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Personal relations, Kerry and Lavrov, facts on the ground, and the search for solutions in Syria

Sunday, May 19th, 2013

The New York Times reports on May 18 on the rapport that is building between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

See Steven Lee Meyers and David M. Herszenhorn, “U.S.-Russian Diplomacy, With a Personal Touch”,” New York Times, May 17, 2013.

Yet the U.S. decision to join the Russians in organizing a Syrian peace conference, aside from having a snowball’s chance in hell of leading to peace, has undercut efforts that might have resulted in sending arms to the Syrian rebels any time soon.

Once again, the United States has acted to undercut its allies, who (with France and Britain in the lead) among other things were pushing for an end to the European Union arms embargo on Syria. Once again, the U.S. has acted to put off the day of reckoning when Barack Obama might actually have to decide to openly supply arms to the armed opposition in Syria.

See “The emperor has no clothes”: Foreign policy without a moral core—Obama’s Debacle in Syria — Update #19, The Trenchant Observer, March 29, 2012.

Once again, the United States has decided “to act through the Russians” in search of a solution to the crisis in Syria. When this strategy was adopted a year ago, it allowed the U.S. to continue its “pressure” on al-Assad with only words, not military actions, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives in Syria. The acknowledged (minimum) death toll now stands at 80,000.

However, David Kramer, the President of Freedom House and a former high State Department official, has forcefully reminded us of who Putin is, and the fallacious nature of the illusions that might lead us to believe that Russia could be helpful in Syria.

See David J. Kramer, “No help on Syria will come from Russia, Washington Post, May 17, 2013 (10:48 PM EDT).

Once again, we are reminded of Obama’s strong belief in personal relations, his belief in his own personal charm, and how he pursued his “reset” of relations with Russia under the illusion that his “warm” relations with President Dimitri Medvedev would affect events, with disastrous results. In Syria, he simply ignored what was happening on the ground and the actual policies the Russians were pursuing.

A famous journal during the Soviet era, particularly in the glasnost period, was entitled, “Argumenty i Fakty” (Russian: “Аргументы и факты”). Arguments and Facts. President Obama and John Kerry need to attend not only to their own and Moscow’s arguments with respect to Syria, but also–and primarily–to the facts regarding what the Russians are doing on the ground in Syria, and what the United States and its allies should be doing to counter or prevent these actions.

This week we know that Russia has deployed a number of warships to the Syrian port of Tartus, is delivering or is about to deliver land-to-sea missile and radar systems to Syria, and appears to be about to deliver a new advanced air-defense system and missiles to Syria. Russia is financing the Syrian state. Iran is supplying weapons, training and personnel to Syria. Lebanon’s Hezbollah has militia members inside Syria fighting alongside al-Assad’s forces.

See Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes, and Gregory L. White, “Russia Raises Stakes in Syria; Assad Ally Bolsters Warships in Region; U.S. Sees Warning,” The Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2013 (updated 11:07 p.m. ET).

At the same time, Kerry and Obama, in addition to derailing French- and British-led efforts to lift the EU arms embargo against Syria and to postponing–indefinitely–any U.S. decision to openly provide arms to the insurgents (despite the crossing of the chemical weapons “red line”), have not responded to Lavrov’s ludicrous argument (not new) that Russia in only fulfilling the terms of old arms contracts, which are prohibited neither by international nor domestic law. Even at this level of detail, neither Kerry nor Obama has rebutted this argument, or even demanded that the texts of such contracts be made public.

Only since Obama took office has the U.S. been deterred from acting by the contractual terms of agreements such as those alleged to exist between Russia and Syria, a state led by one of the great war criminals of this or the last century. In fact, International law has much to say about war crimes and crimes against humanity, and about complicity in the commission of such crimes.

At the end of the day, there should be no confusion over the fact that the decision- maker in Russia is Vladimir Putin, who is not going to be moved by good relations with Obama (actually their relations are abominable), or by warm, friendly relations between Lavrov and Kerry. Lavrov is a very effective diplomat in the service of the Russian state, who takes his orders from Putin. It doesn’t hurt that he has cordial relations with Kerry, and it is good that the U.S. and Russia are talking to each other directly (rather than through a UN mediator like Kofi Annan or Lakhdar Brahimi), but there should be no illusions about whether or not rapport between Kerry and Lavrov will affect Putin’s calculus and behavior.

In this context, it is extremely important to understand who Putin is, and what he has done in the past.

See, e.g.,

André Glucksmann, “The killing continues in Syria” (English translation)—Obama’s Debacle in Syria — Update #81 (August 28), The Trenchant Observer, August 28, 2012.

André Glucksmann, “La tuerie continue en Syrie”—Obama’s debacle in Syria — Update #74 (August 13), The Trenchant Observer, August 13, 2012.

“What future for UNSMIS and for Kofi Annan? Russia pushes for more of the same, with an implied military threat to dissuade all from any other options—Obama’s Debacle in Syria — Update #61 (July 11),” The Trenchant Observer, July 11th, 2012.

Surely the United States can come up with a better policy regarding Syria than “trust the Russians” and “play the Russians’ diplomatic game”.

The Trenchant Observer

Tags: "reset"with Russia, 2013 planned Geneva preace conference, 80 000 dead, adam entous, David J. Kramer, David M. Herszenhorn, dimitri medvedev, foreign policy without a moral core, Freedom House, Geneva Peace Conference 30 June 2012, Gregory L White, John Kerry. Sergei Lavrov, julian e barnes, play the Russians' diplomatic game, Poutine, Russia, Sergy Lavrov, Siria, sirye, Steven Lee Meyers, surria, surriah, syria, Syrien, the butcher of grosny, the emperor has no closthes, to act through the Russians, trust the Russians, United States, vladimir putin, Wall Street Journal
Posted in Barack Obama, Crimes Against Humanity, extrajudicial execution, History, International Law, Iran, Lebanon, Russia, State Department, syria, Turkey, U.S. Intervention, U.S. Military, United States, use of force, war crimes | No Comments »

Nibia Zabalsagaray and the long arc of justice

Thursday, May 9th, 2013

“(T)he arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear. Let us bear it–bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it for peace. Let us go out this morning with that determination. And I have not lost faith. I’m not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven’t lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Why I am opposed to the war in Vietnam,” Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967.

The Case of Nibia Zabalsagaray (Sabalsagaray)
Uruguayan General Miguel Dalmao has been found guilty of the murder of Nibia Sabalsagaray in 1974.

See Associated Press (Buenos Aires, “Uruguayan general found guilty of junta’s 1974 murder of communist; General Miguel Dalmao convicted of murder of professor and activist Nibia Sabalsagaray during Uruguay’s military dictatorship,” The Guardian, May 9, 2013. (16.36 EDT)

See also:

“Uruguay Supreme Court annuls amnesty law, as accountability continues in Latin America, intlawgrrls.com-voices on international law, policy, practice, November 3, 2010 (with picture of Nibia Sabalsagaray).

I remember Nibia Sabalsagaray, or rather her case at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)–or the Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH), as it is known in Spanish. The IACHR is the human rights organ of the Organization of American States, established pursuant to both the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights (in force since 1978).

Although much litigation has ensued, including decisions by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and several decisions by the Uruguayan Supreme Court on what amounted to an amnesty law, the original decision of the IACHR, issued four years after the facts, is worth recalling in detail.

The 1978 Decision on Case 1870 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

The Text of the Commission’s decision in Case No. 1870 (Nibia Zabalsagaray) follows:

Case 1870

Uruguay

WHEREAS:

In a communication dated August 22, 1974, the following was denounced:

A young woman, a 20-year-old student and professor, NIBIA ZABALZAGARAY, (was) killed as a result of tortures inflicted at the Police Station at Señaleros, located in the El Peñarol neighborhood of Montevideo.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in a note dated October 8, 1974, transmitted the pertinent parts of the denunciation to the Government of Uruguay and requested that it provide the appropriate information;

The Government, in a note date May 23, 1975, requested a ninety-day extension in order to provide the information requested;

The Commission, in a note dated June 12, 1975, granted a thirty-day extension to the Government, which elapsed on July 12, 1975;

The Government of Uruguay, in a note dated July 12, 1975, reported the following to the Commission:

I – The death of Miss Nibia Zabalzagaray

The individual in question was detained on July 29, 1974 and within 24 hours of her detention she committed suicide in her cell.

