No Paradise: Rajapaksa’s Post-War Sri Lanka

Since the announcement last Tuesday that Sri Lankan President Mahindra Rajapaksa had defeated former army chief General Sarath Fonseka in the country’s first national election since the defeat of the separatist LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) last May, we in the United States have heard little about the election’s aftermath. In the run up to the election, bits of valuable information reached our shores through The New York Times, The Phildelphia Inquirer, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor and others, but since the election’s conclusion, Sri Lanka has faded into the background behind more dramatic stories in Haiti, Afghanistan, and China.

To some, Rajapaksa’s win signaled the triumph of democracy after decades of civil war, but it doesn’t take much looking to find that Rajapaksa resorted to some decidedly undemocratic methods to secure victory. Reporters Without Borders condemned the Sri Lankan government for blocking websites, intimidating critics, and possibly being responsible for the disappearance of opposition supporters. The Sri Lankan government had been preventing foreign journalists from entering the country to cover the elections, and the situation on the ground in Sri Lanka, especially in Tamil areas, had hardly been conducive to ensuring that the citizens’ right to vote would be protected. The election day bombshell that Fonseka was allegedly not registered to vote prompted Rajapaksa’s UPFA to loudly threatened to challenge his election if he were to win. This threat came despite the fact that the election commission had declared that Fonseka’s papers were in order and that not being registered to vote had no bearing on whether he could hold office.

Since the election, Rajapaksa has made drastic moves to consolidate his power and clamp down on journalists, the political opposition, and protesters in the streets. Earlier fears of post-election violence between supporters of Rajapaksa and Fonseka seem to have given way to fears of a coup, at least according to Rajapaksa, orchestrated by military supporters of General Fonseka. In response, Rajapaksa has ordered the biggest shake up of the Sri Lankan military in decades, purging the forces of high-ranking supporters of Fonseka. Many justifiably fear that Rajapaksa’s election will worsen the state of media freedom in Sri Lanka.

During the election, Rajapaksa was strongly supported by the ethnic Sinhalese majority in the south. Rajapaksa won over 65%, while Fonseka – also Sinhalese – carried less than 35% of the vote. The largest Tamil political party – faced with the option of  supporting the president who led a brutal war against them or supporting the general who carried out the president’s orders – chose to back Fonseka, hopeful that he would do more than Rajapaksa has to bring about a Sinhalese-Tamil reconciliation. In the Jaffna district, the Tamil heartland, 64% supported Fonseka and just 25% backed Rajapaksa. Since the end of the long and devastating civil war in May, Rajapaksa has aggravated ethnic tensions and has failed to demonstrate a desire or ability to reimagine Sri Lanka as an inclusive democratic society willing to accommodate the still-legitimate Tamil demands on the Sri Lankan government that originally led the country into war. His behavior since his election victory once again appears to reflect an insecure and greedy desire to remain in power rather than a strategy for rebuilding an island destroyed and torn apart by violence and social inequality.

This shortsightedness could backfire on Rajapaksa. The International Crisis Group still sees a need for international community involvement in reconstructing Sri Lanka and making sure Tamil grievances are responded to. Rajapaksa should also keep in mind that while the LTTE has been soundly defeated militarily in Sri Lanka, its organization still exists overseas, holding up to one billion dollars in assets. Despite its wealth, this network is, for now, beset by infighting and a lack of central leadership and fighters. Yet, Tamil concerns cannot be expected to go unaddressed forever, and a continued denial of rights, opportunities, and dignity to the Tamil people by the Sri Lankan government just might provide the motivation to unify and organize that today’s overseas Tigers are lacking.

President Rajapaksa believes that “Sri Lanka’s struggle is a victory for global democracy and demonstrates that a workable model exists for eradicating terrorism.” Optimists see this peacetime election as an opportunity for Rajapaksa and Sri Lankans to put the war behind them and to get on with creating an economically prosperous, politically inclusive, and socially harmonious nation. Yet, such a project will take time and will require rebuilding a constructive Tamil political voice, not merely a relatively free electoral win by a seemingly divisive and ethnically chauvinist politician. Based on Rajapaksa’s record since the defeat of the LTTE, I doubt that he is a leader capable of forging a new peaceful political future for Sri Lanka.

And I fear for the toll that fighting terrorism takes on democracy. While Sri Lanka may provide a “workable model” for defeating terrorism, it hardly provides us with a desirable model. As a country engaged in (perhaps indefinitely) fighting terrorism, we in the United States should see Sri Lanka as a warning. We must decide if we are willing to sacrifice our democratic ideals to possibly attain an all-out victory over terrorism.

Oh, Massachusetts!

There’s sure been enough harsh talk around the health care bills coming out of the House and Senate – and I mean from people who support universal health insurance – forget the Tea Baggers and the Rush Limbaugh audience for the moment. On the one hand, you’ve got people calling for unseating Representative John Conyers because he voted for the final House bill – and he was the prime sponsor of the single payer bill! On the other, there’s people dismissing any objections to the bills’ shortcomings as the cavalier nitpickings of a privileged group that already has health insurance and doesn’t really care much about anyone else who doesn’t. But the hyperbole crown has got to go to the blogger who produced the headline “Raul Grijalva Flirting With History’s Greatest Monster Status.” And what crime did the Arizona Representative and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair commit to join the ranks of Hitler, Stalin, and Attila? Why, he said that instead of passing the Senate bill as is, the House should send the Senate smaller individual bills that wouldn’t include items such a tax on pre-existing health insurance plans. Imagine that!

The voters of Massachusetts have lately become notorious for forcing a total tactical regrouping on the national health care debate by electing a Republican to finish Ted Kennedy’s Senate term. But the politics of that New England state also hold some interest in this debate in a largely unrelated way – the similarity between the ongoing quandary faced by advocates of expanded government services there and the dilemma that the current national health bills have posed for supporters of health insurance reform.

The “Massachusetts problem” stems from the fact that it is not only one of just seven states in the nation with a “flat” income tax but it also has a constitutional prohibition against establishing a graduated income tax – i.e., the kind we’re all familiar with on the federal level, with rates that climb in higher income brackets – and numerous efforts to amend the state constitution have failed. The flat income tax, combined with the state’s sales tax, has the effect of making the state’s overall tax structure regressive, which seriously hinders any attempted redirection of resources within the state. You may be able to steer services and goods to the poor, but the money to do so will come from the middle rungs on the economic ladder and not the top. The Massachusetts dilemma, then, has generally boiled down to this: Do you ignore real needs or do you address them in a manner likely to eventually lead to a “middle class” taxpayer revolt such as the state’s 1980 “Proposition 2 ½” property tax limitation or California’s more famous Proposition 13.

