By Jeremy Scahill
Despite sustained denials by US officials spanning more than a year, US military Special Operations Forces have been conducting offensive operations inside Pakistan, helping direct US drone strikes and conducting joint operations with Pakistani forces against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in north and south Waziristan and elsewhere in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, according to secret cables released as part of the Wikileaks document dump. According to an October 9, 2009 cable [1] classified by Anne Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan, the operations were "almost certainly [conducted] with the personal consent of [Pakistan's] Chief of Army Staff General Kayani." The operations were coordinated with the US Office of the Defense Representative in Pakistan. A US special operations source told The Nation that the ! US forces described in the cable as "SOC(FWD)-PAK" were "forward operating troops" from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the most elite force within the US military made up of Navy SEALs, Delta Force and Army Rangers.
The cables also confirm aspects of a Nation story from November 2009, The Secret US War in Pakistan [2], which detailed offensive combat operations by JSOC in Pakistan. In response to The Nation story, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell called it [3] "conspiratorial" and explicitly denied that US special operations forces were doing anything other than "training" in Pakistan. More than a month after the October 2009 cable from the US embassy in Pakistan confirming JSOC combat missions, Morrell told reporters: "We have basically, I think, a few dozen forces on the ground in Pakistan who are involved in a train-the-trainer mission. These are Special Operations Forces.&nbs! p; We’ve been very candid about this. They are — they have been for months, if not years now, training Pakistani forces so that they can in turn train other Pakistani military on how to — on certain skills and operational techniques. And that’s the extent of our — our, you know, military boots on the ground in Pakistan." According to the October 2009 cable, Morrell's statement was false.
In one operation in September 2009, four US special operations forces personnel "embedded with the [Pakistani] Frontier Corps (FC)… in the FATA," where the Americans are described as providing "ISR:" intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The support from the US forces, according to the cable, "was highly successful, enabling the FC to execute a precise and effective artillery strike on an enemy location." A month later, according to the cable, the Pakistan Army again "approved deployment of U.S. special operation elements to support Pakistani military operations." To the embassy staff, this was documented in the cable as a "sea change" in Pakistan's military leaders' thinking, saying they had previously been "adamantly opposed [to] letting us embed" US special ops forces with Pakistani forces. According to the cable, "U.S. special operation elements have been in Pakistan for more than a year! , but were largely limited to a training role," adding that the Pakistani units that received training from US special operations forces "appear to have recognized the potential benefits of bringing U.S. SOF personnel into the field with them."
In another operation cited in the cables, the US teams, led by JSOC, were described as providing support to the Pakistani Army's 11th Corp and included "a live downlink of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) full motion video." Whether the drones were used for surveillance or as part of a joint offensive is unclear from the documents. While the US government will not confirm US drone strikes inside the country and Pakistani officials regularly deride the strikes, the issue of the drones was discussed in another cable from August 2008 [4]. That cable describes a meeting between Ambassador Patterson and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. When the issue of US drone strikes came up, according to the cable, Gillani said, "I don't care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then! ignore it."
The ability of US special operations forces to operate in Pakistan is clearly viewed as a major development by the US embassy. "Patient relationship-building with the military is the key factor that has brought us to this point," according to the October 2009 cable. It also notes the potential consequences of the activities leaking: "These deployments are highly politically sensitive because of widely-held concerns among the public about Pakistani sovereignty and opposition to allowing foreign military forces to operate in any fashion on Pakistani soil. Should these developments and/or related matters receive any coverage in the Pakistani or U.S. media, the Pakistani military will likely stop making requests for such assistance."
Such statements might help explain why Ambassador Richard Holbrooke lied to the world when he said [5] bluntly in July 2010: "People think that the US has troops in Pakistan, well, we don't."
A US special operations veteran who worked on Pakistan issues in 2009 reviewed the Wikileaks cables for The Nation. He said he was taken aback that the cable was not classified higher than "SECRET" given that it confirms the active involvement of US soldiers from the highly-secretive, elite Joint Special Operations Command engaging in combat--not just training-- in Pakistan. And offensive combat at that. JSOC operations are compartmentalized and highly classified.
Pentagon spokespeople have repeatedly insisted that the US military's activities in Pakistan are restricted to training operations. Even after the October 2009 cable and multiple JSOC operations in Pakistan, US and Pakistani officials continued to hold official meetings to discuss "potential" joint operations. In January 2010 in Washington DC, US and Pakistani military officials gathered under the umbrella of the "U.S.-Pakistan Land Forces Military Consultative Committee." According to notes from the meeting, they discussed US military operations in Pakistan aiming to "enhance both U.S. and Pakistan Army COIN [counterinsurgency] capabilities" and "potential US COIN Center/Pakistan Army interactions." Among the participants were representatives of the Special Operations Command, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs--Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell, the Office of Defense Representative--Pakistan and a Pakistan delegation led ! by Brigadier General Muhammad Azam Agha, Pakistan's Director of Military Training.
A special operations veteran and a former CIA operative with direct experience in Pakistan have told The Nation that JSOC has long engaged in combat in Pakistan which raises a question: How in-the-loop is the US embassy about the activities of JSOC in Pakistan? Just because Ambassador Anne Patterson approves a cable saying that US special ops forces have only done two operations with Pakistani forces and plays this up as a major league development doesn't make it true. JSOC has conducted operations across the globe without the direct knowledge of the US ambassador. In 2006, the US military and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. JSOC has struck multiple times inside Pakistan over the years regardless of what Ambassador Patterson's cables may say.
In 2006, 12 "tactical action operatives" from Blackwater were recruited for a secret JSOC raid inside Pakistan, targeting an al Qaeda facility. The operation was code-named "Vibrant Fury [6]." Which raises another issue: the activities described in the October 2009 cable very closely align with what a US military intelligence source, a US special forces source and a former Blackwater executive told [2] The Nation in November 2009, namely that JSOC was running an operation in Pakistan where "members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, 'snatch ! and grabs' of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan… The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes." The arrangement, which involved a web of subcontractors, allowed the Pakistani Frontier Corps--the force cited in the cable--to work with JSOC operators while simultaneously denying that Americans were involved. From The Nation article, "The Secret US War in Pakistan [2]," in November 2009:
A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military intelligence source's claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert operations force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on condition of anonymity.
