To understand just how bad the 112th Congress, elected on November 2nd and taking office on January 3rd, is likely to be for peace on Earth, one has to understand how incredibly awful the 110th and 111th Congresses have been during the past four years and then measure the ways in which things are likely to become even worse.
Two days ago, the New York Times reported on the just-released publication of a 2008 report on the CIA's negligence, deceit, disregard for its own rules and stonewalling in connection with investigation of its practice of shooting down airplanes in Peru in 2001. Back then, it was deadly mistakes made in the war on drugs.
A day later, the Wall Street Journal published a report about ramping up the CIA's targeted killing program in the war against terrorism (or against Al Qaida, as the Administration now calls it).
The Peru example underscores why the United States should not be using the CIA to conduct targeted killings. The CIA operates, understandably, in secret. When and if its conduct is investigated, the reports of its violations usually remain secret as well. The power to impose death should not be delegated to an entity, and to individuals, so shielded from standard measures of accountability.
This morning I sat in a U.S. military commissions courtroom in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and watched the first child soldier charged by a Western nation since World War II plead guilty to crimes he was never even accused of. If the guilty plea of Omar Khadr this morning was a face-saving effort by the U.S. government, it was a sad day for the rule of law in the United States.
Omar Khadr is the 24-year-old Canadian who's spent a third of his life in U.S. custody without trial after being accused of helping his father's al Qaeda associates build improvised explosive devices when he was just 15. He was taken to Afghanistan from Canada by his father at the age of nine. The lone survivor of a 2002 U.S. assault on an Afghan compound, Khadr was accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.
But as he entered his guilty plea this morning -- after the government agreed he'd serve just one more year at Guantanamo Bay, and an as-yet-unspecified number of years in Canada -- it was clear that prosecutors had taken the opportunity to throw the kitchen-sink-full of charges at him - including far more crimes than he'd even been charged with. Most importantly, Khadr pled guilty to the murder of two Afghan soldiers who accompanied U.S. forces in the 2002 assault on the compound. The government has never presented any evidence whatsoever that Khadr was responsible for that.
That Khadr pled to this and the range of other charges that the government first unveiled today (details will not be available until the military commissions publicly release the stipulation signed by Khadr tomorrow) is hardly surprising. Ever since Judge Patrick Parrish ruled that Khadr's statements made to interrogators after he was threatened with gang-rape, coerced and possibly tortured were admissible, his defense was sure to be challenging. Although the government did not appear to have any forensic or eyewitness testimony to support its murder charge, government interrogators planned to testify that Khadr had willingly told them that he threw the grenade that killed Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer. Whether he said that because it was true, or because he was a scared and wounded 15-year-old expecting a quick release for telling his interrogators what they wanted to hear, we'll never know. (Khadr was shot multiple times and severely wounded in the firefight, which left him blind in one eye; he still has shrapnel in the other.)
Khadr's sentencing hearing begins tomorrow. Although the plea agreement contains a recommended sentence (news reports have said it's 8 years total) that deal will remain secret until the military commission sworn to act as a jury in this case issues its own sentence based on live testimony. The government will present witnesses to describe the effects of improvised explosive devices, and the testimony of Sergeant Speer's widow about her loss. Khadr's lawyers will put forth psychological and psychiatric experts to talk about the impacts of torture on him and likely about the ability of a 15-year-old youth to appreciate the wrongfulness of his acts, particularly when they were directed by the adults around him.
(This diary asks a VERY good question. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
The Nobel Peace prize has been awarded for many different people and for many different reasons, but there appears to be one area the committee is reluctant to go.
In recent years the Nobel committee has been willing to wade into controversies. A couple of years ago it awarded its economic prize to Paul Krugman, in what appeared to be a swipe at a sitting president and the still (inexplicably) dominant Chicago school of economics. Their selection reverberated politically as well; witness the various freakouts among conservative observers and commentators.
This year Nobel awarded the economics prize to Peter Diamond, thus making Richard Shelby look like a dumb hillbilly. By highlighting reflexive Republican opposition (one might say America has been Gop-blocked) the selection puts conservatives on the defensive. Considering the damage their royalist economic policies have wrought, this is a very good thing.
Their science awards have been political too. The 2007 award was another direct challenge to the American right, which even now continues to pretend the issue does not even exist. Considering the resolute ignorance of modern conservatives, awarding a science prize at all may be provocative.
