Everyone Should See 'Torturing Democracy'

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See 'Torturing Democracy' here:

http://torturingdemocracy.org/

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Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
May 30, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all.

During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week -- immediately on the heels of President Obama's address at the National Archives -- former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism "enhanced interrogation" a full dozen times.

Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism of course has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a "wedge issue," as noted on the front page of Sunday's New York Times.

According to the Times, "Armed with polling data that show a narrow majority of support for keeping the prison open and deep fear about the detainees, Republicans in Congress started laying plans even before the inauguration to make the debate over Guantanamo Bay a question of local community safety instead of one about national character and principles."

No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we
forget, we're not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning.

If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That's just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does. Torturing Democracy was written and produced by one of America's outstanding documentary reporters, Sherry Jones. (Excerpts from the film are being shown on the current edition of "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS -- check local listings, or go to the program's website at PBS.org/Moyers, where you can be linked to the entire, 90-minute documentary.)

A longtime colleague, Sherry Jones and the film were honored this week with the prestigious RFK Journalism Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Torturing Democracy was cited for its "meticulous reporting," and described as "the definitive broadcast account of a deeply troubling chapter in recent American history."

Unfortunately, as events demonstrate, the story is not yet history; the early chapters aren't even closed. Torture still is being defended as a matter of national security, although by law it is a war crime, with those who authorized and executed it liable for prosecution as war criminals. The war on terror sparked impatience with the rule of law -- and fostered the belief within our government that the commander-in-chief had the right to ignore it.

Torturing Democracy begins at 9/11 and recounts how the Bush White House and the Pentagon decided to make coercive detention and abusive interrogation the official U.S. policy on the war on terror. In sometimes graphic detail, the documentary describes the experiences of several of the men held in custody, including Shafiq Rasul, Moazzam Begg and Bisher al-Rawi, all of whom eventually were released. Charges never were filed against them and no reason was ever given for their
years in custody.

The documentary traces how tactics meant to train American troops to survive enemy interrogations -- the famous SERE program ("Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape") -- became the basis for many of the methods employed by the CIA and by interrogators at Guantanamo and in Iraq, including waterboarding (which inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death), sleep and sensory deprivation, shackling, caging, painful stress positions and sexual humiliation.

"We have re-created our enemy's methodologies in Guantanamo," Malcolm Nance, former head of the Navy's SERE training program, says in Torturing Democracy. "It will hurt us for decades to come. Decades. Our people will all be subjected to these tactics, because we have authorized them for the world now. How it got to Guantanamo is a crime and somebody needs to figure out who did it, how they did it, who authorized them to do it... Because our servicemen will suffer for years."

In addition to its depiction of brutality, Torturing Democracy also credits the brave few who stood up to those in power and said, "No." In Washington, there were officials of conviction horrified by unfolding events, including Alberto Mora, the Navy's top civilian lawyer, Major General Thomas Romig, who served as Judge Advocate General of the US Army from 2001 to 2005 and Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch, a former senior prosecutor with the Office of Military Commissions.

Much has happened since the film's initial telecast on some public television stations last fall. Once classified memos from the Bush administration have been released that reveal more details of the harsh techniques used against detainees whose guilt or innocence is still to be decided.

President Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo by next January, with the specifics to come later in the summer. That was enough to set off hysteria among Democrats and Republicans alike who don't want the remaining 240 detainees on American soil -- even in a super maximum security prison, the kind already holding hundreds of terrorist suspects. The president also triggered criticism from constitutional and civil liberties lawyers when he suggested that some detainees may be held indefinitely, without due process.

But in an interview with Radio Free Europe this week, General David Petraeus, the man in charge of the military's Central Command, praised the Guantanamo closing, saying it "sends an important message to the world" and will help advance America's strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In another revealing and disturbing development, the former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, has suggested what is possibly as scandalous a deception as the false case Bush and Cheney made for invading Iraq. Colonel Wilkerson writes that in their zeal to prove a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein during the months leading up to the Iraq war, one suspect held in Egypt, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was water tortured until he falsely told the interrogators what they wanted to hear.

That phony confession that Wilkerson says was wrung from a broken man who simply wanted the torture to stop was then used as evidence in Colin Powell's infamous address to the United Nations shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Colin Powell says the CIA vetted everything in his speech and that Wilkerson's allegation is only speculation. We'll never know the full story -- al-Libi died three weeks ago in a Libyan prison. A suicide.

Or so they say.

No wonder so many Americans clamor for a truth commission that will get the facts and put them on the record, just as Torturing Democracy has done. Then we can judge for ourselves.

As the editors of the magazine The Christian Century wrote this week, "Convening a truth commission on torture would be embarrassing to the U.S. in the short term, but in the long run it would demonstrate the strength of American democracy and confirm the nation's adherence to the rule of law... Understandably, [the President] wants to turn the page on torture. But Americans should not turn the page until they know what is written on it."

http://torturingdemocracy.org/

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Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.

