Secret New Weapon: Serena Sends Taliban Running for Hills

Inserting myself into one of the remotest regions of Afghanistan—and embedding myself with no one in particular except a sheep farmer named Tirkluckless—I interview him. I do this mainly because he can talk, unlike his sheep. The intelligence he provides me, however, is stunning. As a bandit in A Fistful of Dollars once stated, “In these parts, a man’s life can depend upon a mere scrap of information.”

“You seem pretty calm, Tirk,” I say. “The Taliban are howling at the door, and not a NATO soldier within 50 miles, yet you calmly tiptoe around the sheep dip without a care in the world. What’s that all about?”

“Did ye not know, oh infidel? The American drones circle above like eagles—I can certainly hear them, as they interfere with the bah-bah-ing of my sheep and therefore I cannot sleep when I’m trying to count my sheep. Anyway, there are not only drones but the CIA has also secretly inserted Serena Williams into the foothills of the Forbidden Mountains.”

“What? Serena Williams? Come on.”

“Indeed, it is true, oh unbelieving one. She has been sighted on several occasions, cursing the wolves and frightening them to death. She even outruns them and eats them for breakfast.”

“If this is true, Kirk, it’s still incredible. She makes the Special Forces look like girl scouts.”

“It’s Tirk, not Kirk. My full name is Tirkluckless. How many times must I remind you of that, oh clueless Trekkie nerd? Be careful or I shall smite you. I come from a rough neighborhood. Last week, down near the capital, I was watching a full-scale battle between NATO forces and Taliban insurgents, and a ladies’ tennis match broke out.”

“Good heavens, that is a rough neighborhood. I take it Serena was there?”

“Yes, she was. She is a one-woman Special Forces, to be sure. Already she has crushed many a Taliban with her powerful thighs and decapitated others by hurling tennis rackets with superhuman agility and accuracy. Still others she curses to death with unimaginable slurs calculated to defeat their manhood. Yes, oh beardless one, the mountain villagers sing folk songs about her. They call her the Wild Woman With Huge Haunches and Thighs That May Crush a Man into Ragged Pieces. Oh—I’m getting excited; I had better to stop now.”

“Uhm—no, please, go on. I’m sure you can control yourself.”

“She is also veddy beautiful, you know, and she’s having breasts like mangos!”

“I seem to recall that line from A Passage to India.”

“What, those Shiva-worshipping heathen?”

“Now, now, I think the Serena-lust is getting the better of you.”

“Well, there are always my sheep with which to—“

“Ahem. You were saying?”

“You must understand this is a lonely place, sahib. Indeed, before you there was ne’er a white man to be seen in these hills since the days of W.C. Fields in the 1930s. He had lost his corkscrew, you may recall, and was forced to survive on food and water.”

“Such a contingency would be unfortunate, yes.”

“The word in the hills is that Osama bin Laden watches ladies’ tennis on satellite TV and he shivers with fright as we speak. I have seen a sneak preview of a new video he will release, denouncing women in sport—and women in general, of course. He promises to hack off the arms of any female who dares to bare her arms, let alone use them to hurl tennis rackets at him.”

“How do you feel about this?”

“Well, he’s not all hell and brimstone, actually. He has a heart. He says the point is negotiable and that if the USA will call off Serena, he will settle for a ladies’ tennis referee position at the US Open.”

“He really is scared.”

“He said the officiating call was in error; there was no foot fault and therefore as punishment the referee’s tongue must be removed and Serena’s fine must be canceled.”

“A man of mercy, I see.”

“Praised be to the heavens, Serena shall return home and I shall return to my sheep in peace. If we run out of wolves and Taliban, she might develop a taste for lamb.”

Constitution 7, Limitless Executive Power 0

Every time — every single time — that President Bush asserted some unlimited executive power in the name of “national security” or “terrorism,” a federal court has shot him down. Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

2004 marked the first big loss for the Bush administration in the judiciary branch. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld was the first major challenge to President Bush’s self-asserted national security powers. In that case, the Bush administration asserted that Hamdi, an alleged terrorist captured in Afghanistan, had no right to contest his detention. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed and said that Hamdi, an “enemy combatant,” did have the right to contest his detention before a neutral decisionmaker. In Boumediene v. Bush (2008), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay did have the right to habeas petitions, and the Military Commissions Act’s hearings were unconstitutional. In Rasul v. Bush (2004), the Court struck down legislation that ostensibly prevented the federal courts from ruling on whether or not Guantanamo detainees were wrongfully imprisoned. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor,of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, ruled in 2006 that the Bush administration could not use the state secrets privilege to dismiss evidence in a case involving warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of U.S. citizens. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that Congress did not intend to use the Detainee Treatment Act to strip the Supreme Court of its authority to hear pending habeas petitions from prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Also in 2006, Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, refused to dismiss a civil suit against AT&T for warrantless wiretapping. The Bush administration had again asserted the state secrets privilege.

And now we come back to present day. President Obama’s Justice Department has, much to my chagrin, continued — and in some cases, exceeded — the use of the state secrets privilege. It even wanted to have an entire case dismissed on the grounds that the evidence to be used was classified under the state secrets privilege. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals down on Hyde Street in San Francisco — right across the street from the public library — ruled today that Obama could not have the case dismissed due to “state secrets.”

Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, writing the unanimous opinion of the three-judge panel, didn’t buy the Justice Department’s argument that “the very subject matter” of the case was so confidential, and could be so potentially damaging to national security, that it couldn’t even be discussed in court. The “subject matter” was Jeppesen Dataplan’s involvement in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorism suspects in U.S. custody to CIA “black sites” around the world, where they would be presumably tortured. (Jeppesen Dataplan is an oddly-named subsidiary of Boeing, whose airplanes were used to transport suspects to other countries for torture.)

The Ninth Circuit was quite strong in its affirmation that the Obama administration was making things up (the judges rejected the “very subject matter” argument because “it is unsupported in the case law”; i.e., Justice Department lawyers made it up). It was also strong in its affirmation of the separation of powers principle. The job of the courts is to interpret the law. The job of the executive is to enforce the law. For Obama to assert that there exists a scenario in which the court cannot be allowed to interpret the law is a gross overreach of presidential power that violates the separation of powers principle.

Oh, and they took time out of their busy schedule to say that “arbitrary imprisonment and torture under any circumstance is a ‘gross and notorious … act of despotism.’” (Bonus points: that was part of Justice Scalia’s dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld).

What’s interesting about Obama’s argument here is that he wants to use the state secrets doctrine to prevent even the confirmation or denial of the fact that people were extraordinarily rendered. We’re not even talking secret evidence here; Obama says that it is detrimental to national security to say merely that something happened or not. Judge Hawkins will have none of this: “The state secrets privilege has never applied to prevent parties from litigating the truth or falsity of allegations, or facts, or information simply because the government regards the truth or falsity of the allegations to be secret,” he writes. Sure, the state secrets privilege can be used to suppress evidence, but not to suppress the fact that something happened. To go into the nitty-gritty of how extraordinary rendition works (which would be evidence) might be damaging to national security, but merely stating that it happens is not damaging to national security. (What it is damaging to is the country’s public image, and it opens up the government to litigation. Let’s be clear, here: this has nothing to do with actual national security and everything to do with damage control, something the Ninth Circuit hints at in the opinion.)

Finally, the Ninth Circuit addresses the fine distinction between “classified” and “secret.” Classified information is ipso facto subject to a whole host of laws, many of which give the executive branch the authority to decide what to classify and declassify. The distinction becomes important to this case because the government argues that courts should defer to the executive, per the Freedom of Information Act, regarding what should or should not be “secret,” since all secret things are also necessarily classified. The government cannot seriously argue, says the court, that information that has been made public (as this was; The New York Times reported years ago on the existence of this rendition program) is still “secret,” and by way of “secret,” therefore “confidential.” It does not follow that, because the executive says something is confidential, the courts must necessarily accede and declare that confidential thing to be secret within the scope of a judicial proceeding.

