Children murdered, homes foreclosed: How the government makes “mistakes” with impunity

Anyone who’s been at the mercy of the DMV, the IRS, or a health insurance company knows that bureaucracies make mistakes. Most people are accustomed to bureaucracies making mistakes. And even presidential administrations and U.S. Armed Forces make mistakes.

Yet when considering U.S. national security policies, raising the question of mistakes that cost lives is chalked up as a minor issue: “We have to expect collateral damage in wars/drones/bombs/armed conflict.”

If we know that organizations make mistakes, then it’s not that hard to see that organizations without external oversight and accountability will be empowered to make mistakes with impunity.

Not rectifying mistakes, not allowing oversight, refusing to be accountable to an external judicial body is considered by many an abuse of power. But abuse can only be claimed when a state promises to be accountable. If the state claims that it can’t be accountable, can’t be reviewed for mistakes, can’t rectify mistakes because such practices would be dangerous (the reason isn’t really important here), then at most levels, it’s hard to name the state’s attitude as abuse.

Moreover, as journalist Margaret Kimberley points out, the Obama Adminstration has claimed the right to kill American citizens without charge or trial. That’s not an abuse of power. It’s a complete usurpation of power. There is no space by which to claim the Administration should have acted differently by its own lights.

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call this, not the abuse of, but the monopoly of power?

In 2005, Rahina Ibrahim was “cuffed, detained, and denied a flight” to Hawaii to deliver a conference paper about sustainable housing. She was allowed to return home to Malaysia, but because her name was on a U.S. government no-fly list, Ibrahim’s visa was subsequently revoked; she was prevented from returning to the U.S., thus effectively ending her doctoral studies at Stanford.  She eventually finished her dissertation in Malaysia, and sued the US government to have her name removed from the no-fly list. But the courts initially ruled that she had no legal standing to sue the US to change its policies because she is a non-citizen, and the US’s efforts to fight terrorism could not be challenged by a foreign national.

Ibrahim persisted, and at least in the most recent round, won.  Despite the US’s best efforts to the contrary, Ibrahim is the first to successfully force the US government to remove her name from the list. U.S. District Court William Alsup’s ruling points out that the US government had erred: an FBI agent confessed to having filled out the No-Fly list form for Rahina Ibrahim in exactly the opposite way as he should have. Alsup had suspected as early as December 2009 that Ibrahim had been the victim of a “monumental” government error.

Murtaza Hussain, in an excellent assessment, points out that Attorney General Eric Holder abused the state-secrets privilege in the Ibrahim case. In an affidavit from April 2013, Holder invoked the state secrets privilege as the reason that the Department of Justice could not turn over the records regarding why her name was put on the no-fly list. Referring to the 2009 State Secrets Policyy established under a young Obama Administration, Holder promised that he would not claim the state-secrets privilege to hide wrongdoing, incompetence, inefficiency, or embarrassment. Nor would he invoke it to “prevent or delay the release of information the release of which would not reasonably be expected to cause significant harm to national security.”

Clearly, Holder lied. The reason we know that Holder lied is because of what was revealed in Judge Alsup’s decision.  In this specific instance, we have clear evidence that the Obama Administration abused its power—on the view that the abuse of power is constituted when an government has promised to behave within certain procedural bounds and legal limits, but has stepped beyond them.

As journalists Kevin Gosztola and Marcy Wheeler demonstrate, the Obama Administration is completely indifferent to its own state-secrets policy, except as a subterfuge. They have invoked it time and time again, for horrendous ends. As Shahid Buttar, head of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, communicated to Gosztola back in 2012 about the invocation of state secrets privilege:

 

the ability of the FBI to “stand above the law” and not answer to any authority when they outright lie or make deliberate misrepresentations about what kind of operations they are or are not conducting. Also, it makes it possible for the Executive Branch to enjoy extraordinary immunity from punishment when incredible abuses of power are committed and cases on torture, warrantless wiretapping or spying are brought forward in court.

State secrets privilege is but one of multiple excuses that the Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it, has used to expand its own power without any accompanying review or oversight of it. Whether the continued renewal of FISA (which candidate Obama voted in favor of in 2008), the NDAA 2012, NDAA 2013, or a myriad of other laws, under the Obama Administration has endorsed the unchecked expansions of power claimed by the FBI, the CIA (often in collusion with the NYPD, the DOJ. Countless foreigners have been rendered from Somalia, Sweden, and elsewhere, and interrogated without defense lawyers; numerous men have been placed in solitary confinement in prisons around the country, still unaware of the charges against them, with sketchy trials at best. Some of these men have been rendered stateless with the help of the British Home Office, such that their kidnappings could not be contested. Muslim communities all over the United States–in Southern California, Oregon, Minnesota, NY, Pennsylvania, New Jersey—have been subject to spying and entrapment.

Let’s not forget Terror Tuesdays and the Disposition Matrix, where Obama Administration officials gather to determine which alleged terrorist to execute next—without evidence, without oversight, with impunity.

It’s also been recently discovered that the FBI—the agency whose agent made a mistake in placing Rahina Ibrahim on the no-fly list–holds the power to delay the citizenship applications of Muslims—a policy enacted under the Bush Administration but still in effect today.

Mistakes, shmistakes.

The targeting of Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, the 16year-old U.S.-born son of Anwar Al-Awlaki was a mistake.

Putting post-surgery, wheelchair-bound, Stanford doctoral student Rahina Ibrahim’s name on a federal No-Fly list in 2005 was a mistake.

Hundreds of thousands of people were subject to housing foreclosures due to mistakes.

The Obama mortgage settlement allows for a threshold error rate for mistaken foreclosures.

Killing scores of civilians by drones is a mistake.

Incarcerating innocent (but not guilty) men without charges or trials is a mistake.

Holder’s behavior and that of many of his colleagues in the Obama Administration, such as DNI James Clapper, indicates that they have no problems with mistakes, or with lying about government practices, evading demands for evidence, or concealing violations with law.  This may make them corrupt—on the view that there should be a higher standard of behavior from government officials, one that conforms to consistency and accountability.

To the extent that the Obama Administration has conceded to calls for oversight, it has facilitated pseudo-review boards, as when Obama appointed the DNI Clapper to review the NSA’s protocols. Even the name of the group, “Director of National Intelligence Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies,” indicated no interest in external oversight.

On the view that lying, evading and concealing are the (counter)part and parcel of the Obama Administration’s approach to national security—the other part being that any and all strategies will be utilized without regard to accountability or oversight–because these are necessary actions to protect the public at all costs, then Holder’s and Clapper’s actions don’t reveal an abuse of power, but rather the precise and intended application of power.

 

If the Administration promises to behave within certain procedural bounds–along with the proviso that it will be the sole arbitrator on when and how to proceed to execute its power, whom it will delegate its power, and who will be subject to its power—then we should not name that the abuse of power, but the ultimate monopoly—indeed, the ultimate expression of power–and laud the Administration for resolutely carrying out its own promises and marvel at its own rare consistency!

In fact, as many have pointed out, the Obama Presidency is following in the footsteps of the Bush Administration. It might be more accurate to say that the current Administration is carving out even bigger footsteps for itself, what with its impressive record number of drone murders, solitary-confinement based incarcerations, domestic and global surveillance, deportations of migrants, and its pointed indifference to looting bankers. By claiming the right to wield power without apology in all areas of national security domestic and foreign, and on behalf of Wall Street, the Obama Administration is claiming the status of the Leviathan, as the sovereign authority in Thomas Hobbes’ 16^th century treatise on politics is named.

The Leviathan claims both to be the actor and author of the collective will: once people have handed over their consent to the sovereign (demonstrated by abrogating each individual’s rights to kill), then the Leviathan claims that power in the name of the people completely. The Leviathan can do no wrong and admits to no wrong. What’s more, unless a person can find a stronger protector, they have no choice to but to submit to the Leviathan’s authority.

So, the Obama Administration—by refusing to admit that its policies are fraught with mistakes, by refusing to concede that its mistakes have hurt innocents needlessly, by refusing to correct those mistakes in the name of state security—and by resisting all attempts to make it accountable by resorting to incarceration (John Kiriakou), mock trials (e.g., Chelsea Manning) or no trials (Barrett Brown), rescinding passports (Edward Snowden), coercing other sovereign states to incarcerate challengers to its power (Yemen/Abdulelah Haider Shaye), and killing citizens and foreigners alike without review or impunity (whether by drones, financial starvation), it claims to be the ultimate sovereign authority—without challenge, dissent, or resistance. It makes the same claim as the Leviathan.

At some level, the question that needs to be addressed is not whether the Obama Administration is interested in holding itself accountable—it clearly does not—but whether we are interested.

If US citizens are interested in the accountability from an Administration that considers itself to be not only above the law, but is unilaterally creating law and (by extension) determining others’ criminality through its own (often secret) standards, then we have to decide how to wrest back power from an absolutist state. By an absolutist state, I mean an Administration that considers dissent, scrutiny, and criticism from any lowly individual unforgivable, while insisting that its own mistakes (real and contrived) are necessary to its self-awarded status as the ruler of the world.

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This piece was originally published at Salon.com.

Don’t Buy the Spin on Guantánamo: It doesn’t mean what you think it does

This article was originally published on Salon.com on November 18, 2013.

 

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Technically, President Obama appears to be making strides on his 2008 promise to close down Camp Delta at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. But despite Fox News’ takeaway, let’s not get confused: closing down the prison has little to do with releasing the remaining prisoners, some of whom have been held there for nearly 12 years—almost none of them ever charged with a crime.

In fact, closing down the prison doesn’t clear up the issue of what will happen to the 164 prisoners, all of whom are foreign nationals, except that they will be “transferred,” a term that can mean whatever the President wants it to mean: relocating prisoners to another prison, releasing them to the custody of their home governments, placing them in “rehabilitation” facilities, or just simply: get them off the base.

The ACLU, surprisingly, didn’t speak to that distinction when it showcased the costs of keeping Guantánamo open over the last decade. They pointed out the millions that could be allocated to other important programs by “transferring detainees” out of Guantanamo: keeping down healthcare costs for military families, fully funding assistance in transitioning U.S. veterans to civilian life, covering the military’s body armor budget, funding prosthetics research (presumably for vets who lost limbs).

To be fair, the confusion can be partly attributed to the President’s waffling on the issue. He has offered several renditions of  “closing down” Guantánamo: Shortly after he took office in his first term, he conceded that some of the prisoners, despite lack of sufficient evidence or due to “contaminated” evidence, could never be tried. By implication, they could never be released.  Sometime after that, he toyed with the idea of relocating them to a new prison in Illinois. That plan would have allowed him, technically, to keep his promise to close Gitmo. Protests from various corners of the U.S. quickly put a kibosh on that idea.

More recently, the Obama Administration has been in talks with the Yemeni government to transfer somewhere between 55 to 80 Yemeni prisoners to Sana’a, on the condition of a new Guantanamo prison rehabilitation facility of some sort being built there. It would be funded by anyone but the U.S. — most likely the Saudis, who according to the LA Times, have had a successful track record of “rehabilitating” terrorists, presumably so that they will not fight back (against governments who’ve done them harm). The U.S. has promised that the “rehab” would include “counseling, instruction in a peaceful form of Islam, and job training in Yemen before any decision on freeing them.”  Still, I shudder to think which other tactics will be used. See this recent clip, which shows torture being inflicted under the watchful eye of American military personnel in Afghanistan (warning: it is extremely violent). Is it unreasonable to anticipate that that the transfer of Yemeni detainees to Sana’a will be accompanied by the transfer of torture, death, and harm to their families?

Given its own track record, the Yemeni government hardly inspires confidence in the promise of ethical treatment: at times, it purports to represent the interests of the families of the Gitmo prisoners; in the same breath, it reveals itself to be a faithful servant of the U.S. by justifying or covering up U.S. drone attacks into Yemen. And now, it is engaging in negotiations with the U.S. to build a prison/halfway house to house the as-of-yet uncharged Yemenis, going so far as to offer to pay for it before rescinding its offer due to a tight government budget. It is noteworthy that the home-governments of other Gitmo prisoners have refused to imprison them again upon “transfer,” on the grounds that they have not been convicted of any crimes.

Like me, Sen. Saxby Chambliss also thinks transferring prisoners to a prison in Yemen is a bad idea, but for different reasons. Chambliss believes that the Yemenis, at least 20 of whom have been deemed “low-risk” detainees, would be a danger to the U.S. even if they were not released but transferred to a Yemeni prison. Chambliss’ logic makes sense, and could even construed be an implicit acknowledgment that the U.S. has treated these prisoners abominably. After all, if the agents of a foreign government kidnapped and tortured you, threatened to hurt your family, locked you up in a tiny cage for twelve years while guards disciplined and humiliated you, mashed up your Bible, periodically beat you for having the temerity to be unsatisfied with the arrangement, and challenged your ability to hunger strike by violently forcing a tube up your nose three times a day— all without ever charging you with a crime or showing evidence of wrongdoing — you’d be angry enough to dream of ways of getting back at that government and its officials if you were ever released.  Thomas Jefferson suspected as much back in 1781, when he suggested that after emancipation, ex-slaves should be expelled for fear of retaliation against their former owners for the inhuman treatment they had received.

But Chambliss’ fears are not substantiated. As Adam Hudson cites in a brilliant analysis of the supposedly concluded Gitmo hunger strikes, the “recidivism rate” for released Guantanamo prisoners is 4 percent. That low rate suggests that these men, if they ever were prone to violence (which we can’t determine, given the lack of evidence) are remarkably forgiving of those who have inflicted serious violence and other wrongdoing on them.

There are other reasons to oppose “transferring,” rather than releasing prisoners. Relocating human beings who’ve been caged for 11 or more years— despite any public evidence of wrongdoing–to a prison in another country is yet another feature of the quest for global hegemony by the U.S. empire.  The Post-Human Rights State, we might call it.

In this instance, U.S. imperial power, disguised as a liberal polity concerned with protecting the freedom and rights of all human beings, is revealed when it selectively showcases certain human rights that support the destructive actions planned by the state. WMD’s in Iraq.  Women’s rights in Afghanistan. Such “principles” are clearly exhorted almost exclusively to enable voters to support otherwise dubious or indefensible policies.

The issue here is one of principle as well as of realpolitik. Under the Bush Administration and its minions, heinous and unconstitutional actions were undertaken in the name of national security. Those minions, as we know, included plenty of Democrats, like Senators Feinstein, Kerry, and Clinton, who approved and supported those actions. Counter-terrorism, as we now understand it, is about exchanging sacrificing selling out human rights principles in the name of American security while chiseling away at the rights long claimed by American citizens and residents: free speech, privacy, dissent, knowing the charges that warrant my arrest, fair trials before an impartial judge, publicly shared evidence in order to convict.

The Obama Administration unabashedly continues the destruction that the Bush Administration began in 2001 in the name of national security.  Highlights include pushing for NDAA 2012; winning back on appeal (in the lawsuit filed by Chris Hedges, Alexa O’Brien and others) the right to detain people infinitely (sic) with impunity; wiretapping Americans, foreigners, the press, and heads of state alike; and persecutingwhistleblowers through dubious laws and the revocation of passports, and in collusion with foreign governments.

It is not possible to continue to violate the freedom and bodies of so many people — American or foreign, citizens or otherwise — without confronting the inevitability that those chickens will come home to roost. I don’t mean revenge. History has disproven Jefferson’s fears wrong, despite the continued persecution and mass imprisonment of Black Americans up to this day. I mean the disintegration of a society that claims to respect the bodily and psychic integrity of human beings to live and speak without fear of despotic retribution. Consequently, the United States can no longer credibly claim to be a beacon of democracy or protector of rights without hearing the loud, widespread, jeers of derision and contempt from the victims of the US’s unceasing violence: the families of droned Pakistanis and Yemenis as well as those of Gitmo detainees who have already ended their own lives; the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, as well as those of Chelsea Manning, Barrett Brown, John Kiriakou and many others. The list is long, too long.

In the face of this knowledge, closing Guantanamo and releasing its uncharged prisoners may be a trivial act. But it would constitute one step in the right direction — of trying to observe human rights principles while beginning to forge international relationships on a basis other than the force embodied in the long reach of destructive weapons and aggressive, unchecked, despotism. Perhaps then, we might be able to look forward to reclaiming the US’s integrity as a champion, rather than the destroyer, of human rights.

This should not be who we are: Mahdi Hashi’s rendition and solitary confinement

In the last 10 days, the story of Mahdi Hashi’s hunger strike has seeped, barely, into the public sphere. There has been one “official” tweet about Hashi’s failing health, as he entered his fourth week of a hunger strike at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. There have been few stories about it since that tweet.

Hashi’s name is not well known, but his treatment at the hands of the U.S. and U.K. over the last year should give pause. A British citizen of Somali descent, he migrated to England at a young age with his parents. At 18, he was a community youth worker, and was continually pressured by MI5 (the British equivalent of the CIA) to cooperate with them and spy on fellow Somalis (akin to the tactics of the FBI and the NYPD). Growing tired of their harassment, Hashi filed a complaint with his local MP Frank Dobson in 2009.  As well, he spoke with a caseworker at Cage Prisoners, which recorded his story (see pp.18-20 of pdf). ​

But things became worse. On several occasions, he was detained at British airports, interrogated and warned against leaving. On one occasion, after having been interrogated at Gatwick Airport, he insisted on continuing his trip to Djbouti to visit his grandmother, only to be detained and interrogated for hours there. He was refused entry and sent back to the U.K. Finally, escaping the unceasing harassment, Hashi moved to Somalia, where he married and had a child. In mid-2012, at the age of 23, Hashi disappeared altogether. Worried, his family appealed to the British government, who informed them that their hands were tied, because—alas—he was no longer a citizen.

Perhaps because he renounced it, you speculate. Not quite. The British government disfranchised him.  British Home Secretary Theresa May stripped him of his citizenship, which she informed him by letter:

“As Secretary of State, I hereby give notice … that I intend to have an order made to deprive Mahdi Mohamed Hashi of your British citizenship.

‘This is because I am satisfied that it would be conducive to the public good to do so. The reason for this decision is that the Security Service assess that you have been involved in Islamicist (sic) extremism and present a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom due to your extremist activities.’

May has made it a signature of her tenure to strip 17 others of their citizenship, in each case doing so after they left the country. All but one (Anna Chapman, the Russian spy) were Muslim. Technically, the British state may only do this when a person has dual citizenship, in order to avoid leaving a person stateless. Still, it is difficult to argue that Hashi could have turned to the Somali government to defend him, even if he had learned of the decision before he disappeared. May’s letter to Hashi was dated several weeks before he was rendered to the United States.

