Real politics starting inside Iraq?

It is possible, just possible, that the coming weeks will see the emergence
of real internal politics inside Iraq. That is, the kind of politics
marked by realistic discussion and tough negotiating among leaders of the
country’s different major factions. That’s not to say the violence will
completely go away. But if the discussions/negotiations are serious
enough, they might be able to win out over the tendency to violence, and the
country might yet be able to hold the fair, nationwide elections that everyone–everyone!–says
they want to see before the end of January 2005.

That consensus around the need for elections is a great starting point.

I guess the precedent I’m thinking most about is that of South Africa’s
early-1990s transition from brutal minority rule to a true, one-person-one-vote
system. That transition was also marked by continuing violence that
in some areas was considerable, and indeed almost threatened the country’s
ability to hold the elections in late April of 1994. A small portion
of the bowing-out minority community (the Boer-dominated “White” community)
tried to mount a rearguard action against the move to democracy, and was
able to enlist the help of pro-Buthelezi collaborators inside the Zulu community
in order to keep the violence stoked. But that didn’t work. What
predominated in the end was the very long-drawn-out process of negotiating
the “ground-rules” for how the country’s democracy would work.

Those negotiations achieved their declared aim–which in the context of
South Africa’s extremely troubled history of inter-group relations was in
itself an enormous accomplishment. But beyond that, the negotiating
process itself established some basis of trust between communities and people
where previously there had been no trust at all. And it also helped
the very underdeveloped system of political parties within the previously
unfranchised portion of the citizenry to become better formed and more stable
by virtue of the participation of these parties in the negotiation itself.

In Iraq, it was this extremely important process of internal, inter-group negotiation
over the basics of how Iraqis would live and work together in the future that
that arrogant and silly man Paul Bremer tried to completely short-circuit
earlier this year when he summarily forced the 24 members of Iraq’s quasi-puppet
Interim Governing Council to sign onto something called the “Transitional
Administrative Law”. (For my analyses at the time, read
this

and this
and this
.)

So why am I thinking now that possibly–just possibly–we might be seeing
the start of the kind of real politics inside Iraq that might–just might–signal
the possibility of the country escaping from the present tempest of violence
in which it seems mired?

Continue reading “Real politics starting inside Iraq?”

More Golden Oldies posted

Last night, in case you missed this momentous development, I put up three more months’ worth of JWN Golden Oldies into the G.O. pane on the front page here.
These ones come from July, August, and September last year. Check ’em out and tell me what you think!
(Sorry about a few items of spam in some of the Comments there. I am still working at deleting them. My advice for now: don’t click on the hyperlinks embedded into Commenters’ names there without having a good idea of where you’re actually going. But some of the discussions in the Comments boards there are really good, occasional spam notwithstanding)

Rumsfeld, Bush, and ‘command responsibility’

I was glad to see that Jonathan Tepperman, an editor at Foreign
Affairs
, raised the important issue of command responsibility
regarding the tortures and other abuses in the US global gulag, in an

op-ed piece

he had in the NYT Thursday. Certainly, the fact that–according
to the news that has come out this week–Donald Rumsfeld and high-ranking
people in the White House Counsel’s office and the Vice-President’s office
all took active parts in the discussions around the legality of the extremely
abusive techniques used within the gulag brings the question of command
responsibility front and center.

As Tepperman sums it up,

Under the doctrine of command responsibility, officials can be
held accountable for war crimes committed by their subordinates even if
they did not order them– so long as they had control over the perpetrators,
had reason to know about the crimes, and did not stop them or punish the
criminals.

This doctrine has been well accepted into US domestic law, most notably
in the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of General Yamashita, the
man who had been the Japanese commander of the Philippines during the chaotic
days when his forces’ positions there were collapsing to the Americans.

Indeed, the Supreme Court’s ruling ascribed to a commander an even
broader epistemic responsibility than Tepperman indicates. It is
not just that the commander “has reason to know about the crimes”, but rather
that a commander has an active responsibility to know about, and
to try to stop and punish, crimes of this severity.