The court emphasized that its ruling was limited only to the issue of whether or not the state secrets privilege could be used to dismiss the case wholesale. The case will be remanded back to the district court from whence it came, with the understanding that Obama may use the state secrets privilege to have certain evidence excluded, but he may not have the whole case dismissed. Even then, it will be up to the court to decide whether to actually exclude the evidence or not.

Given that seven cases over five years have all declared absolute executive power to be unconstitutional, you’d think that the executive branch would take the hint. And I’m especially disappointed by Obama, who wrote in a January memorandum to all executive agencies:

The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve.

Are they just empty words? We’ll see.

Blowback: The Economy or the Military?

During the long years of the Cold War, not many dared to question the US military budget. Since then, however, the budget has continued to expand, often sending troops overseas to situations that were created by previous diplomatic blunders. Some of those blunders have directly created the morasses that we attempt to extricate ourselves from today. As such, let’s take a look at some of the history of what the CIA refers to as blowback for the U.S.

Brief Blowback History

In 1953, Iran, or Persia as it was then called, had a functioning democratic system. A successful coup by the CIA and British Intelligence overthrew the democratically elected government and replaced them with the hereditary Shah of Persia. His abuses and misrule led directly to the Islamic Revolution and the problems we have encountered with their Islamic government ever since. In the early 1980s, Iraq thus was encouraged to invade Iran, by the US in a fit of pique, and was supplied with arms in the resulting war. This assistance helped solidify Saddam Hussein’s military ambitions and indirectly encouraged his invasion of Kuwait in 1991, all of which led to the mess in Iraq today.

Meanwhile during the 1980s, the military assistance given to the tribes opposing the Russian occupation of Afghanistan led to the Taliban taking over the country. These people, who were responsible for 9/11 (despite what the Bush administration’s claims to the contrary), are whom we continue to fight today in Afghanistan. In addition, they also have brought the war on terror to the nuclear-power country of Pakistan.

Bill Clinton didn’t help matters, when he, in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky affair, launched Tomahawk missiles against suspected Al Qaeda munitions facilities at a site in Sudan and the Bora Bora site in Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden was thought to be. This was in retaliation after US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had been previously bombed. One of Tomahawks destroyed a human and veterinary manufacturing plant in Sudan, killing at least 20 Sudanese and putting many out of work. The Sudanese government immediately cut off all ties with the U.S. and released an important Al Qaeda suspect they had been about to hand over to the U.S. The Tomahawks in Afghanistan missed Bin Laden totally–he was in Kabul at the time. He in turn sold an unexploded Tomahawk to the Chinese for 10 million dollars. Worse, almost all of Africa, who had been outraged over the Embassy bombings by Al Qaeda, swung against the US policy after the bombings. Sound familiar?

In addition, it is clear to most of the world, though rarely reported in the US, that huge military assistance to Israel keeps them so dominant that they often disdain from entering into meaningful dialogue with the Palestinians or other nations in the region. Without meaningful legitimate political channels, arguably, that may have in turn indirectly led to the cult of the indefensible and grotesque suicide bomber.

Similar situations of blowback have occurred on all continents. It is alleged that the policy of supporting vain, immoral megalomaniacs as leaders in the more unstable areas of the world could be summed up as, “We don’t care if he’s a bastard so long as he’s our bastard”.

In too many situations today, previous meddling in the internal affairs or politics of other countries has led directly or indirectly to these messes that we may now face. If intervention leads to revolution or serious instability in the country involved, it is often inevitable that the beneficiaries of the situation will be the worst possible choices. It takes many generations for the situation to settle down and for the voices of reason make headway over the radicals who are always the initial power base. The French Revolution, The Russian Revolution, and the Persian [Iranian] Revolution are all cases in point

To return to the end of the Cold War, there was at that time, along with a feeling of relief that we were all suddenly safe, a hope that the troops could come home, and be discharged. That of course never happened. Why not?

