Remote Control Poison

I wondered how other nations viewed the current use of drones to take out people the current administration deemed "dangerous," and my weekly trip to Watching America provided me with at least one answer. The writer of an opinion piece in France's L'Express raises the kinds of questions which have been troubling many of us here in the US.

However, their use brings about a wave of objections. Should the calm and cold technician who guides this unit from Nevada or Virginia (sites of CIA headquarters) be judged more innocent than a tense fighter pilot in his cockpit — and, thus, do “laws of warfare” apply? Can the person giving the orders, in this case the president of the United States himself, be permanently exempt from any questioning? By extrapolation, with regard to authoritarian regimes, one instantly thinks of Russia or China; would they one day be permitted the same freedom on the territory of their opponents, Georgia or Taiwan, or even on their own soil as in Chechnya or Tibet? Recall that in 2006 the Russian parliament authorized the president to hunt down terrorists across borders.

The most questionable point comes from the secret and highly confidential nature of these operations; they are run entirely by the CIA. From the elimination of a military adversary to targeted killings, there is only one step, which requires a minimum amount of monitoring over the decision. The fact that the U.S. Department of Justice had authorized the operation against al-Awlaki only on the grounds of intelligence pushes aside the presidential decree prohibiting assassination, demonstrating a disturbing breach in the system. It is now right to require that the use of drones by the CIA be fully integrated into the chain of command of conventional forces. Again, the performance “technology” of the United States cannot be accomplished at the expense of fundamental principles on which the nation relies on. Otherwise the U.S. risks this turning into the new Guantanamo. [Emphasis added]

The use of drones on an acknowledged battle field (Afghanistan) is one thing. Using them in countries we are not at war with (Pakistan or, as in the al-Awlaki case, Yemen) is something entirely different. Even assuming that permission was sought and granted by the nation in question to invade their air space with these unmanned death-dealers, their use to kill, to assassinate, solely on the basis of a CIA intelligence report seems contrary to all international rules of conduct. Their use certainly is contrary to the American ideals of due process and a violation of the decades old executive rule against assassinations.

The fact that the use of drones cuts down on (but has not ended) "collateral damage", a despicable euphemism for death and injury to innocent civilians in the neighborhood, does not mitigate the use that the current administration has put them to. The use of unmanned drones in this context is another case of "we do it because we can."

Congress and the American people should be howling with outrage, but we have been so indoctrinated by post-9/11 propaganda that we meekly accept such conduct as fitting within the "Global War on Terror" doctrine.

And that makes me feel very ashamed.

About Damned Time

A bit of refreshing news this morning: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) thinks it's time to end our presence in Afghanistan and has written an op-ed piece to explain just why.

She reminds us that the Senate voted ten years ago to allow the use of military force in Afghanistan to punish those who attacked us and those who gave the attackers safe-haven. She maintains that with the death of Osama bin Laden and the weakening of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan there is no further reason for spending $10 billion a month there (we're up to about half-trillion dollars at this point).

Although we must remain vigilant in our efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and must continue our support for the Afghan people, there is simply no justification for the continued deployment of 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan. This July, the president should expedite his promised withdrawal of our combat forces. Moreover, we should now set an end date for the U.S. deployment there. ...

We have to be realistic about what we can achieve in Afghanistan. The notion that the United States can build a Western-style democracy there is a myth. Instead, we should focus on what we can and must accomplish: preventing Al Qaeda from threatening the United States, and supporting Afghans as they determine the way forward.

Boxer, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has some support from the Republicans on the issue, will be calling on President Obama to keep his promise to start withdrawing troops and to provide an exit strategy with specific dates. Nearly 60% of the American public agree that it's time.

Some of us thought ten years ago that the idea of starting a war in Afghanistan was a bad idea and the Authorization of the Use of Military Force a dangerous precedent. We were right. The AUMF proved to be a handy tool for an entrance into Iraq by President Bush and for military skirmishes in Libya by President Obama. The Senate should also consider repealing that authorization so that presidents have to come back to the Senate before proceeding with other military excursions. I won't be holding my breath for that.

