Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 110

The myth of Obama's "blunders" and "weakness"

With the details of the pending debt deal now emerging (and for a very good explanation of the key terms, see this post by former Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein), a consensus is solidifying that (1) this is a virtually full-scale victory for the GOP and defeat for the President (who all along insisted on a "balanced" approach that included tax increases), but  (2) the President, as usual, was too weak in standing up to right-wing intransigence -- or simply had no options given their willingness to allow default -- and was thus forced into this deal against his will.  This depiction of Obama as occupying a largely powerless, toothless office incapable of standing up to Congress -- or, at best, that the bad outcome happened because he's just a weak negotiator who "blundered" -- is the one that is invariably trotted out to explain away most of the bad things he does.

It appears to be true that the President wanted tax revenues to be part of this deal.  But it is absolutely false that he did not want these brutal budget cuts and was simply forced -- either by his own strategic "blunders" or the "weakness" of his office -- into accepting them.  The evidence is overwhelming that Obama has long wanted exactly what he got: these severe domestic budget cuts and even ones well beyond these, including Social Security and Medicare, which he is likely to get with the Super-Committee created by this bill (as Robert Reich described the bill:  "No tax increases on rich yet almost certain cuts in Med[icare] and Social Security . . . . Ds can no longer campaign on R's desire to Medicare and Soc Security, now that O has agreed it").

Last night, John Cole -- along with several others -- promoted this weak-helpless-President narrative by asking what Obama could possibly have done to secure a better outcome.  Early this morning, I answered him by email, but as I see that this is the claim being pervasively used to explain Obama's acceptance of this deal -- he was forced into it by the Tea Party hostage-takers -- I'm reprinting that email I wrote here.  For those who believe this narrative, please confront the evidence there; how anyone can claim in the face of all that evidence that the President was "forced" into making these cuts -- as opposed to having eagerly sought them -- is mystifying indeed.  And, as I set forth there, there were ample steps he could have taken had he actually wanted leverage against the GOP; the very idea that negotiating steps so obvious to every progressive pundit somehow eluded the President and his vast army of advisers is absurd on its face.   

Here's The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn -- who, as he says, with some understatement, is usually "among [Obama's] staunchest defenders in situations like these" -- on what these guaranteed cuts mean (never mind the future cuts likely to come from the Super Committee):

As Robert Greenstein, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, pointed out in a recent statement about a different proposal, there's just no way to enact spending reductions of this magnitude without imposing a lot of pain. And contrary to the common understanding in the Washington cocktail party circuit, "pain" does not simply mean offending certain political sensibilities. Pain means more people eating tainted food, more people breathing polluted air, more people pulling their kids out of college, and more people losing their homes -- in other words, the hardships people suffer when government can't do an adequate job of looking out for their interests.

As I wrote back in April when progressive pundits in D.C. were so deeply baffled by Obama's supposed "tactical mistake" in not insisting on a clean debt ceiling increase, Obama's so-called "bad negotiating" or "weakness" is actually "shrewd negotiation" because he's getting what he actually wants (which, shockingly, is not always the same as what he publicly says he wants).  In this case, what he wants -- and has long wanted, as he's said repeatedly in public -- are drastic spending cuts.  In other words, he's willing -- eager -- to impose the "pain" Cohn describes on those who can least afford to bear it so that he can run for re-election as a compromise-brokering, trans-partisan deficit cutter willing to "take considerable heat from his own party." 

Democratic politics in a nutshell

Let's begin by taking note of three facts: 

(1) Three days ago, Democratic Rep. John Conyers, appearing at a meeting of the Out of Poverty caucus, said: "The Republicans -- Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor -- did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal.  The President of the United States called for that" (video here, at 1:30);

(2) The reported deal on the debt ceiling is so completely one-sided -- brutal domestic cuts with no tax increases on the rich and the likelihood of serious entitlement cuts in six months with a "Super Congressional" deficit commission -- that even Howard Kurtz was able to observe: "If there are $3 trillion in cuts and no tax hikes, Obama will have to explain how it is that the Republicans got 98 pct. of what they wanted," while Grover Norquist, the Right of the Right on such matters, happily proclaimed: "Sounds like a budget deal with real savings and no tax hikes is a go."

(3) The same White House behavior shaping the debt deal -- full embrace of GOP policies and (in the case of Social Security cuts) going beyond that -- has been evident in most policy realms from the start.  It first manifested in the context of Obama's adoption of the Bush/Cheney approach to the war on civil liberties and Terrorism, which is why civil libertarians were the first to object so vocally and continuously to the Obama presidency, culminating in this amazing event from mid-2010: "Speaking at a conference of liberal activists Wednesday morning, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero didn't mince his words about the administration's handling of civil liberties issues. 'I'm going to start provocatively . . .  I'm disgusted with this president,' Romero told the America's Future Now breakout session."

In other words, a slew of millionaire politicians who spent the last decade exploding the national debt with Endless War, a sprawling Surveillance State, and tax cuts for the rich are now imposing extreme suffering on the already-suffering ordinary citizenry, all at the direction of their plutocratic overlords, who are prospering more than ever and will sacrifice virtually nothing under this deal (despite their responsibility for the 2008 financial collapse that continues to spawn economic misery).  And all of this will be justified by these politicians and their millionaire media mouthpieces with the obscenely deceitful slogans of "shared sacrifice" and "balanced debt reduction" -- two of the most odiously Orwellian phrases since "Look Forward, not Backward" and "2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate" (and anyone claiming that Obama was involuntarily forced by the "crazy" Tea Party into massive budget cuts at a time of almost 10% unemployment: see the actual facts here).

With those fact assembled, this morning's New York Times article -- headlined: "Rightward Tilt Leaves Obama With Party Rift" -- supplies the perfect primer for understanding Democratic Party politics. The article explains that "Mr. Obama, seeking to appeal to the broad swath of independent voters, has adopted the Republicans' language and in some cases their policies," and then lists numerous examples just from the debt debate alone  (never mind all the other areas where he's done the same):

No matter how the immediate issue is resolved, Mr. Obama, in his failed effort for greater deficit reduction, has put on the table far more in reductions for future years' spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, than he did in new revenue from the wealthy and corporations. He proposed fewer cuts in military spending and more in health care than a bipartisan Senate group that includes one of the chamber's most conservative Republicans. . . .

