December 30, 2014

We're still at war

Pilgrims in the parking lot
Arteries clogged with blood clots
Pushing through the aisles of department stores
Neon crosses and Christmas lights
Credit card debts and brand new bikes
The holidays are here and we're still at war
-Brett Dennen, The Holidays Are Here (and We're Still At War)


I've had this earworm by Brett Dennen in my head every Christmas season, for 7 or 8 years now. It's not something I envisioned becoming a permanent fixture to my holidays, but its looking like it'll be a solid standard for years to come. Yes, as Brett reminds us, America is still at war.

From the time of Poppy Bush's opportunistic defense of Kuwait's territory and ports (at the behest of the Bush/Cheney obligations to their Saudi Arabian friends and allies) against Saddam Hussein's army's advance; through his son, Junior Bush's deployments to 'fight them there' in Afghanistan after the 9-11 attacks; to Junior's 'preemptive invasion and occupation of Iraq; through Barack Obama's 'surge' and escalation of force in Afghanistan; to Pres. Obama's re-escalation of military force and attacks in Iraq after completely withdrawing there (and attacks inside Syria, Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, and deployments to Yemen), America is still at war.

This week, Americans were told by President Obama that the 'longest war in American history,' as he called it, is ending. Well, not exactly 'ending;' rather, 'our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending;' well, not exactly 'ending...'

President Obama's statement on the End of the Combat Mission in Afghanistan -December 28, 2014

Today's ceremony in Kabul marks a milestone for our country. For more than 13 years, ever since nearly 3,000 innocent lives were taken from us on 9/11, our nation has been at war in Afghanistan. Now, thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.
On this day we give thanks to our troops and intelligence personnel who have been relentless against the terrorists responsible for 9/11--devastating the core al Qaeda leadership, delivering justice to Osama bin Laden, disrupting terrorist plots and saving countless American lives. We are safer, and our nation is more secure, because of their service. At the same time, our courageous military and diplomatic personnel in Afghanistan--along with our NATO allies and coalition partners--have helped the Afghan people reclaim their communities, take the lead for their own security, hold historic elections and complete the first democratic transfer of power in their country's history.
We honor the profound sacrifices that have made this progress possible. We salute every American--military and civilian, including our dedicated diplomats and development workers--who have served in Afghanistan, many on multiple tours, just as their families have sacrificed at home. We pledge to give our many wounded warriors, with wounds seen and unseen, the world-class care and treatment they have earned. Most of all, we remember the more than 2,200 American patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan, and we pledge to stand with their Gold Star families who need the everlasting love and support of a grateful nation.
Afghanistan remains a dangerous place, and the Afghan people and their security forces continue to make tremendous sacrifices in defense of their country. At the invitation of the Afghan government, and to preserve the gains we have made together, the United States--along with our allies and partners--will maintain a limited military presence in Afghanistan to train, advise and assist Afghan forces and to conduct counterterrorism operations against the remnants of al Qaeda. Our personnel will continue to face risks, but this reflects the enduring commitment of the United States to the Afghan people and to a united, secure and sovereign Afghanistan that is never again used as a source of attacks against our nation.
These past 13 years have tested our nation and our military. But compared to the nearly 180,000 American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan when I took office, we now have fewer than 15,000 in those countries. Some 90 percent of our troops are home. Our military remains the finest in the world, and we will remain vigilant against terrorist attacks and in defense of the freedoms and values we hold dear. And with growing prosperity here at home, we enter a new year with new confidence, indebted to our fellow Americans in uniform who keep us safe and free.

If the president is referring to success in his succinctly defined mission that Afghanistan is 'never again used as a source of attacks against our nation,' he's not only engaging in sophistry, but challenging the intelligence of the American people into accepting that the planning and orchestration for 9-11 attacks (or any other attacks on our nation) was, or reasonably would be, limited to the geographical confines of Afghanistan.

We know that the planning and orchestration for the attacks were executed in Germany, Pakistan, and even in the United States by 'sleeper cells' of terrorists funded by a network of Osama bin-Laden's and Ayman al-Zawahiri's associates and partners. We know that through the coordination of efforts of fellow terrorist conspirators like Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, Walid Muhammad Salih Bin 'Attash (Khallad), and Abu Bara al-Taizi; and of others like captured Zacarias Moussaoui and those who actually participated in the hijacking and crashing of the airplanes, the plot spanned several geographical locations which were only conveniently endemic to Afghanistan.

Are we really to believe that 'more than 13 years' of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan will actually deter someone in the future from plotting some attack on our nation from that or any other location in the world by virtue of our posture or activity there? It's unbelievable, on its face, but all the more incredible when considering that it has been the very U.S. and military presence and activity in Afghanistan and Iraq which has fueled and fostered more individuals bent on violent expressions of retaliation to our advance across sovereign borders than our military forces are able to put down; a mushrooming of support from around the globe for al-Qaeda's 'jihad' against America and our interests and allies.

It's all the more incredible when you consider that even before bin-Laden was located and killed across the border in Pakistan, the U.S. military and intelligence agents admitted that there was little, if any, remnant of al-Qaeda still left in Afghanistan; most having fled to Pakistan and elsewhere early in the initial invasion.

Quite a bit of print has been cast in the past decade about 'Orwellian-speak' in regard to our government officials' justifications for and explanations of military and intelligence goals and operations related to the Bush-era's coinage of our 'war on terror' (and President Obama's fealty to the notion, if not by name, by deed) against agents, operators, architects, associates, forces, remnants, and specters of the original al-Qaeda nemesis which was determined responsible for attacking the nation on Sept. 11, 2001. That 'enduring' commitment which Pres. Obama refers to in his statement makes an absolute Orwellian lie out of any assertion of his that the 'longest war in American history' is ending with his duplicitous statement heralding the withdrawal of a majority of troops deployed to Afghanistan.

The mission of our forces in Afghanistan drifted, as in Iraq, to the desperate defense of an Afghan regime which was installed behind the 'shock and awe' of our invasion following the 9-11 attacks. Like the privileged regime in Iraq which was enabled into influence and authority with votes cast in a dubious election by a minority of citizens under the heavy-hand of their country's invaders, the regime in Kabul relied on their own 'Green Zone' of defense of our military forces as their seat of power to lord over the impoverished country.

It was precisely that opportunistic area of concern surrounding the defense of the Afghan regime that the Pentagon designated to receive the bulk of forces, culled from the Iraq occupation, to 'surge' into Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of additional troops were sent from Iraq to Afghanistan to escalate the occupation of the cities and towns surrounding the Afghan capital and to aid in the desperate defense of the regime against the myriads of separate factions which evolved out of NATO's cynical attempt to dominate the millions of Afghans with their relatively puny, destructive forces.

When the newly-seated Obama administration began to direct their new assaults on whatever they decided was vital to defend in Afghanistan and Iraq, they unleashed every instigation of resistance there was to the presence and activity of the U.S. military on Muslim soil which originated as motivation behind the first bombings the US embassy Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole bombing in Aden in 2000, in addition to the 9-11 attacks. When those terrorist attacks were perpetrated, there was only isolated resistance and violence directed against U.S. interests and allies in the region. In the bloody aftermath of the Bush administration's provocative invasion of Iraq, and Pres. Obama's adoption of that 'terror war,' acts of violence increased and expanded across the globe.

As early as May of 2003, the Brookings Institute found that the invasion of Iraq had "increased the risk of attacks in the United States and Europe by increasing the level of Islamist and anti-American rhetoric, by diverting the attention of political leaders from the central issue of the war on terrorism, and by encouraging the view among the public that the war on terrorism is nearly won."

A Brookings study found that, "The rate of fatal terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups, and the number of people killed in those attacks, increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, the scene of almost half the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks. But even excluding Iraq and Afghanistan—the other current jihadist hot spot—there has been a 35 percent rise in the number of attacks, with a 12 percent rise in fatalities," it concluded.

At the apex of the results and effects of that resistance to the increased and proliferating U.S. military presence and activity in the region over the years since the initial Iraq invasion, Pres. Obama sought to stage some sort of sustaining defense in Afghanistan of our government's own representation of 'democracy' in Kabul against whoever would resist the codifying of America's swaggering advance on their territory.

