Trump administration-1

United States quits United Nations Human Rights Council

The Trump administration withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council on June 19, making good on a pledge to leave a body it accused of hypocrisy and criticized as biased against Israel. “For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said at the State Department in Washington.

The 47-member council, created in 2006 and based in Geneva, began its latest session on June 18 with a broadside against President Trump’s immigration policy by the U.N.’s high commis-sioner for human rights. He called the policy of separating children from parents crossing the southern border illegally “unconscionable.”

The Trump administration is under intense criticism from business groups, human rights organizations and lawmakers from both parties over the recently imposed policy.

The U.S. withdrawal had been in the works for some time. In 2006, National Security Adviser John Bolton had also opposed the body’s creation when he was U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

Condemning the planned withdrawal from the U.N. group, Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the decision “sends a clear message that the Trump administration does not intend to lead the world when it comes to human rights.”

Some critics of the Human Rights Council have called for con-tinuing to push for a revamping of the body rather than quitting it.

“The Trump administration’s withdrawal is a sad reflection of its one-dimensional human rights policy — defending Israeli abuses from criticism takes precedence above all else,” Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth said.

– edited from Bloomberg, June 19, 2018
PeaceMeal, July/August 2018

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Trump thrills white supremacists in 2017

Southern Poverty Law Center

Montgomery, Ala. – President Trump’s first year in office proved to be just as racially divisive as his campaign, but even more consequential. It was a year in which reinvigorated white supremacists staged their largest rally in years — the demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left an anti-racist counterprotester and two law enforcement officers dead.And it was a year that saw the so-called “alt-right” — the latest incarnation of white supremacy — break through the firewall that long kept overt racists out of the political and media mainstream.

Throughout 2017, Trump thrilled and comforted white supremacists with his apparent kinship and pugilistic style. After the Charlottesville rally, for example, he insisted there were some “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis marching with torches in support of Confederate monuments. Former Klan boss David Duke vowed that his fellow white supremacists would “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”

Trump also installed in the White House a handful of key advisers with deep ties to the alt-right and revved up the country’s deportation machinery. He took numerous actions to curtail civil rights enforcement and roll back Obama-era policies that helped vulnerable communities.

His tune is 'music to their ears'

“President Trump in 2017 reflected what many of these groups want to see: a country where racism is sanctioned by the highest office, immigrants are given the boot, and Muslims banned,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. “When you consider that only days into 2018, Trump called African countries ‘shitholes,’ it’s clear he’s not changing his tune. And that’s music to the ears of white supremacists.”

Not only did the president buoy white supremacists, he provoked a backlash among the Nation of Islam and fringe black nationalist groups that see in him a powerful reassertion of the same centuries-old racism that has always fueled their desire to break away from white America.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan pointed to Trump as an avatar of today’s white supremacy and issued calls to action. He blamed the president for encouraging a “growing sentiment” to “put the Black, the Brown, the Red back in a place they have cut out for us.” His newspaper, The Final Call, wrote that “separation from White America” is the “divine solution” to the rise of white supremacy.

Not surprisingly, the ranks of black nationalist hate groups — groups that have always been a reaction to white racism — expanded to 233 chapters in 2017 from 193 the previous year.

These groups, typified by their anti-Semitic, anti-LGBT, anti-white rhetoric and conspiracy theories, should not be confused with mainstream black activist groups such as Black Lives Matter and others that work to eliminate systemic racism in American society and its institutions.

Even with the growth, black nationalist groups lagged far behind the more than 600 groups that adhere to some form of white supremacist ideology, and they have virtually no supporters or influence in mainstream politics, much less in the White House. Overall, the SPLC’s annual census identified 954 hate groups, up 4 percent from 2016.

A separate SPLC investigation found that 43 people were killed and 67 wounded by young men associated with the alt-right over the past four years. Seventeen of the deaths came in 2017.

White supremacists emboldened

Within the white supremacist movement, neo-Nazi grouops saw the greatest growth — soaring from 99 groups to 121. The finding comes after a Washington Post/ABC News poll in August indicated that 9 percent of Americans (approximately 22 million people) believe it is acceptable to hold neo-Nazi or white supremacist views.Also, anti-Muslim groups rose for a third straight year. They increased from 101 chapters to 114 in 2017 — growth that comes after the groups tripled in number a year earlier.

