---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 9:41 AM Subject: re: Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
A mercenary security force for our embassies and their staff impedes our diplomatic effort and makes our diplomats less secure. While we mourn the death of ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya, we must acknowledge that he was exactly the sort of collateral damage we should expect when revolutionaries wage war against assassins and thugs claiming diplomatic immunity in our State Department missions.
The American public still doesn't know how much we paid to get Raymond Davis out of Pakistan after he murdered two locals. But the death of ambassador Stevens must be tallied as part of that price.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 8:37 AM Subject: re: Redrawn Lines Seen as No Cure in Iraq Conflict To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Iraq was invented in 1916 by sir Mark Sykes and Francois-George Picot; no actual Iraqis were involved. Perhaps because there was a war raging at the time, no effort was spent matching the borders to ethnic or cultural divisions. Two years later when Yugoslavia was carved from the defunct AustroHungarian empire the victors were a little more sophisticated. Note the absence of geometrically straight lines there. In each case, ethnic tensions could be suppressed for decades by a repressive regime. In neither case did this forge a national identity.
After WWII, a new wave of nation drawing gave us new states from Algeria to Zaire. Not all have proven to be politically or ethnically coherent. But this wave came with the enunciation of a guiding principle. The U.N. Charter celebrates the right of Peoples to self-determination. No boundary drawn on paper will solve the Sunni-Shiite rift that goes back to the death of the Prophet. But it's long, long overdue that we acknowledge that the Kurds deserve a state no less than any other People.
I search in vain through the Barron memo for a distinction that permits on the one hand the killing of the al-Awlakisbut, on the other hand, protects mr. Obama's political rivals, or nosy journalists, or me from a similar death. It is not there. Perhaps, characteristically, it is a secret, lost in the redaction.
But as I sit here, the precedent seems clear. This administration claims the power to kill anyone on secret (not to say fictive) evidence, without due process of law. That has no place in the rule of law, and should have none in the United States.
The Obama administration on Monday reluctantly released its justification for killing an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, whom it considered a terrorist, in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. But the rationale provides little confidence that the lethal action was taken with real care.
Under orders from a federal appeals court, the Justice Department made public a 2010 memo explaining why the drone strike was legal. Considering how long the administration fought the release, which was sought by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union, one might have expected a thoughtful memo that carefully weighed the pros and cons and discussed how such a strike accords with international and Constitutional law.
Instead, the memo turns out to be a slapdash pastiche of legal theories — some based on obscure interpretations of British and Israeli law — that was clearly tailored to the desired result. Perhaps the administration held out so long to avoid exposing the thin foundation on which it based such a momentous decision.
The main theory that the government says allows it to kill American citizens, if they pose a threat, is the “public authorities justification,” a legal concept that permits governments to take actions in emergency situations that would otherwise break the law. It’s why fire trucks can break the speed limit and police officers can fire at a threatening gunman. But it’s a dangerous concept if expanded because it could be used to justify all kinds of government misdeeds, especially since Congress has never explicitly authorized an exception for official killing in this kind of circumstance, as the memo acknowledges.
The sheer power of drone strikes, several of which have killed many innocent bystanders, is in no way comparable to the kind of police shootings that the memo cites as precedent. (And, in most cities, police shootings are carefully investigated afterward, and officers face punishment if they exceed their authority. Has that ever happened with an errant drone strike?)
There’s no explanation given in the memo for how the United States knew Mr. Awlaki was planningimminent” mayhem, as the memo claims. It’s possible that this information was contained in the dozen or so pages that were redacted from the 41-page memo, which was written by David Barron, then an assistant attorney general who was recently appointed to a federal appellate court. The memo says only that Mr. Awlaki had joined Al Qaeda and was planning attacks on Americans, but that the government did not know when these attacks would occur.
Mr. Awlaki’s due-process rights are dealt with summarily. The “realities of combat” meant that no serious due process was possible, the memo said, citing the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that allows antiterror measures anywhere. And the memo never questioned whether the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, which operate the drone programs, would properly follow international law. “We understand,” Mr. Barron wrote, that the two agencies “would conduct this operation in a manner that accords with the rules of international humanitarian law governing this armed conflict.”
