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Channel 4 journalist grills Olympics organisers over human rights

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

guardian.co.uk | Channel 4 News correspondent Alex Thomson used a press conference in Beijing today to repeatedly challenge Olympics organisers over China’s record on human rights.

Thomson asked a representative of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) at the press conference whether she was “in any way embarrassed” by the Chinese government “lying through its teeth” about keeping its promises to improve human rights and press freedom.

The Channel 4 News chief correspondent had to resist efforts from two volunteers to force the microphone from him as he continued to question the IOC’s communications director, Giselle Davies, at today’s Beijing Olympics media briefing.

Thomson’s testy exchanges with Davies came in what was the most fractious IOC-Bocog press conference yet, with journalists repeatedly demanding to know whether a single Chinese citizen had been granted permission to use the three Protest Parks set up for the Games.

In response, a senior Chinese official for the Beijing Olympics criticised parts of the international media for coming to China “to peek, to be critical, to dig into the small details and find fault” in the country’s human rights record.

Responding to Thomson’s initial question, Davies said: “We have to note that there have been enormous steps forward in a number of areas.”

Thomson kept pressing, asking how the IOC felt about the “manifest failure of the Chinese government to keep their promises”.

Davies again refused to directly answer the question. Instead she said that the IOC was “very proud about how these Games are progressing” before praising the “spectacular venues”.

“I’m not asking about how well the Games are being run, or how wonderful the Games are,” replied Thomson. “Are you embarrassed by China? I don’t think anyone thinks you have answered the question.”

Davies smiled, before again talking operational details. “The Olympic Games is largely about the athletes and they have given us extremely strong feedback about how things are going,” she said.

Thomson, by now resisting efforts from two volunteers to force the microphone from him, kept up the pressure.

He said: “We’re not getting anywhere are we? Are the IOC embarrassed about the Chinese government’s record on human rights? One more chance?”

Davies responded: “We have to note the enormous steps in the wider area. The world is watching and the IOC is appraising.”

Wei Wang, the secretary general of the Beijing organising committee, claimed he had not been given figures from the Office of Public Security before, after a series of questions on human rights, finally allowing his frustrations to show.

“After 30 years of reform China has developed greatly,” he said. “People enjoy more freedom. People are living a good life. Everyone is happy. That’s a fact.

“Of course there are exceptions, like in any other country. But they need to take the legal process and procedures to resolve any issues. We cannot allow this country to be in chaos.

“But there are a few people who have come here to peek, to be critical, to dig into the small details and find fault,” he added. “This does not mean that we are not fulfilling our promises [over human rights to the IOC]. The whole country can see how can China has developed; how China has genuinely welcomed the world to enjoy everything with us.”

Shortly after awarding the Olympics to Beijing in 2001, the IOC president Jacques Rogge claimed he hoped that hosting the Olympics would improve China’s human rights record - but Wei today denied that his country had made any such promises.

“I did not promise that China would promise to do whatever with the Games in China, I did not say that,” he said. “I think the Games will open up the horizon about China. People will see better what China is about.”

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India to examine protest deaths

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

By Ram Dutt Tripathi | The government of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has ordered an inquiry into the deaths of four farmers during clashes with the police on Wednesday.

The clashes - which injured 50 people including policemen - took place in Noida, a suburb of the capital Delhi.

The farmers were demanding compensation for land recently acquired by the Greater Noida industrial authority.

A state government official said that the judicial inquiry would examine all aspects of the disturbances.

The government has already announced financial compensation to dependents of the victims.

It has also transferred officials allegedly responsible for mishandling the issue and appointed a new chairman of the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority.

But the state government has rejected farmers’ demands for more compensation, arguing that it has already been paid them at a mutually agreed rate.

Critics argue that that the announcement of the inquiry was done in part to silence opposition criticism of the killings.

They have condemned the deaths as “unprovoked firing on innocent and unarmed farmers”.

Opposition Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav termed the killings as “murders” and demanded the guilty men be punished.

Two of India’s main political parties - the Congress party and the Bharatiya Janata Party - have also condemned the killings.

In India, the acquisition of land for expansion of cities and industrialisation has become a very emotive issue.

Farmers have often opposed “forceful acquisitions” and have demanded increased rates of compensation for loss of livelihood and land.

Some experts say the agricultural land is shrinking due to urbanisation and industrialisation and this may endanger food security in a country with a population of more than one billion.

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Rwanda: Obscuring the Truth About the Genocide

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

By Barrie Collins - Spiked | Last week, the Rwandan government published the findings of its commission of inquiry into the role France played in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. It found French diplomats, military leaders and politicians – including former president François Mitterand – complicit in the genocide.

Considering that the current Rwandan leadership has vilified France ever since it launched its bid to seize power in Rwanda in October 1990, eventually winning power in July 1994, it is not surprising that it should now up the stakes against its long-time enemy. The new strongman of Rwanda, President Paul Kagame, is fortunate that he has unswerving support from the United States, Britain and Belgium, and a cheerleading media in these countries which can be counted upon to give his report into France’s role in the genocide maximum impact.

But the truth is that France’s major mistake was to find itself on the wrong side of the moral parable that has been imposed by Western observers on Rwanda’s recent tragic history. A war that was complicated by considerable international intervention has become over-simplified into a morality tale of good versus evil, in which France has been branded as part of the ‘evil side’. Such a simplification further obscures the truth about what happened in Rwanda in 1994, and whitewashes the role of Western intervention more broadly.

According to the moral parable of Rwanda, the good guys were the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which invaded Rwanda in 1990 because it had no other means of protecting the persecuted minority of ethnic Tutsis inside Rwanda and of making the then Hutu-led government accept the right of return of Rwandan Tutsis living abroad as refugees. The bad guys were in the Rwandan government and armed forces. When the international community had helped Rwandans achieve a negotiated settlement, the worst elements among the bad guys drew up a plan to secure Hutu domination once and for all by planning and then implementing genocide against Rwandan Tutsis.

By the time the good guys – the RPF – had fought them off, their evil mission had been largely completed. Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis were dead. Genocide had occurred, and the Western world had simply looked on passively. The United States refused to label the war that took place as a genocide in order to resist the clamour for international intervention to save lives. France was the only force on the United Nations Security Council to respond by sending in French forces under Operation Turquoise. But France’s real motivation was not to save lives, but to shore up its erstwhile allies: the bad guys. The French helped them escape Rwanda so that they would not have to answer for their crimes.

A moral analysis like this is compelling because it provides a clear pathway through a maze of complicating factors. For journalists, this moral signposting of the Rwandan genocide leads the way to great copy about the bravery of the heroes and the moral turpitude of the villains. For governments, it provides the crucial element of legitimacy that is the essential underpinning of their right to rule. The Rwandan regime under Paul Kagame depends on this version of events for its support and survival. And so do its principal sponsors, the United States and Great Britain.

As the force that relieved Rwanda from genocide, the RPF - whose leadership currently runs Rwanda - has exploited this version of events to remind Western governments that they failed to live up to the ‘Never Again’ principle that was the driving force behind the passing of the Genocide Convention at the United Nations in 1948. While they battled the genocidaires in 1994, the Western world simply looked on. Except France, that is. But as a supporter of the former, pre-RPF regime, France’s motives for intervening were highly questionable.

