[blind-democracy] Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, The Enemies of Our Enemy Are Not Our Friends
- From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2017 19:06:15 -0500
Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, The Enemies of Our Enemy Are Not Our Friends
By Rebecca Gordon
Posted on February 9, 2017, Printed on February 9, 2017
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176241/ ;
Were in a strange new world -- of fantasists (see Kellyanne Conways
terrorist
<http://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/2/14494478/bowling-green-massacre>
massacre in Bowling Green
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/06/kellyanne-conways
-bowling-green-massacre-wasnt-a-slip-of-the-tongue-shes-said-it-before/?utm_
term=.6d6413e721e4> , Kentucky), delusionaries (see Sean Spicers account
<https://theintercept.com/2017/02/02/press-secretary-sean-spicer-falsely-acc
uses-iran-of-attacking-u-s-navy-vessel-an-act-of-war/> of the Iranians
who attacked an American naval vessel), and dreamers (if having a
nightmare is your idea of dreaming). Only the other day, for instance, at
the National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump said
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/02/remarks-president-tr
ump-national-prayer-breakfast> definitively, We're taken advantage of by
every nation in the world, virtually. It's not going to happen anymore.
Honestly, you have to wonder what planet the former reality show host has
been on these last decades.
And all of this has, in a couple of short weeks, started to change our
world. Just ask Kjell Magne Bondevik, the former prime minister of Norway,
who was stopped
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/03/former-norway-pm-bondevik-h
eld-washington-dulles-airport-2014-visit-iran> at Dulles International
Airport on his way to that same prayer breakfast, held and questioned (even
when it was clear that he had indeed been the prime minister of an allied
country
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/03/upshot/which-country-do-amer
icans-like-most-for-republicans-its-australia.html> ) because he had
traveled to Iran three years earlier. Of course, looked at another way, he
had also been the head of one of the many freeloading nations on the planet
who, as President Trump now points out, have taken our country for a ride,
so he undoubtedly got what he deserved. After all, in 2008, pressured
<http://www.defencetalk.com/how-the-us-got-norway-to-buy-f-35-joint-strike-f
ighters-30523/> by a multi-departmental American lobbying effort, Norway
caved and agreed to buy the most expensive
<http://www.businessinsider.com/expensive-f35-snag-years-to-fix-2017-1> ,
cost-overrun-prone weapons system in history, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter,
rather than a perfectly reasonable Swedish plane. (If they hadnt, it might
have adversely affected sales to other U.S. allies ready to take us for a
ride.) And nine years later, in 2017
<http://www.realcleardefense.com/2016/10/15/norway_first_country_with_f-35_b
lock_buy_286685.html> , despite endless delays and soaring costs, the
Norwegians are still buying the planes -- 52 in all at an estimated price
tag of $40 billion
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_procurement
#Norway> . What a crew of moochers!
Admittedly, its been a one-way planet for one hell of a long time, but
Donald J. Trump is finally readying himself to reverse that and turn it
into... well, possibly a hell on earth. At least, European leaders
(Britain's excepted) seem to think so
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/world/europe/trump-european-union.html>
, as they find themselves packed into more or less the same unfriendly
basket of deplorables as Iran. I had a friend years ago who told me that
Id know I was on a different planet when European powers -- Charles De
Gaulles long-gone France aside -- started to say no to Washington. We may
now officially be on that altered world, one where even Australia, Americas
most faithful ally, might start uttering a no or two to a president who
considers hanging up
<http://www.salon.com/2017/02/02/a-disaster-down-under-president-trump-hangs
-up-on-australias-prime-minister-after-heated-exchange-over-refugee-program/
on its prime minister good form. (I assume by now that somewhere in the
Forbidden City, the Chinese leadership is dancing in the streets, knowing
that on Donald Trumps planet their country is likely to look like
<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/03/donald-trump-making-c
hina-great-again-xi-jinping> the only reasonable imperial power around.)
These days, you may hear a similar chorus of "No's" coming out of the U.S.
government where federal employees are beginning
<
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-nation/2017/02/01/Plans-to-defy-T
rump-among-federal-workers/stories/201702010158> to form support groups and
take courses on workers rights and how they can express civil
disobedience. Consider this my way of saying that, in the Trump era,
youre going to have to buy a scorecard to figure out what team the
various players on this increasingly confused world of ours belong to,
creating endless complications for those of us already thinking about how to
make it into the post-Trump years. Fortunately,
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176229/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_the_bes
t_defense/> TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon, author of
<
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510703330/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>
American Nuremberg, has been thinking about friendship, alliances, and how
to figure out whos who in a world in which, even with that scorecard, it
may be difficult to sort the players and the teams out. Tom
Through the Looking Glass
How Can We Recognize Our Friends in the Mixed-Up World of Donald Trump?
By Rebecca Gordon <
http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/rebeccagordon>
You know youre living in a looking-glass world when former Vice President
Dick Cheney speaks out
<
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dick-cheney-donald-trump-muslim-ban-e
xtreme> against one of Donald Trumps executive orders. Hes a good example
of how past adversaries of movements for peace and justice are lining up
against our current adversary, the new president.
The United States, Cheney told
<
http://www.hughhewitt.com/vice-president-dick-cheney-san-bernardino-obamas-
foreign-policy-setting-history-straight/#more-29615> radio host Hugh
Hewitt, should not exclude people from our territory on the basis of
religion. That was just a few days after Trump had signed an executive
order entitled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the
United States. Such a move, said Cheney, goes against everything we stand
for and believe in.
In the same interview, Cheney revealed the origins of his personal affinity
for Muslim refugees. His own ancestors, he said, arrived on this continent
to escape religious persecution. They were Puritans, he explained, adding,
There wasnt anybody here then when they came. No one? It was a sparkling
display of precisely the European-American solipsism that so deeply marked
the Cheney years in power.
Refugees, he acknowledged, do represent a serious problem. To begin to
solve it, however, You gotta go back and look at why theyre here. Theyre
here because of whats happening in the Middle East.
