Category: News

Much of the hawkish commentary on Syria has centered around this notion that inaction led the al-Qaeda elements in the rebel opposition to metastasize. If only we had intervened early on, before the deepening of the civil war and all the blood-letting, we could have empowered the democratic elements of the early protest movement, they argue.

This argument is wrong, as I’ve written here on this blog since 2011. The reverse is actually more accurate. Early meddling and support of rebel militias on the part of the U.S. and its allies in the Arab Gulf states is what helped the radical elements to prevail and eventually overwhelm the whole rebel opposition.

Leaving aside the inaccuracy for a moment, I’m wondering why interventionists don’t apply this same logic to Bahrain. Largely peaceful democratic protests erupted in Bahrain in 2011 and it was mercilessly crushed. Ever since then, the Sunni monarch in Bahrain has employed a mix of systematic repression (including indefinite detention, torture, strict limits on speech, etc.) and cosmetic political reforms to manage the domestic unrest and prevent the situation from getting to the point of mass killings and civil war. So for more than three years now, the brutally subjugated Shia majority has been left to fester and struggle to maintain a commitment to non-violence in the hopes of substantive change to the authoritarian system under which they live.

It’s worth noting the primary reasons change has not been forthcoming: both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia support the Bahraini dictatorship unswervingly. This has added to the frustration among the Shia opposition. Frederic Wehrey, writing at The National Interest, points to some worrying signs that some in the predominantly peaceful opposition have taken to violence:

A militant strand of the Shia opposition led by the February 14 Youth Coalition and the Ashtar Brigades is becoming bolder and more brazen in its attacks against regime security forces. It is not surprising that new, more sophisticated improvised explosive devices have become the currency of this radical strain, And perhaps most worrisome for the U.S., they are growing increasingly hostile to the presence of the Fifth Fleet, which they believe is colluding in the ongoing repression. Angry young men have marched on the Fifth Fleet housing area of Juffeir, burning U.S. flags. Swathes of the capital are now no-go zones for U.S. personnel.

Interventionist can’t imagine applying the same logic to Syria that they do to Bahrain. Assad is a brutal dictator; the Al Khalifa regime in Bahrain is a reliable ally that must be supported at all costs, even if it means crushing a pro-democracy movement.

The status quo in Bahrain is that the regime uses low-intensity violence and coercion to contain a peaceful pro-democracy movement fighting for basic human rights. The lack of change, which is largely thanks to U.S. support of the regime, could lead to a very different dynamic in the near future.

And then what?

We know a lot about the crimes committed by the U.S. government during the Cold War, but there remain areas of Cold War foreign policy almost completely hidden from the public. One of those dark areas is the U.S. role in the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Brazil in 1964.

Yesterday, the National Security Archive posted transcripts of taped conversations in the Kennedy White House about deposing the Brazilian government. April 1 marked the 50th anniversary of the coup.

Almost two years before the April 1, 1964, military takeover in Brazil, President Kennedy and his top aides began seriously discussing the option of overthrowing Joao Goulart’s government, according to Presidential tape transcripts posted by the National Security Archive on the 50^th anniversary of the coup d’tat. “What kind of liaison do we have with the military?” Kennedy asked top aides in July 1962. In March 1963, he instructed them: “We’ve got to do something about Brazil.”

The tape transcripts advance the historical record on the U.S. role in deposing Goulart — a record which remains incomplete half a century after he fled into exile in Uruguay on April 1, 1964. “The CIA’s clandestine political destabilization operations against Goulart between 1961 and 1964 are the black hole of this history,” according to the Archive’s Brazil Documentation Project director, Peter Kornbluh, who called on the Obama administration to declassify the still secret intelligence files on Brazil from both the Johnson and Kennedy administrations.

Revelations on the secret U.S. role in Brazil emerged in the mid 1970s, when the Lyndon Johnson Presidential library began declassifying Joint Chiefs of Staff records on “Operation Brother Sam” — President Johnson’s authorization for the U.S. military to covertly and overtly supply arms, ammunition, gasoline and, if needed, combat troops if the military’s effort to overthrow Goulart met with strong resistance. On the 40^th anniversary of the coup, the National Security Archive posted audio files of Johnson giving the green light for military operations to secure the success of the coup once it started.

“I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do,” President Johnson instructed his aides regarding U.S. support for a coup as the Brazilian military moved against Goulart on March 31, 1964.

But Johnson inherited his anti-Goulart, pro-coup policy from his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. Over the last decade, declassified NSC records and recently transcribed White House tapes have revealed the evolution of Kennedy’s decision to create a coup climate and, when conditions permitted, overthrow Goulart if he did not yield to Washington’s demand that he stop “playing” with what Kennedy called “ultra-radical anti-Americans” in Brazil’s government.