It may be the most widely told story of Rwanda, but this version of events is deeply flawed. While the US may have been embarrassed by this account, appearing less than heroic during the months of Rwanda’s greatest torment, it is far easier for it to live with this embarrassment than to be confronted with the facts of how it did intervene in this region of Africa in the early 1990s and since Kagame came to power.

The ‘plane crash’ debate

In fact, the three most influential Western players in Rwanda at this time – the US, France and Belgium – all intervened in ways that created the conditions that made mass slaughter inevitable. Contrary to the prevailing version of events, after its initial deployment of troops defending Rwandan leaders against the RPF’s October War in 1990, by means of Operation Noroît, France recognised that the US and Uganda were behind the RPF and had no desire to become isolated as the sole defender of the Rwandan government. So it increasingly made its military support conditional upon the government’s commitment to serious negotiations with the RPF. According to an informant from the French Ministry of Cooperation, France’s decision to disengage was already evident in 1990: ‘We did not want to remain alone…there were great powers behind the RPF. Uganda could send 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers.’ (1)

The Kagame government’s latest salvo against France, in the shape of its commission report fingering the French for their support for the genocide, is in fact part of an increasingly desperate search for political legitimacy. The weakest point of the Rwandan moral parable is the question of what caused the re-eruption of the war in 1994 and the subsequent descent into mass slaughter. The start of the bloodiest stage of the war is far more complicated than the moral storytellers – who blame it on the then evil government’s determination to secure Hutu domination – would have us believe.

It was an act of international terrorism that triggered the return to war. In early April 1994, an aeroplane carrying Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana was blown out of the sky by a missile attack that had been planned for several months. Apologists for the RPF have tried hard to blame the attack upon hardline Hutu conspirators, but they have produced nothing of substance to back up this claim. Rather, there is an accumulating amount of evidence that the RPF was responsible for the missile attack – and it is this evidence that has put the current RPF government, led by Kagame, on the back foot. It is the government’s defensiveness on this issue that lies at the heart of the current France-bashing.

The UN’s own investigator, Michael Hourigan, first came across compelling evidence of the RPF’s responsibility for assassinating President Habyarimana and the other unfortunate occupants of his plane. However, it appears that under pressure from Washington, the UN agreed to shut down its investigation into the missile attack. Another UN investigator, Robert Gersony, came across evidence of RPF atrocities and was also silenced; the UN even stated that his report ‘did not exist’.

These inconvenient truths threatened to muddy the clear waters of moral certainty that the Rwandan parable provides. The Rwandan regime has lived behind the shield of international powers which have worked hard to keep the matter of the plane shooting off the agenda. For all of its 13 years of operation, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), whose brief is to establish the truth of what happened in 1994, has ruled that the matter of the President Habyarimana’s assassination (which it chooses to refer to simply as a plane ‘crash’) is not within its remit. When one of the ICTR’s chief prosecutors, Carla Del Ponte, expressed her desire to dust off the investigation into the allegations against the RPF, stating that ‘if it is the RPF that shot down the plane, the history of genocide must be rewritten’ (2), she was abruptly relieved of her position and moved to The Hague.

Del Ponte’s successor at the ICTR, the Gambian Hassan Bubacar Jallow, subsequently confirmed that the shooting down of the aircraft is ‘not a case that falls within our jurisdiction’ (3). It is ironic that the ICTR’s first chief prosecutor, Richard Goldstone, has expressed his view that the plane attack does fall within the remit of the court and ought to be investigated. ‘It is clearly related to the genocide, by all accounts [it was] the trigger that started the genocide and it would have been very, very important from a justice point of view, from victims’ point of view, to find out.’ (4)

However, the ICTR’s deputy prosecutor, Bernard Muna, felt cavalier enough about the issue to tell the ICTR’s legal adviser, Kingsley Moghalu, that ‘after all, there was a state of war, and Habyarimana could be considered a legitimate target’ (5). This is an extraordinary statement from such a senior figure. The missile attack was, among other things, a deliberate violation of Article 1 of the Arusha Accords of 4 August 1993, which stated: ‘The war between the Government of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front is over.’

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the secretary-general of the UN at the time of the Rwanda tragedy, is also emphatic about the cover-up of the investigation into the plane shooting: ‘It is a very mysterious scandal. Four reports have been made on Rwanda: the French Parliament Report, the Belgian Senate Report, Kofi Annan’s UN report, and the Organization of African Unity report. All four say absolutely nothing about the shooting down of the Rwandan president’s plane. That just goes to show the power of the intelligence services that can force people to be quiet.’ (6)

Building upon the evidence received by the UN investigator Michael Hourigan, the French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière conducted his own enquiry on behalf of the family of the French pilot who died in the missile attack, along with the presidents of both Rwandan and Burundi and senior government and military figures. Bruguière’s report is thoroughgoing and detailed. I have interviewed one of the several RPF dissidents who briefed the judge: Aloys Ruyenzi. A former member of Kagame’s guard, Ruyenzi states categorically that he was in the room when Kagame gave the order to shoot down the president’s plane, and names all those who were present. The meeting was between 2pm and 3pm on 31 March 1994 (7). The Kagame government reacted in its customary fashion to these revelations about the shooting down of the plane: it launched a character assassination of all the Rwandan contributors to Bruguière’s report, and condemned Bruguière for being, well, French.

Western complicity: what about the US?

Yet there is more than the legitimacy of the Rwandan government at stake in this latest retelling of the moral parable on Rwanda. The RPF would not have sustained its war without diplomatic support from Washington. The US intervened to legitimise the RPF’s war, even though the justifications for it had by that time proven to be baseless. The first invasion in 1990 was timed, not to force a reluctant Rwandan government to allow refugees to return, but to disrupt arrangements already in place to accommodate returning refugees.

Rather than being a desertion from the Ugandan military (the RPF leadership were in top positions in the Ugandan state), the invasion of Rwanda in 1990 was a joint Ugandan-RPF venture. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda was keen to have an ally in power south of the border. More importantly, he wanted to be rid of his Rwandan refugee ‘problem’. The issues of land occupation by Rwandans, and suspicions about the leverage that Rwandans in top official positions enjoyed in the Ugandan government, had generated Museveni’s first political crisis since he took power in 1986.

Behind Uganda was its closest international ally and sponsor, Washington. It was US intervention, in the person of secretary of state for African affairs Herman Cohen, which chose not to condemn the RPF’s invasion and Uganda’s support for it, but rather to support the military recovery of the RPF upon its initial defeat. Cohen coerced President Habyarimana not only to negotiate a ceasefire with the RPF, but to enter negotiations with it in order that a stake for the RPF in a new government be agreed.

By July 1992, Rwanda no longer had a single-party regime but a coalition government and a new democratic constitution. The constitution guaranteed freedom of political organisation and prohibited discrimination on any grounds, ethnic or otherwise.