Many of the Japanese units in the Philippines did, undisputedly, commit
atrocities during the period in question. Yamashita was captured by the
US forces, and was later charged with responsibility for those war crimes.
As described in a well-compiled little
paper

written by Marine Corps lawyer Maj. Bruce Landrum:

Continue reading “Rumsfeld, Bush, and ‘command responsibility’”

New York, CSM column on China, etc

I’ve been in New York since I flew in here from Toronto on Sunday evening. Monday, I suddenly remembered I needed to write not one but two columns for The Christian Science Monitor, about China. I got them both with my editors in Boston by 11 a.m. Tuesday. The first, China hums with change, is in Thursday’s paper. The second will be in the June 17 edition.
It was really exciting reconnecting with some of the experiences I had in China last month, as I wrote about them.
On the other hand, trying to focus on that aspect of my work, after just coming away from the conference in Canada on the Rwandan genocide and other atrocities, and while continuing to be consumed with Iraq, the US torture issue, Palestine, etc etc., all left me feeling a little drained.
I’ve had some good meetings here this week.

Continue reading “New York, CSM column on China, etc”

Yes, on torture, leadership counts

Six days ago, I argued in my column in The Christian Science Monitor
that if torture in US-run detention facilities around the world is to be
stopped, then we need top-level leadership from President Bush that articulates
and then verifiably implements a stance of “zero tolerance for torture.”

My fear was that without such clear and unambiguous leadership, tortures
and abuses of various forms would continue to be perpetrated by lower-level
US government personnel and contractors. I knew that in matters like
this one, clear and forceful leadership counts.

Little did I suspect that there has indeed been high- and perhaps even
top-level leadership on this issue–but in completely the wrong direction.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published a piece by Jess
Bravin describing a “draft” memo of March 6, 2003 that she had seen in which
advisers to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld marshalled the arguments as to why
employees in U.S.-run facilities could indeed be justified in the use
of torture.

And the story has only snowballed further since then.

The main argument presented in the March 2003 memo seemed to be a version of the hoary old
defense that “I was just following orders”. (Never mind that that
defense actually had its validity completely skewered in the fourth of the “Nuremberg
Principles”*
that were compiled in 1950 on the basis of the Nuremberg court’s judgments.) What
the authors of the March 2003 memo were arguing was essentially that if
government agents felt they needed to use torture they could invoke the
“only following orders” defense, and then that the President’s unbounded
powers to do whatever he wants in war-time could cover them with the grace
of the Prez’s own impunity.

Welcome to the view of the world as enunciated by the courtiers of His
Most Sublime Excellency the Lord of all World Known and Unkown (and the
Unknown Unknowns), the Defender of all that is Gracious, George Bush II.

Bravin wrote about the memo that it:

Continue reading “Yes, on torture, leadership counts”

This just in!

Using its wellknown and amazingly strong capacity for effective diplomacy, the Bush administration has been able to announce that after long, very complex negotiations with “Iraq” it has been able to reach agreement with “Iraq” over who gets to command the military there after June 30th.
That wellknown “national leader” Iyad Allawi fought tooth and nail for the very best possible deal for the people he represents…
Who are?
Oops, I forgot that part. Allawi was of course actually appointed by the IGC, which was appointed by the Americans. Prior to that (and most probably, until today), he was on the payroll of the CIA.
Why on earth should the Bushies expect anyone else to take any of this so-called “news” about an American creation reaching agreement with the U.S. government seriously?

Western ethno-psychology confronts atrocities

I’ve been at this conference on atrocious violence (“Why neighbors kill”) at the University of Western Ontario. I came mainly because the subject –which is fairly heavily focused on genocide and crimes against humanity–is very compelling to me. And also, because two of the other invited guests, the clinical psycvhologist Erwin Staub from UMass, Amherst, and the Lebanese sociologist Samir Khalaf are both definitely worth listening to.
And they certainly did not disappoint. (I hope I can write more about what they said, later.)
I was invited to the conference by Richard Vernon of UWO’s Center on Nationalism and Ethnic Relations. But I hadn’t realized that it was being co-sponsored by the Dept. of Psychology here– a fact that led to half or more of the presentations being given by various social psychologists, all of them I think from North America or the U.K.
Fair enough. I learned a lot about the way these social psychologists view and explain the world. They have some interesting insights into the motivations and behaviors of the people they study– a large proportion of whom, it turns out, are their own students. They do also conduct some ‘field’ studies. But these are overwhelmingly conducted within their own societies. I think the only ‘data’ presented in the mind-numbing succession of Power Point displays to which we were subjected that came from societies in which there have, actually, in recent history been widespread atrocities were one each from Northern Ireland and former-Yugoslavia.
(I’m leaving to one side, for now, the atrocities committed in the US detention facilities around the world, though they are not totally unrelated to the topic at hand.)
One of the phenomena that these psychologists plumbed in some depth is the tendency some humans have to “other” people from other social groups, and the way that “othering” can lead to stereotyping, prejudice, hate, etc…
I must confess, though, that I heard a certain–probably quite unintentional–amount of “othering” going on in some of the meta-discussions of the conference: namely, “othering” all those poor benighted people from war-torn and generally low-income countries who are unfortunate enough or misguided enough to get themselves into atrocity-enacting situations.