The national health care debate has faced no similar constitutional barriers, but the political barriers have proven every bit as formidable. The President and congressional leaders could have put forth a bill offering a more serious solution to the problem – whether single payer, another type of universal nonprofit health insurance, a government-run health care system, or something else entirely – but they chose not to. The $20 million in campaign contributions the health care industry gave Barack Obama (nearly three times the amount given John McCain) may not have in themselves bought a non-health insurance industry-threatening proposal, but it was probably at least a good predictor of the type of bill we would ultimately see.

So far as the debate within the left goes, both sides might do well to simply concede the other’s central point: It is both true that the bills that came out of Congress would expand health insurance coverage significantly, although not universally, and that they would not fundamentally alter the expensive and wasteful private for-profit health insurance industry that lies at the root of the problem – except to further entrench it by mandating the purchase of its services.

If we’re willing to grant the significance of both the bills’ strengths and their weaknesses, we might find ourselves then able to sympathize with the votes of both of the individuals who are arguably the most left-wing members of each congressional branch, even though they voted the opposite way: Senator Bernie Sanders was a “Yes” when one more “No” would have brought the Senate discussion to a halt, while Representative Dennis Kucinich voted “No” when there were a few House votes to spare and he could thereby highlight the vast gulf between the bill as it was and what it ought to be.

Just a couple of weeks ago, concern about the potential downside of passing the Senate or House bill as currently written might have been dismissed as academic, but it can’t be now – or at least it shouldn’t be. And for the fact that we now know that, we are indebted to MoveOn.org and Democracy for America for having the foresight and wherewithal to secure the services of the Research 2000 polling company to ask a few questions of the Massachusetts electorate. What they found was so at odds with the general “anti-big government” or “anti-insider” interpretations that dominate the mainstream media as to demand the closest attention from anyone with a serious interest in finding a real solution to America’s health care problems.

The poll’s target group was people who had voted for Barack Obama for President but did not vote for Martha Coakley, the Democrats’ Senate nominee; and further divided into those who had actually voted for Scott Brown, the Republican winner, and those who stayed home. When asked if they favored or opposed “the health care reform proposal recently passed by the U.S. Senate,” not terribly surprisingly, both groups opposed it – the Brown voters by a 48–32% margin and the non-voters by a 43-34%. And here’s where things veered from the accepted norms of political discourse: when those opposed were asked if they thought the Senate bill “goes too far or doesn’t go far enough,” the 2008 Obama voters who’d taken a pass on the Massachusetts election said it didn’t go not far enough, by 53-8% margin. And so did those who voted for Obama in 2008 and Brown in 2010 – by a 36-23% margin!

And just so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding as to what going “far enough” might mean, the pollsters also posed the question “Would you favor or oppose the national government offering everyone the choice of a government administered health insurance plan — something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get — that would compete with private health insurance plans?” Both groups said yes – the Obama voters who stayed at home by a 86-7% margin and those who came out and voted for Brown by 82-14%.

Probably we shouldn’t entirely blame the mainstream pundits for the difficulty of incorporating the results of this poll into the national analysis. The fact is that the poll’s results are counterintuitive – people just don’t expect voters who felt the Senate health care bill did not go far enough to vote for a Republican. Counterintuitive, but true, however. Undoubtedly, some will simply reject the messenger like one woman who described her response to reading the MoveOn data thusly: “All I could do is roll my eyes. This is the second time I’ve been ready to unenroll.”

Others may find fault with the electorate itself, like one who thought, “I guess people do not measure the consequences of their vote.” But voters must deal with the choices they are presented as best they see fit (or stay at home) and the choices they have are not always logical. After all, there was no candidate on the Massachusetts ballot advocating going further than the Senate bill, now was there? It’s not just the voters who need to deal with the consequences of their actions – so do the members of Congress who gave us the bills currently at hand.

On January 1 of this year, a Rasmussen Reports poll found voters nationwide opposing the Congressional plans by a 58-39% margin. The poll also found a majority opposed to a single-payer health care system by a 52-34% margin. In other words, the spread against the Congressional plan – 19 points – was greater than the 18 point spread against a single payer plan, even though single payer has never had the benefit of so much as a single Congressional hearing or vote! Although it was dismissed as a non-starter from the outset, at this juncture it’s hard to see how the White House and Congressional leadership would have done worse if they’d had the political will to stand up to the insurance industry with a plan of which the President once said, “The truth is that unless you have a what’s called a single-payer system in which everybody is automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual.”

Opponents would have derided it as “big government,” to be sure, but it would have had the substantial asset of offering an actual solution to a major problem. Instead, the Democratic leadership chose to offer another type of “big government” solution, one that would involve ever more complex regulation of potential insurance company abuses, along with subsidies to allow lower income individuals to pay the bloated premiums those companies demand. And that’s big government that we can’t all believe in. As they’ve long known in Massachusetts, there’s consequences to these things.

Full disclosure: Tom Gallagher, Demockracy senior writer and columnist, served six years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Future of Afghanistan Complicated by Election Outcome

The Afghan presidential elections have ended. And I’m sure I’m not the only one to who finds the outcome thoroughly unsatisfying. After vehemently denying that his campaign had engaged in massive voting fraud, President Hamid Karzai essentially admitted to fraud, accepting the election commission’s revised vote tally. This revision dropped Karzai’s support from 54% to under 50%, triggering a runoff under the Afghan constitution. Karzai’s opponent in the runoff, Abdullah Abdullah, not in a position to actually win and fearing more fraud and violence with a second round of voting, dropped out of the contest, leaving Karzai the winner.

American officials act reasonably satisfied with these elections, though it’s hard to see why. They are now left with an Afghan partner in the escalating war against the Taliban that has run a shockingly corrupt and ineffective government, has garnered less than half the majority of votes cast in the election, and has committed large-scale fraud in a failed effort to win these elections. To sum up, Karzai has proven to be bad at governing Afghanistan, does not have the support of most of the Afghan people, and was caught trying to steal the election. While Karzai seems to have legitimately won a commanding plurality of the vote, his behavior indicates a blatant disregard for the electoral process and the rule of law that would be condemned by the US government had it occurred in a place such as Iran or Venezuela.

Though President Obama gave Karzai a scolding about improving his governance when he called to congratulate him on his victory, close US-Afghan cooperation is bound to continue. Indeed, if Obama has his way, it will increase (though he appears to be feeling less hawkish about Afghanistan than he was as candidate – perhaps because of this tainted election). And it should. The return of the Taliban poses a threat to Afghans, the region, and perhaps the world. After a decade of supporting violent religious fanatics (both Afghan and foreign) against the Soviets, and then walking away to let these extremists, drug kingpins, and warlords plunge the country into civil war, the US owes the Afghan people a serious commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan by providing security, promoting development, and nurturing a democratic government.

This means US military involvement is needed, but more importantly, it means overcoming the challenges of bringing things like water, electricity, roads, health care, education, and jobs to Afghans. Yet, hopes have been dashed that these elections would give Afghanistan a clear and legitimate democratic leader who was ready to work with the US and battle the Taliban with the support of the Afghan public. The muddied results will certainly make the work of the Afghan government, the US, NATO, and other foreign players more difficult. And the Taliban are already claiming victory, believing that their attacks stopped the second round of voting.

