American Footprints

Since at least the first term of the Bush administration, there has been a seemingly everpresent debate about the advisability of military strikes on Iran, to be used in an effort to: (a) cripple the Iranian nuclear energy program; (b) topple the regime; or (c) both.

The debate has mostly centered around strategic concerns, with little regard shown for the prospective loss of human life (which could end up being quite significant depending on how broad the targeting – with some advocating attacking a broad range of non-nuclear related military targets).

Since at least December of 2004, after perusing the results of war game simulations conducted by some fairly knowledgable participants with James Fallows reporting, it became clear that there were few good military options.  The reasons were several, but one of the key fears was the potential for Iran to lash out at U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the potential for global economic crisis due to a spike in oil prices:

[Retired Air Force Colonel Sam] Gardiner cautioned that any of the measures against Iran would carry strategic risks. The two major dangers were that Iran would use its influence to inflame anti-American violence in Iraq, and that it would use its leverage to jack up oil prices, hurting America’s economy and the world’s. In this sense option No. 2 – the pre-emptive air raid – would pose as much risk as the full assault, he said. In either case the Iranian regime would conclude that America was bent on its destruction, and it would have no reason to hold back on any tool of retaliation it could find. “The region is like a mobile,” he said. “Once an element is set in motion, it is impossible to say where the whole thing will come to rest.”

Further, with U.S. forces tied down and overextended, our ability to engage in a full-throated tit-for-tat with Iran would be compromised – with the costs of such escalation multiplied by our existing commitments.  For these reasons I have long argued that the U.S. would not launch such a strike, nor would it greenlight Israel to do so instead.  The risks to U.S. military personnel – and to the U.S. economy – were too great.

Remarkably, however, Glenn Reynolds is not only unconcerned with these risks, he appears to be clamoring for the blowback:

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Report: Obama blocks delivery of bunker-busters to Israel. If I were the Israelis, not only would I bomb Iran, but I’d do so in such a way as to create as much trouble for China, Russia, Europe and the United States as possible. Are the Israelis less obnoxious than me? I guess we’ll find out soon enough. [emph. added]

That is a remarkable thing to say considering the kind of “trouble” that is legitimately anticipated as a result of a military strike on Iran.  Not exactly supporting the troops.

Even if Reynolds claims that blowback against our troops and economic interests wasn’t the kind of “trouble” that he endorses, exactly what kind of setbacks would he like to see his country suffer as a result of unilateral Israeli military action?

(PS: The actual article cited by Reynolds is highly, highly suspect)

Any national-secuirty related bill sponsored by John McCain and Joe Lieberman should be assigned a presumption of doubt as a matter of course considering the sponsors and their respective track records.  Well, the Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010 doesn’t exactly shatter any preconceptions.  As Marc Ambinder reports  (via K-Drum), “it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity.”

Indefinite detention of U.S. citizens (and non-citizens) without trial based on the accusations of the executive branch, codified in law.

This is so retrograde, so reactionary, that, in essence, what they are calling for is a repeal of the Magna Carta and the centuries of precedent that followed.

The gory, and I do mean gory, details:

The bill asks the President to determine criteria for designating an individual as a “high-value detainee” if he/she: (1) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (2) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (3) potential intelligence value; (4) is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate. The President must submit the regulations and guidance to the appropriate committees of Congress no later than 60 days after enactment.

To the extent possible, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must make a preliminary determination whether the detainee is an unprivileged enemy belligerent within 48 hours of taking detainee into custody.

The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must submit its determination to the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General after consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  The Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General make a final determination and report the determination to the President and the appropriate committees of Congress.  In the case of any disagreement between the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General, the President will make the determination.  

As one might expect, Glenn Greenwald has more:

It’s probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act. It literally empowers the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by simply decreeing them a Terrorist suspect — including American citizens arrested on U.S. soil. The bill requires that all such individuals be placed in military custody, and explicitly says that they “may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” which everyone expects to last decades, at least. It’s basically a bill designed to formally authorize what the Bush administration did to American citizen Jose Padilla — arrest him on U.S. soil and imprison him for years in military custody with no charges.

This bill has produced barely a ripple of controversy, its two main sponsors will continue to be treated as Serious Centrists and feted on Sunday shows, and it’s hard to imagine any real resistance to its passage.

