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The Name Of The Iran Game Is Still Strategic Ambiguity

By Steve Hynd

There's a story in the London Times today which says the Saudis have secretly okayed any overflight of their territory involved in an Israeli attack on Iran. The rightwing nuts for whom any day is a good day to bomb Iranians love it.

But since one of the Times' reporters is serial fabulist Uzi Mahnaimi, the other is neocon shill for war with Iran Sarah Baxter, and the only sources for the tale are anonymous, you can probably chalk it off to a continued propaganda effort which has now spanned successive U.S. and Israeli administrations. 

The aim has always been to create "strategic ambiguity" - deliberately muddying the waters about Israeli and American intentions so as to pressure Iran in its negotiations with the West by ensuring it fears an attack if it doesn't play ball. D.C. hawks have gotten on board to such an extent that it is already an accepted fact among the Very Serious Person set that Obama's idea of negotiation without preconditions will get exactly one shot, will fail, and then the bombs will begin to fall. That's why they're so keen on using Iran's election as an excuse to derail those efforts - they're sure they'll never restart and thus they will be proven correct. Self fulfilling prophecy!

And Joe Biden gets to play too:

Vice President Joe Biden seemed to give Israel a green light for military action to eliminate Iran's nuclear threat, saying the U.S. "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do."

..."Israel can determine for itself -- it's a sovereign nation -- what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," Biden told ABC's "This Week" in an interview broadcast Sunday.

"Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed," Biden said.

Video from Crooks and Liars here.

Everybody, from Obama on down, is ignoring as hard as they can the opinion of successive heads of the IAEA - el Baradei and now Yukiya Amano - that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. It doesn't fit the domestic narrative, which is all about hanging tough to gain votes. As usual, foreign policy is domestic gamesplaying inflicted upon foreigners. But then again, that's true of Iran's leaders too.

US Effective Unemployment Rate: 18.7%

By Steve Hynd

Steve Clemons has published an email from Leo Hindery in which Hindery looks at the aggregate jobless totals and comes up with a figure of over 30 million Americans out of work.

Here is a June 2009 version of the summary that calculates the Effective Unemployment Rate, which is now 18.70%, and the Effective Number of Unemployed, which is now 30,172,000.

There are currently 14,729,000 officially unemployed workers, as just announced. However, this figure does not include the combined 15,443,000 workers either (1) in the "labor force reserve" because they have abandoned their job searches (i.e., 4,278,000) or (2) underemployed because they are "part-time of necessity" (i.e., 8,989,000) or "otherwise marginally attached" (i.e., 2,176,000).

The effective unemployment rate is therefore 18.70%, instead of the official 9.51%.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of workers who are officially unemployed has increased by 7,188,000, while almost twice as many workers - 13,290,000 - have become effectively unemployed. And all the while, we should have been creating around 2,250,000 new jobs (i.e., 18 months times 125,000 jobs per month) just to keep up with population growth.

In June, the number of workers officially unemployed increased 218,000, while the number of workers effectively unemployed actually decreased 35,000.

That's a lot more than the 9.5% and 14.7 million jobless of the official figures but it is the true extent of America's unemployment problem. Clemons writes that "the gap between the job figures expected and the disappointing economic realities generated may be politically consequential". He's the master of understatement, some days.

When Did The Af/Pak Policy Change?

By Steve Hynd

One of these things is not like the other.

Back in March, President Obama set out the broad outlines of his Af/Pak policy. One of the bright lines was supposedly that US forces in Afghanistan were not there to engage in long-term nation building. The US most definitely wasn't in Afghanistan so that in a decade or more at a cost of over a trillion dollars that nation could be bootstrapped up to the level of, say, Chad. Instead, the mission was twofold: to go after Al Qaeda and the Taliban's hardcore militants, disrupting safe havens and killing leaders, while giving Afghans the bare beginnings of providing for their own governance and security.

In his March speech, Obama was plain that a long-term COIN operation wasn't to be on the cards and that the US "surge" was to take the fight to the Taliban.