Ku Klux Klan groups, meanwhile, fell from 130 groups to 72. The decline is a clear indication that white supremacy’s new generation is rejecting the Klan’s hoods and robes for the hipper image of the more loosely organized alt-right movement, which heavily targeted college campuses for recruitment in 2017.

Extremism enters mainstream

Regardless of whether they’re affiliated with a hate group, white supremacists found a lot to like about the new administration. Stephen Bannon, who bragged about turning Breitbart News into “the platform for the alt-right,” had Trump’s ear as chief strategist until his departure in late August.

And Trump’s senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller, was a one-time acolyte of anti-Muslim extremist David Horowitz and a close ally of anti-immigrant hate groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Miller’s star continued to rise in 2018; he served as lead author of the State of the Union address, which warned of “illegal, unaccompanied, alien minors” becoming gang members.

Trump also lent the legitimacy of the White House to a hate group by speaking at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit in October — the first sitting president to do so. The FRC is a hate group that has relentlessly vilified the LGBT community.

Antigovernment groups

Aside from hate groups, the SPLC identified 689 active antigovernment groups that comprise the “Patriot” movement in 2017, up from 623. Of these, 273 were armed militias.

Generally, such groups define themselves as opposed to the “New World Order.” They engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing or advocate extreme antigovernment doctrines.

Historically, these groups rise during Democratic presidencies out of fear of gun control measures and federal law enforcement action. They typically decline under GOP presidencies. This has not been the case under Trump, whose radical views and bigotry may be energizing them in the same way as hate groups.

– edited from the SPLC Report, Spring 2018
Peacemeal, March/April 2018

President Trump is pro-war and anti-peace

On May 23, the White House released President Trump’s proposal for the 2018 federal budget, outlining his spending priorities for Congress and the country. The budget seeks to add $52 billion — more than Russia’s entire military budget of $45 billion — to an already bloated U.S. military budget of $587 billion.

To fatten up the Pentagon, Trump plans to shrink the budget for the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development, which is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid, by 29 percent and cut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by 31 percent. For 18 independent agencies — those that exist outside federal depart-ments headed by a Cabinet secretary, Trump’s budget goes a giant step further and proposes to eliminate their funding entirely. Among those agencies is the United States Institute of Peace.

Created by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the United States Institute of Peace is a nonpartisan institute that trains U.S. diplomats and members of the armed forces heading for unstable parts of the world so they can be prepared to help avert conflicts before they mushroom. The institute has a bipartisan board of directors that by statute includes the secretary of Defense, the secretary of State and the president of the National Defense University.

USIP works to prevent and resolve armed conflict by engaging directly in conflict zones and by providing analysis, education and resources to those working for peace. Its specialized teams of mediators, trainers and others work in some of the world’s most dangerous places, including Iraq and Afghanistan, providing a highly cost-effective way of preventing hostilities from breaking out or preserving the peace once a conflict ends. It is an essential element of the U.S. national security architecture.

Even the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has called for many of the cuts that the Trump administration has adopted, has said the USIP deserves to survive, calling it a “do-tank” as opposed to a think tank.

“The amounts being saved are trivial, but they have disproportionate benefits,” said Eric S. Edelman, who worked in senior positions at the State and Defense departments and is a USIP board member. “Just ask any warfighters who worked with USIP folks in the field. They know there are things that aren’t done by diplomats or the military, but helped in Iraq and Afghanistan advancing the success of military operations and reducing conflicts.”

In 2015, USIP-trained mediators arrived in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town in Iraq, after the city was emptied of Islamic State fighters who had slain 1,700 Shiite military cadets. The mediators were instrumental in helping arrange a truce between Sunni and Shiite residents. They got leaders of the two communities together in a hotel room paid for by the USIP, along with a few meals, until the Sunnis agreed to turn in the perpetrators and the Shiites vowed not to seek revenge.

President Trump’s wrongheaded axing of the USIP budget cannot be defended as a cost-saving measure; it’s budget is only $35 million. So, for every $1 we spend on peace, we spend more than $16,000 on war!

– edited from The Atlantic, The Hill and The Washington Post
PeaceMeal, May/June 2017

Trump’s arms sale to Saudi Arabia

President Donald Trump has hailed his $100-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia as a job producer for the United States, but he turns a blind eye to what those weapons are likely to be used for.

Human Rights Watch urged Trump to reject the arms deal after a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen committed “serious violations of the laws of war.”

