A Global Green Deal

By Mark Hertsgaard

This article appeared in the March 16, 2009 edition of The Nation.
February 25, 2009

AVENGING ANGELS

If human civilization is to have a realistic chance of surviving global climate change, President Barack Obama and mobilized citizens will have to lead a virtual revolution in America's approach to the issue. Because the hour is so late and America's role so central, Obama must lead, and be pressed to lead, on three fronts at once. First, the United States must commit itself to serious reductions in its greenhouse gas emissions and begin achieving them without delay. This will restore US credibility on the issue, paving the way for step two: encouraging the rest of the world, especially China, to cut its emissions dramatically. The United States and China together account for 40 percent of global emissions, making them climate superpowers: if they do not cut emissions, it won't matter how much other nations reduce. Finally, Obama must urge the United States and all nations to begin preparing for the sea-level rise, water shortages and other impacts of climate change that are inevitable, with special emphasis on assisting the poor, who stand to suffer first and worst despite having done nothing to cause the problem.

It's a tall order, but America can achieve these triple imperatives if the Obama administration launches a Global Green Deal: a crash program to jump-start the transition to a global economy that is climate-friendly and climate-resilient--that is, an economy that emits relatively few greenhouse gases and is shielded against the impacts of climate change. Done properly, a deal of this sort will green not only our societies but our wallets. A massive program of green investment will reduce greenhouse gas emissions even as it stimulates jobs, profits and innovation worldwide and lifts millions of people out of poverty and economic distress.

The stimulus package is a good start. It contains $71 billion in direct green spending and $20 billion in green tax incentives, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress. The World Resources Institute has calculated that every $1 billion in green spending generates approximately 30,000 jobs, so the green portions of the stimulus package should create about 2 million jobs, many in the construction sector, which has been hit especially hard. Retrofitting buildings, installing solar panels and constructing wind farms require skilled and semiskilled labor and create decent-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced. Investing in climate-friendly development in poor countries, where money buys more, should yield even more jobs and economic uplift--no small consideration, given the recent warning from the US director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, that the economic downturn could become the gravest threat to international stability if it triggers a return to the "violent extremism" of the 1930s.

But even more will have to be done, at home and abroad, if we are to slash emissions quickly enough to preserve a livable planet. President Obama has promised to reduce US emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. This sounds impressive compared with the Bush/Cheney years, but precisely because of Bush-era foot-dragging, the United States and the rest of the world need to achieve larger and faster emissions reductions than previously assumed. We have "a very short window of time," Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in January at a Worldwatch Institute conference. If we want to avoid such scenarios as twenty feet of sea-level rise, which would put most of the world's big cities under water, the rise in global temperatures must be limited to 2.0 to 2.4 Celsius above preindustrial levels. That means global emissions must peak by 2015 and then fall rapidly for decades, said Pachauri. In this context, he added, Obama's goal "falls short of the response needed by world leaders" in preparation for the negotiations in Copenhagen in December to produce a successor to the Kyoto treaty. Instead, Pachauri urged Obama to embrace the European Union's target: reducing emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, which the EU says it will achieve by increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy by 20 percent.

Privately, Obama may understand that his policies don't go far enough--his science advisers are excellent--but the forces of the status quo are too powerful for him to overcome without help. As the squabbling over the stimulus bill demonstrated, the same special interests that have blocked reform for years remain on patrol. Senate Republicans, even the supposed centrists whose compromise eventually passed, reportedly demanded and got the removal of $4 billion to build or modernize green schools. And Republicans aren't the only problem. Inside the Beltway, even some Obama allies are lowering expectations in the name of "political realism." I recently attended an off-the-record briefing by a climate change insider, a thirty-year Washington veteran, who stressed again and again--to a very green audience--how "complicated" and "difficult" it will be to get agreement on Obama's emissions targets. Forget that Obama had just won an undeniable electoral mandate and that Democrats control both houses of Congress. Republicans are opposed, so saving the planet is just too ambitious.

Under the circumstances, there is no substitute for fresh thinking and intense public pressure, both of which will be brought to bear in the run-up to Copenhagen. "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants," Al Gore said in 2007. On March 2, Gore will get his wish. James Hansen of NASA, America's foremost climate scientist, will join hundreds of activists, many of them college students with the Power Shift climate movement, in an act of civil disobedience outside the coal plant that powers the US Capitol. Hansen has argued that preventing catastrophic climate change requires an end to new coal plants; now he will get arrested to make that point. "If there are young people sticking their necks out, how can old geezers who caused their problem hang back?" Hansen told The Nation. Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben and Gus Speth are some of the other environmental luminaries who plan to get arrested in the action, which is being spearheaded by Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Ruckus Society and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

I first proposed a Global Green Deal in 1998 in my book Earth Odyssey because six years of world travel had convinced me that fighting poverty had to go hand in hand with fighting climate change; you can't expect people to starve today to save tomorrow's planet. Relying on a mix of government policies and market mechanisms, the plan would use federal spending and regulation to encourage the rapid deployment of green technologies and practices here and abroad, especially in developing nations. A Global Green Deal follows in the tradition of the New Deal, which President Roosevelt devised to fight the Great Depression in the 1930s; the Marshall Plan, which restored stability in Europe in the '40s and '50s; and the Apollo Project, which put a man on the moon in the '60s and led to the personal computer revolution of the '80s. Like each of these forebears, a Global Green Deal would mobilize America's public and private resources with a wartime sense of urgency. Government would spend more, but it would spend more wisely, and its investments would stimulate enough economic activity that increased tax receipts would cover the costs. The deal would shift taxpayer support away from practices that make climate change worse--i.e., Washington's copious financing of oil and coal projects--and toward green counterparts. Policies that reduce emissions and strengthen climate resilience at the same time, such as the rejuvenation of degraded forests and soils, would be a top priority.

