The Rag Blog

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood tall — militarily invincible, economically unrivalled, diplomatically uncontestable, and the dominating force on information channels worldwide. The next century was to be the true “American century,” with the rest of the world molding itself in the image of the sole superpower.

Yet, with not even a decade of this century behind us, we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of American supremacy — Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode American hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.

How and why has the world evolved in this way so soon? The Bush administration’s debacle in Iraq is certainly a major factor in this transformation, a classic example of an imperialist power, brimming with hubris, over-extending itself. To the relief of many — in the U. S. and elsewhere — the Iraq fiasco has demonstrated the striking limitations of power for the globe’s highest-tech, most destructive military machine. In Iraq, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to two U.S. presidents, concedes in a recent op-ed, “We are being wrestled to a draw by opponents who are not even an organized state adversary.”

The invasion and subsequent disastrous occupation of Iraq and the mismanaged military campaign in Afghanistan have crippled the credibility of the United States. The scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo in Cuba, along with the widely publicized murders of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, have badly tarnished America’s moral self-image. In the latest opinion poll, even in a secular state and member of NATO like Turkey, only 9% of Turks have a “favorable view” of the U.S. (down from 52% just five years ago).

Yet there are other explanations — unrelated to Washington’s glaring misadventures — for the current transformation in international affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations as never before; the rapid economic expansion of the mega-nations China and India; the transformation of China into the globe’s leading manufacturing base; and the end of the Anglo-American duopoly in international television news.

Many Channels, Diverse Perceptions

During the 1991 Gulf War, only CNN and the BBC had correspondents in Baghdad. So the international TV audience, irrespective of its location, saw the conflict through their lenses. Twelve years later, when the Bush administration, backed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, invaded Iraq, Al Jazeera Arabic broke this duopoly. It relayed images — and facts — that contradicted the Pentagon’s presentation. For the first time in history, the world witnessed two versions of an ongoing war in real time. So credible was the Al Jazeera Arabic version that many television companies outside the Arabic-speaking world — in Europe, Asia and Latin America — showed its clips.

Though, in theory, the growth of cable television worldwide raised the prospect of ending the Anglo-American duopoly in 24-hour TV news, not much had happened due to the exorbitant cost of gathering and editing TV news. It was only the arrival of Al Jazeera English, funded by the hydrocarbon-rich emirate of Qatar — with its declared policy of offering a global perspective from an Arab and Muslim angle — that, in 2006, finally broke the long-established mold.

Soon France 24 came on the air, broadcasting in English and French from a French viewpoint, followed in mid-2007 by the English-language Press TV, which aimed to provide an Iranian perspective. Russia was next in line for 24-hour TV news in English for the global audience. Meanwhile, spurred by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Telesur, a pan-Latin-American TV channel based in Caracas, began competing with CNN in Spanish for a mass audience.

As with Qatar, so with Russia and Venezuela, the funding for these TV news ventures has come from soaring national hydrocarbon incomes — a factor draining American hegemony not just in imagery but in reality.

Russia, an Energy Superpower

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has more than recovered from the economic chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. After effectively renationalizing the energy industry through state-controlled corporations, he began deploying its economic clout to further Russia’s foreign policy interests.

In 2005, Russia overtook the United States, becoming the second largest oil producer in the world. Its oil income now amounts to $679 million a day. European countries dependent on imported Russian oil now include Hungary, Poland, Germany, and even Britain.

Russia is also the largest producer of natural gas on the planet, with three-fifths of its gas exports going to the 27-member European Union (EU). Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, and Slovakia get 100% of their natural gas from Russia; Turkey, 66%; Poland, 58%; Germany 41%; and France 25%. Gazprom, the biggest natural gas enterprise on Earth, has established stakes in sixteen EU countries. In 2006, the Kremlin’s foreign reserves stood at $315 billion, up from a paltry $12 billion in 1999. Little wonder that, in July 2006 on the eve of the G8 summit in St Petersburg, Putin rejected an energy charter proposed by the Western leaders.

Soaring foreign-exchange reserves, new ballistic missiles, and closer links with a prospering China — with which it conducted joint military exercises on China’s Shandong Peninsula in August 2005 — enabled Putin to deal with his American counterpart, President George W. Bush, as an equal, not mincing his words when appraising American policies.

“One country, the United States, has overstepped its national boundaries in every way,” Putin told the 43rd Munich Trans-Atlantic conference on security policy in February 2007. “This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations…This is very dangerous.”

Condemning the concept of a “unipolar world,” he added: “However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it describes a scenario in which there is one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making…It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And this is pernicious.” His views fell on receptive ears in the capitals of most Asian, African, and Latin American countries.

The changing relationship between Moscow and Washington was noted, among others, by analysts and policy-makers in the hydrocarbon-rich Persian Gulf region. Commenting on the visit that Putin paid to long-time U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar after the Munich conference, Abdel Aziz Sagar, chairman of the Gulf Research Center, wrote in the Doha-based newspaper The Peninsula that Russia and Gulf Arab countries, once rivals from opposite ideological camps, had found a common agenda of oil, anti-terrorism, and arms sales. “The altered focus takes place in a milieu where the Gulf countries are signaling their keenness to keep all geopolitical options open, reviewing the utility of the United States as the sole security guarantor, and contemplating a collective security mechanism that involves a host of international players.”

In April 2007, the Kremlin issued a major foreign policy document. “The myth about the unipolar world fell apart once and for all in Iraq,” it stated. “A strong, more self-confident Russia has become an integral part of positive changes in the world.”

Gargantuan loan guarantees for a “new generation” of nuke reactors define the Senate’s version of the Energy Bill that Congress will consider right after Labor Day.

Its backers say the $50 billion-plus in radioactive pork will give us “inherently safe” reactors–which is what they said about the last crop, including Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and hundreds of billions in cost overruns and abysmal failure.

Nuke reactors are no safer than those coal mines just littered with fresh corpses, than that collapsed Minnesota bridge, or than the levees that let Katrina swamp New Orleans, and are poised to do it again.

The first “new generation” nuke is already swamped with cost overruns and absurd miscalculations. Finnish regulators are screaming at Areva, the French-based nuke pushers, about corner-cutting and costly delays.

But these are merely the latest in the endless flow of “nuke nuggets” that have made the world’s 430-plus reactors history’s most lethal and expensive technological failure:

Faulty plumbing forced one US nuke operator to shut on-site toilet facilities while the cooling system was in use;

At another US reactor, a basketball wrapped in tape was used to stop up a critical reactor tube;

Consecutive global-warmed “hundred-year floods” threatened to swamp the two Prairie Island reactors (south of that collapsed Minnesota bridge) nearly irradiating the entire downstream Mississippi River;

Like coal miners, uranium miners die en masse from lung cancer and tunnel collapses;

Steam releases killed and maimed at least four workers at Virginia’s North Anna complex;

“Too cheap to meter” was atomic energy’s mantra until it delivered gargantuan cost overruns and ramshackle reactors in what Forbes Magazine has called “the largest managerial disaster in business history”;

In the 2000-1 deregulation scam, the nuke industry portrayed its own reactors as being “uncompetitive,” thus demanding $100 billion in “stranded cost” subsidies for their bad reactor investments;

The Yucca Mountain nuke waste repository, which may never open, has already absorbed $10 billion, but its minimum official cost is now estimated at around $60 billion, which is likely to soar to at least $100 billion;

In 1957 the industry promised independent insurance companies would insure reactors against catastrophic accidents, but that has never happened, either for old nukes or for the proposed new ones;

Before March 28, 1979, nuke owners said the melt-down that destroyed Three Mile Island Two was “impossible”;

Before April 26, 1986, nuke owners said the explosion that destroyed Chernobyl Four was “impossible”;

For nine years, TMI’s owners said there was no significant fuel melt, until a robotic camera showed that nearly ALL the fuel had melted;

TMI’s owners say “no one died” there, but stack monitors failed during the accident and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not know exactly how much radiation escaped, where it went or who it affected;

No official systematic monitoring of the health of the people around TMI was initiated when the plant opened, or when it melted, and none has been maintained;

Some 2400 central Pennsylvania families have tried to sue for damages since TMI’s fall-out hit them, but have been denied a federal trial for nearly three decades;

Some 800,000 drafted clean-up “liquidators” were forced into Chernobyl, thousands of whom are dying of cancer;

Seven atomic reactors in Japan were significantly damaged by an earthquake despite decades of official assurances that they were safe;

Japanese authorities now admit that the recent earthquake exceeded—by a factor of three—the design specifications of the seven reactors it damaged;

Far stronger earthquakes are expected soon at all or most of Japan’s 55 reactors, where experts say at least some could be reduced to radioactive rubble;

Four reactors in California, one in Ohio and two in New York are among the many American nukes built very close to active earthquake faults;

The Perry nuke, east of Cleveland, whose owners denied it was in any danger from a nearby “geological anomaly,” was significantly damaged by a January 31, 1986 earthquake;

