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The Obama administration plans to ask Congress for an extra $33 billion to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to an Associated Press report.

The $33 billion would be on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year.

Compare the outlays Obama wants for Haiti:

The United States armed forces are also on their way to support this effort. Several Coast Guard cutters are already there providing everything from basic services like water, to vital technical support for this massive logistical operation. Elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division will arrive today. We’re also deploying a Marine Expeditionary Unit, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, and the Navy’s hospital ship, the Comfort.

And today, I’m also announcing an immediate investment of $100 million to support our relief efforts. This will mean more of the life-saving equipment, food, water and medicine that will be needed. This investment will grow over the coming year as we embark on the long-term recovery from this unimaginable tragedy.

These are great things. I was pleased, even downright proud that Obama deployed so much so quickly to help Haitians, and knew he could count on everyone’s support to do so. (Well, almost everyone’s.)

But that impressive sounding $100,000,000 is a mere 0.3 percent of the $33,000,000,000 amount we’re going to add to the financial sinkholes and military quagmires called Iraq and Afghanistan.

Question: wouldn’t it be safer, smarter, cheaper, and even (dare I say it) just a lot more fun and more satisfying to divide the Afghanistan/Iraq outlay by, say, 4, and multiply the Haiti commitment by as much?

Question: Wouldn’t it make more sense to help rebuild a friendly nation close to our shores from natural catastrophe, than to rebuild ones on the other side of the planet after bombing and killing their inhabitants?

Question:Wouldn’t it make more sense to redeploy our servicemen and women out of countries where they’re not wanted, to a place where they’re wanted desperately?

Question: which makes us safer in the long run — to earn the thanks of a country for rescuing it from catastrophe in time of need, to put it back on its feet so its inhabitants don’t need to emigrate, or to earn the enmity of families who’ve lost children, husbands, fathers to a war we’ve brought to them?

My “favorite” part of the infamous Pat Robertson outburst on the terrible earthquake in Haiti was what’s her name next to him — pact with the devil!? how’m I supposed to react to that!? umm… disapproving little “hmm”, little concerned frown.

Her reaction wasn’t “oh my gosh a PACT with SATAN? we’ve got to DO something.” It was more like she she’d just heard from Heather that the Haitians hang out with the wrong crowd at her high school — so they should DIE.

And she half agrees, but she also half thinks maybe people are right and she’s teamed up with a nut.  But a nut who pays her salary. So: “hmm.”

= = =

Enough about Elmer and his sidekick.  We’ve given a couple hundred for Haiti now, I hope you’ll dig as deep as you can.  Lots of good groups out there, but one that keeps coming up is Partners in Health; see, for example, an op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times by Tracy Kidder (”Strength in What Remains”) mentioning them.  Also good, of course: Doctors without Borders, the Red Cross, and others.

Without it, it’s a giveaway!

Via Real News Network and brought to you by Billionaires for Wealthcare.

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UPDATE, 10/25: Enthusiastic review by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, hilariously pinch-mouthed writeup by Garance Franke-Ruta in the Washington Post.

Nearly four months after Honduran President Mel Zelaya was forced from office, he retains considerable public support, according to a new survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.

• By a large 22-point margin (60 to 38 percent), the Honduran public disapproves of the removal on June 28 of Zelaya as president.
• Two-thirds approve of Zelaya’s performance as president. Nineteen percent rated his performance as “excellent” and another 48 percent as “good.”

The national survey, which involved face-to-face interviews with 621 randomly selected Hondurans from October 9-13, found that Zelaya is considerably more popular than Roberto Micheletti, who has been serving as de facto president. By a 2-1 margin (57 to 28 percent), Hondurans have a negative personal opinion of Micheletti. And a slight majority gives Micheletti’s tenure as president negative marks.