The Main Result of the "War on Terror": The Destabilization of Pakistan

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Gary Leupp
May 30, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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So far the principle result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the events of 9-11 has been the destabilization of Pakistan. That breakdown is peaking with the events in what AP calls the "Swat town" of Mingora---actually a city of 375,000 from which all but 20,000 have fled as government forces moved in, strafing it with gunships. We're talking urban guerrilla warfare, house-to-house fighting, not on the Afghan border but 50 miles away in the Swat Valley. We're talking about Pakistani troops fighting to reclaim the nearby Malam Jabba ski resort from the Tehreek-e-Taliban, who since last year have been using it as a training center and logistics base. We're talking about two million people fleeing the fighting in the valley and 160,000 in government refugee camps.

And of course, "collateral damage": As was reported in The News in Pakistan May 19:

Several persons, including women and children, were killed and a number of others sustained injuries when families fleeing the military operation in Swat's Matta town were shelled while crossing a mountainous path to reach Karo Darra in Dir Upper on Monday, eyewitnesses and official sources said. Eyewitnesses, who escaped the attack or were able to reach Wari town of Dir Upper in injured condition, said they were targeted by gunship helicopters. However, police officials said they might have been hit by a stray shell. Local people said they saw some 12 to 14 bodies on a mountain on the Swat side but could not go near to retrieve them or help the injured for fear of another aerial attack.

What a nightmare scenario for Pakistan.

We're talking about the Pakistani Army sometimes fighting over the last year to retake towns from Taliban forces in the Buner region of the North-West Frontier Province that are closer to the capital of Islamabad than the Afghan border. And while the Talibs apparently lack popular support, even among the Pashtuns (who are 15 % of the Pakistani population---26 million and 42% of the Afghan population---14 million) they have been able to inflict embarrassing defeats on the army.

Tehreek-i-Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud, head of the militant forces in South Waziristan, established his credentials when his forces captured 300 Pakistani soldiers and traded them for about 30 imprisoned militants in the fall of 2007. Time and again the several (sometimes rival) "Taliban" forces, which did not exist before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan created them, have forced the government to negotiate terms. Most recently in February Islamabad agreed to the implementation of the Sharia in the Swat Valley in exchange for peace. The Taliban broke the agreement in April, or so the story goes, and the army claims it's killed 1,100 militants since.

But curiously as of Sunday it claimed to have killed only 10 Taliban, while boasting of seizing (according to AP) "a spot nicknamed 'bloody intersection' because militants routinely dumped the mutilated bodies of their victims there." On Monday I read of another four dead militants but the Taliban announced through a spokesman that they would maintain "aides" in place in the city, cease fire, and advise civilians to return. It appears most have retreated to other towns, including Buner and Daggar where fighting goes on now. This they can do under cover of the masses of refugees of course.

Now think of what has happened here. Whether or not this was Osama bin Laden's conscious plan, the local, ethnically-based, ideological movement most receptive to his own (i.e., the Taliban, or more precisely, multiple talibans on the Pakistan side of the border) has flourished since the U.S. attack upon Afghanistan in response to the 9-11 attacks. The imperialist response to 9-11 inflamed Pashtunistan. The toppling of the Taliban itself aroused indignation among many Pakistani as well as Afghan Pashtuns. Some militants fleeing east met with the traditional Pasthtunwali welcome, as they would under less stressful circumstances, and beyond that political sympathy.

The drone missile attacks, the civilian deaths, the contemptuous official denials, the repeated insults to national sovereignty, the connivance of the regime in power, have angered many, perhaps most, Pakistanis. While the Taliban has undergone a quiet resurgence in southern Afghanistan, leading U.S. generals to conclude that a military solution to the war is impossible, bands of religious "students" gathering around tribal leaders and warlords in Pakistan forming the umbrella "Movement of the Taliban" or Tehreek-e-Taliban under Mahsud have been able to generate this kind of chaos.

The Army had been deployed before against Indian forces. But the disproportionately Pashtun force had never confronted or been trained to confront fanatical Pashtun jihadis---particularly when the issue was the implementation of the Sharia. Not surprisingly it performed badly and Islamabad wound up cutting a deal in February to implement Islamic law in the Swat Valley. U.S. Defense Secretary Gates can criticize that judgment in stating, "We want to support [the Pakistanis]. We want to help them in any way we can. But it is important that they recognize the real threats to their country." And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can tell Congress, "I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists [by making a peace deal in Swat]. Changing paradigms and mindsets is not easy, but I do believe there is an increasing awareness of not just the Pakistani government but the Pakistani people that this insurgency coming
closer and closer to major cities does pose such a threat."

