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Sunday, September 30th, 2007
Volume 6, No. 17
5 Articles, 17 Pages
1. Mutiny Shakes US Food Aid Industry
4. Ellsberg Calls For Actions To Prevent War With Iran
1. MUTINY SHAKES US FOOD AID INDUSTRY
BY
ELLEN MASSEY
One of the largest international aid organizations in the world turned the food aid industry on its head recently by declaring that they will turn down 46 million dollars in food subsidies from the U.S. government. The United States budgets 2 billion dollars a year in food aid, which buys U.S. crops to feed populations facing starvation amidst crisis or those that endure chronic hunger.
But the U.S.-based CARE International has forfeited its substantial slice of the food aid pie that is the U.S. “Food for Peace” program, claiming that the way the U.S. government distributes food hurts small poor farmers in the very communities and countries the program is supposed to help.
CARE has been one of the largest suppliers of food aid around the world for the past 50 years so its shift in policy could have a dramatic effect on the food aid industry.
The reasoning behind CARE’s decision is part of a years-long debate that has influenced everything from U.S. trade and domestic legislation to the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization talks.
The objection to the current system is that the donation and sale of U.S.-subsidized crops in developing countries where people regularly go hungry actually weakens local farming. “We are not against emergency food aid for things like drought and famine,” CARE spokeswoman Alina Labrada said last week, but local farmers are “being hurt instead of helped by this mechanism”.
Though the policy to phase out U.S. government subsidies has been in place for more than a year, CARE’s rejection of the status quo has been catapulted into the spotlight as the U.S. Congress debates the Farm Bill, a massive 25-billion-dollar piece of legislation that establishes the funding structures for agricultural research, rural development, government subsidies and food aid policy.
The U.S. food aid program was established in the 1950s and designed to use some of the crop surpluses generated by government subsidies. Therefore, U.S. laws place strict limits on how that money can be used. All of the food the U.S. sends to food crisis areas must be grown in the U.S. and 75 percent of that food must be transported by U.S shipping lines.
Many aid organizations have called attention to the fact that this often means that the food aid doesn’t get to where it’s needed in time to help.
A year-long investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also found that the ballooning costs of logistics and shipping food overseas to where it is needed most have nearly halved the amount of U.S. food that is delivered to the hungry around the world in the past five years.
The U.S. policy implements the practice of monetization, a food aid policy in which the U.S. government buys crops from U.S. farms and ships it to aid organizations working around the world. The aid organizations then sell the U.S.-grown crops to local populations, often at a dramatically reduced cost.
The aid organizations use proceeds from these sales to fund their development and anti-poverty programmes. But several groups, with CARE at the forefront, have pointed out that this policy often has the effect of undermining local farmers and destabilizing the very system that aid organizations are working to strengthen.
However, this is point of view is not universally accepted, and CARE’s public rejection of the current system has created a rift in the aid community.
Last year, CARE, along with Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children and several British, French and Canadian aid groups, signed a statement that called the practice of monetization inefficient and said that such sales divert food from the direct transfers to the people that need it.
The European Union has also been critical of the U.S. food aid program. In addition to their suspicions that the U.S. uses these programs to avoid limits on farm subsidies, in the 1990s European countries all but phased out the practice of monetization and only 10 percent of their budgeted food aid is reserved for crops grown in Europe.
The U.N. World Food Program, the largest distributor of food aid in the world, has rejected the practice of monetization and doesn’t allow its grain to be sold by NGOs.
But a coalition of 15 other aid organizations, called the Alliance for Food Aid, is opposing CARE’s tactics and defends the sale of U.S. produce and use of the proceeds as a way of addressing chronic hunger through development programs.
The organizations, including World Vision and the American Red Cross, defend the effectiveness and influence of the development programs that the current system supports.
Opponents of monetization are not calling for an end to those programs, but CARE is looking to shift direct cash contributions to their aid efforts instead of relying on the indirect fundraising that food donations provide.