The competent judicial organ intervened, ordering an opinion from the forensic physician. His reports states: ‘asphyxiation by suspension’ (hanging) as the cause of death.

The intervening Judge, in the absence of proof of any illegality, closed the proceedings on August 2, 1974.

The claimant, in a communication dated July 8, 1975, provided additional information to the Commission, the pertinent parts of which appear below:

NIBIA ZABALZAGARAY – professor of literature, single, 24 years of age.

The individual was detained, tortured and killed, all within a period of 10 hours, on Saturday, June 29, 1974.

At 1:30 a.m., three men dressed in military uniforms and two civilians appeared at her room at the Campomar Home for Workers’ Children in Montevideo (she was a native of the Department of Colonia). They interrogated her as to her political convictions and left with her at 3:00 a.m. and refused to reveal their identity and the place to which they were taking her.

Ten hours later, those in charge of the residence received a phone call informing them that Nibia Zabalzagaray had died and that they should inform some member of the family so that the latter might claim her body at the Military Hospital. Her uncles appeared there and were informed that Nibia was dead on arrival at the Hospital, and that her personal effects and her clothing (she was nude) should be claimed at the barracks of the Engineers Battalion No 5 and Transmissions Service (Camino Casavalle, Montevideo).

The death certificate, issued by Dr José Alejandro Mautone, attributed the death to suicide by hanging.

The relatives were denied the necessary authorization to conduct another autopsy. The corpse, however, underwent an external examination by experts, the results of which contradicted the official ruling.

The true cause of her death is asphyxiation through application of the torture known as the “dry submarine” (application of a plastic bag on the head, thereby preventing breathing) or cardiac arrest under torture.

No judicial action was taken as a result of the death of Nibia Zabalzagaray. No official received any military disciplinary punishment.

The Commission, in a note date October 24, 1975, forwarded to the Government of Uruguay the pertinent parts of the additional information provided by the claimant, and requested that the Government provide the following information:

b) A copy of the legal record and actions taken during the proceedings that were closed by the intervening judge on August 2, 1974, ‘in the absence of proof of any illegality,’ as stated in the corresponding part of the note from Your Excellency’s Government of July 12 of this year.

c) A copy of the autopsy on the corpse of Miss Nibia Zabalzagaray.

The Government of Uruguay, in a note dated May 18, 1976, refused to provide the information specified in the foregoing paragraph;

To date, the Government of Uruguay has still not provided the Commission either a copy of the actions taken during the proceedings or a copy of the autopsy on the corpse of Miss Nibia Zabalzagaray; and

From the information provided by the Government itself, it is concluded that no other proceeding or internal remedy is pending decision,

THE INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, RESOLVES:

1. To declare that all available information leads to the presumption that the cause of death of Miss Nibia Zabalzagaray, who was arrested by authorities and died ten hours after her arrest while in the custody of authorities, was a consequence of acts of violence she experienced during her detention.

2. To point out to the Government of Uruguay that the events denounced constitute a serious violation of the right to life (Article I of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man).

3. To recommend to the Government: a) that it order a thorough and impartial investigation to determine the true cause of the death denounced and, in accordance with Uruguayan laws, punish the individual or individuals responsible, should it be proven that a murder has been committed; b) that it advise the Commission of the measures taken to implement the recommendations contained in the above section within a period of no more than thirty days.

4. To forward this resolution to the Government of Uruguay and to claimants.

5. To include this resolution in its Annual Report to the General Assembly of the Organization (Article 9 (bis), c, iii of the Statute) if the Government has not advised the Commission of the measures it has taken to conduct the investigation recommended under operative paragraph 3 within a thirty-day period.

Adopted at meeting Nº 559th, January 30, 1978 (45th Session) and forwarded to the Government of Uruguay on February 21, 1978.

–Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Decision on Case 1870, January 20, 1978
–The Spanish text is found here.

While President Jimmy Carter signed the Ameican Conventionon Human Rights in 1978, it has never been ratified by the United States.

Syria and the Long Arc of Justice

40 years is a long time to wait for justice, but at least it gives Bashar al-Assad and the leaders of Syria something to look forward to in their old age. Moreover, as the indictments and trials of Slobodan Milosovich, Radovan Karadzich, and Ratko Mladich suggest, things are changing. Al-Assad and his henchmen may not have to wait so long.

The Trenchant Observer

Tags: al-Assad, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice., CIDH, Crimes Against Humanity, General miguel dalmao, IACHR, inter-american commission on human rights, Jr., karadzich, martin luther king, milosevich, Mladich, nibia sabalsagaray, Nibia Zabalsagaray, syria, The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, Uruguay, war crimes
Posted in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Crimes Against Humanity, History, human rights, International Law, kosovo, Serbia, State Department, State Department Legal Adviser, war crimes | No Comments »

REPRISE: “Looney Toons” at the White House: New York Times article details Obama’s thinking on Syria—Obama’s Debacle in Syria — Update #45 (May 27, 2012)

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

Introduction to the REPRISE (May 7, 2013)

So, Obama’s “red line” on the use of chemical weapons in Syria turns out to be a red line that leads directly to the Kremlin.

What American diplomacy has failed to achieve, spectacularly, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry now think they can achieve by talking to Putin and Lavrov.

Well, maybe. But hardly likely. Lavrov and Putin now achieve their goal of holding the conference Kofi Annan conjured up as one of his last “castles in the sky” at the conference held at Geneva on June 30, 2012.

How this will stop the killing in Syria is anyone’s guess.

It is just words, words to get Obama off the hook for his “red line” comment, which have come back to haunt him now that al-Assad has used chemical weapons in Syria.

Now that Obama is once again seeking a solution by going to the Russians, who have steadfastly supported al-Assad in his commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. See the following Reprise from the Trenchant Observer to understand just how pitiful this last move by Obama and “the gang who couldn’t shoot straight” is.

Sadly, our hopes in John Kerry seem to have been misplaced. He appears now to have joined “the gang who couldn’t shoot straight”. His role will be to do Obama’s bidding. Obama will continue to control foreign policy from the White House, guided by assistants such as Ben Rhodes.

If this course is not corrected, the disasters of Obama’s first term are likely to be repeated, on a much grander scale with much graver consequences.

REPRISE: “Looney Toons” at the White House: New York Times article details Obama’s thinking on Syria—Obama’s Debacle in Syria — Update #45 (May 27)

Originally published May 27, 2012

looney-tunes
adj.
[after Looney Tunes, trademark for a series of animated cartoons] [Slang] crazy; demented: also loon’ y-tunes

***
loony
[Slang]
adj.
loon’i-er, looní-est [LUNATIC] crazy; demented
n.,
pl. loon’-ies a loony person Also loon” ey, pl. -eys

***
–Webster’s New Worl Dictionary

**************************************************

In a front-page article in today’s New York Times, Helen Cooper and Mark Landler describe the thinking behind President Obama’s policy towards Syria. They report,

WASHINGTON — In a new effort to halt more than a year of bloodshed in Syria, President Obama will push for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad under a proposal modeled on the transition in another strife-torn Arab country, Yemen.

The plan calls for a negotiated political settlement that would satisfy Syrian opposition groups but that could leave remnants of Mr. Assad’s government in place. Its goal is the kind of transition under way in Yemen, where after months of violent unrest, President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to step down and hand control to his vice president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, in a deal arranged by Yemen’s Arab neighbors. Mr. Hadi, though later elected in an uncontested vote, is viewed as a transitional leader.

The success of the plan hinges on Russia, one of Mr. Assad’s staunchest allies, which has strongly opposed his removal.

–Helen Cooper and Mark Landler, “U.S. Hopes Assad Can Be Eased Out With Russia’s Aid,” New York Times, May 27, 2012.

