War Crime Whistleblower in Obama’s Sights, War Criminals Not
Private
First Class Bradley Manning, a 22 year old U.S. Army intelligence
analyst stationed in Iraq, is being prosecuted by the Obama
administration for disclosing a classified video showing American troops
murdering civilians in Baghdad from an Apache Attack Helicopter in
2007. Eleven adults were killed in the attack captured on tape,
including two Reuters journalists. Two children were critically
injured. The video (available at www.collateralmurder.com) was
published by WikiLeaks in early April of this year. The soldiers shown
in the video have yet to face charges. Manning is looking at 52 years in
federal prison if convicted.
It
might seem odd to some that the Obama White House is going after
Manning and not the war criminals Mannning may have helped expose.
Didn’t Obama use his opposition to the highly unpopular Iraq War to
advance his presidential campaign in 2007 and 2008? Yes, he did, but
once he succeeded in exploiting the Iraq War to gain the nation’s
highest office, Obama became commander in chief of the world’s greatest
imperial killing machine. He and his handlers hardly want to do
anything that might inhibit the American military’s freedom of action as
he conducts a "five-front terror war" (Glenn Greenwald) in Iraq (where
Obama has defied his campaign promises by acting to sustain the U.S.
occupation), Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It should
also be remembered that U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Obama
repeatedly voted to fund the Iraq occupation, campaigned for pro-war
against anti-war Democrats in the 2006 congressional primaries, and
never once criticized Cheney and George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq on
moral or legal grounds. Candidate Obama’s only problem with the Iraq
occupation was that it did not make strategic sense for the interests of
the supposedly benevolent and exceptionally humane and democratic
American Empire. He saw the Iraq occupation like the elite Democratic
"doves" of the late 1960s saw the Vietnam War – as a tactical "mistake"
carried out with the best, indeed an excess, of democratic intentions.
In late 2006, speaking to the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, Obama
even had the cold imperial audacity to say the following in support of
his claim that most U.S. citizens supported "victory" in Iraq: "The
American people have been extraordinarily resolved. They have seen their
sons and daughters killed or wounded in the streets of Fallujah
[emphasis added]." This was a spine-chilling selection of locales.
Fallujah was the site for colossal U.S. atrocity – American crimes
included the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the targeting even
of ambulances and hospitals, and the practical leveling of an entire
city – by the U.S. military in April and November of 2004. The town was
designated for destruction as an example of the awesome state terror
promised to those who dared to resist U.S. power. Not surprisingly,
Fallujah became a powerful and instant symbol of American imperialism in
the Arab and Muslim worlds. It was a deeply provocative and insulting
place for Obama to have chosen to highlight American sacrifice and
"resolve" in the imperialist occupation of Iraq. For these and many
other reasons detailed in the fourth chapter of my early 2008 book
Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Paradigm, 2008), it is
hardly surprising that Obama as president is going after an America
Iraq war crime whistleblower, not American war crimes in Iraq.
Obama’s Response to the WikiLeaks War Logs: Deplore, Downplay, and (Yet) Exploit
Now
mainstream news sources are speculating that Bradley Manning may be
involved in a new leak of more than 90,000 secret documents – dubbed the
Afghanistan "war logs" – made public by WikiLeaks last Sunday. We can
expect the military and the White House to pursue criminal
investigations. The documents reveal massive internal U.S government
intelligence on the difficulty and even futility of the American
colonial war in and on Afghanistan, a great historical graveyard of
empires past and present. That continues unabated and escalated in the
age of the supposed peace president Barack Obama, who ran for the
presidency on a promise to increase imperial violence in South Asia even
as many of his "progressive" supporters foolishly took his tactical
critique of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion as proof that he was an
"antiwar" candidate. There is some analogy between this latest
(Wiki)-leak and the famous Pentagon Papers, famously released to the New
York Times by former Pentagon analyst and super-whistle-blower Daniel
Ellsburg. Like the Pentagon Papers, the Afghanistan "war logs" reveal a
disconnect between the officially positive rhetoric of the executive
branch and Pentagon and the harsh and bloody "on-the-ground" reality of a
vicious colonial war – a war in which the U.S. is a pitiful imperial
giant experiencing little success in winning popular "hearts and minds"
and ending resistance to its supposedly benevolent invasion. Like its
Vietnam-era predecessor the new leak of classified documents suggests a
murderous empire that is out of control, compelled to kill and kill
again like a pitiless Mafia Don in order to create an illusion of
success and to hide its inability to manage events and populations in
distant peripheries. It shows Obama’s supposed "good" and proper war –
Afghanistan – to be an at least partly Vietnam-like quagmire.