The fear for many charities though is that they couldn’t win Congressional support for the food aid funding without the backing of the U.S. farm and shipping industries.
Steve Radelet, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, noted in an article that the problems with the system, and the risks involved in fixing them, need to be weighed against the value of the political support for foreign assistance that this system generates.
The limits of that political support have been tested before. The past two farm bills attempted to shift a portion of the food aid budget from grain to cash donations. Both attempts were voted down.
In this year’s debate, the George W. Bush administration is once again proposing that 25 percent of the food aid be cash, available to buy crops locally for the people who need it.
While the rift between the two sides of the food aid debate remains deep, CARE’s move and the report by the Government Accountability Office may be a sign that changes to the system, and the millions of people it feeds, lie ahead.
(Editor's note: This article completely confuses the issue! If I hadn’t heard this same story reported elsewhere I would have difficulty understanding what this article was reporting! So, to summarize this article:
The US food aid was being given to CARE only on the condition that CARE sold it on the local country’s “free market” They could then use the proceeds to buy food for emergency relief, but meanwhile, in the process, they were complicit in undermining local agriculture (in support of US global capitalist interests - ADM, Cargill and Monsanto) and consequently, just aggravating the risk of famines and deep poverty which they are supposed to be working to alleviate!
In other words, the US motivation behind this food aid was not at all charitable - rather it was corporate greed.)
BY
NOAM CHOMSKY
In Washington a remarkable and ominous campaign is under way to "contain Iran," which turns out to mean "containing Iranian influence," in a confrontation that Washington Post correspondent Robin Wright calls "Cold War II."
The sequel bears close scrutiny as it unfolds under the direction of former Kremlinologists Condoleezza Rice and Robert M Gates, according to Wright. Stalin had imposed an Iron Curtain to bar Western influence; Bush-Rice-Gates are imposing a Green Curtain to bar Iranian influence.
Washington's concerns are understandable. In Iraq, Iranian support is welcomed by much of the majority Shia population. In Afghanistan, President Karzai describes Iran as "a helper and a solution." In Palestine, Iranian-backed Hamas won a free election, eliciting savage punishment of the Palestinian population by the United States and Israel for voting "the wrong way." In Lebanon, most Lebanese see Iranian-backed Hezbollah "as a legitimate force defending their country from Israel," Wright reports. And the Bush administration, without irony, charges that Iran is "meddling" in Iraq, otherwise presumably free from foreign interference.
The ensuing debate is partly technical. Do the serial numbers on the Improvised Explosive Devices really trace back to Iran? If so, does the leadership of Iran know about the IEDs, or only the Iranian Revolutionary Guards? Settling the debate, the White House plans to brand the Revolutionary Guards as a "specially designated global terrorist" force, an unprecedented action against a national military branch, authorising Washington to undertake a wide range of punitive actions.
The sabre-rattling rhetoric about "containing Iran" has escalated to the point where both political parties and practically the whole US Press corps accept it as legitimate and, in fact, honourable, that "all options are on the table," to quote the leading presidential candidates — possibly even nuclear weapons. "All options on the table" means that Washington is threatening war. The UN Charter outlaws "the threat or use of force." The United States, which has chosen to become an outlaw state, disregards international laws and norms. We're allowed to threaten anybody we want — and to attack anybody we want.
Cold War II also entails an arms race. The United States is proposing a $ 20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, while increasing annual military aid to Israel by 30 per cent, to $ 30 billion over 10 years. Egypt is down for a $ 14 billion, 10-year deal. The aim is to counter "what everyone in the region believes is a flexing of muscles by a more aggressive Iran," says an unnamed senior US government official. Iran's "aggression" consists in its being welcomed within the region, and allegedly supporting resistance to US forces in neighbouring Iraq. Unquestionably, Iran's government is reprehensible. The prospect that Iran might develop nuclear weapons is deeply troubling. Though Iran has every right to develop nuclear energy, no one — including the majority of Iranians — wants it to have nuclear weapons. That would add to the much more serious dangers presented by its near neighbours Pakistan, India and Israel, all nuclear-armed with the blessing of the United States.
