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Is It Time for Obama to Change Course on Iraqi Kurdistan?

by Aileen5637 Posted on August 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jonathan Dworkin, who has spent quite a bit of time in Iraqi Kurdistan, thinks the Obama administration is pursuing a failed strategy in Iraq:

In Kurdistan examples are everywhere of the failure of American diplomacy. Refugees have been a problem for months, but only in the last few days has our government gotten serious about providing large scale material support to the Kurds….On the economic front the State Department has gone out of its way to be unhelpful. The Kurdish government is in a desperate economic situation due to the refugee crisis, the security crisis, and the central government’s refusal to share oil revenue.

….The Obama team has adopted Maliki’s line, in essence arguing that Kurdish oil undermines Iraqi unity. That’s an idea that has become increasingly ridiculous with each setback in Baghdad….But the idea of Kurds breaking away from Iraq was anathema to the Obama team….The result is ongoing economic strangulation at precisely the moment the Kurds are being attacked by ISIS. Government salaries haven’t been paid in months. One physician friend in Sulaimania wrote to me that the doctors are working for free. There have also been acute fuel shortages.

Security is the most obvious area where American soft power has failed. For months now the Kurds have been lobbying for a more coordinated approach against ISIS, and they have gotten the cold shoulder over and over. The Obama team was content to arm a disloyal and unreliable Iraqi Army, and they were perplexed when those heavy weapons ended up under ISIS control. But they refused to coordinate significant weapons procurement for the Peshmerga, despite increasingly desperate appeals, until the ISIS rampage forced them to change tack this past week.

I think the highlighted sentence is key. From a diplomatic point of view, the United States either supports a unified Iraq controlled by a central government in Baghdad, or it supports a federal Iraq in which Kurdistan is largely independent. For better or worse, the US made the decision long ago to support a unified Iraq, and that’s not a decision that can be reversed lightly. Everything else flows from this.

Is this incompetent? I don’t think that’s fair. Countries simply can’t change tack on major issues like this when their allies are in trouble. And like it or not, Baghdad is our chosen ally. It may be that there’s more we could do to quietly help the Kurds behind the scenes, but it’s hard to imagine anything serious changing as long as we officially support the authority of the central government in Baghdad over all of Iraq.

In other words, all of the things Jonathan mentions are part of an entirely coherent strategy. Wrong, maybe, but coherent. Rather than commenting on them separately, then, we should be focusing on the bigger picture: Is it finally time for the US to end its opposition to an independent—or semi-independent—Kurdistan? Jonathan made the case for that a couple of months ago here, and I can’t say that I forcefully disagree with him. Certainly we ought to be giving this a more public airing. “When we’re dropping bombs on a place,” Jonathan told me via email, “it should force some conversation about the broader strategy.” It’s hard to argue with that.

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Is It Time for Obama to Change Course on Iraqi Kurdistan?

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Bank Robber Adds New Dimension to Old Definition of Chutzpah

by JaysonCJAP Posted on August 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Woman helps rob bank in elaborate scheme, then files workers comp claim for PTSD. She’s now facing charges of insurance fraud in addition to the nine years in a federal penitentiary she’s already earned. Welcome to California.

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Bank Robber Adds New Dimension to Old Definition of Chutzpah

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Is There a Hillary Doctrine?

by UlrikeC65cfdksx Posted on August 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with Hillary Clinton is being taken as an effort by Hillary to distance herself from President Obama. Here’s the most frequently quoted snippet:

HRC: Great nations need organizing principles, and “Don’t do stupid stuff” is not an organizing principle. It may be a necessary brake on the actions you might take in order to promote a vision.

….JG: What is your organizing principle, then?

HRC: Peace, progress, and prosperity. This worked for a very long time. Take prosperity. That’s a huge domestic challenge for us. If we don’t restore the American dream for Americans, then you can forget about any kind of continuing leadership in the world. Americans deserve to feel secure in their own lives, in their own middle-class aspirations, before you go to them and say, “We’re going to have to enforce navigable sea lanes in the South China Sea.”

I’ve seen the first part of this excerpt several times, and each time I’ve wondered, “So what’s your organizing principle.” When I finally got around to reading the interview, I discovered that this was Goldberg’s very next question. And guess what? Hillary doesn’t have one.

