Libyan Attack May Represent a Shift in Global Power

There is good news for internationalists in the recent coalition attacks on Libya.  The assault, led by France, with vigorous support from Britain and sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council, provides an example of the muscular application of the principle of collective security upon which the United Nations was founded.

If only the international community had mustered the same tenacity in Rwanda in 1995 or in the Sudan in this decade, then perhaps millions of innocent Africans would be alive today.

The news is not quite as good for the projection of American power.  There is no doubt that Barack Obama’s hesitancy and lack of resolve in defending those struggling for  freedom will be noted – by America’s foes and allies alike.  By adopting a multilateral approach to  addressing a threat to national security, he has begun the outsourcing of American foreign policy.

And in case there are doubts, a Ghaddafi victory does represent a threat to national security.  It offers challenges to the supply of U.S. oil; it threatens the war on terror and it presages a cycle of revenge which was exemplified 25 years ago with the downing of U.S. Air 109 over Lockerbie in Scotland.

We will learn soon enough what the outsourcing of American policy will mean for the United States’ standing in the world. The continuing failure of the same policy of multilateralism in its attempt to prevent Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons has only increased that country’s determination to pursue policies inimical to U.S.national security.  No one should count on the Libyan excursion acting as a precursor to an invasion of Iran.  There is no comparison in terms of international consensus.

Rather, the decision of the Obama Administration to follow rather than lead will send a message to the mullahs that they indeed have very little to fear at all from a United States whose own penchant for collective action and consistent dithering will compromise any serious efforts to permanently strangle the Iranian menace.

Peter King’s Valuable Investigations

The new Chairman of Homeland Security, Peter King, has begun an overdue investigation into radicalization among America’s Muslims. For years, reporters, journalists and authors have been warning us about the increasing dangers we face from a home-grown jihad that is both nurtured and protected by an overweening political correctness which has brooked no opposition. Yet investigators such as Steve Emerson ( The Investigative Project); Robert Spencer ( JIHAD WATCH) and David Gaubatz ( author of Muslim Mafia) have made the case over and over again that there are some very serious problems emanating from the Muslim community in this country which go largely unaddressed because of fears of provoking charges of religious intolerance. Finally this ridiculous taboo has been jettisoned and our political leaders are beginning to act like grown ups who recognize they are faced with a serious internal dilemma that is not going to be dealt with by the expression of pieties about multicultural sensitivities.

The escalation of Islamic inspired attacks on American soil since 9/11( with over 30 attacks committed or foiled in the intervening ten years) should have been cause enough for several such inquiries.

Movies such as The Third Jihad and Homegrown Terrorism have given us plenty of cause for thought. Peter King is translating that thought now into action. Lets hope that political correctness does not inhibit further development of these important investigations into the problems lurking within our Muslim communities.

 

Stuxnet the Invincible

Yesterday”s New York Times finally broke the story  of 2010.   The gravest threat to world peace since the fall of the Soviet Union has been temporarily vanquished by a….. wait for it…… computer virus.  The Stuxnet virus finally gained its rightful place in the pantheon of world peace activists when the Times spotlighted its extraordinary success in reversing the momentum of the Iranian nuclear program by rendering many of its main computers inoperable and likely obsolete.   As a related story in the The Telegraph details, Russian scientists  working in the Nantaz facility, have warned  the Kremlin that they could be facing “another Chernobyl” if they are forced to comply with Iran’s tight deadline to activate the complex this summer.

The real news broken by the Times story of course is that the Stuxnet virus, the most sophisticated cyber weapon ever witnessed on earth, was more than likely created in Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility.   That is not really news to those of us who have for years admired and appreciated Israel’s extraordinary technological prowess;  but it might be news to a stubbornly ungrateful world that has been spared, at least for the moment, the economic catastrophe that might have ensued if Israel had been forced to take military action against Iran.

