The Washington Monthly, January/February 2007
Collective Unconscionable
By Arthur Levine
At around six-foot-eight and clad in combat fatigues, Kevin Kiley, the army surgeon general, cut an imposing figure. It was August 2006, and Kiley was in New Orleans to address the governing council of the American Psychological Association (APA) on the subject of psychology in the war on terror. For over a year, the organization had been under fire from human-rights groups and many of its own members, because psychologists had been tied to coercive interrogations and abuse at Guantanamo Bay and other places. Now, many APA members wanted the organization to draw up a firm policy—one that mandated adherence to international standards barring abuse—to prevent psychologists from participating in such practices again.
It was Kiley’s job to convince them not to bail out on interrogations. It’s an open question how much psychologists have contributed to the art of interrogation in the war on terror, but the APA provides a seal of legitimacy that the government values. If it joined the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Psychiatric Association by barring their members from joining the Guantanamo interrogations, it would further stigmatize the military’s practices. So, armed with PowerPoint slides, Kiley argued for keeping psychologists on the offensive against “sworn enemies” of the country. “Psychology is an important weapons system,” he explained. For the APA to draw up an explicit definition of abuse would be counterproductive. After all, “is four hours of sleep deprivation? How loud does a scream have to be? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
Kiley had the blessing of the organization’s leadership. Despite the controversial nature of the topic in question, APA leaders had originally invited no other speakers to counterbalance Kiley with an opposing view. When this fact was reported by Salon, the group hastily issued a last-minute invitation to Steven Reisner, a New York psychoanalyst who had circulated an online petition protesting APA’s involvement in interrogations. Reisner was visiting his parents in Florida when the call from APA came, and he arrived in New Orleans in an ill-fitting off-the-rack suit and without a formal speech.
Reisner made his pitch nonetheless. (“The Hippocratic oath says ‘do no harm.’ It does not say ‘measure harm and see if it is the correct amount,’” he reminded the crowd.) But, having had almost no time to prepare, he was no match for Kiley’s slick presentation and call-to-arms rhetoric. Ultimately, APA’s governing council passed a blandly worded resolution that, most critically, left the definition of the phrase “cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment” up to current government interpretations.
This wasn’t the first time the APA had declined to take a firm position against the administration’s interrogation policies. After reports first surfaced in 2004 of psychologists participating in interrogation procedures, many of the APA’s more progressive members demanded that the organization take a stand. In response, APA convened a task force to draw up guidelines for members but rejected efforts to ensure that they were specific and enforceable.
Why, then, was the leadership of the APA, an organization representing one of the most liberal professions imaginable, so willing to essentially acquiesce with a conservative administration’s efforts to torture prisoners? The answer is that it fell into a classic Washington trade-group dilemma: It became so enmeshed in the gears of the federal machine that it could be influenced by a determined administration and ended up supporting policies that many of its own members opposed.
SERE no evil
Psychology has long had ties to the military and the government. Indeed, the armed forces may have played a larger role than any other institution in establishing psychology as a technical and scientific profession. During World War I, psychologists were placed in charge of aptitude tests given to soldiers—a task they again carried out in World War II, by which time they had been thoroughly integrated into the military structure. By the 1950s, they were helping to conduct Cold War studies on interrogation that included experiments with sensory deprivation and hallucinogens meant to serve as “truth serum” (LSD, for example)—and developed techniques used by the CIA to torture prisoners in Latin America in the 1980s.
It wasn’t surprising, then, that psychologists and psychiatrists were on hand in early 2002, mostly in clinical roles, when detainees who’d been captured in Afghanistan started arriving at Guantanamo. For most of that year, however, intelligence yields from the inmates were poor, and psychologists did not play a major role. That began to change later that year, with the arrival at Guantanamo of a new commander. Major General Geoffrey Miller believed strongly in breaking detainees down, and that psychologists were crucial to this effort. (Miller would later be dispatched to Abu Ghraib to “Gitmo-ize” the prison by giving advice on detainee treatment, where, according to one general, he told subordinates that detainees should be “treated like dogs.”)
Miller approved the creation of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs), which would include psychologists and other medical professionals. In theory, these “biscuit teams” would advise interrogators on how to develop a rapport with detainees, but in practice, things were less Dale Carnegie-esque. When one army psychologist and APA member helped interrogate Mohammed al-Khatani, the supposed “20th hijacker,” some of the techniques used included stripping Khatani naked, giving him intravenous fluids to force him to urinate on himself, exercising him to exhaustion, and making him roll over and perform other dog tricks. The interrogation log includes such psychological observations as “detainee seemed too comfortable.”
There was another link to professional psychology. As first reported by The New Yorker, many of the techniques used to break down detainees at Guantanamo had been derived in late 2002 from a classified program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) at Fort Bragg, N.C. SERE was originally designed to train elite soldiers to resist torture such as forced nudity, Bible trashing, sleep deprivation, hooding, isolation, and water-boarding. But many of these practices—rather than training in how to resist them—were soon adopted at Guantanamo. According to The New Yorker, one of the primary conduits for passing on such techniques appeared to be the chief psychologist of the SERE program, Col. Morgan Banks. (Banks told the magazine he offered guidance to Guantanamo’s BSCT members but denied recommending that SERE techniques be used on detainees.)
Tortured logic
By 2005, media reports about coercive treatment of detainees were becoming increasingly frequent and alarming. Since APA members faced being drawn into the BSCT teams, the group felt compelled to develop a set of guidelines. That task would fall in part to Gerald P. Koocher, an influential member of the board of directors, who would take over the APA presidency the following year. A short, pale, youthful-looking man in his late fifties, Koocher wears large glasses and bright bowties. He is dean of the School of Health Studies at Simmons College in Boston, and editor of the journal Behavior and Ethics. He’s also a child psychology expert, and a scan of regional newspapers over the years reveals occasional quotes from Koocher about matters such as how to keep your kid from getting frightened on Halloween. By any standard, Koocher was an unlikely ally in the Bush administration’s bid for expanded interrogation authority.
