Keeping Guantanamo Open: Will Obama Give Way?

A Gut Reaction to the Obama National Security Speech: Getting Stuck in A “Long War”
The Great Congressional Bailout: Guantanamo (Part 2 — Dan Froomkin)
Related Post: The Great Congressional Bailout - Guantanamo (Part 1 — The Daily Show)

President Obama will make an important, possibly defining, statement on the future of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility today. It will define not only whether Obama will stick to his January promise to close the prison within 12 months but also whether he will be politically caged --- not only on Gitmo but on other "national security" and foreign policy issues --- by Congress, the media, and the Bushttp://enduringamerica.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=9804#edit_timestamphmen/Bushwomen and those who still support them.

Obama's plan was challenged from Day 1, when dissidents within the Pentagon leaked claims to the media that ex-Gitmo detainees had returned to terrorism. Those numbers were never established, but the seeds were planted. If the Administration could not offer a plan with cast-iron guarantees that no one released from Guantanmo would threaten "America", then the closure would be blocked.

The latest --- and most significant --- blow for Guantanamo's continued existence came this week, and it was thrown by Obama's own party. Democratic Congressional leaders withdrew the proposal for $80 milliino to begin implementation of closure, until the Administration offered more defined plans for the handling of ex-detainees. While those leaders kept the option of reinstating the funds open, the political signal --- accompanied by rhetoric, fed by Obama's own Attorney General, that no "terrorist" would ever be released on US soil --- was clear.

There are a lot of mundane realities behind the Administration's difficulties. It could not release many of the detainees to their home countries, who would not take them or could subject them to further abusive detention, and it was unable to get the commitment from "third countries" to take 60 of the most difficult cases. Most importantly, it could not come up with a legally and politically acceptable plan to process the detainees through the US criminal courts.

However, it is in dramatic headlines, rather than complex details, that Guantanamo --- and Obama's position --- will be framed. And today the propaganda campaign within the Executive Branch comes full circle. "Two Administration officials" have fed The New York Times, a reliable channel for such information and mis-information, "an unreleased Pentagon report [that] concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad...has returned to terrorism or militant activity".

This is the same Pentagon "study" that was first floated at the end of 2008, with the allegation of 61 recidivists, and then re-presented in January. That study was roundly thumped by analysts who noted the lack of supporting evidence, and the leaking officials went quiet while Obama held the upper hand in the publicity fight over Guantanamo and torture.

There is no further substance offered in today's article, just the assurance that "a copy of [the report] was made available to The New York Times". Reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, backtracking from the headline "1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Finds", puts the caveat 2/3 of the way down the article:

The Pentagon has provided no way of authenticating its 45 unnamed recidivists, and only a few of the 29 people identified by name can be independently verified as having engaged in terrorism since their release. Many of the 29 are simply described as associating with terrorists or training with terrorists, with almost no other details provided.

There is also the context, at the foot of the story, that "terrorism experts said a 14 percent recidivism rate was far lower than the rate for prisoners in the United States, which, they said, can run as high as 68 percent three years after release".

No matter. The leaking official cutely and cleverly tells Bumiller, "The report was made available...[because] the delay in releasing it was creating unnecessary 'conspiracy theories' about the holdup." It's cute and clever, because any Washington official with more than two weeks' experience knows how the report's unsupported but sensational "1 in 7" claim would be handled. So, with the pretence that he/she is only protecting the public from "conspiracy theories" about the pro-Guantanamo and anti-Obama propaganda, the official leaks that propaganda.

Beyond all the scheming is the significance of the political challenge. In January, when this battle began, it was a minor annoyance to Obama. Now it is a test of his ability to hold a declared position. The President has already flipped twice in recent days on the release of detainee photographs and on military tribunals; this would be a third-time denial both of legal rights and of his authority.

As George W. Bush might have phrased it, Obama's opponents have been chanting, "Bring it on." Today may indicate whether whether Obama will "bring it back" or give way, on this issue and those to come.

