OP-ED: “LIMITED” WAR IN SYRIA – REALLY? by John P. Flannery

Syrian dead – from nerve gas?

Right now we have elected officials in the U.S. Congress from both parties denouncing any military involvement in Syria.  

The public is against us getting involved in this brutal civil war.

President Barack Obama, however, wants to travel a different road.

The President’s avowed reason to force a “limited” aerial attack against Syria, notwithstanding the congressional and public resistance, is because the Syrian government in a civil war that has tallied more than 100,000 dead has recently used chemical weapons killing a thousand or more innocent women and children.

President Obama’s advisers believe the President shall suffer “a credibility gap” if he doesn’t act, to “punish” Syria for using chemical weapons since the President told Syria a year ago, “not to do it – or else.” 

There is no international treaty or law against killing women and children in war.

But we say we care if it happens with chemical weapons.

We have no problem if either side in Syria blows up women and children with bombs and bullets.

If the Syrian government uses chemical weapons, however, we are prepared to advantage the insurgent forces against the incumbent Syrian government in a civil war.

We have a different “credibility gap” on this score given that the United States lodged no objection, and made no aerial attacks, when Saddam Hussein used nerve gas (sarin) and mustard gas against Iran in the 1980s. 

Hussein unleashed mustard gas in Halabja, Iraq against Kurdish rebels toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war, killing 5,000 civilians.

The United States didn’t then invoke the Geneva protocol of 1925 that prohibited the use of nerve gas and deadly agents.

We are also plainly indifferent to how hypocritical it looks when we accuse others of using nerve gas and stockpile this weapon ourselves.

Some pundits and political officials are encouraged that the President asked Congress to weigh in on whether we should attack Syria or not.

Congress in my lifetime has rarely resisted any act of aggression that any President ever proposed.  It will be remarkable if they resist this one.

Whatever the soft fleshy backbone of Congress, the President should erase his impetuous challenge of about a year ago, warning Syria not to cross a line and use chemical weapons.

The President must know that a military punch in Syria's face shall likely change nothing for the better, is bound to make matters worse, and may have the disastrous effect of convincing the world leaders of nation-states including Iran that our “limited” attack is not so limited and is the opening salvo in a regional or world war.  

Incidentally, we once advertised Iraq as a “limited” war.  That Iraq was hardly “limited” disfavors the likelihood we can be believed that this proposed Syrian attack shall be “limited.”

Is it our purpose to demonstrate that the United States can commit terrorism on a grander scale than anyone else in this dysfunctional school yard?

Are we really going to act first, and think about the consequences afterwards?  

There appears to be a sinister microbe that infects every inhabitant of the White House, without regard to party or whatever threshold ideology they claim to hold when they cross over into the oval office.  This infection prompts our Presidents to war because the extraordinary power as commander in chief is the one power that coequal branches can hardly restrain. 

If President Obama doesn't dial back his bellicose threats for a “limited” assault, and do so soon, we all may reap the whirlwind.  If the next domestic terrorist attack in the United states is sarin, then we won’t have to scratch our collective heads wondering whence and why we were so viciously attacked ourselves.  

GAZETTE COLUMN: THE ENDURING STRENGTH OF OUR CONSTITUTION by John P. Flannery

John & Holly Flannery at the Inauguration

The first inauguration of President Barack Obama was a celebration of a dream fulfilled and foreseen by the Reverend Martin Luther King.

My wife Holly and I wanted to be present in person at the second inauguration because we knew that, however much the first Inauguration marked how far we’d come, the second Inauguration would be about how far we hoped to go as a nation

We asked our Republican Representative in the U.S. Congress, Frank Wolf, if he had two tickets so that we could attend.  Dan Scandling, the Congressman’s Chief of Staff, immediately responded, by return e-mail, that he had tickets for us.  We thanked the Congressman and his staff.   No doubt many others thanked him as well for the opportunity to attend a Presidential Inauguration.  The President described why we gather to inaugurate a President.  It is because thereby “we bear witness to the enduring strength of our constitution” and “affirm the promise of our democracy.”

