Behind Liz Cheney’s group, a weird legacy of torture

The arrest of an Army sergeant (and Iraq veteran) who allegedly waterboarded his 4-year-old daughter for failing to recite the alphabet is sickening. Yet it may be the kind of news we must come to expect if, as a society, the United States determines that torture is an acceptable method of securing information and inducing obedience. Physical abuse of children is nothing new, of course,  in certain right-wing quarters, as Max Blumenthal reminded us by exposing the pedagogical sadism of Focus on the Family in Republican Gomorrah.

For a sergeant who tortures his child, however, the relevant model probably comes from somewhere high in the chain of command. At the center of today’s propaganda promoting the torture state are former Vice President Dick Cheney, his family and many of his friends, working through an organization called Keeping America Safe that is run by his daughter Liz Cheney. The financier behind that outfit is one Melvin Sembler, a curious character whose résumé indicates that he is all too familiar with the “enhanced interrogation” of children.

Sembler is best known as a Florida shopping center magnate and Republican fundraiser whose success in amassing funds for the Bush family won him two ambassadorial appointments. Such patronage is a sordid aspect of national politics, but seems trivial when compared with the truly dark side of Sembler’s biography. Long before he achieved prominence in national politics, he was the driving force in the “boot camp” movement that popularized the use of psychological and physical abuse of “troubled” children and teenagers.

The Obama administration’s failure to speak out more boldly against human rights abuses is a poor moral and a political choice.

The Obama administration’s record on human rights has been a major disappointment.

In part because the Bush administration abused the promotion of democracy and human rights to rationalize its militaristic policies in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Obama administration has at times been reluctant to be a forceful advocate for those struggling against oppression. For example, Obama was cautious in supporting the ongoing freedom struggle in Iran, in part because he believes that more overt advocacy could set back what he sees as the more critical issue of curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He is also aware of how the history of U.S. interventionism in that country, overt threats of “regime change” by the previous administration, and the U.S. invasion of two neighboring countries in the name of promoting democracy could lead to a nationalist reaction to such grandstanding. (Despite this caution, however, the Iranian regime has falsely accused Obama of guiding the massive pro-democracy movement that is challenging the increasingly repressive rule in that country.)

Harder to defend is Obama’s continuation of the Bush administration’s policy of arming and training security forces in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, Jordan and other dictatorial regimes in the region.

During his highly anticipated address in Cairo last June, Obama failed to praise his autocratic host, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. He also invited leading critics of the regime, including secular liberals and moderate Islamists, to witness his speech. On the other hand, he refused to criticize the Mubarak regime, acknowledge its autocratic nature, or address any concern over its thousands of political prisoners — even when pushed to do so in a BBC interview. Indeed, Egyptian grassroots pro-democracy group Kefaya chose to boycott the speech, demanding that Obama show his commitment to democracy in deeds, not just words. Obama’s foreign aid budget includes over $1.5 billion in unconditional aid to the Mubarak dictatorship. And Washington didn’t publicly express concern when Egyptian police attacked American human rights activists attempting to deliver relief supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip last month.

Most of the opposition to Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been based on cost and the dubious prospects of victory. But there is concern that the government for which Americans are expected to fight and die is a serious abuser of human rights. Not only did U.S.-backed Hamid Karzai steal the most recent presidential election, but his cabinet includes a number of notorious warlords who have engaged in serious crimes against humanity. Furthermore, U.S.-backed Afghan security forces have engaged in gross and systematic human rights violations, and U.S. bomb and missile attacks killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan since Obama assumed office.

Similarly, U.S. forces remain in Iraq, and billions of dollars support the sectarian regime despite ongoing violations of human rights by Baghdad’s rulers. The recent dismissal of charges against U.S. Blackwater mercenaries, who massacred 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad’s Al-Nusur Square, and the Obama administration’s refusal to extradite them to face justice have also raised concerns regarding the U.S. commitment to basic human rights.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Obama administration rejected calls by Amnesty International and other human rights groups to suspend military aid to Israel following its use of U.S. weaponry against civilian targets in last year’s war on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in more than 700 civilian deaths, over 300 of whom were children. Even worse, Obama has pledged to increase military aid over and above the more than $10 billion provided to the Israelis by the Bush administration. The Obama administration called on Israel to freeze expansion of its colonization efforts in the occupied West Bank and threatened to cut planned loan guarantees to the Israeli government if it continues to refuse. But Obama still rejects conditioning direct aid and has similarly refused to call on Israel to withdraw from the its illegal settlements, as required under international humanitarian law and confirmed through a series of UN Security Council resolutions.