But by this month, in ultimately unsuccessful talks with Speaker John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama tentatively agreed to a plan that was farther to the right than that of the majority of the fiscal commission and a bipartisan group of senators, the so-called Gang of Six. It also included a slow rise in the Medicare eligibility age to 67 from 65, and, after 2015, a change in the formula for Social Security cost-of-living adjustments long sought by economists.

How can the leader of the Democratic Party wage an all-out war on the ostensible core beliefs of the Party's voters in this manner and expect not just to survive, but thrive politically?  Democratic Party functionaries are not shy about saying exactly what they're thinking in this regard:

Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, said polling data showed that at this point in his term, Mr. Obama, compared with past Democratic presidents, was doing as well or better with Democratic voters. "Whatever qualms or questions they may have about this policy or that policy, at the end of the day the one thing they're absolutely certain of -- they're going to hate these Republican candidates," Mr. Mellman said. "So I'm not honestly all that worried about a solid or enthusiastic base."

In other words: it makes no difference to us how much we stomp on liberals' beliefs or how much they squawk, because we'll just wave around enough pictures of Michele Bachmann and scare them into unconditional submission. That's the Democratic Party's core calculation: from "hope" in 2008 to a rank fear-mongering campaign in 2012.  Will it work?  The ones who will determine if it will are the intended victims of that tactic: angry, impotent liberals whom the White House expects will snap dutifully into line no matter what else happens (even, as seems likely, massive Social Security and Medicare cuts) between now and next November.

Obama's whistleblower war suffers two defeats

(updated below: w/reaction from Jim Risen)

The Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers suffered two serious and well-deserved defeats.  The first occurred in the prosecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who was accused of multiple acts of espionage, only for the DOJ to drop virtually all of the charges right before the trial was to begin and enter into a plea agreement for one minor misdemeanor.  Today, The Washington Post -- under the headline "Judge blasts prosecution of alleged NSA leaker" -- reports that the federal judge presiding over the case "harshly criticized U.S. prosecutors' treatment of a former spy agency official accused of leaking classified material."

As the transcript of Drake's sentencing hearing published by Secrecy News reflects, Judge Richard Bennett of the U.S. District Court for Maryland was infuriated by two aspects of the DOJ's conduct: (1) after the Bush DOJ executed a search warrant of Drake's home in 2007, the Obama DOJ -- 2 1/2 years later -- finally indicted him, meaning he had to live with that cloud of criminal uncertainty over his head for that outrageously lengthy period of time; and (2) despite dropping all of the serious charges right before the trial was about to begin, the DOJ demanded that Drake be forced to pay a $50,000 fine as "a deterrent" (on top of the tens of thousands of dollars he spent in legal fees until he had no money left and had to use public defenders, as well as the fact that he was five years away from earning a federal pension when he was fired and ended up working at an Apple Computer store to support his family); to justify the requested fine, the prosecutor cited a $10,000 whistleblowing prize Drake was awarded earlier this year.

As for the first issue, the court condemned what it called the "extraordinary position taken by the government, probably unprecedented in this courthouse" of dropping the whole case on the eve of trial after "an extraordinary period of delay."  Judge Bennett added:  "I find that unconscionable.  Unconscionable.  It is at the very root of what this country was founded on against general warrants of the British."  As for the second issue, the court reviewed the difficult circumstances of Drake's childhood (he was raised in poverty and sent himself to school with risky military service), his complete lack of any prior criminal record, and -- most of all -- the multiple ways in which the failed prosecution destroyed his life ("the financial devastation wrought upon this defendant"), and flatly refused to impose any fine at all, explaining:  "I'm not going to add to that in any way."

What is most notable about this hearing is that the prosecutor candidly described not only his reasons for wanting a substantial fine imposed on Drake, but (without his saying so) also the motive for the Obama DOJ's broader war on whistleblowers: namely, an attempt to send a "message" of intimidation to future would-be whistleblowers (click on image to enlarge):

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Yet Judge Bennett -- who, as a Bush 43 appointee, is presumably not overly sympathetic either to criminal defendants generally or national security leaks in particular -- was having none of that.  He first explained that he had never seen prosecutorial delays as extreme as the one in this case (accounted for by the fact that the Bush DOJ had apparently decided not to prosecute Drake, but the Obama DOJ then proceeded):

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Judge Bennett then eloquently explained that the DOJ already destroyed Drake's life, even though it ended up convicting him of nothing other than a minor misdemeanor:

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That, of course, is the real point here.  Drake's leak involved no conceivable harm to national security, but did expose serious waste, corruption and possible illegality.  When Drake was indicted back in April, 2010, I wrote at the time: "the more I think about this, the more I think this might actually be one of the worst steps the Obama administration has taken yet, if not the single worst step -- and that's obviously saying a lot."  The effect of prosecuting Drake with multiple "espionage" counts, threatening him with decades in prison, and financially ruining him is clear: to frighten future whistleblowers into silence, and thus enable the government and the National Security State to do whatever it wants free of one of the only true checks it has.  That's what makes Obama's War on Whistleblowing so pernicious.

The second defeat Obama's whistleblower war suffered occurred in the prosecution of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who -- like Drake -- allegedly leaked information that exposed serious ineptitude but entailed no national security harm.  As I wrote about several times, the Obama DOJ was seeking to force New York Timees reporter James Risen (to whom Sterling is accused of leaking) to testify about his source.  But yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema quashed the DOJ's subpoena, ruling in a decision (not yet public because it's now undergoing a classification review) that Risen need only testify to affirm the accuracy of what he wrote (which he had long ago offered to do).