Of course, it takes more than a constitution to bring about democracy, but it was a promising start and presented another opportunity for the US to tell its Ugandan ally Museveni to pull the plug on the RPF or face the end of the privileged ‘New African Leader’ status that it had bestowed upon him. There was nothing to prevent the RPF from campaigning for support inside Rwanda alongside the other opposition parties. Nothing except the fact that the RPF was feared and loathed by the majority of Rwanda’s population. And yet, Washington was happy for the RPF to intensify its war. In February 1993, the RPF violated the Arusha ‘peace process’ with its heaviest offensive to date. It is arguably the case that if there had not been French forces around the capital Kigali, the RPF may have succeeded in seizing power at that time. The offensive resulted in thousands of deaths and the displacement of nearly a million people, living in miserable conditions in makeshift camps. This offensive did more than anything else to generate hatred for the RPF and, tragically, for the local Tutsi population who were assumed to be in league with the overwhelmingly Tutsi RPF.

How human rights lobbyists boosted the RPF

The RPF had violated the negotiations process with another round of death and destruction. But thanks to coordinated human rights lobbying, the RPF returned to the negotiating table unapologetic about its own conduct and full of moral indignation at the evils of the Rwandan government. A suspiciously well-timed human rights report was published in 1993, accusing the Rwandan government of gross violations of human rights. Some of its authors even accused it of genocide. The government had been responsible for atrocities against civilians in response to the RPF’s initial invasion, and had admitted to them. It objected to the report’s bias: the investigators had made only a token effort to investigate allegations of atrocities committed by the RPF, spending only a few hours interviewing people in the presence of RPF soldiers.

Thanks in large measure to the impact of this report, the RPF was able to take the moral high ground and use the negotiations as a vehicle for translating its military gains into political gains. RPF intransigence and military strategy was facilitated in no small measure by the human rights crusade that was launched against the Habyarimana-led coalition government.

But France, too, played a vital role in prodding the Rwandan government to reach a political settlement with the RPF. According to the French writer Agnes Callamard, it was not just pressure from the US that was applied to get Habyarimana to sign the Arusha Accords in 1993 – ‘it is doubtful if Habyarimana would have signed the peace accords, which gave heavy concessions to the RPF, without pressure and guarantees from the Elysée through François Mitterand’s personal emissaries, and possibly from representatives of the Military Mission of Cooperation, specifically Général Huchon, Colonel Cussac – the French military attaché and head of the French military Assistance Mission in Rwanda, and his assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Maurin.’ (8)

Having secured a virtual coup in the 1993 negotiations – the RPF had won 50 per cent command of the envisaged unified army and enough seats in the proposed transitional government to block anything that was against its interests – the RPF had emerged as the strongest party. The problem it now faced was the scheduled elections where its unpopularity would have been exposed. Local elections in the demilitarised zone that was created in the wake of the February 1993 offensive pointed the way – the RPF was massively defeated at the hands of the former ruling party.

Faced with the prospect of being downsized to a small party by the Rwandan electorate, and with clear support from the US and Belgium, it would appear that the RPF’s interests could only be further advanced with a return to the battlefield. With the promised departure of French forces from Kigali in December 1993, the military path to the capital was clear. What was needed by the RPF was a justification for resuming the war.

The Rwandan war re-erupts

The assassination of President Habyarimana by means of the missile attack upon his plane set off a round of killings of opposition political figures by elements of Habyarimana’s Presidential Guard on one hand, and killings of members of the former ruling party by the RPF on the other. Massacres of Tutsi civilians by Hutu militia soon followed in Kigali, and then spread across the country. But, contrary to the conventional story, RPF forces were on the march long before any massacres occurred.

Peter Erlinder, the lead defence council for the ICTR, stated categorically in a letter to the Canadian prime minister in 2006 that the final offensive of the RPF was ordered by Kagame within minutes of learning of the successful missile attack, ‘long before any retaliatory, civilian killings had occurred anywhere in Rwanda’ (9).

Three years of mounting fear, insecurity and material deprivation (much of Rwanda was by this time in the grip of famine) came to a head. Rwanda’s hastily (but constitutionally) appointed government of surviving ministers fled the capital. The army was pinned down in one losing encounter with the RPF after another. In these anarchic conditions, Rwanda’s defenceless Tutsi population bore the brunt of murderous hatred generated by an ethnically polarising war.

The RPF won the war and took power in July 1994. Africa then witnessed the largest mass exodus in its history. Over two million Rwandans voted with their feet and moved to former Zaïre and Tanzania. The United States, Britain and Belgium in particular rushed to recognise the new regime in Kigali.

Even greater numbers were still to die. The new Rwandan regime’s invasion of various refugee camps and its forced repatriation of refugees, the massacre of internally displaced people in Kibeho in April 1995, and two invasions of what became the Democratic Republic of Congo by the ruling RPF – all of this has brought the death toll of civilians to a level that is the highest of any conflict since the Second World War. The number of ministers leaving the new government and later dying in mysterious circumstances continues to rise. Accountability on the part of the Rwandan regime for these violations is waived by its sponsors in Washington, London and Brussels. Whenever challenged on these matters, officials from these capitals will reply that this was the force that liberated Rwanda from genocide, and continued Western backing for it is necessary to ensure that the genocidaires never return to power.

The truth behind the moral parable

But facts are stubborn things. Bruguière’s charges will not go away. The matter of the assassination of two heads of state is the Achilles heel of the Rwandan government. If the RPF’s responsibility for the plane shooting as a planned move towards reigniting the war in Rwanda is proven, what can be said about the diplomatic protection given to the RPF by the US and other Western powers? How can the leader of the ‘war against terror’ – America – explain its suppression of the facts about the assassination of two heads of state? What do we make of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s brief to foster reconciliation by establishing the truth and ending a culture of impunity?

In The Times last week, Linda Melvern wrote about ‘a large room in the French Embassy in Kigali filled floor to ceiling with shredded documents. This was probably the paper trail that might have revealed the depth of involvement between the Elysée Palace and the Hutu faction responsible for massacring hundreds of thousands of Tutsi and opposition Hutu’ (10). Holding on to the moral parable of Rwanda and endorsing Kigali’s invective against France may work for now. But facts – about the start of the war, the actions of the RPF, and the role of Western intervention more broadly in pushing Rwanda to the brink – are stubborn things…

(1) ‘French Policy in Rwanda’, A Callamard included in The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaïre, H Adelman and A Suhurke, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999, p. 178, note 19

(2) Interview with Carla Del Ponte, Aktuelt, 17 April 2000. Cited in Le drama rwandais : Les aveaux accablants des chefs de la Mission des Nations Unies pour l’Assistance au Rwanda, E Karemera, Editions Sources du Nil, 2006

(3) Bush and Other War Criminals Meet in Rwanda: The Great “Rwanda Genocide” Coverup, P Erlinder, Global Research, 20 February 2008

(4) April 6th 1994 Attack Fits ICTR Mandate – Goldstone, Hirondelle News Agency, accessed 12 December 2006

(5) Rwanda’s Genocide: The Politics of International Justice, K Moghalu, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 p.52

(6) Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda, Philpot, R, Race and History, 26 February 2005

(7) ‘Major General Paul Kagame behind the shooting down of late Habyarimana’s plane: an eye witness testimony, 2nd Lt. Aloys Ruyenzi Press release, 18 January 2005 (Ruyenzi re-affirmed his statement to the author in an interview in Paris)

(8) ‘French Policy in Rwanda’, A Callamard included in The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaïre, H Adelman and A Suhurke, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999, p.163

(9) Open letter to Prime Minister Harper: Regarding state visit of current President of Rwanda, P Erlinder, 6 April 2006 (Copy passed on to author by Erlinder. Emphasis in the original)

(10) The murky truth about France and genocide, L Melvern, The Times, 8 August 2008

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Another inconvenient truth: Fiscal Armageddon, coming to a cinema near you

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

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British libel laws violate human rights, says UN

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

guardian.co.uk | Britain’s libel laws have come under attack from the United Nations committee on human rights for discouraging coverage of matters of major public interest. The use of the Official Secrets Act to deter government employees from raising important issues has also been criticised.