That is what makes its Peace Prize awards somewhat curious. I remember reading years ago (I don't remember the source) that it might be awarded to political leaders or activists just about anywhere, but only non-Western dissidents could win. Looking at the list from the past thirty years or so that certainly seems to hold up. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama and Oscar Arias Sánchez all have won for raising their voices against local governments, but no one in the West has.
(As the Obama Administration seeks to "normalize" the criminal practices of the Bush Administration, it seems that it may have a LITTLE problem with international law... - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
On Saturday, the New York Times reported that administration officials are "alarmed" by the military commission case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen seized as a 15-year-old by U.S. forces in Afghanistan who's now spent a third of his life in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. Trying an alleged child soldier based largely on confessions he made after being threatened with gang-rape and murder is not the case the Obama administration had hoped to showcase in its first military commission trial.
But the argument in a new paper published today by Loyola Law School professor David Glazier should give the administration even more cause for alarm. Glazier, an expert on international law and the laws of armed conflict, argues that the military commission trial of Omar Khadr is itself a war crime.
I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.
Why do I have the feeling that ignoring this is a huge practical and moral mistake?
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met Sunday with Pakistan's president, and both men urged the international community to step up efforts to help the millions affected by flooding in Pakistan...
He said he has visited scenes of natural disasters worldwide, but has seen "nothing like this. The scale of the disaster is so large -- so many people and in so many places, in so much need."
"Thousands of towns and villages have simply been washed away," Ban said. "Roads, buildings, bridges, crops -- millions of livelihoods have been lost. People are marooned on tiny islands with the floodwaters all around them. They are drinking dirty water. They are living in the mud and ruins of their lives. Many have lost family and friends. Many more are afraid their children and loved ones will not survive in these conditions."
When you read about the effects of climate change, you see these moving maps where large parts of the land mass become submerged and you think, "boy that's really something." But what this shows is the depth of human misery that mass flooding causes. And the probability that this will be happening with frequency and sometimes simultaneously going forward is quite high. What that translates into, aside from the aforementioned human misery, is political instability, mass migration and social upheaval. This is a peek at our future, and it's happening in one of the most dangerous places on earth.
Gosh, ya think?
At the same time, General Patreas is putting on a grand show to convince all the serious people (who laugh at global warming 'cause it snowed last winter) that we really can and should "win the war" in Afghanistan where less than 100 al Qaeda operatives may still be.
And "winning" that war will... do what exactly? Because I do have a much, much clearer sense of what it would mean to win the war on global warming. Another war in which we're very, very clearly fighting on the wrong side.
Of coure, global warming doesn't "cause" these sorts of things directly. It "merely" loads the dice more and more heavily in the direction of a different climate regime, and what we're experiencing now are the transitional effects as what were once highly unusual conditions become increasingly frequent.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.
Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
The United States Military Industrial Complex has might. General and former President Eisenhower understood this. He warned Americans. Abundant might does not make right; it only advances the notion of righteousness. Patriotism is promoted through militarism. His words fell on deaf ears. The sound was hollow in contrast to the drone of drumbeats. At the time, Americans were as they are today; dedicated to the customs we think characterize democracy.
We see this in many a war and peace policy. Questions are asked of the government and the people. Testimony is taken. Think tanks assess Foreign Policy. Conclusions are drawn and decisions made. Still, in 2010, a few within the electorate wonder as General Eisenhower had.. With Al-Qaida Fading, Why Expand the Afghan War?
On Tuesday, the Obama administration is scheduled to begin its first trial of a prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay. Omar Khadr was only 15 when he was captured in a firefight in 2002 with U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Now 23, he'll finally have his day in court. Only instead of an experienced federal court with a long history of trying terror suspects, Khadr will be tried in a military commission, created just last year. In the eight years since President George W. Bush created the first military commissions at Guantanamo, they have convicted only four terrorists - only two in contested trials. Regular federal courts in the United States, by contrast, have convicted more than 400 in the same time period.
Khadr was only nine when his father, an alleged Al Qaeda financier, dragged him from Canada to Afghanistan and put him to work helping his Al Qaeda-connected friends. Khadr has said that he never had a choice. And a Canadian intelligence agency reported, based on interrogations of Khadr in 2003, that Khadr viewed Al Qaeda "through the eyes of a child" who didn't understand that his father's activities were linked to terrorism.