President Obama, administration officials said,

will press the proposal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia next month at their first meeting since Mr. Putin returned to his old post on May 7. Thomas E. Donilon, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, raised the plan with Mr. Putin in Moscow three weeks ago.

Donilon, who is not a seasoned diplomat, apparently did not impress Putin, judging by the latter’s cancellation of his participation in the G-8 summit at Camp David on May 18-19.

The biggest problem with the Yemen model, several experts said, is that Yemen and Syria are starkly different countries. In Yemen, Mr. Saleh kept his grip on power for three decades by reconciling competing interests through a complex system of patronage. When his authority collapsed, there was a vice president, Mr. Hadi, who was able to assert enough control over Yemen’s splintered security forces to make him a credible transitional leader.

In Syria, by contrast, Mr. Assad oversees a security state in which his minority Alawite sect fears that if his family is ousted, it will face annihilation at the hands of the Sunni majority. That has kept the government remarkably cohesive, cut down on military defections and left Mr. Assad in a less vulnerable position than Mr. Saleh. Even if he leaves, American officials conceded, there is no obvious candidate to replace him.

The sheer incompetence of this White House on foreign policy matters is stunning.

Paradoxically, among a number of news commentators within the Washington bubble, Obama is viewed as doing pretty well on foreign policy, particularly since taking out Osama Bin Laden. None of these commentators are foreign policy experts with any experience, however. Further, Democratic foreign policy experts have largely held their silence, probably out of concern that criticism could help the Republicans in the November elections. Moreover, Obama has since his first days in office charmed the press, and many reporters and commentators are simply unwilling to criticize the administration on foreign policy issues in any fundamental way.

Significantly, the Washington Post, which is the one newspaper read by most government officials in Washington, has simply failed to cover Syria with a reporter, usually being content to just run the AP wire story. What contributions they do make are limited in the main to stories providing information by administration officials, named and unnamed.

The Editorial Board, on the other hand, has written some clear-minded editorials on Syria. The disconnect betwee the Editorial Board and the reporting side of the newspaper is hard to understand, especially in view of the Post’s illustrious history.

Despite the reputed “successfulness” of the administration’s foreign policy leadership–which analytically does not stretch beyond the fact that it has not become an issue which hurts the Obama in the presidential race, the utter lack of serousness of Preident Obama and the White House on Syria is exposed for all to see in today’s New York Times article by Cooper and Landler.

Washington’s response to Moscow’s callous support of al-Assad as he killed thousands of people through war crimes and crimes against humanity is on a par with Éduoard Daladier’s and Neville Chamberlain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia in October, 1938, when they signed “the Munich Pact”.

One of the first betrayals on Syria was with Turkey:

Secretary Clinton caught her Turkish counterpart off guard during their meeting in Washington last month. Clinton reportedly told Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu that the Obama Administration “preferred going through the Russians” in an attempt to achieve a political solution being shopped by the UN/Arab League’s Special Syrian Envoy Kofi Annan.
–Amb. Marc Ginsberg, “Syria Is Obama’s Srebrenica,” Huffington Post (The Blog), March 28, 2012 .

On the U.S. decision to sell out its regional allies and to work through Russia instead, see

The Trenchant Observer, “The emperor has no clothes”: Foreign policy without a moral core—Obama’s Debacle in Syria — Update #19 (March 29), March 29, 2012.

The Trenchant Observer, “Into the Abyss: Washington’s Fecklessness, Syria’s Fate—Obama’s Debacle in Syria — Update #20 (March 30), March 30, 2012.

The reader is invited to read the Observer’s recent articles on Syria, and to draw his or her own conclusions as to whether Obama, Donilon, Clinton and the rest of the administration’s foreign policy team are conducting a competent foreign policy, first of all in Syria, but also everywhere else.

In the Observer’s opinion, this team is “the gang who couldn’t shoot straight”. For example, the Sixth Summit of the Americas, held in Cartagena, Colombia on April 14-15, was totally overshadowed by the prostitution scandal involving members of the Secret Serivce and the U.S. military. Little press attention was given to the substance of the meeting, the most important of the year with the leaders of the Latin American countries.

See Brian Ellsworth (Cartagena, Colombia), “Despite Obama charm, Americas summit boosts U.S. isolation,” April 16, 1012.

Now, on the Syrian question, by following a path of “working through the Russians”, the Obama administration has given up its last shred of moral legitimacy in the Middle East. Between al-Assad, Russia, China, and Iran, on the one hand, and the people of Syria, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, on the other, and in the face of immense human suffering and the ongoing commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the al-Assad regime, the United States is pursuing a strategy of “working through the Russians.”

Obama is incompetent as a foreign policy leader. Former Ambassador Marc Ginsberg is to be congratulated for his moral courage in speaking out on the question of Syria, in a clear voice.

What the United States needs, desperately, is for other foreign policy experts–and national leaders–to speak out with equal clarity, be they aligned with the Democratic Party in the United States, with the Republicans, or from other countries that are friends of the United States.

In the meantime, the international community would do well to look elsewhere than to the United States for leadership on the Syrian question.

See The Trenchant Observer, “At least 70 killed nationwide; massacre of 50 in Houla; U.N. International Commission on Syria Update—Obama’s Debacle in Syria — Update # 43 (May 25),” May 25, 2012.

The Trenchant Observer, “Chief of UN Observers confirms massacre at Houla; NGOs report 35 children and total of 110 killed—Obama’s Debacle in Syria — Update #44 (May 26),” May 26, 2012.

The Trenchant Observer

Tags: 1933, Alawite, Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, Brian Ellsworth, Camp David, Cartagena, China, Democratic Party, Democrats, dimitri medvedev, doing well on foreign policy, editorial board, Éduoard Daladier, foreign policy experts, foreign policy experts from other countries, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hadi, Helen Cooper, Iran, John Kerry, last shred of moral legitimacy in the Middle East, Lebanon, looney, Looney Tunes, loony, LOooney Tunes at the White House, marc ginsberg, Mark Landler, Munich Pact, Neville Chamberlain, Obama's Srebrenice, Osama Bin Laden, Qatar, Republicans, Russia, Saleh, Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State, sheer incompetence of the White House, struggle for democracy in syria, Syria is Obama's Srebrenice, the emperor has no clothes, the most imcompetent president on foreign policy since World War II, the Yemen model, Thomas E. Donilon, Turkey, vladimir putin, Washington Post, with Russia's aid, working through the Russians, worst president on foreign policy since WW II, Yemen
Posted in Barack Obama, China, CIA, Crimes Against Humanity, History, human rights, International Law, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, State Department, State Department Legal Adviser, U.N. Charter, U.S Foreign Relations, U.S. Congress, U.S. Intervention, United Kingdom, United States, use of force, war crimes, Yemen | No Comments »

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has begged for forgiveness for the Srebrenice massacre, in remarks to be broadcast on Bosnian television

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic, in an appearance to be broadcast on Bosnian television, has begged for forgiveness for the massacre at Srebrenice in July, 1995, when some 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were lined up and summarily executed by Serbian and Bosnian-Serb military forces.

He stated, according to Der Spiegel, “I beg on my knees for Serbia to be forgiven for this crime committed in Srebrenice.”

Der Spiegel noted that the 1995 Srebrenice massacre is considered to be the gravest war crime committed in Europe since World War II.

“Serbien: Präsident entschuldigt sich für Srebrenica-Massaker,” Der Spiegel, 25 April 2013 (14:38 h).

Is this relevant to the present? Consider the following:

How many Srebrenice’s have been committed in Syria in the last two years?

What will future presidents of Syria, Russia, China, and Iran be able to say when they beg for forgiveness for the war crimes and crimes against humanity they either directly committed or actively supported?

And what will a future American president say to his countrymen, and to the world, about what his country did to halt these war crimes, which were on a scale far exceeding that of the 8,000 boys and men massacred at Srebrenice?