The ease and timing of the British decision is worthy of harsh and loud criticism.  Hashi had never been arrested in the U.K. However, at age 16, he was held in an Egyptian jail for nine days for a visa that still had  two weeks left before renewal was needed. That event, which Hashi reported to the advocacy group Cage Prisoners back in 2010, was somehow linked to suspected terrorist activity, although it is unclear whether there was evidence to back that suspicion. It is also unclear what constitutes evidence of “Islamicist extremism.”  By the time he moved to Somalia, there were still no evident ties to terrorists — except insofar as his work with British Somali youth was automatically assumed to be such a tie. In other words, Hashi’s guilt was through his association with other Somalis.

For the British, whose collusion with the U.S. on most things “counterterrorism” is noteworthy, this was an occasion to let someone else deal with the “problem” of Mahdi Hashi. As Paul Pillar, an ex-CIA employee suggests in this very good article by the Guardian’s Ian Cobain on the British collaboration with the U.S.:

From the United Kingdom point of view, if it is going to be a headache for anyone: let the Americans have the headache.

In other contexts — outside of America’s counterterrorism practices, where accusing young men of criminal and terrorist activities without evidence is endorsed uncritically in the name of national security by all good Americans – we call such suspicion in the absence of evidence racism. When the NYPD does it, we call it racial profiling.

African-American, Latino and Muslim communities in New York are intimately familiar with the judgment of “guilt by association.”

Hashi was detained, abused, and interrogated in Djbouti for several months before being handed over for more interrogations to the Americans. After several months, he suddenly appeared in handcuffs in a Brooklyn Federal Court right before Christmas of 2012, along with 2 Swedish men of Somali descent.

No news had been heard about Hashi until Friday, Sept. 13, 2013, when Cage Prisoners reported that he had been on a hunger strike and that his health was failing.

The MCC, where Hashi is being held in solitary confinement, did not confirm that he was on a hunger strike or that he was in critical condition. According to Saghir Hussain, the solicitor for Hashi’s family, they learned of his strike through a phone call with Hashi, which was interrupted “after about 60 seconds or so.” Calls to Hashi’s attorney, Harry Batchelder, were not returned.

According to Arnaud Mafille, a caseworker at Cage Prisoners, the organization that originally tweeted out the news, “He was in hospital for a week due to his hunger strike. He was diagnosed with jaundice. He was released from the hospital after one week. As far as we know he’s still on a hunger strike.”

He does not appear to have been force-fed yet. The Hashi family was unable to learn much more because of the special administrative measures (SAMs) imposed on him.

According to Mafille, Hashi is refusing food in a last ditch effort to have the SAM’s, which have imposed extremely limited contact with his family, removed.  SAM’s often consist of extreme conditions, such as daily 23-hour solitary confinement, and extremely restrictive contact or communication with anyone including family members and attorneys. SAM’s have also been imposed upon Muslim prisoners for “infractions” such as praying in a language other than English, or even praying with an open mouth.  SAM’s have become de rigeur for most, if not all, men suspected of giving material support to organizations or individuals themselves suspected of terrorism. These determinations are often based on guilt by association with an organization or individual, as for persons of Somali descent who may have donatedeven a small amount of money for charitable purposes to groups affiliated with Al-Shabaab.

No new details in Hashi’s case were heard until last Wednesday, several days after his hunger strike and failing liver had been reported. Independently, it appears, CBS News reported that a new document was “quietly dropped” into the files of Mahdi Hashi and his co-defendants, Ali Yasin Ahmed, and Mohammed Yusuf’s files.

The letter, by U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, alleges that they had substantial knowledge that al-Qaida was building a chemical weapons factory, and that they had substantial countersurveillance expertise. I have written about Lynch’s allegations in more detail elsewhere, but here it’s noteworthy that there has been no mention of their supposed familiarity with a chemical weapons program or countersurveillance expertise until now.

It’s also worth noting the timing of Lynch’s letter. It is entered into Hashi’s and the others’ files one month after the chemical gas attack in Syria, and four months since Edward Snowden’s leaked documents confirmed extensive NSA surveillance of American citizens, foreign nationals and international citizens alike. And perhaps it’s also worth noting that those revelations were met by the standard National Security response that surveillance was needed to foil the terrorists, who presumably had superior intelligence capacities.

Lynch’s letter also requests separate appearances for all three defendants on the grounds that their terrorist “proclivities” might cause death or bodily injury to others, or to themselves. Given that their SAMs probably mandate extremely restrictive conditions with negligible contact with anyone or anything, it’s unclear how exactly they could be a danger to anyone.

Last week, a Twitter account called @StatelessMahdi tweeted a picture of Hashi’s mother standing outside the US embassy in London, holding a sign that says “Free Mahdi Hashi.”  It reminds me of the pictures of Yusef Salaam’s mother who, in 1989, would appear at her teenaged son’s trial wearing a “Yusef is Innocent” T-shirt.

In Ken Burns’ recent documentary “The Central Park Five,” there is footage of Sharonne Salaam encountering jeering and laughing crowds on her way into the courtroom, wearing a T-shirt declaring her son’s innocence.  These were crowds who were convinced of New York Daily News’ headlines, naming Salaam and the 4 other black teenagers as part of a “Wolf Pack,” as marauders, animals, brutes who preyed on a young white woman, known as the Central Park Jogger. Many other newspapers across the country followed suit in sensationalizing the racial dimensions of the case. They convicted the teenagers by media, as did Mayor Edward Koch, then aspiring mayor David Dinkins, Donald Trump and others. Trump went as far as spending $85,000 to publish full-page ads in four daily New York City newspapers, demanding the return of the death penalty and more police for these “roving band of wild criminals.”

As we know today, Salaam and the other four teenagers would spend years in jail after having been railroaded into false confessions. As we also know today, they were innocent of any wrongdoing. As in Salaam’s case, the signs that Hashi was going to be profiled were there when he was a mere teenager, well before his disappearance from Somalia.

The U.S. has become a nation that zealously kidnaps men from foreign countries on the scantest suspicion of being threats to the U.S. and tortures them for indefinite amounts of time. Yes, solitary confinement is torture. Hashi and his co-defendants are three among many such men held here in the U.S. — outside of Guantánamo. Many have still not been charged.

This should not be who we are.

If Lynch’s allegations that Hashi and his co-defendants have substantial knowledge of a chemical weapons programs and are countersurveillance experts, then we need to have a speedy and open trial to see exactly how that expertise was acquired — and how the U.S. obtained that evidence. If Hashi is indeed guilty, that fact will not be established through secret interrogations or unlawful renditions. If he is guilty, that fact won’t be established by secret evidence or tortuous SAMs that eliminate his ability to have contact with the outside world.  It will only be established through a lawful prosecution, a vigorous defense, timely evidence and a transparent trial. The U.S. government’s case against Hashi can only be enhanced by treating him and his co-defendants humanely and sharing the evidence with the public. Until then, skepticism and doubts about the ethics of this nation’s counterterrorism practices will and should prevail.

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This article appeared in Salon.com today under the title: “This is counterrrorism?: The Shocking Story of Mahdi Hashi”

Loretta Lynch alleges Mahdi Hashi is a chemical weapons and countersurveillance expert!

One week ago, a little-noticed tweet announced that Mahdi Hashi, a British-Somali young man who disappeared from his home in Somalia in mid-2012 and suddenly appeared in a Brooklyn Federal Court last December on terrorism-related charges, had been on a hunger strike and hospitalized with jaundice and potential of liver damage.  Shortly before Hashi disappeared (and rendered, as it turns out), the British government stripped Hashi of his citizenship on the grounds that he was engaged in “Islamicist activities.” (See links below to read more about Hashi’s situation).

In a phone call, Arnaud Mafille, a caseworker at Cage Prisoners, indicated that Hashi’s strike is in protest of the extreme Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) imposed on him, including restricted contact with his family. According to Saghir Hussain, the lawyer for Hashi’s family,

“The information was provided by MH to his father over a short telephone conversation, which was interrupted by the authorities after “60 seconds or so.”

SAM’s often consist of extreme conditions, such as daily 23-hour solitary confinement, and with extremely restrictive contact or communication with anyone, including family members.  SAM’s have also been imposed upon Muslim prisoners for “infractions” such as praying in a language other than English, or even praying with an open mouth.  SAM’s have become de rigeur for most, if not all, men suspected of giving material support to organizations or individuals themselves suspected of terrorism. Laura Rovner and Jeanne Theoharris have written extensively about SAM’s here; Theoharis also describes the horrific details of SAM’s in relation to one of her former students, Fahad Hashmi.

Four days after news of Hashi’s hunger strike, CBS News reported that a new letter was “quietly dropped” into the files of Mahdi Hashi and two others who had been indicted alongside hime, Ali Yasin Ahmed, and Mohammed Yusuf’s files. The letter alleges that Hashi had substantial knowledge was chemical weapons expert and was helping Al-Qaeda build a chemical weapons factory. The story itself is a fascinating confirmation of the thesis that the press is the government’s helper. The document “alleges,” but the press believes the allegations unconditionally.

I can’t get the video to embed, so here’s the link:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57603620/court-document-references-al-qaeda-linked-chemical-weapons-program-in-somalia/

Notice the “critical” comments by CBS “This Morning” host, Charlie Rose, as he and Norah O’Donnell consult with CBS Senior Correspondent, former assistant CIA Direct, John Miller.

The last few weeks have been filled with reports about chemical weapons being used in Syria, but this morning a new filing in an obscure terrorism case is confirming something long feared: a chemical weapons program run by Al-Qaeda.

Miller, the canny investigative reporter that he is, notices that a new letter was “quietly dropped” into Mahdi Hashi’s, Ali Yasin Ahmed and Mohammed Yusuf’s files, which point to their expertise in helping Al-Qaeda develop a chemical weapons program!

The causal overdeterminations made in this short segment are fascinating: The letter, dated September 18, 2013, was written by US Attorney Loretta Lynch. According to Rose and Miller, it confirms the existence of a chemical weapons program by Al-Qaeda, which had been LONG FEARED.

In fact, the letter confirms nothing of the sort, except that this is what the US Government is claiming in order to restrict Hashi, Ahmed, and Yusuf from any access to the outside world, and perhaps other untold, more extreme, measures. Lynch’s letter also specifies that the SAM’s restrict their access to “each other” (presumably because they might conspire to…something(?). I suspect that Lynch’s phrase indicates that they also have no contact with anyone, i.e., they are each being held in solitary confinement, though I have found no explicit evidence of this yet.

Neither Rose, O’Donnell, nor Miller question the timing of the letter—nor do they explain the purpose of the letter–in making this causal connection.

Let’s consider the October and November superseding indictments of Hashi and his alleged co-terrorists, and Lynch’s letter. Up until today, all three had been indicted on fairly general charges: (1) a “conspiracy to give material support to terrorism,” which by most measures is an extremely weak charge, usually indicating little concrete evidence, if any, that can convincingly link a person to terrorist activity; (2) Material support to a foreign terrorist organization; and (3) Firearms.There is no mention of chemical weapons or counterterrorism intelligence expertise in initial indictment.

Now, the thrust of Lynch’s letter was to request separate appearances for all three defendants. Lynch does so presumably on the same grounds by which Special Administrative Measures were ordered for them (also mentioned in the letter), namely because

The Attorney General, in directing that such restrictions be implemented, previously found that “[b]ased upon information provided to me of [the defendants’] proclivity for terrorism . . . there is substantial risk that [the defendants’] communications or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons, or substantial damage to property that would entail the risk of serious bodily injury to persons.

Indeed in the last part of the letter, Lynch states that separate appearances are requested because of the above grounds and

To minimize the potential for violations of the defendants’ SAMs during their appearance in Court and for the safety of the defendants themselves.

The safety of the defendants themselves?? From whom? Each other? From Al-Qaeda? They, like the rest of us, are already aware that these three are in prison..

Even a vegan can recognize red herring when they see one. Consider the timing of this letter. It is filed

-after ten months of silence in Hashi’s et al’s cases, and only five days after word of his hunger strike.

– fewer than 2 months after the news about chemical weapons attack in Syria, which tempted the Administration to launch a military attack in Syria.

-fewer than 4 months since Edward Snowden leaked documents confirming extensive NSA surveillance of all American citizens, non-citizens, foreigners—EVERYONE. Those revelations prompted renewed calls for transparency and accountability on the part of the Obama Administration, which has been reeling defensively and searching for new ways to make the case that the US MUST spy on everyone for the purposes of national security.

Claiming “Al-Qaeda!” will surely remind us of the need for spying. And sure enough, CBS News responded appropriately about the “confirmation” of a chemical weapons program developed through “commercial” and widely available ingredients.

Nor does CBS question why, after extremely vague charges filed despite months of interrogations, there are suddenly such specific allegations such as,

(2) the defendants have extensive weapons and combat training and were formerly members of an elite al-Shabaab suicide bombing unit.

and

(4) the defendants are dangerous and influential foreign al-Shabaab fighters who have previously employed operational tradecraft and counter surveillance techniques to avoid detection by law enforcement authorities.

One wonders how sophisticated Hashi could have been in avoiding detection by law enforcement authorities if he was scooped up as easily as he was.

I could be mistaken, but I believe this is the first time that allegations associating Hashi with chemical weapons or countersurveillance expertise have ever been made.

The rhetorical use of “expert” is fascinating given that the chemicals that are being used are most likely elementary. Household bleach thrown at a group of people can be a chemical weapons attack. It doesn’t have to be sarin gas (as Charlie Rose evokes in the segment in connection to the subway sarin attacks in Japan).

Are Hashi et al chemical weapons experts? Or are they new faces to map on convenient chemical weapons and countersurveillance accusations in support of the general War on Terror?

_______________

Other stories about Mahdi Hashi:

https://translationexercises.wordpress.com/tag/mahdi-hashi/

http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/01/04/the-disposition-of-informants-and-citizens/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-how-mi5-blackmails-british-muslims-1688618.html

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/blog/2013/02/26/medieval-exile-the-21-britons-stripped-of-their-citizenship/

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/14/obama-secret-kill-list-disposition-matrix

Obama is Channeling Bush Fever in Iran

Hi folks. Thanks for checking in. Regular readers will notice that I’ve been writing rather sporadically over the last few months. It’s not for lack of interest, but the day job is keeping me intensely busy, and will do so–I predict, until the end of April. I plan to finish a couple more in the next week or two. One will be about the hunger strikers in Guantanamo. I just need some time to treat the topic with the complexity it deserves.

In the meantime, here’s a piece that appeared today on Salon.com.

Ten years after the Iraq debacle, are we — mind-bogglingly — headed to war with Iran? The signals suggest yes

A gold star if you can guess who made the following four statements without clicking on the links. Hint: Two were by an aggressive, hawkish, Republican, one of which was famously said over 10 years ago. Two others are by the more erudite, constitutionally savvy, liberal, moderate, current president. You remember him: He’s the one  Hillary Clinton taunted in 2008 as not being tough enough to answer the phone at 3 a.m. At this point, it’s safe to say that we no longer need to worry about that.

1) “I have made the position of the United States of America clear: Iran must not get a nuclear weapon. This is not a danger that can be contained. As President, I have said to the world that all options are on the table for achieving our objectives. America will do what we must to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.”

2) “One thing is certain. The United States should never allow Iran to threaten the world with a nuclear bomb.”

Click through here to keep reading:

White Papers, Targets, and U.S. Citizens: What’s All the Fuss?

Revised 6:59 am.

The last few days, the mainstreamish media and Congress have professed shock and outrage over the Office of Legal Counsel white paper and its ambiguous rationale on President Obama’s targeted killing program. But, really, there’s very little new about it, save some ostensible rationale that will facilitate a long-standing politics of execution.

But, much news media and Congress (except for DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) have known about targeted killings for years. As Tara Kelvey and Josh Begley have noted, the New York Times has covered drones for years, even when they have ostentatiously skirted around the reasons for those killings. Similarly, the Brennan hearings were a perfect place for Congress to engage in, as Jeremy Scahill called it on Up with Chris this morning, “Kabuki oversight”—namely, the spectacle of watching senators like Dianne Feinstein and others to act as if they were overwhelmingly outraged by the non-responsiveness of the CIA, OLC, and WH to their repeated requests for an answer to the question of the rationale for targeted killing without oversight.

Why then are they suddenly exercised over it now? I’m puzzled by the fuss, given the way the sudden controversy is framed is shock and horror that a U.S. citizen might be fingered for death if they are suspected to be an “imminent” threat to America. So, suddenly—what—everyone cares that U.S. citizens Anwar and Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki , Samir Khan, and Kamal Derwish were killed?

Why weren’t our esteemed media and Congress that exercised about the provisions in NDAA 2012 that authorized POTUS to arrest and detain U.S. citizens (um…and foreign nationals) anywhere for posing an imminent threat?

After all, many more U.S. citizens are likely to be intercepted and indefinitely detained by the following NDAA 2012 provision (the one that Obama insisted be included on threat of veto. Remember?):

Subtitle D–Detainee Matters
SEC. 1021. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE.

 

(a) In General- Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.

(b) Covered Persons- A covered person under this section is any person as follows:

(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.

(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.

The rest of the clause is just as interesting.

After the November elections, Sen. DiFi tried an interesting re-do in NDAA 2013 with an amendment that limited indefinite detention to non-citizens—but you’ll remember that it ‘mysteriously disappeared.’  If anything, U.S. citizens are much more vulnerable to the arrest and indefinite detention provisions from these bills than drones strikes. Right?

Mind you, it is heartening that even ‘forward leaners’ like Kristal Ball are so worked up over the undue authority that the WH/DoJ/OLC is taking to dilute the grounds by which they justify the targeting of U.S. citizens.

But the issue with drones is not just that they target U.S. citizens. But that they miss. And kill thousands of non-US citizens. And thousands of innocent civilians. And hundreds of children. On other sovereign lands. And turn peaceful foreign nationals into hostile, understandably vengeful, potential allies of organizations that the US has deemed to be our enemies.

There are compelling reasons to review the underlying rationales and “logic” of an Administration that wants to maintain a thick shell of secrecy around policies and authoritarian practices as heinous as killing U.S. citizens. The urge to dissect these policies is especially important as we consider future elections in relation to the executive authority that has been expanded for future presidents to exploit.

While the white paper is in the news, it’s worth taking advantage of the timeliness to explore other, older, facets of the Bush and Obama Administrations’ expansion of power.  In the short run, U.S. citizens stand to be much more vulnerable to the provisions of NDAA 2012 than the targeted killing rationale of the white paper.  This is especially true of Muslim-American men, who have been vulnerable to Sec. 1032 of NDAA 2012 since the endless, borderless, War on Terror was declared. And have been vulnerable to much, much, much, much,  much, more than that.

