Thursday, August 6, 2020
I WAS WRONG: CONGRESS ISN’T COWARDLY; IT’S EVIL!
By Danny Sjursen, Antiwar.com.August 5, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/i-was-wrong-congress-isnt-cowardly-its-evil/
Blocking Withdrawal From A Hopeless Afghan War Opposed Even By Its Veterans, Counts As Criminally Heinous – And Par For The Congressional Course.
Sometime during my “brief” spell as an imperial-accomplice, zombie-flicks became all the rage. So did tweeting and texting, by the way – which I learned the hard way when a phone bill ran to several hundred bucks after returning from my first failed war-surge. Turns out my data plan was almost as inadequate as the Pentagon’s Operation Cobra II scheme in Iraq. Perhaps it’s fitting then, that Representative Liz Cheney – progeny of its zombie neocon architect working on his second heart – took to Twitter last month to declare victory in America’s own zombie Afghan war. Not the classic sort of victory that ends a war and brings home victorious troops, naturally. Rather, hers was a partisan triumph, the culmination of the bipartisan battle not to end Congress’s favorite endless war. Got that?
The absurd upshot was the Crow/Cheney amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), prohibiting the expenditure of monies to reduce U.S. troops levels below 8,000 unless stringent security conditions are met. Last month, the House Armed Services Committee approved the measure in a 45-11 landslide, then unanimously passed the full NDAA – as did the full House by a 295-125 margin. As if invented in an establishment lab, Crow/Cheney states that “a rapid military drawdown and a lack of United States commitment to the security and stability of Afghanistan would undermine diplomatic efforts for peace.” (In the contemporary American-dialect of Orwellian “Newspeak,” withdrawal from even 19-year-old wars counts as “rapid.”) Good to know that Congress is in the ending-any-ending of endless wars business.
The US Constitution explicitly states that only Congress “shall have power” to declare and finance wars. Yet over time, first gradually, then rapidly, – especially since World War II – legislative primacy eroded. Covetous presidents clutched war powers that Congress often voluntarily abdicated. But even if commanders-in-chief now near-unilaterally resolve where and when America fights, wars cost money and congressmen could shut them down right along with the fiscal spigot. They almost never do.
That’s largely because, since the draft ended in 1973, retaining inertial wars is low risk; and ending them offers almost no rewards. In fact, even when a war – like the record-length Afghan one – becomes clearly hopeless, the party, faction, or legislator that blinks incurs serious political costs. They can expect to be smeared as “soft” on national security (or “communism,” or “terror”) and/or alienate their true masters: donors, lobbyists, and media moguls who all share a professional and pecuniary interest in a mammoth military-industrial-complex. As a result, aside from some momentary grandstanding, partisan point-scoring, rather than principles or prudence, usually drives decisions on the minor matters of war and peace.
Two standout examples should suffice. Despite enduring hawk-peddled myths that Congress ended the Vietnam War by cutting off votes or funds – thereby “abandoning the troops” – legislators never meaningfully did so. As late as September 1970 – when the US had incurred more than 90 percent of its total fatalities – the McGovern-Hatfield amendment, which called only for an end to the war’s Cambodian incursion, failed by a vote of 55-39. By the time Congress did cut funding to South Vietnam – four years later – from a proposed 1.26 billion to 700 million dollars, 99.88 percent of the doomed American soldiers had already died in vain.
In other words, Congress never actually defunded the troops. It decreased military aid to the South Vietnamese only after Presidents Nixon and Ford had decided, for their own complex reasons, to end the US war. It is true that as North Vietnamese tanks drove towards Saigon in April 1975, key senators came to the White House and firmly refused to reopen the US war effort; but by that point, there were few American troops left and they had almost zero combat role. The conclusion of a specially commissioned 1975 House Democratic Study Group may be the final nail in the sell-out-the-troops myth’s coffin: “Up to the spring of 1973, Congress gave every president everything he requested regarding Indochina policies and funding.”
Thirty-some odd years later, the Democrats seized both Houses of Congress in a November 2006 election that amounted to a veritable referendum on the Iraq quagmire. Still, wouldn’t you know that just a month later – despite polling suggesting 2/3 of Americans opposed the war and a majority desired rapid withdrawal – none other than incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took Congress’s power of the purse off the table. Asked by a reporter if the new Democratic-controlled Congress would vote to stop funding of the war if President Bush refused to change his Iraq strategy, Pelosi answered “We will not cut off funding for the troops…Absolutely not.” That master-bargainer is still at the helm of the “People’s House.”
Then there was the Democrat’s Obama-era hypocrisy penchant. You remember that stage of the abusive relationship with our representatives, right? The part when we learned that morality and efficacy of extrajudicial drone executions, regime change fiascoes, and forlorn troop surges mainly hinges on the party affiliation of the reigning elected emperor. These were the fearful political calculuses I’ve long dubbed “Congress’s Romance with Cowardice.” Only I was wrong – hopeless optimist I am – all along.
The Crow-Cheney pivot demonstrates a congressional capacity for criminal obscenity that should’ve been obvious long ago. We the People’s esteemed representatives have truly jumped the democratic shark and inverted the Founders’ intended function for their war-purse powers. Congress has created the seemingly scientifically impossible: a perpetual (warfare) motion machine. The crime in that, according to my colleague and early muse Andrew Bacevich, “is to persist beyond all reason in a misguided war…to put American soldiers at risk for no definable purpose.”
In part, Congress’s proclivity to prolong the Afghan pointlessness is fueled by a dubious and dangerous Russian Bounty-gate yarn that bipartisan majorities fell for hook-line-and-sinker. Worse still, the regrettable roll call of Crow/Cheney and its inclusive NDAA supporters includes more than just the usual militarism suspects. Any sentient subject would expect peace-pushback from Republican neocons, bipartisan Israeli-“assets,” and hawkish-Dem “deplorables” like, respectively, Tom “troops-in-the-streets” Cotton, ex-CIA-analyst/recipient of ample AIPAC-largess, Elissa Slotkin, and the Armed Services Committee’s in-house Pelosi-plant Donald Norcross.
But hawkish overreactions to Bounty-gate also included folks with some otherwise admirable antiwar positions. Even Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy – a commendable critic of U.S. complicity in the Saudi crime against Yemen – attacked Trump’s “failure to hold Russia accountable for bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan.” He and others decline to define what exactly should constitute accountability-holding in a long lost war that Murphy himself wanted to end – until, that is, it was Mr. Trump negotiating the ending.
