What the heck is going on down there? Posted by Ken Gude

I fail to understand how the Bush administration could have screwed up its detainee policy so badly. Yes, their record is a long catalog of catastrophic failures, from the grossly flawed strategy in Iraq to the complete indifference during Katrina. But the issue of detaining and interrogating suspected al Qaeda terrorists is different--they cared as much or more about it as they did getting rid of Saddam Hussein, but they gave the job to a whole bunch of Brownies, and they sure have been doin' a heck uva job.

The latest evidence comes from a story in today's Washington Post and a book excerpt that ran in the Guardian last Saturday. The Post story details allegations from Guantanamo detainees that they were forcibly drugged during interrogations, transfers, and to restrain them in their cells. While it seems unlikely (though not impossible) that there was widespread use of drugs during interrogations, the most plausible explanations for the consistent accounts from detainees is that they were given chemical restraints to subdue them and those administering the drugs had no idea what they were doing.

Philippe Sands, in his new book Torture Team, portions of which were re-printed in the Guardian over the weekend, uncovered more stories of mind boggling inexperience and incompetence. Topping the list was the revelation that the source of greatest inspiration during the development of interrogations techniques at Guantanamo was none other than Jack Bauer. Yes, the guy from 24, and no, I am not kidding. The junior staff lawyer responsible for approving the list of techniques told Sands that Bauer "gave people lots of ideas."

The Bush administration believed that interrogating terrorist suspects was so important that bedrock principles which formed the basis of our military culture for decades were "obsolete". The reason why they thought it was so important was that they feared we were all going to die in another al Qaeda attack and information gained from interrogations was in some cases our first and only line of defense. But instead of bringing in experienced interrogators and knowledgeable regional and al Qaeda experts, we got Dr. Quinn and Jack Bauer. This is the nature of my confusion.

In Women’s Absence, No Security for Kenya Posted by Marie Wilson

Today, the National Council of Women of Kenya decried their exclusion from the current mediation talks being lead by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.  The Council’s chair, Isabella Karanja, condemned Kenya’s disregard for UN Security Council Resolution 1325 that supports women's participation in mediation.  I’ve been paying close attention to Kenya’s dramatic social and political breakdown, and I can assure you that the exclusion of women from the mediation process is not only unjust – it is a grave sentence for the Kenyan people and their nation’s future.

The country’s rapid descent into violence and relative chaos was sparked by a crack in the veneer of its successful democracy, and attributed to tribal anger and the back-and-forth of ethnic reprisals.  But the violence that Kenyans are suffering, and that we witness in disturbing daily imagery, is rooted in the nation’s lack of access to jobs and healthcare, inequalities in land and resources – all glaring disparities which are funneled into ethnic tensions.  Kenya’s current malaise will only be cured through the acknowledgement of human security as fundamental to state security.  And the issues which make up human security are the issues that women have continually championed worldwide: basic human needs like economic and environmental justice, safe streets, healthcare and education.

Kenya is not unique.  With few exceptions, women have found themselves systematically closed out of the security debate – with severe consequences for national and global security.  Which is why The White House Project, along with a myriad of other groups across the globe, have come together to permanently shift the way we think about, and enact policy, on security. 

In November of 2007, The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands in partnership with The White House Project, the Council of Women World Leaders and the Women Leaders Intercultural Forum, convened the historic International Women Leaders Global Security Summit in New York, bringing together over 75 of the worlds most powerful women leaders in a Call to Action on international security.  Under the leadership of co-hosts Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, and Kim Campbell, former Prime Minister of Canada, they worked together to tackle the world’s most critical security issues. And in the Summit’s aftermath, hundreds of women and men alike have signed on to this critical cause, committing their resources to uphold the bold imperative of crafting policy that holds human security to be intimately intertwined with state security.  I encourage you to join this vital effort and sign the Call to Action as well.

We are witnessing moves in the right direction, and I am heartened by the women and men around the world currently working on issues of human security.  When I was researching the new afterward to my book, Closing the Leadership Gap, I was buoyed by how far women have come in the field of security since the book’s original publication four years ago.  But there is so much further that we need to go in order to normalize women’s leadership in this area, and truly listen to the women working on the ground when we craft national policy.  From Kenya’s post-election violence to the devastation in Iraq, we need women’s voices to be an integral part of the conversation.  As the scale of violence and human insecurity continues its rapid escalation, the critical paradigm shift on security cannot wait a moment longer.

The New "Moral Clarity"? Posted by Shadi Hamid

These pictures of Jose Padilla are disgusting (via Andrew). So much for the Bush administration’s “moral clarity.” For some, “morality” is apparently is so blinding that the ends always justify the means, no matter how horrific those means are. Liberals should be making the case very clearly that any administration that endorses torture is not and cannot be a moral one. It is disappointing that Democratic leaders aren’t making a bigger deal of the torture issue, the one issue which does, in fact, threaten the very moral foundations of our country more than anything else. Whatever Jose Padilla is being accused of (apparently not much), that doesn't justify making the man into a mental vegetable. We are talking about the destruction of another human being. From a recent New York Times article:

“During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body,” Mr. Patel said. “The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel.”

Let's also keep in mind that Padilla is a US citizen, one who is, presumably, subject to the conditions and guarantees of his Constitution. Of course, the Bush administration cares little about liberty at home, while talking a lot about it abroad (and, even then, it fails to follow up).

So liberals must say it without hesitation: we will not allow the fight against terror to cloud our moral judgment. Under no circumstance will be excuse, explain away, or justify torture. This is non-freakin'-negotiable. But maybe the Dems are afraid of saying this because they don’t want to be “soft” on national security. Well, if that’s the case, then we should be ashamed of ourselves. If this article on Padilla doesn’t provoke a sense of moral outrage in us, then we can throw our god-forsaken “morality” out the window.

In hindsight, I find it quite baffling that we impeached a president for getting a blow job. Today, we have a president who has actively supported and facilitated torture in the name of freedom and liberty, a form of hypocrisy which is an insult to every man and woman in uniform putting his or her life on the line. Which is worse? It’s not like Clinton even had sexual intercourse. The same cannot be said for quite a few current and former Republican congressmen. This is the new “moral clarity” for you. Enjoy.

It's Official: Congressman Shays Lives in a Parallel Universe Posted by Shadi Hamid

So rarely have I been revolted as I was while watching this disingenuous piece of obsfucastion and denial by purported nice guy Congressman Chris Shays. Here is a man who has explained away and excused the Bush administration's open policy of facilitating torture while, in Orwellian fashion, calling it something else. See his pathetic performance here. Shays and the other torture-justifiers have chosen to turn a blind eye to some of the most egregious abuses of power our country has ever seen. It has destroyed our crediblity, but, more importantly, it has destroyed our moral sense as a nation.  Progressives should forget polls and remember principle, and start attacking the torture apologists on this issue like there's no tomorrow.