Afghanistan Hearts-and-Minds Update: We're Sorry (But We Didn't Kill That Many of You)

New York Times, 20 May: "Acknowledging the pain inflicted on the Afghan people by American airpower, [US Ambassador to Afghanistan] General [Karl] Eikenberry...called the May 4 aerial bombardment in Bala Baluk district a tragedy and pledged to sharply reduce the chances of civilian casualties in future operations."

CNN, 20 May: "U.S. airstrikes in western Afghanistan this month killed up to 65 Taliban insurgents and 30 Afghan civilians, according to interim results of a military investigation released Wednesday. The civilian deaths were 'most likely' accidental, a U.S. military source told CNN."

Reuters, 20 May: A NATO-led air raid may have killed eight civilians in Afghanistan, the alliance said on Wednesday.

The Torture Photos: Obama's Six-Step Sidestep

The always excellent Dan Froomkin, blogging for The Washington Post, captures a lot of what I was trying to say --- but finding it difficult because of anger and sadness --- this morning. Drawing on other analysts as well as Obama's own words, he takes apart the six excuses for refusing the court order to release the photographs of detainee abuse:

Deconstructing Obama's Excuses

In trying to explain his startling decision to oppose the public release of more photos depicting detainee abuse, President Obama and his aides yesterday put forth six excuses for his about-face, one more flawed than the next.

First, there was the nothing-to-see-here excuse. In his remarks yesterday afternoon, Obama said the "photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib."

But as the Washington Post reports: "[O]ne congressional staff member, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the photos, said the pictures are more graphic than those that have been made public from Abu Ghraib. 'When they are released, there will be a major outcry for an investigation by a commission or some other vehicle,' the staff member said."

The New York Times reports: "Many of the photos may recall those taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which showed prisoners naked or in degrading positions, sometimes with Americans posing smugly nearby, and caused an uproar in the Arab world and elsewhere when they came to light in 2004."

And if they really aren't that sensational, then what's the big deal?

Then there was the the-bad-apples-have-been-dealt-with excuse. This one, to me, is the most troubling.

Obama said the incidents pictured in the photographs "were investigated -- and, I might add, investigated long before I took office -- and, where appropriate, sanctions have been applied....[T]his is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action. Rather, it has gone through the appropriate and regular processes. And the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken."

But this suggests that Obama has bought into the false Bush-administration narrative that the abuses of detainees were isolated acts, rather than part of an endemic system of abuse implicitly sanctioned at the highest levels of government. The Bushian view has been widely discredited -- and for Obama to endorse it suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the past.

The notion that responsibility for the sorts of actions depicted in those photos lies at the highest -- not lowest -- levels of government is not exactly a radical view. No less an authority than the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded in a bipartisan report: "The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own....The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."

But as The Washington Post notes: "[N]o commanding officers or Defense Department officials were jailed or fired in connection with the abuse, which the Bush administration dismissed as the misbehavior of low-ranking soldiers." And the "appropriate actions," as Obama put it, have certainly not yet been taken. The architects of the system in which the abuse took place have yet to be held to account.

Then there was the no-good-would-come-of-this excuse.

Obama said it was his "belief that the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals."

But the photos would add a lot. It was, after all, the photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that forced the nation to acknowledge what had happened there. There is something visceral and undeniable about photographic evidence which makes it almost uniquely capable of cutting through the disinformation and denial that surrounds the issue of detainee abuse.

These photos are said to show that the kind of treatment chronicled in Abu Ghraib was in fact not limited to that one prison or one country. They would, as I wrote yesterday, serve as a powerful refutation to former vice president Cheney's so far mostly successful attempt to cast the public debate about government-sanctioned torture as a narrow one limited to the CIA's secret prisons.

Then there was the "protect-the-troops" excuse.

Said Obama: "In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."

But the concern about the consequences of the release, while laudable on one level, is no excuse for a cover-up.

Glenn Greenwald blogs for Salon: "Think about what Obama's rationale would justify. Obama's claim...means we should conceal or even outright lie about all the bad things we do that might reflect poorly on us. For instance, if an Obama bombing raid slaughters civilians in Afghanistan..., then, by this reasoning, we ought to lie about what happened and conceal the evidence depicting what was done -- as the Bush administration did -- because release of such evidence would 'would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.' Indeed, evidence of our killing civilians in Afghanistan inflames anti-American sentiment far more than these photographs would. Isn't it better to hide the evidence showing the bad things we do?...