In fact, though, there were plenty of reasons why Koocher was unwilling for his organization to take a strong stand against administration policy—outside of its occasional criticisms of the White House’s most extreme pro-torture positions. Psychologists have long had to face skepticism about the efficacy of their profession, and often feel that associations with the military enhance their credibility. As Reisner puts it: “The military put psychologists on the map.” Jeopardizing relations with the armed forces could well lead to a loss of status and influence for the organization. In addition, former APA president Philip Zimbardo—who designed the famous “Stanford Experiments” in which students acted as prison guards and abused fellow students playing prisoners—notes that the military employs hundreds of psychologists, and that academic psychologists also depend greatly on military-related research funding.
Beyond strictly military issues, the APA, like any other trade group, frequently seeks to influence government policy, and is therefore unwilling to alienate key decision-makers. Recently, for instance, the group has been pushing to amend state laws to allow psychologists to write prescriptions for medication, and their leaders had supported a now-defunct military pilot project allowing such prescription privileges. (Generally, in every state except New Mexico and Louisiana, only psychiatrists—in addition to other medical doctors—can prescribe.) The APA “has a vested interested in maintaining good relations with the Bush administration,” says Zimbardo.
Koocher challenges that assertion, pointing to APA’s stance in favor of the McCain anti-torture resolution. The measure passed by 90 votes, but Koocher, in an email, claims it took great courage for his group to back it: “Supporting an amendment in direct contradiction to the Administration’s wishes was decidedly not the politically expedient thing to do in order to advance APA’s financial interests. It was, however, the right thing to do, and APA did it, despite that doing so placed significant funding for psychology in jeopardy.”
In truth, there was a more urgent concern driving the organization’s approach to interrogations: the possibility that APA members who worked on the biscuit teams, by following military orders, had already become embroiled in interrogation methods that were ethically—and even legally—questionable. Retroactively disowning such methods might leave those members vulnerable to prosecution.
The ideal stand for the APA to take, then, would be no stand at all—or at least one that wouldn’t inconvenience the Pentagon. And so, in February 2005, Koocher and APA president Ronald Levant led the creation of the blue-ribbon, 10-member Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force to study the problem. But they stacked the deck by ensuring that six of the 10 members were from the military. One was Capt. Bryce Lefever, a trainer at the Navy’s SERE School and author of the lecture “Brainwashing: The Method of Forceful Interrogation.”
Another was R. Scott Shumate, director of behavioral science for the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity division, who, according to his own bio, had “engaged in risk assessments of the Guantanamo Bay detainees.” There were also Michael Gelles, chief psychologist of the Navy’s Criminal Investigative Service; Col. Larry James, chief psychologist for the intelligence group at Guantánamo in 2003; and Robert Fein, whose biographical blurb describes him as “a consultant to the Directorate for Behavioral Sciences of the Department of Defense Counterintelligence Field Activity.”
The boldest choice of all was Col. Morgan Banks, the very man accused of helping to introduce SERE techniques to Guantanamo. “It was like a Monty Python spoof,” says Dr. Steven Miles, a professor of bioethics at the University of Minnesota medical school who followed the process for his book, Oath Betrayed. “At a certain level, you had to laugh.” Asked about charges that the APA stacked the deck, Koocher responded in an email that “the task force worked by consensus.”
Any countervailing influence, then, would have to come from the four civilian members. But when the task force’s discussions began, it soon became clear that the APA leadership was determined to resist their proposals. When Jean Maria Arrigo, an independent scholar on the ethics of military intelligence, and Michael Wessells, a professor of psychology at Randolph-Macon College, and a specialist in how children are affected by armed conflict, argued that international law such as the Geneva Conventions should be the gold standard in the APA’s ethics code, Koocher, serving as a liaison from the APA board, was dismissive. “We’re not going to go there,” he announced. “International law doesn’t have any standing in U.S. courts.” (According to Arrigo, one of the military psychologists was even blunter, declaring: “We’ve taken an oath to our commander-in-chief.”) Then, when Arrigo argued for an appendix of case histories that would clearly illustrate some examples of banned behavior, such as water-boarding, an APA lawyer who was advising the panel rejected the idea, warning that such examples could be used in court against psychologists. Wessells, still dissatisfied by the lack of specificity, cited the use of techniques like sleep deprivation as clearly out of bounds. To which one of the military panelists responded: “Maybe it’s useful to an interrogation to wake someone up early.”
Drafting the task-force report fell primarily to Stephen Behnke, a lawyer and psychologist who heads the APA’s Office of Ethics. Behnke produced a rough draft on day one, a model of ambiguous wording that effectively determined the scope of the discussions. Ultimately, the final report did assert that “psychologists are alert to acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and have an ethical responsibility to report these acts to the appropriate authorities.” But, crucially, it did not offer specific guidance on what did and did not constitute torture. And it noted pointedly that “over the course of the recent United States military presence in locations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Cuba, … rules and regulations have been significantly developed and refined.” In other words: Things are changing. Good luck feeling your way about.
It was immediately clear to the civilian members that the report didn’t go nearly far enough. Wessells warned that if it were allowed to stand as the APA’s primary public communication on the issue, the group “will be body-slammed, and damage done to the association.” Ultimately, though, they went along, after being assured by Koocher and other APA officials that examples of specific instances of impermissible interrogation would soon be addressed in a casebook to be produced by the APA’s permanent ethics committee. Today, nearly a year and a half later, no such casebook has been released. “Things in an association will not always happen as quickly as some would like,” says Behnke, who promises the casebook will be forthcoming in early 2007.
Mind games
Wessells’s warning proved prescient. The APA’s report, released in July 2005, met with widespread condemnation from human rights groups and many in the media. The New York Times and other news outlets noted Banks’s role on the task force, and the prestigious Lancet medical journal called the report “a disgrace.” The episode also helped open a breach between the APA and the rest of the medical community. After seeing APA raked over the coals for the timidity of its report, the American Psychiatric Association and the AMA released much stronger statements this year that flatly bar their members from participating in interrogation of enemy detainees. They also got specific: The American Psychiatric Association, for instance, prohibits its members from exposing any subject to “degradation, threats, isolation, imposition of fear, humiliation, sensory deprivation or excessive stimulation, sleep deprivation, exploitation of phobias, or intentional infliction of physical pain such as use of prolonged stress positions.”