The increased occupation was designed to facilitate Afghan elections and to provide the same sort of 'with us or against us' choice that our invading and occupying forces in Iraq offered the citizens there. The plot which which emerged in this Potemkin defense of democracy in Kabul is one which is already well-know to Afghans. Opposition communities would be occupied and intimidated by our forces while supportive communities would be protected and enabled in the run-up to the balloting. The outcome of the vote resembled whatever minority composition of the Afghan population felt unencumbered by the regime's heavy-hand to cast their ballot in their favor. The result may well have bolstered whatever legitimacy the West wanted to place on their enabled rule in Kabul, but the effect of the increased military activity had a predictable effect of aligning the myriads of Afghans once led to oppose one another, to band together in resistance against their country's foreign invaders.

Whatever the goals of the new Obama administration had in their deployments in Afghanistan, they had already been corrupted by a mindset which assumed our ability to seize and hold territory impressed more than it repelled. The next strategy was an attempt to thread the needle of resistance to the U.S. advance on Afghan territory with a promise of 'stability' of their installed regime.

The counter to that bunk is that nothing at all had been done to address the original complaint of Muslims and Arabs in the way of our nation's swaggering advance across their sovereign borders; that the very presence of our military on their soil is an intolerable aggravation to their religion, values and their wishes - as well as a threat to a great deal of their own safety and security. The devastating effect of our military intervention in the region, which has cost so many lives caught up in the way of America's government-building folly so far, only deepened itself with every tweak and correction that intended us to 'win' some sort of 'victory' outside of the pursuit of the original 9-11 suspects.

The announcement by then-defense secretary Leon Panetta to reporters while on the way to the 2012 Munich Security Conference that the U.S. is looking to end combat operations in Afghanistan may have come as a surprise to our NATO allies, also en route to the gathering, but no one looking at the failed military and political ambitions of both the Obama and the Bush administrations in the war-torn nation could reasonably have expected anything else.

As far back as November of 2011, senior officials in the administration had signaled the President was exploring a speedier transition of our troops' combat role to training Afghans to provide for their own defense of their dubious government. Tentative plans were said to have been made for President Obama to unveil his revised strategy before the annual NATO summit that May. Even before the signals and leaks from the White House, there were key developments which made it clear that to continue in Afghanistan, either the President would need to undergo another ambitious campaign to rally allies away from their almost certain plans to turn away from their part in the U.S. folly, or the administration and Pentagon would have to devise a way to overcome the mounting problems with logistics, getting supplies to the troops, and the apparent outer limits of the President's belief in what the military forces can accomplish on the offensive against a scattered and determined insurgency.

As if to underscore the folly of their escalated military offensive, U.S. troops all but withdrew from Kandahar, the Pentagon's self-proclaimed center of their terror war in Afghanistan, in a posture of retreat which began that October. The administration had hoped to double down on the occupation, and try to effect a knockout blow to the Taliban resistance. The premise behind President Obama's initial 'surge' of U.S. troops into Bush's Afghanistan quagmire was to 'push back' resisting Afghans enough to allow some sort of political reconciliation. That effort was predictably bogged down by the difficulty in getting the disparate tribes and factions to accept the central authority NATO has set up in Kabul. There's even more difficulty in getting their installed government to accommodate the interests and demands of the resisting rest of the war-split nation.

Even our would-be puppet, Karzai, had bristled and balked at the prospect of more destructive NATO conquest in Afghanistan on his behalf. The once-willing accomplice saw the political writing on the wall and appeared to be looking to settle for the assumption of power wherever the Taliban would allow. His reported outburst at the beginning of the Kandahar campaign, threatening to 'join the Taliban', was a open-warning to the U.S. that he recognized there is no 'political solution' that can be reasonably carved out of the devastating, withering military campaign.

The military and the President quietly hoped we don't notice that they didn't actually transform their Afghanistan misadventure from the leveling of homes in Kandahar, the taking of resistors lives, and the destruction of farmland and livestock into the government-building success that they intended for the 'surge' to highlight. In fact, the UN has reported the civilian death toll in Afghanistan was at its deadliest that year with over 3,000 killed, despite the presence and activity of their would-be NATO protectors. An October 2011 Pentagon report to Congress indicated that Afghan civilians were dying in record numbers. "Civilian casualties -- most caused by the Taliban -- reached an all-time high this summer with approximately 450 civilians killed in July," it said. "Attacks using homemade bombs, or IEDs, also reached an all-time high this past summer, with about 750 IED detonations recorded in July."

Predictably, resisting Afghans had avoided the areas where U.S. troops have masses and have scattered their violence around the capital and elsewhere, killing former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani that September. The planned drawdown was not born out of any political success or victory, but out of a certain realization that there will never be a defining end to the resistant violence there which will transform the country politically. The only course left for a stalemated and faltering U.S. invasion force was to pull back to the capital from their offensive positions in the south of the country and stage a desperate, last-stand defense of their propped-up, yet insolent regime.

The U.S. military offensive against the Taliban was an abject failure in achieving the goals behind the offensive. What happened to the promised ability of the U.S.-led NATO forces to protect the residents of Afghanistan against Taliban blowback from their invasion? The ability to protect innocent civilians from NATO attacks, or insulate them from the negative consequences and effects of the NATO military advance? The ability of NATO to provide and deliver the services and amenities of the central government to the displaced residents? Nonexistent.

President Obama and his republican Pentagon holdovers led our nation to this retreat. They were content to tolerate the continued deaths of our our soldiers as our troops eventually hunkered down there; tolerate the thousands drastically wounded; waiting for some declared 'victory' to materialize out of our their desperate defense of their own lives against the Afghans that the President and the Pentagon claim we're liberating.

They were content to push the 'end of combat operations' beyond the midterm elections; all the while, most of the original threatening figures in our terror war have been killed -- their violent spawns made witness to the worst of al-Qaeda's warnings about U.S. imperialism, and more than satisfied to have the bulk of our nation's military forces bogged down and fighting for their lives in Kabul. "Our bottom line in Afghanistan is ‘in together, out together'." Panetta had told reporters in Feb. 2012.

"As an alliance, we are fully committed to the Lisbon framework and transitioning to Afghan control by 2014 . . . We hope Afghan forces will be ready to take the combat lead in all of Afghanistan sometime in 2013. . . .

We've been in Afghanistan longer than our country fought WWII. No matter to our leaders, though. 'Freedom's' cause for occupation supporters is nothing more than a repression of one group or another within the sovereign nation we invaded into accepting our military forces' false authority over them; and cynical manipulation and control the Afghan government lords over the people of Afghanistan by the intimidation of our military occupation.

Our nation's possessive militarism in Afghanistan and elsewhere has divided our nation from within, and, from without, against our restive allies. The escalated occupation has ignored whatever Afghans might regard as freedom in our insistence that their country be used as a barrier against the terror forces we've aggravated and enhanced in Pakistan. Yet, the soldiers the President insisted on continuing to commit to his retreat to Kabul are mostly fighting and dying because they're not wanted there by the majority of the Afghan people. Our soldiers have been fighting to control the Afghans, and they've been busy fighting to get the U.S. to release that control.

Ready or not, its becoming increasingly clear that President Obama can't leave Afghanistan fast enough to outrun the mission's devastating failure...but, we're not really leaving, are we? Almost 11,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq for the first few months of 2015 and then drawdown to about 5,500 troops by the end of next year; 'training' Afghan military forces and conducting 'counterterrorism operations against the remnants of al Qaeda.'

"Our personnel will continue to face risks," President Obama admitted in his statement. Understated, I think, given that he's re-escalated his terror war in Iraq and expanded U.S. attacks to Syria in a military offensive which the administration and military has justified and defined as an extension of their 13 year terror war by stressing dubious and tangential ties between their new nemesis and enemy and al-Qaeda. Notwithstanding approval by the new republican Congress of President Obama's pursuit of a new authorization to use military force, they're still relying on the original 9-11 AUMF to recommit our forces to their perpetual war. Only in the most evasive and contradictory terms can Pres. Obama claim that the "longest war in American history" is coming to a an end.

"The Afghan people must know that our commitment to their future is enduring, because the security of Afghanistan and the United States is shared." Barack Obama said on July 15, 2008.

