President Obama puts his legacy at risk with new war in Middle East

(theGrio)  In light of the threat posed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, President Obama wants Congress to authorize military force against the Islamist group in the Middle East. Although the president believes a 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) gives him the legal grounds to go to war on his own, he has sent Congress a draft authorization for their approval.

Mr. President, be careful what you wish for. As Colin Powell once said about the consequences of the U.S. war in Iraq, “if you break it, you own it.” Congress should not give the green light to a new, potentially endless war, nor should Obama pursue it. This would be Obama’s war, and he would own it, with a very distinct chance of jeopardizing his legacy. And these wars never turn out well for America, so why would a war against ISIS be any different?

Why the arrests of African-American ISIS suspects deserve more scrutiny

(theGrio)  Last Tuesday, two more African-American men were arrested on federal terrorism charges for trying to join ISIS. The FBI arrested Hasan Edmonds, 22, a member of the Illinois National Guard, and his cousin, Jonas Edmonds, 29, for allegedly attempting to stage terror attacks in the U.S. and join the terror group ISIS.

News of the arrests comes a week after Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh, an Air Force veteran originally from New Jersey, was indicted by federal authorities for allegedly attempting to travel to Turkey to join ISIS and providing material support to the organization. In the past 18 months, 30 people have been charged with enlisting with or attempting to join terrorist organizations. And in February, three immigrants from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in central Asia were charged with conspiracy in Brooklyn, New York, and Florida in connection with failed attempts to join ISIS. The trio allegedly discussed attacking President Obama and Coney Island.

America's "Shoot 'Em Up, Lock 'Em Up" Mentality Is Its Undoing

Remember all the talk of a peace dividend at the end of the Cold War? Seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? Since that time, U.S. defense spending has ballooned, nearly doubling since 2001.

Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, it will be hard for the war hawks to defend keeping American troops in Afghanistan. But they will, even as a majority of people want to cut military spending in order to reduce the deficit, rather than cut important social programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. There's lots of money in the Pentagon, and a group of experts has recommended cutting almost $1 trillion from defense over the next decade. People know that the military-industrial-complex is a drain on the nation's economy -- a threat to economic security, and a parasite that is eating its host bit by bit.

It is hard to shake off bad habits and the U.S. has a number of them. This addiction to remaining in a permanent state of war is one of the largest and most problematic. There is the war on terror and the war on drugs. The former is used to justify the behemoth that is the national security apparatus. Meanwhile, the latter facilitates the growth of the prison-industrial-complex, and the incarceration of predominantly poor, uneducated black and Latino men, in a country with no jobs for them. These two systems are equally exploitative and destructive to human lives, and corporations have found their niche in profiting from the suffering of others.

And while profiting in such a manner is an unsustainable model for the long-term success of a nation, some remain undeterred from pursuing this path. America spends almost as much on military as the rest of the world -- combined. We imprison more people than any other nation, including the most repressive dictatorships you can imagine. In fact, the land of the free is home to only 5 percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of the world's prisoners.

Here, we lock 'em up and shoot 'em up. And we'll go visit someone else's backyard and lock 'em up and shoot 'em up too. And our voracious appetite for guns at home perversely complements our lust for senseless war abroad. With 90 guns for nearly every 100 people, the U.S. is the most armed nation on the planet, and we have shocking homicide statistics to prove it. The second amendment is used as a pretext for an astounding level of gun proliferation that is unheard of in -- and incompatible with -- a stable democratic society. But we know that the National Rifle Association, which, by the way, is increasingly allied with right-wing extremists, militias and domestic terrorists, is funded by the gun industry to the tune of millions of dollars. This, as illegal firearms ravage our urban communities

If so-called American exceptionalism is to be found in war, then Americans are in deeper trouble than they realize. The U.S. has the most advanced military weaponry and high-tech toys for its soldiers to kill and destroy, while American cities crumble under the weight of their low-grade, early-twentieth century infrastructure. Europe and Asia are decades ahead in high-speed rail because they actually have it, and this nation elects politicians who attack high-speed rail as some big government welfare giveaway program. And the rest of the world laughs as we wage war on ourselves, with culture wars, a war on intelligence and progress, and assaults on women's rights, workers and immigrants.

