[Peace-discuss] Informed Comment [Afghanistan: 0 troops optn; Manning update]

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Worth reading. Cole continues to give me hope. 

--- On Wed, 1/9/13, Informed Comment <jricole at gmail.com> wrote:
Informed Comment














Afghanistan:  The End of America’s Longest War?


Wikileaker Bradley Manning “Illegally Punished,” 4 months off Life Sentence


Frankenyear 2012:  Hottest on Record, as US emits 5 bn tons of CO2 Annually






Afghanistan:  The End of America’s Longest War?


Posted: 09 Jan 2013 01:13 AM PST
 Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in Washington for talks with the Obama administration on the gradual draw down of foreign troops from his country over the next two years.  There are currently about 104,000 NATO and other outside troops in Afghanistan, including 68,000 Americans.  
In a recent piece for CNN, I wrote:
 “By summer of 2013, it is anticipated that the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan will draw to a close. By the end of 2014, only a few thousand U.S. troops will be left, and they will mainly supply close air support to the Afghanistan army when it engages in combat. Whether the some 350,000-strong Afghanistan security forces are up to the challenge of fighting the Taliban and other insurgents is a matter of great controversy. American officers in Kabul insist that the Afghanistan National Army (ANA) now takes the lead in 80 percent of operations against the enemy, up from 50 percent just last summer.  But a recent Pentagon review admitted that only one of 23 ANA brigades is capable of functioning on its own, without U.S. or ISAF help. In 2012, some 300 were dying every month in battles with the Taliban and other militant groups.  The ANA has low rates of literacy (a third the rate of the general population), high rates of drug use, and high rates of
 desertion. It is also disproportionately drawn from the Tajik, Dari Persian-speaking minority. Only 2 percent of the troops hail from Kandahar and Helmand Provinces in the Pashtun south, the strongholds of the Taliban.”
Earlier arguments about whether the US would keep 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after December 31, 2014, or only 3,000 have abruptly been eclipsed by a White House staffer’s announcement that the “zero option” is on the table.  That is, the US may leave entirely.
This threat is likely intended to convince Karzai to withdraw his objections to granting extraterritoriality (immunity from prosecution in Afghan courts) to the remaining US troops.  It was the refusal of the Iraqi government to grant such immunity that led to the complete withdrawal of US troops from that country at the end of 2011.
In Iraq, PM Nouri al-Maliki would have had to get extraterritoriality passed through his parliament (which nowadays is up in revolt against him), and that would have been impossible.  The Iraqi parliament is full of Shiite nationalists and Sunni nationalists who were dying to see foreign soldiers out of their country.
The Afghan parliament is even weaker than the Iraqi, and Karzai can probably make his own deal with Washington.  But he can’t act just as he pleases.  
Karzai’s opposition among hard line Muslim fundamentalists are painting him as a traitor for signing any agreement at all with the US on the post-combat American troop presence.  Karzai wants to negotiate a settlement with them, which is probably not impossible, but they say American troops remaining in their country is a deal breaker with regard to negotiations.
Nor can the president afford to alienate too many MPs in his own, weak parliament, since some of them are still movers and shakers in the country.
Will Karzai fold on the immunity issue and grant extraterritoriality to US troops?  Or will he risk the departure of the Americans (whom he has sometimes admitted he does not like very much).
I don’t doubt that in the absence of a deal on immunity from prosecution in local courts of US troops, the Obama administration would be perfectly willing to pull them all out.  Obama is a Pacific Rim president and is annoyed by the distractions of the  Middle East, which he does not think is very important compared to China, Japan, the Koreas and the Philippines.
I wrote at CNN:
 ” Ironically, the draw-down of Western forces may make it easier for warring Afghan factions to begin serious negotiations with one another over the shape of the future. The United States has reportedly given up on attempting to play a role in those talks, and is bequeathing the task of achieving a negotiated settlement to the Afghans themselves and to Pakistan. The Taliban and other insurgent groups have repeatedly said that the end of the foreign troop presence is a precondition for any serious talks. Perhaps light at the end of that tunnel will be enough to at least begin behind-the-scenes discussions. It is also possible, however, that the radicals will attempt to improve their eventual bargaining position by taking more territory from Karzai and his successor. 