She’s basically hauling out an old chestnut: We need to be strong at home if we want to be strong overseas. And that’s fine as far as it goes. But it’s not an organizing principle for foreign policy. It’s not even close. At best, it’s a precursor to an organizing principle, and at worst it’s just a plain and simple evasion.

It so happens that I think “don’t do stupid stuff” is a pretty good approach to foreign policy at the moment. It’s underrated in most of life, in fact, while “doctrines” are mostly straitjackets that force you to fight the last war over and over and over. The fact that Hillary Clinton (a) brushes this off and (b) declines to say what her foreign policy would be based on—well, it frankly scares me. My read of all this is that Hillary is itching to outline a much more aggressive foreign policy but doesn’t think she can quite get away with it yet. She figures she needs to distance herself from Obama slowly, and she needs to wait for the American public to give her an opportunity. My guess is that any crisis will do that happens to pop up in 2015.

I don’t have any problems with Hillary’s domestic policy. I’ve never believed that she “understood” the Republican party better than Obama and therefore would have gotten more done if she’d won in 2008, but I don’t think she would have gotten any less done either. It’s close to a wash. But in foreign policy, I continually find myself wondering just where she stands. I suspect that she still chafes at being forced to repudiate her vote for the Iraq war—and largely losing to Obama because of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if she still believes that vote was the right thing to do, nor would I be surprised if her foreign policy turned out to be considerably more interventionist than either Bill’s or Obama’s.

But I don’t know for sure. And I probably never will unless she gets elected in 2016 and we get to find out.

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Is There a Hillary Doctrine?

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6 Dumb Things Dan Snyder Has Said About the Name of His Football Team

by VRPMichele Posted on August 9, 2014

Mother Jones

A year ago, I explained Mother Jones‘ decision to stop using the name of Washington, DC’s pro football team, both online and in print. We joined Slate and The New Republic in doing so, and since then, a number of other news organizations and journalists have followed suit.

Even as more people have spoken out against the team’s derogatory moniker—everyone from President Obama to Gene Simmons—owner Dan Snyder hasn’t given an inch, repeatedly arguing that it’s simply not offensive. This week he even went on a mini media tour, giving radio and TV interviews as NFL training camps kicked into gear.

In the meantime, Snyder has doubled down on his commitment to keeping the R-word. Here’s a list of some of the dumbest things he’s said about it in the last year (as well as some additional reading, for context):

In an October letter to season ticket holders: “The name was never a label. It was, and continues to be, a badge of honor…It is a symbol of everything we stand for: strength, courage, pride, and respect—the same values we know guide Native Americans and which are embedded throughout their rich history as the original Americans.”
(See also: “Often Contemptuous” and “Usually Offensive”: 120 Years of Defining “Redskin”)

In a March letter to season ticket holders, following months of criticism (including this Super Bowl ad): “I’ve been encouraged by the thousands of fans across the country who support keeping the Redskins tradition alive. Most—by overwhelming majorities—find our name to be rooted in pride for our shared heritage and values.”
(See also: “Dan Snyder to Native Americans: We’re Cool, Right? Native Americans to Dan Snyder: Redacted”)

Following an April ceremony at a Virginia high school: “We understand the issues out there, and we’re not an issue. The real issues are real-life issues, real-life needs, and I think it’s time that people focus on reality.”
(See also: “Washington NFL Team’s New Native American Foundation Is Already Off to a Great Start”)

In a Monday interview with former Washington player Chris Cooley on ESPN 980, the radio station Snyder owns: “It’s sort of fun to talk about the name of our football team because it gets some attention for some of the people that write about it, that need clicks. But the reality is no one ever talks about what’s going on on reservations.”
(See also: “Outrage in Indian Country As Redskins Owner Announces Foundation”)

More from the Cooley interview: “It’s honor, it’s respect, it’s pride, and I think that every player here sees it, feels it. Every alumni feels it. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s a historical thing. This is a very historical franchise…I think it would be nice if, and forget the media from that perspective, but really focus on the fact that—the facts, the history, the truth, the tradition.”
(See also: “Former Redskins Player Jason Taylor Says Redskins Name Is Offensive”)