Despite a lawsuit by Ohio’s governor, Perry was allowed to open amidst damage to area roads and bridges that would have made evacuation impossible, and that could have meant disaster had it been operating at the time;

Near Toledo, dripping boric acid ate through the Davis-Besse pressure vessel, bringing it within a fraction of an inch of a catastrophe capable of irradiating Cleveland and all of Lake Erie;

Davis-Besse’s owner blacked out the entire northeast, including much of Canada, partly due to uneven power surges from its nukes and the deterioration of its electric power grid;

On September 11, 2001, the terrorists who crashed into the World Trade Center flew directly over the two active reactors at Indian Point, but did not hit them, apparently believing that they were protected by surface-to-air missiles;

Not one of the 100-plus US reactors is protected by surface-to-air missiles;

Virtually every US reactor has failed simple tests of security systems meant to protect them from terror attacks;

Early official government studies warned that a single meltdown could make permanently uninhabitable “an area the size of Pennsylvania”;

An attack on the Indian Point reactors on 9/11/2001 could have rendered the entire New York region — including the World Trade Centers — permanently uninhabitable, causing millions of long-term human casualties and trillions of dollars in damage, from which the US economy likely would never have recovered;

Huge heat emissions make atomic reactors major contributors to global warming, as do CO2 emissions from construction, decommissioning, the mining, milling and enrichment of uranium fuel, waste disposal, and more;

Despite being billed as a “solution to global warming,” French reactors were recently shut because they overheated local rivers with their waste cooling water;

Despite being billed as a “solution to global warming,” one reactor at Alabama’s Browns Ferry was forced shut, and two cut back 25%, as summer river temperatures hit 90 degrees, the federal limit;

These shut-downs come precisely when power is most needed for air conditioning, and when the REAL solution to global warming, solar energy, is most abundant;

In 1975, a Browns Ferry reactor suffered a $100 million fire when a worker ignited its insulation with a candle;

Reactor regulators report a constant flow of “incidents” that endanger reactor operations and the public safety;

The former head of the Atomic Energy Commission’s health research efforts has calculated that “normal” reactor emissions could kill some 32,000 Americans every year;

A dollar spent on energy conservation saves ten times the energy produced by a dollar spent on a nuke;

This tragic, terrifying “nugget” list could extend on for another few hundred pages, as per THE NUGGET FILE, by a former industry insider, and FISSION STORIES by David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

With a crippled infrastructure and corner-cutting mentality, the corporate operatives building these reactors are no more competent or trustworthy than the ones in charge of coal mines, bridges, levees.

Homer Simpson will run the new nukes, just like the old nukes.

Wall Street knows it. Does Congress? Better tell them.

Jose Padilla’s conviction on terrorism charges on August 16 was a victory, not for justice, but for the US Justice (sic) Department’s theory that a US citizen can be convicted, not because he committed a terrorist act but for allegedly harboring aspirations to commit such an act. By agreeing with the Justice (sic) Department’s theory, the incompetent Padilla Jury delivered a deadly blow to the rule of law and opened Pandora’s Box.

Anglo-American law is a human achievement 800 years in the making. Over centuries law was transformed from a weapon in the hands of government into a shield of the people from unaccountable power. The Padilla Jury’s verdict turned law back into a weapon.

The jury, of course, had no idea of what was at stake. It was a patriotic jury that appeared in court with one row of jurors dressed in red, one in white, and one in blue (Peter Whoriskey, Washington Post, August 17, 2007).
It was a jury primed to be psychologically and emotionally manipulated by federal prosecutors desperate for a conviction for which there was little, if any, supporting evidence. For the jury, patriotism required that they strike a blow for America against terrorism. No member of this jury was going to return home to accusations of letting off a person who has been portrayed as a terrorist in the US media for five years.

The “evidence” against Padilla consists of three items:

(1) seven intercepted telephone conversations,

(2) a 10-year old non-relevant video of Osama bin Laden, and

(3) an alleged application to a mujahideen (not terrorist) training camp with Padilla’s fingerprints. We will examine each in turn.

The International Herald Tribune and Associated Press reported in detail on the telephone intercepts (June 19, 2007): “Accused al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla was never overheard using purported code words for violent jihad in intercepted telephone conversations and spoke often about his difficulties in learning Arabic while studying in Egypt, the lead FBI case agent testified Tuesday. The questioning of FBI Agent James T. Kavanaugh by Padilla’s attorney, Michael Caruso, focused on seven intercepted telephone calls on which Padilla’s voice is heard mostly talking about his marriage and his studies but never about Islamic extremism. . . . Caruso asked Kavanaugh if Padilla ever was heard using what prosecutors say were code words for violent jihad . . . ‘No, he does not,’ Kavanaugh replied. . . . Caruso asked Kavanaugh if Padilla was ever overheard discussing jihad training. ‘No jihad training that I’ve seen,’ Kavanaugh said. . . . ‘He’s not referring to anything here but studying Arabic, correct? Study means study, right?’ Caruso asked. ‘That’s what they’re talking about,’ Kavanaugh testified.”

Despite the FBI’s testimony that the intercepted telephone messages contained no incriminating evidence, the “patriotic” jury accepted the federal prosecutor’s unsupported accusation that there were hidden code words in the message indicating that Padilla was a terrorist. After all, who but a terrorist would want to learn Arabic?

The video of bin Laden had no relevance whatsoever to the charges in the case. The video is 10 years old and makes no reference to any of the defendants. Moreover, none of the defendants were accused of ever being in contact with bin Laden. The only purpose of the video was to arouse in jurors fear, anger, and disturbing memories associated with September 11, 2001. The fact that the judge let prosecutors sway a fearful and vengeful patriotic jury with emotion and passion rather than evidence is obviously grounds for appeal.

Whoriskey reports that in their closing arguments prosecutors mentioned al-Qaeda more than 100 times and urged jurors to think of al-Qaeda and groups alleged to be affiliated with it as an international murder conspiracy. Padilla “trained to kill,’ Assistant US Attorney Brian Frazier misinformed the jury in his closing statement.

Who Padilla wished to kill was never identified, but according to the prosecutors he had been wanting to kill persons unknown since 1998. Padilla was convicted for harboring alleged intentions, not for committing any acts. Indeed, no harmful acts are charged to Padilla. The incompetent jury fell for the prosecutors’ wild tale of a murder conspiracy many years old that had no results.

As Andrew Cohen put it, Padilla and the two co-defendants were convicted on the charge of “terrorist-wannabes” on the basis of “evidence that federal authorities did not believe amounted to a crime when it was gathered back before 2001.” Cohen concludes: “it’s further proof that if you can convince an American jury that a man in the dock had anything to do with al-Qaeda, you can pretty much bank on a conviction no matter how tenuous the evidence” (washingtonpost.com, August 16, 2007).

The training camp application form is as suspect as any evidence can be.

Moreover, the prosecution had no evidence that Padilla actually attended such a camp. Padilla was held illegally for 3.5 years and tortured. At any time during his illegal detention and torture, Padilla could have been handed a form, thus tainting it with his fingerprints.

Amy Goodman, the forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty, the Christian Science Monitor and others have described how US interrogators abused Padilla and destroyed his mind. To expect a person as badly tortured and abused as Padilla to retain the wits not to touch a piece of paper handed to him, or forced into his hands, is unreasonable.
When Padilla was arrested five years ago in 2002, the US government charged that he was about to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” in a US city that would kill tens or even hundreds of thousands of Americans. The story was a total lie, a fabrication designed to keep the fear level high after 9/11 in order to keep support for the Bush regime’s wars and domestic police state. None of the charges on which Padilla was illegally held, during those years before the US Supreme Court intervened and ordered the Bush regime to release Padilla or bring him to trial, were part of the charges on which Padilla was tried.

There is little doubt that Padilla’s conviction, and probably also the convictions of the two co-defendants, is a terrible injustice. But the damage done goes far beyond the damage to the defendants. What the red, white, and blue “Padilla Jury” has done is to overthrow the US Constitution and give us the rule of men.

The US Constitution and Anglo-American legal tradition prevent indictments, much less convictions, based on a prosecutor’s theory that a person wanted to commit a crime in the past or might want to in the future. Padilla has harmed no one. There is no evidence that he made an agreement with any party to harm anyone whether for money or ideology or any reason. The FBI testified that the telephone calls were innocuous. The bin Laden video was evidence of nothing pertaining to the defendants. The piece of paper, alleged to be a personnel form recovered from an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan is nothing but a piece of paper and an assertion.

As Lawrence Stratton and I demonstrated in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2000), the protective features of law had been seriously eroded prior to the Bush regime’s assault on civil liberty in the name of “the war on terror.” The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights rest on Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. Blackstone explained law as the protective principles against tyranny –habeas corpus, due process, attorney-client privilege, no crime without intent, no retroactive law, no self-incrimination.

