Amitai Etzioni Notes

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 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.

Individualism vs. Social Science

NPR's social science maven reported that President Obama may have undermined the success of gun control legislation when he stated that "We don't live in isolation, we live in a society. A government of, and for, and by the people. We are responsible for each other." Americans, Shankar Vendantam stated, care about individual rights and liberty, not the common good. As evidence he cited a research paper by MarYam Hamedani and her associates called, "In the Land of the Free, Interdependent Action Undermines Motivation," showing that when researchers evoke concepts of the common good -- the subjects did less well on various tasks than when no such concepts were evoked.

Much of the paper relies on the notoriously unreliable concept of psychological priming, contrived situations, and extremely trivial stimuli and responses. Thus, in one of the paper's experiments, students were asked to unscramble anagrams of communitarian words (e.g., "accommodate" or "coordinate") and then were given very difficult anagrams -- their motivation being measured in terms of how long they attempted to solve the puzzles. A second study by the authors had students role-play a job applicant "skilled at working with others," and then measured how long they would squeeze a handgrip -- a short squeeze was taken to show that communitarianism had undermined their motivation! In both cases, the authors found a measurable decline in motivation of the students when compared with various control groups.

Such "priming" has come under fire from many researchers who have been repeatedly unable to replicate these kinds of findings. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate, who at one point favored priming experiments, has recently expressed serious doubt their legitimacy, urging priming researchers to thoroughly address the charges of many skeptics, or else there may be a "train wreck looming" for the field.

An additional problem is that the tasks that the researchers asked students to perform were all individualistic ones. They did not explore how such prompting affects behavior when the task at hand requires teamwork, as is the case for much of work and life. There are a number of studies reporting that those with communitarian tendencies achieve greater success when working as teams (Lillian T. Eby & Gregory H. Dobbins, 1997), have greater work group commitment (Michael Clugston, Jon P. Howell & Peter W. Dorfman, 2000), and exhibit more behaviors associated with citizenship (Linn Van Dyne et al., 2000) than do their more individualistic peers. Such findings suggest that communitarian values have a positive effect on people's motivation to collaborate and achieve team-based objectives.

This conclusion is supported by other studies show that people are more motivated to contribute their time and effort if they believe they are being helpful and promoting the common good (Martha E. Kropf & Johnny Blair, 2005) . Furthermore, studies of voting show that the most important factor determining whether or not a person will vote is his or her sense of civic duty. And studies on recycling show that people are motivated to recycle not so much for themselves and their kids but for all of us.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post.

MyJihad: Just a Spiritual Journey?

The ads that recently appeared to the sides of buses in several American major cities declare: "#MyJihad is to march on despite losing my son," "#MyJihad: Modesty is not a weakness," "#MyJihad is to build bridges through friendship," and "#MyJihad is to not take the simple things in life for granted." The ads are part of a public education campaign sponsored by the Chicago Council of American-Islamic Relations. They remind me of a noble moment during President George W. Bush's presidency when, on Sept 17, 2001, while the ruins of the Twin Towers were still billowing smoke and many of the bodies had not yet been pulled out, he stated that, "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace." It was a magnanimous and even courageous statement to make -- although not a particularly accurate one.

Those behind the #MyJihad campaign argue that the term "jihad," which is defined as "struggling in the way of God," has been misrepresented by extreme Islamists and Islamophobes alike. Countering common associations of jihad with violence, terrorism, and religious extremism, the #MyJihad campaign presents jihad as, "a concerted and noble effort against injustice, hate, misunderstanding, war, violence, poverty, hunger, abuse or whatever challenge big or small we face in daily life, with the purpose of getting to a better place."

Actually, an intensive study of Muslim texts and preaching that we conducted leaves little doubt that Jihad can be understood in two different ways. For some, jihad is a holy war waged against the infidels while others see it as a spiritual struggle for moral self-improvement. Regarding the former, textual support can be found in Quranic verses urging Muslims to "Slay the idolaters wheresoever you find them," (9:5) or the Hadith's statement that "the Messenger of Allah declared: I have been directed to fight against people so long as they do not say: There is no god but Allah."