Libya: Murder on the Docket Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Despite the fact that the US Congress may soon be voting on a bill that many believe sanctions torture  ....Americans should ramp up their outrage for a human rights blight ongoing right now in Libya. Refresher: The USA "made friends" with Libya a few years back, ostensibly because Gadaffi opened up his notably unimpressive nuclear program to international inspection...This shocked many as it happened less than two decades after Libya blew up Pan Am 103 over Scotland.  (I'm in that group, as I lived in London at the time, and knew people on the flight)  Hopefully, the blogs can make up for the lack of attention to this dreadful situation:

"Imagine that five American nurses and a British doctor have been detained and tortured in a Libyan prison since 1999, and that a Libyan prosecutor called at the end of August for their execution… on trumped-up charges of deliberately contaminating more than 400 children with HIV in 1998. Meanwhile, the international community and its leaders sit by, spectators of a farce of a trial, leaving a handful of dedicated volunteer humanitarian lawyers and scientists to try to secure their release.

Implausible? That scenario, with the medics enduring prison conditions reminiscent of the film Midnight Express,  is currently playing out in a Tripoli court, except that the nationalities of the medics are different . The nurses are from Bulgaria and the doctor is Palestinian."

These poor souls have been locked up since 1999. Their retrial has been postponed until October 31st.  Maybe Gaddafi's British educated son --who runs a charitable foundation--could call dad about a human rights at home sometime in the next 30 days?

This is a red  and a blue  issue.  Another site for background is here

Human Rights Council: You Say Yes, I Say No Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Today the US was virtually the lone dissenter as the UN Human Rights Council was voted into being to replace the body's discredited Human Rights Commission.  We've had plenty of posts here on the issues surrounding the composition and credibility of the Council. 

The compromise terms of reference adopted for the Council manifestly fall short of what both the US government and most human rights advocates wanted to see, particularly in terms of ensuring that the Council's membership excludes human rights violators, and those who intend to use the Council for political point-scoring rather than to advance the cause of human rights.

Here's how Ambassador John Bolton put it: 

We must not let history remember us as the architects of a council that was a ‘compromise’ and merely ‘the best we could do’ rather than one that ensured doing ‘all we could do’ to promote human rights

This is a statement that, at least a few weeks ago, most human rights NGOs would have agreed with.

Bolton also said, however, that the US intends to work with the new Council, and will agree to fund it.

So here's the question, given that the new Council is not all it could or should have been, was it right for the US to cast a protest vote reiterating its principled reservations?  After all, why should the US acquiesce in mediocrity and half-measures when it comes to something as important as human rights?

Bush responsibility for a weak UN Human Rights Council Posted by Jeffrey Laurenti

Mort Halperin, in bringing to this blog the insights of Human Rights Watch's Larry Moss on the negotiations for a United Nations Human Rights Council, underscores the issues on how the Council will be only modestly improved over the 60-year-old Human Rights Commission it's intended to replace. The obvious question is why the reform is so modest.

And the bottom-line answer is: John Bolton.

Bolton, of course, is simply the personification of a broader Bush administration strategy of confrontation and steam-rollering. That strategy backfired in the reform negotiations for the September summit, as it has repeatedly in other foreign-policy debacles, and the watering down of Kofi Annan's ambitious plan to upgrade international human rights machinery is just the latest proof.

We could have had a strong Human Rights Council approved when national leaders were in town in New York in September, wrapped into a summit package that repeated previously agreed commitments on development goals, development aid, and nuclear controls. But John Bolton -- who by all accounts really reports to Dick Cheney, not the Secretary of State -- insisted on waging war against the development goals and aid targets, derailing the tentatively agreed package. That sent the poor majority of countries into immediate opposition, and wholesale deletions of proposals and commitments followed -- a "race to the bottom" in the summit declaration. And once the summit was over, the details of the Human Rights Council could only be traded off against other details of the Council -- not against assistance for the development priorities that poorer countries care most passionately about.

So, deprived of leverage, having no sweeteners to give in exchange for a body that will dispense human rights condemnations, Western negotiators have had to give way on the size of the majorities that would be required for election, on the time the Council would be in active session, on the rigor of standards for membership, etc.

Moreover, as Mort and Larry pointed out, after all the reform debate about making membership on the new Council conditional on meeting fundamental human rights standards, Bolton astonished the international community by floating a proposal to seat the five permanent members of the Security Council permanently on the Human Rights Council. That, plus the US coolness to the calls by human rights reformers and Kofi Annan for competitive electdions to the Council settled by a two-thirds majority vote, exposed the Bush administration's recognition of the glaring weakness of its own human rights record. The government that trumpets democracy promotio is now so associated worldwide with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that it fears it cannot win an election against Sweden or Germany or Ireland for a seat on the Council.

Thus goes American "leadership" in the first decade of the 21st century.

The UN Human Rights Council Posted by Morton H. Halperin

Lawrence C. Moss, who is representing Human Rights Watch in the negotiations to create a new UN Human Rights Council, has written the following piece about the ongoing negotiations:

There are many officials of good will in the Bush Administration who do want, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told congressional hearings last week, to create a new UN Human Rights Council (HRC) which would be a substantial improvement on the existing Commission on Human Rights.  However, it is hard to see how that objective has been furthered by the stance taken by the United States in the negotiations in New York.

As its solution to the problem of improving the membership of the new body and preventing the election of inappropriate countries, the US has clung single-mindedly to a proposal to bar the election to the HRC of countries currently under sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council for human-rights related reasons.  As Secretary Rice acknowledged, this proposal has proven highly unpopular.  Many UN member states were reluctant to give the already very powerful Security Council new power to bar countries from serving on the HRC, and observed that the five permanent members of the Security Council (the “P-5”) would never be under sanctions and thus barred.  This concern was exacerbated by US Ambassador John Bolton’s proposal, to presume the P-5 will always be entitled to serve on the Council.  As this proposal would award permanent seats to China and Russia, however poor their human rights records might be or one day become,  it only made the US look hypocritical.

Shoot to kill in Chicago Posted by Morton H. Halperin

Does the president have the right to order the military to shoot a citizen on the streets of Chicago? Could a judge order him not to?  Could Congress pass a law prohibiting such shootings that President Bush would feel that he had to obey?

Regretfully, we have come to the point where these are no longer hypothetical questions.

After all, the legal theory put forward by the administration to justify warrantless surveillance, torture, and detention of "combatants" does not seem to have any limits, and the president did order the military to seize a citizen in Chicago and lock him in a military prison without any right of judicial review and in violation of an explicit law banning such detentions. When the case finally got to court the government transferred Mr. Padilla to a regular prison in the hope of avoiding review.  (The Supreme Court is still considering the case.)