The eight page “Frequency Questionnaire” (.PDF) shows that Hondurans favor holding an assembly to reform the Honduran constitution by 54 to 43 percent — compared to 72 to 27 percent disapproval of keeping Micheletti as president.  Similarly, a 55 to 43 percent majority favored amending the constitution to allow for re-election of presidents.  However, respondents were split 49 to 50 percent on Mel Zelaya’s resumption as president with full powers.  Interestingly — given that Zelaya is viewed by many on the right as a stalking horse for Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez — only 10 percent of a respondent split sample reported “warm” feelings towards Chavez, versus 39 percent towards Barack Obama.

The face to face interview survey sampled 621 respondents between October 9 and 13.  Judging by questions about age, educational attainment, and political views, the respondent sample was youthful and slightly pro-Zelaya in the 2005 election.

The poll is a useful supplement to an excellent Al Jazeera “Fault Lines” report on Honduras by Avi Lewis.  Both halves of the 24 minute report are embedded below.  Lewis concludes pessimistically,

“Through the clouds of tear gas and political spin, some clarity is emerging from this long crisis. Even with Zelaya back in the presidential palace, his time would be brief, his power minimal. Even with the de facto government gone, the coup successfully prevented any great challenge to the established order. [...] Whatever story the world hears about elections and the transition back to democracy in Honduras, there will continue to be struggle, resistance, and loss. And there will still be people here who are living in fear.”

Perhaps the poll will help restore some balance in coverage and understanding of the Honduran struggle.

–

(Via Nell Lancaster and Honduras Oye!)

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UPDATE, 10/23: Nell reminds me that there was a Honduran poll in late August (noted by her and republished by Al Giordano earlier this month) done by the Honduran firm COIMER & OP, with a larger sample (about 1500 people) and broadly similar results.

Sitting in the back of a black BMW sedan at a hilltop hotel here, aides thrusting papers at her, Mrs. Clinton worked two cellphones at once as she tried to resolve differences between the Armenian foreign minister, Eduard Nalbandian, and his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu.

Too bad all that drama was on behalf of a deeply flawed pact between Turkey and Armenia.  While it’s hailed as a breakthrough, it seems to me the reality is that an exhausted Armenia surrendered too much in return for normalized relations between the two countries.  The difficulty, as ever, was in Turkey’s ongoing campaign to obfuscate and deny its responsibility for the Armenian Genocide of 1915-18.

It’s not a great sign that the difficulty Clinton solved rested on Armenian objections to Turkish post-signing statements, nor that the solution she brokered was for the Turkish delegation not to say anything.  The text of the protocols includes language bitterly denounced by many (but not all) Armenian diaspora organizations — specifically, text appearing to pledge Armenia to not taking an active role in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, and text calling for the two countries to

Implement a dialogue on the historical dimension with the aim to restore mutual confidence between the two nations, including an impartial and scientific examination of the historical records and archives to define existing problems and formulate recommendations…

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has posted an annotated copy of the protocol, and comments that this

…secure[s] Armenia’s tacit support for [Turkey's] longstanding aim of downgrading the Armenian Genocide from a matter of settled history [...] At the same time that Turkey is seeking to gain credit internationally by appearing open to dialogue, its government is enforcing Article 301 and other laws criminalizing even the discussion of the genocide.

Turkey is reportedly open to ‘accepting the verdict’ of such a historical commission — but my guess is that commission will deadlock, with Armenian and many outside historians saying one thing, Turkish ones (though there are honorable exceptions) saying another, and Turkish politicians saying “see? No one can agree.”

The Washington Post reports that Secretary Clinton was in “frequent contact with the two sides in recent weeks“, and President Obama called Armenian president Sarkissian to salute him in advance for his “leadership” in accepting the deal.  While some news reports point to regional and U.S. interest in building an anti-Russian alliance in the Caucasus, others cite simpler, more profitable reasons.  The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall:

International pressure on Turkey and Armenia not to let the chance of a rapprochement slip is intense. Both are vital links in the chain of actual or planned western oil and gas pipelines stretching from central Asia to Europe.

