stories to a collective experience in recognition that we are not alone in our experiences, that we are connected to a larger narrative and a larger context. The acknowledgement of a shared journey and struggle could lead to collective strength and power.
Since the end to the U.S. wars in Southeast Asia, many other wars have been waged, in other parts of the world, in new terrain, villages, and communities. Yet, the wars in Southeast Asia lingers. And for the people living in Laos as well as those who became refugees, the lingering impact of war remains ever present in their daily lives. Although war and conflict created the refugee community, they don't have to define it. Through the transformative power of stories, art, and performance, Laotian Americans are evolving from victim to agency of change. "Now that I know about the secret war," said a Lao American student in Seattle, "I have to do something about the horrible things that are still happening to people. As Americans, we must do something."
Another victim, a 37-year old woman, reflects, "Our lives became like those of animals desperately trying to escape their hunters . . . Human beings, whose parents brought them into the world and carefully raised them with overflowing love despite so many difficulties, these human beings would die from a single blast as explosions burst, lying still without moving again at all. And who then thinks of the blood, flesh, sweat and strength of their parents, and who will have charity and pity for them?...In reality, whatever happens, it is only the innocent who suffer. And as for other men, do they know all the unimaginable things happening in this war?"
Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5719
Memo For Obama
For: the President-Elect, Mr. Barack Obama.
From: Uri Avnery, Israel.
The following humble suggestions are based on my 70 years of experience as an underground fighter, special forces soldier in the 1948 war, editor-in-chief of a newsmagazine, member of the Knesset and founding member of a peace movement:
As far as Israeli-Arab peace is concerned, you should act from Day One.
Israeli elections are due to take place in February 2009. You can have an indirect but important and constructive impact on the outcome, by announcing your unequivocal determination to achieve Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-all-Arab peace in 2009.
Unfortunately, all your predecessors since 1967 have played a double game. While paying lip service to peace, and sometimes going through the motions of making some effort for peace, they have in practice supported our governments in moving in the very opposite direction. In particular, they have given tacit approval to the building and enlargement of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories, each of which is a land mine on the road to peace.
All the settlements are illegal in international law. The distinction sometimes made between “illegal” outposts and the other settlements is a propaganda ploy designed to obscure this simple truth.
All the settlements since 1967 have been built with the express purpose of making a Palestinian state – and hence peace - impossible, by cutting the territory of the prospective State of Palestine into ribbons. Practically all our government departments and the army have openly or secretly helped to build, consolidate and enlarge the settlements – as confirmed by the 2005 report prepared for the government (!) by Lawyer Talia Sasson.
By now, the number of settlers in the West Bank has reached some 250,000 (apart from the 200,000 settlers in the Greater Jerusalem area, whose status is somewhat different.) They are politically isolated, and sometimes detested by the majority of the Israel public, but enjoy significant support in the army and government ministries.
No Israeli government would dare to confront the concentrated political and material might of the settlers. Such a confrontation would need very strong leadership and the unstinting support of the President of the United States to have any chance of success.
Lacking these, all “peace negotiations” are a sham. The Israeli government and its US backers have done everything possible to prevent the negotiations with both the Palestinians and the Syrians from reaching any conclusion, for fear of provoking a confrontation with the settlers and their supporters. The present “Annapolis” negotiations are as hollow as all the preceding ones, each side keeping up the pretense for its own political interests.
The Clinton administration, and even more so the Bush administration, allowed the Israeli government to keep up this pretense. It is therefore imperative to prevent members of these administrations from diverting your Middle Eastern policy into the old channels.
It is important for you to make a complete new start, and to state this publicly. Discredited ideas and failed initiatives – such as the Bush “vision”, the Road Map, Annapolis and the like – should by thrown into the junkyard of history.
To make a new start, the aim of American policy should be stated clearly and succinctly. This should be: to achieve a peace based on the Two-State Solution within a defined time-span (say by the end of 2009).
It should be pointed out that this aim is based on a reassessment of the American national interest, in order to extract the poison from American-Arab and American-Muslim relations, strengthen peace-oriented regimes, defeat al-Qaeda-type terrorism, end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and achieve a viable accommodation with Iran.
The terms of Israeli-Palestinian peace are clear. They have been crystallized in thousands of hours of negotiations, conferences, meetings and conversations. They are:
Palestinian unity is essential for peace. Peace made with only one section of the people is worthless. The US will facilitate Palestinian reconciliation and the unification of Palestinian structures. To this end, the US will end its boycott of Hamas, which won the last elections, start a political dialogue with the movement and encourage Israel to do the same. The US will respect any result of democratic Palestinian elections.
The US will aid the government of Israel in confronting the settlement problem. As from now, settlers will be given one year to leave the occupied territories voluntarily in return for compensation that will allow them to build their homes in Israel proper. After that, all settlements – except those within any areas to be joined to Israel under the peace agreement - will be evacuated.
I suggest that you, as President of the United States, come to Israel and address the Israeli people personally, not only from the rostrum of the Knesset but also at a mass rally in Tel-Aviv’s Rabin Square. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt came to Israel in 1977, and, by addressing the Israeli people directly, completely changed their attitude towards peace with Egypt. At present, most Israelis feel insecure, uncertain and afraid of any daring peace initiative, partly because of a deep distrust of anything coming from the Arab side. Your personal intervention, at the critical moment, could literally do wonders in creating the psychological basis for peace.
This article was published in the current issue of the progressive Jewish-American monthly TIKKUN.
From: Uri Avnery, Israel.
The following humble suggestions are based on my 70 years of experience as an underground fighter, special forces soldier in the 1948 war, editor-in-chief of a newsmagazine, member of the Knesset and founding member of a peace movement:
As far as Israeli-Arab peace is concerned, you should act from Day One.
Israeli elections are due to take place in February 2009. You can have an indirect but important and constructive impact on the outcome, by announcing your unequivocal determination to achieve Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-all-Arab peace in 2009.
Unfortunately, all your predecessors since 1967 have played a double game. While paying lip service to peace, and sometimes going through the motions of making some effort for peace, they have in practice supported our governments in moving in the very opposite direction. In particular, they have given tacit approval to the building and enlargement of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories, each of which is a land mine on the road to peace.
All the settlements are illegal in international law. The distinction sometimes made between “illegal” outposts and the other settlements is a propaganda ploy designed to obscure this simple truth.
All the settlements since 1967 have been built with the express purpose of making a Palestinian state – and hence peace - impossible, by cutting the territory of the prospective State of Palestine into ribbons. Practically all our government departments and the army have openly or secretly helped to build, consolidate and enlarge the settlements – as confirmed by the 2005 report prepared for the government (!) by Lawyer Talia Sasson.
By now, the number of settlers in the West Bank has reached some 250,000 (apart from the 200,000 settlers in the Greater Jerusalem area, whose status is somewhat different.) They are politically isolated, and sometimes detested by the majority of the Israel public, but enjoy significant support in the army and government ministries.
No Israeli government would dare to confront the concentrated political and material might of the settlers. Such a confrontation would need very strong leadership and the unstinting support of the President of the United States to have any chance of success.
Lacking these, all “peace negotiations” are a sham. The Israeli government and its US backers have done everything possible to prevent the negotiations with both the Palestinians and the Syrians from reaching any conclusion, for fear of provoking a confrontation with the settlers and their supporters. The present “Annapolis” negotiations are as hollow as all the preceding ones, each side keeping up the pretense for its own political interests.
The Clinton administration, and even more so the Bush administration, allowed the Israeli government to keep up this pretense. It is therefore imperative to prevent members of these administrations from diverting your Middle Eastern policy into the old channels.
It is important for you to make a complete new start, and to state this publicly. Discredited ideas and failed initiatives – such as the Bush “vision”, the Road Map, Annapolis and the like – should by thrown into the junkyard of history.
To make a new start, the aim of American policy should be stated clearly and succinctly. This should be: to achieve a peace based on the Two-State Solution within a defined time-span (say by the end of 2009).
It should be pointed out that this aim is based on a reassessment of the American national interest, in order to extract the poison from American-Arab and American-Muslim relations, strengthen peace-oriented regimes, defeat al-Qaeda-type terrorism, end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and achieve a viable accommodation with Iran.
The terms of Israeli-Palestinian peace are clear. They have been crystallized in thousands of hours of negotiations, conferences, meetings and conversations. They are:
13.1 A sovereign and viable State of Palestine will be established side by side with the State of Israel.
13.2 The border between the two states will be based on the pre-1967 Armistice Line (the “Green Line”). Insubstantial alterations can be arrived at by mutual agreement on an exchange of territories on a 1:1 basis.
13.3 East Jerusalem, including the Haram-al-Sharif (“Temple Mount”) and all Arab neighborhoods will serve as the capital of Palestine. West Jerusalem, including the Western Wall and all Jewish neighborhoods, will serve as the capital of Israel. A joint municipal authority, based on equality, may be established by mutual consent to administer the city as one territorial unit.
13.4 All Israeli settlements – except any which might be joined to Israel in the framework of a mutually agreed exchange of territories - will be evacuated (see 15 below).
13.5 Israel will recognize in principle the right of the refugees to return. A Joint Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, composed of Palestinian, Israeli and international historians, will examine the events of 1948 and 1967 and determine who was responsible for what. Each individual refugee will be given the choice between
(1) repatriation to the State of Palestine,
(2) remaining where he/she is living now and receiving generous compensation,
(3) returning to Israel and being resettled,
(4) emigrating to any other country, with generous compensation.
The number of refugees who will return to Israeli territory will be fixed by mutual agreement, it being understood that nothing will be done that materially alters the demographic composition of the Israeli population. The large funds needed for the implementation of this solution must be provided by the international community in the interest of world peace. This will save much of the money spent today on military expenditure and direct grants from the US.