"I think Afghanistan is still winnable, in the sense of our ability to ensure that it is not a launching pad for attacks against North America. I think it's still possible for us to stamp out al Qaeda to make sure that extremism is not expanding but rather is contracting. I think all those goals are still possible, but I think that as a consequence to the war on Iraq, we took our eye off the ball. We have not been as focused as we need to be on all the various steps that are needed in order to deal with Afghanistan," the president had said.

I don't believe there was ever anything to 'win' in Afghanistan, as the president suggested. There has been, however, much to lose in this repeated flailing of our military forces against the Afghan people; against the remnants and ghosts of al-Qaeda. We have already been shown, repeatedly, that our government-building efforts behind the force of our military in the Middle East has produced more individuals inclined or resigned to violent expressions of resistance than it's succeeded in establishing any of the 'democracy' or 'stability' promised.

There's absolutely no hint of lessons learned from the President's tragic escalation of Bush's Afghanistan deployment in which he sacrificed over 1000 more troops' lives in his ''surge' than Bush lost avenging 9-11. Over 2200 U.S. troops have been sacrificed in Afghanistan - 630 of those deaths occurring in 8 years under George W. Bush. Illustratively, the top three deadliest years of the war -- 2010 (497 deaths), 2011 (362), 2009 (303) -- occurred under President Obama’s tenure. Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. fatalities in the war in Afghanistan have occurred during the Obama administration, in a quarter of the war's duration.

One would hope that the American public would demand accountability from this administration on the goals they establish behind these new deployments. It should be remembered that the Iraq 'surge' began as a trickle, and, in a year, over 800 U.S. troops had lost their lives as a result of that escalation. What we need to hear from the administration is a clear mission for our nation's defenders in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, which is actually directed toward fulfilling the original authorization to use military force which Congress approved for prosecution against "those responsible for the (9-11) attacks launched against the United States."

"That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

If we are really serious about 'democracy' in Afghanistan we should let Afghans sort out those conflicts they have with resistant communities and provinces by themselves. Unfortunately, with any continued U.S. military presence there, that means more armed conflict for our assisting troops, and the reality is, democratic governance from the protected regime won't happen in any truly representative way while the Afghan military is operating behind our heavy-handed presence which carries with it our decidedly retaliatory and destabilizing agenda. We should let Ashraf Ghani (or whoever manages to assume authority in the future) prosecute those defenses without our compromising influence.

What we need in Afghanistan is a true end-point to the occupation. That isn't likely to come with the President's announcement, but it's something which Congress should demand from the administration before they hand over another wad of borrowed cash to continue. If they're not prepared to draft a more defining and relevant authorization for the use of our defensive forces in Afghanistan they should, at least, endeavor to compel the administration to adhere to the limited mandate in the original one.

The President and our legislators need to craft and direct policy in Afghanistan which is 'enduring' but, not merely an extension of this self-perpetuating flailing of our military forces at every expression of resistance to their self-serving presence; or against their self-serving political agendas. Both Bush and Obama made dubious and tenuous representations of the threat to the U.S. in order to declare and secure their unilateral authority to use our military forces (at least initially) any way they see fit, without congressional pre-approval - justified almost entirely in their view by their opportunistic declarations that our security is threatened.

That was the slippery slope that Bush used to war. That's the slope that Pres. Obama used to escalate Bush's Afghanistan occupation far beyond the former republican presidency's limits - with the catastrophic result of scores more casualties than Bush to our forces during this Democratic administration's first term and scores more innocent Afghans dead, maimed, or uprooted.

In pressing forward with a re-escalated U.S. military response to the atrocities committed within Iraq, this Democratic president is losing almost all of the ground we thought we'd covered in repudiating the opportunistic Bush wars. Bush's were waged, certainly, for oil and other greed; but just as certainly to effect U.S. expansionist ideals involving regime changes and 'dominoes.'

In President Obama's recent representations of a future threat to the U.S. from this new enemy in Iraq, we see echoes of Bush's 'preemptive doctrine' which many believed this new president's election was repudiating. The results, worldwide, of contemporary U.S. interventionism, speak for themselves. The Obama administration, almost blithely, is hoping their own military steadfastness in Afghanistan - and their new offensive stand in Iraq says something uniquely democratic and inspiring to the world. I'm afraid that all anyone outside of this country will hear is 'empire.'

The only lesson that our military invasions have imposed on the region is the one which the authors of the deployments purport to oppose; that of the efficacy of military force and violence as an ultimate avenue to power and authority. In Iraq and Afghanistan, those who support the U.S. military-enabled regimes and seek protection behind our dominating forces are considered 'democratic' and legitimate -- while those who choose to be or find themselves outside of that imposed influence are to be opposed as 'insurgent' or 'radical' in their opposition and defense of their chosen territory against NATO's selfish advance.

Bush wrote the script for the U.S. in the region; cast the antagonists in his kabuki play - erected Potemkins of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan to defend in contrived protection schemes where we create the 'enemies' we then claim to protect and defend against.

The Taliban is an imposture in our government's terror war. Our own invading and occupying military forces are the most aggravating element in the perpetual violence in Afghanistan and the region. Deliberately so. The resistant unrest in Afghanistan hasn't abated; it's actually intensified, even as our forces are angling to leave; even the military commanders have recently predicted that violence and deaths will likely continue in the future. I'm at a loss to imagine how that prospect will enhance or relationship with Afghans or others in the region and encourage them to adopt and carry our nation's banner of war against their resisting country-folk. But, that's been the plan . . .

Deception of democracy
The philanderings of faux foreign policy
The holidays are here and we're still at war...Yes, the holidays are here and we're still at war...

December 22, 2014

Dickens: What Christmas Is as We Grow Older

Charles Dickens, author of a story so very popular this time of year, 'A Christmas Carol,' had a life which was almost as complex, tragic, and profoundly interesting as the subjects in his novels. A brief examination of his life would make one wonder at the optimism he expressed, but leaves little doubt about the source of his chartable descriptions of the less fortunate in society. His father ended up in debtors prison and at 12 years-old Charles was removed from school and put to work at a boot-blacking factory to support his family. He lost his his infant daughter Dora, his sister Fanny, and her crippled son Henry Jr. and, shortly thereafter, published a remarkable and touching essay in the 1851 Christmas edition of his weekly magazine, Household Words.

Dickens published four other Christmas novels, but 'Christmas Carol' was an instant hit, if not a large money-maker for the author. The form of his novels was elaborate and his pricing was deliberately low. I own a volume of his works which he re-published for income a few years before his death in 1870 which includes his Christmas favorites. The books are still in amazingly good condition and a joy to handle and read.

David Perdue, a member of The Dickens Fellowship in London and board member of the American Friends of the Charles Dickens Museum re-published Dicken's article on his website and offers its reposting for non-commercial, informational purposes. I offer it here in the spirit of the holiday and hope it touches the same chord with folks at DU that it did with me.


What Christmas Is as We Grow Older

TIME was, with most of us, when Christmas Day encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and every one around the Christmas fire; and made the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.

Time came, perhaps, all so soon, when our thoughts over-leaped that narrow boundary; when there was some one (very dear, we thought then, very beautiful, and absolutely perfect) wanting to the fulness of our happiness; when we were wanting too (or we thought so, which did just as well) at the Christmas hearth by which that some one sat; and when we intertwined with every wreath and garland of our life that some one's name.

That was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which have long arisen from us to show faintly, after summer rain, in the palest edges of the rainbow! That was the time for the beatified enjoyment of the things that were to be, and never were, and yet the things that were so real in our resolute hope that it would be hard to say, now, what realities achieved since, have been stronger!

What! Did that Christmas never really come when we and the priceless pearl who was our young choice were received, after the happiest of totally impossible marriages, by the two united families previously at daggers--drawn on our account? When brothers and sisters-in-law who had always been rather cool to us before our relationship was effected, perfectly doted on us, and when fathers and mothers overwhelmed us with unlimited incomes? Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten, after which we arose, and generously and eloquently rendered honour to our late rival, present in the company, then and there exchanging friendship and forgiveness, and founding an attachment, not to be surpassed in Greek or Roman story, which subsisted until death? Has that same rival long ceased to care for that same priceless pearl, and married for money, and become usurious? Above all, do we really know, now, that we should probably have been miserable if we had won and worn the pearl, and that we are better without her?