[…]
According to the executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral's main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other countries.
[…]
Blackwater operatives also integrate with Kestral's forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry's paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as "frontier scouts"). The Blackwater personnel are technically advisers, but the former executive said that the line often gets blurred in the field. Blackwater "is providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral's folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they're having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they're executing the job," he said. "You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas." He said that when Blackwater personnel are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations against suspected terrorists. "You've ! got BW guys that are assisting... and they're all going to want to go on the jobs--so they're going to go with them," he said. "So, the things that you're seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that--in some of those cases, you're going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house." Blackwater, he said, is paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. "That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, 'Hey, no, we don't have any Westerners doing this. It's all local and our people are doing it.' But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work."
The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater works with the Frontier Corps, saying, "There's no real oversight. It's not really on people's radar screen."
***
In November 2009, Capt. John Kirby, the spokesperson for Adm. Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Nation, "We do not discuss current operations one way or the other, regardless of their nature." A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. Captain Kirby told The Nation if it published the story it would "be on thin ice." The US embassy and Pakistan's interior Minister Rehman Malik both denied Blackwater was operating in Pakistan.
In January 2010, on a visit to Pakistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, appeared to contradict that line, telling a Pakistani TV station, "They [Blackwater and another private security firm, DynCorp] are operating as individual companies here in Pakistan," according to a DoD transcript [7] of the interview. As Gates's comments began to make huge news in Pakistan, US defense officials tried to retract his statement. As the Wall Street Journal reported [8], "Defense officials tried to clarify the comment… telling reporters that Mr. Gates had been speaking about contractor oversight more generally and that the Pentagon didn't employ [Blackwater] in Pakistan." The next day, Pakistan's sen! ior minister for the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Bashir Bilour, said that Blackwater was operating in Pakistan's frontier areas. Bilour told Pakistan's Express News TV that Blackwater's activities were taking place with the "consent and permission" of the Pakistani government, saying he had discussed the issue with officials at the US Consulate in Peshawar, who told him that Blackwater was training Pakistani forces.
Since The Nation story originally ran, Blackwater has continued to work [9] under the Obama administration. In June, the company won a $100 million global contract with the CIA and continues to operate in Afghanistan where it protects senior US officials and trains Afghan forces. Earlier this year, Blackwater's owner Erik Prince put the company up for sale and moved to the Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Whether Blackwater or former Blackwater operatives continue to work in Pakistan is not known. What is clear is that there is great reason to believe that the October 2009 cable from Ambassador Anne Patterson describing US special operations forces activities in Pakistan represents only a tiny glimpse into one of the darkest corners of current US policy in Pakistan.
Like this blog post? Read all Na! tion blogs on the Nation's free iPhone App, NationNow. [10]
[10]
Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/blog/156765/not-so-secret-anymore-us-war-pakistan
Links:
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/229065
[2] http://www.thenation.com/article/secret-us-war-pakistan
[3] http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4520
[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/167125
[5] http://www.commondreams.org/headline! /2010/02/05-9
[6] http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/mercenaries-cia-expanded-role- contractors-legitimate/story?id=9302651'
[7] http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid= 4542
[8] http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB10001424052748704509704575018334096246888.html
[9] http://www.thenation.com/blog/36756/blackwaters-new-sugar-daddy-obam
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
FBI Delivers Subpoenas to More Anti-War, Solidarity Activists
The FBI has informed a lawyer from the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) that at least three subpoenas to appear before a Grand Jury have been delivered in the Chicago area.
Attorney Jim Fennerty confirmed that FBI agent Robert Parker informed him just before 1:00 pm today that the subpoenas were being delivered at that moment.
This is a continuation of the assault on the anti-war movement that began on September 24th. This case began with 14 subpoenas delivered to anti-war, labor and solidarity activists in coordinated raids that swept the Midwest, involving scores of federal agents. “The FBI is continuing their campaign to intimidate the movement,” stated Joe Iosbaker of the national Committee to Stop FBI Repression. Iosbaker was one of those raided and subpoenaed in September.
Fennerty is one of the lead NLG attorneys from the legal team for the activists. According to Fennerty, “The new subpoenas are summoning people for grand jury dates. At least one of the three has been told to appear before the grand jury Tuesday, January 25th, in the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago.”
Three of the original 14 are awaiting new grand jury court dates as well. Iosbaker explained, “If the three women who have been called back – Sara Martin, Tracy Molm and Anh Pham - refuse to take part in the fishing expedition carried on by the U.S. Attorney, they can expect to be cited for contempt and jailed for the life of the grand jury.”
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression urges supporters to contact U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and condemn the use of the grand jury to repress the anti-war and solidarity movements. Call Patrick J. Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300.
Attorney Jim Fennerty confirmed that FBI agent Robert Parker informed him just before 1:00 pm today that the subpoenas were being delivered at that moment.
This is a continuation of the assault on the anti-war movement that began on September 24th. This case began with 14 subpoenas delivered to anti-war, labor and solidarity activists in coordinated raids that swept the Midwest, involving scores of federal agents. “The FBI is continuing their campaign to intimidate the movement,” stated Joe Iosbaker of the national Committee to Stop FBI Repression. Iosbaker was one of those raided and subpoenaed in September.
Fennerty is one of the lead NLG attorneys from the legal team for the activists. According to Fennerty, “The new subpoenas are summoning people for grand jury dates. At least one of the three has been told to appear before the grand jury Tuesday, January 25th, in the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago.”
Three of the original 14 are awaiting new grand jury court dates as well. Iosbaker explained, “If the three women who have been called back – Sara Martin, Tracy Molm and Anh Pham - refuse to take part in the fishing expedition carried on by the U.S. Attorney, they can expect to be cited for contempt and jailed for the life of the grand jury.”
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression urges supporters to contact U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and condemn the use of the grand jury to repress the anti-war and solidarity movements. Call Patrick J. Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Obama and GOPers Worked Together to Kill Bush Torture Probe
By David Corn
In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.