These events demonstrate how legally baseless are the Obama DOJ's intimidation efforts, yet their rejection in court does not mean they have not succeeded.  As I wrote about in the context of the Risen subpoena:

But for anyone who is engaged in meaningful dissent from and challenge to government officials -- the Jim Risens and other real investigative reporters, the Thomas Drakes and other whistleblowers, the WikiLeaks supporters, the Midwest peace activists -- these prosecutions and these ever-expanding surveillance, detention and even assassination powers are inevitably intimidating. Regardless of how those powers are used or even whether they are, they will, as Risen put it, have "a chilling effect" on the exercise of core freedoms.

Despite being largely vindicated, Thomas Drake's life was all but destroyed, while Jim Risen spent years facing the prospect that he'd have to go to prison in order not to reveal his source.  That climate of fear aimed at those who expose government wrongdoing is the prime outcome, if not the prime goal, of the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers.

* * * * *

Here is an issue that needs a lot more scrutiny: Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to the U.N., and Justin Raimondo, both superbly examine the potential help received by accused Oslo attacker Anders Behring Breivik from the network of Muslim-hating far-right activists.  I summarized one aspect of their excellent arguments here (Geller's deletion of the reference to "stockpiling weapons" in Norway described there occurred this month, apparently in the last 24 hours).  In an age where Muslims are swept into intense law enforcement investigations and even prosecutions for even the most tenuous links to those who commit violence, the seemingly pervasive indifference to Breivik's possible support network is revealing indeed.

 

UPDATE: Risen emailed me the following this morning about his sweeping victory:

This is an important victory for the First Amendment, and for the freedom of the press in the United States. Some people don't seem to understand the connection between the ability of journalists to protect their confidential sources and a free press. But if whistleblowers in government, in corporations, and elsewhere in society can be hounded and persecuted, and if the Justice Department is able to use its power to turn reporters into informants, then investigative journalism in America will surely wither and die. The First Amendment will have lost its meaning.

That seems to be not a bug, but a feature -- the primary one -- of the Obama war on whistleblowers.

An un-American response to the Oslo attack

(updated below)

Over the last decade, virtually every Terrorist plot aimed at the U.S. -- whether successful or failed -- has provoked greater security and surveillance measures.  Within a matter of mere weeks, the 9/11 attacks infamously spawned a vast new surveillance statute (the Patriot Act), a secretly implemented warrantless eavesdropping program in violation of the law, an explosion of domestic surveillance contracts, a vastly fortified secrecy regime, and endless wars in multiple countries.  As it turned out, that massive over-reaction was not a crisis-driven anomaly but rather the template for future actions. 

The failed Christmas Day bombing over Detroit led to an erosion of Miranda rights and judge-free detentions as well as a due-process free assassination program aimed at an Muslim American preacher whose message allegedly "inspired" the attacker.  The failed Times Square bombing was repeatedly cited to justify reform-free extension of the Patriot Act along with a slew of measures to maximize government scrutiny of the Internet.  That failed plot, along with Nidal Hasan's shooting at Fort Hood, provoked McCarthyite Congressional hearings into American Muslims and helped sustain a shockingly broad interpretation of "material support for Terrorism" that criminalizes free speech.  In sum, every Terrorist plot is immediately exploited as a pretext for expanding America's Security State; the response to every plot: we need to sacrifice more liberties, increase secrecy, and further empower the government.

The reaction to the heinous Oslo attack by Norway's political class has been exactly the opposite: a steadfast refusal to succumb to hysteria and a security-über-alles mentality.  The day after the attack -- one which, per capita, was as significant for Norway as 9/11 was for the U.S. -- Oslo Mayor Fabian Stang, when asked whether greater security measures were needed, sternly rejected that notion:  "I don't think security can solve problems. We need to teach greater respect."  It is simply inconceivable that any significant U.S. politician -- the day after an attack of that magnitude -- would publicly reject calls for greater security measures.  Similarly inconceivable for American political discourse is the equally brave response of the country's Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, whose office was the target of the bomb and whose Labour Party was the sponsor of the camp where dozens of teenagers were shot:

He called on his country to react by more tightly embracing, rather than abandoning, the culture of tolerance that Anders Behring Breivik said he was trying to destroy.

"The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation," Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg insisted at a news conference. . . .

Stoltenberg strongly defended the right to speak freely -- even if it includes extremist views such as Breivik's.

"We have to be very clear to distinguish between extreme views, opinions — that's completely legal, legitimate to have. What is not legitimate is to try to implement those extreme views by using violence," he said in English.

Stoltenberg's promise in the face of twin attacks signaled a contrast to the U.S. response after the 9/11 attacks, when Washington gave more leeway to perform wiretaps and search records.

It reflects the difference between the two countries' approaches to terrorism. The U.S. has been frustrated by what it considers Scandinavia's lack of aggressive investigation and arrests.

Since the attacks, Stoltenberg and members of Norway's royal family have underlined the country's openness by making public appearances with little visible security.

Norway's government understandably intends to investigate what happened and correct any needed gaps in security, such as slow police response; but what it refuses to do is transform itself into a closed, secret surveillance state.  About all of this, The New York Times today says that "Norway's policy on public security [] seemed defined by a belief that bad things happen elsewhere."  No: it is defined by a belief that there are other values besides security that matter a great deal and that pursuing security above all other values, in a quest for absolute safety, is both self-destructive and futile.

This realization was once not only common in the American political ethos, but its defining feature.  Patrick Henry's decree -- give me liberty or give me death -- resonated for generations precisely because it underscored that Americans were willing to subordinate physical security to other values (such as freedom and privacy).  The American Revolutionaries were long revered in our political culture because -- by risking everything, including their lives, to wage war against the most powerful empire on Earth -- they chose liberty and freedom from state intrusion over personal security.  

Multiple provisions of the U.S. Constitution reflect this same prioritization of values.  The Fourth Amendment bars the police from entering our homes without search warrants and probable cause even though that restriction means that some of the most heinous and dangerous of criminals -- from mass murderers to child rapists -- will remain un-apprehended.  The Fifth Amendment bars imprisonment without due process and the Bill of Rights imposes a slew of restrictions on the state's power to convict accused criminals even though it means that those same horrific criminals may sometimes go free, able to commit their crimes again.  This subordination of security to other values was long the defining attribute of the American political identity, because we didn't want to live in a Singapore-like Security State or an East-German-like Surveillance State.

