Endless War As Policy

The Article: What Endless War Looks Like by Glenn Greenwald of Salon.

The Text: Anonymous U.S. officials this morning are announcing in The Washington Post that they have effectively defeated what they call “the organization that brought us 9/11? — Al Qaeda — by rendering it “operationally ineffective.” Specifically, “the leadership ranks of the main al-Qaeda terrorist network have been reduced to just two figures whose demise would mean the group’s defeat, U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence officials said.” And: “asked what exists of al-Qaeda’s leadership group beyond the top two positions, the official said: ‘Not very much’.”

You might think this means that the vastly expanded National Security and Surveillance States justified in the name of 9/11, as well as the slew of wars and other aggressive deployments which it spawned, can now be reversed and wound down. After all, the stated purpose of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) which provided legal cover to all of this was expressed in the very first line: “To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.” The purpose of this authorized force was equally clear and limited: “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

Now, the group which the U.S. government has always said was the one that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001? is, according to this same government, “operationally ineffective.” So what does that mean in terms of policy? Absolutely nothing:

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“Terrorism Is War Of The Poor. War Is Terrorism Of The Rich.”

Thanksgiving & Black Friday: The Best And Worst of America

Turkey, NFL, and family drama. It’s the most American of holidays. We brave invasive TSA pat-downs to brave invasive familial interrogations. Families pose a little too forced in maybe a little too bright sweaters for the holiday picture. Siblings smile knowingly at each other in between sips as the odd uncle starts to ramble.

Mothers and daughters watch SpongeBob Squarepants float by in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Fathers and sons chuckle at the Detroit Lions’ secondary and John Madden turducken references. And we all take a long, wistful look at the “Wizard of Oz” during commercials.

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And Occupy Wall Street Fights For Another Day

The Article: Occupy Wall Street: Busted Up But Still Thriving by Rebecca Solnit at Mother Jones.

The Text: Last Tuesday, I awoke in lower Manhattan to the whirring of helicopters overhead, a war-zone sound that persisted all day and then started up again that Thursday morning, the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and a big day of demonstrations in New York City. It was one of the dozens of ways you could tell that the authorities take Occupy Wall Street seriously, even if they profoundly mistake what kind of danger it poses. If you ever doubted whether you were powerful or you mattered, just look at the reaction to people like you (or your children) camped out in parks from Oakland to Portland, Tucson to Manhattan.

Of course, “camped out” doesn’t quite catch the spirit of the moment, because those campsites are the way people have come together to bear witness to their hopes and fears, to begin to gather their power and discuss what is possible in our disturbingly unhinged world, to make clear how wrong our economic system is, how corrupt the powers that support it are, and to begin the search for a better way. Consider it an irony that the campsites are partly for sleeping, but symbols of the way we have awoken.

When civil society sleeps, we’re just a bunch of individuals absorbed in our private lives. When we awaken, on campgrounds or elsewhere, when we come together in public and find our power, the authorities are terrified. They often reveal their ugly side, their penchant for violence [5] and for hypocrisy.

Consider the liberal mayor of Oakland, who speaks with outrage of people camping without a permit but has nothing to say about the police she dispatched to tear-gas a woman in a wheelchair [6], shoot [7] a young Iraq war veteran in the head, and assault people while they slept. Consider the billionaire mayor of New York who dispatched the NYPD on a similar middle-of-the-night raid on November 15th. Recall this item included in a bald list of events that night: “tear-gassing the kitchen tent.” Ask yourself when did kitchens really need to be attacked with chemical weapons?

Does an 84-year-old woman [8] need to be tear-gassed in Seattle? Does a three-tours-of-duty veteran need to be beaten [9] until his spleen ruptures in Oakland? Does our former poet laureate need to be bashed in the ribs [10] after his poet wife is thrown to the ground at UC Berkeley? Admittedly, this is a system that regards people as disposable, but not usually so literally.

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The GOP’s Primal Affection For Waterboarding

As if the cheers that followed Rick Perry’s pro-death penalty stance weren’t alarming enough, the recent GOP debate on foreign policy provided even more reasons to believe that today’s Republican candidates may have a lot in common with the Spanish Inquisition tribunal. When asked their stance on waterboarding, it was only candidates Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman who agreed that it is in fact torture and should not be used under any circumstances. Suffice it to say that the proceeding yee-haws were very few. It wasn’t until Michele Bachmann made the rather specious claim that as President she would implement waterboarding for its “effectiveness” in gaining critical security information that the rather torpid audience burst into uproarious applause.

With Herman Cain’s recent statement that he “isn’t supposed to know about foreign policy” and Bachmann’s absurd claim that the ACLU runs the CIA, it is wholly unsurprising that the majority of GOP candidates, none of whom have much foreign policy experience (save for Jon Huntsman, the apparent candidate non grata) displayed such arrant ignorance throughout the debate.

Regardless, what Cain may not understand about Obama’s intervention in Libya or what Mitt Romney may misinterpret regarding United States relations with China pales in comparison to their unnerving endorsements of waterboarding. The fact that a “serious” presidential candidate would vocalize his or her support for waterboarding in hopes of strutting his or her bellicose conservative swagger is much more indicative of our own immorality and lawlessness than an alleged enemy’s.

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