Tag: geneva conventions
Defense Chief Rebuts Trump, Vows To Obey ‘Laws Of Armed Conflict’

Defense Chief Rebuts Trump, Vows To Obey ‘Laws Of Armed Conflict’

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Monday completely undercut President Donald Trump’s advocacy of war crimes, telling CNN that the administration “will follow the laws of armed conflict.”

Trump had raised the prospect of violating these laws over the weekend, saying on Twitter: ‘Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.”

As many people pointed out, this is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits “any acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples.” Others pointed out that Trump’s threat could violate other laws of war, such as the requirement that attacks be proportionate.

CNN pressed Esper on whether his comments meant that the military wouldn’t target cultural sites under his watch, he said: “That’s the laws of armed conflict.”

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about Trump’s war crimes threat on Sunday, he took the more dishonest strategy of flatly denying the plain truth, saying: “President Trump didn’t say he’d go after a cultural site — read what he said.” Of course, that’s exactly what Trump said.

Trump refused to back down on Sunday from his threat in comments to pool reporters, undercutting Pompeo even further, saying: “They’re allowed to kill our people, they’re allowed to torture and maim our people, they’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people, and we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way.”

IMAGE: Defense Secretary Mark Esper, to the right of President Donald Trump at cabinet meeting.

Trump’s Torture Policy Is Already Operating In Washington

Trump’s Torture Policy Is Already Operating In Washington

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

President Trump feels waterboarding works.

If you knew what he knew, wouldn’t you? He heard Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham say torture works with his own ears. He said it on Twitter, which means it must be true. Defense Secretary James Mattis said he’d do better with a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, but, hey, if the president feels something, it can’t be wrong. “I happen to feel,” Trump said yet again last week, “that it does work.”

The problem with torture is that people will say anything to make it stop. If you’re afraid you’re going to die, you don’t care what’s true, you just care about surviving. There is abundant evidence of this behavior in Washington, where the fear of political death also makes people say anything.

Consider Team Trump. Only electoral torture — the threat of losing power — can account for the readiness of the White House and the Republican Congress to say anything, to act as though the infotainment freak show posing as our government were perfectly normal, and to pretend that having a megalomaniac in charge of our nuclear arsenal isn’t the kind of emergency the 25th Amendment anticipates.

At one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mike Pence, Kellyanne Conway, and Sean Spicer give no hint onstage of what they know full well backstage, that the man they serve is a total disaster no longer waiting to happen. A million phantom inaugural attendees; 3 million imaginary illegal voters; the theft of health insurance from more than 20 million people; an animus toward Mexico that will steal billions from working Americans; a Muslim ban that reads right off ISIS’ script — what fresh hell will their boss serve up for them to defend next? A de facto abortion ban? Looser libel laws to make the media, as Steve Bannon barked, “keep its mouth shut”? A sweetheart deal with Putin on sanctions?

At the other end of the avenue, the game faces that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan wear hide their daily humiliation of humoring a tempestuous toddler; conceal their fear that their party is one golden shower away from disgrace and oblivion; and mask their terror that their country is one dirty bomb away from martial law. The last best hope of the Republican leadership is an impeachment they couldn’t be blamed for invoking, and a Pence presidency that would do the Tea Party proud.

Trump’s behavior checks all the symptoms on the malignant narcissism tick list: sadism, aggressiveness, paranoia, hypomania, grandiosity, lack of impulse control, lack of empathy, you name it. His disorder is hiding in plain sight. Here’s an excerpt from his interview last week with ABC’s David Muir:

“That [CIA] speech was a home run. … I got a standing ovation. In fact, they said it was the biggest standing ovation since Peyton Manning had won the Super Bowl and they said it was equal. I got a standing ovation. It lasted for a long period of time. … That speech was a total home run. They loved it. … People loved it. They loved it. They gave me a standing ovation for a long period of time. They never even sat down, most of them, during the speech. There was love in the room. You and other networks covered it very inaccurately. … [T]urn on Fox and see how it was covered. And see how people respond to that speech. That speech was a good speech. And you and a couple of other networks tried to downplay that speech. And it was very, very unfortunate that you did. The people of the CIA loved the speech.”

It goes on.

This is scary. This is not how a president talks. It’s not even how a normal person talks. But it explains how Trump’s courtiers talk. Like the denizens of Wonderland, they fear the Red Queen, who “had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off with his head!’ ” The Red Queen, Trump’s doppelganger, is the mother of all narcissists, the waterboarder in chief. So, to save themselves from political execution, Trump’s enablers, like the playing cards who paint the white roses red, confect “alternative facts.” Like Humpty Dumpty, who makes words mean what he chooses, Bannon calls a free press that speaks truth to power “the opposition party.” It’s not. That’s their job.

In his first news conference as president, Trump said that even though waterboarding “does work,” he’ll defer to his defense secretary’s opposition. “He will override. I’m giving him that power.” Here’s some wishful thinking: If Mattis can get Trump to observe the Geneva Convention on torture, maybe he can get him to observe the Paris Agreement on climate change, too.

Or even — I can dream, can’t I? — to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Marty Kaplan is the Norman Lear professor of entertainment, media and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Reach him at martyk@jewishjournal.com.

