By William Fisher
After years of ignoring the United Nations panel charged with oversight of the Convention Against Torture (CAT) -- a centerpiece of international human rights law -- the U.S. government turned up at a meeting of the group in Geneva with a delegation of more than two dozen lawyers and other officials to affirm that the U.S. is "absolutely committed to uphold its national and international obligations to eradicate torture" and that "there are no exceptions to this prohibition."
That's what I call chutzpah!
The government's theory must be that the more lawyers you bring to Geneva, the easier it will be to bob and weave your way around those pesky questions people keep asking about Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo, renditions and secret prisons in Eastern Europe.
Especially if your delegation doesn't include anyone from the CIA.
Heading this delegation of representatives from the departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, is State Department legal adviser John B. Bellinger III.
With an absolutely straight face, Bellinger told the Committee Against Torture that despite instances of abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the U.S. has not systematically mistreated prisoners and remained committed to a global ban on torture.
But members of the panel referred to a report by investigators for the European Parliament who said last month they had evidence that the C.I.A. had flown 1,000 undeclared flights over Europe since 2001, in some cases transporting terrorist suspects abducted within the European Union to countries known to use torture.
Bellinger said he could not answer questions about intelligence-related activities, but asserted that the allegation that those planes carried terror suspects was an "absurd insinuation."
He added that in cases where the government has "rendered" prisoners to countries with poor human rights records, it has sought assurances that they will not be tortured.
But the panel wasn't buying the "diplomatic assurances" argument. "The very fact that you are asking for diplomatic assurances means you are in doubt," said Andreas Mavrommatis, chairman of the committee.
The "diplomatic assurances" charade has been known - and discredited -- for years. But "rendition" is a policy the administration defends, saying it helps to get dangerous individuals out of the U.S.
In one of the better-publicized cases of "rendition", Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was detained by U.S. authorities after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport from a vacation in North Africa. Instead of being allowed to continue his journey to Canada, he was detained by U.S. officials, then shipped off to Syria, where he was imprisoned for a year and tortured. He tried to sue the U.S. government, but his suit was dismissed because the Justice Department argued that trial would involve divulging "state secrets" in open court.
In another "rendition" case, a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, was abducted while on vacation in Macedonia in December 2003, flown to Afghanistan where he remained in jail without charge until late May 2004, when he was taken to a deserted country road and set free. He too has brought suit against the U.S. government.
Bellinger also defended the U.S. decision not to grant prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq rights under the Geneva Conventions.
Terrorist suspects could pose a threat to security if allowed to meet with
representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as stipulated by the Geneva Conventions, he said.
Such a security threat has clearly been applied by the Bush administration to the alleged key figures in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubeida. These men are being held in undisclosed locations without access to the Red Cross or to legal counsel, and have reportedly been subjected to "aggressive interrogation" techniques such as "waterboarding," in which the prisoner is led to believe he is drowning. And at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the government has Mohamed al-Qahtani, who it now claims is the real would-be 20th hijacker.
Many legal experts believe that U.S. treatment of these suspects is the principal reason they will never be tried in a court of law, civilian or military. It is unlikely that either would admit evidence obtained through torture.
That's one reason the Justice Department made such a big deal of the trial, conviction and sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was clearly a bit player in Al-Quida who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. He was found guilty of conspiracy and of lying to the FBI, thus preventing the government from taking actions to prevent the 9/11 attacks. The government sought the death penalty but the jury sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of release.
Meanwhile, back in Geneva, attorney Bellinger offered a self-congratulatory tribute to U.S. commitment to the rule of law. "The timing of our report comes at a difficult time for the United States," he said. "But we did not shy away from coming."
Members of the panel were clearly unimpressed. Some expressed skepticism about aspects of the American presentation. For example, Fernando Mariño Menendez of Spain cited data from human rights groups saying that of 600 American service members or intelligence officers accused of having been involved in the torture or murder of detainees, only 10 have received prison terms of a year or more.
Addressing reporters after the hearing concluded, Bellinger said that provisions in the torture convention that prohibit transferring detainees to countries where they could be tortured do not apply to detainee "transfers that take place outside of the United States." He added, however, that the U.S. has "as a policy matter, applied exactly the same standards" to such transfers.
Members of the U.S. delegation also emphasized that there have been "relatively few actual cases of abuse" of terror detainees and Bellinger said that some allegations have been widely exaggerated.
Deputy US Assistant Defense Secretary Charles Stimson told the UN panel that of the 120 detainee deaths that have occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq, abuse was suspected in only 29 cases. He said that the deaths had been investigated and appropriate action taken. Stimson also said that no detainees have died at Guantanamo Bay.
For years, Bush administration officials have argued that international human rights laws should not constrain the conduct of United States forces. By sending its oversized delegation to Geneva, the administration is belatedly seeking to restore credibility to its record on prisoner treatment by affirming support for the CAT.
But pulling off that sleight of hand is going to take a lot more than a couple of dozen lawyers turning up in Geneva.
They could start by including a CIA representative in our next delegation to Geneva.
Then President Bush could rescind the "signing statement" he attached to the McCain anti-torture legislation, effectively giving himself the right to ignore the law whenever he says it's in the interest of national security.
That's known as Dubya's Rule of Law.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Sunday, May 07, 2006
REMEMBER THE EDSEL!
By William Fisher
Nobel Peace Prize-winner and Iranian human rights advocate and dissident Shirin Ebadi was asked on PBS last week about the $75 million the U.S. State Department intends to spend supporting pro-democracy groups in her country.
“Will such a program be helpful to assist democracy advocates like yourself?” asked the News Hour’s Margaret Warner.
Ebadi’s response: “No, I don’t think it will benefit people like me because whoever speaks about democracy will be accused of having been paid by the U.S.” She went on to ask, “Can democracy be brought to people by bombs? Democracy is a culture. It has to come from within a society, not brought by America to a society.”
That’s about as good a capsule summary of America’s public diplomacy dilemma as I’ve heard.
The essence of that dilemma is that the U.S. is spending a great deal of money on getting its messages out -- $597 million last year alone, much of it in the Middle East. Yet successive opinion polls show that people in the neighborhood have increasingly negative opinions about American policies.
Those of us who live in the U.S. know that there are gazillion positive stories to tell about our country. And no doubt Karen Hughes and her public diplomacy colleagues at the State Department are trying hard to tell them.
But these stories are being drowned out by the realities and perceptions of our target audiences.
The U.S. is now thought of in the Middle East not just as the country that brought jazz and hamburgers, Hollywood movies, and the Bill of Rights to the world. We are thought of as the country that cooked the intelligence books to sell the American people on invading Iraq. That preached about human rights while abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. That is waging a silent war on Muslims at home. That is seen as ignoring Palestinians while helping Israelis. That is led by a swaggering Texas-style “bring it on” president who dismisses critics as unpatriotic as he exhorts his citizens to “stay the course.”
Against that incessant background of “white noise,” how can the U.S. hope to be heard?
The truth is it can’t. Not now. Not until the policies change.
Because every credible poll in the Middle East tells us that Arabs and other Muslims don’t hate the American people or American culture – they hate the policies of the Bush Administration.
And that would be true even if the strategies, tactics, and mechanics of our public diplomacy efforts were impeccably crafted. But they aren’t.
Last week, the Government Accountability Office weighed in on the subject with a new report. It found the State Department’s efforts to reach more than 1.5 billion Muslims in 58 countries lack a strong central message and a strategic plan of communication, and that as many as 30 percent of public diplomacy posts in the Middle East are filled by officers with limited language skills.
It reported that Public Diplomacy officers abroad don’t spend enough time talking to local audiences and, while the program is aimed primarily at younger audiences, there is a shortage of basic, core messages, and a lack of analysis of the program's results.
To explain U.S. foreign policy more effectively, the GAO recommended that
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice provide our embassies and consulates with clear written guidance on priority goals and tactics.
At the end of the day, however, it’s not going to matter how professionally our public diplomacy efforts are organized and executed, or how much more money we throw at this activity.
Karen Hughes, longtime Bush friend and confidante, has been dealt a lousy hand by the President. He asked her to take on an impossible job for which nothing in her background equips her. I’m sure she is working hard and really trying, but the enemy she faces is not the difficulty of actually getting anything done in the Washington bureaucracy. Her enemy is the very U.S. foreign policy she was brought on board to sell.