That Christmas when we had recently achieved so much fame; when we had been carried in triumph somewhere, for doing something great and good; when we had won an honoured and ennobled name, and arrived and were received at home in a shower of tears of joy; is it possible that THAT Christmas has not come yet?

And is our life here, at the best, so constituted that, pausing as we advance at such a noticeable mile-stone in the track as this great birthday, we look back on the things that never were, as naturally and full as gravely as on the things that have been and are gone, or have been and still are? If it be so, and so it seems to be, must we come to the conclusion that life is little better than a dream, and little worth the loves and strivings that we crowd into it?

No! Far be such miscalled philosophy from us, dear Reader, on Christmas Day! Nearer and closer to our hearts be the Christmas spirit, which is the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance! It is in the last virtues especially, that we are, or should be, strengthened by the unaccomplished visions of our youth; for, who shall say that they are not our teachers to deal gently even with the impalpable nothings of the earth!

Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the circle of our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring, expands! Let us welcome every one of them, and summon them to take their places by the Christmas hearth.

Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath the holly! We know you, and have not outlived you yet. Welcome, old projects and old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us. Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven! Do we build no Christmas castles in the clouds now? Let our thoughts, fluttering like butterflies among these flowers of children, bear witness! Before this boy, there stretches out a Future, brighter than we ever looked on in our old romantic time, but bright with honour and with truth. Around this little head on which the sunny curls lie heaped, the graces sport, as prettily, as airily, as when there was no scythe within the reach of Time to shear away the curls of our first-love. Upon another girl's face near it--placider but smiling bright--a quiet and contented little face, we see Home fairly written. Shining from the word, as rays shine from a star, we see how, when our graves are old, other hopes than ours are young, other hearts than ours are moved; how other ways are smoothed; how other happiness blooms, ripens, and decays--no, not decays, for other homes and other bands of children, not yet in being nor for ages yet to be, arise, and bloom and ripen to the end of all!

Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open- hearted! In yonder shadow, do we see obtruding furtively upon the blaze, an enemy's face? By Christmas Day we do forgive him! If the injury he has done us may admit of such companionship, let him come here and take his place. If otherwise, unhappily, let him go hence, assured that we will never injure nor accuse him.

On this day we shut out Nothing!

"Pause," says a low voice. "Nothing? Think!"

"On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside, Nothing."

"Not the shadow of a vast City where the withered leaves are lying deep?" the voice replies. "Not the shadow that darkens the whole globe? Not the shadow of the City of the Dead?"

Not even that. Of all days in the year, we will turn our faces towards that City upon Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts bring those we loved, among us. City of the Dead, in the blessed name wherein we are gathered together at this time, and in the Presence that is here among us according to the promise, we will receive, and not dismiss, thy people who are dear to us!

Yes. We can look upon these children angels that alight, so solemnly, so beautifully among the living children by the fire, and can bear to think how they departed from us. Entertaining angels unawares, as the Patriarchs did, the playful children are unconscious of their guests; but we can see them--can see a radiant arm around one favourite neck, as if there were a tempting of that child away. Among the celestial figures there is one, a poor misshapen boy on earth, of a glorious beauty now, of whom his dying mother said it grieved her much to leave him here, alone, for so many years as it was likely would elapse before he came to her-- being such a little child. But he went quickly, and was laid upon her breast, and in her hand she leads him.

There was a gallant boy, who fell, far away, upon a burning sand beneath a burning sun, and said, "Tell them at home, with my last love, how much I could have wished to kiss them once, but that I died contented and had done my duty!" Or there was another, over whom they read the words, "Therefore we commit his body to the deep," and so consigned him to the lonely ocean and sailed on. Or there was another, who lay down to his rest in the dark shadow of great forests, and, on earth, awoke no more. O shall they not, from sand and sea and forest, be brought home at such a time!

There was a dear girl--almost a woman--never to be one--who made a mourning Christmas in a house of joy, and went her trackless way to the silent City. Do we recollect her, worn out, faintly whispering what could not be heard, and falling into that last sleep for weariness? O look upon her now! O look upon her beauty, her serenity, her changeless youth, her happiness! The daughter of Jairus was recalled to life, to die; but she, more blest, has heard the same voice, saying unto her, "Arise for ever!"

We had a friend who was our friend from early days, with whom we often pictured the changes that were to come upon our lives, and merrily imagined how we would speak, and walk, and think, and talk, when we came to be old. His destined habitation in the City of the Dead received him in his prime. Shall he be shut out from our Christmas remembrance? Would his love have so excluded us? Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you! You shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!

The winter sun goes down over town and village; on the sea it makes a rosy path, as if the Sacred tread were fresh upon the water. A few more moments, and it sinks, and night comes on, and lights begin to sparkle in the prospect. On the hill-side beyond the shapelessly-diffused town, and in the quiet keeping of the trees that gird the village-steeple, remembrances are cut in stone, planted in common flowers, growing in grass, entwined with lowly brambles around many a mound of earth. In town and village, there are doors and windows closed against the weather, there are flaming logs heaped high, there are joyful faces, there is healthy music of voices. Be all ungentleness and harm excluded from the temples of the Household Gods, but be those remembrances admitted with tender encouragement! They are of the time and all its comforting and peaceful reassurances; and of the history that re-united even upon earth the living and the dead; and of the broad beneficence and goodness that too many men have tried to tear to narrow shreds.

read: http://charlesdickenspage.com/what_christmas_is_as_we_grow_older.html

December 19, 2014

And a Merry Christmas to all: 1,500 More American Troops Headed to Iraq

Peter Van Buren ?@WeMeantWell 9m
And a Merry Christmas to all: 1,500 More American Troops Headed to Iraq http://cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/dod-1500-more-american-troops-iraq-isil-resilient …

Approximately 1,000 paratroopers from the Army’s famed 82nd Airborne Division will deploy to Iraq early next year to help the Iraqi security forces take on the Islamic State, the Pentagon announced Friday.
1,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne headed to Iraq

MintPress News ?@MintPressNews 3m3 minutes ago
Guess How Many More Troops Are Being Sent Into #Iraq http://bit.ly/1w9bcXv via @TheAntiMedia1 #EndlessWar


ron fullwood ?@ronfullwood (bigtree)
Are There Any Limits On The President’s Ability To Wage War? by @ronfullwood @MintPressNews on #MyMPN http://bit.ly/1qYaYqm

Americans concerned with our U.S. presidents’ ability to unilaterally wage war have to be shaking their heads. President Obama has authorized war in Iraq and Libya, not only to defend Kurdish civilians besieged in the Iraqi mountains but also against forces in Syrian territories. Attempting to curb this new escalation seems utterly futile.

I take the view that the U.S. forfeited our moral authority to wage war in Iraq after our previous conduct there. Bush perpetrated an opportunistic and devastating military misadventure which ran roughshod over our own constitution and over the rights and safety of Iraqis, as well.

To many Iraqis subject to our bombs and airstrikes, we must seem scarcely less pernicious or dangerous than the violence from any insurgent group attacking them. I’ll allow that our nation’s violenc there under President Obama is likely less devastating to the general population than Bush’s violent attacks; we are now less deliberately barbarous than the current combatant insurgents featured in his justifications for his latest military strikes against ISIS. However, in their counterproductive nature — fostering and fueling even more resistant violence in response — I believe that’s a matter of degree, but not effect; its also of little comfort to the residents of these sovereign nations caught in the way of our bombs and missiles.

I’ve been mulling over ways in which someone in America who shares my concern would be able to — collectively, of course, in our legislative system — prevent the President from launching the types of limited airstrikes that he’s outlined in Iraq and elsewhere. I’ve concluded that it’s almost impossible.

The authority the President, as commander-in-chief has in his reach to wage limited war (which, by most definitions would cover airstrikes) is effectively unchecked. Even if Congress specifically prohibited a president from initiating such attacks, a president could defend his actions with authorization gleaned from several different authorities.

Observe that whatever authority President Obama is considering in his re-deployment of troops into Iraq; more importantly, his order for airstrikes to defend American positions and personnel in Baghdad, Irbil, and in defense of the besieged Kurdish civilians, was an amorphous and shifting affair.

