Obama Administration Reveals Deep Divisions on Syria Policy

February 17, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

aleppo_640-629x419

A resident of Aleppo in the midst of buildings damaged by an airstrike from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Credit: Zak Brophy/IPS

By Samer Araabi

WASHINGTON, Feb 14 (IPS) – Though President Barack Obama has been reticent to involve his administration too deeply in the Syrian uprising, revelations over the past week have shown near-unanimous agreement among the president’s top national security advisors for greater military intervention.A New York Times story last week uncovered a strategy by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus to directly involve the U.S. in arming and supporting the Syrian rebels, in order to have a more direct influence on the course of events in the war-torn country.

The following week, during congressional testimony on the Benghazi embassy attacks, former Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey both professed similar support for the idea of arming Syrian rebels. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is also said to have backed the plan.

The revelations paint a very different picture from the official narrative of the Obama administration, which has remained publicly sceptical of the idea of providing weapons to unknown militant groups operating in Syria.[pullquote]3[/pullquote]

“The U.S. long ago accepted the strategy of supporting insurgents as a way to counter the Assad regime or at least to appear to be doing something about Syria,” Leila Hilal, director of the Middle East Task Force for the New America Foundation, told IPS.

“Even if full-scale military support was not mobilised earlier, steps were taken to allow others to arm rebels. The indirect approach failed to turn the conflict and undermined the revolution.”

Foreign policy analysts have jumped to widely different conclusions about the disparate opinions of the president on one hand, his senior national security staff – the secretary of state, the secretary of defence, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and director of the CIA – on the other.

Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams refers to the president’s decision as “tragically wrong", and states that “one cannot escape the conclusion that electoral politics played a role” in ignoring the advice of his national security team.

Joshua Landis, associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and proprietor of the widely-read blog Syria Comment, disagrees.

“Obama doesn’t seem to agree with the prevailing interests in Washington, and the way they want to formulate our Middle East policy,” he told IPS.

Landis claims that instead of being influenced by the cabinet’s push for more involvement, “that’s a driver for him for staying out of Syria, because he knows powerful interests will quickly weigh in if we get involved there. He doesn’t seem to trust our Middle East policy-making apparatus.”

Pressed further on the question, General Dempsey clarified later in the week that he supported arming the Syrian opposition “conceptually", noting that “there were enormous complexities involved that we still haven’t resolved.”

The interventionists’ plan was further undermined by a study within the CIA itself, where a team of intelligence analysts concluded that the influx of U.S. arms would not “materially” affect the situation on the ground.

Landis also cautioned that “the proposals put in front of (Obama) don’t have a plan about how to get out, or if things don’t go according to plan. They don’t outline in any way how America is going to win, or achieve its goals.”

Little is known about the current state of U.S. involvement in the two-year Syrian uprising, which may have claimed the lives of over 60,000 Syrians. Senior White House officials have repeatedly expressed concern that increasing the arms supply to the Syrian rebels may result in weapons falling into the “wrong hands", a concern exacerbated by the influx of foreign fighters in Syria.

As Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have risen in the ranks of the armed Syrian opposition – partially due to better financial backing, equipment, training, and experience in Iraq/Afghanistan – it has become increasingly difficult to disentangle such groups from other opposition elements.

Even the very same cabinet members who have vocally supported arming the Syrian opposition have expressed grave reservations about the increasingly extremist inclinations of the rebels. Hillary Clinton herself has warned that “the opposition is increasingly being represented by Al-Qaeda extremist elements,” a development she considers “deeply distressing".

“You can always vet, but can you make the people you like win?” asked Landis. “I’m sure we know people we like, but the problem is, can you make them winners?”

Thus far, Washington’s efforts to marginalise militant Al-Qaeda groups have largely backfired. After the U.S. designation of Jubhat Al-Nusra, the largest Al-Qaeda-linked fighting group in Syria, as a foreign terrorist organisation, most of the Syrian opposition leadership jumped to their defence.

Moaz Al-Khatib, the titular head of the Syrian opposition’s main coalition, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, immediately defended Jabhat Al-Nusra’s role in the uprising as “essential for victory".

Nevertheless, Washington has been covertly supporting rebel groups for well over a year, with “non-lethal aid", intelligence, and other unknown means.

The recent statements by Clinton and Panetta, therefore, still reveal little about the actual relationship between the White House and the Syrian rebels.

President Obama openly criticises the idea of armed assistance but has been silently supporting the rebels, while his administration’s liberal interventionists who have openly called for a more militant role have also expressed grave reservations about the ideology and direction of the very people they hope to arm.

These varied opinions and perspectives leave the door open for any number of policies toward Syria."No one has taken any option off the table in any conversation in which I’ve been involved," said Dempsey.

Nevertheless, Landis thinks a more militaristic approach in Syria in unlikely.

“Clearly…the people Obama has tried to put forward, all of his appointees, are not in favour of a muscle-bound Middle East policy and are not in favour of more military involvement," he said. "They’re consistent with his overall plan, which is not to get involved with Syria, not to start a war with Iran.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Conflict, Foreign Affairs, Insurgency, Lead, Politics, United States Tagged With: , , , , ,

Obama’s OMB Channels its Inner Tea Party

December 27, 2012 by

By William K.Black The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is every administration’s heavy artillery on budget issues.  OMB’s staff is dominated by neo-liberal micro-economists under every administration, so it is institutionally…

 

“The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is every administration’s heavy artillery on budget issues.  OMB’s staff is dominated by neo-liberal micro-economists under every administration, so it is institutionally conservative.  OMB personnel obtain promotions by killing programs, cutting spending, and either blocking the adoption of regulations or weakening the regulations.  OMB is institutionally predisposed to embrace austerity.  OMB is also expected to be a zealous advocate for the President.”