13.6 The West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip constitute one national unit. An extraterritorial connection (road, railway, tunnel or bridge) will connect the West Bank with the Gaza Strip.
13.7 Israel and Syria will sign a peace agreement. Israel will withdraw to the pre-1967 line and all settlements on the Golan Heights will be dismantled. Syria will cease all anti-Israeli activities conducted directly or by proxy. The two parties will establish normal relations between them.
13.8 In accordance with the Saudi Peace Initiative, all member states of the Arab League will recognize Israel and establish normal relations with it. Talks about a future Middle Eastern Union, on the model of the EU, possibly to include Turkey and Iran, may be considered.
Palestinian unity is essential for peace. Peace made with only one section of the people is worthless. The US will facilitate Palestinian reconciliation and the unification of Palestinian structures. To this end, the US will end its boycott of Hamas, which won the last elections, start a political dialogue with the movement and encourage Israel to do the same. The US will respect any result of democratic Palestinian elections.
The US will aid the government of Israel in confronting the settlement problem. As from now, settlers will be given one year to leave the occupied territories voluntarily in return for compensation that will allow them to build their homes in Israel proper. After that, all settlements – except those within any areas to be joined to Israel under the peace agreement - will be evacuated.
I suggest that you, as President of the United States, come to Israel and address the Israeli people personally, not only from the rostrum of the Knesset but also at a mass rally in Tel-Aviv’s Rabin Square. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt came to Israel in 1977, and, by addressing the Israeli people directly, completely changed their attitude towards peace with Egypt. At present, most Israelis feel insecure, uncertain and afraid of any daring peace initiative, partly because of a deep distrust of anything coming from the Arab side. Your personal intervention, at the critical moment, could literally do wonders in creating the psychological basis for peace.
This article was published in the current issue of the progressive Jewish-American monthly TIKKUN.
Analysis: Obama Defense Agenda Resembles Gates'
For a Democrat whose opposition to the Iraq war was a campaign centerpiece, President-elect Barack Obama is remarkably in sync with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on many core defense and national security issues — even Iraq.
The list of similarities suggests the early focus of Obama's Pentagon may not change dramatically from President George W. Bush's.
Given that Obama made the unprecedented decision to keep the incumbent Republican defense secretary, it would seem natural to expect that they see eye to eye on at least some major defense issues. But the extent of their shared priorities is surprising, given Obama's campaign criticisms of Bush's defense policies.
In his first public comments about signing on with the incoming administration, Gates said Tuesday that in his decisive meeting with the president-elect in November, they talked more about how his appointment would be made and how it would work in practice, than about substantive policy issues.
The two "share a common view about the importance of integrating all elements of American power to make us more secure and defeat the threats of the 21st century," Brooke Anderson, the Obama transition office's chief national security spokeswoman, said Saturday.
She said Obama "appreciates Secretary Gates' pragmatism and competence and his commitment to a sustainable national security strategy that is built on bipartisan consensus here at home."
The apparent harmony between Gates and Obama on broad defense and national security aims is on display in a Foreign Affairs magazine article by the defense chief that was released Thursday. Gates lays out a comprehensive agenda based on the Bush administration's new National Defense Strategy. In numerous ways it meshes with the defense priorities that Obama espoused during the campaign. Examples include:
_better integrating and coordinating military efforts with civilian agencies, including the State Department. This is one of the lessons the Bush administration learned from the experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, where initial combat efforts went well, only to fail to avert destabilizing insurgencies.
_building up the security capacity of partner nations. This is central to a belief, advocated by Gates and shared by Obama, that the fight against Islamic extremism — what the Bush administration calls the war on terror — cannot succeed in the long run without help from allies and partners.
_not overlooking the possibility of future threats from conventional military powers, even while continuing to focus on prevailing in the counterinsurgency campaigns where conventional firepower plays a lesser role.
There also are points of potential differences between Obama and Gates: closing the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and expanding the U.S. missile defense system into Eastern Europe.
Gates advocates both, but on Guantanamo he lost the argument in Bush administration councils.
Obama has been unequivocal that he will close the prison. On missile defense, he has indicated support in general while emphasizing it must not divert resources from other priorities "until we are positive the technology will protect the American people." That condition could lead to delays in the Europe project, although the Pentagon managed a successful test intercept of a target missile over the Pacific on Friday.
But even on Iraq, Gates said that he considers Obama's focus on troop withdrawals to be an "agreeable approach," given that Obama has said he would listen to his commanders on how to proceed. Reminded that he previously had opposed setting a firm timetable for withdrawal, Gates said the situation changed when the Bush administration accepted Iraq's demand for an agreement in writing to remove U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and to withdraw entirely by Dec. 31, 2011.
"So we will confront or have a different kind of situation in Iraq at the end of June 2009 than we would have thought perhaps in June of 2008," Gates said. "And I think that the commanders are already looking at what the implications of that are, in terms of the potential for accelerating the drawdown."
Obama has said he believes a full withdrawal of combat troops can be accomplished within 16 months of his swearing in on Jan. 20. But he also has said the withdrawal should be done responsibly. This appears in line with indications that in a meeting last July in Baghdad with Gen. David Petraeus — then the top U.S. commander in Iraq and now the overseer of U.S. military operations across the Middle East — Obama gave hints, if not outright assurances, that he could be flexible on a pullout timetable.
Both Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, who will remain as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after Obama takes office, have stressed their eagerness to shift resources, including troops, from Iraq to Afghanistan, where the insurgency has grown in intensity. That, too, is in line with Obama's agenda.
Obama has pledged to continue the expansion of the Army and the Marine Corps that Gates started. They are on the same page, too, with regard to overhauling Pentagon's procurement system.
Also, both emphasize a need to improve the government's ability to address concerns of military families who are under strain from repeated, lengthy and frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
EDITOR'S NOTE — Robert Burns has covered defense and national security issues for The Associated Press since 1990.
kilde: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081206/ap_on_el_pr/obama_on_defense/print
The list of similarities suggests the early focus of Obama's Pentagon may not change dramatically from President George W. Bush's.
Given that Obama made the unprecedented decision to keep the incumbent Republican defense secretary, it would seem natural to expect that they see eye to eye on at least some major defense issues. But the extent of their shared priorities is surprising, given Obama's campaign criticisms of Bush's defense policies.
In his first public comments about signing on with the incoming administration, Gates said Tuesday that in his decisive meeting with the president-elect in November, they talked more about how his appointment would be made and how it would work in practice, than about substantive policy issues.
The two "share a common view about the importance of integrating all elements of American power to make us more secure and defeat the threats of the 21st century," Brooke Anderson, the Obama transition office's chief national security spokeswoman, said Saturday.
She said Obama "appreciates Secretary Gates' pragmatism and competence and his commitment to a sustainable national security strategy that is built on bipartisan consensus here at home."
The apparent harmony between Gates and Obama on broad defense and national security aims is on display in a Foreign Affairs magazine article by the defense chief that was released Thursday. Gates lays out a comprehensive agenda based on the Bush administration's new National Defense Strategy. In numerous ways it meshes with the defense priorities that Obama espoused during the campaign. Examples include:
_better integrating and coordinating military efforts with civilian agencies, including the State Department. This is one of the lessons the Bush administration learned from the experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, where initial combat efforts went well, only to fail to avert destabilizing insurgencies.
_building up the security capacity of partner nations. This is central to a belief, advocated by Gates and shared by Obama, that the fight against Islamic extremism — what the Bush administration calls the war on terror — cannot succeed in the long run without help from allies and partners.
_not overlooking the possibility of future threats from conventional military powers, even while continuing to focus on prevailing in the counterinsurgency campaigns where conventional firepower plays a lesser role.
There also are points of potential differences between Obama and Gates: closing the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and expanding the U.S. missile defense system into Eastern Europe.
Gates advocates both, but on Guantanamo he lost the argument in Bush administration councils.
Obama has been unequivocal that he will close the prison. On missile defense, he has indicated support in general while emphasizing it must not divert resources from other priorities "until we are positive the technology will protect the American people." That condition could lead to delays in the Europe project, although the Pentagon managed a successful test intercept of a target missile over the Pacific on Friday.
But even on Iraq, Gates said that he considers Obama's focus on troop withdrawals to be an "agreeable approach," given that Obama has said he would listen to his commanders on how to proceed. Reminded that he previously had opposed setting a firm timetable for withdrawal, Gates said the situation changed when the Bush administration accepted Iraq's demand for an agreement in writing to remove U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and to withdraw entirely by Dec. 31, 2011.
"So we will confront or have a different kind of situation in Iraq at the end of June 2009 than we would have thought perhaps in June of 2008," Gates said. "And I think that the commanders are already looking at what the implications of that are, in terms of the potential for accelerating the drawdown."
Obama has said he believes a full withdrawal of combat troops can be accomplished within 16 months of his swearing in on Jan. 20. But he also has said the withdrawal should be done responsibly. This appears in line with indications that in a meeting last July in Baghdad with Gen. David Petraeus — then the top U.S. commander in Iraq and now the overseer of U.S. military operations across the Middle East — Obama gave hints, if not outright assurances, that he could be flexible on a pullout timetable.
Both Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, who will remain as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after Obama takes office, have stressed their eagerness to shift resources, including troops, from Iraq to Afghanistan, where the insurgency has grown in intensity. That, too, is in line with Obama's agenda.
Obama has pledged to continue the expansion of the Army and the Marine Corps that Gates started. They are on the same page, too, with regard to overhauling Pentagon's procurement system.
Also, both emphasize a need to improve the government's ability to address concerns of military families who are under strain from repeated, lengthy and frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
EDITOR'S NOTE — Robert Burns has covered defense and national security issues for The Associated Press since 1990.
kilde: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081206/ap_on_el_pr/obama_on_defense/print
onsdag den 3. december 2008
Obama's Kettle of Hawks. --- "Change".