We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or to dictate its future. We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan who have suffered the most at the hands of violent extremists.

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.

...I have already ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops that had been requested by General McKiernan for many months. These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east, and give us a greater capacity to partner with Afghan Security Forces and to go after insurgents along the border. This push will also help provide security in advance of the important presidential election in August.

At the same time, we will shift the emphasis of our mission to training and increasing the size of Afghan Security Forces, so that they can eventually take the lead in securing their country. That is how we will prepare Afghans to take responsibility for their security, and how we will ultimately be able to bring our troops home.

Sometime over the last few months, that mission has changed. Without informing the American people and wthout any real debate, the COINdinista interventionists have taken over and redirected Obama's policy. From the WaPo today:

Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday morning, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military’s new counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan…

Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade’s commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban, and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.

Counter-insurgency "clear, hold and build" has entirely taken over from counter-terrorism "hunt, kill and disupt". That might be the right thing to do - although I have my doubts - but the point is that it wasn't what Obama said would happen and government policy has radically shifted in favor of an interventionist, long-war, nation-building policy straight from the military and the folks at CNAS without any official announcement or very much public debate. In fact, it's almost as if Obama himself hasn't been told.

Update: In comments over at VetVoice, commenter Ben says that one data point does not a trend make. Ben's critique correctly notes that there was going to be some COIN even in Obama's mainly CT-aimed original plan and so he asks how do might tell the difference from meagre evidence. But of course there isn't just one data point. There's been a continual stream of officers, wonks and policy officials - from Gates and McChrystal on down - saying that it's about civilian protection and nation building, not killing bad guys and getting out. The genesis of the change is easy to see too. CNAS' David Kilcullen has estimated another 10-15 years. Back in March, Eric Martin noted a CNAS report written by four of the leading COIN scholars arguing why a 5-10 year military/diplomatic commitment in Afghanistan was necessary.

Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal sees the same mission creep as I do.

And a new piece at The American Conservative details the alliance between Petraeus' COIN team and CNAS that has quietly changed Obama's Af/Pak policy.

Obama, Like Bush, Wrong On Indefinite Detention

By Steve Hynd

A Pro-Publica report for the Washington Post which says that the Obama administration is drafting an executive order to reassert Bush's claimed presidential authority to lock up detainees forever without trial.

It's generating a lot of blogger comment, with rightwing posts being mostly along the lines of "see, we told you Bush was right" and leftwing posts being critical of Obama's plans and the very notion of indefinite detention.

The report is being described as a "trial balloon". Not to see if people will accept the idea of indefinite detentions - Obama has already said explicitly those will happen - but to see if doing an end-run around Congress to proclaim the right to do so by executive fiat will upset too many very important people.

I've nothing really to add to Glenn Greenwald's post on this report, and in particular this:

A government that will give you a trial before imprisoning you only where it knows ahead of time it will win -- and, where it doesn't know that, will just imprison you without a trial -- isn't a government that believes in due process.  It's one that believes in show trials.

This move is an abuse of authority and immoral at every level.

Obama has already foreited my (always sceptical) support - over his claims to secrecy, his abysmal Af/Pak non-plan, his denials of habeas rights and his continued torturing of the facts about Iran's nuclear program. My original fears have been proven justified, he's America's Tony Blair. Yes, he's better than John McCain or Hillary Clinton would have been in the Oval Office; that's a pretty low bar though, and not one that should garner progressives' uncritical support for a president who simply isn't very good at all.

Froomkin's Last Washington Post

By Steve Hynd

Dan Froomkin's last column for the WaPo is here. Go read, give him your best wishes and so forth. Froomkin's one of the good guys and the WaPo will be far, far poorer for his going. But whover gets him next will be far, far richer.

Froomkin found his voice in watching the Bush White House lie about everything. But he's also been essential for following the Obama administration's wrongdoings. For this last WaPo post, he identifies some of the areas Obama needs to be watched carefully on.