In the mean time, however, it is gratifying to note the movement towards ending the longest war in US history. As Sen. Boxer points out, there are other ways to fight terrorism, ways that won't cost us $10 billion a month.

The Assassins

Comedian Bill Maher's career took a nosedive after making comments about the courage of the 9/11 terrorists who at least were willing to die in the name of their cause. Maher shouldn't have been surprised by the fallout from his comments. They were, without a doubt, ill-timed, tasteless, and crude. Even so, his point, even if expressed badly, was well taken.

I was reminded of his comments this morning, by this L.A. Times article concerning a UN report critical of the CIA's use of drones in assassinations.

The campaign of CIA drone strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan has made the United States "the most prolific user of targeted killings" in the world, said a United Nations official, who urged that responsibility for the program be taken from the spy agency.

Philip Alston, a New York University law professor who serves as the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, made the comments Wednesday as he released a report on targeted killings. The report criticizes the U.S. for asserting "an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe" in its fight against Al Qaeda and other militant groups. ...

"This strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions," Alston said.

Sadly, the focus of the article seems not to be the use of unmanned aircraft in the Great War On Terror, nor the fact that the US is engaged in assassinations ("extrajudicial killings"). Instead, the piece seems more concerned that it is the CIA that is engaged in the deplorable practice, an organization that lacks real oversight because of all the secrecy surrounding it.

While I agree that the argument against allowing the CIA to run such a program is a valid one, that any such program exists in the first place offends me. The military also uses the drones extensively, often with disastrous effects when it comes to civilian deaths. But both agencies are still engaged in the practice of killing people presumed guilty of acts of terrorism against the US. And now they get to do so from the safety of thousands of miles from the intended target.

Ain't technology grand.

Released To What?

It's becoming clear that President Obama is going to bow to the pressure from the Brave Sir Robins in Congress and will not release any of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the US. After up to eight years of detention thousands of miles from their homes for no good reason, eight years often filled with torture and abuse, these men are now deemed too dangerous for our fragile democracy to handle. Instead, the White House is busily trying to find other more resilient countries, such as Palau, to take them in.

To complete the whole bungling, error-filled, and foul process, the US is releasing these men with nothing more than a "OK, you're free now. Have a nice life." Is it any wonder that a few of these prisoners might harbor enough ill-will towards the US to head to the first terrorist recruiting station they can find?

Laurel Fletcher and Eric Stover, authors of an upcoming book on the issue, wrote an op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times yesterday detailing the problems those released from Gitmo have faced upon release.

Last year, we interviewed 62 released Guantanamo detainees from nine countries in Europe, the Middle East and Southern Asia. We found that although many harbored negative feelings toward the U.S. government, most simply wanted to reintegrate into their families and communities. But they found it difficult to do so.

Nearly all suffered from what we call the "Guantanamo stigma," a presumption in their communities that they were dangerous men, even though the U.S. had never convicted them of a crime. Only six of the 62 had been able to find permanent jobs. Many had lost property, and their families had been driven into debt during their absence. ...

Two-thirds of the former detainees we interviewed reported psychological problems stemming from their confinement. Memories of being short-shackled in stress positions, subjected to extreme temperatures and exposed to violence by guards remained vivid for many. Others complained of memory loss, depression and nightmares. "I think I'm still back there, with chains and guards swearing at me," said one man. ...

Released detainees told us what they wanted most was the opportunity to put Guantanamo behind them and get on with their lives. Yet 45 of the 62 former detainees said they received no significant support from their governments or private charities to help them start anew. "I lost everything as a result of being detained in Guantanamo. I've lost my property. I've lost my job. I've lost my will," said one Afghan detainee, a former medical professional who claims he was sent to Guantanamo because a rival tribe falsely denounced him to the Americans.

