Bush Administration Repsonsible for Abuses Posted by James Lamond

The bipartisan Senate Armed Services committee report on detainee abuse released by Carl Levin and John McCain, places the blame for the abuse of American prisoners squarely on the civilian leadership at the DoD, Justice, and the White House. 

The most incredible part of the report is:

JPRA is the DoD agency that oversees military Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training. During the resistance phase of SERE training, U.S. military personnel are exposed to physical and psychological pressures (SERE techniques) designed to simulate conditions to which they might be subject if taken prisoner by enemies that did not abide by the Geneva Conventions. As one JPRA instructor explained, SERE training is '€œbased on illegal exploitation (under the rules listed in the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War) of prisoners over the last 50 years.'€ The techniques used in SERE school, based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean war to elicit false confessions, include stripping students of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, disrupting their sleep, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. It can also include face and body slaps and until recently, for some who attended the Navyâ€'s SERE school, it included waterboarding. 

Typically, those who play the part of interrogators in SERE school neither are trained interrogators nor are they qualified to be. These role players are not trained to obtain reliable intelligence information from detainees. Their job is to train our personnel to resist providing reliable information to our enemies. As the Deputy Commander for the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), JPRA'€™s higher headquarters, put it: 'the expertise of JPRA lies in training personnel how to respond and resist interrogations'€“ not in how to conduct interrogations. 'Given JPRA'€™s role and expertise, the request from the DoD General Counsel'€™s office was unusual. In fact, the Committee is not aware of any similar request prior to December 2001. But while it may have been the first, that was not the last time that a senior government official contacted JPRA for advice on using SERE methods offensively. In fact, the call from the DoD General Counsel'€™s office marked just the beginning of JPRA'€™s support of U.S. government interrogation efforts.

The Bush administration actually trained the interrogators to be like the "€œenemies that did not abide by the Geneva Conventions."€  These were techniques that were explicitly '€œbased on illegal exploitation of prisoners over the last 50 years.'€

Those OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] opinions distorted the meaning and intent of anti-torture laws, rationalized the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody and influenced Department of Defense determinations as to what interrogation techniques were legal for use during interrogations conducted by U.S. military personnel.

This violation our America's most cherished principles are not only a disgusting act, but simply a bad tactic that will only hurt our own security.  As retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, a, ex-Navy judge advocate general, said "€œTheir weapons are hate and terror. ... The enemy's goal is to make us more like them. This nation's main mission is to not forget who we are ... to hold our ideals even more tightly... We are going to win the war against this bunch of chumps because we are better than them, not because we are more inhumane."

And We Don't Care About The Young Folks Posted by Adam Blickstein

With the inevitable aging of America (by 2030, the population of Americans over 65 is projected to double from 35 million to 71.5 million and represent nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. population.), I wonder if the elderly in America will be as proactive as our older compatriots in Japan:

As Japanese live longer and longer, and the number of centenarians increases to once unimaginable levels, a new elite class is emerging – the Super Elderlies or Genkinarians. In the arts, medicine, scholarship, and most strikingly of all, in sport, a small number of extremely old Japanese are not only keeping their heads above water, but surging forward.

The head of one of Tokyo’s most famous hospitals, St Luke’s, is 97-year old Shigeaki Hinohara...The world’s oldest television news reader is a 105-year old lady named Shino Mori...with two younger colleagues of 92 and 84...Japan has a 101-year old dancer..who still performs from time to time in a wheelchair. In a different artistic genre, there is Shigeo Tokuda, the 73-year old male star of over 100 pornographic films, including titles such as Maniac Training of Lolitas and Forbidden Elderly Care. The porn business’s oldest talent, 90-year old Yoshiaki Yasuda, had to retire a few years ago after a career-wrecking back injury. All of these people, in their different ways, are exceptional – but in 21st century Japan the fact of living to 100 is no longer the miracle that it used to be.

No Whey! Posted by Hanna Lundqvist

The Wall Street Journal had an article yesterday on the Italian government's decision to bail out struggling Parmigiano Reggiano makers by buying 100,000 wheels of the cheese and donating them to charity.  While I think we can all agree that such bailouts and the misfortunes of Italian cheesemakers are no laughing matter, had this piece appeared in any other paper, I honestly would have thought it was a joke.  Selected quotes are below, enjoy:

The world is bailing out banks and car companies. Italy is coming to the rescue of parmigiano cheese. In an effort to help producers of the cheese commonly grated over spaghetti, fettuccine and other pastas, the Italian government is buying 100,000 wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano and donating them to charity. Though demand for parmigiano is strong in Italy and abroad, producers have been struggling for years to make money, putting the future of Italy's favorite cheese at risk...