Once in a while, it serves as a helpful reminder to draw attention to the fact that, during the Cold War, the U.S. felt it had the prerogative to covertly overthrow whatever government they wanted, any time they wanted. It’s a kind of refutation to the picture most Americans have of their freedom-loving, stars-and-stripes government. Much of the U.S. involvement remains secret, but anecdotes about these kinds of deplorable yet routine policies are almost completely unknown to the broader public.

Were these crimes? Yep. Does that matter? Apparently not.

In negotiations with Israel and the U.S., the Palestinians threw down their wildcard this week. When the U.S. and Israel had essentially agreed upon an interim deal that was ludicrously one-sided in favor of Israel, the Palestinians announced they were moving ahead with the one thing that would have been prohibited in interim deal: pursuing further UN recognition.

As always, this will be branded as sabotage by the intransigent Palestinians. Like in the negotiations toward the very end of the Clinton administration, the myth that Yassir Arafat rejected “the best deal he was going to get” and abandoned the talks was propagated to no end, despite it being untrue.

According to the New York Times, the PLO made the provocative announcement to pursue further recognition at the UN “not to derail the peace process,” given that they are still technically in talks for another month or so and that the latest PLO statement says they “remain committed” to the talks until their scheduled end on April 29.

Critically, the interim deal would not have called on Israel to freeze settlement building. The PLO’s announcement could be a bargaining chip to alter the interim deal and pressure Israel to agree to a settlement freeze. This is extremely unlikely, given the apparent refusal of Washington to demand Israel stop building illegal settlements as part of a gradual annexation of the West Bank.

Israel and the U.S. have predictably condemned the PLO move. But this is what happens when you conduct negotiations in which one side has all the power and influence, and the other is kicked to the curb.

It’s hard to be optimistic about the future of these talks. According to Barak Ravid at Haaretz, the details of the interim agreement were just a bunch of “acrobatics” that “were intended to buy more time for sterile talks that are going nowhere.” There are all kinds of commentators trying to be diplomatic and blaming both Netanyahu and Abbas, but talks are “going nowhere” fundamentally because the right-wing leadership in Israel refuses to cede the West Bank to the Palestinians and, plainly, will do anything to prevent a Palestinian state.

This is the answer to the question posed in the title:

“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that: namely, I can do something about it. So even if the US was responsible for 2% of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2% I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”

— Noam Chomsky, cited by Glenn Greenwald

Mother Jones has published another secretly recorded speech at a private Republican event. Rather than Mitt Romney’s embarrassing “47 percent” line, this one has former Vice President Dick Cheney lamenting the U.S.’s lack of control over the Middle East, NSA hate, and the danger of “the increasing strain of isolationism” in the GOP.

The private event was the much talked about Las Vegas meet-up of “the Republican Jewish Coalition” held at billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s hotel, “where several possible 2016 contenders, including ex-Governor Jeb Bush and current Governors Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and John Kasich, showed up to kiss the ring of the casino magnate, who’s looking to bankroll a viable Republican presidential candidate,” Mother Jones writes.

There is a lot worth addressing in Cheney’s speech (the dark joke about bombing Iran and the delusional defense of the NSA come to mind), but I wanted to just highlight his remarks on the Middle East and the alleged isolationism running through the GOP.

The former vice president said Obama has been a bust at home and abroad, proving to be a weak commander-in-chief and failing to project strength around the world. “The bottom line is,” Cheney groused, “the United States’ position in [the Middle East] is worse than at any time in my lifetime.” He added, “It’s reached the point where Israel and Egypt, [the United Arab] Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan are closer to one another—imagine that!—than any of them is to us… Nobody who’s been our friend in the past any longer has any sense of trust in we’ll keep our commitments, that we’ll be there in a crisis when they need us. On the other hand, none of our adversaries need fear us.”

This is a nice little summation of what Cheney thinks the thrust of U.S. policy in the Middle East should be. Aside from unequivocally and unconditionally supporting Israel (a prescription mentioned repeatedly in the audio recording), U.S. policy should keep all Middle Eastern states dependent on Washington, isolated from one another, and fearful of America’s war machine. This is how to maintain primacy over the region, and Cheney’s iteration conforms basically to how things have played out since WWII.

To keep the Middle Eastern states dependent on the U.S., you have to prevent independence, which means preventing democracy, economic development, and willful deviation from Washington’s demands. Keeping them from getting “closer to one another” than they are to us is vital in maintaining their dependence on the U.S. They shouldn’t be able to form their own alliances because they are not independent states, they are vassal properties belonging to America. And finally, they must all “fear us,” as Cheney puts it, because the threat of U.S. military force is paramount in enforcing obedience.

Cheney can hardly conceal his love of empire.

Continue reading “Secret Recording of Dick Cheney Lamenting Middle East Policy & GOP ‘Isolationism’”