The refugees Cheney refers to arent here, of course, or what would be the
point of Trumps entrance ban? Otherwise, Id have to agree with the former
vice president: you do need to look at whats happening but also --
something he didnt mention -- what happened in the Middle East to explain
their need for refuge. Refugees from Iraq and Syria (among other places)
have indeed lost their homes and homelands by the millions
<
http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced-displ
acement-hits-record-high.html> , in significant part because of the very
invasions and occupations that Cheney and his president, George W. Bush,
launched in the Greater Middle East, radically destabilizing that part of
the world.
The Enemy of My Enemy?
What should it mean for those of us hoping to resist the grim presidency of
Donald Trump to find Dick Cheney, even momentarily and on a single issue, on
our side? One thing it certainly cant mean is that Cheney stands for the
same everything that moved thousands of people
<
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/29/512250469/photos-thousand
s-protest-at-airports-nationwide-against-trumps-immigration-order> to rush
to U.S. airports, demanding the release of visitors, immigrants, and green
card holders detained under Trumps new order. Although in the Muslim
refugees of today he may indeed recognize a reflection of his Puritan
ancestors, Cheneys disagreement with Donald Trump does not, in fact, make
him a friend of the cause of compassion, justice, or the rule of law.
Few of us who spent eight years opposing Bush and Cheney or who remember
their record of invasions
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176058/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_how_the
_u.s._created_middle_east_mayhem> , occupations, torture
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175934/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_the_tor
ture_wars> , black sites, and so much more are likely to imagine that his
opposition to the ban on refugees makes him our friend. But that doesnt
mean that we cant take some satisfaction from where hes landed on this
issue.
Its been harder, however, for many of us to find clarity when it comes to
certain of the other war hawks who, for their own reasons, dont trust
Trump.
Its a trap most of us avoided last summer when 50 members of the national
security establishment, including former National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice and one of George W. Bushs CIA directors, Michael Hayden,
wrote
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176178/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon,_making_se
nse_of_trump_and_his_national_security_state_critics/> an open letter
warning the world that Trump lacked the character, values, and experience
to be president. We recognized that the letter signers themselves lacked
the character, values, and experience to comment. After all, in the Middle
East and elsewhere, this bunch had helped to pave the way for Trumps rise.
In recent months, as the Russian hacking scanda
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/us/politics/taking-aim-at-trump-leaders-
strongly-affirm-findings-on-russian-hacking.html> l hit and Trumps feud
<
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/after-feud-with-intel-agencies-trump-tells-cia-
that-i-am-so-behind-you/> with the CIA gained ever more media attention,
that Agency has proven another matter. Here is a real danger to avoid: in
our efforts to delegitimize Donald Trump, its important not to
inadvertently legitimize an outfit that most of us have long opposed for its
vicious campaigns around the world. Just because Donald Trump all but called
<
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/cia-brennan-trump-nazi-germany-233636
its operatives Nazis shouldnt lead the rest of us to forget its long
history of deceit or accept its pronouncements at face value because they
happen to fit what we would like to believe.
When Barack Obama said
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/politics/russia-election-hacking-sanc
tions.html?_r=0> that there was convincing evidence Russia had used its
hacking efforts to throw the U.S. election to Trump, the president-elect not
surprisingly labeled
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/politics/trump-russia-democrats.html>
the claim ridiculous. But theres also been a bit of sympathy for the CIA
in some odd places. For example, long-time CIA critic and Hullabaloo
<
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/> founder Heather Digby Parton (generally
known as Digby) wrote
<
http://www.salon.com/2016/12/12/spy-vs-spy-cia-says-russia-hacked-the-elect
ion-to-help-trump-and-we-know-the-fbi-did/> at Salon that the CIA
understandably felt there was something a tad unfair about the Trump
transition team calling the Agency the same people that said Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction. After all, they were under a lot of
pressure from the White House back then. As Digby wrote, Its now known
that Vice President Dick Cheney went out to [CIA headquarters in] Langley
[Virginia] in order to personally twist arms and stovepipe the
intelligence report on Iraq.
Thats certainly true, but its also true that the CIA director of that
moment, George Tenet, assured
<
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/18/woodward.book/> President Bush
that there was a slam dunk case that Saddam Hussein had such weaponry. The
fact is that the CIA caved in to pressure from top administration officials
for the intel they so desperately wanted for the invasion they already knew
they were going to launch in Iraq. That is not exactly a ringing endorsement
of the agencys integrity or political independence. An "independent" CIA is
bad enough, but the CIAs vulnerability to political pressure from the White
House is another reason we should be cautious about using Agency
pronouncements as an instrument against Donald Trump. That's the slippery
terrain we find ourselves on now.
<
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1510703330/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>
Description: gordonnurembergDigby is certainly no admirer of the CIA, and
her article wasnt primarily focused on the quality of its intelligence
under Bush, but on a far more recent turf war between the Agency and the
FBI. She rightly calls out FBI Director James Comey for his 11th hour
intervention in the election, the way he alerted Congress
<
http://www.newsweek.com/what-fbi-found-emails-anthony-weiner-laptop-517652>
to the (vanishingly tiny) possibility that the hard drive on the computer
that Anthony Weiner shared with his wife, Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin,
might have contained evidence of Clintons failure to protect State
Department emails. Nevertheless, the reader is left to infer that -- at
least when it comes to intelligence rather than clandestine operations --
the CIAs pronouncements might prove a reliable instrument against Donald
Trump, an urge that was relatively commonplace among opponents of the new
president.