The Military Industrial Complex

Today the US spends 46% of the total world’s military budget. The next 4 nations, the UK, France, Japan and China spend between 4-5% each. The US military budget has risen from 250 billion dollars in 2001 to over 700 billion in 2008. Thus, the sensible solution to help our failing economy would logically have to be to cut the military budget and bring everyone home. Wouldn’t that give us iron clad security at home? Maybe we could even make our inner cities safe and bring down the horrendous murder rate from the 17,000 yearly victims it is today.

Of course that is about as realistic as overall world peace. But why?

The answer to why that apparently sensible solution is currently a pipe dream was first given by President Eisenhower in 1961. Eisenhower was the first President, as a former General, to recognize the power of the Military Industrial Complex.

That term refers to an over friendly relationship between the government, the military, munitions manufacturers, and defense contractors. All in this relationship benefit financially, and unfortunately peace can get in the way. Eisenhower as a military man saw what could occur when future Presidents without military experience tried to go up against this Complex. They would be easily maneuvered by the military to react where no reaction was necessary, and to keep the US military equipped with constantly updated equipment and every new technology. Today, there is a defense contractor in every State of the Union. If there are cutbacks, you can be sure these workers will be out in force rallying senators and representatives at every level. The President will be lambasted across the nation and the Republicans will make hay. Any President to take on this issue will be lauded by history, but unlikely to win a second term.

Will Barack Obama be able to break this endless cycle to prevent the never ending cycle of blowback? If recent history is a good predictor, it certainly won’t be easy. For the sake of the rest of the world, let’s hope for the best.

Will He or Won’t He? The Investigation Question

If it is true that sitting presidents set the political boundaries for future ones, then the recent hand-off of executive power was truly a gift for Barack Obama. When, in modern presidential politics, has a president been provided with so much room to operate? Not only has he enormous public support, his party’s majority in the two houses of Congress, and a huge, urgent financial crisis affording him opportunity for inventive solutions, but most important, he has the George W. Bush administration preceding him. Having Bush brandish executive power over the Constitution like a swinging ax, the boundaries of what is politically acceptable have been pushed so far that, for Obama, it is like playing football on a field the size of Texas.

Within in the context of the last eight years, Obama has been given free reign over an almost full gamut of the political spectrum to execute his ideas. As such, the combination of revulsion toward Bush, and excitement for Obama, causes each conservative move he makes to be acceptable, and any restoration of common sense to be celebrated as progressive.

And this was apparent from the day of the inauguration onward. In his speech, Obama managed set a conservative tone without hardly a whisper of reaction from most progressive commentators. In invoking the Bible to “set aside childish things” (implying collective responsibility for the financial crisis), and adamantly stating that we will not apologize for our way of life, Obama was able to successfully plant conservative memes because they were wrapped in massive progressive celebration. The fact that both The Daily Show and Bill Kristol picked up on this is highly illustrative.

However, the lesson of context is more instructive when considering Obama’s first actions as president. While his executive orders, such as the closure of Guantanamo, the order for the CIA to follow the Army Field Manual for interrogation, and limitations of government secrecy are welcome, are they cause for progressive celebration? A sigh of relief, yes, but the shoots of a progressive agenda? I’m afraid not. After watching Bush spend eight years bending the Constitution to near snapping point, Obama is merely attempting to restore the document to some recognizable form. And more notable, these were the easy moves. In fact, he had to issue these orders. The public outrage over state encroachment of civil liberties had been swelling to bursting point, and was subsequently channeled into the Obama campaign. He had the mandate and the political will to do so, not to mention the founding ideals of the nation on his side. Really, all he has done has been to put back in place what Bush had removed, while at the same time, continuing militarily, very much, in the same vein as his predecessor: bombing Waziristan and killing 14 people. Because the reversals of Bush policy have been rapid, the ones that stayed the same went almost unnoticed.

