Ronald Reagan: Worst President Ever?
From the Archive: Ronald Reagan, who was born on Feb. 6, 1911, ranks among the
most honored U.S. presidents of modern times with his name etched into public
buildings across the country. Even Democrats shy from criticizing his legacy.
But is this Reagan worship deserved, Robert Parry asked in 2009.
By Robert Parry (Originally published June 3, 2009)
There’s been talk that George W. Bush was so inept that he should trademark the
phrase “Worst President Ever,” though some historians would bestow that title on
pre-Civil War President James Buchanan. Still, a case could be made for putting
Ronald Reagan in the competition.
Granted, the very idea of rating Reagan as one of the worst presidents ever will
infuriate his many right-wing acolytes and offend Washington insiders who have
made a cottage industry out of buying some protection from Republicans by
lauding the 40th President.
But there’s a growing realization that the starting point for many of the
catastrophes confronting the United States today can be traced to Reagan’s
presidency. There’s also a grudging reassessment that the “failed” presidents of
the 1970s Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter may deserve more credit
for trying to grapple with the problems that now beset the country, despite
their other shortcomings as leaders.
Nixon, Ford and Carter won scant praise for addressing the systemic challenges
of America’s oil dependence, environmental degradation, the arms race, and
nuclear proliferation all issues that Reagan essentially ignored and that now
threaten America’s future.
Despite egregious abuses of power, Nixon helped create the Environmental
Protection Agency; he imposed energy-conservation measures; he opened the
diplomatic door to communist China. Nixon’s administration also detected the
growing weakness in the Soviet Union and advocated a policy of détente (a plan
for bringing the Cold War to an end or at least curbing its most dangerous
excesses).
After Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal, Ford continued many of
Nixon’s policies, particularly trying to wind down the Cold War with Moscow.
However, confronting a rebellion from Reagan’s Republican Right in 1976, Ford
abandoned “détente.”
Ford also let hard-line Cold Warriors (and a first wave of young intellectuals
who became known as neoconservatives) pressure the CIA’s analytical division to
begin exaggerating the Soviet menace, and he promoted a new generation of hardliners, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, into key government jobs.
After defeating Ford in 1976, Carter injected more respect for human rights into
U.S. foreign policy, a move some scholars believe put an important nail in the
coffin of the Soviet Union, leaving it hard-pressed to justify the repressive
internal practices of the East Bloc. Carter also emphasized the need to contain
the spread of nuclear weapons, especially in unstable countries like Pakistan.
Domestically, Carter pushed a comprehensive energy policy and warned Americans
that their growing dependence on foreign oil represented a national security
threat, what he famously called “the moral equivalent of war.”
However, powerful vested interests both domestic and foreign managed to exploit
the shortcomings of these three presidents to sabotage any sustained progress.
By 1980, Reagan had become a pied piper luring the American people away from the
tough choices that Nixon, Ford and Carter had defined.
Cruelty with a Smile
With his superficially sunny disposition and a ruthless political strategy of
exploiting white-male resentments Reagan convinced millions of Americans that
the threats they faced were: African-American welfare queens, Central American
leftists, a rapidly expanding Evil Empire based in Moscow, and the do-good
federal government.
In his First Inaugural Address in 1981, Reagan declared that “government is not
the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
When it came to cutting back on America’s energy use, Reagan’s message could be
boiled down to the old reggae lyric, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Rather than
pressing Detroit to build smaller, fuel-efficient cars, Reagan made clear that
the auto industry could manufacture gas-guzzlers without much nagging from
Washington.
The same with the environment. Reagan intentionally staffed the Environmental
Protection Agency and the Interior Department with officials who were hostile
toward regulation aimed at protecting the environment. George W. Bush didn’t
invent Republican hostility toward scientific warnings of environmental
calamities; he was just picking up where Reagan left off.
Reagan pushed for deregulation of industries, including banking; he slashed
income taxes for the wealthiest Americans in an experiment known as “supply
side” economics, which held falsely that cutting rates for the rich would
increase revenues and eliminate the federal deficit.
Over the years, “supply side” would evolve into a secular religion for many on
the Right, but Reagan’s budget director David Stockman once blurted out the
truth, that it would lead to red ink “as far as the eye could see.”
While conceding that some of Reagan’s economic plans did not work out as
intended, his defenders including many mainstream journalists still argue that
Reagan should be hailed as a great President because he “won the Cold War,” a
short-hand phrase that they like to attach to his historical biography.
However, a strong case can be made that the Cold War was won well before Reagan
arrived in the White House. Indeed, in the 1970s, it was a common perception in
the U.S. intelligence community that the Cold War between the United States and
the Soviet Union was winding down, in large part because the Soviet economic
model had failed in the technological race with the West.
That was the view of many Kremlinologists in the CIA’s analytical division.
Also, I was told by a senior CIA’s operations official that some of the CIA’s
best spies inside the Soviet hierarchy supported the view that the Soviet Union
was headed toward collapse, not surging toward world supremacy, as Reagan and
his foreign policy team insisted in the early 1980s.
The CIA analysis was the basis for the détente that was launched by Nixon and
Ford, essentially seeking a negotiated solution to the most dangerous remaining
aspects of the Cold War.
The Afghan Debacle
In that view, Soviet military operations, including sending troops into
Afghanistan in 1979, were mostly defensive in nature. In Afghanistan, the
Soviets hoped to prop up a pro-communist government that was seeking to
modernize the country but was beset by opposition from Islamic fundamentalists
who were getting covert support from the U.S. government.
Though the Afghan covert operation originated with Cold Warriors in the Carter
administration, especially National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the
war was dramatically ramped up under Reagan, who traded U.S. acquiescence toward
Pakistan’s nuclear bomb for its help in shipping sophisticated weapons to the
Afghan jihadists (including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden).
While Reagan’s acolytes cite the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan as decisive in
“winning the Cold War,” the counter-argument is that Moscow was already in
disarray and while failure in Afghanistan may have sped the Soviet Union’s final
collapse it also created twin dangers for the future of the world: the rise of
al-Qaeda terrorism and the nuclear bomb in the hands of Pakistan’s unstable
Islamic Republic.
Trade-offs elsewhere in the world also damaged long-term U.S. interests. In
Latin America, for instance, Reagan’s brutal strategy of arming right-wing
militaries to crush peasant, student and labor uprisings left the region with a
legacy of anti-Americanism that is now resurfacing in the emergence of populist
leftist governments.
In Nicaragua, for instance, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega (whom Reagan once
denounced as a “dictator in designer glasses”) is now back in power. In El
Salvador, the leftist FMLN won the last national election (and led the first
round of balloting in the 2014 election). Indeed, across the region, hostility
to Washington is now the rule, creating openings for China, Iran, Cuba and other
American rivals.
In the early 1980s, Reagan also credentialed a young generation of neocon
intellectuals, who pioneered a concept called “perception management,” the
shaping of how Americans saw, understood and were frightened by threats from
abroad.
Many honest reporters saw their careers damaged when they resisted the lies and
distortions of the Reagan administration. Likewise, U.S. intelligence analysts
were purged when they refused to bend to the propaganda demands from above.
To marginalize dissent, Reagan and his subordinates stoked anger toward anyone
who challenged the era’s feel-good optimism. Skeptics were not just honorable
critics, they were un-American defeatists or in Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick’s
memorable attack line they would “blame America first.”
Under Reagan, a right-wing infrastructure also took shape, linking media outlets
(magazines, newspapers, books, etc.) with well-financed think tanks that churned
out endless op-eds and research papers. Plus, there were attack groups that went
after mainstream journalists who dared disclose information that poked holes in
Reagan’s propaganda themes.