Drones are being used for tracking here in the U.S, but not yet as lethal weapons. On the other hand, the (ex post?) rationale of Sec. 1032 in NDAA 2012 stands to round many more up in conjunction with anxieties about their acquaintances, associations, and communications in relation to the monstrous fear of Al-Qaeda and the all things “terrorist.” But we know that those ‘more’ will less likely be young white men from the burbs of Mill Valley (to date, we’ve only seen one like that–and he got a trial), than young brown and black men from the “terrorist-laden” terrain of Queens, the Bronx, or the less-than-affluent suburbs of Boston and Portland, OR.

And in so saying, perhaps I’ve answered my own question: maybe we care more about the OLC white paper because it obfuscates the obvious: these aren’t policies intended towards non-Muslims. We can scrutinize the rationale of the white memo as a way to distract most Americans from focusing on the fact that policies like indefinite detention, pre-emptive policing, and—yes—targeted killings—haven’t been and won’t likely be directed towards innocent (non-Muslim) Americans. Rather, such policies will continue to be aimed many more Muslim-Americans (and non-Americans) who won’t–can’t–possibly expect the U.S. to respect their innocence unless there are clear and evident reasons to suspect otherwise.

In America, Journalists “Push Back”: The Magnificent Hypocrisy of Touré

Update (2/17/13) below:

Yesterday, the news of the leaked Department of Justice white paper brought on a flurry of “debates” about whether POTUS’ ever-expansive rationale for targeting U.S. citizens was acceptable. The rationale is that a mere suspicion WITHOUT evidence that a U.S. citizen was a senior official in Al-Qaeda (designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S.) is an acceptable basis to target him via a drone strike.

It’s hard to have a believable “debate” when folks who should be aware and up-to-date on the Administration’s doings are ignorant, skeptical, or indifferent. Those were the reactions of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, when she was challenged about the legitimacy of WH-directed kill lists and drone strikes. This clip is from last fall, after the second Presidential debate at Hofstra University. Wasserman-Schultz–an elected Congressional representative from Florida–has NO idea about the secret kill list whatsoever (FF to 00:25 and again to 00:35-60 for “the look”):

Wasserman-Schultz appears confused and skeptical when asked about the kill lists. In fact, she has the same blank look on her face that Touré, a political commentator for cable tv’s “left-leaning” MSNBC’s SpinCity, does when his co-hosts Steve Kornacki and S.E. Cupp confront him about the fact that a drone was used to kill 16 year old Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi, the son of the alleged “#2 official in Al-Qaeda.” His father, Anwar Al-Aulaqi, was killed by drones on Sept. 30, 2011, 2 weeks AFTER John Brennan, the Obama nominee to be the next director of the CIA, argued for upholding transparency and rule of law when deciding the targets of drone strikes. Abdulrahman was killed exactly 2 weeks later. Both father and son were U.S. citizens.

Compare Wasserman-Schultz’ reactions to those of Touré on the same topic (unfortunately, this clip won’t embed on this site, so you’ll have to click it. It’s short, and I promise it’s worth your time).

https://www.mrctv.org/videos/watch-two-far-left-msnbc-hosts-actually-support-doj-drone-memo

Touré was embroiled in a controversy last year with Piers Morgan over the death of Trayvon Martin, whose 18^th birthday would have been yesterday. Martin’s ‘crime,’ as “journalist” Geraldo Rivera and prosecutors allege—was not that he was black, but that he was wearing a hoodie in an exclusive gated community. Touré was especially critical of Morgan about not having interviewed George Zimmerman–who shot and killed Martin–and his brother Robert, critically and forcefully.

You will see from the below clip one such heated discussion between the two of them where, invoking certain nativist sentiments, Touré insisted that because Morgan was not American, he didn’t understand true journalistic rigor.

Morgan is hardly an icon of journalistic responsibility, but Toure’s comments are remarkable and self-righteously patronizing:

Let me explain to you a little bit at what’s at stake here. This is a major moment in American history and America’s reaching a bit of a boiling point in terms of dealing with this issue. And when we allow for misinformation and obfuscation and people to become confused about the truth about what’s going on, then we become part of the problem and not part of the seeking a solution.

He continues to berate Morgan for “being a part of the problem” for allowing the Zimmerman brothers to come on the air and spread misinformation and lies that “we know many people will believe.”

Do you know that in the hallways of MSNBC we were laughing at you today? We wouldn’t even take ‘em–standards of practices at MSNBC wouldn’t even let them through the door. (1:15)

I’m hardly a fan of Piers Morgan; but Touré’s response was an especially interesting one. Remember this part from the SpinCity clip?

If you join Al-Qaeda, you lose the right to due process, you become an enemy of this nation. And you’re committing treason. And I don’t see why we should expand (sic) American rights to people who want to kill Americans. This is not criticizing the United States. This is going to war against the United States.

Treason is a charge that can be leveled at a U.S. citizen, not a “foreign” enemy. He is also surprised to learn that Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki is American minor. Take a look again at 00:34.

Touré: What do you mean a 16-year old who is killed? I’m not talking about civilians.

Steve Kornacki and S.E. Cupp (the ‘conservative’) assure Touré that they are talking about a 16 year old Denver-born teen who was killed. Touré looks confused.

Touré: If people are working against America, then they need to die.

According to Touré’s own standard, he is part of the problem. Is MSNBC laughing at Touré, one wonders?

There is a certain nativist, if not xenophobic, consistency on Touré’s part. Rightfully insisting on paying attention to the racist context surrounding Martin’s death, he nevertheless challenges Morgan’s attitudes on the grounds that Morgan is not “from here.” For all of Touré’s understanding about the racial context of unfair murders, he appears to be ignorant of and indifferent to the fact that a young Muslim (American) boy was killed by a drone under the auspices of the POTUS.

We see a similar nativism in Touré’s sentiments about restricting due process to “Americans”—even after he learns that Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki IS American. [Not to worry though, Kristal Ball jumps in to assure us that this issue is not “black and white,” but “definitely one of those areas of grey.” As S.E. Cupp points out, killing 700 children through drone strikes is hardly “an area of grey.”]

According to Touré (5:30), what Morgan understands as “challenging” interview subjects is barely critical, barely journalistic. Says Touré:

What you understand as challenging, perhaps, maybe that’s what goes in England. That’s not what we do in terms of challenging in America…I would have liked to see him pushed and challenged, more followup, more pushback, more research to understand.

Really? Considering that Touré’s “version” of critical (“leftie”) journalism takes the form of vociferous unwillingness to ask for proof of one’s “terrorist credentials,” or to question the validity of the white paper (never mind the range of “counter-terrorism” law that has increasingly shrouded executive decisions in secrecy), I have to wonder what it is “that we do here in America.”

Touré goes on this vein for another 10 minutes: a lecture to Piers Morgan about aggressive journalism, and how impossible it is that Zimmerman’s story is true, so “at that point, we can’t give him a light pushback; we have to give him a much tougher follow-up than that.” (6:20).

I’m waiting for Touré’s tough follow-up on POTUS’ kill lists, the WH’s Terror Tuesdays, and the white paper on targeted killing. As Touré snidely pretends to be impressed that Morgan has been covering the Trayvon Martin story for “a whole week, wow!” I’m wondering why Touré knows not at all about the 2011 murder of 16 year-old Awlaki or of the deaths of 700 children by drones.

Given his anger over Martin’s death and apparent ignorance about who Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki was, or what his crime was (namely that of having an “irresponsible father”), one could accuse Touré of having double-standards about the value of the lives of African American v. Muslim American 16 year old-teens, not to mention his own hypocritical indignance about Morgan, given that Touré is vociferously spreading misinformation.

Even then, his position regarding the white paper on targeted killings is that America is being attacked, Al-Qaeda is fighting a “post-geographic” war, and therefore the President, as the Commander-in-Chief is correct to decide who to kill–in secret and without any due process.

The last person in this thread is correct; her words point to Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England–back in the 1760’s–when they had kings with political clout (Book 1, Ch. 7):

THE king, moreover, is not only incapable of doing wrong, but ever of thinking wrong: he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness.

One wonders how exactly how our “left” political class is “leaning forward.” If they dare to concede that wrong is done, it’s purely an accident. Which must make it morally acceptable.

Feet to the Fire! Or is it “Lean Forward”?

______________________

Update (2/17/13): This article by Jemima Pierre on Black Agenda Report is a MUST READ. Written one year ago, it is dead-on accurate and precise. Pierre compares the assassinations of Trayvon Martin and Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki. Pierre, rather than Touré, should have been on this segment of The Cycle–without spin.

Swedish Government’s Story on Renditions Appears to Change

Yesterday, an English-language Swedish newspaper, The Local, reported that Anders Jorle, from the Sweden’s Foreign Ministry, called a “failure” the inability to keep 2 Swedish citizens from being rendered to the United States from Djibouti.

That statement suggests that the Swedish government actually tried to do so.  Jorle’s language is decidedly interesting: In fact, he states that the Swedish “proposed” that the men, Mohamed Ali Yusuf and Ali Yasin Ahmed, be returned to Sweden. Proposed, but not insisted.

But Jorle’s position is still at odds with his statement, issued after a visit by officials from the Swedish consulate to their citizens in NY, where they insisted that they had no opinion on the men’s guilt or innocence–but that they would leave it up to the US to decide that question:

As the Washington Post reported on January 1, 2013:

Anders Jorle, a spokesman for the ministry in Stockholm, said Swedish diplomats were allowed to visit the men in Djibouti and New York to provide consular assistance.

“This does not mean that the Swedish government has taken any position on the issue of their guilt or innocence,” Jorle said in a telephone interview. “That is a question for the U.S. judicial system.”

It is also striking, as I have written, that the Swedish government lodged no official protest against the rendering of their citizens.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry’s position also clashed against the story told 6 days ago by Gösta Hultén, a journalist and spokesperson for the civil rights movement Charter 2008 in SvD, a Swedish-language newspaper. There, he reported that an American intelligence agent told the 2 men on September 24, 2012, that they were waiting for permission from the Swedish government to bring them back to the United States.  According to him, the men were actually rendered to the United States in mid-November, but their families and attorney were only informed of this fact on December 7—over 2 weeks before they were formally charged in NY.

And yet, Hultén suggests, even as late as December 17, the Swedish Foreign Office would neither confirm nor deny that the men had been extradited to the US.

As many are asking, it is unclear why these men were rendered to NY, given that the charges involve no crimes against Americans or the United States.  Moreover, given the absence of objections by the Swedish consulate in their December 23 statement, one wonders whether and how hard they tried to keep their citizens from being rendered “extradited” to the United States.

The Deaths of Innocents: How to Understand “Collateral Damage”

Today, TransEx guest blogger Robert Prasch weighs in on the moral debate over the ethics of  US-led drone strikes and “unintended” casualties. He offers a provocative analogy that sheds some insight on the rhetoric of collateral damage.

 

By Robert E. Prasch

The devastating massacre that took place a few short weeks ago in Newtown moved hearts across the world.  It also rekindled several debates, one of which had  to do with the contrast between the West’s – fully understandable — horror at the mass death of children in Newtown, and the striking absence of an emotional response to the deaths of children “mistakenly” killed in U.S.-directed drone strikes.  This debate has received a significant amount of attention in the blogosphere, and less attention in the overseas press.  It has not been taken up at all by the United States mainstream press.  Moreover, in contrast to gun control, no major political party is interested in curtailing the United States’ several drone wars, despite its highly dubious ethical and legal foundations.

This debate turns, then, on how we in the West perceive the violent deaths of these non-Western children.  Two possible answers emerge.  The first is to maintain that “their” children simply aren’t worth that much anyway.  Hence, their deaths are insufficient grounds for concern.  It is a racist perspective, but it is consistent.  The second answer agrees that the violent death of any child, anywhere, is an equally terrible tragedy, as Falguni Sheth and Glenn Greenwald have argued.  Yet, many holding this view also contend that while they would agree that a tragedy occurred in Newtown, a similar moral status should not be ascribed to the many children who are the “accidental” casualties—even when these are the routine and predictable consequence of drone strikes.  To this line of thinking, the perception that a tragedy has occurred must turn upon the context of the death of the child and the motivation behind the killing.  The mere fact that one or more children have died by violence is insufficient to establish that a tragedy has occurred.  Consequently, the name ‘Adam Lanza’ is reviled for being the perpetrator of the Newtown massacre, but to suggest anything even remotely like a similar condemnation of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate is to associate oneself with a “lunatic fringe.”  Why is that?

The oft-repeated answer is that Adam Lanza intended to massacre children, whereas the approximately 200 children killed by President Barack Obama’s predator drone strikes were inadvertent.  In the military parlance that has been all-too-willingly adopted in this country, the latter were collateral damage (even when the term does not legally describe CIA-led drone strikes).  This answer suggests that the mere fact of a child’s death should have little relevance in our evaluation of the ethics of an action taken if killing a child was not the set priority of the person taking that action.  It just happened.  Bummer.

As an aside, I would, like to believe that even those who support the predator drone program might want the president to apologize, or at least offer condolences, to the families who have lost children in these strikes (Please do not tell me that he has not done so because the program is “secret.” Most people living outside the US know exactly which government is organizing and executing these attacks).

Let’s return to the ethical calculation implicit in the ascription of the deaths of 200 children to collateral damage:  To highlight the salient characteristics, I will draw upon an analogy:  the decision to use a pharmaceutical drug.  We have all been exposed to the advertising of drugs that – we are told — can cure one or more ailments.  We are also aware that each drug advertisement concludes with a list of warnings about known “side-effects.”  However, as a matter of simple biology, drugs do not have “side-effects.”  They only have “effects.”  Calling the positive outcomes “effects,” and the bad outcomes “side effects,” is simply a spin by the drug manufacturer’s marketing department that is designed to appeal to our hopes of a positive result.

In an organism as complex as the human body, the effects of a drug are probabilistic.  That is to say that, after an adequate number of clinical trials, researchers can acquire a defensible estimate that a given drug–let us call it N–will have the effects A, B, and C, with the probabilities x, y, and z.  Let us suppose that effect A, which occurs with probability x, is a highly desirable outcome.  Perhaps it can save a patient from death by heart disease.  However, as mature and informed adults, we also understand that if drug N is used often enough, by enough people, the undesirable effects B and C will occur with probabilities y and z.  This latter reality is the basis for the government-mandated warnings on TV (Obviously, any given person using N might be “lucky” and only experience A, or they might be “unlucky” and only experience B and C without the benefit of A occurring).

Every society and adult considering the use of N must weigh the benefit of A, subject to the probability of it occurring, against the risk-adjusted damage to society and ourselves that may be anticipated in the event that B and/or C occurs.  In some cases, such as curing a heart condition, we may calculate that the risk is worth taking.  But what if A is simply a cure for teenage acne?  We may decide that the risks outweigh the benefits, although we can be sure that teenagers, famously known for undervaluing risks, will protest.

Drawing upon the above, let us return to the matter of missiles launched by predator drones into someone else’s country.  Even if we assume (although we have little reason to do so) that such strikes support good outcomes, it’s still the case that – as with the drug described above – the destruction wreaked by these missiles cannot be nicely codified into intended targets (good) and collateral damage (bad).  On the contrary, they destroy everything and everyone around them upon detonation.  Period.  In a manner parallel to a drug company’s sales pitch, the U.S. government classifies some deaths as “good” if it exclusively kills “targeted terrorists” (how this term has come to encompass all military age males has been much discussed by others).  Anyone else killed, whether a group en route to a wedding party or children who happened to be nearby, are subject to a cover-up or labeled “collateral damage.”

The difficulty with this naïve classification is that we now – for better or worse — have observed an enormous number of missile strikes, so we have a good idea of the likely distribution of effects.  Even if we accept the government’s own classification which, as we know, is overwhelmingly biased against concluding that innocents died (again, assuming that the government has legitimate grounds to conduct these attacks), then we must acknowledge that those ordering further attacks have found the death rate of innocent persons and other people’s children to be within the zone of predictable but tolerable outcomes.  Why tolerable?  Because we have enough information to estimate the rate of innocent deaths to be expected per-missile-launched and the program is still continuing.  It follows that such a calculation has been made, if only implicitly, and the calculus – at least to those making the decision – has been found to be within an acceptable range.

I also want to highlight an important disanalogy with the pharmacological example given above.  If I decide to ingest drug N in the hopes of effect A, but end up suffering from results B and C, the decision and its consequences all accrue to me and those who care about me.  A most notable quality of the drone program is that its benefits (if any) accrue almost exclusively to Americans, while the associated costs and risks (which are known to be substantial) are being borne almost exclusively by “Foreign Others.”  Moreover, it is not a stretch to suppose that these latter persons may not wish to live every minute of every day worrying about the chances that someone very far away – oops! – mistook the “disposition” of themselves or their loved ones to be correlated with actual or potential hostility towards a faraway nation. (Also neglected by the Administration and the mainstream media is any consideration that the hostility of the communities being bombed may grow in tandem with the size and duration of this missile program).

In light of the above, American citizens have a right to know the explicit or implicit formula that validates the “costs” of killing a certain number of other people’s children per-missile-launched as weighed against the (presumptive) “benefits” of killing a certain number of persons who have exhibited a subset of the as-yet-still-secret “dispositions.”  The contours of this calculus are something that should be, at a minimum, the subject of a substantial public discussion and full accounting by the highest echelons of our government.  Are four persons of “bad disposition” worth the life of one innocent child?  Is the break-even number six?  Perhaps it is ten?   We are entitled to this answer and its underlying logic.

School Massacres and Collateral Damage: Why the Double Standards?

Revised Version.

Updated 12/29/12 (below).

One of the predominant responses to my piece–about the amplified coverage of children killed by a lone shooter in contrast to the barely-existent coverage of those killed by US-led drone and missile strikes—was that these events were not “comparable.”  I am informed by journalists with a superior moral compass to mine that this is because events like the Newtown, CT massacre are the result of a deliberate shooting of children, whereas others—like the December 2009 US-led missile strike in Yemen, which killed 21 children who were part of a wedding party–are accidental, unintentional, and part of the collateral damage of war. Therefore, it is wrong—even infantile–to compare the events.

Those who share this position include Brendan O’Neill, a London Telegraph blogger, who besides accusing me of infantilism, attributed a position to me that I never suggested (“An American professor says it’s dumb to feel emotional about Sandy Hook but not about drone strikes”). Several journalists agreed that the two are incomparable, including Rosamund Urwin, an Evening Standard columnist who responded to my interview on BBC’s Weekend Radio Program(me). (32:30)

Urwin, responding to my position that it is horrific to have children die regardless of whether they die at the hands of a shooter or as the consequence of a missile strike, said: “I don’t think it quite sits well as a comparison simply because what you’re talking about is somebody setting out to do something versus unintended consequences.”