The core principles of the deal have been embraced by leaders and citizen groups around the world, such as the prime minister of Japan, the foreign minister of Germany, and labor and environmental groups in Britain and the United States, including the AFL-CIO. In December, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for a very similar plan. In February Ban and Gore urged the world's governments to counter the economic crisis with spending that addresses immediate social needs and "launches a new green global economy." Noting that thirty-four nations are planning $2.25 trillion in stimulus spending, Ban and Gore warned that channeling this money "into carbon-based infrastructure and fossil-fuel subsidies would be like investing in subprime real estate all over again."

Most significant, President Obama has advocated policies that, at least domestically, align perfectly with those of a Global Green Deal. The stimulus package increases federal spending on green energy to three times the current level. But stabilizing our climate also requires that governments stop subsidizing activities that make things worse. Here, Obama still has far to go. The stimulus package contains $17 billion for mass transit but almost twice that much for new roads, according to Friends of the Earth. Senate-House conferees wisely deleted $50 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power plants from the bill, but fossil fuels continue to receive nearly twice as much in federal subsidies as do renewables and energy efficiency. For example, the stimulus package devotes $4.6 billion to research carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that, if it can be made to work--a big if, in some experts' minds--would capture a coal plant's carbon dioxide emissions and store them underground, where they would not contribute to global warming. Without CCS, continuing to burn coal is incompatible with preventing catastrophic climate change, says Hansen. But since it will be many years before CCS can be deployed, the more urgent task is to stop building coal plants and start phasing out existing ones. That goal, which Obama has given no sign of endorsing, is possible only if green alternatives receive even greater government support.

Energy efficiency is the alternative of choice under the Global Green Deal because it is the quickest and most lucrative means of reducing CO2 emissions and sparking economic development. Naysayers often complain that going green costs too much, especially in this time of economic crisis; but evidence suggests otherwise. Corporations and governments alike have found that investments in energy efficiency are extraordinarily profitable. Over a three-year period beginning in 1999, BP invested $20 million to increase energy efficiency throughout its global network of production facilities and offices. The company ended up saving $650 million in fuel costs--a stunning thirty-two-fold return on investment. "Six companies--IBM, DuPont, British Telecom, Alcan, NorskeCanada and Bayer--have each reduced emissions by at least 60 percent since the early 1990s, collectively saving more than $4 billion in the process," according to Michael Northrop of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Happily, the stimulus package contains $9.4 billion to upgrade the efficiency of government and military buildings. Under the Global Green Deal, the government would extend the same opportunity to businesses and households. Federal loans would underwrite the upgrades, and the resulting savings on energy bills would be used to pay taxpayers back with interest. The deal would also boost the efficiency of vehicles, appliances, and power and water use. For example, the rules governing electric utilities would be revised to reward them for selling less power. California did this in the 1970s. Since then, the state's electricity use has been flat, despite a growing population and economy, while the utilities have enjoyed solid profits.

Bringing other states up to California's efficiency levels would save as much electricity as is produced by 60 percent of the nation's coal-fired power plants, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute. To offset the remaining 40 percent, solar and wind power must continue their recent rapid expansion. Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, notes that Texas, of all places, "has 45,000 megawatts of wind power either on line, under construction or in development, which is about equal to the average amount of electricity generated by forty-five coal plants." That's more than Texas can consume, and it illustrates the importance of developing a national "smart grid" so that wind power produced in one region can be transported to customers elsewhere. The stimulus package invests $11 billion in this vital initiative.

Although the Obama administration is embarking on a scaled-down version of the Global Green Deal at home, similar policies must be applied internationally as well. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report made it clear that rich nations cannot survive unless developing nations--particularly China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies whose emissions are rising rapidly--also cut emissions. As a moral and practical matter, the rich will have to help pay for this shift; otherwise it will not happen. Congressional Republicans will howl, but the facts are clear: rich countries released 80 percent of the greenhouse gases warming the atmosphere, and on a per capita basis they still emit much more than developing nations, where hundreds of millions of poor people need affordable energy. Most rich nations have long rejected the idea of paying the poor to go green. Now we have no choice. Instead of resisting, the United States should make a virtue of necessity by helping these countries go green at maximum speed. If we're smart, a Global Green Deal will open new markets for US exporters, just as the Marshall Plan did after World War II.

The deal also provides a framework that could break the most important impasse in climate change diplomacy: the longstanding mutual insistence by the United States and China that the other climate superpower act first to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the United States and the Soviet Union had with nuclear weapons during the cold war, the United States and China have loaded guns pointed at each other's heads, and at everyone else's. If both superpowers do not reduce emissions--if they do not lower and unload their guns--they will destroy themselves and the rest of civilization.

For years, Washington's intransigence has given China an easy excuse for refusing to reduce its emissions. Pursuing sharp emissions reductions, however, would give America leverage to press China to do its part. And there is reason to believe that China would welcome a climate deal, provided it is equitable. Its leaders at last appear to recognize that climate change is not only a rich man's problem. China is already being hurt by climate change--2007 brought the worst drought in ten years while record floods further undermined food production--and worse lies in store, including a sea-level rise that could flood Shanghai. What's more, Chinese experts have long recognized that energy efficiency is the most potent source of green energy available. Studies supervised in the 1990s by Zhou Dadi, a top government adviser, showed that China could use 40-50 percent less energy if it installed efficiency technologies. Under the Global Green Deal, the United States and China would work together to capture these savings--by promoting more efficient refrigerators, light bulbs and air conditioners, insulating China's notoriously drafty buildings and installing smarter electric motors and equipment.

Secretary of State Clinton's talks with top Chinese officials are cause for hope. Washington and Beijing pledged to work together toward energy efficiency and renewables and to achieve a "successful outcome" to the Copenhagen negotiations. A new report jointly produced by US and China experts and co-chaired by Steven Chu, a Chinese-American serving as Obama's energy secretary, urges regular "leaders summits" between China and the United States to pursue a climate deal. When Obama meets Chinese President Hu Jintao in April at the G-20 summit, he should invite Hu to join him for a series of talks to forge a path toward mutually assured reductions in emissions. (Such summits should augment, not displace, the UN negotiations that will culminate in Copenhagen.)