So while world leaders may be breathing a bit easier tonight, perhaps they ought to be paying a little more attention to  some of these  basic realities:  The West’s  security interests are being safeguarded by a tiny country the size of New Jersey; that the small country is on the very front lines of a war that it still largely refuses to either name or recognize; that peace is unlikely to come to the Middle East  – or to the rest of the world for that matter – until the scourge of the West, based in Tehran, is completely defeated and the  worldwide religious movement it leads is forced into ignominious retreat.

While there are no guarantees of anything  in this world,  it is a safer bet than most that Israel’s powerful technological capabilities and the tremendous ingenuity of its scientists, offers a key weapon in determining who will  ultimately win the war of civilizations in which we are all presently engaged.

An Acknowledgement of Evil

President Barack Obama made an eloquent appeal in Tucson yesterday for civility and communal healing following the horrific shooting in that city last Saturday. One of the more interesting things he said was the following:

” Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world and terrible things happen that defy human understanding”

It is notable that this is actually the second time, to my knowledge, that Obama during his presidency  has used the word evil.  The first was in the delivery of his Nobel acceptance speech in December, 2009.   There he said:

‘” I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

At the time I saw it as a signal of his recognition of certain realities in life and his willingness to identify the existence of absolute moral standards.  Unfortunately the subsequent twelve months did little to buttress that belief.

His comments in Tuscon, which underscored an apparent belief that Jared Lee Loughner’s actions were the result of a manifest evil which had gripped the young man – and not only a consequence of mental illness, political extremism or social alienation, is evidence ( if thin) of  a  moral maturity that has noticeably lacking in this President.  Too many in his own party and on the left are willing to see gray areas where the evidence suggests stark black and white distinctions.  This is of course most relevant to the seething hatred poised against the United States from Islam and the Arabic world.  We should never ignore that the evil which drove 19 young men to fly planes into the Twin Towers 10 years ago is of the same character which made Jared  Loughner pull the trigger over and over again in Tucson on Saturday afternoon.

Lets hope this president indeed continues to face the world as it is and grasp that, as he states in his own words, ” evil really does exist in the world”  and that he, of all people, cannot stand idle in the face of it.

Daily Blurb #5

Is China Preparing For War With the United States?

Reports that China has developed the prototype of a stealth bomber is getting people in our Defense establishment hot under the collar – and for good reason.  While China has never approached anything near parity with the U.S. in military capacity, the fact that it is now developing its own military technology, sometimes well in advance of the United States, is certainly cause for concern.  There is of course an argument that the trade ties between the United States and the Republic of China and the mutually assured destruction of both economies should war erupt, would prevent a military confrontation.  But this is  no longer convincing.  One just has to read the the books of Niall Ferguson to understand how nations quickly abandon their own better economic instincts when it comes to wars of aggrandisement.

And China’s ambitions in the Western Pacific are very much about self-aggrandisment.  In August, in its annual report to Congress,  the U.S. Department of Defense claimed that China was ramping up investment in an array of areas including nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, submarines, aircraft carriers and cyber warfare. The military report said China was “already looking at contingencies beyond Taiwan” including through a longstanding project to build a far-reaching missile that could potentially strike US carriers deep in the Pacific.

It should come as little surprise.  The revitalization of the Middle Kingdom of the  Ming and Qing dynasties, wherein China reduced all the nations surrounding it to vassal states, is not merely a part of Chinese folklore, but a central tenet of  political discourse and national business strategy.  Is war likely tomorrow, or next year or even in ten years?  Perhaps not.  But we would be foolish to believe that it could never happen or that expenditures in military technology represent no threat to the global  supremacy of the U.S. military.

Obama’s Day of Reckoning Over Settlements

In a few days the Obama Administration will be tested on exactly how much of an obstacle it believes the 120 settlements in Samaria and Judea represent to the peace process.  This month, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is taking his campaign to the UN Security Council, where the Palestinians will introduce a draft resolution that would declare Israeli “settlements” in Jerusalem to be “illegal.” The draft demands a halt to all construction in the eastern half of Israel’s capital city.   The Palestinians understand exactly what this means:   “We drafted it using the same words that Secretary Clinton is using and so we don’t see why the U.S. would veto it,” Abbas said.