Let’s unpack that misconception, shall we?

Over the last twelve years, there have been more than 320 drone strikes. Over 300 of those strikes were conducted under the auspices of the Obama Administration (the most recent 2 strikes in Yemen over Christmas not included). They have killed between 2600-3300 people, of which over 800 were civilians (these numbers require us to believe that 2600 people were terrorists). Around 176 were children.*

These are hardly “unintended” consequences. If 1 or 3—ok, 5–drone strikes are launched, and others besides the “intended” targets are killed, it is more plausible to believe that the consequences are “unintended.”  It is easier to believe the position of former US Air Force drone pilot, Brandon Bryant, that by droning, he and his colleagues “were saving lives.” In fact, Bryant and his fellow drone pilots knew what they were trained to do: they were trained to kill—to “target” human beings, who were supposedly “terrorists.”

This is the story Bryant lived by until he could no longer hide behind the falsity. One day, Bryant launched a strike towards a site in Afghanistan, even as he saw a child walking around a corner. He and his co-drone pilot tried to convince themselves that they had killed a dog. But a dog has 4 legs, whereas this small figure had 2.  Bryant may have unintentionally killed that child. But there were many others who died at his hands.  Whether they were terrorists or unwitting victims—he, and we, will never learn.

As to the Obama Administration and the US Air Force—it is their business to know how precise their tools are. They are completely familiar with the consequences of imprecise “targeted” killings. The murders of hundreds—perhaps thousands– may not have been the “purpose” of these US cruise missiles and drone strikes, but they were hardly “unintended.” When 180 (or more) children die because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—through no fault other than that they had the chutzpah to be born to Pakistani, Afghan, Yemeni, Somali, Filipino parents who live in the same vicinity as “suspected” terrorists—this is hardly unintended. POTUS, his advisers, and the US Air Force, are well aware that the consequences of remote drone strikes is widespread “collateral damage.”

Indeed, that is the point of using the term “collateral damage”:  it allows the US government to sterilize and transform into a technical, impersonal statistic the macabre, bloody, material effects of an imperial war to “root out” terrorists indiscriminately.  What makes the obfuscation even more predictable and still as heinous is that the hunt for terrorists is conducted in parts of the world where, as Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary and head of the National Economic Council understood, 3rd world residents are worth less than 1^st world lives.

The “collateral damage” is much more widespread than the approximately 3000 who were killed through “targeted drone strikes.” The damage is reflected in the children who die in raids, women who are raped, families who are shot by US soldiers in Afghanistan. The damage is evidenced by the children who are fatherless, the women whose husbands and brothers and fathers are taken away–for “good cause”–since, as we know, according to the Obama Administration, all men over the age of 16 “are potential militants.”

As the Der Spiegel profile on Bryant describes:

Many Afghans sleep on the roof in the summer, because of the heat. “I saw them having sex with their wives. It’s two infrared spots becoming one,” he recalls.

[Bryant] observed people for weeks, including Taliban fighters hiding weapons, and people who were on lists because the military, the intelligence agencies or local informants knew something about them.

“I got to know them. Until someone higher up in the chain of command gave me the order to shoot.” He felt remorse because of the children, whose fathers he was taking away. “They were good daddies,” he says.

If the Obama Administration tells us that the unfortunate deaths of civilians and children are “accidental” and yet necessary in their hunt for terrorists/militants, then apparently we are supposed to accept these deaths as part of the “costs of war.”  Never mind that we haven’t declared war in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Philippines, or Mali even as the US is directing tens, even hundreds, of drone strikes towards people living in these countries.

Never mind that the mainstream American media is uninterested in covering the human impact of drone and missile strikes on the families whose relatives are maimed and killed by those drones. Never mind that we never learn the names of the children who died, unless someone like Julian Abagond spends hours trying to recover them.

Never mind that these strikes are uncompromisingly illegal according to international law—and being used in place of due process, where suspected “militants” or “terrorists” should be brought to a courtroom to see if there is enough evidence for an indictment, let alone a trial. Never mind that the “war” in question is informal, undeclared, and unilaterally pursued by a Democratic President (who was just re-elected for his remarkable human rights sensibilities, as evidenced through his multiple awards, such as the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and the 2008 and 2012 Time Person of the Year Award).

Remember, once upon a time, the most visible distinction between the two US political parties was that the Democrats were supposed to be the stronger observers and advocates of human rights and international law. Once upon a time.

It is an interesting spectacle to observe as mainstream journalists and US politicians become remarkably earnest and forgiving about excuses that come from governments and elites.  They insist that it is untoward, indeed impolite–the concept of unethical isn’t even on the table–to ask for 1) journalistic coverage of the casualties material consequences of US foreign policy and 2) governmental accountability when it comes to the deaths of civilians in the course of a unilateral attack on a population in the name of “security.” How shocking it is—shocking!—to suggest that after more than 300 drone strikes that have killed more than 3000 people, including many civilians and children, perhaps the U.S. is not completely unaware of the widespread death and havoc they are causing through the constant use of drones that “target” alleged terrorists.

On the other hand, Urwin suggests that “Western media” has a tendency to “fixate on people like them [Americans?].” She cites the case of Hurricane Sandy, which had passed through Haiti before waging a path of destruction in New Jersey, noting that media coverage of Sandy on Haiti was non-existent, whereas the focus on New Jersey dominated the media.

But if we abide by Urwin’s standard for media coverage—namely that even accidental deaths should be covered by Western media—then there is even less reason to exculpate American media from covering drone/missile strikes which resulted in hundreds—thousands– of “accidental” deaths.

Perhaps the unspoken assumption here is that I, like O’Neill and Urwin, should spend little to no time considering the immorality of deaths when caused by Western governments—because that would force us into a discussion of whether illegal drone strikes are ethical or even legitimate. It might force us into a discussion of American imperialism, and its ever-voracious appetite to invade, conquer, terroritorialize, and ‘civilize’ ‘backwards’ countries by exploiting the rhetorical goals of “national security,” “saving Afghan women,” “democratizing” other countries (some of which have a higher standard of due process than even the US). In the meantime, O’Neill and Urwin might have to explain the increasing hatred and contempt that Pakistanis, Yemenis, Afghans, Iraqis have for the US—proliferated by the continual invasion and destruction of their communities, children, spouses, fathers, uncles, brothers, lives, livelihoods, infrastructures, and knowing full well that the US has no intention or capacity to compensate them for the devastation of their lives.

When did the standard of accountability drop so low, such that—even after slavery and colonialism are supposedly atrocities of the past–Americans easily forgive their government when it wages an ever-expanding unilateral assault on countries that have never officially been declared enemies of the US–never even declared to be at war with them?

It is indeed a double ethical standard to insist that individuals who use assault rifles to shoot children are evil, heinous, mentally ill, and should be locked up, surveilled, tracked, and pre-emptively policed via an FBI database, while simultaneously exculpating the American government from addressing the “unintended” consequences of US foreign policy.

As we know, the Obama administration has killed–unaccidentally–multiple US citizens, some of them under the age of legal consent, as in the case of Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi.  Al-Aulaqi was a 16 year old US citizen who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen. He was killed 2 weeks after a US-led drone strike killed his father, Anwar Al-Aulaqi, considered to the “no. 2” leader of Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Shouldn’t the Obama Administration explain the circumstances that led to young Abdulrahman’s death? Some civil rights lawyers think so, strangely enough.  As Hina Shamsi and Vincent Warren, of the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, respectively, wrote several days ago:

In court, government officials provided no explanation at all. Their response boiled down to an assertion that the government has the authority to kill Americans without having to account to any court for its actions.

Is a US federal court is also misguided to agree that the US must show evidence for Abdulrahman’s death, even if, as one unnamed Obama official suggests, it was accidental?  Again as Shamsi and Warren argue:

 But the U.S. Constitution requires due process when life is at stake. The government cannot be permitted to deprive an American child of his life without any judicial review, even after the fact. More broadly, thousands of people have been killed by U.S. drones in a program that began in 2002 and has expanded dramatically under the Obama administration.

The Obama Administration disagrees that it should be accountable for any such activity—before or after the murder of Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi. But perhaps if American media were to cover this consequence of US foreign policy as aggressively as they did the Newtown massacre, the Obama Administration might eventually feel compelled to give some answers.

As it stands now, it is acceptable to ask for accountability only from lone individuals who are not part of the US political elite. To the latter—whether Republican or Democrat—we give Peace Prizes, consultancies, and their own shows on MSNBC. No accountability needed, because the thousands of deaths by drones—as the President’s men and women tell us—are accidental. Nothing else need be said.

Forgive, forget, and address only those facts that serve power well and are convenient.

____________________________________________

*In Pakistan. The number of children who died in Yemeni and Somali drone strikes under Obama Administration: 28-36. No data on children killed in Philippines or Mali.

Update: Col. Morris Davis, former Guantanamo chief prosecutor, pointed out in response to this column that “collateral damage” legally excludes CIA drone strikes. Also, interestingly, “collateral damage” would include legitimate military targets in the U.S.:

Statelessness, Renditions and Making Examples of Muslims: The Case of Mahdi Hashi

The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human.

–Hannah Arendt (1951)

When President Obama famously signed the executive order to end torture, he did not also sign an order to end the practice of renditions that had also become popular during the Bush Era.  I suppose it is one of the many consistencies of the current Administration on which we can rely: drones, kill lists, renditions.

Perhaps that explains why we have a report of the mysterious appearance of 3 men of Somali descent in a Federal court in NY Friday morning, where they were charged with material support and arms violations in conjunction with Al-Shabaab, an Islamic group deemed a terrorist organization by the US.  A Swedish interpreter was also present.

The men are Mohamed Yusuf, Ali Yasin Ahmed and Mahdi Hashi. Of Mohamed Yusuf, I can find nothing. Ali Yasin Ahmed appears to be a Swedish resident, if not a national, who owned a travel agency in Sweden and was charged with not keeping financial records. Apparently, he sent over US $1.5m to Somalia while in Sweden.*

Hashi, 23, has been missing from his home in Somalia for over three months. Hashi was a British citizen. Hashi’s father reports that in the UK, Hashi and several others had been hounded to become informants for British intelligent agents.  Hashi refused, before moving to Somalia some time later, where he got married and had a child.

A little over 4 months ago, Hashi was informed by mail that the UK had stripped him of his citizenship for his association “with terrorist activities.” He was given 4 weeks to challenge the decision. But according to his family, he disappeared before he could challenge the British government’s decision.  Disappeared that is, until his appearance in Brooklyn last Friday morning.

As Jeremy Scahill tweeted:

Oh, you thought Obama ended renditions?

Not quite.

The FBI asserts that the 3 men were apprehended “on their way to Yemen.” According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism,

Mahdi Hashi passed through Djibouti on a number of previous occasions when visiting relatives in Somalia. It’s not known whether he made his own way to the small nation on this occasion, or was forcibly abducted and transferred to jail there.

The double-standards and arbitrary prosecutions of individuals is but par for the course for Department of Justice. But it is also interesting to ask why POTUS didn’t just kill Hashi instead of kidnapping him? It is especially interesting, given that US showed no particular interest in awarding trials to Osama bin Laden, Anwar Al-Awlaki—or his 16 year old son, Abdulrahman—before summarily killing them.

So, why suddenly render these three Somalis to the US and have them appear publicly in a NY Federal Court? If they were “accidentally” killed, there might be a small roar of protest, but the US government has stood tall in the face of much worse uproars.  Most likely, it is useful to make a public example of them to ordinary Muslim migrants who are interested in sending money to relatives or for charitable purposes, in the face of dubious restrictions.  It has been a standard practice for the Obama Administration to prosecute Muslims for charitable donations, as the family of Dr. Shakir Hamoodi and members of the Holy Land Foundation will attest.

Al-Shabaab is an Islamic militant organization that is challenging the UN-backed (Ethiopian) transitional government. It is deemed by the US government to to be a terrorist organization, and affiliated with Al-Qaeda–although this seems to be more of an aspirational association. It is also an organization toward which the Somali diaspora is sympathetic—likely because it is one of the chief organizations that distributes money for various charitable purposes in the civil-strife ridden country.

However, you will recall that the US is much less sympathetic to Somali migrants to who violate material support statutes—even for charitable purposes—than to banks who callously and openly flaunt the same statutes. Nima Ali Yusuf, a 26 year old woman who had fled Somalia as a child, was sentenced to 8 years in prison for sending $1450 for charitable purposes through Al-Shabaab. But to hear of her actions from the US Attorney General’s office, you would have thought she was a potential suicide bomber. HSBC, by contrast, agreed to “forfeit $1.26 billion and enter into ‘a deferred prosecution agreement’” for a much worse charge of money laundering and the “financing of drug cartels and groups with ties.” No criminal charges, no jail time for HSBC bankers.  The sum forfeited seems huge, but in fact it is substantially less than one month’s profits.

It is also notable that the UK stripped Hashi of citizenship, thereby rendering him stateless—immediately before he was kidnapped off the streets of Mogadishu.  So, a first world sovereign nation purposely stripped one of their citizens of complete protection and left him vulnerable to the exigencies of a first world imperial—outlaw–sovereign nation. Yes, outlaw nation: it is a nation that has a history of violating international law by constructing extrajurisdictional prisons, formulating new extrajudicial categories such as enemy aliens (lawful and unlawful) and rendering men whom they suspect of terrorism (often wrongly—remember Maher Arar? Khalid Al-Masri?) to CIA black sites and torturing them.

Did the UK know that the US wanted to render him? Is that why they stripped him of his citizenship?  It is more than likely that the UK and the US are yet again in collusion to kidnap, render, and otherwise ignore the rights of individuals whom they deem a threat to the state, or whom they want to make a “public” example.

Spare me the argument that Somalia is not a sovereign nation, which is why it wasn’t illegal to render Hashi, Yusuf, and Ahmed. Hashi was stripped of his British citizenship right before the US swooped in to render him.  As Asim Qureshi of CagePrisoners suggested on Twitter,

We believe that since the problems the UK gov has had with deportations and extraditions, it has been easier for them to remove the citizenship of individuals thus allowing them to be victims of rendition by 3rd party countries.

In light of this latest rendering, why does anyone think that Julian Assange–who has taken refuge in a stiflingly small apartment maintained by the Ecuadorian Embassy for the last 6 months and has avoided extradition by the UK to Sweden for questioning on rape charges–is paranoid to assume that it is the UK’s intention to extradite him to  the United States for torture, solitary confinement, and persecution along the lines now being meted out to Bradley Manning?

The main differences between Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are that Assange has a worldly set of resources, networks, and–now–a newly established press organization through which money for his legal defense can be channeled. Assange was able to use the first two to avoid the undoubtedly contrived extradition to Sweden by having Ecuador grant him political asylum—a necessity, since Australia does not appear to be actively intervening on his behalf against 2 outlaw first-world sovereign nations.

The main differences between Julian Assange and Mahdi Hashi include the former as well. But they also include the fact that Australia—as of yet—has not completely abrogated its sovereign responsibility over Assange, who still remains an Australian citizen. By contrast, the UK abandoned its responsibility in the sneakiest, underhanded way: by sending a letter to Hashi—somehow coincidentally timed such that he was kidnapped—rendered–with no notice given to his family–within a few days of having his citizenship rescinded.

Hashi had no time—and it is doubtful, the legal and financial capacity—to appeal to Ecuador for asylum from Somalia. Instead, he was granted the rewards of statelessness: vulnerability to the exigencies of international barbarism. Kidnapped with nary a sovereign nation to appeal to for defense on his behalf.

Although I can’t find anything about the citizenship status of Ahmed, he appears to have been a Swedish resident, if not citizen. Will Sweden intervene on Ali Yassin Ahmed’s behalf? Or will they also leave him in a similar barbaric statelessness?

__________________________________________________

*Patrick Fahlander, BA Thesis on Swedish Perceptions of Al-Shabab (Malmo University, 2010).

Newtown, CT: The Culture of Terror and the Failure of the National Security Agenda*

Yet again. Yes, again. Another heinous massacre in Newtown, CT. When I read of the details on Friday, I didn’t plan to write about it. I didn’t want to write about it.  I wanted to lose myself in the heated discussions over the misleading and graphic depictions of torture in Kathryn Bigelow’s film Zero Dark Thirty, in the Twitter project of NYU student & artist Josh Begley, who is tweeting every drone strike between 2002-2-12, in the details of the pre-trial motion hearing of Pfc. Bradley Manning as reported by Nathan Fuller and Kevin Gosztola and others; in the discussions of the conflagration of the meaning of terrorism in NY courts.  I wanted to consider those “national security” issues that form the basis of my work.  But in fact, the horrific event that occurred in Newtown, CT is also a national security issue. It is the result of the failure of the National Security Agenda put in place in the US since 9/11.

There isn’t one dominant definition of national security, but it might be safe to suggest that in the U.S., national security relates to domestic and foreign policies created in the name of fighting the “War on Terror.”  The policies of National Security relate to waging wars on sovereign Middle Eastern nations on the pretense that they have hidden WMD’s, or that their women need saving from Afghan men, or that they have nuclear weapons technology that will be used against us if we don’t level sanctions. National security refers to the hunt for alleged terrorists through pre-emptive policing, warrantless and indefinite detention, torture, solitary confinement. National security refers to the solitary confinement, humiliation, and abuse of whistleblowers such as Bradley Manning for turning over evidence of ethical wrongdoing by the U.S. armed services to transparency organizations such as Wikileaks.

The media coverage of the Newtown murders and the memorial speech given by President Obama would lead us to believe that what happened on Friday in Connecticut is worlds away from national security issues, because effective national security lies in rooting out terrorists. And we know that terrorists operate in dark shadowy cells, in the basements of mosques—in Kandahar, in Sana’a, in Abbottobad, in Queens, Brooklyn, Paterson, NJ, Lodi, CA. Terrorists don’t walk up to schools in grassy, leafy, quiet New England towns, with semi-automatic rifles in their hands, and after killing their mothers, force their way in, and shoot twenty 6 year olds multiple times at close range. Terrorists don’t have Asperger’s. Well, maybe they do. But only if they’re Muslim.

The media reports and the corresponding images of the heinous massacre in Newtown, CT have done their utmost to distinguish the unique tragedy of this shooting, to humanize the beautiful young children whose families grieve for them so heavily. Everything we hear about Adam Lanza reinforces that this was a random tragedy, fueled by the easy accessibility to guns. It had nothing to do with the Culture of Terror. Nothing to do with National Security.