Apparently the US feels its responsibility for these men ends with a plane ticket. The problem lies with the fact that once you've taken a man's boots away, you can't very well expect him to pull himself up by his bootstraps, yet that's the very approach the US is taking. We can find trillions of dollars for saving the banksters from the errors of their ways, and hundreds of billions of dollars for new toys for the Pentagon, but we can't find a few million dollars that it would take to ease these prisoners of war (most of whom had no connection whatsoever with the Global War on Terror) back into some kind of life beyond Gitmo.

But, hey! We're the US: we don't have to take responsibility for our mistakes. That's for the little countries.

Shameful.

The Soft Center

While I have to grudgingly admit that this editorial in the Los Angeles Times is better written than most of the "center left" editorial board's efforts, it still misses the mark because it is based on a faulty assumption: that the rights to due process and habeas corpus are tenable only during peace and prosperity. The subject, of course, is the proposed "preventive detention" being considered by President Obama.

...one passage in Obama's speech provoked dismay among civil libertarians. After delineating how the administration would treat four categories of detainees -- those accused of violating U.S. law, those charged with war crimes, those ordered released by the courts and those who can be repatriated -- the president identified a fifth: those "who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people."

Those suspected terrorists would be held without trial. "I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people," Obama said. A final judgment on his plan must await further details. But we accept -- uneasily -- the basic principle. If Obama is willing to wrestle with what he calls "the toughest single issue that we will face," so must those of us who consider the same question.

Preventive detention -- holding someone primarily because of what he might do in the future -- is an exception in the U.S. judicial system. Under a federal law upheld by the Supreme Court, some criminal defendants can be detained before trial, but in some cases Obama is willing to dispense with a trial. He says he is determined to exercise that authority rarely and to subject himself and future presidents to oversight by other branches of government. Those are gratifying promises, but they also serve to remind that detention without trial, although commonplace in wartime, challenges basic assumptions of U.S. justice when practiced over an indefinite period and an undefinable battlefield. [Emphasis added]

The reason that fifth category of detainees cannot be tried, and therefore won't be, is that the evidence against those men is so badly tainted by how it was obtained that it would not be accepted in any court of law, even the heavily rigged military commission system. Further, proceeding to trial in such cases would shine too bright a klieg light on just what the prior administration and the various agencies in the Executive Branch did in their prosecution of the Global War On Terror. Apparently President Obama is just as afraid of the fall-out from that disclosure as former Vice-President Dick Cheney is.

Imposing a new system to provide oversight over such a process, as the editorial suggests, doesn't change the fact that preventive detention is against the most basic elements of our justice system. The editorial recommends a new court, modeled after the FISA court (which, for the most part, simply rubber stamps whatever the Justice Department puts in front of it), to monitor the selection and detention of those we can't try because we screwed up so badly to begin with. That's a cop-out, one worthy of the Soviet era show trials and gulags.

If due process and habeas corpus have any meaning, they must apply all the time, not just when it's convenient to the government. If this means that guilty and dangerous people are set free, then so be it. We will have to deal with them again. That's the price of a democracy which believes rights are more important than even governmental power.

It's Getting Harder To Avoid

Even the "center left" editorial board of the Los Angeles Times is now calling for investigations of members of the Bush administration for their role in illegal activities justified by "The Global War On Terror." Kidnappings, illegal detentions in secret prisons and at Guantanamo Bay, the use of torture during interrogations: all are activities deplored by civilized nations, so deplored that those nations crafted treaties and conventions to ban such behavior. The United States is a signatory to those treaties, yet under George W. Bush, those treaties were ignored and subverted under the guise of national security, but, it now appears, in reality to enhance the power of the then-sitting president.

While the language of the Times editorial is tepid and a bit stiff, the message is fairly clear. President Obama can no longer ignore the call by the world and his own nation to investigate and to prosecute as necessary the crimes of the last administration.

The Obama administration has deleted the term "global war on terror" from the government lexicon but is finding it more difficult to wipe the slate on some of the dark activities that rhetoric was used to justify. Since his election, President Obama has said he would prefer to look forward instead of backward at charges that the Bush administration used illegal detention and torture to prosecute its campaign against terrorism. That's an understandable political impulse, but it may prove difficult to sustain.