Now, a little over five months after Bush left office, Barack Obama's presidency is shaping up to be in large part about coming to terms with the Bush era, and fixing all the things that were broken. In most cases, Obama is approaching this task enthusiastically – although in some cases, he is doing so only under great pressure, and in a few cases, not at all . I think part of Obama's abiding popularity with the public stems from what a contrast he is from his predecessor -- and in particular his willingness to take on problems. But he certainly has a lot of balls in the air at one time. And I predict that his growing penchant for secrecy – especially but not only when it comes to the Bush legacy of torture and lawbreaking – will end up serving him poorly, unless he renounces it soon.

Obama is nowhere in Bush's league when it comes to issues of credibility, but his every action nevertheless needs to be carefully scrutinized by the media, and he must be held accountable. We should be holding him to the highest standards – and there are plenty of places where we should be pushing back. Just for starters, there are a lot of hugely important but unanswered questions about his Afghanistan policy, his financial rescue plans, and his turnaround on transparency.

And remember, Froomkin is still writing for Nieman Watchdog.

The Farah Airstrike Coverup

By Steve Hynd

A report by the UK's Channel Four News, via the Real News Network, alleges a coverup over May 4th airstrikes in Farah province, Afghanistan, which the US military says killed scores of Taliban fighters and "only" 26 civilians and local villagers say killed around 140 innocents. The report includes previously unseen footage, taken by a cellphone, showing at least a score of children's bodies recovered from the rubble.

The US military had originally tried to blame Taliban grenades for civilian casualties, despite the utter devestation caused by dropping 2,000 lb bombs. Villagers who survived insist that by the time the bombs fell the Taliban had already fled the area.

Gareth Porter also accuses the US military of "covering up the most damaging facts surrounding the incident", and for much the same reasons as the Channel Four report.

The declassified "executive summary" of the report on the bombing issued last Friday admitted that mistakes had been made in the use of airpower in that incident. However, it omitted key details which would have revealed the self-serving character of the U.S. command’s previous claims blaming the "Taliban" – the term used for all insurgents fighting U.S. forces - for the civilian deaths from the airstrikes.

...the report indicates that the airstrikes referred to as the "second B1-B strike" and the "third B-1B strike" caused virtually all of the civilian deaths. The report’s treatment of those two strikes is notable primarily for what it omits with regard to information on casualties rather than for what it includes.

It indicates that the ground force commander judged the movement of a "second large group" – again at night without clear identification of whether they were military or civilian – indicated that they were "enemy fighters massing and rearming to attack friendly forces" and directed the bombing of a target to which they had moved.

The report reveals that two 500-pound bombs and two 2,000-pound bombs were dropped on the target, not only destroying the building being targeted but three other nearby houses as well.

In contrast to the report’s claim regarding the earlier strike, the description of the second airstrike admits that the "destruction may have resulted in civilian casualties". Even more important, however, it says nothing about any evidence that there were Taliban fighters killed in the strike – thus tacitly admitting that the casualties were in fact civilians.

The third strike is also described as having been prompted by another decision by the ground commander that a third group moving in the dark away from the firefight was "another Taliban element". A single 2,000-pound bomb was dropped on a building to which the group had been tracked, again heavily damaging a second house nearby.

Again the report offers no evidence suggesting that there were any "Taliban" killed in the strike, in contrast to the first airstrike.

By these signal omissions, aimed at avoiding the most damaging facts in the incident, the report confirms that no insurgent fighters were killed in the airstrikes which killed very large numbers of civilians. The report thus belies a key propaganda line that the U.S. command had maintained from the beginning – that the Taliban had deliberately prevented people from moving from their houses so that civilian casualties would be maximised.

Despite admissions that the military's own rules of engagement were not followed in the airstrikes - particularly in not checking whether targets were civilian or not, no one has been held culpable in any way. Yet by not checking, then bombing civilians, a clear war crime was committed.