Attorney General Gonzales, at the recent Judiciary Committee hearing, declined to provide a direct answer on this question, saying it was not part of the warrantless surveillance program that he was discussing.  He seemed to admit that there were other "programs" that he was not discussing, so this provided little comfort.  Moreover, another official in a closed session apparantly did concede what is obvious to any careful reader of the administration's statements, namely, that there is no way to distinguish the right to order assasinations from other powers that the President has claimed.

the US and Iran: anti-gay collaborators Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Even if they can't agree on nuclear power, seems the US and Iran are in harmony when it comes to discriminating against gay people (along with the Sudan). Three cheers for Representative Tom Lantos (CA)--co Chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus for revealing this incident in this letter to Ambassador Bolton:

Dear Ambassador Bolton:

I am writing to express my shock and bewilderment in learning of a very harmful and hurtful action taken earlier this week by your staff at the U.S. mission to the UN in New York.  As you may now know, U.S. representatives on the Non-Governmental Organization Committee to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Monday supported a hateful anti-human rights motion brought by the Iranian and Sudanese regimes to dismiss the application of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) and the Danish national gay and lesbian organization Landsforeningen for Bosser og Lesbiske for consultative status to ECOSOC.

I sincerely hope that the U.S. vote on this issue was a technical error or the unfortunate result of an undisciplined U.S. officer operating on his or her own without instructions.  In any case, I am asking you to clearly and publicly disavow and explain this anti-human rights vote before it does any long-term damage to U.S. moral authority at the UN.  I would also like to discuss with you, at length, any possible breakdown in State Department procedures that may have led to this most unfortunate U.S. action.

Imbalance of Power Posted by Spencer Boyer

Spencer P. Boyer

Season's greetings.  Suzanne Nossel asked me to be a guest contributor while she is in South Africa. By way of background, I am a Fellow to the Security and Peace Initiative of the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation.

President Bush defends his program of warrantless surveillance of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, by pointing to a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing him to use all necessary force against those responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001. He also makes the case that, as Commander in Chief in a time of war, he has the power do whatever he sees fit, regardless of legal prohibitions, when he believes it is in the national interest to do so. Unfortunately, his actions are indefensible.

To start with, there is no ambiguity when it comes to FISA. Congress made it clear when it enacted the law in 1978 that the President must have a judicial warrant to eavesdrop on Americans. Congress clearly rejected the idea of inherent Presidential authority to conduct warrantless wiretaps in the U.S. and made such actions by the executive branch a crime.

The administration cites Congress’s 2001 use-of-force statute, which authorized the President to use “necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” as giving him the authority to conduct these warrantless searches on Americans. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales attempted to bolster this point by stating that domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency only occurs where there is a reasonable basis to conclude that one of the parties of the communication is a member of al Qaeda or otherwise affiliated. The administration’s points do not, however, make the domestic spying program any more legal.

As a general matter, a declaration of war, which we have not had since World War II, arguably triggers a range of common law-of-war authorities in addition to standby statutes keyed to “declared war,” “war,” or “time of war.” Use-of-force statutes, on the other hand, have less of a domino effect and do not trigger certain standby authorities, such as the power under the Alien Enemy Act to detain alien enemies, keyed to a declaration of war. But nothing in the 2001 congressional authorization, which was specific in its language, gives the President power to ignore the clear statutory prohibitions in FISA. FISA does allow the Attorney General to use warrantless wiretaps for fifteen days after a declaration of war. But even if the 2001 authorization was a declaration of war, which it was not, the surveillance would have been authorized for only that short period of time. 

In addition, in a Washington Post Op-ed on Friday, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle rejects the notion that Congress intended the 2001 authorization to exempt the President from FISA. Senator Daschle, who helped negotiate the authorization, states that the administration tried, and failed, to insert language allowing for expansive Presidential powers in the U.S.  Thus, there can be no illusion concerning Congress’s intent.

This administration’s penchant for increasing executive power in the name of national security – denying prisoners access to lawyers or courts, indefinitely detaining individuals as enemy combatants, rejecting the applicability of the Geneva Conventions – continues to trample on civil liberties. If we are to accept President Bush’s claim, he could ignore any clear law he disagrees with during our war on terrorism, which could last for decades. The Constitution requires the President to take care that all laws are faithfully executed, not just the ones he likes. The Framers of our Constitution guarded against an abuse of power by the President by embedding governmental powers in a system of checks and balances. It is time for Congress and the courts to re-establish the equilibrium.

Restoring America's Honor Posted by Morton H. Halperin

As I write, the current session of the United States Congress is nearing its end. Congress is never at its best when it seeks to draft complicated legislation as it races for the door. Now it is close to banning torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment -- as it should. But at the same time it is close to limiting access to the courts to enforce this rule -- which it should not do.

Of the many issues in play in these last days none is more consequential for our own democracy, and for our ability to influence Iraqi and other behavior, than the debate over the Graham-Levin provisions seeking to limit the right of judicial review for those held in Guantanamo. This provision was written on the Senate floor without benefit of hearings and is now being rewritten in secret by conferees with little knowledge or understanding of what is at stake. This provision would undercut the intent of the McCain amendment banning torture, which this administration has now accepted. As Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter has urged, the provision should be stripped from the Defense Authorization bill now in conference and sent to the Judiciary Committee for hearings.

No Ambiguity on Torture Posted by Morton H. Halperin

Secretary Rice implemented a two pronged strategy in dealing with the torture issue during her trip to Europe.  First, she threatened European governments by asserting that nothing was done that violated their sovereignty. The warning was clear:  the US government will expose the complicity of European governments in secret renditions if they continue to imply that they were done without their consent. Second, she implied that she was announcing a change in policy only to deny that she had.

This will not do. Congress must act to make clear that the United States will not engage in any conduct prohibited by the Convention Against Torture (CAT) as Congress understood those prohibitons when it ratified the CAT.

Intervention: When and How Posted by Morton H. Halperin

My friends at the America Abroad blog have been conducting a lively debate about whether liberals have become too committed to intervention.  Ivo Daalder has been kind enough to encourage me to join the debate and I am pleased to do so.

There is as much confusion about this topic as almost any.  One part of the confusion is whether the term "intervention" means the use of military force.  I am going to use it in that way. Otherwise, we need to cope with the fact that the great powers, and especially the United States, are always  "intervening" in all sorts of situations, both by action and inaction.  The interesting and hard questions are about when we should use force.

The second confusion comes from lumping together different motives for intervention, especially those that pertain to American ideals, including stopping humanitarian disasters and promoting democracy.  I want to deal with these two motives for the use of military force.

I start with a strong bias in favor of a double standard.  That is, I recognize that we cannot intervene every time there are people being deprived of basic human rights.  Nor can we intervene every time democracy is threatened or an opportunity to establish democracy may be lost. However, that does not mean that we should never intervene.  That we cannot deal with all deprivations cannot mean that we should not act in those situations where we can make a difference for the better.

Let me start with humanitarian intervention. Certainly a commitment to react to a human rights violation by sending in military force would be a recipe for perpetual war.  There are many other things we can and should do to try to reduce suffering, including referring cases to the ICC and imposing targeted sanctions on the leaders of governments engaging in human rights abuses.

There have been a number of efforts to list the conditions to be met in determining when force should be used in reaction to systematic human rights abuses. They all reach similar and sensible conclusions.  First,  we would always prefer to go in pursuant to a UN Security Council resolution, but we cannot rule out acting when it is impossible to get one, especially if we try and are thwarted by a veto when a large majority of the Council is ready to authorize force.