Sounds like a winning strategy, if your goal is to fail miserably -- exceptionally miserably.

Let Us Expand the Definition of Terrorism

I begin this commentary by looking up the word terrorism.

One dictionary defines terrorism as follows:

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

Similarly, the U.S. military says terrorism is:

The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

Practically speaking, however, terrorism is defined differently in everyday American life. Terrorism is synonymous with Muslim and Arab extremism, and affiliated persons, organizations and nations. The threats they pose are either real, perceived, or purely conjured up. The terrorist-as-enemy-of-America is like the bogeyman of Red Scare fame, ubiquitous yet elusive, and you can't quite put your finger on them because they're tricky. The definition of terrorism itself can serve as a political weapon--a form of terrorism itself, dare I say. Call someone a terrorist, or a communist or socialist or supporter thereof, and you delegitimize everything that person has to say. You marginalize everything that person represents.

In these days of extremism at home, we cling to a narrow, selective definition of terrorism, while ignoring blatant forms of terrorism in our own midst. In doing so, we can't see the forest for the trees.

A progressive voice for peace, Rabbi Michael Lerner, was almost certainly a victim of terrorism on the night of May 2 and early morning of May 3. Right-wing Zionists attacked his home and threatened his life. The attackers attached posters to his door and property with a strong glue. And the posters attacked Lerner personally, as well as liberals and progressives as being supporters of terrorism and "Islamo-fascism." They posted a bumper sticker which read "fight terror--support Israel" next to a caricature of Judge Goldstone, the South African jurist who issued a UN report on Israeli human rights violations during the military campaign in Gaza. The Goldstone report called on Israel to do an independent investigation into Operation Cast Lead, and punish those elements of the IDF who were responsible. The report was denounced by rightists in the U.S. and Israel as "anti-Semitic" and "pro-terror."

The crime against Rabbi Lerner came after a week of Lerner and his staff at Tikkun magazine receiving hate mail. These acts stemmed from Tikkun's announcement that if South African Zionists made good on their threat to prevent Judge Goldstone from attending his grandson's bar mitzvah, Lerner would hold the bar mitzvah in the Bay Area instead. Tikkun is presenting an award to Goldstone next year for his commitment to human rights in Israel, and apparently some people don't like that.

Although Lerner has received death threats and hate mail over the years, this recent attack is troubling because they targeted his home. "By linking Lerner to alleged terrorism, they provide for themselves and other extremists a 'right-wing justification' to use violence against Lerner, even though Lerner has been a prominent advocate of non-violence", Tikkun said in an official statement. Lerner speaks out against violence everywhere around the world, including Palestinian acts against Israelis. But when he and groups such as J Street advocate a pro-peace solution, they are branded as anti-Israel. This comes as a group of over 3,000 European Jews signed a petition criticizing Israeli settlement policies, and warning of the dangers of systematic support for the Israeli government.

Turning the page a bit, we are witnessing state-sponsored terrorism within our borders, most prominently coming from the state of Arizona. Arizona's legislature passed--and the governor signed into law--a bill which makes it a crime under state law to be in the U.S. illegally. The law allows police to stop anyone with a "reasonable suspicion" of being undocumented, and demand proof of citizenship. Those who cannot produce the documentation face arrest, a $2,500 fine, and 6 months in jail.

I submit that Arizona's anti-immigrant law is nothing more than Juan Crow racism, a codification of xenophobia, specifically designed to intimidate Latinos regardless of their citizenship status. Although its proponents will tell us it does not racially profile, the law is part of the mix that makes people with Spanish surnames feel unwelcome and unsafe, in an environment of heightened anti-Latino violence and discrimination. After all, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a hate group with ties to the eugenics movement and white supremacists, assisted in drafting the bill. An honest, vigorous debate on immigration and border security is one thing. Bad people passing a law with cruel intentions is another.

