Antiwar.com Blog

In Monday’s edition of his biweekly column, “The Wartime Economist,” Antiwar.com’s David R. Henderson takes on George Shultz of the Committee on the Present Danger and the best case the War Party can make for continuing the failed “war on terror.” Tough luck there, George.

David’s article reminds me of retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski‘s story about Shultz’s fax to Secretary of Wars Rumsfeld in the summer of 2002. As she recounted to C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb,

“I’ll tell you something about George Shultz, that – there was a fax that came into the office. It wasn’t for me. I happened to get it, and I looked at this fax. It was a short note from George Shultz, who was on – who at that time, I don’t know if he still is – but he was on the Defense Policy Board, along with Richard Perle. It was a fax, a copy of a fax that he had sent to Don Rumsfeld in June of 2002, June of 2002 I believe it was. It was the summer of 2002.

“And on this fax, it was a short, one-note thing, from Shultz to Rummy. Basically, we have to get together and talk about what we do after the victory in Iraq, and this was in the summer of 2002, long before even the president and the vice president had begun their round of why we fight-type propaganda speeches.”

“What to do after the victory in Iraq”? This may be a reference to the funneling of billions of government dollars into the Bechtel corporation, which gets paid to do nothing but show up and stand around in America’s never-ending series of global interventions. George Shultz, it seems, has a vested interest in being so full of it.

(One might even conclude that since Roosevelt turned America into the “Arsenal of Democracy,” those whose business it is to maintain that arsenal and rebuild what it destroys spend a portion of those collected tax-payer dollars on getting their stooges to positions of power in order to keep those tax-dollars flowing.)

There are some who think that Saddam’s mid-1980s refusal to pay then-Secretary of State Shultz (who had come to government “service” directly from the presidency of Bechtel) and his former company to build an oil pipeline from Iraq to the Red Sea – a major topic of discussion between Rumsfeld and Hussein when they met in 1983 – was the beginning of the end of the era of Republican-Baathist good feelings which had survived Hussein’s use of chemical weapons and America’s treachery in selling missiles to the Ayatollah.

It wasn’t long before James Baker III was “emphasizing the instruction” to U.S. ambassador April Glaspie to invite Saddam to go ahead and invade Kuwait, setting Saddam up for “Operation Desert Storm” and the people of Saudi Arabia for a permanent garrison of American troops to enforce the blockade and launch the no-fly zone bombings – which, as we all know, is the reason for Osama’s gang’s war against the United States.

Since the second war against Iraq, which Shultz promoted inside and outside the halls of state power, the terrorists have been given a new cause for their recruiting and a massive new base within which to train their new generation of recruits.

Now this man has the gumption and gall to pose as an expert on fighting terrorism and on why more of these disasterous wars should be waged. Perhaps we should send Mr. Shultz to fight this phony war of his and let the people who joined the military under the pretext that their job was to protect America come home.

(Comments welcome at Stress)

The key players in the U.S. Senate have agreed with the Bush administration to retroactively legalize torture by U.S. government agents. The compromise deal struck yesterday will block prosecution for CIA officials who tortured detainees since 9/11.  I would expect that, in the name of “fair play,” someone will begin pushing similar legislation to give immunity to U.S. military officials who tortured detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The legislative “compromise” blocks detainees from suing in federal court after they have been tortured.  Game, set, match.

And it is worse than naive for Americans to comfort themselves with the notion that the U.S. government will only torture “Islamo-fascists.” The administration’s Enemies List is far more expansive.

The deal is not yet carved into the statute book, so….

On the same topic - The American Conservative posted online today my review of John Yoo’s new book, War by Other Means. Here are some outtakes of the review:

George W. Bush has made absolutism respectable among American conservatives. And no one has done more pimping for president-as-Supreme-Leader than John Yoo, the former Justice Department official who helped create the “commander-in-chief override” doctrine, unleashing presidents from the confines of the law. At a time when Bush is pushing Congress to approve the use in military tribunals of confessions that resulted from torture, it is vital to understand the thinking of the Bush administration’s most visible advocate of “coercive interrogation.”

Yoo’s new book, War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror, reads like a slippery lawyer’s brief submitted to a dim judge who gets all his information from Fox News. Though Yoo’s misrepresentations and omissions should provoke outrage, his book will likely receive accolades from many conservative reviewers. This new volume compliments Yoo’s first book, The Powers of War and Peace, which revealed that the Founding Fathers intended to permit presidents to start wars on their own whims, regardless of what the Constitution says.

Perhaps Yoo’s authoritarian tendencies resulted from his time at Harvard, where empowering an elite is always in fashion. Yoo paints every proposal for limiting the president’s power as a dangerous novelty. He is always trying to shift the burden of proof onto anyone who thinks the president should not be a czar.
……
While curtsying to the prevailing rhetoric on democracy, Yoo shows contempt for “government by consent.” He claims the 2004 election vindicated Bush’s torture policy: “Our nation had a presidential and congressional election after Abu Ghraib and the leaking of the [2002] memos. If the people had disagreed with administration policies, they could have made a change.”

How could the people judge the policy when the Bush administration was suppressing almost all information about it? There were no independent probes into the torture scandal during 2004. All the investigators were under the thumb of the Pentagon. The investigations were designed to look only downward—with no authority to pursue wrongdoing to the highest branches of the Pentagon and the White House. The Bush team succeeded in delaying the vast majority of damning revelations until after he was re-elected. Presumably, the public can “approve” atrocities even when the government deceives them about the actual events.

Yoo reasons like a devious personal-injury lawyer—yet it is the rights of the American people that are being run over. He is being feted by conservative foundations and think tanks, and often treated deferentially by liberals, for a theory of presidential power that would make Hobbes proud.

Yoo believes Americans should presume that the government always has a good reason for violating the law, even when it deceives the citizens about the reasoning. Yoo’s doctrines are absolutely unfit for any system with a pretense of self-government.****

Comments/condemnations welcome at I am welcoming comments at http://jimbovard.com/blog/2006/09/22/torture-the-law-of-the-land-and-the-torture-mastermind-reviewed/

 

The bloodthirsty “conservative” warmongers at National Review have now all but admitted that The War on Terror will never end. This is from the September 11th issue:

“Ladies and gentlemen: Our Problems are here, there, and everythere. They will last our lifetime. You have heard of the Thirty Years’ War. This is ours—if not our Hundred Years’ War.”

Ann Berg surveys the history of fascism and concludes this ain’t it.

Jon Basil Utley explains why Americans aren’t cut out for empire.

Steve Vujacic ponders how far Tony Blair will go to salvage his legacy.

And as always, be sure to check out our Friday regulars Justin Raimondo and Doug Bandow.

Okay, you have an extra month to write that insightful essay you know you have inside you! The Antiwar.com essay contest for middle and high school students is drawing to a close – but as this is our first such contest and we want to make sure everyone who wants to enter has the chance to do so, we are extending the deadline through October 31.

This contest has significant monetary rewards and numerous less materialistic benefits – so check out the contest information. This is not a difficult contest, but one we hope is thought-provoking for our younger readers and their peers. One very important goal of the Randolph Bourne Institute and Antiwar.com is the education and involvement of young people: please help spread the word about this contest to any potential writer.

Brendan O’Neill has an Antiwar.com exclusive on today’s page, “Hooked on a Failing,” about the West’s War on Drugs, that will be of interest to folks of many foreign-policy stripes.