Set that against a mere 1.5 million dead in the first modern genocide, and I suppose it was always clear what Clinton’s BMW drama and Obama’s Oval Office phone calls were going to be about — never mind Obama’s own campaign promise to have the U.S. call the Armenian Genocide by name.

Honduras
The Obama administration has been displaying no such sense of urgency in Latin America’s first coup in years — Roberto Micheletti and his clique’s ousting of rightful Honduran president Manuel Zelaya.  As is well known, Zelaya recently ‘infiltrated’ his own country after his forcible exile, seeking asylum and support in the Brazilian embassy.

Despite strong support from the OAS (Organization of American States) for Zelaya, and even official acknowledgment by the U.S. State Department  that a coup took place, the Obama administration has not taken further concrete steps to put pressure on the Micheletti coup regime — including, at minimum, Secretary of State Clinton’s active efforts to restore an elected leader of an OAS member country to power.

Meanwhile, in Honduras, the coup leaders continue to repress their opposition (often lethally),  have set and lifted curfews, and have claimed the right to curtail freedom of speech to secure their hold on power, and carried out or condoned attacks on independent radio stations.  Now, the standoff at the Brazilian embassy is getting more tense.  Adrienne Pine, who has been monitoring the Honduran media, reports:

Platforms with highly armed sharpshooters installed outside the embassy, using telescopic and infrared targeting systems, just meters away from the windows of the building where the president, his family, and many others are held hostage by the regime.

(Photos are at the link.)  You’d think that would be worth a flurry of cell phone calls.

A Nobel foreign policy?
After the same initial “for what?” reaction everyone else had, I figured that despite my many reservations about Obama, awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize was a decent strategic choice by the Nobel committee.  As the Nobel committee’s press release put it,

The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

I can agree about the nuclear weapons efforts, where Obama has restored nuclear nonproliferation and arms reduction to prominence in U.S. and world foreign policy. That’s important enough that giving him a prize in advance may actually make some sense — maybe this way he’ll stick with this issue the way he sometimes doesn’t with others.  (For more on this, see especially nonproliferation experts Joe Cirincione of Ploughshares, and William Hartung of the New America Foundation.)

Much of the rest of the statement rings hollow, though — especially that last sentence.  But I can fix it with just two words: “when convenient.”

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UPDATE, 10/10: ANCA is running a “Tell the President: Genocide Shouldn’t Pay” email protest campaign against US support for the Turkey-Armenia protocol.  From the message:

The United States should address genocide as a moral imperative, not as a geo-political commodity to be traded or sold to the highest bidder. Sadly, however, that is exactly what has happened. Turkey enlisted the powerful, sustained, and very likely decisive support of our government in its shameless but nonetheless successful effort to compel Armenia into acceptance of a set of humiliating and dangerous concessions.

UPDATE, 10/11: See also “Stop The Protocols” website, created by Armenian American student groups.
UPDATE, 10/14: Naturally, the Washington Post editorializes in favor of the protocols.  Nice line: “The genocide issue — and the refusal of some in the American Armenian community to compromise on it — still threatens to undo the deal.” How unreasonable of “some” in the American Armenian community! One hopes the Post would never urge Jewish groups to compromise on recognition of the Holocaust, even if some groups had the so-called “common sense” to acquiesce to a process even the Post acknowledged could “filibuster” the issue.

Sorry to be away so long. This seems nice in the meantime. Via my friend Valeria Ponte back in California, on her facebook page.

As Van Hollen might write, I’m pleased to report that he makes repeated and positive mention of the “public option” in his remarks, which naturally center on HR 3200, the “American Affordable Health Choices Act.” From the e-mail:

The American Affordable Health Choices Act fulfills the promise of bringing real change to America through two key provisions: giving Americans the choice of a public health option and providing universal coverage to all Americans. [...]

One of the most significant elements of this bill will be the public health option. A public option is essential for creating choice for consumers and more competition for the insurance companies. The top 10 insurance companies have seen their profits increase 430 percent over the last seven years, yet the majority of Americans’ incomes have stayed flat while their insurance premiums have sky rocketed. A public option will keep insurance companies honest and bring health costs down for the American people.