Iran resists US or Israeli domination of the Middle East but scarcely poses a military threat. Any potential threat to Israel might be overcome if the United States would accept the view of the great majority of its own citizens and of Iranians and permit the Middle East to become a nuclear-weapons free zone, including Iran and Israel, and US forces deployed there. One may also remember that UN Security Council Resolution 687, of 1991, to which Washington appeals when convenient, calls for "establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery."
Washington's feverish new Cold War "containment" policy has spread even to Europe. The United States wants to install a "missile defence system" in the Czech Republic and Poland that is being marketed to Europe as a shield against Iranian missiles. Even if Iran had nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, the chances of its using them to attack Europe are perhaps on a par with the chances of Europe's being hit by an asteroid. In any case, if Iran were to indicate the slightest intention of aiming a missile at Europe or Israel, the country would be vaporised.
Of course Vladimir Putin is deeply upset by the shield proposal. We can imagine how the United States would respond if a Russian anti-missile system were erected in Canada. The Russians have every reason to regard an anti-missile system as part of a first-strike weapon against them. As is well known, such a system could never impede a first strike, but it could conceivably impede a retaliatory strike. On all sides, "missile defense" is therefore understood to be a first-strike weapon, eliminating a deterrent to attack.
Even more obviously, the only military function of such a system with regard to Iran, the declared aim, would be to bar an Iranian deterrent to US or Israel aggression. The shield, then, ratchets the threat of war a few notches higher, in the Middle East and elsewhere, with incalculable consequences, and the potential for a terminal nuclear war. The immediate fear is that by accident or design, Washington's war planners or their Israeli surrogate might decide to escalate their Cold War II into a hot one.
There are many nonmilitary measures to "contain" Iran, including a de-escalation of rhetoric and hysteria all around, and agreeing to negotiations in earnest for the first time — if indeed all options are on the table.
BY
SCOTT RITTER
It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration’s newest military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General Petraeus, maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only salvageable, but actually improving, due to the “surge” of U.S. combat troops into Iraq over the past year. All the president and his collection of GI Joe hand-puppets ask for is more time, more money and more troops.
There is no reason to believe that the compliant war facilitators who comprise the “anti-war” Democratic majority in Congress will do anything other than give the president what he is asking for. No one seems to want to debate, in any meaningful fashion, what is really going on in Iraq.
Why would they? The Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have invested too much political capital into fictionalizing the problem with slogans like “support the troops,” “we’re fighting the enemy there so we don’t have to fight them here,” and my all-time favorite, “leaving Iraq would hand victory to al-Qaida.”
There simply is no incentive to put fact on the table and formulate policy that actually seeks a solution to a properly defined problem. Like the Republicans before them, the Democrats today seek not to govern with the best interests of the people in mind, but rather to game the system in order to consolidate political power. Political sloganeering has so trumped reality that any political backlash that is generated from the so-called “Petraeus Report” will be limited to how the Democrats could better sustain a conflict that kills American troops, since no main-stream Democratic leader has expressed a true “get out of Iraq now” policy.
Nearly 4 1/2 years following President Bush’s ill-fated (and illegal) decision to invade and occupy Iraq, few people in a position to influence policy formulation and implementation in America have actually grasped the horrible truth about what has transpired, and what is transpiring, in Mesopotamia today. As the United States places the finishing touches on Fortress America, the new half-billion-dollar Embassy complex in the heart of the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, and more troops pour into mega-bases throughout Iraq, the reality (and futility) of permanent occupation has yet to sink in. What could be going through the minds of those members of Congress who keep signing blank checks for the president? Is there no oversight of how and why this money is spent? How can someone fund permanent infrastructure one day, then speak of the need to get out of Iraq the next?