What's more, based on what's been presented in pretrial hearings so far, there appears to be little or no evidence, other than "confessions" extracted under highly suspicious circumstances, that Khadr actually committed the most serious crime he's accused of: throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.
Even if he did, Khadr shouldn't be tried in a military commission.
Under international law, a child captured in combat is supposed to be treated as a victim rather than a warrior, offered rehabilitation in custody and eventually repatriated home. Khadr, who has relatives in Canada, was offered neither option.
In addition, the crime of murdering a U.S. soldier isn't actually a war crime. In war, it's not a crime to target the other side's soldiers. But because Khadr was a civilian, rather than a member of a regular foreign army, throwing a grenade is a criminal act that could be prosecuted in a regular criminal court. Although the military commission rules characterize his crime as one that falls within the commissions' jurisdiction, the legal authority of the commission to prosecute conduct that was declared a war crime after the act was committed, or ex-post facto, remains legally questionable.
Khadr's lawyer has also questioned the legality of the military commissions as a whole, filing an appeal just this week with the Supreme Court arguing that the commissions are unconstitutional because they target only "aliens"--people who are not U.S. citizens. Though the courts have so far punted on this issue, it's clear that even if Khadr is convicted, he'll have several strong grounds for appeal.
So why is the government bringing this case in a military commission?
Perhaps the government hopes that Khadr's statements, which he claims were extracted by various kinds of torture and abuse, will be allowed into court as evidence. Although Khadr's lawyer hasn't yet had the opportunity to present all the evidence of his client's treatment at Bagram and at Guantanamo Bay, what's come out at pretrial hearings so far is that when Khadr was captured by U.S. soldiers in July 2002, the teenager had been shot twice in the back, blinded in one eye and had a face peppered with shrapnel. Interrogators at the Bagram air base took to calling him "Buckshot Bob." But that didn't stop them from interrogating him while he was still recovering from life-threatening wounds and strapped to a hospital gurney. Using what the military calls a "fear up" technique, an interrogator testified, Khadr was told a story about another prison just like him who refused to cooperate - and who then was gang-raped and killed in an American prison.
Official documents also reveal that at Guantanamo, Khadr was subjected to the military's "frequent flyer" program -- meaning he was moved every three hours for weeks at a time to keep him from sleeping prior to interrogations.
So just how reliable are the statements he made, either at Bagram or at Guantanamo?
Now, after eight years at Gitmo, Khadr insists he's not guilty. He has also at times said he'd boycott his own trial because he thinks the whole military commission process is a sham.
It's easy to understand why. Now 23, Khadr, has been interviewed by dozens of interrogators, each time led to believe that his cooperation would spare him from violence and lead to his release. He told interrogators what he thought they wanted to hear, but that release never happened. If Khadr had been imprisoned in the United States, he would have been tried and either convicted or released long ago. But instead, Khadr has been held without trial on a secluded prison camp in Cuba for nearly a decade with little opportunity to defend himself.
Human Rights First has been observing the military commission hearings since their inception in 2002. Repeatedly, our observers have been astounded by the injustices, inefficiency and wholesale fiasco that many of the inexperienced and legally questionable commissions' proceedings produce.
That's partly because the commissions are so new - created by a law passed in 2009. The first military commission system, created by the Bush administration, was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006. As a result, there's is almost no legal precedent to guide commission judges. The Military Commissions Manual, meanwhile, was only issued in late April - on the eve of Khadr's first pretrial hearing. The resulting confusion offers yet more opportunity for Khadr and anyone else convicted in a military commission to challenge their convictions on a broad range of legal grounds. Decisions on the prisoners' fate will be delayed that much longer.
There's another reason that this whole military commission system leaves me scratching my head: the extravagant expense involved. Keeping the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and military commission system open for fewer than 180 detainees costs taxpayers a lot of money. Construction and renovations to the camp have cost about $500 million so far; operating costs are another $150 million every year. The Washington Post recently estimated the bill, much of which has been paid to KBR and Halliburton, has so far exceeded $2 billion. Just the cost of flying dozens of journalists and observers like myself, plus all the lawyers involved, to and from Guantanamo to attend each of these hearings so the government can claim that they're "public" is astronomical. Meanwhile, federal courts and secure prisons in the United States are readily available and already paid for. And the government doesn't have to cover anyone's costs to get there.
I'm in Guantanamo Bay this week to observe the end of Khadr's pretrial hearings and the beginning of his trial in a military commission. But I doubt I'll gain any better understanding of why the Obama administration chose to try him there.