All of this has given way -- among the political class in the U.S. -- to a supreme fixation on safety at the expense of every other value: a fixation that is in equal measures cowardly, authoritarian and exploitative.  Patrick Henry's long celebrated tribute to courage has been turned on its head by the degraded cowardice of GOP tough-guy leaders -- such as Pat Roberts, John Cornyn, and Rush Limbaugh -- shrieking that civil liberties are worthless if you're dead: i.e., that safety is the paramount goal.  Meanwhile, as virtually every other country that suffers a horrendous Terrorist attack puts the accused perpetrators on trial in their real court system in the city where the attack occurred -- the subway bombers in London, the train bombers in Madrid, the shooters in Mumbai, the Bali nightclub bombers in Indonesia -- it is only the U.S., the self-proclaimed Home of the Brave, that is too frightened to do so, instead concocting military tribunals and sticking accused terrorists in cages on a Caribbean island, as members of both parties spew base fear-mongering to bar trials on American soil.

Just to highlight how extreme is the fear-based American repudiation of openness and transparency, consider the responses to the efforts of two Democratic Senators, Sens. Wyden and Udall, to force the Obama administration to explain what Wyden previously called the Secret Patriot Act:

 The Obama administration continued Wednesday to resist the efforts of two Democratic senators to learn more about the government's interpretation of domestic surveillance law, stating that "it is not reasonably possible" to identify the number of Americans whose communications may have been monitored under the statute. . . .

"Every time the American public finds out that laws have been rewritten in secret or the administration can't give a basic answer, it erodes public confidence and makes it harder for intelligence agencies to do their jobs," said Wyden, who for the past two years has decried what he calls a de facto "secret law" governing domestic surveillance.

So drowning in secrecy is the National Security State that the Obama administration refuses even to explain how it interprets and applies surveillance powers enacted by Congress.  Even more perverse, the article describes how the Obama administration has been touting its commitment to openness by hailing the declassification of a 200-year-old document on cryptography: one that has been publicly available for years in Europe.  As a new ACLU report documents -- one co-authored by former FBI agent Mike German -- "We are now living in an age of government secrecy run amok."

What's most striking, and ironic, is that the Norwegian response to the Oslo attack is so glaringly un-American even though its core premise -- a brave refusal to sacrifice liberty and transparency in the name of fear and security -- was once the political value Americans boasted of exhibiting most.  What we now have instead is the instinctive exploitation by political elites of every threat -- real and imagined -- as a means of eroding liberties, privacy and openness, based in part on fear and in part on an opportunistic desire for greater power.  That's why Norway's courageous, principled response seems so foreign to American eyes and ears.

 

UPDATE:  Several commenters argue that Norway would have been less restrained had the attack been perpetrated by foreign Muslims rather than a domestic Terrorist; some similarly claim that the U.S. did not implement new security laws when attacked by domestic Terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh.  Leaving aside the fact that many of the above-referenced increased U.S. Security State measures were "justified" by acts by American citizens (Nidal Hasan, Faisal Shazad, Anwar Awlaki), this argument is misguided for several reasons.

Norway has long faced serious tensions over the alleged Islamic threat -- both because of their active participation in Western wars in Muslim countries and a growing Muslim immigration population (which is what motivated the attacker) -- and yet, as the articles linked above from the Post and the NYT demonstrate, the Norwegians have long resisted pressure from the U.S. to implement the type of surveillance and monitoring programs now so pervasive in the West to monitor Islamic extremists.  The courageous restraint exhibited by the Norwegians in the wake of the Oslo attack is perfectly consistent with how they've responded to the alleged threat of Terrorism from radical Muslims as well.  

Conversely, the U.S. Government most certainly did pursue vastly increased security powers in the name of McVeigh's attack:  the Clinton administration, citing the Oklahoma City attack, demanded a full-scale prohibition on all computer encryption that the Government could not access, as well as significantly increased domestic eavesdropping powers, while Congress -- by an overwhelming majority -- enacted the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 that severely infringed due process rights, created new Terrorism crimes, and vested the government with a litany of vast new prosecutorial powers -- all galvanized by the McVeigh attack (read more from The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse on how both parties exploited the Oklahoma City bombing to significantly increase the government's surveillance and police powers).

Obviously, the McVeigh attack was not of the same magnitude as the 9/11 attack (which was bolstered by the subsequent anthrax attack), so it did not generate the same degree of Security State extremism.  But the disparate reactions evident here reflect the radically different approaches Norway and the U.S. take -- in general -- with regard to thinking about and responding to security threats and whether liberty and privacy should be sacrificed.

The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

The Washington Post today has the latest leak-based boasting about how the U.S. is on the verge of "defeating" Al Qaeda, yet -- lest you think this can allow a reduction of the National Security State and posture of Endless War on which it feeds -- the article warns that "al­-Qaeda's offshoot in Yemen is now seen as a greater counterterrorism challenge than the organization's traditional base" and that this new threat, as Sen. Saxby Chambliss puts it, "is nowhere near defeat."  Predictably, the Post's warnings about the danger from Yemen feature the U.S. Government's due-process-free attempts to kill U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, widely believed to be in Yemen and now routinely (and absurdly) depicted as The New Osama bin Laden.

The Post says Awlaki is "known for his fiery sermons" (undoubtedly the prime -- and blatantly unconstitutional -- motive for his being targeted for killing).  But what is so bizarre about Awlaki's now being cast in this role is that, for years, he was deemed by the very same U.S. Government to be the face of moderate Islam.  Indeed, shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon invited Awlaki to a "luncheon [] meant to ease tensions with Muslim-Americans." But even more striking was something I accidentally found today while searching for something else.  In November, 2001, the very same Washington Post hosted one of those benign, non-controversial online chats about religion that it likes to organize; this one was intended to discuss "the meaning of Ramadan". It was hosted by none other than . . . "Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki."