Can America make this green dream a reality? As candidate Obama famously said, Yes we can. But a Global Green Deal would amount to almost a revolution in how Washington works. It requires fundamental changes in where government money goes, including taking billions of dollars away from some of the most powerful lobbies and corporations in the country, above all the oil and coal industries. Obama promised to change how politics is done in Washington, but does he have the stomach for this? We'll see.

In any case, such change will come about only if President Obama and others in government are pushed from below--by intense and sustained public pressure. As Obama explained to an audience in January 2008, when few gave him much of a chance to be president, "Change does not happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up.... [People] arguing, mobilizing, agitating and ultimately forcing elected officials to be accountable.... That's how we're going to bring about change."

About Mark Hertsgaard

Mark Hertsgaard (markhertsgaard.com), a fellow of The Nation Institute and The Nation's environment correspondent, is the author of five books, which have been translated into sixteen languages. His next book, Living Through the Storm: How We Survive the Next 50 Years of Climate Change, is forthcoming from Houghton-Mifflin. more...

Copyright © 2008 The Nation

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

When parents fail to pay lunch tab, Albuquerque school district serves cheese sandwiches to kids/Colombia rocked by wiretapping revelations

www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-cheese-lunchfeb26,0,963861.story

chicagotribune.com

When parents fail to pay lunch tab, Albuquerque school district serves cheese sandwiches to kids

Parents say policy penalizes some kids for being poor

By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press February 26, 2009

ALBUQUERQUE — Faced with mounting unpaid lunch charges, Albuquerque Public Schools last month instituted a "cheese sandwich policy," serving a cold cheese sandwich, fruit and a milk carton to children whose parents are supposed to pay for some or all of their regular meals but fail to pick up the tab.

Such policies have become a necessity for schools seeking to keep budgets in the black while ensuring children don't go hungry. School districts in Chula Vista, Calif.; Hillsborough County, Fla.; and Lynnwood, Wash. have similar policies.

Parents who qualify for free meals are not affected.

Some Albuquerque parents have pleaded with school board members to stop singling out their children because they're poor, while others are thanking the district for a policy that demands parental responsibility.

Second grader Danessa Vigil said she had to eat cheese sandwiches because her mother couldn't afford to give her lunch money while her application for free lunch was being processed.

Now, "every time I eat it, it makes me feel like I want to throw up," the 7-year-old said.

Her mother, Darlene Vigil, said there are days she can't spare lunch money for her two daughters.

Albuquerque Public Schools students receive a cheese sandwich in lieu of a hot meal if they have exceeded a set number of meals charged to their account, ranging from two at high schools to 10 at elementary schools.

In New Mexico, nearly 204,000 low-income students — about three-fifths of public school students — got free or reduced-price lunches at the beginning of the school year, according to the state.

Unpaid lunch charges were on pace to reach $300,000 by the end of the school year, said Mary Swift, director of Albuquerque's food and nutrition services. Swift added that the cheese sandwiches can be seen as a "courtesy meal."

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

World Socialist Web Site

Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)

Colombia rocked by wiretapping revelations

By Bill Van Auken
27 February 2009

The Colombian government of President Alvaro Uribe has been rocked by a political scandal involving the wholesale wiretapping of opposition politicians, top judges and journalists by a secret service agency under Uribe's direct command.

The revelations, emblematic of the police state-style methods of Uribe's right-wing government, came at a seemingly inconvenient time, on the eve of this week's trip to Washington by Colombia's defense and foreign affairs ministers for their first meeting with the Obama administration.

Nonetheless, the scandal appeared not to cause even a ripple, as top US officials embraced the Colombian emissaries and made it clear that the Obama administration's policy toward Colombia will differ little from the one pursued by the Bush White House.

Since 2000, the US has funneled some $6 billion in aid to Colombia—the bulk of it military—while counting Uribe as its closest ally in the hemisphere. Shortly before leaving office, George W. Bush awarded Uribe the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The weekly news magazine Semana published details of the illegal domestic spying operation over the weekend, leading to a raid on the offices of the Department of Administrative Security (DAS) intelligence agency by state prosecutors Sunday.

The revelations resulted in the resignations of the DAS deputy director of intelligence Sunday as well as two other deputy directors for operations and analysis on Tuesday.

Uribe has denied any responsibility for his intelligence agency's covert spying, attributing it to a "mafia gang" within the DAS and even claiming that he himself was one of its victims.

"I have never ordered at any time for anyone to monitor the private lives of people," declared Colombia's rightist president. "I am a loyal man, who plays clean with the opposition and isn't involved in any tricks."

Uribe's political record, however, belies the claims of loyalty and playing "clean with the opposition." Ample evidence has linked the president and his closest political supporters to some of the bloodiest crimes committed by the right-wing paramilitary death squads that have claimed tens of thousands of victims in the country's four decades of civil war.

The principal targets of the spying operation were perceived opponents of Uribe, suggesting that the intelligence agency was operating as a political enforcement arm of the presidential palace.

One of the main targets was Iván Velásquez, the principal judge in the so-called parapolítica case that has put 40 members and ex-members of the Colombian national legislature—almost all of them Uribe allies—behind bars for illicit ties with the country's main right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). At least 70 legislators are under investigation. The president's cousin and close political ally, former Senator Mario Uribe, was one of those arrested, charged with meeting paramilitary leaders to secure their support in the 2002 congressional elections.

According to the latest revelations, the DAS taped some 2,000 hours of Velásquez's telephone calls and had agents follow him as he met with jailed paramilitaries acting as witnesses and as he traveled to and from his home.

In an interview with the Spanish daily El País, Velásquez said that he feared for his life, citing the intense political "polarization" in the country.

Other victims of wiretapping include former Supreme Court president Francisco Javier Ricaurte, who had publicly clashed with Uribe, and opposition senators Piedad Córdoba and Gustavo Petro, as well as journalists from the Carocal and W. Radio networks, who had been critical of the government.