The intervention by the UN comes in the wake of international disquiet over the use of British courts for “libel tourism”, whereby wealthy plaintiffs can sue in the high court in London over articles that would not warrant an action in their own country.

The criticisms are made as part of the committee’s concluding observations on the report submitted by the UK on civil and political rights. UN member states are required to submit reports on human rights in their jurisdictions every three years.

The committee warns that the British libel laws have “served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work, including through the phenomenon known as libel tourism”.

The case that has provoked the most concern is that of an American researcher, Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld, who was sued in London by a Saudi businessman and his two sons over a book that sold 23 copies over the internet into the UK, where it was never officially published. One chapter of the book was available online.

The action led to the New York state legislature passing legislation to protect writers and publishers working there from defamation judgements in any country that does not give the same same freedom of speech rights as New York and US federal law.

The committee’s report highlights the grey area created by the internet whereby alleged libel can be read in different countries. There is a risk, warns the committee, that restrictive libel laws could affect legitimate international discussion, contrary to article 19 of the covenant on civil and political rights, which guarantees the right to freedom of speech “regardless of borders”.

The UK government has been urged to consider “a so-called ‘public figure’ exception” that would require a would-be claimant to prove actual malice by a publisher or author.

This would apply in cases involving public officials and prominent public figures, as currently exists in the US, where a public figure can only sue for libel if he or she can demonstrate malice, recklessness or indifference to the truth and that the statement is false.

On the Official Secrets Act, the committee “remains concerned” that powers under the act have been “exercised to frustrate former employees of the crown from bringing into the public domain issues of genuine public interest, and can be exercised to prevent the media from publishing such matters”. The committee found the act is used even when issues of national security are not involved.

The 2006 Terrorism Act’s “broad and vague” definition of the offence of “encouragement of terrorism” was also criticised by the committee.

Media law specialist Mark Stephens, of legal firm Finers Stephens Innocent, said: “I think it is quite remarkable that the UK government has drawn these deficiencies in our libel laws to the attention of the United Nations, while at the same time libel lawyers in this country have remained insouciant to the deficiencies highlighted by the UN.”

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What’s on Tap and What You Need to Know About Drinking Water

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

By Leigh Erin Connealy, M.D. | The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental action organization, recently conducted an in-depth study into the quality of drinking water across the United States. Reviewing the tap water quality data for 19 major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, they compiled their findings and made them available to the public in June of 2003. 11 contaminants were labeled to be of “high concern” or “some concern” for the LA area’s water supply. Since much of Los Angeles and Orange County drinking water comes from the same two sources, the Colorado River and Northern California, this information should be of note to those living in the Orange County area.

Five contaminants fell under the “high concern” category, including Lead, Perchlorate, Radon, Haloacetic Acids (HAAs) and Total Trihalomethanes (TTHMs).

Lead

Lead is a heavy metal that generally enters the drinking supplies due to the corrosion of pipes, plumbing or faucets. Often, the lead levels of the water at your home are much higher than the levels from the water’s source. This is usually the result of contamination that may be occurring at your home, due to old or corroded pipes. The national standard (NS) for lead, as determined by the EPA, is 15 ppb.

Health Effects: Infants, young children and pregnant women are particularly susceptible to the adverse effects of lead. In serious cases, poisoning can cause permanent brain damage and, in less severe cases, can cause children to suffer from decreased intelligence and problems with growth, development and behavior. In adults, lead can increase blood pressure, harm kidney function, adversely affect the nervous system and damage red blood cells.

Perchlorate

Perchlorate in the water usually comes from rocket fuel spills or leaks at military facilities. Additionally, perchlorate is used in a variety of products and applications, including electronic tubes, vehicle airbags, leather tanning and fireworks. The NS is 4 ppb, however no level has been determined to be safe.

Health Effects: Perchlorate disrupts the thyroid function and is a suspected carcinogen. Changes in thyroid hormone levels can result in thyroid gland tumors. In children, thyroid disruption can adversely affect proper development and in adults it can interfere with metabolism regulation. Disruption of the thyroid in pregnant women may impact the fetus and result in delayed development and decreased learning ability.

Radon

Radon is a radioactive gas that results from the natural breakdown of uranium in the ground. The NS is an average of 300 pCi/L.

Health Effects: Radon is known to cause lung cancer. No level is considered to be safe and a single particle of radon can cause cancer. The EPA estimates that radon in drinking water causes approximately 168 deaths from lung and stomach cancer each year (89% from lung cancer caused by breathing radon released to the indoor air from water, 11% from stomach cancer caused by consuming water that contains radon). Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the U.S., after smoking.

Haloacetic Acids (HAAs)/Total Trihalomethanes (TTHMs)

HAAs and TTHMs are volatile organic contaminates often referred to as disinfection by-products or organochlorines and result when chlorine used to disinfect drinking water interacts with organic matter in the water. The EPA has classified some TTHMs as probable human carcinogens. The NS for HAAs is an average of 60 ppb and for TTHMs, an average of 80 ppb.

Health Effects: Disinfection by-products have been linked to cancers of the bladder, pancreas, colon, rectum, brain, and childhood leukemia.

The following six contaminants fall under the category of “some concern”:

Cryptosporidium

Cryptosporidium is a waterborne parasite that lives and reproduces by the millions in both animal and human intestines until it is shed in the feces. The NS is 0.

Health Effects: Cryptosporidium can cause severe diarrhea, nausea, abdominal cramping and fever for up to 2 weeks. Currently there is no antibiotic that can kill the parasite. It poses a significant health risk to children and those with weakened immune systems.

Total Coliform Bacteria (TCM)

TCM is a broad class of bacteria, many of which live in the intestines of humans and animals. Most coliform bacteria are harmless, however their presence indicates that the water may contain harmful bacteria such as E. coli. The NS for TCM is 0.

Arsenic

Arsenic found in drinking supplies comes from mining, industrial processes, past use of arsenic containing pesticides, and natural leaching erosion from rock. Currently the NS for arsenic is 50 ppb but will be lowered to 10 ppb in 2006.

Health Effects: Arsenic is toxic to humans and a known carcinogen. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has determined that arsenic in drinking water is known to cause cancer of the bladder, skin and lungs. An NAS report published in 2001 stated that a person who drinks 2 liters of water a day (containing 10 ppb arsenic) has a lifetime total fatal cancer risk greater than 1 in 333.

Chromium

Chromium is a naturally occurring metal used in industrial processes, including metal plating for chrome bumpers and making stainless steel, paint, rubber and wood preservatives. The NS for chromium is 100 ppb.

Health Effects: Chromium ingestion can cause a host of health problems, ranging form skin irritation to damage to kidney, liver and nerve tissue.

Gross Alpha Radiation (GAR)/Gross Beta Radiation (GBR)

GAR and GBR generally result from the decay of radioactive minerals in underground rocks and are sometimes by-products of the mining and nuclear industries. The NS for GAR is an average of 15 pCi/L and for GBR, an average of 50 pCi/L.