Barack Obama has assembled a team of rivals to implement his foreign policy. But while pundits and journalists speculate endlessly on the potential for drama with Hillary Clinton at the state department and Bill Clinton's network of shady funders, the real rivalry that will play out goes virtually unmentioned. The main battles will not be between Obama's staff, but rather against those who actually want a change in US foreign policy, not just a staff change in the war room.
When announcing his foreign policy team on Monday, Obama said: "I didn't go around checking their voter registration." That is a bit hard to believe, given the 63-question application to work in his White House. But Obama clearly did check their credentials, and the disturbing truth is that he liked what he saw.
The assembly of Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Susan Rice and Joe Biden is a kettle of hawks with a proven track record of support for the Iraq war, militaristic interventionism, neoliberal economic policies and a worldview consistent with the foreign policy arch that stretches from George HW Bush's time in office to the present.
Obama has dismissed suggestions that the public records of his appointees bear much relevance to future policy. "Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost," Obama said. "It comes from me. That's my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing." It is a line the president-elect's defenders echo often. The reality, though, is that their records do matter.
We were told repeatedly during the campaign that Obama was right on the premiere foreign policy issue of our day – the Iraq war. "Six years ago, I stood up and opposed this war at a time when it was politically risky to do so," Obama said in his September debate against John McCain. "Senator McCain and President Bush had a very different judgment." What does it say that, with 130 members of the House and 23 in the Senate who voted against the war, Obama chooses to hire Democrats who made the same judgement as Bush and McCain?
On Iraq, the issue that the Obama campaign described as "the most critical foreign policy judgment of our generation", Biden and Clinton not only supported the invasion, but pushed the Bush administration's propaganda and lies about Iraqi WMDs and fictitious connections to al-Qaida. Clinton and Obama's hawkish, pro-Israel chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, still refuse to renounce their votes in favour of the war. Rice, who claims she opposed the Iraq war, didn't hold elected office and was not confronted with voting for or against it. But she did publicly promote the myth of Iraq's possession of WMDs, saying in the lead up to the war that the "major threat" must "be dealt with forcefully". Rice has also been hawkish on Darfur, calling for "strik[ing] Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets".
It is also deeply telling that, of his own free will, Obama selected President Bush's choice for defence secretary, a man with a very disturbing and lengthy history at the CIA during the cold war, as his own. While General James Jones, Obama's nominee for national security adviser, reportedly opposed the Iraq invasion and is said to have stood up to the neocons in Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, he did not do so publicly when it would have carried weight. Time magazine described him as "the man who led the Marines during the run-up to the war – and failed to publicly criticise the operation's flawed planning". Moreover, Jones, who is a friend of McCain's, has said a timetable for Iraq withdrawal, "would be against our national interest".
But the problem with Obama's appointments is hardly just a matter of bad vision on Iraq. What ultimately ties Obama's team together is their unified support for the classic US foreign policy recipe: the hidden hand of the free market, backed up by the iron fist of US militarism to defend the America First doctrine.
Obama's starry-eyed defenders have tried to downplay the importance of his cabinet selections, saying Obama will call the shots, but the ruling elite in this country see it for what it is. Karl Rove, "Bush's Brain", called Obama's cabinet selections, "reassuring", which itself is disconcerting, but neoconservative leader and former McCain campaign staffer Max Boot summed it up best. "I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain," Boot wrote. The appointment of General Jones and the retention of Gates at defence "all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign."
Boot added that Hillary Clinton will be a "powerful" voice "for 'neoliberalism' which is not so different in many respects from 'neoconservativism.'" Boot's buddy, Michael Goldfarb, wrote in The Weekly Standard, the official organ of the neoconservative movement, that he sees "certainly nothing that represents a drastic change in how Washington does business. The expectation is that Obama is set to continue the course set by Bush in his second term."
There is not a single, solid anti-war voice in the upper echelons of the Obama foreign policy apparatus. And this is the point: Obama is not going to fundamentally change US foreign policy. He is a status quo Democrat. And that is why the mono-partisan Washington insiders are gushing over Obama's new team. At the same time, it is also disingenuous to act as though Obama is engaging in some epic betrayal. Of course these appointments contradict his campaign rhetoric of change. But move past the speeches and Obama's selections are very much in sync with his record and the foreign policy vision he articulated on the campaign trail, from his pledge to escalate the war in Afghanistan to his "residual force" plan in Iraq to his vow to use unilateral force in Pakistan to defend US interests to his posturing on Iran. "I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel," Obama said in his famed speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last summer. "Sometimes, there are no alternatives to confrontation."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21373.htm
When announcing his foreign policy team on Monday, Obama said: "I didn't go around checking their voter registration." That is a bit hard to believe, given the 63-question application to work in his White House. But Obama clearly did check their credentials, and the disturbing truth is that he liked what he saw.
The assembly of Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Susan Rice and Joe Biden is a kettle of hawks with a proven track record of support for the Iraq war, militaristic interventionism, neoliberal economic policies and a worldview consistent with the foreign policy arch that stretches from George HW Bush's time in office to the present.
Obama has dismissed suggestions that the public records of his appointees bear much relevance to future policy. "Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost," Obama said. "It comes from me. That's my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing." It is a line the president-elect's defenders echo often. The reality, though, is that their records do matter.
We were told repeatedly during the campaign that Obama was right on the premiere foreign policy issue of our day – the Iraq war. "Six years ago, I stood up and opposed this war at a time when it was politically risky to do so," Obama said in his September debate against John McCain. "Senator McCain and President Bush had a very different judgment." What does it say that, with 130 members of the House and 23 in the Senate who voted against the war, Obama chooses to hire Democrats who made the same judgement as Bush and McCain?
On Iraq, the issue that the Obama campaign described as "the most critical foreign policy judgment of our generation", Biden and Clinton not only supported the invasion, but pushed the Bush administration's propaganda and lies about Iraqi WMDs and fictitious connections to al-Qaida. Clinton and Obama's hawkish, pro-Israel chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, still refuse to renounce their votes in favour of the war. Rice, who claims she opposed the Iraq war, didn't hold elected office and was not confronted with voting for or against it. But she did publicly promote the myth of Iraq's possession of WMDs, saying in the lead up to the war that the "major threat" must "be dealt with forcefully". Rice has also been hawkish on Darfur, calling for "strik[ing] Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets".
It is also deeply telling that, of his own free will, Obama selected President Bush's choice for defence secretary, a man with a very disturbing and lengthy history at the CIA during the cold war, as his own. While General James Jones, Obama's nominee for national security adviser, reportedly opposed the Iraq invasion and is said to have stood up to the neocons in Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, he did not do so publicly when it would have carried weight. Time magazine described him as "the man who led the Marines during the run-up to the war – and failed to publicly criticise the operation's flawed planning". Moreover, Jones, who is a friend of McCain's, has said a timetable for Iraq withdrawal, "would be against our national interest".
But the problem with Obama's appointments is hardly just a matter of bad vision on Iraq. What ultimately ties Obama's team together is their unified support for the classic US foreign policy recipe: the hidden hand of the free market, backed up by the iron fist of US militarism to defend the America First doctrine.
Obama's starry-eyed defenders have tried to downplay the importance of his cabinet selections, saying Obama will call the shots, but the ruling elite in this country see it for what it is. Karl Rove, "Bush's Brain", called Obama's cabinet selections, "reassuring", which itself is disconcerting, but neoconservative leader and former McCain campaign staffer Max Boot summed it up best. "I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain," Boot wrote. The appointment of General Jones and the retention of Gates at defence "all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign."
Boot added that Hillary Clinton will be a "powerful" voice "for 'neoliberalism' which is not so different in many respects from 'neoconservativism.'" Boot's buddy, Michael Goldfarb, wrote in The Weekly Standard, the official organ of the neoconservative movement, that he sees "certainly nothing that represents a drastic change in how Washington does business. The expectation is that Obama is set to continue the course set by Bush in his second term."
There is not a single, solid anti-war voice in the upper echelons of the Obama foreign policy apparatus. And this is the point: Obama is not going to fundamentally change US foreign policy. He is a status quo Democrat. And that is why the mono-partisan Washington insiders are gushing over Obama's new team. At the same time, it is also disingenuous to act as though Obama is engaging in some epic betrayal. Of course these appointments contradict his campaign rhetoric of change. But move past the speeches and Obama's selections are very much in sync with his record and the foreign policy vision he articulated on the campaign trail, from his pledge to escalate the war in Afghanistan to his "residual force" plan in Iraq to his vow to use unilateral force in Pakistan to defend US interests to his posturing on Iran. "I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel," Obama said in his famed speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last summer. "Sometimes, there are no alternatives to confrontation."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21373.htm
torsdag den 16. oktober 2008
Top Ex-Diplomats Slam 'Militarisation' of Foreign Policy
While the Pentagon's budget has risen to heights not seen since World War II, U.S. diplomatic and foreign aid assets have largely atrophied and must be quickly rebuilt by any new administration that takes office in January, according to a new report released here this week by former senior foreign service officers.
The report by the American Academy of Diplomacy (AAD) and the Henry L. Stimson Centre is calling for a nearly 50 percent increase in the number of diplomats and aid and development specialists recruited into the foreign service over the next five years. This would cost about three billion dollars -- or approximately what the Pentagon is currently spending every 10 days on military operations in Iraq -- over current budget estimates.
''Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the diplomatic capacity of the United States has been hollowed out,' according to the 26-page report, 'A Foreign Affairs Budget for the Future'. 'The status quo cannot continue without serious damage to our vital interests.'