Bagram, the new Guantánamo

By Steve Hynd

Clive Stafford Smith at the Guardian responds to the BBC report of abuse and torture at Bagram prison in Afghanistan that I mentioned earlier.

President Obama told us that this sort of thing has stopped. Well, it hasn't.

Sadly, the Obama administration is up to the former administration's familiar tricks, attempting to block the world from the truth. In April, a federal judge in Washington DC ordered that prisoners in Bagram should be allowed counsel, and the right to be heard in court; the Obama administration refused to comply, and appealed the judgment. People being beaten up in Bagram should, apparently, grin and bear it.

The US is spending $50m on a new prison for Bagram, housing more than 1,000 people – to add to the 600 who are already there. Of these, many (including all those in the recent Washington case) were not originally captured in Afghanistan at all, but in other countries. The US then rendered them into Afghanistan.

The British government should have a sense of familiarity with this story: in February, Defence Minister John Hutton admitted that British personnel had taken two Pakistani men prisoner in Iraq in 2004, and had subsequently handed them to the Americans. The men were rendered to Afghanistan, where they have now been held – and, if the latest BBC report is anything to go by, presumably beaten – for five years. They have never been charged. The US argues that it is too dangerous to allow them lawyers – and yet, like so many others, the first time they went to Afghanistan was when the US took them there.

...Bagram is the evil twin of Guantánamo Bay, if rather more cut off from the world, and all things we consider civilised.

And, make no mistake, the Obama administration bears ultimate responsibility for what is happening there now. Back in March, Amnesty International issued a plea to Obama:

Amnesty International has urged the new administration not to repeat its predecessor's use of secrecy to conceal from the public its response to the judge. Transparency, essential to accountability and detainee protection, must be central to US detention policy. As President Obama has himself instructed his administration, "transparency promotes accountability".

The need for transparency was illustrated late last month when the UK government revealed that two individuals it handed over to the USA in Iraq in 2004 had subsequently been transferred to US custody in Afghanistan, where they remain five years later.

Amnesty International has asked the US government to confirm whether the two are held in Bagram and to provide further information on their cases. The organization has raised the possibility that the USA's transfer of these individuals to Afghanistan constituted a war crime.

Amnesty International continues to call for the Bagram detainees to be granted access to an independent court to challenge the lawfulness of their detentions, to effective remedies in relation to their treatment and conditions of detention, and to meaningful access to legal counsel for such purposes. At present, the detainees have no access to lawyers or courts.

Obama has shown no sign of listening: even as he continues to hold his administrations actions on Gitmo up as a premier policy change, his administation continues following the same criminal course in another, more secret, location. 

Stupidity of Secrecy

By Fester:
Recently General McChystal in his confirmation hearings before taking command in Afghanistan noted that the most important metric for US and allied forces would be the number of civilians protected from harm in Afghanistan. This is a bit of a turn from the Twitter body counts of 'success' that the US PAOs are putting out. But this statement by McChrystal is aligned with current US population-centric COIN doctrine. The people are the center of operational gravity and their allegiance or at least tolerance of the counter-insurgent and passive intolerance of the insurgent is the key.

The strategic goal of US COIN doctrine is to build up the capacity and legitimacy of the host nation government by the provision of public goods and services, most notably security and economic development. The key is the legitimacy of the government must be accepted. And that means the government and its allies (in this case, the US government and military) must be seen as worthy of trust even, or especially when the truth is less than flattering. When the truth is less than flattering but it is told without pressure or coercian to cover it up, the government has engaged in a costly but credible signal that it is trying its best to be transparent and non-arbitary.

 Steve highlighted the internal debate amongst the DOD to bury the report on a set of airstrikes that allegedly killed numerous civilians after the US did not follow the rules of engagement. The argument is that attempts at transparency will only inflame the Afghani civilian population. This illustrates high level friction and confusion within the US decision loop.