Health Effects: No level of exposure to GAR or GBR is considered safe as they are both radioactive and can cause cancer.

Uranium

Uranium is released from minerals in the ground, often as the result of mining or as a by-product of the nuclear industry. The NS for uranium is 30 micrograms/L.

Health Effects: Uranium is radioactive and known to cause cancer when ingested. The EPA has determined that it causes serious kidney damage at levels above 300 mcg/L.

While Orange County has strict regulations on the quality of drinking water, you should still be aware of what is coming out of your tap. The EPA established national standards are determined to be the highest level of contaminants allowed in the water. The NRDC however, maintains that no level of any of these contaminants is safe.

So what can you do? First, contact the EPA for a list of state-certified labs that can test the water at your home. Finding out what is in your tap water can help you to determine what kind of filtration system is right for you. Your water standards should be higher than the EPA’s to ensure the safety of your family.

When choosing a water filtration system, I recommend a unit that also regulates the pH level of your water like Jupiter Melody by Ion Life available through perfectlyhealthy at (www.perfectlyhealthy.net) . Proper pH levels can further protect you from any contaminants that you might come in contact with and also ward off disease and infection. You want to drink water that reaches a pH level of approximately 9.0 while trying to maintain a blood pH level of 7.43.

For a list of state-certified labs, call the EPA’s hotline at 800-426-4791 or go online at (www.epa.gov/safewater/privatewells/labs.html) . To review the entire report by the NRDC, visit their website at (www.nrdc.org) . I recommend the Jupiter Melody Ionizer available through perfectlyhealthy, it excludes contaminants from your drinking water as well as providing a pH level of approximately 9.0. Visit (www.perfectlyhealthy.net) for more information.

Have Your Say: What’s on Tap and What You Need to Know About Drinking Water
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BAE case in the Lords

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

CAAT News | The five senior Judges are technically a committee of the Lords so the hearing took place in a Lords’ Committee room, dominated by a huge painting of the burial of King Harold. Only the tops of the heads of the Judges (without wigs) were visible from most of the public seats as the banks of case documents formed a wall across the room. Between the Judges and the rest of us sat eleven bewigged barristers – CAAT and The Corner House had four (David Pannick QC, Philippe Sands QC, Dinah Rose QC and Ben Jaffey) and the Government five, whilst ‘interested party’ BAE, and ‘intervener’ Justice, a human rights and law reform organisation, had one apiece. All these barristers were backed by teams of solicitors. Even though the Lords’ authorities had added an extra bench, this retinue left little space in the room.

We all crammed in – CAAT and Corner House people; the Guardian‘s Rob Evans, who had done so much to expose the BAE corruption allegations, was there along with journalists from other papers, the BBC and specialist legal magazines; representatives from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, concerned that its 1997 Anti-Bribery Convention will be rendered meaningless if the Government is allowed to stop corruption inquiries as in this case, took copious notes; Peter Gardiner, the former BAE travel agent who gave evidence to the SFO looked on; and many others were present.

The arguments

The Government’s lead barrister, Jonathan Sumption QC, went first. He argued that the Director of the SFO, as an independent prosecutor, had a wide discretion as to which cases he investigated or prosecuted, he just had to act ‘reasonably’ in making his decisions. He also produced a witness statement from the Foreign Office in an attempt to show that, in contrast to what Lord Justice Moses had said in the High Court, the attention of Saudi Arabian officials had been drawn to the separation of powers between the Government and the legal authorities in the UK.

David Pannick challenged this. He said the rule of law had to prevail and that this demanded that the SFO did not give into threats by Saudi Arabia to withdraw cooperation on anti-terrorism until all other options had been exhausted and, even then, only if it was strictly necessary. The Government, he said, did not meet this test, as all bar one of the approaches to Saudi Arabia listed in the Foreign Office statement had been made before the threats were issued and all were fairly casual mentions in the course of other meetings. Additionally, the UK did not seem to have reminded Saudi Arabia of its anti-terrorism commitments.

With regards to the OECD Convention, Dinah Rose argued that this was a relevant consideration because the SFO Director said his decision was made in accordance with it – the question was whether ‘national security’ was an implied exemption or not and she said not – whilst the Government said it was up to the OECD to decide on this issue.

No decision as yet

There was very little intervention by the Judges as the barristers made their submissions. This, we were told, is unusual. Each of five Judges now considers the submissions, looks up the precedents and writes his or her own speech – the verdict is the majority view. The result will be announced, most likely in October, when the Judges’ committee reports to the full House of Lords. Justice?

Campaign update

The House of Lords has overturned the High Court’s ruling that the Government broke the law by stopping the corruption investigation into BAE Systems’ Saudi arms deals. The case had been brought by CAAT and The Corner House with widespread support.

The Serious Fraud Office’s appeal was heard by the House of Lords on the 7th and 8th of July and judgment was given on 30th July.

One of the judges, Baroness Hale, said that she would have liked to have been able to say that it was wrong to stop the investigation as it was “extremely distasteful that an independent public official should feel himself obliged to give way to threats of any sort.” However, she had to agree with her colleagues that the decision taken by the SFO Director was lawful.

The judgment means that those with powerful friends prepared to make threats can effectively evade justice, particularly if the threats are couched in terms of national security. The ruling also confirms that the UK government has driven a coach and horses through a key international anti-bribery convention to protect its friends in BAE.

CAAT and The Corner House are not dejected by the result as it has brought the whole issue into the public realm and clarified the law.

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Guantanamo general calls 2nd general ‘bullying’

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

By Carol Rosenberg | GUANTANAMO BAY NAY BASE, Cuba — One general testified about another general at the war court Wednesday, describing a Pentagon official fast-tracking trials here as “abusive, bullying, unprofessional.”

Moreover, in testimony, Army Brig. Gen. Gregory Zanetti, deputy prison camps commander, described the approach employed earlier this year by his counterpart, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, this way:

“Spray and pray. Charge everybody. Let’s go. Speed, speed, speed.”

The colorful testimony — using battlefield language — was in pretrial hearings in the case of Afghan detainee Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan accused of wounding two U.S. troops by throwing a grenade in a bazaar in Kabul.

Hartmann is the legal advisor overseeing the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II. Jawad’s attorney, Air Force Reserve Maj. David Frakt, wants his client’s charges dismissed on grounds that Hartmann exerted ”unlawful influence” on the Guantánamo trials from his perch at the Pentagon.

Frakt alleges in his motion that Hartmann usurped the role of a prosecutor — rather than act as an impartial supervisor — by pressuring military attorneys to charge Jawad because the case involved battlefield bloodshed.

In June, Hartmann defended his ”intense and direct” management style in testimony, saying he had pressured for speed in the interest of kick-starting sluggish military commissions, not for political reasons.

What was unusual about Wednesday’s testimony was that, while subordinates have described Hartmann’s style as abusive ”nano-management,” this was the first time an officer of equal rank testified about Hartmann’s management style.

In telephone calls and teleconferences from the Pentagon, Zanetti said, Hartmann’s demeanor ”as an attorney from a thousand miles away,” was “abusive, bullying and unprofessional . . . pretty much across the board.”

