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robert mcnamara
The Truth-Teller: From the Pentagon Papers to the Doomsday Machine
Daniel Ellsberg discusses the continuing existential threat posed by the military-industrial complex
May 18, 2019
This interview was originally published on the Great Transition Initiative website. See more of GTI's work here.
The growth of the military-industrial complex poses an existential threat to humanity. Daniel Ellsberg, peace activist and Vietnam War whistleblower discusses with Tellus Senior Fellow Allen White the continuing existential threat posed by the military-industrial complex--and what needs to be done about it.
You became a pivotal figure in the anti-Vietnam War movement when you released the Pentagon Papers, a large batch of classified documents that revealed a quarter century of official deception and aggression. What inspired you to take such a risky action?
After graduating from Harvard with an economics degree and completing service in the U.S. Marines, I worked as a military analyst at the RAND Corporation. In 1961, in that role, I went to Vietnam as part of a Department of Defense task force and saw that our prospects there were extremely dim. It was clear to me that military intervention was a losing proposition.
Three years later, I moved from RAND to the Department of Defense. On my first day, I was assigned to a team tasked with devising a response to the alleged attack on the U.S. naval warship USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin by the North Vietnamese. This completely fabricated incident became the excuse for bombing North Vietnam, which the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had wanted to do for some months.
That night, I saw President Lyndon Johnson and my boss, Secretary McNamara, knowingly lie to the public that North Vietnam had without provocation attacked the U.S. ship.
That night, I saw President Lyndon Johnson and my boss, Secretary McNamara, knowingly lie to the public that North Vietnam had without provocation attacked the U.S. ship. In fact, the U.S. had covertly attacked North Vietnam the night before and on previous nights. Johnson and McNamara's claim that the U.S. did not seek to widen the war was the exact opposite of reality. In short, the Gulf of Tonkin crisis was based on lies. I was not yet moved to leave government, though I had come to view U.S. military action as ineffective, illegitimate, and deadly, without rationale or endgame.
By 1969, as the war progressed under Richard Nixon, I saw such evil in government deceit that I asked myself, "What can I do to shorten a war that I know from an insider's vantage point is going to continue and expand?" When the Pentagon Papers were released in 1971, the extent of government lies shocked the public. The retaliatory crimes Nixon committed against me out of fear that I would expose his own continuing threats--including nuclear threats--ultimately helped to bring him down and shorten the Vietnam War. This outcome had seemed impossible after his landslide reelection in 1972.
Today, similar revelations do not occasion equal shock because in the current administration in Washington, lying is routine rather than exceptional. Whether we are headed for a turning point toward bringing liars to justice will become clear when the investigations of President Donald Trump's administration are concluded.
Since then, you have been a vocal critic of both U.S. military interventions and the continued embrace of nuclear weapons, an issue with which you had first-hand familiarity through your work at RAND and the Pentagon. How did your experience with nuclear policy contribute to your disillusionment with U.S. foreign policy writ large?
At RAND, Cold War presuppositions dominated all our work. We were certain that the U.S. was behind in the arms race and that the Soviet Union, in pursuit of world domination, would exploit its lead by achieving a capacity to disarm the United States entirely of its nuclear retaliatory force. We were convinced that we were facing a Hitler with nuclear weapons.
However, in 1961, I learned about a highly classified new estimate of Soviet weapons: four intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). At the time, the U.S. had forty ICBMs, as well as thousands of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Italy, Britain, and Turkey (compared to the Soviet Union's total of zero). General Thomas Power, head of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), believed that the Russians had 1,000 ICBMs. He was wrong by a factor of 250. This early mistaken belief signaled to me that something was very wrong with our perception of the world and, more specifically, with how we perceived the threat posed by the nation viewed as our most formidable adversary.
At the time, I regarded the erroneous "missile gap" as a misunderstanding or cognitive error of some kind. But, in fact, it was very much a motivated error--motivated in particular by the desires of the Air Force and SAC to justify their budget requests for huge increases in the numbers of U.S. bombers and missiles. But why did we at RAND uncritically accept the wildly inflated Air Force Intelligence estimates, rather than the contrary estimates by Army and Navy Intelligence that the Soviets had produced only "a few" ICBMs? Again, a motivated error. Through self-deception, we viewed ourselves as independent thinkers focused exclusively on national security, assuming that our role as contractors on the Air Force payroll had no influence on our analysis.
In retrospect, it is clear that our focus and our recommendations would have been very different had we been working for the Navy. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." It was very important to us not to understand that our work was above all serving to justify the exaggerated budget demands by the Air Force.
That killings of this magnitude--100 times the toll of Jewish victims of the Holocaust--were willingly contemplated by our military transcended prevailing notions of crimes against humanity.
My distrust of the wisdom of Pentagon planners was also aroused by JCS estimates of the death toll resulting from deployment of our nuclear weapons. I had heard that the JCS avoided calculating this figure because they didn't want to know how many people they would be killing. To confront them, I drafted a question that appeared in a letter from the White House Deputy for National Security, Robert Komer, transmitted in the name of President Kennedy: "If your war plans were carried out as written and were successful, how many people would be killed in the Soviet Union and China?"
Within a week, I held in my hand a top secret, eyes-only-for-the-president document with an estimate of 325 million fatalities in the first six months. A week later, a second communication added an estimated 100 million deaths in Eastern Europe and another 100 million in our allied nations of Western Europe, depending upon the wind patterns in the aftermath of the strike. Additional deaths in Japan, India, Afghanistan, and other countries brought the total to 600 million.
That killings of this magnitude--100 times the toll of Jewish victims of the Holocaust--were willingly contemplated by our military transcended prevailing notions of crimes against humanity. We had no words--indeed, there are no words--for such devastation. These data confronted me with not only the question of whom I was working with and for, but also the fundamental question of how such human depravity was possible.
Your recent book, The Doomsday Machine, describes "a very expensive system of men, machines, electronics, communications, institutions, plans, training, discipline, practices and doctrine designed to obliterate the Soviet Union under various circumstances, with most of the rest of humanity as collateral damage." How did this system come about?
World War II created a highly profitable aerospace sector upon which the U.S. military relied for strategic bombing of cities, thereby setting the stage for the idea of bombers as a delivery mechanism for nuclear weapons. As orders precipitously declined by the end of the war, the industry was in dire financial straits, facing bankruptcy within a year or two. Accustomed to the guaranteed profits of the war years, they found themselves unable to compete with corporations experienced in building non-military products for the market, and demand for civilian aircraft on the part of commercial airlines was insufficient to replace the wartime military business.
With the benefit of hindsight, I now see the Cold War as, in part, a marketing campaign for the continual, massive subsidies to the aerospace industry.
The Air Force grew concerned that the industry would be unable to survive on a scale adequate to deliver military superiority in future conflicts. In the eyes of the government--and industry lobbyists--the only solution was a large peacetime (Cold War) Air Force with wartime-level sales to keep the industry afloat.
Thus emerged the military-industrial complex. Mobilization to confront a Hitler-like external enemy--a role filled by the Soviet Union--was viewed as indispensable to national security. Government military planning followed, essentially socialism for the whole armaments industry, including but not limited to aircraft production. With the benefit of hindsight, I now see the Cold War as, in part, a marketing campaign for the continual, massive subsidies to the aerospace industry. That's what it became after the war, and that's what we are seeing again today. The contemporary analog is the idea of China as an existential enemy, which, I believe, is the dream and expectation of the U.S. Defense Department.
The threat of nuclear conflict persists as a near-term existential threat yet remains muted in political discourse and largely absent in public consciousness. How do you explain this glaring inconsistency?
Contemporary U.S. media focuses on contradictions and conflicts between the two major parties. On the issue of nuclear weapons, little difference exists between them. They support the same programs and both receive donations from Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, among others. They both favor more aircraft than the Pentagon requests, itself an amazing situation given the existing level of spending. Right now, the F35, the largest military project in history, may end up costing $1.5 trillion (an incredible sum even by historical standards of lavish Pentagon spending), yet still unable to achieve the promised performance. This kind of massive pork program is used by senators and representatives to secure political advantage--a "jobs" program that often is a euphemism for a "profits" program.
Nuclear weapons and climate change are two quintessential planetary threats requiring a coordinated global response. Do you see potential for alignment and cooperation between the anti-nuclear movement and the climate justice movement?
We, as a society, are conscious of the risk of the devastating impacts that could come from climate disruption. In contrast to the absence of public discourse around nuclear conflict since the end of the Cold War, climate has been a subject of intense public debate. Although the danger of the nuclear threat remains undiminished, the proposed $1.7 trillion nuclear modernization program in the U.S. is not a matter of serious debate.
It is difficult to compare climate and nuclear threats. The climate catastrophe toward which we are moving, while uncertain in terms of timing and outcomes, is indisputable. We have survived the nuclear danger for seventy years, although we have come close to conflict more frequently than the public realizes. I am not talking about just the Cuban Missile Crisis; in 1983, for example, we were also at the brink of a nuclear exchange, and there have been other instances. The risk of conflagration remains continuous and potentially catastrophic.
It is true that climate change may totally disrupt civilization as we know it, but how many lives would it cost? Whatever the number, some form of civilization would probably survive. By contrast, a nuclear winter, which has a non-zero possibility of occurring, would occasion near extinction.
That being said, both climate and nuclear threats are existential in nature, even as the degree and type of destruction differ. And both share another critical feature: the role of corporate interests and influence in sustaining the threat. As we speak, a pristine Arctic snowfield is under threat of oil drilling. Will Exxon and the other corporations be content to leave their known oil reserves in the ground, as needs to be done? I think that's as unlikely as Boeing eschewing military contracts.
Both climate and nuclear threats are existential in nature, even as the degree and type of destruction differ. And both share another critical feature: the role of corporate interests and influence in sustaining the threat.
To the question of alignment of the nuclear and climate movements, in my view, we cannot deal with the climate problem, globally or nationally, without massive government spending to speed up the production and lower the cost of renewables, and thereby accelerate the transition from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable energy one. This will also require subsidies to the underdeveloped countries to ease their transitions. In short, we need a new super-sized Marshall Plan combined with government regulation to constrain the most damaging impulses of the fossil-based market economy embraced by Reagan, Thatcher, and other market fundamentalists. We need a national mobilization akin to that achieved during World War II. We confronted Hitler then as a civilizational threat. Climate disruption demands an equivalent response.
And here's where the climate-nuclear nexus comes into play again. We cannot afford the wasteful and dangerous development of new nuclear weapons that "modernize" the Doomsday Machine at the same time that we need to apply vast sums to reduce the threat of climate disruption. In the face of imminent climate catastrophe, the $700-plus-billion military budget is both untenable and irresponsible. We must convert the military economy to a climate economy. We cannot have both. To do so, we must recognize that the risks posed by the military-industrial complex far exceed those posed by Russia.
The Great Transition envisions a fundamental shift in societal values and norms. To what extent does eliminating the nuclear threat ultimately depend on such a shift?
Few would disagree that to activate plans for deployment of nuclear weapons leading to a nuclear winter--and thereby killing nearly everyone on Earth--is immoral to a degree that words cannot convey. It is a crime that transcends any human conception or language. But what about the threat of deployment? For many, propagating the threat of an immoral act is itself immoral. But in the nuclear era, the nuclear states have not accepted that as a norm. Our entire nuclear posture, and that of our NATO allies, is based on deterrence of a nuclear war and, if it occurs, responding with our nuclear arsenal.
Revisiting this norm is very difficult. It is deeply embedded in the mindset of the U.S., Russia, and other nuclear-armed states and reinforced by the interests of powerful corporations. When Reagan and Gorbachev agreed that nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought, they did not say that it cannot be threatened or risked. Both nations continued such preparations and do so to this day. We have been taught that nuclear weapons are a necessary evil. Without a shift in norms and values, this situation will not change.
The Great Transition depicts a hopeful future rooted in solidarity, well-being, and ecological resilience. Given the dystopian scenarios you outline in The Doomsday Machine and your other work, where do you see the basis for hope?
My intention in addressing the threat of nuclear annihilation is that it will at least open up the possibility of change. While such a shift in values and norms would be almost miraculous, miracles can happen, and have happened in my lifetime. In 1985, the falling of the Berlin wall a mere four years later would have seemed improbable, if not impossible, given decades of nuclear tensions and near conflicts. But then it happened. And Nelson Mandela coming to power in South Africa, without a violent revolution, was impossible. But it happened.
So, unpredictable changes like these can happen, and their possibility inspires my commitment to continue my peace activities against long odds. My activity is based on the belief that small probabilities can be enlarged and that, however remote success may be, it is worthwhile pursuing because so much is at stake.
My experience with the Pentagon Papers showed that an act of truth-telling, of exposing the realities about which the public had been misled, can indeed help end an unnecessary, deadly conflict. This example is a lesson applicable to both the nuclear and climate crises we face. When everything is at stake, it is worth risking one's life or sacrificing one's freedom in order to help bring about radical change.
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How the Pentagon Took Ownership of Con Man Donald Trump
When it comes to raising money based on false claims, this president has nothing on the Pentagon. And worse yet, like America's wars, the Pentagon's long con shows no sign of ending.
Apr 30, 2019
Donald Trump is a con man. Think of Trump University or a juicy Trump steak or can't-lose casinos (that never won). But as president, one crew he hasn't conned is the Pentagon. Quite the opposite, they've conned him because they've been at the game a lot longer and lie (in Trump-speak) in far biglier ways.
People condemn President Trump for his incessant lying and his con games -- and rightly so. But few Americans condemn the Pentagon and the rest of the national security state, even though we've been the victims of their long con for decades now. As it happens, from the beginning of the Cold War to late last night, they've remained remarkably skilled at exaggerating the threats the U.S. faces and, believe me, that represents the longest con of all. It's kept the military-industrial complex humming along, thanks to countless trillions of taxpayer dollars, while attempts to focus a spotlight on that scam have been largely discredited or ignored.