Yet the wretched roll contains even the much-touted post-9/11 combat vets recently recruited by Democrats to bolster their toughness bonafides. These ostensible “brothers”-in-arms are dead to me. Full stop. After all, what does one call a Mr. Smith Crow who shares your struggles, employs his vet-badge-of-honor, then “goes to Washington” only to sell out the 73 percent of his brethren who support full withdrawal from a war that broke so many? I vote “Congressional Collaborator.”
The Democratic Iraq/Afghan veterans on the House Armed Services who backed the perpetual-war-amendment – Jason Crow, Seth Moulton, Jared Golden, and Ruben Gallego – along with all the other vet-quislings on The Hill deserve (metaphorically, I suppose) the same post-liberation treatment as French women who fornicated with their Nazi occupiers. Only instead of shaving their fraternizing heads, let’s trim these turncoats terms in office.
Now that Congress has shown the “courage” of its combat-continuation “convictions,” expect a repeat performance enabling the next (potentially extinctive) war – this time in Europe. As I noted with exasperation here last week, congressional majorities are appalled, just appalled, by Trump’s plan to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany. It doesn’t matter that the Europeans can capably handle their own defense in the event of a future war that America’s expatriate-soldiers shouldn’t risk, can’t win, and mustn’t be fought. At least if our species-mates would like to meet their prospective grandkids. After all, Raytheon and Lockheed want to maximize profits, their indebted congressional pawns desire job security, and even re-deployments have price tags – probably several billion dollars, per Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s initial swag.
So strap in for likely Crow-Cheney encore folks – relentless Liz already tweeted her (and 21 colleagues) opposition, since withdrawing any troops from Germany would surely “do grave damage to our national security.” See, those soldiers might not be going anywhere. The Donald rarely denies himself even premature victory laps, but just this once he ought to recall the “Gambler” wisdom of the late Kenny Rogers: “You never count your money, when you’re sitting at the table.” In Imperial America, the Military-Industrial-Complex “House” always wins; and congressional dealers are a wily lot. Here’s a pro-tip for my buddies stationed in Germany: maybe hold off on packing your bags.
Unfortunately, unlike in Europe, there’s nothing hypothetical about an extant Afghan adventure where Washington’s gamblers count their losses in other people’s blood. At least a handful of the remaining American troops, and who knows how many thousands of Afghans, will undoubtedly perish in this hopeless mess. On the ground, that US zombie-war is already over. It was unwinnable from the start and lost long ago.
Just a shame no one told all the walking-dead still patrolling the place…
Red Legacies
This book, first published in 2011, remains useful in this time of renewed popularity for socialist ideas. As reviewer Terry pointed out when the book was first published, it is an informative treatment of its topic, despite its weaknesses.
August 5, 2020 Michael Terry THE BROOKLYN RAIL
https://portside.org/2020-08-05/red-legacies
The “S” Word
A Short History of an American Tradition … Socialism
John Nichols
Verso Books
ISBN: 9781784783402
In The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition...Socialism, John Nichols begins with the story of an aging Walt Whitman and his daily meetings with a young writer named Horace Logo Traubel. In Camden, New Jersey, the two had a series of conversations that would lead to a book itself, detailing the thoughts of one of America’s great poets. In addition to discussions about the craft and nature of poetry, they would often talk politics. In reference to a then recent essay titled “Walt Whitman as a Socialist Poet,” Walt said, “Of course, I find I am a good deal more of a socialist than I thought I was.” In Nichols’s newest work, he sets out to show to all Americans that in fact we all are. Released at a time when our strange political discourse has viciously reduced the “s-word” to a variety of wild misinterpretations and misappropriations, Nichols counters this by using the profound historical record to revise the revisionists, in order to save an essential part of our past and hopefully, Nichols feels, our future.
Indeed, Nichols seems to be exactly the man for this much-needed task. Long on the vanguard of a mostly weary American Left, he has spent his career as a journalist avoiding the ease of malaise that so many others on the margins have chosen. As a contributor to In These Times and the Progressive, as well as his wonderful blog for the Nation,his reporting and writing have been epitomized by a worthy combination of reason and passion, along with an optimism that never becomes naïve. This impressive style is on full display in this work, in which he successfully illustrates his indisputable yet often ignored point.
In order to perform the daunting rescue mission of resuscitating our idea of socialism in America, Nichols takes the reader on a journey from the nation’s founding through to the present day, stopping off along the way to illustrate how many of the same people so revered by those who disdain all things and all people socialist were themselves socialists, had clear socialist ideas, and conversed with socialists and even (gasp) communists. Starting with Thomas Paine, the Founder whose pamphlet Common Sense is often attributed as being the spark that ignited the American Revolution, was more than just a town crier bent on personal liberty (as Glenn Beck would like you to believe). Nichols tells the story of Beck’s attempt to “re-write” Common Sense, illustrating wonderfully the ignorance and selective memory held by those who find it necessary or pleasing to forget that Paine himself was a “proponent of taxation, especially progressive taxation for the purpose of redistributing wealth to the poor and the dispossessed. His ideas about guaranteed incomes, national health care and social-welfare schemes earned him recognition as the first great proponent of old-age pensions.” As Nichols points out, these critical details are nowhere to be seen in Beck’s revision of Paine.
And what about the Party of Lincoln? Well, it is here where Nichols argument is perhaps at its strongest. He details the writing of Karl Marx, often celebrating the early incarnation of the Republican Party, and indeed Lincoln himself, something that many of its current day members would loathe to learn. Many glowing articles of America’s new radical party penned by Marx appeared in the New York Tribune. When Lincoln won re-election, Marx wrote him a congratulatory letter. What did Lincoln do to wholly disassociate himself from this evil man? Well, he wrote a letter back of course, accepting Marx’s good wishes “with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence.” Indeed, most every president up until 1980 engaged socialists, and hired socialists, formed policies ranging from Medicare to anti-poverty legislation to Civil Rights using socialist thought as part of deliberations. Unfortunately for those who pretend otherwise, Lincoln was one such president.
Nichols demonstrates how Martin Luther King Jr., another man whose history Glenn Beck has recently attempted to revise, was strongly influenced by socialism and socialist leaders as he rose to prominence. Nichols’s description of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom as a socialist undertaking underscores this fact, and emphasizes how notions like guaranteed employment and social justice were key elements of the subtext in MLK’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech. Throughout the book, Nichols manages to tell the great story of socialism in America without having to play it up. His strength as a writer is found in the manner in which he treats the facts at hand, and the statements of the various historical players stand as a testament to his idea that socialism has not somehow worked to destroy America, but in fact is responsible for many of the great programs and people that have graced the American stage.