The Trenchant Observer

Tags: asked for forgiveness, Dutch blu helmets, dutch u.n. forces, greatest, Greatest war crime since World War II, Interview with Bosnian telivision, Serbian president, Serbian President Tomislav nokolic, Srebrenice, Srebrenice massacre, tomislav Nikolic, What will a future American president say?
Posted in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Crimes Against Humanity, extrajudicial execution, History, human rights, International Law, State Department, State Department Legal Adviser, syria, use of force, war crimes | No Comments »

Obama’s “red line” baby talk, and the Red Herring of whether it has been crossed

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

In the 21st century, statesmen don’t shout at the leaders of other nations and threaten, “if you cross this red line, my red line because I am powerful and can hurt you, if you cross this red line which I have drawn in the sand, I will huff and puff and I’ll blow your house down.”

The apogee of all of this red line talk was when Benjamin Netanyahu, at the United Nations, drew a crude picture of a bomb with an arbitrary red line to show the point beyond which Iran can’t continue down the path to making a nuclear bomb without Israel attacking it militarily.

All this talk of red lines is silly because it is unilateral, arbitrary, and lacks any claim of legitimacy.

It’s the way some leaders might have spoken to leaders in other countries in the 19th century or earlier.

Now, things have changed. We have a United Nations Charter and well-developed rules of international law governing the use of force.

Statesmen today talk to each other in the language of international law, not the playground threats of children who don’t know yet much about rules and law and the limits society places on their behavior.

Statesmen don’t talk that way, but regrettably some national leaders still do.

All the talk about Obama’s “red lines” in Syria and whether they have been crossed constitutes one big RED HERRING.

The questions we ought to be discussing, instead of chasing the Red Herring, include the following:

1. Does the present situation in Syria, including al-Assad’s barbarism (e.g., war crimes and crimes against humanity on a massive scale), negatively affect the vital national interests of the United States, or those of its allies?

2. If so, what must be done, both alone and in conjunction with others, to defend those vital national interests?

3. How are those interests likely to be affected if no effective action is taken to halt al-Assad’s barbarism?

4. Does the United States have a vital national interest in preventing and halting the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and widespread violations of fundamental human rights on a massive scale?

5. If the United States is going to act, “If not now, when?”

These are the questions people should be talking about, and not Obama’s baby talk about red lines and arguments about whether they have been crossed.

The Trenchant Observer

Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu, If not now when?, International Law, International law rules governing the use of force, obama's 'red line' baby talk, Obama's baby talk about red lines in Syria, other national leaders, red herring, Red line, red line for Iran, Siria, sirie, statesmen, Syrie, Syrien, The language of international law, the united nations charter, Use of chemical weapons in Syria, Widespread violations of fundamental human rights on a massive scale
Posted in Barack Obama, Crimes Against Humanity, Dimming Vision of World Affairs, History, human rights, internal supporters of human rights, International Law, self-defense, State Department, State Department Legal Adviser, syria, U.N. Charter, U.S. Intervention, U.S. Military, United States, use of force, war crimes | No Comments »

Obama’s distorted relationship with the truth: Al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

(developing story)

See Isabelle Lasserre, “Washington tergiverse face aux armes chimiques d’Assad,” Le Figaro, 23 avril 2013 (mis à jour le 24/04/2013 à 16:13).

President Obama has gotten himself into a real bind with all of his talk of “red lines” in Syria. If al-Assad crossed Obama’s red line on using chemical weapons, the U.S. was going to…going to…going to…do something really big, like even intervene militarily.

Now, with Israeli generals asserting al-Assad has used chemical weapons, and other allies’ intelligence agencies essentially in agreement, it would seem that Obama has to do … SOMETHING!

The situation is reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s reluctance to call al-Assad a war criminal, because that would increase pressures on the administration to act.

But Obama does not want to act in Syria. Despite the unanimous recommendations of his secretaries of state, his defense minister, his CIA Director, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

So, his solution for the moment is to say we are still investigating whether Syria used chemical weapons in places like Homs, Aleppo, and maybe even Damascus.

One would think he can only investigate for so long. On the other hand, as his leak investigations show, or his torture investigations, he’s pretty good at stretching out investigations until no one remembers or cares.

This time, in Syria, however. the truth just may be getting poised to take a big bite out of Obama’s credibility–such as it is–and his silly use of words like “red lines”.

He really ought to be basing his statements on international law, not imaginary and unilaterally imposed “red lines”, which are naked assertions of power devoid of the appeals to legitimacy contained in international law.

Obama’s principal approach to foreign policy issues is to try to solve them with words. We’ll see if words suffice this time, or if action may be forced upon a reluctant president.

The Trenchant Observer

Tags: al-Assad, Al-assad's use of chemical weapons, Aleppo, Che, chemical weapons, chemical weapons in syria, claims based solely on power, claims legitimacy, Damascus, Homs, inyernational law, Israel, israeli generals, mical weapons in syria, Obama's distorted relationship with the truth, red lines, use of chemical weapons
Posted in Barack Obama, Crimes Against Humanity, human rights, Intelligence, International Law, Israel, State Department, State Department Legal Adviser, syria, U.N. Charter, U.S. Intervention, U.S. Military, United States, use of force, war crimes | No Comments »

Smart drones, the goal of peace, and the future of mankind

Sunday, March 17th, 2013

In an Op-Ed piece by Bill Keller published in the New York Times on March 16, 2013, Keller describes the high probability that “smart drones” will be introduced in the future, in which the aerial-borne robotic machine and its computer will decide which targets and individuals and groups to fire upon, without human intervention. Keller notes that Israel, in fact, has already introduced such an aircraft, the Harpy. Keller notes,

Israel is the first country to make and deploy (and sell, to China, India, South Korea and others) a weapon that can attack pre-emptively without a human in charge. The hovering drone called the Harpy is programmed to recognize and automatically divebomb any radar signal that is not in its database of “friendlies.” No reported misfires so far, but suppose an adversary installs its antiaircraft radar on the roof of a hospital?

–Bill Keller, Op-Ed, “Smart Drones,” New York Times, March 16, 2013.

The entire op-ed piece speaks of advances in warfare based on the underlying assumption that continued warfare is inevitable, and that the most we can aspire to is to limit some forms of warfare or weapons used, such as land-mines. While there is a great deal to be said for international treaties and institutions that limit types and the extent of warfare–international humanitarian law or “the law of war” has precisely that aim, it seems that humanity has fallen into a downward spiral in its thinking and aspirations relating to war, and into what is in fact a profound moral abyss.

In 1945, no one doubted that the goal of international society and the new United Nations Charter and Organization should be the prevention of war, and the maintenance of international peace and security. This goal was almost self-evident to generations which had suffered the ravages of World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945).

But today our leaders no longer espouse the goal of international peace. Like President Barack Obama in his Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech or Lecture in 2009, they have no vision of peace as an overriding goal to which other objectives should be subordinated. Rather, permanent war is in the minds of the leaders of today. Obama, in thinking about his pivot to Asia, is thinking about military deployments in the region to check China’s rising military power. In the stand-off with Russia and China in the United Nations Security Council over Syria, the larger question of the goals and vision of international society has been lost, primarily but not exclusively as a result of Russian and Chinese obstinacy.

At best, particularly under Obama, we have a dearth of American leadership in world affairs in general and in the maintenance of international peace and security in particular. Here, France has stepped into the vacuum, first acting as a catalyst in Libya and more recently, acting by introducing French forces into Mali to halt the fall of that country to Islamic terrorist groups and Tuareg guerrillas.

But who, and in which countries, dares today to articulate a powerful vision of peace and how to get there?

Without a powerful vision of peace, such as that originally laid out in 1945 in the Preamble and Articles 1 and 2 of the United Nations Charter, humanity will continue to stumble down the terrible path of war, now to be mechanized with smart drones, and also soon to be characterized by an imminent breakdown in the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.

In five years, or at most 10, Iran will have nuclear weapons. In five years, or at most 10, North Korea will have weapons and delivery vehicles that can land a nuclear bomb in Seattle or Los Angeles, if not Washington, New York, Moscow or London.

Is it not time that we in the United States seek to purify ourselves of the flawed thinking of the Bush and the Obama administrations about the inevitability of war, about the malleability of our most sacred moral values such as the inviolability of the human person, about the central importance of respect for fundamental human rights, of every person–even enemy combatants–and begin to concentrate with all our mental, social and political powers on the question of peace, and how to achieve it?