One thing should have, but hasn't, cut through all the lies: the grimly downbeat results of America's actual wars. War by its nature tells harsh truths -- in this case, that the U.S. military is anything but "the finest fighting force that the world has ever known." Why? Because of its almost unblemished record of losing, or at least never winning, the wars it engages in. Consider the disasters that make up its record from Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s to, in the twenty-first century, the Iraq War that began with the invasion of 2003 and the nearly 18-year debacle in Afghanistan -- and that's just to start down a list. You could easily add Korea (a 70-year stalemate/truce that remains troublesome to this day), a disastrous eight-year-old intervention in Libya, a quarter century in (and out and in) Somalia, and the devastating U.S.-backed Saudi war in Yemen, among so many other failed interventions.
In short, the U.S. spends staggering sums annually, essentially stolen from a domestic economy and infrastructure that's fraying at the seams, on what still passes for "defense." The result: botched wars in distant lands that have little, if anything, to do with true defense, but which the Pentagon uses to justify yet more funding, often in the name of "rebuilding" a "depleted" military. Instead of a three-pointed pyramid scheme, you might think of this as a five-pointed Pentagon scheme, where losing only wins you ever more, abetted by lies that just grow and grow. When it comes to raising money based on false claims, this president has nothing on the Pentagon. And worse yet, like America's wars, the Pentagon's long con shows no sign of ending. Eat your heart out, Donald Trump!
Eternal MADness
"So many lies, so little time" is a phrase that comes to mind when I think of the 40 years I've spent up close and personal with the U.S. military, half on active duty as an Air Force officer. Where to begin? How about with those bomber and missile "gaps," those alleged shortfalls vis-a-vis the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s? They amounted to Chicken Little-style sky-is-falling hoaxes, but they brought in countless billions of dollars in military funding. In fact, the "gaps" then were all in our favor, as this country held a decisive edge in both strategic bombers and nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.
Or consider the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that served to authorize horrific attacks on Vietnam in retaliation for a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. Navy destroyers that never happened. Or think about the consistent exaggeration of Soviet weapons capabilities in the 1970s (the hype surrounding its MiG-25 Foxbat fighter jet, for example) that was used to justify a new generation of ultra-expensive American weaponry. Or the justifications for the Reagan military buildup of the 1980s -- remember the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars") or the MX ICBM and Pershing II missiles, not to speak of the neutron bomb and alarming military exercises that nearly brought us to nuclear war with the "Evil Empire" in 1983. Or think of another military miracle: the "peace dividend" that never arrived after the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 and the last superpower (you know which one) was left alone on a planet of minor "rogue states." And don't forget that calamitous "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq in 2003 in the name of neutralizing weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist or the endless global war on terror that still ignores the fact that 15 of the 19 September 11th terrorist hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.
And this endless long con of the Pentagon's was all the more effective because so many of its lies were sold by self-serving politicians. Exhibit one was, of course, John F. Kennedy's embrace of that false missile gap in winning the 1960 presidential election. Still, the Pentagon was never shy in its claims. Take the demand of the Air Force then for 10,000 -- yes, you read that right! -- new ICBMs to counter a Soviet threat that then numbered no more than a few dozen such missiles (as Daniel Ellsberg reminds us in his recent book, The Doomsday Machine).
To keep the Air Force happy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara settled on a mere 1,000 land-based Minuteman missiles to augment the 54 older Titan II ICBMs in that service's arsenal, a figure I committed to memory as a teenager in the 1970s. And don't forget that some of those missiles were MIRVed, meaning they had multiple nuclear warheads that could hit many targets. It all added up to the threat of what, in those years, came to be called "mutually assured destruction," better known by its all-too-apt acronym, MAD.
And the Pentagon's version of madness never ends. Think, for instance, of the planned three-decade $1.7 trillion "modernization" of the U.S. nuclear triad now underway, justified in the name of "overmatching" China and Russia, "near-peer" rivals in Pentagon-speak. No matter that America's current triad of land-based, submarine-based, and air-deployed nukes already leave the arsenals of those two countries in the shade.
Reason doesn't matter when the idea of a new cold war with those two former enemies couldn't be more useful in justifying the through-the-ceiling $750 billion defense budget requested by President Trump for 2020. The Democrats have pushed back with a still-soaring budget of $733 billion that accepts without question the "baseline" minimum demanded by Pentagon officials, a level of spending Trump once called "crazy." Talk about resistance being futile!
In other words, when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars, the Washington establishment of both parties has essentially been assimilated into the Pentagon collective. The national security state, that (unacknowledged) fourth branch of government, has in many ways become the most powerful of all, siphoning off more than 60%of federal discretionary spending, while failing to pass a single audit of how it uses such colossal sums.
All of this is in service to what's known as a National Defense Strategy (NDS) whose main purpose is to justify yet more prodigious Pentagon spending. As Vietnam War veteran and professor at National Defense University Gregory Foster wrote of the latest version of that document:
"In the final analysis, the NDS is an unadulterated call for a new Cold War, with all its attendant appurtenances: more gluttonous defense spending to support escalatory arms races in all those 'contested domains' of warfare; reliance on bean-counting input measures (weapons, forces, spending) for determining comparative 'competitiveness'; reinforcement and reaffirmation of the sacrosanct American way of war; and the reassuring comfort of superimposing an artificially simplistic Manichean worldview on the world's inherent complexity and thereby continuing to ignore and marginalize actors, places, and circumstances that don't coincide with our established preconceptions."
Such a critique is largely lost on Donald Trump, a man who models himself on perceived tough guys like Andrew Jackson and Winston Churchill. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he did, at least, rail against the folly and cost of America's wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. He said he wanted better relations with Russia. He talked about reinvesting in the United States rather than engaging in new wars. He even attacked costly weapons systems like the sky's-the-limit $1.4 trillion Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter.
Suffice it to say that, after two-plus years of posing as commander-in-chief, strong man Trump is now essentially owned by the Pentagon. America's wars continue unabated. U.S. troops remain in Syria and Afghanistan (despite the president's stated desire to remove them). Relations with Russia are tense as his administration tears up the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty negotiated by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
What to make of the president's visible capitulation to the Pentagon? Sure, he's playing to his conservative base, which is generally up for more spending on weaponry and war, but like so many presidents before him, he's been conned as well. The con-man-in-chief has finally met his match: a national security state that, when you consider its record, has had far greater success at lying its way to power than Donald J. Trump.
The Biggest Lie of All
Now, let's take a hard look at ourselves when it comes to weaponry and those wars of "ours." Because the most significant lies aren't the ones the president tells us, but those we tell ourselves. The biggest of all: that we can continue to send young men and women off to war without those wars ever coming home.
Think again. America's shock-and-awe conflicts have indeed come home, big time -- with shocking and awful results. On some level, many Americans recognize this. PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is now a well-known acronym. A smaller percentage of Americans know something about TBI, the traumatic brain injuries that already afflict an estimated 314,000 troops, often caused by IEDs (improvised explosive devices), another acronym it would have been better never to have to learn. Wounded Warrior projects remind us that veterans continue to suffer long after they've come home, with roughly 20 of them a day taking their own lives in a tragic epidemic of suicides. Meanwhile, surplus military equipment -- from automatic weapons to tank-like MRAPs -- made for the mean streets of Iraq are now deployed on Main Street, USA, by increasingly militarized police forces. Even the campus cops at Ohio State University have an MRAP!
Here, Americans would do well to ponder the words of Megan Stack, a war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times who drew on her own "education in war" when she wrote: "You can overcome the things that are done to you, but you cannot escape the things that you have done." She was undoubtedly thinking about subjects like the horrors of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, torture at the CIA's "black sites," cities rubblized in the Greater Middle East, and refugees produced by the tens of millions. Somehow, sooner or later, it all comes home, whether we as Americans admit it, or even realize it, or not.
"Here is the truth," Stack notes:
"It matters, what you do at war. It matters more than you ever want to know. Because countries, like people, have collective consciences and memories and souls, and the violence we deliver in the name of our nation is pooled like sickly tar at the bottom of who we are. The soldiers who don't die for us come home again. They bring with them the killers they became on our national behalf, and sit with their polluted memories and broken emotions in our homes and schools and temples. We may wish it were not so, but action amounts to identity. We become what we do... All of that poison seeps back into our soil."
And so indeed it has. How else to explain the way Americans have come to tolerate, even celebrate, convenient lies: that, for instance, Tomahawk missile strikes in Syria could make a feckless figure like Donald Trump presidential or even that such missiles are beautiful, as former NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams once claimed. Imagine if leading media and political figures boasted instead of taking on the Pentagon, reining in its ambitions, and saving taxpayers trillions of dollars, as well as countless lives here and overseas.
Ending the Pentagon's Long Con
War is the ultimate audit and, as any American should know, the Pentagon is incapable of passing an audit. Sadly, even when Congress acts to end U.S. support for a near-genocidal war that has nothing to do with any imaginable definition of national defense, in this case in Yemen, President Trump vetoes it. Remember when Candidate Trump was against dumb and wasteful wars? Not anymore. Not, at least, if it involves the Saudis.
The best course for this country, unimaginable as it might seem today, is to fight wars only as a last resort and when genuinely threatened (a sentiment that 86% of Americans agree with). In other words, the U.S. should end every conflict it's currently engaged in, while bringing most of its troops home and downsizing its imperial deployments globally.
What's stopping us? Mainly our own fears, our own pride, our own readiness to believe lies. So let me list six things Americans could do that would curb our military mania:
1. Our nuclear forces remain the best in the world, which is hardly something to brag about. They need to be downsized, not modernized, with the goal of eliminating them -- before they eliminate us.
2. The notion that this country is suddenly engaged in a new cold war with China and Russia needs to be tossed in the trash can of history -- and fast.
3. From its first days, the war on terror has been the definition of a forever war. Isn't it finally time to end that series of conflicts? International terrorism is a threat best met by the determined efforts of international police and intelligence agencies.
4. It's finally time to stop believing that the U.S. military is all about deterrence and democracy, when all too often it's all about exploitation and dominance.
5. It's finally time to stop funding the Pentagon and the rest of the national security state at levels that outpace most of the other major military powers on this planet put together and instead invest such funds where they might actually count for Americans. With an appropriate change in strategy, notes defense analyst Nicolas Davies, the U.S. could reduce its annual Pentagon budget by 50%.
6. Finally, it's time to stop boasting endlessly of our military strength as the measure of our national strength. What are we, Sparta?
The Pentagon will never be forced to make significant reforms until Americans stop believing in (and consenting to) its comforting lies.
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War and Peace and the 2020 Presidential Candidates
While we can't guarantee that candidates will stick to their campaign promises, we still must ask this vital question: What prospects for peace might each of them bring to the White House?
Mar 27, 2019
Forty-five years after Congress passed the War Powers Act in the wake of the Vietnam War, it has finally used it for the first time, to try to end the U.S.-Saudi war on the people of Yemen and to recover its constitutional authority over questions of war and peace. This hasn't stopped the war yet, and President Trump has threatened to veto the bill. But its passage in Congress, and the debate it has spawned, could be an important first step on a tortuous path to a less militarized U.S. foreign policy in Yemen and beyond.
While the United States has been involved in wars throughout much of its history, since the 9/11 attacks the U.S. military has been engaged in a series of wars that have dragged on for almost two decades. Many refer to them as "endless wars." One of the basic lessons we have all learned from this is that it is easier to start wars than to stop them. So, even as we have come to see this state of war as a kind of "new normal," the American public is wiser, calling for less military intervention and more congressional oversight.
The rest of the world is wiser about our wars, too. Take the case of Venezuela, where the Trump administration insists that the military option is "on the table." While some of Venezuela's neighbors are collaborating with U.S. efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government, none are offering their own armed forces.
"Ever since the Bush/Cheney administration launched the present-day 'Long Wars,' new presidents from both parties have dangled superficial appeals to peace during their election campaigns. But neither Obama nor Trump has seriously tried to end our 'endless' wars or rein in our runaway military spending."
The same applies in other regional crises. Iraq is refusing to serve as a staging area for a U.S.-Israeli-Saudi war on Iran. Traditional Western allies of the U.S. oppose Trump's unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement and want peaceful engagement, not war, with Iran. South Korea is committed to a peace process with North Korea, despite the erratic nature of Trump's negotiations with North Korea's Chairman Kim Jung Un.
So what hope is there that one of the parade of Democrats seeking the presidency in 2020 could be a real "peace candidate"? Could one of them bring an end to these wars and prevent new ones? Walk back the brewing Cold War and arms race with Russia and China? Downsize the U.S. military and its all-consuming budget? Promote diplomacy and a commitment to international law?
Ever since the Bush/Cheney administration launched the present-day "Long Wars," new presidents from both parties have dangled superficial appeals to peace during their election campaigns. But neither Obama nor Trump has seriously tried to end our "endless" wars or rein in our runaway military spending.
Obama's opposition to the Iraq war and vague promises for a new direction were enough to win him the presidency and the Nobel Peace Prize, but not to bring us peace. In the end, he spent more on the military than Bush and dropped more bombs on more countries, including a ten-fold increase in CIA drone strikes. Obama's main innovation was a doctrine of covert and proxy wars that reduced U.S. casualties and muted domestic opposition to war, but brought new violence and chaos to Libya, Syria and Yemen. Obama's escalation in Afghanistan, the fabled "graveyard of empires," turned that war into the longest U.S. war since the U.S. conquest of Native America (1783-1924).