When the UN Human Rights Council investigation led by Richard Goldstone documented war crimes by both Hamas and the Israeli government — confirming previous investigations by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others — the Obama administration rejected the commission’s findings, calling them “deeply flawed.”  Rather than challenge the content of the meticulously documented 575-page report, U.S. officials instead issued strong but vague critiques. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was particularly critical of the report’s recommendation that Palestinians and Israelis suspected of war crimes should be tried before the International Criminal Court. “Our view is that we need to be focused on the future,” she argued.

The human rights community was initially pleased when Obama appointed Michael Posner, cofounder and director of Human Rights First, as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights. However, Posner took the lead in quashing the Goldstone Commission report, insisting it “should not be used as a mechanism to add impediments to getting back to the peace process.” Ironically, just weeks earlier, the Obama administration argued during a UN debate on Darfur that war crimes charges should never be sacrificed for political reasons.

The Obama administration has shown a lack of concern for democracy and human rights outside the Middle East as well. Washington initially raised objections to the coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. But then Obama — in opposition to virtually the entire hemisphere — recognized the November elections that took place under a censured media, widespread political repression, and a boycott by pro-democracy forces. The administration also pledged to continue sending over half a billion dollars of aid annually to the Colombian regime, despite its notoriously poor human rights record. It even signed an agreement that allows U.S. forces to be stationed at seven military bases across that country. Though ostensibly the focus is to curb the drug trade, such aid has also been used in broader counterinsurgency efforts that have serious human rights consequences.

Rejecting calls by liberal Democratic members of Congress, leading human rights groups, Pope Benedict XVI, and most of the international community to participate, the Obama administration decided to boycott the UN Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Geneva. And most disturbingly, the Obama administration decided to continue the Bush administration’s policy of remaining one of the few nations in the world to refuse to sign the international treaty banning landmines, completing its review process in secret without allowing for any input from human rights organizations.

Despite all this, there have been some gestures in support of individual human rights activists. For example, in an unprecedented move, the White House hosted the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, with Obama personally honoring this year’s recipients, Women of Zimbabwe Arise, who have been struggling for human rights under the repressive Mugabe regime. The White House also intervened on behalf of the 2008 winner, Western Saharan nonviolent activist Aminatou Haidar, as she verged on death from a hunger strike following expulsion from her country by Moroccan occupation authorities. The Obama administration has failed, however, to demand that Morocco honor a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a World Court ruling allowing the people of Western Sahara the right of self-determination.

To Obama’s credit, there is now a subtle but important shift in the U.S. government’s discourse on human rights. The Bush administration pushed a rather superficial structuralist view of human rights. It focused, for instance, on elections — which can easily be rigged and manipulated in many cases — in order to change certain governments for purposes of expanding U.S. power and influence. Obama has taken more of an agency view of human rights, emphasizing the rights of free expression, particularly the right of protest, and recognizing that human rights reform can only come from below and not through imposed means.

In the short term, however, Obama’s failure to more boldly address human rights concerns have alienated much of Obama’s progressive base of support. The right wing, meanwhile, disingenuously portrays Obama as retreating from his predecessor’s supposed support for democracy and human rights. Although the Bush administration provided even more assistance to governments engaged in human rights abuses and used pro-democracy rhetoric largely as a ruse for empire, Obama’s lukewarm support for human rights has enabled right-wingers to seize the moral high ground. As a result, the perceived weakness of the Obama administration’s human rights record raises important ethical and political questions.

Source: http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/human_rights_c

US Aid to Israel

Peter Paul vs. Hillary Clinton

http://www.paulvclinton.com/

Winning the war on drugs

Winning the war on drugs
by Prof. Steve Jonas

“Winning the War on Drugs?” Is that you, Dr. Steve? Isn’t that “War” just a construct designed to achieve political and economic aims, while oppressing with it one particular sector of the population? How can it be “won?” This column considers that conundrum in almost telegraphic form. I have written at length on it in the academic literature. Interested readers are welcome to get in touch with me for references. The “War on Drugs” has never been such a thing. From its inauguration by Richard Nixon it has always been a War on Drug Users, for the most part minority drug users at that, although some non-minorities have occasionally been caught up in its tentacles. The so-called War on Drugs was begun shortly after the invention of the race-based “Southern Strategy” that has controlled the fortunes of the GOP and unfortunately the country for most of the time since Nixon installed it.

