v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Darker Legacy for Bush

From today's NYT Editorial:

All five living presidents gathered in Texas Thursday for a feel-good moment at the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, which is supposed to symbolize the legacy that Mr. Bush has been trying to polish. President Obama called it a “special day for our democracy.” Mr. Bush spoke about having made “the tough decisions” to protect America. They all had a nice chuckle when President Bill Clinton joked about former presidents using their libraries to rewrite history.

But there is another building, far from Dallas on land leased from Cuba, that symbolizes Mr. Bush’s legacy in a darker, truer way: the military penal complex at Guantánamo Bay where Mr. Bush imprisoned hundreds of men after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a vast majority guilty of no crime.

It became the embodiment of his dangerous expansion of executive power and the lawless detentions, secret prisons and torture that went along with them. It is now also a reminder of Mr. Obama’s failure to close the prison as he promised when he took office, and of the malicious interference by Congress in any effort to justly try and punish the Guantánamo inmates.

There are still 166 men there — virtually all of them held without charges, some for more than a decade. More than half have been cleared for release but are still imprisoned because of a law that requires individual Pentagon waivers. The administration eliminated the State Department post charged with working with other countries to transfer the prisoners so those waivers might be issued.

Of the rest, some are said to have committed serious crimes, including terrorism, but the military tribunals created by Mr. Bush are dysfunctional and not credible, despite Mr. Obama’s improvements. Congress long ago banned the transfer of prisoners to the federal criminal justice system where they belong and are far more likely to receive fair trials and long sentences if convicted.

Only six are facing active charges. Nearly 50 more are deemed too dangerous for release but not suitable for trial because they are not linked to any specific attack or because the evidence against them is tainted by torture.

The result of this purgatory of isolation was inevitable. Charlie Savage wrote in The Times on Thursday about a protest that ended in a raid on Camp Six, where the most cooperative prisoners are held. A hunger strike in its third month includes an estimated 93 prisoners, twice as many as were participating before the raid. American soldiers have been reduced to force-feeding prisoners who are strapped to chairs with a tube down their throats.

That prison should never have been opened. It was nothing more than Mr. Bush’s attempt to evade accountability by placing prisoners in another country. The courts rejected that ploy, but Mr. Bush never bothered to fix the problem. Now, shockingly, the Pentagon is actually considering spending $200 million for improvements and expansions clearly aimed at a permanent operation.

Polls show that Americans are increasingly indifferent to the prison. We received a fair amount of criticism recently for publishing on our Op-Ed page a first-person account from one of the Guantánamo hunger strikers. But whatever Mr. Bush says about how comfortable he is with his “tough” choices, the country must recognize the steep price being paid for what is essentially a political prison. Just as hunger strikes at the infamous Maze Prison in Northern Ireland indelibly stained Britain’s human rights record, so Guantánamo stains America’s.

Surreal War on Terror

From Glenn Greenwald on the quicksand legal developments with the Boston case:

So Democrats reacted with horror and outrage to Graham's suggestion that "the last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent.'" But that's already Obama DOJ policy, enacted with little controversy. And last night's announcement makes clear that the Obama DOJ intends, as Bazelon says, to question him about a wide range of topics far beyond matters of imminent threats to public safety without first Mirandizing him.

But there's another reason why I found Democratic outrage over Graham's statements to be confounding. The theory on which Graham's arguments are based is one that the Obama administration has vigorously embraced with the full-throated endorsement of most of its supporters: namely, that the US is "at war", and that anyone who takes up arms against the country or tries to kill Americans is not entitled to basic rights - even if they're American citizens. As Graham told the Washington Post, his view that Tsarnaev is not entitled to these rights is grounded in his belief that the US is fighting a global war and those who fight in it against the US are "enemy combatants".

It is bizarre indeed to watch Democrats act as though Graham's theories are exotic or repellent. This is, after all, the same faction that insists that Obama has the power to target even US citizens for execution without charges, lawyers, or any due process, on the ground that anyone the president accuses of Terrorism forfeits those rights. The only way one can believe this is by embracing the same theory that Lindsey Graham is espousing: namely, that accused Terrorists are enemy combatants, not criminals, and thus entitled to no due process and other guarantees in the Bill of Rights. Once you adopt this "entire-globe-is-a-battlefield" war paradigm - as supporters of Obama's assassination powers must do and have explicitly done - then it's impossible to scorn Graham's views about what should be done with Tsarnaev. Indeed, one is necessarily endorsing the theory in which Graham's beliefs are grounded.

