Obama's Killing Machine.

 

Not even a week into his first term, President Obama sent a clear message to the world when it came to the ‘War on Terror’ re-declared by Bush in 2001. On January 23^th 2009 Obama authorised the first of many military operations conducted within Pakistani territory to take place during his time in office. It was a double-strike carried out by a remotely piloted American aircraft – one of the so-called ‘drones’ – killing at least 15 people in western Pakistan.[1] As far as we know it was the first of more than 300 of these operations to be conducted by the CIA in Pakistan over the last four years. It was as much a sign of things to come as it was the first sign of what looks like continuity between Obama and Bush. Actually the truth is even worse than that.

The policy of drone strikes was initially launched under the shameful first term of President Bush only five months before the 2004 election. Under Bush the campaign of assassination was supplemented, at first, with the kidnapping and torture of ‘terror suspects’ only for this campaign to be upped under Obama. It was Bush who saw the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, rammed through Congress after the attacks on the Twin Towers. Pentagon officials have claimed that the AUMF gives the President the power to wage an endless war anywhere on earth; with one official predicting that the operations against al-Qaeda could go on for 20 years.[2] Even so, the Bush administration only authorised around 50 strikes in Pakistan compared with the more than 300 strikes authorised by Obama.[3] With the passing of the National Defence Authorization act the US can now feel free to murder its own citizens at a whim if they are ‘associated’ with terror. The world remains the battlefield for these airborne death squads and no one appears to be safe.
 

 

Over the next four years Obama would extend the drone operations to a whole new precedent, past Pakistan across West Asia and even onwards to Africa. By the summer of 2011 the White House had given the ‘okay’ to bomb Somalia, the justification being to combat the Islamists in the country who had forged ties to Yemen’s al-Qaeda.[4] The US had been conducting operations against Yemen, where they would later assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki – the American and online face of radical Islamism – only to continue the strikes and kill (as of May 20^th 2013) somewhere between 1,100 and 1,800 people.[5] Then the arms that had flowed readily into the hands of Berbers and Tuareg fighters in Libya’s civil war made it to Northern Mali in 2012. The Tuaregs, now rearmed, carved out Azawad from the African state only for the military junta in Bamako to request French assistance. The Islamist presence in North Africa provided yet another pretext to the ever extending bloodbath from above. Soon the US government had responded in its own way and American troops were deployed in 35 African countries.[6] By January 2013, Niger had agreed to let the US drones swarm into their sovereignty to kill yet more targets.[7]
 

The exact numbers of those killed in these operations are not so much disputed as the precise composition of the slain. At CounterPunch, Jeffrey St. Clair estimates the death toll as more than 3,000 with something like 900 civilian deaths including at least 176 children.[8] That’s if we assume that the muddy distinctions of ‘civilians’ from ‘terror suspects’ or even ‘associated forces’ (of al-Qaeda) can be sustained. At the Brookings Institution, in July of 2009, Daniel L Byman estimated that the body count from the drone strikes came to ten civilians for every militant killed.[9] It’s worth keeping in mind that the US government defines ‘suspected militant’ as all military-age males in a strike zone.[10] There are worthy victims and unworthy victims, those killed by the enemy and those we have killed. Such a distinction is to be maintained through whatever legal wrangling necessary in this bizarre age.
 

Come the second term, President Obama had resorted to using past precedents of American war crimes in Indochina to further legitimise the swarm of Predator drones.[11] Operation Menu was the name for the systematic bombing of selected targets (supposedly Viet Cong strongholds) within neutral Cambodia. This campaign was actually just a worse version than the less intense operations carried out under Lyndon Johnson.[12] It was called Menu because of the order of bombing: first breakfast, then lunch, snack, dinner, supper and dessert. With this flippancy the US effectively invaded Cambodia in 1970 and out of the inferno emerged the Khmer Rouge stronger than ever from the fallout. The example of Operation Menu is useful because international law would rule out extending conflict outside of the battlefield. At the time the State Department lawyer claimed legitimacy in extending the war in Vietnam to its neutral neighbour because there were Vietnamese forces in Cambodian territory.[13]
 

It is a befitting analogy for Obama’s drone wars, given the destabilising effect on Pakistan with the potential for civil war and even nuclear disaster in the country. With this in mind we may add that the assassination of Osama bin Laden, originally named Operation Geronimo, was carried out by US forces with the prior expectation that if the situation gets out of hand with nearby Pakistani soldiers they would have to fight their way out of the country. These unsanctioned actions against a supposedly sovereign country have provoked incredible anger in Pakistan. Let alone the authorised actions to repeatedly bomb villages and towns in Pakistan’s territory. Even if we accept the premises of the ‘War on Terror’ we cannot be blind to the sheer futility of these bloody operations. The latest drone strike in Pakistan was on May 29^th of this year, left Walier ur-Rehman, second-in-command of the Taliban, dead among three others in North Waziristan.[14] The next day the Pakistani Taliban replaced this prominent commander with Khan Said. No doubt the Islamists of Pakistan have plenty of new recruits to hoover up in the wake of drone strikes.
 