Second, there must be proportionality of various kinds.  We must have reason to believe that the level of force contemplated can do the job and that it will not cause more harm and suffering than it will stop or deter.  Third, the nature of the human rights violation must be extremely serious, amounting to genocide or systematic violation of fundamental human rights.

As we contemplate the use of force we must be willing to use the amount of force necessary to accomplish the humanitarian goal -- no more and no less.  What that will be will vary from situation to situation.  In Somalia it was possible to establish safe havens where people could come for food and security without intervening in the civil war and seeking to capture warlords.  In Kosovo the administration that I was a part of concluded that the ethnic cleansing could be stopped only by securing three objectives -- the Serb military out,  an international military force in, and the future of Kosovo left for another day. 

When we intervene for humanitarian purposes we have an obligation to put into place institutions that can preserve the peace and to help build new governmental structures.  We have done very badly at that and will continue to do so until we create new organizations at the national and international level to perform these tasks.  Appointing coordinators, moving bureaucratic boxes around and even creating commissions is not enough.

On the question of intervention to promote democracy I start with a different premise.  The use of force can never be justified to seek to impose democracy on another country.  There are many reasons for this.  As Iraq reminds us, it is very very hard to do and often will lead to more suffering and armed conflict.  Moreover, democracy is not yet a universal value and I do not think we have the right to impose this form of government on others.  Democracy can work only if the people of a nation find a way to get on the path to democracy.  Then we have an obligation to help them stay on that path.  Once a people have started on the path to democracy, they have taken sovereignty into their hands.  Any group in that state which seeks to usurp that power is acting to undercut the sovereignty of a people and the international community, in my view, has a duty to do what it can to protect the people's sovereignty.

Only in rare circumstances does it make sense to contemplate the use of force to insure that a people who are on the path to democracy are able to remain on that path. That would happen when there is an illegal use of force -- usually a military coup -- to disrupt the democratic process.  (See Halperin and Galic, eds., Protecting Democracy, Lexington Books. 2005).

Even then military force may not always been sensible.  In some cases diplomacy and economic sanctions may be sufficient.  In other cases the government that was deposed, even if originally elected in a democratic free and fair election, may have become so corrupt that there is no chance to bring it back into force.  In those cases diplomacy should focus on the rapid return to democracy.

When there is a coup against a functioning democratic government and diplomatic and economic efforts fail to restore the legitimate government, the international community should consider the use of force.  A UN Security Council resolution, as in the case of Haiti, would provide the best legitimacy, but regional organizations to which the state belongs would have the right to act if necessary. Force must be limited and aimed only at restoring the previous legitimate government.

We must not let George Bush give intervention for humanitarian purposes or to advance democracy a bad name as he seeks to use them in retrospect to justify his Iraqi intervention.  At the same time we should not be driven to the view that such interventions are always justified if only done by the right people.

What Does the Democratic Party Believe In? Posted by Shadi Hamid

It's been a pleasure guest blogging for Democracy Arsenal. I hope I'€™ve provided some insight into the question of democracy promotion in the Arab world, and Egypt in particular. For this, my last post, I want to just throw out a few disjointed, but hopefully useful, thoughts about the future of the Democratic Party.

For a while now, I've been getting increasingly frustrated with our party's approach to foreign policy. Let me just backtrack a little bit. I remember, last year during the election campaign, when John Kerry cited "stability" as our most important objective in Iraq. There was something disturbing about the idea that our soldiers were dying by the hundreds for "stability." For some it seemed a perfectly logical statement - yet more evidence that Kerry would be the safe, sober choice relative to the recklessness of George Bush and his coterie of war-crazed advisors. For others like me, we wondered, perhaps with looks of incredulity on our faces, how and when sobriety had become the revered hallmark of the Democratic Party. (Of course, stability is of vital importance. But one would hope that stability is not, by itself, all we are striving for in Iraq).

This otherwise unremarkable statement from John Kerry was evidence of the poverty of new, or even interesting, ideas in our party. It's become a cliche by now, but we're lacking the "vision thing." For all its faults, at least the Bush administration acted (or pretended) like it operated out of conviction and not calculation. When you listened to Bush speak about a variety of foreign policy issues, you got a sense that he was presenting a vision, however frightening that vision sometimes was. Ideology mixed with foreign policy can be dangerous (i.e. the last 5 years) but, then again, I suspect that few Americans have an emotional affinity for the dank grayness of realpolitik.

There doesn'€™t seem to be even a trace of Woodrow Wilson in our Democratic leaders (Joe Biden is an exception that comes to mind). More often than not, we'€™ve avoided the issue of democracy promotion in the Middle East like it was some kind of partisan plague unleashed by Karl Rove. I dislike many things about Bush's foreign policy, but I -€“ and I say this with a more than a hint of reluctance -€“ really liked the language Bush used in his state of the union and inaugural addresses earlier this year. "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you," or "the road of providence is uneven and unpredictable, yet we know where it leads: It leads to freedom." It'€™s unfortunate that these words, so long overdue, came from a Republican president. This used to be our issue. A passion for promoting freedom, democracy and human rights used to be what animated us and what drove us. This was the essence of what it meant to be a liberal internationalist. But now it seems that the liberals have turned conservative and the conservatives turned liberal.

It seems to me that a keen awareness of the West's often destructive role in the region coupled with well-deserved anger over the last 5 years of President Bush's messianic militarism has pushed many democrats to disengage from the noble and worthwhile venture of democracy building. In the process, the Democratic Party -€“ which used to be most vigorous in its support of humanitarian intervention abroad -€“ has ceded this crucial issue to the neo-conservatives.

So a few questions to all of you Democracy Arsenal readers and I'd love to hear your feedback: What do we believe in ? What are the ideas that guide us ? Will we be able to provide a bold, comprehensive vision for US foreign policy ?  More importantly, what is our overarching theme, our  message, our meta-narrative ?

Yes, I am a Democrat, and a proud one at that, but I have no problem saying that I hope that America's great project this century will be the unapologetic, vigorous promotion of democracy in the Middle East (note: this does not mean using military force). This is not so much a policy choice as it is a moral commitment. Moreover, it'€™s an idea and it'€™s a vision and, yes, it'€™s also in our national interests. This was once also, long ago, our language -€“ the language of Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. It is easy to forget it now, but the driving force of the Left has always been something much greater, and certainly more noble than "stability." Let us, then, work to reclaim that lost spirit.

What Iraq Has Taught Us About Humanitarian Intervention Posted by Suzanne Nossel

There's an important debate underway on America Abroad about where the liberal internationalist consensus for humanitarian intervention stands after Iraq (see Anne-Marie Slaughter's latest post for a partial summary).  The gist is an argument over whether, as David Rieff claims, after Iraq, humanitarian intervention can no longer be distinguished from self-interested, imperialistic interventions done under the guise of promoting human rights and ousting despots.  Back in the Spring of 2004 (actually, the Summer of 2003, in light of FA's pub cycle) I fretted that exactly this would happen, writing in Foreign Affairs that:

After September 11, conservatives adopted the trappings of liberal internationalism, entangling the rhetoric of human rights and democracy in a strategy of aggressive unilateralism. But the militant imperiousness of the Bush administration is fundamentally inconsistent with the ideals they claim to invoke. To reinvent liberal internationalism for the twenty-first century, progressives must wrest it back from Republican policymakers who have misapplied it.