For example, the Atlantic, which has carried
<
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/operation-tinselto
wn-how-the-cia-manipulates-hollywood/491138/> excellent reporting about CIA
deceptions, published
<
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/the-trump-national-sec
urity-council-an-analysis/514910/> a piece by Kelly Magsamen, who served on
the National Security Council (NSC) under both Bush and Obama, expressing
alarm at Trumps plan to exclude the CIA director from his version of the
NSC. (In fact, the new president reversed himself
<
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-national-security-council-cia-2
34381> on the matter almost immediately.) It's not surprising that Magsamen
would have this view. For those of us who would like to dismantle the entire
national security edifice, however, it would be shortsighted indeed to
attack Trump by shoring up the reputation of an agency -- the CIA -- that,
as former counterintelligence officer John Kiriakou has suggested
<
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/41433-i-have-come-to-the-con
clusion-the-country-does-not-need-a-cia> , the country and the world do not
need. Kariakou, you may remember, was jailed
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175500/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_in_washi
ngton,_fear_the_silence,_not_the_noise/> for discussing the CIAs torture
program with a journalist.
Support for Americas spooks has continued to resound in odd places. For
example, theres been much outrage expressed at President Trumps bizarre
behavior on a visit to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In a
performance that was indeed shocking, he used the occasion to complain about
the way the media underestimated the size of the crowd at his inauguration,
after which he asserted that God had stopped the rain during his Inaugural
Address.
What many commentators found far more bizarre and disturbing, however, was
that Trump gave his performance in front of a memorial wall commemorating
CIA agents who had died on the job. Writing for the not-exactly-right-wing
Huffington Post, Neil McCarthy claimed
<
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/executive-disorders_us_5890c025e4b02c39
7c178cac> that the wall honors un-named heroes who have died in our
service. In a New Yorker article headlined Trumps Vainglorious Affront to
the CIA, former Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Robin Wright
chided
<
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trumps-vainglorious-affront-to-the-
c-i-a> the new president for his lack of respect for the Agencys martyrs.
Trump, she suggested, should have followed the example of President Ronald
Reagan, who on his first visit to the CIA told the assembled staff:
The work you do each day is essential to the survival and to the spread of
human freedom. You remain the eyes and ears of the free world. You are the
trip wire over which totalitarian rule must stumble in their quest for
global domination...
While I would never applaud anyones untimely, violent death, the fact that
Donald Trump (despite his denials
<
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-cia-langley-233971> ) has been
feuding with the CIA shouldnt erase that agencys history or just what
those agents died defending. Trumps annoyance shouldnt magically transform
an agency responsible for decades of violent and bloody coups against
democratic governments in places like Iran
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat> , Guatemala
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat> , the
Congo
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_
the_Congo> , and Chile
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d'%C3%A9tat> into an
organization essential to the survival and spread of human freedom.
Whatever pleasure we may take in Trumps irritation, it doesnt vindicate
the murder
<
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005WPN4X8/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> of
between 26,000 and 41,000 Vietnamese, many of then tortured to death, in the
CIAs notorious Phoenix program
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program> during the Vietnam War. It
doesnt erase the training in torture and repression its agents provided to
dictatorships around the world. And it certainly doesnt make the CIAs use
of terror and torture in its black sites
<
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/13/the-black-sites> as part of
the Bush administrations war on terror any less horrific or illegal.
Nor does the CIAs future look much more promising than its past. When it
comes to torture, its new head Mike Pompeo has clearly wanted to have it
both ways. During his confirmation hearing, he proved unwilling to call
waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation methods torture, but did
acknowledge that they are illegal under a 2015 law, which limits
interrogation techniques to those described in the U.S. Army Field Manual.
There are two problems with reliance on that law. The present Field Manual
contains
<
https://www.justsecurity.org/18043/torture-convention-appendix-army-field-m
anual-interrogations/> a classified annex, which permits among other things
repeated 12-hour bouts of sensory deprivation and solitary confinement for
up to 30 days at a time. Both of these are forms of the cruel, inhuman, and
degrading treatment prohibited by the U.N. Convention against Torture. In
addition, the manual itself is up for revision in two years. A new version
might provide very different guidance.
But its not clear that Pompeo is actually wedded to the manual anyway. As
Human Rights Watch (HRW) points out
<
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/21/us-reject-pompeo-cia-director> , in his
written testimony for his confirmation hearing he indicated that he would
consult with CIA staff to determine whether the application of the Army
Field Manual was an impediment to intelligence-gathering, and whether it
needed to be rewritten. Note as well that Gina Haspel, Pompeos newly
appointed deputy director at the Agency, is notorious
<
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/02/trumps-cia-chief-selects-major-torture-
operative-to-be-agencys-deputy-director/> for her involvement in its black
sites and torture practices in the Bush years (as well as the destruction of
video tapes of waterboarding sessions -- evidence, that is, of those
criminal activities).
Trump himself supports such torture practices. On January 25th, he told
<
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/25/politics/donald-trump-waterboarding-torture/i
ndex.html> ABC News that he still clings to his belief that torture
works. His evidence? The testimony of people at the highest level of
intelligence who as recently as twenty-four hours ago told him that it
works absolutely. It seems likely one of those people was Gina Haspel,
who has a good reason to cling to that same belief.
In reporting ABCs interview with Trump, CNN, like most mainstream media,
allowed itself to be distracted by the question of whether or not torture is
an effective way of getting information from someone. It isnt, as the
Senate Intelligence Committee concluded
<
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/world/cia-torture-report-doc
ument.html> in its landmark 2014 report. However, the question really
shouldnt be whether torture works. The question should be: Is it either
moral or legal? And Donald Trump notwithstanding, the answer in both cases
is no.
Pompeo is also a big fan of NSA-style mass surveillance and has called for
the reinstatement of the NSAs massive secret collection of telephone,
Internet, and social media metadata. The telephone data part of the program
officially expired
<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/nsa-bulk-metadata-collectio
n-expires-usa-freedom-act> in November 2015 as a result of the USA Freedom
Act, passed earlier that year. Under the new arrangement, metadata is held
by the phone companies, rather than directly by the NSA, which now needs a
FISA warrant to get access to those records. Internet and social media
records are still directly available to the NSA, however.
But thats not enough for Pompeo. Human Rights Watch points to a 2016 Wall
Street Journal op-ed
<
https://www.wsj.com/articles/time-for-a-rigorous-national-debate-about-surv
eillance-1451856106> , in which Pompeo urged Congress to 'pass a law
re-establishing collection of all metadata' -- that is, records of
communications, such as their dates, parties, and durations -- 'and
combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information
into a comprehensive, searchable database.'
