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condoleezza rice
Kamala Harris Is Trump’s Worst Nightmare
He dreads with every racist, misogynistic fiber in his body the rise of Harris and the intensity of her support, and also the organizing might of Black women voters.
Aug 24, 2024
One of the nation’s best-known Black Republicans is former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In the 21st century (and perhaps ever), no African American woman rose higher in Republican politics than Rice, who served as President George W. Bush’s national security adviser and then his secretary of state, both firsts. Like her or not, agree with her politics or not, she brought significant experience, knowledge, and professionalism to those positions.
Former President Donald Trump’s first public words about Rice date back to 2006 when he labeled her with a vile term. In a speech before 8,000 people in New York City, he said, “Condoleezza Rice, she’s a lovely woman, but I think she’s a bitch. She goes around to other countries and other nations, negotiates with their leaders, comes back, and nothing ever happens.” There was no justification for Trump using such repulsive language other than his own toxic petulance and racist misogyny against Black women.
The stunning upheaval in the 2024 presidential race has, in fact, brought into sharp focus Trump’s longstanding animosity toward and war against Black women.
His vulgarity and sexism toward Rice foreshadowed a political future of hateful attacks on women—particularly women of color—with whom he disagrees. That incident provides some context for a recent New York Times report that, in private, Trump has referred repeatedly to Vice President Kamala Harris, his most formidable challenger for the 2024 presidential race, as a “bitch.” His campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung shamelessly and unbelievably stated that, when it comes to the person many would view as the most profane president ever, “That is not language President Trump has used to describe Kamala.” In fact, Trump’s longstanding and fixed sense of patriarchy and the cruel slurs against women that go with it are well documented.
The stunning upheaval in the 2024 presidential race has, in fact, brought into sharp focus Trump’s longstanding animosity toward and war against Black women. President Joe Biden’s June 21st decision to drop out of that race propelled Harris to become the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, which means Trump now faces the one opponent who not only threatens his return to office, but also triggers his worse racist and sexist behavior.
Trump Goes After Harris and Other Black Women
In her first weeks running for president, he has publicly called Kamala Harris “dumb as a rock,” “nasty,” a “bum,” and “real garbage.” In front of thousands of his followers, he has deliberately and repeatedly mispronounced her name, claiming, “I don’t care” when called out on it. At his rallies, some of his supporters can be seen wearing and selling T-shirts that say, “Joe and the Ho Must Go,” or some variation on that, deplorable mantras that date back to 2020. Neither Trump nor his campaign have ever denounced such unacceptable activities. His effort and that of many MAGA adherents to “other” Harris is not just meant to humiliate her but degrade and dehumanize her as well.
Nor is this one-off focused on Harris. Trump has done the same to other Black women and women of color for decades. Before, during, and after his presidency, he specifically targeted Black women with a kind of venom he rarely aimed at white women or men.
He’s gone after Black women, whether elected and appointed officials (Republican or Democrat), journalists, athletes, prosecutors, or celebrities. Here are just a few examples of his loathing:
- Former Representative Mia Love (R-Utah): “Mia Love gave me no love and she lost. Too bad. Sorry about that Mia.”
- Former Apprentice contestant and then Trump’s White House director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison Omarosa Manigault Newman: “When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”
- Four congressional women of color—Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.): “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?”
- CNN journalist Abby Phillips: “What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot—you ask a lot of stupid questions.”
- CNN reporter April Ryan: “April Ryan… You talk about somebody that’s a loser. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing… She’s very nasty.”
- Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.): “an extraordinarily low IQ person.”
- MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid: “Who the hell is Joy-Ann Reid? Never met her, she knows ZERO about me, has NO talent, and truly doesn’t have the ‘it’ factor needed for success in showbiz.”
The examples of Trump’s enraged responses to Black women who criticize or call out his lies, ineptitude, insecurities, and ignorance are endless. He is also fully aware that his attacks put targets on the backs of those women. In fact, that may be exactly the point.
While the journalists and celebrities that he goes after are part of his bullying approach to life, with some added racist and sexist spice, he clearly feels most threatened by Black people and Black women in particular who could send him to prison. Georgia Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, and Washington, D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan have all felt the pressure of Trump’s inflammatory wrath as they oversaw legal cases attempting to hold him accountable for his criminal behavior. They have all experienced countless death threats since taking on his cases. In addition to referring to them as “racists,” “animal,” “rabid,” “liars,” and worse, he also called Willis and James “Peekaboo,” a nickname he has yet to explain but that seems awfully close to the racist slur “jigaboo.” It’s an obvious dog whistle similar to his calling them and others prosecuting him “riggers,” which, of course, rhymes with the “N-word” and which he normally spells out in caps in social posts to make sure it gets attention.
His attacks on Judge Chutkan led to the arrest of a woman in Texas who threatened to murder her and a swatting attack on her home, bringing the police to her house in response to a false report of a shooting there. Chutkan is attempting to move forward with the case against Trump in Washington, D.C., although there will clearly not be a trial before the November election. If Trump loses the election, the case will likely go forward with the strong possibility that he’ll be convicted and punished. If he wins, he’ll undoubtedly order the Justice Department to drop it.
While Black leaders in politics, the media, women’s groups, and community organizations consistently denounced Trump for his chauvinist attacks, there was dead silence from his best-known Black women supporters. MAGA devotees like far-right commentator Candace Owens, social media celebrities like (the late) Diamond and Silk, conservative abortion extremist Reverend Alveda King, and others said nary a word as he raged and ranted.
A Record of Exclusive Hiring
Notably, in his businesses and during his presidency, very, very few Black individuals were either in Trump’s employ or in his inner circle. In his White House, only three Black women held high political or staff positions: the briefly tenured Manigault Newman, the briefly acting Surgeon General Sylvia Trent-Adams (from April 2017 to September 2017), and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) official Lynne Patton.
Only Patton worked for Trump for any period of time. Prior to 2016, she worked for the Trump Organization and the Eric Trump Foundation for at least a decade, eventually becoming a “Trump family senior aide.” After taking office, Trump appointed her administrator of HUD Region II under Secretary Ben Carson. Like Carson, she had no background or expertise in housing policy, yet was put in charge of hundreds of thousands of public housing units in New York and New Jersey. She made excuses for Trump’s unsuccessful effort to cut millions of dollars from the New York Housing Authority budget that could have led to a potential 40% rent increase for public housing residents.
She was scandal-ridden throughout his tenure, caught, for instance, misrepresenting her education background on her government résumé, implying that she had attended and graduated from Quinnipiac University School of Law and Yale University when she hadn’t. She dropped out of Quinnipiac and only took summer classes at Yale. When caught, she responded: “Lots of people list schools they didn’t finish.”
It’s not just Trump’s hateful words but the policies and initiatives he pushed while in office that harmed Black women as well as millions of other Americans.