"How can anyone who supports what Obama is doing here complain about the CIA's destruction of their torture videos? The torture videos, like the torture photos, would, if released, generate anti-American sentiment and make us look bad. By Obama's reasoning, didn't the CIA do exactly the right thing by destroying them?"

Then there was the chilling-effect excuse.

Said Obama: "Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse."

But how so? Under questioning, press secretary Robert Gibbs failed miserably to explain that particular rationale at yesterday's press briefing.

"[I]f in each of these instances somebody looking into detainee abuse takes evidentiary photos in a case that's eventually concluded, this could provide a tremendous disincentive to take those photos and investigate that abuse," Gibbs said.

Q. "Wait, try that once again. I don't follow you. Where's the disincentive?"

Gibbs: "The disincentive is in the notion that every time one of these photos is taken, that it's going to be released. Nothing is added by the release of the photo, right? The existence of the investigation is not increased because of the release of the photo; it's just to provide, in some ways, a sensationalistic portion of that investigation.

"These are all investigations that were undertaken by the Pentagon and have been concluded. I think if every time somebody took a picture of detainee abuse, if every time that -- if any time any of those pictures were mandatorily going to be necessarily released, despite the fact that they were being investigated, I think that would provide a disincentive to take those pictures and investigate."

Get that? Yeah, me neither.

And finally, there was the new-argument excuse.

Gibbs said "the President isn't going back to remake the argument that has been made. The President is going -- has asked his legal team to go back and make a new argument based on national security."

But as the Los Angeles Times reports, the argument that releasing the photographs could create a backlash "was raised and rejected by a federal district court judge and the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which called the warnings of a backlash 'clearly speculative' and insufficient to warrant blocking disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

"'There's no legal basis for withholding the photographs,' said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, 'so this must be a political decision.'"

Margaret Talev and Jonathan S. Landay write for McClatchy Newspapers: "The request for what's effectively a legal do-over is an unlikely step for a president who is trained as a constitutional lawyer, advocated greater government transparency and ran for election as a critic of his predecessor's secretive approach toward the handling of terrorism detainees.

"Eric Glitzenstein, a lawyer with expertise in Freedom of Information Act requests, said he thought that Obama faced an uphill legal battle. 'They should not be able to go back time and again and concoct new rationales' for withholding what have been deemed public records, he said.

"The timing of the president's decision suggests that a key factor behind his switch of position could have been a desire to prevent the release of the photos before a speech that he's to give June 4 in Egypt aimed at convincing the world's Muslims that the United States isn't at war with them. The pictures' release shortly before the speech could have negated its goal and proved highly embarrassing. Even if courts ultimately reject Obama's new position, the time needed for their consideration could delay the photos' release until long after the speech."

Peter Wallsten and Janet Hook write in the Los Angeles Times: "President Obama's decision Wednesday to try to block the court-ordered release of photographs depicting alleged abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers sets him on a confrontational course with his liberal base. But it is a showdown he is willing to risk -- and may even view as politically necessary...

"Obama now can tell critics on the right that he did his best to protect the nation's troops, even if the courts eventually force the disclosure.

"Obama has been facing intense criticism from former Vice President Dick Cheney and other conservatives, who have argued that the new administration's efforts to roll back Bush-era interrogation policies have made the country less safe.

"The praise for Obama that came Wednesday from Republicans such as House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina can only help undercut those arguments."

But, Wallsten and Hook write: "Obama's dilemma is that he risks undermining one of the core principles he claimed for his presidency: transparency."

The Washington political-media establishment seems to approve of Obama's decision.

Rick Klein writes in ABC News's The Note: "In the broader context, it's cast as a sign of political maturation, maybe even classic Obama pragmatism. This is what it's like to be commander-in-chief -- one of those tough choices where there's no easy answer, and no shame in reversing yourself."

Ben Smith and Josh Gerstein write in Politico that Obama's reversal "marks the next phase in the education of the new president on the complicated, combustible issue of torture."