The compliant mainstream media, of course, is no help. The war in Iraq has become a major generator of advertising revenue for these corporations, so there is no incentive to actually report the truth, but rather manipulate the fiction. Iraq has become a prestige destination for every aspiring journalist or struggling anchor, determined to get “the big story.” The most recent manifestation of this syndrome is CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who earlier this week travelled to Iraq because she was (in her own words), “Curious about very basic questions regarding living conditions, about how much fear there is in the street, about how the soldiers really are doing.” That the situation in Iraq has been boiled down to these three big, burning issues (living conditions, fear in the streets, and how the troops are really doing), and that CBS is sending their multi-million-dollar investment to investigate, speaks volumes about the truly degenerate state of American journalism today.
The real big three she should be addressing are “Why do Americans keep dying?” “Who is killing them?” and “Why?” Of course, answering these questions would undermine the very fantasy world Couric is being sent to cover, one where Americans are doing good deeds in the name of peace and justice for downtrodden Iraqis. Couric’s jaunt is fraud on a massive scale. Ironically, she herself acknowledged this when she admitted that her up-beat reports from Iraq were reflective of what the US military wanted her to see, and not honest ‘reporting’ on her part.
If Couric and her ilk won’t answer these questions, I will. “Why do Americans keep dying?” Simple: Because we are in Iraq. We don’t belong there. Our presence is derived from our own violation of law, not someone else’s, and as such any effort to sustain our presence is tainted by this same foundation of illegitimacy. In short, Americans will keep dying in Iraq as long as we remain in Iraq. If Katie wanted to really get to the bottom of this story, she could venture out on her own to any one of the villages and towns where Americans have been killed recently. Of course, she would probably end up dead herself, which would defeat the purpose of trying to report the story.
“Who is killing them?” Another easy answer: Iraqis. We are occupying their homeland. We are violating their sovereignty. We are butchering, abusing and torturing their citizens. Our continued presence is an affront to the socio-economic-political fabric that is (or was) Iraqi society. If someone occupied my hometown in the same manner Americans occupy Iraq, I’d be killing them any way I could. And I would be called a hero by my own people, and not a terrorist. The Bush administration, in an effort to deflect public attention away from this reality, has created the fiction of a massive al-Qaida presence in Iraq, working in parallel with a similarly large Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command presence, which apparently is responsible for the majority of anti-American violence and dead U.S. troops.
Rhetoric aside, however, American officials who make these claims have been unable to back them up with hard facts and figures. There is an al-Qaida presence in Iraq. However, the majority of what is known as “al-Qaida in Iraq” is composed of Iraqis, not foreigners. The whole phenomenon is a direct result of the American occupation of Iraq, and would dissipate the moment America left the country. Likewise, the accusation of direct Iranian involvement in anti-American violence is questionable. Iranian political support of Iraqi Shiite groups who violently oppose the American occupation of Iraq is real, but then again we know this: We invited the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to join us in toppling Saddam. Based out of Iran, functioning as a de-facto arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command, SCIRI did as we asked. Why, then, are we shocked when SCIRI maintains ties with the very entity that created and nurtured it? It is Iraqi Shiites who are killing Americans, not Iranians. And they would kill us with or without the support of Iran.
Now we come to the third and perhaps most difficult question: “Why?” In some odd way, Katie Couric’s jaunt to Iraq answers that question: Because Americans truly don’t care. Oh, we care about vague softball issues, such as “conditions in the street,” “fear,” and of course, “how the American troops are really doing,” especially when they are fed to us in 30-second sound bites or three- minute “in-depth” stories. Little feel good segments planted in between commercials, designed not to infringe on our intellectual curiosity for more than 30 minutes so we don’t loose our focus watching the latest “reality” show or made-for-television drama.