Jeremy Bentham claimed that these protective principles were outmoded in a democracy in which the people controlled the government and no longer had reasons to fear it. The problem with Blackstone’s “Rights of Englishmen,” Bentham said, is that these civil liberties needlessly limit the government’s power and, thus, its ability to protect citizens from crime. Bentham wanted to preempt criminal acts by arresting those likely to commit crimes in advance, before the budding criminals entered into a life of crime. Bentham, like the Bush regime, the “Padilla Jury,” and the Republican Federalist Society, did not understand that when law becomes a weapon, liberty dies regardless of the form of government. If they do understand, they prefer unaccountable government power to individual liberty.

The incompetent “Padilla Jury” has done Americans and their liberty far more damage than will ever be done by terrorists, other than those in our criminal justice (sic) system who now wield the powers that Bentham wanted to give them.

The Padilla case was the way the Bush Justice (sic) Department implemented its strategy for taking away the legal principles that protect American citizens. Padilla is an American citizen. He was denied habeas corpus and his rights to an attorney and due process. He was tortured in an attempt to coerce him into self-incrimination. In treating Padilla in these ways, the US Department of Justice (sic) violated both the US Constitution and federal law. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Justice (sic) Department committed far more crimes than did Padilla.

By the time the Supreme Court finally intervened, Padilla was universally known as the demonized “dirty bomber,” an “enemy combatant” who was arrested before he could set off a radioactive bomb in a US city. The Injustice Department could now simultaneously convict Padilla and enshrine Benthamite law simply by appealing to fear and patriotism. And that is what happened.

Under Benthamite law, the individual has no rights. The new calculus is “the greatest good for the greatest number” as determined by the wielders of power. On the basis of this new law, not written by Congress but invented by the Injustice Department and made precedent by the “Padilla Jury” verdict, the US can lock up people based on the percentage of crime committed by their race, gender, income class, or ethnic group.

Under Benthamite law, people can be arrested and prosecuted for thought crimes. Under Benthamite law, it is the government that protects the people, not the Constitution and Bill of Rights that protect the individual. Benthamite law makes “advocacy speech,” for example, a call for the overthrow of the US government, upheld in the 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio, a serious federal crime.

The “Padilla Jury” has opened Pandora’s Box. Unless the conviction is overturned on appeal, American liberty died in the “Padilla Jury’s” verdict.

BAGHDAD: The United States is pressing ahead with an American-financed effort to recruit and pay local Sunni Arabs to protect neighborhoods in districts scattered across a wide swath of central Iraq.

The initiative has generated deep skepticism in some members of the Shiite-led Iraqi government, who fear that the strategy could intensify the already intense sectarian warfare here.

The American military says it is not arming the new forces, at least initially, but in some areas, tribal groups bring their own weapons.

On Saturday, in the ravaged Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliya, freshly recruited members of the local force were on display in crisp new cargo pants and flak jackets during a visit by the top American commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the American ambassador, Ryan Crocker. Both made it clear that the United States sees the creation of the so-called Guardian forces as a major new initiative to improve security on the streets of Iraq.

The effort is loosely based on successes the United States has had in Anbar, the desert province where Sunni tribes have been paid to ally themselves with American-led multinational forces in fighting insurgent groups. In an interview in the back of a tiny shop in Ghazaliya, Petraeus said that the United States was pressing to set up Guardian forces in places where the tribes were not strong or prevalent enough to serve as a backbone of the program.

Iraqi streets are both protected and terrorized by militias of all kinds, leaving the United States open to criticism that it could simply be creating a fighting force whose loyalty to the legitimate government is open to question.

Some of the existing militias are loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, some to other Shiite political groups and many to no one but local commanders. At the same time, the Sunni tribes have armed wings, and a wide spectrum of insurgent groups and criminal gangs also wield the power of the gun.

The Guardians could also be seen as natural targets for some Shiite militias, potentially generating violence even as they try to tamp it down.

Asked whether he supported the Guardian program, whether he thought it should be put in place countrywide and whether he thought it could improve security, Petraeus replied, “Yes, yes and yes.”

But he said that the effort would have to be tailored to individual neighborhoods.

Variants of such forces have turned up in Amiriya and Abu Ghraib neighborhoods in western Baghdad, in Diyala Province in the east, in Falluja in Anbar Province and elsewhere. On Saturday, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, reviewed a similar force in Yusufiya, in a deadly region just south of the capital.

Even though the initiative could be seen as a sign of mistrust for the Iraqi police forces, Petraeus said it was supported by high-ranking members of the Iraqi government, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The police are heavily infiltrated by members of Shiite militias that are accused of sowing terror among Sunnis in Baghdad.

But Iraq’s deputy national security adviser and a member of its reconciliation council, Safa al-Sheik, said that the Iraqi government had not been involved when the Americans began the program and it was divided on it now. “Some of the people think it is arming the Sunnis,” Sheik said. “They believe it will be preparation for civil war.”

Partly for those reasons, he said, the prime minister generally favors the program but is not ready to endorse it.

Even Fox’s Chris Wallace wants to know why Bush’s newly departed advisor had to paint Democrats as traitors.

On Fox News Sunday morning, Karl Rove played the victim. He told host Chris Wallace that in the wake of his resignation as White House deputy chief of staff, his enemies were on the hunt. Rove compared himself to a legendary monster whom the ancient Anglo-Saxon hero Beowulf sought to slay. “I mean, I’m a myth, and they’re … You know, I’m Grendel. … They’re after me.”

But Rove, who pursued his Democratic foes with a relentless repertoire of dirty tricks, smears, and outright lies, won’t win many sympathizers by depicting himself as unfairly maligned. He is likely to be remembered above all for his own expertise at demonization, specifically for his ability to paint his political opponents as unreliable partners in the “war on terror” — as traitors to the United States. A master propagandist, he portrayed his rivals as fellow travelers with Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Like Cain, from whom Grendel was said to be descended, Rove was more interested in fratricide than in the welfare of his people.

While the Democrats were debating on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning, Rove appeared on the other three political talk shows. Surprisingly, it was Wallace of “Fox News Sunday” who asked Rove to defend his rhetorical legacy. For about a fourth of his interview, Wallace pushed Rove again and again to explain his willingness to cast aspersions on the patriotism of Democrats.

First, he asked Rove about the decision of the White House to turn the “war on terror” into a campaign issue in the 2002 midterms. He cited as an example the Republican attacks on Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia as weak on national security.

Cleland, a veteran who lost an arm and both of his legs in Vietnam, faced Republican Saxby Chambliss, who had never worn a uniform. Yet Chambliss lashed out at Cleland “for breaking his oath to protect and defend the Constitution,” accusing him of treason. Chambliss won the election. Many believe that Rove advised Chambliss and other Republican candidates to pursue this sort of smear campaign. Terrorism, Rove observed, is a good issue for the Republicans to take to the country.

Among Rove’s techniques was to identify every stance, every word, in every piece of legislation put forward by President Bush as identical with the welfare and security of the United States, and therefore any opposition to any jot or tittle of it as inimical to the country’s essential interests. That is, he inscribed the nation on the person of George W. Bush, so that opposition to the president was coded as betrayal of America.

Pressed by Wallace on Sunday to explain what made Cleland a traitor, Rove responded by attacking the former Georgia senator yet again, this time for having wanted to allow employees of the Department of Homeland Security to have a union. He did not explain why such stances made Cleland a menace to the Constitution, unless one holds that unions are unconstitutional.

Wallace followed up by asking Rove to justify the notorious June 22, 2005, speech he gave before the New York Conservative Party, in which he alleged that Democrats were soft on terror. It is worth recalling at length what Rove said on that occasion: “Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban; in the wake of 9/11, liberals believed it was time to … submit a petition.”

Rove’s diatribe depended for its effect on a series of deft substitutions, both explicit and implied. First, he misrepresented liberals by coding MoveOn.org, the grass-roots Internet activists who did urge alternatives to a frontal assault on the Taliban, as representative of liberal opinion generally. Then, by mentioning Democratic Party figures such as Howard Dean and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, he implied that he was speaking about that party. Unless we assume that most Democrats are not liberals, then the attack was certainly partisan. It was also false. In polling soon after the 2001 attacks, 84 percent of self-identified liberals supported military action in response, and 80 percent of Democrats favored war against Afghanistan. Democratic members of Congress largely supported the Afghanistan war as well, with the senators voting for it unanimously.

08/18/07 “Global Research” — — Canadian jurisdiction over its Northern territories was redefined, following an April 2002 military agreement between Ottawa and Washington. This agreement allows for the deployment of US troops anywhere in Canada, as well as the stationing of US warships in Canada’s territorial waters.

Following the creation of US Northern Command in April 2002, Washington announced unilaterally that NORTHCOM’s territorial jurisdiction (land, sea, air) extended from the Caribbean basin to the Canadian arctic territories.

“The new command was given responsibility for the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, portions of the Caribbean and the contiguous waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans up to 500 miles off the North American coastline. NorthCom’s mandate is to “provide a necessary focus for [continental] aerospace, land and sea defenses, and critical support for [the] nation’s civil authorities in times of national need.”

