The Progressive Response
Volume 8, Number 16
June 18, 2004
Editor: John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
| Foreign Policy In Focus | |
The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) as part of its Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. FPIF, a "Think Tank Without Walls," is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." FPIF is joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/, or email <feedback@fpif.org> to share your thoughts with us.
John Gershman, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) (online at www.irc-online.org) and co-director of FPIF. He can be contacted at <john@irc-online.org>.
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
PENTAGON REPORT ARGUES TORTURE IS LEGAL IN WAR ON TERROR
By Jim LobeCHARGING ON IN IRAQ--BUT WHICH WAY?
By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.)DON'T CREDIT REAGAN FOR ENDING THE COLD WAR
By Stephen ZunesBLACKMAIL EFFORTS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AT THE UN END IN FAILURE THIS TIME
By Ian WilliamsU.S. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: A TALE OF TWO WHO JUMPED THE SHIP AT STATE
By Nancy Snow
II. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-Takes
PENTAGON REPORT ARGUES TORTURE IS LEGAL IN WAR ON TERROR
By Jim Lobe
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0406torturelegal.html).
A classified Pentagon report, providing a series of legal arguments apparently intended to justify abuses and torture against detainees, appears to undermine public assurances by senior U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush that the military would never resort to such practices in the “war on terrorism.”
Excerpts of the report, which was drafted by Defense Department lawyers, were published in the Wall Street Journal on June 7. The text asserts, among other things, that the president, in his position as commander-in-chief, has virtually unlimited power to wage war, even in violation of U.S. law and international treaties. (A full copy of the report is available at http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/military_0604.pdf).
“The breadth of authority in the report is wholly unprecedented,” says Avi Cover, a senior attorney with the U.S. Law and Security program of Human Rights First, formerly known as Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. “Until now, we’ve used the rhetoric of a president who is ‘above the law’, but this document makes that (assertion) explicit; it’s not a metaphor anymore,” he added.
While it is unknown whether Bush himself ever saw or approved the report, it was classified “secret” by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld on Mar. 6, 2003, the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to the Journal.
The report’s partial publication comes amid growing charges that the Pentagon is engaged in a cover-up of the full extent of abuses committed by U.S. forces in their anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan, Iraq, at the U.S. naval facility at Guantánamo, Cuba, and elsewhere.
Origins of the Scandal
The abuse scandal first came to light in April when news organizations published photographs of the sexual humiliation and abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad that took place last October and November. Seven soldiers have been charged in those cases. While the Pentagon and the White House have claimed that the abuses were committed by a “few bad apples,” evidence of much more widespread abuse, including severe beatings and torture, has steadily accumulated over the past month.
Former detainees at Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan, as well as other prisons in Iraq, have complained about similar tactics used against them, leading a number of lawmakers and other observers to conclude that such treatment was authorized or at the least condoned by authorities at much higher levels.
The Defense Department has itself launched six investigations or reviews into the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, but none is designed to probe the role of senior officers or the civilian leadership in the Pentagon or relevant policies that they may have developed. At the same time, lawmakers from the governing Republican Party have been actively discouraged from undertaking investigations of their own.
(Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
For more analysis by Jim Lobe from Foreign Policy in Focus:
Tenet Resignation Exposes Accelerating Intrigue Within Bush Administration
By Jim Lobe | June 9, 2004
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0406tenet.html
Prisoner Abuse Calls into Question America’s Position of Moral “Exceptionalism”
By Jim Lobe (May 19, 2004)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405moralex.html
From Iraqi Occupation to Islamic Reformation: Neocons Aim Beyond Baghdad
By Jim Lobe (April 9, 2003)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0404neocons.html
For more information:
Foreign Policy In Focus coverage of human rights
http://www.fpif.org/indices/topics/rights/index.php
Association of the Bar of the City of New York
http://www.abcny.org/
Human Rights First
www.humanrightsfirst.org
Human Rights Watch
www.hrw.org
Amnesty International-USA
http://www.amnestyusa.org/
Committee on Torture
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/6/cat/index.html
CHARGING ON IN IRAQ--BUT WHICH WAY?
By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.)
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0406charging.html).
As Iraq enters the final weeks in the life of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the power exerted by the inhabitants of the heavily guarded “Green Zone” is rapidly dissipating as other “centers of gravity” re-emerge and vie for influence. How much “electricity” each can generate within Iraq will determine the country’s future course.
Of course, power centers outside the country will exert some influence. Perhaps the most significant of these is the UN, which, in the person of the Secretary-General’s special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, attempted to discharge a most difficult mandate: negotiate the shape and composition of Iraq’s seven-month interim administration that is to hold and transmit power from the CPA to a transitional government indirectly elected by the Iraqi people in January 2005. In the end, both the efforts of Brahimi and the maneuvers of L. Paul Bremer, the CPA head, were short-circuited by the CPA-appointed Iraqi Governing Council which secured three of the top four positions in the interim administration for its candidates.