The vacuum created by the lack of diplomatic resources -- particularly in comparison to the Pentagon's budget and manpower -- has translated into the militarisation of U.S. foreign policy, warns the report.
''Today, significant portions of the nation's foreign affairs business simply are not accomplished,'' it says. 'The work migrates by default to the military that does have the necessary people and funding but neither sufficient experience nor knowledge. The 'militarisation' of diplomacy exists and is accelerating.'
To that end, the report calls for the State Department to take over control from the Defence Department (DOD) of nearly 800 million dollars a year budgeted for several security assistance programmes, including humanitarian aid, created in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to help friendly militaries prosecute the 'global war on terrorism'.
'Our view is that the Secretary of State has and should have responsibility for assuring that all foreign and security assistance is carried out in accord with U.S. foreign policy, including setting overall policy, approving countries to receive assistance, and setting the budget for such assistance,' the report said.
'DOD's expanded policy responsibility for security assistance programs risks the additional atrophy of the civilian agencies' ability to plan and conduct foreign policy and foreign assistance and raises serious concerns that such programs could conflict with broader U.S. strategic and foreign policy interests.'
'Moreover, these expanded missions are not the core competence of the military and thus may detract from the readiness to perform more central military missions,' it added. 'Finally, it is important for the U.S. to ensure that its non-military international presence and engagement be carried out primarily by civilians, not by the military.'
Indeed, the latest report echoes the views -- albeit in more diplomatic language -- of a growing number of non-governmental organisations and foreign policy experts that the Pentagon, simply by virtue of its enormous budget and its worldwide presence with nearly 800 overseas bases, has become far too dominant in policy making.
Even Pentagon chief Robert Gates a former senior intelligence officer, has complained about the imbalance between U.S. military and diplomatic resources. 'Funding for non-military foreign affairs programmes...remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military,' he declared in a much-discussed speech last November. 'What is clear for me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security.'
'Our diplomatic leaders -- be they in ambassadors' suites or on the State Department's seventh [top] floor -- must have the resources and political support needed to fully exercise their statutory responsibilities in leading American foreign policy,' he said in July.
He has also noted ruefully that there are more people serving in military bands than in the entire State Department.
Despite his support, however, Gates' views have not yet substantially altered the political equation in Congress, which has routinely approved or even increased the Bush administration's budgetary requests for the Pentagon over the last eight years while casting a far more sceptical eye on requests for the State Department, which lacks a comparably broad-based geographic, commercial, or demographic constituency.
The Defence Department is slated to receive well over 527 billion dollars for 2009 -- not including some 15 billion dollars a month for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- or roughly 13 times more than the State Department's budget of less than 40 billion dollars.
Moreover, despite his concerns, Gates has asked -- so far without success -- that substantially more money be allocated to the new discretionary accounts that the Pentagon currently may disburse for allies in the war on terror, a request which, to the dismay of most foreign service officers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice supported in hearings before Congress earlier this year.
Last week, the Pentagon submitted a new estimate for defence spending that is 450 billion dollars more over the next five years than it had previously announced, according to Congressional Quarterly, beginning with a nearly 10-percent increase in its 2010 budget to nearly 600 billion dollars.
Compared to that request, the recommendation by the AAD-Stimson report to increase the State Department's planned budget by roughly 3.3 billion dollars over the next five years seems paltry, indeed.
According to the report, which was put together by a task force of 14 former senior foreign service officers with the help of an advisory group chaired by former U.N. Amb. Thomas Pickering, the State Department currently suffers serious shortages in personnel in virtually all of its operations, from consular activity to development assistance and public diplomacy.
The report noted the decline in the foreign service and State Department spending began at the end of the Cold War when the international affairs budget was reduced by roughly 30 percent in real terms. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell succeeded in creating more than 1,000 new State Department posts between 2001 and 2004, according to the report, but these increases were quickly absorbed by diplomatic surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving other key areas and global issues with significant staff shortfalls.
It called for total State Department staffing to increase from roughly 10,000 today to nearly 15,000 by 2014.
By Jim Lobe,
The report by the American Academy of Diplomacy (AAD) and the Henry L. Stimson Centre is calling for a nearly 50 percent increase in the number of diplomats and aid and development specialists recruited into the foreign service over the next five years. This would cost about three billion dollars -- or approximately what the Pentagon is currently spending every 10 days on military operations in Iraq -- over current budget estimates.
''Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the diplomatic capacity of the United States has been hollowed out,' according to the 26-page report, 'A Foreign Affairs Budget for the Future'. 'The status quo cannot continue without serious damage to our vital interests.'
The vacuum created by the lack of diplomatic resources -- particularly in comparison to the Pentagon's budget and manpower -- has translated into the militarisation of U.S. foreign policy, warns the report.
''Today, significant portions of the nation's foreign affairs business simply are not accomplished,'' it says. 'The work migrates by default to the military that does have the necessary people and funding but neither sufficient experience nor knowledge. The 'militarisation' of diplomacy exists and is accelerating.'
To that end, the report calls for the State Department to take over control from the Defence Department (DOD) of nearly 800 million dollars a year budgeted for several security assistance programmes, including humanitarian aid, created in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to help friendly militaries prosecute the 'global war on terrorism'.
'Our view is that the Secretary of State has and should have responsibility for assuring that all foreign and security assistance is carried out in accord with U.S. foreign policy, including setting overall policy, approving countries to receive assistance, and setting the budget for such assistance,' the report said.
'DOD's expanded policy responsibility for security assistance programs risks the additional atrophy of the civilian agencies' ability to plan and conduct foreign policy and foreign assistance and raises serious concerns that such programs could conflict with broader U.S. strategic and foreign policy interests.'
'Moreover, these expanded missions are not the core competence of the military and thus may detract from the readiness to perform more central military missions,' it added. 'Finally, it is important for the U.S. to ensure that its non-military international presence and engagement be carried out primarily by civilians, not by the military.'
Indeed, the latest report echoes the views -- albeit in more diplomatic language -- of a growing number of non-governmental organisations and foreign policy experts that the Pentagon, simply by virtue of its enormous budget and its worldwide presence with nearly 800 overseas bases, has become far too dominant in policy making.
Even Pentagon chief Robert Gates a former senior intelligence officer, has complained about the imbalance between U.S. military and diplomatic resources. 'Funding for non-military foreign affairs programmes...remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military,' he declared in a much-discussed speech last November. 'What is clear for me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security.'
'Our diplomatic leaders -- be they in ambassadors' suites or on the State Department's seventh [top] floor -- must have the resources and political support needed to fully exercise their statutory responsibilities in leading American foreign policy,' he said in July.
He has also noted ruefully that there are more people serving in military bands than in the entire State Department.
Despite his support, however, Gates' views have not yet substantially altered the political equation in Congress, which has routinely approved or even increased the Bush administration's budgetary requests for the Pentagon over the last eight years while casting a far more sceptical eye on requests for the State Department, which lacks a comparably broad-based geographic, commercial, or demographic constituency.
The Defence Department is slated to receive well over 527 billion dollars for 2009 -- not including some 15 billion dollars a month for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- or roughly 13 times more than the State Department's budget of less than 40 billion dollars.
Moreover, despite his concerns, Gates has asked -- so far without success -- that substantially more money be allocated to the new discretionary accounts that the Pentagon currently may disburse for allies in the war on terror, a request which, to the dismay of most foreign service officers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice supported in hearings before Congress earlier this year.
Last week, the Pentagon submitted a new estimate for defence spending that is 450 billion dollars more over the next five years than it had previously announced, according to Congressional Quarterly, beginning with a nearly 10-percent increase in its 2010 budget to nearly 600 billion dollars.
Compared to that request, the recommendation by the AAD-Stimson report to increase the State Department's planned budget by roughly 3.3 billion dollars over the next five years seems paltry, indeed.
According to the report, which was put together by a task force of 14 former senior foreign service officers with the help of an advisory group chaired by former U.N. Amb. Thomas Pickering, the State Department currently suffers serious shortages in personnel in virtually all of its operations, from consular activity to development assistance and public diplomacy.
The report noted the decline in the foreign service and State Department spending began at the end of the Cold War when the international affairs budget was reduced by roughly 30 percent in real terms. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell succeeded in creating more than 1,000 new State Department posts between 2001 and 2004, according to the report, but these increases were quickly absorbed by diplomatic surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving other key areas and global issues with significant staff shortfalls.
It called for total State Department staffing to increase from roughly 10,000 today to nearly 15,000 by 2014.
By Jim Lobe,
CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos Waterboarding Got White House Nod
The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.
The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.
The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval."
The repeated requests for a paper trail reflected growing worries within the CIA that the administration might later distance itself from key decisions about the handling of captured al-Qaeda leaders, former intelligence officials said. The concerns grew more pronounced after the revelations of mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and further still as tensions grew between the administration and its intelligence advisers over the conduct of the Iraq war.
"It came up in the daily meetings. We heard it from our field officers," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the events. "We were already worried that we" were going to be blamed.
A. John Radsan, a lawyer in the CIA general counsel's office until 2004, remembered the discussions but did not personally view the memos the agency received in response to its concerns. "The question was whether we had enough 'top cover,' " Radsan said.
Tenet first pressed the White House for written approval in June 2003, during a meeting with members of the National Security Council, including Rice, the officials said. Days later, he got what he wanted: a brief memo conveying the administration's approval for the CIA's interrogation methods, the officials said.
Administration officials confirmed the existence of the memos, but neither they nor former intelligence officers would describe their contents in detail because they remain classified. The sources all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss the events.