Wikileaker Bradley Manning “Illegally Punished,” 4 months off Life Sentence


Posted: 09 Jan 2013 12:50 AM PST
A  military judge has found that Bradley Manning, who released large numbers of low-classified State Department cables to Wikileaks, was illegally punished while in the brig at Quantico, when he was denied exercise and kept on ‘suicide watch’ (chained and naked) against the counsel of his psychiatrist.  Although Manning did nothing more than Daniel Ellsberg (who released the Pentagon Papers during Vietnam, which were published by the New York Times), and although Ellsworth and the Times were held harmless, Manning faces life imprisonment.  Ellsworth notes that all of the dirty tricks deployed against him by the harassing Nixon administration are now actually legal.
 Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks explains:
 
Manning should be released, given that he was kept in conditions that the world court at the Hague would probably find met the definition of torture, and there was very substantial misconduct on the part of the government.
Here is a reprint edition of my January, 2011, comparison of Bradley Manning to Mohammed Bouazizi, the young man who sparked the Tunisian revolution and the Arab Spring:
——–

Bradley Manning and Mohamed Bouazizi
Activists David House and Jane Hamsher tried to visit Pfc. Bradley Manning, who stands accused of leaking classified US government documents, at Quantico on Sunday.  They allege that while still outside the base, they  were given a run-around, threatened with having their car towed, and then essentially detained for two hours, until the 3:00 pm end to visiting hours arrived.  They were not on the base, and House is on an approved visitor list.  They were trying to see Manning, whose health they say has deteriorated because of the harsh terms of his detainment, and to deliver to the base commander a petition with 40,000 signatories asking that the terms be eased. 
The suspicious behavior of the authorities at Quantico raises the question of why they were trying to keep House from seeing Manning on Sunday.  What had been done to their prisoner that they didn’t want coming out?
Manning’s treatment as though he were a terrorist contrasts to the lionization of other kinds of dissident.  If it is true that Manning turned State Department documents over to Wikileaks, then he played a small role in the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution, which overthrew the brutal and grasping dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, whom the US government had been coddling and the French government actively supporting.  Ben Ali’s  cruelty to political prisoners is now emerging, as they are being released and telling their story.


Desperation at the policies of the Tunisian government had driven  college graduate turned vegetable peddler Mohammad Bouazizi to set himself on fire in protest.  The government had supplied him no job, then had confiscated his vegetable cart, then slapped and humiliated him when he protested.  Bouazizi was driven to desperation, knowing that the Tunisian system was closed so tight that it offered him no recourse, no hope for reform.  His only means of protest was to start a fire and sacrifice his own life.  His protest set off public disturbances throughout the country.  In the midst of this “Jasmine Revolution,” a leaked US embassy cable about the corruption of President Ben Ali came to the attention of the Tunisian public, lending legitimacy and urgency to their efforts to unseat him.  It may have been leaked by Manning.




  



