Gen. Alexander Declares War on the First Amendment

Dear Mr. President,
Yesterday I watched a 30 minute interview with Gen. Keith Alexander, Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, NSA Director, and Chief of Central Security Service. He was interviewed by Jessica Tozer for the “Armed With Science” blog on the DoD website. (http://science.dodlive.mil/2013/10/24/i-spy-no-lie/) The purpose of the interview, Tozer says is to get the facts and find out if the NSA “is really capable of the… power madness that they’re accused of wielding? Or are internet rumors and misinformation painting our best cyber security defenders as bad guys?” I have to admit, since it was a DoD website, I was pretty sure I knew what her conclusions would be and they weren’t going to be the same as mine. But I suffered through 20 minutes of Alexander’s blather about missions and national security and protecting the American people and all the other saccharine bullshit and spin he’s been putting on it since 2005. Of course, he never mentioned any of the illegal stuff: the tapping of Merkel’s and Hollande’s and Rousseff’s phones or the bugging and hacking of the EU, the UN, the G-20, the embassies around the world. But in the 21st minute of the interview, he said something that shocked me and convinced me even more that this is a very dangerous man. In discussing the Snowden leaks, he asserted that newspapers and the media dispensing this information “is wrong… and we have to come up with a way of stopping it. I don’t know how to do that. That’s more [for] the courts and the policy makers, but from my perspective, that’s wrong.” He’s already done away with the 4th Amendment—the right to privacy is history—and now he’s declaring war on the 1st Amendment as well. Put a different uniform on this guy and he could be Goebbels or Goering or any of history’s monsters. This is a man who fashioned his command center an exact replica of the Starship Enterprise control room. This is a man who has done more damage to America’s credibility and trust than anyone in history. This is a man who has lied to Congress, who has misled both legislators and the American public, has shown incredibly bad judgment, has made our country less safe, has squandered hundreds of billions of dollars needed for public services and the good of the nation, has defied and violated the Constitution, and will continue to do so. Sack him! Immediately! You want to restore trust in America? Bring Edward Snowden home and put him in charge of the NSA. Better yet, do away with it completely.

"Get It All" Blowback

Dear Mr. President,

Last week it was Hollande calling to complain, yesterday Merkel, before that, Mexico’s Calderón, last month, Brazil’s Rousseff and before her, the EU, the UN… the list keeps growing, According to today’s Guardian, you can expect a lot more angry phone calls (“NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders after US official handed over contacts”). The article says you assured Merkel that you were not monitoring her calls now and wouldn’t in the future, the same assurances you gave Hollande, Rousseff and all the others. The surveillance program is being reviewed, you said, rebalanced. But the Guardian article shows that what the NSA calls “customers”—the State Department, Pentagon, etc.—were encouraged to hand over their rolodex files of high level foreign leaders’ phone numbers so they could be monitored. Many officials did without compunction, and soon as the NSA got new numbers they were “tasked,” a euphemism and obfuscation meaning those phones were tapped. In the document revealing all this (thank you, Mr. Snowden!), the NSA also admits that the numbers produced little reportable intelligence. But what it really shows is that 1) everybody is a suspected terrorist and, 2) the NSA surveillance programs are not about uncovering terrorist plots but about expanding the database and the universe of surveillance. The means to a goal has become the goal itself. To date the NSA has not shown a single instance of a plot foiled by their programs. They may have contributed information after the plot was discovered but they have never been more than a secondary source. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been siphoned from our own needs to build a surveillance boondoggle with zero value—no, with negative value, for it destroys trust and credibility among friends and allies around the world. And yet, you continue to defend and protect them as “an essential part of national security.” That’s bullshit and you know it, Mr. President. The NSA is a monster out of control, a danger to democracy, freedom and the security of everyone. I’m glad you’re getting angry phone calls. It seems the only way to stop this irresponsible and dangerous Nazi/Stasi surveillance state is through outside pressure since our own citizenry is too complacent, too comatose, too disengaged to rise up in protest. Quit denouncing and pursuing Edward Snowden. He is not the cause of the problem. The villains are Clapper, Alexander and all those who march to their mad fantasy of Get It All!