Blithely accepting such assurances at face value is why these kinds of killings are so troubling, and why we have repeatedly urged that an outside party — such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — provide an independent review when a citizen is targeted. How did the Justice Department know that capturing Mr. Awlaki was not feasible, or that the full force of a drone strike was necessary? This memo should never have taken so long to be released, and more documents must be made public. The public is still in the dark on too many vital questions.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 7:17 PM Subject: re: Obama Sending Advisers to Iraq To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
The moment we sent "military advisers" into a warzone, we much contemplate the possibility that one or more of them will be captured by hostile forces. We then have to choose either to write them off as dead, or to plead for their release from a position of weakness or to commit troops to getting them back.
The first two options would devastate president Obama's credibility with his own armed forces. That means that sending "military advisers" is tantamount to sending in the troops that we'll need to rescue them.
This is no longer about winding down president Bush's stupid war. This is your stupid war, mr. President. We are not behind you.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 8:59 AM Subject: re: U.S. Asserts Self-Defense in Benghazi Suspect Case To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Had Ambassador Chris Stevens been killed in our consulate in Benghazi as Charlie Savage alleges, we would have to explain a 45-year cover-up. We haven't had a consulate in Benghazi since 1967.
The events of 2012 are obscure enough without this paper printing what is tangibly false.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 1:20 PM Subject: re: The Conundrum of a Unified Iraq and a Unified Syria To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
As his neo-con
fever subsides, Tom Friedman acknowledges that "the only way [Syria and
Iraq] can remain united is if an international force comes
in, evicts the dictators, uproots the extremists and builds consensual
politics from the ground up — a generational project for which there are
no volunteers. "
We have real data from such experiments.
The U.S. built our own consensual politics from the ground up. By 1865,
when we really had it running, it had taken us 89 years, and the deaths
of 620,000 Americans ( 2% of our whole population). More recently, we
also installed a national government in Japan. That project cost us
106,000 American deaths, and we can't know the whole cost yet because
our army of occupation is still there.
So let's acknowledge that Rumsfeld and Cheney and Feith and Wolfowitz
were wrong. No one--in either Syria or Iraq--is going to welcome us
with flowers as liberators. Before we go in, we need to ask whether we
have the right to commit our grandchildren to serving in the occupation
there.
Barry Haskell Levine
Anyone who has been paying attention knows by now that Americans pay more for healthcare than anyone has done since the invention of money, yet we get substandard outcomes for it. In no way does it follow that "[t]he Affordable Care Act, if left to accomplish its goals by Congressional Republicans, is the best way to alleviate the cost and quality issues for most Americans." None of the countries whose systems out-perform ours implement anything like theACA. The ACA is a monstrosity forced on us to keep the Insurance Companies in the game. But every dollar they report as profit and every dollar they report as expense and every dollar they spend lobbying, and every dollar a doctor spends on their paperwork is a dollar that's not delivering healthcare.
ACA has brought us closer to universal coverage, which is a necessary step. But it does not address real reform of Americanhealthcare, which still threatens in time to devour our entire economy.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 11:45 AM Subject: re: The True Cost of Hidden Money To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Emmanuel Kant observed that inter-personal violence declines when
citizens cede what Max Weber termed a "monopoly on violence" to the
State. He extrapolated that the world would know peace when States
likewise join together in a "League of Nations" each renouncing their
own recourse to violence.
Until we achieve Kant's vision, the "race to the bottom" will
take many forms. One form is war. Another is the tax-haven scam, that
steals billions in tax revenue from taxpayers world-wide.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 11:58 AM Subject: re: Iraq in Peril To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
The "Sunk-cost Fallacy" kept U.S. troops fighting, bleeding and dying in Vietnam for years beyond reason. In the event, our puppet government there fell and the sky did not follow. The U.S. has no vested interest in Iraq . Iraq was an artificial construct carved from the defeated Ottoman empire just as Yugoslavia was hacked from the Austro-Hungarian corpse. Either could be held together for a while by a repressive government but neither had any ethnic, cultural or political coherence.