It's certainly possible to object to Graham's arguments on pragmatic grounds, by advocating that Tsarnaev should be eventually Mirandized and tried in a federal court because it will be more beneficial to the government if that is done. But for anyone who supports the general Obama "war on terror" approach or specifically his claimed power to target even US citizens for execution without charges, it's impossible to object to Graham's arguments on principled or theoretical grounds. Once you endorse the "whole-globe-is-a-battlefield" theory, then there's no principled way to exclude US soil. If (as supporters of Obama's terrorism policies must argue), the "battlefield" is anywhere an accused terrorist is found and they can be detained or killed without charges, then that necessarily includes terrorists on US soil (or, as Graham put it, using one of the creepiest slogans imaginable: "the homeland is the battlefield").

Recall, in fact, that the Democratic-led Senate enacted the 2011 NDAA, which was then signed into law by President Obama, that codified the power of indefinite detention even of US citizens on US soil accused of terrorism (that's what led a federal court to enjoin the law on the grounds of unconstitutionality). It is true that Obama said that, as a matter of policy, he would not exercise these powers against US citizens on US soil, but that's simply a pragmatic choice that can be changed at any time. The theory of the NDAA is the same theory as Graham yesterday invoked, which in turn is the same theory animating the Obama "war on terror": the US is "at war" with The Terrorists, and anyone who takes up arms against the US and tries to kill Americans are "combatants" who can be denied basic rights. Watching Democrats mock Graham, while supporting Obama's policies based on the same theory, is truly surreal.

Forgotten Souls

From NYT, Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel,  writes:

ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either.

When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

I was wrong to trust him. There was no work. I wanted to leave, but had no money to fly home. After the American invasion in 2001, I fled to Pakistan like everyone else. The Pakistanis arrested me when I asked to see someone from the Yemeni Embassy. I was then sent to Kandahar, and put on the first plane to Gitmo.

Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

I am still being force-fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my cell. My arms, legs and head are strapped down. I never know when they will come. Sometimes they come during the night, as late as 11 p.m., when I’m sleeping.

There are so many of us on hunger strike now that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force-feedings; nothing is happening at regular intervals. They are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.

During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not.

It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the “food” spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.

When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.

The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one.

I do not want to die here, but until President Obama and Yemen’s president do something, that is what I risk every day.

Where is my government? I will submit to any “security measures” they want in order to go home, even though they are totally unnecessary.

I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free. I am now 35. All I want is to see my family again and to start a family of my own.

The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply. At least 40 people here are on a hunger strike. People are fainting with exhaustion every day. I have vomited blood.

And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.

I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.

Bad Tax System

Joseph Stieglitz writes at the NYT:

About 6 in 10 of us believe that the tax system is unfair — and they’re right: put simply, the very rich don’t pay their fair share. The richest 400 individual taxpayers, with an average income of more than $200 million, pay less than 20 percent of their income in taxes — far lower than mere millionaires, who pay about 25 percent of their income in taxes, and about the same as those earning a mere $200,000 to $500,000. And in 2009, 116 of the top 400 earners — almost a third — paid less than 15 percent of their income in taxes.

Conservatives like to point out that the richest Americans’ tax payments make up a large portion of total receipts. This is true, as well it should be in any tax system that is progressive — that is, a system that taxes the affluent at higher rates than those of modest means. It’s also true that as the wealthiest Americans’ incomes have skyrocketed in recent years, their total tax payments have grown. This would be so even if we had a single flat income-tax rate across the board.

What should shock and outrage us is that as the top 1 percent has grown extremely rich, the effective tax rates they pay have markedly decreased. Our tax system is much less progressive than it was for much of the 20th century. The top marginal income tax rate peaked at 94 percent during World War II and remained at 70 percent through the 1960s and 1970s; it is now 39.6 percent. Tax fairness has gotten much worse in the 30 years since the Reagan “revolution” of the 1980s.

Citizens for Tax Justice, an organization that advocates for a more progressive tax system, has estimated that, when federal, state and local taxes are taken into account, the top 1 percent paid only slightly more than 20 percent of all American taxes in 2010 — about the same as the share of income they took home, an outcome that is not progressive at all.