These divisions were dramatized in October of 2005, when APA president Levant and American Psychiatric Association president Dr. Steven Sharfstein traveled together to Guantanamo as guests of the Pentagon. On a day-long tour of the facility, the men glimpsed white-jump-suited Muslim detainees—but weren’t allowed to talk to them.
Sharfstein, alarmed by published reports about the BSCT teams and their potential to engage in torture, wasn’t reassured by his visit and urged military officials to exclude psychiatrists from involvement in interrogations. Levant, by contrast, eagerly offered his organization’s support to the military, announcing in a press release, “I saw the invitation as an important opportunity to continue to provide our expertise and guidance for how psychologists can play an appropriate and ethical role in national security investigations.”
In the wake of the split, APA has taken some small steps to repair its image. In September, Koocher joined with leading health professionals and Physicians for Human Rights in publicly opposing the administration-backed bill that essentially allows it to disregard the Geneva Conventions, and explicitly condemning techniques such as water-boarding and stress positions. But APA has not relented on the most crucial issue that it faces: preserving the right of psychologists to participate in coercive interrogations. And, thanks to an earlier loophole in the APA’s still-vague ethics code, psychologists are allowed to obey so-called lawful military orders instead of the APA’s own ethical guidelines, even as the APA offers lip-service to opposing any involvement in torture. As Stephen Soldz, a Boston-based psychoanalyst and APA critic observes: “What sort of experts on ethics write the Nuremberg defense into their professional ethics code?”
This is by no means the first time that the leadership of a traditionally liberal Washington interest group has courted controversy by essentially siding with the Bush administration on a major policy issue over the objections of many of its members. In 2003, AARP provided crucial support for the corporate-backed Medicare prescription-drug bill—and lost thousands of members as a result. Three years later, that legislation has proved so costly and cumbersome that Republican lawmakers seldom talked about it on the campaign trail—and AARP now supports changing the legislation to allow the government to negotiate drug prices. But there’s little evidence that APA is similarly reconsidering its position on interrogations. As Koocher approvingly noted in a paper on “21st Century” ethics that he presented at the APA’s New Orleans conference: “The dictum of ‘do no harm’ has evolved to ‘do as little harm as possible.’”
Arthur Levine is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly.
Friday, January 26, 2007
KOSOVO....
January 26, 2007
KOSOVO....James Joyner comments on the latest from the Balkans:
Fifteen years ago, when then-Yugoslavia was falling apart in a series of ethic civil wars, those of us who opposed American military intervention argued that no significant threat was posed to U.S. vital interests. The caveat was always that, if things got out of hand in Kosovo, we'd have little choice but to jump in to prevent it becoming a regional crisis.
When that did indeed come to pass, the idea that Kosovo's independence would eventually follow would have seemed incredible. Now it's buried on A10 of the Post.
It's more "independence-lite" than actual independence at the moment, and it's not yet a completely done deal: Serbia (obviously) is opposed, Russia is holding out for concessions, and even Spain is nervous about the whole thing. Still, it looks increasingly likely that Kosovo is on track to become an independent country in the near future. More background here.
—Kevin Drum 12:40 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (2)Is the "Secret Email System" Just Lotus Notes?
Friday, January 26, 2007
ITN last night and the Mail today are repeating the "Smoking Gun" story with a twist about a "secret I.T. system". Guido thinks the story is a little muddled. Here is what a seemingly well informed co-conspirator wrote last night:
There isn't a second email system in my humble opinion - there is a confidential database thats written in Lotus Notes - a system more commonly recognised as an email platform but one that also can be used for database work.
The system is primarily used by Labour party employees and although partly ran by No. 10 staff, access is severly restricted, in the same way parliament's I.T. department have to provide impartial service to the parties who have MPs, so do the No. 10 staff have to be impartial when helping the party-in-power therefore there is a kind of two-tier IT infrastructure in No. 10 and also the Palace of Westminister.
The database access is for staff in the No. 10 office of the Labour party, Powell and his staff and also key minsters' SpAds, they contribute briefing documents, in various stages of preparation before being used by other spads to present key ideas to ministers and ultimately Tony Blair himself, all the speeches and statements and PMQ briefs are in there, going all the way back to '97.
UPDATE : Co-conspirators have spotted and tipped off Guido to the Labour party's private email system supplied by a Microsoft subsidary. The Whale Secure Remote Access website emphasises "it was designed to meet Israeli military-grade security needs, and all thought: 'we definitely need this!' ", so said Steve Turnbull, Network Manager, Labour Party. It fortunately has "Strict provisions for wiping all traces of email attachments, files and user credentials from the end-point, as well as the ability to permit different levels of access and functionality depending on compliance of the access device with Party security policy, would be critical." It does run Lotus notes groupware.
Candidates for 2008 courting Jewish support
It's a Washington ritual as reliable as the cherry blossoms, if nowhere near as pretty: Midterm congressional elections are over and aspirants for the most powerful job in the world are throwing their hats into the race for the US presidency.
Another ritual within the ritual is lining up Jewish support, and this year is no different. Some candidates are acting immediately: This month, US Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plucked Jay Zeidman, President Bush's popular Jewish outreach official, to lead his Jewish campaign.
Sometimes it's even sooner than immediately: For the past two years, Ann Lewis, who has been prominent in Jewish causes since she served as the Clinton administration's deputy communications director, has been sounding out Jewish support for Clinton's wife, US Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Here's a glance at the candidates and where they stand on issues of concerns to the Jewish people.
The Democrats
You probably won't hear all about Clinton's Jewish step-grandfather this time around. That's because she won't need to grab at Jewish straws after six years of support for Jewish causes that activists across the spectrum say is stellar.
Clinton's 2000 run for the Senate was marred by a 1999 incident in which she sat by and said nothing as Suha Arafat, Yasser Arafat's wife, accused Israel of deliberately poisoning children. Clinton and Suha Arafat embraced after the speech.