The
new war president’s administration has undertaken a reprehensible
three-track response to the WikiLeaks’ revelations. Track one is to
deplore the leak, claiming that it is a violation of national security
that puts innocent Afghanis and Americans at risk of murder and
terrorist attack. The claim is not very impressive. The primary threat
to Afghan civilians is the U.S. occupation, characterized by 10 years of
bombings, drone-slaughters, checkpoint shootings, targeted death-squad
assassinations, massive political de-stabilization and more. Just ask
the survivors’ of Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama’s May 2009
bombing of Bola Boluk – an epic slaughter of women and children for
which the White House refused to apologize (even as it apologized to the
people of New York City because of an ill-advised Air Force One flyover
that briefly reminded Manhattan residents and workers of 9/11). Al
Qaeda and other Islamic terror networks hardly depend on Afghanistan or
Pakistan for "safe havens." and the U.S. imperial presence in
Afghanistan and elsewhere (characterized by some incredibly bloody
dealings that are detailed in the Afghan War Logs) are precisely the
sort of American actions that inspire countless Muslims to attack US
symbols, structures, and people.
Track
two is to downplay the significance of the material leaked, claiming
that – as Obama said earlier this week, "These documents don't reveal
any issues that haven't already informed our public debate on
Afghanistan."[1] While it is true that what passes for a "public
debate" in the narrow, corporate-managed culture imposed by dominant war
and entertainment media has permitted some acknowledgement that things
aren’t going so hot for Uncle Sam in Afghanistan, the president’s
statement is far too strong. Amid rising establishment and media concern
that Barack Obama's "surge" strategy is breaking down, the "war logs"
detail how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in
unreported incidents; how a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts
down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial; how the
Pentagon covered up evidence that the Taliban has acquired lethal
surface-to-air missiles; and how the coalition is increasingly using
deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control
from a base in Nevada. I’ve missed detailed discussion of all this and
more that emerge from the "war logs" in our not-so "informed" "public
debate."
Track
three is to exploit the "war logs" by claiming that the WikiLeaks
disclosures about the "mishandling" of the Afghan war justify his
"decision to embark on a new strategy." "The period of time covered in
these documents (January 2004-December 2009) is before the President
announced his new strategy," the White House told reporters via email
last Sunday. "Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why
the President ordered a three month policy review and a change in
strategy."[2] In his first public statement about the leaked
documents last week, Obama argued that the material highlighted the
challenges that led him to announce a "change in strategy" that involved
sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan late last year. "We
failed for seven years to implement a strategy adequate to the
challenge," Obama said today, of the period starting with the 9/11
attacks. That is why we have increased our commitment there and
developed a new strategy," he said, adding he has also sent "one of the
finest generals in the US," General David Petraeus. Claiming that his
"new strategy…can work," Obama concluded with a plea for the U.S. House
of Representatives to join the U.S. Senate in passing legislation to
fund the Afghan war for yet another year. The plea worked in spite of
the fact that just a third of the U.S. populace now approves (according
to a recent Reuters poll) of Obama’s Afghan policy.
The
claim that the "war logs" relate only to the Bush era and predate the
supposedly new strategy under Obama is not impressive. As the former
Obama supporter and left media and social critic Norman Solomon notes:
"Unfortunately,
the 'change in strategy’ has remained on the same basic track as the
old strategy - except for escalation. On Tuesday morning, the lead story
on The New York Times web site noted: 'As the debate over the war
begins anew, administration officials have been striking tones similar
to the Bush administration's to argue for continuing the current
Afghanistan strategy, which calls for a significant troop buildup.’"
"Even
while straining to depict the US war policy as freshly hatched since
last winter, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs solemnly proclaimed
that the basis for it hasn't changed since the autumn of 2001. 'We are
in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,’ Gibbs
said on Monday. 'Ensuring that there is not a safe haven in Afghanistan
by which attacks against this country and countries around the world can
be planned.’ In other words: a nifty rationale for perpetual war."
"…What
has been most significant about "the president's new policy" is the
steady step-up of bombing in Afghanistan and the raising of US troop
levels in that country to a total of 100,000. None of what was basically
wrong with the war last year has been solved by the 'new policy.’ On
the contrary."[3]
As
is so often the case, the Obama administration’s claims of change and
novelty seem to represent little more than deceptive cover for
substantive policy continuity, the same old imperial regime.