Is not war, and the pursuit of war, evil, and are not the pursuit of international peace and the fundamental human rights of all persons in all countries goals which embody our highest moral values?

Should we, then, not act on the basis of those values, and turn all of our efforts to developing our visions of peace and our roadmaps on how to get there?

It is perhaps no exaggeration to assert that a positive future for mankind depends on our visions of peace and our efforts to achieve them, far more than it depends on the technological “advances” we might make in developing ever-better machines of war.

Now, let’s think one step further and ask whether peace can be established without international rules that are binding in nature. Is there any realistic vision of peace that does not rest, ultimately, on the development and observance of international law and institutions? That was the vision of the founders of the League of Nations in 1919, and of the founders of the United Nations in 1945.

Is it not time for a renewal of hope, of positive goals, of our own deeply-felt visions of peace, and of our own stalwart and courageous actions to secure that peace?

The Trenchant Observer

Tags: A dearth of american leadership inworld affairs, Aerial-bourne robotic machines, Bill keller, France has stepped into the vacuum, Harpy, Harpy. Israel, Humanitarian Law, Humanity in a downward spiral in its thinking and aspirations related to war, in Libya, in mali, in syria, international peace and security, into a profound moral abyss, Israel, lNobel lecture, New York Times, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, smart drones, The assumptiom that war is inevitable, The goal of international peace, thelaw of war, vision of peace
Posted in Barack Obama, China, Crimes Against Humanity, extrajudicial execution, France, human rights, International Law, Iran, Israel, Libya, Nobel Lecture, Nobel Peace Prize, Nuclear Proliferation, State Department Human Rights Country Reports, syria, targeted assassinations, targeted killings, Torture, U.N. Charter, U.N. Convention Against Torture, U.N. Security Council, U.N. Torture Convention, U.S. Military, United States, use of force, vision of peace, war crimes | No Comments »

Imagine: The Collapse of International Order, Syria, and Berlin in 1945

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

There is nothing inevitable about international order.

The lessons of two world wars which informed the creation of the United Nations in 1945, and the maintenance of international peace and security for over 60 years, can be forgotten.

It is entirely conceivable that without decisive leadership from either Europe or the United States, the international order that has existed for many decades could start to wobble and even collapse.

And it is nearly impossible to conceive of such leadership emerging any time soon.

The rubble in Syria resembles the rubble in Berlin and the destruction in Germany in 1945, which occurred the last time the international order collapsed.

How bad could it get?

You could have wars like the one in Syria devastating countries in Africa, a nuclear attack on Los Angeles from North Korea, Iran with nuclear weapons and delivery systems within 5-10 years, and Israel surrounded by hostile Islamist states.

Things could fall apart.

Imagine a world without law, without international law governing the use of force which is generally observed and which states seek to uphold when it is violated.

Imagine true anarchy unleashed upon the world.

Imagine a world in which states use force without acknowledging they have acted, and without any obligation to publicly justify the legitimacy of their actions by reference to international law.

That is the direction in which we are heading.

The Trenchant Observer

Tags: Berlin in 1945, Egypt, Illegal use of force, international anarchy, international governing the use of force, Iran withnuclearweapons and delivery systems, Israel surrounded by hostileislamist states, los angeles, North Korea, The collapse of international order, The rubbleinsyria, therubble in berlin in 1945, world without international law
Posted in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Barack Obama, China, CIA, Crimes Against Humanity, debate over the efficacy of torture, Deutschland, Dictatorship, Egypt, extrajudicial execution, extraordinary rendering, extraordinary rendition, France, Germany, History, human rights, International Law, Iran, Israel, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Middle East, Mossad, NATO, Nigeria, Nobel Lecture, Nobel Peace Prize, North Korea, Nuclear Proliferation, Pakistan, refoulement, Russia, self-defense, Somalia, State Department, State Department Legal Adviser, syria, Taliban, targeted assassinations, targeted killings, Torture, Tunisia, U.N. Charter, U.N. Security Council, united arab emirates, United Kingdom, United States, use of force, war crimes, Yemen | 1 Comment »

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the foreign policy “successes” of our celebrity leaders

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

Rough draft

[Note: Today's article is a bit unusual in format, consisting of long portions of an article on Hillary Clinton's term as Secretary of State, the soft gloves with which the media now treat our "celebrity" president and other high "celebrity" government officials, together with a checklist of foreign policy subject areas and themes which any objective analysis of Hillary Clinton's successes and failures as Secretary of State would need to take into account, focusing not on verbal policies but on facts on ground and the actions of other states. This latter section is somewhat adumbrated and incomplete, and in many ways could serve as an outline for a whole series of articles. However, it is offered now as a corrective to some of the hagiography currently being showered on Hillary Clinton, by President Obama and others, without regard for the factual record.]

Celebrity + popularity + miles traveled = foreign policy success

The loss of hard-hitting impartiality in foreign policy reporting, commentary and opinion is illustrated by President Barack Obama’s and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s joint appearance on “60 Minutes” this last Sunday.

See “The President and the Secretary of State,” 60 Minutes, January 27, 2013.

There, as elsewhere on TV, they were treated like celebrities and judged by the kind of standards we use to judge celebrities:

Are they gracious, or apparently so?

Do they smile and laugh a lot in a friendly interview situation?

Are their little pleasantries amusing, and well-delivered?

Are they handsome and attractive, with million-dollar smiles?

While Steve Kroft’s intention might have been simply to draw them out, one cannot imagine Mike Wallace letting such an opportunity go by without asking–and following up on–the hard and penetrating questions of a first-rate journalist about the foreign policy of the United States.

Instead, this is what we got:

Steve Kroft: This is very improbable. This is not an interview I ever expected to be doing. But I understand, Mr. President, this was your idea. Why did you want to do this together, a joint interview?

President Obama: Well, the main thing is I just wanted to have a chance to publicly say thank you, because I think Hillary will go down as one of the finest secretary of states we’ve had. It has been a great collaboration over the last four years. I’m going to miss her. Wish she was sticking around. But she has logged in so many miles, I can’t begrudge her wanting to take it easy for a little bit. But I want the country to appreciate just what an extraordinary role she’s played during the course of my administration and a lot of the successes we’ve had internationally have been because of her hard work.
…

Steve Kroft: Has she had much influence–

President Obama: Well, I–

Steve Kroft: –in this administration?

President Obama: I think everybody understands that Hillary’s been, you know, one of the most important advisors that I’ve had on a whole range of issues. Hillary’s capacity to travel around the world, to lay the groundwork for a new way of doing things, to establish a sense of engagement that, you know, our foreign policy was not going to be defined solely by Iraq, that we were going to be vigilant about terrorism, but we were going to make sure that we deployed all elements of American power, diplomacy, our economic and cultural and social capital, in order to bring about the kinds of international solutions that we wanted to see. I had confidence that Hillary could do that. And, you know, one of the things that I will always be grateful for is– yeah, it wasn’t just that she and I had to integrate. I mean, we had Bob Gates, who was a holdover from the Bush administration. You know Leon Panetta to take over the CIA. And so we had a lot of very strong personalities around the table. And, you know, I think one of the things that Hillary did was establish a standard in terms of professionalism and teamwork in our cabinet, in our foreign policy making that said, “We’re going to have an open discussion. We’re going to push each other hard. There are going to be times where we have some vigorous disagreements. Once the president makes a decision though we’re going to go out there and execute.

Steve Kroft: How would you characterize your relationship right now?

President Obama: I consider Hillary a strong friend….

The general consensus among commentators in Washington, consciously or unconsciously using these “celebrity” criteria and others we use to bestow esteem on celebrities, is that Obama’s and Hillary’s foreign policy has been very successful.

Hillary is often referred to as an extraordinarily successful Secretary of State, or as one of the most successful Secretaries of State in recent times. Indeed, that is how President Obama described her in the 60 Minutes interview quoted above.