More extraordinary than the fact that the Post hosted The New Osama bin Laden in such a banal role a mere ten years ago was what Imam Awlaki said during the Q-and-A exchange with readers.  He repudiated the 9/11 attackers.  He denounced the Taliban for putting women in burqas, explaining that the practice has no precedent in Islam and that "education is mandatory on every Muslim male and female."  He chatted about the "inter-faith services held in our mosque and around the greater DC area and in all over the country" and proclaimed: "We definitely need more mutual understanding." While explaining his opposition to the war in Afghanistan, he proudly invoked what he thought (mistakenly, as it turns out) was his right of free speech as an American:  "Even though this is a dissenting view nowadays[,] as an American I do have the right to have a contrary opinion."  And he announced that "the greatest sin in Islam after associating other gods besides Allah is killing an innocent soul."

Does that sound like the New Osama bin Laden to you?  One could call him the opposite of bin Laden.  And yet, a mere nine years later, there was Awlaki, in an Al Jazeera interview, pronouncing his opinion that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to blow up a civilian jet over Detroit was justified (while saying "it would have been better if the plane was a military one or if it was a US military target"), and urging "revenge for all Muslims across the globe" against the U.S.  What changed over the last decade that caused such a profound transformation in Awlaki? Does that question even need to be asked?  Awlaki unwittingly provided the answer ten years ago when explaining his opposition to the war in Afghanistan in his 2001 Post chat:

Also our government could have dealt with the terrorist attacks as a crime against America rather than a war against America. So the guilty would be tried and only them would be punished rather than bombing an already destroyed country. I do not restrict myself to US media. I check out Aljazeerah and European media such as the BBC. I am seeing something that you are not seeing because of the one-sidedness of the US media. I see the carnage of Afghanistan. I see the innocent civilian deaths. That is why my opinion is different.

Keep in mind that I have no sympathy for whoever committed the crimes of Sep 11th. But that doesn't mean that I would approve the killing of my Muslim brothers and sisters in Afghanistan.

And in his Al Jazeera interview nine years later, he explained why he now endorses violence against Americans, especially American military targets:

I support what Umar Farouk has done after I have been seeing my brothers being killed in Palestine for more than 60 years, and others being killed in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And in my tribe too, US missiles have killed 17 women and 23 children, so do not ask me if al-Qaeda has killed or blown up a US civil jet after all this. The 300 Americans are nothing comparing to the thousands of Muslims who have been killed.

A full decade of literally constant (and still-escalating) American killing of civilians in multiple Muslim countries has radically transformed Awlaki -- and countless other Muslims -- from a voice of pro-American moderation into supporters of violence against the U.S. and, in Awlaki's case, the prime pretext for the continuation of the War on Terror.  As this blogger put it in response to my noting the 2001 Awlaki chat: "it's interesting to think about how many other people followed that same path, that we don't know about it."  In other words, the very U.S. policies justified in name of combating Terrorism have done more to spawn -- and continue to spawn -- anti-American Terrorism than anything bin Laden could have ever conceived.  The transformation of Awlaki, and many others like him, provides vivid insight into how that occurs.

* * * * *

It's equally instructive to note that if the Post were to give Awlaki a venue to express his opinions now -- or if the Pentagon were to invite him to a luncheon -- those institutions would likely be guilty of the felony of providing material support to Terrorism as applied by the Obama DOJ and upheld by the Supreme Court.

Al Sharpton, MSNBC and journalistic standards

On Sunday, Cenk Uygur was interviewed by CNN's Howard Kurtz about Uygur's departure from MSNBC, and Ugyur claimed that Al Sharpton -- widely reported to be his replacement -- vowed in a 60 Minutes interview never to criticize President Obama under any circumstances.  When I first heard Ugyur make this claim, I assumed it was hyperbole -- until I watched the video and read the transcript of the Sharpton interview.  The 60 Minutes segment was aired on May 19, 2011, and chronicles what it calls Sharpton's "metamorphosis: today he's down right tame. So much so, that he has made his way into the establishment."  It includes this:

Sharpton told us that having a black president is a challenge: if he finds fault with Mr. Obama, he'd be aiding those who want to destroy him. So he has decided not to criticize the president about anything -- even about black unemployment, which is twice the national rate.

The segment also described Sharpton as "now a trusted White House adviser" and recounts that "given his loyalty and his change from confrontational to accommodating, the administration is rewarding him with access and assignments."

How can a media outlet such as MSNBC that purports to be presenting political journalism possibly employ someone as a journalist -- even an opinion journalist -- who publicly and categorically pledges never to criticize the President of the United States under any circumstances?  That would be like hiring a physician who vows never to treat any diseases, or employing an auto mechanic who pledges never to fix any cars, or retaining a pollster who swears never to make any findings about public opinion.  Holding people in political power accountable is the prime function -- the defining feature -- of a journalist, including a pundit; if you expressly and publicly vow never to do that, how can you possibly be credibly presented as being one?  And how can the political analysis of someone who takes this pledge possibly be trusted as sincerely held, let alone accurate?  Note that this vow was not from three years ago; it was from two months ago.

There is a wide spectrum of political opinion within progressive circles with regard to how much criticism President Obama warrants -- some believe he merits much and others believe he merits very little -- and it's perfectly appropriate for MSNBC to feature hosts and commentators representing all those views (and, indeed, it does do that).  But publicly swearing never to criticize the President no matter what is in an entirely different universe.  Of course, never criticizing the President was the overarching credo of Fox News during the Bush years, but that's one of the features that made it so pernicious; besides, not even Fox took a public pledge never to do so.  

It's true that MSNBC has many hosts who frequently and aggressively criticize the President, but one does have to wonder what message it sends when the most critical of them is removed despite solid ratings and replaced with someone who has taken this vow, someone who is "rewarded" for his "loyalty" by the White House with "access."  I've long considered Sharpton to be a constructive political voice, especially the important views he forced into the 2004 Democratic presidential primary.  And it's perfectly fine for a political activist to decide that the best way to advance an agenda is through unbroken fealty to the White House.  But that is a bizarre attribute indeed for a featured nighttime host of a political program on an ostensibly journalistic outlet.