The Pentagon’s chief war crimes prosecutor at the time, now retired Air Force Col. Morris Davis, resigned the post and has testified that he believed Hartmann usurped his role.

A Navy judge, Capt. Keith Allred, agreed that it appeared that way, at least, and in May banished Hartmann from any role in the just-completed trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan. Hamdan was convicted of providing material support for terror last week.

The current chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, dismissed criticism of Hartmann’s leadership style as the product of a “superficial personality conflict. Gen. Hartmann came in, kicked over some furniture, wasn’t so gentle as some subordinates wish.”

Frakt got a court order from the trial judge, Col. Stephen Henley, to compel the testimony of Zanetti, a former air defense artillery officer with the New Mexico National Guard. At Guantanamo, his title is deputy joint task force commander.

Zanetti described struggling with Hartmann over who would command U.S. forces in Guantanamo assigned to do the logistics of the trials.

To try to work with Hartmann, who like Zanetti has one star on his uniform, the Army brigadier said he tried to engage the Air Force brigadier in a discussion on the concept of “command unity.”

”As a principle, it’s really been around since Alexander the Great. Most military people understand this one,” Zanetti said with a laugh. “Gen. Hartmann really wanted to run things.”

In a curious twist, the topic of Hartmann’s leadership style was also being scrutinized Wednesday in a different war court.

Pretrial hearings in the Jawad case took place in Courtroom No. 1, the original tribunal chamber, while a hearing in Courtroom No. 2 was held concurrently in a second case accusing Canadian Omar Khadr of the grenade killing of a U.S. Army sergeant in Afghanistan in July 2002.

Both detainees were captured as teens.

It was during Hartmann’s fast-paced tenure as legal advisor that the second war court chamber was brought on-line.

In his testimony, Zanetti credited an independent ‘’sense of urgency” by military staff on the ground at Guantanamo for the emerging infrastructure at Camp Justice, where the trials are held, likening it to “putting a small base together.”

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Antiwar activists seek expanded police probe

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

Tom LoBianco | Antiwar activists who were targeted by an undercover state police operation from 2005 to 2006 will ask state investigators Tuesday to expand their probe to learn whether other law enforcement agencies took part in the spying.

Members of Pledge of Resistance Baltimore plan to rally in front of the Maryland State Police headquarters in Baltimore County Tuesday afternoon. The agency’s surveillance of the group for 14 months in 2005 and 2006 is being investigated by the state. The group also was tracked by the Baltimore City Police Department in 2003, according to an e-mail obtained by The Washington Times.

“We just want to know: Who ordered it? Who was involved? Who paid for it? Has it stopped? What are you going to do to make sure it never happens again?” said group member Maria Allwine.

A state police spokeswoman declined to comment Monday, citing the pending results of the state probe. A Baltimore police spokesman said any expansion of the probe “would be a huge waste of money.”

Baltimore police and Gov. Martin O’Malley, who served as mayor at the time, have denied city officers were involved in tracking protest groups, though the 2003 e-mail is the second document that shows Baltimore police have tracked protesters since the start of the war in Iraq.

Protesters who were targets of the surveillance by state and Baltimore police say the city is withholding information.

“We believe other agencies [than the state police] have documents and we’d like to see all of the documents,” said Max Obus-zewski, an antiwar activist whose name was entered into a federal terrorist-tracking database.

In responding to a 2006 public records request filed by the ACLU on behalf of Mr. Obuszewski and other protestors, the Baltimore police department said it had no relevant documents.

Mr. Obuszewski protests regularly in front of the National Security Agency headquarters,at Fort Meade, and said Baltimore police, under Mr. O’Malley, cooperated with the NSA in tracking his antiwar group.

“Balto City Intell is working from her end … [redacted] advised they will have someone working this weekend who will scope out their departure from the American Friends Service Committee,” an unknown sender wrote in an e-mail to NSA Police Maj. Michael Talbert, dated September 29, 2003. “The Baltimore City PD counterpart will give [redacted] a heads up as to the numbers departing from the Govans location.”

Mrs. Allwine said she suspects a Baltimore police officer infiltrated her group around the start of the Iraq war in 2003. “We may be peaceful, but we’re not stupid,” she said last week.

Mr. O’Malley appointed former Attorney General Stephen H. Sachs to lead the state investigation of the spying by state police, which occurred under former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

The Maryland ACLU uncovered the spying by state police last month after filing a lawsuit against the state in June. The state police released 44 pages of documents detailing its surveillance of antiwar and anti-death-penalty groups.

Mr. O’Malley, a Democrat, has attacked Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, since the spying became public last month. Mr. Ehrlich has said he was previously unaware of the spying.

Mr. O’Malley has denied any involvement by the city police, though the ACLU documents show two undercover Baltimore police officers supported undercover state officers at a December 2005 rally.

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Is Perpetual War Our Future? Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Bush Era

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

TomDispatch | To the problem of an overstretched, over-toured military, there is but one answer in Washington. Both presidential candidates (along with just about every other politician in our nation’s capital) are on record wanting to significantly expand the Army and the Marines. In part two of his series at TomDispatch, adapted from his remarkable new book, The Limits of Power, The End of American Exceptionalism, historian and retired colonel Andrew Bacevich suggests a solution to the American military crisis that might seem obvious enough, if only both parties weren’t so blinded by the idea of our “global reach,” by a belief, however wrapped in euphemisms, in our imperial role on this planet, and by the imperial Pentagon and presidency that go with it: reduce the mission.

That is the heart of his latest piece. As he writes: “America doesn’t need a bigger army. It needs a smaller — that is, more modest — foreign policy, one that assigns soldiers missions that are consistent with their capabilities. Modesty implies giving up on the illusions of grandeur to which the end of the Cold War and then 9/11 gave rise. It also means reining in the imperial presidents who expect the army to make good on those illusions. When it comes to supporting the troops, here lies the essence of a citizen’s obligation.”

In this striking post, Bacevich also lays out the wrong lessons that our leaders have drawn from Bush’s wars and they all spell trouble: first, that the challenges posed by Iraq and Afghanistan define not only the military’s present but also its future, the “next war”; second, that the corrective to civilian arrogance and misjudgment is obvious — that the civil-military balance should be tilted back in favor of the generals, untying the hands of senior commanders; and third, that the All-Volunteer Force needs to be junked altogether.

Bacevich’s latest piece represents an incisive analysis of the way lessons drawn will determine our future. This post is a warning against “lessons” of the Bush era that will lead to perpetual war — from a man who knows his business.

Note: Andrew Bacevich will discuss his new book — and the limits of American power in the Bush era — for a full hour on “Bill Moyers Journal,” Friday, August 15th. Don’t miss it. Go here to check broadcasts and times in your area. If you’re watching the Olympics, TIVO it or look for a repeat.

Is Perpetual War Our Future?
Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Bush Era
By Andrew Bacevich

To appreciate the full extent of the military crisis into which the United States has been plunged requires understanding what the Iraq War and, to a lesser extent, the Afghan War have to teach. These two conflicts, along with the attacks of September 11, 2001, will form the centerpiece of George W. Bush’s legacy. Their lessons ought to constitute the basis of a new, more realistic military policy.