“Coalition aircraft have bombed crowded markets and funerals, maimed countless children, and attacked a boat filled with refugees, often using U.S.-made weapons in unlawful attacks,” said Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “Seven million people face starvation in Yemen. If the Trump administration wants to curtail U.S. support for abuses in the Muslim world, it should immediately end arms sales to Saudi Arabia and demand credible investigations of alleged laws-of-war violations.”

Roger Stone, a longtime political adviser to President Trump and one of his closest allies, said Trump’s meeting with King Salman and Saudi leaders made him “want to puke.” Instead of meeting with the Saudis, Stone tweeted that “Trump should be demanding they pay for the attack on America on 9/11 which they financed.” Fifteen of the 19 suicide terrorists that carried out the 9/11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia.

– PeaceMeal, May/June 2017

Allies fear Trump is eroding America’s moral authority

When the State Department released its annual human rights report on March 3, it contained many of the usual tough American judgments of other countries. Iran was criticized for restricting freedom of religion and the media; Russia for discriminating against minorities; Eritrea for using torture; Bulgaria for violence against migrants and asylum seekers. The list went on.

What was notably missing this year, however, was the usual fanfare around the report and a news conference promoting it by the new secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, as Democratic and Republican administrations have almost always done.

The State Department dismissed criticism of Mr. Tillerson’s absence, which came even from some Republicans. But for observers of American foreign policy, it was hard not to interpret the low-key rollout as another step by the Trump administration away from America’s traditional role as a moral authority on the world stage that tries to shape and promote democratic norms, both for their intrinsic value and to create a more secure world.

Interviews with more than a dozen former diplomats, professors, human rights advocates and international politicians, both abroad and in the United States, suggested that the United States under President Trump was poised to cede not only this global role, but also its ability to lead by example.

Many pointed out that America’s own actions over the years have already eroded its moral standing — Guant�namo Bay, the use of torture on suspected terrorists, and the civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, to name a few.

But Mr. Trump’s administration stands alone, many experts said, for the divisiveness of its tone toward minorities and the media at home and toward Muslims and migrants abroad, its disparagement of NATO and the European Union, and its praise of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, which have blurred distinctions between allies and enemies.

Mr. Trump himself recently put the United States on the same moral plane as Russia, when the Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly protested during an interview that Mr. Putin was a killer. “There are a lot of killers,” Mr. Trump quickly responded. “We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?”

The comment alarmed many because it underscored an approach by Mr. Trump, like the rejection of migrants from certain predominantly Muslim countries, that has stripped much of the moral component from American foreign relations and left him being lectured by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and others about his duties under international law.

Her foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, has gone one step further, reminding America of its moral duty as the most powerful Western country and one founded by Christian refugees.

Behind the rhetoric is the idea that moral authority — as amorphous and idealistic as that can sound — has imbued America with a special kind of clout in the world, with a power that is different from that wielded by autocrats and dictators or by big countries like Russia and China.

While the Soviet-era dominance across Eastern Europe was undermined by a costly Cold War arms race with the United States, it was the Western Democratic system and America that many people looked to emulate, former diplomats said.

“The Berlin Wall didn’t come down because people were responding to American howitzers,” said Joseph Nye, a former senior State Department official and now a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. “It came down under hammers and bulldozers wielded by people whose minds had been affected by the ideas of the West.”

If America no longer presents an image of religious tolerance — a core component of its moral standing — it undermines its ability to make needed alliances, several diplomats said.

“Even in the days of George W. Bush, there was no feeling that Bush was against Muslims,” said Marwan Muasher, a former foreign minister of Jordan and now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he is vice president for studies and oversees research on the Middle East. “By contrast,” he said, “Mr. Trump’s administration has seemed almost to revel in its anti-Islamic sentiments. There is no effort on the administration’s side to reverse that image. There’s no empathy toward the region in any way.”

For Hoshyar Zebari, a former foreign minister of Iraq, the initial decision to issue the migrant ban and include Iraq was utterly puzzling as well as deeply unfair, given how many Iraqis had fought on the same side as the Americans against the Islamic State and its precursors in Iraq.

Mr. Trump does seem to have been convinced of the importance of Iraq’s role in the fight against Islamic extremism, as the latest version of his immigration ban leaves Iraq off the list of six predominantly Muslim countries. Still, the anti-Muslim rhetoric “has emboldened extremists that this is the true face of America,” Mr. Zebari said.