Washington Post opinion columnist David Ignatius blogs: "Is this a 'Sister Soulja' moment on national security, like Bill Clinton's famous criticism of a controversial rap singer during the 1992 presidential campaign -- which upset some liberal supporters but polished his credentials as a centrist?"

But anti-torture bloggers reject the comparison.

Andrew Sullivan blogs: "The MSM cannot see the question of torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions as a matter of right and wrong, of law and lawlessness. They see it as a matter of right and left. And so an attempt to hold Bush administration officials accountable for the war crimes they proudly admit to committing is 'left-wing.' And those of us who actually want to uphold the rule of law ... are now the equivalent of rappers urging the murder of white people."

In a separate post, Sullivan writes: "Slowly but surely, Obama is owning the cover-up of his predcessors' war crimes. But covering up war crimes, refusing to proscute them, promoting those associated with them, and suppressing evidence of them are themselves violations of Geneva and the UN Convention. So Cheney begins to successfully coopt his successor."

Sri Lanka: The Hidden Slaughter

Related Post: Sri Lanka - "Why is the World Not Helping?"

UPDATE: The closing paragraphs of this piece were significantly rewritten after attention was drawn to errors in the original entry. Please see the readers' comments for details.

The comment was fleeting, but significant. Steve Clemons, a prominent Washington journalist, posted on Twitter after an discussion with British Foreign Minister David Miliband yesterday: "Surprised AfPak [Afghanistan-Pakistan] wobbliness not the core topic in New America new media chat with UK For Minister Miliband. Steve Coll pushed Sri Lanka mess."

It is estimated that the "Sri Lanka mess", in which Government forces are fighting the insurgency of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has killed an estimated 6500 civilians in recent weeks. Yet it has been effectively a non-story in US and British media. Both The Washington Post and The New York Times only noticed it on Monday, when a United Nations spokesman revealed a death toll of almost 400 from a weekend artillery barrage.

There are obvious reasons (excuses?) for this. Afghanistan and Pakistan are at the epicentre of US foreign policy. Sri Lanka is not. It can claim no connection with the "War on Terror", at least as it has been defined in Washington. No Osama bin Laden lurking in a border town, no nuclear weapons that can be seized by insurgents. So broadcasters and major newspapers don't expend increasingly limited resources on a bureau near Colombo.

Atttention spans may be changing, however. Whether it is because a British minister has dared put this hidden war above the visible one from Islamabad to Kabul, because the concern of the United Nations is finally have an effect, because the Tamil protests in London have unveiled the issue, or because journalists are catching up with the reality of the carnage, Sri Lanka has made the news today in Britain. The Times forcefully declares, "The world must force Colombo to halt the shelling of trapped civilians," and The Guardian has a Page 1 eyewitness account by Vany Kumar (reprinted in a separate blog) of shelling in the "no-fire zone".

Perhaps the most intriguing attention comes in an opinion piece by Andrew Buncombe in The Independent as he quotes a doctor's analysis of the conflict: ""In any military operation there is collateral damage. In Pakistan it's killing, in Sri Lanka it's slaughter."

The piece is well worth considering not only for its thoughtful attention to the relative coverage of the two conflicts but also to wider issues. Buncombe, as the Asia Correspondent of The Independent is having to make decisions on how he expends his own resources of time and energy between covering Pakistan, where he has been writing about the exodus of residents from fighting in the northwest of the country, Sri Lanka, and other countries. It also highlights the relative ease with which a journalist can file stories about and from Pakistan, even in the midst of the campaign against the insurgency, versus the difficulties in getting access to and bringing out information from Sri Lanka.

Beyond these logistical and practical considerations, however, there remains the question, at least looking out from Washington. In the midst of the politics and military posturing around "Af-Pak", will the collateral damage in eastern Sri Lanka ever merit sustained attention?

Now It's Petraeus' War: US Replaces Top Commander in Afghanistan

GENERAL DAVID MCKIERNAN

Yesterday, I was speaking to British high school students when one asked, "What are President Obama's three greatest challenges today?" After putting the economy Number One and listing (but dismissing) Republican opposition as a potential Number Two, I said:

But I'm concerned that it will be Afghanistan and Pakistan that will bring him down. I think he's being overtaken by his own military, especially General David Petraeus [the head of US Central Command] and their ideas of "strategy".