There is much to respect in Nichols’s effort, and there is no doubting that this sort of response was long overdue. However, despite all its qualities, it seems unlikely that the book will do much of anything other than provide those already sympathetic with this cause some anecdotes and evidence with which to argue. Despite the book’s title, Nichols provides scant attention to the history of the word itself, the incredible state of disrepair the language of the Left is in, and the worrying prospect that almost anyone who does not already agree with the underlying ideas of this work would likely reject it out of hand as, well, just another socialist plot to overthrow America. Just how deep the anti-socialist sentiment is sown into the modern American fabric is something not really addressed here by Nichols, even if it is true that we are more socialist than we thought. If that is the case, then why are we so obsessed with pretending we are not? Hopefully, Nichols will attack that issue sometime soon. However, what he has managed to do is deliver a strong, concise history that at least begins the attempt to help America reconnect with those of its roots which are, in fact, socialist.
Chicago Teachers Union to Call for Strike Vote at Meeting Next Week
At protests Monday in which the union ramped up its public attacks, CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates, said it’s too dangerous to send students and staff back to schools with COVID-19 cases on the rise.
August 5, 2020 Nader Issa and Fran Spielman CHICAGO SUN TIMES
https://portside.org/2020-08-05/chicago-teachers-union-call-strike-vote-meeting-next-week
UPDATE: CPS is planning to announce that all classes will be held remotely this fall, sources told the Sun-Times late Tuesday.
Less than a year removed from its longest labor stoppage in three decades, the Chicago Teachers Union is convening an emergency meeting of its elected delegates early next week to discuss another strike vote that would put pressure on Chicago Public Schools to back off its plan for a partial return to classrooms next month, a source told the Chicago Sun-Times.
The timeline for a potential vote is unclear, but as teachers unions across the country play significant roles in the resumption of American education, the CTU appears to be the first major teachers union in the nation to move toward a potential walkout over coronavirus concerns.
Any strike authorization would need the approval of three-quarters of the union’s 26,000 rank-and-file members. The meeting next week would mark the first steps of a member-based process toward another walkout. Depending on the resolution put forth at the meeting, a vote could take place that day or could come at a later meeting after the union’s 700 delegates discuss the potential strike with members at their schools.
The CTU has been highly critical of Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS officials’ proposal to put most of the 300,000 students at non-charter schools back in classrooms twice a week this fall.
Though city officials have repeatedly said they haven’t yet made a final decision on in-person learning and would wait to do so until closer to the start of the school year, the union has cited the health concerns during a raging pandemic as reasons why that choice shouldn’t even be considered right now.
CPS spokeswoman Emily Bolton said in a statement Tuesday that “nothing is more important than the health and safety of our students and staff, and Chicago Public Schools won’t open its doors on September 8 if public health officials don’t deem it safe to do so.”
“We continue to gather community feedback and closely monitor the public health data before making any final determinations for what learning will look like this fall,” noting the five community meetings CPS held last week that were attended by thousands of parents
At protests Monday in which the union ramped up its public attacks, CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates, an outspoken and frequent critic of Lightfoot, said it’s too dangerous to send students and staff back to schools with COVID-19 cases on the rise again.
Davis Gates said the mayor was displaying “failed leadership” and answered “no” when asked whether there was anything Lightfoot or CPS could do in the next month to get teachers to agree to go back into schools Sept. 8, the start of the next school year.
Lightfoot has been reluctant to enter another fierce battle with the union that supplied her first political test as mayor last fall during an 11-day strike. When she unveiled CPS’ fall plan last month, Lightfoot said she wasn’t worried about a legal challenge or another strike by the CTU and said she believes any differences would be sorted out between then and the start of school.
The CTU’s national parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, made waves late last month when it passed a resolution to support strikes by local affiliates “as a last resort” if school districts don’t take the necessary health measures to keep teachers and students healthy in schools.
During a news conference Tuesday about the state of the coronavirus in Chicago, Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady was asked whether it was safe for parents to send their kids back to school.
Arwady said it depends on whether the local outbreak “is under control” and whether schools have safeguards in place to control the spread.
“Our numbers are on the way up, so I have some concerns there,” she said. “I can’t say the risk is zero, of course. And again, the more our numbers are going up in Chicago, the more concern I have about this because, as our cases increase, the risk of people having COVID — especially asymptomatic COVID — does go up.”
But she quickly added, “I personally am in favor of having children in school. … Where the child is at school wearing a mask with the social distancing with the appropriate procedures in place, I honestly do not think the risk of spread is significant. I wouldn’t be promoting this if I thought it was.”
In recent days, Lurie Children’s Hospital did a study that showed that the noses and throats of infected children have at least as much of the virus as infected adults, and that children younger than five may host up to 100 times as much of the virus.
Dr. Taylor Heald-Sargent, a Lurie expert in pediatric infectious diseases, was quoted as saying that one takeaway from the study he led is that it cannot be assumed that, “Just because kids aren’t getting sick or very sick that they don’t have the virus.”
On Tuesday, Arwady was asked whether those findings make her think twice about the hybrid return-to-school model proposed by the Chicago Public Schools.
“This one was about level of virus that’s been found. There’s other epidemiological studies that are, instead, looking at the risk ... of young children under 10,” she said.
“We know that young children under ten in households in some very large studies out of Korea are about half as likely to spread,” Arwady said. “Finding virus does not necessarily mean spreading virus. Lots of questions remain in this space would be my answer at the end of the day.
She added: “We’ve done a lot of thinking about how to do this as safely as possible. Those pods. The distance. All of these things are in place to keep the risk of spread down at school. As long as children are broadly able to follow that, they should not be bringing additional risk back to their households.”
August 5, 2020 Nader Issa and Fran Spielman CHICAGO SUN TIMES
https://portside.org/2020-08-05/chicago-teachers-union-call-strike-vote-meeting-next-week
UPDATE: CPS is planning to announce that all classes will be held remotely this fall, sources told the Sun-Times late Tuesday.
Less than a year removed from its longest labor stoppage in three decades, the Chicago Teachers Union is convening an emergency meeting of its elected delegates early next week to discuss another strike vote that would put pressure on Chicago Public Schools to back off its plan for a partial return to classrooms next month, a source told the Chicago Sun-Times.
The timeline for a potential vote is unclear, but as teachers unions across the country play significant roles in the resumption of American education, the CTU appears to be the first major teachers union in the nation to move toward a potential walkout over coronavirus concerns.