But Arizona did not stop there. They are banning ethnic studies in the schools, characterizing such programs as "ethnic chauvinism" and "high treason." Under the policy, schools will lose state funding if they offer courses that "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." And the Arizona Department of Education is removing teachers with heavy accents.

Ethnic Studies were part of the civil rights movement--born in the late 1960s and early 1970s at a time of increased cultural awareness among people of color--to counter a Eurocentric perspective of history. State governments in Arizona and Texas feed into white extremist antipathy towards diversity by denigrating and eliminating people of color in their school curricula, "taking the country back" so to speak, via the textbooks.

A vibrant democracy should allow for differences of opinion, free from demonization and threats of violence against those who disagree. We may have differences of opinion with people, even those within our own family, but we don't resort to terrorist attacks against them.

A State of Perpetual War

In the George Orwell classic 1984, there is a state of perpetual war between the nations of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. The enemy in the conflict is ambiguous, and the battlefield exists in an elusive and distant land. The enemy could be Eurasia one day, and Eastasia the next, but that location is really insignificant. 

The mission of perpetual war for these superpowers is to justify psychological and physical control over their populations, to keep their people busy, fearful and hateful towards the enemy. The perpetual war also serves as an excuse for a nation's failings and shortcomings. The economy, the labor force and industry are all centered around war rather than consumer goods. People live a miserable existence with poverty and no hope of improving their standard of living. 

War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! That is what soul singer Edwin Starr said, but it is also what Major General Smedley D. Butler, a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, believed as well. In fact, he called war a racket. "A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people," he said. "Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes." The answer to ending war, Butler concluded, is not through disarmament conferences or peace talks, but by taking the profit out of war.

And upon his departure from office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former general, warned of the military-industrial complex and its threat to democracy and liberty. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist," he said.

America is in a state of perpetual war. Before it was the Cold War, and now it is the War on Terror. And the boogeyman du jour is Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism rather than Communism. And it doesn't seem to matter whether the government is controlled by Democrats or Republicans. This is the nature of the beast. There were wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under Bush, and these wars have not abated under Obama. Add to that Pakistan, perhaps Yemen, who knows, and any other nation that comes up in the future. Things were supposed to be different under an Obama presidency, as people did not vote for more war when they voted for "change" in November. After all, the huge, costly, senseless and deadly mess called the Iraq war made people yearn for a better way. But in all fairness, Obama had pledged in the presidential campaign to step things up in Afghanistan. 

We are told that the real threat to the United States comes from foreign terrorism, with the latest example brought to us in the form of a B-list al Qaeda groupie from Nigeria, with explosive airline undergarments no less. He follows in the footsteps of another misguided soul, a Jamaican-British terrorist wannabe who tried to blow up his shoes on an airplane several years ago. Such incidents have resulted in reactionary security measures by the government that are ostensibly designed to make us safer, such as the ban on liquids on the plane, or pat downs, or taking off your shoes at the airport. In the end, these measures only make us neurotic and fearful, fail to make us safer, and render air travel an impractical and unpleasant prison-like experience. Meanwhile, while it seems impossible to prevent every potential act of terrorism, the systems that should keep such undesirables off the plane in the first place are not working.

My goal is not to make light of terrorism and the threat it may or may not pose. At the same time, there are many domestic threats that seem to pose a greater risk to national security, including the U.S. economic system itself. Consider, for example, the massive loss of wealth precipitated by the housing crisis, disproportionately felt in the black and Latino communities. Or, take a look at the jobless numbers, and the deplorable 20 percent unemployment rate for working-age men. A nation that claims to be a superpower, yet has one out of every four of its children dependent on food stamps, has far larger issues than a Nigerian with combustible drawers.