The attempts by the White House to find a loophole around the criminal nature of this conduct are especially revealing. Obama is much less comfortable than his predecessor when it comes to disregarding international law. Where the Bush-Cheney gang couldn’t give a damn about international law this lawyer-cum-politician looks for the legal grounds to commit mass-murder. Bush had the audacity to pass the ‘Netherlands invasion act’ in 2002, which gave the US the right to invade to prevent any trial of an American citizen taking place in The Hague.[15] Obama is looking to find a more subtle way out of any possible allegations of crimes against humanity. In short, we find that the Democrats offer a better and more civilised George Bush with his finger on the button.

 

This article was written for the Third Estate and posted on June 4th 2013.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r=0

[2] http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/17/astoundingly_disturbing_obama_administration_claims_power

[3] http://natsec.newamerica.net/drones/pakistan/analysis

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/world/africa/02somalia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
[5] http://yemendrones.newamerica.net/
[6] http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-real-invasion-of-africa-is-not-news-and-a-licence-to-lie-is-hollywoods-gift
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/29/niger-approves-american-surveillance-drones
[8] http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/03/the-game-of-drones/
[9] http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2009/07/14-targeted-killings-byman
[10]http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/15453-obama-orders-drone-strikes-killing-of-6-suspected-militants-in-yemen
[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/opinion/obamas-nixonian-precedent.html?_r=0
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/29/senior-talibans-killed-us-drone-pakistan
[15] http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law

 

 

Thanking Monica.

In Praise of Sex Scandals.

What can we say of the economics of the New Democrats? Well, it wasn't too soon after the election Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan met with Bill Clinton and told the President that his election promises of social reform could not be carried out without increasing the deficit, which would lead to higher interest rates that would undermine economic growth. The dinosaur libertarian Greenspan advised the Clinton administration to slash spending in order to convince the bond markets to lower interest rates and growth would ultimately be generated. Surprising Greenspan the President swallowed this theory without a fight. Clinton made the case for austerity in order to achieve greater long-term economic growth. The prescription was a significant cut in public spending coupled with minor tax increases to fill the koffers left ransacked by 12 years of Republican government. It displeased the middle-class he had pledged to cut taxes for and further diminished the standard of living for the American working-class.

Out of a triangulated politics the Clinton administration implemented welfare reform which was much harsher than anything the GOP ever rammed through a complacent Democratic Congress in previous decades. As the boom emerged there was a widespread belief that it would not all come crashing down because of the innovations in computer technology. The guarantee of stability and stupendous rates of growth came with the advances in computer technology, equations and mathematical models could now be used to bring order to a chaotic marketplace. The state was not needed to intervene either. In theory, it would ensure long-term growth and the confidence in the midst of deregulation produced from this led to an orgy of lending. The banks could now throw money at millions of new lenders. High levels of competition and productivity were now within reach of a self-stabilising order. This is what became known as the New Economy.

Alan Greenspan was concerned when he found little evidence for any rise in productivity, yet he did find signs of "irrational exuberance". In 1996 Greenspan argued that the markets might be overvalued and that a dangerous speculative bubble was beginning inflated. The press attacked Greenspan and he buckled to the pressure. He now claimed that the advances in computer technology had been so significant as to ensure rates of productivity that could not be measured in the traditional way. Greenspan told Clinton it was like "discovering a new planet". The high-tech boom itself had come out of huge amounts of public investment over many years which culminated in the dotcom bubble. This was all going on as deregulation opened up the financial sector to run amok. It would all later blow up in the form of subprime mortgages. The financialisation that began in the 1970s and was intensified under Reagan and Clinton led to the economic disaster that we're still living with.

If we want to take the glass to be half-full then we might take the view that the Lewinsky scandal which saved social security from Clinton's prescribed privatisation as Robin Blackburn has noted. It was in the mid 1990s that the widespread attitude was that the social security system required radical reform. The privatisation lobby basked in the popular perception that an aging population would soon make social security unsustainable in its current form. As Clinton had just sold the workless down the river it was expected that the administration could well do the same to the retired and soon to be retired. Clinton had a top secret "Special Issues" coterie - with Larry Summers at the helm - to go over the minute details of the basis for a "bipartisan policy" on social security that would splice individual accounts into the program. Note the emphasis on unity in American politics runs constant, the preference is always for consensus rather than dissensus.