The great irony of the Bush legacy, though, is that by conducting his office so disastrously, and, by extension, handing Obama so much political breathing space, it is clear that Obama feels he cannot hold Bush accountable, lest that breathing space disappear. The choice between massive political capital and following the Constitution is a very real one, and one with very high stakes. In attempting to bring the former administration to justice, it is very likely, given the tone set by current congressional Republicans, Obama’s agenda would shrink to zero by potentially instigating a political civil war — memories from the nineties, obviously fresh in Obama’s mind. If Obama finds it difficult now, twisting Republican arms in Congress, imagine his options after he attempts to try Bush and Cheney for high crimes and misdemeanors. Then there’s also a massive economic crisis to address, not to mention his own party’s complicity in the waterboarding program, making it not merely difficult to start an investigation, but nigh on impossible.

To prosecute members of the previous administration would be like lighting a match to a partisan war, causing the mechanisms of Congress to jam up, just when we need it to function as efficiently as possible.

It is clear that Obama regards his options less as a balancing act and more mutually exclusive; a choice between principle and pragmatism. And as you would expect, the choice is not without precedent. There is the much-cited example of Lincoln’s magnanimity toward the South before and after the Civil War, but there is also the more appropriate parallel of the Jefferson presidency. After winning the presidency in 1800, Jefferson struck a remarkably conciliatory tone, when he said at his inaugural address that “every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.” And this, too, was after an incredibly brutal, partisan election, where it followed an administration that severely curtailed both civil liberties and the freedom of the press. Jefferson prosecuted no one for these infractions of the Constitution, including previous president John Adams. In order for him to keep the union together — a very real concern during the nascent United States — Jefferson had to reach out to northern Federalists. For an avid student of history such as Obama, it would seem he seeks to emulate this pragmatic, albeit contradictory, approach to crisis.

It is easy to imagine the president thinking of how he would best like to be remembered: the man who attempted to bring executive malfeasance to justice, or the man who wrested America from an economic free fall. It is clear which one is most politically viable. And given how difficult it would be to investigate Bush, fixing the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression would be easier.

The problem remains though, what to do to prevent future abuse of the executive office? And this is one area where progressives can press Obama to demonstrate some progressive mettle.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously took impeachment off the table due to her own complicity in the CIA torture program and, unfortunately, impeachment was the only opportunity to hold Bush to account. However, if the Obama administration were to propose a framework where the requirements to hold impeachment hearings would be made easier — specifically, more definitive — it would do much to prevent politicians like Pelosi from fudging the issue, and presidents (and vice presidents) from abusing their office. Though this would probably require a constitutional amendment, it would be the only way of protecting the state from future executive abuse. As it currently stands, the definition of crimes tried by impeachment is woefully ill-defined to be effective and consistent:

The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

As then-House Minority Leader Gerald Ford said in 1970, “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

By providing clear definitions of the offenses punishable by impeachment, Obama could demonstrate a willingness to address the crimes of the previous administration without having to sacrifice too much goodwill.

For all the celebrations of Obama’s restoring of civil liberties, it is clear that violations of those liberties must not happen again, and this is where the progressive fight to hold those in power accountable should be aimed.

Two Days > Eight Years?

I’m feeling pretty good right now.

Yesterday, on his first full day in office, President Obama issued three memoranda to executive departments reinforcing his commitment to open government and accountability. For one, he directed departments to comply with the Freedom of Information Act and err on the side of disclosing information rather than hiding it. In 2001, former Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered executive departments to comply with FOIA requests only after exhausting all avenues to prevent disclosure of information. He even emphasized that potential embarrassment or liability is not a good reason to withhold information requested under FOIA. That’s tremendous!

