"...MORE THAN THEY BARGAINED FOR"
I was listening to a report on the BBC last night (the text of which can be found here) which talked about a burgeoning movement calling for the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The movement calls itself Bring Them Home Now and comprises many military veterans and families of US soldiers. (That its name is similiar to the anti-war protesters' slogan "Support the Troops: Bring Them Home" will hopefully moderate some people's virulence against the 'warmed over 60s hippies')

That the group wants to internationalize the occupation is a welcome change from the attitude of "screw the rest of the world" which gripped American public opinion 6 months ago.
One Vietnam veteran and member of the group fumed, "I'm tired of America's sons and daughters having to do all of the policing of this world."

This comment certainly piqued my interest since America didn't HAVE to police Iraq, it chose to. In fact, it chose to do so not because of international pressure but despite it. And let's not forget, while the government may have made the decision to go to war, this self-imposed "obligation" was wildly popular among the broad American public.

As I've written before, the frustration is due in large point to initial expectations that were unrealistic. Occupation is never a short term deal. Even the post-World War II occupations and re-constructions of Germany and Japan lasted several YEARS. We've only been in Iraq a few months and people are getting impatient. Americans rightly figured winning the war would be quick. They either didn't know or didn't fully comprehend that winning the peace would be substantially more challenging... and more time consuming.

I hope the American people have learned a lesson about getting swept up in a wave of emotion at the expense of foresight. The next time the president decides to invade a random country against international public opinion and with hardly any serious military allies, I'd urge my fellow citizens will pause to fully ponder the long-term implications of that decision.

Concluded one mother, "My son has a job, he has a life - he had a life before he went to Iraq. I think they gotten much more than they bargained for."

Indeed.

But it begs the question, when they joined the military reserves, what exactly DID they bargain for?

WHAT ARE AMERICA'S NATIONAL INTERESTS?
In foreign policy, I consider myself an internationalist. I believe in the UN system. The UN system is definitely flawed (some of those flaws being built into the system by the big powers) but hardly discredited. But, as the best, or least bad, system out there for facilitating international relations and encouraging stability, it should be reformed, not scrapped. I believe in humanitarianism, of which the UN is often the central coordinator. I believe in fairness, broadly defined, in international relations as something that we should strive for. I recognize that all nations' power will never truly be equal in the real world. But while we will never achieve this ideal, we should constantly be trying in that direction. I believe in a proper equilibrium among indigenous cultural traditions, respect for individual and human rights and local sovereignty; all in noting that such balance is not easily definable. I believe that richer nations have a moral obligation to help out poorer nations; and I believe it's in the richer nations' economic interest to do so as well. I believe that in return for such help, richer nations should have no qualms in expecting poorer nations' governments to use that help in the interest of their people.

Some people oppose the internationalist philosophy. The two largest camps seem to be the isolationists and the unilateralists. Of course, any such broad generalization is going to be lacking in nuance. I recognize that some people might not think they fit into any of these descriptions. With that in mind...

*The unilateralists, via the neo-conservative movement, are presently in control of the foreign policy agenda. They believe that America should act on its own, to advance its values and interests, without regard to what the rest of the world thinks. They would contend that they don't hate the rest of the world and that America should accept foreign help when offered, only that the US shouldn't be "held hostage" by international opinion. They believe that American values should be pre-eminent.

These positions have created many problems. While most Americans likely believe American values are the best, the neo-conservative unilateralists extrapolate this one step further. To them, it's not enough to let American values to triumph on their own, those values must be imposed by force, militarily if necessary. They do not recognize the incongruity of imposing liberty and freedom via occupation and the barrel of a gun. Furthermore, while they claim not to be overtly hostile to international opinion, in the last year and a half, it seems many have gone out of their way to antagonize other countries. Not just "terrorism lovers," as they might call them, but our longtime friends and allies who share our values. The US could've disagreed with France or Germany on the Iraq war without launching a national character assassination of those countries; it's of note that most European opposition targeted their criticism to the person of President Bush (the person who made the objectionable policy) rather than attacking the American people as a whole. While we may be able to antagonize international opinion in a specific case if the administration thinks it necessary, it will surely be disastrous as consistent, long term policy.