So the problem is not the messenger or the message. It’s the product. It’s U.S. policy. Until that changes, we’re kidding ourselves if we believe we’re going to be able to win Muslim hearts and minds.
Isn’t it amazing that the country that invented modern marketing doesn’t understand that sales of a flawed product can’t be sustained?
That’s what we just don’t seem to get.
Remember the Edsel!
Nobel Peace Prize-winner and Iranian human rights advocate and dissident Shirin Ebadi was asked on PBS last week about the $75 million the U.S. State Department intends to spend supporting pro-democracy groups in her country.
“Will such a program be helpful to assist democracy advocates like yourself?” asked the News Hour’s Margaret Warner.
Ebadi’s response: “No, I don’t think it will benefit people like me because whoever speaks about democracy will be accused of having been paid by the U.S.” She went on to ask, “Can democracy be brought to people by bombs? Democracy is a culture. It has to come from within a society, not brought by America to a society.”
That’s about as good a capsule summary of America’s public diplomacy dilemma as I’ve heard.
The essence of that dilemma is that the U.S. is spending a great deal of money on getting its messages out -- $597 million last year alone, much of it in the Middle East. Yet successive opinion polls show that people in the neighborhood have increasingly negative opinions about American policies.
Those of us who live in the U.S. know that there are gazillion positive stories to tell about our country. And no doubt Karen Hughes and her public diplomacy colleagues at the State Department are trying hard to tell them.
But these stories are being drowned out by the realities and perceptions of our target audiences.
The U.S. is now thought of in the Middle East not just as the country that brought jazz and hamburgers, Hollywood movies, and the Bill of Rights to the world. We are thought of as the country that cooked the intelligence books to sell the American people on invading Iraq. That preached about human rights while abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. That is waging a silent war on Muslims at home. That is seen as ignoring Palestinians while helping Israelis. That is led by a swaggering Texas-style “bring it on” president who dismisses critics as unpatriotic as he exhorts his citizens to “stay the course.”
Against that incessant background of “white noise,” how can the U.S. hope to be heard?
The truth is it can’t. Not now. Not until the policies change.
Because every credible poll in the Middle East tells us that Arabs and other Muslims don’t hate the American people or American culture – they hate the policies of the Bush Administration.
And that would be true even if the strategies, tactics, and mechanics of our public diplomacy efforts were impeccably crafted. But they aren’t.
Last week, the Government Accountability Office weighed in on the subject with a new report. It found the State Department’s efforts to reach more than 1.5 billion Muslims in 58 countries lack a strong central message and a strategic plan of communication, and that as many as 30 percent of public diplomacy posts in the Middle East are filled by officers with limited language skills.
It reported that Public Diplomacy officers abroad don’t spend enough time talking to local audiences and, while the program is aimed primarily at younger audiences, there is a shortage of basic, core messages, and a lack of analysis of the program's results.
To explain U.S. foreign policy more effectively, the GAO recommended that
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice provide our embassies and consulates with clear written guidance on priority goals and tactics.
At the end of the day, however, it’s not going to matter how professionally our public diplomacy efforts are organized and executed, or how much more money we throw at this activity.
Karen Hughes, longtime Bush friend and confidante, has been dealt a lousy hand by the President. He asked her to take on an impossible job for which nothing in her background equips her. I’m sure she is working hard and really trying, but the enemy she faces is not the difficulty of actually getting anything done in the Washington bureaucracy. Her enemy is the very U.S. foreign policy she was brought on board to sell.
So the problem is not the messenger or the message. It’s the product. It’s U.S. policy. Until that changes, we’re kidding ourselves if we believe we’re going to be able to win Muslim hearts and minds.
Isn’t it amazing that the country that invented modern marketing doesn’t understand that sales of a flawed product can’t be sustained?
That’s what we just don’t seem to get.
Remember the Edsel!
Thursday, May 04, 2006
LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE VOICE OF DEMOCRACY!
By William Fisher
These were messages that needed to be delivered: Russia must stop backsliding on its commitment to democratic reform. It must stop using its oil as a tool of blackmail. Belarus must stop beating peaceful demonstrators, "disappearing" dissidents, and promoting a climate of fear under a government that subverts free elections.
But what was President Bush thinking when he chose Vice President Dick Cheney to go to Lithuania as the messenger?
Could there be anyone less credible on subjects like democratic reform and open government?
More than any other Administration figure save the president himself, it was Dick Cheney who orchestrated the cherrypicking of pre-Iraq intelligence. Who hyped the need to invade with imagery of mushroom clouds. Who promised that the Iraqis would greet us as 'liberators'. Who told us the insurgency was in its "last throes." Who put the Administration's lackey lawyers to work to find justifications for torture, and opposed John McCain's proposal to ban it. Who went to court to keep secret the details of the so-called energy policy he discussed with leaders of Big Oil. Who opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission and suppressed a Senate report on whether the Administration manipulated pre-war intelligence. Who fought every effort to declassify information the American people have a right to know. Who battled to stem all leaks except those he could use to have his minions go after the wife of an Administration critic?
Dick Cheney is arguably the most powerful vice president in American history. And un-arguably the most dangerous.
Cheney told Baltic and Black Sea leaders at the summit in Vilnius that Russia had rolled back on freedoms ranging from "religion and the news media to advocacy groups and political parties.'' He called Belarus the "last dictatorship in Europe'' and urged the release of opposition leader Aleksander Milinkevich and other pro-democracy activists.
"A climate of fear prevails under a government that subverts free elections,''
he said. "There is no place in a Europe whole and free for a regime of this
kind.''
He is undeniably right.
But what is truly grotesque is the utter hypocrisy of Dick Cheney lecturing anyone about democracy and human rights. He has dishonored these core American values in his own country.
Then there's the question of the geopolitical wisdom of his remarks?
Cheney's staunch championship of democracy in Russia and Belarus comes at a time when the U.S. is seeking Putin's support for a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that Iran curb its nuclear ambitions. Cheney's harsh remarks could further antagonize Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council, where it has thus far opposed any sanctions.
What splendid timing!
But, on the other hand, Russia-bashing is always a big hit with President Bush's conservative base at home, which could use considerable shoring up. Bush's approval ratings are currently hovering at around 32 percent, and Cheney's numbers are even lower.
Sending Cheney to Vilnius as a champion of human rights and civil liberties can only be seen as a caricature. It is yet another demonstration of the Bush Administration's contempt for "old Europe" and its essentially unchanged unilateralism.
Well, Europe may be old, but it's not stupid.
These were messages that needed to be delivered: Russia must stop backsliding on its commitment to democratic reform. It must stop using its oil as a tool of blackmail. Belarus must stop beating peaceful demonstrators, "disappearing" dissidents, and promoting a climate of fear under a government that subverts free elections.
But what was President Bush thinking when he chose Vice President Dick Cheney to go to Lithuania as the messenger?
Could there be anyone less credible on subjects like democratic reform and open government?
More than any other Administration figure save the president himself, it was Dick Cheney who orchestrated the cherrypicking of pre-Iraq intelligence. Who hyped the need to invade with imagery of mushroom clouds. Who promised that the Iraqis would greet us as 'liberators'. Who told us the insurgency was in its "last throes." Who put the Administration's lackey lawyers to work to find justifications for torture, and opposed John McCain's proposal to ban it. Who went to court to keep secret the details of the so-called energy policy he discussed with leaders of Big Oil. Who opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission and suppressed a Senate report on whether the Administration manipulated pre-war intelligence. Who fought every effort to declassify information the American people have a right to know. Who battled to stem all leaks except those he could use to have his minions go after the wife of an Administration critic?
Dick Cheney is arguably the most powerful vice president in American history. And un-arguably the most dangerous.
Cheney told Baltic and Black Sea leaders at the summit in Vilnius that Russia had rolled back on freedoms ranging from "religion and the news media to advocacy groups and political parties.'' He called Belarus the "last dictatorship in Europe'' and urged the release of opposition leader Aleksander Milinkevich and other pro-democracy activists.
"A climate of fear prevails under a government that subverts free elections,''
he said. "There is no place in a Europe whole and free for a regime of this
kind.''
He is undeniably right.
But what is truly grotesque is the utter hypocrisy of Dick Cheney lecturing anyone about democracy and human rights. He has dishonored these core American values in his own country.