Clinton later claimed the interpreter skipped over the poisoning allegation, but she set about atoning for the gaffe. In addition to the revelation about her step-granddad, she told two different Jewish audiences within weeks of Suhagate that Jerusalem was Israel's indivisible capital.
She won solidly that year, but with less-than-enthusiastic Jewish support. By 2006, however, Jewish support for Clinton was overwhelming and spanned the religious spectrum. Much of the money she has raised - some analysts expect her to bring in $500 million by election time - has come from Jewish donors.
Pro-Israel lobbyists say Clinton's voting record on issues related to funding for Israel and isolating its enemies, including Iran and Syria, has been top notch, and she has visited the country multiple times since becoming a senator. On domestic issues, too, she is reliably pro-choice and backs increased federal involvement in health care, stances that reflect the majority US Jewish opinion.
Her supporters say one area where Clinton has strengthened Jewish support might offer a clue to how she plans to overcome overwhelming conservative opposition to her candidacy, a residue of the 1990s culture wars: She seeks imaginative legislative solutions to get funding to parochial institutions while not skirting church-state divisions.
As the lead Democratic spokesman on foreign policy - Biden chairs the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee - his rhetoric on Israel at times has been tough.
Biden repeatedly has suggested that Israel and the United States "blew it" in the summer of 2003 by not sufficiently backing Mahmoud Abbas, who was then the Palestinian Authority prime minister. Abbas eventually quit because P.A. President Yasser Arafat frustrated his efforts to make peace with Israel, but he also accused Israel and the United States of failing to provide concessions that might have helped him confront Arafat.
Pro-Israel advocates say there's a substantial gap between Biden's rhetoric and how he ultimately votes: He has a solid pro-Israel voting record and was a leader of the successful effort last year to pass the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which isolates the Palestinian Authority's Hamas leadership as long as it backs terrorism and refuses to recognize Israel.
Biden, like many other leading Democrats, has been reluctant to sign on to efforts to isolate Iran as long as it poses a nuclear threat, preferring to keep channels open to the Islamic republic.
Much of Obama's current appeal has to do with his vocal opposition to the Iraq war in 2002-03, when he was a state senator in Illinois, at a time when it was not popular to oppose the war.
Arab Americans initially held out hopes that his iconoclasm extended to Israel-Palestinian issues. During the 2004 primaries, Obama said Bush had neglected the region, and in private conversations with Arab-American donors he reportedly said he favored a more "even-handed" US approach between Israel and the Palestinians.
Since then, however, Obama has cultivated a solidly pro-Israel record, and he visited the Jewish state last year. He has developed close ties with Chicago's Jewish community, and some of its major donors backed him among more than a dozen candidates - some Jewish - in the 2004 primaries.
The appearance by the former Democratic senator from North Carolina at last year's American Israel Public Affairs Committee's policy forum was the first substantial sign that he was considering another run for the White House after he failed in his 2004 bid to win the Democratic primary and then the vice presidency.
The millionaire trial lawyer had focused almost exclusively on his "two Americas" theme in combating poverty and advocating for universal health care in his primaries campaign, and Republicans cast him as a lightweight on foreign policy.
He drew loud applause when he endorsed AIPAC's trademark issue: isolating Iran as long as it resists nuclear transparence.
"For years I have argued that the United States has not been doing enough to deal with the growing threat in Iran," he said. "While we've talked about the dangers of nuclear terrorism, we've largely stood on the sidelines as the problems got worse. I believe that for far too long, we've abdicated our responsibility to deal with the Iranian threat to the Europeans."
Such talk has helped draw major Jewish donors to Edwards' campaign. He raised eyebrows late last year, however, when he named as his campaign director David Bonior, a former Michigan congressman noted for his tough criticism of Israel.
Bonior and Edwards reached out to top pro-Israel figures and assured them that Bonior's role would not extend to foreign policy.
Others:
• Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is probably the toughest critic of Israel among Democratic candidates. Next month he will be a featured speaker at a conference of Sabeel, a pro-Palestinian group, and in recent years he has consistently abstained or voted against pro-Israel measures. Kucinich maintains close ties with some dovish Jewish groups, and at times has challenged his ideological compatriots, once saying he was never convinced that Yasser Arafat gave up on his dream of eliminating Israel.
Kucinich's candidacy is perhaps the longest shot this year, but he has accrued foreign policy credibility for opposing the Iraq war from the outset.
• US Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). Another longshot, but with a solid pro-Israel record. He told an AIPAC audience in Houston in October that he doubted the viability of a Palestinian state in the near future.
• Gov. Tom Vilsack. The former Iowa governor hopes to appeal to voters as a Democrat who won two terms in a solidly Republican state. He is close to the small pro-Israel community in his state and recently visited Israel.
The Republicans
McCain's Jewish strategy mirrors his broader realignment in recent years with Republicans who are loyal to President Bush, leaving behind the bloodletting of the tough 2000 primaries campaign.
In addition to Jay Zeidman, he is counting on an endorsement from the former White House liaison's father, Fred Zeidman, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and a major fund-raiser for Bush. Another likely endorser is Ned Siegel, who was the named plaintiff in the successful effort to stop the Florida recount, a decision that placed Bush in the White House.
McCain has a solid pro-Israel record, and he has been outspoken about isolating Iran as long as it poses a nuclear threat. He made that call most recently in a satellite address at this week's Herzliya Conference and in October at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference.
McCain has toughened his opposition to abortion and gay marriage, positions that place him at odds with most American Jews. Yet he also has forged alliances with domestic Jewish groups on issues such as campaign-finance reform and against torture.
The former New York City mayor may be the perfect Republican candidate for Jewish Americans: He's one of Israel's most vocal supporters in the United States and is unapologetically moderate on social issues like abortion and gay marriage.
Giuliani has been circumspect about his candidacy in recent weeks. He has performed well in polling because of the reputation as "America's mayor" that he earned after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but he's seeking strategies to reconcile his moderation on social issues with the conservative Republican base.
Still, he is assembling a formidable campaign team, including Jeff Berkowitz, another former White House liaison to the Jewish community, as research director.
Giuliani had overwhelming Jewish support as New York mayor from 1993 to 2001, once booting Yasser Arafat out of a concert hall: The federal government may need to deal with the once and future terrorist, Giuliani said, but he did not.
