Key Democrats, Led by Hillary Clinton, Leave No doubt that Endless War is Official U.S. Doctrine
Glenn Greenwald for The Intercept
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/07/key-democrats-led-hillary-clinton-leave-doubt-endless-war-u-s-doctrine/
Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. . . . That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.”
In May, 2013, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether it should revise the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). A committee member asked a senior Pentagon official, Assistant Secretary Michael Sheehan, how long the war on terror would last; his reply: “At least 10 to 20 years.” At least. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed afterward “that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today — atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted.” As Spencer Ackerman put it: “Welcome to America’s Thirty Years War,” one which – by the Obama administration’s own reasoning – has “no geographic limit.”
Listening to all this, Maine’s independent Sen. Angus King said: “This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today.” Former Bush DOJ lawyer Jack Goldsmith – himself an ardent advocate of broad presidential powers – was at the hearing and noted that nobody even knows against whom this endless war is being waged: “Amazingly, there is a very large question even in the Armed Services Committee about who the United States is at war against and where, and how those determinations are made.”
All of that received remarkably little attention given its obvious significance. But any doubts about whether Endless War – literally – is official American doctrine should be permanently erased by this week’s comments from two leading Democrats, both former top national security officials in the Obama administration, one of whom is likely to be the next American president.
= new reply since forum marked as read
and will always be at war with somebody. The final, rotten stage of soft fascism.
Release the poutrage!
...in 3...2...1...
That's how to get active. If it was a Chicago precinct, it's tough to take it over. Me and six friends took over the precinct for the guy who is now our alderman here in the burbs. Every precinct is different, but that's the level to get real activism in place.
Here is what Glenn Greenwald answers to your accusation:
"When the Iraq War was debated and then commenced, I was not a writer. I was not a journalist. I was not politically engaged or active. I never played any role in political debates or controversies. Unlike the countless beloved Democrats who actually did support the war - including Obama's Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - I had no platform or role in politics of any kind.
I never once wrote in favor of the Iraq War or argued for it in any way, shape or form. Ask anyone who claims that I "supported" the Iraq War to point to a single instance where I ever supported or defended it in any way. There is no such instance. It's a pure fabrication.
. . . .
Nonetheless, because of the general faith I had in political and media institutions, I assumed - since both political parties and media outlets and journalists from across the ideological spectrum were united in support of the war - that there must be some valid basis to the claim that Saddam posed a threat. My basic trust in these institutions neutralized the objections I had and led me to passively acquiesce to what was being done ("I believed then that the president was entitled to have his national security judgment deferred to, and to the extent that I was able to develop a definitive view, I accepted his judgment that American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country."
.
. . . .
Like many people, I became radicalized by those early years of the Bush administration. The Preface recounts that it was the 2002 due-process-free imprisonment of US citizen Jose Padilla and the 2003 Iraq War that caused me to realize the full extent of the government's radicalism and the media's malfeasance: "I developed, for the first time in my life, a sense of urgency about the need to take a stand for our country and its defining principles."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/30/1182442/-Glenn-Greenwald-Responds-to-Widespread-Lies-About-Him-on-Cato-Iraq-War-and-more
Like Greenwald, I was working very long hours during the build-up to the Iraq War. Like Greenwald, I read the news, listened to NPR and thought the Bush lies were true. Like Greenwald, I became an activist when I realized how I had been lied to, cheated, snookered by the Bush administration.
I was pretty much always politically active but, like Greewald, before Bush and in spite of my distress at the Nixon, Reagan and Bush I presidencies, I believed in and trusted the system.
Greenwald was not a Bush supporter. He was a lawyer.
I believe Greenwald has recognized his error and has explained how the Bush administration and its lies and deception turned him away from practicing law and into becoming and activist in favor of civil rights and honest, open government.
How much more can you ask?
It is true that, like 90% of Americans, I did support the war in Afghanistan and, living in New York, believed the rhetoric about the threat of Islamic extremism: those were obvious mistakes. It's also true that one can legitimately criticize me for not having actively opposed the Iraq War at a time when many people were doing so. Martin Luther King, in his 1967 speech explaining why his activism against the Vietnam War was indispensable to his civil rights work, acknowledged that he had been too slow to pay attention to or oppose the war and that he thus felt obligated to work with particular vigor against it once he realized the need ("Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam" .
I've often spoken about the prime benefit of writing about political matters full-time: namely, it enables you to examine first-hand sources and not have to rely upon media or political mediators when forming beliefs. That process has been and continues to be very eye-opening for me.
Like most people who do not work on politics or journalism full-time, I had to rely back then on standard political and media venues to form my political impressions of the world. When I first began writing about politics, I had a whole slew of conventional political beliefs that came from lazy ingestion of the false and misleading claims of these conventional political and media sources. Having the time to examine political realities first-hand has led me to realize how many of those former beliefs I held were based on myth or worse, and I've radically changed how I think about a whole slew of issues as a result of that re-examination.
The purpose of the Preface was to publicly explain that evolution. Indeed, the first sentence of this Preface was this quote from Abraham Lincoln: "I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday." When I still trusted and relied upon the claims of the political and media class - when I was basically apolitical and passive - I tacitly accepted all sorts of views which I've come to see are warped and misleading. I've talked often about this process and am proud of this evolution. I have zero interest in hiding it or concealing it. Quite the contrary: I want readers to know about it. That's why I wrote the Preface.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/30/1182442/-Glenn-Greenwald-Responds-to-Widespread-Lies-About-Him-on-Cato-Iraq-War-and-more
All I can say is that if you apply this strict standard in your judgment of Glenn Greenwald, I hope you also apply it to Hillary Clinton.
Many of us were shocked and awakened out of apathy by the lies of the Bush administration.
The lesson is to be ever vigilant, ever skeptical, trust no politician. Not a one of them -- until they prove their honesty and good sense.
I would like to add that Greenwald's reference to Abraham Lincoln is especially moving. If you read the Lincoln-Douglas debates, you learn that Lincoln was at that time not running on freeing slaves. The Gettysburg Address was most likely not due to a sudden change of conscience but rather to a progressive growth in his awareness of the equality of all humans and the crime that slavery caused to those enslaved in our country.
People can and do change. Greenwald explains that he changed. I accept his explanation. To reject his claim of transformation is to deny to all of us including yourself the possibility of learning. What is the use of writing on DU or campaigning or talking about politics if we view others as cemented, paralyzed in the opinions they held at some moment in the past, even in the immediate past?
Last edited Tue Oct 7, 2014, 05:46 PM - Edit history (1)
Families and communities torn apart... hunger, disease, displacement... the pernicious terrorism of drones... creating the conditions that gave rise to the horrifying barbarism of ISIS...
What's the point of even pretending anymore?