In the end, these elections give little hope for the immediate future of Afghanistan and the US mission there. By his own actions, Karzai has weakened his position vis-à-vis the Taliban, and the US will be hard-pressed to win Afghan hearts and minds while backing a largely discredited Afghan government and failing to follow through on efforts to improve the lives of Afghan people. US involvement is also becoming increasingly unpopular at home, and the longer US soldiers and aid workers are in Afghanistan, the more chances there are for casualties that may not be palatable to Americans who increasingly believe that there are unclear reasons to stay in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration is hopeful that Karzai will clean up his act and the UK is making threats that it can’t support a government that is so unapologetically corrupt. However, it is hard to imagine that the US or the UK – as heavily invested in Afghanistan as they are – will simply quit Afghanistan if Karzai continues running his government as is. The US certainly has some leverage over Karzai, but for now it has little choice but to put most of its eggs in one basket, hoping that he is the man best suited to improve life in Afghanistan and to fight the Taliban. Unrest seems sure to continue to plague Afghanistan, and US ability to win a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan has been seriously compromised by this election’s outcome. How adeptly Obama’s strategy can adapt to today’s complex political situation in Afghanistan and how well US forces can work with other regional players (Pakistan, India, Russia, Iran, China) will be key to preventing Afghanistan and the entire region from becoming more dangerous and unstable than they are today.

This is the second article covering the Afghan election and the fourth in a series on major elections in Asia this year.

Prospects for Change in Burma: Too Many Wild Cards in the Deck?

From the US, Burma (more recently known as Myanmar) has appeared for the past two decades to be a global pariah, ruled by an isolated, paranoid, and  power-hungry military notorious for its suppression of human rights, government critics, and ethnic minorities. In the last few years it has made the news for all the wrong reasons – the continued imprisonment of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the bloody crackdown on huge crowds of protesting Buddhist monks in 2007, the refusal to allow international aid agencies into the country after Cyclone Nargis killed at least 140,000 people in 2008, and holding a clearly illegitimate constitutional referendum in which 92% of Burmese supposedly supported the new constitution drafted by the ruling military junta.

US policy towards Burma under George W. Bush was to shun the military government and to stick to the strict international sanctions regime imposed on the junta. This did nothing to noticeably change Burma’s internal political situation. So now the Obama administration is trying a new tack of unconditional diplomatic engagement while continuing sanctions until the junta makes some significant concessions. The US and many Burmese would like to see three things – the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, constitutional reforms, and assurances that 2010’s election will be free and fair. While committed to dialogue with General Than Shwe’s government, the US does not appear optimistic that change will happen quickly in Burma.

While this strategy alone may not bring quick or significant change to Burma, other factors are also shaking up the country’s political status quo. Aung San Suu Kyi – the incredibly popular and politically shrewd leader of the opposition National League for Democracy who has been under house arrest for most of the past 20 years after winning the 1990 elections, only to have the results ignored — has recently met with members of the junta, agreeing to help negotiate an end to sanctions on Burma by Western nations. While Suu Kyi likely believes that the sanctions have been ineffective and detrimental to the Burmese people (the standard argument for ending them), she is also making a political move.  This is based on the assumption that her favor to the junta will not go unrewarded, perhaps reminding the junta of the substantial power she still wields. Should the junta decide to release Suu Kyi, next year’s elections have a chance of being legitimate, with Suu Kyi’s NLD possibly coming to power.

In recent days, there have been hints that Suu Kyi may indeed be released by the government. This could be thanks to Suu Kyi’s recent cordial relations with the government, because of the change in US Burma policy or due to mounting international pressure. The US is leaning on other nations to put pressure on the Burmese government, and China, India, and Russia recently have joined the US and Europe in calling for Suu Kyi’s release. The calls of the three emerging powers are particularly significant given their relatively close ties and positions of influence with Burma. These new calls for Suu Kyi’s release accompany strained relations between Burma and its closest ally, China, because of border disputes and Chinese anxiety over the possibility of improved US-Burma ties.

Within Burma, politically active Buddhist monks continue to challenge the junta, pressing it to apologize for killings during 2007’s massive protests and threatening further protests if their demands go unmet. Monks inside and outside Burma have also demanded a timeline and clear benchmarks for US engagement with Than Shwe’s government.

The most likely change in the foreseeable future is the release of some political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, which could open a Pandora’s box for the junta. The more parties involved in 2010’s elections, the greater likelihood that they may, from the junta’s perspective, get out of control. Should the elections actually be held freely and fairly, countless other complicated political and constitutional issues will be raised. After this, a redrafting of the constitution could take place, which would likely deny the junta the constitutional protections that they now enjoy against prosecution for their actions while in power.

Of course, there are a host of other possible futures for Burma – the most likely being that not much will change. The junta may allow cosmetic political changes while retaining power and continuing to suppress its domestic critics, defying the international community. However, there seem to be enough wild cards in the deck now that a political shakeup in the next year is more likely than it has been for some time. Whatever happens, one hopes that life will improve for the Burmese people.

Why Another Karzai Government May be Bad for Afghanistan

If you read the news (in the US anyway) it is common knowledge that what is most important in the current Afghan elections is not necessarily who wins, but that the elections be seen as legitimate and transparent by the Afghan public as well as the international community. Now, almost three weeks after election day, it is highly questionable whether the election process this time around will be, in the end, seen as legitimate by Afghans or the international community. There have been widespread allegations of voter fraud, including among supporters of sitting President Hamid Karzai. The sheer volume of complaints has pushed back the announcement of the election’s official results by at least two weeks.

With 90% of the vote counted, Karzai appears to have won 54% of the vote, with runner-up Dr. Abdullah Abdullah with 28%, and the remainder of the vote being split among 36 other presidential candidates. However, these results are not official, hundreds of thousands of votes have been thrown out, and there have been persistent allegations of massive voter fraud. It appears that there is substance to many of the allegations, raising the possibility that enough votes could be disqualified to drop Karzai’s tally to under the 50% that he needs to avoid a runoff with Abdullah. Investigations into voter fraud could last months, delaying any eventual runoff and threatening to plunge Afghanistan into more violence and perhaps a constitutional crisis as competing groups and candidates jockey for a position in whatever government eventually comes to power (or alternatively, strive to discredit and destabilize the government elect).

