LIBERTY UNDER FIRE? (AGAIN)

Original post got jostled in the roll out. Here it is again ...
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Take a look at this proposal working it's way through congress ...

(d) AUTHORITIES. — Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect the existing criminal enforcement and national security authorities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or any other domestic law enforcement agency with regard to a covered person, regardless whether such covered person is held in military custody.

This is the language that was inserted into the proposed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in the Senate. In plain speak it permits the U.S. government to detain indefinitely, without trial, anyone who “substantially supported al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.”

There are several problems here:

* The proposed legislation allows the United States government to imprison anyone without charge or trial, even if they are U.S. citizens.

* The Bush adminsitration detained, and kept detained, many prisoners after they learned of their innocence because they did not want them on the streets speaking about their unlawful detention (sort of like, "How can we be wrong when there's no one to claim we did anything wrong"?).

* In arguing that the President has almost unlimited powers in times of war, a Working Group Report for President Bush cited Hamilton v. Dillin, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 73, 87 (1874) cited a Supreme Court decision which held (unanimously) that it's “the President alone who is constitutionally invested with the entire charge of hostile operations.”

* Current FISA statutes provide enough leeway for the U.S. government to make arrests - and to make their case for the arrest - when it comes to terrorism.

And just in case you want to claim that you can't be held indefinitely because you're a U.S. citizen, Senator Joe Lieberman has introduced legislation (the Enemy Expatriation Act) which would remove U.S. citizenship from anyone accused of supporting “hostilities against the United States.”

And, yes, the language is murky enough to be interpreted loosely.

Yeah, yeah, I know ... al Qaeda, worse than the Nazis, "greatest threat of all time," terrorism, be afraid, etc. But does this mean you neuter constitutional protections in the process? Should we start granting this type of authority to any president because a tactically successful, but largely fringe, terrorist group says "Boo"? Think about it. At the time that this nation was founded, there were far greater threats than what we face today. Britain, Spain, France, Russia, and the indigenous nations on the continent, among other threats, didn't subscribe to Geneva-like conventions either. And they were all around us, literally.

It seems to me that more than a few members of congress need to read about America's history (again). Fortunately, Rep. Ron Paul has introduced legislation to cut this language out of the NDAA.

Sigh ...

- Mark

UPDATE: Click here for additional figures, and discussion.

PAX AMERICANA, THROUGH LATIN AMERICA'S EYES

It's incredible how our world changed in just one generation. It was 1980. I was in junior college when I started studying politics and international relations. The United States was engaged in a cold war, paying for the defense of the west, and staring down the Soviet Union as it was crumbling into history. The American Peace, or Pax Americana, was in full bloom.

South of the border, most of Latin America was dominated by corrupt regimes and crony capitalists. The region's growing debts insured that the United States would wag it's finger at our neighbors to the south, as if they were broken step-children. And why not? The U.S. had a debt to GDP ratio that was just above 30% (we owed about $979 billion then) while most of Latin America had debt to GDP ratios that hovered between 35-60%, which would be even higher when set against declining export earnings in the 1980s. Though debt ratios didn't approach 100% for most of the region in the 1980s, declining export earning contributed significantly to Latin America's Lost Decade.

And we continued to wag our finger through it all.

How things have changed in just one generation.

There's no longer a cold war, but the United States continues to spend lavishly on military budgets like drunken sailors. We are spending far more money on defense than the next 17 militaries, combined. Worse, we spend 6 times more than our presumptive enemies China, Korea and Iran put together (we might be spending more than $1 trillion a year on defense).

And for what? To defend ourselves from terrorists who killed fewer Americans in 2010 (15, most in Afghanistan) than dog bites (34) or lightening (29)?  Combined with the incredibly irresponsible trickle down borrow-and-spend policies initiated by President Reagan (then carried on by both Bushes), and it should come as no surprise that America now finds itself in a financial mess. We've been spending and cutting taxes recklessly, while subsidizing crony capitalists, and pursuing foreign demons that don't warrant the expenditures.

How big is the mess? The U.S. now finds itself with a debt to GDP ratio that hovers over 95%. This is far worse than any of the major economies in Latin America today. Bolivia, run by socialist president Evo Morales, recently posted a 3.7% budget surplus (in 2010) and felt comfortable enough to lecture the United States on it's finances.

And while capacity to pay is as important as ever (the U.S. still retains the capacity to pay), the recent stupidity we saw over the debt ceiling is not encouraging. The Tea Party's fake populism and manufactured rage are encouraging the Barbarians at the Gate to question the credibility of the United States.

Today, even though annual budget deficits in the United States have only averaged about 10% of GDP after the 2008 market collapse (not bad considering what happened) ...