Some policies Mr. Trump seems eager to pursue may also com- promise America’s ability to lecture China about more tolerance toward Tibetan Buddhists or Uighurs and President Erdogan of Turkey about a free news media or tolerance of the Kurds.

The idea of a moral component in American identity dates back to the pilgrims. The notion became a particularly strong principle in foreign policy after World War I, with the United States playing a leading role in the creation of global organizations. That moral strand was strengthened by World War II, not only because of America’s part in helping to vanquish the Nazis, but also its postwar efforts to help rebuild Europe and form the United Nations.

Now, as America looks at minimizing its commitments to NATO and the European Union, there is the sense that it can no longer be counted on as a reliable partner. Instead, Mr. Trump seems intent to pursue a “what’s in it for us?” approach to foreign policy much closer to that of Russia, where threats and lethal power are its chief points of leverage.

“What is very different is that the Trump administration says very bluntly that ‘America has no responsibility in the world and it will pull back,’” said Laurence Nardon, who runs the North America program at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris, a prominent think tank. “Trump will still do things, but in a transactional way,” she added. “He will fight ISIS because it’s perceived as a true and real danger to the United States, and he’ll do deals that benefit the country, but not out of any sense of moral responsibility to help the rest of the world.”

– edited from an article by Alissa J. Rubin in The New York Times, March 10, 2017
PeaceMeal, March/April 2017

Why I cannot fall in line behind Trump

Peter_Wehner.jpg (2201 bytes) Peter Wehner
The New York Times, January 22, 2017

A year ago, I declared on these pages that, despite being a Republican my whole life, I would not under any circumstances vote for Donald J. Trump for president. Since then, I’ve been asked by other Republicans if I kept that promise (I did) and whether I regret it (I don’t).

Republicans who disagree with my stance make the following argument: Mr. Trump, while flawed, is preferable to Hillary Clinton. His cabinet appointments, they say, have been reassuring, and it’s true that several of them are. In addition, the nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court is certain to be more of an originalist than a Clinton appointment would be. On top of that, Republicans are in control of Congress, meaning they are likely to drive much of the agenda, particularly given Mr. Trump’s notable lack of interest in policy. Whatever misgivings anti-Trump conservatives might have had about him, he’ll undo much of the agenda of his liberal predecessor while Mrs. Clinton would have built on it.

This case is hardly irrational, and over time it may be proved right. President Trump may govern well and in a conservative manner, and my concerns about him may eventually look misguided and silly. But I doubt it.

To understand why, it’s worth keeping in mind that my chief worries about Mr. Trump were never strictly ideological; they had to do with temperament and character.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t have worries based on Mr. Trump’s deviations from conservatism, a political philosophy he seems to have no real interest in or acquaintance with. Yet it was always a guarantee that on policy he would do more things conservatives would like than Mrs. Clinton would. But that was outweighed by other considerations.

The more pressing concern many of us had about Mr. Trump is that he simply isn’t up to the job of being president. And much that has happened during the transition period has confirmed those concerns. One example: Last weekend Mr. Trump gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he said his administration would quickly put out its own health proposal, which would cover everyone now insured and cost much less.

One problem: There is no Trump proposal. As Yuval Levin, my colleague at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, points out, it was the creation of his own imagination. Republicans on Capitol Hill and Mr. Trump’s own team were utterly perplexed by what Mr. Trump said, and not for the first time. The extraordinary and unenviable task facing the White House staff is to contain Mr. Trump, to keep a dysfunctional president from producing a dysfunctional presidency.

Beyond that, Mr. Trump has continued to demonstrate impulsivity and narcissism, an affinity for conflict and vindictiveness. Which leads to my main worry about Mr. Trump: His chronic lack of restraint will not be confined to Twitter. His Twitter obsessions are manifestation of a deeper disorder.

Donald Trump is a transgressive personality. He thrives on creating disorder, in violating rules, in provoking outrage. He is a shock jock. This might be a tolerable (if culturally coarsening) trait in a reality television star; it is a dangerous one in a commander-in-chief. He is unlikely to be contained by norms and customs, or even by laws and the Constitution. For Mr. Trump, nothing is sacred. The truth is malleable, instrumental, subjective. It is all about him. It is always about him.