(Canada-US Relations – Defense Partnership – July 2003, Canadian American Strategic Review (CASR), http://www.sfu.ca/casr/ft-lagasse1.htm

NORTHCOM’s stated mandate was to “provide a necessary focus for [continental] aerospace, land and sea defenses, and critical support for [the] nation’s [US] civil authorities in times of national need.”

(Canada-US Relations – Defense Partnership – July 2003, Canadian American Strategic Review (CASR), http://www.sfu.ca/casr/ft-lagasse1.htm)

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld boasted that “the NORTHCOM – with all of North America as its geographic command – ‘is part of the greatest transformation of the Unified Command Plan [UCP] since its inception in 1947.'” (Ibid)

Canada and US Northern Command

In December 2002, following the refusal of (former) Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to join US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), an interim bi-national military authority entitled the Binational Planning Group (BPG) was established.

Canadian membership in NORTHCOM would have implied the integration of Canada’s military command structures with those of the US. That option had been temporarily deferred by the Chrétien government, through the creation of the Binational Planning Group (BPG).

The BPG’s formal mandate in 2002 was to extend the jurisdiction of the US-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to cover sea, land and “civil forces”,

“to improve current Canada–United States arrangements to defend against primarily maritime threats to the continent and respond to land-based attacks, should they occur.”

Although never acknowledged in official documents, the BPG was in fact established to prepare for the merger of NORAD and NORTHCOM, thereby creating de facto conditions for Canada to join US Northern Command.

The “Group” described as an “independent” military authority was integrated from the outset in December 2002 into the command structures of NORAD and NORTHCOM, both operating out the same headquarters at the Paterson Air Force base in Colorado. In practice, the “Group” functioned under the jurisdiction of US Northern Command, which is controlled by the US Department of Defense.

In December 2004, in the context of President Bush’s visit to Ottawa, it was agreed that the mandate of the BPG would be extended to May 2006. It was understood that this extension was intended to set the stage for Canada’s membership in NORTHCOM.

In March 2006, two months before the end of its mandate, the BPG published a task force document on North American security issues:

“‘A continental approach’ to defense and security could facilitate binational maritime domain awareness and a combined response to potential threats, ‘which transcends Canadian and U.S. borders, domains, defense and security departments and agencies,’ (quoted in Homeland Defense watch, 20 July 2006)

The BPG task force report called for the establishment of a “maritime mission” for NORAD including a maritime warning system. The report acted as a blueprint for the renegotiation of NORAD, which was implemented immediately following the release of the report.

On April 28, 2006, an agreement negotiated behind closed doors was signed between the US and Canada.

The renewed NORAD agreement was signed in Ottawa by the US ambassador and the Canadian Minister of Defense Gordon O’Connor, without prior debate in the Canadian Parliament. The House of Commons was allowed to rubberstamp a fait accompli, an agreement which had already been signed by the two governments.

“‘A continental approach to defense and security could facilitate binational maritime domain awareness and a combined response to potential threats, “which transcends Canadian and U.S. borders, domains, defense and security departments and agencies,’ the report says.” (Homeland Defense Watch, May 8, 2006)

While NORAD still exists in name, its organizational structure coincides with that of NORTHCOM. Following the April 28, 2006 agreement, in practical terms, NORAD has been merged into USNORTHCOM.

NORTHCOM Commander Gen. Gene Renuart, USAF happens to be Commander of NORAD, Maj. Gen. Paul J. Sullivan who is NORTHCOM Chief of Staff, is Chief of Staff of NORAD.

With a exception of a token Canadian General, who occupies the position of Deputy Commander of NORAD, the leadership of NORAD coincides with that of NORTHCOM. (See photo gallery below).

These two military authorities are identical in structure, they occupy the same facilities at the Peterson Air Force base in Colorado.

There was no official announcement of the renewed NORAD agreement, which hands over control of Canada’s territorial waters to the US, nor was there media coverage of this far-reaching decision.

The Deployment of US Troops on Canadian Soil

At the outset of US Northern Command in April 2002, Canada accepted the right of the US to deploy US troops on Canadian soil.

“U.S. troops could be deployed to Canada and Canadian troops could cross the border into the United States if the continent was attacked by terrorists who do not respect borders, according to an agreement announced by U.S. and Canadian officials.” (Edmunton Sun, 11 September 2002)

With the creation of the BPG in December 2002, a binational “Civil Assistance Plan” was established. The latter described the precise “conditions for deploying U.S. troops in Canada, or vice versa, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack or natural disaster.” (quoted in Inside the Army, 5 September 2005).

Canadian Sovereignty

In August 2006, the US State Department confirmed that a new NORAD Agreement had entered into force, while emphasizing that “the maritime domain awareness component was of ‘indefinite duration,’ albeit subject to periodic review.” (US Federal News, 1 August 2006). In March 2007, the US Senate Armed Services Committee confirmed that the NORAD Agreement had been formally renewed, to include a maritime warning system. In Canada, in contrast, there has been a deafening silence.

In Canada, the renewed NORAD agreement went virtually unnoticed. There was no official pronouncement by the Canadian government of Stephen Harper. There was no analysis or commentary of its significance and implications for Canadian territorial sovereignty. The agreement was barely reported by the Canadian media.

Operating under a “North American” emblem (i.e. a North American Command), the US military would have jurisdiction over Canadian territory from coast to coast; extending from the St Laurence Valley to the Queen Elizabeth archipelago in the Canadian Arctic. The agreement would allow for the establishment of “North American” military bases on Canadian territory. From an economic standpoint, it would also integrate the Canadian North, with its vast resources in energy and raw materials, with Alaska.

Ottawa’s Military Facility in Resolute Bay

Ottawa’s July 2007 decision to establish a military facility in Resolute Bay in the Northwest Passage was not intended to reassert “Canadian sovereignty. In fact quite the opposite. It was established in consultation with Washington. A deep-water port at Nanisivik, on the northern tip of Baffin Island is also envisaged.

The US administration is firmly behind the Canadian government’s decision. The latter does not “reassert Canadian sovereignty”. Quite the opposite. It is a means to eventually establish US territorial control over Canada’s entire Arctic region including its waterways. This territory would eventually fall under the jurisdiction of US Northern Command (NORTHCOM).

The Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (SPP)

The Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (SPP) signed between the US, Canada and Mexico contemplates the formation of a North American Union (NAU), a territorial dominion, extending from the Caribbean to the Canadian arctic territories.

The SPP is closely related to the Binational Planning Group initiative. An Independent Task Force sponsored by The Council on Foreign Relations calls for the transformation of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) into a “multiservice Defense Command”. The CFR document entitled “North American Community” drafted on behalf of the SPP endorses the BPG March 2006 recommendations:

“As recommended in a report of the Canadian-U.S. Joint Planning Group [BPG], NORAD should evolve into a multiservice Defense Command that would expand the principle of Canadian-U.S. joint command to land and naval as well as air forces engaged in defending the approaches to North America. In addition, Canada and the United States should reinforce other bilateral defense institutions, including the Permanent Joint Board on Defense and Joint Planning Group, and invite Mexico to send observers.

(North American Community, Task Force documented sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) together with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales)

The accession of Canada to this Multiservice Defense Command, as recommended by the CFR, has already been established, signed and sealed, approved by the Canadian Parliament in May 2006, in the context of the renewal of the NORAD agreement.

In all likelihood, the formal merging of “the renewed NORAD” and US NORTHCOM will be on the agenda at the August Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (SPP) Summit meeting of President Bush, Prime Minister Harper and President Calderon at Montebello, Quebec. This decision would lead to the formation of a US-Canada NORTHCOM, with a new name, but with substantially the same NORTHCOM rhetorical mandate of “defending the Northern American Homeland” against terrorist attacks. The military of both the US and Canada would also be called to play an increasing role in civilian law enforcement activities.

The real objective underlying the SPP is to militarize civilian institutions and repeal democratic government.

“Integration” or the “Annexation” of Canada?

Canada is contiguous to “the center of the empire”. Territorial control over Canada is part of the US geopolitical and military agenda. It is worth recalling in this regard, that throughout history, the “conquering nation” has expanded on its immediate borders, acquiring control over contiguous territories.

Military integration is intimately related to the ongoing process of integration in the spheres of trade, finance and investment. Needless to say, a large part of the Canadian economy is already in the hands of US corporate interests. In turn, the interests of big business in Canada tend to coincide with those of the US.

Canada is already a de facto economic protectorate of the USA. NAFTA has not only opened up new avenues for US corporate expansion, it has laid the groundwork under the existing North American umbrella for the post 9/11 integration of military command structures, public security, intelligence and law enforcement.

No doubt, Canada’s entry into US Northern Command will be presented to public opinion as part of Canada-US “cooperation”, as something which is “in the national interest”, which “will create jobs for Canadians”, and “will make Canada more secure”.

Ultimately what is at stake is that beneath the rhetoric, Canada will cease to function as a Nation:

-Its borders will be controlled by US officials and confidential information on Canadians will be shared with Homeland Security.