In some respects, the effort to divine those lessons is well under way, spurred by critics of President Bush’s policies on the left and the right as well as by reform-minded members of the officer corps. Broadly speaking, this effort has thus far yielded three distinct conclusions. Whether taken singly or together, they invert the post-Cold War military illusions that provided the foundation for the president’s Global War on Terror. In exchange for these received illusions, they propound new ones, which are equally misguided. Thus far, that is, the lessons drawn from America’s post-9/11 military experience are the wrong ones.

According to the first lesson, the armed services — and above all the Army — need to recognize that the challenges posed by Iraq and Afghanistan define not only the military’s present but also its future, the “next war,” as enthusiasts like to say. Rooting out insurgents, nation-building, training and advising “host nation” forces, population security and control, winning hearts and minds — these promise to be ongoing priorities, preoccupying U.S. troops for decades to come, all across the Islamic world.

Rather than brief interventions ending in decisive victory, sustained presence will be the norm. Large-scale conventional conflict like 1991’s Operation Desert Storm becomes the least likely contingency. The future will be one of small wars, expected to be frequent, protracted, perhaps perpetual.

Although advanced technology will retain an important place in such conflicts, it will not be decisive. Wherever possible, the warrior will rely on “nonkinetic” methods, functioning as diplomat, mediator, and relief worker. No doubt American soldiers will engage in combat, but, drawing on the latest findings of social science, they will also demonstrate cultural sensitivity, not to speak of mastering local languages and customs. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it in October 2007, “Reviving public services, rebuilding infrastructure and promoting good governance” had now become soldiers’ business. “All these so-called nontraditional capabilities have moved into the mainstream of military thinking, planning, and strategy — where they must stay.”

This prospect implies a rigorous integration of military action with political purpose. Hard power and soft power will merge. The soldier on the ground will serve as both cop and social worker. This prospect also implies shedding the sort of utopian expectations that produced so much confident talk of “transformation,” “shock-and-awe,” and “networkcentric warfare” — all of which had tended to segregate war and politics into separate compartments.

Local conditions will dictate technique, dooming the Pentagon’s effort to devise a single preconceived, technologically determined template applicable across the entire spectrum of conflict. When it comes to low-intensity wars, the armed services will embrace a style owing less to the traditions of the Civil War, World War II, or even Gulf War I than to the nearly forgotten American experiences in the Philippines after 1898 and in Central America during the 1920s. Instead of looking for inspiration at the campaigns of U. S. Grant, George Patton, or H. Norman Schwarzkopf, officers will study postwar British and French involvement in places like Palestine and Malaya, Indochina and Algeria.

In sum, an officer corps bloodied in Iraq and Afghanistan has seen the future and it points to many more Iraqs and Afghanistans. Whereas the architects of full spectrum dominance had expected the unprecedented lethality, range, accuracy, and responsiveness of high-tech striking power to perpetuate military dominion, the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan know better. They remain committed to global dominance while believing that its pursuit will require not only advanced weaponry but also the ability to put boots on the ground and keep them there. This, in turn, implies a plentiful supply of soldiers and loads of patience on the home front.

Were the Civilians of the Defense Department Responsible?

Viewed from another perspective, however, the post-9/11 wars teach an altogether different lesson. According to this alternative view, echoing a similar complaint during the Vietnam era, the shortcomings of U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan have little to do with the actual performance of American forces in the field and everything to do with the meddling of bumbling civilians back in Washington. In its simplest form, fault lies not with the troops themselves, nor with their commanders, but with the likes of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who prevented the troops from doing their jobs.

The charges leveled by Major General John Batiste, who served in Rumsfeld’s Pentagon but subsequently retired in disgust and became one of the defense secretary’s loudest military critics, are representative of this view. “Rumsfeld’s dismal strategic decisions resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women,” Batiste declared in September 2006. The former general held Rumsfeld personally “responsible for America and her allies going to war with the wrong plan.” But that was just for starters. Rumsfeld also “violated fundamental principles of war, dismissed deliberate military planning, ignored the hard work to build the peace after the fall of Saddam Hussein, set the conditions for Abu Ghraib and other atrocities that further ignited the insurgency, disbanded Iraqi security force institutions when we needed them most, [and] constrained our commanders with an overly restrictive de-Ba’athification policy.”

Nor was the problem limited to Rumsfeld himself. It included his chief lieutenants. According to Batiste, Rumsfeld surrounded himself “with like-minded and compliant subordinates who [did] not grasp the importance of the principles of war, the complexities of Iraq, or the human dimension of warfare.” The overall effect was tantamount to murder: Rumsfeld “tied the hands of commanders while our troops were in contact with the enemy.”

Here lies the second preliminary lesson drawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, one that appeals to disgruntled military officers like Batiste, but also to Democrats eager to blame the Bush administration for any and all sins and to neoconservatives looking to absolve themselves of responsibility for botched wars that they had once cavalierly promoted. The corrective to civilian arrogance and misjudgment is obvious: It requires tilting the civil-military balance back in favor of the generals, untying the hands of senior commanders.

From this perspective, the most important lesson to take away from Iraq and Afghanistan is the imperative to empower military professionals. The Petraeus moment of 2007, when all of official Washington from President Bush to the lowest-ranking congressional staffer waited with bated breath for General David Petraeus to formulate basic policy for Iraq, offers a preview of how this lesson might play itself out.

Is a Draft the Answer?

There is also a third perspective, which blames the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan on a problematic relationship between soldiers and society. According to this view, the All-Volunteer Force itself is the problem. As the military historian Adrian Lewis observed, “The most significant transformation in the American conduct of war since World War II and the invention of the atomic bomb was not technological, but cultural, social, and political — the removal of the American people from the conduct of war.” Only after 9/11, with the Bush administration waging war on multiple fronts, have the implications of this transformation become fully evident.

A reliance on volunteer-professionals places a de facto cap on the army’s overall size. The pool of willing recruits is necessarily limited. Given a choice, most young Americans will opt for opportunities other than military service, with protracted war diminishing rather than enhancing any collective propensity to volunteer. It is virtually inconceivable that any presidential call to the colors, however impassioned, any PR campaign, however cleverly designed, or any package of pay and bonuses, however generous, could reverse this disinclination.

Furthermore, to the extent that an army composed of regulars is no longer a people’s army, the people have little say in its use. In effect, the professional military has become an extension of the imperial presidency. The troops fight when and where the commander in chief determines.

Finally, a reliance on professional soldiers eviscerates the concept of civic duty, relieving citizens at large of any obligation to contribute to the nation’s defense. Ending the draft during the waning days of the Vietnam War did nothing to heal the divisions created by that conflict; instead, it ratified the separation of army from society. Like mowing lawns and bussing tables, fighting and perhaps dying to sustain the American way of life became something that Americans pay others to do.

So the third lesson of the Iraq War focuses on the need to repair the relationship between army and society. One way to do this is to junk the All-Volunteer Force altogether. Rather than rely on professionals, perhaps it makes sense to revive the tradition of the citizen-soldier.

Proposals to restore this hallowed tradition invariably conjure up images of reinstituting some form of conscription. In place of a system based on the principle of individual choice, those unhappy with the AVF advocate a system based on the principle of state compulsion.

The advantages offered by such a system are hardly trivial. To the extent that Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed the operational, political, and moral problems produced by relying on a small professional force, a draft seems to offer one obvious way to alleviate those problems.