... total debt to GDP ratios in the United States have risen so fast it's now approaching 100% of GDP. This is quite a swing from when it was just above 30% when President Reagan entered the White House. No wonder Ecuador's socialist president lectured the United States on it's finances. Simply put, he can.

Why is all of this important? Because apart from the faux populist outrage we're getting from the Tea Party cranks (where were these guys when Reagan tripled and Bush II doubled our national debt?), we now have to deal with a world that has less confidence in America.

The world sees a country that seems more concerned with empty tax cuts, crony capitalism for Wall Street, and endless foreign wars than it is with fiscal responsibility and global leadership. They see a nation run by Wall Street kleptocrats, who are guided by ideologues pushing a failed ideology. Worse, many have a sense that they are seeing an empire in decline.

This helps explain why leftist-socialist presidential candidates have had found success in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela. While there's much to admire in this country, it's no longer easy for  Latin Americans to point to the United States' economic model as the path to follow. How can it be when fraud and incompetence on Wall Street are rewarded with bailouts and bonuses?

Yet, the United States continues to prod and push Latin America on issues ranging from drugs to immigration when, as any Latin American will tell you, it's U.S. policies and habits that encourage both. The Bush administration even tried a cold war tactic when they participated in (led?) an attempt to remove Venezuela's Hugo Chavez from power in 2002, even though he had been popularly and legitimately elected president. While it wasn't picked up by America's media, political insiders understood that the U.S. had a hand in the attempt to oust Chavez from power by bankrolling Venezuelan groups opposed to Hugo Chavez.

Then there's the hypocrisy of our response to the 2008 market crash.

History tells us that if any of our neighbors to the south had experienced the same market meltdown that we did in 2008 that our response would have been much different. Apart from demanding strict austerity measures we would have pressured Latin American officials to make big changes in the way government bureaucrats and their crony capitalists did business. Our response to our own meltdown, however, was to spend lavishly and to cover up for Wall Street with taxpayer backed bailout funds.

How we reacted to our market meltdown in 2008 is one of the reasons why I wrote, tongue-in-cheek, that it's a good thing we don't have a U.S. Embassy in the United States.

In the past - using the U.S. Embassy as a base to direct events - the U.S. initiated coups and forced unwanted leaders from power for lesser offenses throughout the world. With this in mind, in 2009, after being asked about the evolving economic mess in the United States, Chile's then President (2006-2010) Michelle Bachelet joked:

The reason why in the United States there has never been a coup d'etat is because, in the United States, there is no United States embassy.

President Bachelet may have been joking (she issued an apology later), but the point was made. After 30 years of pursuing budget busting tax cuts and unrestrained neoliberal policies in the United States, we are now experiencing what Latin America did when it embraced free market policies under corrupt regimes in the 1980s: economic instability and financial collapse.

What's worse, in many ways we've done nothing to rectify the issues that have altered our economic landscape in just one generation. This is unfortunate because, while our media ignores how it's all tied in to the American Peace, Latin America is picking up on the new realities of Pax Americana in the 21st century.

I'll be touching on this, and other issues, in my Politics of Latin America class this winter. Stay tuned for updates.

- Mark

CUTTING DEFICITS ISN'T ROCKET SCIENCE

Some times Congress makes things more difficult than it should be. Check out this article from Christopher Hellman at Huffingtonpost.

Hellman's article details how our base defense budget of $558 billion is not even close to what we actually spend on national security related items. What we actually spend is well over $1.2 trillion ... and counting.

Included in Hellman's numbers are our costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, veteran benefits, homeland security, the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA), military aid to foreign countries, and an entire group of categories that most Americans are too busy to think about or follow on a regular basis. Worse, billions of our national security expenditures - perhaps $200 billion - is simply overlap and waste.

Considering the $1.1 trillion in tax breaks (write-offs) we give to ordinary Americans, the $100 billion we give to corporations to locate off shore for tax (avoidance) purposes, the $88.7 billion in tax breaks that are dedicated for America's wealthiest class, the unnecessary hundreds of billions given away by the Bush tax cuts, and the trillions in profit subsidies we've handed over to Wall Street (with no tax claw backs), it appears that Congress simply isn't trying hard enough.

Put another way, when Congress says it's trying to cut the fat from the budget it needs to look beyond the chump change it will save by simply cutting public employee benefits and pay. We need to start rescinding tax cuts that don't work, eliminate write-offs that undermine the integrity of the market, abolish subsidies that distort incentives, and do away with other tax breaks that favor the wrong people in America.

Oh, and there's much to be saved by paring down the budget expenditures of our national security state too.

This isn't rocket science. Seriously.

- Mark

CLOAK & DAGGER CULTURE MAKING A MOCKERY OF NATIONAL SECURITY?

As I noted last week, the rise of the militarists after 9/11 has created a new environment in Washington.