Update: Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, Omar Khadr's military defense lawyer, just gave a quick news conference in the sweltering airplane hangar here at the Gitmo base. (Only prosecutors are allowed to use the indoor air-conditioned rooms for press conferences.) "This case will echo in the future," Jackson said, noting that it will set a sad precedent for the United States' right to try a child soldier as a full-fledged war criminal.
It will also create a lasting legacy for the Obama administration."Forever the Obama administration will be remembered as starting the military commissions with a case of a child soldier," Jackson said.
Somehow that doesn't seem like the sort of legacy Obama had in mind when he vowed to close the Gitmo prison down on his first day in office.
We are spending $2 Billion a week in Afghanistan. If you want to see zeros, that's $2,000,000,000.00 a week. It also means $104 Billion a year.
Meanwhile, we can't afford to keep our education budgets in functional condition. We can't reduce our National Debt. We can't bring down our operating deficit. And we are spending a fortune on foreign servicing (read China) of our debt.
Obama and Company are gearing up for an explanation tour of our goals in the Middle East... that we are there to keep Al Qaeda out, to stop the Taliban from returning to Afghanistan, and to WIN (whatever that means).
Trying to build a Democratic state in a Medieval mess is just not working out. Keeping the corrupt Karzai government afloat is a form of creeping suicide for our troops, which we have expanded in Afghanistan as we have cut them in Iraq.
An analyst has called for a more deliberate pace in the production and consumption of news. He could have demonstrated his commitment to such improvement by shelving yet another exercise in media self-mortification and spending time with some primary sources.
For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.
On Tuesday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill already passed by the Senate that funds a $33 billion, 30,000-troop escalation in Afghanistan. The vote was 308 to 114. What could the good news possibly be?
The first good news is that, while we had no more than 35 congress members who would vote against war funding a year ago, or perhaps 55 when it was an easy vote with no pressure, we've now got 114. That's serious progress. That's a far more dramatic increase than we've seen in the number of congress members willing to vote for a non-binding unspecified timetable for a withdrawal. That number rose from 138 last year to 162 on July 1st (although the legislation was somewhat stronger this year). In other words, willingness to express mild interest in ending the war has reached a plateau. Willingness to take serious action to end the war is rapidly catching up. Of course, both have to top 218 before we win.
The 92,000 classified documents on the war inAfghanistan posted by Wikileaks and made public on Sunday are already causing a firestorm.
Although I can't claim to have reviewed the tens of thousands of documents myself (Human Rights First will be reviewing them for specific information on detentions at Bagram and the U.S. reliance on private contractors in Afghanistan), the accounts from diligent reporters so far suggest that the documents support the Obama administration's new rules of engagement, which emphasize the importance of keeping civilian casualties to an absolute minimum. While some soldiers in combat have complained about that, the latest reports in these newly-released documents that some U.S. efforts to target insurgents has led to the killing of civilians and stoked Afghan anger suggest that the administration's efforts to limit the use of air power so as not to kill Afghan civilians unnecessarily was the right move. Reducing unnecessary civilian casualties is not only important to compliance with the laws of war, but it's critical to the U.S. counterinsurgency effort. After all, killing Afghan civilians isn't a very effective way to win hearts and minds. The change in the rules also appears to have responded to solid information the military had received about field operations gone wrong.
Many of the failures in Afghanistan reportedly catalogued in the released documents, which do not extend past 2009 and therefore do not reflect the impact of the new rules of engagement, appear to be the result of insufficient investment in securing Afghanistan and preparing the Afghan police and security forces to responsibly assume their appropriate roles in their own country. To the extent that the U.S. military is currently working with NATO forces to train the Afghan police and security forces to improve their practices, these Wiki-released documents support that effort.
Human Rights First has consistently urged the administration to plan for the turnover of U.S. detention operations to the Afghan government by helping the Afghans develop fair and humane detention and justice systems that reflect a commitment to international standards of due process for suspected terrorists. The Afghans need civilian training, support and funding for those efforts,which are critical to allowing the U.S. to withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan responsibly. I plan to take a trip to Afghanistan in the fall to observe first-hand how that transition is proceeding and whether the U.S. and its NATO allies are providing the necessary support and training.
Unfortunately, some lawmakers, understandably concerned about corruption, have responded by voting to block all civilian aid to Afghanistan, which could seriously jeopardize those efforts and the United States' long term goals.
