Torture and empire

I am always curious from those who want America out of the "Empire Business" how the creation of a new balance of power will work over the long term.

I consider myself a recovering neoconservative with a realist bent, however, I have yet to see how long term stability emerges from a classical balance of power.

I suppose a few decades of relative stability purchased through creatively ambidextrous diplomacy is something worthy of some aspiration. However, I also wonder whether hegemonic stability is a safer long-term choice.

What lasted longer, the Concert of Europe post Napoleon or the Pax Romana?

like Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, waterboarding, etc.,

Professor is that etc include WACO and Amish?
I expect the US first to learn not to deny the right to law of her own SPEEs. Those recorded tortures are temporary incidents compared to the continuous denial of right to law of SPEEs which keeps them bleeding to die. This also keeps the US bleeding to death.
Listen to this Professor:

Police Hunt for Mother, Son Refusing Chemo

Burn them witches!!;->>

BTW, Mind you, Muslims don't hate the EUS, they see the EUS as an offspring of their civilisation in their teenage stage. Muslims eventually learn how to coach the EUS to grow up;->>

Grand Sen~or.

Those who have sullied our good republic with their crimes against humanity, should undergo capital punishment. How is Cheney's attempt to torture a link between Saddam and Obama any better than Nazi torture?

A truth commission is what I want. I want the pictures released. I want our nation to guarantee that we do not sink to the depths of barbarians!

I cannot sleep at night, until we prosecute these crooks.

I may be a neocon, but I wont trade our amenmdent rights, and I wont be bamboozled by idiots with words like "interrogation technique".

Shame shame shame on us all, for we should march on Washington, to take the Republic back in our hands.

Sy Hersch says the Evil Dick orderd executions left and right. If it was just in Iraq and A-Stan and went after terrorists, ok. But if it was extralegal murder in South America, in Africa, in Eruasia - then again - Cheney is just a damned war criminal!!

I weep for my nation!

"who took advantage of the post-9/11 climate of fear to implement a torture regime"

You just couldn't resist your own bit of simplification in the same sentence that you describe the criticism of the Bush Administration as convenient and simplistic, could you?

Your comments are a vicious slur against hardworking men and women in the Bush Administration (their "minions" as you so spitefully call them) who were trying their hardest to prevent additional terror attacks. You weren't there and they didn't have the luxury of making those decisions in a vacuum with the hindsight of 8 years. How dare you.

"anti-Americanism is mostly a reaction to U.S. policies and not a rejection of American values, culture, or identity"

So US policies are mostly never informed by those values, culture or identity? Never influenced by or a reflection of those values, culture and identity. Really?

"Bottom line: if you don't like Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, waterboarding, etc., the best way to make the problem go away for good is to get out of the business of occupying and trying to govern other countries."

Yep, let's just pull all our forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Just like we have in Germany and South Korea. Oh wait, we haven't...

Yep, you're right, the problems will go away for good. Only more serious problems will come up instead. But I'm sure you will find another way to blame Bush and Cheney for those, too.

"Unfortunately, history also shows that prolonged occupations and counterinsurgencies always lead to significant abuses. It is the nature of the beast. This is what happened to Britain in the Boer War, Belgium in its central African empire, France in Indochina and Algeria, Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Israel in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, and the United States in Iraq".
The US may be a latter day occupier of countries under many different guises but one really does not have to go far to see its insidious hand of empire all over the world. 700+ US military bases? Not quite as obvious has been the insidious economic blackmail (aid), embargos and subsidisation used ad nauseum to achieve a 'peaceful' commercial result. Taking the livelihood away from others through unfair and illegal practices is war in a sense, feeling the same to the losers.
"Why don't they like us", indeed. Where does one start. South America. There is not a single country on that continent that hasn't had the heavy hand of the US stirring up trouble to meet the sometimes jaundiced objectives of commerce, US style, such as in Chile, the blackest memory in my lifetime, subjecting the Chileans to 16 years of murderous acts by Pinochet. Proud of that, are we?
Prior to that era, the supporting of dictatorships to prop up US commercial interests with torture, assassinations, death squads, still proceeding even to this day.
One has to consider anyone who received words of praise and financial support from someone like Bush, as he did and does still, that is Prethe days of dictators and time may prove Uribe is no better the a 2009 Pinochet.
The inability to accept the dictates of the people of a whole country, such as Cuba and the resulting embargo, a petty act that has achieved absolutely nothing but which was seen as necessary to be continued by every President since that date. Doesn't say much for the collective intelligence of US Presidents.
A wonderful result. Something akin to the schoolyard behaviour of a petulant big bully who cannot countenance anyone having a philosophy different to his.
Why do they hate us? Indeed.
Such a big subject to cover but the wars and occupations carried out by Britain when it 'ruled the waves' have not been a lesson that anyone in the US has learned in over 50 years. I fear that this will continue, eventually prompting a well organised foe, or, as the number grows as it will, a series of foes, to really do a 9/11 like never before and then we will ask again, being no wiser than before, 'why don't they like us'.
Off we go again.