The wiretapping revelations are only the latest scandal to rock the intelligence agency. Just four months ago, the former chief of DAS, Maria del Pilar Hurtado, was forced out over a previous exposure of illegal spying on Senator Petro, who at the time was a key figure in exposing the links between leading pro-Uribe politicians and the paramilitary right.

Her predecessor, Jorge Noguera, is in prison on charges of supplying the paramilitary death squads with lists of union officials and left-wing activists to be assassinated. After these connections were exposed, Uribe sought to protect his secret police chief by naming him as Colombian consul general in Milan, Italy.

The latest illegal spying on Uribe's opponents has been carried out with surveillance equipment supplied and maintained by the US and British security agencies, supposedly for use in combating drug traffickers and anti-government guerrilla movements.

US Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield openly acknowledged that the US had supplied the bugging equipment. "I don't have any problem in admitting this; I am proud of it, because, humbly, thanks to this collaboration the United States and Colombia are better countries," he told reporters. He added, however, that Colombian authorities should determine if the equipment had been put to illegal use. For its part, the British government remained silent on any connection to the domestic spying operation.

In Washington, the ongoing bugging scandal did not seem to cast any shadow on the meetings between the two Colombian ministers and top members of the Obama administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed Jaime Bermúdez, Colombia's minister of foreign relations, at the State Department, calling it "a real pleasure to have the representative of a country that has made so many strides and so much progress, and we have a lot to talk about because there is so much we have in common to work on."

In addition to Clinton, Bermúdez and Colombia's minister of defense Juan Manuel Santos held talks with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Adviser James Jones, CIA Director Leon Panetta and several members of Congress, including Democratic Senators John Kerry and Christopher Dodd and Republican Congressman Roy Blunt.

Among the issues discussed were the prospects for a Free Trade Agreement between the US and Colombia. Citing human rights concerns, the Democrats stymied the bill when the Bush administration tried to push it through the Congress last year. But now there are indications that, with Obama in office, they are prepared to reconsider.

In an interview with the Colombian magazine Semana, House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer declared, "The reduction in violence is clearly a positive step, and I continue to believe that a US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement would be beneficial to both nations." Hoyer suggested that the real reason for blocking the agreement last year was the Bush administration's failure to consult with the Democratic leadership in Congress. He added, "President Uribe has been a great partner and a real ally to the United States, and I look forward to continuing to work with him on the issues that are important to both our nations."

As the latest bugging scandal indicates, there are no grounds for claiming an improvement in democratic rights in Colombia. A recent report prepared by Colombian human rights groups indicates a dramatic increase in the number of disappearances. Between January 1, 2007, and October 21, 2008, there were some 7,763 disappearances in the country, 3,090 this year alone. Those most at risk are political activists, union leaders and militants, and leaders of community groups and indigenous communities.

Meanwhile, Colombia's National Labor School reported a 25 percent increase in the number of union leaders killed in 2008, jumping to 49, compared to 39 in 2007.

There has also been the recent exposure of the murder of innocent civilians under a macabre procedure known as "false positives," in which troops were encouraged to lure away young men in rural areas and murder them and then present them as guerrillas in order to get the army's kill numbers up.

The change in administrations in Washington has brought about no change in policy towards Colombia. The Democratic Congress is preparing to pass a foreign aid package that will hand the Uribe government $547.05 million, more than half of that for the armed forces and police. The amount is almost exactly the same as that granted by the Bush administration last year. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is also expected to provide an additional amount of direct aid to Colombian security forces equal to that of last year—$114.26 million—for a combined total of $666.31 million, nearly 63 percent of it for Colombia's repressive forces.

Uribe was among the first foreign leaders called by Obama in the days after his inauguration. The American president was apparently anxious to reassure him that, Democratic election-year rhetoric surrounding the Free Trade Agreement notwithstanding, Washington remained firmly behind his right-wing government.

According to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, Obama told Uribe that the US would continue backing "Colombia's efforts to improve its security and prosperity."

As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration's policy toward Colombia and the rest of Latin America signals not the change promised in his campaign slogans, but continuity based on the defense of the strategic interests of US imperialism in the region. As with the Bush administration before it, it is prepared to defend those interests by means of militarism and mass repression.

The author also recommends:

Colombia's President Uribe implicated in paramilitary death squad probe
[24 April 2008]

Colombia's Uribe: US ally in "war on terror" named as drug trafficker
[5 August 2004]

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Israel's death squads: A soldier's story

Israel's death squads: A soldiers story

A former member of an Israeli assassination squad has broken his silence for the first time. He spoke to Donald Macintyre

Sunday, 1 March 2009

The Israeli military's policy of targeted killings has been described from the inside for the first time. In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, and in his testimony to an ex-soldiers' organisation, Breaking the Silence, a former member of an assassination squad has told of his role in a botched ambush that killed two Palestinian bystanders, as well as the two militants targeted.

The operation, which took place a little over eight years ago, at the start of the present intifada, or uprising, left the former sharpshooter with psychological scars. To this day he has not told his parents of his participation in what he called "the first face-to-face assassination of the intifada."

As the uprising unfolded, targeted assassinations became a regularly used weapon in the armoury of the Israel military, especially in Gaza, where arrests would later become less easy than in the West Bank. The highest-profile were those of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi in 2005, and of Said Siyam in the most recent offensive. But the targeting of lower-level militants, like the one killed in the operation described by the former soldier, became sufficiently common to attract little comment.

The incident described by the ex-soldier appears almost trivial by comparison with so much that has happened since in Gaza, culminating in more than 1,200 Palestinian casualties inflicted by Operation Cast Lead this January. It might have been forgotten by all except those directly affected, if it had not been for the highly unusual account of it he gave to Breaking the Silence, which has collected testimony from hundreds of former troops concerned about what they saw and did – including abuses of Palestinians – during their service in the occupied territories.

That account, expanded on in an interview with the IoS, and broadly corroborated by another soldier's testimony to Breaking the Silence, directly challenges elements of the military's official version at the time, while casting new light on the tactic of targeted assassination by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). So do comments by the father of one of the Palestinians killed, and one who survived, also traced by the IoS.

