Just World News with Helena Cobban – Page 106 – Info, analysis, discussion

‘China Hand’ on extrajudicial killings

The excellent (though sporadic) blogger China Hand has a great new post today tracking the degree to which extensive use of extra-judicial killings has been incorporated into the “standard operating procedures” of the counter-insurgency forces fielded by Gen. Petraeus in Iraq and his former counterparts– now subordinates– running the US-led war in Afghanistan.
As I wrote in this recent JWN post,

Extra-judicial killings, also known as assassinations, are always abhorrent. They shock the conscience of anyone who believes in the rule of law. When carried out by states they represent a quite unacceptable excess of state power.

I was writing that in response to the bland, non-questioning reception by members of the US’s elite MSM corps of the spin that the recent US killing raid into Syria was somehow “okay” because it was part of a (possibly) “targeted” killing raid against a named individual.
That is an absolutely unacceptable argument.
What China Hand has done, though is review the evidence that is already widely available that the use of deliberate, extra-judicial killings has been deeply integrated by the US military into its conduct of “counter-insurgency” operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan.
He refers mainly to two easily available sources: the Wikipedia entry on Gen. Petraeus (which CH describes as “adoring”), and Bob Woodward’s latest book on the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, titled The War Within.
One thing CH does effectively is unpack the mendacious, though apparently highly “technologized”, language that “people in the know” use to talk about such operations… They do that to hide the fact that, as he states straightforwardly, in the end their policy relies simply on deploying some form of “death squads.”
One of these terms is “targeted kinetic activity.” Personally, when I hear a slimy euphemism like that, I want to vomit.
CH comments:

I guess we’ll just have to take General Petraeus’s word for it that there was some kind of vetting and due process, that people were not improperly killed because of those death squad doppelgangers, greedy and grudge-holding informants, that non-violent opponents of the occupation weren’t targeted as a matter of COIN doctrine, and that “collateral damage” was accidental, avoided when at all possible, and not used as a tool to intimidate the local populace into turning against the insurgents.

For my part, I am not prepared to take anybody’s word that such hush-hush, quite opaque deliberations have any integrity or justifiability to them at all. At all. (And to be fair to China Hand, I think he was writing there with ironic intent.)
President-elect Obama: Please pay attention to this question of extra-judicial killings! They are exactly what the word says: extra-judicial, that is, quite inimical to any concept of the rule of law.
Yes, our country has found itself in a situation where a certain number of people are working actively to harm it. There are many ways to deal with that challenge that do not involve actions that directly undermine the concept of the rule of law.
At a purely utilitarian level, there is absolutely no way the US military can ever “kill” itself successfully out of the many problems and challenges it currently faces in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan.
But beyond that, at a moral/political level, embracing the use of extra-judicial killings (i.e. death squads) as an integral part of what our troops are doing in those distant countries is directly inimical to our own self-understanding and our own interests.
So please: Stop the death squads!

First big global challenges for Obama

While Ahmadinejad and Hamas are making nicey-nice in their first overtures to President-elect Barack Obama, leaders in Russia and China have sent their first rhetorical “shots” across his bows.
The “shot” (challenge) from Moscow came in the fairly familiar language of military threats and escalation: Yesterday President Dmitry Medvedev said he would station surface-to-surface missiles next to Poland if the US stationed an anti-missile system inside Poland.
(Today, there have apparently been moves by both Medvedev and the Bush administration to tamp down tensions over the issue. This is not surprising. Despite the rhetoric and the needs both leaderships have to play to their domestic constituencies, I still think that neither Medvedev nor the Bushites want any very serious tensions in their relations.)
The challenge from China, however, came in a very different form of language: the language of expressing a tough negotiating position, on the issue of climate change.
I have been arguing for some time that climate change is set to become an increasingly big issue in international politics, and this seems now to be happening. Today in Beijing, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao told the UN’s chief climate change official, Yvo de Boer, that,

by changing their unsustainable lifestyles.