With such low effective tax rates — and, importantly, the low tax rate of 20 percent on income from capital gains — it’s not a huge surprise that the share of income going to the top 1 percent has doubled since 1979, and that the share going to the top 0.1 percent has almost tripled, according to the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Recall that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own about 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, and the picture becomes even more disturbing.

If these numbers still don’t impress you as being unfair, consider them in comparison with other wealthy countries.

The United States stands out among the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the world’s club of rich nations, for its low top marginal income tax rate. These low rates are not essential for growth — consider Germany, for instance, which has managed to maintain its status as a center of advanced manufacturing, even though its top income-tax rate exceeds America’s by a considerable margin. And in general, our top tax rate kicks in at much higher incomes. Denmark, for example, has a top tax rate of more than 60 percent, but that applies to anyone making more than $54,900. The top rate in the United States, 39.6 percent, doesn’t kick in until individual income reaches $400,000 (or $450,000 for a couple). Only three O.E.C.D. countries — South Korea, Canada and Spain — have higher thresholds.

Most of the Western world has experienced an increase in inequality in recent decades, though not as much as the United States has. But among most economists there is a general understanding that a country with excessive inequality can’t function well; many countries have used their tax codes to help “correct” the market’s distribution of wealth and income. The United States hasn’t — or at least not very much. Indeed, the low rates at the top serve to exacerbate and perpetuate the inequality — so much so that among the advanced industrial countries, America now has the highest income inequality and the least equality of opportunity. This is a gross inversion of America’s traditional meritocratic ideals — ideals that our leaders, across the spectrum, continue to profess.

Special & Unique Exceptions

Glenn Greenwald writes:

The American-Israeli Political Action Committee (Aipac) is now pushing legislation that would allow Israel to enter this program, so that Israelis can enter the US without a visa. But as JTA's Ron Kampeas reports, there is one serious impediment: Israel has a practice of routinely refusing to allow Americans of Arab ethnicity or Muslim backgrounds to enter their country or the occupied territories it controls; it also bars those who are critical of Israeli actions or supportive of Palestinian rights. Israel refuses to relinquish this discriminatory practice of exclusion toward Americans, even as it seeks to enter the US's visa-free program for the benefit of Israeli citizens.

As a result, at the behest of Aipac, Democrat Barbara Boxer, joined by Republican Roy Blunt, has introduced a bill that would provide for Israel's membership in the program while vesting it with a right that no other country in this program has: namely, the right to exclude selected Americans from this visa-free right of entrance. In other words, the bill sponsored by these American senators would exempt Israel from a requirement that applies to every other nation on the planet, for no reason other than to allow the Israeli government to engage in racial, ethnic and religious discrimination against US citizens. As Lara Friedman explained when the Senate bill was first introduced, it "takes the extraordinary step of seeking to change the current US law to create a special and unique exception for Israel in US immigration law." In sum, it is as pure and blatant an example of prioritizing the interests of the Israeli government over the rights of US citizens as one can imagine, and it's being pushed by Aipac and a cast of bipartisan senators.

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Bad Leaders

From Juan Cole:

The hatred for the late Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister, among a broad segment of the British public has manifested itself in visible and undeniable ways in the week after her death, but these are not highlighted on American television. The status quo corporate media are afraid of admitting that policy-makers who favor the rich and punish the middle and working classes are deeply hated by the latter. Dead leaders have to be represented on television as being revered by the entirety of the public (an imaginary public for which the corporate anchors can serve as ventriloquists). That many Americans despise Ronald Reagan is likewise an unmentionable on the airwaves.

Demonstrators gathered Saturday at Trafalgar Square to denounce Thatcher’s Neoliberal policies, which enriched the wealthy and harmed the middle classes, holding what they called a “death party.” Middle and working class Britons well remember how they defeated her hated poll tax and hastened her from office.

Then, Britons have been commemorating Thatcher’s death by downloading “Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead,” in high volumes, pushing it to the top of the download charts. The British Broadcast Company was put in a difficult position, because it has a show that plays the top downloaded songs, and it didn’t want to be seen as endorsing this use of the tune. The BBC dealt with the problem by only playing an excerpt of the song, which satisfied no one.