But there is little analysis of foreign policy successes and failures supporting such conclusions. In fact, the closer we look at the substance of the foreign policy positions and decisions Obama and Hillary have adopted, the more distressing the picture becomes. As the patina of celebrity politicians and celebrity government officials fades away under the withering sunlight of serious examination, it turns out that all of the hoopla and self-contented praise our officials shower on each other has been hiding another reality, that of real facts on the ground in the real world unfiltered by the television media and many in the Washington and New York written press.

To judge Hillary’s successes and failures, we must look beyond her celebrity status and that of her patron, President Barack Obama, to ask simply, “What is it, in the real world, that she has actually accomplished during her four years in office?

How do her accomplishments stack up against those of Madeline Albright, James Baker, Warren Christopher, or Dean Rusk, for example? What, in short, has she actually accomplished?

Sadly, the answer appears to be, “precious little”. If her excuse is that she has only been an “implementer” of foreign policy crafted in the White House, that itself is a strong commentary on what she herself has or has not contributed during her own term in office.

So, let us begin to look at the facts.

Background Factors

The need for a bipartisan foreign policy, and the partisan nature of foreign policy analysis in the U.S.
–Partisan lockstep and loyalty chorus instead of independent analysis based on factual reporting by seasoned foreign correspondents and analyses by subject matter and regional experts.

The loss of respect for expertise and expert knowledge.
–Confidential inside sources and transmittal of “anonymous sources” information without verification.
–On TV, the preference for glib, young, attractive faces over seasoned experts. Here, anyone can be an expert.
–The failure to make rigorous judgments based on factual analysis and expert opinion.
–Celebrity, buzz, and partisan management of the political narrative transposed to foreign policy analysis. Hence, the chorus of Hillary’s “most-miles’ traveled” success as Secretary of State.
–Obama sings this refrain, without substantiation, because if Hillary’s success narrative gains traction, his own foreign-policy success narrative also gains traction.

In fact, historians of foreign policy may speak of the dramatic failures of Obama’s and Hillary’s foreign policy, with the most important questions focusing on issues of who was most responsible for them.

The first-term successes and failures of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton

Let’s begin with a checklist. (Readers are encouraged to fill in the blanks.)

Iraq

Afghanistan

Pakistan

Israel

Iran

Syria

Benghazi and what it stands for

–growth of al-Queda and Islamic terrorists in Libya, north Africa, and the Sahel
–failure of covert operations approach to Syria
–total intelligence failure regarding terrorist activities in Benghazi
–failure to provide sufficient assistance to the new democracies of the Arab Spring to enable them to stay on a democratic and “rule of law” course

Significantly, Hillary Clinton’s long-delayed testimony on Benghazi took place this last week, on January 23, 2013. Amy Davidson reported in the New Yorker on the following exchange:

“(T)here was…a scene that will surely be replayed in attack ads and echoed (and possibly distorted) in the Republican primary campaign, assuming that Clinton does run. It came in an exchange with Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin. Like many of his colleagues, he goaded. (“I realize that’s a good excuse,” he said when Clinton talked about not interfering with investigations.) She lost her patience when he said, not for the first time, that she could have found out what was going on at the consulate easily enough if she wanted to.

Clinton: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans.

Johnson: I understand.

Clinton: Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? (emphasis added)

It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator. Now, honestly, I will do my best to answer your questions about this. But the fact is that people were trying in real time to get the best information….But, you know, to be clear, it is, from my perspective, less important today looking backwards as to why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice, and then maybe we’ll figure out what was going on in the meantime.

What difference, at this point, does it make?”

–Amy Davidson, “Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi Testimony: What Difference Will it Make?” The New Yorker, January 23, 2013.

Egypt

–failure to grasp and respond to what is going on in Egypt

Russia

Sub-Saharan Africa

–Transitions to democracy
–Growth in number and strength of Islamist terrorist organizations

Mexico and Central America

–Violence and insecurity in Mexico, on the border with the United States
–Growing drug violence and insecurity in Guatema, El Salvador, and especially Honduras.
–Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega as a newly authoritarian state, joining with Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia seeking to weaken the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the analogous institutions in the Americas to the European Court of Human Rights.

Venezuela

–as it faces Hugo Chavez’ impending exit from the scene, on the verge of a constitutional coup d’etat as the Chavistas seek to cling to power by unconstitutional means.

Thailand

–ouster of President of Supreme Court, abandoning the rule of law

Military strategy

–so called “pivot to Asia”
–abandonment of two-war requirement in U.S. military strategy in favor of an unproven Counter-terrorism strategy like that espoused by Vice-President Joe Biden. Betting the farm on an unproven theory.
–adoption of unproven “Counter-terrorism” strategy while reducing military capabilities, such as those in Mediterranean that might have been useful in Benghazi

China

–Obama administration policy and actions during the leadership transition in Beijing
–Did the so-called “pivot to Asia” and plans for an increased naval presence in the region affect the succession of a new generation of leaders in China?
–Were there any real experts on China advising Obama on these issues, and if so did he listen to them?
–strengthening military capabilities of allies ringing China
–U.S. naval force deployments

China and Japan

–doing nothing to defuse tensions, including dangerous military interactions, in matter of disputed islands
–here, blindness to international law prevents U.S. from advancing most promising route for defusing crisis
–a growth of dangerous nationalism in both countries, with China evidencing a willingness to display and perhaps use force

Nuclear Proliferation

–Iran
–North Korea
–Middle East
–Israel
–the risk of proliferation throughout the Middle East

Climate Change

–Copenhagen
–Doha

Human Rights

–kill lists; drone strikes and special forces operations
–denial of fundamental rights. See Jimmy Carter’s op-ed in the New York Times. Guantánamo.
–dealing with those responsible for Bush torture policy
–cooperating with countries which use torture
–non-cooperation with the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights with respect to cases brought against the U.S.

Statute of the International Criminal Court

–Failure to push for ratification

Failure to develop new or adopt existing multilateral conventions or treaties

–In particular, multilateral treaties establishing legal norms and regimes regulating new forms of warfare, from done strikes to cyber-warfare

***
Judgments on the success of Obama’s and Clinton’s foreign policy should be based on careful assessment and analysis of U.S. actions (not just verbal policies) in the areas listed above, and others.

To simply shout in partisan chorus that Hillary has been a great Secretary of State, without reference to and analysis of the detailed factual record, is simply a strategy by politicians to transfer to the foreign policy arena the use of political narrative management techniques. It is political, not analytical, in nature, and should be firmly resisted by all of those who want to see constructive, fact-based foreign policy debates aimed at finding and implementing the best policies for the country.

Until we are able to have those debates and discussions, a bipartisan foreign policy will be forever beyond our reach.

And the dialogue of the deaf, le dialogue des sourds, will continue, as many situations in other countries and regions, or globally, deteriorate in a leaderless world.

As for Hillary Clinton, three points illuminate the extent of her failed tenure as Secretary of State:

1. Her avoiding the TV shows and hiding from the cameras and congressional panels that wanted to know what happened, and what she and Barack Obama knew and when they knew it after the attacks in Benghazi and the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens on September 11, 2012. Her summary dismissal of Benghazi and the entire substance of the Susan Rice affair, in recent Congressional testimony, demonstrated an extraordinary degree of cynicism and almost unprecedented chutzpah, or insolence. “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

What difference did it make that the administration successfully hid the fact that its policies in North Africa were in total disarray, as demonstrated by the September 11 attacks in Benghazi and recent events in Mali?

What difference did it make that the Obama administration and campaign downplayed the Al-Qaeda links of those who attacked U.S. compounds in Benghazi, and killed Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans?

What difference did it make that Obama and his administration, during the election campaign, misrepresented the degree of their success in the battle against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates?

2. Hillary Clinton’s failure, and Obama’s failure, to lead international efforts to halt the atrocities in Syria, including military action, and to avoid the creation of a failed state where a dominant player, the al-Nusra Front, is an Al-Qaeda affiliate.

3. The State Department’s failure, under Hillary Clinton, to comment on Israel’s recent attack on targets in the Sudan, or its very recent bombing attacks inside Syrian territory. If the State Department cannot speak to the international law issues involved, who in the American government can?