Then there's the question of the geopolitical wisdom of his remarks?
Cheney's staunch championship of democracy in Russia and Belarus comes at a time when the U.S. is seeking Putin's support for a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that Iran curb its nuclear ambitions. Cheney's harsh remarks could further antagonize Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council, where it has thus far opposed any sanctions.
What splendid timing!
But, on the other hand, Russia-bashing is always a big hit with President Bush's conservative base at home, which could use considerable shoring up. Bush's approval ratings are currently hovering at around 32 percent, and Cheney's numbers are even lower.
Sending Cheney to Vilnius as a champion of human rights and civil liberties can only be seen as a caricature. It is yet another demonstration of the Bush Administration's contempt for "old Europe" and its essentially unchanged unilateralism.
Well, Europe may be old, but it's not stupid.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GOOD FIGHT?
By William Fisher
The juxtaposition of oil, human rights, and the "global war on terror" has exposed a giant fault line in the Bush Administration's foreign policy, revealing inconsistency and hypocrisy.
In his second inaugural address, the president pledged to make spreading freedom around the world the cornerstone of U.S. international relations. America would no longer tolerate its cozy relationships with dictatorial and repressive governments. We would stop supporting regimes that consistently showed up on the State Department's annual list of human rights violators.
After the scandals of Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo Bay, it was never going to be easy for the U.S. to maintain any credibility for its freedom agenda. But some of us continued to cling to a few hopeful signs; for example, the Administration's arm-twisting of Egypt's aging dictator, Hosni Mubarak, to open its presidential elections to multiple candidates.
For twenty-five years, Egypt remained second only to Israel as a recipient of U.S. military and economic assistance, while its Emergency Law made a mockery of due process and freedom of association and expression. Now we would no longer give Mubarak his usual "get out of jail" free pass. Now we would attach strings to our massive largesse.
So Egypt mollified us with a kind of faux presidential election, albeit it deeply flawed by placing impossible limitations on who could challenge the Mubarak regime at the polls. And the leading opposition figure, Ayman Nour, ended up in jail.
That was followed by a Parliamentary election that was rife with vote-rigging, disenfranchisement, violent attacks on voters and peaceful protesters, and the arrest of hundreds of Egyptian citizens. Despite flagrant police interference, the banned Muslim Brotherhood - the Middle East's poster child for political Islam - managed to win 88 seats in Parliament.
Judges who called on the government to allow them to conduct an inquiry into election irregularities were stripped of their judicial immunity, opening the possibility that they could be questioned by police, arrested, and tried.
The U.S. reaction to this Egyptian "democracy" charade was the equivalent of a mild slap on the wrist. The State Department expressed its "disappointment."
It had the same reaction last week, when Mubarak pushed through a two-year extension of the 25-year-old Emergency Law, despite his pledge to repeal it in favor of anti-terror legislation.
Egypt first adopted this draconian law in 1981 in response to the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, and at its height it was used to detain more than 30,000 prisoners indefinitely without charge. Mr. Mubarak has had the law renewed every three years since - and today human rights groups estimate that there are approximately 15,000 uncharged prisoners in Egypt's jails.
The law expressly allows the authorities to hold individuals for months without being charged or tried. But in practice, legal experts say, the government goes through the motions of technically releasing prisoners and then re-arresting them, without ever having actually let them go.
In effect, the law is the fire blanket the government has thrown over all dissent, including press freedom.
Said a State Department spokesman in response to a reporter's question at the very end of a press briefing last week: "It's a disappointment. It's a disappointment. We understand that Egypt has certainly facing its own issues related to terrorism, but President Mubarak during the presidential campaign had talked about the fact that he was going to seek a new emergency law, but one that would be targeted specifically at fighting terrorism, counterterrorism, and that would take into account respect for freedom of speech as well as human rights. Certainly we would like to see President Mubarak and his government follow through on that pledge."
What has happened here is that President Bush's pledge to rein in support for dictators has been trumped by two other strategic considerations: rewarding those countries who are U.S. allies in the "Global War on Terror" and romancing other countries that have oil and gas resources, despite their outrageous human rights records.
The list of U.S. allies in the "Global War on Terror" could well be headed, "The Coalition of the Despots." The democracy-spreader in the White House seems all too willing to overlook the long histories of repression, autocracy and human rights violations of such countries as Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Sudan, Jordan - even Syria, which U.S. officials have recently begun praising for its efforts to keep terrorists out of Iraq.
Clearly the U.S. and other like-minded countries need to do whatever is likely to reduce threats of terrorism. But the Administration has apparently concluded that hunting down the bad guys - no matter by what methods -- has a higher priority than working to create the transparency and good governance practices that, ironically, might just help to kill jihadism at its poisonous roots.
More recently, as Iran is seen as a gathering threat and the insatiable
oil-appetites of fast-growing economies like China and India put pressure on the world's energy supplies, the Bush Administration has begun its delicate minuet with energy-rich states.
And so access to oil and gas becomes another issue that apparently trumps respect for democratic rule of law - and another sorry substitute for an energy policy that could curb America's addiction to oil by developing non-fossil energy sources.
America's partners in this new minuet include such pillars of democracy as Azerbaijan, one the most corrupt countries in the world, and Equatorial Guinea, whose dictatorial president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, was recently praised by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
And Vice President Cheney will soon visit oil-rich Kazakhstan, whose president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has long been a poster child for repression and corruption.
As my colleague Jim Lobe wrote recently, "Give Me That Old-Time Geo-Politics" is becoming a Bush Administration theme song.
But what makes these gaping policy contradictions so bizarre is not their geo-politics. It is the stark contrast between what America says and what America does. When our president vowed to spread freedom throughout the world, we might have thought him too idealistic, but we applauded - and we expected him to do what he promised.
Sadly, he seems to be giving up the good fight.
The juxtaposition of oil, human rights, and the "global war on terror" has exposed a giant fault line in the Bush Administration's foreign policy, revealing inconsistency and hypocrisy.
In his second inaugural address, the president pledged to make spreading freedom around the world the cornerstone of U.S. international relations. America would no longer tolerate its cozy relationships with dictatorial and repressive governments. We would stop supporting regimes that consistently showed up on the State Department's annual list of human rights violators.
After the scandals of Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo Bay, it was never going to be easy for the U.S. to maintain any credibility for its freedom agenda. But some of us continued to cling to a few hopeful signs; for example, the Administration's arm-twisting of Egypt's aging dictator, Hosni Mubarak, to open its presidential elections to multiple candidates.
For twenty-five years, Egypt remained second only to Israel as a recipient of U.S. military and economic assistance, while its Emergency Law made a mockery of due process and freedom of association and expression. Now we would no longer give Mubarak his usual "get out of jail" free pass. Now we would attach strings to our massive largesse.
So Egypt mollified us with a kind of faux presidential election, albeit it deeply flawed by placing impossible limitations on who could challenge the Mubarak regime at the polls. And the leading opposition figure, Ayman Nour, ended up in jail.
That was followed by a Parliamentary election that was rife with vote-rigging, disenfranchisement, violent attacks on voters and peaceful protesters, and the arrest of hundreds of Egyptian citizens. Despite flagrant police interference, the banned Muslim Brotherhood - the Middle East's poster child for political Islam - managed to win 88 seats in Parliament.
Judges who called on the government to allow them to conduct an inquiry into election irregularities were stripped of their judicial immunity, opening the possibility that they could be questioned by police, arrested, and tried.
The U.S. reaction to this Egyptian "democracy" charade was the equivalent of a mild slap on the wrist. The State Department expressed its "disappointment."
It had the same reaction last week, when Mubarak pushed through a two-year extension of the 25-year-old Emergency Law, despite his pledge to repeal it in favor of anti-terror legislation.
Egypt first adopted this draconian law in 1981 in response to the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, and at its height it was used to detain more than 30,000 prisoners indefinitely without charge. Mr. Mubarak has had the law renewed every three years since - and today human rights groups estimate that there are approximately 15,000 uncharged prisoners in Egypt's jails.
The law expressly allows the authorities to hold individuals for months without being charged or tried. But in practice, legal experts say, the government goes through the motions of technically releasing prisoners and then re-arresting them, without ever having actually let them go.
In effect, the law is the fire blanket the government has thrown over all dissent, including press freedom.