"A War That Was Necessary"
It
is depressing if unsurprising to see the leftmost reaches of narrow
mainstream commentary cling in its "war logs" coverage to the notion of
Afghanistan as "the good war," the noble "ball" that Bush "dropped"
because of his great Iraq "mistake" (crime anyone?) Listen to the
following reflections (linked on the New York Times Web site) from Neal
Sheehan, a New York Times reporter who helped break the Pentagon Papers
story:
"The
[Afghan war logs] show how difficult the war in Afghanistan is. It’s a
very complicated situation. You’ve got a government in Kabul which is
corrupt and untrustworthy. You’ve got Pakistani allies which are not
necessarily always your allies. You’ve got a Taliban movement which is
resurgent, but also isn’t unified. It has its own factions, but it’s a
resilient movement."
"The
WikiLeaks revelations are very valuable, I think. They show how hard it
is going to be to reach the objective the U.S. wants to reach, which is
basically pacifying the country. Coming up with a sort of agreement
which will pacify the country and end the insurgency. It shows how
difficult it is to deal with your own allies."
"It
gives you a good insight into the war, the kind of war Americans are
faced with. It shows the extent to which the Bush administration
neglected Afghanistan and wasted resources in Iraq on a war that wasn’t
necessary, and ignored a war that was necessary in Afghanistan. The
situation has worsened markedly as a result of that neglect."[4]
It’s
sad to see Sheehan reflexively spit out the standard imperial good war
(Afghanistan)/bad war (Iraq) dichotomy and the ease with which he
ignores the WiklLeaks findings on distinctly uncomplicated U.S.
criminality in its supposedly "necessary" war. As the prominent U.S.
legal scholar Marjorie Cohn noted in July of 2008, "The invasion of
Afghanistan was as illegal as the invasion of Iraq." The U.S. attack
on Afghanistan after 9/11/2001 met none of the United Nations’ criteria
for legitimate self-defense. The United States ' attack on Afghanistan
met none of the standard international moral and legal criteria for
justifiable self-defense and occurred without reasonable consultation
with the United Nations Security Council. The U.N. Charter requires
member states to settle international disputes by peaceful means.
Nations are permitted to use military force only in self-defense or when
authorized by the Security Council. After 9/11, the Council passed two
resolutions, neither of which authorized the use of military force in
Afghanistan. Assaulting that country was not legitimate self-defense
under article 51 of the Charter since the jetliner assaults were
criminal attacks, not "armed attacks" by another country. Afghanistan
did not attack the U.S. and 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi
Arabia. Furthermore, there was no "imminent threat of an armed attack on
the United States after September 11 or Bush would not have waited
three weeks before initiating his October 2001 bombing campaign." As
Cohn notes, international law requires that "The necessity for
self-defense must be 'instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means,
and no moment for deliberation.' This classic principle of self-defense
in international law has been affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal and
the U.N. General Assembly."
Obama
press secretary Robert Gibbs’ repetition of the "safe haven" argument
is depressing. As Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor Stephen
Walt noted in an August 2009 Foreign Policy essay, Obama's "safe haven
myth" rests on the fundamentally flawed premise that al Qaeda or its
many and various imitators couldn't just as effectively plot and conduct
future terror attacks from any of a large number of other locations,
including Western Europe and the U.S. itself. At the same time, Walt
observed, Obama's expanded engagement in the "ambitious social and
political reconstruction and re-engineering of Afghanistan and perhaps
even Pakistan" simply reinforced al Qaeda's core (and correct) claim
that the West's and the above all the United States' presence in South
Asia is about imperial control. The more the U.S. is seen as "trying to
restructure their societies along lines that we think are appropriate,"
Walt notes, "the more we play into the narrative that they use to try
and attract support and recruit people in Afghanistan itself." [5]
"If Only He Knew"
The
award for the single most childish comment on Obama and the WikiLeaks
War Logs goes to Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the manager of the supposedly
left liberal magazine The Nation. "I hope," Vanden Heuvel writes, "the
ensuing discussion will lead President Obama to understand that the
human and financial costs of continuing on this path [of escalation in
Af-Pak] far outstrip any conceivable security benefits. In fact, it is
clear from the granular details in the war logs, and especially in the
sections about collusion between Pakistan intelligence services and the