A Spanish court has opened criminal proceedings against six senior Bush administration officials accused of providing the legal framework to allow the torture of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center ...

The Spanish case comes on the heels of a British investigation into whether an MI5 security official colluded with American agents to torture Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held at Guantanamo. The two cases reflect a growing international determination to find out whether the Bush administration abandoned the rule of law in pursuit of terrorists. We too want to know. ...

The Obama administration must restore the international community's confidence in the U.S. rule of law, as well as our own. That means that investigations into possible criminal wrongdoing in the terror war should proceed with all due care and vigor. Once the probes are completed, the findings should be made public, whenever possible. And, as Obama has said, if there was criminal wrongdoing, there should be prosecutions. [Emphasis added]

Why is that such a difficult proposition to understand?

The Uighurs Are Still In Gitmo

Even after a federal court ruled the evidence against the Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay was "dubious" and that they should immediately be released, the 17 men are still in shackles. Rather than review the facts which had not been presented and build a stronger case, the US government has done nothing. Rather than release the Uighurs to those in the US who have offered to take them in, most themselves Uighur refugees, the US government has refused. After all, the 17 men are in Gitmo. They must have done something wrong and therefore must be dangerous.

An article in today's NY Times provides an update on the Uighurs' case which reminds us just what the last administration was doing in our name.

The men ended up in American hands in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001 and 2002, in some cases after the payment of bounties. Their life stories are inexact: hat maker, shoe repairman, typist in the Uighurs’ Turkic language. The evidence against them has been declared dubious by federal courts. But former Bush administration officials said in interviews that there had been no serious effort to clear up the mysteries. ...

The Bush administration conceded last fall that none of the men were enemy combatants. Then the Justice Department argued that they should never be admitted into this country because they “sought to wage terror” in China. ...

...Bush administration officials said that among the Uighur prisoners were three men who had been captured in an active battle zone and a firearms trainer, a Uighur who claimed he had been mistaken for someone else. The Bush administration said the outpost was a training camp run by a Uighur resistance group that was listed by the State Department in 2002 as a terrorist group, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement.

That designation has raised as many questions as it answered. The listing, which came after the 17 men were already prisoners, came at China’s urging at a time when American diplomats were pressing for Beijing’s support for the coming war in Iraq.

The State Department has acknowledged that the Chinese used the terrorist listing to justify a harsh crackdown on Uighur separatists, much like the Beijing government’s better-known policies toward Tibet. [Emphasis added]

In other words, the Uighurs, victims of the bounty system the US instituted in Afghanistan, were labeled terrorists after they were shipped to Gitmo in order to get China on board for the invasion of Iraq. Releasing them now would have the effect of admitting that the men who have been held for six long years were innocent to begin with and should never have been sent to the prison camp.

Does President Obama have the strength, the political cojones, to correct this "mistake" by releasing the men and allowing them to live in the US with those who are willing to sponsor them? That remains to be seen.

A Bankrupt Legacy

Perhaps the most perceptive analysis of the "Bush Legacy" I've seen in my weekly forays to Watching America can be found in the Netherlands' NRC Handelsblad. It is a critique of the Bush administration and the American public which gave him two terms, and the rest of the world which went along with his madness for so long.

When Bush took office as president in 2001, after an election that was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, he became the leader of a superpower that had its finances in pretty good order. Nine months later, he became the leader of almost the entire world when terrorism, as a result of 9/11, took on a new, global meaning. His use of military means to snuff out terrorism was hardly challenged, and all the old geopolitical differences of opinion seemed instantly insignificant. ...

America is and remains a dynamic country, but Bush's estate is bankrupt across the board. The president who inherited a budget surplus of almost $130 billion will leave a deficit of $490 billion in 2009. In foreign policy, Bush showed himself at the critical moment to be not a statesman, but an adventurer. Domestically, he neglected the cautious tradition of his own party, and the U.S. is paying a high price for that.

The price is being paid by more than Americans. The economies of every nation on the planet are now suffering because of the "irrational exuberance" of Wall Street types who found ingenious ways to amass fortunes in the absence of any meaningful regulation because those in the GOP who believed that making money should never be curbed by anything held sway in the Bush White House.