The reason for the strong opposition against Karzai has been his government’s extreme corruption and his political amorality in being willing to team up with unsavory former warlords like Abdul Rashid Dostum, accused of human right atrocities against Taliban captives under his control. The Afghan people also have seen Karzai largely as the candidate of the US and the international community which has generated distrust concerning the outcome of the vote, believing that his victory has been preordained without concern for Afghan opinion. If Karzai wins a majority in a flawed election process, his adminstration is sure to be dogged by accusations that it came to power illegitimately. Should he fail to win over 50%, his position would be confirmed as relatively weak while he would be subject to repeated opposition attacks (during and between election campaign) highlighting his corruption and poor administration. If Karzai were to win the runoff election, he would be returning to office with a poor record, a weak administration, and no mandate from Afghans. If on the other hand, Abdullah were to win the run off, there may be a public sense of hope for a new direction in Afghan politics, and a belief in the legitimacy of the electoral system. Nor would Abdullah have the amount of negative baggage that is holding Karzai back. While Abdullah’s backers are also likely to have engaged in vote fraud, the most serious allegations appear to be against the Karzai campaign. An Abdullah win would more likely be perceived as representative of a fair and legitimate electoral process.

The biggest difference between Karzai and Abdullah is that Karzai supports a government with power concentrated in the office of president, while Abdullah sees a parliamentary system as a more appropriate system for representing the diversity of Afghan beliefs and communities. An Abdullah win would mean a fundamental restructuring of the Afghan government with unpredictable results. In governing, Abdullah would probably need to rely on supporters as shady as Karzai’s, and his government would face the same difficult challenges to improving life in Afghanistan that Karzai’s would.

But it may just be time for a change. Karzai may have been the man for the job when the Taliban fell. He had an admirable history of brave opposition to the Taliban and al Qaeda. He challenged Presidents Bush and Musharraf on many aspects of his country’s rebuilding and advocated strongly for the Afghan people. He may have been the best chance to hold Afghanistan together after 2001, but now, his rule has become a liability for the Afghan state. A new leader is needed to bring legitimacy to the election process and to restore faith in the Afghan government itself. Bringing progress in Afghanistan will be a difficult task for anyone, but should Karzai win, it will be harder than need be.

This article is the third in a series about major elections taking place in Asia this year.  Part one and two covered the recent elections in India.

History Matters: Understanding Current Iranian Relations

In light of the recent unrest in Iran and heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, it is important to understand the historical path that has led us to this point.

In this light, I recently had the honor of reading Tim Werner’s book, Legacy of Ashes, the history of the CIA, an immaculately researched work based on the years the writer has written on Intelligence for the New York Times. Even I who suspect incompetence, exaggeration, and pure lying at every level am stunned. According to Werner, almost every action taken by the CIA since World War II has been illegal, dishonest, deceptive, and not successful in the long run. In the worst incidents, one of which I will attempt to outline, the results have been catastrophic for vast numbers of people. Millions have paid with their lives, torture and brutality have been let loose on the country, and certainly the results have been contrary to the best interests of the United States and the World in general. In this piece, I will deal with the situation in Iran and how it has been almost entirely created by the CIA, with some assistance from British Intelligence. It is entirely because of the CIA’s past meddling in Iran that Barack Obama must be very careful in his criticisms of recent events.

Imperial Past

It is incumbent on all observers of the Middle East to be aware of Persia’s ancient history. [ Iran was at that time known as Persia; I will use both names interchangeably.] Unlike most of the surrounding Arab states, which were all established by the Treaty of Versailles in 1918 at the end of World War I after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Persian History stretches back Millennium, and Persians are intensely proud of that history. Shortly before World War II, Britain purchased a controlling share of the Anglo- Persian oil company. At the time, these oil reserves were the largest known to the world.  For most of the next two decades Iran was run by a Cossack, Reza Khan, who seized power, proclaimed himself Shah of Persia, and held onto it through electoral fraud. During his reign, the British took the vast majority of the oil revenue. British oil executives enjoyed private clubs, while Iranian oil workers lived in deplorable conditions without electricity or running water. Iran asked for a 50/50 split of revenues with Britain, which was rejected outright.

In April 1951, the “Majlis,” a major group in the Iranian Parliament, voted to nationalize Iran’s oil production. Mohammed Mosaddeq who was voted as Iran’s prime minister a few days after the Majlis vote to nationalize the oilfields supported the issue and took it to the United Nations. The British immediately undertook an effort to try to depose Mosaddeq, and even drew up plans to invade and seize the oilfields.

The United States, while opposing any invasion, agreed to attempt a coup to depose the legitimate government that had been lawfully elected in a fully functioning democratic process. The CIA plot was code named, “Operation Ajax.” The plan was approved by President Eisenhower and the British Prime Minister. The CIA had previously stashed away sufficient funds and guns to support 10,000 tribal warriors for 6 months for another venture which had been shelved, and that money was now available for this effort.

The Coup

The CIA bribed Iranian Senators, Military Officers, and Publishers. They paid for and recruited Goon Squads to beat those opposed to the Coup. The coup was accomplished by a 3-pronged attack. First, the press denounced Mosaddeq as anti-Islamic, a Communist, and a Jew. Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets were also printed up and distributed, particularly around the capital of Tehran. The Shah was recruited and his forces were used to attack the heavily defended home of Mosaddeq. The coup was accomplished on August 19, 1953. It started with a demonstration in a gym by weightlifters and circus strongmen recruited by the CIA for the day. They shouted anti-Mosaddeq statements, and chanted, “Long live the Shah” while marching through the streets. The crowd joined them along with two major religious leaders, one being Ayatollah Khomeini, the future leader of Iran, after being exiled by the Shah. By the afternoon the CIA agents had seized control of Radio Iran. At least 100 people died that day, and at least 200 more perished when Mosaddeq’s house was invaded. The Prime Minister escaped, but later surrendered. He was imprisoned and later held under house arrest until his death.

The Shah was given 1 million dollars in cash and pronounced prime minister. He became the centerpiece of American Policy in the Middle East for years to come. The Shah maintained his position through a new intelligence service, the Savak, who were CIA trained. The Savak were to become reviled throughout Iran. Their powers allowed them to censor the press, arrest, and detain without any lawful process. Torture, starvation, and sleep deprivation were only some of the techniques for which they were to become reviled.

The Revolution

Revulsion against the Shah built up in Iran and among those exiled abroad. Finally by January 1979, demonstrations against the Shah could not be resisted, the Shah was toppled from his throne, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had been exiled in France, was bought back to lead a new Islamic Republic. Unfortunately, as in most revolutions, the initial leaders often tend toward fanaticism and move to seizing all power in their own hands. It usually takes many years until the moderates ultimately gain enough support to overthrow them. The French Revolution and the Soviet Revolution are two good examples. The Ayatollah was true to historical form, crushing all opposition groups and centralizing power for himself and a few other radical clerics.

By November 1979, much of the population were enraged by the policies of the USA as described by the controlled press. Students who had been demonstrating outside the US embassy seized the embassy and all its employees. In total 52 diplomats were seized and imprisoned inside the embassy for a total of 444 days. Initially there had been calls by the students to execute the hostages, but eventually views softened, and diplomatic endeavors ultimately led to their release.