Trump's election was also boosted by false promises of peace, with recent war veterans delivering critical votes in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But Trump quickly surrounded himself with generals and neocons, escalated the wars in Iraq, Syria, Somalia and Afghanistan, and has fully backed the Saudi-led war in Yemen. His hawkish advisers have so far ensured that any U.S. steps toward peace in Syria, Afghanistan or Korea remain symbolic, while U.S. efforts to destabilize Iran and Venezuela threaten the world with new wars. Trump's complaint, "We don't win any more," echoes through his presidency, ominously suggesting that he's still looking for a war he can "win."
While we can't guarantee that candidates will stick to their campaign promises, it is important to look at this new crop of presidential candidates and examine their views--and, when possible, voting records--on issues of war and peace. What prospects for peace might each of them bring to the White House?
Senator Sanders has the best voting record of any candidate on war and peace issues, especially on military spending. Opposing the oversized Pentagon budget, he has only voted for 3 out of 19 military spending bills since 2013. By this measure, no other candidate comes close, including Tulsi Gabbard. In other votes on war and peace, Sanders voted as requested by Peace Action 84% of the time from 2011 to 2016, despite some hawkish votes on Iran from 2011-2013.
One major contradiction in Sanders' opposition to out-of-control military spending has been his support for the world's most expensive and wasteful weapon system: the trillion-dollar F-35 fighter jet. Not only did Sanders support the F-35, he pushed--despite local opposition--to get these fighter jets stationed at the Burlington airport for the Vermont National Guard.
In terms of stopping the war in Yemen, Sanders has been a hero. Over the past year, he and Senators Murphy and Lee have led a sustained effort to shepherd his historic War Powers bill on Yemen through the Senate. Congressman Ro Khanna, whom Sanders has chosen as one of his 4 campaign co-chairs, has led the parallel effort in the House.
"Senator Sanders has the best voting record of any candidate on war and peace issues, especially on military spending."
Sanders' 2016 campaign highlighted his popular domestic proposals for universal healthcare and social and economic justice, but was criticized as light on foreign policy. Beyond chiding Clinton for being "too much into regime change," he seemed reluctant to debate her on foreign policy, despite her hawkish record. By contrast, during his current presidential run, he regularly includes the Military-Industrial Complex among the entrenched interests his political revolution is confronting, and his voting record backs up his rhetoric.
Sanders supports U.S. withdrawals from Afghanistan and Syria and opposes U.S. threats of war against Venezuela. But his rhetoric on foreign policy sometimes demonizes foreign leaders in ways that unwittingly lend support to the "regime change" policies he opposes - as when he joined a chorus of U.S. politicians labeling Colonel Gaddafi of Libya a "thug and a murderer," shortly before U.S.-backed thugs actually murdered Gaddafi.
Open Secrets shows Sanders taking in over $366,000 from the "defense industry" during his 2016 presidential campaign, but only $17,134 for his 2018 Senate reelection campaign.
So our question on Sanders is, "Which Bernie would we see in the White House?" Would it be the one who has the clarity and courage to vote "No" on 84% of military spending bills in the Senate, or the one who supports military boondoggles like the F-35 and can't resist repeating inflammatory smears of foreign leaders? It is vital that Sanders should appoint genuinely progressive foreign policy advisors to his campaign, and then to his administration, to complement his own greater experience and interest in domestic policy.
Tulsi Gabbard
While most candidates shy away from foreign policy, Congressmember Gabbard has made foreign policy--particularly ending war--the centerpiece of her campaign.
She was truly impressive in her March 10 CNN Town Hall, talking more honestly about U.S. wars than any other presidential candidate in recent history. Gabbard promises to end senseless wars like the one she witnessed as a National Guard officer in Iraq. She unequivocally states her opposition to U.S. "regime change" interventions, as well as the New Cold War and arms race with Russia, and supports rejoining the Iran nuclear deal. She was also an original cosponsor of Rep. Khanna's Yemen War Powers bill.
"Gabbard still believes in a militarized approach to counterterrorism, despite studies showing that this feeds a self-perpetuating cycle of violence on both sides."
But Gabbard's actual voting record on war and peace issues, especially on military spending, is not nearly as dovish as Sanders'. She voted for 19 of 29 military spending bills in the past 6 years, and she has only a 51% Peace Action voting record. Many of the votes that Peace Action counted against her were votes to fully fund controversial new weapons systems, including nuclear-tipped cruise missiles (in 2014, 2015 and 2016); an 11th U.S. aircraft-carrier (in 2013 and 2015); and various parts of Obama's anti-ballistic missile program, which fueled the New Cold War and arms race she now decries.
Gabbard voted at least twice (in 2015 and 2016) not to repeal the much-abused 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, and she voted three times not to limit the use of Pentagon slush funds. In 2016, she voted against an amendment to cut the military budget by just 1%. Gabbard received $8,192 in "defense" industry contributions for her 2018 reelection campaign.
Gabbard still believes in a militarized approach to counterterrorism, despite studies showing that this feeds a self-perpetuating cycle of violence on both sides.
She is still in the military herself and embraces what she calls a "military mindset." She ended her CNN Town Hall by saying that being Commander-in-Chief is the most important part of being president. As with Sanders, we have to ask, "Which Tulsi would we see in the White House?" Would it be the Major with the military mindset, who cannot bring herself to deprive her military colleagues of new weapons systems or even a 1% cut from the trillions of dollars in military spending she has voted for? Or would it be the veteran who has seen the horrors of war and is determined to bring the troops home and never again send them off to kill and be killed in endless regime change wars?
Elizabeth Warren made her reputation with her bold challenges of our nation's economic inequality and corporate greed, and has slowly started to stake out her foreign policy positions. Her campaign website says that she supports "cutting our bloated defense budget and ending the stranglehold of defense contractors on our military policy." But, like Gabbard, she has voted to approve over two-thirds of the "bloated" military spending bills that have come before her in the Senate.
Her website also says, "It's time to bring the troops home," and that she supports "reinvesting in diplomacy." She has come out in favor of the U.S. rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement and has also proposed legislation that would prevent the United States from using nuclear weapons as a first-strike option, saying she wants to "reduce the chances of a nuclear miscalculation."
"Warren made her reputation with her bold challenges of our nation's economic inequality and corporate greed, and has slowly started to stake out her foreign policy positions."
Her Peace Action voting record exactly matches Sanders' for the shorter time she has sat in the Senate, and she was one of the first five Senators to cosponsor his Yemen War Powers bill in March 2018. Warren took in $34,729 in "Defense" industry contributions for her 2018 Senate reelection campaign.
With regards to Israel, the Senator angered many of her liberal constituents when, in 2014, she supported Israel's invasion of Gaza that left over 2,000 dead, and blamed the civilian casualties on Hamas. She has since taken a more critical position. She opposed a bill to criminalize boycotting Israel and condemned Israel's use of deadly force against peaceful Gaza protesters in 2018.
Warren is following where Sanders has led on issues from universal healthcare to challenging inequality and corporate, plutocratic interests, and she is also following him on Yemen and other war and peace issues. But as with Gabbard, Warren's votes to approve 68% of military spending bills reveal a lack of conviction on tackling the very obstacle she acknowledges: "the stranglehold of defense contractors on our military policy."
Senator Harris announced her candidacy for president in a lengthy speech in her native Oakland, CA, where she addressed a wide range of issues, but failed to mention U.S. wars or military spending at all. Her only reference to foreign policy was a vague statement about "democratic values," "authoritarianism" and "nuclear proliferation," with no hint that the U.S. has contributed to any of those problems. Either she's not interested in foreign or military policy, or she's afraid to talk about her positions, especially in her hometown in the heart of Barbara Lee's progressive congressional district.
"Either [Harris} is not interested in foreign or military policy, or she's afraid to talk about her positions."
One issue Harris has been vocal about in other settings is her unconditional support for Israel. She told an AIPAC conference in 2017, "I will do everything in my power to ensure broad and bipartisan support for Israel's security and right to self-defense." She demonstrated how far she would take that support for Israel when President Obama finally allowed the U.S. to join a UN Security Council resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine as a "flagrant violation" of international law. Harris, Booker and Klobuchar were among 30 Democratic (and 47 Republican) Senators who cosponsored a bill to withhold U.S. dues to the UN over the resolution.
Faced with grassroots pressure to #SkipAIPAC in 2019, Harris did join most of the other presidential candidates who chose not to speak at AIPAC's 2019 gathering. She also supports rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement.
In her short time in the Senate, Harris has voted for six out of eight military spending bills, but she did cosponsor and vote for Sanders' Yemen War Powers bill. Harris was not up for reelection in 2018, but took in $26,424 in "Defense" industry contributions in the 2018 election cycle.
After Senator Sanders, Senator Gillibrand has the second best record on opposing runaway military spending, voting against 47% of military spending bills since 2013. Her Peace Action voting record is 80%, reduced mainly by the same hawkish votes on Iran as Sanders from 2011 to 2013. There is nothing on Gillibrand's campaign website about wars or military spending, despite serving on the Armed Services Committee. She took in $104,685 in "defense" industry contributions for her 2018 reelection campaign, more than any other senator running for president.
"Gillibrand cosponsored the Anti-Israel Boycott Act in 2017 but later withdrew her cosponsorship when pushed by grassroots opponents and the ACLU, and she voted against S.1, which included similar provisions, in January 2019."Gillibrand was an early cosponsor of Sanders' Yemen War Powers bill. She has also supported a full withdrawal from Afghanistan since at least 2011, when she worked on a withdrawal bill with then Senator Barbara Boxer and wrote a letter to Secretaries Gates and Clinton, asking for a firm commitment that U.S. troops would be out "no later than 2014."
Gillibrand cosponsored the Anti-Israel Boycott Act in 2017 but later withdrew her cosponsorship when pushed by grassroots opponents and the ACLU, and she voted against S.1, which included similar provisions, in January 2019. She has spoken favorably of Trump's diplomacy with North Korea. Originally a Blue Dog Democrat from rural upstate New York in the House, she has become more liberal as a Senator for New York state and now, as a presidential candidate.
Senator Booker has voted for 16 out of 19 military spending bills in the Senate. He also describes himself as a "staunch advocate for a strengthened relationship with Israel," and he cosponsored the Senate bill condemning the UN Security Council resolution against Israeli settlements in 2016. He was an original cosponsor of a bill to impose new sanctions on Iran in December 2013, before eventually voting for the nuclear agreement in 2015.
"Despite serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee, [Booker] has not taken a public position for ending America's wars or cutting its record military spending." Like Warren, Booker was one of the first five cosponsors of Sanders' Yemen War Powers bill, and he has an 86% Peace Action voting record. But despite serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee, he has not taken a public position for ending America's wars or cutting its record military spending. His record of voting for 84% of military spending bills suggests he would not make major cuts. Booker was not up for reelection in 2018, but received $50,078 in "defense" industry contributions for the 2018 election cycle.
Senator Klobuchar is the most unapologetic hawk of the senators in the race. She has voted for all but one, or 95%, of the military spending bills since 2013. She has only voted as requested by Peace Action 69% of the time, the lowest among senators running for president. Klobuchar supported the U.S-NATO-led regime change war in Libya in 2011, and her public statements suggest that her main condition for the U.S. use of military force anywhere is that U.S. allies also take part, as in Libya.
"Klobuchar is the most unapologetic hawk of the senators in the race."In January 2019, Klobuchar was the only presidential candidate who voted for S.1, a bill to reauthorize U.S. military aid to Israel that also included an anti-BDS provision to allow U.S. state and local governments to divest from companies that boycott Israel. She is the only Democratic presidential candidate in the Senate who did not cosponsor Sanders' Yemen War Powers bill in 2018, but she did cosponsor and vote for it in 2019. Klobuchar received $17,704 in "defense" industry contributions for her 2018 reelection campaign.
Beto O'Rourke
Former Congressmember O'Rourke voted for 20 out of 29 military spending bills (69%) since 2013, and had an 84% Peace Action voting record. Most of the votes Peace Action counted against him were votes opposing specific cuts in the military budget. Like Tulsi Gabbard, he voted for an 11th aircraft-carrier in 2015, and against an overall 1% cut in the military budget in 2016. He voted against reducing the number of U.S. troops in Europe in 2013 and he twice voted against placing limits on a Navy slush fund. O'Rourke was a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and he took in $111,210 from the "defense" industry for his Senate campaign, more than any other Democratic presidential candidate.
"O'Rourke has not highlighted foreign or military policy in his Senate or presidential campaigns, suggesting that this is something he would like to downplay."
Despite an obvious affinity with military-industrial interests, of which there are many throughout Texas, O'Rourke has not highlighted foreign or military policy in his Senate or presidential campaigns, suggesting that this is something he would like to downplay. In Congress, he was a member of the corporate New Democrat Coalition that progressives see as a tool of plutocratic and corporate interests.
John Delaney
Former Congressmember Delaney provides an alternative to Senator Klobuchar at the hawkish end of the spectrum, after voting for 25 out of 28 military spending bills since 2013, and earning a 53% Peace Action voting record. He took in $23,500 from "Defense" interests for his last Congressional campaign, and, like O'Rourke and Inslee, he was a member of the corporate New Democrat Coalition.
Jay Inslee, the Governor of Washington State, served in Congress from 1993-1995 and from 1999-2012. Inslee was a strong opponent of the U.S. war in Iraq, and introduced a bill to impeach Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez for approving torture by U.S. forces. Like O'Rourke and Delaney, Inslee was a member of the New Democrat Coalition of corporate Democrats, but also a strong voice for action on climate change. In his 2010 reelection campaign, he took in $27,250 in "defense" industry contributions. Inslee''s campaign is very focused on climate change, and his campaign website so far does not mention foreign or military policy at all.
Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang
These two candidates from outside the world of politics both bring refreshing ideas to the presidential contest. Spiritual teacher Williamson believes, "Our country's way of dealing with security issues is obsolete. We cannot simply rely on brute force to rid ourselves of international enemies." She recognizes that, on the contrary, the U.S. militarized foreign policy creates enemies, and our huge military budget "simply increase(s) the coffers of the military-industrial complex." She writes, "The only way to make peace with your neighbors is to make peace with your neighbors."