The New Democrats had snuffed the life out of the welfare program that had been established with the New Deal, now it was social security to be asphyxiated. It just needed to be harsh enough to win over the Republicans without appearing to be Draconian in order to keep the support of a fair chunk of the American public. It soon looked like it was going to be triangulation par excellence. So what went wrong? At the time the Republicans and the media were engaged in a moral crusade against Bill Clinton over a variety of accusations regarding his personal, sexual and political conduct. By 1998 the "Special Issues" agenda had developed seriously over the years and Clinton attended a meeting to review the project. This was in July, shortly before he was handed a subpoena and it wouldn't be long before he was confessing to an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Now Clinton could not be seen to be trashing a long-standing institution of American society. Social security reform was put on ice, the reform would have to be reformed quickly in order for it to be saleable.

It was not the time for a radical overhaul of the system as it had been founded during the New Deal. As one member of the "Special Issues" team would later put it "Toward the end of 1998, as the possibility that the President would be impeached came clearly into view, the policy dynamic of the social security debate changed dramatically and it became clear to the White House that this was not the time to take risks on the scale that would be necessary to achieve a deal on an issue as contentious as social security reform." Quickly the plan was reoriented to strengthen social security through a rare recourse to the budget surplus that the austerity had attained, of course a portion would be invested in equities. Clinton came to propose that 62% of the budget surplus be used to build up the social security trust fund. He promised to veto any attempts to divert social security funds to other uses while calling for 15% of the trust fund to be invested in the stock market.

The investment would be overseen by the social security administrators. It had the potential to create a powerful new lever over economic policy, naturally Alan Greenspan became an opponent of investing social security funds on the stock market. Nevertheless the reform was well received among the American public, the pessimism around social security was supplanted for optimism and the GOP had to concede that social security should be prioritised. And as the sex scandal deepened President Clinton fully endorsed the system. It set back the privatisation lobby in the form of right-wing think tanks as well as the corporate wing of the Democratic Party which Clinton had nursed so well. The consensus was now that social security had to be preserved, even George Bush pledged to prioritise it. The service remained untouchable until the recent economic crisis. This is probably the only reason to praise Clinton's promiscuity that had in the past led to so much misery for others. Fucking Monica Lewinsky may be the only worthwhile decision Bill Clinton ever made.

The Politics of a Litterateur.

With the campaign slogan "You'll get more with Gore", Gore Vidal ran for Congress in 1960 in a traditionally Republican district of New York. The planks in the platform including recognition of Mao's China, federal aid for education and progressive taxes. He received more votes than any Democrat in five decades, but still lost. Though Gore Vidal has strong links to the Democratic Party through his family as well as his own affiliation in the early 1970s he chaired the People's Party alongside prominent socialists like Benjamin Spock. The Party campaigned for withdrawal from Vietnam, legalisation of cannabis, a higher minimum wage and the introduction of a maximum wage. Ultimately Vidal opted to support McGovern against Nixon, to avoid splitting the anti-war vote and hopefully end the Vietnam war. It would be the last chance for New Deal liberalism to save itself. He ran for the Senate in 1982 and campaigned to tax Church income, nationalisation of natural resources and the replacement of the current system with a Parliamentary democracy.

In 1988 Gore Vidal presented five proposals to improve the American Republic. The first of which was to limit elections to 8 weeks and secondly to ban any candidate or party from buying time on television, radio and newspapers. In Vidal's America the media ought to provide free time and space for the candidates to be interviewed and debate with one another. No more, no less. The growing decay of political language and the system at large was a great worry of Gore's in his later years. The costs of advertising must be eliminated as a necessary step to the removal of money from the political arena. Thirdly, social security should be factored out of fiscal policy in order to expose the bloated military expenditure to the American people. This is all a part of Vidal's isolationist convictions. He goes further to recommend American withdrawal from NATO and all foreign adventures, as well as an end to military aid to foreign countries (e.g. Israel). The line is populist as the cash can be put to better use at home, for infrastructure and public education Vidal stresses.

The fourth proposal was to legalise the use and sale of all drugs because Prohibition only made the Mafia rich while alcoholism sky-rocketed in the 1920s. Addiction cannot be eliminated through criminalisation. This fits into his own commitment to civil liberties and rights pitched since the 1960s when Vidal first moved to the Democratic Left. He later corresponded with Timothy McVeigh and found that he understood the libertarian reasoning for a rebellion against the government. After all the Clinton regime had the FBI incinerate 80 people at Waco with the broad approval of the liberal Left. Vidal remained a scourge of civil authoritarianism when the Bushites stole the election and launched the country into war. The last proposal was to end the Cold War and initiate the beginning of economic integration between America and Russia, justified by self-preservation in a world increasingly centred around China and Japan. It would seem Vidal was internationalist on economics and isolationist on foreign policy.