The easy part, the transition to power, is over. The hard part begins now. So this concern arises: When President Trump is buffeted by events — when hard times hit, when crises arise, when other politicians and world leaders do not bend to his will — pernicious things will happen. Rather than try to address the alienation and anger that exists in America, he will amplify them. He’ll create yet more conspiracy theories. He will also go in search of enemies — the press, the opposition party, other nations, even Republican leaders — in order to create diversions that inflame his most loyal supporters. And when he locates his targets, he will do what is second nature to him, which is to try to delegitimize and destroy them. What’s different now is that he will have the additional, awesome power of the presidency at his disposal.

We cannot know the outcome of events in advance, but we can draw reasonable inferences. One of them is this: In failing to distinguish between the good of the nation and his own vanity, the danger is that Mr. Trump will fail to see the limits of his authority and will try to use both the bully pulpit and the power of government — the I.R.S., the F.B.I., regulatory agencies and others — to settle personal scores. He’ll do what he needs to in order to get his way. That has been the animating force in his life.

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis wrote, “I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.”

Donald Trump has not only spent much of his life stepping outside of traditional morality; he seems to delight in doing so. If I am right about Mr. Trump, and Lewis is right about history, then it is unlikely that President Trump will use his power bene-volently. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Because Republicans control Congress, they have the unique ability and the institutional responsibility to confront President Trump.

What this means is that Republican leaders in Congress need to be ready to call Mr. Trump on his abuses and excesses, now that he is actually in office. It is a variation of the Golden Rule, in this case treating others, including a Republican president, as they deserve to be treated. They need to ask themselves a simple, searching question: “If Barack Obama did this very thing, what would I be saying and doing now?” — and then say and do it.

In anticipating a Trump presidency, I wish my hopes exceeded my fears. But Donald Trump has given us many reasons to worry. A man with illiberal tendencies, a volatile personality and no internal checks is now president. This isn’t going to end well.

Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, served in the last three Republican administrations. He grew up in Richland and graduated from Hanford High School and the University of Washington. His article was reprinted in PeceMeal, Jan/February 2017.

Trump to focus on ‘peace through strength’ over ‘soft power’ approach

President-elect Donald Trump has stacked his Cabinet with military generals, pushed for more Pentagon spending and a bigger Navy, threatened to slap tariffs on China and Mexico, and suggested that he was open to expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The aim, he has said, is to achieve “peace through strength.”

If Trump follows through with this confrontational approach, it will represent a sharp break with the multifaceted foreign policy strategy that both Democratic and Republican presidents have practiced for decades, including reliance on what diplomats call “soft power” to achieve objectives and avoid conflict. Instead, aides say, Trump views foreign policy as largely transactional and his goal is to win by talking and acting tough.

But critics, including foreign diplomats and former Obama administration officials, said winning on the world stage requires more than bluster and intimidation and pugilistic messages on Twitter. American leadership, they said, also is about the promotion of democratic values and building U.S.-led institutions that can address shared global challenges such as economic growth, climate change and terrorism.

Past presidents have tried to use “soft power” strategies to bolster the United States’ cultural appeal abroad and lend moral weight to the country’s standing as the free world’s leading alternative to communist or authoritarian systems. Such tactics are not a substitute for military and economic “hard power,” foreign affairs analysts said, but can be an effective diplomatic tool to help shape global perceptions of the United States.

President Obama, for example, spoke frequently about the need for an international order based on universal human rights and the rule of law as he pursued the Paris climate accord, a Pacific Rim free-trade pact and the Iran nuclear deal. By comparison, Trump has seldom talked about such ideals, either during the campaign or since winning office. He has expressed skepticism about the international agreements negotiated by the Obama administration, saying they do not do enough to help the American people. Other aspects of American influence — including development aid and human rights advocacy — have been de-emphasized in Trump’s nominations and appointments to his incoming administration.

Trump’s administration is “all about tough guys and being tough,” said Suzanne Nossel, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations under Obama. Nossel added that “there’s a great sense of fear around the world that the U.S. is going to abandon its leadership role in the world on behalf of the vulnerable.”

Trump’s aides said his strategy is a necessary course correction to what they called Obama’s “apology tour” of trying to build bridges to rogue regimes in places such as Iran and Cuba.

Trump has threatened to terminate the Iran nuclear deal and Obama’s diplomatic rapprochement with Havana, which included the lifting of some U.S. economic sanctions. And he has named to his administration several former generals with deeply pessimistic views of Iran. The group includes his national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn.