U.S. Foreign Policy: The Angels of Death

Dear Mr. President,
Last week $1.6 billion in aid was released to Pakistan. Yesterday the NYT reported that Pakistan is China’s biggest customer for their growing arms trade, spending $612 billion in 2012. (China’s Arms Industry Makes Global Inroads, p. A1) Excuse me? We give them $1.6 billion and half goes to China for weapons? My tax dollars subsidize Chinese arms merchants? I protest! I don’t want my tax dollars spent on any weapons—U.S. or Chinese. It was timed for tomorrow’s visit by Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Shari, a critic of drone strikes although that too may be political. Last week a UN report stated that at least 400 civilians were killed in drone attacks in Pakistan since 2008 and today 2 more reports were released, one by Amnesty International focusing on Pakistan, the other on Yemen by Human Rights Watch. Both document the toll on civilians, the disruption on regions where drones patrol and kill, and the myth of “surgical,” “precise” and “contained.” The Yemen report documents 6 attacks that killed 82 people, at least 57 of them unarmed civilians; 2 attacks killed innocent people indiscriminately. The report on Pakistan names several victims who were unarmed and “posed no threat to life.” One, Mamana Bibi, was 68. She was outside picking okra when she was targeted and killed. Her 8-year-old granddaughter, wounded in the attack, reported seeing 2 missiles in the initial strike. Minutes later when Bibi’s 18-year-old grandson ran from the house to help his grandmother, more missiles were launched—what the CIA calls double-tapping, what the UN calls a war crime. Today’s NYT (Civilian Deaths Cited in Report on Drone Strikes, p. A1) examines the effects of drone strikes on one town in Pakistan, Miram Shah. “The drones are like the angels of death,” said Nazeer Gul, a shopkeeper…“Only they know when and where they will strike.” The town has endured at least 13 drone attacks since 2008—10 of them in its densely populated center—and 25 more in surrounding areas. “It has become a fearful and paranoid town…buzzing drones hover day and night, scanning the alleys and markets with roving high-resolution cameras.” Sleeping pills, anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressant sales are high, women affected the most. What does it take for you to see the injustice and inhumanity of your targeted assassinations and covert wars? Or are you beyond that? Beyond conscience, morality and the ability to distinguish good from evil. Some Nobel Peace prize winner you are.

Barack Obama: The Smartest Guy in the Room?

Dear Mr. President,
Your week’s not starting out so hot what with the online computer system snafus plaguing Obamacare. By some estimates, up to 5 million lines of code might have to be rewritten. (NYT, Oct. 21, “Specialists See Weeks of Work On Health Site” p.A1). Fifty-five different contractors worked on the system—55!. That alone guaranteed failure, but the myth of outsourcing trumps history, experience and common sense. The article goes on to say that the lead contractor, CGI Group, is a Canadian company (buy American!) and that the system went live before it was completely tested. In the computer biz, that’s called “going guts” and the saying is, “those who go guts become road kill.” What the Republican nut cases failed to do—undermine and roll, back Obamacare—is being done by incompetence and technical bungling. Among this week’s woes, your French poodle Hollande, called today to complain about the latest revelations in Le Monde of NSA spying on French citizens, businesses and government officials. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/21/us-french-surveillance-legitimate-questions/print) The usual response from The White House: “we’re reviewing… weighing the balance between security and privacy…” What we heard in June, July, August… with each new revelation. What does it take to get you to see NSA is out of control and dangerous? And then there’s Afghanistan, your Vietnam. Monsif Khan, a U.S.-trained Afghan Special Forces commander, loaded a Humvee with guns, ammo and high-tech gear and defected to the Taliban. (http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013/10/afghan-army-commander-defects-rival-side-20131021103222455867.html) None of the news from Afghanistan is good. Even the NYT editors call it a lost cause. Today’s editorial, “An Exit Strategy From Afghanistan,” points out that over the past 12 years, Karzai has done little to benefit anyone other than himself and his cronies, that the government is dysfunctional and corrupt, that the Taliban will likely take control of most of the country as soon as we leave and that without our $4-6 billion a year to fund the Afghan Army and police, they will cease to exist. You were supposed to be the smartest guy in the room—you said that yourself in the early days—but your brilliance escapes me. Cunning yes, slick, duplicitous, but I see only one bad decision after another, betrayal after betrayal. You have learned nothing. I could go on but as my mother used to say, there’s no sense in beating a dead horse.

Snowden Speaks, Obama Should Listen

Dear Mr. President,

“The secret continuance of these [NSA surveillance] programs represents a far greater danger than their disclosures.” Edward Snowden quoted in today’s NYT (“Snowden Says He Took No Secret Files to Russia” p. A1). And right there’s the nub of the whole scandal. He’s got it right and all your intelligence nabobs who express “grave concern” got it all wrong. Democracy cannot exist in an all-encompassing surveillance state with secret laws and secret courts, for that leads to corruption, abuse and tyranny. You’ve done a full court press to grab Snowden and put him away where he cannot be heard, but this 30-year old “hacker” as you called him, managed to elude all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Edward Snowden is not only smart but he has more ethics, more morality and more American values than all those king’s horses and all those king’s men combined. He said in the interview with James Risen (the journalist who broke the initial story on warrantless wiretapping and who your boy Holder is threatening to throw in jail if he doesn’t reveal his sources) that he carried none of the secret files with him from Hong Kong and that the NSA knew it: “NSA has not offered a single example of damage from the leaks.” He also points out another obvious fact—that whistleblowers can’t possibly work through the internal system because “You have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it.” Well, duh! He explains how he was told to drop it when he reported a security gap in the CIA’s personnel system and then punished for persisting and how he witnessed others being punished for “rocking the boat” as well. “If the highest officials in government can break the law without fearing punishment or even any repercussions at all,” he said, “secret powers become tremendously dangerous.” Why is truth and transparency so dangerous? Because the perceived power and fiefdom of petty and not-so-petty bureaucrats in our ever expanding intelligence community is lost. But is that worth the loss of freedom and democracy? Not to me and not to many of us outside the bubble, it isn’t. Are you so wedded to the business-as-usual warmongers that you cannot see (or care about) the obvious? Can you not see the traitors in our midst? Not Edward Snowden but the Clappers and Alexanders and Feinsteins and Rogers who willfully lie or look away and ignore the real danger. Bring Snowden home and award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. There is no one more deserving.