The Bushian doctrines embodied in the Global War On Terror and his theory of pre-emptive war have been adopted by nations to justify brutal repression of their own people and the slaughtering of their neighbors. The rhetoric of the end justifying the means has reintroduced torture as a legitimate tool in the treatment of people detained, some of them for no reason other than being the wrong color, or members of the wrong tribe, or for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All of this happened because enough people in this country believed Mr. Bush was a guy they could have a beer with. Now? Eh, not so much:

Bush was a pleasant man, a man in whom many Americans recognized themselves. But what they didn't know was that he was also a political alchemist who thought that he was the president of Monopoly.

And those are the kindest words that could be summoned for Mr. Bush's legacy.

Another Looming Disaster

Disaster fatigue is one of the innovations the occupied White House has made happen. We are desperate economically, and that has overshadowed the international disasters the imitation cowboys have driven the U.S. into. Last night Bill Moyers' Journal explored our policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have created as much distress for this country as the executive branch's welfare for corporations. Unfortunately, the stability of the entire world is threatened as much by them as we are.

Speaking with a former NPR reporter, Sarah Chayse, who stayed after our making war on Afghanistan, the perpetuation of corruption by the government of Afghanistan was brought out. She pointed out that the actual populace is under as much oppression, and as little cooperation, as it had known under the Taliban. Feelings for the U.S. reflect that abuse, and our actions are creating another looming disaster for this country.

BILL MOYERS: Your article in the "Washington Post" paints a devastating picture. The Taliban insurgents are making headway again because the government we support is a gang of corrupt gunslingers, feared as much by everyday people as the Taliban themselves.

SARAH CHAYES: Yes. That's about the size of it.

BILL MOYERS: And this is what American soldiers are dying for there?

SARAH CHAYES: Our democracy is famous for one thing in particular, checks and balances. That was the genius of the American system.

BILL MOYERS: Rule of law.

SARAH CHAYES: Rule of law but also recourse. If one branch of government is abusing you, you've got other branches of government that you can turn to.

BILL MOYERS: And Afghanistan?

SARAH CHAYES: Doesn't. So what we've really done is set up a kind of monopoly on the exercise of power. I mean, it's the opposite of what everything that we consider to be democracy, we've allowed an abusive concentration of power in the hands of, in particular, the executives, be it, in particular, on a local level like the provincial governors and their acolytes. Because we've convinced ourselves and often we have to - by "we" I mean us and our NATO allies - convince our own public opinion that this is a democratically elected representative government of Afghanistan in order to justify the sacrifices in money and troops and things like that. But the Afghans see it differently. The Afghans say you brought these people in here. We repudiated-

BILL MOYERS: You mean the Afghans at the local level-

SARAH CHAYES: That's it.

BILL MOYERS: -people where you work, right?

SARAH CHAYES: Ordinary people.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah.

SARAH CHAYES: The ordinary population. The people I work with are villagers. They're semi-literate, illiterate, these are really ordinary men and women. And they all are telling me, "You brought these people back into Afghanistan. We had repudiated them in the early 1990s. We knew what these people are. They're"-

BILL MOYERS: Warlords, right?

SARAH CHAYES: Yes. Yes.

BILL MOYERS: The criminal class.

SARAH CHAYES: Exactly. So you brought them in and now you're backing them up. And you are making it impossible for us to make our voices heard and to have any leverage on the behavior of these people. (Emphasis added.)

As we are in so many fields of operations, this executive branch's policies are building more disasters to come in the future for this country.

As this maladministration has in this country's business operations, it has continued blindly in policies that do damage rather than good. That damage is mounting everywhere.

The incoming administration can do well by reversing course in every piece of pro-disaster management the right wingers have gotten us into. It might be concluded that wrongheadedness has kept us on a course that hurts us in every way for eight years. Beginning January 21st, putting on the brakes, making a U-turn, and going in the opposite direction would begin an end to the worst phase of history any of us has ever experienced. While it will be a lurch, it will be the right choice.