In a Tuesday interview with ESPN’s Outside the Lines: “A Redskin is a football player. A Redskin is our fans. The Washington Redskins fan base represents honor, represents respect, represents pride. Hopefully winning. And, and, it, it’s a positive. Taken out of context, you can take things out of context all over the place. But in this particular case, it is what it is. It’s very obvious…We sing ‘Hail to the Redskins.’ We don’t say hurt anybody. We say, ‘Hail to the Redskins. Braves on the warpath. Fight for old DC.’ We only sing it when we score touchdowns. That’s the problem, because last season we didn’t sing it quite enough as we would’ve liked to.”
(See also: “Timeline: A Century of Racist Sports Team Names”)

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6 Dumb Things Dan Snyder Has Said About the Name of His Football Team

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Tennessee Gubernatorial Nominee Explains Why He Wants to Send Governor to Electric Chair

by tobedzieto123 Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Charlie Brown for Governor

They did it again. On Thursday, Tennessee Democrats picked a statewide candidate with zero political experience. His campaign platform is based on sending incumbent Gov. Bill Haslam (R) to the electric chair. Charlie Brown, a retired engineer from Oakdale whose name is misspelled on his own Facebook page, may owe his victory in the gubernatorial primary to appearing as the first name on the ballot. But he gives full credit to God. “I got down on my knees and prayed about it,” he told Mother Jones, when asked about his campaign strategy. “That hit you pretty hard, huh? That took you for a loop, huh?”

In 2012, anti-gay activist Mark Clayton, who also had no political track record won the nod to take on GOP Sen. Bob Corker. His name was also the first name listed on the ballot. Clayton initially filed to run against Haslam this year but was rejected by the state party. The state party did not, however, unite behind a more experienced candidate to challenge the popular Haslam.

The 72-year-old Brown did not raise money or campaign actively for the seat. Instead, he sent two letters to the editor to every major newspaper in the state, outlining his plans for Tennessee, which included bringing back teacher tenure, restoring benefits for civil servants, spending his gubernatorial salary on large deer for hunters, and raising speed limits on the interstate highways to 80 mph “because everyone does anyway.” (Brown says he has been pulled over for speeding, but “not lately.”) “Let me give you something: My main interest is to put the Bible back in school,” he said on Friday. “You can write that down.”

“I’d still like to put his butt in that electric chair and turn it on about half throttle and let him smell a little bit,” Brown said of Haslam. “You can print that if you want to.”

Shortly before the election, he says a higher power intervened on his behalf. “I was sitting on the interstate waiting on a guy,” he said, “and something hit me just like that, and it said to get down on your knees to pray. I got down right there on the interstate. There’s a wide place, where there’s a pullout. There wasn’t anybody there. And I got down and asked the Lord to get me through this thing and he did. Now listen, I’m not no preacher, I’m just a Christian. I’m just a sinner saved by grace. I’m just like everybody else.”

Brown said he would update his Facebook after he got off the phone (it has since been taken down), and plans to campaign more actively in the fall, but downplays the uphill challenge he faces.

“I’m gonna campaign big time!” Brown said. “They said I was unknown—I’ve been in the newspaper for years under Peanuts!”

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Tennessee Gubernatorial Nominee Explains Why He Wants to Send Governor to Electric Chair

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Body of Boy Who Tried to Escape Notorious Florida Reform School is Identified

by AlvinBodnar Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Researchers from the University of South Florida have positively identified the remains of a 14-year-old boy who died at the notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys more than 70 years ago.

George Owen Smith’s remains were unearthed as part of the effort to find, exhume, and identify dozens of children who died at the northern Florida school. The school, opened in 1900, was closed by the state in 2011 after a Department of Justice investigation found “systemic, egregious, and dangerous practices.” Even though school officials deny it, former students claim the school’s staff would routinely abuse students, including allegations of sexual abuse and murder. At least 96 children died at the the school between 1914 and 1973, according to records, with 7 of those deaths listed as the result of escape attempts.