HRW observes that, in spite of repeated written and oral questions in the
context of the hearing, Pompeo remained vague on what he meant by the
potentially expansive and discriminatory term lifestyle information. As
one devoted to the lesbian lifestyle, I dont find this particularly
encouraging.
Fortunately for those of us who hope to see the national security state
dismantled someday, as recent events have indicated, that edifice and its
friends in both parties are not a seamless whole. There are runs and tears
throughout its fabric, and part of our job is to help open those gaps wider
-- always keeping in mind that while politics may make strange bedfellows,
there are some people you dont ever want to sleep with. Even in the Trump
era, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, at least not when that enemy is
the CIA.
Enemies of Enemies of Enemies
If the CIA is the enemy of my enemy, then Vladimir Putins government in
Russia must be the enemy of the enemy of my enemy. Is it therefore my
friend?
This is a complicated and delicate question. The Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists has just set
<
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-doomsday-clock-is-now-at-two-and-a-ha
lf-minutes-to-midnight/> its doomsday clock forward to two-and-a-half
minutes to midnight, 30 seconds closer to catastrophe.
In the shadow of nuclear war, who wouldnt be eager to see tensions between
Russia and the United States defused? At the same time, I become
uncomfortable when some of my colleagues on the left appear to believe that
any adversary of U.S. hegemony may represent a potential ally for us.
For example, the Nations Stephen Cohen, whose many years of writing on the
Soviet Union served as an important corrective to the official narrative of
the time, characterizes
<
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-friends-and-foes-of-detente/> those
who today are wary of Putin as enemies of détente. He points to a New York
Times editorial whose descriptions "of Putins leadership over the years"
were "so distorted they seemed more like Saturday Night Lives ongoing
parodies" and calls out Times columnist Paul Krugmans "neo-McCarthyite
baiting" of Trump for his admiration of Putin.
I can agree with Cohen that Krugman goes over the top when he refers to
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/building-a-wall-of-ignorance.htm
l> the present administration as the Putin-Trump regime. But its a
mistake to equate legitimate suspicion of Russia and Putin with the efforts
of Senator Joe McCarthy to discredit the U.S. left (and liberals) during the
Cold War. The Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union, and distrust of
Vladimir Putin is not McCarthyism.
Cohen is certainly correct that Putin has good reason to be wary of what he
calls "NATOs highly provocative buildup on Russias Western border." But
even if Russia quite rightly objects to the way NATO has moved east, it
doesnt prove that Putins government didnt try to influence the U.S.
election. Such things are hardly beyond the realm of possibility. After
all, the United States has a long history
<
http://www.npr.org/2016/12/22/506625913/database-tracks-history-of-u-s-medd
ling-in-foreign-elections> of doing just that to countries around the world
(as did the Soviet Union in its day).
That the Washington establishment opposes Russian challenges to the U.S.
urge for global dominance doesnt make Vladimir Putin any less an autocrat,
or Russia under his rule any more a country to emulate. Indeed, on January
27th, the Russian parliament voted
<
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/27/russian-parliament-decrimiina
lizes-domestic-violence/97129912/> 380-3 to decriminalize domestic
violence. A week later, Putin signed the bill into law. Which way, I
wonder, would Donald Trump go if similar legislation were on the table here?
What About Friends?
When the thieves who run our government fall out, we should be glad -- and
find ways to drive the wedge deeper. When John McCain does something
<
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/mccain-graham-trump-234403> we
approve of, like objecting to Trumps executive order on immigration, we can
agree with him, but notice as well that, in the next breath, he says he
supports Trumps commitment to rebuilding our (already vast and
unprecedentedly powerful) military.
Theres a difference between people who find themselves sharing the same
adversary and people who can be, to use an old-fashioned term, in solidarity
with each other. Those of us who oppose U.S. military adventurism abroad and
inequality, racism, and sexism at home need to remember who our friends are.
The next few years must be a time of building broad coalitions and
tightening the bonds among organizations and people who believe that, even
now, a better world is still possible.
In the mixed-up looking-glass universe that is Trumplandia, we are going to
need our friends more than ever. This is true domestically, which means, for
instance, that tenants rights groups will need to keep jumping into
struggles for immigrant rights (as is already happening
<
https://cjjc.org/?projects=immigrant-rights-campaign/> in many places),
and veterans organizations will need to keep on supporting
<
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dakota-pipeline-protests/dakota-access-pip
eline-fight-veterans-vow-it-will-not-get-n716011> fights to preserve Native
land and water rights as in the struggle over the Dakota Access pipeline.
Its true on the international level, as well. We will need to build strong
ties with people in Europe fighting the rise of the far right there, and to
continue our solidarity with the victims of U.S. military actions around the
world.
But its also true at the level of our individual lives. Now especially we
need contact with the people we love to keep us strong and hopeful. Now is a
good time to remind your friends that you love them, and that you will have
their backs. Its a time to march together, but also to eat together. To
strategize and organize, but also to make each other laugh. Its a time to
remember who our adversaries are, but also to cherish our friends.
Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176229/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon,_the_best_
defense/> regular, teaches in the philosophy department at the University
of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S.
Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes
<
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1510703330/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> . Her
previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the
Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter <
https://twitter.com/TomDispatch> and join us
on Facebook <
http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch> . Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands
<
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467244/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> , as
well as Nick Turses Next Time They
<
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608466485/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> ll Come
to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World
<
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463656/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> .