Manning, like Bouazizi, is young.  He also faced, with all his youth and inexperience and impatience, a political situation that was the result of criminality.  Dick Cheney and John Yoo and Karl Rove and George W. Bush were responsible for creating a public image of government lawlessness that encouraged whistle blowing.  They went to war against Iraq on false pretenses and in contravention of international law.  They themselves tried to leak the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative, to the press.  They set up Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and Bagram as black torture facilities.  They lied repeatedly to the American people (there was no looting in Iraq, no guerrilla war in Iraq, no civil war in Iraq, no torture practiced by the US in Iraq, no more than 30,000 civilian dead in Iraq, no need for more armored vehicles for our troops in Iraq).
The political situation Manning faced was also unyielding.  Long after the American public turned against Washington’s Forever Wars, they are still being pursued, and are killing thousands of innocent civilians for war goals that range from the highly unlikely to the utterly phantasmagoric.  Manning’s leak was an act of desperation no different in intent from Bouazizi’s self-immolation.  He intended to protest, by putting himself on the line.  He wrote in  chat room, “god knows what happens now — hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms — if not & we’re doomed.”  He did not intend to get caught, but he must have known the risks.  His was a cyberspace form of self-immolation, a career-ending, decisively life-changing act that, however foolhardy or possibly illegal, was certainly courageous.
President Obama belatedly praised “the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people” and said,
  “The United States stands with the entire international community in bearing witness to this brave and determined struggle for the universal rights that we must all uphold, and we will long remember the images of the Tunisian people seeking to make their voices heard.” 
So one of the universal human rights the Tunisians wanted was freedom from harsh conditions of detention when charged with thought crimes.
As a service member under arrest in preparation for a military trial, Manning lacks many of the protections of US civilians charged with wrongdoing, but there are military regulations about pre-trial treatment that his defense alleges are being violated. There are also provisions in international law to which the US is signatory and which may be being violated.
 Manning was placed on suicide watch for two days last week, and is in general in maximum security detention and subject to ‘prevention of injury’ (POI) rules.  
 Manning’s psychiatrists say there is no reason for the POI.  This procedure allows guards to wake Manning up whenever they cannot see his face (i.e. if he rolls over on his bed while sleeping).
There is a strong possibility that solitary confinement (i.e. social isolation) and sleep deprivation are being used by Manning’s jailers as a form of torture to soften him up.  It is possible that they want from him information that would allow them to pursue conspiracy charges against Wikileaks, and this mistreatment is the way they think they can get it from him.
Ironically,  Among Amnesy International’s charges against the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia was this:
 ‘ Prison conditions: Many political prisoners reportedly suffered discrimination and harsh treatment. Some went on hunger strike to protest against ill-treatment by prison guards, denial of medical care, interruption of family visits and harsh conditions, including prolonged solitary confinement.’  
And, yes, among the techniques used against prisoners was “sleep deprivation.”  
No one is saying that Manning is being physically abused.  But he is being psychologically abused, which is still a form of inhumane treatment.  Both the United Nations and the US State Department have called sleep deprivation a form of torture.   Glenn Greenwald has also made this case.
There is little recourse for Manning until the court convenes and pleas are entered, at which time his military attorney can submit a complaint about the terms of his detention.  Attorney  David Coombs has in the meantime protested on the grounds of article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which says:
 ‘ No person, while being held for trial, may be subjected to punishment or penalty other than arrest or confinement upon the charges pending against him, nor shall the arrest or confinement imposed upon him be any more rigorous than the circumstances required to insure his presence, but he may be subjected to minor punishment during that period for infractions of discipline. ‘ 
Just Saturday,  Coombs filed an article 138 complaint, as well.  This complaint alleges a perceived wrong committed by his command against a service member, under the UCMJ.
Amnesty International has addressed a letter to US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates about the treatment of Manning.
It says, 
 ‘ We are informed that, since July 2010, PFC Manning has been confined for 23 hours a day to a single cell, measuring around 72 square feet (6.7 square metres) and equipped only with a bed, toilet and sink. There is no window to the outside, the only view being on to a corridor through the barred doors of his cell. All meals are taken in his cell, which we are told has no chair or table. He has no association or contact with other pre-trial detainees and he is allowed to exercise, alone, for just one hour a day, in a day-room or outside. He has access to a television which is placed in the corridor for limited periods of the day. However, he is reportedly not permitted to keep personal possessions in his cell, apart from one book and magazine at a time. Although he may write and receive correspondence, writing is allowed only at an allotted time during the day and he is not allowed to keep such materials in his cell. 
We understand that PFC Manning’s restrictive conditions of confinement are due to his classification as a maximum custody detainee. This classification also means that – unlike medium security detainees –- he is shackled at the hands and legs during approved social and family visits, despite all such visits at the facility being non-contact. He is also shackled during attorney visits at the facility. We further understand that PFC Manning, as a maximum custody detainee, is denied the opportunity for a work assignment which would allow him to be out of his cell for most of the day. The United Nations (UN) Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMR), which are internationally recognized guiding principles, provide inter alia that “Untried prisoners shall always be offered opportunity to work” should they wish to undertake such activity (SMR Section C, rule 89). PFC Manning is also being held under a Prevention of Injury (POI)
 assignment, which means that he is subjected to further restrictions. These include checks by guards every five minutes and a bar on his sleeping during the day. He is required to remain visible at all times, including during night checks. His POI status has resulted in his being deprived of sheets and a separate pillow, causing uncomfortable sleeping conditions; his discomfort is reportedly exacerbated by the fact that he is required to sleep only in boxer shorts and has suffered chafing of his bare skin from the blankets. 
We are concerned that no formal reasons have been provided to PFC Manning for either his maximum security classification or the POI assignment and that efforts by his counsel to challenge these assignments through administrative procedures have thus far failed to elicit a response. We are further concerned that he reportedly remains under POI despite a recommendation by the military psychiatrist overseeing his treatment that such an assignment is no longer necessary.’   
If an American citizen, convicted of no crime and innocent until proven guilty, can be held under such conditions arbitrarily for half a year, essentially softened up and tortured as a means of extracting information from him, then the Republic is in extreme danger.  Indeed, it may be that John Yoo, Karl Rove, Richard Bruce Cheney, and George W. Bush are already winning in their war on civil liberties in favor of a monarchical national security state.
President Obama, has made some important advances in abolishing torture and restoring some civil liberties, but it is a mixed picture, as the ACLU explained just a few days ago.  He has a duty to intervene to stop the abuse of Pfc. Manning.
If Manning has broken the law, he will be tried and convicted and punished in accordance with the law.  In the meantime, as long as he is being treated as though he were at Guantanamo, all of us are.