In effect, Reagan’s team created a faux reality for the American public. Civil
wars in Central America between impoverished peasants and wealthy oligarchs
became East-West showdowns. U.S.-backed insurgents in Nicaragua, Angola and
Afghanistan were transformed from corrupt, brutal (often drug-tainted) thugs
into noble “freedom-fighters.”
With the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan also revived Richard Nixon’s theory of an
imperial presidency that could ignore the nation’s laws and evade accountability
through criminal cover-ups. That behavior also would rear its head again in the
war crimes of George W. Bush. [For details on Reagan’s abuses, see Robert
Parry’s Lost History and Secrecy & Privilege.]
Wall Street Greed
The American Dream also dimmed during Reagan’s tenure. While he played the role
of the nation’s kindly grandfather, his operatives divided the American people,
using “wedge issues” to deepen grievances especially of white men who were
encouraged to see themselves as victims of “reverse discrimination” and
“political correctness.”
Yet even as working-class white men were rallying to the Republican banner (as
so-called “Reagan Democrats”), their economic interests were being savaged.
Unions were broken and marginalized; “free trade” policies shipped manufacturing
jobs abroad; old neighborhoods were decaying; drug use among the young was
soaring.
Meanwhile, unprecedented greed was unleashed on Wall Street, fraying oldfashioned bonds between company owners and employees. Before Reagan, corporate
CEOs earned less than 50 times the salary of an average worker. By the end of
the Reagan-Bush-I administrations in 1993, the average CEO salary was more than
100 times that of a typical worker. (At the end of the Bush-II administration,
that CEO-salary figure was more than 250 times that of an average worker.)
Many other trends set during the Reagan era continued to corrode the U.S.
political process in the years after Reagan left office. After 9/11, for
instance, the neocons reemerged as a dominant force, reprising their “perception
management” tactics, depicting the “war on terror” like the last days of the
Cold War as a terrifying conflict between good and evil.
The hyping of the Islamic threat mirrored the neocons’ exaggerated depiction of
the Soviet menace in the 1980s and again the propaganda strategy worked. Many
Americans let their emotions run wild, from the hunger for revenge after 9/11 to
the war fever over invading Iraq.
Arguably, the descent into this dark fantasyland that Ronald Reagan began in the
early 1980s reached its nadir in the flag-waving early days of the Iraq War.
Only gradually did reality begin to reassert itself as the death toll mounted in
Iraq and the Katrina disaster in 2005 reminded Americans why they needed an
effective government.
Still, the disasters set in motion by Ronald Reagan continued to roll in. Bush’s
Reagan-esque tax cuts for the rich blew another huge hole in the federal budget
and the Reagan-esque anti-regulatory fervor led to a massive financial meltdown
that threw the nation into economic chaos.
Love Reagan; Hate Bush
Ironically, George W. Bush has come in for savage criticism (much of it
deserved), but the Republican leader who inspired Bush’s presidency Ronald
Reagan remained an honored figure, his name attached to scores of national
landmarks including Washington’s National Airport.
Even leading Democrats genuflect to Reagan. Early in Campaign 2008, when Barack
Obama was positioning himself as a bipartisan political figure who could appeal
to Republicans, he bowed to the Reagan mystique, hailing the GOP icon as a
leader who “changed the trajectory of America.”
Though Obama’s chief point was that Reagan in 1980 “put us on a fundamentally
different path” a point which may be historically undeniable Obama went further,
justifying Reagan’s course correction because of “all the excesses of the 1960s
and 1970s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of
accountability.”
While Obama later clarified his point to say he didn’t mean to endorse Reagan’s
conservative policies, Obama seemed to suggest that Reagan’s 1980 election
administered a needed dose of accountability to the United States when Reagan
actually did the opposite. Reagan’s presidency represented a dangerous escape
from accountability and reality.
Still, Obama and congressional Democrats continue to pander to the Reagan myth.
In 2009, as the nation approached the fifth anniversary of Reagan’s death, Obama
welcomed Nancy Reagan to the White House and signed a law creating a panel to
plan and carry out events to honor Reagan’s 100th birthday in 2011.
Obama hailed the right-wing icon. “President Reagan helped as much as any
President to restore a sense of optimism in our country, a spirit that
transcended politics, that transcended even the most heated arguments of the
day,” Obama said. [For more on Obama’s earlier pandering about Reagan, see
Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s Dubious Praise for Reagan.”]
Despite the grievous harm that Reagan’s presidency inflicted on the American
Republic and the American people, it may take many more years before a historian
has the guts to put this deformed era into a truthful perspective and rate
Reagan where he belongs, near the bottom of the presidential list.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s
trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives
for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
How Misread Cables Fed Iran Hysteria
Official Washington saw how bad intelligence led to the disastrous Iraq War, but
U.S. analysts and “experts” like David Albright charged down the same path on
Iran’s alleged nuclear program. Again, key “evidence” collapsed under
scrutiny, Gareth Porter wrote for Inter Press Service.
By Gareth Porter
When Western intelligence agencies began in the early 1990s to intercept telexes
from an Iranian university to foreign high technology firms, intelligence
analysts believed they saw the first signs of military involvement in Iran’s
nuclear program. That suspicion led to U.S. intelligence assessments over the
next decade that Iran was secretly pursuing nuclear weapons.
The supposed evidence of military efforts to procure uranium enrichment
equipment shown in the telexes was also the main premise of the International
Atomic Energy Agency’s investigation of Iran’s nuclear program from 2003 through
2007.
But the interpretation of the intercepted telexes on which later assessments
were based turned out to have been a fundamental error. The analysts, eager to
find evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, had wrongly assumed that
the combination of interest in technologies that could be used in a nuclear
program and the apparent role of a military-related institution meant that the
military was behind the procurement requests.
In 2007-08, Iran provided hard evidence that the technologies had actually been
sought by university teachers and researchers. The intercepted telexes that set
in train the series of U.S. intelligence assessments that Iran was working on
nuclear weapons were sent from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran
beginning in late 1990 and continued through 1992.
The dates of the telexes, their specific procurement requests and the telex
number of PHRC were all revealed in a February 2012 paper by David Albright, the
executive director of the Institute for Science and International Security, and
two co-authors.
The telexes that interested intelligence agencies following them all pertained
to dual-use technologies, meaning that they were consistent with work on uranium
conversion and enrichment but could also be used for non-nuclear applications.
But what raised acute suspicions on the part of intelligence analysts was the
fact that those procurement requests bore the telex number of the Physics
Research Center (PHRC), which was known to have contracts with the Iranian
military.
U.S., British, German and Israeli foreign intelligence agencies were sharing raw
intelligence on Iranian efforts to procure technology for its nuclear program,
according to published sources. The telexes included requests for “high-vacuum”
equipment, “ring” magnets, a balancing machine and cylinders of fluorine gas,
all of which were viewed as useful for a program of uranium conversion and
enrichment.
The Schenck balancing machine ordered in late 1990 or early 1991 provoked
interest among proliferation analysts, because it could be used to balance the
rotor assembly parts on the P1 centrifuge for uranium enrichment. The “ring”
magnets sought by the university were believed to be appropriate for centrifuge
production. The request for 45 cylinders of fluorine gas was considered
suspicious, because fluorine is combined with uranium to produce uranium
hexafluoride, the form of uranium that used for enrichment.
The first indirect allusion to evidence from the telexes in the news came in
late 1992, when an official of the George H. W. Bush administration told The
Washington Post that the administration had pushed for a complete cutoff of all
nuclear-related technology to Iran, because of what was called “a suspicious
procurement pattern.”