Giuliani has visited Israel multiple times, and formed a fast friendship with his Jerusalem counterpart at the time, Ehud Olmert, who is now Israel's prime minister.
Giuliani's closeness to Israel did not end once he left politics. In his final days as mayor, he rejected a $10 million donation from a Saudi prince because the giver blamed the Sept. 11 attacks in part on U.S. support for Israel.
In 2004, delivering the keynote speech at the Republican convention in New York, Giuliani emphatically noted Bush's outspoken support for the Jewish state.
Romney passed on a bid for a second term as Massachusetts governor to get started on the Republican nomination this year. He wasted no time in making clear his message of solid support for Israel.
That's because however well governors perform on domestic issues - and Romney made significant inroads with the liberal Jewish community in the Boston area - they need to act quickly to establish foreign policy credentials.
Romney was one of four candidates to address the Herzliya Conference this week, but the only one to do so in person. He spoke forcefully about isolating Iran as long as it poses a nuclear threat, noting that he refused to provide police protection for its former president, Mohammad Khatami, when he spoke in the Boston area last year.
He also called for the indictment of Iran's current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on genocide charges.
"The United States should lead this effort," Romney said. "The full title of the Genocide Convention is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Remember that word `prevention.' " Ahmadinejad has called repeatedly for the destruction of Israel and has denied the Holocaust.
More practically, Romney also has attracted top Republican Jewish donors, including Mel Sembler, the former ambassador to Rome. Charlie Spies, formerly the counsellor to the Republican National Committee, is now the Romney campaign's counsel.
Nancy Kaufman, who directs the Jewish Community Relations Council in the Boston area, said Romney earned community admiration for shepherding universal health care through the legislature and for his solidly pro-Israel credentials. But she said some were disappointed by his rightward drift on social issues like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and gay marriage. As a Senate candidate in 1994, Romney had tacked left on such issues.
Others:
Rachel Mauro, JTA's Washington intern, contributed to this report.
Russia Gets its Warm-Water Port
| January 26, 2007 |
| by Christopher Deliso |
| A number of simultaneous recent events and trends in the Balkans evidence a startling yet indisputable conclusion: that across the board, the Western influence that had for so long seemed so hegemonic is on the wane, or has at least encountered very serious stumbling blocks. Quietly, almost unexpectedly (at least for those who had hubristically expected domination ad infinitum), non-Western powers have expanded their "spheres of influence" in the region. Yet you would not know it from the gathering mass of yes-men crowing imminent victory – a fact that has as much to do with internal American politicking as it does with any realities on the ground in the Balkans. And so as the region marches forward bravely to the imagined greatness of "Euro-Atlantic integration," a sort of retrograde motion has instead begun; with every year that we get closer to 2012, and the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Balkan Wars that drove out the Ottoman Turks and set the stage for World War I, it seems the situation in the Balkans is resembling more and more the chaotic decades that preceded that dissolution, which were characterized by a sordid tug-of-war by the Great Powers of the day. Then as now, this power play is being carried out largely by outside interests, though it has not stopped the media and governments from assigning the responsibility and the blame to the outcome of local decisions and citizens. Montenegro Up for Grabs One of the most striking recent trends adding credence to this argument is what has been going on in Montenegro, that Adriatic jewel which elected, in a tightly contested referendum, to break off its state union with Serbia last spring. This secession, long hoped-for and championed by the West, represents the antepenultimate act in an almost two-decade policy against Serbia, the final manifestation of which is expected to be the severing of Kosovo from its historic identity as a Serbian province. This long and worn-out policy has taken on a life of its own, propelled consciously by political ideologues, many of them linked in one way or another with the Balkan interventions of the Clinton administration, and subconsciously, in the collective public sentiment instilled in Western audiences for a very long time by a pliant media: that the Serbs were and are warmongering barbarians, who deserve whatever they get (or whatever they get taken from them). These ingrained beliefs and the policy they gave birth to have had several serious repercussions, however. From at least the 17th century, the wars and foreign policy of imperial Russia in the Balkans were motivated partially by a vital goal: access to the so-called "warm-water ports" of the Adriatic, Aegean and/or Black Seas. Inevitably, the response of European rivals, such as Great Britain or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was to check this ambition, either directly or through policies hostile to countries identified at various times as Russia's advance guard. Examples of this high intrigue include the revision of the San Stefano Treaty at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, which drastically limited the territorial gains of Bulgaria after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, and the creation of Albania, under heavy Austrian lobbying, as a means of preventing then-Russian ally Serbia from gaining access to the Adriatic in 1912. The later incorporation of Romania and Bulgaria into the Soviet fold following World War II greatly enhanced Russian warm-water ports on the Black Sea, though since the downfall of Communism these two countries – which joined the European Union on January 1, 2007 – have moved decisively into the Western camp (though neither was realistically prepared for EU membership). In recent years, the geopolitical brinkmanship of the US has also manifested in the greater Balkan/Black Sea region with the "color revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and their archetypal predecessor in the "democratic opposition" and youth movement that led to the downfall of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000, little over a year after his capitulation to NATO's air war on Serbia and Kosovo. The reckless desire of hawks in the West to expand NATO to far-flung Ukraine and Georgia, both of which have important Black Sea positioning, owes almost completely to the post-Soviet policy of "containing" Russia at a time when energy security has come to replace collective self-defense and humanitarian policing as NATO's raison d'être. The basic premise is that the threat of military force along Russia's borders can prove an effective bargaining chip in guaranteeing unfettered Western access to Russian energy at good prices, and can protect alternative suppliers and supply routes from Russian influence. It remains to be seen how effective this dangerous resurrection will be. In Ukraine, the West would like to dislodge Russia's Black Sea Fleet, by treaty allowed to stay until 2017 while in Georgia, it would like to eliminate Russian support for Abkhazia, the breakaway province that Russia is comparing (along with Georgia's other self-declared autonomous entity, South Ossetia) as an analogous situation to Kosovo: if the latter deserves independence, then why not the others? And why not the ethnically Russian