Obama took office on a pledge to recalibrate the U.S. role in the world and repair the country’s image after George W. Bush’s “with us or against us” war on terror and the U.S. military invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Trump has expressed skepticism of the Bush-era U.S. military interventionism to force regime change or resolve sectarian clashes. But he also has discarded Obama’s caution over using terms such as “radical Islam” to describe terrorist threats emanating from Muslim nations. Obama has warned that such language will perpetuate the terrorists’ goals of inflaming a clash of religions and will radicalize more disaffected young people in the Middle East.

Human rights advocates are alarmed by Trump’s professed admiration for authoritarian figures such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he called a stronger leader than Obama. And in the days after his election victory, Trump fielded a congratulatory call from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose administration has overseen the extrajudicial killings of thousands of suspected drug dealers. Obama had canceled a bilateral meeting with Duterte, but Trump invited him to the White House.

– edited from The Washington Post, December 29, 2016
Peacemeal, Jan/February 2017

Trump poised to lift ban on CIA prisons and torture

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing a sweeping executive order that would clear the way for the Central Intelligence Agency to reopen overseas “black site” prisons, like those where it detained and tortured terrorism suspects before former President Obama shut them down. President Trump’s three-page draft order, titled “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants,” would also undo many of the other restrictions on handling detainees that Mr. Obama put in place in response to policies of the George W. Bush administration.

If Mr. Trump signs the draft order, he would also revoke Mr. Obama’s directive to give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all wartime detainees in American custody — another step toward reopening secret prisons outside of the normal wartime rules established by the Geneva Conventions.

The draft order does not direct any immediate reopening of C.I.A. prisons or revival of torture tactics, which are now barred by federal law. But it sets up high-level policy reviews to make further recommendations in both areas to Mr. Trump, who vowed during the campaign to bring back waterboarding and a “hell of a lot worse” — not only because “torture works,” but because even “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway.”

Mr. Trump’s draft directive order would resurrect a 2007 executive order issued by President George W. Bush. It responded to a 2006 Supreme Court decision about the Geneva Conventions that had put C.I.A. interrogators at risk of prosecution for war crimes, leading to a temporary halt of the agency’s “enhanced interrogations” program.

Mr. Bush’s 2007 order enabled the agency to resume a form of the program by specifically listing what sorts of prisoner abuses counted as war crimes. That made it safe for interrogators to use other tactics, like extended sleep deprivation, that were not on the list. Mr. Obama revoked that order as part of his 2009 overhaul of detention legal policy.

While Mr. Trump’s order says no detainee should be tortured or otherwise subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment “as prescribed by U.S. law,” it makes no mention of international law commitments binding the United States to adhere to humane standards even if Congress were to relax domestic legal limits on interrogations, such as the Convention Against Torture or the Geneva Conventions.

Elisa Massimino, director of Human Rights First, denounced the draft order as “flirting with a return to the ‘enhanced interrogation program’ and the environment that gave rise to it.” She noted that numerous retired military leaders have rejected torture as “illegal, immoral, and damaging to national security,” and said many of Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees had seemed to share that view in their confirmation testimony. “It would be surprising and extremely troubling if the national security cabinet officials were to acquiesce in an order like that after the assurances that they gave in their confirmation hearings,” she said.

Tom Malinowski, who was assistant secretary of state for human rights in the Obama administration, said the draft order showed that everyone who thought the office of the presidency or the advice of cabinet secretaries like Mr. James Mattis would temper Mr. Trump “is being shown wrong again.”

“He’ll listen to his worst instincts over his best advisers unless restrained by law,” Mr. Malinowski said.

– edited from The New York Times, January 25, 2017
PeaceMeal, Jan/February 2017

Women’s March on Washington

On Saturday, January 21, a constellation of woman-centered, anti-Trump protest lit up across all seven continents. At the center of the action was the Women’s March on Washington, which drew an estimated half-a-million participants.

It made sense to organize the first major post-Inauguration protest march around women, who are almost 51 percent of the American population, who have been maligned and attacked by the new President, and who make up a group within which every other vulnerable population exists. The Women’s March protesters took an obvious, gentle pleasure in sharing space with people of divergent interests and appearances.

The radical possibility of the Women’s March, the hope that hasn’t been crushed, is an alignment of women representing a broad spectrum of political, ethnic and religious diversity.