“The combination of those dual roles can produce especially bad pro-austerity propaganda.  President Obama’s OMB produced a classic example of that propaganda in 2012 that exemplifies the administration’s incoherence on austerity.  Obama 2013 budget proposal contains OMB’s ode to austerity.  It was prepared under Jacob Lew’s direction.  Lew was OMB’s head until he became Obama’s chief of staff in January 2012.  Lew is described as the leading candidate to succeed Treasury Secretary Geithner.  Lew, Geithner, and William Daley (then Obama’s chief of staff) were Obama’s principal aides during his attempt in July 2011 to negotiate the Great Betrayal with Speaker Boehner.  Each of them is a strong supporter of austerity and cuts to the safety net and a champion of Wall Street’s interests.”

See on neweconomicperspectives.org


Filed Under: Budget, Economic Policy, Economy, Headlines, United States Tagged With: , ,

It Was the Demography, Stupid

November 9, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 09 (IPS) – Twenty years ago, Democratic pol James Carville immortalised the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” in explaining how former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton would unseat President George H. W. Bush, who was riding high off his smashing military victory in the first Gulf War.Now, 20 years later, pros in both parties appear to agree that “It was the demography, stupid” that best explained how President Barack Obama defeated former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, despite four years of hard economic times and a nearly eight-percent unemployment rate.

Demographics has become almost a cliché in the 48 hours since Romney went down to defeat despite the support of nearly 60 percent of white voters.

“It’s a changing country,” observed the wildly successful right-wing talk-show host, Bill O’Reilly, soon after the major television networks concluded that Obama had won the electoral vote by a landslide, even as the popular vote gave him a victory of only about three percent.

“The demographics are changing; It’s not a traditional America anymore,” O’Reilly told his FoxNews viewers ruefully. “…Whereby 20 years ago, President Obama would have been roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney, the white establishment is now the minority.”

In fact, the “traditional America” of an overwhelmingly white, patriarchal society that has effectively dominated the country from its independence nearly 240 years ago through at least the era of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s is long gone.

And both minorities and women, combined with the so-called Millennium Generation of 18 to 29-year-olds whose attitudes are far more tolerant of “untraditional” people and lifestyles than any that preceded it, proved the point quite convincingly on election night this year.

Sixty percent of white voters, combined with just a smattering of minority votes, would have clinched any presidential election until the end of the Reagan era. Indeed, when Bush Sr. received the same percentage of white votes as Romney, he won the 1988 election by eight percentage points despite receiving only 30 percent of Hispanic and 12 percent of African American votes.

But given both the increase in the size of minority populations and their increased turnout at the voting booths – as well as the growing identification of women with the Democratic Party – those days are now gone, and this election hammered that truth home like no other.

In many respects, it’s just a matter of mathematics. In 1988, non-Latino white voters constituted 85 percent of the electorate. By 2008, when Obama defeated Sen. John McCain, that percentage was down to 74 percent. It fell again this year – to only 71 percent.

And that trend will inevitably continue, much to the distress of most Republican leaders who fear that, absent a major and convincing effort to woo ethnic and religious minority voters, their party will lose and lose again, at least at the national level.

“If you’re not going to be competitive with Latinos, with African Americans, with Native Americans, with Asian Americans, you’re not going to be a successful party,” noted former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich this week.

He lost the party’s nomination to Romney in the primary campaign in part due to his support for more liberal immigration policies than those endorsed by Romney and the party’s right-wing and “Tea Party” activist core.

Unsurprisingly, African Americans, who make up about 12 percent of eligible voters, cast their ballots overwhelmingly for the biracial Obama, although, at 93 percent, that was two percentage points less than in 2008.

More shocking to the Republicans, however, was how Latinos, the country’s largest ethnic minority, voted. Just over two percent of the electorate in 1992, Latinos accounted for 10 percent of all voters in this election, and they voted by a whopping 71-27 percent majority for Obama.

While Republicans were concerned that their tough immigration stance would hurt them with Latinos, they consoled themselves that the “traditional values” of the party, combined with the dismal economy, would permit them to increase their share of the Latino vote above the 31 percent received by McCain four years ago.

That calculation, however, was not born out. Romney received only 27 percent of the Latino vote, compared to Obama’s 71 percent.

Moreover, the greater Latino turnout magnified the loss and, according to most political analysts, probably made the difference in such key swing states as Nevada, Colorado, Virginia, and Florida – which Obama appears poised to win officially – where they make up 17 percent of the electorate.

Republicans also underestimated their losses among the country’s fastest-growing minority – Asian Americans – who, while constituting only about three percent of the total electorate, were a key constituency in the swing state of Virginia.

As a whole, the group has historically been divided politically by national origin, with Japanese and Southeast Asian Americans tending to vote more Republican. In 1992, 55 percent of Asian Americans voted for Bush Sr.

But, with the arrival of new immigrants – the Asian-American population grew at a rate of nearly 50 percent in the past decade –and the increasingly right-wing trajectory of the Republican Party, Asian Americans have moved into the Democratic column.

In 2000, 54 percent voted for Vice President Al Gore; eight years later, 62 percent for Obama. This year, however, Asians surpassed Latinos in support for the president, voting 73-26 percent, or three-to-one, in his favour.