east of Ukraine, for that matter? Of course, the US has heatedly denied any similarity between the two cases though, as we will see, regardless of the veracity of the argument the oft-cited fears of "Balkan instability" if the West doesn't get its way in Kosovo are bound to be realized – regardless of what happens. Before moving on to the morass that is Kosovo, however, it pays to take a look at the situation in Montenegro, where independence was gained by the decision of ostensibly pro-Western, anti-Serbian political leaders and citizens. However, as a recent New York Times article revealed, things are not exactly as they seem: "As Russian investments here grow, Moscow has sought to exert more political influence. In August, Russia's emergencies minister, Sergei Shoigu, warned in an interview with a Montenegrin newspaper that relations between the countries would be damaged if the Montenegrins continued to pursue NATO membership. Later that month, [then-Prime Minister Milo] Djukanovic met with President Putin in Sochi, a Russian Black Sea resort, and discussed the possibility of creating a military-technical agreement." The investments mentioned include a huge buy-up of the Montenegrin Adriatic coast by Russian firms allegedly linked to mafia interests, as well as investments in the industrial sector. By stealth, not by force of arms, Russia has expanded its influence in warm-water Montenegro, its "investors" bearing down on one of the most legendarily corrupt Balkan statelets, "carrying four, five or six million euros in cash apparently without any form or official control." While Western property buyers, particularly British and Irish have also made noticeable acquisitions in the "new" Montenegro, it is the Russians who are causing the biggest stir – and who, unlike the latter, seek perhaps something other than retirement homes by the sea. In Montenegro, the surreal situation has thus become one of a pro-Serbian opposition sounding the alarm against eastern incursions, while an allegedly pro-Western leadership continues to be seduced by the Russians. Then there are the Albanian and Bosnian minorities, both of which are Muslim and both of which cast the crucial votes for independence. Within the latter group especially there has quietly developed, in the Sandzak border area with Serbia (as well as on the other side of the border), an indigenous radical Islamic Wahhabi community that is strongly anti-Western and supported by Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Muslim states. As for the former, the Albanians, numerous arrests in both Montenegro and neighboring Kosovo linked with extremist groups who would like to annex Albanian-populated parts of the fledgling state, or at very least raise the specter of such an act to expedite the independence of Kosovo, have been made since September. Major weapons seizures and arrests of alleged would-be assassins and terrorists illustrate that the threat is real and will continue to intensify throughout 2007. Kosovo: Turning the Tables If the West's policies in Montenegro seem to have had somewhat unexpected results, the same can be said even more so for the situation in Kosovo. It was "the year everything changed," according to Antiwar.com's Nebojsa Malic, referring to the failure of Kosovo's Albanians to achieve independence throughout 2006. This setback for the interventionist policy in the Balkans had to do both with strengthened Russian diplomatic opposition, the unlikely appearance of a Serbian lobby in Washington late in the game, and the essentially tepid support of the Bush administration – its apparent support notwithstanding – for the creation of a mafia-run Muslim statelet in Europe. Supporters of Kosovo independence – essentially, the same crowd of Clinton-era acolytes who see it as justified punishment for "Serb aggression" – apparently have become so enamored of their own position that they have neglected to see the trouble it is about to cause them. All that Belgrade and Moscow have to do is to continue opposing independence, which requires very little energy compared to those who are increasingly desperately pushing for independence and an overturning of the legal reality (that Kosovo is a part of Serbia). It is this reality that Albanian lobbyists such as Joe DioGuardi ask the world to overlook when justifying independence by recourse to "the facts on the ground" (a euphemism for the ethnic cleansing of Serbs and other minorities which has left Kosovo an almost entirely Albanian-populated province). Yet who will suffer if Kosovo does not become independent? Not Serbia. The Western-led UN administration in Kosovo and NATO troops are the ones who will be caught in the crossfire if Albanian maximalist demands are not met. For well over a year, in fact, the UN mission has been scapegoated by local Albanian leaders and covertly-led youth groups as the enemy, as a bunch of obstructionist outsiders blocking their ambitions. The irony is that when the last Russian peacekeepers pulled out of Kosovo several years ago, it was depicted as a sort of triumph for the West, as the final scene in a dramatic struggle for possession that began during the 1999 NATO air campaign, when Russian troops briefly seized Pristina Airport. Now, however, the reality is that there are simply no Russian troops for angry irredentists to shoot at in Kosovo, whereas there are plenty of Western ones. Indeed, since 1999 there have been very many terrorist attacks carried out against UN and NATO personnel and installations in Kosovo by the Albanians they supposedly came there to protect. While in that time violence against the minority Serbs has certainly been steady, there has not been a single terrorist attack in Belgrade or Serbia proper (if we do not count the various armed altercations in a contained area of South Serbia – "East Kosovo" to the Albanians). This is no doubt in keeping with the same orders that the ragged Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were given by NATO in 1999: if you want our help, help your PR by limiting your activities to your home turf. And indeed the Albanians have proven extraordinarily disciplined in doing so and have thus avoided the sort of censure that befell classic separatist groups such as the IRA in Ireland and the Basque ETA in Spain. Now the pressure is more intense than ever on the Albanians to keep up "good behavior" if they want to be free. Yet what if the West can't deliver? Enter the Democrats What is now influencing the whole issue in Kosovo, and the Balkans in general, is a phenomenon going on half a world away: the sudden resurrection of the Democratic Party in Washington and its new resolve against a formerly strong president now on the ropes over the quagmire in Iraq. Several of these Democrats, such as Sen. Joseph Biden, also have presidential ambitions. And so it is no surprise that partisan and personal politics are being crafted out of the imagined past and perceived future of American foreign policy in the Balkans. In short, the Democrats are eager to hold up a shining example of a foreign policy success that can be attributed to themselves as a party, while their individual leaders would like to highlight their personal contributions to these alleged successes. The Clinton-era interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, which fed the current chaos in the region, are being held up more and more in speeches and media reports as examples of America at its best – thus accentuating what the Clintonites view as a contrast to Bush's war in Iraq. However, seeing the obvious folly of the latter does not mean one must automatically accept the former. Nevertheless, as the presidential elections of 2008 draw closer, we are going to be hearing a lot of hyperbole and self-aggrandizing rhetoric from Democrats about how much better off the Balkans is because of their interventions