Williamson proposes a 10 or 20 year plan to transform our wartime economy into a "peace-time economy." ""From massive investment in the development of clean energy, to the retrofitting of our buildings and bridges, to the building of new schools and the creation of a green manufacturing base," she writes, "it is time to release this powerful sector of American genius to the work of promoting life instead of death."
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang promises to "bring our military spending under control," to "make it harder for the U.S. to get involved in foreign engagements with no clear goal," and to "reinvest in diplomacy." He believes that much of the military budget "is focused on defending against threats from decades ago as opposed to the threats of 2020." But he defines all these problems in terms of foreign "threats" and U.S. military responses to them, failing to recognize that U.S. militarism is itself a serious threat to many of our neighbors.
Julian Castro, Pete Buttigieg and John Hickenlooper
Neither Julian Castro, Pete Buttigieg nor John Hickenlooper mention foreign or military policy on their campaign websites at all.
Although Biden has yet to throw his hat into the ring, he is already making videos and speeches trying to tout his foreign policy expertise. Biden has been engaged in foreign policy since he won a Senate seat in 1972, eventually chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for four years, and becoming Obama's vice president. Echoing traditional mainstream Democratic rhetoric, he accuses Trump of abandoning U.S. global leadership and wants to see the U.S. regain its place as the "indispensable leader of the free world."
Biden presents himself as a pragmatist, saying that he opposed the Vietnam War not because he considered it immoral but because he thought it wouldn't work. Biden at first endorsed full-scale nation-building in Afghanistan but when he saw it wasn't working, he changed his mind, arguing that the U.S. military should destroy Al Qaeda and then leave. As vice president, he was a lonely voice in the Cabinet opposing Obama's escalation of the war in 2009.
Regarding Iraq, however, he was a hawk. He repeated false intelligence claims that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons and was seeking nuclear weapons, and therefore was a threat that had to be "eliminated." He later called his vote for the 2003 invasion a "mistake."
Biden is a self-described Zionist. He has stated that the Democrats' support for Israel "comes from our gut, moves through our heart, and ends up in our head. It's almost genetic."
There is one issue, however, where he would disagree with the present Israeli government, and that is on Iran. He wrote that "War with Iran is not just a bad option. It would be a disaster," and he supported Obama's entry into the Iran nuclear agreement. He would therefore likely support re-entering it if he were president.
"Like many other corporate Democrats, Biden champions a misleadingly benign view of the dangerous and destructive role the U.S. has played in the world over the past 20 years, under the Democratic administration in which he served as vice-president as well as under Republican ones." While Biden emphasizes diplomacy, he favors the NATO alliance so that "when we have to fight, we are not fighting alone." He ignores that NATO outlived its original Cold War purpose and has perpetuated and expanded its ambitions on a global scale since the 1990s - and that this has predictably ignited a new Cold War with Russia and China.
Despite paying lip service to international law and diplomacy, Biden sponsored the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, which authorized the U.S. to lead the NATO assault on Yugoslavia and invasion of Kosovo in 1999. This was the first major war in which the U.S. and NATO used force in violation of the UN Charter in the post-Cold War era, establishing the dangerous precedent that led to all our post-9/11 wars.
Like many other corporate Democrats, Biden champions a misleadingly benign view of the dangerous and destructive role the U.S. has played in the world over the past 20 years, under the Democratic administration in which he served as vice-president as well as under Republican ones.
Biden might support slight cuts in the Pentagon budget, but he is not likely to challenge the military-industrial complex he has served for so long in any significant way. He does, however, know the trauma of war firsthand, connecting his son's exposure to military burn pits while serving in Iraq and Kosovo to his fatal brain cancer, which might make him think twice about launching new wars.
On the other hand, Biden's long experience and skill as an advocate for the military-industrial complex and a militarized U.S. foreign policy suggest that those influences might well outweigh even his own personal tragedy if he is elected president and faced with critical choices between war and peace.
Conclusion
The United States has been at war for over 17 years, and we are spending most of our national tax revenues to pay for these wars and the forces and weapons to wage them. It would be foolish to think that presidential candidates who have little or nothing to say about this state of affairs will, out of the blue, come up with a brilliant plan to reverse course once we install them in the White House. It is especially disturbing that Gillibrand and O'Rourke, the two candidates most beholden to the military-industrial complex for campaign funding in 2018, are eerily quiet on these urgent questions.
"We need to hear a much more vigorous debate about war and peace in this campaign, with more specific plans from all the candidates."
But even the candidates who are vowing to tackle this crisis of militarism are doing so in ways that leave serious questions unanswered. Not one of them has said how much they would cut the record military budget that makes these wars possible - and thus almost inevitable.
In 1989, at the end of the Cold War, former Pentagon officials Robert McNamara and Larry Korb told the Senate Budget Committee that the U.S. military budget could safely be cut by 50% over the next 10 years. That obviously never happened, and our military spending under Bush II, Obama and Trump has outstripped the peak spending of the Cold War arms race.
In 2010, Barney Frank and three colleagues from both parties convened a Sustainable Defense Task Force that recommended a 25% cut in military spending. The Green Party has endorsed a 50% cut in today's military budget. That sounds radical, but, because inflation-adjusted spending is now higher than in 1989, that would still leave us with a larger military budget than MacNamara and Korb called for in 1989.
Presidential campaigns are key moments for raising these issues. We are greatly encouraged by Tulsi Gabbard's courageous decision to place solving the crisis of war and militarism at the heart of her presidential campaign. We thank Bernie Sanders for voting against the obscenely bloated military budget year after year, and for identifying the military-industrial complex as one of the most powerful interest groups that his political revolution must confront. We applaud Elizabeth Warren for condemning "the stranglehold of defense contractors on our military policy." And we welcome Marianne Williamson, Andrew Yang and other original voices to this debate.
"We are calling for this debate most of all because we mourn the millions of people being killed by our country's wars and we want the killing to stop."
But we need to hear a much more vigorous debate about war and peace in this campaign, with more specific plans from all the candidates. This vicious cycle of U.S. wars, militarism and runaway military spending drains our resources, corrupts our national priorities and undermines international cooperation, including on the existential dangers of climate change and nuclear weapons proliferation, which no country can solve on its own.
We are calling for this debate most of all because we mourn the millions of people being killed by our country's wars and we want the killing to stop. If you have other priorities, we understand and respect that. But unless and until we address militarism and all the money it sucks out of our national coffers, it may well prove impossible to solve the other very serious problems facing the United States and the world in the 21st century.
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Turning Our Backs on Nuremberg
John Bolton and Mike Pompeo defy the International Criminal Court
Mar 26, 2019
Events just fly by in the ever-accelerating rush of Trump Time, so it's easy enough to miss important ones in the chaos. Paul Manafort is sentenced twice and indicted a third time! Whoosh! Gone! The Senate agrees with the House that the United States should stop supporting Saudi Arabia in Yemen (and Mitch McConnell calls this attempt to extricate the country from cooperation in further war crimes "inappropriate and counterproductive")! Whoosh! Gone! Twelve Republican senators cross party lines to overturn Trump's declaration of a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, followed by the president's veto! Whoosh! Gone! Delegates to the March 2019 U.N. Environment Assembly meeting agree to a non-binding but important resolution drastically reducing the production of single-use plastic. The United States delegation, however, succeeds in watering down the final language lest it "endorse the approach being taken in other countries, which is different than our own"! Once again, the rest of the world is briefly reminded of the curse of American exceptionalism and then, whoosh! Gone!
Under the circumstances, it wouldn't be surprising if you had missed the Associated Press report about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announcing that the United States "will revoke or deny visas to International Criminal Court personnel seeking to investigate alleged war crimes and other abuses committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere." In fact, said Pompeo, some visas may already have been denied or revoked, but he refused to "provide details as to who has been affected and who will be affected" (supposedly to protect the confidentiality of visa applicants).
National Security Advisor John Bolton had already signaled such a move last September in a speech to the Federalist Society. In what the Guardian called an "excoriating attack" on the International Criminal Court, or ICC, Bolton said, "The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court."
By "unjust prosecution," he clearly meant any attempt to hold Americans accountable for possible war crimes. An exception even among exceptional nations, the United States simply cannot commit such crimes. Hence, by the logic of Bolton or Pompeo, any prosecution for such a crime must, by definition, be unjust.
In calling it "this illegitimate court," Bolton was referring to the only international venue now in existence for trying alleged war criminals whose countries cannot or will not prosecute them. By "our allies," Bolton appeared to mean Israel, a supposition Pompeo confirmed last week when he told reporters, "These visa restrictions may also be used to deter ICC efforts to pursue allied personnel, including Israelis."
And when it came to threats, Bolton didn't stop there. He also suggested that the U.S. might even arrest ICC officials:
"We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans."
This is a dangerous precedent indeed, as the director of the American Civil Liberty Union's Human Rights Project, Jamil Dakwar, told Democracy Now. It's outrageous, he pointed out, that the U.S. would prosecute "judges and the prosecutors of the ICC for doing their job and for doing the job that the United States should have done -- that is, to investigate, credibly and thoroughly, war crimes and crimes against humanity that were committed in the course of the war in Afghanistan."
What's all this about?
The story goes back to December 2017, when Fatou Bensouda, the ICC's chief prosecutor, announced an investigation into the possibility that U.S. military and CIA personnel had committed war crimes during America's Afghan War or in other countries "that have a nexus to the armed conflict in Afghanistan." These included some of the countries that hosted the CIA's so-called black sites, where, in the earlier years of the war on terror, detainees were held incommunicado and tortured. Specifically, the ICC opened an investigation into the possible commission of "war crimes, including torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape, and other forms of sexual violence by U.S. armed forces and members of the CIA on the territories of Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania."
When Bensouda made her announcement, it looked as if at least some Americans might finally be held accountable for crimes committed in the post-9/11 "war on terror" launched to avenge the criminal deaths of 3,000 souls in New York City and Washington, D.C. That never-ending war has seen the United States illegally invade and occupy Iraq; directly kill at least 210,000 civilians (not to mention actual combatants) in Iraq and Afghanistan; torture an unknown number of prisoners; and continue to detain without trial or conviction 39 men at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
But wait. Aren't U.S. personnel immune from ICC prosecution, because Washington never ratified the treaty that created the court?
That's true, but the alleged crimes didn't take place in the United States. They were committed in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania, all of which have ratified the treaty. Note that Thailand, site of egregious CIA abuses, doesn't appear on the ICC's list, nor does Iraq (the site of the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison, among other things), presumably because neither is a signatory to the treaty.
However, before it could prosecute such crimes, the ICC would have to investigate any potential charges, interview possible witnesses, and gather the evidence necessary to prepare an indictment. That would undoubtedly require its investigators to visit the United States. This, say Bolton and Pompeo, will never be permitted.
What Is the International Criminal Court and Why Does It Matter?
The ICC's origins go back to the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II. In 1943, the leaders of the Allied powers -- England, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union -- met in Tehran, Iran. One subject on the table: how, once the war was won, the Allies would deal with Nazi war criminals. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is said to have proposed simply lining up and executing 50,000 Nazis. American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reportedly tried to break the resulting tension by jokingly suggesting that 49,000 might be sufficient.
Two years later, at war's end, confronting evidence of barbarism on a scale previously unseen in history, the war's victors found themselves responsible for bringing accountability to the perpetrators of genocide and some modicum of justice to its victims. It was decided then to establish a tribunal, a court, where such criminals could be tried. The problem the Great Powers now faced was how to create a process that the world would consider something more than vengeance masquerading as righteousness, something more than "victors' justice."
The solution was to demonstrate that their prosecutions had a basis in the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties -- in, that is, the already existing laws of war. In the process of designing those prosecutions, they consolidated and advanced the meaning and power of international law itself, a concept particularly needed in a postwar world of atomic weapons and a looming U.S.-Soviet conflict. Three-quarters of a century and many wars and weapon systems later, enforceable international law still remains humanity's best hope for adjudicating past war crimes and preventing future ones -- but only if great nations like the United States do not declare themselves exceptions to the rule of law.
In addition to the verdicts rendered, the Nuremberg tribunal produced other enduring results, including the 1950 Nuremberg Principles, commissioned and adopted by the new United Nations. Those principles established that actions violating international law were punishable crimes, whether they violated any specific country's domestic laws or not. Even heads of state or other high government officials were not considered immune from prosecution for such war crimes or crimes against humanity. And no one could be exonerated for them on the sole grounds of following the orders of a superior.
In the end, however, was Nuremberg really anything more than victors' justice? There were those who said that was all it was, invoking what was called the "tu quoque" (Latin for "you did it, too") argument. After all, hadn't the allies also committed war crimes? Hadn't the British and Americans, for example, firebombed the German city of Dresden, killing 25,000 civilians in one night and destroying 75,000 homes? Indeed, it's been argued that, because the Allies didn't want to answer for Dresden, they excluded the earlier German air war against England from the charges brought at Nuremberg.
Nevertheless, many observers there believed that, after rendering verdicts for Nazi crimes, a more permanent tribunal would turn its attention to the crimes of the Allies. It might even, for example, have taken up the legality of the U.S. use of the world's first atomic weapons to obliterate the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This, of course, never happened.
Nor has any court ever prosecuted those responsible for the U.S. firebombing of 67 Japanese cities. Those lesser-known attacks killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and reduced many of that country's largely wooden urban areas to ashes. Robert McNamara, secretary of defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (and an architect of American policy in Vietnam), described those attacks in Errol Morris's brilliant documentary The Fog of War. Reflecting on his own actions in World War II when, as an Air Force captain, he served in the Office of Statistical Control (where he analyzed the efficiency of bomber aircraft), he told Morris: "What one can criticize is that the human race, prior to that time -- and today! -- has not really grappled with what are called the rules of war. Was there a rule that said you shouldn't bomb, shouldn't kill, shouldn't burn to death a hundred thousand civilians in one night? [General Curtis LeMay, who oversaw the firebombing campaign in Japan] said if we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals."