The current UN focus is on a new Security Council resolution which is to detail the specifics of exactly what constitutes the “full sovereignty” President Bush pledged to restore to Iraq on June 30, 2004. The Iraqis, already burned by promises not kept by the CPA and concerned that “full sovereignty” not end up as mere “formal sovereignty,” dispatched their new foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, to New York to insist on complete empowerment of the interim administration.
In rightfully insisting on regaining full control over its affairs, the new central administration is reflecting the position of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Iraqi Shi’ite cleric. Part of al-Sistani’s charge to the new secular authorities is to secure sovereignty that is “full and unflawed in any of its political, economic, military or security aspects, as well as to strive to remove all the consequences of the occupation” (
Taken together with an apparent agreement between al-Sistani and the “firebrand” cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for the latter’s Madhi militia to leave Kufa and Najaf, this demand presages a potential shock for Bush Administration and Pentagon plans for the “war on terror.” Washington has insisted that coalition military troops would be needed in Iraq through at least January 2006 to ensure that terrorists or surviving Ba’athists did not seize power. This agreement diffuses a major source of resistance through internal Iraqi mechanisms, just as fighting in the Fallujah area ebbed after Iraqi-on-Iraqi consultations. Moreover, in what the Iraqis attribute to a U.S. initiative, nine factions with militias totaling 100,000 men have declared they will disburse their armed fighters over the next seven months to either re-integrate into civil society or become part of the centrally-controlled security forces. With a significant boost in trained fighters augmented by a continuing flow of new U.S.-trained recruits, the interim administration may succeed in expelling “foreign jihadists,” thus removing all pretense for a continued U.S. presence or bases in Iraq beyond January 2005.
(Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org), a retired U.S. army colonel and a senior fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.)
For more analysis from Foreign Policy In Focus:
The Defense of “Command Influence”
By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) (May 18, 2004)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405comminf.html
How Long a War?
By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) (May 13, 2004) May 13, 2004
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405byrdwar.html
DON'T CREDIT REAGAN FOR ENDING THE COLD WAR
By By Stephen Zunes
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0406reagan.html).
Perhaps the most dangerous myth regarding the legacy of the late President Ronald Reagan is that he was somehow responsible for the end of the Cold War.
Soviet-style Communism was doomed in part because it fell victim to the pro-democracy movement that was also then sweeping Latin America and parts of Africa and Asia during this same period. No credit can be given to the Reagan Administration, which was a strong supporter of many of these right-wing dictatorial regimes, such as the Marcos regime in the Philippines.
High Soviet military spending, in part as a reaction to the U.S. military buildup that began in the latter half of the Carter administration, certainly hurt the Soviet economy--as it did (and is still doing to) ours. This was, however, only a minor factor.
The reality is that it was the people themselves who brought down the system.
The most significant case was Poland, where--even before Reagan became president--the communist regime was forced to recognize the independent trade-union movement Solidarity. This helped expose the lie that the communist governments were "workers’ states." Despite the Polish regime's decision to ban Solidarity at the end of 1981, pro-democracy Poles continued to organize, as did dissidents in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, the Baltic states and elsewhere. Many of these democratic leaders were openly skeptical of Reagan administration policies.
President Reagan's verbal support for democracy had little credibility in many of these countries. For example, while he denounced Poland's martial law regime, he was a strong supporter of the more repressive martial law regime then in power in Turkey, a NATO ally. In challenging left-wing governments in the Third World, Reagan backed insurgents with ties to U.S.-backed dictatorships, and, in the case of Afghanistan, even Islamic fundamentalists.
While Ronald Reagan was certainly capable of inspirational leadership, idealism, and personal charm, the myth that he is responsible for the downfall of Communism and the end of the Cold War does a disservice to the millions of Eastern Europeans and others who faced the tanks and struggled against great odds for their freedom. It was not American militarism, but massive nonviolent action--including strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, and other forms of ingenious non-cooperation--that finally brought down these communist regimes.
Stephen Zunes, Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus, is a professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Perspective (Blackwell Publishers, 1999.)
BLACKMAIL EFFORTS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AT THE UN END IN FAILURE THIS TIME
By Ian Williams
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0406blackmail.html.)
On Wednesday, May19th, the U.S. delegation withdrew the “blackmail-the world” resolution that they had been trying to force to a vote in the Security Council, when they realized that there was a serious chance that other members may try to call Washington’s bluff. The resolution was to renew Resolution 1487, which in turn was to renew Resolution 1422, which sought to exempt U.S. military in UN peacekeeping forces from any chance of arrest and removal for trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
On previous occasions, the U.S. was prepared to veto every peacekeeping operation across the globe unless it got its way--which was an illustration for the rest of the world of how the unilateralist obsessions of the Pentagon gang in the Bush administration, and their envoy in the State Department John Bolton, could threaten world peace.
The resolution requested the ICC not to open proceedings against any current or former officials from “a contributing state nor a party to the Rome Statute” for a twelve month renewable period. However, the last twelve months have not been encouraging for the U.S. Ironically, supporters of the ICC used to suggest that it was unthinkable that U.S. military would be guilty of crimes against humanity, or that the U.S. would fail to deal with adequately.