Today, military hawks manipulate military budgets in a way that's not financially prudent for our nation. Worse, they have a tendency to classify everything that crosses their desks as "top secret". Consider the following, which even the experts acknowledge creates redundancy and overkill.

* We have over 10,000 counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence locations across the country.
* We have over 850,000 intelligence personnel with "top secret" access.
* We also produce over 50,000 intelligence reports (no doubt all "top secret") every year.

In a few words, Washington is in the process of developing a cloak and dagger culture that pretty much makes a mockery of top secret clearance.

Helping us understand this is Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert.

In one of his most incisive and lucid clips, Stephen Colbert makes it clear that the war crazies are starting to make a joke of security and what gets classified. Colbert uses the recent WikiLeaks release of 92,000 Afghan War related documents to help us understand that, in reality, "there's no new broad revelations" in the document dump, and that the government is pretty much classifying stuff that we already know about. More specifically ...

* Civilians have been killed by U.S. forces.
* Pakistan helps al Qaeda.
* Afghanistan is a tough place to wage war.

Watch the Colbert clip. It's pretty funny. His "ObviLeaks" reference is classic.

- Mark

BLOWBACK & THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE ... IN REAL TIME

In a series of books that began with Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Chalmers Johnson warns us about the political and military challenges that would face America at the beginning of the 21st century.

Writing before 9/11, Johnson argued that the United States needed to begin the process of disengaging from many of its global commitments, or we would begin to face serious repercussions around the world - both militarily and financially.

Then 9/11 happened.

After 9/11 Johnson came out with The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, where he describes the full entrenchment of the militarists throughout the U.S. government.

The real problem is not that these militarists are military hawks, pushing for more weapon programs. They have always been around. Instead, Johnson argues, the problem is their hyped up post-9/11 influence, and their new found ability to manipulate military budgets, while classifying everything that crosses their desks as "top secret". At the end of the day, American democracy - and the promises of transparency - suffer.

Finally, Johnson came out with Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006).

In it Johnson writes about militarism, imperial hubris, national security secrecy, secret armies, and executive arrogance that have worked to undermine the promises of the Constitution. He compares the U.S. to ancient Rome and asks why we don't (or haven't yet) learned the lessons of history.

I bring the Johnson Trilogy up because of this Washington Post article.

Drawing on information provided by Washington insiders, including a few "Super Users" who have access to the most sensitive security briefings, the Washington Post's initial report provides a stunning look at how out of control our America's militarism has become. According to the Post article, one Super User recounted how, for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn't take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, until he finally yelled ''Stop!" in frustration.

He simply couldn't take it all in. "I wasn't remembering any of it," he said. Among the findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counter terrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the U.S.

* Nearly 1 1/2 times the number of people who live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In the D.C. metropolitan area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since 9/11. They occupy the equivalent of three Pentagons.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the exact same work, creating redundancy and waste.

* 50,000 intelligence reports are issued each year--amongst 1,000 a week--that even senior officials admit cannot possibly be digested.

Whether we're facing, as Chalmers Johnson argued, the last days of the Republic, is yet to be determined. But one thing is clear. Rather than streamlining our defense priorities 9/11 has only served to privatize security, put it's users on steroids, while vastly expanding our military budgets.

How bad has it gotten? According to CIA Director Leon Panetta, the levels of spending since 9/11 are not sustainable. "Particularly with these deficits, we're going to hit the wall ..." Yet, no one can say that we're safer today than we were before 9/11. Still, the national security crazies say we need to spend more. Great.

Chalmers Johnson's discussions on blowback, secrecy & militarism, and the last days of the American Republic all seem to be wrapped up in the Post's series this week. Be sure to read it. The Washington Post will be running these articles throughout the week.

Stay tuned.

- Mark

UPDATE: Click here for additional figures, and discussion.

BILL MAHER & THE TEA BAGGERS

Bill Maher takes it to the Tea Baggers in this clip ...

The War Crazies, many in the Gun Fetish crowd, and those with a limited understanding of international relations won't like these comments, but here's where he brings it home:

Next question, so what government spending do you want to see cut? Answer: nothing. Not a thing.

America is like a family that spends way more than they bring in. But Mom won't give up her shopping sprees and Dad won't give up that big stupid boat he bought. Even now when we utterly can't afford a big stupid boat.

And you know what America's stupid boat is? It's our empire. We have an empire. We have half a million of our troops in other peoples' countries all over the world. That is our boat. And maintaining that empire and everything that goes into defense costs us about $1 trillion dollars a year. Most of which goes to fighting the Russians in 1978.

What defense spending really is. Is a giant welfare program. A jobs program for defense workers to build crap we don't need. So... scream about handouts. This is what they should be protesting.