Her most notorious scandal occurred on February 27, 2019, when she volunteered to be a political prop for then-Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) at a congressional hearing. To repudiate the testimony of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who was accusing him of being racist, among other charges, Meadows had Patton stand silently behind him while he ludicrously stated that Trump couldn’t be racist because Patton had worked for him and she was a descendant of slaves.
Like other White House staff under Trump, Patton repeatedly violated the Hatch Act, which doesn’t allow federal employees in the executive branch to engage in political partisanship. She was first warned by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) in September 2019 but continued her transgressions. She and other Trump staffers broke the law, but the Trump administration did little to enforce it. However, when Biden came into office, the OSC did apply the rule of law. In response, Patton was forced to admit her violations and reached a settlement. She was fined $1,000 and banned from holding any federal government position for four years. And yet she still remains loyal to Trump.
Following his recent disastrous interview appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump’s campaign issued a statement claiming that Trump, who slung insults, spewed endless lies, refused to answer questions, and hurried off early, was the victim of “unhinged and unprofessional commentary.” His most noted unbalanced remark—and there were plenty of them—was his contention that Kamala Harris had only in recent years “happened to turn Black.”
At the Republican National Convention, where African Americans were only 3% of the attendees, eight speakers were Black, seven of them men. The only Black woman given a prime speaking spot was rapper and model Amber Rose, whose Trump-loving father converted her to support him. Rather than include an elected official, state party leader, or conservative scholar, Trump selected someone who fulfilled his gendered view of Black women as either spectacles or subservient.
Trump’s Gendered and Racist Policies
It’s not just Trump’s hateful words but the policies and initiatives he pushed while in office that harmed Black women as well as millions of other Americans. Much of what he’s done and is planning to do is laid out in policy proposals detailed in the Heritage Foundation’s racially discriminating Project 2025 report, written by many of Trump’s former officials and those aligned with him. These include policies relating to abortion rights, education, criminal justice, civil rights, and healthcare access, among many other concerns.
In addition, Black women have been disproportionately suffering from the abortion bans implemented since the significantly Trump-built conservative Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade in 2022. According to the Democratic National Committee, “More than half of Black women of reproductive age now live in states with abortion bans in effect or with threats to abortion access.” Close to 7 million Black women, ages 15 to 49, reside in those states. Worse yet, Project 2025 advocates a nationwide ban on abortion for a future Trump administration. He himself has become increasingly coy in addressing such an electorally damaging issue by deferring to whatever states want to do, fearing otherwise that he might lose a majority of women voters, but not wanting to anger the Christian nationalist extremists in his base.
That same Trumpified Supreme Court also ended affirmative action at colleges and universities. In 2023, it ruled that colleges and universities can no longer consider race in admissions. As yet, it’s not clear whether acceptance rates have fallen, particularly at elite schools. What is clear, thanks to the ruling, is that many colleges and universities have cut or dramatically redefined hundreds of scholarships worth millions of dollars that were previously targeted for Black and Latino students. This particularly hurts Black women students (who attend college in disproportionate numbers compared to young Black men).
Black women voters have responded in kind to Trump. In 2016, he won about 6% of the Black vote overall, but there was a stunning gender gap. While he gained about 14% of Black male votes, 98% of Black women voted for Hillary Clinton. Four years later, in 2020, Trump garnered about 8% of the overall Black vote, but only 5% of Black women.
Black Support for Harris Swells Despite Trump
Given those numbers (and his sexism), it’s clear why Trump has focused his “Black outreach” on Black men. However, the wedge he seeks to build may not be as stable as he imagines. Not only have Black women rallied behind the Harris-Walz ticket, but it appears that Black male voters are shifting as well. In a poll conducted in late July by the Howard University polling service, the Howard Initiative on Public Opinion (HIPO), of which I’m a member, we found 96% of Black women and 93% of Black men expressing their intention to vote for Harris. Meanwhile, a Zoom gathering of 40,000 Black men voicing their support and suggestions only days after Harris was rising to become the nominee suggested that the Trump campaign’s hope for an irreversible gender split among Black voters wasn’t on target.
As New York Times columnist Charles Blow noted, Trump is the “totem” of contemporary patriarchy. He is also the embodiment of what Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey terms “misogynoir,” the marriage of misogyny and racism.
Certainly, he dreads with every fiber in his body the rise of Harris and the intensity of her support, and also the organizing might of Black women voters. In Georgia, in 2021, it was the on-the-ground mobilization of Black women that led to the defeat of Trump’s preferred Senate candidates and the victories of Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
Count on one thing: Donald Trump is now running scared. What he assumed barely a month ago would be an essentially uncontested victory has been transformed into his worst nightmare: facing a smart, confident, younger Black woman who has stolen his momentum and whose possible victory in November would be a defeat from which he could never recover.
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Washington Post Curates the Memory of George Shultz
By exclusion or distortion, establishment obituaries rewrite history to make the official heroes fit for adoration.
Feb 09, 2021
George Shultz, a prominent cabinet member of both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, holding posts at State, Treasury, Labor and the Office of Management and Budget, died over the weekend at age 100. His death prompted no fewer than three fawning tributes in the Washington Post, in addition to the paper's official obituary.
Former George W. Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who considered Shultz both a mentor and friend, was given column space at the Post (2/7/21) to wax poetic about how Shultz "never lost sight of the centrality of freedom to the human experience and to human dignity," and concluded that "we are all so much better for having been a part of the consequential life that he lived."
Minutes later, the Post published a tribute from the paper's former reporter Lou Cannon (2/7/21), who lauded a man who "spoke truth to power" and "lived his life in service to his nation and humanity."
The next day, Post columnist David Ignatius (2/8/21) offered yet a third hagiography. Ignatius gushed:
Watching him over so many years was an education in the fact that the good guys--the smart, decent people who take on the hard job of making the country work--do sometimes win in the end.
Ignatius noted that Shultz "was Post publisher Katharine Graham's favorite tennis partner," and the warm, fuzzy feelings clearly persist at the paper long after Graham's departure.
But assessments that judge Shultz to be one of "the good guys," with a commitment to things like freedom, human dignity and humanity, necessarily gloss over his role in both the Iraq War and the Iran/Contra scandal.
It was Shultz's influential assertion in the mid-'80s of a right to pre-emptively strike against "future attacks"--what was dubbed the "Shultz Doctrine"--that helped pave the way for the endless War on Terror, and led the Wall Street Journal (4/29/06) to call Shultz "the father of the Bush Doctrine" of unprovoked attacks on nations deemed threats. Shultz was a mentor to both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as well as Rice, and after 9/11 Shultz chaired the pro-invasion "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq." As FAIR (8/2/10) argued more than 10 years ago, when PBS aired a glowing documentary about Shultz that omitted his role in the Iraq War:
His advocacy for a new norm of international law that legitimizes "active prevention, pre-emption and retaliation" against terrorism is one of the most abiding, and controversial, legacies of Shultz's tenure at the State Department, providing the justification for two ongoing wars.