We traveled from Lovettsville to a Dulles parking lot to join others from as far away as Texas to ride downtown in a rented van.  We were there bundled up in the dark chilly morning air at 5 AM.  We didn’t know then there would be 800,000 people attending.  We only knew that DC had to be secure and difficult to navigate.

When we crossed the bridge from Virginia, we found Humvees blocking off ramps and roads, saw many rotating blue lights, and National Guard troops and police handling traffic and pedestrians and explaining how best and where to go.

The streets were almost empty in a yellowish glow of street lamps.  When we came upon a coffee shop at about 10^th Street near the mall, it seemed everyone was in there and no one was outside.  And it was warm.  We stood shoulder to shoulder with visitors from across the nation, from California to New York, from Washington to Florida, and uniformed officers from Maryland and DC, talking about when they arrived and their duty assignments.

The atmosphere was helpful and friendly like we were all going to a fine party.  Soon we found the crowds massing at the entry points to the mall and we walked further up toward Union Station as our space was on the West Side of the Capitol – where we would be able to see and hear the President.  There were pearls and mink, Sunday clothes, hawkers selling memorabilia. 

At 7AM the gates opened and, although we would stand or sit in the cold until 11:30 AM before the scheduled events were underway, the time flew by talking to people who traveled great distances or just walked across town.

When the President finally spoke and said “what makes us American … is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago,” there was a cheer that rolled from the Lincoln Memorial where the Reverend King once spoke to the West face of the Capitol where President Obama was now speaking.

He repeated how, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” and he said that this day we “continue[d] a never-ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time.”  He said that, “history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.”  With this, there was more applause.  As I looked around the eyes were on the President.  Tears flowed down the faces of men and women.  Small children asked to be lifted to see their president.

The President pledged that “together” we are resolved to “care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.”  He asked the crowd and the nation watching to “do these things together, as one nation and one people.”  There was enthusiastic applause. 

He asked the crowd to remember “who left footprints along this great Mall” where we were assembled for the Inauguration, and who heard “a preacher say that we cannot walk alone,” and who came before “to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on earth.”

When it was done and the crowd moved to the parade route or to eat or to busses or cars to leave, strangers spoke to each other about what they’d seen and heard, enthused for the nation, and its future.

Ringing in their ears were the President’s words that each of us has “the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient and enduring ideals.”

GAZETTE COLUMN: THE GREENING OF AMERICA - THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION by John P. Flannery

Billions of campaign dollars spent on a presidential election and what have we learned about our nation?

Charles Reich wrote a book in the 60s titled, the Greening of America, about humans, not so much nature, and a “consciousness” that looked beyond the system as we find it.

Reich was concerned about the restraint on personal liberty.

In this last election, there were several strains that suggest the kind of 50s thinking that former Governor Romney offered was not, on balance, where the nation wanted to go.

When I was a young pol on the East Side of Manhattan, a political patron of mine repeatedly instructed that you can’t pretend to be hungry.

Republican leaders made many groups hungry for change because of what Republicans pronounced what they thought best for women, gays, immigrants, the young, and the working man and woman.

We had Republican white males telling women they were going to probe them if they ever thought of having an abortion. 

We had Republican legislators compromise the medical services a woman could obtain if she chose an abortion.

We have Republicans joining with Catholic Bishops to tell women staff what kind of medical procedures they may have insured and whether contraceptives may be taken.

We have had other Republicans running for the U.S. Senate this year talking about “legitimate rape” and the rape that God intends.  Plainly, these candidates spoke neither for women nor for God.  Exit polls confirmed that 59% of voters believe that abortion should be legal.

Yet, there are Republicans scratching their collective heads after the election trying to understand why President Obama won 36 % more single women to his candidacy over Governor Romney, and how these several women, Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), could best Republican candidates for U.S. Senate seats, giving Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, an even stronger hand to play than before the presidential election.

We have had more sanctimonious gay bashing by Republicans in the last couple of years than I’ve seen my whole life, and the Catholic Church doubled down in conjunction with Republican forces to stop same sex marriage initiatives in several states, and these initiatives were rightly upheld by the voters at the ballot box.