Sadly, their argument--that the U.S. had little or nothing to fear from the court--does not ring so true anymore. The behavior of the U.S. military in Abu Ghraib and potentially in Afghanistan combined with the deaths and abuse of journalists suggest exactly the kind of culture of impunity that the ICC was set up to counter.
Faced with the American threat to veto peacekeeping in previous years, the British have led some of the Europeans into the “hold your nose and vote for the resolution” lobby. This time, with the images of battered bodies of dead Iraqis and the humiliated live ones fresh in the minds of the world, and indeed of Americans, is an opportune moment for the Europeans to make a stand.
Han Corell, who was Legal Counsel for the UN at the time in effect argued that the resolution had no legal force, since the clause of the ICC statute it invoked was clearly aimed at individual cases, and not at giving a blanket exemption, a preemptive “get out of jail free card” to U.S. troops, but he warns that the resolutions effectively dilute the authority of the Security Council--and call into question the credibility of the U.S. administration. In fact, he is too kind: they call into question the sanity of the Bush administration.
So far, over 120 countries have signed the treaty setting up the ICC, and 94 have ratified it. The U.S. has expended immense diplomatic effort, and incurred equally immense ill will by bullying nations into signing bilateral exemption treaties promising not to hand over Americans to the Court. The treaties are of dubious legality, and have set Washington at loggerheads with all its Western allies.
(Ian Williams contributes frequently to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) on UN and international affairs.)
U.S. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: A TALE OF TWO WHO JUMPED THE SHIP AT STATE
By Nancy Snow
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new special report available in full at http://www.fpif.org/papers/0405taleoftwo.html.)
In politics, the name of the game is often zero sum. At times one country may have a positive advantage in reputation and influence while others like North Korea, China and Cuba may be on the negative side. At the end of World War II, no country could compete with the victorious United States in ascendancy. Through its competitive economic and ideological advantage, the United States was able to rebuild war-torn Japan and Germany through the Marshall Plan and to create a marketplace for goods and ideas that overshadowed its formidable but lesser competitor, the Soviet Union.
In zero-sum games, one side cannot gain reputation without the other side losing. Following the trajectory of two careers in public diplomacy since Sept. 11, 2001, it seems that Washington’s reputation is fixed at zero in terms of credibility and political leadership. Margaret Tutwiler, who announced her resignation from the U.S. State Department in April 2004 at the end of the bloodiest month in Iraq, was well-regarded in her five-month stretch as the high-profile replacement for Charlotte Beers, a former ad executive who left Washington in March 2003, just days before the outbreak of war with Iraq. Unlike Beers, Tutwiler had an inside-the-beltway career working for four Republican administrations as a State Department spokesman and then as an ambassador to Morocco. Tutwiler was expected to outmaneuver Beers in sheer political experience alone, and hopes were high that she would announce some major initiatives, despite 2004 being a presidential election year. At the time of Tutwiler’s confirmation hearings, it seemed that her Washington political experience would serve her well in helping to tackle the downward slide of America’s reputation in the world. But she deflected such insider experience when she told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee overseeing her confirmation that when it comes to the complex reality of winning hearts and minds: “There is not one magic bullet, magic program or magic solution. As much as we would like to think Washington knows best, we have to be honest and admit we do not necessarily always have all the answers.”
In her short tenure, Tutwiler emphasized more active listening on the part of the U.S. government--including listening to its diplomats serving on the frontlines--and expanding the discussion of American values and policies to public venues outside of traditional elites in diplomacy and government. “We only have to look at the activities of U.S. corporations overseas to see the value of being present and engaged in neighborhoods that we in government have for too long neglected.”2 She also announced a slight increase in educational exchanges, particularly youth exchanges, focused primarily on the Middle East. When Tutwiler suddenly announced her switch from government public relations to the New York Stock Exchange executive suites, one could not help but notice that the move occurred during the week that the first brutal images of abused Iraqi prisoners were released worldwide, rendering her youth exchange program from the Middle East--Partnerships for Learning, with its less than 200 participants--a drop of hope in an ocean of anger and resentment.
Dr. Nancy Snow is an assistant professor of communications at California State University, Fullerton and a senior fellow at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Information War (Seven Stories Press) and a regular contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).
II. Letters and Comments
Re: Yugoslavian fairy tale (http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405fairytale.html)
Excellent corrective. The limp liberal assumptions on the Balkans are far too widespread...and it’s nice to get a clear factual analysis. FPIF should watch topics like this one...and probably Rwanda too, for the liberal bias...or as Ed Herman calls them, “the cruise missile left.”
--John Steppling, steppling@yahoo.com
Re: From Iraqi Occupation to Islamic Reformation (http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0404neocons.html)
I would like to point out that the neocons aren't the only ones pressing for an Islamic reformation. Tariq Ali says the same thing, I believe in his Clash of Fundamentalisms book.
P.S. I really like your site!
--Carl Stoll, carlstoll@yahoo.com
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