January 24, 2014| News | John Glaser

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Pro-Israel commentators have been known to downplay the importance of the Israel lobby here in the U.S. “The lobby” is not as influential, coordinated, sneaky, or nefarious as many of its critics maintain, they insist, while often making accusations of conspiratorial thinking.

In a strange, reverse-paranoia article at The Daily Beast, one of these pro-Israel commentators, Eli Lake, makes the argument that there is an “American Lobby in Israel” pressuring select Israeli leaders on a peace deal with the Palestinians. Oddly, he calls this a lobby even though he is referring to elected and appointed Washington diplomats out of the State Department and not private lobby groups or political action organizations.

Specifically, U.S. officials are talking with Israeli military officials about whether it is necessary for Israel to insist on maintaining an army occupation in the Jordan Valley (on Palestinian territory) as part of any final deal. Lake:

The Daily Beast has learned that Martin Indyk, the administration’s special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and his team have quietly been meeting with Israeli reservist generals and other leading national-security experts to discuss American ideas for securing the Jordan River Valley without a permanent Israeli troop presence. That’s an idea the current Israeli defense minister opposes, and strongly.

On the surface, these informal meetings may not sound like lobbying—at least, not the stuff-cash-in-congressmen’s-pockets style of lobbying we hear about in Washington. There’s no hard sales pitch, just a genteel discussion of issues. But the conversations are part of a larger effort to “prepare the Israeli public” to accept hard compromises for peace with the Palestinians, as one U.S. official working on the negotiations put it. And some senior members of the Israeli government, including Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, are not happy. Yaalon views the get-togethers with the Israeli reservist generals as a way to circumvent his own objections to any security plan that would require Israel not to have troops on the border with Jordan.

Oh, how wily and underhanded of Indyk! Far from a sneaky ploy to gin up support for a final deal without a continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands (which of course would never be accepted by the Palestinian side, as Yaalon and Netanyahu know full well), it seems entirely reasonable that the U.S. envoy would speak with Israeli generals about the need (or not) to have a presence in the Jordan Valley.

Lake seems to want to portray this as a quiet coup, since people like Yaalon and Netanyahu oppose IDF withdrawal from the West Bank. But many current and former officials don’t agree that an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley is necessary as part of a final deal. Dov Weisglass, who was a top advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and by no means a dove, wrote earlier this month that there really is no security justification for such a presence. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan also argued there is no military or security need.

In reality, the push to maintain an occupation in the Jordan Valley,  an area constituting some 20% of the West Bank, is a political one about denying Palestinian statehood and holding out hope for an eventual annexation of the coveted “Judea and Samaria.” The increasing sway of the settler movement in Israeli politics has caused some politicians to insist on this presence in the Jordan Valley, but it seems clear they only insist upon it because they know it will destroy any chance for a peace settlement.

The last thing Israel wants is a final agreement. As Yousef Munayyer has written at The Daily Beast, “Israel needs negotiations to provide cover for its continued colonization of Palestinian territory and create the impression that its presence in the West Bank is temporary and its withdrawal around the corner.”

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January 23, 2014| News | John Glaser

An editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post urges President Obama to use the threat of a U.S. bombing campaign to achieve political ends on a transition deal in the Syria talks.

Obama “could force” a diplomatic agreement for a transition government in Syria “by presenting Mr. Assad with the choice of accepting them or enduring U.S. airstrikes.” With what must be Martian logic, the Post argues that Obama’s refusal to use the threat of violence is why atrocities continue to be committed in Syria.

The United Nations Charter, to which the United States is a high contracting party, prohibits “all members” from “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, to which the U.S. is also a signatory, establishes the principle that if a country threatens to use force during diplomatic negotiations, then all resulting treaties are invalid. “A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations,” it states.

Back in August, the New York Times was even more blatant in its advocacy of criminal government when it published an Op-Ed titled, “Bomb Syria, Even If It Is Illegal.”

Just consider for a moment how corrupted the political dialogue in this country has to be for mainstream voices to openly and proudly call for their own government to commit war crimes.

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January 23, 2014| News | John Glaser

The NSA’s bulk collection of every American’s telephone call records is illegal, according to the federal government’s independent review panel, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

The NSA’s interprets Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which permits the F.B.I. to obtain business records deemed “relevant” to an investigation, as granting it the authority to collect the call records of all Americans and hold them for years for querying. The Oversight Board says no dice.

New York Times:

An independent federal privacy watchdog has concluded that the National Security Agency’s program to collect bulk phone call records has provided only “minimal” benefits in counterterrorism efforts, is illegal and should be shut down.

…The program “lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value,” the report said. “As a result, the board recommends that the government end the program.”

It’s hard to get any clearer than that, but it’s worth remembering that this review panel isn’t alone. This comes on the heels of the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon that the phone metadata program is “almost certainly” unconstitutional.

A ruling from the FISA court in 2011 found that the NSA “frequently and systematically violated” statutory laws governing how intelligence agents can search databases of Americans’ telephone communications and that NSA analysts deliberately misled judges about their surveillance activities in order to get court approval.

There is also bipartisan agreement in Congress that the NSA has systematically violated the law. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the author of the Patriot Act, including its Section 2015, has said from the beginning that the NSA’s bulk metadata collection program exceeds the authority of the law. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee and has access to classified information about the NSA’s surveillance practices, said in October that even with the overly broad statutory powers granted to the NSA, “the rules have been broken, and the rules have been broken a lot.”