The U.S. does, however, have an interest in the region. The Kurds have waited since the foundation of the United Nations for the self-determination that is their Right. If we asked nicely, we could have an airbase forever in free Kurdistan.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 6:19 AM Subject: re: U.S. Scrambles to Help Iraq Fight Off Militants as Baghdad Is Threatened To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
In the end, it's too easy. Now that the NSA has shown itself incompetent at its core mission of military intelligence, it should be discarded, root and branch. Let our military do its own intelligence as it did before. We'll all be more secure from threats foreign and domestic.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 9:01 AM Subject: re: Missile Strike by C.I.A. Drone Kills at Least 4, Pakistan Reports To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
To characterize the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as "a Taliban-allied jihadi group" is like characterizing the United States as a "Soviet ally". Yes, we shipped billions of dollars worth of arms and munitions to keep the Red Army in the fight against our common enemy in Europe. But the Uzbek separatists have no more interest in the Taliban's dream of a Pashtunistan than FDR had in building up the Soviet empire.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 1:30 PM Subject: re: Sunni Militants Drive Iraqi Army From Big City To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Seven years ago, when the U.S. embraced general Petraeus' strategy of empowering and arming sectarian militias rather than building national Iraqi institution, we ensured and fueled the civil war that has been churning since. That left--broadly--three options: 1-Iraq as a perennial basket case, forever dependent on the U.S. with L. Paul Bremer as satrap
2-partition, in which the Kurds at least get the self-determination of peoples that we've promised since we signed the UN charter
3-Iraq as a festering failed state and incubator of Terrorists who threaten the world.
The Iraqi people rightly rejected the first option and the third is intolerable. So lets give serious thought to the second. Iraq's borders have never made ethnic, cultural or political sense. They were drawn in haste as we dismantled the Ottoman empire. The Kurds deserve self-determination no less than do e.g. the Jews.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 9:00 PM Subject: re: Sunni Militants Drive Iraqi Army From Big City To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Seven years ago, when the U.S. embraced general Petraeus' strategy of empowering and arming sectarian militias rather than building national Iraqi institution, we ensured and fueled the civil war that has been churning since. Now, what had been relatively peaceful and prosperous Iraqi Kurdistan is being swept into the maelstrom.
Maybe when the Iraqis despair utterly, we'll give them a new strongman whom we find convenient.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 9:36 AM Subject: re: Pakistan’s Latest Crisis To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
For years, first as head of Pakistan's ISI and later as army chief, general Ashfaq Kayyani tolerated, sponsored and even paid elements of the Taliban as a proxy force to use against India in Kashmir. If Pakistan survives the current crisis, it may eventually try him for treason. But for now, Kayyani is living in retirement, and his pet monster is amok. Should we be surprised?
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 5:38 PM Subject: re: Prisoner Trade Yields Rare View Into the Taliban To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
It was widely known in antiquity that Jews felt keenly the obligated to
ransom one of their own who was held captive. this made Jews something
of a hot commodity. Every pirate, brigand and thug knew he could extort
ransom from the Jewish community by hold one of them prisoner. This
perverse incentive was later modified (Mishna, Gittin 4:6) to preclude ransoming a captive for more than his worth.
American Jurisprudence has its own rules, but the incentives are the same. By bargaining for the release of BoweBergdahl,
president Obama has made every American serviceman, diplomat,
journalist and tourist a target for kidnapping. As to the second, what
is Bergdahl's worth, and what are the prisoners released
worth? In American law, a criminal is a criminal only when a court has
ruled so. Until then, he is merely a detainee awaiting trial. These
five--despite senator McCain's ravings--are alleged to have done awful
things, but have been convicted of nothing. To continue holding them is
an embarrassment to the United States. We're well rid of them.
It remains to be seen not so much if we have paid too much for
the release of one of our own, but whether we have paid to much to be
rid of these five whom we couldn't legally hold. Barry Haskell Levine