None of the three Post contributors mentioned Bush, Iraq or the War on Terror. Perhaps even more disturbingly, neither did the paper's nearly 3,000-word obituary for Shultz (2/7/21).
The Post also attempted to avoid or rewrite another key piece of Shultz's history--his role in the Iran/Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran in order to fund, against congressional prohibitions, the right-wing Contra terror squads working to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. As Iran/Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh concluded in his final report (Extra! Update, 4/94):
The evidence establishes that the central National Security Council operatives kept their superiors--including Reagan, [Vice President George] Bush, Shultz, [Defense Secretary Caspar] Weinberger and other high officials--informed of their efforts generally, if not in detail, and their superiors either condoned or turned a blind eye to them.
The Post obituary, written by Michael Abramowitz and David E. Hoffman, tried to spin this, relying on the account of the Reagan administration's hand-picked investigative board:
By Mr. Shultz's account, he argued vigorously in private against the arms sales to Tehran, which were designed to gain Iran's help in freeing US hostages in Lebanon. But he was criticized afterward for not taking on the matter more directly.
"Secretary Shultz and Secretary Weinberger in particular distanced themselves from the march of events," concluded the board chaired by former Sen. John Tower (R.-Texas) that reviewed the Reagan administration's handling of the matter. "Secretary Shultz specifically requested to be informed only as necessary to perform his job."
As if worried that even this apologetic assessment might still put the deceased in an unfavorable light, the paper quickly softened the blow:
Once the matter became public, however, Mr. Shultz, reflecting the lessons of what he had seen during Watergate, urged others in the administration to come clean. Historian Malcolm Byrne, in his book Iran/Contra, wrote that "Shultz alone proposed to engage the US public rather than keep a tight hold on information."
And the Post didn't even mention Shultz's position on the Contra half of the scandal--perhaps because he actively participated in discussions regarding how to get around the congressional prohibitions, and almost made a solicitation himself to the Sultan of Brunei (FAIR.org, 8/2/10).
In Ignatius's telling, Iran/Contra was an illustration of Shultz's "good judgment":
He could detect bad ideas taking shape in the bureaucracy almost as if by smell. And he tried to stop them, even when that meant challenging Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, whose policy ideas he mistrusted, or President Ronald Reagan, whose National Security Council staff concocted a bizarre plot--to fund the contras in Nicaragua by selling arms to Iran--that Shultz abhorred.
Rice and Cannon simply omitted Iran/Contra in their columns. Either way, by exclusion or distortion, establishment obituaries rewrite history to make the official heroes fit for adoration (FAIR.org, 6/9/04, 7/9/09, 8/29/18, 12/7/18).
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New CIA Torture Documents Confirm Chilling Details of Khaled El-Masri's 'Kafka-esque' Ordeal
After being mistakenly abducted in Macedonia and detained in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, Khaled El-Masri told his interrogators that his ongoing detention was like "a Kafka novel." A cable to CIA headquarters reported that El-Masri said he "could not possibly prove his innocence because he did not know what he was being charged with."
Jun 17, 2016
After being mistakenly abducted in Macedonia and detained in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, Khaled El-Masri told his interrogators that his ongoing detention was like "a Kafka novel." A cable to CIA headquarters reported that El-Masri said he "could not possibly prove his innocence because he did not know what he was being charged with."
Much has been reported on this tragic case of mistaken identity at the hands of the CIA. But this week, additional details on El-Masri's case emerged when the CIA released a new batch of documents in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Among the many disturbing details relating to the CIA's post-9/11 torture and rendition program was a revealing investigation carried out by the CIA's inspector general into the rendition and torture of El-Masri, an innocent German citizen who was disappeared, detained, and abused by the CIA for over four months in early 2004. (The ACLU now represents El-Masri in a pending case against the U.S. before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.)
The investigation makes clear that El-Masri's unlawful rendition and detention were rife with neglect, abuse, and incompetence, reaching to the highest levels of the CIA.
The investigation makes clear that El-Masri's unlawful rendition and detention were rife with neglect, abuse, and incompetence, reaching to the highest levels of the CIA. It reveals that even as the CIA "quickly concluded he was not a terrorist," two CIA officers who had been involved in his rendition justified his continued detention "despite the diminishing rationale, by insisting that they knew he was 'bad.'"
The document also confirms that former CIA Director George Tenet "was informed about the ... January 2004 ... rendition shortly after it happened and then again in late April 2004." Yet El-Masri was not freed and allowed to return to his family in Germany until May of that year after former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice ordered it. The CIA didn't inform Congress of the mistaken rendition until after his repatriation and after it learned that he had retained an attorney.
The report confirms the grueling psychological torture that El-Masri was subjected to, along with the CIA's blatant disregard for his physical and mental health while in custody. In protest of his wrongful detention, El-Masri went on a hunger strike and lost 50 pounds. A CIA psychologist described him as "openly tearful and speechless" and suffering from "feelings of helplessness, hopeless ... [and] wishing he was dead." Another psychologist confirmed the intensity of his "depression, loneliness, hopelessness, and anger."
The source of his deteriorating mental health, the psychologists believed, was "the unknown status of his case and the uncertain length of his detention, complicated by lack of interaction with Agency personnel." The psychologists recommended releasing him. Their reason was not his innocence or his mental health, but the need to avoid "potential long-term issues for HQs."
The CIA's inspector general report confirms that El-Masri's prolonged arbitrary detention and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment included solitary confinement in a "small cell with just a bucket for his waste." The report concludes:
"[T]here was an insufficient basis to render and detain al-Masri and the Agency's prolonged detention of al-Masri was unjustified. His rendition and long detention resulted from a series of breakdowns in tradecraft, process, management, and oversight. CTC and [redacted] failed to take responsible steps to verify al-Masri's identity. ALEC Station exaggerated the nature of the data it possessed linking al-Masri to terrorism. After the decision had been made to repatriate al-Masri, implementation was marked by delay and bureaucratic infighting."
Yet after it was decided that El-Masri should be freed, he languished in the CIA prison for more than two months because of "bureaucratic infighting" and "bureaucratic differences." At one point, the CIA considered transferring El-Masri to the custody of the U.S. military. This option was ultimately ruled out because "such a move could complicate matters"; "the U.S. military would register al-Masri and notify the Red Cross of his detention"; and, without grounds to suspect he had a role within al-Qaida, "the US military would have no grounds on which to detain him" and "he could be a free man within hours."
After it was decided that El-Masri should be freed, he languished in the CIA prison for more than two months because of "bureaucratic infighting" and "bureaucratic differences."
Despite recognizing a terrible mistake, the Bush administration pressed the Supreme Court to refuse to hear El-Masri's (brought by the ACLU) case against Tenet. The court acquiesced, deciding not to review the case—which had been dismissed by the lower courts on "state secrets" grounds—the very same month the inspector general report was submitted to the administration.