The initial deployment of troops could be justified, as he did earlier in the summer, as protection of embassy personnel. It gets trickier when defining the goal of military ‘advisers’ and their support troops, but President Obama has justified that action is authorized under a broad and certainly expansive reading of the 2001/9-11 AUMF against al-Qaida; or under the nebulous and autocratic declaration of our ‘national security interest’ which can be either a short term concern or a long-term one which is speculative and subjective to whatever view there is of a future threat.

Conor Friedersdorf argues in the Atlantic that Barack Obama has “dramatically expanded” the notion of when presidents can use force without permission. He cites three precedents:

First, Obama’s reliance on Article 2 in airstrikes against Libya and Syria to claim it empowers the president to take unilateral action to “protect regional stability” & “enforce international norms.”

Second, Pres. Obama’s claim as he waged war past the two-month period contained in the War Powers Act- beyond which, congressional authorization is required — that ‘limited’ airstrikes don’t count as ‘hostilities’ under the provisions of the under-utilized legislation.

Third, Obama’s assertion that the 2001 AUMF against al-Qaida gives him authority to wage war against tangentially related combatants, like those who comprise the leadership of ISIS who have long ago renounced allegiance to, or affiliation with al-Qaida.

There isn’t any argument that the President has the ability and need to protect and defend American military and civilian personnel he’s inserted into Iraq. There’s certainly room to argue that defense of troops deployed is a self-serving, self-perpetuating rationale, but there’s little doubt that he has that authority.

It gets a bit more complicated when considering the actions of military advisers who he’s ordered to help Iraqi forces direct attacks against whoever they deem a threat to Iraqi or U.S. interests in the country. The authority for that military deployment and activity are being conjured from a number of Bush-era authorizations to war in Iraq, and elsewhere, which haven’t expired or been voted out of existence by Congress. Most notably, Bush’s 2001 AUMF is still in effect. Or, justification of that authority could be drawn from the nebulous ‘national security’ concerns described above. At any rate, President Obama really hasn’t settled on any one tenet of that authority for Americans, or our legislature to measure or approve.

From June 12 Roll Call:

When asked about getting Congress’s permission (to take initial action in Iraq), WH spokesman Carney was noncommittal.

“We are in active consultation with members of Congress,” he said.

He demurred when asked directly about the 2002 authorization to use military force (AUMF). An administration spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden, told Yahoo’s Olivier Knox in January “the administration supports the repeal of the Iraq AUMF.”

Hayden emailed CQ Roll Call late Thursday and to reiterate that what she said then remains in effect.

She declined to comment on what authority Obama would have to act if he decided to launch a strike.

Roll Call again, June 18:

Pres. Obama met for about an hour in the Oval Office with McConnell, Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Pelosi told reporters that she agreed that the president has all of the authorities that he needs in the authorizations to use military force passed by Congress previously.

“All of the authorities are there. That doesn’t mean I want all of them to be used, especially boots on the ground,” she said. “But I definitely think the president has all of the authority he needs by dint of legislation that was passed in 2001 and 2003.”

She appeared to be referring to the authorizations to use military force passed after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the 2002 authorization to use force in Iraq. Neither of those authorizations have expired, although the official White House position is that the Iraq authorization should be repealed.

It’s a bit slippery for the president to give lip service to the idea of repealing an authorization to war that he may well be advantaging authority from in Iraq. He actually has as much authority to wage war as Congress allows. Still, even though a formal declaration hasn’t been made, the administration does appear to be leaning to the CIC defense of their authority to launch strikes.
[link:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/08/08/background-briefing-senior-administration-officials-iraq|
Bernadette Meehan], a spokesperson for the National Security Council, August 08, 2014:

As to the domestic legal basis, we believe the President has the authority under the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief to direct these actions, which are consistent with this responsibility to protect U.S. citizens and to further U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. Specifically, the protection of U.S. personnel and facilities is among his highest responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief, and given the threats that we see on the periphery of Erbil, he has authorized the use of targeted military action.

Similarly, we believe that there is an urgent humanitarian challenge that further poses a threat to U.S. interests. As I said this rises to the level of a potential act of genocide when you have an entire group of people being targeted for killing, and you have a population of the size that is on Mount Sinjar that is threatened with starvation as one option, or, as the President said, coming down that mountain and potentially being massacred by ISIL.

If we do end up taking airstrikes, we would have to do a War Powers report consistent with how we respond when the United States is engaged in hostilities. So we have been consulting Congress for the last several weeks about Iraq, generally. And then throughout the day today we were able to reach a good number of members and leaders of Congress to advise them of our thinking and then of the President’s decision. And again, if there are airstrikes taken, we will comply with our responsibility to file a War Powers report.

In the case of limited war, or limited airstrikes as President Obama has ordered in Iraq, his ability to claim authority, as Commander-in-Chief, appears unlimited. If he relies on the Bush-era authorizations already in place — the one specific to Iraq, and others related to the broader ‘war on terror’ — in a legal sense, his actions never need be scrutinized by Congress for approval or disapproval, until they decide to repeal them.

If he relies on his constitutional powers as commander-in-chief — albeit under the War Powers Resolution enacted by Congress in 1973 and intended as a limiter on a president’s ability to wage war without Congress’ approval; passed in response to Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia — he has historically demonstrated broad powers to wage limited airstrikes without any weighing in from Congress at all.

Under the WPR, under Article Two of that act, “in the absence of a declaration of war, the president must report to Congress within 48 hours of introducing armed forces into such circumstances and must terminate the use of U.S. armed forces within 60 days unless Congress permits otherwise.”

That provides more than enough opportunity for a president to launch the types of airstrikes President Obama has ordered in Iraq without relying on any of the Bush-era documents, with virtual impunity.

I’m obviously dismayed that there doesn’t seem to be a lever for the public, or for our elected representatives and senators, to automatically or quickly restrain any president from warring on a limited basis. I’m certainly dismayed over our ability to legally or legislatively restrain President Obama from waging limited war, or otherwise, in Iraq.

That’s the way it goes. Notwithstanding a major uprising by Americans in opposition, it’s highly unlikely that there’s anything that can or will be done to actually cause President Obama to limit his military ambitions.

I believe that, no matter what one’s view of his actions are there, it should be a concern just how easily a president is able to wield the devastating force of our military abroad. So much for trying to figure a way out of this mess.

Why do we allow the President of the United States to make war based off of a stale, open-ended AUMF? Bush’s AUMF, at that … the one we opposed with marches and protests!

In the wake of the republican takeover of the Senate, reports say President Obama intends to double the U.S. military force in Iraq. That autocratic and reflexively Bushian surge of force is just the latest installment in our present creep toward irreversible perpetual war.

Anyone worried about Obama’s ability to unilaterally wage war should also remember that every successive president will hold the same open-ended authority. That way lies our future




ron fullwood @ronfullwood

December 15, 2014

A New AUMF: Political Acrobatics, Slippery Slopes, and Endless War

Common dreams has an article outlining the Obama administration's bid for a new AUMF for their new military efforts in Iraq which they describe as a push for 'endless war.' That's the reality of the present re-involvement there - perpetual war - and given the politics that compelled this President to return to the country he withdrew all of our troops from just a short while ago, it's a sure bet that we will likely never leave Iraq without some U.S. military presence; at least in the next decade.

What this push for a new AUMF really represents is Pres. Obama's desire to shed the appearance that he's fighting Bush's wars. As his present military ambitions and actions stand, he's either bound to use Bush's AUMFs as 'authorization' for his warring in Iraq, or he's bound using his CiC authority which has limitations under the War Powers Act provisions which would trigger a time limitation and possible rejection of his mandate to continue.

It's telling that he increased his efforts to obtain a new AUMF with a majority republican Congress; undoubtedly aware that his support for perpetual warring in Iraq and opening a new front in Syria faced opposition from his own Democratic legislative caucus. To date, Obama has relied on slippery interpretations of 'boots on the ground' - characterizing special forces as 'trainers' or 'advisers' to avoid triggering a congressional responses under the WPA law. For now, he's been resigned to operate under unexpired Bush-era authorizations of force (mostly, the 2001 AUMF against al-Queda) and strained to associate the present ISIS leadership with the al-Qaeda organization they publicly split from years ago.