Said a State Department spokesman in response to a reporter's question at the very end of a press briefing last week: "It's a disappointment. It's a disappointment. We understand that Egypt has certainly facing its own issues related to terrorism, but President Mubarak during the presidential campaign had talked about the fact that he was going to seek a new emergency law, but one that would be targeted specifically at fighting terrorism, counterterrorism, and that would take into account respect for freedom of speech as well as human rights. Certainly we would like to see President Mubarak and his government follow through on that pledge."
What has happened here is that President Bush's pledge to rein in support for dictators has been trumped by two other strategic considerations: rewarding those countries who are U.S. allies in the "Global War on Terror" and romancing other countries that have oil and gas resources, despite their outrageous human rights records.
The list of U.S. allies in the "Global War on Terror" could well be headed, "The Coalition of the Despots." The democracy-spreader in the White House seems all too willing to overlook the long histories of repression, autocracy and human rights violations of such countries as Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Sudan, Jordan - even Syria, which U.S. officials have recently begun praising for its efforts to keep terrorists out of Iraq.
Clearly the U.S. and other like-minded countries need to do whatever is likely to reduce threats of terrorism. But the Administration has apparently concluded that hunting down the bad guys - no matter by what methods -- has a higher priority than working to create the transparency and good governance practices that, ironically, might just help to kill jihadism at its poisonous roots.
More recently, as Iran is seen as a gathering threat and the insatiable
oil-appetites of fast-growing economies like China and India put pressure on the world's energy supplies, the Bush Administration has begun its delicate minuet with energy-rich states.
And so access to oil and gas becomes another issue that apparently trumps respect for democratic rule of law - and another sorry substitute for an energy policy that could curb America's addiction to oil by developing non-fossil energy sources.
America's partners in this new minuet include such pillars of democracy as Azerbaijan, one the most corrupt countries in the world, and Equatorial Guinea, whose dictatorial president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, was recently praised by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
And Vice President Cheney will soon visit oil-rich Kazakhstan, whose president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has long been a poster child for repression and corruption.
As my colleague Jim Lobe wrote recently, "Give Me That Old-Time Geo-Politics" is becoming a Bush Administration theme song.
But what makes these gaping policy contradictions so bizarre is not their geo-politics. It is the stark contrast between what America says and what America does. When our president vowed to spread freedom throughout the world, we might have thought him too idealistic, but we applauded - and we expected him to do what he promised.
Sadly, he seems to be giving up the good fight.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
SPINNING OUR FORGOTTEN WAR
By William Fisher
“Contractors in Afghanistan are making big money for bad work.”
This is the conclusion reached in a new report from CorpWatch written by an Afghan-American journalist who returned to her native country to examine the progress of reconstruction.
“The Bush Administration touts the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan as a success story,” the report says, and claims that reconstruction has been “bungled” by “many of the same politically connected corporations which are doing similar work in Iraq”, receiving “massive open-ended contracts” without competitive bidding or with limited competition.
“These companies are pocketing millions, and leaving behind a people increasingly frustrated and angry with the results,” the report says. Foreign contractors “make as much as $1,000 a day, while the Afghans they employ make $5 per day,” the report charges.
Examples cited in the report by Fariba Nawa:
“A highway that begins crumbling before it is finished. A school with a collapsed roof. A clinic with faulty plumbing. A farmers’ cooperative that farmers can’t use. Afghan police and military that, after training, are incapable of providing the most basic security.”
Ms. Nawa says such examples abound in the country.
She writes, “Near Kabul City in the village of Qalai Qazi, Afghanistan, stands a new, bright-yellow health clinic built by American contractor The Louis Berger Group. The clinic was meant to function as a sterling example of American engineering, and to serve as a model for 81 clinics Berger was hired to build—in addition to roads, dams, schools and other infrastructure—in exchange for the $665 million in American aid money the company has so far received in federal contracts.
“The problem is, this ‘model’ clinic was falling apart: The ceiling had rotted away in patches; the plumbing, when it worked, leaked and shuddered; the chimney, made of flimsy metal, threatened to set the roof on fire; the sinks had no running water; and the place smelled of sewage,” the report says.
The U.S.-led reconstruction effort has directed substantial resources toward eradicating illicit poppy growing. It awarded a contract worth $120 million over four years to train opium growers in cultivation of alternative crops.
One part of the program “instructed farmers in Parwan to grow more vegetables, and promised to find buyers for them both within the country and beyond. The farmers, who normally planted beans and lentils, grew green vegetables as encouraged. But instead of profiting, they lost money. Vegetables flooded the market and drove the price down,” the report says.
In another part of the same program, the report says, it was determined that Afghan farmers, who make up about 80 percent of the working population, needed canals and irrigation systems and the means to get their product to domestic markets more efficiently, to minimize crop loss, and to reestablish their access to the international market.
The contractor’s solution was to build irrigation canals. But the reports points out that poppies need very little water or fertilizers to thrive. The result, the report says, was that opium poppy growers used the water in the canals to grow even more poppies.
The report says the U.S. hired a number of public relations companies to put a positive face on the reconstruction effort. One of them is the Washington, D.C.-based Rendon Group, which the report says has “close ties to the Bush Administration.” The Pentagon has awarded Rendon more than $56 million in contracts since September 11, 2001, “as part of a coordinated effort to disseminate positive press about America and its military in the developing world.”
The contracts call for “tracking foreign reporters” and “pushing (and sometimes paying) news outlets worldwide to run articles and segments favorable to United States interests.”
Rendon was also granted a contract in 2004 to train staff at President Karzai’s office in the art of public relations, and “later received another hefty grant of $3.9 million from the Pentagon to develop a counter-narcotics campaign with the Afghan interior ministry -- despite objections from Karzai and the State Department.”
The report charges that the contracting system used by international donors is broken. It says, “USAID gives contracts to American companies (and the World Bank and IMF give contracts to companies from their donor countries) who take huge chunks off the top and hire layers and layers of subcontractors who take their cuts, leaving only enough for sub-par construction. Quality assurance is minimal; contractors know well they can swoop in, put a new coat of paint on a rickety building, and submit their bill, with rarely a question asked. The result is collapsing hospitals, clinics, and schools, rutted and dangerous new highways, a “modernized” agricultural system that has actually left some farmers worse off than before, and emboldened militias and warlords who are more able to unleash violence on the people of Afghanistan.”
Afghans, the report says, “are losing their faith in the development experts whose job is to reconstruct and rebuild their country...What the people see is a handful of foreign companies setting priorities for reconstruction that make the companies wealthy, yet are sometimes absurdly contrary to what is necessary.”
Meanwhile, the report says, “the security situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, directly threatening ongoing reconstruction. Some of the fighting is simply the result of deep frustration and distrust among Afghans who no longer believe the international community is looking out for their best interests.”
The “deliberate use of warlords and militias in reconstruction efforts has only lent them more credibility and power, further undermining the elected government and fueling a Taliban-led insurgency that continues to gain power.”
The basic infrastructure in the country, the report concludes, “is in shambles; the drug trade is booming. This result should be seen as a major setback to the ‘War on Terror.’ To Afghans, who after decades of war, believed they would finally catch a break, it’s a heartbreak.”
“Contractors in Afghanistan are making big money for bad work.”
This is the conclusion reached in a new report from CorpWatch written by an Afghan-American journalist who returned to her native country to examine the progress of reconstruction.
“The Bush Administration touts the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan as a success story,” the report says, and claims that reconstruction has been “bungled” by “many of the same politically connected corporations which are doing similar work in Iraq”, receiving “massive open-ended contracts” without competitive bidding or with limited competition.
“These companies are pocketing millions, and leaving behind a people increasingly frustrated and angry with the results,” the report says. Foreign contractors “make as much as $1,000 a day, while the Afghans they employ make $5 per day,” the report charges.
Examples cited in the report by Fariba Nawa:
“A highway that begins crumbling before it is finished. A school with a collapsed roof. A clinic with faulty plumbing. A farmers’ cooperative that farmers can’t use. Afghan police and military that, after training, are incapable of providing the most basic security.”
Ms. Nawa says such examples abound in the country.
She writes, “Near Kabul City in the village of Qalai Qazi, Afghanistan, stands a new, bright-yellow health clinic built by American contractor The Louis Berger Group. The clinic was meant to function as a sterling example of American engineering, and to serve as a model for 81 clinics Berger was hired to build—in addition to roads, dams, schools and other infrastructure—in exchange for the $665 million in American aid money the company has so far received in federal contracts.