If the bill passes both houses, and Obama vetos it, no doubt the GOP will lambaste him using that veto as proof that he is “soft” on terror.  Hell, that will be the cudgel wielded in the Congressional fight regardless.

This bill, not any minor tweaking of private health industry regulation, would actually do much to upend the American system of governance.  And my money is on one of the major Party’s fighting like hell to enshrine it in law.

I’m not exactly sure why I took it upon myself to refute the periodic, triumphant claims that perpetual thorn-in-the-side-of-the-occupation Moqtada al-Sadr and his political movement were finished, and yet it became my sisyphisian chore – one that I’ve been busy with for the better part of 5 years (those would be 5 years of cyclical death and resurrection that would make a phoenix blush).  

Part of my preoccupation with knocking down this omnipresent meme stems from an aversion to the insidious interplay of propaganda and policymaking based on belief of that same propaganda.  Sadr represents a major obstacle to a prolonged U.S. presence (his movement strongly opposes it), and so proponents of maintaining that same presence repeatedly insist on his demise and irrelevance so as to magically sweep aside a major impediment.  However, such wishes do not actually mold reality.

This is from the March 2008 Edition:

According to Dan Senor, Moqtada al-Sadr is dead…again. Rumors of Moqtada al-Sadr’s political demise seem to crop up every couple of months in certain circles (some recent examples were documented on this site here and here). Senor himself suggested after the Sadrist uprising in Najaf in 2004 that Sadr and his Mahdi militia had been neutralized and contained. But this time, Senor assures the reader, Sadr is really done for. Maybe. Sort of?

A mere one month later:

Sigh. You knew it was about that time didn’t you? Rich Lowry becomes the latest volunteer to fill the monthly quota of “Moqtada al-Sadr is dead” proclamations (a recurring phenomenon of remarkable perseverence despite its unbroken streak of being…well, wrong each time). As I have warned, the danger in this fantastical thinking is that policy makers will eventually believe their own hype, and then proceed to underestimate Sadr which results in a string of tactical defeats. Sun Tzu 101 is baffling esoterica to them.

This legacy came to mind when I read this piece by Anthony Shadid in yesterday’s New York Times:

The followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a radical cleric who led the Shiite insurgency against the American occupation, have emerged as Iraq’s equivalent of Lazarus in elections last week, defying ritual predictions of their demise and now threatening to realign the nation’s balance of power.

Their apparent success in the March 7 vote for Parliament — perhaps second only to the followers of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as the largest Shiite bloc — underscores a striking trend in Iraqi politics: a collapse in support for many former exiles who collaborated with the United States after the 2003 invasion. [...]

The outcome completes a striking arc of a populist movement that inherited the mantle of a slain ayatollah, then forged a martial culture in its fight with the American military in 2004.

After years of defeats, fragmentation and doubt even by its own clerics about its prospects in this election, the movement has embraced the political process, while remaining steadfast in opposition to any ties with the United States. It was never going to be easy to form a new postelection government — and the Sadrists’ unpredictability, along with a new confidence, may now make it that much harder.

“As our representation in Parliament increases, so will our power,” said Asma al-Musawi, a Sadrist lawmaker. “We will soon play the role that we have been given.” [...]

The results of the election are not yet conclusive, and under a complicated formula to allot seats, the percentage of the vote will not necessarily reflect actual numbers in the 325-member Parliament.

But opponents and allies alike believe the Sadrists may win more than 40 seats. In all likelihood, that would make them the clear majority in the Iraqi National Alliance, a predominantly Shiite coalition and the leading rival of Mr. Maliki. If the numbers are borne out, the Sadrists could wield a bloc roughly the same size as the Kurds, who have served as kingmakers in governing coalitions since 2005.

In Baghdad alone, whose vote is decisive in the election, Sadrist candidates, many of them political unknowns, were 6 of the top 12 vote-getters.

“They cannot be dismissed,” a Western official said on the condition of anonymity, under the usual diplomatic protocol.

Disregarding the Sadrists has proved a motif of post-invasion Iraq. In the chaotic months of 2003, American officials habitually ridiculed Mr. Sadr as an upstart and outlaw, oblivious as they were to the mandate he had assumed from his father, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, whose portrait still hangs in the offices, homes and workshops of followers. The ayatollah was assassinated in 1999.