-US troops and Special Forces will be able to enter Canada as a result of a binational arrangement.

-Canadian citizens can be arrested by US officials, acting on behalf of their Canadian counterparts and vice versa.

But there is something perhaps even more fundamental in defining and understanding where Canada and Canadians stand as nation.

By endorsing a Canada-US “integration” in the spheres of defense, homeland security, police and intelligence, Canada not remains a full fledged member of George W. Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing”, it will directly participate, through integrated military command structures, in the US war agenda in Central Asia and the Middle East, including the massacre of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the torture of POWs, the establishment of concentration camps, etc.

Canada would no longer have an independent foreign policy. Under an integrated North American Command, a North American national security doctrine would be formulated. Canada would be obliged to embrace Washington’s pre-emptive military doctrine, its bogus “war on terrorism which is used as a pretext for waging war in the Middle East.

08/18/07 “ICH” — – With habeas corpus a thing of the past, with arrest and detention without charge permitted, with torture and spying without court oversight all the rage, with prosecutors free to tape conversations between lawyers and their clients, and with the judicial branch now infested by rightwing judges who would have been at home in courtrooms of the Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany, for all they seem to care about common law tradition, the only real thing holding the line against absolute tyranny in the U.S. has been the jury.

Now, with Jose Padilla–a US citizen who was originally picked up and held incommunicado on a military base for three and a half years, publicly accused (though never charged) with planning to construct and detonate a so-called “dirty” nuclear device (this a guy without a high school education!), all based upon hearsay, evidence elicited by torture, and a few overheard wiretapped conversations where prosecutors claimed words like “zucchini” were code for explosive devices-convicted on a charge of “planning to murder,” we see that juries in this era of a bogus “war on terror” are ready to believe anything.

That last line of defense-the common sense or ordinary citizens in a jury box-is gone too.

The jury in this case apparently accepted the government’s contention that Padilla was a member of Al Qaeda, and had returned from a trip to Pakistan full of plans to wreak mayhem on his own country. They cared not a whit for the fact that the government had used methods against Padilla (three years of isolation and total sensory deprivation that had driven him insane) which would have made medieval torturers green with envy. They cared not a whit that there was no real evidence against Padilla.

This was, in the end, a case that most closely resembled the famous Saturday Night Live skit in which witches were dunked underwater to “prove” whether they were in fact witches, and where if they drowned, they were found to be innocent. In the end, Padilla’s jury simply bought the government’s wild and wild-eyed story. They decided he hadn’t drowned, so he must be guilty.

Padilla can now expect to spend what’s left of his life in prison. Since the government has already driven him insane, he will have the added burden of being mentally unbalanced from the outset of his incarceration. His survival prospects are not good.

The president promptly thanked the jury for their “good judgment.”

We can no doubt expect many more Padillas now that the way has been paved for this kind of totalitarian approach to law enforcement.

Beginning today, we can expect the government to begin arresting people on an array of trumped-up charges, locking them away in black sites, on military bases, or maybe even overseas, subjecting them to all manner of torture, and then finally bringing them to trial on trumped-up charges. We can also expect juries, made fearful by breathless warnings that “evil ones” mean us and our nation harm, to buy the government’s stories.

Who is at risk? That’s hard to say, but it’s clear that it won’t just be hardened terrorist types. A presidential executive order signed by Bush on July 17 declares that anything that “undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction (sic) and political reform (sic) in Iraq” could be deemed a crime making the perpetrator subject to arrest. Would writing essays critical of the president, the war in Iraq, or the “reconstruction” effort in Iraq meet that standard? Who knows? Would being interviewed for commentary as part of a news story on English-language Al Jezeera TV (which Bush and Cheney have declared to be supportive of the Iraqi insurgency, and which Bush reportedly at one point considered bombing!)?

And how about anti-war protesters? We already have Washington, DC, under pressure from Homeland Security, threatening the organization World Can’t Wait with multiple $10,000 fines for posting flyers around the city announcing an anti-war march and rally on September 15. If they go ahead with the protest, will they be joining Padilla?

I have little doubt that this administration would love to lock up journalistic critics and protesters in military brigs, so the question is: how would juries respond to charges that American journalists and protesters against the war were treacherously undermining the Bush war effort?

I used to be confident that most juries would laugh such cases out of court. After the Padilla decision, I’m not so sure.

You want to think that your fellow citizens have at least some measure of common sense, but this case suggests otherwise–that they are easily frightened, gullible, and willing to believe the most fantastic claims of the government.

The history of Cuba during the last 140 years is one of struggle to preserve national identity and independence, and the history of the evolution of the American empire, its constant craving to appropriate Cuba and of the horrendous methods that it uses today to hold on to world domination.

Prominent Cuban historians have dealt in depth with these subjects in different periods and in various excellent books which deserve to be readily available to our compatriots. These reflections are addressed especially to the new generations with the aim of helping them learn about very important and decisive events in the destiny of our homeland.

Part I: The Imposition of the Platt Amendment as an appendix to the Neocolonial Cuban Constitution of 1901.

The “ripe fruit doctrine” was formulated in 1823 by Secretary of State and later President John Quincy Adams. The United States would inevitably achieve taking over our country, by the law of political influence, once colonial subordination to Spain had ended.

Under the pretext of blowing up the “Maine” –a still unraveled event of which it took advantage to wage war against Spain, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an event which was demonstrably prefabricated in order to attack North Vietnam –President William McKinley signed the Joint Resolution of April 20, 1898, stating “…that the people on the island of Cuba are and by right ought to be free and independent”, “… that the United States herewith declare that they have no desire or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island, except for pacification thereof, and they affirm their determination, after this has been accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people.” The Joint Resolution entitled the President to use force to remove the Spanish government from Cuba.

Colonel Leonard Wood, chief commander of the Rough Riders, and Theodore Roosevelt, second in command of the expansionist volunteers who landed in our country on the beaches close to Santiago de Cuba, after the brave but poorly utilized Spanish squadron and their Marine infantry on board had been destroyed by the American battleships, requested the support of Cuban insurrectionists who had weakened and defeated the Spanish Colonial Army after enormous sacrifices. The Rough Riders had landed without horses.

Following the defeat of Spain, representatives of the Queen Regent of Spain and of the President of the United States signed the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898 and, without consulting of the Cuban people, agreed that Spain should relinquish all claim of sovereignty over and title to the island and would evacuate it. Cuba would then be occupied by the United States on a temporary basis.

Already appointed U.S. military governor, Army Major General Leonard Wood, issued Military Order 301 of July 25, 1900, which called for a general election to choose delegates to a Constitutional Assembly that would be held in the city of Havana at twelve noon on the first Monday of November in 1900, with the purpose of drafting and adopting a Constitution for the people of Cuba.

On September 15, 1900, elections took place and 31 delegates from the National, Republican and Democratic Union parties were elected. On November 5, 1900, the Constitutional Convention held its opening session at the Irijoa Theatre of Havana which on that occasion received the name of Martí Theatre.

General Wood, representing the President of the United States, declared the Assembly officially installed. Wood advanced the intention of the United States government: “After you have drawn up the relations which, in your opinion, ought to exist between Cuba and the United States, the government of the United States will undoubtedly adopt the measures conducive to a final and authorized treaty between the peoples of both nations, aimed at promoting the growth of their common interests.” The 1901 Constitution provided in its Article 2 that “the territory of the Republic is composed of the Island of Cuba, as well as the islands and neighboring keys which together were under Spanish sovereignty until the ratification of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898”.

Once the Constitution was drafted, the time had come to define political relations between Cuba and the United States. To that end, on February 12, 1901, a committee of five members was appointed and charged with studying and proposing a procedure that would lead to the stated goal.

On February 15, Governor Wood invited the members of the committee to go fishing and hosted a banquet in Batabanó, the main access route to the Isle of Pines, as it was known then, also occupied at that time by the U.S. troops which had intervened in the Cuban War of Independence. It was there in Batabanó that he revealed to them a letter from the Secretary of War, Elihu Root, containing the basic aspects of the future Platt Amendment. According to instructions from Washington, relations between Cuba and the United States were to abide by several aspects. The fifth of these was that, in order to make it easier for the United States to fulfill such tasks as were placed under its responsibility by the above mentioned provisions, and for its own defense, the United States could acquire title, and preserve it, for lands to be used for naval bases and maintain these in certain specific points.

Upon learning of the conditions demanded by the U.S. government, the Cuban Constitutional Assembly, on February 27, 1901, passed a position that was opposed to that of the U.S. Executive, eliminating therein the establishment of naval bases.

The U.S. government made an agreement with Orville H. Platt, Republican Senator from Connecticut, to present an amendment to the proposed Army Appropriations Bill which would make the establishment of American naval bases on Cuban soil a fait accompli.