IMAGE: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump gives a thumbs up to the media as he arrives at a costume party at the home of hedge fund billionaire and campaign donor Robert Mercer in Head of the Harbor, New York, U.S., December 3, 2016. REUTERS/Mark Kauzlarich

There’s A Reason Trump Targets Terrorists’ Families

There’s A Reason Trump Targets Terrorists’ Families

What’s new on the Democrats-Are-Terrorist-Lovers beat?

Well, the father of Orlando gay nightclub shooter Omar Mateen attended a Hillary Clinton rally on Monday — sweet, sweet clickbait for the right wing blogosphere, and thus, the national media.

The Clinton campaign responded to criticism of Seddique Mateen’s attendance by claiming they did not invite him to the rally, nor were they made aware of his attendance until after the event had concluded. They failed to clarify whether they would have asked Mateen not to come if they had known ahead of time that he planned on attending.

But why should the Clinton campaign walk back Mateen’s attendance?

Omar Mateen’s father received plenty of national attention after his son’s attack in August because of the alleged influence of Mateen’s upbringing on his eventual declared loyalties to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (and others — Mateen cited various unaffiliated extremist groups). While Seddique has a history of commenting on Afghan politics, occasionally buying public access air time in California and posting YouTube videos on the subject, there’s no evidence that he was involved in the attack or knew about it ahead of time.

Still, Donald Trump has made “going after” the families and acquaintances of terrorists — just the “radical Islamic extremist” variety, though — a central premise of his national security strategy.

“And the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families,” Trump said in December. “They, they care about their lives. Don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.” (Deliberately killing terrorists’ innocent family members is a war crime. Former CIA director Michael Hayden told Bill Maher after Trump’s comments that military leadership would not follow such an order.)

Trump applied similar logic to the family and acquaintances of the two San Bernardino attackers. “Many people saw this, many, many people. Muslims living with them, in the same area, they saw that house,” he said in March.

Why? Trump announced his intention to implement a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” in December, and though at times he’s changed the scope of that ban to include or exclude countries “affected by terrorism” — including France and Germany, the sentiment has stayed the same: There’s “something going on,” and Islam itself is to blame.

And what easier way to find fault in an entire religion than to call attention not to radicalized individuals — the intelligence community finds that many attacks in the U.S. are carried out by “lone wolves” — but rather to the social structures that surround them?

In reality, ISIS recruiters pressure their recruits to isolate themselves from family and friends who might otherwise be able to convince them not to go through with an attack. One account from an ISIS recruit published by the New York Times last June illustrates the process by which recruiters attempt to replace the social ties in potential recruits’ lives:

Meanwhile, let’s talk about someone who was actually invited to attend the Republican National Convention as a member of the press: James Edwards, the white supremacist who the Trump campaign had previously falsely denied was given an interview with Donald Trump Jr. The campaign also initially denied white supremacist leader William Johnson was selected as a California delegate to the convention, before the media questioned the choice.

Unlike Seddique Mateen — unlike any of the less-newsworthy, innocent families of terrorist attackers targeted by the Trump campaign — Edwards, Johnson, and many others who identify with their politics were asked to participate in Trump’s nomination process.

 

Photo: WPTV

Gen. John Allen Says Trump Orders Could Lead To ‘Civil Military Crisis’

Gen. John Allen Says Trump Orders Could Lead To ‘Civil Military Crisis’

Gen. John Allen, a four-star General and formerly President Obama’s Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, told This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that “we would be facing a civil military crisis, the likes of which we have not seen in this country before,” if Donald Trump carried out some of his campaign promises as president.

“He’s talked about needing to torture. He’s talked about needing to murder the families of alleged terrorists. He’s talked about carpet-bombing ISIL. Who do you think is going to get carpet-bombed when all of that occurs? It’ll be innocent families,” Gen. John Allen (Ret.) said, before Stephanopoulos asked him about the consequences of Trump asking military leaders to break the law.

John Allen, who spoke recently in support of Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency at the Democratic National Convention, isn’t the first to note that Trump may be unfit to lead the military.

In July of last year, Rear Admiral John Hutson, who once served as the Navy’s top lawyer, told the Daily Beast, “Personally, I hope no one will be called upon to serve under a President T… I can’t bring myself to type the words.”

In December, the website ran a brief profile of Pentagon officials who anonymously said they would refuse to serve in a Trump administration.

In February, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden told Bill Maher, of Trump’s comments on “waterboarding and a whole lot more” and killing terrorists’ families, “if he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act.”

In March, a group of 121 “GOP National Security Leaders” signed a letter denouncing Trump’s proposals and behavior, including his “embrace of the expansive use of torture,” “anti-Muslim rhetoric,” and “admiration for foreign dictators such as Vladimir Putin.” The letter said Trump’s “insistence that close allies such as Japan must pay vast sums for protection is the sentiment of a racketeer.”

Trump called John Allen a “failed general” in response to his DNC speech — one assumes for the continued existence of the Islamic State. Responding to criticism that military leaders ought to stay neutral in partisan elections, John Allen told Stephanopoulos, “I’ve agonized over this decision over and over again … I wanted to make sure it was very clear that I supported this particular candidate, Hillary Clinton, to be the president and the commander-in-chief and I decried these comments that put us on a potential track for a civil military crisis the like of which we have never seen in this country.”

Photo and Video: ABC/ Media Matters for America.