A rather different interpretation of jihad, associated with the Sufis, is that it refers primarily to the internal spiritual struggle against immorality rather than an outward battle against one's enemies. Thus, Sufis attribute to Muhammad the statement "The greater jihad is the struggle against the self." And as the twelfth-century Sufi master Abd al-Qdier al-Jilani explained, "[There are] two types of jihad: the outer and the inner. The inner is the jihad of the soul, the passion, the nature, and Satan. The outer is the jihad of the infidels who resist Him and His Messenger." When a pollster asked 10,004 adults in predominantly Muslim countries "what jihad means to you," he found that the majority of responses spoke of jihad as a "duty toward God," a "divine duty," or a "worship of god" -- "with no explicit militaristic connotation at all."

Read the rest at The Huffington Post.

Defending Drone Policy

The question of whether it is justified to use a drone to kill an American terrorist overseas is best answered if we imagine that the target had acted in the same manner—but wearing a uniform. If that soldier was part of an army that had attacked us in the past (call it al-Qaeda) and he was preparing for a new attack—or even regrouping between attacks—then he would be considered a fair and legitimate target. There seems little reason he should be treated more benignly just because he violated the rules of armed conflicts by donning civilian clothes that make him much more difficult to identify.

Thus, the first requirement for targeted killing should be one that is not included in a recently leaked “white paper” that served as the basis for many of the questions hurled at John Brennan: Has the administration verified that the said person is terrorist? Is he a member—worse yet, a high-ranking one—of al-Qaeda or one of its affiliates or some other such terrorist organization? In order for even a non-American to be on the approved kill list, such evidence must be available from two independent intelligence sources.

Even critics concede that before the authorization to kill is granted there is considerable review within the administration. Lawyers review the case and, before it reaches them, it must meet several criteria, including that the terrorist cannot be captured without undue risk to our troops and that the expected collateral damage in taking him out will be limited.

Critics complain that Congress and the courts are not involved in these reviews. Actually, although Congress cannot and should not be involved in reviewing each case, it is actively involved in reviewing the procedures used. Indeed, the white paper made it to the media because it was submitted to Congress as part of that branch’s review of the targeted assassination program.

Moreover, as Senator Diane Feinstein has stated, “the Senate Intelligence Committee is kept fully informed of counterterrorism operations and keeps close watch to make sure they are effective, responsible and in keeping with U.S. and international law.” Further, Feinstein has affirmed that staffers “question every aspect of the program including legality, effectiveness, precision, foreign policy implications and the care taken to minimize noncombatant casualties.”

U.S. civil courts have not been granted oversight for good reason. They are not suited for dealing with cases that involve classified information, sources and methods that need to be protected, and situations wherein the accused can neither be cross-examined nor face his accusers.

Many of the questions and criticisms raised by the white paper have focused on the criterion that targets must pose an “imminent” danger to the United States, which indeed has been given an expansive interpretation. This term is obviously employed in order to try to tie necessary counterterrorism measures to established international norms and laws, which recognize—as the UN charter does—that a nation has a right to act in self-defense when its citizens are in immediate danger. “Imminent” to most people connotes enemy troops lined up across the border ready to attack, or a North Korea or Iran loading nuclear arms onto the tips of transcontinental missiles capable of reaching our shores. However, because terrorists disguise themselves as civilians and attack with no warning—as they did on 9/11—a nation that seeks to defend itself must either broaden the meaning of “imminent” danger or allow its citizens to be killed en masse.

Being a member of an organization such as al Qaeda should suffice. It is not a dual-purpose group whose members engage in social service or political action while some moonlight as terrorists. Its stated goals and main—if not total—body of activities is aimed at killing, maiming, and terrorizing us. This is sufficient reason to take out its members, as long as we have solid evidence that the given person is a member of this or some other terrorist organization.

No mention is made in the white paper of an issue that communitarians, concerned not just with rights but also with responsibilities, find compelling. U.S. citizen terrorists differ from others, not only because they have extra rights, but also because they have committed an extra offense. When they raise their arms against their own community, they commit treason, which cannot be said of terrorists who hail from other countries. And the constitution is exceptionally clear about the way traitors should be treated: “No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act.” So be it.

Read the rest at The National Interest-->