And should we not concern ourselves with the daily acts or terror committed in this violent society, the proliferation of firearms, the mass shootings and the school shootings? Every year, on average, more than 100,000 people are shot with a gun in America, and over 30,000 of them die. This level of violence and killing is not tolerated in a truly free and democratic society.

If we are to have a perpetual war, it must be a war against injustice and deprivation at home and abroad. We need to get our own house in order, rather than demolish and rebuild other nations that did not invite us there. And as far as the so-called terrorism problem is concerned, maybe we should stay out of other folks' backyards and it will go away.

The Surge We Need At Home

Original link from BlackCommentator.com.

Sometimes, messes are so big that you just can’t fix them. The best thing to do is to leave it alone, and walk away, before you make things worse.

Afghanistan is one of those big messes. President Obama’s decision to claim ownership of the war in Afghanistan—by sending 30,000 more troops to fight the unwinnable war—is an example of misplaced priorities and misguided advice. As the White House parrots the Bush administration by launching a surge in Afghanistan, there is a domestic crisis that requires our attention. And this crisis is a far greater threat to national security than any foreign terrorists, real or imagined. A surge is needed, to be sure, but it is needed here at home.

Of course, the domestic crisis of which I speak is the nation itself. Simply put, America is a mess. Unemployment is over 10 percent, while the effective unemployment rate—which also includes the underemployed—is more like 19.2 percent. In the first three quarters of 2009, there were more than 2.6 million foreclosure filings, with a projected total of 3.2-3.4 million property foreclosures for the year. In the "land of plenty", 40 percent of the food supply is wasted, one in eight people uses food stamps, as does one in four children. About half of American children, and 90 percent of black children, will live in a household that depends on food stamps at some point before they turn 20. And 63 percent of teachers buy food for hungry students with their own money. Is this the most we can expect from the world’s greatest superpower?

Meanwhile, we are told the economy is recovering because Wall Street has recovered. Wall Street never had it so good, as the banks bask in the glow of their TARP-bailout, corporate-welfare recipient status. As the titans of finance are rewarded for their greed, failure, and demolition of the U.S. economy, the upward redistribution of wealth continues in this country. Those who have the most are getting more and more. A consumer-based economy ceases to function as such when the consumers are jobless, penniless, homeless, and hungry. It doesn’t take an expert or professional commentator to realize that something is fundamentally wrong with this nation’s economic system, and that the public will not sustain more of this suffering without some repercussions. For further information on the nature of the repercussions we can expect, you only need to consult history.

Surely, the Obama team is smart enough to know this. After all, they have fancy degrees and extensive book learning. But it would seem that the advisors who are misguiding the President on the economy are as useless—or perhaps as harmful—as his advisors on Afghanistan. Just look at his economic team. Larry Summers is Director of the White House's National Economic Council. In his old job as president of Harvard, Summers ignored warnings not to put so much of the university’s money into the stock market. As a result, the world’s largest university endowment lost $1.8 billion. And this man is the President’s economic czar?

Or take a look at Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, who failed to pay Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes for four years. Geithner, according to one observer, “should never have been appointed to anything. He's been wrong about just about everything for 15 years.” As head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner oversaw the bailout of AIG. Further, he has been criticized for giving away tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to counterparties that contracted with AIG—a cash transfer amounting to one hundred cents on the dollar, to be exact. Geithner was a part of the problem in helping create the financial crisis and failing to protect the taxpayers from vultures. Now, calls for his resignation are coming from both sides of the aisle.

This is what happens when the so-called “best and brightest”—corporate pinheads with no real-world sensibilities, no moral compass, and no connection to the lives of everyday people— are given more power in government than they deserve. President Lyndon Johnson relied on Robert McNamara, a number-crunching technocrat from Ford Motor Company, to run the Vietnam War like a business. That war was unwinnable, if anyone really wins in war, and McNamara came to know it. But he continued to crunch the numbers to please his President, like any good technocrat. Who cares if in the end, 58,000 Americans and 2 million Vietnamese lost their lives, in addition to hundreds of thousands of casualties, right?