What does any of this have to do with today's International Criminal Court? The ICC is itself an outgrowth of the Nuremberg process. Even during the original Nuremberg trial, observers expected that the newly established United Nations would create a permanent war crimes court as one of its earliest actions.
In the end, it took more than half a century, but in 1998, at a United Nations General Assembly convention in Rome, 120 countries adopted the "Rome Statute," which established the court at The Hague in the Netherlands and described its jurisdiction and rules of operation. (Among the 148 votes, there were 21 abstentions and seven "no" votes, including the United States.) The ICC officially opened in 2002, when 60 nations ratified the Rome Statute. It took up its first prosecution in 2005. Today, about 120 member states back its role on this planet.
(A side note: The ICC is often confused with theInternational Court of Justice, commonly called the World Court. The ICC deals with the criminal prosecution of individuals. The World Court deals with civil disputes between nations. Unlike the ICC, the United States is a member of the World Court, although its record of abiding by that court's decisions is spotty at best.)
The United States and the ICC--a Strange Dance
Despite having participated in the work of formulating the Rome Statute, the United States never ratified it or joined the court. The first administration to deal with it would take a confusing and contradictory stance. In 1999, President Bill Clinton signed a Foreign Relations Authorization Act that included language prohibiting federal funding for the ICC and the extradition of any U.S. citizen to a country that might surrender him or her to that court for prosecution.
The following year, however, Clinton actually signed the Rome Statute, the treaty creating the ICC. In fact, the United States had been instrumental in drafting the court's procedures, rules of evidence, and definitions of various crimes. In spite of that Foreign Relations Authorization Act, it looked as if the U.S. was on the way to future full participation in the ICC. The year 2000, however, saw the election of George W. Bush. In 2002, the Bush administration rescinded Clinton's signature and notified the United Nations that the United States would not ratify the treaty. It was hardly a surprising move given that the Bush-Cheney administration had already begun torturing detainees in its newly born war on terror. (Torture techniques would even reportedly be demonstrated to some of those officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, in the White House.)
It was John Bolton, then Bush's undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, who sent the notification letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and personally trekked to U.N. headquarters in New York City to "unsign" the Rome Statute. That, of course, is the very John Bolton who now is Donald Trump's national security advisor and who attacked the ICC at the Federalist Society last September. This was hardly surprising, since his record of opposing any international constraints on Washington has been long and consistent. In fact, when George W. Bush tapped him as ambassador to the United Nations in 2005, the Senate refused to confirm him. It took a recess appointment to get him the job. The Senate's reluctance was reasonble, given Bolton's contempt for the institution. (He'd once said that if its headquarters building "lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.")
In 2002, Bush signed the American Servicemembers Protection Act (ASPA), which, as the American Bar Association explains, contained "several provisions meant to prohibit or otherwise complicate U.S. cooperation with the ICC." These included "restricting U.S. participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations, and prohibiting use of any appropriated funds to support or cooperate with the Court." They also included a provision authorizing the use of military force "to liberate any American citizens held by the Court," leading it to be dubbed by critics "the Invade The Hague Act."
And yet even the ASPA demonstrated an American ambivalence towards the ICC. It had an amendment allowing the U.S. to cooperate with the court in order to bring "other foreign nationals accused of genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity" to justice. In other words, the ICC was considered good enough to try other countries' accused war criminals, just not ours.
Under President Barack Obama, the United States began a rapprochement with the court, opening diplomatic relations and starting to attend meetings of its Assembly of States Parties as an observer, which it continues to do today. In 2011, the U.S. sent a delegation to an ICC meeting in Kampala, Uganda, where important language was adopted defining the crime of aggression.
Making an aggressive war was the first of the three categories of crimes under which Nazi leaders were charged at Nuremberg. At the time, Washington officials strongly advocated for the position that all other Nazi atrocities sprang from that initial crime. The same could well be said of the Bush-Cheney administration's decision to invade first Afghanistan and then Iraq. Cooperation with the ICC continued under Obama, who also signed a law providing rewards of up to $5 million for the capture of individuals indicted by the court.
It should be noted that the ICC is not without its critics. African nations in particular have rightly complained that the only people who have stood trial so far are from that continent, leading some to threaten to withdraw. In 2017, Burundi did leave, but so far no other African members have followed suit. Nonetheless, the ICC remains a court of last resort when it comes to bringing war criminals to justice.
Reversing Course Under Trump
Given Trump's "America First" rhetoric, it should hardly be surprising that the ICC is among the international organizations he and his top foreign-policy officials particularly despise. As a result, his administration has already rolled back Obama's rapprochement and then some. In view of the president's lack of attention to detail (not to mention his short attention span), it seems likely that John Bolton is the true architect of this latest move. It's the State Department that grants (or doesn't grant) visas, so Mike Pompeo made the official announcement, but this approach fits Bolton's M.O.
The poison now seeping out of Washington continues to spread. On March 18th, Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines became the second country to leave the ICC, where it, like the U.S., is being investigated for possible crimes -- in its case, against its own people. As the Washington Post reports, the country is "under preliminary examination [by the ICC]for thousands of [domestic drug war] killings since Duterte rose to the presidency in 2016."
In its menacing rejection of the court, the Trump administration is turning its back on the system of international law and justice the United States helped establish at Nuremberg. The rule of law must not hold only, as hotelier Leona Helmsley once said about taxes, for "the little people." If Donald Trump had truly wanted to "make America great again," he would have recognized that international law is not just for the little countries. The greater a world power, the more consequential is its submission to the rule of law. The attacks of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo on the ICC, however, simply represent a new spate of lawless actions from a lawless administration in an increasingly lawless era in Washington.
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We Are Being Lied Into War Again
This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results
Mar 07, 2019
I was 23 when we invaded Iraq, and I wasn't sure it was based on lies, but something deep down in me--just behind the spleen--told me it was based on lies. Kinda like if your blind date shows up and you notice he has a 2004 flip phone. It seems vaguely worrisome, and no explanation he can haltingly supply will put you at ease. Plus, anyone else who acts like it's normal also becomes suspect.
The invasion of Iraq just felt like it was a lie to me. And it turned out that I was right, that it was a lie, and that the entirety of the mainstream media and our government were either wrong or lying and, most of the time, both.
Now our government and our media are trying their damnedest to lie us into another war, this one with Venezuela. They tell us the Venezuelan people are desperate for necessities like toothpaste, while independent journalists show piles of affordable toothpaste in Caracas.
And even if they didn't have toothpaste, that hardly seems like a good reason for America to be dropping our long-range bad decisions on the heads of innocent people. Turning a town into an impact crater for the sake of a battle to stop gingivitis seems a bit extreme.
The mainstream media and nearly the entirety of the U.S. government tell us Juan Guaido is the "interim president," even though he was never elected to that position and the current president is still leading the Venezuelan government and military. So I guess this "interim" is the time between Guaido being a nobody and the time when he goes back to being nobody but now gets to tell women at parties, "You know, I used to be interim president."
The idea of Venezuela taking "aid" from the country whose sanctions are crushing them would be like the Standing Rock Sioux accepting gift packages from the construction crews swiss-cheesing their land to lay down the Dakota Access pipeline.
The mainstream media also inform us that the Venezuelan military set U.S. aid trucks on fire, when video shows opposition forces doing it. Furthermore, the idea of Venezuela taking "aid" from the country whose sanctions are crushing them would be like the Standing Rock Sioux accepting gift packages from the construction crews swiss-cheesing their land to lay down the Dakota Access pipeline. Unless the boxes are filled with industrial paper towels to help clean up oil spills, I fail to see how it would be beneficial. Sometimes you do indeed have to look a gift horse in the mouth (or should I say "gift dog").
This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country--or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results. So I thought this would be a prime moment to go through the top four greatest hits.
Number 4: The Spanish-American War
This is widely considered to be the birth of modern media propaganda, because it was the first war actually started by the media. Newspapers fabricated atrocities in the never-ending quest for more readers.
And as The New York Times noted, "[T]he sensationalistic reporting of the sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898 ... and all the other egregious reporting leading up to the Spanish-American War might have been considered merely cartoonish if it hadn't led to a major international conflict."
I think maybe The New York Times got that quote confused with its mission statement: "Cartoonishly dragging America into major international conflict since 1851!"
Number 3: The Vietnam War
Sure, most everyone knows the catastrophic Vietnam War was precipitated by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which U.S. naval vessels were fired upon by villainous North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Following that skirmish, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommended that President Johnson retaliate, and the full-force Vietnam War had begun. But most Americans still don't know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident--unless you count U.S. naval ships literally firing their weapons at weather events they saw on the radar. The 2003 documentary "The Fog of War" finally revealed the truth. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara confessed that the Gulf of Tonkin attack did not actually happen.
That's right. It never happened. Much like leprechauns or dragons or Simon Cowell's talent, it was a figment of our national imagination.
The lies of our government, followed by the fawning, credulous reporting from our media, led to the death of 58,000 U.S. service members and as many as 3.8 million Vietnamese.
The lies of our government, followed by the fawning, credulous reporting from our media, led to the death of 58,000 U.S. service members and as many as 3.8 million Vietnamese.
The United States government has one of the most powerful Departments of Fabrication and Falsification ever assembled. It's a modern marvel on par with the Great Pyramid of Giza and Rafael Nadal's down-the-line running forehand.
Number 2: The Iraq War
Of course, there's the most obvious lie about Iraq, i.e., that Saddam Hussein had so many weapons of mass destruction that he would often use one to scrub hard-to-reach places while in the tub. But that wasn't the only falsehood manifested to bring about our complete annihilation of the sovereign nation Saddam ruled over. There were others, such as the idea that Saddam was connected to al-Qaida and perhaps played a role in the 9/11 attacks. William Safire at The New York Times, in May 2002, wrote, "Mohamed Atta, destined to be the leading Sept. 11 suicide hijacker, was reported last fall by Czech intelligence to have met at least once with Saddam Hussein's espionage chief in the Iraqi Embassy."
Yes, Safire was able to polish a load of bullshit so thoroughly it would sparkle like a sapphire. And that column is still up on the Times' website, without a correction or retraction. I would say the Times is only useful for covering the bottom of a birdcage, but I'd fear the paper would lie your pet cockatoo into an ill-advised invasion, killing millions.
But the propaganda didn't even stop there. There was also the anthrax attacks following 9/11. Anthrax was mailed to press outlets and the offices of politicians. To this day, many people still believe it had something to do with Iraq or al-Qaida because of award-winning national embarrassments like Brian Ross.
"Brian Ross at ABC News wrote 'the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite' and 'bentonite is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program.' " As Salon so clearly put it, "All of those factual claims ... were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. ... Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports."
And, as you would expect, following that blatantly false reporting, Brian Ross did not lose his job. In fact, he wasn't put out to pasture from ABC News until last year, when he "reported that fired national security adviser Michael Flynn was ready to testify that Trump told him to contact the Russians during the campaign."
That report--much like the rumors of Brian Ross's journalistic integrity--turned out to be absolutely false.
(In my professional opinion, anyone who had anything to do with the selling, perpetrating or planning of theIraq War should never again hold a position higher than assistant trainee to the guy who picks up the shit of a dog that does not belong to anyone of any particular importance. If that position does not exist, we as a nation should create it just for this moment. Yet, despite my objections, Robert Mueller (head of the FBI at the time of the invasion and a big supporter of it) is leading the biggest investigation in the country. John Bolton, who advocated for the Iraq invasion as far back as the 1990s, is now national security adviser. Bill Kristol, who pushed for the war and said it would last two months, is now a regular panelist on MSNBC. And the list goes on.)
Unlike Defense Secretary McNamara, who admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened, we don't have a smoking gun showing that the Bush administration created these lies to get us into Iraq. ... Oh, wait! Turns out the paper shredder at the Bush Oval Office was on strike for a higher minimum wage in 2002, and in fact, we do have a memo written by Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, a year before U.S. forces unleashed a reign of terror on the Iraqi people. His memo about war with Iraq stated, "How start? US discovers Saddam connection to Sept 11 or to anthrax attacks? Or maybe a dispute over WMD inspections?"
I'm not sure what's more striking--that this memo exists, or that it sounds like the Bush boys planned a massive international battle the same way a broke 35-year-old maps out his bad novel that he's sure is the ticket out of his mom's basement.
"How start horrible bloody war? Maybe Saddam found to moonlight as porn star?"
Point is, multiple completely false stories laid the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq that left well over 1 million people dead.
Number 1: The Bombing of Syria
President Bashar Assad gassed his own people, thereby guaranteeing more American involvement--and he did it just days after Donald Trump had told the Pentagon to begin withdrawing troops from Syria. At least, that's the story the corporate media repeated on-loop for at least a month, only pausing every 10 minutes to try desperately to get us all to buy more things with "baconator" in the name or to seek out a harder penis.
So we are expected to believe Assad did the one thing that would ensure more U.S. involvement just as he was about to win his war? It's kinda like how, when I'm about to win a fistfight, I often poke myself repeatedly in the eye. You know--just to keep it exciting.
Famed journalists Seymour Hersh and Robert Fisk have done great work showing that the chemical attacks never happened, but there's a new update. Just two weeks ago, a BBC producer came forward and said the Douma, Syria, chemical attack footage was staged.
His tweet said that after six months of investigations, he can prove that no fatalities occurred in the hospital. Yet our breathlessly inept mainstream American media, with little to no evidence, ran around saying, "There was a chemical attack! Those poor people! And they don't have toothpaste, either! We must bomb them to help them!"