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How to train abusers

You want more clues as to how widespread physical abuse is in US-run detention facilities? Read about Specialist Sean Baker.
Baker was a member of a military-police unit in the Kentucky National Guard who pulled a tour of guard duty at Gitmo. One day in January 2003, an officer ordered Baker to play the role of a balky detainee in a training exercise. He put that dehumanizing orange jumpsuit on over his unifrm and cowered, as ordered, under a bed in a mock ‘cell’.
According to this report by the NYT’s Nick Kristof, this is what Baker said happened next:

    “They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and unfortunately one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he — the same individual — reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn’t breathe. When I couldn’t breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was `red.’ . . . That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: `I’m a U.S. soldier. I’m a U.S. soldier.’ ”
    Then [continues Kristof] the soldiers noticed that he was wearing a U.S. battle dress uniform under the jumpsuit. Mr. Baker was taken to a military hospital for treatment of his head injuries, then flown to a Navy hospital in Portsmouth, Va. After a six-day hospitalization there, he was given a two-week discharge to rest.
    But Mr. Baker began suffering seizures, so the military sent him to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for treatment of a traumatic brain injury. He stayed at the hospital for 48 days, was transferred to light duty… and was finally given a medical discharge two months ago.
    Meanwhile, a military investigation concluded that there had been no misconduct involved in Mr. Baker’s injury. Hmm. The military also says it can’t find a videotape that is believed to have been made of the incident.
    Most appalling, when Mr. Baker told his story to a Kentucky reporter, the military lied in a disgraceful effort to undermine his credibility.

Continue reading “How to train abusers”

Gelb on Tenet resignation

I cruised around the ‘net a bit to check out speculation etc about Tenet’s resignation. Actually, the most interesting thing I found came from that very well-connected old fox, Les Gelb.
(Gelb even taught Tenet in a seminar when Tenet was a senior at Georgetown U., back in 1981, and they’ve stayed in pretty close touch since.)
Here’s the most interesting thing I saw Gelb saying, in the interview with him on cfr.org:

    Generally, you never know exactly what is going on. You hear some people repeating one rumor and other rumors come out, too. I don’t think his leaving helps Bush politically, and I don’t think he would resign to help Bush politically.

There are some other interesting things in the interview, too. Check it out.
Btw, I agree with Gelb that Tenet’s resignation doesn’t help Bush politically.
#1 It adds to the impression of an administration in gathering chaos (prez hiring private legal advice, polygraphing of high officials at the Pentagon over the Chalabi leak, Ashcroft not talking to Ridge, etc etc etc…. )
#2 If Tenet is a “private citizen”, he’ll be in a much better position to defend himself and name the other names that need to be named since the upcoming, reportedly extremely damaging reports on pre-9-11 failures and other issues start rolling off the presses.

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Tenet resigning–who’s next?

I’m in Ontario. I see there’s lots of speculation about why George Tenet resigned. Of course, there are many reasons he should have resigned, at many points along the way– him and Colin Powell, both. Indeed, those two and anyone else of any possible integrity in the service of this government…
One of the delightful (and weird) twists on this story is that our dear old buddy Ahmad (‘Don’t blame me, I only sold them the snake-oil’) Chalabi, who is now in Najaf, rapidly trying to reinvent himself as a Shi-ite national hero (?), is now acting the wounded party and blaming Tenet for having framed him re the passing-secrets-to-Iran business.
If we were to believe Chalabi – oh, ha-ha-ha, this is almost to crazy to write… If we were to believe Chalabi (!), then Tenet’s sudden downfall might look like the doing of Chalabi’s longtime backers in the Wolfie-Feith-Perle circle?
But what it certainly looks like to me is that there’s a really delightful falling-out among all the rabble who’ve been running our country’s so-called foreign ‘policy’ under Bush…
And Tenet’s resignation surely isn’t the end of it.