Obama’s memoranda also gives the National Archives the authority to declassify whatever presidential records it sees fit, a stark reversal from an administration that had fought tooth and nail to keep everything it did secret. The potential exists for massive declassification of Bush administration records that are being kept secret for no other reason that it might be embarrassing or might disclose political favors.

That’s really terrible, in case you were wondering. The Bush administration’s default position was secrecy over disclosure, which only served to emphasize Bush’s greater message: the U.S. government works for we the representatives first, then for you the people. Obama’s philosophy is exactly the opposite: he has said several times that he and the rest of our representatives are public servants first, and everything they do should be in that vein of serving the public.

It should go without saying that our government is accountable to us, but it’s been a long time since that’s been true. We have been told that we have no right to know what our representatives are doing, and in some cases, we have been told it is unpatriotic to question the things our government does. Thank you, Obama, for bringing us back to normal.

And then this morning, as promised, Obama signed an executive order calling for the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison within a year. The fate of the 200-some prisoners left there has yet to be decided: prosecutions under the Military Commissions Act have been suspended for 120 days, pending a review of each prisoner’s case. Guantánamo is littered with people who did nothing more than be in the wrong place at the wrong time, including people who were minors when they were arrested in 2001.

But there’s more! Obama signed another order directing the C.I.A. to use only the interrogation techniques specified in the Army Field Manual, a policy that has been in the works for two years, but was ignored by the Bush administration in a signing statement.

Things are looking good for America. After eight long years, it’s refreshing to see accountability, transparency, and the due process of law finally take precedence over narrow political interest.

Che and Evo: ¡Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

As the wide scale release date for Steven Soderbergh’s new film, Che, starring Benicio del Toro as Ernesto “Che” Guevara, draws near, the second half of the movie, Guerrilla, needs to be placed in a proper historical context.  The first half of the movie has a more accessible plot considering the general populace is more familiar with the Cuban Revolution. But what about Bolivia during Guevara’s involvement there?  What about Bolivia today?  The small South American nation seems to be left out of worldwide political discourse for the most part.  Soderbergh’s biopic about the radical ideologue will certainly increase awareness not only about Che and Marxism, but also his continuing struggle that is embodied by current Bolivian president, Evo Morales.

Che is concerned mainly with two pinnacles of its namesake’s existence.  The first half of the film, The Argentine, covers the Che’s involvement in the Cuban Revolution alongside Fidel Castro.  The latter half, Guerrilla, follows Guevara’s final revolutionary attempt in Bolivia.  His endeavor eventually fails, and he is executed for his subversion.

Guevara’s activities in Bolivia came during a time of quasi-military rule under President René Barrientos of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement. The Barrientos administration attempted to maintain popular support within the peasantry while blatantly serving foreign interests, mainly the United States.  The president had initially come to power through an armed coup d’état in 1964 while he was serving as vice-president.  He would later be elected with help from the military.

After recovering in Prague from a failed revolutionary effort in the Congo, Che began to meet with Bolivian dissidents in late 1966 or early 1967.  With a band of Cuban soldiers and supplies from Havana, Guevara made his way to the Ñancahuazú region of Bolivia where a military training camp was set up.  There he began to recruit and train Marxist-sympathizing peasants.  The recruiting process was largely unsuccessful given that the Communist Party of Bolivia did not support his guerrilla movement.

In total, a ragged band of about 50 guerrilla warriors began an armed assault against the Bolivian army.  They won a few small victories throughout 1967, but the tide turned against them as Barrientos, with help from the CIA, took a strong stance against Guevara’s efforts.  Guevara’s small forces were quickly encircled by the Bolivian military and subdued in October of 1967.  Che himself was captured and placed in a schoolhouse where he was later executed. Reportedly, his last words were “shoot, coward, you are only about to kill a man.”  The execution had been ordered by President Barrientos himself.