*The isolationists, and I believe I'm stating this accurately, tend to believe that America should never act unless her interests or territory are directly threatened or attacked. They place the concept of national sovereignty above all others. While they often have personal sympathy with the plight of people in worn-torn countries or under the thumb of despots, they do not believe it's America's role to solve these problems.

But both isolationists and unilateralists base their positions upon what's in our national interest, in contrast to internationalists who focus on international stability. Yet, the phrase "national interest" is one that's almost always undefined. Like obscenity, it seems, you can't define it but you recognize it when you see it. I don't believe this is satisfactory. If this is going to be the cornerstone of one's foreign policy, it should be explicit and well-defined.

The reason I say this is because "national interests" has historically meant economics. There have certainly been exceptions, for when the national territory was attacked. But more often than most people realize, "national interests" have been defined as what's in the interest of American corporations. This is not new, or unique to the Bush administration. The economic vitality of American fruit, sugar and rubber companies have played a critical role in the US' relations with Latin America. Economics and trade are why we annexed the previously independent Hawaii, why we helped Panama secede from Colombia, we why effectued "regime change" (long before anyone knew of Saddam) in countries with nationalistic, democratically-elected governments. The US government hasn't supported countless corrupt, brutal dictators because any president liked corruption and brutality; it did so, almost invariably, for economic reasons.

When I said the invasion of Iraq was done for economic reasons, I was denounced as a crackpot conspiracy theorist. Oil was a factor, certainly, but not the only factor. There is a broader goal of expanding American economic influence in the Middle East. That's why the war took place. My critics reacted with shock and awe, as though economics as a justification for the Iraq war was inconceivable; I contend that this fits in quite well with the historical pattern.

Yet I issue a challenge my isolationist and unilateralist friends. I suspect some of them will not appreciate my characterization of their version of America's "national interests." If they do not believe that the economic vitality of big business should be at the heart of American "national interests," then I urge them to define it for themselves; to give a positive vision of what they believe should guide American foreign policy. What are our national interests? Not what they aren't, but what they are.

QUESTIONS FROM A 'CONSPIRACY THEORIST' ABOUT IRAQ AND LIBERIA
I happened to stop on Fox News (sic) Channel for a minute or two. This happens occassionally as it's strategically mislocated between the evil Yankees' (redundant, I know) Channel and MSG Network, both of which sometimes show soccer.

They had two yapping heads talking about Liberia. Surprisingly, they were talking, not shouting. They engaged the standard, fact-free UN-bashing.

One guy, Mort Kondrake I think, was outraged. "How come it's taking the UN 4-6 weeks to send peacekeepers to Liberia?" he thundered. Then they went ranting on about the UN incompetence. The other guy not only didn't correct him but agreed with him. Like I said, standard b.s. Only the Kondrake knows if he is ignorant or willfully deceptive.

Newsflash to those two "experts" on FNC: THE UN IS BANNED FROM HAVING A STANDING ARMY.

This is what annoys me about the UN-bashing in this country. It's mostly uninformed. These "experts" were talking as though the UN had a standing army. Critics here talk about the UN as though it has any inherent authority on its own. As though the Secretary-General (S-G) is something like the president of the world. It's a bunch of nonsense. But what annoys me is that there are people out there listening to these yapping heads who don't know the difference and believe them.

The UN Secretary-General is a figure head, sort of like the Pope in a way. His power is pretty much limited to moral authority. Kondrake acts like the S-G can simply snap his fingers and have troops be somewhere the next day. The S-G has no divisions, as Stalin famously noted of the pontiff. And this is exactly how the US and the other big powers want it.

Some conservatives in this country complain that the UN has too much power, that it's leading us to one world government. Then when it doesn't bend to whatever Washington wants, they deride the UN as weak and incompetent. So my question is this: how can the UN simultaneously be too powerful and ineffectual?

Any deployment of UN peacekeepers requires not only the approval of the Security Council but, and this is the key point, the volunteering of troops by member states. In most UN missions, troops are primarily supplied by less powerful countries like India, Bangladesh and Uruguay.