The previous month, a Spanish human rights group called the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners had requested that Spain's National Court indict six former Bush officials for, as the cable describes it, "creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture." The six were former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon's former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel. The human rights group contended that Spain had a duty to open an investigation under the nation's "universal jurisdiction" law, which permits its legal system to prosecute overseas human rights crimes involving Spanish citizens and residents. Five Guantanamo detainees, the group maintained, fit that criteria.
Soon after the request was made, the US embassy in Madrid began tracking the matter. On April 1, embassy officials spoke with chief prosecutor Javier Zaragoza, who indicated that he was not pleased to have been handed this case, but he believed that the complaint appeared to be well-documented and he'd have to pursue it. Around that time, the acting deputy chief of the US embassy talked to the chief of staff for Spain's foreign minister and a senior official in the Spanish Ministry of Justice to convey, as the cable says, "that this was a very serious matter for the USG." The two Spaniards "expressed their concern at the case but stressed the independence of the Spanish judiciary."
Two weeks later, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and the embassy's charge d'affaires "raised the issue" with another official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The next day, Zaragoza informed the US embassy that the complaint might not be legally sound. He noted he would ask Cándido Conde-Pumpido, Spain's attorney general, to review whether Spain had jurisdiction.
On April 15, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who'd recently been chairman of the Republican Party, and the US embassy's charge d'affaires met with the acting Spanish foreign minister, Angel Lossada. The Americans, according to this cable, "underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the US and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship" between Spain and the United States. Here was a former head of the GOP and a representative of a new Democratic administration (headed by a president who had decried the Bush-Cheney administration's use of torture) jointly applying pressure on Spain to kill the investigation of the former Bush officials. Lossada replied that the independence of the Spanish judiciary had to be respected, but he added that the government would send a message to the attorney general that it did not favor prosecuting this case.
The next day, April 16, 2009, Attorney General Conde-Pumpido publicly declared that he would not support the criminal complaint, calling it "fraudulent" and political. If the Bush officials had acted criminally, he said, then a case should be filed in the United States. On April 17, the prosecutors of the National Court filed a report asking that complaint be discontinued. In the April 17 cable, the American embassy in Madrid claimed some credit for Conde-Pumpido's opposition, noting that "Conde-Pumpido's public announcement follows outreach to [Government of Spain] officials to raise USG deep concerns on the implications of this case."
Still, this did not end the matter. It would still be up to investigating Judge Baltasar Garzón—a world-renowned jurist who had initiated previous prosecutions of war crimes and had publicly said that former President George W. Bush ought to be tried for war crimes—to decide whether to pursue the case against the six former Bush officials. That June—coincidentally or not—the Spanish Parliament passed legislation narrowing the use of "universal jurisdiction." Still, in September 2009, Judge Garzón pushed ahead with the case.
The case eventually came to be overseen by another judge who last spring asked the parties behind the complaint to explain why the investigation should continue. Several human rights groups filed a brief urging this judge to keep the case alive, citing the Obama administration's failure to prosecute the Bush officials. Since then, there's been no action. The Obama administration essentially got what it wanted. The case of the Bush Six went away.
Back when it seemed that this case could become a major international issue, during an April 14, 2009, White House briefing, I asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if the Obama administration would cooperate with any request from the Spaniards for information and documents related to the Bush Six. He said, "I don't want to get involved in hypotheticals." What he didn't disclose was that the Obama administration, working with Republicans, was actively pressuring the Spaniards to drop the investigation. Those efforts apparently paid off, and, as this WikiLeaks-released cable shows, Gonzales, Haynes, Feith, Bybee, Addington, and Yoo owed Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thank-you notes.
David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief.
In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.
The previous month, a Spanish human rights group called the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners had requested that Spain's National Court indict six former Bush officials for, as the cable describes it, "creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture." The six were former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon's former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel. The human rights group contended that Spain had a duty to open an investigation under the nation's "universal jurisdiction" law, which permits its legal system to prosecute overseas human rights crimes involving Spanish citizens and residents. Five Guantanamo detainees, the group maintained, fit that criteria.
Soon after the request was made, the US embassy in Madrid began tracking the matter. On April 1, embassy officials spoke with chief prosecutor Javier Zaragoza, who indicated that he was not pleased to have been handed this case, but he believed that the complaint appeared to be well-documented and he'd have to pursue it. Around that time, the acting deputy chief of the US embassy talked to the chief of staff for Spain's foreign minister and a senior official in the Spanish Ministry of Justice to convey, as the cable says, "that this was a very serious matter for the USG." The two Spaniards "expressed their concern at the case but stressed the independence of the Spanish judiciary."
Two weeks later, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and the embassy's charge d'affaires "raised the issue" with another official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The next day, Zaragoza informed the US embassy that the complaint might not be legally sound. He noted he would ask Cándido Conde-Pumpido, Spain's attorney general, to review whether Spain had jurisdiction.
On April 15, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who'd recently been chairman of the Republican Party, and the US embassy's charge d'affaires met with the acting Spanish foreign minister, Angel Lossada. The Americans, according to this cable, "underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the US and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship" between Spain and the United States. Here was a former head of the GOP and a representative of a new Democratic administration (headed by a president who had decried the Bush-Cheney administration's use of torture) jointly applying pressure on Spain to kill the investigation of the former Bush officials. Lossada replied that the independence of the Spanish judiciary had to be respected, but he added that the government would send a message to the attorney general that it did not favor prosecuting this case.
The next day, April 16, 2009, Attorney General Conde-Pumpido publicly declared that he would not support the criminal complaint, calling it "fraudulent" and political. If the Bush officials had acted criminally, he said, then a case should be filed in the United States. On April 17, the prosecutors of the National Court filed a report asking that complaint be discontinued. In the April 17 cable, the American embassy in Madrid claimed some credit for Conde-Pumpido's opposition, noting that "Conde-Pumpido's public announcement follows outreach to [Government of Spain] officials to raise USG deep concerns on the implications of this case."
Still, this did not end the matter. It would still be up to investigating Judge Baltasar Garzón—a world-renowned jurist who had initiated previous prosecutions of war crimes and had publicly said that former President George W. Bush ought to be tried for war crimes—to decide whether to pursue the case against the six former Bush officials. That June—coincidentally or not—the Spanish Parliament passed legislation narrowing the use of "universal jurisdiction." Still, in September 2009, Judge Garzón pushed ahead with the case.