What a new AUMF would do for him is to release him from the political acrobatics he's had to engage in and allow him to place U.S. troops directly in harm's way without dancing around whether they are 'advisers' or any other euphemism used to obscure their direct role in the fighting he wants the U.S. to engage in.

This isn't about 'narrowing' the mission or any other limiting factor that supporters are justifying this ambition as; it's a direct appeal for an entirely new front in an obvious extension of Bush's 'pollyandish misadventure' in Iraq. It portends what this article correctly terms an 'endless' or self-perpetuating war which will never resolve itself or release the U.S. military from obligations to engage our troops or resources for any foreseeable future.

Even Obama's own leadership is insisting that this will be a 'long' endeavor, so, there's really no denying that this AUMF is intended to serve well beyond this presidency.

What proponents of this action, and their challenge to critics to formulate their own response to ISIS ignore is that U.S. military involvement in Iraq is a self-perpetuating morass which has had the effect of fueling and fostering even more individuals with the ambition of fighting our forces or our interests there than we are able to put down.

That was the sobering reality when Bush's own intelligence agencies collectively made that exact judgment during his own commitment of troops to Iraq, and it was the judgment earlier on in this present commitment of troops and resources by Obama's own intelligence agents that individuals were abandoning al-Qaeda to engage the forces he sent to Iraq.

Moreover, the U.S. has long ago forfeited any moral authority it had in Iraq with our opportunistic invasion and occupation. The expectation that a 'limited' force with 'targeted' airstrikes could resolve the civil conflict in Iraq, or anywhere else, is a myopic and ignorant disregard for the effect of Bush's deployments which, despite their number and activity, oversaw record numbers of massacres of Iraqis in spite of our massive troop presence, or in spite of any political solution we helped impose on Iraqis.

It's no accident that the leadership of ISIS includes former Baathists who our military insisted disband when we imposed our 'interim authority' headed by Chalabi, the man who lied us into Iraq. The Shiite government that we promoted and enabled into power's brutality and barbarism against the Sunni minority created the landscape for the forces we're engaged fighting today. And, so it goes. We never learn.

As Saigon became Ho Chi Min City after the U.S. bugged out, Iraq’s Baghdad was always destined to reflect the designs of those Bush had identified as our ‘enemies’ — more so than the captured, occupied, and overthrown capital city will ever resemble any of the grand designs that Bush hawked to the American people to get their initial approval to invade. It becomes more of a conundrum than anything akin to the democracy American troops are pledged to support and defend.

The Iraqi prisons became more efficient torture chambers to crush the new junta’s political opposition who they locked up indefinitely without charges or counsel. The police forces re-assumed their duty as deadly enforcers with the summary judgment of their U.S. supported violence. The military devolved into bands of death squad militias, complete with United States’ weapons and para-military training. As the Iraqi government drew closer to the main spoke of Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil,’ Iran — Iraq was set to rival any of our other purchased regimes in its brutality and oppression.

Indeed, no more evidence is needed to demonstrate U.S. responsibility in creating this latest terror group — which President Obama has opportunistically conflated with our number one nemesis, al-Qaida — than Izzat Ibrahim. A Baathist leaders in the ISIS forces, Ibrahim was deposed in the initial invasion and occupation of Iraq along with other Baathist supporters of Saddam Hussein, and has been in active warfare with the Shiite-dominated Iraqi regime ever since they were enabled into power and began using their U.S.-supplied weapons to stage barbaric attacks against the Sunni minority population.

None of that, of course, is an excuse for any of the craven, power-driven violence on either side; it’s certainly not an excuse for the senseless displays of savage terror that ISIS has used as its tactic of intimidation. Yet, to Iraqis, the violence from U.S. cluster bombs and drones — or from the U.S.-protected Iraqi regime — is virtually indistinguishable from any other attack on their population.

There is no country in the world which threatens democratic progress in Iraq more than the United States. The Iraqi regime has been under siege from resistance forces in Iraq since the U.S. first pulled out its troops — forces whose cause has been fostered, inflamed and aggravated by previous American military activity in the country.

Sadly, the calculation by Pres. Obama that he could apply a limited number of troops with a flurry of airstrikes to contain the self-perpetuating folly has our forces destroying armaments left from the last engagement, while shoveling even more into Iraq in the vain hope that more war will translate into peace.

Bush’s equation for troops in Iraq went like this: More violence = need for more troops. That’s the same equation President Obama has acquiesced to with his campaign of airstrikes and steadily escalating military presence and activity today. With that prescription, we will leave Iraq by … never. Iraq’s forces will always be challenged by some militarized resistance, even more so as they remain aligned with our aggravating military presence.

President Obama will never be able to encircle Baghdad with enough air power to crush the resistance to the U.S.-enabled Iraqi rule. The best he can hope for as he lobs missiles against what he identifies as our ‘enemy’ is an artificial prop of an unpopular junta. So why bother?

Possibly, the answer lies in the political pressure from his opponents to ‘do something.’ The chickenhawk-infested Republican majority have meshed the sacrifices of our soldiers into their ‘smear and fear’ campaigns to make themselves look like they’re the ones defending our security, and Democrats like the ones preventing us from ‘winning’ in Iraq. It’s a cynical mission, a shameful one.

What Republican critics fail to understand and acknowledge is that U.S. military activity in Iraq greatly heightened the violence instead of reducing it. It’s ludicrous to expect that more bombings, and the introduction of more weapons into Iraq will bring about any different result, no matter which Iraqis we identify and attack as enemies of our compromised and threatened junta.

Now we have a new U.S. warlord fomenting his own politically-driven violence in Iraq; mindless of the conflating consequences and blind to the legacy of perpetual war he once decried in his pushback against Bush policies to assume the presidency.

from the article:

In his opening remarks, Kerry said, "It will be years, not months, before [ISIL] is defeated."

"We’re determined to work with you, first and foremost to develop an approach that can generate broad bipartisan support, while ensuring that the President has the flexibility to successfully prosecute this effort," he said.

"We do not think an AUMF should include a geographic limitation," he said, adding that "we would not want an AUMF to constrain our ability to use appropriate force against ISIL in those locations if necessary. In our view, it would be a mistake to advertise to ISIL that there are safe havens for them outside of Iraq or Syria."

That's a bid for 'endless war,' a war hopelessly perpetuated by our own military's aggravating influence, as demonstrated by Bush's own folly. Such a stark change from what Pres. Obama said on the eve of his order to end that sad Bush war:

"What we will not do is let the pursuit of the perfect stand in the way of achievable goals. We cannot rid Iraq of all who oppose America or sympathize with our adversaries. We cannot police Iraq’s streets until they are completely safe, nor stay until Iraq’s union is perfected. We cannot sustain indefinitely a commitment that has put a strain on our military, and will cost the American people nearly a trillion dollars. America’s men and women in uniform have fought block by block, province by province, year after year..." Pres. Obama had said.

Now comes an appeal for a war without time limitation or boundaries against yet another ideological enemy. We never learn.





ron fullwood @ronfullwood

December 13, 2014

Over a Decade of Fighting the Government, Military, and Intelligence Agencies on Torture

I've been reading some comments here which suggest that some posters' concern and outrage expressed about the Obama administration's tepid response and defenses of the Bush-era torture policies and practices are merely an extension of some campaign against his presidency and disassociated from similar criticism of the Bush administration in the past. What I've discovered, looking back over numerous posts from myself and others (some dating back to 2004), is a progression of concern and outrage expressed here which began with revelations about the Bush administration's renditions; black sites; tortures revealed in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere; and torture and detention legislation which sought and provided retroactive cover for abuses ordered and practiced by Bush administration officials and agents.

What has brought us to this spillover of blame into the Obama administration was a series of events in 2009 when the ACLU sued and successfully forced the new administration to produce documents showing that Bush directly ordered and authorized specific interrogation techniques (which he had denied in 2006 constituted torture and claimed results disproved in this latest release). President Obama, at the time, made a statement claiming to the effect, that the barbarous and inhumane practices had already been 'widely reported,' and that he had 'already ended the techniques described in the memos through an Executive Order;' memos revealing 'facts that have been in the public domain for some time,' he had said.