Obama and the Left: a problem for the WH?

In Salon today, Ed Kilgore argues that the White House ignores liberal dissatisfaction with the President because it is largely confined to the "liberal elite" and "liberal opinion leaders" but has not extended to the average liberal voter to any substantial degree.  To sustain this argument, Kilgore dismisses as statistically aberrational and insignificant a CNN article from last week about its new poll which found Obama's overall approval rating driven down to 45% "in part by growing dissatisfaction on the left with the president's track record in office" and "signs of a stirring discontent on the left"; CNN added: "roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of the president say they feel that way because he's not been liberal enough."  Kilgore further argues that the White House knows that liberals, no matter how upset they become with Obama, will be scared into voting for him anyway by the GOP candidate, and thus can safely ignore their complaints.

There are several points worth noting about Kilgore's argument, one that is commonly held among many D.C. political and media figures.  Initially, Kilgore picked a bad week to depict that CNN poll as aberrational, given today's new Washington Post/ABC News poll which found, as the Post today put it:

More than a third of Americans now believe that President Obama's policies are hurting the economy, and confidence in his ability to create jobs is sharply eroding among his base. . . . The Post-ABC poll found that the number of liberal Democrats who strongly support Obama's record on jobs plunged 22 points from 53 percent last year to 31 percent. The number of African Americans who believe the president's actions have helped the economy has dropped from 77 percent in October to just over half of those surveyed.

Meanwhile, the latest Gallup poll shows that the President's approval rating among self-identified "liberals" has dropped to 70% -- the lowest it has been in many months (which means, of course, that 30% of liberals refuse to express approval for the Democratic President).  Other polls have found similarly large quantities of dissatisfaction:  "Nearly half of [Obama's] own base -- 45 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents -- want someone to challenge him for the Democratic nomination . . . Among pro-Democratic voters who want him challenged: pluralities of women, voters younger than 45, and those without a college degree."

At this point, the only factor that can lead someone to deny the significance of this trend is willful blindness.  And it's hard to imagine those numbers going anywhere but down as the realization sets in that it is the President who, now by his own admission, has been working hard to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, and as the President increasingly pursues what is clearly his 2012 strategy:  casting himself as a trans-partisan centrist (his doing so vindicates, in my view, those of us who have long argued that there was nothing "new" about Obama's politics; it was just slightly re-branded Clintonian, Third Way triangulation).

Independently, and more to the point, approval ratings is only one of many barometers of a President's standing with his base -- and, at least in Obama's case, almost certainly not the most important one.  It's completely unsurprising that the vast majority of Democrats and even "liberals" -- when presented with the dichotomous approve/disapprove choice by a pollster regarding their own party's President -- will choose "approve"; that, in essence, is little more than a proxy for declaring one's tribal identity (which of the two sides are you on?).  But what propelled the Obama campaign in 2008 was not merely the number of people willing to vote for him but, rather, the intensity of his support.  

It's one thing to be willing to go vote for a candidate on Election Day (or, more accurately, against the other candidate); it's another entirely to be willing to donate scarce money, canvass and evangelize, and infuse the campaign with passion and energy.  That many liberals will still be willing to do the former notwithstanding their dissatisfaction does not mean they will do the latter.  That level of progressive commitment to Obama's candidacy was vital to his victory in 2008, and its absence could be crippling in 2012 (a dependency on Wall Street cash even greater than 2008 can only take one so far).  Wasn't that one obvious lesson of 2010: the central role base enthusiasm plays in election outcomes? 

Democratic Party supporters can try to put a happy face on this problem by citing approval ratings, but it only masks the serious problem of intense dissatisfaction and lack of enthusiasm (Matt Yglesias and others, for instance, touted a poll from Netroots Nation finding 80% approval for Obama as evidence that the base loves the President, studiously ignoring the much more significant fact that only 27% "strongly approved" of Obama in that poll, while 53% approved only "somewhat," and 20% expressed some form of disapproval [strong or somewhat]:  a poll of hard-core Democratic activists that finds that only 27% "strongly approve" of their own Party's president is hardly some sign of a healthy relationship with the base: quite the opposite).

Perhaps the most unconvincing part of Kilgore's argument is the notion that the White House cares about the views of its liberal base but it is not worried only because there is not pervasive anger among the average base voter.  For more persuasive is the amply-supported argument from this blogger that Obama wants to be attacked by liberals because of the perception that it politically benefits him by making him look centrist, non-partisan and independent; it also endears him to the D.C. media class, which -- in its classic anti-democratic style -- swoons for any politician who scorns their own voters.  With this strategy, the angrier liberals are with Obama, the better off he is; hence, openly boasting about aggressive efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, just like publicly chiding liberals for not being more appreciative of him as he repeatedly did before the 2010 election, is designed to highlight this schism.  It's not merely that he lacks a fear of liberal dissatisfaction; it's that he affirmatively craves it.

But that's a dangerous strategy.  U.S. presidential elections are very closely decided affairs, and alienating the Left even to some degree can be lethal for a national Democratic campaign; shouldn't the 2000 election, along with 2010, have cemented that lesson forever?  Kilgore (and the White House) are almost certainly right that most dissatisfied progressives will end up voting for Obama no matter what.  The 2000 experience has soured many to the notion of supporting a third-party candidate, and the fear-mongering that will undoubtedly replace "hope" as Obama's re-election strategy will be, like most fear-based campaigns, effective.  The stunning silence in the face of Obama's efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits (along with his pursuit of a whole slew of other policies ostensibly anathema to liberals) should put to rest any notion that there will be mass defection of liberal voters in 2012 to the GOP or a third party.

But that fact is only a small part of the story.  Even small defections, along with pervasive cynicism, disappointment, and apathy, can sink Obama's campaign.  Kilgore's underlying assumption is correct, and it's one I've argued many times: a political constituency that slavishly and unconditionally supports a Party will inevitably be ignored by that Party.  That's just basic political rationality.  The question is whether the clearly growing discontent on the Left will translate into anything more meaningful than impotent words.  I genuinely don't know the answer, but the hubristic confidence on the part of the White House, as expressed by Kilgore, seems very unwarranted.