Copyright 2017 Rebecca Gordon
© 2017 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176241/
Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, The Enemies of Our Enemy Are Not Our Friends
By Rebecca Gordon
Posted on February 9, 2017, Printed on February 9, 2017
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176241/ ;
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Just a modest reminder that were on a planet
where supporting places like TomDispatch matters. In that context, let me
point out that, for a donation of $100 ($125 if you live outside the United
States), you can still get a signed, personalized copy of American
Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War
Crimes <
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1510703330/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> ,
the latest book from todays author, Rebecca Gordon. It seems like a
particularly topical book since its already possible to start imagining the
kinds of war crimes trials that might someday be appropriate for the crew
now taking over the U.S. national security state. And speaking of imagining
our future world, I want once again to urge all of you to pick up a copy of
Splinterlands
<
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467244/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> , John
Feffers stunning dystopian novel about our fracturing world (and the latest
entry in the Dispatch Books publication list). Its a genuine must-read in
the age of Trump and signed, personalized copies of it are similarly
available at our
<
https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1443285?uniqueID=634795889283895124>
donation page. Just go there and
<
https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1443285?uniqueID=634795889283895124>
check it all out! Tom]
Were in a strange new world -- of fantasists (see Kellyanne Conways
terrorist
<
http://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/2/14494478/bowling-green-massacre>
massacre in Bowling Green
<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/06/kellyanne-conways
-bowling-green-massacre-wasnt-a-slip-of-the-tongue-shes-said-it-before/?utm_
term=.6d6413e721e4> , Kentucky), delusionaries (see Sean Spicers account
<
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/02/press-secretary-sean-spicer-falsely-acc
uses-iran-of-attacking-u-s-navy-vessel-an-act-of-war/> of the Iranians
who attacked an American naval vessel), and dreamers (if having a
nightmare is your idea of dreaming). Only the other day, for instance, at
the National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump said
<
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/02/remarks-president-tr
ump-national-prayer-breakfast> definitively, We're taken advantage of by
every nation in the world, virtually. It's not going to happen anymore.
Honestly, you have to wonder what planet the former reality show host has
been on these last decades.
And all of this has, in a couple of short weeks, started to change our
world. Just ask Kjell Magne Bondevik, the former prime minister of Norway,
who was stopped
<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/03/former-norway-pm-bondevik-h
eld-washington-dulles-airport-2014-visit-iran> at Dulles International
Airport on his way to that same prayer breakfast, held and questioned (even
when it was clear that he had indeed been the prime minister of an allied
country
<
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/03/upshot/which-country-do-amer
icans-like-most-for-republicans-its-australia.html> ) because he had
traveled to Iran three years earlier. Of course, looked at another way, he
had also been the head of one of the many freeloading nations on the planet
who, as President Trump now points out, have taken our country for a ride,
so he undoubtedly got what he deserved. After all, in 2008, pressured
<
http://www.defencetalk.com/how-the-us-got-norway-to-buy-f-35-joint-strike-f
ighters-30523/> by a multi-departmental American lobbying effort, Norway
caved and agreed to buy the most expensive
<
http://www.businessinsider.com/expensive-f35-snag-years-to-fix-2017-1> ,
cost-overrun-prone weapons system in history, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter,
rather than a perfectly reasonable Swedish plane. (If they hadnt, it might
have adversely affected sales to other U.S. allies ready to take us for a
ride.) And nine years later, in 2017
<
http://www.realcleardefense.com/2016/10/15/norway_first_country_with_f-35_b
lock_buy_286685.html> , despite endless delays and soaring costs, the
Norwegians are still buying the planes -- 52 in all at an estimated price
tag of $40 billion
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_procurement
#Norway> . What a crew of moochers!
Admittedly, its been a one-way planet for one hell of a long time, but
Donald J. Trump is finally readying himself to reverse that and turn it
into... well, possibly a hell on earth. At least, European leaders
(Britain's excepted) seem to think so
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/world/europe/trump-european-union.html>
, as they find themselves packed into more or less the same unfriendly
basket of deplorables as Iran. I had a friend years ago who told me that Id
know I was on a different planet when European powers -- Charles De Gaulles
long-gone France aside -- started to say no to Washington. We may now
officially be on that altered world, one where even Australia, Americas
most faithful ally, might start uttering a no or two to a president who
considers hanging up
<
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/02/a-disaster-down-under-president-trump-hangs
-up-on-australias-prime-minister-after-heated-exchange-over-refugee-program/
on its prime minister good form. (I assume by now that somewhere in the
Forbidden City, the Chinese leadership is dancing in the streets, knowing
that on Donald Trumps planet their country is likely to look like
<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/03/donald-trump-making-c
hina-great-again-xi-jinping> the only reasonable imperial power around.)
These days, you may hear a similar chorus of "No's" coming out of the U.S.
government where federal employees are beginning
<
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-nation/2017/02/01/Plans-to-defy-T
rump-among-federal-workers/stories/201702010158> to form support groups and
take courses on workers rights and how they can express civil
disobedience. Consider this my way of saying that, in the Trump era, youre
going to have to buy a scorecard to figure out what team the various
players on this increasingly confused world of ours belong to, creating
endless complications for those of us already thinking about how to make it
into the post-Trump years. Fortunately,
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176229/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_the_bes
t_defense/> TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon, author of
<
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510703330/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>
American Nuremberg, has been thinking about friendship, alliances, and how
to figure out whos who in a world in which, even with that scorecard, it
may be difficult to sort the players and the teams out. Tom
Through the Looking Glass
How Can We Recognize Our Friends in the Mixed-Up World of Donald Trump?
By Rebecca Gordon <
http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/rebeccagordon>
You know youre living in a looking-glass world when former Vice President
Dick Cheney speaks out
<
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dick-cheney-donald-trump-muslim-ban-e
xtreme> against one of Donald Trumps executive orders. Hes a good example
of how past adversaries of movements for peace and justice are lining up
against our current adversary, the new president.
The United States, Cheney told
<
http://www.hughhewitt.com/vice-president-dick-cheney-san-bernardino-obamas-
foreign-policy-setting-history-straight/#more-29615> radio host Hugh
Hewitt, should not exclude people from our territory on the basis of
religion. That was just a few days after Trump had signed an executive order
entitled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United
States. Such a move, said Cheney, goes against everything we stand for and
believe in.