So when anyone speaks of "the UN," you should ask what that means. "The UN" is many things. To Americans, it's peacekeeping, the Security Council and, to some, "one world government." To people in other countries, "the UN" is the people who feed and house the refugees or organize vaccination campaigns.

Ultimately, "the UN" is whatever member states, especially the rich ones, want it to be. Or not be. This is why I often put "the UN" in quotes. "The UN" is its member countries. Nothing more, nothing less. It's barely an entity in itself..

In answer to Kondrake's question, the reasons it's taking "the UN" is taking 4-6 weeks to send troops to Liberia are these. 1) It took the Security Council a while to authoritze said mission and 2) member states, including the United States, aren't exactly rushing to volunteer peacekeeping troops for the mission.

"The UN" most certainly has its flaws. Some are of its own making (like a New York City-heavy bureaucracy) and others imposed from outside (the slowness of the Security Council and powerlessness of the General Assembly were designed precisely to not give it too much authority at the expense of the big powers). But criticism should at least be informed in order to be taken seriously.

Anyways, either Kondrake or the other commentator opined that President Bush was right to be reticent about sending troops to Liberia because, in his opinion, it would be risking "another Somalia."

Now warnings against another Somalia are what some people automatically use to argue against any deployment of troops in Africa, whether the analogy is accurate or not. This warning was used to scuttle against any possible mission in the Rwandan genocide, even though the situations in Somalia (total chaos) and Rwanda (meticulously planned and executed slaughter) were polar opposites. But given what I know about Liberia and the factions there, this is actually not a totally unfounded fear.

Nevertheless, the argument is ironic. In Somalia, 18 American servicemen were killed on the streets of Mogadishu. It is argued that Americans must, at all costs, avoid "another Somalia," no matter how great the human suffering that we could prevent. 18 American servicemen killed in Africa is unacceptable.

Yet the public was gung ho about invading, conquering and occupying Iraq even though it was all but guaranteed that far more than 18 servicemen would die there, which has proven true.

We've had more than 18 die since President Fighter Pilot declared the end of major hostilities. There have been demonstrations against the occupation in Iraq. In Liberia, the people are IMPLORING us to come. Not just the public either. Both the government and the rebels have invited us. Yet, we go where we're not wanted but refuse to get where they're begging us.

Revisionists in the administration say, "Hey, it's no big deal we can't find weapons of mass destruction, the primary justification for the war. At least we got rid of an evil dictator and that makes us righteous and good." Well, Charles Taylor certainly qualifies as evil dictator. And an indicted war criminal to boot. And he's destabilized more of his neighbors than even Saddam did. Is that enough comparisons to satisfy you?

What's the difference? For those who insist that the Iraq invasion had no economic motive whatsoever, what is the difference? We "conspiracy theorists" are curious.

INDICTED WAR CRIMINAL DEMANDS RESPECT FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW
A long time ago, I stopped regularly watching American TV news but I'm quickly becoming a fan of CNN's Newsnight normally with Aaron Brown, as it actually seems worth an hour of my time. I still watch it in addition to listening to the BBC World Service radio, which is sometimes complicating as the BBC's only newcast of more than 5 minutes in the evening also starts at 10 PM. Sometimes the Internet resolves that conflict.

Last night wasn't one of Newsnight's better performances. They spent the first 40 (!!) minutes of the broadcast going on about California. Sure, a recall effort in the nation's largest state is a pretty big deal and a lot certainly happened in that story yesterday. It wasn't totally unreasonable for it to be the lead story. But to spend 2/3 an hourlong broadcast on this one story, three or four different segments, was massive overkill. (Memo to Ahnold: try to avoid lame jokes using titles of or lines from your movies).

After CNN was done speculating on weighty questions like Arnold Schwarzenegger's alleged womanizing, they moved on to more trivial stuff like peacekeepers in Liberia, plans for nuclear proliferation in the US and an embassy bombing in Baghdad.

The California situation seemed like a bad joke until, in the Liberia segment, they played comments by the country's indicted war criminal/dictator Charles Taylor. Taylor complained that an American military helicopter landed in the US embassy complex but that US officials didn't have the courtesy to inform his government.