The case eventually came to be overseen by another judge who last spring asked the parties behind the complaint to explain why the investigation should continue. Several human rights groups filed a brief urging this judge to keep the case alive, citing the Obama administration's failure to prosecute the Bush officials. Since then, there's been no action. The Obama administration essentially got what it wanted. The case of the Bush Six went away.
Back when it seemed that this case could become a major international issue, during an April 14, 2009, White House briefing, I asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if the Obama administration would cooperate with any request from the Spaniards for information and documents related to the Bush Six. He said, "I don't want to get involved in hypotheticals." What he didn't disclose was that the Obama administration, working with Republicans, was actively pressuring the Spaniards to drop the investigation. Those efforts apparently paid off, and, as this WikiLeaks-released cable shows, Gonzales, Haynes, Feith, Bybee, Addington, and Yoo owed Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thank-you notes.
David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Canadian PM's ex-aide: Assassinate Assange
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be assassinated, a former adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Wednesday, highlighting escalating anger in the wake of a major leak of US documents.
"I think Assange should be assassinated, actually," Tom Flanagan said, speaking on Canadian television station CBC. "I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something."
Flanagan did not retract his remarks when asked about them later and added: "I wouldn't feel unhappy if Assange does disappear."
Meanwhile, senior US Republican Party member Mike Huckabee urged the execution of the person who leaked the hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks.
"Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty," Huckabee was quoted as saying by The Guardian. According to the Politico website, he said: "They've put American lives at risk. They put relationships that will take decades to rebuild at risk."
On Tuesday, Interpol in Europe placed WikiLeaks founder Assange on its most-wanted list Tafter Sweden issued an arrest warrant against him as part of a drawn-out rape probe – involving allegations Assange has denied. The Interpol alert is likely to make international travel more difficult for Assange, whose whereabouts are publicly unknown.
Meanwhile the US officials pondered possible criminal prosecutions against Assange. There have been suggestions that Assange or others involved in the leaks could be prosecuted under the US Espionage Act.
"I think Assange should be assassinated, actually," Tom Flanagan said, speaking on Canadian television station CBC. "I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something."
Flanagan did not retract his remarks when asked about them later and added: "I wouldn't feel unhappy if Assange does disappear."
Meanwhile, senior US Republican Party member Mike Huckabee urged the execution of the person who leaked the hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks.
"Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty," Huckabee was quoted as saying by The Guardian. According to the Politico website, he said: "They've put American lives at risk. They put relationships that will take decades to rebuild at risk."
On Tuesday, Interpol in Europe placed WikiLeaks founder Assange on its most-wanted list Tafter Sweden issued an arrest warrant against him as part of a drawn-out rape probe – involving allegations Assange has denied. The Interpol alert is likely to make international travel more difficult for Assange, whose whereabouts are publicly unknown.
Meanwhile the US officials pondered possible criminal prosecutions against Assange. There have been suggestions that Assange or others involved in the leaks could be prosecuted under the US Espionage Act.
Monday, November 29, 2010
The Roberts Court’s Free Speech Problem
David Cole
On January 21, in its first decision of this term, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court’s five-member conservative majority announced that the First Amendment bars Congress from imposing even mild constraints on the ways corporations can employ their vast financial resources to drown out the voices of ordinary people in federal election campaigns. On June 21, in one of its last decisions of the term, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the same majority, this time joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, ruled that the First Amendment permits Congress to imprison human rights activists for up to fifteen years merely for advising militant organizations on ways to reject violence and pursue their disputes through lawful means. The two decisions purported to apply the same First Amendment standard, but in fact the Court applied that standard in radically different ways. In the Roberts Court’s world, corporations’ freedom to spend unlimited sums of money apparently deserves substantially greater protection than human rights advocates’ freedom to speak.
Ronald Dworkin has cogently identified the errors in the Court’s legal reasoning in Citizens United, a decision President Obama himself has criticized. But you won’t see the President condemning the decision in Humanitarian Law Project, the first Supreme Court case to pit free speech rights against national security since the September 11 attacks. At issue was a federal law banning “material support” to “foreign terrorist organizations” even when the “support” consists only of speech advocating peace and human rights. The lower courts had repeatedly declared the provisions that prohibit speech unconstitutional, but the Obama administration—represented by Elena Kagan, the Solicitor General and now Supreme Court nominee—appealed to the Supreme Court. (I argued the case for the Humanitarian Law Project, an organization that works to promote human rights and peace in conflict-ridden regions.)
The material-support law, enacted as part of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act, gives the Secretary of State virtually unchecked authority to place organizations on a list of “foreign terrorist organizations.” The list includes, among others, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party of Turkey. It is a crime to provide “material support” to listed groups, not only in the form of money or weapons, but also in the form of speech; the law specifically prohibits anyone from providing them with “expert advice,” “training,” and “services.” According to the government the law prohibits even speech that advocates only lawful, nonviolent activity, including speech designed to discourage violence by encouraging lawful alternatives.
Under this law, when President Jimmy Carter monitored the June 2009 elections in Lebanon, and met with all of the parties to advise them on fair election practices, he could have been prosecuted for providing “material support,” in the form of “expert advice” to a designated group, because he advised Hezbollah. It means that when the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post published op-eds by Hamas leaders in recent years, they were engaging in the crime of providing “material support” to a designated terrorist group, because doing so provided Hamas a “service.” And it means that my clients, a retired judge and a human rights group, cannot continue to work for peace and human rights on behalf of the Kurds in Turkey, as they had been doing before the law took effect, without risking long prison terms.
In the past, the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protected the right to advocate even criminal activity, including overthrow of the government, so long as one’s advocacy was not intended or likely to produce an imminent crime. In the Humanitarian Law Project case, however, the Court ruled—for the first time in its history—that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activity can be subject to criminal penalty, even where the speakers’ intent is to discourage resort to violence.