When the firestorm over the latest Wikileaks document dump dies down, let's hope that a responsible transition strategy remains standing.
Supplemental funding of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be voted on in the House tomorrow. From Shaunna Thomas on twitter:
Well, its official: emergency war funding vote has been scheduled tomorrow on suspension. Where's the emergency $ for us?
Notably, the bill will also come up under a :suspension of the rules." This means it will require a two-thirds majority in order to pass.
The two-thirds majority requirement means there is a chance it will be defeated, at least for tomorrow. Here is how:
Votes needed to pass: The are currently.432 members of the House, with three vacancies (there might only be two vacancies--I am checking on that). This means that 289 votes are required to pas the bill if everyone votes (or 290 if there are only two vacancies, and 433 members), and 133 are required to defeat it (134 of there are only two vacancies)..
Many, if not most, Republicans will oppose the bill: This is not an entirely "clean" war supplemental. In addition to $33.45 billion in the bill for the Department of Defense, there is $13.4 billion in funding for the Department of Veteran's Affairs, $6.2 billion for the state department, and $5.1 billion for FEMA (see detail on the bill here). Due to this spending, it is likely that most Republicans will oppose the bill (less than a dozen Republicans would oppose a "clean" war funding bill). When the Senate passed this version of the war funding bill back in late May, 26 of the 41 Republicans in that chamber opposed the bill due to the domestic spending provisions, and three Republicans did not vote. If that same ratio of Republican opposition holds in the House vote, then 113 Republicans will oppose the bill.
A few dozen anti-war Democrats: Last year 50 Democrats who are still in the House of Representatives (Eric Massa is no longer in the house) opposed a supplemental war funding bill that contained no domestic spending. Most, but not all of these members are from the left-wing of the caucus, and opposed the funding due to their opposition to the war. However, some of the Democrats who opposed the "clean" war supplemental in May of 2009 and likely to vote for this bill. In June of 2009, under significant pressure from the White House, and after some domestic spending had been added, 19 of those 50 Democrats voted in favor of a different version of the war supplemental.
Given this mix of progressive opposition to the war and conservative opposition the non-war related funding in the bill, it is possible the bill will not pass the two-thirds threshold required under a suspension of the rules.
However, one word of caution for anti-war activists: don't sell this as an opportunity to your fellow activists as an opportunity to actually end the war in Afghanistan. While this version of the Afghanistan supplemental might be defeated (thus forcing the bill to be changed, and thus requiring a vote on a new bill in both chambers of Congress), it is extremely likely that supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually pass. As was demonstrated last May, there are upwards of 370 votes in the House in favor of a "clean" war supplemental bill, and there are at least 67 votes in favor of this version of the bill in the Senate.
Given this, we have to be honest: the votes are there to pass some version of a war supplemental, eventually. Those opposed to the passage of any funding for Iraq and Afghanistan altogether--a group to which I belong--might be able to keep using procedural hurdles such as the "suspensions of the rules" to keep the bill from passing before the start of the August recess on Friday, August 5th. From that point, perhaps even more procedural hurdles can cause the bill to be delayed all the way until the end of September. But it is going to pass eventually, and as such we should not mislead anti-war activists into thinking this is actually an opportunity to end the war. It isn't.
To close on a personal note, while I have become more amendable to supporting legislative incremental change over the past two years (see my support for health insurance reform and my support for financial reform), I have moved in the exact opposite direction on matters of war. I would not have supported this war funding bill no matter how much domestic stimulus spending was attached to it, because I simply cannot condone the continuation of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Real people, both military and civilian, are dying, getting wounded, or losing their homes in enormous numbers because of these wars. Our presence there is not going to result in either stable or democratic regimes in either state. Additionally, we were not attacked by either state. Further, our presence in those countries will not prevent ethnic cleansing (ethnic cleansing took place while we were in Iraq).
Because of this, I still consider opposing this supplemental--even though it will pass eventually--a worthwhile activity. It is reminiscent of the marches against the war in late 2002 and early 2003: while I knew they would not stop the war, I still felt compelled to participate to order to publicly registered dissent. If you feel the same way, call switchboard for the House of Representatives at 202-324-3121 and register your dissent on the war to your Representative. We are not in a position to end the war right now, but we will never be in a position to end the war unless we continue to register our dissent against it.
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