Shadi Hamid has touched on similar issues in posts immediately below.   There's much I agree with in responses to Rieff from Slaughter, Bruce Jentleson, Ivo Daalder and John Ikenberry, including the essential point that Iraq was emphatically not a humanitarian intervention.  It doesn't even qualify as the hard case that might make bad law.   But that said, Iraq has taught us key lessons that can and must guide future thinking on humanitarian intervention, mostly raising the bar for when we should intervene and how we need to do it.  I list 10 of them.  Look forward to additions, subtractions and comments.

1.  Principle Motivation Must be Perceived as Humanitarian - I disagree strongly with Rieff that humanitarian intervention has already been discredited beyond salvation.  But after a few more Iraqs, that likely would be true.   No matter the stated reasons for intervention, audiences in the affected country and at home will judge motives for themselves.  Humanitarian intervention will normally implicate some strategic US interest, writ broadly.  But any whiff of narrower self-interest (especially involving economic or domestic political considerations) can foul the air completely.  James Baker's observation that we had no dog in the fight in Bosnia may, ironically, have helped legitimize our interventions in Bosnia and later in Kosovo.

2.  While it Need Not Necessarily Derive from Any Single Source, Legitimacy is Essential - Anne-Marie Slaughter and Ivo Daalder illuminate how the US operation in Kosovo, though without UN imprimatur, had the effect of "pushing" international law to provide broader license for similar interventions, culminating in this Fall's adoption of a UN "responsibility to protect" (a duty that, unaccountably, has not been invoked in Darfur).   Rather than fixating exclusively on a single form of sanction (UN Security Council, for example), advocates of humanitarian intervention will need to ensure they can credibly claim some source of legitimacy (for example, from a regional organization).

3.  Humanitarian intervention is war - Rieff is right to emphasize this, particular since the point was forgotten by those (outside the Administration) who favored war in Iraq on humanitarian grounds.    Many expected a quick, clean conflict and thought that if a brutal tyrant like Saddam could be ousted relatively bloodlessly well, then, why not?  Iraq is a reminder of the  risks that make going to war a momentous decision:  loss of American lives, loss of foreign lives, physical dislocations, social and psychological disruptions, regional destabilization and risk of unpredictable horribles.  While we rightly rue our failure to act in Rwanda, we perhaps don't think enough about what the never-fought "Rwanda War" (and subsequent occupation?) might have been like.

4.  Humanitarian intervention is more than just war - Those of us who believe that humanitarian intervention needs to be among the options available to US policymakers face a major challenge in bringing US capabilities to carry out the non-military aspects of intervention (stabilization, state-building, socio-economic reconstruction, etc.) up to the standards applied to our conventional military operations (counter-terrorism, unfortunately, excluded).   See here for more.

5.   Intervenor Bears Strict Liability for Anything That Goes Wrong - The reasons the operation in Iraq has gone so badly wrong have everything to do with the fact that this was not a humanitarian intervention:  if the US's motives weren't at issue, we wouldn't face the kind of insurgency we do.  But Iraq has nonetheless taught a sobering lesson about the responsibility an intervenor shoulders, fairly or not.  We should never again intervene without a serious examination of the worst-case scenario consequences and how to deal with them.

6.  Negligent Intervention May be Worse than No Intervention - Until Iraq, it never dawned on most of us that the US was capable of an operation as poorly planned and executed as the aftermath of the Iraq intervention.  But we know now.  A hard-headed assessment of preparedness and capabilities is essential to any future humanitarian intervention debate.

7.  When We Go at it Alone, We'd Better Understand Why - Many progressives subscribe to the mantra "with others where possible, alone where necessary."  When it comes to humanitarian intervention, we need to answer honestly why we're alone.  If its because of the rest of the world's biases, indifference, cowardice or helplessness, fine.  If its because we haven't proffered a rationale convincing enough to rally others, because they suspect our motives, or because they believe that measures short of intervention might work, we need to look hard at whether to go ahead.   Analyzing this objectively will be tough.

8.  Humanitarian Intervention Represents a Preventive Policy Failure - Given the emphasis that we progressives place on diplomacy, alliances, multilateral institutions, and fostering democracy and the rule of law, humanitarian intervention should only arise as a need once our best efforts on all these fronts have failed.  That notion may seem obvious, but truly embracing it means rejecting humanitarian intervention"ism" as a major pillar of progressive foreign policy (an pillar that wins favor partly because it allows liberals to demonstrate that they don't shy away from force).  John Ikenberry makes a similar point.

9.  Putting Values into Action Abroad Invites Scrutiny at Home - This is one of the most dangerous aspects of the neo-conservative hijacking of progressive priorities like human rights and the rule of law.  The abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have tainted the way these concepts are understood abroad, and we will spend years undoing that damage.

10.  Today's Interventions Will Both Dictate and Circumscribe Tomorrow's - What we used to think of as "Vietnam Syndrome" has turned out to be an eerie pendulum that swings from one era's mistakes of action (Vietnam, Somalia) into the next's errors of omission (Rwanda, Bosnia), and then back again (Iraq) and again (Darfur).   The challenge of us defenders of humanitarian intervention is to take the last 30 years of experience and build from it a vector of progress (Anne-Marie Slaughter's faith) rather than than a bloody cycle of repetition (Rieff's fear).

Preventing Cruel and Degrading Punishment for Terror Suspects Posted by Suzanne Nossel

There have been some interesting reports this week about the deliberations underway in the Bush Administration over whether to adopt as part of Defense Department guidelines language from the Geneva Conventions that would prohibit cruel, humiliating and degrading punishment.   These guidelines would apparently not apply to CIA interrogations, meaning that the cover prisons now coming to light would not be bound by these strictures.

Some in the Administration are putting forward solid arguments:  that referencing the conventions will help rebuild support for the war on terror among our allies, and send a signal of good faith to Muslims.  This dovetails with the fight underway now in Congress over Senator John McCain's proposed law to ban inhuman treatment during interrogations, a bill President Bush has vowed to veto.

What's amazing is how simplistic the counter-argument seems to be.   According to the NY Times:

Their opponents, who include aides to Vice President Dick Cheney and some senior Pentagon officials, have argued strongly that the proposed language is vague, would tie the government's hands in combating terrorists and still would not satisfy America's critics, officials said . . .

"We may know what they mean in the United States," one senior administration official familiar with the debate said of the Geneva terms. "But views around the world may differ from ours. Having a female interrogator even asking questions of a male might be humiliating to some parts of the Muslim faith."

Here as elsewhere those who reject international law do so on the grounds that once the US acknowledges that international legal obligations exist and apply to us, we then surrender all ability to affect how those requirements are interpreted, and how our actions are evaluated against them. 