Malala Yousafzai and Abu Anas al-Liby Go Off-Script

Dear Mr. President,
Maybe the capture of Abu Anas al-Liby wasn’t such a great coup after all. And maybe your audience with Malala Yousafzai wasn’t such a hot idea, either. Your intelligence people claimed al-Liby was a wealth of information on Al Qaeda past and present but in a NYC courtroom yesterday, his court-appointed lawyer said al-Liby “was mentioned only briefly in a 150 page indictment relating to conduct in 1993 and 1994… [and] there were no allegations in the charges that he had any connection to Al Qaeda after 1994.… Prosecutors declined to comment.” (today’s NYT, “A Terrorist Suspect Caught in Libya Pleads Not Guilty” p. A22) It’s so much easier to stick “suspected” insurgents in Guantanamo where they have no voice or access to justice; better yet, drone them and make them disappear. And speaking of drones, that great photo op with Malala on Friday turned out to be a 16-year-old schoolgirl giving you, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, an earful about your drone program. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/10/11/malala-yousafzai-meets-with-the-obamas-in-the-oval-office/) “I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees,” Yousafzai said in a statement published by the Associated Press. “I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact.” Whoops! That wasn’t in the script. Not only does she defy the Taliban, she criticizes your signature piece of foreign policy! It made me think of other courageous heroes; not the action heroes like Capt. Will Swenson (I’m glad you mentioned the kiss in yesterday’s ceremony), but people like Ellsberg, Snowden, Assange, Manning and all the whistleblowers who would dare reveal the truth, who would dare challenge the authority they know will hound them, persecute them, throw them in prison, destroy their lives; the people who risk everything for democracy and justice, for us. In a way, so were the Guantanamo prisoners who went on a hunger strike in a desperate effort to inform the world of injustice being done them. Maybe al-Liby too, is in that lot; he stopped eating and drinking on board the USS San Antonio. It was only then that he was taken to a medical facility on land where he fell under court jurisdiction. Once again, not in the script.

What It Takes To Start A War

Dear Mr. President,

By custom there is no statute of limitations on war crimes or crimes against humanity. This was codified in the Rome Statute (2002) and the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity (1968). We never ratified the former or signed the latter, but we’ve used them to accuse others. Yesterday’s NYT (“To Ousted Boss, Arms Watchdog Was Seen as an Obstacle in Iraq” p. A4) reveals behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Bush administration in 2002 to oust José Bustani, then head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the agency just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One day in early 2002 John Bolton, then an undersecretary of state, told Bustani he had 24 hours to resign or “face the consequences.” Washington wanted Bustani out because his inspectors—and everyone else—knew that Iraq had no WMDs; that they had been destroyed after the Gulf War. But WMDs was the justification for invading Iraq and if the public learned there were none, the invasion of Iraq would be revealed for what it was, a naked act of aggression for control of Middle East oil fields. Bustani refused to resign so Washington accused him of incompetence and tried—but failed—to get a vote of no confidence from the agency’s executive committee. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had praised Bustani in 2001, told him, “I have people in the administration who don’t want Bustani to stay, and my role is to inform you of this.” The article specifically mentions Bolton and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “wanting the head of Bustani.” In the end, they got rid of him by pressuring Japan, Great Britain and other countries to threaten to cut off funding for the agency if Bustani stayed. The cabal accounted for half the agency’s budget and it would have collapsed if that happened, so Bustani left, the myth of Iraq’s WMDs continued, and the invasion of Iraq resulted in an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths. The country was left in ruins and is still wracked by violence, worse off than under Saddam Hussein. The actions of Bolton, Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney and others who consciously lied to the American people and the world, who promoted a senseless and unjust war that still rages a decade later is a war crime and a crime against humanity, Mr. President. And by your refusal to “look backward,” to hold anyone accountable for the atrocities and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, you are complicit.