All of these statistics paint a very gloomy picture for a Republican Party that, in the aftermath of its defeat – it unexpectedly lost, in addition to the White House, two seats in the Senate and at least seven in the House of Representatives – is turning into a circular firing squad, with the Tea Party and Christian Right claiming that Romney was too moderate and more establishment politicians insisting that he was not moderate enough.

The debate whether the party must change its substantive positions on issues – notably immigration – in order to win over minorities or whether merely softening its tone – by, for example, explicitly disowning racist messages that have become commonplace on right-wing radio and television talk shows – is also underway.

But the party faces a serious challenge, according to Matt Barreto, a pollster of Latino Decisions.

“There’s this combination: the Asian vote is high, and each year it is going to add another percent. The Latino vote is growing fast. And as long as the African American vote continues to turn out at high rates, in that next election in 2016, it maybe down to like 69 percent white voters,” he told Southern California Public Radio Thursday.

“At that point, if they don’t make increases among blacks and Latinos and Asians, then the Republican Party is not going to win another national election.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Elections, Environment, Politics, Social Issues, United States Tagged With: , , ,

Immigration Reform May Be Big Winner in U.S. Elections

November 9, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Carey L. Biron

WASHINGTON, Nov 08 (IPS) – In the aftermath of a surprisingly lopsided victory for President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party and for progressive causes more broadly, one of the key discussions taking place here is over the suddenly increased prospects for comprehensive immigration reform, long an issue so divisive that few politicians have been willing to tackle it.“Coming out of this election, there is now increased debate in political circles on how to create a pragmatic immigration system, with Republicans and conservatives engaging in this debate to a degree our country has never seen,” Ali Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, the largest such group in the country, said while speaking with journalists on Thursday.

The reasons for this sudden rise in immigration’s profile are twofold, though they are based on the same general issue: that President Obama’s slim re-election majority was given a critical boost by the Latino vote, nearly three-quarters of which supported the president. Latinos, meanwhile, are the country’s fastest-growing demographic.

First, then, Latino voices have quickly begun demanding that President Obama now move towards rewarding their support by making immigration reform one of his top legislative priorities, which he has already indicated he will do.

“As a result (of the election), the mandate for President Obama, along with the newly elected members of Congress, should be clear: voters want an immigration system that treats aspiring citizens with dignity, and provides a roadmap for those living and working here to integrate fully into society,” Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement, noting that Latinos “will no longer tolerate the status quo of record deportations and aggressive detention policies”.

Second, and of paramount importance, as the Republican Party begins a painful process of introspection over its losses, there is a growing consensus among all but the most conservative parts of the party that it needs to overhaul its hard line on immigration reform – and that the next few months will offer an unusually strong opportunity to come together with the Democrats to do so.

“On immigration reform, if ever there is a time to be hopeful that it will happen, it is now,” Allie Devine, a lobbyist for the Kansas Business Coalition, told journalists on Thursday. “This is a social and moral issue, but it is also very much a monetary issue that needs to be addressed.”

The nationalist far right in U.S. politics, including the so-called Tea Party faction, has become increasingly mobilised against immigration in recent years, exacerbated in part by the downturn in the economy. While frustrating for pro-business and law enforcement elements within the Republican Party, this has also stymied broader efforts at forging a legislative “path to citizenship” for immigrants, with extreme conservatives refusing to negotiate until the entire U.S.-Mexico border is fenced and “secured”.

The federal government has previously made half-hearted attempts to overhaul its complex mishmash of immigration policies, which has resulted in some 12 million undocumented workers living within the United States. President Obama urged Democrats in the Congress to introduce initial legislation in 2009, but on political pushback the attempt was dropped.

Eventually, the legislative drive was overshadowed by the bruising partisan fight over health care reform. At the time, Obama’s chief of staff referred to immigration reform as the “third rail of American politics”, a reference to the dangerous electrified track that powers a subway – and that everyone is urged not to touch.

Just three months ahead of the election, Obama did eventually sign a minor but lauded executive order that halted deportation of certain children of illegal immigrants. But in late October, he stated unequivocally that, if elected, “I’m confident we’ll get done … immigration reform”, listing it as his second priority after the looming debt negotiations.

He reiterated this stance in his re-election acceptance speech early Wednesday morning, noting that “fixing the immigration system” would be an immediate concern.

Bible, badge, business

It remains unclear exactly how the Republicans will respond. After all, despite Republican losses in the White House and Senate races, the party picked up seats in the particularly partisan House of Representatives.

Still, many are interpreting the election results as a clear indication that U.S. voters want to see greater cooperation – and progress – on key issues, including immigration. That should embolden many members of Congress that their jobs won’t be on the line if they choose to support broad reform.

“In the last election, many Republican officials felt incorrectly that they needed to pander to the base of the party – to the loud, shrill, anti-immigration people out there – and I’m excited now that there is this open opportunity to do something about it,” Mark Shurtleff, the Republican attorney-general for the state of Utah, said Tuesday.

“I’m very concerned – we have to reconsider who the Republican base is and how to define the soul of the Republican Party. Moderates within the party need to come back to this discussion and reject the extreme rightwing partisan ranting that does not represent the majority of Republicans.”

Law-enforcement officials such as Shurtleff and business advocates such as Devine make up two parts of a three-pronged strategy now being pushed by those looking to capitalise on the strengthened environment for immigration reform.

“The only way that immigration reform is going to pass is if those who hold the Bible, those who wear a badge and those who own a business exert grassroots pressure. But that pressure has begun to build,” the National Immigration Forum’s Noorani says.