The position spelled out by Wen has the twin advantages of (a) having a lot of moral validity, and (b) being very popular among the 88% of the world’s population that does not belong to the “rich” western bloc.
On moral validity, we need remember only two important points: (1) Though China’s total annual CO2 emissions are now roughly the same as those of the United, its population is four times greater; therefore the per-capita emissions rate is only one-fourth that of the US; and (2) Historically, the US and the other long-rich countries have contributed considerably more to the “fund” of toxic greenhouses gases that has been accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere over the past 150 years than have China and other long-poor countries.
China’s Communist Party leadership made some extremely wise judgments over 30 years ago, and they seem to have stuck to them ever since. They have maintained a steadfast policy of seeking ever fuller integration into the world’s numerous economic and political networks, and of sticking as much as possible by the rules of these networks to enhance their effectiveness within them. And they apparently also made a strategic judgment a long time ago that seeking to “compete” on the global stage against the US (or anyone else) in terms of externally directed military power projection capabilities was not a fruitful way to proceed. Hence, China has not engaged in nuclear or non-nuclear arms-racing with the US. It maintains only a “minimum deterrent” nuclear arsenal. And it has won positions of real political influence with all the countries around its periphery– and in some areas considerably further afield– not through military domination but through extensive economic and diplomatic/political cooperation.
These judgments and policies have proved to be well chosen. After all, during the past 30 years, the actual utility of military power in international relations has been declining rapidly– a decline that has been in almost direct proportion to the explosion in the efficiency and reach of global communications.
But I, for one, am not surprised that, when China seeks to send a “hey, don’t stomp on me” message to President-elect Obama, it does so in a way that is (a) quite discreet, and (b) absolutely unrelated to the military realm.
It’s an interesting world we live in…

Congratulations, Tom Perriello!

Tom Perriello’s lead over mean-spirited rightwinger Virgil Goode in our district’s hard fought congressional race now looks unassailable. The Virginia Democrats’ ‘Raising Kaine’ blog now says that Perriello is 646 votes ahead of Goode, at 158,563 – 157,917 votes.
RK quotes a veteran state political hand as saying that Bedford County is the only jurisdiction that still needs to be retabulated. The state board of elections web-page for Bedford shows us that as of 7:33 last night the numbers involved in correction counting there fell far short of the 650-plus Goode needs: It was three votes here or there they were looking at.
Tom and the state Dems are now claiming victory. Goode has not yet conceded.
Tom Perriello will be a huge improvement over Virgil Goode in the House of Representatives. He is a dedicated social activist where Goode had become a mean-spirited, divisive personality who sought to belittle and exclude immigrants and new Americans. It was also from Goode that I first heard a call to “drill, drill, drill” (oil out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) being used as a rallying cry.
In a couple of earlier JWN posts I offered Tom Perriello some constructive criticism about some aspects of his campaign. Basically, I thought he was wrong to be so openly critical of those who came before him in Democratic Party, whether locally or nationally.
But thanks in good measure to Tom’s smart and dedicated campaigning we are now in a very welcome new day in Virginia, as throughout the US. And because of the horrible economic crisis now descending on the heads of all the US’s people– but most harshly on those of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable families– we will need Tom’s attention to social organizing and socio-economic and political inclusiveness more than ever. He’ll be a fabulous force for good in Washington, DC!
Thanks to Tom Perriello and all his hardworking supporters!

R. Emanuel: Repudiate this disgusting racist comment

… that was reportedly made by your father, Benjamin Emanuel, to the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv in response to your appointment as Obama’s White House Chief of Staff:

What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White House.