Then the Iranian efforts to obtain those specific technologies from major
foreign suppliers were reported, without mentioning the intercepted telexes, in
a Public Broadcasting System “Frontline” documentary called “Iran and the Bomb”
broadcast in April 1993, which portrayed them as clear indications of an Iranian
nuclear weapons program. The producer of the documentary, Herbert Krosney,
described the Iranian procurement efforts in similar terms in his book Deadly
Business published the same year.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton’s CIA Director John Deutch declared, “A wide
variety of data indicate that Tehran has assigned civilian and military
organizations to support the production of fissile material for nuclear
weapons.”
For the next decade, the CIA’s non-proliferation specialists continued to rely
on their analysis of the telexes to buttress their assessment that Iran was
developing nuclear weapons. The top-secret 2001 National Intelligence Estimate
bore the title “Iran Nuclear Weapons Program: Multifaceted and Poised to
Succeed, but When?”
Former IAEA Deputy Director General for Safeguards Olli Heinonen recalled in a
May 2012 article that the IAEA had obtained a “set of procurement information
about the PHRC” an obvious reference to the collection of telexes which led him
to launch an investigation in 2004 of what the IAEA later called the
“Procurement activities by the former Head of PHRC.”
But after an August 2007 agreement between Iran and IAEA Director-General
Mohamed ElBaradei on a timetable for the resolution of “all remaining issues,”
Iran provided full information on all the procurement issues the IAEA had
raised. That information revealed that the former PHRC head, Sayyed Abbas
Shahmoradi-Zavareh, who had been a professor at Sharif University at the time,
had been asked by several faculty departments to help procure equipment or
material for teaching and research.
Iran produced voluminous evidence to support its explanation for each of the
procurement efforts the IAEA had questioned. It showed that the high vacuum
equipment had been requested by the Physics Department for student experiments
in evaporation and vacuum techniques for producing thin coatings by providing
instruction manuals on the experiments, internal communications and even the
shipping documents on the procurement.
The Physics Department had also requested the magnets for students to carry out
“Lenz-Faraday experiments,” according to the evidence provided, including the
instruction manuals, the original requests for funding and the invoice for cash
sales from the supplier. The balancing machine was for the Mechanical
Engineering Department, as was supported by similar documentation turned over to
the IAEA. IAEA inspectors had also found that the machine was indeed located at
the department.
The 45 cylinders of fluorine that Shahmoradi-Zavareh had tried to procure had
been requested by the Office of Industrial Relations for research on the
chemical stability of polymeric vessels, as shown by the original request letter
and communications between the former PHRC head and the president of the
university.
The IAEA report on February 2008 recorded the detailed documentation provided by
Iran on each of the issues, none of which was challenged by the IAEA. The report
declared the issue “no longer outstanding at this stage,” despite U.S. pressure
on ElBaradei to avoid closing that or any other issue in the work program, as
reported in diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.
The IAEA report showed that the primary intelligence basis for the U.S. charge
of an Iranian nuclear weapons program for more than a decade had been erroneous.
That dramatic development in the Iran nuclear story went unnoticed in news media
reporting on the IAEA report, however. By then the U.S. government, the IAEA and
the news media had raised other evidence that was more dramatic a set of
documents supposedly purloined from an Iran laptop computer associated with an
alleged covert Iranian nuclear weapons program from 2001 to 2003. And the
November 2007 NIE had concluded that Iran had been running such a program but
had halted it in 2003.
Despite the clear acceptance of the Iranian explanation by the IAEA, David
Albright of ISIS has continued to argue that the telexes support suspicions that
Iran’s Defense Ministry was involved in the nuclear program.
In his February 2012 paper, Albright discusses the procurement requests
documented in the telexes as though the IAEA investigation had been left without
any resolution. Albright makes no reference to the detailed documentation
provided by Iran in each case or to the IAEA’s determination that the issue was
“no longer outstanding.”
Ten days later, the Washington Post published a news article reflecting
Albright’s claim that the telexes proved that the PHRC had been guiding Iran’s
secret uranium enrichment program during the 1990s. The writer was evidently
unaware that the February 2008 IAEA report had provided convincing evidence that
the intelligence analyst’s interpretations had been fundamentally wrong. [For
more on Albright, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Hyping Iran Nukes, Again.”]
Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S.
national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism
for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book Manufactured
Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, will be published in
February 2014. [This story originally appeared at Inter Press Service.]
Where the Real ‘Iran Threat’ Lies
The endless double standards demonstrated by U.S. pols and pundits toward U.S.
“friends” vs. “enemies” have created a wildly distorted frame for a public
trying to distinguish between genuine threats and propaganda themes, as Lawrence
Davidson found regarding Iran.
By Lawrence Davidson
The investigative reporter and author Gareth Porter has recently published a
book entitled
A Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear
Scare. An impressively written and researched work, it is also frightening in
its implications. For if Porter’s allegations are accurate, it is not Iran that
the American people should fear – it is their own politicians, bureaucrats and
an “ally” named Israel.
According to Porter, there has never been a serious nuclear weapons program
undertaken by Iran. By the way, this is a conclusion that is supported by the
heads of all American intelligence agencies reporting annually to Congress.
Unfortunately, this repeated determination has been scorned by the politicians
and poorly reported by the media.
As a result the American people lack the knowledge to independently judge
Iranian actions as regards nuclear research, and so can be led to erroneous
conclusions by those pursuing their own political or ideological ends or, as in
the present case, the intrigues of a foreign government.
Following the end of the Cold War, the U.S. foreign relations, military and
“defense” bureaucracies quickly focused on the issue of terrorism. And well they
might, for their own policies of backing all manner of right-wing dictatorships
had identified the U.S. as an enemy of almost every resistance movement on the
planet.
These wrongheaded policies provoked violent responses, including the attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001. From that point on, the threat of terrorist attacks,
particularly involving “weapons of mass destruction,” or WMDs, became the main
selling point of every bureaucrat, politician and soldier looking for a bigger
“defense” budget.
President George W. Bush was the main promoter of this line of thinking and the
invasion of Iraq the major corresponding catastrophe. Memories of that disaster,
so expensive in lives and treasure, along with the lingering war in Afghanistan,
have caused a war-weariness among the American people that may be their ultimate
saving grace.
Enter the Zionists
With Iraq in shambles and no longer a “threat,” the attention of American policy
makers turned to Iran. Forgetting all about the horrible blunder our
neoconservative President Bush and his advisers had made over Iraqi WMDs, an
even larger coalition of political forces started a slow buildup of popular
anxiety over Iranian nuclear research. But where was the evidence? For this, one
can always rely on the Israelis.
Porter describes how successive Israeli governments exaggerated the threat of
Iran in order to, among other things, rationalize their own expansionist
ambitions and bind the United States government ever closer to Israeli
interests. In 2004, a laptop, allegedly taken from an Iranian scientist, was
given by the Israelis to U.S. intelligence agents. Since 2008 much of the socalled evidence for an Iranian nuclear weapons program has come from material on
this computer. Porter makes a convincing argument that this data, as well as
additional material, are Israeli forgeries.
Despite the fact that Iran has satisfied both the American intelligence services
and the International Atomic Energy Agency that it is not pursuing nuclear
weapons development, U.S. politicians and media refuse to let the matter go.
Hence the recent spectacle of the U.S. Senate presenting an almost veto-proof
bill demanding yet more sanctions on Iran, despite the likelihood that such an
act would ruin diplomatic negotiations and make hostilities all the more likely.
One has to ask in whose interest is such an obsessive anti-Iranian stance? Not
the interest of the United States. Indeed, the Senate gambit started to unravel
when President Obama implied that the demand for more sanctions on Iran
threatened U.S. national interests.