While Congress is out of session until next week, Noorani says that initial meetings are already being set up. Further, during the first week of December, a two-day national strategy meeting will also bring together Republicans from across the ideological spectrum to come up with a more unified stance on the issue of immigration reform.

And while nearly all involved are now hoping that the new dynamics will allow for enough consensus to arrive at a comprehensive reforms package, most say a gradual approach would still be acceptable.

“Comprehensive reform is the utopia, but we can go piecemeal,” the Reverent Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, told reporters Thursday. “The critical issue is getting some sort of legislation through that sends a message that lets people know that they can come out of the shadows – something to deal with the fear and angst that immigrants suffer from in this country.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Elections, Featured, Human Rights, Politics, United States Tagged With: , ,

OP-ED: Unfinished Business Awaits Obama’s Second Term

November 9, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Emile Nakhleh

WASHINGTON, Nov 08 (IPS) – Several critical issues of unfinished business in the Middle East face President Barack Obama as he begins his second term. Washington must become more engaged come January because these issues will directly impact regional stability and security and U.S. interests and personnel in the region. The issues include the Syrian uprising and increasing atrocities by extremist elements within the uprising, the Arab Spring and the future of democratic transitions, the growing influence of radical Salafi “jihadism” across the Arab world, Bahrain, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran, Pakistan, and Guantanamo and global terrorism.

The Obama administration’s engagement in these issues in the past year has been marginal and uneven, influenced largely by domestic politics and to some degree the ghost of Libya. Washington’s public support for democracy following the start of the Arab Spring was welcomed in the region, especially as dictators in Tunisia and Egypt fell precipitously.

The U.S. image became more tarnished, however, as repression escalated in Bahrain against the Shia majority and as Assad’s killing machine became more vicious, and Syria descended into a civil war.

Washington’s benign response to repression and torture in Bahrain, according to advocates of this policy, is justified by the presence of the U.S. Fifth Fleet and the special relationship with Saudi Arabia. Yet, the U.S. and its Western allies have not used their significant leverage in either country to advance democracy. Nor has the Fleet deterred the Al Khalifa regime from repressing the pro-democracy movement.

The ghost of Libya and the U.S. presidential election also drove Obama’s hesitancy to act against the Syrian dictator. During the foreign policy presidential debate before the U.S. elections, President Obama and Governor Mitt Romney argued lamely that Syria was different from Libya, and therefore the U.S. military even under the NATO umbrella should not be used against Assad.

The fate of emerging Arab democracies and the legitimate aspirations of millions of Arab youth, which the U.S. and many countries worldwide have endorsed, should not be held hostage to political expediency or become a casualty of electoral politics.

U.S. prestige and Obama’s credibility at home and abroad will be tested by whether Washington stands with the peoples of the region against their entrenched dictators, regardless of the so-called Libyan model. Calls for justice and dignity in the Arab uprisings signaled a historic moment that resonated across the globe. The U.S. should embrace this moment and place itself on the right side of history.

President Obama was hailed across the Arab Muslim world in June 2009 when he called for engaging credible indigenous communities on the basis of common interests and mutual respect. A retreat from those ideals would be disastrous for the U.S. and its allies, especially as regime remnants and radical Salafis endeavour to derail the democratic process.

An autocratic tribal ruler in Manama, who has just revoked the citizenship of 31 Bahraini nationals, or a brutal dictator in Damascus should not turn the clock back on the moral inroads that Washington made in the region in the post-Bush era.

The unfolding of events at a dizzying speed and increasing threats to U.S. interests and personnel demand serious attempts to address theses critical issues. In his second-term, President Obama cannot remain oblivious to rising sectarianism, growing Salafi extremism, continued repression, and suppression of minorities and women.

On day one after taking office, the president must turn his full attention to Syria.

Assad must be forced out, and soon. Over 25,000 Syrians have been killed since the uprising began in early 2011, and equal numbers have been “disappeared” by the regime. Hundreds of thousands have become refugees. Atrocities committed by the regime and by some of the rebels are inflicting untold suffering on innocent civilians in Syria.

The Syrian uprising, like those in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, started peacefully. Regime intransigence and repression, however, forced the uprising to become violent. Lawlessness and the porous borders have opened Syria to radical “jihadists” from neighbouring Arab countries.

Whereas, the uprising was initially non-ideological and non-religious, the incoming “jihadists” are Sunni Salafis bent on fighting a religious war against an “infidel” dictator. These “jihadists” have exploited the factionalism of the opposition for their intolerant religious extremism.

They also gained acceptance by the poorly armed rebels because they brought in weapons and money from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and elsewhere. The rise of violent “jihadism” in Syria had been a direct consequence of continued regime intransigence.

A prolonged proxy war between Iran, which supports Assad, and Saudi Arabia, which supports the uprising, over Syria and a resurgent radical Salafi “jihad” within the insurgency cannot be good for regional stability and for the international community.

How to speed up Assad’s exit? Short of putting boots on the ground, Washington and its NATO allies, especially the UK, France, and Turkey, should declare a no-fly zone and provide the Free Syrian Army with adequate anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to fight the regime’s military machine. NATO should seek the consent of Arab and Asian countries for the Syria initiative, including patrolling the no-fly zone.

Media reports reveal that Turkey, with U.S. approval, has deployed Patriot missiles close to the Syrian border. This action seems to signal Turkey’s intention to create and possibly defend a no-fly zone. President Obama and other NATO leaders should vigorously push this action forward.

Syrian refugees cannot spend another winter in tents and under intolerable conditions.