The Obama Administration, as of today, stands equivocal on how it intends to address this flagrant attack on the notion of a negotiated settlement. On December 29, Mark C. Toner, the State Department spokesman had this to say on the matter at a press conference in Foggy Bottom:

” QUESTION: Hi, Mark. I’m wondering about this report of the draft resolution that may go before the UN Security Council on – by supporters of Palestinians condemning the Israeli settlements. What would the U.S. response be to that?

MR. TONER: Well, every U.S. Administration has been for decades has been clear on this. We don’t accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity, and in fact, we believe continued expansion is corrosive to peace efforts, as well as to Israel’s future. We believe, fundamentally, that direct negotiations are the only path through which the parties will ultimately reach the framework agreement that is our goal, our mutual goal. And final status issues can only be resolved through negotiations between the parties and not by recourse to the UN Security Council, so we’ve consistently opposed any attempt to take these kinds of issues to the Council, because we believe that these kinds of efforts don’t move us any closer to our goal, which is of two states living side by side in peace and security.

QUESTION: Would the U.S. go so far as to use its veto power?

MR. TONER: Again, it’s a hypothetical at this point, Cami, but I think I made our position pretty clear. Any more questions?

This has never been a “hypothetical” for any other U.S. Administration and the government’s position on the matter is far from clear.   One-sided U.N. resolutions against Israel have ALWAYS been vetoed by the U.S. at the United Nations.   The failure of the Obama Administration to signal its intentions regarding such a draft resolution is truly a first and a worrying development.

Pundits in Washington and New York are now speculating about what any abstention on the part of the United States could mean for  Israel and the Middle East.  Some have suggested that it will confirm what many for some time have considered the truth – that the Obama Administration’s intends to become  the first openly hostile Administration to the Jewish state.  I would go further.  It would open the gates to the next Middle East war, encouraging Israel’s enemies to believe that it has been abandoned by its main diplomatic champion and that open season has been declared.

The Administration’s insistence on settlement freezes as preconditions to negotiations has proven rash as the Palestinians and their Arab allies have used it to craftily drive a wedge between Israel and its American ally.  If Obama wants to prove he cares more about peace in the Middle East than he does about punishing Israel for its settlement policies, then he must immediately signal to the Arab world that his country will not stand idly by while Israel is made the fall guy for his Administration’s own diplomatic failures and mistakes.   That would be the mature and responsible approach.  But I wouldn’t count on it.

Meet Fred Singer

On Wednesday night , January 5 in Bel Air,  AFA presented  Fred Singer, the renown and ebullient climatologist who has spent the past 30 years debunking anthropogenic global warming and transforming skepticism on that subject into a high art.   Singer’s book Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years and the unmatched research from his own organization, the Nongovernmental International  Panel on Climate Change ( NIPCC) which produced the 850 page study  Climate Change Reconsidered, form the basis of  the scientific response to the deeply flawed and highly politicized work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations agency whose four reports over the past 19 years have been used to sound the clarion call for cutting global carbon emissions.

Singer, an avuncular and engaging speaker with a stentorian voice, described how the global warming debate gained world wide traction as environmentalists came to dominate world forums on issues of economic development.   Whereas he believes there is abundant evidence for increases in world temperatures over the past 150 years,  he stated that the evidence that man has substantially contributed to that warming is still very much in contention and should be debated.  The more likely explanation, he said, is that we are now in the midst of a global warming cycle that repeats every 400 or so years and has much more to do with solar activity than with anything humans do or don’t do on Earth.

It was a powerful presentation, delivered  with a wry sense of humor and a warmth that belied  Dr. Singer’s reputation as a curmudgeon.  I highly recommend Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years and hope to bring Dr. Singer back  to Los Angeles in June for our next summer conference Big Footprint: Is Green the New Tyranny?

Can Iran Be Defeated Without Firing a Shot?