It's easy to lecture about such things, to judge the actions of another government facing a crisis. But isn't it obvious that what Clinton has since at least April been calling Pakistan's "existential threat" wouldn't be closing in on the cities of that country had the U.S. not responded to 9-11 with the knee-jerk bombing of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban? President Pervez Musharraf has recalled that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told him soon after 9-11 to "prepare to go back to the Stone Age" if he didn't cooperate with the U.S. in the war on terrorism. The existential threat to Pakistan was the Bush administration!

The Bush administration pressured Musharraf to deploy the Pakistan Army in border provinces where it had never been deployed and where its very presence was perceived as a provocation. The result was the September 2005 "peace agreement" in which the government agreed to halt military operations along the border and dismantle checkpoints in return for tribal leaders' commitment to end support for militancy and prevent cross-border incursions into Afghanistan. It was a face-saving defeat for the regime that drew U.S. criticism, as have all subsequent deals with the militants, which have in any case broken down, like the February deal in Swat.

The 2005 agreement followed the notorious Lal Masjid episode in Islamabad when the security forces stormed an important seminary and hotbed of Islamist activism. The khatib (prayer-leader) had been dismissed for issuing a fatwa stating no Pakistani Army officer could be given an Islamic burial if died fighting the Taliban, and then the mosque had risen up in general rebellion, sparking solidarity attacks on government forces by militants in North Waziristan and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The government was forced to back down.

That's been the pattern ever sense. Get tough on the "insurgents," with U.S. prodding, and funding, and threats of funding reduction and direct intervention. Then negotiate with tribal and religious leaders, recognizing locals' mistrust of outsiders, the Pakistani state, and its international backers which the mullahs may identify as U.S. imperialism and Zionism. And watch both carrot and stick policies fail as Pakistan's own homegrown Taliban insurgency swells alongside the recrudescent original next door.

Now, while the Pakistani Army is still struggling to take control of Mingora and the Taliban is regrouping, the insurgents have pulled off a brazen attack on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) office compound in Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, on the border with India, killing about 30 and injuring 250. The irony here of course is that the Taliban was nurtured by the ISI in the 1990s and the attackers may well have known the location of ISI offices for that very reason.

Such terror has Bush's war on terror visited on Pakistan, with no end in sight. And Obama's war in "Af-Pak," reliant on a troop surge, more Predator drone attacks, and maybe some "divide and conquer" tactics, hold out little promise for relief. U.S. officials screw up their faces as if genuinely puzzled about while the Pakistanis aren't doing more---as if puzzled about why they don't understand that their existence is at stake. The fact is that they are the ones on the outside looking in, who do not understand that the interests of U.S. imperialism do not cause religious and national and ethnic sensibilities to disappear or make it possible for local leaders, even those on the imperialist payroll, to snap their fingers, crush local resistance and produce social peace. The interests of U.S. imperialism in this case, in the form of regime change in Afghanistan, and the way it was done, have antagonized much of the Pakistani population.

This is Washington's unwanted gift to Islamabad, for which Islamabad keeps getting paid and keeps paying.

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Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion, at Tufts University and author of numerous works on Japanese history.

Pyongyang shakes up pacifist Japan

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Kosuke Takahashi
May 30, 2009 - Asia Times

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TOKYO - An increasingly belligerent North Korea is reawaking hawkish sentiments in Japan, still one of the world's most powerful nations and equipped with ultra-modern weaponry.

Prompted by Pyongyang's recent provocations - including an underground nuclear test, short-range missile launches and a long-range missile test - normally pacifist Japan is considering acquiring the capability to make pre-emptive strikes to destroy enemy bases, such as those in North Korea.

More than a few government officials and lawmakers have reservations about making the leap, as it would be a huge departure from Japan's exclusively defense-oriented, post-World War II policy. The strong pacifism enshrined in the United Stated-imposed "peace constitution" would be a thing of the past.

The Japanese government, led by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), is applying the finishing touches to plans that would enable the Japanese military to to carry out pre-emptive strikes against enemy states as part of the new National Defense Program Guidelines for fiscal years 2010 to 2014, to be compiled by the end of this year.

The 12-page summary of proposals made by a subcommittee of the LDP's defense policy-making panel on May 26 argue that Japan could use sea-launched cruise missiles in pre-emptive strikes against a hostile nation's missile sites, having first detected launch preparations in that enemy state with surveillance satellites. The proposals are expected to be officially finalized on June 3.

Japan would not be forced to "just sit and wait for its own death", read the document obtained by Asia Times Online. Such measures would have to remain "within the scope of Japan's defense-only policy," it continued, stressing that the pre-emptive strikes could be used to prevent an imminent attack.