The War with Iraq

Less than a year after the hostages were released, Iraq invaded Iran. Many believe that the US was implicit in that invasion. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein felt emboldened to invade by US animosity toward Iran. The US did provide helicopters to Iraq and satellite intelligence to pinpoint bombing targets. The war was viscously fought by both sides, with estimates of casualties going as high as 2 million. To give some idea of the intensity I will cite 2 examples. First, when low on armaments, the Iranians sent children armed only with wooden rifles to overwhelm Iraqi lines. The children had been convinced that they were impermeable to bullets. These children were in turn mowed down by reluctant Iraqi forces. Similarly horrific was the use of human bodies in the marshes to the South. The Iraqis used Iranian bodies to fill ditches for their tanks to pass over. Saddam Hussein first tried his chemical weapons on Iranian troops in this war.

Finally in 1988 after 8 years of the terrible conflict, a ceasefire was effected, the border remained unchanged, 2 million were dead, and there was massive damage to the infrastructure of both countries. Just prior to the ceasefire, there was another incident by the US that made the Iranian view of the US even worse. A US warship, the USS Vincennes, shot down an Iranian civilian airliner resulting in 290 deaths. While the official investigation concluded that it was done in error, that was largely disbelieved by the Iranian public.

If we view the present turmoil in Iran through the eyes of those who have lived through these events, it is terribly obvious why Barack Obama must be very careful with his words about the present turmoil. If not for interventions by the CIA and British Intelligence, Iran might be a very different country today.

Recent Days

With this proper context, let’s now take a brief look at more recent events. Iran’s Supreme ruler is currently Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Ayatollah Khomeini after his death. The Supreme ruler controls the Armed Forces, Radio and TV, Security, the Chief Judge, and the Guardian Council. There is an elected council and president, who mainly deal with day-to-day governing matters and economics. Anyone who wishes to run for those positions must first be approved by a body loyal to the Supreme Leader. The rejection rate however is close to 80%. From 1997-2005, there was a moderately progressive President Sayed Mohammed Khatemi. However, he failed to deliver on any serious reformist policies.

It should be noted that directly after 9/11, there was a street demonstration of over 1 million in support of the US. All of this was support was lost by continuing US sanctions on Iran, the disastrous War in Iraq, and the Bush White House’s grouping of Iran in the “Axis of Evil.” In 2005, Sayed Mohammed Khatemi lost the presidential election to the ill informed, firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This swing to the right was probably largely a result of the three factors mentioned above.

Of course, during the recent election, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected, likely by fraud. It is my opinion that the Supreme Leader did not wish to have a reformist President to deal with now that there was no longer George Bush in the White House, but rather the new more popular US President, Barack Obama. A moderate President was OK when the White House could be counted on to alienate the average Iranian, but could not be risked with Barack Hussein Obama in the White House.

What Does This All Mean?

How it will all play out is anyone’s guess. Effective change is unlikely as the Military and Security services are protected from the poverty and poor economy suffered by the average Iranian. It is encouraging that the Obama administration has chosen a policy of engagement, rather than strict neoconservative rigidity. However, engagement alone will not be the magic bullet needed to fully reverse a century of bad blood, imperialism, and CIA sponsored coups. When dealing with Iran in this light, incremental progress on any front will be a huge step forward.

San Francisco Gets an Antiwar Congresswoman

The recent 226-202 House of Representatives approval of the supplemental budget was a particular disappointment to antiwar activists.  At one point they’d thought it might be possible to block the bill and its $79.9 billion Department of Defense appropriation earmarked largely for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, – at least temporarily.   Nonetheless, San Francisco antiwar voters might take some consolation in one thing anyhow – it appears that the city now has an antiwar Congresswoman.  And no, it’s not House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but Jackie Speier, elected just last year to represent the less liberal western part of the city and several towns on the Peninsula to the south.

Not only was Speier one of but sixty votes (fifty-one of them Democrat) against the budget in its first trip through the House, but she also made a second, tougher vote against it.  When House Republicans took umbrage at the addition of a $5 billion International Monetary Fund loan guarantee, they announced they would switch sides and vote against the bill upon its return from the Senate, raising the possibility of its defeat should the antiwar Democrat votes hold firm.

Predictably, they did not.  This time even Pelosi herself – who did not vote the first time as is common practice for a Speaker – was recorded in favor, presumably to demonstrate how much the House leadership really wanted the votes.  And yet, despite a San Francisco Chronicle report that “the White House has threatened to pull support from Democratic freshmen who vote no,” Speier did just that, one of only six freshmen – among thirty-two total Democrats – to do so.  Arguably, Speier was doing nothing but what San Francisco voters had directed her to do last November when 59 percent of them supported Proposition U which stated that the city’s Congressional representatives “should vote against any further funding for the deployment of United States Armed Forces in Iraq.”

But realistically speaking, although the ballot question’s only exception concerned “funds specifically earmarked to provide for their [American troops in Iraq] safe and orderly withdrawal” and did not exempt funding requests from Democratic Presidents, the fact that George Bush had negotiated a troop withdrawal agreement before leaving office seems to have made most House Democrats feel they have a pass to fund that war right through 2011. And certainly Pelosi has never given any indication of paying the proposition any heed despite the fact that 61 percent of her district backed it.

On the contrary, she’s made it clear that she views it as a Democratic Speaker’s duty to ensure the funding of what a Democratic President has now taken on as his wars.  Her spokesman, Brendan Daly, told the Chronicle that Pelosi was telling members “we need to do this, this is President Obama’s plan for both Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s got a plan to end the war in Iraq.  He’s got a plan to refocus our efforts in Afghanistan, and we need to support the president in that, and this is the right way to go.”

And yet when Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) proposed adding language calling for the Secretary of Defense to “submit to Congress a report outlining the United States exit strategy for United States military forces in Afghanistan” by December 31, 2009, it was no dice.  Pelosi’s view is apparently that the President shall give us his plan in his own good time. (McGovern has since filed his amendment as a free-standing bill with 84 co-sponsors.)

Her San Francisco colleague Speier, on the other hand, said she had “serious problems with the current wars” and didn’t believe that “escalating the conflicts make America or the world safer.”  Speier’s viewpoint is particularly welcome in that it differs so markedly from that of her predecessor, the late Tom Lantos, who voted for the first House resolution for the Iraq War (which Pelosi did not.)

Moreover, in her ascent to her new position, Speier had betrayed no particular maverick tendencies.  She gained it not through any kind of insurgent antiwar campaign but more of a vetting process of the area’s political establishment.  A former state legislator forced to leave office due to term limits, she had failed in a prior bid for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor. But when she announced her interest in the Lantos seat, it soon became clear that she would have the endorsements deemed to matter – and presumably the attendant campaign financing.  At this point, other potential candidates backed off and the insider consensus choice was presented to the voters for their ratification.  Speier then won 90 percent of the Democratic vote in a special primary after a campaign that seemed to involve less of telling people what she stood for than reminding them that they already knew her – and that her ultimate victory was inevitable.