The second request from Tenet, in June 2004, reflected growing worries among agency officials who had just witnessed the public outcry over the Abu Ghraib scandal. Officials who held senior posts at the time also spoke of deteriorating relations between the CIA and the White House over the war in Iraq -- a rift that prompted some to believe that the agency needed even more explicit proof of the administration's support.
"The CIA by this time is using the word 'insurgency' to describe the Iraq conflict, so the White House is viewing the agency with suspicion," said a second former senior intelligence official.
As recently as last month, the administration had never publicly acknowledged that its policymakers knew about the specific techniques, such as waterboarding, that the agency used against high-ranking terrorism suspects. In her unprecedented account to lawmakers last month, Rice, now secretary of state, portrayed the White House as initially uneasy about a controversial CIA plan for interrogating top al-Qaeda suspects.
After learning about waterboarding and similar tactics in early 2002, several White House officials questioned whether such harsh measures were "effective and necessary . . . and lawful," Rice said. Her concerns led to an investigation by the Justice Department's criminal division into whether the techniques were legal.
But whatever misgivings existed that spring were apparently overcome. Former and current CIA officials say no such reservations were voiced in their presence.
In interviews, the officials recounted a series of private briefings about the program with members of the administration's security team, including Rice and Cheney, followed by more formal meetings before a larger group including then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. None of the officials recalled President Bush being present at any of the discussions.
Several of the key meetings have been previously described in news articles and books, but Rice last month became the first Cabinet-level official to publicly confirm the White House's awareness of the program in its earliest phases. In written responses to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rice said Tenet's description of the agency's interrogation methods prompted her to investigate further to see whether the program violated U.S. laws or international treaties, according to her written responses, dated Sept. 12 and released late last month.
"I asked that . . . Ashcroft personally advise the NSC principles whether the program was lawful," Rice wrote.
Current and former intelligence officials familiar with the briefings described Tenet as supportive of enhanced interrogation techniques, which the officials said were developed by CIA officers after the agency's first high-level captive, al-Qaeda operative Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, refused to cooperate with interrogators.
"The CIA believed then, and now, that the program was useful and helped save lives," said a former senior intelligence official knowledgeable about the events. "But in the agency's view, it was like this: 'We don't want to continue unless you tell us in writing that it's not only legal but is the policy of the administration.' "
One administration official familiar with the meetings said the CIA made such a convincing case that no one questioned whether the methods were necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks.
"The CIA had the White House boxed in," said the official. "They were saying, 'It's the only way to get the information we needed, and -- by the way -- we think there's another attack coming up.' It left the principals in an extremely difficult position and put the decision-making on a very fast track."
But others who were present said Tenet seemed more interested in protecting his subordinates than in selling the administration on a policy that administration lawyers had already authorized.
"The suggestion that someone from CIA came in and browbeat everybody is ridiculous," said one former agency official familiar with the meeting. "The CIA understood that it was controversial and would be widely criticized if it became public," the official said of the interrogation program. "But given the tenor of the times and the belief that more attacks were coming, they felt they had to do what they could to stop the attack."
The CIA's anxiety was partly fueled by the lack of explicit presidential authorization for the interrogation program. A secret White House "memorandum of notification" signed by Bush on Sept. 15, 2001, gave the agency broad authority to wage war against al-Qaeda, including killing and capturing its members. But it did not spell out how captives should be handled during interrogation.
But by the time the CIA requested written approval of its policy, in June 2003, the population of its secret prisons had grown from one to nine, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged principal architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Three of the detainees had been subjected to waterboarding, which involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face and pouring water over his nose and mouth to simulate drowning.
By the spring of 2004, the concerns among agency officials had multiplied, in part because of shifting views among administration lawyers about what acts might constitute torture, leading Tenet to ask a second time for written confirmation from the White House. This time the reaction was far more reserved, recalled two former intelligence officials.
"The Justice Department in particular was resistant," said one former intelligence official who participated in the discussions. "They said it doesn't need to be in writing."
Tenet and his deputies made their case in yet another briefing before the White House national security team in June 2004. It was to be one of the last such meetings for Tenet, who had already announced plans to step down as CIA director. Author Jane Mayer, who described the briefing in her recent book, "The Dark Side," said the graphic accounts of interrogation appeared to make some participants uncomfortable. "History will not judge us kindly," Mayer quoted Ashcroft as saying.
Participants in the meeting did not recall whether a vote was taken. Several weeks passed, and Tenet left the agency without receiving a formal response.
Finally, in mid-July, a memo was forwarded to the CIA reaffirming the administration's backing for the interrogation program. Tenet had acquired the statement of support he sought.
The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.
The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval."
The repeated requests for a paper trail reflected growing worries within the CIA that the administration might later distance itself from key decisions about the handling of captured al-Qaeda leaders, former intelligence officials said. The concerns grew more pronounced after the revelations of mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and further still as tensions grew between the administration and its intelligence advisers over the conduct of the Iraq war.
"It came up in the daily meetings. We heard it from our field officers," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the events. "We were already worried that we" were going to be blamed.
A. John Radsan, a lawyer in the CIA general counsel's office until 2004, remembered the discussions but did not personally view the memos the agency received in response to its concerns. "The question was whether we had enough 'top cover,' " Radsan said.
Tenet first pressed the White House for written approval in June 2003, during a meeting with members of the National Security Council, including Rice, the officials said. Days later, he got what he wanted: a brief memo conveying the administration's approval for the CIA's interrogation methods, the officials said.
Administration officials confirmed the existence of the memos, but neither they nor former intelligence officers would describe their contents in detail because they remain classified. The sources all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss the events.
The second request from Tenet, in June 2004, reflected growing worries among agency officials who had just witnessed the public outcry over the Abu Ghraib scandal. Officials who held senior posts at the time also spoke of deteriorating relations between the CIA and the White House over the war in Iraq -- a rift that prompted some to believe that the agency needed even more explicit proof of the administration's support.
"The CIA by this time is using the word 'insurgency' to describe the Iraq conflict, so the White House is viewing the agency with suspicion," said a second former senior intelligence official.
As recently as last month, the administration had never publicly acknowledged that its policymakers knew about the specific techniques, such as waterboarding, that the agency used against high-ranking terrorism suspects. In her unprecedented account to lawmakers last month, Rice, now secretary of state, portrayed the White House as initially uneasy about a controversial CIA plan for interrogating top al-Qaeda suspects.
After learning about waterboarding and similar tactics in early 2002, several White House officials questioned whether such harsh measures were "effective and necessary . . . and lawful," Rice said. Her concerns led to an investigation by the Justice Department's criminal division into whether the techniques were legal.
But whatever misgivings existed that spring were apparently overcome. Former and current CIA officials say no such reservations were voiced in their presence.
In interviews, the officials recounted a series of private briefings about the program with members of the administration's security team, including Rice and Cheney, followed by more formal meetings before a larger group including then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. None of the officials recalled President Bush being present at any of the discussions.
Several of the key meetings have been previously described in news articles and books, but Rice last month became the first Cabinet-level official to publicly confirm the White House's awareness of the program in its earliest phases. In written responses to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rice said Tenet's description of the agency's interrogation methods prompted her to investigate further to see whether the program violated U.S. laws or international treaties, according to her written responses, dated Sept. 12 and released late last month.
"I asked that . . . Ashcroft personally advise the NSC principles whether the program was lawful," Rice wrote.
Current and former intelligence officials familiar with the briefings described Tenet as supportive of enhanced interrogation techniques, which the officials said were developed by CIA officers after the agency's first high-level captive, al-Qaeda operative Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, refused to cooperate with interrogators.
"The CIA believed then, and now, that the program was useful and helped save lives," said a former senior intelligence official knowledgeable about the events. "But in the agency's view, it was like this: 'We don't want to continue unless you tell us in writing that it's not only legal but is the policy of the administration.' "
One administration official familiar with the meetings said the CIA made such a convincing case that no one questioned whether the methods were necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks.
"The CIA had the White House boxed in," said the official. "They were saying, 'It's the only way to get the information we needed, and -- by the way -- we think there's another attack coming up.' It left the principals in an extremely difficult position and put the decision-making on a very fast track."
But others who were present said Tenet seemed more interested in protecting his subordinates than in selling the administration on a policy that administration lawyers had already authorized.
"The suggestion that someone from CIA came in and browbeat everybody is ridiculous," said one former agency official familiar with the meeting. "The CIA understood that it was controversial and would be widely criticized if it became public," the official said of the interrogation program. "But given the tenor of the times and the belief that more attacks were coming, they felt they had to do what they could to stop the attack."
The CIA's anxiety was partly fueled by the lack of explicit presidential authorization for the interrogation program. A secret White House "memorandum of notification" signed by Bush on Sept. 15, 2001, gave the agency broad authority to wage war against al-Qaeda, including killing and capturing its members. But it did not spell out how captives should be handled during interrogation.
But by the time the CIA requested written approval of its policy, in June 2003, the population of its secret prisons had grown from one to nine, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged principal architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Three of the detainees had been subjected to waterboarding, which involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face and pouring water over his nose and mouth to simulate drowning.
By the spring of 2004, the concerns among agency officials had multiplied, in part because of shifting views among administration lawyers about what acts might constitute torture, leading Tenet to ask a second time for written confirmation from the White House. This time the reaction was far more reserved, recalled two former intelligence officials.
"The Justice Department in particular was resistant," said one former intelligence official who participated in the discussions. "They said it doesn't need to be in writing."
Tenet and his deputies made their case in yet another briefing before the White House national security team in June 2004. It was to be one of the last such meetings for Tenet, who had already announced plans to step down as CIA director. Author Jane Mayer, who described the briefing in her recent book, "The Dark Side," said the graphic accounts of interrogation appeared to make some participants uncomfortable. "History will not judge us kindly," Mayer quoted Ashcroft as saying.