On the Ground in Iran
I recently spent 11 days in Iran as part of group of Academics for Peace (a
subdivision of Conscience International), returning to the U.S. on Jan. 29. On
the ground in that country is a mix of optimism and anxiety. Some Iranians feel
persecuted by the U.S. government. They can’t understand why sanctions have been
imposed upon them. They like the American people and look forward to a return of
the tourist trade, but the behavior of the U.S. government is often a mystery to
them.
As is so often the case, U.S.-sponsored sanctions have hurt ordinary people with
no influence on policy. The sanctions have resulted in inflation, higher rates
of pollution, less-safe civilian aircraft, shortages of some medical supplies,
the isolation of Iranian banks, and the reduction of exports.
A Gallup poll taken in Iran in late in 2013 showed that 85 percent of
respondents felt that sanctions had hurt their standard of living. On the other
hand, other countries, such as China, have taken advantage of the Western
refusal to deal with Iran. Presently the country is full of Chinese businessmen
and their inexpensive imports.
The Obama administration’s willingness to finally take up Iran’s offer to
negotiate differences (one should remember President Khatami’s spurned offer
made in 2003) has raised great hopes. Many Iranians are simply holding their
breath hoping for that elusive final comprehensive agreement between Iran and
the P5 + 1 powers (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus
Germany).
One should also note that there is a minority of Iranians, mostly technicians,
scientists and some businessmen, who are of a mixed mind when it comes to
sanctions. On the one hand, banking and export limitations are a real economic
hindrance. And, for all of those in the West concerned with the free flow of
information, there seems to be an ongoing ban against Iranian scholars by
American scholarly journals.
On the other hand, there are Iranians who find at least some of the sanctions
genuinely beneficial. The fact is that Iran has become a lot more selfsufficient under the sanctions and these people don’t want to see the country
lose that edge. The government is developing industrial and research parks to
keep its R&D pace going. But what will happen when and if the sanctions go away?
Will Iran’s economy get sucked into the neoliberal vortex of the Western
marketplace?
While there are sanction-related problems, the Iranian economy has not been
stilled. In the capital of Tehran, along with the traffic congestion and air
pollution, there are a myriad of building projects. These are not signs of a
society shriveling on the vine. To go beyond the present level of sanctions and
impose the ever more draconian measures proposed by the U.S. Senate comes close
to an act of war.
Iran is not like the United States. The women cover their hair in public and men
do not wear ties. Most of the time men do not shake hands with women, nor is
affection shown between sexes in public.
The government is different too. While there is an elected president and
parliament, there is also a Supreme Leader who has the last say on most matters.
However, unlike those leaders in the U.S., Iran’s leadership has not yet misled
their people into foreign wars.
The “Iranian problem” is really a U.S. problem. It points up very deep flaws in
the U.S. political system, where money is legally considered “free speech” and
policy formation often follows the wishes of the highest bidder.
We have too many built-in incentives for war in this country: a militaryindustrial complex that employs millions, both Democratic and Republican
politicians who find political success in supporting “defense” contractors,
neoconservative ideologues who want the U.S. to militarily dominate the globe,
self-interested bureaucrats whose budgets depend on an endless array of alleged
threats, and special interest lobbies tied to foreign powers seeking to turn
American aggressiveness toward targets of their own choosing.
The outcome is often policies that kill and maim millions. It is only the
present war-weariness of the American people that, for now, holds all of this
destructive influence at bay.
The only reasonable conclusion is that Gareth Porter’s portrayal of the conflict
with Iran stands true. And, as a consequence, the American people have far less
to worry about with Iran than they do with the machinations of many of their own
leaders.
Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in
Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s
National Interest; America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from
Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism.
Big Media Again Pumps for Mideast Wars
Exclusive: Official Washington’s neocons still influence U.S. foreign policy
despite their Iraq War disaster. Forever pushing what they view as Israel’s
strategic needs, the neocons now are stoking fires of war against Iran and Syria
by piling on old and new arguments, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Journalistically, there’s a problem with this passage from Monday’s New York
Times: “Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon of Israel castigated Iran as being
dedicated to a nuclear weapon and acting to deceive, and he repeated Israel’s
warning that it would not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.” Can you tell what
the flaw is?
If the New York Times were acting in a professional and objective manner, the
next line would have read something like: “Of course, Israel itself developed a
nuclear bomb in secret decades ago and now has possibly the most sophisticated
undeclared nuclear arsenal on earth.” But the Times chose not to remind its
readers of Israel’s stunning hypocrisy as a rogue nuclear-armed state condemning
Iran for supposedly harboring a desire for a nuke, a weapon that Iran doesn’t
have and says it doesn’t want.
That sort of double standard is common in the mainstream U.S. news media when
reporting on Israel and its Muslim adversaries. But to let an Israeli official
get away with castigating Iran for contemplating something that Israel has
already done without mentioning the hypocrisy is a clear violation
of journalistic standards. Indeed, it is evidence of bias.
Meanwhile, the neocon editors of the Washington Post are continuing their new
campaign to pressure President Barack Obama into issuing more military
ultimatums to Syria, another Israeli “enemy.” The logic seems to be that if
Obama keeps issuing ultimatums eventually Syria won’t comply or won’t be able
to comply, thus creating a casus belli, much as when President George W. Bush
demanded that Iraq surrender WMD that it didn’t have.
In a double-barreled blast on Tuesday, the Post published a lead editorial and
then a separate op-ed by its editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt making essentially
the same argument that Obama’s diplomacy over Syria has failed and that it’s
time for more military threats or even a military intervention in Syria’s civil
war. That “theme” was quickly picked up by other U.S. news outlets, including
“liberal” MSNBC.
Yet, the real problem with Obama’s Syria strategy is that it is still based on
his blustering pronouncements during Campaign 2012 when he was trying to sound
tough in order to fend off the more hawkish, neocon rhetoric of Republican Mitt
Romney.
During that period, Obama was drawing “red lines” regarding Syria and declaring
that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “must go.” Obama insisted that the purpose
of any peace talks must be to dissolve Assad’s government and replace it with
one organized by Assad’s opponents, in other words, Assad’s negotiated
surrender.
But that was never realistic, however unsavory Assad and his regime might be. He
still represents major segments of Syrian society, including blocs of Alawites
(an offshoot of Shiite Islam) and Christians. Plus, the strongest part of the
rebel movement, seeking Assad’s ouster, is the contingent of radical jihadists
representing extreme Sunni groups, including some affiliated with al-Qaeda and
some even more extreme who are vowing to exterminate the Alawites and other
“heretics.”
Baiting Obama
In the midst of this complex and dangerous mix, the Post’s neocon editors are
baiting Obama to stop being so weak, so “inert,” as Hiatt wrote.
On Sunday, the Post’s editors demanded that Obama issue a new military ultimatum
regarding delays in Assad’s delivery of chemical weapons to a UN agency for
destruction. On Tuesday, the argument was that Obama must intervene militarily
to prevent Syria from becoming a base for al-Qaeda militants to plot attacks
against the American “homeland.”
“Once again, terrorists linked to al-Qaeda may be using territory they control
to plot attacks against the United States, even as [Secretary of State John]
Kerry pursues his long-shot diplomacy and Mr. Obama offers excuses for
inaction,” the Post’s editorial read.
“With or without U.N. action, it is time for the Obama administration to
reconsider how it can check the regime’s crimes and the growing threat of alQaeda. As Mr. Kerry reportedly conceded, for now it has no answers.”
Hiatt reiterated the same points in his companion op-ed: “It is no secret that
the Obama administration’s Syria policy, to the extent that one exists, is
failing. Now the man with the unenviable task of implementing that policy,
Secretary of State John F. Kerry, has acknowledged as much, according to two
U.S. senators who spoke with him Sunday, John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O.
Graham (R-S.C.).