So, at a point when the country’s antiwar movements are largely stalled, Bay Area antiwar voters can at least cheer the pleasant surprise of having a new Congresswoman willing to buck both the White House and the House leadership.

Let’s Talk About Sonia Sotomayor Like Grown-Ups

During his confirmation hearing in 2005, John Roberts likened the job of a Supreme Court justice to that of a baseball umpire:

Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, if there’s anything the media love when reporting on the law, it’s simplicity, either because they don’t understand or don’t have the column-inches for thorough understanding. The umpire analogy was well-received by the mainstream media: “We’re Americans, we understand baseball, but we don’t understand the federal judiciary. Judges make rulings; umpires make rulings. Therefore, umpires are like baseball judges, right?”

Not so much. The baseball analogy fails because appellate court judges, and Supreme Court justices in particular, can re-write the rules of the game, provided they believe those rules to be wrong in the first place. Umpires are not at liberty to “interpret” anything; theirs are facile rulings. They may rule that a particular pitch was a strike, but they may never re-define what constitutes a “strike.” If we really must reason by analogy (which we shouldn’t), then umpires are most like trial court judges. They deal with the object of the law, whereas appellate court judges deal with the law itself. This is why appeals of a trial court ruling do not bring with them any new evidence or new substantive hearings; as far as the appellate court is concerned, the issue of what happened has been settled, but the issue of how the law applies to what happened has not. By the way, this is basic stuff that everyone should know. It’s important to know, since it defines how our judicial system works.

Courts hear a few different kinds of cases. They hear criminal cases, in which someone has violated a law and the plaintiff to the suit is the executive branch of the government, which is charged with enforcing the law. They hear civil cases, in which two parties have a dispute and request the mediation of a neutral decision-maker. Sometimes, in a civil case, the law itself is the subject under discussion, as in, “I think this law violates the Constitution,” or, “I think that thing you did is unconstitutional.” The Constitution is sacrosanct; no law may conflict with it, and when there is a conflict, the Constitution must always win. For this reason, we have tried to imbue the Constitution with what we believe to be the best principles of good governance. When those principles are in the Constitution, then we may say that we are not adjudicating based on just a document, but we are adjudicating against our values, since the ideal Constitution would be synonymous with our values.

The vast majority of judges are really smart people, and Supreme Court justices are the best of the best. I mean that even for the justices I don’t care for, like Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas. (This is probably why the nation was outraged when President Bush selected Harriet Miers, a true intellectual lightweight, to occupy the nation’s highest bench. It was painfully, painfully obvious that she was nowhere close to qualified to occupy the position. Even conservative commentator George Will said that she was not among the 10,000 most qualified people in the country.) Judges are learned people who make thought-out, reasoned arguments. What it boils down to is whose arguments are most convincing. Ideally, the arguments that best address the law should be most convincing. But law isn’t the only thing that goes into legal opinions, as we shall discover.

For one thing, the law can be vague. When is a government activity a “public benefit” and when is it “general welfare”? The Supreme Court disagreed over these definitions in Kelo v. New London. The court decided (wrongly, in my opinion) that the unsecured promise of future economic revitalization was “public benefit” enough to allow the city of New London, Connecticut to turn over private property for development to Pfizer. The Supreme Court has spent many years deciding what is “necessary and proper” and when an action interferes with “interstate commerce.”

In his book The Invisible Constitution, law professor Laurence Tribe argues that the Constitution is just as much composed of unwritten rules as written ones (kind of like how the universe is composed of both matter we can see and “dark matter.” Hey, analogies are fun!). Roe v. Wade was decided based on legal principles that weren’t necessarily written down, but that must be inferred to exist based on the tone of the rest of the Constitution. Add up amendments 1, 4, 10, and 14, and you get a right to privacy that, while not explicit, is clearly lurking beneath the surface. Appellate courts tend to examine intent more than trial courts, and rightly so, since their rulings will have effects that reach much further than the individual case. (More on that later.)

Were you aware? The Constitution contains no explicit language permitting federal appellate courts to decide the constitutionality of statutes, but Chief Justice John Marshall, in Marbury v. Madison, suggested that judicial review was a necessity for proper enforcement of those things that were written down in the Constitution. No one would argue that, because there is no explicit permission granted to the judiciary to engage in judicial review, the courts should not engage in the practice. If someone did argue that, then the next question would be, “So who will tell us what is constitutional or not?” Chief Justice Marshall had the answer already prepared: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each.” This rule has served us well for over 206 years.

Where is this going? Sonia Sotomayor has been criticized for suggesting that judges “make law.” Here is a transcript of the relevant portion of her comments, in context this time:

All of the legal defense funds out there, um, they’re looking for people with court of appeals experience, because it is– court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know this is on tape and I should never say that, because we don’t “make law,” I know. I know. I’m not promoting it and I’m not advocating it, I’m– you know. Having said that, the court of appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating. It’s interpretation, it’s application, and Judge Ocero’s right. I often explain to people, when you’re on the district court, you’re looking to do justice in the individual case, so you are looking much more to the facts of the case than you are to the application of the law, because the application of the law is not precedential. So the facts control. On the court of appeals, you’re looking to how the law is developing so that it will be applied to a broad class of cases.

Appellate courts exist because the other branches of government (including the judiciary) make mistakes. No one would suggest (hopefully) that the legislation that comes out of Congress is perfect. Judges are there to correct errors; this is called “relief.” Sometimes, the relief comes in the form of an outright overruling of legislation that Congress has passed. Other times, the court doesn’t, as in the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear. While the Supreme Court certainly did not endorse pay discrimination, the majority ruled that the Supreme Court did not have the power to grant Ledbetter the relief she sought due to the language of the legislation. Appropriate relief, they said, would be for Congress to amend the law, which it did earlier this year. This is an example of the government working correctly, as much as some people believe that the court should have immediately overturned the legislation.

Judges do not make law, but they do make policy, which Sotomayor also said. Sometimes they have to, because Congress has made incorrect policy, for whatever reason. But anyone who suggests that judges do not sometimes engage in policymaking is being either ignorant or disingenuous. Each branch of government makes policy using the tools at its disposal. Note the use of the word “policy” and not “legislation”; “policy” is a much broader term that encompasses the many kinds of enforceable legal principles that exist in government. Every branch makes “policy,” whether through executive orders, statutes, judicial opinions, public referenda, and constitutional amendments. Not all policy is of the strictly legislative variety.

Sotomayor has also been criticized for suggesting that Latinas make better judicial decisions than white men. The New York Times recently published a transcript of the 2001 Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture at Berkeley Law School, during which the comments were made. Her lecture was, among other things, about the lack of diversity in the federal court system, and how that impacts judicial opinions. “Diversity” is important, she said, because “in any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences and of thought.” But why is that diversity of opinion important? It goes back to the wiggle room that all judges have when interpreting the law and potentially making policy. That wiggle room allows for a range of options, all of which are perfectly legal and perfectly defensible. Judges’ backgrounds and experiences influence where they fall within that range. They can, for example, lean toward the side of punishment, or they can lean toward the side of rehabilitation. Both fall within the range of legal possibilities, but judges with different experiences will necessarily have different opinions on which solution is most appropriate. (Or, to bring this outside the realm of race, let’s talk about technical savviness as another kind of diversity of opinion: a judge who understands technology might rule that a minor who “sexts” another minor should not be prosecuted as a sex offender.)