Our source cannot be identified by name, not least because by finally deciding to talk about what happened, he could theoretically be charged abroad for his direct role in an assassination of the sort most Western countries regard as a grave breach of international law. From a good home, and now integrated into civilian life in the Tel Aviv area, the former soldier is about 30. Intelligent and articulate, and with a detailed memory of many aspects, he is scrupulous in admitting his recall of other points may be defective.

The former conscript said his special unit had trained for an assassination, but was then told it would be an arrest operation. They would fire only if the targeted man had weapons in his car. "We were pretty bombed it was going to be an arrest. We wanted to kill," he said. The unit then went south to Gaza and took up position. It was 22 November 2000.

The squad's main target was a Palestinian militant called Jamal Abdel Razeq. He was in the passenger seat of a black Hyundai being driven north towards Khan Younis by his comrade, Awni Dhuheir. Both men were wholly unaware of the trap that was waiting for him near the Morag junction. This section of the main Salahadin north-south road in Gaza went straight past a Jewish settlement. Razeq was used to seeing an armoured personnel carrier (APC) beside the road, but he had no idea that its regular crew had been replaced by men from an elite air force special unit, including at least two highly trained sharpshooters.

Since before he even left his home in Rafah that morning, Shin Bet – the Israeli intelligence service – had been monitoring Razeq's every move with uncanny accuracy, thanks to a running commentary from the mobile phones of two Palestinian collaborators, including one of his own uncles. The man who was to kill him says he was "amazed" at the detail relayed to the unit commander from Shin Bet: "How much coffee he had in his glass, when he was leaving. They knew he had a driver [and] ... they said they had weapons in the trunk, not in the car. For 20 minutes we knew it was going to be a simple arrest because they had no weapons in the car."

But then, he says, the orders suddenly changed. "They said he had one minute to arrive, and then we got an order that it was going to be an assassination after all." He thinks it came from a war room set up for the operation and his impression was that "all the big chiefs were there", including a brigadier general.

The two militants would still have suspected nothing as they approached the junction, even when a big Israel Defence Forces (IDF) supply truck lumbered out of a side turning to cut them off. They would have had no way of knowing the truck was full of armed soldiers, waiting for this moment. A 4x4 was deployed by the road, only in case "something really wrong" happened.

But something did go wrong: the truck moved out too soon, and blocked not only the militants in their black Hyundai, but the white Mercedes taxi in front of them. It was carrying Sami Abu Laban, 29, a baker, and Na'el Al Leddawi, 22, a student. They were on their way from Rafah to Khan Younis to try to buy some scarce diesel to fire the bread ovens.

As the critical moment approached, the sharpshooter said he began to shake from the waist down. "What happens now is I'm waiting for the car to come and I am losing control of my legs. I have an M16 with digicom [special sharpshooter sights]. It was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me. I felt completely concentrated. So the seconds are counted down, then we started seeing the cars, and we see that two cars are coming, not one. There was a first car very close to the following one and when the truck came in, it came in a bit early, and both cars were stopped.Everything stopped. They gave us two seconds and they said, 'Shoot. Fire.'" Who gave the order, and to whom? "The unit commander ... to everybody. Everybody heard 'Fire'."

The target, Razeq, was in the passenger seat, closest to the APC. "I have no doubt I see him in the scope. I start shooting. Everyone starts shooting, and I lose control. I shoot for one or two seconds. I counted afterwards – shot 11 bullets in his head. I could have shot one shot and that's it. It was five seconds of firing.

"I look through the scope, see half of his head. I have no reason to shoot 11 bullets. I think maybe from the fear, maybe to cope with all the things that are happening, I just continue shooting."

As far as he can recall, the order to fire was not specific to the sharpshooters in the APC. He cannot know for certain if the troops in the truck thought wrongly that some of the fire was directed at them from the cars. But he says that after he stopped "the firing gets even worse. I think the people in the truck started to panic. They're firing and one of the cars starts driving and the commander says, 'Stop, stop, stop, stop!' It takes a few seconds to completely stop and what I see afterwards is that both cars are full of holes. The first car, too, which was there by coincidence."

Razeq and Dhuheir, the militants, were dead. So were Abu Laban and Al Leddawi. Miraculously, the driver of the taxi, Nahed Fuju, was unscathed. The sharpshooter can remember only one of the four bodies lying on the ground. "I was shocked by that body. It was like a sack. It was full of flies. And they asked who shot the first car [the Mercedes] and nobody answered. I think everybody was confused. It was clear that it had been a screw-up and nobody was admitting [it]." But the commander did not hold a formal debriefing until the unit returned to its main base.

"The commander came in and said, 'Congratulations. We got a phone call from the Prime Minister and from the Minister of Defence and the chief of staff. They all congratulated us. We succeeded perfectly in our mission. Thank you.' And from that point on, I understood that they were very happy." He says the only discussion was over the real risk there had been of soldiers' casualties from friendly fire in the shoot-out, in which at least one of the IDF's own vehicles was hit by ricocheting bullets, and at the end of which at least one soldier even got out of the 4x4 and fired at an inert body on the ground.

Saying his impression was "they wanted the press or the Palestinians to know they were raising a step in our fight", he adds: "The feeling was of a big success and I waited for a debriefing that would ask all these questions, that would show some regret for some failure, but it didn't happen. The only thing that I felt is that the commanders knew that it was a very big political success for them."

The incident immediately caused something of a stir. Mohammed Dahlan, then head of the Fatah-run Preventative Security in Gaza, called it a "barbaric assassination". The account given at the time to the press by Brigadier General Yair Naveh, in charge of IDF forces in Gaza, was that it had been intended as an arrest operation, but that sensing something amiss, Razeq had pulled out a Kalashnikov rifle and attempted to open fire at the Israeli forces, at which point the troops shot at his vehicle. While Razeq was the main target, it was claimed, the two victims in the taxi were were also Fatah activists "with ties to Razeq".