“We welcome the board’s report, and we agree with is principal conclusions,” the ACLU said in a statement. “The NSA’s call-records dragnet is illegal and ineffective and presents a serious threat to civil liberties.”

Sorry to ask such a 5th grade Social Studies question, but…what is it that’s supposed to happen when people violate the law? I can’t seem to remember.

Update: On Twitter, Scott Horton provides the answer to this question…

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January 22, 2014| Barack Obama, War at Home, War on Terror | Angela Keaton

Directly lifted from the Electronic Frontier Foundation blog:

January 23, 2014 – 7:30pm
Berkeley, CA
Join us for “NSA Surveillance and Our ‘Almost Orwellian’ State,” hosted by St. John’s Presbyterian Church on Thursday, January 23, 2014.

Address:
St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA

The event is open to the public. A donation will be requested, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Proceeds will benefit the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
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January 22, 2014| News | John Glaser

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The Geneva II talks on the Syrian civil war in Switzerland started today. In the lead up to the conference, the media focus, unfortunately, had been on which parts of the Syrian opposition would attend and whether or not Iran, the Assad regime’s close ally, would attend (the U.S. pressured the UN to uninvite Iran at the last minute for not accepting the Geneva Communique).

And today, the media focused on two developments: (1) Secretary of State John Kerry’s hardline rhetoric about the Syrian regime’s crimes and how Assad cannot be a part of any transition government, and (2) the tense back-and-forth between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem, the latter being nothing more than a disagreement over how much time the foreign minister should have to speak.

From where I’m sitting, the real story of the Geneva II conference was all but ignored. It was summed up by Ban Ki-Moon in a press conference following the talks when he said, “all of the countries who have been providing arms to either side must stop and encourage them to engage in political dialogue.”

This opinion, which Moon has repeatedly expressed, echoes that of countless other experts. Back in 2012, UN rights chief Navi Pillay condemned the continued flow of weapons from foreign powers to both sides in the Syrian conflict. “The ongoing provision of arms to the Syrian government and to its opponents feeds additional violence,” she said in the text of remarks made to the Security Council.

James Dobbins, director of the RAND a former US assistant secretary of state told NPR recently, “the external environment in which sides are providing arms to both of the contending parties—all of that suggests that the situation’s going to continue to deteriorate.”

When both sides to a civil war are emboldened by their foreign benefactors, neither feels vulnerable enough to compromise. This virtually ensures perpetual stalemate.

“A continuous supply of weapons to both sides—whether from Russia, Iran or the Gulf States—only maintains the parties’ perception that fighting is a better option than negotiating,” Dr. Florence Gaub, a researcher at the NATO Defense College, wrote at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last year. “This explains why, in terms of statistical probability, an external supply of weapons lengthens a civil war.”

The U.S. has grown more and more trepidatious about the Syrian opposition. Some rebels are getting training and weapons from the U.S., but it is by no means significant (many U.S. officials have even said an Assad victory would be better than al-Qaeda-linked rebels grabbing hold the reins of state). But U.S. allies, particularly in the Arab Gulf states, do continue to aid extremist militants in Syria. Iran and Russia, wary of U.S. (or U.S.-allied) gains in Syria, continue to fully back the Assad regime. Some political will, and a minimal amount of honesty (which we didn’t get from Kerry), could put a stop to this and help mitigate the conflict considerably.

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January 22, 2014| News | John Glaser

US Air Force conducting military exercises in South Korea. Credit: DoD

US Air Force conducting military exercises in South Korea. Credit: DoD

Today at Al Jazeera America I argue that the U.S. should stop occupying South Korea, not only because they don’t belong there but because the highly militarized alliance between the U.S. and South Korea doesn’t actually weaken North Korea, but helps sustain the regime by incentivizing China to continue to prop up Pyongyang.

At Medium.com, Robert Beckhusen reports on the latest round of U.S.-South Korean military exercises and reveals for the first time that U.S. special operations forces are training for guerrilla war in North Korea and practicing how to grow an “indigenous resistance organization” inside North Korea.

Every year, the U.S. and South Korea team up for one of the world’s largest military exercises. Thousands of troops backed by fighter aircraft, strategic bombers and Navy warships plan for the worst.

But America’s elite Special Operations Forces are also involved—planning for the day when they might be the first ones tasked with stepping across the DMZ.

The training is a less publicized element of the Pentagon’s exercises in South Korea, which are emphasized as defensive in nature. But for three days in April 2013, American commandos carried out simulated North Korea missions during Balance Knife 13-1—part of the much larger Foal Eagle exercise—near Iksan and Damyang, South Korea.

Along with the 7th and 11th ROK Special Forces Brigades, the exercise involved two American commando groups of 12 men each—Operational Detachment Alphas 1336 and 1333. Both American teams belonged to Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion of the 1st Special Forces Group.

Notably, the training dealt with how to move special operators into and out of North Korea, according to a review published in the January edition of Special Warfare, the wonky, academic journal of the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. The scenario also dealt with how to grow an “indigenous resistance organization” inside the North.

Why? How can this possibly be in the U.S. interest? And don’t say it’s to save the North Korean people from dictatorship, because obviously Washington couldn’t care less about that.

Americans frequently see media reports of the aggressive North Korean regime carrying out this or that ostentatious military maneuver, which indeed does happen. How often do Americans hear about the incredibly ostentatious military exercise, one of the biggest in the world, that Washington carries out right in South Korea, at least in part to threaten Pyongyang? If a designated enemy state of ours was conducting training on the Mexico border designed to prepare for regime change contingencies, how would Washington react?

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