Amitai Etzioni Notes

Soft Syria Response Worse Than Inaction

A weak or irrelevant response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria may be even worse than inaction. As long as President Obama delays action—as he waits for all the intelligence he requires—Syrians and others can still assume that when he is finally moved to act, he will unleash a thunderbolt, striking a blow against the regime that will convince one and all not to cross red lines drawn by the United States. But if Obama again follows his proclivity to split the difference—to appease the critics, but not address the challenge—he will demonstrate weakness.

Among the suggestions that have been made are for Obama to arm the rebels, to introduce a no-fly zone or to create a safe haven for refugees. Calls for such actions have come from both sides of the aisle: Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, as well as Democratic senator Carl Levin and representative Eliot Engel. But these acts are not likely to turn the tide against the rush of fighters—many with combat experience—from Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon that are joining in the defense of Assad, or the elite cohort of “advisers” and many thousands of troops supplied by Iran. And if the intervention by the United States were to tip the scales, we would have a new Libya on our hands, with one very devastating difference: jihadists with chemical weapons.

The notion advanced by Senator Graham that if we only arm “our” rebels (the few pro-Western ones) they will fight against both Assad and the extremists, is wishful thinking. “Ours” are the weakest of the lot. However, even if somehow “our” rebels prevailed, we should note that it did not take long for those who the United States armed in Afghanistan against the Soviets to turn on us, or for arms we supplied in Libya to flow into the hands of Al Qaeda in Mali.

Increasing humanitarian aid, especially helping Jordan and Turkey cope with the flood of refugees and providing more medical and food supplies to refugees in Syria, is both a very good idea and an irrelevant one. We should extend this aid whether or not Assad used chemical weapons, but such good deeds will not be, and will not be seen as, a response to the regime’s (or the rebels') violation of Obama’s red line.

Read the rest at The National Interest-->

Drones: Say it with figures

Originally published in United Press International

Attacking drones, the most effective counter-terrorism tool the United States has found thus far, is a new cause celebre among progressive public intellectuals and major segments of the media.

Their arguments would deserve more of a hearing if, instead of declaring their contentions as fact, they instead coughed up some evidence to support their claims.

One argument that is repeated again and again is that killing terrorists with drones generates resentment from Pakistan to Yemen, thereby breeding many more terrorists than are killed. For example, Akbar Ahmed, a distinguished professor at American University, told the BBC on April 9 that, for "every terrorist drones kill, perhaps 100 rise as a result."

The key word is "perhaps"; Ahmed cites no data to support his contention.

Similarly, in The New York Times, Jo Becker and Scott Shane write that "Drones have replaced Guantanamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants," citing as their evidence one line Faisal Shahzad, who had tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square, used in his 2010 trial seeking to justify targeting civilians.

At the same time, when HBO interviewed children who carry suicide vests, they justified their acts by the presence of foreign troops in their country and burning of Korans.

No such self-serving statements can be taken as evidence in themselves.

And Peter Bergen, a responsible and serious student of drones, quotes approvingly in The Washington Post a new book by Mark Mazzetti, who claims that the use of drone strikes "creates enemies just as it has obliterated them." Again, however, Mazzetti presents no evidence.

One may at first consider it obvious that, when American drones kill terrorists who are members of a tribe or family, other members will resent the United States. And hence if the United States would stop targeting people from the skies, that resentment would abet and ultimately vanish.

In reality, ample evidence shows that large parts of the population of several Muslim countries resent the United States for numerous and profound reasons, unrelated to drone attacks.

These Muslims consider the United States to be the "Great Satan" because it violates core religious values they hold dear; it promotes secular democratic liberal regimes; it supports women's rights; and it exports a lifestyle that devout Muslims consider hedonistic and materialistic to their countries.

These feelings, data show, are rampant in countries in which no drones attacks have occurred, were common in those countries in which the drones have been employed well before any attacks took place, and continue unabated, even when drone attacks are greatly scaled back.

Read the rest at United Press International

The Risk of Blurring the Red Lines

The Obama administration is ignoring two of the most elementary rules of the use of power: First of all, the more credible threats are, the less power one needs to marshal (and hence less one needs to spend on building it up), and the less often power needs to be actually exercised. Second, every time one makes a threat, one is tested twice: will it bring about the desired outcome? And will it build up or diminish the credibility of one’s power?