In the past several weeks a computer virus known as the Stuxnet worm has invaded computer systems around the world, creating havoc and shutting down important industrial facilities in many locations.

According to a geotagging system developed by the U.S. based Symantec, 58.8 per cent of infections were in Iran, 18.2 per cent in Indonesia, 8.3 per cent in India, 2.6 per cent in Azerbaijan and 1.6 per cent in the US..

Computer viruses, worms and trojans have until now mainly infected PCs or the servers that keep e-businesses running. They may delete key system files or documents, or perhaps prevent website access, but they do not threaten life and limb.

The Stuxnet worm is different. It is the first piece of malware so far able to break into the types of computer that control machinery at the heart of industry, allowing an attacker to assume control of critical systems like pumps, motors, alarms and valves in an industrial plant.

Where does such a virus originate? Computer security experts seem to agree that the virus could only have been developed in a country with a extremely sophisticated high tech infrastructure and almost certainly with government assistance.

That certainly would implicate high tech giants such as Israel or the United States.

If Israel or the U.S. has indeed been involved in these attacks, then it is really the first salvo in the War of Iran. The attempt to destroy the infrastructure of a country, may in act represent a new front in the history of armed conflict.

But if you think that it can’t work the other way, then you might want to consider this: In June, 2010, the United States recognized that in fact it is as much at risk from a cyber-attack that could incapacitate its own electrical infrastructure in a report from the Department of Defense identified a scenario in which the entire defense infrastructure of the country  could be shut down. In response, a bill has been drafted which would give the President of the United States absolute power to shut down the Internet in the event of a massive cyber-attack which threatened the nation.

Libertarians are naturally up in arms about this and have declared it such an extension of executive power that it would lead to a level of authoritarianism that could change the nature of the presidency itself.

This reaction might be somewhat chastened by the advent of the Stuxnet worm. Because if countries can develop viruses to incapacitate the defense infrastructure of any given country, the threat may indeed look something comparable to a nuclear attack, a contingency over which the President does and certainly should have full authority, as commander-in -chief, to thwart.

Whatever the answer to this important question, the success of the Stuxnet worm raises potentially devastating consequences for high tech nations. We might indeed be able to defeat Iran without firing a shot, but without the proper cyber-shields, the duel might end in our own incapacitation – leading to the very self destruction we are seeking to avoid.

Backtracking on the Mexican Drug War

Just when it looked as though the Obama Administration had finally recognized the seriousness of the threat to  national security represented by the continuing Mexican Drug War, hopes once again faded.    Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a major foreign policy speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington D.C. in which she squarely addressed the Mexican drug war:

” We face an increasing threat from a well-organized network, drug-trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency, in Mexico and in Central America. ..And these drug cartels are now showing more and more indices of insurgency — you know, all of a sudden car bombs show up, which weren’t there before. So it’s becoming — it’s looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago.”

The speech caused an uproar in Mexico since it appeared that Clinton was criticizing the Mexican government itself.   No sooner did Calderon  respond with umbrage than Barack Obama issued a retraction and clarification, insisting that Mexico is a great country, with a flourishing economy and proud democratic tradition.

Opportunity lost.   What Clinton had said was the truth – that the country is a mess and that the chaos south of  the border presents a very real threat to U.S.  national security.

I have written extensively of my fears in this regard  in my pieces When the Dam Breaks , Plugging Up the Dam and more recently The Mexico War of Survival and have felt for nearly two years that U.S. military intervention will almost certainly become necessary within a relatively short time.  Obama’s clarification of Clinton’s remarks, while strengthening the U.S. commitment to assisting the Calderon government with intelligence and advisers, falls short of what is really required at this time – joint strategic  planning between the U.S. and Mexican military with the tacit acknowledgment that sooner or later the U.S. will need to commit special forces to the region.

China’s Military Build Up Must Be Watched

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on  August 18, expatriate Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali amplified her charge that the United States was truly engaged in a clash of civilizations:

“The West is declining in relative power, Islam is exploding demographically, and Asian civilizations—especially China—are economically ascendant……………The West’s universalist pretensions are increasingly bringing it into conflict with the other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China. Thus the survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations.”