Beyond an "oral admonition" given to three CIA attorneys, no one has been held accountable for El-Masri's ordeal. The CIA's inspector general referred El-Masri's case to the Department of Justice for prosecution -- but in May 2007, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia declined to pursue the case.
This report confirms what the ACLU has said for years: At the height of the so-called "War on Terror," the CIA made grave mistakes and committed outrageous violations of domestic and international law. Yet, no one responsible for these acts has been held accountable. Despite the CIA's best efforts to keep this and so many other stories secret -,- the CIA told El-Masri that a condition for his release was "that he would not reveal his experiences to the media or local authorities" -- the truth is steadily coming out. And still, El-Masri and other victims of CIA torture continue to wait for what they deserve -- a full criminal investigation into those responsible for overseeing and implementing the program, an acknowledgment of what they went through, an official apology, and compensation to help them rebuild their lives. This is the very least President Obama can do for them before leaving office.
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America's Stay-at-Home Ex-President
As the news broke on Saturday that former President George W. Bush had abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance this week in Geneva to avoid the risk of arrest on a torture complaint, my first thought was -- how humiliating, not only for Bush but, by extension, for all Americans.
Feb 08, 2011
As the news broke on Saturday that former President George W. Bush had abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance this week in Geneva to avoid the risk of arrest on a torture complaint, my first thought was -- how humiliating, not only for Bush but, by extension, for all Americans.
However, those who might have expected Bush to be down in the mouth and sulk about the embarrassment were disabused of that notion as the TV cameras caught him and Condoleezza Rice -- his former national security adviser and Secretary of State -- in seats of honor at Sunday's Super Bowl in Dallas.
Doomed to become America's first better-stay-at-home former president, Bush could still take consolation in getting scarce tickets to big sports events - he also attended high-profile Texas Rangers baseball games last year - and he can expect to hear some folks cheer for him, so long as he stays in Texas.
I imagined myself with advanced training in the intelligence collection technique called speed lip-reading, enabling me to decipher from the TV screen what Condi Rice might be saying to her beloved mentor:
Not to worry, Mr. President, as I told those upstart students at Stanford when they kept asking about waterboarding, "By definition, if it was authorized by the President, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture." Period. End of story.
Remember, Mr. President, it was Richard Nixon who pronounced the principle of presidential impunity in his famous statement to interviewer David Frost, "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal."
Oh, the pardon? Well, you're right. Nixon did need to be pardoned, but no worries for you on that score. What luck that we were able to get Obama and Eric Holder to agree to ride shotgun for us, if anyone summoned the temerity to bring charges against us for torture.
And, you can always use the perfect squelch -- the one you used so effectively in talking about waterboarding in that TV interview with Matt Lauer on Nov. 8. You remember, you countered by saying, "The lawyer said it was legal." As a last resort, we can always blame it on Al Gonzales and the gaggle of lawyers who gave us legal cover.
Your reply to Lauer was masterful. Glad we rehearsed that one so thoroughly. Just keep remembering not to say that you told the lawyers what you wanted them to say. Then we're home free.
Speaking of home free, as Ollie North once said, "Is this a great country, or what?" Sure is nice not to have to worry, at least here at home, about anyone holding us accountable for what you called "alternative procedures" for interrogation; or for my asking George Tenet to orchestrate demonstrations of those procedures every couple of weeks in the White House Situation Room.
By the way, we just got a thoughtful thank-you note from George Tenet, who must be the most grateful of all ex-CIA directors. He wanted to remind us of an important anniversary coming up. No, besides Ronald Reagan's birthday.
You may recall that it was on Feb. 7, 2002, that you signed that action memorandum saying the U.S. did not have to abide by the Geneva Conventions in how we treat al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners. Tenet says that he and his boys know they owe you big time for putting down in writing the protection that made them comfortable going to the dark side.
I sure wish that other countries would simply read that carefully worded memo. Then, they might become as understanding as Obama and stop hinting that we are in some legal jeopardy. Staying safe at home is nice, but I really miss traveling abroad. And I'm about to forfeit thousands of frequent flyer miles.
Anyhow, I must remind you, Mr. President, you're not the only one grounded for fear of being detained abroad. I can't begin to tell you how many speaking offers in Europe and elsewhere I've had to turn down.
It's hard, embarrassing even, but you are right to decide to err on the side of caution. That way you are sure to avoid confrontations not only with the local gendarmerie, but also with people like those ubiquitous, obnoxious women from Code Pink who seem to spring up from nowhere with handcuffs.
Ubiquitous? Oh, that means they seem to be everywhere. Obnoxious you know, yes?
A recent Secret Service bulletin said some of those Code Pink women are even in Tahrir Square helping to give our friend Mubarak a hard time. And remember how they went around to bookstores and libraries last fall, putting your excellent book in the fiction or crime sections?
Code Pink is now doing the same thing with Rumsfeld's book, and even inserting a bookmark that says: "WARNING: This Book's Author is a War Criminal." Heh, heh; poetic justice for Rumsfeld. Serves him right. I'm told that he has a bunch of nasty things to say about the rest of us.
I suspect Rumsfeld may catch more flak than you did in promoting your own book. Remember how those Code Pink activists challenged him the first time he came out of hiding in May 2009 and showed up at the White House Stenographers, sorry, Correspondents Dinner? There they were, introducing him as a war criminal. Frightful people.
I've also been thinking of the very close call Rumsfeld had in Paris in October 2007, when he had to make a mad dash for the airport, upon learning that someone (I think the Center for Constitutional Rights was behind it) had filed a Convention Against Torture complaint against him with the Paris Prosecutor.
I mean, if I had my way, I'd tell Tenet's friends at Langley to round up the lot of them -- Code Pink, Center for Constitutional Rights, whatever -- and drop them off at one of the old black sites. I tell you I'd do it, if we were still in power. All I'd need, of course, would be the President's okay, preferably in writing -- like that action memo of Feb. 7, 2002.
Don't much care for Rumsfeld, but glad he beat the gendarmes onto the plane in Paris and is now, like us, safe at home. That episode could have ended very badly, setting an awful precedent. Luckily, you avoided that kind of scene by canceling out of Geneva.
"Canceling out of Geneva." Has a familiar ring. That's essentially what your February 2002 memo did, canceling the Geneva Conventions on treatment of detainees. That's how you authorized what followed, how you made it legal.
End of imaginary report based on lip-reading Condoleezza Rice's Super Bowl conversations with George W. Bush.
Now Dead Serious
It was White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who released to the press Bush's Feb. 7, 2002, memo. It was spring 2004, and the timing suggests that one main purpose was to deflect early reports about abuse of detainees. Gonzales may also have been motivated by a desire to get onto the public record documentary proof that it was the decider, not the lawyers, who signed that memo.
In any case, it turned out to be the smoking gun on Bush's torture policies. In it Bush wrote: "I determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees." Article 3, which is common to the other Geneva conventions on prisoners of war, bans "torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." The conventions permit no country to unilaterally exclude anyone from Geneva protections.