Normally, they would have sent us a note that there are Black Hawk helicopters landing at the embassy, sniffed the despot. That's what you do if you respect international law. But we have no choice. We still accept American presence here, but people have to learn to do it properly.

(as quoted here)


To hear a man allegedly responsible, either directly or indirectly, for destabilizing four countries, for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and for ruining the lives of millions more yammer on about respecting international law and proper process was a pretty difficult thing to do while eating dinner. Even more amazing, Taylor made the complaint in conjuction with his efforts to void international law by getting the war crimes indictment against him quashed. You couldn't make this stuff up.

It was hard not to laugh. Except that it's so serious. What's next? Idi Amin lecturing on the importance of respecting human life?

CALIFORNIANS: MAY THEY GET WHAT THEY WANT
The recall effort directed against California Gov. Gray Davis is entirely legal. There, I said it. And I'm sure I'll repeat it again several times during the course of this essay. Because every time I say the recall is a bad idea and a waste of money the state doesn't have, someone will inevitably "counter" that it's fully within California law. Which is, of course, neither here nor there. Legal and foolish aren't mutually exclusive, as the existence of the electoral college attests to.

The whole concept of recall gives me mixed feelings. I like the idea of holding politicians accountable. I'm hesitant about it being used by a bunch of sore losers to target the person that beat them. I see elections as a contract. We elect someone giving them the expectation that they will have a specific number of years to do their job. What incentive does a true leader have to take tough decisions early in his term if he knows it might force him out of office before his term is up (by which time the longer-term benefits might kick in). In a regular contract, you can't unilaterally change the terms. But recall allows the public to do exactly that. On a related note, I also don't like elected officials who quit before their term is up because they got a better offer.

Perhaps recall should only be allowed if there is specific misconduct alleged. Perhaps it should be allowed for any reason but only after the official has served at least half his term (it still violates the elections as a contract principle but it's less egregous than the California system). Perhaps California officials should serve for two years like elected officials in many New England states; that creates its own difficulties but addresses the accountability issue. Perhaps recall is simply a well-intentioned, but unworkable idea.

The specifics of the California case are even more farcical. Yes legal, but still farcical. The recall effort is proceeding only 9 months after Californians re-elected Davis with 47% of the vote (a higher percentage than Bill Clinton got in '92 and the same as George W. Bush got in '00, although Davis won a plurality). To annul that victory after only 9 months is highly dubious, even if Gray Davis is one of the least inspiring politicians around. I'd love to be rid of President Bush, say, yesterday, but I'm still glad we don't have national recall.

Some point out that prime ministers have to face votes of confidence, why not governors? The difference is that governors don't have the same powers as prime ministers. In a parliamentary system, the prime minister will almost always have the support of, if not the majority of the legislature, then at least its largest party. In California, both houses of the legislature are majority-controlled by the party in opposition to the governor. In such a setup, a governor can obstruct or he can encourage tweaks the opposition legislature's proposals but he can do very little to drive the agenda. He can do very little constructive on his own. That is the downside of the separation of powers. Or, as others might counter, that is the whole point of the separation of powers.

Ultimately, the farce in California is an excellent example of why America is a republic (indirect democracy), rather than a direct democracy. It is really the fault of the people, far more so than the elected officials. In the late 70s, Californians launched a tax revolt; now, as the result of a voter-initiated law, any tax increase requires a 2/3 vote of the state legislature. But now they're upset that their education system ranks last in the nation. They want their public schools, hospitals and roads to be of high quality but don't want to pay taxes to support those services. This is the paradox any elected official, anywhere, has to face: everyone wants a free lunch. But it's most acute in California. The ease of initiative ties the hands of legislators with unreasonable demands and then recall is the stick used to punish those who don't meet those unreasonable demands.

The Green Party is in favor of initiative and referendum [I/A]. I'm not sure I want them to be too easy. The mess in Albany (New York's state capital) is cited by many advocates as why this state needs I/A. I can barely imagine a state government more closed, more opaque and less accountable than New York's. Everyone knows Albany is a joke, that every major decision involves only the two legislative leaders and the governor: the infamous "three men in a room" decried by the current governor when he was a challenger. But the two parties (each of whom has controlled one house of legislature for years) have done a brilliant job of self-preservation, of manipulating electoral law to ensure lack of accountability. In fact, California's I/A and recall was developed precisely to counter the machine driven politics of the east coast. But it's gone too far to the other extreme.

Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of the California system is this. Gov. Davis could get far more support than anyone else and still lose the governorship. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that 44% vote to maintain Davis and 56% vote to get rid of him. There will probably be a few hundred candidates trying to replace Davis, the most famous being Schwarzenegger and porn magnate Larry Flynt. Even, in the unlikely event that any one of the hundreds of candidates gets half of the anti-Davis vote, half of 56% is only 28%. In such a situation, that person would become governor. Davis, with 44%, would be evicted from office by someone who got a substantially smaller 28% (if Californians think 28% > 44%, then their schools really are that bad). Even the electoral college couldn't produce a result so farcical.

Again, this would be entirely legal and, as a non-Californian, it doesn't affect me directly. But it would also make California a national and international laughingstock. And since the state seems to be the birthplace of many national trends, for better or worse, I will be watching this vote with interest. The people of California are getting what they want. I hope it satisfies them.

BIG BROTHER 1975
I was reading Samantha Power's Pulitzer Prize book A Problem From Hell. The chapter on Cambodia is really quite chilling. The fact that any chapter in a book about genocide can be more chilling than the others is something! According to the book*, life under the Khmer Rouge (1975-79) entailed:

-Citizens could not move. Travel passes were required even to cross town. Cities were evacuated at gunpoint.

-They could not learn what they chose. Only KR [Khmer Rouge] tracts were permitted. Libraries were ravaged. And speaking foreign-languages signaled 'contamination' and earned many who dared to do so a death sentence.

-They could not reminisce. [!!!] Memories of the past life were banned. Familles were separated. Children were 're-educated' and induced to inform on parents who might be attempting to mask their 'bourgeois' pasts. 'Cambodia,' a colonial term, was replaced by 'Democratic Kampuchea.'

-'They could not flirt. Only Angkar [term meaning roughly The System] could authorize sexual relations. The pairings for weddings were announced en masse at the commune assemblies.

-They could not pray. Chapels and temples were pillaged. Devout Muslims were often forced to eat pork. Buddhist monks were defrocked, their pagodas converted into grain silons.

-They could not own private property. All money and property were abolished. The national bank was blown up. Radios, televisions, telephones, cars and books gathered in the central squares were burned.

-And they could not make contact with the outside world. Foreign embassies were closed; telephone, telegraph and mail service suspended.

Incidentally, reports of such atrocities were rubbished at the time by many prominent figures on the left including Noam Chomsky (who I'm not a huge fan of, even if he occassionally makes cogent observations). At the time, they assumed that such reports were the sort of anti-communist propaganda so thoroughly discredited by the Vietnam-era lying. I guess this is an example of why it's important not to sacrifice your principles at the altar of your ideology.

*-A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power, 2002, paperback version, pp. 117-118.

SHOWDOWN: PRECIPITATION
This is a satirical piece I wrote in early March. A friend suggested I submit this to slate.com which I did. though it got no response from them. I still think it's amusing. Bear in mind, this was written in the heat of the debate on the invasion of Iraq, the gratuitous French/UN bashing orgy and general national temper tantrum the United States was undergoing at that time. I felt a little mischievous one Sunday and this was the result.






It rained in my city today. National and international reaction to this cataclysmic event was immediate.

Rush Limbaugh suggested that the rain was linked to the alleged friendship between French president Jacques Chirac and Ecology dictator Mother Nature. Bill O'Reilly wondered if Canadians' fondness for baseball doubleheaders had anything to do with the storm's origin around Hudson Bay.

Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld echoed these sentiments, condemning "French appeasement" of Nature and Canadian softness on the rain problem.

In a joint press conference with British prime minister Tony Blair, President Bush blasted the United Nations for not doing enough to stop the terrible pain and the havoc the rain is causing to my city's treasured snowbanks. Blair added, "What he said."