It wasn't as if President Obama had willingly released the 'memorandums of notification;' he had been ordered to do so by the court after fighting the ACLU to keep them secret. In those memos and the orders contained within, there were/are authorizations which President Obama and his administration and agents use today to carry out covert acts of rendition, detentions and interrogations of U.S.-captured suspects in torture-lenient countries and on vessels in international waters.

from @emptywheel “The Gloves Come Off” Memorandum of Notification

Bob Woodward provides an extensive discussion of what George Tenet (Obama CIA's Brennan's boss at the time) and Cofer Black requested in a critical MON in Bush at War.

Tenet had brought a draft of a presidential intelligence order, called a finding, that would give the CIA power to use the full range of covert instruments, including deadly force. For more than two decades, the CIA had simply modified previous presidential findings to obtain its formal authority for counterterrorism. His new proposal, technically called a Memorandum of Notification, was presented as a modification to the worldwide counterterrorism intelligence finding signed by Ronald Reagan in 1986. As if symbolically erasing the recent past, it superseded five such memoranda signed by President Clinton.

... as Woodward describes it, the MON authorized the CIA to engage in these general activities without having to come back for a new finding. Jane Mayer elaborates what this meant:

To give the President deniability, and to keep him from getting his hands dirty, the finding called for the President to delegate blanket authority to Tenet to decide on a case-by-case basis whom to kill, whom to kidnap, whom to detain and interrogate, and how.

By President Obama's own admission, only 'some' objectionable (and arguably inhumane) interrogation practices, tortures, were outlawed in his Executive order. Other interrogation practices, such as force-feedings and sleep deprivation have continued in his administration, falling outside the President's definition in his EO of what constitutes torture. Those loopholes in his order, in and of themselves, should be enough to question this president's sincerity in eliminating torture from our national security agencies' lexicons. Yet, there is much more in this president's policy and stance to challenge and object to.

from Marcy Wheeler (Some Torture Facts):

(12) Obama’s role in covering up the Bush White House’s role in torture has received far too little attention. But Obama’s White House actually successfully intervened to reverse Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s attempt to release to ACLU a short phrase making it clear torture was done pursuant to a Presidential Finding. So while Obama was happy to have CIA’s role in torture exposed, he went to great lengths, both with that FOIA, with criminal discovery, and with the Torture Report, to hide how deeply implicated the Office of the President was in torture.

The very same strategy for authorization of military and intelligence activity against targets believed associated with al-Qaeda which was engineered by George Tenet, Cofer Black, and Dick Cheney, has been used by President Obama to justify his ordering of drone strikes and renditions. They have a definite basis in the 2001 AUMF, as admitted by Obama's CIA chief nominee Brennan in his 2013 hearing, but the assumed authority is based in memorandums of understanding which are used as 'notifications' of Congress for blanket authority to conduct operations - operations like the drone strikes which increased under the Obama administration.

from the National Journal:

(Chief architect of Obama's counterterrorism policies during his first campaign) Brennan gives one of his most extensive answers (to the Senate committee]) on the explicit question of drone strikes -- when, how, and where the United States can carry them out. Note the last paragraph where he lays out the specific legal justification for conducting strikes in non-theaters of war.



from “The Gloves Come Off” Memorandum of Notification:

Woodward describes other things included in Tenet’s request:

-Providing hundreds of millions to “heavily subsidize Arab liaison services,” effectively “buying” key services in Egypt, Jordan, and Algeria
-Equipping Predator drones with Hellfire missiles for lethal missions to take out top al Qaeda figures
-Working with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan (in the earlier discussions, Woodward made clear that Rashid Dostum, whose massacre at Dasht-i-Leili we subsequently covered up] was the key figure Black had in mind)
-Conducting covert ops in 80 countries, including the use of breaking and entering, and lethal force (what Jane Mayer, in The Dark Side, refers to as paramilitary death squads)
-Working with Libya and Syria (and also, in the context of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan)

. . .The legal fight between the Administration and the ACLU is fundamentally about whether–given the way Tenet constructed his Interrogation Guidelines–Bush (and now Obama) could sustain that claim of plausible deniability.

Certainly all of those policies can be debated and resolved in some way through making those actions available to the legislature to mitigate and judge. That’s not a course this administration has chosen to take on a number of remnants from Bush’s ‘war on terror;’ like renditions, detentions of suspects in torture-friendly nations, ‘extra-judicial killings, and the like. Authorization on all of these may well be successfully mitigated through Congress, but the President has made a determination to hold back accountability for whatever authority he’s assumed to carry out these policies and actions (to order them).

Those are areas where the Bush-era abuses and the present activities of the Obama CIA collide. Those are the prerogatives of President Obama which he shares with the former administration that he’s fought to obscure and keep secret through many questionable moves.

That obstruction, that collusion with the prerogatives of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ may well have withstood legislative attempts to delve deeper and demand more public accountability, but the Senate was spurred to investigate the CIA activities under Bush because of deliberate, and admitted destruction of key videotaped evidence depicting tortures. Ninety-two interrogation tapes were destroyed. George Tenet was CIA chief when the tapes were made, and Porter Goss headed the agency when the tapes were destroyed.

Confronted about their obstruction by Congress, the agencies involved agreed to provide dual paperwork which they claimed contained the same evidence that had been discarded. That’s where the present investigation took over, first under Jay Rockefeller, then under Sen. Feinstein in 2009.

Consider that there had been no effective challenge of the past administration's actions during Bush's term in office. With the election of Barack Obama, there was a reasonable expectation that, not only would there be a full accounting of the actions of the previous administration, but there would be an effort to hold the principle authors and those who ordered the tortures legally accountable.

Yet, President Obama took the position right from the start that his intention was to look forward and away from prosecutions. Indeed, his Justice Dept. made a half-hearted show of investigating the abuses and closed their inquiry without any charges at all; except for prosecuting and jailing former CIA officer John Kiriakou who had brought many of the abuses to light.

Understand, if you will, that this is a string of events which has sparked outrage for a decade now, only to meet with an attitude of 'been there, done that' from this President. In no way can anyone claim that justice has been served by the mere (albeit, extensive and detailed) summary of accounts of past practices, without some sort of measure of accountability and assignment of legal responsibility.

The American people are being treated like dupes; deemed by the president we elected to hold our government accountable undeserving of the justice we seek; selfish in our expectation that our Congress act to actually outlaw the practices through legislation, or that our courts be enlisted to outlaw the practices through prosecutions.

Worse, President Obama has not been as forthcoming and attentive to our right to be informed about the actions of our government, our military, our intelligence agencies and agents as he postures in these statements made AFTER he is forced past YEARS of repeated objections and defenses to reveal a smidgen of his and the past administration's actions and the authorities they've assumed to carry them out. How can we ignore the foot-dragging and outright refusals to be forthcoming with evidence and justifications - objections made by his Secretary of State Kerry right until the final hour against even releasing this incomplete and redacted summary?

Are we to just brush past the fact that one of President Obama's choice for leading the CIA, John Brennan, was an intelligence official under George Tenet; chosen by Obama early in his presidency to lead the review of intelligence agencies and helped make recommendations to his new administration? Brennan had supported warrantless wiretapping and 'extraordinary rendition' under Bush. It’s understandable that he would seek to stifle and obfuscate from anything he and his former employers might have had a hand in.

In the course of the Senate investigation, there was systematic and blatant interference, obstruction, surveillance, and intimidation of committee staffers by the Brennan/Obama CIA. It was first denied by the director when confronted in March; later admitted by him in July. Added to that, the President put this same interfering and obstructing CIA in charge of editing the ‘executive summary’ of the Senate Intelligence Committee findings which is to be the ONLY public accounting of the actions of the former administration.

Right after the President addressed reporters on the imminent (turned out, delayed) release torture report, it was revealed by Senate committee members that the documents they submitted to the White House, to the President, for approval for release had been heavily redacted and had “eliminated and obscured key information” which supported the report’s conclusions.

That editing process was led by Brennan, who admitted his agency’s role, the agency he oversees, in obstructing those findings. Further, an effort to rebut the report was, reportedly, directly aided by all three former CIA directors under Bush (Tenet, Porter Goss, Hayden) and others who participated in or ordered the activities and abuses in question in the report’s findings.