there. And, while it does not take much to make Bosnia or Kosovo appear better off than a country where US troops and Iraqi civilians are being blown apart by the dozens each day, they are not taking any chances: the "final status" of Kosovo, and the continuing consolidation of Muslim rule in the tripartite Bosnian Federation, must be accomplished so that the whole "Mission Accomplished" narrative can be completed. In a grandiloquent Financial Times opinion piece published a day after he became head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the longtime Albanian lobbyist and now presidential candidate Joseph Biden fired off a predictable enough such broadside about Kosovo. The senator, or his speechwriter, fantastically claimed that "adroit diplomacy to secure Kosovo's independence could yield a victory for Muslim democracy, a better future for southeast Europe and validation for the judicious use of American power." These justifications, long considered by critics to be more or less hidden motivations, are apparently not even to be kept secret anymore, so confident are the Clintonites of their Balkan successes. Ironically, the West's plea to Serbian voters during their recent elections was to look to the future, not the past, by choosing the "pro-Western" Democratic Party of President Boris Tadic, rather than the "hard-line nationalists" of Vojislav Seselj's Radical Party. Yet the Serbs' castigators in Washington are apparently not following their own prescribed course of action; as the Biden piece shows, their vision for the future of the Balkans is almost entirely necessitated by the past, by the need to validate a botched series of interventions to shore up their own legacies, as well as to have something to present as a foreign policy success in contradistinction to Bush's Iraq fiasco. Tortuous Contradictions Of course, to pull off such a magic trick is to suppress or ignore entirely certain realities. For since those Clinton-era interventions took place, local and foreign organized crime, not to mention Islamic fundamentalists, have established a pervasive presence. The demand for drugs and prostitutes soared with the arrival of affluent Western peacekeepers, whose don't-rock-the-boat mentality has meant a lackadaisical approach to both mafia groups and Islamic extremists. At the same time, sluggish economic growth and festering nationalism in Kosovo has kept the situation tense, with everyone aware that it only takes one order from militant leaders to set the province ablaze as in the March 2004 riots. To conceal these (and other) failings, the opportunists on the Hill have to put the blame elsewhere. And so Sen. Biden asserts, "there is a growing risk that Serbia and Russia will conspire to seize defeat from the jaws of victory" by continuing to block Kosovo independence. This panic has also apparently induced schizophrenia. The ICG, which has been one of the most consistent and hysterical institutional supporters of Kosovo independence, calling since 1998 for the province's eventual independence, has curiously reversed its position on Islamic extremism in Kosovo; while once downplaying it as little more than "Serb propaganda," the group's latest report discloses that unless Kosovo is freed this could become a threat, as could the more traditional nationalist form of Albanian violence. "Nervous Kosovo Albanian leaders worry they may not be able to contain public pressures beyond March," says the Dec. 20, 2006 report, adding that: "a botched status process that fails to consolidate the prospect of a Kosovo state within its present borders and limits the support the EU and other multilateral bodies can provide would seed new destructive processes. A sense of grievance would become ingrained among Albanians throughout the region, strengthening a pan-Albanian ideology corrosive of existing borders and possibly even enriching the soil for radical Islam." So let's get this straight. The ICG is now warning that unless Albanian maximalist demands are met, both of the dangers which their critics have long warned about – and the existence of which the ICG has steadfastly denied – will come true. The bizarre conjuring act shows to just what tortuous lengths the apologists for intervention will go to push their position while ignoring their own self-contradictions. Nevertheless, pulling rabbits out of hats is a slick political specialty. And so we are asked to believe that Kosovo Muslims could pose a threat if they are not given independence, while on the other hand (as Biden writes) the situation will be miraculously reversed if they are allowed to create their own state. "The people of Kosovo – already the most pro-American in the Islamic world – will provide a much-needed example of a successful US-Muslim partnership," the senator confidently asserts. If this approximation were even true, one has to wonder just who needs this "example" – the people of Kosovo, or the American Democratic Party, as it prepares its 2008 election campaign strategy? Conclusion: A Checkered Future for Western Supremacy in the Balkans If we believe former Clinton staffers like John Norris, the Kosovo war marked the definitive victory of the West (that is, NATO) over Russia. Yet if we take a look at the actual situation today, it is easy to see that Russia's position in the Balkans has never been stronger. It has established itself financially and politically in Montenegro and has, with its opposition to independence in Kosovo, perpetuated an already intractable problem for the same Western powers who have sought so hard to "liberate" the province, and internationalized it with its threats to replicate independence with similar secessionist movements in areas of strategic importance to Western energy security, especially the Caucasus – as well as in Europe itself, as The Guardian recently noted. At the same time, Moscow has expanded its influence through energy projects – its chief concern – which can also buy political influence, for example in Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Turkey and Greece. Apparently, the end of the Cold War did not result, as some prominent thinkers imagined, in the one-way ascension of the West and its values. The forcible breakup of Yugoslavia made sure of that. The "end of history" would be deferred for a long time to come. But there was too much giddiness in the reunified Germany (+ Austria), eager to make a return to its old imperialist position on the Continent, to see it; thus their irresponsible recognition of an independent Slovenia and Croatia and the arming, ironically, of Bosnian radical Muslims and the Croat neo-Nazi Ustashe movement, responsible for the biggest ethnic cleansing campaigns perpetrated in Europe since the German Nazis in World War II. Now, the final chapter of the sad tale of Yugoslavia is being written in Kosovo, a narrative which shows the utter impotence of the West and its inability to solve complicated strategic problems in its own backyard. Russia (not to mention China) can just sit back and laugh. Indeed, behind his trademark icy demeanor, it was hard to miss the glee in President Putin's recent comments about the "grave consequences" of Kosovo independence for the current international order: "There is a huge temptation, like it was after the World War II – three or four people with pencils in their hands were dividing Europe and the entire world. Now [the] winners in the Cold War, sensing their innocence and strength, want to redistribute everything on their own. There is a huge temptation. It is very hard to predict the consequences." Putin's message: if you want chaos, we'll give you chaos. But the West in the Balkans is now past the point of no return; in Kosovo, for various reasons neither the status quo (protectorate) nor the other two options (Serbian control, independence) are viable. It is a black hole