“Kerry said that the Geneva negotiating process hasn’t delivered, they said, and
that new approaches are needed. Now, though, a new factor has emerged. Last
week, in Senate testimony that got less attention than it deserved, Obama’s
director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said Syria ‘is becoming a
center of radical extremism and a potential threat to the homeland.’”
Hiatt continued: “Havens in Syria, in other words, could play the same role that
Afghan refuges offered al-Qaeda before 9/11. As the West cold-shouldered
moderate and secular forces, extremist ranks have swelled in Syria to as many as
26,000, including 7,000 foreigners, Clapper said.”
Not surprisingly, given the always-hawkish views of McCain and Graham, their
proposed “new approaches” to this new threat involved military interventions in
Syria. Graham wanted to unleash armed drones over the country, while McCain
called for establishing “a safe zone in which to train the Free Syrian Army and
care for refugees, protected by Patriot missiles based in Turkey,” Hiatt wrote.
Which Side?
Of course, a big part of the Syrian problem is that al-Qaeda-connected
extremists are fighting as part of the rebel coalition against Assad’s army.
Indeed, the jihadists are considered, by far, the most effective part of the
rebel force. To a significant degree, the Sunni jihadists funded and armed by
Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states are the rebel army.
In other words, the semantic trick that the Post is pulling off is to conflate
the existence of al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria with the Syrian government when
they are actually on opposite sides, bitterly fighting one another. The Post’s
argument is a bit like blaming Fidel Castro for harboring al-Qaeda operatives in
Cuba without mentioning that they are locked up at the U.S. military base at
Guantanamo and thus outside Castro’s control.
Currently, the Syrian government is engaged in a brutal campaign to root out
these “terrorists” as well as other armed rebels and is killing lots of
civilians in the process. While there may be no easy solution to this
catastrophe, the idea of another U.S. military intervention could easily lead to
even more death and destruction.
As Hiatt noted, “Obama has doubted that the United States could intervene in
such a messy conflict without making things worse. He reportedly worries that
even a limited commitment would inexorably suck the nation into something
deeper. There certainly is no public clamor to intervene.”
But lack of public support for another Mideast war is no concern to Hiatt
and other Post editors who have never really apologized for helping to mislead
the American people into the Iraq invasion which resulted in the deaths of
nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Indeed, the
Iraqi bloodbath — initiated by President Bush and promoted by the neocons —
has already been forgotten, as the Post cited the Syrian civil war as the worst
humanitarian disaster since the Rwanda genocide in the 1990s, jumping over the
Iraqi carnage of the past decade.
Now, Hiatt and the other neocons are promoting “themes” designed to
maneuver Obama into another Mideast conflict, pushing the hot button of al-Qaeda
“refuges” as if Assad is protecting the extremists, not trying to kill them.
Yet, if preventing al-Qaeda from establishing a safe haven in Syria is now the
top U.S. concern and not just the latest neocon excuse for another U.S. invasion
of a Muslim country then a more logical approach might be to seek a powersharing arrangement between Assad’s government and the more moderate opposition,
creating a united front against the jihadists.
Such an agreement could be followed by a coordinated strategy to rid Syria of
these extremists. Obama also might put the squeeze on the Saudis and other oilrich sheiks to stop funding the Sunni jihad inside Syria.
But the U.S. insistence that Assad negotiate his own surrender especially when
his forces have gained the upper hand militarily will simply ensure
more fighting and killing, while the neocons ramp up their pressure on Obama
for one more “regime change.”
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s
trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives
for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
Fear Itself: Democrats Duck FDR’s
Lessons
The lessons of Franklin Roosevelt are relevant today, especially the need for an
activist government to “promote the general Welfare” by investing in
infrastructure and combating the power of “organized money.” But many Democrats
shy away from the debate, says Beverly Bandler.
By Beverly Bandler
Last Thursday Jan. 30 was the 132nd anniversary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s
birth. You’d think that the Democratic Party would celebrate the occasion: the
birth of the Democratic president who led the nation out of the worst economic
crisis in its history, who guided the country through a catastrophic global war,
who fulfilled the constitutional mandate on the federal government to “provide
for the general Welfare,” and who devised the policies that helped create the
Great American Middle Class while also stabilizing the capitalist system.
“No president since the founders has done more to shape the character of
American government,” notes historian Alan Brinkley in his biography of
Roosevelt. “No president since Lincoln served through darker or more difficult
times. The agenda of postwar American liberalism was set out by FDR in 1944,
when he called for an ‘economic bill of rights.’”
Nicholas Lemann in his review of Ira Katznelson’s book, Fear Itself: The New
Deal and the Origins of Our Time, reminds us that during Roosevelt’s first term
the threat of fascism was real, that “alternate systems were on the verge of
imposing themselves by force on many other countries.”
Yet, by the counter-force of his personal will and his creative policies,
Roosevelt steered America and arguably the world away from that abyss. But
modern Democrats are hesitant to celebrate the contributions of FDR and his New
Deal.
These days, the Democratic Party acts more like an enabler of the Republican
Party as it seeks to poison the memory of the 32nd president and bury the
significance of what FDR accomplished. Instead of highlighting Roosevelt’s
remarkable legacy, today’s Democrats seem afraid to argue the point that
government is vital to a successful society. They shy away from that debate
despite the fact that the lessons of Roosevelt are central to solving the
problems that the nation faces in 2014.
Besides the mainstream Democrats and their timidity, many average Americans
suffer from “terminal historical amnesia” and appear oblivious of the history of
FDR’s era. Too many who came of age in the years of Ronald Reagan (and after
Reagan) bought into his idiom that “government is the problem” and his
prescription of “trickle-down economics” (giving massive tax cuts to the rich
and trusting that their investments and spending will spill over to raise the
living standards of working- and middle-class Americans).
For some Americans, it doesn’t even matter that Reagan’s nostrums have failed
miserably, as today’s rich have amassed huge wealth and the power that goes with
it while pretty much everyone else has stagnated or lost ground.
Still, an appreciation of FDR’s accomplishments and a recognition of Reagan’s
mistakes are alive among serious historians. When 238 participating presidential
scholars took part in the Siena College Research Institutes Survey of U.S.
Presidents in 2010, Franklin Roosevelt ranked as the top all-time chief
executive. Ronald Reagan was not even in the top ten.
If only that awareness could penetrate Official Washington’s conventional
wisdom. Though President Barack Obama has highlighted the problem of income
inequality, which Roosevelt ameliorated and which Reagan exacerbated, Obama has
shied away from making the forceful argument that Reagan was just a skillful
front man for the same forces of “organized money” that Roosevelt fought.
Obama also has failed to dislodge the resistance to activist government that is
represented by Republicans, the Tea Party and the Right and some analysts wonder
if Obama and the Democrats really want to do so.
Economics professor Richard D. Wolff says “Obama and most Democrats are so
dependent on contributions and support from business and the rich that they dare
not discuss, let alone implement, the kinds of policies Roosevelt employed the
last time U.S. capitalism crashed.”
The Republican Party and many of these corporatist Democrats would have the
United States regress to that earlier, more primitive time, the days before
Roosevelt. But look more closely at the inequities of the 1920s — and the era’s
reckless capitalism that drove the country into the Great Depression. You won’t
like what you see.
Yet, corporatist Democrats have let the Right get away with re-writing this
history, canonizing Reagan as the “greatest president ever” (with his name
etched into government buildings and his statue outside public facilities across
the country), while consigning Roosevelt to a second-tier status (even
questioning the effectiveness of his efforts to pull the nation out of the Great
Depression).
Salvaging that history as well as its important lessons about the necessity of
government action on behalf of the people to counterbalance the destructive
excesses of the “market” can be the beginning of a crucial debate about where
the United States is heading now and where it should go in the future.