Senator Tom Daschle and Congressman Richard Gephardt blasted the president's handling of the crisis, which CNN has been quick to label "Showdown: Precipitation." The legislators said that the president's refusal to deal with the rain question was yet another way he kowtowed to the rich. They proposed a rain tax, under which the rich (those making $20,000 a year or more) would pay a $1000 fee each time water fell from the sky. "This fund," explained Sen. Daschle "would be used to help working Americans buy umbrellas." Rep. Gephardt, however, expressed skepticism about the proposal's chances of passage due to what he called the president's pandering to the influential raincoat lobby. "We must not let Big Raingear override the wishes of the American people."

Presidential candidate Senator Joe Liebermann also criticized the president's conduct. "It's a moral imperative that we act much more quickly to beef up our counter-precipitation activities."

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge changed the nation's alert from code orange to code flourescent grey. No one, outside of three Washington bureaucrats, is certain if this represents an upgrade, downgrade or lateral move on the security scale. Nevertheless, duct tape sales tripled in the hours after Sec. Ridge's announcement.

The political parties were divided. Democrats insisted, "This rain would not have fallen had Nader not cost Gore the election in 2000." Republicans contended that the rain crisis was linked to former President Bill Clinton and/or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in some unspecified way. An official Green Party statement asked why those two parties opposed legalizing drugs since both are so obviously smoking something.

Enviro-whackos cautiously advanced the notion that the rain was actually natural and should be welcomed. They were quickly denounced by Attorney General John Ashcroft who questioned their patriotism and condemned them for "giving aid and comfort to the rainmakers." The attorney general quickly submitted to Congress the "Truth Protection Act of 2003", sponsored in the House by Rep. Winston Smith; this is the first bill sponsored by Rep. Smith since his election in 1984. The legislation has been nicknamed the "enviro-whacko roundup bill." Passage by Congress is likely since the invertebrate lobby, now the Democrats' most important constituency, has expressed support for the proposal.

Anti-globalization activists argued that the rain storm demonstrates the internationalization of bad weather and called on the WTO to push for more humane atmospheric conditions. The CEOs conference in Davos, Switzerand issued a statement countering that rain was every consumers' free choice.

Reaction to the storm from the Middle East was swift. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tore into Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat for not doing more to stop international precipitation. Arafat responded that he condemned rain in the strongest, most unequivocal terms but that only an end to Israeli occupation would bring true meteorological peace.

There was rain reported in manyparts of Africa and South America as well, although no Western press reaction has been noted as yet.

WHERE TO TRY SADDAM?
Yesterday, the UN Security Council voted to authorize a peacekeeping mission to Liberia. The vote was 12-0 with France, Germany and Mexico abstaining. The US inserted a clause into the resolution that would exempt the UN peacekeepers from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which the Bush administration rabidly objects to. This is ironic since the primary demand of the White House is for the removal of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, a man indicted for war crimes by and who everyone wants to face justice in front of... an international tribunal: the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone.

The Bush administration also successfully pressured the Belgian governement to quash a controversial law. The law gave Belgian courts universal jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity regardless of where the atrocities took place and regardless of the nationality of the victim. Washington had warned that it would refuse to send officials to NATO meetings in Brussels if the law were to stand. Lawsuits had already been filed there against such high-profile targets as President Bush, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Under the revised law, only Belgian subjects or people resident in the country for at least three years at the time of the crime will have the right to launch such a suit.

All this leads me to wonder: what would happen if we actually captured Saddam Hussein? Osama bin Laden would be one thing, since the gravest crime he is accused of occurred on American soil (9/11). But since Saddam did not commit any crimes on American territory, American laws surely wouldn’t apply to him.

Since, in Belgian case, the Bush administration rejects the principle of national courts holding universal jurisdiction, we couldn’t try Saddam for crimes he committed in Iraq (or Kuwait or Iran). Since the administration rejects the authority of the International
Criminal Court, we wouldn’t send him there either. And do you seriously believe the occupation authorities would let Saddam be tried by domestic Iraqi courts?

So this begs the question, if American forces captured Saddam Hussein, where would he go on trial? Would the administration condescend to put him on trial? Can they afford not to?