Friday, March 18, 2016

Obama's Pre-Emptive Strike.

Most leaders in their last years in office worry about their 'legacy' or how the world in the future will view their tenure in power.   Many wait until they are free of day-to-day responsibilities before publishing their memoirs, hoping to set the record straight (or bend it in a favourable direction) or giving extensive interviews to journalists who will act as sort of instant biographers.  But Barack Obama has acted pre-emptively and, with more than nine months left of his term, given extensive interviews to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, which has published them in a series.  I must confess I have not read the interviews which apparently, combined, are almost of book length. Instead I am relying on second-hand reports such as the following by Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent of The Independent. 

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/17/obama-and-the-house-of-saud-a-new-skepticism/

Cockburn comments that Obama, unlike David Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, learns from his mistakes.  He also seems to have learned from his political rivals, by whom I mean the NeoCons, in that he has adopted the tactic employed by George W. Bush (and many Israeli governments of the past) of striking pre-emptively.   

In many ways Obama's remarks seem like Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address of January, 1961, in which he warned America of the dangers of the growing power of the "military-industrial" complex. Obama in his turn warns of how it is not in the interests of the USA to be led into overseas wars, which are really more in the interests of others than of the US itself.  He is particularly critical of the influence of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states, long allied to the US.  He is also critical of Britain's David Cameron and French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, for the way in which they beseeched the US to lead a NATO air campaign against Libyan president Mummer Qadaffi, but then walked away when the Libyan state structure was destroyed, leaving the chaos which has prevailed for the last five years.  It was this breech of diplomatic politesse, criticizing leaders of allied countries, that seemed to gain most traction in the press, but what Obama had to say was really much more important than that - it amounts to a repudiation of the foreign policy that the United States has been following, since the inauguration of George W. Bush, i.e. for most of this century.  

Goldberg states that "A widely held sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab or pro-Israeli funders." He also mentions how Obama "broke with the Washington playbook. This was his liberation day" referring to when he overturned his own 'red-line' and refused to bomb Syria.   

The Cockburn piece dwells heavily on the malign influence of Saudi Arabia, both in spreading Wahabbi extremism throughout the Muslim world and in their "purchase of people and institutions which they see as influential".  "Academic institutions of previously high repute in Washington have shown themselves to be as shamelessly greedy for subsidies from the Gulf and elsewhere, as predatory warlords and corrupt leaders in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and beyond".

In Cockburn's piece little mention is made of the malign influence of the pro-Israel NeoCons.  I don't know if this is how it is in Goldberg's piece.  But I wouldn't be surprised - Goldberg is a dual US-Israeli citizen and served in the Israeli Defence Forces.  He was a drum-beater for the invasion of Iraq, and according to Glen Greenwald prepared and disseminated a litany of falsehoods which rivalled those of Judith Miller of The New York Times.  However unlike many of the War Party, Goldberg later recanted publishing a piece in 2008, entitled "How Did I Get Iraq Wrong?"  

Whether Goldberg should still be counted as a NeoCon is a moot point.  But the fact is that the NeoCons as a group, hold considerable influence among the Washington foreign policy community.  And I am sure that their influence on foreign policy under Obama has been very bit as strong and as malign as that of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States. In so many cases the interests and aims of the Saudis and Israel coincide e.g. in overthrowing and de-stabilizing Iraq; throttling the 'Arab Spring'; overthrowing any Arab leader who is perceived as an enemy either for being prepared to act independently (Qadaffi) or who is too close to Iran (al Assad).  Both Saudis and NeoCons have urged US governments to use military force to accomplish these goals either directly or through the support of proxy militias such as is happening in Syria.  

But it seems that Obama has had a conversion.  One could almost say that the conversion happened on the road to Damascus, since as Goldberg reports, it happened with Obama's refusal to bomb Syria, after the sarin gas attack on the edge of Damascus, attributed at once by the NeoCons and the compliant media, to al Assad, but which on further examination appears to have been a "false-flag" operation, designed to discredit the al Assad regime (see e.g. 

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line 
and 
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/23/hersh-vindicated-turkish-whistleblowers-corroborate-story-on-false-flag-sarin-attack-in-syria/)

No doubt Obama's fight with Binyamin Netanyahu and the Saudis over the nuclear deal reached with Iran, helped to clarify his thinking - both parties tried, with all means at their disposal, to act in a way which Obama saw clearly was not in the best interests of the USA.  

An intersting question is why Obama has chosen to go public with his concerns at this point.  One answer is that he wishes to burnish his legacy - sort of implying a statement along the lines of "Sorry I made some mistakes (e.g. Libya) but I was misled by people in the pay or the sway of other interests.  It won't happen again on my watch."  Of course too, he is probably deeply concerned at the way in which the US has been steered in directions inimical to its best interests. But there is a third possible explanation which I find interesting.  This is that he is firing a shot across the bow of Hillary Clinton's election campaign.  

Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be like those "predatory warlords and corrupt leaders shamelessly greedy for subsidies from the Gulf".  The Clinton Foundation received $25 million from the Saudis.  Qatar and Oman are both reported to have given between one and five million.  What do they expect in return?  Well Hillary, for one thing, as Secretary of State helped broker the sale of $29 billion of advanced fighter jets to the Saudis - jets which are now being used to pound Yemen, its impoverished neighbour.    

There is an irony in Hillary's position vis a vis the Saudis, that not too many have picked up on.    In the election campaign Hillary is presenting herself as a champion of women's rights and during an early primary campaign event, Madeleine Albright, with Hillary at her side, stated that there was a "special place in Hell reserved for women who didn't help other women".  She clearly was not thinking about the repressed women of Saudi Arabia, when she said it.    

Hillary has been no less shameless in the way she grovels to Israel. As Mondoweiss reports: She has promised to take the Israel relationship “to the next level,” has bragged that she was born within months of Israel, she has promised to fight Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and work with Republicans to do so. She has also promised to invite Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House in the first month of office. 

So it seems that Hillary, if she wins next November would be quite happy to do the bidding of the Saudis and the Israelis, even into wars, which Obama has pointed out are often not in America's best interests. This is fascinating because Donald Trump, who seems set to be the Republican candidate, has taken a different position, and has promised that he would not get the US involved in foreign wars of choice, and would adopt a more even-handed stance in his dealings with Israel.  

Is Obama trying to warn Hillary?  Or is he perhaps trying to scupper her chances?  With the popularity of Donald Trump, there does seem to be a change in the air, with respect to US policy in the Middle East.  Obama's statements can only help in this direction.  Whether anything will come of it remains to be seen, but it seems at last that people are waking up to the fact that the US has been used by unscrupulous allies.  

Could it be that the reign of the NeoCons is coming to an end? 






Saturday, March 12, 2016

US Justice in Disrepute. Judge awards S10.5 billion against IRAN over 9/11.

It is not just the American political process that is in disrepute these days.  The justice system is also suffering   We have sadly become accustomed to police officers  killing unarmed (usually black) citizens, and then typically being acquitted of any culpability.   Such killings and acquittals,  like mass shootings, hardly even make it to the front page these days. But now the judiciary is also looking extremely dodgy - well at least one judge in the US District Court. 

As I understand it the findings of the 9/11 Commission stated that 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the outrages of September 11, 2001, were citizens of Saudi Arabia.  And that the attacks were organized and funded by al Qaeda under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, another Saudi citizen.  Now I am not saying that the Commissions report was the unvarnished truth - many, including one of the commissioners have questioned the accuracy of its conclusions.  And 28 pages, allegedly documenting Saudi complicity in financing the attacks, have been redacted, in spite of many calls for their release.  

But as far as I know, no one has seriously suggested that Iran was behind the outrages.  

Nonetheless on March 9 of this year, U.S. District Judge George Daniels in New York issued a default judgment against Iran for $7.5 billion to the estates and families of people who died at the World Trade Center and Pentagon.  In addition he awarded $3 billion to insurers who paid property damages for claims resulting from the events of 9/11.  A brief summary of the ruling can be found here

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-10/iran-told-to-pay-10-5-billion-to-sept-11-kin-insurers

The ruling results from a 2011 case referred to as Havlish et al. vs. bin Laden et al.  brought by spouses of some of the victims of 9/11.  Some more details can be found here

http://iran911case.com

Iran apparently did not contest the allegations made against it (although the suit was against al Qaeda, not Iran, unless Iran is included in the et al.).  Maybe this is one of the reasons the judge found against Iran.  But if this is the case should not Saudi Arabia have been deemed to hold some responsibility?   However to complicate things further the same judge (George Daniels) dismissed a case, brought by victims' families against Saudi Arabia in 2005, based on his opinion that Saudi Arabia (and co-defendant Saudi High Commission for the Relief of Bosnia-Herzegovina) were foreign sovereigns immune from lawsuit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. 

So it would seem that in Judge Daniels' opinion, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a "foreign sovereign" but "The Islamic Republic of Iran" is not a "foreign sovereign"!


I know that Dickens has Mr. Bumble say in Oliver Twist "the law is a ass - a idiot",  but these rulings by Judge Daniels seem to take its idiocy to new heights.  


Although this whole sorry story can be found on the internet, it has not made much news in the mainstream media (although Bloomberg did mention it - see above). I wonder why?  

There are a few possible explanations for Judge Daniels' ruling.  One is that he is an idiot; another he is that completely venal and is in the pay of some group who want to discredit Iran (and exculpate Saudi Arabia). A third is that there are some points of law which could explain the ruling (although I can't imagine what).  And a fourth is that Judge Daniels knows something, which the public at large has not been told - that indeed the whole 9/11 Commission Report was a whitewash and that Iran's complicity was for one reason or another kept secret.  

Which of these would you go for?   For me provided we can rule out the third (recondite points of law) I would go for number two, that Judge Daniels for one reason or other, has an agenda, which involves blackening Iran.  

But as I see it he has only succeeded in blackening the reputation of US justice. 

Monday, March 7, 2016

Wrapped in a Flag and wearing a Red Baseball Cap.