The propositions are reformist, even conservative, in tone as the recommendations of are about the preservation of the body politic. The ruling-class and prevailing politics had become a drag on the Republic in his mind. The national security state would inevitably threaten the foundations of the United States. Its rapacious growth would eventually devour every chunk of the mountain of revenues from the American tax-payer. It was in this same presentation that Vidal delved into the details of the 1986 US Budget. He breaks it down for us: out of $794 billion in revenue a total of $294 billion goes to social security while $286 billion goes to defence, $12 billion on foreign arms to client states and $8 billion on energy (e.g. nuclear weapons); $27 billion on benefits for war vets and $142 billion on interest payments for loans used to prop up the national security state. Other federal spending came to $177 billion, partly the size of the deficit. Out of the $500 billion left over after social security around $475 billion is spent on the national security state.

 

 

Out of all the Founding Fathers it is Aaron Burr who is most admired by Gore Vidal, not Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson or even Tom Paine. For Vidal it is the man who was never President but served as Vice President under Jefferson who is most important. He notes that Burr introduced a degree of professionalism to American politics. Later, Aaron Burr challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel before shooting him - a standard maintained by Vice Presidents until Dick Cheney mistook a lawyer for a quail. It's clear that Vidal saw himself as a man of the Jeffersonian revolutionary tradition. He remained concerned that the US was desecrating its republican ideals. The way Vidal portrayed Jefferson in Burr was particularly controversial back in 1973 as it included an account of Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings. The historians of the time argued that a gentleman would have never had sex with a slave and since Thomas Jefferson was the consummate gentleman he would've never had an affair with Sally Hemings.

Obamarama - the Deficit Drama.

The Narcissism of Fine Distinctions.

Every serious commentator on US politics is aware of the fact that if you want to know who is about to win the election you should take a close look at campaign funding. Follow the money and you'll separate the loser from the winner in no time. It is the norm in the US that the President is elected from the campaign that receives the most cash. The campaign to re-elect Obama has raised $86 million in the first quarter and the Republican nominees are still in a state of disarray. The GOP is still split between the rightist wing-nut of Bachmann and the unsellable Mormon 'moderatism' of Romney, neither candidate is a realistic contender and collectively the GOP candidates have raised $35 million. There is still time and we'll see if the Republicans can make any headway in coming months, but my guts see a second term for Obama. The current issue of the debt-ceiling has raised signs of what we might see on the campaign trail as well as from the prospective second term for the Democrats.

As pointed out by Shawn Whitney there is not much difference between Republicans and Democrats on this issue. It is only a minor dispute over the extent to which the rich should contribute to the debt reduction plan. Obama has insisted that there will be trillions of dollars in cuts, no doubt to health-care, welfare and social security without scathing the bloated military budget. The military-industrial complex is untouchable because it functions as corporate welfare, whereas 'handouts' for the poor and elderly is too costly for the state to maintain apparently. Obama has tried to win over the Republicans with a round of spending cuts that amount to $4 trillion, though that much could have been raised had the Bush tax-cuts never been renewed under Obama. The Bush tax-cuts which cost the Treasury trillions of dollars over the last 10 years, at first it benefited many Americans but the number dwindled under the Bushites until only the richest Americans reaped the rewards. That's a real sunset policy!

The coalition government of the UK is running with a ratio of 80:20 in spending cuts to taxes, whereas Republicans found a ratio of 85:15 optimal and then walked out of negotiations after the Democrats only conceded 83:17. The kind of changes needed to make up that 17% would mostly come in the form of closing loopholes in the system. There are Republicans who want 100% spending cuts and no tax increases at all. The stalemate raised the prospect of a forced default on America's debts. Even conservatives have criticised the GOP line on the debt-ceiling as childish and ridiculous because they recognise it is not in the interest of the Republican Party to push for an economic disaster. But it is not the first time that politicians have created fiscal crises in order to initiate a wave of market reforms and austerity measures. This is especially true of the "Starve the Beast" approach of conservative strategists, which is a way of increasing debt to provide a pretext for more cuts to services that assist the poor.

The fact that the Democrats conceded almost the entire plan and it wasn't enough for the Republicans is indicative of the dramatic shift in politics that has occurred in the US over the last 40 years. The Democrats are now what used to be considered moderate Republicans while the Republicans have become even more extreme. In the words of Bill Maher "The Democrats have moved to the Right and the Republicans have moved into a mental hospital." To be even more blunt the American political system is a lot like a plane with two right wings. Noam Chomsky once distinguished between the Republicans and Democrats by noting that the GOP represent the business community in general whilst the Democrats are for Big Business specifically. The White House is looking to gain a 'moderate' platform for 2012, meanwhile the Left and the social democrats can go hang. The Democrats are aware that there is nowhere for the 'moderates' to run and Obama's real problem is how to win over enough of the 'crazies' to prop up a platform crafted for the ultra-rich.