Even Justice Clarence Thomas, who is among the most conservative of the Supreme Court justices, may have brought his experience as a black person to bear on the issue of whether or not cross-burning was protected by the First Amendment. In 2002, Justice Thomas took a break from being famously quiet during oral arguments to declare, “This was a reign of terror, and the [burning] cross was a symbol of that reign of terror. [...] It is unlike any symbol in our society. [...] There was no other purpose to the [burning] cross. There was no communication of a particular message. It was intended to cause fear and to terrorize a population.” Was this an example of someone’s experience informing his interpretation of the law? Potentially. (By the way, in the case, Virginia v. Black, the Supreme Court ruled that a Virginia statute prohibiting cross-burning was unconstitutional. Justice Thomas dissented, writing, “A conclusion that the statute prohibiting cross burning with intent to intimidate sweeps beyond a prohibition on certain conduct into the zone of expression overlooks not only the words of the statute but also reality.”)

Here’s the money quote that some people are upset about:

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? After that, she says:

I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. [...] However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

Unfortunately for the people who would like to attack her comments, Sotomayor was not talking about all cases, but rather sex and racial discrimination cases specifically, suggesting that a woman who has had to experience sex discrimination herself is more capable of understanding the reality of sex discrimination than a man who has never experienced it, or studied it only in the abstract. I refer to the Justice Thomas paragraph above.

So no, Sonia Sotomayor is not a racist. And no, she will not legislate from the bench. These two arguments are ridiculous, and it’s shameful that people (like me!) should have to spend so much time refuting them. But as her confirmation hearing looms, the arguments will appear again. It’s important to keep in mind the qualities that make a good Supreme Court justice. Should a justice follow the legal model of applying the law based on pure legal reasoning? Should a justice follow the attitudinal model of using his attitude and values to decide a case? Lawrence Wrightsman, in The Psychology of the Supreme Court, suggests that both must be melded into a human model of what it means to be a justice, since “[t]he legal model bleaches the decision-making process of its colorful human ingredients; it can be portrayed as an ultralogical, if not mechanical, analysis of applications of relevant statutes and decisions.” The attitudinal model, “taken to its extreme, fails to recognize the constraints upon the judge as a professional person.” Melding the two approaches creates a justice who applies the law using reason and logic, but also understands that her opinions will have real consequences for real people.

Judge Sotomayor is definitely a human judge. But then again, all judges are human. While we all acknowledge that judges must use reason to decide their cases, we are loathe admit that, as humans, they have biases that also influence those decisions. Even Justice Scalia, champion of “originalism,” has biases. At least Judge Sotomayor is up front about those biases. And in being up front about those biases, she can be held accountable to them. In her 2001 speech, she said, “I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.”

Her opinions are sound (if a little conservative, actually), her experience unquestionable. Her judicial philosophy is, actually, no different from that of other justices, judges, lawyers, and professors around the country and the world. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t succeed Justice Souter and do an excellent job.

Reactions to China’s Tiananmen Blackout: Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live Without Them

This June fourth marked the twentieth anniversary of pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. These protests were violently put down by China’s government, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of (usually nonviolent) protesters and iconic photos and videos showcasing the inhumanity and intolerance of Chinese communism in the midst of the Cold War. The so-called Free World howled with outrage about China’s brutal violation of its citizens’ human rights.

While the Cold War has ended and China has become a capitalist powerhouse, China’s government has retained its iron grip. Strikingly, any acknowledgment of this week’s historic anniversary was blotted out in China (with, for legal reasons, the exception of Hong Kong where over 100,000 people gathered to mark the occasion). Any news of the event – via television, internet, radio, press, even Twitter! – was blacked out and any demonstrations commemorating the event and its victims were forbidden. And this has not been the beginning of Tiananmen Square’s erasure from public memory. Many of China’s under-20 generation know nothing about what happened there in 1989, and students do not learn anything about the incident in their classes.

Many in China and the outside world remember, however. And although world leaders and citizens spoke out this week to condemn the 1989 crackdown as well as China’s silencing recognition of the event, these words were uttered in a different context, in a different world. China and the world are so different from 1989 that these words, coming from the mouths leaders who have become increasingly friendly with China, ring somewhat hollow. For example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that China “should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal.” To which Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang responded, “We urge the U.S. to put aside its political prejudice and correct its wrongdoing and refrain from disrupting or undermining bilateral relations.” It is hard to see Clinton’s statement as anything besides political rhetoric. This is the same Secretary of State who visited China just this spring and refused to discuss “marginal issues” like human rights in favor of issues like the economic crisis and environmental concerns.

I’m sure that Clinton, Obama, and other outspoken world leaders and heads of state are uncomfortable with China’s lackluster human rights record. Who isn’t? But now China doesn’t fit quite so easily into the box that it used to. It was easy to condemn its human rights shortcomings and to demonize China as a godless commie dictatorship when it didn’t supply most of the cheap consumer products that we are so addicted to in the US. Or when it didn’t finance much of our ballooning national debt. It is still easy to condemn Burma’s similar 1988 and 2007 pro-democracy crackdowns because Burma still remains politically and economically insignificant on the global stage. China now occupies center stage.

These days, words condemning China are generally just that – words. Discomfort with China’s disregard for democratic values and basic human rights will not stop our businesses – or US consumers – from buying cheap goods from China. It will not stop businesses from moving factories there. Nor will it stop the US government from stepping up diplomatic and economic engagement with China, an important rising global superpower. Barring a shockingly egregious misstep on the part of China’s political leadership, relatively small issues like the Tiananmen Square blackout and even bigger concerns such as Chinese policies regarding Tibet, the rest of the world will be eager to be a part of China’s stunning rise.

Really, China is a new manifestation of an old dilemma for US foreign policy. We (and here I use “we” to stand in for the US government) claim to stand for democracy, freedom, liberty, human rights, the right to free speech, freedom of religion, etc., etc. And sometimes we do, but often we don’t. We support a Saudi monarchy/dictatorship because they ensure our access to oil. We supported the mujahaddin in Soviet-era Afghanistan because it was anti-Soviet. Then we supported a military dictatorship in Pakistan because it was anti-mujahaddin (kind of). We supported South Africa’s apartheid government for years. We armed, trained, and funded death squads and dictatorships throughout Central and South America during the 1980s and beyond (and before too). This list goes on.