run by the mafia, a place with no economic future, and with a small but growing Islamic fundamentalist movement that was allowed to take root because UN occupiers were not vigilant about keeping Arab financiers out. If it is independent, Kosovo will have to start paying for a whole lot of things (such as international debts) for which Serbia is currently paying, and its citizens will no longer be able to claim the Serbian passports which currently allow them a modicum of international travel. In short, an independent Kosovo would become even more of a walled ghetto than it already is today. However, in the 1990's ambitious Western interventionists were unable to, or else chose not to see that such things would inevitably result from any forcible change of the regime. They did not consult the history books, which would have confirmed certain chronic social and economic patterns that simply cannot be changed by wishful thinking and humanitarian zeal. They made Serbia's administrative problem their own – ironically, a major relief for Belgrade which is being exploited by Moscow to the detriment of the Western do-gooders. If Kosovo does gain some sort of autonomy or independence, you can bet that Russia will exact some major concessions in the process. The irony is that before NATO's bombing in 1999 Moscow had no leverage, whereas now it does, and simply by doing nothing but opposing Western plans. In Serbia, used as the main scapegoat for why Kosovo is not still independent, the West has meanwhile played into Russian hands with its intransigent position on Kosovo and with its incessant demands for Belgrade to send alleged war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to the Hague – even though they are, more likely than not, hiding out in Montenegrin or Bosnian territory. Constantly demanding that Serbia do the impossible has of course bolstered the right-wing Radical party, which advocates closer ties with Russia and China and which won over a quarter of the vote in the recent elections. Western fears of a conservative and retrospective political movement blocking "Euro-Atlantic accession" thus become a self-fulfilling prophesy. To return finally to the deceptive commentary of Sen. Biden in the Financial Times, we can conclude with his strange assertion that an independent Kosovo is justified because Balkan residents are "mentally prepared" for it, and that Serbian politicians should accordingly recognize that. "Historically, trouble in the Balkans is almost always the result of false expectations," opines the senator and presidential candidate. Indeed. Everyone has expectations; it is left to history to sort out whose were false and whose came true. Will it prove that the Kosovo Albanians had false expectations of getting an independent state out of NATO's bombing in 1999? Indeed, it is the need to preclude such a dawning realization that is pushing the ICG's advocacy and the interventionist rhetoric demanding independence for Kosovo. In short, it is of the essence that, when the dust clears, history has proved the "false expectations" to have been on the Serbian rather than the Albanian side. Otherwise there will be hell to pay – and especially for the Western administration in Kosovo, which is directly in the line of fire from disgruntled paramilitaries. In actuality, however, the real "historical" source of trouble in the Balkans has always been foreign intervention and intrigue. For at least the past two centuries, there has not been a period of even fifty years without a war, uprising or state persecution of one kind or another. In every case, foreign hands, sometimes hidden, always bloody, are to be found behind it. The sad truth is that the people of the Balkans have never been left alone to sort out their own affairs. And with the continued struggle of the Western Great Powers and Russia for dominance in the region, just as happened a century ago, it is clear that they won't get the chance to do so any time soon. |
UK government asks employees to work for free
4.30pm update
Friday January 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Campaigners condemn plea for nurses to work unpaid
Staff and agenciesFriday January 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Health campaigners today condemned an NHS trust for asking its staff to resign, work for no pay or take unpaid leave in order to reduce its multimillion-pound deficit.
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, which reported a £16.7m deficit last year, has sent staff a letter asking them to work unpaid for a day, take six months unpaid leave, take voluntary redundancy or defer taking five days of their holiday until next year to help balance its books.
The trust says "just one extra day of work without additional pay as a voluntary contribution" would help to avoid "significant job losses". The trust is predicted to be £5m at the end of the financial year in March.
The move has further angered health campaigners because it would also enable the trust to sign a deal under the controversial private finance initiative (PFI).
Under the initiative, private firms raise the money to design and build a hospital, which NHS trusts must then pay back with interest over 20 to 30 years. The Conservatives say the eventual repayments for the existing 83 PFI hospital building projects - worth £8bn - would total £53bn.
A spokeswoman for the UK's largest public sector union, Unison, said the trust's request was "disgraceful".
She said: "It is unbelievable to expect nurses and other low-paid health professionals to work for nothing. Why should they be penalised for providing a good service when the deficits are the fault of mismanagement?
"It's particularly galling when the trust wants to finance a PFI deal that will end up costing taxpayers more money." The leaked memo, issued to all staff by the director of human resources Terry Coode, said the trust was "facing a very significant challenge this year".
It added: "To be unsuccessful in our target will have serious consequences for the trust that will affect us all. It will jeopardise our investment and development plans, including our ability to build the PFI."
The letter sets out how job losses can be avoided, including "inviting enquiries about the possibility of voluntary redundancy". It also offers staff the chance to take a six-month unpaid break "to pursue a personal ambition or just to take a well-earned break".
Staff would be able to return to their original jobs or one in a similar position, it added. The letter also encouraged staff to carry forward five days' holiday to the next year to "help avoid additional costs this year".
It said: "We are also asking staff to contribute just one extra day without additional pay as a voluntary contribution to year-end.
"This would further help displace some bank and agency (costs) and increase our opportunity to have additional income."
Geoff Martin, head of campaigns at the group Health Emergency, said: "This slaps the nut on the government's health care policy.
"Nurses and other members of the healthcare team are called on to work for nothing so that speculators and banks can cream off another fat profit from an NHS PFI scheme.
"This is Robin Hood in reverse, robbing the poor to fill the pockets of the rich. And it's happening right under the noses of a Labour government who are ripping the heart out of the NHS."
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said staff were being asked to work a day unpaid on an entirely voluntary basis.
In a statement, it said: "Our staff have suggested this idea to help reduce agency use as part of plans to stay within our budgets. This informal request was extended to all staff, and we've had doctors offering to work extra hours for free. This is not about saving our PFI, but getting our finances right."
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