Any strike authorization would need the approval of three-quarters of the union’s 26,000 rank-and-file members. The meeting next week would mark the first steps of a member-based process toward another walkout. Depending on the resolution put forth at the meeting, a vote could take place that day or could come at a later meeting after the union’s 700 delegates discuss the potential strike with members at their schools.
The CTU has been highly critical of Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS officials’ proposal to put most of the 300,000 students at non-charter schools back in classrooms twice a week this fall.
Though city officials have repeatedly said they haven’t yet made a final decision on in-person learning and would wait to do so until closer to the start of the school year, the union has cited the health concerns during a raging pandemic as reasons why that choice shouldn’t even be considered right now.
CPS spokeswoman Emily Bolton said in a statement Tuesday that “nothing is more important than the health and safety of our students and staff, and Chicago Public Schools won’t open its doors on September 8 if public health officials don’t deem it safe to do so.”
“We continue to gather community feedback and closely monitor the public health data before making any final determinations for what learning will look like this fall,” noting the five community meetings CPS held last week that were attended by thousands of parents
At protests Monday in which the union ramped up its public attacks, CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates, an outspoken and frequent critic of Lightfoot, said it’s too dangerous to send students and staff back to schools with COVID-19 cases on the rise again.
Davis Gates said the mayor was displaying “failed leadership” and answered “no” when asked whether there was anything Lightfoot or CPS could do in the next month to get teachers to agree to go back into schools Sept. 8, the start of the next school year.
Lightfoot has been reluctant to enter another fierce battle with the union that supplied her first political test as mayor last fall during an 11-day strike. When she unveiled CPS’ fall plan last month, Lightfoot said she wasn’t worried about a legal challenge or another strike by the CTU and said she believes any differences would be sorted out between then and the start of school.
The CTU’s national parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, made waves late last month when it passed a resolution to support strikes by local affiliates “as a last resort” if school districts don’t take the necessary health measures to keep teachers and students healthy in schools.
During a news conference Tuesday about the state of the coronavirus in Chicago, Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady was asked whether it was safe for parents to send their kids back to school.
Arwady said it depends on whether the local outbreak “is under control” and whether schools have safeguards in place to control the spread.
“Our numbers are on the way up, so I have some concerns there,” she said. “I can’t say the risk is zero, of course. And again, the more our numbers are going up in Chicago, the more concern I have about this because, as our cases increase, the risk of people having COVID — especially asymptomatic COVID — does go up.”
But she quickly added, “I personally am in favor of having children in school. … Where the child is at school wearing a mask with the social distancing with the appropriate procedures in place, I honestly do not think the risk of spread is significant. I wouldn’t be promoting this if I thought it was.”
In recent days, Lurie Children’s Hospital did a study that showed that the noses and throats of infected children have at least as much of the virus as infected adults, and that children younger than five may host up to 100 times as much of the virus.
Dr. Taylor Heald-Sargent, a Lurie expert in pediatric infectious diseases, was quoted as saying that one takeaway from the study he led is that it cannot be assumed that, “Just because kids aren’t getting sick or very sick that they don’t have the virus.”
On Tuesday, Arwady was asked whether those findings make her think twice about the hybrid return-to-school model proposed by the Chicago Public Schools.
“This one was about level of virus that’s been found. There’s other epidemiological studies that are, instead, looking at the risk ... of young children under 10,” she said.
“We know that young children under ten in households in some very large studies out of Korea are about half as likely to spread,” Arwady said. “Finding virus does not necessarily mean spreading virus. Lots of questions remain in this space would be my answer at the end of the day.
She added: “We’ve done a lot of thinking about how to do this as safely as possible. Those pods. The distance. All of these things are in place to keep the risk of spread down at school. As long as children are broadly able to follow that, they should not be bringing additional risk back to their households.”
Workers, youth, women and communities in action, in likely and unlikely places - reports from all over
August 5, 2020 PORTSIDE
https://portside.org/2020-08-05/global-left-midweek-august-5-2020
Organize Like Never Before!
Rosa Pavanelli / Progressive International (Athens)
The General Secretary of the global union federation Public Services International calls for united action.
__________
Pandemic Solidarity: Care, Love and Mutual Aid
Colectiva Sembrar, Marina Sitrin, Vanessa Zettler, Ji Young Shin and Boaventura Monjane / Roar (Amsterdam)
A new book offers snapshots of struggles and intimate stories about life during the pandemic from across the globe, reminding us who we really are.
__________
Israel: Anti-Corruption Protests Unite Opposition
Israel Hayom (Tel Aviv)
Throughout the summer, thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets, calling for Netanyahu to resign. Joint Arab List Chairman MK Ayman Odeh said on Twitter that he would attend the protest in Jerusalem.
__________
Hong Kong Movement Going Union
Anita Chan / Made in China Journal (Canberra)
The anti-extradition bill movement has branched off in a new direction, with activists beginning to set up trade unions and transitioning towards a nascent organised movement.
__________
Thailand’s Angry Generation
Yvette Tan / BBC News (London)
Disillusioned by years of military rule, protesters are now demanding amendments to the constitution, a new election, the prime minister’s resignation and an end to the harassment of rights activists.
__________
Webinar: Migrant Farm Workers Organize and Resist
Victoria Fenner / rabble.ca (Toronto)
Speakers include
Alagie Jinkang, Ikenga and University of Palermo (Italy)
Bridget Henderson, UNITE (UK)
Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Coalition of Immokalee Workers (USA)
Carlos Marentes, La Via Campesina (USA)
Vasanthi Venkatesh, Justicia/University of Windsor (Canada)
__________
Venezuela: Between Imperialism and State Repression
Pirates, Covid and Sanctions Marco Consolo / European Left (Brussels)
Women Confront State Violence Francisco Sánchez / NACLA Report (New York)
__________
#ZimbabweanRightsMatter
Rahel Philipose / Indian Express (Noida)
Zimbabwean authorities thwarted a peaceful street protest against economic turmoil and human rights violations by arresting scores of activists, opposition leaders and journalists. The people’s movement has shifted online with a hashtag inspired by the global #BlackLivesMatter campaign.
___________
Germany: Busting the Far Right’s Chops
Michael C. Zeller / openDemocracy (London)
In the many instances where far-right activity attempts to exhibit solemnity, gravity, or strength, a well-aimed joke is a powerful act of resistance.