When I read that, I wanted to stab myself in the eye with a dull spoon for the stupid burns. The civilian grapevine works very well in any society, and even better in one where there are few credible sources of information. The relevant actors already know about either this airstrike that killed civilians or other airstrikes that killed civilians. Releasing a report that accepts responsibility will not suddenly release new information into the wild. If anything, it could slowly, especially if it is a part of a corrective action cycle where after action reports are made public in cases of large scale civilian deaths so that procedures could be improved, nip some of the credibility killing conspiracy theories in the bud.

Tim F. has often noted the basic reason why transparency works well:

People do a more competent job under the threat of transparency and adversarial oversight. Take that away and you eliminate the disincentive for slack, graft and letting mistakes of every magnitude slide uncorrected. To the degree that whistleblowers are actively protected, shitty managers and government programs that fail for whatever reason can be exposed and corrected. Strict ethics rules enforced by zealous and independent oversight keep away the stink that almost always goes along with political power. If these things disappear it hardly matters who is in charge; shitty management will follow like water flows downhill. Tax money will disappear down unaccountable holes, important programs will stop working. National security will be less secure.

Secrecy does not help anyone on any measure. It delegitimatizes the United States military and by extension the Afghan government. It kills more civilians. It creates a juicier rumor mill where the casual assumption of credibility runs against US interests. It directly contradicts US COIN doctrine. It is mind-numbingly stupid and counter-productive.

DOD Manual Classes Political Protests As "Low Level Terrorism"

By Steve Hynd

Via Fester, who's too busy today, comes this:

The Department of Defense is training all of its personnel in its current Antiterrorism and Force Protection Annual Refresher Training Course that political protest is "low-level terrorism." 

...The first question of the Terrorism Threat Factors, "Knowledge Check 1" section reads as follows:

Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorism activity?

Select the correct answer and then click Check Your Answer. 

O   Attacking the Pentagon

O   IEDs

O   Hate crimes against racial groups

O   Protests

*** 

The "correct" answer is Protests.

A copy of this can be found on the last two pages of this pdf.  

The ACLU learned of this training and on June 10, 2009 sent a letter to the Gail McGinn, Acting Under-Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, objecting to their training all DoD personnel that the exercise of First Amendment rights constitutes "low-level terrorism."  

This course is an annual web-based training requirement for all DoD personnel. The ACLU press release states:

“DoD employees cannot fully protect our nation and its values unless they understand that a core American value is the constitutional right to criticize our government through protest activities,” said ACLU of Northern California attorney Ann Brick. “It is fundamentally wrong to equate activism with terrorism.”

Well, yeah. I'd hope even the Malkinite crazies agreed on that.

The course appears to be a hangover from the Bush years, so maybe the Obama administration will act swiftly to set things right. Though with the White House currently taking the Bush stance on all kinds of paranoid secrecy policies - including White House guest records - I won't be holding my breath.

Space Rocks Now Classified

By Steve Hynd

Can liberals, lefties, progressives and Democrats all be honest and admit we'd have howled in outrrage about overly zealous police-state secrecy if this had been done during the Bush years? (H/t Kat):

For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth's atmosphere – but no longer.

A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com has learned.

The satellites' main objectives include detecting nuclear bomb tests, and their characterizations of asteroids and lesser meteoroids as they crash through the atmosphere has been a byproduct data bonanza for scientists.

The upshot: Space rocks that explode in the atmosphere are now classified.

"It's baffling to us why this would suddenly change," said one scientist familiar with the work. "It's unfortunate because there was this great synergy...a very good cooperative arrangement. Systems were put into dual-use mode where a lot of science was getting done that couldn't be done any other way. It's a regrettable change in policy."

Scientists say not only will research into the threat from space be hampered, but public understanding of sometimes dramatic sky explosions will be diminished, perhaps leading to hype and fear of the unknown.

Can we be that honest, to admit that Obama's administration is pushing kneejerk secrecy - the cornerstone of the Imperial Presidency - to undreamt of heights? You'd think so.