The Court’s decision is all the more disturbing when contrasted with Citizens United. The campaign finance law that the Court struck down did not prohibit speech, but merely required corporations to use segregated funds to engage in political campaign speech. The material-support law, by contrast, criminalized speech outright—consulting with, advising, or speaking on behalf of, disfavored groups. The Court treated both as laws that restrict speech based on its content, which can be sustained only if they are narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. Stanford Law Professor Gerald Gunther once described this speech-protective standard as “strict in theory, but fatal in fact,” because so few laws have ever survived it.
In both cases, there was no dispute that the government had a compelling goal; the question was whether the means chosen were necessary. Thus, in Humanitarian Law Project the Court asked whether barring peaceful communication with listed groups intended only to further nonviolent ends was necessary to protect our national security. In Citizens United, the question was whether requiring corporations to use segregated funds for campaign spending was necessary to guard against corruption of the political process.
In Citizens United, the Court imposed a heavy burden of justification on the government, and required solid evidentiary support for all justifications that the government offered. For example, the Court rejected the government’s argument that unrestricted corporate expenditures could lead to corruption of politicians because it deemed it unsupported by evidence of such corruption. By contrast, in Humanitarian Law Project, the Court upheld the material-support law based on justifications that were unsupported by evidence, and in some instances were not even advanced by the government. The Court reasoned that even if speech did not directly lead to violence, it might “legitimate” the group, thereby interfering with US foreign policy. And Chief Justice Roberts speculated that advising an organization on how to file human rights complaints with the United Nations might help the group use the law to “threaten, manipulate, and disrupt,” and that helping a group pursue peace might give it cover to prepare for its next attack.
The Court demanded no evidence that any of these hypothetical dangers had ever come to pass. Instead, the Court explained that, because the material-support statute’s goals were “preventive,” no evidentiary support was required. But of course, the campaign finance law was equally preventive, as it sought to forestall corruption and distortion of the political process. Indeed, virtually all laws restricting speech are “preventive,” inasmuch as they seek to avoid future harm.
Moreover, in permitting the government to suppress speech on the ground that it might make people think better of designated groups, the Court endorsed a “viewpoint-based” rationale directly antithetical to the First Amendment. The Court has reserved its most skeptical review for viewpoint-based laws which prohibit speech on one side of a particular issue, but not the other. In fact, until the current decision no viewpoint-based law had ever survived Supreme Court review. The government’s interest in barring speech because it might “legitimate” an organization is, by definition, “viewpoint-based”: It prohibits speech because it sends a message—that a group is “legitimate”—of which the government disapproves. Yet Chief Justice Roberts never even addressed this critique.
Roberts stressed that the Court’s decision addressed only speech “coordinated” with foreign organizations engaged in terrorism, not independent advocacy or speech coordinated with domestic groups. By “coordinated,” the Court seemed to mean speech that involves some kind of direct contact with the group in question. But coordinated speech is just as protected as independent speech; the right to speak necessarily implies the right to speak with and to others. Roberts never explained why, in an increasingly interconnected world, an American’s right to speak with a group should vary if the group is domestic or foreign. An American writing for the Guardian is no less protected from US criminal prosecution for his speech than one writing for the New York Times. And the Court has repeatedly upheld the right of US citizens to speak and associate with the Communist Party as long as they intended to further only lawful ends—even though Congress formally found that the Communist Party was an international conspiracy that used terrorism and other violent means to seek the overthrow of the United States by force and violence.
In short, while the Court ostensibly applied the same stringent standard of review in both Citizens United and Humanitarian Law Project, in the latter case it accepted arguments that would never have survived the scrutiny employed in Citizens United. Once the government invoked national security and the war on terror, the Court simply deferred to rank speculation, rather than requiring the government to meet the heavy burden of hard evidence and narrow tailoring that speech prohibitions based on content have heretofore required. History shows that it is in moments of great fear that governments are most likely to target speech and association. Such overreaching not only compromises the fundamental freedoms that undergird our democracy, but is likely to backfire, by targeting innocents and breeding resentment. When the Court allows unsupported speculation about “terrorism” and disapproval of a speaker’s viewpoint to justify making advocacy of human rights a crime, the First Amendment as we know it is in serious jeopardy.
On January 21, in its first decision of this term, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court’s five-member conservative majority announced that the First Amendment bars Congress from imposing even mild constraints on the ways corporations can employ their vast financial resources to drown out the voices of ordinary people in federal election campaigns. On June 21, in one of its last decisions of the term, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the same majority, this time joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, ruled that the First Amendment permits Congress to imprison human rights activists for up to fifteen years merely for advising militant organizations on ways to reject violence and pursue their disputes through lawful means. The two decisions purported to apply the same First Amendment standard, but in fact the Court applied that standard in radically different ways. In the Roberts Court’s world, corporations’ freedom to spend unlimited sums of money apparently deserves substantially greater protection than human rights advocates’ freedom to speak.
Ronald Dworkin has cogently identified the errors in the Court’s legal reasoning in Citizens United, a decision President Obama himself has criticized. But you won’t see the President condemning the decision in Humanitarian Law Project, the first Supreme Court case to pit free speech rights against national security since the September 11 attacks. At issue was a federal law banning “material support” to “foreign terrorist organizations” even when the “support” consists only of speech advocating peace and human rights. The lower courts had repeatedly declared the provisions that prohibit speech unconstitutional, but the Obama administration—represented by Elena Kagan, the Solicitor General and now Supreme Court nominee—appealed to the Supreme Court. (I argued the case for the Humanitarian Law Project, an organization that works to promote human rights and peace in conflict-ridden regions.)
The material-support law, enacted as part of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act, gives the Secretary of State virtually unchecked authority to place organizations on a list of “foreign terrorist organizations.” The list includes, among others, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party of Turkey. It is a crime to provide “material support” to listed groups, not only in the form of money or weapons, but also in the form of speech; the law specifically prohibits anyone from providing them with “expert advice,” “training,” and “services.” According to the government the law prohibits even speech that advocates only lawful, nonviolent activity, including speech designed to discourage violence by encouraging lawful alternatives.