The ruling class comes up with a lie to manufacture American consent for its all-American war crimes, and that lie is then sprayed like laminate all over average American citizens.
The overarching point here is that we've replaced our media with stenographers to the ruling elite long ago. The ruling class comes up with a lie to manufacture American consent for its all-American war crimes, and that lie is then sprayed like laminate all over average American citizens. This goes on until such time as any average citizens who question said lie is looked at like they have two heads, and one of them is covered in rat shit.
For the "journalists" who hose the lies across the country the best, awards and private jets and rooftop drinks with midlevel celebrities like Chuck Norris await them. Now we're getting to the point where the actual rulers--the Trump administration, etc.--are not even hiding their corruption. John Bolton stated on Fox News that the ultimate goal is to steal Venezuela's oil. But our media continue to tout the propaganda line. Even after Bolton said that, you won't see Anderson Cooper or one of Fox News' grand wizards saying, "Venezuela is undergoing a U.S.-backed coup because we'd like to steal their oil." It's truly dizzying that the corporate media preserve the propaganda even after the "leaders" have revealed their true sinister intentions.
On the inside of Wolf Blitzer's eyelids, the phrase, "Must Defend the Matrix" blinks in red.
The propaganda line for Venezuela right now is, "We want to help the poor Venezuelans." Well, if you want to help them, then keep America out of their face. Don't force them to have anything to do with the country that came up with drive-through fried food served in a bucket and opioid nasal sprays. At no point does anyone look at the Donald Trump presidency and think, "Wow, that country really has things figured out. I hope they bring some of their great decision-making to our doorstep."
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Our Man From Boeing: The Pentagon's Revolving Door Spins Fast
Has the arms industry captured Trump’s Pentagon?
Jan 28, 2019
The way personnel spin through Washington's infamous revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry is nothing new. That door, however, is moving ever faster with the appointment of Patrick Shanahan, who spent 30 years at Boeing, the Pentagon's second largest contractor, as the Trump administration's acting secretary of defense.
Shanahan had previously been deputy secretary of defense, a typical position in recent years for someone with a significant arms industry background. William Lynn, President Obama's first deputy secretary of defense, had been a Raytheon lobbyist. Ashton Carter, his successor, was a consultant for the same company. One of President George W. Bush's deputies, Gordon England, had been president of the General Dynamics Fort Worth Aircraft Company (later sold to Lockheed Martin).
But Shanahan is unique. No secretary of defense in recent memory has had such a long career in the arms industry and so little experience in government or the military. For most of that career, in fact, his main focus was winning defense contracts for Boeing, not crafting effective defense policies. While the Pentagon should be focused on protecting the country, the arms industry operates in the pursuit of profit, even when that means selling weapons systems to countries working against American national security interests.
The closest analogues to Shanahan were Charlie Wilson, head of General Motors, whom President Dwight Eisenhower appointed to lead the Department of Defense (DoD) more than 60 years ago and John F. Kennedy's first defense secretary, Robert McNamara, who ran the Ford Motor Company before joining the administration. Eisenhower's choice of Wilson, whose firm manufactured military vehicles, raised concerns at the time about conflicts of interest -- but not in Wilson's mind. He famously claimed that, "for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa."
Shanahan's new role raises questions about whether what is in the best interest of Boeing -- bigger defense budgets and giant contracts for unaffordable and ineffective weaponry or aircraft -- is what's in the best interest of the public.
Rampant Conflicts of Interest
Unlike Wilson, Shanahan has at least implicitly acknowledged the potential for conflicts of interest in his new role by agreeing to recuse himself from decisions involving his former employer. But were he truly to adhere to such a position, he would have to avoid many of the Pentagon's most significant management and financial decisions. Last year, after all, Boeing received nearly $30 billion in DoD contracts for working on everything from combat, refueling, training, and radar planes to bombs, drones, missile-defense systems, ballistic missiles, and military satellites. If Shanahan were to step back from deliberations related to all of these, he would, at best, be a part-time steward of the Pentagon, unable even to oversee whether Boeing and related companies delivered what our military asked for.
There is already evidence, however, that he will do anything but refrain from overseeing, and so promoting, his old firm. Take Boeing's F-15X, for example. Against the wishes of the Air Force, the Pentagon decided to invest at least $1.2 billion in that fighter aircraft, an upgraded version of the Boeing F-15C/D, which had been supplanted by Lockheed Martin's questionable new F-35. There have been reports that Shanahan has already trashed Lockheed, Boeing's top competitor, in discussions inside the Pentagon. According to Bloomberg News, the decision to invest in the F-15X was due, in part at least, to "prodding" from him, when he was still deputy secretary of defense.
And that's just one of a slew of major contracts scooped up by Boeing in the past year. Others include a $9.2 billion program for a new training aircraft for the Air Force, an $805 million contract for an aerial refueling drone for the Navy, two new presidential Air Force One planes at a price tag of at least $3.9 billion, and significant new funding for the KC-46 refueling tanker, a troubled plane the Air Force has cleared for full production despite major defects still to be addressed. While there is as yet no evidence that Shanahan himself sought to tip the scales in Boeing's favor on any of these systems, it doesn't look good. As defense secretary, he's bound to be called on to referee major problems that will arise with one or more of these programs, at which point the question of bias towards Boeing will come directly into play.
Defenders of Shanahan's appointment to run what is by far the largest department in the federal government suggest that key Boeing decisions won't even reach his desk. That, however, is a deeply flawed argument for a number of reasons. To start, when making such decisions, lower-level managers will be aware of their boss's lifetime connection to Boeing -- especially since Shanahan has reportedly sung the praises of his former firm at the Pentagon. He has insisted, for example, that the massive F-35 program would have had none of the serious problems now plaguing it had it been run by Boeing.
In addition, Shanahan will be developing policies and programs sure to directly affect that company's bottom line. Among them, he'll be setting the DoD's priorities when it comes to addressing perceived threats. His initial message on his first day as acting secretary, for instance, was summarized as "China, China, China." Will he then prime the pump for expensive weapon systems like Boeing's P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft designed specifically to monitor Chinese military activities?
He has similarly been the Pentagon's staunchest advocate when it comes to the development of a new Space Force, something that likely thrills President Trump. He's advocated, for example, giving the Space Development Agency, the body that will be charged with developing military space assets, authority "on steroids" to shove ever more contracts out the door. As a producer of military satellites, Boeing is a major potential beneficiary of just such a development.
Then there's missile defense, another new presidential favorite. Shanahan presided over Boeing's missile defense division at a time when one of the systems being developed was the Airborne Laser, meant to zap launched nuclear missiles with lasers installed on Boeing 747 aircraft. The project, a dismal failure, was cancelled after more than $5 billion in taxpayer funds had been sunk into it. The Pentagon's latest "Star Wars"-style anti-missile technology, whose developmentwas just announced by President Trump, calls for a major investment in an equally impractical set of technologies at a price that Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund suggests could reach $1 trillion in the decades to come.
Among Boeing's current missile-defense programs is the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System, an array of land-based interceptor missiles that has already failed the majority of its tests. It's unlikely that it will ever function effectively in a situation in which incoming warheads would be accompanied by large numbers of decoys. The Congressional Budget Office has identified the cancellation of the program as one obvious decision that could save significant sums. But what chance is there that Shanahan would support such a decision, given all those years in which he advocated for that missile-defense system at Boeing?
Or take nuclear policy. His former company is one of two finalists to build a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Critics of such weapons systems like Clinton administration Secretary of Defense William Perry point out that ICBMs are the most dangerous and unnecessary leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, since in a potential war they might need to be launched on only minutes' notice, lest they be lost to incoming enemy nukes. Even some of their supporters have questioned the need for a brand-new ICBM when older ones could be upgraded. Nuclear hawks might eventually be persuaded to adopt such a position, too, since the cost of the Pentagon's across-the-board $1.5 trillion "modernization" of the U.S. nuclear arsenal (including the production of new nuclear bombers, missiles, and warheads) will otherwise begin to impinge on department priorities elsewhere. But how likely is Shanahan to seriously entertain even such modest critiques when they threaten to eliminate a huge potential payday for Boeing?
Finally, there is the issue of U.S. support for the brutal war launched by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Yemen nearly four years ago. Boeing's combat planes, bombs, and attack helicopters have played a central role in that conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of civilians, while a Saudi blockade of the country has put millions more at risk of famine. In addition, Boeing continues to benefit from a $480 million contract to service the F-15s it has supplied to the Royal Saudi Air Force.
Here, President Trump is firmly in that company's corner. "Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon... I don't wanna hurt jobs," he told 60 Minutes. "I don't wanna lose an order like that [from the Saudi government]." Before his resignation, Secretary of Defense James Mattis was regularly called upon to comment on the Saudi war and help craft U.S. policy towards both that country and the UAE. Where will Shanahan stand on a war significantly fueled by the products of his former company?
There is, in fact, a grim precedent for Shanahan's present situation. The Intercept and the Wall Street Journal have both reported that State Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Legislative AffairsCharles Faulkner, a former lobbyist for Raytheon, advocated giving Saudi Arabia a clean bill of health on its efforts to avoid hitting civilians in its air strikes in Yemen, lest Raytheon lose a lucrative bomb deal. So much for draining the swamp.
The Revolving Door Spins Both Ways
Shanahan and Faulkner are far from the only former defense executives or lobbyists to populate the Trump administration. Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson is a former lobbyist for Lockheed Martin. Ellen Lord, who heads procurement at the Pentagon, worked at Textron, a producer of bombs and military helicopters. Secretary of the Army Mark Esper -- rumored as a possible replacement for Shanahan as secretary of defense -- was once a top lobbyist at Raytheon. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood was a senior vice president at Lockheed Martin. And the latest addition to the club is Charles Kupperman, who has been tapped as deputy national security advisor. His career includes stints at both Boeing and Lockheed Martin. (His claim to fame: asserting that the United States could win a nuclear war.)
All of the above, including Patrick Shanahan, spun through that famed revolving door into government posts, but so many former DoD officials and top-level military officers have long spun in the opposite direction. In 1969, for example, Wisconsin Democratic Senator William Proxmire, a legendary Pentagon watchdog, was already describing the problem this way:
"The easy movement of high-ranking military officers into jobs with major defense contractors and the reverse movement of top executives in major defense contractors into high Pentagon jobs is solid evidence of the military-industrial complex in operation. It is a real threat to the public interest because it increases the chances of abuse... How hard a bargain will officers involved in procurement planning or specifications drive when they are one or two years from retirement and have the example to look at of over 2,000 fellow officers doing well on the outside after retirement?"
Or, as a 1983 internal Air Force memo, put it, "If a colonel or a general stands up and makes a fuss about high cost and poor quality, no nice man will come to see him when he retires."
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump appeared to recognize the obvious problem of the revolving door and proposed a five-point ethics reform plan to slow it down, if not shut it down entirely. Unfortunately, the ethics executive order he put in place once in office fell wildly short of his campaign ambitions, leaving that revolving door spinning madly. A new report from the Project On Government Oversight has documented 645 cases in 2018 alone in which former government officials held jobs at the top 20 Pentagon contractors. The leader among them? You probably won't be surprised to learn that it's Boeing, with 84 such hires.
Retired Vice Admiral Jeffrey Wieringa, who led the Pentagon's arms sales office, is a case in point. In that role, he helped promote sales of U.S. weaponry globally. Perhaps as a result, he "earned" himself a position as president for global services and support at Boeing less than a year after he retired. He's far from alone. Retired Rear Admiral Donald Gaddis, a program officer for Navy air systems, also joined the company, as did retired Air Force Major General Jack Catton, Jr., who served as the director of requirements for the Air Combat Command before moving to Boeing. Retired Vice Admiral Mark Harnitchek, the former head of the Defense Logistics Agency, charged with managing $35 billion in goods and services across the DoD annually, similarly became a vice president at Boeing.
Slowing the Revolving Door
Candidate Donald Trump saw the revolving door between government and industry as a problem. "I think anybody that gives out these big contracts should never ever, during their lifetime, be allowed to work for a defense company, for a company that makes that product," he said. As the continuing flow of officials through it suggests, however, as president, he's done anything but drain that swamp.
In order to do so, he would, as a start, have to focus his administration on closing the many loopholes in current federal ethics laws, which, however imperfectly, seek to limit conflicts of interest on the part of government officials who move to jobs in industry. Under current law, lobbying restrictions on such former officials can be circumvented if they label themselves "consultants" or "business development executives." Similarly, former Pentagon officials can go to work for an arms maker they once awarded a contract to as long as they're hired by a different division of that company. In addition, while Congress requires that the Pentagon track whoever's moving through that revolving door, the database that does so is both incomplete and not available for public viewing.
Candidate Trump was onto something. However, rather than curbing the blatant conflicts inherent in the revolving door -- the ultimate symbol of the military-industrial complex in action -- President Trump is actually accelerating them. America is indeed great again, if you happen to be one of those lucky enough to be moving back and forth between plum jobs in the Pentagon and the weapons industry.
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How Not to Build a "Great, Great Wall"
A timeline of border fortification
Jan 13, 2019
The point was less to actually build "the wall" than to constantly announce the building of the wall. "We started building our wall. I'm so proud of it," Donald Trump tweeted. "What a thing of beauty."
In fact, no wall, or certainly not the "big, fat, beautiful" one promised by Trump, is being built. True, miles of some kind of barrier -- barbed wire, chain-link and steel-slat fencing, corrugated panels, and, yes, even lengths of what can only be described as concrete wall -- have gone up along the U.S.-Mexico border, starting at least as far back as the administration of President William Taft, early in the last century. Trump has claimed repairs and expansions of these barriers as proof that he is fulfilling his signature campaign promise. Plaques have already been bolted onto upgrades in existing fencing, crediting him with work started and funded by previous administrations.