(HT: B of Moon of Alabama)
In many Jewish-Israeli circles, including apparently the Irgun/Likud circles the elder Emanuel has been associated with for many decades, “Arab work” is associated with doing all the dirty or hard work, very frequently carried out by members of Israel’s substantial ethnically Palestinian (Arab) minority, that allows so many of Jewish Israelis, nowadays, to live lives of relative ease and prosperity.
But Rahm Emanuel is not just a provincial-minded Jewish Israeli. He is also a US citizen. Indeed, he’s about to rise to one of the highest positions in our country.
There is a good question as to whether anyone occupying such a sensitive position in Washington ought to also hold the citizenship of a foreign country– or whether, in the circumstances, Rahm Emanuel should lay down his foreign citizenship.
But there is no question in my mind that Rahm Emanuel needs to distance himself rapidly, completely, and convincingly from the racist sentiment expressed by his father.
Of course we can’t hold any individual responsible for the sins or sentiments of his fathers. But given the many questions that quite legitimately swirl around this controversial appointment of a dual citizen to WH Chief of Staff, the very least we can request of Rahm Emanuel is that he publicly disavow these ugly racist sentiments. And then, that he and more importantly the president-elect whom he serves should ensure that all high-level appointments and policies are quite untainted by the ugly divisiveness of anti-Arab or anti-Muslim discrimination that have marked far too much of US public life for years now.
Being “pro-Israel”, as Rahm Emanuel has always proudly been, does not in any way involve a requirement to be “anti-Arab”– far less to demean Arabs and Muslims in public or to pursue exclusionary or discourse-suppressing policies. Being “pro-Israel” should absolutely not be considered as being in a “zero sum game” relationship with being “pro-Arab.” Wise leaders and peacemakers should seek to be “pro” both sets of people.
President-elect Obama will very soon, I hope, be calling on Israelis, Palestinians, and other Arabs to escape from the long-turning cycles of violence, oppression, and fear they’ve lived in for so long and to build new relationships with each other that are inclusive, generous, and accord equal rights to all persons, regardless of religion or ethnicity.
So the very least he can do at this crucial point is start to model (and if necessary enforce) just such an approach in the makeup and conduct of his own administration.
On a related note: Today’s WaPo carries, on its front page, a very moving profile of Eugene Allen, an African American who worked many years in the kitchens at the White House, starting in 1952 and finally rising to become butler.
The writer, Wil Haygood, traces the appalling history of the discrimination to which African Americans have always, until very recently, been subjected inside the White House.
Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, and our president-elect, Barack Hussein Obama, would both profit a lot by reading and reflecting on this article. Oh, correct that. Obama already knows and understands that history of marginalization, hard work, and belittlement.
But does his new chief of staff?

An Egyptian-American at Grant Park

My friend Blayne Amir Sayed, an Egyptian-American medical researcher, lives in Chicago with his talented wife Amenah and their daughter. Blayne and Amenah are both observant Muslims, and for what it’s worth Amenah covers her hair with a hijab.
Tuesday night the two of them left their daughter with Amenah’s parents and headed down to the gigantic victory rally the Obama campaign organized in Grant Park. The next day Blayne wrote a great short reflection on the experience, which I’m happy to publish here with his permission. Thanks, Blayne!

Grant Park

Thinking of My Son the Lieutenant

(This is Scott writing…. and reflecting)
It’s been a month since I last saw my son Keith, at a dinner where we said our farewells. I miss him; I am concerned for him. It’s taken me too long to write about this.
My angst comes in knowing he leaves for Iraq soon. As I’ve noted here before, my son Keith is an officer in the Virginia National Guard. His engineering unit is now in final preparations in chilly Wisconsin. He will be leaving soon and directly for Iraq, part of a region I’ve dedicated my own career to studying.
No, I don’t want him to go, not under these circumstances. I’m not like Governor Sarah Palin, who last June proclaimed from a church pulpit how her son going to Iraq was somehow “a task from God.” I think too highly of Providence to be so presumptuous. My prayers for Keith are more modest, and, for the moment, private.
The day after 9/11, Keith volunteered to serve his University’s rescue squad. He joined ROTC and earned a scholarship. Not a path I would have chosen. My late father, once a West Pointer, would smile. From all accounts, Keith is today a good officer; he feels honored to be doing his duty.
We see the Iraq war rather differently. Yet our recent conversations and our last dinner were not to be about the cause, but about… Keith and his family. I was speechless; still am.
Helena at the time helpfully reassured me that “for Quakers, being speechless is our most common and usually deepest form of spiritual connection.” I like that. Just being with Keith, his wife, and my grand-daughter was precious. (Jessica is the one who so kindly delayed her birth until my birthday – 9/11 – last year. She’s an angel, just now learning to walk.).
Yes, I did manage to talk a bit, listened hopefully a lot more.
My son is an engineer in training, with a focus on bridge building. (for VDOT) If only he could be doing that for Iraq! I gather his unit will be engaged in “horizontal construction.” (roads & such) I wonder just why it is that Iraqis could not perform such tasks. It seems “trust” remains in short supply.
At a family briefing day in September, I was struck that most of the speakers inserted quick lines to the soldiers about “how much we appreciate your service” — without quite mentioning what it was they were to be doing. We were mercifully spared any of the Bushisms about a “war on terror” and undefined hoo-ahs about “victory.”
We were there vaguely as “a band of families,” even as we are dispersed up and down the east coast. Most Guard member families are isolated; I doubt my son’s neighbors in Augusta County even know he’s been deployed.
Like Vice President elect Joe Biden, when speaking about his son, I wanted – and tried – to tell Keith I am proud of him, that I admire his courage, that I can celebrate his maturity, his achievements in his own right, that I know he will make good decisions, that he is a good leader
Maybe I didn’t get that all out quite right; I had lump-in-throat disorder.
When Keith was told that his former middle school was asking about what they could do for him, what things they could send, Keith at first was a bit defensive. As his unit’s executive officer, he takes pride in making sure his troops are well supplied. (Think Radar — as a Lieutenant!)
But then he swallowed hard and asked quite earnestly that any care packages be sent to his daughter — Jessica — that she gets extra love and attention while Daddy is away….
In that sentiment, I could not be prouder of my son. I salute you Keith.