For those who worry that the existing army is overextended, conscription provides a mechanism for expansion. Triple the size of the army — in essence restoring the structure that existed during much of the Cold War — and the personnel shortages that constrain the prosecution of ground campaigns will disappear. Sustaining the military commitment to Iraq for ten or twenty years, or even a century as Senator John McCain and many neoconservatives are willing to contemplate, then becomes a viable proposition.

War planners will no longer find themselves obliged to give short shrift to Contingency A (Afghanistan) in order to support Contingency B (Iraq). The concept of “surge” will take on a whole new meaning with the Pentagon able to dispatch not a measly 30,000 reinforcements to Iraq or another few thousand to Afghanistan, but 100,000 or more additional troops wherever they might be needed. Was the problem with Operation Iraqi Freedom too few “boots on the ground” for occupation and reconstruction? Reconstitute the draft, and that problem goes away.

Creating a mass army might even permit the United States to resuscitate the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine with its emphasis on “overwhelming force.”

For those distressed by the absence of a politically meaningful antiwar movement despite the Iraq War’s manifest unpopularity, the appeal of conscription differs somewhat. Some political activists look to an Iraq-era draft to do what the Vietnam-era draft did: animate large-scale protest, alter the political dynamic, and eventually shut down any conflict that lacks widespread popular support. The prospect of involuntary service will pry the kids out of the shopping malls and send them into the streets. It will prod the parents of draft-eligible offspring to see politics as something other than a mechanism for doling out entitlements. As a consequence, members of Congress keen to retain their seats will define their wartime responsibilities as something more than simply rubber-stamping spending bills proposed by the White House. In this way, a draft could reinvigorate American democracy, restore the governmental system of checks and balances, and constrain the warmongers inhabiting the executive branch.

For those moved by moral considerations, a draft promises to ensure a more equitable distribution of sacrifice in war time. No longer will rural Americans, people of color, recent immigrants, and members of the working class fill the ranks of the armed forces in disproportionate numbers. With conscription, the children of the political elite and of the well-to-do will once again bear their fair share of the load. Those reaping the benefits of the American way of life will contribute to its defense, helping to garrison the more distant precincts of empire. Perhaps even the editorial staffs of the Weekly Standard, National Review, and the New Republic might have the opportunity to serve, a salutary prospect given the propensity of those magazines to argue on behalf of military intervention.

Reconfigure the armed services to fight “small wars”; empower the generals; reconnect soldiering to citizenship — on the surface each of these has a certain appeal. But upon closer examination, each also has large defects. They are the wrong lessons to take from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Drawing the Right Lessons from the Bush Era

If gearing up to fight “small wars,” deferring to the brass, and scrapping the All-Volunteer Force are the wrong lessons to be drawn from our recent military experience, then what are the right ones?

The events of the recent past offer several lessons that illuminate these questions. The first concerns the nature of war. Iraq and Afghanistan remind us that war is not subject to reinvention, whatever George W. Bush and Pentagon proponents of the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs may contend.

War’s essential nature is fixed, permanent, intractable, and irrepressible. War’s constant companions are uncertainty and risk. “War is the realm of chance,” wrote the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz nearly two centuries ago. “No other human activity gives it greater scope: no other has such incessant and varied dealings with this intruder…” — a judgment that the invention of the computer, the Internet, and precision-guided munitions has done nothing to overturn.

So the first lesson to be taken away from the Bush administration’s two military adventures is simply this: War remains today what it has always been — elusive, untamed, costly, difficult to control, fraught with surprise, and sure to give rise to unexpected consequences. Only the truly demented will imagine otherwise.

The second lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan derives from the first. As has been the case throughout history, the utility of armed force remains finite. Even in the information age, to the extent that force “works,” it does so with respect to a limited range of contingencies.

Although die-hard supporters of the Global War on Terror will insist otherwise, events in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated definitively that further reliance on coercive methods will not enable the United States to achieve its objectives. Whether the actual aim is to democratize the Islamic world or subdue it, the military “option” is not the answer.

The Bush Doctrine itself provides the basis for a third lesson. For centuries, the Western moral tradition has categorically rejected the concept of preventive war. The events of 9/11 convinced some that this tradition no longer applied: old constraints had to give way. Yet our actual experience with preventive war suggests that, even setting moral considerations aside, to launch a war today to eliminate a danger that might pose a threat at some future date is just plain stupid. It doesn’t work.

History has repeatedly demonstrated the irrationality of preventive war. If the world needed a further demonstration, President Bush provided it. Iraq shows us why the Bush Doctrine was a bad idea in the first place and why its abrogation has become essential. For principled guidance in determining when the use of force is appropriate, the country should conform to the Just War tradition — not only because that tradition is consistent with our professed moral values, but also because its provisions provide an eminently useful guide for sound statecraft.

Finally, there is a fourth lesson, relating to the formulation of strategy. The results of U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan suggest that in the upper echelons of the government and among the senior ranks of the officer corps, this has become a lost art.

Since the end of the Cold War, the tendency among civilians — with President Bush a prime example — has been to confuse strategy with ideology. The president’s freedom agenda, which supposedly provided a blueprint for how to prosecute the Global War on Terror, expressed grandiose aspirations without serious effort to assess the means required to achieve them. Meanwhile, ever since the Vietnam War ended, the tendency among military officers has been to confuse strategy with operations.

Here we come face-to-face with the essential dilemma with which the United States has unsuccessfully wrestled since the Soviets deprived us of a stabilizing adversary. The political elite that ought to bear the chief responsibility for crafting grand strategy instead nurses fantasies of either achieving permanent global hegemony or remaking the world in America’s image. Meanwhile, the military elite that could puncture those fantasies and help restore a modicum of realism to U.S. policy fixates on campaigns and battles, with generalship largely a business of organizing and coordinating matériel.

The four lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan boil down to this: Events have exposed as illusory American pretensions to having mastered war. Even today, war is hardly more subject to human control than the tides or the weather. Simply trying harder — investing ever larger sums in even more advanced technology, devising novel techniques, or even improving the quality of American generalship — will not enable the United States to evade that reality.

As measured by results achieved, the performance of the military since the end of the Cold War and especially since 9/11 has been unimpressive. This indifferent record of success leads some observers to argue that we need a bigger army or a different army.

But the problem lies less with the army that we have — a very fine one, which every citizen should wish to preserve — than with the requirements that we have imposed on our soldiers. Rather than expanding or reconfiguring that army, we need to treat it with the respect that it deserves. That means protecting it from further abuse of the sort that it has endured since 2001.

America doesn’t need a bigger army. It needs a smaller — that is, more modest — foreign policy, one that assigns soldiers missions that are consistent with their capabilities. Modesty implies giving up on the illusions of grandeur to which the end of the Cold War and then 9/11 gave rise. It also means reining in the imperial presidents who expect the army to make good on those illusions. When it comes to supporting the troops, here lies the essence of a citizen’s obligation.

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Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. This piece is adapted from his new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Metropolitan Books, 2008). He is also the author of The New American Militarism, among other books. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. A TomDispatch interview with him can be read by clicking here, and then here. For part one of Bacevich’s two-part series for TomDispatch, “Illusions of Victory,” click here

From the book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew Bacevich, Copyright © 2008 by Andrew Bacevich. Reprinted by arrangement with Metropolitan Books, an Imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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