In March, President Obama announced that if the Assad regime will use chemical weapons this would be a “game changer.” When reports first surfaced that such weapons were used, the Obama administration pointed out that these appeared to be riot control agents, such as pepper spray and tear gas, which is often used by police forces. These may be considered chemical weapons in the Middle East, but the United States does not consider them as such. (It was also unclear whether it was the rebels or the government who had employed these agents.)

Most recently, however, when Britain, France, and Israel reported that nerve gas agents were used by the Assad regime, the Obama administration responded that the United States was investigating the matter. As these reports come in, the study continues.

One can readily understand the reluctance of the Obama administration to act, given the large quantities, varying kinds, and wide dispersion of the chemical agents in Syria. Moreover, the chemical weapons are not easily handled; safely destroying them will very likely entangle the United States in the civil war; and such involvement would almost certainly lack UN authorization. However, all this was known before the United States drew the red line. Hence, if the Obama administration continues to dillydally, it will further undermine the credibility of the United States as a superpower, a position already shaken by its failing engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The same holds for the shifting red lines—the plural “lines” is not a misprint—drawn, redrawn and repositioned on Iran’s nuclear development. From the beginning of his first term, President Obama indicated that the United States would find it “unacceptable” if Iran were to pursue a nuclear weapon program. Yet it seems that Iran’s nuclear development did not stop. In September 2009 the administration threw its support behind a proposal that would allow Iran to pursue uranium enrichment up to 5 percent. The deal was rejected, and by February 2010, Iran was producing 20 percent enriched uranium. The administration decided that 20 percent was now acceptable—as long as Iran did not move toward constructing a bomb. The president pledged “not to contain, but to prevent an Iranian bomb,” even if that meant military action.

Read the rest at The National Interest-->

The Gun Debate I Lost

During the opening rounds of a gun debate in London, beamed globally by Google Plus, I thought I was doing quite well. I started by telling the audience, brought together by Intelligence Squared, that I recently was showing off photos of my grandchildren in a doctor's waiting room, when they brought tears the eyes of a grandma sitting next to me. She told me, "My grandson was cleaning his gun, and he killed his father." Think about it for a moment. Poof, one life was lost, a child lost his father, there is a terrible guilt, and the grandmother has to live with a grandson she hates and loves. Now, multiply this thirty-two thousand times, eleven times more people than we lost in the World Trade Center attacks which traumatized the nation, six times more than we lost total in the war in Iraq, and you see we're talking about a very, very serious problems. We're not talking about the quality of the Duchesses' hats, or even organic food. We're talking about a huge amount of life lost each year.

Next, I added that those who argue the Second Amendment states that individuals have a right to bear arms need to have their glasses checked. The Second Amendment states that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." It is odd that those who argue that we should go by and live by the text of the Constitution regularly and grossly misquote it. Note that the fact that the Constitution does not recognize an individualized right to bear arms is the reason the NRA was very careful not to take this issue to court until very recently because in all the cases that were brought to the Supreme Court over two hundred years, without exception, the court did not recognize an individualized right to bear arms. Only in 2008, the Roberts Court, the same court which just gave corporations an unlimited right to bribe politicians, the same court which gave the elections to Bush despite the fact that Gore had the majority vote, claimed for the first time in American history, that there is an individualized right to bear arms. All we need is one more liberal judge and we can correct this tragedy.

Finally, I responded to those arguing that citizens need to be armed so that they could take to the mountains and fight a tyrannical government. If one truly fears that this could take place in the United States, one should not wait until the government falls but now join civil societies, conduct classes in public affairs, and organize voters to protect our democracy. Turning to fire fighters after it collapses means civil war and major blood shed, of the kind we now see in Syria.

I thought I was doing okay, but I was not prepared for the next challenge.

Peter Hitchens argued, "The fundamental point is this, do you take away the fundamental liberties of all, do you assume the guilt of all, because some people cannot handle that freedom properly? Imagine if you did, how many other freedoms would have to be taken away?" He kept coming back to the point that passing a law to ban the private ownership of guns presumes all people are guilty. Otherwise, why not let them have their guns? He closed with, "I am very disturbed by the ideas that my government thinks I can't be trusted to do so [own a gun] and denies me the freedom to do so. It is a fundamental breach of the presumption of innocence. I am assumed to be of criminal intent and criminal mind not to be responsible enough, not to be able to take decisions on my own account of such an important thing." Shortly thereafter, a vote was taken and the motion I was arguing in favor of, that "the right to bear arms is a freedom too far," did not carry.