Obama draws out the best in others

I just listened to the very gracious and supportive words that George W. Bush said about Pres.-elect Obama this morning on the steps of the White House.
Last night, John McCain also gave what I thought was one of the best and most gracious speeches I’ve ever heard from him, when he conceded the victory to Obama and congratulated him on it.
And before that, without a doubt the very best speech that Hillary Clinton throughout the entire, lengthy primary-race struggle she fought was the one in which she conceded victory to Obama.
What is it about this guy that he can elicit these generous and gracious reactions from people who, until just hours before, had been his bitter opponents?
I think it’s in good part his own calm, steady, and always respectful demeanor. What a resource. What a gift.
And yes, I know that all those gracious words spoken by, respectively, Clinton, McCain, and Bush did not necessarily signal that all the old resentments and criticisms had ended. (In Hillary’s case, as we subsequently saw, they clearly seemed not to have. Though after an interval of time, she did start doing some good work for the Obama campaign.)
But still, having those defeated opponents utter those gracious words of concession and congratulation is far, far preferable to having them speak in other, more grudging, mean-spirited, or even inflammatory tones.
Words matter.

America enters the 21st century

Okay, it’s a bit late, but I think it’s happening.
For the past eight years it has felt as if we being thrown back into some of the worst years of the 19th cntury. Years when the imperial armies of ‘white’ northern nations set out on expeditions to completely re-make (and control) distant portions of the non-‘white’ world.
But a majority of US citizens have now, a little belatedly, started to understand that we’re not in the 19th century any more.
Thank God.
Back in the 19th century, ‘white’ leaders wrapped up in the certainty of their own self-righteousness were able to launch those campaigns of imperial aggrandizement and control, and to have a reasonable chance of their success, for two key reasons:

Thus, during the 19th century the British, French, or other European armies could set out from their homelands to seize control of distant land-masses, or the US Cavalry would set out ever further westward to bring under Washington’s control vast portions of the lands of Indian nations. (‘Treaties’ be damned.)
But hear this: we aren’t in the 19th century any more. Now, a whole span of 108 years separates us from those days. And during the 20th century, two important things happened:

matter

So there you have two great achievements of the 20th century: The exponential improvement of the means of worldwide communication (with the concomitant decline in the usefulness of military power), and the much broader international recognition of the norm of human equality.
Which have brought us to a 21st century in which whole new ways for the world’s peoples to be in this world together are now not just possible, but mandatory.
And yesterday, 62.5 million US voters– a clear majority of those who cast a ballot– finally seemed to understand that.
Jane and Joe Six-pack: welcome to the 21st century.