__________
Legacies
Gisèle Halimi, France France 24 (Paris)
John Weeks, UK Bhabani Shankar Nayak / Countercurrents (Kottayam District, India)
Eusebio Leal Spengler, Cuba Ruaridh Nicoll / The Guardian (London)
The U.S. Health Care System Is Designed To Fail When It’s Needed Most
When the economy goes bad, coverage gets even harder to keep. More than 20 million could become uninsured this year.
August 5, 2020
Jeffrey Young
HUFFPOST
https://portside.org/2020-08-05/us-health-care-system-designed-fail-when-its-needed-most
The American health care system leaves us all vulnerable to massive costs and uneven access, even under the best of circumstances. But when the economy goes south, things get really awful.
The novel coronavirus pandemic and the United States’ feckless response to the outbreak has triggered a historic economic downturn that has cost tens of millions of jobs. Because almost half of the country ― about 160 million workers, spouses and dependents ― get their health coverage through an employer, those lost jobs almost always mean lost health insurance.
Between February and May, an estimated 5.4 million people became uninsured because of job loss, according to the liberal advocacy organization Families USA. The group describes this as the largest loss of job-based health benefits in U.S. history, worse even than during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009.
And job losses have continued to mount since May, meaning the number of those who lost health benefits is likely to be much higher now. Many millions more are at risk as the coronavirus outbreak and its economic toll continue to escalate.
Many workers can extend their employer-based health insurance through COBRA, which allows unemployed people to keep their benefits for up to 36 months. But doing so is hugely expensive, as they take on the full cost of premiums without contributions from their former employers. That’s a heavy lift.
The average annual cost of a job-based family health insurance plan is nearly $20,000, which translates to more than $1,600 a month, according to a survey of employers conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation last year. Businesses cover an average of 70% of those premiums while workers are employed, but that goes away when a person is laid off. In May, House Democrats passed legislation that would subsidize COBRA premiums, but Senate Republicans have resisted the idea.
Newly jobless people can buy insurance policies from health insurance exchanges like HealthCare.gov, but those are also very costly ― hundreds of dollars a month for a single person and upwards of $1,000 for families ― for those who don’t qualify for the most generous subsidies.
Even the least expensive plans typically carry deductibles that can exceed $10,000 a year for a family. An estimated 750,000 people have enrolled in exchange policies because of job loss since the pandemic began.
Medicaid Access Is Limited
Medicaid, which covers 72 million people, provides a safety net for those that the bad economy has hit hardest, but access is limited and varies greatly from state to state, especially for adults. The Affordable Care Act authorized a Medicaid expansion to anyone earning up to 133% of the federal poverty level, which is about $35,000 a year for a family of four. Residents of the states that have expanded Medicaid have access to these benefits when their incomes fall.
But 13 states have refused to adopt it. In those non-expansion states, adults who don’t have children living at home and don’t have disabilities can’t access coverage regardless of how low their incomes are. Parents and adults with disabilities in those states typically are eligible only if they earn a small fraction of poverty wages.
What’s more, the structure of the Medicaid program itself makes it ill-suited to tough economic times. The federal government and the states jointly manage the program, with the federal government covering more than half of the expense.
That’s an imperfect situation when things are good, but it becomes a major problem when the economy is suffering. Unlike the federal government, states are required to balance their budgets. Bad economies and rising unemployment lead to lower tax revenues going to state governments. In turn, this very often leads to cuts in Medicaid benefits and eligibility at times when the program is most needed.
Medicaid enrollment began rising early in the pandemic. Between February and April, the program’s rolls grew by more than 1 million. Like the data on employer-based insurance, these numbers lag and are likely to be significantly higher now. One estimate projects as many as 23 million people could enroll in Medicaid over the course of the pandemic.
The first round of economic stimulus that Congress and President Donald Trump enacted earlier this year included a boost in federal Medicaid funding, as well as a guarantee that states wouldn’t cut back on Medicaid while the money was flowing.
House Democrats passed a bill in May that would have extended the additional Medicaid funding, but the package Senate Republicans are considering for another round of stimulus doesn’t include it. Without that money, states are almost certain to begin scaling back Medicaid by eliminating benefits and restricting eligibility. The federal government has used this means of shoring up state finances during previous economic downturns, including the Great Recession in the late 2000s.
Trump Took Aim At The Safety Net
As has been the case with so many things the past three years, Trump has made matters worse by weakening an already frayed health care safety net.
The Trump administration has taken a series of actions to harm the health insurance exchange marketplaces, which is available to people who lose their jobs even outside of the annual open enrollment period. During the pandemic, the administration refused to reopen the exchanges to all uninsured people, not just the newly jobless, in contrast to the District of Columbia and 11 states that operate their own health insurance exchanges (Idaho’s exchange also didn’t reopen).
Trump also expanded access to junk insurance policies the Affordable Care Act had curbed. These so-called short-term plans now can be purchased for up a year. Unlike real health insurance, people with preexisting conditions can be excluded and the policies offer very meager coverage that leaves patients exposed to extremely high medical costs.
On Medicaid, the administration has attempted two major new policies designed to make benefits hard to get and keep. Courts struck down the first, which would have imposed work requirements on Medicaid recipient. The second would cut Medicaid funding and place new limitations on coverage for adults. During Trump’s presidency, more than 1 million children have been kicked off Medicaid, and the national uninsured rate was rising even before the pandemic walloped the economy.
And if Trump and the Republican Party have their way, the safety net as expanded by the Affordable Care Act will go away, leading to an estimated 20 million more uninsured people. Trump supports a lawsuit, pending at the Supreme Court, that would eliminate the entire law, including its health insurance subsidies, its Medicaid expansion and its guarantee of coverage to people with preexisting conditions.
And despite Trump’s empty claims otherwise, they have no notion of how to replace those things, which will lead to further suffering if the high court rules in their favor.
The Department of Homeland Security: The Ideal Authoritarian Tool
The threat to American governance in an election year is dire. There is an authoritarian president in the White House with no respect for the rule of law and toadying and unconfirmed loyalists at the top of the DHS.
August 5, 2020
August 5, 2020
Melvin Goodman
COUNTERPUNCH
https://portside.org/2020-08-05/department-homeland-security-ideal-authoritarian-tool
In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration made a series of blunders that have created havoc in U.S. governance. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the worst of these decisions, but not far behind was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS has turned out to be the perfect authoritarian tool in the hands of a corrupt administration, and there is ample evidence of the department’s role in degrading public life in America in the past several weeks. The department has become Trump’s tool for targeting “anti-fascists,” the label that he has broadly applied to all protestors.