But Bush did so, while hiding the substance of his memo behind words that the White House lawyers thought would make Bush look humane. Bush's memo said detainees should be treated "humanely" and "in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva," but added the caveat, "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity."
In other words, Bush and his high command could decide whether "humane" treatment would be granted or not. If they saw a "military necessity" for, say, waterboarding somebody 183 times, then they could so order.
That, of course, is not what Geneva demands; there is no way to square this circle. Bush's memorandum violated international law, creating the giant loophole through which Rumsfeld and Tenet drove the Mack truck of torture.
Bush Memo "Opened the Door"
After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded in December 2008 that it was President Bush himself who, by the Executive Memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, "opened the door" to the abuse that ensued. Here is Conclusion Number One of the committee report:
"Following the President's determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions ... were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody."
The direct result was torture and sometimes murder of detainees at Guantanamo in Cuba, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram in Afghanistan. One chilling phrase used by young soldiers describing treatment of detainees at Guantanamo was "rape by instrumentality."
When Congress attempted to draft legislation prohibiting this practice, Bush's White House lawyers objected citing their worry that such legislation might subject practitioners to prosecution under state and federal criminal statutes. Practitioners!
You may remember that one of the Bush administration's favorite slogans was that evildoers must be "brought to justice." Now, the world will be watching to see whether the evildoers of the Bush administration meet justice in the months and years to come.
Meanwhile, Bush, Rice, the lawyers and the hands-on "practitioners" of torture had best stay close to home. After all, some countries might not think that it's such a "quaint" idea to enforce international law. They might even believe in the old American principle that "no one is above the law."
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He spent almost 30 years as a CIA analyst and Army infantry/intelligence officer and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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Pope Versus President
Oct 07, 2007
The Vatican's recent snub of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is only the latest salvo in the battle between Pope Benedict XVI and President George W. Bush. This tug of war has profound implications for both U.S. foreign policy and the critical Catholic vote in 2008's presidential race.
Overlapping Agendas
Things haven't always been tense between Bush and Benedict. They share similar views regarding abortion, gay marriage, and other hot-button conservative issues. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (as Benedict was known before becoming Pope in April 2005) even helped Bush secure the White House for a second term.
Specifically, after Bush visited the Vatican in June 2004, complaining that "Not all the American bishops are with me," Ratzinger sent a letter to US bishops, ordering them to refuse Communion to "a Catholic politician ... consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" - a thinly-veiled reference to John Kerry. Ratzinger added that any person even voting for this Catholic politician "would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion." Probably no surprise, then, that Bush increased his margin among Catholics by 6% from 2000 to 2004.
In an interesting twist, Ratzinger also partnered with George W. Bush's brother Neil in a foundation "to promote ecumenical understanding and publish original religious texts" in 1999. Oddly enough, business credit reports listed the foundation as a "management trust for purposes other than education, religion, charity or research," leaving the true nature of the Neil Bush/Cardinal Ratzinger venture unclear.
In 2005, Ratzinger was named as a defendant in a U.S. lawsuit suit accusing him of conspiring to cover up the sexual abuse of minors. At the center of the controversy was a May 2001 confidential letter he had sent Catholic bishops across the world ordering them to keep evidence of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy secret until 10 years after the child had reached adult status.
Soon after becoming Pope, however, Ratzinger was dismissed from the case. A US federal judge decided the lawsuit would be "incompatible with the United States' foreign policy interests."
Disagreements Multiply
On many contentious issues since then, Pope Benedict XVI has disagreed with the Bush administration's policies, but only politely and indirectly. For example, Benedict has spoken in favor of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is often at loggerheads with Bush administration foreign policy.
Similarly, Benedict's Vatican has taken a firm stance against global warming, even acquiring a carbon offset forest to make the Vatican the "first entirely carbon neutral sovereign state." He has called for greater international co-operation to fight ozone depletion, yet not overtly criticized White House foot-dragging in that area.
The gloves came off, however, regarding the war in Iraq. In a May 2003 interview, Ratzinger said, " There was not sufficient reasons to unleash a war in Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war.'"
The U.S. invasion of Iraq was similarly contentious for former Pope John Paul II, who sent a special envoy to the White House in March 2003 in an effort to prevent an attack. The papal envoy's pleas fell on deaf ears.
Vatican criticisms of the Bush administration's military intervention in Iraq have continued unabated. French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, told an Italian magazine in August 2007, "The facts speak for themselves. Alienating the international community (with the U.S. push for war) was a mistake." Tauran, who has referred to the invasion and occupation as a "crime against peace," also said that Christians in Iraq "paradoxically, were more protected under the dictatorship" of Saddam Hussein.
Rice Rebuffed
As such, it is perhaps unsurprising that Benedict failed to honor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's urgent request for a private meeting last month. The Italian periodical Corriere della Sera reported that Rice was hoping to capitalize on the Pope's moral authority by having a papal audience focused on the Middle East. Instead, Rice was told that Benedict was on holiday and had to settle for a telephone conversation with a lower Vatican official.
The ongoing tensions between Bush and Benedict over Iraq put America's over 75 million Roman Catholics in a tricky position for 2008. By supporting candidates hawkish on the Bush administration's Iraq policies, are they defying the Pope and the Catholic Church?
For its part, the powerful United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has taken a firm stance against the US presence in Iraq. A July 2007 letter to House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), USCCB noted, "The current situation in Iraq is unacceptable and unsustainable, as is the policy and political stalemate among decision makers in Washington ... our nation must have the moral courage to change course in Iraq."
Dissent is swelling up from the grassroots as well. In August 2007, an alliance of religious groups calling itself Catholics for an End to War collected 10,000 signatures for an online petition "urging leaders to commit to a responsible withdrawal of U.S. troops." Sister Simone Campbell of the national Catholic social justice lobby NETWORK said, "Church leaders and individual Catholics have opposed U.S. policy in Iraq since before the war began," adding that the petition "lets thousands of Catholics unite to speak out even more strongly for an end to the violence and occupation."
In other words, being dovish on Iraq might help the next Democratic presidential contender win Roman Catholic votes. Whether the current front-runners qualify for that distinction, however, is another matter.
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Elliott Abrams and Deja Vu All Over Again
WASHINGTON - It has an all too familiar ring to it.A crisis area -- in this case, the Middle East -- finds itself in desperate need of a peace process capable of tamping down the forces of violence and destabilisation which the United States itself has played a central role in unleashing.
Apr 10, 2007
WASHINGTON - It has an all too familiar ring to it. A crisis area -- in this case, the Middle East -- finds itself in desperate need of a peace process capable of tamping down the forces of violence and destabilization which the United States itself has played a central role in unleashing.