In fact its just the opposite.   At least in this case, the mantle of international law makes us more, not less, equipped to shape how our actions are perceived by others. 

First off, its worth noting that the reference to the Geneva provisions in this DoD manual will have absolutely no effect on whether others hold our behavior up to the Geneva standards.   The Bush Administration's rationale for claiming that detentions as part of the fight against terror are exempt from Geneva Convention requirements may have gotten a hearing in the early months after 9/11, but after Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, not to mention just the simple recognition that battling terror will go on for years and sweep up tens of thousands, it no longer holds up.  So allies and enemies will continue to measure our behavior against these standards whether we acknowledge them or not. 

Being able to cite a manual that mentioned Geneva Accord requirements would not have helped us quell the firestorm after Abu Ghraib.  But if US officers are acting in good fait (as they are 99% or more of the time), their government's willingness to formally commit itself to international standards means we're more likely to get the benefit of the doubt when actions are questioned. 

Yes, there will be disputes of legal interpretation - - but in most cases it will be neither possible nor necessary to definitively settle those.   Some Muslims might argue that having a female interrogate a male is inherently humiliating.  But that claim won't be tried in court, much less a Muslim court.  It will be aired publicly and, when the US is behaving reasonably, our interpretations will prevail.   

Our influence over the media, international institutions, and foreign governments gives us a leg up in ensuring that international legal provisions can't be easily used against us since we can shape how they are understood.  The vagueness of the provision that some in the Administration are complaining about can work in our favor, allowing us to argue that where unconventional techniques are needed, nothing in the convention prohibits them.

As for the point that embracing Geneva won't satisfy our critics, that's true.  But it may just satisfy some of our friends who would rather not criticize the US's conduct in the war on terror, but feel compelled to do so in the face of the Administration's apparent indifference to the human rights of certain detainees.

I made similar points several years ago, arguing that the US ought to wrap itself in the Geneva Conventions Law of Occupation in post-war Iraq in order to win ourselves some badly needed legitimacy.  The Administration rejected that approach then, but shouldn't again now.

Talk of the Blogs: Ian Fishback, 82nd Airborne Posted by The Editors

By now you've probably heard of Captain Ian Fishback.  A member of the famed 82nd Airborne, he alleges that members of his battalion routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004.  Along with two other soldiers, Fishback recounted his story to Human Rights Watch after spending 17 months trying to use the proper channels, but it's his poignant letter to Senator John McCain which has the blogosphere talking:

We are America.  Our actions should be held to a higher standard.  I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is 'America.'
(Balkinization has the full text of the letter.)

Laura Rozen highlights portions of the HRW report.

Finally, Andrew Sullivan has really picked up on Fishback's story (here and here).

UN Reform Issue Spotlight: Human Rights Posted by David Shorr

I thought I'd temporarily set aside the debate of Pollyanna (me) versus Chicken Little (Mark Goldberg) versus Solomon (Suzanne) over whether agreement will be reached among UN reform negotiators in New York.

Instead I want to focus on one of the major issues of reform: creating a new Human Rights Council to replace the controversial Human Rights Commission. This issue is especially timely today. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton has requested a small group meeting on this disputed reform in New York, and the likely conveners of such a meeting are probing to make sure the Americans would be bringing new positions to the table. One central question is whether governments can be pressed to improve their rights records more effectively through confrontation or cooperation.

The existing commission is infamous for having some of the worst rights-violating regimes among its elected members -- among others the Sudanese government (even as it backs a genocidal campaign in Darfur). As such countries have used their places on the commission to shield themselves from international pressure, the body has drawn the scorn of the Bush Administration. But the commission is widely seen as discredited and a blot on the UN's reputation.

As it stands, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights meets for just a frenzied six weeks each spring, bickering continuously over resolutions. Now the diplomatic tug-of-war has carried over into the debate over replacing the commission with a new Human Rights Council that would remain in session all year. As one side sees it, the issue is the ability of rights-abusing regimes to fend off scrutiny; for the other side, the problem is the way the U.S. and others unfairly beat up on sovereign states.

As diplomats in New York wrangle over this, naturally there are structural issues regarding how the new body would be organized and elected (a summary of the U.S. position is here). The proposed mechanism for keeping the worst offenders off the council is to require election by a supermajority of two-thirds of the UN General Assembly. There is also supposed to be a system of peer review that subjects all countries to scrutiny on a regular rotation, beginning with those on the council -- a mechanism meant to level the playing field and also deter rights-abusers from seeking membership.

The real issue, though, is whether the council will push for improved rights by pointing fingers at regimes and voting on condemnatory resolutions or by extending a helping hand and quietly cooperating on solutions. The best approach, of course, is to strike a balance between naming-and-shaming and more cooperative approaches. Both are essential to strengthen human rights, and combining the two should be easier for a body that meets year-round.

Foiled by Idealism? - The US Foreign Policy Pendulum Posted by Michael Kraig

Foreign Affairs Managing Editor Gideon Rose recently wrote a very provocative column in the NYT on August 18, appropriately titled, "Get Real."  It is a Realpolitik bashing of America's proclivity for swinging wildly between unrealistic ideals in international relations and prudent balance-of-power pragmatism. He's definitely on to something, but I question his description of current policy realities.

Rose's argument is compelling: the United States has swung back and forth for decades between getting into international messes because of ideals/culture/nationalism, after which pragmatic policies reign and the US extricates itself, only to repeat the idealist debacle again under another Administration.  This pattern, according to Rose, does not respect partisan lines; Dems or Republicans are both prone to the errors of idealism, and both sides have had their chance to extricate America from its unrealistic messes.

There is one problem, however: we are not swinging back to pragmatism this time around - at least, not yet. 

First, Rose forgets what all of DC and much of America have "learned" from their supposed past Realpolitik misdeeds during the Cold War: namely, it was not idealism that led to 9-11, according to this argument, but rather Realism itself that is the cold-blooded culprit.   In the new DC Consensus, our active aiding and abetting of all sorts of authoritarian nasties during the Cold War is what got us into the current mess and made us a hypocrtical sham the world over.  According to both Dems and Republicans, it is time to make things right.

Thus, despite the debacle in Iraq, there is still a largely unquestioned assumption - growing increasingly popular to the point of becoming received wisdom - that the US can only be secure through spreading and supporting true democracy and economic liberalization the world over.  In this new Consensus, the path to Realism is Idealism.   To lessen one's ideals in the name of pragmatism is to invite disaster. 

For this reason, authors such as Reinhold Neibuhr and Hans Morgenthau, and the halcyon Wise Men of post-WW II international system building  (Marshall, Acheson, Kennan, etc.), are no longer being held up as revered historical gurus.  After Vietnam, these Realists felt vindicated in their earlier assessment that our failure was due to an overzealous application of an unrealistic "domino theory" of communism based on the obsessive need to spread systems like ours throughout the Developing World.   There is no similar vindication occurring now; rather, criticism tends to be on the Bush Adm.'s bad methods and faulty original rationales (WMD arguments), rather than criticism of the core assumption of "transforming the Middle East."