The DHS is a bureaucratic monstrosity that includes the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and various unrelated departments. It has over 240,000 employees, a $50 billion budget, and a reputation for excessive waste and ineffectiveness. It is the third largest government agency, and its 60,000 law enforcement officers represent half of all federal law enforcement agents in the government. DHS has too many subdivisions, operates in too many disparate fields, and lacks proper congressional oversight. The creation of DHS meant that immigration enforcement and border protection were moved from the Departments of Treasury and Justice, respectively, and were then treated as national security issues. Under Trump, demonstrators, dissidents, and protestors have become national security issues.
It took Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to teach us what a mess had been created at DHS. Several years later, the office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection acknowledged that it “does open mail to U.S. citizens that originate from foreign countries whenever it’s deemed necessary.” In 2012, a Senate Homeland Security report concluded that DHS intelligence was “irrelevant, useless, or inappropriate.” In 2017, a border patrol agent was investigated for obtaining confidential travel records of a Washington journalist and using them to press for her sources.
Events in Portland, Oregon have illuminated the DHS threat to governance and civil rights as the Federal Protective Service (FPS) has operated without any consultation, let alone permission, from state or local authorities. The FPS deployed its unidentified agents in camouflage uniforms without identifying insignia, used so-called “nonlethal” projectiles and tear gas against American citizens, and forced demonstrators into unmarked rental cars to be held in federal buildings without charges. DHS agents were involved in the separation of children from their parents at the southern border, and agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been labeled as “RoboCops” for their aggressive measures against immigrants. A CBP drone monitored the protest activities in Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd.
Over the past week, the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) disseminated reports to various law enforcement agencies that summarized tweets by a reporter for the New York Times and the editor of the blog Lawfare. The journalists had posted leaked DHS documents that revealed shortcomings in the department’s aggressive handling of events in Portland. According to the Washington Post, the DHS also tracked the communications of demonstrators, another violation of the First Amendment. The acting director of DHS, Chad Wolf, immediately acknowledged the threat to the First Amendment, stopped the illegal activities of the office, and removed its director, Brian Murphy, but this was simply an act of damage limitation. Murphy, a former FBI agent, had a reputation for misapplying the authorities of I&A, and ignoring their intelligence assessments. In any event, the overall problems of DHS remain.
The illegal creation of dossiers on journalists is reminiscent of the unconstitutional activities of the intelligence community in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam War. The congressional investigations of the mid-1970s and the excellent reporting of Seymour Hersh exposed the illegal domestic spying operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Security Agency to disrupt the anti-war movement. The FBI’s counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) actively disrupted lawful activities of numerous individuals and organizations, including Martin Luther King Jr. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s designation of the Black Panther Party as the “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” is reminiscent of Trump’s identification of “antifa” as a similar threat. (At least, there was a Black Panther Party; there is no “antifa” party.) The dossiers on political dissidents is reminiscent of DHS’ collection against U.S. journalists.
Just as the FBI’s COINTELPRO and CIA’s Operation Chaos hurt the reputation of these agencies, the actions of DHS on behalf of Donald Trump are drawing criticism from former Republican directors of the agency. The first director of DHS, Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania, stated that it would be a “cold day in hell before I would consent to an uninvited intervention into one of my cities.” Former director Michael Chertoff pointed out that DHS is much too willing to carry out the president’s support for brutal and aggressive force, “especially in cities…governed by liberal Democratic mayors.”
The threat to American governance in an election year is dire. There is an authoritarian president in the White House with no respect for the rule of law; a strong advocate for presidential power in William Barr as Attorney General; toadying and unconfirmed loyalists at the top of the Department of Homeland Security; and a Republican-led Senate that will offer no criticism of the outrageous actions of the president. We know little about Barr’s Operation Legend, which is using agents from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to prevent peaceful demonstrations.
At least, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley expressed regret for being present when federal police officers violently cleared Lafayette Square to enable Trump’s blasphemous display of power at the St. John’s Episcopal Church in June. Chad Wolf, however, has been a willing tool of the White House, parroting the line about “violent antifa anarchists,” and blocking the Supreme Court’s order to restore protections and benefits to dreamers in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Barr and Wolf are enablers of the president’s excesses, and It is long past time for them to acknowledge the misuse of the DoJ and the DHS, respectively, on behalf of Trump’s reelection campaign. It is also time for the Congress to conduct the kind of oversight that exposed the illegal and unconstitutional activities of the intelligence community during the Vietnam War. The city of Portland must not become a petri dish for studying the death of democracy.
https://portside.org/2020-08-05/department-homeland-security-ideal-authoritarian-tool
In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration made a series of blunders that have created havoc in U.S. governance. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the worst of these decisions, but not far behind was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS has turned out to be the perfect authoritarian tool in the hands of a corrupt administration, and there is ample evidence of the department’s role in degrading public life in America in the past several weeks. The department has become Trump’s tool for targeting “anti-fascists,” the label that he has broadly applied to all protestors.
The DHS is a bureaucratic monstrosity that includes the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and various unrelated departments. It has over 240,000 employees, a $50 billion budget, and a reputation for excessive waste and ineffectiveness. It is the third largest government agency, and its 60,000 law enforcement officers represent half of all federal law enforcement agents in the government. DHS has too many subdivisions, operates in too many disparate fields, and lacks proper congressional oversight. The creation of DHS meant that immigration enforcement and border protection were moved from the Departments of Treasury and Justice, respectively, and were then treated as national security issues. Under Trump, demonstrators, dissidents, and protestors have become national security issues.
It took Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to teach us what a mess had been created at DHS. Several years later, the office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection acknowledged that it “does open mail to U.S. citizens that originate from foreign countries whenever it’s deemed necessary.” In 2012, a Senate Homeland Security report concluded that DHS intelligence was “irrelevant, useless, or inappropriate.” In 2017, a border patrol agent was investigated for obtaining confidential travel records of a Washington journalist and using them to press for her sources.
Events in Portland, Oregon have illuminated the DHS threat to governance and civil rights as the Federal Protective Service (FPS) has operated without any consultation, let alone permission, from state or local authorities. The FPS deployed its unidentified agents in camouflage uniforms without identifying insignia, used so-called “nonlethal” projectiles and tear gas against American citizens, and forced demonstrators into unmarked rental cars to be held in federal buildings without charges. DHS agents were involved in the separation of children from their parents at the southern border, and agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been labeled as “RoboCops” for their aggressive measures against immigrants. A CBP drone monitored the protest activities in Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd.