Will we survive another month of this destruction unleashed by criminals in our highest offices?

Thirty days.

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Senate right wingers managed to keep the congress from acting to shore up the country's automotive industry. It was obvious that politics was primary in their views, not the interests of those they have sworn to serve. In the Dallas Morning News, that problem was headlined;

Many area dealers say they were deeply disappointed that Republicans they had supported essentially put politics over the economy in opposing loans to GM and Chrysler.

The disasters of the past eight years have hit this country at every level.

Getting It Right

Now that he has resigned, the military cannot silence him. A prosecutor at Gitmo is free to tell the truth, and has done it.

The tribunals used for putting suspects on trial at Guantanamo Bay are a "stain on America's military", a former military prosecutor has told the BBC in his first interview since resigning.

For Lt Col Darrel Vandeveld, a devout Catholic, the twin responsibilities of religious faith and military duty led to a profound moral crisis.

His resignation has led to charges against six inmates being dropped, at least for now, and called into question the possibility of a fair legal process at Guantanamo.

"I know so many fighting men and women who are stained by the taint of Guantanamo, so I'm here to tell the truth about Guantanamo and how a few people have sullied the American military and the constitution," he told me during an interview in his home town of Erie, Pennsylvania.

A reservist, Darrel Vandeveld was called up as a military lawyer after 9/11 and served in Iraq, Bosnia and Africa.

In 2007, he became a prosecutor for the military commissions which tried terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, a role he took enthusiastically.

"I went down there on a mission and my mission was to convict as many of these detainees as possible and put them in prison for as long as I possibly could," he told the BBC.

"I had zero doubts. I was a true believer."

But his zeal did not last long.

When he arrived, he says he found the prosecutor's office in chaos, with boxes scattered around the floor, files disorganised, evidence scattered in different places and no clear chain of command.

And more seriously, he soon discovered that defence lawyers were not receiving information which could help clear their clients, including evidence that suspects had been "mistreated" in order to secure confessions.

But eventually he did resign and has chosen to speak out about what he saw, giving the BBC his first interview.

"I never suffered such anguish in my life about anything," he says, looking back over the period.

"It took me too long to recognise that we had abandoned our American values and defiled our constitution."

The morally reprehensible job that has been given to our military to do at Gitmo has proved too objectionable before. Erik Saar served as an translator for interrogators there from December 2002 to June 2003, and found out early that the detainees had been for the most part arbitrarily turned in for money. He wrote about it in "Inside the Wire" and has toured the U.S. sharing his findings.

The damage done to the prisoners is irredeemable. That damage has entered into the U.S. servicepeople who carry out unjust punishment as well.

Grey Matters

What that title refers to is not the stuff between our ears, but what happens when issues aren't black and white. Nuanced may be a better title for the situation in Darfur.

After the eight years of an occupied White House keeping its hands off and telling China to go influence al-Bashir to stop armed militia preying on Darfur's black population, the U.S. has earned only shame in the conflict there. What a new administration can bring, we can only guess, but the International Criminal Court has taken up the matter of recent murders of U.N. peacekeepers by rebel groups, and may be declaring those acts also violation of international law. Of course, al-Bashir will then have no excuse for ignoring ICC calls for his trial.

With his call to indict Sudanese rebel leaders for crimes in Darfur, International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will hope to blunt moves in the United Nations to grant immunity from a genocide charge to Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.

Several UN members have indicated support for suspending a proposed ICC indictment against Mr Bashir if he co-operates in turning Darfur's delicate peace process into a reality.

In announcing charges against Mr Bashir's foes, the prosecutor is hoping to show he is even handed.

Mr Bashir was accused of genocide in July, although the ICC has yet to confirm the charge.

Since then the Arab League and the African Union have called on the UN Security Council to use special powers, under Article 16 of the ICC constitution, to suspend the case against Mr al-Bashir.

Four of the five permanent members of the council - Britain, China, France and Russia - have indicated support for the plan.