In the Amendment, passed by the U.S. Senate on February 27, 1901 and by the House of Representatives on March 1, and sanctioned by President McKinley the following day, as a rider attached to the “Bill granting credit to the Army for the fiscal year ending on June 30, 1902,” the article mentioning the naval bases was drafted as follows:

“Art. VII.- That to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain specified points to be agreed upon with the President of the United States.”

Article VIII adds: “…the government of Cuba will embody the foregoing provisions in a permanent treaty with the United States.”

The speedy passage of the Amendment by the U.S. Congress was due to the circumstance of it coming close to the conclusion of the legislative term and to the fact that President McKinley had a clear majority in both Houses so that the Amendment could be passed without any problem. It became a United States Law when, on March 4, McKinley was sworn in for his second presidential term in office.

Some members of the Constitutional Convention maintained the view that they were not empowered to adopt the Amendment requested by the United States since this implied limitations on the independence and sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba. Thus, the military governor Leonard Wood hastened to issue a new Military Order on March 12, 1901 where it was declared that the Convention was empowered to adopt the measures whose constitutionality was in question.

Other Convention members, such as Manuel Sanguily, held the opinion that the Assembly should be dissolved rather than adopt measures that so drastically offended the dignity and sovereignty of the people of Cuba. But during the session of March 7, 1901, a committee was appointed yet again in order to draft an answer to Governor Wood; the presentation of this was entrusted to Juan Gualberto Gómez who recommended, among other things, rejecting the clause concerning the leasing of coaling or naval stations.

Juan Gualberto Gómez maintained the most severe criticism of the Platt Amendment. On April 1, he tabled a debate of the presentation where he challenged the document on the grounds that it contravened the principles of the Treaty of Paris and of the Joint Resolution. But the Convention suspended the debate on Juan Gualberto Gómez’s presentation and decided to send another committee “to ascertain the motives and intentions of the government of the United States about any and all details referring to the establishment of a definitive order to relations, both political and economic, between Cuba and the United States, and to negotiate with the government itself, the bases for agreement on those extremes that would be proposed to the Convention for a final solution.”

Subsequently, a committee was elected that would travel to Washington, made up of Domingo Méndez Capote, Diego Tamayo, Pedro González Llorente, Rafael Portuondo Tamayo and Pedro Betancourt; they arrived in the United States on April 24, 1901. The next day, they met with Root and Wood who had earlier traveled back to his country for this purpose.

The American government hastened to publicly declare that the committee would be visiting Washington on their own initiative, with no invitation or official status.

Root, Secretary of War, met with the committee on April 25 and 26, 1901 and categorically informed them that “the United States’ right to impose the much debated clauses had been proclaimed for three-quarters of a century in the face of the American and European world and they were not willing to give it up to the point of putting their own safety in jeopardy.”

United States officials reiterated that none of the Platt Amendment clauses undermined the sovereignty and independence of Cuba; on the contrary, they would preserve them, and it was clarified that intervention would only occur in the case of severe disturbances, and only with the objective of maintaining order and internal peace.

The committee presented its report in a secret session on May 7, 1901. Within the committee there were severe discrepancies about the Platt Amendment.

On May 28, a paper drafted by Villuendas, Tamayo and Quesada was tabled for debate; it accepted the Amendment with some clarifications and recommended the signing of a treaty on trade reciprocity.

This paper was approved by a vote of 15 to 14, but the United States government didn’t accept that solution. It informed through Governor Wood that it would only accept the Amendment without qualifiers, and warned the Convention with an ultimatum that, since the Platt Amendment was “a statute passed by the Legislature of the United States, the President is obliged to carry it out as it is. He cannot change or alter it, add or take anything out. The executive action demanded by the statute is the withdrawal of the American Army from Cuba, and the statute authorizes this action when, and only when, a Constitutional government has been established which contains, either in its body or in appendices, certain categorical provisions, specified in the statute (…) Then if these provisions are found in the Constitution, the President will be authorized to withdraw the Army; if he does not find them there, then he will not be authorized to withdraw the Army…” The United States Secretary of War sent a letter to the Cuban Constitutional Assembly where he stated that the Platt Amendment should be passed in its entirety with no clarifications, because in that way it would appear as a rider to the Army Appropriations Bill; he indicated that, otherwise, his country’s military forces would not be pulled out of Cuba.

On June 12, 1901, during another secret session of the Constitutional Assembly, the incorporation of the Platt Amendment as an appendix to the Constitution of the Republic passed on February 21 was put to the vote: 16 delegates voted aye and 11 voted nay. Bravo Correoso, Robau, Gener and Rius Rivera were absent from the session, abstaining from voting in favor of such a monstrosity.

The worst thing about the Amendment was the hypocrisy, the deceit, the Machiavellianism and the cynicism with which they concocted the plan to take over Cuba, to the lengths of publicly proclaiming the same arguments made by John Quincy Adams in 1823, about the apple which would fall because of gravity. This apple finally did fall, but it was rotten, just as many Cuban intellectuals had foreseen for almost half a century, from José Martí in the 1880’s right up to Julio Antonio Mella, assassinated in January of 1929.

Nobody better than Leonard Wood himself to describe what the Platt Amendment would mean for Cuba in two sections of a confidential letter to his fellow in the adventure, Theodore Roosevelt, dated on October 28, 1901:

“There is, of course, little or no independence left Cuba under the Platt Amendment. (…) the only consistent thing to do now is to seek annexation. This, however, will take some time, and during the period which Cuba maintains her own government, it is most desirable that she should be able to maintain such a one as will tend to her advancement and betterment. She cannot make certain treaties without our consent (…) and must maintain certain sanitary conditions (…), from all of which it is quite apparent that she is absolutely in our hands, and I believe that no European government for a moment considers that she is otherwise than a practical dependency of the United States, and as such is certainly entitled to our consideration. (…) With the control which we have over Cuba, a control which will soon undoubtedly become possession, (…) we shall soon practically control the sugar trade of the world. (…) the island will (…) gradually become Americanized and we shall have in time one of the richest and most desirable possessions in the world.”

Part II: The Application of the Platt Amendment and the Establishing of the Guantanamo Naval Base as a Framework for Relations between Cuba and the United States.

By the end of 1901, the electoral process which resulted in the triumph of Tomás Estrada Palma, without opposition and with the support of 47 percent of the electorate, had begun. On April 17, 1902, the President-elect in absentia left the United States for Cuba where he arrived three days later. The inauguration of the new President took place on May 20, 1902 at 12 noon. The Congress of the Republic had already been constituted. Leonard Wood set sail for his country in the battleship “Brooklyn”. In 1902, shortly before the proclamation of the Republic, the United States government informed the newly elected President of the Island about the four sites selected for the establishing of naval bases -Cienfuegos, Bahía Honda, Guantanamo and Nipe – as provided by the Platt Amendment. Not even the Port of Havana escaped consideration since it was contemplated as “the most favorable for the fourth naval base”.

From the beginning, despite its spurious origins, the Government of Cuba, in which many of those who fought for independence participated, was opposed to the concession of four naval bases since it considered two to be more than enough. The situation grew tenser when the Cuban government toughened its stand and demanded the final drafting of the Permanent Agreement on Relations, with the goal of “determining at the same time and not in parts, all the details that were the object of the Platt Amendment and setting the range of their precepts”. President McKinley had died in September 14, 1901 as a result of gunshot wounds he had sustained on the 6th of that month. Theodore Roosevelt had advanced to such a degree in his political career that he was already Vice President of the United States and so he had assumed the presidency after the shooting of his predecessor. Roosevelt, at that time did not deem it to be convenient to specify the scope of the Platt Amendment, so as not to delay the military installation of the Guantanamo Base, given what that would mean for the defense of the Canal whose construction France had begun and later abandoned in the Central American Isthmus, and which the voracious government of the empire intended to complete at all costs. Nor was he interested in defining the legal status of the Isle of Pines. Therefore, he abruptly reduced the number of naval bases under discussion, removed the Port of Havana suggestion and finally agreed to the concession of two bases: Guantanamo and Bahía Honda.

Subsequently, in compliance with Article VII of the constitutional appendix imposed on the Constitutional Convention, the Agreement was signed by the Presidents of Cuba and the United States on February 16 and 23, 1903, respectively:

“Article I. – The Republic of Cuba hereby leases to the United States, for the time required for the purposes of coaling and naval stations, the following described areas of land and water situated in the Island of Cuba:

“1st. In Guantanamo”…(A complete description of the bay and neighboring territory is made.)

“2nd. In Bahia Honda…” (Another similar description is made.)

This Agreement establishes:

“Article III. –While on the one hand the United States recognizes the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba over the above described areas of land and water, on the other hand the Republic of Cuba consents that during the period of the occupation by the United States of said areas under the terms of this agreement the United States shall exercise complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas with the right to acquire for the public purposes of the United States any land or other property therein by purchase or by exercise of eminent domain with full compensation to the owners thereof.”