That debate can start with our remembering one leader who dared to challenge an
unjust status quo, someone who fearlessly fought the power of “organized money”
and who helped save the American Republic. Some of us do remember.
[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “FDR’s Legacy of Can-Do
Government.“]
Beverly Bandler’s public affairs career spans some 40 years. Her credentials
include serving as president of the state-level League of Women Voters of the
Virgin Islands and extensive public education efforts in the Washington, D.C.
area for 16 years. She writes from Mexico. As full disclosure, she notes that
she considers herself a member of the “Democratic wing” of the Democratic Party,
but a U.S. citizen first.
Sources and Reading
Brinkley, Alan.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Oxford University Press. 2009.
Davidson, Lawrence.
“Forgetting the Why of the New Deal.” ConsortiumNews,
2012-08-20.
https://consortiumnews.com/2012/08/20/forgetting-the-why-of-the-new-deal/
Katznelson, Ira.
Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our
Time. Liveright; 1 edition (February 22, 2013).
Lemann, Nicholas.
“The New Deal We Didn’t Know.” Lemann reviews Ira Katznelson
Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. New York Review of Books,
2013-09-26.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/new-deal-we-didnt-know/?pag
ination=false
Madrick, Jeff.
The Case for Big Government. Princeton University Press; 1
edition (October 6, 2008).
Parry, Robert.
America’s Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison to
Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes to Obama. The Media Consortium; First edition
(October 17, 2012).
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano.
“The Economic Bill of Rights.” January 11, 1944.
American Heritage Center Museum. http://www.fdrheritage.org/bill_of_rights.htm
Siena Research Institute. “American Presidents: Greatest and Worst.” 2010-07-01.
Wolff, Richard D.
“Ghost of the New Deal Haunts Democrats’ Agenda, but It’s
Time to Summon FDR.” Truthout, 2012-10-10.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12016-bush-may-have-been-absent-from-the-rnc-but
-the-dnc-banished-a-past-president-too
Hugo Chavez’s Legacy at Risk
Exclusive: Over the past generation, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez changed the
political dynamics of Latin America with a socialist experiment that spread the
wealth and improved the lives of the poor. But nearly a year after Chávez’s
death, his movement is in jeopardy, writes Andrés Cala.
By Andrés Cala
Fifteen years into Venezuela’s Chavista socialist revolution and almost a year
since the death of its charismatic founder Hugo Chávez the movement’s new
leader, President Nicolás Maduro, is running out of time to consolidate a
sustainable political and economic regime.
His most immediate ticking clock is 2016 when the opposition will likely try to
force a recall referendum to remove Maduro from power. Assuming Maduro survives
that, Chavismo will face another test when Maduro’s presidential term ends in
2019.
At this point, the survival of Chavismo is almost entirely dependent on public
opinion. Under Maduro, it has few repressive tools to wield and thus needs to
retain the loyalty of the nation’s poor and, at least, the partial support of
the middle class.
Maduro’s challenge since he took power after the death of President Chávez on
March 5, 2013 has been to prove Chavismo is a mature enough movement that it can
outlive its founder. The old tactic of blaming foreign and oligarchic enemies
for waging an “economic war” against the revolution will probably not be enough
to win another election. Maduro barely survived the last two electoral tests.
Simply put, the Chavista socialist regime will not survive unless Maduro can
bring economic sustainability to the revolution that he inherited. Facing an
economy in shambles, he has two years to get things in order and convince the
electorate that better days are ahead, all while facing significant internal and
external pressures. If he fails, the opposition will surely try to gut the
Chavistas’ share-the-oil-wealth approach.
Beyond relying on Venezuela’s oil resources, Maduro must show skills in managing
the economy to benefit most of the nation’s nearly 30 million people, especially
the hard-hit middle class. If Maduro continues to lose middle-class support in
the cities, he will find it hard to prevail by relying on Chavismo’s strength in
the countryside.
Maduro, like Chávez, has accused Venezuela’s traditional ruling elites and
their foreign backers of trying to undermine the revolution. But populist price
controls and currency strategies meant to counter this so-called “economic war”
are failing to improve the lot of many middle-class supporters of Chavismo who
are losing faith that Maduro can carry on the movement effectively.
Inflation rose more than 50 percent in 2013; crime is at record levels; and the
value of the bolivar has plunged. As oil revenues decline, Venezuela’s dollar
reserves have shrunk to a 10-year low, even as demands for more public spending
grow. At this point, Venezuela is spending more than it earns, which might not
be a problem except the economy is forecast to keep shrinking and along with it
the quality of life for the average Venezuelan.
Amid these economic troubles, markets are demanding a higher premium for
Venezuelan debt than that of Argentina and even Greece. Foreign investment is
drying up, and international creditors namely the Chinese doubt Maduro’s
promises to deliver meaningful economic reforms and a more stable security for
investment.
So the squeeze is on Maduro and Chavismo. Either Maduro controls inflation,
stops the plunging value of the currency and jump-starts the economy or
Venezuelans are unlikely to hand him another electoral mandate. And two years
might not be enough time to convince disenchanted voters that a turnaround is
underway.
In short, Chavismo appears to be cracking under the combination of economic and
political pressures. Plus, Maduro lacks the personal charisma of Chávez, which
often was the glue that held the movement together. Yet, while fissures are
appearing in the Chavista bloc, the opposition is united in a single-minded
priority: end Chavismo.
A Two-Year Respite
Still, Maduro was granted a year to rule by decree and eked out a slim margin of
victory in municipal elections last December. So, he has about two years to
address the nation’s troubles before voters will likely deliver a verdict on
whether to extend his mandate.
Venezuela is also a very wealthy country, thanks to 2.8 million barrels of oil
per day that it produces. According to government estimates, it also possesses
the world’s biggest reserves, some 297 billion barrels. During the last decade,
Chávez used this vast oil wealth to significantly increase public spending.
Cutting back that spending would be unpopular with many Venezuelans who were
mostly shut out from the oil riches under the old oligarchy.
Much of the money has been spent to reduce Venezuela’s poverty, achieving the
most impressive results in all of South America. But corruption, cronyism and
mismanagement are also rampant. Maduro pledged to stop wasteful spending at the
start of his term but met resistance from his coalition, including the military.
Thus, there has been little improvement.
And, Maduro must remember that the last time a Venezuelan government tried to
seriously cut public handouts, including almost free fuel, Venezuelans revolted
in a 1989 uprising known as the Caracazo, which eventually led to Chávez
sweeping to victory. So, Maduro will have to walk a fine line, trimming waste
and tackling corruption within his ranks, while preserving the more successful
welfare programs for the population.
Maduro has ruled out a devaluation of the currency, even if a dollar trades for
80 bolivares in the black market, compared to the official 6.3 rate, and the
recently relaxed rate for travelers of around 11 per dollar. But achieving the
necessary economic reforms without a devaluation will be difficult, especially
as Venezuela’s fiscal deficit increases and its credit dries up.
Venezuela also desperately needs to attract foreign investors, but Maduro would
stir up widespread anger if he invited back in the big bad Western companies,
which Chavismo regularly denounces. But Maduro also has failed to retain Chinese
trust that the revolution will be able to pay its debts, a feat that Chávez
managed skillfully.
The Chinese government, in effect, has frozen additional credit for Venezuela,
pending new rules to ensure proper controls over projects involving Chinese
companies. Chinese companies, especially in the oil sector, also have frozen
most investments until Venezuela pays for its part of the capital investments,
but that money is lacking.
Without those investments, oil production will keep falling along with the
revenue that Maduro needs to pay for public services. Of course, economic
mismanagement is not new to Venezuela. But Chávez was able to surf a wave of
high oil prices to consolidate his regime’s hold on power.