Under this law, when President Jimmy Carter monitored the June 2009 elections in Lebanon, and met with all of the parties to advise them on fair election practices, he could have been prosecuted for providing “material support,” in the form of “expert advice” to a designated group, because he advised Hezbollah. It means that when the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post published op-eds by Hamas leaders in recent years, they were engaging in the crime of providing “material support” to a designated terrorist group, because doing so provided Hamas a “service.” And it means that my clients, a retired judge and a human rights group, cannot continue to work for peace and human rights on behalf of the Kurds in Turkey, as they had been doing before the law took effect, without risking long prison terms.
In the past, the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protected the right to advocate even criminal activity, including overthrow of the government, so long as one’s advocacy was not intended or likely to produce an imminent crime. In the Humanitarian Law Project case, however, the Court ruled—for the first time in its history—that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activity can be subject to criminal penalty, even where the speakers’ intent is to discourage resort to violence.
The Court’s decision is all the more disturbing when contrasted with Citizens United. The campaign finance law that the Court struck down did not prohibit speech, but merely required corporations to use segregated funds to engage in political campaign speech. The material-support law, by contrast, criminalized speech outright—consulting with, advising, or speaking on behalf of, disfavored groups. The Court treated both as laws that restrict speech based on its content, which can be sustained only if they are narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. Stanford Law Professor Gerald Gunther once described this speech-protective standard as “strict in theory, but fatal in fact,” because so few laws have ever survived it.
In both cases, there was no dispute that the government had a compelling goal; the question was whether the means chosen were necessary. Thus, in Humanitarian Law Project the Court asked whether barring peaceful communication with listed groups intended only to further nonviolent ends was necessary to protect our national security. In Citizens United, the question was whether requiring corporations to use segregated funds for campaign spending was necessary to guard against corruption of the political process.
In Citizens United, the Court imposed a heavy burden of justification on the government, and required solid evidentiary support for all justifications that the government offered. For example, the Court rejected the government’s argument that unrestricted corporate expenditures could lead to corruption of politicians because it deemed it unsupported by evidence of such corruption. By contrast, in Humanitarian Law Project, the Court upheld the material-support law based on justifications that were unsupported by evidence, and in some instances were not even advanced by the government. The Court reasoned that even if speech did not directly lead to violence, it might “legitimate” the group, thereby interfering with US foreign policy. And Chief Justice Roberts speculated that advising an organization on how to file human rights complaints with the United Nations might help the group use the law to “threaten, manipulate, and disrupt,” and that helping a group pursue peace might give it cover to prepare for its next attack.
The Court demanded no evidence that any of these hypothetical dangers had ever come to pass. Instead, the Court explained that, because the material-support statute’s goals were “preventive,” no evidentiary support was required. But of course, the campaign finance law was equally preventive, as it sought to forestall corruption and distortion of the political process. Indeed, virtually all laws restricting speech are “preventive,” inasmuch as they seek to avoid future harm.
Moreover, in permitting the government to suppress speech on the ground that it might make people think better of designated groups, the Court endorsed a “viewpoint-based” rationale directly antithetical to the First Amendment. The Court has reserved its most skeptical review for viewpoint-based laws which prohibit speech on one side of a particular issue, but not the other. In fact, until the current decision no viewpoint-based law had ever survived Supreme Court review. The government’s interest in barring speech because it might “legitimate” an organization is, by definition, “viewpoint-based”: It prohibits speech because it sends a message—that a group is “legitimate”—of which the government disapproves. Yet Chief Justice Roberts never even addressed this critique.
Roberts stressed that the Court’s decision addressed only speech “coordinated” with foreign organizations engaged in terrorism, not independent advocacy or speech coordinated with domestic groups. By “coordinated,” the Court seemed to mean speech that involves some kind of direct contact with the group in question. But coordinated speech is just as protected as independent speech; the right to speak necessarily implies the right to speak with and to others. Roberts never explained why, in an increasingly interconnected world, an American’s right to speak with a group should vary if the group is domestic or foreign. An American writing for the Guardian is no less protected from US criminal prosecution for his speech than one writing for the New York Times. And the Court has repeatedly upheld the right of US citizens to speak and associate with the Communist Party as long as they intended to further only lawful ends—even though Congress formally found that the Communist Party was an international conspiracy that used terrorism and other violent means to seek the overthrow of the United States by force and violence.
In short, while the Court ostensibly applied the same stringent standard of review in both Citizens United and Humanitarian Law Project, in the latter case it accepted arguments that would never have survived the scrutiny employed in Citizens United. Once the government invoked national security and the war on terror, the Court simply deferred to rank speculation, rather than requiring the government to meet the heavy burden of hard evidence and narrow tailoring that speech prohibitions based on content have heretofore required. History shows that it is in moments of great fear that governments are most likely to target speech and association. Such overreaching not only compromises the fundamental freedoms that undergird our democracy, but is likely to backfire, by targeting innocents and breeding resentment. When the Court allows unsupported speculation about “terrorism” and disapproval of a speaker’s viewpoint to justify making advocacy of human rights a crime, the First Amendment as we know it is in serious jeopardy.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Chalmers Johnson Dies at 79; Criticized U.S. Role in World
By DENNIS HEVESI
Chalmers Johnson, an Asian studies scholar who stirred controversy with books contending that the United States was trying to create a global empire and was paying a stiff price for it, died Saturday at his home in Cardiff-by-the Sea, Calif. He was 79.
The cause was complications of rheumatoid arthritis, his wife, Sheila, said.
Dr. Johnson, who considered himself a longtime cold warrior, was a consultant to the Central Intelligence Agency for many years. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union he became concerned that the United States was increasingly using its military presence to gain power over the global economy.
In “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” (Metropolitan Books, 2000), Dr. Johnson wondered why America’s military spending continued to rise after the cold war had ended. He concluded that through a network of more than 700 strategic bases around the world, the United States was committed to creating global hegemony. And he worried about the consequences for American democracy.
It was a theme he expanded upon in three subsequent books, “The Sorrows of Empire” (2004), “Nemesis” (2006) and “Dismantling the Empire” (2010).
Summarizing the series in “Dismantling the Empire,” Dr. Johnson said that “blowback” means more than a negative, sometimes violent reaction to United States policy. “It refers to retaliation for the numerous illegal operations we have carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public,” he wrote.