I must say that I enjoyed the irony of seeing the open letter from the Republican national security community (read Neocons) claiming that Donald Trump would "make America less safe" and "diminish our standing in the world".  The signatories included people like Eliot Cohen, Richard Pipes, Max Boot and Robert Kagan who were some of the loudest drum-beaters for the invasion of Iraq and for Bush's ill-conceived "global war on terror".  Can they not see the irony (or hypocrisy) in the fact that the very policies which they promoted did exactly what they now claim Trump will do?  or that policies they suggest Trump will pursue such as "expansive use of torture" were first introduced by the Republican president whom many of them served or supported? 

And I am delighted, too, in the way in which Trump's campaign has spread alarm and fear among the big money backers of the GOP.  He has not accepted money from Las Vegas casino billionaire (and Netanyahu buddy), Sheldon Adelson, or from any of the foundations that the Koch brothers have established and so, if Trump does win, he will not in any way be beholden to them.  Have they bet on the wrong horse?  Will all of their "Dark Money" as author Jane Mayer has called it, be money down the drain?  And it is a lot of money.  According to The Guardian last year alone Super Pacs funded by oil and gas companies "invested" $100 million on candidates they thought likely to win the White House.  The Super Pac backing Ted Cruz got 57% of its money from the energy industry.  Chris Christie's got 39% and Jeb Bush's got 26%.  Even Hillary Clinton's Super Pac received 7% of its funding from fossil fuel industries.  

Besides Big Bad Money, Trump is also loathed by social conservatives.  They tend not to like his serial marriages and trophy wives.  Also he won't unequivocally speak out against gay marriage - in fact he now refuses to speak about "marriage equality" at all.

On the principle that  "my enemy's enemy is my friend" I should be a big supporter of Donald Trump.  Indeed some  of his policies I much prefer to those of his rivals.  For instance he repudiates much of the foreign policy of the Neocons, who now constitute the the "foreign policy establishment" of the Republican party.  He was against the Iraq war;  says he would be prepared to negotiate with Israel and its Palestinian victims without the precondition that the US will support whatever Israel demands; is against the "carried-interest" tax loophole which saves the very wealthy tens of millions in tax; and has even echoed Warren Buffet in saying that the ultra-rich do not pay their fair share of tax.  In comparison to Rubio and Cruz these seem like enlightened liberal policies.  Indeed, even in comparison to Hillary Clinton they seem pretty good.  

Rubio would be simply a puppet of the Neocon, Dark Money crowd, reducing taxes even more on the super-wealthy, starting more wars in the Middle East, repealing Obamacare and scuttling any hope of real action on climate change.  Cruz would abolish Obamacare and the IRS and introduce a flat tax across the board, decimate the Federal Government (except of course the Pentagon), support Israel whatever it does and become a champion of the fossil fuel industry, from which he has received so much funding. 

As David Frum put it the Republican establishment is promising fewer benefits, more immigration and more foreign wars while Donald Trump is offering more benefits, less immigration and fewer foreign wars 

It has been said of Hillary Clinton, that she sees no problem with the extreme and growing wealth and income inequality, provided that some of the super-rich are women and minorities.  In other words she is on the side (or in the pocket of) Wall St. and Big Money, but uses the issues of gender and racial identity to help her electorally.  She is also pretty popular with the Neocons when it comes to foreign policy and Israel - some (e.g. Robert Kagan, Max Boot) said that if Trump gets the nomination they will support her.  Judging on her performance as Secretary of State, she seems to fit right in with their agenda. She seemed happy to use military force in Libya and wanted to use American air power to oust al Assad in Syria.  She appointed Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert Kagan) to a senior position in European affairs and backed Nuland's aggressive campaign for regime change in Ukraine.  As with pretty much every neocon regime-change endeavour it has ended (or rather continues) badly.  

So I should be happy that Trump doing so well, shouldn't I? At least he promises to shake up some of the ensconced power groups and special interests, and to take America in a new direction.  But could he really do it?  Is he to be trusted?   He has said some reprehensible things - Latino immigrants are rapists and murderers; US forces should use torture techniques far worse than waterboarding.  He has encouraged people at his rallies to turn on protesters, especially those of colour.  He has whipped up fear and hatred of Muslims.  

Trump's character is very questionable.  Besides being a braggart and a blowhard, he seems to have little respect for the unspoken rules that keep our societies from degenerating into racial and sectarian conflict and chaos.  I suspect that if elected he would have little respect for due process in law; and little respect for treaties and international obligations, not to mention human rights.    

He seems to be a politician in the mould of some earlier "charismatic" strong men, who promised to restore their countries to greatness, but who led them, and much of the world, to disaster and depravity. Sinclair Lewis is reported to have said "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." Perhaps he got it wrong  - no cross, perhaps a flag, but certainly wearing a red baseball cap.

How did American democracy sink to this level?  Can it recover? Would it be at this low point if the US Supreme Court hadn't gifted the 2000 election to George W. Bush?  

Not being an American, I don't have to make a choice in this election. But we all have a stake in the result.  I can't foresee a good ending. But perhaps we are at a turning point.