* * * * *

Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs has an excellent assessment of the role both parties are playing in America's decline, along with their competition as to who can be more subservient to Wall Street; he concludes:  "America needs a third-party movement to break the hammerlock of the financial elites. Until that happens, the political class and the media conglomerates will continue to spew lies, American militarism will continue to destabilize a growing swath of the world, and the country will continue its economic decline."  I highly recommend Sachs' entire article.

I was on Democracy Now this morning discussing the Oslo attack and reactions to it.  It can be viewed here, beginning at roughly 33:00 (I'll post the video of the segment once it's available).

The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of "Terrorism"

(updated below)

For much of the day yesterday, the featured headline on The New York Times online front page strongly suggested that Muslims were responsible for the attacks on Oslo; that led to definitive statements on the BBC and elsewhere that Muslims were the culprits.  The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin wrote a whole column based on the assertion that Muslims were responsible, one that, as James Fallows notes, remains at the Post with no corrections or updates.  The morning statement issued by President Obama -- "It's a reminder that the entire international community holds a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring" and "we have to work cooperatively together both on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks" -- appeared to assume, though (to its credit) without overtly stating, that the perpetrator was an international terrorist group. 

But now it turns out that the alleged perpetrator wasn't from an international Muslim extremist group at all, but was rather a right-wing Norwegian nationalist with a history of anti-Muslim commentary and an affection for Muslim-hating blogs such as Pam Geller's Atlas Shrugged, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch.  Despite that, The New York Times is still working hard to pin some form of blame, even ultimate blame, on Muslim radicals (h/t sysprog):

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause of Friday's assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al Qaeda's brutality and multiple attacks.

"If it does turn out to be someone with more political motivations, it shows these groups are learning from what they see from Al Qaeda," said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Al Qaeda is always to blame, even when it isn't, even when it's allegedly the work of a Nordic, Muslim-hating, right-wing European nationalist.  Of course, before Al Qaeda, nobody ever thought to detonate bombs in government buildings or go on indiscriminate, politically motivated shooting rampages.  The NYT speculates that amonium nitrate fertilizer may have been used to make the bomb because the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, owned a farming-related business and thus could have access to that material; of course nobody would have ever thought of using that substance to make a massive bomb had it not been for Al Qaeda.  So all this proves once again what a menacing threat radical Islam is.

Then there's this extraordinarily revealing passage from the NYT -- first noticed by Richard Silverstein -- explaining why the paper originally reported what it did:

Initial reports focused on the possibility of Islamic militants, in particular Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or Helpers of the Global Jihad, cited by some analysts as claiming responsibility for the attacks. American officials said the group was previously unknown and might not even exist.

There was ample reason for concern that terrorists might be responsible.

In other words, now that we know the alleged perpetrator is not Muslim, we know -- by definition -- that Terrorists are not responsible; conversely, when we thought Muslims were responsible, that meant -- also by definition -- that it was an act of Terrorism.  As Silverstein put it: 

How's that again? Are the only terrorists in the world Muslim? If so, what do we call a right-wing nationalist capable of planting major bombs and mowing down scores of people for the sake of the greater glory of his cause? If even a liberal newspaper like the Times can't call this guy a terrorist, what does that say about the mindset of the western world?

What it says is what we've seen repeatedly: that Terrorism has no objective meaning and, at least in American political discourse, has come functionally to mean: violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes, no matter the cause or the target.  Indeed, in many (though not all) media circles, discussion of the Oslo attack quickly morphed from this is Terrorism (when it was believed Muslims did it) to no, this isn't Terrorism, just extremism (once it became likely that Muslims didn't).  As Maz Hussain -- whose lengthy Twitter commentary on this event yesterday was superb and well worth reading -- put it:

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That Terrorism means nothing more than violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes has been proven repeatedly.  When an airplane was flown into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, it was immediately proclaimed to be Terrorism, until it was revealed that the attacker was a white, non-Muslim, American anti-tax advocate with a series of domestic political grievances.  The U.S. and its allies can, by definition, never commit Terrorism even when it is beyond question that the purpose of their violence is to terrorize civilian populations into submission.  Conversely, Muslims who attack purely military targets  -- even if the target is an invading army in their own countries -- are, by definition, Terrorists.  That is why, as NYU's Remi Brulin has extensively documented, Terrorism is the most meaningless, and therefore the most manipulated, word in the English language.  Yesterday provided yet another sterling example.

One last question: if, as preliminary evidence suggests, it turns out that Breivik was "inspired" by the extremist hatemongering rantings of Geller, Pipes and friends, will their groups be deemed Terrorist organizations such that any involvement with them could constitute the criminal offense of material support to Terrorism?  Will those extremist polemicists inspiring Terrorist violence receive the Anwar Awlaki treatment of being put on an assassination hit list without due process?  Will tall, blond, Nordic-looking males now receive extra scrutiny at airports and other locales, and will those having any involvement with those right-wing, Muslim-hating groups be secretly placed on no-fly lists?  Or are those oppressive, extremist, lawless measures -- like the word Terrorism -- also reserved exclusively for Muslims?

 

UPDATE:  The original version of the NYT article was even worse in this regard.  As several people noted, here is what the article originally said (papers that carry NYT articles still have the original version):

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out terrorism as the cause of Friday's assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking al-Qaida's signature brutality and multiple attacks.

"If it does turn out to be someone with more political motivations, it shows these groups are learning from what they see from al-Qaida," said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Thus: if it turns out that the perpetrators weren't Muslim (but rather "someone with more political motivations" -- whatever that means: it presumably rests on the inane notion that Islamic radicals are motivated by religion, not political grievances), then it means that Terrorism, by definition, would be "ruled out" (one might think that the more politically-motivated an act of violence is, the more deserving it is of the Terrorism label, but this just proves that the defining feature of the word Terrorism is Muslim violence).  The final version of the NYT article inserted the word "Islamic" before "terrorism" ("even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause"), but -- as demonstrated above -- still preserved the necessary inference that only Muslims can be Terrorists.  Meanwhile, in the world of reality, of 294 Terrorist attacks attempted or executed on European soil in 2009 as counted by the EU, a grand total of one -- 1 out of 294 -- was perpetrated by "Islamists." 