“The problem is, this ‘model’ clinic was falling apart: The ceiling had rotted away in patches; the plumbing, when it worked, leaked and shuddered; the chimney, made of flimsy metal, threatened to set the roof on fire; the sinks had no running water; and the place smelled of sewage,” the report says.
The U.S.-led reconstruction effort has directed substantial resources toward eradicating illicit poppy growing. It awarded a contract worth $120 million over four years to train opium growers in cultivation of alternative crops.
One part of the program “instructed farmers in Parwan to grow more vegetables, and promised to find buyers for them both within the country and beyond. The farmers, who normally planted beans and lentils, grew green vegetables as encouraged. But instead of profiting, they lost money. Vegetables flooded the market and drove the price down,” the report says.
In another part of the same program, the report says, it was determined that Afghan farmers, who make up about 80 percent of the working population, needed canals and irrigation systems and the means to get their product to domestic markets more efficiently, to minimize crop loss, and to reestablish their access to the international market.
The contractor’s solution was to build irrigation canals. But the reports points out that poppies need very little water or fertilizers to thrive. The result, the report says, was that opium poppy growers used the water in the canals to grow even more poppies.
The report says the U.S. hired a number of public relations companies to put a positive face on the reconstruction effort. One of them is the Washington, D.C.-based Rendon Group, which the report says has “close ties to the Bush Administration.” The Pentagon has awarded Rendon more than $56 million in contracts since September 11, 2001, “as part of a coordinated effort to disseminate positive press about America and its military in the developing world.”
The contracts call for “tracking foreign reporters” and “pushing (and sometimes paying) news outlets worldwide to run articles and segments favorable to United States interests.”
Rendon was also granted a contract in 2004 to train staff at President Karzai’s office in the art of public relations, and “later received another hefty grant of $3.9 million from the Pentagon to develop a counter-narcotics campaign with the Afghan interior ministry -- despite objections from Karzai and the State Department.”
The report charges that the contracting system used by international donors is broken. It says, “USAID gives contracts to American companies (and the World Bank and IMF give contracts to companies from their donor countries) who take huge chunks off the top and hire layers and layers of subcontractors who take their cuts, leaving only enough for sub-par construction. Quality assurance is minimal; contractors know well they can swoop in, put a new coat of paint on a rickety building, and submit their bill, with rarely a question asked. The result is collapsing hospitals, clinics, and schools, rutted and dangerous new highways, a “modernized” agricultural system that has actually left some farmers worse off than before, and emboldened militias and warlords who are more able to unleash violence on the people of Afghanistan.”
Afghans, the report says, “are losing their faith in the development experts whose job is to reconstruct and rebuild their country...What the people see is a handful of foreign companies setting priorities for reconstruction that make the companies wealthy, yet are sometimes absurdly contrary to what is necessary.”
Meanwhile, the report says, “the security situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, directly threatening ongoing reconstruction. Some of the fighting is simply the result of deep frustration and distrust among Afghans who no longer believe the international community is looking out for their best interests.”
The “deliberate use of warlords and militias in reconstruction efforts has only lent them more credibility and power, further undermining the elected government and fueling a Taliban-led insurgency that continues to gain power.”
The basic infrastructure in the country, the report concludes, “is in shambles; the drug trade is booming. This result should be seen as a major setback to the ‘War on Terror.’ To Afghans, who after decades of war, believed they would finally catch a break, it’s a heartbreak.”
AMERICAN BEDFELLOWS
By William Fisher
President George W. Bush’s “Global War on Terror” has produced the unintended consequence of bringing the United States ever-closer to some of the world’s most repressive regimes.
Egypt provides a classic example.
Last week, over the objections of the country’s human rights advocates, Egypt extended the 20-year-old “emergency” law that gives the government power to arrest and detain people without charges, and refused to moderate its campaign to further compromise the independence of an already weak judiciary.
These two developments provide insight into how the Global War on Terror is consistently trumping moves toward good governance and civil society that could be powerful weapons against the very terrorists Egypt seeks to defeat.
Following what many believe to be last year’s deeply flawed presidential election, the country’s judges’ demanded that they be allowed to investigate reports of widespread irregularities, violence towards voters and judges supervising the polls, and vote rigging. .
The government’s response was to strip six of the magistrates of their immunity from police questioning and thus open the door to criminal charges of defamation and insult.
Human rights organizations wrote Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif that they were “concerned for a number of human rights violations that took place with a renewed strength in the last months in Egypt, and, in particular, for the repeated limitations to freedom of expression and opinion, whose victims were different groups of the Egyptian civil society”.
The fate of the judges remains in limbo.
Egypt first adopted its Emergency Law in 1981 in response to the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, and at its height was used to detain more than 30,000
prisoners indefinitely without charge.
Mr. Mubarak has had the law renewed every three years since — and today human rights groups estimate that there are approximately 15,000 uncharged prisoners in Egypt's jails.
The law expressly allows the authorities to hold individuals for up to six
months without being charged or tried. But in practice, legal experts said, the
government goes through the motions of technically releasing prisoners after six
months, and then re-arresting them, without ever having actually let them go.
In effect, the law is the fire blanket the government has thrown over all dissent, including press freedom.
During his presidential campaign – the first in the country’s history that allowed multiple candidates -- President Mubarak vowed repeatedly to repeal the state of emergency in favor of a new anti-terrorism law. He received the enthusiastic support of civil society and human rights groups, journalists, lawyers, and other professional organizations, and even members of the political opposition.
A typical civil society response came from the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and the Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners. They wrote the Prime Minister that they “consider the termination of the state of emergency by the Egyptian authorities as a step forward towards the respect of Human Rights in Egypt and the strengthening of democratic values in the country. The extension of the state of emergency in Egypt had has been the source of several violations of human rights, and was used by the authorities to repress political opponents and to severely limit the freedom of expression and association.”
The organizations also encouraged the government to consider the demands of the Egyptian Press Syndicate and to examine journalists’ demands for the reform of laws governing the press. In particular, the groups expressed concern about the clauses on defamation, “so as to decriminalize the press related offences in order to guarantee freedom of expression and democracy in the country”.
Two journalists were recently sentenced to a year of imprisonment and fines for “defamation”, and hundreds of similar cases are reportedly now before the courts.
But the organizations cautioned the Egyptian authorities “to ensure the conformity of the new legislation to their international obligations” with guarantees of the right to life, freedom of expression, religion and belief, prohibition of torture and any form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to a fair and impartial trial, guarantees on the presumption of innocence, arrest only in case of reasonable suspicion, as well as the obligation to communicate to the detainee the charges against him/her and the guarantee of access to a lawyer, absolute prohibition of torture in all circumstances and a legal definition of terrorism that does not leave ground for misinterpretation or abuse..”
The Egyptian president’s response was to push a two-year extension of the emergency law through Parliament. The two-year extension was widely supported by the majority of the members of parliament who belong to Mubarak's governing National Democratic Party, which voted 237 to 91 in favor.
The largest opposition block in Parliament includes 88 members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were elected as independents last year. They stood in the parliamentary chamber today wearing black sashes over their shoulders that called for an end to the emergency law. The once militant Brotherhood, while still officially banned, has become Egypt’s leading voice of political Islam.
We will never use the emergency law against the Egyptian people," Mr. Nazif
said to the crowded parliamentary chamber. "We will use it only to protect the
citizens and face the terror cells that did not quell until now."
The authorities promptly arrested several dozen young men from political
opposition groups who had been displaying signs reading, "No for emergency
law," and "Together against extension of the emergency law."
While the U.S. State Department expressed disappointment that the presidential and subsequent parliamentary elections were not as free and fair as hoped for, President Bush has praised Egypt for its staunch support for the Global War on Terror.
Today, Egypt remains second only to Israel as a beneficiary of U.S. military and economic assistance.
President Bush has also praised other countries that have long histories as human rights violators but that support his anti-terror campaign. These include Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Libya, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Yemen, and others.
These countries consistently receive negative assessments in the U.S. State Department’s annual review of human rights practices around the world.
In a second kind of alliance that appears to be contrary to President Bush’s goal of spreading democracy around the world, the Administration is now reaching out to leaders who rule oil-rich countries that are accused of authoritarian rule and human rights violations. This search for energy supplies and allies against Iran includes Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Equatorial Guinea.