The Women’s March statement of principles includes this: “We recognize that to achieve any of the goals outlined within this statement, we must work together to end war and live in peace with our sisters and brothers around the world. Ending war means a cessation to the direct and indirect aggression caused by the war economy and the concentration of power in the hands of a wealthy elite who use political, social and economic systems to safeguard and expand their power.”

– PeaceMeal, Jan/February 2017

Trump’s plans for military buildup promise nukes and debt

Washington DC — As the point man for House Democrats on defense issues, Washington state Rep. Adam Smith is trying to make sense of President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the U.S. military. So far, he’s not having much luck.

“I don’t think it’s intellectually possible to digest what he’s talking about,” said Smith, the top-ranked Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. One thing is clear: If Trump gets his way on lifting the spending caps imposed on the U.S. military, Smith says, “It would cause an unsustainable increase in the national debt and deficit.” He added, “But in the short term, it would certainly be great for the military-industrial complex.”

Lifting the caps alone would cost roughly $500 billion over 10 years, and it’s just part of Trump’s “peace through strength” plan that calls for a multibillion-dollar increase for more nuclear warheads, bombers and submarines. And with Trump also proposing a huge tax cut and more spending on infrastructure projects, Smith says that none of it adds up. [Ed note: Shades of Ronald Reagan’s “voodoo economics.”] He said Trump’s military plan would only drive up the national debt and make it impossible for Congress to pay for any other discretionary spending.

Trump emphasized a military build-up throughout his cam-paign. “I’m gonna build a military that’s gonna be much stronger than it is right now. It’s gonna be so strong, nobody’s gonna mess with us,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in October 2015.

Trump backers are expecting him to prevail with the new Congress in removing the budget caps, known as the “sequester.”

Smith has backed much of President Obama’s military plans over the past eight years. He won his 11th term in the recent election and was mentioned as a contender to succeed Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had won the presidency.

Smith objected strenuously to Trump’s characterization of the U.S. military as a “disaster.” He said, “It’s idiotic and it’s incredibly insulting to the people in the military.”

Smith said he’s also hoping that Trump shapes a foreign policy that avoids more military entanglements for the U.S. overseas. “I hope the lesson we’ve learned from Afghanistan and Iraq is that a large U.S. military presence in a Muslim country does not advance our interests,” he said. “I’m more interested in what his strategy is. On all the major national security issues, it is completely unclear what President Trump is going to do.”

– edited from McClatchyDC, November 15, 2016
PeaceMeal, Nov/December 2016

Foreign-policy experts grow more hostile to Trump

The foreign-policy establishment remains overwhelmingly opposed to Donald Trump’s bid for the White House, unifying around Hillary Clinton as the only responsible option despite ideological differences — support that has been brought into sharper focus in the week since North Korea defiantly launched its fifth nuclear weapon test.

As Kim Jong Un’s authoritarian regime remains belligerently committed to developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, several international security experts warn that the next president will probably face the culmination of those efforts. And they worry that Trump is ill equipped to navigate the complicated geopolitical forces at play.

Eliot Cohen, an active anti-Trump voice, said that he has never seen foreign-policy professionals so stridently hostile to a candidate. “He is not only an ignoramus, but he’s a dangerous ignoramus who doesn’t know the first thing about foreign policy and doesn’t care and has some very dangerous instincts,” saud Cohen, who served in the George W. Bush administration. “Part of what is so dangerous about him is not just his ignorance and contempt for our alliances, but his failure to understand how important these have been to our security since 1945. And he has already done a lot of damage. Our allies are deeply shaken by this election.”

On the campaign trail, Trump has regularly signaled that he would consider pulling American support away from traditional allies — naming Japan and South Korea in particular — and out of mutual-defense alliances such as NATO. On several occasions, he also has floated the idea that Japan should perhaps develop its own nuclear deterrents to deal with threats in the region.

Those suggestions, which were widely panned, fly in the face of a consensus on American defense and nonproliferation dating back to World War II.

Despite deep skepticism about their candidate, the Trump cam-paign has sought to undermine Clinton’s experience as secretary of state, pinning diplomatic failures in North Korea on her policies. His campaign said on Sept. 16 that North Korea’s latest nuclear test is a referendum on Clinton’s diplomatic efforts as secretary of state, which he said was full of “catastrophic failures.” In a statement, spokesman Jason Miller said that the North Korean nuclear program grew in sophistication under her watch.