Non-intervention is a simple policy, but unfortunately my fellow Americans appear to be suffering from a severe case of Exceptionalitus. Common symptoms are scheming and delusional do-gooding hallucinations. At first glance it appears to be a cardiovascular issue but upon closer examination it presents itself as a morally degenerative disease of the nervous system.

Does Mr. Walt need a stern lecture on Genocide until he himself develops the fever, that unstoppable interventionist itch? Is Mr. Walt not sufficiently conditioned to support the bankrupt ideology of intervention?

I recommend a dose of Anarchism twice daily.

Please, you gotta have a comment on the Mark-Twain-on-Israel discussion: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/netanyahus-embrace-of-mark-twain/?ref=world

Media is so focused in trivia.

Americans are pro-torture. All the polls tell us this.

Our government is reflecting the will of the people.

So many academics seem to skip the step of having to actually convince people to their views. It's why they are so drawn to the most brutal totalitarian regimes, because those government can skip the messiness of convincing the people.

I would like to ask the participants in this discussion, whether they think that it was a coincidence that Obama suffered, what in my view must be his greatest defeat yet, when Congress led by Dianne Feinstein (German for 'Fine stone') turned down his proposal for closing Guantanamo down on the very same day that he was having a meeting with Netanyanu in.....The Oval Office. Was this a discreet message from the Lobby: "Look how powerful we are, you better cooperate with us on Israel/Palestine or we will block more of your initiatives?

______________

On a more conspirational note, the exposure of 4 muslims allegedly having had plans to detonate bombsoutside jewish temples, also coming just now, could be an attempt to deliver the message to the American people that the terrorism threat is real, and that there is good reason to be in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as is the Lobby's wish, that the US should be.

As I said this is the conspirational bit of my deliberations. Maybe they had such plans (but we must never forget that they would had come to nothing if the FBI agent in disguise had not supplied the fake C-4 plastic explosives, and the false stinger missile) - but why does the revelation comes just now.?

They are charged with wanting "to use weapons of mass destruction within the US and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles".
"The defendants wanted to engage in terrorist attacks," said Lev Dassin, acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Commentary:

Lev Dassin is an honourable descendant of the distinguished Israelites, but where and in what context have we heard New Yorkers talk about 'weapons of mass destruction' before? In my view they may have had such plans, but it is morally defunct to aide people with tons of plastic explosives and ...a stinger missile. The alleged perpetrators must have been rather naive, if they trusted a man from the underworld could just deliver these things (at what price, I want to know. For this to have any credibility they must have payed the market-price for these items. If they got them at a discounted price, this just confirms criminal wrongdoings on the part of the authorities, when they in this amoral way try to lure people to commit attrocities, - something they could not have accomplished without aid from the Authorities remember.

Finally I want to say that people in general need not to worry about terrorism. It mostly affect people whose representatives are perceived to have committed wrongdoings in the homecountries of the perpetrators. That means that Swedes and Finns need not to worry. Of course Americans have a slightly higher risc of being attacked because their country for now two score years have taken the side of the Israelis in the Middle East conflict, but then again it is most often in cities , and it is symbolic things that are being attacked.

From today's WashPost:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/20/AR2009052002981_pf.html

Bringing Iran In From the Cold

By Nader Mousavizadeh
Thursday, May 21, 2009

A fateful consensus is forming around the proposition that war with Iran is inevitable. The failure of the past eight years' non-diplomacy has resulted in a worst-case scenario whereby Iran, most experts agree, has passed the point of no return in terms of technical nuclear weapons capability without violating its legal obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Witness, then, the remarkable display of Arab-Israeli unity at the White House: Monday's message from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about existential threats echoing Arab warnings about the Persian menace on the horizon. Palestine is passé, Iran is in -- and the great debate, we are now to believe, concerns whether the road to Tehran runs through Jerusalem or vice versa.

