Category: News

Antiwar.com Newsletter | May 25, 2012

IN THIS ISSUE

• Pledge Drive
• Top News
• Opinion and analysis
• Events

Continue reading “Antiwar.com Newsletter | May 25, 2012 | NATO3, War Inc.”

The State Department report on human rights says that U.S.-trained security forces in Mexico have “engaged in unlawful killings, forced disappearances, and instances of physical abuse and torture” in the U.S.-led war on drugs. Mike Riggs at Reason contacted the DEA looking for some sort of statement. Here is the email exchange:

Riggs: The State Department recently released a report on human rights abuses in Mexico. That report found that Mexican military and LEOs “engaged in unlawful killings, forced disappearances, and instances of physical abuse and torture” while fighting TCOs.

I was wondering if your office could provide me with a statement about the new report in light of Administrator Michele Leonhart’s earlier claim, made to the Washington Post, in which she said, “It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs….[cartels] are like caged animals, attacking one another,” as it seems cartels are not the only people in Mexico committing violence.

DEA: We will let the State Department and Mexico speak to this rather than us

Riggs: If the DEA won’t comment on the report, can you at least tell me if Administrator Leonhart stands by her claim that the “the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success” in the war on drugs?

DEA: She has been consistent that the violence represents the pressure cartels feel from Mexican law enforcement/military and the U.S.

Riggs: But [she] has no comment on violence perpetrated by DEA partners in Mexican military and law enforcement?

DEA: nope

It’s important to point out that Mexican security forces have been committing crimes with U.S. backing for some time now. And it is well known. Human Rights Watch back in November of last year released a report providing evidence that Mexico’s security forces participated in “more than 170 cases of torture, 39 ‘disappearances,’ and 24 extrajudicial killings since Calderón took office in December 2006.” And these are just what they could confirm.

“Instead of reducing violence, Mexico’s ‘war on drugs’ has resulted in a dramatic increase in killings, torture, and other appalling abuses by security forces, which only make the climate of lawlessness and fear worse in many parts of the country,” said José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. What’s more, claimed the report, is that most of these crimes are committed with impunity. Security forces are by and large immune from any accountability for these actions.

President Calderon’s policy to deploy 50,000 Mexican troops and thousands more federal police officers – forces that are trained by the United States – has only increased the violence, which has left more than 50,000 dead since about 2006. The Mexican drug cartels –  which the Washington Post reported yesterday are at war with each other – have dug in their heels and terrorized Mexico with progressive cruelty following every increase in hardened drug war policy (directed by Washington, of course).

“George W. Bush backed Calderón’s militarization with a $1.8 billion package of helicopters, police training, and intelligence cooperation,” wrote The New Yorker’sSteve Coll recently. “Obama has continued the program.”

See other recent drug war coverage on this blog here, here, and here.

Julian Sanchez at the Cato Institute on the renewal of the FISA Amendment Act and the lawless surveillance state:

It’s been almost four years since the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 put President Bush’s warrantless wiretap program on legal footing by authorizing broad, programmatic surveillance of Americans’ international communications. The only thing the public really knows about it so far is that it was almost immediately misused, resulting in “significant and systemic” overcollection of Americans’ purely domestic communications. Subsequent reporting revealed that the improperly “overcollected” communications could number in the millions, and included former president Clinton’s private e-mails. So naturally, the Senate is charging ahead toward the renewal of these sweeping powers without hearings or debate.

…This is a truly incredible state of affairs. We have a vast apparatus for intercepting—and retaining indefinitely—American communications on a mass scale. We are being asked to take it as an article of faith that this is absolutely necessary to the security of the United States, even though similar claims about the original warrantless wiretap program could not be substantiated by later internal audits. The government doesn’t want to have to even defend the constitutionality of this program in front of a judge. And Congress doesn’t seem interested in so much as discussing the question, or making the public privy to so much as the raw numbers involved, before giving the NSA four more years of carte blanche. But hey, look over there, someone tangentially related to a presidential campaign said something dumb on cable television! Clearly there’s no time to discuss trivia like this “vast government database of intercepted communications.”