So opaque is the Bush Administration that it’s difficult to know if it understands how its policies thus contradict one another. And how seriously these contradictions strain American credibility internationally. But these conflicting themes will not be lost on the rest of the world, most of whose countries will lose no time pointing them out.
President George W. Bush’s “Global War on Terror” has produced the unintended consequence of bringing the United States ever-closer to some of the world’s most repressive regimes.
Egypt provides a classic example.
Last week, over the objections of the country’s human rights advocates, Egypt extended the 20-year-old “emergency” law that gives the government power to arrest and detain people without charges, and refused to moderate its campaign to further compromise the independence of an already weak judiciary.
These two developments provide insight into how the Global War on Terror is consistently trumping moves toward good governance and civil society that could be powerful weapons against the very terrorists Egypt seeks to defeat.
Following what many believe to be last year’s deeply flawed presidential election, the country’s judges’ demanded that they be allowed to investigate reports of widespread irregularities, violence towards voters and judges supervising the polls, and vote rigging. .
The government’s response was to strip six of the magistrates of their immunity from police questioning and thus open the door to criminal charges of defamation and insult.
Human rights organizations wrote Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif that they were “concerned for a number of human rights violations that took place with a renewed strength in the last months in Egypt, and, in particular, for the repeated limitations to freedom of expression and opinion, whose victims were different groups of the Egyptian civil society”.
The fate of the judges remains in limbo.
Egypt first adopted its Emergency Law in 1981 in response to the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, and at its height was used to detain more than 30,000
prisoners indefinitely without charge.
Mr. Mubarak has had the law renewed every three years since — and today human rights groups estimate that there are approximately 15,000 uncharged prisoners in Egypt's jails.
The law expressly allows the authorities to hold individuals for up to six
months without being charged or tried. But in practice, legal experts said, the
government goes through the motions of technically releasing prisoners after six
months, and then re-arresting them, without ever having actually let them go.
In effect, the law is the fire blanket the government has thrown over all dissent, including press freedom.
During his presidential campaign – the first in the country’s history that allowed multiple candidates -- President Mubarak vowed repeatedly to repeal the state of emergency in favor of a new anti-terrorism law. He received the enthusiastic support of civil society and human rights groups, journalists, lawyers, and other professional organizations, and even members of the political opposition.
A typical civil society response came from the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and the Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners. They wrote the Prime Minister that they “consider the termination of the state of emergency by the Egyptian authorities as a step forward towards the respect of Human Rights in Egypt and the strengthening of democratic values in the country. The extension of the state of emergency in Egypt had has been the source of several violations of human rights, and was used by the authorities to repress political opponents and to severely limit the freedom of expression and association.”
The organizations also encouraged the government to consider the demands of the Egyptian Press Syndicate and to examine journalists’ demands for the reform of laws governing the press. In particular, the groups expressed concern about the clauses on defamation, “so as to decriminalize the press related offences in order to guarantee freedom of expression and democracy in the country”.
Two journalists were recently sentenced to a year of imprisonment and fines for “defamation”, and hundreds of similar cases are reportedly now before the courts.
But the organizations cautioned the Egyptian authorities “to ensure the conformity of the new legislation to their international obligations” with guarantees of the right to life, freedom of expression, religion and belief, prohibition of torture and any form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to a fair and impartial trial, guarantees on the presumption of innocence, arrest only in case of reasonable suspicion, as well as the obligation to communicate to the detainee the charges against him/her and the guarantee of access to a lawyer, absolute prohibition of torture in all circumstances and a legal definition of terrorism that does not leave ground for misinterpretation or abuse..”
The Egyptian president’s response was to push a two-year extension of the emergency law through Parliament. The two-year extension was widely supported by the majority of the members of parliament who belong to Mubarak's governing National Democratic Party, which voted 237 to 91 in favor.
The largest opposition block in Parliament includes 88 members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were elected as independents last year. They stood in the parliamentary chamber today wearing black sashes over their shoulders that called for an end to the emergency law. The once militant Brotherhood, while still officially banned, has become Egypt’s leading voice of political Islam.
We will never use the emergency law against the Egyptian people," Mr. Nazif
said to the crowded parliamentary chamber. "We will use it only to protect the
citizens and face the terror cells that did not quell until now."
The authorities promptly arrested several dozen young men from political
opposition groups who had been displaying signs reading, "No for emergency
law," and "Together against extension of the emergency law."
While the U.S. State Department expressed disappointment that the presidential and subsequent parliamentary elections were not as free and fair as hoped for, President Bush has praised Egypt for its staunch support for the Global War on Terror.
Today, Egypt remains second only to Israel as a beneficiary of U.S. military and economic assistance.
President Bush has also praised other countries that have long histories as human rights violators but that support his anti-terror campaign. These include Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Libya, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Yemen, and others.
These countries consistently receive negative assessments in the U.S. State Department’s annual review of human rights practices around the world.
In a second kind of alliance that appears to be contrary to President Bush’s goal of spreading democracy around the world, the Administration is now reaching out to leaders who rule oil-rich countries that are accused of authoritarian rule and human rights violations. This search for energy supplies and allies against Iran includes Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Equatorial Guinea.
So opaque is the Bush Administration that it’s difficult to know if it understands how its policies thus contradict one another. And how seriously these contradictions strain American credibility internationally. But these conflicting themes will not be lost on the rest of the world, most of whose countries will lose no time pointing them out.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
REARRANGING THE DECK CHAIRS?
By William Fisher
So, after seven months and 21 separate post-Katrina hearings, testimony from close to 400 witnesses, and review of more than 800,000 documents, the Senators have thrown up their hands in frustration and disbelief and called for the abolition of FEMA - the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- and its resurrection under a new name.
Sens. Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman, respectively the top Republican and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Reform, predictably found "failings" at all levels of government in dealing with Hurricane Katrina, before, during and after the storm hit the Gulf Coast.
The Committee made more than 80 recommendations to begin to solve FEMA's problems. These recommendations concluded that FEMA is "a shambles" crippled beyond repair by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding and called for a new agency - the National Preparedness and Response Authority - to plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters.
The new authority would communicate directly with the president during major crises, and any dramatic cuts to budget or staffing levels would have to be approved by Congress. But it would remain within the Homeland Security Department and would continue receiving resources from that department.
Unfortunately, in "gotcha" Washington, what should have been a serious discussion about how to fix FEMA has degenerated into a partisan - and uninformed - debate about whether FEMA should remain part of the DHS or return to its former place as a Cabinet-level independent agency reporting directly to the President.
But that is a faux argument. It is largely irrelevant. The challenges facing both FEMA and DHS involve issues so fundamental that no amount of box-shifting has the slightest chance of fixing the problems. The main issue is not where the boxes are located, but who is in the boxes.
In case you've forgotten, FEMA has been around a long time. It was created by President Jimmy Carter way back in 1979, and by all accounts, it was just as dysfunctional then as now.
During the Reagan years, it was considered largely a weapon in the cold war. It morphed from dealing with natural disasters to planning for nuclear attacks.
In the early 1990's, FEMA's reputation was as bad as it is today. It was a dumping ground for political cronies, headed by a man whose only apparent qualification for the job was that he was a close friend of the first President Bush's chief of staff.
The agency's pitifully inadequate performance during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 should have told us a lot about how it would handle a Katrina-size calamity. For the first three post-Andrew days, the agency was absent. When it arrived, it was clueless about what to do.
But then President Bill Clinton has a unique idea: fix the problem by recruiting experienced leadership. Clinton appointed a seasoned disaster management professional, James Lee Witt, to head FEMA, which he elevated to cabinet rank.
Witt reorganized the office from top to bottom, producing immediate results. And even Clinton's harshest critics - including candidate George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential campaign -- praised the agency's performance.
What Clinton did is exactly opposite to what President George W. Bush has done
When Bush took office, he set out to replace FEMA's experienced staff with political cronies. His choice for director was his campaign manager, Joseph Allbaugh, who had no experience in emergency management. Veteran staffers were demoralized. Qualified personnel began leaving.