Over the past week, the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) disseminated reports to various law enforcement agencies that summarized tweets by a reporter for the New York Times and the editor of the blog Lawfare. The journalists had posted leaked DHS documents that revealed shortcomings in the department’s aggressive handling of events in Portland. According to the Washington Post, the DHS also tracked the communications of demonstrators, another violation of the First Amendment. The acting director of DHS, Chad Wolf, immediately acknowledged the threat to the First Amendment, stopped the illegal activities of the office, and removed its director, Brian Murphy, but this was simply an act of damage limitation. Murphy, a former FBI agent, had a reputation for misapplying the authorities of I&A, and ignoring their intelligence assessments. In any event, the overall problems of DHS remain.
The illegal creation of dossiers on journalists is reminiscent of the unconstitutional activities of the intelligence community in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam War. The congressional investigations of the mid-1970s and the excellent reporting of Seymour Hersh exposed the illegal domestic spying operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Security Agency to disrupt the anti-war movement. The FBI’s counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) actively disrupted lawful activities of numerous individuals and organizations, including Martin Luther King Jr. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s designation of the Black Panther Party as the “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” is reminiscent of Trump’s identification of “antifa” as a similar threat. (At least, there was a Black Panther Party; there is no “antifa” party.) The dossiers on political dissidents is reminiscent of DHS’ collection against U.S. journalists.
Just as the FBI’s COINTELPRO and CIA’s Operation Chaos hurt the reputation of these agencies, the actions of DHS on behalf of Donald Trump are drawing criticism from former Republican directors of the agency. The first director of DHS, Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania, stated that it would be a “cold day in hell before I would consent to an uninvited intervention into one of my cities.” Former director Michael Chertoff pointed out that DHS is much too willing to carry out the president’s support for brutal and aggressive force, “especially in cities…governed by liberal Democratic mayors.”
The threat to American governance in an election year is dire. There is an authoritarian president in the White House with no respect for the rule of law; a strong advocate for presidential power in William Barr as Attorney General; toadying and unconfirmed loyalists at the top of the Department of Homeland Security; and a Republican-led Senate that will offer no criticism of the outrageous actions of the president. We know little about Barr’s Operation Legend, which is using agents from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to prevent peaceful demonstrations.
At least, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley expressed regret for being present when federal police officers violently cleared Lafayette Square to enable Trump’s blasphemous display of power at the St. John’s Episcopal Church in June. Chad Wolf, however, has been a willing tool of the White House, parroting the line about “violent antifa anarchists,” and blocking the Supreme Court’s order to restore protections and benefits to dreamers in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Barr and Wolf are enablers of the president’s excesses, and It is long past time for them to acknowledge the misuse of the DoJ and the DHS, respectively, on behalf of Trump’s reelection campaign. It is also time for the Congress to conduct the kind of oversight that exposed the illegal and unconstitutional activities of the intelligence community during the Vietnam War. The city of Portland must not become a petri dish for studying the death of democracy.
Trump’s Desperate, Last-Ditch Effort to Hike Tensions with Iran
This might be the final stretch for his failed policy of maximum pressure.
August 5, 2020
August 5, 2020
Reese Erlich
PORTSIDE
https://portside.org/2020-08-05/trumps-desperate-last-ditch-effort-hike-tensions-iran
During the past month, Iran has suffered a half-dozen explosions and fires at military and civilian sites. A bomb blew up near the Parchin missile base outside Tehran, Iran’s capital. Fires broke out at an electric power station and aboard seven ships in a southern port city.
Iranian government authorities say some of the incidents were accidents. But the most serious, it appears, was an act of sabotage.
On July 2, a blast ripped through the main assembly hall at Natanz, a facility that produces centrifuge parts essential for enriching uranium for Iran’s nuclear power program.
No one officially took credit for the sabotage, but The New York Times reported that a “Middle East intelligence” source admitted that Israel was behind the bombing. An Israeli newspaper later identified the source as Yossi Cohen, head of the Mossad intelligence agency.
Analysts say such a brazen attack, which constitutes an act of war, would need the approval of officials in Washington, D.C.
“If the US did not participate in the attack directly, at the very least it gave Israel its consent,” Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California and Iran expert, says in an interview.
Washington and Tel Aviv think such attacks, along with the unilateral US sanctions, are a low-risk means of pushing back on Iran. They are an escalation of Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign—which has notably failed and will likely be abandoned after the US presidential election.
“There’s a sense that there’s a bit of desperation right now” in both capitals, says Trita Parsi, executive vice president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute, an anti-interventionist think tank in Washington, D.C. He likens the attempts to those of medieval archers fighting a losing battle: “Empty your quiver . . . shoot all your arrows.”
October surprise?
Some analysts speculate that the Trump Administration is seeking to provoke Iran into military retaliation. Trump could then launch a war, rally support at home, and win the election. It’s a classic “October Surprise” or even a “Wag the Dog” scenario.
But Foad Izadi does not agree with that analysis.
“Iran is not Iraq,” Izadi, an assistant professor of American studies at the University of Tehran, tells me by phone from Tehran. “Any overt war runs the danger of serious US casualties. He should know, after being President for almost four years, attacking Iran has consequences.”
Izadi does not think that “starting a new war with Iran a few months before the election” is in Trump’s interest. “Even a limited war is not useful for him.”
But that doesn’t preclude other forms of US aggression.
On July 23, a US fighter jet flew close to an Iranian civilian airliner on a routine flight from Tehran, as it crossed Syria on its way to Beirut, Lebanon. The US military claimed to be conducting a “visual inspection” of the plane in order to “ensure the safety of coalition personnel at At Tanf garrison,” says Captain Bill Urban, spokesperson for US Central Command.
Urban claimed the F-15 fighter jet kept 1,000 yards away from the airliner. But a video shot by passengers shows a jet flying much closer. The proximity of the F-15 forced the Iranian pilot to drop 14,000 feet in four minutes, injuring several passengers.
According to Izadi, the US military has no business “inspecting” a civilian airliner flying in a normal civilian air corridor over Syria. In fact, he says, the United States “has no right to be in Syria at all.”
The Trump Administration keeps several hundred troops in Syria in defiance of the Syrian government and without authorization from the United Nations or any other international body.
Iranians are particularly sensitive about US interactions with civilian planes. In 1988, the US Navy shot down an Iranian airliner, killing all 290 passengers and crew. After initially providing false information about where and how fast the plane was flying, Washington admitted to shooting down the airliner and paid compensation to the victims’ families.
“These things unify the Iranian people,” Izadi says. “Whether they like the government or not, Iranians don’t want to be on a plane that will be shot down.”
Iranian response
To date, the Iranian government has not overtly responded to the US provocations. It seems more likely that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is waiting for the US election on November 3, which could result in the election of Joe Biden.
“Iranians are holding their fire, playing the long game,” Parsi says. “They fear it may be a trap to give Trump an excuse to go farther.”
Iran’s conservative hardliners, meanwhile, denounce Rouhani as vacillating in the face of a US and Israeli onslaught. But Parsi says these hardliners “are playing a political game. They understand the logic of not doing anything for now, but that doesn’t prevent them from calling Rouhani weak.”
Sahimi, a close observer of Iranian politics, agrees that “there is a lot of ‘hot’ rhetoric against President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif by the hardliners. But I do not expect any practical action in the near future.”
Depending on what policy the United States adopts after the elections, Sahimi expects “the response to come at a later time and in a manner and at locations where neither Israel nor the US would expect.”
Biden has pledged, if elected, to reverse course on Iran. Izadi believes a Biden Administration would change the Trump policy of maximum pressure. “Whether doing it through rejoining the nuclear agreement or coming up with some other policies, we have to wait and see,” he says.
Parsi, who is familiar with the views of Biden’s Iran advisors, says the new administration would likely call for “compliance for compliance.”
“Biden could lift sanctions by executive order without rejoining the nuclear accord,” he says. “That’s a necessary step, but not sufficient.” The new administration will also have to work with Congress and lay the groundwork for restoring the nuclear accord.
Despite the current crisis, Izadi says, “I’m optimistic. Trump’s policies are not working. The US will have to change, and the change will be for the best.”
https://portside.org/2020-08-05/trumps-desperate-last-ditch-effort-hike-tensions-iran
During the past month, Iran has suffered a half-dozen explosions and fires at military and civilian sites. A bomb blew up near the Parchin missile base outside Tehran, Iran’s capital. Fires broke out at an electric power station and aboard seven ships in a southern port city.
Iranian government authorities say some of the incidents were accidents. But the most serious, it appears, was an act of sabotage.
On July 2, a blast ripped through the main assembly hall at Natanz, a facility that produces centrifuge parts essential for enriching uranium for Iran’s nuclear power program.
No one officially took credit for the sabotage, but The New York Times reported that a “Middle East intelligence” source admitted that Israel was behind the bombing. An Israeli newspaper later identified the source as Yossi Cohen, head of the Mossad intelligence agency.
Analysts say such a brazen attack, which constitutes an act of war, would need the approval of officials in Washington, D.C.
“If the US did not participate in the attack directly, at the very least it gave Israel its consent,” Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California and Iran expert, says in an interview.
Washington and Tel Aviv think such attacks, along with the unilateral US sanctions, are a low-risk means of pushing back on Iran. They are an escalation of Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign—which has notably failed and will likely be abandoned after the US presidential election.
“There’s a sense that there’s a bit of desperation right now” in both capitals, says Trita Parsi, executive vice president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute, an anti-interventionist think tank in Washington, D.C. He likens the attempts to those of medieval archers fighting a losing battle: “Empty your quiver . . . shoot all your arrows.”
October surprise?
Some analysts speculate that the Trump Administration is seeking to provoke Iran into military retaliation. Trump could then launch a war, rally support at home, and win the election. It’s a classic “October Surprise” or even a “Wag the Dog” scenario.
But Foad Izadi does not agree with that analysis.
“Iran is not Iraq,” Izadi, an assistant professor of American studies at the University of Tehran, tells me by phone from Tehran. “Any overt war runs the danger of serious US casualties. He should know, after being President for almost four years, attacking Iran has consequences.”
Izadi does not think that “starting a new war with Iran a few months before the election” is in Trump’s interest. “Even a limited war is not useful for him.”
But that doesn’t preclude other forms of US aggression.
On July 23, a US fighter jet flew close to an Iranian civilian airliner on a routine flight from Tehran, as it crossed Syria on its way to Beirut, Lebanon. The US military claimed to be conducting a “visual inspection” of the plane in order to “ensure the safety of coalition personnel at At Tanf garrison,” says Captain Bill Urban, spokesperson for US Central Command.
Urban claimed the F-15 fighter jet kept 1,000 yards away from the airliner. But a video shot by passengers shows a jet flying much closer. The proximity of the F-15 forced the Iranian pilot to drop 14,000 feet in four minutes, injuring several passengers.
According to Izadi, the US military has no business “inspecting” a civilian airliner flying in a normal civilian air corridor over Syria. In fact, he says, the United States “has no right to be in Syria at all.”
The Trump Administration keeps several hundred troops in Syria in defiance of the Syrian government and without authorization from the United Nations or any other international body.
Iranians are particularly sensitive about US interactions with civilian planes. In 1988, the US Navy shot down an Iranian airliner, killing all 290 passengers and crew. After initially providing false information about where and how fast the plane was flying, Washington admitted to shooting down the airliner and paid compensation to the victims’ families.
“These things unify the Iranian people,” Izadi says. “Whether they like the government or not, Iranians don’t want to be on a plane that will be shot down.”
Iranian response
To date, the Iranian government has not overtly responded to the US provocations. It seems more likely that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is waiting for the US election on November 3, which could result in the election of Joe Biden.
“Iranians are holding their fire, playing the long game,” Parsi says. “They fear it may be a trap to give Trump an excuse to go farther.”
Iran’s conservative hardliners, meanwhile, denounce Rouhani as vacillating in the face of a US and Israeli onslaught. But Parsi says these hardliners “are playing a political game. They understand the logic of not doing anything for now, but that doesn’t prevent them from calling Rouhani weak.”
Sahimi, a close observer of Iranian politics, agrees that “there is a lot of ‘hot’ rhetoric against President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif by the hardliners. But I do not expect any practical action in the near future.”
Depending on what policy the United States adopts after the elections, Sahimi expects “the response to come at a later time and in a manner and at locations where neither Israel nor the US would expect.”
Biden has pledged, if elected, to reverse course on Iran. Izadi believes a Biden Administration would change the Trump policy of maximum pressure. “Whether doing it through rejoining the nuclear agreement or coming up with some other policies, we have to wait and see,” he says.
Parsi, who is familiar with the views of Biden’s Iran advisors, says the new administration would likely call for “compliance for compliance.”
“Biden could lift sanctions by executive order without rejoining the nuclear accord,” he says. “That’s a necessary step, but not sufficient.” The new administration will also have to work with Congress and lay the groundwork for restoring the nuclear accord.
Despite the current crisis, Izadi says, “I’m optimistic. Trump’s policies are not working. The US will have to change, and the change will be for the best.”
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