Read the rest here.

The Reasonable Interrogation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

There is something very commendable and seriously troubling in the calls by the so called “responsible media,” the ACLU, and select liberals to preserve the rights of the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect. On the one hand, we cannot but be proud about how strongly Americans are committed to the rule of law, the Constitution, and granting a fair trial to those who engage in the most despicable acts—even when the wound is so deep and still fresh. Hospitals are still full with people whose limbs have been amputated and the victims of the attack (including an 8-year-old child) have not yet been laid to rest. But the extent to which many observers of our public life ignore the balance carefully crafted by the Constitution—between individual rights and the public interest—is stunning.

One wishes that the ardent advocates for the rights of suspected terrorist would read the Fourth Amendment, which captures very well the balance the Constitution calls for. Unlike the one-sided, absolute language of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law…”), the Fourth protects “against unreasonable searches and seizures,” thus recognizing on the face of it that there are reasonable searches—that is, those justified by a compelling public interest.

This essential text leads us to a question that has received much attention: should the Boston Marathon bomber have been Mirandized or was there a compelling public reason to withhold this right? Authorities did not bend the rules or sidestep justice when they delayed reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his rights; indeed, their decision to do so is fully supported by the public-safety exception introduced precisely for the situation at hand. The Supreme Court upheld the exception in the 1984 case New York v. Quarles, in which police were informed the suspect had a gun and asked where it was before reading his rights. It also was invoked in the case of the 2009 Christmas Day bomber and in 2010 for Faisal Shahzad after he attempted to set off a bomb in Times Square. In the wake of the Boston attack, law enforcement is trying to find out if other plots are afoot. This is always a legitimate question when one deals with acts of terror, but especially in this case, as officials already established that the brothers had stockpiled more bombs and ammunition. If this is not a threat to public safety—what is?

Read the rest at The Institute For Communitarian Policy Studies site.

Time for New Paradigms

It is easy to understand why so many mavens are trying desperately to conceptualize cyber warfare, drones and transnational terrorists in yesterday’s terms. However, the dissonance has grown to a point where we are forced to look for new concepts and principles rather than try in vain to fit a new reality into obsolete paradigms. We often act like someone who can’t squeeze a size-fourteen foot into a size-nine boot—and would rather cut off the toes than find a larger pair.

True, if we discard and adopt new principles as frequently as we replace footwear, principles will cease to carry much normative heft. However, currently we suffer from a severe case of the opposite problem: We forget that laws were not etched in stone and that all constitutions are living documents. After all, segregation was once legal in the United States, women could not vote until 1920 and the federal right to privacy did not exist until the mid-1960s.

Nowhere is the lag in legal and ethical frameworks more obvious than in the notion that lethal force can only be used against a declared enemy if an attack is imminent—that is, if there is evidence that it is about to occur in short order. However, in a world where a cyber attack launched from the other side of the world has the potential to instantly—and without any visible warning—bring down not only IT systems but also critical infrastructure such as power stations and water supplies, new criteria for what constitute legitimate preventive defensive measures are desperately needed.

The same holds for terrorism. Because terrorists pose as civilians up until the moment they strike, counterterrorist forces seeking to prevent attacks and save innocent lives must intervene before terrorists reveal their true colors. This means acting before attacks are considered "imminent" by the old rules.

Similarly, the constant lip service paid to the increasingly obsolete concept of sovereignty undermines U.S. efforts in places such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. By enshrining the myth of absolute sovereignty, we give Afghan President Hamid Karzai endless fodder for stoking nationalism and lashing out against NATO forces when they act without his clearance—for supposedly violating his country’s right to self-governance. The fact is, Karzai was installed by the United States and would not have survived long without our protection. Washington pays an estimated 91 percent of Afghan security expenditures. The Afghan economy is heavily subsidized by the United States and its international partners, with 90 percent of its public expenditures coming from donors. We need a new definition for nations and regimes that survive thanks to blood we shed and monies we expend. A tempered or conditional understanding of sovereignty is necessary for working with those who refuse to act as reliable junior partners.