Waging a senseless, immoral and unwinnable war, Johnson cost himself a great presidency. Dr. Martin Luther King called out Johnson on the Vietnam War and was derided by many for doing so, but history proved King right. History has judged McNamara a sorry excuse for a person. And Johnson was unable to accomplish his Great Society anti-poverty programs because the war sucked up all of the resources. And that was when the American empire was far ahead of the competition.

Today, we have a basket case of a nation, and a president who was elected as an agent of change. Yet, the Democrats have become the party of Wall Street. The administration prefers to manage its predecessor’s messes abroad rather than walk away from them. But most importantly, the people don’t have an appetite for war. The only war that concerns them now is the war that has been waged against working people for years, by a predatory economic regime of wage suppression, deregulation and corporate plunder. Today, we see the fiercest battles in this war since the Great Depression.

Obama needs a surge of resources here in the U.S. to help everyday people. He should take a page from F.D.R., or several chapters if he must, and adapt it to twenty-first century sensibilities. F.D.R. saved the people from capitalism, if he didn’t save capitalism from itself. Now is the time to save the people once again.

"Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror," By David Cole & Jules Lobel

A Review By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
November 15, 2007

“Democracies die behind closed doors.”

–Judge Damon Keith, 2002, declaring unconstitutional, Attorney General Ashcroft’s policy of closing to the public all immigration proceedings involving persons of interest to the 9/11 investigation

“I don’t believe in Al Qaeda; I don’t believe in the boogie man, the Loch Ness monster. I don’t believe you, because you all said the same s*** about the Black Panther Party.”

-Mos Def

In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the superpower state of Oceania — a totalitarian regime marked by the constant surveillance of its people — is in a state of perpetual war with Eurasia and Eastasia. Big Brother, the leader of Oceania’s repressive regime, tells his citizens that the nation is better than its enemies, which at any given time may be Eurasia, or Eastasia, or both, and that it is winning the war against its rivals. Meanwhile, the people of Oceania really do not know for certain that Oceania is winning the war, or that the war actually exists, or even that Eurasia and Eastasia actually exist.

America’s so-called war on terror reminds me of this Orwellian concept of perpetual war. One can make the argument that both are used to manipulate the citizenry through secrecy and coercion, justify a waste of precious resources, and rationalize the purging of basic civil liberties.

A new book by Georgetown law professor, David Cole, and University of Pittsburgh law professor and Center for Constitutional Rights, vice president Jules Lobel, provides a critique of America’s post-9/11 war on terror. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror (The New Press, 326 pp.) suggests that this war has been an abysmal failure. The authors focus their attention on the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s antiterrorism efforts, the preventive paradigm.

Under the preventive paradigm, nations are attacked and suspects are kidnapped, tortured, detained and prosecuted, not based upon what they have done, but on what they could do in the future. Under this warped logic, the usual cost and benefit analysis is eschewed on the grounds that the stakes are too catastrophic. In other words, as its proponents would argue, we must do whatever is necessary in order to prevent deadly terrorist attacks and fight the people who commit them. Decisions to take action are the result of a warped calculation based on hunches, driven by suspicion and hysteria, and rife with abuse.

But perhaps the most troubling aspect of the preventive paradigm is its disdain for the rule of law. The legal process, both domestic and international, is viewed not merely as passé and an inconvenience, but a strategy for the weak and an anathema. Americans are subjected to illegal wiretaps. People are held indefinitely, based on questionable evidence, evidence obtained through torture, or no evidence at all. They are deemed terrorists because they have a certain political or religious affiliation, or belong to a certain racial or ethnic group, or because the president says so.

Supporters of the preventive paradigm cannot point to any successes as a justification for its coercive methods and the elimination of the rule of law. The vast majority of the detainees at Guantanamo (95 percent) are not members of the Taliban or al Qaeda, and draconian immigration reforms have not unearthed a single terrorist. And almost no terrorists have been brought to justice.