The identification of China may have  surprised many.  After all, the United States is China’s most important trading partner and China owns, according to the lastest reports, nearly 40% of American debt.  The two nations , it is argued, are wrapped in a symbiotic relationship where  armed conflict would be unthinkable.

But Hirsi Ali , without going into extensive analysis, was touching  on an important development which is all but ignored by the U.S. Government.  The Chinese are almost certainly preparing for an eventual military conflict with the United States.

In August, in its annual report to Congress,  the U.S. Department of Defense claimed that China was ramping up investment in an array of areas including nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, submarines aircraft carriers and cyber warfare. The military report said China was “already looking at contingencies beyond Taiwan” including through a longstanding project to build a far-reaching missile that could potentially strike US carriers deep in the Pacific.

“Current trends in China’s military capabilities are a major factor in changing East Asian military balances and could provide China with a force capable of conducting a range of military operations in Asia well beyond Taiwan” it said.

“China’s military doctrine has traditionally emphasized the ability to strike within an area extending to Japan’s  Okinawa Island chain and throughout the South China Sea east of Vietnam,” the report said.

But Chinese strategists are now looking to expand their reach further to be able to hit targets as far away as Guam including much of mainland Japan and the Philippines it said.

Andrew Krepinevich , the president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments wrote in Friday’s Wall Street Journal:

” China’s goal is to stop the United States from protecting its long standing interests in the region – and to draw Washington’s democratic allies and partners ( such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) into its orbit.”

In the piece, he claims that the Chinese military has identified U.S.’ reliance on satellites and the Internet to monitor incoming attacks as its Achilles Heel.   The successful testing of a Chinese  anti-satellite missile in 2007   and the prospective use of lasers to blind satellites, presents an extremely discomfiting scenario for the United States.

The imperial ambitions of China to dominate its region should not come as any historical surprise.   There has  been a long standing Chinese view of itself as the center of  Asia and that those nations that surround it should exist as either vassal or tributary states.  In fact, China could remind its Asian neighbors of the once powerful tributary system of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, when the “Middle Kingdom” was in fact at the center of an Asian system of trade, cultural eminence and respect.  Though Beijing may have no aspirations of re-creating such a system, this “Middle Kingdom” mentality cannot be totally neglected today.

The Obama Administration, much like the Bush Administration before it, remains blissfully unaware of the Chinese military build up or of how, in any potential conflict breaking out over Taiwan or South Korea, U.S. forces in the Pacific could become neutralized within minutes.

China’s astonishing  economic development, its bustling metropolises and embrace of  the West in robust trade, should not blind us to the fact that the Chinese do not share the same civilizational values as ourselves, nor are they necessarily willing to play ball on issues of global concern – particularly when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program or even matters as hot button as global warming.

That is because to the Chinese mind,  the Middle Kingdom is not a quaint historical anecdote, consigned to a storied past, but an ever present reality in the thinking of many modern Chinese political  leaders and businessmen. It  dictates a view of China as the cynosure of  an Asian ascendancy with a concomitant indifference to Western leaders’ universalist ideals.   We would be foolish to ignore this kind of thinking and to believe so implicitly in Chinese professed good intentions.

Remembering Bush’s “Gulag” and Policies of Torture

The Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten found an appropriate way to commemorate the ninth anniversary of 9/11 on Saturday.  In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, titled A Post- 9/11 Betrayal Endures, Rutten wasted little time in inveighing against the actual murderers of 3,000 Americans and the heinous ideology that brought about their deaths on that clear September morning.

Instead Rutten filled the space identifying the true villains of the 9/11 era -  the Bush Administration with its establishment of the Guantanomo “Gulag” and its sanctioning of policies of torture.