To get out of Iraq…

… will require a completely transformed relationship between Washington and the United Nations.
That is, it will require this if President-elect Obama is serious about pursuing, at the very least, a speedy and deep drawdown of US forces from there, and doing so in an orderly– or as the other word is, ‘responsible’– fashion.
And I think he is.
He’ll need the UN to do the convening of the regional, and probably also the intra-Iraqi, negotiations that will be required if the drawdown is to be orderly. I.e., if the departing US troops are not to be shot at as they depart, and Iraq and the surrounding region are not to descend into unimaginable chaos as the US troops leave.
Why the UN? Because only the UN can deal in a respectful and effective way with Iran and all other regional governments. Washington can’t do this within anything like the timetable required.
As Obama pursues the planning for the ‘drawdown’ from Iraq, in close coordination with the other four permanent members of the Security Council (which is what it’ll take), I think he will come to two important realizations:

re-hatted as part of a UN gendarmerie in a few portions of Iraq

Fortunately, as of January 1, 2009, the UN will already, most likely, be assuming a much more direct role in the governance of Iraqi security affairs. All the efforts the Bush administration has made to bribe and bully the Iraqi government into signing off on the coercive bilateral SOFA-plus arrangements have come to nought. And they can be expected to continue to be unsuccessful until the current ‘mandate’ that the US enjoys in Iraq, courtesy of the Security Council, comes to an end on December 31.
So as of next January 20, the UN Security Council will already have a considerably stronger and more direct role in the governance of Iraqi affairs than it currently has. That’s great.
But it would be even better if we could start to see some effective and inclusive inter-P5 coordination on Iraq and related security affairs starting to take place before December 31.
There are things the departing Bush administration could and should do– regarding Iraq, regarding Palestine, and other topics– long before January 19, if the final ‘legacy’ of this Bush administration in the Middle East is not to be remembered as one of total, and totally callous disaster.

Obama’s key cabinet picks…

… Won’t be announced very soon, if I heard David Axelrod right yesterday.
He was asked on MSNBC when Obama would be announcing his top picks, and I believe the questioner even threw a few suggested names into the mix. But Axelrod replied, very clearly, something like: “While Obama will be proceeding with due haste he also recopgnizes that he needs to undertake his cabinet appointments with all the necessary deliberation…”
I think this is entirely right. Governing this country– especially at a time of so many great challenges, which have been openly acknowledged by the president-elect– is a challenge quite different from that of running for election.
Obama needs to reach down deep within himself at this point. He and those to closest to him need to change gears. He may well need to bring in and listen to voices of advice different than those he listened to during the campaign. I certainly hope he does these things before he makes any firm decisions on his cabinet team.
They will take a certain amount of time. As will the process of vetting possible top-level picks before he makes the final offers to them.
So I’m not going to make any public recommendations re possible picks. The only things I’ll say are that, in foreign policy and probably also in economic policy, choosing people who had high-level responsibility in the Clinton years would, in nearly all cases, undermine Pres. Obama’s ability to implement his agenda. He definitely needs to think outside the Clinton-era box.
For now, I merely want to urge Obama to take his time, and to reflect more deeply on how to implement the key portions of his transformation agenda, as he deliberates on the possible top-level picks. These are some of the absolutely most important decisions he will make in his life. They will strongly affect the effectiveness of his entire presidency.
I’m sure he has also given some thought to the key question of how he will get the information he needs to make his presidential decisions, and how he will organize the decision-deliberating functions of the cabinet. Those are key aspects of governance. In George W. Bush’s first term, effective executive power was exercised overwhelmingly by VP Cheney, who controlled the entire information flow to the president and completely subverted the concept of cabinet-level deliberations on the country’s most important decisions. (Cheney’s influence eroded noticeably during W’s second term.)
I think we can be confident that Joe Biden won’t be playing a role anything similar to Cheney’s. But as a long-time ‘Washington insider’ he can certainly be of some help as Obama navigates the shoals of 2009 Washington, including dealing with all the big egos and special interests associated with most (though not all) of the Democratic leaders in Congress.
Obama’s victory owes something to the large monetary support he received from big lobbying interests. But it owes most to the monetary support as well as dedicated ‘footwork’ support he received from 62.5 million voters throughout the whole country yesterday, and our desire for deepseated change. I guess for now we have to trust him not to forget that.
But I’m also, quite simply, praying for his survival.