Regional efforts at diplomacy -- in this case, led by Saudi Arabia -- gain some momentum but are frustrated by die-hard hawks in a U.S. administration. While increasingly on the defensive both at home and abroad, they are determined to carry through their strategy of isolating and destabilizing a hostile target -- in this case, Syria -- despite its oft-repeated eagerness to engage Washington and its regional allies.
Sensing an increasingly dangerous impasse, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives -- in this case, Nancy Pelosi, backed by a growing bipartisan consensus that the administration's intransigence will further reduce already-waning U.S. influence in the region -- tries to encourage regional peace efforts by engaging the target directly.
But, worried that her quest might actually gain momentum, administration hawks -- in this case, led by Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams and Vice President Dick Cheney -- accuse the speaker of undermining the president and, working through obliging editorial writers at the Washington Post, among other sympathetic media, including, of course, the Wall Street Journal, attack her for "substitut(ing) her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president."
If that scenario sounds familiar, your foreign policy memory dates back at least to 1987, when, despite intensified regional peace-making efforts for which Costa Rican President Oscar Arias won that year's Nobel Peace Prize, the Ronald Reagan administration was persisting in its efforts to isolate and overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
It was then-House Speaker Jim Wright who, with the quiet encouragement of Republican realists, notably Reagan's White House chief of staff, Howard Baker, Secretary of State George Shultz and his special Central America envoy, Philip Habib, sought to promote Arias' plan.
Like today's Republican realists on the Iraq Study Group (ISG), who have urged the Bush administration to engage rather than continue to isolate Syria, they understood that popular and Congressional support for a "regime change" policy in Nicaragua was not sustainable and Washington should seek a regional settlement on the most favorable terms available.
But Abrams, then assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs, worked assiduously with fellow hard-liners in the White House and the Pentagon -- just as he works today with Cheney's office -- to torpedo both the Arias plan and Wright's efforts to advance it throughout the latter half of 1987.
As Abrams' assistant at the time, the future neo-conservative heavy thinker, Robert Kagan, put it later, "Arias, more than any other Latin leader single-handedly undid U.S. policy in Nicaragua." And when he won the Nobel Prize, "all us of who thought it was important to get aid for the contras reacted with disgust, unbridled disgust."
As part of their strategy, hard-liners led by Abrams rejected appeals by Nicaragua for high-level talks, thus forcing Habib to resign by late summer and insisting -- as they now do with Syria -- that direct negotiations would serve only to legitimate Sandinistas and demoralise the contras.
In November 1987, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega came to Washington with a proposal for a ceasefire with the contras. After the administration refused to receive him, Wright, seeing an opportunity to jump-start a stalled peace process, attended a meeting at the Vatican Embassy here at which Ortega asked his main domestic foe, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, to mediate between the Sandinista government and the contras.
Wright's participation in the talks was seized by Abrams as the launching pad for a public -- if barely concealed -- attack on the speaker. Interviewed by the Post under the guise of an unnamed "senior administration official," Abrams charged Wright with engaging in "guerrilla theater" and "an unbelievable melodrama" that had dealt a "serious setback" to the administration's policy.
"This was not forward movement; this was screwing up the process," the "senior official" complained to the Post which, as in its criticism Friday of Pelosi's meeting with Assad, obligingly followed up with its own editorial, entitled "What is Jim Wright Doing?", charging the speaker with having acted "as though the actual conduct of diplomacy in this delicate passage were his responsibility."
The Journal's neo-conservative editorial writers swiftly joined in, accusing Wright of a "compulsion for running off-the-shelf foreign-policy operations," just as last week they charged Pelosi and Democrats of seeking "to conduct their own independent diplomacy".
Within just a few months of his meeting with Ortega, however, the Democratic-led Congress rejected Reagan's request to fund the contras, a step which Abrams incorrectly predicted at the time would result in "the dissolution of Central America".
According to Roy Gutman's aptly named 1988 book about Reagan's Central America policy, "Banana Diplomacy", Washington soon found itself "at the margins of the region's diplomacy".
Unlike his high-public profile as assistant secretary 20 years ago, Abrams, who now presides over Middle East policy at the National Security Council, is today far more discreet, no doubt in part because his conviction in 1991 for lying to Congress about his role in the Iran-contra scandal has made him an easy target for Democrats.
"He's very careful about not leaving fingerprints," one State Department official told IPS earlier this year.
But there is little doubt among Middle East analysts here that Abrams is playing a lead role in White House efforts to discredit Pelosi for meeting with Assad, just as he did with Wright for meeting Ortega in 1987.
And just as he worked with Reagan hard-liners to undermine the Arias Plan 20 years ago, so he appears to be doing what he can to undermine recent efforts by Saudi King Abdullah to initiate an Arab-Israeli peace process and, for that matter, by Republican realists, and even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to push it forward.
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Easter Surprise: Attack on Iran, New 9/11 -- or Worse
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again." -- George W. Bush, September 2002
"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous... Having said that, all options are on the table." -- George W. Bush, February 2005
The Bush administration continues moving closer to a nuclear attack on Iran, and we ignore the obvious buildup at our peril.
Mar 28, 2007
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again." -- George W. Bush, September 2002
"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous... Having said that, all options are on the table." -- George W. Bush, February 2005
The Bush administration continues moving closer to a nuclear attack on Iran, and we ignore the obvious buildup at our peril.
Russian media is sounding alarms. In February, ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Shirinovsky warned that the US would launch a strike against Tehran at the end of this month. Then last week, the Russian News and Information Agency Novosti (RIA-Novosti) quoted military experts predicting the US will attack Iran on April 6th, Good Friday. According to RIA-Novosti, the imminent assault will target Iranian air and naval defense capabilities, armed forces headquarters as well as key economic assets and administration headquarters. Massive air strikes will be deployed, possibly tactical nuclear weapons as well, and the Bush administration will attempt to exploit the resulting chaos and political unrest by installing a pro-US government.
Sound familiar? It's Iraq deja vu all over again, and we know how well that war has gone.
Seymour Hersh has published numerous articles in The New Yorker detailing the Bush administration's plans to invade Iran. His latest, "The Redirection," discusses participation in Iran-based clandestine operations, the kidnapping of hundreds of Iranians (including many "humanitarian and aid workers") by US forces and the shocking revelation that an Iran-Contra-type scandal has been run out of Vice President Dick Cheney's office with some of the illicit funds going to groups "sympathetic to al-Qaeda."
"The Redirection" also reports that the Pentagon has been planning to bomb Iran for a year and that a recently-established group connected to the Joint Chiefs of Staff is formulating an assault strategy to be implemented "upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours." Hersh notes that current capabilities "allow for an attack order this spring," possibly when four US aircraft-carrier battle groups are scheduled to be in the Persian Gulf simultaneously.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Congress busies itself with non-binding, timid resolutions on Iraq and recently altered a military-funding bill to make it easier for Bush to invade Iran. As Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) explained, language demanding that Bush seek congressional approval before attacking Iran "would take away perhaps the most important negotiating tool that the U.S. has when it comes to Iran."
