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Posts tagged with Foreign Policy

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1:58 PM

February 17, 2010

Mount Vernon Statement = Empty Rhetoric

Well, the self-righteousness has surely hit the fan. Self-proclaimed “Constitutional conservatism” is the hero of the Mount Vernon Statement; however obliquely details, specifics, policies, evidence, history and data enter into this equation.

For one thing, is this supposed to be news? Are we in the public supposed to respect or revere these folks who are indeed, not saying anything new or of substance, while they simultaneously make unsubstantiated claims about our country? While the statement reads as a high school report on conservative talking points through American history, it sure fails to offer itself in the context of our world today and the problems we face. The only effort made to contextualize this statement is provided as follows : “In light of the challenges facing the country and the need for clarity in the age of Obama…” These are somehow new problems for these folks? As opposed to the new challenges that these conservatives did not deem politically beneficial to enunciate during the last decade (aka the lost decade)?

It reduces complex policy debates to a false framework of being against the Constitution or for it, while implicitly targeting and labeling the last year under the Obama administration as not being “consistent with the American ideal,” and a “…movement away from…our founding principles,”.

Blanketed, unsupported claims such as this are necessary to further these “Constitutional conservatives” worldview. The empty rhetorical piece de resistance :

“A Constitutional conservatism unites all conservatives through the natural fusion provided by American principles. It reminds economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and national security conservatives that energetic but responsible government is the key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world.”

Economic conservatives would probably like to be reminded that despite all the espoused morality of the Bush administration, our economy ran full speed into a brick wall. They would also probably like to be reminded that these “new challenges” we face in the “age of Obama” are a direct result of our economy crashing under Bush and the massive job losses suffered alongside said crash.

Social conservatives would probably like to be reminded that the greatest threat to moral self-government has come in the form of the exploitation of executive power by Bush/Cheney after 9.11 (think state secrets, executive privilege, and signing statements) and the subsequent relegation of habeas corpus (a Constitutionally guaranteed right) to a privilege that can be revoked at the whim of the executive. National security conservatives would likely benefit as well from the reminder that Obama is ending the war in Iraq and successfully turning the war in Afghanistan back toward our favor, most notably with the recent capture of top Taliban commanders. These same national security conservatives, which I hope is not just a term being used in lieu of the political impotence of neo-conservatives, would also benefit from the reminder that Iran is actually negotiating its nuclear enrichment program under 6 party talks that would result in them complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allowing the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) full access to all their nuclear facilities. Oh and about that whole “energetic but responsible government is the key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world” assertion : remind me what recent conservative was it that brought about the collective scorn of copious populations abroad because of its reckless, irresponsible, unilateral foreign policy regime? It starts with G and rhymes with shmorge shmush.

So are we to take this statement, if we accept it as news, as a repudiation of Bush’s legacy as none of the above-mentioned values? Or should we just take it as another empty rhetorical indulgence, carried out by conservative ideologues seeking to re-write history?

Somehow the latter option seems more in line with conservatism today.

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12:16 PM

February 11, 2010

Torture by any other name…

Today, Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish has been featuring some historical visuals of the alleged “enhanced interrogation” (re: torture) techniques institutionalized in the Bush/Cheney anti-terrorism regime (here, here and here). The shocking nature of these images is not in their graphic content, but in their power to speak to the inhumanity inherent in any torture regime. In the context of the Obama DoJ keeping a lid on as much of the visual record of the Bush/Cheney torture practices, these images emphasize that what was done was nothing new. Whoever came up with the notion that post-9/11 terrorists somehow need to be tortured clearly cannot be said to be particularly creative or ingenious. Nay, they cannot even be said to have thought through the implications of their actions, as is evidenced by the Bush administration’s efforts to remove as much tangible evidence of their acts from the public record as possible.

It is nearly 400 years after the Peruvian Inquisition from which Sullivan’s photos draw their historical context, and history has remembered those events precisely as despicable, barbaric and as exemplifying a tattered, desperate regime clinging to power. This despite the fact that there were to cameras around to document the acts – it is only the public consciousness and what spare written record remains that shapes the perception of these acts within its history. That said, I don’t think that the Obama administration’s attempts to keep the remaining torture photos from various Bush/Cheney blacksites unpublished is going to alter how history judges the last administration’s actions. Think about how easy it is to allude towards an oppressive regime just by saying the name – the Inquisition or the Khmer Rouge. After Obama’s election and during the campaign, there came to be zero ambiguity within the institutionalized perceptions of the Bush/Cheney regime that what occurred was indeed torture and that moving forward America rejects those acts and their justifications. From a March speech by Pres. Obama at the National Archives Museum:

For reasons that I will explain, the decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable – a framework that failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions; that failed to use our values as a compass. And that is why I took several steps upon taking office to better protect the American people.First, I banned the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the United States of America

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3:17 PM

February 10, 2010

Luddites for the war

Foreign Policy’s David Kenner brings us a list of the media’s most prominent Luddites : those in favor of bombing the nuclear technology out of Iran. Kenner describes these characters as a “belligerent minority”, supported by Dick Cheney, whose agitations seem unlikely to influence any opinion in the Obama administration, as “administration officials have strongly suggested they prefer to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions through diplomacy and sanctions,”.