The fact is, Couric’s made-for-television news is to what is really happening in Iraq as “CSI: Las Vegas” is to what is really happening on the streets of Sin City. CBS knows that, which is why they are packaging Katie in this fashion. The shame is that for most Americans watching, they think they’re getting the real deal. They are not, but will continue to wallow in their ignorant indifference. Katie will struggle to tell us that our kids keep dying in Iraq to “improve the quality of life” and “reduce the level of fear” on the streets of Baghdad. She solemnly informs us that “our boys and girls” are suffering, but they know it is in support of a just and noble cause. Katie will continue to report the story in Iraq from the perspective of an American political dynamic, not Iraqi reality.
She won’t go visit one of the American mercenary units in Iraq, the private military contractors who challenge the American military for numerical supremacy. She won’t burrow into the never-never land of legal ambiguity that allows these mercenaries to commit murder at will, to treat Iraq (and Iraqis) as second-class citizens in their own nation, and whose continued abuse of Iraq results in a deep and undying hatred for all things American. Katie may catch a movie in a hardened underground theater on one of the Pentagon’s mega-bases, or go shopping in a PX inside the “Green Zone” to get a “feel” of life for our troops, but she won’t venture up north, into Kurdistan, where other secure outposts of foreign occupation sit, out of sight and mind. If Couric would visit the Iraqi Oil Ministry, she might be shocked to witness the legal maneuvering and exploitation carried out by foreign oil companies (including, directly or indirectly, American oil companies).
Working with local Kurdish officials, small oil exploration and drilling camps are sprouting up all over northern Iraq, where they siphon off the wealth of the Iraqi people. Shipped out of Iraq via Turkey and (surprisingly) Iran, using long-established smuggling routes, these illegal ventures are generating billions of dollars in income for oil companies, and because these ventures aren’t supposed to exist, this income goes unreported. You can’t miss these sites. Any review of Google-Earth imagery would show these facilities springing up like mushrooms over the last few years. The U.S. military knows about them, and yet does nothing. Note to Richard Kaplan (Katie Couric’s producer): If you want to investigate this story, I’ll provide you with the geographic coordinates. Drive up and try to talk your way into the security perimeter. Position Katie well for the camera shot and demand answers. Just look out for the Canadian, South African or American mercenaries who are charged by “Big Oil” to keep this dirty little secret “secret.”
Instead of going to Iraq to report on why Americans keep dying, Katie could just stay here, in America. There are any number of corporations whose board rooms she could visit. Or she could smooth talk her way into a number of country clubs, to interview the human face of the “military industrial complex” that President Eisenhower warned us about a half-century ago.
She might take a look at congressional campaign financing, where the profits from these corporations fund the campaigns of the politicians who continue to do nothing about Iraq. Then, and just then, would Katie come close to answering the question of “Why?”
But she won’t. Or should I say, she can’t. CBS is owned by General Electric. GE is working hard to get favorable trading status with any number of foreign trading partners. The U.S. trade representative is working hard on GE’s behalf. Hard-nosed “reporting” by the likes of Couric would not go over well in the bowels of the White House, where instructions to the U.S. trade representative are issued. “I’m Katie Couric,” her broadcast could begin. “Tonight I am declaring independence from corporate control over how I report (i.e., read) the news.” Answering the “why” of Iraq requires confronting the layers of corruption and corporate domination of America on so many levels that even if Katie wanted to, she couldn’t-at least not from her perch as anchor of the CBS Evening News.
In a way, Iraq is a manifestation of all that ails America today. A complete breakdown of fundamental societal checks and balances brought on by greed and hubris. From General Petraeus who will give it, to the mindless corporate-owned minions who populate much of Congress who will receive it, to the entertainment-as-news media which will report on it, and to the American people who will consume it with no foundation upon which to evaluate it, the “Petraeus Report” will have little relevance to what is really going on in Iraq. Once again, Americans will be searching for a solution to a problem they have yet to properly define.
Just ask Katie Couric. Or better yet, watch her.