NATO partners also should help streamline the opposition groups and recognise whatever group emerges as a legitimate political representative of Syria. Admittedly, factionalism among the rebel groups on the ground and within the Syrian National Council outside the country is a major impediment to diplomatic recognition and international action.

Once a unified leadership emerges, NATO should provide it with logistics, intelligence, and command and control training. Furthermore, Washington and London should put the Assad regime on notice that attacking Syria’s neighbours or using chemical and biological weapons in any form against any target will result in a massive military response.

Lakhdar Brahimi’s U.N.-Arab mission to Syria has failed to persuade Assad to stop the killing, and any talk of a temporary ceasefire is no more than wishful thinking. Russian and Chinese obduracy in the U.N. Security Council on Syria justifies an immediate and more robust NATO action against the regime. The Syrian dictator has already rejected British Prime Minister David Cameron’s offer for a safe passage out of Syria.

It’s morally reprehensible for the international community to remain insensitive to the continued atrocities against the Syrian people, whether by the regime or the opposition. Moral platitudes no longer cut it.

Once the regime is toppled, the international community should help the post-Assad government with economic recovery and empower the Syrian business community and entrepreneurial civil society to start creating jobs. When that happens, the “Arab Spring” would rightfully claim its fifth trophy.

*Emile Nakhleh is former director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program at CIA and author of A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim world.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Foreign Affairs, Middle East, Opinion, Peace, Politics Tagged With: ,

Debt deal distracts from the economy’s real problems.

August 2, 2011 by

Statement on the Debt Ceiling Deal

Debt deal distracts from the economy’s real problems.

Center for Economic and Policy Research, CEPR

For Immediate Release: August 1, 2011
Contact: Alan Barber, (202) 293-5380 x115

Washington, D.C.- Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), issued the following statement on the debt ceiling deal:

"The protracted negotiations over the debt ceiling, as well as the final package agreed to by President Obama and the congressional leadership, show what happens when a small minority is allowed to gain control over national debate. While polls consistently show that the vast majority of the public sees jobs as the main problem facing the economy, there has been a well-funded crusade to ignore public opinion and make cuts to social insurance programs and other spending the top priority for Congress and the President.

"To further this effort, the anti-deficit lobby has been willing to rewrite the history of the downturn and the deficit. The data clearly show that the large deficits of recent years follow from the downturn caused by the collapse of the housing bubble. Prior to the downturn, the deficits projected for 2009 and subsequent years were relatively modest. In fact, even with the tax cuts, the cost of the wars, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the debt-to-GDP ratio fell from 2004 through 2007.

By all logic, leaders in Washington should have been focused on restoring the economy to its potential. This would be the most effective way to bring the deficit down to a manageable level.

"However the anti-deficit lobby has managed to dominate public debate and essentially pushed the sputtering economy off the agenda for both the president and congress. The cuts put in place as part of this deal will modestly slow growth in the short-term and are likely to take a big bite out of the investment portions of the budget over the longer term. If the country does not maintain its infrastructure, its research, and adequately support education it will hurt productivity and slow growth over the longer term.

"The agreement also sets in motion a process that could result in substantial cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security to meet its debt targets. This would hurt retirees and near retirees, many of whom saw much of their wealth eliminated with the collapse of the housing bubble. Remarkably, there is nothing here that would increases taxes on corporations or the wealthy even as the data show a record high profit share and polls show clear public support for higher taxes to balance spending cuts in any debt ceiling deal.

"At a time when growth has slowed to a near halt and unemployment rate is again rising, it is tragic that the nation’s political leadership has spent the last few months crafting a deal that is likely to slow growth further and take away supports from the people who have been hit hardest by the downturn."


Filed Under: Budget, Commentary, Economic Crisis, Economic Policy, United States Tagged With: ,

Obama Dithering Between People and Corporate America

July 28, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Lee Sustar*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint    

Barack Obama, celebrated as a champion of all good causes three years ago, has thrown traditional Democratic constituencies overboard – not just to make a deal with Republicans, but to carry out the Corporate America’s agenda.

CHICAGO (IDN) – Can someone please remind us why the Democrats are so often called "the party of the people?"

There’s Social Security, of course – the cornerstone of the 1930s New Deal social programs created during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The popularity of Social Security is such that no Democrat would ever dream of offering it up to the Republican budget-slashers.

Except that Barack Obama has now done so.

Then there’s Medicare, a signal achievement of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society social programs. No Democrat could conceivably line up with the right to take aim at the widely supported health care program for the elderly.

Not until, that is, Barack Obama slashed Medicare in the name of health care "reform" – and then bowed to Republican demands for far greater cuts in the future.

What about support for organized labour? That’s a principle that clearly differentiates Democrats from Republicans, right? But Obama himself green-lighted the attack on public-sector workers, freezing federal workers’ pay for three years and pushing the Race to the Top education program to promote teacher-bashing state legislation – and he turned his back on private-sector unions after promising to support the Employee Free Choice Act to make organizing unions easier.

Surely, economic policy differentiates Democrats and Republicans? Where the Bush administration in 2008 rushed to provide $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, while leaving working people to suffer the brunt of the economic crash, the Obama administration continued the endless bailout of the bankers, and has done little more for the millions who face foreclosure or the almost 20 percent of the workforce that’s either jobless or underemployed.

The Democrats are on the record supporting women’s rights – in particular, the right to choose abortion. But as a growing number of state legislatures pass laws that further curb access to abortion, the Obama administration has done nothing to counter the trend. And when Obama’s own pro-choice views were the subject of controversy at a University of Notre Dame speech in 2009, the president failed to even state his position in favour of abortion rights.