Has the United States become an enemy of international law, a founding member of the “‘International Law Be Damned’ Club”?

Historians are not likely to be kind to Hillary Clinton in her role as Secretary of State. She used her star power to shield herself and the Obama administration from substantive criticism of what has turned out to be a disastrous foreign policy.

Consider:

1. Relations with Russia have deteriorated sharply, while personal relations between Obama and Putin seem to have reached sub-zero temperatures.

2. Relations with China are not good. A new generation of leaders, which appear to be more hard-line than the technocrats that preceded them, has taken power. China is engaged in a very dangerous policy of military confrontation with Japan over disputed islands, as noted above.

3. Relations between China and Japan have reached what is perhaps their lowest point since the end of World War II, or at least the end of the Korean War. This an extremely dangerous development for the prospects of international peace and security.

4. The Middle East is in great turmoil. Syria is in flames, due in part to the inexcusable failure of Obama and Clinton to lead international actions to bring the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity to a halt, including the limited use of military force when necessary.

5. The United States has stood by, and even lent support to Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as they proceeded with their November 22, 2012 coup d’état and the shutting down of the Constitutional Court through the use of “brown-shirt” tactics.

The U.S. and the West have been losing Egypt, just as they lost Iran in 1979.

6. The future leadership of Venezuela is being decided in Havana, Cuba, which is only the tip of the iceberg of U.S. failures in Latin America due to America’s policy of neglect in most, though not all, of the countries in the region.

Where are the successes of Obama’s and Hillary’s first term in office?

Hillary Clinton is in many ways an admirable politician and public figure. But that should not blind us to the facts regarding her tenure as Secretary of State under Obama.

There have undoubtedly been some achievements during her term of office, in the area of women’s rights, for example. Undoubtedly, many dedicated and talented people in the State Department have achieved significant goals and objectives, and this too is part of the story.

But here, we are talking about foreign policy successes and failures in the larger sense, in the grand scheme of things.

While Clinton pushed for women’s rights, admirably, she also failed to criticize Mohamed Morsi when he launched a coup d’état after helping her broker a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel as the latter was poised to invade Gaza. Did Hillary’s praise embolden Morsi to launch his coup? That coup led to the illegitimate adoption of a draft constitution (later approved in a hurried referendum that did not allow time for debate throughout the country), enshrining a stricter adherence to sharia law, and also the removal of the first female judge of the constitutional court, who had been an inspirational figure in the struggle to bring women into the judiciary in Egypt.

Nor does the failure of U.S. policy in Afghanistan bode well for the women of that country.

Hillary worked hard, and traveled almost a million miles, and visited over a hundred countries. But these are not indicators of foreign policy success.

In the grand scheme of things, what did she achieve?

It may turn out to be the case that she was consistently pushed aside by Obama and his foreign policy team in the White House. We look forward to reading her memoirs, and hope they will be candid. The risk is that political considerations could compromise the forthrightness of those memoirs, should she decide to seek the presidency in 2016. Indeed, that could well have been Obama’s intention in orchestrating the “love fest” on “60 Minutes” on January 27. That could be his calculation. That could be why he wanted to say “thank you” in the way he did.

We can only hope that Hilary will write her memoirs, beginning soon, with the kind of historical candor that would add to our understanding of foreign-policy decision making within the Obama administration. We need to know the battles which she fought and lost or won within the administration during the president’s first term. That could greatly advance the foreign policy interests of the United States, opening up the discussion in a way which might lead to corrective action and avoidance of further failures during Obama’s second term.

Yet as a political candidate she could find that book hard to write.

Nonetheless, whatever course she may choose to take in the future, in assessing her achievements and failures as Secretary of State, let us at least take a hard look at the facts and try to be objective.

The Trenchant Observer

Tags: 60 Minutes Transcript, 60 minutes video, Amy Davidson, Barack Obama, Benghazi, celebrity, celebrity plus popularity plus miles traveled equals foreign policy success for Hillary Clinton, celebrity standards, Enemy of international law, hagiography being showered on Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Hillary clinton's failures as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton's successes as secretary of state, Mike Wallace, most successful secretaries of state, Obama's and Clinton's foreign policy failures, Steven Kroft, The "international law be damned" club, the loss of hard-hitting impartiality, The New Yorker, What difference does it make?, what has hilary actually achieved?
Posted in Afghanistan, Africa, Barack Obama, Crimes Against Humanity, extrajudicial execution, extraordinary rendering, Guatemala, History, Honduras, human rights, International Law, Iran, Israel, Latin America, Libya, Mali, Middle East, Nicaragua, State Department, State Department Legal Adviser, syria, targeted assassinations, targeted killings, Torture, U.N. Charter, U.N. Convention Against Torture, U.N. Torture Convention, U.S Foreign Relations, U.S. Intervention, U.S. Military, United States, use of force, Venezuela, war crimes | No Comments »

REPRISE: “A time to break silence”: Dr. King on the Vietnam war, and President Carter on America’s human rights violations

Sunday, January 6th, 2013

[This is a lengthy article. The reader may wish to read it, and listen to the recordings, in three parts.]

Originally published June 27, 2012 (revised June 28, 2012)

“And I’ve long since learned that to be a follower (of) Jesus Christ means taking up the cross. And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear. Let us bear it–bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it for peace. Let us go out this morning with that determination. And I have not lost faith. I’m not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven’t lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Why I am opposed to the war in Vietnam,” Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967.

There is a powerful connection between the April, 1967 sermons on Vietnam of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., President Jimmy Carter’s recent New York Times op-ed piece on American human rights violations, and the policies currently being carried out by President Barack Obama. It is important to understand this connection, details of which are set forth below.

I. Jimmy Carter’s Op-Ed in the New York Times, Criticizing America’s Violations of Human Rights

Ex-president Jimmy Carter published an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times on June 24, in which he hashly criticized President Obama, and also former president Bush, for “the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade, (which) has been a dramatic change from the past, signifying the fact that “the United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.”

See Jimmy Carter, “A Cruel and Unusual Record,” New York Times (op-ed), June 24, 2012.

Carter continued,

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.

These policies and actions, he wrote, signaled “a dramatic change from the past”, when the United States exercised bold leadership in securing the adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948, as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Its adoption, wrote Carter,

…was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.

The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs.

But, he continued,

It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
…
Recent legislation has made legal the president’s right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or “associated forces,” a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.

He noted further, that

(R)ecent laws have canceled the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications…

Carter harshly criticized the use of drone attacks, writing that

Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.

These policies were counterproductive in terms of American foreign policy, he observed, noting that

Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior.

The 39th president of the United States also criticized the fact that the Guantánamo Bay facility remains open, with 169 prisoners still detained there. While “about half have been cleared for release,” their chances of ever obtaining their freedom are slim, he asserted.

Some of those being tried have been tortured, Carter noted, writing:

American authorities have revealed that, in order to obtain confessions, some of the few being tried (only in military courts) have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers. Astoundingly, these facts cannot be used as a defense by the accused, because the government claims they occurred under the cover of “national security”. Most of the other prisoners have no prospect of ever being charged or tried either.

In conclusion, former president Carter argued,

At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

U.S. violation of international human rights is counterproductive, he asserted, because it “abets our enemies and alienates our friends.” As “concerned citizens”, we must now persuade Washington “to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.”

This forceful critique of American human rights violations made by Jimmy Carter, the American president most closely associated with U.S. leadership in the field of human rights, will undoubtedly have a significant impact over time, both abroad and at home.

II. Dr. King and Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence—Bearing the Cross for Truth, Justice and Peace

When I read ex-President Jimmy Carter’s op-ed piece in the New York Times on June 24, calling out President Barack Obama for his human rights violations, both domestic and foreign, I was reminded of the afternoon I was driving in my car and first heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., also a Nobel Prize winner, deliver a powerful speech criticizing President Johnson and his conduct of the Vietnam war.

The feeling then, in 1967, was one of enormous relief. At last there was a figure of great and almost unparalleled national and international prominence, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, who had the courage to speak the truth as he saw it, according to his best lights, and his deep faith, however unpopular that truth might be.