Barrientos’ decisions surrounding the quelling of Guevara’s movement and his local supporters would eventually lead to his political demise.  During the onslaught against Che’s troops, a group of Bolivian miners came out in support of the insurgency.  Barrientos sent soldiers to extinguish this spreading sentiment.  This resulted in the soldiers massacring approximately 30 civilians of both sexes.  His authoritarian actions in both situations led to the loss of what popular support he still had.  In order to regain his popularity, the president took to traveling around the Bolivian countryside and explaining his actions.  While on this journey, Barrientos perished in a helicopter accident in 1969.  The country then plunged into decades of political and economic turmoil that lasted until the early 1990s. The political situation remains unstable even today.

Che’s gift to Bolivia would not be his dream of a violent revolution, but his socially progressive ideals.  He also encouraged anti-capitalist sentiments within the largely indigenous populace.  These concerns would later form the basis for the backlash to neoliberal globalization and neocolonialism imposed by the international community.

Evo Morales was elected to the presidency of Bolivia on December 4, 2005.  Since then he has carried on a legacy that began in his country with Che.  He is the first indigenous president of Bolivia and is seen by many as the first step to throwing off the shackles of Western imperialism.  He raised the minimum wage by fifty percent soon after his election.  In a landmark move, he partially nationalized Bolivia’s natural gas reserves, the second largest in Latin America after Venezuela.  In doing so, he has exponentially increased the amount of capital available to the national government.  This has allowed Bolivia to heavily invest in social welfare programs, which have been largely successful; as of December 21, 2008 Evo Morales has declared Bolivia an illiteracy-free region.

Despite Morales’ success and popularity, in early 2008 there was an autonomy movement in the Santa Cruz regions, the wealthy area of Bolivia, which was instigated by wealthy oligarchs.  This move led to rioting, which was reportably supported by the US ambassador to Bolivia.  The ambassador was promptly expelled from the country for his alleged subversive position. Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, in a show of solidarity with Morales, also expelled the American ambassador to Venezuela.

The US “War on Drugs” has also been a point of contention for Bolivian policy as the coca leaf is a traditional herb used by the indigenous people there as a remedy for altitude sickness and as a mild stimulant.  Morales, a former coca farmer and union organizer, has allowed for more legal production of the plant.  In response to this action, the United States has placed Bolivia on its narcotics blacklist and has stopped all aid to the poorest nation in South America.

All of these events culminated in an unsuccessful attempted coup against the Morales government in 2008.  The coup may have been tacitly supported in my opinion, although not very vocally, by the government of the United States.  Unanimously, the leaders of every South American country came out in support of the Morales government, and Hugo Chavez pledged military support for his political ally.  The coup failed, but some of the regions were granted a level of autonomy as a result of the coup attempt.

The rejection of US authority when viewed with Guevara in mind can be seen as a continuation of his beloved revolution.  Although for now, mass bloodshed has not been necessary to attain progressive goals in Bolivia, the future is uncertain. Recent declines in worldwide commodity prices put many of Morales’ social programs in jeopardy. This has the potential to lead to tumultuous times not only in Bolivia, but also throughout Latin America. Time will tell whether a socialist democracy can survive such an economic shock. As such, history will either view Guevara and Morales as idealistic failures or heroic humanitarians.  As for me, I’ll hope for the latter.

Robert Gates: Beyond Politics

Hacking off the people that got you elected is a dubious way of beginning a presidency. Why on earth then would President-elect Obama draw the ire of some Democrats by keeping Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a Bush appointee, in his cabinet?

“Change” has been the mantra of the Obama machine’s public face from day one. It catapulted him from an obscure, yet “articulate and bright and clean” (thanks, Joe) junior U.S. Senator from Illinois to the next President of the United States. As such, the Obama campaign promised a transparent administration that would redress the excesses of power wielded by the unitary executive under Bush’s wicked little coven. We would see an end to the war in Iraq and a realignment of our foreign policy that would lead to open communications with those nations deemed unworthy by the Bush cadre. Good God, don’t let any of THOSE guys stick around for his new “change” administration.

The thing is, Secretary Gates isn’t really one of those guys.