Allbaugh hired his college pal Michael Brown as FEMA's general counsel and then promoted him to deputy director. And when Allbaugh left to join the army of Washington lobbyists, he recommended Brown for the top job, despite his lack of any experience whatever in emergency management. Bush appointed him and, aside from the Katrina debacle ("You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie"), he will be best remembered for passing out FEMA checks to people whose homes weren't damaged in heavily Republican districts in Florida before the last election.
Then came the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, and the president felt the urgent need to be seen to be taking action. He created a new White House office of Homeland Security. To head this key post, he appointed former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, another "friend of Bush". Gov. Ridge, an affable politician, had zero experience in either counter-terrorism or disaster management.
When the behemoth Department of Security was created in 2002 - over the objections of the president -- Ridge was named to head it. Under his command were 22 different government agencies, as many different corporate cultures, and more than 183,000 employees. FEMA was one of the agencies absorbed by the new DHS.
But, as Eric Klinenberg and Thomas Frank wrote in Rolling Stone, "the real damage" began when Bush folded FEMA into the sprawling new Department of Homeland Security." With the department's focus almost exclusively on terrorism, disaster experts and emergency managers found themselves excluded from planning sessions. Military and law-enforcement personnel dominated DHS, imposing a top-down structure built on secrecy and skepticism, which clashed with FEMA's primary function of collaborating with regional agencies in an environment of shared information and mutual trust."
They point out that the cronyism that gave us Tom Ridge as the first secretary of Homeland Security quickly extended to the Bush Administration's buddies in the corporate community." The department's first advisory council was filled by corporate CEOs, many from industries positioned to profit from homeland-security projects.
DHS outsourced billions to private sector contractors, many on a no-bid basis.
With enthusiastic help from the Congressional pork barrel, a substantial part of DHS's funding was wasted on programs that rewarded "red states" and treated Wyoming and New York as if they faced equal threats of terrorism.
Issues that the 9/11 Commission identified as being critically important were neglected. The result, as we saw during Katrina, was that five years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Louisiana - and most other states - still lacked the interoperable radio systems to allow first responders to communicate with one another.
Other parts of DHS were equally wasteful. The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) spent billions fighting yesterday's wars by snatching nail clippers from airline passengers while largely ignoring, for example, port security.
And before the flood waters had receded from New Orleans, the president gave us added confirmation that cronyism was still alive and well by nominating the niece of the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, to head the DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation (ICE). ICE and its predecessor agencies have always been seen as wildly dysfunctional. Now the president put its 20,000 employees and $4 billion budget in the hands of an appointee with no expertise in the field.
Running DHS was always going to be an extremely difficult job. Running it without world-class leadership was unarguably an impossible job. Here was a monster that cried out for the talents of a Jack Welch, who brilliantly managed a similarly huge and varied enterprise known as the General Electric Company. Instead, it got a party political crony named Tom Ridge.
Ridge will probably best be remembered as the man who brought us the highly informative terrorist threat color-codes - that many charge he used to exploit terrorist fears by creating fake red alerts.
When Ridge left after the 2004 election, the President first named former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, a tough-talking cop who was a partner in former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's private security firm. But Kerik, it was soon revealed, had forgotten to pay his "nanny-tax" and his name was withdrawn. The nod then went to Michael Chertoff, a former federal prosecutor who had headed John Ashcroft's Criminal Division in the Department of Justice before Bush nominated him to be a Federal Judge.
I'm sure Secretary Chertoff is a very smart guy, but like his predecessor, he has zero experience in managing anything larger than a few Justice Department hundred lawyers and support staff.
Six months after his confirmation, the unthinkable happened: DHS and FEMA had to demonstrate their ability to deal with a catastrophic natural disaster: Katrina. And we are all too familiar with how that turned out.
But the DHS and FEMA were not alone in abdicating responsibility; Congress bears a large share of the blame. DHS was obliged to report to dozens of different congressional committees because Congress refused to reorganize its oversight, the same way it did during the consolidation of the intelligence community.
What so many congressional committees did with so many hours of testimony is near nothing. Members protected their turf, ignoring the many critical reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the failing grades contained in the 9/11 Commission's "report card".
Congresspersons made lots of speeches and did a lot of showboating. Republicans led the cheerleading and counseled patience while Democrats hot-dogged dire warnings. In the end - until Katrina - neither party exercised any meaningful oversight. So the cronyism and wasteful spending continued - and continues today.
Post-Katrina, both the House and Senate conducted serious and valuable investigations. But in my view, the Senate reached the wrong conclusion.
Arguably, it might be marginally easier to fix the much smaller FEMA if it was no longer part of DHS - if the Administration is able - and has the political will -- to hire another James Lee Witt, regardless of his or her party affiliation, and give a new leader the resources needed to get the job done. Based on its current unsuccessful recruiting campaign, that prospect doesn't seem very promising. Top professionals in disaster management appear reluctant to become cogs in the DHS machinery.
But whether FEMA is cut loose from DHS or not is not likely to make a significant difference in the performance of either agency. Both will continue to fail until they undertake the fundamental strategic, tactical and managerial reforms they should have begun to address three years ago.
Both agencies need to replace political cronies with highly qualified and motivated leaders and employees - and that requires the cooperation and support of the president. Both need to make large and continuing investments in human capital. Both require improved clarity of mission. Both need to better understand and anticipate impacts of massive government reorganization on the other departments and agencies they need to depend on to be "force multipliers" as they carry out their tasks. Both need to adopt a decision-making process that is clear and transparent to outsiders. Both need to develop strategic plans that have measurable goals and benchmarks to assess progress and correct deficiencies. Both need to build accountability for individuals into their performance evaluations. Both need to develop rapid-response capability. Both need to build more effective relations with state and local agencies. Both need complete independence from the political centers in the Administration. Both need adequate financial resources, allocated according to need and not party politics. And both desperately require real Congressional oversight.
None of this is going to be easy. It is instructive to recall that President Harry Truman's proposals to coordinate the activities of the military services were initially considered by Congress in 1944. His objective was to reduce the inter-service rivalries believed to have reduced military effectiveness during World War II. But the Senate did not confirm James V. Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense until three years later, waited another two years before giving him needed authority over the Army, Navy and Air Force, and thus opened the door to the "jointness" of the current Department of Defense (DOD).
And that job is still a work in progress, far from complete. The DOD's annual budget is roughly $425 billion, not including the tens of billions more in supplemental expenditures allotted by Congress throughout the year. And, all these years later, it is still the most avid dispenser of huge, often no-bid contracts and the government's most profligate waster of taxpayer money. It has never been able to pass any of the annual audits carried out by its own accountants. Its own Inspector General reports that it has not and will not be able to account for $1.1 trillion of "undocumentable adjustments."
So, with both FEMA and DHS, a measure of patience is required. Change threatens vested interests and is always resisted. It is at this nexus of transformation versus the status quo that presidential leadership is most critical. And we may well have to wait for another president to muster the political will to take it on. Hurricanes, floods and terrorist attacks, however, won't wait.
But clearly the debate is far broader than where to put FEMA, because what ails FEMA also ails the DHS.
So, after seven months and 21 separate post-Katrina hearings, testimony from close to 400 witnesses, and review of more than 800,000 documents, the Senators have thrown up their hands in frustration and disbelief and called for the abolition of FEMA - the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- and its resurrection under a new name.
Sens. Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman, respectively the top Republican and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Reform, predictably found "failings" at all levels of government in dealing with Hurricane Katrina, before, during and after the storm hit the Gulf Coast.
The Committee made more than 80 recommendations to begin to solve FEMA's problems. These recommendations concluded that FEMA is "a shambles" crippled beyond repair by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding and called for a new agency - the National Preparedness and Response Authority - to plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters.
The new authority would communicate directly with the president during major crises, and any dramatic cuts to budget or staffing levels would have to be approved by Congress. But it would remain within the Homeland Security Department and would continue receiving resources from that department.
Unfortunately, in "gotcha" Washington, what should have been a serious discussion about how to fix FEMA has degenerated into a partisan - and uninformed - debate about whether FEMA should remain part of the DHS or return to its former place as a Cabinet-level independent agency reporting directly to the President.
But that is a faux argument. It is largely irrelevant. The challenges facing both FEMA and DHS involve issues so fundamental that no amount of box-shifting has the slightest chance of fixing the problems. The main issue is not where the boxes are located, but who is in the boxes.
In case you've forgotten, FEMA has been around a long time. It was created by President Jimmy Carter way back in 1979, and by all accounts, it was just as dysfunctional then as now.