More to the point, there is no indication that Condi Rice's State Department is prepared to implement a truly "balance of power" policy of Realpolitik pragmatism and/or a progressive policy of reciprocal engagement and cooperation with the enemy (i.e., detente or rapprochement).   Rose makes much of the new and improved operation at State, but here's what's missing in our actual security policies:

--support for a new security consensus, or common security vision, between the Developed and Developing World at the upcoming negotiations in NY for UN Reform (see Thursday's Washington Post story to see what I mean);

--support for new confidence-building measures (CBMs) toward "rogues" such as Syria, Iran, and North Korea, all of which essentially say, "We recognize you as a sovereign state with legitimate security concerns, interests, and anxieties, and we will talk with you about security guarantees that will meet the interests of both of us without undermining the other." 

--(in other words: a balance of interests, which is what the Realist's balance-of-power is meant to create);

--statements to the effect that our goal toward these 3 states is not regime change, preemptive, preventive, or otherwise, but rather is one of reaching detente or a "grand bargain" that meets the interests of both sides without endangering either side's security;

--allowance of our friends and allies in these respective regions to engage the rogues, invest in them, and trade with them, without punishment from us (for instance, allowing India to negotiate with Iran on a new oil pipeline for South Asia);

--engaging Iran to better manage the threat of a disintegrating Iraq, which would make both Iran and the US massively insecure;

--in sum: the idea of Nixon going to China, with a view of transforming things gradually through achieving a balance of interests and values, rather than radical transformation through winning a competition and delivering outright defeat via coercive methods (i.e., one side's values/interests overturning the other);

--all of this based on the assumption that North Korea, Iran, and Syria are not expansionist powers chomping on the bit to kick out the Americans and win aggressive wars against their neighbors, but rather are insecure regional powers who feel under constant threat of extinction - an assumption that is neither idealistic or realistic, but is simply the truth (see for instance Leon Sigal's argument in Arms Control Today concerning North Korea's motivations and intent, based on actual behavior).

Whatever the current realities, is Rose right in his prescriptions?  Yes.  I do hope that Rose's pragmatic turn will happen soon, as laid out above, because as recently argued by Realpolitik Middle East analyst F. Gregory Gause in Foreign Affairs,

"Is it true that the more democratic a country becomes, the less likely it is to produce terrorists and terrorist groups? In other words, is the security rationale for promoting democracy in the Arab world based on a sound premise? Unfortunately, the answer appears to be no....Terrorism appears to stem from factors much more specific than regime type. Nor is it likely that democratization would end the current campaign against the United States. Al Qaeda and like-minded groups are not fighting for democracy in the Muslim world; they are fighting to impose their vision of an Islamic state. Nor is there any evidence that democracy in the Arab world would "drain the swamp," eliminating soft support for terrorist organizations among the Arab public..."

Michael Kraig, Director of Policy Analysis and Dialogue, The Stanley Foundation

Top 10 Things To Do for Darfur Short of U.S. Military Intervention Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Kevin asks whether we ought to be prepared to send in armed troops to stop genocide. My answer is yes, provided we think we can get the job done and there isn’t an equivalent or better alternative to get the killing stopped. Given the weaknesses of the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed, I assume the operation would ordinarily be eminently doable.

But one of the worst things about our single-handed Iraq invasion is that for the first time in recent memory a legitimate question can be raised about whether the U.S. is over-extended to the point where we cannot assume new military obligations. As a political matter, Iraq has also made it tough to contemplate mounting another challenging military intervention. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, but it does suggest that we won’t.  Progressives need to look beyond the a false dichotomy of either proposing a military intervention that is a political non-starter, or keeping a low profile on the Darfur tragedy out of an abashed sense that we don't know how to fully solve it.

If we right away did everything possible short of sending combat troops, we’d save a lot of lives, and make an eventual U.S. military role more feasible (and maybe even less necessary). I am no expert on Darfur, but those that are suggest that these are some places to start:

1. Put the heat on NATO to buttress the AU – The US, UN, EU and NATO have been passing the hot potato when it comes to taking action in Sudan. NATO has its limitations, but its better positioned than any other organization to become the focal point for partnering with the AU to try to make that mission effective. The U.S. should take the lead in pushing the alliance to prove its relevance by getting involved. NATO should take the lead in negotiating terms with the AU, instead of waiting until broader help is asked for. This month’s G-8 meeting in Scotland would be a good opportunity to make the case (though other G-8 members may turn the tables wanting support for their anti-poverty plans in Africa).

2. Put NATO troops on the ground – It will be impossible to turn around Darfur without putting substantial numbers of competent and equipped troops on the ground quickly. That’s an impossibility for the AU, so partnering effectively with them means sending in a portion of the 17,000 troops NATO supposedly has at the ready. All else under discussion – airlift, training, advisers – are half-measures. But in doing this, we need to realize that a NATO "bridge" until the AU is ready to take over may wind up lasting a long while.

3. Enforce a no-fly zone – The need for a no-fly zone to stop air raids on civilians has been discussed for upwards of a year.It was contained in the Darfur Accountability Act, which the Administration opposed.

4. Making it clear that preventing genocide trumps intelligence cooperation – The Sudanese government must love the fact that the U.S. is being reported to have toned down its outcry on Darfur so as not to interfere with Khartoum’s help in the fight against terrorism.The Administration has never disavowed this, and needs to if its other efforts to end the genocide are to be taken seriously and attract support.

5. Impose sanctions and an arms embargo – These are also parts of the moribund Darfur Accountability Act. Particularly if they targeted core sectors like the oil industry, sanctions would demonstrate that the U.S. means business, and would raise the cost of the Sudanese government’s indifference. In addition to full implementation of bilateral sanctions, the U.S. should push the UN Security Council to press ahead with its stalled sanctions effort. (Sudan’s defeat in today’s World Cup qualifier made me think sports sanctions should be considered too – they worked in South Africa).

Gitmo, Amnesty and the Theatre of the Absurd Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Now its no longer Newsweek, its Amnesty International.  Here's what President Bush had to say yesterday about Amnesty International's latest human rights report:

I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that is -- promotes freedom around the world. When there's accusations made about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way. It's just an absurd allegation.

In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is.

More on the report here.  Thinkprogress has pointed out that when the Administration was making its case against Saddam Hussein, it repeatedly cited Amnesty reports on the Iraqi regime's human rights abuses.

The President's latest comments (and similar remarks made Sunday by Cheney on Larry King - the word "absurd" clearly featured prominently in the talking points) are yet more evidence of the White House's refusal to come to grips with the abuses in detention revealed in recent weeks.  It would be one thing if Bush lashed out against Amnesty but acknowledged the troubling revelations at Guantanamo and Bagram.  But he lashed out at Amnesty and left it at that.

Bush's swept those findings to one side countering that the U.S. is a purveyor of freedom, as if this should trump everything else.  Though her husband claims not to, Laura Bush seems to get the contradicition. 