However, this misguided strategy has cost the lives of countless thousands in Iraq, thwarted legitimate antiterrorism efforts, and encouraged the spread of more terrorism. The international community distrusts the United States, and the Muslim world resents and hates America for its interventionism and aggression in the Mideast, and justifiably so. Meanwhile, as America embraces antidemocratic principles in the war on terror, it provides cover to other repressive regimes who wish to do the same.

The authors propose constructive solutions to undoing the harm created by preventive war, including the respect for the rule of law and international human rights legal principles within U.S. borders, the elimination of overseas military bases, the use of diplomacy rather than war and coercion, and international cooperation. Further, the authors call for the U.S. to embrace the International Criminal Court, which Bush has sought to undermine by not participating in it, and seeking to make American citizens immune from prosecution.

Professors Cole and Lobel perform a valuable service by deconstructing and demystifying one of the most deplorable chapters in American history, as it is occurring, and suggesting positive solutions. Less Safe, Less Free is required reading for critics of the war on terror and the Iraq War, lovers of civil liberties and human rights, and those who are concerned about the monster this country has become.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

American Puppet Power in Pakistan

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
COVER STORY

The raw power grab in Pakistan, in which General Pervez Musharraf has imposed a state of emergency, suspended the Supreme Court and the provincial courts, and silenced private-owned media, tells us far more about the United States than Pakistan.

To be sure, Musharraf is behaving like a caricature of a third world petty dictator, direct from central casting, with the rounding up of thousands of people and the beating of lawyers in the streets by police. He is using the war on terror as a pretext for the suspension of the rule of law and a war on civil society and progressives in that country. How unfortunate it is that so many leaders abuse their power and suppress their own citizens, particularly in the developing world, where already there is so much deprivation and despair. But from whom is the General taking his cues?

Pakistani citizens are paying the price for the misguided policies of Washington decision makers. The U.S. government stands idly by because it does not want to offend one of its primary allies in this war on terror, viewed by many as a war on civil liberties here at home and a war on international human rights law and the Muslim world. Besides, America, or rather, Bush & Co., the inventor of the preventive war doctrine, believes in cracking down, starting wars and stripping rights, based on what they think people might do in the future. War is perpetual, and constitutional guarantees stand in the way of this war, in their view. I will discuss this doctrine at greater length in an upcoming commentary, in which I will review the new book by David Cole and Jules Lobel, Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror.

America cannot lecture Musharraf about democracy because the current occupants of the White House do not believe in democracy. And various U.S. administrations have stifled democracy movements abroad (and here at home), assassinated their leaders, and selected and installed their replacements. But that does not stand in their way when they want to decide who is a brutal dictator and who is not.

So, which governments are dictatorial? Cuba? Cuba is deemed a dictatorship because it is a small island nation with a leader who, for decades, has defied the behemoth 90 miles to the north. Is China a dictatorship in the eyes of America? No, because although it represses its people and sells lead toys for profit, China owns America’s debt and there is too much money at stake. Burma is owned and operated by a brutal, insular, and ignorant military junta that will summarily round up and kill thousands of pro-democracy protestors in order to maintain power. But we can’t make too much of a fuss about it, because oil companies such as Chevron (who once named an oil tanker after Condoleezza Rice) are doing business there and need to get paid.

And Iran, of course, is a terrorist state because Bush the Decider says so. The U.S. once eliminated a democratic government in Iran by staging a coup, overthrowing Prime Minister Mossadegh and installing a puppet regime under the Shah. Not surprisingly, it was all about the oil, as Mossadegh’s government voted to nationalize Iran’s petroleum industry. Backlash against the Shah’s autocratic rule led to the Iranian Revolution, and the rest is history. Sometimes, it is difficult to distinguish the terrorists and the dictatorships from the democracies.

As Musharraf consolidates his power, unconstitutionally, in the name of fighting terrorism, so too, does his patron, Bush. The two men are cut from the same cloth. And neither can hold onto power forever.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love