"Parmigiano is almost indispensable," says Antonio Piermani, 41 years old, who owns a wine bar in Rome. Mr. Piermani buys three kilos a month, which he grates over pasta dishes. Buying something other than parmigiano, he says, "would compromise the taste of the entire dish."

...Now that the government has stepped in to help parmigiano makers, however, others are making a stink. "We've never received a single dime in state aid," complains Vincenzo Oliviero, who heads the association of buffalo mozzarella producers. Mr. Oliviero says makers of the juicy white cheese eaten alone or on pizza have been suffering since Naples faced a trash crisis last year.

Mumbai Aftermath Raises New Questions Posted by Patrick Barry

There's little question that details of the Mumbai attacks remain murky.  This tidbit, tucked within a Greg Miller piece in yesterday's LA Times only adds to the murkiness:

U.S. intelligence officials downplayed earlier reports that there were specific warnings shared with India before the attacks. Indeed, the CIA's deputy director of operations, Michael Sulick, was in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on the day of the strikes, a trip arranged not out of concern for a potential attack but as part of a Thanksgiving visit designed to boost morale among CIA case officers in the region.

Asked whether there had been serious warnings, the senior U.S. intelligence official said, "I certainly didn't go into the holidays thinking something was going to happen in Mumbai, that's for sure."

Coupled with this Jeff Stein post from last week - in which he speculates on the possibility that the U.S. warned India of the Mumbai plot, and asks whether the U.S. provided similar warnings to Pakistan - this revelation raises further questions about who knew what and when prior to the attacks.

Newsweek Cuts Back, As Reported from Bangalore Posted by Adam Blickstein

So Newsweek is reportedly planning some major cut-backs, including a staff cut of over 100, a reduction in physical copies produced each week, and "slimming" the publication. Of course the industry is reeling across the board, so the cuts aren't terribly surprising, especially as some outlets are now outsourcing reporting to India. The byline of the Reuters piece breaking the Newsweek story (linked above), though, provides an interesting twist to all this:

Reporting by Pratish Narayanan in Bangalore; Editing by Mike Nesbit

Reuters actually routs a large percentage of their financial reporting through Bangalore, but having a bureau in India breaking news about major cuts at an American publication struggling financially is an instructive indication just how unsettled and uncertain things are now for the media industry.

Beating the Drum on Cuba Policy Posted by Jake Colvin

Jake Colvin is a fellow with the New Ideas Fund and a Vice President with the National Foreign Trade Council, a non-profit trade association based in Washington, DC. This article was cross-posted on the Huffington Post.

For a small country, U.S. think tanks, journalists and businesses are paying Cuba a great deal of attention these days. The latest in a steady drumbeat of white papers, policy briefs and news articles to call for new U.S. policies toward the island comes from Roger Cohen, who wrote in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine that history will judge U.S. policy "[b]adly, I think, especially since the end of the cold war."  He continues,

if the embargo had come down then, back in 1989, I doubt the [Castro] regime would have survived. But the grudges were too deep, and a mistake was made. Today the policy makes little sense. The United States dislikes Chávez but maintains diplomatic relations with Venezuela. I think Obama should add to the measures he has already announced by offering to open full diplomatic relations with Cuba immediately.

Cohen's article provides a fairly leisurely tour through the politics of Cuba, both in Cuba and in the United States.  Having spent some time in Cuba, he also provides an accessible account of daily life there.  His thoughts on policy seem like a bit of an afterthought, however, and he stops short of recommending more dramatic policy changes that others have suggested.

The week prior, a group of U.S. business associations, including the one for which I work, wrote President-elect Obama to suggest the need for a more dramatic policy shift. 

In the short term, the groups asked for the temporary suspension of certain restrictions on trade that would allow American companies to help Cuba to respond more effectively to the humanitarian crisis in the wake of recent hurricanes and storms in Cuba.  The associations also urged President-elect Obama to "immediately remove travel restrictions and allow Americans to act as ambassadors of freedom and American values to Cuba," and to engage in bilateral discussions with Cuban government.