We spend more on weapons than the next top 15 military powers combined. Let's cut it in half so we only spend as much as the next 8 countries behind us and see if anyone invades us.

Teabaggers, If you'll look into that, I will believe you really are 'we the people,' 'what about our grandchildren' patriots. But if you're unwilling to cut defense and give up the empire, you don't really care about the debt. And you have to admit: you're just a racist sore loser.  

 
- Mark

MILITARISM IN AMERICA

Speaking of militarism in America, it’s time we begin looking into what the mind-set has brought us ...


As Chalmers Johnson noted in The Sorrows of Empire, one of the first signs of militarism is when its proponents come to put military service and all things military above the integrity of the government structures and processes the military are supposed to protect.

In a twisted kind of “We have to burn the village in order to save it” mentality, civilians and the political classes elevate all things military above democratic processes and deliberate state functions. The ends justify the means. Worse, they come to believe they must display a “warrior’s culture” if they are to ingratiate themselves with real men of war.

This helps explain why many who have never served in the military adopt a callous and cavalier attitude toward war. Their lack of experience means they have to “out military” the military guys. This is the genesis of our modern day Chicken Hawks.

Military men, on the other hand, “pay court” to the pet schemes of the new political “warrior class” in an attempt to both promote within the system and, eventually, earn their stripes with the civilian-tied contractors.

But the real goal of many high-level military personnel is to gain access to key government positions, or to secure a new career in the defense industry. With civilians trying to find a place in the new “warrior culture”, and with military men cozying up to the new civilian political class (of Chicken Hawks), the goal is to out-do one another in preparing for constant war.

The end result – as we know all too well – is that much of America’s national security policy has centered around simply trying to scare us into believing we are under siege and need military messiahs for our salvation. Fear rather than analysis drive policy.


The proper functions and duty of government become secondary to addressing the needs of the new warrior culture, which helps to institutionalize war into our political system. Democracy is sacrificed to militarism and all things military.

The end result is a misguided and conflict-pandering need to promote wars that are not well understood by Americans (Iraq, and perhaps Iran), while former warriors are idolized for their service, prompting America’s cowering electorate into giving someone like John McCain a pass on his policy prescriptions for society (being a POW does not a president make).

America’s electorate is forced to suffer at the feet of this process, which we call militarism.

This is yet another disasterous legacy of George W. Bush, the politics of fear, and his Blundering Wars Project …

- Mark

ON MILITARISM ...

After my previous post, I think it's necessary we take a look at how politics, fear, and militarism can play out in any country. It's not pretty.


- Mark

TEAM McCAIN THINKS WE NEED MILITARY MEN RUNNING THIS COUNTRY

Well, it looks like John McCain understands he won't be able to win the election unless he can make it look like his military service means that he's the only one who understands national security and military issues. The implication is that we all need to be afraid unless, of course, John McCain is president.

Team McCain has even taken to going after Barack Obama for what Gen. Wesley Clark said here ...



Specifically, after being asked by Bob Schieffer about Barack Obama's lack of experience because he hasn't "ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down ..." the McCain people got upset that Gen. Clark responded "Well I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president ..." (1:54 into the clip). I agree.

VoteVets.org has it's response to Team McCain's drama-filled indignation here ...

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General Clark,

We the undersigned thank you for speaking up forcefully and honestly about what it takes to lead this nation, and the kind of judgment we must look for. You were right to say that Senator McCain has not shown good judgment, despite his extraordinary service to America. Just in the past few years:

- Senator McCain's service and experience, both as a POW and as a Senator apparently hasn't infused him with a dose of good judgment.

- Senator McCain's experience hasn't led him to realize that the war in Iraq and it's continuance has empowered and emboldened Iran, and destabilized the region.

- Senator McCain's experience hasn't caused him to recognize that we're losing ground in Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden is still out there, plotting.

- Senator McCain's experience didn't lead him to support the 21st Century GI Bill -- he opposed it. It didn't even make him feel the need to get back to Washington to vote on this -- one of the most important veterans' bills this Congress. He twice skipped votes on the GI Bill, to fundraise.

- Senator McCain's experience didn't help him empathize with troops are overstretched and overdeployed, when he voted against the bipartisan Webb-Hagel "Dwell Time Amendment," which would have given troops as much time at home as in the field.

We all honor Senator McCain's service, as you said you do. But that does not mean that on matters of security, the military, and veterans that he is beyond reproach. Nor does it mean that his service trumps the poor judgment he has shown in some of the most important issues of our time.

Do not back down, and keep treating the American people like adults who can handle a real, honest, and blunt debate in these important times.

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To sign a petition put out by some of America's Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans at VoteVets.org, which let's Gen. Clark know Team McCain is out of touch and grasping at straws, click here.

- Mark