This may or may not be a surprise to close watchers of the health care reform debate, but Van Hollen’s unequivocal emphasis — at least at this point — on the public option was welcome news to me.  Last year during the election he actually went further, endorsing a “single payer,” Medicare for all reform, but hasn’t opined on that since then as far as I know.

In an September 1 interview with Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, this is how Van Hollen handicapped the prospects for the public option:

Right now, you have Senate moderates saying they can’t pass a bill with a public plan and House liberals saying they won’t pass a bill without one. Is health-care reform between a rock and a hard place?

We need to let it play out more. In the House there’s a consensus in support of the public option, and people coming back from their districts continue to support a public option. Then we’ll have to see what the Senate does and where we go from there. As we come back, the White House will have to play a bigger role in this debate.

I wonder how he rates Obama on that score now; that’s somewhat less than a pledge to fight for a public option no matter what.  But given his continued support for a public option — a stance that is presumably in step with other House Democrat leaders — it’s important to support Baucus bill amendments like Jay Rockefeller’s that add the public option to the Senate bill.

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EDIT, 9/25: “Representative,” “(D-MD-8),” and link to the congressional web site added.

Survival of the Kindest, Eric Michael Johnson, SEED Magazine, describing former Enron executive Jeff Skillings’ “rank and yank” management method based on Skillings’ understanding of books like “The Selfish Gene.”  Johnson summarizes the result: “This system of ruthless competition advanced just the type of personalities that one would expect: crazy people.”

With the notable exception of handing over $700 billion to Wall Street last year, the United States Congress is not known for quick, decisive action. [...] The disparity in the treatment of Blackwater et al. and ACORN is part of a larger American problem, what might be called the Inequality of Accountability. We diligently apply the principle of accountability to the poor and the powerless, and the principle of forgiveness to the wealthy and powerful. ”

ACORN and Accountability — Chris Hayes, The Nation

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Fourth Amendment

That’s pretty explicit language.

Senator Al Franken, D-MN, asking Department of Justice official David Kris how the Fourth Amendment can be reconciled with roving wiretaps.  (The Obama Justice Department is seeking reauthorization of PATRIOT Act provisions for such wiretaps.)

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that turning around the huge secret empire built by the National Security State is a hard, perhaps impossible, task. [...] Nonetheless, some of us entertain a fondness for the quaint old Constitution. It may be too late to return to its ideals, but the effort should be made. As Cyrano said, “One doesn’t fight in the hope of winning” (Mais on ne se bat pas dans l’espoir du succès).

Entangled Giant — Garry Wills, The New York Review of Books

“The terrorist mastermind had slipped through their fingers before, and American forces were not about to let it happen again.  At one point the previous year, they had actually arrested him but, not realizing who he was, had let him go.  Unable to track him down now, they managed instead to locate and detain his wife…”

Thus begins the introduction to “Law and the Long War,” Benjamin Wittes’ book length polemic for new laws in new times.  The story continues with the wife being told her sons would be flown to their likely deaths in a hostile country unless she gives up her husband, which she does.  Wittes uses the case to introduce his theme:

“In the years since September 11, 2001, a gulf has opened up between the views of elites, mostly but far from exclusively liberals, and majority opinion on such questions of presidential power as detention, surveillance, interrogation, and trial of suspected terrorists. … Public opinion has tended to regard these issues pragmatically — tolerating tough measures and contemplating with relative equanimity the deprivation of certain rights to terrorist suspects that are nonnegotiable in a civilian context…”

Not so the “academy, the press, and the human rights world,” beguiled by moral absolutes and transfixed by the fear of executive power.  They’re out of luck now, though, because Wittes is about to spring his trap:

But let me now confess that I have adjusted somewhat the facts of my opening anecdote… The plane was really a train; the country was Germany; the soldiers were British, not American; the year was 1946. And the high-value detainee was no Al Qaeda figure, not even a figure who posed a great prospective danger, but one of the great mass murderers of all time: Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz.  [...]