Taliban, that any homeland security provided by the war is significantly
undermined by the anger and resentment -- and armed resistance -- of
our Central and South Asian hosts. And the evidence that U.S. troops
have sanitized accounts of bloody scenes they've left in their wake
underscores that our presence in Afghanistan is counterproductive."[6]
One
might raise more-than-minor quibbles with Vanden Heuvel’s word choices
here. "Hosts" is an odd term to describe those the U.S. has imperially
invaded and assaulted: you do not "host" me when I break into your house
and start killing people. And "counterproductive" seems like something
of an understatement when applied to an invasion that is criminal,
mass-murderous, and deeply provocative. The bigger problem, however, is
what the insightful blogger "IOZ" calls Vanden Heuvel’s "curious
conceit" that "the public revelation of information to which the
administration has always been privy will spark a 'discussion [that]
will lead President Obama to understand.’" "IOZ" hypothesizes (correctly
in my view) that Vanden Heuvel’s silly "hope" (always a keyword in
relation to Obama!) reflects exaggerated self-importance combined with
an overly strong identification with Obama that is all too common among
the president’s power-worshipping fan club: "I suppose it is, at least, a
testament to the over-inflated self-regard of the Vanden Heuvels of the
world, to suppose that if they jabber persistently enough, the emperor
will come to know what he's always known. There actually seems to be
broad confusion among the President's supporters on this fact--so
resolutely have they self-identified with the man that they have
half-accepted the crazy notion that the military and 'intelligence
community’ kept this information classified . . . from him." Vanden
Heuvel has it completely backwards:
"The
lesson; no, the message; no, um, the takeaway of the leaked documents
is not: if only they knew how badly it's going, how hard it's going to
be, then the administration would bring an end to the conflict. Rather,
the takeaway; no, the message is that even knowing how badly the war
goes, they persist. The lesson is not the Administration's blindness,
but its dogged intransigence, its total commitment to the endeavor,
regardless of the means or outcome, regardless of the possibility of
reward, regardless of the cost, regardless of suffering, regardless of
sense and duration. The United States has an institutional commitment to
the occupation of Afghanistan. It can't be argued out of it."[7]
"When,
by the way, was the last time your hosts engaged in armed resistance? I
know that I make it a general rule not to break out the Stinger
missiles at a dinner party nor to strap dynamite to my boyfriend and
send him into the dining room when the guests have stayed past their
espresso. Such would be . . . 'counterproductive.]"
Exactly right.
Paul Street (paulstreet99@yahoo.com)will speak on his new book The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (http://www.paradigmpublishers.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=243410)at
the restaurant and bookstore Busboys and Poets - 5th and K 1025 5th St.
NW, WDC 20001 on Monday, August 16th, 2010 6:30 to 8 PM. Street will
speak at the Wooden Shoe Bookstore at 704 South Street in Philadelphia,
PA on Tuesday, August 17th at 7PM and at Bluestockings Bookstore, 172
Allen Street NYC, NY (in the Lower East Side of Manhattan) on Wednesday,
August 18 at 7 PM For future dates in Springfield, New Jersey and
Boston and for information on how to help support’s Paul’s book tour,
see http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulstreet/the-lefts-fiercest-critic-goes-street-on-obama
SELECTED NOTES
1. Quoted in Ewen MacAskill, "Barack Obama Enlists Afghan War Leaks in Support of Policy Switch," The Guardian (UK), July 27, 2010.
2. Quoted in Norman Solomon, "State of Denial: After the Big Leak, Spinning for War," Truthout (July 28, 2010) at http://www.truth-out.org/state-denial-after-big-leak-spinning-war61790?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
3. Solomon, "State of Denial."
4. Marian Wang, "Pentagon Papers Reporter: What the WikiLeaks 'War Logs’ Tell Us," Pro Publica: Journalism in the Public Interest (July 26, 2010) at http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/sheehan-interview
5. For sources and elaboration, see Paul Street, "Obama’s West Point War Speech: A Quick Response," ZNet (December 3, 2009) at http://www.zcommunications.org/obamas-west-point-war-speech-a-quick-response-by-paul-street; Street, The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, August 2010), chapter two.
6. Katrina Vanden Huevel, "Could WikiLeaks Offer a War Out of War?" Washington Post (July 27, 2010)
7. IOZ, "If Only He Knew," Who is IOZ? (July 28, 2010) at http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2010/07/if-only-he-knew.html
Press release from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights
