[Note for TomDispatch Readers: A last reminder for those of you in New York City: Jeremy Scahill and I will be onstage Friday, 6-8 pm, at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute discussing our American world (such as it is), his work, and my new book, The United States of Fear. Hope you’ll drop by. For further information and directions on getting there, click here. Tom]
One thing is obvious. No one ever joins the government in order to be a whistleblower or leaker. Whistleblowers are created, not born. To offer an example, as Peter Van Buren is happy to admit, before he spent a year on two forward operating bases in Iraq running a State Department provincial reconstruction team, he was “a more or less content Foreign Service Officer.” It is perhaps typical of whistleblowers and leakers that something they are privy to simply pushes them over the edge.
In Van Buren’s case, it was perhaps all those late nights on some desolate base thousands of miles from his family, thinking about the mad way your taxpayer money was being squandered -- millions of dollars, for instance, going into the building of an all-Iraqi chicken-plucking factory that would never be used to pluck chickens. It was the pure madness of the American occupation and “reconstruction” -- more like deconstruction -- of Iraq, seen up close and personal, that led him to start writing his own truth-telling book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (which just happens to be both unsettling and often bizarrely hilarious because, as a writer, he’s a natural).
He had the urge to offer you an insider's view of your government in action in a distant land. Think of it -- perhaps of any whistleblowing -- as an act of personal “reconstruction,” as a method of occupying yourself in a new way, even as it may also be deconstructing your career. Such acts are favors to the rest of us in what we still claim is a “democracy,” even if the money of the truly wealthy rules the day and your state, the national security one, has moved beyond all accountability into a post-legal era.
Though the Obama administration has, from its first days, talked the talk of governmental openness and “sunshine,” it’s walked a very different walk. And while Van Buren hasn’t, like other whistleblowers, been brought to court or imprisoned, he has learned, once again in an up close and personal fashion, how little “our” government wants even a penlight shown on its inner workings. Consider, then, Van Buren’s view from the eye of the national security storm. (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Van Buren discusses what it means to be a governmental whistleblower, click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Tom
Silent State
The Campaign Against Whistleblowers in Washington
By Peter Van BurenOn January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort.
Kiriakou’s plight will clearly be but one more battle in a broader war to ensure that government actions and sunshine policies don’t go together. By now, there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things that their government does. How it plays out in court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy.
Two Saturdays ago, I was walking with a friend in a park here in New York City. It was late January, but I was dressed in a light sweater and a thin fall jacket, which I had just taken off and tied around my waist. We were passing a strip of bare ground when suddenly we both did a double-take. He looked at me and said, “Crocuses!” Dumbfounded, I replied, “Yes, I see them.” And there they were, a few clumps of telltale green shoots poking up from the all-brown ground as if it were spring. Such a common, comforting sight, but it sent a chill through me that noticeably wasn’t in the air. Even the flowers, I thought, are confused by our new version of weather.
Later that same week, as temperatures in the Big Apple crested 60 degrees, I was chatting on the phone with a friend in Northampton, Massachusetts. I was telling him about the crocuses, when he suddenly said, “I’m looking out my window right now and for the first time in my memory of January, there’s not a trace of snow!”
Of course, our tales couldn’t be more minor or anecdotal, even if the temperatures that week did feel like we were on another planet. Here’s the thing, though: after a while, even anecdotes add up -- maybe we should start calling them “extreme anecdotes” -- and right now there are so many of them being recounted across the planet. How could there not be in a winter, now sometimes referred to as “Junuary,” in which, in the United States, 2,890 daily high temperature records have either been broken or tied at last count, with the numbers still rising? Meanwhile, just to the south of us, in Mexico, extreme anecdotes abound, since parts of the country are experiencing “the worst drought on record.” Even cacti are reportedly wilting and some towns are running out of water (as they are across the border in drought-stricken Texas). And worst of all, the Mexican drought is expected to intensify in the months to come.
And who can doubt that in Europe, experiencing an extreme cold spell the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades -- even Rome had a rare snowfall and Venice’s canals were reported to be freezing over -- there are another set of all-too-extreme anecdotes. After all, in places like Ukraine, scores of the homeless are freezing to death, pipes are bursting, power cuts are growing, and maybe even an instant energy crisis is underway (at a moment when the European Union is getting ready to cut itself off from Iranian oil).
That’s just to begin a list. And yet here’s the strange thing. At least in this country, you can read the “freaky” weather reports or listen to the breathless TV accounts of unexpected tornadoes striking the South in January and rarely catch a mention of the phrase “climate change.” Given the circumstances, the relative silence on the subject is little short of eerie, even if worries about climate change lurk just below the surface. Which is why it’s good to have TomDispatch regular Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, take a clear-eyed look at American denialism and just what it is we prefer not to take in. Tom
The Great Carbon Bubble
Why the Fossil Fuel Industry Fights So Hard
By Bill McKibbenIf we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet -- as we shall see -- it’s unfortunately largely invisible to us.
In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology. Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery: “Blue Marble,” originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on January 4th, a good day for snapping photos because there weren’t many clouds.
It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web’s most widely read meteorologist, explains, “The U.S. and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the Western U.S. is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s.”
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Just a reminder for those planning their week: Jeremy Scahill, one of the best investigative journalists in the business, and I will be talking together on stage at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute on Friday, February 10th, 6-8pm. Click here for details and directions. It’s for the official launch of my book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), which you can buy by clicking here. For a contribution of $75 or more to TomDispatch, you can get a signed, personalized copy of the book with my thanks to you. (Visit our donation page by clicking here.) If you buy the book, or anything else, via any of our book links that take you to Amazon.com, this website gets a modest percentage of your purchase, which is a good way to contribute at no extra cost to you. Tom]
Offshore Everywhere
How Drones, Special Operations Forces, and the U.S. Navy Plan to End National Sovereignty As We Know It
By Tom Engelhardt
Make no mistake: we’re entering a new world of military planning. Admittedly, the latest proposed Pentagon budget manages to preserve just about every costly toy-cum-boondoggle from the good old days when MiGs still roamed the skies, including an uncut nuclear arsenal. Eternally over-budget items like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, cherished by their services and well-lobbied congressional representatives, aren’t leaving the scene any time soon, though delays or cuts in purchase orders are planned. All this should reassure us that, despite the talk of massive cuts, the U.S. military will continue to be the profligate, inefficient, and remarkably ineffective institution we’ve come to know and squander our treasure on.
Still, the cuts that matter are already in the works, the ones that will change the American way of war. They may mean little in monetary terms -- the Pentagon budget is actually slated to increase through 2017 -- but in imperial terms they will make a difference. A new way of preserving the embattled idea of an American planet is coming into focus and one thing is clear: in the name of Washington's needs, it will offer a direct challenge to national sovereignty.
Heading Offshore
The Marines began huge amphibious exercises -- dubbed Bold Alligator 2012 -- off the East coast of the U.S. last week, but someone should IM them: it won’t help. No matter what they do, they are going to have fewer boots on the ground in the future, and there’s going to be less ground to have them on. The same is true for the Army (even if a cut of 100,000 troops will still leave the combined forces of the two services larger than they were on September 11, 2001). Less troops, less full-frontal missions, no full-scale invasions, no more counterinsurgency: that's the order of the day. Just this week, in fact, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta suggested that the schedule for the drawdown of combat boots in Afghanistan might be speeded up by more than a year. Consider it a sign of the times.
Like the F-35, American mega-bases, essentially well-fortified American towns plunked down in a strange land, like our latest “embassies” the size of lordly citadels, aren't going away soon. After all, in base terms, we’re already hunkered down in the Greater Middle East in an impressive way. Even in post-withdrawal Iraq, the Pentagon is negotiating for a new long-term defense agreement that might include getting a little of its former base space back, and it continues to build in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Washington has typically signaled in recent years that it’s ready to fight to the last Japanese prime minister not to lose a single base among the three dozen it has on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
But here’s the thing: even if the U.S. military is dragging its old habits, weaponry, and global-basing ideas behind it, it’s still heading offshore. There will be no more land wars on the Eurasian continent. Instead, greater emphasis will be placed on the Navy, the Air Force, and a policy “pivot” to face China in southern Asia where the American military position can be strengthened without more giant bases or monster embassies.
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Just to let those of you in New York City know, I’ll be appearing with the remarkable journalist Jeremy Scahill, just back from the frontlines in the Global War on Terror and author of the bestselling book Blackwater, on Friday, February 10th, 6 to 8pm, at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University -- 7th Floor Commons, 20 Cooper Square (Bowery at 5th Street). For directions, click here.
The event is a launch for my new book, The United States of Fear. I’ll read a piece or two and then Jeremy and I will have a conversation about our work and our world. It’s free and open to the public. Hope to see you there! Tom]
Are you on tenterhooks? Will Mitt make it out of the Cayman Islands and into the White House? Will Newt take the full “wild and woolly” ride on the primary roller coaster to the Republican convention? Will the two of them and their PACs eat each other alive by next week? Will Rick and his single Wyoming funder hang in there until his “man on dog” sex comment finally fades from Google? And Ron Paul -- yes, we’re on first-name terms with the other three, but not Paul, the guy who insisted he’d be home reading an “economics textbook” while other Republican candidates piously opted for watching a football game -- will he continue to make statements about U.S. global policy that would normally send a Republican to hell? And honestly, did you really imagine that Elizabeth Warren wasn’t going to have something strong and supportive to say about the Pats in the Super Bowl, after the previous Democratic senatorial candidate blew her chances with a dismissive comment about Fenway Park?
You thought I was talking about American electoral politics? Not at all. I’m discussing the latest version of The Amazing Race. And if you're like me, don’t you miss the contestants who have already been eliminated: Herman (“Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan”) Cain, Michele (who mistook a serial killer for a movie star) Bachman, and the other Rick, whatever-his-name-was, the Texan who just couldn’t count to three?