In fact, Robert Gates has served seven presidents, both Republican and Democrat, during his years with the intelligence community. He is notable for being the only director of the CIA to rise in ranks from an entry-level position to director (DCI). He wasn’t born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth and earned his directorship in 1991 the hard way. In fact, he was up for the job in 1987, but shadows of doubt about his role in the Iran-Contra affair took their toll on his nomination. There were intimations that he may have been complicit in suppressing irregularities that should have been reported to Congress during the affair. However, Gates, unlike many, was completely cleared of any wrongdoing. In fact, during those confirmation hearings, he gained a measure of introspection that the current administration lacks, as noted in his memoirs:

I would go over those points in my mind a thousand times in the months and years to come, but the criticisms still hit home. A thousand times I would go over the ‘might-have-beens’ if I had raised more hell than I did with Casey [former director of the CIA William]  about non-notification of Congress, if I had demanded that the NSC get out of covert action, if I had insisted that CIA not play by NSC rules, if I had been more aggressive with the DO in my first months as DDCI, if I had gone to the Attorney General.

Gates’ political alignment is a little vague, but he most certainly leans conservative. Some sources cite him as an Independent, while others quote him as saying “I consider myself a Republican.” However, his foreign policy ideals were shaped by those conservatives who did not necessarily hold with the current administration’s neoconservative “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” absolutist philosophy. Rather, Gates could be better identified with the more rational “realists” of the first Bush administration. In fact, during his service as deputy national security adviser during the Bush 41 administration, Gates worked closely with then director Brent Scowcroft, some even referring to Gates as his protégé . Scowcroft has been vilified by the neocons for his vocal opposition to the war in Iraq, and his influence on Gates should not be underestimated.

Gates’ work with the Iraq Study Group before his nomination to Secretary of Defense should also be considered closely. This group consisted of a bipartisan team of heavy hitters, including former Secretary of State James Baker, former representative Lee Hamilton, and retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The group’s recommendations, published in 2006, significantly differed from the course of action taken by the Bush administration. They favored a substantial shift in responsibility for Iraq’s security from U.S. to Iraqi forces and opined that “by the first quarter of 2008…all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq.” Instead, we got the surge. The surge, arguably, was effective, but Gates’ presumable role in advising the group in matters of intelligence steered them towards their conclusions that a troop reduction was the wiser course. It is a testament to Gates’ integrity that he listened to his better judgment rather than the rantings of the hawks. Gates maintained a rational voice and was the farthest thing from a sycophant to the neoconservative prevailing interests of the administration.

Gates’ reliance upon his own well-founded deductive ability over hard line party rhetoric became even more evident during his confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense. When asked to describe his motivations for accepting the nomination to the position, Gates stated that he believed “very deeply that one of the fundamental factors in our success in the Cold War was our ability to have a broad, bipartisan agreement on the fundamental strategy on how to deal with the Soviet Union” and that “it is imperative, in this long war on terrorism that we face that could go on for a generation, that there be a bipartisan agreement.” That philosophy of bipartisanship stands in stark contrast to the Bush administration’s politically unilateral attitude.

Even more revealing is his thoughtful, realistic understanding of relations with Iran and Syria. When asked by Sen. Byrd, D-West Virginia, if “an attack on either Iran or Syria would worsen the violence in Iraq and lead to greater American casualties,” Gates paused gravely, and replied, “Yes, sir, I think that’s very likely.”

What one gathers from studying Secretary Gates is that his actions are guided by his assimilation of experience and an exceptional understanding of the geopolitical world around him. He is no slave to demagoguery, and has a history with the more levelheaded elders of his party. His agenda seems one of a true civil servant as opposed to a political ladder-climber. He has used his ascendancy to power to effect cautious, intelligent policies that are much more self-guided than adherence to any particular political dogma. President-elect Obama seems to value these characteristics as virtue enough to override divisive political considerations and has entrusted the defense of the nation to such a man of intelligence, independence, and integrity.