The dozen business organizations which signed the letter are among the largest in the country and include American Farm Bureau Federation, Business Roundtable, National Foreign Trade Council and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  They called for a comprehensive reexamination of policy and eventually the complete removal of all trade and travel restrictions on Cuba.

Earlier in the week, I released a new policy brief, the Case for a New Cuba Policy, which featured calls for new approaches to Cuba from former senior Clinton administration officials who were responsible for U.S. Cuba policy.  They included former Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at National Security Council Arturo Valenzuela; former Assistant Secretaries of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Jeffrey Davidow, Peter Romero and Alexander Watson; and former U.S. Ambassadors to the United Nations Thomas Pickering and Nancy Soderberg. 

Ambassador James Dobbins, another former Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the NSC, says in the report that, "Cuba policy is long past due for substantial revision, and domestically there is waning support. Flooding Cuba with American tourists, journalists, and culture is the fastest way to promote change. I'd almost completely reverse current policy."

And, as I wrote last month, the Brookings Institution released a new report, "Rethinking U.S.-Latin American Relations: A Hemispheric Partnership for a Turbulent World."

These are just the latest drumbeats.  The Council on Foreign Relations put out a report in May, "U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality," which called for a new approach to Cuba.

The task force, chaired by former U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and former Commander of U.S. Southern Command James Hill, calls for freer travel, more trade, a new U.S. diplomatic initiative and the repeal of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996.  It also called on the United States to "assure Cubans on the island that the United States will pursue a respectful arm's-length relationship with a democratic Cuba."  The report's section on Cuba concluded that,

The time is ripe to show the Cuban people, especially the younger generations, that an alternative exists to permanent hostility between these two nations and that the United States can play a positive role in Cuba's future.

The flurry of reports suggests some pent up interest on the part of policy wonks, educational, religious and humanitarian groups, and the business community.  Next January will mark the first time in eight years where there is a chance that the next U.S. President could loosen restrictions on Cuba.  A number of groups, who have been noticeably quiet over the past few years, are watching closely.

These are not the last of the drumbeats.  Next year, I suspect you will see more calls for changes in policy.  (In particular, watch for something from this organization.) 

As these reports suggest, a new approach to Cuba is fairly easy to accomplish.  President-elect Obama could send a signal to the Cuban people and the world by changing Cuba policy via a simple Federal Register notice and diplomatic outreach.  As the Council on Foreign Relations says, the time is ripe.

Some Heavy Musings on the Special Relationship Posted by Adam Blickstein

Pat's post is an excellent light examination of the current state of the special relationship between the U.S. and Britain. When Winston Churchill first uttered the phrase in 1945, it signaled a cementing of military cooperation between the two powers in the post-war world, predicated on the looming strategic threat from the Soviet Union. The traditional military underpinnings of the special relationship, though, arguably saw its bookend in terms of what we commonly viewed it as meaning during the Balkan crisis and NATO's Kosovo intervention in 1999. It was a coalescing of common strategic interest and internal domestic support, as well as the binding interventionist views of both Clinton and Blair. But post-Kosovo, there was a strategic breakdown between the two countries vis-à-vis Blair's support for the Iraq war as a deviation from the special relationship, not an indicator of its strength (though Bush used lofty rhetoric to suggest otherwise).

British historian Ian Kershaw examined this angle in an LA Times piece last year. It suggests that while the nature of the special relationship has retained common strategic aims, divergent strategies on how to achieve these common goals and differing degrees of domestic opinion have transformed it. Also, the financial crisis could move Britain closer to Europe in order to bolster its economic security, which might be another indicator that the traditional view of the special relationship is more specious than before.

The key to the special relationship has been that it was never based on a myopic partnership solely between the America and Britain, but that the U.K and U.S traditionally lead broad coalitions of nations with common strategic goals and common internal domestic views. Domestic political uncertainty and dissatisfaction amongst traditional allies, not to mention the effects of the economic crisis, may hinder our ability to return to the traditional notion of a special relationship. Indeed Blair's support for the Iraq war may have inextricably scarred it. Perhaps Barack Obama and Gordon Brown can reinvigorate it, especially in terms of Afghanistan, by reengaging our allies, especially those who are still reluctant to participate in necessary military operations there (Britain has already intimated it is indeed up to other allies to act first on increasing their commitment in Afghanistan).