That enmity erupted in fighting twice in Baghdad and Najaf in 2004. Four years later, the movement, blamed for some of the war’s worst sectarian carnage, was vanquished by the Iraqi military, with decisive American help, only to rise again in provincial elections last year. Many politicians now see it as part of the political mainstream, albeit one with a canny sense of the street and a knack for fashioning itself in the opposition.

It is the popularity of political movements such as the Sadrist Trend, as well as the clout of religious leaders like Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, that make talk about the U.S. unilaterally deciding to keep troops in Iraq beyond the withdrawal timeline set forth in the SOFA so misguided.

These decisions are not ours alone to make.  We can no longer simply dictate terms – to the extent we ever could.

A large segment of Iraq’s population wants us out of Iraq ASAP, and other factions will only tolerate our presence based on strict guidelines and parameters.  We can’t just pretend these Iraqis don’t exist and that they don’t have a vote, even if we voice an oft-repeated mantra about the death of their movement and their leaders.

Again.

Yet another episode of quotable Daniel Larison:

One of the most irritating memes in conservative commentary these days is the idea that Obama subverts allies and aids rivals. They have been pushing this one right from the beginning. This is a pretty blatant accusation of treachery and/or naivete, and it isn’t true. Naturally, this latest quarrel with Israel has become another entry on the indictment against Obama for the supposed “squeeze” he puts on allies. The only trouble with this argument is that there is no real squeeze. There is a lot of talk that I assume everyone involved knows will lead to nothing. It’s as if all of the parties know that the entire quarrel is a charade, but now that it has started it has to be played out.

Incredibly, despite the absence of any meaningful consequences for Netanyahu’s government from Washington, the administration is supposedly being very “hard” on Israel while it is being equally “soft” on Iran. There is an Iran gasoline embargo bill pending in Congress, where it has overwhelming support, and it seems unlikely that Obama would veto it if the bill came to his desk. On the other hand, the administration is throwing a public fit over the treatment of the Vice President during his visit to Israel and not doing much more than that. No honest person could conclude from this that it is Israel that has been getting the squeeze.

One thing that I have been noticing over the last few days is how readily foreign policy hawks have been adopting arguments that are normally made by opponents of Iran sanctions but have been applying them to the U.S.-Israel relationship instead. All of a sudden, the hawks have realized that public condemnation and political pressure might backfire and cause the population of another country to rally around the government Washington is trying to pressure. At last they have discovered that hectoring rhetoric and attempts to push a government into doing something it believes it has every right to do are counterproductive! Of course, this insight disappears the minute it might actually be useful in improving our Iran policy.

There are also a few crucial things that the hawks are missing that make these arguments a poor fit for Israel policy. Israeli settlement policy really does violate international law, Israel really is “flouting the will of the world” (to the extent that such a thing exists), and Israel really is more isolated today than it has been in decades. All of the things that the administration has falsely claimed about Iran’s nuclear program and its diplomatic and economic position in the world are far more true of Israel’s international position in the wake of Lebanon, Gaza, Dubai, the latest settlement announcement, and the serial incompetence of Lieberman’s Foreign Ministry. Unlike in Iran, the U.S. actually has leverage and influence in Israel, but while Washington strives mightily to conjure up some way to punish Iran it refuses to use the means available to it to try to make Israel stop doing what Washington has called on it to stop doing for decades.

It’s quite possible that the “pressure track” wouldn’t work on Israel any better than it would work on any other state, but it isn’t even part of the discussion.

CNN’s Ed Henry tried to brush off criticism of the Erick Erickson hiringg by arguing that the left would object to any conservative that they hired.  Perhaps, but there’s something to be said about the volume and validity of the complaints.  Erickson’s critics have a lot of ammunition courtesy of Erickson, and that repertoire alone should have given CNN pause.

I, for one, would not have objected to the hiring of either Larison or Conor Friedersdorf, for example (even if the latter would bristle at the attempt to affix a label).  Heck, I even put in a kind word for Ross Douthat when he got the Times gig (Douthat being considerably better than Erickson, though I would have, again, preferred Larison or Friedersdorf).

I’m actually starting to like this guy:

“I believe the time has come to consider a change to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” General David Petraeus told the Armed Services Committee today, in his most direct public comments about the policy. “I think it should be done in a thoughtful and deliberative matter that should include the conduct of the review that Secretary Gates has directed that would consider the views in the force on the change of policy”

Granted this is still caveated, but at least it denotes an open mind, and an acknowledgment that the time for change may very well be at hand.  For someone who enjoys widespread, bi-partisan respect, this is a very positive step.  Especially considering the outright resistance shown in some other military quarters.