Doesn’t it? In fact, the latest shooting of schoolchildren is the latest evidence that the national security project of the U.S government has failed.  The shooting in Newtown, CT is but part and parcel of a culture of shooting children, shooting civilians, shooting innocent adults, that has been waged by the U.S. government since September 12, 2001.  It has been directed by two United States Presidential Administrations, and has intensified under the second President, a Democrat.

And let there be no mistake: many of “us” have directly felt the impact of that culture: Which “us”? Yemeni parents, Pakistani uncles and aunts, Afghan grandparents and cousins, Somali brothers and sisters, Filipino cousins have experienced the impact of the culture of killing children. Families of children who live in countries that are routinely droned by the U.S. Air Force. Families of children whose villages are raided nightly in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Culture of Terror has been waged insistently through Pres. Obama’s policy of drone strikes. Or by U.S. Cruise missiles, as the one that targeted a Yemeni wedding party in 2009, in which 20 adults and 21 children died.  The Culture of Terror is intensified when the journalist who reported that strike was jailed—at the command of POTUS—and remains in jail to this day.  The Culture of Terror was waged insistently on the day that the same President was re-elected–when another drone strike was launched in Yemen, and 3 more people died. The Culture of Terror was perpetuated when the US insisted on the right of Israel to “self-defense” in Gaza—in the face of the systematic, legal, theft of land and the disproportionate “targeted” killings of Palestinians by the Israeli government.

And in case, you have forgotten: here are the numbers for Israel’s “self-defense” in Palestine:

From January through September 2012, Israeli weaponry caused 55 Palestinian deaths and 257 injuries. Among these 312 casualties, 61, or roughly 20 percent, were children and 28 were female. 209 of these casualties came as a result of Israeli Air Force missiles, 69 from live ammunition fire, and 18 from tank shells.In 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza were responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians, of which 15 were women or children, and the injury of 468 Palestinians, of which 143 where women or children. The methods by which these causalities were inflicted by Israeli projectiles breaks down as follows: 57 percent, or 310, were caused by Israeli aircraft missile fire; 28 percent, or 150, where from Israeli live ammunition; 11 percent, or 59, were from Israeli tank shells; while another 3 percent, or 18, were from Israeli mortar fire.

The Culture of Terror has been consistently, repeatedly, enforced through the innumerable practices of rendering and torturing Muslim men and women alleged to be terrorists. Without ever providing evidence of their terrorist activities. The Culture of Terror is waged every minute that Bradley Manning is incarcerated in solitary confinement for having turned over documents that show the immoral, illegal, reprehensible practices of our U.S. Armed Services at the behest of the POTUS.

The Culture of Terror is reflected in the mass shootings in Oak Creek, WI, in Newtown, CT, in the 60 other places where mass shootings have occurred in the last 3 decades in the U.S. It is reflected in the deaths of countless children (2700 children in 2010) in the United States through needless and random gun violence—despite restrictions on guns. It is avoidable violence. The Culture of Terror is reflected in the “See Something, Say Something” posters, directed by the Department of Homeland Security, found all public transportation systems in the U.S. In the Pamela Gellar anti-Muslim posters posted all over NYC and Washington DC.  The Culture of Terror is reflected in the deportation of over 1.4 million migrants over the last four years. In the separation of 46,000 children from their parents (only in a 6 month period in 2011) . In the jailing of Dr. Shakir Hamoodi for sending money to his family in Iraq despite the needless sanctions imposed by the U.S.  In the refusal to allow a Muslim U.S. veteran fly home from Qatar to see his mother until the prolonged intervention of journalists and advocacy groups made it happen. In the fear that contributing to Bradley Manning’s or Julian Assange’s legal defense funds will render ordinary innocent citizens vulnerable to arrest and jailtime and similar privation of Constitutional rights. In the development of ever-longer kill lists and “disposition matrixes.”

In each and every one of those instances, the Culture of Terror is organized and directed by the U.S. government. And in each and every one of those instances, the Culture of Terror reflects a failure of the goal of National Security.  Because the goal of National Security cannot—can never succeed—if some among us must live in fear of being arrested, persecuted, imprisoned without charges, susceptible to being tortured or killed for being Muslim, Arab, hijabi, religious, the son of a suspected terrorist, a political dissenter, a whistleblower…

The project of National Security is the project of forcing us to live in fear of each other, of cutting social services to families whose members have severe neurological, psychological illnesses–in order to fund an increasing Culture of Terror. The National Security project is the project of allocating “2/3 of a trillion dollars” for 2013 alone: for the purpose of continued US military presence in other sovereign nations. The National Security project is to reward banks and financial institutions with even more money for their achievement of plundering the life-savings of thousands of ordinary citizens. For gratuituously rendering Americans homeless through subprime mortgage foreclosures.

What is the difference between the heinous tragedy that occurred last Friday in Newtown, CT and the instances that I mention above?  The key difference–Attorney General Eric Holder, POTUS Obama, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta—will tell you, is that the poor children in Newtown, CT were the innocent defenseless victims of a lone gunman, whereas the U.S. is in the full-fledged battle of combatting terrorism—which makes the murder of innocent civilians, of innocent children an unfortunate collateral damage. They will tell you that the housing crisis was the unfortunate result of greedy bankers, but they tried to punish the bankers. They will tell you to “Look forward, not backward.”

But in fact these are not the primary differences. The primary difference is that the U.S. has legitimated the Culture of Terror—and the failure of National Security—by insisting that needless violence, the random deaths of thousands of children and adult women and men, the gratuitous incarceration and solitary confinement of thousands of young men without charges is a necessary approach to “solving” terror.

The second primary difference is the complete lack of accountability—demanded from or given by– the U.S. government, the U.S. Congress—on the issues of unjust wars and invasions, human rights violations, damaging racial profiling, illegal drone and missile strikes, and countless other damage to ordinary citizens in the US and around the world. The third primary difference is that the same Liberals who are shocked by the shooting at Newtown, CT, in fact have legitimated the Culture of Terror by endorsing, voting for, and re-electing POTUS and his murderous terrorist Administration–instead of demanding accountability.

And that same legitimation—and the absence of outrage at the murders of thousands of innocent civilians around the world—whose parents, families, grieve identically to the families of the youngsters and teachers who tragically, horrifically died in Newtown, CT—shows the massive failure of our National Security agenda and the “War on Terror” in the era since 9/11.

Yet again. Yes, again.

___________________

*Revised.

It’s Still Not Safe to Read The Nation

Update I (below):

I thought it was safe to read The Nation again, since election season is over. I was wrong.  I know. People tried to warn me–those who couldn’t bear to turn away from the luridness of liberalnews porn–that the insipid “now the real work begins” trope was gaining steam. So I resisted. For a day. And then, someone tweeted out that Katha Pollitt had a new column. That was it. I was sucked into the vortex.

Truth be told, I’m with Katha on this:

After all, if you can hold people solely responsible for their problems, you can ignore them, deprive them, even hate them.

LOVE it. Katha and me, finally two feminists on the same page. Multiracial solidarity at last. Yeppers. Maybe this Democratic victory thing isn’t going to be so bad after all. Y’know. We can hold Liberals’ feet to the fire together. Maybe warm up a bit of brandy to toast each other while we’re so close to that fire, holding feet up and all.

But wait. Right before she makes that awesome point, she says this:

The logical corollary of “You’re on your own” is “You’re your own damn fault.” Americans in general are keen on seeing social problems in terms of individual weakness—look at how we demonize fat people, as if the reason so many are overweight is just a lack of willpower. But that mindset is particularly part of the right-wing DNA.

She, my feminist ally of righteous liberal persuasion–points out that it was “rightwing DNA” that turned the “we’re all in this together” mindset into the “You’re-your-own-damn” fault mindset.

It’s true: the Romney/Ryan crowd does do that with that durn 47% who want handouts. And binders full of women. And rapey-guys like Richard Mourdoch and Todd Akin. The conservative white guys who don’t give a hoot about anyone else do that.  Sheesh.

Glad no one in the Democratic Party does that. You know, that thing, where victims get blamed. Because it would embarrassing and hypocritical—you know—if someone in the Democratic party, say, blamed Black men for being AWOL, or missing from the lives of their children, or were told to buck up and get a job. Right? And that would be, as Katha says, from rightwing DNA. Right.

Fast forward to 2:30 to get to the serious condemnations quickly.

“Too many fathers are AWOL.” “Too many fathers are missing from too many lives and too many homes.” Hm. I’m wondering if any of that has to do with a ramped up drug war, expanded and exploited under this Democratic Administration? 3 strikes laws? Racial profiling?

Again: 1 in 3 Black men can expect to go to prison. 1 in 9 Black men is in prison. Mortgage Foreclosures. Massive unemployment.

“You’re your own damn fault.” Rightwing DNA. Right.

The irresponsible fathers trope apparently is really popular among the Democratic Party folks. Remember Chief Advisor Robert Gibbs on how the murdered 16-year old kid of Al-Qaeda #2 Anwar Al-Aulaqi should have gotten a more responsible father? You don’t? Well, here it is. Starts at 2:00. Gibbs’ response at 2:40:

Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki should have gotten a “far more responsible father.” “You’re your own damn fault.” Rightwing DNA. Right.

How about another? Remember our buddy Bobby Gibbs? Dispenser of “more responsible father” wisdom? Remember his comment about “The Professional Left” and how crazy they are and ought to be drug tested? Here you go (couldn’t find the original clip, but I thought this analysis by Alyona on RT was on point).

The professional left. Reflecting the hopes for change of that part of the crowd that voted in dear POTUS in 2008. “You’re your own damn fault.” So…does that make the Democratic Party hypocritical? Or rightwing? You pick.

“We’re all in this together.” Really. The Dems and Feminists are in this together? Under the ACA act which gave us health insurance negotiated and mediated by the private, for-profit insurance companies, POTUS enshrined the Hyde Amendment in the ACA. Why didn’t feminists complain about the severe and legalized restricting funding for abortions back in March 2010?

As Matt Stoller, apparently a white privileged anti-feminist man, pointed out:

Obama is the president who insisted that women under 17 shouldn’t have access to Plan B birth control, overruling scientists at the FDA, because of his position ”as a father of two daughters.” Girls, he said, shouldn’t be able to buy these drugs next to “bubble gum and batteries.” Aside from the obvious sexism, he left out the possibility that young women who need Plan B had been raped by their fathers, which anyone who works in the field knows happens all too often.

I didn’t hear Katha, whose primary concern is reproductive rights—from which all other rights, including economic rights, apparently stem—complaining about this remarkably misogynist policy.  Maybe I missed it.

Pollitt asks:

Of all the divisions between the candidates in this election, perhaps the deepest was over whether, as President Obama put it, we are all in this together. Do we believe in solving our problems by sharing them… Or do we believe, with Mitt Romney, that each of us is on his or her—maybe especially her—own?

In which way can we interpret the Democratic platform as one in which “we are all in this together” when more than a thousand Muslim* men have been detained, incarcerated, pre-emptively arrested without evidence, placed in solitary confinement, extradited from UK when their “white” counterparts are allowed a free pass? How is the deportation of 1.4 million people from the US a victory for minorities?  How is the Democrat White  House-led separation of hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants from their US born children a sign of anything other than “you’re your own damn fault”?

I’m not a religious person, so I’ll skip the quotidien mantra about the ways in which the Democrats have eviscerated so many segments of the population, I’ll just link to my first response to Pollitt herself, Emily Hauser and a couple others on Safe States, Democratic Achievements, and Election Day victories.

Pollitt lists a number of social policies passed under the Democrats. And some of them are good (if they exist): progressive taxes, low-income grants, infrastructure, scientific research. But these policies are good for those who get to live. For those who do not have to live in fear of being beaten, tortured, jailed, bombed or droned to death.

Maybe at the end of the day, that is the difference between Pollitt and myself. I’m absolutely in favor of economic and social improvements that enhance the lives of those who struggle.  But in our society, where extra-constitutional murder and assassinations and solitary confinement and incarceration are literally everyday occurrences, life is a privilege. Not a right. A privilege. And I’m unwilling to accept that as a policy position from liberals or progressives or Democrats. Or Republicans. Except that the Republican’s political platform doesn’t fool liberals.

Try as I might, I’m fundamentally unable to appreciate those improvements by forgetting about the heinous ways by which we assault brown and black populations—in the US and internationally. And for liberals, ultimately, those two facets are constantly pitted against each other. Well, hey, but we can marginally lower our payroll taxes, yeah! And…well, yeah, the same party that helps the lives of SOME of the vulnerable…their Prez kinda kills people arbitrarily (or maybe not…but we’ll never know cause we can’t see the evidence). And, at the end of the day, not much help was meted out to the living as it was.

Here are some events that have occurred since Tuesday, when the great victory for Liberals occurred:

3 Yemenis were killed by drones within 12 hours of Obama’s re-election.

The US sent a drone into Iranian airspace.

The families of Pakistani drone victims are infuriated by Obama’s re-election.

I understand that neither Pollitt nor her liberal or feminist pals give a good goddamn about foreign nationals, or black or brown men (or women who have a myriad of other issues as a result of heinous Democratic policies) in the US. That’s fine. But it’s the hypocrisy of it all that is so galling.

People who claim to be feminists should care about what happens to women—and men of color–in all of their dimensions—reproductive, social, physical and psychic. But the list of people who count as deserving, for liberals and feminists in the US, doesn’t include Muslim women–in the US or in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, whose lives and bodies and communities are torn apart because a Black Democratic President and his liberal Democratic cronies. It’s fine to be angry with the Republicans for being indifferent-but I’d much rather that the same critics be as honest about their own indifference.

That way I get to know exactly who my allies and adversaries are, and I don’t waste time wondering why if someone claims to be a “feminist,” they only seem to care about one dimension, applied to a small segment of a population—those who fit their image of who “deserving” women and men are.

Katha and I probably won’t be sharing that brandy after all.

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*This number has been corrected from a previous version, which stated that “thousands of men are detained…” My previous reference was to Muslim and undocumented Latino men, who together would have numbered in the hundreds of thousands, but I’ve revised for clarity.

Update I: Several examples of Liberals holding Democrats’ Feet to the Fire:

1. Mother Jones has a photo retrospective that illustrates how much Barack Obama Loves Kids, Chairs, Fedoras, Pirates, and Nancy Reagan.

2. Here’s an article by Tom Junod about how much Barack Obama loved 16 year-old Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki. To paraphrase Mother Jones: Awwwwww. h/t/ @byroncopley57

3. Here is a link to a clip where POTUS sheds a tear. As Mother Jones tweeted:  “Obama tears up thanking young volunteers. Their accomplishments will be greater than his. Awwww.: bit.ly/S2inxP

4. Here is The Nation journalist Jeremy Scahill take on photogalleries and weeping.  Scahill is an accomplished national security reporter Middle East issues and war. Perhaps a sign of hope for The Nation. or Twitter.

Emily Hauser’s Disgusting Indifference to Women of Color

Update I & Update 2: Below

On yesterday’s on-line “HuffPo Live Debate” on supporting Obama, between Daniel Ellsberg, Daily Beast writer Emily Hauser, and Naked Capitalism writer Matt Stoller, Hauser quickly distinguished herself by trying to shame Stoller into shutting up about basic economic facts that pertained to women and illuminated POTUS in a less than sterling light.

It was the usual run of the mill “white women’s” discussion, reminiscent of the pablum that Katha Pollitt was spewing in January of this year. Hauser scolded Matt Stoller for suggesting that anyone might have a serious “deal-breaking” problem with various policies of POTUS/Democrats.

the suggestion that my life and the life of my daughter, and the life of my mother, sister, and friends is more or the less the same under a Republican as it is under a Democrats is so wildly mistaken as to be delusional, frankly.

Here’s Hauser on the most important implications for the “50% of Americans who are women”:

A woman’s right to choice…A women’s right to bodily autonomy. A woman’s right to be a person. And we’ve seen the Democrats working to stem that tide.…But that doesn’t mean that I’ve agreed with everything [Obama’s] done, or everything that’s been done in Congress while [Obama’s] been there, not even by my fellow Democrats… We’re seeing the Democrats working to stem that tide …But I never expect to agree with everything everybody does, least of all of someone who has to be president of all Americans, least of all me and my fondest dreams…

She continues:

But as a woman who’s raising my daughter, I tell you what, there’s no comparison that can be made between life in these United States under a potential Romney Presidency and life here under a second term with Obama.

Thank goodness that Emily Hauser has reminded us to focus on what’s important.

Reproductive rights matter. Plenty. But apparently—and this will be news to the Democrats and to a number of American feminists–they’re not the only issue that women—or men–should care about. To hear the Democrats and NOW and many other repro health organizations, the differences between O and R are HUGE—when it comes to women’s issues.  It’s true that O has mild leanings in favor of reproductive rights. But as I’ve written about over and over again on this blog—they’re mild and rather unaggressive in defending those rights. I’m thinking of Sec. of HHS Kathleen Sebelius’ decision to prevent access to OTC contraception despite widespread support; exempting Catholic organizations from providing contraception under Obama Health Insurance Subsidies (let’s just stop calling it Obamacare. It’s NOT healthcare. It’s a subsidy that draws insurance companies into the mix). It doesn’t count as big in O’s favor that he nominated 2 supposedly pro-choice Supreme Court justices (of which the only proof we have that they’ll be pro-choice is that they’re women), one of whom sided in favor of a conservative decision to limit access to reproductive rights. Of the other one, Kagan, very little favorable can be satisfactorily determined on the issue of choice.

Framing the feminist liberatory potential of an Obama win in the second term on the reproductive choice reduces women to (one—narrow—aspect of) their sexuality. It also ignores how many women—poor white women and women of color have either never had easy access to reproductive rights or have had their access slowly eroded well before now.

It is true that Obama supported and pushed through the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which gives women a more flexible statute of limitations to sue for discriminatory wages; it doesn’t actually mandate that women be paid the SAME as men. Thank the good old religion of free markets for that. The Market! The Market! The Market will provide!

I’m going to extend Emily Hauser’s call to remember what’s important. Let me go out on that delusional limb to consider what the past 11 years—including the most recent 4– has brought women who are part of 50% of Americans AND the world.

Women and their well-being have been aggressively under attack by the current and previous POTUSes. Both the Republicans AND Democrats have attacked women’s psychic, physical, and social/economic well-being.  From a global perspective, like the penumbra of the Articles listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the well-being of a woman—any woman— depends on a range of rights that guarantee safety, well-being, keeping her children safe and protected, ensuring her community is intact because, in fact, it is in “the community in which alone the free and full development of [her] personality is possible.” And that includes a “cultural right to self-determination,” as has been suggested by some in the human rights community.