During a recent trip to Egypt she told NBC: "We are an example . . . And that's why the photographs that have come out are so particularly damaging, because we are held to a higher standard than other countries because of our own history of democracy."

This is part of why when it comes to America's image in the Arab world, when it comes to America's image our role in helping advance democracy is at risk of being overshadowed by the prisoner scandals.  See here for a more thorough analysis of why.

One of the challenges faced by the progressive movement is making clear that both morally, practically, and politically indifference and denial won't cut it in response to the abuses in detention.   The moral case is clear.  The practical impact on our foreign policy is demonstrable, though the Administration is nowhere close to acknowledging that link. 

The political piece may be the hardest. 

Koran Allegations Posted by Suzanne Nossel

The ACLU has now come forward with additional documented witness accounts dating back to 2002 that allege flushing of the Koran down Guantanamo toilets.  Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said two weeks ago that such allegations were never investigated because they were not credible.  But given that similar allegations have emerged from multiple sources, it looks increasingly clear that at least some investigation was warranted to find out if the charges were credible or not.  The fallout's not over by a longshot.   See ThinkProgress for more.

Amnesty Rails Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Amnesty International has released their latest report on the state of human rights worldwide.  I have not had a chance to read it in full, but the early reports suggest that it blames the U.S. for global backsliding on human rights and the rule of law in recent years.   A foreward by Amnesty's Secretary General, Irene Khan, seems to support such a read.  Some excerpts:

Despite the near-universal outrage generated by the photographs coming out of Abu Ghraib, and the evidence suggesting that such practices are being applied to other prisoners held by the USA in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and elsewhere, neither the US administration nor the US Congress has called for a full and independent investigation.

Instead, the US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to “re-define” torture.  It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding “ghost detainees” (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the "rendering" or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise torture. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law . . .

The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity. From Israel to Uzbekistan, Egypt to Nepal, governments have openly defied human rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national security and “counter-terrorism”.

Khan's message goes on to make some important points about the larger state of human rights, including the ineffectiveness of the UN's human rights mechanisms and the shameful failure to prevent genocide in Darfur (topics discussed on DA here and here).

Amnesty has laid out some of the problems with current U.S. policies in their starkest terms, terms that may cause many in the U.S. political debate to simply tune out what the group has found. 

I see one of our tasks in the progressive foreign policy world to translate the concerns that we and Amnesty share into terms that allow for reasoned debate and even consensus-building among people of sharply differing views.   

We need Amnesty to weigh in with the facts as they see them, and need to weigh in ourselves with forward-looking interpretations and prescriptions where we can offer them. 

Reform of the UN's human rights mechanisms is one place where people on all sides of the spectrum ought to be able to agree; the Bush Administration should be judged on the progress it can elicit there.  I partly agree with one of the comments to this earlier post on Gunatanamo and Bagram that one ought not be too quick to blame military culture for the abuses there; the vast majority at all levels within the military are disgusted by what's happened and would probably say it bears no relation to the values they hold.  We do need to confront the question of why such abuses have occurred repeatedly anyway.

Some say (though I don't agree) that Bush has taken the upper hand from progressives when it comes to the promotion of democracy.   The same certainly can't be said on human rights.

Silence, Exile, Cunning: The Red Cross Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Last week, Suzanne posted on the Red Cross warning of mistreatment of the Koran and elicted a number of questions from our readers about why the Red Cross wouldn't give details.

As several folks suggested, the International Committee of the Red Cross does indeed have a policy of giving out little or no information about the situations it observes.  This is longstanding, and the rationale behind it is that, by maintaining discretion, they will be more likely to ensure continuing access and thus to help remedy bad situations. 

Readers with long memories will recall that the ICRC knew quite a bit about Abu Ghraib, and had been complaining to the US military about it, long before the photos hit the papers.  Indeed, Red Cross complaints were reported back to Washington, where fights broke out in the Administration about how seriously they should be taken.

The ICRC complains that its neutrality is called into question, and its safety compromised as a result, when militaries not only do humanitarian work, as in Afghanistan, but identify themselves with humanitarianism in their interventions.  I don't recall the ICRC making this complaint about Kosovo, or Somalia for that matter.  So the problem is less with the military doing relief work than with tactics that tend to blur the line between military and civilian relief workers on the one hand, and opponents who aren't interested in allowing civilians to be fed and prisoners to be visited on the other hand.

This is an area where progressives ought to be able to sit down and, regardless of how we felt about the war when it was started, have some real discussions about how Iraq and the larger "war on terror," the way the US is conducting it, must change our assumptions about how the world works and how we can work in it.

Field NGOs trying to be genuinely non-partisan, of course, don't have the luxury of wringing their hands.  Instead, they have two unpalatable choices:  leave or diminish their activities in war zones, as the ICRC did after an attack on its Baghdad headquarters in 2003; or become more partisan and seek protection from one side, as many NGOS have felt they had no choice but to do in Afghanistan.

One immediate consequence that is worth drawing is that declaring that the consequences of an "either you're with us or against us" policy include real harm to the innocent civilians whom we would like to be with us, if we can't find ways to have our policy respect (and even see the advantages of) the neutrality of the organizations that want to help them. 

Weekly Top 10 List - Ten Reasons the Real Fallout from the Newsweek Story Is Just Beginning Posted by Suzanne Nossel

A vast amount of time and energy has gone into analysis and recriminations over the botched Newsweek story reporting that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed a Koran down a toilet.  Newsweek's recantation, its new policy limiting the use of unsubstantiated sources, and its finding that the reporters in question followed established procedures and relied on a trustworthy source ought to put that matter mostly to bed. But here's what should keep us up at night:

1.  That similar stories that have been corroborated by credible sources. There are a number of serious reports of abuse at Guantanamo that have come to light in recent months, before and after the Newsweek report.  60 Minutes reported on female interrogators using sexual manipulation and fake menstrual blood to intimidate and discomfort Muslim detainees.  The ICRC has brought numerous instances of Koran desecration at Guantanamo to the Pentagon's attention.  This page details the concerns the ICRC has about conditions and treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo.  Now that we are on notice about what such practices can trigger, we'd better find out what's really going on and fast. 

2.  The underlying level of anti-American sentiment that allowed a single news report to trigger deadly riots throughout the Muslim world. This point is gradually being acknowledged in quarters that might have preferred to blame it all on Newsweek. The comments in response to Dan Drezner's post on the subject are illustrative. These riots are the most vivid, though hardly the only, evidence of just how precarious the U.S.'s standing is in the Muslim world.  Though aimed to counter anti-Americanism, Laura Bush's visit to the region triggered more protests last weekend. The sources of these attitudes ought to be a primary matter of U.S. concern.

3.   The related revelations of detainee abuse in Afghanistan that came to light this week. The religious insults that the ICRC documented at Guantanamo pale alongside the allegations of actual torture -- brutal beatings, chaining people to cell ceilings for days -- and homicide at the Bagram detention camp in Afghanistan reported by the New York Times this week.  Yet this shocking report got far less play than the Newsweek story.

4.  The military culture and policies that have allowed these abuses to happen. This is the larger issue at stake,