As a rising regional power with a record of sponsoring Hezbollah and Hamas as agents of influence, Iran is using every weapon -- symmetrical and asymmetrical -- to disrupt the established order. Answering this challenge without war will require a diplomatic shift beyond mere engagement.

By focusing on the means of Iran's ascendancy -- its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability and its support for Hezbollah and Hamas -- we are avoiding the vital question of ends. Concentrating on capabilities instead of intentions, we are missing the far more consequential opportunity to challenge the Iranian regime to a real debate about the country's legitimate place in the regional security architecture and the deeply illegitimate ways Tehran seeks to achieve it.

In other words, it's not about the bomb.

And yet preventing Tehran from gaining nuclear weapons status has gained dangerously totemic status as a national security aim of the United States and its allies. Leave aside the possibility that an Israeli government disinclined toward a two-state solution would find reason to direct the world's focus away from Gaza. Ignore, too, the likelihood that Arab regimes struggling to justify their rule may be keen to change the subject. The United States remains captive to three decades of Cold War thinking where Iran is concerned, and nothing in the new administration's policy suggests a shift as fundamental as the one required.

While the Obama administration appears likely to resist the near-term pressure for military action (not least because of its preoccupation with the creeping Talibanization of Pakistan, Iran's already nuclear-armed neighbor to the east), its mix of rhetorical innovation and policy continuation is unlikely to produce a different outcome.

This presents a timeline of a war foretold: Over the next few months, a set of U.S. diplomatic gestures will probably be met with skepticism and stalling in Tehran. New and alarming intelligence about possible covert nuclear programs will surface, accompanied by a step-up in Hamas and Hezbollah activity. The administration will conclude that its outstretched hand has been met with the familiar fist and will seek U.N. support for crippling sanctions. As Russia and China decline to join a meaningful sanctions regime, proponents of military action will argue that all other options have been exhausted. War will be upon us.

To avoid this calamity, we need to reverse our starting point in engagement -- away from the bomb and Iran's sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas -- and discard the notion that bigger sticks and bigger carrots will alter Tehran's strategic calculus. Our goal should be a new geostrategic environment in the Persian Gulf, in which Iran has fewer reasons to pursue overt nuclear weapons status, and in which it won't trigger a cascade of conflict if it nonetheless decides to do so. Rather than allow capabilities over which we have little control to force our hand, we should seek a new framework of intentions in our diplomacy with Iran.

This means opening direct bilateral talks without preconditions, focused on the many areas of common urgent concern, beginning with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. By building trust through joint efforts in arenas where Iranian and U.S. interests greatly coincide, we can move toward candid acknowledgment of each side's legitimate interests.

From Iran, this would require acceptance of the U.S. regional role; agreement that Hezbollah and Hamas pursue their interests through political, and not military, means; and a return to its previous policy of supporting whatever deal the Palestinians make with Israel. From the United States, this would require recognition of the sources of strategic paranoia in Tehran -- the legacy of its 10-year war with Iraq; being surrounded by nuclear powers, including Pakistan, India, Russia, Israel and the United States; and a 30-year history of antagonism with the world's greatest power. From this can flow acceptance of a legitimate Iranian role in Gulf security brokered by the United States and including Iran's Arab neighbors; and over time, Iran's reintegration into the international community and the lifting of sanctions -- all conditioned upon unequivocal security guarantees for U.S. allies in the region.

A shift of this magnitude in national security policy will require a leap of faith. Pragmatism in foreign policy -- however welcome a tonic after the past eight years -- has its limits, morally and philosophically. In the case of Iran, it is also a strategic dead end. Only a fundamental shift toward a policy of calculated coexistence will ensure the long-term defense of our interests and the security of our allies. It is also the best hope for the people of Iran and their struggle for a modern, free and open society.

The Bush administration fought the battle of capabilities with Iran and lost. The battle of intentions can still be won.

The writer, a special assistant to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan from 1997 to 2003, is a consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Yes I agree.

...(if we ever were), we might have been able to make the most of our remaining resources to deal with peak oil and the climate...

...which would have involved lots of global cooperation.

since we've become israeli america, it doesnt look like there's much chance of that.