Mr Al Leddawi said last week that his son's presence was a tragic accident of timing and that the family had never heard of the other two men. "It was all by coincidence that they were there," he said. "We have nothing do with the resistance in this family." Beyond saying that he had received "not a shekel" in compensation, the taxi driver, Mr Fuju, did not want to talk to us in Rafah last week. "You want to interview me so the Israelis can bomb my house?"

The Israeli military said in response to detailed queries about the incident and the discrepancies between its account at the time and that of Palestinians, and now the ex-soldier, that it takes "human rights violations very seriously" but "regrets that Breaking the Silence does not provide it with details or testimony of the incidents it alleges in order to allow for a thorough investigation". It added that "these soldiers and commanders did not approach senior commanders ... with their complaints during their service."

Our revelations in brief: Secret unit on a mission to kill

The Independent on Sunday has obtained an account which, for the first time, details service in one of the Israeli military's assassination squads.

A former conscript has told the IoS and an ex-soldiers' organisation of his part in an ambush that went wrong, accidentally killing two men as well as the two militants targeted.

The ex-soldier, a trained sharpshooter, says he fired 11 bullets into the head of the militant whose death had been ordered by his superiors. The squad was initially told it was going on an arrest mission, but was then ordered on a minute's notice to shoot to kill.

Instead of the flaws in the operation being discussed afterwards, the squad was told it had "succeeded perfectly" and had been congratulated by the Prime Minister and chief of staff.

The former soldier, who was psychologically scarred by the incident, has never told his parents what happened.

Copyright 2008 Independent News and Media Limited

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

Activists Protest Immigration Raids in Phoenix

Published on Sunday, March 1, 2009 by Reuters

Activists Protest Immigration Raids in Phoenix

by Tim Gaynor

PHOENIX - Thousands of people protesting a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigrants by an Arizona sheriff marched through Phoenix on Saturday, toting placards reading "We Are Human" and "Stop the Raids."

A woman holds a sign as she protests against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix, Arizona, February 28, 2009. Arpaio has been facing criticism from Hispanic activists and lawmakers, alleging Arpaio's crackdown methods on illegal immigrants involve racial profiling. (Reuters/Joshua Lott/United States)

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has dispatched deputies into Hispanic communities in the Phoenix area where they stop people and arrest anyone who cannot prove he or she is a legal U.S. resident.

Under a deal allowing them to enforce federal immigration laws, the deputies have arrested more than 1,500 people whom they determined were in Arizona illegally.

Latino activists and lawmakers call his program a clear case of racial profiling because only people who look Hispanic are targeted. Arpaio steadfastly denies the charge.

Earlier this month, he stirred more controversy when he marched 220 illegal immigrants in shackles and striped prison garb through Phoenix under armed guard.

"Walking people through the streets in chains, public shaming, it's medieval," said Veronica Perez, 32, an archeologist carrying signs reading "No Human Is Illegal" and "Stop the Raids."

"Isn't cruel and unusual punishment against the U.S. Constitution?" she asked.

The event was organized by activists from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and a group called El Puente Arizona. Estimates of the number of participants ranged from 1,000 to 3,000.

Preparing for the march at a park in central Phoenix, school district coordinator Sylvia Airington, 47, slammed Arpaio's policies.

"Racial profiling, targeting the Hispanic community -- it's an embarrassment to America," she said.

What to do about an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States is an explosive political issue. But it has largely dropped out of the debate as concerns turn to the economic crisis.

A bid to push comprehensive immigration reform through Congress was rejected by Republican lawmakers two years ago. President Barack Obama, who supported the measure, has yet to address the matter.

"I voted for Obama for change," said welder Oscar Camacho, 45. "But with respect to immigration, I see no change at all."

Around 100 counter-demonstrators waving American flags turned out to support Arpaio on Saturday. Some carried holstered pistols.

"He is the only one to uphold illegal immigration laws," said Dina Rose, 52, standing on sidewalk by the sheriff's office in downtown Phoenix. "The county sheriff is America's last hope of protecting our freedoms."

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

© 2009 Reuters

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

Nick was released/The Blight of Bagram

Friends,

 

Nick Sheridan walked out of jail yesterday, nearly 24 hours after a judge ordered him released pending the posting of a bond of $50,000.  It is believed he and Larry Egbert left for Georgia todayto turn themselves in to Georgia authorities.  It is believed they will be released after posting a $60,000 bond, and will return to Baltimore to await trial.  Kagiso, Max

. 

Published on Thursday, February 26, 2009 by The American Prospect

The Blight of Bagram

Human-rights advocates expected Obama to reverse the previous administration's position on detention, but undoing that policy may take more time than expected.

by Adam Serwer

Moments after Obama signed an executive order on Jan. 23 mandating that the prison at Guantánamo Bay be closed within a year, retired Maj. Gen. John Eaton, an Iraq veteran, declared that torture was the tool of "the lazy, the stupid, and the pseudo-tough. It's also perhaps the greatest recruiting tool that the terrorists have." It seemed that America's policy of human-rights abuse and indefinite detention might come to an end.

But since January, a number of the decisions made by the Obama administration have caused anxiety among human-rights advocates, who fear that the new president may indeed continue many Bush-era policies. Obama officials such as Attorney General Eric Holder, solicitor general nominee Elena Kagan, and Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyam have released statements endorsing the idea that terror suspects can be defined as "enemy combatants" and held "for the duration of hostilities" without trial.

The Obama administration also recently invoked the state-secrets doctrine to dismiss a civil suit against a Boeing subsidiary that plaintiffs contend aided the CIA in their rendition to countries where they were tortured. Prior to the Bush administration, the state-secrets doctrine was used to dismiss individual pieces of evidence, rather than entire lawsuits. Civil libertarians bristled at Obama's use of the doctrine in the same manner, and on Feb. 11, Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced a bill in Congress that would regulate its use. The administration's actions were in contrast to Obama's earliest executive orders mandating that all interrogations by U.S. government agents comply with the Army Field Manual and that the Bush administration's infamous "black sites" be closed. President Obama is walking a fine line between Dick Cheney's "dark side" and his own promise to not compromise American values in the name of national security.