Time Bomb

From Dantemag.com, Fernando Carneiro writes:

Our demographic time bomb.
And here we are: seven billion humans on the planet and counting. Chalk another one up to human ingenuity. Alas, this mark is troublesome. In 1950, there were three billion homo sapiens hopping about. If we discount Darwinian evolution, this particular species of hominid – which got its moniker from French philosopher Henri Bergson – has been around for roughly 200,000 years. In other words, we’ve doubled, splicing ourselves by half in sixty years. That is very worrisome.

Some secular humanists, usually taking a balanced and scientific approach to these matters, worry about what can be done. Many believe that superior technology will get us out of the hole. But Albert Einstein sounded an timeless cautionary tale when he said “…all our lauded technological progress – our very civilisation – is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.” Most new technology brings with it new problems. We understand nowadays that green, slow and organic are here to stay. If economics studies the allocation of finite and limited resources, we must remember that the planet also has a geometrical finitude. There will not be a happy ending to this movie.

Ever since I can remember, my thoughts on this subject were like the definition of good taste. Less is more. As I observed lines, crowds, queues, multitudes, I immediately thought about silence and the cloister. Malthus, though dead, received a good philosophical lashing in academia during my formative years. The pedagogical recalcitrance of others did not deter me. I still admired his ideas and thought he was on to something. Nowadays, he is at the forefront again after a seemingly long hiatus.

UN demographers, led by Joel Cohen, talk about a “stabilisation” of the world population that will take place between 2050 and 2100. Some agree that many of our current problems, particularly in Europe, are due in great part to this issue. The demographic explosion is like the metaphor of the living room wake that is taking too long. In the present global economy, we currently have capital sufficient for only half of the inhabitants. This includes their retirement, as well as investments needed in infrastructure and renewal of modes of production to support such numbers. The assets under management (AUM) are currently lacking. The issue appeared in the media as a celebratory mark, full of exulting tones, and paeans to this generation. Sometimes you might read a minor perfunctory warning about such a milestone. But the mood was definitely upbeat. The ontological traits of the issue are forgotten, because to tackle it would require an examination of individual liberties, the collective well-being, and how to balance assorted demands. In the midst of such confusion, or lack of a healthy and honest discussion, we sometimes have proponents of oddball solutions to our intractable problem.

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Completely Wrong

Stephen M. Walt in an interview:

The European: President Bush and Dick Cheney were convinced that the Iraq intervention would herald far-reaching regional transformations and could consolidate American hegemony in that region. Were they wrong to believe that?
Walt: Yes, they were completely wrong. They thought that the US could remake the politics of the entire Middle East at the point of a gun. That’s a very fanciful idea. What we’ve seen instead, is that the politics of the region, far from moving towards a tranquil democracy, have become much more contentious and less stable.

The European: Yet, President Obama is still convinced that Iraq is “a model for others that are aspiring to create democracy in that region”.
Walt: You have to remember that President Obama was committed to get the US out of Iraq when he took office. That was, back then, a position that President Bush had as well. Obviously Obama tried to present Iraq in a proper light, but the key here was that the US finally understood that it had made a huge mistake and should withdraw. I don’t place much weight on what either Obama or Bush said as the Unites States was getting out.

The European: Do you see any change between the Bush and the Obama administration with regards to Iraq?
Walt: Bush’s administration had negotiated a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, which lay out a schedule for American withdrawal. The Obama administration, for the most part, stuck to that schedule. In that sense, there was no change between the end of the Bush presidency and the current Obama presidency.

The European: Iran might be considered the sole “winner” of the conflict. The country undoubtedly filled the regional “influence”- and “power void” that both Iraq and the US left behind, and is now a major obstacle for regional peace and a challenge to the US.
Walt: That’s correct. Iran has always been a major power in that region. Under Saddam however, Iran and Iraq were bitter enemies who fought a long war and were strongly opposed to one another. There was almost a rough balance of power between the two countries. By reducing Iraq’s power and by allowing the Shia to become the dominant political force in Iraq, the US removed the main country balancing Iran, and helped bring to power a government that has at least some sympathies and links to Iran. So, Iran is by far the main strategic beneficiary of the Iraq War, which made it even more difficult for the US and its allies to deal with the country.

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10 Years - Lessons Learned

Joseph Nye writes:

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the controversial American-led invasion of Iraq. What has that decision wrought over the last decade? More important, was the decision to invade rightly made?