When Governor Romney offered no hope for the children of immigrants schooled in America and spoke about “self-deportation,” he should have expected that Hispanics and other immigrants would hunger after an alternative that he did not offer.  The Governor garnered only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote; by contrast, former President Bush received 44% Hispanic support when he embraced immigration reform.  President Obama granted work permits to undocumented people brought here as children who graduated High School or served in the military.  Omayra Vasquez, 43, from Denver, reportedly said, he voted for President Obama because, “I feel closer to him” and “He cares about Spanish people.”  The President ran away with 71 percent support among Hispanic voters.  That’s how the President won Florida, and Colorado and Nevada.

Republicans talk about the next generation, those aged 18 to 29, but their policies fell far short on school tuition assistance and loans, and on unemployment.  Also, the young felt an affinity with women of all ages, the Dream Act, and same sex marriage.  Perhaps the Republicans believed some polling “experts” who didn’t think the young would be a factor in this election, or as much as the last election, but their participation actually increased, though slightly, by 1%.  The young made up 19% of those voting and President Obama won 60 percent of their votes, as compared with 37 percent for Governor Romney.  Had Mr. Romney split the “youth” vote with the President, he would have been President instead. 

There is a shift in the nation’s consciousness and it’s away from the 50s.  As Charles Reich wrote, “Power is not exercised in this country by force of arms, as in some dictatorships.  Power rests on control of consciousness.  If the people are freed from false consciousness, no power exists that could prevent them from taking the controls.”

While to some, it looks like nothing has changed, there has been a “greening” in America’s consciousness.

Nor am I saying that the Republican party does not have a role to play as a partner in this grand political adventure.

While the House of Representatives did not change many seats, leaving Speaker John Boehner in charge, he reacted by seeking to engage but it remains to be seen if he can navigate his caucus to a more moderate agenda.

Former Congressman Tom Davis told several of us about a week or so ago that a Speaker without regard to party can’t make up a majority for a vote that doesn’t include a majority of his own party caucus.  That’s what derailed the agreement on the debt limit when the Speaker negotiated with the President but, in my opinion, couldn’t deliver because of the now marginalized Tea Party faction.

It is my hope, however, that we find a way through our past differences to engage and resolve America’s challenges, and that we give effective structure to a changing, greening, America.

COLUMN: IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE … NO IT’S A DRONE by John P. Flannery

Just when you stopped being surprised about black helicopters flying East and West to and from Mount Weather, we have Drones (unmanned aircraft) in America, one crashing to the ground in Northern Virginia recently, so we know they are no longer just in the Mid-East seeking out and blowing up terrorist targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen; they’re also here surveilling us.

Drone-mania started in the Bush White House and continued, as enthusiastically, in the Obama White House.  These flying drones can stay aloft for sixteen hours, controlled by radio signals via satellite to the theater of war 8,000 miles from Nevada where the pilot sits, before a video screen, manipulating “game controls,” from what looks like a portable ship container, relying on live-feed super high resolution video, with ready real destructive power, Hellfire missiles and bombs.

Indeed, every Tuesday, at the weekly counterterrorism meeting, attended by a phalanx of our national security apparatus, drone targets on cards and in PowerPoint presentations are designated in a ghoulish “whack a mole” ritual.  The process is somewhat suspect insofar as we pay $5,000 in bounty for intelligence from local nationals to inform us who the “real” terrorists are.  At least, this has simplified the Guantanamo detention question as to taking any more prisoners.  

Our government has defined away the killing of “innocent bystanders.”  “Combatants,” by official definition, are any “military age males in a strike zone …unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”  A “posthumous” judgment of innocence is awfully Alice in Wonderlandish and disserves our avowed counter insurgency initiatives in Pakistan and Yemen when we rain down Hellfire missiles transporting innocent nationals to Allah.

When we killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, hiding in Yemen, with a drone, we also killed Samir Khan, another American who was with him but not on the “whack a mole” list.

There has been alleged disparity in our government’s reports – that our targeted kills are overstated and the innocent dead are grossly understated.  U.S. Officials on different occasions say we’ve killed “over 20,” then “closer to 50,” finally conceding they really couldn’t say how many. 

Another dangerous genie has escaped.  Our drones manufacturers are selling them overseas to other governments.  

Closer to home, we shall be awash in some 15,000 drones in the United States by 2018.