4. ELLSBERG CALLS FOR ACTIONS TO PREVENT WAR WITH IRAN
BY
MICHAEL YODER
The date Aug. 4, 1964 still haunts Daniel Ellsberg, despite the passage of more than 40 years.
He was a 33-year-old on his first day at the Pentagon as special assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton. It also was the day the North Vietnamese navy allegedly fired 21 torpedoes at U.S. naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Ellsberg was one of 100 people who saw top secret transmissions later in the day saying the attack never happened, yet President Lyndon Johnson used the alleged incident to drive the U.S. into full-scale war in Vietnam.
“I knew Congress was being deceived into a declaration of war and that the public was being totally deceived into a landslide victory for a man who was about to plunge them into a big war,” Ellsberg told a crowd of more than 200 people Thursday evening at the inaugural Ware Seminar on Global Citizenship at Elizabethtown College’s Center for Global Citizenship.
The 76-year-old activist gained notoriety during the Vietnam War when he released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and other newspapers, detailing internal U.S. policy decisions regarding the war and its escalation.
Ellsberg said in the last few weeks he has begun to think a coup has occurred in the presidency of George Bush, which he characterized as a “rogue administration.”
He said that if a new 9/11 terrorist attack happens in the United States, the president would not hesitate to suspend and dismantle the Constitution and that hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners and dissidents could end up in detention camps. “I think we’re in danger - we’re in a crisis,” he said.
Ellsberg pointed to actions taken by Bush that he said violate the law, including endorsing warrantless surveillance and lying to Congress about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. At the same time, he was quick to chastise the Democrats in Congress, saying that by going along with Bush’s war they’ve failed their duty to uphold the Constitution.
He said the Senate resolution passed Wednesday declaring Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization is an invitation for Bush to declare war on Iran.
Ellsberg compared Wednesday’s resolution to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, passed Aug. 7, 1964, that gave Johnson a virtually blank check for combat in North Vietnam. He laid out a scenario of $200 a barrel for oil, the possibility of retaliatory attacks against the U.S. and the president keeping open the “nuclear option” to attack Iran. He said he is asking people in government who have information that could stop such a war before it happens to not do what he did by releasing the Pentagon Papers after the war started. He said they should do what he didn’t do - release the information before a disaster happens. “Don’t wait till the war has started,” Ellsberg told the audience. “Don’t wait till the bombs are falling or thousands more have died.”
Ellsberg said he has been called a traitor numerous times for breaking a “vow of secrecy” when he released the Pentagon Papers. But Ellsberg said he took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution - the same oath all military and public servants are required to take.
“It is not an oath to the president,” Ellsberg said. “And it’s not an oath to keep secrets. And it’s not an oath to the commander in chief, or the Fuhrer or Caesar or to the flag. “It is an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God, against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
BY
DANIEL ELLSBERG
I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state.
If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.
Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? … They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they’re not now they will be after another 9/11.
And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran - an escalation - which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps, mainly for Middle Easterners but not exclusively.
It’s a little hard for me to distinguish the two contingencies; they could come together. Another 9/11 or an Iranian attack in which Iran’s reaction against Israel, against our shipping, against our troops in Iraq above all, possibly in this country, will justify the full panoply of measures that have been prepared now, legitimized, and to some extent written into law. …
This is an unusual gang, even for Republicans. [But] I think that the successors to this regime are not likely to roll back the assault on the Constitution. They will take advantage of it, they will exploit it.
Will Hillary Clinton as president decide to turn off NSA after the last five years of illegal surveillance? Will she deprive her administration of her ability to protect United States citizens from possible terrorism by blinding herself and deafening herself to all that NSA can provide? I don’t think so.
Unless this somehow, by a change in our political climate, of a radical change, unless this gets rolled back in the next year or two before a new administration comes in - and there’s no move to do this at this point - unless that happens I don’t see it happening under the next administration, whether Republican or Democratic.
The Next Coup
Let me simplify this and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9/11. That’s the next coup, that completes the first.
The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution, … what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world - in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.