Most elementarily, we need to ditch the notion that we can only fight terrorists within declared theaters of war. Terrorists operate easily across borders; so must those who pursue them. True, Congress should maintain the right to authorize the use of lethal force outside our borders. Given that many hold that the current authorization for the use of military force is too vague, the president should ask Congress to reauthorize the campaign against terrorists, wherever they are found. Hopefully, even a divided Congress can agree on that much. However, there is little merit in the notion that we cannot take out Al Qaeda’s leaders and their associates because they are not in a country on some preapproved list.

Read the rest here -->

Israel -- 65 Years Ago

Sixty-five years ago it was far from obvious that Israel would survive; it was even far from obvious that a Jewish state would be created in the first place.

In 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for a resolution calling for the division of British-controlled Palestine into two states -- one of which would be a Jewish state and one of which would be predominantly Palestinian. Specifically, Palestine would be divided into seven sections, three Jewish and four Arab, with Jerusalem placed under international administration. Jewish representatives accepted the deal; however, both the Arab League as well as the Palestinian organizations rejected the plan.

In the same year, I attended a most remarkable meeting. I was quite aware that I was only invited because I was a member of Mapai (labor party). And, those who convened the meeting wanted to have "someone young" because "after all, it was their future we will be discussing."

The meeting, which took place early in March 1947, was composed of leaders of Mapai, at the time the most powerful party of the Yishuv. Its leader, David Ben Gurion, headed the informal government with the Yishuv. Those assembled were exploring the position these leaders would stroke later that month at a meeting in Jerusalem. The subject: should the Yishuv settle merely for a homeland under continued British rule (couple with more leeway for intracommunity decisions), or should we dare hold out for true independence -- for statehood? In other words, should the Yishuv risk losing the possible, in favor of going for the deal?

The issue was rapidly coming to a head after years of tense negotiations. Numerous proposals had been advanced concerning the disposition of Palestine after World War II. Britain had been governing Palestine since World War I. Faced with growing unrest, Jewish defiance of British rules, some Jewish terrorism, and Arab riots, Britain was growing weary of maintaining its rule. In 1947, Britain dumped the future of Palestine in the lap of the United Nations. Ben Gurion and other Mapai leaders were exploring which of the several proposals before the United Nations they were going to fight for. The offer that seemed the most attainable (although not very much so) was a fair measure of self-government for the Jewish community; the least plausible was statehood.

Ben Gurion opened this part of the meeting by stating with much gusto, as if speaking to a much larger audience, "It is time to finalize our decision one way or the other." He added bluntly, "the time is right for us to take the ultimate risk and demand and fight for the formation of a full-blown state. Anything less will not allow us to realize the dream of Zion, to defend ourselves, to ensure that there will be a land any Jew in the world who seeks refuge will be able to come to unencumbered; that we shall never again be taken like lambs to the slaughter."

Moshe Shertok spoke much more softly. "I realize of course the wonder of having a state all our own. But we could get there gradually, in stages. For now we should limit ourselves to asking for a Jewish homeland within the framework of the British 'Mandate,' which we should insist be extended and truly implemented. Here, we can base ourselves on the British promise included in the Balfour Declaration, which calls for a Jewish homeland, not for a state. This way we are much more likely to win the support of the United Nations and not unnecessarily provoke the Arab nations that surround us."

Ben Gurion reacted impatiently, almost angrily. He argued, with a rising voice, "The time is now. The British Empire has been weakened as a result of the war. The British people are anxious to focus on rebuilding their land and not squandering their resources by holding on to a piece of desert in the Middle East, especially if we make the occupation of Palestine more costly for them. While we may be the first British colony to push them out, I hear rumblings from India and other British colonies, even French ones; the days of empires are numbered."

Read the rest here-->

North Korea and U.S. Priorities

If someone could get jumping-bean secretary of state Kerry off of his jet long enough to preside over a review of U.S. foreign priorities, he might discover why we are in such a pickle in our dealings with North Korea—and what might be done. It is a nation that openly threatens the United States and its allies—not less than with nuclear attacks—and all we can say is, “well, the kid seems to be bluffing.”