At the top of that list is Daniel Pipes , whose recent “…Bomb Iran” article has been making the rounds. I derided his flimsy justification for a complete about-face of US policy regarding nuclear states (politics and ‘public opinion’) here. Next is John Bolton (fmr. US ambassador to the UN), whose favored policies toward Iran also include regime change. Following next comes Norman Podhoretz, whose argument towards urgent military action rests upon an analogy he makes comparing Iran and nuclear power to Hitler. The list finishes with Joshua Muravchik, Thomas McInerney and Max Boot – expect more of the same reasoning (and more mentions of Israel) within these arguments towards war.

I’m glad that elections can bring about change. These are all cats that whisper into the ears of Bush/Cheney (and definitely curry the good graces of McCain – remember, “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”?), and I don’t know who in their right mind would argue that another war is what America needs, nay favors, right now. But the important thing is that no one is power is arguing to those ends – thanks to the nearly 67 million Americans who thought otherwise.

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5:19 PM

February 8, 2010

The Wrong Direction

Over the weekend, Iran stated their intent to enrich uranium to 20% and to build 10 new enrichment plants (reacting to the West’s unresponsiveness to Iran’s nuclear offer). This move also signaled Iran’s intent to allow the IAEA to fully monitor the sites where uranium would be enriched to 20%, which Iran argues it needs to continue to produce in order to provide radioactive isotopes for cancer treatment. This all sounds reasonable when viewed outside of its context, but that context is becoming increasingly looming.

This announced has spurred renewed calls for sanctions in the West, this time the idea being prominently pushed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates. This move is likely to be supported by the US Congress, who as recently as December 09 passed a new gasoline embargo on Iran. As is to be expected, there is still a vocal minority in the US who advocate an all-out war with Iran, including most recently (and visibly) Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Daniel Pipes’ NRO article titled “How to save the Obama presidency: Bomb Iran”. Of the utmost importance to note when considering these urgent statements that advocate more forceful responses (re: Bomb Iran) is that these folks have placed politics as the deciding factor in whether to bomb Iran or not. Here is Pipes’ argument (I’m not paraphrasing, it is literally this shallow):

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10:17 AM

February 5, 2010

More Iraqi reversals

The news that an appeals court had overturned the banning of over 500 candidates for the March elections came as a boon to the perceptions of the Iraqi government’s oversight mechanisms. But it turns out that Al-Maliki and his party believe such action by the appeals panels of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq is evidence of US interference and that the un-banning was unconstitutional. The whole issue of under whose legitimate authority this decision rests is exactly what the Iraqi government should be probing, and should be rectifying (if indeed this move was unconstitutional); but to claim that this decision was made because of US interference is kind of ridiculous (keep in mind that VP Biden visited Iraq at the end of January to urge the Iraqi gov’t to reinstate the banned candidates in order for this election to be viewed as free and fair, but had little direct success). Not only is the Al-Maliki government taking a page out of the Iranian government’s playbook, but the need to demonize the US’s role is tangential to what the actual concern is over the banned candidates. Juan Cole provides an in-depth analysis of the decision making processes involved in this dispute, and conspicuously the US was never an integral part of the process nor a relevant actor.

The issue has caused the Independent High Electoral Commission to delay the beginning of campaign season in order to allow enough time for the Federal Supreme Court to decide on the constitutionality of the previous reversal.

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8:44 AM

February 3, 2010

Iraqi reversals

The much publicized banning of 500+ candidates from the March elections in Iraq now has a new chapter – an appeals court in the Justice and Accountability Committee temporarily lifted the ban.

So to recap : VP Joe Biden recently went to Iraq to try and work something out with the Iraqi government to lift the ban placed on these candidates, stressing how the elections must be free and fair, and had limited success – only about 50 banned candidates were unbanned as a result of his engagement. But now, the issue has been seemingly rectified not through external influence and domination, but through the oversight mechanisms in the government of Iraq itself.

I’m sure that this decision being made by Iraq itself (not imposed upon Iraq) will do much to allay the concerns of electoral unfairness towards Sunni Arabs in Iraq. Interestingly though, Juan Cole attempts to express a theory on the Iraqi government’ s view of regional politics and power (specifically in regard to Iran) in the context of the banned candidates.