There have been violations of these principles by many presidents before. Most of the specific things that Bush has done in the way of illegal surveillance and other matters were done under my boss Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against Americans.
I could go through a list going back before this century to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in the Civil War, and before that the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 18th century. I think that none of those presidents were in fact what I would call quite precisely the current administration: domestic enemies of the Constitution. What I swore as a Marine officer and State and Defense Department official-along with every other officer and official and member of Congress-to defend the Constitution against, along with foreign enemies.
I think that none of these presidents with all their violations, which were impeachable had they been found out at the time and in nearly every case their violations were not found out until they were out of office so we didn’t have the exact challenge that we have today.
That was true with the first term of Nixon and certainly of Johnson, Kennedy and others. They were impeachable, they weren’t found out in time, but I think it was not their intention to in the crisis situations that they felt justified their actions, to change our form of government.
It is increasingly clear with each new book and each new leak that comes out, that Richard Cheney and his now chief of staff David Addington have had precisely that in mind since at least the early 70s. Not just since 1992, not since 2001, but have believed in Executive government, single-branch government under an Executive president - elected or not - with unrestrained powers. They did not believe in restraint.
When I say this I’m not saying they are traitors. I don’t think they have in mind allegiance to some foreign power or have a desire to help a foreign power. I believe they have in their own minds a love of this country and what they think is best for this country - but what they think is best is directly and consciously at odds with what the Founders of this country and Constitution thought.
They believe we need a different kind of government now, an Executive government essentially, rule by decree, which is what we’re getting with signing statements. Signing statements are talked about as line-item vetoes which is one [way] of describing them which are unconstitutional in themselves, but in other ways are just saying the president says “I decide what I enforce. I decide what the law is. I legislate.”
It’s [the same] with the military commissions, courts that are under the entire control of the Executive Branch, essentially of the president. A concentration of legislative, judicial, and executive powers in one branch, which is precisely what the Founders meant to avert, and tried to avert and did avert to the best of their ability in the Constitution.
Founders Had It Right
Now I’m appealing to that as a crisis right now not just because it is a break in tradition but because I believe in my heart and from my experience that on this point the Founders had it right.
It’s not just “our way of doing things” - it was a crucial perception on the corruption of power to anybody including Americans. On procedures and institutions that might possibly keep that power under control; because the alternative was what we have just seen, wars like Vietnam, wars like Iraq, wars like the one coming.
That brings me to the second point. This Executive Branch, under specifically Bush and Cheney, despite opposition from most of the rest of the branch, even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war against Iran which is crazy even by imperialist standards, standards in other words which are accepted not only by nearly everyone in the Executive Branch but most of the leaders in Congress. The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our right to control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and many other places:. That is consensual in our establishment. …
But even by those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that quietly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it’s not only aggression and a violation of international law, a supreme international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane in terms of the consequences.
Does that make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn’t, it doesn’t even make it unlikely.
That is because two things come together that with the acceptance for various reasons of the Congress - Democrats and Republicans - and the public and the media, we have freed the White House - the president and the vice president - from virtually any restraint by Congress, courts, media, public, whatever.
And on the other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power are crazy. Not entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.
And the question is what then, what can we do about this? We are heading towards an insane operation. It is not certain. It is likely. … I want to try to be realistic myself here, to encourage us to do what we must do, what is needed to be done with the full recognition of the reality. Nothing is impossible.
What I’m talking about in the way of a police state, in the way of an attack on Iran is not certain. Nothing is certain, actually. However, I think it is probable, more likely than not, that in the next 15, 16 months of this administration we will see an attack on Iran. Probably. Whatever we do.
And … we will not succeed in moving Congress probably, and Congress probably will not stop the president from doing this. And that’s where we’re heading. That’s a very ugly, ugly prospect.
However, I think it’s up to us to work to increase that perhaps small- anyway not large - possibility to avert this within the next 15 months, aside from the effort that we have to make for the rest of our lives.