On the positive side, analysts point to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the creation of an elected government, and an economy growing at nearly 9% per year, with oil exports surpassing their pre-war level. Some, such as Nadim Shehadi of Chatham House, go further, arguing that, while “the US certainly bit off more than it could chew in Iraq,” America’s intervention “may have shaken the region out of [a] stagnation that has dominated the lives of at least two generations.”

Skeptics reply that it would be wrong to link the Iraq War to the “Arab Spring,” because events in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 had their own origins, while President George W. Bush’s actions and rhetoric discredited, rather than advanced, the cause of democracy in the region. Removing Saddam was important, but Iraq is now a violent place governed by a sectarian group, with one corruption index ranking it 169th out of 174 countries.

Whatever the benefits of the war, skeptics argue, they are too meager to justify the costs: more than 150,000 Iraqis and 4,488 American service members killed, and an estimated cost of nearly $1 trillion (not including long-term health and disability costs for some 32,000 wounded US soldiers.)

Perhaps this balance sheet will look different a decade from now, but at this point most Americans have concluded that the skeptics are right, and that thinking has influenced current US foreign policy. In the next decade, it is very unlikely that the US will try another prolonged occupation and transformation of another country. As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it shortly before stepping down, any adviser recommending such action “should have his head examined.”

Some call this isolationism, but it might better be called prudence or pragmatism. After all, President Dwight D. Eisenhower refused in 1954 to send US troops to save the French at Dien Bien Phu because he feared that they would be “swallowed up by the divisions” in Vietnam. And Ike was hardly an isolationist.

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-iraq-war-ten-years-later-by-joseph-s--nye#STUwpgAspzBBODAj.99

Chavez Mystery

Alma Guillermoprieto writes in the NYRB blog:

The Chávez mystery: he took over a country ravaged by corruption and poor administration and, mostly, a collapsing international price for oil, which is virtually the only product Venezuela has to sell the world. In his years in power, oil—which accounts for 30 percent of the GDP and of which Venezuela is one of the world’s top ten producers—went from nine dollars a barrel to nearly one hundred and fifty and remains currently at or near one hundred. Despite being able to draw on such a huge windfall for a small country (the population is a fairly stable 30 million), chavismo distinguished itself by a series of disasters—housing, infrastructure, agriculture, electricity, food distribution, and public safety among the most salient—while oil production declined thanks to fantastic levels of mismanagement. And yet Chávez easily won his fourth election just last October, at a time when he had already been operated on for cancer three times and it was hard not to notice that he was dying, despite his refusal to provide any information on the progress of the cancer that would kill him.

He cared about people. He defied Venezuelan racism and leapt over his country’s class barriers. Having come from abject circumstances himself, he brought significant improvements in health, education, and public welfare to the poor, right in the neighborhoods where they live. He was defiant. He was macho. According to former President Jimmy Carter and other sober-minded observers, he reduced poverty by dramatic percentages. He repeatedly poked the United States in the eye and ran away like a mischievous schoolboy, giggling. He adored himself. But other rulers with similar records have failed to be Chávez and withdrawn from public office before an indifferent audience, or been forced out by crowds who would have torn them limb from limb. It is safe to say that Chávez, now dead and about to receive the funeral of a saint, will in his afterlife influence the politics and social mores of his country for years—perhaps decades—to come, like the Latin American leader he most resembled, Juan Domingo Perón of Argentina. Or rather, as Perón and his wife Evita have, for in his complicated appeal (and his manner of dying, too) Chávez resembles both.

He was not the first president to fail, or to remain popular while failing. But it was his Peronist brand of popularity that so many found disturbing; the passion with which his name was roared at enormous public gatherings, the hatred he brought forth in his followers when he denounced the imperialists, the sharks, the would-be assassins of Venezuela, the traitors, the sneaking cowards who dared to disagree with him. And now we see the desperate weeping of millions of Venezuelans who feel that they have lost not a president or a politician or a great leader but something else: a father, a savior, a protector and soother of the orphan who lives in fright inside us all.

Perhaps in trying to evaluate the astonishing rule of Hugo Chávez the question to ask is this: whether the people he leaves behind regressed into a kind of childhood faith and dependency under his spell and what the price of such regression might be. Perhaps this is the state brought forth by those rulers we call caudillos—willful chieftans who rule by force of personality—of which Hugo Chávez Frías may have been the greatest of all. “There is no chavismo without Chavez,” he proclaimed repeatedly. Who now will dry Venezuela’s tears?