I know that international constitutions and conventions aren’t big in Hauser’s crowd, what with enemy combatants and all. But they’re a whole lot more protective of the interests of humans than American discussions. So I’m going to keep with that premise.

Such a perspective means that One’s Community Matters. That same view includes the right to be part of a continuing community, where a woman’s family, neighbors, friends, and extended relatives are intact, safe, and free of harm—from others and by the state.  When the daily existence of a woman consists of living in fear that her community is slowly being eviscerated, through drones, invasions, assaults, rapes by an invading army, sanctions, and open cultural vilification or outright hatred (as in the case of Islamophobia), then her well-being is no longer intact. Her psychic and physical and social existence is no longer safe from harm.

When a woman’s son or spouse or father or brother or cousin or uncle or nephew faces hourly risks of the following: being droned to death; being arrested for unknown reasons; disappearing into the indefinite detention hole for days, months, years at a time; rendered somewhere far away to be tortured; then she can no longer count on the right of cultural self-determination—because her culture is being demolished. Her family is being destroyed. Her community is disappearing. And her ability to determine herself disappears right along with the rest.

Now, I’m not big into sister-talk, but for the last 11 years (and yes, for the innumerate, that includes the last FOUR as well), my daily routine has involved waking up hearing about one or several of the following, and wondering about the women whose lives are shattered through the following policies and practices (and if the details bore you, or you don’t want to be confused with the facts, skip past the blue):

In the United States:

-More than 1 in 5 children live in poverty in 2011. That’s an increase from 1 in 6 children in 2000.

-1.2 million migrants deported in the last 3 years by the Department of Homeland Security (and that’s only in the first three years under a Democratic president).

-46,000 parental deportations of migrants who had US born children (and that’s just from the six month period of Jan-June 2011).

-1 in 9 Black men are in prison. 1 of 3 Black men can expect to go to prison in his lifetime.  These numbers aren’t diminished by the active drug war continued under the current Administration.

-African American & Latino homeowners suffered disproportionately more housing foreclosures than white men or women. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, 17% of Latino homeowners, 11% of African homeowners are at risk for losing their homes. I have not been able to extract the number of women affected, but it’s safe to say black and brown women of color have also been disproportionately affected.

The current Administration did not cause these foreclosures. But according to Neil Barofsky, under Pres. Obama, the Treasury department deliberately and cynically did not use TARP money to help these homeowners despite the express bipartisan intent of the US Congress.

At most, the 49-state mortgage settlement brokered under President Obama will be at most a palliative, if not in fact harmful to these same families.

-Between 800-1000 Muslim men—or more–who are arrested on trumped-up charges made possible by the USA PATRIOT Act (which allows for pre-emptive policing, warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention, interrogation).

-The entrapment, surveillance, and racial profiling of Muslim men in hundreds of mosques under the NYPD and FBI.

-the death of US citizens under the age of 16, like Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi, who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen. Senior Obama Advisor Robert Gibb’s response (at 2:40 in clip) to whether that was a moral move on POTUS’ part was to point out that Al-Aulaqi should have found a “far more responsible father.” Of course.

-A series of laws, designed and passed to allow the maximum, least-documented, aggressive targeting of Muslim men ALONG with maximum immunity for US government officials and security-related employees. There are so many. Just go read Glenn Greenwald. For the last 5 years.

Internationally:

35,000 have perished in Pakistan, where the US is waging a “shadow” war against “terror groups and militants.”These are deaths from direct violence: bombings, gunshot wounds, missile strikes, etc.

-A celebrated DRONE Program targeted towards militants in Pakistan. More than 3000 militants and civilians will have been killed, more than the number of those who died in the US on September 11, 2011. Other countries being droned include Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Philippines. Soon to be added: Mali.

-A celebrated “Secret Kill List,” configured and for the authority of the current POTUS.

-As of yesterday, the Secret Kill list will be expanded into a disposition matrix which will make the War on Terror a permanent part of the lives of men and the other 50% of US inhabitants—an ever-increasing list of name of people to kill—gathered by way of National Counterterrorism Center. Here’s an excellent piece that connects the dots.

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When American feminists tell me about the importance of protecting reproductive rights, do they believe that Black, Latino, undocumented, Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani women have reproductive rights, too? Or is that one of those areas where we just can’t expect the Dems to protect “my fondest dreams”? Do we have obligations to hold the Dems accountable for active harms to women around the world?

When Emily Hauser tells me that about POTUS and the Dems’ aggressive attempts to “protect” the bodily autonomy of women—in the face of facts that dispute it, such as increased incarceration rates, poverty, unemployment, mortgage foreclosures for Black and Latina women, and increased every-other-kind-of-targeting for well-being of the brown (most often Muslim) women, I have to wonder what she thinks about the following:

Does the imprisonment/solitary confinement/indefinite incarceration of men–who are Muslim, black, Latino, Asian–count as a “gender issue”?

Does the economic and political detriment to women from having their sons, spouses, brothers, fathers entrapped and arrested–count as “a feminist issue”? By economic and political detriment, I mean the social ostracization, the material effect of the loss of income, the political vulnerability of having a male who is potentially the head of a household.

Does the deportation of hundreds of thousands of men AND women—and the separation of U.S. citizen/children from their parents annually count as an issue that “affects” women? By “affect,” I mean the the psychic, material, social vulnerability to survive, to thrive, to live free of fear and harm.  Does the legal adoption of those children to U.S. citizen parents and the subsequent break-up of families count as a “woman’s” issue?

And before someone tells me that that’s a patriarchal question—that women should be able to make their own decisions and survive independently of “their men,” let me suggest that we look around the US for a quick min: It’s a patriarchal society.

When Emily Hauser insists that she “can’t get everything for free,” I wonder what she thinks of the price black and brown women have to pay for their “reproductive rights.” That price is a hell of a lot more costly than hers: Her family isn’t being decimated through deportations, entrapments, surveillance, and indefinite detentions. There appear to be few male relatives in her life who are being decimated. And if there are, she doesn’t appear to care. Not so for most Muslim women.

To the ridiculous argument offered in that HuffPo Live “Debate” that we must support Obama, even thought he “is doing things that are disillusioning to us,” I agree: It IS disillusioning to have the POTUS take the lead on the extra-legal murders of people he and his staff think are terrorists—without EVER offering evidence. It IS a bit disillusioning to hear about a “disposition matrix.”  It IS disillusioning to wake up every day and hear about NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and the NYPD harassing Muslim men—who are the family members of Muslim women. Interrogating them. Incarcerating them indefinitely and without charges. Running kangaroo courts. Yes. A bit disillusioning. A bit.

When Daniel Ellsberg (and implicitly) Emily Hauser agree that the POTUS is a murderer, but still good on reproductive rights, I can’t help but think that Mr. Ellsberg, Ms. Hauser, just want to vote for Obama and the Democrats, regardless of ANY facts that detract from the ascription of his supposed moral righteousness. Regardless.

What a remarkable feat of hypocrisy, racist-guilt-tripping, and righteous wealthy American myopia to tell Matt Stoller and all the men that he’s supposed to stand in for, that “[he] doesn’t get to have a say on [her]body,” but that Hauser can cheer and clap as she anxiously runs to the polls to vote for a guy and his party who have aggressively, enthusiastically, and eagerly harmed the bodies of the loved ones of many, many US citizens and foreign nationals here and abroad—brown, black, Muslim,–their children, their spouses, their fathers, their brothers?

Emily Hauser’s feminism is the kind of feminism that deprioritizes the multiple dimensions of the well-being of black and brown women, in order to protect one aspect of women’s lives to detriment of so many others.  In light of these facts (which shouldn’t be taken to confuse your ideological commitments), I’d describe Hauser’s voting advice as telling Women of Color to “please f*ck off.”

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Update I: I initially omitted the following facts because they happened before 2008. But because they are related to international women’s reproductive rights, I think they bear mentioning as part of the list of atrocities that the US has waged. Dem or Repub or 3rd party, it’s still our collective government waging the assault–and many Democrats voted to go into Iraq, as we know.

Iraqi women have suffered severe reproductive problems and have had children with birth defects as a result of years of cluster bombs: 1 of 2 children born in Falluja has birth defects. That’s 50%. One in Two. Between 2007-2010, 1 in 6 births ended in miscarriage.

Tens of thousands of Afghan women live on soil poisoned by depleted uranium (which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years), resulting in an 18-fold increase in the rate of cancer from 500 cases in 2004 to over 9000 cases in 2009? The damage to their reproductive systems is untold.

Update II (Oct. 27, 2012): In her column, “Not Voting for Obama,” Margaret Kimberley of the Black Agenda Report has another analysis of the harms wrought by the current Democratic Administration.  As she says:

“If Democrats also believe in wars of aggression and bail outs and subservience to finance capital, Republicans are only left with abortion and gay marriage as issues to differentiate themselves.”

This conclusion, says Kimberly, has been brought on by progressives themselves:

“It is a lack of progressive activism which has precipitated this crisis. In the absence of strong and coordinated opposition to Democratic Party duplicity, progressives meekly go along with whatever bad deals are presented to them and then recoil in fear every four years when they are told that the barbarians are at the gate. Republicans only help make the case for this complicity with openly racist and misogynistic policies.” 

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Increased Privacy, and National Security: The Guantanamo Bay Spectacle

Update (below):

I wonder what goes through the minds of the prosecutors and Army Judges involved in the 9-11 staged spectacles surrounding various “terrorism-related” activities.  Yesterday, in Guantanamo Bay, at the show pre-trial for death-penalty proceedings for Khalid Sheik Mohammed and several others, Edward Ryan, the US Justice Department prosecutor asked for more restrictions on the release of “hundreds of thousands” documents having to do with the September 11 attacks. As the LA Times reported, Ryan

asked the military commission judge to bar the public release of much of that material to protect secret law enforcement investigative techniques and information about clandestine terrorist activities.

I reread those words in light of the numerous actions of the part of the US, and wonder if anyone of the participating parties—the US Army Judge who oversees the trial, or the prosecutors understand that they are dispelling any doubt about whether they are running a kangaroo court.  Apparently, Ed Ryan and his colleagues are under the impression that we haven’t heard about their “secret” law enforcement techniques.

Edward Ryan continues with his argument:

“That material, he said, includes ‘911 calls from individuals trapped inside the burning towers to people who may have rented rooms or mail boxes to Mohamed Atta or one of the other hijackers.” Atta, one of the engineers of the hijackings, piloted one of the passenger jets into the World Trade Center.”

The United States government has records of calls made by people from inside the WTC to Mohammed Atta or other hijackers? The Department of Justice has other–clear, primary, damning information from secret law enforcement techniques? And it’s taken 12 years to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial?

Let’s just keep going. This is better than reading Kafka.  Ryan points to the fact that similar restrictions were imposed Timothy McVeigh and Zacarious Moussaui. But McVeigh was charged, tried, and sentenced to death by 1997, within 2 years his attempts to bomb the Oklahoma City building.  Moussaui was found guilty in 2006—less than 5 years after September 11—of planning attacks in concert with the group of 19.

“Other materials, Ryan said, deal with “military operations that are sensitive” and the “names of suspected terrorists and the strategies they used to communicate with one another, their operational nicknames and code words.”

Apparently, the US Department of Justice is concerned that some part of the gazillions of people who populate the 7 continents might learn about the counterterrorism techniques deployed by FBI, CIA, the US Army, Military, and Navy in the 12 years since 9-11. I’m here to tell you about some of the secret—effective–law enforcement techniques that the US has used over the last decade. With this, I join the ranks of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange in releasing top-secret information:

–the decades long renditions-program maintained by the CIA, which scooped up Syrian-Canadian engineers like Maher Arar and sent him back to Syria to be tortured and put in solitary confinement for 10 months.

-the entrapment and targeting of hundreds of Muslims in the United States.

-the federal (and state) governments’ relentless zeal in passing successive laws and policies that expand the scope of policing powers (NDAA, H.R. 347, SB1070, S.Comm, renewal of the Military Commissions Act, FISA).

-The highly touted extra-legal assassinations of Osama Bin Ladin (marveled, boasted about by POTUS himself, and rehashed in excruciating detail on 60 Minutes, a book by one of the Navy Seals involved in the killing (somehow not banned as giving “highly classified information”), and gleefully reviewed from multiple angles in Vanity Fair, including the Leon Panetta’s and POTUS’s own deep thoughts on the matter of extra-legal assassination, and multiple rags professing to be part of the critical watchdogs called the media.

-the much announced extra-legal assassination of “Al-Qaeda’s #2” Anwar Al-Aulaqi, a US citizen and

-extra-legal assassination of his U.S. citizen, 16 year old son Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi.

–the subsequent drone attacks that have supposedly killed multiple Al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

–the killings of multiple other potential #2’s in line to Osama Bin Ladin.

I wonder if Ed Ryan finds the repeated bombing and drone attacks and complete abrogation of human rights on the part of the US—do those endanger national security? Does the NYU/Stanford Drone Report on the murders of more than 2000 civilians (and countless “militants”—defined as those who come to take care of their injured and dead in the immediate aftermath of attacks by drones)—endanger national security? How about the Columbia Report, “Civilian Impact of Drones: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered Questions,” which points to the broad range of executive and legal measures that enable any future president to kill broadly, vastly, and with ease? Are these also endangering national security?

Back to Ryan’s argument before U.S. Army Judge James L. Pohl:

“Ryan said that once the materials are handed over to the defense in the discovery phase of the case, the government does not want many of them made public in court filings or testimony, or released to the public in other ways.”

‘Discovery,” he said, “is not a public process. It’s not a source of open public access.’”

I can accept that. It’s not a public process. Got it. It needs to be secret from the “public.” Apparently, the “public” include the defendants and their lawyers, too.

“Defense attorneys asked for some modifications, especially the government’s request that the five defendants not be allowed to see any of the sensitive or classified material.” (my emphasis)

Apparently release of documents would reveal the incredible plethora of information about terrorists and their activities and contacts. It would prove irrefutably that KSM and Walid Atta and others are terrorists who want to hurt America. That in turn would endanger national security?

I wonder how the abrogation of the due process and violation of the human rights of 800 prisoners in GTMO over the course of the decade enhance national security. I wonder how national security concerns were protected by holding a number of children among them, like Omar Khadr, and clear innocents like Adnan Latif, whose repeated exoneration was ignored, until finally, he killed himself. Especially in light of the fact that the families of these prisoners and their communities are probably pretty pissed off if they weren’t before.

Clearly, national security isn’t the issue here. The drive to increase “privacy” is correspondingly a drive to increased immunity from the charge of lawlessness in the name of law. As Yemeni –based lawyer Haykal Bafana tweeted to me this morning:

What is at issue is US ability to plausibly deny that that they have initiated, perpetrated, and engaged in the most focused, expansive, and the unqualified campaign to target an international and domestic population of Muslims—merely because they could. And where they couldn’t engage in those processes, the state—under the aegis of GW Bush and the Republicans—with the unabashed help of Democrats from 2001 until today—has passed laws that would allow for the unapologetic harassment, torture, and persecution of Muslims.  There isn’t enough time in all of our years put together to lay out every instance of persecution on this site, although many lawyers, activists, human rights organizations, and pundits are on the case.  Again, Bafana states the profound truth:

Despite the still persistent charges from outraged domestic and international dissenters, US Department of Justice and US Army Judges appear to think that their actions can withstand scrutiny from international observers. As bizarre, they appear to believe that their actions are not already transparent. One doesn’t need access to classified materials to understand that the spectacle in Guantanamo is a parody of justice.

If we turn our attention to the show-trial at Fort Hood of former US Army Psychiatrist Malid Nidal Hassan, the same impression arises: Nidal Hassan’s trial for the killing of multiple people on Fort Hood Army Base has been repeatedly delayed as the trial judge Col. Gregory Gross has ordered that Nidal Hasan must shave his beard because it shows disrespect for the Army proceedings. Nidal Hasan—arguing that he is close to death and that it would be a sin to shave at this point, has refused to shave. Gross’ response has been repeatedly to fine and place Nidal Hasan in contempt multiple times. He rejects Nidal Hasan’s explanation because the sign “of his religious faith hasn’t been sincere enough.”

Which part of this ridiculous battle between a US Army judge and a suspect suggests that this engagement is anything other than act of pure unadultered, unaccountable, power—an act designed to humiliate and squelch Nidal Hasan as part of a public spectacle designed to send a message to millions of religious Muslism? Since when are American non-Muslim Army judges able to distinguish sincere religious belief from falsehoods? What exactly in their careers has equipped them to make this distinguished judgment?

Does the US Army or the Department of Justice—or even the present Administration wonder about how their actions are received by the international arena and international press?  Do they think that news of their rulings will somehow increase the trust of international observers as the US makes claims about caring about human rights violations in…well…anywhere else in the world? Except for Palestine of course. No human rights violations there.

Do they wonder about how US citizens fare when traveling abroad in the light of all of these “measures” to protect national security? Unimpeded acts of torture, lawlessness, incarceration, confinement, and kangaroo trials—in case it isn’t obvious—can only increase the national insecurity at home and threaten Americans travel abroad—even and especially for those who wish only to live in peace with Muslims around the world.
Update:

Haykal Bafana reminds me that his second tweet is in fact a quote from Shakespeare. Precisely, it’s from Act III, Scene I of the History of King John (1596).

Argo: Iran, Empire, and American Privilege

Spoiler Alert: (I point to the obvious ending of the movie; it’s a spoiler if you know nothing about the events of Iran 1980).

Update: See below.

It is very alienating to be in this country right now if you refuse to accept the premise that the lives of Americans have more worth than those of foreign nationals.  By right now, I mean three weeks before the national elections to determine who will oversee the American Empire for the next four years. Last night, based on a brief description on a commercial movie site, I tweeted outrage about the timing of a new movie, Argo, produced by Ben Affleck, George Clooney, and others. The description mentioned the true-story rescue of 6 American Embassy staff from the Canadian Ambassador’s residence in 1980 during a tense moment in Iran’s history, and one of several especially tense moments in the history of Iran’s relationship with the United States. The movie is staffed by great lights, including Adam Arkin, John Goodman, Bryan Cranston, Kyle Chandler and starring Ben Affleck as the CIA operative who rescues the Americans.

It is hard not to be seduced by the great production and staff—what’s not to love about Affleck? He’s hot, smart, with good politics generally—and by the comic plot of the rescue, which requires the Hollywood make-up artist John Chambers, played by John Goodman, to assist Antonio Mendez, the CIA operative, figure out a plan to help the 6 American Embassy staffers leave Iran. Initially, I felt sheepish about my outraged tweet, and worried about my skeptical preconceptions about the timing and tone of the movie.