During the Reagan years, it was considered largely a weapon in the cold war. It morphed from dealing with natural disasters to planning for nuclear attacks.
In the early 1990's, FEMA's reputation was as bad as it is today. It was a dumping ground for political cronies, headed by a man whose only apparent qualification for the job was that he was a close friend of the first President Bush's chief of staff.
The agency's pitifully inadequate performance during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 should have told us a lot about how it would handle a Katrina-size calamity. For the first three post-Andrew days, the agency was absent. When it arrived, it was clueless about what to do.
But then President Bill Clinton has a unique idea: fix the problem by recruiting experienced leadership. Clinton appointed a seasoned disaster management professional, James Lee Witt, to head FEMA, which he elevated to cabinet rank.
Witt reorganized the office from top to bottom, producing immediate results. And even Clinton's harshest critics - including candidate George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential campaign -- praised the agency's performance.
What Clinton did is exactly opposite to what President George W. Bush has done
When Bush took office, he set out to replace FEMA's experienced staff with political cronies. His choice for director was his campaign manager, Joseph Allbaugh, who had no experience in emergency management. Veteran staffers were demoralized. Qualified personnel began leaving.
Allbaugh hired his college pal Michael Brown as FEMA's general counsel and then promoted him to deputy director. And when Allbaugh left to join the army of Washington lobbyists, he recommended Brown for the top job, despite his lack of any experience whatever in emergency management. Bush appointed him and, aside from the Katrina debacle ("You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie"), he will be best remembered for passing out FEMA checks to people whose homes weren't damaged in heavily Republican districts in Florida before the last election.
Then came the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, and the president felt the urgent need to be seen to be taking action. He created a new White House office of Homeland Security. To head this key post, he appointed former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, another "friend of Bush". Gov. Ridge, an affable politician, had zero experience in either counter-terrorism or disaster management.
When the behemoth Department of Security was created in 2002 - over the objections of the president -- Ridge was named to head it. Under his command were 22 different government agencies, as many different corporate cultures, and more than 183,000 employees. FEMA was one of the agencies absorbed by the new DHS.
But, as Eric Klinenberg and Thomas Frank wrote in Rolling Stone, "the real damage" began when Bush folded FEMA into the sprawling new Department of Homeland Security." With the department's focus almost exclusively on terrorism, disaster experts and emergency managers found themselves excluded from planning sessions. Military and law-enforcement personnel dominated DHS, imposing a top-down structure built on secrecy and skepticism, which clashed with FEMA's primary function of collaborating with regional agencies in an environment of shared information and mutual trust."
They point out that the cronyism that gave us Tom Ridge as the first secretary of Homeland Security quickly extended to the Bush Administration's buddies in the corporate community." The department's first advisory council was filled by corporate CEOs, many from industries positioned to profit from homeland-security projects.
DHS outsourced billions to private sector contractors, many on a no-bid basis.
With enthusiastic help from the Congressional pork barrel, a substantial part of DHS's funding was wasted on programs that rewarded "red states" and treated Wyoming and New York as if they faced equal threats of terrorism.
Issues that the 9/11 Commission identified as being critically important were neglected. The result, as we saw during Katrina, was that five years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Louisiana - and most other states - still lacked the interoperable radio systems to allow first responders to communicate with one another.
Other parts of DHS were equally wasteful. The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) spent billions fighting yesterday's wars by snatching nail clippers from airline passengers while largely ignoring, for example, port security.
And before the flood waters had receded from New Orleans, the president gave us added confirmation that cronyism was still alive and well by nominating the niece of the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, to head the DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation (ICE). ICE and its predecessor agencies have always been seen as wildly dysfunctional. Now the president put its 20,000 employees and $4 billion budget in the hands of an appointee with no expertise in the field.
Running DHS was always going to be an extremely difficult job. Running it without world-class leadership was unarguably an impossible job. Here was a monster that cried out for the talents of a Jack Welch, who brilliantly managed a similarly huge and varied enterprise known as the General Electric Company. Instead, it got a party political crony named Tom Ridge.
Ridge will probably best be remembered as the man who brought us the highly informative terrorist threat color-codes - that many charge he used to exploit terrorist fears by creating fake red alerts.
When Ridge left after the 2004 election, the President first named former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, a tough-talking cop who was a partner in former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's private security firm. But Kerik, it was soon revealed, had forgotten to pay his "nanny-tax" and his name was withdrawn. The nod then went to Michael Chertoff, a former federal prosecutor who had headed John Ashcroft's Criminal Division in the Department of Justice before Bush nominated him to be a Federal Judge.
I'm sure Secretary Chertoff is a very smart guy, but like his predecessor, he has zero experience in managing anything larger than a few Justice Department hundred lawyers and support staff.
Six months after his confirmation, the unthinkable happened: DHS and FEMA had to demonstrate their ability to deal with a catastrophic natural disaster: Katrina. And we are all too familiar with how that turned out.
But the DHS and FEMA were not alone in abdicating responsibility; Congress bears a large share of the blame. DHS was obliged to report to dozens of different congressional committees because Congress refused to reorganize its oversight, the same way it did during the consolidation of the intelligence community.
What so many congressional committees did with so many hours of testimony is near nothing. Members protected their turf, ignoring the many critical reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the failing grades contained in the 9/11 Commission's "report card".
Congresspersons made lots of speeches and did a lot of showboating. Republicans led the cheerleading and counseled patience while Democrats hot-dogged dire warnings. In the end - until Katrina - neither party exercised any meaningful oversight. So the cronyism and wasteful spending continued - and continues today.
Post-Katrina, both the House and Senate conducted serious and valuable investigations. But in my view, the Senate reached the wrong conclusion.
Arguably, it might be marginally easier to fix the much smaller FEMA if it was no longer part of DHS - if the Administration is able - and has the political will -- to hire another James Lee Witt, regardless of his or her party affiliation, and give a new leader the resources needed to get the job done. Based on its current unsuccessful recruiting campaign, that prospect doesn't seem very promising. Top professionals in disaster management appear reluctant to become cogs in the DHS machinery.
But whether FEMA is cut loose from DHS or not is not likely to make a significant difference in the performance of either agency. Both will continue to fail until they undertake the fundamental strategic, tactical and managerial reforms they should have begun to address three years ago.
Both agencies need to replace political cronies with highly qualified and motivated leaders and employees - and that requires the cooperation and support of the president. Both need to make large and continuing investments in human capital. Both require improved clarity of mission. Both need to better understand and anticipate impacts of massive government reorganization on the other departments and agencies they need to depend on to be "force multipliers" as they carry out their tasks. Both need to adopt a decision-making process that is clear and transparent to outsiders. Both need to develop strategic plans that have measurable goals and benchmarks to assess progress and correct deficiencies. Both need to build accountability for individuals into their performance evaluations. Both need to develop rapid-response capability. Both need to build more effective relations with state and local agencies. Both need complete independence from the political centers in the Administration. Both need adequate financial resources, allocated according to need and not party politics. And both desperately require real Congressional oversight.
None of this is going to be easy. It is instructive to recall that President Harry Truman's proposals to coordinate the activities of the military services were initially considered by Congress in 1944. His objective was to reduce the inter-service rivalries believed to have reduced military effectiveness during World War II. But the Senate did not confirm James V. Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense until three years later, waited another two years before giving him needed authority over the Army, Navy and Air Force, and thus opened the door to the "jointness" of the current Department of Defense (DOD).
And that job is still a work in progress, far from complete. The DOD's annual budget is roughly $425 billion, not including the tens of billions more in supplemental expenditures allotted by Congress throughout the year. And, all these years later, it is still the most avid dispenser of huge, often no-bid contracts and the government's most profligate waster of taxpayer money. It has never been able to pass any of the annual audits carried out by its own accountants. Its own Inspector General reports that it has not and will not be able to account for $1.1 trillion of "undocumentable adjustments."
So, with both FEMA and DHS, a measure of patience is required. Change threatens vested interests and is always resisted. It is at this nexus of transformation versus the status quo that presidential leadership is most critical. And we may well have to wait for another president to muster the political will to take it on. Hurricanes, floods and terrorist attacks, however, won't wait.
But clearly the debate is far broader than where to put FEMA, because what ails FEMA also ails the DHS.
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