Participants in the meeting did not recall whether a vote was taken. Several weeks passed, and Tenet left the agency without receiving a formal response.
Finally, in mid-July, a memo was forwarded to the CIA reaffirming the administration's backing for the interrogation program. Tenet had acquired the statement of support he sought.
onsdag den 15. oktober 2008
Conversations With History: How the War on Terror Turned into A War on American Values
Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes New Yorker writer Jane Mayer to discuss her book, The Dark Side. She explains how, under the direction of Vice President Cheney and his Assistant David Addington, the Bush administration, contrary to American history and tradition, implemented a policy of torture and rendition in violation of U.S. and international law. She describes the resistance within the government and the military to these actions. Mayer also offers a compelling account of what happened to detainees under the Cheney/Addington regime. She analyzes long term consequences for the fight against terror and for U.S. moral leadership in the world.
lørdag den 4. oktober 2008
Irak-krigen -> Dollarens hegemoni på olie-markedet.
Følgende er et uddrag fra min artikel 'Fogh & Bush - Venner i Ilden.' som jeg finder interessant at perspektivere til, i lyset af kapiliberalismens $millard-bailout af Wall Street spekulanter for skattemidler, da denne krise også bør ses i lyset af den ekstremt omkostningstunge Irak-krig, og dennes årsag.
Uddrag:
Uddrag:
Olien og dollaren…
Efter Anden Verdenskrig lå store dele af den europæiske og japanske industri hen i ruiner, og produktionen befandt sig generelt på et lavt niveau. USA var den eneste af de store magter, som undslap krigens ødelæggelser, og den amerikanske industri var efter krigen højproduktiv, således at man under krigen tredoblede produktionen indenrigs.
Derudover flyttedes store mængder guld fra Europa til USA før og under anden verdenskrig grundet det økonomiske og politiske postyr på det europæiske kontinent. Efter Anden Verdenskrig var USA således indehaver af 80 pct. af verdens guld og man rådede samtidig over 40 pct. af verdens samlede produktionsapparat. En fast valutakurs etableredes kaldet gulddollar standarden, hvor guldet blev prissat til $35 pr. ounce.
Guld blev altså ækvivalent med dollaren, og den amerikanske valuta blev efterfølgende den internationale valutareservestandard. Derudover bør det nævnes, at præsident Franklin Delano Roosevelt i 1945 lavede en aftale med den saudi-arabiske Ibn Saud gående ud på, at man ville beskytte landet, mod at regimet kun handlede dets olie i dollars [15]. Disse to historiske forhold er meget væsentlige at have med, hvis man vil forstå, hvorfor den internationale oliehandel har været domineret af dollaren i adskillelige årtier, hvilket ses manifesteret i det faktum, at olie kun kan købes hos OPEC i dollars.
Denne dollar-dominans blev af Saddam Hussein truet, da han i september 2000 valgte at veksle sin dollarreserve til euros [16] med henblik på at handle den irakiske olie i denne valuta, og det blev efterfølgende af flere olie-producerende lande hævdet, at man havde lignende intentioner, hvilket for Irans vedkommende i dag ses manifesteret i landets for nyligt lancerede eurobaserede oliebørs.
Det amerikanske olieforbrug forventes fra officiel side, at stige med en tredjedel over de næste to årtier, mens produktionen indenrigs forventes at falde med 12 pct. i samme periode, hvorfor den amerikanske afhængighed af importeret olie er steget fra at udgøre en tredjedel af forsyningen i 1985 til i dag at udgøre mere end halvdelen, og det forventes ydermere at importeret olie vil udgøre to tredjedele af forsyningen i 2020. Selvom man har gjort, hvad man kan for at sikre forsyningsstabiliteten, blandt andet ved at handle olie med lande uden for OPEC, var OPEC (primært Saudi-Arabien) fortsat den største eksportør af olie til USA i 2002-2003 [17].
Præsident Bush og vicepræsident Dick Cheney var blot de første eksempler på administrations dybe forbindelser til energisektoren. Otte ministre samt den nationale sikkerhedsrådgiver blev senere hentet direkte i oliebranchen. Præsidenten udpegede to uger inde i hans embede vice-præsident Dick Cheney som overhoved for task forcet National Energy Policy Group, hvis formål var en vurdering af karakteren af den amerikanske forsyningssikkerhed.
Et faktum som næppe kan have undgået Cheney’s Task Force’s opmærksomhed er, at der i Det Kaspiske Hav og under den irakiske ørken potentielt er 433 milliarder tønder olie eller mere, og kontrol over denne olie er selvsagt ensbetydende med øget økonomisk og geopolitisk magt. Bemærkelsesværdigt er det derfor også, at dette Task Force allerede mange måneder inden den 11. september, undersøgte kort over irakiske oliefelter, tankerterminaler og olieudvinding. Disse kort er først langt senere blevet offentliggjort grundet at sagsanlæg mod regeringen vedrørende aktindsigt som borgerretsgruppen Judicial Watch måtte hele vejen til Højesteret for at vinde [18].
Cheney’s taskforce konkluderede, at efter »enhver vurdering vil mellemøstlige olieproducenter forblive centrale for sikkerheden i verden. Golfområdet vil være et primært fokus for USA’s internationale energipolitik«. [19]
Samtidig med dette blev Condeoleeza Rice’s National Security Council beordret, at det skulle støtte »gennemgangen af operationelle politikker rettet mod slyngelstater såsom Irak, samt handlinger vedrørende pågribelsen af nye og eksisterende olie og gasfelter«.
I statsministeriet etableredes et såkaldt policy-development initiativ, der blev døbt »The Future of Iraq«. I initiativets sidste rapport gjordes det klart at Irak »burde åbnes for internationale olieselskaber så hurtigt som muligt efter krigen ... landet bør etablere et forretningsklima som kan bidrage med at tiltrække investeringer i olie- og gasressourcer«. [20]
Disse forhold peger alle sammen hen imod, at Bush-administration var overordentlig interesseret i den irakiske olie lang tid før proklameringen og markedsføringen af den Globale Krig mod Terror, og selvom det fra officiel side gentagne gange er blevet hævdet, at angrebskrigen intet havde at gøre med olie, er der et interessant forhold, som indikerer det modsatte. I en artikel i Financial Times den 5. juni 2003 - altså allerede mindre end tre måneder efter krigens begyndelse – kunne man læse, at den irakiske olie igen handledes i dollars [21], til trods for at euroen i midten af 2003 havde en 13 pct. højere værdi end dollaren.
Krigens omfattende økonomiske omkostninger.
Ifølge det officielle organ US Census Bureau havnede yderligere 3,5 millioner amerikanere i fattigdom i perioden 2002-2006, hvilket i dag betyder, at rundt regnet 13 pct. af den amerikanske befolkning er fattige. Denne foruroligende stigning i fattigdom er specielt bemærkelsesværdig, når den ses i sammenhæng med de enorme omkostninger, som Irak-krigen har kostet de amerikanske skatteydere.
Fra officiel side vurderede man før Irak-krigen påbegyndtes, at krigen ville koste omtrent 60 milliarder dollars, men dette må i lyset af krigsomkostningerne på nuværende tidspunkt betegnes som en meget optimistisk vurdering. Joseph Stieglitz, en af USA’s ledende økonomer, som i 2000 modtog Nobelprisen i økonomi og som tidligere har været cheføkonom i Verdensbanken, har netop i en ny bog vurderet, at den egentlige pris for Irak-krigen oprinder i tre billioner (på amerikansk kaldet trillion) dollars, hvilket Stieglitz i et interview sendt på Democracy Now den 29. februar i år, selv kalder en forholdsvis konservativ vurdering.
Ifølge Stieglitz er der nemlig udover forsvarsministeriets budgetterede krigsomkostninger, endvidere en lang række omkostninger skjult i andre offentlige budgetter og hinsides disse. For eksempel vil udgifter til de økonomiske kompensationer til tilskadekomne krigsveteraner, samt udgifter til medicinsk behandling af disse, løbe op i mange hundrede milliarder dollars over de kommende årtier. Hinsides disse budgetmæssige omkostninger findes der derudover andre skjulte omkostninger for økonomien.
Således udgør invaliderede soldaters økonomiske godtgørelser kun en brøkdel af de invalideredes familier økonomiske tab i form af tabte indkomster, som soldaterne ellers kunnet have tjent. Derudover er der ifølge Stieglitz en lang række makroøkonomiske omkostninger, som har forvoldt en deprimering af økonomien, såsom det faktum at krigen har bidraget til stigningen i prisen på olie, hvilket betyder ekstraomkostninger til køb af importeret olie, og følgelig at disse penge ikke kan bruges andetsteds i økonomien. Derudover nævner Stieglitz det forhold, at krigen var fuldstændig finansieret for lånte penge, altså med andre ord, af det enorme amerikanske underskud [22].
Amerikansk Militærbase-imperialisme.
737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire
By Chalmers Johnson
The following is excerpted from Chalmers Johnson's new book, "NEMESIS: The Last Days of the American Republic " (Metropolitan Books).
Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base; and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial "footprint" and the militarism that grows with it.
It is not easy, however, to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records available to the public on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual inventories from 2002 to 2005 of real property it owns around the world, the Base Structure Report, there has been an immense churning in the numbers of installations.
The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up.
Interestingly enough, the thirty-eight large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 -- mostly air and naval bases for our bombers and fleets -- almost exactly equals Britain's thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia. Perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for an imperialist aspiring to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and forty.
Using data from fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon bureaucrats calculated that its overseas bases were worth at least $127 billion -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic products of most countries -- and an estimated $658.1 billion for all of them, foreign and domestic (a base's "worth" is based on a Department of Defense estimate of what it would cost to replace it). During fiscal 2005, the military high command deployed to our overseas bases some 196,975 uniformed personnel as well as an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employed an additional 81,425 locally hired foreigners.