In the same interview, Cheney revealed the origins of his personal affinity
for Muslim refugees. His own ancestors, he said, arrived on this continent
to escape religious persecution. They were Puritans, he explained, adding,
There wasnt anybody here then when they came. No one? It was a sparkling
display of precisely the European-American solipsism that so deeply marked
the Cheney years in power.
Refugees, he acknowledged, do represent a serious problem. To begin to
solve it, however, You gotta go back and look at why theyre here. Theyre
here because of whats happening in the Middle East.
The refugees Cheney refers to arent here, of course, or what would be the
point of Trumps entrance ban? Otherwise, Id have to agree with the former
vice president: you do need to look at whats happening but also --
something he didnt mention -- what happened in the Middle East to explain
their need for refuge. Refugees from Iraq and Syria (among other places)
have indeed lost their homes and homelands by the millions
<
http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced-displ
acement-hits-record-high.html> , in significant part because of the very
invasions and occupations that Cheney and his president, George W. Bush,
launched in the Greater Middle East, radically destabilizing that part of
the world.
The Enemy of My Enemy?
What should it mean for those of us hoping to resist the grim presidency of
Donald Trump to find Dick Cheney, even momentarily and on a single issue, on
our side? One thing it certainly cant mean is that Cheney stands for the
same everything that moved thousands of people
<
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/29/512250469/photos-thousand
s-protest-at-airports-nationwide-against-trumps-immigration-order> to rush
to U.S. airports, demanding the release of visitors, immigrants, and green
card holders detained under Trumps new order. Although in the Muslim
refugees of today he may indeed recognize a reflection of his Puritan
ancestors, Cheneys disagreement with Donald Trump does not, in fact, make
him a friend of the cause of compassion, justice, or the rule of law.
Few of us who spent eight years opposing Bush and Cheney or who remember
their record of invasions
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176058/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_how_the
_u.s._created_middle_east_mayhem> , occupations, torture
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175934/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_the_tor
ture_wars> , black sites, and so much more are likely to imagine that his
opposition to the ban on refugees makes him our friend. But that doesnt
mean that we cant take some satisfaction from where hes landed on this
issue.
Its been harder, however, for many of us to find clarity when it comes to
certain of the other war hawks who, for their own reasons, dont trust
Trump.
Its a trap most of us avoided last summer when 50 members of the national
security establishment, including former National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice and one of George W. Bushs CIA directors, Michael Hayden,
wrote
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176178/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon,_making_se
nse_of_trump_and_his_national_security_state_critics/> an open letter
warning the world that Trump lacked the character, values, and experience
to be president. We recognized that the letter signers themselves lacked
the character, values, and experience to comment. After all, in the Middle
East and elsewhere, this bunch had helped to pave the way for Trumps rise.
In recent months, as the Russian hacking scanda
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/us/politics/taking-aim-at-trump-leaders-
strongly-affirm-findings-on-russian-hacking.html> l hit and Trumps feud
<
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/after-feud-with-intel-agencies-trump-tells-cia-
that-i-am-so-behind-you/> with the CIA gained ever more media attention,
that Agency has proven another matter. Here is a real danger to avoid: in
our efforts to delegitimize Donald Trump, its important not to
inadvertently legitimize an outfit that most of us have long opposed for its
vicious campaigns around the world. Just because Donald Trump all but called
<
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/cia-brennan-trump-nazi-germany-233636
its operatives Nazis shouldnt lead the rest of us to forget its long
history of deceit or accept its pronouncements at face value because they
happen to fit what we would like to believe.
When Barack Obama said
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/politics/russia-election-hacking-sanc
tions.html?_r=0> that there was convincing evidence Russia had used its
hacking efforts to throw the U.S. election to Trump, the president-elect not
surprisingly labeled
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/politics/trump-russia-democrats.html>
the claim ridiculous. But theres also been a bit of sympathy for the CIA
in some odd places. For example, long-time CIA critic and Hullabaloo
<
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/> founder Heather Digby Parton (generally
known as Digby) wrote
<
http://www.salon.com/2016/12/12/spy-vs-spy-cia-says-russia-hacked-the-elect
ion-to-help-trump-and-we-know-the-fbi-did/> at Salon that the CIA
understandably felt there was something a tad unfair about the Trump
transition team calling the Agency the same people that said Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction. After all, they were under a lot of
pressure from the White House back then. As Digby wrote, Its now known
that Vice President Dick Cheney went out to [CIA headquarters in] Langley
[Virginia] in order to personally twist arms and stovepipe the
intelligence report on Iraq.
Thats certainly true, but its also true that the CIA director of that
moment, George Tenet, assured
<
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/18/woodward.book/> President Bush
that there was a slam dunk case that Saddam Hussein had such weaponry. The
fact is that the CIA caved in to pressure from top administration officials
for the intel they so desperately wanted for the invasion they already knew
they were going to launch in Iraq. That is not exactly a ringing endorsement
of the agencys integrity or political independence. An "independent" CIA is
bad enough, but the CIAs vulnerability to political pressure from the White
House is another reason we should be cautious about using Agency
pronouncements as an instrument against Donald Trump. That's the slippery
terrain we find ourselves on now.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1510703330/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20http://www.
amazon.com/dp/1510703330/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20Digby is certainly no
admirer of the CIA, and her article wasnt primarily focused on the quality
of its intelligence under Bush, but on a far more recent turf war between
the Agency and the FBI. She rightly calls out FBI Director James Comey for
his 11th hour intervention in the election, the way he alerted Congress
<
http://www.newsweek.com/what-fbi-found-emails-anthony-weiner-laptop-517652>
to the (vanishingly tiny) possibility that the hard drive on the computer
that Anthony Weiner shared with his wife, Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin,
might have contained evidence of Clintons failure to protect State
Department emails. Nevertheless, the reader is left to infer that -- at
least when it comes to intelligence rather than clandestine operations --
the CIAs pronouncements might prove a reliable instrument against Donald
Trump, an urge that was relatively commonplace among opponents of the new
president.