It’s unclear how Smith died. According to the USF researchers, he was sent to the school in 1940 at the age of 14. In December 1940 his mother asked the school how he was doing and was told they didn’t know where he was. A month later the family was told Smith was found dead under a house after escaping from the school. When the family came to the school to get his body, they were showed a freshly-covered grave without any marking. Now, 73 years later, Smith’s body was the first to be identified as part of the USF project. The researchers plan to continue excavating the unmarked graves until next summer.

While most boys at Dozier had it bad, the situation was probably worse for black students. Five African-American former students returned to the school in 2013 to recount their experience on “the black side” of the school, where work was harder, and the threat of abuse was ever present. “It was kind of like slavery,” one of the men told photographer Nina Berman. Read more about their journey and see Berman’s photographs in this Mother Jones story.

“To go inside of it was…a feeling like you’re there again,” says former student Richard Huntly. “You’re under the spell of the Florida School for Boys.” Nina Berman

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Body of Boy Who Tried to Escape Notorious Florida Reform School is Identified

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Quote of the Day: The Bane of the Magic Asterisk

by OlgaBrunson Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Brad DeLong on the debasement of budget policy since the Reagan era:

Ever since the start of 1981 and the miseducation of David Stockman, the bane of a sensible American fiscal policy has most often been the magic asterisk: the implicit claim that some policy that the politician dares not name or some magical Budget Fairy will fly down from above and make everything OK. When this magic asterisk is found, by my guess 90% of the time it is in budget “plans” from Republicans—but a good 10% of the time it is found in plans from Democrats (yes, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Gene Sperling, I am looking at you).

This has reached its zenith in the budget “plans” of Paul Ryan and his fellow tea partiers. I can’t remember the last time I saw a budget plan from a Republican that was even remotely honest.

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Quote of the Day: The Bane of the Magic Asterisk

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Marijuana Legalization Seems to Be Working Out….So Far

by MiloTQBHoozqo Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here are a few typical headlines I’ve seen recently about Colorado’s legalization of marijuana:

Washington Post: Since marijuana legalization, highway fatalities in Colorado are at near-historic lows

Vox: Marijuana legalization didn’t stop Colorado’s decade-long decline in teen pot use

HuffPo: If Legalizing Marijuana Was Supposed To Cause More Crime, It’s Not Doing A Very Good Job

There’s a phrase missing from all of these: “so far.” I hope that pot legalization turns out great and every other state eventually follows the lead of Colorado and Washington. But honestly folks, it’s early days yet. Legalization almost certainly has long-term dynamics and feedback effects that we simply won’t know about for years. What happens during the first few months is all but meaningless. Even if the stories themselves are more nuanced, this ought to be reflected in the headlines too.

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Marijuana Legalization Seems to Be Working Out….So Far

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Obama Authorizes Air Strikes in Iraq: Will Americans be Evacuated?

by CathleeGarrido Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, as Islamic militants closed in on the Kurdish capital of Irbil, President Obama authorized targeted air strikes in Iraq if necessary to prevent the capture of the city, which is a base for US officials and foreign workers. “When the lives of American citizens are at risk, we will take action,” said Obama. He also pledged to provide humanitarian aid and to take steps to protect about 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, who have fled their homes and have been trapped on nearby mountains.

The announcements came after fighters associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) took control of at least one town within twenty miles of the city and reportedly seized a massive dam, which if breached could flood Mosul, a city of 1.5 million residents.

Throughout the decade following the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Kurdish north has avoided much of the violence and chaos common in the south. As recently as June, the State Department noted that the region has been “more stable relative to the rest of Iraq in recent years.” That relative tranquility has not only drawn diplomats, oil workers, and US military personnel to Irbil: just last year, the New York Times called the city a “tourist boom town.” Should ISIS take Irbil, any foreigners left there would be at considerable risk.

US companies began pulling employees from Iraq before ISIS’s recent advances. According to the leader of Iraq’s state-run South Oil Company, ExxonMobil staged a “major evacuation” in mid-June and BP reportedly withdrew 20 percent of its staff. But over the last few days, companies have ramped up extractions from Kurdistan: on Thursday, Reuters reported that ExxonMobil is pulling its staff, and a Chevron spokeswomen told the Wall Street Journal the company had reduced its number of foreign workers in the region.