Such sheer ignorance and blind denial would be laughable if it weren't marching us into Armageddon.
But with this Administration (and this Congress, apparently) diplomacy be damned.
It's now widely known that Iran had broached peace talks with the US in 2003 - Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice admitted as much in 2006 when she said, "what the Iranians wanted earlier was to be one-on-one with the United States." Yet the White House rejected Tehran's overture outright and Rice has since developed selective amnesia, later saying of the Iranian proposal, " I don't remember seeing any such thing."
For its part, the UN Security Council recently tightened sanctions aimed at pressuring Iran to cease uranium enrichment, and in response, Iran announced it would cooperate less with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
It's worth noting that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and says that its program falls under the legally permitted right to "peacefully use nuclear technology." In contrast, Israel has neither signed nor ratified the NPT and the US would breach the Treaty by conducting a nuclear attack against Iran.
Besides, the Bush administration's message to its enemies has been very clear: if you possess WMD you're safe, and if you don't, you're fair game. Iraq had no nuclear weapons and was invaded, Iran doesn't as well and risks attack, yet that other "Axis of Evil" country, North Korea, reportedly does have nuclear weapons and is left alone. When considering that India and Pakistan (and presumably Israel) developed secret nuclear weapons programs yet remain on good terms with Washington, the case for war becomes even more tenuous.
What consequences would arise from a US attack on Iran? Retaliation, for one. Tehran promised a "crushing response" to any US or Israeli assault, and while the country - ironically - doesn't possess nuclear weapons to scare off attackers, it does have other options. Iran boasts a standing army estimated at 450,000 personnel, as well as long-range missiles that could hit Israel and possibly even Europe. In addition, much of the world's oil supply is transported through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow stretch of water which Iran borders to the north. In 1997, Iran's deputy foreign minister warned that the country might close off that shipping route if ever threatened, and it wouldn't be difficult. Just a few missiles or gunboats could bring down vessels and block the Strait, thereby threatening the global oil supply and shooting the price of crude oil to over $100 a barrel,with untold negative consequences for the world economy.
An attack on Iran would also inflame tensions in the Middle East, and could tip the scales towards a new geopolitical balance, one in which the US finds itself shut out by Russia, China, Iran, Muslim countries and the many others Bush has managed to alienate during his period in office.
The most horrific impact of a US assault on Iran, of course, would be the potentially catastrophic number of casualties. The Oxford Research Group predicted that up to 10,000 people would die if the US bombed Iran's nuclear sites, and that an attack on the Bushehr nuclear reactor could send a radioactive cloud over the Gulf. If the US uses nuclear weapons, such as earth-penetrating "bunker buster" bombs, radioactive fallout would become even more disastrous.
The devastating implications of a US strike on Iran are clear. And that begs the question: how could the US public be convinced to enter another potentially ugly and protracted war?
Former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi chillingly noted that the Pentagon's plans to attack Iran were drawn up "to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States." Writing in The American Conservative in August 2005, Giraldi added, "The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran, there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites ... As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States."
Chew on that one a minute. The Pentagon's plan would be in response to a terrorist attack on the US, but not contingent upon Iran actually having been responsible. How outlandish is this scenario: another 9/11 hits the US, the administration says it has secret information implicating Iran, the US population demands retribution and bombs start dropping on Tehran.
While even contemplating another 9/11 brings shudders, it's worth noting that last year, Congress quietly approved provisions making it easier for the President to declare federal martial law after a domestic terrorist incident. And recall that in late 2003, General Tommy Franks openly speculated on how a new 9/11 could lead to a military form of government: "a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world -- it may be in the United States of America -- that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution."
Meanwhile, Iran conducted war games in the Persian Gulf last week and just yesterday, the US Navy began its largest maneuvers in the region since the 2003 Iraq invasion, complete with over 100 US warplanes and 10,000 personnel.
The clock is ticking, and there's far too much at stake.
If you're from the US, contact your Senators today and ask them to support the Webb amendment prohibiting the Administration from attacking Iran without congressional approval. Tell them to support the Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) bill making it harder for Bush to declare martial law and take over the National Guard, and while you're at it, tell your Senators to only fund troop withdrawal and to bring the troops home. Thank those Congress members who voted against more war funding.
We could be looking at WWIII. The time for positive action is now.
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The Iran Crisis -- 'Diplomacy' as a Launch Pad for Missiles
Feb 07, 2006
The current flurry of Western diplomacy will probably turn out to be groundwork for launching missiles at Iran.
Air attacks on targets in Iran are very likely. Yet many antiwar Americans seem eager to believe that won't happen.
Illusion 1: With the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq, the Pentagon is in no position to take on Iran.
But what's on the horizon is not an invasion -- it's a major air assault, which the American military can easily inflict on Iranian sites. (And if the task falls to the Israeli military, it is also well-equipped to bomb Iran.)
Illusion 2: The Bush administration is in so much political trouble at home -- for reasons including its lies about Iraqi WMDs -- that it wouldn't risk an uproar from an attack on Iran.
But the White House has been gradually preparing the domestic political ground for bombing Iran. As the Wall Street Journal reported days ago, "in recent polls a surprisingly large number of Americans say they would support U.S. military strikes to stop Tehran from getting the bomb."
Above those words, the Journal's headline -- "U.S. Chooses Diplomacy on Iran's Nuclear Program" -- trumpeted the Bush administration's game plan. It's a time-honored scam: When you're moving toward aggressive military action, emphasize diplomacy.
Donald Rumsfeld proclaimed at a conference in Munich on Saturday that -- to put a stop to Iran's nuclear program -- the world should work for a "diplomatic solution." Yet the next day, the German daily newspaper Handelsblatt reports, Rumsfeld said in an interview: "All options including the military one are on the table."
Top U.S. officials, inspired by the royal "W," aren't hesitating to speak for the world. Over the weekend, Condoleezza Rice said: "The world will not stand by if Iran continues on the path to a nuclear weapons capability." Meanwhile, Rumsfeld declared: "The Iranian regime is today the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. The world does not want, and must work together to prevent, a nuclear Iran."
Translation: First we'll be diplomatic, then we can bomb.
Illusion 3: The U.S. won't attack Iran because that would infuriate the millions of Iran-allied Shiites in Iraq, greatly damaging the U.S. war effort there.
But projecting rationality onto the Bush administration makes little sense at this point. The people running U.S. foreign policy have their own priorities, and avoiding carnage is not one of them.
Non-proliferation doesn't rank very high either, judging from Washington's cozy relationships with the nuclear-weapons powers of Israel, India and Pakistan. Unlike Iran, none of those countries are signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Only Iran has been allowing inspections of its nuclear facilities -- and it is Iran that the savants in Washington are now, in effect, threatening to bomb.