“  The story of how the Bush- Cheney administration rushed to make torture an instrument of national policy in its ” war on terror” and how it created an international gulag in which to abuse prisoners is well known.,  Less remarked on  – for reasons that do nobody credit – is the fact that President Obama and his administration have embraced the secrecy and usurpations of power that made possible the Bush- Cheney betrayal of American values.”

It is  convenient, I suppose, for a mudslinger such as  Rutten to reach for  the nearest accessible clump of vitriol and fling it for all its worth at Bush’s historical record.  Leftists such as this old curmudgeon still believe that there is mileage to be pumped out of flaying the previous Administration, certain it will expiate the country of its lingering sins.

I wonder if he has ever considered that the succeeding Obama Administration kept much of the Bush anti- terror campaign in place because it found that not only was it legal,  but also extraordinarily effective.

The fact is that the CIA interrogation program at Guantanomo did not inflict torture by any reasonable standard  – whether that of the Geneva Convention, the guidelines set by the European Court of Human Rights or American Law.   The only instance in which torture, as it is defined internationally, could possibly be said to have taken place was in the water boarding of three high level al Qaeda operatives.

But water boarding in itself is not illegal under American law.  The report of the CIA Inspector General found that ” on 29 July 2003 , the Agency secured Department of Justice concurrence on water boarding.” The interrogators checked to see that it was legal – and it was.  The Obama Administration has not brought any prosecutions against either the Department of Justice officials who approved the water boarding, nor against those CIA agents who administered it, precisely because they know that no case against them could succeed in any American court of law.

We can also not ignore that the water boarding  of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, produced such a rich trove of intelligence that it is rightfully credited as having averted the next 9/11.   By the time his interrogators had finished with him, Mohammed was spilling the beans, without much prompting from his interlocutors, on al Qaeda’s operational structure, its financing,  its communications and its logistics  – giving rise, in the process, to over 6,000 intelligence reports.

He identified al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helped intelligence officers make sense of documents and travel records seized in terrorist raids.   This invaluable information was used by British officials in August, 2006 to interdict a plot of  two dozen terrorists to blow up seven trans-Atlantic flights , scheduled to depart Heathrow within hours of each other.

And what of Guantonomo itself ?  Can it really be compared to a Gulag -  the Soviet penal labor camp system that has become historically synonymous with the very concept of Hell ?

Well lets see:   Between 1929 and 1953  more than 14 million people passed through the Gulag with a further 6 to 7 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the USSR.  According to a 1993 study of  archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953. More complete data puts the death toll for this same time period at 1,258,537, with an estimated 1.6 million casualties from 1929 to 1953.  These estimates exclude those who died shortly after their release but whose death resulted from the harsh treatment in the camps, which was a common practice.  The total population of the camps varied from 510,307 (in 1934) to 1,727,970 (in 1953).

Although conditions varied from camp to camp and place to place, the large majority of prisoners at most times faced meagre food rations, inadequate clothing, overcrowding, poorly insulated housing, poor hygiene, and inadequate health care. The overwhelming majority of prisoners were compelled to perform harsh physical labor. In most periods and economic branches, the degree of mechanization of work processes was significantly lower than in the civilian industry: tools were often primitive and machinery, if existent, short in supply. Officially established work hours were in most periods longer and days off were fewer than for civilian workers.  Often official work time regulations were extended by local camp administrators.

This is how Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archepeligo described his camp:

“Philosophers, psychologists, doctors, writers could have observed in our camps more than in anywhere else in all the versatility and in full details the specific process of narrowing of man’s mental and intellectual horizon, decline of a man to the level of an animal and his process of dying alive.”

This , on the other hand, is how  Guantanomo was described by Judy Reiss, whose son Joshua was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, described the detention facility.  Reiss had opposed the Iraq War and was appalled by stories of abuse at Guantanomo:

” I expected it to look like a broken down prison, like I had heard in the news.  But let me tell you, its the Guantanomo Bay Resort and Spa.   If they even have a pimple, they will fly a dermatologists down to make sure its not cancer.  They can stop the court proceedings if they need to pray.  They eat a more varied and selective diet than either you or I.”