Further, that pleasant revelation comes on the heels of this:

On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) “too old, too slow … and too late.”

The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.”

This, too, is brave if also long overdue.  Israel needs to take compromise more seriously.  It is a strategic imperative for us that Israel take a more realistic approach to accommodation with the Palestinians.  The first step should be the lifting of the insidious blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza.  If anything, as Daniel Levy counsels, the Obama team should substitute that for the settlement freeze as its primary focus.

(See, also, Judah Grunstein and Gregg Carlstrom on Petraeus’ message about Israel/Palestine lack of progress)

Mark Benjamin at Salon has a very disturbing piece that recounts details of the Bush administration’s infamous use of the waterboarding technique for torturing certain detainees accused of belonging to al-Qaeda:

Self-proclaimed waterboarding fan Dick Cheney called it a no-brainer in a 2006 radio interview: Terror suspects should get a “a dunk in the water.” But recently released internal documents reveal the controversial “enhanced interrogation” practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney’s description sounds, and was administered with meticulous cruelty.

Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.

The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.

Naturally, the torture protocol was endorsed by lawyers within the Bush administration:

These torture guidelines were contained in a ream of internal government documents made public over the past year, including a legal review of Bush-era CIA interrogations by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility released late last month.

Though public, the hundreds of pages of documents authorizing or later reviewing the agency’s “enhanced interrogation program” haven’t been mined for waterboarding details until now. While Bush-Cheney officials defended the legality and safety of waterboarding by noting the practice has been used to train U.S. service members to resist torture, the documents show that the agency’s methods went far beyond anything ever done to a soldier during training. U.S. soldiers, for example, were generally waterboarded with a cloth over their face one time, never more than twice, for about 20 seconds, the CIA admits in its own documents.

These memos show the CIA went much further than that with terror suspects, using huge and dangerous quantities of liquid over long periods of time. The CIA’s waterboarding was “different” from training for elite soldiers, according to the Justice Department document released last month. [...]

One of the more interesting revelations in the documents is the use of a saline solution in waterboarding. Why? Because the CIA forced such massive quantities of water into the mouths and noses of detainees, prisoners inevitably swallowed huge amounts of liquid – enough to conceivably kill them from hyponatremia, a rare but deadly condition in which ingesting enormous quantities of water results in a dangerously low concentration of sodium in the blood. Generally a concern only for marathon runners , who on extremely rare occasions drink that much water, hyponatremia could set in during a prolonged waterboarding session. A waterlogged, sodium-deprived prisoner might become confused and lethargic, slip into convulsions, enter a coma and die.

Therefore, “based on advice of medical personnel,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury wrote in a May 10, 2005, memo authorizing continued use of waterboarding, “the CIA requires that saline solution be used instead of plain water to reduce the possibility of hyponatremia.”

The agency used so much water there was also another risk: pneumonia resulting from detainees inhaling the fluid forced into their mouths and noses. Saline, the CIA argued, might reduce the risk of pneumonia when this occurred.

“The detainee might aspirate some of the water, and the resulting water in the lungs might lead to pneumonia,” Bradbury noted in the same memo. “To mitigate this risk, a potable saline solution is used in the procedure.”

That particular Bradbury memo laid out a precise and disturbing protocol for what went on in each waterboarding session. The CIA used a “specially designed” gurney for waterboarding, Bradbury wrote. After immobilizing a prisoner by strapping him down, interrogators then tilted the gurney to a 10-15 degree downward angle, with the detainee’s head at the lower end. They put a black cloth over his face and poured water, or saline, from a height of 6 to 18 inches, documents show. The slant of the gurney helped drive the water more directly into the prisoner’s nose and mouth. But the gurney could also be tilted upright quickly, in the event the prisoner stopped breathing.

So, accoding to Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol, Chuck Grassley and several other leading Republican legislators and pundits, the lawyers that challenged the use of torture (and other gross perversions of the Bill of Rights) were traitors to the United States and the Constitution, yet the lawyers that signed off on the use of brutal methods of torture were…patriots?

I suppose that perspective depends on what you think of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Mark Isenberg has more.