But even Chávez realized in 2010 that his regime was vulnerable to shifts in
public opinion. Without resources, Chavismo risked losing its hold. Thus,
Chávez implemented limited reforms to attract more foreign investors, diversify
the economy and boost oil production.
However, as Chávez’s health deteriorated, the regime increased its populist
spending to secure Maduro’s electoral victory. But that left Venezuela in dire
shape, made worse by the global macroeconomic climate, including the recent
flight of capital from emerging economies.
Maduro also will not get much sympathy from Venezuelan voters, many of whom are
enduring a worsening quality of life. Indeed, if the economic crisis were to
boil over into social turmoil, Venezuela’s military, which is by no means a
loyal servant of Maduro, could decide to restore order, as it did when Chávez
was briefly deposed in 2002.
Confronted with all these difficulties and lacking Chávez’s charisma, Maduro
has resorted to more confrontational and bellicose rhetoric. Yet, after 15 years
under Chavismo, there is a loss of enthusiasm among many longtime supporters,
including some who find Maduro’s words and style tiresome, lacking the
excitement of Chávez.
So, Maduro has a two-year window to address the country’s economic woes. If he
doesn’t, Chavismo the movement that has transformed Venezuela and much of Latin
America over the past generation could end under his watch.
Andrés Cala is an award-winning Colombian journalist, columnist and analyst
specializing in geopolitics and energy. He is the lead author of America’s Blind
Spot: Chávez, Energy, and US Security.
Is US Military Spinning Out of Control?
The United States was built on the idea of civilian control of the military, but
as the burden of fighting overseas wars is carried disproportionately by a
sliver of the population that control seems to be slipping, as ex-CIA analyst
Paul R. Pillar reflects.
By Paul R. Pillar
Lately it seems that we have been reading many stories of misconduct among U.S.
military officers. The most recent collective infraction concerned cheating on a
proficiency test and involved a substantial proportion of the Air Force officers
who control nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.
We continue to hear about the alleged bribery of Navy officers who awarded
logistical support contracts to the payer of the bribes. Other ethical lapses
among officers of all the military services are enough to fill a catalog that
the Department of Defense itself compiled.
Senior Marine Corps commanders are alleged to have covered up misconduct by
lower-ranking members of their service in Afghanistan. General officers in more
than one service are described as being abusive leaders who have created
poisonous atmospheres in units they have led. Other generals and colonels are
identified with seedy behavior ranging from sexual abuse and alcohol abuse to
making lecherous comments about members of Congress.
Before we jump to conclusions about what all this says about any broad patterns
of bad conduct or bad character in the officer corps, we should note that a
concatenation of such stories in the news does not by itself prove the existence
of broad, ingrained problems in a service. Perhaps we are seeing part of random
fluctuations in the press’ output on this or any other subject, or partly the
efforts of some particularly enterprising and energetic journalists who cover
the military.
Bearing in mind that there are upwards of 200,000 U.S. military officers on
active duty, maybe the bad apples we read about are no more numerous than we
should expect to find in other professional populations of comparable size. And
maybe most of the problems are best described in terms of individual cases and
individual circumstances and do not lend themselves to valid and insightful
generalization.
Under the where-there’s-smoke-there-might-be-fire principle, however, it is
appropriate to ask whether there may be some overall reasons, applicable to this
national military at this time in the nation’s history, for a surge in bad
behavior. The U.S. armed forces are coming off more than a decade of continuous
involvement in overseas warfare, with the particular wars in question not having
gone especially well, or at least ending for the United States in ways well
short of what could be called victory.
Stresses that this recent history places on the military as a whole are shared
by the officer corps. One thinks, by way of comparison, of the years immediately
after the Vietnam War, another overseas war that did not go well and a time when
aberrant conduct in the military such as drug abuse was high.
The American public is treating service members returning from the more recent
wars, however, much differently from how it treated Vietnam veterans. Today’s
uniformed military is routinely applauded at sporting events and otherwise
lauded for the service that the other 99 percent of the population is not
performing. Maybe herein lies a different sort of explanation for some of the
bad conduct.
Maybe being placed on a public pedestal leads some in uniform to feel that they
are being given more latitude than others are, and that there is more room for
ignoble behavior since it has already been offset by the noble behavior that the
public applauds. But that is only a hypothesis, and like any hypothesis it has
to deal with the fact that most members of the service, officers as well as
enlisted, behave well.
Perhaps relevant is another aspect of the current phase in the history of the
U.S. military, which is that it has become more separated from civilian society
than perhaps at any earlier time, as measured in part by the small and shrinking
proportion of the civilian population that has performed military service.
One can imagine several deleterious consequences of this, some of which can be
reflected in the bad news stories about officers. An abusive leadership style,
for example, may have something in common with hazing and other abusive behavior
in other exclusive, separate cadres. More generally, there may be less exposure
to wider societal norms, or more of a notion that those norms don’t apply or
don’t apply in the same way to the military.
More military sociology needs to be performed about such questions (or if it has
already been performed, it needs to be publicized more). Not very helpful is
just to take narrow actions in the name of accountability. The Robert Gates
approach of finding someone to fire, whether or not the firee was even aware of
whatever is the latest problem to become public, does not help.
It makes the person doing the firing look decisive but offers no reason to
believe that things will be better under new management. New management in the
Air Force does not seem to have made much positive difference in behavior in the
part of the service that handles nuclear weapons.
These issues are not ones to be left only to the military, or to the Department
of Defense. They involve the military’s place in larger society, and so larger
society has to be involved in thinking about solutions.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be
one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown
University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at
The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)
Neocons Seek New Ultimatum on Syria
Exclusive: The Washington Post’s neocon editors are pushing for another U.S.
military ultimatum against a Muslim country in the Mideast. Citing discredited
“evidence” pinning the Aug. 21 Sarin attack on the Syrian government, the Post
wants President Obama to re-issue a war threat, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
You have to hand it to the neocons; they never give up on their single-minded
agenda of promoting wars against Israel’s Muslim “enemies,” even after
the disastrous war in Iraq. The big difference now is that the neocon strategy
is to endlessly insist that the U.S. government issue ultimatums of war unless a
target country acquiesces to some demand.
The apparent neocon hope is that at some point the target won’t or can’t do
something, thus requiring a U.S. military assault to maintain American
“credibility.” The Washington Post’s neocon editors are the bellwether for this
approach as they mix outraged propaganda against the targets with outrage over
any perceived “failure” of the targets to comply — and then over President
Barack Obama’s hesitancy to act.
A typical example was on Sunday’s editorial page, egging President Obama to
reissue a threatened military strike against Syria for allegedly dragging its
heels on delivering chemical weapons to a United Nations agency for destruction.
As you may recall, the Syrian government got high marks for implementing the
initial phase of its promise to destroy equipment that could be used to prepare
chemical weapons for deployment. But it was well known that the next phase
collecting the chemicals and taking them to a Mediterranean port and then to sea
for destruction would be much trickier because some of the CW depots were in
areas controlled or contested by Syrian rebels and the routes to the sea also
were insecure.
Even the Post’s editors acknowledge this reality, writing: “No one should be
surprised that the international effort is behind schedule. The original
deadline to remove all so-called Priority One chemicals, the most dangerous, by
Dec. 31, and all Priority Two chemicals by Feb. 5, was terribly ambitious for an
operation that is complex even in peacetime and doubly difficult in the midst of
a civil war. The chemicals must be transported to the coast, then by sea to a
destruction facility on board a U.S. vessel, the MV Cape Ray, and neutralized
safely.”
Nevertheless, the Post’s neocon editors have decided that Bashar al-Assad’s
government is intentionally foot-dragging and must be prodded with a renewed
threat of a U.S. military bombardment. Or as the Post wrote, “If the effort
cannot be put back on track, it will raise anew the question of whether Mr.