The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one of the world's largest landlords.
These numbers, although staggeringly big, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance, to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a province) -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in 1999 and maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston.
The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005), Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian areas since 9/11. By way of excuse, a note in the preface says that "facilities provided by other nations at foreign locations" are not included, although this is not strictly true. The report does include twenty sites in Turkey, all owned by the Turkish government and used jointly with the Americans. The Pentagon continues to omit from its accounts most of the $5 billion worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases overseas, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure.
In some cases, foreign countries themselves have tried to keep their U.S. bases secret, fearing embarrassment if their collusion with American imperialism were revealed. In other instances, the Pentagon seems to want to play down the building of facilities aimed at dominating energy sources, or, in a related situation, retaining a network of bases that would keep Iraq under our hegemony regardless of the wishes of any future Iraqi government. The U.S. government tries not to divulge any information about the bases we use to eavesdrop on global communications, or our nuclear deployments, which, as William Arkin, an authority on the subject, writes, "[have] violated its treaty obligations. The U.S. was lying to many of its closest allies, even in NATO, about its nuclear designs. Tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, hundreds of bases, and dozens of ships and submarines existed in a special secret world of their own with no rational military or even 'deterrence' justification."
In Jordan, to take but one example, we have secretly deployed up to five thousand troops in bases on the Iraqi and Syrian borders. (Jordan has also cooperated with the CIA in torturing prisoners we deliver to them for "interrogation.") Nonetheless, Jordan continues to stress that it has no special arrangements with the United States, no bases, and no American military presence.
The country is formally sovereign but actually a satellite of the United States and has been so for at least the past ten years. Similarly, before our withdrawal from Saudi Arabia in 2003, we habitually denied that we maintained a fleet of enormous and easily observed B-52 bombers in Jeddah because that was what the Saudi government demanded. So long as military bureaucrats can continue to enforce a culture of secrecy to protect themselves, no one will know the true size of our baseworld, least of all the elected representatives of the American people.
In 2005, deployments at home and abroad were in a state of considerable flux. This was said to be caused both by a long overdue change in the strategy for maintaining our global dominance and by the closing of surplus bases at home. In reality, many of the changes seemed to be determined largely by the Bush administration's urge to punish nations and domestic states that had not supported its efforts in Iraq and to reward those that had. Thus, within the United States, bases were being relocated to the South, to states with cultures, as the Christian Science Monitor put it, "more tied to martial traditions" than the Northeast, the northern Middle West, or the Pacific Coast. According to a North Carolina businessman gloating over his new customers, "The military is going where it is wanted and valued most."
In part, the realignment revolved around the Pentagon's decision to bring home by 2007 or 2008 two army divisions from Germany -- the First Armored Division and the First Infantry Division -- and one brigade (3,500 men) of the Second Infantry Division from South Korea (which, in 2005, was officially rehoused at Fort Carson, Colorado). So long as the Iraq insurgency continues, the forces involved are mostly overseas and the facilities at home are not ready for them (nor is there enough money budgeted to get them ready).
Nonetheless, sooner or later, up to 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members will have to be accommodated within the United States. The attendant 2005 "base closings" in the United States are actually a base consolidation and enlargement program with tremendous infusions of money and customers going to a few selected hub areas. At the same time, what sounds like a retrenchment in the empire abroad is really proving to be an exponential growth in new types of bases -- without dependents and the amenities they would require -- in very remote areas where the U.S. military has never been before.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was obvious to anyone who thought about it that the huge concentrations of American military might in Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea were no longer needed to meet possible military threats. There were not going to be future wars with the Soviet Union or any country connected to any of those places.
In 1991, the first Bush administration should have begun decommissioning or redeploying redundant forces; and, in fact, the Clinton administration did close some bases in Germany, such as those protecting the Fulda Gap, once envisioned as the likeliest route for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But nothing was really done in those years to plan for the strategic repositioning of the American military outside the United States.
By the end of the 1990s, the neoconservatives were developing their grandiose theories to promote overt imperialism by the "lone superpower" -- including preventive and preemptive unilateral military action, spreading democracy abroad at the point of a gun, obstructing the rise of any "near-peer" country or bloc of countries that might challenge U.S. military supremacy, and a vision of a "democratic" Middle East that would supply us with all the oil we wanted. A component of their grand design was a redeployment and streamlining of the military. The initial rationale was for a program of transformation that would turn the armed forces into a lighter, more agile, more high-tech military, which, it was imagined, would free up funds that could be invested in imperial policing.
What came to be known as "defense transformation" first began to be publicly bandied about during the 2000 presidential election campaign. Then 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq intervened. In August 2002, when the whole neocon program began to be put into action, it centered above all on a quick, easy war to incorporate Iraq into the empire. By this time, civilian leaders in the Pentagon had become dangerously overconfident because of what they perceived as America's military brilliance and invincibility as demonstrated in its 2001 campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda -- a strategy that involved reigniting the Afghan civil war through huge payoffs to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance warlords and the massive use of American airpower to support their advance on Kabul.
In August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld unveiled his "1-4-2-1 defense strategy" to replace the Clinton era's plan for having a military capable of fighting two wars -- in the Middle East and Northeast Asia -- simultaneously. Now, war planners were to prepare to defend the United States while building and assembling forces capable of "deterring aggression and coercion" in four "critical regions": Europe, Northeast Asia (South Korea and Japan), East Asia (the Taiwan Strait), and the Middle East, be able to defeat aggression in two of these regions simultaneously, and "win decisively" (in the sense of "regime change" and occupation) in one of those conflicts "at a time and place of our choosing."As the military analyst William M. Arkin commented, "[With] American military forces ... already stretched to the limit, the new strategy goes far beyond preparing for reactive contingencies and reads more like a plan for picking fights in new parts of the world."
A seemingly easy three-week victory over Saddam Hussein's forces in the spring of 2003 only reconfirmed these plans. The U.S. military was now thought to be so magnificent that it could accomplish any task assigned to it. The collapse of the Baathist regime in Baghdad also emboldened Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to use "transformation" to penalize nations that had been, at best, lukewarm about America's unilateralism -- Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Turkey -- and to reward those whose leaders had welcomed Operation Iraqi Freedom, including such old allies as Japan and Italy but also former communist countries such as Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. The result was the Department of Defense's Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy, known informally as the "Global Posture Review."
President Bush first mentioned it in a statement on November 21, 2003, in which he pledged to "realign the global posture" of the United States. He reiterated the phrase and elaborated on it on August 16, 2004, in a speech to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati. Because Bush's Cincinnati address was part of the 2004 presidential election campaign, his comments were not taken very seriously at the time. While he did say that the United States would reduce its troop strength in Europe and Asia by 60,000 to 70,000, he assured his listeners that this would take a decade to accomplish -- well beyond his term in office -- and made a series of promises that sounded more like a reenlistment pitch than a statement of strategy.
"Over the coming decade, we'll deploy a more agile and more flexible force, which means that more of our troops will be stationed and deployed from here at home. We'll move some of our troops and capabilities to new locations, so they can surge quickly to deal with unexpected threats. ... It will reduce the stress on our troops and our military families. ... See, our service members will have more time on the home front, and more predictability and fewer moves over a career. Our military spouses will have fewer job changes, greater stability, more time for their kids and to spend with their families at home."
On September 23, 2004, however, Secretary Rumsfeld disclosed the first concrete details of the plan to the Senate Armed Services Committee. With characteristic grandiosity, he described it as "the biggest re-structuring of America's global forces since 1945." Quoting then undersecretary Douglas Feith, he added, "During the Cold War we had a strong sense that we knew where the major risks and fights were going to be, so we could deploy people right there. We're operating now [with] an entirely different concept. We need to be able to do [the] whole range of military operations, from combat to peacekeeping, anywhere in the world pretty quickly."
Though this may sound plausible enough, in basing terms it opens up a vast landscape of diplomatic and bureaucratic minefields that Rumsfeld's militarists surely underestimated. In order to expand into new areas, the Departments of State and Defense must negotiate with the host countries such things as Status of Forces Agreements, or SOFAs, which are discussed in detail in the next chapter. In addition, they must conclude many other required protocols, such as access rights for our aircraft and ships into foreign territory and airspace, and Article 98 Agreements. The latter refer to article 98 of the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute, which allows countries to exempt U.S. citizens on their territory from the ICC's jurisdiction.
Such immunity agreements were congressionally mandated by the American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002, even though the European Union holds that they are illegal. Still other necessary accords are acquisitions and cross-servicing agreements or ACSAs, which concern the supply and storage of jet fuel, ammunition, and so forth; terms of leases on real property; levels of bilateral political and economic aid to the United States (so-called host-nation support); training and exercise arrangements (Are night landings allowed? Live firing drills?); and environmental pollution liabilities.
When the United States is not present in a country as its conqueror or military savior, as it was in Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II and in South Korea after the 1953 Korean War armistice, it is much more difficult to secure the kinds of agreements that allow the Pentagon to do anything it wants and that cause a host nation to pick up a large part of the costs of doing so. When not based on conquest, the structure of the American empire of bases comes to look exceedingly fragile.
An Internet Guide to United States Military Bases Around the World
Challenges to the Empire.
By Chalmers Johnson
The following is excerpted from Chalmers Johnson's new book, "NEMESIS: The Last Days of the American Republic " (Metropolitan Books).
Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base; and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial "footprint" and the militarism that grows with it.
It is not easy, however, to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records available to the public on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual inventories from 2002 to 2005 of real property it owns around the world, the Base Structure Report, there has been an immense churning in the numbers of installations.
The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up.