What about civil liberties? Surely Obama has provided some relief from the Bush regime’s shredding of basic rights under the banner of the "war on terror."

Only he hasn’t. Instead, Obama has continued and even expanded virtually the whole of the Bush-Cheney approach to the war on civil liberties.

While George W. Bush offered a future of endless war in Arab and Muslim lands, the Obama administration no longer justifies U.S. military action in the name of a "global war on terror." But the wars continue anyway, with downsized but enduring occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a new war in Libya, launched with U.S. missiles and planes and supported by the U.S. through the NATO military alliance.

All this from the leader of what is supposed to be the mainstream party of the "left" in U.S. politics.

TRADITION AND EXPEDIENCY

Many people are justifiably upset at the Obama administration’s compromises, retreats and outright sellouts, and blame the president for being too weak in the face of the Republicans’ corporate-funded, Fox News-scripted backlash against even the most modest liberal measures.

But the reality is that Obama’s policies are perfectly consistent with the Democrats’ long tradition of making promises to their working-class base at election time, but delivering the policies demanded by the bankers, CEOs and Pentagon brass. Because while the Democrats depend on workers and the poor to turn out to vote, they’re just as much a pro-capitalist party as the Republicans.

To be sure, Obama has made concessions to the right that were unnecessary even from the narrow viewpoint of the most cynical Democratic political operative. By contrast, Franklin Roosevelt was willing to stand up to a business establishment that had been discredited by the Great Depression, declaring at one point during his re-election campaign that he "welcomed their hatred." Obama, on the other hand, bowed to business on every question – and then bowed some more.

But at the same time, Roosevelt rightly considered himself, as he also once said, "the best friend the profit system ever had." The pro-working class measures that Roosevelt is credited with introducing were the result of a labour rebellion that shook the U.S. in the 1930s and led to the unionization of much of U.S. industry in just a few years. Plus, Roosevelt was also prepared to turn his back on unions – for example, during the bitter 1937 strike for union recognition against so-called "Little Steel."

And it was Roosevelt who used the Second World War to advance the American empire, backed up by his successor Harry Truman, who ordered the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and later launched a war on the Korean Peninsula to ensure U.S. dominance of the Pacific. It was to maintain that control that John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson sent more than half a million U.S. troops to Vietnam in the 1960s to fight wars that led to the deaths of 4 million Southeast Asians.

The next Democrat to occupy the White House, Jimmy Carter, has since become known as an advocate for human rights. But in office, Carter didn’t try to repeat Johnson’s attempt to have "both guns and butter" – the effort to combine the pursuit of U.S. imperial aims with expansion of the social safety net to widen the Democrats’ electoral base. Instead, Carter cut the budget for social programs and ramped up military spending – a trend that would continue when Republican Ronald Reagan took over the Oval Office.

Carter’s right turn couldn’t be explained just by the fact that he came from the conservative Southern wing of the Democratic Party. That was true of Johnson as well. Instead, the party’s shift to the right beginning in the late 1970s was the political consequence of the end of the long economic postwar boom, during which living standards rose for most working-class people.

The Democrats’ move to the right as the ’80s and ’90s dragged on didn’t go unchallenged. The civil rights movement led to increased prominence for African American political leaders in the party – Black politicians won seats in Congress and control of City Hall in a number of important cities. Rev. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 seemed to provide a vehicle for more liberal forces in the Democratic Party.

OVERALL TRAJECTORY

But the overall trajectory of the Democratic Party was in the other direction – with the party establishment working to marginalize liberals and make the Democrats more business-friendly. Enter the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) – a group formed in the mid-1980s by conservative Democrats as an internal pressure group to pull the party to the right.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was a founding member of the DLC. As president, Clinton earned the ire of the rich for raising their taxes – but soon enough, he fully embraced the Wall Street agenda of his adviser and later Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

Clinton’s plans for health care reform died in a Democratic Congress before even coming to a vote, and when the Republican Revolution of 1994 took back control of the House and Senate, Clinton moved even further right. Rather than expand the social safety net, he cut it dramatically, ending the federal welfare program and replacing it with state-run "workfare" programs that compelled recipients to work for low wages to get benefits that were no longer guaranteed by federal law.

Clinton hewed to this conservative line despite the promised "peace dividend" that was supposed to follow the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration undertook what former military officer and author Andrew Bacevich called "the unprecedented militarization of U.S. foreign policy" as the U.S. drove the expansion of NATO into the former Russian sphere of influence and twice intervened militarily in the Balkans.

"OBAMA, INC."

Barack Obama understood these new realities of U.S. politics well when he ran for president in 2008. The candidate who evoked social movements to excite volunteer campaign activists had already amassed crucial support among top party leaders and business interests, a combine that journalist Ken Silverstein called "Obama, Inc."

As president, faced with the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, Obama was willing to push through a $787 billion economic stimulus program that was big enough to prevent an outright depression, but not nearly substantial enough to stop the deterioration of living standards faced by tens of millions of workers who had voted for him.

In stark contrast to his campaign slogan of "Change we can believe in," Obama’s top priority was tending to the interests of business. Like so many party leaders before him, he assumed the Democratic base had nowhere else to go. In the resulting demoralization, millions of those voters stayed home in the 2010 election, giving a whipped-up Republican base the chance to retake the House and set the political agenda.

Obama has shown no hesitation in getting with the program since the Republican victory last November. While the Republicans’ proposals for cuts are savage and overwhelming, Obama poses as a responsible steward of the state, "protecting" Social Security and Medicare by backing cuts he portrays as more reasonable – even though they go further than what any Republican president has so far dared to propose.