Indeed, they do. According to Marc A. Thiessen, author of  Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe, at one time the military spent $125,000 on baklava to feed the prisoners on each night of Ramadan.  The chef in charge of catering showed Thiessen how she prepared exotic Middle Eastern meals according to the Middle East standard of halal.  Each meal is prepared in a variety of ways to satisfy the dietary restrictions of the inmates – ” regular meal”, soft meal”, ” high fiber meal,” vegetarian meal” , vegetarian meal with fish”  and ” bland meal”.  One nurse told Thiessen that  “the biggest problem the terrorists face is from excessive consumption of food on their 6,500 calories per day diet.”

To stay in shape and avoid this ” Gitmo gut,” the prisoners have access to elliptical trainers. They can view  satellite television, with access to al -Jazeera and Arabic news and sports channels.   They receive language and art classes – and handheld video games in order to help them pass the time.

An independent review by Navy Inspector General Admiral Albert T. Church III  found that:

” Detainees wee more likely to suffer injury from playing soccer or volleyball during recreation periods than from interactions with interrogators or guards.  Almost without exception, therefore, GTMO detainers have been treated humanely.”

Why is none of this information more popularly known?   Why does  ” Gitmo” still maintain  such a hold  on the national consciousness as a place where American values were betrayed – as indelibly imprinted as the attacks of 9/ 11 themselves.

Clearly there is still much political juice to be squeezed from the indictment and even today, as Rutten so ably demonstrates, it makes good copy.

One can only wonder what the reaction of readers  would have been in the decade following the attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941, that the only thing a commentator could recall was how unlawfully we treated the men responsible for the attack.

But those who still remember that it was not the U.S. Government that sent 19 young men on planes on that September morning to kill thousands of innocent Americans, but Islamists driven by a deep hatred for our values and ideals, will regard journalists such as Rutten for what they are -malcontents, more committed to nursing a  sense of grievance against the United States ( of whatever administration) and identifying Americans’  “malevolent impulses”,  than true pride and gratitude for the achievements of its government over nine difficult  years in keeping Americans safe.

The Press and “Matters of Public Interest”

Give the New York Times at least a little credit for editorial discretion.

Last week, in a note to its readers accompanying the release of the first installment of nearly 90,000 classified documents, it claimed that it had ” taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests.”

Well thank goodness we have the editorial board of the New York Times around to make critical judgements for us on issues of  national security.

By now everyone knows that the paper, alongside seven other international newspapers, was the recipent of documents from the website known as WikiLeaks, which specializes in obtaining classified information that the government does not want made public.  The documents, in this case,  offer information about the U.S. war in Afghanistan which purportedly illuminate the U.S. government’s  military planning and decision making processes over a five year period between 2005-09.

The New York Times justified the release of the documents by asserting that  ” There are times when the information is of significant public interest,  and this is one of those times.”

By what authority does the paper gauge “matters of public interest? ”

And who, we should all wonder, made the editorial board of the New York Times the arbiter of what is or what is not in the ambit of this country’s national security interests?

Those are questions the News York Times and other national newspapers rarely answer with any precision, if at all.  Rather, their conduct over the past decade has demonstrated a wilful contempt of  the U.S.government’s stated view of national security interests and a repeated failure to accede to the demands of successive administrations to keep national security materials well under wraps.

On December 16, 2005, Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, experienced  investigative reporters at the Times, blew open the NSA wiretapping scheme, under the same justification of public interest.   They followed that performance with  a report on June 23, 2006  focusing on the disclosure of the government’s SWIFT program -  an international effort, led by the United States, designed to monitor the financial transactions of terrorist organizations. 

But things are not always as they seem at the New York Times.