Public Intelligence, a non-profit, has released a map that shows more than 60 bases in the United States with drone activity.  http://publicintelligence.net/dod-us-drone-activities-map/

 

There are 50 companies, universities and government organizations producing and developing 155 unmanned aircraft designs.  The FAA has recently disclosed all the public and private entities that have asked to fly drones in the United States.  https://www.eff.org/document/faa-list-special-airworthiness-certificates-experimental-categorysacs

 

State and county governments want these drones to view, record and tape what we do and say. 

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell can’t get our drones quickly enough; Fairfax County’s Police Chief, David Rohrer, proclaimed he wants to use them “in this region…”

We have to be on guard for privacy violations.  Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) proposed a bill to outlaw the use of drones in the United States without a warrant approved by the court.  That’s a good start.  The Supreme Court in Kyllo v. United States found unlawful any warrantless search of a home conducted from outside the home using thermal imaging.  In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court objected to a warrantless GPS attached to a car for 24/7 surveillance.  This trend may favor further protection for any expectation of privacy from drones hovering above us, dodging black helicoptors.

If you are interested in self-defense, you may want your own more reasonably priced drone operated from your iPad or smart phone (a Parrot AR Drone 2.0 Quadricoptor)(for $300) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqkklVI7WBo&feature=youtube_gdata_player ) in order to watch the government watch you, or to broadcast a birds-eye view of your next political demonstration, perhaps to bust the errant cop compromising someone’s First Amendment rights, or, if you are unsavory, to catch your neighbor sunbathing.

The bottom line is that our public dialogue is arid when we fail to object to how we use drones to kill innocents abroad, export them too freely to other nation-states, and allow them to invade our privacy without our express knowledge or consent.

GAZETTE COLUMN: THAT TAKES THE PRIZE by John P. Flannery

When President Barack Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, everyone asked what had he done to deserve it?

Now we can all fairly ask what has he done to deserve to keep it?

In 2009, the Nobel Committee said that it was honoring Obama for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Oh really.

Our peace president let fly many more drones into Pakistan, and made Afghanistan his war of choice, while remaining in the Iraq theater that he promised he’d leave.

President Obama signed an 007 shoot-to-kill death warrant, very James-Bond-like, on an American citizen (Anwar al-Awlaki) without any judicial review - and not so much as a rubber-stamping grand jury ever considered the charge or the Alice in Wonderland ?sentence-first-no-trial-to-follow.

President Obama sent missiles to kill crazy Qaddafi (a precedent for taking out heads of state that will yet have somebody trying to send drones into the West Wing).  Did I overlook to mention the carpet bombing we’ve unleashed on Libya?  We kill and destroy to save other lives.  At least, that’s how I understand our rules of engagement in a civil war that threatened us not at all.

I hate to imagine what a warring president would be like if this is the peace president.

Nor should my chortling friends in the Republican party take heart from this critique of the Democratic incumbent - as if their plowshares to weapons side show offers this nation any better hope of peace.

The Republican leadership and its candidates don’t want us out of Iraq. 

They can’t stand the thought of us reducing troops in Afghanistan.  They insist we are going to “win” that war in Afghanistan - when someone defines what “win” means.

The Republican’s beef about Libya - is that we don’t have “boots on the ground,” meaning putting more American service men and women at risk of life and limb in another war theater for an uncertain military objective when we have hardly the resources or treasure to continue the wars that we have elsewhere.

When we had imperial adventures in the recent past, the barely concealed message was that, we did so because we could - and no one had the chutzpah or resources to stop us.

By contrast, the Congressional Budget Office tells us that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost $2.4 Trillion and it’s costing us more because we are fighting these wars on the American family credit card.  

Think of that the next time you buy that product from China in its toxic card board wrapping; appreciate that you are funding our nation’s major creditor. 

The former chief economist of the World Bank and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics said more recently that it could cost us $3 Trillion.

Wow!

Our elected “leaders” are debating how to cut $3 Trillion dollars from the budget over the next decade. 

If it’s not from war spending, it will be from your Social Security, Medicare, Education, Infrastructure and other services now taken for granted.

We need a peace dividend to avoid a surplus of despair. 

Speak up now or regret at your leisure.