Obama’s behaviour isn’t unique to national politics – just look at the policies of Democratic governors in California, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Connecticut, where social spending is being slashed and public-sector unions are under attack. In fact, political leaders around the world – whether from centre-left parties or traditional conservative ones – are embracing austerity under pressure from big business.

All this points to the need for independent working-class politics in the U.S. While the formation of a new political party isn’t on the agenda, what has to be tackled now is struggle against the austerity, whether pushed by hard-right Republicans like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and House Speaker John Boehner or Democrats like Obama or New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

*Lee Sustar of anti-globalization group the International Socialist Organization is the labour editor of Socialist Worker. This is a slightly abridged version of the article that first appeared as editorial on July 27, 2011 on http://socialistworker.org/2011/07/27/party-which-people.

The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of IDN editors or editorial board. (IDN-InDepthNews/28.07.2011)

2011 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Budget, Economic Crisis, Economic Policy, Featured, Politics, Social Justice, United States Tagged With: , ,

Obama and the “Gang Of Six”

July 21, 2011 by

James K. Galbraith: “Gang of Six” Plan is all about cuts not increased taxes; Obama represents Wall Street faction of Democratic Party

More at The Real News


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POST-ABBOTTABAD PAK SULKING HAS HAD NO IMPACT ON OBAMA

June 23, 2011 by

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO. 729

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy

By B.Raman

Pakistan’s post-Abbottabad sulking and partly-real, partly-manufactured anti-US  anger have had no impact on President Barack Obama’s counter-sanctuary emphasis in his counter-terrorism strategy.

2. It was this counter-sanctuary emphasis that enabled the successful extermination of Osama bin Laden on May 2,2011, by  US naval commandos raiding his house clandestinely at Abbottabad and  the successes scored by the Drone (pilotless planes of the CIA) strikes against other medium and high-value targets of Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan’s jihadi belt— wherever that belt is located, in the tribal areas or outside.

3.The counter-sanctuary operations  which were confined to the tribal belt till May 2, have been extended beyond unilaterally. A future repeat of this extension to areas outside the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) cannot be ruled out if necessary to wipe out the surviving remnants of the high-value leadership of Al Qaeda.

4. This message—loud and clear—had repeatedly come out of Washington DC since May 2 and it came out again in Mr.Obama’s address to the American people on June 23 outlining his plan for a de-surge in Afghanistan, which would involve the withdrawal  — in two instalments of 10,000 and 23,000 troops— of the reinforcements that he had sent to Afghanistan in 2009. The de-surge would start next month and would be completed by election time next year.

5. The planned de-surge is based on a less pessimistic assessment of the counter-insurgency situation on the ground in Afghanistan. The peak in pessimism seen in 2009 has given way to the first signs of hope—though not optimism— that the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda has started moving gradually in the direction desired by the US.

6. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has not yet been defeated, but has been contained. It has been made amenable to enter the process of negotiation. Al Qaeda, its ally, has suffered such serious attrition in Pakistan that its usefulness as an ally has diminished. Al Qaeda and its affiliates  do not seem to be in a position to reverse the tide and recover their balance.

7.The threats from the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda & Co have been contained. From a phase of containment, the US policy has moved into a phase of elimination of the threat which does not require the engagement of the same level of forces as till now.

8. Mr.Obama’s less pessimistic assessment of the counter-insurgency ground situation in Afghanistan is accompanied by  a realistic assessment of the counter-terrorism ground situation in the jihadi belt of Pakistan. The belt remains. The irrational jihadi ardour remains. The insincerity of the Pakistani political and military establishment in dealing with jihadi terrorism remains. The sanctuaries remain. The suspicions regarding Pakistani official complicity with the terrorist remnants remain.

9. How to deal with this complex ground situation in Pakistan’s jihadi belt? Victory is not yet in sight in the counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations, but there are hopes of victory. The scene on the ground is no longer one of unmitigated gloom as it was since the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US homeland.

10. How to translate these seeming hopes into durable reality? Will they concretise into reality or turn out to be another chimera? The answer to this question has to come from the jihadi belt of Pakistan. It has to come from the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army. It has to come from the headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). It has to come from the confused political and military leadership of Pakistan, which continues to live in a make-believe world of its own imaginary creation thinking and hoping that the importance of Pakistan’s strategic location and value will once again prevail in the US geostrategic calculations and that it can reverse its tide of gloom.

11. Mr.Obama has taken care to discourage the illusions of the Pakistani leadership. He said in his address to his people: “ Of course, our efforts must also address terrorist safe-havens in Pakistan. No country is more endangered by the presence of violent extremists, which is why we will continue to press Pakistan to expand its participation in securing a more peaceful future for this war-torn region. We will work with the Pakistani government to root out the cancer of violent extremism, and we will insist that it keep its commitments. For there should be no doubt that so long as I am President, the United States will never tolerate a safe-haven for those who aim to kill us: they cannot elude us, nor escape the justice they deserve.”

12. It is a strong message that India has every reason to welcome. There is more stick than carrots in the message. There are more admonitions than lollipops in the message. India should keep discreetly nudging the US to keep translating the message into reality without relenting periodically as the US has been wont to do. That will be in the interest of both the US and India.

13. Can Pakistan change? Can Pakistan be made to change? The answers to those questions lie in New Delhi and Washington DC and nowhere else in the world. (23-6-11)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail:seventyone2@gmail.com. Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

Copyright © 2011 B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG).

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the permission of the original author or copyright holder.