The ACLU also has a nice round up of links including “the Obama administration’s explanation of the law here” and “the ACLU’s letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee here” and the ACLU’s “lawsuit challenging the law here.” They also explain how the Director of National Intelligence “said it isn’t even ‘reasonably possible’ to estimate how many Americans are swept up in the NSA’s expansive dragnet.”

The Obama administration, as is usual in cases where they disregard the Constitution, promises this mass surveillance comes with strong safeguards and accountability. In reality, the war on terrorism is continuing to be used to justify major infringements on the civil liberties of Americans.

The long-awaited P5+1 talks with Iran took place today in Baghdad, with disappointing results. While the U.S. and its allies called for Iran to stop enriching uranium at 20 percent levels in exchange for delivery of the medical isotopes Iran is creating with the 20 percent enriched uranium and, oddly enough, some spare parts for civilian airliners. Iran rejected this because its first priority going into further negotiations is to avoid the harsh sanctions, which have already hurt their economy and badly slowed their oil exports. Iran offered to give greater access to UN inspectors if at least some of the sanctions could be eased. The West said no.

So, no “deal” was reached, but the nations are scheduled to meet again for further talks in Moscow on June 18.

Today I attended an event in DC hosted by the National Iranian American Council, featuring the following speakers: PJ Crowley, Aaron David Miller, Bijan Khajehpour, George Perkovich, moderated by Trita Parsi of NIAC and frequent contributor to this blog (partial bois here). I was happy to hear that there was complete agreement on a few important points. First of all, Miller said that, given the fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, “a unilateral attack [on Iran] would be totally discretionary. It would be a war of choice,” not of necessity. Perkovich interrupted him for emphasis on what an unprovoked military strike actually is, saying “it would be illegal.” Miller finished up his point by saying that he does not expect any Israeli or U.S. attack “this year.”

PJ Crowley, former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Policy under Obama and not exactly known for his dovish views, said a preemptive strike on Iran “makes an Iranian nuclear weapon inevitable.” I made this argument in a recent piece I wrote for the magazine published by Young Americans for Liberty. The hawks have no leg to stand on in arguing for war on Iran because it would embolden, not subdue, Iran.

Adding on to that point, Bijan Khajehpour, who is an Iranian expat who was actually imprisoned by the Iranian regime during the unrest there in 2009, emphasized that the Iranian leadership is “rational and reactive.” That is, they are not ideologues bent on world domination, elimination of infidels or the destruction of Israel. They respond to incentives like everybody else. But they do react to threats, intimidation, and mistreatment – and not in the way the hardliners in the West would prefer. The more unwarranted pressure the U.S. and its allies put on Iran, Khajehpour explained, the less cooperative the Iranians are likely to be.

Khajehpour was asked about the Ayatollah Khamenei’s religious fatwa condemning nuclear weapons as un-Islamic and his pledge never to seek them. Some of the panel seemed skeptical that this is a genuine declaration of intent. But Khajehpour reminded the room that a similar fatwa against the use of indiscriminate weapons was adhered to strictly by Iran during its 1980s war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons, and the Iranians refused to reciprocate in kind because of religious rulings against the use of such weapons, he said.

There was a point in the discussion which focused on the fact, as best anyone can tell, that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program and has demonstrated no intention to start one. Still, nobody was moved to address what a strange kind of negotiating process this is. I’ve called it “the quirky” aspect of these negotiations. The U.S. approach seems schizophrenic. The Obama administration expended a certain amount of political capital by marching out his minions from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey to reiterate the fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, despite constant rhetoric to the contrary. On the other hand, these unprecedented, high-level international negotiations are taking place in order to “restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.” Which is it? The one hint of an answer to this puzzle was when Bijan Khajehpour said, vaguely, this is “not just about nuclear weapons.”

I suspect the other issues at play are primarily two-fold. First, Obama feels pressure to prove himself a big tough man. If he doesn’t, Mitt Romney, Republicans in Congress, and the Israeli Likud leadership will call him a wimp. So Obama is fine going through this rather dangerous charade, waging economic warfare on innocent Iranians, etc., so long as he gets to seem tough. The second issue at play is simply the old chestnut of regional hegemony over the Middle East. The region is in flux now, but the U.S. is still the dominant influence and intervener in the region. Iran is the exception to that rule.