Martin Luther King, Jr. gave two sermons on Vietnam in April, 1967. The first, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” is a detailed but courageous speech that draws on many of the details of the history of Vietnam and the war which were familiar to his audience. It is delivered in a calm, reasoned tone. The second, a sermon delivered at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where he was pastor, is a strong sermon delivered in the cadences of the powerful preacher who King was. Entitled, “Why I am opposed to the war in Vietnam,” it hits the main points of the April 4 sermon, with greater emotional emphasis. It is probably more accessible to readers and listeners not familiar with the history and details of the Vietnam conflict. Links to both are found below. See

Rev. Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City).

The text is found here.

The audio is found here.

David Bromwich, “Martin Luther King’s Speech Against the Vietnam War,” Antiwar.com, May 16, 2008 (summary and analysis, with extensive excerpts).

See also:

Martin Luther King, Jr., “Why I am opposed to the war in Vietnam,” Sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, April 30, 1967. Excerpts from the audio and text are found here.

The complete audio (in RealAudio) is found here.

The original written text is found here.

NOTE: The two sermons are often confused, with the audio for the April 30 sermon often being attributed to the April 4 “Beyond Vietnam” sermon.

“The Obamians”, as James Mann has termed President Obama and his younger group of closest foreign policy advisers, in his new and revealing book on the foreign policy team in the White House, would especially benefit from listening to King’s speech, and his April 30, 1967 sermon. Their eyes reportedly glaze over when other advisers, usually older, refer to the Vietnam war and its lessons. They, and particularly the most important Obamian, President Obama himself, should listen to Martin Luther King’s speech and sermon, and reflect on what they hear, taking the moral authority of the speaker into account.

They might also bear in mind and take to heart the famous dictum,

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George de Sanayana, from “Life of Reason I”).

Mann’s book is fascinating. See

The Obanians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power (Viking Penguin/The Penguin Group, 2012)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, exactly one year after his speech or sermon entitled, “”Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”

III. Jimmy Carter’s Contribution to Human Rights

Jimmy Carter’s op-ed piece should grab the public’s attention in the United States.

But the coverage in the U.S. press suggests the public may have become far too accustomed to the targeted killings, or “assassinations” in the words of Jimmy Carter–which is the correct term when the killings are conducted outside the framework of international law, far too accustomed to the debate over the efficacy of torture, far too complacent over the violation of bedrock principles of the U.S. Constitution, to pay much attention.

The press reaction in different countries is quite revealing, even if it takes a lot of work to uncover, due to the “filter bubble” Google and most other search engines now use, displaying search results only from our own country and in our own language. If you are in the United States and Google “Jimmy Carter” you won’t see the incisive articles published in the United Kingdom in The Guardian, The Telegraph or The Independent. You’ll see articles and blogs published in the United States.

We now live in information ghettos, where the opinions of those in other countries are filtered out of our consciousness. Moreover, due to the use of our previous search histories to filter the results that are displayed in, e.g., a Google search, within this subset of news and opinion we may even see news that leans more to the left or the right, depending on who we have read in the past.

Jimmy Carter has demonstrated in his op-ed that there are still Democrats in the United States with the courage to defend our civil liberties, and to fight for a foreign policy based on furthering human rights and democracy abroad, and compliance with the basic norms of international law, including those relating to human rights.

When historians of the future write about this period, they may mention Jimmy Carter’s op-ed piece, and wonder how the people of this time in the U.S. went along with such egregious violations of the U.S. constitution and the most fundamental norms of international law.

Now the question is whether others will have the courage to speak out, even if the president committing these violations is from their own party–and the party they want to win in the November elections.

It is a stark moral choice. Listen to the audio of Martin Luther King’s April 4, 1967 speech and especially to the audio of his April 30, 1967 sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church. He speaks of stark moral choices.

One is reminded not only of Martin Luther King, Jr., but also of those other defenders of civil liberties and democracy, such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, Vacslav Havel, and Lech Walensa. One is also reminded of humanity’s project of building international peace through the establishment of international law and institutions, and compliance with their norms.

In the field of human rights, President Jimmy Carter was one of those men. His support of human rights started a process in Latin America (and elsewhere) which led to the end of dictatorships and authoritarian rule, and the gradual consolidation of democracy throughout the hemisphere.

His push for human rights led to the ratifications of the American Convention on Human Rights which resulted in its entry into force on July 18, 1978. His support of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the establishment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José Costa Rica, pursuant to the provisions of the American Convention, strengthened in the Americas a system of international protection of human rights similar in form to that established in Europe under the European Convention on Human Rights, in force since 1953.

Regrettably, the United States has never ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, which President Jimmy Carter signed and submitted to the Senate for ratification. Nonetheless, the U.S. is still bound to observe the rights set forth in the American Declaration of the Rights of Man, adopted by the members of the newly founded Organization of American States in Bogotá in April, 1948, months before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10 of that year.

But the Inter-American system was called upon to protect human rights in the face of social and political realities that were vastly different from those in Europe in 1978, though one must recall that the European system too had its origins in tumultuous times following the end of World War II. The European Convention entered into force on September 3, 1953, establishing a Commission which functioned until 1998, and the European Court of Human Rights to which citizens since 1998 may now appeal directly without going through the Commission, which was abolished in 1998.

The Inter-American system, with that of Europe, also set a powerful example for Africa, which adopted the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which entered into force on October 21, 1986. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has established an important body of precedent, and now the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, created pursuant to a protocol to the Charter which entered into effect on January 25, 2005, has also been established, and may one day soon merge with the African Court of Justice. The African Commission and Court are having an increasing impact on the achievement and consolidation of democracy and the rule of law on the continent.

All three of these regional systems were inspired by, and gave further expression to, the ideals and norms contained in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. Worth noting is that the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded on December 10 of each year.

In supporting these developments, and continuing his struggle for democracy and human rights since he left office in January, 1981, Jimmy Carter deserves the most profound respect and thanks of the world community, including the people of the United States. During his time in office, while mistakes were made, he carried forward the torch of human rights. For his work, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

For speaking out now against violations of the most fundamental norms of human rights and international law, and even and particularly when those violations were and are committed by his own government, Jimmy Carter deserves our highest praise.

Thank you, President Carter.

And thank you, Dr. King. For your example, moral clarity, and courage, which we hope will guide us now.

The Trenchant Observer

observer@trenchantobserver.com
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For links to other articles by The Trenchant Observer, click on the title at the top of this page to go to the home page, and then use the “Search” Box or consult the information in the bottom right hand corner of the home page. The Articles on Syria page can also be found here. The Articles on Targeted Killings page can also be found here.

Tags: 1967, a cruel and unusual record, a stark moral choice, a time to break silence, african charter on human and people's rights, african commission on human and people's rights, african court of human and people's rights, african court of justice, american convention on human rights, american declaration of rights and duties of man, april 4, bearing the cross, bends toward justice, beyond vietnam, building international peace, complkiance, confessions, coverage in the u.s. press, detainees at Guantanamo, dr. king would be proud, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Efficacy of Torture, European Convention on Human Rights, Gantanamo, Google, hiostorians of the future, historians of the future, human rights, humanity's project, information ghettos, inter-american commission on human rights, inter-american court of human rights, International Law, is curved but it, James Mann, jimmy carter, justice, law and morality, lech walensa, Mahatma Ghandi, martin luther king, moral order, Nelson Mandela, New York Times, Nobel Peace Prize, Obama's Handlers, obamians, op-ed, opinion, peace, riverside church, search engines, speech against vietnam war, stark moral choice, targeted killings, the arch of the moral universe, the filter bubble, the most important Obamian, the Obanians, Torture, truth, Universal declaration of Human Rights, use of torture to obtain, vacslav havel, Why I am against the war in Vietnam
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The Trenchant Observer

Archive for the ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ Category

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Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the foreign policy “successes” of our celebrity leaders

REPRISE: “A time to break silence”: Dr. King on the Vietnam war, and President Carter on America’s human rights violations

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