Filed Under: Analysis, Foreign Affairs, Security, Terrorism, United States Tagged With: , ,

AFGHANISTAN: Obama Takes the Centrist Option on Withdrawal

June 23, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 23, 2011 (IPS) – In a much-anticipated decision, U.S. President Barack Obama announced here Wednesday evening that he will withdraw 10,000 of the 100,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Afghanistan by the end of this year and a total of 33,000 by some time next summer.

In a nationally televised address, Obama said U.S. troops will continue coming home at a "steady pace" so that "by 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security."

And he strongly suggested that his plan marked a decisive turning point in the conflicts in which Washington has been embroiled in the nearly ten years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

"Tonight, we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding," he said. "Fewer or our sons and daughters are serving in harm’s way. We have ended our combat mission in Iraq, with 100,000 American troops already out of that country," he said.

"And even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can been seen in the distance. These long wars will come to a responsible end," he stressed, adding with special emphasis several minutes later: "America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home."

The 15-minute prime-time address – and the timetable it set forth – appeared to be a compromise between the faction led by outgoing Pentagon chief Robert Gates and the Afghanistan commander, Gen. David Petraeus, that favoured a slower drawdown, and another administration faction, led by Vice President Joe Biden, that has long argued for a "counter-terrorist" (CT) strategy that would require many fewer U.S. and NATO forces deployed to Afghanistan.

Petraeus, who will take over the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) later this summer, had let it be known that he wanted to withdraw only a nominal number of troops – no more than 5,000 – by the end of this year and only a few of thousand more in 2012 in order to continue carrying out an ambitious "counter- insurgency" (COIN) strategy through a second "fighting season" against the Taliban focused primarily on eastern Afghanistan, close to the Pakistani border, where the insurgency remains strongest.

The CT faction, whose position has been significantly strengthened since the May 2 killing by CIA- directed U.S. Special Operations Forces of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and by concerns among a growing number of Republicans about the 10-billion-dollar-a-month cost of the Afghanistan campaign, reportedly favoured a much more rapid drawdown – as much as 30,000 troops by the end of this year and an equal number, if not more, in 2012.

Those differences were reflected in reactions to Wednesday’s speech. While the more hawkish Republican leaders, whose influence on the party has appeared to wane in the past couple of weeks, charged that Obama’s timetable risked undoing the gains made by Petraeus’ COIN strategy, many Democrats expressed disappointment that the president had not opted for a more sizeable withdrawal this year and a more decisive shift to a CT strategy.

Thus, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, called the plan a "positive development, although in my view the conditions on the ground justify an even larger drawdown of U.S. troops," while Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, a long-time hawk, complained to CNN that "we’ve undercut a strategy that was working, (and) …may eventually have doomed it fail. We’re going to a counter-terrorism strategy too soon," he warned.

Mindful of the growing conflict within the party between neo-conservatives and aggressive nationalists who have dominated it since 9/11 and an ascendant coalition of "realists", "isolationists", and fiscal conservatives, other Republicans were more circumspect.

The normally highly partisan speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, for example, issued a mild criticism, arguing that degrading Al-Qaeda’s capabilities in the region "must take priority over any calendar dates" and urging Obama "to continue to listen to our commanders on the ground as we move forward."

Similarly, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the current front-runner in the race for the 2012 Republican nomination, asserted that the timetable for withdrawal "should not be based on politics or economics" while the newest entry in the race, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, representing the party’s realist faction, came out strongly for a CT strategy and expressed disappointment that the president had not announced a larger withdrawal.

Under Obama’s timetable, the same number of U.S. troops will be deployed in Afghanistan in September 2012 as in December 2009 when he accepted – to the great frustration of most Democrats – Petraeus’s recommendation to "surge" 33,000 troops into Afghanistan over the following nine months in order to wrest control from the Taliban of the southern part of the country around Afghanistan’s second-largest city, Kandahar.

Since taking office in January, 2009, Obama, who had described Afghanistan as a "necessary war" during the 2008 presidential election campaign, has more than tripled U.S. troop strength there.

In his address, Obama stressed that, having "inflicted serious losses on the Taliban," and "taken out more than half of Al-Qaeda’s leadership," including bin Laden, he will start the drawdown "from a position of strength."

He also stressed that a political settlement was the only way to end the conflict and that "America will join initiatives that reconcile the Afghan people, including the Taliban," so long as the latter break with Al-Qaeda, renounce violence, and accept the country’s constitution.

Washington’s goal, he said, "can be expressed simply: no safe haven from which Al-Qaeda or its affiliates can launch attacks against our homeland, or our allies. We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place."

He added that terrorist safe havens in Pakistan must also be addressed, although he did not elaborate on how this will be done. Counter-terrorist co-operation between the U.S. and Pakistan, already strained before the U.S. strike against bin Laden, appears to have deteriorated over the past six weeks.

In addition to splitting the difference between the COIN and CT advocates and anti-war Democrats and hawkish Republicans, Obama quite explicitly depicted himself as a pragmatic centrist in the broader contemporary foreign-policy debate, noting that the past "decade of war has caused many to question the nature of America’s engagement around the world.

"Some would have America retreat from our responsibility as an anchor of global security, and embrace an isolation that ignores the very real threats that we face," he said. "others would have America over- extend ourselves, confronting every evil that can be found abroad.

"We must chart a centred course," he went on. "Like generations before, we must embrace America’s singular role in the course of human events. But we must be as pragmatic as we are passionate; as strategic as we are resolute. When threatened, we must respond with force – but when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas," he argued.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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