Are we to ignore the fact that more than 200 CIA employees who were involved in the torture program are still employed at the CIA?

I know that many here who regularly defend criticisms of President Obama by questioning and demeaning the motives of his critics will brush past these facts and revert to the 'Obama knows best' stance which is sickeningly reminiscent of the 'government knows best' defense that characterizes the darkest days of government secrecy and misdeeds practiced before Watergate (and later, Iran-Contra) made investigatory journalism and public accountability the norm. Yet, consider that the pursuit of justice in these acts of torture has spanned a decade, only to be met with the same paternalistic and self-protective roadblocks that we decried before this Democratic administration decided to sign onto the defense of the past republican one.


here are some posts I made over the years tracking the Bush-era abuses:

U.S mercenary running torture chamber in Kabul "worked for Rumsfeld" -2004

Cheney wants to torture prisoners. He said so. He didn't mean a dunk in the pool. -2004

Was Torture at Abu Gharib Like Under Saddam? How Do We Know? -2004

Bush Appeals for Permission to Torture and Railroad Gitmo Prisoners -2006

US backed Iraqi force seen as death squad-linked to secret torture prison -2005

No torture? Then why are we hiding these prisoners from the Red Cross? -2005

Is U.S. using others for abusive interrogations? On Abu Ali and others? -2006

Just because Congress makes a torture law doesn't mean it's constitutional -2006

The U.S. is Helping Pakistan Torture 'Terror' Suspects -2006

Bush Regime Asks Judge To Gag Gitmo Detainees To Prevent Disclosures On CIA Torture Prisons -2006

Gitmo Detainees Challenge Torture And Detention Law -2006

The torture legislation takes away the presumption of innocence -2006

US: Pentagon Spends Billions to Outsource Torture -2006

Inspectors Find More Torture at Iraqi Jails-US isn't protecting prisoners -2006

(including this one from symbolman in which I sound much like DU defenders of Obama today)
Anyone who sanctions torture should be removed from office -2006


more...



ron fullwood @ronfullwood

December 4, 2014

Some Light From the President, Into My Dark Place

I'd like to take a moment to express some thoughts about the decision yesterday not to indict the cop who killed Eric Garner, and I want to do it here on this forum because I'm able to make it lengthy - and also, because I know it'll get a good read from a community that I respect and admire.

I want to first express how disappointed I've been in President Obama's responses to the police killings in Ferguson which I believe brushed right past where I think many folks like me have found ourselves this morning - dismayed and disillusioned, perhaps beyond any repair or healing that any president's words could possibly achieve. What I'd personally (albeit, unrealistically) like to hear from President Obama are judgments about the state of the judicial system and conclusions about these prominent cases of police abuses and killings which I well know would go beyond where it would be prudent or even serve to advance the justice I seek. Nonetheless, I've been without any real anchor of hope to moor my ship of despair - and, the president has appeared in recent months, deliberately adrift from where I'm sinking.

I'm watching, listening, as the highest official in the country, a black man, equivocates and equalizes the Eric Garner decision yesterday by raising concerns over 'trust.' Trust in our justice system; trust in police practices; is such a remote and unlikely possibility to me right now that I'm almost ready to just tune the president out, along with every other public official or officer who purports to speak down to me from their positions of authority and influence.

Yet, there was something refreshingly direct in President Obama's statement which, perhaps, wasn't made as clear in the snippets offered along with news reports of the non-indictment of the cop filmed committing what was ruled a homicide, a murder of Eric Garner, by the city coroner. There was something in his statement which finally connected with my own thoughts and determination this morning. The president used the word, "accountability," to buttress his concern about Americans "being treated equally under the law."

"I'm absolutely committed as president of the United States to making sure that we have a country in which everyone believes in the core principle that we are equal under the law," President Obama said at the White House Tribal Nations Conference.

"We are not going to let up until we see a strengthening of the trust and a strengthening of the accountability that exists between our communities and our law enforcement," he continued.

"When anybody in this country is not being treated equally under the law, that's a problem. It's incumbent on all of us as Americans ...that we recognize that this is an American problem and not just a black problem. It is an American problem when anybody in this country is not being treated equally under the law."

That sentiment, so eloquently expressed, I believe, is directly on point. To me, there is nothing short of accountability from these police officers and police departments which will assuage my concern and commitment. I don't see any way that 'trust' will ever be achieved without a clear avenue for accountability, both within the institutions and from our courts. Standards, training, and even cameras on officers are essentially meaningless without accountability for the actions of these officers and officials of the law. In the case of Eric Garner, strangleholds were already against police policy, and it's clear that filming the killing did little to effect accountability and justice for the assailant.

Moreover, there really isn't any provision of law which mandates 'trust' - or even understanding, or respect for each other - as a condition of our rights to equal treatment under the law. Those are certainly fine aspirations, but our rights are inherent in the Constitution which (improbably, at the time of its inception) asserts that we are all created equal. That's where our rights are drawn from, not from any expectation that we love or respect each other before they are administered fairly.

The only way to ensure proper management of departments and policy is for individuals employed to 'protect and serve' to fear for their own liberty or job security if they violate provisions or laws in their duties. There's far too much comfort in these police departments and impunity in the actions of their officers, creating an authoritarian atmosphere where officers feel safe in using excessive force without repercussions or serious rebuke.

The law is where our protests and demands originate and reside; the rest of those aspirations should flow from that demonstrated understanding of equal treatment in any legal reprimand from police or adjudication in court. We begin with our demands and exercise every instigation of democracy (and civil disobedience) to achieve them.

I was told a while back by an individual that the actions of some blacks allegedly involved in some criminal activity 'hold us back' from getting the justice we want. I believe we're long past the point where blacks need to prove their worth to anyone to expect equal justice under the law. We need to force the system to adhere to justice, to respect our rights, no quarter.

As encouraged as I am by President Obama's statement, I'm in a particularly dark place right now. I've seen calls for 'civil rights' investigations before, and I'm not convinced, yet, that without results they're more than pacifiers and stopgap proclamations designed to take some of the heat out of our dissent and protest. However, I'm still watching and listening for our government to get it right.

We are going to need to keep raising our voices above their sonic cannons and their lecturing from the elevation of the offices we've gifted them with; HOLLER if we must, until our voices are plainly heard and our demands addressed. THAT'S how "we bring about justice," and THAT'S how we "bring about peace;" by not allowing ourselves to be cowed into believing that these same indifferent officials and officers can be made to listen and bridge that "gulf" they've deliberately created to neuter our voices and place themselves outside of the reach of their own responsibility and accountability to us by our muting or repressing the VOLUME of our own protests.

No one looking at the police armies arrayed and attacking protestors and demonstrators in Ferguson and in hundreds of other cities around the nation can ignore or dismiss the fact that these forces purporting to 'protect and serve' are armed and armored for repression of dissent against them and positioned to completely suppress the very people President Obama wants to imbue with trust for cops. What we expect from our President and other leaders is to amplify our voices DEMANDING justice - not co-opting officials and officers in their attempts to choke them out with barrages of gas and smoke; materially or rhetorically.

President Obama may just now be waking up to the reality that it is these very police officials in Ferguson and elsewhere who have deliberately and systematically alienated themselves from the people they are supposed to serve and are doing little more than defending their own positions of authority over us; abusing that power we've invested in them with our votes and with our hard-earned contributions to our democratic system of governance.

It's not the demonstrators of Ferguson and elsewhere who've neglected to engender trust - it's these abusive and self-protective officials and officers who have let go of any modicum of respect for these grieving communities under siege and under fire from canisters of smoke and tear gas hurled from a distance behind the protection of taxpayer-sponsored armaments.

I'm a big fan of the 'shut the shit down' movement which has grown out of the Ferguson movement to obtain justice for the killing of Mike Brown, and I look to the future for an escalation of those very direct confrontations which both raise awareness and pressure pols and officials to respond to protesters very specific and aggressive demands for the justice and accountability the president says he believes in.

"...it is incumbent upon all of us as Americans, regardless of race, region, faith, that we recognize this is an American problem and not just a black problem or a brown problem or a Native American problem, this is an American problem, when anybody in this country is not being treated under the law that’s a problem and it’s my job as president to help solve it,” President Obama asserted.

We'll see.