The Oslo attacks

(updated below)

A powerful bomb exploded in Oslo, Norway today near the office of that nation's Prime Minister, killing at least 7 people, and that was followed by a shooting attack at a camp of young leaders of the ruling Labour Party where the Prime Minister was scheduled to appear.  It should go without saying that such violent attacks aimed at civilians are inherently unjustified, and the attack on the camp, which wounded several teenagers, is particularly vile and tragic.  The perpetrators of these attacks are unknown, as is their motives, though one self-described "jihadi" group claimed responsibility.

It is, however, worth commenting on both the prevailing descriptions of Norway as well as the reaction to these attacks, as they reveal some important points.  Most media accounts express bafflement that Norway would be the target of such an attack given how peaceful it is; The New York Times, for instance, said "the attacks appeared to be part of a coordinated assault on the ordinarily peaceful Scandinavian nation."  This is simply inaccurate.  Norway is a nation at war -- in more than just one country.  For instance:

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The NATO force of which Norway is a part has explicitly declared Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi to be a "legitimate target" and has repeatedly attempted to kill him; one attempt on Gadaffi's life -- a bombing attack on his son's residence -- resulted in the death of the dictator's son and three grandchildren.  In response, Gadaffi "vowed to attack 'homes, offices and families' in Europe in revenge for NATO airstrikes," adding that "your homes, your offices and your families, which will become military targets just as you have transformed our offices, headquarters, houses and children into what you regards as legitimate military targets."  The semantic games of the Obama administration notwithstanding, that is not a "peaceful" situation; those are nations at war.

Then in Afghanistan, there is this (click on image to enlarge):

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Again, nobody knows who perpetrated these attacks or why (though the self-described jihadi group claiming responsibility said, as the NYT put it, that it "was a response to Norwegian forces' presence in Afghanistan and to unspecified insults to the Prophet Muhammad").  But whether these attacks are related to those wars or not, I simply do not understand this bafflement being expressed that Norway -- of all countries -- would be targeted with violence. 

Regardless of the justifications of these wars -- and Norway is in both countries as part of a U.N. action -- it is simply a fact that Norway has sent its military to two foreign countries where it is attacking people, dropping bombs, and killing civilians.  Historically, one reason not to invade and attack other countries is because doing so often prompts one's own country to be attacked.  Western nations typically only attack countries that are incapable of responding in kind, but those nations and their sympathizers are capable of perpetrating asymmetrical attacks of the sort that Oslo just suffered. 

This has nothing to do with justification, as these kinds of civilian-targeting attacks are, as I said, inherently unjustifiable (though if NATO declares the leader of Libya a "legitimate military target" and air bombs his residence, what's the argument as to why the office of the Prime Minister whose country is at war with Libya is not a legitimate target?).  The point is that it's completely unsurprising that a nation at war -- whether Norway or the U.S. -- is going to be targeted with violent attacks.  That's what "being at war" means, and it's usually what it provokes.  And the way this fact is suppressed ("a coordinated assault on the ordinarily peaceful Scandinavian nation" = the post-9/11 why do they hate us?) highlights how we view violence as something only those Others commit, but not we.

That relates to the second point I want to make: the reaction to the attacks in Oslo.  Ever since news of the attacks emerged this morning (U.S. time), the interest in them has been intense, as has media coverage of them and the disgust expressed toward them.  That's understandable: the destruction and carnage quickly visible from photographs online should make any decent person recoil in disgust.

Still, I can't help noticing, and being quite bothered by, the vast difference in reaction to the violence visited on Western nations such as Norway and the violence visited by Western nations (particularly our own) on non-Western nations.  The violence and indiscriminate death brought today to Oslo is routinely and constantly imposed by the U.S. and its closest allies in a large and growing list of Muslim nations.  On a weekly basis -- literally -- the U.S. and its Western allies explode homes, mangle children, extinguish the lives of innocent people, disrupt communities, kill community and government leaders, and bring violence and terror to large numbers of people -- those are just facts.  And yet a tiny, tiny fraction of attention, interest and anger is generated by such violence as compared to that generated by the violence in Oslo today.  What explains that mammoth discrepancy in interest, discussion, and media coverage?

Whatever accounts for it, the impact is to minimize and suppress the consequences of our own violence while focusing almost exclusively on the violence of others.  The solution is not to dismiss or justify acts such as the Oslo bombing.  It's to realize that our own country and those in alliance with it -- unintentionally or otherwise -- replicate the horror that took place in Oslo in countless places around the world with great regularity, and that requires at least as much attention and discussion as the Oslo attacks are sure to receive.

 

UPDATE:  The New York Times headline was quick to suggest responsibility for these attacks:

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Yet some reports now say that Norwegian police believe the perpetrator was a native Norwegian driven by domestic opposition to the government.  As I wrote three different times here, both the perpetrators and their motives are unknown, and none of the points I made -- which relate exclusively to the reaction to these attacks -- are changed in any way based on the identity of the perpetrators.  Except that I would add one point about Western reaction if indeed it turns out to be a domestic rather than "terrorist" (i.e., Muslim) attack: American interest in these attacks and the desire to be seen publicly denouncing them will quickly diminish -- almost to the point of non-existence -- if the perpetrators are not Muslim.  Add that to the list of revealing aspects of the reaction to this story.

Barack Obama is gutting the core principles of the Democratic party

The president's attacks on America's social safety net are destroying the soul of the Democratic party's platform

In 2005, American liberals achieved one of their most significant political victories of the last decade. It occurred with the resounding rejection of George W Bush's campaign to privatise social security.

Bush's scheme would have gutted the crux of that entitlement programme by converting it from what it has been since the 1940s – a universal guarantor of minimally decent living...