My skepticism had been enhanced by the prominent production presence of George Clooney, whose assertive embrace of the Democrats during several key egregious moments in the last four years—notably after the extra-legal assassination of Osama Bin Ladin—remains prominent in my mind.  There are funny, absurd, and delightful moments in this film, whose title is a play on a joke and catchphrase used by Ben Affleck’s, Adam Arkin’s and John Goodman’s characters: “Argo Fuckyourself.” But I am not offering a film review.

While the details of the film may not be completely accurate in trivial ways, it is technically quite “accurate” in its rendering of the logic of the moments leading to the rescue by the CIA, including the brief moment when the mission was temporarily aborted. It is a refined film, which makes it difficult to do anything other than sympathize with the Americans and worship Tony Mendez, the CIA officer in charge of the operation, who refused to leave his charges even after the clandestine mission was shut down. In fact, aside from a dramatic story, the not-so-subtle subplot of the movie appears to be the celebration of the CIA as a competent organization. More, it declares that the CIA is vital to the “cooperation” between great nations. Indeed, there is a slogan to this effect that springs onto the screen against the backdrop of heart-swelling patriotic music. As alarming, it urges us to trust the CIA with lives and livelihoods of the nation, its citizens, and the world more generally.

Even more telling is what is not said but what is shown: The movie “properly” offers a brief—very brief–introduction in narrating the history of Iran from the 1950’s until the 1980’s.  The (unplanned but certainly familiar) ingenuity of this film is its easy resonance with Dem VP Biden’s assumptions, articulated two nights ago in his debate against Paul Ryan: the easy and urgent priority of the value of 6 American lives—worth so much more than the other lives (that the US) sacrificed under the installation of the Shah. In fact, those 6 American lives justified a planned top-secret mission into the confusion of post-revolutionary Iran.

The unrest was a direct consequence of what was once thought to be the US Empire’s greatest moments (the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected prime minister), but was soon recognized as one of the biggest mistakes of the American Empire under whose auspices the CIA precipitated a chaotic revolutionary moment.

Indeed, the authenticity of the original footage, the film’s zeal to “stick to the facts,” makes it much easier to inhale the spectacle of crazy imams, zealous armies and well-educated (and well-armed) Revolutionary Guards rushing here there and everywhere to shoot on sight those whom they suspect of treason to the Islamic Republic. There’s no disputing that these things happened. There is no dispute that the American 6 were “innocent” of wrongdoing, and make for sympathetic victims. They were “ordinary Americans,” which heightens the heroism of the CIA—going in under such dangerous circumstances to rescue them. The heightened contrast between the worthy Americans and the unvalued brown folks is seen in the fate of Sahar, the housekeeper of the Canadian Ambassador. She is seen suspiciously and then sympathetically as her loyalty to her boss and his guests is revealed. But even as we understand that her life is at severe risk—and that her rescue will not be by the CIA but left in her own hands, the attention is fleeting.

The story of this film just happens to resonate with the story that we have been hearing for months. It is the story that justifies the sanctions upon Iran (with increasingly frequent references to the threat of nuclear war in the hands of the same ‘crazy’ imams and their minion Mahmoud Ahmedinejad). It is the story that drives Bibi to throw his hands up in frustration as POTUS—thus far—refuses to invade Iran. It is the story that confirms the political and moral weight of American Empire. And as importantly, it is the story that reaffirms the decisions made by the CIA on behalf of American Empire. It validates the CIA’s existence, it valorizes its supposed competence.  It is the fantasy of a CIA that has probably never existed—and certainly not now—as we recall the incident of the CIA agent who shot two Pakistanis last year, whose story was covered up by an embarrassed US—at least for a few days.

It is hard not to recall the events in Benghazi last month as U.S. State Department rushed to lie about the circumstances of the deaths of US Embassy Staff and Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.  Remember the initial narrative we received from the State Department: mobs of Muslims were furious at the satire and insults of the (much cruder anti-Muslim) movie made by Sam Bacile, and invaded the US embassy to kill 5 staff, including Stevens. The ensuing “correction” that the mobs in Benghazi were responding TO the killing of Stevens and other Embassy staff—barely registers.

Indeed, the recent complicity of the media and State Department in depicting Libyans as hordes of teeming zealots and savages who couldn’t tolerate being badmouthed in a crappy movie comes to mind. It resembles scenes in Argo that depict hordes of Iranian men who lose their tempers as one of the American six takes a photograph for the “film” that they are supposedly shooting.

Even as it engages in these reinscriptions of “crazy” Muslims and seething Iranians, Argo seduces, assures, and comforts. It balances its savage-ization of Iranians with alternate scenes that intimate that ordinary Iranians are forced to submit to the fundamentalist aims of its unfortunate religiously zealous dictators. The suspense of waiting to see whether the Americans will be able to escape Iran before the Revolutionary Guard catches on to them, is heightened by the frequent splicings of masses of darker-skinned folks chanting and shouting; menacing dark and bearded men in uniforms aiming rifles at other Iranians; and a hijabi member of the Revolutionary Guard reading out statements condemning the United States for its imperial behavior.

Technically, there are no single facts or details that are grievously “inaccurate” in the portrayal of this event. The flaw lies in the way the facts are massaged and assembled to reflect a patronizing Orientalism, and of course, Islamophobia (I have taken issue with this term from time to time, but I believe it is accurate here).  Towards the movie’s end, as the Americans barely managed to catch the SwissAir jet that would whisk them away, the scene is interspliced with laughing, infantilized images of the Revolutionary guards who have been gifted with animated scenes from the faux movie that the “Canadian filmmakers” are supposedly there to research.

They, along with the teeming brown hordes, are contrasted with an unabashed, if warm and moving, embrace of the priority of (white) American lives—protected and facilitated by the help of the US’ neighbors to the north. In this movie, we hear Joe Biden’s contemptuous insistence to Paul Ryan that Afghans need to step up, that American lives are more valuable. We hear Madeleine Albright’s insistence that the deaths of so many Iraqi children (under Clinton-era sanctions) were “worth it.” We hear the reinscription that American lives are always worth more, are worth clandestine CIA operations. And of course, it enables the justification and valorization of the CIA less than 3 weeks before the US national elections: it reiterates what is already an uncontroversial point for Republicans and Democrats.

We hear the media’s uncritical acceptance of these positions by the US government.  That is part of what renders this film so problematic: there is no critical assessment of the assumptions of the journalists and other raconteurs who covered these events thirty years ago—as there is no such assessment by most journalists in the MSM today. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out in his assessment of Martha Raddatz and faux objectivity, journalists can better inform their audience when they come to terms with their own biases. I would say: Moviemakers, too.

The others in the theatre where I saw the film may have been warmed by this feel-good story of American exceptionalism and superiority. I was chilled.

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Update: Sarah Shourd, an American who along with two friends, was captured in July 2009 on the Iran-Iraq border, offers an overlapping assessment of Argo. Thanks to @standardherald for the link.

Protecting Women and Children: France, Drones and Disingenuous Justifications

Formerly Titled: Protecting the Honor of Women and Children: Allons-y!

Update I [below]

Any day now, I expect that the US will do the right thing and invade France–or at least send stealth drones–to manage the Gallic descent into degradation and chaos. The French judicial system just today has acquitted 6 of 10 men who gang-raped two teens repeatedly; it gave the remaining 4 men fewer than 3-year sentences. It gets worse: because of time already served, only one man was returned to prison. The two women were in their teens, and were raped for years by “scores” of men. I can’t summarize it. Here is the description in today’s Guardian:

The alleged Fontenay-sous-Bois attacks took place between 1999 and 2001. One night returning from a cinema, aged 16, Nina, described as a tomboy who was good at school, said she was grabbed by a local group of youths, taken to basement cellars in the flats, raped and subjected to a series of brutal sex attacks by scores of local boys. The extremely violent, prolonged sex attacks by large groups of boys continued daily, in car-parks, stairwells, apartments, cellars and the empty playground of a local nursery school. She said there would be “at least 25” youths present during attacks in which she screamed, protested, cried and vomited. One witness described 50 boys “queuing” to attack her.

Threatened that her flat would be burned down if she spoke out, she was afraid to tell her mother, who noticed she was washing eight to 10 times a day.

The women kept quiet for years about the attacks until 2005, when Nina was left unconscious by one final brutal beating following years of abuse and finally told a female police officer. Psychiatric experts had agreed that both women were the victims of rape.

We know that the French have long had a history of devaluing women and their testimony regarding rape and sexual assault. Remember the French’s response to the allegations of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sexual assaults? Scores of French denizens, including philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, rushed to defend him. They couldn’t believe that such a celebrated figure, the head of the IMF no less, could ever have done such a thing–despite the detailed accounts of Tristan Banon, the French journalist and god-daughter of DSK’s second wife, who described having to fend off the advances of the “rutting chimpanzee.” The Guardian’s account seems to confirm the same French’s attitude towards the gang-rape charges.

Clothilde Lepetit, a lawyer for one of the women, now in her 20’s, described the trials as “a judicial shipwreck. Here is another excerpt from the same article:

Another lawyer for the women, Laure Heinich, asked: “What sentence makes sense when one hears that gang-rapists are given a three years suspended sentence?” The case, which has gripped the country, has highlighted the problems in historic rape investigations where material evidence is lacking and much rests on the women’s word. Lawyers for the women said they felt the women’s testimony had not been respected during the trial.

Amid surprise at the verdict in France, the justice minister, Christiane Taubira, said there could be grounds to appeal. “Personally, I’m shocked by gang-rapes, by every form of aggression against women and I think we have to create conditions so that the facts are established and those guilty can be effectively identified.”

The women’s minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, said the case had shown that better education on sex and sexuality was needed in schools.

Sounds like the descriptions we hear of Pakistan. Vallaud-Belkacem is wrong: we need more than better education on sex and sexuality in France. We know that the French adore democracy, reason, and political freedom, because Ayaan Hirsi Ali has told us so. From the outrage gleaned, it makes sense that the rape trials were shams and that democracy is missing in France.

And where democracy and civilization are missing, we must be consistent in our stance against terror and anti-women actions. After all, we brought our beloved troops into the clash of civilizations between the Middle East and the freedom-loving “Developed World.” We needed to help replace the sovereign authority and sham judicial system of Iraq—and our troops did it! They not only toppled Iraqi oppression, they won their hearts and minds. Now it only makes sense—I’m sure Niall Ferguson would agree—that we must reintroduce democracy to the former light of the western model of fraternité, liberté, egalité—in the form of an invasion, or at the very least, drones.

Why am I so sure? Because we have heard from various elements that the vicious attack by the Taliban on the 14 year old Pakistani girl indeed confirms–justifies the POTUS’ decision to continue a (no-longer-stealthy) drone war. As Paul Whitefield of the Los Angeles Times sagely points out:

And this isn’t the horrible “honor killings” or acid attacks or whatever that we read about. This is a group attempting to kill a young girl to make a political statement.

How do you deal with such people? Sadly, I say you have to fight fire with fire.

Gibson’s right. People are cowering in terror in their homes in Pakistan, fearful of U.S. drones. But there are many kinds of terror, and in Pakistan, too much of it is home-grown.

So at this point, those terrible, deadly drones help Americans — and girls like Malala Yousafzai — sleep at night, knowing that they keep the Taliban from doing the same.

Paul Whitefield seems pretty content to discard due process and instead depend upon the razor sharp intel (and unverifiable for national security purposes) that justifies countless assassinations of foreign and U.S. nationals, interrogations (cf Maher Arar, Omar Khadr, Adnan Latif), torture, renditions, the declaration of wars on terror in “any” parts of the world where the United States sees that lives of women are at stake. He echoes Former First Lady Laura Bush’s sentiments, who informed us under her spouse’s Administration that we needed to invade Afghanistan because women were suffering under the Taliban. I take solace in the concern of American women-feminists—looking out for their oppressed counterparts—and I look forward to their consistent and applied pressure on their spouses to do the right thing in France. So I’m expecting Whitefield and other feminists to champion and endorse an invasion of France along with Cleveland, Texas (see below), and elsewhere where women can’t expect to sleep safely at night—or during the day.

Irony aside—let me say clearly that what happened to Malala Yousafszai, the 14 year-old outspoken activist shot by the Taliban in Pakistan is unjust, outrageous and shocking. According to mainstream media, it has—and should have–sparked outrage in Pakistan. In the United States, the widespread attention to the shooting is notable in the near eclipse of attention to the violence targeted against women all over the U.S., Canada, and other “first world” Western nations. I can’t help but wonder about the outrage—especially in contrast to the continued gang-rape of the two French teens, the gang-rape of the 11 year old in Cleveland, Texas by 20, TWENTY, men—a rape by the way that induced the denizens of Cleveland, TX to lay blame upon the victim for being promiscuous, for dressing too provocatively (and we think the Taliban are the only bass-ackwards group out there?). It makes me physically ill to consider the way an entire town flanked to protect the 20 men involved in raping her. I’m waiting for U.S. Armed Forces to invade Cleveland, Texas, or maybe send some drones in to bring some civility to those adults.

It makes me equally physically ill to hear the smug, righteous screams of Americans who exploit the horrific Taliban attack on Malala Yousafszai to justify the deaths of 2000-3000 men.

[An aside: these are the numbers that we have if we take seriously the report that “only” 1/6^th to 1/3^rd of the victims who’ve died from drone attacks since 2004 were civilians. And that’s before we try to reconcile that statement with the “Living Under Drones” Stanford/NYU report released in the last month that

All reporting of government accounts of “militant” deaths should include acknowledgment that the US government counts all adult males killed by strikes as “militants,” absent exonerating evidence. Media accounts relying on anonymous government sources should also highlight the fact of their single-source information and of the past record of false government reports.

Avid followers of the drone “debates” will be familiar with American Security Fellow Joshua Foust’s criticism of the report—including the charge of “bias” of small sample size of interviewees, and nonrandom interviewees, i.e. concluding that the report did not try objectively to count who really was a civilian victim and who was not. They might also be familiar with Kevin Gosztola’s and others’ ensuing challenges and exchanges to Foust as well as Gosztola’s challenge to Reuters reporter Myra MacDonald. The fairly obvious and definitive point of rebuttal was that it’s a bit hard for dead civilians to prove their innocence. And by extension, that the numbers are most likely severely deflated. Apologies to those of you who found that statement a bit obvious.]

The retroactive justification of an eight-year systemic drone war on Pakistan (ramped up 400% under the present Democratic POTUS) with a country with whom we are not officially at war–is heinous and morally despicable. It reminds me of the various right-wing charges of moral equivocation in 2002 as critics of the war on Terror suggested that the U.S. historical presence as an empire might have had something to do with the attacks upon the Twin Towers. How ironic that the apologists for the drones in Pakistan are engaging in a similar, morally problematic game of retroactive justification and moral equivocation.

If we really care about protecting the safety and security of women and children then presumably, those same defenders of drones will rise up to demand that we send in the National Guard and Active forces to France, Sweden, the UK, and the rest of Europe-where children have been captured, tortured, raped. If we really care about protecting the safety and security of dissenters and activists, then presumably, those same defenders of drones will rise up to demand the release of Julian Assange, Bradly Manning, Tarek Mehanna, and hundreds of others who have insisted that they want a life. Those same defenders will demand a repeal of Section 1031 of NDAA 2012, FISA, H.R. 347, and countless other erosions upon free speech, whistleblowing, and dissent in the U.S. [I am preparing for the onslaught of detractors who will call me batshit crazy for insisting upon a dose of skepticism with respect to assurances by the U.S.—or any government—about actions taken to protect its citizens that require secrecy and confidentiality. See every post I’ve ever written in the last year on PATRIOT Act, NDAA, FISA, H.R. 347, etc. Despite those seductive assurances, shockingly, I still tend to feel that I’m owed an accounting for the state’s actions in form of legal procedure. Must be PMS.]

I’m waiting, Paul Whitefield, Joshua Foust, Myra MacDonald, and others—to join forces to protect the safety of women, children, and activists around the world. Anyone? Hello? Hello?

Update:

Sadia Toor has an excellent article, “Imperialist Feminism Redux,” in Dialectical Anthropology. There, she argues seriously & clearly against the imperialist mentality that justifies drones, wars, invasions, i.e. what I am satirizing in this piece. Thanks to @avelokiteshvara for the lead.

White Privilege, the Dems, and the Rhetoric of “Care”

To read some of the exchanges over the last week in the blogosphere, apparently “white privilege” means that one doesn’t attend to race and class issues at home, but instead privileges “foreign policy” and “national security” issues. This implies that there is privilege in worrying about the bodies and violations to foreign nationals over the bodies of brown and black Americans. Ok, let me grant that assumption for a second.  Still, I wonder why issues such as warrantless wiretapping, surveillance, unlawful (and supposedly “lawful,” warrantless) detention of US Muslim men of South Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds, the nullification of judicial review, the assassination of not just 1, but multiple, US citizens, the incarceration of U.S. citizens (black and brown), should be deprioritized by American voters. Are these not issues that should be of concern especially to folks who are unencumbered by an excess of “white privilege”?

Still granting the assumption that worrying about foreign issues involves undue privilege: I wonder, after considering some of the policies that the present Administration has supported and backed (from NDAA 2012, Expansion and Renewal of FISA, Expansion of prisons, expansion of DHS deportations of migrants; expansion of detention centers), in which ways have U.S people of color and poor  people benefited under the present Democratic Administration? There may be some, such as college loans forgiveness, and the absence of a concerted attack on reproductive rights. But there are certainly anti-choice Dems, such as Harry Reid, who have managed to stifle somewhat. I would hardly call Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ decision to revoke access to OTC contraception a big win for pro-choice folks.

According to a number of progressive economists, the top 20% has remained pretty unaffected by the present Democratic Administration, and I’m betting that includes some of the folks lobbing around the “white privilege” accusation.  Could it not be the case that one is exemplifying white privilege by deciding that one should be loyal to the Administration and the Democratic Party in the face of a range of demonstrable discriminations against certain kinds of minority populations? In the face of violations to certain kinds of brown and black bodies? Does such a loyalty not imply that those who are in a position to make choices are simply refusing to see the world that they themselves have made, by insisting on a repeated loyalty to the Democratic Party, despite the years of abusive behavior on the part of the Dems? Charles Mills calls this “the epistemology of ignorance,” namely that state of the world in which whites refuse to see the world that they themselves have made.

According to a report by the Pew Research Center, “Median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and by 53% among black households during the financial crisis, compared with a fall of just 16% among white households.”