“This means that when the retaliation comes, as it did so spectacularly on Sept. 11, 2001, the American public is unable to put the events in context. So they tend to support acts intended to lash out against the perpetrators, thereby most commonly preparing the ground for yet another cycle of blowback.”
To maintain its empire, he said, the United States “will inevitably undercut domestic democracy.”
In a review of “The Sorrows of Empire” in The New York Times, Ronald Asmus, a deputy assistant secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, wrote that the book was “a cry from the heart of an intelligent person who fears that the basic values of our republic are in danger.” He added that it “conveys a sense of impending doom rooted in a belief that the United States has entered a perpetual state of war that will drain our economy and destroy our constitutional freedoms.”
E. B. Keehn, past president of the Japan Society of Southern California and a former lecturer at Cambridge University, said in an interview on Monday that Dr. Johnson “did not go into his work with an agenda.”
“If the data pointed to a conclusion that made people uncomfortable, including himself,” Dr. Keehn said, “he would never shy away from it.”
That was true not only of the “blowback” series, Dr. Keehn said, but of Dr. Johnson’s studies of Chinese Communism and of the role Japan’s government played in its economy.
His 1982 book, “MITI and the Japanese Miracle” (MITI stands for the Ministry of International Trade and Industry), challenged conventional wisdom with its premise that Japan was a “capitalist developmental state” that combined government industrial strategy with free-market forces. His ideas contradicted those of economists who insisted that Japan’s economic rise was almost entirely based on the free market.
The heavily state-influenced economic model that Dr. Johnson elucidated can now be seen in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and China. “This,” Dr. Keehn said, “is how you can have a contradiction that the world’s last remaining powerful Communist country is also the world’s greatest rising capitalist success.”
Born in Phoenix on Aug. 6, 1931, Chalmers Ashby Johnson was one of two children of Katherine and David Johnson Jr. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1953, with a degree in economics, he served in the Navy in the Korean War; it was the start of his fascination with Asia. “His assault boat landing craft was constantly being repaired in Yokohama,” his wife said, “so he started to study Japanese.”
After receiving his master’s degree in 1957 and his doctorate in 1961, both from Berkeley, he joined the university’s political science faculty. He headed the China Center at Berkeley from 1967 to 1972 and was chairman of the political science department from 1976 to 1980. In 1988 he moved to the University of California, San Diego, to teach at its new School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. He retired in 1992.
Besides his wife, the former Sheila Knipscheer, he is survived by his sister, Barbara Johnson.
==
Chalmers Johnson: 10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire
Dismantling the American empire would, of course,
involve many steps. Here are ten key places to begin:
1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental
damage done by our bases planet-wide. We also need to
stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any
responsibility for cleaning up after ourselves.
2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of
carrying our empire of bases and so of the "opportunity
costs" that go with them -- the things we might
otherwise do with our talents and resources but can't
or won't.
3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism
breeds the use of torture. In the 1960s and 1970s we
helped overthrow the elected governments in Brazil and
Chile and underwrote regimes of torture that prefigured
our own treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(See, for instance, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors
[Pantheon, 1979], on how the U.S. spread torture
methods to Brazil and Uruguay.) Dismantling the empire
would potentially mean a real end to the modern
American record of using torture abroad.
4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp
followers, dependents, civilian employees of the
Department of Defense, and hucksters -- along with
their expensive medical facilities, housing
requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, and
so forth -- that follow our military enclaves around
the world.
5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the
military-industrial complex that our military
establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs,
scientific research, and defense. These alleged
advantages have long been discredited by serious
economic research. Ending empire would make this
happen.
6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to
stop being the world's largest exporter of arms and
munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in
the techniques of torture, military coups, and service
as proxies for our imperialism. A prime candidate for
immediate closure is the so-called School of the
Americas, the U.S. Army's infamous military academy at
Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American military
officers. (See Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire
[Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 136-40.)
7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget,
we should abolish the Reserve Officers' Training Corps
and other long-standing programs that promote
militarism in our schools.
8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in
our armed forces by radically scaling back our reliance
on civilian contractors, private military companies,
and agents working for the military outside the chain
of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
(See Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater:The Rise of the World's
Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007]).
Ending empire would make this possible.
9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our
standing army and deal much more effectively with the
wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they
undergo.
10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must
give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as
the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy
objectives.
Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave
up their dominions in order to remain independent,
self-governing polities. The two most important recent
examples are the British and Soviet empires. If we do
not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is
foreordained.
Chalmers Johnson is the author of Blowback (2000), The
Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of
the American Republic (2006), and editor of Okinawa:
Cold War Island (1999).
Chalmers Johnson, an Asian studies scholar who stirred controversy with books contending that the United States was trying to create a global empire and was paying a stiff price for it, died Saturday at his home in Cardiff-by-the Sea, Calif. He was 79.
The cause was complications of rheumatoid arthritis, his wife, Sheila, said.
Dr. Johnson, who considered himself a longtime cold warrior, was a consultant to the Central Intelligence Agency for many years. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union he became concerned that the United States was increasingly using its military presence to gain power over the global economy.
In “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” (Metropolitan Books, 2000), Dr. Johnson wondered why America’s military spending continued to rise after the cold war had ended. He concluded that through a network of more than 700 strategic bases around the world, the United States was committed to creating global hegemony. And he worried about the consequences for American democracy.
It was a theme he expanded upon in three subsequent books, “The Sorrows of Empire” (2004), “Nemesis” (2006) and “Dismantling the Empire” (2010).
Summarizing the series in “Dismantling the Empire,” Dr. Johnson said that “blowback” means more than a negative, sometimes violent reaction to United States policy. “It refers to retaliation for the numerous illegal operations we have carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public,” he wrote.
“This means that when the retaliation comes, as it did so spectacularly on Sept. 11, 2001, the American public is unable to put the events in context. So they tend to support acts intended to lash out against the perpetrators, thereby most commonly preparing the ground for yet another cycle of blowback.”
To maintain its empire, he said, the United States “will inevitably undercut domestic democracy.”
In a review of “The Sorrows of Empire” in The New York Times, Ronald Asmus, a deputy assistant secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, wrote that the book was “a cry from the heart of an intelligent person who fears that the basic values of our republic are in danger.” He added that it “conveys a sense of impending doom rooted in a belief that the United States has entered a perpetual state of war that will drain our economy and destroy our constitutional freedoms.”