Trump himself blasted Clinton on the stump: “Just today it was announced that North Korea performed its fifth nuclear test, its fourth since Hillary Clinton became secretary of state. It’s just one more massive failure from a failed secretary of state. She’s failed at everything,” Trump said during a campaign event in Washington DC. “Her policies have also put Iran onto a path of nuclear weapons. And I have to say, made them, overnight, an absolute power. They were dying three years ago.”

That accusation is part of a broader effort by the Republican Party to turn Clinton’s strength and expertise on foreign policy against her — aided by a drumbeat of controversy over her improper use of a private email server during her tenure at the State Department.

Trump also has blasted Clinton’s judgment for supporting interventions in Iraq and Libya, despite advocating similar views himself at the time.

While political strategists have fought over whose administration is to blame over North Korea’s continued march toward intercontinental nuclear capabilities — the first nuclear test was launched during the G. W. Bush administration — foreign policy experts have been more measured in their assessments.

In conversations with The Washington Post, several said that suggesting there’s a singular person to blame for the North Korean nuclear problem ignores the complicated geopolitical realities making the situation almost unworkable.

“We’re worried about our own interest and protecting our own interests, having to worry about protecting the interests of our allies, and it can’t be seen as undercutting our allies,” said Toby Dalton, co-director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “All of these relationships are nested in ways that make it very difficult to come to the table with clear objectives that are agreed on, and to work in a process that somehow satisfies all of the interests.”

The Clinton campaign, meanwhile, has used the situation in North Korea to urge voters to think carefully about who they want making high-stakes foreign-policy decisions. Clinton’s messaging has been overt in suggesting that she is uniquely positioned to manage a diplomatic resolution, amid likely escalation of the stakes, and that Trump is simply unqualified.

In several interviews, Clinton said that she believes the situation in North Korea has reached a turning point. She has called on the United States to strengthen its security alliances with South Korea and Japan, even while insisting that China will need to play a role and escalate its pressure on North Korea. “I think we have an opening here that we haven’t had for the last seven years that I intend to do everything I can to take advantage of,” she said.

The Trump campaign has not delivered such policy prescriptions, though Trump said in January that he would force China to take ownership of the situation. But he has also spoken in favorable terms of the North Korean dictator — to the great discomfort of many, even within his own party.

Trump’s campaign and surrogates have remained committed to blaming Clinton. But outside the campaign, even those who have been critical of Obama — including Cohen — have been mindful to look at the events in their totality.

“The Obama administration really hasn’t done anything about it. Three of the five nuclear tests have been under their watch, but I can’t say that any other administration was able to slow them down in any way,” Cohen said.

– edited from an article by Jose A. DelReal in The Washington Post, September 18, 2016, and reprinted in PeaceMeal, Sept/October 2016

Taliban leaders watched U.S. presidential debate, blast ‘non-serious’ Trump

Taliban leaders followed the U.S. presidential debate closely but heard nothing on Afghanistan, a spokesman said on September 28, adding that they were not impressed by Republican candidate Donald Trump, whom they considered “non-serious.”

The leaders watched the televised debate from a secret location in Afghanistan, but neither Trump nor Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton talked about their intentions for the country, the spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said by telephone.

“The main thing that we would like the next U.S. president to do is to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors,” he said.

“Why are they hated worldwide? It’s because of their aggressive policies. They invade other people’s countries and kill innocent human beings for their vested interests.”

The election winner will have to decide future policy for what has been America’s longest war, started after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 triggered a U.S.-led campaign that toppled the Taliban government in Kabul.

President Barack Obama this year shelved plans to halve the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and instead has kept 8,400 troops there until the end of his presidency, leaving further decisions to his successor.

Zabihullah also had harsh words for Trump, a political newcomer who has attacked what he calls the failed policies of the Washington political classes.

Taliban leaders considered Trump a “non-serious” candidate who said “anything that comes to his tongue,” the spokesman said.

Both Obama, in whose administration Clinton served as Secretary of State, and former President George W. Bush had wasted 15 years and billions of dollars without being able to defeat the Taliban, he added.

“There is a choice for the upcoming president, whether he or she would like to suffer human and financial losses to continue their invasion of Afghanistan or they want to let the people of Afghanistan decide their affairs,” Zabihullah said.

“If the new president doesn’t change policy, the Taliban will continue their armed struggle until they are expelled from Afghanistan.”

– Reuters, September 28, 2016
PeaceMeal, Sept/October 2016