As to the first incident, commentator Gabriel Schoenfeld in Necessary Secrets: National Security, The Media and the Rule of Law ably demonstrates that it was neither “matters of public interest”  nor concerns for individual privacy that stood as the prime motivations for the Times to publish Lichtblau and Blau’s original story on the NSA.  It was, rather, a determination not to be scooped by its own reporters who were both writing books at the time on the Bush Administration’s anti-terror campaign.  The eventual publication of those books  – Lichtblau’s Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice  and Risen’s State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration  soon revealed not a balanced examination of the efficacy of the Bush Administration’s counter terrorism campaign but a vitriolic contempt for the Bush Administration itself and a ruthless demonization – and throughly prejudiced – attack on its counter-terrorism measures. It cast into significant doubt the reasons for the exposure of the scheme.

As for the SWIFT program revelations, no legitimate reason was ever offered by the New York Times for the necessity of disclosing the program. In fact in a letter to readers the paper’s editor, Bill Keller, admitted that ” no serious abuses of privacy had been identified.” Rather, he stated, the article’s publication was a means of protecting the public against only potential violations by the Bush Administration:

  ” We remain convinced,”  he wrote, ” that the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest “

In other words, the editor of the foremost and arguably the most influential newspaper in the country, believes that it is incumbent on journalists such as himself to determine ” matters of public interest ” that could have a  potential  bearing on the security of U.S.citizens.

But who elected or appointed such men to make these kind of decisions for us?   Who gave sanction to these self appointed tribunes to wrest from our elected leaders and our military personnel ( men and women, after all, in whom we repose our trust and confidence by fiat, to protect us) the authority to pass judgement on vital issues of national security? 

The answer, of course,  is no one.   The press simply deigns to itself such a right, even if the U.S. Constitution (through the First Amendment)  remains silent on the issue and abundant legislation ( including the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Comint Act of 1950 – both of which have sections which expressly focus on the published disclosure of classified  information)  and more than 200 years of court decisions have repeatedly stymied the release of documents which the government regards as having a bearing on public safety.

Such editorial presumption was illustrated by Keller in his June 23, 2006 letter:

” And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.”

He is certainly not alone in considering the enshrined principle of freedom of the press as a blank check given to an unelected body of self appointed potentates to pass judgement on what is and what is not safe for us to know.

On June 27, 2006, Dan Baquet, the then editor of the Los Angeles Times, in justifying his own paper’s publication of the SWIFT program’s details, offered this rather revealing window on press arrogance:

” We (also) have an obligation to cover the government, with its tremendous power, and to offer information about its activities so citizens can make their own decisions. That’s the role of the press in our democracy. The founders of the nation actually gave us that role, and instructed us to follow it, no matter the cost.”

No matter the cost?   I wonder if  Baquet had actually read the debates  on the  drafting of the First Amendment?  He might be surprised to learn that the  recorded discussion in the House of Representatives in 1789 on Madison’s first draft of the Amendment  is rather unhelpful in gauging the ’ Founders’ intentions’ and that there is no recorded debate at all on the issue in the Senate.   I wonder if he has read the vast body of jurisprudence since that time which makes it clear that there are absolute limits on the press’ supposed right to disclose classified materials to the public – particularly during war time.

What he might also discover is that there is certainly no fundamental right to reveal everything there is to know about the workings of counter-espionage and counter-terrorism in this country - even where it concerns protecting against the potential  for the abuse of privacy rights.

If the press wants to claim that its right to virtually legislate on national security issues is absolute, then surely the public has a similar right to demand from it the exact standards and policies by which it seeks to frame these decisions.  It is simply not enough for editors such as Keller and Baquet to claim arbitrary authority.   If the United States Congress and our judiciary have spent 220 years debating First Amendment rights, then why isn’t it appropriate for our self appointed fourth tier of government to be doing exactly the same thing? 

Maybe it is time for the press to examine, within itself and together with its reading public, the exact framework for the publication of classified documents whose disclosure could mean life or death for thousands of U.S. citizens.

Only then will we have a much more exact understanding of what the press actually means when it claims that it is taking action in ” matters of public interest “ and will be held accountable when it abuses its own standards.  And perhaps then American citizens, in whose service the press claims to be acting, will find a way to let our newspapermen know whether it considers those standards to be either admirably sustainable or else sadly deficient.