It is a monument to the final closing of the frontier, a symbol of a nation that used to believe it had escaped history, but now finds itself trapped by history, and of a people who used to believe they were captains of the future, but now are prisoners of the past
And yet Trump's phantasmagorical wall, whether it ever materializes or not, has become a central artifact in American politics. Think of his promise of a more than 1,000-mile-long, 30-foot-high ribbon of concrete and steel running along the southern border of the United States as America's new myth. It is a monument to the final closing of the frontier, a symbol of a nation that used to believe it had escaped history, but now finds itself trapped by history, and of a people who used to believe they were captains of the future, but now are prisoners of the past.
From Open to Closed Borders
Prior to World War I, the border -- established in the late 1840s and early 1850s after the U.S. military invaded Mexico and took a significant part of that country's territory -- was relatively unpoliced. As historian Mae Ngai has pointed out, before World War I the United States "had virtually open borders" in every sense of the term. The only exception: laws that explicitly excluded Chinese migrants. "You didn't need a passport," says Ngai. "You didn't need a visa. There was no such thing as a green card. If you showed up at Ellis Island, walked without a limp, had money in your pocket, and passed a very simple [IQ] test in your own language, you were admitted."
A similar openness existed at the border with Mexico. "There is no line to indicate the international boundary," reported Motor Age, a magazine devoted to promoting automobile tourism, in 1909. The only indication that you had crossed into a new country, heading south, was the way a well-graded road turned into a "rambling cross-country trail, full of chuck-holes and dust."
The next year, the State Department made plans to roll "great coils of barbed wire... in a straight line over the plain" across the open borderland range where Texans and Mexicans ran their cattle. The hope was to build "the finest barbed-wire boundary line in the history of the world." Not, though, to keep out people, as the border wasn't yet an obstacle for the Mexican migrant workers who traveled back and forth, daily or seasonally, to work in homes, factories, and fields in the United States. That barbed-wire barrier was meant to quarantine tick-infested longhorn cattle. Both Washington and Mexico City hoped that such a fence would help contain "Texas Fever," a parasitic disease decimating herds of cattle on both sides of the border and leading to a rapid rise in the cost of beef.
As far as I can tell, the first use of the word "wall" to describe an effort to close off the border came with the tumultuous Mexican Revolution. "American troops," announced the Department of War in March 1911 during Taft's presidency, "have been sent to form a solid military wall along the Rio Grande." Yes, Donald Trump was not the first to deploy the U.S. Army to the border. Twenty thousand soldiers, a large percentage of that military at the time, along with thousands of state militia volunteers, were dispatched to stop the movement of arms and men not out of, but into Mexico, in an effort to cut off supplies to revolutionary forces. Such a "wall" would "prove an object lesson to the world," claimed the Department of War. The point: to reassure European investors in Mexico that the U.S. had the situation south of the border under control. "The revolution in the republic to the south must end" was the lesson that the soldiers were dispatched to teach.
The revolution, however, raged on and borderland oil companies like Texaco began building their own private border walls to protect their holdings. Then, in April 1917, the month the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law a set of sweeping constraints on immigration generally, including literacy tests, entrance taxes, and quota restrictions. From that point on, the border sharpened -- literally, as lengths of barbed wire were stretched ever further on either side of port-of-entry customs houses.
This timeline illustrates how some of the most outward-looking presidents, men who insisted that the prosperity of the nation was inseparable from the prosperity of the world, also presided over the erection of a deadly run of border barriers, be they called fences or walls, that would come to separate the United States from Mexico.
What follows is a chronology of both the physical fortification of the U.S.-Mexico boundary and the psychic investment in such a fortification -- the fantasy, chased by both Democrats and Republicans for more than half a century, that with enough funds, technology, cement, steel, razor ribbon, barbed wire, and personnel, the border could be sealed. This timeline illustrates how some of the most outward-looking presidents, men who insisted that the prosperity of the nation was inseparable from the prosperity of the world, also presided over the erection of a deadly run of border barriers, be they called fences or walls, that would come to separate the United States from Mexico.
A Chronology
1945: The first significant physical barrier, a chain-link fence about five miles long and 10 feet high, went up along the Mexican border near Calexico, California. Its posts and wire mesh were recycled from California's Crystal City Internment Camp, which had been used during World War II to hold Japanese-Americans.
1968: Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" famously played to the resentments of white southern Democrats who opposed civil rights. As it turned out, though, the president had another southern strategy in mind as well, a "border strategy." As historian Patrick Timmons has written, running for president in 1968, Nixon promised to get tough on illegal drugs from Mexico -- the "marijuana problem," he called it. Shortly after winning the White House, he launched "Operation Intercept," a brief but prophetic military-style, highly theatrical crackdown along the border. That operation created three weeks of chaos, described by National Security Archive analyst Kate Doyle as an "unprecedented slow-down of all plane, truck, car and foot traffic -- legitimate or not -- flowing from Mexico into the southern United States." That it would be run by two right-wing figures, G. Gordon Liddy and Joe Arpaio, should be a reminder of the continuities between the Nixon era and the kind of demagoguery that now rules the country. Arpaio would become the racist sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who gratuitously imposed humiliating, brutal, and often deadly conditions on his overwhelmingly Latino prisoners. He would also become an early supporter of Donald Trump and would receive the first pardon of Trump's presidency after a judge found him in criminal contempt in a racial-profiling case. Liddy, of course, went on to run Nixon's "Plumbers," the burglars who infamously broke into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, precipitating the president's downfall. In his 1996 memoir, Liddy said Operation Intercept primarily wasn't about stopping the flow of pot. Instead, its "true purpose" was "an exercise in international extortion, pure, simple, and effective, designed to bend Mexico to our will" -- to force that country to be more cooperative on a range of policies.
1973-1977: The United States had just lost a war in Vietnam largely because it proved impossible to control a border dividing the two parts of that country. In fact, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, desperate to keep North Vietnamese forces from infiltrating South Vietnam, had spent more than $500 million on 200,000 spools of barbed wire and five million fence posts, intending to build a "barrier" -- dubbed the "McNamara Line" -- running from the South China Sea to Laos. That line failed dismally. The first bulldozed six-mile strip quickly became overgrown with jungle, while its wooden watch towers were, the New York Times reported, "promptly burned down." It was as that war ended that, for the first time, rightwing activists began to call for a "wall" to be built along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Biologist Garrett Hardin, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was typical. In "Population and Immigration: Compassion or Responsibility?," an essay in the Ecologist, he wrote: "We might build a wall, literally." Hardin was an early exponent of what today is called "race realism," which holds that, in a world of limited resources and declining white birth rates, borders must be "hardened."
During these years, southern border conflicts were especially acute in California, where Ronald Reagan was then governor. As San Diego's sprawl began to push against agricultural fields where migrant workers from Mexico toiled, racist attacks on them increased. Vigilantes drove around the back roads of the greater San Diego area shooting at Mexicans from the flatbeds of their pickup trucks. Dozens of bodies were found in shallow graves.
Such anti-migrant violence was fueled, in part, by angry Vietnam veterans who began to carry out what they called "beaner raids" to break up migrant camps. Snipers also took aim at Mexicans crossing the border. Led by the 27-year-old David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan set up a "border watch" in 1977 at the San Ysidro point of entry and received significant support from local Border Patrol agents. Other KKK groups soon set up similar patrols in south Texas, placing leaflets stamped with skulls and crossbones on the doorsteps of Latino residents. Around this time, in the swampy Tijuana estuary, an area that border vigilantes began calling "Little 'Nam," U.S. border agents reported finding pitfall traps modeled on the punji traps the Vietnamese had set for American soldiers.
1979: President Jimmy Carter's administration offered a plan to build a fence along heavily trafficked stretches of the border, but scuttled the idea as the 1980 presidential election approached.
1980-1984: "You don't build a nine-foot fence along the border between two friendly nations," Ronald Reagan said on a presidential campaign swing through Texas in September 1980. By taking a swipe at the Carter administration's plans, he was making a play for that state's Latino vote, 87% of which had gone to Carter four years earlier. "You document the undocumented workers and let them come in here with a visa," Reagan said, and let them stay "for whatever length of time they want to stay."
Then, four years later, President Reagan shifted gears. "Our borders are out of control," he insisted in October 1984. As he ran for reelection, his administration started pushing the idea that the border could indeed be "sealed" and that the deployment of "high tech" equipment -- infrared scopes, spotter planes, night-vision goggles -- might provide just such effective control. "New stuff," claimed a Border Patrol official, though some of the ground sensors being set out along that border were leftovers from Vietnam. In his second term, Reagan did get an immigration reform bill passed that helped more than two million undocumented residents obtain citizenship. But his administration, looking to appease a growing caucus of nativists in the Republican Party, also launched Operation Jobs, sending federal agents into workplaces to round up and deport undocumented workers. In 1984, the Border Patrol saw the largest staff increase in its 60-year history.
1989: In March 1989, a few months before the Berlin Wall fell, the new administration of President George H. W. Bush proposed building a 14-foot-wide, 5-foot-deep border trench south of San Diego. Some likened it to a "moat," since it would be filled with run-off rainwater. "The only thing they haven't tried is mining the area," quipped Robert Martinez, the director of San Diego's American Friends Service Committee. Opponents called it an "inverted Berlin Wall," while the White House claimed that the trench would solve both drainage and immigration problems. The idea was shelved.
1992: Richard Nixon's former speechwriter Patrick Buchanan provided an unexpectedly strong challenge to a sitting president for the Republican nomination, calling, among other things, for a wall or a ditch -- a "Buchanan trench," as he put it -- along the U.S.-Mexico border and for the Constitution to be amended so that migrant children born in the country couldn't claim citizenship. Bush won the nomination, but Buchanan managed to insert a pledge in the Republican platform to build a "structure" on the border. It proved an embarrassment at a moment when there was an emerging post-Cold War consensus among Republican and Democratic Party leaders that a free trade agreement with Mexico had to be encouraged and the border left open, at least for corporations and capital. Bush's campaign tried to fudge the issue by claiming that a "structure" didn't necessarily mean a wall, but Buchanan's people promptly shot back. "They don't put lighthouses on the border," his sister and spokesperson Bay Buchanan said.
1993: Having passed the North American Free Trade Agreement in Congress, President Bill Clinton immediately started to militarize the border, once again significantly increasing the budget and staff of the Border Patrol and supplying it with ever more technologically advanced equipment: infrared night scopes, thermal-imaging devices, motion detectors, in-ground sensors, and software that allowed biometric scanning of all apprehended migrants. Stadium lights went up, shining into Tijuana. Hundreds of miles of what the Clinton White House refused to call a "wall" went up as well. "We call it a fence," said one government official. "'Wall' has kind of a negative connotation."
The objective was to close off relatively safe urban border crossings and force migrants to use more treacherous places in their attempts to reach the United States, either the creosote flatlands of south Texas or the gulches and plateaus of the Arizona desert. Trips that used to take days now took weeks on arid sands and under a scorching sun. Clinton's Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, Doris Meissner, claimed "geography" as an "ally" -- meaning that desert torments would work wonders as a deterrent.
The Clinton White House was so eager to put up a set of barriers that it barely paid attention to the actual borderline, at one point mistakenly running a section of the structure into Mexico, prompting a protest from that country's government.
Another stretch, spanning 15 miles from the Pacific Ocean, would be built using Vietnam-era steel helicopter landing pads stood on end. Their edges were so sharp that migrants trying to climb over them often severed their fingers. As one observer noted, the use of the pads raised "the chilling possibility" that the U.S. might be able to "wall off the country" with leftover war materiel.
2006: The Secure Fence Act, passed by President George W. Bush's administration with considerable Democratic support, appropriated billions of dollars to pay for drones, a "virtual wall," aerostat blimps, radar, helicopters, watchtowers, surveillance balloons, razor ribbon, landfill to block canyons, border berms, adjustable barriers to compensate for shifting dunes, and a lab (located at Texas A&M and run in partnership with Boeing) to test fence prototypes. The number of border agents doubled yet again and the length of border fencing quadrupled. Operation Streamline detained, prosecuted, and tried migrants en masse and then expedited their deportation (mostly using an immigration reform law Clinton had signed in 1996). Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (created after 9/11) seized children off school buses and tracked undocumented residents deep into liberal states, including in the exclusive Hamptons on New York's Long Island and in New Bedford, Massachusetts. All told, in his eight years in office, Bush deported two million people, at a rate roughly matched by his successor, Barack Obama.
2013: The Democratic-controlled Senate passed a bill in June 2013 that -- in exchange for the promise of a one-time amnesty and a long-shot chance at citizenship for some of the millions of undocumented residents in the country -- offered more billions of dollars for policing, fencing, and deportations. According to the New York Times, with a winding down in Iraq and Afghanistan (however brief it would prove to be), defense contractors like Lockheed Martin were betting on a "military-style buildup at the border zone," hoping to supply even more helicopters, heat-seeking cameras, radiation detectors, virtual fences, watchtowers, ships, Predator drones, and military-grade radar. The bill failed in the House, killed by nativists. But the Democratic Party would continue to fund "tough-as-nails" (in the phrase of New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer) border security programs that amounted to years of up-armoring the border in what was then referred to as a "border surge."
No one really knows how many people have died trying to get into the United States since Washington began to make the border tough as nails. Most die of dehydration, hyperthermia, or hypothermia. Others drown in the Rio Grande. Since about 1998, the Border Patrol has reported nearly 7,000 deaths, with groups like the Tucson-based Coalicion de Derechos Humanos estimating that the remains of at least 6,000 immigrants have been recovered. These numbers are, however, undoubtedly just a fraction of the actual toll.
June 16, 2015: Donald J. Trump descends an escalator in Trump Tower to the tune of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" to announce his presidential campaign and denounce "Mexican rapists."
"I will build a great, great wall on our southern border," he tells Americans. "And I will have Mexico pay for that wall."
Show Me a 50-Foot Wall...