Obama is still serious about his ‘threat of force.’”
The Post then reprised the now-discredited propaganda case, blaming the Assad
regime for the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of civilians
east of Damascus. Though the case against the Assad regime has essentially
collapsed and the Obama administration still refuses to release any evidence
supposedly fingering the Assad regime the Post editors simply pretend that the
case is ironclad.
The editorial states: “The chemical weapons removal was the direct outgrowth of
the use of poison gas to kill more than 1,400 people last year, including women
and children. The evidence pointed directly at Mr. Assad’s forces for use of the
chemical weapons. Further delay by Syria in the movement of these deadly
substances to the coast will only compound Mr. Assad’s complicity in the grave
crime of the original attack.”
Virtually everything about that paragraph has either been debunked or is in
serious doubt. But the Post’s editors don’t care, much as they behaved in
promoting false claims about Iraq’s WMD in the 2002-03 run-up to that invasion.
The editors seem to understand that the key to propaganda is simply to repeat
questionable claims as flat fact with unyielding confidence. Most readers won’t
know or remember the details, so the propaganda will win out.
Exaggerating Numbers
In the Syria case, the U.S. government’s claim that “1,429” people were killed
in the Aug. 21 incident was never substantiated and conflicted with on-theground estimates by doctors who put the number of victims at a few hundred.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the strangely precise “1,429” number
resulted from the CIA applying facial recognition software to videos of corpses
posted on YouTube and then subtracting duplications and victims with bloody
shrouds. The problem with this “methodology” should be obvious, since there was
no way to confirm the dates or the locations of the YouTube videos and people
can die of many causes other than a gas attack and not have bloody shrouds.
To determine the cause of the deaths requires much more than scanning YouTube
videos. Still, the Post accepts these dubious and surely exaggerated numbers as
flat fact.
More significantly, the Aug. 21 evidence does not point directly at Assad’s
forces, as the Post asserts. The only evidence against Assad’s forces that has
been publicly presented the “vector analysis” retracing the trajectories of two
rockets back to an intersection point 9.5 kilometers away at a Syrian military
base has been thoroughly discredited, since the one rocket carrying Sarin had a
range of only about two kilometers. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mistaken Guns
of Last August.”]
That limited range suggested that the rocket, which landed in Zamalka, east of
Damascus, was launched from territory controlled by the rebels, not by the
government. The other rocket, which landed in Moadamiya, south of Damascus, was
found by UN inspectors to have no Sarin or other chemical weapons agents, and it
clipped a building in its descent, making a precise determination on its
trajectory impossible.
Even the New York Times, which had promoted the “vector analysis” in a frontpage article, was forced to grudgingly admit that its big scoop was bogus. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Backs Off Its Syria-Sarin Analysis.”]
There’s also never been an explanation of why Assad’s regime would have launched
this attack just as UN inspectors were unpacking their bags at a Damascus hotel
in preparation for checking out an earlier chemical weapons attack that the
regime blamed on the rebels. The Aug. 21 incident was sure to divert the UN team
and was likely to provoke a U.S. military intervention that the Assad regime
wanted to avoid but that the rebels desperately desired.
Yet, the neocon editors of the Washington Post want you to forget all that and
simply remember the propaganda barrage that followed the incident. What does it
say about a major American newspaper that willfully seeks to mislead its
readers?
The Post’s neocon editors apparently have put their ideology of seeking “regime
change” in “hostile” Muslim countries ahead of telling the truth to the American
people. And, if the Post can get President Obama to renew his military threats
against Syria, Iran and possibly other countries, eventually the hope seems to
be one of the targets will fail to comply with an ultimatum and Obama can then
be badgered into another war.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s
trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives
for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
Worse Than Orwell
President Obama has promised reform of the NSA’s mass collection of data on
virtually all Americans and much of the world. But his proposals are limited and
his speech failed to offer clemency to Edward Snowden who made the public debate
possible, writes Marjorie Cohn.
By Marjorie Cohn
‘“Big Brother is Watching You,” George Orwell wrote in his disturbing book 1984.
But, as Mikko Hypponen points out, Orwell “was an optimist.”
Orwell never could have imagined that the National Security Agency (NSA) would
amass metadata on billions of our phone calls and 200 million of our text
messages every day. Orwell could not have foreseen that our government would
read the content of our emails, file transfers, and live chats from the social
media we use.
In his recent speech on NSA reforms, President Obama cited as precedent Paul
Revere and the Sons of Liberty, who patrolled the streets at night, “reporting
back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America’s early
Patriots.” This was a weak effort to find historical support for the NSA spying
program.
After all, Paul Revere and his associates were patrolling the streets,
not sorting through people’s private communications.
To get a more accurate historical perspective, Obama should have considered how
our Founding Fathers reacted to searches conducted by the British before the
Revolution.
The British used “general warrants,” which authorized blanket
searches without any individualized suspicion or specificity of what the
colonial authorities were seeking.
At the American Continental Congress in 1774, in a petition to King George III,
Congress protested against the colonial officers’ unlimited power of search and
seizure. The petition charged that power had been used “to break open and enter
houses, without the authority of any civil magistrate founded on legal
information.”
When the Founders later put the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable
searches and seizures into the Bill of Rights, they were attempting to ensure
that our country would not become a police state.
Those who maintain that government surveillance is no threat to our liberty
should consider the abuse that occurred nearly 200 years later, when FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover conducted the dreaded COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence
program).
It was designed to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise
neutralize” political and activist groups.
During the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the
perceived threat of communism, our government engaged in widespread illegal
surveillance to threaten and silence anyone with unorthodox political views.
Thousands of people were jailed, blacklisted, and fired as the FBI engaged in
“red-baiting.”
In the 1960s, the FBI targeted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a program called
“Racial Matters.” King’s campaign to register African-American voters in the
South raised the hackles of the FBI, which disingenuously claimed that King’s
organization was being infiltrated by communists.
But the FBI was really worried that King’s civil rights campaign “represented a
clear threat to the established order of the U.S.” The FBI went after King with
a vengeance, wiretapping his phones, and securing personal information which it
used to try to discredit him, hoping to drive him to divorce and suicide.
Obama would likely argue that our modern day “war on terror” is unlike
COINTELPRO because it targets real, rather than imagined, threats. But, as
Hypponen says, “It’s not the war on terror.” Indeed, the Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal privacy watchdog, found “no
instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a
previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.”
The NSA spying program captures all of us, including European leaders, people in
Mexico, Brazil, the United Nations, and the European Union Parliament, not just
the terrorists. Although Obama assured us that the government “does not collect
intelligence to suppress criticism or dissent,” our history, particularly during
COINTELPRO, tells us otherwise.
Obama proposed some reforms to the NSA program, but left in place the most
egregious aspects. He said that the NSA must secure approval of a judge on the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before it gets access to the phone
records of an individual. But that is a secret court, whose judges are appointed
by the conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, and it has almost never turned
down an Executive Branch wiretapping request since it was created in 1978. Most
significantly, Obama did not say that surveillance without judicial warrants or
individual suspicion should be halted.
“One of [Obama’s] biggest lapses,” a New York Times editorial noted, “was his
refusal to acknowledge that his entire speech, and all of the important changes
he now advocates, would never have happened without the disclosures by [Edward]
Snowden, who continues to live in exile and under the threat of decades in
prison if he returns to this country.”
Snowden’s revelations will reportedly continue to emerge. And you can bet that
Orwell will continue to turn in his grave for a long time to come.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, a past
president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the
International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her next book, Drones and
Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues, will be published this
fall by University of California Press. [The article previously appeared at
HuffingtonPost.]