Even as ISIS made dramatic gains across Iraq in June and July, Irbil remained a safe haven. Refugees from elsewhere in northern Iraq streamed in, as did foreigners. Employees of Siemens Energy were evacuated to Irbil in mid-June amid a bloody battle for control of Baiji’s oil infrastructure. Earlier that month, the State Department relocated staffers from the embassy in Baghdad to consulates outside the capital, including the one in Irbil. But now, the situation has reversed: according to the New York Times, civilians are swamping Irbil’s airport, hoping to snag seats on flights to Baghdad. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways has canceled all flights to Irbil.

Aki Peritz, a former CIA counterterrorism analyst, says that when US citizens are under threat, the State Department works quickly. And when it comes to the safety of diplomatic staff, “If they felt like the US consulate could fall, they would have evacuated,” he says. “They have an itchy finger especially after Benghazi, they’re not going to let Americans get chopped up and put on the Internet.”

While Obama said on Thursday night that protecting US military personnel, diplomats, and civilians living in Irbil is a priority, it’s unclear just how many Americans and other foreigners are present in the city, and what plans may be in place to evacuate them. A senior administration official told reporters late on Thursday that there was an “ongoing conversation” in the administration about evacuating its diplomats, but “given that we will make sure ISIS cannot approach Irbil, we’re very confident our consulate is safe.”

A Defense Department spokesman, Commander Bill Speaks, says that there is a Joint Operations Center in Irbil, with about 40 military personnel. He would not discuss contingency planning for any potential evacuation of US or non-US foreign citizens. Katherine Pfaff, a spokesperson for the US State Department, declined to provide the number of staff based in the Irbil consulate. “We have nothing to announce on possible evacuations,” she says.

According to Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who was in Irbil in June, there’s not a huge American presence in the city, but it is home to some foreign diplomats and oil workers, with a couple of expat hotspots. He says that Kurdish officials “knew the fight was coming, they just didn’t know it was coming so quickly.”

David Phillips, director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, is on his way to Irbil on Sunday for a pre-planned research trip. He told Mother Jones from his hotel in Turkey that he has meetings scheduled with government officials and “as far as I know, everything is on track.”

“It’s a fast-moving, volatile situation,” he adds. “Unless something really unexpected happens, I think the Islamic State is going to be on the run.” He says he promised his daughters that he wouldn’t “do anything foolish.”

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Obama Authorizes Air Strikes in Iraq: Will Americans be Evacuated?

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Quote of the Day: Wall Street Judge Left With "Nothing But Sour Grapes"

by ElizbethCardwel Posted on August 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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A few years ago, federal district judge Jed Rakoff refused to approve an SEC settlement with Citigroup over charges that they had deliberately offloaded toxic mortgage securities into a special fund so that they could make money by betting against their own customers. Rakoff objected partly because he thought the SEC’s proposed fine was too small—”pocket change,” he called it—but mostly because there was no public reckoning of what Citigroup had done. Not only weren’t they required to admit wrongdoing, they weren’t required even to admit the bare facts of what they had done.

Sadly for Rakoff—and for the public—an appeals court overruled him, basically saying that the SEC had full discretion to reach any settlement it desired, and the judge’s only real role was to make sure it wasn’t tainted by collusion or corruption. Earlier this week, Rakoff backed off:

They who must be obeyed have spoken, and this Court’s duty is to faithfully fulfill their mandate.

….Nonetheless, this Court fears that, as a result of the Court of Appeal’s decision, the settlements reached by governmental regulatory bodies and enforced by the judiciary’s contempt powers will in practice be subject to no meaningful oversight whatsoever. But it would be a dereliction of duty for this Court to seek to evade the dictates of the Court of Appeals. That Court has now fixed the menu, leaving this Court with nothing but sour grapes.

Quite so, and the SEC’s long tradition of issuing wrist slaps to big Wall Street firms—and withholding all the details of their corruption from the public—is now safe once again. Apparently that kind of thing is only for the little people.

Of course, Congress could intervene, giving the SEC more manpower and demanding more accountability, but that’s not going to happen either. After all, sometimes people say mean things about Wall Street firms. Surely that’s punishment enough?

Via Michael Hiltzik, who has more at the link.

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Quote of the Day: Wall Street Judge Left With "Nothing But Sour Grapes"

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