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," poet Robert Frost once wrote.
Borders, not to mention walls, represent domination and exploitation. But they also symbolize the absurdity of political leaders taking the world as it is and trying to make it as they think it ought to be. However much people might curse border fortifications, they also enjoy subverting them -- even if the subversion only lasts a moment, as when citizens of Naco, Sonora, and Naco, Arizona, play an annual volleyball game over the border fence; or when an artist decides to paint "the world's longest mural" on border fencing; or when families come together to gossip, tell jokes, and pass tamales and sweets between the posts; or when couples get married through the spaces separating the slats. As long as the United States keeps coming up with new ways to fortify the border, people will keep coming up with new ways to beat the border, including tunnels, ramps, catapults and homemade cannons (to launch bales of marijuana to the other side), and GoFundMe campaigns to pay for ladders.
As Janet Napolitano, former governor of Arizona and former director of Homeland Security, once said, "Show me a fifty-foot wall, and I'll show you a fifty-one-foot ladder."
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Julian Assange Deserves a Medal of Freedom, Not a Secret Indictment
Rather than federal indictment, Assange deserves a tweaked version of one of Washington’s hottest honors — a Medal of Freedom with a steam whistle.
Nov 20, 2018
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been secretly indicted by the Trump administration's Justice Department, "a drastic escalation" of the feds' efforts against him, the New York Times reported. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has denounced Wikileaks as a "non-state hostile intelligence service" and labeled Assange a "fraud," "coward," and "enemy." But rather than a federal indictment, Assange deserves a tweaked version of one of Washington's hottest honorifics.
Wikileaks has been in the federal crosshairs since it released scores of thousands of documents exposing lies and atrocities regarding the Afghan and Iraq wars, thanks to leaks from Army corporal Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Wikileaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee showing that its nominating process was rigged to favor Hillary Clinton. During the final month of the campaign, Wikileaks disclosed emails from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta.
Trump loved WikiLeaks when it was convenient
In the final month of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump declared, "I love WikiLeaks" and mentioned it more than a hundred times. However, since Trump took office, he is following Washington protocols and viewing whistleblowers as public enemies.
The Assange indictment is far more threatening than Trump tweets snarling at CNN. The ACLU warns that prosecuting Assange for Wikileaks' publishing operations would be "unconstitutional" and sets a "dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public's interest." Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation declared: "Any charges brought against WikiLeaks for their publishing activities pose a profound and incredibly dangerous threat to press freedom."
It is difficult to appreciate Wikileaks without recognizing how federal secrecy has become far more pervasive and dangerous since 9/11. If someone had massively leaked U.S. government documents on Iraq in January 2003, the Bush administration campaign for war might have been thwarted. The federal government made almost 50 million decisions to classify information last year. Politicians and federal agencies have long recognized that "what people don't know won't hurt the government."
"Truth will out" is the biggest fairy tale in Washington. U.S. troops are now fighting in 14 foreign nations: will the Pentagon tell us all about it? The National Security Agency illegally tracked every citizen's phone calls: no federal official disclosed the system that a federal judge castigated as an "almost Orwellian" surveillance scheme. And what are the betting odds of Americans seeing the dirt on the U.S. government's long-term collusion with the Saudi regime (despite its atrocities at home and abroad)?
On the same day the Assange indictment scored headlines, Trump awarded seven Presidential Medals of Freedom. No controversy greeted posthumous awards to Babe Ruth and Elvis Presley -- unlike the ruckus regarding Miriam Adelson, wife of Republican super-donor Sheldon Adelson. Public Citizen, a liberal nonprofit, howled that the Adelson award "is just the latest sign of [Trump's] ability to corrupt and corrode all aspects of the government." New York Times columnist Paul Krugman caterwauled that it was "ludicrous" and "and an insult to people who received the medal for genuine service."
Update the freedom awards to kill coverups
In reality, Presidential Medals of Freedom have routinely been exploited to buttress the political establishment, with bevies of awards for political operators, members of Congress, and pliable foreign leaders. President Lyndon Johnson distributed a bushel of Medals of Freedom to his Vietnam War architects and enablers, perhaps as consolation prizes for losing the war. (The medal awarded to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, whose lies about the war making progress cost thousands of Americans and Vietnamese their lives, fetched $40,625 at an auction a few years ago.) President George W. Bush conferred Medals of Freedom on his Iraq war team, including CIA chief George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, Iraq viceroy Paul Bremer, and ambassador Ryan Crocker, whom Bush called "America's Lawrence of Arabia." Some of the biggest fabulists of the modern era -- including Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney -- also pocketed the award.
The controversies over Assange and Adelson provide a serendipitous opportunity to update the freedom awards. Because few things are more perilous to democracy than permitting politicians to coverup crimes, there should be a new Medal of Freedom category commending individuals who have done the most to expose official lies. This particular award could be differentiated by including a little steam whistle atop the medal -- vivifying how leaks can prevent a political system from overheating or exploding.
Assange would deserve such a medal -- as would Thomas Drake and Edward Snowden (who revealed NSA's abuses), John Kiriakou (who revealed CIA torture), and Daniel Ellsberg (who leaked the Pentagon Papers). Admittedly, there may be no way to stop presidents from giving steam whistle freedom awards to political donors' wives.
Organizations like Wikileaks are among the best hopes for rescuing democracy from Leviathan. Unless we presume politicians have a divine right to deceive the governed, America should honor individuals who expose federal crimes. Whistleblowers should be especially welcome by anyone riled up over Trump's lies.
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Rationalizing Genocide
It’s long past time for the United States to end its complicity with Israeli war crimes.
May 22, 2018
Outrage over what has been alleged to be interference by a foreign power in the affairs of this country has led to a profound deterioration of relations with Russia and the unfortunate and tragic renewal of the Cold War. The Main Stream Media, despite the fact that the investigation is ongoing and conclusive evidence has yet to be released, is rift with criticism and condemnation of what it seems convinced are, or wishes to portray as, Russian attempts to influence, if not to undermine, the 2016 elections. But yet, in May of 2015, there was nary a whimper, neither the appointment of a special prosecutor or much debate and discussion in the MSM, when Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, was invited by Republicans to speak to a joint session of Congress in an attempt to undermine not just Obama's efforts to strike a nuclear deal with Iran, but his presidential authority over foreign policy.
In fact, not only did relations between the U.S. and Israel remain unaffected by this unprecedented interference with the American political process, but in September of 2016, the U.S. agreed to increase its military assistance to Israel to $38 billion, the largest such aid package in U.S. history. Any rational observer may understandably question the disparity in reaction between these two cases, the outrage at a yet to be substantiated claim regarding alleged Russian meddling, and the complete lack of concern regarding Israel's move to undermine diplomacy and the authority of a sitting American President.
This unwillingness of the U.S. Government to hold Israel accountable for its actions is clearly indicated as well in the 1967 Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty, a Navy research vessel in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, during which 34 American Servicemen were killed. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and in defiance of the protestation of USS Liberty survivors, President Lyndon Johnson and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, ordered that the inquiry be concluded and the incident declared an accident.
As a consequence of what many perceive as Israeli war crimes and the realization that the United States, for reasons yet to be determined, is more concerned with justifying Israeli behavior than with the well being of those it victimizes.
If yet unconvinced of Israeli malevolence and American complicity, consider the recent civilian protests at the Gaza "Border" instigated by the Trump Administration's provocative and ill advised decision to move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. As Trump family members and Israeli officials celebrated the opening of Embassy, just 40 miles away Israeli snipers killed 59 unarmed and non violent Palestinian protestors and injured more than 2,700, including several hundred children. In response many Nations, including American allies Great Britain, Kuwait, Turkey, etc., outraged by this unconscionable slaughter of civilians, called for an "independent and transparent" investigation. As has been the case on 43 previous occasions when the United States used its veto power against U.N. resolutions concerning Israel, the United States Ambassador, Nikki Haley, blocked the Security Council's statement calling for an investigation blaming Hamas for the killings and describing the Israeli response as "restrained." However one interprets these occurrences, the killing of 59 human beings can hardly be described as a restrained response. Prominent Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard agrees,
"It seems to me that the huge number of casualties we have seen in recent weeks . . . contradicts the most fundamental principles of laws governing the use of force, which adhere to the formula that endangering the lives of civilians can only be done to defend life - and nothing else."
As a consequence of what many perceive as Israeli war crimes and the realization that the United States, for reasons yet to be determined, is more concerned with justifying Israeli behavior than with the well being of those it victimizes, even its own citizens, demands for Israeli accountability and justice for the Palestinian people have increased substantially both within the United States and around the world.
Predictably, the response in the United States has been swift and severe with apologists even willing to sacrifice precious constitutionally guaranteed human rights. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), self-described as "America's Pro-Israel Lobby, " and the many politicians from both political parties under it's influence, many of whom who hold dual Israeli-American citizenship, e.g., Chuck Schumer, Barbara Boxer, Richard Blumenthal, John Bolton, have stepped up their protectionist agenda by instigating and supporting legislation which stifles free speech and makes illegal any criticism of and demands for Israeli accountability. New York State, for example, passed a series of bills in 2017 that prohibited the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement on college campuses and described its advocacy as hate speech. Not to be outdone, the South Carolina Legislature recently passed a Bill equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
This tactic by Israeli apologists' of equating, even defining, any and all criticism and response to its crimes as anti-Semitism and hate speech conflates, whether implicitly or explicitly, and then exploits for its advantage, Israel's status as a nation state or as a religion. This equivocation is clearly intended to suppress moral and legal evaluation of its behavior. Further, it allows the Israeli government to play the perennial victim by offering well-timed references to something we all regret, the Holocaust, even while Israel itself is engaged in the genocide of Palestinian people. I know some will object to a characterization of Israeli action against the Palestinians as genocide, but according to Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who first coined the term, it seems quite appropriate. Lemke writes.
More often [genocide] refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun (or sniper fire) can always be utilized as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary to the annihilation of the national group to which they belong.[1] (italics mine)
Interestingly, many of the same actors who are quick to conflate the state of Israel and Judaism, and enthusiastically utilize this equivocation to condemn criticism of the former as anti-Semitic and as hate speech seem perfectly willing to criticize, sanction, even threaten war against the Islamic Republic of Iran without similar concern that such criticism and threats are anti Muslim or hate speech. Nor has this Iranian antagonism, much of it Israeli instigated, spawned a flurry of protectionist bills and resolutions.
It's time I think, probably long past time, for Israel be held accountable for its actions. It's time as well for the United States to end its complicity with Israeli war crimes and genocide by ending its military aid and obstruction of attempts by the United Nations to censure, sanction, and prosecute Israel as a rogue state, and its leaders as war criminals, a designation and effort based not upon it's claim of affiliation with Judaism but for its refusal to conduct itself according to its tenets.
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Swamping the Drain in Washington
Washington has been and remains a swamp in every sense of the word.
Apr 30, 2018
Recently, I visited New York's Guggenheim Museum for a show of conceptual art by Danh Vo, whose family fled Vietnam as the American war there ended in 1975. He was four years old when he became a refugee and, through a series of flukes, found himself in Denmark, which has been his home ever since. Much of his work is focused on that grim war and the colonial history leading up to it. Among the eerie exhibits at the Guggenheim are two chairs (stripped down and exhibited in bits and pieces) that originally came from the White House cabinet room. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President John F. Kennedy used them while discussing key Vietnam decisions. Jackie Kennedy gave them to McNamara after her husband's death (and Vo bought them at a Sotheby's auction).
There are also a series of notes that Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon's national security adviser and then secretary of state, a man deeply involved in the horrors of that same war, sent to the New York Post's Broadway gossip columnist Leonard Lyons. In those letters, successively framed on a wall, Dr. K responds to offers of free ballet and Broadway show tickets that Lyons seems to have regularly dangled in front of him. They capture the smallest scale form of corruption imaginable but are no less eerie for that. In perhaps the creepiest one, Kissinger writes Lyons jokingly in May 1970, "Dear Leonard, You must be a fiend. I would choose your ballet over contemplation of Cambodia any day -- if only I were given the choice. Keep tempting me; one day perhaps I will succumb." Keep in mind that this was just months after he had transmitted a presidential order to the U.S. military to intensify the devastating secret bombing of that land with these words: "A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves." Ballet indeed.
Those ticket offers, of course, were something less than a Teapot Dome scandal, but they certainly should be considered a reminder that Washington has been and remains a swamp in every sense of the word. In his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump swore that he would drain that very swamp, shut down K Street lobbying activities, and bring that city's myriad revolving doors to a halt. Instead, a year and a quarter into his presidency, he and his administration are already involved in a staggering set of activities guaranteed to swamp the drain in Washington.
We don't know about ballet or theater tickets for Trump administration figures yet. (That will perhaps await some conceptual artist of the mid-twenty-first century.) We do, however, already know about a veritable deluge of everyday corruption at the highest levels, ranging from condo rentals to plane flights to dining room furniture -- and that's just the churn at the edges of that drain. There are already at least 10 investigations of, for instance, Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt's profligate spending habits. And at the center of that vortex of corruption lies the president and his family, the man whose taxes remain an American mystery and who couldn't even get them in on time this year. He's brought his family operation directly into the Oval Office, along with his daughter and son-in-law, and they've all but raised his Golden Letters over the building. So I'm sure you won't be surprised that his new hotel, just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, has become a must-stop spot for every lobbyist, foreign diplomat, or anyone else who cares to influence the Oval Office.
The question, of course, is: Who exactly will find the ultimate piece of tape on the latch of the Trump Organization's basement door? In her latest post, "Want to Bring Down Donald Trump?," Rebecca Gordon, author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes, suspects that it's likely to be a classic "bean counter" and, with that in mind, she's written a paean of prospective praise to the one or ones who will someday take down the president. Think of it as an ode not on a Grecian urn, but on a gimlet-eyed accountant.
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