"If you want to give the administration the benefit of the doubt, they are taking the six months they've been given to figure out what their position is going to be," says Sahr Muhammedally, a senior law associate at Human Rights First. "Or the other way of reading it is that they want to embrace the whole Bush position on detention."

In the view of human-rights activists, among the most disturbing actions recently taken by the Obama administration is the decision to continue with the Bush administration position that suspected terrorist detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan do not have the right to challenge their detention. The Bush administration position, which has thus far been maintained by the Obama administration, holds that because Bagram is located in "a zone of active hostilities," it is distinct from Guantánamo, so the ruling that granted Gitmo detainees a right to challenge their detention does not apply to Bagram.

"I think this is a difficult one to know exactly what's going on, particularly because they've only given a two-sentence filing," says Ken Gude, a human rights expert at the Center for American Progress. "I think it's important to recognize that no U.S. court ever has exercised jurisdiction over a military detention center on foreign territory in a battle zone. It's not surprising that they've taken this position."

Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who has represented several detainees, describes the government's position on Bagram and Guantánamo as a distinction without a difference, and worries that by maintaining Bagram as a legal black hole for detainees, the Obama administration will continue to hold terror suspects indefinitely without trial, even if Gitmo is closed. "The fact is that since this first Supreme Court ruling upholding Gitmo detainee's access to habeas corpus," Hafetz explains, "the administration stopped bringing people to Guantánamo and started bringing them to Bagram. The population skyrocketed."

All of the detainees involved in the hearing in which the Obama administration asserted the same position as the Bush administration were brought to Bagram from outside Afghanistan. "There's no difference other than that they were brought to Bagram instead of Guantánamo," Hafetz says.

"Many people sent to Guantánamo were sent for the wrong reasons, tribal rivalries and so forth," Muhammedally says. "I'm certain that there are a whole host of people like that at Bagram."

The Obama administration seems to be preparing for the prison to expand. The Christian Science Monitor reported on Feb. 12 that plans are underway to ensure that Bagram can hold as many as 1,100 prisoners. The number of detainees housed at Bagram remains unclear, as does the percentage of detainees who were captured outside of Afghanistan. A Defense Department official told ProPublica that more than 500 of the detainees there are from Afghanistan; The Christian Science Monitor reported that the prison holds more than 600 people.

The Obama administration's reasoning, that Afghan detainees can be held at Bagram indefinitely until the end of hostilities because they are enemy combatants, is also problematic, say human-rights advocates. The U.S. is not currently involved in an international armed conflict in Afghanistan, for which enemy combatants would have to be considered prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Instead, the U.S. is engaged in a non-international armed conflict in a foreign nation, which means that civilians who take up arms have to be tried according to domestic law, in accordance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which the United States is a member. The Covenant states, "Anyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that that court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful." In reality, the status of detainees at Bagram is determined by confidential enemy-combatant review boards.

"There is a legitimate concern about detaining individuals," Muhammedally says, "but there has to be some way of challenging their detention."

The administration's policy on Bagram is not necessarily final. Among the executive orders Obama issued in early January was one ordering a review of detention-policy options by a special task force consisting of high-ranking administration officials, to determine the options for detaining suspected terrorists. The Center for American Progress' Gude is confident that the administration will come up with a "meaningful" review process for detainees, including redefining the term "enemy combatant" to prevent the detention process from being abused.

"For the purposes of identifying the category of individuals who can be lawfully detained by the military, the Bush administration's definition was incredibly broad," he says. "I think it's completely clear that [the Obama administration has] no intention of making the Bush administration's mistakes. They are not going to turn Bagram into Guantánamo's little brother. They closed Guantánamo for a reason."

At the heart of the issue with Bagram is the argument about whether terror suspects should be tried in civilian courts, rather than in the military commissions set up by the Bush administration.

"They've lost the confidence of the public," Eugene Fidell, a military-law expert, says of the military commissions. "It's time I think to finish them off."

"Without fairness, we're not going to get public acceptance of the results," Fidell says. "Here or anywhere." The goal, the ACLU's Chafetz says, should be trying terror detainees captured in Afghanistan in Afghan courts.

"The path should be on strengthening those institutions so they can do it better," Chafetz says. "Not on creating a shadow detention system." The final decision on detention will have to wait until the task force finishes its work and the administration develops a new detention policy. Until then, Obama will be walking along the edge of the "dark side."

© 2009 The American Prospect

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

Maya Schenwar | The Push to Downsize Defense

http://www.truthout.org

 

t r u t h o u t | 02.27

 

http://www.truthout.org/022709A

 

The Push to Downsize Defense

Friday 27 February 2009

 

by: Maya Schenwar, t r u t h o u t | Report

 

    As President Obama released his budget outline for fiscal year 2010 on Thursday, recommending about $664 billion in defense funding, a determined group of progressive Congress members and activists pushed for a marked change in the way the US spends those dollars. Led by Rep. Barney Frank, the group advocates a 25 percent cut in military spending, to be accomplished by eliminating wasteful and obsolete programs, reducing active nuclear warheads and withdrawing from Iraq in an efficient and timely manner.

 

    The Obama administration's budget allocates $534 billion in general defense funds for fiscal year (FY) 2010: an inflation-adjusted increase of about 2.1 percent over the amount appropriated by Congress last year, according to an analysis by Travis Sharp at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. It's a smaller increase than previous years have seen, according to Sharp, but nevertheless continues the trend of a swelling defense budget. An additional $130 billion is requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

    Obama's budget outline excludes funding for nuclear weapons and non-Defense Department military costs which, according to Sharp's analysis, totaled around $23 billion for FY 2009.

 

    Military spending has more than doubled in the past eight years; it now tops $700 billion and sucks up about 40 percent of US tax dollars. According to Frank, bloated defense funding is crowding out domestic priorities.