If the tactic — and the absence of any judicial review of its use — does not suddenly seem more defensible … [then my] purpose in this book is to shake somewhat the certainty of your nonconsequentialism and, in particular, your faith in judges as the essential check on such executive behavior.  I share neither your certainty nor your faith and can only thank God that neither did the British soldiers who captured Rudolf Hoess.

Now I certainly stipulate that Rudolf Hoess was a very, very, very bad and odious man who deserved to be arrested, tried, and punished.  But I still wonder if this isn’t a very odd opening anecdote for Wittes to choose.

For, as Wittes even acknowledges, Hoess was “not even a figure who posed a great prospective danger.” The war was over, the Holocaust was over; little remained to be prevented.  This might not seem a great difficulty - the sheer scale of Hoess’s crimes demanded that justice be done and punishment meted out.  But it is — even for Wittes; in fact, especially for him.

That’s because one of Wittes’ chief assertions in the introduction (and throughout the rest of the book) is that in wartime “legal rules are inevitably less absolute, less truly legal, in this context than, for example, in the domestic civilian context” – and that “[d]iscerning the reason requires no great imagination: The stakes are too high for anything else. [...] … even the worst individual crimes represent manageable horrors from a societywide point of view.  Terrorism, by contrast, involves horrors on an altogether different scale.  And international conflict at its core is about avoiding harms — particularly catastrophic harms — prospectively, not retroactively accounting for them.” (p. 9-10)

Yet “avoiding harms prospectively” is precisely not what Wittes’ Hoess example was about; again, the harm was done, the war was over.  And this not just a debating point: while Wittes advocates what he calls “preemptive” policy explicitly premised on avoiding prospective catastrophic harm, his very first example widens his approval to other “preemptions” of the law — even as he ignores the obvious retort that Hoess might well have been caught by more acceptable means the next day or the day after that.  (Indeed, he might have been caught the day before; as Wittes relates, Hoess had already been arrested once but wasn’t recognized for who he was.)

This, in turn, leads to a partial response to Wittes’ other concern: what he sees as the legislative branch’s abdication of its responsibilities, a political vacuum then filled by the judicial branch’s overweening, misguided efforts to adjudicate issues that are properly none of its business.  To be sure, Wittes frames this in what becomes his familiar “neither/nor,” balancing style: by themselves, “[n]either unilateral rule making on the part of the president nor judicial review of whatever rules he makes up can mold a stable long-term architecture for a war that defies all of the usual norms of war.”

Yet imagine that some legal program were enacted entirely with a view to meeting Wittes’ stated concerns, i.e., resulting in laws granting the President powers to prospectively avoid defined harms in defined and legal ways.  We would nevertheless sometimes be faced with hard legal questions — and given the problems mentioned above, his Hoess case might be one of them.  So the courts would still be called on to interpret the law.

The point is simply that there will always be “chalk lines” — sometimes vague ones, sometimes not — separating the legal playing field from a world deemed out of bounds by a country’s constitution, traditions, and legislative judgment. And deciding when to signal “out of bounds” will always be the judicial branch’s job — whether or not the laws in place at any given moment have Wittes’ seal of approval.

My comments so far have been somewhat critical; I’ll end more favorably, in that I agree very much with Wittes that Congress has all too often been missing in action in the debates around habeas corpus, surveillance, and other civil liberties during this “long war.”  I suspect I’ll disagree in part about why, and about what it should do once (or if) it more vigorously joins that debate.  But I agree that clarifications of executive powers are sorely needed, and Wittes’ book does a service in motivating that need, and ably presenting at least one side of a complex debate.

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NOTE: This is part of a series on “Law and the Long War,” in collaboration with “The Talking Dog.” — PRIOR - HOME - NEXT .
UPDATE, 9/23: Talking Dog’s post about the introduction.