Interestingly enough, the thirty-eight large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 -- mostly air and naval bases for our bombers and fleets -- almost exactly equals Britain's thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia. Perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for an imperialist aspiring to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and forty.
Using data from fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon bureaucrats calculated that its overseas bases were worth at least $127 billion -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic products of most countries -- and an estimated $658.1 billion for all of them, foreign and domestic (a base's "worth" is based on a Department of Defense estimate of what it would cost to replace it). During fiscal 2005, the military high command deployed to our overseas bases some 196,975 uniformed personnel as well as an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employed an additional 81,425 locally hired foreigners.
The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one of the world's largest landlords.
These numbers, although staggeringly big, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance, to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a province) -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in 1999 and maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston.
The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005), Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian areas since 9/11. By way of excuse, a note in the preface says that "facilities provided by other nations at foreign locations" are not included, although this is not strictly true. The report does include twenty sites in Turkey, all owned by the Turkish government and used jointly with the Americans. The Pentagon continues to omit from its accounts most of the $5 billion worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases overseas, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure.
In some cases, foreign countries themselves have tried to keep their U.S. bases secret, fearing embarrassment if their collusion with American imperialism were revealed. In other instances, the Pentagon seems to want to play down the building of facilities aimed at dominating energy sources, or, in a related situation, retaining a network of bases that would keep Iraq under our hegemony regardless of the wishes of any future Iraqi government. The U.S. government tries not to divulge any information about the bases we use to eavesdrop on global communications, or our nuclear deployments, which, as William Arkin, an authority on the subject, writes, "[have] violated its treaty obligations. The U.S. was lying to many of its closest allies, even in NATO, about its nuclear designs. Tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, hundreds of bases, and dozens of ships and submarines existed in a special secret world of their own with no rational military or even 'deterrence' justification."
In Jordan, to take but one example, we have secretly deployed up to five thousand troops in bases on the Iraqi and Syrian borders. (Jordan has also cooperated with the CIA in torturing prisoners we deliver to them for "interrogation.") Nonetheless, Jordan continues to stress that it has no special arrangements with the United States, no bases, and no American military presence.
The country is formally sovereign but actually a satellite of the United States and has been so for at least the past ten years. Similarly, before our withdrawal from Saudi Arabia in 2003, we habitually denied that we maintained a fleet of enormous and easily observed B-52 bombers in Jeddah because that was what the Saudi government demanded. So long as military bureaucrats can continue to enforce a culture of secrecy to protect themselves, no one will know the true size of our baseworld, least of all the elected representatives of the American people.
In 2005, deployments at home and abroad were in a state of considerable flux. This was said to be caused both by a long overdue change in the strategy for maintaining our global dominance and by the closing of surplus bases at home. In reality, many of the changes seemed to be determined largely by the Bush administration's urge to punish nations and domestic states that had not supported its efforts in Iraq and to reward those that had. Thus, within the United States, bases were being relocated to the South, to states with cultures, as the Christian Science Monitor put it, "more tied to martial traditions" than the Northeast, the northern Middle West, or the Pacific Coast. According to a North Carolina businessman gloating over his new customers, "The military is going where it is wanted and valued most."
In part, the realignment revolved around the Pentagon's decision to bring home by 2007 or 2008 two army divisions from Germany -- the First Armored Division and the First Infantry Division -- and one brigade (3,500 men) of the Second Infantry Division from South Korea (which, in 2005, was officially rehoused at Fort Carson, Colorado). So long as the Iraq insurgency continues, the forces involved are mostly overseas and the facilities at home are not ready for them (nor is there enough money budgeted to get them ready).
Nonetheless, sooner or later, up to 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members will have to be accommodated within the United States. The attendant 2005 "base closings" in the United States are actually a base consolidation and enlargement program with tremendous infusions of money and customers going to a few selected hub areas. At the same time, what sounds like a retrenchment in the empire abroad is really proving to be an exponential growth in new types of bases -- without dependents and the amenities they would require -- in very remote areas where the U.S. military has never been before.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was obvious to anyone who thought about it that the huge concentrations of American military might in Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea were no longer needed to meet possible military threats. There were not going to be future wars with the Soviet Union or any country connected to any of those places.
In 1991, the first Bush administration should have begun decommissioning or redeploying redundant forces; and, in fact, the Clinton administration did close some bases in Germany, such as those protecting the Fulda Gap, once envisioned as the likeliest route for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But nothing was really done in those years to plan for the strategic repositioning of the American military outside the United States.
By the end of the 1990s, the neoconservatives were developing their grandiose theories to promote overt imperialism by the "lone superpower" -- including preventive and preemptive unilateral military action, spreading democracy abroad at the point of a gun, obstructing the rise of any "near-peer" country or bloc of countries that might challenge U.S. military supremacy, and a vision of a "democratic" Middle East that would supply us with all the oil we wanted. A component of their grand design was a redeployment and streamlining of the military. The initial rationale was for a program of transformation that would turn the armed forces into a lighter, more agile, more high-tech military, which, it was imagined, would free up funds that could be invested in imperial policing.
What came to be known as "defense transformation" first began to be publicly bandied about during the 2000 presidential election campaign. Then 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq intervened. In August 2002, when the whole neocon program began to be put into action, it centered above all on a quick, easy war to incorporate Iraq into the empire. By this time, civilian leaders in the Pentagon had become dangerously overconfident because of what they perceived as America's military brilliance and invincibility as demonstrated in its 2001 campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda -- a strategy that involved reigniting the Afghan civil war through huge payoffs to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance warlords and the massive use of American airpower to support their advance on Kabul.
In August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld unveiled his "1-4-2-1 defense strategy" to replace the Clinton era's plan for having a military capable of fighting two wars -- in the Middle East and Northeast Asia -- simultaneously. Now, war planners were to prepare to defend the United States while building and assembling forces capable of "deterring aggression and coercion" in four "critical regions": Europe, Northeast Asia (South Korea and Japan), East Asia (the Taiwan Strait), and the Middle East, be able to defeat aggression in two of these regions simultaneously, and "win decisively" (in the sense of "regime change" and occupation) in one of those conflicts "at a time and place of our choosing."As the military analyst William M. Arkin commented, "[With] American military forces ... already stretched to the limit, the new strategy goes far beyond preparing for reactive contingencies and reads more like a plan for picking fights in new parts of the world."
A seemingly easy three-week victory over Saddam Hussein's forces in the spring of 2003 only reconfirmed these plans. The U.S. military was now thought to be so magnificent that it could accomplish any task assigned to it. The collapse of the Baathist regime in Baghdad also emboldened Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to use "transformation" to penalize nations that had been, at best, lukewarm about America's unilateralism -- Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Turkey -- and to reward those whose leaders had welcomed Operation Iraqi Freedom, including such old allies as Japan and Italy but also former communist countries such as Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. The result was the Department of Defense's Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy, known informally as the "Global Posture Review."
President Bush first mentioned it in a statement on November 21, 2003, in which he pledged to "realign the global posture" of the United States. He reiterated the phrase and elaborated on it on August 16, 2004, in a speech to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati. Because Bush's Cincinnati address was part of the 2004 presidential election campaign, his comments were not taken very seriously at the time. While he did say that the United States would reduce its troop strength in Europe and Asia by 60,000 to 70,000, he assured his listeners that this would take a decade to accomplish -- well beyond his term in office -- and made a series of promises that sounded more like a reenlistment pitch than a statement of strategy.
"Over the coming decade, we'll deploy a more agile and more flexible force, which means that more of our troops will be stationed and deployed from here at home. We'll move some of our troops and capabilities to new locations, so they can surge quickly to deal with unexpected threats. ... It will reduce the stress on our troops and our military families. ... See, our service members will have more time on the home front, and more predictability and fewer moves over a career. Our military spouses will have fewer job changes, greater stability, more time for their kids and to spend with their families at home."
On September 23, 2004, however, Secretary Rumsfeld disclosed the first concrete details of the plan to the Senate Armed Services Committee. With characteristic grandiosity, he described it as "the biggest re-structuring of America's global forces since 1945." Quoting then undersecretary Douglas Feith, he added, "During the Cold War we had a strong sense that we knew where the major risks and fights were going to be, so we could deploy people right there. We're operating now [with] an entirely different concept. We need to be able to do [the] whole range of military operations, from combat to peacekeeping, anywhere in the world pretty quickly."
Though this may sound plausible enough, in basing terms it opens up a vast landscape of diplomatic and bureaucratic minefields that Rumsfeld's militarists surely underestimated. In order to expand into new areas, the Departments of State and Defense must negotiate with the host countries such things as Status of Forces Agreements, or SOFAs, which are discussed in detail in the next chapter. In addition, they must conclude many other required protocols, such as access rights for our aircraft and ships into foreign territory and airspace, and Article 98 Agreements. The latter refer to article 98 of the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute, which allows countries to exempt U.S. citizens on their territory from the ICC's jurisdiction.
Such immunity agreements were congressionally mandated by the American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002, even though the European Union holds that they are illegal. Still other necessary accords are acquisitions and cross-servicing agreements or ACSAs, which concern the supply and storage of jet fuel, ammunition, and so forth; terms of leases on real property; levels of bilateral political and economic aid to the United States (so-called host-nation support); training and exercise arrangements (Are night landings allowed? Live firing drills?); and environmental pollution liabilities.
When the United States is not present in a country as its conqueror or military savior, as it was in Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II and in South Korea after the 1953 Korean War armistice, it is much more difficult to secure the kinds of agreements that allow the Pentagon to do anything it wants and that cause a host nation to pick up a large part of the costs of doing so. When not based on conquest, the structure of the American empire of bases comes to look exceedingly fragile.
An Internet Guide to United States Military Bases Around the World
Challenges to the Empire.
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