I mean, aren’t you having a blast watching this bread-and-circuses spectacle, which in January captured a staggering 41% of the combined media newshole, 64% of cable TV’s? There’s a headline a second, a new poll a minute, an angry set-to an hour. With only three primaries and one caucus out of the way, the Republicans have already had 19 (count 'em 19!) televised “debates,” and my hometown paper is running daily front-page stories about the race with double- or triple-page inside coverage. In a season when spectacle and Super Bowl normally go together, the entertainment extravaganza of the moment remains the race for the White House -- and in football terms, we’re still in the wild-card round of the playoffs.
I mean truly, did you ever dream that a moribund Democratic presidential race and a Republican one led by Mr. Mitt, the plastic quarter-billionaire, would be competition for that single holiest night on the sports calendar when everyone but the Giants, Patriots, and Madonna is expected to couch out? Fortunately, we have TomDispatch Jock Culture correspondent Robert Lipsyte, author most recently of An Accidental Sportswriter, to remind us that, whether you’re watching a Republican debate or the Super Bowl, it’s wild and woolly America all the way to the end zone. Tom
Four Reasons to Watch the Super Bowl
Joe Hill, Joe Pa, Tebow, Wee Brains
By Robert LipsyteMost Americans won’t need a justification to watch Sunday’s game, but if you’re a TomDispatch.com reader you might think, even in passing, that celebrating the holiest day of violence, consumerism, and class warfare on your couch is a betrayal of your values or a waste of your time. You might even imagine that it would be better to take a hike, read a book, or meditate.
Not this Sunday, buster. It’s an election season. You need to watch this game to fully understand how jobs, religion, leadership, and healthcare dominate every American contest.
When it comes to U.S. policy toward Iran, irony is the name of the game. Where to begin? The increasingly fierce sanctions that the Obama administration is seeking to impose on that country’s oil business will undoubtedly cause further problems for its economy and further pain to ordinary Iranians. But they are likely to be splendid news for a few other countries that Washington might not be quite so eager to favor.
Take China, which already buys 22% of Iran’s oil. With its energy-ravenous economy, it is likely, in the long run, to buy more, not less Iranian oil, and -- thanks to the new sanctions -- at what might turn out to be bargain basement prices. Or consider Russia once the Eurozone is without Iranian oil. That giant energy producer is likely to find itself with a larger market share of European energy needs at higher prices. The Saudis, who want high oil prices to fund an expensive payoff to their people to avoid an Arab Spring, are likely to be delighted. And Iraq, with its porous border, its thriving black market in Iranian oil, and its Shiite government in Baghdad, will be pleased to help Iran avoid sanctions. (And thank you, America, for that invasion!)
Who may suffer, other than Iranians? In the long run, the shaky economies of Italy, Greece, and Spain, long dependent on Iranian oil, potentially raising further problems for an already roiling Eurozone. And don’t forget the U.S. economy, or your own pocketbook, if gas prices go up, or even President Obama, if his bet on oil sanctions turns out to be an economic disaster in an election year.
In other words, once again Washington's (and Tel Aviv's) carefully calculated plans for Iran may go seriously, painfully awry. Now, in all honesty, wouldn’t you call that Kafkaesque? Or perhaps that’s a question for the Pentagon where, it turns out, Kafka is in residence. I’m talking, of course, about Lieutenant Commander Mike Kafka. He’s a spokesman for the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command -- believe me, you can’t make this stuff up -- and just the other day he was over at the old five-sided castle being relatively close-mouthed about the retrofitting of a Navy amphibious transport docking ship as a special operations “mothership” (a term until now reserved for sci-fi novels and Somali pirates). It’s soon to be dispatched to somewhere in or near the Persian Gulf to be a floating base for Navy SEAL covert actions of unspecified sorts, guaranteed not to bring down the price of oil.
Certainly, the dispatch of that ship in July will only ratchet up tensions in the Gulf, a place that already, according to Michael Klare, TomDispatch regular and author of the upcoming book The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, is the most potentially explosive spot on the planet. Tom
Hormuz-Mania
Why Closure of the Strait of Hormuz Could Ignite a War and a Global Depression
By Michael T. KlareEver since December 27th, war clouds have been gathering over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow body of water connecting the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean and the seas beyond. On that day, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned that Tehran would block the strait and create havoc in international oil markets if the West placed new economic sanctions on his country.
“If they impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports,” Rahimi declared, “then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz.” Claiming that such a move would constitute an assault on America’s vital interests, President Obama reportedly informed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Washington would use force to keep the strait open. To back up their threats, both sides have been bolstering their forces in the area and each has conducted a series of provocative military exercises.
All of a sudden, the Strait of Hormuz has become the most combustible spot on the planet, the most likely place to witness a major conflict between well-armed adversaries. Why, of all locales, has it become so explosive?