In response to a lawmaker's question as to whether Japan has right to launch pre-emptive strikes against missile sites after detecting launch preparations in an enemy state with a spy satellite, Prime Minister Taro Aso said: "As long as it is evident that there are no other measures, striking the enemy's missile bases is guaranteed under the Constitution. It falls within the scope of self-defense. It's different from pre-emptive attacks."

Aso pointed out that the right of self-defense is usually defined as the right to exercise certain forces for self-defense against imminent or real unlawful armed attacks. He stressed that the Japanese government has maintained this view as a basic standpoint.

Aso's remarks suggest that Japan's more assertive stance against North Korea would not require changes to Japan's pacifist constitution. He added, "... the Self-Defense Force [SDF] is unequipped to strike enemy bases" given its current capabilities.

"The nation's right of self-defense is a natural right, and the individual right of self-defense is certainly guaranteed under the Constitution," Japanese military analyst Toshiyuki Shikata told Asia Times Online. "But Japan requires some adjustment with the United States, or Japan's military ally."

Meanwhile, North Korea's Rodong Daily News on Friday carried a commentary branding Aso's and other leaders' recent remarks as revealing the bellicose design of Japan as it seeks to ignite a war of aggression with North Korea. Pyongyang vowed to "wipe out all Japanese militaristic invaders by launching merciless retaliatory attacks" on ground, sea and air assaults, the Rodong Daily News editorial boasted.

The LDP subcommittee's proposals also include changing the government's current interpretation of the Constitution which denies Japan the right to collective defense, preventing the SDF from protecting US warships in joint operations or from intercepting long-range ballistic missiles aimed at US targets.

The proposals also include developing an early warning satellite system to detect the launch of ballistic missiles, for which Japan currently relies on the US. Another proposal is to appoint an SDF officer to the post of secretary to the prime minister. This position has been avoided in the post-World War II period in order to prevent a the return of an unchecked military establishment.

Among other proposals is a bid to review Japan's so-called three principles of banning the export of weapons. Currently, the only exception is for Japanese companies to provide weapons to the US created through joint development projects. This applies solely to the ballistic missile defense (BMD) initiative. The revision of the three principles would allow Japan to export weapons to other nations.

The proposals also suggest establishing a basic law on national security and initiating a Japanese version of the US's National Security Council.

Satoru Miyamoto, research fellow in North Korean military affairs at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, told Asia Times Online on Friday, that the recent argument by the LDP and Aso was "nothing more than words on paper".

"Even if Japan succeeds in attacking enemy bases, it cannot defend itself from counterattacks," Miyamoto said. "Japan does not have such military capabilities. It's quite easy to start a war, but it's very difficult to end it."

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Kosuke Takahashi, a former staff writer at the Asahi Shimbun, is a freelance correspondent based in Tokyo.

Educating Ourselves to Oblivion

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May 28, 2009 - TomDispatch

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Can there be any doubt that education matters not just in how we view the world, but in what kind of world we create -- or simply accept? And can there be any doubt that, despite a massive educational infrastructure (admittedly now fraying badly), Americans remain remarkably poorly informed about the world? Last year, Rick Shenkman, the editor of the History News Network website, published a book (now out in paperback), Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter, excerpted at this site. Stupid enough (or ill-informed) was the answer.

Since Barack Obama's election, many readers wrote Shenkman asking him if he still believes that "the voters are uninformed. Didn't Obama's election mean they were pretty smart?" In a recent post, he answered regretfully in the negative and here's just a little of what he had to say:

"The highlights of the 2008 election included controversies over Obama's bowling score, his middle name Hussein, and Hillary's crying. These were not exactly issues of much weight at a time when the financial collapse of the country was happening before our eyes. And yet they drew extended media commentary… The media was to blame for the deplorable low quality of much of the campaign. But I am firmly convinced that you get the campaign you deserve…

"Take the question of Obama's religion. Millions of voters paid so little attention to the news that they were easily bamboozled into believing that Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim. On the eve of the election, confusion reigned. Polls indicated that 7 percent of the voters in the key battleground states of Florida and Ohio and 23 percent in Texas believed that Obama was a Muslim. In addition, and worse, more than 40 percent in Florida and Ohio reported that they did not know what his religion was. The arithmetic is horrifying: 7 percent + 40 percent = a near majority guilty of gross ignorance.

"Americans did not come by their confusion by accident. A deliberate campaign was launched by Republicans to convince people that Obama's faith was in question. But what are we to make of voters who could be so easily bamboozled..."

It's sobering to consider just how many Americans can't sort out propaganda (or simply fiction) from fact in the media madness that passes for our "information age." It's no less sobering to consider a corollary possibility: that we get the society we deserve; that, in fact, our youth in college today are being prepared, as TomDispatch regular William Astore (who has taught at both the Air Force Academy and the Pennsylvania College of Technology) suggests, to enter a world in desperate shape, but not to challenge it.