For example, the Atlantic, which has carried
<
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/operation-tinselto
wn-how-the-cia-manipulates-hollywood/491138/> excellent reporting about CIA
deceptions, published
<
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/the-trump-national-sec
urity-council-an-analysis/514910/> a piece by Kelly Magsamen, who served on
the National Security Council (NSC) under both Bush and Obama, expressing
alarm at Trumps plan to exclude the CIA director from his version of the
NSC. (In fact, the new president reversed himself
<
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-national-security-council-cia-2
34381> on the matter almost immediately.) It's not surprising that Magsamen
would have this view. For those of us who would like to dismantle the entire
national security edifice, however, it would be shortsighted indeed to
attack Trump by shoring up the reputation of an agency -- the CIA -- that,
as former counterintelligence officer John Kiriakou has suggested
<
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/41433-i-have-come-to-the-con
clusion-the-country-does-not-need-a-cia> , the country and the world do not
need. Kariakou, you may remember, was jailed
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175500/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_in_washi
ngton,_fear_the_silence,_not_the_noise/> for discussing the CIAs torture
program with a journalist.
Support for Americas spooks has continued to resound in odd places. For
example, theres been much outrage expressed at President Trumps bizarre
behavior on a visit to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In a
performance that was indeed shocking, he used the occasion to complain about
the way the media underestimated the size of the crowd at his inauguration,
after which he asserted that God had stopped the rain during his Inaugural
Address.
What many commentators found far more bizarre and disturbing, however, was
that Trump gave his performance in front of a memorial wall commemorating
CIA agents who had died on the job. Writing for the not-exactly-right-wing
Huffington Post, Neil McCarthy claimed
<
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/executive-disorders_us_5890c025e4b02c39
7c178cac> that the wall honors un-named heroes who have died in our
service. In a New Yorker article headlined Trumps Vainglorious Affront to
the CIA, former Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Robin Wright
chided
<
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trumps-vainglorious-affront-to-the-
c-i-a> the new president for his lack of respect for the Agencys martyrs.
Trump, she suggested, should have followed the example of President Ronald
Reagan, who on his first visit to the CIA told the assembled staff:
The work you do each day is essential to the survival and to the spread of
human freedom. You remain the eyes and ears of the free world. You are the
trip wire over which totalitarian rule must stumble in their quest for
global domination...
While I would never applaud anyones untimely, violent death, the fact that
Donald Trump (despite his denials
<
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-cia-langley-233971> ) has been
feuding with the CIA shouldnt erase that agencys history or just what
those agents died defending. Trumps annoyance shouldnt magically transform
an agency responsible for decades of violent and bloody coups against
democratic governments in places like Iran
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat> , Guatemala
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat> , the
Congo
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_
the_Congo> , and Chile
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d'%C3%A9tat> into an
organization essential to the survival and spread of human freedom.
Whatever pleasure we may take in Trumps irritation, it doesnt vindicate
the murder
<
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005WPN4X8/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> of
between 26,000 and 41,000 Vietnamese, many of then tortured to death, in the
CIAs notorious Phoenix program
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program> during the Vietnam War. It
doesnt erase the training in torture and repression its agents provided to
dictatorships around the world. And it certainly doesnt make the CIAs use
of terror and torture in its black sites
<
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/13/the-black-sites> as part of
the Bush administrations war on terror any less horrific or illegal.
Nor does the CIAs future look much more promising than its past. When it
comes to torture, its new head Mike Pompeo has clearly wanted to have it
both ways. During his confirmation hearing, he proved unwilling to call
waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation methods torture, but did
acknowledge that they are illegal under a 2015 law, which limits
interrogation techniques to those described in the U.S. Army Field Manual.
There are two problems with reliance on that law. The present Field Manual
contains
<
https://www.justsecurity.org/18043/torture-convention-appendix-army-field-m
anual-interrogations/> a classified annex, which permits among other things
repeated 12-hour bouts of sensory deprivation and solitary confinement for
up to 30 days at a time. Both of these are forms of the cruel, inhuman, and
degrading treatment prohibited by the U.N. Convention against Torture. In
addition, the manual itself is up for revision in two years. A new version
might provide very different guidance.
But its not clear that Pompeo is actually wedded to the manual anyway. As
Human Rights Watch (HRW) points out
<
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/21/us-reject-pompeo-cia-director> , in his
written testimony for his confirmation hearing he indicated that he would
consult with CIA staff to determine whether the application of the Army
Field Manual was an impediment to intelligence-gathering, and whether it
needed to be rewritten. Note as well that Gina Haspel, Pompeos newly
appointed deputy director at the Agency, is notorious
<
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/02/trumps-cia-chief-selects-major-torture-
operative-to-be-agencys-deputy-director/> for her involvement in its black
sites and torture practices in the Bush years (as well as the destruction of
video tapes of waterboarding sessions -- evidence, that is, of those
criminal activities).
Trump himself supports such torture practices. On January 25th, he told
<
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/25/politics/donald-trump-waterboarding-torture/i
ndex.html> ABC News that he still clings to his belief that torture
works. His evidence? The testimony of people at the highest level of
intelligence who as recently as twenty-four hours ago told him that it
works absolutely. It seems likely one of those people was Gina Haspel,
who has a good reason to cling to that same belief.
In reporting ABCs interview with Trump, CNN, like most mainstream media,
allowed itself to be distracted by the question of whether or not torture is
an effective way of getting information from someone. It isnt, as the
Senate Intelligence Committee concluded
<
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/world/cia-torture-report-doc
ument.html> in its landmark 2014 report. However, the question really
shouldnt be whether torture works. The question should be: Is it either
moral or legal? And Donald Trump notwithstanding, the answer in both cases
is no.
Pompeo is also a big fan of NSA-style mass surveillance and has called for
the reinstatement of the NSAs massive secret collection of telephone,
Internet, and social media metadata. The telephone data part of the program
officially expired
<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/nsa-bulk-metadata-collectio
n-expires-usa-freedom-act> in November 2015 as a result of the USA Freedom
Act, passed earlier that year. Under the new arrangement, metadata is held
by the phone companies, rather than directly by the NSA, which now needs a
FISA warrant to get access to those records. Internet and social media
records are still directly available to the NSA, however.
