Friday, October 16, 2015

Pentagon knew Kunduz MFD facility was a hospital

  The Associate Press reported yesterday that the Pentagon knew a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Kunduz, Afghanistan was, indeed, a hospital, and that they had ordered the site be placed under surveillance prior to the hospital's destruction. Special Operations analysts apparently suspected that the site was being used by a Pakistani ISI agent to coordinate Taliban attacks against Afghan and US forces.

  Whether the commanders who ordered the strike had this information in hand when the order to attack the site is unclear. The Pentagon has shifted its position, as well as its narrative of events, several times. The report cites anonymous analysts claiming the strike was "justified" due to their assumption the Pakistani agent was killed. No evidence suggests any Pakistani nationals were present in the office, and MSF flatly denies this assertion.

  This means that a civilian facility was flagged, prior to being destroyed, as a potential hostile target. The Pentagon can also no longer claim they didn't know the MSF facility was a hospital, which means a case can now be made this act was, in fact, a war crime.


Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Bernie Sanders' Lost Opportunity

  At the Democratic Party Primary Debate held last night in Las Vegas, I think I anticipated more of a grudge match between Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley, fueled partly by Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee attempting to make strong use of what was sure to be limited air-time. All of the candidates had something to gain, and some a lot to lose, with good showings. CNN's intro may have hyped up my expectations as it was clearly modeled on a pro-football broadcast, or maybe American Idol. It was a ridiculous way to introduce such an event, yet I may have been subconsciously amped by it.

  Boy, was I disappointed.

  Just to get it out of the way, Webb and Chafee are completely finished. Whatever policy positions they may advance from here on out are irrelevant given the incredibly awkward nature of their delivery and their clear discomfort as public speakers (btw, Jim Webb killed a guy?). So they're done. Gone. Finis. Oh, and Martin O'Malley accepted money from the NRA in 2012. He was also Baltimore's worst mayor and the basis for Littlefinger running that city in The Wire. So his whole performance was just that, a performance.

  Chafee, nonetheless, in spite of sounding like an awkward science teacher, should be given some credit for at least being the only candidate to directly challenge Hillary Clinton's integrity. However, when asked by CNN moderator Anderson Cooper if she had any response, she simply retorted "No." The audience cheered and applauded, and that was that. No further discussion, no further concern.

  Perhaps the crowd reaction can explain Bernie Sanders' decision to emphatically state that he's tired of hearing about Clinton's emails, a decision akin to a poker player knowing he has four aces in his hand but deciding to fold anyway. Anyone on that stage could rail against the rich (and they did) and demand a bigger share of the national wealth for working people (and they did), but only Sanders has a consistent track record of truly working for both of those things. Integrity is the one thing that Bernie Sanders can lord over every other politician in Washington, not just Hillary Clinton, and to so readily dismiss its importance could only have been the product of shrewd political calculus. Yes, he probably thought, I could make this an issue, but it could backfire given the party faithful simply don't seem to care if a Clinton breaks the law.

  On the subject of whistleblowers Clinton was given even more leeway:
"[Snowden] could have been a whistleblower. He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistleblower. He could have raised all the issues that he has raised. And I think there would have been a positive response to that."
  But as Dan Froomkin of The Intercept pointed out:
Snowden, as a contractor, was not covered by whistleblower protections. He did try going through established channels, but he said his concerns fell on deaf ears.  And the response to his leaks has made abundantly clear that no one in his chain of command was the least bit interested in going public with the information.
  That Clinton could say such a thing with a straight face is demonstrative of how comfortable she is with the double standard she and every Washington insider benefits from: when they break the law, it's at most a political liability, but when people like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden do it for the public benefit their lives are ruined. They, along with journalists like Barrett Brown, were made examples of by the Obama administration, which she was part of, for relaying information to the public that we would never have known about without their sacrifice. In the universe of privilege Clinton exists in, the use of leaks for political advantage are ok, but when they actually force those in power to answer for their actions, then and only then are they considered legitimate breaches of national security.

  It's no wonder, given the free pass she was given last night, that every major liberal periodical in the country, from the Wall-Street-controlled New York Times to the guns-in-America obsessed Guardian, are running headlines declaring the debate a resounding victory for Clinton. She was not challenged on her principal weakness, and she will never be. It is a stark indicator of how little change will be coming to the Democratic Party, and the American Left, anytime soon.



Sunday, October 11, 2015

Arm the troops. But arm the people?

It would the an understatement to say that the Republican Party is a firm opponent of any attempts to restrict gun ownership in the United States. All of their presidential hopefuls have adopted the NRA's "good guy with a gun" talking point. This is a good indicator that this will become a platform position in the next general election. So really, if anything, the GOP wants to help expand the market of gun ownership in the United States.

This creates a contradiction between their position on the subject of war. With the exception of a small libertarian minority, the Republican party is still the party of unilateral, single-minded military action. For all their disdain for entitlement programs, their desire to further bloat an already massive military budget and to re-engage in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan renders their supposed advocacy of small government as mere rhetorical nonsense. Telling, then, that they have not, with only a few exceptions, challenged President Obama on issues of war and national security during his time in office. If they attempted to put up a real challenge to extra-judicial killing or indefinite detention they would be restricting the abilities of future Republican presidents to conduct those acts as well. So the contradiction we end up with is "Let's make our military bigger, stronger, and meaner and also protect our right to shoot at it."

Having said this, we see a different, albeit related, contradiction from President Obama and many Democrats. He has worked to block, or in the case of the Libyan War has outright ignored, attempts by Congress to hinder his ability to use violence internationally whenever he sees fit. This not only contradicts positions he took as a candidate, but also his advocacy of stricter gun laws. As far as the Obama administration is concerned, his constituents should be hindered in their capacity to conduct mass killings, and he should not. He should have the power to commit acts of terrible violence anywhere on Earth at all times, and will kill anyone he chooses without oversight regardless of how many innocent people die in the process, but Americans should not shoot each other and should not arm themselves.

Perhaps, reader, I am alone in seeing these contradictions. Unfortunately, while preparing this piece I attempted to find any kind of polling data that would link views on gun ownership to views on foreign policy and the war on terrorism, but was unable to. It is odd to me, given the horse-race nature of the election commentary by the media, that no one has researched whether there is a correlation between an individual US voter's view of gun ownership and how those views relate to other issues. A majority of gun owners are indeed Republicans, but apart from Nate Silver's breakdown there is virtually no research on how an individual's opinion on the 2nd Amendment correlates to their opinion of the 1st Amendment, or on the separation of powers, or the state secrets privilege.