Before I got home, the news came through: the Obama Adminstration had replaced the commander of NATO and US forces in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan.

My initial reaction was, OK, generals get replaced. They are moved to other military posts or return to Washington for a break from the field. Then, however, the details piled in. McKiernan had done only 11 months of a command tour that normally last 18 to 24 months. He had been ousted, even as the US is planning to pour more troops into a "crisis", and replaced with General Stanley McChrystal, the director of the military's Joint Staff and, before that, head of US Special Operations Forces in Iraq.

All of which pointed to the re-branding of the Afghanistan conflict. This is not Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' war. This is not President Obama's war.

This one has been claimed by David Petraeus.

Gates, announcing McKiernan's departure, was not shy about kicking the general out the door. McKiernan had "probably" had his career cut short because “a new approach was probably in our best interest”. He added, "Fresh eyes were needed."

So what were wrong with those eyes? After all, the commander was no lightweight: he had led US ground troops in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Pentagon officials piled on the criticism, "General McKiernan...had been removed primarily because he had brought too conventional an approach to the challenge." His honour was to be "the first general to be dismissed from command of a theater of combat since Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War".

In contrast, the officials noted that General McChrystal had led the American forces who captured Saddam Hussein and later killed insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq: "his success in using intelligence and firepower to track and kill insurgents, and his training in unconventional warfare that emphasizes the need to protect the population, made him the best choice for the command in Afghanistan".

Translation? McKiernan is a "big force" leader. His background is an officer in armoured units, and he led the calls in Iraq for a much larger ground force than that used to occupy the country. McChrystal, on the other hand, is able to organise and direct small, elite units that can strike quickly.

Make no mistake, however. As The New York Times politely frames it, "The change also reflects the influence of Gen. David H. Petraeus." Their emphasis is on a personal battle: Petraeus served under McKiernan in Iraq but eventually overtook him in rank and, again according to Pentagon officials, "the two men did not develop a bond after General Petraeus inherited General McKiernan as his Afghanistan commander".

More importantly, Petraeus is preparing his supposed strategy for victory. His reputation has been built on the mythical or real success of the Iraq "surge" from 2007. While that relied on an increase in US troops, it emphasized the deployment of specialist units to work with local Sunni militias while using Special Forces in "surgical" strikes against the bad guys. The big military idea is that the same approach can work in Afghanistan. Hook up with some of the local leaders and use airstrikes and covert operations to capture or kill key figures in the insurgency.

This is not solely a Petraeus notion. The White House spokesman was quick to say the President agreed with Secretary of Defense Gates and Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that “the implementation of a new strategy in Afghanistan called for new military leadership". And, perhaps ironically, Obama has played into Petraeus' hands. Even though he effectively approved the military's request for an additional 30,000 troops this years, the President's hesitation reinforced the idea that the US will have to succeed with smaller but mobile units rather than overwhelming force.

To call this a fantasy too far would be kind. Iraq, a country of 25 million, could not be pacified by US operations in 2003. (Indeed, if McKiernan wanted to strike back at his critics and the compliant media, he could note: his complaint that the American force for post-Saddam occupation is now generally accepted wisdom.) Now Petraeus is pursuing the same goal in a country of 75 million. He is doing so with a Karzai Government that is trying to establish some independence from Washington and with little apparent knowledge of the intricacies of Afghan politics. Even the symbolic of General McChrystal's record with US special operations has a downside: "He will be confronted with deep tensions over the conduct of Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, whose aggressive tactics are seen by Afghan officials as responsible for many of the American mistakes that have resulted in the deaths of civilians."

In the end, little of this may matter to Petraeus, who could be in a no-lose situation: if his strategy checks the insurgency, he gets the credit. If it does not, he can put the blame on political superiors who didn't give him enough troops or on an Afghan Government that is beyond redemption.

For now, it's David Petraeus' war. But the beauty of his strategic move --- not in Central Asia but in Washington --- is that he can always hand it back if it goes wrong.