But thats not enough for Pompeo. Human Rights Watch points to a 2016 Wall
Street Journal op-ed
<
https://www.wsj.com/articles/time-for-a-rigorous-national-debate-about-surv
eillance-1451856106> , in which Pompeo urged Congress to 'pass a law
re-establishing collection of all metadata' -- that is, records of
communications, such as their dates, parties, and durations -- 'and
combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information
into a comprehensive, searchable database.'
HRW observes that, in spite of repeated written and oral questions in the
context of the hearing, Pompeo remained vague on what he meant by the
potentially expansive and discriminatory term lifestyle information. As
one devoted to the lesbian lifestyle, I dont find this particularly
encouraging.
Fortunately for those of us who hope to see the national security state
dismantled someday, as recent events have indicated, that edifice and its
friends in both parties are not a seamless whole. There are runs and tears
throughout its fabric, and part of our job is to help open those gaps wider
-- always keeping in mind that while politics may make strange bedfellows,
there are some people you dont ever want to sleep with. Even in the Trump
era, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, at least not when that enemy is
the CIA.
Enemies of Enemies of Enemies
If the CIA is the enemy of my enemy, then Vladimir Putins government in
Russia must be the enemy of the enemy of my enemy. Is it therefore my
friend?
This is a complicated and delicate question. The Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists has just set
<
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-doomsday-clock-is-now-at-two-and-a-ha
lf-minutes-to-midnight/> its doomsday clock forward to two-and-a-half
minutes to midnight, 30 seconds closer to catastrophe.
In the shadow of nuclear war, who wouldnt be eager to see tensions between
Russia and the United States defused? At the same time, I become
uncomfortable when some of my colleagues on the left appear to believe that
any adversary of U.S. hegemony may represent a potential ally for us.
For example, the Nations Stephen Cohen, whose many years of writing on the
Soviet Union served as an important corrective to the official narrative of
the time, characterizes
<
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-friends-and-foes-of-detente/> those
who today are wary of Putin as enemies of détente. He points to a New York
Times editorial whose descriptions "of Putins leadership over the years"
were "so distorted they seemed more like Saturday Night Lives ongoing
parodies" and calls out Times columnist Paul Krugmans "neo-McCarthyite
baiting" of Trump for his admiration of Putin.
I can agree with Cohen that Krugman goes over the top when he refers to
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/building-a-wall-of-ignorance.htm
l> the present administration as the Putin-Trump regime. But its a
mistake to equate legitimate suspicion of Russia and Putin with the efforts
of Senator Joe McCarthy to discredit the U.S. left (and liberals) during the
Cold War. The Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union, and distrust of
Vladimir Putin is not McCarthyism.
Cohen is certainly correct that Putin has good reason to be wary of what he
calls "NATOs highly provocative buildup on Russias Western border." But
even if Russia quite rightly objects to the way NATO has moved east, it
doesnt prove that Putins government didnt try to influence the U.S.
election. Such things are hardly beyond the realm of possibility. After all,
the United States has a long history
<
http://www.npr.org/2016/12/22/506625913/database-tracks-history-of-u-s-medd
ling-in-foreign-elections> of doing just that to countries around the world
(as did the Soviet Union in its day).
That the Washington establishment opposes Russian challenges to the U.S.
urge for global dominance doesnt make Vladimir Putin any less an autocrat,
or Russia under his rule any more a country to emulate. Indeed, on January
27th, the Russian parliament voted
<
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/27/russian-parliament-decrimiina
lizes-domestic-violence/97129912/> 380-3 to decriminalize domestic
violence. A week later, Putin signed the bill into law. Which way, I wonder,
would Donald Trump go if similar legislation were on the table here?
What About Friends?
When the thieves who run our government fall out, we should be glad -- and
find ways to drive the wedge deeper. When John McCain does something
<
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/mccain-graham-trump-234403> we
approve of, like objecting to Trumps executive order on immigration, we can
agree with him, but notice as well that, in the next breath, he says he
supports Trumps commitment to rebuilding our (already vast and
unprecedentedly powerful) military.
Theres a difference between people who find themselves sharing the same
adversary and people who can be, to use an old-fashioned term, in solidarity
with each other. Those of us who oppose U.S. military adventurism abroad and
inequality, racism, and sexism at home need to remember who our friends are.
The next few years must be a time of building broad coalitions and
tightening the bonds among organizations and people who believe that, even
now, a better world is still possible.
In the mixed-up looking-glass universe that is Trumplandia, we are going to
need our friends more than ever. This is true domestically, which means, for
instance, that tenants rights groups will need to keep jumping into
struggles for immigrant rights (as is already happening
<
https://cjjc.org/?projects=immigrant-rights-campaign/> in many places),
and veterans organizations will need to keep on supporting
<
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dakota-pipeline-protests/dakota-access-pip
eline-fight-veterans-vow-it-will-not-get-n716011> fights to preserve Native
land and water rights as in the struggle over the Dakota Access pipeline.
Its true on the international level, as well. We will need to build strong
ties with people in Europe fighting the rise of the far right there, and to
continue our solidarity with the victims of U.S. military actions around the
world.
But its also true at the level of our individual lives. Now especially we
need contact with the people we love to keep us strong and hopeful. Now is a
good time to remind your friends that you love them, and that you will have
their backs. Its a time to march together, but also to eat together. To
strategize and organize, but also to make each other laugh. Its a time to
remember who our adversaries are, but also to cherish our friends.
Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch
<
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176229/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon,_the_best_
defense/> regular, teaches in the philosophy department at the University
of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S.
Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes
<
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1510703330/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> . Her
previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the
Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter <
https://twitter.com/TomDispatch> and join us
on Facebook <
http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch> . Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands
<
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467244/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> , as
well as Nick Turses Next Time They
<
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608466485/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> ll Come
to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World
<
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463656/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> .
Copyright 2017 Rebecca Gordon
© 2017 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176241/
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