On May 28, 1903, surveying began to establish the boundaries of the Guantanamo Naval Station. In the Agreement of July 2, 1903, dealing with the same subject, the “Regulations for the Lease of Naval and Coaling Stations” was passed:

“Article I.- The United States of America agrees and covenants to pay the Republic of Cuba the annual sum of two thousand dollars, in gold coin of the United States, as long as the former shall occupy and use said areas of land by virtue of said agreement.”

“All private lands and other real property within said areas shall be acquired forthwith by the Republic of Cuba.”

“The United States of America agrees to furnish to the Republic of Cuba the sums necessary for the purchase of said private lands and properties and such sums shall be accepted by the Republic of Cuba as advance payment on account of rental due by virtue of said Agreement.”

The Agreement which governed this lease, signed in Havana by representatives of the Presidents of Cuba and the United States respectively, was passed by the Cuban Senate on July 16, 1903, ratified by the President of Cuba a month later on August 16, and by the President of the United States on October 2, and after exchanging ratifications in Washington on October 6, it was published in the Gazette of Cuba on the 12th of the same month and year.

Dated on December 14, 1903, it was informed that four days earlier on the 10th of the same month, the United States had been given possession of the areas of water and land for the establishing of a naval station in Guantanamo. For the United States Government and Navy, the transfer of part of the territory of the largest island in the Antilles was a source of great rejoicing and they intended to celebrate the event. Vessels belonging to the Caribbean Squadron and some battleships from the North Atlantic Fleet converged on Guantanamo.

The Cuban government appointed the Head of Public Works of Santiago de Cuba to deliver that part of the territory over which it technically exercised sovereignty on December 10, 1903, the date chosen by the United States. He would be the only Cuban present at the ceremony and just for a brief time since, once his mission was accomplished, without any toasts or handshakes, he left for the neighboring town of Caimanera.

The Head of Public Works had boarded the battleship “Kearsage”, which was the U.S. flagship, where he met Rear Admiral Barker. At 12:00 hours a 21-gun-salute was given and along with the notes of the Cuban National Anthem, the Cuban flag which had been flying on board that vessel was lowered, and immediately the United States flag was hoisted on land, at the point called Playa del Este, with an equal number of salvos, thus concluding the ceremony.

According to the articles of the Agreement, the United States was to dedicate the leased lands exclusively for public use, not being able to establish any type of business or industry. The U.S. authorities in said territories and the Cuban authorities mutually agreed to surrender fugitives from justice charged with crimes or misdemeanors subject to the laws of each party, as long as it was required by the authorities who would be judging them.

Materials imported into the areas belonging to said naval stations for their own use and consumption would be exempt from customs duties, or any other kind of fees, to the Republic of Cuba.

The lease of these naval stations included the right to use and occupy the waters adjacent to said areas of land and water, to improve and deepen the entrances to them and their anchorages and for anything else that would be necessary for the exclusive use to which they were dedicated.

Even though the United States acknowledged the continuation of Cuba’s definitive sovereignty over those areas of water and land, it would exercise, with Cuba’s consent, “complete jurisdiction and domain” over said areas while they occupied them according to the other already quoted stipulations.

In the so-called Permanent Treaty of May 22, 1903, signed by the governments of the Republic of Cuba and the United States, future relations between both nations were detailed: in other words, what Manuel Márquez Sterling would call “the intolerable yoke of the Platt Amendment” was thus put firmly in place.

The Permanent Treaty, signed by both countries, was approved by the United States Senate on March 22, 1904 and by the Cuban Senate on June 8 of that year, and the ratifications were exchanged in Washington on June 1st, 1904. Therefore, the Platt Amendment is an amendment to an American law, an appendix to the Cuban Constitution of 1901 and a permanent treaty between both countries.

The experiences acquired with the Guantanamo Naval Base were useful to apply measures in Panama that were equal or worse, in the case of the Canal. In the United States Congress, it is customary to introduce amendments, whenever a law which is of urgent necessity for its content and importance is being debated. This frequently obliges legislators to put aside or sacrifice any conflicting criteria. Such amendments have more than once affected the sovereignty for which our people tirelessly struggle.

In 1912, the Cuban Secretary of State, Manuel Sanguily, negotiated a new treaty with the U.S. State Department whereby the United States would relinquish its rights over Bahia Honda in exchange for enlarging the boundaries of the Guantanamo station.

Following a year that witnessed a new generation of young activists adopt the name and legacy of Students for a Democratic Society, the new organization converged upon Detroit for its second national Convention. There are already attempts by both outsiders and a number of members of the organization to augur what meaning to assign to the convention.

To get it out of the way: it’s disingenuous to suggest, as some have, that anyone in SDS came into this Convention with grandiose expectations of taking part in a world-historic event — or at least, that it would be world-historic in the way that, say, the press casts Bono meeting the President as world-historic.

‘Tis not quite the final conflict, but nevertheless — give us no condescending saviors.

This preface aside, there actually was something in the back of everyone’s head or on the tip of their tongue about what would distinguish this Convention from your standard, humdrum Left event. What the membership expected out of this Convention was a delivery upon the commitment made at last year’s inaugural Convention in Chicago: beyond trading on name-brand recognition, the new SDS would commit itself to being a real live organization.

The devil, as with God, is in the details: the general will was to have a body that could embrace a multitude of chapters and members who each with their own character and ideas, but is still capable of issuing clarion calls to action that brings struggles to decisive resolutions. Further, it has been a near universal opinion that SDS can and must remain a independent and self-sustaining organization – powered by the members and chapters who make it work, not by the unseen hand of funders or sponsors who don’t ever want to see that unseen hand get dirty doing the shitwork. There is a lot within these parameters; it took a year of discussion plus a Convention to give it the attention that deserves.

Beyond a recap of the dry and droll minutiae of some of the decisions made, or worse how they were made – matters which those with a knack for “point-of-process”-ing things to death can have entirely to themselves – what is necessary to convey is the political problem which SDS took on by making that commitment last year.

That political problem which the Convention ended up dealing with: how do we lay claim to the future, mindful that we do not wish to merely repeat the past, but also mindful that the present state of things is nothing with which to be content.

On whether we wish to repeat the past, clarification is necessary. It can be taken for granted that the bulk of the members of the current SDS have no qualms about embracing the name of the organization, even with some of the baggage it brings. After all, the bulk of its luminaries have had nothing but encouraging words to say, and those who jealously guard “their” legacy with the first-wave SDS through disparaging the current SDS are those that chose to be sellouts or merely asinine (or merely asinine sellouts).

Beyond the name, however, there is relative unease with embracing the legacy of SDS. The traumatic experience of the original SDS folding in 1969, just as the campuses exploded, has left a residue across the activist Left. Underneath a certain veil of nostalgia most reporters barely pierce through, there are for the organization those moments of near-paralyzing fear of anything associated with the demise of the original SDS. Among some members of the current SDS that includes everything up to and including what made the original SDS vital to begin with.

Over the past year, there were the microphones getting jammed in front of SDS’ers faces demanding an answer to every absurd question on 60s movement trivia. There were the parades of Boomers approaching those with SDS pins at rallies, beaming with their air of paternalism and “I saw them live” attitude. Under that sort of microscope, the membership has largely adopted classic Freudian defense mechanisms to handle that unspoken fear of just repeating things over again.

In interviews with the reporters of the mainstream press, there is sarcasm (“Yeah, we took on this name so that we could be accused of blowing up toilets.” Nudge nudge, wink wink). At events, there is some light-hearted kitschiness (a purely nonsensical chant of the old RYM-faction slogan, “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!” – as a motion to define chapter membership passes). Then there is the sublimation of old movement arguments into the current ones, so that stating which faction of the original SDS you’ve read the most on becomes a referendum upon your politics (and the reverse being true as well: ask for discipline, and you’re Progressive Labor in disguise; demand militancy and you’re a Motherfucker wannabe).

All this pressure from the weight of the past, which thus far can only be expressed in punchlines. Still, the name of SDS wouldn’t be adopted by so many chapters if there were nothing good out of it – or if people didn’t find something amiss in the current state of affairs that made a look back somewhat worthwhile.

That unspoken problem of today: the Left in general finds itself both factionalized and unproductive to the point of neutralization. Responses to crises such as Iraq or Hurricane Katrina that should be sparking greater collaboration on a wider scale have instead been used as opportunities for Left organizations to cut each other off at the knees. Dropping a few key buzzwords substitutes for analysis; one can even come up with a dictionary of activistese-to-plain English. “Autonomy” has been perverted to flipping off anyone not in one’s own target demographic. “Consensus” morphs into a shorthand for speaking exclusively with those who already agrees. A “temporary autonomous zone” is a bohemian enclave with an infoshop and a loaded dumpster behind the Whole Foods supermarket. And so on… Twinkle your fingers if you agree.

We have seen since the 1990s that the model of very loose and informal networks have been great for the planning and execution of militant demos. Yet they can be slaves to pre-existing conditions by their reactive nature, to the extent that they set up activists to become hamsters on a wheel; they thrive on summit-hopping and floundered when the War of Terror commenced. The work of actively changing conditions on the ground – building up the capability to wage further struggle, of uniting disparate struggle together into a common battle, agitating and building up militancy where there was once apathy – these are matters where large scale organization, along with a large-scale commitment, becomes necessary.