Talking heads on TV keep reassuring each other that North Korea is not suicidal. Washington is scaling back military exercises in the area and urging South Korea to be cautious—and to be sure that if attacked their response will be proportional and not escalatory. True, the United States did send some untested missile-defense units to the region and to Alaska, and moved some other military assets around. But altogether, this is not much of a response.

The reason we must be so circumspect is that Kim Jong-un has us over a barrel. It is common knowledge that he can flatten Seoul and may well be able to overrun South Korea. If he proceeds, Washington will be left with very few and very tough options: either using nuclear arms or engaging in a large-scale conventional war, drawing on our worn-out army in a faraway country—all this just as our economy requires retrenching.

Read the rest here-->

 

Video: Gun Control Debate

Many thanks to Intelligence Squared for organizing an excellent, thoughtful debate. Watch the video below--

How Conservatives Still Run America, Despite Losing Elections

There is more than may appear in President Obama’s plan to cut the social safety net in his new budget proposal. The offer, on the face of it, reflects a significant violation of a major liberal creed, discarding the strongest liberal political card, and Obama’s peculiar negotiation style of making major concessions at the opening of a give-and-take session. But it also reflects the sad but true fact that the dynamics of American politics cannot be understood in terms of Democrats vs. Republicans. Party labels aside, the nation is still being ruled by what I call a majority “conservative party.”

If Democrats and Republicans were the true divide, the meager gun control measures recently introduced in the Senate would have the majority needed to pass. After all, there are 53 Democratic Senators (and two independents who generally side with them). Moreover, this time, the threat of a GOP filibuster is not to blame. Yet the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, removed the assault weapons ban from the draft bill, because some 15 Democratic senators, in effect, supported the conservative, pro-gun position, making up — with the Republican senators — that majority “conservative party.” Thanks to this party, the same legislative defeat is about to befall liberal proposals to curtail high-capacity magazines. This leaves only better background checks on the table, but these, too, will inevitably be rendered ineffective by the conservatives via the underhanded gutting of enforcement (more about this shortly).

Social security and gun safety are but a couple of the numerous issues on which conservatives in Washington get their way and the minority liberal party loses out. Most recently, every Republican and 33 Democratic conservatives came together to repeal a tax on medical devices, a major source of funding for Obamacare. And on Dec 28, the conservative party — 42 Republicans, 30 Democrats and one Independent senator — voted to extend foreign intelligence law known as FISA, opposed by civil libertarians. We should further expect that the conservative party will keep winning on many fronts, from greatly limiting all new investments in education to unduly slashing social spending.

Some argue that the president is trying to build up a broad following so that, come the 2014 elections, the Democrats will carry the House and he will be able to push through a progressive agenda in the second half of his term. These doe-eyed optimists disregard the fact that, even if the Democrats hold both chambers, the additional Democrats elected in 2014 will largely be from so-called red (i.e., conservative) districts. The situation will then be much like 2009, when the Democrats had a majority in the House, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and a president in the White House, yet still could enact only very little progressive legislation. The reason? Very much the same: conservative Democrats voting with the GOP to extend the Bush tax cuts, cut social spending, weaken financial regulations, and so on.

I must regretfully add that the situation in Washington is even bleaker than what I have laid out so far. While gun control legislation makes its way through Congress (we may get slightly stricter background checks), the conservatives in Congress have passed various measures that eviscerate the agency charged with enforcing these background checks, new and old, thereby ensuring that they will remain weak and ineffective. Liberals tend to focus on passing laws; conservatives, when they cannot block or weaken the laws themselves, see to it that they are not enforced.

Conservatives in Congress have a long history of undermining the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and new moves to this effect pile on top of old ones. The Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986 bans the ATF from inspecting gun dealers more than once in any twelve month period, even if violations are uncovered, and reduces record-keeping violations from a felony to a misdemeanor offense, the result being that they are very rarely prosecuted. The 2003 and 2004 Tiahrt amendments, named for their sponsor Rep. Todd Tiahrt, require that records from the background checks of gun buyers be destroyed within 24 hours; it bars requiring gun dealers to conduct inventory checks to monitor gun thefts; and it prevents crime gun trace data from being used in court, even when a dealer has broken the law. In addition, Congress has barred the ATF repeatedly from creating a computerized database, so when a gun is recovered at a crime scene, agents must manually search through boxes of paper records to trace the firearm to dealer or purchaser.

Read the rest at Salon.com.