The correctly labeled “War on Drug Users” has primarily been a racist enterprise too. It has been aimed at the users of one minor class of the Recreational Mood Altering Drugs (RMADs), those that are currently “illicit” (as alcohol was nationally between 1920 and 1933 and cigarettes were in 15 states at various times during the 19th century. Although the ratios have declined a bit in the last few years, for most of its duration under the War on Drug Users, while approximately 75% of those in prison for drug-related offenses are non-white approximately 75% of illicit-drug users are white. Further, the War on Drug Users has been race-based in terms of the neighborhoods in which it has been waged. There was one major previous true War on Drugs, Prohibition. It was for the most part actually aimed at the drug, ethyl alcohol, not at the users.

The commonly used RMADs are alcohol, nicotine in tobacco, the non-prescription use of prescription drugs, and the illicits, primarily marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and fairly recently, methamphetamine. In terms of negative outcomes of RMAD use, for example, tobacco kills about 430,000 people per year, alcohol between 60,000 and 100,000, depending upon how one counts, and the illicits kill about 20,000, half that number as a result of drug-trade violence that would not exist absent the War on Drug Users and some of the other half due to forced unsterile use of the drugs. Tobacco and alcohol are not only the major drug killers but they are the “starter drugs,” most often in childhood, for almost every problem-user of them in adult life and almost every user of the illicits, regardless of age.

Logic has not ended the War on Drug Users. Neither has the mainstream drug policy reform movement which views RMAD use as the same false duality the Drug Warriors do. Logic did not end Prohibition either. Over-riding policy concerns did: rampant crime on the one hand and a major need for new tax revenues to deal with the Depression on the other. Major funding for the final Repeal campaign of the early 1930s came from a John D. Rockefeller-lead group of financiers who wanted to prevent any increases in income tax levels that an incoming Democratic Administration might enact.

In dealing with the War on Drug Users the stars would seem to be aligned, that is if the unitary-RMAD understanding of reality were to be adopted. There is a major series of problems that could be addressed by ending the War on Drug Users. Legalizing the currently illicit would create a major new source of tax revenues. Doing so would significantly reduce the prison population resulting in major reductions in Federal, state and local spending on incarceration. Doing so would significantly unclog the courts, especially at the Federal level where they are so over-burdened with drug cases that the waits for trials on much more important matters, especially in the civil realm, can become interminable. Obviously, there would be a significant reduction in the demands on the law enforcement sector of government, which could either save money or enable the diversion of resources to other important areas, such as financial fraud, that do not always receive the attention they deserve.

The Taliban would be largely defunded. That the heroin trade is a major source of their funding is the subject a new book that is currently featured on BuzzFlash.com: Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda. As well, of course, the true Drug Wars that are killing thousands of Latin Americans, especially in Mexico and Colombia, would be brought to a sudden, well-deserved end. Finally, the recognition of the unitary nature of RMAD use would enable for the first time a comprehensive public health program to deal with all of the negative aspects of that use, especially among children for whom it is the major licit drugs which are the stepping stones both to later habitual, damaging use of them, and, currently, to the use of the illicits.

As to the practical matter of how to implement the legalization of the illicits, it has been said that the tobacco companies have been prepared for marijuana legalization, up to and including the registration of trade names. Heroin and cocaine could be sold by Federal or state-operated stores, similar to the “package stores” that dispense certain alcoholic beverages in such states as Vermont. As for the synthetic RMADs, and the non-prescription use of the prescription drugs (the latter of which has been a much more serious problem than the use of heroin and cocaine combined), a variety of approaches could be explored. This all would have be combined with a major public-health based anti- and safe-RMAD use program, combining tax policy, controls on advertising, packaging, and marketing, and effective education programs for both adults and children. The result would be a much healthier nation. Since finding sources of new government revenues in the face of ever-increasing deficits have become such a major concern and since certain major foreign policy aims could be achieved so easily, now is the time to end the War on Drug Users, once and for all.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor of 30 books. In his book The New Americanism (1992, available at www.amazon.com), Dr. Jonas presented his proposal for that “new vision and mission” for the Democratic Party that so many, for so many years, have been urging it to find. Dr. Jonas is also the author of The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022.