"In the event the Sudan authorities do change, totally change, their policy," said French President Nikolas Sarkozy, "France would not be opposed to using, I believe it is, Article 16."

Stuck in the mud

Human rights groups complain that such a deal would be the kiss of death for international war crimes justice, setting a dangerous precedent.

This has some of the coloration that the situation here in the U.S. has shown. Saddled with an outgoing administration that has waged illegal war, violated the constitution and our rule of law, committed crimes as heinous as illegal detention and torture, undermined the executive branch by giving it a political rather than executive function, and destroyed the economy by ignoring our laws, the incoming administration is confronted with this kind of choice.

It is in the interests of a destroyed economy, our immediate crisis, to pitch in at once to retrieve the mangled working/business community. In ultimate terms though, perpetuating the crimes by ignoring them and their perpetrators is betrayal of justice.

The international community is watching the U.S., and its lawless elements, just as it is watching genocide in Darfur. It would be required to act eventually, if we don't, in the matter of our unilateral war against Iraq and those we declared 'terrorists'. The debate going on now in the ICC foreshadows actions against, or in accord with, governments that have internal elements who have committed international atrocities. Whether the action is against or in accord with the U.S. is our own choice.

When the present maladministration came into office, it denied the International Criminal Court the recognition to act here. Having sent that message, it proceeded to commit the very crimes it had denied the ICC the right to punish. The U.S. is a rogue nation until it recognizes the rights of the world to keep crimes from being committed arbitrarily by one country against another.

If this country had recognized and then appealed to the ICC for its prosecution of the Saddam Hussein regime we removed at such great cost to the countries of Iraq and the U.S., it would have been better for all concerned. In addition, the world would no doubt be in much better shape economically.

What Our Friends Think

The US is still embroiled in two wars, a fact that may have slipped the American consciousness in the midst of a presidential election campaign and the deepening problems with the economy. Of those two wars, one has received less attention than the other: Afghanistan. That war was de-emphasized when the US invaded Iraq, at which point the US handed over the prosecution of the Afghanistan war to NATO forces and pulled out a sizable US contingent from Afghanistan to provide more fire power to Iraq. That was five years ago, and both conflicts continue.

Our NATO allies are clearly chafing at the extended tour in Afghanistan, especially since the Taleban's efforts appear to be heating up. The Prime Minister of Canada recently announced that he would like that country's troops out of the conflict by 2011 (coincidentally the date the Iraqi government would like to see US troops gone from that nation). There are also rumbles from Britain and France, primarily because the US, in concentrating mostly on Iraq, really has shown little in the way of a coherent strategy to end the war in Afghanistan.

From the Times of London:

The departing commander of British forces in Afghanistan says he believes the Taleban will never be defeated.

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, whose troops have suffered severe casualties after six months of tough fighting, will hand over to 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines this month.

He told The Times that in his opinion, a military victory over the Taleban was “neither feasible nor supportable”.

“What we need is sufficient troops to contain the insurgency to a level where it is not a strategic threat to the longevity of the elected Government,” he said. ...

The brigadier’s grim prognosis follows a leaked cable by François Fitou, the deputy French Ambassador in Kabul, claiming that Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador, had told him the strategy for Afghanistan was “doomed to failure”.

In the cable, Mr Fitou told President Sarkozy that Sir Sherard believed “the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption and the Government has lost all trust”. He said Sir Sherard had told him Britain had no alternative but to support the US, “but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one. The American strategy is doomed to fail.”

The problem, of course, is that the "American strategy" is based on the premise that the Global War On Terror is simply another war, that traditional military strategies will work. After more than seven years, people are finally beginning to realize that bombs and bullets are not the weapons of choice in effectively overcoming actual terrorism. Many of us on the American left have been pointing to that fact for over seven years, but we've been ridiculed as being "soft" and "therapy oriented." Now, with the devastation and destabilization of two countries and the deaths of hundreds of thousands, even the military experts in other nations are coming around to the same conclusion. You can't bomb a belief system out of existence, even one which relies on its own kind of bombs.

Morons.