E. B. Keehn, past president of the Japan Society of Southern California and a former lecturer at Cambridge University, said in an interview on Monday that Dr. Johnson “did not go into his work with an agenda.”
“If the data pointed to a conclusion that made people uncomfortable, including himself,” Dr. Keehn said, “he would never shy away from it.”
That was true not only of the “blowback” series, Dr. Keehn said, but of Dr. Johnson’s studies of Chinese Communism and of the role Japan’s government played in its economy.
His 1982 book, “MITI and the Japanese Miracle” (MITI stands for the Ministry of International Trade and Industry), challenged conventional wisdom with its premise that Japan was a “capitalist developmental state” that combined government industrial strategy with free-market forces. His ideas contradicted those of economists who insisted that Japan’s economic rise was almost entirely based on the free market.
The heavily state-influenced economic model that Dr. Johnson elucidated can now be seen in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and China. “This,” Dr. Keehn said, “is how you can have a contradiction that the world’s last remaining powerful Communist country is also the world’s greatest rising capitalist success.”
Born in Phoenix on Aug. 6, 1931, Chalmers Ashby Johnson was one of two children of Katherine and David Johnson Jr. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1953, with a degree in economics, he served in the Navy in the Korean War; it was the start of his fascination with Asia. “His assault boat landing craft was constantly being repaired in Yokohama,” his wife said, “so he started to study Japanese.”
After receiving his master’s degree in 1957 and his doctorate in 1961, both from Berkeley, he joined the university’s political science faculty. He headed the China Center at Berkeley from 1967 to 1972 and was chairman of the political science department from 1976 to 1980. In 1988 he moved to the University of California, San Diego, to teach at its new School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. He retired in 1992.
Besides his wife, the former Sheila Knipscheer, he is survived by his sister, Barbara Johnson.
==
Chalmers Johnson: 10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire
Dismantling the American empire would, of course,
involve many steps. Here are ten key places to begin:
1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental
damage done by our bases planet-wide. We also need to
stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any
responsibility for cleaning up after ourselves.
2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of
carrying our empire of bases and so of the "opportunity
costs" that go with them -- the things we might
otherwise do with our talents and resources but can't
or won't.
3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism
breeds the use of torture. In the 1960s and 1970s we
helped overthrow the elected governments in Brazil and
Chile and underwrote regimes of torture that prefigured
our own treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(See, for instance, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors
[Pantheon, 1979], on how the U.S. spread torture
methods to Brazil and Uruguay.) Dismantling the empire
would potentially mean a real end to the modern
American record of using torture abroad.
4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp
followers, dependents, civilian employees of the
Department of Defense, and hucksters -- along with
their expensive medical facilities, housing
requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, and
so forth -- that follow our military enclaves around
the world.
5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the
military-industrial complex that our military
establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs,
scientific research, and defense. These alleged
advantages have long been discredited by serious
economic research. Ending empire would make this
happen.
6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to
stop being the world's largest exporter of arms and
munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in
the techniques of torture, military coups, and service
as proxies for our imperialism. A prime candidate for
immediate closure is the so-called School of the
Americas, the U.S. Army's infamous military academy at
Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American military
officers. (See Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire
[Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 136-40.)
7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget,
we should abolish the Reserve Officers' Training Corps
and other long-standing programs that promote
militarism in our schools.
8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in
our armed forces by radically scaling back our reliance
on civilian contractors, private military companies,
and agents working for the military outside the chain
of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
(See Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater:The Rise of the World's
Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007]).
Ending empire would make this possible.
9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our
standing army and deal much more effectively with the
wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they
undergo.
10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must
give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as
the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy
objectives.
Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave
up their dominions in order to remain independent,
self-governing polities. The two most important recent
examples are the British and Soviet empires. If we do
not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is
foreordained.
Chalmers Johnson is the author of Blowback (2000), The
Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of
the American Republic (2006), and editor of Okinawa:
Cold War Island (1999).
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
U.S.-sponsored torture must end
In recent years, it has been reported that the administration of former President George W. Bush condoned the use of torture by U.S. military personnel and the CIA. The photos and stories from Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo are seared into the memory of many both here in the U.S. and abroad. Just recently, President Bush, in his new memoir, “Decision Points,” claims he responded with “damn right” when asked if the CIA should torture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by waterboarding him.
In June 2010, the Physicians for Human Rights released a report highlighting the participation of CIA health professionals in medical experimentation intended to make torture more efficient. Sadly, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Office of Human Research Protections, and the CIA have declined to investigate PHR’s findings.
Such reports are troubling. Believing that all forms of torture are morally wrong, we add our voices to the growing number of people calling for the creation of a bipartisan Commission of Inquiry to investigate the use of U.S.-sponsored torture. We especially call on our legislators, Congressman-elect Robert Dold, Sen. Richard Durbin, and Sen.-elect Mark Kirk in supporting this effort. Any and all reports of this commission must be made public so that the American people will know what has been done in our name, to help ensure that such acts will never again be repeated.
If we simply ignore what has taken place, what message will this send to our youth?
Fr. Corey Brost, CSV
Br. Michael Gosch, CSV Fr. Thomas von Behren, CSV
Arlington Heights
In June 2010, the Physicians for Human Rights released a report highlighting the participation of CIA health professionals in medical experimentation intended to make torture more efficient. Sadly, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Office of Human Research Protections, and the CIA have declined to investigate PHR’s findings.
Such reports are troubling. Believing that all forms of torture are morally wrong, we add our voices to the growing number of people calling for the creation of a bipartisan Commission of Inquiry to investigate the use of U.S.-sponsored torture. We especially call on our legislators, Congressman-elect Robert Dold, Sen. Richard Durbin, and Sen.-elect Mark Kirk in supporting this effort. Any and all reports of this commission must be made public so that the American people will know what has been done in our name, to help ensure that such acts will never again be repeated.
If we simply ignore what has taken place, what message will this send to our youth?
Fr. Corey Brost, CSV
Br. Michael Gosch, CSV Fr. Thomas von Behren, CSV
Arlington Heights
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