Restoring the Republic
Getting back the constitutional government and improving it will take a long time. And I think if we don’t get started now, it won’t be started under the next administration.
Getting out of Iraq will take a long time. Averting Iran and averting a further coup in the face of a 9/11, another attack, is for right now, it can’t be put off. It will take a kind of political and moral courage of which we have seen very little…
We have a really unusual concentration here and in this audience, of people who have in fact changed their lives, changed their position, lost their friends to a large extent, risked and experienced being called terrible names, “traitor,” “weak on terrorism” - names that politicians will do anything to avoid being called.
How do we get more people in the government and in the public at large to change their lives now in a crisis in a critical way? How do we get Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, for example. To change their priorities and their performance as Democratic leaders in the House and Senate? What kinds of pressures, what kinds of influences can be brought to bear to get Congress to do their jobs? It isn’t just doing their jobs. Getting them to obey their oaths of office.
I took an oath many times, an oath of office as a Marine lieutenant, as an official in the Defense Department, as an official in the State Department as a Foreign Service officer. A number of times I took an oath of office which is the same oath office taken by every member of Congress and every official in the United States and every officer in the United States armed services.
And that oath is not to a Commander in Chief, which is not mentioned. It is not to a fuehrer. It is not even to obey superior officers. The oath is precisely to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign or domestic.
Now that is an oath I violated every day for years in the Defense Department without realizing it, when I kept my mouth shut when I knew the public was being lied into a war as they were lied into Iraq, as they are being lied into war in Iran.
I knew that I had the documents that proved it, and I did not put it out then. I was not obeying my oath, which I eventually came to do.
I’ve often said that Lt. Ehren Watada - who still faces trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war - is the single officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously his obligation to uphold his oath.
The president is clearly violating that oath, of course. Everybody under him who understands what is going on and there are myriad, are violating their oaths. They can stop doing that. And that’s the standard that I think we should be asking of people.
Congressional Courage
On the Democratic side, on the political side, I think we should be demanding of our Democratic leaders in the House and Senate - and frankly, of the Republicans too - that it is not their highest single absolute priority to be reelected, or to maintain a Democratic majority so that Pelosi can still be Speaker of the House and Reid can be in the Senate, or to increase that majority.
I’m not going to say that for politicians they should ignore that, or that they should do something else entirely, or that they should not worry about that.
Of course that will be and should be a major concern of theirs, but they’re acting like it’s their sole concern. Which is business as usual. “We have a majority, let’s not lose it, let’s keep it. Let’s keep those chairmanships.” Exactly what have those chairmanships done for us to save the Constitution in the last couple of years?
I am shocked by the Republicans today that I read in the Washington Post who yesterday threatened a filibuster if we … get back habeas corpus. The limiting of habeas corpus with the help of the Democrats did not get us back to George the Third, it got us back to before King John 700 years ago in terms of counter-revolution.
We need some way of recalling to recalling to them their obligations; and Ann Wright and Ray McGovern had one way, of sitting in in Conyers’ office and getting arrested. Ray McGovern was pushed out of the Petraeus hearing the other day for saying the simple words “swear him in” when it came to his testimony.
I think we’ve got to somehow get home to them [in Congress] that this is the time for them to uphold the oath, to preserve the Constitution, which is worth struggling for in part because it’s only with the power that the Constitution gives Congress responding to the public, only with that can we protect the world from madmen in power in the White House who intend an attack on Iran.
And the current generation of American generals and others who realize that this will be a catastrophe have not shown themselves willing to uphold their oaths any more than the civilians. They might be people who in their past lives risked their bodies and their lives in Vietnam or elsewhere, like [Colin] Powell, yet would not and will not risk their career or their relation with the president to the slightest degree.
That has to change. And it’s the example of people like those up here who might bring home to our representatives that they as humans and as citizens have the power to do likewise and to find in themselves the courage to protect this country and protect the world.