But Obama's first step in attempting to resuscitate the special relationship wouldn't be to necessarily court Britain specifically and then branch out from there, but to implement a broader strategic framework which would reengage all our traditional allies. By doing so, Britain and America could once again be the leaders of many instead of trying to go it alone as a tandem, something which has sabotaged the special relationship for 8 years now

Less Lawyers, More Auditors Posted by Michael Cohen

David Isenberg has a very good piece up today on the Blackwater indictments, with this excellent takeaway:

The proper utilization of private military and security contractors depends on having a prepared and educated client. If the people, meaning the U.S. government, who hire contractors are not prepared to not only write a detailed contract, but also monitor and audit it, meaning having capable and adequately resourced contracting officers who go out in the field to check up on contractors, then bad things will continue to happen.

The best thing is to prevent bad things from happening in the first place, not to have adequate means to prosecute them after they happen. What that means is less lawyers and more auditors. Up to now the government has been missing in action on that count.

This is exactly right. I have no problem with indicting these guards if they broke the law, but let's not be confused about who is ultimately to blame here; it's not Blackwater, it's the government that sent them to Iraq without thinking about the implications of having private security contractors working in an active battle space.

Some Light Musings on the Special Relationship Posted by Patrick Barry

This eloquent plea to Secretary Gates by Allan Mallinson, gives good flavor to the problems presently marring U.S.-Britain relations, and also lays out a few concrete steps in the area of defense policy that show how this decline could be reversed.

One advantage of Obama taking office in January is that it will probably lay the groundwork for reinvigorating the 'special relationship.'  It's easy to forget, in a context of near global dissatisfaction, that even alliances as fundamental as our relationship with Great Britain have suffered considerable strain over the past 8 years. As the occasional surfacing of squabbles over counterinsurgency, or more substantively, the war in Afghanistan, indicate, deep grievances exist.  If you accept Mallinson's argument, then resolving these differences will be key if the Obama administration expects to make the substantial alterations to current U.S. foreign policy that it has so far discussed.

Who Are You Calling A Federalist? Posted by David Shorr

Over on TPM Cafe Book Club, we had a good discussion last week about Michael Lind's fascinating American Way of Strategy (now out in paperback). I'm tardy in replying to a post of Michael's on sovereigntyand interventionism, so I'll respond here. Lind draws some important dividing lines, but he puts a little too much ideological baggage on my side of the dividce. It's worth quoting at length.

Unlike world federalists, we traditional liberal internationalists do not view a global society of sovereign states as a stepping-stone to a global federal government or a post-national global society. The global society of sovereign states is our final goal, and it is not an end in itself, but merely a means for distinct peoples to work out their local destinies with a minimum of unsought interference...

People who say that globalization is good because it is reducing the control of nation-states over flows of goods, capital and immigrants across borders by definition are not liberal internationalists, for whom nation-states should be free to choose their own trade policies, their own foreign investment policies, and their own immigration policies. Countries may choose stupid and counterproductive policies, but that is their right.

I guess we do disagree about ultimate ends, though I'm not sure. I know I'm not celebrating the breakdown of national borders and waiting for the eschaton of a global government. I do see it as possible, even desirable, for national differences to fade over the long term, the very long term. A new basis for global society could emerge, but it is a question for some future century, so I don't know how much of a difference that leaves between Lind and myself. In the meantime, I certainly recognize the importance of sovereign nation-states as the building blocks of the current (and forseeable) international order.

Lind and I do clearly have different understandings of interdependence, its nature and its implications. Sovereign nations indeed have their own policy prerogatives. Whatever their rights as independent actors and their policy choices, they will not be able to insulate themselves from international trends and pressures. And that's why we have a global society and not global government. I do want more countries to choose constructive policies and think that such alignment is possible and influence-able, short of global government. Michael portrays too much of an all-or-nothing false choice between a supra-national authority and laissez faire international politics. I think there is a much wider range of possibilities in between denial of sovereignty and mild moral suasion than Lind admits. Even the concept of national sovereignty may not be so cut and dried. As Kal Raustiala of UCLA argued in his 2003 article "Rethinking the Sovereignty Debate in International Economic Law," many international norms fill in gaps where there isn't operative sovereignty rather than subverting existing national sovereignty.