China is just the latest challenge to applying lofty American ideals to the nitty-gritty of national foreign policy and bilateral relations. Perhaps one day, China’s government will give in (willingly or unwillingly) to global and domestic concerns about human rights and political freedom in China. It doesn’t look likely to happen soon however. And neither the US nor other countries have the political will to really stand up to China on such issues. In fact, conflicts with China over such issues could very well undermine the material benefits we enjoy thanks to our growing relationship with China. And, in all honesty, the compromises that the US and China are compelled to make to maintain a working, if imperfect, relationship are certainly better than another Cold War. Diplomacy and relationship building are always more complex, muddled, and morally ambiguous than outright hostility.

Ghana: Leading A New Era of African Democracy

Take a look at the reported news around Africa: In President Obama’s ancestral country of Kenya, violence ripped through the country after the ruling party proclaimed a dubious electoral victor.  President Zuma of South Africa, having survived corruption and rape allegations to recently assume the presidency, had to grapple with the mystery of which of his several wives would join the rarefied ranks of first ladies of the world.  In oil-rich Nigeria there is elusive peace as the insurgency grows fiercer each day, not to mention the recent flawed elections that brought President Umaru Yar’ Adua to power. Millions in Zimbabwe suffer at the hands President Mugabe under a sham power sharing agreement with his opponent in the last election after the ruling party refused to relinquish power.  Army tanks recently stormed the presidential palace in Madagascar to chase out an elected president.  The president of Guinea Bissau was assassinated hours after an army general was blown into pieces by a bomb. Islamic insurgents are currently battling impotent governments within Somalia. And all of this is does not mention the genocide in Darfur, of which we are all too familiar.

Based on such stories, it is hard for anyone outside Africa to imagine the existence of anything resembling civil society and good governance on the continent.  It is very easy to fall into the ranks of those who see Africa as a “disaster” because of a myopic and ignorant worldview that does not see Africa as having anything good to offer the world.  Yet amidst the strife, unrest, corruption, and starvation that never escape the lenses of the CNNs of the world, there are many encouraging success stories.  In this piece, I would like to share one of these stories with the readers of Demockracy. I hope to share many similar such stories in a new collaboration between Demockracy and CediPost, a Web site focused on the policy and politics of Ghana and the misunderstood continent Africa. Yes, democracy (not demockracy) is still making progress in Africa, and there have been recent successful elections in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Zambia, and the subject of this piece – Ghana.

In fact, democracy is actually flourishing in the West African country of Ghana. Ghana’s burgeoning democracy is a positive drumbeat on a volatile continent where the barrel of the gun still rules in many countries. It is important to trumpet this success story with the hope that other African countries will emulate Ghana’s shining example. In addition, it is important to show as an example to the western world that civil societies and good governance do exist in sub-Saharan Africa.

Fifty-two years ago, Ghana, led by the charismatic and over-ambitious Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, became the first country in the sub-Saharan to emerge from the subjugation of colonial rule. Ghana’s independence spurred on the African liberation movement, and by the mid-1960s, 30 African countries had become independent. Ghana became the beacon of HOPE for the rest of Africa in the freedom movement.

It is difficult to believe now, but at independence, Ghana was richer and better developed than countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. However, corruption and mismanagement, two of Africa’s most ravaging diseases, soon drained Ghana’s national coffers and debt started to pile up. To make matters worse,  in Ghana, like many African countries, civilian rule was toppled repeatedly by a series of military takeovers.

The Birth of Democracy

This cycle stopped when former President Jerry John Rawlings shed his military uniform through some international arm twisting and reluctantly adopted democratic rule in 1992.  Since then, Ghana has been on a seemingly unstoppable march to entrench its democracy.

Traditionally,  many African countries have been gripped by violence following disputed polls. While the capacity for violence exists in Ghana as it does in any society, Ghana has deviated from the cycle of bad news that has been making the headlines throughout Africa. In 2000 when the world’s oldest democracy was in court squabbling over the winner of the presidential election, the famous Bush v. Gore case, Ghana held its second successful election after adopting democratic rule. Jerry Rawlings, a former coup leader who had metamorphosed into a democratically elected president, stood down quietly after eight years in power and peacefully handed over the reigns to a successor from the main opposition party. A rare occurrence in African politics! To this day, it is unthinkable for an incumbent party to lose an election to an opposition party in many African countries, not to mention peacefully relinquishing power. If you don’t believe me, ask Mr. Odinga of Kenya and the puppet Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Mr. Tsvangirai.

After the peaceful transition of 2000, many in Ghana were determined to chart a new era in African democracy. Eight years later, in 2008, when the whole world’s attention was focused on Ghana as it went to the polls against a backdrop of sham elections in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria, Ghana trounced the cycle of bad news to conduct successful elections and a peaceful transfer of power, again, from a losing incumbent to an opposition successor. The stakes were even higher in this past election as the winner stood to lead Ghana in an oil-boom era.

Notwithstanding the contentious nature leading to isolated skirmishes and the usual mudslinging between the leading political parties, Ghanaians collectively displayed the kind of political maturity and tolerance that is unheard of in many African countries.  Overall, since embracing democratic rule in the early 1990s, Ghana has  now held four successive peaceful elections, making it the only country in sub-Sahara to have had two peaceful and smooth back-to-back transfers of power from democratically elected incumbents to democratically elected successors. That is a commendable achievement by all measures in a volatile region.

A Beacon of Hope

Ghana has set an example for African democracy and has the potential to become the poster nation of true leadership on a continent so much in need of effective leadership and direction. Ghana is rapidly reclaiming its historical status as the shining star illuminating Africa. If the “wind of change” in the 1950s was for political freedom and self-determination, this time the “wind of change” is for true democracy in Africa. And once again, Ghana has the capacity and potential to lead the way as the POSTER NATION for true leadership in Africa. From the dawn of self-determination to the rise of democracy, Ghana has led the way in Africa and will continue to be a repository of hope to end the cycle of underachievement on the continent.

Ghana’s march to usher the continent into a new era of African democracy and responsible leadership is refreshing and assuring and should be highlighted by all who have the interest of Africa at heart. Therefore, it is befitting that the first Black President of the United States of America, in keeping faith with America’s foreign policy to support democratic and civil societies around the world, has chosen Ghana for his maiden trip to Africa since becoming president. A statement released by the White House in announcing the July 10 trip to Ghana stated:

[T]he president and Mrs. Obama look forward to strengthening the U.S. relationship with one of our most trusted partners in sub-Saharan Africa, and to highlighting the critical role that sound governance and civil society play in promoting lasting development.

In choosing Ghana as the first country to visit in sub-Saharan Africa, the Obama administration is recognizing and rewarding the country for the remarkable progress it has made toward achieving sustainable peace and stability, and most importantly, validating Ghana’s newly carved status as a beacon of hope for a new era of African democracy.

Despite the encouraging progress and all the enthusiasm of recent years, there is no doubt that the challenges Ghana faces are enormous. I will be addressing some of the issues in my conversations to follow.

George Aduhene is the Co-founder and Editor of CediPost.com , a news and blog site on Ghana.

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