The importance of creating and sustaining a large-scale Left movement with large-scale organization is understood by the better part of virtually all Left tendencies from the liberal, to the anarchist, to the reds. The responsibilities and difficulties involved in forming and sustaining a large-scale organization and fostering a larger-scale Left tend to be viewed as the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune of being Left in the era of No Alternative.

In this existential dilemma, in which a discomforting past and an all-too-comfortable present act as a pair of blinders, what we required from this Convention was to throw off those blinders, survey all of what is in front of us and not just what is immediate, glamorous, or expected of us by outside forces. After all, we take arms against a whole sea of troubles — not some trickle that will disappear with one demo.

It would indeed be wonderful if we had the luxury of only discussing and executing actions – I should know, I had an action proposal (passed, without discussion unfortunately, but passed nevertheless). To everything there is a season, though, and the pressing matter of this Convention was to determine the organization’s work and settling on a means for handling it; if we did not decide, it is highly likely that outside events or actors would force a decision upon us and we would be likely less than equal to the task.

We have now mostly handled questions of a structure and have made opening gambits on vision documents – it will still be up to the chapters to decide whether to ratify them — but the important thing is that the foundations are in place, and they were placed by us and not the Ford Foundation.

Amman, Jordan — Last month when Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Ray McGovern and I took over 300 people and a petition with over a million signatures to Congressman John Conyers (D-Mi, Chair House Judiciary Committee) demanding impeachment, we believed we were morally correct then. Despite Rep. Conyers’ long record of public service to our nation and several private meetings that went absolutely nowhere, and despite the mild to severe criticism we have received, we believed then and still believe now that impeaching BushCo is a Constitutionally mandated requirement and a necessary tool to reclaim our representative republic, end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan (“The troops aren’t coming home while I’m preznit,” GWB), and to hold the monsters accountable who have wreaked havoc on our planet.

I believe what we did on July 23rd was the right thing to do because we are all required to be active participants in our democracy. One of the reasons that all branches of our government are so out of control, Dems or Repugs, is that we have been passive voters who have allowed our elected officials to get away literally with murder for generations. The human element of “We the People” has been suppressed by the fascist elite and all but forgotten by an American public that has been lulled into an uncomfortable apathy by the “vast wasteland” of TV and its byproduct: a seductive, yet destructive consumerism that has us constantly striving not only to “keep up with the Joneses,” but “smash the Joneses” in our quest for more, more, more. We have thousands, if not millions of Susie Soccer moms in their huge SUVs to NASCAR dad Nick watching high performing, gas guzzling cars go round and round in circles wasting precious oil for our dubious entertainment, while people are dying, being injured and displaced and while our troops receive no more support than a yellow magnetic ribbon on Susie’s SUV.

The Rev and I had another dose of reality the other day and our actions in Conyers’ office were confirmed for both of us when we visited Bethena in al Jazeera hospital in Amman.

An American fired mortar shell hit twenty-eight year old, former Baghdad resident, Bethena on June 1st of this year. Her husband was also injured in the abhorrent attack and her mother-in-law and sister-in-law were killed. Due to lack of medical care at first, Bethena still has a large hole in her stomach. She was allowed to stay in an American hospital for 7 days, and then told she had to leave. With a smashed arm, broken leg, and another leg amputated above the knee, Bethena had to make her way to Amman for medical help with her sister. She laid in her bed gazing at us with pain-filled, yet very aware eyes and she graciously allowed us to look at her wounds and record them on film. The entire time we visited with her, I couldn’t help but reflect that Casey would have been the same age as Bethena just three days before she was mortared, if he hadn’t already been killed not too far from where Bethena and her family were hit.

Besides the incontrovertible fact that Bethena was no threat to the USA and we are occupying her country illegally and immorally, her hospital bills are costing the family 750.00 to 1000.00 a day and she still requires two more surgeries. The family had to sell their home in Baghdad and is rapidly going through their savings. Bethena’s sister told us that a woman who suffered a heart attack from fright in the same mortar attack had her bills covered by the US, but we won’t cover Bethena’s bills because she was hit by an American bomb!

We are going to the American Embassy here in Jordan to ask the same simple question: “Why?” Why is the government who harmed her not paying her bills?” and she is just one of thousands. As the war crimes compound in Iraq, the resistance heightens and no one wins in “lose-lose” land.

My campaign for Congress’ slogan “People Before Politics” is the exact opposite of what John Conyers told me and my staff in a meeting prior to the July 23rd sit-in: “It is more important to me (Conyers) to put a Democrat back in the White House in ’08 than to end the war!” (Even if it is Hillary “If Saddam won’t disarm, will we disarm him” Clinton”) I can guarantee him that it is not what’s most important to Bethena, the people of Iraq and the thousands of mothers in our own country who can’t sleep at night, concentrate, eat or do much else for worry of their son or daughter in Iraq for the lies of BushCo and the criminal complicity of Congress, Inc.

I wept in John Conyers’ office that day as I wept over Bethena and her plight.

We the People have also failed our soldiers and Bethena and rest of the innocent citizens of Iraq by allowing the partisan politics of greed and destruction to hijack our country. I wish every American could peer into Bethena’s eyes and have an epiphany that there are many things more important than partisan politics as usual. I wish news cameras would show an American mother falling on the ground screaming in agony for her needlessly killed child. We see the devastation on Jordanian TV caused in Northern Iraq where over 500 people were slaughtered yesterday: we need to see that on our TVs.

Then maybe, just maybe, this monstrosity would end. View Photos of Bethena here.

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal civil rights lawsuit charging that a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official and JetBlue Airways illegally discriminated against an American resident based solely on the Arabic message on his t-shirt and his ethnicity.

JetBlue and the TSA official, identified as “Inspector Harris,” would not let Raed Jarrar board his flight at John F. Kennedy Airport until he agreed to cover his t-shirt, which read “We Will Not Be Silent” in English and Arabic script. According to the complaint, Harris told Jarrar that it is impermissible to wear an Arabic shirt to an airport and equated it to a “person wearing a t-shirt at a bank stating, ‘I am a robber.'”

“It is a dangerous and slippery slope when we allow our government to take away a person’s rights because of his speech or ethnic background,” said Reginald Shuford, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. “Racial profiling is illegal and ineffective and has no place in a democratic society.”

Jarrar, an architect and political analyst of Arabic descent, has lived in the United States since 2005 with his wife, who is an American citizen. On August 12, 2006, Jarrar attempted to fly on JetBlue from New York to Oakland, California, where he lived at the time. Although Jarrar successfully cleared two security checkpoints, he was approached by Inspector Harris while waiting at the boarding gate. Harris brought Jarrar to the JetBlue counter and told him that he would have to remove his shirt because other passengers were not comfortable with the Arabic script.

“It was clear that Mr. Jarrar was not a security threat and was singled out solely because of his ethnicity and the constitutionally protected speech on his t-shirt,” said Aden Fine, an ACLU senior staff attorney who represents Jarrar. “Rather than censor Raed, the TSA official and Jet Blue should have assured any uncomfortable passengers that there was absolutely no public safety or security risk. We hope this case sends the message to TSA officials and to airlines that they cannot discriminate against passengers because of their race or the content of their speech.”

Jarrar attempted to assert his constitutional right to wear the t-shirt, but became intimidated after he was surrounded by Harris and several JetBlue officials. He worried he would miss his flight or be arrested and detained indefinitely. The lead JetBlue customer service crewmember stated that she would buy Jarrar a new shirt to wear on top of his own t-shirt as a “compromise.” Left with no other choice, Jarrar reluctantly agreed, and was allowed on the plane only after the JetBlue agents ripped up his boarding pass and changed his seat from the front of the plane to the very back of the plane. He was then forced to board the plane first, even before disabled passengers and those traveling with children.

“I believe it is my right and responsibility as a new U.S. resident and taxpayer to fight for my freedoms and for the right of all people in this country to be free of discrimination,” said Jarrar, who is currently employed with the American Friends Service Committee, an organization committed to peace and social justice. “It was not my goal to offend anyone with my t-shirt, but it is a shame that racial profiling and censorship are still rampant in America’s airports.”

The ACLU said Jarrar’s case is part of a disturbing pattern of discriminatory acts at airports against individuals perceived to be Arab, especially those engaged in expressive activities that visibly display their ethnic background or religious faith. According to the Department of Transportation, it has received complaints of discrimination by air carriers every month from January 2002 to June 2007, the last month for which statistics are available. Several of those discrimination complaints have been lodged against JetBlue.

The ACLU filed the complaint today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The complaint charges that TSA Inspector Harris and JetBlue violated Jarrar’s civil rights under the First and Fifth Amendments and federal, state and city anti-discrimination laws.

In addition to Fine and Shuford, attorneys in this case are: Dennis Parker, Director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program, and Palyn Hung of the NYCLU.

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.