Frankenyear 2012:  Hottest on Record, as US emits 5 bn tons of CO2 Annually


Posted: 09 Jan 2013 12:24 AM PST
Can we sue the Koch brothers and all the other dirty-energy, climate change-denying moguls yet for the billions they are costing us in climate disasters every year because of their poisonous carbon emissions?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that:
 “2012 marked the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States with the year consisting of a record warm spring, second warmest summer, fourth warmest winter and a warmer-than-average autumn. The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3°F, 3.2°F above the 20th century average, and 1.0°F above 1998, the previous warmest year.”

The temperatures set records in 19 states and they were warmer than average in all of the lower 48.
Frankenyear was also the 2nd most destructive on record, lashing the nation with 11 catastrophes that reached at least $1 bn. in losses — including hurricanes, drought, wildfires, tornadoes and the great storm surge in New York City.  Hurricanes are fed by warm water, and warmer water makes them more destructive and longer-lasting.  It was the unusual warmth of the ocean off the New York coast that allowed Sandy to strike up there with such force.  The average surface temperature of the earth has increased one Centigrade degree (1.8 Fahrenheit degrees) in the past century, and is heading for a calamitous 4 C. degrees increase in this century.
It was the 15th driest year on record.  In summer of 2012, a massive drought smothered 61% of the country.  Hawaii likewise was extremely dry, with drought in 63.3% of the state.  On the mainland, wildfires raged through 9.2 million acres of forest, the third highest on record.  The  Mississippi River is so low that bigger river ships can’t go out on it, stretches of it are deserted like a ‘ghost town,’ and some of it could be closed altogether as it heads below 3 feet in depth.  Ironically, the Mississippi carries a lot of hydrocarbons like petroleum, the very fuels that are causing its current travails.
 ABC reports, and actually does a snippet mention of man-made climate change, though in the recommendations for what to do, they focus on things like buying flood insurance and ‘becoming more energy efficient’ instead of simply calling for vastly lowered carbon dioxide emissions.
 
Climate is extremely complex.  We may yet see some cold years.  There is some thinking that the melting of ice at the poles could temporarily cool the oceans and reduce temperatures for a while.  But the longer term trend is not only toward hotter, it is toward a kind of hotter that human beings may find it difficult to survive.
What can be done to forestall this coming set of global disasters?
1.  Tax carbon emissions.
2.  Close all coal plants as soon as humanly possible.
3.  Move rapidly, as  Germany and  Scotland are, toward  wind, and  solar, and wave and other renewables ( geothermal, new hydroelectric, etc.).  Any government subsidies, stimulus, tax breaks that could possibly be provided for this would save trillions in climate damage down the road (and not that far from now).
4. Call out corporations, states, and countries that decline to reduce their emissions on a short time scale; as public attitudes change, especially on the bench, it may be possible to begin suing them successfully for the property damage they are doing (English law in the Lockean tradition is very good about protecting property).
5.  Disinvest from  Big Oil and Big Carbon generally.
6.   Municipalities and counties should take matters into their own hands, as with Sacramento, CA and now Boulder, Co..  They should abandon electric utilities that depend heavily on coal, and generate green electricity for their city.






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