Presumably, the President so cared about the devastating impact to US populations of color that he was going to support California Attorney General Kamala Harris to get as much from the banks as she could, right? POTUS’ response was to pressure Harris to accept a ridiculous settlement with the 5 BIG BANKS of $25 billion dollars, which cashes out either to $750 or $840—yes, you read that right– per household for families who lost their houses due to subprime mortgages.

Again, according to the Pew report:

“A disproportionate share of Hispanics live in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, which were in the vanguard of the housing real estate market bubble of the 1990s and early 2000s but that have since been among the states experiencing the steepest declines in housing values.”

Take a look at those quotes again. This is not a “white privilege” issue. It affects U.S. minorities more so than whites. Clearly, the Big Banks must have “cared” about those homeowners, too, right? They must just have been broke, to pay so little. Right. According to today’s Bloomberg, “Even as U.S. unemployment has remained above 8 percent for 43 months, the country’s biggest banks are making almost as much as they ever have.” Namely, a combined $63 billion in profits.  The original rescue was signed by Bush, but what exactly did O require in terms of accountability from the banks? Anyone?

As I mentioned in my last post, the privilege of deciding that the lives of others are easy to sacrifice, the privilege of deciding that certain civil rights are more important than human rights violations will backfire—This is nationalist privilege—American privilege, to be exact. And it has already backfired.  We are seeing the backlash in all kinds of cases—cases like that of Dr. Shakir Hamoodi, Sami Al-Arian, and hundreds of others.

Ultimately, I don’t care who Democrats vote for because I accept the argument that “the structure is broken.”  If it’s broken, voting for the Democrats yet again isn’t going to fix it. Instead, it’s going to amplify the message that Democratic voters have sent for the last 20 years: Please, screw us again. Abandon your constituents for yet another 4 years. And we’ll reward you as you move even further to the right after every term—we’ll send you the message that “we like it, we love it, and we want more of it.” It’s a state-of-emergency politics: It’s an emergency, so we have to vote for the “lesser evil” of 2 states. And the cycle will continue.

If voting for the incumbent accords with your conscience, then by all means do so. If you, like me–despise the Democratic record on wars, drones, murders, assassinations, detention, torture, solitary confinement of foreign nationals without charges (and that includes migrants of various nationalities—since solitary confinement is used more and more widely), but still feel that this vote matters, voting for POTUS is a better option to other options, do what you need to do.

But don’t bake me a dungpie and tell me it’s my birthday. Just tell the truth. Tell the truth about the Democrats’ record on civil liberties issues, on NDAA 2012, on H.R. 347, on S.Comm, on detention policies, on migration policies, on deportation policies. Don’t tell me that the Democrats “care” more, or that “Obama’s heart is in the right place,” or “he would have done more if we didn’t have a GOP-led Congress (um—again, how did that stop the Dems from getting things done in the first two years under Obama?), or that he’s pro-union, or that innocent civilians aren’t getting killed, or that the Affordable Care Act involved actual health care reform, or that Obama’s not interested in cutting Social Security, or that the Dems “care” about civil liberties or human rights violations.

And by the way, how does one know whether Obama or the Dems “care”? Just because they say so? If POTUS is willing to lie about not wanting the U.S. government to be able to kill Americans (thanks, Sen. Carl Levin), then why wouldn’t he lie about whether he “cares” for you, me, or black and brown folk?

Why don’t the same folks who insist that we must vote for the Dems believe that the Republicans “care” just as much? Because of their track record, I hear. Ok, that’s my standard for the Democrats, too. For those who insist that POTUS/Dems cares about poor black and brown folks, I’ve explored the track record on “care” all over this site. For some examples, see here and here and here.

A friend whose political insights I respect tremendously suggested that she was voting for the incumbent precisely because there are racists who will vote against him because he’s black. I can respect that.  Others suggest that they’re voting Dem to “prevent GOP access to power.” Okay, I can live with that—but I don’t buy that this will increase the likelihood that poor folks, folks of color in the US and internationally will be less vulnerable to having social safety nets or economic structures decimated by Democrats.

Just do what you need to do, but stop insisting that folks who reject the false dichotomy between the lives of U.S. folks of color, black and brown, and the lives of international folks of color are “conservatives,” or libertarians.

And the day after the election, for those of you who feel like you had to vote for the Democrats as the least crappy option among crappy options, please, let’s start pursuing the viability of a third party. We need to change the conversation, we need to hold the Democrats accountable for abandoning voters, poor folks, black and brown folks—in the US and elsewhere. Only the threat of not being re-elected, of losing “winnable votes” will bring them around.

The Enemy of My Enemy is Not Always My Friend: Iran, Anti-War Activism, and Sexist Aggression

This open letter from Raha Iranian Feminist Collective crossed my desk yesterday.  I post it today because the lessons gleaned from it are larger than just about pro-Iran/anti-Iran conflicts. This letter points to the inability of many anti-war activists and thinkers to see the nuances of progressive politics. In this case, as Raha demonstrates, it is possible to be both anti-war, anti-interventionist in Iran, AND critical of Islamic republic politics of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.  Raha has written an excellent—and I mean excellent–analysis of the subtleties of such politics here.

This letter points to the larger sexist, chauvinist, politics of progressive politics that have the danger to hurt women and derail solidarity through brute aggression. Aggression in the name of anti-war, anti-interventionist politics is an ironic mirror on the aggressive US military interventions in the name of freedom and democracy. The acceptance of such aggression in the name of a superior politics—whether against (women) activists with whom you disagree, or against foreign civilians that one’s government is bombing—signals a serious moral decay on the part of progressives and liberals.

As Omar Dahi commented here in March 2012 about the civil uprisings in Syria, the American left needs a more complicated politics that can simultaneously recognize the injustice of US imperialist politics AND the coercive and corrupt politics of leaders like Bashar Al-Asad and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad—politics that have left their people economically and politically disfranchised– without accusing others of being “pro-imperialist,” “pro-Zionist,” “pro-interventionist.”

[Update: For another nuanced article that explains the issues and principles at stake for progressive activists in relation to Iran, see this excellent piece by Danny Postel, “Iran, the Left, and the Non-Aligned Movement: A Guide for the Perplexed.”]

The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. Read on:

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In light of recent hostile incidents within the anti-war movement against members of Raha and others who oppose war, sanctions, and state repression in Iran, Raha Iranian Feminist Collective, along with Havaar: Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions, and State Repression, have written the below.

Please read and forward on as you see fit and feel free to comment to Raha at: rahanyc@gmail.com

Open Letter to the Anti-War Movement

The upcoming anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan is a crucial time for activists to reflect on the urgent need for an anti-war movement that is committed to opposing systematic oppression, domination and violence. In the spirit of moving us towards this goal, we feel compelled to respond when individuals and organizations within the movement are harassing and maligning other members of the movement. We need to ask how this reflects on the political and ethical commitments underlying our activism. We need to ask when enough is enough and some kind of collective action is necessary to address an untenable situation.

There is a campaign of hostility and intimidation underway against Iranian activists in the U.S. who oppose war, sanctions and state repression in Iran. The Iranian American Friendship Committee (AIFC) has taken the lead in a series of physical and verbal attacks on Iranian activists and their allies. Enough is enough. This letter is an appeal to those who consider themselves part of the anti-war movement: stop condoning, excusing or dismissing these attacks by continuing to include AIFC in your coalitions, demonstrations, forums and other organizing events. We call on those of you who want to build an effective anti-war movement that includes the participation of those whose families are directly targeted by U.S. imperialism, and that is committed to social justice for all, to oppose the abuse AIFC has been heaping on members of various Iranian American organizations.

On June 29, 2012, Ardeshir Ommani of the AIFC circulated a public missive attacking members of Raha Iranian Feminist Collective, Havaar: Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions, and State Repression, Where Is My Vote, and United For Iran. This so-called AIFC “Factsheet” accused individual members of each group of harboring covert imperialist, Zionist, and pro-war agendas. Such a smear campaign should be transparent to all who know and work with us and to all those who recognize in these charges a familiar script. Ommani and AIFC are uncritical apologists for the Iranian government, proudly organizing dinners for President Ahmadinejad in New York each fall and inviting anti-war and pro-Palestinian activists to come pay their respects. They are not alone but work with the Workers World Party and the International Action Center to give left cover to the Iranian government and to infuse the anti-war movement with pro-Islamic Republic politics. They repeat the Iranian state’s position that the pro-democracy protesters in Iran are agents of Western imperialism and Zionism.  And now AIFC mimics the regime by lodging such false charges against us, activists who dare to challenge their orthodoxy and who oppose the Iranian state’s oppressive actions.

Unfortunately, it is not enough to simply dismiss AIFC’s charges as spurious and move on with the serious and necessary work of opposing U.S. intervention around the world. Ommani’s accusations of Zionist loyalties carry serious prison sentences in Iran as a crime of moharebeh (crimes against Islam or against the state). This means that Iranians who refuse to become apologists for the Iranian state cannot participate in the anti-war movement without having their reputations attacked and their names publicly identified with charges that can land them in prison, or worse, if they go to Iran. The continued acceptance of AIFC as a legitimate presence in the anti-war movement virtually ensures that the majority of Iranians in the U.S. will see the entire movement as pro-Islamic Republic and, therefore, unsafe and hostile. Forcing Iranians to have to choose between visiting their family members in Iran and joining the anti-war movement produces another form of discrimination and oppression of Iranians in the U.S.

To be clear, Ommani’s accusations in print are just the latest in an ongoing campaign of harassment and abuse going back to 2010. The brief history that follows illustrates tactics that are unacceptable to us, and that should be unacceptable to the anti-war movement. At a June 24, 2010 workshop at the US Social Forum hosted by Raha and Where Is My Vote, Ommani was disruptive, insulting young women organizers and questioning their legitimacy in speaking at the conference at all. At a February 4th, 2012 anti-war rally in Manhattan, Ommani attempted to physically knock an Iranian woman off of the speakers’ platform while she expressed her views against war and sanctions and in solidarity with those resisting state repression in Iran. At a March 24th, 2012 panel called “Iran: Solidarity Not Intervention” that was part of the United National Anti-War Committee conference, Ommani had to be asked repeatedly by conference security to stop calling members of Raha “C.I.A. agents” and “State Department propagandists” and even to allow us to speak at all. Unable to engage in any respectful dialogue with the ideas Raha members and their allies were advocating, he simply stormed out of the panel. At a conference plenary, security had to be called after Ommani poked a woman who was there to support Raha and who was waiting in line to speak. Ommani eventually had to be moved by conference security to a different part of the hall in order to prevent him from harassing members of Raha on the speakers’ line.

This conflict cannot be reduced to a matter of political differences about the nature of the Iranian state. There are certain behaviors that should be quite obviously beyond the scope of what is acceptable in the anti-war movement. These include the physical and verbal harassment of activists, particularly intimidation tactics lodged by men against women. Shoving, insulting and bullying women in an effort to silence us is outright sexism. Furthermore, the leveling of false charges that could make us targets of state repression has haunting historical precedents in the spy operations of SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police force, which hounded the Iranian student opposition abroad throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The same way that American progressives defended Iranian students from persecution by the Iranian and U.S. states in those days, we call on activists today to oppose these efforts to silence us. AIFC has consistently demonstrated an inability to follow basic rules of civility and engagement and should have no place in our movement.

Raha and Havaar oppose all military intervention in Iran (For more on Raha’s analysis see here.) Further, we oppose all U.S., U.N., and European sanctions against Iran, and have been active in trying to build an anti-sanctions/anti-war movement. In our view, the Iranian state, the Israeli state, and the U.S. state each are guilty of repressing popular democratic movements. Standing in solidarity with others engaged in similar struggles, we will organize against the vicious and autocratic measures of these governments until we are free–from the U.S. to Iran to Palestine and beyond.
Yours in struggle and solidarity,

The Members of RAHA Iranian Feminist Collective

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The Members of Havaar: Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions and State Repression

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Adnan Latif, the Social Contract, and the American Empire

Glenn Greenwald, emptywheel, Mark Falcoff , Andy Worthington, and many others have written about the Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, who died in Guantanamo Bay Detention Facilities yesterday. Cause of death is still unknown. But if you click on these links, you will learn something about this young man, who by almost all accounts was no threat to the United States. Latif was turned over to the United States shortly after 9/11/01 by Pakistani forces in Afghanistan, which as emptywheel will tell you, they were doing quite often then. He was in detention without charges for nearly 11 years, recommended by the US Military for release in 2006 and again in 2008. His lawyers fought to have him released for a decade. According to Andy Worthington, he was cleared at least 3 times, until the Supreme Court overturned the order to release last year.  Thanks to various folks (“Heroes,” we’ll call them), was left to rot in GTMO with little chance of getting out—because the US was concerned about the lack of security in Yemen.

“At one point, military records show, Latif was cleared for release. But the U.S. has ceased returning any prisoners to Yemen because the country is unstable and its government is considered ill-equipped to prevent former militants from resuming previous activities. There are about 55 Yemenis among the 167 men held at Guantanamo.”

Translation: Latif could be very angry after his years locked up and, if he wasn’t a threat to the US going into Guantanamo Bay, he could very well be one if released. Imagine: you, your brother, locked up for 11 years. Forced to wear only underpants because it is immodest to pray in scanty attire. Punished for sequestering food, for stepping over the chalk line as “lunch” was doled out. Force-fed through feeding tubes in your nose (“like having a dagger shoved down your throat,” according to Latif) because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. He went on several hunger strikes to protest, among other things, his treatment in GTMO and his detention.

There are many protests of outrage, of which this post is but one. But what should we make of this death? As Peter Van Buren will tell you, there was a moment in time when torture was zealously denounced by the American Nation at large. There was a moment perhaps remembered by denizens of the US above the age of 20, pre-9/11/01 when human rights, while not airtight, were not laughable. Torture was not debated, because it was considered downright shady and impermissible for the arbiter of human rights, the U.S., to engage in such nefarious conduct. Pre-emptive surveillance, surveillance without a warrant from a judge, widespread interrogation, warrantless detention, deportation without judicial review for people whose religions and skincolors the US wasn’t fond of—these were not boasted of proudly. Assassinations, kidnappings, of foreign nationals—these were things that other countries did, and always with a frown of embarrassment.

Was this an idyllic time? No, of course not. African Americans were, even pre-9/11, fighting to survive the continuous contempt, the legal and political obstacles by whites to dignity, civil rights, wage parity, admission to college, employment for which they were plenty qualified (and over-qualified). Black men were—and still are—being thrown in prison. Nearly 1 in 3 Black men will expect—EXPECT—to go to prison in their lifetimes today.

Life is still extremely precarious for segments of the Black, Latino, Muslim, and Arab populations, but life has been extremely beneficial for many others at the same time.  It’s not coincidental of course. It involves a little thing called the Social Contract. As philosopher Charles Mills describes the Social Contract that is at the heart of modern liberalism—at the heart of modern Europe and North America—it is a Racial Contract.  A Racial Contract underpins the Social Contract, which means that political freedoms and social obligations are built upon the racial hierarchies that form the basis of United States political history.

That means slavery, Jim Crow, the exclusion of Chinese immigrants in 1882, the lynchings of black men, the internment of citizens and migrants of Japanese descent, the Hindu Conspiracy Trials of 1917 (where the US cooperated with the British to try Punjabi political dissenters who want Self-Rule in India), the deportation of Mexicans in the 1920’s, the Bracero program, and widespread harassment of Black Americans and migrants.

Today’s Racial Contract is slightly updated: it involves participating in the imperial impulses of the American Homeland, of doing the bidding of the American Empire.

We can see the Racial Contract operating in every area of American Politics—from designing torture policies, to pre-emptive policing, to exculpating bankers who enabled the financial and housing crises, to arguing for invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.  The Racial Contract is being built on the drones that are killing Yemenis, Pakistanis, Saudis, Afghans in Guantanamo. The Racial Contract is being built on the lives of Iraqis and Pakistani civilians. It may soon be built on the lives of Iranians.

There’s another aspect as well. Philosopher Michel Foucault insisted in the mid 1970’s that we needed to take the emphasis off the figureheads like kings and presidents, and focus on its inner workings, on laws, bills, policies, programs that divide a society in two, and will—literally—force some to live and allow others to die.

About 10 years ago, this division was much harder to see. Today, Foucault’s prescience is stunning: Adnan Latif was forced to live until—well—until he’d outlived whatever usefulness he had for the American Empire. But his life—well, it was barely life. That was also Foucault’s point: the nature of life is also subject to the whims of the state—in this case, subject to the whims of American Empire. Ditto for non-citizens like those Pakistanis, Yemenis, Afghans. They get to live until—well—until the American state decide otherwise.

Concretely, what does this mean? It means that the American Homeland (after all, this is what the Department of Homeland Security signifies) will secure its borders through the series of laws that enable it to seize the power to control who is forced to live, who will be forced to die.  But the division is not just about the American Homeland and its empire. It’s about reinforcing the divide between citizens and non-citizens. President Obama was right when he invoked “citizenship” as the obligation to others. He was invoking the Social Contract in its post-racial moment: as the obligation to certain other (citizens). Not to Yemenis, Afghans, Iranians, Pakistanis. Not to brown women in other countries. Not to undocumented Latinos.

Foucault notwithstanding, the POTUS is hardly exculpated in for his involvement in this Racial Contract: His personal role in imprisoning journalists and whistleblowers from Abduleh Haider Shaye, his Administrations’s harassment of John Kiriakou, Julian Assange, and others,  his extra-legal assassination of Osama Bin Ladin, of countless #2’s who are supposed to be next in line to head Al-Qaeda, from Anwar Al-Aulaqi, and his 16 year old son, to Abu Yahya al-Libi, Saeed Al Shihri.  But not to worry, the Democrats will have a solid easy partnership with Republicans, who want much the same things. If elected, Romney will continue the legacy, no doubt.

Suffice it to say to that on the 11^th anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001: the United States has waged a retaliatory? distracting? decade-long war. But it is hardly a race-neutral war. It is hardly a post-racial moment. Rather it is a war begun by elite whites with the assistance of populations across the spectrum, who get to reap the benefits of American Empire: Prestige, Power, Prime speaking time at the Political Conventions.

In the meantime, prisoner after prisoner will die in Guantanamo, even though they haven’t been charged, even though they have been nearly released, even though their only crime was being brown and in the wrong place at the wrong time. Innocents in other countries will die needlessly. But hey, that’s JUST xenophobia, and it happens all the time. So quit being an asshole and vote for the Dems, will you?

Adnan Latif? Wait, what happened? Who’s he?