With sugar-plum visions of Iran's massive oil and natural-gas reserves dancing in their heads, the Washington neo-cons evidently harbor some farfetched hopes of bringing about the overthrow of the Iranian regime. But in the real world, an attack on Iran would strengthen its most extreme factions and fortify whatever interest it has in developing nuclear arms.
"The U.S. will not solve the nuclear problem by threatening military strikes or by dragging Iran before the U.N. Security Council," Iran's 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi wrote in the Jan. 19 edition of the Los Angeles Times, in an oped piece co-authored by Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California. "Although a vast majority of Iranians despise the country's hard-liners and wish for their downfall, they also support its nuclear program because it has become a source of pride for an old nation with a glorious history."
The essay added: "A military attack would only inflame nationalist sentiments. Iran is not Iraq. Given Iranians' fierce nationalism and the Shiites' tradition of martyrdom, any military move would provoke a response that would engulf the entire region, resulting in countless deaths and a ruined economy not only for the region but for the world. Imposing U.N. sanctions on Iran would also be counterproductive, prompting Tehran to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its 'additional protocol.' Is the world ready to live with such prospects?"
While calling for international pressure against Iran's serious violations of human rights, Ebadi and Sahimi said that "Iran is at least six to 10 years away from a nuclear bomb, by most estimates. The crisis is not even a crisis. There is ample time for political reform before Iran ever develops the bomb."
Last Friday, the Iranian Student News Agency quoted Iran's former president Muhammad Khatami, who urged the Iranian government to offer assurances that the country's nuclear program is only for generating electricity. "It is necessary to act wisely and with tolerance so that our right to nuclear energy will not be abolished," he said.
Though he failed to develop much political traction for reform during his eight years as president, Khatami was a moderating force against human-rights abuses. His demagogic successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a menace to human rights and peace. But it's by no means clear that Ahmadinejad can count on long-term support from the nation's ruling clerics.
The man he defeated in the presidential runoff last summer, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, wields significant power as head of the government's Expediency Council. Though he has a well-earned reputation as a corrupt opportunist, Rafsanjani is now a beacon of enlightenment compared to Ahmadinejad.
In early January, a pair of Iran scholars -- Dariush Zahedi and Ali Ezzatyar, based at the University of California in Berkeley -- wrote an LA Times piece making this point: "Contrary to popular belief, the traditional conservative clerical establishment is apprehensive about the possibility of violence inside and outside Iran. It generally opposes an aggressive foreign policy and, having some intimate ties with Iran's dependent capitalist class, is appalled at the rapid slide of the economy since Ahmadinejad's inauguration. The value of Tehran's stock market has plunged $10 billion, the nation's vibrant real estate market has withered and capital outflows are increasing."
And the scholars added pointedly: "The history of U.S.-Iran relations shows that the more Washington chastises Tehran for its nuclear ambitions, the more it plays into the hands of the radicals by riling up fear and nationalist sentiment."
Right now, the presidents of Iran and the United States are thriving on the belligerency of the other. From all indications, a military assault on Iran would boost Ahmadinejad's power at home. And it's a good bet that the U.S. government will do him this enormous favor. Unless we can prevent it.
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This War is Not Just
Nov 27, 2001
IN RECENT DAYS, sage editorial writers, religious leaders, politicians, liberal pundits, and admired columnists have joined in the Donald Rumsfeld-Condoleezza Rice chorus praising the American war in Afghanistan as ''just.''
The Taliban are described as all but defeated. The ''noose'' around bin Laden grows ever tighter. Afghans are seen rejoicing in the streets, and the women among them are liberated. All because the United States turned the full force of its fire power loose on the evil enemy. Anyone still refusing to sign onto this campaign is increasingly regarded as unpatriotic. Next, we will be called ''kooks.''
Not so fast. The broad American consensus that Bush's war is ''just'' represents a shallow assessment of that war, a shallowness that results from three things.
First, ignorance. The United States government has revealed very little of what has happened in the war zone. Journalists impeded by restricted access and blind patriotism have uncovered even less. How many of those outside the military establishment who have blithely deemed this war ''just'' know what it actually involves? It is clear that a massive bombardment has been occurring throughout Afghanistan, but to what effect? And against whom? Is the focus on the readily targeted Taliban, in fact, allowing a far more elusive Al Qaeda to slip away?
The crucial judgment about a war's ''proportionality,'' central to any conclusion about its being ''just,'' simply cannot be made on the basis of information available at present. And how is this war ''just'' if the so far unprovoked war it is bleeding into - against Iraq - is unjust?
Second, narrow context. The celebrated results that have so far followed from the American war - collapse of the Taliban, liberation of women - are welcome indeed, but they are relatively peripheral outcomes, unrelated to the stated American war aim of defeating terrorism.
And these outcomes pale in significance when the conflict is seen in the context of a larger question: Does this intervention break, or at least impede, the cycle of violence in which terrorism is only the latest turn? Or, by affirming the inevitability of violence, does this war prepare the ground for the next one? By unleashing such massive firepower, do we make potential enemies even more likely to try to match it with the very weapons of mass destruction we so dread? Alas, the answer is clear.
This ''overwhelming'' exercise of American power has been a crude reinforcement of the worst impulse of human history - but this is the nuclear age, and that impulse simply must be checked. This old style American war is unwise in the extreme, and if other nations - Pakistan, India, Israel, Russia? - begin to play according to the rules of ''dead or alive,'' will this American model still seem ''just''?
Third, wrongly defined use of force. This war is not ''just'' because it was not necessary. It may be the only kind of force the behemoth Pentagon knows to exercise, but that doesn't make it ''just'' either. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 could have been defined not as acts of war, but as crimes. That was the first mistake, one critics like me flagged as it was happening.
As perhaps the most savage crimes in history, the terrorists' acts should have been met with a swift, forceful response far more targeted than the present war has been. Police action, not war. The criminals, not an impoverished nation, should be on the receiving end of the punishment.
Instead, a massive war against a substitute enemy leaves the sprawling criminal network intact - perhaps in Afghanistan, certainly in major cities elsewhere. Meanwhile, because of the war, the rule of law at home is being undermined. Because of the war-driven pressure to be ''united,'' the shocking incompetence of US domestic security agencies goes unchallenged.
Early in the war, the highest US officials, including the president and vice president, encouraged the idea that the anthrax attacks were originating with the bin Laden network. The understandable paranoia that consequently gripped the public imagination - an enemy that could shut down Congress! - was a crucial aspect of what led both press and politicians to accept the idea that a massive war against an evil enemy would be both necessary and moral.
Now, the operating assumption is that the anthrax cases, unrelated to bin Laden, are domestic crimes, not acts of war. But for a crucial moment, they effectively played the role in this war that the Gulf of Tonkin ''assault'' played in the Vietnam War, as sources of a war hysteria that ''united'' the nation around a mistake. In such a context, the more doubt is labeled disloyal, the more it grows. The more this war is deemed ''just,'' the more it seems wrong.
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