 

    "The logic is irrefutable," Frank said at a forum on Wednesday, where he discussed his proposal to chop off a quarter of the defense budget. "If we are not able to get military spending under control, if we are not able to break the trend that's now there, we will not be able to respond to important domestic needs."

 

    Frank was joined by Congress members Barbara Lee, Keith Ellison, Dennis Kucinich and Lynn Woolsey at Wednesday's meeting. Lee emphasized the benefits of reducing military spending, including more money for education, health care and homeland security. She also pointed to some obvious targets to slash: stale Cold War-era programs that somehow never made it to the chopping block.

 

    "It has been eighteen years since the collapse of the Soviet Union," Lee said in a statement. "I find it mind-boggling and inexcusable that nearly two decades later, the Pentagon continues to waste tens of billions of dollars buying outdated, Cold War-era weaponry for a national security threat that no longer exists."

 

    The flood of dollars toward obsolete systems is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cutting weapons purchases, according to Craig Jennings, federal fiscal policy analyst with the nonprofit OMB Watch. Substantially reducing the Pentagon budget will necessitate a meaty cost-benefit analysis, discarding appropriations that just aren't worth it.

 

    "Congress needs to ask the critical question, 'Are defense expenditures meeting the needs of the nation?'" Jennings told Truthout. "In other words, does the F-22 make us so much safer from present-day threats like al-Qaeda that it's worth expending tens of billions of dollars on? Do we really need $4 billion stealth naval destroyers? What is more ultimately harmful to the health of the nation: 46 million people without health insurance or the threat of intercontinental ballistic missile launches from North Korea? These are questions that Congress - Democratic and Republican - have consistently failed to pose. While Frank's specific plan may not be the right solution, the very fact that he's broaching the taboo subject of substantial cuts to military spending is very encouraging."

 

    Just trimming the fat - cutting obsolete programs, reducing nuclear arsenals and eliminating wasteful spending - would save more than $60 billion, according to Erik Leaver, policy outreach director for Foreign Policy in Focus.

 

    Also, withdrawing from Iraq could substantially reduce the defense budget. Obama has said that the withdrawal will help to curb the deficit, and despite a troop build-up in Afghanistan, he's probably right, according to Jennings, who estimates that the number of troops in Afghanistan will be about one third of the number currently in Iraq.

 

    However, withdrawal has its costs, too. Procurement and maintenance costs for equipment will continue as long as some troops remain in Iraq, and transporting soldiers and equipment home will add to the tab, according to Leaver. He also notes that the transportation of supplies is more expensive in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

 

    Moreover, any plan to reduce the defense budget must take into account President Obama's plans to expand the Army and Marines by nearly 100,000 troops. Growing the military not only increases short-term spending, but it racks up long-term veteran-related costs. According to Leaver, an enlarged military creates a "hidden cost" as well.

 

    "With a larger-sized military, President Obama or other future presidents may be tempted to use them more liberally in combat missions," Leaver told Truthout. "As we've seen with Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, what seems like a 'cakewalk' often turns into a military and fiscal disaster."

 

    Thus, Representative Frank and his colleagues are suggesting a fundamentally different direction: a reconceptualization of the Defense Department as a smaller, more limited enterprise. The transformation won't happen overnight, but it is far from doomed, according to Sharp.

 

    "While I think it is pretty unlikely that Frank's proposal will go anywhere this year, Frank himself has said that he wants this to be a long-term project, not a one-time effort," Sharp told Truthout.

 

    Changes in the defense-budgeting process may pave the way for reductions - or at least bring more scrutiny to skyrocketing military expenditures, according to Sharp. Departing from the Bush administration's general strategy of submitting supplemental spending bills throughout the year to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama budget requests the whole year's funding up front, though it remains in supplemental form, separate from the general budget. The Bush administration tended to request war funds in partial-year segments, obscuring the full cost of the war. The Obama administration has said that in future years, it will dispense with supplementals for war funding, forcing policymakers to weigh it alongside other priorities in the general budget. Experts commend the switch, calling it a boon for transparency.

 

    "This may seem like a small change, but it is an enormous improvement over the Bush administration, which insisted until the bitter end that it could not present its war budget at the beginning of the year even though it was required by law," Sharp told Truthout. "If war supplementals are submitted at the beginning of the year and eventually phased out, it will improve congressional oversight and allow policymakers to perform better long-term planning. It also will present a clearer picture to the American public of what the country spends in Iraq and Afghanistan."

 

    Revealing the true cost of Iraq and Afghanistan would not only bring home the amount of money the "war on terror" is costing taxpayers. Squeezing defense money through the same funnel as comparably meager domestic allocations could potentially force a reassessment of America's priorities. However, even that hard comparison might not have enough oomph to knock Congress out of defense-budget overdrive.

 

    "When it comes to military spending, Congress tends to treat those expenditures as 'free money,' in that they are not in direct competition with other, non-defense program spending," Jennings said.

 

    Thus, according to Rep. Frank, the cost-benefit analysis needs to be spelled out not only for Congress but for the American people.

 

    "If we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy," Frank wrote in an op-ed in The Nation earlier this month. "I do not think it will be hard to make it clear to Americans that their well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face."

 

    Signs may bode well for a serious consideration of Frank's proposal. The fact that the American people elected a president who objected to the invasion of Iraq, coupled with an economic crisis that sheds disapproving light on any wasteful spending, could fuel a new push to reexamine military excess. The Obama administration's moves toward defense-budget transparency could open new eyes to that budget's immensity. Plus, the very presence of an open discussion of the military budget's size is a positive signal, according to Sharp.

 

    "One notable thing about Frank's plan is that it represents a return to public debate about recalibrating and reducing defense spending," Sharp said. "It was politically taboo to discuss reducing or rearranging Pentagon spending requests in the years after September 11. Any member of Congress who dared to publicly question larger defense budgets risked being called unpatriotic, 'soft' on terrorism, or worse. Now, seven years later, it seems things slowly are returning to normal."

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Maya Schenwar is an editor and reporter for Truthout.

 

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